L I B R.ARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 U N I VLRSITY 
 
 Of ILLINOIS 
 
 823 
 
 C9l4h 
 v.!
 
 .Ojlxj^L 
 
 THE HERIOTS
 
 THE HERIOTS 
 
 BY 
 
 SIR HENRY STEWART CUNNINGHAM, K.C.I.E. 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 'chronicles of DUSTYPORE,' 'wheat and tares,' 'the Ca-;RULEANS,' 
 
 ETC. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES 
 VOL. I 
 
 iloiitioii 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YORK 
 I 8qo 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 U3 
 
 TO 
 
 E. C. E. 
 
 ' When ail is done, liuman life is, at the greatest and 
 the best, but like a froward child, that must be played with 
 and humoured a little to keep it quiet, till it falls asleep, 
 and then the care is over.'
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. 
 I. 
 
 6. 
 
 7. 
 8. 
 
 9- 
 
 lO. 
 
 II. 
 
 12. 
 
 13- 
 
 14. 
 15. 
 
 An Old Home .... 
 
 Olivia 
 
 A Horrid Ordeal 
 Deeper and Deeper Still 
 
 ' ICH HABE MEINE JUGEND VERLOREN 
 
 A Green Old Age . 
 Glorious Apollo 
 Sic Itur ad Astra . 
 
 Diplomacy 
 
 Le fou qui Croit au Lendemain 
 
 Lady Heriot prepares for Action 
 
 An Old Lady's Sermon . 
 
 A Young Man's Sport 
 
 Retro Sathanas ! . . . 
 
 'A New Mistress now I chase' 
 
 PAGE 
 I 
 
 18 
 
 32 
 
 41 
 
 53 
 68 
 81 
 
 94 
 II I 
 127 
 144 
 163 
 175 
 188 
 197
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 AN OLD HOME 
 
 ' Happy is your grace, 
 That can translate the stubbornness of Fortune 
 Into so quiet and so sweet a style.' 
 
 HuNTSHAM Court was one of those delightful 
 old homes which transform the dull prose of 
 country life into an idyll dear to the English- 
 man's heart. It was idyllic, at any rate, to 
 the Heriots, several generations of whom 
 had first seen the light of day and had taken 
 their last look at it beneath that friendly roof. 
 To them it was a shrine of precious relics 
 and dear associations. Its very shabbiness 
 breathed a poetry that seemed to scorn the 
 vulgar necessities of material repair. Its 
 
 VOL. I B
 
 2 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 gables peeping through the elms, its weather- 
 stained walls, its rambling passages — whose 
 geography one almost needed to be born a 
 Herlot to understand — Its galleries stored 
 with many a trophy of travel and endless 
 collections of faded books. Its great bed- 
 rooms, where each generation of dwellers 
 seemed to have left some stamp of per- 
 sonality — picture or print, historic bed or 
 anecdotic chair — how tight a hold do such 
 things take on loving hearts, whose love 
 began with the first wondering looks of 
 infancy ! Outside, the great stretches of 
 lawn, smooth with the care of centuries — 
 the quaint statellness of the gardens — the 
 wide -spreading beeches that crowned the 
 hillsides of the park — the moss-grown paths 
 through depths of wood — ^each seemed to tell 
 its own romance — a romance none the less 
 charming for being often told — which made 
 it natural for the Herlots to hold, foremost in 
 their family creed, the loyal dogma that, for
 
 I AN OLD HOME 3 
 
 them at any rate, there was and could be no 
 place like home. 
 
 To Sir Adrian, the present Lord of Hunts- 
 ham, his estate was suggestive of thoughts 
 other than romantic — thoughts harassing, 
 sordid, soul-depressing. It meant fields of 
 stiff clay where nothing but wheat could be 
 grown, and wheat only at a loss ; farms 
 unlet or let only at a calamitous decline from 
 their former rental ; mortgages whose interest 
 was an incessant drag, and whose capital had 
 to be found at inconvenient moments — charges 
 which, unluckily, did not diminish with the 
 means of defraying them — dilapidations which 
 it was costly to remedy and ruinous to neglect 
 — a banker's book which too often revealed 
 that most disagreeable of all reading, an over- 
 drawn account. Sir Adrian was excessively 
 embarrassed, and his struggles to escape from 
 embarrassment — which had mostly taken the 
 form of injudiciously speculative projects — 
 had only sunk him deeper in distress. Such
 
 4 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 Struggles involve sad wear and tear of brain, 
 nerve and temper. Sir Adrian was often- 
 times in the depths of low spirits — depths 
 whose profundity defied the gentle ministra- 
 tions of his wife, herself too oppressed by the 
 burthen of existence to be an efficient con- 
 soler ; or the ignorant light -heartedness of 
 his son Jack, whom the experiences of Eton 
 and Christchurch had not yet taught how 
 rough a place the world may easily become 
 to those who essay to travel through it with- 
 out the necessary appliances for a comfortable 
 journey. 
 
 Just now Sir Adrian had forgotten his 
 troubles, for he was a good host, and there 
 was a pleasant party in the house. It was 
 the party of the year. His mother was pay- 
 ing them her accustomed autumn visit — an 
 event which stirred the quiet current of 
 Huntsham existence with a pleasurable ex- 
 citement, not without its anxiety to the 
 mistress of the house. Lady Heriot was a
 
 I AN OLD HOME 5 
 
 vigorous old lady, excessively interested in 
 the world, and requiring above everything 
 to be well amused. Lady Eugenia was 
 incapable of amusing any one, least of all 
 her mother-in-law, of whose keen wit and 
 outspoken criticisms she felt a somewhat 
 paralysing dread. She protected herself by 
 securing a sufficiency of guests to whom Lady 
 Heriot would care to listen and to talk. 
 Several of her husband's relatives were always 
 to be depended upon for these occasions. Mrs. 
 Hazelden, Sir Adrian's eldest sister— a woman, 
 as her mother used to say, of strong sense, 
 strong feelings, and strong language — would 
 have thought herself dreadfully disloyal if she 
 had failed to spend a week at the home of 
 her girlhood during her mother's visit. She 
 brought a considerable supply of pungent 
 observations, some excellent stories, and a 
 sturdy humour, to which the rough business 
 of life and her cares as a mother of a family 
 had but given additional zest. Valentine, a
 
 6 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 younger brother, a prosperous man of busi- 
 ness, and his smart young wife, generally 
 contrived to take Huntsham at the outset of 
 a course of autumn visits, and to fit their 
 arrival at Huntsham with Lady Heriot's. 
 Their presence, if in some ways distasteful to 
 Lady Eugenia, was on these occasions, she 
 felt, the greatest possible help. They relieved 
 her of all anxiety as to Lady Heriot's being 
 well entertained. The old lady liked these 
 gay people, with their shrewdness, their quick- 
 ness, their knowledge of the world, their bright 
 talk, their sensible, if not always very elevated, 
 way of looking at things, better than those 
 who took her more seriously, and whose 
 respectful demeanour was a sort of covert 
 sermon on the dignities and responsibilities 
 of old age, and a tacit reminder of its approach- 
 ing end. 
 
 'We old people,' she used to say, 'want 
 cheering, and, above everything, not to be 
 preached at. Some people cannot help
 
 I AN OLD HOME 7 
 
 preaching.' Sir Adrian and Lady Eugenia 
 had sometimes — Lady Heriot was constrained 
 to admit to herself — the effect of a dull ser- 
 mon. She resented such sermons the more 
 because Sir Adrian laboured under the dis- 
 advantage of recalling to her recollection some 
 of the thino^s in life which had vexed her 
 most, some incidents of which she least wished 
 to be reminded. Thanks to him, she had 
 been betrayed into several colossal blunders, 
 and thrown away many thousands of pounds 
 which, though legally at her disposal, she was 
 bound, as an intelligent and capable guardian, 
 to hand down intact to her children. She 
 was shrewd, she had the reputation of shrew^d- 
 ness, and enjoyed it ; but she felt that here 
 at least she had sunk below the level of 
 ordinary common sense, and that Sir Adrian 
 was a sharer in the lapse, if not its instigator. 
 It was a relief to be able to turn from such 
 topics to people who, like the Valentines, wore 
 an air of prosperity and suggested only the
 
 8 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 successful side of life. Viewed in this light, 
 Mrs. Valentine's fine dresses, whose splendour 
 and variety it was the family custom to con- 
 demn as out of taste, became but the fitting 
 environment of a woman who marched through 
 life in a sort of triumphal procession, conquer- 
 ing its difficulties, seizing its opportunities, 
 and drinking its cup of pleasure to the dregs. 
 
 The family party was supplemented by a 
 few outsiders, old friends of Sir Adrian and 
 his mother, and traditional visitors at Hunts- 
 ham. Dr. Crucible, the curator of a Govern- 
 ment museum, had always for years past 
 begun his summer holiday at Huntsham, and 
 enjoyed no part of It so well. It was his 
 recognised function to keep Lady Heriot 
 supplied with new books and fresh gossip, 
 and to add a spice to the talk around her tea- 
 table by acid drops of sarcasm, and apoph- 
 thegms, whose burthen was, for the most 
 part, the surpassing folly of the human race. 
 
 Another Invariable guest was Hlllyard, a
 
 I AN OLD HOME 9 
 
 neighbouring clergyman, an old college friend 
 of Sir Adrian, and a devoted admirer of his 
 mother. He had come now with his daughter 
 Olivia, a picturesque young creature who wore 
 the graces of 'sweet seventeen' with good 
 effect. H er bright eyes, vivacious manner, and 
 enthusiastic enjoyment of all things enjoyable 
 had long ago secured her a place in Lady 
 Heriot's regard. She was the incarnation of 
 youth, health, and gaiety, yet not unsympa- 
 thetically boisterous, as youth is apt to seem 
 to aged nerves. The two stood at the opposite 
 poles of life, but, despite the long interval of 
 years. Lady Heriot found her a congenial 
 companion, and made active advances for the 
 young lady's goodwill. It was one of her 
 principles that old age should treat young 
 people with ceremonious politeness ; but to 
 Olivia she was more than polite. 
 
 ' Will you give me your arm, my dear,' 
 she had said to her as, on the opening 
 morning of this tale, the breakfast party
 
 lo THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 broke up, and Olivia was helping her to rise 
 from her seat, ' and come with me for my 
 walk in the garden ? And, perhaps, after- 
 wards you will have the kindness to read me 
 the Times — a luxury my old eyes forbid me 
 to enjoy, except through the kind offices of 
 my friends.' 
 
 Olivia blushed up with pleasure, and her 
 kindling eyes, as they caught her father's, 
 told how welcome the proposal was. The 
 old lady and the young girl went off together 
 in mutual satisfaction. This was the sort of 
 thing that Olivia did to perfection. There 
 was a nice combination of deference and 
 kindness in her behaviour, which Lady 
 Heriot found greatly to her taste. 
 
 She felt the pathos of age and its 
 picturesqueness. She liked old people, she 
 enjoyed ministering to them, and her grace 
 and adroitness, her good-natured alacrity, 
 made her a pleasant ministrant. She was 
 now delighted to minister to Lady Heriot.
 
 I AN OLD HOME ii 
 
 The two wandered, arm in arm, down the 
 wide terrace, and by the avenue of Hmes, 
 and passed the gate of the enclosure where 
 — surrounded by old brick walls, now- 
 crumbling and moss-grown — was all that 
 remained of the glory of a well-kept garden. 
 Nature, however, had taken it to her kindly 
 keeping, and shrouded the shortcomings of 
 art and the negligence of man with a 
 luxurious growth. 
 
 Olivia stood gazing, her eyes bright with 
 pleasure, and drank a long draught of the 
 fragrant atmosphere. 
 
 'What an enchanting morning,' she cried, 
 ' and how these gardens charm one — so still 
 and peaceful — and these dear old-fashioned 
 flowers, how gay they look, how delicious 
 they smell ! ' 
 
 ' Do you know,' said Lady Heriot, *a nice 
 saying of a very wise person who wrote 
 about gardens? "The breath of flowers," 
 he said, " is sweetest in the air, where it
 
 12 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 comes and goes, like the warbling of 
 music." ' 
 
 * How pretty ! ' said Olivia ; * it is a sort 
 of music, is it not ? a harmony of pleasant 
 sensations ! Places like this garden do one 
 good to remember, do they not ? ' 
 
 * I have many remembrances about it,' 
 said her companion. 'This was my home, 
 you know, for thirty years. That clump of 
 beeches my dear husband and I planted 
 when we were young people — I was a year 
 or two older than you are now — in honour of 
 our honeymoon ; so they are old friends of 
 mine, and nod me a kindly welcome when- 
 ever I come to see them.' 
 
 Lady Heriot stood gazing, her eyes dim 
 with tears, and seemed lost in reverie. * I 
 have spent many a happy hour here,' she 
 continued, ' many peaceful days. This was 
 our favourite haunt. Sweet recollections, 
 my child, grow very precious as other 
 treasures slip from one. Young people
 
 I AN OLD HOME 13 
 
 should make a good hoard of them betimes. 
 "The thought of our past years in me doth 
 breed Perpetual benediction" — the best 
 blessing that old age can have.' 
 
 Olivia was charmed. ' I shall always 
 remember this walk with you, Lady Heriot,' 
 she said; 'let me come with you again. It 
 does me good. I wish to begin my store of 
 good remembrances at once.' 
 
 So Lady Heriot and Olivia became the 
 best of friends. 
 
 There was another person at Huntsham 
 who was beginning to think Olivia delightful. 
 She was a child, and Jack none the less a 
 boy because he had been to Christchurch. 
 No break had ever occurred to chill the 
 pleasant familiarity of childhood. The past 
 was dear to them in common. Recollection 
 painted some happy scenes when, as little 
 children, they had wandered together about 
 the lanes in an ecstasy of surprise at the 
 treasures which were for ever springing up
 
 14 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 around them — flowers such as no longer live 
 in the grown-up world ; long summer after- 
 noons under the elms, the air sweet with the 
 scent of hay ; delightful marauding expedi- 
 tions along odorous hedgerows ablaze with 
 primroses ; wild adventures into the inter- 
 minable depths of a park plantation. So 
 childhood's remembered joys gave to each a 
 romantic background which threw^ a tender 
 radiance on the commonplace intimacy of 
 grown-up life. 
 
 And now a new pulse stirring in Jack's 
 blood told him that he was a child no 
 longer, and that his companion was en- 
 chanting. 
 
 Before many days were passed, Jack 
 began to talk about Olivia with a vehemence 
 that aroused his mother's vague anxiety to 
 active alarm. 
 
 ' Yes,' Lady Eugenia had said with artless 
 hypocrisy, ' I suppose she would be called a 
 pretty girl ; but she is a mere child, and you
 
 I AN OLD HOME 15 
 
 never can know how children will turn out ; 
 she is perfectly unformed.' 
 
 ' Unformed, mother ! ' cried the enthusi- 
 astic Jack. 'What can you mean by that? 
 How would you have her formed ? How 
 many women in England are formed half as 
 well ? Is she not like a Sir Joshua Reynolds 
 stepping out of its frame — a dream of grace 
 and refinement, only with colours ten times 
 more enchanting than any Sir Joshua ? ' 
 
 ' How can you talk in that way, Jack ? ' 
 said his mother ; ' the girl is well enough, 
 and it is fortunate that she seems to be 
 intelligent ; she will probably have to earn 
 her living as a governess.' 
 
 ' A governess ! ' cried Jack, his excited 
 mood all the hotter for his mother's coolness; 
 ' a governess ! a goddess ! I could tell you of 
 plenty of scholars who would like to learn of 
 such a governess as that ! All the world will 
 be fighting for her, you will see.' 
 
 ' Fighting for her ! ' cried Lady Eugenia ;
 
 i6 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 ' that is not what generally happens when 
 young governesses — pretty or ugly — are in 
 want of a situation. Happily there is no 
 need to think about it at present.' 
 
 Be Olivia's prospects what they might, 
 there was nothing to prevent the two young 
 people enjoying themselves meantime to 
 their hearts' content. Jack had just passed 
 his last Oxford examination — an effort of 
 intellect which justified the pleasant idleness 
 of a long vacation. Amid many abortive 
 attempts at assiduity, he was diligent at one 
 thing — his violin. The presence of Olivia — 
 ready to play his accompaniments — gave a 
 great stimulus to diligence. What pleasanter 
 pretence at an industrious morning than to 
 practise duets with so opportune a com- 
 panion ? Nothing more promotes the flow 
 of talk than an employment which justifies 
 silence but admits readily of interruption. 
 Jack and Olivia, it may be surmised, stopped 
 frequently in their labours to exchange ideas
 
 I AN OLD HOME 17 
 
 or to indulge in a little permissible self- 
 applause at the success of the performance. 
 
 Olivia, with her fingers resting on the 
 notes like a modern St. Cecilia in flesh and 
 blood — Jack kneeling on the ottoman, bow 
 in hand, forgetful of everything but his 
 delightful companion — how pleasantly, how 
 swiftly such mornings slip away ! 
 
 VOL. I
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 OLIVIA 
 
 ' For she was faire, as faire might ever be, 
 And in the flower of her freshest age ; 
 Yet full of grace and goodly modestie. 
 That even Heaven rejoiced her sweete face to see.' 
 
 Mrs. Valentine Heriot's relations, the 
 Goldinghams, lived at ' the Pines,' a fine 
 place within an afternoon's drive of Hunts- 
 ham. They were extremely rich. The 
 founder of the family had realised a huge 
 fortune from a stucco, of which he was the 
 fortunate monopolist, and which had estab- 
 lished its fame as by many degrees harder, 
 more weather -tight, and more economical 
 than any previously revealed to human ken. 
 Mr. Goldingham, it was said, had spent half
 
 CHAP. II OLIVIA 19 
 
 a million in advertising, had bought up big 
 competitors and crushed the small, and now 
 held the markets of the world. Wealth, 
 accordingly, was as abundant at the Pines 
 as it was conspicuous by its absence at 
 Huntsham. 
 
 Sir Adrian had always disliked his opulent 
 neighbours. Their splendour — comfortable 
 and solid — contrasted disagreeably with the 
 shabby meagreness of all around him. Mr. 
 Goldingham's model cottages, exquisite 
 gardens, and well - appointed homesteads, 
 bristling with every new appliance, were a 
 reflection on the picturesque but ruinous 
 tenements of the Huntsham cottagers. Sir 
 Adrian consoled himself with the reflection 
 that farming and cottage - building of this 
 order was the natural amusement of a 
 millionaire, who wanted to make his wealth 
 conspicuous, and that such showy extrava- 
 gance could never pay. 
 
 Mr. Goldingham, however, soon proved
 
 20 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 that his farms paid as well as other people's, 
 and carried public opinion with him in pro- 
 testing that it was neither humane nor eco- 
 nomical to house one's labourers like pigs. 
 Meanwhile he went his way rejoicing, with 
 other and more solid orrounds of satisfaction. 
 He had carried an election, as Liberal mem- 
 ber for the county. Sir Adrian, who, as his 
 father before him, had represented it, and was 
 by sentiment and tradition a Tory of the 
 purest water, had fought angrily for his 
 endangered seat. Mr. Goldingham had 
 triumphed ; the contest had left a great deal 
 of bitterness behind it and a smarting sense 
 of defeat in Sir Adrian's mind, already full 
 enough of the material of ferment. 
 
 One good result, however, of the mil- 
 lionaire's settlement in the county was that 
 Mr. Hillyard, who, as Mrs. Goldingham's 
 first cousin, had the needy kinsman's claim 
 upon his wealthy relations, was, through her 
 influence, presented with the incumbency of
 
 II OLIVIA 21 
 
 a small Rectory which lay between the two 
 estates. He thus became available for social 
 purposes at Huntsham, and was a great addi- 
 tion to Sir Adrian's comfort in life. The one 
 was as impecunious as the other, and each 
 was glad of a companion in whose society 
 money troubles might be forgotten awhile 
 in more congenial topics. Hillyard was, 
 admittedly, a very clever fellow, but his 
 cleverness was not exactly of the order 
 most calculated to advance his interests as 
 a Churchman. Mr. Goldingham had given 
 him the living with the idea of putting a stop 
 to the scandals to which Hillyard s embarrass- 
 ments were too often giving rise. But Hill- 
 yard had no sooner got a living than he 
 considered himself entitled to marry ; and 
 did not improve his condition by marrying a 
 beautiful young Irishwoman with no fortune 
 but a pair of melting violet eyes, lips round 
 which the Graces played, and a low deep 
 voice, which, with its little touch of Irish
 
 22 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 brogue, sounded with a sweet pathos to her 
 husband's inner ear long after he had heard 
 it for the last time on earth. 
 
 Mrs. Hillyard proved the worst of all 
 possible managers. The financial crisis at 
 the Rectory became yearly more acute. 
 Butchers and bakers did not find in the 
 bride's beaux yettx sufficient compensation for 
 long unsettled accounts for quartern loaves 
 and solid legs of mutton. The life of the 
 young couple was embittered by unskilful 
 attempts to make an inadequate income 
 stretch over an expenditure that, for some 
 recondite reason or other, seemed ever on 
 the rise. Then came a baby, the Olivia of 
 the present story, the most bewitching little 
 creature that it was possible to imagine, but 
 still not tending to reduce expenses. Hill- 
 yard made bootless attempts to discover new 
 sources of supply. He wrote spasmodic 
 articles for magazines, which, though learned 
 and scholar- like, did not prove to be par-
 
 II OLIVIA 23 
 
 ticularly saleable. Then the brilliant idea of 
 taking pupils suggested itself, but resulted in 
 nothing but much fruitless expenditure. 
 
 Then, to crown their misfortunes, Mrs. 
 Hillyard's health broke down. Nothing but 
 a winter in Italy, change of scene, a warm 
 climate, and rest — perfect rest of mind and 
 body, the doctor said — could save her. Rest ! 
 Italy! Good God! Hillyard was already 
 deep in debt to half the neighbouring 
 tradesmen, and at a loss where to turn for 
 a sovereign ! Half frantic, he rushed off to 
 his bankers and persuaded them to lend him 
 ;^200. He sent his darling off to Mentone 
 with Olivia for companion, and remained, 
 eating his heart out, at the lonely Rectory, 
 half starving himself meanwhile. Mrs. Hill- 
 yard came back to her home in the spring 
 with death written in her haggard features, 
 bright eyes, and hectic cheek. Husband and 
 wife read directly in each other's eyes what 
 was going to happen. She was doomed —
 
 24 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 and before autumn the doom had fallen. 
 Hillyard was a widower, and Olivia mother- 
 less. 
 
 Olivia was a precocious child, and her 
 mother's death hurried her Into womanhood. 
 The true woman's natural function is that of 
 consolation, and Olivia was a thorough woman. 
 She had always cherished a romantic attach- 
 ment to her father, and she now felt an over- 
 powering flow of pitying love for the heart- 
 broken, helpless man, more unable than ever 
 to face the rough struggle of existence. 
 Hillyard, on his part, felt all the chivalry and 
 tenderness of his nature stirred Into active 
 life by the charming creature who was now 
 dependent on him for everything, and whose 
 future was so dark. He petted her with a 
 kind solicitude that went to Olivia's heart. 
 She had her mother's eyes, more than her 
 mother's beauty, and a vivacity of wit which 
 was all her own and made her father often 
 declare her to be the best company in the
 
 II OLIVIA 25 
 
 world. But Olivia had more than a lively 
 wit ; she was instinctively mistress, as her 
 father soon discovered, of the art of fascina- 
 tion. 
 
 She was, he soon began to realise, devot- 
 ing herself to charming him, and found the 
 task easy and congenial. Her father, what- 
 ever else the poverty of her home denied, 
 could give her an education as refined, as 
 polished as the best. An education that did 
 not include the classics was, to Hillyard's 
 understanding, but an empty and meaningless 
 fragment — enough, perhaps, to give a surface 
 glitter, but leaving the soul uncultured, the 
 taste with no adequate standard — the most 
 interesting chapters of human history a blank. 
 
 ' All the best possible things,' so ran his 
 doctrine, ' said in the best possible manner 
 by the best possible people, Olivia. That is 
 what the classics mean — all the moods ot 
 human thought when men had yet room and 
 leisure to be original : "those fortunate early
 
 26 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 risers of literature, who gathered their phrases 
 with the dew still on them," and had their 
 poetry ready-made for them in their voca- 
 bulary. Modern literature is but plagiarism, 
 and the moderns are clumsy plagiarists. The 
 cleverest, the brightest of them are content 
 with the humble role of translators ; and 
 rightly, for beauty is eternal' 
 
 So Olivia's education progressed. She 
 lived happy and serene in her own happy 
 surroundings. Of the outer world she 
 thought nothing and knew nothing, except 
 that, when she went on rare occasions to the 
 neighbouring market-town, the people in the 
 streets turned to look at her, and that most 
 of the gentlemen who came to her father's 
 house on business or pleasure seemed sud- 
 denly inspired with a vivid interest in her 
 fortunes and herself. She had never, it may 
 be safely affirmed, formulated in her mind 
 any definition of the characteristic qualities of 
 man ; but it is probable that, without previous
 
 II OLIVIA 27 
 
 definition, she was accustomed, even at this 
 early period, to think of him as an appreciative 
 and sympathetic animal. 
 
 In the meanwhile she wrote a set of Latin 
 Alcaics on her father's birthday, which the 
 admiring recipient walked about the drawing- 
 room reciting with tears of pleasure in his 
 eyes, and w^hich he declared would have done 
 credit to a sixth-form boy at Eton. 
 
 Jack's excited mood and high-flown praises 
 made his mother anxious about him. Her 
 anxiety soon assumed an acuter phase, for 
 Jack's feelings on the subject had become too 
 strong to bear either repression or conceal- 
 ment. His mother was the natural depositary 
 of his confession. 
 
 One night Jack came Into her bedroom for 
 a chat and poured out his troubles. It at 
 once became apparent that he was very far 
 gone Indeed. 
 
 ' You must admit, mother,' he cried, ' she
 
 28 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 is a lovely creature, and clever and good. 
 Where is there another like her ? ' 
 
 ' There are plenty like her,' Lady Eugenia 
 said in ineffectual protest ; 'believe me, Jack, 
 the world is full of charming girls. Happily 
 or unhappily, they are a plentiful race, only 
 too plentiful ! ' 
 
 ' Come, mother,' said Jack, ' don't say that. 
 You know it is not true. Girls like Olivia 
 are not so common. The world would be a 
 much prettier place if they were. Confess 
 now that you admire her as much as I do. 
 Did you ever have any girl here that you 
 liked half as well ? ' 
 
 ' She is a child, I tell you. Jack,' said his 
 mother, ' and so are you — perfect children 
 both. You must not think of marriage these 
 dozen years, and when you do think of it you 
 will have to find a girl with some money to 
 help to keep you afloat.' 
 
 * I can never marry any one but Olivia,' 
 Jack said solemnly ; 'show me the girl, mother,
 
 II OLIVIA 29 
 
 that can compare with her in beauty or wit. 
 Anyhow, I love her. I am not ambitious. 
 I don't want to be a greater man than my 
 father. We all despise wealth, don't we ? 
 As for marrying into stucco or that sort of 
 thing, like Uncle Val, I hate the idea of it. 
 Besides, don't you see, mother, it is no use 
 talking to me. I love the very ground she 
 treads on.' 
 
 Then Lady Eugenia thought it necessary 
 to tell Sir Adrian, who accepted the intelli- 
 gence as but one item more in the list of 
 life's complications. He braced himself up to 
 the effort of speaking to Jack on the subject. 
 
 ' I have something serious to say to you, 
 Jack,' he said ; ' you are behaving like a fool, 
 sir, and bothering your mother. What is all 
 this nonsense about you and Olivia ? You 
 have said nothing to the girl, of course ? ' 
 
 ' Not a word, sir,' said Jack, 'except ' 
 
 ' Except what ? ' asked his father per- 
 emptorily.
 
 30 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 ' I can't tell what I may have said to her, 
 father. I love her, and do not always count 
 my words. I have not offered to marry her, 
 if that is what you mean.' 
 
 ' Good heavens, Jack ! ' cried his father in 
 consternation, ' I should hope not indeed. 
 Marry her ! Why, my dear fellow, you have 
 only just taken your degree! You are a 
 student, a schoolboy, and she is a schoolgirl, 
 without a grain of reason in either of your 
 silly brains, or a penny to bless yourselves 
 with ! For goodness sake do not let any 
 such foolish notion come into your head ! ' 
 
 Jack showed a great deal of the family 
 obstinacy. Lady Eugenia experienced just 
 the same feeling of hopelessness and fatigue 
 as was familiar to her in contests with her 
 husband. 
 
 ' I want you to understand. Jack,' his 
 father said, resuming the attack, ' how much 
 discomfort and trouble you may easily pro- 
 duce. You must see that you cannot be
 
 ir OLIVIA 31 
 
 married for years to come. You will then 
 have to make the match of a rational being — 
 some woman whose position and money will 
 help you to face the world and hold your 
 own in it. It is no easy struggle, I can 
 tell you. You have no idea, my boy, how 
 bad the times are, how unfortunate I have 
 been, what difficulty I have in making both 
 ends meet. The fact is, they don't meet. 
 Things have gone badly with me. Jack, 
 cruelly badly. You must promise me not to 
 make love to her ' 
 
 ' Till when ? ' said Jack. 
 
 'Till I give you leave,' said his father 
 decisively. ' Unless you give me your word 
 of honour to that, I must send you with a 
 tutor to Germany, or to India for a year's 
 travelling. Will you promise ? ' 
 
 ' I suppose I must,' said Jack.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 A HORRID ORDEAL 
 
 ' I know not 
 What counts harsh fortune casts upon my face ; 
 But in my bosom shall she never come 
 To make my heart her vassal,' 
 
 Sir Adrian's exercise of paternal despotism 
 cost him all the more for the consideration 
 that he had, as the facts stood between him- 
 self and Jack, no right to be despotic. It 
 was Jack who was, if the truth were known, 
 the real master of the situation. Sir Adrian 
 had now before him something which he 
 dreaded more than any of the inconveniences 
 In which poverty had hitherto involved him ; 
 something which, all along, had given poverty 
 its worst sting. For years past It had been
 
 CHAP. Ill A HORRID ORDEAL 33 
 
 looming in the horizon, darkening the after- 
 noon liehts of Sir Adrian's Hfe. It was now 
 close at hand ; it must be done, and done 
 forthwith. Sir Adrian had to confess his 
 troubles to his son. The confession cost a 
 dreadful effort even in anticipation. It was a 
 new order of affliction, all the more poignant 
 for its novelty. Sir Adrian was by this time 
 accustomed to many phases of embarrass- 
 ment — to solicitors, to creditors, to his 
 mother's views, to his wife's, to \'alentine's. 
 He had o^one throuQ;h the worst that thev 
 could inflict upon him. The worst was very 
 bad, but it was endurable : he had borne it, 
 he could bear it again. But with Jack he 
 had always held his head high. He had 
 maintained a dignified reserve. Jack knew 
 that his father was poor ; he could not be at 
 home without observing the signs ot that ; 
 but he knew no more. He had always had 
 a handsome allowance. He had lived freeh- 
 and gaily with his compeers. His college 
 
 VOL. I D
 
 34 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 debts had been paid. Poverty which allowed 
 of this had naturally seemed to him not 
 unendurable. The comfortable routine of a 
 country house is suggestive of anything 
 rather than impending change. It is the 
 very antipodes of revolution ; yet the 
 changes which Sir Adrian now had in his 
 thoughts were revolutionary. 
 
 He had a confession to make, a con- 
 fession that would seem to Jack like the 
 world tumbling about his ears — the over- 
 turning of all the solid facts of life ; nor was 
 the confession all. He had to ask him to 
 place himself in a position which was not his 
 legal one, to assume a responsibility for 
 family debts which were not legally binding 
 upon him, to overthrow the safe and solid 
 structure of protection which a family settle- 
 ment rears for the future landowner before 
 his birth, and maintains for him all his life, 
 unless with his own hand he pulls it down. 
 Jack had to be informed that his father's
 
 Ill A HORRID ORDEAL 35 
 
 emergency demanded the cutting off of the 
 entail. Supposing he refused ? But Sir 
 Adrian did not count on a refusal. Jack 
 would, Sir Adrian well knew, behave like a 
 gentleman and a good fellow in his father's 
 hour of need, his own hour of self-sacrifice. 
 None the less it was a dreadful disclosure, a 
 dreadful proposal to have to make — all the 
 more dreadful for Jack's unconsciousness of 
 the impending disaster, and his undisguised 
 affection for the place that was soon to pass 
 away from him for ever. 
 
 ' These are grand oaks, father,' he said 
 one day, as the two were strolling through 
 one of the woods that crowned the hillsides 
 round Huntsham Park, 'are they not .^ I 
 don't know where there are any finer in the 
 county. Lord Appenthorpe's cannot com- 
 pare with them.' 
 
 ' Cannot they ? ' said his father in torture, 
 for the oaks had long been doomed. Sir 
 Adrian knew their cubic contents, and the
 
 36 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 sum which they would contribute to his 
 exhausted exchequer. 
 
 ' And what an ornament they are to the 
 place!' cried the unthinking Jack. 'What 
 is any place without them ? Just look at the 
 Pines, with that horrid, gaudy house — as 
 smart as paint and stucco can make it, and 
 not a tree on the whole estate that is worth 
 looking at. No gentleman would care to 
 live there, would he ? ' 
 
 ' But Mr. Goldingham is making fine 
 plantations,' said his father, catching help- 
 lessly at a moment s delay of the crisis which 
 he felt to be Imminent ; ' he has planted 
 out half a million trees, Sincox was tell- 
 ing me yesterday. I envy him the job 
 sincerely.' 
 
 ' Three generations hence they will be 
 respectable,' cried Master Jack, ' which Is 
 more than the house will ever be. It is a 
 rich tradesman's house, father, is It not ? too 
 fine, too pretentious, too new ; nothing really
 
 Ill A HORRID ORDEAL yj 
 
 nice about it. Just look at Huntsham ! why, 
 even as a ruin, It would tell its own tale, that 
 eentlefolk have lived there for three hundred 
 years.' 
 
 'Jack,' said his father suddenly, 'I have 
 something to say to you — bad for you to 
 hear — cruel for me to say. You are a man 
 now;, and must bear to hear it, though it 
 breaks both our hearts and your mother's. 
 I have been unfortunate, Jack, very unfor- 
 tunate in money matters. I have done my 
 best for you : but bad has been my best. I 
 can do no more. I am at the end of ex- 
 pedients : God knows, I have tried every 
 one that I could think of. But the times are 
 hard and the luck has been against me. I 
 was left with heavy mortgages, and heavy 
 charges, too heavy for the estate. My own 
 bad luck or bad judgment has done the rest. 
 I am a ruined man, and you can guess what 
 you are. I have concealed it from you as 
 long as a ray of hope remained. It would
 
 3^ THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 be cruelty — cowardice and cruelty — to con- 
 ceal it any longer.' 
 
 Jack stood stunned ; his usually ruddy 
 cheek was white as a sheet. His good in- 
 stincts showed themselves at once. He 
 seized his father's hand ; somehow he could 
 not speak. 
 
 * You have been a good son to me, Jack, 
 and I know that I may count on you ; we 
 must face it together.' 
 
 ' Of course we must, and will,' said Jack ; 
 ' what is it, father, that I am to do ? ' 
 
 Then came the stern prosaic truth, and 
 very grim and horrible it sounded. Jack 
 was to join with his father in cutting off the 
 entail. Huntsham must be sold. 
 
 ' Sold ! ' cried Jack aghast ; ' Huntsham 
 sold ! Surely that cannot be necessary. 
 Can it legally be sold ? ' 
 
 ' It can, and must,' said his father In 
 desperation ; ' I like the idea as little as you 
 do. Jack, God knows. I have fought against
 
 Ill A HORRID ORDEAL 39 
 
 my money troubles till the last ditch. But I 
 can fight no more. I am swamped. There 
 are the mortgages — a big one of your grand- 
 father's when he fought the election. It cost 
 him forty thousand. Then there was a big 
 slice cut off for your Uncle Valentine, and 
 there is your grandmother's jointure, and 
 your aunts' annuities, and two mortgages of 
 my own. Meanwhile rents are falling and 
 tenants giving notice. I have three farms 
 on my hands. They are all driving me half 
 mad, I can tell you.' 
 
 ' All right, father,' cried Jack cheerfully ; 
 ' do not fret about me. I shall do well 
 enough. I will go and make a fortune 
 somehow. Of course the Heriots must pay 
 their debts, let it cost what it will. We must 
 make my mother comfortable ; must not we ? 
 That is the great thing.' 
 
 'You are a good fellow, Jack,' said his 
 father, taking his hand; 'a good son — an 
 honourable man. You will be happier, all
 
 40 THE HERIOTS chap, hi 
 
 your life, when you remember how you have 
 behaved to-day. Here comes your mother. 
 Don't let us talk about it before her.' 
 
 Then Lady Eugenia came up and took 
 Sir Adrian's arm. Jack saw that which the 
 careless eyes of youth had failed to see 
 before — what a careworn and sorrow-stricken 
 couple his parents had begun to look. His 
 courage rose manfully to the task which life 
 was setting him. His task was to guard 
 these two gentle natures from the rough 
 blows of the world — to protect, support, 
 console them. He would do it. Dear, kind, 
 simple, generous hearts ! Who could deserve 
 it more ? 
 
 He took his mother's hand kindly, and 
 held it as they strolled along beneath the 
 trees. 
 
 Somehow Lady Eugenia felt as if the 
 work of protection had there and then 
 begun.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 DEEPER AND DEEPER STILL 
 
 ' How goes the world that I am thus encountered 
 With clamorous demands of date-broke bonds, 
 And the detention of long-since-due debts 
 Against my honour ?' 
 
 Sir Adrian's heroic remedy had been in- 
 voked none too soon. Matters were going 
 very badly at Huntsham. The long lane of 
 adversity showed no symptom of turning, 
 but grew ever deeper and more miry. The 
 chariot wheels which bore the fortunes of the 
 Heriots began to move heavily, and threat- 
 ened to come to a standstill. Jack's generous 
 surrender of his riehts broug^ht no immediate 
 
 o o 
 
 relief, for no purchaser for Huntsham, except 
 on absolutely disastrous terms, could be
 
 42 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 found. It was like his luck, Sir Adrian felt, 
 that the moment at which he wished and was 
 able to sell should be precisely that at which 
 the chances of a reasonably profitable sale 
 were hopelessly remote. Mr. Graves, the 
 family solicitor, who was doing his utmost to 
 find a purchaser, wrote in terms of dis- 
 couragement. Country estates were, he said, 
 a drug In the market. Too many proprietors 
 were in the same predicament as Sir Adrian, 
 and ready, like him, to submit to almost any 
 sacrifice to obtain present relief. 
 
 Meanwhile bills poured in upon Sir 
 Adrian in ever -swelling volume ; rents and 
 revenues trickled in dwindling rivulets or 
 ceased to flow. Everybody, it seemed to 
 him, who had anything to pay, abounded in 
 unanswerable apologies for being behindhand, 
 or plausible grounds for claiming abatement. 
 One farm after another was surrendered, 
 each in its turn swelling the total of Sir 
 Adrian's deficit. One of his mortgages had
 
 IV DEEPER AND DEEPER STILL 43 
 
 to be renewed, and Mr. Graves wrote that 
 land was not thought as good security as it 
 once was, and that a successor to the outgoing 
 mortgagee was hard to find. At Huntsham 
 itself the absence of ready money was be- 
 coming daily more apparent in dilapidated 
 buildings, ill-tilled fields, and a general air of 
 ruin. Things could not, it was certain, go 
 on much longer as they were. Sir Adrian 
 recognised that the hour of doom — the 
 inevitable crash — must shortly come. 
 
 Before many weeks had passed, the hour 
 did come with a vengeance. One of Sir 
 Adrian's borrowings from the local Bank at 
 Huntsford had been allowed to run on for 
 years, till the necessity of repayment had 
 faded from Sir Adrian's mind. All had gone 
 on quietly and pleasantly. The interest w^as 
 carried half-yearly to the debit of Sir Adrian's 
 account. The Bank had no reason to 
 complain. But the Board, through some 
 recondite influence, had of late become
 
 44 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 uneasy, and the Manager now wrote to say 
 that the debt must be discharged at once. 
 Sir Adrian had written back — in a form 
 which was, unfortunately, too familiar to him 
 — to say that immediate payment was utterly 
 impossible, but that he was making arrange- 
 ments, and would, at the earliest possible 
 date, provide for the liability. No answer 
 had come, and Sir Adrian had fondly hoped 
 that the holder was appeased. In the next 
 few weeks this agreeable delusion was rudely 
 swept away by lawyers' letters, notices, 
 summons, — proceedings which only made 
 Sir Adrian more obstinate than before in 
 refusing to give this Importunate and im- 
 pertinent creditor an advantage over the 
 rest ; and then, almost before Sir Adrian had 
 realised the gravity of the occasion, the news 
 arrived that the case had been taken Into 
 Court and judgment had been recovered. 
 Still Sir Adrian stood firm. What was to 
 happen next ?
 
 IV DEEPER AND DEEPER STILL 45 
 
 Two dingy individuals, of a Jewish aspect, 
 called one morning at Huntsham, and asked 
 to see Sir Adrian on business. ]\Iorrison, 
 the butler, who had grown white-headed in 
 Sir Adrian's employ and his father's, inter- 
 viewed the visitors, and did not like their 
 looks at all. What sort of business was it, 
 he asked, on which they had come ? That 
 was a question which the two visitors 
 preferred to answer only to Sir Adrian. 
 Thereupon ^Morrison instructed a footman to 
 keep a sharp look-out on the intruders' pro- 
 ceedings, while he went to inform his master. 
 The visitors sent in a note which speedily 
 gained them admission to Sir Adrian's study; 
 and there their awful mission was revealed. 
 Not only had judgment been recovered, but 
 a writ of execution had issued, under which 
 the myrmidons of the law had laid a grisly 
 hand on Huntsham and its contents. 
 
 They had no wish to be disagreeable, 
 they had no desire to obtrude ; but remain
 
 46 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 they must. They were in possession. It 
 was Sir Adrian and Lady Eugenia who were 
 the Intruders. 
 
 Then Morrison was summoned to his 
 master's presence and entrusted with the 
 secret, and with the task of arranging matters 
 so as to conceal the disaster from the outer 
 world. The pair of Jewish gentlemen were 
 spirited away, to be decently concealed from 
 view and provided with the means of solid 
 enjoyment in the back regions. They 
 seemed entirely accustomed to Sir Adrian's 
 explanation that there had been, a mistake 
 and that all would be speedily set right. 
 Meanwhile they were masters of the 
 position. 
 
 To crown the disaster several of the 
 Huntsham tradespeople, catching a rumour 
 of the Bank's proceedings, made rude and 
 peremptory demands ; and when these were 
 disregarded, carried their cases into the 
 County Court, and having obtained decrees,
 
 IV DEEPER AND DEEPER STILL 47 
 
 sent their representatives to join those 
 of the Bank already quartered at Hunts- 
 ham. 
 
 Sir Adrian sat alone in his study. Ruin, 
 too close to be any longer trifled with, stared 
 him in the face. The evil was not greater 
 than he had known it, all along, to be ; but 
 it was closer to him. The hour for tem- 
 porising had passed. He wrote off in 
 desperation to Mr. Graves, to his mother, 
 to Valentine. It was unfortunate for Sir 
 Adrian that his application to Lady Heriot 
 was especially ill-timed. She was feeling ill, 
 disinclined and unfit for business. She was 
 pinched for money. A call from one of 
 Adrian's companies had swept off her spare 
 cash : her usually handsome balance at her 
 banker's had sunk below the point which 
 Lady Heriot thought safe or respectable. 
 She wrote off to Mr. Graves, who had 
 already got Sir Adrian's letter, and who 
 came to her on the instant, looking, as indeed
 
 48 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 Lady Heriot felt, as if something dreadful 
 had occurred. 
 
 ' This Is a bad business,' he said ; ' It must 
 be stopped at once.' 
 
 'It Is all very well to say It must be 
 stopped,' Lady Heriot said, by this time 
 thoroughly upset by vexation and alarm, ' but 
 what am I to do ? I am really most un- 
 fortunate.' 
 
 ' I see no difficulty, so far,' said Mr. 
 Graves ; ' deplorable as the matter Is as show- 
 ing Sir Adrian's capacity for mismanagement, 
 and the straits to which It has reduced him. 
 But the sum Is Inconsiderable — ^1200, I 
 believe.' 
 
 ' But It is not at all inconsiderable to me, 
 Mr. Graves,' Lady Heriot said with asperity ; 
 ' you don't know how Sir Adrian has bled me 
 — bled me. I am Impoverished.' 
 
 ' He has been very unfortunate,' observed 
 the lawyer. 
 
 * And very blundering,' said Lady Heriot.
 
 IV DEEPER AND DEEPER STILL 49 
 
 ' But his blunders,' pleaded Mr. Graves, 
 * would not have mattered if it had not been 
 for his misfortunes, and his misfortunes would 
 have swamped him, blunders or no.' 
 
 ' Well,' said Lady Heriot, 'there is no use in 
 our discussing that. Blunders or misfortunes, 
 Adrian is once again down on his back in the 
 mud, and I suppose I must pay for him.' 
 
 ' I think so,' said Mr. Graves, ' and the 
 sooner the better. Mortimers, I see, are the 
 plaintiff's attorneys. I had better send and 
 tell them that the matter will be settled, and 
 that the bailiff's people may be withdrawn.' 
 
 ' And how am I to do it ? ' said Lady 
 Heriot. 
 
 ' You have not enough then at your 
 banker's, Lady Heriot ? ' asked Mr. 
 Graves. 
 
 'No,' said Lady Heriot, 'certainly not. 
 I am much too poor to keep such a 
 balance.' 
 
 'Then,' said Mr. Graves, 'we must 
 
 VOL. I E
 
 so THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 realise some of your securities — some of 
 those that you can deal with. After all, it is 
 only giving it to Sir Adrian now instead of 
 hereafter.' 
 
 * I am beginning to doubt,' said Lady 
 Heriot, sinking from one depth of despond- 
 ency to another, ' whether I ought to give it 
 to him at all. The whole affair is deplorable 
 — deplorable and disgraceful. You must 
 write to Sir Adrian, Mr. Graves ; I cannot, 
 and will not. Tell him I am very much 
 inconvenienced and very much displeased.' 
 
 'Let me suggest,' said Graves, 'if I am 
 not venturing too far. Lady Heriot, that you 
 should write to him yourself. Sir Adrian is 
 a sensitive man. He is suffering, no doubt. 
 He will be dreadfully hurt at your reply 
 coming through me.' 
 
 ' I shall only make matters worse,' said the 
 other, 'by writing angrily, as I know I should; 
 and I really have not strength to write at all. 
 Mr. Graves, you must arrange it, and send
 
 IV DEEPER AND DEEPER STILL 51 
 
 me the papers to sign. Another trouble of 
 this sort would kill me.' 
 
 Mr. Graves went away with a heavy heart 
 and a new foreboding. He was devoted to 
 the Heriots. He cared sincerely for Sir 
 Adrian. He had known him since he was a 
 boy. He knew his troubles and his fruitless 
 efforts to escape them. He had often helped 
 in the escape. He had drawn Lady Heriot's 
 will. For years past he had thought of it as 
 the natural means by which Sir Adrian's 
 crippled fortunes would, one day, be restored. 
 The capital, of which she had the life interest, 
 with a right of apportionment amongst her 
 children, would suffice to set Adrian free from 
 his creditors. Supposing that now — at the 
 last — anything should intervene to hinder that 
 much-to-be-desired restoration ! Mr. Graves 
 was a calm person, by temperament, by habit ; 
 but he could not think of this contingency 
 with calmness. It would be the subversion 
 of the rightful order of events, which it is the 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF »LUNO'-
 
 52 THE HERIOTS chap, iv 
 
 function of family solicitors to preserve, to 
 bring about. The world, however, was, Mr. 
 Graves's experience told him, a place where, 
 despite all efforts to prevent them, such sub- 
 versions not unfrequently occurred.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 'ICH HABE MEINE JUGEND VERLOREN ' ' 
 
 ' As the most forward bud 
 Is eaten by the canker ere it blow ; 
 E'en so by love the young and tender wit 
 Is turned to folly ; blasting in the bud, 
 Losing his wisdom, even in the prime, 
 And all the fair effects of future hopes.' 
 
 Olivia returned to her home an altered being. 
 A new conviction had been borne in upon 
 her — that hfe abounds in enchanting possi- 
 biHties. This conviction was a disturbing 
 one. It jarred on the thoughtless, effortless 
 bliss of childhood, and, jarring, it destroyed 
 it. Olivia's horizon was suddenly enlarged. 
 The childish cares, interests, and joys which, 
 till now, had rounded her little life, were 
 suddenly pushed aside by a superior force.
 
 54 THE HERIOTS chap; 
 
 Till now the surroundings of existence had 
 been amply sufficient for her. Poor as they 
 were, and serious as was the insistence with 
 which occasionally poverty knocked at their 
 door, her father and she lived a life which till 
 now had satisfied her every aspiration. When 
 Hillyard could forget his loss for a while he 
 was as light-hearted as a schoolboy. When 
 a melancholy mood beset him he was gentle, 
 considerate, watchful against obtruding his 
 sorrow on a companion whom youth rendered 
 more buoyant than himself under the stroke 
 of bereavement. When he was in the 
 scholar's mood, he poured out a medley of 
 learned gossip — favourite flowers of study 
 culled for Olivia's express benefit — trifles, 
 which told her, however, how much that was 
 not trifling there was behind, in the well- 
 furnished treasure-house of her father's brain. 
 'We must be philosophers, Olivia,' he 
 would say, ' since experience, in the shape of 
 unpaid Christmas bills, insists on teaching
 
 V MCH HABE MEINE JUGEND VERLOREN' 55 
 
 US philosophy. This leg of mutton, with 
 whose diminishing outlines we have grown 
 so familiar, even as they vanished, has, after 
 all, given us several excellent repasts. Were 
 it only paid for, I would wish for nothing 
 better. This lettuce, fresh culled by my 
 Olivia's hand, how crisp and dewy ! These 
 pickles — we are unfortunately but too near 
 the bottom of the bottle — how rare a condi- 
 ment ! " Plain living and high thinking" — 
 the healthiest regimen for mortals ! 
 
 " Peace and Quiet, 
 Spare Fast that oft with gods doth diet." 
 
 A one-o'clock repast leaves the brain admir- 
 ably clear for an intellectual banquet in the 
 evening. Whom the gods love dine early, 
 Olivia, as some philosopher has observed. 
 A banquet of bread and butter (in limited 
 amounts) purges the intellect of its earthly 
 grossness, sets the soul loose to soar, 
 unimpeded, into the empyrean. We dine 
 here in the midst of our books, surrounded
 
 56 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 by the great and good — the wise, the witty, 
 the profound ; our fare is humble but our 
 guests are illustrious. Meanwhile my Olivia 
 grows a young nymph on humble fare, like 
 Daniel on the pulse — 
 
 " Herbs and other country messes 
 Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses." 
 
 Phillis, by the way, is rudely importunate for her 
 last quarter's wages. Base mercenary girl ! ' 
 
 So Olivia and her father had scrambled 
 through life in a not unenjoyable fashion. 
 
 Every commonplace incident caught a 
 gleam of poetry from their romantic rela- 
 tions, and the grace which each brought to 
 the humble duties of existence. Olivia was 
 perfectly content. 
 
 And now this pleasant peaceful epoch had 
 closed. Olivia had left childhood and child- 
 hood's happiness behind her. She realised 
 now — what had never occurred to her before 
 — that life meant something more than happy 
 companionship with her father and the filial
 
 V 'ICH HABE MEINE JUGEND VERLOREN' 57 
 
 duties which she rendered to him ; some- 
 thing profounder, more soul -stirring, more 
 satisfying. The occupations which she had 
 formerly found so interesting, so engrossing, 
 were no longer enough. There was a some- 
 thing at work in her which she could not 
 reckon with, could not analyse, could not 
 dominate. She tried, and tried in vain to 
 believe that she did not miss her companion. 
 She set herself heroically to make the best 
 of such materials of cheerfulness as existence 
 still afforded. But she was conscious of a 
 restlessness that would not be allayed, a want 
 which not all her father's tenderness could 
 satisfy, a void which not all her studies would 
 suffice to fill. She would indignantly have 
 repudiated the suggestion that she was un- 
 happy. Nor was she ; but her happiness 
 was not of the calm unconscious order 
 which had reigned in her soul before her last 
 experiences at Huntsham. That too agree- 
 able companionship had struck a new fever
 
 58 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 into her blood. Her childhood had ended. 
 She was a woman. 
 
 Thus Olivia was beginning to look about 
 her as a young bird peeps at the world over 
 the edges of its nest. The prospect was not 
 quite reassuring. Many things filled her 
 with apprehension. It was tacitly agreed 
 between father and daughter that money 
 matters should be mentioned as seldom as 
 possible, and discussed only up to the point 
 at which discussion was compatible with 
 cheerfulness. Poor people, who wish for 
 any comfort in life, are driven to such 
 expedients. But the relief is temporary. 
 Olivia became increasingly conscious that 
 you do not dispose of the troubles of life by 
 ignoring them. She could not blind herself 
 to the fact that her father's slender income, 
 such as it was, alone stood between them and 
 penury, and that this protection must at no 
 distant day come to an end. Her kinsfolk 
 were few, and not to be relied on for sub-
 
 V 'ICH HABE MEINE JUGEND VERLOREN' 59 
 
 stantial help. The Goldinghams considered 
 that all claims had been satisfied by the gift 
 of the living, and discouraged an intimacy- 
 suggestive of inconvenient demands. Nor 
 was Hillyard in the least disposed for inti- 
 macy. ' Dives equum,' he had said with 
 some scorn to Olivia, as one of the smart 
 Goldingham carriages was wafting them to 
 the station on the return from their last visit 
 — ' dives pictai vestis et auri — but Dives is a 
 vulgar fellow, Olivia, and Mrs. Dives, she is 
 a vulgar fellow too, and a dull one ; and on 
 the whole I am not sorry that that is over.' 
 
 * Nor am I, father,' said Olivia, taking his 
 hand fondly, ' there is no place like home, 
 especially no place like my home. I dislike 
 stucco particularly.' 
 
 Nor were Olivia's humbler relations more 
 congenial. There was a certain Dr. Mere- 
 dith, her mother's brother, who was practis- 
 ing as a physician, with not too much success, 
 in a. provincial town. He came at rare inter-
 
 6o THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 vals to see her father and herself, a dull, 
 harassed man, weary with an uphill pro- 
 fessional trudge, and a troop of children 
 whose education was a never-ending struggle 
 against opposing forces. Olivia had always 
 reflected with a pang that these people were 
 her nearest relations. She had a dreadful 
 remembrance of a visit which she and her 
 father had once paid to them at Axborough 
 — the grimy city with its hideous chimneys 
 shrouded in a sulphurous pall of smoke ; the 
 crowded streets, the rough, bustling crowd, 
 the vulgar shops ; the business-like gravity of 
 her uncle's house and its inmates ; the ill- 
 kept, unlovely children who assembled with 
 distracting punctuality at meal -times and 
 were constantly surprising one by their in- 
 convenient numbers. The scene had filled 
 Olivia's soul with horror. She was soon 
 longing to get back to her quiet, picturesque 
 home, where trees and flowers and sweet 
 sylvan vistas gave to life, however humble,
 
 V 'ICH HABE MEINE JUGEND VERLOREN' 6i 
 
 a poetry of its own. As they travelled back 
 her father told her of overtures on her uncle's 
 part with a view to securing her services for 
 her cousins' education. They had both put 
 away the idea as a horrid suggestion, which 
 it was a comfort to know did not come within 
 the range of possibility. It had remained in 
 Olivia's thoughts, however, as a specimen of 
 the sort of things which might hereafter 
 present themselves for endurance. She had 
 often reminded herself that she miorht some 
 day have to become a governess or a com- 
 panion. That thought had at one time 
 possessed no terrors for her. Why should 
 she not, as well as any of the thousand other 
 girls who have a livelihood to earn ? She 
 was well equipped, and the world is full of 
 happy chances. Adventure into the un- 
 known has always something pleasant to the 
 courageous soul. But now, as it drew near 
 and ceased to be vague, this possibility 
 looked less attractive. It seemed to Olivia
 
 62 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 sometimes to be drawing very near indeed. 
 Her father's health was certainly not as 
 strong as she remembered it. He was grow- 
 ing an old man, and his old age was not 
 robust. He was always cheerful, but it was 
 not the cheerfulness of a sound physique. 
 Olivia began to understand that some of his 
 failings — his irresolution, for instance, his 
 infirmity of purpose, his delays, his forgetful- 
 ness — might be owing to bodily weakness 
 against which he struggled in vain. This 
 idea filled her with a tender pity ; but then 
 pity is not an exhilarating sentiment. So 
 everything that Olivia thought about just 
 now began to take a sombre hue. The 
 world was, she was beginning to feel, a very 
 sad place. 
 
 At the bottom of her thoughts lay a 
 spring of sadness — silent, secret, but none 
 the less active — like some busy little fount, 
 which goes welling and streaming on busily 
 through the still night, saturating all the
 
 V *ICH HABE MEINE JUGEND VERLOREN' 63 
 
 place around. There was, Olivia knew, a 
 tender spot in her heart, which shrank from 
 touching even by herself. There was a dear 
 friend, who was different from other friends, 
 the very thought of whom set her heart 
 beating. Yet it was a sad sort of sentiment, 
 a ghost of friendship, for he had passed 
 away. She and Jack Heriot were friends, 
 fast friends, but they could never, Olivia 
 well understood, be anything more. He 
 must go out into the world to seek his 
 fortune, as poor as any young fortune-hunter 
 could be, and with no prospect but poverty. 
 He had cut off the entail to save his father's 
 honour, but in doing so he had doomed him- 
 self to poverty, had abandoned the chance of 
 happiness in life. He was now, thanks to 
 his own generous act, extremely poor. Some 
 men go forth with nothing in their pockets, 
 and soon find the way to wealth. But Jack ! 
 No, Olivia felt that it was in vain to hope. 
 He might force his way to glory, but to
 
 64 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 riches, never! It would be enough for him 
 to do to keep afloat in the great bustHng 
 turgid stream. He could never marry — 
 never at least till after a lapse of years and a 
 string of vicissitudes, which, at Olivia's time 
 of life, seem absolutely interminable. He 
 had accepted his fate and was gone. Olivia 
 too had accepted hers. Lady Eugenia, with 
 all her kindness, had conveyed sundry skilful 
 but emphatic hints that her welcome at 
 Huntsham depended on a tacit understand- 
 ing, and would cease at once if ever that tacit 
 understanding were infringed, or even im- 
 perilled. There must be no nonsense be- 
 tween her and Jack. It was playing with 
 fire. They never could marry ; such a 
 marriage would mean disaster to them both ; 
 it was wiser not to haunt the pleasant paths 
 by which marriage is approached. The 
 human heart turns sadly from visions of 
 possible delight. It was but a day-dream, 
 but the surrender, even of a day-dream, costs
 
 V 'ICH HABE MEINE JUGEXD VERLOREN' 65 
 
 a pang. Olivia, like Jack, was conscious of 
 a sort of martyrdom ; she was the victim of 
 cruel circumstances ; she was hedged in by 
 stern necessity. Life indeed had much 
 for her ; she was happy as she was ; but 
 there was a more delightful form of happi- 
 ness, which hovered in the background, 
 merely as a regret. There was a region of 
 fancy — a pleasant region — from which stern 
 fate commanded her to turn away. Olivia's 
 saddened mood infected her father. He 
 found her more touching, more tender, more 
 charming than ever. The subtle infusion of 
 melancholy added a new pathos to her devo- 
 tion, to the gaiety under which devotion hid 
 itself. Still Hillyard grew uneasy, and it 
 was a great relief when one day a letter 
 arrived from Lady Heriot, inviting Olivia to 
 come and pay her a visit in London. * It is 
 a most selfish request,' Lady Heriot wrote, 
 ' for you know, my dear, what an invalid I 
 am, and how little fit a companion for so 
 
 VOL. I F
 
 66 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 bright and young a creature as yourself. I 
 must tell you the truth — I am in a fit of low 
 spirits. I have been in more pain than 
 usual, and that by itself is no small tax on 
 one's equanimity, and I am sleeping badly. 
 I am too ailing to enjoy my friends, and I 
 find myself bad company. I want some one 
 who is everything that I am not — young, 
 healthy, happy, gay — to lighten up my 
 sombre drawing-room and my silent house. 
 My servants, I can see, are getting quite 
 depressed. Now I have made a clean breast 
 of it, my dear Olivia, are you prepared for a 
 noble act of self-sacrifice ? I want you to 
 read to me, to sing to me, to play to me, to 
 chatter to me, to listen when I chatter to 
 you ; to enliven me. Come, my dear, and 
 earn an old lady's gratitude. Give my love 
 to your father, and ask him to spare you 
 to me.' 
 
 Olivia was greatly excited at the invita- 
 tion, and somewhat awed at the idea of a
 
 V 'ICH HABE MEINE JUGEND VERLOREN ' 67 
 
 tHe-a-tite visit to so Impressive a hostess. 
 Her father at once overruled her scruples at 
 leaving him alone, and entered with zest into 
 the spirit of the expedition. ' It will give me 
 an excuse for a visit to London,' he said, 
 * which I like of all things. I shall enjoy my 
 Olivia's enjoyment as much as she does. It 
 is a reward for her patience under misfor- 
 tunes, her content with a humble home ; and, 
 besides, I would do anything for Lady Heriot, 
 my dear and excellent friend. I wish old 
 ladles nowadays kept private chaplains. 
 That would be the post for me. Meanwhile 
 my Olivia will see the world, and the world 
 will see my Olivia and be delighted with her. 
 She will be admired, she will be loved as she 
 deserves. I have been a horrid old monopo- 
 list to keep you here. Go, child, where for- 
 tune calls you.'
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 A GREEN OLD AGE 
 
 ' Sydneian showers 
 Of sweet discourse, whose powers 
 Can crown old Winter's head with flowers.' 
 
 The aspect of Lady Heriot's house was not, 
 at first sight, exhilarating. Its magnificence 
 was of that soHd, comfortable order which, 
 above everything, dislikes to be too line. 
 Some of the drawing-rooms, to which Olivia 
 now accompanied her hostess for five-o'clock 
 tea, were a great deal too fine for Lady 
 Heriot's taste. 'They ought to be put in a 
 glass case and sent to the South Kensington 
 Museum,' she told Olivia, as they got home 
 from a visit to a specially ornate abode ; ' but 
 to live in — no, thank you, my dear ; give me
 
 CHAP. VI A GREEN OLD AGE 69 
 
 a comfortable sofa, near enough to the fire, 
 and not a wilderness of fine things where one 
 cannot walk with safety or sit at ease. Every 
 silly young woman of the present day wants 
 to make her drawing-room a palace of art ; 
 I like mine to be the home of conversation ; 
 and homes should be snug and comfortable, 
 and not too smart. I want my visitors not 
 to admire my gimcracks, but to talk to me 
 and amuse me ' 
 
 'And admire you,' said Olivia, always 
 ready with an agreeable suggestion, ' as they 
 all do. All the same, Lady Herlot, the pretty 
 things are wonderfully pretty, and If one can- 
 not think of anything to say, as Is often my 
 plight, It Is a comfort to look at them and 
 find something to talk about.' 
 
 ' You may talk about this sofa, If you 
 please,' said her companion, settling herself 
 comfortably upon It. 'Is It not a good one ? 
 Tell me the truth.' 
 
 ' Well, then,' said Olivia, ' it Is a good one,
 
 JO THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 of course, but I don't like those red and white 
 roses ; they stand up so, that one hardly dares 
 to sit down upon them.' 
 
 * My dear,' said Lady Heriot, ' that only 
 shows how well they are painted. My sofa 
 is a beauty ; at any rate it is quite fine enough 
 for an old woman like me to rest my bones 
 on. Those roses were greatly admired, I 
 can tell you, when I first set them up, and a 
 great many good people have sat upon them 
 since then, and so I love them. As for 
 cabinets, mine are old enough and odd 
 enough, in all conscience ; and they are full 
 of Dresden and Sevres shepherdesses, I be- 
 lieve, for those who care about them, which 
 I do not happen to do.' 
 
 Olivia was speedily converted to the in- 
 artistic simplicity of her hostess's abode, and 
 found herself quite at home in it. It was a 
 most amusing place. Lady Heriot's privi- 
 leges as an invalid warranted just enough 
 disorder to enhance comfort and banish the
 
 VI A GREEN OLD AGE 71 
 
 possibility of stiffness. Old age, like other 
 infirmities, may, in skilful hands, become an 
 element of social success. People came to 
 see Lady Heriot in compliance with her 
 petition to take pity on an old woman whose 
 infirmities debarred her from the pleasures of 
 the outside world. They invariably found a 
 cheerful hostess, better posted up than them- 
 selves in current gossip, longing to know of 
 what was going on in the world, and quite 
 prepared to meet them half way in being 
 amusing and amused. Lady Heriot had not 
 lived all those years for nothing ; she had 
 known a host of people all the time her hus- 
 band had been in Parliament, some of them 
 already beginning to be historical. She re- 
 membered a story and knew how to tell it. 
 Her five-o'clock tea was a most popular 
 beverage ; and quite a little crowd would 
 gather to drink it. So it came about that, in 
 the course of the afternoon, a great many 
 nice people dropped in, and left a small
 
 72 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 residuum of wit behind them. It is a great 
 thine to know a house where the hostess is 
 always at home, and always delighted to see 
 you. There were several elderly gentlemen 
 who would have considered a Sunday In town 
 exceptionally ill spent, part of which had not 
 been passed by the side of Lady Heriot's 
 sofa. Stonehouse, the distinguished Queen's 
 Counsel and M.P., who had no leisure for 
 ordinary society, managed to forget his briefs 
 and his clients, and unbent his great intellect 
 under the soothing Influence of Lady Heriot's 
 companionship ; Mr. Pygmalion, a power in 
 the world of art, was well pleased to convey 
 to her the latest gossip from the Royal 
 Academy ; Dr. Crucible deserted his favour- 
 ite arm-chair at the Athenaeum in order to 
 bring an amusing book or expound the newest 
 theory that stirred the philosophic world ; 
 now it would be Lord Melrose, an accom- 
 plished ex-diplomat, untiring collector and 
 retailer of every form of social curiosity ; now
 
 VI A GREEN OLD AGE -]-}> 
 
 Desmond, an Irish Dean, providentially 
 supplied with a never-failing cruse of excel- 
 lent stories at his countrymen's expense. 
 Even young Mr. de Renzi, the brightest of 
 rising political stars, who w^as in great request 
 and capable of giving himself airs with 
 common mortals, never showed them to Lady 
 Heriot, but would come and spend a pleasant 
 half-hour, and take real pains to be amusing. 
 Lady Heriot's panegyric on her sofa was, 
 Olivia felt, extremely well deserved. 
 
 When they were alone together. Lady 
 Heriot proved a delightful companion. ' 'Tis 
 pleasant,' she said one day as the door closed 
 upon the last departing guest — 
 
 '• " 'Tis pleasant, through the loopholes of retreat, 
 To peep at such a world, to see the stir 
 Of the great Babel, and not feel the crowd " — 
 
 The trade of being an old lady is not such a 
 bad one, is it, Olivia ? Every one is so kind 
 to me. Bift you have been indoors too long, 
 and are losing your roses. Go out now with
 
 74 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 my excellent Phillips and have a good walk 
 across the park. Then we will go on with 
 our third volume, which I am longing to 
 hear.' 
 
 Olivia was under a spell. Lady Heriot 
 looked older and frailer than she remembered 
 her at Huntsham, and was gentler than ever. 
 She touched Olivia by her cordial enjoyment 
 of the pleasures of life — already quickly 
 passing beyond her reach — by considerate 
 care, by unobtrusive contrivances to amuse 
 her ofuest. There is somethino^ solemn in 
 one's communications with the old — so soon 
 to cease. They have the air of a farewell. 
 A subtle, tender melancholy breathes over 
 the commonplaces of everyday life ; a 
 thousand little monitions remind us that the 
 end is drawing near. 
 
 Youth is beautiful, but there is a beauty 
 about a good old age which rivals youth, and 
 a pathos that is all its own. Old age — wise, 
 calm, and patient — that has learnt from the
 
 VI A GREEX OLD AGE 75 
 
 troubles of life the divine lesson of com- 
 passion — old age, that 
 
 ' dares send 
 A challenge to his end, 
 And, when it comes, say, " Welcome, friend " ' — 
 
 old age, refined by experience into generous 
 sympathy — for which the struggles of life 
 are over, but not its interests — which kindles 
 over the new life that is coming up, — which 
 views the turmoils of existence as from some 
 mountain height, through an atmosphere 
 which softens each crude colour and dulls 
 each harsh outline — what better things have 
 youth and strength to show us ? what more 
 dignified, more ennobling, more really beau- 
 tiful, like mellow music, good for heart and 
 nerves ? 
 
 So Olivia found her life very interesting, 
 very charming, and, in a charming way, a 
 little sad. 
 
 In many effusive letters to her father she 
 portrayed her impressions of Lady Heriot's
 
 76 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 companionship. The visit was doing her 
 good In every way — In mind, and, through 
 the mind, In body. She caught something 
 of her companion's serenity. It added to 
 her happiness that Lady Herlot petted her 
 with much admiring soHcItude, made much 
 of her performances on the pianoforte, and 
 greatly appreciated her Hterary tastes. 
 Olivia's musical education had been but 
 scanty ; but taste and love had supplemented 
 it with a hundred unstudied graces. Her 
 father loved a good tune, and sang Moore's 
 melodies in soft tenor tones, which often 
 brought the tears into Olivia's eyes as she 
 accompanied him. Many a well-loved and 
 familiar air had Olivia studied for her father's 
 benefit and filled their quiet evenings with 
 delight. Now Lady Herlot bade her pro- 
 duce them, and remembered one old friend 
 after another — as she sat listening In the 
 twilight — and, as each piece ended, would 
 still beg for another, and applaud the per-
 
 VI A GREEN OLD AGE 'j'j 
 
 formance with sympathetic cordiaHty. She 
 took OHvIa's hand fondly, as she came from 
 the piano and sat beside her : ' That is quite 
 a treat, my dear ; yours is the way that I 
 Hke people to play — not too difficult for 
 unlearned ears and simple tastes — and play- 
 ing all as if you loved it, as I know you do, 
 and so do I.' 
 
 'You are such a good listener, Lady 
 Heriot,' said Olivia, greatly delighted; 'that 
 is half the battle when one plays ; some 
 people freeze the very soul within one. But 
 for you ! I love these airs all the better 
 when I know that you are listening to them.' 
 
 ' I have heard some delightful music in 
 my day,' said her companion, ' and I am the 
 better for it, the richer. I lie sometimes in 
 the silence of a sleepless night and recall 
 some hours of enjoyment that have enriched 
 my life for ever after. Music is a kind 
 goddess ; she is good to the old people and 
 infirm : she does not, as some pleasures do,
 
 78 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 keep all her favours for the young, the 
 vigorous, the bright, who least stand in need 
 of consolation. When, In the guise of a 
 sweet young lady, she comes and sits by my 
 sofa and fills my ears with tuneful echoes of 
 old days, I like her very much indeed. But 
 you must be quite tired.' 
 
 ' No, Indeed,' cried Olivia, to whom this 
 sort of talk made the idea of fatio^ue seem 
 very remote, ' I only feel refreshed. You 
 must have a great store of nice recollec- 
 tions ? ' 
 
 'Yes,' said her companion, ' they are the 
 riches of the old ; our compensation for some 
 things which we old people cannot have — 
 some pleasures which have ceased to please — 
 some hopes extinguished — some companion- 
 ship that we may share no more this side 
 the grave. Meanwhile our store of happy 
 memories is for ever growing. With pleas- 
 ant memories and good books one is always 
 well off.'
 
 VI A GREEN OLD AGE 79 
 
 ' Ah ! ' said Olivia, * your books ! You 
 have got some good ones, indeed ! ' 
 
 'Yes,' said the other, 'they are among 
 one's best friends indeed as one gets on in 
 years. One advantage of being seventy, 
 and lame, and too ill to move about, is that 
 one has leisure to read, and need not be so 
 shamefully illiterate as the busy people 
 always are. "A good book," Milton said, 
 ''is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, 
 embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a 
 life beyond life." But then I am not always 
 so fortunate as to have any one who reads to 
 me so well as you do. I cannot tell you, my 
 dear, what it is to have some delightful 
 volume pumped over one by an uninterested 
 and unsympathetic reader : it is often my 
 fate. My good Phillips is a paragon, as you 
 see ; but for reading ! her suppressed yawns ! 
 her inconceivable mistakes ! her blank in- 
 difference to what she is about ! her sudden 
 arrest in the midst of something really
 
 8o THE HERIOTS chap, vi 
 
 delightful to give me my medicine or put me 
 to bed ! It is hard to bear. As for your 
 Cousin Isabella, she reads worse than 
 Phillips does. So you see, my dear, your 
 reading is a real holiday to me. I enjoy it 
 thoroughly.' 
 
 'And I too enjoy it,' said Olivia; 'a nice 
 book, like solitude, is all the nicer for some 
 one to whom one can say how nice it is. 
 And then your books are very nice.' 
 
 So Olivia found that her services were in 
 great request, and went roaming about her 
 dear hostess's well -filled shelves for some- 
 thing that would prove congenial reading. 
 Many a half-forgotten volume did she bring 
 to light. The two would settle down with 
 real excitement, on some new-found treasure. 
 
 ' Good, good,' Lady Heriot would say, 
 her eyes lighting up with pleasure and ani- 
 mation ; ' you are a good girl, Olivia, a 
 clever girl. The worst of it is that I shall 
 never be able to get on without you.'
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 GLORIOUS APOLLO 
 
 ' In the ver}^ May-morn of his youth, 
 Ripe for exploits and mighty enterprises.' 
 
 So Olivia lingered on, fortified by cheerful 
 injunctions from her father to enjoy a good 
 time while it lasted, and loth to leave the 
 dear friend who needed her so much, and 
 was goodness itself to her. Several of the 
 frequenters of Lady Heriot's drawing-room 
 soon understood Olivia's charm, and began 
 to be very polite to her. Dr. Crucible took 
 her over his Museum, and devoted an after- 
 noon to explaining its wonders and mysteries. 
 Mrs. Hazelden carried her off to a concert, 
 
 where music — such as Olivia's imagination 
 VOL. I G
 
 82 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 had never dreamt of — the symphony of a 
 perfect orchestra, or the miracles of a 
 master-hand or voice, sent her home op- 
 pressed with happy rapture. Stonehouse 
 astonished even Lady Heriot — who knew 
 the kind heart that glowed under an exterior 
 of stately politeness — by volunteering to 
 come and dine, and afterwards escort Olivia 
 to the play. ' Would Olivia like it ? ' Olivia, 
 who had never set foot in a theatre, and to 
 whom her father's stories and recitations had 
 conveyed a vague but delightful conception 
 of the glories of the stage ! Stonehouse, 
 who awed everybody, possessed no terrors 
 for Olivia. The two went off in great glee 
 and came back in the highest spirits, declar- 
 ing that they had had a delightful evening. 
 Everybody, Olivia began to feel, was con- 
 spiring to pet her. Not least among the 
 excitements, which at this time stirred 
 existence to a ferment, was the intelligence 
 that Lady Heriot was bent on giving her a
 
 VII GLORIOUS APOLLO 83 
 
 lovely dress, such as the female imagination 
 might rejoice to think of, and youth and 
 beauty rejoice to wear — and that Mrs. 
 Hazelden, in furtherance of this benevolent 
 design, had already arranged a pilgrimage 
 with her to an illustrious mistress of that 
 imperial art. Olivia was woman enough to 
 feel this a very soul-stirring event indeed. 
 
 Still greater excitements were, however, 
 awaiting her. One afternoon, when Lady 
 Heriot's tea-party was at its height, a visitor 
 was announced, whose manner and appear- 
 ance bespoke him not in the roll of common 
 men. It was Mr. de Renzi. His visit was, 
 if the truth is to be told, due to one of Mrs. 
 Valentine's ingenious arrangements of her 
 little world. ' I want you,' she had said to 
 him, as they passed each other on a crowded 
 staircase the night before, ' to go and pay a 
 visit to my mother ; she is in need of amuse- 
 ment. You will be a godsend.' 
 
 ' What a curious name to call me ! ' said
 
 84 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 De Renzi ; ' of course I will go. I want 
 cheering too. Lady Herlot always infects 
 me with some of her own cheerfulness ; and, 
 besides, Mrs. Heriot's word is law.' 
 
 ' That is very nice of you,' said the other ; 
 * it will be angelic if you will go. Moreover, 
 it is a known fact that virtue often finds a 
 reward where she least expects it.' 
 
 ' A reward ! ' cried De Renzi ; ' what can 
 you mean ? ' 
 
 'Nothing,' said Mrs. Valentine; 'virtue 
 is its own reward, and reverence to old age 
 one of the most agreeable of virtues. Only 
 go, like a good creature.' 
 
 ' And I shall be rewarded ? ' asked her 
 companion. 
 
 ' By a good conscience,' said Mrs. Valen- 
 tine, — 'best of all rewards.' 
 
 ' But that I have already,' said De Renzi, 
 'and I am tired of it.' 
 
 ' And my approval ; you are not tired of 
 that, I hope.'
 
 VII GLORIOUS APOLLO 85 
 
 'You already think me perfection.' 
 'Vanity!' cried Mrs. Valentine; 'how 
 little people know ! But I shall think you 
 several degrees less removed from it if you 
 do as I ask you.' 
 
 ' Mysterious !' said De Renzi, 'but I obey.' 
 
 ' Mystery,' said his companion, looking 
 
 back, as the crowd swept her downstairs, 
 
 ' mystery is our prerogative and obedience 
 
 our foible. Good-night, and thank you.' 
 
 De Renzi had gone, accordingly, to Sey- 
 mour Street and found a room full of people 
 — one little group gathered about Lady 
 Heriot, and another round the tea-table, 
 where Olivia was busily ministering to the 
 wants of Lady Heriot's guests. Amongst 
 the latter Dr. Crucible was occupying a 
 favoured post, and was thoroughly enjoying 
 himself. Olivia was beaming upon him with 
 unsuspicious gaiety, grateful for being so 
 well amused, and speaking her gratitude 
 with radiant smiles. De Renzi realised the
 
 86 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 position at a glance. He made his way to 
 Lady Heriot's sofa ; she gave him a place 
 on it. 
 
 'Who is the beauty,' he said presently, 
 looking in Olivia's direction, ' who presides, 
 like a young goddess, at your tea-table, Lady 
 Heriot — a fresh-alighted Hebe ? ' 
 
 ' That is my new maid of honour,' Lady 
 Heriot said ; ' a goddess, as you rightly 
 observe. My Olympus required a Hebe. 
 She is known to mortals as Miss Hillyard. 
 As young men generally want to worship 
 goddesses on the spot, you may, if you 
 please, take my cup to her and ask her for 
 another.' 
 
 De Renzi sped joyfully on his mission. 
 'Lady Heriot bids me introduce myself,' he 
 said, ' and ask you for a second cup ; and 
 may I have one for myself?' 
 
 Olivia had never before felt shy. Why, 
 in the name of common sense, should shyness 
 now suddenly beset her ?
 
 VII GLORIOUS APOLLO Sy 
 
 Who was this Apollo-like being, who had 
 risen suddenly into her horizon — bright, im- 
 pressive, delightful, and, perhaps because of 
 his delightfulness, alarming ? What is the 
 secret of the spell that mortals exercise on 
 one another, the spell that dominates, fas- 
 cinates, and thrills ? No explanation can be 
 given except that Heaven has been pleased 
 so to construct, or misconstruct, us that some 
 people have a most unaccountable effect on 
 other people's nerves. Olivia experienced 
 this physiological truth just now with dis- 
 agreeable acuteness. It was a relief when, 
 after a few sentences, De Renzi left her. 
 
 ' What a beauty ! ' he said as he rejoined 
 Lady Heriot, ' and how divinely fresh ! Has 
 she ever, till this afternoon, held converse 
 with mortal man ? I suppose you had her 
 straight from heaven.' 
 
 ' Where, naturally,' said Mrs. Hazelden, 
 ' she had but few opportunities of making 
 male acquaintance. Well, Mr. de Renzi, it
 
 88 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 you were the first, I hope that you took pains 
 to make a good impression. The race of 
 man will owe you a grudge if you have pre- 
 possessed her against them.' 
 
 ' Awful responsibility ! ' cried De Renzi ; 
 ' but she was too frightened, I am certain, to 
 form a prepossession.* 
 
 ' Perhaps,' said Mrs. Hazelden, ' the first 
 man a girl knows is generally the beginning 
 of her disillusions.' 
 
 * Possibly,' said De Renzi ; ' the fate of 
 humanity is disillusion. Young ladies must 
 be disillusionised like the rest of us. Men 
 may be Nature's humble instrument. It 
 may correspond to the acute form of it, 
 which they themselves experience when they 
 enter public life.' 
 
 ' Some of us amuse ourselves, during the 
 debates, by rewriting the English poets and 
 improving them. We have just brought out 
 a new edition of '' Hohenlinden " for use at 
 Westminster. Allow me to recite a verse —
 
 VII GLORIOUS APOLLO 89 
 
 " A combat threatens, — off, ye crave 
 'n souls, who seek your seats to save ! 
 Waive, traitors, all your scruples waive, 
 And change with all your perfidy ! " ' 
 
 * Well/ said Lady Heriot, ' there I agree 
 with you. You young politicians, I admit, 
 have seen enough to make you cynics. The 
 science of politics has been swamped in the 
 art of tergiversation.' 
 
 * As it always must,' said Mrs. Hazelden, 
 *with mob-rule. When you have to court a 
 lot of irrational people, the way to please them 
 is to do the most irrational thing you can 
 think of. Sudden and meaningless change is 
 one form — and a striking one — of irrationality. 
 There are people who think that the only 
 proper use of a coat is to turn it.' 
 
 * Now,' said De Renzi, ' I have Mrs. 
 Hazelden on my side, and I can go away in 
 safety and talk to the young goddess, who, I 
 daresay, like other goddesses, young and old, 
 requires adoration. Mrs. Hazelden, I leave 
 my reputation in your hands.'
 
 90 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 ' A dangerous place to leave it In,' 
 observed Stonehouse, as De Renzi was 
 retreating. 
 
 ' He Is a horrid young cynic,' said Mrs. 
 Hazelden ; — 
 
 ' " Would he oblige me ? Let me only find 
 
 He does not think me what he thinks mankind." 
 
 As for what he thinks womankind, no one can 
 even venture to conjecture.' 
 
 ' He appears to think some portions of it 
 worth cultivation,' said Stonehouse, glancing 
 in the direction where De Renzi had already 
 succeeded in establishing himself by Olivia's 
 chair, and was bending over her with an air 
 of deferential interest. 'All work and no 
 play makes Jack a dull politician.' 
 
 'Yes,' said Mrs. Hazelden, 'and most 
 men have taken care to protect themselves 
 from that particular way of getting dull. 
 Unfortunately there are others.' 
 
 ' Well,' said Crucible, who, dislodged by De 
 Renzi, had joined Lady Heriot's group, ' De
 
 VII GLORIOUS APOLLO 91 
 
 Renzl is a good judge. The young lady is 
 delightful — 
 
 " A rosebud, set with little wilful thorns, 
 As sweet as English air can make her, she " — 
 
 I feel a pang of jealousy even at this distance.' 
 
 ' Perhaps,' said Stonehouse, 'it is jealousy 
 which leads me to observe that De Renzi's 
 cynicism is a very mild affair. It merely 
 means that there is a great deal of humanity 
 in human nature, and that the parts of it 
 with which politics are concerned are not 
 the best.' 
 
 ' Of course,' said Crucible, ' man being 
 asinine, statesmen have to ride their parties, 
 as boys do donkeys, as near as possible upon 
 the tail' 
 
 'And,' said Mrs. Hazelden, 'as far as 
 possible from the seat of intelligence.' 
 
 ' What a simile ! ' said Stonehouse ; ' a libel 
 on party government in disguise ! ' 
 
 ' Party government ! ' said Mrs. Hazelden ; 
 ' it is an old story — a limited democracy that
 
 92 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 has destroyed the limitations. The thirty- 
 cleverest people in England trying to govern 
 the country, and the thirty next cleverest 
 trying to prevent them — the leaders hoping 
 to save themselves by abandoning their prin- 
 ciples, like the parents in the Russian story, 
 by pitching their children to the wolves/ 
 
 ' The worst of that sort of business,' said 
 Stonehouse, ' is that, sooner or later, the time 
 comes when all the children are used up, and 
 the parents have to decide which shall make 
 jettison of the other.' 
 
 'Yes,' said Lady Heriot, 'but, meanwhile, 
 the process is delightfully easy, like the road 
 to Avernus.' 
 
 ' All the roads to that place,' said Crucible, 
 'are delightful. It is the journey back that 
 is the rub. They don't issue return-tickets 
 on that line.' 
 
 ' Anyhow,' said Stonehouse, * the pace is 
 fast and furious. It is the case of the horse 
 and cart galloping down hill. No one — least
 
 VII GLORIOUS APOLLO 93 
 
 of all the horse — knows whether the horse is 
 running away with the cart, or the cart with 
 the horse.' 
 
 * But we can all make a shrewd guess,' 
 said Crucible, ' what will happen at the bottom 
 of the hill; 
 
 ' My nerves are weak,' said Lady Heriot, 
 ' and I congratulate myself on the probability 
 that I shall not be there to see.'
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 SIC ITUR AD ASTRA 
 
 ' On dit que dans ses amours 
 II fut caresse des belles, 
 Qui le suivirent toujours 
 
 Tant qu'il marcha devant elles.' 
 
 The great house of De Renzi was a name to 
 conjure with. It was In force wherever 
 finance on a grand scale was stirring, from 
 Gallipoli to San Francisco. It swayed ex- 
 changes, it negotiated loans, it floated rail- 
 ways, it inspired syndicates, it turned the 
 flow of capital this way or that ; with a word, 
 a look, markets rose or fell ; investors 
 trembled before it as mortals at the nod of 
 Olympian Jove. Now, too, the family had 
 become political and social. Former genera-
 
 CHAP. VIII SIC ITUR AD ASTRA 95 
 
 tions had dominated finance ; the present 
 achieved something more, the conquest of 
 society. The father of the present head of 
 the family had signahsed its triumph by 
 becoming a Christian, a baronet, and an 
 English gentleman. Lady de Renzi's parties 
 were among the smartest, the best, the most 
 sought after, the most written about and 
 talked about in polite London. Two 
 daughters of the family had made distin- 
 guished marriages and had carried welcome 
 streams of gold to thirsty regions of the aris- 
 tocratic world. Two more remained, the 
 cynosure of eager eyes on the look-out for a 
 splendid and profitable alliance. Claude de 
 Renzi's career at Eton and Christchurch had 
 been worthy of his family and himself — char- 
 acteristically brilliant. The young under- 
 graduate had well maintained the traditional 
 standard of ability and splendour. No golden 
 youth ever lavished an ample patrimony with 
 more refined prodigality. His parties, his
 
 96 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 hunters, the exquisite luxury of his rooms, 
 his carefully chosen and splendidly attired 
 library, his collection of priceless inutilities — 
 dear to the heart of the connoisseur — had 
 thrown all rival spendthrifts into the shade, 
 and realised to the ready enthusiasm of his 
 contemporaries the impressive conception of 
 a modern Alcibiades. Grave pedants shook 
 their heads at a license, which not even the 
 wise catholicity of academic indulgence could 
 quite condone. But then pedants were 
 exactly the people whom young De Renzi 
 least cared to conciliate. The tasks which 
 Alma Mater enjoined, and for which she 
 reserved her choicest honours and prizes, 
 revolted him. They had been designed 
 surely to produce that special quality of 
 erudite narrow-mindedness which is the attri- 
 bute of priests and the qualification of school- 
 masters. At any rate they were not worthy 
 the self-denial and effort necessary for their 
 accomplishment — worth the pleasures of eye,
 
 VIII SIC ITUR AD ASTRA 97 
 
 ear, taste, which civiHsation brings within the 
 reach of a refined epicurean ! 
 
 His college triumphs over, Claude de 
 Renzi had renewed them in London on a 
 more daring scale. His good looks, his 
 brilliant audacity, his vivacious readiness of 
 talk, his well-planned hospitalities soon made 
 him the fashion. His house became presently 
 a favourite resort, as beautiful as art, wealth, 
 and good taste could make it. Fine ladies 
 were delighted to drink tea there, or to bring 
 their daughters to contemplate this modern 
 Maecenas in his own domain. There were 
 other parties too to which ladies did not come, 
 but which none the less had a celebrity of 
 their own. Claude was an adept in the arts 
 of hospitality. His suppers achieved fame, 
 and deserved it. Artists and authors, actors, 
 actresses — beautiful women and accomplished 
 men — the rising politician, the witty journal- 
 ist, the lion of the hour, found themselves in 
 a coterie, which each helped to make varied, 
 
 VOL. I H
 
 98 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 brilliant, and amusing. To crown all, De 
 Renzi had fought an election with skill, 
 courage, and address, had made a successful 
 maiden speech, and had established a reputa- 
 tion as one of the rising lights of his party. 
 He seemed likely to be great ; and Mrs. 
 Valentine, who had a quick eye for greatness, 
 present or prospective, was delighted to have 
 so notable a guest for little dinners, to which 
 his presence added amusement and dclat. 
 One of these was now impending, and Mrs. 
 Valentine responded promptly to her mother- 
 in-law's wish that Olivia should be well 
 amused, by inviting her to fill a vacant place. 
 Mr. Stonehouse and Pygmalion were to be 
 among the other guests. 
 
 Mrs. Heriot, expert in her management 
 of mankind, was accustomed, on these occa- 
 sions, to send De Renzi in to dinner with 
 a pretty woman, and to let him sit next 
 herself. 
 
 De Renzi had thus a twofold obligation to
 
 VIII SIC ITUR AD ASTRA 99 
 
 render himself agreeable. The beauty pro- 
 vided on this occasion for him was Mrs. 
 Backhouse, a brilliant being, one of the 
 briehtest luminaries in Mrs. Valentine's 
 social horizon. Her beauty acquired addi- 
 tional interest from the circumstance that her 
 husband was making, or had made, a colossal 
 fortune on the Stock Exchange. There was, 
 too, Stoddart, who represented a Scotch 
 borough, and had just returned from a rough 
 encounter with his constituents. Several of 
 the guests were already intimate with each 
 other ; those who were not desired to become 
 so. All wished to please and hoped to be 
 pleased. Everything promised favourably. 
 Mrs. Valentine's guests were always confi- 
 dent in her power to consort them agreeably 
 and to feed them well. 
 
 De Renzi found Mrs. Backhouse delight- 
 ful, and between his two ladies, both of w^hom 
 required attention, had his hands full ; but he 
 was undaunted by the emergency. Every-
 
 lOO THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 body was talking too fast to allow of personal 
 attention, and, besides, Mr. Pygmalion, on 
 Mrs. Backhouse's other side, was bent on 
 absorbing her if De Renzi had given him an 
 opportunity. Mrs. Backhouse, however, had 
 no wish to be absorbed, and bent a gracious 
 ear to De Renzi's merry flow of talk. 
 
 Stoddart had just been relating some of 
 his experience in being 'heckled.' 
 
 ' Your constituents have been giving you 
 a treat ! ' said Stonehouse ; ' what a price to 
 pay for the eminence of politics ! ' 
 
 ' Eminence ! ' said Stoddart ruefully ; 
 'abyss, you mean.' 
 
 ' Stoddart,' said Pygmalion, ' has been 
 realising the truth of an observation of De 
 Tocqueville's, that there is nothing which a 
 man cannot, if necessary, learn to put up 
 with, except the manners of another class 
 than his own.' 
 
 ' And such a class ! ' cried Stoddart ; 
 * ignorant, coarse, violent people, vested with
 
 VIII SIC ITUR AD ASTRA loi 
 
 power, without a notion how to use it, and 
 roused into a passion by unwholesome doses 
 of rhetoric. Can any one expect to Hke it ? ' 
 'Sir Thomas Browne,' said PygmaHon, 
 ' was always good, but is best about the mob. 
 He had it not in him, he says, to hate any- 
 body, not even Frenchmen for eating frogs 
 and toadstools ; nor Jews for their weakness 
 for locusts and grasshoppers ; nor a salad 
 gathered in a churchyard ; nor serpents, 
 scorpions, or salamanders ; nor even that 
 imperial salamander, the devil himself. 
 " But," says that exemplary person, if I 
 remember him rightly, " if there be any 
 among those common objects of hatred I do 
 contemn and laugh at, it is that great enemy 
 of reason, virtue, and relioion, the multitude 
 — that numerous piece of monstrosity which, 
 if taken asunder, seem men and the reason- 
 able creatures of God, but, confused together, 
 make a great beast and a monstrosity more 
 prodigious than Hydra.'"
 
 I02 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 * He was a clear man,' said Mrs. Back- 
 house ; ' how I wish he was alive, that one 
 might ask him to five-o'clock tea.' 
 
 ' Philosophers have observed,' said Stone- 
 house, ' that mankind is a physic, which, if 
 taken at all, needs to be taken in homoeopathic 
 doses — not in such hideous conglomerations 
 as poor Stoddart has had to gulp.' 
 
 ' It is a fearful illustration,' said Pygmalion, 
 ' of what the evolutionists are preaching to us, 
 the essential bestiality of man. The mob is, 
 as Sir T. Browne said, a ereat beast.' 
 
 'And the mob's idea of evolution,' said 
 Stonehouse, * is, as Lowell has put it, to spell 
 it with an initial R.' 
 
 ' But evolution spells itself with an initial 
 R,' said Pygmalion ; * it is essentially revolu- 
 tionary. Even in the days of Aristophanes 
 the law of physics — say, the whirlpool theory 
 or the cosmic dust theory, or what you please 
 — had driven the Lord of Olympus off the 
 field. Do you remember the passage, De
 
 VIII SIC ITUR AD ASTRA 103 
 
 Renzi ? You are the last of us from 
 school.' 
 
 ' Perfectly,' said De Renzl, 'and the trans- 
 lation — 
 
 " An age when folk have grown too clever to believe, 
 And evolution has disposed of Eve." ' 1 
 
 ' Poor Eve,' cried Mrs. Valentine, ' the 
 fairest of her daughters she ! but she is a 
 ruined woman. Her reputation was hope- 
 lessly damaged in Paradise Lost. Who will 
 rehabilitate her ? ' 
 
 ' I will,' said De Renzi ; 'she deserves all 
 the sympathy that you ladies can give her. 
 Her retreat after dinner, when the conversa- 
 tion threatened to become tedious, shows that 
 the enslavement of women began even before 
 the fall of man. Do you remember the lines ? 
 I learnt them at Eton for an imposition — 
 
 " So spake our sire, and by his countenance seemed 
 Entering on studious thoughts abstruse ; which Eve 
 
 1 De Renzi must have been thinking of 
 
 AiVos /SacTiXevet rhv At' €^€\T]\aKu)S.
 
 I04 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 Perceiving, where she sat retired from sight, 
 With lovehness majestic from her seat. 
 And grace that won, who saw, to wish her stay. 
 Rose, and went forth amid her fruits and flowers, 
 To visit how they prospered, bud and bloom, 
 Her nursery " ' — 
 
 'Her nursery!' cried Pygmalion; 'that 
 was a little premature, surely.' 
 
 ' A hint,' cried Mrs. Valentine, ' to us to 
 leave the gentlemen to their cigars ; but we 
 refuse to act on the Miltonic precedent.' 
 
 'Quite right,' said Pygmalion; 'Milton 
 was a horrid old misogynist. There are 
 some things he said about the first Mrs. 
 Milton that I shudder to remember and refuse 
 to repeat.' 
 
 'Which means that you are dying to 
 repeat them,' said Mrs. Backhouse, 'and we 
 to hear. Let us have the worst.' 
 
 'Impossible,' said Pygmalion; 'it is 
 enough that Dr. Johnson summed up Milton 
 as atoning for public license by domestic 
 despotism, and as holding that every man
 
 VIII SIC ITUR AD ASTRA 105 
 
 was born to be a rebel, and every woman a 
 slave.' 
 
 ' Inquisitiveness Is unallayed,' insisted Mrs. 
 Valentine ; ' let us hear the worst.' 
 
 ' Well,' said Stonehouse, * what can be 
 worse than bringing a nice young bride from 
 a merry home of Oxfordshire fox-hunters, 
 boring her to death, no doubt, with Puritanic 
 dissertations In the style of Paradise Lost, 
 then dubbing her as "mute and insensate," 
 and when the poor creature could bear It no 
 longer and fled to her father's for a respite, 
 starting a flirtation with another woman and 
 propounding "the doctrine and discipline of 
 divorce restored, to the good of both 
 sexes " ? ' 
 
 ' That Is worst with a vengeance,' said 
 Mrs. Backhouse, 'and Milton too!' 
 
 ' But then,' put In Mrs. Valentine, ' he was 
 a poet, and poets are chartered libertines, 
 like German sovereigns. A poet may be 
 as eccentric as he pleases.'
 
 io6 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 ' However,' said Stonehouse, 'there is one 
 agreeable trait In the Mlltonic scene which 
 Mr. de Renzl omitted. Eve retreated, you 
 may remember, not because she dIsHked 
 philosophy, but because she liked her hus- 
 band's way of putting It better than the 
 angel's. She missed the ''grateful digres- 
 sion " of an occasional caress.' 
 
 'Ah,' said Mrs. Pygmalion, 'I was reading 
 somewhere, the other day, that men always 
 want to stop the mouths of female propa- 
 gandists by kissing them. They got the 
 hint from Adam.' 
 
 'A time-honoured form of argument,' said 
 Stonehouse, 'which we all approve.' 
 
 ' And too seldom, unfortunately,' said De 
 Renzl, 'get a chance of practising.' 
 
 ' But,' said Mrs. Backhouse, who occasion- 
 ally played the 7'ole of the engaging ingdmte, ' I 
 cannot imagine an angel kissingone — can you ?' 
 
 ' I have kissed angels,' said De Renzl ; ' I 
 hope to kiss some more.'
 
 VIII SIC ITUR AD ASTRA 107 
 
 'Well,' said Mrs. Backhouse, 'it is a fact, 
 is it not, that almost all great men have mal- 
 treated their wives ? Lord Byron and Andrea 
 del Sarto, and Shelley and that sort of 
 person ; I never can remember names, but I 
 know that there is quite a list of them.' 
 
 ' But the Shelley set pressed their privi- 
 leges too far,' said Pygmalion. 'They got 
 quite into a jumble. Between the different 
 ladies one never can remember who is who.' 
 
 ' No,' said Stonehouse, 'nor who is whose. 
 Still it is, no doubt, the attribute of genius to 
 make women miserable.' 
 
 'Yes, and w^hat a blessing it is,' cried De 
 Renzi, ' and how grateful we ought to be 
 that things are ordered so nicely ! ' 
 
 ' I don't see that at all,' said Mrs. Back- 
 house ; ' the wives of the greatest men ought 
 to be the happiest women ; oughtn't they ? ' 
 
 ' No,' said De Renzi, with enthusiasm ; 
 ' the happy woman is lost to society ; she 
 ruins her husband and herself. The first
 
 io8 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 condition of social brilliancy is domestic 
 gloom. The modern enchantress must have 
 some high lonely tower where she ''may oft 
 outwatch the Bear"; that is, a dull country 
 house and a conjugal bear who goes to bed 
 at ten o'clock. Like the dying dolphin of 
 the Roman banquet, the suffering woman 
 wears a thousand lovely hues. She is 
 brilliant, she is tender, she is sympathetic, 
 she is deliciously confidential, she is eloquently 
 reticent. Once happy, she loses the wish 
 to charm, and, with the wish, the power. 
 She basks in the stupefying sunshine of con- 
 jugal felicity ; she becomes mute and insen- 
 sate like Mrs. Milton ; she has a nursery full 
 of horrid little pledges of love ; the clink of 
 tea-cups and the warbling of babies fill her 
 ears ; nurses and governesses bound her 
 horizon ; she loses her care for society, the 
 world ; she loses her ambition ; she loses 
 her figure ; she becomes a little dump, or 
 expands, under the fostering influences of
 
 VIII SIC ITUR AD ASTRA 109 
 
 domestic bliss, into the elephantine, and goes 
 "stretching many a rood," like the Miltonic 
 Satan, all the vast fabric palpitating with 
 affection.' 
 
 'Stop, stop,' cried Mrs. Valentine ; 'all of 
 us here are extremely happy. Do you dare 
 to tell us that we are all the horrid things 
 you mention, or ever will be ? ' 
 
 ' Every law has its exceptions,' said De 
 Renzi, ' and this law has three charming ones 
 to-night. Besides, it is the prerogative of 
 genius to obey no law.' 
 
 'What a dreadful law, though,' said 
 Mrs. Backhouse, ' if one happened not 
 to be one of the exceptions, and what 
 an embarrassing alternative if one had to 
 choose ! ' 
 
 ' I should pronounce unhesitatingly for 
 unhappiness,' said Mrs. Pygmalion ; ' Mr. de 
 Renzi's portrait of the happy mother quite 
 haunts me.' 
 
 ' Naturally,' said Pygmalion.
 
 no THE HERIOTS chap, viii 
 
 " What is your sex's earliest latest care, 
 Your heart's supreme ambition ? To be fair." ' 
 
 'This is horrible,' said Mrs. Valentine. 
 ' Let us go away and cultivate a little un- 
 happiness by ourselves. One remark I will 
 make in retreating. If beauty depends on 
 conjugal unhappiness, many of us ought to 
 be a great deal prettier than we are.'
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 DIPLOMACY 
 
 ' Ah I that deceit should steal such gentle shapes, 
 And with a virtuous vizard hide deep vice ! ' 
 
 Valentine was furious when he heard of the 
 occurrences at Huntsham — of Jack having 
 been induced to cut off the entail, of the 
 disgraceful episode of the execution. He 
 went to his mother, and speedily infected her 
 with his own indignation. Lady Herlot had 
 been very much aggrieved, and was not 
 difficult to move to actual ancrer. The whole 
 thing was an indignity ; the family name was 
 disgraced. It seemed inconceivable that 
 such an outrae^e should occur in the home — 
 the house where so many generations of
 
 112 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 Heriots had lived in honour, plenty, and 
 dignity. So Valentine had no difficulty in 
 raising his mother's displeasure to the level 
 of his own. 
 
 'Adrian has disgraced us all,' he said, 
 ' and injured us. To me it is a very tangible 
 injury. What a pleasant thing, when I go 
 into the City, for my friends to be telling 
 about one's brother ! ' 
 
 ' We may hope that nobody knows it,' 
 said his mother ; * the bills were paid at once, 
 before any one knew.' 
 
 'Not know?' cried Valentine. 'Of 
 course everybody knew ; everybody always 
 does know that sort of pleasant news. 
 Depend upon it, such a piece of gossip as 
 that was chattered over, within twenty-four 
 hours, in every drawing-room in the county, 
 in every attorney's office, in every trades- 
 man's back parlour! How nice for me, who 
 have my own way to make in the world, and 
 am dependent for all I can do on the con-
 
 IX DIPLOMACY 113 
 
 fidence I Inspire ! and how much confidence 
 are people Hkely to feel in a man, the head 
 of whose family is being dunned by trades- 
 men for their accounts, and haunted by 
 sheriff s officers in his own country house ? ' 
 
 ' It is hard, Valentine,' his mother said, 
 ' very hard on you, I quite feel that. Adrian's 
 misfortunes have not fallen on his own 
 shoulders only.' 
 
 ' Adrian's misfortunes ! ' cried Valentine ; 
 ' I am tired of hearing of them. He has one 
 misfortune, mother, the misfortune of being 
 a fool — an obstinate fool. He would have 
 his way ; he knew he was right, you know, 
 like the man in Trollope's story — he would 
 do what he chose, despite of all we could do 
 to stop him : and now what is his position, 
 and what is Jack's ? ' 
 
 'Yes, indeed,' said Lady Heriot ; 'poor 
 boy, it is hard on him.' 
 
 'He starts life,' Valentine continued, 'a 
 beggar, and all through his father's folly — 
 
 VOL. I I
 
 114 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 his patrimony wasted, his position ruined. 
 What on earth is to become of him ? We 
 shall have to support him, I suppose, and 
 give him a start in life if he be unlike enough 
 to his father to be capable of starting. But, 
 from all I hear. Jack is as great a fool as 
 Adrian.' 
 
 ' Poor fellow ! ' said Lady Heriot, ' that is 
 a strong thing to say of him. But what 
 could we expect ? His mother, too ! ' 
 
 *Yes,' said Valentine, * Eugenia is a fool 
 too, a self-complacent fool. Three people 
 better contrived for making a mess of their 
 concerns, I cannot imagine.' 
 
 Conversations such as this left their mark 
 on Lady Heriot's mind, and prepared her for 
 a change of purpose. The question began 
 to suggest itself with increased force and 
 frequency, whether she might not be acting 
 in the true interests of her family, as well as 
 administering a well-deserved punishment on 
 its delinquent Head, if she made some
 
 IX DIPLOMACY 115 
 
 change in the existing disposition of her 
 wealth. Hitherto her main object had been 
 to help Adrian generously as the one of her 
 children who most needed help. The family- 
 fortunes must be restored, the family honour 
 saved, and the master of Huntsham be made 
 to stand free from embarrassments. But now 
 all these good objects were past praying for. 
 The disgrace had been incurred. The house 
 and park were in the market. A London 
 tradesman — a fashionable tailor, it was said 
 — was negotiating for it. Lady Heriots 
 soul grew dark with anger. Righteous 
 indignation is a seductive and dangerous 
 feeling. When once you recognise the right 
 and duty of punishing others, it is difficult to 
 stay your hand in the exercise of the punitive 
 function, and to say how hard the scourge 
 shall fall, and how many blows will adequately 
 meet the culprit's delinquency. 
 
 The more Lady Heriot thought it over, 
 the more did her feeling of provocation with
 
 ii6 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 Sir Adrian and Lady Eugenia grow. They 
 had made a lifelong series of mistakes, and 
 now they had crowned their mismanagement 
 by a disaster, the discredit of which all the 
 family had to share. Why put more money 
 in their way, to follow, no doubt, where so 
 much good money had already gone ? 
 
 Lady Heriot played with the thought, 
 and found it a consolatory vent for the 
 vexation that Sir Adrian was constantly 
 occasioning her. It was, at present, a toy 
 rather than an expedient, which she thought 
 seriously of adopting. But the idea became 
 familiar, as congenial visitors will. It had 
 made itself at home. 
 
 Lady Heriot had made a rule, all her life, 
 never to say anything to her children as to 
 the disposal of her money, nor to allow them 
 to talk to her about it — a rule which none of 
 them had ever ventured to infringe. Now, 
 however, her thoughts were so full of the 
 subject that she could not help hinting at it
 
 IX DIPLOMACY 117 
 
 to Mrs. Valentine. ' I am in great per- 
 plexity, Isabella,' she said ; ' Adrian's affairs 
 are a source of endless worry to me.' 
 
 ' Are they ? ' said Mrs. Valentine ; ' I am 
 sorry for that, mother.' 
 
 Mrs. Valentine was a woman of tact, and 
 a prudential instinct warned her that the 
 present occasion demanded a display of 
 innocent unconcern, and a complete conceal- 
 ment of feelings which she was conscious of 
 entertaining toward the Lord of Huntsham, 
 his wife, and heir. Certain visions had 
 flitted through her brain of what might have 
 been, had things gone a little otherwise than 
 they had — if, for instance, Eugenia, whose 
 contributions to the human race had, with a 
 single exception, been exclusively feminine, 
 had not been fated to prelude the list with a 
 boy. She found it impossible not to remem- 
 ber that, but for the inconvenient intrusion of 
 Jack, her husband's prospects, her own, and 
 those of her little Antinous would have been
 
 Ii8 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 very different from what they were. That 
 little Antinous ! Mrs. Heriot's heart was 
 not a soft one ; the vicissitudes of an aspiring 
 existence had hardened it ; but for this child 
 there was a spot, where the tender maternal 
 graces flourished, like the garden of wild 
 flowers on the Mer de Glace. No one who 
 — however remotely, however unintentionally 
 — had injured this precious little fellow, could 
 fail to incur his mother's undying animosity. 
 Jack, through circumstances beyond his con- 
 trol, had injured him very much indeed. 
 
 As Lady Heriot now approached this 
 delicate topic, generally guarded so sedulously 
 from all approach, her daughter's heart began 
 to beat. She was conscious of the necessity 
 of especial self-control. 
 
 * I am perplexed,' Lady Heriot continued, 
 'perplexed and harassed. It is right for me 
 to do all I can to help Adrian. His dear 
 father would have wished it. I have always 
 intended it ; but there are limits.'
 
 IX DIPLOMACY 119 
 
 Lady Heriot's mood might now, Mrs. 
 Valentine thought, with safety receive a little 
 gentle encouragement. 'It is a grievous 
 trouble,' she said sympathetically; 'Valen- 
 tine is feeling it very much. He feels it a 
 sort of a stain on the honour of the family.' 
 
 * If Adrian had only taken Valentine's 
 advice,' continued Lady Heriot, 'all might 
 have been avoided. But he will be advised 
 by no one.' 
 
 * Poor Eugenia ! ' said Mrs. Valentine. 
 
 ' I feel it difficult to pity her,' said Lady 
 Heriot ; ' she ought to have helped Adrian, 
 but she is helplessness itself. How is one 
 to help such people ? ' 
 
 Mrs. Valentine's inquisitiveness was be- 
 coming acute. ' Valentine feels the effects of 
 it,' she said, 'among his business friends. 
 Money likes money, and a family whose 
 Head cannot pay his tradesmen's bills is not 
 a connection that City people care about.' 
 
 * It is a great shame,' said Lady Heriot,
 
 I20 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 by this time worked into a thoroughly angry 
 mood ; ' what am I to do ? I have others to 
 think of besides Adrian. I must do justice 
 to all my children, if I can ; but how ? ' 
 
 'Valentine's great anxiety,' said Mrs. 
 Valentine, ' is that Adrian should be kept 
 from further trouble. Of late each fresh step 
 has carried him deeper into it. Of course, 
 Valentine would always be ready to stand by 
 his brother ; but he may not be able ; as was 
 the case the other day about the execution : 
 he really had not the money at his command.* 
 
 ' Of course not,' said Lady Heriot ; ' I 
 found it excessively inconvenient to find the 
 money myself. I believe I sold out at a loss ; 
 but I was too hurried to be able to consider 
 that, and too mortified to care. It was a 
 question of disgrace.' 
 
 ' Such questions may occur again,' said 
 Mrs. Valentine, playing nervously round the 
 suggestion which she longed to make, but 
 dared not, namely, that Valentine should be
 
 IX DIPLOMACY 121 
 
 left master of Lady Heriot's money, with 
 discretion to help his brother at an emergency. 
 
 'They may, and they will,' said Lady 
 Heriot with a decisive air ; ' I do not intend 
 any more of my money to be wasted, as too 
 much has been already, in paying debts that 
 seem to grow all the faster for paying. The 
 best thing I can do for Adrian and for us all 
 is to protect him from his own indiscretion 
 and his creditors' rapacity. I am certain 
 that he gets horribly cheated.' 
 
 * There can be no doubt of that,' said her 
 daughter-in-law. ' A good man of business 
 would soon put his concerns to rights and 
 frighten off the sharks. As it is, the more he 
 has, the more they prey upon him.' 
 
 'And giving money to Jack,' said Lady 
 Heriot, thinking the matter out exactly in the 
 direction which Mrs. Valentine desired, 'is 
 only giving it to his father.' 
 
 ' It is a pity that Jack is a socialist,' said 
 Mrs. Valentine, by this time grown courageous
 
 122 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 by success. ' He came to dine with us the 
 other night and talked like a madman. He 
 has been to their meetings, and gave us a 
 tirade on the coming revolution. If a few of 
 us get our throats cut in the regeneration of 
 society, so much the better.' 
 
 ' The boy is a fool, of course,' said Lady 
 Heriot ; ' how could he be anything else ? 
 But socialism and revolution ! that is past a 
 joke. I will not allow any nonsense of that 
 sort here.' 
 
 ' The worst of it is,' said the diplomatist, 
 ' that he is in love with Olivia Hillyard. 
 Eugenia had them both together at Hunts- 
 ham, left them for a fortnight to make love 
 to each other — the one thing, it appears, that 
 Jack is an adept at — and now professes to be 
 astonished at the result. Of course it would 
 be his ruin and the girl's, or Adrian would 
 not have encouraged it.' 
 
 Lady Heriot said nothing, but that even- 
 ing she wrote a note to Mr. Graves begging
 
 IX DIPLOMACY 123 
 
 him to come and call upon her at his earliest 
 convenience. 
 
 Valentine was rather taken aback when 
 his wife reported to him her afternoon's con- 
 versation with his mother. ' I do not want 
 to do Adrian a bad turn,' he said ; ' I do not 
 care about the money.' 
 
 ' Don't you ? ' said his wife ; ' well, I do. 
 I will not see ^50,000 slip out of our fingers 
 if I can help it. Why, Valentine, you are as 
 soft as Adrian. Think of his last letter to 
 you.' 
 
 This last letter was a sore point. Valen- 
 tine was a good-natured man, as far as busi- 
 ness allows of good nature ; but his amiability 
 was not proof against his brother's rudeness. 
 Adrian's letter had been angry, unreasonable, 
 offensive. He had applied to Valentine, at 
 the crisis of the execution, and begged him to 
 back a bill, which his bankers then would 
 honour. ' For God's sake, Valentine,' he had 
 written, ' stand by me now, like a good fellow,
 
 124 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 and help me to pull through. If I can only 
 get a little time to look about me, all can be 
 arranged. I have settled to sell the Hargrove 
 timber, and I give you my word of honour I 
 can and will meet the bill. Blood is thicker 
 than water, old fellow — I count on you.' 
 
 Blood may be thicker than water and be 
 very poor stuff for all that. Valentine fumed 
 over the letter. His wife read it with derisive 
 laughter. The result showed that Adrian's 
 experience of human nature, at any rate of 
 the fraternal side of it, was incomplete. 
 Valentines answer was courteous, regretful, 
 but firm. Backing bills was the one thing he 
 never did, never had done, and never would, 
 for any one — not even for his brother. It 
 would be absolutely fatal to his reputation 
 to have it known that he had been guilty 
 of such an indiscretion. ' I am a poorer 
 man than you think, Adrian,' he had written. 
 ' The most valuable thing I have is my credit ; 
 and where would my credit be if paper with
 
 IX DIPLOMACY 125 
 
 our joint signatures on it were once to get 
 about ? I had far rather send you the sum 
 you want at once. I would if I could, but it 
 is impossible. I am hard run just now, and 
 it is all that I can do to meet my business 
 calls. Times are as bad with us business 
 people as with you country gentlemen. I am 
 truly sorry.' 
 
 Then Sir Adrian had breathed a deep oath 
 and written the objectionable letter — the letter 
 of a proud, sensitive man, who has humbled 
 himself in vain, and who thinks he does well 
 to be angry at his bootless humiliation. Wise 
 men know that of all profitless, expensive, 
 foolish things an angry letter is the worst. 
 It can do no good ; it cannot be forgiven 
 or forgotten ; it cannot be toned down by 
 manner or voice ; it cannot be recalled. 
 There it stands, in damning black and white, 
 for the recipient to read over, in what mood 
 he pleases, and to make the worst of. 
 Valentine and his wife had read Sir Adrian's
 
 126 THE HERIOTS chap, ix 
 
 letter and had felt it to be very bad. Adrian 
 was an impossible man at the best of times ; 
 but Adrian in a passion ! it was piteous. So 
 when Mrs. Valentine bade her husband re- 
 member his brother's letter, she laid her adroit 
 hand on a very tender spot. Valentine found 
 comfort in reflecting that he had himself never 
 broached the subject, and that conversations 
 between his wife and mother were matters 
 which, however much he wished, he was 
 practically powerless to control.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 LE FOU QUI CROIT AU LENDEMAIN 
 
 * " Is the world so bad, 
 While I hear nothing of it through the trees ? 
 The world was always evil ; but so bad ? " 
 " So bad, Aurora, dear ; my spirit is grey 
 With poring over the long sum of ill." ' 
 
 Jack, it was now certain, could not hope to 
 live, like a gentleman, in quiet enjoyment of 
 ancestral rents. That dream had passed. 
 He must earn his living by sinew or by brain. 
 Jack*s sinews were of the best order, culti- 
 vated into exuberant prowess by all the varie- 
 ties of athleticism in which young English 
 gentlemen consider it necessary to be pro- 
 ficient. He had played cricket, rowed, hunted 
 and fished, scaled Alpine heights, and perse-
 
 128 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 cuted the dwindling population of his father's 
 coverts till he looked a young Hercules. If 
 legs could win in the race of life, or stalwart 
 arms secure its prizes, Jack's fortune would 
 have been assured. His brain, too, was not 
 amiss, though never as severely disciplined as 
 his outer man. He could think, and, as his 
 father was constrained to admit, he could 
 argue. Just now his head was packed full of 
 socialist theories, the fallacy of which Sir 
 Adrian felt it a solemn duty as a father, a 
 landowner, and a loyal subject to expose. 
 These extravagant ideas were the fruit of a 
 visit which Jack had paid to an old college 
 friend who was now a curate in Shoreditch, 
 who found no difficulty in convincing Jack 
 by ocular demonstration that ours is not the 
 best of all possible worlds, and that the con- 
 ditions of human life — human life in Shore- 
 ditch, at any rate — were very far indeed from 
 being what they ought to be. Jack had seen 
 sights and heard sounds that sent him shiver-
 
 X LE FOU QUI CROIT AU LENDEMAIN 129 
 
 ing away, and haunted him afterwards like a 
 nightmare. His eager brain was on fire — he 
 was prepared for radicalism, socialism, revolu- 
 tion, anything except acquiescence in a 
 realised pandemonium. He broke in upon 
 the still atmosphere of his father's dinner- 
 table with blasts of declamation. One even- 
 ing, when Hillyard was a guest, the conversa- 
 tion turned on the problem of great cities, and 
 when Lady Eugenia had retired, Jack gave 
 the gentlemen the benefit of some of his 
 London experiences. His hearers seemed 
 to him strangely unimpressed. 
 
 ' My dear Jack,' said Hillyard as he passed 
 the claret jug on to him, ' what call in the 
 world have you to go and dip your clean young 
 fingers in foece Romuli ? It is dirty stuff, and 
 always will be dirty, I am afraid, and there is 
 a great deal of it. You would have employed 
 these lovely days far better in fishing in the 
 stream here, and learning the kindly lessons 
 that Nature preaches. Everything about 
 
 VOL. I K
 
 I30 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 London is oppressively big, its crime and 
 miseries among the rest. There are some 
 things which it is well for young folks to leave 
 alone — the London slums, perhaps, among 
 them.' 
 
 * Ah, sir,' cried Jack, by this time kindling 
 into something like explosive heat, 'how easy 
 it is to call them '* slums " and have done 
 with it ! But do you realise what it means, 
 that millions should be living like brute 
 beasts, without the wholesome customs and 
 instincts of the brutes.' 
 
 * Come, come, Jack,' said his father, 'you 
 are pitching it too high, surely. These poor 
 people, who have shocked you so much, are 
 badly off enough, no doubt ; a good many of 
 them because they will spend in beer what 
 they ought to spend on their families : but 
 are you sure that they are as bad, or that 
 their life is as wretched as you fancy ? I do 
 not believe it.' 
 
 'No, father,' cried Jack, 'no one could
 
 X LE FOU QUI CROIT AU LENDEMAIN 131 
 
 believe it without seeing, and no one cares to 
 see ; and so every one disbelieves. But go 
 about the lanes and alleys in the East End 
 and see the life that people have to live, and 
 the dens they live in. It is not life ; it has 
 none of the things that make life tolerable.' 
 
 ' Not tolerable to y 021,' said Hillyard, 'but 
 tolerable, demonstrably, to ^/ze7n, inasmuch as 
 they tolerate it.' 
 
 *Yes,' cried Jack, 'but for how long? 
 This monster — the masses — which we have 
 allowed to grow up, miserable, depraved, with 
 nothing to care for, nothing to fear, nothing 
 to hope — it will turn upon society and rend 
 us ; it will clutch, some day, at the pleasures 
 which we have monopolised ; it will break its 
 bonds ; it will destroy the society which pro- 
 vided for it nothing but toil, poverty, and 
 crime. I for one shall cry, "God speed."' 
 
 ' When you go on in that way. Jack,' said 
 his father, refilling his glass, ' you talk like a 
 madman. Tall talk and hot talk on such
 
 132 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 subjects is the very mischief. Supposing 
 these poor people, whose lot troubles you so 
 much, are roused into violence, and succeed 
 in destroying society, what next ? Will they 
 be better off when they have driven the 
 capitalist to other countries ? when they have 
 destroyed our trade, as they easily may, for 
 the English capitalist has a hard time of it 
 already ? when they have broken up the most 
 orderly, peaceable, prosperous community 
 the world has ever seen ? for it is so. Jack, 
 you cannot get over the figures. The work- 
 ing classes, whatever miseries you see, are 
 better off than ever before. If they could 
 only be cured of intemperance they might 
 enjoy a prosperity the like of which the world 
 has never seen. Surely it is only madmen 
 and fanatics who would dash such a fabric to 
 pieces on the chance of something better 
 rising from its ruins.' 
 
 * That is always said,' cried Jack. 
 
 ' But if it is true,' said Hillyard, taking the
 
 X LE FOU QUI CROIT AU LENDEMAIN 133 
 
 Opportunity to fill his glass and push the 
 bottle across to Sir Adrian, ' the oftener it is 
 said the better. Recollect, it is God's world, 
 not ours.' 
 
 'I sometimes doubt it,' said Jack; 'God, 
 at any rate, has left it to its fate — perhaps as 
 a bad job.' 
 
 ' That is a sort of atheism,' said his father ; 
 * take care what you say. ' 
 
 'Yes, Jack,' said Mr. Hillyard, 'and take 
 care what you feel. The world, no doubt, 
 has many things awry : but that sort of talk- 
 ing has never helped to cure them.' 
 
 ' And what does religion do ? ' cried Jack. 
 ' If you could see the Shoreditch public-houses 
 of a Sunday evening ! — 
 
 " This world that we have made, 
 They say God made it first, but, if He did, 
 'Twas so long since ; and, since, we have spoiled it so, 
 He scarce would know it, if He looked this way. 
 From hells we preach of, with the flames blown out." ' 
 
 ' It is not spoilt here, at any rate,' said
 
 134 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 Hillyard, getting up and going to the window, 
 which opened upon the lawn, where the last 
 sweet lights of an evening summer day were 
 pouring a mellow glow on lawn and flower- 
 beds and distant woodland. ' Come, Jack, 
 and see something that God certainly made, 
 and man — spoiler though he may be — has 
 not succeeded in spoiling. What a delicious 
 evening, and what a gush of song from that 
 nightingale in the old thorn tree ! *' Hie 
 saepe Faunorum voces exauditae, saepe formse 
 visae deorum." Such an evening as this 
 preaches one a good sermon, does it not ? a 
 better one perhaps than the sights of horror 
 of which you have been telling us.' 
 
 Hillyard laid his hand kindly on Jack's 
 shoulder and led him out upon the lawn, and 
 then went back to Sir Adrian, who loved a 
 chat over his claret. 
 
 Jack went in to his mother through the 
 drawing-room window. 
 
 'How excited you look, dear!' she said,
 
 X LE FOU QUI CROIT AU LENDEMAIN 135 
 
 Stroking his forehead and pushing away his 
 hair, which was tumbling about it. 'What 
 have you been quarrelling about — politics ? ' 
 
 'Listen to this, mother,' said Jack, taking 
 up a volume which lay on the table and 
 looking for the place he wanted. * This is 
 what we have been quarrelling about,' and 
 then he read : ' '' Who does not know the 
 temper of the man of the world, that worst 
 enemy of the world ? His inexhaustible 
 patience of abuses that only torment others ; 
 his apologetic word for beliefs that may, 
 perhaps, not be so precisely true as one might 
 wish, and institutions which are not altogether 
 so useful as one might think possible ; his 
 cordiality towards progress and improvement 
 in a general way and his coldness or anti- 
 pathy to each progressive proposal in par- 
 ticular ; his pigmy hope that life will one day 
 become somewhat better, punily shivering by 
 the side of his gigantic conviction that it 
 might well be infinitely worse ? " That is
 
 136 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 good, is it not ? Father and Mr. Hillyard 
 are just deciding over their claret that Shore- 
 ditch might easily be a great deal grimier 
 than I found it, and that the Shoreditch 
 needlewomen on sixpence a day have every 
 reason to be well content. I came away 
 because I felt in such a rage : when you find 
 parsons defending the infamies of the world it 
 makes one hate the very name of religion.' 
 
 * Hush, Jack,' said his mother, * you don't 
 really mean that, I'm sure. Irreligion, I 
 have just been reading, is the elder sister of 
 revolution.' 
 
 * I should think none the worse of it for 
 that,' said Jack. Presently the two gentle- 
 men appeared and summoned Jack and his 
 mother to their evening rubber. 
 
 Be Jack's opinions what they might, it 
 had become necessary to provide him with 
 an employment in life. 
 
 ' If you like to go into orders, Jack,' his 
 father had once said, ' you could have Hunts-
 
 X LE FOU QUI CROIT AU LENDEMAIN 137 
 
 ham some day. Poor old Porter will soon 
 be going ; he is getting very infirm.' 
 
 ' Not for the world, father, thank you,' 
 cried Jack. ' If I went into orders at all I 
 should be an East End curate ; but I cannot. 
 That is not my vocation ; though I should 
 like it in many ways — missionary work 
 among the worst sort of savages, home- 
 grown ones ; but I cannot.* 
 
 This was not the view in which the 
 Church presented itself to Sir Adrian, to 
 whom one of its functions seemed to be the 
 providing a respectable sphere for such 
 members of the landed classes as were not 
 eldest sons and chose to adopt an unambi- 
 tious career. It mattered the less, because it 
 was now clear that neither as a country 
 rector nor as an East End curate would Jack 
 put on the Churchman's frock. 
 
 But then what was to be done with him ? 
 Sir Adrian's vague notions that something 
 could be found for him in London faded to a
 
 138 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 dreary blank when they were brought to the 
 test of practical realisation. He consulted 
 Mr. Graves, and that gentleman's advice — 
 exact, business-like, matter of fact — was the 
 reverse of encouraging. The Bar was, as 
 Sir Adrian well knew, a long, expensive, 
 and hazardous experiment. Jack was too 
 old for the army, not studious enough for the 
 Civil Service. 
 
 On the whole, Mr. Graves thought that 
 Valentine's influence in the City was the 
 likeliest chance. He might find an opening 
 for him, or, at any rate, a useful training. 
 
 Lady Eugenia had entreated her husband 
 not to quarrel with his brother. The wisdom 
 of her advice was now apparent. Nothing 
 would Induce Sir Adrian to write to Valen- 
 tine again ; nor would It be proper that he 
 should. Then Lady Eugenia, who would 
 have stripped the clothes off her back for her 
 darling son, put her pride in her pocket, and, 
 without informing Sir Adrian of what she
 
 X LE FOU QUI CROIT AU LENDEMAIN 139 
 
 was about, wrote to Valentine a quiet, digni- 
 fied letter. 'Would Valentine forget their 
 quarrel and help Jack and his parents in this 
 grave emergency ? ' It is good policy to 
 confer favours which cost one nothing, and 
 agreeable to put oneself conspicuously in the 
 right. Valentine was influenced by both 
 considerations. Nor did he harbour any real 
 bitterness against his brother, except the 
 latent resentment that a successful man natur- 
 ally feels at failure, and a shrewd man at 
 bungling. He was haunted by scruples, to 
 which his wife was a stranger. He cared, 
 indeed, first of all for himself, his own suc- 
 cess, his wife, his child ; but he cared also 
 for his childhood's home, the companion of 
 his boyhood, his family name. Mrs. Valen- 
 tine regarded her brother-in-law's reverses 
 with indifference, if not actual satisfaction. 
 Steel his heart as he would, Valentine could 
 not think of them without a pang. 
 
 So Valentine answered Lady Eugenia's
 
 I40 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 request with a gracious alacrity that did 
 credit to his brotherly afifection. He had 
 forgiven Adrian's angry speeches, and was 
 only anxious to give what help he could. 
 He knew of nothing at the moment which 
 was likely to answer, but he would think it 
 over. Eugenia should hear from him shortly 
 again. Meanwhile he would do his best, 
 and was her affectionate brother. 
 
 Lady Eugenia took this small modicum 
 of comfort for what it was worth, and did 
 not think it necessary to make her husband 
 participate in what might, after all, prove 
 only a treacherous hope. She answered 
 Valentine effusively. * You have behaved 
 generously,' she wrote; * you know our 
 troubles and difficulties. They have brought 
 us very low. I am in despair about Jack's 
 future. Dear Valentine, you can save him, 
 and I believe you will. Meanwhile you 
 have earned a troubled woman's gratitude.' 
 
 Valentine was as good as his word. It
 
 X LE FOU QUI CROIT AU LENDEMAIN 141 
 
 was a point of honour with him. He felt a 
 little fondness for Adrian, a little chivalry for 
 Lady Eugenia, a little liking for Jack, a 
 great deal of regard for his own reputation 
 for efficiency. He was bound to succeed, 
 even when success concerned such unin- 
 fluential persons as his own relations. He 
 cast the matter over in his mind — he in- 
 quired right and left — he kept his eyes open. 
 Before many weeks the opportunity, 
 which generally comes to the alert ob- 
 server, presented itself. Among Valen- 
 tine's City acquaintances were a firm of 
 brewers, who were doing a good solid 
 business in beer and public-houses. Rudge 
 Brothers had an account at one of Valentine's 
 banks, and he had, accordingly, the best in- 
 formation as to their resources, their wants, 
 their prospects. They were shrewd, pushing, 
 ambitious ; resolved to make a fortune and 
 on the high road to do so. They turned 
 their capital to excellent account, and saw
 
 142 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 numerous directions in which more capital 
 might be profitably employed. They were 
 not, it had to be acknowledged, quite gentle- 
 men ; but they were in process of becoming 
 gentlemen, and meanwhile were quite near 
 enough the mark for business purposes. 
 They would be tempted by the idea of a 
 prospective baronet and a county connection. 
 They would like an alliance with Valentine. 
 Jack might be turned to some account as a 
 partner, and a few thousand pounds could 
 surely be raised from the collapse of Hunts- 
 ham for him to take into the concern. Jack 
 was a good fellow, a pleasant companion, 
 popular in society, an undeniable gentleman 
 — would, no doubt, make an excellent brewer. 
 Valentine broached the subject delicately to 
 the Rudges, and felt his way. His overtures 
 were well received. The additional capital 
 was scarcely a consideration ; still a few 
 thousand pounds are always something. But 
 the connection was desirable, and the firm
 
 X LE FOU QUI CROIT AU LENDEMAIN 143 
 
 was exactly at the stage when its desirability 
 would be most acutely felt. After some days 
 of neofotiation Valentine was able to inform 
 Lady Eugenia that an arrangement, in every 
 way satisfactory, was open to Jack's accept- 
 ance, and that, if the disentailing of Hunts- 
 ham would set ^5000 at liberty, Jack might 
 be provided with a pleasant berth in an 
 excellent business, where he might reason- 
 ably hope to make, at any rate, an ample 
 competence, and might become a rich man. 
 
 Pleased with the success of his diplomacy, 
 Valentine wrote with real good nature and 
 satisfaction at having been able to do the 
 family so good a turn. Lady Eugenia gave 
 a sigh of relief and congratulated herself on 
 a practical achievement. 
 
 A ray of light had at last broken through 
 the murky sky under which she generally 
 lived.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 LADY HERIOT PREPARES FOR ACTION 
 
 ' Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, 
 Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.' 
 
 If there was one thing more than another 
 which shook Lady Heriot's confidence in 
 Mr. Graves, it was his persistent champion- 
 ship of Sir Adrian. Even the execution at 
 Huntsham failed to rouse him to any proper 
 pitch of indignation, if indeed Mr. Graves's 
 mood could be reasonably held to deserve so 
 respectable a name as indignation. He was 
 Indignant, indeed ; not, however, like Lady 
 Herlot, with Sir Adrian, but with those who 
 had so unnecessarily set the machinery of 
 the law In motion to harass him. ' It is too
 
 LADY HERIOT PREPARES FOR ACTION 145 
 
 bad of Mortimers' people,' he said ; ' a great 
 deal too bad ; and too bad of the Huntsford 
 Bank. They knew perfectly well that the 
 money was safe ; they knew that I was 
 acting for Sir Adrian, and they never gave 
 me a hint. It is some political grudge, I am 
 convinced. Mortimers, you know, were Mr. 
 Goldingham's agents at the last election. It 
 is too bad, too bad : an honourable high- 
 minded gentleman like Sir Adrian ! There 
 is really nothing that men will not do to 
 indulge a political grudge.' 
 
 This view of the subject did not much accord 
 with Lady Heriot's present feelings about 
 it ; nor did it gratify her to have Sir i\drian's 
 misdeeds so generously extenuated. ' I really 
 cannot see it in that light,' she said ; ' people 
 have a right to get their bills paid, I suppose, 
 somehow or other, by fair means or foul ' 
 
 ' But not by such foul means as this,' said 
 Mr. Graves. ' It was a low manoeuvre.' 
 
 ' You can never see any harm in Adrian, 
 
 VOL. I L
 
 146 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 can you, Mr. Graves?' Lady Heriot said, 
 unable to repress a rising feeling of irritation. 
 ' Well, you have not had to pay his bills as 
 often as I have.' 
 
 ' Sir Adrian has been unwise in some of 
 his speculations, I admit,' said the solicitor ; 
 ' unwise, perhaps, in speculating at all. All 
 the same, if he had not, I do not see how he 
 could have paid his way. His rental is less 
 than half his father's. He has very heavy 
 charges, bequeathed to him by others ; and 
 these, unluckily, do not diminish with his 
 rental. It was natural for him to try to 
 increase his income : it was excusable, it was 
 imperative. Even a wise man is bound 
 sometimes to run a risk.' 
 
 ' If I ever wished to alter the disposition 
 which I have made of my property,' asked 
 Lady Heriot, breaking away from a dis- 
 tasteful topic, and coming somewhat abruptly 
 to the business which she had at heart, ' how 
 ought it to be done ? '
 
 XI LADY HERIOT PREPARES FOR ACTION 147 
 
 Mr. Graves was startled. Such a change 
 in Lady Heriot's intentions was a contingency 
 which had never till now suggested itself. 
 He had presence of mind, however, to con- 
 ceal his surprise. ' It could be done by a 
 codicil,' he said, 'like that which your lady- 
 ship will remember having executed some 
 years ago, when you altered some of the 
 legacies. But such a change would require 
 a great deal of consideration, would it not ? ' 
 
 ' I have given much consideration to it,' 
 said Lady Heriot with decision, 'and am 
 giving it. I am rapidly coming to the con- 
 clusion that it may be my duty to save the 
 bulk of the property — such of it as Sir 
 Adrian has not squandered — by leaving 
 it to his brother. I should wish to have a 
 codicil drawn which will effect that, in case 
 I should ever decide upon doing it.' 
 
 Mr. Graves stood absolutely aghast. 'Your 
 ladyship will not forget, I am sure,' he said 
 
 ' I would rather not discuss it just now,'
 
 148 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 said Lady Herlot; 'I am not strong enough 
 to-day. I have decided upon nothing. But 
 I see plainly that it may be right for me to 
 take this course, and I wish to be prepared 
 for it. The legacies may remain as they 
 are ; but have the codicil so drawn, if you 
 please, that the rest of the property may go 
 to Valentine instead of his brother. How 
 must it be executed ? ' 
 
 ' The formalities of execution are the same 
 as those for a will,' said Mr. Graves, by this 
 time growing decidedly stiffer in manner. 
 ' The codicil must be signed in the presence 
 of two witnesses, both present at the same 
 time ; and each of them must sign their 
 attestation in presence of the other. But I 
 shall come myself, of course, and see that 
 everything is right and in due form. Any 
 mistake about a will is often the ruin of a 
 family — the ruin, at any rate, of its happiness. 
 We see such things, unhappily, only too 
 often in my profession.'
 
 XI LADY HERIOT PREPARES FOR ACTION 149 
 * I can well imagine it,' said Lady Heriot, 
 more and more determined not to let Mr. 
 Graves's scruples stand in the way of her 
 intentions, whatever they might be. ' Never- 
 theless it will be a satisfaction to me to have 
 such a codicil ready and at hand, in case I 
 wish to use it. Will you have it prepared 
 and send it to me ? ' 
 
 Mr. Graves left his old friend with a 
 heavy heart and apprehensive of disaster. 
 Lady Heriot was evidently contemplating 
 some foolish act, and was clearing the field 
 of those who would oppose her folly. She 
 was just at that stage of bodily weakness 
 at which infirmities of temper and judgment 
 are likeliest to reveal themselves ; and she 
 was shaking off her advisers. It was not 
 easy to see how she could be helped. So 
 thought Mr. Graves as he walked homeward, 
 in anxious thought immersed, striving in 
 vain to see his way to any hopeful solution. 
 Lady Heriot felt a quiet exultation in
 
 I50 THE HERIOTS chap 
 
 having courageously confronted Mr. Graves. 
 She was, at heart, afraid of him — of his keen 
 insight, his impartiality, his staunch good 
 sense. He had his views — clear and de- 
 cided — as to what she ought to do, and they 
 clashed with her own inclinations. It was a 
 relief to be now completely mistress of the 
 situation and free to do what she pleased 
 without the troublesome constraint of un- 
 favourable criticism. What she meant to do 
 she had not yet decided, except that it should 
 be exactly what she chose, not what other 
 folks bothered her into doing. 
 
 It was perhaps Lady Heriot's satisfaction 
 at the achievement that made her especially 
 bright amid her guests that night. She was 
 having a little dinner in honour of Olivia, 
 who was afterwards to make her ddbut, under 
 Mrs. Hazelden's protection, in a London 
 ball-room. The occasion was exciting, for 
 the beautiful dress which Lady Heriot had 
 ordered, and which Madame Celestine sent
 
 XI LADY HERIOT PREPARES FOR ACTION 151 
 
 home only just in time for dinner, proved 
 indeed an ambrosial affair. Madame 
 Celestine had recognised her opportunity 
 for a striking effect, and had done her best 
 to deck the beautiful debutante with artistic 
 simplicity. Olivia surprised herself, Mrs. 
 Phillips, who presided on the occasion at her 
 toilette, and Lady Heriot — who criticised 
 the result — by a new access of loveliness. 
 The dress was, all acknowledged, a master- 
 piece ; but how easily are such masterpieces 
 constructed for young creatures like Olivia ! 
 Lady Heriot had sent for her to come and 
 be inspected before she went downstairs. 
 Olivia found her restino- in an arm-chair, in 
 anticipation of the fatigues of the evening. 
 
 ' Charming ! ' she cried, as Olivia came 
 and stood before her. 
 
 ' It is so good of you,' cried the blushing 
 Olivia, giving her kind patroness a filial kiss. 
 ' My dress is too lovely — I feel a great deal 
 too fine in it.'
 
 152 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 But another delightful surprise was still 
 to come. ' I want you,' Lady Heriot said, 
 ' to have a little remembrance of your visit 
 to me. I shall remember it with pleasure. 
 You have worked hard for me, I am sure, 
 and I wish you to feel an old woman's 
 gratitude. Give me the string of pearls, 
 Phillips. Put it on, dear, and go to the 
 glass and see how you like yourself with a 
 necklace.' 
 
 When they got downstairs they found 
 that Dr. Crucible had already arrived in 
 charge of a fine bouquet, which, in an unpre- 
 cedented fit of gallantry, he had ordered 
 from Covent Garden as his contribution to 
 the splendour of the occasion. 
 
 Olivia, whose attire till now had been of a 
 rustic and juvenile simplicity, was conscious 
 of feeling extremely over-dressed. It was 
 a comfort when Mrs. Valentine arrived in 
 attire whose magnificence completely eclipsed 
 Olivia, and gave her a reassuring sensation of
 
 XI LADY HERIOT PREPARES FOR ACTION 153 
 
 insignificance. After the Valentines came 
 Lord Melrose, and, close upon him, Mrs. 
 Hazelden, who was to be Olivia's guardian 
 through the eventful evening. 
 
 'We will not wait for Mr. de Renzi,' Lady 
 Heriot said. ' He has written to say that he 
 may be kept at the House. He has to make 
 a speech this evening, and must get it over 
 before he comes away. He is to come when 
 he can ; so, my dear Olivia, you will have to 
 go down to dinner by yourself.' 
 
 Stonehouse brought them the latest news 
 from the House ; he had come straight from 
 the debate. De Renzi had spoken admirably. 
 
 ' There had been nothing so brilliant among 
 the younger men this session,' he said; 'I 
 heard Mr. Grandiose congratulating him. 
 He is a real acquisition to his party — to the 
 House.' 
 
 In the midst of this panegyric De Renzi 
 arrived, with the flush of triumph full upon 
 him. Olivia felt it very impressive to meet
 
 154 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 at close quarters one who had just been ex- 
 periencing a parliamentary success ; but De 
 Renzi wore his honours with pleasant modesty. 
 He was quite at his ease, and at once put 
 Olivia at ease by a reassuring air of intimacy. 
 He was the friend of the family, and bent — 
 like the rest of Lady Heriot's friends — on 
 providing Olivia with amusement. She 
 should be well amused. Commonplace, cere- 
 mony, tedium, were for the uninteresting 
 world of outsiders. De Renzi was in the 
 highest spirits, and his high spirits were 
 delightfully infectious. 
 
 * I am so glad that I managed to get away,' 
 he said, ' though I did not know the honour 
 that Lady Heriot destined for me. We have 
 had such an afternoon, such an awful after- 
 noon, on the Old Swamp Reclamation Bill. It 
 is the Serbonian bog of modern times, where 
 armies whole have sunk — armies of debaters 
 with batteries of blue-books. Thank Heaven 
 it is over. Now we will enjoy ourselves.'
 
 XI LADY HERIOT PREPARES FOR ACTION 155 
 
 'For me,' said Olivia, 'it is amusement 
 enouorh to sit next a Member of Parliament 
 who has just been making a speech. You 
 can hardly believe, I suppose, that I have 
 never heard one.' 
 
 ' No ? ' said De Renzl. ' Let me advise 
 you never to do so. No one ever quite re- 
 covers his spirits again who has been through 
 a debate, the worst known form of human 
 dreariness. You would lose your freshness, 
 which would be such a misfortune.' 
 
 * Should I ?' said Olivia. ' Well, my fresh- 
 ness, which means my country simplicity, I 
 suppose, must take care of itself I want to 
 see the world.' 
 
 ' The world will be delighted to see you, 
 I am sure,' said her companion. 'What bit 
 of it do you propose to look at first ? ' 
 
 * To-night,' answered Olivia, ' I am going 
 to a ball — a very grand ball. Mrs. Hazelden 
 is going to take me.' 
 
 ' Ah,' said De Renzi. ' Mrs. Beaumont's,
 
 156 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 of course. That will be an experience. I 
 wish I could be there ; but I am bound by 
 the most awful vows to be back at the House 
 by half-past ten. I dare not break them, even 
 for you or Mrs. Beaumont.' 
 
 ' What a pity ! ' said Olivia. ' Have you 
 to make another speech ? ' 
 
 ' Heaven forbid ! ' cried De Renzi. ' I 
 have contributed my share of dulness for 
 to-day.' 
 
 ' Dull ! ' cried Olivia. ' But how can it be 
 dull ? Mr. Stonehouse was saying, when you 
 came in, that your speech had been excessively 
 brilliant.' 
 
 ' See how people deceive themselves ! ' 
 cried De Renzi. ' Stonehouse himself is the 
 wreck of an amusing character, the ruins of a 
 wit ! Nothing of him remains but an occa- 
 sional epigram. But how delightful for you 
 to know nothing about it — to be so unsophisti- 
 cated. Do you know nothing, then ? ' 
 
 ' Nothing,' said Olivia, ' except Homer and
 
 XI LADY HERIOT PREPARES FOR ACTION 157 
 
 Virgil, which I have read with my father. 
 And now I have begun Dante.' 
 
 * Perfection ! ' cried her companion — 'an 
 ideal education ; three masterpieces, and the 
 rest a blank for fancy to play at large in ! If 
 only we could all be educated like that ! 
 What a world it would be ! ' 
 
 ' A dull one ! ' said Olivia. ' I have found 
 that out already ; there are a thousand things 
 that I am dying to know about.' 
 
 'A mistake,' said De Renzi, 'as old as our 
 first mother ! Be warned by her. Feminine 
 craving for information was the ruin of man- 
 kind, and is so still. Ignorance, some philo- 
 sopher has said, is bliss. How true ! If only 
 w^e could attain it! And so you really can 
 do nothing ? ' 
 
 'Nothing,' said Olivia, 'except play the 
 piano a little, — not that it deserves the name 
 of playing. I know enough to know that.' 
 
 ' You love music, then ? ' asked her com- 
 panion.
 
 158 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 ' I do,' said Olivia, 'with all my heart. It 
 is my chief delight at home. It has been one 
 of my great pleasures in London. Mrs. 
 Hazelden has taken me to several enchanting 
 concerts. But all music delights me. There 
 is a beautiful German band which comes into 
 Seymour Street on Thursdays. Even the 
 barrel-organs are an immense pleasure. Do 
 you like them ? ' 
 
 ' No,' said De Renzi. ' I am never merry 
 when I hear street music, as somebody or 
 other says in Shakespeare, I believe ; but 
 before I became a political star I was begin- 
 ning a musical education, and devoted my- 
 self to the violoncello. But what sort of music 
 do you play ? ' 
 
 * I ? ' said Olivia. ' Only some slow move- 
 ments of Beethoven, and some airs of Schu- 
 bert and Chopin that Lady Heriot likes to 
 fall asleep to.' 
 
 'Happy Lady Heriot!' cried De Renzi. 
 ' A narcotic worthy of gods ! What blissful
 
 XI LADY HERIOT PREPARES FOR ACTION 159 
 
 slumbers they must be — like Endymion's, 
 " full of sweet dreams and health and quiet 
 breathing," and ended only by a kiss from the 
 moon. That would be the way that one 
 would like to go to sleep, lulled by the Graces 
 instead of being stupefied by boredom ! I 
 am a wretched sleeper. Even in the House 
 I can scarcely get a nap. You must play me 
 to sleep some day, like Lady Heriot ; will 
 you ? ' 
 
 ' With pleasure,' said Olivia, beaming upon 
 her companion with mirthful eyes : ' you can 
 have the other sofa. I can do both of you at 
 once.' 
 
 ' That will be delightful,' said De Renzi ; 
 'but I am so interested in your case. It is 
 like that of the charming: S^irl in the Golden 
 Bzttterfly, who had been brought up in the 
 proper way, and been kept perfectly ignorant, 
 just as you have been. How delightful it 
 must be not to be able to read or write ! ' 
 
 ' But, unfortunately,' said Olivia, ' I can
 
 i6o THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 read and write. I forgot to mention that. 
 All the little children in the national schools 
 get as far as that.' 
 
 ' Yes,' said De Renzi, ' and so lose all their 
 poetry ! You spoil a peasant when you teach 
 him how to read. How incongruous, how un- 
 natural, how inartistic ! What does he want 
 to read for, when he is happy in the fields ? 
 Who can tell what he will read ? Very 
 likely some horrid revolutionary newspaper.' 
 
 ' Well,' said Olivia, ' I always read the 
 Times to Lady Heriot after breakfast. That 
 is how I came to know about your speeches 
 in Parliament ; but I thought the idea was 
 that everybody should be educated.' 
 
 ' The idea ! ' cried De Renzi ; ' yes, it is 
 one of the radical cries which obliges the 
 Tories to outcry them. That is why we are 
 all going to the dogs on a stream of national 
 enlightenment.' 
 
 'What heresy are you propounding, Mr. 
 de Renzi ? ' said Lady Heriot.
 
 XI LADY HERIOT PREPARES FOR ACTION i6i 
 
 ' No heresy, Lady Heriot,' said De Renzi, 
 ' but the orthodox doctrine of contented ignor- 
 ance. Great men can do without knowledge ; 
 petty men only become pettier by being 
 crammed with more than they are meant to 
 hold. Lord Chatham, you remember, knew 
 nothing but Spenser's Faery Quee^i' 
 
 ' Which we none of us know nowadays,' 
 said Stonehouse; 'but a prig has been, I think, 
 defined as a person who has been overfed with 
 intellectual provender.' 
 
 ' That accounts for our all being such 
 prigs,' said Lord Melrose. * They cram us 
 too much ; one of George Eliot's wisest 
 observations is that you only make a man's 
 ignorance denser by starching it with facts.' 
 
 'And,' said De Renzi, 'when the starch 
 is made out of parliamentary statistics, how 
 dense does ignorance become ! ' 
 
 When the gentlemen rejoined the ladies 
 in the drawing-room De Renzi dexterously 
 took possession of a chair which secured him 
 
 VOL. I M
 
 i62 THE HERIOTS chap, xi 
 
 a few moments' talk with Olivia. ' It is too 
 tiresome,' he said ; * I am obliged to go. 
 But we shall meet again before long. I am 
 coming to Mrs. Beaumont's after all. I shall 
 get into dire disgrace. You must reward me 
 with a valse.'
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 AN OLD lady's SERMON 
 
 ' A man, who can 
 Live to be old, and still a man ; 
 Whose latest and most leaden hours 
 Fall with soft wings, stuck with soft flowers ; 
 And when life's short fable ends. 
 Soul and body part as friends ; 
 No quarrels, murmurs, no delay ; 
 A kiss, a sigh, — and so, away.' 
 
 The hours of Olivia's holiday were numbered. 
 Her father had returned from Huntsham, 
 and, in his lonely home, was missing her 
 sorely. Pleasure apart, Olivia's presence at 
 the Rectory was essential to the maintenance 
 of such order as prevailed there. The family 
 accounts would, she knew, in her absence 
 soon become chaotic. Some village festivities 
 needed her inspiring genius and controlling
 
 i64 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 hand. Her father was quite Incapable of 
 carrying on his parish work without her aid. 
 Olivia began to detect, or to imagine that 
 she detected, some sub-tones of melancholy 
 in his letters. She knew instinctively that 
 he was wanting her. She confided her 
 suspicions to Lady Heriot, and Lady Heriot, 
 without an instant's hesitation, decided that 
 she ought to go. It was a characteristic of 
 her habitual unselfishness that, when once 
 she learnt how matters stood, she breathed 
 no hint of regret that Olivia's visit could not 
 be prolonged. Yet she would fain have 
 prolonged it. Olivia was daily becoming 
 more necessary to her. She was in need of 
 companionship, and Olivia was excellent 
 company. Her ministrations added greatly 
 to the elder lady's enjoyment. Congeniality 
 is what invalids prize in those who are about 
 them, and Lady Heriot found Olivia ex- 
 tremely congenial. Her movements, her 
 tones, her way of doing things — her way of
 
 XII AN OLD LADY'S SERMON 165 
 
 talking and feeling about things — all were 
 soothing to the sufferer's nerves. She 
 amused, she interested, she touched her. It 
 was not always that Lady Heriot felt up to 
 having Mrs. Valentine, or even her own 
 daughter, Lydia Hazelden, to stir the 
 tranquillity of her chamber : nor were they 
 always to be had. Both were busy women, 
 in the full flow of life. Mrs. Hazelden had 
 a family of boys and girls, whose souls and 
 bodies left their mother little leisure for any 
 other care. Isabella found the claims of 
 society, each year, more imperative, more 
 absorbing. Olivia could see that Lady 
 Heriot was fatigued by her daughter-in-law's 
 bustle and gossip, and tried in vain to assume 
 an Interest in matters which were becoming 
 too remote from her invalid life and her real 
 thoughts to be any longer interesting. It 
 was natural, of course, that a young woman 
 with Isabella's tastes should enjoy the world 
 and the amusements which fortune brought
 
 i66 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 within her reach. It did not follow that 
 other people should care about them as much 
 as she did, or that Isabella's somewhat noisy 
 chatter should prove a good specific on 
 afternoons when Lady Heriot's spirits were 
 clouded, her head aching, her vital powers 
 sinking low. Mrs. Valentine, too, made no 
 secret to Olivia that she regarded her visit 
 to Lady Heriot in the light of a holiday for 
 herself — a welcome respite from distasteful 
 duties. It was a duty to attend on her 
 mother-in-law, and one which she dared not 
 neglect ; but it was a relief to perform it by 
 proxy. 
 
 * Nature never intended me for a nurse,' 
 she one day told Olivia. ' I do not feel 
 compassionate to people just because they 
 happen to be old or ill. They ought to be 
 compassionate to us who have to attend to 
 them. You are a perfect little adept at it, 
 and have a genius for nursing. You ought 
 to be a sister of mercy, my dear ; you would
 
 XII AN OLD LADY'S SERMON 167 
 
 make a charming nun. But for me, I confess 
 to you, an invalid's room is a chamber of 
 horrors ! Pouff ! It stifles me to think of it. 
 And invalids ! How exacting they are ! how 
 full of troublesome whims ! How can they 
 expect one not to dislike them ? For me, I 
 love what is lovable — light, beauty, pretty 
 colours, pretty forms, pretty faces. I love 
 them. I want as much of them as I can get. 
 But nursing ! My dear Olivia, stay as long 
 as ever you can, like a good girl, and earn 
 my eternal gratitude.' 
 
 The Fates had decreed, however, that 
 Olivia's visit should end. Lady Heriot had 
 already arranged for her journey home. 
 There was nothing now to be said. 
 
 None the less did the approaching de- 
 parture throw a tinge of melancholy over the 
 intercourse of these two friends. Olivia was 
 grieved to leave a void which she was 
 conscious no one else could fill. Should she 
 ever return to fill it ? There was a feeling
 
 i68 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 of everything being for the last time. The 
 end was coming, was near ; each week did 
 its work. Even during Olivia's visit Lady 
 Heriot's powers had seemed to ebb. The 
 sands were running out, and running fast. 
 The morning after the ball she was especially 
 feeble. She had slept ill — she was in 
 pain. 
 
 ' I fear,' she said to Olivia, ' that I must 
 give up having dinner-parties. They are too 
 much for me, even little ones like yesterday's, 
 and with my dear Olivia to help. But now 
 tell me about the ball.' 
 
 * It was an immense crowd,' said Olivia ; 
 * a crowd of strangers, which is a strong form 
 of loneliness. But what a splendid sight ! 
 The flowers were exquisite, though it seemed 
 sacrilege to put them to perish in a mob. 
 There were many beautiful ladies : it was a 
 pleasure to look at them. Mr. de Renzi 
 came and took me down to supper, and 
 afterwards helped us to get away.'
 
 XII AN OLD LADY'S SERMON 169 
 
 * And you enjoyed it ? ' asked Lady 
 Heriot. 
 
 ' Yes,' said Olivia ; ' it was my first experi- 
 ence. It was all new to me — my beautiful 
 new dress, and the lovely pearls among the 
 rest. I have not thanked you for them half 
 enough, Lady Heriot, for this and a thousand 
 other kindnesses. You have been very good 
 to me.' 
 
 'Well, Olivia,' said Lady Heriot, 'grieved 
 as I am to lose you, I am glad in some ways 
 that you are going home. You will be safer 
 with your father — safer and happier.' 
 
 ' I have been very happy here,' said 
 Olivia ; ' you have given me many pleasures. 
 But safe ? Can I be safer than with 
 you ? ' 
 
 'Yes,' said her companion; 'more out of 
 harm's way. Your life at home is the proper 
 sort of life to lead — a life of tranquillity, 
 refinement, pure and healthy joys, simple 
 pleasures.'
 
 I70 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 ' But,' said Olivia, ' you have loved society. 
 Lady Heriot, have you not ? ' 
 
 *Yes,' said Lady Heriot; 'well, perhaps 
 too well. I am an old woman now, and see 
 things otherwise than I did when I was a 
 young and foolish one. There is a nice 
 saying of George Sand's that I am fond of 
 ''When we grow old," she says, "and reach 
 the sunset of life — the finest hour for tones 
 and harmonies of colour — we form new ideas 
 of everything, and above all, of affection." 
 Young eyes are so dazzled with the bright 
 things in life that they sometimes fail to see 
 that affection is the only thing really worth 
 caring about.' 
 
 ' I feel a great affection for you,' said 
 Olivia, ' and I care about yours, next to my 
 father's, more, I believe, than about anything 
 in the world.' 
 
 Lady Heriot sat holding Olivia's hand, 
 and looking at her with kindly wistful eyes, 
 as if trying to read her future.
 
 XII AN OLD LADY'S SERMON 171 
 
 * You are a good girl, Olivia, and have a 
 warm heart, a tender heart, a rare possession 
 nowadays, I can tell you. I am always so 
 afraid that you should get it hurt. Many 
 women have lumps of ice which do duty for 
 hearts. They are dangerous folk for sensi- 
 tive natures who cross their path. One has 
 to beware of them.' 
 
 ' You want to say something to me, Lady 
 Heriot, I can see,' said Olivia. 
 
 ' Yes,' said her companion, ' I do. I have 
 it on my conscience to give you some advice. 
 I feel a great interest in you. I should like 
 to see you happy, dear Olivia, before I die. 
 I should like to protect you from unhappi- 
 ness. I wish that I could. But, who knows 
 how long I shall be alive ? You will be beset 
 with dangers. There are people who ignore 
 all the precious things of life. They try to 
 make young women ignore them ; they laugh 
 them to scorn, for they have ceased to believe 
 in them. You may be tried, you may be
 
 172 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 tempted. Olivia, take an old friend's advice 
 — one who has seen life and knows the world 
 — and don't let them persuade you ; don't let 
 them deceive you. Numbers of girls are 
 sold that way ; be not you of that unhappy 
 number. They will try to sell you. There 
 will be plenty of bidders. Some one will 
 want to buy your sweet eyes. Isabella will 
 put them up to the biggest bidder. Do not 
 be bought at any price. Marry the man you 
 love, and, till he comes — and he will come in 
 all due time — turn a deaf ear to all that others 
 say, to all that others can offer. The worst 
 way of preparing for the journey of life, 
 believe me, is to link yourself to a companion 
 whom you are not certain of loving.' 
 
 ' I hope that I may never do that,' said 
 Olivia. ' Why should you think it likely. 
 Lady Heriot ? ' 
 
 * You will be tempted, Olivia ; I am posi- 
 tive of it. You have the art to charm, my 
 child, the dangerous, sometimes the fatal art.
 
 XII AN OLD LADY'S SERMON 173 
 
 You cannot help yourself. You will be 
 admired ; you will be flattered, and flattery is 
 a most intoxicating drink for young heads, 
 and indeed for old ones. You will be beset 
 by those who are thinking only — who can 
 think only — for themselves, who have much 
 to offer, who will bid high with money, influ- 
 ence, prestige, all the good things of life. 
 How is a poor young creature to know the 
 real worth of those who want her to embellish 
 their world, who want to buy her ? It must 
 be no question of buying, my dear. Some 
 good man will come and offer you his heart 
 and claim yours in return, and then you will 
 be a happy woman.' 
 
 Olivia got up and kissed Lady Heriot's 
 forehead. 
 
 * Forgive me for preaching you a sermon,' 
 Lady Heriot went on, ' I may not have an 
 opportunity of preaching you another. Young 
 people, whom I love, starting in their fragile 
 skiffs on a perilous sea, fill me with a sort of
 
 174 THE HERIOTS chap, xii 
 
 anxious terror. Shipwreck is so easy — your 
 precious freight so soon tossed overboard in 
 despair. And what that means to feeHng 
 souls ! ' 
 
 * The world seems a dangerous place,' said 
 Olivia. ' I like looking at it in safety from 
 your drawing-room windows or my father's 
 study. I am sure at any rate that I love him 
 and I love you. At present I am safe.' 
 
 But was she safe ? or was she carrying 
 with her to her quiet home the germ of that 
 which would one day stir her being to its 
 lowest depths, and shake the fair fabric of 
 her life's happiness with mortal shock ? 
 
 It was unfortunate that, next day, when 
 De Renzi called. Lady Heriot was not well 
 enough to be at home. Olivia felt it a sort 
 of blank to have missed his visit. It would, 
 she confessed to herself, be a great mortifica- 
 tion if the Fates had decreed that she should 
 leave London without seeing her brilliant 
 companion once again.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 A YOUNG man's SPORT 
 
 ' He understood the worth of womankind, 
 To furnish men, provisionally, sport — 
 Sport transitive ; — such earth's amusements are ; 
 But, seeing that amusements pall by use, 
 Variety therein is requisite ; 
 
 And, since the serious work of life were wronged, 
 Should we bestow importance on our play. 
 It follows, in such womankind-pursuit, 
 Cheating is lawful chase.' 
 
 The Fates, however, were not in the habit of 
 decreeing w^hat De Renzi did not Hke. Next 
 day there came a poHte note from him to 
 Lady Heriot, announcing that he had a box 
 at the opera, and would be highly honoured 
 if Miss Hillyard and Mrs. Valentine Heriot 
 would occupy it, and come, on their way 
 home, to a little supper at his house. The
 
 176 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 Backhouses were to be there, and Dr. Cru- 
 cible. Mrs. Valentine had already accepted. 
 It remained only for Lady Heriot and Olivia 
 to give their consent. For once Lady Heriot 
 looked, Olivia could perceive, disconcerted at 
 a proposal for her amusement. She was, in 
 truth, beginning to feel alarmed for her 
 protdgdes safety. She had preached her 
 sermon, but on what heedless ears do such 
 sermons fall ! A danger which Lady Heriot, 
 in proposing Olivia s visit, had never reckoned 
 as within the realm of possibility, was begin- 
 ning to shape itself with disagreeable distinct- 
 ness. It was the danger of De Renzi. The 
 chances were a million to one against De 
 Renzi and Olivia forming any but the most 
 superficial acquaintance. They were whole 
 hemispheres apart in tastes, habits, ways of 
 thought. They belonged to worlds as 
 different as though Olivia had dropped from 
 another planet. They might — they would, 
 if they met — amuse each other by complete
 
 XIII A YOUNG MAN'S SPORT 177 
 
 diversity of nature and circumstance, by force 
 of contrast, by the remoteness of each other's 
 ideas. And they might do so with safety. 
 Anything beyond amusement was inconceiv- 
 able. 
 
 So Lady Heriot, on prudent thoughts 
 intent, had ordained. So, according to every 
 rule of probability, events should have fallen 
 out. Nothing, however, where human beings 
 are concerned, is so likely as the improbable, 
 the inconceivable. De Renzi falsified every 
 calculation. His predilection for Olivia was 
 unmistakable. At Lady Heriot's dinner- 
 party he had devoted himself to amusing 
 her ; he had made his way to her for a tete-a- 
 tete in the drawing-room : he had avowedly 
 deserted the House for her sake, and, con- 
 trary to all his habits, had made his appear- 
 ance at a ball. Those flattering attentions 
 could not, of course, have been without their 
 effect on an impressible girl. Olivia, Lady 
 Heriot could see, was impressed ; how much, 
 
 VOL. I N
 
 178 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 how little, none could tell ; but more, it was 
 to be feared, than was desirable for her peace 
 of mind. Her reticence about De Renzi — 
 the guarded language in which she spoke 
 about him, when contrasted with the usual 
 frankness of her utterances — implied that 
 there was something that she cared not to 
 avow. The suspicion was alarming. Lady 
 Heriot reproached herself for having allowed 
 the opportunity of their acquaintance. But 
 how vain is such self-reproach, when the 
 mischief is, perhaps, already done ! 
 
 Nor was De Renzi the only danger. The 
 conviction had begun to be borne in on Lady 
 Heriot that Mrs. Valentine had designs upon 
 Olivia. Either she wanted to annex her for 
 her own purposes, or she was desirous of 
 turning De Renzi's partiality to serious 
 account. Either alternative was alarming. 
 To what risks, in such a woman's hands, was 
 not Olivia's happiness exposed ! 
 
 Thus De Renzi's invitation was anything
 
 XIII A YOUNG MAX'S SPORT 179 
 
 but welcome. None the less it could not 
 well be escaped. Mrs. Valentine had set 
 her heart upon it, and would not be foiled. 
 Lady Heriot was in the feeble condition to 
 which the prospect of a conflict of wills is 
 terrible. Besides, opposition would attract 
 attention, and only emphasise matters which 
 it was, above everything, desirable to leave 
 in obscurity. 
 
 Lady Heriot felt the situation to be full 
 of anxiety. It was a comfort to reflect that 
 the period of peril was nearly at its close. 
 In another week Olivia would be beyond 
 the reach both of De Renzi's and Mrs. 
 Valentine's dangerous influences — safe once 
 again in the quiet of her father's house. If 
 onlv she could read Olivia's thoughts and 
 assure herself that no harm had as yet been 
 effected ! 
 
 Meanwhile, how did matters stand with 
 Olivia ? How do matters stand with a young 
 girl when she first discovers that she wields
 
 i8o THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 a Spell which stronger natures than her own 
 obey — which makes her a force among her 
 fellow-mortals — when she knows that she is 
 no longer insignificant — when it dawns upon 
 her that some one admires her, delights in 
 her, finds in her something more charming 
 than in others ? 
 
 It was, Olivia felt, a disturbing revelation. 
 A new world had suddenly opened upon her, 
 full of exciting possibilities. She felt power- 
 less to resist De Renzi, but not powerless 
 to charm him. He had, again and again, 
 obliged her to recognise this soul -stirring 
 fact. Their talk at the ball, short as it had 
 been, was long enough for this. He was 
 there for her. And he was very impressive. 
 Never before had Olivia met any one so 
 brilliant, so audacious, so much the incarna- 
 tion of success. He seemed to go through 
 life In a sort of triumph, treading on roses 
 and dewy meads, on the prostrate forms of 
 fallen foes, with light, joyous, Indifferent
 
 XIII A YOUNG MAN'S SPORT i8i 
 
 Step. Some men are born to good fortune. 
 Some are born hewers of wood and drawers 
 of water — the useful, patient, unaspiring 
 toilers of existence. Nature, it may be 
 hoped, adapts them to their lot. A favoured 
 few are born to ride on the toilers' shoulders, 
 to coin pleasure, amusement, distinction out 
 of their obscure labours. De Renzi took it 
 for granted that he was one of these — fore- 
 most among the lucky ones. For him 
 riches, pleasure, delights of eye and ear and 
 taste, the rapture of gratified ambition, the 
 joy of successful achievement. This spoilt 
 child of fortune it was who was now owning 
 Olivia's spell, consulting her every wish, 
 devising pretexts to meet her, inviting her 
 to consider him at her disposal — the eager 
 ministrant to her enjoyment. The idea was 
 bewildering. Bewildering, too, was De 
 Renzi's little banquet. Olivia had never 
 seen luxury before — had never, certainly, 
 seen so many beautiful things as crowded
 
 i82 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 Upon her sight in De Renzi's drawing-room. 
 Old Lady Heriot would have been scandal- 
 ised at its profusion ; but De Renzi's pro- 
 fusion was at any rate judicious and refined. 
 The books, the pictures, the etchings, the 
 curiosities — if too abundant for some tastes 
 — were all of the rarest. Flowers, fresh and 
 exquisite, filled every available space. An 
 open piano proclaimed that music had here 
 some recent devotee. Mrs. Backhouse 
 flitted from one pretty object to another 
 with fresh exclamations of delight. 
 
 ' Sybarite ! ' she cried, as De Renzi 
 followed her about doing the honours of 
 the occasion and the place ; ' this then is how 
 a bachelor makes shift to live.' 
 
 ' Bachelors,' said De Renzi, ' can hardly 
 be said to live. They hope for life. To- 
 night, for a brief moment, my hopes are 
 realised.' 
 
 The party was a small one. Dr. Crucible 
 had been invited as a friend of Olivia, and
 
 XIII A YOUNG MAN'S SPORT 183 
 
 was now deep with Mr. Cosmo over a rare 
 copy of Boccaccio, one of the last of De 
 Renzi's acquisitions. ' You will like to know 
 Cosmo,' De Renzi had said to Olivia, 'one 
 of the greatest connoisseurs in Europe, and a 
 famous collector. We will make him show 
 us his cabinets some day. Meantime he is 
 a curiosity himself. Ah, there is supper ! 
 Come, Mrs. Heriot, let us lead the way.' 
 
 Cosmo came up and took charge of Olivia, 
 and placed her next their host. Mrs. Back- 
 house followed with Dr. Crucible. Her 
 husband, Valentine Heriot, and one or two 
 more men brought up the procession. 
 
 De Renzi was in the highest spirits, and 
 played his part of host with animation. ' I 
 hope that everybody is hungry,' he cried. 
 'The opera always makes me ravenous.' 
 
 ' For my part,' said Mrs. Backhouse, ' I 
 am far too overwrought to be hungry. I 
 don't think I shall go to Faust again ; it 
 distresses one. Marguerite haunts me. The
 
 i84 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 jewel scene is a sort of sermon against vanity, 
 and I am conscious of being disgracefully 
 vain. I believe I should sell my soul for a 
 pretty necklace if I had the chance.' 
 
 'Fortunately,' said De Renzi, * there is no 
 need for any such transaction. Backhouse 
 keeps you too well supplied. Your sapphires 
 to-night would justify any crime.' 
 
 'And how nice,' said Mrs. Backhouse, 'to 
 have them for nothing.' 
 
 ' For nothing ! ' cried her husband ; ' I like 
 that.' 
 
 * A husband's homage counts for nothing,' 
 said Cosmo. 
 
 * But what a i^echerchd supper ! ' cried 
 Mrs. Backhouse, studying the menu. ' Half 
 a dozen delectable curiosities of which I 
 never heard. It will enrich my imagination 
 and my cook's. I am devoted to fine cook- 
 ing. It is an art we women have to study. 
 Husbands must be fed. Mine is dreadfully 
 particular.'
 
 XIII A YOUNG MAN'S SPORT 185 
 
 'Of course,' said Cosmo. 'A woman's 
 sovereignty begins in the kitchen, and to be 
 complete it must be intelHgent. To govern 
 the man you must feed him scientifically.' 
 
 ' But it would never do to feed one's 
 husband with such suppers as this too often, 
 would it?' asked Mrs. Backhouse. 'Nor 
 do I like the idea of feeding men with a 
 purpose. It sounds as if they were a sort of 
 wild beasts.' 
 
 ' But what submissive ones ! ' said Cosmo. 
 ' Man is ahead of the other animals because 
 he got tamed the first — by woman. ' ' Beauty, " 
 we read in Pope, ''draws us by a single 
 hair." ' 
 
 ' It depends upon whose hair it is,' said 
 Mrs. Heriot, 'and which way it wants to 
 draw one. Some women are empresses 
 everywhere but in their own homes.' 
 
 ' But then some husbands are so unsympa- 
 thetic,' said Mrs. Backhouse with a sweet 
 smile, ' and so unimpressible ! One cannot
 
 i86 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 think how they persuaded their wives to 
 marry them.' 
 
 * I have read,' said Crucible, 'that women's 
 faculty for making incongruous marriages is 
 the corner-stone of civilisation. It preserves 
 the social equilibrium.' 
 
 * I suppose,' said Mrs. Backhouse, ' that it 
 is a law of nature ; isn't it ? But the laws of 
 nature are so often bad ones. This is one of 
 the worst, so far as women are concerned. 
 It involves so much suffering. Just think 
 what dull men girls marry ! ' 
 
 ' But woman does not mind dulness,' said 
 Cosmo, ' or any other form of martyrdom. 
 In the East she submits to be locked up in 
 a seraglio ; in the West she unflinchingly 
 obliterates herself in a bore.' 
 
 ' Not unflinchingly,' said Mrs. Valentine ; 
 ' we have to make the best of an inferior sex. 
 Bad is the best.' 
 
 ' It is a beautiful provision,' said Crucible, 
 ' to prevent society from becoming too bril-
 
 XIII A YOUNG MAN'S SPORT 187 
 
 liant. It is like the dark, defunct companion 
 star, which occasionally obscures the splendid 
 ones, like Sirius and Algol. They are the 
 brightest of known creations, but some cold 
 piece of opacity revolves about them, now 
 diminishing their brilliancy, now shutting 
 them off altogether from human ken. The 
 husband's function is to eclipse the effulgence 
 of the wife.' 
 
 ' The occultation of Venus ! * observed 
 Cosmo ; ' a curious phenomenon, with, no 
 doubt, some useful purpose, if we only knew it.' 
 
 ' How interesting ! ' cried Mrs. Backhouse. 
 ' How delightful it must be to be scientific, 
 like Dr. Crucible, and to explain human 
 nature by the heavenly bodies ! Do you 
 know that I never heard of Alofol and its 
 attendant star before. For the future, when 
 I am not shining in society, I shall know the 
 cause.' 
 
 'Nothing,' said Cosmo, 'could eclipse 
 Mrs. Backhouse, not even a husband.'
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 RETRO SATHANAS ! 
 
 ' The sun of youth 
 Has shone too straight upon his track, I know, 
 And fevered him with dreams of doing good 
 To good-for-nothing people.' 
 
 When Lady Eugenia received Valentine's 
 accommodating proposal it might have been 
 thought that her anxieties about Jack's future 
 were at an end. In the case of most women 
 this would have been so : but then most 
 women have not such a husband as Sir 
 Adrian or such a son as Jack to reckon with. 
 Sir Adrian had to be encountered first. 
 Lady Eugenia looked forward to the inter- 
 view with some flutterings of heart. He 
 would, she knew only too well, raise every
 
 CHAP. XIV RETRO SATHANAS ! 189 
 
 conceivable objection, and some objections 
 that were inconceivable. And so it proved. 
 Sir Adrian was much aggrieved at negotia- 
 tions having been opened with Valentine — 
 his offending brother — without his sanction. 
 
 ' But you never would have sanctioned 
 it, Adrian,' pleaded his wife, 'if you had 
 known.' 
 
 'That is just it,' said Sir Adrian; 'and 
 now Valentine will, of course, imagine that I 
 was too proud to ask a favour of him myself, 
 but not too proud to let you do it for me, 
 which is what I call mean. It is excessively 
 annoying.' 
 
 ' Please do not say that,' said his wife ; 
 * unless you want to hurt me. We have 
 quite troubles enough without your doing 
 that. You know that Valentine will imagine 
 nothing of the sort. He knows you too well. 
 At any rate you must admit that the result is 
 satisfactory.' 
 
 ' I am not so sure of that,' said Sir Adrian.
 
 I90 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 ' What do we know about this precious 
 brewery, and the men who are to be Jack's 
 partners ? No doubt they own a lot of 
 public-houses and gin-palaces. It is not the 
 sort of thing which I fancy for my son. It 
 will take a good deal to convince me that I 
 ought to consent, if I ever do. After all, my 
 consent is but half the battle, and the smaller 
 half. I have a shrewd suspicion of what 
 Jack will think about it. If he does not like 
 it, my views about it will not signify. I will 
 never urge him.' 
 
 ' I cannot conceive why he should object,' 
 said Lady Eugenia, ' and I cannot think that 
 he will.' 
 
 'Well,' said Sir Adrian, 'try him.' 
 Try him Lady Eugenia did, with results 
 that far more than confirmed her husband's 
 prognostications. Jack met his uncle's pro- 
 posal with an uncompromising opposition, 
 which his mother knew by long experience 
 that it was in vain to combat. Lady Eugenia
 
 XIV RETRO SATHANAS ! 191 
 
 in her desperation betrayed more temper than 
 Jack had ever seen in her before. She told 
 him what trouble she had taken, what a stoop 
 her pride had made, in order to secure him 
 this good start in life. She was full of dismal 
 apprehensions about their concerns, and espe- 
 cially about Jack's future. No doubt the 
 plan was in some ways a descent, but every- 
 body nowadays has to descend. 
 
 Then Jack, usually so dutiful and loving, 
 and the pink of courtesy, flew out in a 
 manner which his mother felt to be hardly 
 short of brutal. ' I do not care about Uncle 
 Val,' he said, ' or the people he consorts with. 
 They are a bad lot, mother ; I met a party of 
 them at his house when I was in London, 
 and was ashamed to see him, yes, and Aunt 
 Isabella too, making up to them, beaming 
 upon them, flattering them, actually flirting 
 with them ! Besides, no power upon earth 
 would ever induce me to have anything to do 
 with public-houses. I know too much about
 
 192 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 them. Go into partnership with a brewer ! 
 Go into partnership with the devil. Ask any 
 parson, any magistrate, any policeman, where 
 all the sin and misery of England are hatched 
 — the starving wives and children, the ruined 
 homes, the workhouses, the jails. It is the 
 publican's work, and the publican is the agent 
 of the brewer ! Parson, schoolmaster, and 
 philanthropist struggle in vain to help the 
 poor man while at every street corner there 
 is temptation flaunted in his face to lure him 
 to ruin. Come round the Shoreditch public- 
 houses with me on a Saturday night and 
 then ask me to earn a livelihood out of them 
 if you can ! ' 
 
 ' My dear Jack,' said his father, who came 
 into the room during this tirade and listened 
 to it with some secret satisfaction, ' what 
 would you have ? The Englishman must 
 have his liquor, must he not ? and liberty 
 to drink it ? The brewer cannot stop him 
 any more than you or I can — any more than
 
 XIV RETRO SATHANAS ! 193 
 
 I can Stop the farmers boozing at the " Heriot 
 Arms" in Huntsford.' 
 
 * The EngHshman and his Hberty ! ' cried 
 Jack ; ' the world is tired of them ! Liberty 
 means something else than the right of 
 knaves and ruffians to go to the bad which- 
 ever road they please, and take their luckless 
 wives and children with them ! Such people's 
 liberty is their greatest curse.' 
 
 ' You cannot force men into virtue,' said 
 Sir Adrian. 
 
 * No,' said Jack ; ' but one need not tempt 
 them into vice. One may help them to- 
 wards good. Many men are trying. I wish 
 to help them. At any rate I will not be 
 found in the enemy's camp. Why cant 
 about it ? A flourishing brewery with its 
 list of ''tied" public-houses (how many have 
 Rudge Brothers, I wonder ?) is the best con- 
 trived machine for the demoralisation of 
 society the world has ever seen.' 
 
 'Well,' said Lady Eugenia, who sat 
 VOL. I o
 
 194 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 trembling for the fate of her project, ' I 
 cannot see why, because bad people drink 
 too much beer, good people may not drink 
 it, and good people brew it. Some great 
 brewers have been eminent for goodness.' 
 
 ' Ah ! ' said Jack doggedly, ' but I have no 
 wish to share their eminence. I am content 
 with obscurity.' 
 
 ' You will have to be content with some- 
 thing worse than obscurity,' said his mother, 
 holding desperately to her position. ' How 
 in the world are you to live if you refuse such 
 an opening as this for a fantastic scruple ? 
 Surely what your uncle recommends and 
 your father approves cannot be too bad for 
 you to accept.' 
 
 ' I never said that I approved,' said Sir 
 Adrian. ' I said that Jack must do as he 
 thought right.' 
 
 Lady Eugenia's last hope expired. It 
 was cruel of her husband to turn against her. 
 One other bolt remained. She now fired it.
 
 XIV RETRO SATHANAS ! 195 
 
 ' How are you ever to marry if you will 
 not take your chances when they come ? 
 With this business of your uncle's you might 
 have married when you pleased.' 
 
 Then Jack, whose wrath had been gather- 
 ing, flew out in vehement outspokenness. 
 
 *You want to bribe me with Olivia, 
 mother. That comes of my confession to 
 you. I cannot change. I love her. I can 
 love no other but her. I will marry no one 
 if I cannot marry her. But I will not buy 
 the chance of that by an act which I should 
 loathe, which would make me despise myself 
 for ever. I have done all that my father 
 wished me. I have given up the woman I 
 love. We do not know how I am to live. 
 Well, I will take my chance : but live a life 
 of shame I will not. Uncle Val's public- 
 houses are declinied with thanks ! I am 
 right, am I not, father?' 
 
 ' I said that you must do as you thought 
 right,' said Sir Adrian ; ' and so you shall.
 
 196 THE HERIOTS chap, xiv 
 
 But remember, Jack, your promise to me 
 about Olivia is more necessary now than 
 ever.' 
 
 ' There is no need to remind me of that, 
 sir^' Jack said with some impatience; *I 
 remember it only too well.'
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 *A NEW MISTRESS NOW I CHASE ' 
 
 ' Every gate is thronged with suitors, all the markets 
 overflow : 
 I have but an angry fancy ; what is that which I 
 should do ? ' 
 
 Jack's rejection of the career suggested for 
 him by his uncle was but one step, and an 
 unsatisfactory one, towards solving the prob- 
 lem of what was to become of him. That 
 question — ignore it as the Huntsham party 
 might — recurred with disagreeable insistency. 
 He was now of age, and the first use he had 
 made of his majority had been to surrender 
 home, fortune, and the pleasant prospects of 
 a country gentleman's life. 
 
 His father had shown him the necessity :
 
 198 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 that, unhappily, required but little demonstra- 
 tion. It was impossible for Sir Adrian, with 
 an ever -diminishing income, to meet the 
 charges of a heavily encumbered estate. Sir 
 Adrian's efforts to improve matters had only 
 enhanced the impossibility. Jack was 
 generosity itself, and would not for a 
 moment, even in thought, have attributed 
 any part of their misfortunes to his father's 
 ill judgment. It was a natural topic of 
 consolation that he was falling with his 
 order. All country gentlemen were impover- 
 ished. Jack knew of some others besides 
 his father who were practically insolvent. 
 Poverty had become respectable. None the 
 less, it was extremely depressing to be con- 
 tinually contemplating it, discussing it, and 
 adjusting the comfortable routine of life to its 
 requirements. 
 
 Expenditure at Huntsham had been cut 
 down to starvation point. 
 
 The shooting had been let, and Jack
 
 XV 'A NEW MISTRESS NOW I CHASE' 199 
 
 actually could not stroll with his dog through 
 his own father's woods. The stables, where 
 Lady Eugenia's ponies and a single carriage- 
 horse were all that remained of the once 
 plentiful equipage, filled Jack's soul with the 
 blackest melancholy. Few things are to the 
 horse-lover more depressing than an unused 
 stable — silence and gloom where once all 
 was pleasant bustle ; the grass -grown yard, 
 the empty stalls where gallant steeds have 
 stood; the loose -box where the favourite 
 hunter has reposed in well-earned dignity 
 after the labours of the chase, or a pet pony 
 has awaited his morning treat of carrots and 
 lumps of sugar. There were many such 
 stalls now in the Huntsham stables, and 
 Jack, poor lad, had indulged in many a 
 day-dream of how, some day or other, 
 he would fill them worthily with steeds 
 who should carry him as a Heriot M.F.H. 
 ought, in the proper order of things, 
 to be carried. Vain dreams! Vain hopes,
 
 200 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 which the rude hand of reality had swept 
 away. 
 
 Jack shunned the scene of desolation. 
 
 Indoors the dingy process of retrenchment 
 was equally apparent. The long file of 
 serving men and women who used to come, 
 trooping, in imposing procession, into the 
 hall for morning prayers, had dwindled to a 
 little group — servants who were necessary to 
 Lady Eugenia's comfort, or who had grown 
 gray in Sir Adrian's service, and could not 
 now, without actual cruelty, be turned out 
 upon the world. Jack used to sit at prayers, 
 looking out on the acres which were passing 
 away from him — the lawn, each corner of it 
 with its own special association — the dear 
 old trees that he had played under as a child 
 — and groaned inwardly at the thought that 
 all was, so far as he was concerned, a vanish- 
 ing phantom. They were solid facts no 
 more ; they were a reminiscence, a regret. 
 ' Fuimus,' he would say bitterly to himself;
 
 XV 'A NEW MISTRESS NOW I CHASE' 201 
 
 'the Heriots have had their day. I am the 
 last of them.' 
 
 Meanwhile his father and mother were 
 feeling hopelessly perplexed. They agreed 
 that nothing could be worse for Jack than 
 dawdling about at home, nursing his fancies 
 and his mishaps, practising upon his violin, 
 writing small pieces of poetry, sketching in 
 the park, or paying visits at neighbouring 
 houses, where he was extremely popular. 
 The revelation of his real position had been 
 a great shock to him, no doubt, which might 
 well make action for the moment impossible. 
 But it was now necessary that Jack should 
 set to work. He himself was anxious to be 
 gone. His parents shared his anxiety, with 
 the super-added motive of wishing him to be 
 well away before Olivia returned to her 
 home, to give rise, perhaps, to some new 
 complication. It was easy enough to see 
 that Jack ought to go. The difficulty was 
 to settle the 'where' and the 'how.' Upon
 
 202 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 these points the family consultations threw 
 no ray of light. Jack took a humble view 
 of his capacities, and suggested a ranche in 
 Montana where one of his college friends 
 had been for a year or two horse-breaking 
 and cattle-driving. ' That is the only sort 
 of work I am fit for, father, and which I 
 could do decently well ; I should like it, I 
 fancy.' The prospect filled Lady Eugenia 
 with horror. She pictured to herself a 
 hideous vision of Jack as a cowboy, career- 
 ing about on a buck -jumping mustang, 
 swearing strange oaths and bearded like the 
 pard. Sir Adrian liked the project scarcely 
 better than did his wife. It was bad enough 
 for Huntsham to pass to other hands, for 
 their old life to be broken up, but Jack in 
 the wilds of West America, far from kith 
 and kin, living the rowdy life of a cattle- 
 ranche ! It did not. Sir Adrian admitted, 
 fall within the limits of the endurable. 
 
 Lady Eugenia settled the matter by im-
 
 XV 'A NEW MISTRESS NOW I CHASE' 203 
 
 ploring Jack, with tears in her eyes, not to 
 desert her. ' I have gone through a great 
 deal,' she said, 'but this would be more than 
 I could bear. Your father and I are old 
 people. Do not darken the few years that 
 remain to us by leaving us alone. Jack, 
 dear, I beg and pray you not to leave me.' 
 
 Jack kissed his mother, and swore that he 
 never would, and told his father that evening 
 that the Montana project might be considered 
 as abandoned. The next day he came down 
 to breakfast with a new suggestion. He 
 would go to London and study art. He 
 knew an artist, Brandon, an old college 
 friend, who was doing capitally, and would 
 let him share his studio. ' I have a taste for 
 water-colours, as you have often said, mother ; 
 I could learn to paint as well as some of the 
 fellows who exhibit. Why should I not ? At 
 all events, it could do no harm to try. I have 
 given up Montana to please you, mother ; 
 now you must back up this plan to please me.'
 
 204 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 Lady Eugenia found it difficult to meet 
 this argument ; and, indeed, on several 
 accounts the project pleased her. It com- 
 mitted them to nothing ; it put an end to 
 all schemes which involved Jack's expatria- 
 tion ; it involved no outlay of capital ; it 
 would give Jack the sort of life he liked, 
 and an honourable occupation. All hesita- 
 tion, however, was brought to a speedy 
 close by a letter which arrived from Mr. 
 Hillyard, announcing that Olivia had actually 
 arrived at the Rectory. 
 
 Jack was agreeably surprised at the 
 alacrity with which his father embraced his 
 latest scheme. Before the week was over 
 he was established in Brandon's quarters 
 in Chelsea, had enrolled himself in an art 
 class, purchased a magnificent supply of 
 artist's paraphernalia, and, under his friend's 
 superintendence, had set to work with real 
 enthusiasm at the first stage of his new 
 profession.
 
 XV 'A NEW MISTRESS NOW I CHASE' 205 
 
 His presence in London was highly un- 
 welcome to the Valentines. His uncle had 
 been thoroughly annoyed by the summary 
 rejection of his offer. A general feeling of 
 contempt had ripened into active dislike. 
 Valentine had made up his mind that Jack 
 was a fool — quixotic, romantic, erratic, 
 faddish — everything that a reasonable being, 
 who means to get on in the world, ought 
 not to be. He let Jack at once understand 
 the low valuation which he put upon him 
 and his opinions. Jack saw that his uncle 
 was intending to belittle him, and at once 
 stood to his arms. Valentine dropped a 
 sneer at Sir Adrian which called the colour 
 to Jack's cheeks and set his pulse throbbing. 
 His rejoinder was more explicit than polite. 
 Jack being in a quarrelsome mood, his 
 uncle was by no means disinclined to 
 quarrel. Isabella added the necessary drop 
 of acid. The two men parted coldly, and 
 with no invitation, as Jack had expected,
 
 2o6 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 to exercise the privileges of a kinsman in 
 coming when he pleased to see them. 
 
 Mrs. Valentine had, just now, a special 
 reason for disliking him. He was in her 
 way ; he might prove a formidable obstacle. 
 If he established a footing at his grand- 
 mother's he would be likely to spoil every- 
 thing. It was essential, Isabella Heriot felt, 
 that no other influence than her own should 
 be brought to bear, just now, on the invalid's 
 mind. It was essential that there should 
 be no independent observer, no independent 
 reporter of what was going on. Sir Adrian 
 had no idea of his mother's condition. It 
 was necessary to keep Jack also in the 
 dark, to keep him from Lady Heriot, who 
 had doted on him as a child, as she had 
 doted on his father before him, who, how- 
 ever angry she might at times feel with 
 Sir Adrian, was always hankering after him 
 and longing for reconciliation, — who might 
 easily be reconciled, and so spoil all Mrs.
 
 XV 'A NEW MISTRESS NOW I CHASE' 207 
 
 Valentine's designs. It had become neces- 
 sary to prejudice Lady Heriot against her 
 grandson ; nor had this been difficult to 
 achieve. For Lady Heriot had heard much 
 about Jack of which she vehemently dis- 
 approved. It was easy to turn this prejudice 
 to good account. 
 
 Before he had been many weeks in 
 London Jack had managed so to play his 
 game as to lead up to his adversary's 
 strongest card. He had speedily renewed 
 his intercourse with the Shoreditch parson, 
 who was only too grateful for an enthusiastic 
 co-operator. Jack brought new fire, new 
 zeal, new hope to his companion's projects 
 of reformation. Day after day he was 
 horrified by discoveries of misery — hope- 
 less toil, destitute homes, abysmal depths 
 of depravity — the hell upon earth which is 
 realised in the low life of great cities. He 
 was horrified, perturbed, and excited more 
 than he was aware. He made friends with
 
 2o8 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 many men as excited as himself. He 
 attended meetings where everything helped 
 to foster excitement, where passion was in the 
 air, where inflammatory speeches — instinct 
 with anger, impatience, jealousy, revenge — 
 stirred a sympathetic audience almost past 
 quiet endurance ; where the view of the 
 rich as the oppressors of the poor, as 
 thoughtless unpitying monopolists of all the 
 good things of life, was assumed, as a matter 
 of course, by speakers and hearers alike. 
 He heard passionate men declaiming against 
 wrongs inflicted by the powerful on the 
 weak — laws passed by the wealthy to 
 enhance their unjust privileges — order, the 
 mere systematising of oppression — religion, 
 no longer the refuge of the wretched, but 
 the bulwark of inhuman inequalities of lot. 
 He lived among men who were profoundly 
 convinced that a society, contrived in the 
 interests of the privileged few, must be 
 shaken to its very foundations before the
 
 XV 'A NEW MISTRESS NOW I CHASE' 209 
 
 poor could enjoy their natural rights. He 
 began to share their beliefs and their as- 
 pirations. 
 
 Then came a period of distress. Trade 
 was slack ; several great industries were 
 paralysed ; large numbers were out of work. 
 There were gatherings of hungry men, stung 
 by cruel scenes of misery at home. Jack 
 was in the midst, as excited as any one. 
 He found himself surrounded by numbers 
 of poor people whose inarticulate misery 
 craved bitterly for expression. None of 
 his relations sympathised in the least with 
 him, or could understand his feelings. He 
 thought of his quiet comfortable home, 
 where the distant murmur of the City mob 
 sounded so faintly ; of his father's calm 
 explanations; of Hillyard's apologies; his 
 mother's narrow sympathies, foolish fears, 
 and equally foolish courage ; of his uncle's 
 keen, hard selfishness, always ready to turn 
 each new circumstance to his own profit ; of 
 
 VOL. I p
 
 2IO THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 Isabella Heriot, luxurious, pleasure -seeking, 
 profuse in personal expenditure, niggardly in 
 all other. 
 
 He thought of them bitterly, contemptu- 
 ously. Were these the people who con- 
 stituted society ? and if so, was society 
 worth the trouble of preserving it ? Then, 
 as bad luck would have it, there was a 
 collision with authority. Jack one day found 
 himself in the midst of a great open-air 
 meeting, which the law forbade. The law 
 forbid it ! The law forbid starving men — 
 with wives and children starving at home 
 — if indeed their dens could be called a 
 home — to meet and tell their tale of woe, 
 hopelessness, unrequited toil, bootless search 
 for work ! The law maintain order, so that 
 the rich might go on in cynical enjoyment 
 of their luxuries, while the masses, driven 
 back by main force, toiled, suffered, perished 
 without a helper, without even an utterance 
 of despair ! There was a scuffle close to
 
 XV 'A NEW MISTRESS NOW I CHASE' 211 
 
 where Jack was standing, a sudden rush 
 of poHcemen who were pushing their way 
 through the mob and using fists and 
 truncheons freely. The people were shov- 
 ing, pushing, kicking, shouting. ' Move 
 on ! move on ! ' The truncheons seemed 
 descending everywhere on the shoulders 
 and heads of defenceless people. ' Move 
 on be damned ! ' cried a tatterdemalion lad 
 who stood at Jack's side, the very embodi- 
 ment of misery. Crash came a truncheon, 
 the boy was lying at Jack's feet in a pool 
 of blood. ' You ruffian,' cried Jack, beside 
 himself with fury, ' don't touch that boy 
 again.' 
 
 'Stand off!' cried the policeman, but 
 Jack was in no temper to stand off, and 
 stood defiant over the prostrate victim of 
 the law. Then some one struck the police- 
 man ; a free fight began. Jack unluckily 
 knew how to use his fists, and fought like 
 a young Trojan. ' Stand back ! ' the police-
 
 212 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 man cried, pushing Jack roughly back. 
 Then Jack's stalwart arm flashed out, and 
 the mob shouted with triumph to see the 
 vindicator of order knocked head over heels 
 and rolling in the dirt. Short-lived triumph, 
 alas ! for the prostrate warrior was soon on 
 his legs again. Other policemen were clos- 
 ing in. Jack suddenly felt a crushing blow, 
 given by an unseen hand, which brought 
 him to his knees, sick, giddy, almost stunned. 
 Before he could collect his senses he found 
 himself powerless, with his arms fastened 
 behind him, in the firm grip of two sturdy 
 constables, who w^ere marching him through 
 the frightened, surly crowd to the nearest 
 Station, where he was left for the rest of 
 the day to reflect at leisure on the results 
 of his first active attempt to assist the 
 democracy. 
 
 The next morning, with a black eye, 
 torn clothes, and broken head, Jack appeared 
 among a grimy crowd of fellow -offenders.
 
 XV 'A NEW MISTRESS NOW I CHASE' 213 
 
 and received the righteous reward of his 
 indiscreet valour in an award of a week's 
 imprisonment, accompanied by several caustic 
 observations from the presiding magistrate 
 as to the foolish criminality of young gentle- 
 men who amuse themselves by attending mob- 
 meetings and assist in resisting the police. 
 
 Mrs. Heriot, when she came down to 
 breakfast next morning, found her husband 
 in no pleasant mood, reading the Times, with 
 many fervent exclamations of anger and 
 disgust. He handed the paper to her with 
 sundry half-smothered utterances, more fer- 
 vent than polite, and strode about the room 
 in a fury. 
 
 ' The young idiot might have had the 
 decency to conceal his name, and not disgrace 
 us all by his blackguardism and folly. It is 
 intolerable.' 
 
 ' It is admirable,' cried Mrs. Heriot as 
 she finished the perusal and proceeded to 
 make tea. ' I am delighted ! '
 
 214 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 ' Delighted ? ' cried her husband. ' And 
 why, pray ? ' 
 
 ' Why ? ' said his wife ; ' because I Hke to 
 see ragamuffins and ragamuffins' champions 
 in their proper place.' 
 
 This, however, was not the real cause of 
 Mrs. Valentine's delight. Immediately after 
 breakfast she hurried off to Lady Heriot's 
 with the agreeable intelligence that her 
 grandson was in jail. 
 
 Mrs. Valentine, in her eagerness to tell 
 her tale, forgot for the moment the necessity, 
 urged so strongly by Mr. Battiscombe, the 
 doctor, of keeping the invalid from sudden 
 shock. She forgot to watch the effect of 
 her communication on its recipient. Lady 
 Heriot, however, showed no outward symp- 
 tom of excitement. As Isabella's descrip- 
 tion drew to a close she sat quietly look- 
 ing at her with a puzzled inquiring look, 
 as if no clear impression had reached the 
 brain. She closed her eyes and sank back
 
 XV 'A NEW MISTRESS NOW I CHASE' 215 
 
 with a gesture of weariness. The rumours 
 of Hfe were beginning to sound faintly in her 
 ear, Hke the dull murmur of waves upon a 
 distant shore. The clouds were gathering 
 around ; all was confusion in her mind. She 
 heard the story indeed, but heard as in a dream, 
 where nothing is consequential. She was 
 too feeble to be indignant, to understand the 
 grounds of indignation. Mrs. Valentine saw 
 quickly that her mother-in-law was not her- 
 self. How much of the story had she under- 
 stood ? How much was it possible to make 
 her understand ? Had the opportunity for 
 which Isabella had been so long watching, 
 preparing, already passed away ? 
 
 When Lady Heriot at last spoke it was 
 clear that her brain was no longer duly 
 performing its task. She had understood 
 nothing aright. In particular she was, as 
 Isabella found, mixing up Jack's present 
 trouble with his father's previous misad- 
 venture.
 
 2i6 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 ' In jail,' she said ; ' Adrian in jail ! I was 
 afraid that it would be so, that it would come 
 to this. It was in vain to help him. I did 
 what I could — more than I ought. It was 
 in vain, in vain ! And now he is in jail ! 
 I am tired, tired ! Isabella, are you 
 there ? ' 
 
 'Mother,' said the other, 'you are over- 
 done ; keep quiet awhile and rest yourself. 
 There is nothing to worry about. It is not 
 Adrian who is in trouble, but his boy, Jack ; 
 it is only a boy's scrape.' 
 
 ' Where is Adrian ? ' cried Lady Heriot. 
 ' Why does he not come to see me ? Why 
 does he not write ? He always used to 
 write to me on Sundays. He knows how ill 
 I am. I am dying, Isabella ; dying fast. I 
 want to see him again — to see him again, my 
 poor boy Adrian. You wrote, Isabella, did 
 you not ? ' 
 
 'Of course,' said Mrs. Valentine. 'I 
 wrote the day you told me to do so.'
 
 XV 'A NEW MISTRESS NOW I CHASE' 217 
 
 ' Well,' said the other, ' write again and 
 tell him that I am grieved. He does not 
 write or come to me because he is ashamed. 
 I am ashamed too ; but tell him to come. 
 I want him badly. I must see him again.' 
 
 It was true that Mrs. Valentine had 
 written, as she said. None the less, her 
 answer to her mother was a lie. Her letter 
 to Sir Adrian had been carefully framed so 
 as to avoid giving him any intimation of his 
 mother's state or of her wish to see him. 
 On the contrary, it contained various hints 
 which Sir Adrian felt to be excessively offen- 
 sive. It was written from his mother's room ; 
 it professed to be by her inspiration ; but it 
 sounded no note of tenderness, affection — the 
 mother's natural yearnings for her first-born. 
 It dealt with some business matters — drily, 
 harshly, even, as it seemed to Sir Adrian's 
 sensitive nerves, discourteously. It suggested 
 no overtures of peace ; rather, it breathed a 
 subtle undertone of hostility. Mrs. Valen-
 
 2i8 THE HERIOTS chap. 
 
 tine's conscience, which was never encouraged 
 to morbid delicacy or inconvenient outspoken- 
 ness, had stung her as she wrote. It was 
 necessary, however, at any cost, to keep Sir 
 Adrian away. It was essential to Mrs. 
 Valentine's project. As, moreover, a visit 
 from Sir Adrian just now might really do his 
 mother harm, it was but carrying out the 
 doctor's orders to guard effectually against 
 his coming. 
 
 One base act involves another. Lady 
 Heriot's messages to her son being falsified, 
 it was necessary that his letters to her should 
 be suppressed, and that the suppression 
 should be covered by a direct falsehood. 
 Such falsehoods are often told to invalids, 
 whom it is necessary, for their own sakes, 
 to mislead. If justified on this ground, the 
 fact that they are, on other grounds, expedi- 
 ent, cannot render them unjustifiable. So 
 whispered the impish spirit that sat just now, 
 toad-like, whispering evil counsels into Mrs.
 
 XV 'A NEW MISTRESS NOW I CHASE' 219 
 
 Valentine's too attentive ear, and suffusing 
 her soul with ever - blackening shades of 
 turpitude. Wrongdoing is like some moun- 
 tain's icy glissade ; he who is rash enough to 
 venture on it may have to travel farther than 
 he likes. Mrs. Valentine was on the slope ; 
 achievement by whatever means was indis- 
 pensable. She now took the precaution of 
 giving orders that, should Sir Adrian or his 
 son happen to call, neither of them was, on 
 any account, to be admitted. Nothing was 
 to be said of Lady Heriot's condition except 
 that she had given orders not to be disturbed. 
 
 END OF VOL. I 
 
 Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinbitrgh.
 
 rz.