The Three Brides by Charlotte M. Yonge (page 7)

legs, in writing no one can see but Julius with his spectacles off, and set in a brooch as big as the top of a thimble, all done by a one-legged sergeant of marines. So that the line might not be out done, I offered my sergeant-major’s banner-screen, but I am sorry to say they declined it, which made me jealous.”

“Are there any drawings of the Reynolds’ boy?”

“Yes, Lenore Vivian brought them down, and very good they are. Every one says he has the making of a genius, but he does not look as if it agreed with him; he is grown tall, and thin, and white, and I should not wonder if those good-for-nothing servants bullied him.”

“Did you see anything of Eleonora?”

“Nothing so impossible. I meet her every day, but she is always beset with the Strangeways, and I think she avoids me.”

“I can hardly think so.”

“I don’t like it! That man is always hanging about Sirenwood, and Lenore never stirs an inch without one of those girls. I wish Frank could see for himself, poor fellow.”

“He does hope to run down next week. I have just heard from him in high spirits. One of his seniors has come into some property, another is out of health and retires, so there is some promotion in view.”

“I wish it would make haste then. I don’t like the look of things.”

“I can hardly disbelieve in the dear girl herself; yet I do feel as if it were against nature for it to succeed. Did you hear anything of Mrs. Bowater to-day?”

“Yes, she is much better, and Edith is coming to go into the gallery with me on Tuesday when they inaugurate the Rat-house. Oh! did you hear of the debate about it? You know there’s to be a procession– all the Volunteers, and all the Odd Fellows, and all the Good Templars, and all the school-children of all denominations–whatever can walk behind a flag. Our choir boys grew emulous, and asked Herbert to ask the Rector to let them have our lovely banner with the lilies on it; but he declined, though there’s no choice but to give the holiday that will be taken.”

“Was that the debate?”

“Oh no! that was among the higher powers–where the procession should start from. The precedent was an opening that began with going to church, and having a sermon from the Bishop; but then there’s no church, and after that spur the Bishop gave them they can’t ask him without one; besides, the mayor dissents, and so do a good many more of them. So they are to meet at the Market Cross, and Mr. Fuller, in the famous black gown, supported by Mr. Driver, is to head them. I’m not sure that Julius and Herbert were not in the programme, but Mr. Truelove spoke up, and declared that Mr. Flynn the Wesleyan Methodist, and Mr. Howler the Primitive Methodist, and Mr. Riffell the Baptist, had quite as good a right to walk in the foreground and to hold forth, and Mr. Moy supported him.”

“Popularity hunting against Raymond.”

“Precisely. But Howler, Flynn, and Co. were too much for Mr. Fuller, so he seceded, and the religious ceremonies are now to be confined to his saying grace at the dinner. Raymond thinks it as well, for the inaugural speech would only have been solemn mockery; but Julius thinks it a sad beginning for the place to have no blessing because of our unhappy divisions. Isn’t that like Julius?”

“Exactly, though I see it more from Raymond’s point of view. So you are going to the dinner?”

“Oh yes. Happily my Rector has nothing to say against that, and I am sure he owes me something for keeping me out of the bazaar. In fact, having avoided the trouble, I _couldn’t_ take the pleasure! and he must set that against the races.”

“My dear, though I am not set against races like Julius, I think, considering his strong feelings on the subject–“

“My dear Mrs. Poynsett, it would be very bad for Julius to give in to his fancies. The next thing would be to set baby up in a little hood and veil like a nun!”

Rosamond’s winsome nonsense could not but gain a smile. No doubt she was a pleasant daughter-in-law, though, for substantial care, Anne was the strength and reliance. Even Anne was much engrossed by preparations for the bazaar. It had been a great perplexity to her that the one thing she thought not worldly should be condemned by Julius, and he had not tried to prevent her from assisting Cecil, thinking, as he had told Eleonora, that the question of right and wrong was not so trenchant as to divide households.

The banquet and inauguration went off fairly well. There was nothing in it worth recording, except that Rosamond pronounced that Raymond only wanted a particle of Irish fluency to be a perfect speaker; but every one was observing how ill and depressed he looked. Even Cecil began to see it herself, and to ask Lady Tyrrell with some anxiety whether she thought him altered.

“Men always look worn after a Session,” said Lady Tyrrell.

“If this really makes him unhappy!”

“My dear Cecil, that’s the very proof of the necessity. If it makes him unhappy to go five miles away with his wife, it ought not. You should wean him from such dependence.”

Cecil had tears in her eyes as she said, “I don’t know! When I hear him sighing in his sleep, I long to give it up and tell him I will try to be happy here.”

“My dear child, don’t be weak. If you give way now, you will rue it all your life.”

“If I could have taken to his mother, I think he would have cared more for me.”

“No. The moment her jealousy was excited she would have resumed him, and you would have been the more shut out in the cold. A little firmness now, and the fresh start is before you.”

Cecil sighed, feeling that she was paying a heavy price for that fresh start, but her hands were too full for much thought. Guests came to dinner, Mrs. Poynsett kept more to her own room, and Raymond exerted himself to talk, so that the blank of the evenings was less apparent. The days were spent at the town-hall, where the stalls were raised early enough for all the ladies, their maids and footmen, to buzz about them all day, decking them out.

Mrs. Duncombe was as usual the guiding spirit, contriving all with a cleverness that made the deficiencies of her household the more remarkable. Conny and Bee Strangeways were the best workers, having plenty of experience and resource, and being ready to do anything, however hard, dusty, or disagreeable; and to drudge contentedly, with plenty of chatter indeed, but quite as freely to a female as to a male companion; whereas Miss Moy had a knot of men constantly about her, and made a noise which was a sore trial to Cecil’s heavy spirit all the first day, exclusive of the offence to her native fastidiousness. She even called upon Lady Tyrrell and Mrs. Duncombe to hold a council whether all gentlemen should not be excluded the next day, as spoiling the ladies’ work, and of no use themselves; but there were one or two who really did toil, and so well that they could not be dispensed with, and Mrs. Duncombe added that it would not do to give offence.

There was a harassed look about Mrs. Duncombe herself, for much depended on the success of her husband’s filly, Dark Hag. The Captain had hitherto been cautious, and had secured himself against heavy loss, so as to make the turf a tolerable speculation, on but the wonderful perfections of this animal had led him to stake much more on her than had been his wont; and though his wife was assured of being a rich woman in another week, she was not sorry for the multiplicity of occupations which hindered her mind from dwelling too much on the chances.

“How calm you look,–how I envy you!” she said, as she came to borrow some tape of Eleonora Vivian, who was fastening the pendent articles to the drapery of her sister’s stall. Eleonora gave a constrained smile, feeling how little truth there was in her apparent peace, wearied out as she was with the long conflict and constant distrust. She was the more anxious to be with Lady Susan, whose every word she could believe, and she finally promised to leave home with Bee and Conny the day after the ball, and to meet their mother in London. They knew there was no chance for Lorimer, but they took her on her own terms, hoping something perhaps, and at any rate glad to be a comfort to one whom they really loved, while Lady Tyrrell was delighted to promote the visit, seeing that the family did more for Lorimer’s cause than he did for himself; and in his own home who could guess the result, especially after certain other manoeuvres of her ladyship had taken effect?

Lady Tyrrell did not know, nor indeed did Conny or Bee, that, though they would meet their mother in London, she would not at once go into Yorkshire with them, but would send them to their uncle’s, while she repaired to the retreat at St. Faith’s. The harass of these last few weeks, especially the endeavour to make her go to the races, had removed all scruples from Lenore’s mind as to leaving her home in ignorance of her intentions. To her mind, the circumstances of her brother’s death had made a race-course no place for any of the family, especially that of Backsworth; gout coming opportunely to disable her father in London, and one or two other little accidents, had prevented the matter from coming to an issue while she had been in London, and the avowal of her intention to keep away had filled her father with passion at her for her absurd scruples and pretences at being better than other people. It had been Lady Tyrrell who pacified him with assurances that she would soon do better; no one wished to force her conscience, and Lenore, always on the watch, began to wonder whether her sister had any reason for wishing to keep her away, and longed the more for the house of truth and peace.

So came on the bazaar day, which Mrs. Poynsett spent in solitude, except for visits from the Rectory, and one from Joanna Bowater, who looked in while Julius was sitting with her, and amused them by her account of herself as an emissary from home with ten pounds to be got rid of from her father and mother for good neighbourhood’s sake. She brought Mrs. Poynsett a beautiful bouquet, for the elderly spinsters, she said, sat on the stairs and kept up a constant supply; and she had also some exquisite Genoese wire ornaments from Cecil’s counter, and a set of studs from a tray of polished pebbles sent up from Vivian’s favourite lapidary at Rockpier. She had been amused to find the Miss Strangeways hunting over it to match that very simple-looking charm which Lena wore on to her watch, for, as she said, “the attraction must either be the simplicity of it, or the general Lena-worship in which those girls indulge.”

“How does that dear child look?”

“Fagged, I think, but so does every one, and it was not easy to keep order, Mrs. Duncombe’s counter was such a rendezvous for noisy people, and Miss Moy was perfectly dreadful, running about forcing things on people and refusing change.”

“And how is poor Anne enduring?”

“Like Christian in Vanity Fair as long as she did endure, for she retired to the spinsters on the back stairs. I offered to bring her home, and she accepted with delight, but I dropped her in the village to bestow her presents. I was determined to come on here; we go on Monday.”

“Shall you be at the Ordination?”

“I trust so. If mamma is pretty well, we shall both go.”

“Is Edith going to the ball on Thursday?”

“No, she has given it up. It seems as if we at least ought to recollect our Ember days, though I am ashamed to think we never did till this time last year.”

“I confess that I never heard of them,” said Mrs. Poynsett. “Don’t look shocked, my dear; such things were not taught in my time.”

Julius showed her the rubric and the prayer from the book in his pocket, knowing that the one endeared to her by association was one of the Prayer-books made easy by omission of all not needed at the barest Sunday service.

“I see,” she said, “it seems quite right. I wish you had told me before you were ordained, my dear.”

“You kept your Ember days for me by instinct, dear mother.”

“Don’t be too sure, Julius. One learns many things when one is laid on one’s back.”

“Think of Herbert now,” whispered Jenny. “I am glad he is sheltered from all this hubbub by being at the palace. I suppose you cannot go to the Cathedral, Julius?”

“No, Bindon will not come back till his brother’s holiday is over, nor do I even know where to write to him. Oh! here comes Anne. Now for her impressions.”

Anne had brought her little gift for Mrs. Poynsett, and displayed her presents for Glen Fraser, but as to what she had seen it made her shudder and say, “You were right, Julius, I did not know people could go on so! And with all those poor people ill close by. Miss Slater, who sat on the stairs just below me tying up flowers, is much grieved about a lad who was at work there till a fortnight ago, and now is dying of a fever, and harassed by all the rattling of the carriages.”

“What! close by! Nothing infectious, I hope?”

“The doctor called it gastric fever, but no one was to hear of it lest there should be an alarm; and it was too late to change the place of the bazaar, though it is so sad to have all that gaiety close at hand.”

If these were the impressions of Anne and Joanna early in the day, what were they later, when, in those not sustained by excitement, spirit and energy began to flag? Cecil’s counter, with her excellent and expensive wares, and her own dignified propriety, was far less popular than those where the goods were cheaper and the saleswomen less inaccessible, and she was not only disappointed at her failure, but vexed when told that the articles must be raffled for. She could not object, but it seemed an unworthy end for what had cost her so much money and pains to procure, and it was not pleasant to see Mrs. Duncombe and Miss Moy hawking the tickets about, like regular touters, nor the most beautiful things drawn by the most vulgar and tasteless people.

Miss Moy had around her a court of ‘horsey’ men who were lounging away the day before the races, and who had excited her spirits to a pitch of boisterousness such as dismayed Mrs. Duncombe herself when her attempts at repression were only laughed at.

Somehow, among these adherents, there arose a proposal for the election of a queen of beauty, each gentleman paying half-a-crown for the right of voting. Miss Moy bridled and tried to blush. She was a tall, highly-coloured, flashing-eyed brunette, to whom a triumph would be immense over the refined, statuesque, severe Miss Vivian, and an apple-blossom innocent-looking girl who was also present, and though Lady Tyrrell was incontestably the handsomest person in the room, her age and standing had probably prevented her occurring to the propounders of the scheme.

The design was taking shape when young Strangeways, who was willing to exchange chaff with Gussie Moy, but was gentleman enough to feel the indecorum of the whole thing, moved across to his sister, and muttered, “I say, Con, they are getting up that stupid trick of election of a queen of beauty. Does Lady Tyrrell know it?”

“Wouldn’t it be rather fun?”

“Horrid bad form, downright impudence. Mother would squash it at once. Go and warn one of them,” signing with his head.

Constance made her way to Eleonora, who had already been perplexed and angered by more than one critical stare, as one and another man loitered past and gazed intrepidly at her. She hurried at once to her sister, who was sitting passively behind her counter as if wearied out, and who would not be stirred to interference. “Never mind, Lenore, it can’t be helped. It is all for the cause, and to stop it would be worse taste, fitting on the cap as an acknowledged beauty, and to that I’m not equal.”

“It is an insult.”

“Never fear, they’ll never choose you while you look so forbidding, though perhaps it is rather becoming. They have not the taste.”

Eleonora said no more, but went over to the window where Raymond was keeping his guard, with his old-fashioned sense of protection. She had no sooner told him than he started into incredulous indignation, in which he was joined by his wife who only wished him to dash forward to prevent the scheme before he would believe it real.

However, when the ballot-box came his way, and a simpering youth presented him with a card, begging for his opinion, he spoke so as to be heard by all, “No, thank you, sir. I am requested by the ladies present to state that such competition was never contemplated by their committee and would be repugnant to all their sentiments. They beg that the election may be at once dropped and the money returned.”

Mr. Charnock Poynsett had a weight that no one resisted. There was a moment’s silence, a little murmur, apologetic and remonstrant, but the deed was done.

Only a clear voice, with the thrillings of disappointed vanity and exultation scarcely disguised by a laugh, was heard saying, louder than the owner knew, “Oh, of course Mr. Charnock Poynsett spoiled sport. It would have been awkward between his wife and his old flame.”

“For shame, Gussie,” hushed Mrs. Duncombe, “they’ll hear.”

“I don’t care! Let them! Stuck-up people!”

Whoever heard, Cecil Charnock Poynsett did, and felt as if the ground were giving way with her.

CHAPTER XXIV
The Lady Green Mantle

The night, just like the night before, In terrors passed away,
Nor did the demons vanish thence
Before the dawn of day.–MOORE

The turmoil was over, the gains had been emptied into bags to be counted at leisure, the relics of the sale left to be disposed of through the Exchange and Mart. Terry, looking tired to death, descended from his post as assistant showman; and, with some gentlemen who were to dine at Compton Poynsett, Cecil drove home to dress in haste, and act hostess to a large dinner-party. All the time she felt giddy at the words she had heard–“Mr. Poynsett’s old flame.” It was constantly ringing in her ears, and one conviction was before her mind. Her cheeks burnt like fire, and when she reached her own room at night, and leant from the window to cool them, they only burnt the more.

Had she been wilfully deceived? had she been taking the counsel of a jealous woman about her husband? Had not Camilla assured her that the object of his first love was not in the country? Ay; but when that was spoken Camilla herself was in London, and Cecil knew enough of her friend to be aware that she viewed such a subterfuge as ingenious. Even then she had perceived that the person alluded to could only have been a Vivian, and the exclamation of careless spite carried assurance to her that she had been tricked into confidence, and acceptance of the advice of a rival. She had a feverish longing to know more, and obtain explanation and external certainty. But how?

Raymond was one of the very tired that night. He fell asleep the instant his head touched the pillow; but it was that sobbing, sighing sleep which had before almost swept away, from very ruth, her resolution; and on this night there were faltering words, strangely, though unconsciously, replying to her thoughts. “Camilla, a cruel revenge!” “Poor child! but for you she might have learnt.” “My mother!” “Why, why this persistent hatred?” “Cannot you let us alone?” “Must you destroy our home?”

These were the mutterings at intervals. She listened, and in the darkness her impulse was to throw herself on her husband, tell him all, show him how she had been misled, and promise to give up all to which that true Vivienne had prompted her. She did even try to wake him, but the attempt caused only a more distinct expostulation of “Cannot you let her alone?” “Cannot you let us learn to love one another?” “It may be revenge on me or my mother; but what has she done?” “Don’t!–oh, don’t!”

The distress she caused forced her to desist, and she remembered how Raymond had always warned her. The intimacy with Lady Tyrrell had been in the teeth of his remonstrances. He had said everything to prevent it short of confessing his former attachment, and though resentful that the warning had been denied her, she felt it had been well that she had been prevented from putting the question on her first impulse. Many ways of ascertaining the fact were revolved by her as with an aching head she lay hopelessly awake till morning, when she fell into a doze which lasted until she found that Raymond had risen, and that she must dress in haste, unless she meant to lose her character for punctuality. Her head still ached, and she felt thoroughly tired; but when Raymond advised her to stay at home, and recruit herself for the ball, she said the air of the downs would refresh her. Indeed, she felt as if quiet and loneliness would be intolerable until she could understand herself and what she had heard.

Raymond took the reins of the barouche, and a gentleman who had slept at the Hall went on the box beside him, leaving room for Rosamond and her brother, who were to be picked up at the Rectory; but when they drew up there, only Rosamond came out in the wonderful bonnet, just large enough to contain one big water-lily, which suited well with the sleepy grace of her movements, and the glossy sheen of her mauve silk.

“Terry is not coming. He has a headache, poor boy,” she said, as Julius shut her into the barouche. “Take care of him and baby.”

“Take care of yourself, Madam Madcap,” said Julius, with a smile, as she bent down to give him a parting kiss, with perhaps a little pleading for forgiveness in it. But instead of, as last year, shuddering, either at its folly or publicity, Cecil felt a keen pang of desire for such a look as half rebuked, while it took a loving farewell of Rosamond. Was Camilla like that statue which the husband inadvertently espoused with a ring, and which interposed between him and his wife for ever?

Rosamond talked. She always had a certain embarrassment in tete-a- tetes with Cecil, and it took form in a flow of words. “Poor Terry! he turned faint and giddy at breakfast. I thought he had been indulging at the refreshment-stall, but he says he was saving for a fine copy of the Faerie Queen that Friskyball told him of at a book- stall at Backsworth, and existed all day on draughts of water when his throat grew dry as showman; so I suppose it is only inanition, coupled with excitement and stuffiness, and that quiet will repair him. He would not hear of my staying with him.”

“I suppose you do not wish to be late?”

“Certainly not,” said Rosamond, who, indeed, would have given up before, save for her bonnet and her principle; and whatever she said of Lady Rathforlane’s easy management of her nurslings, did not desire to be _too_ many hours absent from her Julia.

“I only want to stay till the Three-year-old Cup has been run for,” said Cecil. “Mrs. Duncombe would feel it unkind if we did not.”

“You look tired,” said Rosamond, kindly; “put your feet upon the front seat–nobody will look. Do you know how much you cleared?”

“Not yet,” said Cecil. “I do not know what was made by the raffles. How I do hate them! Fancy that lovely opal Venetian vase going to that big bony Scotswoman, Mr. M’Vie’s mother.”

“Indeed! That is a pity. If I had known it would be raffled for, I would have sent a private commission, though I don’t know if Julius would have let me. He says it is gambling. What became of the Spa work-box, with the passion-flower wreath?”

“I don’t know. I was so disgusted, that I would not look any more. I never saw such an obnoxious girl as that Miss Moy.”

“_That_ she is,” said Rosamond. “I should think she was acting the fast girl as found in sensation novels.”

“Exactly,” said Cecil, proceeding to narrate the proposed election; and in her need of sympathy she even told its sequel, adding, “Rosamond, do you know what she meant?”

“Is it fair to tell you?” said Rosamond, asking a question she knew to be vain.

“I must know whether I have been deceived.”

“Never by Raymond!” cried Rosamond.

“Never, never, never!” cried Cecil, with most unusual excitement. “He told me all that concerned himself at the very first. I wish he had told me who it was. How much it would have saved! Rosamond, you know, I am sure.”

“Yes, I made Julius tell me; but indeed, Cecil, you need not mind. Never has a feeling more entirely died out.”

“Do you think I do not know that?” said Cecil. “Do you think my husband could have been my husband if he had not felt _that_?”

“Dear Cecil, I am so glad,” cried impulsive Rosamond; her gladness, in truth, chiefly excited by the anger that looked like love for Raymond. “I mean, I am glad you see it so, and don’t doubt him.”

“I hope we are both above that,” said Cecil. “No, it is Camilla that I want to know about. I _must_ know whether she told me truth.”

“She told! what did she tell you?”

“That _he_–Raymond–had loved some one,” said Cecil in a stifled voice; “that I little knew what his love could be. I thought it had been for her sister in India. She told me that it was nobody in the country. But then we were in town.”

“Just like her!” cried Rosamond, and wondered not to be contradicted.

“Tell me how it really was!” only asked Cecil.

“As far as I know, the attachment grew up with Raymond, but it was when the brother was alive, and Sir Harry at his worst; and Mrs. Poynsett did not like it, though she gave in at last, and tried to make the best of it; but then she–Camilla–as you call her–met the old monster, Lord Tyrrell, made up a quarrel, because Mrs. Poynsett would not abdicate, and broke it off.”

“She said Mrs. Poynsett only half consented, and that the family grew weary of her persistent opposition.”

“And she made you think it Mrs. Poynsett’s doing, and that she is not possible to live with! O, Cecil! you will not think that any longer. Don’t you see that it is breaking Raymond’s heart?”

Cecil’s tears were starting, and she was very near sobbing as she said, “I thought perhaps if we were away by ourselves he might come to care for me. _She_ said he never would while his mother was by– that she would not let him.”

“That’s not a bit true!” said Rosamond, indignantly. “Is it not what she has most at heart, to see her sons happy? When has she ever tried to interfere between Julius and me? Not that she could,” added Rosamond to herself in a happy little whisper, not meant to be heard, but it was; and with actual though suppressed sobs, Cecil exclaimed–

“O, Rose, Rose! what do you do to make your husband love you?”

“Do? Be very naughty!” said Rosamond, forced to think of the exigencies of the moment, and adding lightly, “There! it won’t do to cry. Here are the gentlemen looking round to see what is the matter.”

Ardently did she wish to have been able to put Cecil into Raymond’s arms and run out of sight, but with two men-servants with crossed arms behind, a strange gentleman in front, the streets of Wil’sbro’ at hand, and the race-ground impending, sentiment was impossible, and she could only make herself a tonic, and declare nothing to be the matter; while Cecil, horrified at attracting notice, righted herself and made protest of her perfect health and comfort. When Raymond, always careful of her, stopped the carriage and descended from his perch to certify himself whether she was equal to going on, his solicitude went to her heart, and she gave his hand, as it lay on the door, an affectionate thankful pressure, which so amazed him that he raised his eyes to her face with a softness in them that made them for a moment resemble Frank’s.

That was all, emotion must be kept at bay, and as vehicles thickened round them as they passed through Wil’sbro’, the two ladies betook themselves to casual remarks upon them. Overtaking the Sirenwood carriage just at the turn upon the down, Raymond had no choice but to take up his station with that on one side, and on the other Captain Duncombe’s drag, where, fluttering with Dark Hag’s colours, were perched Mrs. Duncombe and Miss Moy, just in the rear of the like conveyance from the barracks.

Greetings, and invitations to both elevations were plentiful, and Rosamond would have felt in her element on the military one. She was rapidly calculating, with her good-natured eye, whether the choice her rank gave her would exclude some eager girl, when Cecil whispered, “Stay with me pray,” with an irresistibly beseeching tone. So the Strangeways sisters climbed up, nothing loth; Lady Tyrrell sat with her father, the centre of a throng of gentlemen, who welcomed her to the ground where she used to be a reigning belle; and the Colonel’s wife, Mrs. Ross, came to sit with Lady Rosamond. The whole was perfect enjoyment to the last. She felt it a delightful taste of her merry old Bohemian days to sit in the clear September sunshine, exhilarated by the brilliancy and life around, laughing with her own little court of officers, exclaiming at every droll episode, holding her breath with the thrill of universal expectation and excitement, in the wonderful hush of the multitude as the thud of the hoofs and rush in the wind was heard coming nearer, straining her eyes as the glossy creatures and their gay riders flashed past, and setting her whole heart for the moment on the one she was told to care for.

Raymond, seeing his ladies well provided for, gave up his reins to the coachman, and started in quest of a friend from the other side of the county. About an hour later, when luncheon was in full progress, and Rosamond was, by Cecil’s languor, driven into doing the honours, with her most sunshiny drollery and mirth, Raymond’s hand was on the carriage door, and he asked in haste, “Can you spare me a glass of champagne? Have you a scent-bottle?”

“An accident?”

“Yes, no, not exactly. She has been knocked down and trampled on.”

“Who? Let me come! Can’t I help? Could Rosamond?”

“No, no. It is a poor woman, brutally treated. No, I say, I’ll manage. It is a dreadful scene, don’t.”

But there was something in his tone which impelled Rosamond to open the carriage door and spring out.

“Rose, I say it is no place for a lady. I can’t answer for it to Julius.”

“I’ll do that. Take me.”

There was no withstanding her, and, after all, Raymond’s tone betrayed that he was thankful for her help, and knew that there was no danger for her.

He had not many yards to lead her. The regions of thoughtless gaiety were scarcely separated from the regions of undisguised evil, and Raymond, on his way back from his friend, had fallen on a horrible row, in which a toy-selling woman had been set upon, thrown down and trodden on, and then dragged out by the police, bleeding and senseless. When he brought Rosamond to the spot, she was lying propped against a bundle, moaning a little, and guarded by a young policeman, who looked perplexed and only equal to keeping back the crowd, who otherwise, with better or worse purposes, would have rushed back in the few minutes during which Mr. Poynsett had been absent.

They fell back, staring and uttering expressions of rough wonder at the advance of the lady in her glistening silk, but as she knelt down by the poor creature, held her on her arm, bathed her face with scent on her own handkerchief, and held to her lips the champagne that Raymond poured out, there was a kind of hoarse cheer.

“I think her arm is put out,” said Rosamond; “she ought to go to the Infirmary.”

“Send for a cab,” said Raymond to the policeman; but at that moment the girl opened her eyes, started at the sight of him and tried to hide her face with her hand.

“It is poor Fanny Reynolds,” said he in a low voice to Rosamond, while the policeman was gruffly telling the woman she was better, and ought to get up and not trouble the lady; but Rosamond waved off his too decided assistance, saying:

“I know who she is; she comes from my husband’s parish; and I will take her home. You would like to go home, would you not, poor Fanny?”

The woman shuddered, but clung to her; and in a minute or two an unwilling fly had been pressed into the service, and the girl lifted into it by Raymond and the policeman.

“You are really going with her?” said the former. “You will judge whether to take her home; but she ought to go to the Infirmary first.”

“Tell Cecil I am sorry to desert her,” said Rosamond, as he wrung her hand, then paid the driver and gave him directions, the policeman going with them to clear the way through the throng to the border of the down.

The choice of the cabman had not been happy. He tried to go towards Backsworth, and when bidden to go to Wil’sbro’, growled out an imprecation, and dashed off at a pace that was evident agony to the poor patient; but when Rosamond stretched out at the window to remonstrate, she was answered with rude abuse that he could not be hindered all day by whims. She perceived that he was so much in liquor that their connection had better be as brief as possible; and the name on the door showed that he came from beyond the circle of influence of the name of Charnock Poynsett. She longed to assume the reins, if not to lay the whip about his ears; but all she could do was to try to lessen the force of the jolts by holding up the girl, as the horse was savagely beaten, and the carriage so swayed from side to side that she began to think it would be well if there were not three cases for the Infirmary instead of one. To talk to the girl or learn her wishes was not possible, among the moans and cries caused by the motion; and it was no small relief to be safely at the Infirmary door, though there was no release till after a fierce altercation with the driver, who first denied, and then laughed to scorn the ample fare he had received, so that had any policeman been at hand, the porter and house surgeon would have given him in charge, but they could only take his number and let him drive off in a fury.

Poor Fanny was carried away fainting to the accident ward, and Rosamond found it would be so long before she would be visible again, that it would be wiser to go home and send in her relations, but there was not a fly or cab left in Wil’sbro’, and there was nothing for it but to walk.

She found herself a good deal shaken, and walked fast because thus her limbs did not tremble so much, while the glaring September afternoon made her miss the parasol she had left in the carriage, and find little comfort in the shadeless erection on her head. It was much further than she had walked for a long time past, and she had begun to think she had parted with a good deal of her strength before the Compton woods grew more defined, or the church tower came any nearer.

Though the lane to the Reynolds’ colony was not full in her way, she was glad to sit down in the shade to speak to old Betty, who did not comport herself according to either extreme common to parents in literature.

“So Fanny, she be in the ‘firmary, be her? I’m sure as ’twas very good of the young Squire and you, my lady; and I’m sorry her’s bin and give you so much trouble.”

Everybody was harvesting but the old woman, who had the inevitable bad leg. All men and beasts were either in the fields or at the races, and Rosamond, uncertain whether her patient was not in a dying state, rejoiced in her recent acquisition of a pony carriage, and speeding home with renewed energy, roused her ‘parson’s man’ from tea in his cottage, and ordered him off to take Betty Reynolds to see her daughter without loss of time.

Then at length she opened her own gate and walked in at the drawing- room window. Terry started up from the sofa, and Anne from a chair by his side, exclaiming at her appearance, and asking if there had been any accident.

“Not to any of us, but to a poor woman whom I have been taking to the Infirmary,” she said, sinking into a low chair. “Where’s Julius?”

“He went to see old George Willett,” said Anne. “The poor old man has just heard of the death of his daughter at Wil’sbro’.”

“And you came to sit with this boy, you good creature. How are you, master?”

“Oh, better, thanks,” he said, with a weary stretch. “How done up you look, Rose! How did you come?”

“I walked from Wil’sbro’.”

“Walked!” echoed both her hearers.

“Walked! I liked my two legs better than the four of the horse that brought me there, though ’twasn’t his fault, poor beast, but the brute of a driver, whom we’ll have up before the magistrate. I’ve got the name; doing his best to dislocate every bone in the poor thing’s body. Well, and I hope baby didn’t disturb you?”

“Baby has been wonderfully quiet. Julius went to see after her once, but she was out.”

“I’ll go and see the young woman, and then come and tell my story.”

But Rosamond came back almost instantly, exclaiming, “Emma must have taken the baby to the Hall. I wish she would be more careful. The sun is getting low, and there’s a fog rising.”

“She had not been there when I came down an hour ago,” said Anne; “at least, not with Mrs. Poynsett. They may have had her in the housekeeper’s room. I had better go and hasten her home.”

Julius came in shortly after, but before he had heard the tale of Fanny Reynolds, Anne had returned to say that neither child nor nurse had been at the Hall, nor passed the large gate that morning. It was growing rather alarming. The other servants said Emma had taken the baby out as usual in the morning, but had not returned to dinner, and they too had supposed her at the Hall. None of the dependants of the Hall in the cottages round knew anything of her, but at last Dilemma Hornblower imparted that she had seen my lady’s baby’s green cloak atop of a tax-cart going towards Wil’sbro’.

Now Emma had undesirable relations, and Rosamond had taken her in spite of warning that her uncle was the keeper of the ‘Three Pigeons.’ The young parents stood looking at one another, and Rosamond faintly said, “If that girl has taken her to the races!”

“I’m more afraid of that fever in Water Lane,” said Julius. “I have a great mind to take the pony carriage and see that the girl does not take her there.”

“Oh! I sent it with Betty Reynolds,” cried Rosamond in an agony.

“At that moment the Hall carriage came dashing up, and as Raymond saw the three standing in the road, he called to the coachman to stop, for he and his friend were now within, and Cecil leaning back, looking much tired. Raymond’s eager question was what Rosamond had done with her charge.

“Left her at the Infirmary;–but, oh! you’ve not seen baby?”

“Seen–seen what! your baby?” asked Raymond, as if he thought Rosamond’s senses astray, while his bachelor friend was ready to laugh at a young mother’s alarms, all the more when Julius answered, “It is too true; the baby and her nurse have not been seen here since ten o’clock; and we are seriously afraid the girl may have been beguiled to those races. There is a report of the child’s cloak having been seen on a tax-cart.”

“Then it was so,” exclaimed Cecil, starting forward. “I saw a baby’s mantle of that peculiar green, and it struck me that some farmer’s wife had been aping little Julia’s.”

“Where? When?” cried Rosamond.

“They passed us, trying to find a place. I did not show it to you for you were talking to those gentlemen.”

“Did you see it, Brown?” asked Julius, going towards the coachman. “Our baby and nurse, I mean.”

“I can’t tell about Miss Charnock, sir,” said the coachman, “but I did think I remarked two young females with young Gadley in a tax- cart. I would not be alarmed, sir, nor my lady,” he added, with the freedom of a confidential servant, who, like all the household, adored Lady Rosamond. “It was a giddy thing in the young woman to have done; and no place to take the young lady to. But there–there were more infants there than a man could count, and it stands to reason they come to no harm.”

“The most sensible thing that has been said yet,” muttered the friend; but Rosamond was by no means pacified. “Gadley’s cart! They’ll go to that horrid public-house in Water Lane where there’s typhus and diphtheria and everything; and there’s this fog–and that girl will never wrap her up. Oh! why did I ever go?”

“My dear Rose,” said Julius, trying to speak with masculine composure, “this is nonsense. Depend upon it, Emma is only anxious to get her home.”

“I don’t know, I don’t know! If she could take her to the races, she would be capable of taking her anywhere! They all go and drink at that beer-shop, and catch–Julius, the pony carriage! Oh! it’s gone!”

“Yes,” said Julius in explanation. “She sent Betty Reynolds into Wil’sbro’ in it.”

“Get in, Rosamond,” cried Cecil, “we will drive back till we find her.”

But this was more than a good coachman could permit for his horses’ sake, and Brown declared they must be fed and rested before the ball. Cecil was ready to give up the ball, but still they could not be taken back at once; and Rosamond had by this time turned as if setting her face to walk at once to the race-ground until she found her child, when Raymond said, “Rose! would you be afraid to trust to King Coal and me? I would put him in at once and drive you till you find Julia.”

“Oh! Raymond, how good you are!”

The coachman, glad of this solution, only waited to pick up Anne, and hurried on his horses, while the bachelor friend could not help grunting a little, and observing that it was plain there was only one child in the family, and that he would take any bet ‘it’ was at home all right long before Poynsett reached the parsonage.

“Maybe so,” said Raymond, “but I would do anything rather than leave her mother in the distress you take so easily.”

“Besides, there’s every chance of her being taken to that low public-house,” said Cecil. “One that Mr. Poynsett would not allow our servants to go to during the bazaar, though it is close to the town-hall, and all the others did.”

“Let us hope that early influence may prevent contamination,” solemnly said the friend.

Cecil turned from him. “I still hope she may be at home,” she said; “it is getting very chill and foggy. Raymond, I hope you may not have to go.”

“You must lie down and get thoroughly rested,” he said, as he helped her out; and only waiting to equip himself for the evening dance, he hurried to the stables to expedite the harnessing of the powerful and fiery steed which had as yet been only experimentally driven by himself and the coachman.

Rosamond was watching, and when King Coal was with difficulty pulled up, she made but one spring to the seat of the dog-cart; and Julius, who was tucking in the rug, had to leap back to save his foot, so instantaneous was the dash forward. They went like the wind, Rosamond not caring to speak, and Raymond had quite enough on his hands to be glad not to be required to talk, while he steered through the numerous vehicles they met, and she scanned them anxiously for the outline of Emma’s hat. At last they reached Wil’sbro’, where, as they came to the entrance of Water Lane, Rosamond, through the hazy gaslight, declared that she saw a tax- cart at the door of the ‘Three Pigeons,’ and Raymond, albeit uncertain whether it were _the_ tax-cart, could only turn down the lane at her bidding, with difficulty preventing King Coal from running his nose into the vehicle. Something like an infant’s cry was heard through the open door, and before he knew what she was about, Rosamond was on the pavement and had rushed into the house; and while he was signing to a man to take the horse’s head, she was out again, the gaslight catching her eyes so that they glared like a tigress’s, her child in her arms, and a whole Babel of explaining tongues behind her. How she did it neither she nor Raymond ever knew, but in a second she had flown to her perch, saying hoarsely, “Drive me to Dr. Worth’s. They were drugging her. I don’t know whether I was in time. No, not a word”–(this to those behind)– “never let me see any of you again.”

King Coal prevented all further words of explanation by dancing round, so that Raymond was rejoiced at finding that nobody was run over. They were off again instantly, while Rosamond vehemently clasped the child, which was sobbing out a feeble sound, as if quite spent with crying, but without which the mother seemed dissatisfied, for she moved the poor little thing about if it ceased for a moment. They were soon within Dr. Worth’s iron gates, where Raymond could give the horse to a servant, help his sister-in-law down, and speak for her; for at first she only held up the phial she had clutched, and gazed at the doctor speechlessly.

He looked well both at the bottle and the baby while Raymond spoke, and then said, “Are you sure she took any, Lady Rosamond?”

“Quite, quite sure!” cried Rosamond. “The spoon was at her lips, the dear little helpless darling!”

“Well, then,” said the doctor, dryly, “it only remains to be proved whether an aristocratic baby can bear popular treatment. I dare say some hundred unlucky infants have been lugged out to the race-course to-day, and come back squalling their hearts out with fatigue and hunger, and I’ll be bound that nine-tenths are lulled with this very sedative, and will be none the worse.”

“Then you do not think it will hurt her?”

“So far from it, that, under the circumstances, it was the best thing she could have. She has plainly been exhausted, and though I would not exactly recommend the practice in your nursery, I doubt if she could have taken nourishment till she had been composed. She will sleep for an hour or two, and by that time you can get her home, and feed her as usual. I should be more anxious about Lady Rosamond herself,” he added, turning to Raymond. “She looks completely worn out. Let me order you a basin of soup.”

But Rosamond would not hear of it, she must get baby home directly. Raymond advised a fly, but it was recollected that none was attainable between the races and the ball, so the little one was muffled in shawls and cloaks almost to suffocation, and the doctor forced a glass of wine on her mother, and promised to look in the next day. Still they had a delay at the door, caused by the penitent Emma and her aunt, bent on telling how far they had been from intending any harm; how Emma, when carrying the baby out, had been over-persuaded by the cousins she had never disappointed before; how they had faithfully promised to take her home early, long before my lady’s return; how she had taken baby’s bottle, but how it had got broken; how impossible it had been to move off the ground in the throng; and how the poor baby’s inconsolable cries had caused the young nurse to turn aside to see whether her aunt could find anything to prevent her from screaming herself into convulsions.

Nothing but the most determined volubility on Mrs. Gadley’s part could have poured this into the ears of Raymond; Rosamond either could not or would not heed, pushed forward, past the weeping Emma, and pulled away her dress with a shudder, when there was an attempt to draw her back and make her listen.

“Don’t, girl,” said Raymond. “Don’t you see that Lady Rosamond can’t attend to you? If you have anything to say, you must come another time. You’ve done quite enough mischief for the present.”

“Yes,” said the doctor, “tell your brother to put them both to bed, and keep them quiet. I should like to prescribe the same for you, Mr. Poynsett; you don’t look the thing, and I suppose you are going to take the ball by way of remedy.”

Raymond thanked the doctor, but was too much employed in enveloping his passengers to make further reply.

It was quite dark, and the fog had turned to misty rain, soft and still, but all pervading, and Rosamond found it impossible to hold up an umbrella as well as to guard the baby, who was the only passenger not soaked and dripping by the time they were among the lighted windows of the village.

“Oh, Raymond! Raymond!” she then said, in a husky dreamy voice, “how good and kind you have been. I know there was something that would make you very, very glad!”

“Is there?” he said. “I have not met with anything to make me glad for a long time past!”

“And I don’t seem able to recollect what it was, or even if I ought to tell,” said Rosamond, in the same faint, bewildered voice, which made Raymond very glad they were at the gate, where stood Julius.

But before Rosamond would descend into her husband’s arms, she opened all her child’s mufflings, saying, “Kiss her, kiss her, Raymond–how she shall love you!” And when he had obeyed, and Rosamond had handed the little one down to her father, she pressed her own wet cheek against his dripping beard and moustache, and exclaimed, “I’ll never forget your goodness. Have you got her safe, Julius? I’ll never, never go anywhere again!”

CHAPTER XXV
The Pebbles

O no, no, no; ’tis true. Here, take this too; It is a basilisk unto mine eye,
Kills me to look on’t. Let there be no honour, Where there is beauty; truth, where semblance; love, Where there’s another man.–Cymbeline

When Julius, according to custom, opened his study shutters, at half-past six, to a bright sunrise, his eldest brother stood before the window. “Well, how are they?” he said.

“All right, thank you; the child woke, had some food, and slept well and naturally after it; and Rose has been quite comfortable and at rest since midnight. You saved us from a great deal, Raymond.”

“Ah!” with a sound of deep relief; “may Julia only turn out as sweet a piece of womanhood as her mother. Julius, I never understood half what that dear wife of yours was till yesterday.”

“I was forced to cut our gratitude very short,” said Julius, laying his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “You know I’ve always taken your kindness as a matter of course.”

“I should think so,” said Raymond, the more moved of the two. “I tell you, Julius, that Rosamond was to me the only redeeming element in the day. I wanted to know whether you could walk with me to ask after that poor girl; I hear she came home one with her grandmother.”

“Gladly,” said Julius. “I ought to have gone last night; but what with Rose, and the baby, and Terry, I am afraid I forgot everything.” He disappeared, and presently issued from the front door in his broad hat, while Raymond inquired for Terry.

“He is asleep now, but he has been very restless, and there is something about him I don’t like. Did not Worth say he would come and look at the baby?”

“Yes, but chiefly to pacify Rosamond, about whom he was the most uneasy.”

“She is quite herself now; but you look overdone, Raymond. Have you had any sleep?”

“I have not lain down. When we came home at four o’clock, Cecil was quite knocked up, excited and hysterical. Her maid advised me to leave her to her; so I took a bath, and came down to wait for you.”

Julius would have liked to see the maid who could have soothed his Rosamond last night without him! He only said, however, “Is Frank come down? My mother rather expected him.”

“Yes, he came to the race-ground.”

“Indeed! He was not with you when you came back, or were we not sufficiently rational to see him?”

“Duncombe gave a dinner at the hotel, and carried him off to it. I’m mortally afraid there’s something amiss in that quarter. What, didn’t you know that Duncombe’s filly failed?”

“No, indeed, I did not.”

“The town was ringing with it. Beaten out-and-out by Fair Phyllida! a beast that took them all by surprise–nothing to look at–but causing, I fancy, a good deal of distress. They say the Duncombes will be done for. I only wish Frank was clear; but that unhappy engagement has thrown him in with Sir Harry’s set, and he was with them all day–hardly spoke to me. To a fellow like him, a veteran scamp like old Vivian, with his benignant looks, is ten times more dangerous than men of his own age. However, having done the damage, they seem to have thrown him off. Miss Vivian would not speak to him at the ball.”

“Eleonora! I don’t know how to think it!”

“What you cannot _think_, a Vivian can _do_ and does!” said Raymond, bitterly. “My belief is that he was decoyed into being fleeced by the father, and now they have done their worst, he is cast off. He came home with us, but sat outside, and I could not get a word out of him.”

“I hope my mother may.”

“If he be not too far gone for her. I always did expect some such termination, but not with this addition.”

“I don’t understand it now–Lena!”

“I only wonder at your surprise. The girl has been estranged from us all for a long time. If it is at an end, so much the better. I only wish we were none of us ever to see the face of one of them again.”

Julius knew from his wife that there were hopes for Raymond, but of course he might not speak, and he was revolving these words, which had a vehemence unlike the wont of the speaker, when he was startled by Raymond’s saying, “Julius, you were right. I have come to the conclusion that no consideration shall ever make me sanction races again.”

“I am glad,” began Julius.

“You would not be glad if you had seen all I saw yesterday. You must have lent me your eyes, for when you spoke before of the evils, I thought you had picked up a Utopian notion, and were running a- muck with it, like an enthusiastic young clergyman. For my own part I can’t say I ever came across anything offensive. Of course I know where to find it, as one does wherever one goes, but there was no call to run after it; and as we were used to the affair, it was a mere matter of society–“

“No, it could never be any temptation to you,” said Julius.

“No, nor to any other reasonable man; and I should add, though perhaps you might not allow it, that so long as a man keeps within his means, he has a right to enhance his excitement and amusement by bets.”

“Umph! He has a right then to tempt others to their ruin, and create a class of speculators who live by gambling.”

“You need not go on trying to demolish me. I was going to say that I had only thought of the demoralization, from the betting side; but yesterday it was as if you had fascinated my eyes to look behind the scenes. I could not move a step without falling on something abominable. Roughs, with every passion up to fever-pitch, ferocity barely kept down by fear of the police, gambling everywhere, innocent young things looking on at coarseness as part of the humour of the day, foul language, swarms of vagabond creatures, whose trade is to minister to the license of such occasions. I declare that your wife was the only being I saw display a spark of any sentiment human nature need not blush for!”

“Nay, Raymond, I begin to wonder whose is the exaggerated feeling now.”

“You were not there,” was the answer; and they were here interrupted by crossing the path of the policeman, evidently full of an official communication.

“I did not expect to see you so early, sir,” he said. “I was coming to the Hall to report to you after I had been in to the superintendent.”

“What is it?”

“There has been a burglary at Mrs. Hornblower’s, sir. If you please, sir,” to Julius, “when is the Reverend Mr. Bowater expected home?”

“Not before Monday. Is anything of his taken?”

“Yes, sir. A glass case has been broken open, and a silver cup and oar, prizes for sports at college, I believe, have been abstracted. Also the money from the till below; and I am sorry to say, young Hornblower is absconded, and suspicion lies heavy on him. They do say the young man staked heavily on that mare of Captain Duncombe’s.”

“You had better go on to the superintendent now,” said Raymond. “You can come to me for a summons if you can find any traces.”

Poor Mrs. Hornblower, what horror for her! and poor Herbert too who would acutely feel this ingratitude. The blackness of it was beyond what Julius thought probable in the lad, and the discussion of it occupied the brothers till they reached the Reynolds colony, where they were received by the daughter-in-law, a much more civilized person than old Betty.

After Fanny’s dislocated arm had been set, the surgeon had sent her home in the Rectory carriage, saying there was so much fever in Wil’sbro’, that she would be likely to recover better at home; but she had been suffering and feverish all night, and Dan Reynolds was now gone in quest of ‘Drake,’ for whom she had been calling all night.

“Is he her husband?” asked Julius.

“Well, I don’t know, sir; leastways, Granny says he ought to be answerable for what’s required.”

Mrs. Reynolds further betrayed that the family had not been ignorant of Fanny’s career since she had run away from home, leaving her child on her grandmother’s hands. She had made her home in one of the yellow vans which circulate between fairs and races, driving an ostensible trade in cheap toys, but really existing by setting up games which were, in fact, forms of gambling, according to the taste of the people and the toleration of the police. From time to time, she had appeared at home, late in the evening, with small sums of money and presents for her boy; and Mrs. Dan believed that she thought herself as good as married to ‘that there Drake.’ She was reported to be asleep, and the place ‘all of a caddle,’ and Julius promised to call later in the day.

“Yes, sir,” said Mrs. Reynolds; “it would be a right good thing, poor girl. She’ve a kind heart, they all do say; not as I know, not coming here till she was gone, nor wanting to know much on her, for ’twas a right bad way she was in, and ’twere well if them nasty races were put down by Act of Parliament, for they be the very ruin of the girls in these parts.”

“There’s a new suggestion, Raymond,” said Julius as he shut the garden gate.

Raymond was long in answering, and when he spoke, it was to say, “I shall withdraw from the subscription to the Wil’sbro’ Cup.”

“So much the better.”

Then Raymond began discussing the terms of the letter in which he would state his reasons, but with an amount of excitement that made Julius say, “I should think it better not to write in this first heat. It will take more effect if it is not so visibly done on the spur of the moment.”

But the usually deliberate Raymond exclaimed, “I cannot rest till it is done. I feel as if I must be like Lady Macbeth, continually washing my hands of all this wreck and ruin.”

“No wonder; but I should think there was great need of caution–to use your own words.”

“My seat must go, if this is to be the price,” said Raymond. “I felt through all the speeches at that gilt-gingerbread place, that it was a monument of my truckling to expediency. We began the whole thing at the wrong end, and I fear we are beginning to see the effects.”

“Do you mean that you are anxious about that fever in Water Lane?”

“There was an oppressive sickly air about everything, strongest at the ball. I can’t forget it,” said Raymond, taking off his hat, so that the morning air might play about his temples. “We talked about meddling women, but the truth was that they were shaming us by doing what they could.”

“I hope others will see it so. Is not Whitlock to be mayor next time?”

“Yes. He may do something. Well, they will hardly unseat me! I should not like to see Moy in my place, and it would be a sore thing for my mother; but,” he continued, in the same strange, dreamy manner, “everything has turned out so wretchedly that I hardly know or care how it goes.”

“My dear old fellow!”

Raymond had stopped to lean over a gate, where he could look up to the old red house in the green park, set in brightly-tinted trees, all aglow in the morning sunshine. Tears had sprung on his cheeks, and a suppressed sob heaved his chest. Julius ventured to say, “Perhaps there may yet be a change of mind.”

“No!” was the answer. “In the present situation there is nothing for it but to sacrifice my last shred of peace to the one who has the chief right–in a certain way.”

They walked on, and he hardly spoke again till, as they reached the Rectory, Julius persuaded him to come in and have a cup of tea; and though he said he must go back and see his friend off, he could not withstand the sight of Rosamond at the window, fresh and smiling, with her child in her arms.

“Not a bit the worse for her dissipation,” she merrily said. “Oh, the naughty little thing!–to have begun with the turf, and then the ‘Three Pigeons’! Aren’t you ashamed of her, papa? Sit down, Raymond; how horribly tired you do look.”

“Ha! What’s this?” exclaimed Julius, who had been opening the post- bag. “Here’s a note from the Bishop, desiring me to come to the palace to-day, if possible.”

“Oh!” cried Raymond. “Where is there vacant–isn’t there a canonry or a chaplaincy?”

“Or an archbishopric or two?” said Julius. “The pony can do it, I think, as there will be a long rest. If he seems fagged, I can put up at Backsworth and take a fly.”

“You’ll let James drive you,” said Rosamond.

“I had rather not,” said Julius. “It may be better to be alone.”

“He is afraid of betraying his elevation to James,” laughed Rosamond.

“Mrs. Daniel Reynolds to see you, sir.”

This was with the information that that there trapezing chap, Drake, had fetched off poor Fanny in his van. He had been in trouble himself, having been in custody for some misdemeanour when she was thrown down; but as soon as he was released, he had come in search of her, and though at first he seemed willing to leave her to be nursed at home, he had no sooner heard of the visitors of that morning than he had sworn he would have no parson meddling with his poor gal! she was good enough for him, and he would not have a pack of nonsense put in her head to set her against him.

“He’s good to her, sir,” said Mrs. Reynolds, “I think he be; but he is a very ignorant man. He tell’d us once as he was born in one of they vans, and hadn’t never been to school nor nothin’, nor heard tell of God, save in the way of bad words: he’ve done nothin’ but go from one races and fairs to another, just like the gipsies, though he bain’t a gipsy neither; but he’s right down attacted to poor Fanny, and good to her.”

“Another product of the system,” said Raymond.

“Like the gleeman, whom we see through a picturesque medium,” said Julius; “but who could not have been pleasant to the mediaeval clergyman. I have hopes of poor Fanny yet. She will drift home one of these days, and we shall get hold of her.”

“What a fellow you are for hoping!” returned Raymond, a little impatiently.

“Why not?” said Julius.

“Why! I should say–” replied Raymond, setting out to walk home, where he presided over his friend’s breakfast and departure, and received a little banter over his solicitude for the precious infant. Cecil was still in bed, and Frank was looking ghastly, and moved and spoke like one in a dream, Raymond was relieved to hear him pleading with Susan for to his mother’s room much earlier than usual.

Susan took pity and let him in; when at once he flung himself into a chair, with his face hidden on the bed, and exclaimed, “Mother, it is all over with me!”

“My dear boy, what can have happened?”

“Mother, you remember those two red pebbles. Could you believe that she has sold hers?”

“Are you sure she has? I heard that they had a collection of such things from the lapidary at Rockpier.”

“No, mother, that is no explanation. When I found that I should be able to come down, I sent a card to Lady Tyrrell, saying I would meet them on the race-ground–a post-card, so that Lena might see it. When I came there was no Lena, only some excuse about resting for the ball–lying down with a bad headache, and so forth–making it plain that I need not go on to Sirenwood. By and by there was some mild betting with the ladies, and Lady Tyrrell said, ‘There’s a chance for you, Bee; don’t I see the very fellow to Conny’s charm?’ Whereupon that girl Conny pulled out the very stone I gave Lena three years ago at Rockpier. I asked; yes, I asked–Lena had sold it; Lena, at the bazaar; Lena, who–“

“Stay, Frank, is this trusting Lena as she bade you trust her? How do you know that there were no other such pebbles?”

“You have not seen her as I have done. There has been a gradual alienation–holding aloof from us, and throwing herself into the arms of those Strangeways. It is no fault of her sister’s. She has lamented it to me.”

“Or pointed it out. Did she know the history of these pebbles?”

“No one did. Lena was above all reserved with her.”

“Camilla Tyrrell knows a good deal more than she is told. Where’s your pebble? You did not stake that?”

“Those who had one were welcome to the other.”

“O, my poor foolish Frank! May it not be gone to tell the same tale of you that you think was told of her? Is this all?”

“Would that it were!”

“Well, go on, my dear. Was she at the ball?”

“Surrounded by all that set. I was long in getting near her, and then she said her card was full; and when I made some desperate entreaty, she said, in an undertone that stabbed me by its very calmness, ‘After what has passed to-day, the less we meet the better.’ And she moved away, so as to cut me off from another word.”

“After what had passed! Was it the parting with the stone?”

“Not only. I got a few words with Lady Tyrrell. She told me that early impressions had given Lena a kind of fanatical horror of betting, and that she had long ago made a sort of vow against a betting man. Lady Tyrrell said she had laughed at it, but had no notion it was seriously meant; and I–I never even heard of it!”

“Nor are you a betting man, my Frank.”

“Ay! mother, you have not heard all.”

“You are not in a scrape, my boy?”

“Yes, I am. You see I lost my head after the pebble transaction. I couldn’t stand small talk, or bear to go near Raymond, so I got among some other fellows with Sir Harry–“

“And excitement and distress led you on?”

“I don’t know what came over me. I could not stand still for fear I should feel. I must be mad on something. Then, that mare of Duncombe’s, poor fellow, seemed a personal affair to us all; and Sir Harry, and a few other knowing old hands, went working one up, till betting higher and higher seemed the only way of supporting Duncombe, besides relieving one’s feelings. I know it was being no end of a fool; but you haven’t felt it, mother!”

“And Sir Harry took your bets?”

“One must fare and fare alike,” said Frank.

“How much have you lost?”

“I’ve lost Lena, that’s all I know,” said the poor boy; but he produced his book, and the sum appalled him. “Mother,” he said in a broken voice, “there’s no fear of its happening again. I can never feel like this again. I know it is the first time one of your sons has served you so, and I can’t even talk of sorrow, it seems all swallowed up in the other matter. But if you will help me to meet it, I will pay you back ten or twenty pounds every quarter.”

“I think I can, Frankie. I had something in hand towards my own possible flitting. Here is the key of my desk. Bring me my banker’s book and my cheque book.”

“Mother! mother!” he cried, catching her hand and kissing it, “what a mother you are!”

“You understand,” she said, “that it is because I believe you were not master of yourself, and that this is the exception, not the habit, that I am willing to do all I can for you.”

“The habit! No, indeed! I never staked more than a box of gloves before; but what’s the good, if she has made a vow against me?”

Mrs. Poynsett was silent for a few moments, then she said, “My poor boy, I believe you are both victims of a plot. I suspect that Camilla Tyrrell purposely let you see that pebble-token and be goaded into gambling, that she might have a story to tell her sister, when she had failed to shake her constancy and principle in any other way.”

“Mother, that would make her out a fiend. She has been my good and candid friend all along. You don’t know her.”

“What would a friend have done by you yesterday?”

“She neither saw nor heard my madness. No, mother, Lenore’s heart has been going from me for months past, and she is glad of this plea for release, believing me unworthy. Oh! that stern face of hers! set like a head of Justice with not a shade of pity–so beautiful– so terrible! It will never cease to haunt me.”

He sat in deep despondency, while Mrs. Poynsett overlooked her resources; but presently he started up, saying, “There’s one shadow of a hope. I’ll go over to Sirenwood, insist on seeing one her and having an explanation. I have a right, whatever I did yesterday; and you have forgiven me for that, mother!”

“I think it is the most hopeful way. If you can see her without interposition, you will at least come to an understanding. Here, you had better take this cheque for Sir Harry.”

When he was gone, she wondered whether she had been justified in encouraging him in defending Eleonora. Was this not too like another form of the treatment Raymond had experienced? Her heart bled for her boy, and she was ready to cry aloud, “Must that woman always be the destroyer of my sons’ peace?”

When Frank returned, it was with a face that appalled her by its blank despair, as he again flung himself down beside her.

“She is gone,” he said.

“Gone!”

“Gone, and with the Strangeways. I saw her.”

“Spoke to her?”

“Oh no. The carriage turned the corner as I crossed the road. The two girls were there, and she–“

“Going with them to the station?”

“I thought so; I went to the house, meaning to leave my enclosure for Sir Harry and meet her on her way back; but I heard she was gone to stay with Lady Susan in Yorkshire. Sir Harry was not up, nor Lady Tyrrell.”

Mrs. Poynsett’s hope failed, though she was relieved that Camilla’s tongue had not been in action. She was dismayed at the prone exhausted manner in which Frank lay, partly on the floor, partly against her couch, with his face hidden.

“Do you know where she is gone?”

“Yes, Revelrig, Cleveland, Yorkshire.”

“I will write to her. Whatever may be her intentions, they shall not be carried out under any misrepresentation that I can contradict. You have been a foolish fellow, Frankie; but you shall not be painted worse than you are. She owes you an explanation, and I will do my best that you shall have it. My dear, what is the matter?”

She rang her bell hastily, and upheld the sinking head till help came. He had not lost consciousness, and called it giddiness, and he was convicted of having never gone to bed last night, and having eaten nothing that morning; but he turned against the wine and soup with which they tried to dose him, and, looking crushed and bewildered, said he would go and lie down in his own room.

Raymond went up with him, and returned, saying he only wanted to be alone, with his face from the light; and Mrs. Poynsett, gazing at her eldest son, thought he looked as ill and sunken as his younger brother.

CHAPTER XXVI
A Stickit Minister

And the boy not out of him.–TENNYSON’S Queen Mary

Julius had only too well divined the cause of his summons. He found Herbert Bowater’s papers on the table before the Bishop, and there was no denying that they showed a declension since last year, and that though, from men without his advantages they would have been passable, yet from him they were evidences of neglect of study and thought. Nor could the cause be ignored by any one who had kept an eye on the cricket reports in the county paper; but Herbert was such a nice, hearty, innocent fellow, and his father was so much respected, that it was with great reluctance that his rejection was decided on and his Rector had been sent for in case there should be any cause for extenuation.

Julius could not say there was. He was greatly grieved and personally ashamed, but he could plead nothing but his own failure to influence the young man enough to keep him out of a rage for amusement, of which the quantity, not the quality, was the evil. So poor Herbert was sent for to hear his fate, and came back looking stunned. He hardly spoke till they were in the fly that Julius had brought from Backsworth, and then the untamed school-boy broke forth: “What are you doing with me? I say, I can’t go back to Compton like a dog in a string.”

“Where will you go?”

“I don’t care. To Jericho at once, out of the way of every one. I tell you what, Rector, it was the most ridiculous examination I ever went up for, and I’m not the only man that says so. There was Rivers, of St. Mary’s at Backsworth,–he says the questions were perfectly unreasonable, and what no one could be prepared for. This fellow Danvers is a new hand, and they are always worst, setting one a lot of subjects of no possible use but to catch one out. I should like to ask him now what living soul at Compton he expects to be the better for my views on the right reading of–“

Julius interrupted the passionate tones at the lodge by saying, “If you wish to go to Jericho, you must give directions.”

Herbert gave something between a laugh and a growl.

“I left the pony at Backsworth. Will you come with me to Strawyers and wait in the park till I send Jenny out to you?”

“No, I say. I know my father will be in a greater rage than he ever was in his life, and I won’t go sneaking about. I’d like to go to London, to some hole where no one would ever hear of me. If I were not in Orders already, I’d be off to the ivory-hunters in Africa, and never be heard of more. If this was to be, I wish they had found it out a year ago, and then I should not have been bound,” continued the poor young fellow, in his simplicity, thinking his thoughts aloud, and his sweet candid nature beginning to recover its balance. “Now I’m the most wretched fellow going. I know what I’ve undertaken. It’s not your fault, nor poor Joanna’s. You’ve all been at me, but it only made me worse. What could my father be thinking of to make a parson of a fellow like me? Well, I must face it out sooner or later at Compton, and I had better do it there than at home, even if my father would have me.”

“I must go to Strawyers. The Bishop gave me a letter for your father, and I think it will break it a little for your mother. Would you wait for me at Rood House? You could go into the chapel, and if they wish for you, I could return and fetch you.”

Herbert caught at this as a relief, and orders were given accordingly. It seemed a cruel moment to tell him of young Hornblower’s evasion and robbery, but the police wanted the description of the articles; and, in fact, nothing would have so brought home to him that, though Compton might not appreciate minutiae of Greek criticism, yet the habit of diligence, of which it was the test, might make a difference there. The lingering self- justification was swept away by the sense of the harm his pleasure- seeking had done to the lad whom he had once influenced. He had been fond and proud of his trophies, but he scarcely wasted a thought on them, so absorbed was he in the thought of how he had lorded it over the youth with that late rebuke. The blame he had refused to take on himself then came full upon him now, and he reproached himself too much to be angered at the treachery and ingratitude.

“I can’t prosecute,” he said, when Julius asked for the description he had promised to procure.

“We must judge whether it would be true kindness to refrain, if he is captured,” said Julius. “I had not time to see his mother, but Rosamond will do what she can for her, poor woman.”

“How shall I meet her?” sighed Herbert; and so they arrived at the tranquil little hospital and passed under the deep archway into the gray quadrangle, bright with autumn flowers, and so to the chapel. As they advanced up the solemn and beautiful aisle Herbert dropped on his knees with his hands over his face. Julius knelt beside him for a moment, laid his hand on the curly brown hair, whispered a prayer and a blessing, and then left him; but ere reaching the door, the low choked sobs of anguish of heart could be heard.

A few steps more, and in the broad walk along the quadrangle, Julius met the frail bowed figure with his saintly face, that seemed to have come out of some sacred bygone age.

Julius told his errand. “If you could have seen him just now,” he said, “you would see how much more hope there is of him than of many who never technically fail, but have not the same tender, generous heart, and free humility.”

“Yes, many a priest might now be thankful if some check had come on him.”

“And if he had met it with this freedom from bitterness. And it would be a great kindness to keep him here a day or two. Apart from being with you, the showing himself at Compton or at Strawyers on Sunday would be hard on him.”

“I will ask him. I will gladly have him here as long as the quiet may be good for him. My nephew, William, will be here till the end of the Long Vacation, but I must go to St. Faith’s on Monday to conduct the retreat.”

“I leave him in your hands then, and will call as I return to see what is settled, and report what his family wish. I grieve more for them than for himself.”

Julius first encountered Jenny Bowater in the village making farewell calls. He stopped the carriage and joined her, and not a word was needed to tell her that something was amiss. “You have come to tell us something,” she said. “Herbert has failed?”

“Prayers are sometimes answered as we do not expect,” said Julius. “I believe it will be the making of him.”

“Oh, but how will mamma ever bear it!” cried Jenny.

“We must remind her that it is only a matter of delay, not rejection,” said Julius.

“Have you seen him?”

“Yes, the Bishop sent for me, and asked me to see your father. It was partly from slips in critical knowledge, which betrayed the want of study, and the general want of thought and progress, and all the rest of it, in his papers–“

“Just the fact–“

“Yes, which a man of less reality and more superficial quickness might have concealed by mere intellectual answers, though it might have been much worse for him in the end.”

“Where is he?”

“At Rood House. Unless your mother wishes for him here, he had better stay there till he can bear to come among us again.”

“Much better, indeed,” said Jenny. “I only hope papa and mamma will see how good it is for him to be there. O, Julius, if he is taking it in such a spirit, I can think it all right for him; but for them– for them, it is very hard to bear. Nothing ever went wrong with the boys before, and Herbert–mamma’s darling!” Her eyes were full of tears.

“I wish he had had a better Rector,” said Julius.

“No, don’t say that. It was not your fault.”

“I cannot tell. An older man, or more truly a holier man, might have had more influence. We were all in a sort of laissez-aller state this autumn, and now comes the reckoning.”

“There’s papa,” said Jenny. “Had you rather go to him alone, or can I do any good?”

“I think I will go alone,” said Julius.

Mr. Bowater, who had grown up in a day when examinations were much less earnest matters, never guessed what brought Julius over, but simply thought he had come to wish them good-bye; then believed in any accident rather than in failure, and finally was exceedingly angry, and stormed hotly, first at examinations and modern Bishops, then at cricket and fine ladies, then at Julius, for not having looked after the lad better, and when this was meekly accepted, indignation took a juster direction, and Herbert’s folly and idleness were severely lashed more severely than Julius thought they quite deserved, but a word of pleading only made it worse. Have him home to take leave? No, indeed, Mr. Bowater hoped he knew his duty better as father of a family, when a young man had publicly disgraced himself. “I’ll tell you what, Julius Charnock, if you wish him to forget all the little impression it may have made, and be ready to run after any amount of folly, you’d make me have him home to be petted and cried over by his mother and sisters. He has been their spoilt pet too long, and I won’t have him spoilt now. I’ll not see him till he has worked enough to show whether there’s any real stuff in him.”

Mr. Bowater never even asked where his son was, probably taking it for granted that he was gone back to Compton; nor did Julius see Jenny again, as she was trying to comfort her mother under the dreadful certainty that poor dear Herbert was most cruelly treated, and that the examining chaplain came of a bad stock, and always had had a dislike to the family. It was to be hoped that Mr. Bowater would keep to his wise resolution, and not send for Herbert, for nothing could be worse for him than the sympathy he would have met with from her.

What with looking in to report at Rood House and finding Herbert most grateful for leave to remain there for a few days, Julius did not reach home till long after dark. Pleasantly did the light greet him from the open doorway where his Rosamond was standing. She sprang at once into his arms, as if he had been absent a month, and cried, “Here you are, safe at last!” Then, as she pulled off his wraps, “How tired you must be! Have you had any food? No–it’s all ready;” and he could see ‘high tea’ spread, and lighted by the first fire of the season. “Come and begin!”

“What, without washing my hands?”

“You are to do that in the study; it is all ready.” He did not exactly see why he should be too tired to mount to his dressing- room; but he obeyed, not ungratefully, and his chair was ready, his plate heaped with partridge and his tumbler filled with ale almost before his eyes had recovered the glare of light. The eagerness and flutter of Rosamond’s manner began to make him anxious, and he began for the third time the inquiries she had always cut short–“Baby all right? Terry better?”

“Baby–oh yes, a greater duck than ever. I put her to bed myself, and she was quite delicious. Eat, I say; go on.”

“Not unless you eat that other wing.”

“I’ll help myself then. You go on. I don’t see Herbert, so I suppose it is all right. Where’s your canonry?”

“Alas! poor Herbert is plucked. I had to go round by Strawyers to tell them.”

“Plucked! I never heard of such a thing. I think it is a great shame such a nice honest fellow should be so ill-used, and when all his pretty things have been stolen too! Do you know, they’ve taken up young Hornblower; but his friends have made off with the things, and they say they are in the melting-pot by this time, and there’s no chance of recovering them.”

“I don’t think he cares much now, poor fellow. Did you see Mrs. Hornblower?”

“No; by the time I could get my hat on she had heard it, poor thing, and was gone to Backsworth; for he’s there, in the county gaol; was taken at the station, I believe; I don’t half understand it.”

Her manner was indeed strange and flighty; and though she recurred to questions about the Ordination and the Bowaters, Julius perceived that she was forcing her attention to the answers as if trying to stave off his inquiries, and he came to closer quarters. “How is Terry? Has Dr. Worth been here?”

“Yes; but not till very late. He says he never was so busy.”

“Rosamond, what is it? What did he say of Terry?”

“He said”–she drew a long breath–“he says it is the Water Lane fever.”

“Terry, my dear–“

She held him down with a hand on his shoulder–

“Be quiet. Finish your dinner. Dr. Worth said the great point was to keep strong, and not be overdone, nor to go into infected air tired and hungry. I would not have let you come in if there had been any help for it; and now I’ll not have you go near him till you’ve made a good meal.”

“You must do the same then. There, eat that slice, or I won’t;” and as she allowed him to place it on her plate, “What does he call it– not typhus?”

“He can’t tell yet; he does not know whether it is infectious or only epidemic; and when he heard how the dear boy had been for days past at the Exhibition at the town-hall, and drinking lots of iced water on Saturday, he seemed to think it quite accounted for. He says there is no reason that in this good air he should not do very well; but, oh, Julius, I wish I had kept him from that horrid place. They left him in my charge!”

“There is no reason to distress yourself about that, my Rose. He was innocently occupied, and there was no cause to expect harm. There’s all good hope for him, with God’s blessing. Who is with him now?”

“Cook is there now. Both the maids were so kind and hearty, declaring they would do anything, and were not afraid; and I can manage very well with their help. You know papa had a low fever at Montreal, and mamma and I nursed him through it, so I know pretty well what to do.”

“But how about the baby?”

“Emma came back before the doctor came, crying piteously, poor child, as if she had had a sufficient lesson; so I said she might stay her month on her good behaviour, and now we could not send her out of the house. I have brought the nursery down to the spare room, and in the large attic, with plenty of disinfecting fluid, we can, as the doctor said, isolate the fever. He is quiet and sleepy, and I do not think it will be hard to manage, if you will only be good and conformable.”

“I don’t promise, if that means that you are to do everything and I nothing. When did Worth see him?”

“Not till five o’clock: and he would not have come at all, if Anne had not sent in some one from the Hall when she saw how anxious I was. He would not have come otherwise; he is so horribly busy, with lots of cases at Wil’sboro’. Now, if you have done, you may come and see my boy.”

Julius did see a flushed sleeping face that did not waken at his entrance; and as his wife settled herself for her watch, he felt as if he could not leave her after such a day as she had had, but an indefinable apprehension made him ask whether she would spare him to run up to the Hall to see his mother and ask after Raymond, whose looks had haunted him all day. She saw he would not rest otherwise, and did not show how unwilling was her consent, for though she knew little, her mind misgave her.

He made his way into the Hall by the back door, and found his mother still in the drawing-room, and Raymond dozing in the large arm-chair by the fire. Mrs. Poynsett gave a warning look as Julius bent over her, but Raymond only opened his eyes with a dreamy gaze, without speaking. “Why, mother, where are the rest?”

“Poor Frank–I hope it is only the shock and fatigue; but Dr. Worth wished him to be kept as quiet as possible. He can’t bear to see any one in the room, so that good Anne said she would sit in Charlie’s room close by.”

“Then he is really ill?” said Julius.

“He nearly fainted after walking over to Sirenwood in vain. I don’t understand it. There’s something very wrong there, which seems perfectly to have crushed him.”

“I’ll go up and see him,” said Julius. “You both of you look as if you ought to be in bed. How is Cecil, Raymond?”

“Quite knocked up,” he sleepily answered. “Here’s Susan, mother.”

Susan must have been waiting till she heard voices to carry off her mistress. Raymond pushed her chair into her room, bent over her with extra tenderness, bade her good night; and when Julius had done the same they stood by the drawing-room fire together.

“I’ve been trying to write that letter, Julius,” said Raymond, “but I never was so sleepy in my life, and I can’t get on with it.”

“What letter?”

“That letter. About the races.”

“Oh! That seems long ago!”

“So it does,” said Raymond, in the same dreamy manner, as if trying to shake something off. “Some years, isn’t it? I wanted it done, somehow. I would sit down to it now, only I have fallen asleep a dozen times over it already.”

“Not very good for composition,” said Julius, alarmed by something indefinable in his brother’s look, and by his manner of insisting on what was by no means urgent. “Come, put it out of your head, and go to bed.”

“How did you find the boy Terry?” asked Raymond, again as if in his sleep.

“I scarcely saw him. He was asleep.”

“And Worth calls it–?”

“The same fever as in Water Lane.”

“I thought so. We are in for it,” said Raymond, now quite awake. “He did not choose to say so to my mother, but I gathered it from his orders.”

“But Frank only came down yesterday.”

“Frank was knocked down and predisposed by the treatment he met with, poor boy. They say he drank quarts of iced things at the dinner and ball, and ate nothing. This may be only the effect of the shock, but his head is burning, and there is a disposition to wander. However, he has had his coup de grace, and that may account for it. It is Cecil.”

“Cecil!”

“Cecil, poor child. She has been constantly in that pestiferous place. All Worth would say was that she must be kept quiet and cool, but he has sent the same draughts for all three. I saw, for Terry’s came here. I fancy Worth spoke out plainly to that maid of Cecil’s, Grindstone; but she only looks bitter at me, says she can attend to her mistress, and has kept me out of the room all day. But I will go in to-night before I go to bed,” added Raymond, energetically. “You are ready to laugh at me, Julius. No one has meddled between you and Rosamond.”

“Thank God, no!” cried Julius.

“Friend abroad, or you may leave out the r,” said Raymond, “maid at home. What chance have I ever had?”

“I’ll tell you what I should do, Raymond,” said Julius, “turn out the maid, keep the field, nurse her myself.”

“Yes,” said Raymond, “that’s all very well if–if you haven’t got the fever yourself. There, you need say nothing about it, nobody would be of any use to me to-night, and it may be only that I am dead beat.”

But there was something about his eyes and his heavy breath which confirmed his words, and Julius could only say, “My dear Raymond!”

“It serves us right, does not it?” said his brother, smiling. “I only wish it had not fixed on the one person who tried to do good.”

“If I could only stay with you; but I must tell Rosamond first.”

“No, indeed. I want no one to-night, no one; after that you’ll look after my mother, that’s the great thing.” He spoke steadily, but his hand trembled so that he could not light his candle, and Julius was obliged to do it, saying wistfully, “I’ll come up the first thing in the morning and see how you are.”

“Do, and if there is need, you will tell my mother. A night’s rest may set me right, but I have not felt well these three or four days– I shall be in my own old room.”

He leant heavily on the balusters, but would not take his brother’s arm. He passed into his dressing-room, and thus to the open door of the room where he heard his wife’s voice; and as Mrs. Grindstone came forward to warn him off, he said, “She is awake.”

“Yes, sir; but she must not be excited.”

“Raymond!”

“How are you now?” he asked, coming up to the bed.

“Oh! it is very hot and heavy,” said Cecil wearily, putting her hand into his; “I’m aching all over.”

“Poor child!” he said softly.