diff options
Diffstat (limited to '78772-0.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | 78772-0.txt | 6408 |
1 files changed, 6408 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/78772-0.txt b/78772-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a4ec039 --- /dev/null +++ b/78772-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6408 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78772 *** + + + + +Transcriber’s Note: Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: +_italics_. + + + + + DEAD MEN’S SHOES. + + + + + DEAD MEN’S SHOES + + A Novel + + BY THE AUTHOR OF + + ‘LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET’ + + ETC. ETC. ETC. + + IN THREE VOLUMES + + VOL. I. + + [Illustration: (Colophon)] + + LONDON + JOHN MAXWELL AND CO. + 4, SHOE LANE, FLEET STREET + + 1876 + + [_All rights reserved._] + + + + + To SIR J. CORDY BURROWS, J.P., + BRIGHTON. + + +DEAR SIR CORDY BURROWS, + +If anything can justify the dedication of a book to any one, it +surely must be a friendship that has lasted nearly twenty years; +marked on your side by many acts of care and kindness, and on mine +by a most sincere appreciation of your genial and generous nature. +I have therefore great pleasure in recording this fact, and I have +still greater pleasure in dedicating this story to you. + + Believe me, + + Dear SIR CORDY BURROWS, + + Very sincerely yours, + + THE AUTHOR. + +RICHMOND, _February, 1876_. + + + + + CONTENTS TO VOL. I. + + + CHAP. PAGE + + I. ‘PLUNGED IN THE DEPTH OF HELPLESS POVERTY’ 1 + + II. ‘O WORLD, THY SLIPPERY TURNS!’ 24 + + III. THE TRUE METAL 39 + + IV. ‘HAD THE CHANCE BEEN WITH US THAT HAS NOT BEEN’ 47 + + V. SIBYL FAUNTHORPE’S DIARY 60 + + VI. THE ÉLITE OF REDCASTLE 94 + + VII. DRIFTING INTO HAVEN 104 + + VIII. THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL 117 + + IX. UNCLE TRENCHARD 131 + + X. SIBYL TAKES THE LEAD 140 + + XI. HOW STEPHEN TRENCHARD FORGIVES 152 + + XII. LOVE, THEN, HAD HOPE OF RICHER STORE 171 + + XIII. THE SWEETS OF LIFE 195 + + XIV. MAKING READY FOR VICTORY 208 + + XV. TOWN AND COUNTY 221 + + XVI. A MYSTERIOUS VISITOR 246 + + XVII. THE WANDERER’S RETURN 273 + + XVIII. AT ARM’S LENGTH 287 + + + + + DEAD MEN’S SHOES. + + + + + CHAPTER I. + + ‘PLUNGED IN THE DEPTH OF HELPLESS POVERTY.’ + + +A girl-woman alone on Battersea Bridge, reading a letter in the +December sunset--one of those mild autumnal afternoons which hang +upon the skirts of winter. A girl in years--a woman in cares. Dark +brown eyes set in a pale, sharply set face; mouth rosy and beautiful +in form, but too firm in its lines to be altogether lovely in a +woman. A girl whom the passers by look at interrogatively, wondering +that so much beauty should go alone, and so poorly clad. Her clothes +are not common, but shabby--a black silk dress that has once been +handsome and fashionable; a black felt hat trimmed with threadbare +velvet; a sealskin jacket worn bald at the edges, and dull with +exposure to hard weather; gloves which indicate that to be gloved +at all has cost the wearer a struggle; boots whose decay is no less +evident than the symmetry of the slender feet they cover. She walks +listlessly up and down the pavement of the bridge--just the one quiet +promenade to be found in this neighbourhood--reading a letter from +home, or the place which was her home two years ago. She has seen +much of the world during these two years,--in her own opinion too +much, for she has seen not the fair and shining fabric in life’s +loom, but the ragged sleave thereof. + +This is the letter which she reads, not once, but three times over, +with deepest attention, as she paces up and down the quiet old +bridge, while the sunset fades from the cold gray river, and from +that Dutch picture of old red roofs and water-side shanties on the +Middlesex shore, which painters have loved, and which the Thames +Embankment may perchance have blotted out by this time:-- + + ‘_Redcastle, December 11th, 186-._ + + ‘MY DEAR SIBYL, + + ‘An event has happened which I think likely to exercise a + wonderful influence for good upon all our lives. Stephen + Trenchard, your mother’s brother, the uncle Stephen you have all + talked about as children, and whose wealth was your poor mother’s + boast, has returned to England, after nearly thirty years’ + absence, yellow, wrinkled, withered, and eccentric in manners and + habits, but I think not unkindly disposed to any of us. He has + taken a house at Redcastle, and is anxious to have his nieces + about him, as he calls it. Marion has already exchanged the + discomforts and deprivations of a parish doctor’s household for + the Oriental luxuries of Lancaster Lodge. I dare say you remember + the house, a square stone building with two tall iron gates, and + two lodges within thirty yards of the hall door. Some people + will have grandeur at the sacrifice of consistency. He seems--I + mean your uncle Stephen--to have taken a great fancy to Marion. + I meet her lolling in his barouche, trying to look as if she had + been accustomed to ride in a three hundred guinea carriage all + her life, and really doing it very well. Jenny has also been to + see her uncle, but he thought her rough and uncultivated, and I + fear that, with her present deficiency of manners, she has little + chance of pleasing him. I have sent her to Miss Mercer’s, as a + day scholar, since Michaelmas, but as she _will_ talk to the boys + going and returning, I really think the change is doing her more + harm than good. I have dined with Mr. Trenchard, and can assure + you that the splendour of his table is something to remember. I + don’t pretend to be a judge of wines, though I could give you + a lecture upon tannic acid, alcohol, and so on--experience, to + my mind, being better than theory, and my opportunities of the + rarest--but I know that after dining with Stephen Trenchard I + felt as if my veins ran quicksilver. Well, my dear, I want you + to have your chance as well as Marion, and I think the best and + wisest course for you will be to beg a month’s holiday from your + employer, Mrs. Hazleton, and come to spend Christmas with your + poor old uncle Robert. No doubt if you do, your rich old uncle + Stephen will ask you to transfer your society to Lancaster Lodge, + and then you and Marion will have equal chances. I dare say it + will end by his asking one or both of you to live with him and + keep his house. He has, I believe, something like a million to + leave behind him, and you three girls are his nearest relations, + and his natural heirs. He has spoken very kindly of your mother. + + ‘Let me know what Mrs. Hazleton says about a holiday. If a month + is too much you might ask for a fortnight. I should think it most + unlikely that you need ever return to her. With such a man as old + Trenchard for your uncle, and well disposed towards you, your + teaching days ought to be over. + + ‘Your affectionate Uncle, + ‘ROBERT FAUNTHORPE.’ + +‘My teaching days,’ repeats the young woman, bitterly. ‘He little +knows that they were the height of luxury compared to what has come +after them.’ + +The letter is addressed to-- + + MISS FAUNTHORPE, + AT MRS. HAZLETON’S, 19, LOWTHER STREET, + ECCLESTON SQUARE. + +It has been re-addressed by an humble friend of Miss Faunthorpe’s, in +the person of Mrs. Hazleton’s housemaid, who has enclosed the letter +in an envelope directed to-- + + MRS. STANMORE, + AT MRS. BONNY’S, 11, DIXON STREET, + CHELSEA. + +An address which indicates a descent in the social scale from the +semi-Belgravian gentility of Lowther Street, Eccleston Square. And +how comes Miss Faunthorpe to be Mrs. Stanmore, while her affectionate +uncle, Robert Faunthorpe, remains unaware of a transmutation which +must needs have some influence for good or evil on his niece’s future +career? Marriage is one of those inadvertences which can hardly go +for nothing even in the easiest life. + +‘So Marion is exhibiting herself about Redcastle in a three hundred +guinea barouche,’ says Mrs. Stanmore, putting the letter in her +pocket, ‘while I have hardly shoes to my feet. I--who was supposed to +be the handsome sister, and the clever sister, and the lucky sister! +And I dare not show my face in Redcastle, not even if half a million +of money is to be lost by my absence. To think that uncle Stephen +should choose just this particular time for his return; to think that +he should return at all, when Marion and I made up our minds ever so +long ago that he was little better than a myth, and was sure to have +married a begum without telling anybody, and to die in India, leaving +all his money to horrid copper-coloured children. Lucky for Marion!’ + +Then, after a pause, leaving the bridge and entering the shabby +street leading to Cheyne Walk, she continues her self-communing +thus:-- + +‘What shall I say to uncle Robert? Suppose he were to come to town +and call at Mrs. Hazleton’s. He may have money now to pay for the +journey. It was safe enough before. Poor uncle Robert never had a +spare pound, or ever wasted a shilling, except the shillings he had +to pay for summonses because of being behindhand with the taxes. If +he should come up to London? Or if uncle Stephen should be in town +and call in Lowther Street? More likely that. Anglo-Indians are such +active creatures. What am I to do?’ + +Thus disjointedly run her thoughts, as she walks--very quickly +now--along the narrow, shabby street, past the fried-fish shop, and +the pork butcher’s, and the emporium for second-hand goods--from a +picture of the Holy Family, after Raffaelle, very much framed, to +a flat iron, or a pair of bluchers--the greengrocer’s, also coal +merchant, the cook-shop, with its steam-tarnished windows and reeking +odour of boiled beef and stick-jaw pudding. + +‘That reminds me,’ Mrs. Stanmore says to herself, as the reek of +cooked provisions salutes her nostrils, ‘there’s nothing for dinner.’ + +She pauses and takes counsel with herself. Her eye wanders from the +cook-shop to the fishmonger’s, thence ranges to the pork butcher’s. +Her election lies among these. Cambridge sausages are savoury, but +dear; and Mrs. Bonny, the landlady, has a trick of overdoing all +things entrusted to her culinary art. A pound of Cambridge sausages, +reduced to grounds and grease, are hardly worth the shilling they +cost. Boiled beef is expensive and weighs heavy. For a cheap relish, +a zest which shall make bread and butter supply the place of dinner, +your fishmonger is your best friend. Mrs. Stanmore patronizes the +finny tribe. She selects an eight-penny haddock, dried and salted, +from the merchant’s store, and carries it home with her, rolled up in +brown paper. She stops at the cheap baker’s for a half-quartern loaf, +with which the bit over is not unacceptable. ‘I wonder what Marion +would think if she could see me now?’ she asks herself; ‘Marion who +always complained of my pride, and called herself the Cinderella of +the family. Her Cinderella-ship never brought her so low as this.’ + +Home! bitter mockery of a sweet word. She turns out of the shabby +street into a street still shabbier, narrow, dirty, and out at +elbows. Yet at its worst not quite so bad as a modern street under +the same conditions, for the red brick houses are substantial and +roomy, and the worm-eaten oaken window-frames shut out the wind +better than the speculative builder’s warped and shrunken deal. + +The house which Mrs. Stanmore enters is dark and gloomy. The wail +of a fretful child sounds from the basement as she lets herself in +at the street door with a convenient latch-key. A glimmer from the +kitchen stairs is the only light visible, and to this glimmer Mrs. +Stanmore seems to address herself. + +‘I’ve brought home a haddock, Mrs. Bonny. Will you be kind enough to +broil it at six o’clock?’ + +‘Oh, very well,’ answers a querulous voice from unseen depths below. +‘You can put the ’addock on the window-sill. I’ll come and fetch it +when I’ve got time; but I can’t say nothink about its being done by +six, for my fire’s got low after ironin’. The parlour has gone out to +tea.’ + +This last remark has a reproachful sound, as who should say, ‘You +never spare me trouble by going out visiting.’ + +Mrs. Stanmore deposits the dried fish, and ascends the dark, +old-fashioned staircase, smelling of mice, whose hurried scamper is +audible behind the mouldering wainscot. One room, the first-floor +front, comprises Mr. and Mrs. Stanmore’s share of number eleven, +Dixon Street. It is happily a rather large room, with three windows, +provided with old-fashioned window-seats. The furniture is old +like the house, worn and dingy, but solid furniture that has +served several generations of housekeepers and a ragged regiment of +lodgers. In the glow of a cheery little fire the dim old room has a +homely, not unfriendly look. The old tent bedstead has been pushed +into the most obscure corner. There are two arm-chairs, with faded +chintz covers, a sofa, large and ponderous. There is a round table +opposite the wide old fireplace, and another table against the wall, +surmounted by a japanned iron tea-tray of a bright red ground with a +landscape in the middle, a rosewood tea-caddy, a pair of blown glass +decanters, empty, a family Bible--the landlady’s--a ragged copy of +Byron’s ‘Don Juan,’ and two odd duodecimo volumes of ‘Tom Jones,’ in +brown calf--the lodger’s. + +Mrs. Stanmore lights a small paraffine lamp, takes off jacket and +hat, and proceeds to prepare the evening meal. She has tea-things and +tea-kettle to her hand in the roomy and mousey old closet beside the +fireplace--such a closet as is only to be found in old houses, large +enough for half a dozen burglars to hide in, or a whole nursery of +children to play in, and with all manner of odd corners and shelves, +and perchance an inner cupboard lurking mysteriously in its paneled +recesses. + +Mrs. Stanmore fills the kettle, and sets out the tea-things on the +red japanned tray, and cuts a plate of bread and butter, and makes +a round of toast deftly enough, though a year ago she was about the +least handy of her sex in such small domestic offices. That stern +schoolmistress, necessity, has taught her many things. How young +she looks in the ruddy light of the fire, as she kneels on the +hearth-rug toasting that round of bread for the poor meal that is to +be dinner, tea, and supper, all in one for Mrs. Bonny’s first-floor +lodgers!--how young and how pretty! every feature so daintily +fashioned, eyes so darkly lustrous, colouring so delicate; young, and +with much need of love and sympathy, of comfort and careful tendance. + +‘And so uncle Stephen has really come home--richer than we ever made +him in our dreams when we were children--and Marion is tasting all +the pleasures his wealth can buy for her, Marion whom I pitied so +when I left her behind me at Redcastle. She might pity me now, from +the depth of her heart, if she could see me. She might have written +to tell me the change in her fortunes--selfish thing. I suppose it +is on account of my not answering her last two letters--such stupid +letters as they were too--full of “I hope you are free from cold,” +and “I trust you are enjoying the nice autumn weather”--and Uncle +Robert’s rheumatic gout.’ + +She lapses into deeper meditation, looking into a red cavern in the +heart of the fire, forgetful of the toast which hangs despondently +upon the twopenny tin toasting-fork, shaped like Neptune’s trident. +Meditation full of rue, for she has done the most foolish thing a +woman can do, except one, which is to repent too late of her folly; +and she is fast coming to that ultimate stage of foolishness, vain +regret for an irrevocable act. + +She is still kneeling in front of the fire, absent-minded, absorbed, +when the door opens, and a young man comes in, slowly, heavily, like +one who brings no gladness with him, and has no hope of finding +comfort at home. He comes quietly to the hearth, lays his hand upon +Sibyl’s shoulder, and addresses her not unkindly, but with little +warmth in his tone. + +‘Well, little old woman, brooding over the fire as usual? What’s the +matter now?’ + +‘Not much more than usual,’ his wife answers, without looking up. +‘You’ve had your customary luck, I suppose?’ she inquires, after a +pause, during which her husband has taken off his shabby overcoat, +and flung himself into one of the arm-chairs. + +‘Yes, the wheel of fortune hasn’t turned the other way yet. It +revolves persistently, but always--like the planets--in the same +direction. The immutable laws of bad luck are not to be abrogated +in my favour. The fellows I wanted to see--butterfly friends of the +past, who might lend me a fiver if I could catch them in the right +humour--were all out. The situation I applied for has been given to +somebody else. They had a hundred and thirty-nine applicants, the +principal told me, and gave the berth to the applicant who dotted +his i’s with the nearest approach to mathematical precision. “We +take a man’s handwriting as the physical expression of his mental +bias,” said the principal, “and what we want is precision.” Now +you know I never dot my i’s at all, or if I do the dot is so far +from the letter as to make my meaning all the more unintelligible. +So much for the clerkship. The commission agency we saw advertised +turns out a “do.” Agent required to put down fifty pounds as a +guarantee of _bona fides_. I applied for an agency in the wine +trade, offered to a young gentleman moving in good society and able +to push a new brand of champagne; but when the wine merchant saw +me, he asked, rather pertinently, if I moved in good society in +this coat. I told him I was a gentleman by birth and education, and +knew some of the best people in London. “Very likely, my dear sir,” +replies the grape-doctor, “but you don’t visit them. We want young +men who dress well, and look as if they could afford to drink the +wine they recommend; men who have the appearance of wealth with the +unscrupulousness of poverty.” Rather neatly put by our friend the +gooseberry-fermenter, wasn’t it?’ + +‘And you have done nothing, earned nothing, are no nearer earning +anything than you were yesterday?’ asks Sibyl, without lifting her +eyes to his face. + +Yet the time was, not a year ago, when to gaze upon that countenance +seemed to her like reading a poem, when every turn of the handsome +head, every sparkle of the dark eyes--eyes ever of uncertain hue but +always dark--was a thing to remember and dream about;--when to watch +him across a crowded room was quiet happiness, all-sufficing for an +exacting love--when to hear his voice, gay or grave, was sweeter than +music. + +And now he sits a few paces from her, worn out, weary, dispirited, +in sore need of comfort, and she cannot raise her eyes from moody +contemplation of the fire. The difference is marked, the reason +obvious. A year ago he was an undeclared lover--to-day he is an +actual husband. Then there was not a many-petalled flower which did +not suggest the question, ‘Loves me, loves me not?’ Now he has loved +her and won her, and they have essayed to sail along the river of +life together, and found the navigation difficult--ay, hard and +bitter as that weedy swamp through which Sir Samuel Baker’s craft was +toilfully dragged under Afric’s torrid sky. + +‘You couldn’t give a neater definition of my position,’ replies Alex +Secretan, otherwise Stanmore. He has striven to hide his destitution +under an assumed name, just as his wife has kept the secret of an +imprudent marriage by retaining a false address. Either mystery may +be discovered at any moment, so various are the accidents of life. + +‘Don’t consider me frivolous if I remind you that I haven’t eaten +anything since half-past eight this morning, and the perambulation of +stony-hearted London is conducive to an inward craving. I won’t call +the feeling by so healthy a name as hunger. It’s a compound sensation +of sickness and emptiness. Is there anything to eat except bread and +butter? It’s a very nice thing in its way, but one comes to object +to it on the same ground that Louis the Fourteenth’s confessor took +about partridges.’ + +‘Mrs. Bonny is broiling a haddock,’ replies Sibyl, listlessly. + +‘What good Catholics we are! keeping Advent all the week through. We +had bloaters yesterday, and dried sprats the day before. All our days +are Ember days.’ + +‘Fish is the cheapest thing I can get, Alex.’ + +‘No doubt, but it generally entails after expense in the way of an +extra half-pint of beer. No matter. Let Mrs. Bonny bring forth the +haddock,’ exclaimed Alexis, applying himself diligently to the toast, +which Sibyl has just buttered. + +She tinkles the bell gently, as a polite hint to Mrs. Bonny. She dare +not give a peremptory ring, as she might for a servant whose wages +she paid. Mrs. Bonny--when letting her lodgings--professes to give +attendance to her lodgers, but that attendance is scanty, and yielded +as a favour rather than a right. A lodger who wants extra luxuries, +such as onion sauce with a shoulder of mutton, or fried liver and +bacon for supper, must make things very sweet to Mrs. Bonny. An +order for the theatre, or even an occasional tumbler of grog, has a +mollifying effect on her disposition, the loan of a newspaper soothes +her sensitive mind. The Stanmores are too poor to offer even these +small attentions, and are sometimes backward in the payment of their +rent, and thus receive stinted service grudgingly given. Sibyl pours +out the tea languidly, and with the air of a person out of health. +She eats a little bread and butter, but without appetite, and when +the haddock appears at last, borne by a slipshod girl, Mr. Stanmore +has that fish all to himself, Sibyl refusing any portion thereof. + +Alexis contemplates her pityingly--tenderly even;--that haggard, +sickly look in the delicate face touches him. + +‘Poor girl, how pale and ill you look! No appetite too. That’s a bad +sign. I wish I could have brought you home something more tempting +than this old finnan. A bird, a sweetbread, or something of that +kind.’ + +‘I could not eat the most exquisite dinner that was ever cooked, +Alex, so you needn’t trouble yourself to regret that. But I do wish +for something, very much.’ + +‘What is it, darling? You ought to have every wish gratified just +now. You would, if you had married a rich cheesemonger, or a +wharfinger, or a packer, or a cotton-spinner, or a brass-founder, +anything except that lowest animal in the scale of creation, a +broken-down swell. What is it, Sibyl?’ + +‘I want ten pounds, Alex,’ she answers, intently, her elbow on the +table, her chin supported by her hand, her eyes upon his face, +attitude and expression alike earnest. + +‘Ten pounds, my dearest! We have been wanting ten pounds ever since +our honeymoon.’ + +‘Don’t speak of our honeymoon,’ exclaimed Sibyl, fretfully. ‘It +maddens me when I think how you squandered money that might have kept +us in comfort for a year.’ + +‘My love, you are so easily maddened,’ remonstrates Alexis, +placidly--he has never been seen out of temper. ‘I dare say it was +foolish to go the pace quite as fast as we did, but you had never +seen Paris, and April in Paris with the woman one loves is the +nearest approach that I can imagine to paradise.’ + +‘You speak as if you had tried it often,’ says Sibyl, with a sneer. + +‘Bah, child, a mere _façon de parler_. Do you remember our drives to +the Cascade, in the balmy spring nights, when the stars were shining +on the Bois, and how we used to sit in the lamplit gardens of the +_café_, eating ices and making love? If ever we grow rich, Sibyl, +we’ll go back to Paris and have another honeymoon. But how about +these ten pounds, little woman? What can you want with ten pounds?’ + +The young wife rises, glides behind her husband’s chair, and, leaning +on his shoulder, whispers something in his ear, a something at which +he smiles tenderly, sadly, and turning in his chair, draws the young +face--so wan and yet so fair--down to his lips. + +‘By Jove!’ he exclaims, ‘poor little woman, I am a brute, never to +have thought of it. You want to buy clothes for the poor little +beggar who is to make his first appearance upon the stage of life, +before the innocent lambkins have begun to bleat in the meadows, +undisputed heir to his father’s impecuniosity. The lower animals have +the advantage of us in that respect, by the by. The lambkins come +into the world amply provided. You shall have the money, Sibyl. Yes, +if I have to borrow, beg, rob for it. You shall have it somehow, +even if I were driven to beg of my bitterest foe, ay, of Stephen +Trenchard himself.’ + +His arm is round her and he feels her start at the name. + +‘Don’t be frightened, little woman. That’s only a figure of speech. +I never saw Stephen Trenchard in my life, and as to begging of +him, there’s nothing more unlikely, since he is, to the best of my +knowledge, an inhabitant of the city of palaces, otherwise Calcutta.’ + +‘He might have come back to England, Alex, without your knowing +anything about it,’ suggests Sibyl. + +‘Ay, that might he have done easily, child, seeing that he is a very +insignificant person in this big busy world, and that I know nothing +whatever about him, except that he did me deadly wrong before I was +born.’ + +‘And you were taught to hate him?’ + +‘Yes verily, before I learned my catechism I learned to hate Stephen +Trenchard with a righteous and a godly hate, for was he not the +falsest and meanest of men? and the Scripture does not forbid us to +hate falsehood and meanness. If Eve had hated the serpent a little, +humanity in general would not have gone wrong. Trenchard was like the +serpent, a creature that crawled, a wriggling worm in the guise of a +man. He wriggled and wormed himself into the fortune that should have +been my father’s; he wriggled and wormed himself into the heart of my +father’s first love; and he did all this wrong,--deliberate wrong, +mark you, basely conceived, the study of his days and nights, with a +smiling face, clasping his victim’s hand in friendship all the while, +so that no thunderbolt falling from the skies could have surprised +my father more than the discovery that his arch enemy was _there_, +hiding under the mask of his humble friend.’ + +Alexis has risen, and paces the room, fired by this memory of a +lesson learned in earliest boyhood. As deeply as he loved his dead +father, so deeply does he hate his father’s enemy and betrayer. Sibyl +watches him, thoughtful and perplexed. Of all things difficult to +impossibility, nothing could seem more so than to reconcile her love +and duty to her husband, and her desire to win her uncle’s fortune. + + + + + CHAPTER II. + + ‘O WORLD, THY SLIPPERY TURNS!’ + + +Given a ten-pound note which must be had. Query, where to get it? A +problem not over-easy of solution for a man who has exhausted the +generosity of those few friends who are generous, and discovered the +hollowness of those numerous acquaintances who, not ill-natured in +the beaten way of friendship, will do anything for a friend except +open their purse-strings. + +A sharp December morning. The wind has changed in the night from +south-west to due east, and there has been a light fall of snow, +which is whitening the various and picturesque roofs of Chelsea, and +hangs on the ragged elm branches on Cheyne Walk. The river is dun +colour, the sky iron-gray, as if the atmosphere were heavily charged +with snow. Butchers’ boys, cabmen, and those denizens of the street +who seem to get through their daily round of labour with an ample +margin of leisure for gossip and standing about at corners, look up +at the darkened vault of heaven and opine that there will be a heavy +fall of snow before night. + +This is the cold world which Alexis Secretan faces, leaving his wife +asleep in the old tent bed at number eleven, Dixon Street. She has +fallen into slothful habits of late, pleading as her excuse that +there is so little to get up for, now-a-days. Certainly not pleasure +or prosperity, not even so much as a new book to read, for does not +that ragged old ‘Don Juan,’ whose bitterest verses Alexis gloats over +in his gloomiest moods, constitute, with graceless ‘Tom Jones,’ the +entire stock of literature in Sibyl Secretan’s reach? + +Ten pounds. He faces the bitter blast blowing up the river from +Plumstead and Woolwich and all the chilly eastern marshes, and +seeming to concentrate its biting power upon innocent Cheyne Walk, he +faces the rasping wind moodily, puzzling out this insolvable problem, +where to get ten pounds! Where to get it? that is the only question. +The how to get it has been settled from the beginning. He must +borrow it. He has almost outgrown the sense of degradation which +accompanies the earlier stages of the borrower’s piteous career,--he +has almost reached the lower depth of the hardy and habitual +borrower. He has but to settle with himself upon whom he shall make +his demand. For himself he might perchance never have stooped to +borrow. He would have emigrated rather, and lived by the sweat of his +brow in some new country where men are equal, and poverty less than a +crime; or, his heart failing him, he might have flung himself and his +difficulties off Waterloo Bridge, and so made an easy end of them; +but with a young and beloved wife dependent on him for daily bread he +has sacrificed pride and independence, manhood and honesty even, he +sometimes thinks, and for the last six months has lived a wretched +hand-to-mouth existence, trying to get employment all the time, and +occasionally earning a fortuitous five-pound note, but supporting +the burden of life for the most part by the aid of loans obtained +from the associates of happier days. He is not a man upon whom so +pitiful a position sits lightly; though--being gifted by nature with +a peculiarly sweet and easy temper--he has a way of taking his +troubles placidly, especially in the presence of his wife, and his +railings at Fate and Fortune, though frequent, are philosophical +rather than angry or vindictive. He is a man who, if Nature’s +bounties are to be counted as a heritage, is not undowered. Eminently +handsome, of a noble presence, athletic, with a constitution to +which illness and disease are unknown--with a voice that can soothe +or charm, threaten or command--an eye that dominates man and the +lesser animals alike--a quick, bright intellect--a wondrous power +of endurance--that noble quality which in a horse we call ‘stay,’ +which in man is perhaps the crowning characteristic of manhood,--with +such gifts as these, Alexis Secretan should hardly count himself ill +furnished for the battle of life. Unhappily, the old fairy story of +the Princess’s christening gifts repeats itself more or less in every +man’s life. Among the numerous good fairies who were invisible guests +at Alexis Secretan’s baptismal feast two evil fairies slipped in +unawares. These were Poverty and Unthrift. + +‘He shall have little of this world’s goods,’ said the first. + +‘And he shall squander that little,’ added the second. + +This baptismal curse has been fulfilled. The only son of a +disinherited father, Alexis has yet escaped the chastening influence +of that sharp schoolmaster, Poverty. His mother’s fortune was +enough to support father and son in luxurious idleness, and in a +happy-go-lucky, easy kind of life in foreign cities, where life +is cheaper, gayer, and brighter than at home. At seventeen his +father’s influence was sufficient to obtain him a commission in a +crack regiment. Father and mother died within a year of each other, +and soon after Alexis had put on his epaulettes. The remnant of +his mother’s fortune--the bulk thereof having been anticipated, +and made away with from year to year as necessity impelled--served +to keep the young man going in an expensive profession for about +five years, during which he had the good fortune to see some active +service, distinguish himself by various displays of reckless daring, +and obtain a captaincy. At the end of the fifth year he had spent +the last shilling of his capital, and was in debt. Knowing the +impossibility of living on his pay, he sold out, and for some +time--about a year and a half--contrived to live upon the proceeds +of his commission, having thus sacrificed his military career to +the necessities of eighteen months’ idleness, and to that miserable +condition of a noble profession which makes it impossible that a +gentleman should live by his sword. + +Alexis reviews the ranks of his acquaintances as he walks +Londonwards. He has exhausted the bounty of his easy-going, and, in +some cases, open-handed brother officers. No hope of help there. +His foreign education has left him without school friends near at +hand. Honest Max, or jovial Fritz of Heidelberg might advance him a +thaler--or a handful of groschen--were they within reach, but their +normal state is impecuniosity. + +There is but one source left undrained. Even in this depth of +destitution he has not yet appealed to his mother’s sole surviving +sister, his aunt Louisa, co-heiress with his mother of a rich +Manchester manufacturer, and more fortunately married than his +mother. Aunt Louisa is the wife of Dudley Gorsuch, barrister, in +large practice, and member for Glaseford, in the Potteries, a +self-made man, self-important, and worshipping rank and mammon, as +the Ammonites worshipped Moloch. On this bleak December morning +it occurs to Alexis that aunt Louisa, being of his mother’s kin, +must have some green spot in her nature, some place in her heart +accessible to softer feeling, were it but the size of a pin’s point, +and that he, her nephew, destitute and forlorn, ought to be able to +find that place. + +He has dined at her house when he was a dashing young officer, well +dressed, well surrounded; has been entertained bounteously by her, +made much of, presented to her friends with some touch of pride, +being verily a young man for women to be proud of in his prosperous +days. At that happier time aunt Louisa appeared to him worldly, but +good-natured, hospitable, benevolent even. + +He is at the bottom of Grosvenor Place by this time, and has made up +his mind to try aunt Louisa. + +Mr. and Mrs. Gorsuch live in a street out of Grosvenor Place, too +expensive a street for Mr. Gorsuch’s means, which are larger in +appearance than reality; but a fine house in a fine neighbourhood is +a standing evidence of wealth, and as such is worth all it costs. +There are so many things in which prudent careful people can save +money; notably in their meals and the food they give their servants, +since these matters appertain to the inner economy of a household, +and are secrets to the outer world. Mrs. Gorsuch pinches in all +domestic details, even down to scouring-paper. Mr. Gorsuch gives +three state dinners in the season, supplied by Gunter, banquets of +imposing appearance, but washed down with wines that range from half +a crown to four and sixpence per bottle. + +Alexis, fully aware of his broken-down appearance, is too wise to +put forward his relationship as a claim to be admitted, despite the +footman’s suspicious look. + +He simply asks to see Mrs. Gorsuch, but he gives his real name, Mr. +Secretan. + +He is left in the hall while the footman communicates with his +mistress, whose voice is heard in the library at the back of the hall. + +‘She can hardly deny herself when I can hear her talking,’ thinks +Alexis. + +She does not deny herself. The man ushers him into the library--a +square apartment with a gloomy outlook, and two pompous bookcases, +containing law books, and a few of those classic authors whose works +are more largely bought than read. + +A fire burns frostily and cheerily in the bright steel grate. +Mrs. Gorsuch sits at the table, with a row of tradesmen’s books +and a ponderous plated inkstand before her. She has been trying +to reconcile discrepancies between the butcher’s account of meat +delivered and her own idea of the meat that ought to have been +consumed. Three pounds of rump-steak sit heavily upon her soul. She +cannot see how those three pounds of butcher’s meat can have been +honestly eaten, and she is haunted by the image of an all-devouring +policeman--or those bloodsuckers, the cook’s relatives. + +She is a little dried-up looking woman, with stiff bands of light +auburn hair, pepper-castored with gray; a brown merino gown, a +pinched-looking lace cap, and a double eye-glass attached to a chain +which glitters in the rosy light of the fire, as she turns to look at +her visitor, glass in hand. + +‘Alex!’ she exclaims, ‘Good heavens, what a change!’ + +She saw him last as a guest at one of her state dinners, elegant, +prosperous-looking, with the easy self-assured air of a man certain +of success in life. She sees him now reduced to the lowest ebb in the +tide of man’s existence. He comes to her as a beggar. Mendicancy is +written on his face. + +‘Yes, there’s a marked decadence from the young man about town, +is there not?’ he replies. ‘You see the brand which Destitution +stamps upon her children. I have fallen very low in the world since +I used to come to your swell parties. You were very kind to me in +those days, aunt,’--Mrs. Gorsuch winces, knowing so well what is +coming,--‘so kind that I have made up my mind to sue for a small +kindness to-day. It goes against the grain, but----’ + +‘Before we talk about kindnesses, Alexis, perhaps you will be good +enough to explain how you have sunk to this absolutely disreputable +condition?’ asked Mrs. Gorsuch, looking at her nephew’s boots. + +‘The easiest thing in the world,’ answers Alexis, with agreeable +recklessness. ‘I have spent all my money, and have not yet acquired +the knack of earning more.’ + +He sees, dimly, that there is little to be hoped from this flesh and +blood of his, and that placid despair which is his normal condition +enables him to take things easily. + +‘Earning!’ echoes aunt Louisa, with a bitter sneer. ‘It isn’t in any +of your race to earn the bread they eat. My father made his fortune +by honest industry, your father thought he honoured our family when +he exchanged his landless gentility for my sister’s thirty thousand +pounds. Poor Maud! it was a luckless day that brought him across her +path.’ + +‘Reserve your pity, aunt Louisa. My mother’s married life was a happy +one. I can bear witness to that.’ + +‘Happy!’ exclaims Mrs. Gorsuch, contemptuously. ‘Was she in society?’ + +This question she evidently considers unanswerable. Alexis respects +her opinion, and makes no reply. + +‘Can you compare her position with mine?’ + +‘Certainly not. You have a handsome house in a fashionable street, a +bishop for your right-hand neighbour, an earl on your left hand. You +have the orthodox establishment of a lady, and all the cares that +accompany it. My mother lived a roving life in some of the loveliest +places of this earth, and had no servant but the maid who waited on +her when she was well and nursed her when she was ill, and loved her +dearly always. My mother’s society consisted of the few friends who +were faithful to her through all changes of fortune. Those do not +count, of course. No, she was not in society; but perhaps when you +and she compare notes as to your earthly experiences in a wiser world +you may find that the balance has been more evenly adjusted than you +suppose now.’ + +Mrs. Gorsuch has hardly heard him. Her mind is troubled by a grave +doubt. + +‘I hope you did not tell the butler that you are my nephew,’ she +says, anxiously. + +‘I had too much discretion for that. And now, aunt, not wishing to +intrude myself or my boots (he has perceived her uneasy glances at +those patched offenders against the decencies of life) upon you +longer than is absolutely necessary, I will come to the point. Will +you lend me, or give me, ten pounds? If Fate is against me you may +call it a gift, but if Fortune favour me it shall be repaid tenfold. +I needn’t tell you how badly I want money. My appearance testifies to +my necessities, but it is not for myself that I am a beggar. It is +for my wife, soon to become a mother.’ + +‘What?’ almost shrieks Mrs. Gorsuch. ‘Married! Without income or +profession, you have linked yourself to some unhappy creature?’ + +‘Yes, we have taken the liberty to unite our destitution. If the +worst comes to the worst the same pan of charcoal that serves for one +will accommodate the other.’ + +‘Your impiety shocks but does not surprise me,’ says Mrs. Gorsuch. +‘Such sinful imprudence could hardly be found in a man of religious +principles.’ + +‘No, prudence and piety generally go in double harness. Well, aunt, I +have my answer. You won’t lend or give me the money?’ + +‘In the first place, I have not such a sum to lend. Mr. Gorsuch’s +position demands the expenditure of our income. We are never in +debt,’ with a shudder, ‘but we have never anything to spare. I had +to strain every nerve in order to pay our annual contribution to the +Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.’ + +‘And you have nothing left for a starving nephew at home.’ + +‘Even if I were in a position to advance you this money--which I +repeat I am not--I cannot see that your condition would be materially +improved by the loan. Where would you be when the money was spent?’ + +‘Exactly where I am now. The money is not for myself, but for my +wife. I should not touch a sixpence of it.’ + +‘Who was this unfortunate young woman when you married her?’ + +‘Will you lend me ten pounds?’ asks Alexis, ignoring the question. + +‘Sadly to be pitied, poor creature, whoever she was. Some young +person of inferior position, I dare say.’ + +‘Will you lend me ten pounds?’ + +‘I have already told you that I have no such sum at my disposal, +Alexis,’ replies Mrs. Gorsuch. And then, hesitatingly, reluctantly +extracting a coin from a plethoric-looking Russia leather purse, she +adds, ‘If half a sovereign will be of some small assistance----’ + +‘It won’t,’ answered her nephew, abruptly. ‘I dare say I could make +as much in a day by sweeping a crossing, and I shouldn’t feel myself +so degraded as if I took the money from you. Good-bye, aunt.’ + +He has opened the door before he concludes, and Aunt Louisa endures +agonies for the rest of the day, fearful that the butler, or man of +all work, heard that last address. Remorse for her treatment of her +nephew troubles her not at all. + +‘He cannot say that I sent him away empty-handed,’ she reflects. ‘I +offered him half a sovereign.’ + + + + + CHAPTER III. + + THE TRUE METAL. + + +Alexis Secretan turns his back upon the solemn responsibilities of +Tubal Street, Grosvenor Place, sick with anger and despair. He is +angry with himself rather than with his aunt. He loathes himself for +having invited such humiliation. + +‘I ought to have known her better,’ he muses. ‘A woman who gives +showy dinners and cheap wines, and talks of her friend the Duchess +of Landsend, or the Countess of John-o’-Groat; a woman whose name +appears in the subscription list of all the orthodox charities, just +under the nobility, and who never keeps a servant six months. And yet +she is my mother’s sister, of the same race; my mother, whose nature +was all kindness, and with whom to give was as natural as to breathe.’ + +He stands at Hyde Park Corner, indifferent to the east wind and the +falling snow,--fine small snow-flakes that lie unmelted where they +fall. + +‘Now which way shall I turn myself in search of a friendly soul?’ he +asks. + +He turns south-westward, perhaps to escape that biting easterly +blast, and walks towards Brompton, listlessly, hopelessly, walking +fast to keep himself warm, but with no settled purpose. + +Past the Bell and Horns Tavern he stops and looks up at one of the +houses in the high road, a house with a front garden--or railed +enclosure, which courtesy calls garden--a snowy parallelogram, in +which flourish four melancholy bushes, like dwarf cypresses in a +graveyard. The house is neat and bright-looking, and a bill in the +parlour window announces that apartments are to be let within. + +Alexis opens the gate as if familiar with its structure, goes up +to the door hesitatingly, knocks, and asks to see Mr. Plowden. He +is ushered forthwith into the back parlour, where a man of about +his own age, pale and thoughtful-looking, sits by an indifferent +fire painting a map. A pile of unpainted maps, a battered old tin +paint-box and brushes lie on the table before him. The thin white +hand travels dexterously, rapidly over the paper, leaving a delicate +line of colour behind it. + +The map-painter looks up at Alexis, brush in hand, surveys him from +head to foot, wonderingly, and drops the brush full of colour, on the +map. + +‘Captain Secretan!’ he exclaims, ‘Is it possible?’ + +‘It’s true, at any rate,’ answers Alexis, holding out his hand, which +the other grasps affectionately. ‘Theoretically impossible, perhaps, +but absolutely true. Just wash off that splash of cobalt, Dick. I +shouldn’t like you to spoil one of your maps on my account.’ + +‘I’m so glad to see you,’ says Richard Plowden, dabbing the map with +a sponge rather nervously. ‘I was afraid you’d quite forgotten me, +and that we should never see you here again, either as a lodger or +a friend. However, here you are, and I’m heartily glad to see you,’ +poking the dingy little fire vigorously, and then holding out his +hand again to Alexis; ‘but I’m afraid things haven’t been going so +well with you as they ought. You look----’ + +‘Poor,’ interjects Alexis. ‘You’re not far out. Poverty and small-pox +are unmistakable diseases. You can see them in a man’s face. Before +you say another kind word to me, Dick, I must tell you the truth--the +naked, unpleasant truth. I come to you as a beggar. Knowing how hard +you work for every shilling you earn--knowing what a good fellow +you are--good son, good friend, good Christian--I am mean enough to +come here and ask you to help me. The worthless drone appeals to the +honest, independent bee.’ + +‘So far as I can help you,’ replies Mr. Plowden, with undiminished +kindliness, ‘I am at your service. You were a profitable lodger +to my mother, and a kind friend to me. It isn’t many gentlemen in +your position who would have condescended to associate with a lame +invalid, who gets his living by painting maps. I know those evenings +when you used to come and smoke your pipe down here were some of the +happiest in my life.’ + +He walks about the room as he speaks, drags a chair to the fireside +for Alexis, takes a loaf of bread, a bottle of anchovies, a pat of +butter, and a bottle of ginger wine out of the chiffonier, spreads a +napkin, and arranges this temperate refreshment on one side of the +table, pushing his maps and colour-box to the other. He walks lame, +but is active and hardy notwithstanding. + +‘Do you suppose I should have spent many evenings with you if I had +not found your company pleasant, Dick?’ says Alexis, lightly. ‘I +found that you had read more and thought more than any fellow of my +acquaintance, and it was refreshing to me to hear your ideas upon +all manner of subjects. And then I flattered myself that you liked +me, and were pleased with my talk of the gay world; above all, about +that stage you love so well and see so little of. Do you remember +how we used to discuss the actors of the day, Dick, and settle how +Shakespeare ought to be interpreted?’ + +‘Do you think I can ever forget?’ asks Richard Plowden. ‘I’ve not so +many friends that I can afford to forget the one who was the first +to tell me I had a mind. Do you know, Captain Secretan, that I’ve +had the impertinence to write a book since then? Do peg into those +anchovies, captain, and don’t mind cutting the knobs off the loaf. I +like crumb as well as crust.’ + +‘A book, Dick. An essay on the genius of Shakespeare!’ + +‘Nothing so ambitious, or so unlikely to sell. A geography for +schools, on a new system. It is not published yet, but I have reason +to believe that it will be, and that I shall make a little money by +it. So you may have less compunction in borrowing a pound or two.’ + +‘Dear old Dick!’ exclaims Alexis, who has been doing ample justice to +the anchovies and bread and butter, and warming himself with a glass +of ginger wine. ‘Unhappily, it is not a question of a pound or two. I +want ten pounds.’ + +Richard Plowden’s countenance falls. It is not that he would measure +his friendship, but ten pounds is an awful sum. + +‘If I ever can repay it I will, and with interest at a more than +usurious rate. But it is almost a mockery to talk of repayment in my +present condition.’ + +Richard limps to the chiffonier without a word, takes out a little +japanned cash-box, unlocks it, and extracts therefrom a five-pound +note and five sovereigns. + +‘I had the money ready for the Christmas rent,’ he says, ‘but you are +welcome to it. We shall be able to rub along without it, I dare say.’ + +What pinching and deprivation this rubbing along process will cost, +Alexis can pretty well guess, for he has seen how the widow Plowden +and her son live at the best of times. + +He takes the money with a faltering hand, and turns away his face to +hide the tears that disfigure it, the first that he has shed since he +wept for his mother’s death. + +Presently he grows cheerful again, resumes his seat, finishes his +luncheon, and then tells Richard Plowden the story of his decadence, +an unvarnished tale which his humble friend hears with deepest +interest. + +‘If you could put me in the way of earning a few shillings a week +by any kind of labour, however humble, you would be doing me even a +greater favour than you have done me this day; and yet, knowing your +circumstances as I do, I feel as if you had given me ten years of +your life instead of ten pounds.’ + +Richard Plowden promises that he will turn the matter over in his +mind, and see what he can do, and so the two young men part, as +firm friends as in the days when Mrs. Plowden’s first-floor lodger, +the dashing young captain, was the object of her son’s affectionate +admiration, his ideal of all that is noble and splendid in manhood. + + + + + CHAPTER IV. + + ‘HAD THE CHANCE BEEN WITH US THAT HAS NOT BEEN.’ + + +Alexis speeds homeward joyously, elate as if he had conquered +fortune. He has borrowed money from a social inferior, and yet does +not feel humiliated. That interview with Richard Plowden has cheered +him wondrously. The patient, gentle soul working at monotonous +task-work in a gloomy back parlour, with no outlook save blank wall +and cistern, working uncomplainingly, nay, even cheerfully, has read +him a lesson. There must be work for a strong, healthy fellow like +himself when a cripple in a back room can earn his living. Alexis +begins to think he has tried life at the wrong end, that in striving +for some shabby-genteel, reduced-gentleman’s occupation, he has +overlooked those lowlier and less sophisticated avocations which +offer themselves to every honest man. + +‘We’ll emigrate as soon as the little woman is strong enough for +a sea voyage,’ he tells himself, ‘and I’ll turn shepherd on the +Australian downs.’ + +Sibyl receives him with an eager look, full of questioning. She is +sitting on the hearth-rug as he comes into the room, in her favourite +attitude, looking into the fire, her ruffled hair golden in the ruddy +light, her eyes heavy with thought or care. + +His elated aspect tells her that he has been successful. She rises +and runs to him, trembling with anxiety. + +‘Have you got the money?’ + +‘Yes, Sibyl. Of all my friends, the one who could least afford to +lose it was the only one to lend it. Here it is, little one. You must +make it go a long way, for it has cost me sore humiliation.’ + +‘It was lent grudgingly, then?’ + +‘No; but it was refused heartlessly by the wrong person before I hit +upon the right one. Make the most of it, my love, now you’ve got it.’ + +His wife takes the little parcel of money from his hand, slowly, +looking downward, and without a word. + +‘You are pleased, little woman?’ + +‘It was very good of you to try so hard,’ she answers in a low voice. + +She begins to busy herself about her husband’s dinner without another +word. This evening she gives him half a pound of rump-steak, an +unwonted feast, at which his soul rejoices. + +‘I am faring sumptuously to-day,’ he says, as she sits opposite to +him, pouring out the tea with a listless, absent air, which he takes +for physical languor. ‘I have had a superb luncheon already.’ + +All that evening Sibyl is unwontedly silent, and Alexis, not caring +to describe his interview with Mrs. Gorsuch, has not much to tell her +after he has related Richard Plowden’s generosity. He has recourse +to the tattered leaves of ‘Don Juan,’ and sits sniggering over his +favourite passages, and feeling as if he and the poet were both +outside the human race generally, and could afford to ridicule and +despise it. + +He sallies forth early next morning, despite the snow, which now +clothes the land as a garment, and goes straight to Brompton, to have +another cheery talk with Dick Plowden, and to inquire whether that +back parlour philosopher has hit upon any method by which he, Alexis, +may earn his daily bread. + +Richard is hopeful. He has an uncle engaged in a large shipping +agent’s office, an uncle who would have obtained employment for +Richard himself, had Richard’s legs been more serviceable in active +life. To this uncle, Mr. Sampson Plowden, Dick writes a long letter, +setting forth his friend’s capacities and desire for employment; +and, armed with this recommendation, Alexis speeds to the offices of +Messrs. Keel and Skrew, in a narrow alley out of Fenchurch Street. He +sees Sampson Plowden, an active little elderly man, who asks him if +he can write a good hand, and if he is quick at accounts. Alexis asks +for a sheet of paper, and writes a few lines in a clerk-like hand, +taking care to dot his i’s this time, and then volunteers to solve +any arithmetical puzzle that Mr. Plowden likes to set him. + +‘Well, I’ll take your word and Dick’s as to the book-keeping,’ +replies Mr. Plowden. ‘We employ a good many clerks, and sometimes +have to send one to Australia, which makes a vacancy. The next +time this occurs you shall hear of it. The junior clerks are in my +department, and it’s in my province to engage or dismiss them. I’ll +bear you in mind, Mr. Stanmore.’ + +‘If you could send me to Australia,’ hazards Alexis, glowing with +hope, ‘it would suit me admirably.’ + +‘Well, well, that would be a matter involving much consideration. +However, you shall hear from me at the first opportunity.’ + +This is not much, but it is something; for Mr. Plowden looks like a +man who means what he says, and Dick has given him a high character +for integrity and kindness of heart. Alexis plods homewards, cheered +and sustained by sorrow’s pole-star, Hope. + +He lets himself in at number eleven, Dixon Street, the door being on +the latch, and goes upstairs, prepared to find Sibyl in a brighter +frame of mind than usual, busy at her needlework most likely, the +lamp burning, the hearth swept, the evening meal set out, with +neatness which lends its charm even to poverty. + +The room looks curiously blank and dreary as he enters it. The fire +has gone out; cheerless sight, with that white world outside, and +the thermometer below freezing-point. There is no tea-tray, no white +cloth on the table, no lamp burning. The dusk is just light enough +to show him that the room is empty, and that no preparation has been +made for his refreshment. + +He goes back to the landing and calls over the balusters to his +landlady: ‘Has my wife been out long, Mrs. Bonny?’ + +‘She went out just before dinner-time,’ screams a voice from below. + +Dinner-time with Mrs. Bonny means one o’clock. + +‘She has gone to buy things, I dare say,’ thinks Alexis, ‘gone to +London most likely. She ought to have been home by half-past four, +though, if she went as early as one. Did she leave any message, Mrs. +Bonny?’ he asks, calling over the balusters again. + +‘No,’ replies the landlady, curtly, ‘she didn’t leave no message, but +she took a carpet bag.’ + +‘A carpet bag,’ repeats Alexis, with a puzzled air, as he goes back +to the blank, cold room. ‘What could she want with a carpet bag? To +bring the things home, perhaps,--foolish little thing! As if a parcel +wasn’t lighter to carry than a carpet bag.’ + +He gropes for wood and coals in the bottom of the roomy cupboard, +and lights a fire, patiently, toilfully, not unskilfully, with hands +which have learned many offices unknown to the elegant Captain +Secretan. + +He is dispirited by his wife’s absence, but not angry. That placid, +easy temper of his is full of tenderness and indulgence for the +‘little woman’ whose brief married life has been so full of care, who +approaches the mystery of maternity under such sorrowful conditions. +He lights his fire, brings out a loaf, a starveling slice of cheese, +and some small-beer in a bottle, and sits by the hearth to eat +his meal in the firelight. As he eats and drinks his eyes wander +thoughtfully round the firelit room, jets of flame flashing and +twinkling on the wainscot. + +‘Not a bad old room by any means,’ he thinks, ‘if one had just enough +money to live in it comfortably.’ + +He fancies that in Sampson Plowden’s friendship he has found the clue +that shall extricate him from the maze of adversity. How happy Sibyl +and he might be in this humble old room were he but employed as clerk +at Messrs. Keel and Skrew’s with a salary of say thirty shillings a +week! Not an ambitious desire, surely, in a young man whose family +history is set forth with some flourish in Burke’s ‘Landed Gentry.’ + +‘I shall have something pleasant to tell the little woman when +she comes home, at any rate,’ thinks Alexis, as he sips the flat +fourpenny ale, put carefully away after last night’s supper. + +A pert little flame spurts out of a knob of coal just at this moment, +brightening the whole room, and Secretan’s eye, wandering idly as he +muses, is attracted by a spot of white upon the sideboard. + +‘A letter, by Jove!’ he exclaims. ‘Who the deuce can have written to +me, when not a mortal knows my address?’ + +He rises--listlessly--apprehending no advantage from the letter, +lights the lamp, and goes over to the sideboard. The letter is from +his wife. + + ‘DEAR ALEXIS, + + ‘Our misery of the last few months has opened my eyes to the sad + truth that it would have been far better for both of us had we + never met, or had we been wise enough to defer our marriage till + we had some settled means of living. What am I but a burden to + you? How many situations there are in which you could get your + living were you alone and unfettered! while I could at least + return to the dull drudgery of teaching, and escape the pinch + of absolute poverty. Do not think me cold-hearted, dear Alexis, + when I tell you that I am weary of our continual struggle, and + that I have resolved to end it by an act which may provoke your + indignation, but which, I feel assured, will result in your + advantage. I set you free from the burden of a wife whom you have + found it too bitter a task to support. You have rarely uttered a + complaint, but I have seen despair in your face often enough to + learn that it has settled in your heart. Without me you may begin + the world afresh. Apart from you I shall have opportunities of + prosperity as Miss Faunthorpe, which I could never have as Mrs. + Secretan. If my lot changes, and fortune smiles, as I dare to + hope it will, you shall hear of me; and even if you blame me for + a separation which your anger may call a desertion, believe at + least that in severance, as in union, I shall be ever your true + and loyal wife, + + ‘SIBYL.’ + +Alexis reads and re-reads this letter like a man who hast lost +the power of understanding his mother tongue, and pores over +familiar words as though they were the hieroglyphics of an Assyrian +inscription. + +So cold, so heartless, so deliberate. His heart sickens at the +thought of such cruelty. In all his adversity, with starvation +staring him in the face, he has thought of his wife as part of +himself; has never considered the responsibility of providing for +her as doubling the difficulty of existence; has never for a moment +remembered that life might be easier to him without her. He has +been sorry for her, has thought of her deprivations, her endurance, +but of the burden upon himself--never. All hopes and dreams of a +happier future have centred themselves in her. To win a brighter home +for her, to surround her with comfort, has been his one ambition. +Reckless as his marriage was, he has never repented it. Fettered hand +and foot as he has found himself by that ill-considered act, he has +never wished the tie loosened. + +He stands with the letter in his hand, repeating the words to himself +incredulously. It must be a jest--a trick to test his love--anything +but the base and bitter truth. + +He puts the letter in his pocket at last, goes downstairs, and +penetrates the sacred domain of Mrs. Bonny; namely, the front +kitchen, which is at once the parlour or living-room, where Mr. +Bonny, employed as a railway porter, tastes the sweets of domestic +leisure, and the apartment in which Mrs. Bonny cooks for her lodgers. +The back kitchen makes a cheerful bedroom, and in summer-time, when +Mr. Bonny trains scarlet runners over the window, enjoys a rustic +outlook. + +Alexis is received somewhat coldly by Mrs. Bonny, that lady being +intent upon frying sausages for the railway porter’s evening repast, +and resenting all intrusion upon her private domain on principle. +He questions her closely as to the mode and manner of his wife’s +departure, but she can tell him no more than she has told him +already. Mrs. Stanmore went out between twelve and one o’clock, +carrying a small carpet bag. + +‘I shouldn’t have known anything about it if I hadn’t happened to +meet her as I was fetching of the dinner beer, our Mary Ann being +washing, and no one else to fetch it.’ + +‘Did she say nothing to you?’ + +‘Not a word; she just gives me a nod, in her off-hand way, and walks +on.’ + +That is all. Alexis goes upstairs again, heavily, slowly, and paces +the deserted room. By-and-bye he pauses before a rickety old chest of +drawers with brass handles and locks, opens a drawer, and finds it +empty. It is the drawer that contained his wife’s poor remains of a +wardrobe that had never been richly furnished, a few under garments, +a collar or two, and so on. These she has evidently taken with her. +Nothing could have been more deliberate than her departure. + +Presently a curious idea occurs to him, improbable, but it takes a +strong hold upon him nevertheless. + +Has she gone to make away with herself? and is this heartless letter +of hers a tender device to save him the pain of knowing that she had +been driven by despair to suicide? + +This seems to him more likely, more natural than that the wife he +loves can desert him; can, with coldest calculation, barter love and +truth against the chances of prosperity. + +What those chances are he knows not. He is so ignorant of his wife’s +family and surroundings as not to know that Sibyl Faunthorpe is the +niece of Stephen Trenchard. + +Why he is thus unenlightened is a question that can be only answered +by a retrospect, and will be best answered in Sibyl’s own words. + + + + + CHAPTER V. + + SIBYL FAUNTHORPE’S DIARY. + + +Lowther Street, _November 14, 186_--. I suppose to keep a diary is +about as foolish a thing as any one can do--waste of time in the +present, and self-abasement in the future. I dare say I shall hate +myself when I read over these pages in years to come, and see what a +stupid creature I was at nineteen years of age. However, I am driven +to scribble about myself and my feelings for want of anything better +to do in the long, lonely evenings, when the children are gone to +bed, and Mrs. Hazleton is out, and I have the dreary schoolroom +all to myself. I used to read any novel I could find lying about +downstairs, and bring up here for an evening, till Mrs. Hazleton +found me out and forbade it. ‘Novels, my dear Miss Faunthorpe,’ she +preached, ‘are the worst possible reading for a young woman in your +position--enervating the mind, weakening the logical faculty, which +in your brain I regret to say is sorely deficient.’ I felt inclined +to ask her why she reads novels if they are so injurious. She has a +knack of reading one’s thoughts, and answered my objection before +I could give it expression. ‘For the head of a household, who must +always have some portion of care and anxiety, novel-reading is an +innocent relaxation; but the instructor of youth should employ her +leisure in widening her circle of knowledge. The books in the study +bookcase are quite at your service, Miss Faunthorpe, whenever you +like to avail yourself of them,’ and then she sailed out of the room +to go to a dinner party, dressed in maroon velvet and old Brussels +lace, and looking very handsome--for an old woman. She must be +five-and-forty at the least. + +Perhaps I ought not to complain of my bondage, for I might be worse +off than I am. Mrs. Hazleton is fond of preaching, but she is not +unkind to me. She has no grown-up daughters, and whenever she has +company I am asked down to the drawing-room to play and sing and make +myself generally useful; and as she has a good deal of company, this +happens tolerably often. Luckily, music is my strong point. When Mrs. +Hazleton is in a good humour she takes me for a drive in the park, +and I see the world and hear what is going on. I go to a fashionable +church with the children on Sundays and Saints’ days, and am +altogether much better off than in my uncle Robert’s poverty-stricken +household, in dull old Redcastle, where I knew no one worth knowing, +and where life is only another name for vegetation. I am sure the +cabbages in uncle’s wretched kitchen-garden had quite as much +enjoyment of life as Marion and I--more indeed, for they had sunshine +and perpetual idleness, and bees and butterflies buzzing and skimming +about them, while we had old house-linen to patch and darn, and the +tradesmen’s books to puzzle over, and Jenny to teach, and mend for, +and scold, and puddings to make, and buttons to sew on from January +to December. I think there never was such a man as uncle Robert for +wrenching the buttons off his shirts, and pushing his toes through +his socks. + +So, at the worst, though I have to grind French, Italian, and German +verbs in a mill all the week through, and listen to those wretched +children strumming Kalkbrenner’s exercises three hours a day, I am +better off than Marion. I have forty pounds a year to spend upon +clothes, and I see a great many nice people. Mrs. Hazleton boasts +that she only knows the best people. ‘I am no tuft-hunter, my dear,’ +she tells me when she is in one of her expansive moods. ‘You will see +very few titles in my card-basket; but the people I know belong to +some of the best families in England.’ + + +_December 3._--Such a tiresome, dreary week. Mrs. Hazleton has dined +out four evenings out of six, and now on the fifth she has taken +off the children to see the new actor at the Haymarket. ‘I am sorry +there won’t be room for you in the box, Miss Faunthorpe,’ she said, +with her chilly politeness, after I had been toiling for an hour +helping Moyson, the children’s maid, to tie Lucinda’s ribbons, and +brush Laura’s hair, and sew on a tucker for Magdalen. So here I am at +half-past seven o’clock, my hearth swept, and my fire made up, as +solitary as an old maid with a small annuity. + +I have been down to the study, and chosen a couple of volumes, the +best I could find in a dry-as-dust collection of antiquities--the +‘Citizen of the World’ and a volume of the _Spectator_,--but I don’t +feel equal to reading either. It suits my present humour better to +scribble my complaints against fortune in this ridiculous book of +mine. What a lucky woman Mrs. Hazleton is! Married to a wealthy +Indian judge, and left a widow six years ago with an ample fortune; +too old to care about marrying again, but not too old to be admired +and made much of by her friends; her children young enough to be kept +in the schoolroom for the next four years. Impossible to imagine +a more independent position. What a contrast between her fate and +mine! I have never known what it is to have my own way, and yet, +when I was a child, I thought I had only to be ‘grown up’ in order +to taste all the sweets of life. Perhaps that was because of the +nonsense people talked about my good looks. I can fancy no greater +misfortune for a girl in my position than to be brought up with the +idea of being a beauty. When I was a little thing people were always +drawing comparisons between Marion and me to Marion’s disadvantage; +and before I was twelve I knew quite well that I was the pretty Miss +Faunthorpe. Even old Hester, who never had a civil word for me at the +best of times, used to feed my vanity with her taunts about my pretty +face and my uselessness. ‘Handsome is that handsome does,’ she used +to say, by which I knew very well that she thought me handsome. Then +came school, and I was set up as a beauty, and courted and petted by +one-half of the girls, and detested by the other half, and nagged at +by Marion, who was set against me by the disagreeable comparisons +people were always making between us. What was the consequence of +all this? I grew up with the idea that as soon as I left school, +some rich young man, handsome and agreeable into the bargain, would +fall in love with me at first sight, and that I should be married in +grand style at the parish church--six bridesmaids and ever so many +carriages and pairs--before the admiring eyes of all Redcastle. I +came home to uncle Robert’s dull red house, prepared for conquest. +Life would be like a fairy tale. Some fine summer morning the +handsome young prince would appear, and I should be raised at once +from Cinderella’s obscurity to Cinderella’s high fortune. Foolish +creature that I was! I used to lie awake at night telling Marion the +grand things I would do for her when I was married. + +‘Where is the prince to come from, Sib?’ she asked me once, rather +maliciously. ‘You know there are not above three such young men in +Redcastle--young Taylor, the lawyer’s son; Mr. Lacy, the biscuit +manufacturer; and George Pinsford, the coachmaker.’ + +‘Biscuit manufacturer!’ I exclaimed. ‘Do you suppose I would marry a +low tradesman? Aren’t there the county families, stupid?’ + +Well, here I am, after two weary years’ home life with uncle Robert, +who I must say is the dearest old thing in the world. Here I am, +nearly twenty, and no nearer finding the prince of fairy lore +than when I left Miss Worrie’s establishment for young ladies at +Kilmorden, after three years’ experience as pupil-teacher. Here I am, +a poor drudge of a governess, at just ten pounds a quarter, thankful +for being asked down to the drawing-room, where my beauty goes for +very little. All Mrs. Hazleton’s friends have found out by this time +that I am ‘only the governess,’ and have left off asking one another +who I am, as they used to do at first with some show of interest. I +sing, or play, and some one who has been chattering the whole time +says languidly, ‘Very nice, really. _Thank_ you, Miss Faunthorpe.’ +And I sit in the angle between the back drawing-room fireplace +and the window-curtain for the rest of the evening, watching and +listening, with no more part in what is going on than if I were at a +theatre. + +Let me look in the glass and see what this lauded beauty is which has +brought me so little luck. A small straight nose very sharply cut, +a short upper lip, under lip a thought too full, teeth good, chin +round and dimpled, face a perfect oval, eyes darkest brown; the sort +of eyes which, I believe, are usually called black. Hair dark brown, +with a tinge of gold where it ripples--the colour usually called +chestnut. Present expression discontent and a tendency to ill temper. + +I have given up that foolish notion of a rich husband, but I +sometimes indulge in another day-dream, perhaps just as foolish. What +if my rich uncle, Stephen Trenchard, were to come home, take a fancy +to me, and leave me a fortune? Such things have happened. I remember +how my poor mother used to talk of her brother Stephen, the Indian +merchant, and of the ship that was coming home to bring her ease and +comfort, and which never came. Will the ship come home for me, I +wonder, now that my poor mother has been lying ten years in her quiet +grave? + + +_December 13._--The most wonderful thing has happened--the most +unlooked-for, the most extraordinary. My heart beats so fast at the +mere thought of it, that I am almost breathless as I write these +lines. My hand trembles, and the letters look blurred and dim before +my eyes. + +I have seen the son of Philip Secretan, my uncle Stephen’s deadly +enemy--the man whom he supplanted in the affections of a weak old +father--for surely any father must be weak who would disinherit his +son in favour of a dependant, the man from whom he received the +injury that lamed him for life. How often have I heard my mother +tell the story, always putting her brother’s conduct in the most +favourable light! He was honest, indefatigable, steady--a favourite +clerk in the firm of Secretan Brothers, Manchester merchants. He +fully deserved the unexpected fortune that came to him, while +Philip’s dissipation and extravagance were justly rewarded by +disinheritance. Yet somehow in spite of poor mamma’s special +pleading, my sympathy was always with this unfortunate Mr. Secretan, +who saw his father’s wealth pass into the possession of his father’s +confidential clerk. + +I once asked mamma what kind of a man this Philip Secretan was. She +told me that she had only seen him once in her life, but that he +impressed her as being remarkably handsome and a perfect gentleman. + +And now I have seen his son, Captain Secretan. He was at Mrs. +Hazleton’s party last night. I had no idea who he was till +afterwards. He was standing before the fireplace in the back +drawing-room when I went back to my corner after singing ‘Porghi +Amor,’ standing with his back to the fire talking to old Colonel +Syceman. He is tall and strong-looking, and has, to my mind, a +most beautiful countenance. I never called a man beautiful before, +and I dare say I shall laugh at the expression when I read over +this stupid diary some day; but I cannot call his face less than +beautiful. It is such a noble face, with just the grand look I could +fancy in Achilles. I was reading Pope’s ‘Iliad’ to the children this +afternoon, and I thought of Captain Secretan every time Achilles +spoke. It seemed to me almost as if I could see him standing up +before me, confronting Agamemnon. He is dark, with boldly cut +features, a good-humoured expression about the mouth, and a somewhat +dreamy look in the dark gray eyes. I have seen handsomer faces, but +none that ever interested me as deeply. He is a man I should believe +in with all my soul if he were my friend; a man I should lean upon +as on a rock of defence if he were of my kindred. But he is nothing +to me, and I am hardly likely to see him again. + +Mrs. Hazleton spoke of him at luncheon to-day as a foolish young +fellow who has sold his commission, and whose future career must be +disastrous unless some distant relations were to die and leave him +their property. As a rule, distant relations are not so obliging. +She spoke with her reverential tone of his family, which is one of +the oldest in Hampshire, although his grandfather was a Manchester +merchant; and she informed me that his first cousin, once removed, is +a baronet, Sir Douglas Secretan, with a large estate in somewhere or +other. + +I wonder whether I shall ever see him again. + + +_December 30._--I have seen him again, three, four, five, six, seven +times. Three times in Mrs. Hazleton’s drawing-room, three times in +the park, when I was out walking with the children; and once in +Desmond Street when I had gone out alone to post a letter. + +I dare say it was very wrong, and that I shall be ashamed of myself +when I read over this dreadful diary, but when Captain Secretan asked +me whether I ever walked in the park with the children, I said yes; +and when he asked me what time, I said between three and five; and +after that, when he asked me if I ever went out alone, I told him +yes, sometimes, just before half-past five, to post my home letter. + +How kind he is! how clever! how interesting! and how well we seem +to know each other, though we have only met seven times! There is +evidently no association for him in the name of Faunthorpe. This is +only natural, as my mother did not marry till some years after her +brother’s quarrel with Philip Secretan. How much I regret, now, that +I did not learn the exact particulars of that quarrel! I have only +a vague idea of the circumstances; but from what my mother told me, +I know that, although Philip Secretan was the sufferer, my uncle +Stephen was as vindictive as if he also had been injured. + +Perhaps the injurer is sometimes more angry than the injured. + +My mother always declared that her brother was innocent of guile or +wrong-doing from first to last, but now that I know Mr. Secretan’s +son I feel still more inclined to side with my uncle’s enemy. + +He, Captain Secretan, has told me the history of his life, his +careless happy youth spent abroad, with a father and mother whom he +idolized. He was educated at Heidelberg, came from Heidelberg to +Woolwich, to an army tutor, joined his regiment at twenty, and sold +out after five years’ service, a few months ago. He has now all the +world before him, he says, and has only to choose a career. He is +energetic and clever, and can hardly miss success in anything he may +attempt. + +How changed our walks seem, now that there is always the chance of +meeting him! As I see him coming to meet us along the wintry avenue, +the familiar scene seems to grow beautiful, the sun shines brighter, +the birds break out into singing. They may have been singing before, +perhaps, and I too absorbed to hear them; but it seems as if they +began a glad chorus at his coming. I did not think that winter +afternoons could be so beautiful; the calm still air, the blue-gray +sky, the black tracery of the tall elm trees against the yellow +sunset. + +He told me yesterday that his father would have been a rich man, but +for the treachery of a friend whom he had loved and trusted. A cold +sick feeling came over me, just as if the treachery had been mine, +and I had suddenly come face to face with my victim. + +‘The only lesson my father ever taught me was to revile that man’s +name, and to carry my hatred of him with me to the grave. An evil +lesson for a kind-hearted man to teach, you’ll say; but for all that, +I don’t believe there ever beat a kinder heart than my father’s.’ + +I can easily believe this. Kindness and sweet temper are Captain +Secretan’s chief characteristics; a bright good humour which cheers +one like sunshine. A way of looking at life on the pleasantest side +which would inspire hopefulness in the most dismal mind. I know how +low-spirited, discontented, and wretched I was growing just before I +knew him, and how changed and brightened life seems to me now. + +The children doat upon him, and are as pleased as I am to meet him in +our walks. He talks to them about all their small pleasures, and is +able to interest himself in their ideas much better than I, who spend +my life with them. Sometimes he paces up and down the broad walk with +the three girls hanging about him, telling them one of the fairy +tales we all know so well, and he has a way of giving a new charm +and interest to the old stories, while his little touches of modern +slang come in here and there with the funniest effect, and set us off +laughing till the tree-tops seem to shake with our laughter. + +‘How odd that we should meet you again to-day, Captain Secretan!’ +cried Magdalen the day before yesterday, when we found him at the +entrance of the broad walk. + +‘Not at all odd, if you insist on coming this way, little one,’ he +said. ‘This is my afternoon constitutional. But if you very much +object I’ll take the other side of the park.’ + +‘Oh, no, no, please come always,’ shouted the three; and then they +asked for Cinderella, Captain Secretan’s modernized Cinderella, +whose ball dress was made in New Bond Street, and whose cruel +step-mother had a box on the second tier at Covent Garden. + +It was yesterday afternoon that I met him in Desmond Street, a +dreary drizzling afternoon, which made me think the sooner the year +came to an end the better. I had been feeling rather depressed and +disheartened all the morning. The children had all gone to a morning +performance of the pantomime at Drury Lane, and I had the day to +myself, as Mrs. Hazleton graciously informed me. I don’t think +leisure is an unalloyed good for those who have few pleasant thoughts +to brighten their solitude. I sat mending my clothes, and thinking +about Captain Secretan. My thoughts were not happy ones. I was +shocked to find what a hold this stranger had taken upon my mind, and +how difficult it was for me to think of any one else, or to imagine +my life without him. Yet I knew that he was nothing, and never could +be anything to me. Poor, but proud, and of good birth, moving in what +Mrs. Hazleton calls the best society, he will naturally select a +woman of fortune for his wife. He is handsome, agreeable, has many +gifts which distinguish him from the common run of young men, and +will have no difficulty in making an advantageous marriage. Of an +obscure little pauper like me he would never think seriously for a +moment, unless his thoughts were dishonourable; and I know him and +trust him well enough already to wager my life against that. What +has he to do with me, then, or I with him? Absolutely nothing. We +are only fooling each other by this friendship, which is so sweet to +me, and which must needs have some charm for him, since he takes the +trouble to cultivate it. Better for both of us that we should see +each other no more, or only upon the public stage of Mrs. Hazleton’s +drawing-room. I will tell him so seriously and honestly the next time +we are alone together for a minute or two, while the three girls +march on before us. This doesn’t often happen, for I think Lucinda is +more deeply in love with the captain than----! What was I going to +write? Than a girl of twelve ought to be. This is the lecture which +I read myself yesterday while I worked at that tiresome mending. +All my Christmas quarter’s salary will go for a black silk dress, as +I must have one good and fashionably made gown to wear downstairs. +I wanted so much to have sent uncle Robert a little present, and I +should have liked to buy Marion a winter hat; but that is out of the +question. Shall I have my dress made with flounces, or a trained +skirt? + +It was dark when I went out to post my letter; dark, and wet, and +uncomfortable, and there was nothing farther from my thoughts than +the idea of meeting Captain Secretan between Lowther Street and the +post office, though I am bound to confess that the captain himself +was not very far from my thoughts. I had posted my letter, and was +coming away from the office, when a tall man, looking very big in a +great rough overcoat, crossed the road and came towards me. I knew +him in a moment, but a strange shy feeling came over me, and I walked +on ever so fast, pretending not to know him. The street is quiet and +lonely, and I heard his footsteps hurrying after me. + +‘Do you always walk like a sporting pedestrian when you are alone, +Miss Faunthorpe?’ he asked, coming by my side. + +I started a little at the sound of his voice, although I knew so well +that he was there. Yesterday was one of my nervous days, I suppose. I +said something about its being such a disagreeable evening. + +‘Yes,’ he answered, with his good-tempered laugh, ‘the old year is +making himself as obnoxious as he can in order that we may not regret +him. It is rather unpleasant weather. You dislike this drizzling rain +I dare say. I rather like it, for it reminds me of grouse-shooting +in the Highlands. I was even going to ask you to take a little walk +round Eccleston Square before you go back to your schoolroom.’ + +‘I couldn’t think of such a thing,’ I answered, sharply, feeling that +the proposal was an impertinence. + +‘Couldn’t you? Then it wasn’t right in me to propose it, I suppose,’ +he replied, placidly. ‘And yet I should be so glad of half an +hour’s quiet talk with you. It’s very nice telling the children +fairy stories, but rather a hindrance to conversation. Well, we’ll +postpone the walk round the square till we’ve pleasanter weather and +you know me better. Do you know I have been thinking of you so much +in the last few days.’ + +Had he? There must be something sympathetic in our thoughts then, for +he has never been out of mine. + +We had turned into Lowther Street by this time, and I was weak enough +to be glad that it is such a long street. I would not have gone three +yards out of my way with him if the happiness of my life had depended +on it, but there was no harm in letting him walk as far as Mrs. +Hazleton’s door with me. + +‘Yes, I have been thinking about you a good deal, Miss Faunthorpe,’ +he said, after a pause. ‘I have been thinking what might have +happened if I had been a rich man and free to follow my own +inclination.’ + +This was telling me plainly that he was neither rich nor free. + +‘Can you guess what I fancied would have happened in that case?’ + +‘No, indeed.’ + +‘I thought it just possible that I might have been tempted to ask you +to be my wife.’ + +He waited for my reply, but I was dumb. I felt choking, and could not +find a word to answer him. + +‘What would you have said in that case?’ + +Some diabolical counsellor suggested a flippant answer instead of a +serious one. + +‘Isn’t your question rather like Lord Dundreary’s?’ I asked. ‘If you +had had a brother, do you think he would have liked cheese?’ + +‘I see,’ he said, with a disappointed tone, ‘I am not to expect a +serious answer to a hypothetical question. I dare say you are right, +Miss Faunthorpe. In all life’s delicate questions women are always +wiser than men.’ + +I thought that he had taken the easiest way of telling me that his +circumstances forbade him to think of marrying me. + +‘In that case,’ I said to myself, ‘he has no right to waylay me as I +come from the post;’ and I tried to feel very angry with him. + +‘So you didn’t go home to spend your Christmas holidays?’ he said +presently. + +‘Home! Do you suppose I could afford to travel to Yorkshire and back +for a week’s pleasure? Besides, I have no real home. My sisters and I +are dependent on my uncle’s bounty, and he is only a parish doctor, +who finds it a hard thing to pay his butcher and baker.’ + +I was determined to let him know how poor I am, and how wise he has +been in coming to the conclusion that I am no wife for him. + +‘Poor little thing,’ he said compassionately, and his pity did me +good somehow. It did not gall, as most people’s pity does. + +‘Poor little girl,’ he said again, after a few moments’ silence. ‘An +orphan, and sent out into the world to bear the burden of servitude +and all ill-usage “that patient merit from the unworthy takes.” One +would suppose that you could hardly be worse off than you are at +present?’ + +This was not very cheering, but I said nothing. We were near Mrs. +Hazleton’s door by this time, and yet we had been walking slowly. + +‘Any change would be for the better, one would think,’ he said, +musingly. ‘A change that would give this poor little waif a sworn +protector and defender,--a husband pledged to toil for her and +cherish her. But a poor husband--a man at war with fortune--bah! I’ll +tell you what it is, Miss Faunthorpe,’ he burst out suddenly, ‘with +your lovely face you ought to make a brilliant marriage.’ + +‘So I was told when I was sixteen,’ said I, ‘but I’m almost twenty, +and the fairy prince in the shape of a rich husband hasn’t appeared +yet.’ + +‘You wouldn’t despise an eligible opportunity of exchanging Mrs. +Hazleton’s schoolroom for a house in Kensington Palace Gardens, I +suppose? You have a feminine inclination for fine clothes, servants +with powdered heads, carriages and horses, and a box at the opera?’ + +‘I am human, and I don’t pretend to be superior to the weaknesses of +humanity,’ I answered, feeling that I was making myself intensely +disagreeable. + +He provoked me, somehow, by his nonchalant manner of discussing my +position and prospects. Luckily, we were quite at the door now, and I +was able to beat a retreat before anything still more unpleasant had +been said upon either side. + +‘Good afternoon, Captain Secretan,’ I said. + +‘It must be good-bye,’ he answered, ‘I am going into Norfolk +to-morrow for a month’s shooting.’ + +I felt as if he had said that he was going to Australia, but I only +answered ‘Oh, in that case, good-bye;’ and so we shook hands again, +and then he lifted his hat and went away, while I gave the bell a +good sharp pull that insured its being answered promptly. + +I don’t quite know whether I like him or hate him; but whichever +feeling it is, it must be rather strong of its kind, as I cannot get +him out of my thoughts. I am inclined to think that it is hatred. +What could be more disagreeable or humiliating than his way of +speaking about me before my face, as if I had been miles away? ‘Poor +thing, poor little waif!’ + +I grow hot and red when I think of it. + + +_Jan. 14._--The year is just a fortnight old. There has been snow, +but bright clear weather, a blue sky, and sunshine. We walk in +Kensington Gardens every day, and meet him every day. He makes the +three girls run races with their hoops, he being umpire, and during +the race he and I are able to talk without restraint. He only stopped +four days in Norfolk. He told me that the shooting was very good, but +that he was bored to death after the second day, and yet it was in a +pleasant country house that he was staying at, according to his own +account. There was to be a ball the very day after he came away, but +he did not care to stay for it. Curious man! + +My black silk dress has come, and is a great success. I dread to see +the dressmaker’s bill, as I have only reserved a sovereign for the +making, and I am afraid she will charge me something nearer three. +The dress certainly fits to perfection, and is beautifully finished; +the trimmings simple, but of the best quality. At home, Marion and I +used to make our own dresses, but after going nearly out of my mind +for a week over piping-cord and button-holes, I always felt myself a +dowdy at the last. + +Mrs. Hazleton has a dinner party to-morrow, Captain Secretan is +coming in the evening, and I shall wear my new dress. Have I made up +my mind yet whether I like him or hate him? + +Yes. I do neither. I love him--love him--love him. + +There, it is written at last. Foolish old diary, how I shall despise +you and myself some day when I read over this wretched page! + + +_Jan. 16._--Such a delicious party last night! Captain Secretan +was the first person I saw when I slipped quietly in at the back +drawing-room door. He was watching the door, and those dark eyes +brightened at sight of me. I sang to him, I played to him, I talked +to him, the party was all him. The rest of the people were only +the medium through which I saw him,--or they were like trees in +a landscape, and he the living figure in the foreground. I know +he likes to talk to me, and to hear me sing or play; but I wonder +whether he loves _me_. + + +_Feb. 3._--It has come at last. He has asked me plainly, +straightforwardly, anxiously, earnestly, to be his wife. + +He has told me that he is poor, that he is living just now on the +money he got for his commission. He has nothing else, but he has +youth, health, and strength, some talents, and he is willing to work. +With a wife whom he fondly loved he would have a motive for beginning +a new career. + +‘I’m such a happy-go-lucky fellow,’ he said, in his bright, cheery +way, ‘that I can hardly bring myself to put my shoulder to the wheel +for my own sake, but if I had you to work for, pet, I should slave +like a Goliath.’ + +I don’t like to remind him that the Philistine soldier was more +remarkable for strength than industry. + +He made me say yes, and promise whatever he liked. How could I resist +him, when I love him so dearly that the lightest touch of his hand +makes me tremble? and there seems to me more pathos in his voice than +in the tenderest phrase of Mozart’s. He is so straightforward, so +candid, so noble. He wanted to take Mrs. Hazleton into his confidence +immediately, so that I might be married very quietly from her house. + +‘We have nothing to wait for, darling,’ he said, ‘unless we were to +wait till I have made a fortune, which would mean at least half a +dozen years of severance,--just the brightest, happiest years of life +sacrificed to a sordid scruple, an unworthy doubt of Providence. If +you love me, Sibyl, you will not talk of waiting.’ + +‘I should like to be wise and prudent,’ I told him, ‘but your +impetuosity carries me along like a torrent.’ + +‘Love is a torrent,’ answered he, ‘do not oppose so poor a thing as +reason against its sacred might.’ + +I entreated him to say nothing to Mrs. Hazleton. An idea had occurred +to me which made me hesitate, even with my lover’s hand clasping +mine, as to the wisdom of yielding to his prayer. + +I remembered a strange fact, which had almost slipped out of my mind +lately. I remembered that Alexis Secretan is the natural inheritor +of his father’s hatred, the natural enemy of my rich uncle, Stephen +Trenchard, the uncle from whom I have been taught to expect a +fortune. If I marry Captain Secretan, I surrender all hope of favour +from my uncle. + +I begged Alex--he has taught me to call him Alex--to say nothing to +Mrs. Hazleton yet awhile. I wanted time to think. + +After all, this hope of fortune from my uncle Stephen may be only +a dream, vain as that idea of a rich husband with which I used to +delude myself when I was a schoolgirl. On the other hand, I have +the knowledge from my poor mother that my uncle was a very rich man +twenty years ago (I have the knowledge from his last letter to my +uncle Robert, enclosing a twenty-pound bank bill as a present for +Marion and me); that he has never married, and has no intention of +marrying; that he looks forward to returning to his native country +in a few years and making the acquaintance of his nieces. Too good +a chance in all this, surely, to be thrown away. It would be rather +a bitter thing for me to see Marion chosen for her uncle’s heiress, +while I was left a pauper. + +What am I to do? How am I to choose between Alexis and the +possibility of a large fortune? + +Prudence suggests that I should only pledge myself to Alexis on +condition that our marriage shall be deferred for some years. + +We are both young. We can afford to wait a few years, and yet have a +good deal of the brightness of life before us. My uncle Stephen is +an old man, older no doubt at his age than men who have spent their +lives in Europe. Whether I am to inherit any portion of his wealth is +a question that must be decided in a few years. I must tell Alex that +he must wait. If his love is real and earnest it cannot be lessened +by time. + + +_Feb. 5._ I have told him my decision. Vain, hopeless, to talk of +reason with a man whose inclination is his only law. He tells me +that if I really cared for him I could not propose dreary years of +separation. My statement that I have rich relatives who may leave me +money if I marry to please them, and are sure to leave me nothing +if I marry without their consent, fell on ears obstinately deaf to +reason. Love like this is worse than a torrent--it is a maelstrom. +Prudence, reason, worldly wisdom, are mere straws in the whirlpool. +I must see him no more. + + +_Feb. 7._ I have seen him again. Poor Alex! He looks so unhappy. How +sweet to know that I have such power over him!--I, to whom he seemed +such a far-off creature two months ago. Is the chance of fortune +worth such a love as his? + + +_Feb. 8._ Stephen Trenchard may live to be as old as Old Parr, and +leave his money to the Asylum for Idiots, after I have sacrificed +youth and love and all that is sweetest in life to the sordid hope of +fortune. + + +_Feb. 9._ A hopelessly wet day. I have seen him walk up and down the +street three times in the rain. I know his dear umbrella. + + +_Feb. 11._ In the Broad Walk again yesterday. It is all settled. I +am to give Mrs. Hazleton a month’s notice to-morrow--our agreement +is a month’s notice on either side--in the event of my proving +inefficient, she said. Not in the event of my not liking the +situation. Oh dear no, of course not. + +I am so agitated that I can hardly write. This day month I am to have +my boxes packed, and go quietly away in a cab at ten o’clock in the +morning, drive to the station and deposit my luggage, and then meet +Alexis, with whom I shall drive back to the quietest little church +in Ecclestonia, where we are to be married. No witnesses but the +pew-opener and the clerk; no announcement in the _Times_. The secret +of our marriage kept from everybody who knows us, at the outset, at +any rate, so that if Stephen Trenchard dies in India--a likely thing +after all--I may still inherit my share of his fortune. Dear old +uncle Robert is such an easy-going man, that as long as I tell him I +am comfortably situated with my employer he will never put himself +out of the way to know more. He has not an acquaintance in London +whom he could ask to call upon me at Mrs. Hazleton’s. There is no +such isolation as poverty. + +I have arranged with Jane Dimond, the under housemaid, about my +letters. She will receive any that come to Lowther Street for me, +and post any that I send her to be posted. I have given her quite +a heap of things, the weeding out of my wardrobe, and made her my +friend for life. + + +_March 11._ To-morrow is to be my wedding day. Oh fearful day! on +which hangs all my life to come. Will the future be blessed or +accursed for to-morrow’s vows? + +I wish Marion and uncle Robert could have been with me. It would all +have seemed more real. I remember my foolish fancies--my castles in +the air. The grand wedding at which I used to see myself figuring +as chief performer; my white satin dress and Brussels flounces; the +carriages; the favours; the crowd; Mendelssohn’s Wedding March; the +joyous peal of bells. Those bells are sounding in my ears to-night. + +To-morrow, to-morrow, to-morrow! Before noon to-morrow I shall have +ceased to be Sibyl Faunthorpe. My name will be Sibyl Secretan--name +of all others most abhorrent to my uncle, Stephen Trenchard. + + + + + CHAPTER VI. + + THE ÉLITE OF REDCASTLE. + + +Redcastle is a country town. It is not a manufacturing town, or a +seaport, or a garrison town, or a settlement in any manner designed +to be of wide and general use to society. It exists for itself alone, +and is exclusive to a fault. It is on the high road to nowhere. +Erase it from the map of England to-morrow, and nobody but its own +inhabitants would be the worse off for its evanishment. It produces +nothing but elderly people with limited incomes, and scandal. For +the cultivation of this last article Redcastle is like a mushroom +bed in a cellar, a dark corner of the land in which fungi abound and +flourish. + +It is not a bad town in which to enjoy a brief span of repose from +the turmoil and bustle of the industrial and commercial world;--the +world of labour and pleasure, profit, loss, and pain. Not a bad +old town in which to dream away a joyless, painless old age. But to +live in Redcastle, to bound one’s hopes within its brick and mortar +confines, to regulate one’s life by its petty proprieties and narrow +creed! Heaven pity that wretch to whom destiny flings the lot of +life-long bondage in Redcastle. + +It is a clean old town. Scarcely in laborious Holland, where the +servant maids scrub the chimney-pots and pipe clay the gutters, +would you find a cleaner. A rainy day, which makes mud and slush in +busier places, only washes down and renovates Redcastle. The one wide +street, with its massive old brick houses, square, and strong, and +substantial--the historic gateway, which divides the one street into +two, Below Bar and Above Bar--and the fine old Coach and Horses Inn, +where seldom coaches or horses are seen to stop, the inn which, save +for the mildest indulgence in billiards, and brandy and soda among +the youth of the town, seems to exist rather as a part and parcel +of Redcastle, an institution essential to the honour and glory of +the town, than for any commercial purpose, since it appears morally +impossible that the establishment can be self-supporting,--all +these are the pink of cleanliness. The pretty little minster, more +architecturally perfect than many a grander fane, looks as if it +were kept under a glass shade. The market-place presents on off days +a broad expanse of spotless pavement blinking and smiling up at the +sun. The turnpike road on which Redcastle lies is one of the best in +Yorkshire; the narrow lanes and by-streets leading up to that broad +stretch of common land known as Redcastle Woods, apparently for the +sole reason that it is barren of anything taller than a hazel-bush, +are innocent of mud or smoke. The scanty suburbs of the town present +a sprinkling of smallish houses, for the most part uninteresting +of aspect, but all scrupulously clean. Those modern edifices, the +Wesleyan Chapel, the Independent Chapel, and that masonic temple the +Athena Lodge, are of whitest freestone, with shining windows, and +hearthstoned steps embellishing their classic porticoes. + +Redcastle, producing nothing, and offering no attraction to +visitors, is naturally not a wealthy settlement. The rich inhabitants +of Redcastle can be counted on the fingers of a single hand. Yet +there is perhaps no town in England in which respect for wealth +is more deeply implanted in the human mind. It is a saying of the +profane that twopence halfpenny will not consort with twopence in +Redcastle, but this is not a true saying, for more than it worships +wealth does Redcastle worship appearances, and if A, with twopence, +can put on the semblance of threepence, he shall be assuredly held +higher than C, who lacks the art to obtain as much show out of +twopence halfpenny. + +The _élite_ of Redcastle--that is to say, persons of fixed income +or established professional earning, ranging from eight to eighteen +hundred per annum--live within a narrow circle. The houses +immediately below Bar, and the houses immediately above Bar, shelter +the aristocracy of the town. Below Bar, grave old red brick houses of +the early Georgian period, roomy, and comfortable within, respectable +of aspect without; above Bar, houses of a more modern date, stone +façades, French windows, porches, verandahs, larger gardens, and +ostentatious stabling, rarely used, save for the accommodation of a +pony chaise, like one of Falstaff’s buck baskets. + +Within this charmed circle, in the largest of the stone-fronted +houses above Bar, resides Colonel Stormont, who enjoys the privileges +of retirement and half-pay, cheered by the society of his wife and +family, the family consisting of a grown-up son and two grown-up +daughters who, of various views upon other questions, are at one in +the opinion that Redcastle was called into being for their especial +behoof, and who regulate their conduct by that idea. + +Colonel and Mrs. Stormont take the lead in Redcastle society. +Their names are at the head of the croquet and archery club, which +black-balls every one who is suspected of having once had a cousin +connected with trade. They are chief patrons of the assize and +masonic balls. They sanctify the more chaste and classic of the +Redcastle concerts with their august presence, or, at least, Mrs. +Stormont allows her name to grace the list of patronesses, and add a +lustre to the programme of the evening’s harmony. If St. Cecilia had +come to life again she could hardly have been in more request among +the concert-givers than Mrs. Stormont, who scarcely knows Mozart from +Offenbach, or Beethoven from Brinley Richards. + +To offend Colonel and Mrs. Stormont would be to be at war with +Redcastle; and it is doubtful if any one so unfortunately placed +could continue to reside in the town. He would be obliged to depart, +exiled by that awful ban; like Ovid from Rome, or Dante from Florence. + +In the large stucco-fronted house with the Norman turret resides +Mr. Marlin Spyke, the great shipbuilder of Krampston-on-Tybur. Mr. +and Mrs. Spyke live with some splendour, but a self-contained kind +of life, not conducive to wide popularity. They receive very little +company, their names grace the subscription list of no local charity, +they patronize no local entertainment, they attend no masonic or +benevolent ball. They are negatively great, and will be remembered +when they are dead for the many noble deeds they have not done. + +After the Stormonts and the Marlin Spykes come the professional +classes below Bar; Mr. Jewson, the chief local solicitor and vestry +clerk; Dr. Mitsand, an elderly man of some distinction, being one of +the army surgeons who endured and ameliorated the miseries of the +Crimean war; Mr. Groshen, the banker; Mr. Farrer, the curate; and a +few others, whom it is needless to particularize. On the outskirts of +the town reside three or four gentlemen who derive their income from +houses or lands, are more rustic in their bearing and attire than +the inhabitants of the citadel, and in a general way give themselves +airs, as affecting to belong to the county families. Afar off in +their various fastnesses, isolated, inaccessible, unapproachable, +live the county families. A few of them are on visiting terms with +the Stormonts, Dr. Mitsand, and the clergy of Redcastle; but they +regard the town otherwise as a depôt for groceries and draperies, +and a centre of Radicalism for the lower classes. Their big family +landaus, with tall, slab-sided horses and brass harness, pervade +the street on fine afternoons; their sons trot briskly through the +quiet town on hunting mornings in well-worn pink. They turn out +occasionally for a concert, and take care to testify by loud talk and +laughter among themselves, and a supercilious contemplation of the +rest of the audience through eye-glasses, that they hold themselves +as creatures apart from the townspeople. + +Within ten miles of Redcastle is that thriving seaport, +Krampston-on-Tybur, famous for ship-building, ropemaking, linseed +crushing, sugar baking, and general exportation and importation. +Krampston has noisy, bustling streets, miles of quays, labyrinths +of docks, drawbridges that arrest the pedestrian at every turn, so +intersected is the land by narrow inlets of water. Krampston has +very little ‘society,’ in the Redcastle sense of that word, but it +has commercial activity, the vigorously throbbing pulse of active +and useful life, name, and place and power in the world. The word +‘Krampston’ branded on bale or packing-case is familiar in Buenos +Ayres or Sierra Leone, in Pernambuco or Timbuctoo, while the name +of Redcastle is hardly known out of the post office or British +Gazetteer. + +Among the _élite_ of Redcastle--the archons--the equestrian +order--Robert Faunthorpe, surgeon and parish doctor, has no place. +The _élite_ give him good-day when they meet him trudging toilfully +above or below Bar, or trotting meekly along one of the lanes on +his unkempt pony. Good, easy-going little man, ever ready to help +the helpless to whom he ministers, often squeezing a shilling or a +sixpence out of his ill-furnished purse where he feels that drugs +alone are of no avail. Kindly gentleman though he is, the _élite_ of +Redcastle cannot recognise him as a member of their order. He lives +in a shabby red house at the fag-end of the town, grooms his pony, +digs in the garden, keeps one old woman-servant of eccentric aspect; +he takes snuff inordinately--perhaps it is his only consolation--and +the normal shabbiness of his clothes is enhanced by the process. His +existence is altogether unorthodox. He is beyond the pale. + +True that he has reared three orphan nieces, the children of a +brother who died penniless ten years ago; and it is hardly to be +supposed that this act of benevolence has not cost him as much as the +maintenance of a groom and gardener. But Redcastle cannot recognise +these small charities. They judge a man as they judge his house, by +the front which he presents to the world. They would recognise the +groom and gardener as elements of social status. They smile gently +at the idea of the three orphan nieces as a harmless eccentricity of +that eccentric little man, Dr. Faunthorpe. + +Happily Robert Faunthorpe, M.R.C.S., and Dr. by courtesy, is of all +men the last to regret that social heaven to which he has never +ascended. He sees Colonel and Mrs. Stormont, Dr. Mitsand, and Mr. and +Mrs. Groshen revolving in their orbits as he sees the planets, and +envies them no more. The idea that they do him any unkindness by not +inviting him to their dinner parties, by not extending the hand of +friendship to his fatherless nieces, never enters his mind. He is so +simple-minded a little man that he is content to go his way and let +other people go theirs. + +An eccentric, evidently, as Redcastle opines. + + + + + CHAPTER VII. + + DRIFTING INTO HAVEN. + + +It is a soft, calm evening, early in April, and Dr. Faunthorpe’s +shabby old house is as much brightened by the westering sunlight as +it can be brightened by anything less than the three coats of paint +for which its worm-eaten woodwork has been languishing for the last +twenty years. There has not been a five-pound note expended upon the +repair or the beautification of Robert Faunthorpe’s house within the +memory of the oldest inhabitant of Redcastle. It is scrupulously +clean, and that is the best that can be said of it. There is a small +garden in front, where flourish those homely perennials which demand +little care and no artificial nutriment,--lupins, Canterbury bells, +flags, London pride, polyanthuses, primroses, and wall-flowers. +Behind the house there is a long strip of ground where the surgeon +cultivates cabbages and potatoes, leeks and potherbs, leaving only +two narrow borders for floriculture. Happily there are ancient rose +bushes in these neglected borders,--rose bushes from which Beauty’s +father might have gathered those large red cup-shaped cabbage roses +that grow in a child’s picture book. The borders are edged with box, +tall and thick,--box that has been growing for a century. The low +red walls, crumbling into hollows where the birds have pecked at the +brickwork, crowned with dragon’s-mouth, stonecrop, and houseleek, +would be delicious in a picture, and are not unlovely in reality. +At the bottom of this long narrow garden there is a patch of ground +set apart for the benefit of Scrub, the pony, upon which grow +purple-flowered tares, three crops in a twelvemonth sometimes. + +Within, the house has a certain air of homely comfort. The shabby old +furniture has that well-worn look which in some wise endears goods +and chattels to their owners. Beeswax and labour have done their best +to brighten and beautify the ancient mahogany bureaus, the clumsy +walnutwood bedsteads and tables,--made at a time when walnutwood was +almost as cheap as deal. Cracked old jars and bottles of common blue +delf adorn the tall narrow wooden mantelpieces; curtains of watered +moreen, once crimson, but faded to a tawny brown, drape the deeply +recessed windows of parlour and surgery. The rooms are spacious, but +low; the ceilings sustained by massive beams painted black. The walls +are for the most part paneled, and the paneling has been painted a +dingy pink or a dirty drab. To keep this paneling spotless is the +old servant’s anxious care, and much house-flannel and soft soap are +expended thereupon to Dr. Faunthorpe’s aggravation,--that good easy +man having no passion for cleanliness in the abstract. + +A wide stone passage leads from the front door to the half-glass door +opening into the back garden, thus letting light and air through the +old house. A clumsy mahogany-framed barometer, a row of hat-pegs, +and a faded map of England are the only furniture of this passage, +or hall, as a modern house-agent would call it. A roomy, solid old +staircase, with shallow treads, and ponderous balusters, leads to the +upper chambers, which are numerous and of fair size. To the right +of the front door is the parlour, on the left the surgery. Behind +the surgery is the best parlour; behind the every-day parlour is the +large stone-paved kitchen. + +For this house, with its acre of garden, Dr. Faunthorpe pays twenty +pounds a year; so there is some saving of house-rent in residence +at Redcastle, if your soul aspires not after any higher state than +comfortable vegetation, and you are content to inhabit the inferior +end of the town. + +Dr. Faunthorpe paces his front garden on this calm April evening, +smoking his pipe. He is a smoker as well as a snuffer, and finds +solace in tobacco after his daily round. This is his hour of rest +and leisure. True that it may be broken in upon at any moment by +some sudden call for his services, but his regular daily labour, his +measured grind at life’s mill, is over. + +He prefers the small front garden for his evening pipe to the larger +ground at the back,--first, because he is to the fore if wanted; +and secondly, because, his house being on the high road, it is just +possible that something may go by, vehicle or passenger, to the +enlivenment of his leisure. + +He is meditative and silent, but not alone. His niece Marion, a tall +girl with wavy light hair, and a pre-Raphaelite figure, stands in a +listless attitude by the gate. His niece Jenny, an overgrown girl of +twelve, with a very short frock and stalwart legs, encased in brown +worsted stockings, is watering the flowers, and making as much mess +as it is possible to make in the operation. + +‘Just look what puddles you are making in the path, stupid,’ exclaims +the elder sister, peevishly regarding the efforts of her junior. ‘I +do wish you’d leave things alone. You’re always up to some mischief +or other.’ + +‘I suppose I shouldn’t be mischievous if I let the primroses die for +want of water,’ remonstrates the junior, in no wise abashed. ‘That’s +what you’d do, with your laziness and fine-lady ways. You were bad +enough before you went to stay with uncle Stephen, but you’re ever +so much worse now. I’m sure I wish he’d kept you there instead of +sending you back, like a bad penny. Uncle Robert and I were as jolly +as sandboys while you were away.’ + +The young person sets down her water-pot and delivers this diatribe +with arms akimbo, like Madame Angot’s daughter. Marion shudders. + +‘Sandboys! What an expression for a young lady!’ she ejaculates. + +‘Pray where’s the harm in sandboys?’ demands the incorrigible Jenny. +‘They’re more respectable than you, as far as I can see, for they get +their own living.’ + +‘My dear,’ remonstrates uncle Robert mildly, ‘that is not the way to +address your elder sister.’ + +‘Why does she come and loaf about here, then, with her +stuckupishness? Why doesn’t she go and be a governess like Sibyl? If +she heard what Hester says of her she’d be ashamed of herself.’ + +‘My love, you have no right to quote Hester.’ + +‘Hester is an impertinent, mischief-making creature,’ exclaims Marion. + +‘And as to your sister going out as a governess, my dear,’ continues +uncle Robert mildly, ‘with her expectations it would be about the +most foolish thing she could do.’ + +‘Expectations,--dead men’s shoes!’ exclaims the terrible child, +twirling the watering-can so that its last drops sprinkle Marion’s +pretty blue dress. ‘I should hate myself if _I_ was mean enough to +calculate upon what any one would leave me.’ + +‘Quite right of you,’ says Marion, with a supercilious laugh--that +sneering schoolgirl laugh, which we all remember to have been crushed +by occasionally in our youth,--‘for certainly no one is likely to +leave _you_ money.’ + +‘I dare say not, with you in the way,’ answers the irrepressible +Jenny. ‘They’d feel they were doing an act of charity bestowing their +fortune on you, for it would be the same as leaving it to the Asylum +for Idiots. One simpleton provided for, at any rate.’ + +With this the imp swings round upon her heels as on a pivot, +brandishes the watering-pot as an Indian savage his club, and gallops +into the house. Jane Faunthorpe never walks. She has the action of +an unbroken colt, and seems, when in motion, to have as many legs +as that animal. When she comes downstairs there is a sound as of a +sack of coals flung from the upper story. How the old house sustains +itself under her youthful vigour is a mystery to the parish doctor. + +‘I’d run after her and give her a good box on the ears,’ says Marion, +viciously, ‘if I didn’t want to see the omnibus go by.’ + +_The_ omnibus is a stunted covered vehicle, like a carrier’s cart +garnished with glazed windows, which plies between the station and +the outskirts of Redcastle, and it is nearly time for this conveyance +to pass with its evening freight. There are sometimes as many as five +people arrive by the six o’clock train from Krampston,--nay, the +Krampston train sometimes brings that rare bird, a passenger from +London. + +‘It’s a pity you ever sent that child to a day school, uncle Robert,’ +Marion remarks presently, wiping the waterspots daintily from her +dress. ‘She was bad enough before, but now she is simply intolerable.’ + +‘My love, I couldn’t afford a boarding school, and I was obliged +to send her somewhere,’ replies the surgeon, in his longsuffering +way. ‘At home she was learning only to dig potatoes and to whistle, +neither of which pursuits is an attractive accomplishment in a young +lady. The child is not bad at bottom.’ + +‘Perhaps not,’ answers Marion, snappishly, ‘but the bottom must be a +long way down. I’ve never come to it yet.’ + +‘She is very warm-hearted.’ + +‘Yes, if warmth of heart consists in rushing at one like an +avalanche, hugging one round the neck like a bear, and rumpling one’s +collar atrociously, without the faintest provocation.’ + +‘She is not of an idle disposition,’ remonstrates the uncle. ‘I found +her cleaning the back kitchen windows at half-past six this morning. +No one had asked her to do it.’ + +‘Of course not. That’s just the reason she did it.’ + +‘If you would take a little more pains with her, Marion,’ suggests +Dr. Faunthorpe, timidly---- + +‘Pains! I might take _agonies_, and without the least effect. Didn’t +I begin to teach her music----’ + +‘Yes, my dear, but you didn’t go on.’ + +‘Well, you just try to teach her anything, uncle Robert--just +try--that’s all,’ says Marion, with awful significance, and then +breaks out with a sigh, ‘Oh dear, is this precious old omnibus never +coming?’ + +‘It is rather late, my dear. But as it isn’t going to bring us any +one we care about, we needn’t worry ourselves about it.’ + +‘It would be something to look at just for a minute. If you only knew +what a difference there is between the look-out down here and above +Bar. There there’s almost always something going by--Mrs. Stormont’s +basket carriage, or Master Groshen’s pony, or the butcher’s cart.’ + +‘Ah, my dear, I’m afraid that long visit to your uncle Trenchard has +spoiled you for my quiet home.’ + +‘No, it hasn’t, uncle,’ answers the girl, with a little gush of +feeling in the midst of her petulance, just strong enough to show +the better side of her nature--‘no, it hasn’t, for this is home and +that isn’t. I should always feel that if I spent the rest of my life +with uncle Stephen. Of all the old fidgets----! Well, I suppose I +oughtn’t to say anything against him, for he has been very kind to +me in his way. He has given me a good deal of money from first to +last, though I must say he doled it out stingily, as if he liked the +money better than me; and it is nice staying at his house--one feels +one’s self somebody. Only think of the Stormonts, and the Groshens, +and the Marlin Spykes calling on him before he had been three weeks +in Redcastle, while you’ve lived here thirty years and they’ve never +called upon you.’ + +‘People at this end of the town are not visited, my dear,’ replies +the doctor, mildly, as one who bows to the mysterious ways of +Providence and questions not. ‘I dare say the _élite_ of Redcastle +called upon your uncle out of kindness, he being a stranger.’ + +‘He being a millionaire, uncle, that’s what you mean. Very much +they’d have called upon him if he’d been a stranger who wanted to get +his living. Think of the Stormonts giving a dinner party on purpose +for him, and inviting _me_--after ignoring me for the last four +years--staring me in the face, after church, for two hundred Sundays, +and taking no more interest in me than if I were a stone cherub on +a tablet in the minster, and now, all of a sudden, being so fond of +me. It’s too ridiculous. If I was as worldly as they are, I’d take a +little more pains not to show it.’ + +‘The world is worldly, my love,’ replies uncle Robert, with his +resigned air. ‘You can hardly expect it to be otherwise. For my part, +I am very glad to think that the Stormonts have taken notice of you, +and that you’ve been invited out with Mr. Trenchard. It may lead to +your making a good marriage, though you needn’t set your mind upon +that now, as it is tolerably certain your uncle will leave you an +independence. I only wish Sibyl were at home to have her share of +good fortune.’ + +‘It’s her own fault if she isn’t,’ says Marion. + +‘Say rather her conscientiousness, my dear. She doesn’t like to leave +Mrs. Hazleton in a difficulty about her children; and very right too. +But I hope Mrs. Hazleton will suit herself with a new governess very +soon, and let Sibyl come home. Mr. Trenchard has asked for her so +often, and it really seems flying in the face of Providence for her +to be out of the way.’ + +‘If she wasn’t a stupid, she wouldn’t be at Mrs. Hazleton’s beck and +call,’ says Marion, and then exclaims, shrilly, ‘Here’s the omnibus, +and lots of people inside. Why, there’s some one nodding to us--a +lady in a gray hat--and--I declare, the ’bus is stopping. Why, it’s +Sibyl.’ + +The blundering vehicle stops before Dr. Faunthorpe’s gate; a shabby +carpet bag--only a carpet bag--is handed down from the roof, and +in the next instant Sibyl is in the homely little garden, sobbing +hysterically on her uncle’s shoulder. + +He presses her to his breast tenderly, and looks in the pale, wan +face. + +‘Why, my darling, how ill you look--how changed--how thin!’ + +‘I’ve had so much hard work, uncle,’ she answers, faintly, ‘but, +thank God, I am at home at last.’ + + + + + CHAPTER VIII. + + THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL. + + +‘Home at last,’ cries the wanderer, with glad thankfulness. + +This is a night of rejoicing in Dr. Faunthorpe’s modest dwelling. The +prodigal daughter has returned, and the fatted calf, or at least so +much of him as a cutlet, fried as only Hester can fry a veal cutlet, +is served up in her honour. How cheery and homely the common parlour, +with its shabby old furniture, dimly illuminated by two composite +candles which leave the paneled corners in densest shadow, seems to +those tired eyes! + +‘It is so nice to be at home again, uncle,’ says Sibyl lovingly, as +she draws her chair a little nearer the doctor’s at supper-time. +‘What an old dear Hester is! and how deliciously she cooks!’ + +‘If you’re so fond of home, I wonder you stayed away so long,’ +remarks Marion, who cannot help being occasionally disagreeable in +her petty way. There was nothing large-minded about Marion, Sibyl +used to complain. She would never commit a big sin, but would forfeit +heaven by a multitude of infinitesimal faults. + +‘Marion’s faults are like the animalculæ in a glass of water,’ +remarked Sibyl on another occasion, ‘too minute to be seen without a +microscope, but making the water unwholesome all the same.’ + +‘I had to stop away to suit other people’s convenience,’ replies +the prodigal, looking downward as she squeezes lemon juice upon her +cutlet. + +‘How altered you must be!’ says that odious Marion. ‘Other people’s +convenience used to be the last thing you thought about. When is your +luggage coming?’ + +‘My luggage? I brought it with me.’ + +‘I mean the rest of your luggage. The omnibus man brought in nothing +but a carpet bag.’ + +‘That is my luggage,’ answers Sibyl, colouring to the roots of her +hair. It is the first tinge of red that has warmed her delicate cheek +since her arrival. ‘I gave one of Mrs. Hazleton’s servants that +horrid old heavy trunk of mine.’ + +‘But your dresses, your linen, you can’t get them all into that +carpet bag,’ cries Marion, almost in a shriek. To be without variety +of clothes is the last calamity she can conceive among the miseries +of humanity. + +‘I have not one dress besides this. You can’t have any notion how +one’s dresses wear out in a schoolroom--mischievous romping girls +pulling one about all day long, ink spilt in every direction, +candle-grease on all the tables, cups of tea perpetually turned over. +I was determined to buy nothing during the last quarter, so I wore +my old dresses till they were almost in rags, and gave them to my +favourite housemaid when I came away.’ + +‘I dare say it was an excellent plan,’ says Marion, shrugging her +thin shoulders, ‘but you won’t be in a condition to make a very good +appearance in Redcastle till you’ve new things. People will expect +you to bring down the London fashions too. They come out on the first +of March, don’t they?’ + +‘What a pity Fate made you a gentleman’s daughter Marion,’ remarks +Sibyl, with a cold sneer. ‘You would have made such a capital +milliner. Your soul would have been in your work.’ + +Dr. Faunthorpe sits back in his chair, reposeful, after that little +bit of hot supper, which is not an every-day luxury. The small +snappings and snarlings of his nieces hardly discompose him, he is so +used to their sisterly talk. He is glad to have his handsome niece +at home again, seated close to his chair, with all those familiar +winning ways which have won her the first place in his heart; small +gushings of loving speech, tender little smiles, gentle touches of a +white fluttering hand--graces of manner which may mean very little, +but are very sweet; petty Circean arts which have beguiled honest men +to ruin and death before to-day. + +‘My darling,’ he says presently, as the dark brown eyes smile upon +him, brightening in the candlelight, ‘I am so glad you have come +back. It wasn’t wise to stay away so long at the risk of vexing your +uncle Trenchard: but I’ll say no more about that. You are here, and +all is well. You must go and see him to-morrow.’ + +‘How can she,’ exclaims Marion, ‘in that gown?’ pointing +contemptuously to Sibyl’s shabby alpaca, an alpaca which has seen +much service, cockled by the rain, and frayed at the edges of the +cuffs, and with that shrunken and dwindled appearance that ill-used +garments are apt to assume. + +‘Pshaw, what does her gown matter? You can lend her a gown. You have +gowns enough and to spare.’ + +‘None that will fit Sibyl,’ replies Marion, who prides herself on her +superior height. ‘She’s welcome to wear one, but it’ll be two inches +on the ground.’ + +‘Can’t she run a tuck, or cut a bit off?’ argues uncle Robert. + +‘I shall have to give you a tonic, my love,’ he adds, contemplating +his elder niece anxiously, ‘you are looking so fagged and worn.’ + +‘I am at home with you, uncle Robert; that is the best tonic for me,’ +replies the girl fondly. + +She is fond of him to-night. This shabby old home, which she +abandoned in sheer discontent two years ago, seems very dear to her +just now. It is a haven for a storm-beaten soul. + +‘You will have a better home than this, my pet, I hope, for the +greater part of your time,’ answers the doctor, cheerily. ‘I’ve no +doubt your uncle Trenchard will ask you to stay with him as he did +Marion. She was quite three months at Lancaster Lodge, and is to go +back again by-and-bye. I look upon her as little more than a visitor +here; but she is kind enough to make the best of her old uncle +Robert’s humdrum house.’ + +‘It is a great relief to be here for a change, uncle,’ answers +Marion. ‘I felt a fine lady at uncle Trenchard’s, but I feel my own +mistress here. If it wasn’t for that tyrannical old Hester your house +would be liberty hall; and I can forgive even Hester when she is in a +good humour and makes hot cakes for breakfast.’ + +An hour later and uncle Robert has smoked his after-supper pipe, +and the girls are in their bedroom, the old room which Sibyl knows +so well, with its ridiculous flowered paper, low ceiling, and high +painted dado, and curious brass safety bolts upon the door, as if +burglars were a contingency to be provided against in that humble +dwelling. How well she remembers the long narrow chimney-piece, +the basket-shaped grate with its wide hobs, the open-work brass +fender, the painted four-post bedstead, drab and green, with skimpy +dimity valance, and two starveling curtains. The rickety deal +dressing-table, the streaky looking-glass, which used to reflect +a fair girl’s face wondering at its own beauty. The tall mahogany +wardrobe that never was opened without threatening to topple over +and wreak destruction on its violator. The scanty strips of bedside +carpet, dull in colour and perplexing in pattern. How often she has +pored and puzzled over those interwoven scrolls, in sheer idleness +of thought. All things are unchanged. There are the wretched old +ornaments on the mantelpiece. The pasteboard spill-boxes, adorned +with faded gold paper, ancient works of art by fingers that have long +been dust. The little black Wedgwood vases, urn-shaped, funereal. +The hand screens with lithographs of Dr. Syntax pasted thereupon, +and more paper gilding. The two black profile miniatures of dead and +forgotten relatives. + +It seems a dear old room somehow to Sibyl to-night, for it brings +back the feelings of her innocent girlish days, when life, if it had +few pleasures, had no cares. Now life means perplexity. Existence +is an entanglement from which only some happy turn of fortune can +extricate her. + +She sits in her old place on the window-seat, and loosens the long +twisted roll of rich brown hair, which falls over her bare shoulders +like shining drapery. + +‘Goodness!’ cries Marion, ‘how skinny your shoulders have grown!’ + +‘Have they?’ says Sibyl, coolly, glancing downwards at a white neck +and arms in which the bones are too sharply defined for beauty. +‘Then we shall look more like sisters when we wear low dresses. Your +shoulders were always skinny.’ + +Marion is silenced for the moment, and proceeds with the destruction +of that elaborate edifice of hair and hair-pads which she constructs +with infinite pains every morning, even though no one outside her own +small family circle is likely to be gratified by the sight thereof. +Marion’s hair has been washed and doctored to the fashionable +pre-Raphaelite colour. It is thick and fluffy, and short, only just +covering the points of her bony shoulders, and standing out round her +head like an exaggerated nimbus. It is not bad hair altogether, and +Marion thinks it one of her strong points, like her pre-Raphaelite +figure, her long narrow foot, eighteen-inch waist, arched eyebrows, +white teeth, and other small graces, some of which are the +praiseworthy result of patient training. + +‘Do let me see your pretty things, Sibyl,’ the younger sister +exclaims presently, twisting one of her yellow tresses in and out of +a hair-pin. + +The elder looks up, startled out of a profound reverie. + +‘What pretty things?’ + +‘Well, you must have something to show me--presents--things you have +bought out of your salary. I’m sure I should have a lot to show out +of forty pounds a year for two years. Glove-boxes, sealskin purses, +card-cases, neck-ties, lace, gloves, and so on. I dare say that +carpet bag is bursting with them.’ + +‘It is doing nothing of the kind. I found that it was as much as I +could do to dress myself decently for Mrs. Hazleton’s parties and pay +my laundress. Evening dresses are so unprofitable.’ + +‘They must be, if you have _nothing_ to show out of eighty pounds. I +never thought you could bring yourself to wear such a dress as that +alpaca thing,’ adds Marion, pointing contemptuously to Sibyl’s shabby +gown hanging on a peg upon the door. ‘I expected to see you come home +quite a woman of fashion.’ + +‘People who teach unruly children, and have to take them out walking +in all weathers, have not much chance of being fashionably dressed,’ +answers Sibyl, wearily. ‘Perhaps if you could contrive to put dress +out of your mind for five minutes or so, Marion, we might have a +little rational conversation.’ + +‘Oh, very well; of course I know what an inferior mind mine is. +You used to tell me so often enough. But you were once rather fond +of talking about dress, and I thought, perhaps, if you’ve nothing +to show me you might like to see my dresses--_not_ home-made. Miss +Eylett has made every one, and a pretty price she has charged me.’ + +Marion wrenches open the refractory door of the wardrobe, and +displays three calico-shrouded garments, hanging in a row, like +sheeted ghosts. One by one she brings forth these treasures, whisking +off their covering, and displaying each to Sibyl with a dexterous +twirl of her arm. A bronze brown silk; a pale gray, with elaborate +ruchings of satin; a black silk, which stands on end for very +richness of fabric. + +‘There,’ she exclaims, swelling with pride, ‘I wore the gray--new--at +Colonel Stormont’s.’ + +‘At Colonel Stormont’s! Is the world coming to an end, or what +convulsion of nature brought you and the Stormonts together?’ + +‘I was asked to dinner with uncle Trenchard.’ + +‘And uncle Trenchard gave you the money to buy those dresses, of +course.’ + +‘Yes. He said, “Well, my dear, I suppose you’ll want a new gown;” +and then he gave a heavy sigh, and took a bank note out of an +old-fashioned red pocket-book, and then he looked at the note so +long that I was afraid he was going to change his mind, and then he +gave another sigh, deeper than the first, and handed me the note--a +ten-pound note. I tried to kiss him the first time, but he didn’t +seem to like that, for he gave me a little peevish push, and said +“There, my dear, that’ll do.”’ + +‘Funny old man! How many ten-pound notes has he given you?’ + +‘Four altogether. He always sighs just in the same way, as if every +note was a wrench. He’s inordinately rich, of course, but it seems to +hurt him so to part with his money that I can’t help thinking of that +dreadful story of Douglas Jerrold’s, “The Man made of Money,” and +fancying that uncle Trenchard is unrolling a bit of himself when he +gives away a bank note.’ + +‘It’s only such people who get inordinately rich,’ replies Sibyl, +plaiting her long thick hair into one massive tail for the night. +‘And how did you get on with uncle Trenchard, upon the whole?’ + +‘Oh, very well indeed. It was so nice driving about in his new +barouche, with a lovely pair of chestnuts, and feeling one’s self +looked up to by all Redcastle; and I had a splendid bedroom and +dressing-room, and we dined at half-past seven every day, with two +men waiting upon us. I used to feel afraid of them just at first, +especially the butler, who looks the image of Mr. Groshen the banker, +and that took away from the grandeur; but I soon got accustomed to +them, and learned to speak to them in an offhand way, just like Mrs. +Stormont.’ + +‘Marion,’ says Sibyl, earnestly, ‘do you think uncle Trenchard +intends to leave us his money?’ + +‘Well, I should think he must leave it to us or to hospitals; and if +we can manage to please him----’ + +‘We must please him, Marion, and wind ourselves into his withered old +heart somehow. It would be ridiculous, abominable, shameful, for the +money to be left to hospitals when we want it so badly. It’s no use +to enjoy the luxuries of his house, to take a ten-pound note from him +now and then. That kind of thing will only make poverty seem worse to +us afterwards. We must have his fortune.’ + +Her eyes dilate and brighten, her lips tremble faintly as she leaves +off speaking, and then her face changes in a moment, and tears run +down her wan cheeks. + +‘Gracious, Sibyl!’ cries Marion, rushing at her with a bottle of eau +de Cologne and a towel, and dabbing her forehead with the perfume. ‘I +declare you’re quite hysterical. Of course we must have his money--if +we can get it. What has the fidgety old thing come home to England +for except to make our acquaintance and leave us his fortune? He has +as good as said so ever so many times.’ + +Marion’s sisterly attentions check that hysterical attack of Sibyl’s, +and the two girls lie down side by side affectionately, after a brief +formula in the way of evening prayer. + +Deep in the chill spring night Sibyl’s head tosses restlessly on +the pillow, and the sleeper’s lips murmur sorrowfully in troubled +dreams,-- + +‘Alex, Alex--don’t be so cruel, Alex. Forgive--you know--your +sake--yes, yes--as much as for my own.’ + +So pleads the sinner’s vexed soul; self-excusing, self-accusing, even +in dreams. + + + + + CHAPTER IX. + + UNCLE TRENCHARD. + + +Stephen Trenchard paces his smooth gravel walk in the April sunshine, +after tiffin, looking at the sparrows, and blackbirds, and thrushes +disporting blithely on his velvet lawn, or hopping away into the +shadow of evergreens--great masses of laurel and laurustinus, +rhododendron and bay, which surround the smooth expanse of grass in a +semicircular sweep. + +Very perfect is the order of Mr. Trenchard’s garden--not a yellow +leaf on the laurels, not a daisy peeping pertly, silver-white, from +the lawn, not a branch that grows awry. In the kitchen-garden yonder, +far away behind the shrubbery, the fan-shaped fruit-trees look like +geometrical patterns on the yellow brick walls. The apples and pears +are all wired into exactest growth, and not a twig is allowed its own +way. Mr. Trenchard is in his garden by six o’clock every morning, +and his severe eye interrogates the smallest sprig of groundsel, +and rebukes the very slugs that vie with him in early rising. Mr. +Trenchard is not a master to be trifled with, and his gardeners know +it. For every shilling he expends he will have twelve pennyworth of +labour--nay, thirteen or fourteen pennyworth if he can get it. Woe +be to the wretch who tries to put him off with elevenpence halfpenny +worth of industry! + +‘I’ve had to work for my money,’ says Mr. Trenchard, ‘and I expect +value for my money from other people.’ + +He walks briskly up and down, looking to the right and left with an +eye bright and quick as a bird’s, a small black eye, which looks the +blacker for its whitened lashes. He is of middle height, very thin, +very yellow. He has sharply cut features; nose thin, pointed, and +aggressive-looking; lips also thin, and of a disagreeable pallid +hue; eyebrows iron-gray, thick and bushy; brow narrow; perceptive +ridge strongly marked, upper head receding; hair thick, short, and +iron-gray, like the eyebrows, brushed into two sharp points, like a +terrier’s ears. + +Mr. Trenchard wears nankeen waistcoat and trousers, very loose +for his lean limbs, and a glossy black frock coat, also loose, a +black satin scarf with a gold pin, and high shirt collars; a double +gold eye-glass dangles on his breast, a glass which he wears for +show rather than use, but which intensifies the severity of his +countenance when he reproves his gardeners, or lectures his butler. + +He is a man who has toiled early and late, until the other day, when +he took it into his head to give up his counting-house to a junior +partner, and come back to England and enjoy the evening of his life +at his ease. He has been a man of one idea all his days, and the +single object of his existence has been the accumulation of money. +The process of money-making, the honour and homage which the world +renders the reputed millionaire--these have been so sweet to him that +the question of what he is to do with his wealth has rarely presented +itself seriously to his mind. + +On his sixty-ninth birthday he awoke suddenly to the consciousness +that whatever personal enjoyment he meant to have out of his wealth +must be obtained within the next ten, twelve, or fifteen years. Even +with his vigorous constitution he could hardly hope to live beyond +the age of eighty-five. Forty years in India must take something out +of a man, be he never so temperate, and abstemiousness has been one +of Stephen Trenchard’s virtues. + +So at sixty-nine he said to himself, ‘It is time for me to go back to +England; let the world see what a position I have made for myself, +and take all the good I can out of life.’ + +His seventieth birthday has not yet arrived, and he has built for +his soul a lordly treasure-house, or in other words, he has taken +upon lease, decorated, and furnished Lancaster Lodge, one of the +best houses in his father’s native town of Redcastle: he has hired +servants, purchased carriages and horses, and begun a plain-sailing +English gentleman’s life on a very liberal scale. The result so far +has been eminently satisfactory. His house to him a kingdom is, he +rules his servants, indoor and outdoor, with a rod of iron, and feels +himself a potentate. + +Very pleasant to him is the incense which Redcastle offers to his +wealth. People whose fathers and grandfathers snubbed or ignored +his father, the struggling solicitor, bow down and worship the +Anglo-Indian Plutocrat. He accepts their adoration with supreme +coolness, and a quiet arrogance which his admirers extol as innate +aristocracy of mind. + +It has pleased him to permit his niece Marion Faunthorpe to bask in +the sunshine of his favour. She is not handsome enough to charm his +eye, which is critical in the matter of feminine beauty, nor is she +clever enough to amuse him; but she is rather a pretty thing to have +about his house, and she does very well for a listener when he is in +the humour to tell his prosy old stories of dead and gone Calcutta +scandals. She knows how to hold her tongue when he is inclined to +be silent, is solicitous for his small comforts, quiet as a mouse +when he takes his after-dinner nap. She behaves gracefully at table, +neither eats nor drinks too much, looks stylish when fashionably +dressed, moves about the house quietly, and is not altogether +deficient in tact. He is content, therefore, to tolerate her as a +frequent guest, but does not appreciate her warmly enough to ask her +to take up her permanent abode with him. + +He has made many inquiries about Sibyl, and has been vexed by her +non-appearance. The Stormonts, the Groshens, and other notabilities +have praised the absent girl’s beauty, having found out all at once +that a young person whose existence they never troubled themselves to +acknowledge was the loveliest girl in Redcastle. ‘Quite the belle of +the place, I assure you, Mr. Trenchard,’ says Mrs. Stormont. + +‘Indeed,’ remarks Stephen Trenchard. ‘She was invited out very much, +I suppose?’ + +‘Well, no, dear Mr. Trenchard, she was too young, you know--almost a +child. And then your brother-in-law is so retiring. We could never +have got him out of his shell.’ + +If there is one thing in that region of trifles outside the money +market which Mr. Trenchard appreciates it is beauty in woman. +Having heard his eldest niece so enthusiastically praised, he is +particularly anxious to see her, ever so much the more anxious +because her indifference has thwarted him. + +‘She must be a queer kind of girl,’ he tells himself, ‘to hang back +from a rich uncle, to prefer drudging as a governess to sponging +upon me. Marion is glad enough to take all she can get, and would +kneel down and kiss my shoe-string if I asked her. Her feelings are +transparent enough. This other one must be something out of the +common.’ + +A wonderful advantage this for Sibyl at starting; though it is an +advantage she has gained accidentally. + +The great lodge bell clangs out, while Mr. Trenchard paces up and +down, and startles the respectable tranquillity of Above Bar with its +clamour. He takes out his watch. Too early for a ceremonious visit. +Mr. Trenchard walks round by the side windows of his large square +mansion, and comes within view of the gate. Two ladies enter, both +young and slim, both tall, but one rather shorter than the other. The +taller gives a little eager cry and runs forward to him, the second +advances more slowly. + +‘Dear uncle Stephen,’ cries Marion, pursing up her lips to be kissed, +an operation which uncle Stephen performs with a slightly reluctant +air, ‘Sibyl has come home quite unexpectedly,’ Marion is always out +of breath at the beginning of a visit, a pretty gushing way which +some people call charming, ‘and I thought I might bring her--to--see +you--dear uncle John.’ + +‘Thought you might bring her. Of course you might bring her. Haven’t +I been asking to see her ever since Christmas? So that is Sibyl, is +it?’ looking at the graceful figure lingering on the sunlit grass a +few yards away from him. The bright face is flushed with palest rose, +the dark full eyes are looking slily at him, the dark brown hair is +burnished by the sun. A fair picture of peerless youth for crabbed +age to admire. + +‘So that is Sibyl! Yes, she is very lovely. Those sycophants haven’t +exaggerated. Come here, my love, come to your old uncle. Naughty +child, why did you stay away so long?’ + +He holds out his lean old arms, he folds her to his breast, he kisses +her lovingly, paternally, as he has never yet kissed Marion, despite +her affectionate blandishments. + +‘Well, I never!’ Marion exclaims inwardly, standing a little aloof, +and feeling that her reign is over. + + + + + CHAPTER X. + + SIBYL TAKES THE LEAD. + + +The favourable impression which Sibyl makes on her uncle Stephen +Trenchard is a fact too obvious for diversity of opinion. + +Marion reluctantly, sullenly even, admits that truth, with many +sneers and inuendos about winning manners and hollow-heartedness. + +‘I have never laid myself out to please uncle Stephen as Sibyl lays +herself out,’ murmurs the injured maiden. ‘I can’t flatter people +with my looks. I haven’t Sibyl’s caressing ways. I can’t pretend +more affection than I feel; and I must say that uncle Stephen’s dry +little jerky ways of speaking and looking at one are not calculated +to develop affection.’ + +Thus argues Marion in the easy atmosphere of uncle Robert’s every-day +parlour. The girls are seated at supper with Dr. Faunthorpe, trifling +with morsels of bread and cheese, after having dined with Mr. +Trenchard. + +‘I did not find him hard or dry,’ replies Sibyl. ‘He seems really +kind and affectionate, and I was grateful to him for his warm +welcome. I don’t know what you mean by my laying myself out to please +him. I remembered that he was poor mamma’s only brother, and our own +flesh and blood, the uncle I had heard so much about years ago, and I +was naturally touched by our meeting.’ + +‘Ah,’ says Marion, ‘what an advantage it is for a woman to be able to +cry when she likes! How _do_ you manage it, Sib?’ + +‘If the tears came into my eyes to-day it was because I am not very +strong just now, Marion,’ answers Sibyl, reddening. ‘You are really +the most horrid girl I ever met with.’ + +‘However horrid I am, I am not double-faced,’ replies the other, +promptly. ‘I should be ashamed to court uncle Trenchard if I were +you, when I remember the things you’ve said about him.’ + +‘What things?’ + +‘What a convenient memory yours is! Haven’t you said that you +despised him for his meanness as a young man--that he won his way in +the world by double-dealing, by base flattery of his patron--that all +your sympathy was with the young man he supplanted, Mr. Secretan?’ + +At that name Sibyl flushes crimson, and then grows ashy pale. + +‘Ah, I see you do remember,’ cries Marion, triumphantly. + +‘Marion,’ exclaims the mild little surgeon, with a rare flash of +anger, ‘I will not have your sister teased in this manner. How dare +you accuse her of falsehood or hypocrisy? She has as good a right to +Stephen Trenchard’s favour as you have.’ + +‘Yes, and to his fortune. Let her have it all,’ cries Marion, tempted +to go into hysterics, but thinking better of it immediately. ‘She is +to go and stay with him, and keep house for him, directly she can get +her things ready, which, considering she came home without a rag, +must take some time. She is to pay him a long visit. I’m nobody now.’ + +‘My love, you have had your innings,’ pleads the pacific doctor. + +‘Oh, of course, and just as I have got to understand his ways and +know how to please him I am pushed aside.’ + +‘My dear, his sense of justice will induce him to distribute his +bounty fairly.’ + +‘His sense of justice did not prevent his kissing Sibyl more +affectionately than he has ever kissed me.’ + +‘Mere fancy on your part, I have no doubt,’ says the doctor. + +After this little burst of temper Marion calms down and is tolerably +placable. She even discusses her sister’s outfit with some show of +interest. Mr. Trenchard has given Sibyl five-and-twenty pounds. ‘I +suppose you are pretty well provided with cash, little one,’ he said, +just before she wished him good night, ‘an independent-minded young +woman like you who goes out into the world to get her own living is +sure to have a well-lined purse.’ + +Sibyl blushed, and owned that her purse had no lining at all. + +‘Ah, I see, sent help home to the old doctor,’ muttered Mr. +Trenchard, fortunately not loud enough for Marion to hear, or that +sharp-tongued young person would inevitably have set him right. +‘Well, well, very right, very proper.’ + +And then the crimson pocket-book was slowly brought forth, and Mr. +Trenchard sighed a desponding sigh as he opened it, a sigh that +was like a funeral gun for his departed bank notes. Sibyl went +back to the dingy old house at the bottom of the town richer by +five-and-twenty pounds than when she left it at midday. + +The girls go out gaily enough next morning to Carmichael’s, _the_ +haberdashery, linendrapery, and silk mercery establishment of +Redcastle, to supply the void in Sibyl’s wardrobe. Five-and-twenty +pounds is not much for a young lady of large ideas, but Sibyl, +schooled in the philosophy of small means, makes the most of that +sum. She spends all her money at Carmichael’s, and trusts to +Providence and Stephen Trenchard for means to pay Miss Eylett for +the making up of her dresses, and Mr. Korksoll, the bootmaker, for +the equipment of her pretty little feet. It is astonishing how far +away from the thoughts of Miss Eylett and Mr. Korksoll seems the +notion of payment now that Miss Faunthorpe’s rich uncle has returned +from the Indies. ‘You are to send the things home to me at Lancaster +Lodge,’ says Sibyl, and that seems as good as paying for them. + +Sibyl has asked for a week in which to prepare herself for this +important visit, and that week is occupied in the stitching, hemming, +sewing, felling, gathering, and trimming of underclothing--the +fashion of ready-made linen not having yet vitiated the housewifely +habits of Redcastle. The lower middle classes make their own +garments, laboriously, and are proud of their toil; the upper classes +employ school children, reduced widows, or virtuous orphans for the +labour, and contrive thereby to exercise a good deal of patronage at +a very small expenditure. + +Sibyl revives considerably during this week of preparation. She +manages to rest a good deal, other people taking the chief burden of +getting her clothes made on their shoulders. She lies on the sofa in +the shabby old parlour, staring idly at the white and yellow spring +flowers that brighten the dull brown beds yonder in the familiar +garden, the white pear blossoms tossing gaily in the light April +wind, the jonquils peeping over the tall box border, the sword-shaped +lily of the valley leaves cleaving the damp mould in the shadow of +the bulging moss-grown wall, summer’s harbinger in the shape of a +butterfly skimming over the tender rose leaves. A dull old house +verily--a limited prospect, this long strip of walled garden, yet +sweet and soothing to one who has suffered. Sweet to lie at rest on +the slumberous sofa, with no thought or care for the day, and with +but vaguest thought of the morrow. + +‘If uncle Trenchard leaves me a fortune life will be made so easy,’ +Sibyl muses, her arms folded above her head, her eyes fixed dreamily +on the waving white pear-bloom, ‘I shall have but to call Alex back +to me, and we can be happy together again, and taste the sweets of +life again, as we did in our brief bright honeymoon. Poverty and love +cannot live long together; but love with plenty of money--_that_ +means paradise.’ + +The future, dimly veiled though it is, seems very easy to her just +now. She is elated by her uncle’s evident admiration of her. She has +made just the impression that she would have wished to make upon that +fate-disposing relative. To follow up that impression will be simple +enough. Has she not been told of her winning ways, of those small +fascinations which make a woman powerful for good or evil? Has she +not been always her uncle Robert’s favourite, everybody’s favourite, +without effort on her own part? while Marion, painfully anxious +to please, has been looked on rather as a nuisance, a vivacious +nonentity of whom one might easily have too much. + +Mr. Trenchard’s carriage calls every afternoon, with its coachman and +footman in respectable Puritan drab liveries, to take the two young +ladies for an airing; Mr. Trenchard himself rarely making any use of +the equipage, which he keeps rather as an appanage of his state than +for pleasure or convenience. It is very agreeable to Sibyl to drive +up the long street, with its ascending scale of social importance, +from the shabby old houses at uncle Robert’s end of the town to the +stately stone mansions above Bar. Very agreeable to pass the _élite_ +whom Marion has just begun to know, and salutes with delighted becks +and bows, but whom Sibyl surveys with a stony stare, affecting to +have not the faintest notion who they are. + +‘That Faunthorpe girl is handsomer than ever,’ says Colonel Stormont +to his wife, whom he is driving in a pony carriage a size or two +larger than a washing basket. ‘She’s pretty sure to come in for a +tidy share of the old fellow’s money, I should think. Not a bad match +for Frederick.’ + +Frederick is the hope of the Stormonts--great at cricket, croquet, +and athletics, fire brigade and volunteer rifle corps; a youth with +very thin legs, and not much body, who wears a cutaway coat that just +clears his hips, and has never been seen in an overcoat, or without a +flower in his button-hole. + +‘No family,’ says Mrs. Stormont, pursing up her lips. + +‘Family be bothered!’ remarks the colonel. ‘Old Trenchard is rolling +in money. What’s the good of family? It won’t keep a roof over your +head, or pay the tax-gatherer. Commerce is the thing now-a-days. If +Fred doesn’t marry a rich woman pretty soon he’ll have to go into +commerce. You ought to take notice of those Faunthorpe girls.’ + +‘I’ll call next week,’ replies Mrs. Stormont, obediently. + +Sibyl’s beauty is the talk of the town. Redcastle is suddenly +awakened to the consciousness of loveliness that scarcely moved it +to admiration two years ago, although the girl’s beauty had then +the bloom and freshness of unchastened youth. Perhaps she is really +lovelier now. Sorrow and passion have passed there, and left the +exalted look of an awakened soul, where there was before only girlish +innocence, curious and wondering about a world of which it knew +nothing. She has eaten of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The +mystery of life has been revealed to her. Be sure that Eve’s beauty +had a deeper meaning after she came out by the fatal gate where the +angel with the flaming sword kept watch and ward. + +The carriage comes at the week’s end to fetch Miss Faunthorpe and +her belongings, to the tribulation of her young sister Jenny, who has +had so much of Marion lately that she is deeply grieved to lose Sibyl. + +‘It will be ever so much worse for me when you’re gone,’ she says. +‘You do stand up for a fellow sometimes. She’ll be sending me +upstairs for her handkerchief or her keys three times an hour, and +making me crimp her hair till my fingers ache, and unpick her old +dresses. I wish uncle Trenchard would let me go with you. I shouldn’t +cost much or be in his way. And now uncle Robert says I’m not to go +to school any more, because it makes me vulgar, and Marion is to go +on with my education. A nice education it will be! I don’t believe +she knows when William the Conqueror came over, or who invented +potatoes.’ + +Sibyl tears herself from the lamenting damsel, kisses uncle Robert +with a plaintive little look more expressive of gratitude than many a +lengthy oration, and takes her place in the barouche, which becomes +her as a frame does a picture, and seems as much her attribute as +Juno’s car to the goddess. + +‘Good-bye, Poverty,’ she says to herself as the chestnuts throw up +their fore-legs as if they were playing cup and ball, and dash off +towards the Bar. ‘It shall go hard with me if my name is not written +in uncle Trenchard’s will before long.’ + + + + + CHAPTER XI. + + HOW STEPHEN TRENCHARD FORGIVES. + + +The new life at Lancaster Lodge suits Sibyl as if she had been +created for no other purpose than to sit at her uncle’s table, +pour out his coffee, air his newspapers, play or sing to him in +the evenings, and take her own pleasure for the rest of the day. +Housekeeping is an easy burden in so well-ordered an establishment. +The trained servants perform their duties, light for the most part, +with mechanical precision. The service is too good to be forfeited +by scamped work, or forgetfulness of the master’s wishes. Stephen +Trenchard has let his servants understand that he will have fullest +value for his money, that there must be no talents stowed away in +napkins in his household. He has contrived to inspire them with +wholesome fear, and is served to the utmost of their power. + +Sibyl is not afflicted with a genius for domestic matters. She +remembers with a shudder those days in Dixon Street when she had to +cater for a penniless husband, and make ninepence do the work of a +shilling. She remembers this weary time, and reposes in her low easy +chair, novel in hand, the garden smiling at her through the open +French window, horses and carriages at her disposal, luxury around +her, all Redcastle subjugated and more or less prostrated at her +feet,--she keenly remembers the past, and deems her present life +worthy some sacrifice, more especially as the present is made still +brighter by vague hopes of happiness, and a reconciliation of all +life’s perplexities in the future. + +She has her dark moments, naturally. What life is without shadow? +There are moments when she thinks of one she has fondly loved--fondly +loves still, perhaps, in some sealed chamber of her heart. There are +hours in which she wonders, with remorseful wonder, how _he_ fares +whom she so ruthlessly abandoned. + +‘For his future advantage,’ she tells herself; ‘as Mrs. Secretan I +should have forfeited my uncle’s fortune--as Miss Faunthorpe I may +win it and share it with my husband.’ + +Established as Stephen Trenchard’s favourite niece, Sibyl finds +herself an object of unbounded interest and admiration with the +_élite_. Mrs. Stormont, although overflowing with kindness, at first +shows some disposition to patronize, but finding this eldest Miss +Faunthorpe a young woman not amenable to patronage, changes her note +and accepts Mr. Trenchard’s niece as ‘one of ourselves,’ elected and +chosen to sit in the high places of Redcastle. + +‘The girl has a wonderful air,’ argues Mrs. Stormont, ‘when you +consider that she is totally without family.’ + +‘Talking of family,’ muses the colonel, ‘I hope it’s all right about +old Trenchard’s money, and that he hasn’t left any niggers over in +Calcutta to whom he may leave his fortune.’ + +‘My dear Reginald, I’m surprised at you,’ exclaims the lady, with a +look of horror. ‘Mr. Trenchard goes to church every Sunday, and is +altogether a most correct person.’ + +‘We don’t know what he may have been in India, though,’ says the +colonel. ‘He may have been a devil-worshipper, and danced an +exaggerated highland fling at devil-dances; or a Mahometan, or a +Brahmin, or a Thug. He seems to have plenty of money, and that’s +about all we know of him.’ + +Notwithstanding which ignorance as to Stephen Trenchard’s antecedents +the colonel and his wife continue to court and cherish him, +arranging the nicest little dinners for him, with Mr. Groshen to +sit opposite to him and discourse upon the money market; lavishing +affection on Sibyl, inquiring kindly about the exiled Marion--as +remote at the unvisited end of the town as if she had been removed +to another hemisphere--and making themselves generally subservient +and agreeable. Frederick Stormont, with his cutaway coat and legs +like sticks of sealing wax, calls frequently at Lancaster Lodge, +and is deeply interested in everything that interests Sibyl,--the +flower-garden, the horses; he even volunteers to be interested in +the poultry, but bottles his enthusiasm upon finding that Miss +Faunthorpe has no taste for Dorkings, Spaniards, or Cochin-Chinas. + +There is a billiard-room at Lancaster Lodge, and Frederick is +great at billiards. He drops in of an evening, and plays with Mr. +Trenchard; he teaches Sibyl how to handle her cue, and discourses +wisely on the theory of angles. + +‘Well, pretty one,’ says Mr. Trenchard one night, when Fred has +taken his departure with obvious reluctance, and uncle and niece +are loitering by the billiard-table, Sibyl leaning over the green +cloth to aim at the distant red, dressed in pale gray silk, with +innumerable flounces, and knots of mauve ribbon dotted about among +them, a masterpiece of Miss Eylett’s art. ‘Well, my pet, I think it’s +pretty clear what that young gentleman comes here for.’ + +‘Billiards, I should think,’ replies Sibyl, pushing her cue gently +backwards and forwards as she meditates her aim. ‘They have no table +at the Stormonts, and it is cheaper for him to play here than at the +“Coach and Horses.”’ + +‘The billiard-table is a very good excuse, my dear, but the gentleman +comes to see you.’ + +‘Poor thread-paper!’ exclaims Sibyl, with a contemptuous laugh. ‘For +his own sake--if the thing can feel--I hope not.’ + +‘Why, he’d be a very good match for you, wouldn’t he?’ asks her +uncle, looking keenly at her from under his penthouse brows. ‘These +Stormonts are great people, the leaders of Redcastle society. You +could hardly do better than marry into their set.’ + +‘If I were likely ever to marry, which I’m not,’ says Sibyl, +pocketing her ball triumphantly off the red, ‘I’d marry a _man_.’ + +‘Never likely to marry! what do you mean by that?’ + +‘Simply that I’m quite happy as I am, and that I mean to stop with +you, and take care of you, please uncle Stephen, until you get tired +of me.’ + +She has been living with her rich uncle nearly three months, and +there is no more talk of her being a visitor at Lancaster Lodge. +It is her home. Marion may come and go, but Sibyl remains. Stephen +Trenchard cannot do without her. + +‘I shan’t get tired of you in a hurry,’ answers Mr. Trenchard, ‘but +I think for your own sake you ought to marry when you get a good +opportunity. I was only joking about that whipper-snapper, who walks +about the place as if the very paving stones were his property, and +couldn’t give you change for a five-pound note if you asked him for +it. He’s not the man for you. But with your pretty face you are sure +to find the right kind of man before long, a man with brains and +money, and when you do I hope you’ll be wise enough to marry him. +It’s all very well while I’m here to take care of you, but when I’m +dead and gone----’ + +‘When you are dead and gone I shall have your money, you dear old +thing,’ thinks Sibyl, but says not a word. She only goes to her +uncle’s side, and lays her face upon his shoulder, and gives him +one of those gentle little caresses which Marion would as soon have +offered to the Zoological Garden’s tiger as to her Anglo-Indian uncle. + +‘Yes, pretty one, I should like to see you well married before my +time comes,’ says Stephen Trenchard. + +‘Now you know, uncle, that you are under a solemn agreement with me +to live till you are ninety,’ replies Sibyl, shaking her finger at +him with playful menace. + +She has grown very intimate with her uncle in these three months, +her playing, her singing, her bright talk, her sparkling, vivacious +little ways have won the old man’s confidence. Stern to all the rest +of the world, implacable in all his dealing with men, suspicious +alike of equals and inferiors, tyrannical to his servants, he +is yet wondrously gentle to Sibyl. His inherent meanness, his +mental incapacity to give, cannot be wholly subjugated even by +her influence, but what money he bestows upon her he gives less +grudgingly than to Marion. He feels the loss of so many pounds a +shade less keenly when Sibyl’s pleasure is in question, and though he +grumbles sorely at the costliness of a woman’s toilet he is pleased +to see his niece expensively dressed, and may in time come to regard +her costume as one of the accessories of his own grandeur, like his +stables or hothouses. + +Rarely, despite the confidence that is established between them, has +Mr. Trenchard talked to Sibyl of his past life, of his youth never. +He tells her his prosy old stories of Calcutta society, of men with +whom he has had commercial dealings, of clever frauds and chicaneries +which he chuckles over as the _coups d’état_ of the trading world, +but of himself he speaks very little. Never, above all, has the fatal +name of Secretan crossed his lips; and Sibyl is longing to find out +the state of his feelings now, after this lapse of time, in relation +to that name. + +If he had learned, in the lapse of years, to forgive the man he +injured and over-reached, if he had grown to feel some touch of +remorseful pity for the supplanted son, what a happiness it would be +to fall on her knees at his feet and confess the secret of her life, +to be pardoned for her duplicity, set free from the toil and trouble +of falsehood, able to call her proud young husband back to her side, +and to begin life again, honest in the sight of man and at peace with +God! + +She is continually musing upon this question, and would give much for +an opportunity of sounding her uncle’s feelings. It comes one day +unawares, and she has no longer need to speculate or wonder about +Stephen Trenchard’s sentiments upon the subject of an old enemy. + +It is a drowsy July afternoon. The summer is at its hottest, and Mr. +Trenchard and his niece are sitting on the lawn after that elaborate +meal, half breakfast, half luncheon, which the Anglo-Indian calls +tiffin. The lawn behind Lancaster Lodge is a delightful place on a +warm summer day. Three or four old elms, a spreading cedar, a Spanish +chestnut, and a couple of noble plane trees afford abundant shade. +The grass is smooth as velvet. Garden chairs, low and luxurious, are +dotted about under the trees. Newspapers, and Sibyl’s work-basket, +bestrew the light iron table. Changing lights and shadows flit and +flicker among the leaves, and Stephen Trenchard’s lean figure, +stretched to its full length, reposes at ease on a bamboo reclining +chair, a glass of potash water on one side of him, a cigar-case on +the other. + +Sibyl is reading to him out of yesterday’s _Times_, when he +interrupts her with a sudden sigh, which is almost a groan. + +‘What is the matter, uncle Stephen?’ + +‘You had better leave off,--even your soft voice irritates me.’ + +‘Your nervous headache not gone yet, uncle Stephen?’ + +‘Gone! It’s worse than ever. This English summer is more oppressive +than Indian heat, or it seems so to me at any rate.’ + +Sibyl searches in the little work-basket lined with blue satin, +fishes out a silver-stoppered scent-bottle, and is on her knees by +her uncle’s side in a moment, dabbing his yellow forehead with her +handkerchief steeped in eau de Cologne. + +‘Thank you, my dear, that will do. I don’t care about it.’ + +He gives her an impatient little push, as disapproving so much fuss, +but not before she has disarranged one of those terrier-ear wisps +of iron-gray hair, and been startled by a scar which disfigures the +forehead beneath it, a long narrow seam, which crosses the temple +diagonally just below the roots of the Hair. + +‘Uncle Stephen, were you ever in battle?’ + +‘Battle, child? What nonsense! Of course not.’ + +‘Or in a mutiny--or anything? How did you get this dreadful scar?’ + +‘From the foul blow of a scoundrel,’ answers Stephen Trenchard, +deadly pale. ‘From the man who lamed me for life. Did you never hear +your mother speak of Philip Secretan?’ + +‘Yes, uncle Stephen, I have heard her say that he treated you very +badly.’ + +‘Oh, she owned as much, did she? The world in general would have it +that I used him badly, that I had no right to the money his father +left me--a paltry thirty thousand; that I ought to have stood on one +side and said, “No, blood is thicker than water. You’ve been an idler +and a profligate--a bad son, the business would have gone to wreck +and ruin if it had been left to you to save it. I’ve toiled, I’ve +slaved, I’ve planned and plotted, I’ve borne the heat and burden of +the day; but still you are the son, and you’ve a right to come in at +the eleventh hour and rob me of my just reward, simply because you +are the son.” That’s what the world would have had me do, in the high +and mighty justice it is so good at dealing out for other people, and +so bad at yielding on its own account. Some went so far as to say +that the will was forged, and I was the forger. Luckily for me, old +Mr. Secretan had published his intention of disinheriting his son, +and making me his heir, the year of the great Manchester failures, +when his house tottered, and I had the luck to save it by a desperate +stroke of business.’ + +‘He was very fond of you, I suppose, this old Mr. Secretan?’ asks +Sibyl, breathlessly. + +‘Fond of me? Yes, perhaps as much as it was in his nature to be fond +of anything, except money. He hated his son, knowing that he was a +spendthrift, and would squander every shilling the old man had toiled +for. He trusted me--he looked up to me. “If you were my son,” he used +to say, “I shouldn’t be tortured by the thought that this business +would go to ruin when I’m in my grave.” The day he said that for the +first time I made up my mind that I was to be his heir. Philip’s +follies and vices helped me, but my own patience and industry were +the chief agents.’ + +‘And there was a quarrel between you and Philip Secretan?’ asks +Sibyl, seated on the grass and plucking up little tufts of it +nervously, as she watches her uncle’s vindictive face with eager +eyes, reading doom there. + +‘Yes, when the will had been read, and he knew the worst--he ought +to have expected it if he had a grain of sense,--Philip Secretan +followed me out into the grounds. His father’s house was a few miles +outside Manchester, a fine old place enough, but neglected,--the old +man was too fond of money to spend much on house or gardens. Philip +followed me to the back of the grounds, where there was a wild bit of +shrubbery and a hollow that had once been a stone quarry, and which +had been left, either because people didn’t care about the expense +of filling it, or because they fancied it was picturesque. In any +case it was dangerous, and an abomination that ought to have been +done away with. Well, I was close to the edge of this hollow--there +being a short cut to the Manchester road just beyond it--when Philip +overtook me. He didn’t spare me, I can tell you, for, apart from the +money question, there was an old sore between us. The girl he wanted +to marry had done me the honour to prefer his father’s confidential +clerk. She was a sensible girl, and saw the point to which our lives +were drifting. When he had called me reptile, and a few other equally +agreeable names, finding that he couldn’t sting me into retaliation +by abuse of that kind, he came close up to me and struck me across +the face with his open hand. “There, cur,” he cried, “and let’s +see if that will warm your fish’s blood into manly feeling.” I had +been in a burning rage all the time at his insolence, but had held +myself in check, in pity for his disappointment, which was hard to +bear, no doubt, richly as he had deserved it. I was a man, and the +shame of a blow was too much even for my sluggish temper, trained +to patience by long servitude. I closed with him, and we wrestled +together on that path by the quarry. Now mark the cowardice of this +fine gentleman, who boasted of his honour, and called me a sneak +and reptile! He was twice my match in weight and size, three times +my match in training, a practised athlete, a skilled boxer, every +muscle developed by exercise. To use his force against mine was +simply murder. I was the shuttlecock, and he the battledore. I had +a confused sense of blows raining on my head, as from a Nasmyth’s +hammer, coloured sparks dancing before my eyes, fire shooting out +of my brain, and then I was hurled bodily into the air, and fell +crashing through the brushwood into the quarry. It seemed like +falling from the highest cliff that breasts the Atlantic.’ + +‘How dreadful!’ says Sibyl, with a gasp. + +‘It was deep in the night when I awoke, and the stars were shining. +I wondered where I was, and how I came to see the pole-star looking +straight down at me. Pain came before memory, acute, agonizing pain, +and then I knew that my leg had been shattered somehow. I lay in the +quarry till past eight o’clock next morning, suffering indescribable +torture. At last, however, some labourers heard my faint cries for +help, found me, and carried me to the nearest roadside inn, whence +I was conveyed to the Manchester Infirmary. Here I lay for five +months--the most miserable months of my life--while the fractured +bones united. It was a compound fracture, and for some time I was +threatened with amputation. When I rose from the hospital bed I +was lame for life. The broken leg had contracted in the process of +healing. Surgery had done its best for me, and had saved my leg; but +surgery left me a cripple; for which life-long injury I had to thank +Philip Secretan. I had to thank him for something else too, for the +girl who had pretended to love me chose this time for throwing me +over, and making a better match.’ + +‘And in those weary months, lying on your bed of pain, you learned to +forgive your enemy,’ suggests Sibyl, very gently. + +‘Learned to forgive him! Yes, if forgiveness means undying hatred; +if forgiveness means the rankling memory of an unatonable wrong; if +forgiveness means to remember him and curse him every time a change +of wind brings back the old grinding pain in this crippled limb. If +that means forgiveness, Philip Secretan and his race are forgiven.’ + +‘His race?’ falters Sibyl ‘You could feel no rancour against his +children.’ + +‘I could. I do,’ answers the old man, vindictively. ‘Let no viper of +that blood cross my path. “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and +the children’s teeth are set on edge.” There’s Scripture for you. I +believe in that good old heathen creed one reads of in Greek legends, +of an accursed race. Of Philip Secretan’s after career I know little +or nothing. He had the devil’s luck as well as his own, and married +a woman with money, soon after his father’s death, but I never heard +what became of him. He may be living or dead. If he lives, let him +keep out of my way. If he has left children, my dearest hope is that +they are penniless, homeless, street Arabs, whose playground is the +gutter, whose ultimate destiny is the gallows.’ + +‘Uncle, for mercy’s sake----’ + +‘My curse light on him and his seed to the third generation! There, +child, don’t cry. You should have known better than to tempt me to +talk of Philip Secretan.’ + + + + + CHAPTER XII. + + LOVE, THEN, HAD HOPE OF RICHER STORE. + + +After that summer day under the plane trees, Sibyl utters the name +of Secretan no more. Hope of relenting on her uncle’s part there is +none. If Alexis could forgive the man who in his version of the story +came basely between father and son to cheat the son of his heritage, +and tricked the lover out of his mistress, Stephen Trenchard’s +stubborn soul would still remain unsoftened. Reconciliation between +these two was impossible. To retain her uncle’s favour, and inherit +a portion of his wealth, Sibyl must keep the secret of her marriage. +A painful part to play even for a mind not untrained in deceit; but +a necessary part, Sibyl tells herself. A difficult game, but for a +stake well worth the winning. She has no exact measure of her uncle’s +possessions. He has never talked to her of his investments, or told +her his income, but she has a fixed idea that his wealth is almost +without limit, that, like the Rothschilds or the Duke of Westminster, +he could scarcely state the sum-total of his riches if he were +asked for exact figures. His fortune is a rolling mass of gold, she +supposes, which grows larger at every turn, like a snowball. The +respect she sees paid to him by the elect of Redcastle establishes +her in this conviction of Stephen Trenchard’s importance, for she +knows that in this case importance can only mean money. + +Lancaster Lodge is one of those handsomely finished, solidly built +houses which adorn the outskirts of every country town, and are like +temples dedicated to the genius of commonplace; houses in which the +butler’s pantry has been as carefully considered as the drawing-room, +and in which my lady’s boudoir is just as unlovely as John Thomas’s +attic under the leads. All the principal rooms are large and square +and lofty. The passages are broad and straight. The staircase is well +proportioned, ventilated and lighted to perfection. Impossible to +find fault with a house which, as the house agent proudly puts it, +possesses all the requirements for a gentleman’s family. Equally +impossible to feel the slightest interest in a mansion which neither +awes by its splendour nor attracts by its eccentricity, nor charms by +the lowlier graces of homeliness and simplicity. A coffin descending +that mathematical staircase would lose its awfulness in the pervading +atmosphere of commonplace. A cradle in any of those rooms would seem +to have lost its way, and wandered into a desert, where baby-life +could not endure. No sadly sweet fancies of domestic joys that are no +more entwine themselves about this dwelling of Stephen Trenchard’s. +It looks like what it is--an old bachelor’s house,--and Mr. Trenchard +could hardly have chosen a habitation more completely in harmony with +his own character. + +The Redcastle upholsterer, a man whose stock in trade appears +to consist of two easy chairs and a sideboard--but who can do +great things at a push,--has furnished Lancaster Lodge with +appropriate splendour. All is solid and grandiose; dark crimson +draperies--velvet in the dining-room and library, satin brocade in +the drawing-room--subdue the garish light and give a sombre grandeur +to the rooms. Heavy oak furniture, thickest Turkey and Persian +carpets; varied spoil of carved black wood, ivory, porcelain, and +Bombay inlaid work, which Mr. Trenchard has brought home with him +from India,--everywhere the evidence of wealth. + +To Sibyl the house seems simply perfect. Its luxury, its soft silent +splendour, contrast so pleasantly with the humble homeliness of her +uncle Robert’s old-fashioned, low-ceiled rooms; the stealthy-footed +footman, who spends so much of his time looking at nothing particular +out of the hall window, that he grows sedentary in his habits, +and fancies he has disease of the heart; the ponderous butler in +his glossy black suit and irreproachable white tie; the smart +maid-servants, in crisp starched cambric, tight-waisted, prim, +supercilious, as if Mr. Trenchard’s importance as the richest man in +Redcastle shed reflected glory upon them. The household has an air +of quiet dignity which impresses Sibyl wonderfully. Her soul reposes +itself in this land of fatness. She looks back at her life in Dixon +Street, its one room, its manifold privations, veritable starvation +hovering near like the wan spectre of approaching doom, and the +change seems too wonderful for anything but a dream. Does she think +of the husband who shared her poverty, whom she abandoned to endure +misfortune alone, deserted in the darkest hour of their wedded life? +When does she not think of him? Memory and regret are interwoven with +the fabric of her life. She consoles herself--justifies her desertion +of Alexis--by the idea that life must have been made easy to him by +their separation. As a married man with a helpless wife to provide +for, he was like a vessel waterlogged; relieved of that burden, he is +the same ship free to sail for any port in quest of fortune. + +One night, in the solitude of her prettily furnished bedroom, all +rose-coloured chintz and shining maple, furnished especially for +a young lady’s occupation at Mr. Trenchard’s order, Sibyl takes +out an insignificant paper-covered book from among her most sacred +possessions, and opens it with a hand that trembles a little as +she sits alone in the lamplight. It is like opening the grave of +the past. That little sixpenny book is the diary she kept at Mrs. +Hazleton’s--her brief love story. + +Tearfully, sorrowfully, she reads that record of her first and only +love, the story of a time when in singleness of mind and simplicity +she surrendered her heart to its conqueror. + +‘I love him, I love him, I love him,’ she reads, almost blinded by +tears. She remembers the gush of passionate feeling with which those +foolish words were written. ‘And one little year after I wrote that +line I deserted him,’ she says to herself, wondering at her own +hardness of heart. + +‘What a fool I must have been when I wrote this book!’ This is her +verdict as she closes the volume; yet she feels as if it were the +best and brightest part of her life in which those foolish pages were +written, and that she was happier in those days than she is now, +although she has become a personage in Redcastle. + +She looks round her room wonderingly, glancing at the maple wardrobe +which contains so many pretty dresses, such a treasury of ribbons and +lace, and the frivolities women love. + +‘Would I exchange all this, and the hope of a fortune from my uncle, +for the dismal second-floor schoolroom at Mrs. Hazleton’s, and the +freshness and sweetness of first love?’ she asks herself; and for a +moment it seems to her that could a good fairy give her back the days +that are no more, she would be a gainer by the exchange. + +If she could know that her husband was safe and well, that he had +prospered since she left him, or that things had gone tolerably well +with him, she might feel more at ease than she does. But she knows +nothing of what has happened to him since the beginning of the year, +when he was seen at Redcastle, a dismal apparition; and of this +appearance of his she only hears by chance, a few days after her +perusal of her diary, from no less a person than her younger sister +Jane, otherwise Jenny. + +Sibyl is spending the day with her uncle Robert, a visit which +ranks as a condescension now that she is on intimate terms with the +Stormonts, the Groshens, Dr. Mitsand, and, in a word, the _élite_ +of Redcastle. She is received by her indulgent old uncle with all +honour. Hester prepares an extra good dinner, a dainty little loin +of veal, and a curry of yesterday’s roast mutton, followed by the +unwonted extravagance of a tart and a pudding. Marion sees this +relaxation of the economic bow with certain sniffings and bridlings, +indicative of suppressed indignation. + +‘I never knew such a time-server as Hester,’ she remarks, as she +surveys the table, laid as for a feast, a clean tablecloth in the +middle of the week, almonds and raisins for dessert, an altogether +ruinous expenditure. ‘She didn’t make this fuss about you when you +were at home, but now she pays her court to the heiress elect.’ + +‘No more an heiress elect than you or Jenny, I should imagine,’ +replies Sibyl, lightly. ‘I think it is pretty clear that uncle +Trenchard means to leave his money among us, though he has not said +as much.’ + +‘Yes, and the lion’s share to you, no doubt, though he has known me +longest,’ says Marion, snappishly. + +‘A precious sight of his money I’m likely to get, when he never +so much as asks me to go and see him,’ observes Jenny, whereupon +both sisters swoop down upon her in denunciation of such a noun of +quantity as ‘a precious sight.’ + +‘Where do you pick up your language, child?’ cries Sibyl. ‘Not in the +streets surely, since Marion teaches you, and you have no occasion to +be running about.’ + +‘A fat lot Marion teaches me!’ says the incorrigible child. ‘She nags +at me for an hour and a half by the kitchen clock every morning, and +calls that education.’ + +‘Pray, in what edition of Lindley Murray do you find the verb “to +nag”?’ demands Marion, with the air of a pedagogue. + +‘It’s as good a verb as any other. I nag, thou naggest, he or she +nags, generally she; or take it in Latin if you like, Nago, nagas, +nagat, nagamus, nagatis, nagant; first conjugation; perfect, nagavi.’ + +‘I’m afraid that Jane has rather an unruly temper,’ remarks Dr. +Faunthorpe, mildly. + +‘Oh, of course it’s Jane. Marion is never aggravating. _You_ don’t +find me unruly, do you, uncle?’ Jane adds coaxingly, as she sidles +up to the gentle, easy-tempered little doctor, who has gone through +life placidly bearing other people’s burdens, and has never murmured +against a destiny that has weighted him with three orphan nieces. + +Later in the afternoon Sibyl and Jane are alone together in the +garden, Marion having lost her temper at croquet, and left them to +themselves. + +The little bit of grass upon which they play is not many sizes bigger +than the billiard-table at Lancaster House. The balls and mallets are +in the last stage of shabbiness, and chipped into icosahedrons. + +‘You must both come to afternoon tea to-morrow, if it’s fine, and +play croquet on uncle Trenchard’s lawn,’ says Sibyl, condescendingly, +as if she were inviting them to her own house. Perhaps this +patronizing invitation has something to do with Marion’s loss of +temper five minutes afterwards, when Jenny sends her ball into a +distant cabbage bed. The sources of bad humour are more often complex +than simple. + +It is a warm September afternoon, one of those days in which people +incline to sitting in gardens rather than walking on dusty high +roads. Sibyl sits on the grass as she was wont to do three years +ago, before she was anybody’s heiress. Jenny sprawls, with an +appalling display of legs and boots and rusty bootlaces, at her +sister’s side. + +‘Now, Sibyl’ she says, eagerly, ‘tell us about the parties you go to.’ + +‘Pray, who is your companion?’ inquires Sibyl, with a contemptuous +droop of her heavy eyelids. ‘I see no one here but yourself.’ + +‘I don’t know what you mean,’ says Jane, staring. + +‘No more do I when you say tell _us_.’ + +‘Oh, lor, as if it mattered! You’re as bad as Marion. Now do be nice, +Sib, for once in a way, and tell me what it’s like going to the +Stormonts. Only fancy you’re being asked there ever so many times; +and to think how often I’ve passed their door when we’ve been out for +walks, and the inside of it has seemed as far off as heaven; further, +indeed, for they say we’re sure to go to heaven if we’re good, but +we’re not sure of going to the Stormonts unless we’re rich. What’s it +like, Sib? do tell.’ + +‘Well, they live in a house, as you know, since you’ve seen the +outside of it, and they eat their dinner at a table, just as we do, +and they are rather stupid after dinner, and the ladies go up into +the drawing-room and talk about other people who are not there, and +a little about the minster, and the clergymen, and the schools, and +look at one another’s dresses. I can see them count the flounces on +my dress sometimes, and actually take the pattern of it under my +nose, which I consider an impertinence.’ + +‘Is it nice going to grand dinners?’ asks Jane, breathlessly. + +‘Yes, I suppose so. It’s rather a mild kind of enjoyment. It doesn’t +quicken one’s pulse by a single throb. It isn’t like riding a good +horse, or seeing a race, or hearing a great singer, or even getting a +good break at billiards. There’s no excitement, no elation; but one +feels one is doing the right kind of thing, that this is what one was +born for.’ + +‘Are the dinners nice?’ inquires Jenny, licking her lips gluttonously. + +‘They are very grand,’ replies Sibyl. ‘I don’t know that I should +care about _vol-au-vent à la Financière_, or _petites timbales de +gibier_ for a continuance, and with so many made dishes one has the +idea that one is eating up all the cold meat that has accumulated in +the last week; and one gets rather tired of seeing saddle of mutton +and boiled fowls everywhere,--for whether you call fowls _poulets à +la Béchamel_, or _chapons en demi-deuil_, they are very much the same +birds.’ + +‘Capons in half-mourning! That is funny. Do you know what _my_ +favourite dinner is, Sib? Bullock’s heart with veal stuffing and +currant jelly. Do you ever have _that_ at Colonel Stormont’s?’ + +‘You must never mention such a dish, Jenny. It’s positively +revolting.’ + +‘But you used to like it, and liver and bacon, and sheep’s head with +parsley and butter. But never mind your dinners, tell me about your +beaux. Marion says that young Mr. Stormont was in love with her until +you lured him away.’ + +‘Marion is a ---- fool.’ + +‘You must have lots of lovers now that you go into such grand +society, Sib, because you are the beauty of the family, you know. +We all know that, and that’s what makes Marion so cross sometimes. +“I’m nobody,” she says; and then she squeezes her waist in another +half-inch, and fancies she has got the better of you. She’s awfully +proud of her figure, you know.’ + +‘You mustn’t talk disrespectfully of your elder sister, Jenny,’ +remonstrates Sibyl, yawning. The plebeian two o’clock dinner and the +game of croquet in the afternoon sun have made her sleepy. + +‘Then I won’t talk of her at all. Tell me about your lovers, Sib, +that’s a deal more interesting.’ + +‘Nonsense, child! I have no lovers.’ + +‘But you had one once. Yes, I saw somebody who was in love with you +once, though he must have gone down in the world dreadfully since you +had had anything to say to him, for he looked little better than a +beggar when I saw him.’ + +Sibyl has sunk into a reclining attitude, with half-closed eyes, +and is dropping into a gentle doze, but at this speech of Jane’s +she starts into a sitting posture again, and looks intently at her +sister, very pale. + +‘What do you mean?’ she cries. ‘What was he like? Where did you see +him? When? Tell me all about it this instant.’ + +‘Ah, I see you know the person I speak of. You wouldn’t be in such a +way if you didn’t. How pale you are, Sibyl! Do you care for him very +much?’ + +‘Will you tell me what you are talking about, child?’ exclaims Sibyl, +passionately. + +Jane begins her story with deliberation and importance. + +‘I have always kept it a secret,’ she prefaces, ‘feeling that it +might get you into a row with uncle and Marion, and I’ve wanted to +tell you about it ever since you came home, but have never had a +chance of being alone with you till this afternoon.’ + +‘For goodness’ sake go on. What was the man like?’ + +‘Very handsome and noble-looking, though his clothes were dreadfully +shabby. His coat was shabbier than uncle’s, snuff and all, but it +looked as if it had been a more gentlemanly coat in its day; and as +for his poor boots, it made my heart bleed to see them. I wanted to +give him my new shilling, one uncle Robert gave me on Christmas +Day, for it was the day after New Year’s Day that I saw the man, you +know----’ + +‘I know nothing. Never mind how you came by the shilling.’ + +‘But he pushed away my hand gently, and said, “No, my dear, I’m not a +beggar, though I dare say I look like one.”’ + +‘Poor fellow,’ sighs Sibyl. + +‘Oh, Sibyl, I did feel so ashamed of myself for having offered him +that shilling,--ever so much ashameder than he did,’ adds Jenny, +coining a comparative in the impetuosity of her speech. + +‘Can’t you tell me about it straight--beginning at the beginning?’ +demands Sibyl, impatiently. + +‘Well, it was the day after New Year’s Day. I detest New Year’s Day. +Church in the morning, and dulness in the afternoon--and I came into +the garden to have a run all by myself, and to get out of Marion’s +way. It was a little after four, between the lights, you know, and a +wretchedly cold afternoon. Well, you know the lane at the bottom of +the garden----’ + +‘Of course,’ says Sibyl, with an involuntary glance in that +direction. Beyond the plot of lucerne there is a low wall, and +on the other side of the wall an accommodation road leading to a +neighbouring farm. + +‘Well, he was there, looking over the wall, and he beckoned to me. +I was afraid at first, thinking he might be a robber, but as I had +nothing but my hoop to be robbed of I went up to the wall to look +at him, and then I saw somehow in a moment that he was a gentleman, +though I am sure you wouldn’t have given twopence for his hat.’ + +‘What did he say?’ + +‘He asked me if my name was Faunthorpe, and then if I had a sister +called Sibyl. “Yes,” says I, “but she’s away in London.” “Where?” +says he. “At Mrs. Hazleton’s, Lowther Street, Eccleston Square,” says +I. “Is that all you know about her?” says he. “What more can I know +about her?” says I. “She’s very happy, I believe, and she’s very +well,--at least, she was when uncle heard from her last.” “When was +that?” says he. “About three weeks ago,” says I. And then he sighed +heavily, and he looked so white and tired that I pitied him with all +my heart.’ + +‘Poor fellow,’ sighed Sibyl again. + +‘Ah, you do know him then?’ cries Jane. + +‘How can I tell? He didn’t tell you his name, I suppose.’ + +‘Not a bit of it. He asked me a lot of questions about you. Did we +expect you home soon? and so on, but I could tell him no more than +I had told him at first. You were at Mrs. Hazleton’s, and you were +likely to stay there, for anything I knew. I didn’t know that uncle +Robert wanted you to come home at that time. They don’t take _me_ +into their confidence.’ + +‘You didn’t mention uncle Trenchard?’ asks Sibyl, with a scared look. + +‘Of course not; why should I go and mention our rich uncle to a +wandering tramp that might go and steal his plate? At least, I don’t +mean that, for when once I had heard the poor thing speak it never +entered my mind that he was anything but a gentleman. Who is he, +Sibyl? Do tell me. Some one who fell in love with you in London; saw +you go in by Mrs. Hazleton’s carriage perhaps, and fell in love with +you at first sight, and followed you about everywhere, and neglected +his profession, and went to the dogs for your sake. Do tell me all +about him.’ + +‘How do I know who the man was?’ says Sibyl, absently. There is no +shadow of doubt in her mind. This wanderer was her husband, who had +come to Redcastle in quest of her. + +‘I’ll describe him if you like. I can see him before me at this +moment. He is tall and dark, with rather large features, regular +features, but striking, not one of those straight-nosed waxwork faces +one sees in a hairdresser’s shop. His lower lip projects a little, +which gives him rather a scornful look till he smiles, and then he +has the kindest expression. “Dear child,” he said, and patted my +shoulder so kindly, “you are just a little like your sister when +you look up at me as you are looking now.” You won’t think that a +compliment, I know, Sib, but he said it. Who is he, Sib? Do tell me.’ + +‘I have not the remotest idea,’ replies Sibyl, with provoking +indifference. + +‘Come now, you wouldn’t have been so agitated when I spoke about him +if you hadn’t guessed who he was.’ + +‘I was not agitated,’ says Sibyl, pretending to yawn. + +‘Oh, very well, if you like to tell crammers, of course I can’t help +it. My experience of elder sisters is that they may break all the +commandments with impunity, and drive a coach and six through the +Catechism. I think they wash their hands of Christianity when they’re +confirmed.’ + +‘Jane, you are not only blasphemous, but you’re extremely impertinent +to _me_,’ exclaims Sibyl. + +‘Well, if that’s all I get for keeping your secrets!’ + +‘That was wise of you at any rate, Jenny,’ says Sibyl, making haste +to relent. ‘Marion would have made no end of mischief out of nothing. +Never mind the man in the lane, dear. We’ll forget all about him. He +was some foolish fellow, no doubt. And if you’d like a new frock for +Sunday, Jenny, you shall have that pretty checked peach-coloured silk +of mine, and I’ll get Miss Eylett to make it up for you.’ + +‘Oh you dear!’ cries Jane, crimsoning with rapture. ‘That lovely +peach-colour! How sweet I shall look, if--’, with a doubtful look at +her well-worn boots--‘if uncle Robert will only give me new boots.’ + +‘If he won’t, I know somebody else who will. And, Jenny, if you could +contrive to keep your hair a little smoother, and your hands a shade +cleaner, you wouldn’t be the worst-looking child in Redcastle,’ +says Sibyl, drawing her younger sister towards her, and bestowing a +condescending kiss upon that young person’s forehead. ‘Now mind when +you come to afternoon tea with me to-morrow you make yourself look as +nice as ever you can.’ + +‘I’ll do my best, Sib, but I know I shall feel shabby before those +stuck-up servants. When is uncle Trenchard going to have Marion to +stay with him again, do you think?’ + +‘I don’t know. That’s a question I can’t ask him, you see.’ + +‘I suppose not; but Marion’s rather cut up at his not inviting her, +you know. I say, Sib, I fancy Marion’s nose is out of joint since +you’ve come home.’ + +Sibyl smiles--a self-satisfied smile. She is very sure of her uncle’s +preference--knows quite well that he considers Marion something of a +simpleton, and not a little of a bore. + +‘It isn’t my fault, Jenny, if uncle Trenchard likes me best,’ she +says, complacently. + +The sisters go in to tea after this, Jenny with her arm round Sibyl’s +waist. + +‘I say, Sib, when you’re married, and have a beautiful house of your +own, you’ll have me to stay with you sometimes, won’t you? I’ll be +good, and keep my hair tidy.’ + +‘I mean never to marry, Jane; at least, not during uncle Trenchard’s +lifetime. I mean to keep his house for him, always.’ + +‘But he may live to be ninety--twenty years to come,--and a nice +old woman you’d be by that time. Who’d have you then? You ought to +marry now, Sib, while you have such advantages; that’s what uncle +Robert says. Do be married soon, that’s a dear, and let me be your +bridesmaid--in white muslin over pink silk. Is Frederick Stormont +very nice?’ + +‘He’s absolutely detestable,’ replies Sibyl, and immediately without +rhyme or reason bursts into tears. She is thinking of the fond and +faithful husband who came to Redcastle in quest of her, and departed +hopeless. + +Where is he? what is he doing? how has he fared since that bleak +January afternoon when he found his journey had been useless? +Starving, perhaps; or worse--dead. Slain by his own hand in some dark +hour of despair. Has she not reason to fear the worst of one she left +without hope? + +Three days later, by the help of her old ally, Mrs. Hazleton’s +housemaid, Jane Dimond, Sibyl contrives to insert the following +advertisement in the second column of the _Times_ supplement:-- + + ‘S. S. to Alexis.--You are not forgotten. In all I do I am + faithful to you and your interests. I look forward to our + reunion. Wait and hope, as I do. Write and tell me where you + are, and what you are doing.--Address, S. S., Post Office, Hale + Street, Pimlico.’ + +This advertisement is inserted three times, and the housemaid +inquires diligently at the Hale Street Post Office during the +following fortnight for a letter addressed to S. S. No such letter +comes, and Sibyl’s vague fears of evil are intensified by this +ominous silence. + + + + + CHAPTER XIII. + + THE SWEETS OF LIFE. + + +Not a word has been said by Mr. Trenchard as to his testamentary +intentions in reference to his three nieces, but in the mind of +Redcastle it is an established fact that Sibyl is to inherit the bulk +of her uncle’s property. The other two girls will get something, +no doubt, Mrs. Stormont remarks obligingly to Mrs. Groshen, the +banker’s wife, as those two ladies take their afternoon tea +together, ceremoniously, in the Stormont drawing-room, a spacious +apartment with a good deal, of white paneling, gold moulding, and +looking-glass, and not much besides in the way of furniture, a barren +tract of Brussels carpet, with an islet here and there in the shape +of sofa, ottoman, or coffee-table. + +‘The other two girls will get something, of course--two hundred a +year each, perhaps: and a very nice income too, for young women not +likely to marry. But mark my words, Mrs. Groshen, Sibyl is the +heiress. Mr. Trenchard positively doats upon her.’ + +‘Do you think her pretty?’ asked the banker’s wife, languidly. +She has been esteemed a beauty in her time, on the strength of +an aquiline nose and a large pale blue eye, and she does not +particularly approve of these new lights. + +‘Well, yes, decidedly pretty--in her peculiar style. Features rather +too sharp, perhaps, and a sad want of colour.’ The Miss Stormonts +rejoice in vivid complexions. ‘But she has fine eyes.’ + +‘Yes, fine eyes,’ assents Mrs. Groshen. + +‘Though I cannot say I like their expression.’ + +‘No more do I,’ says Mrs. Groshen, warmly. + +‘Perhaps the nicest thing about her is her manner. She has really +charming manners.’ + +‘Ye-es, very agreeable manners,’ drawls Mrs. Groshen. + +‘If they were not so painfully artificial.’ + +‘That’s the very thing that struck me,’ says Mrs. Groshen, +brightening. + +The banker’s wife rustles home in her silk attire, and tells Mr. +Groshen at dinner how the Stormonts are trying their uttermost to +catch Mr. Trenchard’s niece for their empty-headed son Frederick. + +‘This Mr. Trenchard is very rich, I suppose?’ she says, +interrogatively. + +‘Enormously. I wish he’d keep an account with us,’ replies the banker. + +Sibyl accepts all the homage Redcastle can offer her, with a +tranquillity which raises her not a little in the estimation of the +_élite_. She takes Mrs. Stormont’s somewhat oppressive kindness as +a matter of course, and is unawed by the splendour of the Groshens’ +dinner-table, which for plate, china, glass, floral decoration, and +hothouse fruit, takes precedence of other tables in Redcastle. + +‘I don’t pretend to do things as Mrs. Groshen does,’ the Redcastle +matrons inform one another apologetically. ‘We can’t all be bankers.’ + +Mrs Stormont volunteers her services in escorting Sibyl to concerts, +and other local entertainments which a man of Mr. Trenchard’s age may +not care to patronize. Stephen Trenchard is quite willing that Sibyl +should take advantage of these friendly offers, but, to his surprise, +and perhaps gratification, the girl refuses. + +‘I am very fond of music, uncle Trenchard,’ she says, ‘but I shall +not go out of an evening without you. That would be a pretty way of +keeping you company.’ + +‘But, my dear, there is some difference between seventy and twenty. +Crabbed age and youth cannot dwell together; or if they do, youth +must have a holiday now and then.’ + +‘You are not crabbed, and I am very happy with you,’ answers Sibyl. + +‘Flatterer,’ exclaims Stephen Trenchard, not the less pleased. + +‘Artful hussy,’ thinks Mrs. Stormont, and by-and-bye in the course of +that cutting and wounding which passes for conversation in Redcastle, +that lady informs Mrs. Groshen that Sibyl Faunthorpe is one of the +deepest girls it was ever her fate to encounter. + +‘She’ll have that old man’s money, my dear, every sixpence,’ says +Mrs. Stormont, emphatically. + +‘Then your Fred ought to have her.’ + +‘Why, you see, my dear, these Faunthorpes are people of no family.’ + +‘You mean that he has asked her and been refused,’ remarks Mrs. +Groshen, astutely. + +‘I don’t think a Stormont is likely to find himself rejected by a +parish doctor’s niece,’ replies the colonel’s wife, with suppressed +indignation. ‘As to Mr. Trenchard’s fortune, it is nothing to boast +of after all. It has all come from trade.’ + +This is a thrust at the banking business. + +‘I fancy that is the source of most people’s money now-a-days,’ +returns Mrs. Groshen, blandly. ‘Professional men seldom seem to have +much.’ + +Hereupon the two ladies, having indulged in a few friendly passes on +their own account, return to the slaughter of the absent, and kiss +each other affectionately at parting. + +Sibyl’s dissipations are therefore, by her own desire, confined to +those festivities to which Mr. Trenchard is bidden, and which take +the dignified and substantive form of dinners. No one could think of +inviting the master of Lancaster Lodge to ‘come in’ in the evening. +Dinners of first quality, A1 at Lloyd’s, are those to which Mr. +Trenchard is bidden, and very splendid are the banquets with which at +longish intervals he gratifies his friends in return. Wonderful is +the regard which Redcastle has for Mr. Trenchard, and its eagerness +to win and retain his friendship. It is not to be supposed that the +_élite_ have any expectation of profiting in a direct manner by his +wealth. They have none. But they like to adorn their table with a +rich man. They like to put him forward as one of their best friends, +and to know that less privileged people are smitten with envy. They +invite him very much for the same reason that they buy costly fruit +out of season, and waxen blossoms from the hothouse instead of +homely roses ripened in the sun. He reflects honour and glory upon +themselves. It is a distinction to be on intimate terms with so much +money. Mr. Trenchard’s Redcastle friends brag about his wealth as +if it were their own, smack their lips as they tell each other his +income, and that he has never less than fifty thousand at call, in +case some sudden opportunity for a stroke of business should crop up +in Calcutta. Has Stephen Trenchard told his new friends the amount +of his income, or the sum he keeps uninvested? Hardly, for he is the +most reticent of men as to his own affairs. But Redcastle has a knack +of evolving facts about other people’s business out of its inner +consciousness. + +A year has slipped away, unawares almost it seems to Sibyl, despite +lurking pangs of remorse, silent hours given to regret. Life at +Lancaster Lodge is such an easy thing. It is so pleasant to have +everything one desires, to be praised and petted, and invited here, +there, and everywhere, and to refuse the most flattering invitations +upon the last fashionable absurdity in note-paper. Pleasant, in a +word, to be Miss Faunthorpe of Lancaster Lodge, instead of Miss +Faunthorpe of nowhere. There is something of the lotus-eater’s dreamy +idlesse assuredly in this reposeful existence at Lancaster Lodge. + +Conscience has been lapped to sleep before the year is out, and Sibyl +has persuaded herself that Alexis Secretan has carved his way to +independence somehow or other, and is getting on very well indeed in +some distant quarter of the globe, whence he will doubtless return by +some happy conjuncture of events soon after uncle Trenchard’s death, +which calamity in the course of nature will come to pass in a few +years. + +‘And then we shall both be amply rewarded for the sacrifice we have +made in this separation,’ muses Sibyl, as if the separation had been +a voluntary one on her husband’s side as well as her own. + +Mr. Trenchard takes life tolerably easily considering that he has +his own way in everything, an indulgence which acts as an irritant +upon some dispositions. He is feared and obeyed in his own house, +flattered and caressed out of it. His servants work for him as no +other man’s servants work, and obey, and tremble at his footstep. He +accepts all that Redcastle can give him, dines out a good deal among +the _élite_, tells his prosy old Indian stories again and again, +to listeners who always laugh in the right places. He enjoys the +homage offered to his wealth, and chuckles over the weakness of his +flatterers as he drives home with his niece. + +‘If my name were in the _Gazette_ next Wednesday morning, before +Wednesday night I should be friendless,’ he says; ‘and the people we +have dined with this evening would be gloating over my downfall.’ + +‘Oh, uncle! they would be sorry, surely,’ exclaims Sibyl, more for +the sake of conversation than from any belief in the good-heartedness +of her friends. + +‘Sorry that they had been taken in--that they had mistaken a poor man +for a rich one, no doubt; but for me, not a whit. Society in a place +like Redcastle is made up on the co-operative system--is a club to +which a man is admitted upon certain understood conditions. The first +of these is that he should be well off.’ + +‘Luckily you are never likely to put our friends to the test,’ says +Sibyl. + +‘Of course not. And in the meanwhile there’s no harm in calling them +friends. One name does as well as another when you are talking of +unrealities.’ + +The year has gone, and Marion has not been asked to stay with her +uncle Trenchard--a fact which she resents bitterly, and ascribes +to double-dealing on the part of Sibyl. She has been at Lancaster +Lodge tolerably often, but only as Sibyl’s visitor, and although +she accepts all Sibyl’s invitations, it is almost unbearable to be +invited and patronized by a sister. Sibyl has established herself as +Mr. Trenchard’s adopted daughter. He coolly declares that she suits +him better than Marion, and that she is to keep his house till she +marries. + +‘I suppose I must have made myself very disagreeable to him in +the three months I spent here,’ remarks Marion one bright April +afternoon, digging her croquet ball into the ground with misused +energy. She has come to spend the afternoon with Sibyl. + +‘No, dear, I don’t think it was so bad as that,’ replies Sibyl, +graciously; ‘but you didn’t succeed in making yourself agreeable to +him.’ + +‘I know I made myself a perfect slave,’ complains the injured Marion; +‘toasting his newspapers, and running for his slippers, and peeling +walnuts for him till my fingers were black. I’m sure I don’t know +what he wants--the nasty old thing!’ + +‘Now really, Marion, I can’t consent to hear the best of uncles +called names,--on his own croquet lawn, too.’ + +‘Very much the best of uncles for you, but give me uncle Robert.’ + +‘Well, my dear, you’ve got him. Haven’t I left you in undisturbed +possession of our paternal uncle?’ + +‘All I can say is that it is positive injustice,’ murmurs Marion, as +the game proceeds. + +Frederick Stormont strolls in five minutes afterwards and takes a +mallet, whereupon the sisters become all smiles and graciousness. +He goes in to afternoon tea with them, and they sit on the crimson +brocade sofas sipping orange pekoe out of Indian teacups, waited on +by the most accomplished of footmen, and discussing the petty gossip +of Above and Below Bar. An empty life assuredly. But it is pleasant +to sit in a handsome room, almost an indoor garden in its abundance +of choicest flowers, a sunlit lawn beyond the open windows; pleasant +to be dressed in the last fashion; pleasant to be admired, even +though the eyes of the admirer are pale in hue and porcine in shape; +pleasant to feel that in life’s eager race one has shot ever so far +ahead of one’s younger sister. So, at least, feels Sibyl as she +accepts Mr. Stormont’s vapid homage, and allows Marion to be useful +as her foil. + +Mrs. Groshen is strictly incorrect in her conjecture about this young +man’s wooing. Frederick has not been rejected by Mr. Trenchard’s +niece. He has not yet ventured to propose to her, and when pushed +hard upon the subject by his father, he always asks for time. + +‘I think she likes me,’ he says complacently, ‘but, by Jove, you +know it doesn’t do for a man to hurry that kind of thing; you’re so +impatient, you see, you want a fellow to round the Cape before he’s +got across the Bay of Biscay. Miss Faunthorpe has a good deal of +reserve about her and that kind of thing, and she’s just the sort of +girl to throw over a fellow who proposed to her before she’d quite +made up her mind about liking him.’ + +‘She’s a long time making up her mind about you,’ replies the +colonel, pensively. ‘And upon my word, you know, Fred, if you don’t +marry a woman with money you’ll have to do something for yourself. +Things can’t go on like this much longer. By Jove, you know, you’ll +have to emigrate. I don’t see that there’s anything you could do +in England. You’re too old for the army, or the navy, or the civil +service; you’ll have to try the colonies.’ + +‘I might do something, kangaroo-shooting in New Zealand,’ says +Frederick, meditatively. + +‘Hang it, sir! a man can’t get his livin’ kangaroo-shootin’,’ roars +the colonel. ‘You’d better marry Trenchard’s niece.’ + +‘She’s a very jolly girl,’ says Fred, vaguely. He would have called +Electra or Antigone, Joan of Arc or Mary Stuart, jolly. He knows no +higher praise to bestow on the woman of his choice. + + + + + CHAPTER XIV. + + MAKING READY FOR VICTORY. + + +The fair spring days flit by; the violets and primroses, bluebells +and wind-flowers, fade in the copses, unseen, unknown, uncared for, +save by a few peasant children; the white blossoms of the pears--the +pinky bloom of the apples--have drifted away on the light west winds +like summer snow; ferns uncurl their tender fronds in thicket and +lane, and stand up to hail the summer. The cuckoo’s last call dies +in the silence of the wood, the skylark’s clear carol rings out +above the tall green corn. Summer has come--summer has come--and the +little children of Redcastle--the children of the commonality, at +least--wander far afield under the midday sun, and lose themselves +in distant woods, and drain the cup of summer joys to the dregs. The +children of the _élite_ regard summer as a period in which they wear +starched frocks, find French and German grammar more than usually +oppressive, and entertain hopes of going to the sea-side. + +Sibyl welcomes June and the roses with a languid greeting. That +smooth, easy life has begun to pall a little on Stephen Trenchard’s +niece. Despite its pleasantness, it is at best a monotonous +existence, and youth’s eager spirit revolts against monotony. Not +willingly would Sibyl confess even to herself that she is tired of +Lancaster Lodge and Redcastle dinner parties, Redcastle compliments, +Redcastle life altogether. + +She wishes that her uncle would extend the circle of his +acquaintance, yet is obliged to admit that it would not be easy for +him to do so at Redcastle. The county people have not called upon +Mr. Trenchard. Aloof in their fastnesses among the hills and moors, +the county people refuse to bow to the golden calf, hug themselves +in their social privileges, and do not recognise the fact of an old +gentleman having made money in India as a reason why they should +go out of the beaten track to take notice of him. From their lofty +region of territorial estate they look down with an equal disdain +upon professional and commercial people who live in a town and call +five acres of garden and paddock _land_. Stephen Trenchard’s million +is nothing to them, or if they think of his wealth at all, it is with +resentment, as a sign of the times, and an irrefutable proof that +England is going to the dogs. + +Perhaps it is the very fact of the county people’s exclusiveness +which makes Sibyl regard them with a certain amount of interest. +Those big broad-shouldered young men she has seen ride past her +window in the hunting season, sitting their horses much more easily +than Frederick Stormont sits his chair, glorious in ‘pink’ and +buckskins, loud voiced, large whiskered, seem to her of a different +race from young Groshen, or young Stormont, or Dr. Mitsand’s +pale-faced spectacled son, whose manly vigour has degenerated into +brains, Mr. Twells the curate, or Mr. Jewson the lawyer. To her +fancy there is something grand about these sons of the soil, a rough +nobility, an outspoken contempt for the petty conventionalities which +constitute the small despotism of Redcastle society. _Cæsar est supra +grammaticam._ The county people are above good manners--that is to +say, good manners as understood in Redcastle. + +The town and the county meet occasionally in the hunting-field, where +the county looks on with a smile at some of the town’s feats in +horsemanship, leaves the town three fields behind for the most part, +and now and then deposits the town in ditches or hangs it out to dry +on a stiff bullfinch. + +Twice in every year town and county meet on equal ground. Redcastle, +small and obscure as it is in the eyes of the outer world, boasts a +racecourse, and as pretty a course in a small way as any in England. +Less than a mile out of the town, on that broad open common known as +Redcastle Woods, gleam the white posts of the course, and the white +walls of the stand, a permanent and substantial building. Redcastle +has its spring and summer meeting, two days on each occasion--and +just the merriest two days in that part of the world. Granted that +horses of much weight or _prestige_ rarely appear at Redcastle; +the fact only leaves the ground open to the horses of the local +aristocracy, and makes the races so much the more interesting to +Redcastle itself. + +Sibyl has never seen a race in her life, and it was not without a +struggle that she declined Mrs. Stormont’s invitation to join her +party at the spring meeting. Now comes the summer meeting, and +another invitation from the leader of Redcastle society. + +‘Rose and Violet,’ the dear girls are named after those favourite +flowers--five feet ten each of them, and with the complexions of +cookmaids;--‘Rose and Violet will be so disappointed if you refuse +to join our party, my dear Sibyl. Of course I say nothing of Fred’s +feelings.’ + +‘Why don’t you go with them, child?’ asks Mr. Trenchard, when Sibyl +reads him the letter, laughing as she reads. + +‘I don’t care for pleasures that you cannot share, uncle.’ + +‘Nonsense, my dear! I could share this if I liked. For my part, I +could never understand what people could see in a race, unless as a +hazardous investment with the possibility of enormous returns. I can +fancy a bookman enjoying the races in a business-like way; but for +people to sit in their carriages to look on at other people winning +or losing, and call it pleasure, that passes my comprehension.’ + +‘I should like to see a race for once in my life,’ says Sibyl, +languishing for any novel sensation that may ruffle the mill-pond of +her existence. + +‘Then write and accept Mrs. Stormont’s invitation, my dear.’ + +‘You won’t think me unkind for going without you?’ + +‘I should think you much more unkind if you wanted me to go with you.’ + +So it is settled. Sibyl tells her dear Mrs. Stormont that she is +charmed to accept her kind invitation, and summons Miss Eylett +to immediate counsel. She has ever so many pretty dresses in her +wardrobe, but she must have something new for this occasion, with a +view to crushing dear Violet and Rose by the exhibition of a dress +they have never seen before. The invitation has been given a week +before the races, so there is time for preparation. The council is a +solemn one, and by the intensity of Sibyl’s desire to look her best +may be measured her hatred of dear Rose and Violet. + +‘Now mind, Miss Eylett,’ she begins, after she has looked through +_Le Follet_ and pronounced all the illustrations ‘hideous,’ ‘I must +have nothing that can possibly look like a shopkeeper’s wife’s Sunday +gown--no flaming pink or blue that people can see a mile off----’ + +‘Mauve, or a rich voylet, now,’ suggests Miss Eylett, in her +persuasive voice. + +‘My dear Eylett, mauve and violet are the colours vulgar people +choose when they want to be genteel.’ + +‘A sweet French grey.’ + +‘Give me a housemaid’s afternoon gown at once.’ + +‘A cinnamon brown.’ + +‘A doctor’s wife’s dinner dress. No, I must have some pale indistinct +colour softened with a cloud of India muslin. A dress which looks +nothing particular at a distance, but which is fit for a princess +when you come to look into it. Mr. Trenchard gave me an embroidered +Indian muslin, which will be just the thing, over a pale maize corded +silk,--you know the shade I mean, straw-colour shot with apricot.’ + +Sibyl opens a huge camphor chest, in which she keeps her treasures, +and displays a muslin dress fine as a cobweb, and covered with +embroidery. + +‘Exquisite!’ exclaims Miss Eylett; ‘what taste you have, Miss +Faunthorpe!’ + +She would have been just as enthusiastic had Sibyl suggested +pickled-cabbage colour, picked out with pea-green. + +‘And you must make me a bonnet exactly to match the dress.’ + +‘Of course, Miss Faunthorpe, I’ll go round to Carmichael’s at once, +and see if they’ve got the colour; and if they haven’t I’ll take the +three o’clock train to Krampston.’ + +This question settled, Sibyl feels easy in her mind, and looks +forward to next week with pleasure. The summer is at its height--mid +July,--and a delicious July, warm, dry, ripening roses and ripening +corn, swelling the peaches on the wall, and reddening the apples in +the orchard--all the land basking in the sun, and Redcastle High +Street a place to look at blinkingly between two and five in the +afternoon, and a burning ploughshare to walk upon. Marion and Jenny +come toiling along the sun-baked pavement in the very hottest hour +of the afternoon to visit their prosperous sister,--Jane splendid in +the peach-coloured silk and new boots, and a hat that is too small +for her large round head, with its thick brown hair in curls that no +application of the hair-brush will reduce from their disorder to the +smoothness of civilization. + +Sibyl receives her sisters languidly, under the plane trees, +exhausted by her interview with Miss Eylett. Marion’s temper is not +improved by the warm walk, or by the labour of getting Jenny up in a +style befitting Lancaster Lodge. + +‘There never was such a troublesome child,’ she complains as she +sinks into a rustic arm-chair, conscious that her face is the colour +of a boiled lobster, while Sibyl, in cream-coloured Indian silk, and +a turquoise blue sash, is looking divinely pale. ‘Look at her legs. +She has grown out of that frock already; and as for ever keeping her +decently dressed, I defy you. There’s the print of a slice of bread +and butter on the front breadth, and smears of marmalade all over the +sleeves, though she’s only worn the frock on Sundays.’ + +‘Let her wear it every day and wear it out,’ says Sibyl, generously; +‘she shall have another for best.’ + +‘Oh, you dear!’ cries Jenny; ‘but if you knew what a life Marion +leads me when I’ve a good frock on you might think it a greater +charity never to give me one.’ + +‘You ungrateful minx,’ exclaims Marion, ‘didn’t I stand half an hour +this broiling afternoon doing your hair?’ + +‘Pulling it, you mean,’ responds Jenny. ‘If you’d combed it with a +hay-fork and brushed it with a bush harrow you couldn’t have hurt me +more.’ + +‘There’s gratitude!’ ejaculates Marion, pointing to the offender. + +‘_My_ idea of gratitude is thankfulness for things we want,’ reasons +Jenny, who is good at argument. ‘I didn’t want my hair pulled.’ + +‘Well, Sibyl,’ says Marion, ‘is uncle Trenchard going to the races?’ + +Everybody thinks and talks of the races at this time. It is the one +subject of conversation in Redcastle. A rare thing for Redcastle to +have so much as one subject of conversation; as a rule, the town +contrives to be conversational about nothing. + +‘No, uncle Trenchard hates races. I am going with the Stormonts.’ + +‘Indeed! I thought you wouldn’t go anywhere without your uncle.’ + +‘No more I would in an ordinary way, but I felt a kind of interest in +the races. One hears so much of them.’ + +‘I feel a kind of interest in them too,’ says Marion, with an injured +air. ‘I’ve been hearing about Redcastle races ever since I left +school, and yet, living so near, I’ve never seen them. Uncle Robert +has got a pony that would take us, but he has not got the spirit. +You might have asked uncle Trenchard to let you take us all in his +barouche. I dare say uncle Robert would have gone if you’d taken him.’ + +Sibyl looks doubtful as to the delight of such a family party. + +‘I’ve accepted Mrs. Stormont’s invitation, you see,’ she replies, +apologetically. + +‘Oh yes, of course, catch you putting yourself out of the way for +anybody! Another girl in your position might have thought of her poor +relations. What are you going to wear?’ + +Sibyl describes the costume which she and Miss Eylett have arranged +that morning. Poor Marion listens in an agony of envy. + +‘What a lot of money uncle Trenchard must give you!’ she exclaims. + +‘No, he doesn’t give me much, but he allows me to keep an account at +Carmichael’s.’ + +‘Well,’ sighs Marion, ‘I would give a year of my life to go to the +races this day week.’ + +‘What a pity our lives are not transferable like railway stock,’ says +Sibyl, airily. She is not deeply moved by Marion’s piteous condition. +Her mind is occupied with a prophetic vision of her triumphs next +Wednesday. She will see and be seen by the county. That idea is more +inspiring than the prospect of a day spent with the Stormonts, whom +she knows by heart, or even the privilege of beholding Mrs. Groshen’s +raiment, which is sure to be resplendent and of the very latest +fashion, however hideous in the abstract and individually unbecoming +that fashion may be. + + + + + CHAPTER XV. + + TOWN AND COUNTY. + + +A curious thing happens that evening after dinner. It is Mr. +Trenchard’s habit to read the daily papers at his ease in the +drawing-room as soon as he has withdrawn from the dinner-table; +or, if he is idly disposed, Sibyl reads to him, and beguiles him +into placid slumber. This evening he reads the papers for himself, +beginning, as usual, with the _Times_, which he studies profoundly. +He sits in his easy chair by one open window. Sibyl yawns over a +novel at another. Rather dreary these summer evenings at Lancaster +Lodge, when twilight’s purple shadows rise ghost-like among the +trees on the lawn, and the gates are closed upon the outer world. +Welcome even such commonplace interruption as the advent of Frederick +Stormont, and an adjournment to the billiard-room. + +Sibyl looks up from her book with a start at a sudden movement of +her uncle’s. What was that half-stifled exclamation which sounded +so like an oath? Stephen Trenchard is standing up, with the paper +crumpled in his right hand, staring blankly at his niece. She goes to +him, looks at him in frightened interrogation; but he neither sees +nor hears her. Is this some kind of seizure,--epileptic, paralytic? +She thinks so, tremblingly, for a moment, before Mr. Trenchard’s keen +black eyes resume their power of vision and look into hers. + +‘Dearest uncle, what is the matter?’ + +‘Nothing that need concern you, Sibyl. A friend, an old friend of +mine, dead in India. The announcement of his death shocked me, that’s +all. I ought not to have been surprised. At my age a man must expect +old friends to drop off. Go back to your book, my dear. There is no +reason for you to be agitated.’ + +Sibyl looks wonderingly at the paper in her uncle’s hand. It is not +the supplement. That, with its births, marriages, and deaths, lies on +the carpet unopened. She remembers that the deaths of distinguished +people are sometimes recorded in the body of the paper, and this +friend of her uncle’s is doubtless a person worthy of an obituary +paragraph. + +‘I am so sorry,’ she says sympathetically. + +‘So am I. But it was to be expected. Go back to your book, child.’ + +Perceiving that sympathy is not required, Sibyl returns to her seat +by the distant window. Marion would have hung about her uncle for a +quarter of an hour bemoaning his loss and offering stale crumbs of +consolation. + +Sibyl hears the door shut ten minutes afterwards, and looking up, +sees that Stephen Trenchard has vanished. She hastens to look for the +newspapers, eager to find out all she can about her uncle’s departed +friend; but Mr. Trenchard has taken the papers with him, and when +she searches for them next day in his study and in other likely +places, they are not to be found. Nor does Mr. Trenchard reappear +that evening. The butler brings Sibyl a message at tea-time to the +effect that his master has letters to write, and will take tea in his +study. So that particular infusion of hyson with which Mr. Trenchard +is in the habit of irritating his nerves is carried to the study on a +salver, and Sibyl is left to spend her evening alone. + +There are times, on just such an evening as this, when memory recalls +that one room in Dixon Street, Chelsea, and his company whose easy +temper and natural gaiety of heart could brighten deepest poverty +with an occasional ray of light. + +‘If I could have borne poverty as well as he, we might have struggled +on together to the end,’ she thinks, with a touch of remorse. ‘But +then what a pity it would have been to lose uncle Trenchard’s +fortune! How ghastly pale he looked to-night, poor dear man!’ + +Mr. Trenchard seems a little out of sorts for the next few days, +not quite so keen and far-seeing, so exacting or high-handed in +his household as it is his wont to be. He has a preoccupied air, a +thoughtful look, and is evidently much concerned by the loss of that +departed friend whose name he has not mentioned. + +Sibyl wonders at this a little, never having heard Mr. Trenchard talk +of any intimate friend in India. He has told numerous stories of +Calcutta society, of trade and chicanery in that palatial city; but +of friendship, of intimate congenial companions, he has not breathed +a word. Nor in the year and a half of his residence at Redcastle has +a single Anglo-Indian acquaintance visited him. Impossible to imagine +a man more independent of friendship, yet he seems cut to the quick +by the death of this distant friend, and is slow to recover his +equanimity. + +Mrs. Stormont calls about three days before the races, and finds +Mr. Trenchard and his niece on the lawn, the gentleman asleep, or +meditating, his countenance shrouded by an orange-coloured bandanna, +like a new veiled prophet, the lady working point lace at the rate of +a stitch a minute. + +The kind soul has come to talk about the races. + +‘I wish you could be induced to join us, dear Mr. Trenchard.’ + +‘You’re very good, my dear madam, but the thing is not in my way. +I hardly know whether a horse should have four legs or six. If you +were to show me a six-legged animal I doubt if I should remark the +redundancy.’ + +‘And yet you have the finest carriage horses in Redcastle.’ + +‘Because I did not choose them myself, madam.’ + +‘I shall call for you at half-past twelve, my dear,’ says Mrs. +Stormont, turning to Sibyl. ‘Fred is going to ride. I shall hire +Shrub’s landau and pair. My poor dear ponies would be frightened to +death on a racecourse.’ + +Shrub is the proprietor of the George Hotel and livery stables and +has the honour of ministering to the _élite_ on all state occasions. + +‘Why hire Shrub’s landau when my barouche is at your service?’ asks +Mr. Trenchard. ‘I shall be glad to give that idle coachman of mine a +day’s work.’ + +‘My dear Mr. Trenchard, you are too kind. Such an idea never entered +my head.’ + +‘Odd if it didn’t,’ thinks Sibyl, ‘when you are always making use of +the carriage in some way or other.’ + +The Stormonts have allowed Sibyl to drive them a good deal during +the last few months, to the infinite relief of the ponies and the +buck-basket, both of which institutions are slightly the worse for +wear. You may get fifteen years’ good work out of a pony, but when he +approaches his majority his powers are apt to wane. + +Mrs. Stormont allows herself to be entreated, and finally yields +gracefully, and with an airy coquetry, but only on condition that Mr. +Trenchard shall dine with them on the race day. This he promises, +with certain reservations. + +‘If I feel myself up to the mark, I’ll come,’ he says, ‘but I have +not been particularly well lately.’ + +‘Uncle Trenchard has lost an old friend in India,’ explains Sibyl, +and seeing her uncle’s impatient frown, is sorry she has made the +remark. + +‘Indeed!’ exclaims Mrs. Stormont, thirsting for information. ‘In +the civil service or the army? The colonel has so many old Indian +friends.’ + +‘My friend was neither in the civil service nor the army,’ says Mr. +Trenchard, and says no more. + +Mrs. Stormont is disappointed, but she has got the carriage, which +was the object of her visit, so she drifts off into the usual +Redcastle talk. ‘Have you seen the Groshens lately?’ and ‘Did you +hear that Dr. Mitsand has been very ill?’ and so on; with which +interesting discourse she beguiles the next half-hour. + +The race day comes with the calendar, and a glorious day, hot blue +sky, roads white with dust, grass brown and slippery, bad for the +horses, opine the learned in such matters. The grand stand is +gleaming in the sun, flags are flying, the town is all astir, flies +are driving to and fro between station and racecourse, with visitors +from Krampston, people who smell of commerce and dockyard, oakum and +tar, a rough lot in the estimation of genteel Redcastle. At half-past +twelve the Trenchard barouche calls for Mrs. Stormont and her two +daughters; Sibyl has taken her place in it already. She wishes to sit +with her back to the horses, but this Mrs. Stormont will not allow, +and after a little polite skirmishing she takes her place next that +lady, the Miss Stormonts side by side on the opposite seat, which +they fill to overflowing. On the way to the course the ladies have +time for a silent review of each other’s apparel. Rose and Violet +are in washed muslins and home-made bonnets. Mrs. Stormont wears her +dove-coloured moire, which is an institution in Redcastle, and as +well known as the town clock. + +‘Here comes Mrs. Groshen’s carriage. I suppose she is going to crush +us with some new finery,’ says Rose, with a venomous look at the +maize silk and India muslin. + +‘I hope it will be in a little better taste than usual,’ remarks +Violet, who is of a more calculating temper than her sister. ‘What +lovely embroidery that is of yours, Sibyl! I can’t help noticing it.’ + +Frederick joins the party presently, on a brute of a gray horse, +whose ownership he participates with young Jewson, the lawyer’s son. +The joint animal, having very little mouth to speak of at the best, +and being ridden on opposite principles by his two proprietors, is +about as manageable as a watering-place donkey. Frank Jewson, who +is the better equestrian of the co-owners, boasts that he rides +with his knees. Fred Stormont hangs on by the reins, and makes the +wretched quadruped’s mouth his fulcrum. He is not happy on horseback +himself, or the cause of happiness to his steed, and the joint +proprietorship is an extravagance which he can ill afford. But he +feels that the horse gives him social status, and endures bravely. +The beast is consistent, and starting with a fixed idea that the +sooner he gets back to his stables the better for his own well-being, +tugs desperately at every turning in the endeavour to make a short +cut home, and if confronted in his straight course with any object +which he dislikes, wheels sharp round, and sets off at a lively trot +stable-wards. The first half-hour of Mr. Stormont’s ride is one +prolonged tussle with the gray, which, in the pride of their hearts, +the joint proprietors have christened Flying Dutchman. + +‘The Dutchman is awfully fresh to-day, Fred,’ remonstrates Rose, +when the gray has backed into the landau half a dozen times, in his +efforts to go up every side street or alley; ‘hadn’t you better try +him on the curb?’ + +‘I think I am riding him on the curb,’ says Fred, looking doubtfully +at his reins, which are in an inextricable muddle, ‘the fact is +Jewson spoils his mouth. Yah, you beast, what’s the matter now?’ +as the Dutchman, taking objection to a very small child in a white +pinafore, gathers all his legs together, collapses, and scrambles +frantically across the street, with a noise as of a detachment of +cavalry. + +‘Is that a fit?’ asks Sibyl, when Mr. Trenchard’s horses have +recovered from their consternation at this manœuvre. + +‘No, it’s only a shy. He cannot stand a perambulator.’ + +‘Nor a woman in a red cloak, nor a baker’s cart, nor a +washing-basket, nor a chimney sweep, nor a heap of stones, nor an +organ,’ says Rose, indignantly; ‘I never knew such a beast. He’ll +have your life some day, Fred, I feel convinced.’ + +‘He’s more than half thoroughbred,’ says Frederick, leaning over to +pat the animal’s neck--an attention which the Dutchman resents by a +sudden slouch forward, and a furious shake of his head, whereby he +all but precipitates Fred upon the paving stones. + +‘Are you fond of riding?’ asks Sibyl, as the horseman pulls himself +together, scarlet after his struggles with his steed, and settles +into a jolting trot beside the barouche. + +‘P--p--passion--ate--ly,’ says Fred, the syllables jerked out of him +piecemeal by the gray. + +‘But that seems rather an uncomfortable horse to ride.’ + +‘He’s a little fidgety in the town, but he’s splendid when you get +him on the turf. You should see him in a stretching gallop across the +grass.’ + +Mr. Stormont omits to state that in these stretching gallops he is +entirely at the Dutchman’s mercy, and suffers abject terror. + +They turn out of the Market-place presently, into a broad lane +leading to the woods--a lane in which there are nice old houses on +one side, and orchards on the other, and at the top of this lane they +come out upon that open stretch of greensward, with a hollow full +of hazel bushes, hawthorn, and blackberry here and there, which is +dignified with the name of Redcastle Woods. + +Yonder towers the stand, white in the sunshine, flags blue, red, and +yellow, fluttering gaily, the oval course on the southern side of a +slope, and a fringe of carriages and smartly dressed people--a simple +rustic racecourse, with its local gentry, and sprinkling of citizens +from busy Krampston. + +The Stormont barouche takes its position among the great ones of the +land, and by good luck finds itself in the very lap of the county. +The magnates of Redcastle are six carriages off, Mrs. Groshen becking +and nodding at her friends, gorgeously arrayed in a brilliant mauve +silk, which glistens in the sun, and a bonnet loaded with feathers. + +There are many greetings between Mrs. Stormont and her +neighbours--for the Stormonts occupy the border line of Redcastle +society, and are graciously regarded by the county families. Loud +‘how d’ye do’s’ are uttered by the occupants of a tall coach next +door to the barouche, two young men and two young women are seated on +the box--the men in homespun tweed, the women in brown holland and +brown straw hats. Two grooms in dark green, and mahogany tops, are in +attendance. + +‘Are we going to have some good racing, Sir Wilford?’ asks Mrs. +Stormont, radiant at finding herself in such good company, and Mrs. +Groshen afar off like Dives. The bigger of the gray men answers in a +loud good-natured voice, dropping lightly down from his perch, and +coming close to the barouche. + +‘Not much fun, I’m afraid; wretched lot of leather platers. Going to +speculate, Miss Stormont? Better put something on Stagheen for the +Cup. Sure to win.’ + +He addresses himself to the fair Rose, shaking hands with her the +while, but he looks at Sibyl. That delicate clear-cut face, with its +brown eyes, is strange to him, and in a place where everybody knows +everybody else that is enough to awaken interest. + +Sibyl remembers him as one of the hunters she has seen ride past the +walls of Lancaster Lodge, clad in weather-stained scarlet. + +He is tall--six feet two--broad shouldered, with the frame of +an athlete. He has shaggy brown hair, shaggy brown moustache, +good-humoured gray eyes, a commonplace nose, a good, firm mouth, and +strong square chin, large hands in well-worn tan gloves. + +‘Sir Wilford Cardonnel, Miss Faunthorpe,’ says Mrs. Stormont, +graciously. + +Sir Wilford takes off his hat and looks pleased, but is little wiser +than before. This name of Faunthorpe means nothing for him. + +‘Fond of racing?’ he inquires, following up the introduction. + +‘This is the first time I was ever at a race,’ replies Sibyl. ‘But I +think I shall enjoy it very much.’ + +‘Then you don’t belong to this part of the country, I suppose? We +Yorkshire folks are always going to races.’ + +‘Yes, I have lived in Redcastle ever since--or almost ever since, I +left school.’ + +‘And have never come to the races?’ + +‘I couldn’t get anybody to bring me,’ replies Sibyl, frankly. +‘Neither of my uncles care about races. Good gracious!’ + +This exclamation is evoked by a most startling apparition on the +other side of the course, exactly opposite the barouche. A shabby +old pony carriage, quite the most ancient vehicle of its kind in +Redcastle, a dilapidated, unkempt pony, with his nose in a nose-bag, +an elderly gentleman in a discoloured white hat, a young woman +in pink muslin, and a girl of nondescript appearance, in short +petticoats, standing on the back seat of the pony carriage, in order +the better to survey the brilliant scene, and making a positively +awful exhibition of her legs. + +These are uncle Robert, Marion, and Jenny. Sibyl beholds them with +unmitigated consternation. She will be obliged to acknowledge them +presently, to avow her relationship to that wretched chaise, that +odious pony, in the face of the county families, nay, the highest and +mightiest of the high and mighty--the Cardonnels of the How, people +she has heard the Stormonts talk about with as much reverence as if +they had the prosperity of the county in their keeping, wound up the +sun like a clock, and turned on the rain from a tap in their custody. + +‘This is Marion’s doing,’ thinks Sibyl, indignantly. ‘That girl is +capable of anything. To think that they must needs come and perch +themselves exactly opposite us!’ + +There seems deliberate malice in the act. A few minutes ago there was +only empty space where the pony chaise stands now. The chaise has +been placed there since the arrival of the barouche. + +Dr. Faunthorpe surveys his niece’s party mildly through his +spectacles; Marion nods and kisses her hand; but Sibyl, once having +seen her danger, looks every way except towards the doctor’s chaise. +Jenny, more energetic than her elders, is not to be baffled. Finding +nods and hand-kissing unnoticed, she raises her shrill young voice, +and screams, ‘Sibyl, Sibyl! Look this way, Sibyl.’ + +‘Who is that leggy child calling?’ asks Sir Wilford, looking at Jenny +through his race-glass, which brings her to the end of his nose. +‘What an excitable young person! And what a funny party! A little old +man in spectacles and a white hat, a tall young woman with ginger +hair, and that leggy child dancing about upon the cushions. And what +a pony! The very one Noah had in the ark, I should think.’ + +Sibyl grows crimson. Can she acknowledge her kith and kin after +this? While she hesitates, Mrs. Stormont raises her gold-rimmed +binoculars, and scrutinizes the opposite party. + +‘Why, my dear,’ she exclaims, not sorry to set off any obligation +involved in the loan of the barouche by the humiliation of its owner, +‘it’s that dear, good little man, Dr. Faunthorpe, and your sisters. I +wonder you didn’t recognise the pony; there’s not another like him in +Redcastle.’ + +‘Is that little girl your sister?’ says Sir Wilford. ‘I beg your +pardon and hers if I said anything impertinent. She seems a fine, +high-spirited girl, but in an awful state of excitement. Shall I +bring her across to you? She wants to speak to you, I fancy.’ + +‘Oh, pray leave her where she is,’ replies Sibyl. ‘She’s a dreadful +nuisance. There, there, child,’ nodding to the obnoxious hoyden; +‘won’t that do?’ + +Jane kisses her hand again vehemently, and having succeeded in +attracting her sister’s attention, seems tolerably resigned. + +Sibyl feels that her maize-coloured silk and India muslin, the +barouche, and all things are a failure after this. And there are +the Miss Cardonnels in their plain holland gowns, with satchels +at their waists, brown hats, brown feathers, brown holland +umbrellas--singularly plain attire, which looks in better form for a +racecourse than Sibyl’s flower-show costume. + +Sir Wilford stands by the barouche for an hour or more, and tells +Sibyl all about the horses. He devotes himself to her almost +exclusively before the face of Redcastle. Fred Stormont, pounding +restlessly about upon the gray, and bringing that excited animal to +anchor beside the barouche, when he can, feels that he is nowhere, +and begins to think that he has erred on the side of caution and +hesitancy in his wooing of Stephen Trenchard’s niece. + +The races may not be good races from a professional point of +view,--the horses may be the very refuse of famous stables, but the +excitement and exhilaration of the crowd are not lessened by that +fact. No weighty stakes are lost or won, but every one seems happy. +Broad grins are the only wear. There is a great deal of picnicking +between the races, and people who would have lived through the day +at home on a biscuit and a glass of sherry, do wild things in the +consumption of lobster salad, chicken, mayonnaise, and pigeon pie. + +Mrs. Stormont has provided the most refined of baskets,--delicate +papers of anchovy and chicken sandwiches, fragile biscuits, some +choice fruit, and a bottle of dry sherry. These favours she dispenses +to her party, while Sir Wilford and his people are devouring their +lobster salad on the roof of the drag, enlivened by a running fire of +champagne corks. + +Fred, roving to and fro on the gray, declines the maternal sherry. + +‘No thanks, mother; when I’m dry myself I don’t want my wine dry. +I’ll go and do a bitter at the stand presently.’ + +Sibyl has gradually recovered that death-blow of the pony carriage. +Sir Wilford Cardonnel’s attentions have put her in good humour. +It is as if some prince of the blood-royal had paid her homage in +the presence of his subjects, and she knows that Mrs. Groshen and +Mrs. Marlin Spyke, the Miss Jewsons, and above all dearest Rose and +Violet, will be provoked to envy by the distinction thus conferred +upon her. Indeed, dear Rose’s brow has a cloudy look already, and +Violet is snappish. Only Mrs. Stormont preserves her equanimity, and +smiles upon the baronet when he re-descends from the drag and takes +up his position again beside the barouche. + +Sibyl’s ignorance of racing matters is curiously attractive to him +from its novelty, his sisters being learned in the minutest details +of the turf, and as well up in stable talk as their brother’s stud +groom, under whom they have graduated. He lingers by her side till +the races are nearly over, and his grooms go to fetch the horses. The +important duty of seeing these animals put to distracts him a little, +but he comes back again at the last to say good-bye to Mrs. Stormont +and her daughters and to Sibyl. + +‘I should like you to know my sisters,’ he says, ‘I am sure you’d +suit each other,’--a mendacious assertion inspired by the exigencies +of the situation, Sir Wilford knowing very well that town and county +have seldom an idea in common. He has not ventured to bring about +an introduction on the course, his sisters being at an inconvenient +altitude, and of an uncertain temper. But he feels that he must +contrive to see more of Miss Faunthorpe somehow or other. Who can +she be? She is too richly dressed for a governess, and the Stormonts +are too civil to her. Yet she must be a nobody, or Mrs. Stormont +would have taken care to parade her people. He resolves to call +on the Stormonts in a day or two, and find out all about their +_protegée_; and sustained by this resolution, he takes his reluctant +leave. How splendid his coach looks to Sibyl! the four broad-chested +bays, with their honest English-looking heads, horses that mean +work, the steel chains, the black harness, austerely simple in its +mounting, the grooms in Lincoln green, the two girls in brown holland +nodding good-bye to the Stormonts as Sir Wilford drives away, making +a wide sweep upon the turf, his horses going as if this was the +happiest moment of their lives, his grooms climbing into their places +after the team has started, with some hazard of life and limb, but +with honour to themselves. + +‘Charming man, Sir Wilford Cardonnel,’ says Mrs. Stormont. ‘The +Cardonnels are one of the oldest of our county families. How do you +like him, Sibyl?’ + +‘He seems good-natured,’ replies Sibyl, carelessly. What are the +Cardonnels to her? and what avails this young man’s admiration, save +to flaunt in the face of her acquaintance? _Her_ name is written in +the Book of Fate, and in the registers of St. Apollonius, Pimlico. + +‘The soul of good nature. His sisters are charming too; great friends +of Rose and Violet’s.’ + +‘Uncommon intimate,’ says Fred, who has dragged that unyielding gray +up to the carriage once more. ‘They see one another twice a year, +I should think. For my part, I detest the county people. They’re a +parcel of narrow-minded snobs, who think the beginning and end of +life is to ride straight to hounds.’ + +Having relieved his jealous pangs by this vindictive burst, Fred goes +to look after Mr. Trenchard’s horses, and presently the barouche +falls in with the line of vehicles driving towards the town, Fred and +the gray in attendance, that animal suddenly amenable to reason now +that he is going back to his stable. + +Sibyl drives home with the Stormonts, with whom she is to dine. + +‘I do hope your dear uncle will join us at dinner,’ says Mrs. +Stormont. + +That hope is nipped in the bud, for among the day’s letters Mrs. +Stormont finds a note from Stephen Trenchard:-- + + ‘DEAR MRS. STORMONT, + + ‘I do not feel well enough to avail myself of your kind + invitation for this evening, so must ask you to excuse me. I will + send the carriage for Sibyl at half-past ten. + + ‘Yours very truly, + ‘STEPHEN TRENCHARD.’ + +‘I’m afraid your uncle is breaking up, my dear,’ remarks Mrs. +Stormont with a sigh. ‘I saw a change in him when I called the other +day.’ + +‘That is strange,’ says Sibyl, ‘for he has not been actually ill. He +has not kept his room for a single day.’ + +‘He is a man of iron nerves, my love, and would be reluctant to give +way to illness, but I feel sure that he is declining. At his age, and +after a life in India, you cannot expect to have him with you many +years.’ + +Sibyl looks grave. No, she has not counted on her uncle living many +years, or at least when she deserted her husband she told herself +that the old man’s life could be but brief, and that a few years of +patience would be rewarded by fortune and independence for all her +life to come. But since she has lived with uncle Trenchard she has +been inclined to think differently. In his wiry frame and active +habits, his temperance, his iron nerves, there seems the promise of +life prolonged to its utmost limits. He may live to be ninety, and +she be almost an old woman ere she reap the wages of her toil; and in +that case what is to become of Alexis? + +Mrs. Stormont’s remark inspires a new hope. The end may not be so far +off after all. She is not ungrateful to her uncle, she is not without +some kind of affection for him, but the hope of reunion with her +husband, of forgiveness and atonement, is sweet. + + + + + CHAPTER XVI. + + A MYSTERIOUS VISITOR. + + +The dinner at the Stormonts is as other dinners in the same house. +The guests are Mr. and Mrs. Groshen, Dr. and Mrs. Mitsand, and one +Miss Mitsand, the ugliest, as Fred remarks with a sense of injury. +The flower-pots on the table, the silver dishes, the ruby hock +glasses, the finger-glasses engraved with the Greek key pattern, the +talk, the twaddle, Mrs. Groshen’s Honiton lace, how well Sibyl knows +them all! She breathes a sigh for the days that are gone, before that +slow, pompous banquet is ended, and thinks that after all there was +more pleasure in a haddock and a cup of tea in Dixon Street than in +all this provincial splendour. + +The talk is chiefly of the races, who was there and who was not +there. The county families are brought on the table, and discussed +fully, together with their genealogies, which are as well known and +as complicated as if they were Greek heroes or demigods. + +Mrs. Stormont praises Sir Wilford Cardonnel, and those dear girls +his sisters, and talks of the rose-garden and ferneries at the How; +whereby she bears down rather heavily upon Mrs. Groshen, who has +never been bidden to that earthly paradise. Mr. Groshen opines that +Sir Wilford is better off than most of the county people, whom he +disparages as a shabby lot, but adds that at the rate Sir Wilford +is going on with his drags and hunters he is likely to outrun the +constable before he is many years older. + +That the evening entertainment which follows the feast is dull, not +even Mrs. Stormont’s dearest friend Mrs. Groshen could deny, were her +views taken on the subject. + +Sibyl knows every piece of furniture in the drawing-room by heart, +every photograph in the album. She knows the Miss Stormonts’ +favourite fantasias better than those performers themselves, or they +would play more correctly. She knows exactly how she will be asked +to play one of her lovely pieces, or to sing one of her sweet songs, +and how the young ladies will pretend to delight in Chopin, and the +elders praise her wonderful ‘fingering,’ and how stifled yawns will +at intervals prevail among the company. She knows how Violet will +tell her about some new fern she has discovered, ‘such a darling’; +and how Rose will ask her if she is going on the Continent this year, +and will then favour her with some interesting facts about her Swiss +tour with papa three years ago. + +What a blessed relief when the clock on the mantelpiece strikes +eleven! Sibyl has been wondering for ever so long why her carriage +has not been announced. + +‘Dear Mrs. Stormont, I think they must have forgotten me,’ she says. +‘But we are such near neighbours, I can walk home easily.’ + +‘My love, it is quite early; don’t talk of going; the carriage will +come for you, I am sure. We want another of those delicious sonatas. +Not going, surely, Mrs. Groshen,’ cries Mrs. Stormont, rejoicing in +her soul to see the banker and his wife advancing to her, stately and +smiling, to tell her that they have spent ‘a most enjoyable evening.’ + +Every one discovers that it is frightfully late. No one would have +supposed it for an instant. How swift are the pinions of Time when +pleasure quickens them! + +Mrs. Stormont, pressed by Sibyl, makes an inquiry about Mr. +Trenchard’s carriage. It has not come. + +‘We walked here,’ says Mr. Groshen. ‘Matilda grumbled about her +dress, but I wouldn’t have my horses harnessed again after they +had come from the racecourse, and I couldn’t have them standing in +harness while she changed her dress. It is no use having fine horses +if you don’t study them a little. And we’re such near neighbours. +We’ll take care of you, Miss Faunthorpe, if you don’t mind walking.’ + +‘I should like it,’ says Sibyl, with a longing look at the cool +purple night beyond the open window of the gaslit room. + +Fred springs up eagerly from the ottoman on which he has been sitting +in patient attendance on the unattractive Miss Mitsand. + +‘Let me see you home, Miss Faunthorpe. I shall be delighted.’ + +Sibyl runs away to put on her bonnet, and the guests issue forth in +a bevy. Dr. Mitsand’s useful brougham is waiting, the others walk +home in the tranquil perfumed air. Fred offers his arm, which Sibyl +accepts with the infinite ease of indifference. Mr. and Mrs. Groshen +make themselves agreeable by walking on briskly. + +‘Isn’t it a lovely night?’ gasps Fred, rapturously. + +‘Yes, it’s very fine. We generally have nice evenings in June.’ + +‘Ye-es,’ replies Fred, after judicious consideration. ‘I think we do. +Nice long evenings, at any rate. The twenty-first being the longest +day, of course, is a reason. Nice month for races, too; but rather +rainy sometimes, don’t you think?’ + +Sibyl concedes the point. + +‘I remember one wet June--poured all the month--regular cats and +dogs. The racecourse was a morass; of course the heaviest timbered +horse won. Here we are, I declare, close to Lancaster Lodge! How I +wish it was further off!’ + +‘Not very flattering to me to wish us less near neighbours,’ says +Sibyl, laughing. + +‘Oh, come now, Miss Faunthorpe, you know I don’t mean that; but just +for to-night, for the sake of prolonging this delightful walk.’ + +‘Don’t talk nonsense, please,’ says Sibyl. ‘And be kind enough to +ring the bell.’ + +They are standing at the gate by this time, and Fred lingers, as if +loth to perform that necessary duty. + +He rings, and the lodgekeeper opens the side gate. Sibyl offers Mr. +Stormont her hand on the threshold, but gives him no invitation to +enter the domain. + +‘Good night,’ she says, and then cries suddenly, ‘Do you hear that?’ + +It is a most melodious jug-jugging from a dark clump of chestnuts +near the gate. + +‘I hear something chirping,’ replies Fred, dubiously. + +‘It’s the nightingale. It sings every night just at this time. Isn’t +it exquisite?’ + +‘Rather throaty,’ says Fred. + +‘Good night,’ repeats Sibyl, shutting the gate in his face. + +‘Horrid young man!’ she ejaculates. + +How dark, and cool, and silent, save for those nightingales, the +grounds are to-night! She is in no hurry to go into the house. The +dewy turf, the tall black trees standing out against a sky of mixed +light and colour, the moon rising grandly above the elms yonder, just +where the Lancaster Lodge grounds meet the edge of Redcastle Park, +Sir John Boldero’s domain--all is beautiful. + +Sibyl walks slowly along the shrubberied drive, and round to the lawn +behind the house, that wide sweep of velvet grass upon which she and +her uncle spend the summer afternoons. Mr. Trenchard’s study is on +this side of the house. The lighted windows inform Sibyl that he has +not yet retired for the night. + +The study opens on the lawn by a half-glass door. She can go into the +house this way, and surprise her forgetful uncle by her return, and +tell him all about her day, about Sir Wilford Cardonnel’s attentions, +of which she is proud. She thinks it will please her uncle to know +that one of the magnates of the land has admired her. + +She goes towards this glass door, but makes a dead stop before one +of the study windows, startled by what she sees there. It is nothing +very remarkable, perhaps, at the first showing, only uncle Stephen +and a stranger; but the stranger is no ordinary person, and there is +that in Stephen Trenchard’s face which makes the scene remarkable. + +The lamp burns brightly on the official-looking table, which +is spread with papers--formidable-looking papers, bristling +with figures, ruled with red ink. They are laid open, as if for +inspection, and among them lies an open ledger. + +Sibyl has no experience which can teach her the exact nature of these +papers, but she knows instinctively that they must have some relation +to commerce. + +Stephen Trenchard’s face is black as thunder. His left hand lies on +that open ledger; with the right he points to a column of figures, +running his square forefinger down the column with a vicious dig of +the nail here and there, as much as to say, ‘Look at that, sir, and +at that!’ and ‘What do you say to that?’ + +The stranger stands at Mr. Trenchard’s elbow. He is a foreigner--an +Oriental--Sibyl thinks, though his plain and faultless clothes are +perfectly English. He has a dark olive skin, eyes black as night, an +aquiline nose, a narrow oval face, and silky blue-black hair. He is +something less than middle height, stout, and sleek. His lips move +softly, and his plump yellow hand seems to expostulate as Stephen +Trenchard scowls at the figures. + +‘Who can he be?’ wonders Sibyl, abandoning all intention of seeing +her uncle to-night. ‘Some Indian friend of uncle Stephen’s, I +suppose. But what can all those papers mean, and why does uncle +Stephen look so angry? He looked just like that when he spoke of +Philip Secretan.’ + +She goes round to the front of the house. The hall door is open, and +the footman is airing himself on the threshold, listening to the +nightingales. + +‘Why wasn’t the carriage sent for me?’ asks Sibyl. + +‘Indeed, ma’am, I don’t know. Was it ordered?’ + +‘I suppose so. Mr. Trenchard said he would send it.’ + +‘I’m afraid master must have forgotten, ma’am. I didn’t take no +message to the coachman. Perhaps it was the gentleman coming to see +him that put it out of his mind.’ + +‘I suppose so. Who is the gentleman? Do you know?’ + +‘No, ma’am, there was no name given. The gentleman came after dinner, +about nine o’clock. He came from London, I believe. The London train +hadn’t been long in when he came, and he’s been with Mr. Trenchard +ever since.’ + +‘Is he going to stay here to-night?’ + +‘I don’t know, ma’am. There’s been nothing said, but Mrs. Skinner had +the Blue Room got ready in case it should be wanted, as a premonitory +measure.’ + +Sibyl yawns languidly, and goes upstairs to her own room, puzzled, +but not seriously disturbed. This stranger has come on some +business errand evidently. She knows that her uncle’s temper is not +particularly placid, and concludes that he has been irritated by some +vexation of a commercial character. Yet she cannot understand how +this can be, since she has been taught to believe that Mr. Trenchard +has retired from business. + +Curiosity would impel her to await the stranger’s departure in the +drawing-room, or to discover whether he is to remain for the night; +but she does not care to encounter her uncle in his present temper, +and he would doubtless be offended by anything that could look like +espionage. + +It is nearly midnight when she goes to her room. Her windows open on +the garden, and are above those of the study. She seats herself by an +open window, and looks out into the cool, shadowy garden. Presently +she hears a voice raised in anger, her uncle’s voice, she knows; but +the stranger’s tones never reach her ear. + +‘His voice is like his looks, I dare say,’ she thinks, ‘soft, and +silky, and cunning. I shouldn’t think he was the kind of man uncle +Trenchard would trust.’ + +She wastes more than an hour in undressing, brushing her hair, +putting away her finery. The clocks strike one, but those lighted +windows still shine upon the dark turf below. + +‘What a long interview!’ she thinks. ‘This Indian gentleman must +surely be going to stay all night. He would never leave the house at +such an hour as this.’ + +She falls asleep at last, worn out by the fatigues of the day, but at +the last moment hears that angry voice of her uncle’s suddenly raised +in a gust of passion. + +She wakes next morning with an uneasy sense of something having gone +wrong; but it is some moments before that scene in the room beneath +flashes back upon her. + +‘Who can that man be?’ she asks herself again, ‘and why was uncle +Trenchard so angry? Some Indian merchant, perhaps, to whom he has +lent money. The loss of a few thousands ought not to make him so +angry. It must be like a drop in the ocean compared with his immense +wealth. But then I know he is fond of money, and that it pains him to +part even with a ten-pound note.’ + +She dresses, and goes down to the dining-room, looking as fresh as +the newly opened roses, to which the nightingale sings at sundown. +Mr. Trenchard is in his accustomed seat, the big crimson morocco +arm-chair drawn into the bay-window. The sashes are up, and the +sweet morning air comes in across the flower-beds. Eight o’clock is +the hour for breakfast, winter and summer, at Lancaster Lodge, and +unpunctuality is little less than a crime in the eyes of Stephen +Trenchard, who is usually dressed in his blue frock coat and nankeen +waistcoat and trousers by six, and prowling about the grounds to the +discomfiture of his gardeners. + +He is a shade paler than usual, and has purple shadows under his +eyes. His hand shakes a little, Sibyl thinks, as he turns the +leaves of the Manchester daily, which he reads every morning before +breakfast. The face he turns to her as she bends over him to +administer her morning kiss has an old and wan look in the sunshine. +Can it be that Mrs. Stormont is right, and that Stephen Trenchard is +breaking up? + +There are no early prayers at Lancaster Lodge. Mr. Trenchard has his +ideas upon religion, and his own particular creed by which he is +to stand or fall, no doubt; but whatever these are, he keeps them +strictly to himself. He never goes to church, a neglect of duty +which in a person of Mr. Trenchard’s consequence Redcastle regards +as an eccentricity, but which would make a social outlaw of a small +butcher or baker. He has no objection to Sibyl’s attendance at the +minster, where she exhibits the latest fashions on Sunday mornings. +He is no declared infidel. He simply ignores religion, as a thing he +has been able to dispense with all his life. + +Sibyl takes her place before the silver urn, and begins the business +of tea-making. Mr. Trenchard drinks green tea unmixed with black, +and is very particular about the preparation of the beverage. Marion +has never succeeded in pleasing him in this matter. Sibyl has never +failed. + +‘You are looking so tired this morning, dear uncle!’ she says, in her +soft winning voice. ‘You were up very late last night, were you not?’ + +‘How do you know that? You were in bed, I suppose?’ + +‘Not till twelve o’clock. I stayed rather late at the Stormonts, +thinking you would send the carriage for me.’ + +‘The carriage? ah, to be sure. I forgot.’ + +‘It didn’t matter in the least. I walked home. That horrid Fred +brought me. Such a lovely night, the walk would have been delightful +with any one else.’ + +‘Ah, you don’t like young Stormont?’ says Mr. Trenchard, looking +sharply at her. ‘I’m glad of it, child. He’s a genteel pauper at +best. You must marry some one better than that.’ + +Sibyl pales at the mention of marriage. + +‘I don’t mean to marry at all, uncle. I’m much happier as I am, with +you.’ + +‘Stuff and nonsense, my dear! Marriage is a woman’s mission, and with +your pretty face you are sure to get a rich husband.’ + +‘You wouldn’t have me marry for money, uncle Trenchard!’ cries Sibyl, +with a horrified look. + +Here is this old man, rolling in wealth, and yet counselling a +mercenary marriage. + +‘I wouldn’t have you marry without money. You are no girl to play at +love in a cottage. That’s a game you’d soon grow tired of.’ + +Sibyl starts as if she had been stung. + +‘Don’t talk of marriage, uncle Trenchard. The subject is hateful to +me. There is no one in Redcastle that I care for, or am ever likely +to care for.’ + +‘I am sorry to hear it,’ replies Mr. Trenchard, with a moody look, as +he resumes his newspaper. + +Stephen Trenchard is not a man who riots in the good things of this +life. His breakfast consists of a cup of green tea and a little bit +of dry toast. His other meals are of the simplest. But there is +considerable epicureanism in his simplicity, and he resents a bad +dinner as a personal injury. + +‘I expected to find a visitor here this morning,’ Sibyl says +presently, too curious to be silent on the subject of that nocturnal +interview in Mr. Trenchard’s study. + +‘Indeed! Have you invited any one?’ + +‘I should not take such a liberty without your permission--unless it +were Marion or Jenny. I thought the gentleman who was with you last +night would stay----.’ + +Her uncle looks at her with a darker frown than she has ever provoked +before. + +‘The gentleman came on business, and left as soon as his business +was concluded,’ replies Mr. Trenchard, in chilling tones. ‘The less +you trouble yourself about my affairs, Sibyl, the better for our +mutual happiness.’ + +‘I only wondered----’ falters Sibyl. + +‘Don’t wonder. It’s a most unprofitable occupation of the mind. Who +told you there was any one with me last night?’ + +‘I saw him.’ + +‘Saw him? How?’ + +‘The night was so lovely, that I walked round the garden after Fred +Stormont left me at the gate, and I was coming in at your study door, +seeing your lamp burning, when I saw that you were not alone.’ + +‘The gentleman you saw is a Calcutta merchant, an old acquaintance, +who wanted my advice in a critical turn of his affairs. And now you +know all that there is to be known, and may leave off wondering.’ + +Mr. Trenchard sips his tea and nibbles his dry toast in silence, and +presently disappears altogether behind the county paper. + +Sibyl is disappointed. She expected to be questioned about yesterday, +to be asked if she had made any conquests, to be able to describe +Sir Wilford Cardonnel’s obvious subjugation, and the effect which +it produced on the Stormonts,--Rose’s envious looks, Violet’s +constrained civility, Fred’s anguish of mind as he curveted on the +unmanageable gray. + +Finding her uncle indisposed for conversation, Sibyl leaves the +dining-room as soon as decency permits, and flits away to her +favourite retreat--the garden. Life which is all a summer holiday is +pleasant enough, doubtless; but oh, how monotonous! and, in Sibyl’s +case, how lonely! + +This morning, exhausted with yesterday’s excitement, she throws +herself back in her low wicker chair wearily, and sighs two or three +times in a quarter of an hour without knowing why,--sighs for the +days that are gone--for poverty and Alexis, perhaps, though she would +hardly confess as much. + +The roses glorify the garden, the trees cast their deep cool shadows +on the sunny grass; the house yonder, with all its windows shining +in the sun, its venetians, its flower-boxes, its prosperous air, as +of a habitation for which wealth has done its uttermost,--all these +things remind her that her lot has fallen in a pleasant place. Yet +she yearns for something more. + +How soon will it come? How soon will the heritage for which she waits +be hers? Mrs. Stormont has noticed a change in Stephen Trenchard, and +that change has been very obvious to Sibyl’s eyes this morning. + +She struggles against sordid, mercenary thoughts, but they are +too strong for her. She cannot help speculating about the future +which seems drawing nearer, that future which is to reunite her to +Alexis--to open the door of a new glad world, to release her from +this dull bondage in the narrow paths of provincial pretence and +respectability. + +She knows that she is her uncle’s favourite niece. Marion is +suffered to come and go, but is rarely favoured with so much as a +civil word or a kindly glance from Mr. Trenchard. Jenny he openly +abominates. Her noisy bouncing ways distress him beyond measure, and +she is rarely admitted to his presence. Sibyl therefore concludes +that--although Mr. Trenchard, out of kindly feeling, may leave a +few thousands to Marion and Jenny, just enough to secure them a +competence--the bulk of his fortune will be hers. That vast wealth +which has made Redcastle bow down before him will be hers; and +Redcastle, which already fawns upon her--honouring her prospective +riches--will fall prostrate and worship her. + +‘Poor uncle Trenchard,’ she thinks, compassionately. ‘What is the +good of money to the old? His prosperity comes at the wrong end of +life. What can his wealth give him? A fine house, where he lives +alone, a splendid solitude. Horses which he rarely uses. For all the +personal gratification he has out of his wealth he would be as well +off with six hundred a year. But he has the homage of Redcastle, +which would not be given to a man of limited income, even though he +devoted half his revenue to acts of charity.’ + +Sibyl sees the end of her bondage coming near, and thinks of Alexis +with tender longing for reunion. Will he come back to her? Will he +forgive her? Yes, a thousand times yes. He loves her too well to be +obdurate. Whatever anger he may have felt at her abandonment of him +will melt away before her smiles. + +It is a trial to be so ignorant of his fate, not to know where he is +or what he is doing, whether fortune has been kind or cruel to him. + +Great heaven! if he should be dead! If the fight should have been too +hard, and he fallen! + +Her heart grows cold at the mere thought that such a thing is +possible. She shudders, clasps her hands over her eyes as if to +shut out the horrid spectacle. If he were dead; hope’s airy palace +built on a fatal quicksand; and the future she has looked forward to +a future never to be realized! No, she will not think of anything +so hideous. Fate must be kind to true love, and she has loved her +husband truly, even when deserting him to secure fortune. She +remembers how often she has heard him say that it is easy for a +single man to fight the battle of life, that alone he could have +struggled on somehow, could have obtained employment, could have +roamed the world till he found just the one spot where he could +prosper. He has never said it reproachfully. He was too fond of her +for that. But he has said it; and the memory of that speech is a +consoling thought to Sibyl just now. + +‘He has emigrated, I dare say,’ she thinks. ‘He had a longing to try +his luck in Australia. He is on the other side of the world, most +likely, and when I am free to call him back to me, I shall have to +wait ever so long before he can come.’ + +She is aroused from this reverie, from the deepest deep of thought, +by the mellifluous soprano of Mrs. Stormont, raised inquiringly--that +society voice in which a comedy actress makes some trivial inquiry at +the wing before she appears on the stage. + +‘In the garden?’ screams Mrs. Stormont. ‘Dear child! I will find her.’ + +Mrs. Stormont emerges from the shrubbery, rustling in a flounced +cambric morning dress. She wears a black lace shawl, her last +summer’s bonnet ‘done up’ inexpensively by her maid, and in honest +truth has been ‘up town’ to pay her tradesmen’s weekly accounts. The +Stormonts, though near, are good pay. + +‘Old Mother Stormont will haggle about the bone in a bit of brisket, +and she will worry about her Sunday sirloin,’ says Mr. Heffer, the +butcher, ‘but she do pay uncommon reglar, I will say that for the old +gal.’ + +Familiarity, induced by Mrs. Stormont’s frequent personal visits of +complaint or inspection at Mr. Heffer’s shop, has bred contempt in +that citizen’s mind. The customers he respects are those who never +cross his threshold or weigh his meat. + +Mrs. Stormont is followed by a tall stranger in gray, who looks about +him admiringly, and whom Sibyl hardly recognises at the first glance. + +‘Charming place--kept so well, too--garden much neater than my +fellows keep the How. How d’ye do, Miss Faunthorpe? Hope you weren’t +tired by the races yesterday.’ + +Sibyl blushes becomingly, startled by this sudden appearance of the +mighty Sir Wilford Cardonnel--startled out of all sad thoughts, and +gratified by this proof of her power. + +‘I met this tiresome Sir Wilford in the market-place, Sibyl,’ says +Mrs. Stormont with juvenile playfulness--which sits upon her portly +middle age about as becomingly as the airy gauze bonnet on her +pepper-and-salt chignon,--‘and he insisted upon my bringing him to +call on you. I hope you are not shocked with us for invading you at +such a barbarous hour.’ + +Sibyl assures Mrs. Stormont that the hour is a matter of no +importance. + +‘You are just as glad to see us as if we had come in proper visiting +hours,’ exclaims the lady. ‘What a dear candid child she is! I don’t +know what you did with my poor Fred last night, Sibyl, but you sent +him home quite low-spirited.’ + +This is said with meaning, and Sir Wilford looks at the speaker +curiously. + +‘Poor Fred,’ he cries in his loud voice, ‘I think it must have been +the bumping he got on that bony gray that made him low-spirited.’ + +‘I’m afraid I said good night rather abruptly,’ says Sibyl, ‘which +was very ungrateful of me after his kindness in seeing me home. But I +was vexed with him for not appreciating our nightingales.’ + +‘Not appreciate the nightingales! How odd!’ exclaims Mrs. Stormont. +‘Fred has such an ear for music.’ + +‘Shouldn’t have thought it from his trotting,’ remarks the candid Sir +Wilford. ‘Man with a good ear always keeps time in the saddle. So +you’ve nightingales here, Miss Faunthorpe? Shouldn’t have thought it, +so near the town. We’ve no end of ’em at the How. Jug-jug-jug from +sundown till midnight. I should like to show you our gardens at the +How, by the by. Mrs. Stormont might drive you over some day.’ + +Mrs. Stormont, divided between her desire to be intimate with the +best of the county families, and her maternal solicitude for Fred, +whose interests are evidently in peril, can only smile blandly +and assentingly. To drive over to the How in a friendly way is to +take the highest rank in Redcastle society. Mrs. Groshen will feel +absolutely crushed when she is told of such a visit. And after all, +poor Fred’s courtship hangs on hand dismally, and may never come to +anything. Sibyl, although courted by the whole family, has given +no token of preference for the eldest hope. Sibyl with Stephen +Trenchard’s fortune, and exalted into Lady Cardonnel, would be a +splendid person to know. The dear girls, Rose and Violet, would be +asked to stay at the How, no doubt; might make splendid matches, +marry into the county. + +The conversation meanders on in the same elevated strain for half +an hour while Sibyl and her visitors walk round the garden, Sir +Wilford admiring everything ‘monstrously,’ to use his own phrase, and +grumbling a good deal about those ‘fellows’ of his at the How. + +‘I never saw such flower-beds,’ he says; ‘there’s not a dead leaf +among ’em.’ + +‘My uncle is very particular about the garden,’ says Sibyl. + +‘That reminds me that I must ask to be introduced to your uncle.’ + +‘I dare say he is in his study,’ replies Sibyl. ‘I’ll run and see.’ + +She has an idea that it would hardly do to take Sir Wilford to her +uncle without some note of preparation, Mr. Trenchard being somewhat +out of sorts to-day. + +She is saved the trouble of going to the study, however, for Stephen +Trenchard is seen coming across the lawn in his Panama hat, and they +all three go to meet him. He receives Mrs. Stormont and Sir Wilford +graciously, and, the luncheon bell ringing while he is conversing +with them, insists upon their staying to luncheon. So they all go +together to the dining-room, Mrs. Stormont protesting that her +absence will be the cause of consternation at home. + +Sibyl is fluttered and a little pleased at the idea of having made +such an important conquest,--a useless triumph, of course, for a +woman in her position, but one that flatters womanly vanity. + + + + + CHAPTER XVII. + + THE WANDERER’S RETURN. + + +The great city lies seething like some unholy caldron under the +blazing August sun, when a lonely wayfarer returns to it after two +years’ exile on the other side of the world. Rank and fashion, +middle-class wealth, professional respectability, have deserted the +airy western squares and streets for English watering-places, Welsh +mountains, Scottish moors, Irish lakes, or broiling Continental +esplanades, spas, conversation-houses, Rhine steamers, and so on; +but from this eastern end of the city there is no such exodus; here +life holds on patiently through the dog days, here labour knows no +respite, and the grinding of the universal mill slackens not. + +Alexis Secretan, just disembarked from the famous clipper ship +_Oronoko_, surveys the dingy street, the driving crowd, with wonder, +not unmingled with loathing. What a weary city it seems to this man, +who walked its stony ways two years ago a seeker for bread, and for +the most part found only the natural product of the soil--a stone! He +has found fortune kinder at the antipodes, man more friendly, Nature +more liberal of her smiles, less shut out and constrained by brick +and mortar. He has achieved no sudden prosperity, he has worked hard +and honestly, and has done well; so well as to be able to come back +to this sophisticated, unfriendly city, whither fate draws him as a +magnet. + +It is not possible for a man to feel more lonely than this returning +wayfarer. In all the vast city which spreads itself about and around +him there lives only one person from whom he can hope for a friendly +smile of welcome. His humble friend Dick Plowden is the only being to +whom he can go with any certainty of not being considered a bore and +an intruder. His old brother officers--the companions of his brief +day of prosperity,--alas! he wore out the friendship of those when +he sank to that lowest grade in the animal creation--the borrowing +animal. + +Dear old Dick! honest, friendly Dick, to whom he has long since +repaid that ten-pound note borrowed for the false wife who deserted +him--it is to Dick he goes naturally to-day, as brother goes to +brother. It is to Dick’s recommendation to Messrs. Keel and Skrew +he owes the honourable independence of the last two years. But for +Dick’s influence he would never have got that fair start in a new +world which has enabled him to keep his head above water, and do +Messrs. Keel and Skrew honourable service on the other side of the +globe. + +He can afford to take a hansom, and drive down to the Brompton Road +as fast as a broken-down thoroughbred can take him. Dear old Dick is +in the little back parlour hard at work, as on that snowy day when +desperation guided Alexis to that last resource of the desperate--the +humble friend of better days. But Dick is not occupied to-day in the +mechanical drudgery of map-painting; he is writing a book, a little +book on astronomy, for the use of schools,--that elementary geography +of his having been a success. + +He starts up at sight of Alexis, who has pushed by the maid of all +work and entered unannounced. The two men greet each other heartily. + +‘Captain Secretan! What a delightful surprise! and looking so well +too, so handsome, just like my original captain, who took mother’s +first floor.’ + +‘Dear old Dick!’ + +‘But I did not expect you home for ever so long. I thought you were +going to stop at Sidney, working for the firm until you had made your +fortune.’ + +‘Fortune is all very well, Dick--and the firm is all very well. +They have been liberal employers, and I have worked honestly for +them, and been lucky in my dealings for them. But the soul of man +needs something more than fifteen per cent. commission upon all his +dealings. There was an emptiness in my heart, Dick, out yonder--a +cavity that needed filling somehow,--so I took the first opportunity +to slip across to the old world, though God knows there’s little +chance of filling the vacuum here. However, I shall only stop a month +or so, and then go back again. The firm has been very kind about +the matter. I told them my health was failing, and that the voyage +home was my only hope of getting strong again, so they gave me a +free passage both ways, and I’m to hold counsel with them about the +opening of a new branch of the business out yonder.’ + +‘And were you really ill?’ asks Richard Plowden, sympathetically. + +‘What I told the firm was not much more than the truth, old fellow. +When heart-sickness sets in, bodily sickness is pretty sure to +follow. My nights were growing sleepless, full of bad thoughts. Well, +Dick, you can guess my first question. Any news--of her?’ + +Richard Plowden shakes his head despondingly. + +‘I am the last to hear of her,’ he says,--‘I who live as much out of +the world as if I were a hermit in a cave.’ + +‘She might have come to you to inquire about my fate, knowing you +were the only friend adversity had left me.’ + +‘She has never come.’ + +‘Nor written?’ + +‘Not a line. Forgive me if I wound you, Captain Secretan----.’ + +‘Call me Alex, Dick, or we shall quarrel.’ + +‘Forgive me if I seem to speak hardly of her, but upon my honour, +Alex, it seems to me that you have nothing to do but to forget her. +She deserted you when you had the most need of her love, when, if she +had been a true woman, she would have clung to you most fondly.’ + +‘Granted, Dick. She was selfish, base, cowardly. We had sunk together +into the slough of despond, and she contrived to scramble out of it +and leave me in the mire. She was clever enough to make use of me +to accomplish her escape, sent me out among hard-hearted humanity +to borrow, beg, or steal the means by which she meant to separate +herself from my fallen fortunes. Do you think I came across the +world to seek for her? No, Dick, I am not such a fool. I have been +cheated once. I shall never be her dupe again. Do you think I could +ever trust her any more?--that if fortune smiled upon us, and she +pretended to love me, I could feel any confidence in her truth, any +security in her affection? The void in my heart is to be filled, but +not by her. I came back to the old world to look for my child,--the +child that was to be born to me when my cruel wife left me.’ + +‘You do not even know that the child survived its birth?’ + +‘What a Job’s comforter you are, Dick! I know nothing except that I +am going to hunt for the mother in order that I may find the child.’ + +‘The law would give the custody of so young a child to the mother.’ + +‘I snap my fingers at the law. Truth is great and shall prevail. So +base a wife must be an unworthy mother. I will find her price for +the child. She will sell that as she sold me--for a mess of pottage. +When I left England I was desperate--mad, perhaps, or I should not +have left the land that held my child. My loneliness in that strange +world yonder awakened a father’s feelings, I found out how dreary +a prospect life is to a man who stands alone--a blank and barren +desert, with no green oasis--no distant city to which he may direct +his steps--a lonely pilgrimage leading nowhere.’ + +‘How shall you commence your search?’ + +‘I have thought of that question many a time on board the _Oronoko_. +There is little choice of plan left open to me. You remember that +before Messrs. Keel and Skrew took me into their employment, I went +to Redcastle, the place my wife came from when she came to London +as Mrs. Hazleton’s governess. I saw Sibyl’s younger sister, made my +inquiries, and found that Sibyl had not been heard of at Redcastle. +She had not gone straight home to her uncle, the parish doctor, as +I had supposed it probable she would, and flung herself and her +troubles upon his shoulders. No, she was too artful for that. She +had some deeper game in view--some rich relative from whom she had +expectations, as I gathered dimly from her letter. I could find out +nothing more from the girl than that Sibyl was supposed still to be +in Mrs. Hazleton’s employment--that her marriage was not known to her +family, that she had not reappeared at Redcastle, or received any +help from her uncle the doctor. Where could she be, and how could she +be living? She must have found the wealthy friend whose existence I +inferred from her letter, and this wealthy friend or relative was +evidently not an inhabitant of Redcastle. She must have found a safe +haven somewhere. I made no further attempt to trace her. I was too +deeply stung by her abandonment. “Let her go,” I said to myself, as +I crawled wearily away from that dismal country town, through the +January weather, “she and I have done with each other.” I did not +foresee that the hour would come in which the thought of my child +would be more precious to me than my false wife’s love had ever +been. But in my lonely days in a strange land--lonely in spite of +what the world calls friendship--I have suffered my hopes to build +themselves round that one image--the child whose face I have never +seen. Now, Dick, there seem to be only two sources of information +open to me. I can go down to Redcastle again, and renew my inquiries +at Dr. Faunthorpe’s; or, before doing that, I can hunt up an honest +creature who used to be housemaid at Mrs. Hazleton’s, and who made +herself useful to my wife in sending her letters, and so helping her +to sustain the falsehood which she chose to practise upon her uncle, +for quite inadequate reasons, as they always seemed to me. But there +are minds to which double-dealing is an absolute pleasure, and hers +may be of that order,’ adds Alexis, bitterly. + +‘You have not dined,’ says Richard Plowden, by way of changing +the conversation. ‘I’ll order a steak and potatoes. You’ll enjoy +an English rump-steak after ship fare, and you know mother’s a +first-rate cook. You’ll take up your quarters with us, of course, +while you are in London?’ + +‘I shall go to Redcastle to-morrow, Dick, if I can find Jane Dimond, +the housemaid, this evening. But if you can give me a bed for +to-night, I will accept it with all gratitude. Don’t trouble about +dinner. I had a substantial lunch on board the _Oronoko_. I’ll go to +Lowther Street at once, and we can smoke our pipes together when I +come back, and talk over old times, when I was a careless, thriftless +bachelor. How selfish I am, talking of my own affairs all this time, +and never so much as congratulating you on your success as an author!’ + +‘Don’t call me an author,’ protests Dick, blushing. ‘That’s putting +me too much upon a level with Scott and Bulwer, and geniuses of that +kind. I was lucky enough to hit upon an easy, simple way of stating +hard facts--making information a little more attractive than it has +been made for young minds, and the style took with the schools and +teachers. My little handbook of geography has gone through fifteen +editions, and has been quite a fortune to me, and I’m now doing the +sixth in a series of handbooks, all more or less geographical, up +to the present one, in which I venture upon astronomy. So you see +map-painting led to something, after all.’ + +‘Intelligence and industry always lead to something, Dick. There +would be a screw loose in the scheme of the universe if they could +ever lead to nothing.’ + +‘Those little books have done wonders for us,’ exclaims Dick, with +harmless pride. ‘Mother doesn’t work half so hard as she used, +though she will stick to the cooking; and she has a silk gown to wear +on Sundays,--doesn’t it rustle, too! you can hear it at the very top +of the staircase,--none of your soft silks for mother, but a silk +that stands alone and lets you know that it’s there. And I’ve got a +garden. See!’ + +The Duke of Devonshire could feel no loftier pride in the possession +of Chatsworth than swells Richard Plowden’s breast to-day, as he +draws up the Venetian blind and allows his cherished garden to burst +upon Alexis Secretan’s admiring gaze. + +It is a quadrangle of fifteen feet square, shut in by whitewashed +walls, overshadowed by leaden cisterns, bounded by the slated roofs +of a mews, but Dick has built rockeries in the corners, rockeries +where ferns flourish greenly. He has trained ivy over one wall--that +blessed parasite which is so fair and quick-growing a screen for +brick and mortar abominations--Virginia creeper over another. The +grass is soft and green, and in the middle of the little plot there +is a stone basin--a timeworn old basin which Dick has picked up +for half a sovereign in a builder’s yard, but a basin in which a +slender jet of water actually plays. Scarlet geraniums in green tubs +give colour to the picture; an old stone bench, also a bargain of +Dick’s, offers repose to the idler in this narrow pleasaunce. Shut +in as it is by mews and back kitchens,--overshadowed as it is by +cisterns,--Richard Plowden’s garden is absolutely pretty. Alexis +accords it his unmeasured approbation. + +‘It’s the first English garden I’ve seen for the last two years, +Dick, and it smiles at me like a welcome home. Yes, I’ll come back in +time to smoke a cigar on that stone bench of yours under the summer +stars.’ + +‘We drink tea out there on fine Sunday afternoons in the warm +weather,’ says Dick, smiling at the ferns and rockwork, ‘and you +can’t imagine how proud mother is. I’ve got the real _Osmunda +regalis_, or flowering fern, in that corner, though you’d hardly +believe it; and there’s a _Polypodium_ over there that a friendly +lodger of ours brought me from Ilfracombe.’ + +‘Well, Dick, I must go and look for Jane Dimond, but I’ll be back in +a couple of hours at latest.’ + +Dick limps to the door with his friend, and follows his figure with +admiring eyes till it vanishes in the current of wayfarers. + +‘What a fine fellow he is! and to think that a wife could desert him! +I’ll ask mother to get a bit of something nice for supper, a veal +cutlet and a few peas, or a chicken and a slice of broiled ham.’ + + + + + CHAPTER XVIII. + + AT ARM’S LENGTH. + + +There are some people whose houses never change; people whose +habitations are in a manner symbolical of their lives, and whose even +tenor of existence nothing less than the undertaker can overthrow. +Mrs. Hazleton is one of these eminently respectable personages. +She has occupied the house in Lowther Street for the last ten +years. She has gone to the sea-side every year of those ten, and +at exactly the same period, has returned after the same interval, +has given her great parties at the same seasons, and has lived a +methodical and prosperous existence, with satisfaction to herself +and her neighbours, and with considerable profit to the surrounding +shopkeepers. When the London season is over, Mrs. Hazleton goes to +the sea-side, not because she belongs to that flight of fashionable +swallows who follow pleasure’s summer from clime to clime, but +simply because London in August is unendurable,--baking pavements, +scorched verdure, dust and grime on everything, and a sense of +desertion in all those regions which the upper ten thousand and a +considerable portion of the lower million inhabit. + +There could not be a better time for Alexis to make his inquiry +without having to present himself in a formal manner to his old +acquaintance. Mrs. Hazleton is at Scarborough, with children, +governess, and _femme de chambre_. The blinds are all down, save one +of the venetians in the dining-room, which is drawn up about halfway, +and in the space thus exposed to view the comfortable round face of +Mrs. Hazleton’s cook, and the lanky countenance of Mrs. Hazleton’s +sandy-haired footman--a footman whose visage is happily unfamiliar to +Alexis--exhibit themselves. Cook and footman are engaged in looking +out of the window. There is not much for them to see in Lowther +Street on this August evening, but it is a relief to be above ground +for a little while, after the twilight of those underground dungeons +to which the London domestic is confined. + +Alexis mounts the steps, and knocks and rings, under the calm survey +of those two pair of eyes. The sandy-haired footman is not impressed +by Mr. Secretan’s appearance. Alexis is carelessly dressed in +garments of a colonial cut, a velveteen shooting jacket, a soft felt +hat, clothes chosen for ease and hard wear rather than for fashion. +The footman yawns audibly, and when reminded of his duties by a nudge +from cook’s plump elbow, mutters contemptuously, ‘Oh, hang it! that +fellow can wait, you know;’ and then withdraws himself lazily from +his post of observation, and anon opens the street door a little way, +filling the opening with his person. + +‘Is there a young woman called Dimond in service here now?’ asks +Alexis. + +‘Dun know, I’m shaw,’ replies the flunkey, with another yawn. ‘What +do you want with her?’ + +‘We won’t go into particulars till you find out whether she’s still +here,’ answers Alexis, coolly. ‘Perhaps you will condescend so far as +to inquire of your fellow-servant?’ + +‘Hi, cooky,’ bawls the footman, ‘what’s our Jane’s name? Dimond, +ain’t it?’ + +‘Of course it is. You might have known,’ answers cook, who has come +into the hall, and now contemplates Alexis over the youth’s shoulder. + +‘What do you want with Jane Dimond?’ she inquires, sharply. ‘There’s +no followers allowed here.’ + +‘I’m not a follower,’ answers Alexis, ‘but I want to see Jane Dimond +alone for five minutes, on business.’ + +The countenances of cook and footman plainly express an apprehension +that this is the beginning of a deep-laid scheme against the family +plate. + +‘I’ll tell you what, young man,’ says the cook, with asperity, ‘my +missus is out of town, and we don’t want no airy sneaks loafing about +while she’s away.’ + +‘And it ain’t no good for them to loaf,’ adds the sandy-haired young +man, who has not shaved for the last day or two, and whose chin is +adorned with a tawny stubble like a newly-cut wheat field. ‘The plate +has all been sent to the bank.’ + +Alexis fairly bursts out laughing. + +‘Is there so much difference between a chimney-pot hat and a wide +awake? between Poole and a colonial tailor?’ he says to himself, +and then he adds aloud. ‘If one of you simpletons will take the +trouble to call Jane Dimond, she will be able to tell you that I’m +a gentleman, and that I have not come after the tea-spoons or the +umbrellas. I’ll wait in the street for her. You can tell her that a +gentleman from Australia wants a few words with her.’ + +Cook and footman whisper doubtfully for half a minute, and then shut +the door upon Mr. Secretan, leaving him to infer their acquiescence +with his request. + +He paces the pavement for five minutes or so, and then the +good-natured Jane Dimond comes down the steps, while cook and footman +stand in the doorway to watch the proceedings. + +They see Jane gesticulate as in extreme surprise at sight of Alexis, +and then the two walk a little further off, quite out of earshot, to +the aggravation of Jane’s fellow-servants, whose curiosity is by this +time raised to the highest pitch. + +‘I shouldn’t wonder if he was some haristocratic arf-brother of ers,’ +says cook, who is a devoted student of “Reynolds’s Mysteries of +London.” ‘Life is full of family secrets and such like.’ + +‘Lor, sir,’ says Jane Dimond, when she has recovered the shock of +surprise; ‘I thought you was dead and gone.’ + +‘Did you, Jane. Why?’ + +‘Because I fancied if you was in the land of the livin’ you wouldn’t +have turned a deaf ear to that advertisement.’ + +‘What advertisement?’ + +‘The advertisement as Miss Faunthorpe--I beg pardon, Mrs.----’ + +‘Never mind the name, girl. Tell me all about the advertisement.’ + +Jane explains herself in a roundabout way, but in due course Alexis +knows all that Jane knows, except his wife’s present abode. That the +girl refuses to tell even to him. + +‘She told me to keep it a secret, and I’m not going to tell no one +without her permission,’ says Jane resolutely. + +This resolve the husband combats, but in vain. + +‘I’ll arst her leaf to tell you, and when I’ve got her leaf I’ll +tell you,’ answers Jane. ‘Wild horses wouldn’t move me from that.’ + +‘Telegraph to her then directly,’ cries Alexis, taking out a handful +of silver. ‘Come with me to the nearest telegraph office, and I’ll +write the message for you. You can put in the address yourself.’ + +‘No, I won’t send her no telegrafts, lest I should get her into +trouble with her friends. I’ll write to her.’ + +‘Inexorable girl! Is she in the country?’ + +‘Yes.’ + +‘And the country post is gone ever so long. I shall have to wait +twenty-four hours before you can get her answer.’ + +‘I can’t help that,’ says Jane, with an inflexible air. ‘She’s +trusted me, and I’ll do my dooty by her. As you’ve stayed away so +long it can’t hurt you to stay a little longer.’ + +‘Stayed away so long, cruel girl! Don’t you know that it was she who +left me?’ + +‘Whatever she did, I make no doubt she did it for the best,’ answers +Jane, true to the fair young governess whose donations of lace and +ribbon, soiled gloves, darned stockings, and friendly smiles, had +won her heart years ago. + +‘See here, Jane,’ says Alexis, unfolding a five-pound note. ‘Here’s +something to buy you a silk gown for Sundays. Now don’t you think +that you could contrive to tell me the address at once? You know my +wife wishes to see me. The advertisement says that.’ + +‘No, it don’t,’ answers Jane, taking a tiny slip of paper out of her +shabby old portemonnaie. ‘The advertisement says nothing of the kind.’ + +She reads as follows:-- + + ‘S. S. to Alexis. You are not forgotten. In all I do I am + faithful to your interests. I look forward to our reunion. Wait + and hope, as I do. Write and tell me where you are, and what you + are doing.--Address, S. S., Post Office, Hale Street, Pimlico.’ + +‘There, you see,’ exclaims Jane, triumphant. ‘There’s not a word +about wanting to see you. She only wants to hear from you.’ + +‘Heartless woman!’ mutters Alexis. ‘Yet I’m glad she was just a +little anxious to know my fate. I’ll go to a coffee-house, and write +to her, and bring the letter to you to post. There’s the silk gown +for you all the same, Jane, to show that I bear no malice.’ + +‘Oh, sir!’ cries the housemaid, overcome by this generosity, ‘I +couldn’ think----’ + +‘You needn’t think about it. You’ve only to take the money and buy +your gown. I’ll go and write my letter.’ + +He goes to the nearest coffee-house and writes to Sibyl. There is a +touch of bitterness in the composition, though his wounded heart is +full of love for her all the time. Neither exile nor the sense of her +unkindness have been strong enough to exclude her from his heart. He +may pretend to himself and to his friend Dick Plowden that he has +ceased to love his wife, that he seeks his child alone; but the mere +fact that she has sought to obtain tidings of him is enough to melt +his heart, to change pride and anger to love and pardon. + + ‘Whatever the exalted sphere in which you now move,’ he writes, + ‘you may be glad to know that your desertion has not quite been + the death of me. I have contrived to live, somehow, though + indignation against your cruelty has lacerated my heart, and + love for the wife who deserted me has proved an incurable + disease. I have not starved or been driven to hang myself, and I + have come back from the other side of the world because I have + a foolish hankering to know the fate of the woman who swore at + the altar to love, honour, and obey me, and kept her vow by + abandoning me in my darkest hour of need. Where are you, Sibyl? + and with whom? What has been your reward for deserting me? Has + your scheme of life been a wise one? Have your hopes prospered? + + ‘Write and answer all these questions freely and fully if you + recognise the tie which, in the sight of God and man, makes us + two one. Tell me about our child, the infant I have never seen, + yet whose baby face has haunted my dreams. You have given your + babe to the care of strangers perhaps, but I conclude you have + watched over its welfare. + + ‘Tell me further if there are in your life--prosperous as it may + be--some few weaker moments when your heart yearns for reunion + with the husband you once loved. But no, love, I will show you + an easier way. Do not stop to answer one of these questions. + + ‘Write, Sibyl, from your heart to mine. Tell me in three words + to come to you, and I will come. I will come, dear, and all the + past, all that you have made me suffer, shall be forgotten and + forgiven in the rapture of our reunion.--Yours for ever, if you + will have it so,--ALEXIS.’ + +He is swayed to and fro by diverse passions as he writes this +letter, now all bitterness, now fond unreasoning love. He has not +the courage to read over his effusion, but seals and addresses it +hastily, and hurries back to Lowther Street. There is no difficulty +about admittance this time. Jane Dimond opens the door, receives the +letter, and promises to post it that evening. + +It is too late for any of the provincial mails, but it is something +to be assured that there shall be no needless delay. + +‘I shall call for the answer the day after to-morrow, in the evening. +You ought to have it by that time,’ says Alexis, and it seems to him +that the interval will be an unendurable space of time. + +He thinks about that advertisement as he goes back to the Brompton +Road. Sibyl must have cared for him a little, despite her heartless +abandonment of him, or she would not have felt this anxiety to be +informed of his fate. She would not have committed herself by an act +likely to entangle her fate with his. Once having released herself +from him she would have held herself altogether aloof--she would +have stretched no friendly hand across the gulf if she had not loved +him. Her heart was still his, he tells himself, when she made that +appeal to him. Whatever her scheme of life--whatever game she was +playing--her heart was true to him. + +Comforted by this assurance he is inclined to be wondrously +indulgent, to forgive much, should she but prove herself worthy to be +forgiven. + +He tries to occupy himself with hard-headed business during that +weary interval in which he waits for Sibyl’s reply. He goes down +to Messrs. Keel and Skrew’s office, and enters upon the discussion +of certain extensions and improvements in the Australian branch of +the business, improvements which his experience of the colony has +suggested to him. He is well received, and his views approved by Mr. +Keel, the senior partner--a gentleman with large ideas, a palatial +villa on Clapham Common, vineries, pineries, succession houses, and +a stable which is a perennial source of profit to the horse dealers +and the veterinary surgeon, and a well-spring of heart-burning and +annoyance to its proprietor. Mr. Keel is a gentleman who talks of +thousands as meaner people talk of sixpences, and is rumoured to have +started in life thirty years ago as a stevedore, and to have founded +his fortunes upon the ill-gotten gains supposed to be inseparable +from that function. + +Mr. Keel is pleased with Mr. Secretan’s suggestions. + +‘You’re about the only fellow I ever sent out who seems to understand +the Australian trade,’ he says approvingly, ‘and I shall push you, +young man, mark my words, I shall push you.’ + +Cheered by this assurance, Alexis thinks what a nice thing it will +be for him to go back to Sidney with his wife and child for his +companions, if Sibyl will but show herself true metal after all, and +if his child lives. Two formidable ‘ifs.’ + +He builds a delightful castle in the air, and looks so well, fed upon +this nutriment of hope, that Samuel Plowden scrutinizes him with a +serio-comic expression when he returns to the outer office after his +interview with Mr. Keel. + +‘Why, I thought you came home on sick leave, youngster,’ says the +kindly clerk. ‘By Jupiter, I never saw any one looking better.’ + +‘All the effect of the voyage, Mr. Plowden, I assure you. I was a +shadow when I went on board at Sidney.’ + +The second day after Mr. Secretan’s interview with Jane Dimond has +come, and in the evening Alexis knocks at the familiar door in +Lowther Street, with a heart that seems to beat louder than the +knocker. + +Jane Dimond appears promptly, and divining his impatience, gives him +the expected letter without a word. He wrings her hand in speechless +gratitude, as if the letter were a boon from her; bids her a brief +good night, and goes away with his prize. He would rather read the +letter in the street, unwatched, than open it in Mrs. Hazleton’s +hall, under the housemaid’s friendly eyes. + +Yes, it is from Sibyl, in the hand he knows so well. The last letter +he received from her was that cruel renunciation, that most heartless +farewell--the loosening, nay, the severing of every link between +them. She writes to him again. There is communion between them once +more. The thought thrills him. + +She begins well at all events:-- + + ‘DEAREST--DEAREST--DEAREST!’ + +There is love’s foolish rapture in a gush of pen and ink. + + ‘Thank God for your dear letter, though it is not altogether + kind. Still it promises forgiveness for my wrong-doing, and that + is much. Thank God for the knowledge that you are living and + well. My heart grew very heavy when that advertisement of mine + remained unanswered. + + ‘You ask me if my scheme of life has realized what I counted + upon, if my hopes have prospered. I can say yes to both those + questions. I am on the road to high fortune, fortune which + you and I will share in happy days to come if you are as true + to me as I am to you, though seeming estranged. In a very + little while, dear, my most anxious hopes will be realized. The + realization is so near that it would be worse than folly to + sacrifice those hopes now, as I must sacrifice them if I were to + obey you, and say come to me. + + ‘I long to see you, my heart aches, my soul sickens at the + thought that we must wait for the hour of reunion. But I am not + so weak a slave to impulse as to abandon my prize, just as it is + almost won. We must wait, dearest. I ask from you patience and + trust. I give you my daily prayers, my nightly dreams. There is + no wrong-doing in my scheme of life. I injure no one, least of + all do I wrong you. I only forego the happiness of sharing your + life for a little while in order to make it brighter afterwards. + + ‘Write to me, dear husband, from time to time, and let me write + to you, but let our correspondence pass through the hands of + that good girl, Jane Dimond. I know your impulsive nature, and + I cannot trust you with my address, for fear you should come + here and destroy all my plans. I am known in my present circle + only as Miss Faunthorpe. All my hopes would be shipwrecked if I + stood confessed as Mrs. Secretan. Yet, believe me, there is no + shadow of wrong to you in this concealment. It is for our mutual + welfare. You ask me about our child, Alexis. Our child, our son, + is safe and well. I dare tell you no more than that. + + ‘Ever, through all changes and dangers, your true and loving wife, + + ‘SIBYL.’ + +‘Is she mad?’ Alexis asks himself, indignantly, after reading this +letter. ‘Does she think I am to be put off with loving words and +assurances of constancy? Does she suppose that she can keep me at a +distance by concealing her address and writing to me under cover to +a housemaid? Wherever she may have hidden herself, my business shall +be to find her, and my first visit shall be to Redcastle. I’ll go +straight to her uncle, the doctor, and unearth this mystery.’ + + + END OF VOL. I. + + + + + LONDON: + J. AND W. RIDER, PRINTERS, + BARTHOLOMEW CLOSE. + + + + + Transcriber’s Notes + + +Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been +silently corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences +within the three volumes of this work and consultation of external +sources. Some hyphens in words have been silently removed and +some silently added when a predominant preference was found in +the original work. Except for those changes noted below, original +spellings in the text and inconsistent or archaic usage have been +retained. + + Page 12: “its panelled recesses” replaced with “its paneled + recesses”. + + Page 34: “Mrs. Gorsuch, contempuously” replaced with “Mrs. + Gorsuch, contemptuously”. + + Page 37: “would be materally” replaced with “would be materially”. + + Page 39: “the solemn responsibilites” replaced with “the solemn + responsibilities”. + + Page 58: “By-and-by he” replaced with “By-and-bye he”. + + Page 86: “He has aked” replaced with “He has asked”. + + Page 122: “again by and by” replaced with “again by-and-bye”. + + Page 147: “a vivacious nonenity” replaced with “a vivacious + nonentity”. + + Page 168: “ths most miserable” replaced with “the most miserable”. + + Page 176: “to its conquerer” replaced with “to its conqueror”. + + Page 177: “and a currie” replaced with “and a curry”. + + Page 183: “à la Béchamelle” replaced with “à la Béchamel”. + + Page 198: “and by-and-by” replaced with “and by-and-bye”. + + Page 262: “the county pa er” replaced with “the county paper”. + + +Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_. + +New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the +public domain. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78772 *** |