HE THAT WILL NOT
WHEN HE MAY

HE THAT WILL NOT
WHEN HE MAY

BY
MRS. OLIPHANT
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOLUME III.
London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1880
The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved

LONDON:
R. Clay, Sons, and Taylor,
BREAD STREET HILL.

CONTENTS.

HE THAT WILL NOT WHEN HE MAY.

CHAPTER I.

It was late, quite late, when Mr. Gus was “got to go away.” And it might have proved impossible altogether, but for some one who came for him and would not be denied. Mr. Scrivener was sitting alone with him in the library, from which all the others had gone, when this unknown summons arrived. The lawyer had done all he could to convince him that it was impossible he could remain; but Gus could not see the impossibility. He was hurt that they should wish him to go away, and still more hurt when the lawyer suggested that, in case of his claims being proved, Lady Markham would evacuate the house and leave it to him.

“What would she do that for?” Gus cried. “Did I come here to be left in a great desert all by myself? I won’t let them go away.”

Between these two determinations the lawyer did not know what to do. He was half-exasperated, half-amused, most reluctant to offend a personage who would have everything in his power as respected the little Markhams, and might make life so much happier, or more bitter, to all of them. He would not offend him for their sake, but neither could he let him take up his abode in the house and thus forestal all future settlement of the question. When the messenger came Mr. Scrivener was very grateful. It left him at liberty to speak with the others whose interests were much closer to his heart. To his surprise the person who came for Gus immediately addressed to him the most anxious questions about Lady Markham and Alice.

“I daren’t ask to see them,” this stranger said, who was half hidden in the obscurity of the night. “Will you tell them Edward Fairfax sends his—what do you call it?” said the young man—“duty, the poor people say: my most respectful duty. I stayed for to-day. I should have liked to help to carry him, but I did not feel I had any right.” His eyes glimmered in the twilight as eyes shine only through tears. “I helped to nurse him,” he said in explanation, “poor old gentleman.”

At this moment Gus, helped very obsequiously by Brown, who had got scent of something extraordinary in the air, as servants do, was getting himself into his overcoat.

“Have you anything to do with him?” the lawyer replied.

“No further than being in the inn with him. And I thought from what he said they might have a difficulty in getting him away. So I came to fetch him; but not entirely for that either,” Fairfax said.

“Then you never did them a better service,” said the lawyer, “than to-night.”

“I don’t think there is any harm in him,” Fairfax said.

The lawyer shook his head. There might be no harm in him; but what harm was coming because of him! He said nothing, and Gus came out, buttoned up to the throat.

“You’ll not go, I hope, till it is all settled,” he said.

“Settled—it may not be settled for years!” cried the lawyer, testily. And then he turned to the other, who might be a confederate for anything he knew, standing out in the darkness, “What name am I to tell Lady Markham—Fairfax? Keep him away as long as you can,” he whispered; “he will be the death of them.” He thought afterwards that he was in some degree committing himself as allowing that Gus possessed the power of doing harm, which it would have been better policy altogether to deny.

Thus it was not till nightfall that the lawyer was able to communicate to his clients his real opinion. All the exhaustion and desire of repose which generally follows such a period of domestic distress had been made an end of by this extraordinary new event. Lady Markham was sitting in her favourite room, wrapped in a shawl, talking low with her brother and Alice, when Mr. Scrivener came in. He told them how it was that he had got free, and gave them the message Fairfax had sent. But it is to be feared that the devotion and delicacy of it suffered in transmission. It was his regards or his respects, and not his duty, which the lawyer gave. What could the word matter? But he reported the rest more or less faithfully. “He thought there would be a difficulty in getting rid of our little friend,” Mr. Scrivener said, “and therefore he came. It was considerate.”

“Yes, it was very considerate,” Lady Markham said, but, unreasonably, the ladies were both disappointed and vexed, they could not tell why, that their friend should thus make himself appear the supporter of their enemy. Their hearts chilled to him in spite of themselves. Paul had gone out; he was not able to bear any more of it; he could not rest. “Forgive my boy, Mr. Scrivener,” his mother said; “he never was patient, and think of all he has lost.”

“Mr. Paul,” said the lawyer coldly, “might have endured the restraint for one evening, seeing I have waited on purpose to be of use to him.”

The hearts of all three sank to their shoes when Mr. Scrivener, who was his adviser, his supporter, the chief prop he had to trust to—who had called the young man Sir Paul all the morning—thus changed his title. Lady Markham put out her hand and grasped his arm.

“You have given it up, then!” she said. “You have given it up! There is no more hope!”

And though he would not allow this, all that Mr. Scrivener had to say was the reverse of hopeful. He was aware of Sir William’s residence in Barbadoes, which his wife had never heard of until the Lennys had betrayed it to her, and of many other little matters which sustained and gave consistence to the story of Gus. They sat together till late, going over everything, and before they separated it was tacitly concluded among them that all was over, that there was no more hope. The lawyer still spoke of inquiries, of sending a messenger to Barbadoes, and making various attempts to defend Paul’s position. After all, it resolved itself into a question of Paul. Lady Markham could not be touched one way or another, and the fortunes of the children were secured. But Paul—how was Paul to bear this alteration in everything, this ruin of his life?

“It is all over now,” Lady Markham said to her daughter, as after this long and terrible day they went up stairs together. “Whatever might have been, it is past hoping now. He will go with those people, and I shall never see my boy more.”

What could Alice say? She cried, which seemed the only thing possible. There was no use in tears, but there is sometimes relief when no other outlet is possible. They wept together, thankful that at least there were two of them to mingle their tears. And Paul had not come in. He was wandering about the woods in the moonlight, not caring for anything, his head light, and his feet heavy. He had fallen, fallen, he scarcely knew where or when. Instead of the subdued and sad happiness of the morning, a sense of wounding and bruising and miserable downfall was in him and about him. He did not know where he was going, though he was acquainted with every glade and tangled alley of those familiar woods. Once (it was now September) he was seized by the gamekeepers, who thought him a poacher, and whose alarmed apologies and excuses when they discovered that it was Sir Paul, gave him a momentary sensation of self-disgust as if it were he who was the impostor. “I am not Sir Paul,” was on his lips to say, but he did not seem to care enough for life to say it. One delusion more or less, what did it matter?

He walked and walked, till he was footsore with fatigue. He went past the Markham Arms in the dark, and saw his supplanter through the inn window talking—to whom?—to Fairfax. What had Fairfax to do with it? Was it a scheme invented by Fairfax to humble him? Then the unhappy young fellow strayed to his father’s grave, all heaped up and covered with the flowers that shone pale in the moonlight, quite detached from the surrounding graves and upturned earth. He sat down there, all alone in the silence of the world, and noticed, in spite of himself, how the night air moved the leaves and grasses, and how the moonlight slowly climbed the great slope of the skies. When the church tower came for a little while between him and the light, he shivered. He dropped his head into his hands and thought he slept. The night grew tedious to him, the darkness unendurable. He went away to the woods again, with a vague sense that to be taken for a poacher, or even shot by chance round the bole of a tree, would be the best thing that could happen. Neither Sir Paul nor any one—not even a poacher: what was he? A semblance, a shadow, a vain show—not the same as he who had walked with his face to heaven in the morning, and everything expanding, opening out around him. In a moment they had all collapsed like a house of cards. He did not want to go home; home! it was not home—nor to see his mother, nor to talk to any one. The hoot of the owl, the incomprehensible stirring of the woods were more congenial to him than human voices. What could they talk about? Nothing but this on which there was nothing to say. Supplanted! Yes, he was supplanted, turned out of his natural place by a stranger. And what could he do? He could not fight for his inheritance, which would have been a kind of consolation—unless indeed it were a law-fight in the courts, where there would be swearing and counter-swearing, and all the dead father’s life raked up, and perhaps shameful stories told of the old man who had to-day been laid in his grave with so much honour. This was the only way in which in these days a man could fight.

But it was only now and then, by intervals, that Paul’s thoughts took any form so definite. He did not want to think. There was in him a vague and general sense of destruction—ruin, downfall, and humiliation which he could not endure. But, strangely enough, in all this he never thought of the plans which so short a while ago he had considered as shaping his life. He did not think that now he could go back to them, and, free from all encumbrances of duty, pursue the way he had chosen. The truth was, he did not think of them at all. In the morning Spears and his colleagues had come to his mind as something from which he had escaped, but at night he did not think of them at all. They were altogether wiped out of his mind and obliterated by the loss of that which he had never possessed.

When he went home all the lights in the great house seemed extinguished save one candle which flickered in the hall window, and the light in his mother’s room, which shone out like a star into the summer darkness. It was Alice who came noiseless, before he could knock, and opened the great door.

“Mamma cannot sleep till she has seen you,” said the girl. “Oh, Paul, we must think of her now. I sent all the servants to bed. I have been watching for you at the window. I could not bear Brown and the rest to think that there was anything wrong.”

“But they must soon know that everything is wrong. It is not a thing that can be hid.”

“Perhaps it may be hid, Paul. It may turn out it is all a delusion—or an imposture.”

“Let us go to my mother’s room,” said Paul.

He said nothing as he went up the stairs, but when he got to the landing he turned round upon the pale girl beside him carrying the light, whose white face illuminated by her candle made a luminous point in the gloom. He turned round to her all at once in the blackness of the great vacant place.

“It is no imposture; it is true. Whether we can bear it or not, it is true!”

“God will help us to bear it, Paul; if you will not desert us—if you will stay by us——”

“Desert you—was there ever any question of deserting you?” he said. He looked at his sister with a half-complaining curiosity and surprise, and shrugged his shoulders, so foolish did it sound to him. Then he took the candle from her hand, almost rudely, and walked before her to their mother’s room. “You women never understand,” he said.

CHAPTER II.

After this a sudden veil and silence fell upon Markham. Nothing could be more natural than that this should be the case. Paul went to town with his uncle Fleetwood and the family lawyer, and shortly after the boys went back to school, and perfect silence fell upon the mourning house. The woods began to be touched by that finger of autumn which is chill rather than fiery, notwithstanding Mr. Tennyson—a yellow flag hung out here and there to warn the summer world, still in full brightness, of what was coming; but no crack of gun was to be heard among the covers. The county persistently and devotedly came to call, but Lady Markham was not yet able to see visitors. She was visible at church and sometimes driving, but never otherwise, which was all quite natural too, seeing that she was a woman who had always been a tender wife. No whisper of any complication, of anything that made grief harder to bear had escaped from the house. Or so at least they thought who lived an anxious life there, not knowing what was to happen. But nevertheless by some strange magnetism in the air it was known from one end to another of the county that there was something mysterious going on. The servants had felt it in the air almost before the family themselves knew. When Brown helped “the little furrin gentleman” on with his coat on the evening of the funeral day do you think he did not know that this was his future master? The knowledge breathed even about the cottages and into the village, where generally the rustic public was obtuse enough in mastering any new fact. The young master who had been Sir Paul for one brief day sank into Mr. Paul again, nobody knowing how, and what was still more wonderful, nobody asking why. Among the higher classes there was more distinct curiosity, and many floating rumours. That there was a new claimant everybody was aware; and that there was to be a great trial unfolding all the secrets of the family for generations and showing a great many respectable personages to the world in an entirely new light, most people hoped. It was generally divined and understood that the odd little foreigner (as everybody thought him) who had made himself conspicuous at the funeral, and whom many people had met walking about the roads, was the new heir. But how he came by his claim few people understood. Sir William was not the man to be the hero of any doubtful story, or to leave any uncertainty upon the succession to his property. This was just the one evil which no one, not even his political enemies, could think him capable of; therefore the imagination of his county neighbours threw itself further back upon his two brothers who had preceded him. Of these Sir Paul was known to have borne no spotless reputation in his youth, and even Sir Harry might have had antecedents that would not bear looking into. From one or other of these, the county concluded, and not through Sir William, this family misfortune must have come.

One morning during this interval, when Paul was absent and all the doings of the household at Markham were mysteriously hidden from the world, a visitor came up the avenue who was not of the usual kind. She seemed for some time very doubtful whether to go to the great door, or to seek an entrance in a more humble way. She was a tall and slim young woman, dressed in a black alpacca gown, with a black hat and feather, and a shawl over her arm, a nondescript sort of person, not altogether a lady, yet whom Charles, the footman, contemplated more or less respectfully, not feeling equal to the impertinence of bidding her go round to the servants’ door; for how could any one tell, he said? there were governesses and that sort that stood a deal more on their dignity than the ladies themselves. Mrs. Fry, who happened to see her from a window in the wing where she was superintending the great autumn cleaning in the nursery, concluded that it was some one come about the lady’s-maid’s place, for Alice’s maid was going to be married. “But if you get it,” said Mrs. Fry mentally, “I can tell you it’s not long you’ll go trolloping about with that long feather, nor wear a bit of a hat stuck on the top of your head.” While, however, Mrs. Fry was forming this rapid estimate of her, Charles looked at the young person with hesitating respect, and behaved with polite condescension, coming forward as she approached. When she asked if she could see Lady Markham, Charles shook his head. “My lady don’t see nobody,” he replied with an ease of language which was the first symptom he showed of feeling himself on an equality with the visitor. It was the tone of her voice which had produced this effect. Charles knew that this was not how a lady spoke.

“But she’ll see me, if she knows who I am,” said the girl. “I know she’ll see me if you’ll be so kind as to take up my name. Say Miss Janet Spears—as she saw in Oxford—”

“If you’ve come about the lady’s-maid’s place,” said Charles, “there’s our housekeeper, Mrs. Fry, she’ll see you.”

“I haven’t come about no lady’s-maid’s place. You had better take up my name, or it will be the worse for you after,” cried the girl angrily. She gave him such a look that Charles shook in his shoes. He begged her pardon humbly, and went off to seek Brown, leaving her standing at the door.

Then Brown came and inspected her from the further side of the hall. “I don’t know why you should bother me, or me go and bother my lady,” said Brown, not satisfied with the inspection; “take her to Missis Fry.”

“But she won’t go. It’s my lady she wants, and just you look at her, what she wants she’ll have, that’s sure; she says it’ll be the worse for us after.”

“What name did you say?” asked Brown. “I’ll tell Mrs. Martin, and she can do as she thinks proper.” Mrs. Martin was Lady Markham’s own maid. Thus it was through a great many hands that the name of Janet Spears reached Lady Markham’s seclusion. Charles was very triumphant when the message reached him that the young person was to go up stairs. “I told you,” he said to Mr. Brown. But Brown on his part was satisfied to know that it was only “a young person,” not a lady, whom his mistress admitted. His usual discrimination had not deserted him. As for Janet, the great staircase overawed her more than even the exterior of the house; the size and the grandeur took away her breath; and though she felt no respect for Charles, the air as of a dignified clergyman with which Mr. Brown stepped out before her, to guide her to Lady Markham’s room, not deigning to say anything, impressed her more than words could tell. No clergyman she had ever encountered had been half so imposing; though Janet from a general desire to better herself in the world, and determination not to lower herself to the level of her father’s companions, had always been a good churchwoman and eschewed Dissenters. But Mr. Brown, it may well be believed, in the gloss of his black clothes and the perfection of his linen, was not to be compared with a hardworking parish priest exposed to all weathers. By the time she had reached Lady Markham’s door her breath was coming quick with fright and excitement. Lady Markham herself had made no such strong impression. Her dress had not been what Janet thought suitable for a great lady. She had felt a natural scorn for a woman who, having silks and satins at her command, could come out in simple stuff no better than her own. Mrs. Martin, however, had a black silk which “could have stood alone,” and everything combined to dazzle the rash visitor. Now that she had got so far her knees began to tremble beneath her. Lady Markham was standing awaiting her, in deep mourning, looking a very different person from the beautiful woman whom Janet had seen standing in the sunshine in her father’s shop. She made a step forward to receive her visitor, a movement of anxiety and eagerness; then waited till the door was shut upon her attendant. “You have come—from your father?” she said.

“No, my lady.” Now that it had come to the point Janet felt an unusual shyness come over her. She cast down her eyes and twisted her fingers round the handle of the umbrella she carried. “My father was away: I had a day to spare: and I thought I’d come and ask you——”

“Do not be afraid. Tell me what it is you want; is it——” Lady Markham hesitated more than Janet did. Was it something about Paul? What could it be but about Paul? but she would not say anything to open that subject again.

“It is about Mr. Paul, my lady. There isn’t any reason for me to hesitate. It was you that first put it into my head——”

Now it was Lady Markham’s turn to droop. “I am very sorry,” she said involuntarily. “I was—misled——”

“Oh, I don’t know as there’s anything to be sorry about. Mr. Paul—I suppose he is Sir Paul, now?”

As Janet’s gaze, no longer shy, dwelt pointedly on her dress by way of justifying the question, Lady Markham shrank back a little. “It is not—quite settled,” she said faintly; “there are some—unexpected difficulties.”

“Oh!” Janet’s eyes grew round as her exclamation, an expression of surprise and profound disappointment went over her face. “Will he not be a baronet then, after all?” she said.

“These are family matters which I have not entered into with any one,” said Lady Markham, recovering herself. “I cannot discuss them now—unless——” here her voice faltered, “you have any right——”

“I should think a girl just had a right where all her prospects are concerned,” said Janet. “It was that brought me here. I wanted you to know, my lady, that I’ve advised Mr. Paul against it—against the emigration plan. If he goes it won’t be to please me. I don’t want him to go. I don’t want to go myself—and that’s what I’ve come here for. If so be,” said Janet, speaking deliberately, “as anything is to come of it between him and me, I should be a deal happier and a deal better pleased to stay on at home; and I thought if you knew that you’d give up opposing. I’ve said it to him as plain as words can say. And if he will go, it will be your blame and not mine. It will be because he thinks you’ve set your face so against it, that that’s the only way.”

Lady Markham trembled so much that she could not stand. She sank down upon a chair. “Pardon me,” she said involuntarily, “I have not been well.”

“Oh, don’t mention it, my lady,” said Janet, taking a chair too. “I was just a going to ask you if you wouldn’t sit down and make yourself comfortable.” She had got over her shyness; but that which liberated her threw Lady Markham into painful agitation. It seemed to her that she had the fate of her son thrown back into her hands. If she withdrew all opposition to this marriage, would he indeed give up his wild ideas and stay at home? If she opposed it, would he persevere? and how could she oppose anything he had set his heart upon after all he had to renounce on his side, poor boy? She did not know how to reply or how to face such a dilemma. To help to make this woman Paul’s wife—or to lose Paul altogether—what a choice it was to make! Her voice was choked by the fluttering of her heart.

“My son,” she said, faintly, “has never spoken to me on the subject.”

“It is not likely,” said Janet, “when he knows he would meet with nothing but opposition. For my part I’m willing, very willing, to stay at home. I never went in with the emigration plan. Father is a good man, and very steady, and has been a good father to us; but whenever it comes to planning, there’s no telling the nonsense he’s got in his head.”

“Does your father know that you have come to see me?” Lady Markham said. With Spears himself she had some standing-ground. She knew how to talk to the demagogue, understood him, and he her; but the young woman she did not understand. Paul’s mother, notwithstanding all her experience, was half afraid of this creature, so straightforward, so free of prejudice, so—sensible. Yes, it was sense, no doubt. Janet did not want to go away. She had no faith in her father, nor in the man who was going, she hoped, to be her husband. Lady Markham, herself capable of enthusiasm and devotion, and who could so well, in her maturity, have understood the folly of a girl ready to follow to the end of the world for love, was almost afraid of Janet. She was cowed by her steady look, the bargain she evidently wished to make. She took refuge as it were, in Spears, mentally appealing to him in her heart.

“No,” said Janet, “no one knows. He is away from home on one of his speechifyings. Don’t think I hold with that, my lady. England’s good enough for me, and things as they are; and if so be as you will make up your mind not to go against us, Mr. Paul shall never go to foreign parts through me. But he is Sir Paul, ain’t he?” the young woman said.

“I will do nothing—to make my son unhappy,” said Lady Markham. How could she help but sigh to think that this was the woman that could make him happy? “He is not at home,” she added with a tone of relief.

“But he is Sir Paul? What is the good of deceiving me, when I can hear from any one—the gentleman down stairs, or any one.”

“Is there a gentleman down stairs?” Lady Markham thought some one must have come bringing news, perhaps, while she was shut up here.

Janet blushed crimson. Now she had indeed made a mistake. She avoided all reply which might have led to the discovery that Brown was the gentleman she meant; but this glaring error made her humbler.

“You are very kind, my lady, to speak so reasonable,” she said. “And if you like to tell Mr. Paul that I’m as set against emigration as you are—I am not one that will be put upon,” said Janet; “but if we’re both to be the same, you and me, both Lady Markhams,” here she paused a moment to draw a long breath, half overcome by the thought which in this scene became so dazzlingly real and possible, “I think it would be a real good thing if we could be friends.”

This thought, which fluttered Janet, made Lady Markham faint. The blood seemed to ebb away from her heart as she heard these words. She could not make any reply. It was true enough what the girl said, and if she should ever be Paul’s wife, no doubt his mother would be bound to be her friend. But she could not speak in reply. There was a pause. And Janet looked round the richly-furnished, luxurious room which was not indeed by any means so fine as she would have thought natural, with much curiosity and interest. The sight of all its comforts revealed to her the very necessities they were intended to supply, and which had no existence in her primitive state. Janet was not unreasonable. She was content with the acquiescence she had elicited. Lady Markham had not resisted her nor denounced her, as it was quite on the cards that she might have done. “You have a very grand house, and a beautiful place here, my lady,” she said. Lady Markham, more than ever subdued, made a faint sound of assent in reply. “I should like to see over it,” Janet said.

“Miss—Spears!”

“Oh, I don’t mind, if you would rather not! Some people don’t like them that is to come after them. I have said all I came to say, my lady. So perhaps I had better just say good-bye.”

And Janet rose and put forth a moist hand in a black glove. She had got these black gloves and the hat out of compliment to the family. Never had a friendly and hospitable woman been in a greater difficulty. “I am not seeing any one,” Lady Markham faltered; “but—should you not like some refreshment before you go?”

Janet paused. She would have liked to have eaten in such a house. What they eat there must be different from the common fare with which she was acquainted, and a man in livery to wait behind her chair was an idea which thrilled her soul; but when Lady Markham rang the bell, and ordered Mrs. Martin to have a tray brought up stairs, she started in high offence.

“No, my lady; if I’m not good enough to take my meals with you, I’ll have nothing in this house,” she cried, and flounced indignant out of the room. This was the summary end of the first visit paid to Markham by Janet Spears.

CHAPTER III.

The day after Paul’s departure for London with his lawyer and his uncle, Mr. Gus left the Markham Arms. By a fatality Fairfax thought, he too was going away at the same time. He had gone up to Markham in the morning early for no particular reason. He said to himself that he wanted to see the house of which he had so strangely become an inmate for a little while and then had been swept out of, most probably for ever. To think that he knew all those rooms as familiarly as if they belonged to him, and could wander about them in his imagination, and remember whereabouts the pictures hung on the walls, and how the patterns went in the carpet, and yet never had seen them a month ago, and never might see them again! It is a strange experience in a life when this happens, but not a very rare one. Sometimes the passer-by is made for a single evening, for an hour or two, the sharer of an existence which drops entirely into the darkness afterwards, and is never visible to him again. Fairfax asked himself somewhat sadly if this was how it was to be. He thought that he would never in his life forget one detail of those rooms, the very way the curtains hung, the covers on the tables: and yet they could never be anything to him except a picture in his memory, hanging suspended between the known and the unknown. The great door was open as he had known it (“It is always open,” he said to himself), and all the windows of the sitting-rooms, receiving the full air and sunshine into them. But up stairs the house was not yet open. Over some of the windows the curtains were drawn. Where they still sleeping, the two women who were in his thoughts? He cared much less in comparison for the rest of the family. Paul, indeed, being in trouble, had been much in his mind as he came up the avenue; but Paul had not been here when Fairfax had lived in the house, and did not enter into his recollections; and Paul he knew was away now. But the two ladies—Alice, whom he had been allowed to spend so many lingering hours with, whom he had told so much about himself—and Lady Markham, whom he had never ceased to wonder at; they had taken him into the very closest circle of their friendship; they had said “Go,” and he had gone; or “Come,” and he had always been ready to obey. And now was he to see no more of them for ever? Fairfax could not but feel very melancholy when this thought came into his mind. He came slowly up the avenue, looking at the old house. The old house he called it to himself, as people speak of the home they have loved for years. He would never forget it though already perhaps they had forgotten him. His foot upon the gravel caught the ear of Mr. Brown, who came to the door and looked out curiously. When things of a mysterious character are happening in a house the servants are always vigilant. Brown came down stairs early; he suffered no sound to pass unnoticed. And now he came out into the early sunshine, and looked about like a man determined to let nothing escape him. And the sight of Fairfax was a welcome sight, for was not he “mixed up” with the whole matter, and probably able to throw light upon some part of it, could he be got to speak.

“I hope I see you well, sir,” said Mr. Brown. “This is a sad house, sir—not like what it was a little time ago. We have suffered a great affliction, sir, in the loss of Sir William.”

“I am going away, Brown,” said Fairfax. “I came up to ask for the ladies. Tell me what you can about them. How is Lady Markham? She must have felt it terribly, I fear.”

“Yes, sir, and all that’s happened since,” said Brown. “A death, sir, is a thing we must all look forward to. That will happen from time to time, and nobody can say a word; but there’s a deal happened since, Mr. Fairfax—and that do try my lady the worst of all.”

Fairfax did not ask what had happened, which Mr. Brown very shrewdly took as conclusive that he knew all about it. He said half to himself, “I will leave a card, though that means nothing;” and then he mused long over the card, trying to put more than a message ever contained into the little space at his disposal. This was at last what he produced—

When he had written this—and only when he had written it—it occurred to him how much better it would have been to have written a note, and then he hesitated whether to tear his card in pieces; but on reflection, decided to let it go. He thought the crowded lines would discourage Brown from the attempt to decipher it.

“You will give them that, and tell them—but there is no need for telling them anything,” Fairfax said with a sigh.

“You are going away, sir?”

“Yes, Brown”—he said, confidentially, “directly,” feeling as if he could cry; and Brown felt for the poor young fellow. He thought over the matter for a moment, and reflected that if things were to go badly for the family, it would be a good thing for Miss Alice to have a good husband ready at hand. Various things had given Brown a high opinion of Fairfax. There were signs about him—which perhaps only a person of Mr. Brown’s profession could fully appreciate—of something like wealth. Brown could scarcely have explained to any one the grounds on which he built this hypothesis, but all the same he entertained it with profound conviction. He eyed the card with great interest, meaning to peruse it by and by; and then he said—

“I beg your pardon, sir, but I think Miss Alice is just round the corner, with the young ladies and the young gentlemen. You won’t mention, sir, as I said it—but I think you’ll find them all there.”

Fairfax was down the steps in a moment; but then paused:

“I wonder if it will be an intrusion,” he said; then he made an abject and altogether inappropriate appeal, “Brown! do you think I may venture, Brown?”

“I would, sir, if I was you,” said that personage with a secret chuckle, but the seriousness of his countenance never relaxed. He grinned as the young man darted away in the direction he had pointed out. Brown was not without sympathy for tender sentiments. And then he fell back upon those indications already referred to. A good husband was always a good thing, he said to himself.

And Fairfax skimmed as if on wings round the end of the wing to a bit of lawn which they were all fond of—where he had played with the boys and talked with Alice often before. When he got within sight of it, however, he skimmed the ground no longer. He began to get alarmed at his own temerity. The blackness of the group on the grass which he had seen only in their light summer dresses gave him a sensation of pain. He went forward very timidly, very doubtfully. Alice was standing with her back towards him, and it was only when he was quite near that she turned round. She gave a little startled cry—“Mr. Fairfax!” and smiled; then her eyes filled with tears. She held out one hand to him and covered her face with the other. The little girls seeing this began to cry too. For the moment it was their most prevailing habit. Fairfax took the outstretched hand into both his, and what could he do to show his sympathy but kiss it?—a sight which filled Bell and Marie with wonder, seeing it, as they saw the world in general, through that blurred medium of tears.

“I could not help coming,” he said, “forgive me! just to look at the windows. I know them all by heart. I had no hope of so much happiness as to see—any one; but I could not—it was impossible to go away—without——”

Here they all thought he gave a little sob too, which said more than words, and went to their hearts.

“But, Mr. Fairfax,” said Bell, “you were here before—”

“Yes; I could not go away. I always thought it possible that there might be some errand—something you would tell me to do. At all events I must have stayed for——”

The funeral he would have added. He could not but feel that though Alice had given him her hand, there was a little hesitation about her.

“But, Mr. Fairfax,” Bell began again, “you were staying at the inn with—the little gentleman. Don’t you know he is our enemy now?”

“I don’t think he is your enemy,” Fairfax said—which was not at all what he meant to say.

“Hush, Bell, that was not what it was; only mamma thought—and I—that poor Paul was your friend and that you would not have put yourself—on the other side.”

“I put myself on the other side!” cried the young man. “Oh, how little you know! I was going to offer to go out to that place myself to make sure, for it does not matter where I go. I am not of consequence to any one like Paul; but——”

“But—what?”

Alice half put out her hand to him again.

“You will not think this is putting myself on the other side. It all looks so dreadfully genuine,” said Fairfax, sinking his voice.

Only Alice heard what he said. She was unreasonable, as girls are.

“In that case we will not say anything more on the subject, Mr. Fairfax; you cannot expect us to agree with you,” she said. “Good-bye. I will tell mamma you have called.”

She turned away from him as she spoke, then cast a glance at him from under her eyelids, angry yet relenting. They stood for a moment like the lovers in Molière, eying each other timidly, sadly—but there was no one to bring them together, to say the necessary word in the ear of each. Poor Fairfax uttered a sigh so big that it seemed to move the branches round. He said—

“Good-bye then, Miss Markham; won’t you shake hands with me before I go?”

“Good-bye,” said Alice faintly. She wanted to say something more, but what could she say? Another moment and he was gone altogether, hurrying down the avenue.

“Oh, how nasty you were to poor Mr. Fairfax,” cried Bell. “And he was always so kind. Don’t you remember, Marie, how he ran all the way in the rain to fetch the doctor? even George wouldn’t go. He said he couldn’t take a horse out, and was frightened of the thunder among the trees; but Mr. Fairfax only buttoned his coat and flew.”

“The boys said,” cried little Marie, “that they were sure he would win the mile—in a moment——”

“Oh, children,” cried Alice, “what do you know about it? you will break my heart talking such nonsense—when there is so much trouble in the house. I am going in to mamma.”

But things were not much better there, for she found Lady Markham with Fairfax’s card in her hand, which she was reading with a great deal of emotion. “Put it away with the letters,” Lady Markham said. They had kept all the letters which they received after Sir William’s death by themselves in the old despatch-box which had always travelled with him wherever he went, and which now stood—with something of the same feeling which might have made them appropriate the greenest paddock to his favourite horse—in Lady Markham’s room. Some of them were very “beautiful letters.” They had been dreadful to receive morning by morning, but they were a kind of possession—an inheritance now.

“Put it with the letters,” Lady Markham said; “any one could see that his very heart was in it. He knew your dear father’s worth; he was capable of appreciating him; and he knows what a loss we have had. Poor boy—I will never forget his kindness—never as long as I live.”

“But, mamma,” said Alice, loyal still though her heart was melting, “you know you thought it very strange of Mr. Fairfax to take that horrid little man’s part against Paul.”

“I can’t think he did anything of the sort,” Lady Markham said, but she would not enter into the question.

It was not wonderful, however, if Alice was angry. She had sent him away because of the general family anger against him; and lo, nobody seemed to feel that anger except herself.

But it may be easily understood how Fairfax felt it a fatality when he found Gus’s portmanteaux packed, and himself awaiting his return to go by the same train.

“Why should I stay here?” he said. “I did not come to England to stay in a village inn. I will go with you, and go to that lawyer, and get it all settled. Why should they make such a fuss about it? I mean no one any harm. Why can’t they take to me and make me one of the family? except that I should be there instead of my poor father, I don’t know what difference it need make.”

“But that makes a considerable difference,” said Fairfax. “You must perceive that.”

“Of course it makes a difference; between father and son there is always a difference—but less with me than with most people. I do not want to marry, for instance. Most men marry when they come into their estates. There was once a girl in the island,” said Gus, with a sigh; “but things were going badly, and she married a man in the Marines. No, if they will consent to consider me as one of the family—I like the children, and Alice seems a nice sort of girl, and my stepmother a respectable motherly woman——, eh?”

Some hostile sound escaped from Fairfax which made the little gentleman look up with great surprise. He had not a notion why his friend should object to what he said.

But the end was that the two did go to town together, and that it was Fairfax who directed this enemy of his friends’ where to go, and how to manage his business. Gus was perfectly helpless, not knowing anything about London, and would have been as likely to settle himself in Fleet Street as in Piccadilly—perhaps more so. Fairfax could not get rid of his companion till he had put him in communication with the lawyer, and generally looked after all his affairs. For himself nothing could be more ill-omened. He went about asking himself what would the Markhams think of him?—and yet what could he do? Gus’s mingled perplexity and excitement in town were amusing, but they were embarrassing too. He wanted to go and see the Tower and St. Paul’s. He wanted Fairfax to tell him exactly what he ought to give to every cabman. He stood in the middle of the crowd in the streets folding his arms, and resisting the stream which would have carried him one way or the other.

“You call this a free country, and yet one cannot even walk as one likes,” he said. “Why are these fellows jostling me; do they want to rob me?”

Fairfax did not know what to do with the burden thus thrown on his hands.

And it may be imagined what the young man’s sensations were, when having just deposited Gus in the dining-room of one of the junior clubs of which he was a member, he met Paul upon the steps of the building coming in. Paul was a member too. Fairfax was driven to his wits’ end. The little gentleman was tired, and would not budge an inch until he had eaten his luncheon and refreshed himself. What was to be done? Paul was not too friendly even to himself.

“Are you here, too, Markham? I thought there was nobody in London but myself,” Fairfax said.

“There are only a few millions for those who take them into account; but some people don’t——”

“Oh, you know what I mean,” Fairfax said. And then they stood and looked at each other. Paul was pale. His mourning gave him a formal look, not unlike his father. He had the air of some young official on duty, with a great deal of unusual care and responsibility upon him.

“You look as if you were the head of an office,” said Fairfax, attempting a smile.

“It would not be a bad thing,” said the other languidly; “but the tail would be more like it than the head. I must do something of that kind.”

“Do you mean that you are going into public life?”

“That depends upon what you mean by public life,” said Paul. “I am not, for instance, going into Parliament, though there were thoughts of that once; but I have got to work, my good fellow, though that may seem odd to you.”

“To work!” Fairfax echoed with dismay; which dismay was not because of the work, but because the means of getting him out of the place, and out of risk of an encounter with Gus, became less and less every moment. Paul laughed with a forced and theatrical laugh. In short, he was altogether a little theatrical—his looks, his dress, everything about him. In the excess of his determination to bear his downfall like a man, he was playing with exaggerated honesty the part of a fallen gentleman and ruined heir.

“You think that very alarming then? but I assure you it depends altogether on how you look at it. My father worked incessantly, and it was his glory. If I work, not as a chief, but as an underling, it will not be a bit less honourable.”

“Markham, can you suppose for a moment that I think it less honourable?” said Fairfax; “quite otherwise. But does it mean——? Stop, I must tell you something before I ask you any questions. That little beggar who calls himself your brother——”

“I believe he is my brother,” said Paul, formally; and then he added with another laugh: “that is the noble development to which the house of Markham has come.”

“He is there. Yes, in the dining-room, waiting for his luncheon. One moment, Markham!—we were at the inn in the village together, and he has hung himself on to me. What could I do? he knew nothing about London; he is as helpless as a baby. And the ladies,” said Fairfax, his countenance changing, “the ladies—take it as a sign that I am siding with him against you.”

He felt a quiver come over his face like that of a boy who is complaining of ill-usage, and for the moment could scarcely subdue a rueful laugh at his own expense; but Paul laughed no more. He became more than ever like the head of an office, too young for his post, and solemnised by the weight of it. His face shaped itself into still more profound agreement with the solemnity of those black clothes.

“Pardon me, my good fellow,” he said. Paul was not one of the men to whom this mode of address comes natural. There was again a theatrical heroism in his look. “Pardon me; but in such a matter as this I don’t see what your siding could do for either one or the other. It is fact that is in question, nothing else.”

And with a hasty good day he turned and went down the steps where they had been talking. Fairfax was left alone, and never man stood on the steps of a club and looked out upon the world and the passing cabs and passengers with feelings more entirely uncomfortable. He had not been unfaithful in a thought to his friend, but all the circumstances were against him. For a few minutes he stood and reflected what he should do. He could not go and sit down at table comfortably with the unconscious little man who had made the breach; and yet he could not throw him over. Finally he sent a message by one of the servants to tell Gus that he had been called unexpectedly away, and set off down the street at his quickest pace. He walked a long way before he stopped himself. He was anxious to make it impossible that he should meet either Gus again or Paul. Soon the streets began to close in. A dingier and darker part of London received him. He walked on, half interested, half disgusted. How seldom, save perhaps in a hansom driven at full speed, had he ever traversed those streets leading one out of another, these labyrinths of poverty and toil. As he went on, thinking of many things that he had thought of lightly enough in his day, and which were suggested by the comparison between the region in which he now found himself and that which he had left—the inequalities and unlikeness of mankind, the strange difference of fate—his ear was suddenly caught by the sound of a familiar voice. Fairfax paused, half thinking that it was the muddle in his mind, caused by that association of ideas with the practical drama of existence in which he found himself involved, which suggested this voice to him; but looking round he suddenly found himself, as he went across one of the many narrow streets which crossed the central line of road, face to face with the burly form of Spears.

CHAPTER IV.

“You here, too,” said the demagogue; “I thought this was a time when all you fine folks were enjoying yourselves, and London was left to the toilers and moilers.”

“Am I one of the fine folks? I am afraid that proves how little you know of them, Spears.”

“Well, I don’t pretend to know much,” said Spears. “Markham’s here, too. And what is all this about Markham? I don’t understand a word of it.”

“What is about him?”

Fairfax was determined to breathe no word of Paul’s altered circumstances to any one, sheltering himself under the fact that he himself knew nothing definite. The orator looked at him with a gaze which it was difficult to elude.

“I thought you had been with the family at that grand house of theirs? However! Paul was hot upon our emigration scheme, you know; he would hear no reason on that subject. I warned him that it was not a thing for men like him, with soft hands and muscles unstrung; but he paid me no attention. There was another thing, I believe, a secondary motive,” said Spears, with a wave of his hand, “a thing that never would have come into my head, which his mother found out—the kind of business that women do find out. Well! His father is dead, and I suppose he has come into the title and all that. But here’s the rub. We are within a fortnight of our start, and never another word from Paul. What does he mean by it? has he been persuaded by the women? has he thrown us overboard and gone in for the old business of landlord and aristocrat? I have told him many a time it was in his blood; but never was there one more hot for better principles. Now look here, Fairfax, you’re not the man to pretend ignorance. What do you know?”

“Nothing but that Sir William is dead.”

“Sir William is dead, that means, long live Sir Paul: lay roy est mortt, veeve lay roy,” said Spears, with honest English pronunciation. “Yes, the papers would tell you that. If he’s going to give it all up,” he went on, a deep colour coming over his face, “I sha’n’t be surprised. I don’t say that I’ll like it, but I sha’n’t be surprised. A large property—and a title—may be a temptation: but in that case it’s his duty to let us know. I suppose you and he see each other sometimes?”

“By chance we have met to-day.”

“By chance? I thought you were always meeting. Well, what does he mean? I acknowledge,” said Spears, with very conscious satire, “that a Sir Paul in our band will be an oddity. It wouldn’t be much more wonderful if it was St. Paul,” he added, with a laugh; “but one way or other I must know. And I don’t mind confessing to you,” he said, turning into the way by which Fairfax seemed to be walking, and suddenly striking him on the shoulder with an amicable but not slight blow, “that it will be a disappointment. I had rather committed the folly of setting my heart on that lad. He was the kind of thing, you know, that we mean in our class when we say a gentleman. There’s you, now, you’re a gentleman, too; but I make little account of you. You might just as well have been brought up in my shop or in trade. But there’s something about Paul, mind you—that’s where it is; he’s got that grand air, and that hot-headed way. I hate social distinctions, but he’s above them. The power of money is to me like a horrible monster, but he scorns it. Do you see what I mean? A man like me reasons it all out, and sees the harm of it, and the devilry of it, and it fires his blood. But Paul, he holds his head in the air, and treats it like the dirt below his feet. That’s fine, that takes hold of the imagination. I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, Fairfax,” said Spears, giving him another friendly tap on the shoulder, “but you’re just a careless fellow, one thing doesn’t matter more than another to you.”

“Quite true. I am not offended,” said Fairfax, laughing. “You discriminate very well, Spears, as you always do.”

“Yes, I suppose I have a knack that way,” said the demagogue, simply. “I shouldn’t wonder,” he added, “though it is not a subject that a man can question his daughter about, that it was just the same thing that attracted my girl.”

Fairfax turned round upon him with quick surprise; he had not heard anything about Janet. “What!” he said, “has Markham——” and then paused; for Spears, though indulgent to freedom of speech, was in this one point a dangerous person to meddle with. He turned round, with all the force of his rugged features and broad shoulders, and looked the questioner in the face.

“Yes,” he said, “Markham has—a fancy for my Janet. There is nothing very wonderful in that. His mother tried to persuade me that this was the entire cause of his devotion to my principles and me. But that is a way women have. They think nothing comparable to their own influence. He satisfied me as to that. Yes,” said Spears, with a softened, meditative tone, “that is the secondary motive I spoke of; and, to tell the truth, when I heard of the old fellow’s death I was sorry. I said to myself, the girl will never be able to resist the temptation of being ‘my lady.’”

A smile began to creep about the corners of his mouth. For himself, it is very likely that Spears would have had virtue enough to carry out his own principles and resist all bribes of rank had they been thrown in his way; but he contemplated the possible elevation of his child with a tender sense of the wonderful, and the ludicrous, and incredible which melted all sterner feelings. The idea that Janet might be “my lady” filled him with a subdued pleasure and amusement, and a subtle pride which veiled itself in the humour of the notion. It made him smile in spite of himself. As for Fairfax, this had so completely taken his breath away that he seemed beyond the power of speech, and Spears went on musingly for a minute or two walking beside him, his active thoughts lulled by the fantastic pleasure of that vision, and the smile still lingered about his closely-shut lips. At last he started from the weakness of this reverie.

“There is to be a meeting to-night,” he said, “down in one of these streets—and I’m going to give them an address. I’ve got the name of the street here in my pocket and the house and all that—if you like to come.”

“Certainly I will come,” said Fairfax with alacrity. He had not much to occupy his evenings, and he took a kind of careless speculative interest, not like Paul’s impassioned adoption of the scheme and all its issues, in Spears’s political crusade. The demagogue patted him on the shoulders once more as he left him. He had always half-patronised, half stood in awe of Fairfax, whose careless humour sometimes threw a passing light of ridicule even on the cause. “If you see Markham, bring him along with you; and tell him I must understand what he means,” he said.

But Fairfax did not see Paul again. He did not indeed put himself in the way of Paul, though his mind was full of him, for the rest of the day. Janet Spears was a new complication in Paul’s way. The whole situation was dreary and hopeless enough. His position as head in his house and family, the importance, his wealth, his power of influencing others, all taken from him in a day, and Spears’s daughter—Janet Spears—hung round his neck like a millstone. Paul! of all men in the world to get into such a vulgar complication, Paul was about the last. And yet there could be no mistake about it. Fairfax, who honestly felt himself Paul’s inferior in everything, heard this news with the wondering dismay of one whose own thoughts had taken a direction as much above him (he thought) as the other’s was beneath him. With a painful flush of bewilderment, he thought of himself floated up into regions above himself into a different atmosphere, another world, by means of the woman who had been Paul’s companion all his life, while Paul—— He had heard of such things; of men falling into the mire out of the purest places, of rebellions from the best to the worst. They were common enough. But that it should be Paul!

When evening came he took his way to the crowded quarter where he had met Spears, and to the meeting, which was held in a back room in an unsavoury street. It had begun to rain, the air was wet and warm, the streets muddy, the floor of the room black and stained with many footsteps. There was a number of men packed together in a comparatively small space, which soon became almost insupportable with the flaring gaslights, the odour from their damp clothes, and their breath. At one end of it were a few men seated round a table, Spears among them. Fairfax could only get in at the other end, and close to the door, which was the saving of him. He exercised politeness at a cheap cost by letting everybody who came penetrate further than he. Some of the men looked at him with suspicion. He had kept on his morning dress, but even that was very different from the clothes they wore. They were not very penetrating in respect to looks, and some of them thought him a policeman in plain clothes. This was not a comfortable notion among a number of hot-blooded men. Fairfax, however, soon became too much interested in the proceedings to observe the looks that were directed to himself. There was a good deal of commonplace business to be gone through first—small subscriptions to pay, some of which were weekly; little books to produce, with little sums marked; reports to be given in, on here and there a wavering member, a falling back into the world, a new convert. It looked to Fairfax at first like a parochial meeting about the little charities of the parish, the schools, and the almshouses. Perhaps organisation of every kind has its inherent vulgarities. This movement felt grand, heroic, to the men engaged in it, how much above the curate and his pennies who could say; but it seemed inevitable that it should begin in the same way.

The walls were roughly plastered and washed with a dingy tone of colour. The men sat on benches which were very uncomfortable, and showed all the independent curves of backs which toil had not straightened, the rough heads and dingy clothes. Over all this the gas flickered, unmitigated even by the usual glass globe. There was a constant shuffling of feet, a murmur of conversation, sometimes the joke of a privileged wit whispered about with earthquakes of suppressed laughter. For the men, on the whole, suppressed themselves with the sense of the dignity of a meeting and the expectation of Spears’s address. “He’s a fellow from the North, ain’t he?” Fairfax heard one man say. “No, he’s a miner fellow.” “He’s one of the cotton spinners.” While another added authoritatively, “None of you know anything about it. It’s Spears the delegate. He’s been sent about all over the place. There’s been some talk of sending him to Parliament.” “Parliament! I put no faith in Parliament.” “No more do I.” “Nor I,” the men said. “And yet,” said the first speaker, “we’ve got no chance of getting our rights till they’ve got a lot like him there.”

At this moment one of the men at the table rose, and there was instant silence. The lights flared, the rain rained outside with a persistent swish upon the pavement, the restless feet shuffled upon the floor, but otherwise there was not a sound to interrupt the stillness. This was somewhat tried, however, by the reading of a report, still very like a missionary report in a parish meeting. There was a good deal about an S. C. and an L. M. who had been led to think of higher principles of political morality by the action of the society, and who had now finally given in their adhesion. The meeting greeted the announcement of these new members by knocking with their boot-heels upon the floor. Then some one else got up and said that the prospects of the society were most hopeful, and that the conversion of L. C. and S. M. were only an earnest of what was to come. Soon the whole mass of the working classes, as already its highest intelligence, would be with them. The meeting again applauded this “highest intelligence.” They felt it in themselves, and they liked the compliment. “Mr. Spears will now address the meeting,” the last speaker said, and then this confused part of the proceeding came to an end, and everything became clear again when Spears spoke.

And yet Fairfax thought, looking on, it was by no means clear what Spears wanted, or wished to persuade the others that they wanted. Very soon, however, he secured their attention which was one great point; the very feet got disciplined into quiet, and when a late member came down the long passage which led straight into this room, there was a universal murmur and hush as he bustled in. Spears stood up and looked round him, his powerful square shoulders and rugged face dominating the assembly. He took a kind of text for his address, “not from the Bible,” he said, “which many of you think out of date,” at which there was a murmur, chiefly of assent; “mind you,” said the orator, “I don’t; that’s a subject on which I’m free to keep my private opinion; but the other book you’ll allow is never out of date. It’s from the sayings of a man that woke up out of the easy thoughts of a lad, the taking everything for granted as we all do one time or another, to find that he could take nothing for granted, that all about was false, horrible, mean, and sham. That was the worst of it all—sham. He found the mother that bore him was a false woman and the girl he loved hid his enemy behind the door to listen to what he was saying, and his friends, the fellows he had played with, went off with him on a false errand, with letters to get him killed, ‘There’s something rotten,’ says he, ‘in this State of Denmark—’ that was all the poor fellow could get out at first, ‘something rotten;’ ay, ay, Prince Hamlet, a deal that was rotten. We’re not fond of princes, my friends,” said Spears, stopping short with a gleam of humour in his face, “but Shakspeare lived a good few years ago, and hadn’t found that out. We’ve made a great many discoveries since his day.”

At this the feet applauded again, but there was a little doubtfulness upon the faces of the audience who did not see what the speaker meant to be at.

“‘There’s something rotten in the state of Denmark,’ that’s what he said. He didn’t mean Denmark any more than I mean Clerkenwell. He meant this life he was living in, where the scum floated to the top, and nothing was what it seemed. That was Hamlet’s quarrel with the world, and it’s my quarrel, and yours, and every thinking man’s. It was a grand idea, my friends, to make a government, to have a king. Yes, wait a bit till I’ve finished my sentence. I tell you it was a noble idea,” said the orator, raising his voice, and cowing into silence half a dozen violent contradictions, “to get hold of the best man and set him up there to help them that couldn’t help themselves, to make the strong merciful and the weak brave. That was an idea! I honour the man that invented it whoever he was; but I’d lay you all a fortune if I had it, I’d wager all I’m worth (which isn’t much) that whoever the first king was, that was made after he had found out the notion, it wasn’t he! And it was a failure, my lads,” said Spears.

At this there was a tumult of applause. “I don’t see anything to stamp about for my part,” he said shaking his head. “That gives me no pleasure. It was a grand idea, but as sure as life they took the wrong man, and it was a failure. And it has always been a failure and always will be—so now there’s nothing for it but to abolish kings——”

The rest of the sentence was lost in wild applause.

“But the worst is,” continued the speaker, “that we’ve done that practically for a long time in England, and we’re none the better. Instead of one bad king we’ve got Parliament, which is a heap of bad kings. Men that care no more for the people than I care for that fly. Men that will grind you, and tax you, and make merchandise of you, and neglect your interest and tread you down to the ground. Many is the cheat they’ve passed upon you. At this moment you cheer me when I say down with the kings, but you look at one another and you raise your eyebrows when I say down with the parliament. You’ve got the suffrage and you think that’s all right. The suffrage! what does the suffrage do for you? It’s another sham, a little stronger than all the rest. They’ll give more of you, and more of you the suffrage, till they let in the women (I don’t say a word against that. Some of the women have more sense than you have, and the rest you can always whop them) and the babies next for anything I can tell. And it will all be rotten, rotten, rotten to the core. And then a great cry will rise out of this poor country, and it will be Hamlet again,” cried the orator, pouring out the full force of his great melodious voice from his broad chest—“‘Oh, cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right!’”

There was a feeble stamp or two upon the floor; but the audience, though curious and impressed, were not up to the level of the speaker, and did not know what to make of him. He saw this, and he changed his tone.

“I read the other day of the kind of parliament that was a real parliament of the people. Once every two months the whole population met in a great square; and there they were asked to choose the men that were to govern them. They voted all by word of mouth—no ballot tickets in those days—for there was not one of them that was afraid to give his opinion. They chose their men for two months, no more. They were men that were known to all the place that had been known from their cradles; no strangers there, but men they could lay their hands on if they went wrong. It was for two months only, as I tell you, and then the parliament came together again, and the men they had chosen gave an account of what they had done. In my opinion—I don’t know what you may think—that was as perfect a plan of government, and as true a rule of the people as ever existed on this globe. Who is that grumbling behind there? If it is you, Paul Markham, stand up like a man and say what you’ve got to say.”

There was a pause for a moment, and everybody looked round; but as no reply was made, the hearers drowned all attempts at opposition in a tumult of stamping feet and approving exclamations. “That was something like,” they cried. And “Go on. Go on! Bravo, Spears!”

“Ah, yes. You say ‘Bravo, Spears!’ because I humour you. But that young fellow there at the back, I know what he meant to say. It was all rotten, rotten, rotten to the core; that peoples’ parliament was the greatest humbug that ever was seen; it was the instrument of tyrants; it was the murderer of freedom; there was nothing too silly, nothing too wicked for it; its vote was a sham, and its wisdom was a sham. Ah! you don’t cry ‘Bravo, Spears!’ any more. The reason of all this is that we never get hold of the right men. I don’t know what there is in human nature that makes it so. I have studied it a deal, but I’ve never found that out. The scum gets uppermost, boils up and sticks on the top. That’s my experience. The less honest a man is, the more sure he is to get up to the top. I don’t speak of being born equal like some folks; but I think every man has a right to his share of the place he’s born in—a right to have his portion wherever he is. One man with another, our wants are about the same. One eats a little more, one drinks a little more (and we all do more of that than is good for us), than the rest. But what we’ve got a right to is our share of what’s going. Instead of great estates, great parks, grand palaces where those who call themselves our masters live and starve us, we have a right, every man, to enough of it to live on, to enough——”

Here the speaker was interrupted by the clamour of the cheering. The men rose up and shouted; they drowned his voice in the enthusiasm of their delight. Paul had come in behind after Spears began to speak. Though there had been in him a momentary movement of offence when he saw Fairfax, yet he had ended by remaining close to him, not seated, however, by leaning against the doorway in the sight of all. And it was likewise apparent in the sight of all that he was dressed, not like Fairfax in morning clothes, which offered a less visible contrast with the men surrounding him, but in evening dress, only partially covered by his light overcoat. He had come indeed to this assembly met to denounce all rights of the aristocrat, in the very livery of social superiority. Fairfax, who was anxious about the issue, could not understand what it meant. Paul’s eyes were fixed upon Spears, and there was a half smile and air of something that might be taken for contempt on his face.

The applause went to the orator’s head. He plunged into violent illustrations of his theory, by the common instances of riot, impurity, extravagance, debt, and general wickedness which were to be found in what were called the higher classes. Perhaps Spears himself was aware that his arguments would not bear a very close examination: and the face of his disciple there before him, the face which had hitherto glowed with acquiescence, flushed with indignation, answered every appeal he made, but which was now set, pale, and impassive, without any response at all, with indeed an evident determination to withstand him—filled him with a curious passion. He could not understand it, and he could not endure to see Paul standing there, Paul, his son in the faith, his disciple of whom he was unconsciously more proud than of all the other converts he had made, with that air of contradiction and defiance. The applause excited him and this tacit opposition excited him still more. Fairfax had produced no such effect upon the demagogue; he had been but a half believer at the best, a critic more interested than convinced. He was one of those whom other men can permit to look on, from whom they can accept sympathy without concurrence, and tolerate dissent. But with Paul the case was very different. Every glance at him inflamed the mind of Spears. Was it possible (the idea flashed across his mind in full torrent of his speech) that this beloved disciple was lost to him? He would not believe it, he would not permit it to be; and with this impulse he flung forth his burning accusations, piled up sham and scandal upon the heads of aristocrats, represented them as standing in the way of every good undertaking, of treading down the poor on every side, of riding roughshod everywhere over liberties and charities alike, robbers of their brethren, destroyers of their fellow-creatures. And as every burning period poured forth, the noise, the enthusiasm became indescribable. The men who listened were no more murderous rebels than English landlords and millionaires are sanguinary oppressors, but they shouted and stamped, and rent their throats with applause, all the more that they were well acquainted with these arguments. Hamlet and “the cursed spite” of his position were of doubtful interest; but here was something which they understood. Thus they went on together, mutually exciting each other, the speaker and the listeners—until suddenly in the midst of the hubbub a strange note, a new voice, struck in, and caught them all in full uproar.

“What’s that?” cried Spears, with the quick hearing of offended affection. “You behind there—some one spoke.”

The men all turned round—the entire assembly—to see what the interruption was. Then they saw, leaning carelessly against the wall, his grey overcoat open, showing the expanse of fine linen, the silk lapels of the evening coat in which Paul had chosen to array himself, the young aristocrat, looking his part to the fullest perfection, with scorn on his face, and proud indifference, careless of them and their opinions. The mere sight of him brought an impulse of fierce hostility.

“I said, that’s not so,” said Paul, distinctly, throwing his defiance over all their heads at his old instructor. Spears was almost beside himself with pain and passion.

“Do you give me the lie,” he said, “to my face—you, Paul? Oh, you shall have your title—that’s the meaning of the change! you, Sir Paul Markham, baronet,—Do you give me the lie?”

“If you like to take it so, Spears. You know as well as I do that men are not monsters like that in one rank and heroes in another. Title or no title, that’s the truth, and you know it—whatever those men that take in everything you are saying may think. You know that’s not so.”

The excited listeners saw Spears grow pale and wince. Then he shouted out with an excited voice—

“And that’s a lie whoever said it. I! say one thing and mean another! The time has been when a man that said that to me would have rued it. He would have rued it——”

“And he shall rue it!” said a voice in the crowd. The people turned round with a common impulse. Fairfax, when he saw what was coming, had risen too, and thrown himself in front of Paul. He was not so tall a man, and Paul’s dark hair towered over his light locks. He tried to push him out into the narrow-flagged passage, and called to him to go—to go! But Paul’s blood was up; he stood and faced them all, holding his arm before him in defence against the raised fists and threatening looks. “I’m one against a hundred,” he said, perfectly calm. “You can do what you please. I will not give in, whatever you do. I tell you what Spears says is not true.”

And then the uproar got up again and raged round them. There was a hesitation about striking the first blow. Nobody liked to begin the onslaught upon one single man, or a man with but one supporter. Fairfax got his arm into his, and did his best to push and drag him away into the paved passage. But it was not till Spears himself, breaking through the angry crowd, gave him a thrust with his powerful arm that he yielded. What might have happened even then, Fairfax did not know; for the passage was narrow, and the two or three people hanging about the door sufficed to make another angry crowd in their way. While, however, he was pushing his way along by the wall, doing all he could to impel before him Paul’s reluctant figure, a door suddenly opened behind them, a light flashed out, and some one called to them to come in. Paul stumbled backwards, fortunately, over the step, and was thus got at a disadvantage; and in two minutes more Fairfax had struggled in, bringing his companion with him. The place into which they were admitted was a narrow passage, quite dark—and the contrast from the noise and crowd without to this silence bewildered the young men. Even then, however, the voice of Spears reached them over the murmur of the crowd.

“There’s a specimen for you!” cried the orator, with a harsh laugh. “The scum come uppermost! What did I tell you? that, take what pains you like, you never get the right man. I loved that lad like my son; and all I said was gospel to him. But he has come into his title, he has come into the land he swore he never would take from the people, and there’s the end. Would you like a better proof of what I said? Oh, rotten, rotten, rotten to the core!”

CHAPTER V.

They were in a small, dingy room, lighted with one feeble candle—still within hearing of the tumult close by. Paul had twisted his foot in the stumble, which was the only thing that had saved him from a scuffle and possible fight. He was paler than before with the pain. He had put his foot up upon a chair at Fairfax’s entreaty, who feared a sprain; but himself, in his excitement, did not seem to feel it.

“My title and my lands!” he said, with a laugh which was more bitter than that of Spears. “You heard him, Fairfax. I’ve come into my property; that is what has caused this change in my opinions.”

“Never mind, the man’s a fool,” said Fairfax angrily.

“He is not a fool,” said Paul, “but it shows how well you can judge a man when you do not know his circumstances.”

Fairfax, however, it must be owned, was as much puzzled as Spears. What was it, that had caused the change? It was not much more than a month since Paul’s devotion to Spears and his scheme had kept him from his father’s death-bed. He had been intent then on giving up his whole life to the creed which this evening he had publicly contradicted in the face of its excited supporters. Fairfax could not make out what it meant any more than the deserted demagogue could. If Paul, indeed, had reached the high top-gallant of his fortunes—if he had held the control of a large property in his hands—a position like that of a prince—there might have been reason in such a change of faith. Though it gave a certain foundation for Spears’s bitter sneer, yet there was reason in it. A young man might very well be justified in abandoning the society of revolutionaries, when he himself entered the ranks of those who are responsible for the safety of the country and have a great deal to lose. But he did not understand Paul’s position now, and a change so singular bewildered him. It was not, however, either necessary or expedient to enter into that question; and he addressed himself with more satisfaction to rubbing the injured ankle. He had asked the woman who admitted them, and who was in great terror of “the meeting,” to get a cab, but had been answered that she dared not leave the house, and that they must not think of leaving the house till all was over in the “Hall.” It was not a cheerful prospect. To his surprise, however, Paul showed less impatience than he did. He was full of the place and the discussion they had just left.

“He is no fool,” Paul said, “that is the most wonderful of all. A man may go on telling a pack of lies for years, and yet be as true in himself as all the rest is false. I understand your looks, Fairfax. You think I have gone as far as most men.”

“Keep your foot still, my good fellow,” was all Fairfax said.

“That is all very well; you want an explanation of my conduct,” said Paul. “You want to know what this inconsistency means; for it is inconsistency. Well, then, there’s just this, that I don’t mean to tell. I am as free as another man to form my own opinions, I hope.”

“Hark! they’re cheering again,” said Fairfax. “What fellows they are to cheer! He has got them into a good humour. They looked savage enough half an hour ago. It’s a little absurd, isn’t it, that you and I, Paul, who have been considered very advanced in our political opinions, should be in a kind of hiding here?”

“Hiding! I will go back at once and make my profession of faith,” cried Paul; but when he sprang up to carry out his intention, the pain of his foot overpowered him. “Have I sprained it, do you think?—that is an affair of four or five weeks,” he said, with a look of dismay.

After this very little passed. They sat on each side of the little deal table with the coarse candle sputtering between them, and listened to the hoarse sounds of the voices, the tumultuous applause on the other side of the wall. This was still going on, though in subdued tones, when the door suddenly opened. It was not easy at first to see who had come in, till Spears’s face appeared over the flickering light. It was angry and dark, and overclouded with something like shame.

“I am glad you are here still, you two,” he said in subdued tones.

Neither of the young men spoke. At last Fairfax, who was not the one on whom his eyes were bent, said—

“We were waiting till the meeting was over. Till then, it appears, we can’t have a cab sent for. Markham has hurt his foot.”

“Good Lord! How did he do that?” Spears came round and looked at it where it lay supported on the chair. He looked as if he would have liked to stroke and pet the injured limb like a child. “I hope it was none of those fellows with their pushing and stupid folly,” he said.

“It was not done by any refinement of politeness, certainly.”

These were the first words Paul had said, and they were uttered with the same half mocking smile.

“They’re rough fellows, that’s the truth,” said Spears; “and they have an idiot for a guide,” he went on in a low voice. “Look here, Paul, you aggravated me with those grand looks of yours, and that sneer. You know as well as I do what puts me out. When it’s a fellow I care for, I can’t stand it. All the asses in Rotten Row might come and haw-haw at me, and I shouldn’t mind; but you! that are a kind of child of my soul, Paul!”

“I hope your other children will get more mercy from you, then,” said Paul, without looking at him. “You have not had much for me, Spears.”

“I, lad? What have I ever done but cherish you as if you were my own! I have been as proud of you—! All your fine ways that I’ve jibed about have been a pleasure to me all the time. It went to my heart to think that you, the finest aristocrat of all the lot, were following old Spears for love of a principle. I said to myself, abuse them as we like, there’s stuff in these old races—there’s something in that blue blood. I don’t deny it before you two, that may laugh at me as you please. I that have just been telling all those lads that it’s the scum that comes uppermost (and believe it too). I that have sworn an eternal war against the principle of unequal rank and accumulation of property—”

Spears paused. There was nothing ludicrous to him in the idea of this eternal war, waged by a nameless stump orator against all the kingdoms of the world and the power of them. He was too much in earnest to be conscious of any absurdity. He was as serious in his crusade as if he had been a conqueror with life and death in his hands, and his voice trembled with the reality of this confession which he was going to make.

“Well!” he said, “I, of whom you know all this as well as I do myself, I’ve been proud of your birth and your breeding, Paul, because it was all the grander of you to forget them for the cause. I’ve dwelt on these things in my mind. I’ve said, there’s the flower of them all, and he’s following after me! Look here! you’re not going to take it so dreadfully amiss if, after not hearing a word from you, after not knowing what you were going to do, seeing you suddenly opposite to me with your most aggravating look (and you can put on an aggravating look when you like, you know you can, and drive me wild,” Spears said with a deprecating, tender smile, putting his hand, caressingly, on the back of Paul’s chair)—“if I let out a bitter word, a lash of ill-temper against my will, you are not going to make that a quarrel between you and me.”

The man’s large mobile features were working, his eyes shining out under their heavy brows. The generous soul in him was moved to its depth. He had, being “wild,” as he said, with sudden passion, accused Paul of having yielded to the seductions of his new rank—but in his heart he did not believe the accusation he had made. He trusted his young disciple with all the doting confidence of a woman. Of a woman! his daughter Janet, though she was a woman, and a young one, had no such enthusiasm of trust in her being. She would have scorned his weakness had she been by—very differently would Janet have dealt with a hesitating lover. But the demagogue had enthroned in his soul an ideal to which, perhaps, his very tenderest affections, the deepest sentiments he was capable of, had clung. He had fallen for the moment into that madness which works in the brain when we are wroth with those we love. And he did not know now how to make sufficient amends for it, how to open wide enough that window into his heart which showed the quivering and longing within. But he had said for the moment all he could say.

And for a time there was silence in the little room. Fairfax, who understood him, turned away, and began to stare at a rude-coloured print on the wall in order to leave the others alone. He would himself have held out his hand before half this self-revelation had been made, and perhaps Spears would have but lightly appreciated that naïve response. But Paul was by no means ready to yield. He kept silence for what seemed to the interested spectator ten minutes at least. Then he said, slowly—

“I think it would be wise to inquire into the facts of the case before permitting yourself to use such language, Spears—even if you had not roused your rabble against me.”

He said these strident words in the most forcible way, making the r’s roll.

“Rabble?” Spears repeated, with a tone of dismay; but his patience was not exhausted, nor his penitence. “I know,” he said, “it was wrong. I don’t excuse myself. I behaved like a fool, and it costs a man like me something to say that. Paul—come! why should we quarrel? Let bygones be bygones. They should have torn me to pieces before they had laid a finger on you.”

“A good many of them would have smarted for it if they had laid a finger on me,” said Paul. “That I promise you.”

Spears laughed; his mind was relieved. He gave his vigorous person a shake and was himself again.

“Well, that is all over,” he said. “It will be a lesson to me. I am a confounded fool at bottom after all. Whatever mental advantages you may have, that’s what the best of us have to come to. My blood gets hot, and I lose my head. There’s a few extenuating circumstances though. Have you forgotten, Paul, that we were to sail in October, and it’s the 20th of September now? Not a word have I heard from you since you left Oxford, three weeks ago. What was I to think? I know what’s happened in the meantime; and I don’t say,” said Spears, slowly, “that if you were to throw us overboard at the last moment, it would be a thing without justification. I told you at the time you would be more wise to let us alone. But you never had an old head on young shoulders. A generous heart never counts the cost in that way; still—— And the time, my dear fellow, is drawing very near.”

“I may as well tell you,” said Paul, tersely, “I am not going with you, Spears.”

The man sat firm in his chair as if he had received a blow, leaning back a little, pressing himself against the woodwork.

“Well!” he said, and kept upon his face a curious smile—the smile, and the effort alike, showing how deeply the stroke had penetrated. “Well!” he repeated, “now that I know everything—now you have told me—I don’t know that I have a word to say.”

Paul said nothing, and for another minute there was again perfect silence. Then Spears resumed—

“I thought as much,” he said. “I have always thought it since the day you went away. A man understands that sort of thing by instinct. Well! it’s a disappointment, I don’t deny; but no doubt,” said Spears, with a suppressed tone of satire in his voice, “though I’ve no experience of the duties of a rich baronet, nor the things it lays upon you, no doubt there’s plenty to do in that avocation; and looking after property requires work. There’s a thousand things that it must now seem more necessary to do than to start away across the Atlantic with a set of visionaries. I told you so at the beginning, Paul—or Sir Paul, I suppose I ought to say; but titles are not much in my way,” he added, with a smile, “as you know.”

“You may save yourself the trouble of titles here, for I am not Sir Paul, nor have I anything in the way of property to look after that will give me much trouble. It appears—” said Paul, with a smile that was very like that of Spears, which sat on his lips like a grimace, “it appears that I have an elder brother who is kind enough to relieve me from all inconvenience of that sort.”

Spears turned to Fairfax with a look of consternation, as if appealing to him to guarantee the sanity of his friend.

“What does he mean?” he cried, bewildered.

“We need not go into all the question,” said Paul. “Fairfax, haven’t they got that cab yet? My foot’s better—I can walk to the door, and these gentlemen seem to be dispersing. We need not enter into explanations. I’m not a rich baronet, that is about all. The scum has not come uppermost this time. You see you made a mistake in your estimate of my motives.”

This time he laughed that harsh, bitter, metallic laugh which is one of the signs of nervous passion. He had such a superiority over his assailant as nothing else could have given him. And as for Spears, shame, and wonder, and distress, struck him dumb. He gasped for breath.

“My God!” he said; “and I to fall upon you for what had never happened, and taunt you with wealth when you were poor. Poor! are you actually poor, Paul?”

“What is the use of searching into it? the facts are as I have told you. I shan’t starve,” said the young man, holding his head high.

Spears looked at him with a mixture of grief and satisfaction, and held out a large hand.

“Never mind,” he said, his face melting and working, and a smile of a very different character gleaming over it, “you would have been out of place with us if you had been Sir Paul; but come now, my lad, come now! It’s not money we want, but men. Come with us, you’ll be as welcome as the sunshine, though you have not a penny. For a rich man, I could see myself the incongruity; but for a poor man, what could be better than a new country and a fair field. Come! don’t bear malice for a few hasty words that were repented of as soon as they were said. I would have scorned to pay a word had you been kept back by your new grandeur. But now that you’re disinherited—why, Paul, come—Australia is the place for such as you. Young and strong with a good heart, and all the world before you! Why, there’s a new country for you to get hold of, to govern, if you like. Come! I’ll not oppose any dignity you may gain out there; and I tell you, you’ll have the ball at your foot, and the whole world before you! Come with us, I ask this time as a favour, Paul.”

He had held out his hand with some wavering and doubt, though with enthusiasm. But gradually a curious expression of wonder came to his face; his hand dropped at his side. Paul made no motion towards taking it; the demagogue thought it was resentment. A flush of vivid colour came over him. “Come, this is a little too much for old friends,” he said, getting up hastily from his chair, with a thrill of wounded feeling in his voice.

“Don’t wrong him, Spears,” said Fairfax. “He has had a great deal to bother him, and his foot is bad. You can meet another time and settle that. At present, let us get him out of this place. If he is angry, he has a right to be; but never mind that now. Let us get him out of here.”

Spears did not say another word. He stalked away into the house to which this room belonged, and the “hall” beyond it. It was a little tavern of the lower class in which he was living. By and by the woman came to say there was a cab at the door. And Paul limped out, leaning on Fairfax.

All was quiet outside, the meeting dispersed; only one or two men sitting in the room down stairs, who cast a curious look upon the two young men, but took no further notice. As for Spears, he did not appear at all. He was lurking behind, his heart wrung with various feelings, but too much wounded, too much disappointed, too sore and sad to show himself. If Paul had seemed to require help, the rejected prophet was lingering in the hope of offering it; but nothing of the kind seemed the case. He limped out holding Fairfax’s arm. He did not even look round him as the other did, or show any signs of a wish to see his former friend. Spears had not got through the world up to this time without mortification; but he had never suffered so acutely as now.

“Poor Spears,” Fairfax contrived to say, as they jolted along, leaving the mean and monotonous streets behind them. “I think you might have taken his hand.”

“Pshaw!’ said Paul, “I am tired to death of all that. I don’t mean to say he is not honest—far more honest than most of them—but what is the meaning of all that clap-trap? Why, Spears ought to know as well as any man what folly it is. Bosh!” said the young man with an expression of disgust. The milder spectator beside him looked at him with unfeigned surprise.

“I thought you went as far as he did, Markham. I thought you were out and out in your principles, accepting no compromise: I thought——”

“You thought I was a fool,” said Paul, bitterly, “and you were right enough, if that is any satisfaction to you; but I had a lesson or two before my poor father’s death—and more since. Don’t let us speak of it. When a man has made an ass of himself, it is no pleasure to him to dwell upon it. And I am not free yet, and I don’t know when I shall be,” he cried, with an irrepressible desire for sympathy, then closed his mouth as if he had shut a book, and said no more.

Thus they went jolting and creaking over the wet pavements all gleaming with muddy reflections. London was grim and dismal under that autumn rain, no flashing of carriages about, or gleams of toilette, or signs of the great world which does its work under the guise of pleasure; only a theatre now and then in the glare of gas with idle people hanging about, keeping themselves dry under the porch; and afterward the great vacant rooms at the clubs with a vague figure scattered here and there, belated “men,” or waiters at their ease; the foot-passengers hurrying along under umbrellas, the cabs all splashed with mud, weary wayfarers and muddy streets. There was scarcely a word exchanged between them as they went along.

“Where are you living?” said Fairfax at last.

“The house is shut up,” said Paul, giving the name of his hotel.

“But my place is not. Will you come with me and have your foot looked to? I wish you would come, Markham. There are heaps of things I want to say to you, and to ask you——”

Paul was in so fantastic and unreasonable a condition of mind that these last words were all that was necessary to alter his decision. He had thought he would go—why not?—and escape a little from all the contradictions in his own mind by means of his friend’s company. But the thought of having to answer questions made an end of that impulse of confidence. He had himself taken to the hotel instead, where, he said to himself with forlorn pride, at least there was nobody to insist upon any account of his thoughts or doings, where he should be unmolested by reason of being alone.

CHAPTER VI.

The visit of Janet Spears had made a great impression upon Lady Markham. She abstained as long as she could from speaking of it to Alice, but what is there which a woman can keep from her closest companion, her daughter, who is as her own soul? Up to this moment Alice had known nothing whatever about Janet Spears, not even of her existence. Perhaps Lady Markham’s discretion, and the painful sense that she had interfered injudiciously in Paul’s affairs, might not have sufficed to keep her secret; but Sir William’s illness had carried the day over everything, and not a word had been said between the mother and daughter on this subject. Even now Lady Markham made a heroic effort. Full as was her mind of the visit, she kept it to herself for two long days, thinking over everything that had been said, and wondering if she had done as she ought, or if she should have been more kind to the girl whom (was it possible?) Paul loved, or more severe upon the creature who had enthralled him. At one time she thought of Janet in one way, at another in the other. The girl he loved (was it possible?), or the woman who had put forth evil arts and got him in her power. It is hard for a woman to be quite just to any one, male or female, who has injured her son: and people say it is hardest to be just, to a woman who has done so. [In this point I do not feel qualified to judge; but men say so who know women better, naturally, than they know themselves.] Lady Markham struggled very hard to be just: but it was difficult; and in a moment of pressure, when Alice came upon her suddenly, and with a soft arm round her and a soft cheek laid against hers, entreated to know if there was any fresh trouble—how could she help but tell her everything? Alice justified all vulgar sentiment on the subject by being triumphantly unjust.

“He must have been cheated into it,” she cried. “Paul—Paul! so fastidious as he is, how could he ever, ever, have thought of a girl like that?”

But Lady Markham, anxious to keep the balance even, shook her head.

“My dearest, you don’t know much about men. I can’t tell why it is. They choose those whom you would think they would fly from, and fly from those whom you would think—I don’t know, Alice, perhaps they get tired of the kind of women like you and me, whom they see every day.”

“Mamma!”

“I have thought so often, dear. We don’t feel so, but men—they get tired of one kind of woman. They think they will try something different. It has always been a mystery. And you must not think this was a—was not a good girl. I saw nothing wrong about her. Perhaps a little more—— no, I don’t know what to say. She was not saucy, or bold, or—— Perhaps it was only that she was not a lady,” Lady Markham said with a sigh.

“But that Paul should care for any one who was not a lady,” Alice said, clasping her hands together with mingled despair and impatience; and then she cried suddenly, “Poor little Dolly!”

“Dolly!” said Lady Markham. Nothing could exceed her surprise. The air of grieved doubt and hesitation which had been in her face while they discussed Janet gave way to lively astonishment and displeasure. “What do you mean by Dolly?” she said.

Then Alice faltered forth an ashamed confession—that she thought—that she had supposed—that she did not know anything about it—did not believe there was anything in it—but only, Dolly——

Nothing was to be made of this hesitating speech.

“Dolly,” said Lady Markham, drawing herself up, “is a dear little girl. I am very fond of her. In her proper place she is charming; but my dear Alice, Dolly is scarcely more suitable for Paul, in his position. Ah!——”

Lady Markham stopped short and hid her face in her hands.

During the time that these conversations—the visit of Janet and all its attendant circumstances, and the explanation of it thus given to Alice—were going on, these ladies lived upon the post which brought frequent communications from the people in London who were carrying on such inquiries as could be made about the intruder into the family, he who had so suddenly and decisively blighted all the prospects of Paul. Colonel Fleetwood wrote, and Mr. Scrivener, and Paul himself, though less frequently. The former was the only one that was hopeful; he was perfectly ready to believe that Gus was an impostor, and the whole thing “a got up affair.” Was it likely, he argued, that Sir William, the most steady-going old fellow, could be guilty of such a tremendous mistake? Had it only been a wickedness! but it was such a folly, such an error in judgment. A statesman, a man in parliament, one of the rulers of the country, how could any one suppose him capable of a thing so foolish? Mr. Scrivener was far less confident. He knew what a lawyer’s law was in his own private affairs, and he had not much more confidence in a stateman’s wisdom. He had not sent any one to Barbadoes, but he was making careful inquiries among all sorts of people who knew—West Indian agents, ancient governors, and consuls. And he had heard of Gus from more than one of these referees, and found his story confirmed in all points as to his life in Barbadoes. About his connexion with Sir William Markham, these people did not know, but they gave him the highest character, and confirmed his statement in many important details. The lawyer did not conceal from Lady Markham his complete conviction. Neither did Paul, who had given up his own cause at once, though he dragged on in London, dancing attendance at the lawyer’s office and hearing from day to day some fresh and, as he thought, unmeaning piece of additional proof. “Of course it is all right,” Paul wrote; “I never for a moment doubted that the man was all right. He may be a cad, but he was speaking the truth. I stay here to humour them; but I know very well that they will discover nothing which will shake his credit; and the best thing I can do is to get myself as soon as I can out of Sir Gus’s way.” This way of speaking of it was to both the ladies like turning the sword round in the wound. Where was it he meant to take himself, out of the way? They had neither of them any clue to Paul’s changed sentiments, and if he had vowed to go away while all was well with him, when he had fortune and splendour within reach, with those socialist emigrants whose very name was enough to alarm them, what would he do now when this horrible downfall and disappointment had loosed the bonds between him and his native country? A wild desire to call for help, even upon the least desirable of auxiliaries, upon Janet Spears herself, came to Lady Markham’s mind. If the girl could keep him at home, she felt herself able to receive even Janet to her heart.

While their mother’s mind was thus occupied, the two little girls had languidly resumed their lessons. It is no reproach to the children to say that it was not very long before the impression made by their father’s death would have died out naturally, in an occasional tender recollection, or sudden burst of crying when something recalled him to their memory. It was not grief that made them languid, but the sense of something going on, a living agitation, and the shadow of a still greater disturbance to come. It was whispered vaguely between them that no doubt they would have to leave Markham, a thing which they sometimes felt like a deathblow and sometimes like a deliverance. When Bell and Marie thought of leaving their woods, their gardens, their “own house,” in which they had been born, the desolation of the thought overwhelmed them; but when, on the other hand, they thought of going away, perhaps to London, perhaps “abroad,” a thrill of guilty rapture ran through their bosoms. They had never come to such a pitch of wickedness as to say this to each other, but already in the rapid communion of the eyes each had guessed that the other thought there might be something to be said for such a possibility; and the idea made them restless, unable to settle to their work, and very trying to Mademoiselle, who, poor lady, had to put up with this reverberation of the troubles of the house without really having any share in them, or taking any very lively interest in these family concerns. Sometimes she had a headache, caused, as she said, by nothing but the continued disturbance of her nerves through their endless rustlings and changes. And when this headache got very bad and Mademoiselle betook herself to bed, it cannot be said that her pupils were sorry. They put their books away (having been brought up in the strictest habits of tidiness), and hastened out to their favourite haunts. The air and the movement stilled their nerves, which were as much at fault as those of Mademoiselle. They were seated on, or rather in, a tree near the fishpond, the favourite centre of all their games when the next great event occurred to them. Bell had brought out a book with her, which she held embraced in her arms, but had not opened. She was seated well up in the tree, dangling her feet close to Marie’s head, who was seated on a lower branch. Marie had no book—her tastes were not literary; and she was very near the edge of that great discovery which both had made, but neither avowed, that under some circumstances it might be “nice” to go away.

“Were you ever in a great big, big place—in a city, Bell?”

“You little silly, of course I have been in Farboro’. I have been with mamma a hundred times, and so have you.”

“Farboro’ is not what I mean. Farboro’ is only a town. There are not so very many people in it, and the cathedral is the chief place. It is not noisy or wicked at all. I mean a great horrid place where there are crowds everywhere, and policemen, and where nobody goes to church. That is what they call a city in books. London is a city,” said Marie.

“I have never been in London, you know. I wonder if we shall ever see it,” said Bell. “I wonder if mamma will ever take us there. I wonder if you and I will be quite different from Alice when we grow up. She has been presented. I wonder if it makes a difference when poor girls are like us—without any father,” she added, with a little choke of tears.

“Do you think we shall be poor?” said Marie. “There is not much difference now. We have all the same servants, and as much to eat, and Mademoiselle just the same.”

“It will not make any difference in what we have to eat,” said Bell, approaching the dangerous subject. “But—perhaps we may not be able to stay at Markham. Oh, Marie! what would you think if mamma were to give up Markham altogether and go away?”

Marie looked up with large eyes, stretching her neck, as her sister was at an elevation almost perpendicular. She said, in a tone of awe, “Oh, I don’t know! What would you think, Bell?”

Neither of the children liked to commit themselves. At length Bell, who felt that her superior age required of her that she should lead the way, assumed the privilege of her years. “I don’t know either,” she said, reflectively. “If it was in summer, when everything is bright, I should not like it at all; but if, perhaps,” she added, slower and slower, “it was in the rainy weather—when you can’t go out, when the grass is so wet you sink in it, when there is nothing but sleet and slush, and the trees drop cold drops upon you even when it’s not raining, and you get your frock all wet even in the avenue——”

Marie’s eyes opened bigger and bigger after every step of this hypothesis. She followed them with a movement of her lips and a gasp of excitement at the end.

“Then—” said Bell, “perhaps—I think—it might be rather nice, Marie.”

“Oh, Bell! that is what I sometimes thought—but I never liked to say it.”

“Nor me,” said Bell, more courageous, indifferent to grammar—and going on with hardihood after she had made the first plunge. “There would be Madame Tussaud’s, and the Crystal Palace, and the British Museum, and Westminster Abbey, and all the bazaars. However bad the weather was, there would always be something. I dare say mamma would take us to the theatre.”

“But not just now,” said Marie. “It would not be nice to go just now. It would look as if we had forgotten——”

“Did I say now? At present it is only autumn, and everybody is in the country. But when the days get short and dark, and you have to light the candles directly—What is it?” cried Bell, for Marie had shaken herself off her branch, and, with a cry of dismay, stood looking apparently at something which was coming. “Is it Mademoiselle?” said the little girl under her breath.

Mademoiselle had a particular objection to that nest in the tree. Bell’s seat was one which was usually occupied by a boy, not one of the girls’ places, as Roland and Harry contemptuously called the lower branches. It required some ingenuity to clamber into it, and more to get down again—and not only ingenuity, but an absence of petticoats would have been desirable. Bell felt herself catching here and there as she tried to get down hastily. Then came the sound of a long rent, which sent her brain all whirling. Her new black frock! and what would nurse say? The idea of nurse and Mademoiselle both waiting, full of fury, for her descent, was enough to obscure the perceptions of any child. Her foot slipped from a mossy and treacherous twig; she caught wildly at something, she did not know what, and with a sudden whirr and whirl and blackness lost herself altogether for a moment. When she became aware of what was going on again, she found herself seated at the foot of the tree, staring across the fishpond, with a lump on her forehead and a singing in her ears. Marie was crying, bending over her, and saying, “Oh! what can we do—what shall I do? Do you think she will die, Mr. Gus?”

“Oh, what a little goose you are!” murmured Bell, gradually coming to herself. “What should I die for? I have only got a knock—on my head.” She felt the lump on her forehead wonderingly as she spoke, for it hurt her, and nature directed her hand to the spot. “I have got a dreadful knock on my head,” she added, not without satisfaction. Then Bell leaned back on something, she did not know what, and saw a hand come round from behind with a wet handkerchief to lay upon her forehead. The hand was a brown hand with a big ring on it, at which Bell vaguely wondered where she had seen it before. Then, all of a sudden, she jumped up, upon her feet, though she felt very queer and giddy. “It is that little gentleman! You have been talking to him, Marie!”

“And won’t you talk to me, too?” said Gus, following her with his wet handkerchief. “Well, never mind, put on this. The water is out of your own fishpond; it cannot do you any harm.”

Bell was not able to resist, and he made her sit down again and have her forehead bathed. By degrees as she became aware of everything around her, Bell perceived that the little gentleman was very kind. His thin, brown hand touched her so gently, and he was not angry, though she had been angry. By and by she said, “I am better. Please, oh, please go away, Mr. Gus. I don’t want to be disagreeable, but how can I have anything to say to you, when you have been so——”

“Yes, my dear,” said Mr. Gus. “What have I been?” For Bell paused, not knowing what to say.

The little girl did not continue. She contented herself with throwing down Mr. Gus’s wet handkerchief from her forehead, which was not so bad now. You are our enemy,” she said.

“I am nobody’s enemy. I am your brother. I want to do everything I can for you, if you will let me. Don’t you remember what friends we made, and how fond we were of each other before you knew who I was; and why should you hate me now you know I am your brother?” said Gus.

It was wonderful to see him standing there, so like their father: and it was very hard for two little girls to keep up an argument with a grown-up gentleman. But Bell, who had a great spirit, was not disposed to throw down her arms. She said, “Paul is my brother, and you are his enemy,” feeling at last that she was on steady ground.

“I am no more Paul’s enemy than I am yours. Now listen, little girls. If some one were to leave you something, Bell—if it was to be put in the will that this was for Sir William Markham’s second daughter—how should you feel if it were taken from you and given to Marie?”

“I would not put up with it all,” said Bell promptly. Then perceiving how she had committed herself, “It is not the same. It was Paul’s, and you want to take it from Paul.”

“But I am the heir, and not Paul,” said the little gentleman. “I am the eldest. You are very fond of your little sister, but you would not give up what was yours to Marie.”

This time Bell was more wise. “You don’t know anything about it. What would it matter? for when anything is given to me, I always give half to Marie,” she said, with sparkling eyes.

The little gentleman owned himself discomfited. “There you have the better of me,” he said. “But I should like to give a great part to Paul. I would give him everything in reason. And I have come now to see you, to ask you to do me a very great favour.”

They looked at him with eyes that grew bigger and bigger, and as Bell was very pale, with a lump on her forehead, her aspect with her heroic gaze was tragi-comical, to say the least. They were both greatly melted and softened by the idea of having a favour asked of them, and Marie, who was entirely gained over, did nothing but nudge and pull her sister’s dress by way of recommending her to be merciful. Bell leant back upon the tree like a little image of Justice, with the bandage momentarily pushed off, but very much needed. It lay at her feet in the shape of Mr. Gus’s white handkerchief; but all the severity, yet candour, of an entire Bench was in her eyes.

“I want you to make my peace with your mother. I want you to persuade her to stay at Markham; to let me stay here to; to let me live among you like your brother, which I am. If you all run away as soon as I come near the place, what good will it do me?” said Gus. “I want you all. When the boys come home, we should have all kinds of fun, and as for you, I should not let anyone bother you. Fancy, I have nobody belonging to me but you. You are my family. I am more like an old uncle than your brother, but I should be very fond of you all the same. If your mother would only listen to me, it would be very nice for us all. I am sure you can be generous, Bell. You are old enough to understand. And I think Alice would be on my side if she would hear what I have got to say.”

“Alice would never be on your side,” said Bell with decision. “Paul is Alice’s brother—her particular brother—and how could she bear to see him put out? Don’t you know we are all in pairs at Markham? Harry is my brother, and Roland is Marie’s.”

“Ye-es,” said Marie tired of being left out, “but he is not always nice. He sends me away because I am a girl, as if it was my fault!”

“Well then,” said Mr. Gus, “if Alice will not stand my friend, I must trust it all to you. The thing you must do is to go to your mamma, and tell her your old brother is outside, very sorry to be the cause of any trouble, but that he can’t help being your brother, and a great deal older than Paul. How could I help that? I did not choose who my father was to be; and tell her if she would only speak to me, I will explain it all to her. And there is nothing she can ask me to do that I will not do for Paul. And tell her—but I need not tell you, Bell, for I can see in your eyes that you know quite well what to say.”

The conviction that she would indeed be a valuable and eloquent advocate got into Bell’s mind as he went on. Yes, she felt she could say all that to mamma and better than Mr. Gus had said it. She would use such arguments that Lady Markham would be sure to yield. Bell was aware that she was clever, and all her own opposition melted away in the delightful mental excitement of this immense undertaking. She forgot the lump on her forehead, the buzzing in her ears, and even more, she forgot the family opposition to the interloper who was taking away Paul’s birthright. “Oh yes, I know very well what to say,” she cried with a change of sentiment which was as complete as it was rapid, and in her excitement she set off at once for the house, framing little speeches as she went, in which the case of Gus should be put forth with all the devices of forensic talent. Oh what a pity I am not a boy! was the thought which flew through her mind as on the sudden gale of inspiration which swept through her. For the moment, perhaps, this fact, which would for ever prevent her from being a special pleader by profession, was a decided advantage to Bell. Little Marie did not like to be left behind. She looked wistfully after her sister, then she said, “I will tell mamma too,” and rushed after Bell. Finally, Mr. Gus himself completed the procession walking behind them. He had chosen no unfit ambassadors of peace, though the elder emissary looked very much as if she had been in the wars. And the little man walked after them with a little tremor varying the calm of self-satisfaction which usually reigned in his bosom. He knew he was doing what was by far the best and most Christian thing to do, and he felt that he had managed it very cleverly in putting his cause into such hands. But notwithstanding these consolatory reflections, and notwithstanding the natural calm of his bosom, it is certain that Mr. Gus felt in that bosom an unaccustomed quiver of timidity which might almost have been called fear.

CHAPTER VII.

Gus came into the hall with Bell and Marie, and waited there while they proceeded to plead his cause within. He walked about the hall softly, and looked at the pictures, the old map of the county, and other curiosities that were there. These things beguiled his anxiety about his reception, and filled him with an altogether novel interest. A thing which is quite indifferent to us while it belongs to our neighbour, gains immediate attraction when it becomes our own. He looked at everything with interest, even the cases of stuffed birds that decorated one corner. Then he came and seated himself in the great bamboo chair in which he had sat down the first time he came to Markham. It was not very long ago, not yet two months, but what a difference there was! Then, indeed, he had been anxious about his reception, and he was anxious about his reception now. But when he came first, he had been doubtful of his position altogether, not sure what his rights were, or what claim he could make—and now his anxieties were merely sentimental, and his rights all established. He sat where he had sat then, and saw everything standing just as he had seen it, the trees the same, except in colour, nothing altered except himself. Now it was all his, this noble domain. He had not known what welcome he might receive, whether his father would acknowledge him, or what would happen, and now his father’s possessions were his, and no one could infringe his rights. How strange it was! He sat sunk in the great bamboo chair, and listened to the faint sound of voices which he heard through the open door, the two little girls pleading his cause. He was very desirous that they should be successful, for if he was not successful, Markham would be a dull house—but still, successful or not, nothing any longer could affect him vitally. A poor stranger, a wanderer from the tropics, unused to England and English ways, with not much money, and a very doubtful prospect before him, he had been when he first came here. How could he help smiling at the change? He had no desire to do any one harm. All the evil that he had done was involuntary, but it could not be expected that he would give up his rights. He felt very much at his ease as he seated himself in that chair, notwithstanding the touch of anxiety in his mind. The prospect which was before him was enough to satisfy an ambitious man, but Gus was not ambitious. Indeed, the advantages he had gained were contracted in his eyes by his own inability fully to understand their extent. They were greater than he was aware, greater than his imagination could grasp. But, at least, they included everything that his imagination was able to grasp, and mortal man cannot desire more.

Bell had gone in very quietly, inspired by her mission, without pausing to think, and Marie had followed, as Marie always did. They went straight into the room where they were sure, they thought, of seeing their mother. It was in the recess, the west chamber, at the end of the drawing room, that they found her. But the circumstances did not seem very favourable to their plea. Lady Markham and Alice were reading a letter together, and Alice, it was very apparent, was crying over her mother’s shoulder, while Lady Markham was very pale, and her eyes red as if she had shed tears. “It is all over then,” she was saying as the children came in, folding the letter up to put it away. And Alice cried, and made no reply. This checked the straightforward fervour of Bell, who had walked straight into the room and halfway up its length before she discovered the state of affairs. “Mamma,” she had begun, “I have come from——” Then Bell paused, and cried, “Oh, mamma, dear, what is the matter?” with sudden alarm, stopping short in mid-career.

“Nothing very much,” said Lady Markham, “nothing that we did not know before. What is it, Bell? You may tell me all the same. We must face it, you know. We must not allow ourselves to be overcome by it,” she said with a little quiver of her lip, and a smile which made the little girls inclined to cry too.