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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Beyond the City, by Arthur Conan Doyle
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Beyond the City
+
+Author: Arthur Conan Doyle
+
+Release Date: July 1, 2008 [EBook #356]
+[Last updated: February 28, 2014]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEYOND THE CITY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Michael Hart and Trevor Carlson
+
+
+
+
+
+BEYOND THE CITY
+
+By Arthur Conan Doyle
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. THE NEW-COMERS.
+
+
+"If you please, mum," said the voice of a domestic from somewhere round
+the angle of the door, "number three is moving in."
+
+Two little old ladies, who were sitting at either side of a table,
+sprang to their feet with ejaculations of interest, and rushed to the
+window of the sitting-room.
+
+"Take care, Monica dear," said one, shrouding herself in the lace
+curtain; "don't let them see us.
+
+"No, no, Bertha. We must not give them reason to say that their
+neighbors are inquisitive. But I think that we are safe if we stand like
+this."
+
+The open window looked out upon a sloping lawn, well trimmed and
+pleasant, with fuzzy rosebushes and a star-shaped bed of sweet-william.
+It was bounded by a low wooden fence, which screened it off from a
+broad, modern, new metaled road. At the other side of this road were
+three large detached deep-bodied villas with peaky eaves and small
+wooden balconies, each standing in its own little square of grass and
+of flowers. All three were equally new, but numbers one and two were
+curtained and sedate, with a human, sociable look to them; while number
+three, with yawning door and unkempt garden, had apparently only just
+received its furniture and made itself ready for its occupants. A
+four-wheeler had driven up to the gate, and it was at this that the old
+ladies, peeping out bird-like from behind their curtains, directed an
+eager and questioning gaze.
+
+The cabman had descended, and the passengers within were handing out
+the articles which they desired him to carry up to the house. He stood
+red-faced and blinking, with his crooked arms outstretched, while a male
+hand, protruding from the window, kept piling up upon him a series
+of articles the sight of which filled the curious old ladies with
+bewilderment.
+
+"My goodness me!" cried Monica, the smaller, the drier, and the more
+wizened of the pair. "What do you call that, Bertha? It looks to me like
+four batter puddings."
+
+"Those are what young men box each other with," said Bertha, with a
+conscious air of superior worldly knowledge.
+
+"And those?"
+
+Two great bottle-shaped pieces of yellow shining wood had been heaped
+upon the cabman.
+
+"Oh, I don't know what those are," confessed Bertha. Indian clubs had
+never before obtruded themselves upon her peaceful and very feminine
+existence.
+
+These mysterious articles were followed, however, by others which were
+more within their range of comprehension--by a pair of dumb-bells, a
+purple cricket-bag, a set of golf clubs, and a tennis racket. Finally,
+when the cabman, all top-heavy and bristling, had staggered off up the
+garden path, there emerged in a very leisurely way from the cab a big,
+powerfully built young man, with a bull pup under one arm and a pink
+sporting paper in his hand. The paper he crammed into the pocket of his
+light yellow dust-coat, and extended his hand as if to assist some one
+else from the vehicle. To the surprise of the two old ladies, however,
+the only thing which his open palm received was a violent slap, and
+a tall lady bounded unassisted out of the cab. With a regal wave she
+motioned the young man towards the door, and then with one hand upon her
+hip she stood in a careless, lounging attitude by the gate, kicking her
+toe against the wall and listlessly awaiting the return of the driver.
+
+As she turned slowly round, and the sunshine struck upon her face, the
+two watchers were amazed to see that this very active and energetic lady
+was far from being in her first youth, so far that she had certainly
+come of age again since she first passed that landmark in life's
+journey. Her finely chiseled, clean-cut face, with something red Indian
+about the firm mouth and strongly marked cheek bones, showed even at
+that distance traces of the friction of the passing years. And yet she
+was very handsome. Her features were as firm in repose as those of a
+Greek bust, and her great dark eyes were arched over by two brows so
+black, so thick, and so delicately curved, that the eye turned away from
+the harsher details of the face to marvel at their grace and strength.
+Her figure, too, was straight as a dart, a little portly, perhaps, but
+curving into magnificent outlines, which were half accentuated by the
+strange costume which she wore. Her hair, black but plentifully shot
+with grey, was brushed plainly back from her high forehead, and was
+gathered under a small round felt hat, like that of a man, with
+one sprig of feather in the band as a concession to her sex. A
+double-breasted jacket of some dark frieze-like material fitted closely
+to her figure, while her straight blue skirt, untrimmed and ungathered,
+was cut so short that the lower curve of her finely-turned legs was
+plainly visible beneath it, terminating in a pair of broad, flat,
+low-heeled and square-toed shoes. Such was the lady who lounged at
+the gate of number three, under the curious eyes of her two opposite
+neighbors.
+
+But if her conduct and appearance had already somewhat jarred upon their
+limited and precise sense of the fitness of things, what were they to
+think of the next little act in this tableau vivant? The cabman, red and
+heavy-jowled, had come back from his labors, and held out his hand for
+his fare. The lady passed him a coin, there was a moment of mumbling
+and gesticulating, and suddenly she had him with both hands by the red
+cravat which girt his neck, and was shaking him as a terrier would
+a rat. Right across the pavement she thrust him, and, pushing him up
+against the wheel, she banged his head three several times against the
+side of his own vehicle.
+
+"Can I be of any use to you, aunt?" asked the large youth, framing
+himself in the open doorway.
+
+"Not the slightest," panted the enraged lady. "There, you low
+blackguard, that will teach you to be impertinent to a lady."
+
+The cabman looked helplessly about him with a bewildered, questioning
+gaze, as one to whom alone of all men this unheard-of and extraordinary
+thing had happened. Then, rubbing his head, he mounted slowly on to the
+box and drove away with an uptossed hand appealing to the universe. The
+lady smoothed down her dress, pushed back her hair under her little felt
+hat, and strode in through the hall-door, which was closed behind her.
+As with a whisk her short skirts vanished into the darkness, the two
+spectators--Miss Bertha and Miss Monica Williams--sat looking at each
+other in speechless amazement. For fifty years they had peeped through
+that little window and across that trim garden, but never yet had such a
+sight as this come to confound them.
+
+"I wish," said Monica at last, "that we had kept the field."
+
+"I am sure I wish we had," answered her sister.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. BREAKING THE ICE.
+
+
+The cottage from the window of which the Misses Williams had looked
+out stands, and has stood for many a year, in that pleasant suburban
+district which lies between Norwood, Anerley, and Forest Hill. Long
+before there had been a thought of a township there, when the Metropolis
+was still quite a distant thing, old Mr. Williams had inhabited "The
+Brambles," as the little house was called, and had owned all the
+fields about it. Six or eight such cottages scattered over a rolling
+country-side were all the houses to be found there in the days when the
+century was young. From afar, when the breeze came from the north, the
+dull, low roar of the great city might be heard, like the breaking of
+the tide of life, while along the horizon might be seen the dim curtain
+of smoke, the grim spray which that tide threw up. Gradually, however,
+as the years passed, the City had thrown out a long brick-feeler here
+and there, curving, extending, and coalescing, until at last the little
+cottages had been gripped round by these red tentacles, and had been
+absorbed to make room for the modern villa. Field by field the estate of
+old Mr. Williams had been sold to the speculative builder, and had borne
+rich crops of snug suburban dwellings, arranged in curving crescents and
+tree-lined avenues. The father had passed away before his cottage was
+entirely bricked round, but his two daughters, to whom the property had
+descended, lived to see the last vestige of country taken from them. For
+years they had clung to the one field which faced their windows, and it
+was only after much argument and many heartburnings, that they had at
+last consented that it should share the fate of the others. A broad road
+was driven through their quiet domain, the quarter was re-named "The
+Wilderness," and three square, staring, uncompromising villas began to
+sprout up on the other side. With sore hearts, the two shy little old
+maids watched their steady progress, and speculated as to what fashion
+of neighbors chance would bring into the little nook which had always
+been their own.
+
+And at last they were all three finished. Wooden balconies and
+overhanging eaves had been added to them, so that, in the language of
+the advertisement, there were vacant three eligible Swiss-built villas,
+with sixteen rooms, no basement, electric bells, hot and cold water, and
+every modern convenience, including a common tennis lawn, to be let
+at L100 a year, or L1,500 purchase. So tempting an offer did not long
+remain open. Within a few weeks the card had vanished from number one,
+and it was known that Admiral Hay Denver, V. C., C. B., with Mrs. Hay
+Denver and their only son, were about to move into it. The news brought
+peace to the hearts of the Williams sisters. They had lived with a
+settled conviction that some wild impossible colony, some shouting,
+singing family of madcaps, would break in upon their peace. This
+establishment at least was irreproachable. A reference to "Men of the
+Time" showed them that Admiral Hay Denver was a most distinguished
+officer, who had begun his active career at Bomarsund, and had ended it
+at Alexandria, having managed between these two episodes to see as much
+service as any man of his years. From the Taku Forts and the _Shannon_
+brigade, to dhow-harrying off Zanzibar, there was no variety of naval
+work which did not appear in his record; while the Victoria Cross, and
+the Albert Medal for saving life, vouched for it that in peace as in war
+his courage was still of the same true temper. Clearly a very eligible
+neighbor this, the more so as they had been confidentially assured by
+the estate agent that Mr. Harold Denver, the son, was a most quiet
+young gentleman, and that he was busy from morning to night on the Stock
+Exchange.
+
+The Hay Denvers had hardly moved in before number two also struck
+its placard, and again the ladies found that they had no reason to be
+discontented with their neighbors. Doctor Balthazar Walker was a very
+well-known name in the medical world. Did not his qualifications, his
+membership, and the record of his writings fill a long half-column
+in the "Medical Directory," from his first little paper on the "Gouty
+Diathesis" in 1859 to his exhaustive treatise upon "Affections of the
+Vaso-Motor System" in 1884? A successful medical career which promised
+to end in a presidentship of a college and a baronetcy, had been cut
+short by his sudden inheritance of a considerable sum from a grateful
+patient, which had rendered him independent for life, and had enabled
+him to turn his attention to the more scientific part of his profession,
+which had always had a greater charm for him than its more practical
+and commercial aspect. To this end he had given up his house in Weymouth
+Street, and had taken this opportunity of moving himself, his scientific
+instruments, and his two charming daughters (he had been a widower for
+some years) into the more peaceful atmosphere of Norwood.
+
+There was thus but one villa unoccupied, and it was no wonder that the
+two maiden ladies watched with a keen interest, which deepened into a
+dire apprehension, the curious incidents which heralded the coming of
+the new tenants. They had already learned from the agent that the family
+consisted of two only, Mrs. Westmacott, a widow, and her nephew, Charles
+Westmacott. How simple and how select it had sounded! Who could have
+foreseen from it these fearful portents which seemed to threaten
+violence and discord among the dwellers in The Wilderness? Again the two
+old maids cried in heartfelt chorus that they wished they had not sold
+their field.
+
+"Well, at least, Monica," remarked Bertha, as they sat over their
+teacups that afternoon, "however strange these people may be, it is our
+duty to be as polite to them as to the others."
+
+"Most certainly," acquiesced her sister.
+
+"Since we have called upon Mrs. Hay Denver and upon the Misses Walker,
+we must call upon this Mrs. Westmacott also."
+
+"Certainly, dear. As long as they are living upon our land I feel as
+if they were in a sense our guests, and that it is our duty to welcome
+them."
+
+"Then we shall call to-morrow," said Bertha, with decision.
+
+"Yes, dear, we shall. But, oh, I wish it was over!"
+
+At four o'clock on the next day, the two maiden ladies set off upon
+their hospitable errand. In their stiff, crackling dresses of black
+silk, with jet-bespangled jackets, and little rows of cylindrical grey
+curls drooping down on either side of their black bonnets, they looked
+like two old fashion plates which had wandered off into the wrong
+decade. Half curious and half fearful, they knocked at the door of
+number three, which was instantly opened by a red-headed page-boy.
+
+Yes, Mrs. Westmacott was at home. He ushered them into the front room,
+furnished as a drawing-room, where in spite of the fine spring weather a
+large fire was burning in the grate. The boy took their cards, and then,
+as they sat down together upon a settee, he set their nerves in a thrill
+by darting behind a curtain with a shrill cry, and prodding at something
+with his foot. The bull pup which they had seen upon the day before
+bolted from its hiding-place, and scuttled snarling from the room.
+
+"It wants to get at Eliza," said the youth, in a confidential whisper.
+"Master says she would give him more'n he brought." He smiled affably
+at the two little stiff black figures, and departed in search of his
+mistress.
+
+"What--what did he say?" gasped Bertha.
+
+"Something about a---- Oh, goodness gracious! Oh, help, help, help,
+help, help!" The two sisters had bounded on to the settee, and stood
+there with staring eyes and skirts gathered in, while they filled the
+whole house with their yells. Out of a high wicker-work basket which
+stood by the fire there had risen a flat diamond-shaped head with wicked
+green eyes which came flickering upwards, waving gently from side to
+side, until a foot or more of glossy scaly neck was visible. Slowly the
+vicious head came floating up, while at every oscillation a fresh burst
+of shrieks came from the settee.
+
+
+"What in the name of mischief!" cried a voice, and there was the
+mistress of the house standing in the doorway. Her gaze at first had
+merely taken in the fact that two strangers were standing screaming upon
+her red plush sofa. A glance at the fireplace, however, showed her the
+cause of the terror, and she burst into a hearty fit of laughter.
+
+"Charley," she shouted, "here's Eliza misbehaving again."
+
+"I'll settle her," answered a masculine voice, and the young man dashed
+into the room. He had a brown horse-cloth in his hand, which he
+threw over the basket, making it fast with a piece of twine so as to
+effectually imprison its inmate, while his aunt ran across to reassure
+her visitors.
+
+"It is only a rock snake," she explained.
+
+"Oh, Bertha!" "Oh, Monica!" gasped the poor exhausted gentlewomen.
+
+"She's hatching out some eggs. That is why we have the fire. Eliza
+always does better when she is warm. She is a sweet, gentle creature,
+but no doubt she thought that you had designs upon her eggs. I suppose
+that you did not touch any of them?"
+
+"Oh, let us get away, Bertha!" cried Monica, with her thin, black-gloved
+hands thrown forwards in abhorrence.
+
+"Not away, but into the next room," said Mrs. Westmacott, with the air
+of one whose word was law. "This way, if you please! It is less warm
+here." She led the way into a very handsomely appointed library, with
+three great cases of books, and upon the fourth side a long yellow table
+littered over with papers and scientific instruments. "Sit here, and
+you, there," she continued. "That is right. Now let me see, which of you
+is Miss Williams, and which Miss Bertha Williams?"
+
+"I am Miss Williams," said Monica, still palpitating, and glancing
+furtively about in dread of some new horror.
+
+"And you live, as I understand, over at the pretty little cottage. It is
+very nice of you to call so early. I don't suppose that we shall get
+on, but still the intention is equally good." She crossed her legs and
+leaned her back against the marble mantelpiece.
+
+"We thought that perhaps we might be of some assistance," said Bertha,
+timidly. "If there is anything which we could do to make you feel more
+at home----"
+
+"Oh, thank you, I am too old a traveler to feel anything but at home
+wherever I go. I've just come back from a few months in the Marquesas
+Islands, where I had a very pleasant visit. That was where I got Eliza.
+In many respects the Marquesas Islands now lead the world."
+
+"Dear me!" ejaculated Miss Williams. "In what respect?"
+
+"In the relation of the sexes. They have worked out the great problem
+upon their own lines, and their isolated geographical position has
+helped them to come to a conclusion of their own. The woman there is,
+as she should be, in every way the absolute equal of the male. Come in,
+Charles, and sit down. Is Eliza all right?"
+
+"All right, aunt."
+
+"These are our neighbors, the Misses Williams. Perhaps they will have
+some stout. You might bring in a couple of bottles, Charles."
+
+"No, no, thank you! None for us!" cried her two visitors, earnestly.
+
+"No? I am sorry that I have no tea to offer you. I look upon the
+subserviency of woman as largely due to her abandoning nutritious drinks
+and invigorating exercises to the male. I do neither." She picked up
+a pair of fifteen-pound dumb-bells from beside the fireplace and swung
+them lightly about her head. "You see what may be done on stout," said
+she.
+
+"But don't you think," the elder Miss Williams suggested timidly, "don't
+you think, Mrs. Westmascott, that woman has a mission of her own?"
+
+The lady of the house dropped her dumb-bells with a crash upon the
+floor.
+
+"The old cant!" she cried. "The old shibboleth! What is this mission
+which is reserved for woman? All that is humble, that is mean, that is
+soul-killing, that is so contemptible and so ill-paid that none other
+will touch it. All that is woman's mission. And who imposed these
+limitations upon her? Who cooped her up within this narrow sphere? Was
+it Providence? Was it nature? No, it was the arch enemy. It was man."
+
+"Oh, I say, auntie!" drawled her nephew.
+
+"It was man, Charles. It was you and your fellows. I say that woman is
+a colossal monument to the selfishness of man. What is all this boasted
+chivalry--these fine words and vague phrases? Where is it when we wish
+to put it to the test? Man in the abstract will do anything to help a
+woman. Of course. How does it work when his pocket is touched? Where
+is his chivalry then? Will the doctors help her to qualify? will the
+lawyers help her to be called to the bar? will the clergy tolerate her
+in the Church? Oh, it is close your ranks then and refer poor woman
+to her mission! Her mission! To be thankful for coppers and not to
+interfere with the men while they grabble for gold, like swine round a
+trough, that is man's reading of the mission of women. You may sit there
+and sneer, Charles, while you look upon your victim, but you know that
+it is truth, every word of it."
+
+Terrified as they were by this sudden torrent of words, the two
+gentlewomen could not but smile at the sight of the fiery, domineering
+victim and the big apologetic representative of mankind who sat meekly
+bearing all the sins of his sex. The lady struck a match, whipped a
+cigarette from a case upon the mantelpiece, and began to draw the smoke
+into her lungs.
+
+"I find it very soothing when my nerves are at all ruffled," she
+explained. "You don't smoke? Ah, you miss one of the purest of
+pleasures--one of the few pleasures which are without a reaction."
+
+Miss Williams smoothed out her silken lap.
+
+"It is a pleasure," she said, with some approach to self-assertion,
+"which Bertha and I are rather too old-fashioned to enjoy."
+
+"No doubt. It would probably make you very ill if you attempted it.
+By the way, I hope that you will come to some of our Guild meetings. I
+shall see that tickets are sent you."
+
+"Your Guild?"
+
+"It is not yet formed, but I shall lose no time in forming a committee.
+It is my habit to establish a branch of the Emancipation Guild wherever
+I go. There is a Mrs. Sanderson in Anerley who is already one of
+the emancipated, so that I have a nucleus. It is only by organized
+resistance, Miss Williams, that we can hope to hold our own against the
+selfish sex. Must you go, then?"
+
+"Yes, we have one or two other visits to pay," said the elder sister.
+"You will, I am sure, excuse us. I hope that you will find Norwood a
+pleasant residence."
+
+"All places are to me simply a battle-field," she answered, gripping
+first one and then the other with a grip which crumpled up their little
+thin fingers. "The days for work and healthful exercise, the evenings
+to Browning and high discourse, eh, Charles? Good-bye!" She came to the
+door with them, and as they glanced back they saw her still standing
+there with the yellow bull pup cuddled up under one forearm, and the
+thin blue reek of her cigarette ascending from her lips.
+
+"Oh, what a dreadful, dreadful woman!" whispered sister Bertha, as they
+hurried down the street. "Thank goodness that it is over."
+
+"But she'll return the visit," answered the other. "I think that we had
+better tell Mary that we are not at home."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. DWELLERS IN THE WILDERNESS.
+
+
+How deeply are our destinies influenced by the most trifling causes!
+Had the unknown builder who erected and owned these new villas contented
+himself by simply building each within its own grounds, it is probable
+that these three small groups of people would have remained hardly
+conscious of each other's existence, and that there would have been no
+opportunity for that action and reaction which is here set forth. But
+there was a common link to bind them together. To single himself out
+from all other Norwood builders the landlord had devised and laid out
+a common lawn tennis ground, which stretched behind the houses
+with taut-stretched net, green close-cropped sward, and widespread
+whitewashed lines. Hither in search of that hard exercise which is as
+necessary as air or food to the English temperament, came young Hay
+Denver when released from the toil of the City; hither, too, came Dr.
+Walker and his two fair daughters, Clara and Ida, and hither also,
+champions of the lawn, came the short-skirted, muscular widow and her
+athletic nephew. Ere the summer was gone they knew each other in this
+quiet nook as they might not have done after years of a stiffer and more
+formal acquaintance.
+
+And especially to the Admiral and the Doctor were this closer intimacy
+and companionship of value. Each had a void in his life, as every man
+must have who with unexhausted strength steps out of the great race, but
+each by his society might help to fill up that of his neighbor. It is
+true that they had not much in common, but that is sometimes an aid
+rather than a bar to friendship. Each had been an enthusiast in his
+profession, and had retained all his interest in it. The Doctor still
+read from cover to cover his Lancet and his Medical Journal, attended
+all professional gatherings, worked himself into an alternate state of
+exaltation and depression over the results of the election of officers,
+and reserved for himself a den of his own, in which before rows of
+little round bottles full of glycerine, Canadian balsam, and staining
+agents, he still cut sections with a microtome, and peeped through his
+long, brass, old-fashioned microscope at the arcana of nature. With his
+typical face, clean shaven on lip and chin, with a firm mouth, a strong
+jaw, a steady eye, and two little white fluffs of whiskers, he could
+never be taken for anything but what he was, a high-class British
+medical consultant of the age of fifty, or perhaps just a year or two
+older.
+
+The Doctor, in his hey-day, had been cool over great things, but now,
+in his retirement, he was fussy over trifles. The man who had operated
+without the quiver of a finger, when not only his patient's life but his
+own reputation and future were at stake, was now shaken to the soul by
+a mislaid book or a careless maid. He remarked it himself, and knew the
+reason. "When Mary was alive," he would say, "she stood between me and
+the little troubles. I could brace myself for the big ones. My girls are
+as good as girls can be, but who can know a man as his wife knows him?"
+Then his memory would conjure up a tuft of brown hair and a single
+white, thin hand over a coverlet, and he would feel, as we have all
+felt, that if we do not live and know each other after death, then
+indeed we are tricked and betrayed by all the highest hopes and subtlest
+intuitions of our nature.
+
+The Doctor had his compensations to make up for his loss. The great
+scales of Fate had been held on a level for him; for where in all great
+London could one find two sweeter girls, more loving, more intelligent,
+and more sympathetic than Clara and Ida Walker? So bright were they,
+so quick, so interested in all which interested him, that if it were
+possible for a man to be compensated for the loss of a good wife then
+Balthazar Walker might claim to be so.
+
+Clara was tall and thin and supple, with a graceful, womanly figure.
+There was something stately and distinguished in her carriage, "queenly"
+her friends called her, while her critics described her as reserved and
+distant.
+
+Such as it was, however, it was part and parcel of herself, for she was,
+and had always from her childhood been, different from any one around
+her. There was nothing gregarious in her nature. She thought with her
+own mind, saw with her own eyes, acted from her own impulse. Her face
+was pale, striking rather than pretty, but with two great dark eyes, so
+earnestly questioning, so quick in their transitions from joy to pathos,
+so swift in their comment upon every word and deed around her, that
+those eyes alone were to many more attractive than all the beauty of her
+younger sister. Hers was a strong, quiet soul, and it was her firm hand
+which had taken over the duties of her mother, had ordered the house,
+restrained the servants, comforted her father, and upheld her weaker
+sister, from the day of that great misfortune.
+
+Ida Walker was a hand's breadth smaller than Clara, but was a little
+fuller in the face and plumper in the figure. She had light yellow hair,
+mischievous blue eyes with the light of humor ever twinkling in their
+depths, and a large, perfectly formed mouth, with that slight upward
+curve of the corners which goes with a keen appreciation of fun,
+suggesting even in repose that a latent smile is ever lurking at the
+edges of the lips. She was modern to the soles of her dainty little
+high-heeled shoes, frankly fond of dress and of pleasure, devoted to
+tennis and to comic opera, delighted with a dance, which came her way
+only too seldom, longing ever for some new excitement, and yet behind
+all this lighter side of her character a thoroughly good, healthy-minded
+English girl, the life and soul of the house, and the idol of her sister
+and her father. Such was the family at number two. A peep into the
+remaining villa and our introductions are complete.
+
+Admiral Hay Denver did not belong to the florid, white-haired, hearty
+school of sea-dogs which is more common in works of fiction than in the
+Navy List. On the contrary, he was the representative of a much more
+common type which is the antithesis of the conventional sailor. He was
+a thin, hard-featured man, with an ascetic, aquiline cast of face,
+grizzled and hollow-cheeked, clean-shaven with the exception of
+the tiniest curved promontory of ash-colored whisker. An observer,
+accustomed to classify men, might have put him down as a canon of the
+church with a taste for lay costume and a country life, or as the master
+of a large public school, who joined his scholars in their outdoor
+sports. His lips were firm, his chin prominent, he had a hard, dry eye,
+and his manner was precise and formal. Forty years of stern discipline
+had made him reserved and silent. Yet, when at his ease with an equal,
+he could readily assume a less quarter-deck style, and he had a fund
+of little, dry stories of the world and its ways which were of interest
+from one who had seen so many phases of life. Dry and spare, as lean as
+a jockey and as tough as whipcord, he might be seen any day swinging his
+silver-headed Malacca cane, and pacing along the suburban roads with the
+same measured gait with which he had been wont to tread the poop of his
+flagship. He wore a good service stripe upon his cheek, for on one
+side it was pitted and scarred where a spurt of gravel knocked up by
+a round-shot had struck him thirty years before, when he served in the
+Lancaster gun-battery. Yet he was hale and sound, and though he was
+fifteen years senior to his friend the Doctor, he might have passed as
+the younger man.
+
+Mrs. Hay Denver's life had been a very broken one, and her record upon
+land represented a greater amount of endurance and self-sacrifice than
+his upon the sea. They had been together for four months after their
+marriage, and then had come a hiatus of four years, during which he was
+flitting about between St. Helena and the Oil Rivers in a gunboat. Then
+came a blessed year of peace and domesticity, to be followed by nine
+years, with only a three months' break, five upon the Pacific station,
+and four on the East Indian. After that was a respite in the shape of
+five years in the Channel squadron, with periodical runs home, and then
+again he was off to the Mediterranean for three years and to Halifax
+for four. Now, at last, however, this old married couple, who were still
+almost strangers to one another, had come together in Norwood, where,
+if their short day had been chequered and broken, the evening at least
+promised to be sweet and mellow. In person Mrs. Hay Denver was tall and
+stout, with a bright, round, ruddy-cheeked face still pretty, with a
+gracious, matronly comeliness. Her whole life was a round of devotion
+and of love, which was divided between her husband and her only son,
+Harold.
+
+This son it was who kept them in the neighborhood of London, for the
+Admiral was as fond of ships and of salt water as ever, and was as happy
+in the sheets of a two-ton yacht as on the bridge of his sixteen-knot
+monitor. Had he been untied, the Devonshire or Hampshire coast would
+certainly have been his choice. There was Harold, however, and Harold's
+interests were their chief care. Harold was four-and-twenty now.
+Three years before he had been taken in hand by an acquaintance of his
+father's, the head of a considerable firm of stock-brokers, and fairly
+launched upon 'Change. His three hundred guinea entrance fee paid, his
+three sureties of five hundred pounds each found, his name approved by
+the Committee, and all other formalities complied with, he found himself
+whirling round, an insignificant unit, in the vortex of the money market
+of the world. There, under the guidance of his father's friend, he was
+instructed in the mysteries of bulling and of bearing, in the
+strange usages of 'Change in the intricacies of carrying over and of
+transferring. He learned to know where to place his clients' money,
+which of the jobbers would make a price in New Zealands, and which
+would touch nothing but American rails, which might be trusted and which
+shunned. All this, and much more, he mastered, and to such purpose that
+he soon began to prosper, to retain the clients who had been recommended
+to him, and to attract fresh ones. But the work was never congenial.
+He had inherited from his father his love of the air of heaven, his
+affection for a manly and natural existence. To act as middleman between
+the pursuer of wealth, and the wealth which he pursued, or to stand as
+a human barometer, registering the rise and fall of the great mammon
+pressure in the markets, was not the work for which Providence had
+placed those broad shoulders and strong limbs upon his well knit frame.
+His dark open face, too, with his straight Grecian nose, well opened
+brown eyes, and round black-curled head, were all those of a man who was
+fashioned for active physical work. Meanwhile he was popular with his
+fellow brokers, respected by his clients, and beloved at home, but his
+spirit was restless within him and his mind chafed unceasingly against
+his surroundings.
+
+"Do you know, Willy," said Mrs. Hay Denver one evening as she stood
+behind her husband's chair, with her hand upon his shoulder, "I think
+sometimes that Harold is not quite happy."
+
+"He looks happy, the young rascal," answered the Admiral, pointing with
+his cigar. It was after dinner, and through the open French window of
+the dining-room a clear view was to be had of the tennis court and the
+players. A set had just been finished, and young Charles Westmacott was
+hitting up the balls as high as he could send them in the middle of the
+ground. Doctor Walker and Mrs. Westmacott were pacing up and down the
+lawn, the lady waving her racket as she emphasized her remarks, and
+the Doctor listening with slanting head and little nods of agreement.
+Against the rails at the near end Harold was leaning in his flannels
+talking to the two sisters, who stood listening to him with their long
+dark shadows streaming down the lawn behind them. The girls were dressed
+alike in dark skirts, with light pink tennis blouses and pink bands on
+their straw hats, so that as they stood with the soft red of the setting
+sun tinging their faces, Clara, demure and quiet, Ida, mischievous
+and daring, it was a group which might have pleased the eye of a more
+exacting critic than the old sailor.
+
+"Yes, he looks happy, mother," he repeated, with a chuckle. "It is not
+so long ago since it was you and I who were standing like that, and I
+don't remember that we were very unhappy either. It was croquet in our
+time, and the ladies had not reefed in their skirts quite so taut. What
+year would it be? Just before the commission of the Penelope."
+
+Mrs. Hay Denver ran her fingers through his grizzled hair. "It was when
+you came back in the Antelope, just before you got your step."
+
+"Ah, the old Antelope! What a clipper she was! She could sail two
+points nearer the wind than anything of her tonnage in the service. You
+remember her, mother. You saw her come into Plymouth Bay. Wasn't she a
+beauty?"
+
+"She was indeed, dear. But when I say that I think that Harold is not
+happy I mean in his daily life. Has it never struck you how thoughtful
+he is at times, and how absent-minded?"
+
+"In love perhaps, the young dog. He seems to have found snug moorings
+now at any rate."
+
+"I think that it is very likely that you are right, Willy," answered the
+mother seriously. "But with which of them?"
+
+"I cannot tell."
+
+"Well, they are very charming girls, both of them. But as long as he
+hangs in the wind between the two it cannot be serious. After all, the
+boy is four-and-twenty, and he made five hundred pounds last year. He is
+better able to marry than I was when I was lieutenant."
+
+"I think that we can see which it is now," remarked the observant
+mother. Charles Westmacott had ceased to knock the tennis balls about,
+and was chatting with Clara Walker, while Ida and Harold Denver
+were still talking by the railing with little outbursts of laughter.
+Presently a fresh set was formed, and Doctor Walker, the odd man out,
+came through the wicket gate and strolled up the garden walk.
+
+"Good evening, Mrs. Hay Denver," said he, raising his broad straw hat.
+"May I come in?"
+
+"Good evening, Doctor! Pray do!"
+
+"Try one of these," said the Admiral, holding out his cigar-case.
+"They are not bad. I got them on the Mosquito Coast. I was thinking of
+signaling to you, but you seemed so very happy out there."
+
+"Mrs. Westmacott is a very clever woman," said the Doctor, lighting the
+cigar. "By the way, you spoke about the Mosquito Coast just now. Did you
+see much of the Hyla when you were out there?"
+
+"No such name on the list," answered the seaman, with decision. "There's
+the Hydra, a harbor defense turret-ship, but she never leaves the home
+waters."
+
+The Doctor laughed. "We live in two separate worlds," said he. "The Hyla
+is the little green tree frog, and Beale has founded some of his views
+on protoplasm upon the appearances of its nerve cells. It is a subject
+in which I take an interest."
+
+"There were vermin of all sorts in the woods. When I have been on river
+service I have heard it at night like the engine-room when you are on
+the measured mile. You can't sleep for the piping, and croaking, and
+chirping. Great Scott! what a woman that is! She was across the lawn
+in three jumps. She would have made a captain of the foretop in the old
+days."
+
+"She is a very remarkable woman."
+
+"A very cranky one."
+
+"A very sensible one in some things," remarked Mrs. Hay Denver.
+
+"Look at that now!" cried the Admiral, with a lunge of his forefinger at
+the Doctor. "You mark my words, Walker, if we don't look out that woman
+will raise a mutiny with her preaching. Here's my wife disaffected
+already, and your girls will be no better. We must combine, man, or
+there's an end of all discipline."
+
+"No doubt she is a little excessive in her views," said the Doctor, "but
+in the main I think as she does."
+
+"Bravo, Doctor!" cried the lady.
+
+"What, turned traitor to your sex! We'll court-martial you as a
+deserter."
+
+"She is quite right. The professions are not sufficiently open to women.
+They are still far too much circumscribed in their employments. They
+are a feeble folk, the women who have to work for their bread--poor,
+unorganized, timid, taking as a favor what they might demand as a right.
+That is why their case is not more constantly before the public, for if
+their cry for redress was as great as their grievance it would fill the
+world to the exclusion of all others. It is all very well for us to be
+courteous to the rich, the refined, those to whom life is already made
+easy. It is a mere form, a trick of manner. If we are truly courteous,
+we shall stoop to lift up struggling womanhood when she really needs our
+help--when it is life and death to her whether she has it or not. And
+then to cant about it being unwomanly to work in the higher professions.
+It is womanly enough to starve, but unwomanly to use the brains which
+God has given them. Is it not a monstrous contention?"
+
+The Admiral chuckled. "You are like one of these phonographs, Walker,"
+said he; "you have had all this talked into you, and now you are reeling
+it off again. It's rank mutiny, every word of it, for man has his duties
+and woman has hers, but they are as separate as their natures are. I
+suppose that we shall have a woman hoisting her pennant on the flagship
+presently, and taking command of the Channel Squadron."
+
+"Well, you have a woman on the throne taking command of the whole
+nation," remarked his wife; "and everybody is agreed that she does it
+better than any of the men."
+
+The Admiral was somewhat staggered by this home-thrust. "That's quite
+another thing," said he.
+
+"You should come to their next meeting. I am to take the chair. I have
+just promised Mrs. Westmacott that I will do so. But it has turned
+chilly, and it is time that the girls were indoors. Good night! I shall
+look out for you after breakfast for our constitutional, Admiral."
+
+The old sailor looked after his friend with a twinkle in his eyes.
+
+"How old is he, mother?"
+
+"About fifty, I think."
+
+"And Mrs. Westmacott?"
+
+"I heard that she was forty-three."
+
+The Admiral rubbed his hands, and shook with amusement. "We'll find one
+of these days that three and two make one," said he. "I'll bet you a new
+bonnet on it, mother."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. A SISTER'S SECRET.
+
+
+"Tell me, Miss Walker! You know how things should be. What would you
+say was a good profession for a young man of twenty-six who has had no
+education worth speaking about, and who is not very quick by nature?"
+The speaker was Charles Westmacott, and the time this same summer
+evening in the tennis ground, though the shadows had fallen now and the
+game been abandoned.
+
+The girl glanced up at him, amused and surprised.
+
+"Do you mean yourself?"
+
+"Precisely."
+
+"But how could I tell?"
+
+"I have no one to advise me. I believe that you could do it better than
+any one. I feel confidence in your opinion."
+
+"It is very flattering." She glanced up again at his earnest,
+questioning face, with its Saxon eyes and drooping flaxen mustache, in
+some doubt as to whether he might be joking. On the contrary, all his
+attention seemed to be concentrated upon her answer.
+
+"It depends so much upon what you can do, you know. I do not know you
+sufficiently to be able to say what natural gifts you have." They were
+walking slowly across the lawn in the direction of the house.
+
+"I have none. That is to say none worth mentioning. I have no memory and
+I am very slow."
+
+"But you are very strong."
+
+"Oh, if that goes for anything. I can put up a hundred-pound bar till
+further orders; but what sort of a calling is that?"
+
+Some little joke about being called to the bar flickered up in Miss
+Walker's mind, but her companion was in such obvious earnest that she
+stifled down her inclination to laugh.
+
+"I can do a mile on the cinder-track in 4:50 and across-country in 5:20,
+but how is that to help me? I might be a cricket professional, but it
+is not a very dignified position. Not that I care a straw about dignity,
+you know, but I should not like to hurt the old lady's feelings."
+
+"Your aunt's?"
+
+"Yes, my aunt's. My parents were killed in the Mutiny, you know, when
+I was a baby, and she has looked after me ever since. She has been very
+good to me. I'm sorry to leave her."
+
+"But why should you leave her?" They had reached the garden gate, and
+the girl leaned her racket upon the top of it, looking up with grave
+interest at her big white-flanneled companion.
+
+"It's Browning," said he.
+
+"What!"
+
+"Don't tell my aunt that I said it"--he sank his voice to a whisper--"I
+hate Browning."
+
+Clara Walker rippled off into such a merry peal of laughter that he
+forgot the evil things which he had suffered from the poet, and burst
+out laughing too.
+
+"I can't make him out," said he. "I try, but he is one too many. No
+doubt it is very stupid of me; I don't deny it. But as long as I cannot
+there is no use pretending that I can. And then of course she feels
+hurt, for she is very fond of him, and likes to read him aloud in the
+evenings. She is reading a piece now, 'Pippa Passes,' and I assure you,
+Miss Walker, that I don't even know what the title means. You must think
+me a dreadful fool."
+
+"But surely he is not so incomprehensible as all that?" she said, as an
+attempt at encouragement.
+
+"He is very bad. There are some things, you know, which are fine. That
+ride of the three Dutchmen, and Herve Riel and others, they are all
+right. But there was a piece we read last week. The first line stumped
+my aunt, and it takes a good deal to do that, for she rides very
+straight. 'Setebos and Setebos and Setebos.' That was the line."
+
+"It sounds like a charm."
+
+"No, it is a gentleman's name. Three gentlemen, I thought, at first, but
+my aunt says one. Then he goes on, 'Thinketh he dwelleth in the light of
+the moon.' It was a very trying piece."
+
+Clara Walker laughed again.
+
+"You must not think of leaving your aunt," she said. "Think how lonely
+she would be without you."
+
+"Well, yes, I have thought of that. But you must remember that my aunt
+is to all intents hardly middle-aged, and a very eligible person. I
+don't think that her dislike to mankind extends to individuals. She
+might form new ties, and then I should be a third wheel in the coach.
+It was all very well as long as I was only a boy, when her first husband
+was alive."
+
+"But, good gracious, you don't mean that Mrs. Westmacott is going to
+marry again?" gasped Clara.
+
+The young man glanced down at her with a question in his eyes. "Oh, it
+is only a remote possibility, you know," said he. "Still, of course,
+it might happen, and I should like to know what I ought to turn my hand
+to."
+
+"I wish I could help you," said Clara. "But I really know very little
+about such things. However, I could talk to my father, who knows a very
+great deal of the world."
+
+"I wish you would. I should be so glad if you would."
+
+"Then I certainly will. And now I must say good-night, Mr. Westmacott,
+for papa will be wondering where I am."
+
+"Good night, Miss Walker." He pulled off his flannel cap, and stalked
+away through the gathering darkness.
+
+Clara had imagined that they had been the last on the lawn, but, looking
+back from the steps which led up to the French windows, she saw two dark
+figures moving across towards the house. As they came nearer she could
+distinguish that they were Harold Denver and her sister Ida. The
+murmur of their voices rose up to her ears, and then the musical little
+child-like laugh which she knew so well. "I am so delighted," she heard
+her sister say. "So pleased and proud. I had no idea of it. Your words
+were such a surprise and a joy to me. Oh, I am so glad."
+
+"Is that you, Ida?"
+
+"Oh, there is Clara. I must go in, Mr. Denver. Good-night!"
+
+There were a few whispered words, a laugh from Ida, and a "Good-night,
+Miss Walker," out of the darkness. Clara took her sister's hand, and
+they passed together through the long folding window. The Doctor had
+gone into his study, and the dining-room was empty. A single small red
+lamp upon the sideboard was reflected tenfold by the plate about it and
+the mahogany beneath it, though its single wick cast but a feeble light
+into the large, dimly shadowed room. Ida danced off to the big central
+lamp, but Clara put her hand upon her arm. "I rather like this quiet
+light," said she. "Why should we not have a chat?" She sat in the
+Doctor's large red plush chair, and her sister cuddled down upon the
+footstool at her feet, glancing up at her elder with a smile upon her
+lips and a mischievous gleam in her eyes. There was a shade of anxiety
+in Clara's face, which cleared away as she gazed into her sister's frank
+blue eyes.
+
+"Have you anything to tell me, dear?" she asked.
+
+Ida gave a little pout and shrug to her shoulder. "The Solicitor-General
+then opened the case for the prosecution," said she. "You are going to
+cross-examine me, Clara, so don't deny it. I do wish you would have that
+grey satin foulard of yours done up. With a little trimming and a new
+white vest it would look as good as new, and it is really very dowdy."
+
+"You were quite late upon the lawn," said the inexorable Clara.
+
+"Yes, I was rather. So were you. Have you anything to tell me?" She
+broke away into her merry musical laugh.
+
+"I was chatting with Mr. Westmacott."
+
+"And I was chatting with Mr. Denver. By the way, Clara, now tell me
+truly, what do you think of Mr. Denver? Do you like him? Honestly now!"
+
+"I like him very much indeed. I think that he is one of the most
+gentlemanly, modest, manly young men that I have ever known. So now,
+dear, have you nothing to tell me?" Clara smoothed down her sister's
+golden hair with a motherly gesture, and stooped her face to catch the
+expected confidence. She could wish nothing better than that Ida should
+be the wife of Harold Denver, and from the words which she had overheard
+as they left the lawn that evening, she could not doubt that there was
+some understanding between them.
+
+But there came no confession from Ida. Only the same mischievous smile
+and amused gleam in her deep blue eyes.
+
+"That grey foulard dress----" she began.
+
+"Oh, you little tease! Come now, I will ask you what you have just asked
+me. Do you like Harold Denver?"
+
+"Oh, he's a darling!"
+
+"Ida!"
+
+"Well, you asked me. That's what I think of him. And now, you dear old
+inquisitive, you will get nothing more out of me; so you must wait and
+not be too curious. I'm going off to see what papa is doing." She sprang
+to her feet, threw her arms round her sister's neck, gave her a final
+squeeze, and was gone. A chorus from Olivette, sung in her clear
+contralto, grew fainter and fainter until it ended in the slam of a
+distant door.
+
+But Clara Walker still sat in the dim-lit room with her chin upon her
+hands, and her dreamy eyes looking out into the gathering gloom. It
+was the duty of her, a maiden, to play the part of a mother--to guide
+another in paths which her own steps had not yet trodden. Since her
+mother died not a thought had been given to herself, all was for her
+father and her sister. In her own eyes she was herself very plain, and
+she knew that her manner was often ungracious when she would most wish
+to be gracious. She saw her face as the glass reflected it, but she did
+not see the changing play of expression which gave it its charm--the
+infinite pity, the sympathy, the sweet womanliness which drew towards
+her all who were in doubt and in trouble, even as poor slow-moving
+Charles Westmacott had been drawn to her that night. She was herself,
+she thought, outside the pale of love. But it was very different with
+Ida, merry, little, quick-witted, bright-faced Ida. She was born for
+love. It was her inheritance. But she was young and innocent. She
+must not be allowed to venture too far without help in those dangerous
+waters. Some understanding there was between her and Harold Denver. In
+her heart of hearts Clara, like every good woman, was a match-maker, and
+already she had chosen Denver of all men as the one to whom she could
+most safely confide Ida. He had talked to her more than once on the
+serious topics of life, on his aspirations, on what a man could do to
+leave the world better for his presence. She knew that he was a man of
+a noble nature, high-minded and earnest. And yet she did not like this
+secrecy, this disinclination upon the part of one so frank and honest
+as Ida to tell her what was passing. She would wait, and if she got the
+opportunity next day she would lead Harold Denver himself on to this
+topic. It was possible that she might learn from him what her sister had
+refused to tell her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. A NAVAL CONQUEST.
+
+
+It was the habit of the Doctor and the Admiral to accompany each other
+upon a morning ramble between breakfast and lunch. The dwellers in those
+quiet tree-lined roads were accustomed to see the two figures, the long,
+thin, austere seaman, and the short, bustling, tweed-clad physician,
+pass and repass with such regularity that a stopped clock has been reset
+by them. The Admiral took two steps to his companion's three, but the
+younger man was the quicker, and both were equal to a good four and a
+half miles an hour.
+
+It was a lovely summer day which followed the events which have been
+described. The sky was of the deepest blue, with a few white, fleecy
+clouds drifting lazily across it, and the air was filled with the low
+drone of insects or with a sudden sharper note as bee or bluefly shot
+past with its quivering, long-drawn hum, like an insect tuning-fork. As
+the friends topped each rise which leads up to the Crystal Palace,
+they could see the dun clouds of London stretching along the northern
+skyline, with spire or dome breaking through the low-lying haze. The
+Admiral was in high spirits, for the morning post had brought good news
+to his son.
+
+"It is wonderful, Walker," he was saying, "positively wonderful, the way
+that boy of mine has gone ahead during the last three years. We heard
+from Pearson to-day. Pearson is the senior partner, you know, and my boy
+the junior--Pearson and Denver the firm. Cunning old dog is Pearson,
+as cute and as greedy as a Rio shark. Yet he goes off for a fortnight's
+leave, and puts my boy in full charge, with all that immense business
+in his hands, and a freehand to do what he likes with it. How's that for
+confidence, and he only three years upon 'Change?"
+
+"Any one would confide in him. His face is a surety," said the Doctor.
+
+"Go on, Walker!" The Admiral dug his elbow at him. "You know my weak
+side. Still it's truth all the same. I've been blessed with a good wife
+and a good son, and maybe I relish them the more for having been cut off
+from them so long. I have much to be thankful for!"
+
+"And so have I. The best two girls that ever stepped. There's Clara, who
+has learned up as much medicine as would give her the L.S.A., simply
+in order that she may sympathize with me in my work. But hullo, what is
+this coming along?"
+
+"All drawing and the wind astern!" cried the Admiral. "Fourteen knots if
+it's one. Why, by George, it is that woman!"
+
+A rolling cloud of yellow dust had streamed round the curve of the road,
+and from the heart of it had emerged a high tandem tricycle flying along
+at a breakneck pace. In front sat Mrs. Westmacott clad in a heather
+tweed pea-jacket, a skirt which just{?} passed her knees and a pair of
+thick gaiters of the same material. She had a great bundle of red papers
+under her arm, while Charles, who sat behind her clad in Norfolk jacket
+and knickerbockers, bore a similar roll protruding from either pocket.
+Even as they watched, the pair eased up, the lady sprang off, impaled
+one of her bills upon the garden railing of an empty house, and then
+jumping on to her seat again was about to hurry onwards when her nephew
+drew her attention to the two gentlemen upon the footpath.
+
+"Oh, now, really I didn't notice you," said she, taking a few turns
+of the treadle and steering the machine across to them. "Is it not a
+beautiful morning?"
+
+"Lovely," answered the Doctor. "You seem to be very busy."
+
+"I am very busy." She pointed to the colored paper which still fluttered
+from the railing. "We have been pushing our propaganda, you see. Charles
+and I have been at it since seven o'clock. It is about our meeting. I
+wish it to be a great success. See!" She smoothed out one of the bills,
+and the Doctor read his own name in great black letters across the
+bottom.
+
+"We don't forget our chairman, you see. Everybody is coming. Those two
+dear little old maids opposite, the Williamses, held out for some time;
+but I have their promise now. Admiral, I am sure that you wish us well."
+
+"Hum! I wish you no harm, ma'am."
+
+"You will come on the platform?"
+
+"I'll be---- No, I don't think I can do that."
+
+"To our meeting, then?"
+
+"No, ma'am; I don't go out after dinner."
+
+"Oh yes, you will come. I will call in if I may, and chat it over with
+you when you come home. We have not breakfasted yet. Goodbye!" There was
+a whir of wheels, and the yellow cloud rolled away down the road again.
+By some legerdemain the Admiral found that he was clutching in his right
+hand one of the obnoxious bills. He crumpled it up, and threw it into
+the roadway.
+
+"I'll be hanged if I go, Walker," said he, as he resumed his walk. "I've
+never been hustled into doing a thing yet, whether by woman or man."
+
+"I am not a betting man," answered the Doctor, "but I rather think that
+the odds are in favor of your going."
+
+The Admiral had hardly got home, and had just seated himself in his
+dining-room, when the attack upon him was renewed. He was slowly and
+lovingly unfolding the Times preparatory to the long read which led up
+to luncheon, and had even got so far as to fasten his golden pince-nez
+on to his thin, high-bridged nose, when he heard a crunching of gravel,
+and, looking over the top of his paper, saw Mrs. Westmacott coming up
+the garden walk. She was still dressed in the singular costume which
+offended the sailor's old-fashioned notions of propriety, but he could
+not deny, as he looked at her, that she was a very fine woman. In many
+climes he had looked upon women of all shades and ages, but never upon
+a more clearcut, handsome face, nor a more erect, supple, and womanly
+figure. He ceased to glower as he gazed upon her, and the frown smoothed
+away from his rugged brow.
+
+"May I come in?" said she, framing herself in the open window, with a
+background of green sward and blue sky. "I feel like an invader deep in
+an enemy's country."
+
+"It is a very welcome invasion, ma'am," said he, clearing his throat and
+pulling at his high collar. "Try this garden chair. What is there that
+I can do for you? Shall I ring and let Mrs. Denver know that you are
+here?"
+
+"Pray do not trouble, Admiral. I only looked in with reference to our
+little chat this morning. I wish that you would give us your powerful
+support at our coming meeting for the improvement of the condition of
+woman."
+
+"No, ma'am, I can't do that." He pursed up his lips and shook his
+grizzled head.
+
+"And why not?"
+
+"Against my principles, ma'am."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"Because woman has her duties and man has his. I may be old-fashioned,
+but that is my view. Why, what is the world coming to? I was saying to
+Dr. Walker only last night that we shall have a woman wanting to command
+the Channel Fleet next."
+
+"That is one of the few professions which cannot be improved," said Mrs.
+Westmacott, with her sweetest smile. "Poor woman must still look to man
+for protection."
+
+"I don't like these new-fangled ideas, ma'am. I tell you honestly that
+I don't. I like discipline, and I think every one is the better for
+it. Women have got a great deal which they had not in the days of our
+fathers. They have universities all for themselves, I am told, and there
+are women doctors, I hear. Surely they should rest contented. What more
+can they want?"
+
+"You are a sailor, and sailors are always chivalrous. If you could see
+how things really are, you would change your opinion. What are the poor
+things to do? There are so many of them and so few things to which they
+can turn their hands. Governesses? But there are hardly any situations.
+Music and drawing? There is not one in fifty who has any special talent
+in that direction. Medicine? It is still surrounded with difficulties
+for women, and it takes many years and a small fortune to qualify.
+Nursing? It is hard work ill paid, and none but the strongest can stand
+it. What would you have them do then, Admiral? Sit down and starve?"
+
+"Tut, tut! It is not so bad as that."
+
+"The pressure is terrible. Advertise for a lady companion at ten
+shillings a week, which is less than a cook's wage, and see how many
+answers you get. There is no hope, no outlook, for these struggling
+thousands. Life is a dull, sordid struggle, leading down to a cheerless
+old age. Yet when we try to bring some little ray of hope, some
+chance, however distant, of something better, we are told by chivalrous
+gentlemen that it is against their principles to help."
+
+The Admiral winced, but shook his head in dissent.
+
+"There is banking, the law, veterinary surgery, government offices, the
+civil service, all these at least should be thrown freely open to women,
+if they have brains enough to compete successfully for them. Then if
+woman were unsuccessful it would be her own fault, and the majority of
+the population of this country could no longer complain that they live
+under a different law to the minority, and that they are held down in
+poverty and serfdom, with every road to independence sealed to them."
+
+"What would you propose to do, ma'am?"
+
+"To set the more obvious injustices right, and so to pave the way for
+a reform. Now look at that man digging in the field. I know him. He
+can neither read nor write, he is steeped in whisky, and he has as much
+intelligence as the potatoes that he is digging. Yet the man has a vote,
+can possibly turn the scale of an election, and may help to decide the
+policy of this empire. Now, to take the nearest example, here am I, a
+woman who have had some education, who have traveled, and who have seen
+and studied the institutions of many countries. I hold considerable
+property, and I pay more in imperial taxes than that man spends in
+whisky, which is saying a great deal, and yet I have no more direct
+influence upon the disposal of the money which I pay than that fly which
+creeps along the wall. Is that right? Is it fair?"
+
+The Admiral moved uneasily in his chair. "Yours is an exceptional case,"
+said he.
+
+"But no woman has a voice. Consider that the women are a majority in the
+nation. Yet if there was a question of legislation upon which all women
+were agreed upon one side and all the men upon the other, it would
+appear that the matter was settled unanimously when more than half the
+population were opposed to it. Is that right?"
+
+Again the Admiral wriggled. It was very awkward for the gallant seaman
+to have a handsome woman opposite to him, bombarding him with questions
+to none of which he could find an answer. "Couldn't even get the
+tompions out of his guns," as he explained the matter to the Doctor that
+evening.
+
+"Now those are really the points that we shall lay stress upon at the
+meeting. The free and complete opening of the professions, the final
+abolition of the zenana I call it, and the franchise to all women
+who pay Queen's taxes above a certain sum. Surely there is nothing
+unreasonable in that. Nothing which could offend your principles. We
+shall have medicine, law, and the church all rallying that night for the
+protection of woman. Is the navy to be the one profession absent?"
+
+The Admiral jumped out of his chair with an evil word in his throat.
+"There, there, ma'am," he cried. "Drop it for a time. I have heard
+enough. You've turned me a point or two. I won't deny it. But let it
+stand at that. I will think it over."
+
+"Certainly, Admiral. We would not hurry you in your decision. But we
+still hope to see you on our platform." She rose and moved about in her
+lounging masculine fashion from one picture to another, for the walls
+were thickly covered with reminiscences of the Admiral's voyages.
+
+"Hullo!" said she. "Surely this ship would have furled all her lower
+canvas and reefed her topsails if she found herself on a lee shore with
+the wind on her quarter."
+
+"Of course she would. The artist was never past Gravesend, I swear. It's
+the Penelope as she was on the 14th of June, 1857, in the throat of the
+Straits of Banca, with the Island of Banca on the starboard bow, and
+Sumatra on the port. He painted it from description, but of course, as
+you very sensibly say, all was snug below and she carried storm sails
+and double-reefed topsails, for it was blowing a cyclone from the
+sou'east. I compliment you, ma'am, I do indeed!"
+
+"Oh, I have done a little sailoring myself--as much as a woman can
+aspire to, you know. This is the Bay of Funchal. What a lovely frigate!"
+
+"Lovely, you say! Ah, she was lovely! That is the Andromeda. I was a
+mate aboard of her--sub-lieutenant they call it now, though I like the
+old name best."
+
+"What a lovely rake her masts have, and what a curve to her bows! She
+must have been a clipper."
+
+The old sailor rubbed his hands and his eyes glistened. His old ships
+bordered close upon his wife and his son in his affections.
+
+"I know Funchal," said the lady carelessly. "A couple of years ago I had
+a seven-ton cutter-rigged yacht, the Banshee, and we ran over to Madeira
+from Falmouth."
+
+"You ma'am, in a seven-tonner?"
+
+"With a couple of Cornish lads for a crew. Oh, it was glorious! A
+fortnight right out in the open, with no worries, no letters, no
+callers, no petty thoughts, nothing but the grand works of God, the
+tossing sea and the great silent sky. They talk of riding, indeed, I am
+fond of horses, too, but what is there to compare with the swoop of a
+little craft as she pitches down the long steep side of a wave, and then
+the quiver and spring as she is tossed upwards again? Oh, if our souls
+could transmigrate I'd be a seamew above all birds that fly! But I keep
+you, Admiral. Adieu!"
+
+The old sailor was too transported with sympathy to say a word. He could
+only shake her broad muscular hand. She was half-way down the garden
+path before she heard him calling her, and saw his grizzled head and
+weather-stained face looking out from behind the curtains.
+
+"You may put me down for the platform," he cried, and vanished abashed
+behind the curtain of his Times, where his wife found him at lunch time.
+
+"I hear that you have had quite a long chat with Mrs. Westmacott," said
+she.
+
+"Yes, and I think that she is one of the most sensible women that I ever
+knew."
+
+"Except on the woman's rights question, of course."
+
+"Oh, I don't know. She had a good deal to say for herself on that also.
+In fact, mother, I have taken a platform ticket for her meeting."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. AN OLD STORY.
+
+
+But this was not to be the only eventful conversation which Mrs.
+Westmacott held that day, nor was the Admiral the only person in the
+Wilderness who was destined to find his opinions considerably
+changed. Two neighboring families, the Winslows from Anerley, and
+the Cumberbatches from Gipsy Hill, had been invited to tennis by Mrs.
+Westmacott, and the lawn was gay in the evening with the blazers of
+the young men and the bright dresses of the girls. To the older people,
+sitting round in their wicker-work garden chairs, the darting, stooping,
+springing white figures, the sweep of skirts, and twinkle of canvas
+shoes, the click of the rackets and sharp whiz of the balls, with the
+continual "fifteen love--fifteen all!" of the marker, made up a merry
+and exhilarating scene. To see their sons and daughters so flushed and
+healthy and happy, gave them also a reflected glow, and it was hard to
+say who had most pleasure from the game, those who played or those who
+watched.
+
+Mrs. Westmacott had just finished a set when she caught a glimpse of
+Clara Walker sitting alone at the farther end of the ground. She ran
+down the court, cleared the net to the amazement of the visitors, and
+seated herself beside her. Clara's reserved and refined nature shrank
+somewhat from the boisterous frankness and strange manners of the
+widow, and yet her feminine instinct told her that beneath all her
+peculiarities there lay much that was good and noble. She smiled up at
+her, therefore, and nodded a greeting.
+
+"Why aren't you playing, then? Don't, for goodness' sake, begin to be
+languid and young ladyish! When you give up active sports you give up
+youth."
+
+"I have played a set, Mrs. Westmacott."
+
+"That's right, my dear." She sat down beside her, and tapped her upon
+the arm with her tennis racket. "I like you, my dear, and I am going to
+call you Clara. You are not as aggressive as I should wish, Clara, but
+still I like you very much. Self-sacrifice is all very well, you know,
+but we have had rather too much of it on our side, and should like to
+see a little on the other. What do you think of my nephew Charles?"
+
+The question was so sudden and unexpected that Clara gave quite a jump
+in her chair. "I--I--I hardly ever have thought of your nephew Charles."
+
+"No? Oh, you must think him well over, for I want to speak to you about
+him."
+
+"To me? But why?"
+
+"It seemed to me most delicate. You see, Clara, the matter stands
+in this way. It is quite possible that I may soon find myself in a
+completely new sphere of life, which will involve fresh duties and make
+it impossible for me to keep up a household which Charles can share."
+
+Clara stared. Did this mean that she was about to marry again? What else
+could it point to?
+
+"Therefore Charles must have a household of his own. That is obvious.
+Now, I don't approve of bachelor establishments. Do you?"
+
+"Really, Mrs. Westmacott, I have never thought of the matter."
+
+"Oh, you little sly puss! Was there ever a girl who never thought of the
+matter? I think that a young man of six-and-twenty ought to be married."
+
+Clara felt very uncomfortable. The awful thought had come upon her
+that this ambassadress had come to her as a proxy with a proposal of
+marriage. But how could that be? She had not spoken more than three or
+four times with her nephew, and knew nothing more of him than he had
+told her on the evening before. It was impossible, then. And yet what
+could his aunt mean by this discussion of his private affairs?
+
+"Do you not think yourself," she persisted, "that a young man of
+six-and-twenty is better married?"
+
+"I should think that he is old enough to decide for himself."
+
+"Yes, yes. He has done so. But Charles is just a little shy, just a
+little slow in expressing himself. I thought that I would pave the
+way for him. Two women can arrange these things so much better. Men
+sometimes have a difficulty in making themselves clear."
+
+"I really hardly follow you, Mrs. Westmacott," cried Clara in despair.
+
+"He has no profession. But he has nice tastes. He reads Browning every
+night. And he is most amazingly strong. When he was younger we used to
+put on the gloves together, but I cannot persuade him to now, for he
+says he cannot play light enough. I should allow him five hundred, which
+should be enough at first."
+
+"My dear Mrs. Westmacott," cried Clara, "I assure you that I have not
+the least idea what it is that you are talking of."
+
+"Do you think your sister Ida would have my nephew Charles?"
+
+Her sister Ida? Quite a little thrill of relief and of pleasure ran
+through her at the thought. Ida and Charles Westmacott. She had never
+thought of it. And yet they had been a good deal together. They had
+played tennis. They had shared the tandem tricycle. Again came
+the thrill of joy, and close at its heels the cold questionings of
+conscience. Why this joy? What was the real source of it? Was it that
+deep down, somewhere pushed back in the black recesses of the soul,
+there was the thought lurking that if Charles prospered in his wooing
+then Harold Denver would still be free? How mean, how unmaidenly, how
+unsisterly the thought! She crushed it down and thrust it aside, but
+still it would push up its wicked little head. She crimsoned with shame
+at her own baseness, as she turned once more to her companion.
+
+"I really do not know," she said.
+
+"She is not engaged?"
+
+"Not that I know of."
+
+"You speak hesitatingly."
+
+"Because I am not sure. But he may ask. She cannot but be flattered."
+
+"Quite so. I tell him that it is the most practical compliment which a
+man can pay to a woman. He is a little shy, but when he sets himself
+to do it he will do it. He is very much in love with her, I assure you.
+These little lively people always do attract the slow and heavy ones,
+which is nature's device for the neutralizing of bores. But they are
+all going in. I think if you will allow me that I will just take the
+opportunity to tell him that, as far as you know, there is no positive
+obstacle in the way."
+
+"As far as I know," Clara repeated, as the widow moved away to where
+the players were grouped round the net, or sauntering slowly towards
+the house. She rose to follow her, but her head was in a whirl with new
+thoughts, and she sat down again. Which would be best for Ida, Harold
+or Charles? She thought it over with as much solicitude as a mother who
+plans for her only child. Harold had seemed to her to be in many ways
+the noblest and the best young man whom she had known. If ever she was
+to love a man it would be such a man as that. But she must not think of
+herself. She had reason to believe that both these men loved her sister.
+Which would be the best for her? But perhaps the matter was already
+decided. She could not forget the scrap of conversation which she had
+heard the night before, nor the secret which her sister had refused to
+confide to her. If Ida would not tell her, there was but one person who
+could. She raised her eyes and there was Harold Denver standing before
+her.
+
+"You were lost in your thoughts," said he, smiling. "I hope that they
+were pleasant ones."
+
+"Oh, I was planning," said she, rising. "It seems rather a waste of time
+as a rule, for things have a way of working themselves out just as you
+least expect."
+
+"What were you planning, then?"
+
+"The future."
+
+"Whose?"
+
+"Oh, my own and Ida's."
+
+"And was I included in your joint futures?"
+
+"I hope all our friends were included."
+
+"Don't go in," said he, as she began to move slowly towards the house.
+"I wanted to have a word. Let us stroll up and down the lawn. Perhaps
+you are cold. If you are, I could bring you out a shawl."
+
+"Oh, no, I am not cold."
+
+"I was speaking to your sister Ida last night." She noticed that there
+was a slight quiver in his voice, and, glancing up at his dark, clearcut
+face, she saw that he was very grave. She felt that it was settled, that
+he had come to ask her for her sister's hand.
+
+"She is a charming girl," said he, after a pause.
+
+"Indeed she is," cried Clara warmly. "And no one who has not lived with
+her and known her intimately can tell how charming and good she is. She
+is like a sunbeam in the house."
+
+"No one who was not good could be so absolutely happy as she seems to
+be. Heaven's last gift, I think, is a mind so pure and a spirit so
+high that it is unable even to see what is impure and evil in the world
+around us. For as long as we can see it, how can we be truly happy?"
+
+"She has a deeper side also. She does not turn it to the world, and it
+is not natural that she should, for she is very young. But she thinks,
+and has aspirations of her own."
+
+"You cannot admire her more than I do. Indeed, Miss Walker, I only ask
+to be brought into nearer relationship with her, and to feel that there
+is a permanent bond between us."
+
+It had come at last. For a moment her heart was numbed within her, and
+then a flood of sisterly love carried all before it. Down with that dark
+thought which would still try to raise its unhallowed head! She turned
+to Harold with sparkling eyes and words of pleasure upon her lips.
+
+"I should wish to be near and dear to both of you," said he, as he took
+her hand. "I should wish Ida to be my sister, and you my wife."
+
+She said nothing. She only stood looking at him with parted lips and
+great, dark, questioning eyes. The lawn had vanished away, the sloping
+gardens, the brick villas, the darkening sky with half a pale moon
+beginning to show over the chimney-tops. All was gone, and she was only
+conscious of a dark, earnest, pleading face, and of a voice, far away,
+disconnected from herself, the voice of a man telling a woman how he
+loved her. He was unhappy, said the voice, his life was a void; there
+was but one thing that could save him; he had come to the parting of
+the ways, here lay happiness and honor, and all that was high and noble;
+there lay the soul-killing round, the lonely life, the base pursuit of
+money, the sordid, selfish aims. He needed but the hand of the woman
+that he loved to lead him into the better path. And how he loved her his
+life would show. He loved her for her sweetness, for her womanliness,
+for her strength. He had need of her. Would she not come to him? And
+then of a sudden as she listened it came home to her that the man was
+Harold Denver, and that she was the woman, and that all God's work was
+very beautiful--the green sward beneath her feet, the rustling leaves,
+the long orange slashes in the western sky. She spoke; she scarce knew
+what the broken words were, but she saw the light of joy shine out
+on his face, and her hand was still in his as they wandered amid the
+twilight. They said no more now, but only wandered and felt each other's
+presence. All was fresh around them, familiar and yet new, tinged with
+the beauty of their new-found happiness.
+
+"Did you not know it before?" he asked.
+
+"I did not dare to think it."
+
+"What a mask of ice I must wear! How could a man feel as I have done
+without showing it? Your sister at least knew."
+
+"Ida!"
+
+"It was last night. She began to praise you, I said what I felt, and
+then in an instant it was all out."
+
+"But what could you--what could you see in me? Oh, I do pray that you
+may not repent it!" The gentle heart was ruffled amid its joy by the
+thought of its own unworthiness.
+
+"Repent it! I feel that I am a saved man. You do not know how degrading
+this city life is, how debasing, and yet how absorbing. Money for ever
+clinks in your ear. You can think of nothing else. From the bottom of my
+heart I hate it, and yet how can I draw back without bringing grief
+to my dear old father? There was but one way in which I could defy the
+taint, and that was by having a home influence so pure and so high that
+it may brace me up against all that draws me down. I have felt that
+influence already. I know that when I am talking to you I am a better
+man. It is you who must go with me through life, or I must walk for
+ever alone."
+
+"Oh, Harold, I am so happy!" Still they wandered amid the darkening
+shadows, while one by one the stars peeped out in the blue black sky
+above them. At last a chill night wind blew up from the east, and
+brought them back to the realities of life.
+
+"You must go in. You will be cold."
+
+"My father will wonder where I am. Shall I say anything to him?"
+
+"If you like, my darling. Or I will in the morning. I must tell my
+mother to-night. I know how delighted she will be."
+
+"I do hope so."
+
+"Let me take you up the garden path. It is so dark. Your lamp is not lit
+yet. There is the window. Till to-morrow, then, dearest."
+
+"Till to-morrow, Harold."
+
+"My own darling!" He stooped, and their lips met for the first time.
+Then, as she pushed open the folding windows she heard his quick, firm
+step as it passed down the graveled path. A lamp was lit as she entered
+the room, and there was Ida, dancing about like a mischievous little
+fairy in front of her.
+
+"And have you anything to tell me?" she asked, with a solemn face. Then,
+suddenly throwing her arms round her sister's neck, "Oh, you dear, dear
+old Clara! I am so pleased. I am so pleased."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. VENIT TANDEM FELICITAS.
+
+
+It was just three days after the Doctor and the Admiral had
+congratulated each other upon the closer tie which was to unite their
+two families, and to turn their friendship into something even dearer
+and more intimate, that Miss Ida Walker received a letter which caused
+her some surprise and considerable amusement. It was dated from next
+door, and was handed in by the red-headed page after breakfast.
+
+"Dear Miss Ida," began this curious document, and then relapsed suddenly
+into the third person. "Mr. Charles Westmacott hopes that he may have
+the extreme pleasure of a ride with Miss Ida Walker upon his tandem
+tricycle. Mr. Charles Westmacott will bring it round in half an hour.
+You in front. Yours very truly, Charles Westmacott." The whole was
+written in a large, loose-jointed, and school-boyish hand, very thin on
+the up strokes and thick on the down, as though care and pains had gone
+to the fashioning of it.
+
+Strange as was the form, the meaning was clear enough; so Ida hastened
+to her room, and had hardly slipped on her light grey cycling dress when
+she saw the tandem with its large occupant at the door. He handed her up
+to her saddle with a more solemn and thoughtful face than was usual
+with him, and a few moments later they were flying along the beautiful,
+smooth suburban roads in the direction of Forest Hill. The great limbs
+of the athlete made the heavy machine spring and quiver with every
+stroke; while the mignon grey figure with the laughing face, and the
+golden curls blowing from under the little pink-banded straw hat, simply
+held firmly to her perch, and let the treadles whirl round beneath her
+feet. Mile after mile they flew, the wind beating in her face, the trees
+dancing past in two long ranks on either side, until they had passed
+round Croydon and were approaching Norwood once more from the further
+side.
+
+"Aren't you tired?" she asked, glancing over her shoulder and turning
+towards him a little pink ear, a fluffy golden curl, and one blue eye
+twinkling from the very corner of its lid.
+
+"Not a bit. I am just getting my swing."
+
+"Isn't it wonderful to be strong? You always remind me of a
+steamengine."
+
+"Why a steamengine?"
+
+"Well, because it is so powerful, and reliable, and unreasoning. Well, I
+didn't mean that last, you know, but--but--you know what I mean. What is
+the matter with you?"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because you have something on your mind. You have not laughed once."
+
+He broke into a gruesome laugh. "I am quite jolly," said he.
+
+"Oh, no, you are not. And why did you write me such a dreadfully stiff
+letter?"
+
+"There now," he cried, "I was sure it was stiff. I said it was absurdly
+stiff."
+
+"Then why write it?"
+
+"It wasn't my own composition."
+
+"Whose then? Your aunt's?"
+
+"Oh, no. It was a person of the name of Slattery."
+
+"Goodness! Who is he?"
+
+"I knew it would come out, I felt that it would. You've heard of
+Slattery the author?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"He is wonderful at expressing himself. He wrote a book called 'The
+Secret Solved; or, Letter-writing Made Easy.' It gives you models of all
+sorts of letters."
+
+Ida burst out laughing. "So you actually copied one."
+
+"It was to invite a young lady to a picnic, but I set to work and soon
+got it changed so that it would do very well. Slattery seems never
+to have asked any one to ride a tandem. But when I had written it, it
+seemed so dreadfully stiff that I had to put a little beginning and end
+of my own, which seemed to brighten it up a good deal."
+
+
+"I thought there was something funny about the beginning and end."
+
+"Did you? Fancy your noticing the difference in style. How quick you
+are! I am very slow at things like that. I ought to have been a woodman,
+or game-keeper, or something. I was made on those lines. But I have
+found something now."
+
+"What is that, then?"
+
+"Ranching. I have a chum in Texas, and he says it is a rare life. I am
+to buy a share in his business. It is all in the open air--shooting, and
+riding, and sport. Would it--would it inconvenience you much, Ida, to
+come out there with me?"
+
+Ida nearly fell off her perch in her amazement. The only words of which
+she could think were "My goodness me!" so she said them.
+
+"If it would not upset your plans, or change your arrangements in any
+way." He had slowed down and let go of the steering handle, so that the
+great machine crawled aimlessly about from one side of the road to the
+other. "I know very well that I am not clever or anything of that sort,
+but still I would do all I can to make you very happy. Don't you think
+that in time you might come to like me a little bit?"
+
+Ida gave a cry of fright. "I won't like you if you run me against a
+brick wall," she said, as the machine rasped up against the curb, "Do
+attend to the steering."
+
+"Yes, I will. But tell me, Ida, whether you will come with me."
+
+"Oh, I don't know. It's too absurd! How can we talk about such things
+when I cannot see you? You speak to the nape of my neck, and then I have
+to twist my head round to answer."
+
+"I know. That was why I put 'You in front' upon my letter. I thought
+that it would make it easier. But if you would prefer it I will stop the
+machine, and then you can sit round and talk about it."
+
+"Good gracious!" cried Ida. "Fancy our sitting face to face on a
+motionless tricycle in the middle of the road, and all the people
+looking out of their windows at us!"
+
+"It would look rather funny, wouldn't it? Well, then, suppose that we
+both get off and push the tandem along in front of us?"
+
+"Oh, no, this is better than that."
+
+"Or I could carry the thing."
+
+Ida burst out laughing. "That would be more absurd still."
+
+"Then we will go quietly, and I will look out for the steering. I won't
+talk about it at all if you would rather not. But I really do love you
+very much, and you would make me happy if you came to Texas with me, and
+I think that perhaps after a time I could make you happy too."
+
+"But your aunt?"
+
+"Oh, she would like it very much. I can understand that your father
+might not like to lose you. I'm sure I wouldn't either, if I were he.
+But after all, America is not very far off nowadays, and is not so very
+wild. We would take a grand piano, and--and--a copy of Browning. And
+Denver and his wife would come over to see us. We should be quite a
+family party. It would be jolly."
+
+Ida sat listening to the stumbling words and awkward phrases which
+were whispered from the back of her, but there was something in Charles
+Westmacott's clumsiness of speech which was more moving than the words
+of the most eloquent of pleaders. He paused, he stammered, he caught his
+breath between the words, and he blurted out in little blunt phrases all
+the hopes of his heart. If love had not come to her yet, there was at
+least pity and sympathy, which are nearly akin to it. Wonder there was
+also that one so weak and frail as she should shake this strong man so,
+should have the whole course of his life waiting for her decision. Her
+left hand was on the cushion at her side. He leaned forward and took it
+gently in his own. She did not try to draw it back from him.
+
+"May I have it," said he, "for life?"
+
+"Oh, do attend to your steering," said she, smiling round at him; "and
+don't say any more about this to-day. Please don't!"
+
+"When shall I know, then?"
+
+"Oh, to-night, to-morrow, I don't know. I must ask Clara. Talk about
+something else."
+
+And they did talk about something else; but her left hand was still
+enclosed in his, and he knew, without asking again, that all was well.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. SHADOWS BEFORE.
+
+
+Mrs. Westmacott's great meeting for the enfranchisement of woman had
+passed over, and it had been a triumphant success. All the maids and
+matrons of the southern suburbs had rallied at her summons, there was an
+influential platform with Dr. Balthazar Walker in the chair, and Admiral
+Hay Denver among his more prominent supporters. One benighted male had
+come in from the outside darkness and had jeered from the further end
+of the hall, but he had been called to order by the chair, petrified
+by indignant glances from the unenfranchised around him, and finally
+escorted to the door by Charles Westmacott. Fiery resolutions were
+passed, to be forwarded to a large number of leading statesmen, and the
+meeting broke up with the conviction that a shrewd blow had been struck
+for the cause of woman.
+
+But there was one woman at least to whom the meeting and all that
+was connected with it had brought anything but pleasure. Clara Walker
+watched with a heavy heart the friendship and close intimacy which had
+sprung up between her father and the widow. From week to week it had
+increased until no day ever passed without their being together. The
+coming meeting had been the excuse for these continual interviews, but
+now the meeting was over, and still the Doctor would refer every point
+which rose to the judgment of his neighbor. He would talk, too, to his
+two daughters of her strength of character, her decisive mind, and of
+the necessity of their cultivating her acquaintance and following
+her example, until at last it had become his most common topic of
+conversation.
+
+All this might have passed as merely the natural pleasure which an
+elderly man might take in the society of an intelligent and handsome
+woman, but there were other points which seemed to Clara to give it a
+deeper meaning. She could not forget that when Charles Westmacott had
+spoken to her one night he had alluded to the possibility of his aunt
+marrying again. He must have known or noticed something before he would
+speak upon such a subject. And then again Mrs. Westmacott had herself
+said that she hoped to change her style of living shortly and take over
+completely new duties. What could that mean except that she expected to
+marry? And whom? She seemed to see few friends outside their own little
+circle. She must have alluded to her father. It was a hateful thought,
+and yet it must be faced.
+
+One evening the Doctor had been rather late at his neighbor's. He used
+to go into the Admiral's after dinner, but now he turned more frequently
+in the other direction. When he returned Clara was sitting alone in the
+drawing-room reading a magazine. She sprang up as he entered, pushed
+forward his chair, and ran to fetch his slippers.
+
+"You are looking a little pale, dear," he remarked.
+
+"Oh, no, papa, I am very well."
+
+"All well with Harold?"
+
+"Yes. His partner, Mr. Pearson, is still away, and he is doing all the
+work."
+
+"Well done. He is sure to succeed. Where is Ida?"
+
+"In her room, I think."
+
+"She was with Charles Westmacott on the lawn not very long ago. He seems
+very fond of her. He is not very bright, but I think he will make her a
+good husband."
+
+"I am sure of it, papa. He is very manly and reliable."
+
+"Yes, I should think that he is not the sort of man who goes wrong.
+There is nothing hidden about him. As to his brightness, it really does
+not matter, for his aunt, Mrs. Westmacott, is very rich, much richer
+than you would think from her style of living, and she has made him a
+handsome provision."
+
+"I am glad of that."
+
+"It is between ourselves. I am her trustee, and so I know something of
+her arrangements. And when are you going to marry, Clara?"
+
+"Oh, papa, not for some time yet. We have not thought of a date."
+
+"Well, really, I don't know that there is any reason for delay. He has
+a competence and it increases yearly. As long as you are quite certain
+that your mind is made up----"
+
+"Oh, papa!"
+
+"Well, then, I really do not know why there should be any delay. And
+Ida, too, must be married within the next few months. Now, what I want
+to know is what I am to do when my two little companions run away
+from me." He spoke lightly, but his eyes were grave as he looked
+questioningly at his daughter.
+
+"Dear papa, you shall not be alone. It will be years before Harold and I
+think of marrying, and when we do you must come and live with us."
+
+"No, no, dear. I know that you mean what you say, but I have seen
+something of the world, and I know that such arrangements never answer.
+There cannot be two masters in a house, and yet at my age my freedom is
+very necessary to me."
+
+"But you would be completely free."
+
+"No, dear, you cannot be that if you are a guest in another man's house.
+Can you suggest no other alternative?"
+
+"That we remain with you."
+
+"No, no. That is out of the question. Mrs. Westmacott herself says that
+a woman's first duty is to marry. Marriage, however, should be an equal
+partnership, as she points out. I should wish you both to marry, but
+still I should like a suggestion from you, Clara, as to what I should
+do."
+
+"But there is no hurry, papa. Let us wait. I do not intend to marry
+yet."
+
+Doctor Walker looked disappointed. "Well, Clara, if you can suggest
+nothing, I suppose that I must take the initiative myself," said he.
+
+"Then what do you propose, papa?" She braced herself as one who sees the
+blow which is about to fall.
+
+He looked at her and hesitated. "How like your poor dear mother you are,
+Clara!" he cried. "As I looked at you then it was as if she had come
+back from the grave." He stooped towards her and kissed her. "There,
+run away to your sister, my dear, and do not trouble yourself about me.
+Nothing is settled yet, but you will find that all will come right."
+
+Clara went upstairs sad at heart, for she was sure now that what she had
+feared was indeed about to come to pass, and that her father was going
+to take Mrs. Westmacott to be his wife. In her pure and earnest mind her
+mother's memory was enshrined as that of a saint, and the thought that
+any one should take her place seemed a terrible desecration. Even worse,
+however, did this marriage appear when looked at from the point of view
+of her father's future. The widow might fascinate him by her knowledge
+of the world, her dash, her strength, her unconventionality--all these
+qualities Clara was willing to allow her--but she was convinced that she
+would be unendurable as a life companion. She had come to an age when
+habits are not lightly to be changed, nor was she a woman who was at
+all likely to attempt to change them. How would a sensitive man like
+her father stand the constant strain of such a wife, a woman who was
+all decision, with no softness, and nothing soothing in her nature? It
+passed as a mere eccentricity when they heard of her stout drinking,
+her cigarette smoking, her occasional whiffs at a long clay pipe, her
+horsewhipping of a drunken servant, and her companionship with the snake
+Eliza, whom she was in the habit of bearing about in her pocket. All
+this would become unendurable to her father when his first infatuation
+was past. For his own sake, then, as well as for her mother's memory,
+this match must be prevented. And yet how powerless she was to prevent
+it! What could she do? Could Harold aid her? Perhaps. Or Ida? At least
+she would tell her sister and see what she could suggest.
+
+Ida was in her boudoir, a tiny little tapestried room, as neat and
+dainty as herself, with low walls hung with Imari plaques and with
+pretty little Swiss brackets bearing blue Kaga ware, or the pure white
+Coalport china. In a low chair beneath a red shaded standing lamp sat
+Ida, in a diaphanous evening dress of mousseline de soie, the ruddy
+light tinging her sweet childlike face, and glowing on her golden curls.
+She sprang up as her sister entered, and threw her arms around her.
+
+"Dear old Clara! Come and sit down here beside me. I have not had a chat
+for days. But, oh, what a troubled face! What is it then?" She put up
+her forefinger and smoothed her sister's brow with it.
+
+Clara pulled up a stool, and sitting down beside her sister, passed her
+arm round her waist. "I am so sorry to trouble you, dear Ida," she said.
+"But I do not know what to do.
+
+"There's nothing the matter with Harold?"
+
+"Oh, no, Ida."
+
+"Nor with my Charles?"
+
+"No, no."
+
+Ida gave a sigh of relief. "You quite frightened me, dear," said she.
+"You can't think how solemn you look. What is it, then?"
+
+"I believe that papa intends to ask Mrs. Westmacott to marry him."
+
+Ida burst out laughing. "What can have put such a notion into your head,
+Clara?"
+
+"It is only too true, Ida. I suspected it before, and he himself almost
+told me as much with his own lips to-night. I don't think that it is a
+laughing matter."
+
+"Really, I could not help it. If you had told me that those two dear old
+ladies opposite, the Misses Williams, were both engaged, you would not
+have surprised me more. It is really too funny."
+
+"Funny, Ida! Think of any one taking the place of dear mother."
+
+But her sister was of a more practical and less sentimental nature. "I
+am sure," said she, "that dear mother would like papa to do whatever
+would make him most happy. We shall both be away, and why should papa
+not please himself?"
+
+"But think how unhappy he will be. You know how quiet he is in his ways,
+and how even a little thing will upset him. How could he live with a
+wife who would make his whole life a series of surprises? Fancy what
+a whirlwind she must be in a house. A man at his age cannot change his
+ways. I am sure he would be miserable."
+
+Ida's face grew graver, and she pondered over the matter for a few
+minutes. "I really think that you are right as usual," said she at last.
+"I admire Charlie's aunt very much, you know, and I think that she is
+a very useful and good person, but I don't think she would do as a wife
+for poor quiet papa."
+
+"But he will certainly ask her, and I really think that she intends to
+accept him. Then it would be too late to interfere. We have only a few
+days at the most. And what can we do? How can we hope to make him change
+his mind?"
+
+Again Ida pondered. "He has never tried what it is to live with a
+strong-minded woman," said she. "If we could only get him to realize
+it in time. Oh, Clara, I have it; I have it! Such a lovely plan!" She
+leaned back in her chair and burst into a fit of laughter so natural and
+so hearty that Clara had to forget her troubles and to join in it.
+
+"Oh, it is beautiful!" she gasped at last. "Poor papa! What a time he
+will have! But it's all for his own good, as he used to say when we
+had to be punished when we were little. Oh, Clara, I do hope your heart
+won't fail you."
+
+"I would do anything to save him, dear."
+
+"That's it. You must steel yourself by that thought."
+
+"But what is your plan?"
+
+"Oh, I am so proud of it. We will tire him for ever of the widow, and
+of all emancipated women. Let me see, what are Mrs. Westmacott's main
+ideas? You have listened to her more than I. Women should attend less to
+household duties. That is one, is it not?"
+
+"Yes, if they feel they have capabilities for higher things. Then she
+thinks that every woman who has leisure should take up the study of
+some branch of science, and that, as far as possible, every woman should
+qualify herself for some trade or profession, choosing for preference
+those which have been hitherto monopolized by men. To enter the others
+would only be to intensify the present competition."
+
+"Quite so. That is glorious!" Her blue eyes were dancing with mischief,
+and she clapped her hands in her delight. "What else? She thinks that
+whatever a man can do a woman should be allowed to do also--does she
+not?"
+
+"She says so."
+
+"And about dress? The short skirt, and the divided skirt are what she
+believes in?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"We must get in some cloth."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"We must make ourselves a dress each. A brand-new, enfranchised,
+emancipated dress, dear. Don't you see my plan? We shall act up to all
+Mrs. Westmacott's views in every respect, and improve them when we can.
+Then papa will know what it is to live with a woman who claims all her
+rights. Oh, Clara, it will be splendid."
+
+Her milder sister sat speechless before so daring a scheme. "But it
+would be wrong, Ida!" she cried at last.
+
+"Not a bit. It is to save him."
+
+"I should not dare."
+
+"Oh, yes, you would. Harold will help. Besides, what other plan have
+you?"
+
+"I have none."
+
+"Then you must take mine."
+
+"Yes. Perhaps you are right. Well, we do it for a good motive."
+
+"You will do it?"
+
+"I do not see any other way."
+
+"You dear good Clara! Now I will show you what you are to do. We must
+not begin too suddenly. It might excite suspicion."
+
+"What would you do, then?"
+
+"To-morrow we must go to Mrs. Westmacott, and sit at her feet and learn
+all her views."
+
+"What hypocrites we shall feel!"
+
+"We shall be her newest and most enthusiastic converts. Oh, it will be
+such fun, Clara! Then we shall make our plans and send for what we want,
+and begin our new life."
+
+"I do hope that we shall not have to keep it up long. It seems so cruel
+to dear papa."
+
+"Cruel! To save him!"
+
+"I wish I was sure that we were doing right. And yet what else can
+we do? Well, then, Ida, the die is cast, and we will call upon Mrs.
+Westmacott tomorrow."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX. A FAMILY PLOT.
+
+
+Little did poor Doctor Walker imagine as he sat at his breakfast-table
+next morning that the two sweet girls who sat on either side of him were
+deep in a conspiracy, and that he, munching innocently at his muffins,
+was the victim against whom their wiles were planned. Patiently they
+waited until at last their opening came.
+
+"It is a beautiful day," he remarked. "It will do for Mrs. Westmacott.
+She was thinking of having a spin upon the tricycle."
+
+"Then we must call early. We both intended to see her after breakfast."
+
+"Oh, indeed!" The Doctor looked pleased.
+
+"You know, pa," said Ida, "it seems to us that we really have a very
+great advantage in having Mrs. Westmacott living so near."
+
+"Why so, dear?"
+
+"Well, because she is so advanced, you know. If we only study her ways
+we may advance ourselves also."
+
+"I think I have heard you say, papa," Clara remarked, "that she is the
+type of the woman of the future."
+
+"I am very pleased to hear you speak so sensibly, my dears. I certainly
+think that she is a woman whom you may very well take as your model. The
+more intimate you are with her the better pleased I shall be."
+
+"Then that is settled," said Clara demurely, and the talk drifted to
+other matters.
+
+All the morning the two girls sat extracting from Mrs. Westmacott her
+most extreme view as to the duty of the one sex and the tyranny of the
+other. Absolute equality, even in details, was her ideal. Enough of the
+parrot cry of unwomanly and unmaidenly. It had been invented by man
+to scare woman away when she poached too nearly upon his precious
+preserves. Every woman should be independent. Every woman should learn a
+trade. It was their duty to push in where they were least welcome. Then
+they were martyrs to the cause, and pioneers to their weaker sisters.
+Why should the wash-tub, the needle, and the housekeeper's book be
+eternally theirs? Might they not reach higher, to the consulting-room,
+to the bench, and even to the pulpit? Mrs. Westmacott sacrificed her
+tricycle ride in her eagerness over her pet subject, and her two fair
+disciples drank in every word, and noted every suggestion for future
+use. That afternoon they went shopping in London, and before evening
+strange packages began to be handed in at the Doctor's door. The plot
+was ripe for execution, and one of the conspirators was merry and
+jubilant, while the other was very nervous and troubled.
+
+When the Doctor came down to the dining-room next morning, he was
+surprised to find that his daughters had already been up some time. Ida
+was installed at one end of the table with a spirit-lamp, a curved glass
+flask, and several bottles in front of her. The contents of the flask
+were boiling furiously, while a villainous smell filled the room. Clara
+lounged in an arm-chair with her feet upon a second one, a blue-covered
+book in her hand, and a huge map of the British Islands spread across
+her lap. "Hullo!" cried the Doctor, blinking and sniffing, "where's the
+breakfast?"
+
+"Oh, didn't you order it?" asked Ida.
+
+"I! No; why should I?" He rang the bell. "Why have you not laid the
+breakfast, Jane?"
+
+"If you please, sir, Miss Ida was a workin' at the table."
+
+"Oh, of course, Jane," said the young lady calmly. "I am so sorry. I
+shall be ready to move in a few minutes."
+
+"But what on earth are you doing, Ida?" asked the Doctor. "The smell is
+most offensive. And, good gracious, look at the mess which you have made
+upon the cloth! Why, you have burned a hole right through."
+
+"Oh, that is the acid," Ida answered contentedly. "Mrs. Westmacott said
+that it would burn holes."
+
+"You might have taken her word for it without trying," said her father
+dryly.
+
+"But look here, pa! See what the book says: 'The scientific mind takes
+nothing upon trust. Prove all things!' I have proved that."
+
+"You certainly have. Well, until breakfast is ready I'll glance over the
+Times. Have you seen it?"
+
+"The Times? Oh, dear me, this is it which I have under my spirit-lamp.
+I am afraid there is some acid upon that too, and it is rather damp and
+torn. Here it is."
+
+The Doctor took the bedraggled paper with a rueful face. "Everything
+seems to be wrong to-day," he remarked. "What is this sudden enthusiasm
+about chemistry, Ida?"
+
+"Oh, I am trying to live up to Mrs. Westmacott's teaching."
+
+"Quite right! quite right!" said he, though perhaps with less heartiness
+than he had shown the day before. "Ah, here is breakfast at last!"
+
+But nothing was comfortable that morning. There were eggs without
+egg-spoons, toast which was leathery from being kept, dried-up rashers,
+and grounds in the coffee. Above all, there was that dreadful smell
+which pervaded everything and gave a horrible twang to every mouthful.
+
+"I don't wish to put a damper upon your studies, Ida," said the Doctor,
+as he pushed back his chair. "But I do think it would be better if you
+did your chemical experiments a little later in the day."
+
+"But Mrs. Westmacott says that women should rise early, and do their
+work before breakfast."
+
+"Then they should choose some other room besides the breakfast-room."
+The Doctor was becoming just a little ruffled. A turn in the open air
+would soothe him, he thought. "Where are my boots?" he asked.
+
+But they were not in their accustomed corner by his chair. Up and down
+he searched, while the three servants took up the quest, stooping and
+peeping under book-cases and drawers. Ida had returned to her studies,
+and Clara to her blue-covered volume, sitting absorbed and disinterested
+amid the bustle and the racket. At last a general buzz of congratulation
+announced that the cook had discovered the boots hung up among the
+hats in the hall. The Doctor, very red and flustered, drew them on, and
+stamped off to join the Admiral in his morning walk.
+
+As the door slammed Ida burst into a shout of laughter. "You see,
+Clara," she cried, "the charm works already. He has gone to number one
+instead of to number three. Oh, we shall win a great victory. You've
+been very good, dear; I could see that you were on thorns to help him
+when he was looking for his boots."
+
+"Poor papa! It is so cruel. And yet what are we to do?"
+
+"Oh, he will enjoy being comfortable all the more if we give him a
+little discomfort now. What horrible work this chemistry is! Look at
+my frock! It is ruined. And this dreadful smell!" She threw open the
+window, and thrust her little golden-curled head out of it. Charles
+Westmacott was hoeing at the other side of the garden fence.
+
+"Good morning, sir," said Ida.
+
+"Good morning!" The big man leaned upon his hoe and looked up at her.
+
+"Have you any cigarettes, Charles?"
+
+"Yes, certainly."
+
+"Throw me up two."
+
+"Here is my case. Can you catch!"
+
+A seal-skin case came with a soft thud on to the floor. Ida opened it.
+It was full.
+
+"What are these?" she asked.
+
+"Egyptians."
+
+"What are some other brands?"
+
+"Oh, Richmond Gems, and Turkish, and Cambridge. But why?"
+
+"Never mind!" She nodded to him and closed the window. "We must remember
+all those, Clara," said she. "We must learn to talk about such things.
+Mrs. Westmacott knows all about the brands of cigarettes. Has your rum
+come?"
+
+"Yes, dear. It is here."
+
+"And I have my stout. Come along up to my room now. This smell is too
+abominable. But we must be ready for him when he comes back. If we sit
+at the window we shall see him coming down the road."
+
+The fresh morning air, and the genial company of the Admiral had caused
+the Doctor to forget his troubles, and he came back about midday in an
+excellent humor. As he opened the hall door the vile smell of chemicals
+which had spoilt his breakfast met him with a redoubled virulence. He
+threw open the hall window, entered the dining-room, and stood aghast at
+the sight which met his eyes.
+
+Ida was still sitting among her bottles, with a lit cigarette in her
+left hand and a glass of stout on the table beside her. Clara, with
+another cigarette, was lounging in the easy chair with several maps
+spread out upon the floor around. Her feet were stuck up on the coal
+scuttle, and she had a tumblerful of some reddish-brown composition on
+the smoking table close at her elbow. The Doctor gazed from one to the
+other of them through the thin grey haze of smoke, but his eyes rested
+finally in a settled stare of astonishment upon his elder and more
+serious daughter.
+
+"Clara!" he gasped, "I could not have believed it!"
+
+"What is it, papa?"
+
+"You are smoking!"
+
+"Trying to, papa. I find it a little difficult, for I have not been used
+to it."
+
+"But why, in the name of goodness--"
+
+"Mrs. Westmacott recommends it."
+
+"Oh, a lady of mature years may do many things which a young girl must
+avoid."
+
+"Oh, no," cried Ida, "Mrs. Westmacott says that there should be one law
+for all. Have a cigarette, pa?"
+
+"No, thank you. I never smoke in the morning."
+
+"No? Perhaps you don't care for the brand. What are these, Clara?"
+
+"Egyptians."
+
+"Ah, we must have some Richmond Gems or Turkish. I wish, pa, when you go
+into town, you would get me some Turkish."
+
+"I will do nothing of the kind. I do not at all think that it is a
+fitting habit for young ladies. I do not agree with Mrs. Westmacott upon
+the point."
+
+"Really, pa! It was you who advised us to imitate her."
+
+"But with discrimination. What is it that you are drinking, Clara?"
+
+"Rum, papa."
+
+"Rum? In the morning?" He sat down and rubbed his eyes as one who tries
+to shake off some evil dream. "Did you say rum?"
+
+"Yes, pa. They all drink it in the profession which I am going to take
+up."
+
+"Profession, Clara?"
+
+"Mrs. Westmacott says that every woman should follow a calling, and that
+we ought to choose those which women have always avoided."
+
+"Quite so."
+
+"Well, I am going to act upon her advice. I am going to be a pilot."
+
+"My dear Clara! A pilot! This is too much."
+
+"This is a beautiful book, papa. 'The Lights, Beacons, Buoys, Channels,
+and Landmarks of Great Britain.' Here is another, 'The Master Mariner's
+Handbook.' You can't imagine how interesting it is."
+
+"You are joking, Clara. You must be joking!"
+
+"Not at all, pa. You can't think what a lot I have learned already.
+I'm to carry a green light to starboard and a red to port, with a white
+light at the mast-head, and a flare-up every fifteen minutes."
+
+"Oh, won't it look pretty at night!" cried her sister.
+
+"And I know the fog-signals. One blast means that a ship steers to
+starboard, two to port, three astern, four that it is unmanageable. But
+this man asks such dreadful questions at the end of each chapter. Listen
+to this: 'You see a red light. The ship is on the port tack and the wind
+at north; what course is that ship steering to a point?'"
+
+The Doctor rose with a gesture of despair. "I can't imagine what has
+come over you both," said he.
+
+"My dear papa, we are trying hard to live up to Mrs. Westmacott's
+standard."
+
+"Well, I must say that I do not admire the result. Your chemistry, Ida,
+may perhaps do no harm; but your scheme, Clara, is out of the question.
+How a girl of your sense could ever entertain such a notion is more than
+I can imagine. But I must absolutely forbid you to go further with it."
+
+"But, pa," asked Ida, with an air of innocent inquiry in her big blue
+eyes, "what are we to do when your commands and Mrs. Westmacott's advice
+are opposed? You told us to obey her. She says that when women try to
+throw off their shackles, their fathers, brothers and husbands are the
+very first to try to rivet them on again, and that in such a matter no
+man has any authority."
+
+"Does Mrs. Westmacott teach you that I am not the head of my own house?"
+The Doctor flushed, and his grizzled hair bristled in his anger.
+
+"Certainly. She says that all heads of houses are relics of the dark
+ages."
+
+The Doctor muttered something and stamped his foot upon the carpet. Then
+without a word he passed out into the garden and his daughters could see
+him striding furiously up and down, cutting off the heads of the flowers
+with a switch.
+
+"Oh, you darling! You played your part so splendidly!" cried Ida.
+
+"But how cruel it is! When I saw the sorrow and surprise in his eyes I
+very nearly put my arms about him and told him all. Don't you think we
+have done enough?"
+
+"No, no, no. Not nearly enough. You must not turn weak now, Clara. It is
+so funny that I should be leading you. It is quite a new experience. But
+I know I am right. If we go on as we are doing, we shall be able to say
+all our lives that we have saved him. And if we don't, oh, Clara, we
+should never forgive ourselves."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X. WOMEN OF THE FUTURE.
+
+
+From that day the Doctor's peace was gone. Never was a quiet and orderly
+household transformed so suddenly into a bear garden, or a happy man
+turned into such a completely miserable one. He had never realized
+before how entirely his daughters had shielded him from all the friction
+of life. Now that they had not only ceased to protect him, but had
+themselves become a source of trouble to him, he began to understand how
+great the blessing was which he had enjoyed, and to sigh for the happy
+days before his girls had come under the influence of his neighbor.
+
+"You don't look happy," Mrs. Westmacott had remarked to him one morning.
+"You are pale and a little off color. You should come with me for a ten
+mile spin upon the tandem."
+
+"I am troubled about my girls." They were walking up and down in the
+garden. From time to time there sounded from the house behind them the
+long, sad wail of a French horn.
+
+"That is Ida," said he. "She has taken to practicing on that dreadful
+instrument in the intervals of her chemistry. And Clara is quite as bad.
+I declare it is getting quite unendurable."
+
+"Ah, Doctor, Doctor!" she cried, shaking her forefinger, with a gleam
+of her white teeth. "You must live up to your principles--you must give
+your daughters the same liberty as you advocate for other women."
+
+"Liberty, madam, certainly! But this approaches to license."
+
+"The same law for all, my friend." She tapped him reprovingly on the arm
+with her sunshade. "When you were twenty your father did not, I presume,
+object to your learning chemistry or playing a musical instrument. You
+would have thought it tyranny if he had."
+
+"But there is such a sudden change in them both."
+
+"Yes, I have noticed that they have been very enthusiastic lately in the
+cause of liberty. Of all my disciples I think that they promise to be
+the most devoted and consistent, which is the more natural since their
+father is one of our most trusted champions."
+
+The Doctor gave a twitch of impatience. "I seem to have lost all
+authority," he cried.
+
+"No, no, my dear friend. They are a little exuberant at having broken
+the trammels of custom. That is all."
+
+"You cannot think what I have had to put up with, madam. It has been a
+dreadful experience. Last night, after I had extinguished the candle
+in my bedroom, I placed my foot upon something smooth and hard, which
+scuttled from under me. Imagine my horror! I lit the gas, and came upon
+a well-grown tortoise which Clara has thought fit to introduce into the
+house. I call it a filthy custom to have such pets."
+
+Mrs. Westmacott dropped him a little courtesy. "Thank you, sir," said
+she. "That is a nice little side hit at my poor Eliza."
+
+"I give you my word that I had forgotten about her," cried the Doctor,
+flushing. "One such pet may no doubt be endured, but two are more than I
+can bear. Ida has a monkey which lives on the curtain rod. It is a most
+dreadful creature. It will remain absolutely motionless until it sees
+that you have forgotten its presence, and then it will suddenly bound
+from picture to picture all round the walls, and end by swinging down
+on the bell-rope and jumping on to the top of your head. At breakfast
+it stole a poached egg and daubed it all over the door handle. Ida calls
+these outrages amusing tricks."
+
+"Oh, all will come right," said the widow reassuringly.
+
+"And Clara is as bad, Clara who used to be so good and sweet, the very
+image of her poor mother. She insists upon this preposterous scheme of
+being a pilot, and will talk of nothing but revolving lights and hidden
+rocks, and codes of signals, and nonsense of the kind."
+
+"But why preposterous?" asked his companion. "What nobler occupation can
+there be than that of stimulating commerce, and aiding the mariner to
+steer safely into port? I should think your daughter admirably adapted
+for such duties."
+
+"Then I must beg to differ from you, madam."
+
+"Still, you are inconsistent."
+
+"Excuse me, madam, I do not see the matter in the same light. And
+I should be obliged to you if you would use your influence with my
+daughter to dissuade her."
+
+"You wish to make me inconsistent too."
+
+"Then you refuse?"
+
+"I am afraid that I cannot interfere."
+
+The Doctor was very angry. "Very well, madam," said he. "In that case I
+can only say that I have the honor to wish you a very good morning." He
+raised his broad straw hat and strode away up the gravel path, while the
+widow looked after him with twinkling eyes. She was surprised herself to
+find that she liked the Doctor better the more masculine and aggressive
+he became. It was unreasonable and against all principle, and yet so it
+was and no argument could mend the matter.
+
+Very hot and angry, the Doctor retired into his room and sat down to
+read his paper. Ida had retired, and the distant wails of the bugle
+showed that she was upstairs in her boudoir. Clara sat opposite to him
+with her exasperating charts and her blue book. The Doctor glanced at
+her and his eyes remained fixed in astonishment upon the front of her
+skirt.
+
+"My dear Clara," he cried, "you have torn your skirt!"
+
+His daughter laughed and smoothed out her frock. To his horror he saw
+the red plush of the chair where the dress ought to have been. "It is
+all torn!" he cried. "What have you done?"
+
+"My dear papa!" said she, "what do you know about the mysteries of
+ladies' dress? This is a divided skirt."
+
+Then he saw that it was indeed so arranged, and that his daughter was
+clad in a sort of loose, extremely long knickerbockers.
+
+"It will be so convenient for my sea-boots," she explained.
+
+Her father shook his head sadly. "Your dear mother would not have liked
+it, Clara," said he.
+
+For a moment the conspiracy was upon the point of collapsing. There
+was something in the gentleness of his rebuke, and in his appeal to her
+mother, which brought the tears to her eyes, and in another instant she
+would have been kneeling beside him with everything confessed, when the
+door flew open and her sister Ida came bounding into the room. She wore
+a short grey skirt, like that of Mrs. Westmacott, and she held it up in
+each hand and danced about among the furniture.
+
+"I feel quite the Gaiety girl!" she cried. "How delicious it must be
+to be upon the stage! You can't think how nice this dress is, papa. One
+feels so free in it. And isn't Clara charming?"
+
+"Go to your room this instant and take it off!" thundered the Doctor. "I
+call it highly improper, and no daughter of mine shall wear it."
+
+"Papa! Improper! Why, it is the exact model of Mrs. Westmacott's."
+
+"I say it is improper. And yours also, Clara! Your conduct is really
+outrageous. You drive me out of the house. I am going to my club in
+town. I have no comfort or peace of mind in my own house. I will stand
+it no longer. I may be late to-night--I shall go to the British
+Medical meeting. But when I return I shall hope to find that you have
+reconsidered your conduct, and that you have shaken yourself clear of
+the pernicious influences which have recently made such an alteration
+in your conduct." He seized his hat, slammed the dining-room door, and a
+few minutes later they heard the crash of the big front gate.
+
+"Victory, Clara, victory!" cried Ida, still pirouetting around the
+furniture. "Did you hear what he said? Pernicious influences! Don't you
+understand, Clara? Why do you sit there so pale and glum? Why don't you
+get up and dance?"
+
+"Oh, I shall be so glad when it is over, Ida. I do hate to give him
+pain. Surely he has learned now that it is very unpleasant to spend
+one's life with reformers."
+
+"He has almost learned it, Clara. Just one more little lesson. We must
+not risk all at this last moment."
+
+"What would you do, Ida? Oh, don't do anything too dreadful. I feel that
+we have gone too far already."
+
+"Oh, we can do it very nicely. You see we are both engaged and that
+makes it very easy. Harold will do what you ask him, especially as you
+have told him the reason why, and my Charles will do it without even
+wanting to know the reason. Now you know what Mrs. Westmacott thinks
+about the reserve of young ladies. Mere prudery, affectation, and a
+relic of the dark ages of the Zenana. Those were her words, were they
+not?"
+
+"What then?"
+
+"Well, now we must put it in practice. We are reducing all her other
+views to practice, and we must not shirk this one.
+
+"But what would you do? Oh, don't look so wicked, Ida! You look like
+some evil little fairy, with your golden hair and dancing, mischievous
+eyes. I know that you are going to propose something dreadful!"
+
+"We must give a little supper to-night."
+
+"We? A supper!"
+
+"Why not? Young gentlemen give suppers. Why not young ladies?"
+
+"But whom shall we invite?"
+
+"Why, Harold and Charles of course."
+
+"And the Admiral and Mrs. Hay Denver?"
+
+"Oh, no. That would be very old-fashioned. We must keep up with the
+times, Clara."
+
+"But what can we give them for supper?"
+
+"Oh, something with a nice, fast, rollicking, late-at-night-kind of
+flavor to it. Let me see! Champagne, of course--and oysters. Oysters
+will do. In the novels, all the naughty people take champagne and
+oysters. Besides, they won't need any cooking. How is your pocket-money,
+Clara?"
+
+"I have three pounds."
+
+"And I have one. Four pounds. I have no idea how much champagne costs.
+Have you?"
+
+"Not the slightest."
+
+"How many oysters does a man eat?"
+
+"I can't imagine."
+
+"I'll write and ask Charles. No, I won't. I'll ask Jane. Ring for her,
+Clara. She has been a cook, and is sure to know."
+
+Jane, on being cross-questioned, refused to commit herself beyond
+the statement that it depended upon the gentleman, and also upon the
+oysters. The united experience of the kitchen, however, testified that
+three dozen was a fair provision.
+
+"Then we shall have eight dozen altogether," said Ida, jotting down all
+her requirements upon a sheet of paper. "And two pints of champagne. And
+some brown bread, and vinegar, and pepper. That's all, I think. It is
+not so very difficult to give a supper after all, is it, Clara?"
+
+"I don't like it, Ida. It seems to me to be so very indelicate."
+
+"But it is needed to clinch the matter. No, no, there is no drawing back
+now, Clara, or we shall ruin everything. Papa is sure to come back by
+the 9:45. He will reach the door at 10. We must have everything ready
+for him. Now, just sit down at once, and ask Harold to come at nine
+o'clock, and I shall do the same to Charles."
+
+The two invitations were dispatched, received and accepted. Harold
+was already a confidant, and he understood that this was some further
+development of the plot. As to Charles, he was so accustomed to feminine
+eccentricity, in the person of his aunt, that the only thing which could
+surprise him would be a rigid observance of etiquette. At nine o'clock
+they entered the dining-room of Number 2, to find the master of the
+house absent, a red-shaded lamp, a snowy cloth, a pleasant little feast,
+and the two whom they would have chosen, as their companions. A merrier
+party never met, and the house rang with their laughter and their
+chatter.
+
+"It is three minutes to ten," cried Clara, suddenly, glancing at the
+clock.
+
+"Good gracious! So it is! Now for our little tableau!" Ida pushed the
+champagne bottles obtrusively forward, in the direction of the door, and
+scattered oyster shells over the cloth.
+
+"Have you your pipe, Charles?"
+
+"My pipe! Yes."
+
+"Then please smoke it. Now don't argue about it, but do it, for you will
+ruin the effect otherwise."
+
+The large man drew out a red case, and extracted a great yellow
+meerschaum, out of which, a moment later, he was puffing thick wreaths
+of smoke. Harold had lit a cigar, and both the girls had cigarettes.
+
+"That looks very nice and emancipated," said Ida, glancing round. "Now I
+shall lie on this sofa. So! Now, Charles, just sit here, and throw your
+arm carelessly over the back of the sofa. No, don't stop smoking. I like
+it. Clara, dear, put your feet upon the coal-scuttle, and do try to look
+a little dissipated. I wish we could crown ourselves with flowers. There
+are some lettuces on the sideboard. Oh dear, here he is! I hear his
+key." She began to sing in her high, fresh voice a little snatch from a
+French song, with a swinging tra la-la chorus.
+
+The Doctor had walked home from the station in a peaceable and relenting
+frame of mind, feeling that, perhaps, he had said too much in the
+morning, that his daughters had for years been models in every way,
+and that, if there had been any change of late, it was, as they said
+themselves, on account of their anxiety to follow his advice and to
+imitate Mrs. Westmacott. He could see clearly enough now that that
+advice was unwise, and that a world peopled with Mrs. Westmacotts would
+not be a happy or a soothing one. It was he who was, himself, to
+blame, and he was grieved by the thought that perhaps his hot words had
+troubled and saddened his two girls.
+
+This fear, however, was soon dissipated. As he entered his hall he heard
+the voice of Ida uplifted in a rollicking ditty, and a very strong smell
+of tobacco was borne to his nostrils. He threw open the dining-room
+door, and stood aghast at the scene which met his eyes.
+
+The room was full of the blue wreaths of smoke, and the lamp-light shone
+through the thin haze upon gold-topped bottles, plates, napkins, and a
+litter of oyster shells and cigarettes. Ida, flushed and excited, was
+reclining upon the settee, a wine-glass at her elbow, and a cigarette
+between her fingers, while Charles Westmacott sat beside her, with his
+arm thrown over the head of the sofa, with the suggestion of a caress.
+On the other side of the room, Clara was lounging in an arm-chair, with
+Harold beside her, both smoking, and both with wine-glasses beside them.
+The Doctor stood speechless in the doorway, staring at the Bacchanalian
+scene.
+
+"Come in, papa! Do!" cried Ida. "Won't you have a glass of champagne?"
+
+"Pray excuse me," said her father, coldly, "I feel that I am intruding.
+I did not know that you were entertaining. Perhaps you will kindly
+let me know when you have finished. You will find me in my study." He
+ignored the two young men completely, and, closing the door, retired,
+deeply hurt and mortified, to his room. A quarter of an hour afterwards
+he heard the door slam, and his two daughters came to announce that the
+guests were gone.
+
+"Guests! Whose guests?" he cried angrily. "What is the meaning of this
+exhibition?"
+
+"We have been giving a little supper, papa. They were our guests."
+
+"Oh, indeed!" The Doctor laughed sarcastically. "You think it right,
+then, to entertain young bachelors late at night, to smoke and drink
+with them, to---- Oh, that I should ever have lived to blush for my own
+daughters! I thank God that your dear mother never saw the day."
+
+"Dearest papa," cried Clara, throwing her arms about him. "Do not be
+angry with us. If you understood all, you would see that there is no
+harm in it."
+
+"No harm, miss! Who is the best judge of that?"
+
+"Mrs. Westmacott," suggested Ida, slyly.
+
+The Doctor sprang from his chair. "Confound Mrs. Westmacott!" he cried,
+striking frenziedly into the air with his hands. "Am I to hear of
+nothing but this woman? Is she to confront me at every turn? I will
+endure it no longer."
+
+"But it was your wish, papa."
+
+"Then I will tell you now what my second and wiser wish is, and we shall
+see if you will obey it as you have the first."
+
+"Of course we will, papa."
+
+"Then my wish is, that you should forget these odious notions which you
+have imbibed, that you should dress and act as you used to do,
+before ever you saw this woman, and that, in future, you confine
+your intercourse with her to such civilities as are necessary between
+neighbors."
+
+"We are to give up Mrs. Westmacott?"
+
+"Or give up me."
+
+"Oh, dear dad, how can you say anything so cruel?" cried Ida, burrowing
+her towsy golden hair into her father's shirt front, while Clara pressed
+her cheek against his whisker. "Of course we shall give her up, if you
+prefer it."
+
+"Of course we shall, papa."
+
+The Doctor patted the two caressing heads. "These are my own two girls
+again," he cried. "It has been my fault as much as yours. I have been
+astray, and you have followed me in my error. It was only by seeing your
+mistake that I have become conscious of my own. Let us set it aside, and
+neither say nor think anything more about it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI. A BLOT FROM THE BLUE.
+
+
+So by the cleverness of two girls a dark cloud was thinned away
+and turned into sunshine. Over one of them, alas, another cloud was
+gathering, which could not be so easily dispersed. Of these three
+households which fate had thrown together, two had already been united
+by ties of love. It was destined, however, that a bond of another sort
+should connect the Westmacotts with the Hay Denvers.
+
+Between the Admiral and the widow a very cordial feeling had existed
+since the day when the old seaman had hauled down his flag and changed
+his opinions; granting to the yachts-woman all that he had refused to
+the reformer. His own frank and downright nature respected the same
+qualities in his neighbor, and a friendship sprang up between them which
+was more like that which exists between two men, founded upon esteem and
+a community of tastes.
+
+"By the way, Admiral," said Mrs. Westmacott one morning, as they walked
+together down to the station, "I understand that this boy of yours in
+the intervals of paying his devotions to Miss Walker is doing something
+upon 'Change."
+
+"Yes, ma'am, and there is no man of his age who is doing so well. He's
+drawing ahead, I can tell you, ma'am. Some of those that started with
+him are hull down astarn now. He touched his five hundred last year, and
+before he's thirty he'll be making the four figures."
+
+"The reason I asked is that I have small investments to make myself from
+time to time, and my present broker is a rascal. I should be very glad
+to do it through your son."
+
+"It is very kind of you, ma'am. His partner is away on a holiday, and
+Harold would like to push on a bit and show what he can do. You know
+the poop isn't big enough to hold the lieutenant when the skipper's on
+shore."
+
+"I suppose he charges the usual half per cent?"
+
+"Don't know, I'm sure, ma'am. I'll swear that he does what is right and
+proper."
+
+"That is what I usually pay--ten shillings in the hundred pounds. If
+you see him before I do just ask him to get me five thousand in New
+Zealands. It is at four just now, and I fancy it may rise."
+
+"Five thousand!" exclaimed the Admiral, reckoning it in his own mind.
+"Lemme see! That's twenty-five pounds commission. A nice day's work,
+upon my word. It is a very handsome order, ma'am."
+
+"Well, I must pay some one, and why not him?"
+
+"I'll tell him, and I'm sure he'll lose no time."
+
+"Oh, there is no great hurry. By the way, I understand from what you
+said just now that he has a partner."
+
+"Yes, my boy is the junior partner. Pearson is the senior. I was
+introduced to him years ago, and he offered Harold the opening. Of
+course we had a pretty stiff premium to pay."
+
+Mrs. Westmacott had stopped, and was standing very stiffly with her Red
+Indian face even grimmer than usual.
+
+"Pearson?" said she. "Jeremiah Pearson?"
+
+"The same."
+
+"Then it's all off," she cried. "You need not carry out that
+investment."
+
+"Very well, ma'am."
+
+They walked on together side by side, she brooding over some thought of
+her own, and he a little crossed and disappointed at her caprice and the
+lost commission for Harold.
+
+"I tell you what, Admiral," she exclaimed suddenly, "if I were you I
+should get your boy out of this partnership."
+
+"But why, madam?"
+
+"Because he is tied to one of the deepest, slyest foxes in the whole
+city of London."
+
+"Jeremiah Pearson, ma'am? What can you know of him? He bears a good
+name."
+
+"No one in this world knows Jeremiah Pearson as I know him, Admiral.
+I warn you because I have a friendly feeling both for you and for your
+son. The man is a rogue and you had best avoid him."
+
+"But these are only words, ma'am. Do you tell me that you know him
+better than the brokers and jobbers in the City?"
+
+"Man," cried Mrs. Westmacott, "will you allow that I know him when I
+tell you that my maiden name was Ada Pearson, and that Jeremiah is my
+only brother?"
+
+The Admiral whistled. "Whew!" cried he. "Now that I think of it, there
+is a likeness."
+
+"He is a man of iron, Admiral--a man without a heart. I should shock you
+if I were to tell you what I have endured from my brother. My father's
+wealth was divided equally between us. His own share he ran through in
+five years, and he has tried since then by every trick of a cunning,
+low-minded man, by base cajolery, by legal quibbles, by brutal
+intimidation, to juggle me out of my share as well. There is no villainy
+of which the man is not capable. Oh, I know my brother Jeremiah. I know
+him and I am prepared for him."
+
+"This is all new to me, ma'am. 'Pon my word, I hardly know what to say
+to it. I thank you for having spoken so plainly. From what you say, this
+is a poor sort of consort for a man to sail with. Perhaps Harold would
+do well to cut himself adrift."
+
+"Without losing a day."
+
+"Well, we shall talk it over. You may be sure of that. But here we are
+at the station, so I will just see you into your carriage and then home
+to see what my wife says to the matter."
+
+As he trudged homewards, thoughtful and perplexed, he was surprised to
+hear a shout behind him, and to see Harold running down the road after
+him.
+
+"Why, dad," he cried, "I have just come from town, and the first thing
+I saw was your back as you marched away. But you are such a quick walker
+that I had to run to catch you."
+
+The Admiral's smile of pleasure had broken his stern face into a
+thousand wrinkles. "You are early to-day," said he.
+
+"Yes, I wanted to consult you."
+
+"Nothing wrong?"
+
+"Oh no, only an inconvenience."
+
+"What is it, then?"
+
+"How much have we in our private account?"
+
+"Pretty fair. Some eight hundred, I think."
+
+"Oh, half that will be ample. It was rather thoughtless of Pearson."
+
+"What then?"
+
+"Well, you see, dad, when he went away upon this little holiday to Havre
+he left me to pay accounts and so on. He told me that there was enough
+at the bank for all claims. I had occasion on Tuesday to pay away two
+cheques, one for L80, and the other for L120, and here they are returned
+with a bank notice that we have already overdrawn to the extent of some
+hundreds."
+
+The Admiral looked very grave. "What's the meaning of that, then?" he
+asked.
+
+"Oh, it can easily be set right. You see Pearson invests all the spare
+capital and keeps as small a margin as possible at the bank. Still it
+was too bad for him to allow me even to run a risk of having a cheque
+returned. I have written to him and demanded his authority to sell out
+some stock, and I have written an explanation to these people. In the
+meantime, however, I have had to issue several cheques; so I had better
+transfer part of our private account to meet them."
+
+"Quite so, my boy. All that's mine is yours. But who do you think this
+Pearson is? He is Mrs. Westmacott's brother."
+
+"Really. What a singular thing! Well, I can see a likeness now that you
+mention it. They have both the same hard type of face."
+
+"She has been warning me against him--says he is the rankest pirate
+in London. I hope that it is all right, boy, and that we may not find
+ourselves in broken water."
+
+Harold had turned a little pale as he heard Mrs. Westmacott's opinion of
+his senior partner. It gave shape and substance to certain vague fears
+and suspicions of his own which had been pushed back as often as they
+obtruded themselves as being too monstrous and fantastic for belief.
+
+"He is a well-known man in the City, dad," said he.
+
+"Of course he is--of course he is. That is what I told her. They would
+have found him out there if anything had been amiss with him. Bless you,
+there's nothing so bitter as a family quarrel. Still it is just as well
+that you have written about this affair, for we may as well have all
+fair and aboveboard."
+
+But Harold's letter to his partner was crossed by a letter from his
+partner to Harold. It lay awaiting him upon the breakfast table next
+morning, and it sent the heart into his mouth as he read it, and caused
+him to spring up from his chair with a white face and staring eyes.
+
+"My boy! My boy!"
+
+"I am ruined, mother--ruined!" He stood gazing wildly in front of him,
+while the sheet of paper fluttered down on the carpet. Then he dropped
+back into the chair, and sank his face into his hands. His mother
+had her arms round him in an instant, while the Admiral, with shaking
+fingers, picked up the letter from the floor and adjusted his glasses to
+read it.
+
+
+"My DEAR DENVER," it ran. "By the time that this reaches you I shall
+be out of the reach of yourself or of any one else who may desire an
+interview. You need not search for me, for I assure you that this letter
+is posted by a friend, and that you will have your trouble in vain if
+you try to find me. I am sorry to leave you in such a tight place, but
+one or other of us must be squeezed, and on the whole I prefer that
+it should be you. You'll find nothing in the bank, and about L13,000
+unaccounted for. I'm not sure that the best thing you can do is not to
+realize what you can, and imitate your senior's example. If you act at
+once you may get clean away. If not, it's not only that you must put up
+your shutters, but I am afraid that this missing money could hardly be
+included as an ordinary debt, and of course you are legally responsible
+for it just as much as I am. Take a friend's advice and get to America.
+A young man with brains can always do something out there, and you can
+live down this little mischance. It will be a cheap lesson if it teaches
+you to take nothing upon trust in business, and to insist upon knowing
+exactly what your partner is doing, however senior he may be to you.
+
+"Yours faithfully,
+
+"JEREMIAH PEARSON."
+
+
+"Great Heavens!" groaned the Admiral, "he has absconded."
+
+"And left me both a bankrupt and a thief."
+
+"No, no, Harold," sobbed his mother. "All will be right. What matter
+about money!"
+
+"Money, mother! It is my honor."
+
+"The boy is right. It is his honor, and my honor, for his is mine. This
+is a sore trouble, mother, when we thought our life's troubles were all
+behind us, but we will bear it as we have borne others." He held out
+his stringy hand, and the two old folk sat with bowed grey heads, their
+fingers intertwined, strong in each other's love and sympathy.
+
+"We were too happy," she sighed.
+
+"But it is God's will, mother."
+
+"Yes, John, it is God's will."
+
+"And yet it is bitter to bear. I could have lost all, the house, money,
+rank--I could have borne it. But at my age--my honor--the honor of an
+admiral of the fleet."
+
+"No honor can be lost, John, where no dishonor has been done. What have
+you done? What has Harold done? There is no question of honor."
+
+The old man shook his head, but Harold had already called together his
+clear practical sense, which for an instant in the presence of this
+frightful blow had deserted him.
+
+"The mater is right, dad," said he. "It is bad enough, Heaven knows, but
+we must not take too dark a view of it. After all, this insolent letter
+is in itself evidence that I had nothing to do with the schemes of the
+base villain who wrote it."
+
+"They may think it prearranged."
+
+"They could not. My whole life cries out against the thought. They could
+not look me in the face and entertain it."
+
+"No, boy, not if they have eyes in their heads," cried the Admiral,
+plucking up courage at the sight of the flashing eyes and brave, defiant
+face. "We have the letter, and we have your character. We'll weather it
+yet between them. It's my fault from the beginning for choosing such a
+land-shark for your consort. God help me, I thought I was finding such
+an opening for you."
+
+"Dear dad! How could you possibly know? As he says in his letter, it
+has given me a lesson. But he was so much older and so much more
+experienced, that it was hard for me to ask to examine his books. But we
+must waste no time. I must go to the City."
+
+"What will you do?"
+
+"What an honest man should do. I will write to all our clients and
+creditors, assemble them, lay the whole matter before them, read them
+the letter and put myself absolutely in their hands."
+
+"That's it, boy--yard-arm to yard-arm, and have it over."
+
+"I must go at once." He put on his top-coat and his hat. "But I have ten
+minutes yet before I can catch a train. There is one little thing which
+I must do before I start."
+
+He had caught sight through the long glass folding door of the gleam of
+a white blouse and a straw hat in the tennis ground. Clara used often
+to meet him there of a morning to say a few words before he hurried away
+into the City. He walked out now with the quick, firm step of a man who
+has taken a momentous resolution, but his face was haggard and his lips
+pale.
+
+"Clara," said he, as she came towards him with words of greeting, "I am
+sorry to bring ill news to you, but things have gone wrong in the City,
+and--and I think that I ought to release you from your engagement."
+
+Clara stared at him with her great questioning dark eyes, and her face
+became as pale as his.
+
+"How can the City affect you and me, Harold?"
+
+"It is dishonor. I cannot ask you to share it."
+
+"Dishonor! The loss of some miserable gold and silver coins!"
+
+"Oh, Clara, if it were only that! We could be far happier together in
+a little cottage in the country than with all the riches of the City.
+Poverty could not cut me to the heart, as I have been cut this morning.
+Why, it is but twenty minutes since I had the letter, Clara, and it
+seems to me to be some old, old thing which happened far away in my past
+life, some horrid black cloud which shut out all the freshness and the
+peace from it."
+
+"But what is it, then? What do you fear worse than poverty?"
+
+"To have debts that I cannot meet. To be hammered upon 'Change and
+declared a bankrupt. To know that others have a just claim upon me
+and to feel that I dare not meet their eyes. Is not that worse than
+poverty?"
+
+"Yes, Harold, a thousand fold worse! But all this may be got over. Is
+there nothing more?"
+
+"My partner has fled and left me responsible for heavy debts, and in
+such a position that I may be required by the law to produce some at
+least of this missing money. It has been confided to him to invest, and
+he has embezzled it. I, as his partner, am liable for it. I have brought
+misery on all whom I love--my father, my mother. But you at least shall
+not be under the shadow. You are free, Clara. There is no tie between
+us."
+
+"It takes two to make such a tie, Harold," said she, smiling and putting
+her hand inside his arm. "It takes two to make it, dear, and also two to
+break it. Is that the way they do business in the City, sir, that a man
+can always at his own sweet will tear up his engagement?"
+
+"You hold me to it, Clara?"
+
+"No creditor so remorseless as I, Harold. Never, never shall you get
+from that bond."
+
+"But I am ruined. My whole life is blasted."
+
+"And so you wish to ruin me, and blast my life also. No indeed, sir, you
+shall not get away so lightly. But seriously now, Harold, you would hurt
+me if it were not so absurd. Do you think that a woman's love is like
+this sunshade which I carry in my hand, a thing only fitted for the
+sunshine, and of no use when the winds blow and the clouds gather?"
+
+"I would not drag you down, Clara."
+
+"Should I not be dragged down indeed if I left your side at such a time?
+It is only now that I can be of use to you, help you, sustain you. You
+have always been so strong, so above me. You are strong still, but then
+two will be stronger. Besides, sir, you have no idea what a woman of
+business I am. Papa says so, and he knows."
+
+Harold tried to speak, but his heart was too full. He could only press
+the white hand which curled round his sleeve. She walked up and down
+by his side, prattling merrily, and sending little gleams of cheeriness
+through the gloom which girt him in. To listen to her he might have
+thought that it was Ida, and not her staid and demure sister, who was
+chatting to him.
+
+"It will soon be cleared up," she said, "and then we shall feel quite
+dull. Of course all business men have these little ups and downs. Why,
+I suppose of all the men you meet upon 'Change, there is not one who has
+not some such story to tell. If everything was always smooth, you know,
+then of course every one would turn stockbroker, and you would have to
+hold your meetings in Hyde Park. How much is it that you need?"
+
+"More than I can ever get. Not less than thirteen thousand pounds."
+
+Clara's face fell as she heard the amount. "What do you purpose doing?"
+
+"I shall go to the City now, and I shall ask all our creditors to meet
+me to-morrow. I shall read them Pearson's letter, and put myself into
+their hands."
+
+"And they, what will they do?"
+
+"What can they do? They will serve writs for their money, and the firm
+will be declared bankrupt."
+
+"And the meeting will be to-morrow, you say. Will you take my advice?"
+
+"What is it, Clara?"
+
+"To ask them for a few days of delay. Who knows what new turn matters
+may take?"
+
+"What turn can they take? I have no means of raising the money."
+
+"Let us have a few days."
+
+"Oh, we should have that in the ordinary course of business. The legal
+formalities would take them some little time. But I must go, Clara, I
+must not seem to shirk. My place now must be at my offices."
+
+"Yes, dear, you are right. God bless you and guard you! I shall be
+here in The Wilderness, but all day I shall be by your office table at
+Throgmorton Street in spirit, and if ever you should be sad you will
+hear my little whisper in your ear, and know that there is one client
+whom you will never be able to get rid of--never as long as we both
+live, dear."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII. FRIENDS IN NEED.
+
+
+"Now, papa," said Clara that morning, wrinkling her brows and putting
+her finger-tips together with the air of an experienced person of
+business, "I want to have a talk to you about money matters."
+
+"Yes, my dear." He laid down his paper, and looked a question.
+
+"Kindly tell me again, papa, how much money I have in my very own right.
+You have often told me before, but I always forget figures."
+
+"You have two hundred and fifty pounds a year of your own, under your
+aunt's will.
+
+"And Ida?"
+
+"Ida has one hundred and fifty."
+
+"Now, I think I can live very well on fifty pounds a year, papa. I
+am not very extravagant, and I could make my own dresses if I had a
+sewing-machine."
+
+"Very likely, dear."
+
+"In that case I have two hundred a year which I could do without."
+
+"If it were necessary."
+
+"But it is necessary. Oh, do help me, like a good, dear, kind papa, in
+this matter, for my whole heart is set upon it. Harold is in sore need
+of money, and through no fault of his own." With a woman's tact and
+eloquence, she told the whole story. "Put yourself in my place, papa.
+What is the money to me? I never think of it from year's end to year's
+end. But now I know how precious it is. I could not have thought that
+money could be so valuable. See what I can do with it. It may help to
+save him. I must have it by to-morrow. Oh, do, do advise me as to what I
+should do, and how I should get the money."
+
+The Doctor smiled at her eagerness. "You are as anxious to get rid of
+money as others are to gain it," said he. "In another case I might think
+it rash, but I believe in your Harold, and I can see that he has had
+villainous treatment. You will let me deal with the matter."
+
+"You, papa?"
+
+"It can be done best between men. Your capital, Clara, is some five
+thousand pounds, but it is out on a mortgage, and you could not call it
+in."
+
+"Oh, dear! oh, dear!"
+
+"But we can still manage. I have as much at my bank. I will advance it
+to the Denvers as coming from you, and you can repay it to me, or the
+interest of it, when your money becomes due."
+
+"Oh, that is beautiful! How sweet and kind of you!"
+
+"But there is one obstacle: I do not think that you would ever induce
+Harold to take this money."
+
+Clara's face fell. "Don't you think so, really?"
+
+"I am sure that he would not."
+
+"Then what are you to do? What horrid things money matters are to
+arrange!"
+
+"I shall see his father. We can manage it all between us."
+
+"Oh, do, do, papa! And you will do it soon?"
+
+"There is no time like the present. I will go in at once." He scribbled
+a cheque, put it in an envelope, put on his broad straw hat, and
+strolled in through the garden to pay his morning call.
+
+It was a singular sight which met his eyes as he entered the
+sitting-room of the Admiral. A great sea chest stood open in the center,
+and all round upon the carpet were little piles of jerseys, oil-skins,
+books, sextant boxes, instruments, and sea-boots. The old seaman sat
+gravely amidst this lumber, turning it over, and examining it intently;
+while his wife, with the tears running silently down her ruddy cheeks,
+sat upon the sofa, her elbows upon her knees and her chin upon her
+hands, rocking herself slowly backwards and forwards.
+
+"Hullo, Doctor," said the Admiral, holding out his hand, "there's foul
+weather set in upon us, as you may have heard, but I have ridden out
+many a worse squall, and, please God, we shall all three of us weather
+this one also, though two of us are a little more cranky than we were."
+
+"My dear friends, I came in to tell you how deeply we sympathize with
+you all. My girl has only just told me about it."
+
+"It has come so suddenly upon us, Doctor," sobbed Mrs. Hay Denver. "I
+thought that I had John to myself for the rest of our lives--Heaven
+knows that we have not seen very much of each other--but now he talks of
+going to sea again.
+
+"Aye, aye, Walker, that's the only way out of it. When I first heard of
+it I was thrown up in the wind with all aback. I give you my word that
+I lost my bearings more completely than ever since I strapped a middy's
+dirk to my belt. You see, friend, I know something of shipwreck or
+battle or whatever may come upon the waters, but the shoals in the City
+of London on which my poor boy has struck are clean beyond me. Pearson
+had been my pilot there, and now I know him to be a rogue. But I've
+taken my bearings now, and I see my course right before me."
+
+"What then, Admiral?"
+
+"Oh, I have one or two little plans. I'll have some news for the boy.
+Why, hang it, Walker man, I may be a bit stiff in the joints, but you'll
+be my witness that I can do my twelve miles under the three hours. What
+then? My eyes are as good as ever except just for the newspaper. My head
+is clear. I'm three-and-sixty, but I'm as good a man as ever I was--too
+good a man to lie up for another ten years. I'd be the better for a
+smack of the salt water again, and a whiff of the breeze. Tut, mother,
+it's not a four years' cruise this time. I'll be back every month or
+two. It's no more than if I went for a visit in the country." He was
+talking boisterously, and heaping his sea-boots and sextants back into
+his chest.
+
+"And you really think, my dear friend, of hoisting your pennant again?"
+
+"My pennant, Walker? No, no. Her Majesty, God bless her, has too many
+young men to need an old hulk like me. I should be plain Mr. Hay Denver,
+of the merchant service. I daresay that I might find some owner who
+would give me a chance as second or third officer. It will be strange to
+me to feel the rails of the bridge under my fingers once more."
+
+"Tut! tut! this will never do, this will never do, Admiral!" The Doctor
+sat down by Mrs. Hay Denver and patted her hand in token of friendly
+sympathy. "We must wait until your son has had it out with all these
+people, and then we shall know what damage is done, and how best to set
+it right. It will be time enough then to begin to muster our resources
+to meet it."
+
+"Our resources!" The Admiral laughed. "There's the pension. I'm afraid,
+Walker, that our resources won't need much mustering."
+
+"Oh, come, there are some which you may not have thought of. For
+example, Admiral, I had always intended that my girl should have five
+thousand from me when she married. Of course your boy's trouble is her
+trouble, and the money cannot be spent better than in helping to set it
+right. She has a little of her own which she wished to contribute, but
+I thought it best to work it this way. Will you take the cheque, Mrs.
+Denver, and I think it would be best if you said nothing to Harold about
+it, and just used it as the occasion served?"
+
+"God bless you, Walker, you are a true friend. I won't forget this,
+Walker." The Admiral sat down on his sea chest and mopped his brow with
+his red handkerchief.
+
+"What is it to me whether you have it now or then? It may be more useful
+now. There's only one stipulation. If things should come to the worst,
+and if the business should prove so bad that nothing can set it right,
+then hold back this cheque, for there is no use in pouring water into a
+broken basin, and if the lad should fall, he will want something to pick
+himself up again with."
+
+"He shall not fall, Walker, and you shall not have occasion to be
+ashamed of the family into which your daughter is about to marry. I
+have my own plan. But we shall hold your money, my friend, and it will
+strengthen us to feel that it is there."
+
+"Well, that is all right," said Doctor Walker, rising. "And if a little
+more should be needed, we must not let him go wrong for the want of a
+thousand or two. And now, Admiral, I'm off for my morning walk. Won't
+you come too?"
+
+"No, I am going into town."
+
+"Well, good-bye. I hope to have better news, and that all will come
+right. Good-bye, Mrs. Denver. I feel as if the boy were my own, and I
+shall not be easy until all is right with him."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII. IN STRANGE WATERS.
+
+
+When Doctor Walker had departed, the Admiral packed all his possessions
+back into his sea chest with the exception of one little brass-bound
+desk. This he unlocked, and took from it a dozen or so blue sheets of
+paper all mottled over with stamps and seals, with very large V. R.'s
+printed upon the heads of them. He tied these carefully into a small
+bundle, and placing them in the inner pocket of his coat, he seized his
+stick and hat.
+
+"Oh, John, don't do this rash thing," cried Mrs. Denver, laying her
+hands upon his sleeve. "I have seen so little of you, John. Only three
+years since you left the service. Don't leave me again. I know it is
+weak of me, but I cannot bear it."
+
+"There's my own brave lass," said he, smoothing down the grey-shot hair.
+"We've lived in honor together, mother, and please God in honor we'll
+die. No matter how debts are made, they have got to be met, and what
+the boy owes we owe. He has not the money, and how is he to find it? He
+can't find it. What then? It becomes my business, and there's only one
+way for it."
+
+"But it may not be so very bad, John. Had we not best wait until after
+he sees these people to-morrow?"
+
+"They may give him little time, lass. But I'll have a care that I don't
+go so far that I can't put back again. Now, mother, there's no use
+holding me. It's got to be done, and there's no sense in shirking it."
+He detached her fingers from his sleeve, pushed her gently back into an
+arm-chair, and hurried from the house.
+
+In less than half an hour the Admiral was whirled into Victoria Station
+and found himself amid a dense bustling throng, who jostled and pushed
+in the crowded terminus. His errand, which had seemed feasible enough in
+his own room, began now to present difficulties in the carrying out, and
+he puzzled over how he should take the first steps. Amid the stream of
+business men, each hurrying on his definite way, the old seaman in his
+grey tweed suit and black soft hat strode slowly along, his head sunk
+and his brow wrinkled in perplexity. Suddenly an idea occurred to him.
+He walked back to the railway stall and bought a daily paper. This he
+turned and turned until a certain column met his eye, when he smoothed
+it out, and carrying it over to a seat, proceeded to read it at his
+leisure.
+
+And, indeed, as a man read that column, it seemed strange to him that
+there should still remain any one in this world of ours who should be in
+straits for want of money. Here were whole lines of gentlemen who were
+burdened with a surplus in their incomes, and who were loudly calling
+to the poor and needy to come and take it off their hands. Here was the
+guileless person who was not a professional moneylender, but who would
+be glad to correspond, etc. Here too was the accommodating individual
+who advanced sums from ten to ten thousand pounds without expense,
+security, or delay. "The money actually paid over within a few hours,"
+ran this fascinating advertisement, conjuring up a vision of swift
+messengers rushing with bags of gold to the aid of the poor struggler. A
+third gentleman did all business by personal application, advanced money
+on anything or nothing; the lightest and airiest promise was enough to
+content him according to his circular, and finally he never asked
+for more than five per cent. This struck the Admiral as far the most
+promising, and his wrinkles relaxed, and his frown softened away as
+he gazed at it. He folded up the paper rose from the seat, and found
+himself face to face with Charles Westmacott.
+
+"Hullo, Admiral!"
+
+"Hullo, Westmacott!" Charles had always been a favorite of the seaman's.
+"What are you doing here?"
+
+"Oh, I have been doing a little business for my aunt. But I have never
+seen you in London before."
+
+"I hate the place. It smothers me. There's not a breath of clean air on
+this side of Greenwich. But maybe you know your way about pretty well in
+the City?"
+
+"Well, I know something about it. You see I've never lived very far from
+it, and I do a good deal of my aunt's business."
+
+"Maybe you know Bread Street?"
+
+"It is out of Cheapside."
+
+"Well then, how do you steer for it from here? You make me out a course
+and I'll keep to it."
+
+"Why, Admiral, I have nothing to do. I'll take you there with pleasure."
+
+"Will you, though? Well, I'd take it very kindly if you would. I have
+business there. Smith and Hanbury, financial agents, Bread Street."
+
+The pair made their way to the river-side, and so down the Thames to St.
+Paul's landing--a mode of travel which was much more to the Admiral's
+taste than 'bus or cab. On the way, he told his companion his mission
+and the causes which had led to it. Charles Westmacott knew little
+enough of City life and the ways of business, but at least he had more
+experience in both than the Admiral, and he made up his mind not to
+leave him until the matter was settled.
+
+"These are the people," said the Admiral, twisting round his paper,
+and pointing to the advertisement which had seemed to him the most
+promising. "It sounds honest and above-board, does it not? The personal
+interview looks as if there were no trickery, and then no one could
+object to five per cent."
+
+"No, it seems fair enough."
+
+"It is not pleasant to have to go hat in hand borrowing money, but there
+are times, as you may find before you are my age, Westmacott, when a man
+must stow away his pride. But here's their number, and their plate is on
+the corner of the door."
+
+A narrow entrance was flanked on either side by a row of brasses,
+ranging upwards from the shipbrokers and the solicitors who occupied
+the ground floors, through a long succession of West Indian agents,
+architects, surveyors, and brokers, to the firm of which they were in
+quest. A winding stone stair, well carpeted and railed at first but
+growing shabbier with every landing, brought them past innumerable doors
+until, at last, just under the ground-glass roofing, the names of Smith
+and Hanbury were to be seen painted in large white letters across a
+panel, with a laconic invitation to push beneath it. Following out the
+suggestion, the Admiral and his companion found themselves in a dingy
+apartment, ill lit from a couple of glazed windows. An ink-stained
+table, littered with pens, papers, and almanacs, an American cloth sofa,
+three chairs of varying patterns, and a much-worn carpet, constituted
+all the furniture, save only a very large and obtrusive porcelain
+spittoon, and a gaudily framed and very somber picture which hung above
+the fireplace. Sitting in front of this picture, and staring gloomily
+at it, as being the only thing which he could stare at, was a small
+sallow-faced boy with a large head, who in the intervals of his art
+studies munched sedately at an apple.
+
+"Is Mr. Smith or Mr. Hanbury in?" asked the Admiral.
+
+"There ain't no such people," said the small boy.
+
+"But you have the names on the door."
+
+"Ah, that is the name of the firm, you see. It's only a name. It's Mr.
+Reuben Metaxa that you wants."
+
+"Well then, is he in?"
+
+"No, he's not."
+
+"When will he be back?"
+
+"Can't tell, I'm sure. He's gone to lunch. Sometimes he takes one hour,
+and sometimes two. It'll be two to-day, I 'spect, for he said he was
+hungry afore he went."
+
+"Then I suppose that we had better call again," said the Admiral.
+
+"Not a bit," cried Charles. "I know how to manage these little imps. See
+here, you young varmint, here's a shilling for you. Run off and fetch
+your master. If you don't bring him here in five minutes I'll clump you
+on the side of the head when you get back. Shoo! Scat!" He charged at
+the youth, who bolted from the room and clattered madly down-stairs.
+
+"He'll fetch him," said Charles. "Let us make ourselves at home.
+This sofa does not feel over and above safe. It was not meant for
+fifteen-stone men. But this doesn't look quite the sort of place where
+one would expect to pick up money."
+
+"Just what I was thinking," said the Admiral, looking ruefully about
+him.
+
+"Ah, well! I have heard that the best furnished offices generally belong
+to the poorest firms. Let us hope it's the opposite here. They can't
+spend much on the management anyhow. That pumpkin-headed boy was the
+staff, I suppose. Ha, by Jove, that's his voice, and he's got our man, I
+think!"
+
+As he spoke the youth appeared in the doorway with a small, brown,
+dried-up little chip of a man at his heels. He was clean-shaven and
+blue-chinned, with bristling black hair, and keen brown eyes which shone
+out very brightly from between pouched under-lids and drooping upper
+ones. He advanced, glancing keenly from one to the other of his
+visitors, and slowly rubbing together his thin, blue-veined hands. The
+small boy closed the door behind him, and discreetly vanished.
+
+"I am Mr. Reuben Metaxa," said the moneylender. "Was it about an advance
+you wished to see me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"For you, I presume?" turning to Charles Westmacott.
+
+"No, for this gentleman."
+
+The moneylender looked surprised. "How much did you desire?"
+
+"I thought of five thousand pounds," said the Admiral.
+
+"And on what security?"
+
+"I am a retired admiral of the British navy. You will find my name in
+the Navy List. There is my card. I have here my pension papers. I get
+L850 a year. I thought that perhaps if you were to hold these papers
+it would be security enough that I should pay you. You could draw my
+pension, and repay yourselves at the rate, say, of L500 a year, taking
+your five per cent interest as well."
+
+"What interest?"
+
+"Five per cent per annum."
+
+Mr. Metaxa laughed. "Per annum!" he said. "Five per cent a month."
+
+"A month! That would be sixty per cent a year."
+
+"Precisely."
+
+"But that is monstrous."
+
+"I don't ask gentlemen to come to me. They come of their own free will.
+Those are my terms, and they can take it or leave it."
+
+"Then I shall leave it." The Admiral rose angrily from his chair.
+
+"But one moment, sir. Just sit down and we shall chat the matter over.
+Yours is a rather unusual case and we may find some other way of doing
+what you wish. Of course the security which you offer is no security at
+all, and no sane man would advance five thousand pennies on it."
+
+"No security? Why not, sir?"
+
+"You might die to-morrow. You are not a young man. What age are you?"
+
+"Sixty-three."
+
+Mr. Metaxa turned over a long column of figures. "Here is an actuary's
+table," said he. "At your time of life the average expectancy of life is
+only a few years even in a well-preserved man."
+
+"Do you mean to insinuate that I am not a well-preserved man?"
+
+"Well, Admiral, it is a trying life at sea. Sailors in their younger
+days are gay dogs, and take it out of themselves. Then when they grow
+older they are still hard at it, and have no chance of rest or peace. I
+do not think a sailor's life a good one."
+
+"I'll tell you what, sir," said the Admiral hotly. "If you have two
+pairs of gloves I'll undertake to knock you out under three rounds. Or
+I'll race you from here to St. Paul's, and my friend here will see fair.
+I'll let you see whether I am an old man or not."
+
+"This is beside the question," said the moneylender with a deprecatory
+shrug. "The point is that if you died to-morrow where would be the
+security then?"
+
+"I could insure my life, and make the policy over to you."
+
+"Your premiums for such a sum, if any office would have you, which I
+very much doubt, would come to close on five hundred a year. That would
+hardly suit your book."
+
+"Well, sir, what do you intend to propose?" asked the Admiral.
+
+"I might, to accommodate you, work it in another way. I should send for
+a medical man, and have an opinion upon your life. Then I might see what
+could be done."
+
+"That is quite fair. I have no objection to that."
+
+"There is a very clever doctor in the street here. Proudie is his name.
+John, go and fetch Doctor Proudie." The youth was dispatched upon
+his errand, while Mr. Metaxa sat at his desk, trimming his nails, and
+shooting out little comments upon the weather. Presently feet were
+heard upon the stairs, the moneylender hurried out, there was a sound of
+whispering, and he returned with a large, fat, greasy-looking man, clad
+in a much worn frock-coat, and a very dilapidated top hat.
+
+"Doctor Proudie, gentlemen," said Mr. Metaxa.
+
+The doctor bowed, smiled, whipped off his hat, and produced his
+stethoscope from its interior with the air of a conjurer upon the stage.
+"Which of these gentlemen am I to examine?" he asked, blinking from one
+to the other of them. "Ah, it is you! Only your waistcoat! You need
+not undo your collar. Thank you! A full breath! Thank you! Ninety-nine!
+Thank you! Now hold your breath for a moment. Oh, dear, dear, what is
+this I hear?"
+
+"What is it then?" asked the Admiral coolly.
+
+"Tut! tut! This is a great pity. Have you had rheumatic fever?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"You have had some serious illness?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"Ah, you are an admiral. You have been abroad, tropics, malaria, ague--I
+know."
+
+"I have never had a day's illness."
+
+"Not to your knowledge; but you have inhaled unhealthy air, and it has
+left its effect. You have an organic murmur--slight but distinct."
+
+"Is it dangerous?"
+
+"It might at anytime become so. You should not take violent exercise."
+
+"Oh, indeed. It would hurt me to run a half mile?"
+
+"It would be very dangerous."
+
+"And a mile?"
+
+"Would be almost certainly fatal."
+
+"Then there is nothing else the matter?"
+
+"No. But if the heart is weak, then everything is weak, and the life is
+not a sound one."
+
+"You see, Admiral," remarked Mr. Metaxa, as the doctor secreted his
+stethoscope once more in his hat, "my remarks were not entirely uncalled
+for. I am sorry that the doctor's opinion is not more favorable, but
+this is a matter of business, and certain obvious precautions must be
+taken."
+
+"Of course. Then the matter is at an end."
+
+"Well, we might even now do business. I am most anxious to be of use
+to you. How long do you think, doctor, that this gentleman will in all
+probability live?"
+
+"Well, well, it's rather a delicate question to answer," said Dr.
+Proudie, with a show of embarrassment.
+
+"Not a bit, sir. Out with it! I have faced death too often to flinch
+from it now, though I saw it as near me as you are."
+
+"Well, well, we must go by averages of course. Shall we say two years? I
+should think that you have a full two years before you."
+
+"In two years your pension would bring you in L1,600. Now I will do my
+very best for you, Admiral! I will advance you L2,000, and you can make
+over to me your pension for your life. It is pure speculation on my
+part. If you die to-morrow I lose my money. If the doctor's prophecy
+is correct I shall still be out of pocket. If you live a little longer,
+then I may see my money again. It is the very best I can do for you."
+
+"Then you wish to buy my pension?"
+
+"Yes, for two thousand down."
+
+"And if I live for twenty years?"
+
+"Oh, in that case of course my speculation would be more successful. But
+you have heard the doctor's opinion."
+
+"Would you advance the money instantly?"
+
+"You should have a thousand at once. The other thousand I should expect
+you to take in furniture."
+
+"In furniture?"
+
+"Yes, Admiral. We shall do you a beautiful houseful at that sum. It is
+the custom of my clients to take half in furniture."
+
+The Admiral sat in dire perplexity. He had come out to get money, and to
+go back without any, to be powerless to help when his boy needed every
+shilling to save him from disaster, that would be very bitter to him. On
+the other hand, it was so much that he surrendered, and so little that
+he received. Little, and yet something. Would it not be better than
+going back empty-handed? He saw the yellow backed chequebook upon the
+table. The moneylender opened it and dipped his pen into the ink.
+
+"Shall I fill it up?" said he.
+
+"I think, Admiral," remarked Westmacott, "that we had better have a
+little walk and some luncheon before we settle this matter."
+
+"Oh, we may as well do it at once. It would be absurd to postpone it
+now," Metaxa spoke with some heat, and his eyes glinted angrily from
+between his narrow lids at the imperturbable Charles. The Admiral was
+simple in money matters, but he had seen much of men and had learned
+to read them. He saw that venomous glance, and saw too that intense
+eagerness was peeping out from beneath the careless air which the agent
+had assumed.
+
+"You're quite right, Westmacott," said he. "We'll have a little walk
+before we settle it."
+
+"But I may not be here this afternoon."
+
+"Then we must choose another day."
+
+"But why not settle it now?"
+
+"Because I prefer not," said the Admiral shortly.
+
+"Very well. But remember that my offer is only for to-day. It is off
+unless you take it at once."
+
+"Let it be off, then."
+
+"There's my fee," cried the doctor.
+
+"How much?"
+
+"A guinea."
+
+The Admiral threw a pound and a shilling upon the table. "Come,
+Westmacott," said he, and they walked together from the room.
+
+"I don't like it," said Charles, when they found themselves in the
+street once more; "I don't profess to be a very sharp chap, but this is
+a trifle too thin. What did he want to go out and speak to the doctor
+for? And how very convenient this tale of a weak heart was! I believe
+they are a couple of rogues, and in league with each other."
+
+"A shark and a pilot fish," said the Admiral.
+
+"I'll tell you what I propose, sir. There's a lawyer named McAdam who
+does my aunt's business. He is a very honest fellow, and lives at
+the other side of Poultry. We'll go over to him together and have his
+opinion about the whole matter."
+
+"How far is it to his place?"
+
+"Oh, a mile at least. We can have a cab."
+
+"A mile? Then we shall see if there is any truth in what that swab of
+a doctor said. Come, my boy, and clap on all sail, and see who can stay
+the longest."
+
+Then the sober denizens of the heart of business London saw a singular
+sight as they returned from their luncheons. Down the roadway, dodging
+among cabs and carts, ran a weather-stained elderly man, with wide
+flapping black hat, and homely suit of tweeds. With elbows braced back,
+hands clenched near his armpits, and chest protruded, he scudded
+along, while close at his heels lumbered a large-limbed, heavy, yellow
+mustached young man, who seemed to feel the exercise a good deal more
+than his senior. On they dashed, helter-skelter, until they pulled up
+panting at the office where the lawyer of the Westmacotts was to be
+found.
+
+"There now!" cried the Admiral in triumph. "What d'ye think of that?
+Nothing wrong in the engine-room, eh?"
+
+"You seem fit enough, sir."
+
+"Blessed if I believe the swab was a certificated doctor at all. He was
+flying false colors, or I am mistaken."
+
+"They keep the directories and registers in this eating-house," said
+Westmacott. "We'll go and look him out."
+
+They did so, but the medical rolls contained no such name as that of Dr.
+Proudie, of Bread Street.
+
+"Pretty villainy this!" cried the Admiral, thumping his chest. "A
+dummy doctor and a vamped up disease. Well, we've tried the rogues,
+Westmacott! Let us see what we can do with your honest man."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV. EASTWARD HO!
+
+
+Mr. McAdam, of the firm of McAdam and Squire, was a highly polished man
+who dwelt behind a highly polished table in the neatest and snuggest
+of offices. He was white-haired and amiable, with a deep-lined aquiline
+face, was addicted to low bows, and indeed, always seemed to carry
+himself at half-cock, as though just descending into one, or just
+recovering himself. He wore a high-buckled stock, took snuff, and
+adorned his conversation with little scraps from the classics.
+
+"My dear Sir," said he, when he had listened to their story, "any friend
+of Mrs. Westmacott's is a friend of mine. Try a pinch. I wonder that
+you should have gone to this man Metaxa. His advertisement is enough to
+condemn him. Habet foenum in cornu. They are all rogues."
+
+"The doctor was a rogue too. I didn't like the look of him at the time."
+
+"Arcades ambo. But now we must see what we can do for you. Of course
+what Metaxa said was perfectly right. The pension is in itself no
+security at all, unless it were accompanied by a life assurance which
+would be an income in itself. It is no good whatever."
+
+His clients' faces fell.
+
+"But there is the second alternative. You might sell the pension right
+out. Speculative investors occasionally deal in such things. I have one
+client, a sporting man, who would be very likely to take it up if we
+could agree upon terms. Of course, I must follow Metaxa's example by
+sending for a doctor."
+
+For the second time was the Admiral punched and tapped and listened to.
+This time, however, there could be no question of the qualifications
+of the doctor, a well-known Fellow of the College of Surgeons, and his
+report was as favorable as the other's had been adverse.
+
+"He has the heart and chest of a man of forty," said he. "I can
+recommend his life as one of the best of his age that I have ever
+examined."
+
+"That's well," said Mr. McAdam, making a note of the doctor's remarks,
+while the Admiral disbursed a second guinea. "Your price, I understand,
+is five thousand pounds. I can communicate with Mr. Elberry, my client,
+and let you know whether he cares to touch the matter. Meanwhile you can
+leave your pension papers here, and I will give you a receipt for them."
+
+"Very well. I should like the money soon."
+
+"That is why I am retaining the papers. If I can see Mr. Elberry to-day
+we may let you have a cheque to-morrow. Try another pinch. No? Well,
+good-bye. I am very happy to have been of service." Mr. McAdam bowed
+them out, for he was a very busy man, and they found themselves in the
+street once more with lighter hearts than when they had left it.
+
+"Well, Westmacott, I am sure I am very much obliged to you," said the
+Admiral. "You have stood by me when I was the better for a little help,
+for I'm clean out of my soundings among these city sharks. But I've
+something to do now which is more in my own line, and I need not trouble
+you any more."
+
+"Oh, it is no trouble. I have nothing to do. I never have anything to
+do. I don't suppose I could do it if I had. I should be delighted to
+come with you, sir, if I can be of any use."
+
+"No, no, my lad. You go home again. It would be kind of you, though, if
+you would look in at number one when you get back and tell my wife that
+all's well with me, and that I'll be back in an hour or so."
+
+"All right, sir. I'll tell her." Westmacott raised his hat and strode
+away to the westward, while the Admiral, after a hurried lunch, bent his
+steps towards the east.
+
+It was a long walk, but the old seaman swung along at a rousing pace,
+leaving street after street behind him. The great business places
+dwindled down into commonplace shops and dwellings, which decreased and
+became more stunted, even as the folk who filled them did, until he was
+deep in the evil places of the eastern end. It was a land of huge,
+dark houses and of garish gin-shops, a land, too, where life moves
+irregularly and where adventures are to be gained--as the Admiral was to
+learn to his cost.
+
+He was hurrying down one of the long, narrow, stone-flagged lanes
+between the double lines of crouching, disheveled women and of dirty
+children who sat on the hollowed steps of the houses, and basked in
+the autumn sun. At one side was a barrowman with a load of walnuts, and
+beside the barrow a bedraggled woman with a black fringe and a chequered
+shawl thrown over her head. She was cracking walnuts and picking them
+out of the shells, throwing out a remark occasionally to a rough man in
+a rabbit-skin cap, with straps under the knees of his corduroy trousers,
+who stood puffing a black clay pipe with his back against the wall. What
+the cause of the quarrel was, or what sharp sarcasm from the woman's
+lips pricked suddenly through that thick skin may never be known, but
+suddenly the man took his pipe in his left hand, leaned forward, and
+deliberately struck her across the face with his right. It was a slap
+rather than a blow, but the woman gave a sharp cry and cowered up
+against the barrow with her hand to her cheek.
+
+"You infernal villain!" cried the Admiral, raising his stick. "You brute
+and blackguard!"
+
+"Garn!" growled the rough, with the deep rasping intonation of a savage.
+"Garn out o' this or I'll----" He took a step forward with uplifted
+hand, but in an instant down came cut number three upon his wrist, and
+cut number five across his thigh, and cut number one full in the center
+of his rabbit-skin cap. It was not a heavy stick, but it was strong
+enough to leave a good red weal wherever it fell. The rough yelled
+with pain, and rushed in, hitting with both hands, and kicking with his
+ironshod boots, but the Admiral had still a quick foot and a true eye,
+so that he bounded backwards and sideways, still raining a shower of
+blows upon his savage antagonist. Suddenly, however, a pair of arms
+closed round his neck, and glancing backwards he caught a glimpse of the
+black coarse fringe of the woman whom he had befriended. "I've got him!"
+she shrieked. "I'll 'old 'im. Now, Bill, knock the tripe out of him!"
+Her grip was as strong as a man's, and her wrist pressed like an iron
+bar upon the Admiral's throat. He made a desperate effort to disengage
+himself, but the most that he could do was to swing her round, so as to
+place her between his adversary and himself. As it proved, it was the
+very best thing that he could have done. The rough, half-blinded and
+maddened by the blows which he had received, struck out with all his
+ungainly strength, just as his partner's head swung round in front
+of him. There was a noise like that of a stone hitting a wall, a
+deep groan, her grasp relaxed, and she dropped a dead weight upon the
+pavement, while the Admiral sprang back and raised his stick once more,
+ready either for attack or defense. Neither were needed, however, for
+at that moment there was a scattering of the crowd, and two police
+constables, burly and helmeted, pushed their way through the rabble.
+At the sight of them the rough took to his heels, and was instantly
+screened from view by a veil of his friends and neighbors.
+
+"I have been assaulted," panted the Admiral. "This woman was attacked
+and I had to defend her."
+
+"This is Bermondsey Sal," said one police officer, bending over the
+bedraggled heap of tattered shawl and dirty skirt. "She's got it hot
+this time."
+
+"He was a shortish man, thick, with a beard."
+
+"Ah, that's Black Davie. He's been up four times for beating her. He's
+about done the job now. If I were you I would let that sort settle their
+own little affairs, sir."
+
+"Do you think that a man who holds the Queen's commission will stand by
+and see a woman struck?" cried the Admiral indignantly.
+
+"Well, just as you like, sir. But you've lost your watch, I see."
+
+"My watch!" He clapped his hand to his waistcoat. The chain was hanging
+down in front, and the watch gone.
+
+He passed his hand over his forehead. "I would not have lost that watch
+for anything," said he. "No money could replace it. It was given me by
+the ship's company after our African cruise. It has an inscription."
+
+The policeman shrugged his shoulders. "It comes from meddling," said he.
+
+"What'll you give me if I tell yer where it is?" said a sharp-faced boy
+among the crowd. "Will you gimme a quid?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Well, where's the quid?"
+
+The Admiral took a sovereign from his pocket. "Here it is."
+
+"Then 'ere's the ticker!" The boy pointed to the clenched hand of the
+senseless woman. A glimmer of gold shone out from between the fingers,
+and on opening them up, there was the Admiral's chronometer. This
+interesting victim had throttled her protector with one hand, while she
+had robbed him with the other.
+
+The Admiral left his address with the policeman, satisfied that the
+woman was only stunned, not dead, and then set off upon his way once
+more, the poorer perhaps in his faith in human nature, but in very good
+spirits none the less. He walked with dilated nostrils and clenched
+hands, all glowing and tingling with the excitement of the combat, and
+warmed with the thought that he could still, when there was need, take
+his own part in a street brawl in spite of his three-score and odd
+years.
+
+His way now led towards the river-side regions, and a cleansing whiff
+of tar was to be detected in the stagnant autumn air. Men with the blue
+jersey and peaked cap of the boatman, or the white ducks of the dockers,
+began to replace the corduroys and fustian of the laborers. Shops with
+nautical instruments in the windows, rope and paint sellers, and slop
+shops with long rows of oilskins dangling from hooks, all proclaimed
+the neighborhood of the docks. The Admiral quickened his pace and
+straightened his figure as his surroundings became more nautical, until
+at last, peeping between two high, dingy wharfs, he caught a glimpse of
+the mud-colored waters of the Thames, and of the bristle of masts
+and funnels which rose from its broad bosom. To the right lay a quiet
+street, with many brass plates upon either side, and wire blinds in
+all of the windows. The Admiral walked slowly down it until "The Saint
+Lawrence Shipping Company" caught his eye. He crossed the road, pushed
+open the door, and found himself in a low-ceilinged office, with a long
+counter at one end and a great number of wooden sections of ships stuck
+upon boards and plastered all over the walls.
+
+"Is Mr. Henry in?" asked the Admiral.
+
+"No, sir," answered an elderly man from a high seat in the corner. "He
+has not come into town to-day. I can manage any business you may wish
+seen to."
+
+"You don't happen to have a first or second officer's place vacant, do
+you?"
+
+The manager looked with a dubious eye at his singular applicant.
+
+"Do you hold certificates?" he asked.
+
+"I hold every nautical certificate there is."
+
+"Then you won't do for us."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Your age, sir."
+
+"I give you my word that I can see as well as ever, and am as good a man
+in every way."
+
+"I don't doubt it."
+
+"Why should my age be a bar, then?"
+
+"Well, I must put it plainly. If a man of your age, holding
+certificates, has not got past a second officer's berth, there must be
+a black mark against him somewhere. I don't know what it is, drink or
+temper, or want of judgment, but something there must be."
+
+"I assure you there is nothing, but I find myself stranded, and so have
+to turn to the old business again."
+
+"Oh, that's it," said the manager, with suspicion in his eye. "How long
+were you in your last billet?"
+
+"Fifty-one years."
+
+"What!"
+
+"Yes, sir, one-and-fifty years."
+
+"In the same employ?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why, you must have begun as a child."
+
+"I was twelve when I joined."
+
+"It must be a strangely managed business," said the manager, "which
+allows men to leave it who have served for fifty years, and who are
+still as good as ever. Who did you serve?"
+
+"The Queen. Heaven bless her!"
+
+"Oh, you were in the Royal Navy. What rating did you hold?"
+
+"I am Admiral of the Fleet."
+
+The manager started, and sprang down from his high stool.
+
+"My name is Admiral Hay Denver. There is my card. And here are the
+records of my service. I don't, you understand, want to push another man
+from his billet; but if you should chance to have a berth open, I should
+be very glad of it. I know the navigation from the Cod Banks right up to
+Montreal a great deal better than I know the streets of London."
+
+The astonished manager glanced over the blue papers which his visitor
+had handed him. "Won't you take a chair, Admiral?" said he.
+
+"Thank you! But I should be obliged if you would drop my title now. I
+told you because you asked me, but I've left the quarter-deck, and I am
+plain Mr. Hay Denver now."
+
+"May I ask," said the manager, "are you the same Denver who commanded at
+one time on the North American station?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"Then it was you who got one of our boats, the Comus, off the rocks
+in the Bay of Fundy? The directors voted you three hundred guineas as
+salvage, and you refused them."
+
+"It was an offer which should not have been made," said the Admiral
+sternly.
+
+"Well, it reflects credit upon you that you should think so. If Mr.
+Henry were here I am sure that he would arrange this matter for you at
+once. As it is, I shall lay it before the directors to-day, and I am
+sure that they will be proud to have you in our employment, and, I hope,
+in some more suitable position than that which you suggest."
+
+"I am very much obliged to you, sir," said the Admiral, and started off
+again, well pleased, upon his homeward journey.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV. STILL AMONG SHOALS.
+
+
+Next day brought the Admiral a cheque for L5,000 from Mr. McAdam, and
+a stamped agreement by which he made over his pension papers to the
+speculative investor. It was not until he had signed and sent it off
+that the full significance of all that he had done broke upon him. He
+had sacrificed everything. His pension was gone. He had nothing save
+only what he could earn. But the stout old heart never quailed. He
+waited eagerly for a letter from the Saint Lawrence Shipping Company,
+and in the meanwhile he gave his landlord a quarter's notice. Hundred
+pound a year houses would in future be a luxury which he could not
+aspire to. A small lodging in some inexpensive part of London must be
+the substitute for his breezy Norwood villa. So be it, then! Better that
+a thousand fold than that his name should be associated with failure and
+disgrace.
+
+On that morning Harold Denver was to meet the creditors of the firm,
+and to explain the situation to them. It was a hateful task, a degrading
+task, but he set himself to do it with quiet resolution. At home they
+waited in intense anxiety to learn the result of the meeting. It was
+late before he returned, haggard and pale, like a man who has done and
+suffered much.
+
+"What's this board in front of the house?" he asked.
+
+"We are going to try a little change of scene," said the Admiral. "This
+place is neither town nor country. But never mind that, boy. Tell us
+what happened in the City."
+
+"God help me! My wretched business driving you out of house and home!"
+cried Harold, broken down by this fresh evidence of the effects of his
+misfortunes. "It is easier for me to meet my creditors than to see you
+two suffering so patiently for my sake."
+
+"Tut, tut!" cried the Admiral. "There's no suffering in the matter.
+Mother would rather be near the theaters. That's at the bottom of it,
+isn't it, mother? You come and sit down here between us and tell us all
+about it."
+
+Harold sat down with a loving hand in each of his.
+
+"It's not so bad as we thought," said he, "and yet it is bad enough.
+I have about ten days to find the money, but I don't know which way to
+turn for it. Pearson, however, lied, as usual, when he spoke of L13,000.
+The amount is not quite L7,000."
+
+The Admiral claped his hands. "I knew we should weather it after all!
+Hurrah my boy! Hip, hip, hip, hurrah!"
+
+Harold gazed at him in surprise, while the old seaman waved his arm
+above his head and bellowed out three stentorian cheers. "Where am I to
+get seven thousand pounds from, dad?" he asked.
+
+"Never mind. You spin your yarn."
+
+"Well, they were very good and very kind, but of course they must
+have either their money or their money's worth. They passed a vote
+of sympathy with me, and agreed to wait ten days before they took any
+proceedings. Three of them, whose claim came to L3,500, told me that if
+I would give them my personal I.O.U., and pay interest at the rate of
+five per cent, their amounts might stand over as long as I wished. That
+would be a charge of L175 upon my income, but with economy I could meet
+it, and it diminishes the debt by one-half."
+
+Again the Admiral burst out cheering.
+
+"There remains, therefore, about L3,200 which has to be found within ten
+days. No man shall lose by me. I gave them my word in the room that if I
+worked my soul out of my body every one of them should be paid. I shall
+not spend a penny upon myself until it is done. But some of them can't
+wait. They are poor men themselves, and must have their money. They have
+issued a warrant for Pearson's arrest. But they think that he has got
+away to the States."
+
+"These men shall have their money," said the Admiral.
+
+"Dad!"
+
+"Yes, my boy, you don't know the resources of the family. One never does
+know until one tries. What have you yourself now?"
+
+"I have about a thousand pounds invested."
+
+"All right. And I have about as much more. There's a good start. Now,
+mother, it is your turn. What is that little bit of paper of yours?"
+
+Mrs. Denver unfolded it, and placed it upon Harold's knee.
+
+"Five thousand pounds!" he gasped.
+
+"Ah, but mother is not the only rich one. Look at this!" And the Admiral
+unfolded his cheque, and placed it upon the other knee.
+
+Harold gazed from one to the other in bewilderment. "Ten thousand
+pounds!" he cried. "Good heavens! where did these come from?"
+
+"You will not worry any longer, dear," murmured his mother, slipping her
+arm round him.
+
+But his quick eye had caught the signature upon one of the cheques.
+"Doctor Walker!" he cried, flushing. "This is Clara's doing. Oh, dad, we
+cannot take this money. It would not be right nor honorable."
+
+"No, boy, I am glad you think so. It is something, however, to have
+proved one's friend, for a real good friend he is. It was he who brought
+it in, though Clara sent him. But this other money will be enough to
+cover everything, and it is all my own."
+
+"Your own? Where did you get it, dad?"
+
+"Tut, tut! See what it is to have a City man to deal with. It is my own,
+and fairly earned, and that is enough."
+
+"Dear old dad!" Harold squeezed his gnarled hand. "And you, mother!
+You have lifted the trouble from my heart. I feel another man. You have
+saved my honor, my good name, everything. I cannot owe you more, for I
+owe you everything already."
+
+So while the autumn sunset shone ruddily through the broad window these
+three sat together hand in hand, with hearts which were too full to
+speak. Suddenly the soft thudding of tennis balls was heard, and Mrs.
+Westmacott bounded into view upon the lawn with brandished racket and
+short skirts fluttering in the breeze. The sight came as a relief to
+their strained nerves, and they burst all three into a hearty fit of
+laughter.
+
+"She is playing with her nephew," said Harold at last. "The Walkers have
+not come out yet. I think that it would be well if you were to give me
+that cheque, mother, and I were to return it in person."
+
+"Certainly, Harold. I think it would be very nice."
+
+He went in through the garden. Clara and the Doctor were sitting
+together in the dining-room. She sprang to her feet at the sight of him.
+
+"Oh, Harold, I have been waiting for you so impatiently," she cried; "I
+saw you pass the front windows half an hour ago. I would have come in if
+I dared. Do tell us what has happened."
+
+"I have come in to thank you both. How can I repay you for your
+kindness? Here is your cheque, Doctor. I have not needed it. I find that
+I can lay my hands on enough to pay my creditors."
+
+"Thank God!" said Clara fervently.
+
+"The sum is less than I thought, and our resources considerably more. We
+have been able to do it with ease."
+
+"With ease!" The Doctor's brow clouded and his manner grew cold. "I
+think, Harold, that you would do better to take this money of mine, than
+to use that which seems to you to be gained with ease."
+
+"Thank you, sir. If I borrowed from any one it would be from you. But
+my father has this very sum, five thousand pounds, and, as I tell him, I
+owe him so much that I have no compunction about owing him more."
+
+"No compunction! Surely there are some sacrifices which a son should not
+allow his parents to make."
+
+"Sacrifices! What do you mean?"
+
+"Is it possible that you do not know how this money has been obtained?"
+
+"I give you my word, Doctor Walker, that I have no idea. I asked my
+father, but he refused to tell me."
+
+"I thought not," said the Doctor, the gloom clearing from his brow. "I
+was sure that you were not a man who, to clear yourself from a little
+money difficulty, would sacrifice the happiness of your mother and the
+health of your father."
+
+"Good gracious! what do you mean?"
+
+"It is only right that you should know. That money represents the
+commutation of your father's pension. He has reduced himself to poverty,
+and intends to go to sea again to earn a living."
+
+"To sea again! Impossible!"
+
+"It is the truth. Charles Westmacott has told Ida. He was with him
+in the City when he took his poor pension about from dealer to dealer
+trying to sell it. He succeeded at last, and hence the money."
+
+"He has sold his pension!" cried Harold, with his hands to his face. "My
+dear old dad has sold his pension!" He rushed from the room, and burst
+wildly into the presence of his parents once more. "I cannot take it,
+father," he cried. "Better bankruptcy than that. Oh, if I had only known
+your plan! We must have back the pension. Oh, mother, mother, how could
+you think me capable of such selfishness? Give me the cheque, dad, and
+I will see this man to-night, for I would sooner die like a dog in the
+ditch than touch a penny of this money."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI. A MIDNIGHT VISITOR.
+
+
+Now all this time, while the tragi-comedy of life was being played in
+these three suburban villas, while on a commonplace stage love and humor
+and fears and lights and shadows were so swiftly succeeding each other,
+and while these three families, drifted together by fate, were shaping
+each other's destinies and working out in their own fashion the strange,
+intricate ends of human life, there were human eyes which watched over
+every stage of the performance, and which were keenly critical of
+every actor on it. Across the road beyond the green palings and the
+close-cropped lawn, behind the curtains of their creeper-framed windows,
+sat the two old ladies, Miss Bertha and Miss Monica Williams, looking
+out as from a private box at all that was being enacted before them.
+The growing friendship of the three families, the engagement of Harold
+Denver with Clara Walker, the engagement of Charles Westmacott with her
+sister, the dangerous fascination which the widow exercised over
+the Doctor, the preposterous behavior of the Walker girls and the
+unhappiness which they had caused their father, not one of these
+incidents escaped the notice of the two maiden ladies. Bertha the
+younger had a smile or a sigh for the lovers, Monica the elder a frown
+or a shrug for the elders. Every night they talked over what they had
+seen, and their own dull, uneventful life took a warmth and a coloring
+from their neighbors as a blank wall reflects a beacon fire.
+
+And now it was destined that they should experience the one keen
+sensation of their later years, the one memorable incident from which
+all future incidents should be dated.
+
+It was on the very night which succeeded the events which have just been
+narrated, when suddenly into Monica William's head, as she tossed upon
+her sleepless bed, there shot a thought which made her sit up with a
+thrill and a gasp.
+
+"Bertha," said she, plucking at the shoulder of her sister, "I have left
+the front window open."
+
+"No, Monica, surely not." Bertha sat up also, and thrilled in sympathy.
+
+"I am sure of it. You remember I had forgotten to water the pots, and
+then I opened the window, and Jane called me about the jam, and I have
+never been in the room since."
+
+"Good gracious, Monica, it is a mercy that we have not been murdered in
+our beds. There was a house broken into at Forest Hill last week. Shall
+we go down and shut it?"
+
+"I dare not go down alone, dear, but if you will come with me. Put on
+your slippers and dressing-gown. We do not need a candle. Now, Bertha,
+we will go down together."
+
+Two little white patches moved vaguely through the darkness, the stairs
+creaked, the door whined, and they were at the front room window. Monica
+closed it gently down, and fastened the snib.
+
+"What a beautiful moon!" said she, looking out. "We can see as clearly
+as if it were day. How peaceful and quiet the three houses are over
+yonder! It seems quite sad to see that 'To Let' card upon number one. I
+wonder how number two will like their going. For my part I could better
+spare that dreadful woman at number three with her short skirts and
+her snake. But, oh, Bertha, look! look!! look!!!" Her voice had fallen
+suddenly to a quivering whisper and she was pointing to the Westmacotts'
+house. Her sister gave a gasp of horror, and stood with a clutch at
+Monica's arm, staring in the same direction.
+
+There was a light in the front room, a slight, wavering light such as
+would be given by a small candle or taper. The blind was down, but
+the light shone dimly through. Outside in the garden, with his figure
+outlined against the luminous square, there stood a man, his back to the
+road, his two hands upon the window ledge, and his body rather bent as
+though he were trying to peep in past the blind. So absolutely still
+and motionless was he that in spite of the moon they might well have
+overlooked him were it not for that tell-tale light behind.
+
+"Good heaven!" gasped Bertha, "it is a burglar."
+
+But her sister set her mouth grimly and shook her head. "We shall see,"
+she whispered. "It may be something worse."
+
+Swiftly and furtively the man stood suddenly erect, and began to push
+the window slowly up. Then he put one knee upon the sash, glanced round
+to see that all was safe, and climbed over into the room. As he did so
+he had to push the blind aside. Then the two spectators saw where the
+light came from. Mrs. Westmacott was standing, as rigid as a statue, in
+the center of the room, with a lighted taper in her right hand. For an
+instant they caught a glimpse of her stern face and her white collar.
+Then the blind fell back into position, and the two figures disappeared
+from their view.
+
+"Oh, that dreadful woman!" cried Monica. "That dreadful, dreadful woman!
+She was waiting for him. You saw it with your own eyes, sister Bertha!"
+
+"Hush, dear, hush and listen!" said her more charitable companion.
+They pushed their own window up once more, and watched from behind the
+curtains.
+
+For a long time all was silent within the house. The light still
+stood motionless as though Mrs. Westmacott remained rigidly in the one
+position, while from time to time a shadow passed in front of it to show
+that her midnight visitor was pacing up and down in front of her. Once
+they saw his outline clearly, with his hands outstretched as if in
+appeal or entreaty. Then suddenly there was a dull sound, a cry, the
+noise of a fall, the taper was extinguished, and a dark figure fled in
+the moonlight, rushed across the garden, and vanished amid the shrubs at
+the farther side.
+
+Then only did the two old ladies understand that they had looked on
+whilst a tragedy had been enacted. "Help!" they cried, and "Help!" in
+their high, thin voices, timidly at first, but gathering volume as they
+went on, until the Wilderness rang with their shrieks. Lights shone
+in all the windows opposite, chains rattled, bars were unshot, doors
+opened, and out rushed friends to the rescue. Harold, with a stick; the
+Admiral, with his sword, his grey head and bare feet protruding from
+either end of a long brown ulster; finally, Doctor Walker, with a poker,
+all ran to the help of the Westmacotts. Their door had been already
+opened, and they crowded tumultuously into the front room.
+
+Charles Westmacott, white to his lips, was kneeling an the floor,
+supporting his aunt's head upon his knee. She lay outstretched, dressed
+in her ordinary clothes, the extinguished taper still grasped in her
+hand, no mark or wound upon her--pale, placid, and senseless.
+
+"Thank God you are come, Doctor," said Charles, looking up. "Do tell me
+how she is, and what I should do."
+
+Doctor Walker kneeled beside her, and passed his left hand over her
+head, while he grasped her pulse with the right.
+
+"She has had a terrible blow," said he. "It must have been with some
+blunt weapon. Here is the place behind the ear. But she is a woman of
+extraordinary physical powers. Her pulse is full and slow. There is no
+stertor. It is my belief that she is merely stunned, and that she is in
+no danger at all."
+
+"Thank God for that!"
+
+"We must get her to bed. We shall carry her upstairs, and then I shall
+send my girls in to her. But who has done this?"
+
+"Some robber," said Charles. "You see that the window is open. She must
+have heard him and come down, for she was always perfectly fearless. I
+wish to goodness she had called me."
+
+"But she was dressed."
+
+"Sometimes she sits up very late."
+
+"I did sit up very late," said a voice. She had opened her eyes, and was
+blinking at them in the lamplight. "A villain came in through the window
+and struck me with a life-preserver. You can tell the police so when
+they come. Also that it was a little fat man. Now, Charles, give me your
+arm and I shall go upstairs."
+
+But her spirit was greater than her strength, for, as she staggered to
+her feet, her head swam round, and she would have fallen again had her
+nephew not thrown his arms round her. They carried her upstairs among
+them and laid her upon the bed, where the Doctor watched beside her,
+while Charles went off to the police-station, and the Denvers mounted
+guard over the frightened maids.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII. IN PORT AT LAST.
+
+
+Day had broken before the several denizens of the Wilderness had all
+returned to their homes, the police finished their inquiries, and all
+come back to its normal quiet. Mrs. Westmacott had been left sleeping
+peacefully with a small chloral draught to steady her nerves and a
+handkerchief soaked in arnica bound round her head. It was with some
+surprise, therefore, that the Admiral received a note from her about ten
+o'clock, asking him to be good enough to step in to her. He hurried in,
+fearing that she might have taken some turn for the worse, but he was
+reassured to find her sitting up in her bed, with Clara and Ida Walker
+in attendance upon her. She had removed the handkerchief, and had put on
+a little cap with pink ribbons, and a maroon dressing-jacket, daintily
+fulled at the neck and sleeves.
+
+"My dear friend," said she as he entered, "I wish to make a last few
+remarks to you. No, no," she continued, laughing, as she saw a look of
+dismay upon his face. "I shall not dream of dying for at least another
+thirty years. A woman should be ashamed to die before she is seventy.
+I wish, Clara, that you would ask your father to step up. And you, Ida,
+just pass me my cigarettes, and open me a bottle of stout."
+
+"Now then," she continued, as the doctor joined their party. "I don't
+quite know what I ought to say to you, Admiral. You want some very plain
+speaking to."
+
+"'Pon my word, ma'am, I don't know what you are talking about."
+
+"The idea of you at your age talking of going to sea, and leaving that
+dear, patient little wife of yours at home, who has seen nothing of you
+all her life! It's all very well for you. You have the life, and the
+change, and the excitement, but you don't think of her eating her heart
+out in a dreary London lodging. You men are all the same."
+
+"Well, ma'am, since you know so much, you probably know also that I have
+sold my pension. How am I to live if I do not turn my hand to work?"
+
+Mrs. Westmacott produced a large registered envelope from beneath the
+sheets and tossed it over to the old seaman.
+
+"That excuse won't do. There are your pension papers. Just see if they
+are right."
+
+He broke the seal, and out tumbled the very papers which he had made
+over to McAdam two days before.
+
+"But what am I to do with these now?" he cried in bewilderment.
+
+"You will put them in a safe place, or get a friend to do so, and, if
+you do your duty, you will go to your wife and beg her pardon for having
+even for an instant thought of leaving her."
+
+The Admiral passed his hand over his rugged forehead. "This is very good
+of you, ma'am," said he, "very good and kind, and I know that you are a
+staunch friend, but for all that these papers mean money, and though we
+may have been in broken water lately, we are not quite in such straits
+as to have to signal to our friends. When we do, ma'am, there's no one
+we would look to sooner than to you."
+
+"Don't be ridiculous!" said the widow. "You know nothing whatever about
+it, and yet you stand there laying down the law. I'll have my way in
+the matter, and you shall take the papers, for it is no favor that I am
+doing you, but simply a restoration of stolen property."
+
+"How's that, ma'am?"
+
+"I am just going to explain, though you might take a lady's word for
+it without asking any questions. Now, what I am going to say is just
+between you four, and must go no farther. I have my own reasons for
+wishing to keep it from the police. Who do you think it was who struck
+me last night, Admiral?"
+
+"Some villain, ma'am. I don't know his name."
+
+"But I do. It was the same man who ruined or tried to ruin your son. It
+was my only brother, Jeremiah."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"I will tell you about him--or a little about him, for he has done much
+which I would not care to talk of, nor you to listen to. He was always
+a villain, smooth-spoken and plausible, but a dangerous, subtle villain
+all the same. If I have some hard thoughts about mankind I can trace
+them back to the childhood which I spent with my brother. He is my only
+living relative, for my other brother, Charles's father, was killed in
+the Indian mutiny.
+
+"Our father was rich, and when he died he made a good provision both for
+Jeremiah and for me. He knew Jeremiah and he mistrusted him, however; so
+instead of giving him all that he meant him to have he handed me over a
+part of it, telling me, with what was almost his dying breath, to hold
+it in trust for my brother, and to use it in his behalf when he should
+have squandered or lost all that he had. This arrangement was meant to
+be a secret between my father and myself, but unfortunately his words
+were overheard by the nurse, and she repeated them afterwards to my
+brother, so that he came to know that I held some money in trust for
+him. I suppose tobacco will not harm my head, Doctor? Thank you, then I
+shall trouble you for the matches, Ida." She lit a cigarette, and leaned
+back upon the pillow, with the blue wreaths curling from her lips.
+
+"I cannot tell you how often he has attempted to get that money from me.
+He has bullied, cajoled, threatened, coaxed, done all that a man could
+do. I still held it with the presentiment that a need for it would come.
+When I heard of this villainous business, his flight, and his leaving
+his partner to face the storm, above all that my old friend had been
+driven to surrender his income in order to make up for my brother's
+defalcations, I felt that now indeed I had a need for it. I sent in
+Charles yesterday to Mr. McAdam, and his client, upon hearing the facts
+of the case, very graciously consented to give back the papers, and
+to take the money which he had advanced. Not a word of thanks to me,
+Admiral. I tell you that it was very cheap benevolence, for it was all
+done with his own money, and how could I use it better?
+
+"I thought that I should probably hear from him soon, and I did. Last
+evening there was handed in a note of the usual whining, cringing tone.
+He had come back from abroad at the risk of his life and liberty, just
+in order that he might say good-bye to the only sister he ever had, and
+to entreat my forgiveness for any pain which he had caused me. He would
+never trouble me again, and he begged only that I would hand over to him
+the sum which I held in trust for him. That, with what he had already,
+would be enough to start him as an honest man in the new world, when
+he would ever remember and pray for the dear sister who had been his
+savior. That was the style of the letter, and it ended by imploring me
+to leave the window-latch open, and to be in the front room at three in
+the morning, when he would come to receive my last kiss and to bid me
+farewell.
+
+"Bad as he was, I could not, when he trusted me, betray him. I said
+nothing, but I was there at the hour. He entered through the window,
+and implored me to give him the money. He was terribly changed; gaunt,
+wolfish, and spoke like a madman. I told him that I had spent the money.
+He gnashed his teeth at me, and swore it was his money. I told him that
+I had spent it on him. He asked me how. I said in trying to make him an
+honest man, and in repairing the results of his villainy. He shrieked
+out a curse, and pulling something out of the breast of his coat--a
+loaded stick, I think--he struck me with it, and I remembered nothing
+more."
+
+"The blackguard!" cried the Doctor, "but the police must be hot upon his
+track."
+
+"I fancy not," Mrs. Westmacott answered calmly. "As my brother is a
+particularly tall, thin man, and as the police are looking for a short,
+fat one, I do not think that it is very probable that they will catch
+him. It is best, I think, that these little family matters should be
+adjusted in private."
+
+"My dear ma'am," said the Admiral, "if it is indeed this man's money
+that has bought back my pension, then I can have no scruples about
+taking it. You have brought sunshine upon us, ma'am, when the clouds
+were at their darkest, for here is my boy who insists upon returning
+the money which I got. He can keep it now to pay his debts. For what you
+have done I can only ask God to bless you, ma'am, and as to thanking you
+I can't even----"
+
+"Then pray don't try," said the widow. "Now run away, Admiral, and make
+your peace with Mrs. Denver. I am sure if I were she it would be a long
+time before I should forgive you. As for me, I am going to America when
+Charles goes. You'll take me so far, won't you, Ida? There is a college
+being built in Denver which is to equip the woman of the future for the
+struggle of life, and especially for her battle against man. Some months
+ago the committee offered me a responsible situation upon the staff, and
+I have decided now to accept it, for Charles's marriage removes the
+last tie which binds me to England. You will write to me sometimes,
+my friends, and you will address your letters to Professor Westmacott,
+Emancipation College, Denver. From there I shall watch how the glorious
+struggle goes in conservative old England, and if I am needed you will
+find me here again fighting in the forefront of the fray. Good-bye--but
+not you, girls; I have still a word I wish to say to you.
+
+"Give me your hand, Ida, and yours, Clara," said she when they were
+alone. "Oh, you naughty little pusses, aren't you ashamed to look me in
+the face? Did you think--did you really think that I was so very blind,
+and could not see your little plot? You did it very well, I must say
+that, and really I think that I like you better as you are. But you had
+all your pains for nothing, you little conspirators, for I give you my
+word that I had quite made up my mind not to have him."
+
+And so within a few weeks our little ladies from their observatory saw
+a mighty bustle in the Wilderness, when two-horse carriages came, and
+coachmen with favors, to bear away the twos who were destined to come
+back one. And they themselves in their crackling silk dresses went
+across, as invited, to the big double wedding breakfast which was held
+in the house of Doctor Walker. Then there was health-drinking, and
+laughter, and changing of dresses, and rice-throwing when the carriages
+drove up again, and two more couples started on that journey which ends
+only with life itself.
+
+Charles Westmacott is now a flourishing ranchman in the western part
+of Texas, where he and his sweet little wife are the two most popular
+persons in all that county. Of their aunt they see little, but from time
+to time they see notices in the papers that there is a focus of light
+in Denver, where mighty thunderbolts are being forged which will one day
+bring the dominant sex upon their knees. The Admiral and his wife still
+live at number one, while Harold and Clara have taken number two, where
+Doctor Walker continues to reside. As to the business, it had been
+reconstructed, and the energy and ability of the junior partner had soon
+made up for all the ill that had been done by his senior. Yet with his
+sweet and refined home atmosphere he is able to realize his wish, and
+to keep himself free from the sordid aims and base ambitions which drag
+down the man whose business lies too exclusively in the money market
+of the vast Babylon. As he goes back every evening from the crowds of
+Throgmorton Street to the tree-lined peaceful avenues of Norwood, so he
+has found it possible in spirit also to do one's duties amidst the babel
+of the City, and yet to live beyond it.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Beyond the City, by Arthur Conan Doyle
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