The Castle Inn by Stanley John Weyman (page 6)

light thrown by the lanthorn, it struck her that the avenue they were traversing was not the one by which she had approached the house two nights before. The trees seemed to stand farther from one another and to be smaller. Or was it her fancy?

But it was not that had moved him to stand; for in a moment, with a curious sound between a groan and a curse he led the way on, without answering her. Fifty paces brought them to the gate and the road. Thomasson held up his lanthorn and looked over the gate.

‘Where is the carriage?’ she whispered, startled by the darkness and silence.

‘It should be here,’ he answered, his voice betraying his perplexity. ‘It should be here at this gate. But I–I don’t see it.’

‘Would it have lights?’ she asked anxiously. He had opened the gate by this time, and as she spoke they passed through, and stood together looking up and down the road. The moon was obscured, and the lanthorn’s rays were of little use to find a carriage which was not there.

‘It should be here, and it should have lights,’ he said in evident dismay. ‘I don’t know what to think of it. I–ha! What is that? It is coming, I think. Yes, I hear it. The coachman must have drawn off a little for some reason, and now he has seen the lanthorn.’

He had only the sound of wheels to go upon, but he proved to be right; she uttered a sigh of relief as the twin lights of a carriage apparently approaching round a bend of the road broke upon them. The lights drew near and nearer, and the tutor waved his lamp. For a second the driver appeared to be going to pass them; then, as Mr. Thomasson again waved his lanthorn and shouted, he drew up.

‘Halloa!’ he said.

Mr. Thomasson did not answer, but with a trembling hand opened the door and thrust the girl in. ‘God bless you!’ she murmured; ‘and–‘ He slammed the door, cutting short the sentence.

‘Well?’ the driver said, looking down at him, his face in shadow; ‘I am–‘

‘Go on!’ Mr. Thomasson cried peremptorily, and waving his lanthorn again, startled the horses; which plunged away wildly, the man tugging vainly at the reins. The tutor fancied that, as it started, he caught a faint scream from the inside of the chaise, but he set it down to fright caused by the sudden jerk; and, after he had stood long enough to assure himself that the carriage was keeping the road, he turned to retrace his steps to the house.

He was feeling for the latch of the gate–his thoughts no pleasant ones, for the devil pays scant measure–when his ear was surprised by a new sound of wheels approaching from the direction whence the chaise had come. He stood to listen, thinking he heard an echo; but in a second or two he saw lights approaching through the night precisely as the other lights had approached. Once seen they came on swiftly, and he was still standing gaping in wonder when a carriage and pair, a postboy riding and a servant sitting outside, swept by, dazzling him a moment; the next it was gone, whirled away into the darkness.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE INN AT CHIPPENHAM

The road which passed before the gates at Bastwick was not a highway, and Mr. Thomasson stood a full minute, staring after the carriage, and wondering what chance brought a traveller that way at that hour. Presently it occurred to him that one of Mr. Pomeroy’s neighbours might have dined abroad, have sat late over the wine, and be now returning; and that so the incident might admit of the most innocent explanation. Yet it left him uneasy. Until the last hum of wheels died in the distance he stood listening and thinking. Then he turned from the gate, and with a shiver betook himself towards the house. He had done his part.

Or had he? The road was not ten paces behind him, when a cry rent the darkness, and he paused to listen. He caught the sound of hasty footsteps crossing the open ground on his right, and apparently approaching; and he raised his lanthorn in alarm. The next moment a dark form vaulted the railings that fenced the avenue on that side, sprang on the affrighted tutor, and, seizing him violently by the collar, shook him to and fro as a terrier shakes a rat.

It was Mr. Pomeroy, beside himself with rage. ‘What have you done with her?’ he cried. ‘You treacherous hound! Answer, or by heaven I shall choke you!’

‘Done–done with whom?’ the tutor gasped, striving to free himself. ‘Mr. Pomeroy, I am not–what does this–mean?’

‘With her? With the girl?’

‘She is–I have put her in the carriage! I swear I have! Oh!’ he shrieked, as Mr. Pomeroy, in a fresh access of passion, gripped his throat and squeezed it. ‘I have put her in the carriage, I tell you! I have done everything you told me!’

‘In the carriage? What carriage? In what carriage?’

‘The one that was there.’

‘At the gate?’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘You fool! You imbecile!’ Mr. Pomeroy roared, as he shook him with all his strength. ‘The carriage is at the other gate.’

Mr. Thomasson gasped, partly with surprise, partly under the influence of Pomeroy’s violence. ‘At the other gate?’ he faltered. ‘But–there was a carriage here. I saw it. I put her in it. Not a minute ago!’

‘Then, by heaven, it was your carriage, and you have betrayed me,’ Pomeroy retorted; and shook his trembling victim until his teeth chattered and his eyes protruded. ‘I thought I heard wheels and I came to see. If you don’t tell me the truth this instant,’ he continued furiously, ‘I’ll have the life out of you.’

‘It is the truth,’ Mr. Thomasson stammered, blubbering with fright. ‘It was a carriage that came up–and stopped. I thought it was yours, and I put her in. And it went on.’

‘A lie, man–a lie!’

‘I swear it is true! I swear it is! If it were not should I be going back to the house? Should I be going to face you?’ Mr. Thomasson protested.

The argument impressed Pomeroy; his grasp relaxed. ‘The devil is in it, then!’ he muttered. ‘For no one else could have set a carriage at that gate at that minute! Anyway, I’ll know. Come on!’ he continued recklessly snatching up the lanthorn, which had fallen on its side and was not extinguished. ‘We’ll after her! By the Lord, we’ll after her. They don’t trick me so easily!’

The tutor ventured a terrified remonstrance, but Mr. Pomeroy, deaf to his entreaties and arguments, bundled him over the fence, and, gripping his arm, hurried him as fast as his feet would carry him across the sward to the other gate. A carriage, its lamps burning brightly, stood in the road. Mr. Pomeroy exchanged a few curt words with the driver, thrust in the tutor, and followed himself. On the instant the vehicle dashed away, the coachman cracking his whip and shouting oaths at his horses.

The hedges flew by, pale glimmering walls in the lamplight; the mud flew up and splashed Mr. Pomeroy’s face; still he hung out of the window, his hand on the fastening of the door, and a brace of pistols on the ledge before him; while the tutor, shuddering at these preparations, hoping against hope that they would overtake no one, cowered in the farther corner. With every turn of the road or swerve of the horses Pomeroy expected to see the fugitives’ lights. Unaware or oblivious that the carriage he was pursuing had the start of him by so much that at top speed he could scarcely look to overtake it under the hour, his rage increased with every disappointment. Although the pace at which they travelled over a rough road was such as to fill the tutor with instant terror and urgent thoughts of death–although first one lamp was extinguished and then another, and the carriage swung so violently as from moment to moment to threaten an overturn, Mr. Pomeroy never ceased to hang out of the window, to yell at the horses and upbraid the driver.

And with all, the labour seemed to be wasted. With wrath and a volley of curses he saw the lights of Chippenham appear in front, and still no sign of the pursued. Five minutes later the carriage awoke the echoes in the main street of the sleeping town, and Mr. Thomasson drew a deep breath of relief as it came to a stand.

Not so Mr. Pomeroy. He dashed the door open and sprang out, prepared to overwhelm the driver with reproaches. The man anticipated him. ‘They are here,’ he said with a sulky gesture.

‘Here? Where?’

A man in a watchman’s coat, and carrying a staff and lanthorn–of whom the driver had already asked a question–came heavily round, from the off-side of the carriage. ‘There is a chaise and pair just come in from the Melksham Road,’ he said, ‘and gone to the Angel, if that is what you want, your honour.’

‘A lady with them?’

‘I saw none, but there might be.’

‘How long ago?’

‘Ten minutes.’

‘We’re right!’ Mr. Pomeroy cried with a jubilant oath, and turning back to the door of the carriage, slipped the pistols into his skirt pockets. ‘Come,’ he said to Thomasson. ‘And do you,’ he continued, addressing his driver, who was no other than the respectable Tamplin, ‘follow at a walking pace. Have they ordered on?’ he asked, slipping a crown into the night-watchman’s hand.

‘I think not, your honour,’ the man answered. ‘I believe they are staying.’

With a word of satisfaction Mr. Pomeroy hurried his unwilling companion towards the inn. The streets were dark; only an oil lamp or two burned at distant points. But the darkness of the town was noon-day light in comparison of the gloom which reigned in Mr. Thomasson’s mind. In the grasp of this headstrong man, whose temper rendered him blind to obstacles and heedless of danger, the tutor felt himself swept along, as incapable of resistance as the leaf that is borne upon the stream. It was not until they turned into the open space before the Angel, and perceived a light in the doorway of the inn that despair gave him courage to remonstrate.

Then the risk and folly of the course they were pursuing struck him so forcibly that he grew frantic. He clutched Mr. Pomeroy’s sleeve, and dragging him aside out of earshot of Tamplin, who was following them, ‘This is madness!’ he urged vehemently. ‘Sheer madness! Have you considered, Mr. Pomeroy? If she is here, what claim have we to interfere with her? What authority over her? What title to force her away? If we had overtaken her on the road, in the country, it might have been one thing. But here–‘

‘Here?’ Mr. Pomeroy retorted, his face dark, his under-jaw thrust out hard as a rock. ‘And why not here?’

‘Because–why, because she will appeal to the people.’

‘What people?’

‘The people who have brought her hither.’

‘And what is their right to her?’ Mr. Pomeroy retorted, with a brutal oath.

‘The people at the inn, then.’

‘Well, and what is their right? But–I see your point, parson! Damme, you are a cunning one. I had not thought of that. She’ll appeal to them, will she? Then she shall be my sister, run off from her home! Ha! Ha! Or no, my lad,’ he continued, chuckling savagely, and slapping the tutor on the back; ‘they know me here, and that I have no sister. She shall be your daughter!’ And while Mr. Thomasson stared aghast, Pomeroy laughed recklessly. ‘She shall be your daughter, man! My guest, and run off with an Irish ensign! Oh, by Gad, we’ll nick her! Come on!’

Mr. Thomasson shuddered. It seemed to him the wildest scheme–a folly beyond speech. Resisting the hand with which Pomeroy would have impelled him towards the lighted doorway, ‘I will have nothing to do with it!’ he cried, with all the firmness he could muster. ‘Nothing! Nothing!’

‘A minute ago you might have gone to the devil!’ Mr. Pomeroy answered grimly, ‘and welcome! Now, I want you. And, by heaven, if you don’t stand by me I’ll break your back! Who is there here who is likely to know you? Or what have you to fear?’

‘She’ll expose us!’ Mr. Thomasson whimpered. ‘She’ll tell them!’

‘Who’ll believe her?’ the other answered with supreme contempt. ‘Which is the more credible story–hers about a lost heir, or ours? Come on, I say!’

Mr. Thomasson had been far from anticipating a risk of this kind when he entered on his career of scheming. But he stood in mortal terror of his companion, whose reckless passions were fully aroused; and after a brief resistance he succumbed. Still protesting, he allowed himself to be urged past the open doors of the inn-yard–in the black depths of which the gleam of a lanthorn, and the form of a man moving to and fro, indicated that the strangers’ horses were not yet bedded–and up the hospitable steps of the Angel Inn.

A solitary candle burning in a room on the right of the hall, guided their feet that way. Its light disclosed a red-curtained snuggery, well furnished with kegs and jolly-bodied jars, and rows of bottles; and in the middle of this cheerful profusion the landlord himself, stooping over a bottle of port, which he was lovingly decanting. His array, a horseman’s coat worn over night-gear, with bare feet thrust into slippers, proved him newly risen from bed; but the hum of voices and clatter of plates which came from the neighbouring kitchen were signs that, late as it was, the good inn was not caught napping.

The host heard their steps behind him, but crying ‘Coming, gentlemen, coming!’ finished his task before he turned. Then ‘Lord save us!’ he ejaculated, staring at them–the empty bottle in one hand, the decanter in the other. ‘Why, the road’s alive to-night! I beg your honour’s pardon, I am sure, and yours, sir! I thought ’twas one of the gentlemen that arrived, awhile ago–come down to see why supper lagged. Squire Pomeroy, to be sure! What can I do for you, gentlemen? The fire is scarce out in the Hertford, and shall be rekindled at once?’

Mr. Pomeroy silenced him by a gesture. ‘No,’ he said; ‘we are not staying. But you have some guests here, who arrived half an hour ago?’

‘To be sure, your honour. The same I was naming.’ ‘Is there a young lady with them?’

The landlord looked hard at him. ‘A young lady?’ he said.

‘Yes! Are you deaf, man?’ Pomeroy retorted wrathfully, his impatience getting the better of him. ‘Is there a young lady with them? That is what I asked.’

But the landlord still stared; and it was only after an appreciable interval that he answered cautiously: ‘Well, to be sure, I am not–I am not certain. I saw none, sir. But I only saw the gentlemen when they had gone upstairs. William admitted them, and rang up the stables. A young lady?’ he continued, rubbing his head as if the question perplexed him. ‘May I ask, is’t some one your honour is seeking?’

‘Damme, man, should I ask if it weren’t?’ Mr. Pomeroy retorted angrily. ‘If you must know, it is this gentleman’s daughter, who has run away from her friends.’

‘Dear, dear!’

‘And taken up with a beggarly Irishman!’

The landlord stared from one to the other in great perplexity. ‘Dear me!’ he said. ‘That is sad! The gentleman’s daughter!’ And he looked at Mr. Thomasson, whose fat sallow face was sullenness itself. Then, remembering his manners, ‘Well, to be sure, I’ll go and learn,’ he continued briskly. ‘Charles!’ to a half-dressed waiter, who at that moment appeared at the foot of the stairs, ‘set lights in the Yarmouth and draw these gentlemen what they require. I’ll not be many minutes, Mr. Pomeroy.’

He hurried up the narrow staircase, and an instant later appeared on the threshold of a room in which sat two gentlemen, facing one another in silence before a hastily-kindled fire. They had travelled together from Bristol, cheek by jowl in a post-chaise, exchanging scarce as many words as they had traversed miles. But patience, whether it be of the sullen or the dignified cast, has its limits; and these two, their tempers exasperated by a chilly journey taken fasting, had come very near to the end of sufferance. Fortunately, at the moment Mr. Dunborough–for he was the one–made the discovery that he could not endure Sir George’s impassive face for so much as the hundredth part of another minute–and in consequence was having recourse to his invention for the most brutal remark with which to provoke him–the port and the landlord arrived together; and William, who had carried up the cold beef and stewed kidneys by another staircase, was heard on the landing. The host helped to place the dishes on the table. Then he shut out his assistant.

‘By your leave, Sir George,’ he said diffidently. ‘But the young lady you were inquiring for? Might I ask–?’

He paused as if he feared to give offence. Sir George laid down his knife and fork and looked at him. Mr. Dunborough did the same. ‘Yes, yes, man,’ Soane said. ‘Have you heard anything? Out with it!’

‘Well, sir, it is only–I was going to ask if her father lived in these parts.’

‘Her father?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Mr. Dunborough burst into rude laughter. ‘Oh, Lord!’ he said. ‘Are we grown so proper of a sudden? Her father, damme!’

Sir George shot a glance of disdain at him. Then, ‘My good fellow,’ he said to the host, ‘her father has been dead these fifteen years.’

The landlord reddened, annoyed by the way Mr. Dunborough had taken him. ‘The gentleman mistakes me, Sir George,’ he said stiffly. ‘I did not ask out of curiosity, as you, who know me, can guess; but to be plain, your honour, there are two gentlemen below stairs, just come in; and what beats me, though I did not tell them so, they are also in search of a young lady.’

‘Indeed?’ Sir George answered, looking gravely at him. ‘Probably they are from the Castle Inn at Marlborough, and are inquiring for the lady we are seeking.’

‘So I should have thought,’ the landlord answered, nodding sagely; ‘but one of the gentlemen says he is her father, and the other–‘

Sir George stared. ‘Yes?’ he said, ‘What of the other?’

‘Is Mr. Pomeroy of Bastwick,’ the host replied, lowering his voice. ‘Doubtless your honour knows him?’

‘By name.’

‘He has naught to do with the young lady?’

‘Nothing in the world.’

‘I ask because–well, I don’t like to speak ill of the quality, or of those by whom one lives, Sir George; but he has not got the best name in the county; and there have been wild doings at Bastwick of late, and writs and bailiffs and worse. So I did not up and tell him all I knew.’

On a sudden Dunborough spoke. ‘He was at College, at Pembroke,’ he said. ‘Doyley knows him. He’d know Tommy too; and we know Tommy is with the girl, and that they were both dropped Laycock way. Hang me, if I don’t think there is something in this!’ he continued, thrusting his feet into slippers: his boots were drying on the hearth. ‘Thomasson is rogue enough for anything! See here, man,’ he went on, rising and flinging down his napkin; ‘do you go down and draw them into the hall, so that I can hear their voices. And I will come to the head of the stairs. Where is Bastwick?’

‘Between here and Melksham, but a bit off the road, sir.’

‘It would not be far from Laycock?’

‘No, your honour; I should think it would be within two or three miles of it. They are both on the flat the other side of the river.’

‘Go down! go down!’ Mr. Dunborough answered. ‘And pump him, man! Set him talking. I believe we have run the old fox to earth. It will be our fault if we don’t find the vixen!’

CHAPTER XXXII

CHANCE MEDLEY

By this time the arrival of a second pair of travellers hard on the heels of the first had roused the inn to full activity. Half-dressed servants flitted this way and that through the narrow passages, setting night-caps in the chambers, or bringing up clean snuffers and snuff trays. One was away to the buttery, to draw ale for the driver, another to the kitchen with William’s orders to the cook. Lights began to shine in the hall and behind the diamond panes of the low-browed windows; a pleasant hum, a subdued bustle, filled the hospitable house.

On entering the Yarmouth, however, the landlord was surprised to find only the clergyman awaiting him. Mr. Pomeroy, irritated by his long absence, had gone to the stables to learn what he could from the postboy. The landlord was nearer indeed than he knew to finding no one; for when he entered, Mr. Thomasson, unable to suppress his fears, was on his feet; another ten seconds, and the tutor would have fled panic-stricken from the house.

The host did not suspect this, but Mr. Thomasson thought he did; and the thought added to his confusion. ‘I–I was coming to ask what had happened to you,’ he stammered. ‘You will understand, I am very anxious to get news.’

‘To be sure, sir,’ the landlord answered comfortably. ‘Will you step this way, and I think we shall be able to ascertain something for certain?’

But the tutor did not like his tone; moreover, he felt safer in the room than in the public hall. He shrank back. ‘I–I think I will wait here until Mr. Pomeroy returns,’ he said.

The landlord raised his eyebrows. ‘I thought you were anxious, sir,’ he retorted, ‘to get news?’

‘So I am, very anxious!’ Mr. Thomasson replied, with a touch of the stiffness that marked his manner to those below him. ‘Still, I think I had better wait here. Or, no, no!’ he cried, afraid to stand out, ‘I will come with you. But, you see, if she is not here, I am anxious to go in search of her as quickly as possible, where–wherever she is.’

‘To be sure, that is natural,’ the landlord answered, holding the door open that the clergyman might pass out, ‘seeing that you are her father, sir. I think you said you were her father?’ he continued, as Mr. Thomasson, with a scared look round the hall, emerged from the room.

‘Ye–yes,’ the tutor faltered; and wished himself in the street. ‘At least–I am her step-father.’

‘Oh, her step-father!’

‘Yes,’ Mr. Thomasson answered, faintly. How he cursed the folly that had put him in this false position! How much more strongly he would have cursed it, had he known what it was cast that dark shadow, as of a lurking man, on the upper part of the stairs!

‘Just so,’ the landlord answered, as he paused at the foot of the staircase. ‘And, if you please–what might your name be, sir?’

A cold sweat rose on the tutor’s brow; he looked helplessly towards the door. If he gave his name and the matter were followed up, he would be traced, and it was impossible to say what might not come of it. At last, ‘Mr. Thomas,’ he said, with a sneaking guilty look.

‘Mr. Thomas, your reverence?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the young lady’s name would be Thomas, then?’

‘N-no,’ Mr. Thomasson faltered. ‘No. Her name–you see,’ he continued, with a sickly smile, ‘she is my step-daughter.’

‘To be sure, your reverence. So I understood. And her name?’

The tutor glowered at his persecutor. ‘I protest, you are monstrous inquisitive,’ he said, with a sudden sorry air of offence. ‘But, if you must know, her name is Masterson; and she has left her friends to join–to join a–an Irish adventurer.’

It was unfortunately said; the more as the tutor in order to keep his eye on the door, by which he expected Mr. Pomeroy to re-enter, had turned his back on the staircase. The lie was scarcely off his lips when a heavy hand fell on his shoulder, and, twisting him round with a jerk, brought him face to face with an old friend. The tutor’s eyes met those of Mr. Dunborough, he uttered one low shriek, and turned as white as paper. He knew that Nemesis had overtaken him.

But not how heavy a Nemesis! For he could not know that the landlord of the Angel owned a restive colt, and no farther back than the last fair had bought a new whip; nor that that very whip lay at this moment where the landlord had dropped it, on a chest so near to Mr. Dunborough’s hand that the tutor never knew how he became possessed of it. Only he saw it imminent, and would have fallen in sheer terror, his coward’s knees giving way under him, if Mr. Dunborough had not driven him back against the wall with a violence that jarred the teeth in his head.

‘You liar!’ the infuriated listener cried; ‘you lying toad!’ and shook him afresh with each sentence. ‘She has run away from her friends, has she? With an Irish adventurer, eh? And you are her father? And your name is Thomas? Thomas, eh! Well, if you do not this instant tell me where she is, I’ll Thomas you! Now, come! One! Two! Three!’

In the last words seemed a faint promise of mercy; alas! it was fallacious. Mr. Thomasson, the lash impending over him, had time to utter one cry; no more. Then the landlord’s supple cutting-whip, wielded by a vigorous hand, wound round the tenderest part of his legs–for at the critical instant Mr. Dunborough dragged him from the wall–and with a gasping shriek of pain, pain such as he had not felt since boyhood, Mr. Thomasson leapt into the air. As soon as his breath returned, he strove frantically to throw himself down; but struggle as he might, pour forth screams, prayers, execrations, as he might, all was vain. The hour of requital had come. The cruel lash fell again and again, raising great wheals on his pampered body: now he clutched Mr. Dunborough’s arm only to be shaken off; now he grovelled on the floor; now he was plucked up again, now an ill-directed cut marked his cheek. Twice the landlord, in pity and fear for the man’s life, tried to catch Mr. Dunborough’s arm and stay the punishment; once William did the same–for ten seconds of this had filled the hall with staring servants. But Mr. Dunborough’s arm and the whirling whip kept all at a distance; nor was it until a tender-hearted housemaid ran in at risk of her beauty, and clutched his wrist and hung on it, that he tossed the whip away, and allowed Mr. Thomasson to drop, a limp moaning rag on the floor.

‘For shame!’ the girl cried hysterically. ‘You blackguard! You cruel blackguard!’

”Tis he’s the blackguard, my dear!’ the honourable Mr. Dunborough answered, panting, but in the best of tempers. ‘Bring me a tankard of something; and put that rubbish outside, landlord. He has got no more than he deserved, my dear.’

Mr. Thomasson uttered a moan, and one of the waiters stooping over him asked him if he could stand. He answered only by a faint groan, and the man raising his eyebrows, looked gravely at the landlord; who, recovered from the astonishment into which the fury and suddenness of the assault had thrown him, turned his indignation on Mr. Dunborough.

‘I am surprised at you, sir,’ he cried, rubbing his hands with vexation. ‘I did not think a gentleman in Sir George’s company would act like this! And in a respectable house! For shame, sir! For shame! Do, some of you,’ he continued to the servants, ‘take this gentleman to his room and put him to bed. And softly with him, do you hear?’

‘I think he has swooned,’ the man answered, who had stooped over him.

The landlord wrung his hands. ‘Fie, sir–for shame!’ he said. ‘Stay, Charles; I’ll fetch some brandy.’

He bustled away to do so, and to acquaint Sir George; who through all, and though from his open door he had gathered what was happening, had resolutely held aloof. The landlord, as he went out, unconsciously evaded Mr. Pomeroy who entered at the same moment from the street. Ignorant of what was forward–for his companion’s cries had not reached the stables–Pomeroy advanced at his ease and was surprised to find the hall, which he had left empty, occupied by a chattering crowd of half-dressed servants; some bending over the prostrate man with lights, some muttering their pity or suggesting remedies; while others again glanced askance at the victor, who, out of bravado rather than for any better reason, maintained his place at the foot of the stairs, and now and then called to them ‘to rub him–they would not rub that off!’

Mr. Pomeroy did not at first see the fallen man, so thick was the press round him. Then some one moved, and he did; and the thing that had happened bursting on him, his face, gloomy before, grew black as a thunder-cloud. He flung the nearest to either side, that he might see the better; and, as they recoiled, ‘Who has done this?’ he cried in a voice low but harsh with rage. ‘Whose work is this?’ And standing over the tutor he turned himself, looking from one to another.

But the servants knew his reputation, and shrank panic-stricken from his eye; and for a moment no one answered. Then Mr. Dunborough, who, whatever his faults, was not a coward, took the word. ‘Whose work is it?’ he answered with assumed carelessness. ‘It is my work. Have you any fault to find with it?’

‘Twenty, puppy!’ the elder man retorted, foaming with rage. And then, ‘Have I said enough, or do you want me to say more?’ he cried.

‘Quite enough,’ Mr. Dunborough answered calmly. He had wreaked the worst of his rage on the unlucky tutor. ‘When you are sober I’ll talk to you.’

Mr. Pomeroy with a frightful oath cursed his impudence. ‘I believe I have to pay you for more than this!’ he panted. ‘Is it you who decoyed a girl from my house to-night?’

Mr. Dunborough laughed aloud. ‘No, but it was I sent her there,’ he said. He had the advantage of knowledge. ‘And if I had brought her away again, it would have been nothing to you.’

The answer staggered Bully Pomeroy in the midst of his rage.

‘Who are you?’ he cried.

‘Ask your friend there!’ Dunborough retorted with disdain. ‘I’ve written my name on him! It should be pretty plain to read’; and he turned on his heel to go upstairs.

Pomeroy took two steps forward, laid his hand on the other’s shoulder, and, big man as he was, turned him round. ‘Will you give me satisfaction?’ he cried.

Dunborough’s eyes met his. ‘So that is your tone, is it?’ he said slowly; and he reached for the tankard of ale that had been brought to him, and that now stood on a chest at the foot of the stairs.

But Mr. Pomeroy’s hand was on the pot first; in a second its contents were in Dunborough’s face and dripping from his cravat. ‘Now will you fight?’ Bully Pomeroy cried; and as if he knew his man, and that he had done enough, he turned his back on the stairs and strode first into the Yarmouth.

Two or three women screamed as they saw the liquor thrown, and a waiter ran for the landlord. A second drawer, more courageous, cried, ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen–for God’s sake, gentlemen!’ and threw himself between the younger man and the door of the room. But Dunborough, his face flushed with anger, took him by the shoulder, and sent him spinning; then with an oath he followed the other into the Yarmouth, and slammed the door in the faces of the crowd. They heard the key turned.

‘My God!’ the waiter who had interfered cried, his face white, ‘there will be murder done!’ And he sped away for the kitchen poker that he might break in the door. He had known such a case before. Another ran to seek the gentleman upstairs. The others drew round the door and stooped to listen; a moment, and the sound they feared reached their ears–the grinding of steel, the trampling of leaping feet, now a yell and now a taunting laugh. The sounds were too much for one of the men who heard them: he beat on the door with his fists. ‘Gentlemen!’ he cried, his voice quavering, ‘for the Lord’s sake don’t, gentlemen! Don’t!’ On which one of the women who had shrieked fell on the floor in wild hysterics.

That brought to a pitch the horror without the room, where lights shone on frightened faces and huddled forms. In the height of it the landlord and Sir George appeared. The woman’s screams were so violent that it was rather from the attitude of the group about the door than from anything they could hear that the two took in the position. The instant they did so Sir George signed to the servants to stand aside, and drew back to hurl himself against the door. A cry that the poker was come, and that with this they could burst the lock with ease, stayed him just in time–and fortunately; for as they went to adjust the point of the tool between the lock and the jamb the nearest man cried ‘Hush!’ and raised his hand, the door creaked, and in a moment opened inwards. On the threshold, supporting himself by the door, stood Mr. Dunborough, his face damp and pale, his eyes furtive and full of a strange horror. He looked at Sir George.

‘He’s got it!’ he muttered in a hoarse whisper. ‘You had better–get a surgeon. You’ll bear me out,’ he continued, looking round eagerly, ‘he began it. He flung it in my face. By God–it may go near to hanging me!’

Sir George and the landlord pushed by him and went in. The room was lighted by one candle, burning smokily on the high mantelshelf; the other lay overturned and extinguished in the folds of a tablecloth which had been dragged to the floor. On a wooden chair beside the bare table sat Mr. Pomeroy, huddled chin to breast, his left hand pressed to his side, his right still resting on the hilt of his small-sword. His face was the colour of chalk, and a little froth stood on his lips; but his eyes, turned slightly upwards, still followed his rival with a grim fixed stare. Sir George marked the crimson stain on his lips, and raising his hand for silence–for the servants were beginning to crowd in with exclamations of horror–knelt down beside the chair, ready to support him in case of need. “They are fetching a surgeon,” he said. “He will be here in a minute.”

Mr. Pomeroy’s eyes left the door, through which Dunborough had disappeared, and for a few seconds they dwelt unwinking on Sir George: but for a while he said nothing. At length, “Too late,” he whispered. “It was my boots–I slipped, or I’d have gone through him. I’m done. Pay Tamplin–five pounds I owe him.”

Soane saw that it was only a matter of minutes, and he signed to the landlord, who was beginning to lament, to be silent.

“If you can tell me where the girl is–in two words,” he said gently, “will you try to do so?”

The dying man’s eyes roved over the ring of faces. “I don’t know,” he whispered, so faintly that Soane had to bring his ear very near his lips. “The parson–was to have got her to Tamplin’s–for me. He put her in the wrong carriage. He’s paid. And–I’m paid.”

With the last word the small-sword fell clinking to the floor. The dying man drew himself up, and seemed to press his hand more and more tightly to his side. For a brief second a look of horror–as if the consciousness of his position dawned on his brain–awoke in his eyes. Then he beat it down. “Tamplin’s staunch,” he muttered. “I must stand by Tamplin. I owe–pay him five pounds for–“

A gush of blood stopped his utterance. He gasped and with a groan but no articulate word fell forward in Soane’s arms. Bully Pomeroy had lost his last stake!

Not this time the spare thousands the old squire, good saving man, had left on bond and mortgage; not this time the copious thousands he had raised himself for spendthrift uses: nor the old oaks his great-grand-sire had planted to celebrate His Majesty’s glorious Restoration: nor the Lelys and Knellers that great-grand-sire’s son, shrewd old connoisseur, commissioned: not this time the few hundreds hardly squeezed of late from charge and jointure, or wrung from the unwilling hands of friends–but life; life, and who shall say what besides life!

CHAPTER XXXIII

IN THE CARRIAGE

Mr. Thomasson was mistaken in supposing that it was the jerk, caused by the horses’ start, which drew from Julia the scream he heard as the carriage bounded forward and whirled into the night. The girl, indeed, was in no mood to be lightly scared; she had gone through too much. But as, believing herself alone, she sank back on the seat–at the moment that the horses plunged forward–her hand, extended to save herself, touched another hand: and the sudden contact in the dark, conveying to her the certainty that she had a companion, with all the possibilities the fact conjured up, more than excused an involuntary cry.

The answer, as she recoiled, expecting the worst, was a sound between a sigh and a grunt; followed by silence. The coachman had got the horses in hand again, and was driving slowly; perhaps he expected to be stopped. She sat as far into her corner as she could, listening and staring, enraged rather than frightened. The lamps shed no light into the interior of the carriage, she had to trust entirely to her ears; and, gradually, while she sat shuddering, awaiting she knew not what, there stole on her senses, mingling with the roll of the wheels, a sound the least expected in the world–a snore!

Irritated, puzzled, she stretched out a hand and touched a sleeve, a man’s sleeve; and at that, remembering how she had sat and wasted fears on Mr. Thomasson before she knew who he was, she gave herself entirely to anger. ‘Who is it?’ she cried sharply. ‘What are you doing here?’

The snoring ceased, the man turned himself in his corner. ‘Are we there?’ he murmured drowsily; and, before she could answer, was asleep again.

The absurdity of the position pricked her. Was she always to be travelling in dark carriages beside men who mocked her? In her impatience she shook the man violently. ‘Who are you? What are you doing here?’ she cried again.

The unseen roused himself. ‘Eh?’ he exclaimed. ‘Who–who spoke? I–oh, dear, dear, I must have been dreaming. I thought I heard–‘

‘Mr. Fishwick!’ she cried; her voice breaking between tears and laughter. ‘Mr. Fishwick!’ And she stretched out her hands, and found his, and shook and held them in her joy.

The lawyer heard and felt; but, newly roused from sleep, unable to see her, unable to understand how she came to be by his side in the post-chaise, he shrank from her. He was dumbfounded. His mind ran on ghosts and voices; and he was not to be satisfied until he had stopped the carriage, and with trembling fingers brought a lamp, that he might see her with his eyes. That done, the little attorney fairly wept for joy.

‘That I should be the one to find you!’ he cried. ‘That I should be the one to bring you back! Even now I can hardly believe that you are here! Where have you been, child? Lord bless us, we have seen strange things!’

‘It was Mr. Dunborough!’ she cried with indignation.

‘I know, I know,’ he said. ‘He is behind with Sir George Soane. Sir George and I followed you. We met him, and Sir George compelled him to accompany us.’

‘Compelled him?’ she said.

‘Ay, with a pistol to his head,’ the lawyer answered; and chuckled and leapt in his seat–for he had re-entered the carriage–at the remembrance. ‘Oh, Lord, I declare I have lived a year in the last two days. And to think that I should be the one to bring you back!’ he repeated. ‘To bring you back! But there, what happened to you? I know that they set you down in the road. We learned that at Bristol this afternoon from the villains who carried you off.’

She told him how they had found. Mr. Pomeroy’s house, and taken shelter there, and–

‘You have been there until now?’ he said in amazement. ‘At a gentleman’s house? But did you not think, child, that we should be anxious? Were there no horses? No servants? Didn’t you think of sending word to Marlborough?’

‘He was a villain,’ she answered, shuddering. Brave as she was, Mr. Pomeroy had succeeded in frightening her. ‘He would not let me go. And if Mr. Thomasson had not stolen the key of the room and released me, and brought me to the gate to-night, and put me in with you–‘

‘But how did he know that I was passing?’ Mr. Fishwick cried, thrusting back his wig and rubbing his head in perplexity. He could not yet believe that it was chance and only chance had brought them together.

And she was equally ignorant. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘He only told me–that he would have a carriage waiting at the gate.’

‘And why did he not come with you?’

‘He said–I think he said he was under obligations to Mr. Pomeroy.’

‘Pomeroy? Pomeroy?’ the lawyer repeated slowly. ‘But sure, my dear, if he was a villain, still, having the clergyman with you you should have been safe. This Mr. Pomeroy was not in the same case as Mr. Dunborough. He could not have been deep in love after knowing you a dozen hours.’

‘I think,’ she said, but mechanically, as if her mind ran on something else, ‘that he knew who I was, and wished to make me marry him.’

‘Who you were!’ Mr. Fishwick repeated; and–and he groaned.

The sudden check was strange, and Julia should have remarked it. But she did not; and after a short silence, ‘How could he know?’ Mr. Fishwick asked faintly.

‘I don’t know,’ she answered, in the same absent manner. Then with an effort which was apparent in her tone, ‘Lord Almeric Doyley was there,’ she said. ‘He was there too.’

‘Ah!’ the lawyer replied, accepting the fact with remarkable apathy. Perhaps his thoughts also were far away. ‘He was there, was he?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He was there, and he–‘ then, in a changed tone, ‘Did you say that Sir George was behind us?’

‘He should be,’ he answered; and, occupied as she was with her own trouble, she was struck with the gloom of the attorney’s tone. ‘We settled,’ he continued, ‘as soon as we learned where the men had left you, that I should start for Calne and make inquiries there, and they should start an hour later for Chippenham and do the same there. Which reminds me that we should be nearing Calne. You would like to rest there?’

‘I would rather go forward to Marlborough,’ she answered feverishly, ‘if you could send to Chippenham to tell them I am safe? I would rather go back at once, and quietly.’

‘To be sure,’ he said, patting her hand. ‘To be sure, to be sure,’ he repeated, his voice shaking as if he wrestled with some emotion. ‘You’ll he glad to be with–with your mother.’

Julia wondered a little at his tone, but in the main he had described her feelings. She had gone through so many things that, courageous as she was, she longed for rest and a little time to think. She assented in silence therefore, and, wonderful to relate, he fell silent too, and remained so until they reached Calne. There the inn was roused; a messenger was despatched to Chippenham; and while a relay of horses was prepared he made her enter the house and eat and drink. Had he stayed at that, and preserved when he re-entered the carriage the discreet silence he had maintained before, it is probable that she would have fallen asleep in sheer weariness, and deferred to the calmer hours of the morning the problem that occupied her. But as they settled themselves in their corners, and the carriage rolled out of the town, the attorney muttered that he did not doubt Sir George would be at Marlborough to breakfast. This set the girl’s mind running. She moved restlessly, and presently, ‘When did you hear what had happened to me?’ she asked.

‘A few minutes after you were carried off,’ he answered; ‘but until Sir George appeared, a quarter of an hour later, nothing was done.’

‘And he started in pursuit?’ To hear it gave her a delicious thrill between pain and pleasure.

‘Well, at first, to confess the truth,’ Mr. Fishwick answered humbly, ‘I thought it was his doing, and–‘

‘You did?’ she cried in surprise.

‘Yes, I did; even I did. And until we met Mr. Dunborough, and Sir George got the truth from him–I had no certainty. More shame to me!’

She bit her lips to keep back the confession that rose to them, and for a little while was silent. Then, to his astonishment, ‘Will he ever forgive me?’ she cried, her voice tremulous. ‘How shall I tell him? I was mad–I must have been mad.’

‘My dear child,’ the attorney answered in alarm, ‘compose yourself. What is it? What is the matter?’

‘I, too thought it was he! I, even I. I thought that he wanted to rid himself of me,’ she cried, pouring forth her confession in shame and abasement. ‘There! I can hardly bear to tell you in the dark, and how shall I tell him in the light?’

‘Tut-tut!’ Mr. Fishwick answered. ‘What need to tell any one? Thoughts are free.’

‘Oh, but’–she laughed hysterically–‘I was not free, and I–what do you think I did?’ She was growing more and more excited.

‘Tut-tut!’ the lawyer said. ‘What matter?’

‘I promised–to marry some one else.’

‘Good Lord!’ he said. The words were forced from him.

‘Some one else!’ she repeated. ‘I was asked to be my lady, and it tempted me! Think! It tempted me,’ she continued with a second laugh, bitterly contemptuous. ‘Oh, what a worm–what a thing I am! It tempted me. To be my lady, and to have my jewels, and to go to Ranelagh and the masquerades! To have my box at the King’s House and my frolic in the pit! And my woman as ugly as I liked–if he might have my lips! Think of it, think of it! That anyone should be so low! Or no, no, no!’ she cried in a different tone. ‘Don’t believe me! I am not that! I am not so vile! But I thought he had tricked me, I thought he had cheated me, I thought that this was his work, and I was mad! I think I was mad!’

‘Dear, dear,’ Mr. Fishwick said rubbing his head. His tone was sympathetic; yet, strange to relate, there was no real smack of sorrow in it. Nay, an acute ear might have caught a note of relief, of hope, almost of eagerness. ‘Dear, dear, to be sure!’ he continued; ‘I suppose–it was Lord Almeric Doyley, the nobleman I saw at Oxford?’

‘Yes!’

‘And you don’t know what to do, child?’

‘To do?’ she exclaimed.

‘Which–I mean which you shall accept. Really,’ Mr. Fishwick continued, his brain succumbing to a kind of vertigo as he caught himself balancing the pretensions of Sir George and Lord Almeric, ‘it is a very remarkable position for any young lady to enjoy, however born. Such a choice–‘

‘Choice!’ she cried fiercely, out of the darkness. ‘There is no choice. Don’t you understand? I told him No, no, no, a thousand times No!’

Mr. Fishwick sighed. ‘But I understood you to say,’ he answered meekly, ‘that you did not know what to do.’

‘How to tell Sir George! How to tell him.’

Mr. Fishwick was silent a moment. Then he said earnestly, ‘I would not tell him. Take my advice, child. No harm has been done. You said No to the other.’

‘I said Yes,’ she retorted.

‘But I thought–‘

‘And then I said No,’ she cried, between tears and foolish laughter. ‘Cannot you understand?’

Mr. Fishwick could not; but, ‘Anyway, do not tell him,’ he said. ‘There is no need, and before marriage men think much of that at which they laugh afterwards.’

‘And much of a woman of whom they think nothing afterwards,’ she answered.

‘Yet do not tell him,’ he pleaded. From the sound of his voice she knew that he was leaning forward. ‘Or at least wait. Take the advice of one older than you, who knows the world, and wait.’

‘And talk to him, listen to him, smile on his suit with a lie in my heart? Never?’ she cried. Then with a new strange pride, a faint touch of stateliness in her tone, ‘You forget who I am, Mr. Fishwick,’ she said. ‘I am as much a Soane as he is, and it becomes me to–to remember that. Believe me, I would far rather resign all hope of entering his house, though I love him, than enter it with a secret in my heart.’

Mr. Fishwick groaned. He told himself that this would be the last straw. This would give Sir George the handle he needed. She would never enter that house.

‘I have not been true to him,’ she said. ‘But I will be true now.’

‘The truth is–is very costly,’ Mr. Fishwick murmured almost under his breath. ‘I don’t know that poor people can always afford it, child.’

‘For shame!’ she cried hotly. ‘For shame! But there,’ she continued, ‘I know you do not mean it. I know that what you bid me do you would not do yourself. Would you have sold my cause, would you have hidden the truth for thousands? If Sir George had come to you to bribe you, would you have taken anything? Any sum, however large? I know you would not. My life on it, you would not. You are an honest man,’ she cried warmly.

The honest man was silent awhile. Presently he looked out of the carriage. The moon had risen over Savernake; by its light he saw that they were passing Manton village. In the vale on the right the tower of Preshute Church, lifting its head from a dark bower of trees, spoke a solemn language, seconding hers. ‘God bless you!’ he said in a low voice. ‘God bless you.’

A minute later the horses swerved to the right, and half a dozen lights keeping vigil in the Castle Inn gleamed out along the dark front. The post-chaise rolled across the open, and drew up before the door. Julia’s strange journey was over. Its stages, sombre in the retrospect, rose before her as she stepped from the carriage: yet, had she known all, the memories at which she shuddered would have worn a darker hue. But it was not until a late hour of the following morning that even the lawyer heard what had happened at Chippenham.

CHAPTEK XXXIV

BAD NEWS

The attorney entered the Mastersons’ room a little before eleven next morning; Julia was there, and Mrs. Masterson. The latter on seeing him held up her hands in dismay. ‘Lord’s wakes, Mr. Fishwick!’ the good woman cried, ‘why, you are the ghost of yourself! Adventuring does not suit you, that’s certain. But I don’t wonder. I am sure I have not slept a wink these three nights that I have not dreamt of Bessy Canning and that horrid old Squires; which, she did it without a doubt. Don’t go to say you’ve bad news this morning.’

Certain it was that Mr. Fishwick looked woefully depressed. The night’s sleep, which had restored the roses to Julia’s cheeks and the light to her eyes, had done nothing for him; or perhaps he had not slept. His eyes avoided the girl’s look of inquiry. ‘I’ve no news this morning,’ he said awkwardly. ‘And yet I have news.’

‘Bad?’ the girl said, nodding her comprehension; and her colour slowly faded.

‘Bad,’ he said gravely, looking down at the table.

Julia took her fostermother’s hand in hers, and patted it; they were sitting side by side. The elder woman, whose face was still furrowed by the tears she had shed in her bereavement, began to tremble. ‘Tell us,’ the girl said bravely. ‘What is it?’

‘God help me,’ Mr. Fishwick answered, his face quivering. ‘I don’t know how I shall tell you. I don’t indeed. But I must.’ Then, in a voice harsh with pain, ‘Child, I have made a mistake,’ he cried. ‘I am wrong, I was wrong, I have been wrong from the beginning. God help me! And God help us all!’

The elder woman broke into frightened weeping. The younger grew pale and paler: grew presently white to the lips. Still her eyes met his, and did not flinch. ‘Is it–about our case?’ she whispered.

‘Yes! Oh, my dear, will you ever forgive me?’

‘About my birth?’

He nodded.

‘I am not Julia Soane? Is that it?’

He nodded again.

‘Not a Soane–at all?’

‘No; God forgive me, no!’

She continued to hold the weeping woman’s hand in hers, and to look at him; but for a long minute she seemed not even to breathe. Then in a voice that, notwithstanding the effort she made, sounded harsh in his ears, ‘Tell me all,’ she muttered. ‘I suppose–you have found something!’

‘I have,’ he said. He looked old, and worn, and shabby; and was at once the surest and the saddest corroboration of his own tidings. ‘Two days ago I found, by accident, in a church at Bristol, the death certificate of the–of the child.’

‘Julia Soane?’

‘Yes.’

‘But then–who am I?’ she asked, her eyes growing wild: the world was turning, turning with her.

‘Her husband,’ he answered, nodding towards Mrs. Masterson, ‘adopted a child in place of the dead one, and said nothing. Whether he intended to pass it off for the child entrusted to him, I don’t know. He never made any attempt to do so. Perhaps,’ the lawyer continued drearily, ‘he had it in his mind, and when the time came his heart failed him.’

‘And I am that child?’

Mr. Fishwick looked away guiltily, passing his tongue over his lips. He was the picture of shame and remorse.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Your father and mother were French. He was a teacher of French at Bristol, his wife French from Canterbury. No relations are known.’

‘My name?’ she asked, smiling piteously.

‘Pare,’ he said, spelling it. And he added, ‘They call it Parry.’

She looked round the room in a kind of terror, not unmixed with wonder. To that room they had retired to review their plans on their first arrival at the Castle Inn–when all smiled on them. Thither they had fled for refuge after the brush with Lady Dunborough and the rencontre with Sir George. To that room she had betaken herself in the first flush and triumph of Sir George’s suit; and there, surrounded by the same objects on which she now gazed, she had sat, rapt in rosy visions, through the livelong day preceding her abduction. Then she had been a gentlewoman, an heiress, the bride in prospect of a gallant gentleman. Now?

What wonder that, as she looked round in dumb misery, recognising these things, her eyes grew wild again; or that the shrinking lawyer expected an outburst. It came, but from another quarter. The old woman rose and trembling pointed a palsied finger at him. ‘Yo’ eat your words!’ she said. ‘Yo’ eat your words and seem to like them. But didn’t yo’ tell me no farther back than this day five weeks that the law was clear? Didn’t yo’ tell me it was certain? Yo’ tell me that!’

‘I did! God forgive me,’ Mr. Fishwick murmured from the depths of his abasement.

‘Didn’t yo’ tell me fifty times, and fifty times to that, that the case was clear?’ the old woman continued relentlessly. ‘That there were thousands and thousands to be had for the asking? And her right besides, that no one could cheat her of, no more than me of the things my man left me?’

‘I did, God forgive me!’ the lawyer said.

‘But yo’ did cheat me!’ she continued with quavering insistence, her withered face faintly pink. ‘Where is the home yo’ ha’ broken up? Where are the things my man left me? Where’s the bit that should ha’ kept me from the parish? Where’s the fifty-two pounds yo’ sold all for and ha’ spent on us, living where’s no place for us, at our betters’ table? Yo’ ha’ broken my heart! Yo’ ha’ laid up sorrow and suffering for the girl that is dearer to me than my heart. Yo’ ha’ done all that, and yo’ can come to me smoothly, and tell me yo’ ha’ made a mistake. Yo’ are a rogue, and, what maybe is worse, I mistrust me yo’ are a fool!’

‘Mother! mother!’ the girl cried.

‘He is a fool!’ the old woman repeated, eyeing him with a dreadful sternness. ‘Or he would ha’ kept his mistake to himself. Who knows of it? Or why should he be telling them? ‘Tis for them to find out, not for him! Yo’ call yourself a lawyer? Yo’ are a fool!’ And she sat down in a palsy of senile passion. ‘Yo’ are a fool! And yo’ ha’ ruined us!’

Mr. Fishwick groaned, but made no reply. He had not the spirit to defend himself. But Julia, as if all through which she had gone since the day of her reputed father’s death had led her to this point, only that she might show the stuff of which she was wrought, rose to the emergency.

‘Mother,’ she said firmly, her hand resting on the older woman’s shoulder, ‘you are wrong–you are quite wrong. He would have ruined us indeed, he would have ruined us hopelessly and for ever, if he had kept silence! He has never been so good a friend to us as he has shown himself to-day, and I thank him for his courage. And I honour him!’ She held out her hand to Mr. Fishwick, who having pressed it, his face working ominously, retired to the window.

‘But, my deary, what will yo’ do?’ Mrs. Masterson cried peevishly. ‘He ha’ ruined us!’

‘What I should have done if we had never made this mistake,’ Julia answered bravely; though her lips trembled and her face was white, and in her heart she knew that hers was but a mockery of courage, that must fail her the moment she was alone. ‘We are but fifty pounds worse than we were.’

‘Fifty pounds!’ the old woman cried aghast. ‘Yo’ talk easily of fifty pounds. And, Lord knows, it is soon spent here. But where will yo’ get another?’

‘Well, well,’ the girl answered patiently, ‘that is true. Yet we must make the best of it. Let us make the best of it,’ she continued, appealing to them bravely, yet with tears in her voice. ‘We are all losers together. Let us bear it together. I have lost most,’ she continued, her voice trembling. Fifty pounds? Oh, God! what was fifty pounds to what she had lost. ‘But perhaps I deserve it. I was too ready to leave you, mother. I was too ready to–to take up with new things and–and richer things, and forget those who had been kin to me and kind to me all my life. Perhaps this is my punishment. You have lost your all, but that we will get again. And our friend here–he, too, has lost.’

Mr. Fishwick, standing, dogged and downcast, by the window, did not say what he had lost, but his thoughts went to his old mother at Wallingford and the empty stocking, and the weekly letters he had sent her for a month past, letters full of his golden prospects, and the great case of Soane _v_. Soane, and the grand things that were to come of it. What a home-coming was now in store for him, his last guinea spent, his hopes wrecked, and Wallingford to be faced!

There was a brief silence. Mrs. Masterson sobbed querulously, or now and again uttered a wailing complaint: the other two stood sank in bitter retrospect. Presently, ‘What must we do?’ Julia asked in a faint voice.’ I mean, what step must we take? Will you let them know?’

‘I will see them,’ Mr. Fishwick answered, wincing at the note of pain in her voice. ‘I–I was sent for this morning, for twelve o’clock. It is a quarter to eleven now.’

She looked at him, startled, a spot of red in each cheek. ‘We must go away,’ she said hurriedly, ‘while we have money. Can we do better than return to Oxford?’

The attorney felt sure that at the worst Sir George would do something for her: that Mrs. Masterson need not lament for her fifty pounds. But he had the delicacy to ignore this. ‘I don’t know,’ he said mournfully. ‘I dare not advise. You’d be sorry, Miss Julia–any one would be sorry who knew what I have gone through. I’ve suffered–I can’t tell you what I have suffered–the last twenty-four hours! I shall never have any opinion of myself again. Never!’

Julia sighed. ‘We must cut a month out of our lives,’ she murmured. But it was something else she meant–a month out of her heart!

CHAPTER XXXV

DORMITAT HOMERUS

If Julia’s return in the middle of the night balked the curiosity of some who would fain have had her set down at the door that they might enjoy her confusion as she passed through the portico, it had the advantage, appreciated by others, of leaving room for conjecture. Before breakfast her return was known from, one end of the Castle Inn to the other; within half an hour a score had private information. Sir George had brought her back, after marrying her at Salisbury. The attorney had brought her back, and both were in custody, charged with stealing Sir George’s title-deeds. Mr. Thomasson had brought her back; he had wedded her at Calne, the reverend gentleman himself performing the ceremony with a curtain-ring at a quarter before midnight, in the presence of two chambermaids, in a room hung with drab moreen. Sir George’s servant had brought her back; he was the rogue in the play; it was Lady Harriet Wentworth and footman Sturgeon over again. She had come back in a Flemish hat and a white cloth Joseph with black facings; she had come back in her night-rail; she had come back in a tabby gauze, with a lace head and lappets. Nor were there wanting other rumours, of an after-dinner Wilkes-and-Lord-Sandwich flavour, which we refrain from detailing; but which the Castle Inn, after the mode of the eighteenth century, discussed with freedom in a mixed company.

Of all these reports and the excitement which they created in an assemblage weary of waiting on the great man’s recovery and in straits for entertainment, the attorney knew nothing until he set forth to keep the appointment in Lord Chatham’s apartments; which, long the object of desire, now set his teeth on edge. Nor need he have learned much of them then; for he had only to cross the lobby of the east wing, and was in view of the hall barely three seconds. But, unluckily, Lady Dunborough, cackling shrewishly with a kindred dowager, caught sight of him as he passed; and in a trice her old limbs bore her in pursuit. Mr. Fishwick heard his name called, had the weakness to turn, and too late found that he had fallen into the clutches of his ancient enemy.

The absence of her son’s name from the current rumours had relieved the Viscountess of her worst fears, and left her free to enjoy herself. Seeing his dismay, ‘La, man! I am not going to eat you!’ she cried; for the lawyer, nervous and profoundly dispirited, really shrank before her. ‘So you have brought back your fine madam, I hear? And made an honest woman of her!’

Mr. Fishwick glared at her, but did not answer.

‘I knew what would come of pushing out of your place, my lad!’ she continued, nodding complacently. ‘It wasn’t likely she’d behave herself. When the master is away the man will play, and the maid too. I mind me perfectly of the groom. A saucy fellow and a match for her; ’tis to be hoped he’ll beat some sense into her. Was she tied up at Calne?’

‘No!’ Mr. Fishwick blurted, wincing under her words; which hurt him a hundred times more sharply than if the girl had been what he had thought her. Then he might have laughed at the sneer and the spite that dictated it. Now–something like this all the world would say.

The Viscountess eyed him cunningly, her head on one side. ‘Was it at Salisbury, then?’ she cried. ‘Wherever ’twas. I hear she had need of haste. Or was it at Bristol? D’you hear me speak to you, man?’ she continued impatiently. ‘Out with it.’

‘At neither,’ he cried.

My lady’s eyes sparkled with rage. ‘Hoity-toity!’ she answered. ‘D’you say No to me in that fashion? I’ll thank you to mend your manners, Fishwick, and remember to whom you are speaking. Hark ye, sirrah, is she Sir George’s cousin or is she not?’

‘She is not, my lady,’ the attorney muttered miserably.

‘But she is married?’

‘No,’ he said; and with that, unable to bear more, he turned to fly.

She caught him by the sleeve. ‘Not married?’ she cried, grinning with ill-natured glee. ‘Not married? And been of three days with a man! Lord, ’tis a story as bald as Granby! She ought to be whipped, the hussy! Do you hear? She ought to the Roundhouse, and you with her, sirrah, for passing her of on us!’

But that was more than the attorney, his awe of the peerage notwithstanding, could put up with. ‘God forgive you!’ he cried. ‘God forgive you, ma’am, your hard heart!’

She was astonished. ‘You impudent fellow!’ she exclaimed. ‘What do you know of God? And how dare you name Him in the same breath with me? D’you think He’d have people of quality be Methodists and live as the like of you? God, indeed! Hang your impudence! I say, she should to the Roundhouse–and you, too, for a vagabond! And so you shall!’

The lawyer shook with rage. ‘The less your ladyship talks of the Roundhouse,’ he answered, his voice trembling, ‘the better! There’s one is in it now who may go farther and fare worse–to your sorrow, my lady!’

You rogue!’ she cried. ‘Do you threaten me?’

‘I threaten no one,’ he answered. ‘But your son, Mr. Dunborough, killed a man last night, and lies in custody at Chippenham at this very time! I say no more, my lady!’

He had said enough. My lady glared; then began to shake in her turn. Yet her spirit was not easily quelled; ‘You lie!’ she cried shrilly, the stick, with which she vainly strove to steady herself, rattling on the floor.’ Who dares to say that my son has killed a man?’

‘It is known,’ the attorney answered.

‘Who–who is it?’

‘Mr. Pomeroy of Bastwick, a gentleman living near Calne.’

‘In a duel! ‘Twas in a duel, you lying fool!’ she retorted hoarsely. ‘You are trying to scare me! Say ’twas in a duel and I–I’ll forgive you.’

‘They shut themselves up in a room, and there were no seconds,’ the lawyer answered, beginning to pity her. ‘I believe that Mr. Pomeroy gave the provocation, and that may bring your ladyship’s son off. But, on the other hand–‘

‘On the other hand, what? What?’ she muttered.

‘Mr. Dunborough had horsewhipped a man that was in the other’s company.’

‘A man?’

‘It was Mr. Thomasson.’

Her ladyship’s hands went up. Perhaps she remembered that but for her the tutor would not have been there. Then ‘Sink you! I wish he had flogged you all!’ she shrieked, and, turning stiffly, she went mumbling and cursing down the stairs, the lace lappets of her head trembling, and her gold-headed cane now thumping the floor, now waving uncertainly in the air.

* * * * *

A quarter of an hour earlier, in the apartments for which Mr. Fishwick was bound when her ladyship intercepted him, two men stood talking at a window. The room was the best in the Castle Inn–a lofty panelled chamber with a southern aspect looking upon the smooth sward and sweet-briar hedges of Lady Hertford’s terrace, and commanding beyond these a distant view of the wooded slopes of Savernake. The men spoke in subdued tones, and more than once looked towards the door of an adjacent room, as if they feared to disturb some one.

‘My dear Sir George,’ the elder said, after he had listened patiently to a lengthy relation, in the course of which he took snuff a dozen times, ‘your mind is quite made up, I suppose?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Well, it is a remarkable series of events; a–most remarkable series,’ Dr. Addington answered with professional gravity. ‘And certainly, if the lady is all you paint her–and she seems to set you young bloods on fire–no ending could well be more satisfactory. With the addition of a comfortable place in the Stamps or the Pipe Office, if we can take his lordship the right way–it should do. It should do handsomely. But’, with a keen glance at his companion, ‘even without that–you know that he is still far from well?’

‘I know that all the world is of one of two opinions,’ Sir George answered, smiling. ‘The first, that his lordship ails nothing save politically; the other, that he is at death’s door and will not have it known.’

The physician shrugged his shoulders contemptuously. ‘Neither is true,’ he said. ‘The simple fact is, he has the gout; and the gout is an odd thing, Sir George, as you’ll know one of these days,’ with another sharp glance at his companion. ‘It flies here and there, and everywhere.’

‘And where is it now?’ Soane asked innocently.

‘It has gone to his head,’ Addington answered, in a tone so studiously jejune that Sir George glanced at him. The doctor, however, appeared unaware of the look, and merely continued: ‘So, if he does not take things quite as you wish, Sir George, you’ll–but here his lordship comes!’

The doctor thought that he had sufficiently prepared Soane for a change in his patron’s appearance. Nevertheless, the younger man was greatly shocked when through the door, obsequiously opened–and held open while a man might count fifty, so that eye and mind grew expectant–the great statesman, the People’s Minister at length appeared. For the stooping figure that moved to a chair only by virtue of a servant’s arm, and seemed the taller for its feebleness, for dragging legs and shrunken, frame and features sharpened by illness and darkened by the great peruke it was the Earl’s fashion to wear, he was in a degree prepared. But for the languid expression of the face that had been so eloquent, for the lacklustre eyes and the dulness of mind that noticed little and heeded less, he was not prepared; and these were so marked and so unlike the great minister–

‘A daring pilot in extremity
Pleased with the danger when the waves went high’

–so unlike the man whose eagle gaze had fluttered Courts and imposed the law on Senates, that it was only the presence of Lady Chatham, who followed her lord, a book and cushion in her hands, that repressed the exclamation which rose to Sir George’s lips. So complete was the change indeed that, as far as the Earl was concerned, he might have uttered it! His lordship, led to the head of the table, sank without a word into the chair placed for him, and propping his elbow on the table and his head on his hand, groaned aloud.

Lady Chatham compressed her lips with evident annoyance as she took her stand behind her husband’s chair; it was plain from the glance she cast at Soane that she resented the presence of a witness. Even Dr. Addington, with his professional _sang-froid_ and his knowledge of the invalid’s actual state, was put out of countenance for a moment. Then he signed to Sir George to be silent, and to the servant to withdraw.

At last Lord Chatham spoke. ‘This business?’ he said in a hollow voice and without uncovering his eyes, ‘is it to be settled now?’

‘If your lordship pleases,’ the doctor answered in a subdued tone.

‘Sir George Soane is there?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sir George,’ the Earl said with an evident effort, ‘I am sorry I cannot receive you better.’

‘My lord, as it is I am deeply indebted to your kindness.’

‘Dagge finds no flaw in their case,’ Lord Chatham continued apathetically. ‘Her ladyship has read his report to me. If Sir George likes to contest the claim, it is his right.’

‘I do not propose to do so.’

Sir George had not this time subdued his voice to the doctor’s pitch; and the Earl, whose nerves seemed alive to the slightest sound, winced visibly. ‘That is your affair,’ he answered querulously. ‘At any rate the trustees do not propose to do so.’

Sir George, speaking with more caution, replied that he acquiesced; and then for a few seconds there was silence in the room, his lordship continuing to sit in the same attitude of profound melancholy, and the others to look at him with compassion, which they vainly strove to dissemble. At last, in a voice little above a whisper, the Earl asked if the man was there.

‘He waits your lordship’s pleasure,’ Dr. Addington answered. ‘But before he is admitted,’ the physician continued diffidently and with a manifest effort, ‘may I say a word, my lord, as to the position in which this places Sir George Soane?’

‘I was told this morning,’ Lord Chatham answered, in the same muffled tone, ‘that a match had been arranged between the parties, and that things would remain as they were. It seemed to me, sir, a prudent arrangement.’

Sir George was about to answer, but Dr. Addington made a sign to him to be silent. ‘That is so,’ the physician replied smoothly. ‘But your lordship is versed in Sir George Soane’s affairs, and knows that he must now go to his wife almost empty-handed. In these circumstances it has occurred rather to his friends than to himself, and indeed I speak against his will and by sufferance only, that–that, in a word, my lord–‘

Lord Chatham lowered his hand as Dr. Addington paused. A faint flush darkened his lean aquiline features, set a moment before in the mould of hopeless depression. ‘What?’ he said. And he raised himself sharply in his chair. ‘What has occurred to his friends?’

‘That some provision might be made for him, my lord.’

‘From the public purse?’ the Earl cried in a startling tone. ‘Is that your meaning, sir?’ And, with the look in his eyes which had been more dreaded by the Rigbys and Dodingtons of his party than the most scathing rebuke from the lips of another, he fixed the unlucky doctor where he stood. ‘Is that your proposal, sir?’ he repeated.

The physician saw too late that he had ventured farther than his interest would support him; and he quailed. On the other hand, it is possible he had been neither so confident before, nor was so entirely crushed now, as appeared. ‘Well, my lord, it did occur to me,’ he stammered, ‘as not inconsistent with the public welfare.’

‘The public welfare!’ the minister cried in biting accents. ‘The public plunder, sir, you mean! It were not inconsistent with that to quarter on the nation as many ruined gentlemen as you please! But you mistake if you bring the business to me to do–you mistake. I have dispersed thirteen millions of His Majesty’s money in a year, and would have spent as much again and as much to that, had the affairs of this nation required it; but the gentleman is wrong if he thinks it has gone to my friends. My hands are clean,’ his lordship continued with an expressive gesture. ‘I have said, in another place, none of it sticks to them. _Virtute me involvo_!’ And then, in a lower tone, but still with a note of austerity in his voice, M rejoice to think,’ he continued, ‘that the gentleman was not himself the author of this application. I rejoice to think that it did not come from him. These things have been done freely; it concerns me not to deny it; but since I had to do with His Majesty’s exchequer, less freely. And that only concerns me!’

Sir George Soane bit his lip. He felt keenly the humiliation of his position. But it was so evident that the Earl was not himself–so evident that the tirade to which he had just listened was one of those outbursts, noble in sentiment, but verging on the impracticable and the ostentatious, in which Lord Chatham was prone to indulge in his weaker moments, that he felt little inclination to resent it. Yet to let it pass unnoticed was impossible.

‘My lord,’ he said firmly, but with respect, ‘it is permitted to all to make an application which the custom of the time has sanctioned. That is the extent of my action–at the highest. The propriety of granting such requests is another matter and rests with your lordship. I have nothing to do with that.’

The Earl appeared to be as easily disarmed as he had been lightly aroused. ‘Good lad! good lad!’ he muttered. ‘Addington is a fool!’ Then drowsily, as his head sunk on his hand again, ‘The man may enter. I will tell him!’

CHAPTER XXXVI

THE ATTORNEY SPEAKS

It was into an atmosphere highly charged, therefore, in which the lightning had scarcely ceased to play, and might at any moment dart its fires anew, that Mr. Fishwick was introduced. The lawyer did not know this; yet it was to be expected that without that knowledge he would bear himself but ill in the company in which he now found himself. But the task which he had come to perform raised him above himself; moreover, there is a point of depression at which timidity ceases, and he had reached this point. Admitted by Dr. Addington, he looked round, bowed stiffly to the physician, and lowly and with humility to Lord Chatham and her ladyship; then, taking his stand at the foot of the table, he produced his papers with an air of modest self-possession.

Lord Chatham did not look up, but he saw what was passing. ‘We have no need of documents,’ he said in the frigid tone which marked his dealings with all save a very few. ‘Your client’s suit is allowed, sir, so far as the trustees are concerned. That is all it boots me to say.’

‘I humbly thank your lordship,’ the attorney answered, speaking with an air of propriety which surprised Sir George. ‘Yet I have with due submission to crave your lordship’s leave to say somewhat.’

‘There is no need,’ the Earl answered, ‘the claim being allowed, sir.’

‘It is on that point, my lord.’

The Earl, his eyes smouldering, looked his displeasure, but controlled himself. ‘What is it?’ he said irritably.

‘Some days ago, I made a singular discovery, my lord,’ the attorney answered sorrowfully. ‘I felt it necessary to communicate it to my client, and I am directed by her to convey it to your lordship and to all others concerned.’ And the lawyer bowed slightly to Sir George Soane.

Lord Chatham raised his head, and for the first time since the attorney’s entrance looked at him with a peevish attention. ‘If we are to go into this, Dagge should be here,’ he said impatiently. ‘Or your lawyer, Sir George.’ with a look as fretful in that direction. ‘Well, man, what is it?’

‘My lord,’ Mr. Fish wick answered, ‘I desire first to impress upon your lordship and Sir George Soane that this claim was set on foot in good faith on the part of my client, and on my part; and, as far as I was concerned, with no desire to promote useless litigation. That was the position up to Tuesday last, the day on which the lady was forcibly carried off. I repeat, my lord, that on that day I had no more doubt of the justice of our claim than I have to-day that the sky is above us. But on Wednesday I happened in a strange way–at Bristol, my lord, whither but for that abduction I might never have gone in my life–on a discovery, which by my client’s direction I am here to communicate.’

‘Do you mean, sir,’ the Earl said with sudden acumen, a note of keen surprise in his voice, ‘that you are here–to abandon your claim?’

‘My client’s claim,’ the attorney answered with a sorrowful look. ‘Yes, my lord, I am.’

For an instant there was profound silence in the room; the astonishment was as deep as it was general. At last, ‘are the papers which were submitted to Mr. Dagge–are they forgeries then?’ the Earl asked.

‘No, my lord; the papers are genuine,’ the attorney answered. ‘But my client, although the identification seemed to be complete, is not the person indicated in them.’ And succinctly, but with sufficient clearness, the attorney narrated his chance visit to the church, the discovery of the entry in the register, and the story told by the good woman at the ‘Golden Bee.’ ‘Your lordship will perceive,’ he concluded, ‘that, apart from the exchange of the children, the claim was good. The identification of the infant whom the porter presented to his wife with the child handed to him by his late master three weeks earlier seemed to be placed beyond doubt by every argument from probability. But the child was not the child,’ he added with a sigh. And, forgetting for the moment the presence in which he stood, Mr. Fishwick allowed the despondency he felt to appear in his face and figure.

There was a prolonged silence. ‘Sir!’ Lord Chatham said at last–Sir George Soane, with his eyes on the floor and a deep flush on his face, seemed to be thunderstruck by this sudden change of front–‘it appears to me that you are a very honest man! Yet let me ask you. Did it never occur to you to conceal the fact?’

‘Frankly, my lord, it did,’ the attorney answered gloomily, ‘for a day. Then I remembered a thing my father used to say to us, “Don’t put molasses in the punch!” And I was afraid.’

‘Don’t put molasses in the punch!’ his lordship ejaculated, with a lively expression of astonishment. ‘Are you mad, sir?’

‘No, my lord and gentlemen,’ Mr. Fishwick answered hurriedly.’ But it means–don’t help Providence, which can very well help itself. The thing was too big for me, my lord, and my client too honest. I thought, if it came out afterwards, the last state might be worse than the first. And–I could not see my way to keep it from her; and that is the truth,’ he added candidly.

The statesman nodded. Then,

‘_Dissimulare etiam sperasti, perfide tantum Posse nefas, tacitusque meam subducere terram_?’

he muttered in low yet sonorous tones.

Mr. Fishwick stared. ‘I beg your lordship’s pardon,’ he said. ‘I do not quite understand.’

‘There is no need. And that is the whole truth, sir, is it?’

‘Yes, my lord, it is.’

‘Very good. Very good,’ Lord Chatham replied, pushing away the papers which the attorney in the heat of his argument had thrust before him. ‘Then there is an end of the matter as far as the trustees are concerned. Sir George, you have nothing to say, I take it?’

‘No, I thank you, my lord–nothing here,’ Soane answered vaguely. His face continued to wear the dark flush which had overspread it a few minutes before. ‘This, I need not say, is an absolute surprise to me,’ he added.

‘Just so. It is an extraordinary story. Well, good-morning, sir,’ his lordship continued, addressing the attorney. ‘I believe you have done your duty. I believe you have behaved very honestly. You will hear from me.’

Mr. Fishwick knew that he was dismissed, but after a glance aside, which showed him Sir George standing in a brown study, he lingered. ‘If your lordship,’ he said desperately, ‘could see your way to do anything–for my client?’

‘For your client? Why?’ the Earl cried, with a sudden return of his gouty peevishness. ‘Why, sir–why?’

‘She has been drawn,’ the lawyer muttered ‘out of the position in which she lived, by an error, not her own, my lord.’

‘Yours!’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘And why drawn?’ the Earl continued regarding him severely. ‘I will tell you, sir. Because you were not content to await the result of investigation, but must needs thrust yourself in the public eye! You must needs assume a position before it was granted! No, sir, I allow you honest; I allow you to be well-meaning; but your conduct has been indiscreet, and your client must pay for it. Moreover, I am in the position of a trustee, and can do nothing. You may go, sir.’

After that Mr. Fishwick had no choice but to withdraw. He did so; and a moment later Sir George, after paying his respects, followed him. Dr. Addington was clear-sighted enough to fear that his friend had gone after the lawyer, and, as soon as he decently could, he went himself in pursuit. He was relieved to find Sir George alone, pacing the floor of the room they shared.

The physician took care to hide his real motive and his distrust of Soane’s discretion under a show of heartiness. ‘My dear Sir George, I congratulate you!’ he cried, shaking the other effusively by the hand. ‘Believe me, ’tis by far the completest way out of the difficulty; and though I am sorry for the–for the young lady, who seems to have behaved very honestly–well, time brings its repentances as well as its revenges. It is possible the match would have done tolerably well, assuming you to be equal in birth and fortune. But even then ’twas a risk; ’twas a risk, my dear sir! And now–‘

‘It is not to be thought of, I suppose?’ Sir George said; and he looked at the other interrogatively.

‘Good Lord, no!’ the physician answered. ‘No, no, no!’ he added weightily.

Sir George nodded, and, turning, looked thoughtfully through the window. His face still wore a flush. ‘Yet something must be done for her,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I can’t let her here, read that.’

Dr. Addington took the open letter the other handed to him, and, eyeing it with a frown while he fixed his glasses, afterwards proceeded to peruse it.

‘Sir,’ it ran–it was pitifully short–‘when I sought you I deemed myself other than I am. Were I to seek you now I should be other than I deem myself. We met abruptly, and can part after the same fashion. This from one who claims to be no more than your well-wisher.–JULIA.’

The doctor laid it down and took a pinch of snuff. ‘Good girl!’ he muttered. ‘Good girl. That–that confirms me. You must do something for her, Sir George. Has she–how did you get that, by the way?’

‘I found it on the table. I made inquiry, and heard that she left Marlboro’ an hour gone.’

‘For?’

‘I could not learn.’

‘Good girl! Good girl! Yes, certainly you must do something for her.’

‘You think so?’ Sir George said, with a sudden queer look at the doctor, ‘Even you?’

‘Even I! An allowance of–I was going to suggest fifty guineas a year,’ Dr. Addington continued impulsively. ‘Now, after reading that letter, I say a hundred. It is not too much, Sir George! ‘Fore Gad, it is not too much. But–‘

‘But what?’

The physician paused to take an elaborate pinch of snuff. ‘You’ll forgive me,’ he answered. ‘But before this about her birth came out, I fancied that you were doing, or going about to do the girl no good. Now, my dear Sir George, I am not strait-laced,’ the doctor continued, dusting the snuff from the lappets of his coat, ‘and I know very well what your friend, my Lord March, would do in the circumstances. And you have lived much, with him, and think yourself, I dare swear, no better. But you are, my dear sir–you are, though you may not know it. You are wondering what I am at? Inclined to take offence, eh? Well, she’s a good girl, Sir George’–he tapped the letter, which lay on the table beside him–‘too good for that! And you’ll not lay it on your conscience, I hope.’

‘I will not,’ Sir George said quietly.

‘Good lad!’ Dr. Addington muttered, in the tone Lord Chatham had used; for it is hard to be much with the great without trying on their shoes. ‘Good lad! Good lad!’

Soane did not appear to notice the tone. ‘You think an allowance of a hundred guineas enough?’ he said, and looked at the other.

‘I think it very handsome,’ the doctor answered. ‘D—-d handsome.’

‘Good!’ Sir George rejoined. ‘Then she shall have that allowance;’ and after staring awhile at the table he nodded assent to his thoughts and went out.

CHAPTER XXXVII

A HANDSOME ALLOWANCE

The physician might not have deemed his friend so sensible–or so insensible–had he known that the young man proposed to make the offer of that allowance in person. Nor to Sir George Soane himself, when he alighted five days later before The George Inn at Wallingford, did the offer seem the light and easy thing,

‘Of smiles and tears compact,’

it had appeared at Marlborough. He recalled old clashes of wit, and here and there a spark struck out between them, that, alighting on the flesh, had burned him. Meanwhile the arrival of so fine a gentleman, travelling in a post-chaise and four, drew a crowd about the inn. To give the idlers time to disperse, as well as to remove the stains of the road, he entered the house, and, having bespoken dinner and the best rooms, inquired the way to Mr. Fishwick the attorney’s. By this time his servant had blabbed his name; and the story of the duel at Oxford being known, with some faint savour of his fashion, the landlord was his most obedient, and would fain have guided his honour to the place cap in hand.

Rid of him, and informed that the house he sought was neighbour on the farther side, of the Three Tuns, near the bridge, Sir George strolled down the long clean street that leads past Blackstone’s Church, then in the building, to the river; Sinodun Hill and the Berkshire Downs, speaking evening peace, behind him. He paused before a dozen neat houses with brass knockers and painted shutters, and took each in turn for the lawyer’s. But when he came to the real Mr. Fishwick’s, and found it a mere cottage, white and decent, but no more than a cottage, he thought that he was mistaken. Then the name of ‘Mr. Peter Fishwick, Attorney-at-Law,’ not in the glory of brass, but painted in white letters on the green door, undeceived him; and, opening the wicket of the tiny garden, he knocked with the head of his cane on the door.

The appearance of a stately gentleman in a laced coat and a sword, waiting outside Fishwick’s, opened half the doors in the street; but not that one at which Sir George stood. He had to knock again and again before he heard voices whispering inside. At last a step came tapping down the bricked passage, a bolt was withdrawn, and an old woman, in a coarse brown dress and a starched mob, looked out. She betrayed no surprise on seeing so grand a gentleman, but told his honour, before he could speak, that the lawyer was not at home.

‘It is not Mr. Fishwick I want to see,’ Sir George answered civilly. Through the brick passage he had a glimpse, as through a funnel, of green leaves climbing on a tiny treillage, and of a broken urn on a scrap of sward. ‘You have a young lady staying here?’ he continued.

The old woman’s stiff grey eyebrows grew together. ‘No!’ she said sharply. ‘Nothing of the kind!’

‘A Miss Masterson.’

‘No’ she snapped, her face more and more forbidding. ‘We have no Misses here, and no baggages for fine gentlemen! You have come to the wrong house!’ And she tried to shut the door in his face.

He was puzzled and a little affronted; but he set his foot between the door and the post, and balked her. ‘One moment, my good woman,’ he said. ‘This is Mr. Fishwick’s, is it not?’

‘Ay, ’tis,’ she answered, breathing hard with indignation. ‘But if it is him your honour wants to see, you must come when he is at home. He is not at home to-day.’

‘I don’t want to see him,’ Sir George said. ‘I want to speak to the young lady who is staying here.’

‘And I tell you that there is no young lady staying here!’ she retorted wrathfully. ‘There is no soul in the house but me and my serving girl, and she’s at the wash-tub. It is more like the Three Tuns you want! There’s a flaunting gipsy-girl there if you like–but the less said about her the better.’

Sir George stood and stared at the woman. At last, on a sudden suspicion, ‘Is your servant from Oxford?’ he said.

She seemed to consider him before she answered. ‘Well, if she is?’ she said grudgingly. ‘What then?’

‘Is her name Masterson?’

Again she seemed to hesitate. At last, ‘May be and may be not!’ she snapped, with a sniff of contempt.

He saw that it was, and for an instant the hesitation was on his side. Then, ‘Let me come in!’ he said abruptly. ‘You are doing your son’s client little good by this!’ And when she had slowly and grudgingly made way for him to enter, and the door was shut behind him, ‘Where is she?’ he asked almost savagely. ‘Take me to her!’

The old dame muttered something unintelligible. Then, ‘She’s in the back part,’ she said, ‘but she’ll not wish to see you. Don’t blame me if she pins a clout to your skirts.’

Yet she moved aside, and the way lay open–down the brick passage. It must be confessed that for an instant, just one instant, Sir George wavered, his face hot; for the third part of a second the dread of the ridiculous, the temptation to turn and go as he had come were on him. Nor need he, for this, forfeit our sympathies, or cease to be a hero. It was the age, be it remembered, of the artificial. Nature, swathed in perukes and ruffles, powder and patches, and stifled under a hundred studied airs and grimaces, had much ado to breathe. Yet it did breathe; and Sir George, after that brief hesitation, did go on. Three steps carried him down the passage. Another, and the broken urn and tiny treillage brought him up short, but on the greensward, in the sunlight, with the air of heaven fanning his brow. The garden was a very duodecimo; a single glance showed him its whole extent–and Julia.

She was not at the wash-tub, as the old lady had said; but on her knees, scouring a step that led to a side-door, her drugget gown pinned up about her. She raised her head as he appeared, and met his gaze defiantly, her face flushing red with shame or some kindred feeling. He was struck by a strange likeness between her hard look and the frown with which the old woman at the door had received him; and this, or something in the misfit of her gown, or the glimpse he had of a stocking grotesquely fine in comparison of the stuff from which it peeped–or perhaps the cleanliness of the step she was scouring, since he seemed to instant, just one instant, Sir George wavered, his face hot; for the third part of a second the dread of the ridiculous, the temptation to turn and go as he had come were on him. Nor need he, for this, forfeit our sympathies, or cease to be a hero. It was the age, be it remembered, of the artificial. Nature, swathed in perukes and ruffles, powder and patches, and stifled under a hundred studied airs and grimaces, had much ado to breathe. Yet it did breathe; and Sir George, after that brief hesitation, did go on. Three steps carried him down the passage. Another, and the broken urn and tiny treillage brought him up short, but on the greensward, in the sunlight, with the air of heaven fanning his brow. The garden was a very duodecimo; a single glance showed him its whole extent–and Julia.

She was not at the wash-tub, as the old lady had said; but on her knees, scouring a step that led to a side-door, her drugget gown pinned up about her. She raised her head as he appeared, and met his gaze defiantly, her face flushing red with shame or some kindred feeling. He was struck by a strange likeness between her hard look and the frown with which the old woman at the door had received him; and this, or something in the misfit of her gown, or the glimpse he had of a stocking grotesquely fine in comparison of the stuff from which it peeped–or perhaps the cleanliness of the step she was scouring, since he seemed to see everything without looking at it–put an idea into his head. He checked the exclamation that sprang to his lips; and as she rose to her feet he saluted her with an easy smile. ‘I have found you, child,’ he said. ‘Did you think you had hidden yourself?’

She met his gaze sullenly. ‘You have found me to no purpose,’ she said. Her tone matched her look.

The look and the words together awoke an odd pang in his heart. He had seen her arch, pitiful, wrathful, contemptuous, even kind; but never sullen. The new mood gave him the measure of her heart; but his tone lost nothing of its airiness. ‘I hope not,’ he said, ‘for we think you have behaved vastly well in the matter, child. Remarkably well! And that, let me tell you, is not only my own sentiment, but the opinion of my friends who perfectly approve of the arrangement I have come to propose. You may accept it, therefore, without the least scruple.’

‘Arrangement?’ she muttered. Her cheeks, darkly red a moment before, began to fade.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I hope you will think it not ungenerous. It will rid you of the need to do this–sort of thing, and put you–put you in a comfortable position. Of course, you know,’ he continued in a tone of patronage, under which her heart burned if her cheeks did not, ‘that a good deal of water has run under the bridge since we talked in the garden at Marlborough? That things are changed.’

Her eyelids quivered under the cruel stroke. But her only answer was, ‘They are.’ Yet she wondered how and why; for if she had thought herself an heiress, he had not–then.

‘You admit it, I am sure?’ he persisted.

‘Yes,’ she answered resolutely.

‘And that to–to resume, in fact, the old terms would be–impossible,’

‘Quite impossible.’ Her tone was as hard as his was easy.

‘I thought so,’ Sir George continued complacently. ‘Still, I could not, of course, leave you here, child. As I have said, my friends think that something should be done for you; and I am only too happy to do it. I have consulted them, and we have talked the matter over. By the way,’ with a look round, ‘perhaps your mother should be here–Mrs. Masterson, I mean? Is she in the house?’

‘No,’ she answered, her face flaming scarlet; for pride had conquered pain. She hated him. Oh, how she hated him and the hideous dress which in her foolish dream–when, hearing him at the door, she had looked for something very different–she had hurriedly put on; and the loose tangle of hair which she had dragged with trembling fingers from its club so that it now hung sluttishly over her ear. She longed, as she had never longed before, to confront him in all her beauty; to be able to say to him, ‘Choose where you will, can you buy form or face like this?’ Instead she stood before him, prisoned in this shapeless dress, a slattern, a drab, a thing whereat to curl the lip.

‘Well, I am sorry she is not here,’ he resumed. ‘It would have given a–a kind of legality to the offer,’ he continued with an easy laugh. ‘To tell you the truth, the amount was not fixed by me, but by my friend, Dr. Addington, who interested himself in your behalf. He thought that an allowance of a hundred guineas a year, child, properly secured, would place you in comfort, and–and obviate all this,’ with a negligent wave of the hand that took in the garden and the half-scoured stone, ‘at the same time,’ he added, ‘that it would not be unworthy of the donor.’ And he bowed, smiling.

‘A hundred guineas?’ she said slowly. ‘A year?’

‘Yes.’

‘Properly secured?’

‘To be sure, child.’

‘On your word?’ with a sudden glance at him. ‘Of course, I could not ask better security! Surely, sir, there’s but one thing to be said. ‘Tis too generous, too handsome!’

‘Tut-tut!’ he answered, wondering at her way of taking it.