What Will He Do with It? — Complete

CHAPTER II. CHAPTER II. IF THE LION EVER WEAR THE FOX’S HIDE, STILL HE WEARS IT AS THE LION. When Darrell was alone with Lionel and Alban Morley, the calm with which he had before startled them vanished. He poured out his thanks with deep emotion. “Forgive me; not in the presence of a servant could I say, ‘You have saved me from an unnatural strife, and my daughter’s husband from a murderer’s end.’ But by what wondrous mercy did you learn my danger? Were you sent to my aid?” Alban briefly explained. “You may judge,” he said in conclusion, “how great was our anxiety, when, following the instructions of our guide, while our driver rang his alarum at the front portals, we made our entrance into yon ribs of stone, found the doors already opened, and feared we might be too late. But, meanwhile, the poor woman waits without in the carriage that brought us from the station. I must go and relieve her mind.” “And bring her hither,” cried Darrell, “to receive my gratitude. Stay, Alban; while you leave me with her, you will speak aside to Mills; tell him that you heard there was an attempt to be made on the house, and came to frustrate it, but that your fears were exaggerated; the man was more a half-insane mendicant than a robber. Be sure, at least, that his identity with Losely be not surmised, and bid Mills treat the affair lightly. Public men are exposed, you know, to assaults from crackbrained enthusiasts; or stay—I once was a lawyer, and” (continued Darrell, whose irony had become so integral an attribute of his mind as to be proof against all trial) “there are men so out of their wits as to fancy a lawyer has ruined them! Lionel, tell poor Dick Fairthorn to come to me.” When the musician entered, Darrell whispered to him: “Go back to your room—open your casement—step out on to the parapet—you will see something white; it is a scrap of paper wrapped round my old armorial seal. Bring it to me just as it is, Dick. That poor young Lionel, we must keep him here a day or two; mind, no prickles for him, Dick.” CHAPTER III. ARABELLA CRANE VERSUS GUY DARRELL; OR, WOMAN VERSUS LAWYER. IN THE COURTS, LAWYER WOULD WIN; BUT IN A PRIVATE PARLOUR, FOOT TO FOOT, AND TONGUE TO TONGUE, LAWYER HAS NOT A CHANCE. Arabella Crane entered the room: Darrell hesitated—the remembrances attached to her were so painful and repugnant. But did he not now owe to her perhaps his very life? He passed his hand rapidly over his brow, as if to sweep away all earlier recollections, and, advancing quickly, extended that hand to her. The stern woman shook her head, and rejected the proffered greeting. “You owe me no thanks,” she said, in her harsh, ungracious accents; “I sought to save not you, but him.” “How!” said Darrell, startled; “you feel no resentment against the man who injured and betrayed you?” “What my feelings may be towards him are not for you to conjecture; man could not conjecture them; I am woman. What they once were I might blush for; what they are now, I could own without shame. But you, Mr. Darrell,—you, in the hour of my uttermost anguish, when all my future was laid desolate, and the world lay crushed at my feet—you—man, chivalrous man!—you had for me no human compassion—you thrust me in scorn from your doors—you saw in my woe nothing but my error—you sent me forth, stripped of reputation, branded by your contempt, to famine or to suicide. And you wonder that I feel less resentment against him who wronged me than against you, who, knowing me wronged, only disdained my grief. The answer is plain—the scorn of the man she only reverenced leaves to a woman no memory to mitigate its bitterness and gall. The wrongs inflicted by the man she loved may leave, what they have left to me, an undying sense of a past existence—radiant, joyous, hopeful; of a time when the earth seemed covered with blossoms, just ready to burst into bloom; when the skies through their haze took the rose-hues as the sun seemed about to rise. The memory that I once was happy, at least then, I owe to him who injured and betrayed me. To you, when happiness was lost to me forever, what do I owe? Tell me.” Struck by her words, more by her impressive manner, though not recognising the plea by which the defendant thus raised herself into the accuser, Darrell answered gently “Pardon me; this is no moment to revive recollections of anger on my part; but reflect, I entreat you, and you will feel that I was not too harsh. In the same position any other man would not have been less severe.” “Any other man!” she exclaimed; “ay, possibly! but would the scorn of any other man so have crushed self-esteem? The injuries of the wicked do not sour us against the good; but the scoff of the good leaves us malignant against virtue itself. Any other man! Tut! Genius is bound to be indulgent. It should know human errors so well—has, with its large luminous forces, such errors itself when it deigns to be human, that, where others may scorn, genius should only pity.” She paused a moment, and then slowly resumed. “And pity was my due. Had you, or had any one lofty as yourself in reputed honour, but said to me, ‘Thou hast sinned, thou must suffer; but sin itself needs compassion, and compassion forbids thee to despair,’ why, then, I might have been gentler to the things of earth, and less steeled against the influences of Heaven than I have been. That is all no matter now. Mr. Darrell, I would not part from you with angry and bitter sentiments. Colonel Morley tells me that you have not only let the man, whom we need not name, go free, but that you have guarded the secret of his designs. For this I thank you. I thank you, because what is left of that blasted and deformed existence I have taken into mine. And I would save that man from his own devices as I would save my soul from its own temptations. Are you large-hearted enough to comprehend me? Look in my face—you have seen his; all earthly love is erased and blotted out of both.” Guy Darrell bowed his head in respect that partook of awe. “You, too,” said the grim woman, after a pause, and approaching him nearer—“you, too, have loved, I am told, and you, too, were forsaken.” He recoiled and—shuddered. “What is left to your heart of its ancient folly? I should like to know! I am curious to learn if there be a man who can feel as woman! Have you only resentment? have you only disdain? have you only vengeance? have you pity? or have you the jealous absorbing desire, surviving the affection from which it sprang, that still the life wrenched from you shall owe, despite itself, a melancholy allegiance to your own?” Darrell impatiently waved his hand to forbid further questions; and it needed all his sense of the service this woman had just rendered him to repress his haughty displeasure at so close an approach to his torturing secrets. Arabella’s dark bright eyes rested on his knitted brow, for a moment, wistfully, musingly. Then she said: “I see! man’s inflexible pride—no pardon there! But own, at least, that you have suffered.” “Suffered!” groaned Darrell involuntarily, and pressing his hand to his heart. “You have!—and you own it! Fellow-sufferer, I have no more anger against you. Neither should pity, but let each respect the other. A few words more,—this child!” “Ay—ay—this child! you will be truthful. You will not seek to deceive me—you know that she—she—claimed by that assassin, reared by his convict father—she is no daughter of my line!” “What! would it then be no joy to know that your line did not close with yourself—that your child might—” “Cease, madam, cease—it matters not to a man nor to a race when it perish, so that it perish at last with honour. Who would have either himself or his lineage live on into a day when the escutcheon is blotted and the name disgraced? No; if that be Matilda’s child, tell me, and I will bear, as man may do, the last calamity which the will of Heaven may inflict. If, as I have all reason to think, the tale be an imposture, speak and give me the sole comfort to which I would cling amidst the ruin of all other hopes.” “Verily,” said Arabella, with a kind of musing wonder in the tone of her softened voice; “verily, has a man’s heart the same throb and fibre as a woman’s? Had I a child like that blue-eyed wanderer with the frail form needing protection, and the brave spirit that ennobles softness, what would be my pride! my bliss! Talk of shame—disgrace! Fie—fie—the more the evil of others darkened one so innocent, the more cause to love and shelter her. But—I—am childless! Shall I tell you that the offence which lies heaviest on my conscience has been my cruelty to that girl? She was given an infant to my care. I saw in her the daughter of that false, false, mean, deceiving friend, who had taken my confidence, and bought, with her supposed heritage, the man sworn by all oaths to me. I saw in her, too, your descendant, your rightful heiress. I rejoiced in a revenge on your daughter and yourself. Think not I would have foisted her on your notice! No. I would have kept her without culture, without consciousness of a higher lot; and when I gave her up to her grandsire, the convict, it was a triumph to think that Matilda’s child would be an outcast. Terrible thought! but I was mad then. But that poor convict whom you, in your worldly arrogance, so loftily despise—he took to his breast what was flung away as a worthless weed. And if the flower keep the promise of the bud, never flower so fair bloomed from your vaunted stem! And yet you would bless me if I said, ‘Pass on, childless man; she is nothing to you!’” “Madam, let us not argue. As you yourself justly imply, man’s heart and woman’s must each know throbs that never are, and never should be, familiar to the other. I repeat my question, and again I implore your answer.” “I cannot answer for certain; and I am fearful of answering at all, lest on a point so important I should mislead you. Matilda’s child? Jasper affirmed it to me. His father believed him—I believed him. I never had the shadow of a doubt till—” “Till what? For Heaven’s sake speak.” “Till about five years ago, or somewhat more, I saw a letter from Gabrielle Desmarets, and—” “Ah! which made you suspect, as I do, that the child is Gabrielle Desmaret’s daughter.” Arabella reared her crest as a serpent before it strikes. “Gabrielle’s daughter! You think so. Her child that I sheltered! Her child for whom I have just pleaded to you! Hers!” She suddenly became silent. Evidently that idea had never before struck her; evidently it now shocked her; evidently something was passing through her mind which did not allow that idea to be dismissed. As Darrell was about to address her, she exclaimed abruptly: “No! say no more now. You may hear from me again should I learn what may decide at least this doubt one way or the other. Farewell, sir.” “Not yet. Permit me to remind you that you have saved the life of a man whose wealth is immense.” “Mr. Darrell, my wealth in relation to my wants is perhaps immense as yours, for I do not spend what I possess.” “But this unhappy outlaw, whom you would save from himself, can henceforth be to you but a burthen and a charge. After what has passed to-night, I do tremble to think that penury may whisper other houses to rob, other lives to menace. Let me, then, place at your disposal, to be employed in such mode as you deem the best, a sum that may suffice to secure an object which we have in common.” “No, Mr. Darrell,” said Arabella, fiercely; “whatever he be, never with my consent shall Jasper Losely be beholden to you for alms. If money can save him from shame and a dreadful death, that money shall be mine. I have said it. And, hark you, Mr. Darrell, what is repentance without atonement? I say not that I repent; but I do know that I seek to atone.” The iron-grey robe fluttered an instant, and then vanished from the room. When Alban Morley returned to the library, he saw Darrell at the farther corner of the room, on his knees. Well might Guy Darrell thank Heaven for the mercies vouchsafed to him that night. Life preserved? Is that all? Might life yet be bettered and gladdened? Was there aught in the grim woman’s words that might bequeath thoughts which reflection would ripen into influences over action?—aught that might suggest the cases in which, not ignobly, Pity might subjugate Scorn? In the royal abode of that Soul, does Pride only fortify Honour?—is it but the mild king, not the imperial despot? Would it blind, as its rival, the Reason? Would it chain, as a rebel, the Heart? Would it man the dominions, that might be serene, by the treasures it wastes-by the wars it provokes? Self-knowledge! self-knowledge! From Heaven, indeed, descends the precept, “KNOW THYSELF.” That truth was told to us by the old heathen oracle. But what old heathen oracle has told us how to know? CHAPTER IV. THE MAN-EATER HUMILIATED. HE ENCOUNTERS AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE IN A TRAVELLER, WHO, LIKE SHAKESPEARE’S JAQUES, IS “A MELANCHOLY FELLOW”; WHO ALSO, LIKE JAQUES, HATH “GREAT REASON TO BE BAD”; AND WHO, STILL LIKE JAQUES, IS “FULL OF MATTER.” Jasper Losely rode slowly on through the clear frosty night; not back to the country town which he had left on his hateful errand, nor into the broad road to London. With a strange desire to avoid the haunts of men, he selected—at each choice of way in the many paths branching right and left, between waste and woodland—the lane that seemed the narrowest and the dimmest. It was not remorse that gnawed him, neither was it mere mercenary disappointment, nor even the pang of baffled vengeance—it was the profound humiliation of diseased self-love—the conviction that, with all his brute power, he had been powerless in the very time and scene in which he had pictured to himself so complete a triumph. Even the quiet with which he had escaped was a mortifying recollection. Capture itself would have been preferable, if capture had been preceded by brawl and strife—the exhibition of his hardihood and prowess. Gloomily bending over his horse’s neck, he cursed himself as fool and coward. What would he have had!—a new crime on his soul? Perhaps he would have answered, “Anything rather than this humiliating failure.” He did not rack his brains with conjecturing if Cutts had betrayed him, or by what other mode assistance had been sent in such time of need to Darrell. Nor did he feel that hunger for vengeance, whether on Darrell or on his accomplice (should that accomplice have played the traitor), which might have been expected from his characteristic ferocity. On the contrary, the thought of violence and its excitements had in it a sickness as of shame. Darrell at that hour might have ridden by him scathless. Cutts might have jeered and said, “I blabbed your secret, and sent the aid that foiled it”; and Losely would have continued to hang his head, nor lifted the herculean hand that lay nerveless on the horse’s mane. Is it not commonly so in all reaction from excitements in which self-love has been keenly galled? Does not vanity enter into the lust of crime as into the desire of fame? At sunrise Losely found himself on the high-road into which a labyrinth of lanes had led him, and opposite to a milestone, by which he learned that he had been long turning his back on the metropolis, and that he was about ten miles distant from the provincial city of Ouzelford. By this time his horse was knocked up, and his own chronic pains began to make themselves acutely felt; so that, when, a little farther on, he came to a wayside inn, he was glad to halt; and after a strong drain, which had the effect of an opiate, he betook himself to bed, and slept till the noon was far advanced. When Losely came down-stairs, the common room of the inn was occupied by a meeting of the trustees of the highroads; and, on demanding breakfast, he was shown into a small sanded parlour adjoining the kitchen. Two other occupants—a man and a woman—were there already, seated at a table by the fireside, over a pint of half-and-half. Losely, warming himself at the hearth, scarcely noticed these humble revellers by a glance. And they, after a displeased stare at the stalwart frame which obscured the cheering glow they had hitherto monopolised, resumed a muttered conversation; of which, as well as of the vile modicum that refreshed their lips, the man took the lion’s share. Shabbily forlorn were that man’s habiliments—turned and re-turned, patched, darned, weather-stained, grease-stained—but still retaining that kind of mouldy, grandiose, bastard gentility, which implies that the wearer has known better days; and, in the downward progress of fortunes when they once fall, may probably know still worse. The woman was some years older than her companion, and still more forlornly shabby. Her garments seemed literally composed of particles of dust glued together, while her face might have insured her condemnation as a witch before any honest jury in the reign of King James the First. His breakfast, and the brandy-bottle that flanked the loaf, were now placed before Losely; and, as distastefully he forced himself to eat, his eye once more glanced towards, and this time rested on, the shabby man, in the sort of interest with which one knave out of elbows regards another. As Jasper thus looked, gradually there stole on him a reminiscence of those coarse large features—that rusty disreputable wig. The recognition, however, was not mutual; and presently, after a whisper interchanged between the man and the woman, the latter rose, and approaching Losely, dropped a curtsey, and said, in a weird, under voice: “Stranger! luck’s in store for you. Tell your fortune!” As she spoke, from some dust-hole in her garments she produced a pack of cards, on whose half-obliterated faces seemed incrusted the dirt of ages. Thrusting these antiquities under Jasper’s nose, she added, “Wish and cut.” “Yshaw,” said Jasper, who, though sufficiently superstitious in some matters and in regard to some persons, was not so completely under the influence of that imaginative infirmity as to take the creature before him for a sibyl. “Get away; you turn my stomach. Your cards smell; so do you!” “Forgive her, worthy sir,” said the man, leaning forward. “The hag may be unsavoury, but she is wise. The Three Sisters who accosted the Scottish Thane, sir (Macbeth—you have seen it on the stage?) were not savoury. Withered, and wild in their attire, sir, but they knew a thing or two! She sees luck in your face. Cross her hand and give it vent!” “Fiddledee,” said the irreverent Losely. “Take her off, or I shall scald her,” and he seized the kettle. The hag retreated grumbling; and Losely, soon despatching his meal, placed his feet ‘on the hobs, and began to meditate what course to adopt for a temporary subsistence. He had broken into the last pound left of the money which he had extracted from Mrs. Crane’s purse some days before. He recoiled with terror from the thought of returning to town and placing himself at her mercy. Yet what option had he? While thus musing, he turned impatiently round, and saw that the shabby man and the dusty hag were engaged in an amicable game of ecarte, with those very cards which had so offended his olfactory organs. At that sight the old instinct of the gambler struggled back; and, raising himself up, he looked over the cards of the players. The miserable wretches were, of course, playing for nothing; and Losely saw at a glance that the man was, nevertheless, trying to cheat the woman! Positively he took that man into more respect; and that man, noticing the interest with which Losely surveyed the game, looked up, and said: “While the time, sir? What say you? A game or two? I can stake my pistoles—that is, sir, so far as a fourpenny bit goes. If ignorant of this French game, sir, cribbage or all fours?” “No,” said Losely, mournfully; “there is nothing to be got out of you; otherwise”—he stopped and sighed. “But I have seen you under other circumstances. What has become of your Theatrical Exhibition? Gambled it away? Yet, from what I see of your play, I think you ought not to have lost, Mr. Rugge.” The ex-manager started. “What! You knew me before the Storm?—before the lightning struck me, as I may say, sir—and falling into difficulties, I became-a wreck? You knew me?—not of the Company?—a spectator?” “As you say—a spectator. You had once in your employ an actor—clever old fellow. Waife, I think, he was called.” “Ah! hold! At that name, sir, my wounds bleed afresh. From that execrable name, sir, there hangs a tale!” “Indeed! Then it will be a relief to you to tell it,” said Losely, resettling his feet on the hob, and snatching at any diversion from his own reflections. “Sir, when a gentleman, who is a gentleman, asks as a favour a specimen of my powers of recital, not professionally, and has before him the sparkling goblet, which he does not invite me to share, he insults my fallen fortunes. Sir, I am poor—I own it; I have fallen into the sere and yellow leaf, sir; but I have still in this withered bosom the heart of a Briton!” “Warm it, Mr. Rugge. Help yourself to the brandy—and the lady too.” “Sir, you are a gentleman; sir, your health. Hag, drink better days to us both. That woman, sir, is a hag, but she is an honour to her sex-faithful!” “It is astonishing how faithful ladies are when not what is called beautiful. I speak from painful experience,” said Losely, growing debonnair as the liquor relaxed his gloom, and regaining that levity of tongue which sometimes strayed into wit, and which-springing originally from animal spirits and redundant health—still came to him mechanically whenever roused by companionship from alternate intervals of lethargy and pain. “But, now, Mr. Rugge, I am all ears; perhaps you will be kind enough to be all tale.” With tragic aspect, unrelaxed by that jeu de mots , and still wholly unrecognising in the massive form and discoloured swollen countenance of the rough-clad stranger, the elegant proportions, the healthful, blooming, showy face, and elaborate fopperies of the Jasper Losely who had sold to him a Phenomenon which proved so evanishing, Rugge entered into a prolix history of his wrongs at the hands of Waife, of Losely, of Sophy. Only of Mrs. Crane did he speak with respect; and Jasper then for the first time learned—and rather with anger for the interference than gratitude for the generosity—that she had repaid the L100, and thereby cancelled Rugge’s claim upon the child. The ex-manager then proceeded to the narrative of his subsequent misfortunes—all of which he laid to the charge of Waife and the Phenomenon. “Sir,” said he, “I was ambitious. From my childhood’s hour I dreamed of the great York Theatre—dreamed of it literally thrice. Fatal Vision! But like other dreams, that dream would have faded—been forgotten in the workday world—and I should not have fallen into the sere and yellow, but have had, as formerly, troops of friends, and not been reduced to the horrors of poverty and a faithful Hag. But, sir, when I first took to my bosom that fiend William Waife, he exhibited a genius, sir, that Dowton (you have seen Dowton?—grand) was a stick as compared with. Then my ambition, sir, blazed and flared up-obstreperous, and my childhood’s dream haunted me; and I went about musing [Hag, you recollect!]—and muttering ‘The Royal Theatre at York.’ But, incredible though it seem, the ungrateful scorpion left me with a treacherous design to exhibit the parts I had fostered on the London boards; and even-handed Justice, sir, returned the poisoned chalice to his lips, causing him to lose an eye and to hobble—besides splitting up his voice—which served him right. And again I took the scorpion for the sake of the Phenomenon. I had a babe myself once, sir, though you may not think it. Gormerick (that is this faithful Hag) gave the babe Daffy’s Elixir, in teething; but it died—convulsions. I comforted myself when that Phenomenon came out on my stage—in pink satin and pearls. ‘Ha,’ I said, ‘the great York Theatre shall yet be mine!’ The haunting idea became a Mania, sir. The learned say that there is a Mania called Money Mania—[Monomania??]—when one can think but of the one thing needful—as the guilty Thane saw the dagger, sir—you understand. And when the Phenomenon had vanished and gone, as I was told, to America, where I now wish I was myself, acting Rolla at New York or elsewhere, to a free and enlightened people—then, sir, the Mania grew on me still stronger and stronger. There was a pride in it, sir, a British pride. “I said to this faithful Hag: ‘What—shall I not have the York because that false child has deserted me? Am I not able to realise a Briton’s ambition without being beholden to a Phenomenon in spangles?’ Sir, I took the York! Alone I did it!” “And,” said Losely, feeling a sort of dreary satisfaction in listening to the grotesque sorrows of one whose condition seemed to him yet more abject than his own—“And the York Theatre alone perhaps did you.” “Right, sir,” said Rugge—half-dolorously, half-exultingly. “It was a Grand Concern, and might have done for the Bank of England! It swallowed up my capital with as much ease, sir, as I could swallow an oyster if there were one upon that plate! I saw how it would be, the very first week—when I came out myself, strong—Kean’s own part in the Iron Chest—Mortimer, sir; there warn’t three pounds ten in the house—packed audience, sir, and they had the face to hiss me. ‘Hag,’ said I to Mrs. Gormerick, ‘this Theatre is a howling wilderness.’ But there is a fascination in a Grand Concern, of which one is the head—one goes on and on. All the savings of a life devoted to the British Drama and the production of native genius went in what I may call—a jiffey! But it was no common object, sir, to your sight displayed—but what with pleasure, sir (I appeal to the Hag), Heaven itself surveyed!—a great man struggling, sir, with the storms of fate, and greatly falling, sir, with—a sensation! York remembers it to this day! I took the benefit of the Act—it was the only benefit I did take—and nobody was the better for it. But I don’t repine—I realised my dream: that is more than all can say. Since then I have had many downs, and no ups. I have been a messenger, sir—a prompter, sir, in my own Exhibition, to which my own clown, having married into the tragic line, succeeded, sir, as proprietor; buying of me when I took the York, the theatre, scenery, and properties, sir, with the right still to call himself ‘Rugge’s Grand Theatrical Exhibition,’ for an old song, sir—Melancholy. Tyrannised over, sir—snubbed and bullied by a creature dressed in a little brief authority; and my own tights—scarlet—as worn by me in my own applauded part of ‘The Remorseless Baron.’ At last, with this one faithful creature, I resolved to burst the chains—to be free as air—in short, a chartered libertine, sir. We have not much, but thank the immortal gods, we are independent, sir—the Hag and I—chartered libertines! And we are alive still—at which, in strict confidence, I may own to you that I am astonished.” “Yes! you do live,” said Jasper, much interested—for how to live at all was at that moment a matter of considerable doubt to himself; “you do live—it is amazing! How?” “The Faithful tells fortunes; and sometimes we pick up windfalls—widows and elderly single ladies—but it is dangerous. Labour is sweet, sir: but not hard labour in the dungeons of a Bridewell. She has known that labour, sir; and in those intervals I missed her much, Don’t cry, Hag; I repeat, I live!” “I understand now; you live upon her! They are the best of creatures, these hags, as you call them, certainly. Well, well, no saying what a man may come to! I suppose you have never seen Waife, nor that fellow you say was so well-dressed and good-looking, and who sold you the Phenomenon, nor the Phenomenon herself—Eh?” added Losely, stretching himself, and yawning, as he saw the brandybottle was finished. “I have seen Waife—the one-eyed monster! Aha!—I have seen him!—and yesterday too; and a great comfort it was to me too!” “You saw Waife yesterday—where?” “At Ouzelford, which I and the Faithful left this morning.” “And what was he doing?” said Losely, with well-simulated indifference. “Begging, breaking stones, or what?” “No,” said Rugge, dejectedly; “I can’t say it was what, in farcical composition, I should call such nuts to me as that, sir. Still, he was in a low way—seemed a pedlar or a hawker, selling out of a pannier on the Rialto—I mean the Cornmarket, sir—not even a hag by his side, only a great dog—French. A British dog would have scorned such fellowship. And he did not look merry as he used to do when in my troop. Did he, Hag?” “His conscience smites him,” said the Hag, solemnly. “Did you speak to him?” “Why, no. I should have liked it, but we could not at that moment, seeing that we were not in our usual state of independence. This faithful creature was being led before the magistrates, and I too—charge of cheating a cook-maid, to whom the Hag had only said, ‘that if the cards spoke true, she would ride in her carriage.’ The charge broke down; but we were placed for the night in the Cells of the Inquisition, remanded, and this morning banished from the city, and are now on our way to—any other city;—eh, Hag?” “And the old man was not with the Phenomenon? What has become of her, then?” “Perhaps she may be with him at his house, if he has one; only, she was not with him on the Rialto or Cornmarket. She was with him two years ago, I know; and he and she were better off then than he is now, I suspect. And that is why it did me good, sir, to see him a pedlar—a common pedlar—fallen into the sere, like the man he abandoned!” “Humph—where were they two years ago?” “At a village not far from Humberston. He had a pretty house, sir, and sold baskets; and the girl was there too, favoured by a great lady—a Marchioness, sir! Gods!” “Marchioness?—near Humberston? The Marchioness of Montfort, I suppose?” “Likely enough; I don’t remember. All I know is, that two years ago my old Clown was my tyrannical manager; and being in that capacity, and this world being made for Caesar, which is a shame, sir, he said to me, with a sneer, ‘Old Gentleman Waife, whom you used to bully, and his Juliet Araminta, are in clover!’ And the mocking varlet went on to unfold a tale to the effect, that when he had last visited Humberston, in the race-week, a young tradesman, who was courting the Columbine, whose young idea I myself taught to shoot on the light fantastic toe, treated that Columbine, and one of her sister train (being, indeed, her aunt, who has since come out at the Surrey in Desdemona) to a picnic in a fine park. (That’s discipline!—ha, ha!) And there, sir, Columbine and her aunt saw Waife on the other side of a stream by which they sate carousing.” “The Clown perhaps said it to spite you.” “Columbine herself confirmed his tale, and said that on returning to the Village Inn for the Triumphal Car (or bus) which brought them, she asked if a Mr. Waife dwelt thereabouts, and was told, ‘Yes, with his grand-daughter.’ And she went on asking, till all came out as the Clown reported. And Columbine had not even the gratitude, the justice, to expose that villain—not even to say he had been my perfidious servant! She had the face to tell me ‘she thought it might harm him, and he was a kind old soul.’ Sir, a Columbine whose toes I had rapped scores of times before they could be turned out, was below contempt! but when my own Clown thus triumphed over me, in parading before my vision the bloated prosperity of mine enemy, it went to my heart like a knife; and we had words on it, sir, and—I left him to his fate. But a pedlar! Gentleman Waife has come to that! The heavens are just, sir, and of our pleasant vices, sir, make instruments that—that—” “Scourge us,” prompted the Hag, severely. Losely rang the bell; the maid-servant appeared. “My horse and bill. Well, Mr. Rugge, I must quit your agreeable society. I am not overflowing with wealth at this moment, or I would request your acceptance of—” “The smallest trifle,” interrupted the Hag, with her habitual solemnity of aspect. Losely, who, in his small way, had all the liberality of a Catiline, “ alieni appetens, sui profusus ,” drew forth the few silver coins yet remaining to him; and though he must have calculated that, after paying his bill, there could scarcely be three shillings left, he chucked two of them towards the Hag, who, clutching them with a profound curtsey, then handed them to the fallen monarch by her side, with a loyal tear and a quick sob that might have touched the most cynical republican. In a few minutes more, Losely was again on horseback; and as he rode towards Ouzelford, Rugge and his dusty Faithful shambled on in the opposite direction—shambled on, footsore and limping, along the wide, waste, wintry thoroughfare—vanishing from the eye, as their fates henceforth from this story. There they go by the white hard milestone; farther on, by the trunk of the hedgerow-tree, which lies lopped and leafless—cumbering the wayside, till the time come to cast it off to the thronged, dull stackyard. Farther yet, where the ditch widens into yon stagnant pool, with the great dung-heap by its side. There the road turns aslant; the dung-heap hides them. Gone! and not a speck on the Immemorial, Universal Thoroughfare. CHAPTER V. NO WIND SO CUTTING AS THAT WHICH SETS IN THE QUARTER FROM WHICH THE SUN RISES. The town to which I lend the disguising name of Ouzelford, which, in years bygone, was represented by Guy Darrell, and which, in years to come, may preserve in its municipal hall his effigies in canvas or stone, is one of the handsomest in England. As you approach its suburbs from the London Road, it rises clear and wide upon your eye, crowning the elevated table-land upon which it is built;—a noble range of prospect on either side, rich with hedgerows not yet sacrificed to the stern demands of modern agriculture—venerable woodlands, and the green pastures round many a rural thane’s frank, hospitable hall;—no one Great House banishing from leagues of landscape the abodes of knight and squire, nor menacing, with “the legitimate influence of property,” the votes of rebellious burghers. Everywhere, like finger-posts to heaven, you may perceive the church-towers of rural hamlets embosomed in pleasant valleys, or climbing up gentle slopes. At the horizon, the blue fantastic outline of girdling hills mingles with the clouds. A famous old cathedral, neighboured by the romantic ivy-grown walls of a ruined castle, soars up from the centre of the town, and dominates the whole survey—calm, as with conscious power. Nearing the town, the villas of merchants and traders, released perhaps from business, skirt the road, with trim gardens and shaven lawns. Now the small river, or rather rivulet, of Ouzel, from which the town takes its name, steals out from deep banks covered with brushwood or aged trees, and widening into brief importance, glides under the arches of an ancient bridge; runs on, clear and shallow, to refresh low fertile dairy-meadows, dotted with kine; and finally quits the view, as brake and copse close round its narrowing, winding way; and that which, under the city bridge, was an imposing noiseless stream, becomes, amidst rustic solitudes, an insignificant babbling brook. From one of the largest villas in these charming suburbs came forth a gentleman, middle-aged, and of a very mild and prepossessing countenance. A young lady without a bonnet, but a kerchief thrown over her sleek dark hair, accompanied him to the garden-gate, twining both hands affectionately round his arm, and entreating him not to stand in thorough draughts and catch cold, nor to step into puddles and wet his feet, and to be sure to be back before dark, as there were such shocking accounts in the newspapers of persons robbed and garotted even in the most populous highways; and, above all, not to listen to the beggars in the street, and allow himself to be taken in; and before finally releasing him at the gate, she buttoned his greatcoat up to his chin, thrust two pellets of cotton into his ears, and gave him a parting kiss. Then she watched him tenderly for a minute or so as he strode on with the step of a man who needed not all those fostering admonitions and coddling cares. As soon as he was out of sight of the lady and the windows of the villa, the gentleman cautiously unbuttoned his greatcoat, and removed the cotton from his ears. “She takes much after her mother, does Anna Maria,” muttered the gentleman; “and I am very glad she is so well married.” He had not advanced many paces when, from a branchroad to the right that led to the railway station, another gentleman, much younger, and whose dress unequivocally bespoke him a minister of our Church, came suddenly upon him. Each with surprise recognised the other. “What!—Mr. George Morley!” “Mr. Hartopp!—How are you, my dear sir?—What brings you so far from home?” “I am on a visit to my daughter, Anna Maria. She has not been long married—to young Jessop. Old Jessop is one of the principal merchants at Ouzelford—very respectable worthy family. The young couple are happily settled in a remarkably snug villa—that is it with the portico, not a hundred yards behind us, to the right. Very handsome town, Ouzelford; you are bound to it, of course?—we can walk together. I am going to look at the papers in the City Rooms—very fine rooms they are. But you are straight from London, perhaps, and have seen the day’s journals? Any report of the meeting in aid of the Ragged Schools?” “Not that I know of. I have not come from London this morning, nor seen the papers.” “Oh!—there’s a strange-looking fellow following us; but perhaps he is your servant?” “Not so, but my travelling companion—indeed my guide. In fact, I come to Ouzelford in the faint hope of discovering there a poor old friend of mine, of whom I have long been in search.” “Perhaps the Jessops can help you; they know everybody at Ouzelford. But now I meet you thus by surprise, Mr. George, I should very much like to ask your advice on a matter which has been much on my mind the last twenty-four hours, and which concerns a person I contrived to discover at Ouzelford, though I certainly was not in search of him—a person about whom you and I had a conversation a few years ago, when you were staying with your worthy father.” “Eh?” said George, quickly; “whom do you speak of?” “That singular vagabond who took me in, you remember—called himself Chapman—real name William Losely, a returned convict. You would have it that he was innocent, though the man himself had pleaded guilty on his trial.” “His whole character belied his lips then. Oh, Mr. Hartopp, that man commit the crime imputed to him!—a planned, deliberate robbery—an ungrateful, infamous breach of trust! That man—that! he who rejects the money he does not earn, even when pressed on him by anxious imploring friends—he who has now gone voluntarily forth, aged and lonely, to wring his bread from the humblest calling rather than incur the risk of injuring the child with whose existence he had charged himself!—the dark midnight thief! Believe him not, though his voice may say it. To screen, perhaps, some other man, he is telling you a noble lie. But what of him? Have you really seen him, and at Ouzelford?” “Yes.” “When?” “Yesterday. I was in the City Reading-Room, looking out of the window. I saw a great white dog in the street below; I knew the dog at once, sir, though he is disguised by restoration to his natural coat, and his hair is as long as a Peruvian lama’s. ‘‘Tis Sir Isaac,’ said I to myself; and behind Sir Isaac I saw Chapman, so to call him, carrying a basket with pedlar’s wares, and, to my surprise, Old Jessop, who is a formal man, with a great deal of reserve and dignity, pompous indeed (but don’t let that go further), talking to Chapman quite affably, and actually buying something out of the basket. Presently Chapman went away, and was soon lost to sight. Jessop comes into the Reading-Room. ‘I saw you,’ said I, ‘talking to an old fellow with a French dog.’ ‘Such a good old fellow,’ said Jessop; ‘has a way about him that gets into your very heart while he is talking. I should like to make you acquainted with him.’ ‘Thank you for nothing,’ said I; ‘I should be-taken in.’ ‘Never fear,’ says Jessop, ‘he would not take in a fly—the simplest creature.’ I own I chuckled at that, Mr. George. ‘And does he live here,’ said I, ‘or is he merely a wandering pedlar?’ Then Jessop told me that he had seen him for the first time two or three weeks ago, and accosted him rudely, looking on him as a mere tramp; but Chapman answered so well, and showed so many pretty things in his basket, that Jessop soon found himself buying a pair of habit-cuffs for Anna Maria, and in the course of talk it came out, I suppose by a sign, that Chapman was a Freemason, and Jessop is an enthusiast in that sort of nonsense, master of a lodge or something, and that was a new attraction. In short, Jessop took a great fancy to him—patronised him, promised him protection, and actually recommended him to a lodging in the cottage of all old widow who lives in the outskirts of the town, and had once been a nurse in the Jessop family. And what do you think Jessop had just bought of this simple creature’! A pair of worsted mittens as a present for me, and what is more, I have got them on this moment-look! neat, I think, and monstrous warm. Now, I have hitherto kept my own counsel. I have not said to Jessop, ‘Beware—that is the man who took me in.’ But this concealment is a little on my conscience. On the one hand, it seems very cruel, even if the man did once commit a crime, in spite of your charitable convictions to the contrary, that I should be blabbing out his disgrace, and destroying perhaps his livelihood. On the other hand, if he should still be really a rogue, a robber, perhaps dangerous, ought I—ought I—in short—you are a clergyman and a fine scholar, sir-what ought I to do?” “My dear Mr. Hartopp, do not vex yourself with this very honourable dilemma of conscience. Let me only find my poor old friend, my benefactor I may call him, and I hope to persuade him, if not to return to the home that waits him, at least to be my guest, or put himself under my care. Do you know the name of the widow with whom he lodges?” “Yes—Halse; and I know the town well enough to conduct you, if not to the house itself, still to its immediate neighbourhood. Pray allow me to accompany you; I should like it very much—for, though you may not think it, from the light way I have been talking of Chapman, I never was so interested in any man, never so charmed by any man; and it has often haunted me at night, thinking that I behaved too harshly to him, and that he was about on the wide world, an outcast, deprived of his little girl, whom he had trusted to me. And I should have run after him yesterday, or called on him this morning, and said, ‘Let me serve you,’ if it had not been for the severity with which he and his son were spoken of, and I myself rebuked for mentioning their very names, by a man whose opinion I, and indeed all the country, must hold in the highest respect—a man of the finest honour, the weightiest character—I mean Guy Darrell, the great Darrell.” George Morley sighed. “I believe Darrell knows nothing of the elder Losely, and is prejudiced against him by the misdeeds of the younger, to whose care you (and I cannot blame you, for I also was instrumental to the same transfer which might have proved calamitously fatal) surrendered the poor motherless girl.” “She is not with her grandfather now’! She lives still, I hope! She was very delicate.” “She lives—she is safe. Ha—take care!” These last words were spoken as a horseman, riding fast along the road towards the bridge that was now close at hand, came, without warning or heed, so close upon our two pedestrians, that George Morley had but just time to pluck Hartopp aside from the horse’s hoofs. “An impudent, careless, ruffianly fellow, indeed!” said the mild Hartopp, indignantly, as he brushed from his sleeve the splash of dirt which the horseman bequeathed to it. “He must be drunk!” The rider, gaining the bridge, was there detained at the toll-bar by some carts and waggons, and the two gentlemen passed him on the bridge, looking with some attention at his gloomy, unobservant countenance, and the powerful fraune, in which, despite coarse garments and the change wrought by years of intemperate excess, was still visible the trace of that felicitous symmetry once so admirably combining herculean strength with elastic elegance. Entering the town, the rider turned into the yard of the near est inn. George Morley and Hartopp, followed at a little distance by Morley’s travelling companion, Merle, passed on towards the other extremity of the town, and, after one or two inquiries for “Widow Halse, Prospect Row,” they came to a few detached cottages, very prettily situated on a gentle hill, commanding in front the roofs of the city and the gleaming windows of the great cathedral, with somewhat large gardens in the rear. Mrs. Halse’s dwelling was at the extreme end of this Row. The house, however, was shut up; and a woman, who was standing at the door of the neighbouring cottage, plaiting straw, informed the visitors that Mrs. Halse was gone out “charing” for the day, and that her lodger, who had his own key, seldom returned before dark, but that at that hour he was pretty sure to be found in the Cornmarket or the streets in its vicinity, and offered to send her little boy to discover and “fetch” him. George consulted apart with Merle, and decided on despatching the cobbler, with the boy for his guide, in quest of the pedlar, Merle being of course instructed not to let out by whom he was accompanied, lest Waife, in his obstinacy, should rather abscond than encounter the friends from whom he had fled. Merle, and a curly-headed urchin, who seemed delighted at the idea of hunting up Sir Isaac and Sir Isaac’s master, set forth, and were soon out of sight. Hartopp and George opened the little garden-gate, and strolled into the garden at the back of the cottage, to seat themselves patiently on a bench beneath an old appletree. Here they waited and conversed some minutes, till George observed that one of the casements on that side of the cottage was left open, and, involuntarily rising, he looked in; surveying with interest the room, which he felt sure, at the first glance, must be that occupied by his self-exiled friend; a neat pleasant little room-a bullfinch in a wicker cage on a ledge within the casement-a flower-pot beside it. Doubtless the window, which faced the southern sun, had been left open by the kind old man in order to cheer the bird and to gladden the plant. Waife’s well-known pipe, and a tobacco-pouch worked for him by Sophys fairy fingers, lay on a table near the fireplace, between casement and door; and George saw with emotion the Bible which he himself had given to the wanderer lying also on the table, with the magnifying-glass which Waife had of late been obliged to employ in reading. Waife’s habitual neatness was visible in the aspect of the room. To George it was evident that the very chairs had been arranged by his hand; that his hand had courteously given that fresh coat of varnish to the wretched portrait of a man in blue coat and buff waistcoat, representing, no doubt, the lamented spouse of the hospitable widow. George beckoned to Hartopp to come also and look within; and as the worthy trader peeped over his shoulder, the clergyman said, whisperingly, “Is there not something about a man’s home which attests his character?—No ‘pleading guilty’ here.” Hartopp was about to answer, when they heard the key turn sharply in the outer door, and had scarcely time to draw somewhat back from the casement when Waife came hurriedly into the room, followed, not by Merle, but by the tall rough-looking horseman whom they had encountered on the road. “Thank Heaven,” cried Waife, sinking on a chair, “out of sight, out of hearing now! Now you may speak; now I can listen! O wretched son of my lost angel, whom I so vainly sought to save by the sacrifice of all my claims to the respect of men, for what purpose do you seek me? I have nothing left that you can take away! Is it the child again? See—see—look round-search the house if you will—she is not here.” “Bear with me, if you can, sir,” said Jasper, in tones that were almost meek; “you, at least, can say nothing that I will not bear. But I am in my right when I ask you to tell me, without equivocation or reserve, if Sophy, though not actually within these walls, be near you, in this town or its neighbourhood?—in short, still under your protection?” “Not in this town—not near it—not under my protection; I swear.” “Do not swear, father; I have no belief in other men’s oaths. I believe your simple word. Now comes my second question—remember I am still strictly in my right—where is she?—and under whose care?” “I will not say. One reason why I have abandoned the very air she breathes was, that you might not trace her in tracing me. But she is out of your power again to kidnap and to sell. You might molest, harass, shame her, by proclaiming yourself her father; but regain her into your keeping, cast her to infamy and vice—never, never! She is now with no powerless, miserable convict, for whom Law has no respect. She is now no helpless infant without a choice, without a will. She is safe from all, save the wanton, unprofitable effort to disgrace her. O Jasper, Jasper, be human—she is so delicate of frame—she is so sensitive to reproach, so tremulously alive to honour—I am not fit to be near her now. I have been a tricksome, shifty vagrant, and, innocent though I be, the felon’s brand is on me! But you, you too, who never loved her, who cannot miss her, whose heart is not breaking at her loss as mine is now—you, you—to rise up from the reeking pesthouse in which you have dwelt by choice, and say, ‘Descend from God’s day with me’—Jasper, Jasper, you will not—you cannot; it would be the malignity of a devil!” “Father, hold!” cried Jasper, writhing and livid; “I owe to you more than I do to that thing of pink and white. I know better than you the trumpery of all those waxen dolls of whom dupes make idols. At each turn of the street you may find them in basketfuls—blue-eyed or black-eyed, just the same worthless frippery or senseless toys; but every man dandling his own doll, whether he call it sweetheart or daughter, makes the same puling boast that he has an angel of purity in his puppet of wax. Nay, hear me! to that girl I owe nothing. You know what I owe to you. You bid me not seek her, and say, ‘I am your father.’ Do you think it does not misbecome me more, and can it wound you less, when I come to you, and remind you that I am your son!” “Jasper!” faltered the old man, turning his face aside, for the touch of feeling towards himself, contrasting the cynicism with which Jasper spoke of other ties not less sacred, took the father by surprise. “And,” continued Jasper, “remembering how you once loved me—with what self-sacrifice you proved that love—it is with a bitter grudge against that girl that I see her thus take that place in your affection which was mine,—and you so indignant against me if I even presume to approach her. What! I have the malignity of a devil because I would not quietly lie down in yonder kennels to starve, or sink into the grade of those whom your daintier thief disclaims; spies into unguarded areas, or cowardly skulkers by blind walls; while in the paltry girl, who you say is so well provided for, I see the last and sole resource which may prevent you from being still more degraded, still more afflicted by your son.” “What is it you want? Even if Sophy were in your power, Darrell would not be more disposed to enrich or relieve you. He will never believe your tale, nor deign even to look into its proofs.” “He might at last,” said Jasper, evasively. “Surely with all that wealth, no nearer heir than a remote kinsman in the son of a beggared spendthrift by a linendraper’s daughter—he should need a grandchild more than you do; yet the proofs you speak of convinced yourself; you believe my tale.” “Believe—yes, for that belief was everything in the world, to me! Ah, remember how joyously, when my term of sentence expired, I hastened to seek you at Paris, deceived by the rare letters with which you had deigned to cheer me—fondly dreaming that, in expiating your crime, I should have my reward in your redemption—should live to see you honoured, honest, good—live to think your mother watched us from heaven with a smile on both—and that we should both join her at last—you purified by my atonement! Oh, and when I saw you so sunken, so hardened, exulting in vice as in a glory—bravo and partner in a gambler’s hell—or, worse still, living on the plunder of miserable women, even the almsman of that vile Desmarets—my son, my son, my lost Lizzy’s son blotted out of my world for ever!—then, then I should have died if you had not said, boasting of the lie which had wrung the gold from Darrell, ‘But the child lives still.’ Believe you—oh, yes, yes—for in that belief something was still left to me to cherish, to love, to live for!” Here the old man’s hurried voice died away in a passionate sob; and the direful son, all reprobate though he was, slid from his chair, and bowed himself at his father’s knee, covering his face with fell hands that trembled. “Sir, sir,” he said, in broken reverential accents, “do not let me see you weep. You cannot believe me, but I say solemnly that, if there be in me a single remnant of affection for any human being, it is for you. When I consented to leave you to bear the sentence which should have fallen on myself, sure I am that I was less basely selfish than absurdly vain. I fancied myself so born to good fortune!—so formed to captivate some rich girl!—and that you would return to share wealth with me; that the evening of your days would be happy; that you would be repaid by my splendour for your own disgrace! And when I did marry, and did ultimately get from the father-in-law who spurned me the capital of his daughter’s fortune, pitifully small though it was compared to my expectations, my first idea was to send half of that sum to you. But—but—I was living with those who thought nothing so silly as a good intention—nothing so bad as a good action. That mocking she-devil, Gabrielle, too! Then the witch’s spell of that d——d green-table! Luck against one-wait! double the capital ere you send the half. Luck with one—how balk the tide? how fritter the capital just at the turn of doubling? Soon it grew irksome even to think of you; yet still when I did, I said, ‘Life is long, I shall win riches; he shall share them some day or other!’— Basta, basta !—what idle twaddle or hollow brag all this must seem to you!” “No,” said Wife, feebly, and his hand drooped till it touched Jasper’s bended shoulder, but at the touch recoiled as with an electric spasm. “So, as you say, you found me at Paris. I told you where I had placed the child, not conceiving that Arabella would part with her, or you desire to hamper yourself with an encumbrance-nay, I took for granted that you would find a home as before with some old friend or country cousin:—but fancying that your occasional visits to her might comfort you, since it seemed to please you so much when I said she lived. Thus we parted,—you, it seems, only anxious to save that child from ever falling into my hands, or those of Gabrielle Desmarets; I hastening to forget all but the riotous life around me till—” “Till you came back to England to rob from me the smile of the only face that I knew would never wear contempt, and to tell the good man with whom I thought she had so safe a shelter that I was a convicted robber, by whose very love her infancy was sullied. O Jasper! Jasper!” “I never said that—never thought of saying it. Arabella Crane did so, with the reckless woman-will to gain her object. But I did take the child from you. Why? Partly because I needed money so much that I would have sold a hecatomb of children for half what I was offered to bind the girl to a service that could not be very dreadful, since yourself had first placed here there;—and partly because you had shrunk, it seems, from appealing to old friends: you were living, like myself, from hand to mouth; what could that child be to you but a drag and a bother?” “And you will tell me, I suppose,” said Waife, with an incredulous, bitter irony, that seemed to wither himself in venting it, so did his whole frame recoil and shrink—“you will tell me that it was from the same considerate tenderness that you would have again filched her from me some months later, to place her with that ‘she-devil’ who was once more by your side; to be reared and sold to—O horror!—horror!—unimaginable horror!—that pure helpless infant!—you, armed with the name of father!—you, strong in that mighty form of man!” “What do you mean? Oh, I remember now! When Gabrielle was in London, and I had seen you on the bridge? Who could have told you that I meant to get the child from you at that time?” Waife was silent. He could not betray Arabella Crane; and Jasper looked perplexed and thoughtful. Then gradually the dreadful nature of his father’s accusing words seemed to become more clear to him; and he cried, with a fierce start and a swarthy flush: “But whoever told you that I harboured the design that it whitens your lip to hint at, lied, and foully. Harkye, sir, many years ago Gabrielle had made acquaintance with Darrell, under another name, as Matilda’s friend (long story now—not worth telling); he had never, I believe, discovered the imposture. Just at the time you refer to, I heard that Darrell had been to France, inquiring himself into facts connected with my former story, that Matilda’s child was dead. That very inquiry seemed to show that he had not been so incredulous of my assertions of Sophy’s claims on him as he had affected to be when I urged them. He then went on into Italy. Talking this over with Gabrielle, she suggested that, if the child could be got into her possession, she would go with her in search of Darrell, resuming the name in which she had before known him—resuming the title and privilege of Matilda’s friend. In that character he might listen to her, when he would not to me. She might confirm my statement—melt his heart—coax him into terms. She was the cleverest creature! I should have sold Sophy, it is true. For what? A provision to place me above want and crime. Sold her to whom? To the man who would see in her his daughter’s child, rear her to inherit his wealth—guard her as his own honour. What! was this the design that so shocks you? Basta, Basta! Again, I say, Enough. I never thought I should be so soft as to mutter excuses for what I have done. And if I do so now, the words seem forced from me against my will-forced from me, as if in seeing you I was again but a wild, lawless, wilful boy, who grieved to see you saddened by his faults, though he forgot his grief the moment you were out of sight.” “Oh, Jasper,” cried Waife, now fairly placing his hand on Jasper’s guilty head, and fixing his bright soft eye, swimming in tears, on that downcast gloomy face. “You repent!—you repent! Yes; call back your BOYHOOD—call it back! Let it stand before you, now, visible, palpable! Lo! I see it! Do not you? Fearless, joyous Image! Wild, lawless, wilful, as you say. Wild from exuberant life; lawless as a bird is free, because air is boundless to untried exulting wings; wilful from the ease with which the bravery and beauty of Nature’s radiant Darling forced way for each jocund whim through our yielding hearts! Silence! It is there! I see it, as I saw it rise in the empty air when guilt and ignominy first darkened round you; and my heart cried aloud, ‘Not on him, not on him, not on that glorious shape of hope and promise—on me, whose life, useless hitherto, has lost all promise now—on me let fall the shame.’ And my lips obeyed my heart, and I said—‘Let the Laws’ will be done—I am the guilty man.’ Cruel, cruel one! Was that sunny Boyhood then so long departed from you? On the verge of youth, and such maturity in craft and fraud—that when you stole into my room that dark winter eve, threw yourself at my feet, spoke but of thoughtless debts, and the fear that you should be thrust from an industrious honest calling, and I—I said, ‘No, no; fear not; the head of your firm likes you; he has written to me; I am trying already to raise the money you need; it shall be raised, no matter what it cost me; you shall be saved; my Lizzie’s son shall never know the soil of a prison; shun temptation henceforth: be but honest, and I shall be repaid!’—what, even then, you were coldly meditating the crime that will make my very grave dishonoured!” “Meditating—not so! How could I be? Not till after what had thus passed between us, when you spoke with such indulgent kindness, did I even know that I might more than save myself—by monies—not raised at risk and loss to you! Remember, you had left me in the inner room, while you went forth to speak with Gunston. There I overheard him talk of notes he had never counted, and might never miss; describe the very place where they were kept; and then the idea came to me irresistibly, ‘better rob him than despoil my own generous father.’ Sir, I am not pretending to be better than I was. I was not quite the novice you supposed. Coveting pleasures or shows not within my reach, I had shrunk from draining you to supply the means; I had not had the same forbearance for the superfluous wealth of others. I had learned with what simple tools old locks may fly open; and none had ever suspected me, so I had no fear of danger, small need of premeditation: a nail on your mantelpiece, the cloven end of the hammer lying beside, to crook it when hot from the fire that blazed before me! I say this to show you that I did not come provided; nothing was planned beforehand; all was the project and work of the moment. Such was my haste, I burnt myself to the bone with the red iron—feeling no pain, or rather, at that age, bearing all pain without wincing. Before Gunston left you, my whole plan was then arranged—my sole instrument fashioned. You groan. But how could I fancy that there would be detection? How imagine that even if monies, never counted, were missed, suspicion could fall on you—better gentleman than he whom you served? And had it not been for that accursed cloak which you so fondly wrapped round me when I set off to catch the night train back to—; if it had not been, I say, for that cloak, there could have been no evidence to criminate either you or me-except that unlucky L5 note, which I pressed on you when we met at ——, where I was to hide till you had settled with my duns. And why did I press it on you?—because you had asked me if I had wherewithal about me on which to live meanwhile; and I, to save you from emptying your own purse, said, ‘Yes’; showed you some gold, and pressed on you the bank-note, which I said I could not want—to go, in small part, towards my debts; it was a childish, inconsistent wish to please you: and you seemed so pleased to take it as a proof that I cared for you.” “For me!—no, no; for honour—for honour—for honour! I thought you cared for honour; and the proof of that care was, thrusting into these credulous hands the share of your midnight plunder!” “Sir,” resumed Jasper, persisting in the same startling combination of feeling, gentler and more reverential than could have been supposed to linger in his breast, and of the moral obtuseness that could not, save by vanishing glimpses, distinguish between crime and its consequences—between dishonour and detection—“Sir, I declare that I never conceived that I was exposing you to danger; nay, I meant, out of the money I had taken, to replace to you what you were about to raise, as soon as I could invent some plausible story of having earned it honestly. Stupid notions and clumsy schemes, as I now look back on them; but, as you say, I had not long left boyhood, and, fancying myself deep and knowing, was raw in the craft I had practised. Basta, basta, basta! ” Jasper, who had risen from his knees while speaking, here stamped heavily on the floor, as if with anger at the heart-stricken aspect of his silenced father; and continued with a voice that seemed struggling to regain its old imperious, rollicking, burly swell. “What is done cannot be undone. Fling it aside, sir—look to the future; you with your pedlar’s pack, I with my empty pockets! What can save you from the workhouse—me from the hulks or gibbet? I know not, unless the persons sheltering that girl will buy me off by some provision which may be shared between us. Tell me, then, where she is; leave me to deal in the business as I best may. Pooh! why so scared? I will neither terrify nor kidnap her. I will shuffle off the crust of blackguard that has hardened round me. I will be sleek and smooth, as if I were still the exquisite Lothario—copied by would-be rufflers, and spoiled by willing beauties. Oh, I can still play the gentleman, at least for an hour or two, if it be worth my while. Come, sir, come; trust me; out with the secret of this hidden maiden, whose interests should surely weigh not more with you than those of a starving son. What, you will not? Be it so. I suspect that I know where to look for her—on what noble thresholds to set my daring foot; what fair lady, mindful of former days—of girlish friendship—of virgin love—wraps in compassionate luxury Guy Darrell’s rejected heiress? Ah, your looks tell me that I am hot on the scent. That fair lady I knew of old; she is rich—I helped to make her so. She owes me something. I will call and remind her of it. And—tut, sir, tut—you shall not go to the workhouse, nor I to the hulks.” Here the old man, hitherto seated, rose-slowly, with feebleness and effort, till he gained his full height; then age, infirmity, and weakness seemed to vanish. In the erect head, the broad massive chest, in the whole presence, there was dignity—there was power.

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