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Title: Basil

Author: Wilkie Collins

Edition: 10

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

Release Date: November, 2003 [Etext #4605]
[This file was first posted on February 17, 2002]
[Date last updated: May 22, 2005]

The Project Gutenberg Etext of Basil, by Wilkie Collins
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Basil

by Wilkie Collins




LETTER OF DEDICATION.

TO CHARLES JAMES WARD, ESQ.

IT has long been one of my pleasantest anticipations to look forward
to the time when I might offer to you, my old and dear friend, some
such acknowledgment of the value I place on your affection for me, and
of my grateful sense of the many acts of kindness by which that
affection has been proved, as I now gladly offer in this place. In
dedicating the present work to you, I fulfil therefore a purpose
which, for some time past, I have sincerely desired to achieve; and,
more than that, I gain for myself the satisfaction of knowing that
there is one page, at least, of my book, on which I shall always look
with unalloyed pleasure--the page that bears your name.

I have founded the main event out of which this story springs, on a
fact within my own knowledge. In afterwards shaping the course of the
narrative thus suggested, I have guided it, as often as I could, where
I knew by my own experience, or by experience related to me by others,
that it would touch on something real and true in its progress. My
idea was, that the more of the Actual I could garner up as a text to
speak from, the more certain I might feel of the genuineness and value
of the Ideal which was sure to spring out of it. Fancy and
Imagination, Grace and Beauty, all those qualities which are to the
work of Art what scent and colour are to the flower, can only grow
towards heaven by taking root in earth. Is not the noblest poetry of
prose fiction the poetry of every-day truth?

Directing my characters and my story, then, towards the light of
Reality wherever I could find it, I have not hesitated to violate some
of the conventionalities of sentimental fiction. For instance, the
first love-meeting of two of the personages in this book, occurs
(where the real love-meeting from which it is drawn, occurred) in the
very last place and under the very last circumstances which the
artifices of sentimental writing would sanction. Will my lovers excite
ridicule instead of interest, because I have truly represented them as
seeing each other where hundreds of other lovers have first seen each
other, as hundreds of people will readily admit when they read the
passage to which I refer? I am sanguine enough to think not.

So again, in certain parts of this book where I have attempted to
excite the suspense or pity of the reader, I have admitted as
perfectly fit accessories to the scene the most ordinary street-sounds
that could be heard, and the most ordinary street-events that could
occur, at the time and in the place represented--believing that by
adding to truth, they were adding to tragedy--adding by all the force
of fair contrast--adding as no artifices of mere writing possibly
could add, let them be ever so cunningly introduced by ever so crafty
a hand.

Allow me to dwell a moment longer on the story which these pages
contain.

Believing that the Novel and the Play are twin-sisters in the family
of Fiction; that the one is a drama narrated, as the other is a drama
acted; and that all the strong and deep emotions which the Play-writer
is privileged to excite, the Novel-writer is privileged to excite
also, I have not thought it either politic or necessary, while
adhering to realities, to adhere to every-day realities only. In other
words, I have not stooped so low as to assure myself of the reader's
belief in the probability of my story, by never once calling on him
for the exercise of his faith. Those extraordinary accidents and
events which happen to few men, seemed to me to be as legitimate
materials for fiction to work with--when there was a good object in
using them--as the ordinary accidents and events which may, and do,
happen to us all. By appealing to genuine sources of interest _within_
the reader's own experience, I could certainly gain his attention to
begin with; but it would be only by appealing to other sources (as
genuine in their way) _beyond_ his own experience, that I could hope
to fix his interest and excite his suspense, to occupy his deeper
feelings, or to stir his nobler thoughts.

In writing thus--briefly and very generally--(for I must not delay you
too long from the story), I can but repeat, though I hope almost
unnecessarily, that I am now only speaking of what I have tried to do.
Between the purpose hinted at here, and the execution of that purpose
contained in the succeeding pages, lies the broad line of separation
which distinguishes between the will and the deed. How far I may fall
short of another man's standard, remains to be discovered. How far I
have fallen short of my own, I know painfully well.

One word more on the manner in which the purpose of the following
pages is worked out--and I have done.

Nobody who admits that the business of fiction is to exhibit human
life, can deny that scenes of misery and crime must of necessity,
while human nature remains what it is, form part of that exhibition.
Nobody can assert that such scenes are unproductive of useful results,
when they are turned to a plainly and purely moral purpose. If I am
asked why I have written certain scenes in this book, my answer is to
be found in the universally-accepted truth which the preceding words
express. I have a right to appeal to that truth; for I guided myself
by it throughout. In deriving the lesson which the following pages
contain, from those examples of error and crime which would most
strikingly and naturally teach it, I determined to do justice to the
honesty of my object by speaking out. In drawing the two characters,
whose actions bring about the darker scenes of my story, I did not
forget that it was my duty, while striving to portray them naturally,
to put them to a good moral use; and at some sacrifice, in certain
places, of dramatic effect (though I trust with no sacrifice of truth
to Nature), I have shown the conduct of the vile, as always, in a
greater or less degree, associated with something that is selfish,
contemptible, or cruel in motive. Whether any of my better characters
may succeed in endearing themselves to the reader, I know not: but
this I do certainly know:--that I shall in no instance cheat him out
of his sympathies in favour of the bad.

To those persons who dissent from the broad principles here adverted
to; who deny that it is the novelist's vocation to do more than merely
amuse them; who shrink from all honest and serious reference, in
books, to subjects which they think of in private and talk of in
public everywhere; who see covert implications where nothing is
implied, and improper allusions where nothing improper is alluded to;
whose innocence is in the word, and not in the thought; whose morality
stops at the tongue, and never gets on to the heart--to those persons,
I should consider it loss of time, and worse, to offer any further
explanation of my motives, than the sufficient explanation which I
have given already. I do not address myself to them in this book, and
shall never think of addressing myself to them in any other.

                         -----

Those words formed part of the original introduction to this novel. I
wrote them nearly ten years since; and what I said then, I say now.

"Basil" was the second work of fiction which I produced. On its
appearance, it was condemned off-hand, by a certain class of readers,
as an outrage on their sense of propriety. Conscious of having
designed and written, my story with the strictest regard to true
delicacy, as distinguished from false--I allowed the prurient
misinterpretation of certain perfectly innocent passages in this book
to assert itself as offensively as it pleased, without troubling
myself to protest against an expression of opinion which aroused in me
no other feeling than a feeling of contempt. I knew that "Basil" had
nothing to fear from pure-minded readers; and I left these pages to
stand or fall on such merits as they possessed. Slowly and surely, my
story forced its way through all adverse criticism, to a place in the
public favour which it has never lost since. Some of the most valued
friends I now possess, were made for me by "Basil." Some of the most
gratifying recognitions of my labours which I have received, from
readers personally strangers to me, have been recognitions of the
purity of this story, from the first page to the last. All the
indulgence I need now ask for "Basil," is indulgence for literary
defects, which are the result of inexperience; which no correction can
wholly remove; and which no one sees more plainly, after a lapse of
ten years, than the writer himself.

I have only to add, that the present edition of this book is the first
which has had the benefit of my careful revision. While the incidents
of the story remain exactly what they were, the language in which they
are told has been, I hope, in many cases greatly altered for the
better.

                                            WILKIE COLLINS.

Harley Street, London, July, 1862.

BASIL.

PART I.

I.

WHAT am I now about to write?

The history of little more than the events of one year, out of the
twenty-four years of my life.

Why do I undertake such an employment as this?

Perhaps, because I think that my narrative may do good; because I hope
that, one day, it may be put to some warning use. I am now about to
relate the story of an error, innocent in its beginning, guilty in its
progress, fatal in its results; and I would fain hope that my plain
and true record will show that this error was not committed altogether
without excuse. When these pages are found after my death, they will
perhaps be calmly read and gently judged, as relics solemnized by the
atoning shadows of the grave. Then, the hard sentence against me may
be repented of; the children of the next generation of our house may
be taught to speak charitably of my memory, and may often, of their
own accord, think of me kindly in the thoughtful watches of the night.

Prompted by these motives, and by others which I feel, but cannot
analyse, I now begin my self-imposed occupation. Hidden amid the far
hills of the far West of England, surrounded only by the few simple
inhabitants of a fishing hamlet on the Cornish coast, there is little
fear that my attention will be distracted from my task; and as little
chance that any indolence on my part will delay its speedy
accomplishment. I live under a threat of impending hostility, which
may descend and overwhelm me, I know not how soon, or in what manner.
An enemy, determined and deadly, patient alike to wait days or years
for his opportunity, is ever lurking after me in the dark. In entering
on my new employment, I cannot say of my time, that it may be mine for
another hour; of my life, that it may last till evening.

Thus it is as no leisure work that I begin my narrative--and begin it,
too, on my birthday! On this day I complete my twenty-fourth year; the
first new year of my life which has not been greeted by a single kind
word, or a single loving wish. But one look of welcome can still find
me in my solitude--the lovely morning look of nature, as I now see it
from the casement of my room. Brighter and brighter shines out the
lusty sun from banks of purple, rainy cloud; fishermen are spreading
their nets to dry on the lower declivities of the rocks; children are
playing round the boats drawn up on the beach; the sea-breeze blows
fresh and pure towards the shore----all objects are brilliant to look
on, all sounds are pleasant to hear, as my pen traces the first lines
which open the story of my life.

II.

I am the second son of an English gentleman of large fortune. Our
family is, I believe, one of the most ancient in this country. On my
father's side, it dates back beyond the Conquest; on my mother's, it
is not so old, but the pedigree is nobler. Besides my elder brother, I
have one sister, younger than myself. My mother died shortly after
giving birth to her last child.

Circumstances which will appear hereafter, have forced me to abandon
my father's name. I have been obliged in honour to resign it; and in
honour I abstain from mentioning it here. Accordingly, at the head of
these pages, I have only placed my Christian name--not considering it
of any importance to add the surname which I have assumed; and which I
may, perhaps, be obliged to change for some other, at no very distant
period. It will now, I hope, be understood from the outset, why I
never mention my brother and sister but by their Christian names; why
a blank occurs wherever my father's name should appear; why my own is
kept concealed in this narrative, as it is kept concealed in the
world.

The story of my boyhood and youth has little to interest--nothing that
is new. My education was the education of hundreds of others in my
rank of life. I was first taught at a public school, and then went to
college to complete what is termed "a liberal education."

My life at college has not left me a single pleasant recollection. I
found sycophancy established there, as a principle of action;
flaunting on the lord's gold tassel in the street; enthroned on the
lord's dais in the dining-room. The most learned student in my
college--the man whose life was most exemplary, whose acquirements
were most admirable--was shown me sitting, as a commoner, in the
lowest place. The heir to an Earldom, who had failed at the last
examination, was pointed out a few minutes afterwards, dining in
solitary grandeur at a raised table, above the reverend scholars who
had turned him back as a dunce. I had just arrived at the University,
and had just been congratulated on entering "a venerable seminary of
learning and religion."

Trite and common-place though it be, I mention this circumstance
attending my introduction to college, because it formed the first
cause which tended to diminish my faith in the institution to which I
was attached. I soon grew to regard my university training as a sort
of necessary evil, to be patiently submitted to. I read for no
honours, and joined no particular set of men. I studied the literature
of France, Italy, and Germany; just kept up my classical knowledge
sufficiently to take my degree; and left college with no other
reputation than a reputation for indolence and reserve.

When I returned home, it was thought necessary, as I was a younger
son, and could inherit none of the landed property of the family,
except in the case of my brother's dying without children, that I
should belong to a profession. My father had the patronage of some
valuable "livings," and good interest with more than one member of the
government. The church, the army, the navy, and, in the last instance,
the bar, were offered me to choose from. I selected the last.

My father appeared to be a little astonished at my choice; but he made
no remark on it, except simply telling me not to forget that the bar
was a good stepping-stone to parliament. My real ambition, however,
was, not to make a name in parliament, but a name in literature. I had
already engaged myself in the hard, but glorious service of the pen;
and I was determined to persevere. The profession which offered me the
greatest facilities for pursuing my project, was the profession which
I was ready to prefer. So I chose the bar.

Thus, I entered life under the fairest auspices. Though a younger son,
I knew that my father's wealth, exclusive of his landed property,
secured me an independent income far beyond my wants. I had no
extravagant habits; no tastes that I could not gratify as soon as
formed; no cares or responsibilities of any kind. I might practise my
profession or not, just as I chose. I could devote myself wholly and
unreservedly to literature, knowing that, in my case, the struggle for
fame could never be identical--terribly, though gloriously
identical--with the struggle for bread. For me, the morning sunshine
of life was sunshine without a cloud!

I might attempt, in this place, to sketch my own character as it was
at that time. But what man can say--I will sound the depth of my own
vices, and measure the height of my own virtues; and be as good as his
word? We can neither know nor judge ourselves; others may judge, but
cannot know us: God alone judges and knows too. Let my character
appear--as far as any human character can appear in its integrity, in
this world--in my actions, when I describe the one eventful passage in
my life which forms the basis of this narrative. In the mean time, it
is first necessary that I should say more about the members of my
family. Two of them, at least, will be found important to the progress
of events in these pages. I make no attempt to judge their characters:
I only describe them--whether rightly or wrongly, I know not--as they
appeared to me.

III.

I always considered my father--I speak of him in the past tense,
because we are now separated for ever; because he is henceforth as
dead to me as if the grave had closed over him--I always considered my
father to be the proudest man I ever knew; the proudest man I ever
heard of. His was not that conventional pride, which the popular
notions are fond of characterising by a stiff, stately carriage; by a
rigid expression of features; by a hard, severe intonation of voice;
by set speeches of contempt for poverty and rags, and rhapsodical
braggadocio about rank and breeding. My father's pride had nothing of
this about it. It was that quiet, negative, courteous, inbred pride,
which only the closest observation could detect; which no ordinary
observers ever detected at all.

Who that observed him in communication with any of the farmers on any
of his estates--who that saw the manner in which he lifted his hat,
when he accidentally met any of those farmers' wives--who that noticed
his hearty welcome to the man of the people, when that man happened to
be a man of genius--would have thought him proud? On such occasions as
these, if he had any pride, it was impossible to detect it. But seeing
him when, for instance, an author and a new-made peer of no ancestry
entered his house together--observing merely the entirely different
manner in which he shook hands with each--remarking that the polite
cordiality was all for the man of letters, who did not contest his
family rank with him, and the polite formality all for the man of
title, who did--you discovered where and how he was proud in an
instant. Here lay his fretful point. The aristocracy of rank, as
separate from the aristocracy of ancestry, was no aristocracy for
_him._ He was jealous of it; he hated it. Commoner though he was, he
considered himself the social superior of any man, from a baronet up
to a duke, whose family was less ancient than his own.

Among a host of instances of this peculiar pride of his which I could
cite, I remember one, characteristic enough to be taken as a sample of
all the rest. It happened when I was quite a child, and was told me by
one of my uncles now dead--who witnessed the circumstance himself, and
always made a good story of it to the end of his life.

A merchant of enormous wealth, who had recently been raised to the
peerage, was staying at one of our country houses. His daughter, my
uncle, and an Italian Abbe were the only guests besides. The merchant
was a portly, purple-faced man, who bore his new honours with a
curious mixture of assumed pomposity and natural good-humour. The Abbe
was dwarfish and deformed, lean, sallow, sharp-featured, with bright
bird-like eyes, and a low, liquid voice. He was a political refugee,
dependent for the bread he ate, on the money he received for teaching
languages. He might have been a beggar from the streets; and still my
father would have treated him as the principal guest in the house, for
this all-sufficient reason--he was a direct descendant of one of the
oldest of those famous Roman families whose names are part of the
history of the Civil Wars in Italy.

On the first day, the party assembled for dinner comprised the
merchant's daughter, my mother, an old lady who had once been her
governess, and had always lived with her since her marriage, the new
Lord, the Abbe, my father, and my uncle. When dinner was announced,
the peer advanced in new-blown dignity, to offer his arm as a matter
of course to my mother. My father's pale face flushed crimson in a
moment. He touched the magnificent merchant-lord on the arm, and
pointed significantly, with a low bow, towards the decrepit old lady
who had once been my mother's governess. Then walking to the other end
of the room, where the penniless Abbe was looking over a book in a
corner, he gravely and courteously led the little, deformed, limping
language-master, clad in a long, threadbare, black coat, up to my
mother (whose shoulder the Abbe's head hardly reached), held the door
open for them to pass out first, with his own hand; politely invited
the new nobleman, who stood half-paralysed between confusion and
astonishment, to follow with the tottering old lady on his arm; and
then returned to lead the peer's daughter down to dinner himself. He
only resumed his wonted expression and manner, when he had seen the
little Abbe--the squalid, half-starved representative of mighty barons
of the olden time--seated at the highest place of the table by my
mother's side.

It was by such accidental circumstances as these that you discovered
how far he was proud. He never boasted of his ancestors; he never even
spoke of them, except when he was questioned on the subject; but he
never forgot them. They were the very breath of his life; the deities
of his social worship: the family treasures to be held precious beyond
all lands and all wealth, all ambitions and all glories, by his
children and his children's children to the end of their race.

In home-life he performed his duties towards his family honourably,
delicately, and kindly. I believe in his own way he loved us all; but
we, his descendants, had to share his heart with his ancestors--we
were his household property as well as his children. Every fair
liberty was given to us; every fair indulgence was granted to us. He
never displayed any suspicion, or any undue severity. We were taught
by his direction, that to disgrace our family, either by word or
action, was the one fatal crime which could never be forgotten and
never be pardoned. We were formed, under his superintendence, in
principles of religion, honour, and industry; and the rest was left to
our own moral sense, to our own comprehension of the duties and
privileges of our station. There was no one point in his conduct
towards any of us that we could complain of; and yet there was
something always incomplete in our domestic relations.

It may seem incomprehensible, even ridiculous, to some persons, but it
is nevertheless true, that we were none of us ever on intimate terms
with him. I mean by this, that he was a father to us, but never a
companion. There was something in his manner, his quiet and unchanging
manner, which kept us almost unconsciously restrained. I never in my
life felt less at my ease--I knew not why at the time--than when I
occasionally dined alone with him. I never confided to him my schemes
for amusement as a boy, or mentioned more than generally my ambitious
hopes, as a young man. It was not that he would have received such
confidences with ridicule or severity, he was incapable of it; but
that he seemed above them, unfitted to enter into them, too far
removed by his own thoughts from such thoughts as ours. Thus, all
holiday councils were held with old servants; thus, my first pages of
manuscript, when I first tried authorship, were read by my sister, and
never penetrated into my father's study.

Again, his mode of testifying displeasure towards my brother or
myself, had something terrible in its calmness, something that we
never forgot, and always dreaded as the worst calamity that could
befall us.

Whenever, as boys, we committed some boyish fault, he never displayed
outwardly any irritation--he simply altered his manner towards us
altogether. We were not soundly lectured, or vehemently threatened, or
positively punished in anyway; but, when we came in contact with him,
we were treated with a cold, contemptuous politeness (especially if
our fault showed a tendency to anything mean or ungentlemanlike) which
cut us to the heart. On these occasions, we were not addressed by our
Christian names; if we accidentally met him out of doors, he was sure
to turn aside and avoid us; if we asked a question, it was answered in
the briefest possible manner, as if we had been strangers. His whole
course of conduct said, as though in so many words--You have rendered
yourselves unfit to associate with your father; and he is now making
you feel that unfitness as deeply as he does. We were left in this
domestic purgatory for days, sometimes for weeks together. To our
boyish feelings (to mine especially) there was no ignominy like it,
while it lasted.

I know not on what terms my father lived with my mother. Towards my
sister, his demeanour always exhibited something of the old-fashioned,
affectionate gallantry of a former age. He paid her the same attention
that he would have paid to the highest lady in the land. He led her
into the dining-room, when we were alone, exactly as he would have led
a duchess into a banqueting-hall. He would allow us, as boys, to quit
the breakfast-table before he had risen himself; but never before she
had left it. If a servant failed in duty towards _him,_ the servant
was often forgiven; if towards _her,_ the servant was sent away on the
spot. His daughter was in his eyes the representative of her mother:
the mistress of his house, as well as his child. It was curious to see
the mixture of high-bred courtesy and fatherly love in his manner, as
he just gently touched her forehead with his lips, when he first saw
her in the morning.

In person, my father was of not more than middle height. He was very
slenderly and delicately made; his head small, and well set on his
shoulders--his forehead more broad than lofty--his complexion
singularly pale, except in moments of agitation, when I have already
noticed its tendency to flush all over in an instant. His eyes, large
and gray, had something  commanding in their look; they gave a certain
unchanging firmness and dignity to his expression, not often met with.
They betrayed his birth and breeding, his old ancestral prejudices,
his chivalrous sense of honour, in every glance. It required, indeed,
all the masculine energy of look about the upper part of his face, to
redeem the lower part from an appearance of effeminacy, so delicately
was it moulded in its fine Norman outline. His smile was remarkable
for its sweetness--it was almost like a woman's smile. In speaking,
too, his lips often trembled as women's do. If he ever laughed, as a
young man, his laugh must have been very clear and musical; but since
I can recollect him, I never heard it. In his happiest moments, in the
gayest society, I have only seen him smile.

There were other characteristics of my father's disposition and
manner, which I might mention; but they will appear to greater
advantage, perhaps, hereafter, connected with circumstances which
especially called them forth.

IV.

When a family is possessed of large landed property, the individual of
that family who shows least interest in its welfare; who is least fond
of home, least connected by his own sympathies with his relatives,
least ready to learn his duties or admit his responsibilities, is
often that very individual who is to succeed to the family
inheritance--the eldest son.

My brother Ralph was no exception to this remark. We were educated
together. After our education was completed, I never saw him, except
for short periods. He was almost always on the continent, for some
years after he left college. And when he returned definitely to
England, he did not return to live under our roof. Both in town and
country he was our visitor, not our inmate.

I recollect him at school--stronger, taller, handsomer than I was; far
beyond me in popularity among the little community we lived with; the
first to lead a daring exploit, the last to abandon it; now at the
bottom of the class, now at the top--just that sort of gay,
boisterous, fine-looking, dare-devil boy, whom old people would
instinctively turn round and smile after, as they passed him by in a
morning walk.

Then, at college, he became illustrious among rowers and cricketers,
renowned as a pistol shot, dreaded as a singlestick player. No wine
parties in the university were such wine parties as his; tradesmen
gave him the first choice of everything that was new; young ladies in
the town fell in love with him by dozens; young tutors with a tendency
to dandyism, copied the cut of his coat and the tie of his cravat;
even the awful heads of houses looked leniently on his delinquencies.
The gay, hearty, handsome young English gentleman carried a charm
about him that subdued everybody. Though I was his favourite butt,
both at school and college, I never quarrelled with him in my life. I
always let him ridicule my dress, manners, and habits in his own
reckless, boisterous way, as if it had been a part of his birthright
privilege to laugh at me as much as he chose.

Thus far, my father had no worse anxieties about him than those
occasioned by his high spirits and his heavy debts. But when he
returned home--when the debts had been paid, and it was next thought
necessary to drill the free, careless energies into something like
useful discipline--then my father's trials and difficulties began in
earnest.

It was impossible to make Ralph comprehend and appreciate his
position, as he was desired to comprehend and appreciate it. The
steward gave up in despair all attempts to enlighten him about the
extent, value, and management of the estates he was to inherit. A
vigorous effort was made to inspire him with ambition; to get him to
go into parliament. He laughed at the idea. A commission in the Guards
was next offered to him. He refused it, because he would never be
buttoned up in a red coat; because he would submit to no restraints,
fashionable or military; because in short, he was determined to be his
own master. My father talked to him by the hour together, about his
duties and his prospects, the cultivation of his mind, and the example
of his ancestors; and talked in vain. He yawned and fidgetted over the
emblazoned pages of his own family pedigree, whenever they were opened
before him.

In the country, he cared for nothing but hunting and shooting--it was
as difficult to make him go to a grand county dinner-party, as to make
him go to church. In town, he haunted the theatres, behind the scenes
as well as before; entertained actors and actresses at Richmond;
ascended in balloons at Vauxhall; went about with detective policemen,
seeing life among pickpockets and housebreakers; belonged to a whist
club, a supper club, a catch club, a boxing club, a picnic club, an
amateur theatrical club; and, in short, lived such a careless,
convivial life, that my father, outraged in every one of his family
prejudices and family refinements, almost ceased to speak to him, and
saw him as rarely as possible. Occasionally, my sister's interference
reconciled them again for a short time; her influence, gentle as it
was, was always powerfully felt for good, but she could not change my
brother's nature. Persuade and entreat as anxiously as she might, he
was always sure to forfeit the paternal favour again, a few days after
he had been restored to it.

At last, matters were brought to their climax by an awkward love
adventure of Ralph's with one of our tenants' daughters. My father
acted with his usual decision on the occasion. He determined to apply
a desperate remedy: to let the refractory eldest son run through his
career in freedom, abroad, until he had well wearied himself, and
could return home a sobered man. Accordingly, he procured for my
brother an attache's place in a foreign embassy, and insisted on his
leaving England forthwith. For once in a way, Ralph was docile. He
knew and cared nothing about diplomacy; but he liked the idea of
living on the continent, so he took his leave of home with his best
grace. My father saw him depart, with ill-concealed agitation and
apprehension; although he affected to feel satisfied that, flighty and
idle as Ralph was, he was incapable of voluntarily dishonouring his
family, even in his most reckless moods.

After this, we heard little from my brother. His letters were few and
short, and generally ended with petitions for money. The only
important news of him that reached us, reached us through public
channels.

He was making quite a continental reputation--a reputation, the bare
mention of which made my father wince. He had fought a duel; he had
imported a new dance from Hungary; he had contrived to get the
smallest groom that ever was seen behind a cabriolet; he had carried
off the reigning beauty among the opera-dancers of the day from all
competitors; a great French cook had composed a great French dish, and
christened it by his name; he was understood to be the "unknown
friend," to whom a literary Polish countess had dedicated her "Letters
against the restraint of the Marriage Tie;" a female German
metaphysician, sixty years old, had fallen (Platonically) in love with
him, and had taken to writing erotic romances in her old age. Such
were some of the rumours that reached my father's ears on the subject
of his son and heir!

After a long absence, he came home on a visit. How well I remember the
astonishment he produced in the whole household! He had become a
foreigner in manners and appearance. His mustachios were magnificent;
miniature toys in gold and jewellery hung in clusters from his
watch-chain; his shirt-front was a perfect filigree of lace and
cambric. He brought with him his own boxes of choice liqueurs and
perfumes; his own smart, impudent, French valet; his own travelling
bookcase of French novels, which he opened with his own golden key. He
drank nothing but chocolate in the morning; he had long interviews
with the cook, and revolutionized our dinner table. All the French
newspapers were sent to him by a London agent. He altered the
arrangements of his bed-room; no servant but his own valet was
permitted to enter it. Family portraits that hung there, were turned
to the walls, and portraits of French actresses and Italian singers
were stuck to the back of the canvasses. Then he displaced a beautiful
little ebony cabinet which had been in the family three hundred years;
and set up in its stead a Cyprian temple of his own, in miniature,
with crystal doors, behind which hung locks of hair, rings, notes
written on blush-coloured paper, and other love-tokens kept as
sentimental relics. His influence became all-pervading among us. He
seemed to communicate to the house the change that had taken place in
himself, from the reckless, racketty young Englishman to the
super-exquisite foreign dandy. It was as if the fiery, effervescent
atmosphere of the Boulevards of Paris had insolently penetrated into
the old English mansion, and ruffled and infected its quiet native
air, to the remotest corners of the place.

My father was even more dismayed than displeased by the alteration in
my brother's habits and manners--the eldest son was now farther from
his ideal of what an eldest son should be, than ever. As for friends
and neighbours, Ralph was heartily feared and disliked by them, before
he had been in the house a week. He had an ironically patient way of
listening to their conversation; an ironically respectful manner of
demolishing their old-fashioned opinions, and correcting their
slightest mistakes, which secretly aggravated them beyond endurance.
It was worse still, when my father, in despair, tried to tempt him
into marriage, as the one final chance of working his reform; and
invited half the marriageable young ladies of our acquaintance to the
house, for his especial benefit.

Ralph had never shown much fondness at home, for the refinements of
good female society. Abroad, he had lived as exclusively as he
possibly could, among women whose characters ranged downwards by
infinitesimal degrees, from the mysteriously doubtful to the
notoriously bad. The highly-bred, highly-refined, highly-accomplished
young English beauties had no charm for him. He detected at once the
domestic conspiracy of which he was destined to become the victim. He
often came up-stairs, at night, into my bed-room; and while he was
amusing himself by derisively kicking about my simple clothes and
simple toilette apparatus; while he was laughing in his old careless
way at my quiet habits and monotonous life, used to slip in,
parenthetically, all sorts of sarcasms about our young lady guests. To
him, their manners were horribly inanimate; their innocence, hypocrisy
of education. Pure complexions and regular features were very well, he
said, as far as they went; but when a girl could not walk properly,
when she shook hands with you with cold fingers, when having good eyes
she could not make a stimulating use of them, then it was time to
sentence the regular features and pure complexions to be taken back
forthwith to the nursery from which they came. For _his_ part, he
missed the conversation of his witty Polish Countess, and longed for
another pancake-supper with his favourite _grisettes._

The failure of my father's last experiment with Ralph soon became
apparent. Watchful and experienced mothers began to suspect that my
brother's method of flirtation was dangerous, and his style of
waltzing improper. One or two ultra-cautious parents, alarmed by the
laxity of his manners and opinions, removed their daughters out of
harm's way, by shortening their visits. The rest were spared any such
necessity. My father suddenly discovered that Ralph was devoting
himself rather too significantly to a young married woman who was
staying in the house. The same day he had a long private interview
with my brother. What passed between them, I know not; but it must
have been something serious. Ralph came out of my father's private
study, very pale and very silent; ordered his luggage to be packed
directly; and the next morning departed, with his French valet, and
his multifarious French goods and chattels, for the continent.

Another interval passed; and then we had another short visit from him.
He was still unaltered. My father's temper suffered under this second
disappointment. He became more fretful and silent; more apt to take
offence than had been his wont. I particularly mention the change thus
produced in his disposition, because that change was destined, at no
very distant period, to act fatally upon me.

On this last occasion, also, there was another serious disagreement
between father and son; and Ralph left England again in much the same
way that he had left it before.

Shortly after that second departure, we heard that he had altered his
manner of life. He had contracted, what would be termed in the
continental code of morals, a reformatory attachment to a woman older
than himself, who was living separated from her husband, when he met
with her. It was this lady's lofty ambition to be Mentor and mistress,
both together! And she soon proved herself to be well qualified for
her courageous undertaking. To the astonishment of everyone who knew
him, Ralph suddenly turned economical; and, soon afterwards, actually
resigned his post at the embassy, to be out of the way of temptation!
Since that, he has returned to England; has devoted himself to
collecting snuff-boxes and learning the violin; and is now living
quietly in the suburbs of London, still under the inspection of the
resolute female missionary who first worked his reform.

Whether he will ever become the high-minded, high-principled country
gentleman, that my father has always desired to see him, it is useless
for me to guess. On the domains which he is to inherit, I shall never
perhaps set foot again: in the halls where he will one day preside as
master, I shall never more be sheltered. Let me now quit the subject
of my elder brother, and turn to a theme which is nearer to my heart;
dear to me as the last remembrance left that I can love; precious
beyond all treasures in my solitude and my exile from home.

My sister!--well may I linger over your beloved name in such a record
as this. A little farther on, and the darkness of crime and grief will
encompass me; here, my recollections of you kindle like a pure light
before my eyes--doubly pure by contrast with what lies beyond. May
your kind eyes, love, be the first that fall on these pages, when the
writer has parted from them for ever! May your tender hand be the
first that touches these leaves, when mine is cold! Backward in my
narrative, Clara, wherever I have but casually mentioned my sister,
the pen has trembled and stood still. At this place, where all my
remembrances of you throng upon me unrestrained, the tears gather fast
and thick beyond control; and for the first time since I began my
task, my courage and my calmness fail me.

It is useless to persevere longer. My hand trembles; my eyes grow
dimmer and dimmer. I must close my labours for the day, and go forth
to gather strength and resolution for to-morrow on the hill-tops that
overlook the sea.

V.

My sister Clara is four years younger than I am. In form of face, in
complexion, and--except the eyes--in features, she bears a striking
resemblance to my father. Her expressions however, must be very like
what my mother's was. Whenever I have looked at her in her silent and
thoughtful moments, she has always appeared to freshen, and even to
increase, my vague, childish recollections of our lost mother. Her
eyes have that slight tinge of melancholy in their tenderness, and
that peculiar softness in their repose, which is only seen in blue
eyes. Her complexion, pale as my father's when she is neither speaking
nor moving, has in a far greater degree than his the tendency to
flush, not merely in moments of agitation, but even when she is
walking, or talking on any subject that interests her. Without this
peculiarity her paleness would be a defect. With it, the absence of
any colour in her complexion but the fugitive uncertain colour which I
have described, would to some eyes debar her from any claims to
beauty. And a beauty perhaps she is not--at least, in the ordinary
acceptation of the term.

The lower part of her face is rather too small for the upper, her
figure is too slight, the sensitiveness of her nervous organization is
too constantly visible in her actions and her looks. She would not fix
attention and admiration in a box at the opera; very few men passing
her in the street would turn round to look after her; very few women
would regard her with that slightingly attentive stare, that steady
depreciating scrutiny, which a dashing decided beauty so often
receives (and so often triumphs in receiving) from her personal
inferiors among her own sex. The greatest charms that my sister has on
the surface, come from beneath it.

When you really knew her, when she spoke to you freely, as to a
friend--then, the attraction of her voice, her smile her manner,
impressed you indescribably. Her slightest words and her commonest
actions interested and delighted you, you knew not why. There was a
beauty about her unassuming simplicity, her natural--exquisitely
natural--kindness of heart, and word, and manner, which preserved its
own unobtrusive influence over you, in spite of all other rival
influences, be they what they might. You missed and thought of her,
when you were fresh from the society of the most beautiful and the
most brilliant women. You remembered a few kind, pleasant words of
hers when you forgot the wit of the wittiest ladies, the learning of
the most learned. The influence thus possessed, and unconsciously
possessed, by my sister over every one with whom she came in
contact--over men especially--may, I think be very simply accounted
for, in very few sentences.

We live in an age when too many women appear to be ambitious of
morally unsexing themselves before society, by aping the language and
the manners of men--especially in reference to that miserable modern
dandyism of demeanour, which aims at repressing all betrayal of warmth
of feeling; which abstains from displaying any enthusiasm on any
subject whatever; which, in short, labours to make the fashionable
imperturbability of the face the faithful reflection of the
fashionable imperturbability of the mind. Women of this exclusively
modern order, like to use slang expressions in their conversation;
assume a bastard-masculine abruptness in their manners, a
bastard-masculine licence in their opinions; affect to ridicule those
outward developments of feeling which pass under the general
appellation of "sentiment." Nothing impresses, agitates, amuses, or
delights them in a hearty, natural, womanly way. Sympathy looks
ironical, if they ever show it: love seems to be an affair of
calculation, or mockery, or contemptuous sufferance, if they ever feel
it.

To women such as these, my sister Clara presented as complete a
contrast as could well be conceived. In this contrast lay the secret
of her influence, of the voluntary tribute of love and admiration
which followed her wherever she went.

Few men have not their secret moments of deep feeling--moments when,
amid the wretched trivialities and hypocrisies of modern society, the
image will present itself to their minds of some woman, fresh,
innocent, gentle, sincere; some woman whose emotions are still warm
and impressible, whose affections and sympathies can still appear in
her actions, and give the colour to her thoughts; some woman in whom
we could put as perfect faith and trust, as if we were children; whom
we despair of finding near the hardening influences of the world; whom
we could scarcely venture to look for, except in solitary places far
away in the country; in little rural shrines, shut up from society,
among woods and fields, and lonesome boundary-hills. When any women
happen to realise, or nearly to realise, such an image as this, they
possess that universal influence which no rivalry can ever approach.
On them really depends, and by then is really preserved, that claim
upon the sincere respect and admiration of men, on which the power of
the whole sex is based--the power so often assumed by the many, so
rarely possessed but by the few.

It was thus with my sister. Thus, wherever she went, though without
either the inclination, or the ambition to shine, she eclipsed women
who were her superiors in beauty, in accomplishments, in brilliancy of
manners and conversation--conquering by no other weapon than the
purely feminine charm of everything she said, and everything she did.

But it was not amid the gaiety and grandeur of a London season that
her character was displayed to the greatest advantage. It was when she
was living where she loved to live, in the old country-house, among
the old friends and old servants who would every one of them have died
a hundred deaths for her sake, that you could study and love her best.
Then, the charm there was in the mere presence of the kind, gentle,
happy young English girl, who could enter into everybody's interests,
and be grateful for everybody's love, possessed its best and brightest
influence. At picnics, lawn-parties, little country gatherings of all
sorts, she was, in her own quiet, natural manner, always the presiding
spirit of general comfort and general friendship. Even the rigid laws
of country punctilio relaxed before her unaffected cheerfulness and
irresistible good-nature. She always contrived--nobody ever knew
how--to lure the most formal people into forgetting their formality,
and becoming natural for the rest of the day. Even a heavy-headed,
lumbering, silent country squire was not too much for her. She
managed to make him feel at his ease, when no one else would undertake
the task; she could listen patiently to his confused speeches about
dogs, horses, and the state of the crops, when other conversations
were proceeding in which she was really interested; she could receive
any little grateful attention that he wished to pay her--no matter how
awkward or ill-timed--as she received attentions from any one else,
with a manner which showed she considered it as a favour granted to
her sex, not as a right accorded to it.

So, again, she always succeeded in diminishing the long list of those
pitiful affronts and offences, which play such important parts in the
social drama of country society. She was a perfect Apostle-errant of
the order of Reconciliation; and wherever she went, cast out the devil
Sulkiness from all his strongholds--the lofty and the lowly alike. Our
good rector used to call her his Volunteer Curate; and declare that
she preached by a timely word, or a persuasive look, the best
practical sermons on the blessings of peace-making that were ever
composed.

With all this untiring good-nature, with all this resolute industry in
the task of making every one happy whom she approached, there was
mingled some indescribable influence, which invariably preserved her
from the presumption, even of the most presuming people. I never knew
anybody venturesome enough--either by word or look--to take a liberty
with her. There was something about her which inspired respect as well
as love. My father, following the bent of his peculiar and favourite
ideas, always thought it was the look of her race in her eyes, the
ascendancy of her race in her manners. I believe it to have proceeded
from a simpler and a better cause. There is a goodness of heart, which
carries the shield of its purity over the open hand of its kindness:
and that goodness was hers.

To my father, she was more, I believe, than he himself ever
imagined--or will ever know, unless he should lose her. He was often,
in his intercourse with the world, wounded severely enough in his
peculiar prejudices and peculiar refinements--he was always sure to
find the first respected, and the last partaken by _her._ He could
trust in her implicitly, he could feel assured that she was not only
willing, but able, to share and relieve his domestic troubles and
anxieties. If he had been less fretfully anxious about his eldest son;
if he had wisely distrusted from the first his own powers of
persuading and reforming, and had allowed Clara to exercise her
influence over Ralph more constantly and more completely than he
really did, I am persuaded that the long-expected epoch of my
brother's transformation would have really arrived by this time, or
even before it.

The strong and deep feelings of my sister's nature lay far below the
surface--for a woman, too far below it. Suffering was, for her,
silent, secret, long enduring; often almost entirely void of outward
vent or development. I never remember seeing her in tears, except on
rare and very serious occasions. Unless you looked at her narrowly,
you would judge her to be little sensitive to ordinary griefs and
troubles. At such times, her eyes only grew dimmer and less animated
than usual; the paleness of her complexion became rather more marked;
her lips closed and trembled involuntarily--but this was all: there
was no sighing, no weeping, no speaking even. And yet she suffered
acutely. The very strength of her emotions was in their silence and
their secresy. I, of all others--I, guilty of infecting with my
anguish the pure heart that loved me--ought to know this best!

How long I might linger over all that she has done for _me!_ As I now
approach nearer and nearer to the pages which are to reveal my fatal
story, so I am more and more tempted to delay over those better and
purer remembrances of my sister which now occupy my mind. The first
little presents--innocent girlish presents--which she secretly sent to
me at school; the first sweet days of our uninterrupted intercourse,
when the close of my college life restored me to home; her first
inestimable sympathies with my first fugitive vanities of embryo
authorship, are thronging back fast and fondly on my thoughts, while I
now write.

But these memories must be calmed and disciplined. I must be collected
and impartial over my narrative--if it be only to make that narrative
show fairly and truly, without suppression or exaggeration, all that I
have owed to her.

Not merely all that I _have_ owed to her; but all that I owe to her
now. Though I may never see her again, but in my thoughts; still she
influences, comforts, cheers me on to hope, as if she were already the
guardian spirit of the cottage where I live. Even in my worst moments
of despair, I can still remember that Clara is thinking of me and
sorrowing for me: I can still feel that remembrance, as an invisible
hand of mercy which supports me, sinking; which raises me, fallen;
which may yet lead me safely and tenderly to my hard journey's end.

VI.

I have now completed all the preliminary notices of my near relatives,
which it is necessary to present in these pages; and may proceed at
once to the more immediate subject of my narrative.

Imagine to yourself that my father and my sister have been living for
some months at our London residence; and that I have recently joined
them, after having enjoyed a short tour on the continent.

My father is engaged in his parliamentary duties. We see very little
of him. Committees absorb his mornings--debates his evenings. When he
has a day of leisure occasionally, he passes it in his study, devoted
to his own affairs. He goes very little into society--a political
dinner, or a scientific meeting are the only social relaxations that
tempt him.

My sister leads a life which is not much in accordance with her simple
tastes. She is wearied of balls, operas, flower-shows, and all other
London gaieties besides; and heartily longs to be driving about the
green lanes again in her own little poney-chaise, and distributing
plum-cake prizes to the good children at the Rector's Infant School.
But the female friend who happens to be staying with her, is fond of
excitement; my father expects her to accept the invitations which he
is obliged to decline; so she gives up her own tastes and inclinations
as usual, and goes into hot rooms among crowds of fine people, hearing
the same glib compliments, and the same polite inquiries, night after
night, until, patient as she is, she heartily wishes that her
fashionable friends all lived in some opposite quarter of the globe,
the farther away the better.

My arrival from the continent is the most welcome of events to her. It
gives a new object and a new impulse to her London life.

I am engaged in writing a historical romance--indeed, it is
principally to examine the localities in the country where my story is
laid, that I have been abroad. Clara has read the first half-dozen
finished chapters, in manuscript, and augurs wonderful success for my
fiction when it is published. She is determined to arrange my study
with her own hands; to dust my books, and sort my papers herself. She
knows that I am already as fretful and precise about my literary goods
and chattels, as indignant at any interference of housemaids and
dusters with my library treasures, as if I were a veteran author of
twenty years' standing; and she is resolved to spare me every
apprehension on this score, by taking all the arrangements of my study
on herself, and keeping the key of the door when I am not in need of
it.

We have our London amusements, too, as well as our London employments.
But the pleasantest of our relaxations are, after all, procured for us
by our horses. We ride every day--sometimes with friends, sometimes
alone together. On these latter occasions, we generally turn our
horses' heads away from the parks, and seek what country sights we can
get in the neighbourhood of London. The northern roads are generally
our favourite ride.

Sometimes we penetrate so far that we can bait our horses at a little
inn which reminds me of the inns near our country home. I see the same
sanded parlour, decorated with the same old sporting prints, furnished
with the same battered, deep-coloured mahogany table, and polished elm
tree chairs, that I remember in our own village inn. Clara, also,
finds bits of common, out of doors, that look like _our_ common; and
trees that might have been transplanted expressly for her, from _our_
park.

These excursions we keep a secret, we like to enjoy them entirely by
ourselves. Besides, if my father knew that his daughter was drinking
the landlady's fresh milk, and his son the landlord's old ale, in the
parlour of a suburban roadside inn, he would, I believe, be apt to
suspect that both his children had fairly taken leave of their senses.

Evening parties I frequent almost as rarely as my father. Clara's good
nature is called into requisition to do duty for me, as well as for
him. She has little respite in the task. Old lady relatives and
friends, always ready to take care of her, leave her no excuse for
staying at home. Sometimes I am shamed into accompanying her a little
more frequently than usual; but my old indolence in these matters soon
possesses me again. I have contracted a bad habit of writing at
night--I read almost incessantly in the day time. It is only because I
am fond of riding, that I am ever willing to interrupt my studies, and
ever ready to go out at all.

Such were my domestic habits, such my regular occupations and
amusements, when a mere accident changed every purpose of my life, and
altered me irretrievably from what I was then, to what I am now.

It happened thus:

VII.

I had just received my quarter's allowance of pocket-money, and had
gone into the city to cash the cheque at my father's bankers.

The money paid, I debated for a moment how I should return homewards.
First I thought of walking: then of taking a cab. While I was
considering this frivolous point, an omnibus passed me, going
westward. In the idle impulse of the moment, I hailed it, and got in.

It was something more than an idle impulse though. If I had at that
time no other qualification for the literary career on which I was
entering, I certainly had this one--an aptitude for discovering points
of character in others: and its natural result, an unfailing delight
in studying characters of all kinds, wherever I could meet with them.

I had often before ridden in omnibuses to amuse myself by observing
the passengers. An omnibus has always appeared to me, to be a
perambulatory exhibition-room of the eccentricities of human nature. I
know not any other sphere in which persons of all classes and all
temperaments are so oddly collected together, and so immediately
contrasted and confronted with each other. To watch merely the
different methods of getting into the vehicle, and taking their seats,
adopted by different people, is to study no incomplete commentary on
the infinitesimal varieties of human character--as various even as the
varieties of the human face.

Thus, in addition to the idle impulse, there was the idea of amusement
in my thoughts, as I stopped the public vehicle, and added one to the
number of the conductor's passengers.

There were five persons in the omnibus when I entered it. Two
middle-aged ladies, dressed with amazing splendour in silks and
satins, wearing straw-coloured kid gloves, and carrying highly-scented
pocket handkerchiefs, sat apart at the end of the vehicle; trying to
look as if they occupied it under protest, and preserving the most
stately gravity and silence. They evidently felt that their
magnificent outward adornments were exhibited in a very unworthy
locality, and among a very uncongenial company.

One side, close to the door, was occupied by a lean, withered old man,
very shabbily dressed in black, who sat eternally mumbling something
between his toothless jaws. Occasionally, to the evident disgust of
the genteel ladies, he wiped his bald head and wrinkled forehead with
a ragged blue cotton handkerchief, which he kept in the crown of his
hat.

Opposite to this ancient sat a dignified gentleman and a sickly
vacant-looking little girl. Every event of that day is so indelibly
marked on my memory, that I remember, not only this man's pompous look
and manner, but even the words he addressed to the poor squalid little
creature by his side. When I entered the omnibus, he was telling her
in a loud voice how she ought to dispose of her frock and her feet
when people got into the vehicle, and when they got out. He then
impressed on her the necessity in future life, when she grew up, of
always having the price of her fare ready before it was wanted, to
prevent unnecessary delay. Having delivered himself of this good
advice, he began to hum, keeping time by drumming with his thick
Malacca cane. He was still proceeding with this amusement--producing
some of the most acutely unmusical sounds I ever heard--when the
omnibus stopped to give admission to two ladies. The first who got in
was an elderly person--pale and depressed--evidently in delicate
health. The second was a young girl.



Among the workings of the hidden life within us which we may
experience but cannot explain, are there any more remarkable than
those mysterious moral influences constantly exercised, either for
attraction or repulsion, by one human being over another? In the
simplest, as in the most important affairs of life, how startling, how
irresistible is their power! How often we feel and know, either
pleasurably or painfully, that another is looking on us, before we
have ascertained the fact with our own eyes! How often we prophesy
truly to ourselves the approach of a friend or enemy, just before
either have really appeared! How strangely and abruptly we become
convinced, at a first introduction, that we shall secretly love this
person and loathe that, before experience has guided us with a single
fact in relation to their characters!

I have said that the two additional passengers who entered the vehicle
in which I was riding, were, one of them, an elderly lady; the other,
a young girl. As soon as the latter had seated herself nearly opposite
to me, by her companion's side, I felt her influence on me
directly--an influence that I cannot describe--an influence which I
had never experienced in my life before, which I shall never
experience again.

I had helped to hand her in, as she passed me; merely touching her arm
for a moment. But how the sense of that touch was prolonged! I felt it
thrilling through me--thrilling in every nerve, in every pulsation of
my fast-throbbing heart.

Had I the same influence over her? Or was it I that received, and she
that conferred, only? I was yet destined to discover; but not
then--not for a long, long time.

Her veil was down when I first saw her. Her features and her
expression were but indistinctly visible to me. I could just vaguely
perceive that she was young and beautiful; but, beyond this, though I
might imagine much, I could see little.

From the time when she entered the omnibus, I have no recollection of
anything more that occurred in it. I neither remember what passengers
got out, or what passengers got in. My powers of observation, hitherto
active enough, had now wholly deserted me. Strange! that the
capricious rule of chance should sway the action of our faculties that
a trifle should set in motion the whole complicated machinery of their
exercise, and a trifle suspend it.

We had been moving onward for some little time, when the girl's
companion addressed an observation to her. She heard it imperfectly,
and lifted her veil while it was being repeated. How painfully my
heart beat! I could almost hear it--as her face was, for the first
time, freely and fairly disclosed!

She was dark. Her hair, eyes, and complexion were darker than usual in
English women. The form, the look altogether, of her face, coupled
with what I could see of her figure, made me guess her age to be about
twenty. There was the appearance of maturity already in the shape of
her features; but their expression still remained girlish, unformed,
unsettled. The fire in her large dark eyes, when she spoke, was
latent. Their languor, when she was silent--that voluptuous languor of
black eyes--was still fugitive and unsteady. The smile about her full
lips (to other eyes, they might have looked _too_ full) struggled to
be eloquent, yet dared not. Among women, there always seems something
left incomplete--a moral creation to be superinduced on the
physical--which love alone can develop, and which maternity perfects
still further, when developed. I thought, as I looked on her, how the
passing colour would fix itself brilliantly on her round, olive cheek;
how the expression that still hesitated to declare itself, would speak
out at last, would shine forth in the full luxury of its beauty, when
she heard the first words, received the first kiss, from the man she
loved!

While I still looked at her, as she sat opposite speaking to her
companion, our eyes met. It was only for a moment--but the sensation
of a moment often makes the thought of a life; and that one little
instant made the new life of my heart. She put down her veil again
immediately; her lips moved involuntarily as she lowered it: I thought
I could discern, through the lace, that the slight movement ripened to
a smile.

Still there was enough left to see--enough to charm. There was the
little rim of delicate white lace, encircling the lovely, dusky
throat; there was the figure visible, where the shawl had fallen open,
slender, but already well developed in its slenderness, and
exquisitely supple; there was the waist, naturally low, and left to
its natural place and natural size; there were the little millinery
and jewellery ornaments that she wore--simple and common-place enough
in themselves--yet each a beauty, each a treasure, on _her._ There was
all this to behold, all this to dwell on, in spite of the veil. The
veil! how little of the woman does it hide, when the man really loves
her!

We had nearly arrived at the last point to which the omnibus would
take us, when she and her companion got out. I followed them,
cautiously and at some distance.

She was tall--tall at least for a woman. There were not many people in
the road along which we were proceeding; but even if there had been,
far behind as I was walking, I should never have lost her--never have
mistaken any one else for her. Already, strangers though we were, I
felt that I should know her, almost at any distance, only by her walk.

They went on, until we reached a suburb of new houses, intermingled
with wretched patches of waste land, half built over. Unfinished
streets, unfinished crescents, unfinished squares, unfinished shops,
unfinished gardens, surrounded us. At last they stopped at a new
square, and rang the bell at one of the newest of the new houses. The
door was opened, and she and her companion disappeared. The house was
partly detached. It bore no number; but was distinguished as North
Villa. The square--unfinished like everything else in the
neighbourhood--was called Hollyoake Square.

I noticed nothing else about the place at that time. Its newness and
desolateness of appearance revolted me, just then. I had satisfied
myself about the locality of the house, and I knew that it was her
home; for I had approached sufficiently near, when the door was
opened, to hear her inquire if anybody had called in her absence. For
the present, this was enough. My sensations wanted repose; my thoughts
wanted collecting. I left Hollyoake Square at once, and walked into
the Regent's Park, the northern portion of which was close at hand.

Was I in love?--in love with a girl whom I had accidentally met in an
omnibus? Or, was I merely indulging a momentary caprice--merely
feeling a young man's hot, hasty admiration for a beautiful face?
These were questions which I could not then decide. My ideas were in
utter confusion, all my thoughts ran astray. I walked on, dreaming in
full day--I had no distinct impressions, except of the stranger beauty
whom I had just seen. The more I tried to collect myself, to resume
the easy, equable feelings with which I had set forth in the morning,
the less self-possessed I became. There are two emergencies in which
the wisest man may try to reason himself back from impulse to
principle; and try in vain:--the one when a woman has attracted him
for the first time; the other, when, for the first time, also, she has
happened to offend him.

I know not how long I had been walking in the park, thus absorbed yet
not thinking, when the clock of a neighbouring church struck three,
and roused me to the remembrance that I had engaged to ride out with
my sister at two o'clock. It would be nearly half-an-hour more before
I could reach home. Never had any former appointment of mine with
Clara been thus forgotten! Love had not yet turned me selfish, as it
turns all men, and even all women, more or less. I felt both sorrow
and shame at the neglect of which I had been guilty; and hastened
homeward.

The groom, looking unutterably weary and discontented, was still
leading my horse up and down before the house. My sister's horse had
been sent back to the stables. I went in; and heard that, after
waiting for me an hour, Clara had gone out with some friends, and
would not be back before dinner.

No one was in the house but the servants. The place looked dull,
empty, inexpressibly miserable to me; the distant roll of carriages
along the surrounding streets had a heavy boding sound; the opening
and shutting of doors in the domestic offices below, startled and
irritated me; the London air seemed denser to breathe than it had ever
seemed before. I walked up and down one of the rooms, fretful and
irresolute. Once I directed my steps towards my study; but retraced
them before I had entered it. Reading or writing was out of the
question at that moment.

I felt the secret inclination strengthening within me to return to
Hollyoake Square; to try to see the girl again, or at least to
ascertain who she was. I strove--yes, I can honestly say, strove to
repress the desire. I tried to laugh it off, as idle and ridiculous;
to think of my sister, of the book I was writing, of anything but the
one subject that pressed stronger and stronger on me, the harder I
struggled against it. The spell of the syren was over me. I went out,
hypocritically persuading myself, that I was only animated by a
capricious curiosity to know the girl's name, which once satisfied,
would leave me at rest on the matter, and free to laugh at my own
idleness and folly as soon as I got home again.

I arrived at the house. The blinds were all drawn down over the front
windows, to keep out the sun. The little slip of garden was left
solitary--baking and cracking in the heat. The square was silent;
desolately silent, as only a suburban square can be. I walked up and
down the glaring pavement, resolved to find out her name before I
quitted the place. While still undecided how to act, a shrill
whistling--sounding doubly shrill in the silence around--made me look
up.

A tradesman's boy--one of those town Pucks of the highway; one of
those incarnations of precocious cunning, inveterate mischief, and
impudent humour, which great cities only can produce--was approaching
me with his empty tray under his arm. I called to him to come and
speak to me. He evidently belonged to the neighbourhood, and might be
made of some use.

His first answer to my inquiries, showed that his master served the
household at North Villa. A present of a shilling secured his
attention at once to the few questions of any importance which I
desired to put to him. I learned from his replies, that the name of
the master of the house was "Sherwin:" and that the family only
consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Sherwin, and the young lady, their daughter.

My last inquiry addressed to the boy was the most important of all.
Did he know what Mr. Sherwin's profession or employment was?

His answer startled me into perfect silence. Mr. Sherwin kept a large
linen-draper's shop in one of the great London thoroughfares! The boy
mentioned the number, and the side of the way on which the house
stood--then asked me if I wanted to know anything more. I could only
tell him by a sign that he might leave me, and that I had heard
enough.

Enough? If he had spoken the truth, I had heard too much.

A linen-draper's shop--a linen-draper's daughter! Was I still in
love?--I thought of my father; I thought of the name I bore; and this
time, though I might have answered the question, I dared not.

But the boy might be wrong. Perhaps, in mere mischief, he had been
deceiving me throughout. I determined to seek the address he had
mentioned, and ascertain the truth for myself.

I reached the place: there was the shop, and there the name "Sherwin"
over the door. One chance still remained. This Sherwin and the Sherwin
of Hollyoake Square might not be the same.

I went in and purchased something. While the man was tying up the
parcel, I asked him whether his master lived in Hollyoake Square.
Looking a little astonished at the question, he answered in the
affirmative.

"There was a Mr. Sherwin I once knew," I said, forging in those words
the first link in the long chain of deceit which was afterwards to
fetter and degrade me--"a Mr. Sherwin who is now, as I have heard,
living somewhere in the Hollyoake Square neighbourhood. He was a
bachelor--I don't know whether my friend and your master are the
same?"

"Oh dear no, Sir! My master is a married man, and has one
daughter--Miss Margaret--who is reckoned a very fine young lady, Sir!"
And the man grinned as he spoke--a grin that sickened and shocked me.

I was answered at last: I had discovered all. Margaret!--I had heard
her name, too. Margaret!--it had never hitherto been a favourite name
with me. Now I felt a sort of terror as I detected myself repeating
it, and finding a new, unimagined poetry in the sound.

Could this be love?--pure, first love for a shopkeeper's daughter,
whom I had seen for a quarter of an hour in an omnibus, and followed
home for another quarter of an hour? The thing was impossible. And
yet, I felt a strange unwillingness to go back to our house, and see
my father and sister, just at that moment.

I was still walking onward slowly, but not in the direction of home,
when I met an old college friend of my brother's, and an acquaintance
of mine--a reckless, good-humoured, convivial fellow. He greeted me at
once, with uproarious cordiality; and insisted on my accompanying him
to dine at his club.

If the thoughts that still hung heavy on my mind were only the morbid,
fanciful thoughts of the hour, here was a man whose society would
dissipate them. I resolved to try the experiment, and accepted his
invitation.

At dinner, I tried hard to rival him in jest and joviality; I drank
much more than my usual quantity of wine--but it was useless. The gay
words came fainting from my heart, and fell dead on my lips. The wine
fevered, but did not exhilarate me. Still, the image of the dark
beauty of the morning was the one reigning image of my
thoughts--still, the influence of the morning, at once sinister and
seductive, kept its hold on my heart.

I gave up the struggle. I longed to be alone again. My friend soon
found that my forced spirits were flagging; he tried to rouse me,
tried to talk for two, ordered more wine, but everything failed.
Yawning at last, in undisguised despair, he suggested a visit to the
theatre.

I excused myself--professed illness--hinted that the wine had been too
much for me. He laughed, with something of contempt as well as
good-nature in the laugh; and went away to the play by himself
evidently feeling that I was still as bad a companion as he had found
me at college, years ago.

As soon as we parted I felt a sense of relief. I hesitated, walked
backwards and forwards a few paces in the street; and then, silencing
all doubts, leaving my inclinations to guide me as they would--I
turned my steps for the third time in that one day to Hollyoake
Square.

The fair summer evening was tending towards twilight; the sun stood
fiery and low in a cloudless horizon; the last loveliness of the last
quietest daylight hour was fading on the violet sky, as I entered the
square.

I approached the house. She was at the window--it was thrown wide
open. A bird-cage hung rather high up, against the shutter-panel. She
was standing opposite to it, making a plaything for the poor captive
canary of a piece of sugar, which she rapidly offered and drew back
again, now at one bar of the cage, and now at another. The bird hopped
and fluttered up and down in his prison after the sugar, chirping as
if he enjoyed playing _his_ part of the game with his mistress. How
lovely she looked! Her dark hair, drawn back over each cheek so as
just to leave the lower part of the ear visible, was gathered up into
a thick simple knot behind, without ornament of any sort. She wore a
plain white dress fastening round the neck, and descending over the
bosom in numberless little wavy plaits. The cage hung just high enough
to oblige her to look up to it. She was laughing with all the glee of
a child; darting the piece of sugar about incessantly from place to
place. Every moment, her head and neck assumed some new and lovely
turn--every moment her figure naturally fell into the position which
showed its pliant symmetry best. The last-left glow of the evening
atmosphere was shining on her--the farewell pause of daylight over the
kindred daylight of beauty and youth.

I kept myself concealed behind a pillar of the garden-gate; I looked,
hardly daring either to move or breathe; for I feared that if she saw
or heard me, she would leave the window. After a lapse of some
minutes, the canary touched the sugar with his beak.

"There, Minnie!" she cried laughingly, "you have caught the runaway
sugar, and now you shall keep it!"

For a moment more, she stood quietly looking at the cage; then raising
herself on tip-toe, pouted her lips caressingly to the bird, and
disappeared in the interior of the room.

The sun went down; the twilight shadows fell over the dreary square;
the gas lamps were lighted far and near; people who had been out for a
breath of fresh air in the fields, came straggling past me by ones and
twos, on their way home--and still I lingered near the house, hoping
she might come to the window again; but she did not re-appear. At
last, a servant brought candles into the room, and drew down the
Venetian blinds. Knowing it would be useless to stay longer, I left
the square.

I walked homeward joyfully. That second sight of her completed what
the first meeting had begun. The impressions left by it made me
insensible for the time to all boding reflections, careless of
exercising the smallest self-restraint. I gave myself up to the charm
that was at work on me. Prudence, duty, memories and prejudices of
home, were all absorbed and forgotten in love--love that I encouraged,
that I dwelt over in the first reckless luxury of a new sensation.

I entered our house, thinking of nothing but how to see her, how to
speak to her, on the morrow; murmuring her name to myself; even while
my hand was on the lock of my study door. The instant I was in the
room, I involuntarily shuddered and stopped speechless. Clara was
there! I was not merely startled; a cold, faint sensation came over
me. My first look at my sister made me feel as if I had been detected
in a crime.

She was standing at my writing-table, and had just finished stringing
together the loose pages of my manuscript, which had hitherto laid
disconnectedly in a drawer. There was a grand ball somewhere, to which
she was going that night. The dress she wore was of pale blue crape
(my father's favourite colour, on her). One white flower was placed in
her light brown hair. She stood within the soft steady light of my
lamp, looking up towards the door from the leaves she had just tied
together. Her slight figure appeared slighter than usual, in the
delicate material that now clothed it. Her complexion was at its
palest: her face looked almost statue-like in its purity and repose.
What a contrast to the other living picture which I had seen at
sunset!

The remembrance of the engagement that I had broken came back on me
avengingly, as she smiled, and held my manuscript up before me to look
at. With that remembrance there returned, too--darker than ever--the
ominous doubts which had depressed me but a few hours since. I tried
to steady my voice, and felt how I failed in the effort, as I spoke to
her:

"Will you forgive me, Clara, for having deprived you of your ride
to-day? I am afraid I have but a bad excuse--"

"Then don't make it, Basil; or wait till papa can arrange it for you,
in a proper parliamentary way, when he comes back from the House of
Commons to-night. See how I have been meddling with your papers; but
they were in such confusion I was really afraid some of these leaves
might have been lost."

"Neither the leaves nor the writer deserve half the pains you have
taken with them; but I am really sorry for breaking our engagement. I
met an old college friend--there was business too, in the morning--we
dined together--he would take no denial."

"Basil, how pale you look! Are you ill?"

"No; the heat has been a little too much for me--nothing more."

"Has anything happened? I only ask, because if I can be of any use--if
you want me to stay at home--"

"Certainly not, love. I wish you all success and pleasure at the
ball."

For a moment she did not speak; but fixed her clear, kind eyes on me
more gravely and anxiously than usual. Was she searching my heart, and
discovering the new love rising, an usurper already, in the place
where the love of her had reigned before?

Love! love for a shopkeeper's daughter! That thought came again, as
she looked at me! and, strangely mingled with it, a maxim I had often
heard my father repeat to Ralph-- "Never forget that your station is
not yours, to do as you like with. It belongs to us, and belongs to
your children. You must keep it for them, as I have kept it for you."

"I thought," resumed Clara, in rather lower tones than before, "that I
would just look into your room before I went to the ball, and see that
everything was properly arranged for you, in case you had any idea of
writing tonight; I had just time to do this while my aunt, who is
going with me, was upstairs altering her toilette. But perhaps you
don't feel inclined to write?"

"I will try at least."

"Can I do anything more? Would you like my nosegay left in the
room?--the flowers smell so fresh! I can easily get another. Look at
the roses, my favourite white roses, that always remind me of my own
garden at the dear old Park!"

"Thank you, Clara; but I think the nosegay is fitter for your hand
than my table."

"Good night, Basil."

"Good night."

She walked to the door, then turned round, and smiled as if she were
about to speak again; but checked herself, and merely looked at me for
an instant. In that instant, however, the smile left her face, and the
grave, anxious expression came again. She went out softly. A few
minutes afterwards the roll of the carriage which took her and her
companion to the ball, died away heavily on my ear. I was left alone
in the house--alone for the night.

VIII.

My manuscript lay before me, set in order by Clara's careful hand. I
slowly turned over the leaves one by one; but my eye only fell
mechanically on the writing. Yet one day since, and how much ambition,
how much hope, how many of my heart's dearest sensations and my mind's
highest thoughts dwelt in those poor paper leaves, in those little
crabbed marks of pen and ink! Now I could look on them
indifferently--almost as a stranger would have looked. The days of
calm study, of steady toil of thought, seemed departed for ever.
Stirring ideas; store of knowledge patiently heaped up; visions of
better sights than this world can show, falling freshly and sunnily
over the pages of my first book; all these were past and
gone--withered up by the hot breath of the senses--doomed by a paltry
fate, whose germ was the accident of an idle day!

I hastily put the manuscript aside. My unexpected interview with Clara
had calmed the turbulent sensations of the evening: but the fatal
influence of the dark beauty remained with me still. How could I
write?

I sat down at the open window. It was at the back of the house, and
looked out on a strip of garden--London garden--a close-shut dungeon
for nature, where stunted trees and drooping flowers seemed visibly
pining for the free air and sunlight of the country, in their sooty
atmosphere, amid their prison of high brick walls. But the place gave
room for the air to blow in it, and distanced the tumult of the busy
streets. The moon was up, shined round tenderly by a little
border-work of pale yellow light. Elsewhere, the awful void of night
was starless; the dark lustre of space shone without a cloud.

A presentiment arose within me, that in this still and solitary hour
would occur my decisive, my final struggle with myself. I felt that my
heart's life or death was set on the hazard of the night.

This new love that was in me; this giant sensation of a day's growth,
was first love. Hitherto, I had been heart-whole. I had known nothing
of the passion, which is the absorbing passion of humanity. No woman
had ever before stood between me and my ambitions, my occupations, my
amusements. No woman had ever before inspired me with the sensations
which I now felt.

In trying to realise my position, there was this one question to
consider; was I still strong enough to resist the temptation which
accident had thrown in my way? I had this one incentive to resistance:
the conviction that, if I succumbed, as far as my family prospects
were concerned, I should be a ruined man.

I knew my father's character well: I knew how far his affections and
his sympathies might prevail over his prejudices--even over his
principles--in some peculiar cases; and this very knowledge convinced
me that the consequences of a degrading marriage contracted by his son
(degrading in regard to rank), would be terrible: fatal to one,
perhaps to both. Every other irregularity--every other offence
even--he might sooner or later forgive. _This_ irregularity, _this_
offence, never--never, though his heart broke in the struggle. I was
as sure of it, as I was of my own existence at that moment.

I loved her! All that I felt, all that I knew, was summed up in those
few words! Deteriorating as my passion was in its effect on the
exercise of my mental powers, and on my candour and sense of duty in
my intercourse with home, it was a pure feeling towards _her._ This is
truth. If I lay on my death-bed, at the present moment, and knew that,
at the Judgment Day, I should be tried by the truth or falsehood of
the lines just written, I could say with my last breath: So be it; let
them remain.

But what mattered my love for her? However worthy of it she might be,
I had misplaced it, because chance--the same chance which might have
given her station and family--had placed her in a rank of life
far--too far--below mine. As the daughter of a "gentleman," my
father's welcome, my father's affection, would have been bestowed on
her, when I took her home as my wife. As the daughter of a tradesman,
my father's anger, my father's misery, my own ruin perhaps besides,
would be the fatal dower that a marriage would confer on her. What
made all this difference? A social prejudice. Yes: but a prejudice
which had been a principle--nay, more, a religion--in our house, since
my birth; and for centuries before it.

(How strange that foresight of love which precipitates the future into
the present! Here was I thinking of her as my wife, before, perhaps,
she had a suspicion of the passion with which she had inspired
me--vexing my heart, wearying my thoughts, before I had even spoken to
her, as if the perilous discovery of our marriage were already at
hand! I have thought since how unnatural I should have considered
this, if I had read it in a book.)

How could I best crush the desire to see her, to speak to her, on the
morrow? Should I leave London, leave England, fly from the temptation,
no matter where, or at what sacrifice? Or should I take refuge in my
books--the calm, changeless old friends of my earliest fireside hours?
Had I resolution enough to wear my heart out by hard, serious, slaving
study? If I left London on the morrow, could I feel secure, in my own
conscience, that I should not return the day after!

While, throughout the hours of the night, I was thus vainly striving
to hold calm counsel with myself; the base thought never occurred to
me, which might have occurred to some other men, in my position: Why
marry the girl, because I love her? Why, with my money, my station, my
opportunities, obstinately connect love and marriage as one idea; and
make a dilemma and a danger where neither need exist? Had such a
thought as this, in the faintest, the most shadowy form, crossed my
mind, I should have shrunk from it, have shrunk from my self; with
horror. Whatever fresh degradations may be yet in store for me, this
one consoling and sanctifying remembrance must still be mine. My love
for Margaret Sherwin was worthy to be offered to the purest and
perfectest woman that ever God created.

The night advanced--the noises faintly reaching me from the streets,
sank and ceased--my lamp flickered and went out--I heard the carriage
return with Clara from the ball--the first cold clouds of day rose and
hid the waning orb of the moon--the air was cooled with its morning
freshness: the earth was purified with its morning dew--and still I
sat by my open window, striving with my burning love-thoughts of
Margaret; striving to think collectedly and usefully--abandoned to a
struggle ever renewing, yet never changing; and always hour after
hour, a struggle in vain.

At last I began to think less and less distinctly--a few moments more,
and I sank into a restless, feverish slumber. Then began another, and
a more perilous ordeal for me--the ordeal of dreams. Thoughts and
sensations which had been more and more weakly restrained with each
succeeding hour of wakefulness, now rioted within me in perfect
liberation from all control.

This is what I dreamed:

I stood on a wide plain. On one side, it was bounded by thick woods,
whose dark secret depths looked unfathomable to the eye: on the other,
by hills, ever rising higher and higher yet, until they were lost in
bright, beautifully white clouds, gleaming in refulgent sunlight. On
the side above the woods, the sky was dark and vaporous. It seemed as
if some thick exhalation had arisen from beneath the trees, and
overspread the clear firmament throughout this portion of the scene.

As I still stood on the plain and looked around, I saw a woman coming
towards me from the wood. Her stature was tall; her black hair flowed
about her unconfined; her robe was of the dun hue of the vapour and
mist which hung above the trees, and fell to her feet in dark thick
folds. She came on towards me swiftly and softly, passing over the
ground like cloud-shadows over the ripe corn-field or the calm water.

I looked to the other side, towards the hills; and there was another
woman descending from their bright summits; and her robe was white,
and pure, and glistening. Her face was illumined with a light, like
the light of the harvest-moon; and her footsteps, as she descended the
hills, left a long track of brightness, that sparkled far behind her,
like the track of the stars when the winter night is clear and cold.
She came to the place where the hills and the plain were joined
together. Then she stopped, and I knew that she was watching me from
afar off.

Meanwhile, the woman from the dark wood still approached; never
pausing on her path, like the woman from the fair hills. And now I
could see her face plainly. Her eyes were lustrous and fascinating, as
the eyes of a serpent--large, dark and soft, as the eyes of the wild
doe. Her lips were parted with a languid smile; and she drew back the
long hair, which lay over her cheeks, her neck, her bosom, while I was
gazing on her.

Then, I felt as if a light were shining on me from the other side. I
turned to look, and there was the woman from the hills beckoning me
away to ascend with her towards the bright clouds above. Her arm, as
she held it forth, shone fair, even against the fair hills; and from
her outstretched hand came long thin rays of trembling light, which
penetrated to where I stood, cooling and calming wherever they touched
me.

But the woman from the woods still came nearer and nearer, until I
could feel her hot breath on my face. Her eyes looked into mine, and
fascinated them, as she held out her arms to embrace me. I touched her
hand, and in an instant the touch ran through me like fire, from head
to foot. Then, still looking intently on me with her wild bright eyes,
she clasped her supple arms round my neck, and drew me a few paces
away with her towards the wood.

I felt the rays of light that had touched me from the beckoning hand,
depart; and yet once more I looked towards the woman from the hills.
She was ascending again towards the bright clouds, and ever and anon
she stopped and turned round, wringing her hands and letting her head
droop, as if in bitter grief. The last time I saw her look towards me,
she was near the clouds. She covered her face with her robe, and knelt
down where she stood. After this I discerned no more of her. For now
the woman from the woods clasped me more closely than before, pressing
her warm lips on mine; and it was as if her long hair fell round us
both, spreading over my eyes like a veil, to hide from them the fair
hill-tops, and the woman who was walking onward to the bright clouds
above.

I was drawn along in the arms of the dark woman, with my blood burning
and my breath failing me, until we entered the secret recesses that
lay amid the unfathomable depths of trees. There, she encircled me in
the folds of her dusky robe, and laid her cheek close to mine, and
murmured a mysterious music in my ear, amid the midnight silence and
darkness of all around us. And I had no thought of returning to the
plain again; for I had forgotten the woman from the fair hills, and
had given myself up, heart, and soul, and body, to the woman from the
dark woods.

Here the dream ended, and I awoke.

It was broad daylight. The sun shone brilliantly, the sky was
cloudless. I looked at my watch; it had stopped. Shortly afterwards I
heard the hall clock strike six.

My dream was vividly impressed on my memory, especially the latter
part of it. Was it a warning of coming events, foreshadowed in the
wild visions of sleep? But to what purpose could this dream, or indeed
any dream, tend? Why had it remained incomplete, failing to show me
the visionary consequences of my visionary actions? What superstition
to ask! What a waste of attention to bestow it on such a trifle as a
dream!

Still, this trifle had produced one abiding result. I knew it not
then; but I know it now. As I looked out on the reviving, re-assuring
sunlight, it was easy enough for me to dismiss as ridiculous from my
mind, or rather from my conscience, the tendency to see in the two
shadowy forms of my dream, the types of two real living beings, whose
names almost trembled into utterance on my lips; but I could not also
dismiss from my heart the love-images which that dream had set up
there for the worship of the senses. Those results of the night still
remained within me, growing and strengthening with every minute.

If I had been told beforehand how the mere sight of the morning would
reanimate and embolden me, I should have scouted the prediction as too
outrageous for consideration; yet so it was. The moody and boding
reflections, the fear and struggle of the hours of darkness were gone
with the daylight. The love-thoughts of Margaret alone remained, and
now remained unquestioned and unopposed. Were my convictions of a few
hours since, like the night-mists that fade before returning sunshine?
I knew not. But I was young; and each new morning is as much the new
life of youth, as the new life of Nature.

So I left my study and went out. Consequences might come how they
would, and when they would; I thought of them no more. It seemed as if
I had cast off every melancholy thought, in leaving my room; as if my
heart had sprung up more elastic than ever, after the burden that had
been laid on it during the night. Enjoyment for the present, hope for
the future, and chance and fortune to trust in to the very last! This
was my creed, as I walked into the street, determined to see Margaret
again, and to tell her of my love before the day was out. In the
exhilaration of the fresh air and the gay sunshine, I turned my steps
towards Hollyoake Square, almost as light-hearted as a boy let loose
from school, joyously repeating Shakespeare's lines as I went:

            "Hope is a lover's staff; walk hence with that,
             And manage it against despairing thoughts."

IX.

London was rousing everywhere into morning activity, as I passed
through the streets. The shutters were being removed from the windows
of public-houses: the drink-vampyres that suck the life of London,
were opening their eyes betimes to look abroad for the new day's prey!
Small tobacco and provision-shops in poor neighbourhoods; dirty little
eating-houses, exhaling greasy-smelling steam, and displaying a leaf
of yesterday's paper, stained and fly-blown, hanging in the
windows--were already plying, or making ready to ply, their daily
trade. Here, a labouring man, late for his work, hurried by; there, a
hale old gentleman started for his early walk before breakfast. Now a
market-cart, already unloaded, passed me on its way back to the
country; now, a cab, laden with luggage and carrying pale,
sleepy-looking people, rattled by, bound for the morning train or the
morning steamboat. I saw the mighty vitality of the great city
renewing itself in every direction; and I felt an unwonted interest in
the sight. It was as if all things, on all sides, were reflecting
before me the aspect of my own heart.

But the quiet and torpor of the night still hung over Hollyoake
Square. That dreary neighbourhood seemed to vindicate its dreariness
by being the last to awaken even to a semblance of activity and life.
Nothing was stirring as yet at North Villa. I walked on, beyond the
last houses, into the sooty London fields; and tried to think of the
course I ought to pursue in order to see Margaret, and speak to her,
before I turned homeward again. After the lapse of more than half an
hour, I returned to the square, without plan or project; but resolved,
nevertheless, to carry my point.

The garden-gate of North Villa was now open. One of the female
servants of the house was standing at it, to breathe the fresh air,
and look about her, before the duties of the day began. I advanced;
determined, if money and persuasion could do it, to secure her
services.

She was young (that was one chance in my favour!)--plump, florid, and
evidently not by any means careless about her personal appearance
(that gave me another!) As she saw me approaching her, she smiled; and
passed her apron hurriedly over her face--carefully polishing it for
my inspection, much as a broker polishes a piece of furniture when you
stop to look at it.

"Are you in Mr. Sherwin's service?"--I asked, as I got to the garden
gate.

"As plain cook, Sir," answered the girl, administering to her face a
final and furious rub of the apron.

"Should you be very much surprised if I asked you to do me a great
favour?"

"Well--really, Sir--you're quite a stranger to me--I'm _sure_ I don't
know!" She stopped, and transferred the apron-rubbing to her arms.

"I hope we shall not be strangers long. Suppose I begin our
acquaintance, by telling you that you would look prettier in brighter
cap-ribbons, and asking you to buy some, just to see whether I am not
right?"

"It's very kind of you to say so, Sir; and thank you. But cap and
ribbons are the last things I can buy while I'm in _this_ place.
Master's master and missus too, here; and drives us half wild with the
fuss he makes about our caps and ribbons. He's such an austerious man,
that he will have our caps as he likes 'em. It's bad enough when a
missus meddles with a poor servant's ribbons; but to have master come
down into the kitchen, and-- Well, it's no use telling _you_ of it,
Sir--and--and thank you, Sir, for what you've given me, all the same!"

"I hope this is not the last time I shall make you a present. And now
I must come to the favour I want to ask of you: can you keep a
secret?"

"That I can, Sir! I've kep' a many secrets since I've been out at
service."

"Well: I want you to find me an opportunity of speaking to your young
lady--"

"To Miss Margaret, Sir?"

"Yes. I want an opportunity of seeing Miss Margaret, and speaking to
her in private--and not a word must be said to her about it,
beforehand."

"Oh Lord, Sir! I couldn't dare to do it!"

"Come! come! Can't you guess why I want to see your young lady, and
what I want to say to her?"

The girl smiled, and shook her head archly. "Perhaps you're in love
with Miss Margaret, Sir!--But I couldn't do it! I couldn't dare to do
it!"

"Very well; but you can tell me at least, whether Miss Margaret ever
goes out to take a walk?"

"Oh, yes, Sir; mostly every day."

"Do you ever go out with her?--just to take care of her when no one
else can be spared?"

"Don't ask me--please, Sir, don't!" She crumpled her apron between her
fingers, with a very piteous and perplexed air. "I don't know you; and
Miss Margaret don't know you, I'm sure--I couldn't, Sir, I really
couldn't!"

"Take a good look at me! Do you think I am likely to do you or your
young lady any harm? Am I too dangerous a man to be trusted? Would you
believe me on my promise?"

"Yes, Sir, I'm sure I would!--being so kind and so civil to _me,_
too!" (a fresh arrangement of the cap followed this speech.)

"Then suppose I promised, in the first place, not to tell Miss
Margaret that I had spoken to you about her at all. And suppose I
promised, in the second place, that, if you told me when you and Miss
Margaret go out together, I would only speak to her while she was in
your sight, and would leave her the moment you wished me to go away.
Don't you think you could venture to help me, if I promised all that?"

"Well, Sir, that would make a difference, to be sure. But then, it's
master I'm so afraid of--couldn't you speak to master first, Sir?"

"Suppose you were in Miss Margaret's place, would you like to be made
love to, by your father's authority, without your own wishes being
consulted first? would you like an offer of marriage, delivered like a
message, by means of your father? Come, tell me honestly, would you?"

She laughed, and shook her head very expressively. I knew the strength
of my last argument, and repeated it: "Suppose you were in Miss
Margaret's place?"

"Hush! don't speak so loud," resumed the girl in a confidential
whisper. "I'm sure you're a gentleman. I should like to help you--if I
could only dare to do it, I should indeed!"

"That's a good girl," I said. "Now tell me, when does Miss Margaret go
out to-day; and who goes with her?"

"Dear! dear!--it's very wrong to say it; but I must. She'll go out
with me to market, this morning, at eleven o'clock. She's done it for
the last week. Master don't like it; but Missus begged and prayed she
might; for Missus says she won't be fit to be married, if she knows
nothing about housekeeping, and prices, and what's good meat, and what
isn't, and all that, you know."

"Thank you a thousand times! you have given me all the help I want.
I'll be here before eleven, waiting for you to come out."

"Oh, please don't, Sir--I wish I hadn't told you--I oughtn't, indeed I
oughtn't!"

"No fear--you shall not lose by what you have told me--I promise all I
said I would promise--good bye. And mind, not a word to Miss Margaret
till I see her!"

As I hurried away, I heard the girl run a few paces after me--then
stop--then return, and close the garden gate, softly. She had
evidently put herself once more in Miss Margaret's place; and had
given up all idea of further resistance as she did so.

How should I occupy the hours until eleven o'clock? Deceit
whispered:--Go home; avoid even the chance of exciting suspicion, by
breakfasting with your family as usual. And as deceit counselled, so I
acted.

I never remember Clara more kind, more ready with all those trifling
little cares and attentions which have so exquisite a grace, when
offered by a woman to a man, and especially by a sister to a brother,
as when she and I and my father assembled together at the
breakfast-table. I now recollect with shame how little I thought about
her, or spoke to her on that morning; with how little hesitation or
self-reproach I excused myself from accepting an engagement which she
wished to make with me for that day. My father was absorbed in some
matter of business; to _him_ she could not speak. It was to me that
she addressed all her wonted questions and remarks of the morning. I
hardly listened to them; I answered them carelessly and briefly. The
moment breakfast was over, without a word of explanation I hastily
left the house again.

As I descended the steps, I glanced by accident at the dining-room
window. Clara was looking after me from it. There was the same anxious
expression on her face which it had worn when she left me the evening
before. She smiled as our eyes met--a sad, faint smile that made her
look unlike herself. But it produced no impression on me then: I had
no attention for anything but my approaching interview with Margaret.
My life throbbed and burned within me, in that direction: it was all
coldness, torpor, insensibility, in every other.

I reached Hollyoake Square nearly an hour before the appointed time.
In the suspense and impatience of that long interval, it was
impossible to be a moment in repose. I walked incessantly up and down
the square, and round and round the neighbourhood, hearing each
quarter chimed from a church clock near, and mechanically quickening
my pace the nearer the time came for the hour to strike. At last, I
heard the first peal of the eventful eleven. Before the clock was
silent, I had taken up my position within view of the gate of North
Villa.

Five minutes passed--ten--and no one appeared. In my impatience, I
could almost have rung the bell and entered the house, no matter who
might be there, or what might be the result. The first quarter struck;
and at that very moment I heard the door open, and saw Margaret, and
the servant with whom I had spoken, descending the steps.

They passed out slowly through the garden gate, and walked down the
square, away from where I was standing. The servant noticed me by one
significant look, as they went on. Her young mistress did not appear
to see me. At first, my agitation was so violent that I was perfectly
incapable of following them a single step. In a few moments I
recovered myself; and hastened to overtake them, before they arrived
at a more frequented part of the neighbourhood.

As I approached her side, Margaret turned suddenly and looked at me,
with an expression of anger and astonishment in her eyes. The next
instant, her lovely face became tinged all over with a deep, burning
blush; her head drooped a little; she hesitated for a moment; and then
abruptly quickened her pace. Did she remember me? The mere chance that
she did, gave me confidence: I--

--No! I cannot write down the words that I said to her. Recollecting
the end to which our fatal interview led, I recoil at the very thought
of exposing to others, or of preserving in any permanent form, the
words in which I first confessed my love. It may be pride--miserable,
useless pride--which animates me with this feeling: but I cannot
overcome it. Remembering what I do, I am ashamed to write, ashamed to
recall, what I said at my first interview with Margaret Sherwin. I can
give no good reason for the sensations which now influence me; I
cannot analyse them; and I would not if I could.

Let it be enough to say that I risked everything, and spoke to her. My
words, confused as they were, came hotly, eagerly, and eloquently from
my heart. In the space of a few minutes, I confessed to her all, and
more than all, that I have here painfully related in many pages. I
made use of my name and my rank in life--even now, my cheeks burn
while I think of it--to dazzle her girl's pride, to make her listen to
me for the sake of my station, if she would not for the sake of my
suit, however honourably urged. Never before had I committed the
meanness of trusting to my social advantages, what I feared to trust
to myself. It is true that love soars higher than the other passions;
but it can stoop lower as well.

Her answers to all that I urged were confused, commonplace, and
chilling enough. I had surprised her--frightened her--it was
impossible she could listen to such addresses from a total
stranger--it was very wrong of me to speak, and of her to stop and
hear me--I should remember what became me as a gentleman, and should
not make such advances to her again--I knew nothing of her--it was
impossible I could really care about her in so short a time--she must
beg that I would allow her to proceed unhindered.

Thus she spoke; sometimes standing still, sometimes moving hurriedly a
few steps forward. She might have expressed herself severely, even
angrily; but nothing she could have said would have counteracted the
fascination that her presence exercised over me. I saw her face,
lovelier than ever in its confusion, in its rapid changes of
expression; I saw her eloquent eyes once or twice raised to mine, then
instantly withdrawn again--and so long as I could look at her, I cared
not what I listened to. She was only speaking what she had been
educated to speak; it was not in her words that I sought the clue to
her thoughts and sensations; but in the tone of her voice, in the
language of her eyes, in the whole expression of her face. All these
contained indications which reassured me. I tried everything that
respect, that the persuasion of love could urge, to win her consent to
our meeting again; but she only answered with repetitions of what she
had said before, walking onward rapidly while she spoke. The servant,
who had hitherto lingered a few paces behind, now advanced to her
young mistress's side, with a significant look, as if to remind me of
my promise. Saying a few parting words, I let them proceed: at this
first interview, to have delayed them longer would have been risking
too much.

As they walked away, the servant turned round, nodding her head and
smiling, as if to assure me that I had lost nothing by the forbearance
which I had exercised. Margaret neither lingered nor looked back. This
last proof of modesty and reserve, so far from discouraging, attracted
me to her more powerfully than ever. After a first interview, it was
the most becoming virtue she could have shown. All my love for her
before, seemed as nothing compared with my love for her now that she
had left me, and left me without a parting look.

What course should I next pursue? Could I expect that Margaret, after
what she had said, would go out again at the same hour on the morrow?
No: she would not so soon abandon the modesty and restraint that she
had shown at our first interview. How communicate with her? how manage
most skilfully to make good the first favourable impression which
vanity whispered I had already produced? I determined to write to her.

How different was the writing of that letter, to the writing of those
once-treasured pages of my romance, which I had now abandoned for
ever! How slowly I worked; how cautiously and diffidently I built up
sentence after sentence, and doubtingly set a stop here, and
laboriously rounded off a paragraph there, when I toiled in the
service of ambition! Now, when I had given myself up to the service of
love, how rapidly the pen ran over the paper; how much more freely and
smoothly the desires of the heart flowed into words, than the thoughts
of the mind! Composition was an instinct now, an art no longer. I
could write eloquently, and yet write without pausing for an
expression or blotting a word--It was the slow progress up the hill,
in the service of ambition; it was the swift (too swift) career down
it, in the service of love!

There is no need to describe the contents of my letter to Margaret;
they comprised a mere recapitulation of what I had already said to
her. I insisted often and strongly on the honourable purpose of my
suit; and ended by entreating her to write an answer, and consent to
allow me another interview.

The letter was delivered by the servant. Another present, a little
more timely persuasion, and above all, the regard I had shown to my
promise, won the girl with all her heart to my interests. She was
ready to help me in every way, as long as her interference could be
kept a secret from her master.

I waited a day for the reply to my letter; but none came. The servant
could give me no explanation of this silence. Her young mistress had
not said one word to her about me, since the morning when we had met.
Still not discouraged, I wrote again. The letter contained some
lover's threats this time, as well as lover's entreaties; and it
produced its effect--an answer came.

It was very short--rather hurriedly and tremblingly written--and
simply said that the difference between my rank and hers made it her
duty to request of me, that neither by word nor by letter should I
ever address her again.

"Difference in rank,"--that was the only objection then! "Her
duty"--it was not from inclination that she refused me! So young a
creature; and yet so noble in self-sacrifice, so firm in her
integrity! I resolved to disobey her injunction, and see her again. My
rank! What was my rank? Something to cast at Margaret's feet, for
Margaret to trample on!

Once more I sought the aid of my faithful ally, the servant. After
delays which half maddened me with impatience, insignificant though
they were, she contrived to fulfil my wishes. One afternoon, while Mr.
Sherwin was away at business, and while his wife had gone out, I
succeeded in gaining admission to the garden at the back of the house,
where Margaret was then occupied in watering some flowers.

She started as she saw me, and attempted to return to the house. I
took her hand to detain her. She withdrew it, but neither abruptly nor
angrily. I seized the opportunity, while she hesitated whether to
persist or not in retiring; and repeated what I had already said to
her at our first interview (what is the language of love but a
language of repetitions?). She answered, as she had answered me in her
letter: the difference in our rank made it her duty to discourage me.

"But if this difference did not exist," I said: "if we were both
living in the same rank, Margaret--"

She looked up quickly; then moved away a step or two, as I addressed
her by her Christian name.

"Are you offended with me for calling you Margaret so soon? I do not
think of you as Miss Sherwin, but as Margaret--are you offended with
me for speaking as I think?"

No: she ought not to be offended with me, or with anybody, for doing
that.

"Suppose this difference in rank, which you so cruelly insist on, did
not exist, would you tell me not to hope, not to speak then, as coldly
as you tell me now?"

I must not ask her that--it was no use--the difference in rank _did_
exist.

"Perhaps I have met you too late?--perhaps you are already--"

"No! oh, no!"--she stopped abruptly, as the words passed her lips. The
same lovely blush which I had before seen spreading over her face,
rose on it now. She evidently felt that she had unguardedly said too
much: that she had given me an answer in a case where, according to
every established love-law of the female code, I had no right to
expect one. Her next words accused me--but in very low and broken
tones--of having committed an intrusion which she should hardly have
expected from a gentleman in my position.

"I will regain your better opinion," I said, eagerly catching at the
most favourable interpretation of her last words, "by seeing you for
the next time, and for all times after, with your father's full
permission. I will write to-day, and ask for a private interview with
him. I will tell him all I have told you: I will tell him that you
take a rank in beauty and goodness, which is the highest rank in the
land--a far higher rank than mine--the only rank I desire." (A smile,
which she vainly strove to repress, stole charmingly to her lips.)
"Yes, I will do this; I will never leave him till his answer is
favourable--and then what would be yours? One word, Margaret; one word
before I go--"

I attempted to take her hand a second time; but she broke from me, and
hurried into the house.

What more could I desire? What more could the modesty and timidity of
a young girl concede to me?

The moment I reached home, I wrote to Mr. Sherwin. The letter was
superscribed "Private;" and simply requested an interview with him on
a subject of importance, at any hour he might mention. Unwilling to
trust what I had written to the post, I sent my note by a
messenger--not one of our own servants, caution forbade that--and
instructed the man to wait for an answer: if Mr. Sherwin was out, to
wait till he came home.

After a long delay--long to _me;_ for my impatience would fain have
turned hours into minutes--I received a reply. It was written on
gilt-edged letter-paper, in a handwriting vulgarised by innumerable
flourishes. Mr. Sherwin presented his respectful compliments, and
would be happy to have the honour of seeing me at North Villa, if
quite convenient, at five o'clock to-morrow afternoon.

I folded up the letter carefully: it was almost as precious as a
letter from Margaret herself. That night I passed sleeplessly,
revolving in my mind every possible course that I could take at the
interview of the morrow. It would be a difficult and a delicate
business. I knew nothing of Mr. Sherwin's character; yet I must trust
him with a secret which I dared not trust to my own father. Any
proposals for paying addresses to his daughter, coming from one in my
position, might appear open to suspicion. What could I say about
marriage? A public, acknowledged marriage was impossible: a private
marriage might be a bold, if not fatal proposal. I could come to no
other conclusion, reflect as anxiously as I might, than that it was
best for me to speak candidly at all hazards. I could be candid enough
when it suited my purpose!

It was not till the next day, when the time approached for my
interview with Mr. Sherwin, that I thoroughly roused myself to face
the plain necessities of my position. Determined to try what
impression appearances could make on him, I took unusual pains with my
dress; and more, I applied to a friend whom I could rely on as likely
to ask no questions--I write this in shame and sorrow: I tell truth
here, where it is hard penance to tell it--I applied, I say, to a
friend for the loan of one of his carriages to take me to North Villa;
fearing the risk of borrowing my father's carriage, or my
sister's--knowing the common weakness of rank-worship and
wealth-worship in men of Mr. Sherwin's order, and meanly determining
to profit by it to the utmost. My friend's carriage was willingly lent
me. By my directions, it took me up at the appointed hour, at a shop
where I was a regular customer.

X.

On my arrival at North Villa, I was shown into what I presumed was the
drawing-room.

Everything was oppressively new. The brilliantly-varnished door
cracked with a report like a pistol when it was opened; the paper on
the walls, with its gaudy pattern of birds, trellis-work, and flowers,
in gold, red, and green on a white ground, looked hardly dry yet; the
showy window-curtains of white and sky-blue, and the still showier
carpet of red and yellow, seemed as if they had come out of the shop
yesterday; the round rosewood table was in a painfully high state of
polish; the morocco-bound picture books that lay on it, looked as if
they had never been moved or opened since they had been bought; not
one leaf even of the music on the piano was dogs-eared or worn. Never
was a richly furnished room more thoroughly comfortless than this--the
eye ached at looking round it. There was no repose anywhere. The print
of the Queen, hanging lonely on the wall, in its heavy gilt frame,
with a large crown at the top, glared on you: the paper, the curtains,
the carpet glared on you: the books, the wax-flowers in glass-cases,
the chairs in flaring chintz-covers, the china plates on the door, the
blue and pink glass vases and cups ranged on the chimney-piece, the
over-ornamented chiffoniers with Tonbridge toys and long-necked
smelling bottles on their upper shelves--all glared on you. There was
no look of shadow, shelter, secrecy, or retirement in any one nook or
corner of those four gaudy walls. All surrounding objects seemed
startlingly near to the eye; much nearer than they really were. The
room would have given a nervous man the headache, before he had been
in it a quarter of an hour.

I was not kept waiting long. Another violent crack from the new door,
announced the entrance of Mr. Sherwin himself.

He was a tall, thin man: rather round-shouldered; weak at the knees,
and trying to conceal the weakness in the breadth of his trowsers. He
wore a white cravat, and an absurdly high shirt collar. His complexion
was sallow; his eyes were small, black, bright, and incessantly in
motion--indeed, all his features were singularly mobile: they were
affected by nervous contractions and spasms which were constantly
drawing up and down in all directions the brow, the mouth, and the
muscles of the cheek. His hair had been black, but was now turning to
a sort of iron-grey; it was very dry, wiry, and plentiful, and part of
it projected almost horizontally over his forehead. He had a habit of
stretching it in this direction, by irritably combing it out, from
time to time, with his fingers. His lips were thin and colourless, the
lines about them being numerous and strongly marked. Had I seen him
under ordinary circumstances, I should have set him down as a
little-minded man; a small tyrant in his own way over those dependent
on him; a pompous parasite to those above him--a great stickler for
the conventional respectabilities of life, and a great believer in his
own infallibility. But he was Margaret's father; and I was determined
to be pleased with him.

He made me a low and rather a cringing bow--then looked to the window,
and seeing the carriage waiting for me at his door, made another bow,
and insisted on relieving me of my hat with his own hand. This done,
he coughed, and begged to know what he could do for me.

I felt some difficulty in opening my business to him. It was necessary
to speak, however, at once--I began with an apology.

"I am afraid, Mr. Sherwin, that this intrusion on the part of a
perfect stranger--"

"Not entirely a stranger, Sir, if I may be allowed to say so."

"Indeed!"

"I had the great pleasure, Sir, and profit, and--and, indeed,
advantage--of being shown over your town residence last year, when the
family were absent from London. A very beautiful house--I happen to be
acquainted with the steward of your respected father: he was kind
enough to allow me to walk through the rooms. A treat; quite an
intellectual treat--the furniture and hangings, and so on, arranged in
such a chaste style--and the pictures, some of the finest pieces I
ever saw--I was delighted--quite delighted, indeed."

He spoke in under-tones, laying great stress upon particular words
that were evidently favourites with him--such as, "indeed." Not only
his eyes, but his whole face, seemed to be nervously blinking and
winking all the time he was addressing me, In the embarrassment and
anxiety which I then felt, this peculiarity fidgetted and bewildered
me more than I can describe. I would have given the world to have had
his back turned, before I spoke to him again.

"I am delighted to hear that my family and my name are not unknown to
you, Mr. Sherwin," I resumed. "Under those circumstances, I shall feel
less hesitation and difficulty in making you acquainted with the
object of my visit."

"Just so. May I offer you anything?--a glass of sherry, a--"

"Nothing, thank you. In the first place, Mr. Sherwin, I have reasons
for wishing that this interview, whatever results it may lead to, may
be considered strictly confidential. I am sure I can depend on your
favouring me thus far?"

"Certainly--most certainly--the strictest secrecy of course--pray go
on."

He drew his chair a little nearer to me. Through all his blinking and
winking, I could see a latent expression of cunning and curiosity in
his eyes. My card was in his hand: he was nervously rolling and
unrolling it, without a moment's cessation, in his anxiety to hear
what I had to say.

"I must also beg you to suspend your judgment until you have heard me
to the end. You may be disposed to view--to view, I say, unfavourably
at first--in short, Mr. Sherwin, without further preface, the object
of my visit is connected with your daughter, with Miss Margaret
Sherwin--"

"My daughter! Bless my soul--God bless my soul, I really can't
imagine--"

He stopped, half-breathless, bending forward towards me, and crumpling
my card between his fingers into the smallest possible dimensions.

"Rather more than a week ago," I continued, "I accidentally met Miss
Sherwin in an omnibus, accompanied by a lady older than herself--"

"My wife; Mrs. Sherwin," he said, impatiently motioning with his hand,
as if "Mrs. Sherwin" were some insignificant obstacle to the
conversation, which he wished to clear out of the way as fast as
possible.

"You will not probably be surprised to hear that I was struck by Miss
Sherwin's extreme beauty. The impression she made on me was something
more, however, than a mere momentary feeling of admiration. To speak
candidly, I felt-- You have heard of such a thing as love at first
sight, Mr. Sherwin?"

"In books, Sir." He tapped one of the morocco-bound volumes on the
table, and smiled--a curious smile, partly deferential and partly
sarcastic.

"You would be inclined to laugh, I dare say, if I asked you to believe
that there is such a thing as love at first sight, _out_ of books.
But, without dwelling further on that, it is my duty to confess to
you, in all candour and honesty, that the impression Miss Sherwin
produced on me was such as to make me desire the privilege of becoming
acquainted with her. In plain words, I discovered her place of
residence by following her to this house."

"Upon my soul this is the most extraordinary proceeding----!"

"Pray hear me out, Mr. Sherwin: you will not condemn my conduct, I
think, if you hear all I have to say."

He muttered something unintelligible; his complexion turned yellower;
he dropped my card, which he had by this time crushed into fragments;
and ran his hand rapidly through his hair until he had stretched it
out like a penthouse over his forehead--blinking all the time, and
regarding me with a lowering, sinister expression of countenance. I
saw that it was useless to treat him as I should have treated a
gentleman. He had evidently put the meanest and the foulest
construction upon my delicacy and hesitation in speaking to him: so I
altered my plan, and came to the point abruptly--"came to business,"
as he would have called it.

"I ought to have been plainer, Mr. Sherwin; I ought perhaps to have
told you at the outset, in so many words, that I came to--" (I was
about to say, "to ask your daughter's hand in marriage;" but a thought
of my father moved darkly over my mind at that moment, and the words
would not pass my lips).

"Well, Sir! to what?"

The tone in which he said this was harsh enough to rouse me. It gave
me back my self-possession immediately.

"To ask your permission to pay my addresses to Miss Sherwin--or, to be
plainer still, if you like, to ask of you her hand in marriage."

The words were spoken. Even if I could have done so, I would not have
recalled what I had just said; but still, I trembled in spite of
myself as I expressed in plain, blunt words what I had only
rapturously thought over, or delicately hinted at to Margaret, up to
this time.

"God bless me!" cried Mr. Sherwin, suddenly sitting back bolt upright
in his chair, and staring at me in such surprise, that his restless
features were actually struck with immobility for the moment--"God
bless me, this is quite another story. Most gratifying, most
astonishing--highly flattered I am sure; highly indeed, my dear Sir!
Don't suppose, for one moment, I ever doubted your honourable feeling.
Young gentlemen in your station of life do sometimes fail in respect
towards the wives and daughters of their--in short, of those who are
not in their rank exactly. But that's not the question--quite a
misunderstanding--extremely stupid of me, to be sure. _Pray_ let me
offer you a glass of wine!"

"No wine, thank you, Mr. Sherwin. I must beg your attention a little
longer, while I state to you, in confidence, how I am situated with
regard to the proposals I have made. There are certain
circumstances--"

"Yes--yes?"

He bent forward again eagerly towards me, as he spoke; looking more
inquisitive and more cunning than ever.

"I have acknowledged to you, Mr. Sherwin, that I have found means to
speak to your daughter--to speak to her twice. I made my advances
honourably. She received them with a modesty and a reluctance worthy
of herself, worthy of any lady, the highest lady in the land." (Mr.
Sherwin looked round reverentially to his print of the Queen; then
looked back at me, and bowed solemnly.) "Now, although in so many
words she directly discouraged me--it is her due that I should say
this--still, I think I may without vanity venture to hope that she did
so as a matter of duty, more than as a matter of inclination."

"Ah--yes, yes! I understand. She would do nothing without my
authority, of course?"

"No doubt that was one reason why she received me as she did; but she
had another, which she communicated to me in the plainest terms--the
difference in our rank of life."

"Ah! she said that, did she? Exactly so--she saw a difficulty there?
Yes--yes! high principles, Sir--high principles, thank God!"

"I need hardly tell you, Mr. Sherwin, how deeply I feel the delicate
sense of honour which this objection shows on your daughter's part.
You will easily imagine that it is no objection to _me,_ personally.
The happiness of my whole life depends on Miss Sherwin; I desire no
higher honour, as I can conceive no greater happiness, than to be your
daughter's husband. I told her this: I also told her that I would
explain myself on the subject to you. She made no objection; and I am,
therefore, I think, justified in considering that if you authorised
the removal of scruples which do her honour at present, she would not
feel the delicacy she does now at sanctioning my addresses."

"Very proper--a very proper way of putting it. Practical, if I may be
allowed to say so. And now, my dear Sir, the next point is: how about
your own honoured family--eh?"

"It is exactly there that the difficulty lies. My father, on whom I am
dependent as the younger son, has very strong prejudices--convictions
I ought perhaps to call them--on the subject of social inequalities."

"Quite so--most natural; most becoming, indeed, on the part of your
respected father. I honour his convictions, sir. Such estates, such
houses, such a family as his--connected, I believe, with the nobility,
especially on your late lamented mother's side. My dear Sir, I
emphatically repeat it, your father's convictions do him honour; I
respect them as much as I respect him; I do, indeed."

"I am glad you can view my father's ideas on social subjects in so
favourable a light, Mr. Sherwin. You will be less surprised to hear
how they are likely to affect me in the step I am now taking."

"He disapproves of it, of course--strongly, perhaps. Well, though my
dear girl is worthy of any station; and a man like me, devoted to
mercantile interests, may hold his head up anywhere as one of the
props of this commercial country," (he ran his fingers rapidly through
his hair, and tried to look independent), "still I am prepared to
admit, under all the circumstances--I say under all the
circumstances--that his disapproval is very natural, and was very much
to be expected--very much indeed."

"He has expressed no disapproval, Mr. Sherwin."

"You don't say so!"

"I have not given him an opportunity. My meeting with your daughter
has been kept a profound secret from him, and from every member of my
family; and a secret it must remain. I speak from my intimate
knowledge of my father, when I say that I hardly know of any means
that he would not be capable of employing to frustrate the purpose of
this visit, if I had mentioned it to him. He has been the kindest and
best of fathers to me; but I firmly believe, that if I waited for his
consent, no entreaties of mine, or of any one belonging to me, would
induce him to give his sanction to the marriage I have come to you to
propose."

"Bless my soul! this is carrying things rather far, though--dependent
as you are on him, and all that. Why, what on earth can we do--eh?"

"We must keep both the courtship and the marriage secret."

"Secret! Good gracious, I don't at all see my way--"

"Yes, secret--a profound secret among ourselves, until I can divulge
my marriage to my father, with the best chance of--"

"But I tell you, Sir, I can't see my way through it at all. Chance!
what chance would there be, after what you have told me?"

"There might be many chances. For instance, when the marriage was
solemnised, I might introduce your daughter to my father's
notice--without disclosing who she was--and leave her, gradually and
unsuspectedly, to win his affection and respect (as with her beauty,
elegance, and amiability, she could not fail to do), while I waited
until the occasion was ripe for confessing everything. Then if I said
to him, 'This young lady, who has so interested and delighted you, is
my wife;' do you think, with that powerful argument in my favour, he
could fail to give us his pardon? If, on the other hand, I could only
say, 'This young lady is about to become my wife,' his prejudices
would assuredly induce him to recall his most favourable impressions,
and refuse his consent. In short, Mr. Sherwin, before marriage, it
would be impossible to move him--after marriage, when opposition could
no longer be of any avail, it would be quite a different thing: we
might be sure of producing, sooner or later, the most favourable
results. This is why it would be absolutely necessary to keep our
union secret at first."

I wondered then--I have since wondered more--how it was that I
contrived to speak thus, so smoothly and so unhesitatingly, when my
conscience was giving the lie all the while to every word I uttered.

"Yes, yes; I see--oh, yes, I see!" said Mr. Sherwin, rattling a bunch
of keys in his pocket, with an expression of considerable perplexity;
"but this is a ticklish business, you know--a very queer and ticklish
business indeed. To have a gentleman of your birth and breeding for a
son-in-law, is of course--but then there is the money question.
Suppose you failed with your father after all--_my_ money is out in my
speculations--_I_ can do nothing. Upon my word, you have placed me in
a position that I never was placed in before."

"I have influential friends, Mr. Sherwin, in many directions--there
are appointments, good appointments, which would be open to me, if I
pushed my interests. I might provide in this way against the chance of
failure."

"Ah!--well--yes. There's something in that, certainly."

"I can only assure you that my attachment to Miss Sherwin is not of a
nature to be overcome by any pecuniary considerations. I speak in all
our interests, when I say that a private marriage gives us a chance
for the future, as opportunities arise of gradually disclosing it. My
offer to you may be made under some disadvantages and difficulties,
perhaps; for, with the exception of a very small independence, left me
by my mother, I have no certain prospects. But I really think my
proposals have some compensating advantages to recommend them--"

"Certainly! most decidedly so! I am not insensible, my dear Sir, to
the great advantage, and honour, and so forth. But there is something
so unusual about the whole affair. What would be my feelings, if your
father should not come round, and my dear girl was disowned by the
family? Well, well! that could hardly happen, I think, with her
accomplishments and education, and manners too, so
distinguished--though perhaps I ought not to say so. Her schooling
alone was a hundred a-year, Sir, without including extras--"

"I am sure, Mr. Sherwin--"

"--A school, Sir, where it was a rule to take in no thing lower than
the daughter of a professional man--they only waived the rule in my
case--the most genteel school, perhaps, in all London! A
drawing-room-deportment day once every week--the girls taught how to
enter a room and leave a room with dignity and ease--a model of a
carriage door and steps, in the back drawing-room, to practise the
girls (with the footman of the establishment in attendance) in getting
into a carriage and getting out again, in a lady-like manner! No
duchess has had a better education than my Margaret!--"

"Permit me to assure you, Mr. Sherwin--"

"And then, her knowledge of languages--her French, and Italian, and
German, not discontinued in holidays, or after she left school (she
has only just left it); but all kept up and improved every evening, by
the kind attention of Mr. Mannion--"

"May I ask who Mr. Mannion is?" The tone in which I put this question,
cooled his enthusiasm about his daughter's education immediately. He
answered in his former tones, and with one of his former bows:

"Mr. Mannion is my confidential clerk, Sir--a most superior person,
most highly talented, and well read, and all that."

"Is he a young man?"

"Young! Oh, dear no! Mr. Mannion is forty, or a year or two more, if
he's a day--an admirable man of business, as well as a great scholar.
He's at Lyons now, buying silks for me. When he comes back I shall be
delighted to introduce---"

"I beg your pardon, but I think we are wandering away from the point,
a little."

"I beg _yours_--so we are. Well, my dear Sir, I must be allowed a day
or two--say two days--to ascertain what my daughter's feelings are,
and to consider your proposals, which have taken me very much by
surprise, as you may in fact see. But I assure you I am most
flattered, most honoured, most anxious--".

"I hope you will consider my anxieties, Mr. Sherwin, and let me know
the result of your deliberations as soon as possible."

"Without fail, depend upon it. Let me see: shall we say the second day
from this, at the same time, if you can favour me with a visit?"

"Certainly."

"And between that time and this, you will engage not to hold any
communication with my daughter?"

"I promise not, Mr. Sherwin--because I believe that your answer will
be favourable."

"Ah, well--well! lovers, they say, should never despair. A little
consideration, and a little talk with my dear girl--really now, won't
you change your mind and have a glass of sherry? (No again?) Very
well, then, the day after tomorrow, at five o'clock."

With a louder crack than ever, the brand-new drawing-room door was
opened to let me out. The noise was instantly succeeded by the
rustling of a silk dress, and the banging of another door, at the
opposite end of the passage. Had anybody been listening? Where was
Margaret?

Mr. Sherwin stood at the garden-gate to watch my departure, and to
make his farewell bow. Thick as was the atmosphere of illusion in
which I now lived, I shuddered involuntarily as I returned his parting
salute, and thought of him as my father-in-law!

XI.

The nearer I approached to our own door, the more reluctance I felt to
pass the short interval between my first and second interview with Mr.
Sherwin, at home. When I entered the house, this reluctance increased
to something almost like dread. I felt unwilling and unfit to meet the
eyes of my nearest and dearest relatives. It was a relief to me to
hear that my father was not at home. My sister was in the house: the
servant said she had just gone into the library, and inquired whether
he should tell her that I had come in. I desired him not to disturb
her, as it was my intention to go out again immediately.

I went into my study, and wrote a short note there to Clara; merely
telling her that I should be absent in the country for two days. I had
sealed and laid it on the table for the servant to deliver, and was
about to leave the room, when I heard the library door open. I
instantly drew back, and half-closed my own door again. Clara had got
the book she wanted, and was taking it up to her own sitting-room. I
waited till she was out of sight, and then left the house. It was the
first time I had ever avoided my sister--my sister, who had never in
her life asked a question, or uttered a word that could annoy me; my
sister, who had confided all her own little secrets to my keeping,
ever since we had been children. As I thought on what I had done, I
felt a sense of humiliation which was almost punishment enough for the
meanness of which I had been guilty.

I went round to the stables, and had my horse saddled immediately. No
idea of proceeding in any particular direction occurred to me. I
simply felt resolved to pass my two days' ordeal of suspense away from
home--far enough away to keep me faithful to my promise not to see
Margaret. Soon after I started, I left my horse to his own guidance,
and gave myself up to my thoughts and recollections, as one by one
they rose within me. The animal took the direction which he had been
oftenest used to take during my residence in London--the northern
road.

It was not until I had ridden half a mile beyond the suburbs that I
looked round me, and discovered towards what part of the country I was
proceeding. I drew the rein directly, and turned my horse's head back
again, towards the south. To follow the favourite road which I had so
often followed with Clara; to stop perhaps at some place where I had
often stopped with her, was more than I had the courage or the
insensibility to do at that moment.

I rode as far as Ewell, and stopped there: the darkness had overtaken
me, and it was useless to tire my horse by going on any greater
distance. The next morning, I was up almost with sunrise; and passed
the greater part of the day in walking about among villages, lanes,
and fields, just as chance led me. During the night, many thoughts
that I had banished for the last week had returned--those thoughts of
evil omen under which the mind seems to ache, just as the body aches
under a dull, heavy pain, to which we can assign no particular place
or cause. Absent from Margaret, I had no resource against the
oppression that now overcame me. I could only endeavour to alleviate
it by keeping incessantly in action; by walking or riding, hour after
hour, in the vain attempt to quiet the mind by wearying out the body.
Apprehension of the failure of my application to Mr. Sherwin had
nothing to do with the vague gloom which now darkened my thoughts;
they kept too near home for that. Besides, what I had observed of
Margaret's father, especially during the latter part of my interview
with him, showed me plainly enough that he was trying to conceal,
under exaggerated surprise and assumed hesitation, his secret desire
to profit at once by my offer; which, whatever conditions might clog
it, was infinitely more advantageous in a social point of view, than
any he could have hoped for. It was not his delay in accepting my
proposals, but the burden of deceit, the fetters of concealment forced
on me by the proposals themselves, which now hung heavy on my heart.

That evening I left Ewell, and rode towards home again, as far as
Richmond, where I remained for the night and the forepart of the next
day. I reached London in the afternoon; and got to North
Villa--without going home first--about five o'clock.

The oppression was still on my spirits. Even the sight of the house
where Margaret lived failed to invigorate or arouse me.

On this occasion, when I was shown into the drawing-room, both Mr. and
Mrs. Sherwin were awaiting me there. On the table was the sherry which
had been so perseveringly pressed on me at the last interview, and by
it a new pound cake. Mrs. Sherwin was cutting the cake as I came in,
while her husband watched the process with critical eyes. The poor
woman's weak white fingers trembled as they moved the knife under
conjugal inspection.

"Most happy to see you again--most happy indeed, my dear Sir," said
Mr. Sherwin, advancing with hospitable smile and outstretched hand.
"Allow me to introduce my better half, Mrs. S."

His wife rose in a hurry, and curtseyed, leaving the knife sticking in
the cake; upon which Mr. Sherwin, with a stern look at her,
ostentatiously pulled it out, and set it down rather violently on the
dish.

Poor Mrs. Sherwin! I had hardly noticed her on the day when she got
into the omnibus with her daughter--it was as if I now saw her for the
first time. There is a natural communicativeness about women's
emotions. A happy woman imperceptibly diffuses her happiness around
her; she has an influence that is something akin to the influence of a
sunshiny day. So, again, the melancholy of a melancholy woman is
invariably, though silently, infectious; and Mrs. Sherwin was one of
this latter order. Her pale, sickly, moist-looking skin; her large,
mild, watery, light-blue eyes; the restless timidity of her
expression; the mixture of useless hesitation and involuntary rapidity
in every one of her actions--all furnished the same significant
betrayal of a life of incessant fear and restraint; of a disposition
full of modest generosities and meek sympathies, which had been
crushed down past rousing to self-assertion, past ever seeing the
light. There, in that mild, wan face of hers--in those painful
startings and hurryings when she moved; in that tremulous, faint
utterance when she spoke--_there,_ I could see one of those ghastly
heart-tragedies laid open before me, which are acted and re-acted,
scene by scene, and year by year, in the secret theatre of home;
tragedies which are ever shadowed by the slow falling of the black
curtain that drops lower and lower every day--that drops, to hide all
at last, from the hand of death.

"We have had very beautiful weather lately, Sir," said Mrs. Sherwin,
almost inaudibly; looking as she spoke, with anxious eyes towards her
husband, to see if she was justified in uttering even those piteously
common-place words. "Very beautiful weather to be sure," continued the
poor woman, as timidly as if she had become a little child again, and
had been ordered to say her first lesson in a stranger's presence.

"Delightful weather, Mrs. Sherwin. I have been enjoying it for the
last two days in the country--in a part of Surrey (the neighbourhood
of Ewell) that I had not seen before."

There was a pause. Mr. Sherwin coughed; it was evidently a warning
matrimonial peal that he had often rung before--for Mrs. Sherwin
started, and looked up at him directly.

"As the lady of the house, Mrs. S., it strikes me that you might offer
a visitor, like this gentleman, some cake and wine, without making any
particular hole in your manners!"

"Oh dear me! I beg your pardon! I'm very sorry, I'm sure"--and she
poured out a glass of wine, with such a trembling hand that the
decanter tinkled all the while against the glass. Though I wanted
nothing, I ate and drank something immediately, in common
consideration for Mrs. Sherwin's embarrassment.

Mr. Sherwin filled himself a glass--held it up admiringly to the
light--said, "Your good health, Sir, your very good health;" and drank
the wine with the air of a connoisseur, and a most expressive smacking
of the lips. His wife (to whom he offered nothing) looked at him all
the time with the most reverential attention.

"You are taking nothing yourself, Mrs. Sherwin," I said.

"Mrs. Sherwin, Sir," interposed her husband, "never drinks wine, and
can't digest cake. A bad stomach--a very bad stomach. Have another
glass yourself. Won't you, indeed? This sherry stands me in six
shillings a bottle--ought to be first-rate wine at that price: and so
it is. Well, if you won't have any more, we will proceed to business.
Ha! ha! business as _I_ call it; pleasure I hope it will be to _you_."

Mrs. Sherwin coughed--a very weak, small cough, half-stifled in its
birth.

"There you are again!" he said, turning fiercely towards.
her--"Coughing again! Six months of the doctor--a six months' bill to
come out of my pocket--and no good done--no good, Mrs. S."

"Oh, I am much better, thank you--it was only a little--"

"Well, Sir, the evening after you left me, I had what you may call an
explanation with my dear girl. She was naturally a little confused
and--and embarrassed, indeed. A very serious thing of course, to
decide at her age, and at so short a notice, on a point involving the
happiness of her whole life to come."

Here Mrs. Sherwin put her handkerchief to her eyes--quite noiselessly;
for she had doubtless acquired by long practice the habit of weeping
in silence. Her husband's quick glance turned on her, however,
immediately, with anything but an expression of sympathy.

"Good God, Mrs. S.! what's the use of going on in that way?" he said,
indignantly. "What is there to cry about? Margaret isn't ill, and
isn't unhappy--what on earth's the matter now? Upon my soul this is a
most annoying circumstance: and before a visitor too! You had better
leave me to discuss the matter alone--you always _were_ in the way of
business, and it's my opinion you always will be."

Mrs. Sherwin prepared, without a word of remonstrance, to leave the
room. I sincerely felt for her; but could say nothing. In the impulse
of the moment, I rose to open the door for her; and immediately
repented having done so. The action added so much to her embarrassment
that she kicked her foot against a chair, and uttered a suppressed
exclamation of pain as she went out.

Mr. Sherwin helped himself to a second glass of wine, without taking
the smallest notice of this.

"I hope Mrs. Sherwin has not hurt herself?" I said. "Oh dear no! not
worth a moment's thought--awkwardness and nervousness, nothing
else--she always was nervous--the doctors (all humbugs) can do nothing
with her--it's very sad, very sad indeed; but there's no help for it."

By this time (in spite of all my efforts to preserve some respect for
him, as Margaret's father) he had sunk to his proper place in my
estimation.

"Well, my dear Sir," he resumed, "to go back to where I was
interrupted by Mrs. S. Let me see: I was saying that my dear girl was
a little confused, and so forth. As a matter of course, I put before
her all the advantages which such a connection as yours promised--and
at the same time, mentioned some of the little embarrassing
circumstances--the private marriage, you know, and all that--besides
telling her of certain restrictions in reference to the marriage, if
it came off, which I should feel it my duty as a father to impose; and
which I shall proceed, in short, to explain to you. As a man of the
world, my dear Sir, you know as well as I do, that young ladies don't
give very straightforward answers on the subject of their
prepossessions in favour of young gentlemen. But I got enough out of
her to show me that you had made pretty good use of your time--no
occasion to despond, you know--I leave _you_ to make her speak plain;
it's more in your line than mine, more a good deal. And now let us
come to the business part of the transaction. All I have to say is
this:--if you agree to my proposals, then I agree to yours. I think
that's fair enough--Eh?"

"Quite fair, Mr. Sherwin."

"Just so. Now, in the first place, my daughter is too young to be
married yet. She was only seventeen last birthday."

"You astonish me! I should have imagined her three years older at
least."

"Everybody thinks her older than she is--everybody, my dear Sir--and
she certainly looks it. She's more formed, more developed I may say,
than most girls at her age. However, that's not the point. The plain
fact is, she's too young to be married now--too young in a moral point
of view; too young in an educational point of view; too young
altogether. Well: the upshot of this is, that I could not give my
consent to Margaret's marrying, until another year is out--say a year
from this time. One year's courtship for the finishing off of her
education, and the formation of her constitution--you understand me,
for the formation of her constitution."

A year to wait! At first, this seemed a long trial to endure, a trial
that ought not to be imposed on me. But the next moment, the delay
appeared in a different light. Would it not be the dearest of
privileges to be able to see Margaret, perhaps every day, perhaps for
hours at a time? Would it not be happiness enough to observe each
development of her character, to watch her first maiden love for me,
advancing nearer and nearer towards confidence and maturity the
oftener we met? As I thought on this, I answered Mr. Sherwin without
further hesitation.

"It will be some trial," I said, "to my patience, though none to my
constancy, none to the strength of my affection--I will wait the
year."

"Exactly so," rejoined Mr. Sherwin; "such candour and such
reasonableness were to be expected from one who is quite the
gentleman. And now comes my grand difficulty in this business--in
fact, the little stipulation I have to make."

He stopped, and ran his fingers through his hair, in all directions;
his features fidgetting and distorting themselves ominously, while he
looked at me.

"Pray explain yourself, Mr. Sherwin. Your silence gives me some
uneasiness at this particular moment, I assure you."

"Quite so--I understand. Now, you must promise me not to be
huffed--offended, I should say--at what I am going to propose."

"Certainly not."

"Well, then, it may seem odd; but under all the circumstances--that is
to say, as far as the case concerns you personally--I want you and my
dear girl to be married at once, and yet not to be married exactly,
for another year. I don't know whether you understand me?"

"I must confess I do not."

He coughed rather uneasily; turned to the table, and poured out
another glass of sherry--his hand trembling a little as he did so. He
drank off the wine at a draught; cleared his throat three or four
times after it; and then spoke again.

"Well, to be still plainer, this is how the matter stands: If you were
a party in our rank of life, coming to court Margaret with your
father's full approval and permission when once you had consented to
the year's engagement, everything would be done and settled; the
bargain would have been struck on both sides; and there would be an
end of it. But, situated as you are, I can't stop here safely--I mean,
I can't end the agreement exactly in this way."

He evidently felt that he got fluent on wine; and helped himself, at
this juncture, to another glass.

"You will see what I am driving at, my dear Sir, directly," he
continued. "Suppose now, you came courting my daughter for a year, as
we settled; and suppose your father found it out--we should keep it a
profound secret of course: but still, secrets are sometimes found out,
nobody knows how. Suppose, I say, your father got scent of the thing,
and the match was broken off; where do you think Margaret's reputation
would be? If it happened with somebody in her own station, we might
explain it all, and be believed: but happening with somebody in yours,
what would the world say? Would the world believe you had ever
intended to marry her? That's the point--that's the point precisely."

"But the case could not happen--I am astonished you can imagine it
possible. I have told you already, I am of age."

"Properly urged--very properly, indeed. But you also told me, if you
remember, when I first had the pleasure of seeing you, that your
father, if he knew of this match, would stick at nothing to oppose
it--_at nothing_--I recollect you said so. Now, knowing this, my dear
Sir--though I have the most perfect confidence in _your_ honour, and
_your_ resolution to fulfil your engagement--I can't have confidence
in your being prepared beforehand to oppose all your father might do
if he found us out; because you can't tell yourself what he might be
up to, or what influence he might set to work over you. This sort of
mess is not very probable, you will say; but if it's at all
possible--and there's a year for it to be possible in--by George, Sir,
I must guard against accidents, for my daughter's sake--I must
indeed!"

"In Heaven's name, Mr. Sherwin, pass over all these impossible
difficulties of yours! and let me hear what you have finally to
propose."

"Gently, my dear Sir! gently, gently, gently! I propose to begin with:
that you should marry my daughter--privately marry her--in a week's
time. Now, pray compose yourself!" (I was looking at him in speechless
astonishment.) "Take it easy; pray take it easy! Supposing, then, you
marry her in this way, I make one stipulation. I require you to give
me your word of honour to leave her at the church door; and for the
space of one year never to attempt to see her, except in the presence
of a third party. At the end of that time, I will engage to give her
to you, as your wife in fact, as well as in name. There! what do you
say to that--eh?"

I was too astounded, too overwhelmed, to say anything at that moment;
Mr. Sherwin went on:

"This plan of mine, you see, reconciles everything. If any accident
_does_ happen, and we are discovered, why your father can do nothing
to stop the match, because the match will have been already made. And,
at the same time, I secure a year's delay, for the formation of her
constitution, and the finishing of her accomplishments, and so forth.
Besides, what an opportunity this gives of sailing as near the wind.
as you choose, in breaking the thing, bit by bit, to your father,
without fear of consequences, in case he should run rough after all.
Upon my honour, my dear Sir, I think I deserve some credit for hitting
on this plan--it makes everything so right and straight, and suits of
course the wishes of all parties! I need hardly say that you shall
have every facility for seeing Margaret, under the restrictions--under
the restrictions, you understand. People may talk about your visits;
but having got the certificate, and knowing it's all safe and settled,
I shan't care for that. Well, what do you say? take time to think, if
you wish it--only remember that I have the most perfect confidence in
your honour, and that I act from a fatherly feeling for the interests
of my dear girl!" He stopped, out of breath from the extraordinary
volubility of his long harangue.

Some men more experienced in the world, less mastered by love than I
was, would, in my position, have recognised this proposal an unfair
trial of self-restraint--perhaps, something like an unfair humiliation
as well. Others have detected the selfish motives which suggested it:
the mean distrust of my honour, integrity, and firmness of purpose
which it implied; and the equally mean anxiety on Sherwin's part to
clench his profitable bargain at once, for fear it might be repented
of. I discerned nothing of this. As soon as I had recovered from the
natural astonishment of the first few moments, I only saw in the
strange plan proposed to me, a certainty of assuring--no matter with
what sacrifice, what hazard, or what delay--the ultimate triumph of my
love. When Mr. Sherwin had ceased speaking, I replied at once:

"I accept your conditions--I accept them with all my heart."

He was hardly prepared for so complete and so sudden an acquiescence
in his proposal, and looked absolutely startled by it, at first. But
soon resuming his self-possession--his wily, "business-like"
self-possession--he started up, and shook me vehemently by the hand.

"Delighted--most delighted, my dear Sir, to find how soon we
understand each other, and that we pull together so well. We must have
another glass; hang it, we really must! a toast, you know; a toast you
can't help drinking--your wife! Ha! ha!--I had you there!--my dear,
dear Margaret, God bless her!"

"We may consider all difficulties finally settled then," I said,
anxious to close my interview with Mr. Sherwin as speedily as
possible.

"Decidedly so. Done, and double done, I may say. There will be a
little insurance on your life, that I shall ask you to effect for dear
Margaret's sake; and perhaps, a memorandum of agreement, engaging to
settle a certain proportion of any property you may become possessed
of, on her and her children. You see I am looking forward to my
grandfather days already! But this can wait for a future occasion--say
in a day or two."

"Then I presume there will be no objection to my seeing Miss Sherwin
now?"

"None whatever---at once, if you like. This way, my dear Sir; this
way," and he led me across the passage, into the dining-room.

This apartment was furnished with less luxury, but with more bad taste
(if possible) than the room we had just left. Near the window sat
Margaret--it was the same window at which I had seen her, on the
evening when I wandered into the square, after our meeting in the
omnibus. The cage with the canary-bird hung in the same place. I just
noticed--with a momentary surprise--that Mrs. Sherwin was sitting far
away from her daughter, at the other end of the room; and then placed
myself by Margaret's side. She was dressed in pale yellow--a colour
which gave new splendour to her dark complexion and magnificently dark
hair. Once more, all my doubts, all my self-upbraidings vanished, and
gave place to the exquisite sense of happiness, the glow of joy and
hope and love which seemed to rush over my heart, the moment I looked
at her.

After staying in the room about five minutes, Mr. Sherwin whispered to
his wife, and left us. Mrs. Sherwin still kept her place; but she said
nothing, and hardly turned to look round at us more than once or
twice. Perhaps she was occupied by her own thoughts; perhaps, from a
motive of delicacy, she abstained even from an appearance of watching
her daughter or watching me. Whatever feelings influenced her, I cared
not to speculate on them. It was enough that I had the privilege of
speaking to Margaret uninterruptedly; of declaring my love at last,
without hesitation and without reserve.

How much I had to say to her, and how short a time seemed to be left
me that evening to say it in! How short a time to tell her all the
thoughts of the past which she had created in me; all the
self-sacrifice to which I had cheerfully consented for her sake; all
the anticipations of future happiness which were concentrated in her,
which drew their very breath of life, only from the prospect of her
rewarding love! She spoke but little; yet even that little it was a
new delight to hear. She smiled now; she let me take her hand, and
made no attempt to withdraw it. The evening had closed in; the
darkness was stealing fast upon us; the still, dead-still figure of
Mrs. Sherwin, always in the same place and the same attitude, grew
fainter and fainter to the eye, across the distance of the room--but
no thought of time, no thought of home ever once crossed my mind. I
could have sat at the window with Margaret the long night through;
without an idea of numbering the hours as they passed.

Ere long, however, Mr. Sherwin entered the room again, and effectually
roused me by approaching and speaking to us. I saw that I had stayed
long enough, and that we were not to be left together again, that
night. So I rose and took my leave, having first fixed a time for
seeing Margaret on the morrow. Mr. Sherwin accompanied me with great
ceremony to the outer door. Just as I was leaving him, he touched me
on the arm, and said in his most confidential tones:

"Come an hour earlier, to-morrow; and we'll go and get the licence
together. No objection to that--eh? And the marriage, shall we say
this day week? Just as _you_ like, you know--don't let me seem to
dictate. Ah! no objection to that, either, I see, and no objection on
Margaret's side, I'll warrant! With respect to consents, in the
marrying part of the business, there's complete mutuality--isn't
there? Good night: God bless you!"

XII.

That night I went home with none of the reluctance or the apprehension
which I had felt on the last occasion, when I approached our own door.
The assurance of success contained in the events of the afternoon,
gave me a trust in my own self-possession--a confidence in my own
capacity to parry all dangerous questions--which I had not experienced
before. I cared not how soon, or for how long a time, I might find
myself in company with Clara or my father. It was well for the
preservation of my secret that I was in this frame of mind; for, on
opening my study door, I was astonished to see both of them in my
room.

Clara was measuring one of my over-crowded book-shelves, with a piece
of string; and was apparently just about to compare the length of it
with a vacant space on the wall close by, when I came in. Seeing me,
she stopped; and looked round significantly at my father, who was
standing near her, with a file of papers in his hand.

"You may well feel surprised, Basil, at this invasion of your
territory," he said, with peculiar kindness of manner--"you must,
however, apply there, to the prime minister of the household,"
pointing to Clara, "for an explanation. I am only the instrument of a
domestic conspiracy on your sister's part."

Clara seemed doubtful whether she should speak. It was the first time
I had ever seen such an expression in her face, when she looked into
mine.

"We are discovered, papa," she said, after a momentary silence, "and
we must explain: but you know I always leave as many explanations as I
can to you."

"Very well," said my father smiling; "my task in this instance will be
an easy one. I was intercepted, Basil, on my way to my own room by
your sister, and taken in here to advise about a new set of bookcases
for you, when I ought to have been attending to my own money matters.
Clara's idea was to have had these new bookcases made in secret, and
put up as a surprise, some day when you were not at home. However, as
you have caught her in the act of measuring spaces, with all the skill
of an experienced carpenter, and all the impetuosity of an arbitrary
young lady who rules supreme over everybody, further concealment is
out of the question. We must make a virtue of necessity, and confess
everything."

Poor Clara! This was her only return for ten days' utter neglect--and
she had been half afraid to tell me of it herself. I approached and
thanked her; not very gratefully, I am afraid, for I felt too confused
to speak freely. It seemed like a fatality. The more evil I was doing
in secret, evil to family ties and family principles, the more good
was unconsciously returned to me by my family, through my sister's
hands.

"I made no objection, of course, to the bookcase plan," continued my
father. "More room is really wanted for the volumes on volumes that
you have collected about you; but I certainly suggested a little delay
in the execution of the project. The bookcases will, at all events,
not be required here for five months to come. This day week we return
to the country."

I could not repress a start of astonishment and dismay. Here was a
difficulty which I ought to have provided for; but which I had most
unaccountably never once thought of, although it was now the period of
the year at which on all former occasions we had been accustomed to
leave London. This day week too! The very day fixed by Mr. Sherwin for
my marriage!

"I am afraid, Sir, I shall not be able to go with you and Clara so
soon as you propose. It was my wish to remain in London some time
longer." I said this in a low voice, without venturing to look at my
sister. But I could not help hearing her exclamation as I spoke, and
the tone in which she uttered it.

My father moved nearer to me a step or two, and looked in my face
intently, with the firm, penetrating expression which peculiarly
characterized him.

"This seems an extraordinary resolution," he said, his tones and
manner altering ominously while he spoke. "I thought your sudden
absence for the last two days rather odd; but this plan of remaining
in London by yourself is really incomprehensible. What can you have to
do?"

An excuse--no! not an excuse; let me call things by their right names
in these pages--a _lie_ was rising to my lips; but my father checked
the utterance of it. He detected my embarrassment immediately,
anxiously as I strove to conceal it.

"Stop," he said coldly, while the red flush which meant so much when
it rose on _his_ cheek, began to appear there for the first time.
"Stop! If you must make excuses, Basil, I must ask no questions. You
have a secret which you wish to keep from me; and I beg you _will_
keep it. I have never been accustomed to treat my sons as I would not
treat any other gentlemen with whom I may happen to be associated. If
they have private affairs, I cannot interfere with those affairs. My
trust in their honour is my only guarantee against their deceiving me;
but in the intercourse of gentlemen that is guarantee enough. Remain
here as long as you like: we shall be happy to see you in the country,
when you are able to leave town."

He turned to Clara. "I suppose, my love, you want me no longer. While
I settle my own matters of business, you can arrange about the
bookcases with your brother. Whatever you wish, I shall be glad to
do." And he left the room without speaking to me, or looking at me
again. I sank into a chair, feeling disgraced in my own estimation by
the last words he had spoken to me. His trust in my honour was his
only guarantee against my deceiving him. As I thought over that
declaration, every syllable of it seemed to sear my conscience; to
brand Hypocrite on my heart.

I turned towards my sister. She was standing at a little distance from
me, silent and pale, mechanically twisting the measuring-string, which
she still held between her trembling fingers; and fixing her eyes upon
me so lovingly, so mournfully, that my fortitude gave way when I
looked at her. At that instant, I seemed to forget everything that had
passed since the day when I first met Margaret, and to be restored
once more to my old way of life and my old home-sympathies. My head
drooped on my breast, and I felt the hot tears forcing themselves into
my eyes.

Clara stepped quietly to my side; and sitting down by me in silence,
put her arm round my neck.

When I was calmer, she said gently:

"I have been very anxious about you, Basil; and perhaps I have allowed
that anxiety to appear more than I ought. Perhaps I have been
accustomed to exact too much from you--you have been too ready to
please me. But I have been used to it so long; and I have nobody else
that I can speak to as I can to you. Papa is very kind; but he can't
be what you are to me exactly; and Ralph does not live with us now,
and cared little about me, I am afraid, when he did. I have friends,
but friends are not--"

She stopped again; her voice was failing her. For a moment, she
struggled to keep her self-possession--struggled as only women
can--and succeeded in the effort. She pressed her arm closer round my
neck; but her tones were steadier and clearer when she resumed:

"It will not be very easy for me to give up our country rides and
walks together, and the evening talk that we always had at dusk in the
old library at the park. But I think I can resign all this, and go
away alone with papa, for the first time, without making you
melancholy by anything I say or do at parting, if you will only
promise that when you are in any difficulty you will let me be of some
use. I think I could always be of use, because I should always feel an
interest in anything that concerned you. I don't want to intrude on
your secret; but if that secret should ever bring you trouble or
distress (which I hope and pray it may not), I want you to have
confidence in my being able to help you, in some way, through any
mischances. Let me go into the country, Basil, knowing that you can
still put trust in me, even though a time should come when you can put
trust in no one else--let me know this: _do_ let me!"

I gave her the assurance she desired--gave it with my whole heart. She
seemed to have recovered all her old influence over me by the few
simple words she had spoken. The thought crossed my mind, whether I
ought not in common gratitude to confide my secret to her at once,
knowing as I did, that it would be safe in her keeping, however the
disclosure might startle or pain her, I believe I should have told her
all, in another minute, but for a mere accident--the trifling
interruption caused by a knock at the door.

It came from one of the servants. My father desired to see Clara on
some matter connected with their impending departure for the country.
She was unfit enough to obey such a summons at such a time; but with
her usual courage in disciplining her own feelings into subserviency
to the wishes of any one whom she loved, she determined to obey
immediately the message which had been delivered to her. A few moments
of silence; a slight trembling soon repressed; a parting kiss for me;
these few farewell words of encouragement at the door; "Don't grieve
about what papa has said; you have made _me_ feel happy about you,
Basil; I will make _him_ feel happy too," and Clara was gone.

With those few minutes of interruption, the time for the disclosure of
my secret had passed by. As soon as my sister was out of the room, my
former reluctance to trust it to home-keeping returned, and remained
unchanged throughout the whole of the long year's probation which I
had engaged to pass. But this mattered little. As events turned out,
if I had told Clara all, the end would have come in the same way, the
fatality would have been accomplished by the same means.

I went out shortly after my sister had left me. I could give myself to
no occupation at home, for the rest of that night; and I knew that it
would be useless to attempt to sleep just then. As I walked through
the streets, bitter thoughts against my father rose in my mind--bitter
thoughts against his inexorable family pride, which imposed on me the
concealment and secrecy, under the oppression of which I had already
suffered so much--bitter thoughts against those social tyrannies,
which take no account of human sympathy and human love, and which my
father now impersonated, as it were, to my ideas. Gradually these
reflections merged in others that were better. I thought of Clara
again; consoling myself with the belief, that, however my father might
receive the news of my marriage, I might count upon my sister as
certain to love my wife and be kind to her, for my sake. This thought
led my heart back to Margaret--led it gently and happily. I went home,
calmed and reassured again--at least for the rest of the night.

The events of that week, so fraught with importance for the future of
my life, passed with ominous rapidity.

The marriage license was procured; all remaining preliminaries with
Mr. Sherwin were adjusted; I saw Margaret every day, and gave myself
up more and more unreservedly to the charm that she exercised over me,
at each succeeding interview. At home, the bustle of approaching
departure; the farewell visitings; the multitudinous minor
arrangements preceding a journey to the country, seemed to hurry the
hours on faster and faster, as the parting day for Clara, and the
marriage day for me, drew near. Incessant interruptions prevented any
more lengthened or private conversations with my sister; and my father
was hardly ever accessible for more than five minutes together, even
to those who specially wished to speak with him. Nothing arose to
embarrass or alarm me now, out of my intercourse with home.

The day came. I had not slept during the night that preceded it; so I
rose early to look out on the morning.

It is strange how frequently that instinctive belief in omens and
predestinations, which we flippantly term Superstition, asserts its
natural prerogative even over minds trained to repel it, at the moment
of some great event in our lives. I believe this has happened to many
more men than ever confessed it; and it happened to me. At any former
period of my life, I should have laughed at the bare imputation of a
"superstitious" feeling ever having risen in my mind. But now, as I
looked on the sky, and saw the black clouds that overspread the whole
firmament, and the heavy rain that poured down from them, an
irrepressible sinking of the heart came over me. For the last ten days
the sun had shone almost uninterruptedly--with my marriage-day came
the cloud, the mist and the rain. I tried to laugh myself out of the
forebodings which this suggested, and tried in vain.

The departure for the country was to take place at an early hour. We
all breakfasted together; the meal was hurried over comfortlessly and
silently. My father was either writing notes, or examining the
steward's accounts, almost the whole time; and Clara was evidently
incapable of uttering a single word, without risking the loss of her
self-possession. The silence was so complete, while we sat together at
the table, that the fall of the rain outside (which had grown softer
and thicker as the morning advanced), and the quick, quiet tread of
the servants, as they moved about the room, were audible with a
painful distinctness. The oppression of our last family breakfast in
London, for that year, had an influence of wretchedness which I cannot
describe--which I can never forget.

At last the hour of starting came. Clara seemed afraid to trust
herself even to look at me now. She hurriedly drew down her veil the
moment the carriage was announced. My father shook hands with me
rather coldly. I had hoped he would have said something at parting;
but he only bade me farewell in the simplest and shortest manner. I
had rather he would have spoken to me in anger than restrained himself
as he did, to what the commonest forms of courtesy required. There was
but one more slight, after this, that he could cast on me; and he did
not spare it. While my sister was taking leave of me, he waited at the
door of the room to lead her down stairs, as if he knew by intuition
that this was the last little parting attention which I had hoped to
show her myself.

Clara whispered (in such low, trembling tones that I could hardly hear
her):

"Think of what you promised in your study, Basil, whenever you think
of _me:_ I will write often."

As she raised her veil for a moment, and kissed me, I felt on my own
cheek the tears that were falling fast over hers. I followed her and
my father down stairs. When they reached the street, she gave me her
hand--it was cold and powerless. I knew that the fortitude she had
promised to show, was giving way, in spite of all her efforts to
preserve it; so I let her hurry into the carriage without detaining
her by any last words. The next instant she and my father were driven
rapidly from the door.

When I re-entered the house, my watch showed me that I had still an
hour to wait, before it was time to go to North Villa.

Between the different emotions produced by my impressions of the scene
I had just passed through, and my anticipations of the scene that was
yet to come, I suffered in that one hour as much mental conflict as
most men suffer in a life. It seemed as if I were living out all my
feelings in this short interval of delay, and must die at heart when
it was over. My restlessness was a torture to me; and yet I could not
overcome it. I wandered through the house from room to room, stopping
nowhere. I took down book after book from the library, opened them to
read, and put them back on the shelves the next instant. Over and over
again I walked to the window to occupy myself with what was passing
in the street; and each time I could not stay there for one minute
together. I went into the picture-gallery, looked along the walls, and
yet knew not what I was looking at. At last I wandered into my
father's study--the only room I had not yet visited.

A portrait of my mother hung over the fireplace: my eyes turned
towards it, and for the first time I came to a long pause. The picture
had an influence that quieted me; but what influence I hardly knew.
Perhaps it led my spirit up to the spirit that had gone from
us--perhaps those secret voices from the unknown world, which only the
soul can listen to, were loosed at that moment, and spoke within me.
While I sat looking up at the portrait, I grew strangely and suddenly
calm before it. My memory flew back to a long illness that I had
suffered from, as a child, when my little cradle-couch was placed by
my mother's bedside, and she used to sit by me in the dull evenings
and hush me to sleep. The remembrance of this brought with it a dread
imagining that she might now be hushing my spirit, from her place
among the angels of God. A stillness and awe crept over me; and I hid
my face in my hands.

The striking of the hour from a clock in the room, startled me back to
the outer world. I left the house and went at once to North Villa.

Margaret and her father and mother were in the drawing-room when I
entered it. I saw immediately that neither of the two latter had
passed the morning calmly. The impending event of the day had
exercised its agitating influence over them, as well as over me. Mrs.
Sherwin's face was pale to her very lips: not a word escaped her. Mr.
Sherwin endeavoured to assume the self-possession which he was
evidently far from feeling, by walking briskly up and down the room,
and talking incessantly--asking the most common-place questions, and
making the most common-place jokes. Margaret, to my surprise, showed
fewer symptoms of agitation than either of her parents. Except when
the colour came and went occasionally on her cheek, I could detect no
outward evidences of emotion in her at all.

The church was near at hand. As we proceeded to it, the rain fell
heavily, and the mist of the morning was thickening to a fog. We had
to wait in the vestry for the officiating clergyman. All the gloom and
dampness of the day seemed to be collected in this room--a dark, cold,
melancholy place, with one window which opened on a burial-ground
steaming in the wet. The rain pattered monotonously on the pavement
outside. While Mr. Sherwin exchanged remarks on the weather with the
clerk, (a tall, lean man, arrayed in a black gown), I sat silent, near
Mrs. Sherwin and Margaret, looking with mechanical attention at the
white surplices which hung before me in a half-opened cupboard--at the
bottle of water and tumbler, and the long-shaped books, bound in brown
leather, which were on the table. I was incapable of
speaking--incapable even of thinking--during that interval of
expectation.

At length the clergyman arrived, and we went into the church--the
church, with its desolate array of empty pews, and its chill, heavy,
week-day atmosphere. As we ranged ourselves round the altar, a
confusion overspread all my faculties. My sense of the place I was in,
and even of the ceremony in which I took part, grew more and more
vague and doubtful every minute. My attention wandered throughout the
whole service. I stammered and made mistakes in uttering the
responses. Once or twice I detected myself in feeling impatient at the
slow progress of the ceremony--it seemed to be doubly, trebly longer
than its usual length. Mixed up with this impression was another, wild
and monstrous as if it had been produced by a dream--an impression
that my father had discovered my secret, and was watching me from some
hidden place in the church; watching through the service, to denounce
and abandon me publicly at the end. This morbid fancy grew and grew on
me until the termination of the ceremony, until we had left the church
and returned to the vestry once more.

The fees were paid; we wrote our names in the books and on the
certificate; the clergyman quietly wished me happiness; the clerk
solemnly imitated him; the pew-opener smiled and curtseyed; Mr.
Sherwin made congratulatory speeches, kissed his daughter, shook hands
with me, frowned a private rebuke at his wife for shedding tears, and,
finally, led the way with Margaret out of the vestry. The rain was
still falling, as they got into the carriage. The fog was still
thickening, as I stood alone under the portico of the church, and
tried to realise to myself that I was married.

_Married!_ The son of the proudest man in England, the inheritor of a
name written on the roll of Battle Abbey, wedded to a linen-draper's
daughter! And what a marriage! What a condition weighed on it! What a
probation was now to follow it! Why had I consented so easily to Mr.
Sherwin's proposals? Would he not have given way, if I had only been
resolute enough to insist on my own conditions?

How useless to inquire! I had made the engagement and must abide by
it--abide by it cheerfully until the year was over, and she was mine
for ever. This must be my all-sufficing thought for the future. No
more reflections on consequences, no more forebodings about the effect
of the disclosure of my secret on my family--the leap into a new life
had been taken, and, lead where it might, it was a leap that could
never be retraced!

Mr. Sherwin had insisted, with the immovable obstinacy which
characterises all feeble-minded people in the management of their
important affairs, that the first clause in our agreement (the leaving
my wife at the church-door) should be performed to the letter. As a
due compensation for this, I was to dine at North Villa that day. How
should I employ the interval that was to elapse before the
dinner-hour?

I went home, and had my horse saddled. I was in no mood for remaining
in an empty house, in no mood for calling on any of my friends--I was
fit for nothing but a gallop through the rain. All my wearing and
depressing emotions of the morning, had now merged into a wild
excitement of body and mind. When the horse was brought round, I saw
with delight that the groom could hardly hold him. "Keep him well in
hand, Sir," said the man, "he's not been out for three days." I was
just in the humour for such a ride as the caution promised me.

And what a ride it was, when I fairly got out of London; and the
afternoon brightening of the foggy atmosphere, showed the smooth,
empty high road before me! The dashing through the rain that still
fell; the feel of the long, powerful, regular stride of the horse
under me; the thrill of that physical sympathy which establishes
itself between the man and the steed; the whirling past carts and
waggons, saluted by the frantic barking of dogs inside them; the
flying by roadside alehouses, with the cheering of boys and
half-drunken men sounding for an instant behind me, then lost in the
distance--this was indeed to occupy, to hurry on, to annihilate the
tardy hours of solitude on my wedding day, exactly as my heart
desired!

I got home wet through; but with my body in a glow from the exercise,
with my spirits boiling up at fever heat. When I arrived at North
Villa, the change in my manner astonished every one. At dinner, I
required no pressing now to partake of the sherry which Mr. Sherwin
was so fond of extolling, nor of the port which he brought out
afterwards, with a preliminary account of the vintage-date of the
wine, and the price of each bottle. My spirits, factitious as they
were, never flagged. Every time I looked at Margaret, the sight of her
stimulated them afresh. She seemed pre-occupied, and was unusually
silent during dinner; but her beauty was just that voluptuous beauty
which is loveliest in repose. I had never felt its influence so
powerful over me as I felt it then.

In the drawing-room, Margaret's manner grew more familiar, more
confident towards me than it had ever been before. She spoke to me in
warmer tones, looked at me with warmer looks. A hundred little
incidents marked our wedding-evening--trifles that love treasures
up--which still remain in my memory. One among them, at least, will
never depart from it: I first kissed her on that evening.

Mr. Sherwin had gone out of the room; Mrs. Sherwin was at the other
end of it, watering some plants at the window; Margaret, by her
father's desire, was showing me some rare prints. She handed me a
magnifying glass, through which I was to look at a particular part of
one of the engravings, that was considered a master-piece of delicate
workmanship. Instead of applying the magnifying test to the print, for
which I cared nothing, I laughingly applied it to Margaret's face. Her
lovely lustrous black eye seemed to flash into mine through the glass;
her warm, quick breathing played on my cheek--it was but for an
instant, and in that instant I kissed her for the first time. What
sensations the kiss gave me then!--what remembrances it has left me
now!

It was one more proof how tenderly, how purely I loved her, that,
before this time, I had feared to take the first love-privilege which
I had longed to assert, and might well have asserted, before. Men may
not understand this; women, I believe, will.

The hour of departure arrived; the inexorable hour which was to
separate me from my wife on my wedding evening. Shall I confess what I
felt, on the first performance of my ill-considered promise to Mr.
Sherwin? No: I kept this a secret from Margaret; I will keep it a
secret here.

I took leave of her as hurriedly and abruptly as possible--I could not
trust myself to quit her in any other way. She had contrived to slip
aside into the darkest part of the room, so that I only saw her face
dimly at parting.

I went home at once. When I lay down to sleep--then the ordeal which I
had been unconsciously preparing for myself throughout the day, began
to try me. Every nerve in my body, strung up to the extremest point of
tension since the morning, now at last gave way. I felt my limbs
quivering, till the bed shook under me. I was possessed by a gloom and
horror, caused by no thought, and producing no thought: the thinking
faculty seemed paralysed within me, altogether. The physical and
mental reaction, after the fever and agitation of the day, was so
sudden and severe, that the faintest noise from the street now
terrified--yes, literally terrified me. The whistling of the
wind--which had risen since sunset--made me start up in bed, with my
heart throbbing, and my blood all chill. When no sounds were audible,
then I listened for them to come--listened breathlessly, without
daring to move. At last, the agony of nervous prostration grew more
than I could bear--grew worse even than the child's horror of walking
in the darkness, and sleeping alone on the bed-room floor, which had
overcome me, almost from the first moment when I laid down. I groped
my way to the table and lit the candle again; then wrapped my
dressing-gown round me, and sat shuddering near the light, to watch
the weary hours out till morning.

And this was my wedding-night! This was how the day ended which had
begun by my marriage with Margaret Sherwin!

PART II.

I.

AN epoch in my narrative has now arrived. Up to the time of my
marriage, I have appeared as an active agent in the different events I
have described. After that period, and--with one or two exceptional
cases--throughout the whole year of my probation, my position changed
with the change in my life, and became a passive one.

During this interval year, certain events happened, some of which, at
the time, excited my curiosity, but none my apprehension--some
affected me with a temporary disappointment, but none with even a
momentary suspicion. I can now look back on them, as so many timely
warnings which I treated with fatal neglect. It is in these events
that the history of the long year through which I waited to claim my
wife as my own, is really comprised. They marked the lapse of time
broadly and significantly; and to them I must now confine myself, as
exclusively as may be, in the present portion of my narrative.

It will be first necessary, however, that I should describe what was
the nature of my intercourse with Margaret, during the probationary
period which followed our marriage.

Mr. Sherwin's anxiety was to make my visits to North Villa as few as
possible: he evidently feared the consequences of my seeing his
daughter too often. But on this point, I was resolute enough in
asserting my own interests, to overpower any resistance on his part. I
required him to concede to me the right of seeing Margaret every
day--leaving all arrangements of time to depend on his own
convenience. After the due number of objections, he reluctantly
acquiesced in my demand. I was bound by no engagement whatever,
limiting the number of my visits to Margaret; and I let him see at the
outset, that I was now ready in my turn, to impose conditions on him,
as he had already imposed them on me.

Accordingly, it was settled that Margaret and I were to meet every
day. I usually saw her in the evening. When any alteration in the hour
of my visit took place, that alteration was produced by the necessity
(which we all recognised alike) of avoiding a meeting with any of Mr.
Sherwin's friends.

Those portions of the day or the evening which I spent with Margaret,
were seldom passed altogether in the Elysian idleness of love. Not
content with only enumerating his daughter's school-accomplishments to
me at our first interview, Mr. Sherwin boastfully referred to them
again and again, on many subsequent occasions; and even obliged
Margaret to display before me, some of her knowledge of
languages--which he never forgot to remind us had been lavishly paid
for out of his own pocket. It was at one of these exhibitions that the
idea occurred to me of making a new pleasure for myself out of
Margaret's society, by teaching her really to appreciate and enjoy the
literature which she had evidently hitherto only studied as a task. My
fancy revelled by anticipation in all the delights of such an
employment as this. It would be like acting the story of Abelard and
Heloise over again--reviving all the poetry and romance in which those
immortal love-studies of old had begun, with none of the guilt and
none of the misery that had darkened their end.

I had a definite purpose, besides, in wishing to assume the direction
of Margaret's studies. Whenever the secret of my marriage was
revealed, my pride was concerned in being able to show my wife to
every one, as the all-sufficient excuse for any imprudence I might
have committed for her sake. I was determined that my father,
especially, should have no other argument against her than the one
ungracious argument of her birth--that he should see her, fitted by
the beauty of her mind, as well as by all her other beauties, for the
highest station that society could offer. The thought of this gave me
fresh ardour in my project; I assumed my new duties without delay, and
continued them with a happiness which never once suffered even a
momentary decrease.

Of all the pleasures which a man finds in the society of a woman whom
he loves, are there any superior, are there many equal, to the
pleasure of reading out of the same book with her? On what other
occasion do the sweet familiarities of the sweetest of all
companionships last so long without cloying, and pass and re-pass so
naturally, so delicately, so inexhaustibly between you and her? When
is your face so constantly close to hers as it is then?--when can your
hair mingle with hers, your cheek touch hers, your eyes meet hers, so
often as they can then? That is, of all times, the only time when you
can breathe with her breath for hours together; feel every little
warming of the colour on her cheek marking its own changes on the
temperature of yours; follow every slight fluttering of her bosom,
every faint gradation of her sighs, as if _her_ heart was beating,
_her_ life glowing, within yours. Surely it is then--if ever--that we
realize, almost revive, in ourselves, the love of the first two of our
race, when angels walked with them on the same garden paths, and their
hearts were pure from the pollution of the fatal tree!

Evening after evening passed away--one more happily than another--in
what Margaret and I called our lessons. Never were lessons of
literature so like lessons of love We read oftenest the lighter
Italian poets--we studied the poetry of love, written in the language
of love. But, as for the steady, utilitarian purpose I had proposed to
myself of practically improving Margaret's intellect, that was a
purpose which insensibly and deceitfully abandoned me as completely as
if it had never existed. The little serious teaching I tried with her
at first, led to very poor results. Perhaps, the lover interfered too
much with the tutor; perhaps, I had over-estimated the fertility of
the faculties I designed to cultivate--but I cared not, and thought
not to inquire where the fault lay, then. I gave myself up
unreservedly to the exquisite sensations which the mere act of looking
on the same page with Margaret procured for me; and neither detected,
nor wished to detect, that it was I who read the difficult passages,
and left only a few even of the very easiest to be attempted by her.

Happily for my patience under the trial imposed on me by the terms on
which Mr. Sherwin's restrictions, and my promise to obey them, obliged
me to live with Margaret, it was Mrs. Sherwin who was generally
selected to remain in the room with us. By no one could such
ungrateful duties of supervision as those imposed on her, have been
more delicately and more considerately performed.

She always kept far enough away to be out of hearing when we whispered
to each other. We rarely detected her even in looking at us. She had a
way of sitting for hours together in the same part of the room,
without ever changing her position, without occupation of any kind,
without uttering a word, or breathing a sigh. I soon discovered that
she was not lost in thought, at these periods (as I had at first
supposed): but lost in a strange lethargy of body and mind; a
comfortless, waking trance, into which she fell from sheer physical
weakness--it was like the vacancy and feebleness of a first
convalescence, after a long illness. She never changed: never looked
better, never worse. I often spoke to her: I tried hard to show my
sympathy, and win her confidence and friendship. The poor lady was
always thankful, always spoke to me gratefully and kindly, but very
briefly. She never told me what were her sufferings or her sorrows.
The story of that lonely, lingering life was an impenetrable mystery
for her own family--for her husband and her daughter, as well as for
me. It was a secret between her and God.

With Mrs. Sherwin as the guardian to watch over Margaret, it may
easily be imagined that I felt none of the heavier oppressions of
restraint. Her presence, as the third person appointed to remain with
us, was not enough to repress the little endearments to which each
evening's lesson gave rise; but was just sufficiently perceptible to
invest them with the character of stolen endearments, and to make them
all the more precious on that very account. Mrs. Sherwin never knew, I
never thoroughly knew myself till later, how much of the secret of my
patience under my year's probation lay in her conduct, while she was
sitting in the room with Margaret and me.

In this solitude where I now write--in the change of life and of all
life's hopes and enjoyments which has come over me--when I look back
to those evenings at North Villa, I shudder as I look. At this moment,
I see the room again--as in a dream--with the little round table, the
reading lamp, and the open books. Margaret and I are sitting together:
her hand is in mine; my heart is with hers. Love, and Youth, and
Beauty--the mortal Trinity of this world's worship--are there, in that
quiet softly-lit room; but not alone. Away in the dim light behind, is
a solitary figure, ever mournful and ever still. It is a woman's form;
but how wasted and how weak!--a woman's face; but how ghastly and
changeless, with those eyes that are vacant, those lips that are
motionless, those cheeks that the blood never tinges, that the
freshness of health and happiness shall never visit again! Woeful,
warning figure of dumb sorrow and patient pain, to fill the background
of a picture of Love, and Beauty, and Youth!

I am straying from my task. Let me return to my narrative: its course
begins to darken before me apace, while I now write.

The partial restraint and embarrassment, caused at first by the
strange terms on which my wife and I were living together, gradually
vanished before the frequency of my visits to North Villa. We soon
began to speak with all the ease, all the unpremeditated frankness of
a long intimacy. Margaret's powers of conversation were generally only
employed to lead me to exert mine. She was never tired of inducing me
to speak of my family. She listened with every appearance of interest,
while I talked of my father, my sister, or my elder brother; but
whenever she questioned me directly about any of them, her inquiries
invariably led away from their characters and dispositions, to their
personal appearance, their every-day habits, their dress, their
intercourse with the gay world, the things they spent their money on,
and other topics of a similar nature.

For instance; she always listened, and listened attentively, to what I
told her of my father's character, and of the principles which
regulated his life. She showed every disposition to profit by the
instructions I gave her beforehand, about how she should treat his
peculiarities when she was introduced to him. But, on all these
occasions, what really interested her most, was to hear how many
servants waited on him; how often he went to Court; how many lords and
ladies he knew; what he said or did to his servants, when they
committed mistakes; whether he was ever angry with his children for
asking him for money; and whether he limited my sister to any given
number of dresses in the course of the year?

Again; whenever our conversation turned on Clara, if I began by
describing her kindness, her gentleness and goodness, her simple
winning manners--I was sure to be led insensibly into a digression
about her height, figure, complexion, and style of dress. The latter
subject especially interested Margaret; she could question me on it,
over and over again. What was Clara's usual morning dress? How did she
wear her hair? What was her evening dress? Did she make a difference
between a dinner party and a ball? What colours did she prefer? What
dressmaker did she employ? Did she wear much jewellery? Which did she
like best in her hair, and which were most fashionable, flowers or
pearls? How many new dresses did she have in a year; and was there
more than one maid especially to attend on her?

Then, again: Had she a carriage of her own? What ladies took care of
her when she went out? Did she like dancing? What were the fashionable
dances at noblemen's houses? Did young ladies in the great world
practise the pianoforte much? How many offers had my sister had? Did
she go to Court, as well as my father? What did she talk about to
gentlemen, and what did gentlemen talk about to her? If she were
speaking to a duke, how often would she say "your Grace" to him? and
would a duke get her a chair, or an ice, and wait on her just as
gentlemen without titles waited on ladies, when they met them in
society?

My replies to these and hundreds of other questions like them, were
received by Margaret with the most eager attention. On the favourite
subject of Clara's dresses, my answers were an unending source of
amusement and pleasure to her. She especially enjoyed overcoming the
difficulties of interpreting aright my clumsy, circumlocutory phrases
in attempting to describe shawls, gowns, and bonnets; and taught me
the exact millinery language which I ought to have made use of with an
arch expression of triumph and a burlesque earnestness of manner, that
always enchanted me. At that time, every word she uttered, no matter
how frivolous, was the sweetest of all music to my ears. It was only
by the stern test of after-events that I learnt to analyse her
conversation. Sometimes, when I was away from her, I might think of
leading her girlish curiosity to higher things; but when we met again,
the thought vanished; and it became delight enough for me simply to
hear her speak, without once caring or considering what she spoke of.

Those were the days when I lived happy and unreflecting in the broad
sunshine of joy which love showered round me--my eyes were dazzled; my
mind lay asleep under it. Once or twice, a cloud came threatening,
with chill and shadowy influence; but it passed away, and then the
sunshine returned to me, the same sunshine that it was before.

II.

The first change that passed over the calm uniformity of the life at
North Villa, came in this manner:

One evening, on entering the drawing-room, I missed Mrs. Sherwin; and
found to my great disappointment that her husband was apparently
settled there for the evening. He looked a little flurried, and was
more restless than usual. His first words, as we met, informed me of
an event in which he appeared to take the deepest interest.

"News, my dear sir!" he said. "Mr. Mannion has come back--at least two
days before I expected him!"

At first, I felt inclined to ask who Mr. Mannion was, and what
consequence it could possibly be to me that he had come back. But
immediately afterwards, I remembered that this Mr. Mannion's name had
been mentioned during my first conversation with Mr. Sherwin; and then
I recalled to mind the description I had heard of him, as
"confidential clerk;" as forty years of age; and as an educated man,
who had made his information of some use to Margaret in keeping up the
knowledge she had acquired at school. I knew no more than this about
him, and I felt no curiosity to discover more from Mr. Sherwin.

Margaret and I sat down as usual with our books about us.

There had been something a little hurried and abrupt in her manner of
receiving me, when I came in. When we began to read, her attention
wandered incessantly; she looked round several times towards the door.
Mr. Sherwin walked about the room without intermission, except when he
once paused on his restless course, to tell me that Mr. Mannion was
coming that evening; and that he hoped I should have no objection to
be introduced to a person who was "quite like one of the family, and
well enough read to be sure to please a great reader like me." I asked
myself rather impatiently, who was this Mr. Mannion, that his arrival
at his employer's house should make a sensation? When I whispered
something of this to Margaret, she smiled rather uneasily, and said
nothing.

At last the bell was rung. Margaret started a little at the sound. Mr.
Sherwin sat down; composing himself into rather an elaborate
attitude--the door opened, and Mr. Mannion came in.

Mr. Sherwin received his clerk with the assumed superiority of the
master in his words; but his tones and manner flatly contradicted
them. Margaret rose hastily, and then as hastily sat down again, while
the visitor very respectfully took her hand, and made the usual
inquiries. After this, he was introduced to me; and then Margaret was
sent away to summon her mother down stairs. While she was out of the
room, there was nothing to distract my attention from Mr. Mannion. I
looked at him with a curiosity and interest, Which I could hardly
account for at first.

If extraordinary regularity of feature were alone sufficient to make a
handsome man, then this confidential clerk of Mr. Sherwin's was
assuredly one of the handsomest men I ever beheld. Viewed separately
from the head (which was rather large, both in front and behind) his
face exhibited, throughout, an almost perfect symmetry of proportion.
His bald forehead was smooth and massive as marble; his high brow and
thin eyelids had the firmness and immobility of marble, and seemed as
cold; his delicately-formed lips, when he was not speaking, closed
habitually, as changelessly still as if no breath of life ever passed
them. There was not a wrinkle or line anywhere on his face. But for
the baldness in front, and the greyness of the hair at the back and
sides of his head, it would have been impossible from his appearance
to have guessed his age, even within ten years of what it really was.

Such was his countenance in point of form; but in that which is the
outward assertion of our immortality--in expression--it was, as I now
beheld it, an utter void. Never had I before seen any human face which
baffled all inquiry like his. No mask could have been made
expressionless enough to resemble it; and yet it looked like a mask.
It told you nothing of his thoughts, when he spoke: nothing of his
disposition, when he was silent. His cold grey eyes gave you no help
in trying to study him. They never varied from the steady,
straightforward look, which was exactly the same for Margaret as it
was for me; for Mrs. Sherwin as for Mr. Sherwin--exactly the same
whether he spoke or whether he listened; whether he talked of
indifferent, or of important matters. Who was he? What was he? His
name and calling were poor replies to those questions. Was he
naturally cold and unimpressible at heart? or had some fierce passion,
some terrible sorrow, ravaged the life within him, and left it dead
for ever after? Impossible to conjecture! There was the impenetrable
face before you, wholly inexpressive--so inexpressive that it did not
even look vacant--a mystery for your eyes and your mind to dwell
on--hiding something; but whether vice or virtue you could not tell.

He was dressed as unobtrusively as possible, entirely in black; and
was rather above the middle height. His manner was the only part of
him that betrayed anything to the observation of others. Viewed in
connection with his station, his demeanour (unobtrusive though it was)
proclaimed itself as above his position in the world. He had all the
quietness and self-possession of a gentleman. He maintained his
respectful bearing, without the slightest appearance of cringing; and
displayed a decision, both in word and action, that could never be
mistaken for obstinacy or over-confidence. Before I had been in his
company five minutes, his manner assured me that he must have
descended to the position he now occupied.

On his introduction to me, he bowed without saying anything. When he
spoke to Mr. Sherwin, his voice was as void of expression as his face:
it was rather low in tone, but singularly distinct in utterance. He
spoke deliberately, but with no emphasis on particular words, and
without hesitation in choosing his terms.

When Mrs. Sherwin came down, I watched her conduct towards him. She
could not repress a slight nervous shrinking, when he approached and
placed a chair for her. In answering his inquiries after her health,
she never once looked at him; but fixed her eyes all the time on
Margaret and me, with a sad, anxious expression, wholly indescribable,
which often recurred to my memory after that day. She always looked
more or less frightened, poor thing, in her husband's presence; but
she seemed positively awe-struck before Mr. Mannion.

In truth, my first observation of this so-called clerk, at North
Villa, was enough to convince me that he was master there--master in
his own quiet, unobtrusive way. That man's character, of whatever
elements it might be composed, was a character that ruled. I could not
see this in his face, or detect it in his words; but I could discover
it in the looks and manners of his employer and his employer's family,
as he now sat at the same table with them. Margaret's eyes avoided his
countenance much less frequently than the eyes of her parents; but
then he rarely looked at her in return--rarely looked at her at all,
except when common courtesy obliged him to do so.

If any one had told me beforehand, that I should suspend my ordinary
evening's occupation with my young wife, for the sake of observing the
very man who had interrupted it, and that man only Mr. Sherwin's
clerk, I should have laughed at the idea. Yet so it was. Our books lay
neglected on the table--neglected by me, perhaps by Margaret too, for
Mr. Mannion.

His conversation, on this occasion at least, baffled all curiosity as
completely as his face. I tried to lead him to talk. He just answered
me, and that was all; speaking with great respect of manner and
phrase, very intelligibly, but very briefly. Mr. Sherwin--after
referring to the business expedition on which he had been absent, for
the purchase of silks at Lyons--asked him some questions about France
and the French, which evidently proceeded from the most ludicrous
ignorance both of the country and the people. Mr. Mannion just set him
right; and did no more. There was not the smallest inflection of
sarcasm in his voice, not the slightest look of sarcasm in his eye,
while he spoke. When we talked among ourselves, he did not join in the
conversation; but sat quietly waiting until he might be pointedly and
personally addressed again. At these times a suspicion crossed my mind
that he might really be studying my character, as I was vainly trying
to study his; and I often turned suddenly round on him, to see whether
he was looking at me. This was never the case. His hard, chill grey
eyes were not on me, and not on Margaret: they rested most frequently
on Mrs. Sherwin, who always shrank before them.

After staying little more than half an hour, he rose to go away. While
Mr. Sherwin was vainly pressing him to remain longer, I walked to the
round table at the other end of the room, on which the book was placed
that Margaret and I had intended to read during the evening. I was
standing by the table when he came to take leave of me. He just
glanced at the volume under my hand, and said in tones too low to be
heard at the other end of the room:

"I hope my arrival has not interrupted any occupation to-night, Sir.
Mr. Sherwin, aware of the interest I must feel in whatever concerns
the family of an employer whom I have served for years, has informed
me in confidence--a confidence which I know how to respect and
preserve--of your marriage with his daughter, and of the peculiar
circumstances under which the marriage has been contracted. I may at
least venture to congratulate the young lady on a change of life which
must procure her happiness, having begun already by procuring the
increase of her mental resources and pleasures." He bowed, and pointed
to the book on the table.

"I believe, Mr. Mannion," I said, "that you have been of great
assistance in laying a foundation for the studies to which I presume
you refer."

"I endeavoured to make myself useful in that way, Sir, as in all
others, when my employer desired it." He bowed again, as he said this;
and then went out, followed by Mr. Sherwin, who held a short colloquy
with him in the hall.

What had he said to me? Only a few civil words, spoken in a very
respectful manner. There had been nothing in his tones, nothing in his
looks, to give any peculiar significance to what he uttered. Still,
the moment his back was turned, I found myself speculating whether his
words contained any hidden meaning; trying to recall something in his
voice or manner which might guide me in discovering the real sense he
attached to what he said. It seemed as if the most powerful whet to my
curiosity, were supplied by my own experience of the impossibility of
penetrating beneath the unassailable surface which this man presented
to me.

I questioned Margaret about him. She could not tell me more than I
knew already. He had always been very kind and useful; he was a clever
man, and could talk a great deal sometimes, when he chose; and he had
taught her more of foreign languages and foreign literature in a
month, than she had learned at school in a year. While she was telling
me this, I hardly noticed that she spoke in a very hurried manner, and
busied herself in arranging the books and work that lay on the table.
My attention was more closely directed to Mrs. Sherwin. To my
surprise, I saw her eagerly lean forward while Margaret was speaking,
and fix her eyes on her daughter with a look of penetrating scrutiny,
of which I could never have supposed a person usually so feeble and
unenergetic to be capable. I thought of transferring to her my
questionings on the subject of Mr. Mannion; but at that moment her
husband entered the room, and I addressed myself for further
enlightenment to him.

"Aha!"--cried Mr. Sherwin, rubbing his hands triumphantly--"I knew
Mannion would please you. I told you so, my dear Sir, if you remember,
before he came. Curious looking person--isn't he?"

"So curious, that I may safely say I never saw a face in the slightest
degree resembling his in my life. Your clerk, Mr. Sherwin, is a
complete walking mystery that I want to solve. Margaret cannot give me
much help, I am afraid. When you came in, I was about to apply to Mrs.
Sherwin for a little assistance."

"Don't do any such thing! You'll be quite in the wrong box there. Mrs.
S. is as sulky as a bear, whenever Mannion and she are in company
together. Considering her behaviour to him, I wonder he can be so
civil to her as he is."

"What can you tell me about him yourself, Mr. Sherwin?"

"I can tell you there's not a house of business in London has such a
managing man as he is: he's my factotum--my right hand, in short; and
my left too, for the matter of that. He understands my ways of doing
business; and, in fact, carries things out in first-rate style. Why,
he'd be worth his weight in gold, only for the knack he has of keeping
the young men in the shop in order. Poor devils! they don't know how
he does it; but there's a particular look of Mr. Mannion's that's as
bad as transportation and hanging to them, whenever they see it. I'll
pledge you my word of honour he's never had a day's illness, or made a
single mistake, since he's been with me. He's a quiet, steady-going,
regular dragon at his work--he is! And then, so obliging in other
things. I've only got to say to him: 'Here's Margaret at home for the
holidays;' or, 'Here's Margaret a little out of sorts, and going to be
nursed at home for the half-year--what's to be done about keeping up
her lessons? I can't pay for a governess (bad lot, governesses!) and
school too.'--I've only got to say that; and up gets Mannion from his
books and his fireside at home, in the evening--which begins to be
something, you know, to a man of his time of life--and turns tutor for
me, gratis; and a first-rate tutor, too! That's what I call having a
treasure! And yet, though he's been with us for years, Mrs. S. there
won't take to him!--I defy her or anybody else to say why, or
wherefore!"

"Do you know how he was employed before he came to you?"

"Ah! now you've hit it--that's where you're right in saying he's a
mystery. What he did before I knew him, is more than I can tell--a
good deal more. He came to me with a capital recommendation and
security, from a gentleman whom I knew to be of the highest
respectability. I had a vacancy in the back office, and tried him, and
found out what he was worth, in no time--I flatter myself I've a knack
at that with everybody. Well: before I got used to his curious-looking
face, and his quiet ways, I wanted badly enough to know something
about him, and who his connections were. First, I asked his friend who
had recommended him--the friend wasn't at liberty to answer for
anything but his perfect trustworthiness. Then I asked Mannion himself
point-blank about it, one day. He just told me that he had reasons for
keeping his family affairs to himself--nothing more--but you know the
way he has with him; and, damn it, he put the stopper on me, from that
time to this. I wasn't going to risk losing the best clerk that ever
man had, by worrying him about his secrets. They didn't interfere with
business, and didn't interfere with me; so I put my curiosity in my
pocket. I know nothing about him, but that he's my right-hand man, and
the honestest fellow that ever stood in shoes. He may be the Great
Mogul himself, in disguise, for anything I care! In short, you may be
able to find out all about him, my dear Sir; but I can't."

"There does not seem much chance for me, Mr. Sherwin, after what you
have said."

"Well: I'm not so sure of that--plenty of chances here, you know.
You'll see him often enough: he lives near, and drops in constantly of
evenings. We settle business matters that won't come into business
hours, in my private snuggery up stairs. In fact, he's one of the
family; treat him as such, and get anything out of him you can--the
more the better, as far as regards that. Ah! Mrs. S., you may stare,
Ma'am; but I say again, he's one of the family; may be, he'll be my
partner some of these days--you'll have to get used to him then,
whether you like it or not."

"One more question: is he married or single?"

"Single, to be sure--a regular old bachelor, if ever there was one
yet."

During the whole time we had been speaking, Mrs. Sherwin had looked at
us with far more earnestness and attention than I had ever seen her
display before. Even her languid faculties seemed susceptible of
active curiosity on the subject of Mr. Mannion--the more so, perhaps,
from her very dislike of him. Margaret had moved her chair into the
background, while her father was talking; and was apparently little
interested in the topic under discussion. In the first interval of
silence, she complained of headache, and asked leave to retire to her
room.

After she left us, I took my departure: for Mr. Sherwin evidently had
nothing more to tell me about his clerk that was worth hearing. On my
way home, Mr. Mannion occupied no small share of my thoughts. The idea
of trying to penetrate the mystery connected with him was an idea that
pleased me; there was a promise of future excitement in it of no
ordinary kind. I determined to have a little private conversation with
Margaret about him; and to make her an ally in my new project. If
there really had been some romance connected with Mr. Mannion's early
life--if that strange and striking face of his was indeed a sealed
book which contained a secret story, what a triumph and a pleasure, if
Margaret and I should succeed in discovering it together!

When I woke the next morning, I could hardly believe that this
tradesman's clerk had so interested my curiosity that he had actually
shared my thoughts with my young wife, during the evening before. And
yet, when I next saw him, he produced exactly the same impression on
me again.

III.

Some weeks passed away; Margaret and I resumed our usual employments
and amusements; the life at North Villa ran on as smoothly and
obscurely as usual--and still I remained ignorant of Mr. Mannion's
history and Mr. Mannion's character. He came frequently to the house,
in the evening; but was generally closeted with Mr. Sherwin, and
seldom accepted his employer's constant invitation to him to join the
party in the drawing-room. At those rare intervals when we did see
him, his appearance and behaviour were exactly the same as on the
night when I had met him for the first time; he spoke just as seldom,
and resisted just as resolutely and respectfully the many attempts
made on my part to lead him into conversation and familiarity. If he
had really been trying to excite my interest, he could not have
succeeded more effectually. I felt towards him much as a man feels in
a labyrinth, when every fresh failure in gaining the centre, only
produces fresh obstinacy in renewing the effort to arrive at it.

From Margaret I gained no sympathy for my newly-aroused curiosity. She
appeared, much to my surprise, to care little about Mr. Mannion; and
always changed the conversation, if it related to him, whenever it
depended upon her to continue the topic or not.

Mrs. Sherwin's conduct was far from resembling her daughter's, when I
spoke to her on the same subject. She always listened intently to what
I said; but her answers were invariably brief, confused, and sometimes
absolutely incomprehensible. It was only after great difficulty that I
induced her to confess her dislike of Mr. Mannion. Whence it proceeded
she could never tell. Did she suspect anything? In answering this
question, she always stammered, trembled, and looked away from me.
"How could she suspect anything? If she did suspect, it would be very
wrong without good reason: but she ought not to suspect, and did not,
of course."

I never obtained any replies from her more intelligible than these.
Attributing their confusion to the nervous agitation which more or
less affected her when she spoke on any subject, I soon ceased making
any efforts to induce her to explain herself; and determined to search
for the clue to Mr. Mannion's character, without seeking assistance
from any one.

Accident at length gave me an opportunity of knowing something of his
habits and opinions; and so far, therefore, of knowing something about
the man himself.

One night, I met him in the hall at North Villa, about to leave the
house at the same time that I was, after a business-consultation in
private with Mr. Sherwin. We went out together. The sky was unusually
black; the night atmosphere unusually oppressive and still. The roll
of distant thunder sounded faint and dreary all about us. The sheet
lightning, flashing quick and low in the horizon, made the dark
firmament look like a thick veil, rising and falling incessantly, over
a heaven of dazzling light behind it. Such few foot-passengers as
passed us, passed running--for heavy, warning drops were falling
already from the sky. We quickened our pace; but before we had walked
more than two hundred yards, the rain came down, furious and
drenching; and the thunder began to peal fearfully, right over our
heads.

"My house is close by," said my companion, just as quietly and
deliberately as usual--"pray step in, Sir, until the storm is over."

I followed him down a bye street; he opened a door with his own key;
and the next instant I was sheltered under Mr. Mannion's roof.

He led me at once into a room on the ground floor. The fire was
blazing in the grate; an arm-chair, with a reading easel attached, was
placed by it; the lamp was ready lit; the tea-things were placed on
the table; the dark, thick curtains were drawn close over the window;
and, as if to complete the picture of comfort before me, a large black
cat lay on the rug, basking luxuriously in the heat of the fire. While
Mr. Mannion went out to give some directions, as he said, to his
servant, I had an opportunity of examining the apartment more in
detail. To study the appearance of a man's dwelling-room, is very
often nearly equivalent to studying his own character.

The personal contrast between Mr. Sherwin and his clerk was remarkable
enough, but the contrast between the dimensions and furnishing of the
rooms they lived in, was to the full as extraordinary. The apartment I
now surveyed was less than half the size of the sitting-room at North
Villa. The paper on the walls was of a dark red; the curtains were of
the same colour; the carpet was brown, and if it bore any pattern,
that pattern was too quiet and unpretending to be visible by
candlelight. One wall was entirely occupied by rows of dark mahogany
shelves, completely filled with books, most of them cheap editions of
the classical works of ancient and modern literature. The opposite
wall was thickly hung with engravings in maple-wood frames from the
works of modern painters, English and French. All the minor articles
of furniture were of the plainest and neatest order--even the white
china tea-pot and tea-cup on the table, had neither pattern nor
colouring of any kind. What a contrast was this room to the
drawing-room at North Villa!

On his return, Mr. Mannion found me looking at his tea-equipage. "I am
afraid, Sir, I must confess myself an epicure and a prodigal in two
things," he said; "an epicure in tea, and a prodigal (at least for a
person in my situation) in books. However, I receive a liberal salary,
and can satisfy my tastes, such as they are, and save money too. What
can I offer you, Sir?"

Seeing the preparations on the table, I asked for tea. While he was
speaking to me, there was one peculiarity about him that I observed.
Almost all men, when they stand on their own hearths, in their own
homes, instinctively alter more or less from their out-of-door manner:
the stiffest people expand, the coldest thaw a little, by their own
firesides. It was not so with Mr. Mannion. He was exactly the same man
at his own house that he was at Mr. Sherwin's.

There was no need for him to have told me that he was an epicure in
tea; the manner in which he made it would have betrayed that to
anybody. He put in nearly treble the quantity which would generally be
considered sufficient for two persons; and almost immediately after he
had filled the tea-pot with boiling water, began to pour from it into
the cups--thus preserving all the aroma and delicacy of flavour in the
herb, without the alloy of any of the coarser part of its strength.
When we had finished our first cups, there was no pouring of dregs
into a basin, or of fresh water on the leaves. A middle-aged female
servant, neat and quiet, came up and took away the tray, bringing it
to us again with the tea-pot and tea-cups clean and empty, to receive
a fresh infusion from fresh leaves. These were trifles to notice; but
I thought of other tradesmen's clerks who were drinking their
gin-and-water jovially, at home or at a tavern, and found Mr. Mannion
a more exasperating mystery to me than ever.

The conversation between us turned at first on trivial subjects, and
was but ill sustained on my part--there were peculiarities in my
present position which made me thoughtful. Once, our talk ceased
altogether; and, just at that moment, the storm began to rise to its
height. Hail mingled with the rain, and rattled heavily against the
window. The thunder, bursting louder and louder with each successive
peal, seemed to shake the house to its foundations. As I listened to
the fearful crashing and roaring that seemed to fill the whole
measureless void of upper air, and then looked round on the calm,
dead-calm face of the man beside me--without one human emotion of any
kind even faintly pictured on it--I felt strange, unutterable
sensations creeping over me; our silence grew oppressive and sinister;
I began to wish, I hardly knew why, for some third person in the
room--for somebody else to look at and to speak to.

He was the first to resume the conversation. I should have imagined it
impossible for any man, in the midst of such thunder as now raged
above our heads, to think or talk of anything but the storm. And yet,
when he spoke, it was merely on a subject connected with his
introduction to me at North Villa. His attention seemed as far from
being attracted or impressed by the mighty elemental tumult without,
as if the tranquillity of the night were uninvaded by the slightest
murmur of sound.

"May I inquire, Sir," he began, "whether I am right in apprehending
that my conduct towards you, since we first met at Mr. Sherwin's
house, may have appeared strange, and even discourteous, in your
eyes?"

"In what respect, Mr. Mannion?" I asked, a little startled by the
abruptness of the question.

"I am perfectly sensible, Sir, that you have kindly set me the
example, on many occasions, in trying to better our acquaintance. When
such advances are made by one in your station to one in mine, they
ought to be immediately and gratefully responded to."

Why did he pause? Was he about to tell me he had discovered that my
advances sprang from curiosity to know more about him than he was
willing to reveal? I waited for him to proceed.

"I have only failed," he continued, "in the courtesy and gratitude you
had a right to expect from me, because, knowing how you were situated
with Mr. Sherwin's daughter, I thought any intrusion on my part, while
you were with the young lady, might not be so acceptable as you, Sir,
in your kindness, were willing to lead me to believe."

"Let me assure you," I answered; relieved to find myself unsuspected,
and really impressed by his delicacy--"let me assure you that I fully
appreciate the consideration you have shown--"

Just as the last words passed my lips, the thunder pealed awfully over
the house. I said no more: the sound silenced me.

"As my explanation has satisfied you, Sir," he went on; his clear and
deliberate utterance rising discordantly audible above the long,
retiring roll of the last burst of thunder--"may I feel justified in
speaking on the subject of your present position in my employer's
house, with some freedom? I mean, if I may say so without offence,
with the freedom of a friend."

I begged he would use all the freedom he wished; feeling really
desirous that he should do so, apart from any purpose of leading him
to talk unreservedly on the chance of hearing him talk of himself. The
profound respect of manner and phrase which he had hitherto
testified--observed by a man of his age, to a man of mine--made me
feel ill at ease. He was most probably my equal in acquirements: he
had the manners and tastes of a gentleman, and might have the birth
too, for aught I knew to the contrary. The difference between us was
only in our worldly positions. I had not enough of my father's pride
of caste to think that this difference alone, made it right that a man
whose years nearly doubled mine, whose knowledge perhaps surpassed
mine, should speak to me as Mr. Mannion had spoken up to this time.

"I may tell you then," he resumed, "that while I am anxious to commit
no untimely intrusion on your hours at North Villa, I am at the same
time desirous of being something more than merely inoffensive towards
you. I should wish to be positively useful, as far as I can. In my
opinion Mr. Sherwin has held you to rather a hard engagement--he is
trying your discretion a little too severely I think, at your years
and in your situation. Feeling thus, it is my sincere wish to render
what connection and influence I have with the family, useful in making
the probation you have still to pass through, as easy as possible. I
have more means of doing this, Sir, than you might at first imagine."

His offer took me a little by surprise. I felt with a sort of shame,
that candour and warmth of feeling were what I had not expected from
him. My attention insensibly wandered away from the storm, to attach
itself more and more closely to him, as he went on:

"I am perfectly sensible," he resumed, "that such a proposition as I
now make to you, proceeding from one little better than a stranger,
may cause surprise and even suspicion, at first. I can only explain
it, by asking you to remember that I have known the young lady since
childhood; and that, having assisted in forming her mind and
developing her character, I feel towards her almost as a second
father, and am therefore naturally interested in the gentleman who has
chosen her for a wife."

Was there a tremor at last in that changeless voice, as he spoke? I
thought so; and looked anxiously to catch the answering gleam of
expression, which might now, for the first time, be softening his iron
features, animating the blank stillness of his countenance. If any
such expression had been visible, I was too late to detect it. Just as
I looked at him he stooped down to poke the fire. When he turned
towards me again, his face was the same impenetrable face, his eye the
same hard, steady, inexpressive eye as before.

"Besides," he continued, "a man must have some object in life for his
sympathies to be employed on. I have neither wife nor child; and no
near relations to think of--I have nothing but my routine of business
in the day, and my books here by my lonely fireside, at night. Our
life is not much; but it was made for a little more than this. My
former pupil at North Villa is my pupil no longer. I can't help
feeling that it would be an object in existence for me to occupy
myself with her happiness and yours; to have two young people, in the
heyday of youth and first love, looking towards me occasionally for
the promotion of some of their pleasures--no matter how trifling. All
this will seem odd and incomprehensible to _you._ If you were of my
age, Sir, and in my position, you would understand it."

Was it possible that he could speak thus, without his voice faltering,
or his eye softening in the slightest degree? Yes: I looked at him and
listened to him intently; but here was not the faintest change in his
face or his tones--there was nothing to show outwardly whether he felt
what he said, or whether he did not. His words had painted such a
picture of forlornness on my mind, that I had mechanically half raised
my hand to take his, while he was addressing me; but the sight of him
when he ceased, checked the impulse almost as soon as it was formed.
He did not appear to have noticed either my involuntary gesture, or
its immediate repression; and went on speaking.

"I have said perhaps more than I ought," he resumed. "If I have not
succeeded in making you understand my explanation as I could wish, we
will change the subject, and not return to it again, until you have
known me for a much longer time."

"On no account change the subject, Mr. Mannion," I said; unwilling to
let it be implied that I would not put trust in him. "I am deeply
sensible of the kindness of your offer, and the interest you take in
Margaret and me. We shall both, I am sure, accept your good offices--"

I stopped. The storm had decreased a little in violence: but my
attention was now struck by the wind, which had risen as the thunder
and rain had partially lulled. How drearily it was moaning down the
street! It seemed, at that moment, to be wailing over _me;_ to be
wailing over _him;_ to be wailing over all mortal things! The strange
sensations I then felt, moved me to listen in silence; but I checked
them, and spoke again.

"If I have not answered you as I should," I continued, "you must
attribute it partly to the storm, which I confess rather discomposes
my ideas; and partly to a little surprise--a very foolish surprise, I
own--that you should still be able to feel so strong a sympathy with
interests which are generally only considered of importance to the
young."

"It is only in their sympathies, that men of my years can, and do,
live their youth over again," he said. "You may be surprised to hear a
tradesman's clerk talk in this manner; but I was not always what I am
now. I have gathered knowledge, and suffered in the gathering. I have
grown old before my time--my forty years are like the fifty of other
men--"

My heart beat quicker--was he, unasked, about to disclose the mystery
which evidently hung over his early life? No: he dropped the subject
at once, when he continued. I longed to ask him to resume it, but
could not. I feared the same repulse which Mr. Sherwin had received:
and remained silent.

"What I was," he proceeded, "matters little; the question is what can
I do for you? Any aid I can give, may be poor enough; but it may be of
some use notwithstanding. For instance, the other day, if I mistake
not, you were a little hurt at Mr. Sherwin's taking his daughter to a
party to which the family had been invited. This was very natural. You
could not be there to watch over her in your real character, without
disclosing a secret which must be kept safe; and you could not know
what young men she might meet, who would imagine her to be Miss
Sherwin still, and would regulate their conduct accordingly. Now, I
think I might be of use here. I have some influence--perhaps in strict
truth I ought to say great influence--with my employer; and, if you
wished it, I would use that influence to back yours, in inducing him
to forego, for the future, any intention of taking his daughter into
society, except when you desire it. Again: I think I am not wrong in
assuming that you infinitely prefer the company of Mrs. Sherwin to
that of Mr. Sherwin, during your interviews with the young lady?"

How he had found that out? At any rate, he was right; and I told him
so candidly.

"The preference is on many accounts a very natural one," he said; "but
if you suffered it to appear to Mr. Sherwin, it might, for obvious
reasons, produce a most unfavourable effect. I might interfere in the
matter, however, without suspicion; I should have many opportunities
of keeping him away from the room, in the evening, which I could use
if you wished it. And more than that, if you wanted longer and more
frequent communication with North Villa than you now enjoy, I might be
able to effect this also. I do not mention what I could do in these,
and in other matters, in any disparagement, Sir, of the influence
which you have with Mr. Sherwin, in your own right; but because I know
that in what concerns your intercourse with his daughter, my employer
_has_ asked, and _will_ ask my advice, from the habit of doing so in
other things. I have hitherto declined giving him this advice in your
affairs; but I will give it, and in your favour and the young lady's,
if you and she choose."

I thanked him--but not in such warm terms as I should have employed,
if I had seen even the faintest smile on his face, or had heard any
change in his steady, deliberate tones, as he spoke. While his words
attracted, his immovable looks repelled me, in spite of myself.

"I must again beg you"--he proceeded--"to remember what I have already
said, in your estimate of the motives of my offer. If I still appear
to be interfering officiously in your affairs, you have only to think
that I have presumed impertinently on the freedom you have allowed me,
and to treat me no longer on the terms of to-night. I shall not
complain of your conduct, and shall try hard not to consider you
unjust to me, if you do."

Such an appeal as this was not to be resisted: I answered him at once
and unreservedly. What right had I to draw bad inferences from a man's
face, voice, and manner, merely because they impressed me, as out of
the common? Did I know how much share the influence of natural
infirmity, or the outward traces of unknown sorrow and suffering,
might have had in producing the external peculiarities which had
struck me? He would have every right to upbraid me as unjust--and that
in the strongest terms--unless I spoke out fairly in reply.

"I am quite incapable, Mr. Mannion," I said, "of viewing your offer
with any other than grateful feelings. You will find I shall prove
this by employing your good offices for Margaret and myself in perfect
faith, and sooner perhaps than you may imagine."

He bowed and said a few cordial words, which I heard but
imperfectly--for, as I addressed him, a blast of wind fiercer than
usual, rushed down the street, shaking the window shutter violently as
it passed, and dying away in a low, melancholy, dirging swell, like a
spirit-cry of lamentation and despair.

When he spoke again, after a momentary silence, it was to make some
change in the conversation. He talked of Margaret--dwelling in terms
of high praise rather on her moral than on her personal qualities. He
spoke of Mr. Sherwin, referring to solid and attractive points in his
character which I had not detected. What he said of Mrs. Sherwin
appeared to be equally dictated by compassion and respect--he even
hinted at her coolness towards himself, considerately attributing it
to the involuntary caprice of settled nervousness and ill-health. His
language, in touching on these subjects, was just as unaffected, just
as devoid of any peculiarities, as I had hitherto found it when
occupied by other topics.

It was growing late. The thunder still rumbled at long intervals, with
a dull, distant sound; and the wind showed no symptoms of subsiding.
But the pattering of the rain against the window ceased to be audible.
There was little excuse for staying longer; and I wished to find none.
I had acquired quite knowledge enough of Mr. Mannion to assure me,
that any attempt on my part at extracting from him, in spite of his
reserve, the secrets which might be connected with his early life,
would prove perfectly fruitless. If I must judge him at all, I must
judge him by the experience of the present, and not by the history of
the past. I had heard good, and good only, of him from the shrewd
master who knew him best, and had tried him longest. He had shown the
greatest delicacy towards my feelings, and the strongest desire to do
me service--it would be a mean return for those acts of courtesy, to
let curiosity tempt me to pry into his private affairs.

I rose to go. He made no effort to detain me; but, after unbarring the
shutter and looking out of the window, simply remarked that the rain
had almost entirely ceased, and that my umbrella would be quite
sufficient protection against all that remained. He followed me into
the passage to light me out. As I turned round upon his door-step to
thank him for his hospitality, and to bid him good night, the thought
came across me, that my manner must have appeared cold and repelling
to him--especially when he was offering his services to my acceptance.
If I had really produced this impression, he was my inferior in
station, and it would be cruel to leave it. I tried to set myself
right at parting.

"Let me assure you again," I said, "that it will not be my fault if
Margaret and I do not thankfully employ your good offices, as the good
offices of a well-wisher and a friend."

The lightning was still in the sky, though it only appeared at long
intervals. Strangely enough, at the moment when I addressed him, a
flash came, and seemed to pass right over his face. It gave such a
hideously livid hue, such a spectral look of ghastliness and
distortion to his features, that he absolutely seemed to be glaring
and grinning on me like a fiend, in the one instant of its duration.
For the moment, it required all my knowledge of the settled calmness
of his countenance, to convince me that my eyes must have been only
dazzled by an optical illusion produced by the lightning.

When the darkness had come again, I bade him good night--first
mechanically repeating what I had just said, almost in the same words.

I walked home thoughtful. That night had given me much matter to think
of.

IV.

About the time of my introduction to Mr. Mannion--or, to speak more
correctly, both before and after that period--certain peculiarities in
Margaret's character and conduct, which came to my knowledge by pure
accident, gave me a little uneasiness and even a little displeasure.
Neither of these feelings lasted very long, it is true; for the
incidents which gave rise to them were of a trifling nature in
themselves. While I now write, however, these domestic occurrences are
all vividly present to my recollection. I will mention two of them as
instances. Subsequent events, yet to be related, will show that they
are not out of place at this part of my narrative.

One lovely autumn morning, I called rather before the appointed time
at North Villa. As the servant opened the front garden-gate, the idea
occurred to me of giving Margaret a surprise, by entering the drawing
room unexpectedly, with a nosegay gathered for her from her own
flower-bed. Telling the servant not to announce me, I went round to
the back garden, by a gate which opened into it at the side of the
house. The progress of my flower-gathering led me on to the lawn under
one of the drawing-room windows, which was left a little open. The
voices of my wife and her mother reached me from the room. It was this
part of their conversation which I unintentionally overheard:--

"I tell you, mamma, I must and will have the dress, whether papa
chooses or not."

This was spoken loudly and resolutely; in such tones as I had never
heard from Margaret before.

"Pray--pray, my dear, don't talk so," answered the weak, faltering
voice of Mrs. Sherwin; "you know you have had more than your year's
allowance of dresses already."

"I won't be allowanced. _His_ sister isn't allowanced: why should I
be?"

"My dear love, surely there is some difference--"

"I'm sure there isn't, now I am his wife. I shall ride some day in my
carriage, just as his sister does. _He_ gives me my way in everything;
and so ought you."

"It isn't _me,_ Margaret: if I could do anything, I'm sure I would;
but I really couldn't ask your papa for another new dress, after his
having given you so many this year, already."

"That's the way it always is with you, mamma--you can't do this, and
you can't do that--you are so excessively tiresome! But I will have
the dress, I'm determined. He says his sister wears light blue crape
of an evening; and I'll have light blue crape, too--see if I don't!
I'll get it somehow from the shop, myself. Papa never takes any
notice, I'm sure, what I have on; and he needn't find out anything
about what's gone out of the shop, until they 'take stock,' or
whatever it is he calls it. And then, if he flies into one of his
passions--"

"My dear! my dear! you really ought not to talk so of your papa--it is
very wrong, Margaret, indeed--what would Mr. Basil say if he heard
you?"

I determined to go in at once, and tell Margaret that I had heard
her--resolving, at the same time, to exert some firmness, and
remonstrate with her, for her own good, on much of what she had said,
which had really surprised and displeased me. On my unexpected
entrance, Mrs. Sherwin started, and looked more timid than ever.
Margaret, however, came forward to meet me with her wonted smile, and
held out her hand with her wonted grace. I said nothing until we had
got into our accustomed corner, and were talking together in whispers
as usual. Then I began my remonstrance--very tenderly, and in the
lowest possible tones. She took precisely the right way to stop me in
full career, in spite of all my resolution. Her beautiful eyes filled
with tears directly--the first I had ever seen in them: caused, too,
by what I had said!--and she murmured a few plaintive words about the
cruelty of being angry with her for only wanting to please me by being
dressed as my sister was, which upset every intention I had formed but
the moment before. I involuntarily devoted myself to soothing her for
the rest of the morning. Need I say how the matter ended? I never
mentioned the subject more; and I made her a present of the new dress.

Some weeks after the little home-breeze which I have just related, had
died away into a perfect calm, I was accidentally witness of another
domestic dilemma in which Margaret bore a principal share. On this
occasion, as I walked up to the house (in the morning again), I found
the front door open. A pail was on the steps--the servant had
evidently been washing them, had been interrupted in her work, and had
forgotten to close the door when she left it. The nature of the
interruption I soon discovered as I entered the hall.

"For God's sake, Miss!" cried the housemaid's voice, from the
dining-room, "for God's sake, put down the poker! Missus will be here
directly; and it's _her_ cat!"

"I'll kill the vile brute! I'll kill the hateful cat! I don't care
whose it is!--my poor dear, dear, dear bird!" The voice was
Margaret's. At first, its tones were tones of fury; they were
afterwards broken by hysterical sobs.

"Poor thing," continued the servant, soothingly, "I'm sorry for it,
and for you too, Miss! But, oh! do please to remember it was you left
the cage on the table, in the cat's reach--"

"Hold your tongue, you wretch! How dare you hold me?--let me go!"

"Oh, you mustn't--you mustn't indeed! It's missus's cat,
recollect--poor missus's, who's always ill, and hasn't got nothing
else to amuse her."

"I don't care! The cat has killed my bird, and the cat shall be killed
for doing it!--it shall!--it shall!!--it shall!!! I'll call in the
first boy from the street to catch it, and hang it! Let me go! I
_will_ go!"

"I'll let the cat go first, Miss, as sure as my name's Susan!"

The next instant, the door was suddenly opened, and puss sprang past
me, out of harm's way, closely followed by the servant, who stared
breathless and aghast at seeing me in the hall. I went into the
dining-room immediately.

On the floor lay a bird-cage, with the poor canary dead inside (it was
the same canary that I had seen my wife playing with, on the evening
of the day when I first met her). The bird's head had been nearly
dragged through the bent wires of the cage, by the murderous claws of
the cat. Near the fire-place, with the poker she had just dropped on
the floor by her side, stood Margaret. Never had I seen her look so
beautiful as she now appeared, in the fury of passion which possessed
her. Her large black eyes were flashing grandly through her tears--the
blood was glowing crimson in her cheeks--her lips were parted as she
gasped for breath. One of her hands was clenched, and rested on the
mantel-piece; the other was pressed tight over her bosom, with the
fingers convulsively clasping her dress. Grieved as I was at the
paroxysm of passion into which she had allowed herself to be betrayed,
I could not repress an involuntary feeling of admiration when my eyes
first rested on her. Even anger itself looked lovely in that lovely
face!

She never moved when she saw me. As I approached her, she dropped down
on her knees by the cage, sobbing with frightful violence, and pouring
forth a perfect torrent of ejaculations of vengeance against the cat.
Mrs. Sherwin came down; and by her total want of tact and presence of
mind, made matters worse. In brief, the scene ended by a fit of
hysterics.

To speak to Margaret on that day, as I wished to speak to her, was
impossible. To approach the subject of the canary's death afterwards,
was useless. If I only hinted in the gentlest way, and with the
strongest sympathy for the loss of the bird, at the distress and
astonishment she had caused me by the extremities to which she had
allowed her passion to hurry her, a burst of tears was sure to be her
only reply--just the reply, of all others, which was best calculated
to silence me. If I had been her husband in fact, as well as in name;
if I had been her father, her brother, or her friend, I should have
let her first emotions have their way, and then have expostulated with
her afterwards. But I was her lover still; and, to my eyes, Margaret's
tears made virtues even of Margaret's faults.



Such occurrences as these, happening but at rare intervals, formed the
only interruptions to the generally even and happy tenour of our
intercourse. Weeks and weeks glided away, and not a hasty or a hard
word passed between us. Neither, after one preliminary difference had
been adjusted, did any subsequent disagreement take place between Mr.
Sherwin and me. This last element in the domestic tranquillity of
North Villa was, however, less attributable to his forbearance, or to
mine, than to the private interference of Mr. Mannion.

For some days after my interview with the managing clerk, at his own
house, I had abstained from calling his offered services into
requisition. I was not conscious of any reason for this course of
conduct. All that had been said, all that had happened during the
night of the storm, had produced a powerful, though vague impression
on me. Strange as it may appear, I could not determine whether my
brief but extraordinary experience of my new friend had attracted me
towards him, or repelled me from him. I felt an unwillingness to lay
myself under an obligation to him, which was not the result of pride,
or false delicacy, or sullenness, or suspicion--it was an inexplicable
unwillingness, that sprang from the fear of encountering some heavy
responsibility; but of what nature I could not imagine. I delayed and
held back, by instinct; and, on his side, Mr. Mannion made no further
advances. He maintained the same manner, and continued the same
habits, during his intercourse with the family at North Villa, which I
had observed as characterising him before I took shelter from the
storm, in his house. He never referred again to the conversation of
that evening, when we now met.

Margaret's behaviour, when I mentioned to her Mr. Mannion's
willingness to be useful to us both, rather increased than diminished
the vague uncertainties which perplexed me, on the subject of
accepting or rejecting his overtures.

I could not induce her to show the smallest interest about him.
Neither his house, his personal appearance, his peculiar habits, or
his secrecy in relation to his early life--nothing, in short,
connected with him--appeared to excite her attention or curiosity in
the slightest degree. On the evening of his return from the continent,
she had certainly shown some symptoms of interest in his arrival at
North Villa, and some appearance of attention to him, when he joined
our party. Now, she seemed completely and incomprehensibly changed on
this point. Her manner became almost petulant, if I persisted long in
making Mr. Mannion a topic of conversation--it was as if she resented
his sharing my thoughts with her in the slightest degree. As to the
difficult question whether we should engage him in our interests or
not, that was a matter which she always seemed to think too trifling
to be discussed between us at all.

Ere long, however, circumstances decided me as to the course I should
take with Mr. Mannion.

A ball was given by one of Mr. Sherwin's rich commercial friends, to
which he announced his intention of taking Margaret. Besides the
jealousy which I felt--naturally enough, in my peculiar situation--at
the idea of my wife going out as Miss Sherwin, and dancing in the
character of a young unmarried lady with any young gentlemen who were
introduced to her, I had also the strongest possible desire to keep
Margaret out of the society of her own class, until my year's
probation was over, and I could hope to instal her permanently in the
society of my class. I had privately mentioned to her my ideas on this
subject, and found that she fully agreed with them. She was not
wanting in ambition to ascend to the highest degree in the social
scale; and had already begun to look with indifference on the society
which was offered to her by those in her own rank.

To Mr. Sherwin I could confide nothing of this. I could only object,
generally, to his taking Margaret out, when neither she nor I desired
it. He declared that she liked parties--that all girls did--that she
only pretended to dislike them, to please me--and that he had made no
engagement to keep her moping at home a whole year on my account. In
the case of the particular ball now under discussion, he was
determined to have his own way; and he bluntly told me as much.

Irritated by his obstinacy and gross want of consideration for my
defenceless position, I forgot all doubts and scruples; and privately
applied to Mr. Mannion to exert the influence which he had promised to
use, if I wished it, in my behalf.

The result was as immediate as it was conclusive. The very next
evening, Mr. Sherwin came to us with a note which he had just written,
and informed me that it was an excuse for Margaret's non-appearance at
the ball. He never mentioned Mr. Mannion's name, but sulkily and
shortly said, that he had reconsidered the matter, and had altered his
first decision for reasons of his own.

Having once taken a first step in the new direction, I soon followed
it up, without hesitation, by taking many others. Whenever I wished to
call oftener than once a-day at North Villa, I had but to tell Mr.
Mannion, and the next morning I found the permission immediately
accorded to me by the ruling power. The same secret machinery enabled
me to regulate Mr. Sherwin's incomings and outgoings, just as I chose,
when Margaret and I were together in the evening. I could feel almost
certain, now, of never having any one with us, but Mrs. Sherwin,
unless I desired it--which, as may be easily imagined, was seldom
enough.

My new ally's ready interference for my advantage was exerted quietly,
easily, and as a matter of course. I never knew how, or when, he
influenced his employer, and Mr. Sherwin on his part, never breathed a
word of that influence to me. He accorded any extra privilege I might
demand, as if he acted entirely under his own will, little suspecting
how well I knew what was the real motive power which directed him.

I was the more easily reconciled to employing the services of Mr.
Mannion, by the great delicacy with which he performed them. He did
not allow me to think--he did not appear to think himself--that he was
obliging me in the smallest degree. He affected no sudden intimacy
with me; his manners never altered; he still persisted in not joining
us in the evening, but at my express invitation; and if I referred in
any way to the advantages I derived from his devotion to my interests,
he always replied in his brief undemonstrative way, that he considered
himself the favoured person, in being permitted to make his services
of some use to Margaret and me.

I had told Mr. Mannion, when I was leaving him on the night of the
storm, that I would treat his offers as the offers of a friend; and I
had now made good my words, much sooner and much more unreservedly
than I had ever intended, when we parted at his own house-door.

V.

The autumn was now over; the winter--a cold, gloomy winter--had fairly
come. Five months had nearly elapsed since Clara and my father had
departed for the country. What communication did I hold with them,
during that interval?

No personal communication with either--written communication only with
my sister. Clara's letters to me were frequent. They studiously
avoided anything like a reproach for my long absence; and were
confined almost exclusively to such details of country life as the
writer thought likely to interest me. Their tone was as
affectionate--nay, more affectionate, if possible--than usual; but
Clara's gaiety and quiet humour, as a correspondent, were gone. My
conscience taught me only too easily and too plainly how to account
for this change--my conscience told me who had altered the tone of my
sister's letters, by altering all the favourite purposes and favourite
pleasures of her country life.

I was selfishly enough devoted to my own passions and my own
interests, at this period of my life; but I was not so totally dead to
every one of the influences which had guided me since childhood, as to
lose all thought of Clara and my father, and the ancient house that
was associated with my earliest and happiest recollections. Sometimes,
even in Margaret's beloved presence, a thought of Clara put away from
me all other thoughts. And, sometimes, in the lonely London house, I
dreamed--with the strangest sleeping oblivion of my marriage, and of
all the new interests which it had crowded into my life--of country
rides with my sister, and of quiet conversations in the old gothic
library at the Hall. Under such influences as these, I twice resolved
to make amends for my long absence, by joining my father and my sister
in the country, even though it were only for a few days--and, each
time, I failed in my resolution. On the second occasion, I had
actually mustered firmness enough to get as far as the railway
station; and only at the last moment faltered and hung back. The
struggle that it cost me to part for any length of time from Margaret,
I had overcome; but the apprehension, as vivid as it was vague, that
something--I knew not what--might happen to her in my absence, turned
my steps backward at starting. I felt heartily ashamed of my own
weakness; but I yielded to it nevertheless.

At last, a letter arrived from Clara, containing a summons to the
country, which I could not disobey.

"I have never asked you," she wrote, "to come and see us for my sake;
for I would not interfere with any of your interests or any of your
plans; but I now ask you to come here for your own sake--just for one
week, and no more, unless you like to remain longer. You remember papa
telling you, in your room in London, that he believed you kept some
secret from him. I am afraid this is preying on his mind: your long
absence is making him uneasy about you. He does not say so; but he
never sends any message, when I write; and if I speak about you, he
always changes the subject directly. Pray come here, and show yourself
for a few days--no questions will be asked, you may be sure. It will
do so much good; and will prevent--what I hope and pray may never
happen--a serious estrangement between papa and you. Recollect, Basil,
in a month or six weeks we shall come back to town; and then the
opportunity will be gone."

As I read these lines, I determined to start for the country at once,
while the effect of them was still fresh on my mind. Margaret, when I
took leave of her, only said that she should like to be going with
me--"it would be such a sight for her, to see a grand country house
like ours!" Mr. Sherwin laughed as coarsely as usual, at the
difficulties I made about only leaving his daughter for a week. Mrs.
Sherwin very earnestly, and very inaccountably as I then thought,
recommended me not to be away any longer than I had proposed. Mr.
Mannion privately assured me, that I might depend on him in my absence
from North Villa, exactly as I had always depended on him, during my
presence there. It was strange that his parting words should be the
only words which soothed and satisfied me on taking leave of London.

The winter afternoon was growing dim with the evening darkness, as I
drove up to the Hall. Snow on the ground, in the country, has always a
cheerful look to me. I could have wished to see it on the day of my
arrival at home; but there had been a thaw for the last week--mud and
water were all about me--a drizzling rain was falling--a raw, damp
wind was blowing--a fog was rising, as the evening stole on--and the
ancient leafless elms in the park avenue groaned and creaked above my
head drearily, as I approached the house.

My father received me with more ceremony than I liked. I had known,
from a boy, what it meant when he chose to be only polite to his own
son. What construction he had put on my long absence and my
persistence in keeping my secret from him, I could not tell; but it
was evident that I had lost my usual place in his estimation, and lost
it past regaining merely by a week's visit. The estrangement between
us, which my sister had feared, had begun already.

I had been chilled by the desolate aspect of nature, as I approached
the Hall; my father's reception of me, when I entered the house,
increased the comfortless and melancholy impressions produced on my
mind; it required all the affectionate warmth of Clara's welcome, all
the pleasure of hearing her whisper her thanks, as she kissed me, for
my readiness in following her advice, to restore my equanimity. But
even then, when the first hurry and excitement of meeting had passed
away, in spite of her kind words and looks, there was something in her
face which depressed me. She seemed thinner, and her constitutional
paleness was more marked than usual. Cares and anxieties had evidently
oppressed her--was I the cause of them?

The dinner that evening proceeded very heavily and gloomily. My father
only talked on general and commonplace topics, as if a mere
acquaintance had been present. When my sister left us, he too quitted
the room, to see some one who had arrived on business. I had no heart
for the company of the wine bottles, so I followed Clara.

At first, we only spoke of her occupations since she had been in the
country; I was unwilling, and she forbore, to touch on my long stay in
London, or on my father's evident displeasure at my protracted
absence. There was a little restraint between us, which neither had
the courage to break through. Before long, however, an accident,
trifling enough in itself, obliged me to be more candid; and enabled
her to speak unreservedly on the subject nearest to her heart.

I was seated opposite to Clara, at the fire-place, and was playing
with a favourite dog which had followed me into the room. While I was
stooping towards the animal, a locket containing some of Margaret's
hair, fell out of its place in my waistcoat, and swung towards my
sister by the string which attached it round my neck. I instantly hid
it again; but not before Clara, with a woman's quickness, had detected
the trinket as something new, and drawn the right inference, as to the
use to which I devoted it.

An expression of surprise and pleasure passed over her face; she rose,
and putting her hands on my shoulders, as if to keep me still in the
place I occupied, looked at me intently.

"Basil!" she exclaimed, "if that is all the secret you have been
keeping from us, how glad I am! When I see a new locket drop out of my
brother's waistcoat--" she continued, observing that I was too
confused to speak--"and when I find him colouring very deeply, and
hiding it again in a great hurry, I should be no true woman if I did
not make my own discoveries, and begin to talk about them directly."

I made an effort--a very poor one--to laugh the thing off. Her
expression grew serious and thoughtful, while she still fixed her eyes
on me. She took my hand gently, and whispered in my ear: "Are you
going to be married, Basil? Shall I love my new sister almost as much
as I love you?"

At that moment the servant came in with tea. The interruption gave me
a minute for consideration. Should I tell her all? Impulse answered,
yes--reflection, no. If I disclosed my real situation, I knew that I
must introduce Clara to Margaret. This would necessitate taking her
privately to Mr. Sherwin's house, and exposing to her the humiliating
terms of dependence and prohibition on which I lived with my own wife.
A strange medley of feelings, in which pride was uppermost, forbade me
to do that. Then again, to involve my sister in my secret, would be to
involve her with me in any consequences which might be produced by its
disclosure to my father. The mere idea of making her a partaker in
responsibilities which I alone ought to bear, was not to be
entertained for a moment. As soon as we were left together again, I
said to her:

"Will you not think the worse of me, Clara, if I leave you to draw
your own conclusions from what you have seen? only asking you to keep
strict silence on the subject to every one. I can't speak yet, love,
as I wish to speak: you will know why, some day, and say that my
reserve was right. In the meantime, can you be satisfied with the
assurance, that when the time comes for making my secret known, you
shall be the first to know it--the first I put trust in?"

"As you have not starved my curiosity altogether," said Clara,
smiling, "but have given it a little hope to feed on for the present,
I think, woman though I am, I can promise all you wish. Seriously,
Basil," she continued, "that telltale locket of yours has so
pleasantly brightened some very gloomy thoughts of mine about you,
that I can now live happily on expectation, without once mentioning
your secret again, till you give me leave to do so."

Here my father entered the room, and we said no more. His manner
towards me had not altered since dinner; and it remained the same
during the week of my stay at the Hall. One morning, when we were
alone, I took courage, and determined to try the dangerous ground a
little, with a view towards my guidance for the future; but I had no
sooner begun by some reference to my stay in London, and some apology
for it, than he stopped me at once.

"I told you," he said, gravely and coldly, "some months ago, that I
had too much faith in your honour to intrude on affairs which you
choose to keep private. Until you have perfect confidence in me, and
can speak with complete candour, I will hear nothing. You have not
that confidence now--you speak hesitatingly--your eyes do not meet
mine fairly and boldly. I tell you again, I will hear nothing which
begins with such common-place excuses as you have just addressed to
me. Excuses lead to prevarications, and prevarications to--what I will
not insult you by imagining possible in _your_ case. You are of age,
and must know your own responsibilities and mine. Choose at once,
between saying nothing, and saying all."

He waited a moment after he had spoken, and then quitted the room. If
he could only have known how I suffered, at that instant, under the
base necessities of concealment, I might have confessed everything;
and he must have pitied, though he might not have forgiven me.

This was my first and last attempt at venturing towards the revelation
of my secret to my father, by hints and half-admissions. As to boldly
confessing it, I persuaded myself into a sophistical conviction that
such a course could do no good, but might do much harm. When the
wedded happiness I had already waited for, and was to wait for still,
through so many months, came at last, was it not best to enjoy my
married life in convenient secrecy, as long as I could?--best, to
abstain from disclosing my secret to my father, until necessity
absolutely obliged, or circumstances absolutely invited me to do so?
My inclinations conveniently decided the question in the affirmative;
and a decision of any kind, right or wrong, was enough to tranquillise
me at that time.

So far as my father was concerned, my journey to the country did no
good. I might have returned to London the day after my arrival at the
Hall, without altering his opinion of me--but I stayed the whole week
nevertheless, for Clara's sake.

In spite of the pleasure afforded by my sister's society, my visit was
a painful one. The selfish longing to be back with Margaret, which I
could not wholly repress; my father's coldness; and the winter gloom
and rain which confined us almost incessantly within doors, all tended
in their different degrees to prevent my living at ease in the Hall.
But, besides these causes of embarrassment, I had the additional
mortification of feeling, for the first time, as a stranger in my own
home.

Nothing in the house looked to me what it used to look in former
years. The rooms, the old servants, the walks and views, the domestic
animals, all appeared to have altered, or to have lost something,
since I had seen them last. Particular rooms that I had once been fond
of occupying, were favourites no longer: particular habits that I had
hitherto always practised in the country, I could only succeed in
resuming by an effort which vexed and fretted me. It was as if my life
had run into a new channel since my last autumn and winter at the
Hall, and now refused to flow back at my bidding into its old course.
Home seemed home no longer, except in name.

As soon as the week was over, my father and I parted exactly as we had
met. When I took leave of Clara, she refrained from making any
allusion to the shortness of my stay; and merely said that we should
soon meet again in London. She evidently saw that my visit had weighed
a little on my spirits, and was determined to give to our short
farewell as happy and hopeful a character as possible. We now
thoroughly understood each other; and that was some consolation on
leaving her.

Immediately on my return to London I repaired to North Villa.

Nothing, I was told, had happened in my absence, but I remarked some
change in Margaret. She looked pale and nervous, and was more silent
than I had ever known her to be before, when we met. She accounted for
this, in answer to my inquiries, by saying that confinement to the
house, in consequence of the raw, wintry weather, had a little
affected her; and then changed the subject. In other directions,
household aspects had not deviated from their accustomed monotony. As
usual, Mrs. Sherwin was at her post in the drawing-room; and her
husband was reading the evening paper, over his renowned old port, in
the dining-room. After the first five minutes of my arrival, I adapted
myself again to my old way of life at Mr. Sherwin's, as easily as if I
had never interrupted it for a single day. Henceforth, wherever my
young wife was, there, and there only, would it be home for _me!_

Late in the evening, Mr. Mannion arrived with some business letters
for Mr. Sherwin's inspection. I sent for him into the hall to see me,
as I was going away. His hand was never a warm one; but as I now took
it, on greeting him, it was so deadly cold that it literally chilled
mine for the moment. He only congratulated me, in the usual terms, on
my safe return; and said that nothing had taken place in my
absence--but in his utterance of those few words, I discovered, for
the first time, a change in his voice: his tones were lower, and his
articulation quicker than usual. This, joined to the extraordinary
coldness of his hand, made me inquire whether he was unwell. Yes, he
too had been ill while I was away--harassed with hard work, he said.
Then apologising for leaving me abruptly, on account of the letters he
had brought with him, he returned to Mr. Sherwin, in the dining-room,
with a greater appearance of hurry in his manner than I had ever
remarked in it on any former occasion.

I had left Margaret and Mr. Mannion both well--I returned, and found
them both ill. Surely this was something that had taken place in my
absence, though they all said that nothing had happened. But trifling
illnesses seemed to be little regarded at North Villa--perhaps,
because serious illness was perpetually present there, in the person
of Mrs. Sherwin.

VI.

About six weeks after I had left the Hall, my father and Clara
returned to London for the season.

It is not my intention to delay over my life either at home or at
North Villa, during the spring and summer. This would be merely to
repeat much of what has been already related. It is better to proceed
at once to the closing period of my probation; to a period which it
taxes my resolution severely to write of at all. A few weeks more of
toil at my narrative, and the penance of this poor task-work will be
over.

                       * * * * * *

Imagine then, that the final day of my long year of expectation has
arrived; and that on the morrow, Margaret, for whose sake I have
sacrificed and suffered so much, is at last really to be mine.

On the eve of the great change in my life that was now to take place,
the relative positions in which I, and the different persons with whom
I was associated, stood towards each other, may be sketched thus:--

My father's coldness of manner had not altered since his return to
London. On my side, I carefully abstained from uttering a word before
him, which bore the smallest reference to my real situation. Although
when we met, we outwardly preserved the usual relations of parent and
child, the estrangement between us had now become complete.

Clara did not fail to perceive this, and grieved over it in secret.
Other and happier feelings, however, became awakened within her, when
I privately hinted that the time for disclosing my secret to my sister
was not far off. She grew almost as much agitated as I was, though by
very different expectations--she could think of nothing else but the
explanation and the surprise in store for her. Sometimes, I almost
feared to keep her any longer in suspense; and half regretted having
said anything on the subject of the new and absorbing interest of my
life, before the period when I could easily have said all.

Mr. Sherwin and I had not latterly met on the most cordial terms. He
was dissatisfied with me for not having boldly approached the subject
of my marriage in my father's presence; and considered my reasons for
still keeping it secret, as dictated by morbid apprehension, and as
showing a total want of proper firmness. On the other hand, he was
obliged to set against this omission on my part, the readiness I had
shown in meeting his wishes on all remaining points. My life was
insured in Margaret's favour; and I had arranged to be called to the
bar immediately, so as to qualify myself in good time for every
possible place within place-hunting range. My assiduity in making
these preparations for securing Margaret's prospects and mine against
any evil chances that might happen, failed in producing the favourable
effect on Mr. Sherwin, which they must assuredly have produced on a
less selfish man. But they obliged him, at least, to stop short at
occasional grumblings about my reserve with my father, and to maintain
towards me a sort of sulky politeness, which was, after all, less
offensive than the usual infliction of his cordiality, with its
unfailing accompaniment of dull stories and duller jokes.

During the spring and summer, Mrs. Sherwin appeared to grow feebler
and feebler, from continued ill-health. Occasionally, her words and
actions--especially in her intercourse with me--suggested fears that
her mind was beginning to give way, as well as her body. For instance,
on one occasion, when Margaret had left the room for a minute or two,
she suddenly hurried up to me, whispering with eager looks and anxious
tones:--"Watch over your wife--mind you watch over her, and keep all
bad people from her! _I've_ tried to do it--mind _you_ do it, too!" I
asked immediately for an explanation of this extraordinary injunction;
but she only answered by muttering something about a mother's
anxieties, and then returned hastily to her place. It was impossible
to induce her to be more explicit, try how I might.

Margaret once or twice occasioned me much perplexity and distress, by
certain inconsistencies and variations in her manner, which began to
appear shortly after my return to North Villa from the country. At one
time, she would become, on a sudden, strangely sullen and silent--at
another, irritable and capricious. Then, again, she would abruptly
change to the most affectionate warmth of speech and demeanour,
anxiously anticipating every wish I could form, eagerly showing her
gratitude for the slightest attentions I paid her. These unaccountable
alterations of manner vexed and irritated me indescribably. I loved
Margaret too well to be able to look philosophically on the
imperfections of her character; I knew of no cause given by me for the
frequent changes in her conduct, and, if they only proceeded from
coquetry, then coquetry, as I once told her, was the last female
accomplishment that could charm me in any woman whom I really loved.
However, these causes of annoyance and regret--her caprices, and my
remonstrances--all passed happily away, as the term of my engagement
with Mr. Sherwin approached its end, Margaret's better and lovelier
manner returned. Occasionally, she might betray some symptoms of
confusion, some evidences of unusual thoughtfulness--but I remembered
how near was the day of the emancipation of our love, and looked on
her embarrassment as a fresh charm, a new ornament to the beauty of my
maiden wife.

Mr. Mannion continued--as far as attention to my interests went--to be
the same ready and reliable friend as ever; but he was, in some other
respects, an altered man. The illness of which he had complained
months back, when I returned to London, seemed to have increased. His
face was still the same impenetrable face which had so powerfully
impressed me when I first saw him, but his manner, hitherto so quiet
and self-possessed, had now grown abrupt and variable. Sometimes, when
he joined us in the drawing-room at North Villa, he would suddenly
stop before we had exchanged more than three or four words, murmur
something, in a voice unlike his usual voice, about an attack of spasm
and giddiness, and leave the room. These fits of illness had something
in their nature of the same secrecy which distinguished everything
else connected with him: they produced no external signs of
distortion, no unusual paleness in his face--you could not guess what
pain he was suffering, or where he was suffering it. Latterly, I
abstained from ever asking him to join us; for the effect on Margaret
of his sudden attacks of illness was, naturally, such as to discompose
her seriously for the remainder of the evening. Whenever I saw him
accidentally, at later periods of the year, the influence of the
genial summer season appeared to produce no alteration for the better
in him. I remarked that his cold hand, which had chilled me when I
took it on the raw winter night of my return from the country, was as
cold as ever, on the warm summer days which preceded the close of my
engagement at North Villa.



Such was the posture of affairs at home, and at Mr. Sherwin's, when I
went to see Margaret for the last time in my old character, on the
last night which yet remained to separate us from each other.

I had been all day preparing for our reception, on the morrow, in a
cottage which I had taken for a month, in a retired part of the
country, at some distance from London. One month's unalloyed happiness
with Margaret, away from the world and all worldly considerations, was
the Eden upon earth towards which my dearest hope and anticipations
had pointed for a whole year past--and now, now at last, those
aspirations were to be realized! All my arrangements at the cottage
were completed in time to allow me to return home, just before our
usual late dinner hour. During the meal, I provided for my month's
absence from London, by informing my father that I proposed visiting
one of my country friends. He heard me as coldly and indifferently as
usual; and, as I anticipated, did not even ask to what friend's house
I was going. After dinner, I privately informed Clara that on the
morrow, before starting, I would, in accordance with my promise, make
her the depositary of my long-treasured secret--which, as yet, was not
to be divulged to any one besides. This done, I hurried away, between
nine and ten o'clock, for a last half-hour's visit to North Villa;
hardly able to realise my own situation, or to comprehend the fulness
and exaltation of my own joy.

A disappointment was in store for me. Margaret was not in the house;
she had gone out to an evening party, given by a maiden aunt of hers,
who was known to be very rich, and was, accordingly, a person to be
courted and humoured by the family.

I was angry as well as disappointed at what had taken place. To send
Margaret out, on this evening of all others, showed a want of
consideration towards both of us, which revolted me. Mr. and Mrs.
Sherwin were in the room when I entered; and to _him_ I spoke my
opinion on the subject, in no very conciliatory terms. He was
suffering from a bad attack of headache, and a worse attack of
ill-temper, and answered as irritably as he dared.

"My good Sir!" he said, in sharp, querulous tones, "do, for once,
allow me to know what's best. You'll have it all _your_ way
to-morrow--just let me have _mine,_ for the last time, to-night. I'm
sure you've been humoured often enough about keeping Margaret away
from parties--and we should have humoured you this time, too; but a
second letter came from the old lady, saying she should be affronted
if Margaret wasn't one of her guests. I couldn't go and talk her over,
because of this infernal headache of mine--Hang it! it's your interest
that Margaret should keep in with her aunt; she'll have all the old
girl's money, if she only plays her cards decently well. That's why I
sent her to the party--her going will be worth some thousands to both
of you one of these days. She'll be back by half-past twelve, or
before. Mannion was asked; and though he's all out of sorts, he's gone
to take care of her, and bring her back. I'll warrant she comes home
in good time, when _he's_ with her. So you see there's nothing to make
a fuss about, after all."

It was certainly a relief to hear that Mr. Mannion was taking care of
Margaret. He was, in my opinion, much fitter for such a trust than her
own father. Of all the good services he had done for me, I thought
this the best--but it would have been even better still, if he had
prevented Margaret from going to the party.

"I must say again," resumed Mr. Sherwin, still more irritably, finding
I did not at once answer him, "there's nothing that any reasonable
being need make a fuss about. I've been doing everything for
Margaret's interests and yours--and she'll be back by twelve--and Mr.
Mannion takes care of her--and I don't know what you would have--and
it's devilish hard, so ill as I am too, to cut up rough with me like
this--devilish hard!"

"I am sorry for your illness, Mr. Sherwin; and I don't doubt your good
intentions, or the advantage of Mr. Mannion's protection for Margaret;
but I feel disappointed, nevertheless, that she should have gone out
to-night."

"I said she oughtn't to go at all, whatever her aunt wrote--_I_ said
that."

This bold speech actually proceeded from Mrs. Sherwin! I had never
before heard her utter an opinion in her husband's presence--such an
outburst from _her,_ was perfectly inexplicable. She pronounced the
words with desperate rapidity, and unwonted power of tone, fixing her
eyes all the while on me with a very strange expression.

"Damn it, Mrs. S.!" roared her husband in a fury, "will you hold your
tongue? What the devil do you mean by giving _your_ opinion, when
nobody wants it? Upon my soul I begin to think you're getting a little
cracked. You've been meddling and bothering lately, so that I don't
know what the deuce has come to you! I'll tell you what it is, Mr.
Basil," he continued, turning snappishly round upon me, "you had
better stop that fidgetty temper of yours, by going to the party
yourself. The old lady told me she wanted gentlemen; and would be glad
to see any friends of mine I liked to send her. You have only to
mention my name: Mannion will do the civil in the way of introduction.
There! there's an envelope with the address to it--they won't know who
you are, or what you are, at Margaret's aunt's--you've got your black
dress things on, all right and ready--for Heaven's sake, go to the
party yourself, and then I hope you'll be satisfied!"

Here he stopped; and vented the rest of his ill-humour by ringing the
bell violently for "his arrow-root," and abusing the servant when she
brought it.

I hesitated about accepting his proposal. While I was in doubt, Mrs.
Sherwin took the opportunity, when her husband's eye was off her, of
nodding her head at me significantly. She evidently wished me to join
Margaret at the party--but why? What did her behaviour mean?

It was useless to inquire. Long bodily suffering and weakness had but
too palpably produced a corresponding feebleness in her intellect.
What should I do? I was resolved to see Margaret that night; but to
wait for her between two and three hours, in company with her father
and mother at North Villa, was an infliction not to be endured. I
determined to go to the party. No one there would know anything about
me. They would be all people who lived in a different world from mine;
and whose manners and habits I might find some amusement in studying.
At any rate, I should spend an hour or two with Margaret, and could
make it my own charge to see her safely home. Without further
hesitation, therefore I took up the envelope with the address on it,
and bade Mr. and Mrs. Sherwin good-night.

It struck ten as I left North Villa. The moonlight which was just
beginning to shine brilliantly on my arrival there, now appeared but
at rare intervals; for the clouds were spreading thicker and thicker
over the whole surface of the sky, as the night advanced.

VII.

The address to which I was now proceeding, led me some distance away
from Mr. Sherwin's place of abode, in the direction of the populous
neighbourhood which lies on the western side of the Edgeware Road. The
house of Margaret's aunt was plainly enough indicated to me, as soon
as I entered the street where it stood, by the glare of light from the
windows, the sound of dance music, and the nondescript group of cabmen
and linkmen, with their little train of idlers in attendance,
assembled outside the door. It was evidently a very large party. I
hesitated about going in.

My sensations were not those which fit a man for exchanging
conventional civilities with perfect strangers; I felt that I showed
outwardly the fever of joy and expectation within me. Could I preserve
my assumed character of a mere friend of the family, in Margaret's
presence?--and on this night too, of all others? It was far more
probable that my behaviour, if I went to the party, would betray
everything to everybody assembled. I determined to walk about in the
neighbourhood of the house, until twelve o'clock; and then to go into
the hall, and send up my card to Mr. Mannion, with a message on it,
intimating that I was waiting below to accompany him to North Villa
with Margaret.

I crossed the street, and looked up again at the house from the
pavement opposite. Then lingered a little, listening to the music as
it reached me through the windows, and imagining to myself Margaret's
occupation at that moment. After this, I turned away; and set forth
eastward on my walk, careless in which direction I traced my steps.

I felt little impatience, and no sense of fatigue; for in less than
two hours more I knew that I should see my wife again. Until then, the
present had no existence for me--I lived in the past and future. I
wandered indifferently along lonely bye-streets, and crowded
thoroughfares. Of all the sights which attend a night-walk in a great
city, not one attracted my notice. Uninformed and unobservant, neither
saddened nor startled, I passed through the glittering highways of
London. All sounds were silent to me save the love-music of my own
thoughts; all sights had vanished before the bright form that moved
through my bridal dream. Where was my world, at that moment? Narrowed
to the cottage in the country which was to receive us on the morrow.
Where were the beings in the world? All merged in one--Margaret.

Sometimes, my thoughts glided back, dreamily and voluptuously, to the
day when I first met her. Sometimes, I recalled the summer evenings
when we sat and read together out of the same book; and, once more, it
was as if I breathed with the breath, and hoped with the hopes, and
longed with the old longings of those days. But oftenest it was with
the morrow that my mind was occupied. The first dream of all young
men--the dream of living rapturously with the woman they love, in a
secret retirement kept sacred from friends and from strangers alike,
was now my dream; to be realised in a few hours, to be realised with
my waking on the morning which was already at hand!

For the last quarter of an hour of my walk, I must have been
unconsciously retracing my steps towards the house of Margaret's aunt.
I came in sight of it again, just as the sound of the neighbouring
church clocks, striking eleven, roused me from my abstraction. More
cabs were in the street; more people were gathered about the door, by
this time. Was all this bustle, the bustle of arrival or of departure?
Was the party about to break up, at an hour when parties usually
begin? I determined to go nearer to the house, and ascertain whether
the music had ceased, or not.

I had approached close enough to hear the notes of the harp and
pianoforte still sounding as gaily as ever, when the house-door was
suddenly flung open for the departure of a lady and gentleman. The
light from the hall-lamps fell on their faces; and showed me Margaret
and Mr. Mannion.

Going home already! An hour and a half before it was time to return!
Why?

There could be but one reason. Margaret was thinking of me, and of
what I should feel if I called at North Villa, and had to wait for her
till past midnight. I ran forward to speak to them, as they descended
the steps; but exactly at the same moment, my voice was overpowered,
and my further progress barred, by a scuffle on the pavement among the
people who stood between us. One man said that his pocket had been
picked; others roared to him that they had caught the thief. There was
a fight--the police came up--I was surrounded on all sides by a
shouting, struggling mob that seemed to have gathered in an instant.

Before I could force myself out of the crowd, and escape into the
road, Margaret and Mr. Mannion had hurried into a cab. I just saw the
vehicle driving off rapidly, as I got free. An empty cab was standing
near me--I jumped into it directly--and told the man to overtake them.
After having waited my time so patiently, to let a mere accident stop
me from going home with them, as I had resolved, was not to be thought
of for a moment. I was hot and angry, after my contest with the crowd;
and could have flogged on the miserable cab-horse with my own hand,
rather than have failed in my purpose.

We were just getting closer behind them: I had just put my head out of
the window to call to them, and to bid the man who was driving me,
call, too--when their cab abruptly turned down a bye-street, in a
direction exactly opposite to the direction which led to North Villa.

What did this mean? Why were they not going straight home?

The cabman asked me whether he should not hail them before they got
farther away from us; frankly confessing, as he put the question, that
his horse was nothing like equal to the pace of the horse ahead.
Mechanically, without assignable purpose or motive, I declined his
offer, and told him simply to follow at any distance he could. While
the words passed my lips, a strange sensation stole over me: I seemed
to be speaking as the mere mouthpiece of some other voice. From
feeling hot, and moving about restlessly the moment before, I felt
unaccountably cold, and sat still now. What caused this?

My cab stopped. I looked out, and saw that the horse had fallen.
"We've lots of time, Sir," said the driver, as he coolly stepped off
the box, "they are just pulling up further down the road." I gave him
some money, and got out immediately--determined to overtake them on
foot.

It was a very lonely place--a colony of half-finished streets, and
half-inhabited houses, which had grown up in the neighbourhood of a
great railway station. I heard the fierce scream of the whistle, and
the heaving, heavy throb of the engine starting on its journey, as I
advanced along the gloomy Square in which I now found myself. The cab
I had been following stood at a turning which led into a long street,
occupied towards the farther end, by shops closed for the night, and
at the end nearest me, apparently by private houses only. Margaret and
Mr. Mannion hastily left the cab, and without looking either to the
right or the left, hurried down the street. They stopped at the ninth
house. I followed just in time to hear the door closed on them, and to
count the number of doors intervening between that door and the
Square.

The awful thrill of a suspicion which I hardly knew yet for what it
really was, began to creep over me--to creep like a dead-cold touch
crawling through and through me to the heart. I looked up at the
house. It was an hotel--a neglected, deserted, dreary-looking
building. Still acting mechanically; still with no definite impulse
that I could recognise, even if I felt it, except the instinctive
resolution to follow them into the house, as I had already followed
them through the street--I walked up to the door, and rang the bell.

It was answered by a waiter--a mere lad. As the light in the passage
fell on my face, he paused in the act of addressing me, and drew back
a few steps. Without stopping for any explanations, I closed the door
behind me, and said to him at once:

"A lady and gentleman came into this hotel a little while ago."

"What may your business be?"--He hesitated, and added in an altered
tone, "I mean, what may you want with them, Sir?"

"I want you to take me where I can hear their voices, and I want
nothing more. Here's a sovereign for you, if you do what I ask."

His eyes fastened covetously on the gold, as I held it before them. He
retired a few steps on tiptoe, and listened at the end of the passage.
I heard nothing but the thick, rapid beating of my own heart. He came
back, muttering to himself: "Master's safe at supper down stairs--I'll
risk it! You'll promise to go away directly," he added, whispering to
me, "and not disturb the house? We are quiet people here, and can't
have anything like a disturbance. Just say at once, will you promise
to step soft, and not speak a word?"

"I promise."

"This way then, Sir--and mind you don't forget to step soft."

A strange coldness and stillness, an icy insensibility, a
dream-sensation of being impelled by some hidden, irresistible agency,
possessed me, as I followed him upstairs. He showed me softly into an
empty room; pointed to one of the walls, whispering, "It's only boards
papered over--" and then waited, keeping his eyes anxiously and
steadily fixed upon all my movements.

I listened; and through the thin partition, I heard voices--_her_
voice, and _his_ voice. _I heard and I knew_--knew my degradation in
all its infamy, knew my wrongs in all their nameless horror. He was
exulting in the patience and secrecy which had brought success to the
foul plot, foully hidden for months on months; foully hidden until the
very day before I was to have claimed as my wife, a wretch as guilty
as himself!

I could neither move nor breathe. The blood surged and heaved upward
to my brain; my heart strained and writhed in anguish; the life within
me raged and tore to get free. Whole years of the direst mental and
bodily agony were concentrated in that one moment of helpless,
motionless torment. I never lost the consciousness of suffering. I
heard the waiter say, under his breath, "My God! he's dying." I felt
him loosen my cravat--I knew that he dashed cold water over me;
dragged me out of the room; and, opening a window on the landing, held
me firmly where the night-air blew upon my face. I knew all this; and
knew when the paroxysm passed, and nothing remained of it, but a
shivering helplessness in every limb.

Erelong, the power of thinking began to return to me by degrees.

Misery, and shame, and horror, and a vain yearning to hide myself from
all human eyes, and weep out my life in secret, overcame me. Then,
these subsided; and ONE THOUGHT slowly arose in their stead--arose,
and cast down before it every obstacle of conscience, every principle
of education, every care for the future, every remembrance of the
past, every weakening influence of present misery, every repressing
tie of family and home, every anxiety for good fame in this life, and
every idea of the next that was to come. Before the fell poison of
that Thought, all other thoughts--good or evil--died. As it spoke
secretly within me, I felt my bodily strength coming back; a quick
vigour leapt hotly through my frame. I turned, and looked round
towards the room we had just left--my mind was looking at the room
beyond it, the room they were in.

The waiter was still standing by my side, watching me intently. He
suddenly started back; and, with pale face and staring eyes, pointed
down the stairs.

"You go," he whispered, "go directly! You're well now--I'm afraid to
have you here any longer. I saw your look, your horrid look at that
room! You've heard what you wanted for your money--go at once; or, if
I lose my place for it, I'll call out Murder, and raise the house. And
mind this: as true as God's in heaven, I'll warn them both before they
go outside our door!"

Hearing, but not heeding him, I left the house. No voice that ever
spoke, could have called me back from the course on which I was now
bound. The waiter watched me vigilantly from the door, as I went out.
Seeing this, I made a circuit, before I returned to the spot where, as
I had suspected, the cab they had ridden in was still waiting for
them.

The driver was asleep inside. I awoke him; told him I had been sent to
say that he was not wanted again that night: and secured his ready
departure, by at once paying him on his own terms. He drove off; and
the first obstacle on the fatal path which I had resolved to tread
unopposed, was now removed.

As the cab disappeared from my sight, I looked up at the sky. It was
growing very dark. The ragged black clouds, fantastically parted from
each other in island shapes over the whole surface of the heavens,
were fast drawing together into one huge, formless, lowering mass, and
had already hidden the moon for, good. I went back to the street, and
stationed myself in the pitch darkness of a passage which led down a
mews, situated exactly opposite to the hotel.

In the silence and obscurity, in the sudden pause of action while I
now waited and watched, my Thought rose to my lips, and my speech
mechanically formed it into words. I whispered softly to myself: _I
will kill him when he comes out._ My mind never swerved for an instant
from this thought--never swerved towards myself; never swerved towards
_her._ Grief was numbed at my heart; and the consciousness of my own
misery was numbed with grief. Death chills all before it--and Death
and my Thought were one.

Once, while I stood on the watch, a sharp agony of suspense tried me
fiercely.

Just as I had calculated that the time was come which would force them
to depart, in order to return to North Villa by the appointed hour, I
heard the slow, heavy, regular tramp of a footstep advancing along the
street. It was the policeman of the district going his round. As he
approached the entrance to the mews he paused, yawned, stretched his
arms, and began to whistle a tune. If Mannion should come out while he
was there! My blood seemed to stagnate on its course, while I thought
that this might well happen. Suddenly, the man ceased whistling,
looked steadily up and down the street, and tried the door of a house
near him--advanced a few steps--then paused again, and tried another
door--then muttered to himself, in drowsy tones--"I've seen all safe
here already: it's the other street I forgot just now." He turned, and
retraced his way. I fixed my aching eyes vigilantly on the hotel,
while I heard the sound of his footsteps grow fainter and fainter in
the distance. It ceased altogether; and still there was no
change--still the man whose life I was waiting for, never appeared.

Ten minutes after this, so far as I can guess, the door opened; and I
heard Mannion's voice, and the voice of the lad who had let me in.
"Look about you before you go out," said the waiter, speaking in the
passage; "the street's not safe for you." Disbelieving, or affecting
to disbelieve, what he heard, Mannion interrupted the waiter angrily;
and endeavoured to reassure his companion in guilt, by asserting that
the warning was nothing but an attempt to extort money by way of
reward. The man retorted sulkily, that he cared nothing for the
gentleman's money, or the gentleman either. Immediately afterwards an
inner door in the house banged violently; and I knew that Mannion had
been left to his fate.

There was a momentary silence; and then I heard him tell his
accomplice that he would go alone to look for the cab, and that she
had better close the door and wait quietly in the passage till he came
back. This was done. He walked out into the street. It was after
twelve o'clock. No sound of a strange footfall was audible--no soul
was at hand to witness, and prevent, the coming struggle. His life was
mine. His death followed him as fast as my feet followed, while I was
now walking on his track.

He looked up and down, from the entrance to the street, for the cab.
Then, seeing that it was gone, he hastily turned back. At that instant
I met him face to face. Before a word could be spoken, even before a
look could be exchanged, my hands were on his throat.

He was a taller and heavier man than I was; and struggled with me,
knowing that he was struggling for his life. He never shook my grasp
on him for a moment; but he dragged me out into the road--dragged me
away eight or ten yards from the street. The heavy gasps of
approaching suffocation beat thick on my forehead from his open mouth:
he swerved to and fro furiously, from side to side; and struck at me,
swinging his clenched fists high above his head. I stood firm, and
held him away at arm's length. As I dug my feet into the ground to
steady myself, I heard the crunching of stones--the road had been
newly mended with granite. Instantly, a savage purpose goaded into
fury the deadly resolution by which I was possessed. I shifted my hold
to the back of his neck, and the collar of his coat, and hurled him,
with the whole impetus of the raging strength that was let loose in
me, face downwards, on to the stones.

In the mad triumph of that moment, I had already stooped towards him,
as he lay insensible beneath me, to lift him again, and beat out of
him, on the granite, not life only, but the semblance of humanity as
well; when, in the blank stillness that followed the struggle, I heard
the door of the hotel in the street open once more. I left him
directly, and ran back from the square--I knew not with what motive,
or what idea--to the spot.

On the steps of the house, on the threshold of that accursed place,
stood the woman whom God's minister had given to me in the sight of
God, as my wife.

One long pang of shame and despair shot through my heart as I looked
at her, and tortured out of its trance the spirit within me. Thousands
on thousands of thoughts seemed to be whirling in the wildest
confusion through and through my brain--thoughts, whose track was a
track of fire--thoughts that struck me with a hellish torment of
dumbness, at the very time when I would have purchased with my life
the power of a moment's speech. Voiceless and tearless, I went up to
her, and took her by the arm, and drew her away from the house. There
was some vague purpose in me, as I did this, of never quitting my hold
of her, never letting her stir from me by so much as an inch, until I
had spoken certain words to her. What words they were, and when I
should utter them, I could not tell.

The cry for mercy was on her lips, but the instant our eyes met, it
died away in long, low, hysterical moanings. Her cheeks were ghastly,
her features were rigid, her eyes glared like an idiot's; guilt and
terror had made her hideous to look upon already.

I drew her onward a few paces towards the Square. Then I stopped,
remembering the body that lay face downwards on the road. The savage
strength of a few moments before, had left me from the time when I
first saw her. I now reeled where I stood, from sheer physical
weakness. The sound of her pantings and shudderings, of her abject
inarticulate murmurings for mercy, struck me with a supernatural
terror. My fingers trembled round her arm, the perspiration dripped
down my face, like rain; I caught at the railings by my side, to keep
myself from falling. As I did so, she snatched her arm from my grasp,
as easily as if I had been a child; and, with a cry for help, fled
towards the further end of the street.

Still, the strange instinct of never losing hold of her, influenced
me. I followed, staggering like a drunken man. In a moment, she was
out of my reach; in another, out of my sight. I went on, nevertheless;
on, and on, and on, I knew not whither. I lost all ideas of time and
distance. Sometimes I went round and round the same streets, over and
over again. Sometimes I hurried in one direction, straight forward.
Wherever I went, it seemed to me that she was still just before; that
her track and my track were one; that I had just lost my hold of her,
and that she was just starting on her flight.

I remember passing two men in this way, in some great thoroughfare.
They both stopped, turned, and walked a few steps after me. One
laughed at me, as a drunkard. The other, in serious tones, told him to
be silent; for I was not drunk, but mad--he had seen my face as I
passed under a gas-lamp, and he knew that I was mad.

"MAD!"--that word, as I heard it, rang after me like a voice of
judgment. "MAD!"--a fear had come over me, which, in all its frightful
complication, was expressed by that one word--a fear which, to the man
who suffers it, is worse even than the fear of death; which no human
language ever has conveyed, or ever will convey, in all its horrible
reality, to others. I had pressed onward, hitherto, because I saw a
vision that led me after it--a beckoning shadow, ahead, darker even
than the night darkness. I still pressed on, now; but only because I
was afraid to stop.

I know not how far I had gone, when my strength utterly failed me, and
I sank down helpless, in a lonely place where the houses were few and
scattered, and trees and fields were dimly discernible in the
obscurity beyond. I hid my face in my hands, and tried to assure
myself that I was still in possession of my senses. I strove hard to
separate my thoughts; to distinguish between my recollections; to
extricate from the confusion within me any one idea, no matter
what--and I could not do it. In that awful struggle for the mastery
over my own mind, all that had passed, all the horror of that horrible
night, became as nothing to me. I raised myself, and looked up again,
and tried to steady my reason by the simplest means--even by
endeavouring to count all the houses within sight. The darkness
bewildered me. Darkness?--_Was_ it dark? or was day breaking yonder,
far away in the murky eastern sky? Did I know what I saw? Did I see
the same thing for a few moments together? What was this under me?
Grass? yes! cold, soft, dewy grass. I bent down my forehead upon it,
and tried, for the last time, to steady my faculties by praying; tried
if I could utter the prayer which I had known and repeated every day
from childhood--the Lord's Prayer. The Divine Words came not at my
call--no! not one of them, from the beginning to the end! I started up
on my knees. A blaze of lurid sunshine flashed before my eyes; a
hell-blaze of brightness, with fiends by millions, raining down out of
it on my head; then a rayless darkness--the darkness of the
blind--then God's mercy at last--the mercy of utter oblivion.

                        * * * * *

When I recovered my consciousness, I was lying on the couch in my own
study. My father was supporting me on the pillow; the doctor had his
fingers on my pulse; and a policeman was telling them where he had
found me, and how he had brought me home.

PART III.

I.

WHEN the blind are operated on for the restoration of sight, the same
succouring hand which has opened to them the visible world,
immediately shuts out the bright prospect again, for a time. A bandage
is passed over the eyes, lest in the first tenderness of the recovered
sense, it should be fatally affected by the sudden transition from
darkness to light. But between the awful blank of total privation of
vision, and the temporary blank of vision merely veiled, there lies
the widest difference. In the moment of their restoration, the blind
have had one glimpse of light, flashing on them in an overpowering
gleam of brightness, which the thickest, closest veiling cannot
extinguish. The new darkness is not like the void darkness of old; it
is filled with changing visions of brilliant colours and ever-varying
forms, rising, falling, whirling hither and thither with every second.
Even when the handkerchief is passed over them, the once sightless
eyes, though bandaged fast, are yet not blinded as they were before.

It was so with my mental vision. After the utter oblivion and darkness
of a deep swoon, consciousness flashed like light on my mind, when I
found myself in my father's presence, and in my own home. But, almost
at the very moment when I first awakened to the bewildering influence
of that sight, a new darkness fell upon my faculties--a darkness, this
time, which was not utter oblivion; a peopled darkness, like that
which the bandage casts over the opened eyes of the blind.

I had sensations, I had thoughts, I had visions, now--but they all
acted in the frightful self-concentration of delirium. The lapse of
time, the march of events, the alternation of day and night, the
persons who moved about me, the words they spoke, the offices of
kindness they did for me--all these were annihilated from the period
when I closed my eyes again, after having opened them for an instant
on my father, in my own study.

My first sensation (how soon it came after I had been brought home, I
know not) was of a terrible heat; a steady, blazing heat, which seemed
to have shrivelled and burnt up the whole of the little world around
me, and to have left me alone to suffer, but never to consume in it.
After this, came a quick, restless, unintermittent toiling of obscure
thought, ever in the same darkened sphere, ever on the same
impenetrable subject, ever failing to reach some distant and visionary
result. It was as if something were imprisoned in my mind, and moving
always to and fro in it--moving, but never getting free.

Soon, these thoughts began to take a form that I could recognise.

In the clinging heat and fierce seething fever, to which neither
waking nor sleeping brought a breath of freshness or a dream of
change, I began to act my part over again, in the events that had
passed, but in a strangely altered character. Now, instead of placing
implicit trust in others, as I had done; instead of failing to
discover a significance and a warning in each circumstance as it
arose, I was suspicious from the first--suspicious of Margaret, of her
father, of her mother, of Mannion, of the very servants in the house.
In the hideous phantasmagoria of my own calamity on which I now
looked, my position was reversed. Every event of the doomed year of my
probation was revived. But the doom itself, the night-scene of horror
through which I had passed, had utterly vanished from my memory. This
lost recollection, it was the one unending toil of my wandering mind
to recover, and I never got it back. None who have not suffered as I
suffered then, can imagine with what a burning rage of determination I
followed past events in my delirium, one by one, for days and nights
together,--followed, to get to the end which I knew was beyond, but
which I never could see, not even by glimpses, for a moment at a time.

However my visions might alter in their course of succession, they
always began with the night when Mannion returned from the continent
to North Villa. I stood again in the drawing-room; I saw him enter; I
marked the slight confusion of Margaret; and instantly doubted her. I
noticed his unwillingness to meet her eye or mine; I looked on the
sinister stillness of his face; and suspected him. From that moment,
love vanished, and hatred came in its place. I began to watch; to
garner up slight circumstances which confirmed my suspicions; to wait
craftily for the day when I should discover, judge, and punish them
both--the day of disclosure and retribution that never came.

Sometimes, I was again with Mannion, in his house, on the night of the
storm. I detected in every word he spoke an artful lure to trap me
into trusting him as my second father, more than as my friend. I heard
in the tempest sounds which mysteriously interrupted, or mingled
with, my answers, voices supernaturally warning me of my enemy, each
time that I spoke to him. I saw once more the hideous smile of triumph
on his face, as I took leave of him on the doorstep: and saw it, this
time, not as an illusion produced by a flash of lightning, but as a
frightful reality which the lightning disclosed.

Sometimes, I was again in the garden at North Villa accidentally
overhearing the conversation between Margaret and her
mother--overhearing what deceit she was willing to commit, for the
sake of getting a new dress--then going into the room, and seeing her
assume her usual manner on meeting me, as if no such words as I had
listened to but the moment before, had ever proceeded from her lips.
Or, I saw her on that other morning, when, to revenge the death of her
bird, she would have killed with her own hand the one pet companion
that her sick mother possessed. Now, no generous, trusting love
blinded me to the real meaning of such events as these. Now, instead
of regarding them as little weaknesses of beauty, and little errors of
youth, I saw them as timely warnings, which bade me remember when the
day of my vengeance came, that in the contriving of the iniquity on
which they were both bent, the woman had been as vile as the man.

Sometimes, I was once more on my way to North Villa, after my week's
absence at our country house. I saw again the change in Margaret since
I had left her--the paleness, the restlessness, the appearance of
agitation. I took the hand of Mannion, and started as I felt its
deadly coldness, and remarked the strange alteration in his manner.
When they accounted for these changes by telling me that both had been
ill, in different ways, since my departure, I detected the miserable
lie at once; I knew that an evil advantage had been taken of my
absence; that the plot against me was fast advancing towards
consummation: and that, at the sight of their victim, even the two
wretches who were compassing my dishonour could not repress all
outward manifestation of their guilt.

Sometimes, the figure of Mrs. Sherwin appeared to me, wan and weary,
and mournful with a ghostly mournfulness. Again I watched her, and
listened to her; but now with eager curiosity, with breathless
attention. Once more, I saw her shudder when Mannion's cold eyes
turned on her face--I marked the anxious, imploring look that she cast
on Margaret and on me--I heard her confused, unwilling answer, when I
inquired the cause of her dislike of the man in whom her husband
placed the most implicit trust--I listened to her abrupt, inexplicable
injunction to "watch continually over my wife, and keep bad people
from her." All these different circumstances occurred again as vividly
as in the reality; but I did not now account for them, as I had once
accounted for them, by convincing myself that Mrs. Sherwin's mind was
wandering, and that her bodily sufferings had affected her intellect.
I saw immediately, that she suspected Mannion, and dared not openly
confess her suspicions; I saw, that in the stillness, and abandonment,
and self-concentration of her neglected life, she had been watching
more vigilantly than others had watched; I detected in every one of
her despised gestures, and looks, and halting words, the same
concealed warning ever lying beneath the surface; I knew they had not
succeeded in deceiving her; I was determined they should not succeed
in deceiving me.

It was oftenest at this point, that my restless memory recoiled before
the impenetrable darkness which forbade it to see further--to see on
to the last evening, to the fatal night. It was oftenest at this
point, that I toiled and struggled back, over and over again, to seek
once more the lost events of the End, through the events of the
Beginning. How often my wandering thoughts thus incessantly and
desperately traced and retraced their way over their own fever track,
I cannot tell: but there came a time when they suddenly ceased to
torment me; when the heavy burden that was on my mind fell off; when a
sudden strength and fury possessed me, and I plunged down through a
vast darkness into a world whose daylight was all radiant flame. Giant
phantoms mustered by millions, flashing white as lightning in the
ruddy air. They rushed on me with hurricane speed; their wings fanned
me with fiery breezes; and the echo of their thunder-music was like
the groaning and rending of an earthquake, as they tore me away with
them on their whirlwind course.

Away! to a City of Palaces, to measureless halls, and arches, and
domes, soaring one above another, till their flashing ruby summits are
lost in the burning void, high overhead. On! through and through these
mountain-piles, into countless, limitless corridors, reared on pillars
lurid and rosy as molten lava. Far down the corridors rise visions of
flying phantoms, ever at the same distance before us--their raving
voices clanging like the hammers of a thousand forges. Still on and
on; faster and faster, for days, years, centuries together, till there
comes, stealing slowly forward to meet us, a shadow--a vast, stealthy,
gliding shadow--the first darkness that has ever been shed over that
world of blazing light! It comes nearer--nearer and nearer softly,
till it touches the front ranks of our phantom troop. Then in an
instant, our rushing progress is checked: the thunder-music of our
wild march stops; the raving voices of the spectres ahead, cease; a
horror of blank stillness is all about us--and as the shadow creeps
onward and onward, until we are enveloped in it from front to rear, we
shiver with icy cold under the fiery air and amid the lurid lava
pillars which hem us in on either side.

A silence, like no silence ever known on earth; a darkening of the
shadow, blacker than the blackest night in the thickest wood--a
pause--then, a sound as of the heavy air being cleft asunder; and
then, an apparition of two figures coming on out of the shadow--two
monsters stretching forth their gnarled yellow talons to grasp at us;
leaving on their track a green decay, oozing and shining with a sickly
light. Beyond and around me, as I stood in the midst of them, the
phantom troop dropped into formless masses, while the monsters
advanced. They came close to me; and I alone, of all the myriads
around, changed not at their approach. Each laid a talon on my
shoulder--each raised a veil which was one hideous net-work of twining
worms. I saw through the ghastly corruption of their faces the look
that told me who they were--the monstrous iniquities incarnate in
monstrous forms; the fiend-souls made visible in
fiend-shapes--Margaret and Mannion!

A moment more! and I was alone with those two. Not a wreck of the
phantom-multitude remained; the towering city, the gleaming corridors,
the fire-bright radiance had vanished. We stood on a wilderness--a
still, black lake of dead waters was before us; a white, faint, misty
light shone on us. Outspread over the noisome ground lay the ruins of
a house, rooted up and overthrown to its foundations. The demon
figures, still watching on either side of me, drew me slowly forward
to the fallen stones, and pointed to two dead bodies lying among them.

My father!--my sister!--both cold and still, and whiter than the white
light that showed them to me. The demons at my side stretched out
their crooked talons, and forbade me to kneel before my father, or to
kiss Clara's wan face, before I went to torment. They struck me
motionless where I stood--and unveiled their hideous faces once more,
jeering at me in triumph. Anon, the lake of black waters heaved up and
overflowed, and noiselessly sucked us away into its central
depths--depths that were endless; depths of rayless darkness, in which
we slowly eddied round and round, deeper and deeper down at every
turn. I felt the bodies of my father and my sister touching me in cold
contact: I stretched out my arms to clasp them and sink with them; and
the demon pair glided between us, and separated me from them. This
vain striving to join myself to my dead kindred when we touched each
other in the slow, endless whirlpool, ever continued and was ever
frustrated in the same way. Still we sank apart, down the black gulphs
of the lake; still there was no light, no sound, no change, no pause
of repose--and this was eternity: the eternity of Hell!

                       * * * * *

Such was one dream-vision out of many that I saw. It must have been at
this time that men were set to watch me day and night (as I afterwards
heard), in order that I might be held down in my bed, when a paroxysm
of convulsive strength made me dangerous to myself and to all about
me. The period too when the doctors announced that the fever had
seized on my brain, and was getting the better of their skill, must
have been _this_ period.

But though they gave up my life as lost, I was not to die. There came
a time, at last, when the gnawing fever lost its hold; and I awoke
faintly one morning to a new existence--to a life frail and helpless
as the life of a new-born babe.

I was too weak to move, to speak, to open my eyes, to exert in the
smallest degree any one faculty, bodily or mental, that I possessed.
The first sense of which I regained the use, was the sense of hearing;
and the first sound that I recognised, was of a light footstep which
mysteriously approached, paused, and then retired again gently outside
my door. The hearing of this sound was my first pleasure, the waiting
for its repetition my first source of happy expectation, since I had
been ill. Once more the footsteps approached--paused a moment--then
seemed to retire as before--then returned slowly. A sigh, very faint
and trembling; a whisper of which I could not yet distinguish the
import, caught my ear--and after that, there was silence. Still I
waited (oh, how happily and calmly!) to hear the whisper soon
repeated, and to hear it better when it next came. Ere long, for the
third time, the footsteps advanced, and the whispering accents sounded
again. I could now hear that they pronounced my name--once, twice,
three times--very softly and imploringly, as if to beg the answer
which I was still too weak to give. But I knew the voice: I knew it
was Clara's. Long after it had ceased, the whisper lingered gently on
my ear, like a lullaby that alternately soothed me to slumber, and
welcomed me to wakefulness. It seemed to be thrilling through my frame
with a tender, reviving influence--the same influence which the
sunshine had, weeks afterwards, when I enjoyed it for the first time
out of doors.

The next sound that came to me was audible in my room; audible
sometimes, close at my pillow. It was the simplest sound
imaginable--nothing but the soft rustling of a woman's dress. And yet,
I heard in it innumerable harmonies, sweet changes, and pauses minute
beyond all definition. I could only open my eyes for a minute at a
time, and even then, could not fix them steadily on anything; but I
knew that the rustling dress was Clara's; and fresh sensations seemed
to throng upon me, as I listened to the sound which told me that she
was in the room. I felt the soft summer air on my face; I enjoyed the
sweet scent of flowers, wafted on that air; and once, when my door was
left open for a moment, the twittering of birds in the aviary down
stairs, rang with exquisite clearness and sweetness on my ear. It was
thus that my faculties strengthened, hour by hour, always in the same
gradual way, from the time when I first heard the footstep and the
whisper outside my chamber-door.

One evening I awoke from a cool, dreamless sleep; and, seeing Clara
sitting by my bedside, faintly uttered her name, and moved my wasted
hand to take hers. As I saw the calm, familiar face bending over me;
the anxious eyes looking tenderly and lovingly into mine--as the last
melancholy glory of sunset hovered on my bed, and the air, sinking
already into its twilight repose, came softly and more softly into the
room--as my sister took me in her arms, and raising me on my weary
pillow, bade me for her sake lie hushed and patient a little
longer--the memory of the ruin and the shame that had overwhelmed me;
the memory of my love that had become an infamy; and of my brief
year's hope miserably fulfilled by a life of despair, swelled darkly
over my heart. The red, retiring rays of sunset just lingered at that
moment on my face. Clara knelt down by my pillow, and held up her
handkerchief to shade my eyes--"God has given you back to us, Basil,"
she whispered, "to make us happier than ever." As she spoke, the
springs of the grief so long pent up within me were loosened; hot
tears dropped heavily and quickly from my eyes; and I wept for the
first time since the night of horror which had stretched me where I
now lay--wept in my sister's arms, at that quiet evening hour, for the
lost honour, the lost hope, the lost happiness that had gone from me
for ever in my youth!

II.

Darkly and wearily the days of my recovery went on. After that first
outburst of sorrow on the evening when I recognised my sister, and
murmured her name as she sat by my side, there sank over all my
faculties a dull, heavy trance of mental pain.

I dare not describe what remembrances of the guilty woman who had
deceived and ruined me, now gnawed unceasingly and poisonously at my
heart. My bodily strength feebly revived; but my mental energies never
showed a sign of recovering with them. My father's considerate
forbearance, Clara's sorrowful reserve in touching on the subject of
my long illness, or of the wild words which had escaped me in my
delirium, mutely and gently warned me that the time was come when I
owed the tardy atonement of confession to the family that I had
disgraced; and still, I had no courage to speak, no resolution to
endure. The great misery of the past, shut out from me the present and
the future alike--every active power of my mind seemed to be destroyed
hopelessly and for ever.

There were moments--most often at the early morning hours, while the
heaviness of the night's sleep still hung over me in my
wakefulness--when I could hardly realise the calamity which had
overwhelmed me; when it seemed that I must have dreamt, during the
night, of scenes of crime and woe and heavy trial which had never
actually taken place. What was the secret of the terrible influence
which--let her even be the vilest of the vile--Mannion must have
possessed over Margaret Sherwin, to induce her to sacrifice me to him?
Even the crime itself was not more hideous and more incredible than
the mystery in which its evil motives, and the manner of its evil
ripening, were still impenetrably veiled.

Mannion! It was a strange result of the mental malady under which I
suffered, that, though the thought of Mannion was now inextricably
connected with every thought of Margaret, I never once asked myself,
or had an idea of asking myself, for days together, after my
convalescence, what had been the issue of our struggle, for him. In
the despair of first awakening to a perfect sense of the calamity
which had been hurled on me from the hand of my wife--in the misery of
first clearly connecting together, after the wanderings of delirium,
the Margaret to whom with my hand I had given all my heart, with the
Margaret who had trampled on the gift and ruined the giver--all minor
thoughts and minor feelings, all motives of revengeful curiosity or of
personal apprehension were suppressed. And yet, the time was soon to
arrive when that lost thought of inquiry into Mannion's fate, was to
become the one master-thought that possessed me--the thought that gave
back its vigilance to my intellect, and its manhood to my heart.

One evening I was sitting alone in my room. My father had taken Clara
out for a little air and exercise, and the servant had gone away at my
own desire. It was in this quiet and solitude, when the darkness was
fast approaching, when the view from my window was at its loneliest,
when my mind was growing listless and confused as the weary day wore
out--it was exactly at this time that the thought suddenly and
mysteriously flashed across me: Had Mannion been taken up from the
stones on which I had hurled him, a living man or a dead?

I instinctively started to my feet with something of the vigour of my
former health; repeating the question to myself; and feeling, as I
unconsciously murmured aloud the few words which expressed it, that my
life had purposes and duties, trials and achievements, which were yet
to be fulfilled. How could I instantly solve the momentous doubt which
had now, for the first time, crossed my mind?

One moment I paused in eager consideration--the next, I descended to
the library. A daily newspaper was kept there, filed for reference. I
might possibly decide the fatal question in a few moments by
consulting it. In my burning anxiety and impatience I could hardly
handle the leaves or see the letters, as I tried to turn back to the
right date--the day (oh anguish of remembrance!) on which I was to
have claimed Margaret Sherwin as my wife!

At last, I found the number I desired; but the closely-printed columns
swam before me as I looked at them. A glass of water stood on a table
near me--I dipped my handkerchief in it, and cooled my throbbing eyes.
The destiny of my future life might be decided by the discovery I was
now about to make!

I locked the door to guard against all intrusion, and then returned to
my task--returned to my momentous search--slowly tracing my way
through the paper, paragraph by paragraph, column by column.

On the last page, and close to the end, I read these lines:

                 "MYSTERIOUS OCCURRENCE.

"About one o'clock this morning, a gentleman was discovered lying on
his face in the middle of the road, in Westwood Square, by the
policeman on duty. The unfortunate man was to all appearance dead. He
had fallen on a part of the road which had been recently macadamised;
and his face, we are informed, is frightfully mutilated by contact
with the granite. The policeman conveyed him to the neighbouring
hospital, where it was discovered that he was still alive, and the
promptest attentions were immediately paid him. We understand that the
surgeon in attendance considers it absolutely impossible that he could
have been injured as he was, except by having been violently thrown
down on his face, either by a vehicle driven at a furious rate, or by
a savage attack from some person or persons unknown. In the latter
case, robbery could not have been the motive; for the unfortunate
man's watch, purse, and ring were all found about him. No cards of
address or letters of any kind were discovered in his pockets, and his
linen and handkerchief were only marked with the letter M. He was
dressed in evening costume--entirely in black. After what has been
already said about the injuries to his face, any recognisable personal
description of him is, for the present, unfortunately out of the
question. We wait with much anxiety to gain some further insight into
this mysterious affair, when the sufferer is restored to
consciousness. The last particulars which our reporter was able to
collect at the hospital were, that the surgeon expected to save his
patient's life, and the sight of one of his eyes. The sight of the
other is understood to be entirely destroyed."



With sensations of horror which I could not then, and cannot now
analyse, I turned to the next day's paper; but found in it no further
reference to the object of my search. In the number for the day after,
however, the subject was resumed in these words:

"The mystery of the accident in Westwood Square thickens. The sufferer
is restored to consciousness; he is perfectly competent to hear and
understand what is said to him, and is able to articulate, but not
very plainly, and only for a moment or so, at a time. The authorities
at the hospital anticipated, as we did, that, on the patient's
regaining his senses, some information of the manner in which the
terrible accident from which he is suffering was caused, would be
obtained from him. But, to the astonishment of every one, he
positively refuses to answer any questions as to the circumstances
under which his frightful injuries were inflicted. With the same
unaccountable secrecy, he declines to tell his name, his place of
abode, or the names of any friends to whom notice of his situation
might be communicated. It is quite in vain to press him for any reason
for this extraordinary course of conduct--he appears to be a man of
very unusual firmness of character; and his refusal to explain himself
in any way, is evidently no mere caprice of the moment. All this leads
to the conjecture that the injuries he has sustained were inflicted on
him from some motive of private vengeance; and that certain persons
are concerned in this disgraceful affair, whom he is unwilling to
expose to public odium, for some secret reason which it is impossible
to guess at. We understand that he bears the severe pain consequent
upon his situation, in such a manner as to astonish every person about
him--no agony draws from him a word or a sigh. He displayed no emotion
even when the surgeons informed him that the sight of one of his eyes
was hopelessly destroyed; and merely asked to be supplied with writing
materials as soon as he could see to use them, when he was told that
the sight of the other would be saved. He further added, we are
informed, that he was in a position to reward the hospital authorities
for any trouble he gave, by making a present to the funds of the
charity, as soon as he should be discharged as cured. His coolness in
the midst of sufferings which would deprive most other men of all
power of thinking or speaking, is as remarkable as his unflinching
secrecy--a secrecy which, for the present at least, we cannot hope to
penetrate."



I closed the newspaper. Even then, a vague forewarning of what
Mannion's inexplicable reserve boded towards me, crossed my mind.
There was yet more difficulty, danger, and horror to be faced, than I
had hitherto confronted. The slough of degradation and misery into
which I had fallen, had its worst perils yet in store for me.

As I became impressed by this conviction, the enervating remembrance
of the wickedness to which I had been sacrificed, grew weaker in its
influence over me; the bitter tears that I had shed in secret for so
many days past, dried sternly at their sources; and I felt the power
to endure and to resist coming back to me with my sense of the coming
strife. On leaving the library, I ascended again to my own room. In a
basket, on my table, lay several unopened letters, which had arrived
for me during my illness. There were two which I at once suspected, in
hastily turning over the collection, might be all-important in
enlightening me on the vile subject of Mannion's female accomplice.
The addresses of both these letters were in Mr. Sherwin's handwriting.
The first that I opened was dated nearly a month back, and ran thus:


                             "North Villa, Hollyoake Square.

"DEAR SIR,

"With agonised feelings which no one but a parent, and I will add, an
affectionate parent, can possibly form an idea of, I address you on
the subject of the act of atrocity committed by that perjured villain,
Mannion. You will find that I and my innocent daughter have been, like
you, victims of the most devilish deceit that ever was practised on
respectable and unsuspecting people.

"Let me ask you, Sir, to imagine the state of my feelings on the night
of that most unfortunate party, when I saw my beloved Margaret,
instead of coming home quietly as usual, rush into the room in a state
bordering on distraction, with a tale the most horrible that ever was
addressed to a father's ears. The double-faced villain (I really can't
mention his name again) had, I blush to acknowledge, attempted to take
advantage of her innocence and confidence--all our innocences and
confidences, I may say--but my dear Margaret showed a virtuous courage
beyond her years, the natural result of the pious principles and the
moral bringing up which I have given her from her cradle. Need I say
what was the upshot? Virtue triumphed, as virtue always does, and the
villain left her to herself. It was when she was approaching the
door-step to fly to the bosom of her home that, I am given to
understand, you, by a most remarkable accident, met her. As a man of
the world, you will easily conceive what must have been the feelings
of a young female, under such peculiar and shocking circumstances.
Besides this, your manner, as I am informed, was so terrifying and
extraordinary, and my poor Margaret felt so strongly that deceitful
appearances might be against her, that she lost all heart, and fled at
once, as I said before, to the bosom of her home.

"She is still in a very nervous and unhappy state; she fears that you
may be too ready to believe appearances; but I know better. Her
explanation will be enough for you, as it was for me. We may have our
little differences on minor topics, but we have both the same manly
confidence, I am sure--you in your wife, and me in my daughter.

"I called at your worthy father's mansion, to have a fuller
explanation with you than I can give here, the morning after this
to-all-parties-most-distressing occurrence happened: and was then
informed of your serious illness, for which pray accept my best
condolences. The next thing I thought of doing was to write to your
respected father, requesting a private interview. But on maturer
consideration, I thought it perhaps slightly injudicious to take such
a step, while you, as the principal party concerned, were ill in bed,
and not able to come forward and back me. I was anxious, you will
observe, to act for your interests, as well as the interests of my
darling girl--of course, knowing at the same time that I had the
marriage certificate in my possession, if needed as a proof, and
supposing I was driven to extremities and obliged to take my own
course in the matter. But, as I said before, I have a fatherly and
friendly confidence in your feeling as convinced of the spotless
innocence of my child as I do. So will write no more on this head.

"Having determined, as best under all circumstances, to wait till your
illness was over, I have kept my dear Margaret in strict retirement at
home (which, as she is your wife, you will acknowledge I had no
obligation to do), until you were well enough to come forward and do
her justice before her family and yours. I have not omitted to make
almost daily inquiries after you, up to the time of penning these
lines, and shall continue so to do until your convalescence, which I
sincerely hope may be speedily at hand; I am unfortunately obliged to
ask that our first interview, when you are able to see me and my
daughter, may not take place at North Villa, but at some other place,
any you like to fix on. The fact is, my wife, whose wretched health
has been a trouble and annoyance to us for years past, has now, I
grieve to say, under pressure of this sad misfortune, quite lost her
reason. I am sorry to say that she would be capable of interrupting us
here, in a most undesirable manner to all parties, and therefore
request that our first happy meeting may not take place at my house.

"Trusting that this letter will quite remove all unpleasant feelings
from your mind, and that I shall hear from you soon, on your
much-to-be-desired recovery,

"I remain, dear Sir, 
"Your faithful, obedient servant,

                          "STEPHEN SHERWIN.

"P. S.--I have not been able to find out where that scoundrel Mannion,
has betaken himself to; but if you should know, or suspect, I wish to
tell you, as a proof that my indignation at his villany is as great as
yours, that I am ready and anxious to pursue him with the utmost
rigour of the law, if law can only reach him--paying out of my own
pocket all expenses of punishing him and breaking him for the rest of
his life, if I go through every court in the country to do it!--S. S."



Hurriedly as I read over this wretched and revolting letter, I
detected immediately how the new plot had been framed to keep me still
deceived; to heap wrong after wrong on me with the same impunity. She
was not aware that I had followed her into the house, and had heard
all from her voice and Mannion's--she believed that I was still
ignorant of everything, until we met at the door-step; and in this
conviction she had forged the miserable lie which her father's hand
had written down. Did he really believe it, or was he writing as her
accomplice? It was not worth while to inquire: the worst and darkest
discovery which it concerned me to make, had already proclaimed
itself--she was a liar and a hypocrite to the very last!

And it was this woman's lightest glance which had once been to me as
the star that my life looked to!---it was for this woman that I had
practised a deceit on my family which it now revolted me to think of;
had braved whatever my father's anger might inflict; had risked
cheerfully the loss of all that birth and fortune could bestow! Why
had I ever risen from my weary bed of sickness?--it would have been
better, far better, that I had died!

But, while life remained, life had its trials and its toils, from
which it was useless to shrink. There was still another letter to be
opened: there was yet more wickedness which I must know how to
confront.

The second of Mr. Sherwin's letters was much shorter than the first,
and had apparently been written not more than a day or two back. His
tone was changed; he truckled to me no longer--he began to threaten. I
was reminded that the servant's report pronounced me to have been
convalescent for several days past: and was asked why, under these
circumstances, I had never even written. I was warned that my silence
had been construed greatly to my disadvantage; and that if it
continued longer, the writer would assert his daughter's cause loudly
and publicly, not to my father only, but to all the world. The letter
ended by according to me three days more of grace, before the fullest
disclosure would be made.

For a moment, my indignation got the better of me. I rose, to go that
instant to North Villa and unmask the wretches who still thought to
make their market of me as easily as ever. But the mere momentary
delay caused by opening the door of my room, restored me to myself. I
felt that my first duty, my paramount obligation, was to confess all
to my father immediately; to know and accept my future position in my
own home, before I went out from it to denounce others. I returned to
the table, and gathered up the letters scattered on it. My heart beat
fast, my head felt confused; but I was resolute in my determination to
tell my father, at all hazards, the tale of degradation which I have
told in these pages.

I waited in the stillness and loneliness, until it grew nearly dark.
The servant brought in candles. Why could I not ask him whether my
father and Clara had come home yet? Was I faltering in my resolution
already?

Shortly after this, I heard a step on the stairs and a knock at my
door.--My father? No! Clara. I tried to speak to her unconcernedly,
when she came in.

"Why, you have been walking till it is quite dark, Clara!"

"We have only been in the garden of the Square--neither papa nor I
noticed how late it was. We were talking on a subject of the deepest
interest to us both."

She paused a moment, and looked down; then hurriedly came nearer to
me, and drew a chair to my side. There was a strange expression of
sadness and anxiety in her face, as she continued:

"Can't you imagine what the subject was? It was you, Basil. Papa is
coming here directly, to speak to you."

She stopped once more. Her cheeks reddened a little, and she
mechanically busied herself in arranging some books that lay on the
table. Suddenly, she abandoned this employment; the colour left her
face; it was quite pale when she addressed me again, speaking in very
altered tones; so altered, that I hardly recognised them as hers.

"You know, Basil, that for a long time past, you have kept some secret
from us; and you promised that I should know it first; but I--I have
changed my mind; I have no wish to know it, dear: I would rather we
never said anything about it." (She coloured, and hesitated a little
again, then proceeded quickly and earnestly:) "But I hope you will
tell it all to papa: he is coming here to ask you--oh, Basil! be
candid with him, and tell him everything; let us all be to one another
what we were before this time last year! You have nothing to fear, if
you only speak openly; for I have begged him to be gentle and
forgiving with you, and you know he refuses me nothing. I only came
here to prepare you; to beg you to be candid and patient. Hush! there
is a step on the stairs. Speak out, Basil, for my sake--pray, pray,
speak out, and then leave the rest to me."

She hurriedly left the room. The next minute, my father entered it.

Perhaps my guilty conscience deceived me, but I thought he looked at
me more sadly and severely than I had ever seen him look before. His
voice, too, was troubled when he spoke. This was a change, which meant
much in him.

"I have come to speak to you," he said, "on a subject about which I
had much rather you had spoken to me first."

"I think, Sir, I know to what subject you refer. I--"

"I must beg you will listen to me as patiently as you can," he
rejoined; "I have not much to say."

He paused, and sighed heavily. I thought he looked at me more kindly.
My heart grew very sad; and I yearned to throw my arms round his neck,
to give freedom to the repressed tears which half choked me, to weep
out on his bosom my confession that I was no more worthy to be called
his son. Oh, that I had obeyed the impulse which moved me to do this!

"Basil," pursued my father, gravely and sadly; "I hope and believe
that I have little to reproach myself with in my conduct towards you.
I think I am justified in saying, that very few fathers would have
acted towards a son as I have acted for the last year or more. I may
often have grieved over the secresy which has estranged you from us; I
may even have shown you by my manner that I resented it; but I have
never used my authority to force you into the explanation of your
conduct, which you have been so uniformly unwilling to volunteer. I
rested on that implicit faith in the honour and integrity of my son,
which I will not yet believe to have been ill-placed, but which, I
fear, has led me to neglect too long the duty of inquiry which I owed
to your own well-being, and to my position towards you. I am now here
to atone for this omission; circumstances have left me no choice. It
deeply concerns my interest as a father, and my honour as the head of
our family, to know what heavy misfortune it was (I can imagine it to
be nothing else) that stretched my son senseless in the open street,
and afflicted him afterwards with an illness which threatened his
reason and his life. You are now sufficiently recovered to reveal
this; and I only use my legitimate authority over my own children,
when I tell you that I must now know all. If you persist in remaining
silent, the relations between us must henceforth change for life."

"I am ready to make my confession, Sir. I only ask you to believe
beforehand, that if I have sinned grievously against you, I have been
already heavily punished for the sin. I am afraid it is impossible
that your worst forebodings can have prepared you--"

"The words you spoke in your delirium--words which I heard, but will
not judge you by--justified the worst forebodings."

"My illness has spared me the hardest part of a hard trial, Sir, if it
has prepared you for what I have to confess; if you suspect--"

"I do not _suspect_--I feel but too _sure,_ that you, my second son,
from whom I had expected far better things, have imitated in secret--I
am afraid, outstripped--the worst vices of your elder brother."

"My brother!--my brother's faults mine! Ralph!"

"Yes, Ralph. It is my last hope that you will now imitate Ralph's
candour. Take example from that best part of him, as you have already
taken example from the worst."

My heart grew faint and cold as he spoke. Ralph's example! Ralph's
vices!--vices of the reckless hour, or the idle day!--vices whose
stain, in the world's eye, was not a stain for life!--convenient,
reclaimable vices, that men were mercifully unwilling to associate
with grinning infamy and irreparable disgrace! How far--how fearfully
far, my father was from the remotest suspicion of what had really
happened! I tried to answer his last words, but the apprehension of
the life-long humiliation and grief which my confession might inflict
on him--absolutely incapable, as he appeared to be, of foreboding even
the least degrading part of it--kept me speechless. When he resumed,
after a momentary silence, his tones were stern, his looks
searching--pitilessly searching, and bent full upon my face.

"A person has been calling, named Sherwin," he said, "and inquiring
about you every day. What intimate connection between you authorises
this perfect stranger to me to come to the house as frequently as he
does, and to make his inquiries with a familiarity of tone and manner
which has struck every one of the servants who have, on different
occasions, opened the door to him? Who is this Mr. Sherwin?"

"It is not with him, Sir, that I can well begin. I must go back--"

"You must go back farther, I am afraid, than you will be able to
return. You must go back to the time when you had nothing to conceal
from me, and when you could speak to me with the frankness and
directness of a gentleman."

"Pray be patient with me, Sir; give me a few minutes to collect
myself. I have much need for a little self-possession before I tell
you all."

"All? your tones mean more than your words--_they_ are candid, at
least! Have I feared the worst, and yet not feared as I ought?
Basil!--do you hear me, Basil? You are trembling very strangely; you
are growing pale!"

"I shall be better directly, Sir. I am afraid I am not quite so strong
yet as I thought myself. Father! I am heart-broken and spirit-broken:
be patient and kind to me, or I cannot speak to you."

I thought I saw his eyes moisten. He shaded them a moment with his
hand, and sighed again--the same long, trembling sigh that I had heard
before. I tried to rise from my chair, and throw myself on my knees at
his feet. He mistook the action, and caught me by the arm, believing
that I was fainting.

"No more to-night, Basil," he said, hurriedly, but very gently; "no
more on this subject till to-morrow."

"I can speak now, Sir; it is better to speak at once."

"No: you are too much agitated; you are weaker than I thought.
To-morrow, in the morning, when you are stronger after a night's rest.
No! I will hear nothing more. Go to bed now; I will tell your sister
not to disturb you to-night. To-morrow, you shall speak to me; and
speak in your own way, without interruption. Good-night, Basil,
good-night."

Without waiting to shake hands with me, he hastened to the door, as if
anxious to hide from my observation the grief and apprehension which
had evidently overcome him. But, just at the moment when he was
leaving the room, he hesitated, turned round, looked sorrowfully at me
for an instant, and then, retracing his steps, gave me his hand,
pressed mine for a moment in silence, and left me.

After the morrow was over, would he ever give me that hand again?

III.

The morning which was to decide all between my father and me, the
morning on whose event hung the future of my home life, was the
brightest and loveliest that my eyes ever looked on. A cloudless sky,
a soft air, sunshine so joyous and dazzling that the commonest objects
looked beautiful in its light, seemed to be mocking at me for my heavy
heart, as I stood at my window, and thought of the hard duty to be
fulfilled, on the harder judgment that might be pronounced, before the
dawning of another day.

During the night, I had arranged no plan on which to conduct the
terrible disclosure which I was now bound to make--the greatness of
the emergency deprived me of all power of preparing myself for it. I
thought on my father's character, on the inbred principles of honour
which ruled him with the stern influence of a fanaticism: I thought on
his pride of caste, so unobtrusive, so rarely hinted at in words, and
yet so firmly rooted in his nature, so intricately entwined with every
one of his emotions, his aspirations, his simplest feelings and ideas:
I thought on his almost feminine delicacy in shrinking from the barest
mention of impurities which other men could carelessly discuss, or
could laugh over as good material for an after-dinner jest. I thought
over all this, and when I remembered that it was to such a man that I
must confess the infamous marriage which I had contracted in secret,
all hope from his fatherly affection deserted me; all idea of
appealing to his chivalrous generosity became a delusion in which it
was madness to put a moment's trust.

The faculties of observation are generally sharpened, in proportion as
the faculties of reflection are dulled, under the influence of an
absorbing suspense. While I now waited alone in my room, the most
ordinary sounds and events in the house, which I never remembered
noticing before, absolutely enthralled me. It seemed as if the noise
of a footstep, the echo of a voice, the shutting or opening of doors
down stairs, must, on this momentous day, presage some mysterious
calamity, some strange discovery, some secret project formed against
me, I knew not how, or by whom. Two or three times I found myself
listening intently on the staircase, with what object I could hardly
tell. It was always, however, on those occasions, that a dread,
significant quiet appeared to have fallen suddenly on the house. Clara
never came to me, no message arrived from my father; the door-bell
seemed strangely silent, the servants strangely neglectful of their
duties above stairs. I caught myself returning to my own room softly,
as if I expected that some hidden catastrophe might break forth, if
sound of my footsteps were heard.

Would my father seek me again in my own room, or would he send for me
down stairs? It was not long before the doubt was decided. One of the
servants knocked at my door--the servant whose special duty it had
been to wait on me in my illness. I longed to take the man's hand, and
implore his sympathy and encouragement while he addressed me.

"My master, Sir, desires me to say that, if you feel well enough, he
wishes to see you in his own room."

I rose, and immediately followed the servant. On our way, we passed
the door of Clara's private sitting-room--it opened, and my sister
came out and laid her hand on my arm. She smiled as I looked at her;
but the tears stood thick in her eyes, and her face was deadly pale.

"Think of what I said last night, Basil," she whispered, "and, if hard
words are spoken to you, think of _me._ All that our mother would have
done for you, if she had been still among us, _I_ will do. Remember
that, and keep heart and hope to the very last."

She hastily returned to her room, and I went on down stairs. In the
hall, the servant was waiting for me, with a letter in his hand.

"This was left for you, Sir, a little while ago. The messenger who
brought it said he was not to wait for an answer."

It was no time for reading letters--the interview with my father was
too close at hand. I hastily put the letter into my pocket, barely
noticing, as I did so, that the handwriting on the address was very
irregular, and quite unknown to me.

I went at once into my father's room.

He was sitting at his table, cutting the leaves of some new books that
lay on it. Pointing to a chair placed opposite to him, he briefly
inquired after my health; and then added, in a lower tone--

"Take any time you like, Basil, to compose and collect yourself. This
morning my time is yours."

He turned a little away from me, and went on cutting the leaves of the
books placed before him. Still utterly incapable of preparing myself
in any way for the disclosure expected from me; without thought or
hope, or feeling of any kind, except a vague sense of thankfulness for
the reprieve granted me before I was called on to speak--I
mechanically looked round and round the room, as if I expected to see
the sentence to be pronounced against me, already written on the
walls, or grimly foreshadowed in the faces of the old family portraits
which hung above the fireplace.

What man has ever felt that all his thinking powers were absorbed,
even by the most poignant mental misery that could occupy them? In
moments of imminent danger, the mind can still travel of its own
accord over the past, in spite of the present--in moments of bitter
affliction, it can still recur to every-day trifles, in spite of
ourselves. While I now sat silent in my father's room, long-forgotten
associations of childhood connected with different parts of it, began
to rise on my memory in the strangest and most startling independence
of any influence or control, which my present agitation and suspense
might be supposed to exercise over them. The remembrances that should
have been the last to be awakened at this time of heavy trial, were
the very remembrances which now moved within me.

With burdened heart and aching eyes I looked over the walls around me.
There, in that corner, was the red cloth door which led to the
library. As children, how often Ralph and I had peeped curiously
through that very door, to see what my father was about in his study,
to wonder why he had so many letters to write, and so many books to
read. How frightened we both were, when he discovered us one day, and
reproved us severely! How happy the moment afterwards, when we had
begged him to pardon us, and were sent back to the library again with
a great picture-book to look at, as a token that we were both
forgiven! Then, again, there was the high, old-fashioned, mahogany
press before the window, with the same large illustrated folio about
Jewish antiquities lying on it, which, years and years ago, Clara and
I were sometimes allowed to look at, as a special treat, on Sunday
afternoons; and which we always examined and re-examined with
never-ending delight--standing together on two chairs to reach up to
the thick, yellow-looking leaves, and turn them over with our own
hands. And there, in the recess between two bookcases, still stood the
ancient desk-table, with its rows of little inlaid drawers; and on the
bracket above it the old French clock, which had once belonged to my
mother, and which always chimed the hours so sweetly and merrily. It
was at that table that Ralph and I always bade my father farewell,
when we were going back to school after the holidays, and were
receiving our allowance of pocket-money, given to us out of one of the
tiny inlaid drawers, just before we started. Near that spot, too,
Clara--then a little rosy child--used to wait gravely and anxiously,
with her doll in her arms, to say good-bye for the last time, and to
bid us come back soon, and then never go away again. I turned, and
looked abruptly towards the window; for such memories as the room
suggested were more than I could bear.

Outside, in the dreary strip of garden, the few stunted, dusky trees
were now rustling as pleasantly in the air, as if the breeze that
stirred them came serenely over an open meadow, or swept freshly under
their branches from the rippling surface of a brook. Distant, but yet
well within hearing, the mighty murmur from a large thoroughfare--the
great mid-day voice of London--swelled grandly and joyously on the
ear. While, nearer still, in a street that ran past the side of the
house, the notes of an organ rang out shrill and fast; the instrument
was playing its liveliest waltz tune--a tune which I had danced to in
the ball-room over and over again. What mocking memories within, what
mocking sounds without, to herald and accompany such a confession as I
had now to make!

Minute after minute glided on, inexorably fast; and yet I never broke
silence. My eyes turned anxiously and slowly on my father.

He was still looking away from me, still cutting the leaves of the
books before him. Even in that trifling action, the strong emotions
which he was trying to conceal, were plainly and terribly betrayed.
His hand, usually so steady and careful, trembled perceptibly; and the
paper-knife tore through the leaves faster and faster--cutting them
awry, rending them one from another, so as to spoil the appearance of
every page. I believe he _felt_ that I was looking at him; for he
suddenly discontinued his employment, turned round towards me, and
spoke--

"I have resolved to give you your own time," he said, "and from that
resolve I have no wish to depart--I only ask you to remember that
every minute of delay adds to the suffering and suspense which I am
enduring on your account." He opened the books before him again,
adding in lower and colder tones, as he did so--"In _your_ place,
Ralph would have spoken before this."

Ralph, and Ralph's example quoted to me again!--I could remain silent
no longer.

"My brother's faults towards you, and towards his family, are not such
faults as mine, Sir," I began. "I have _not_ imitated his vices; I
have acted as he would _not_ have acted. And yet, the result of my
error will appear far more humiliating, and even disgraceful, in your
eyes, than the results of any errors of Ralph's."

As I pronounced the word "disgraceful," he suddenly looked me full in
the face. His eyes lightened up sternly, and the warning red spot rose
on his pale cheeks.

"What do you mean by 'disgraceful?'" he asked abruptly; "what do you
mean by associating such a word as _disgrace_ with your conduct--with
the conduct of a son of mine?"

"I must reply to your question indirectly, Sir," I continued. "You
asked me last night who the Mr. Sherwin was who has called here so
often--"

"And this morning I ask it again. I have other questions to put to
you, besides--you called constantly on a woman's name in your
delirium. But I will repeat last night's question first--who _is_ Mr.
Sherwin?"

"He lives--"

"I don't ask where he lives. Who is he? What is he?"

"Mr. Sherwin is a linen-draper--"

"You owe him money?--you have borrowed money of him? Why did you not
tell me this before? You have degraded my house by letting a man call
at the door--I know it!--in the character of a dun. He has inquired
about you as his 'friend,'--the servants told me of it. This
money-lending tradesman, your _'friend!'_ If I had heard that the
poorest labourer on my land called you 'friend,' I should have held
you honoured by the attachment and gratitude of an honest man. When I
hear that name given to you by a tradesman and money-lender, I hold
you contaminated by connection with a cheat. You were right,
Sir!--this _is_ disgrace; how much do you owe? Where are your
dishonoured acceptances? Where have you used _my_ name and _my_
credit? Tell me at once--I insist on it!"

He spoke rapidly and contemptuously, and rising from his chair as he
ended, walked impatiently up and down the room.

"I owe no money to Mr. Sherwin, Sir--no money to any one."

He stopped suddenly:

"No money to any one?" he repeated very slowly, and in very altered
tones. "You spoke of disgrace just now. There is a worse disgrace then
that you have hidden from me, than debts dishonourably contracted?"

At this moment, a step passed across the hall. He instantly turned
round, and locked the door on that side of the room--then continued:

"Speak! and speak honestly if you can. How have you been deceiving me?
A woman's name escaped you constantly, when your delirium was at its
worst. You used some very strange expressions about her, which it was
impossible altogether to comprehend; but you said enough to show that
her character was one of the most abandoned; that her
licentiousness--it is too revolting to speak of _her_-- I return to
_you._ I insist on knowing how far your vices have compromised you
with that vicious woman."

"She has wronged me--cruelly, horribly, wronged me--" I could say no
more. My head drooped on my breast; my shame overpowered me.

"Who is she? You called her Margaret, in your illness--who is she?"

"She is Mr. Sherwin's daughter--" The words that I would fain have
spoken next, seemed to suffocate me. I was silent again.

I heard him mutter to himself:

_"That_ man's daughter!--a worse bait than the bait of money!"

He bent forward, and looked at me searchingly. A frightful paleness
flew over his face in an instant.

"Basil!" he cried, "in God's name, answer me at once! What is Mr.
Sherwin's daughter to _you?_"

"She is my wife!"

I heard no answer--not a word, not even a sigh. My eyes were blinded
with tears, my face was bent down; I saw nothing at first. When I
raised my head, and dashed away the blinding tears, and looked up, the
blood chilled at my heart.

My father was leaning against one of the bookcases, with his hands
clasped over his breast. His head was drawn back; his white lips
moved, but no sound came from them. Over his upturned face there had
passed a ghastly change, as indescribable in its awfulness as the
change of death.

I ran horror-stricken to his side, and attempted to take his hand. He
started instantly into an erect position, and thrust me from him
furiously, without uttering a word. At that fearful moment, in that
fearful silence, the sounds out of doors penetrated with harrowing
distinctness and merriment into the room. The pleasant rustling of the
trees mingled musically with the softened, monotonous rolling of
carriages in the distant street, while the organ-tune, now changed to
the lively measure of a song, rang out clear and cheerful above both,
and poured into the room as lightly and happily as the very sunshine
itself.

For a few minutes we stood apart, and neither of us moved or spoke. I
saw him take out his handkerchief, and pass it over his face,
breathing heavily and thickly, and leaning against the bookcase once
more. When he withdrew the handkerchief and looked at me again, I knew
that the sharp pang of agony had passed away, that the last hard
struggle between his parental affection and his family pride was over,
and that the great gulph which was hence-forth to separate father and
son, had now opened between us for ever.

He pointed peremptorily to me to go back to my former place, but did
not return to his own chair. As I obeyed, I saw him unlock the door of
the bookcase against which he had been leaning, and place his hand on
one of the books inside. Without withdrawing it from its place,
without turning or looking towards me, he asked if I had anything more
to say to him.

The chilling calmness of his tones, the question itself, and the time
at which he put it, the unnatural repression of a single word of
rebuke, of passion, or of sorrow, after such a confession as I had
just made, struck me speechless. He turned a little away from the
bookcase--still keeping his hand on the book inside--and repeated the
question. His eyes, when they met mine, had a pining, weary look, as
if they had been long condemned to rest on woeful and revolting
objects; his expression had lost its natural refinement, its
gentleness of repose, and had assumed a hard, lowering calmness, under
which his whole countenance appeared to have shrunk and changed--years
of old age seemed to have fallen on it, since I had spoken the last
fatal words!

"Have you anything more to say to me?"

On the repetition of that terrible question, I sank down in the chair
at my side, and hid my face in my hands. Unconscious how I spoke, or
why I spoke; with no hope in myself, or in him; with no motive but to
invite and bear the whole penalty of my disgrace, I now disclosed the
miserable story of my marriage, and of all that followed it. I
remember nothing of the words I used---nothing of what I urged in my
own defence. The sense of bewilderment and oppression grew heavier and
heavier on my brain; I spoke more and more rapidly, confusedly,
unconsciously, until I was again silenced and recalled to myself by
the sound of my father's voice. I believe I had arrived at the last,
worst part of my confession, when he interrupted me.

"Spare me any more details," he said, bitterly, "you have humiliated
me sufficiently--you have spoken enough."

He removed the book on which his hand had hitherto rested from the
case behind him, and advanced with it to the table--paused for a
moment, pale and silent--then slowly opened it at the first page, and
resumed his chair.

I recognised the book instantly. It was a biographical history of his
family, from the time of his earliest ancestors down to the date of
the births of his own children. The thick quarto pages were
beautifully illuminated in the manner of the ancient manuscripts; and
the narrative, in written characters, had been produced under his own
inspection. This book had cost him years of research and perseverance.
The births and deaths, the marriages and possessions, the battle
achievements and private feuds of the old Norman barons from whom he
traced his descent, were all enrolled in regular order on every
leaf--headed, sometimes merely by representations of the Knight's
favourite weapon; sometimes by copies of the Baron's effigy on his
tombstone in a foreign land. As the history advanced to later dates,
beautiful miniature portraits were inlaid at the top of each leaf; and
the illuminations were so managed as to symbolize the remarkable
merits or the peculiar tastes of the subject of each biography. Thus,
the page devoted to my mother was surrounded by her favourite violets,
clustering thickest round the last melancholy lines of writing which
told the story of her death.

Slowly and in silence, my father turned over the leaves of the book
which, next to the Bible, I believe he most reverenced in the world,
until he came to the last-written page but one--the page which I knew,
from its position, to be occupied by my name. At the top, a miniature
portrait of me, when a child, was let into the leaf. Under it, was the
record of my birth and names, of the School and College at which I had
been taught, and of the profession that I had adopted. Below, a large
blank space was left for the entry of future particulars. On this page
my father now looked, still not uttering a word, still with the same
ghastly calmness on his face. The organ-notes sounded no more; but the
trees rustled as pleasantly, and the roar of the distant carriages
swelled as joyously as ever on the ear. Some children had come out to
play in the garden of a neighbouring house. As their voices reached
us, so fresh, and clear, and happy--but another modulation of the
thanksgiving song to God which the trees were singing in the summer
air--I saw my father, while he still looked on the page before him,
clasp his trembling hands over my portrait so as to hide it from
sight.

Then he spoke; but without looking up, and more as if he were speaking
to himself than to me. His voice, at other times clear and gentle in
its tones, was now so hard and harsh in its forced calmness and
deliberation of utterance, that it sounded like a stranger's.

"I came here, this morning," he began, "prepared to hear of faults and
misfortunes which should pain me to the heart; which I might never,
perhaps, be able to forget, however willing and even predetermined to
forgive. But I did _not_ come prepared to hear, that unutterable
disgrace had been cast on me and mine, by my own child. I have no
words of rebuke or of condemnation for this: the reproach and the
punishment have fallen already where the guilt was--and not there
only. My son's infamy defiles his brother's birthright, and puts his
father to shame. Even his sister's name--"

He stopped, shuddering. When he proceeded, his voice faltered, and his
head drooped low.

"I say it again:--you are below all reproach and all condemnation; but
I have a duty to perform towards my two who are absent, and I have a
last word to say to _you_ when that duty is done. On this page--" (as
he pointed to the family history, his tones strengthened again)--"on
this page there is a blank space left, after the last entry, for
writing the future events of your life. Here, then, if I still
acknowledge you to be my son; if I think your presence and the
presence of my daughter possible in the same house, must be written
such a record of dishonour and degradation as has never yet defiled a
single page of this book--here, the foul stain of your marriage, and
its consequences, must be admitted to spread over all that is pure
before it, and to taint to the last whatever comes after. This shall
not be. I have no faith or hope in you more. I know you now, only as
an enemy to me and to my house--it is mockery and hypocrisy to call
you son; it is an insult to Clara, and even to Ralph, to think of you
as my child. In this record your place is destroyed--and destroyed for
ever. Would to God I could tear the past from my memory, as I tear the
leaf from this book!"

As he spoke, the hour struck; and the old French clock rang out gaily
the same little silvery chime which my mother had so often taken me
into her room to listen to, in the bygone time. The shrill, lively
peal mingled awfully with the sharp, tearing sound, as my father rent
out from the book before him the whole of the leaf which contained my
name; tore it into fragments, and cast them on the floor.

He rose abruptly, after he had closed the book again. His cheeks
flushed once more; and when he next spoke, his voice grew louder and
louder with every word he uttered. It seemed as if he still distrusted
his resolution to abandon me; and sought, in his anger, the strength
of purpose which, in his calmer mood, he might even yet have been
unable to command.

"Now, Sir," he said, "we treat together as strangers. You are Mr.
Sherwin's son--not mine. You are the husband of his daughter--not a
relation of my family. Rise, as I do: we sit together no longer in the
same room. Write!" (he pushed pen, ink, and paper before me,) "write
your terms there--I shall find means to keep you to a written
engagement--the terms of your absence, for life, from this country;
and of hers: the terms of your silence, and of the silence of your
accomplices; of all of them. Write what you please; I am ready to pay
dearly for your absence, your secrecy, and your abandonment of the
name you have degraded. My God! that I should live to bargain for
hushing up the dishonour of my family, and to bargain for it with
_you._"

I had listened to him hitherto without pleading a word in my own
behalf; but his last speech roused me. Some of _his_ pride stirred in
my heart against the bitterness of his contempt. I raised my head, and
met his eye steadily for the first time--then, thrust the writing
materials away from me, and left my place at the table.

"Stop!" he cried. "Do you pretend that you have not understood me?"

"It is _because_ I have understood you, Sir, that I go. I have
deserved your anger, and have submitted without a murmur to all that
it could inflict. If you see in my conduct towards you no mitigation
of my offence; if you cannot view the shame and wrong inflicted on me,
with such grief as may have some pity mixed with it--I have, I think,
the right to ask that your contempt may be silent, and your last words
to me, not words of insult."

"Insult! After what has happened, is it for _you_ to utter that word
in the tone in which you have just spoken it? I tell you again, I
insist on your written engagement as I would insist on the engagement
of a stranger--I will have it, before you leave this room!"

"All, and more than all, which that degrading engagement could imply,
I will do. But I have not fallen so low yet, as to be bribed to
perform a duty. You may be able to forget that you are my father; I
can never forget that I am your son."

"The remembrance will avail you nothing as long as I live. I tell you
again, I insist on your written engagement, though it were only to
show that I have ceased to believe in your word. Write at once--do you
hear me?--Write!"

I neither moved nor answered. His face changed again, and grew livid;
his fingers trembled convulsively, and crumpled the sheet of paper, as
he tried to take it up from the table on which it lay.

"You refuse?" he said quickly.

"I have already told you, Sir--"

"Go!" he interrupted, pointing passionately to the door, "go out from
this house, never to return to it again--go, not as a stranger to me,
but as an enemy! I have no faith in a single promise you have made:
there is no baseness which I do not believe you will yet be guilty of.
But I tell you, and the wretches with whom you are leagued, to take
warning: I have wealth, power, and position; and there is no use to
which I will not put them against the man or woman who threatens the
fair fame of this family. Leave me, remembering that--and leave me for
ever!"

Just as he uttered the last word, just as my hand was on the lock of
the door, a faint sound--something between breathing and speaking--was
audible in the direction of the library. He started, and looked round.
Impelled, I know not how, I paused on the point of going out. My eyes
followed his, and fixed on the cloth door which led into the library.

It opened a little--then shut again--then opened wide. Slowly and
noiselessly, Clara came into the room.

The silence and suddenness of her entrance at such a moment; the look
of terror which changed to unnatural vacancy the wonted softness and
gentleness of her eyes, her pale face, her white dress, and slow,
noiseless step, made her first appearance in the room seem almost
supernatural; it was as if an apparition had been walking towards us,
and not Clara herself! As she approached my father, he pronounced her
name in astonishment; but his voice sank to a whisper, while he spoke
it. For an instant, she paused, hesitating--I saw her tremble as her
eyes met his--then, as they turned towards me, the brave girl came on;
and, taking my hand, stood and faced my father, standing by my side.

"Clara!" he exclaimed again, still in the same whispering tones.

I felt her cold hand close fast on mine; the grasp of the chill, frail
fingers was almost painful to me. Her lips moved, but her quick,
hysterical breathing made the few words she uttered inarticulate.

"Clara!" repeated my father, for the third time, his voice rising, but
sinking again immediately--when he spoke his next words, "Clara," he
resumed, sadly and gently, "let go his hand; this is not a time for
your presence, I beg you to leave us. You must not take his hand! He
has ceased to be my son, or your brother. Clara, do you not hear me?"

"Yes, Sir, I hear you," she answered. "God grant that my mother in
heaven may not hear you too!"

He was approaching while she replied; but at her last words, he
stopped instantly, and turned his face away from us. Who shall say
what remembrances of other days shook him to the heart?

"You have spoken, Clara, as you should not have spoken," he went on,
without looking up. "Your mother--" his voice faltered and failed him.
"Can you still hold his hand after what I have said? I tell you again,
he is unworthy to be in your presence; my house is his home no
longer--must I _command_ you to leave him?"

The deeply planted instinct of gentleness and obedience prevailed; she
dropped my hand, but did not move away from me, even yet.

"Now leave us, Clara," he said. "You were wrong, my love, to be in
that room, and wrong to come in here. I will speak to you
up-stairs--you must remain here no longer."

She clasped her trembling fingers together, and sighed heavily.

"I cannot go, Sir," she said quickly and breathlessly.

"Must I tell you for the first time in your life, that you are acting
disobediently?" he asked.

"I cannot go," she repeated in the same manner, "till you have said
you will let him atone for his offence, and will forgive him."

"For _his_ offence there is neither atonement nor forgiveness. Clara!
are you so changed, that you can disobey me to my face?"

He walked away from us as he said this.

"Oh, no! no!" She ran towards him; but stopped halfway, and looked
back at me affrightedly, as I stood near the door. "Basil," she cried,
"you have not done what you promised me; you have not been patient.
Oh, Sir, if I have ever deserved kindness from you, be kind to him for
_my_ sake! Basil! speak, Basil! Ask his pardon on your knees. Father,
I promised him he should be forgiven, if I asked you. Not a word; not
a word from either? Basil! you are not going yet--not going at all!
Remember, Sir, how good and kind he has always been to _me._ My poor
mother, (I _must_ speak of her), my poor mother's favourite son--you
have told me so yourself! and he has always been my favourite brother;
I think because my mother loved him so! His first fault, too! his
first grief! And will you tell him for this, that our home is _his_
home no longer? Punish _me,_ Sir! I have done wrong like him; when I
heard your voices so loud, I listened in the library. He's going! No,
no, no! not yet!"

She ran to the door as I opened it, and pushed it to again.
Overwhelmed by the violence of her agitation, my father had sunk into
a chair while she was speaking.

"Come back--come back with me to his knees!" she whispered, fixing her
wild, tearless eyes on mine, flinging her arms round my neck, and
trying to lead me with her from the door. "Come back, or you will
drive me mad!" she repeated loudly, drawing me away towards my father.

He rose instantly from his chair.

"Clara," he said, "I command you, leave him!" He advanced a few steps
towards me. "Go!" he cried; "if you are human in your villany, you
will release me from this!"

I whispered in her ear, "I will write, love--I will write," and
disengaged her arms from my neck--they were hanging round it weakly,
already! As I passed the door, I turned back, and looked again into
the room for the last time.

Clara was in my father's arms, her head lay on his shoulder, her face
was as still in its heavenly calmness as if the world and the world's
looks knew it no more, and the only light that fell on it now, was
light from the angel's eyes. She had fainted.

He was standing with one arm round her, his disengaged hand was
searching impatiently over the wall behind him for the bell, and his
eyes were fixed in anguish and in love unutterable on the peaceful
face, hushed in its sad repose so close beneath his own. For one
moment, I saw him thus, ere I closed the door--the next, I had left
the house.

I never entered it again--I have never seen my father since.

IV.

We are seldom able to discover under any ordinary conditions of
self-knowledge, how intimately that spiritual part of us, which is
undying, can attach to itself and its operations the poorest objects
of that external world around us, which is perishable. In the ravelled
skein, the slightest threads are the hardest to follow. In analysing
the associations and sympathies which regulate the play of our
passions, the simplest and homeliest are the last that we detect. It
is only when the shock comes, and the mind recoils before it--when joy
is changed into sorrow, or sorrow into joy--that we really discern
what trifles in the outer world our noblest mental pleasures, or our
severest mental pains, have made part of themselves; atoms which the
whirlpool has drawn into its vortex, as greedily and as surely as the
largest mass.

It was reserved for me to know this, when--after a moment's pause
before the door of my father's house, more homeless, then, than the
poorest wretch who passed me on the pavement, and had wife or kindred
to shelter him in a garret that night--my steps turned, as of old, in
the direction of North Villa.

Again I passed over the scene of my daily pilgrimage, always to the
same shrine, for a whole year; and now, for the first time, I knew
that there was hardly a spot along the entire way, which my heart had
not unconsciously made beautiful and beloved to me by some association
with Margaret Sherwin. Here was the friendly, familiar shop-window,
filled with the glittering trinkets which had so often lured me in to
buy presents for her, on my way to the house. There was the noisy
street corner, void of all adornment in itself, but once bright to me
with the fairy-land architecture of a dream, because I knew that at
that place I had passed over half the distance which separated my home
from hers. Farther on, the Park trees came in sight--trees that no
autumn decay or winter nakedness could make dreary, in the bygone
time; for she and I had walked under them together. And further yet,
was the turning which led from the long, suburban road into Hollyoake
Square--the lonely, dust-whitened place, around which my past
happiness and my wasted hopes had flung their golden illusions, like
jewels hung round the coarse wooden image of a Roman saint.
Dishonoured and ruined, it was among such associations as these--too
homely to have been recognised by me in former times--that I journeyed
along the well-remembered way to North Villa.

I went on without hesitating, without even a thought of turning back.
I had said that the honour of my family should not suffer by the
calamity which had fallen on me; and, while life remained, I was
determined that nothing should prevent me from holding to my word. It
was from this resolution that I drew the faith in myself, the
confidence in my endurance, the sustaining calmness under my father's
sentence of exclusion, which nerved me to go on. I must inevitably see
Mr. Sherwin (perhaps even suffer the humiliation of seeing her!)--must
inevitably speak such words, disclose such truths, as should show him
that deceit was henceforth useless. I must do this and more, I must be
prepared to guard the family to which--though banished from it--I
still belonged, from every conspiracy against them that detected crime
or shameless cupidity could form, whether in the desire of revenge, or
in the hope of gain.. A hard, almost an impossible task--but,
nevertheless, a task that must be done!

I kept the thought of this necessity before my mind unceasingly; not
only as a duty, but as a refuge from another thought, to which I dared
not for a moment turn. The still, pale face which I had seen lying
hushed on my father's breast--CLARA!--That way, lay the grief that
weakens, the yearning and the terror that are near despair; that way
was not it for _me._

The servant was at the garden-gate of North Villa--the same servant
whom I had seen and questioned in the first days of my fatal delusion.
She was receiving a letter from a man, very poorly dressed, who walked
away the moment I approached. Her confusion and surprise were so great
as she let me in, that she could hardly look at, or speak to me. It
was only when I was ascending the door-steps that she said--

"Miss Margaret"--(she still gave her that name!)--"Miss Margaret is
upstairs, Sir. I suppose you would like--"

"I have no wish to see her: I want to speak to Mr. Sherwin."

Looking more bewildered, and even frightened, than before, the girl
hurriedly opened one of the doors in the passage. I saw, as I entered,
that she had shown me, in her confusion, into the wrong room. Mr.
Sherwin, who was in the apartment, hastily drew a screen across the
lower end of it, apparently to hide something from me; which, however,
I had not seen as I came in.

He advanced, holding out his hand; but his restless eyes wandered
unsteadily, looking away from me towards the screen.

"So you have come at last, have you? Just let's step into the
drawing-room: the fact is--I thought I wrote to you about it--?"

He stopped suddenly, and his outstretched arm fell to his side. I had
not said a word. Something in my look and manner must have told him
already on what errand I had come.

"Why don't you speak?" he said, after a moment's pause. "What are you
looking at me like that for? Stop! Let's say our say in the other
room." He walked past me towards the door, and half opened it.

Why was he so anxious to get me away? Who, or what, was he hiding
behind the screen? The servant had said his daughter was upstairs;
remembering this, and suspecting every action or word that came from
him, I determined to remain in the room, and discover his secret. It
was evidently connected with me.

"Now then," he continued, opening the door a little wider, "it's only
across the hall, you know; and I always receive visitors in the best
room."

"I have been admitted here," I replied, "and have neither time nor
inclination to follow you from room to room, just as you like. What I
have to say is not much; and, unless you give me fit reasons to the
contrary, I shall say it here."

"You will, will you? Let me tell you that's damned like what we plain
mercantile men call downright incivility. I say it again--incivility;
and rudeness too, if you like it better." He saw I was determined, and
closed the door as he spoke, his face twitching and working violently,
and his quick, evil eyes turned again in the direction of the screen.

"Well," he continued, with a sulky defiance of manner and look, "do as
you like; stop here--you'll wish you hadn't before long, I'll be
bound! You don't seem to hurry yourself much about speaking, so _I_
shall sit down. _You_ can do as you please. Now then! just let's cut
it short--do you come here in a friendly way, to ask me to send for
_my_ girl downstairs, and to show yourself the gentleman, or do you
not?"

"You have written me two letters, Mr. Sherwin--"

"Yes: and took devilish good care you should get them--I left them
myself."

"In writing those letters, you were either grossly deceived; and, in
that case, are only to be pitied, or--"

"Pitied! what the devil do you mean by that? Nobody wants your pity
here."

"Or you have been trying to deceive me; and in that case, I have to
tell you that deceit is henceforth useless. I know all--more than you
suspect: more, I believe, than you would wish me to have known."

"Oh, that's your tack, is it? By God, I expected as much the moment
you came in! What! you don't believe _my_ girl--don't you? You're
going to fight shy, and behave like a scamp--are you? Damn your
infernal coolness and your aristocratic airs and graces! You shall see
I'll be even with you--you shall. Ha! ha! look here!--here's the
marriage certificate safe in my pocket. You won't do the honourable by
my poor child--won't you? Come out! Come away! You'd better--I'm off
to your father to blow the whole business; I am, as sure as my name's
Sherwin!"

He struck his fist on the table, and started up, livid with passion.
The screen trembled a little, and a slight rustling noise was audible
behind it, just as he advanced towards me. He stopped instantly, with
an oath, and looked back.

"I warn you to remain here," I said. "This morning, my father has
heard all from my lips. He has renounced me as his son, and I have
left his house for ever."

He turned round quickly, staring at me with a face of mingled fury and
dismay.

"Then you come to me a beggar!" he burst out; "a beggar who has taken
me in about his fine family, and his fine prospects; a beggar who
can't support my child--Yes! I say it again, a beggar who looks me in
the face, and talks as you do. I don't care a damn about you or your
father! I know my rights; I'm an Englishman, thank God! I know my
rights, and _my_ Margaret's rights; and I'll have them in spite of you
both. Yes! you may stare as angry as you like; staring don't hurt. I'm
an honest man, and _my_ girl's an honest girl!"

I was looking at him, at that moment, with the contempt that I really
felt; his rage produced no other sensation in me. All higher and
quicker emotions seemed to have been dried at their sources by the
events of the morning.

"I say _my_ girl's an honest girl," he repeated, sitting down again;
"and I dare you, or anybody--I don't care who--to prove the contrary.
You told me you knew all, just now. What _all?_ Come! we'll have this
out before we do anything else. She says she's innocent, and I say
she's innocent: and if I could find out that damnation scoundrel
Mannion, and get him here, I'd make him say it too. Now, after all
that, what have you got against her?--against your lawful wife; and
I'll make you own her as such, and keep her as such, I can promise
you!"

"I am not here to ask questions, or to answer them," I replied--"my
errand in this house is simply to tell you, that the miserable
falsehoods contained in your letter, will avail you as little as the
foul insolence of language by which you are now endeavouring to
support them. I told you before, and I now tell you again, I know all.
I had been inside that house, before I saw your daughter at the door;
and had heard, from _her_ voice and _his_ voice, what such shame and
misery as you cannot comprehend forbid me to repeat. To your past
duplicity, and to your present violence, I have but one answer to
give:--I will never see your daughter again."

"But you _shall_ see her again--yes! and keep her too! Do you think I
can't see through you and your precious story? Your father's cut you
off with a shilling; and now you want to curry favour with him again
by trumping up a case against _my_ girl, and trying to get her off
your hands that way. But it won't do! You've married her, my fine
gentleman, and you shall stick to her! Do you think I wouldn't sooner
believe her, than believe you? Do you think I'll stand this? Here she
is up-stairs, half heart-broken, on my hands; here's my wife"--(his
voice sank suddenly as he said this)--"with her mind in such a state
that I'm kept away from business, day after day, to look after her;
here's all this crying and misery and mad goings-on in my house,
because you choose to behave like a scamp--and do you think I'll put
up with it quietly? I'll make you do your duty to _my_ girl, if she
goes to the parish to appeal against you! _Your_ story indeed! Who'll
believe that a young female, like Margaret, could have taken to a
fellow like Mannion? and kept it all a secret from you? Who believes
that, I should like to know?"

_"I believe it!"_

The third voice which pronounced those words was Mrs. Sherwin's.

But was the figure that now came out from behind the screen, the same
frail, shrinking figure which had so often moved my pity in the past
time? the same wan figure of sickness and sorrow, ever watching in the
background of the fatal love-scenes at North Villa; ever looking like
the same spectre-shadow, when the evenings darkened in as I sat by
Margaret's side?

Had the grave given up its dead? I stood awe-struck, neither speaking
nor moving while she walked towards me. She was clothed in the white
garments of the sick-room--they looked on _her_ like the raiment of
the tomb. Her figure, which I only remembered as drooping with
premature infirmity, was now straightened convulsively to its proper
height; her arms hung close at her side, like the arms of a corpse;
the natural paleness of her face had turned to an earthy hue; its
natural expression, so meek, so patient, so melancholy in
uncomplaining sadness, was gone; and, in its stead, was left a pining
stillness that never changed; a weary repose of lifeless waking--the
awful seal of Death stamped ghastly on the living face; the awful look
of Death staring out from the chill, shining eyes.

Her husband kept his place, and spoke to her as she stopped opposite
to me. His tones were altered, but his manner showed as little feeling
as ever.

"There now!" he began, "you said you were sure he'd come here, and
that you'd never take to your bed, as the Doctor wanted you, till
you'd seen him and spoken to him. Well, he _has_ come; there he is. He
came in while you were asleep, I rather think; and I let him stop, so
that if you woke up and wanted to see him, you might. You can't
say--nobody can say--I haven't given in to your whims and fancies
after that. There! you've had your way, and you've said you believe
him; and now, if I ring for the nurse, you'll go upstairs at last, and
make no more worry about it--Eh?"

She moved her head slowly, and looked at him. As those dying eyes met
his, as that face on which the light of life was darkening fast,
turned on him, even _his_ gross nature felt the shock. I saw him
shrink--his sallow cheeks whitened, he moved his chair away, and said
no more.

She looked back to me again, and spoke. Her voice was still the same
soft, low voice as ever. It was fearful to hear how little it had
altered, and then to look on the changed face.

"I am dying," she said to me. "Many nights have passed since that
night when Margaret came home by herself and I felt something moving
down into my heart, when I looked at her, which I knew was death--many
nights, since I have been used to say my prayers, and think I had said
them for the last time, before I dared shut my eyes in the darkness
and the quiet. I have lived on till to-day, very weary of my life ever
since that night when Margaret came in; and yet, I could not die,
because I had an atonement to make to _you,_ and you never came to
hear it and forgive me. I was not fit for God to take me till you
came--I know that, know it to be truth from a dream."

She paused, still looking at me, but with the same deathly blank of
expression. The eye had ceased to speak already; nothing but the voice
was left.

"My husband has asked, who will believe you?" she went on; her weak
tones gathering strength with every fresh word she uttered. "I have
answered that _I_ will; for you have spoken the truth. Now, when the
light of this world is fading from my eyes; here, in this earthly home
of much sorrow and suffering, which I must soon quit--in the presence
of my husband--under the same roof with my sinful child--I bear you
witness that you have spoken the truth. I, her mother, say it of her:
Margaret Sherwin is guilty; she is no more worthy to be called your
wife."

She pronounced the last words slowly, distinctly, solemnly. Till that
fearful denunciation was spoken, her husband had been looking sullenly
and suspiciously towards us, as we stood together; but while she
uttered it, his eyes fell, and he turned away his head in silence.

He never looked up, never moved, or interrupted her, as she continued,
still addressing me; but now speaking very slowly and painfully,
pausing longer and longer between every sentence.

"From this room I go to my death-bed. The last words I speak in this
world shall be to my husband, and shall change his heart towards you.
I have been weak of purpose," (as she said this, a strange sweetness
and mournfulness began to steal over her tones,) "miserably, guiltily
weak, all my life. Much sorrow and pain and heavy disappointment, when
I was young, did some great harm to me which I have never recovered
since. I have lived always in fear of others, and doubt of myself; and
this has made me guilty of a great sin towards _you._ Forgive me
before I die! I suspected the guilt that was preparing--I foreboded
the shame that was to come--they hid it from others' eyes; but, from
the first, they could not hide it from mine--and yet I never warned
you as I ought! _That_ man had the power of Satan over me! I always
shuddered before him, as I used to shudder at the darkness when I was
a little child! My life has been all fear--fear of _him;_ fear of my
husband, and even of my daughter; fear, worse still, of my own
thoughts, and of what I had discovered that should be told to _you._
When I tried to speak, you were too generous to understand me--I was
afraid to think my suspicions were right, long after they should have
been suspicions no longer. It was misery!--oh, what misery from then
till now!"

Her voice died away for a moment, in faint, breathless murmurings. She
struggled to recover it, and repeated in a whisper:

"Forgive me before I die! I have made a terrible atonement; I have
borne witness against the innocence of my own child. My own child! I
dare not bid God bless her, if they bring her to my bedside!--forgive
me!--forgive me before I die!"

She took my hand, and pressed it to her cold lips. The tears gushed
into my eyes, as I tried to speak to her.

"No tears for _me!_" she murmured gently. "Basil!--let me call you as
your mother would call you if she was alive--Basil! pray that I may be
forgiven in the dreadful Eternity to which I go, as _you_ have
forgiven me! And, for _her?_--oh! who will pray for _her_ when I am
gone?"

Those words were the last I heard her pronounce. Exhausted beyond the
power of speaking more, though it were only in a whisper, she tried to
take my hand again, and express by a gesture the irrevocable farewell.
But her strength failed her even for this--failed her with awful
suddenness. Her hand moved halfway towards mine; then stopped, and
trembled for a moment in the air; then fell to her side, with the
fingers distorted and clenched together. She reeled where she stood,
and sank helplessly as I stretched out my arms to support her.

Her husband rose fretfully from his chair, and took her from me. When
his eyes met mine, the look of sullen self-restraint in his
countenance was crossed, in an instant, by an expression of triumphant
malignity. He whispered to me: "If you don't change your tone by
to-morrow!"--paused--and then, without finishing the sentence, moved
away abruptly, and supported his wife to the door.

Just when her face was turned towards where I stood, as he took her
out, I thought I saw the cold, vacant eyes soften as they rested on
me, and change again tenderly to the old look of patience and sadness
which I remembered so well. Was my imagination misleading me? or had
the light of that meek spirit shone out on earth, for the last time at
parting, in token of farewell to mine? She was gone to me, gone for
ever--before I could look nearer, and know.

                * * * * *

I was told, afterwards, how she died.

For the rest of that day, and throughout the night, she lay
speechless, but still alive. The next morning, the faint pulse still
fluttered. As the day wore on, the doctors applied fresh stimulants,
and watched her in astonishment; for they had predicted her death as
impending every moment, at least twelve hours before. When they spoke
of this to her husband, his behaviour was noticed as very altered and
unaccountable by every one. He sulkily refused to believe that her
life was in danger; he roughly accused anybody who spoke of her death,
as wanting to fix on him the imputation of having ill-used her, and so
being the cause of her illness; and more than this, he angrily
vindicated himself to every one about her--even to the servants--by
quoting the indulgence he had shown to her fancy for seeing me when I
called, and his patience while she was (as he termed it) wandering in
her mind in trying to talk to me. The doctors, suspecting how his
uneasy conscience was accusing him, forbore in disgust all
expostulation. Except when he was in his daughter's room, he was
shunned by everybody in the house.

Just before noon, on the second day, Mrs. Sherwin rallied a little
under the stimulants administered to her, and asked to see her husband
alone. Both her words and manner gave the lie to his assertion that
her faculties were impaired--it was observed by all her attendants,
that whenever she had strength to speak, her speech never wandered in
the slightest degree. Her husband quitted her room more fretfully
uneasy, more sullenly suspicious of the words and looks of those about
him than ever--went instantly to seek his daughter--and sent her in
alone to her mother's bedside. In a few minutes, she hurriedly came
out again, pale, and violently agitated; and was heard to say, that
she had been spoken to so unnaturally, and so shockingly, that she
could not, and would not, enter that room again until her mother was
better. Better! the father and daughter were both agreed in that; both
agreed that she was not dying, but only out of her mind.

During the afternoon, the doctors ordered that Mrs. Sherwin should not
be allowed to see her husband or her child again, without their
permission. There was little need of taking such a precaution to
preserve the tranquillity of her last moments. As the day began to
decline, she sank again into insensibility: her life was just not
death, and that was all. She lingered on in this quiet way, with her
eyes peacefully closed, and her breathing so gentle as to be quite
inaudible, until late in the evening. Just as it grew quite dark, and
the candle was lit in the sick room, the servant who was helping to
watch by her, drew aside the curtain to look at her mistress; and saw
that, though her eyes were still closed, she was smiling. The girl
turned round, and beckoned to the nurse to come to the bedside. When
they lifted the curtains again to look at her, she was dead.

                    * * * * *

Let me return to the day of my last visit to North Villa. More remains
to be recorded, before my narrative can advance to the morrow.

After the door had closed, and I knew that I had looked my last on
Mrs. Sherwin in this world, I remained a few minutes alone in the
room, until I had steadied my mind sufficiently to go out again into
the streets. As I walked down the garden-path to the gate, the servant
whom I had seen on my entrance, ran after me, and eagerly entreated
that I would wait one moment and speak to her.

When I stopped and looked at the girl, she burst into tears. "I'm
afraid I've been doing wrong, Sir," she sobbed out, "and at this
dreadful time too, when my poor mistress is dying! If you please, Sir,
I _must_ tell you about it!"

I gave her a little time to compose herself; and then asked what she
had to say.

"I think you must have seen a man leaving a letter with me, Sir," she
continued, "just when you came up to the door, a little while ago?"

"Yes: I saw him."

"It was for Miss Margaret, Sir, that letter; and I was to keep it
secret; and--and--it isn't the first I've taken in for her. It's weeks
and weeks ago, Sir, that the same man came with a letter, and gave me
money to let nobody see it but Miss Margaret--and that time, Sir, he
waited; and she sent me with an answer to give him, in the same secret
way. And now, here's this second letter; I don't know who it comes
from--but I haven't taken it to her yet; I waited to show it to you,
Sir, as you came out, because--"

"Why, Susan?--tell me candidly why?"

"I hope you won't take it amiss, Sir, if I say that having lived in
the family so long as I have, I can't help knowing a little about what
you and Miss Margaret used to be to each other, and that something's
happened wrong between you lately; and so, Sir, it seems to be very
bad and dishonest in me (after first helping you to come together, as
I did), to be giving her strange letters, unknown to you. They may be
bad letters. I'm sure I wouldn't wish to say anything disrespectful,
or that didn't become my place; but--"

"Go on, Susan--speak as freely and as truly to me as ever."

"Well, Sir, Miss Margaret's been very much altered, ever since that
night when she came home alone, and frightened us so. She shuts
herself up in her room, and won't speak to anybody except my master;
she doesn't seem to care about anything that happens; and sometimes
she looks so at me, when I'm waiting on her, that I'm almost afraid to
be in the same room with her. I've never heard her mention your name
once, Sir; and I'm fearful there's something on her mind that there
oughtn't to be. He's a very shabby man that leaves the letters--would
you please to look at this, and say whether you think it's right in me
to take it up-stairs."

She held out a letter. I hesitated before I looked at it.

"Oh, Sir! please, please do take it!" said the girl earnestly. "I did
wrong, I'm afraid, in giving her the first; but I can't do wrong
again, when my poor mistress is dying in the house. I can't keep
secrets, Sir, that may be bad secrets, at such a dreadful time as
this; I couldn't have laid down in my bed to-night, when there's
likely to be death in the house, if I hadn't confessed what I've done;
and my poor mistress has always been so kind and good to us
servants--better than ever we deserved."

Weeping bitterly as she said this, the kind-hearted girl held out the
letter to me once more. This time I took it from her, and looked at
the address.

Though I did not know the handwriting, still there was something in
those unsteady characters which seemed familiar to me. Was it possible
that I had ever seen them before? I tried to consider; but my memory
was confused, my mind wearied out, after all that had happened since
the morning. The effort was fruitless: I gave back the letter.

"I know as little about it, Susan, as you do."

"But ought I to take it up-stairs, Sir? only tell me that!"

"It is not for me to say. All interest or share on my part, Susan, in
what she--in what your young mistress receives, is at an end."

"I'm very sorry to hear you say that, Sir; very, very sorry. But what
would you advise me to do?"

"Let me look at the letter once more."

On a second view, the handwriting produced the same effect on me as
before, ending too with just the same result. I returned the letter
again.

"I respect your scruples, Susan, but I am not the person to remove or
to justify them. Why should you not apply in this difficulty to your
master?"

"I dare not, Sir; I dare not for my life. He's been worse than ever,
lately; if I said as much to him as I've said to you, I believe he'd
kill me!" She hesitated, then continued more composedly; "Well, at any
rate I've told _you,_ Sir, and that's made my mind easier; and--and
I'll give her the letter this once, and then take in no more--if they
come, unless I hear a proper account of them."

She curtseyed; and, bidding me farewell very sadly and anxiously,
returned to the house with the letter in her hand. If I had guessed at
that moment who it was written by! If I could only have suspected what
were its contents!

I left Hollyoake Square in a direction which led to some fields a
little distance on. It was very strange; but that unknown handwriting
still occupied my thoughts: that wretched trifle absolutely took
possession of my mind, at such a time as this; in such a position as
mine was now.

I stopped wearily in the fields at a lonely spot, away from the
footpath. My eyes ached at the sunlight, and I shaded them with my
hand. Exactly at the same instant, the lost recollection flashed back
on me so vividly that I started almost in terror. The handwriting
shown me by the servant at North Villa, was the same as the
handwriting on that unopened and forgotten letter in my pocket, which
I had received from the servant at home--received in the morning, as I
crossed the hall to enter my father's room.

I took out the letter, opened it with trembling fingers, and looked
through the cramped, closely-written pages for the signature.

It was "ROBERT MANNION."

V.

Mannion! I had never suspected that the note shown to me at North
Villa might have come from him. And yet, the secrecy with which it had
been delivered; the person to whom it was addressed; the mystery
connected with it even in the servant's eyes, all pointed to the
discovery which I had so incomprehensibly failed to make. I had
suffered a letter, which might contain written proof of her guilt, to
be taken, from under my own eyes, to Margaret Sherwin! How had my
perceptions become thus strangely blinded? The confusion of my memory,
the listless incapacity of all my faculties, answered the question but
too readily, of themselves.

"Robert Mannion!" I could not take my eyes from that name: I still
held before me the crowded, closely-written lines of his writing, and
delayed to read them. Something of the horror which the presence of
the man himself would have inspired in me, was produced by the mere
sight of his letter, and that letter addressed to _me._ The vengeance
which my own hands had wreaked on him, he was, of all men the surest
to repay. Perhaps, in these lines, the dark future through which his
way and mine might lie, would be already shadowed forth. Margaret too!
Could he write so much, and not write of _her?_ not disclose the
mystery in which the motives of _her_ crime were still hidden? I
turned back again to the first page, and resolved to read the letter.
It began abruptly, in the following terms:--



                                    "St. Helen's Hospital.

"You may look at the signature when you receive this, and may be
tempted to tear up my letter, and throw it from you unread. I warn you
to read what I have written, and to estimate, if you can, its
importance to yourself. Destroy these pages afterwards if you
like--they will have served their purpose.

"Do you know where I am, and what I suffer? I am one of the patients
of this hospital, hideously mutilated for life by your hand. If I
could have known certainly the day of my dismissal, I should have
waited to tell you with my own lips what I now write--but I am
ignorant of this. At the very point of recovery I have suffered a
relapse.

"You will silence any uneasy upbraidings of conscience, should you
feel them, by saying that I have deserved death at your hands. I will
tell you, in answer, what you deserve and shall receive at mine.

"But I will first assume that it was knowledge of your wife's guilt
which prompted your attack on me. I am well aware that she has
declared herself innocent, and that her father supports her
declaration. By the time you receive this letter (my injuries oblige
me to allow myself a whole fortnight to write it in), I shall have
taken measures which render further concealment unnecessary.
Therefore, if my confession avail you aught, you have it here:--She is
guilty: _willingly_ guilty, remember, whatever she may say to the
contrary. You may believe this, and believe all I write hereafter.
Deception between us two is at an end.

"I have told you Margaret Sherwin is guilty. Why was she guilty? What
was the secret of my influence over her?

"To make you comprehend what I have now to communicate, it is
necessary for me to speak of myself; and of my early life. To-morrow,
I will undertake this disclosure--to-day, I can neither hold the pen,
nor see the paper any longer. If you could look at my face, where I am
now laid, you would know why!"

                         -----

"When we met for the first time at North Villa, I had not been five
minutes in your presence before I detected your curiosity to know
something about me, and perceived that you doubted, from the first,
whether I was born and bred for such a situation as I held under Mr.
Sherwin. Failing--as I knew you would fail--to gain any information
about me from my employer or his family, you tried, at various times,
to draw me into familiarity, to get me to talk unreservedly to you;
and only gave up the attempt to penetrate my secret, whatever it might
be, when we parted after our interview at my house on the night of the
storm. On that night, I determined to baulk your curiosity, and yet to
gain your confidence; and I succeeded. You little thought, when you
bade me farewell at my own door, that you had given your hand and your
friendship to a man, who--long before you met with Margaret
Sherwin--had inherited the right to be the enemy of your father, and
of every descendant of your father's house.

"Does this declaration surprise you? Read on, and you will understand
it.

"I am the son of a gentleman. My father's means were miserably
limited, and his family was not an old family, like yours.
Nevertheless, he was a gentleman in anybody's sense of the word; he
knew it, and that knowledge was his ruin. He was a weak, kind,
careless man; a worshipper of conventionalities; and a great respecter
of the wide gaps which lay between social stations in his time. Thus,
he determined to live like a gentleman, by following a gentleman's
pursuit--a profession, as distinguished from a trade. Failing in this,
he failed to follow out his principle, and starve like a gentleman. He
died the death of a felon; leaving me no inheritance but the name of a
felon's son.

"While still a young man, he contrived to be introduced to a gentleman
of great family, great position, and great wealth. He interested, or
fancied he interested, this gentleman; and always looked on him as the
patron who was to make his fortune, by getting him the first
government sinecure (they were plenty enough in those days!) which
might fall vacant. In firm and foolish expectation of this, he lived
far beyond his little professional income--lived among rich people
without the courage to make use of them as a poor man. It was the old
story: debts and liabilities of all kinds pressed heavy on
him--creditors refused to wait--exposure and utter ruin threatened
him--and the prospect of the sinecure was still as far off as ever.

"Nevertheless he believed in the advent of this office; and all the
more resolutely now, because he looked to it as his salvation. He was
quite confident of the interest of his patron, and of its speedy
exertion in his behalf. Perhaps, that gentleman had overrated his own
political influence; perhaps, my father had been too sanguine, and had
misinterpreted polite general promises into special engagements.
However it was, the bailiffs came into his house one morning, while
help from a government situation, or any situation, was as
unattainable as ever--came to take him to prison: to seize everything,
in execution, even to the very bed on which my mother (then seriously
ill) was lying. The whole fabric of false prosperity which he had been
building up to make the world respect him, was menaced with instant
and shameful overthrow. He had not the courage to let it go; so he
took refuge from misfortune in a crime.

"He forged a bond, to prop up his credit for a little time longer. The
name he made use of was the name of his patron. In doing this, he
believed--as all men who commit crime believe--that he had the best
possible chance of escaping consequences. In the first place, he might
get the long-expected situation in time to repay the amount of the
bond before detection. In the second place, he had almost the
certainty of a legacy from a rich relative, old and in ill-health,
whose death might be fairly expected from day to day. If both these
prospects failed (and they _did_ fail), there was still a third
chance--the chance that his rich patron would rather pay the money
than appear against him. In those days they hung for forgery. My
father believed it to be impossible that a man at whose table he had
sat, whose relatives and friends he had amused and instructed by his
talents, would be the man to give evidence which should condemn him to
be hanged on the public scaffold.

"He was wrong. The wealthy patron held strict principles of honour
which made no allowance for temptations and weaknesses; and was
moreover influenced by high-flown notions of his responsibilities as a
legislator (he was a member of Parliament) to the laws of his country.
He appeared accordingly, and gave evidence against the prisoner; who
was found guilty, and left for execution.

"Then, when it was too late, this man of pitiless honour thought
himself at last justified in leaning to the side of mercy, and
employed his utmost interest, in every direction, to obtain a
mitigation of the sentence to transportation for life. The application
failed; even a reprieve of a few days was denied. At the appointed
time, my father died on the scaffold by the hangman's hand.

"Have you suspected, while reading this part of my letter, who the
high-born gentleman was whose evidence hung him? If you have not, I
will tell you. That gentleman was _your father._ You will now wonder
no longer how I could have inherited the right to be his enemy, and
the enemy of all who are of his blood.

"The shock of her husband's horrible death deprived my mother of
reason. She lived a few months after his execution; but never
recovered her faculties. I was their only child; and was left
penniless to begin life as the son of a father who had been hanged,
and of a mother who had died in a public madhouse.

"More of myself to-morrow--my letter will be a long one: I must pause
often over it, as I pause to-day."

                         -----

"Well: I started in life with the hangman's mark on me--with the
parent's shame for the son's reputation. Wherever I went, whatever
friends I kept, whatever acquaintances I made--people knew how my
father had died: and showed that they knew it. Not so much by shunning
or staring at me (vile as human nature is, there were not many who did
that), as by insulting me with over-acted sympathy, and elaborate
anxiety to sham entire ignorance of my father's fate. The
gallows-brand was on my forehead; but they were too benevolently blind
to see it. The gallows-infamy was my inheritance; but they were too
resolutely generous to discover it! This was hard to bear. However, I
was strong-hearted even then, when my sensations were quick, and my
sympathies young: so I bore it.

"My only weakness was my father's weakness--the notion that I was born
to a station ready made for me, and that the great use of my life was
to live up to it. My station! I battled for that with the world for
years and years, before I discovered that the highest of all stations
is the station a man makes for himself: and the lowest, the station
that is made for him by others.

"At starting in life, your father wrote to make me offers of
assistance--assistance, after he had ruined me! Assistance to the
child, from hands which had tied the rope round the parent's neck! I
sent him back his letter. He knew that I was his enemy, his son's
enemy, and his son's son's enemy, as long as I lived. I never heard
from him again.

"Trusting boldly to myself to carve out my own way, and to live down
my undeserved ignominy; resolving in the pride of my integrity to
combat openly and fairly with misfortune, I shrank, at first, from
disowning my parentage and abandoning my father's name. Standing on my
own character, confiding in my intellect and my perseverance, I tried
pursuit after pursuit, and was beaten afresh at every new effort.
Whichever way I turned, the gallows still rose as the same immovable
obstacle between me and fortune, between me and station, between me
and my fellowmen. I was morbidly sensitive on this point. The
slightest references to my father's fate, however remote or
accidental, curdled my blood. I saw open insult, or humiliating
compassion, or forced forbearance, in the look and manner of every man
about me. So I broke off with old friends, and tried new; and, in
seeking fresh pursuits, sought fresh connections, where my father's
infamy might be unknown. Wherever I went, the old stain always broke
out afresh, just at the moment when I had deceived myself into the
belief that it was utterly effaced. I had a warm heart then--it was
some time before it turned to stone, and felt nothing. Those were the
days when failure and humiliation could still draw tears from me: that
epoch in my life is marked in my memory as the epoch when I could
weep.

"At last, I gave way before difficulty, and conceded the first step to
the calamity which had stood front to front with me so long. I left
the neighbourhood where I was known, and assumed the name of a
schoolfellow who had died. For some time this succeeded; but the curse
of my father's death followed me, though I saw it not. After various
employments--still, mind, the employments of a gentleman!--had first
supported, then failed me, I became an usher at a school. It was there
that my false name was detected, and my identity discovered again--I
never knew through whom. The exposure was effected by some enemy,
anonymously. For several days, I thought everybody in the school
treated me in an altered way. The cause came out, first in whispers,
then in reckless jests, while I was taking care of the boys in the
playground. In the fury of the moment I struck one of the most
insolent, and the eldest of them, and hurt him rather seriously. The
parents heard of it, and threatened me with prosecution; the whole
neighbourhood was aroused. I had to leave my situation secretly, by
night, or the mob would have pelted the felon's son out of the parish.

"I went back to London, bearing another assumed name; and tried, as a
last resource to save me from starvation, the resource of writing. I
served my apprenticeship to literature as a hack-author of the lowest
degree. Knowing I had talents which might be turned to account, I
tried to vindicate them by writing an original work. But my experience
of the world had made me unfit to dress my thoughts in popular
costume: I could only tell bitter truths bitterly; I exposed licenced
hypocrisies too openly; I saw the vicious side of many
respectabilities, and said I saw it--in short, I called things by
their right names; and no publisher would treat with me. So I stuck to
my low task-work; my penny-a lining in third-class newspapers; my
translating from Frenchmen and Germans, and plagiarising from dead
authors, to supply the raw material for bookmongering by more
accomplished bookmongers than I. In this life, there was one advantage
which compensated for much misery and meanness, and bitter, biting
disappointment: I could keep my identity securely concealed. Character
was of no consequence to me; nobody cared to know who I was, or to
inquire what I had been--the gallows-mark was smoothed out at last!

"While I was living thus on the offal of literature, I met with a
woman of good birth, and fair fortune, whose sympathies or whose
curiosity I happened to interest. She and her father and mother
received me favourably, as a gentleman who had known better days, and
an author whom the public had undeservedly neglected. How I managed to
gain their confidence and esteem, without alluding to my parentage, it
is not worth while to stop to describe. That I did so you will easily
imagine, when I tell you that the woman to whom I refer, consented,
with her father's full approval, to become my wife.

"The very day of the marriage was fixed. I believed I had successfully
parried all perilous inquiries--but I was wrong. A relation of the
family, whom I had never seen, came to town a short time before the
wedding. We disliked each other on our first introduction. He was a
clever, resolute man of the world, and privately inquired about me to
much better purpose in a few days, than his family had done in several
months. Accident favoured him strangely, everything was
discovered--literally everything--and I was contemptuously dismissed
the house. Could a lady of respectability marry a man (no matter how
worthy in _her_ eyes) whose father had been hanged, whose mother had
died in a madhouse, who had lived under assumed names, who had been
driven from an excellent country neighbourhood, for cruelty to a
harmless school-boy? Impossible!

"With this event, my long strife and struggle with the world ended.

"My eyes opened to a new view of life, and the purpose of life. My
first aspirations to live up to my birth-right position, in spite of
adversity and dishonour, to make my name sweet enough in men's
nostrils, to cleanse away the infamy on my father's, were now no more.
The ambition which--whether I was a hack-author, a travelling
portrait-painter, or an usher at a school--had once whispered to me:
low down as you are in dark, miry ways, you are on the path which
leads upward to high places in the sunshine afar-off; you are not
working to scrape together wealth for another man; you are
independent, self-reliant, labouring in your own cause--the daring
ambition which had once counselled thus, sank dead within me at last.
The strong, stern spirit was beaten by spirits stronger and sterner
yet--Infamy and Want.

"I wrote to a man of character and wealth; one of my friends of early
days, who had ceased to hold communication with me, like other
friends, but, unlike them, had given me up in genuine sorrow: I wrote,
and asked him to meet me privately by night. I was too ragged to go to
his house, too sensitive still (even if I had gone and had been
admitted) to risk encountering people there, who either knew my
father, or knew how he had died. I wished to speak to my former
friend, unseen, and made the appointment accordingly. He kept it.

"When we met, I said to him:--I have a last favour to ask of you. When
we parted years ago, I had high hopes and brave resolutions--both are
worn out. I then believed that I could not only rise superior to my
misfortune, but could make that very misfortune the motive of my rise.
You told me I was too quick of temper, too morbidly sensitive about
the slightest reference to my father's death, too fierce and
changeable under undeserved trial and disappointment. This might have
been true then; but I am altered now: pride and ambition have been
persecuted and starved out of me. An obscure, monotonous life, in
which thought and spirit may be laid asleep, never to wake again, is
the only life I care for. Help me to lead it. I ask you, first, as a
beggar, to give me from your superfluity, apparel decent enough to
bear the daylight. I ask you next, to help me to some occupation which
will just give me my bread, my shelter, and my hour or two of solitude
in the evening. You have plenty of influence to do this, and you know
I am honest. You cannot choose me too humble and obscure an
employment; let me descend low enough to be lost to sight beneath the
world I have lived in; let me go among people who want to know that I
work honestly for them, and want to know nothing more. Get me a mean
hiding-place to conceal myself and my history in for ever, and then
neither attempt to see me nor communicate with me again. If former
friends chance to ask after me, tell them I am dead, or gone into
another country. The wisest life is the life the animals lead: I want,
like them, to serve my master for food, shelter, and liberty to lie
asleep now and then in the sunshine, without being driven away as a
pest or a trespasser. Do you believe in this resolution?--it is my
last.

"He _did_ believe in it; and he granted what I asked. Through his
interference and recommendation, I entered the service of Mr.
Sherwin.--

"I must stop here for to-day. To-morrow I shall come to disclosures of
vital interest to you. Have you been surprised that I, your enemy by
every cause of enmity that one man can have against another, should
write to you so fully about the secrets of my early life? I have done
so, because I wish the strife between us to be an open strife on my
side; because I desire that you should know thoroughly what you have
to expect from my character, after such a life as I have led. There
was purpose in my deceit, when I deceived you--there is purpose in my
frankness, when I now tell you all."

                         -----

"I began in Mr. Sherwin's employment, as the lowest clerk in his
office. Both the master and the men looked a little suspiciously on
me, at first. My account of myself was always the same--simple and
credible; I had entered the counting-house with the best possible
recommendation, and I acted up to it. These circumstances in my
favour, joined to a manner that never varied, and to a steadiness at
my work that never relaxed, soon produced their effect--all curiosity
about me gradually died away: I was left to pursue my avocations in
peace. The friend who had got me my situation, preserved my secret as
I had desired him; of all the people whom I had formerly known,
pitiless enemies and lukewarm adherents, not one ever suspected that
my hiding-place was the back office of a linen-draper's shop. For the
first time in my life, I felt that the secret of my father's
misfortune was mine, and mine only; that my security from exposure was
at length complete.

"Before long, I rose to the chief place in the counting-house. It was
no very difficult matter for me to discover, that my new master's
character had other elements besides that of the highest
respectability. In plain terms, I found him to be a pretty equal
compound by nature, of the fool, the tyrant, and the coward. There was
only one direction in which what grovelling sympathies he had, could
be touched to some purpose. Save him waste, or get him profit; and he
was really grateful. I succeeded in working both these marvels. His
managing man cheated him; I found it out; refused to be bribed to
collusion; and exposed the fraud to Mr. Sherwin. This got me his
confidence, and the place of chief clerk. In that position, I
discovered a means, which had never occurred to my employer, of
greatly enlarging his business and its profits, with the least
possible risk. He tried my plan, and it succeeded. This gained me his
warmest admiration, an increase of salary, and a firm footing in his
family circle. My projects were more than fulfilled: I had money
enough, and leisure enough; and spent my obscure existence exactly as
I had proposed.

"But my life was still not destined to be altogether devoid of an
animating purpose. When I first knew Margaret Sherwin, she was just
changing from childhood to girlhood. I marked the promise of future
beauty in her face and figure; and secretly formed the resolution
which you afterwards came forward to thwart, but which I have
executed, and will execute, in spite of you.

"The thoughts out of which that resolution sprang, counselled me more
calmly than you can suppose. I said within myself: 'The best years of
my life have been irrevocably wasted; misery and humiliation and
disaster have followed my steps from my youth; of all the pleasant
draughts which other men drink to sweeten existence, not one has
passed my lips. I will know happiness before I die; and this girl
shall confer it. She shall grow up to maturity for _me:_ I will
imperceptibly gain such a hold on her affections, while they are yet
young and impressible, that, when the time comes, and I speak the
word--though my years more than double hers, though I am dependent on
her father for the bread I eat, though parents' voice and lover's
voice unite to call her back--she shall still come to my side, and of
her own free will put her hand in mine, and follow me wherever I go;
my wife, my mistress, my servant, which I choose.

"This was my project. To execute it, time and opportunity were mine;
and I steadily and warily made use of them, hour by hour, day by day,
year by year. From first to last, the girl's father never suspected
me. Besides the security which he felt in my age, he had judged me by
his own small commercial standard, and had found me a model of
integrity. A man who had saved him from being cheated, who had so
enlarged and consolidated his business as to place him among the top
dignitaries of the trade; who was the first to come to the desk in the
morning, and the last to remain there in the evening; who had not only
never demanded, but had absolutely refused to take, a single
holiday--such a man as this was, morally and intellectually, a man in
ten thousand; a man to be admired and trusted in every relation of
life!

"His confidence in me knew no bounds. He was uneasy if I was not by to
advise him in the simplest matters. My ears were the first to which he
confided his insane ambition on the subject of his daughter--his
anxiety to see her marry above her station--his stupid resolution to
give her the false, flippant, fashionable education which she
subsequently received. I thwarted his plans in nothing,
openly--counteracted them in everything, secretly. The more I
strengthened my sources of influence over Margaret, the more pleased
he was. He was delighted to hear her constantly referring to me about
her home-lessons; to see her coming to me, evening after evening, to
learn new occupations and amusements. He suspected I had been a
gentleman; he had been told I spoke pure English; he felt sure I had
received a first-rate education--I was nearly as good for Margaret as
good society itself! When she grew older, and went to the fashionable
school, as her father had declared she should, my offer to keep up her
lessons in the holidays, and to examine what progress she had made,
when she came home regularly every fortnight for the Sunday, was
accepted with greedy readiness, and acknowledged with servile
gratitude. At this time, Mr. Sherwin's own estimate of me, among his
friends, was, that he had got me for half nothing, and that I was
worth more to him than a thousand a-year.

"But there was one member of the family who suspected my intentions
from the first. Mrs. Sherwin--the weak, timid, sickly woman, whose
opinion nobody regarded, whose character nobody understood--Mrs.
Sherwin, of all those who dwelt in the house, or came to the house,
was the only one whose looks, words, and manner kept me constantly on
my guard. The very first time we saw each other, that woman doubted
_me,_ as I doubted _her;_ and for ever afterwards, when we met, she
was on the watch. This mutual distrust, this antagonism of our two
natures, never openly proclaimed itself, and never wore away. My
chance of security lay, not so much in my own caution, and my perfect
command of look and action under all emergencies, as in the
self-distrust and timidity of her nature; in the helpless inferiority
of position to which her husband's want of affection, and her
daughter's want of respect, condemned her in her own house; and in the
influence of repulsion--at times, even of absolute terror--which my
presence had the power of communicating to her. Suspecting what I am
assured she suspected--incapable as she was of rendering her
suspicions certainties--knowing beforehand, as she must have known,
that no words she could speak would gain the smallest respect or
credit from her husband or her child--that woman's life, while I was
at North Villa, must have been a life of the direst mental suffering
to which any human being was ever condemned.

"As time passed, and Margaret grew older, her beauty both of face and
form approached nearer to perfection than I had foreseen, closely as I
watched her. But neither her mind nor her disposition kept pace with
her beauty. I studied her closely, with the same patient, penetrating
observation, which my experience of the world has made it a habit with
me to direct on every one with whom I am brought in contact--I studied
her, I say, intently; and found her worthy of nothing, not even of the
slave-destiny which I had in store for her.

"She had neither heart nor mind, in the higher sense of those words.
She had simply instincts--most of the bad instincts of an animal; none
of the good. The great motive power which really directed her, was
Deceit. I never met with any human being so inherently disingenuous,
so naturally incapable of candour even in the most trifling affairs of
life, as she was. The best training could never have wholly overcome
this vice in her: the education she actually got--an education under
false pretences--encouraged it. Everybody has read, some people have
known, of young girls who have committed the most extraordinary
impostures, or sustained the most infamous false accusations; their
chief motive being often the sheer enjoyment of practising deceit. Of
such characters was the character of Margaret Sherwin.

"She had strong passions, but not their frequent accompaniment--strong
will, and strong intellect. She had some obstinacy, but no firmness.
Appeal in the right way to her vanity, and you could make her do the
thing she had declared she would not do, the minute after she had made
the declaration. As for her mind, it was of the lowest schoolgirl
average. She had a certain knack at learning this thing, and
remembering that; but she understood nothing fairly, felt nothing
deeply. If I had not had my own motive in teaching her, I should have
shut the books again, the first time she and I opened them together,
and have given her up as a fool.

"All, however, that I discovered of bad in her character, never made
me pause in the prosecution of my design; I had carried it too far for
that, before I thoroughly knew her. Besides, what mattered her
duplicity to _me?_--I could see through it. Her strong passions?--I
could control them. Her obstinacy?--I could break it. Her poverty of
intellect?--I cared nothing about her intellect. What I wanted was
youth and beauty; she was young and beautiful and I was sure of her.

"Yes; sure. Her showy person, showy accomplishments, and showy manners
dazzled all eyes but mine--Of all the people about her, I alone found
out what she really was; and in that lay the main secret of my
influence over her. I dreaded no rivalry. Her father, prompted by his
ambitious hopes, kept most young men of her class away from the house;
the few who did come were not dangerous; _they_ were as incapable of
inspiring, as _she_ was of feeling, real love. Her mother still
watched me, and still discovered nothing; still suspected me behind my
back, and still trembled before my face. Months passed on
monotonously, year succeeded to year; and I bided my time as
patiently, and kept my secret as cautiously as at the first. No change
occurred, nothing happened to weaken or alter my influence at North
Villa, until the day arrived when Margaret left school and came home
for good.

                         -----

"Exactly at the period to which I have referred, certain business
transactions of great importance required the presence of Mr. Sherwin,
or of some confidential person to represent him, at Lyons. Secretly
distrusting his own capabilities, he proposed to me to go; saying that
it would be a pleasant trip for me, and a good introduction to his
wealthy manufacturing correspondents. After some consideration, I
accepted his offer.

"I had never hinted a word of my intentions towards her to Margaret;
but she understood them well enough--I was certain of that, from many
indications which no man could mistake. For reasons which will
presently appear, I resolved not to explain myself until my return
from Lyons. My private object in going there, was to make interest
secretly with Mr. Sherwin's correspondents for a situation in their
house. I knew that when I made my proposals to Margaret, I must be
prepared to act on them on the instant; I knew that her father's fury
when he discovered that I had been helping to educate his daughter
only for myself, would lead him to any extremities; I knew that we
must fly to some foreign country; and, lastly, I knew the importance
of securing a provision for our maintenance, when we got there. I had
saved money, it is true--nearly two-thirds of my salary, every
year--but had not saved enough for two. Accordingly, I left England to
push my own interests, as well as my employer's; left it, confident
that my short absence would not weaken the result of years of steady
influence over Margaret. The sequel showed that, cautious and
calculating as I was, I had nevertheless overlooked the chances
against me, which my own experience of her vanity and duplicity ought
to have enabled me thoroughly to foresee.

"Well: I had been some time at Lyons; had managed my employer's
business (from first to last, I was faithful, as I had engaged to be,
to his commercial interests); and had arranged my own affairs securely
and privately. Already, I was looking forward, with sensations of
happiness which were new to me, to my return and to the achievement of
the one success, the solitary triumph of my long life of humiliation
and disaster, when a letter arrived from Mr. Sherwin. It contained the
news of your private marriage, and of the extraordinary conditions
that had been attached to it with your consent.

"Other people were in the room with me when I read that letter; but my
manner betrayed nothing to them. My hand never trembled when I folded
the sheet of paper again; I was not a minute late in attending a
business engagement which I had accepted; the slightest duties of
other kinds which I had to do, I rigidly fulfilled. Never did I more
thoroughly and fairly earn the evening's leisure by the morning's
work, than I earned it that day.

"Leaving the town at the close of afternoon, I walked on till I came
to a solitary place on the bank of the great river which runs near
Lyons. There I opened the letter for the second time, and read it
through again slowly, with no necessity now for self-control, because
no human being was near to look at me. There I read your name,
constantly repeated in every line of writing; and knew that the man
who, in my absence, had stepped between me and my prize--the man who,
in his insolence of youth, and birth, and fortune, had snatched from
me the one long-delayed reward for twenty years of misery, just as my
hands were stretched forth to grasp it, was the son of that honourable
and high-born gentleman who had given my father to the gallows, and
had made me the outcast of my social privileges for life.

"The sun was setting when I looked up from the letter; flashes of
rose-light leapt on the leaping river; the birds were winging nestward
to the distant trees, and the ghostly stillness of night was sailing
solemnly over earth and sky, as the first thought of the vengeance I
would have on father and son began to burn fiercely at my heart, to
move like a new life within me, to whisper to my spirit--Wait: be
patient; they are both in your power; you can now foul the father's
name as the father fouled yours--you can yet thwart the son, as the
son has thwarted _you._

"In the few minutes that passed, while I lingered in that lonely place
after reading the letter, I imagined the whole scheme which it
afterwards took a year to execute. I laid the whole plan against you
and your father, the first half of which, through the accident that
led you to your discovery, has alone been carried out. I believed
then, as I believe now, that I stood towards you both in the place of
an injured man, whose right it was, in self-defence and
self-assertion, to injure you. Judged by your ideas, this may read
wickedly; but to me, after having lived and suffered as I have, the
modern common-places current in the world are so many brazen images
which society impudently worships--like the Jews of old--in the face
of living Truth.

                         -----

"Let us get back to England.

"That evening, when we met for the first time, did you observe that
Margaret was unusually agitated before I came in? I detected some
change, the moment I saw her. Did you notice that I avoided speaking
to her, or looking at her? it was because I was afraid to do so. I saw
that, with my return, my old influence over her was coming back: and I
still believe that, hypocritical and heartless though she was, and
blinded though you were by your passion for her, she would
unconsciously have betrayed everything to you on that evening, if I
had not acted as I did. Her mother, too! how her mother watched me
from the moment when I came in!

"Afterwards, while you were trying hard to open, undetected, the
sealed history of my early life, I was warily discovering from
Margaret all that I desired to know. I say 'warily,' but the word
poorly expresses my consummate caution and patience, at that time. I
never put myself in her power, never risked offending, or frightening,
or revolting her; never lost an opportunity of bringing her back to
her old habits of familiarity; and, more than all, never gave her
mother a single opportunity of detecting me. This was the sum of what
I gathered up, bit by bit, from secret and scattered investigations,
persevered in through many weeks.

"Her vanity had been hurt, her expectations disappointed, at my having
left her for Lyons, with no other parting words than such as I might
have spoken to any other woman whom I looked on merely as a friend.
That she felt any genuine love for me I never have believed, and never
shall: but I had that practical ability, that firmness of will, that
obvious personal ascendancy over most of those with whom I came in
contact, which extorts the respect and admiration of women of all
characters, and even of women of no character at all. As far as her
senses, her instincts, and her pride could take her, I had won her
over to me but no farther--because no farther could she go. I mention
pride among her motives, advisedly. She was proud of being the object
of such attentions as I had now paid to her for years, because she
fancied that, through those attentions, I, who, more or less, ruled
everyone else in her sphere, had yielded to her the power of ruling
_me._ The manner of my departure from England showed her too plainly
that she had miscalculated her influence, and that the power, in her
case, as in the case of others, was all on my side. Hence the wound to
her vanity, to which I have alluded.

"It was while this wound was still fresh that you met her, and
appealed to her self-esteem in a new direction. You must have seen
clearly enough, that such proposals as yours far exceeded the most
ambitious expectations formed by her father. No man's alliance could
have lifted her much higher out of her own class: she knew this, and
from that knowledge married you--married you for your station, for
your name, for your great friends and connections, for your father's
money, and carriages, and fine houses; for everything, in short, but
yourself.

"Still, in spite of the temptations of youth, wealth, and birth which
your proposals held out to her, she accepted them at first (I made her
confess it herself) with a secret terror and misgiving, produced by
the remembrance of me. These sensations, however, she soon quelled, or
fancied she quelled; and these, it was now my last, best chance to
revive.  I had a whole year for the work before me; and I felt certain
of success.

"On your side, you had immense advantages. You had social superiority;
you had her father's full approbation; and you were married to her. If
she had loved you for yourself, loved you for anything besides her own
sensual interests, her vulgar ambition, her reckless vanity, every
effort I could have made against you would have been defeated from the
first. But, setting this out of the question, in spite of the utter
heartlessness of her attachment to you, if you had not consented to
that condition of waiting a year for her after marriage; or,
consenting to it, if you had broken it long before the year was
out--knowing, as you should have known, that in most women's eyes a
man is not dishonoured by breaking his promise, so long as he breaks
it for a woman's sake--if, I say, you had taken either of these
courses, I should still have been powerless against you. But you
remained faithful to your promise, faithful to the condition, faithful
to the ill-directed modesty of your love; and that very fidelity put
you in my power. A pure-minded girl would have loved you a thousand
times better for acting as you did--but Margaret Sherwin was not a
pure-minded girl, not a maidenly girl: I have looked into her
thoughts, and I know it.

"Such were your chances against me; and such was the manner in which
you misused them. On _my_ side, I had indefatigable patience; personal
advantages equal, with the exception of birth and age, to yours:
long-established influence; freedom to be familiar; and more than all,
that stealthy, unflagging strength of purpose which only springs from
the desire of revenge. I first thoroughly tested your character, and
discovered on what points it was necessary for me to be on my guard
against you, when you took shelter under my roof from the storm. If
your father had been with you on that night, there were moments, while
the tempest was wrought to its full fury, when, if my voice could have
called the thunder down on the house to crush it and every one in it
to atoms, I would have spoken the word, and ended the strife for all
of us. The wind, the hail, and the lightning maddened my thoughts of
your father and you--I was nearly letting you see it, when that flash
came between us as we parted at my door.

"How I gained your confidence, you know; and you know also, how I
contrived to make you use me, afterwards, as the secret friend who
procured you privileges with Margaret which her father would not grant
at your own request. This, at the outset, secured me from suspicion on
your part; and I had only to leave it to your infatuation to do the
rest. With you my course was easy--with her it was beset by
difficulties; but I overcame them. Your fatal consent to wait through
a year of probation, furnished me with weapons against you, which I
employed to the most unscrupulous purpose. I can picture to myself
what would be your indignation and your horror, if I fully described
the use which I made of the position in which your compliance with her
father's conditions placed you towards Margaret. I spare you this
avowal--it would be useless now. Consider me what you please; denounce
my conduct in any terms you like: my justification will always be the
same. I was the injured man, you were the aggressor; I was righting
myself by getting back a possession of which you had robbed me, and
any means were sanctified by such an end as that.

"But my success, so far, was of little avail, in itself; against the
all-powerful counter-attraction which you possessed. Contemptible, or
not, you still had this superiority over me--you could make a fine
lady of her. From that fact sprang the ambition which all my
influence, dating as it did from her childhood, could not destroy.
There, was fastened the main-spring which regulated her selfish
devotion to you, and which it was next to impossible to snap asunder.
I never made the attempt.

"The scheme which I proposed to her, when she was fully prepared to
hear it, and to conceal that she had heard it, left her free to enjoy
all the social advantages which your alliance could bestow--free to
ride in her carriage, and go into her father's shop (that was one of
her ambitions!) as a new customer added to his aristocratic
connection--free even to become one of your family, unsuspected, in
case your rash marriage was forgiven. Your credulity rendered the
execution of this scheme easy. In what manner it was to be carried
out, and what object I proposed to myself in framing it, I abstain
from avowing; for the simple reason that the discovery at which you
arrived by following us on the night of the party, made my plan
abortive, and has obliged me since to renounce it. I need only say, in
this place, that it threatened your father as well as you, and that
Margaret recoiled from it at first--not from any horror of the
proposal, but through fear of discovery. Gradually, I overcame her
apprehensions: very gradually, for I was not thoroughly secure of her
devotion to my purpose, until your year of probation was nearly out.

"Through all that year, daily visitor as you were at North Villa, you
never suspected either of us! And yet, had you been one whit less
infatuated, how many warnings you might have discovered, which, in
spite of her duplicity and my caution, would then have shown
themselves plainly enough to put you on your guard! Those abrupt
changes in her manner, those alternate fits of peevish silence and
capricious gaiety, which sometimes displayed themselves even in your
presence, had every one of them their meaning--though you could not
discern it. Sometimes, they meant fear of discovery, sometimes fear of
me: now, they might be traced back to hidden contempt; now, to
passions swelling under fancied outrage; now, to secret remembrance of
disclosures I had just made, or eager anticipation of disclosures I
had yet to reveal. There were times at which every step of the way
along which I was advancing was marked, faintly yet significantly, in
her manner and her speech, could you only have interpreted them
aright. My first renewal of my old influence over her, my first words
that degraded you in her eyes, my first successful pleading of my own
cause against yours, my first appeal to those passions in her which I
knew how to move, my first proposal to her of the whole scheme which I
had matured in solitude, in the foreign country, by the banks of the
great river--all these separate and gradual advances on my part
towards the end which I was vowed to achieve, were outwardly shadowed
forth in her, consummate as were her capacities for deceit, and
consummately as she learnt to use them against you.

"Do you remember noticing, on your return from the country, how ill
Margaret looked, and how ill I looked? We had some interviews during
your absence, at which I spoke such words to her as would have left
their mark on the face of a Jezebel, or a Messalina. Have you
forgotten how often, during the latter days of your year of
expectation, I abruptly left the room after you had called me in to
bear you company in your evening readings? My pretext was sudden
illness; and illness it was, but not of the body. As the time
approached, I felt less and less secure of my own caution and
patience. With you, indeed, I might still have considered myself safe:
it was the presence of Mrs. Sherwin that drove me from the room. Under
that woman's fatal eye I shrank, when the last days drew near--I, who
had defied her detection, and stood firmly on my guard against her
sleepless, silent, deadly vigilance, for months and months--gave way
as the end approached! I knew that she had once or twice spoken
strangely to you, and I dreaded lest her wandering, incoherent words
might yet take in time a recognisable direction, a palpable shape.
They did not; the instinct of terror bound her tongue to the last.
Perhaps, even if she had spoken plainly, you would not have believed
her; you would have been still true to yourself and to your confidence
in Margaret. Enemy as I am to you, enemy as I will be to the day of
your death, I will do you justice for the past:--Your love for that
girl was a love which even the purest and best of women could never
have thoroughly deserved.

                         -----

"My letter is nearly done: my retrospect is finished. I have brought
it down to the date of events, about which you know as much as I do.
Accident conducted you to a discovery which, otherwise, you might not
have made, perhaps for months, perhaps not at all, until I had led you
to it of my own accord. I say accident, positively; knowing that from
first to last I trusted no third person. What you know, you knew by
accident alone.

"But for that chance discovery, you would have seen me bring her back
to North Villa at the appointed time, in my care, just as she went
out. I had no dread of her meeting you. But enough of her! I shall
dispose of her future, as I had resolved to dispose of it years ago;
careless how she may be affected when she first sees the hideous
alteration which your attack has wrought in me. Enough, I say, of the
Sherwins--father, mother, and daughter--your destiny lies not with
_them,_ but with _me._

"Do you still exult in having deformed me in every feature, in having
given me a face to revolt every human being who looks at me? Do you
triumph in the remembrance of this atrocity, as you triumphed in the
acting of it--believing that you had destroyed my future with
Margaret, in destroying my very identity as a man? I tell you, that
with the hour when I leave this hospital your day of triumph will be
over, and your day of expiation will begin--never to end till the
death of one of us. You shall live--refined educated gentleman as you
are--to wish, like a ruffian, that you had killed me; and your father
shall live to wish it too.

"Am I trying to awe you with the fierce words of a boaster and a
bully? Test me, by looking back a little, and discovering what I have
abstained from for the sake of my purpose, since I have been here. A
word or two from my lips, in answer to the questions with which I have
been baited, day after day, by those about me, would have called you
before a magistrate to answer for an assault--a shocking and a savage
assault, even in this country, where hand to hand brutality is a
marketable commodity between the Prisoner and the Law. Your father's
name might have been publicly coupled with your dishonour, if I had
but spoken; and I was silent. I kept the secret--kept it, because to
avenge myself on you by a paltry scandal, which you and your family
(opposing to it wealth, position, previous character, and general
sympathy) would live down in a few days, was not my revenge: because
to be righted before magistrates and judges by a beggarman's
exhibition of physical injury, and a coward's confession of physical
defeat, was not my way of righting myself. I have a lifelong
retaliation in view, which laws and lawgivers are powerless either to
aid or to oppose--the retaliation which set a mark upon Cain (as I
will set a mark on you); and then made his life his punishment (as I
will make your life yours).

"How? Remember what my career has been; and know that I will make your
career like it. As my father's death by the hangman affected _my_
existence, so the events of that night when you followed me shall
affect _yours._ Your father shall see you living the life to which his
evidence against _my_ father condemned _me_--shall see the foul stain
of your disaster clinging to you wherever you go. The infamy with
which I am determined to pursue you, shall be your own infamy that you
cannot get quit of--for you shall never get quit of me, never get quit
of the wife who has dishonoured you. You may leave your home, and
leave England; you may make new friends, and seek new employments;
years and years may pass away--and still, you shall not escape us:
still, you shall never know when we are near, or when we are distant;
when we are ready to appear before you, or when we are sure to keep
out of your sight. My deformed face and her fatal beauty shall hunt
you through the world. The terrible secret of your dishonour, and of
the atrocity by which you avenged it, shall ooze out through strange
channels, in vague shapes, by tortuous intangible processes; ever
changing in the manner of its exposure, never remediable by your own
resistance, and always directed to the same end--your isolation as a
marked man, in every fresh sphere, among every new community to which
you retreat.

"Do you call this a very madness of malignity and revenge? It is the
only occupation in life for which your mutilation of me has left me
fit; and I accept it, as work worthy of my deformity. In the prospect
of watching how you bear this hunting through life, that never quite
hunts you down; how long you resist the poison-influence, as slow as
it is sure, of a crafty tongue that cannot be silenced, of a
denouncing presence that cannot be fled, of a damning secret torn from
you and exposed afresh each time you have hidden it--there is the
promise of a nameless delight which it sometimes fevers, sometimes
chills my blood to think of. Lying in this place at night, in those
hours of darkness and stillness when the surrounding atmosphere of
human misery presses heavy on me in my heavy sleep, prophecies of
dread things to come between us, trouble my spirit in dreams. At those
times, I know, and shudder in knowing, that there is something besides
the motive of retaliation, something less earthly and apparent than
that, which urges me horribly and supernaturally to link myself to you
for life; which makes me feel as the bearer of a curse that shall
follow you; as the instrument of a fatality pronounced against you
long ere we met--a fatality beginning before our fathers were parted
by the hangman; perpetuating itself in you and me; ending who shall
say how, or when?

"Beware of comforting yourself with a false security, by despising my
words, as the wild words of a madman, dreaming of the perpetration of
impossible crimes. Throughout this letter I have warned you of what
you may expect; because I will not assail you at disadvantage, as you
assailed me; because it is my pleasure to ruin you, openly resisting
me at every step. I have given you fair play, as the huntsmen give
fair play at starting to the animal they are about to run down. Be
warned against seeking a false hope in the belief that my faculties
are shaken, and that my resolves are visionary--false, because such a
hope is only despair in disguise.

"I have done. The time is not far distant when my words will become
deeds. They cure fast in a public hospital: we shall meet soon!

                                "ROBERT MANNION."



"We shall meet soon!"

How? Where? I looked back at the last page of writing. But my
attention wandered strangely; I confused one paragraph with another;
the longer I read, the less I was able to grasp the meaning, not of
sentences merely, but even of the simplest words.

From the first lines to the last, the letter had produced no distinct
impressions on my mind. So utterly was I worn out by the previous
events of the day, that even those earlier portions of Mannion's
confession, which revealed the connection between my father and his,
and the terrible manner of their separation, hardly roused me to more
than a momentary astonishment. I just called to remembrance that I had
never heard the subject mentioned at home, except once or twice in
vague hints dropped mysteriously by an old servant, and little
regarded by me at the time, as referring to matters which had happened
before I was born. I just reflected thus briefly and languidly on the
narrative at the commencement of the letter; and then mechanically
read on. Except the passages which contained the exposure of
Margaret's real character, and those which described the origin and
progress of Mannion's infamous plot, nothing in the letter impressed
me, as I was afterwards destined to be impressed by it, on a second
reading. The lethargy of all feeling into which I had now sunk, seemed
a very lethargy of death.

I tried to clear and concentrate my faculties by thinking of other
subjects; but without success. All that I had heard and seen since the
morning, now recurred to me more and more vaguely and confusedly. I
could form no plan either for the present or the future. I knew as
little how to meet Mr. Sherwin's last threat of forcing me to
acknowledge his guilty daughter, as how to defend myself against the
life-long hostility with which I was menaced by Mannion. A feeling of
awe and apprehension, which I could trace to no distinct cause, stole
irresistibly and mysteriously over me. A horror of the searching
brightness of daylight, a suspicion of the loneliness of the place to
which I had retreated, a yearning to be among my fellow-creatures
again, to live where there was life--the busy life of London--overcame
me. I turned hastily, and walked back from the suburbs to the city.

It was growing towards evening as I gained one of the great
thoroughfares. Seeing some of the inhabitants of the houses, as I
walked along, sitting at their open windows to enjoy the evening air,
the thought came to me for the first time that day:--where shall I lay
my head tonight? Home I had none. Friends who would have gladly
received me were not wanting; but to go to them would oblige me to
explain myself; to disclose something of the secret of my calamity;
and this I was determined to keep concealed, as I had told my father I
would keep it. My last-left consolation was my knowledge of still
preserving that resolution, of still honourably holding by it at all
hazards, cost what it might.

So I thought no more of succour or sympathy from any one of my
friends. As a stranger I had been driven from my home, and as a
stranger I was resigned to live, until I had learnt how to conquer my
misfortune by my own vigour and endurance. Firm in this determination,
though firm in nothing else, I now looked around me for the first
shelter I could purchase from strangers--the humbler the better.

I happened to be in the poorest part, and on the poorest side of the
great street along which I was walking--among the inferior shops, and
the houses of few stories. A room to let was not hard to find here. I
took the first I saw; escaped questions about names and references by
paying my week's rent in advance; and then found myself left in
possession of the one little room which I must be resigned to look on
for the future--perhaps for a long future!--as my home.

Home! A dear and a mournful remembrance was revived in the reflections
suggested by that simple word. Through the darkness that thickened
over my mind, there now passed one faint ray of light which gave
promise of the morning--the light of the calm face that I had last
looked on when it was resting on my father's breast.

Clara! My parting words to her, when I had unclasped from my neck
those kind arms which would fain have held me to home for ever, had
expressed a promise that was yet unfulfilled. I trembled as I now
thought on my sister's situation. Not knowing whither I had turned my
steps on leaving home; uncertain to what extremities my despair might
hurry me; absolutely ignorant even whether she might ever see me
again--it was terrible to reflect on the suspense under which she
might be suffering, at this very moment, on my account. My promise to
write to her, was of all promises the most vitally important, and the
first that should be fulfilled.

My letter was very short. I communicated to her the address of the
house in which I was living (well knowing that nothing but positive
information on this point would effectually relieve her anxiety)--I
asked her to write in reply, and let me hear some news of her, the
best that she could give--and I entreated her to believe implicitly in
my patience and courage under every disaster; and to feel assured
that, whatever happened, I should never lose the hope of soon meeting
her again. Of the perils that beset me, of the wrong and injury I
might yet be condemned to endure, I said nothing. Those were truths
which I was determined to conceal from her, to the last. She had
suffered for me more than I dared think of, already!

I sent my letter by hand, so as to ensure its immediate delivery. In
writing those few simple lines, I had no suspicion of the important
results which they were destined to produce. In thinking of to-morrow,
and of all the events which to-morrow might bring with it, I little
thought whose voice would be the first to greet me the next day, whose
hand would be held out to me as the helping hand of a friend.

VI.

It was still early in the morning, when a loud knock sounded at the
house-door, and I heard the landlady calling to the servant: "A
gentleman to see the gentleman who came in last night." The moment the
words reached me, my thoughts recurred to the letter of yesterday--Had
Mannion found me out in my retreat? As the suspicion crossed my mind,
the door opened, and the visitor entered.

I looked at him in speechless astonishment. It was my elder brother!
It was Ralph himself who now walked into the room!

"Well, Basil! how are you?" he said, with his old off-hand manner and
hearty voice.

"Ralph! You in England!--you here!"

"I came back from Italy last night. Basil, how awfully you're changed!
I hardly know you again."

His manner altered as he spoke the last words. The look of sorrow and
alarm which he fixed on me, went to my heart. I thought of
holiday-time, when we were boys; of Ralph's boisterous ways with me;
of his good-humoured school-frolics, at my expense; of the strong bond
of union between us, so strangely compounded of my weakness and his
strength; of my passive and of his active nature; I saw how little
_he_ had changed since that time, and knew, as I never knew before,
how miserably _I_ was altered. All the shame and grief of my
banishment from home came back on me, at sight of his friendly,
familiar face. I struggled hard to keep my self-possession, and tried
to bid him welcome cheerfully; but the effort was too much for me. I
turned away my head, as I took his hand; for the old school-boy
feeling of not letting Ralph see that I was in tears, influenced me
still.

"Basil! Basil! what are you about? This won't do. Look up, and listen
to me. I have promised Clara to pull you through this wretched mess;
and I'll do it. Get a chair, and give me a light. I'm going to sit on
your bed, smoke a cigar, and have a long talk with you."

While he was lighting his cigar, I looked more closely at him than
before. Though he was the same as ever in manner; though his
expression still preserved its reckless levity of former days, I now
detected that he had changed a little in some other respects. His
features had become coarser--dissipation had begun to mark them. His
spare, active, muscular figure had filled out; he was dressed rather
carelessly; and of all his trinkets and chains of early times, not one
appeared about him now. Ralph looked prematurely middle-aged, since I
had seen him last.

"Well," he began, "first of all, about my coming back. The fact is,
the morganatic Mrs. Ralph--" (he referred to his last mistress)
"wanted to see England, and I was tired of being abroad. So I brought
her back with me; and we're going to live quietly, somewhere in the
Brompton neighbourhood. That woman has been my salvation--you must
come and see her. She has broke me of gaming altogether; I was going
to the devil as fast as I could, when she stopped me--but you know all
about it, of course. Well: we got to London yesterday afternoon; and
in the evening I left her at the hotel, and went to report myself at
home. There, the first thing I heard, was that you had cut me out of
my old original distinction of being the family scamp. Don't look
distressed, Basil; I'm not laughing at you; I've come to do something
better than that. Never mind my talk: nothing in the world ever was
serious to _me,_ and nothing ever will be."

He stopped to knock the ash off his cigar, and settle himself more
comfortably on my bed; then proceeded.

"It has been my ill-luck to see my father pretty seriously offended on
more than one occasion; but I never saw him so very quiet and so very
dangerous as last night when he was telling me about you. I remember
well enough how he spoke and looked, when he caught me putting away my
trout-flies in the pages of that family history of his; but it was
nothing to see him or hear him then, to what it is now. I can tell you
this, Basil--if I believed in what the poetical people call a broken
heart (which I don't), I should be almost afraid that _he_ was
broken-hearted. I saw it was no use to say a word for you just yet, so
I sat quiet and listened to him till I got my dismissal for the
evening. My next proceeding was to go up-stairs, and see Clara.
Upstairs, I give you my word of honour, it was worse still. Clara was
walking about the room with your letter in her hand--just reach me the
matches: my cigar's out. Some men can talk and smoke in equal
proportions--I never could.

"You know as well as I do," he continued when he had relit his cigar,
"that Clara is not usually demonstrative. I always thought her rather
a cold temperament--but the moment I put my head in at the door, I
found I'd been just as great a fool on that point as on most others.
Basil, the scream Clara gave when she first saw me, and the look in
her eyes when she talked about you, positively frightened me. I can't
describe anything; and I hate descriptions by other men (most likely
on that very account): so I won't describe what she said and did. I'll
only tell you that it ended in my promising to come here the first
thing this morning; promising to get you out of the scrape; promising,
in short, everything she asked me. So here I am, ready for your
business before my own. The fair partner of my existence is at the
hotel, half-frantic because I won't go lodging-hunting with her; but
Clara is paramount, Clara is the first thought. Somebody must be a
good boy at home; and now you have resigned, I'm going to try and
succeed you, by way of a change!"

"Ralph! Ralph! can you mention Clara's name, and that woman's name, in
the same breath? Did you leave Clara quieter and better! For God's
sake be serious about that, though serious about nothing else!"

"Gently, Basil! _Doucement mon ami!_ I did leave her quieter: my
promise made her look almost like herself again. As for what you say
about mentioning Clara and Mrs. Ralph in the same breath, I've been
talking and smoking till I have no second breaths left to devote to
second-rate virtue. There is an unanswerable reason for you, if you
want one! And now let us get to the business that brings me here. I
don't want to worry you by raking up this miserable mess again, from
beginning to end, in your presence; but I must make sure at the same
time that I have got hold of the right story, or I can't be of any use
to you. My father was a little obscure on certain points. He talked
enough, and more than enough, about consequences to the family, about
his own affliction, about his giving you up for ever; and, in short,
about everything but the case itself as it really stands against us.
Now that is just what I ought to be put up to, and must be put up to.
Let me tell you in three words what I was told last night."

"Go on, Ralph: speak as you please."

"Very good. First of all, I understand that you took a fancy to some
shopkeeper's daughter--so far, mind, I don't blame you: I've spent
time very pleasantly among the ladies of the counter myself. But in
the second place, I'm told that you actually married the girl! I don't
wish to be hard upon you, my good fellow, but there was an
unparalleled insanity about that act, worthier of a patient in Bedlam
than of my brother. I am not quite sure whether I understand exactly
what virtuous behaviour is; but if _that_ was virtuous
behaviour--there! there! don't look shocked. Let's have done with the
marriage, and get on. Well, you made the girl your wife; and then
innocently consented to a very queer condition of waiting a year for
her (virtuous behaviour again, I suppose!) At the end of that
time--don't turn away your head, Basil! I _may_ be a scamp; but I am
not blackguard enough to make a joke--either in your presence, or out
of it--of this part of the story. I will pass it over altogether, if
you like; and only ask you a question or two. You see, my father
either could not or would not speak plainly of the worst part of the
business; and you know him well enough to know why. But somebody must
be a little explicit, or I can do nothing. About that man? You found
the scoundrel out? Did you get within arm's length of him?"

I told my brother of the struggle with Mannion in the Square.

He heard me almost with his former schoolboy delight, when I had
succeeded, to his satisfaction, in a feat of strength or activity. He
jumped off the bed, and seized both my hands in his strong grasp; his
face radiant, his eyes sparkling. "Shake hands, Basil! Shake hands, as
we haven't shaken hands yet: this makes amends for everything! One
word more, though, about that fellow; where is he now?"

"In the hospital."

Ralph laughed heartily, and jumped back on the bed. I remembered
Mannion's letter, and shuddered as I thought of it.

"The next question is about the girl," said my brother. "What has
become of her? Where was she all the time of your illness?"

"At her father's house; she is there still."

"Ah, yes! I see; the old story; innocent, of course. And her father
backs her, doesn't he? To be sure, that's the old story too. I have
got at our difficulty now; we are threatened with an exposure, if you
don't acknowledge her. Wait a minute! Have you any evidence against
her, besides your own?"

"I have a letter, a long letter from her accomplice, containing a
confession of his guilt and hers."

"She is sure to call that confession a conspiracy. It's of no use to
us, unless we dared to go to law--and we daren't. We must hush the
thing up at any price; or it will be the death of my father. This is a
case for money, just as I thought it would be. Mr. and Miss Shopkeeper
have got a large assortment of silence to sell; and we must buy it of
them, over the domestic counter, at so much a yard. Have you been
there yet, Basil, to ask the price and strike the bargain?"

"I was at the house, yesterday."

"The deuce you were! And who did you see?--The father? Did you bring
him to terms? did you do business with Mr. Shopkeeper?"

"His manner was brutal: his language, the language of a bully--?"

"So much the better. Those men are easiest dealt with: if he will only
fly into a passion with me, I engage for success beforehand. But the
end--how did it end?"

"As it began:--in threats on his part, in endurance on mine."

"Ah! we'll see how he likes my endurance next: he'll find it rather a
different sort of endurance from yours. By-the-bye, Basil, what money
had you to offer him?"

"I made no offer to him then. Circumstances happened which rendered me
incapable of thinking of it. I intended to go there again, to-day; and
if money would bribe him to silence, and save my family from sharing
the dishonour which has fallen on _me,_ to abandon to him the only
money I have of my own--the little income left me by our mother."

"Do you mean to say that your only resource is in that wretched
trifle, and that you ever really intend to let it go, and start in the
world without a rap? Do you mean to say that my father gave you up
without making the smallest provision for you, in such a mess as
your's? Hang it! do him justice. He has been hard enough on you, I
know; but he can't have coolly turned you over to ruin in that way."

"He offered me money, at parting; but with such words of contempt and
insult that I would have died rather than take it. I told him that,
unaided by his purse, I would preserve him, and preserve his family
from the infamous consequences of my calamity--though I sacrificed my
own happiness and my own honour for ever in doing it. And I go to-day
to make that sacrifice. The loss of the little I have to depend on, is
the least part of it. He may not see his injustice in doubting me,
till too late; but he _shall_ see it."

"I beg your pardon, Basil; but this is almost as great an insanity, as
the insanity of your marriage. I honour the independence of your
principle, my dear fellow; but, while I am to the fore, I'll take good
care that you don't ruin yourself gratuitously, for the sake of any
principles whatever! Just listen to me, now. In the first place,
remember that what my father said to you, he said in a moment of
violent exasperation. You had been trampling the pride of his life in
the mud: no man likes that--my father least of any. And, as for the
offer of your poor little morsel of an income to stop these people's
greedy mouths, it isn't a quarter enough for them. They know our
family is a wealthy family; and they will make their demand
accordingly. Any other sacrifice, even to taking the girl back (though
you never could bring yourself to do that!), would be of no earthly
use. Nothing but money will do; money cunningly doled out, under the
strongest possible stipulations. Now, I'm just the man to do that, and
I have got the money--or, rather, my father has, which comes to the
same thing. Write me the fellow's name and address; there's no time to
be lost--I'm off to see him at once!"

"I can't allow you, Ralph, to ask my father for what I would not ask
him myself--"

"Give me the name and address, or you will sour my excellent temper
for the rest of my life. Your obstinacy won't do with _me,_ Basil--it
didn't at school, and it won't now. I shall ask my father for money
for myself; and use as much of it as I think proper for your
interests. He'll give me anything I want, now I have turned good boy.
I don't owe fifty pounds, since my last debts were paid off--thanks to
Mrs. Ralph, who is the most managing woman in the world. By-the-bye,
when you see her, don't seem surprised at her being older than I am.
Oh! this is the address, is it? Hollyoake Square? Where the devil's
that! Never mind, I'll take a cab, and shift the responsibility of
finding the place on the driver. Keep up your spirits, and wait here
till I come back. You shall have such news of Mr. Shopkeeper and his
daughter as you little expect! _Au revoir,_ my dear fellow--_au
revoir._"

He left the room as rapidly as he had entered it. The minute
afterwards, I remembered that I ought to have warned him of the fatal
illness of Mrs. Sherwin. She might be dying--dead for aught I
knew--when he reached the house. I ran to the window, to call him
back: it was too late. Ralph was gone.

Even if he were admitted at North Villa, would he succeed? I was
little capable of estimating the chances. The unexpectedness of his
visit; the strange mixture of sympathy and levity in his manner, of
worldly wisdom and boyish folly in his conversation, appeared to be
still confusing me in his absence, just as they had confused me in his
presence. My thoughts imperceptibly wandered away from Ralph, and the
mission he had undertaken on my behalf, to a subject which seemed
destined, for the future, to steal on my attention, irresistibly and
darkly, in all my lonely hours. Already, the fatality denounced
against me in Mannion's letter had begun to act: already, that
terrible confession of past misery and crime, that monstrous
declaration of enmity which was to last with the lasting of life,
began to exercise its numbing influence on my faculties, to cast its
blighting shadow over my heart.

I opened the letter again, and re-read the threats against me at its
conclusion. One by one, the questions now arose in my mind: how can I
resist, or how escape the vengeance of this evil spirit? how shun the
dread deformity of that face, which is to appear before me in secret?
how silence that fiend's tongue, or make harmless the poison which it
will pour drop by drop into my life? When should I first look for that
avenging presence?--now, or not till months hence? Where should I
first see it? in the house?--or in the street? At what time would it
steal to my side? by night--or by day? Should I show the letter to
Ralph?--it would be useless. What would avail any advice or assistance
which his reckless courage could give, against an enemy who combined
the ferocious vigilance of a savage with the far-sighted iniquity of a
civilised man?

As this last thought crossed my mind, I hastily closed the letter;
determining (alas! how vainly!) never to open it again. Almost at the
same instant, I heard another knock at the house-door. Could Ralph
have returned already? impossible! Besides, the knock was very
different from his--it was only just loud enough to be audible where I
now sat.

Mannion? But would he come thus? openly, fairly, in the broad
daylight, through the populous street?

A light, quick step ascended the stairs--my heart bounded; I started
to my feet. It was the same step which I used to listen for, and love
to hear, in my illness. I ran to the door, and opened it. My instinct
had not deceived me! it was my sister!

"Basil!" she exclaimed, before I could speak--"has Ralph been here?"

"Yes, love--yes."

"Where has he gone? what has he done for you? He promised me--"

"And he has kept his promise nobly, Clara: he is away helping me now."

"Thank God! thank God!"

She sank breathless into a chair, as she spoke. Oh, the pang of
looking at her at that moment, and seeing how she was changed!--seeing
the dimness and weariness of the gentle eyes; the fear and the sorrow
that had already overshadowed the bright young face!

"I shall be better directly," she said, guessing from my expression
what I then felt--"but, seeing you in this strange place, after what
happened yesterday; and having come here so secretly, in terror of my
father finding it out--I can't help feeling your altered position and
mine a little painfully at first. But we won't complain, as long as I
can get here sometimes to see you: we will only think of the future
now. What a mercy, what a happiness it is that Ralph has come back! We
have always done him injustice; he is far kinder and far better than
we ever thought him. But, Basil, how worn and ill you are looking!
Have you not told Ralph everything? Are you in any danger?"

"None, Clara--none, indeed!"

"Don't grieve too deeply about yesterday! Try and forget that horrible
parting, and all that brought it about. He has not spoken of it since,
except to tell me that I must never know more of your fault and your
misfortune, than the little--the very little--I know already. And I
have resolved not to think about it, as well as not to ask about it,
for the future. I have a hope already, Basil--very, very far off
fulfilment--but still a hope. Can you not think what it is?"

"Your hope is far off fulfilment, indeed, Clara, if it is hope from my
father!"

"Hush! don't say so; I know better. Something occurred, even so soon
as last night--a very trifling event--but enough to show that he
thinks of you, already, in grief far more than in anger."

"I wish I could believe it, love; but my remembrance of yesterday--"

"Don't trust that remembrance; don't recall it! I will tell you what
occurred. Some time after you had gone, and after I had recovered
myself a little in my own room, I went downstairs again to see my
father; for I was too terrified and too miserable at what had
happened, to be alone. He was not in his room when I got there. As I
looked round me for a moment, I saw the pieces of your page in the
book about our family, scattered on the floor; and the miniature
likeness of you, when you were a child, was lying among the other
fragments. It had been torn out of its setting in the paper, but not
injured. I picked it up, Basil, and put it on the table, at the place
where he always sits; and laid my own little locket, with your hair in
it, by the side, so that he might know that the miniature had not been
accidentally taken up and put there by the servant. Then, I gathered
together the pieces of the page and took them away with me, thinking
it better that he should not see them again. Just as I had got through
the door that leads into the library, and was about to close it, I
heard the other door, by which you enter the study from the hall,
opening; and he came in, and went directly to the table. His back was
towards me, so I could look at him unperceived. He observed the
miniature directly and stood quite still with it in his hand; then
sighed--sighed so bitterly!--and then took the portrait of our dear
mother from one of the drawers of the table, opened the case in which
it is kept, and put your miniature inside, very gently and tenderly. I
could not trust myself to see any more, so I went up to my room again:
and shortly afterwards he came in with my locket, and gave it me back,
only saying--'You left this on my table, Clara.' But if you had seen
his face then, you would have hoped all things from him in the time to
come, as I hope now."

"And as I _will_ hope, Clara, though it be from no stronger motive
than gratitude to you."

"Before I left home," she proceeded, after a moment's silence, "I
thought of your loneliness in this strange place--knowing that I could
seldom come to see you, and then only by stealth; by committing a
fault which, if my father found it out--but we won't speak of that! I
thought of your lonely hours here; and I have brought with me an old,
forgotten companion of yours, to bear you company, and to keep you
from thinking too constantly on what you have suffered. Look, Basil!
won't you welcome this old friend again?"

She gave me a small roll of manuscript, with an effort to resume her
kind smile of former days, even while the tears stood thick in her
eyes. I untied the leaves, glanced at the handwriting, and saw before
me, once more, the first few chapters of my unfinished romance! Again
I looked on the patiently-laboured pages, familiar relics of that
earliest and best ambition which I had abandoned for love; too
faithful records of the tranquil, ennobling pleasures which I had lost
for ever! Oh, for one Thought-Flower now, from the dream-garden of the
happy Past!

"I took more care of those leaves of writing, after you had thrown
them aside, than of anything else I had," said Clara. "I always
thought the time would come, when you would return again to the
occupation which it was once your greatest pleasure to pursue, and my
greatest pleasure to watch. And surely that time has arrived. I am
certain, Basil, your book will help you to wait patiently for happier
times, as nothing else can. This place must seem very strange and
lonely; but the sight of those pages, and the sight of me sometimes
(when I can come), may make it look almost like home to you! The room
is not--not very--"

She stopped suddenly. I saw her lip tremble, and her eyes grow dim
again, as she looked round her. When I tried to speak all the
gratitude I felt, she turned away quickly, and began to busy herself
in re-arranging the wretched furniture; in setting in order the
glaring ornaments on the chimney-piece; in hiding the holes in the
ragged window-curtains; in changing, as far as she could, all the
tawdry discomfort of my one miserable little room. She was still
absorbed in this occupation, when the church-clocks of the
neighbourhood struck the hour--the hour that warned her to stay no
longer.

"I must go," she said; "it is later than I thought. Don't be afraid
about my getting home: old Martha came here with me, and is waiting
downstairs to go back (you know we can trust her). Write to me as
often as you can; I shall hear about you every day, from Ralph; but I
should like a letter sometimes, as well. Be as hopeful and as patient
yourself, dear, under misfortune, as you wish me to be; and I shall
despair of nothing. Don't tell Ralph I have been here--he might be
angry. I will come again, the first opportunity. Good-bye, Basil! Let
us try and part happily, in the hope of better days. Good-bye,
dear--good-bye, only for the present!"

Her self-possession nearly failed her, as she kissed me, and then
turned to the door. She just signed to me not to follow her
down-stairs, and, without looking round again, hurried from the room.

It was well for the preservation of our secret, that she had so
resolutely refrained from delaying her departure. She had been gone
but for a few minutes--the lovely and consoling influence of her
presence was still fresh in my heart--I was still looking sadly over
the once precious pages of manuscript which she had restored to
me--when Ralph returned from North Villa. I heard him leaping, rather
than running, up the ricketty wooden stairs. He burst into my room
more impetuously than ever.

"All right!" he said, jumping back to his former place on the bed. "We
can buy Mr. Shopkeeper for anything we like--for nothing at all, if we
choose to be stingy. His innocent daughter has made the best of all
confessions, just at the right time. Basil, my boy, she has left her
father's house!"

"What do you mean?"

"She has eloped to the hospital!"

"Mannion!"

"Yes, Mannion: I have got his letter to her. She is criminated by it,
even past her father's contradiction--and he doesn't stick at a
trifle! But I'll begin at the beginning, and tell you everything. Hang
it, Basil, you look as if I'd brought you bad news instead of good!"

"Never mind how I look, Ralph--pray go on!"

"Well: the first thing I heard, on getting to the house, was that
Sherwin's wife was dying. The servant took in my name: but I thought
of course I shouldn't be admitted. No such thing! I was let in at
once, and the first words this fellow, Sherwin, said to me, were, that
his wife was only ill, that the servants were exaggerating, and that
he was quite ready to hear what Mr. Basil's 'highly-respected' brother
(fancy calling _me_ 'highly-respected!') had to say to him. The fool,
however, as you see, was cunning enough to try civility to begin with.
A more ill-looking human mongrel I never set eyes on! I took the
measure of my man directly, and in two minutes told him exactly what I
came for, without softening a single word."

"And how did he answer you?"

"As I anticipated, by beginning to bluster immediately. I took him
down, just as he swore his second oath. 'Sir,' I said very politely,
'if you mean to make a cursing and a swearing conference of this, I
think it only fair to inform you before-hand that you are likely to
get the worst of it. When the whole collection of British oaths is
exhausted, I can swear fluently in five foreign languages: I have
always made it a principle to pay back abuse at compound interest, and
I don't exaggerate in saying, that I am quite capable of swearing you
out of your senses, if you persist in setting me the example. And now,
if you like to go on, pray do--I'm ready to hear you.' While I was
speaking, he stared at me in a state of helpless astonishment; when I
had done, he began to bluster again--but it was a pompous, dignified,
parliamentary sort of bluster, now, ending in his pulling your unlucky
marriage-certificate out of his pocket, asserting for the fiftieth
time, that the girl was innocent, and declaring that he'd make you
acknowledge her, if he went before a magistrate to do it. That's what
he said when you saw him, I suppose?"

"Yes: almost word for word."

"I had my answer ready for him, before he could put the certificate
back in his pocket. 'Now, Mr. Sherwin,' I said, 'have the goodness to
listen to me. My father has certain family prejudices and nervous
delicacies, which I do not inherit from him, and which I mean to take
good care to prevent you from working on. At the same time, I beg you
to understand that I have come here without his knowledge. I am not my
father's ambassador, but my brother's--who is unfit to deal with you,
himself; because he is not half hard-hearted, or half worldly enough.
As my brother's envoy, therefore, and out of consideration for my
father's peculiar feelings, I now offer you, from my own resources, a
certain annual sum of money, far more than sufficient for all your
daughter's expenses--a sum payable quarterly, on condition that
neither you nor she shall molest us; that you shall never make use of
our name anywhere; and that the fact of my brother's marriage
(hitherto preserved a secret) shall for the future be consigned to
oblivion. _We_ keep our opinion of your daughter's guilt--_you_ keep
your opinion of her innocence. _We_ have silence to buy, and _you_
have silence to sell, once a quarter; and if either of us break our
conditions, we both have our remedy--_your's_ the easy remedy, _our's_
the difficult. This arrangement--a very unfair and dangerous for us; a
very advantageous and safe one for you--I understand that you finally
refuse?' 'Sir,' says he, solemnly, 'I should be unworthy the name of a
father--' 'Thank you'--I remarked, feeling that he was falling back on
paternal sentiment--'thank you; I quite understand. We will get on, if
you please, to the reverse side of the question.'"

"The reverse side! What reverse side, Ralph? What could you possibly
say more?"

"You shall hear. 'Being, on your part, thoroughly determined,' I said,
'to permit no compromise, and to make my brother (his family of course
included) acknowledge a woman, of whose guilt they entertain not the
slightest doubt, you think you can gain your object by threatening an
exposure. Don't threaten any more! Make your exposure! Go to the
magistrate at once, if you like! Gibbet our names in the newspaper
report, as a family connected by marriage with Mr. Sherwin the
linen-draper's daughter, whom they believe to have disgraced herself
as a woman and a wife for ever. Do your very worst; make public every
shameful particular that you can--what advantage will you get by it?
Revenge, I grant you. But will revenge put a halfpenny into your
pocket? Will revenge pay a farthing towards your daughter's keep? Will
revenge make us receive her? Not a bit of it! We shall be driven into
a corner; we shall have no exposure to dread after you have exposed
us; we shall have no remedy left, but a desperate remedy, and we'll go
to law--boldly, openly go to law, and get a divorce. We have written
evidence, which you know nothing about, and can call testimony which
you cannot gag. I am no lawyer, but I'll bet you five hundred to one
(quite in a friendly way, my dear Sir!) that we get our case. What
follows? We send you back your daughter, without a shred of character
left to cover her; and we comfortably wash our hands of _you_
altogether.'"

"Ralph! Ralph! how could you--"

"Stop! hear the end of it. Of course I knew that we couldn't carry out
this divorce-threat, without its being the death of my father; but I
thought a little quiet bullying on my part might do Mr. Shopkeeper
Sherwin some good. And I was right. You never saw a man sit sorer on
the sharp edges of a dilemma than he did. I stuck to my point in spite
of everything; silence and money, or exposure and divorce--just which
he pleased. 'I deny every one of your infamous imputations,' said he.
'That's not the question,' said I. 'I'll go to your father,' said he.
'You won't be let in,' said I. 'I'll write to him,' said he. 'He won't
receive your letter,' said I. There we came to a pull-up. _He_ began
to stammer, and _I_ refreshed myself with a pinch of snuff. Finding it
wouldn't do, he threw off the Roman at last, and resumed the
Tradesman. 'Even supposing I consented to this abominable compromise,
what is to become of my daughter?' he asked. 'Just what becomes of
other people who have comfortable annuities to live on,' I answered.
'Affection for my deeply-wronged child half inclines me to consult her
wishes, before we settle anything--I'll go up-stairs,' said he. 'And
I'll wait for you down here,' said I."

"Did he object to that?"

"Not he. He went up-stairs, and in a few minutes ran down again, with
an open letter in his hand, looking as if the devil was after him
before his time. At the last three or four stairs, he tripped, caught
at the bannisters, dropped the letter over them in doing so, tumbled
into the passage in such a fury and fright that he looked like a
madman, tore his hat off a peg, and rushed out. I just heard him say
his daughter should come back, if he put a straight waistcoat on her,
as he passed the door. Between his tumble, his passion, and his hurry,
he never thought of coming back for the letter he had dropped over the
bannisters. I picked it up before I went away, suspecting it might be
good evidence on our side; and I was right. Read it yourself; Basil;
you have every moral and legal claim on the precious document--and
here it is."

I took the letter, and read (in Mannion's handwriting) these words,
dated from the hospital:--



"I have received your last note, and cannot wonder that you are
getting impatient under restraint. But, remember, that if you had not
acted as I warned you beforehand to act in case of accidents--if you
had not protested innocence to your father, and preserved total
silence towards your mother; if you had not kept in close retirement,
behaving like a domestic martyr, and avoiding, in your character of a
victim, all voluntary mention of your husband's name--your position
might have been a very awkward one. Not being able to help you, the
only thing I could do was to teach you how to help yourself. I gave
you the lesson, and you have been wise enough to profit by it.

"The time has now come for a change in my plans. I have suffered a
relapse; and the date of my discharge from this place is still
uncertain. I doubt the security, both on your account, and on mine, of
still leaving you at your father's house, to await my cure. Come to me
here, therefore, to-morrow, at any hour when you can get away
unperceived. You will be let in as a visitor, and shown to my bedside,
if you ask for Mr. Turner--the name I have given to the hospital
authorities. Through the help of a friend outside these walls, I have
arranged for a lodging in which you can live undiscovered, until I am
discharged and can join you. You can come here twice a week, if you
like, and you had better do so, to accustom yourself to the sight of
my injuries. I told you in my first letter how and where they had been
inflicted--when you see them with your own eyes, you will be best
prepared to hear what my future purposes are, and how you can aid
them.

                                                     R. M."



This was evidently the letter about which I had been consulted by the
servant at North Villa; the date corresponded with the date of
Mannion's letter to me. I noticed that the envelope was missing, and
asked Ralph whether he had got it.

"No," he replied; "Sherwin dropped the letter just in the state in
which I have given it to you. I suspect the girl took away the
envelope with her, thinking that the letter which she left behind her
was inside. But the loss of the envelope doesn't matter. Look there:
the fellow has written her name at the bottom of the leaf; as coolly
as if it was an ordinary correspondence. She is identified with the
letter, and that's all we want in our future dealings with her
father."

"But, Ralph, do you think--"

"Do I think her father will get her back? If he's in time to catch her
at the hospital, he assuredly will. If not, we shall have some little
trouble on our side, I suspect. This seems to me to be how the matter
stands now, Basil:--After that letter, and her running away, Sherwin
will have nothing for it but to hold his tongue about her innocence;
we may consider _him_ as settled and done with. As for the other
rascal, Mannion, he certainly writes as if he meant to do something
dangerous. If he really does attempt to annoy us, we will mark him
again (I'll do it next time, by way of a little change!); _he_ has no
marriage certificate to shake over our heads, at any rate. What's the
matter now?--you're looking pale again."

I _felt_ that my colour was changing, while he spoke. There was
something ominous in the contrast which, at that moment, I could not
fail to draw between Mannion's enmity, as Ralph ignorantly estimated
it, and as I really knew it. Already the first step towards the
conspiracy with which I was threatened, had been taken by the
departure of Sherwin's daughter from her father's house. Should I, at
this earliest warning of coming events, show my brother the letter I
had received from Mannion? No! such defence against the dangers
threatened in it as Ralph would be sure to counsel, and to put in
practice, might only include _him_ in the life-long persecution which
menaced _me._ When he repeated his remark about my sudden paleness, I
merely accounted for it by some common-place excuse, and begged him to
proceed.

"I suppose, Basil," he said, "the truth is, that you can't help being
a little shocked--though you could expect nothing better from the
girl--at her boldly following this fellow Mannion, even to the
hospital" (Ralph was right; in spite of myself, this feeling was one
among the many which now influenced me.) "Setting that aside, however,
we are quite ready, I take it, to let her stick to her choice, and
live just as she pleases, so long as she doesn't live under our name.
There is the great fear and great difficulty now! If Sherwin can't
find her, we must; otherwise, we can never feel certain that she is
not incurring all sorts of debts as your wife. If her father gets her
back, I shall be able to bring her to terms at North Villa; if not, I
must get speech of her, wherever she happens to be hidden. She's the
only thorn in our side now, and we must pull her out with gold pincers
immediately. Don't you see that, Basil?"

"I see it, Ralph!"

"Very well. Either to-night or to-morrow morning, I'll communicate
with Sherwin, and find out whether he has laid hands on her. If he
hasn't, we must go to the hospital, and see what we can discover for
ourselves. Don't look miserable and downhearted, Basil, I'll go with
you: you needn't see her again, or the man either; but you must come
with me, for I may be obliged to make use of you. And now, I'm off for
to-day, in good earnest. I must get back to Mrs. Ralph (unfortunately
she happens to be one of the most sensitive women in the world), or
she will be sending to advertise me in the newspapers. We shall pull
through this, my dear fellow--you will see we shall! By the bye, you
don't know of a nice little detached house in the Brompton
neighbourhood, do you? Most of my old theatrical friends live about
there--a detached house, mind! The fact is, I have taken to the violin
lately (I wonder what I shall take to next?); Mrs. Ralph accompanies
me on the pianoforte; and we might be an execrable nuisance to very
near neighbours--that's all! You don't know of a house? Never mind; I
can go to an agent, or something of that sort. Clara shall know
to-night that we are moving prosperously, if I can only give the
worthiest creature in the world the slip: she's a little obstinate,
but, I assure you, a really superior woman. Only think of my dropping
down to playing the fiddle, and paying rent and taxes in a suburban
villa! How are the fast men fallen! Good bye, Basil, good bye!"

VII.

The next morning, Ralph never appeared--the day passed on, and I heard
nothing--at last, when it was evening, a letter came from him.

The letter informed me that my brother had written to Mr. Sherwin,
simply asking whether he had recovered his daughter. The answer to
this question did not arrive till late in the day; and was in the
negative--Mr. Sherwin had not found his daughter. She had left the
hospital before he got there; and no one could tell him whither she
had gone. His language and manner, as he himself admitted, had been so
violent that he was not allowed to enter the ward where Mannion lay.
When he returned home, he found his wife at the point of death; and on
the same evening she expired. Ralph described his letter, as the
letter of a man half out of his senses. He only mentioned his
daughter, to declare, in terms almost of fury, that he would accuse
her before his wife's surviving relatives, of having been the cause of
her mother's death; and called down the most terrible denunciations on
his own head, if he ever spoke to his child again, though he should
see her starving before him in the streets. In a postscript, Ralph
informed me that he would call the next morning, and concert measures
for tracking Sherwin's daughter to her present retreat.

Every sentence in this letter bore warning of the crisis which was now
close at hand; yet I had as little of the desire as of the power to
prepare for it. A superstitious conviction that my actions were
governed by a fatality which no human foresight could alter or avoid,
began to strengthen within me. From this time forth, I awaited events
with the uninquiring patience, the helpless resignation of despair.

My brother came, punctual to his appointment. When he proposed that I
should at once accompany him to the hospital, I never hesitated at
doing as he desired. We reached our destination; and Ralph approached
the gates to make his first enquiries.

He was still speaking to the porter, when a gentleman advanced towards
them, on his way out of the hospital. I saw him recognise my brother,
and heard Ralph exclaim:

"Bernard! Jack Bernard! Have you come to England, of all the men in
the world!"

"Why not?" was the answer. "I got every surgical testimonial the
_Hotel Dieu_ could give me, six months ago; and couldn't afford to
stay in Paris only for my pleasure. Do you remember calling me a
'mute, inglorious Liston,' long ago, when we last met? Well, I have
come to England to soar out of my obscurity and blaze into a shining
light of the profession. Plenty of practice at the hospital,
here--very little anywhere else, I am sorry to say."

"You don't mean that you belong to _this_ hospital?"

"My dear fellow, I am regularly on the staff; I'm here every day of my
life."

"You're the very man to enlighten us. Here, Basil, cross over, and let
me introduce you to an old Paris friend of mine. Mr. Bernard--my
brother. You've often heard me talk, Basil, of a younger son of old
Sir William Bernard's, who preferred a cure of bodies to a cure of
souls; and actually insisted on working in a hospital when he might
have idled in a family living. This is the man--the best of doctors
and good fellows."

"Are you bringing your brother to the hospital to follow my mad
example?" asked Mr. Bernard, as he shook hands with me.

"Not exactly, Jack! But we really have an object in coming here. Can
you give us ten minutes' talk, somewhere in private? We want to know
about one of your patients."

He led us into an empty room, on the ground-floor of the building.
"Leave the matter in my hands," whispered Ralph to me, as we sat down.
"I'll find out everything."

"Now, Bernard," he said, "you have a man here, who calls himself Mr.
Turner?"

"Are _you_ a friend of that mysterious patient? Wonderful! The
students call him 'The Great Mystery of London;' and I begin to think
the students are right. Do you want to see him? When he has not got
his green shade on, he's rather a startling sight, I can tell you, for
unprofessional eyes."

"No, no--at least, not at present; my brother here, not at all. The
fact is, certain circumstances have happened which oblige us to look
after this man; and which I am sure you won't inquire into, when I
tell you that it is our interest to keep them secret."

"Certainly not!"

"Then, without any more words about it, our object here, to-day, is to
find out everything we can about Mr. Turner, and the people who have
been to see him. Did a woman come, the day before yesterday?"

"Yes; and behaved rather oddly, I believe. I was not here when she
came, but was told she asked for Turner, in a very agitated manner.
She was directed to the Victoria Ward, where he is; and when she got
there, looked excessively flurried and excited--seeing the Ward quite
full, and, perhaps, not being used to hospitals. However it was,
though the nurse pointed out the right bed to her, she ran in a mighty
hurry to the wrong one."

"I understand," said Ralph; "just as some women run into the wrong
omnibus, when the right one is straight before them."

"Exactly. Well, she only discovered her mistake (the room being rather
dark), after she had stooped down close over the stranger, who was
lying with his head away from her. By that time, the nurse was at her
side, and led her to the right bed. There, I'm told, another scene
happened. At sight of the patient's face, which is very frightfully
disfigured, she was on the point (as the nurse thought) of going into
a fit; but Turner stopped her in an instant. He just laid his hand on
her arm, and whispered something to her; and, though she turned as
pale as ashes, she was quiet directly. The next thing they say he did,
was to give her a slip of paper, coolly directing her to go to the
address written on it, and to come back to the hospital again, as soon
as she could show a little more resolution. She went away at
once--nobody knows where."

"Has nobody asked where?"

"Yes; a fellow who said he was her father, and who behaved like a
madman. He came here about an hour after she had left, and wouldn't
believe that we knew nothing about her (how the deuce _should_ we know
anything!) He threatened Turner (whom, by the bye, he called Manning,
or some such name) in such an outrageous manner, that we were obliged
to refuse him admission. Turner himself will give no information on
the subject; but I suspect that his injuries are the result of a
quarrel with the father about the daughter--a pretty savage quarrel, I
must say, looking to the consequences--I beg your pardon, but your
brother seems ill! I'm afraid," (turning to me), "you find the room
rather close?"

"No, indeed; not at all. I have just recovered from a serious
illness--but pray go on."

"I have very little more to say. The father went away in a fury, just
as he came; the daughter has not yet made her appearance a second
time. But, after what was reported to me of the first interview, I
daresay she _will_ come. She must, if she wants to see Turner; he
won't be out, I suspect, for another fortnight. He has been making
himself worse by perpetually writing letters; we were rather afraid of
erysipelas, but he'll get over that danger, I think."

"About the woman," said Ralph; "it is of the greatest importance that
we should know where she is now living. Is there any possibility (we
will pay well for it) of getting some sharp fellow to follow her home
from this place, the next time she comes here?"

Mr. Bernard hesitated a moment, and considered.

"I think I can manage it for you with the porter, after you are gone,"
he said, "provided you leave me free to give any remuneration I may
think necessary."

"Anything in the world, my dear fellow. Have you got pen and ink? I'll
write down my brother's address; you can communicate results to him,
as soon as they occur."

While Mr. Bernard went to the opposite end of the room, in search of
writing materials, Ralph whispered to me--

"If he wrote to _my_ address, Mrs. Ralph might see the letter. She is
the most amiable of her sex; but if written information of a woman's
residence, directed to me, fell into her hands--you understand, Basil!
Besides, it will be easy to let me know, the moment you hear from
Jack. Look up, young one! It's all right--we are sailing with wind and
tide."

Here Mr. Bernard brought us pen and ink. While Ralph was writing my
address, his friend said to me:

"I hope you will not suspect me of wishing to intrude on your secrets,
if (assuming your interest in Turner to be the reverse of a friendly
interest) I warn you to look sharply after him when he leaves the
hospital. Either there has been madness in his family, or his brain
has suffered from his external injuries. Legally, he may be quite fit
to be at large; for he will be able to maintain the appearance of
perfect self-possession in all the ordinary affairs of life. But,
morally, I am convinced that he is a dangerous monomaniac; his mania
being connected with some fixed idea which evidently never leaves him
day or night. I would lay a heavy wager that he dies in a prison or a
madhouse."

"And I'll lay another wager, if he's mad enough to annoy us, that we
are the people to shut him up," said Ralph. "There is the address. And
now, we needn't waste your time any longer. I have taken a little
place at Brompton, Jack,--you and Basil must come and dine with me, as
soon as the carpets are down."

We left the room. As we crossed the hall, a gentleman came forward,
and spoke to Mr. Bernard.

"That man's fever in the Victoria Ward has declared itself at last,"
he said. "This morning the new symptoms have appeared."

"And what do they indicate?"

"Typhus of the most malignant character--not a doubt of it. Come up,
and look at him."

I saw Mr. Bernard start, and glance quickly at my brother. Ralph fixed
his eyes searchingly on his friend's face; exclaimed: "Victoria Ward!
why you mentioned that--;" and then stopped, with a very strange and
sudden alteration in his expression. The next moment he drew Mr.
Bernard aside, saying: "I want to ask you whether the bed in Victoria
Ward, occupied by this man whose fever has turned to typhus, is the
same bed, or near the bed which--" The rest of the sentence was lost
to me as they walked away.

After talking together in whispers for a few moments, they rejoined
me. Mr. Bernard was explaining the different theories of infection to
Ralph.

_"My_ notion," he said, "is, that infection is taken through the
lungs; one breath inhaled from the infected atmosphere hanging
immediately around the diseased person, and generally extending about
a foot from him, being enough to communicate his malady to the
breather--provided there exists, at the time, in the individual
exposed to catch the malady, a constitutional predisposition to
infection. This predisposition we know to be greatly increased by
mental agitation, or bodily weakness; but, in the case we have been
talking of," (he looked at me,) "the chances of infection or
non-infection may be equally balanced. At any rate, I can predict
nothing about them at this stage of the discovery."

"You will write the moment you hear anything?" said Ralph, shaking
hands with him.

"The very moment. I have your brother's address safe in my pocket."

We separated. Ralph was unusually silent and serious on our way back.
He took leave of me at the door of my lodging, very abruptly; without
referring again to our visit to the hospital.

A week passed away, and I heard nothing from Mr. Bernard. During this
interval, I saw little of my brother; he was occupied in moving into
his new house. Towards the latter part of the week, he came to inform
me that he was about to leave London for a few days. My father had
asked him to go to the family house, in the country, on business
connected with the local management of the estates. Ralph still
retained all his old dislike of the steward's accounts and the
lawyer's consultations; but he felt bound, out of gratitude for my
father's special kindness to him since his return to England, to put a
constraint on his own inclinations, and go to the country as he was
desired. He did not expect to be absent more than two or three days;
but earnestly charged me to write to him, if I had any news from the
hospital while he was away.

During the week, Clara came twice to see me--escaping from home by
stealth, as before. On each occasion, she showed the same affectionate
anxiety to set me an example of cheerfulness, and to sustain me in
hope. I saw, with a sorrow and apprehension which I could not
altogether conceal from her, that the weary look in her face had never
changed, never diminished since I had first observed it. Ralph had,
from motives of delicacy, avoided increasing the hidden anxieties
which were but too evidently preying upon her health, by keeping her
in perfect ignorance of our visit to the hospital, and, indeed, of the
particulars of all our proceedings since his return. I took care to
preserve the same secrecy, during her short interviews with me. She
bade me farewell after her third visit, with a sadness which she
vainly endeavoured to hide. I little thought, then, that the tones of
her sweet, clear voice had fallen on my ear for the last time, before
I wandered to the far West of England where I now write.

At the end of the week--it was on a Saturday, I remember--I left my
lodgings early in the morning, to go into the country; with no
intention of returning before evening. I had felt a sense of
oppression, on rising, which was almost unendurable. The perspiration
stood thick on my forehead, though the day was not unusually hot; the
air of London grew harder and harder to breathe, with every minute; my
heart felt tightened to bursting; my temples throbbed with fever-fury;
my very life seemed to depend on escaping into pure air, into some
place where there was shade from trees, and water that ran cool and
refreshing to look on. So I set forth, careless in what direction I
went; and remained in the country all day. Evening was changing into
night as I got back to London.

I inquired of the servant at my lodging, when she let me in, whether
any letter had arrived for me. She answered, that one had come just
after I had gone out in the morning, and that it was lying on my
table. My first glance at it, showed me Mr. Bernard's name written in
the corner of the envelope. I eagerly opened the letter, and read
these words:



"Private. "Friday.

"My DEAR SIR,

"On the enclosed slip of paper you will find the address of the young
woman, of whom your brother spoke to me when we met at the hospital. I
regret to say, that the circumstances under which I have obtained
information of her residence, are of the most melancholy nature.

"The plan which I arranged for discovering her abode, in accordance
with your brother's suggestion, proved useless. The young woman never
came to the hospital a second time. Her address was given to me this
morning, by Turner himself; who begged that I would visit her
professionally, as he had no confidence in the medical man who was
then in attendance on her. Many circumstances combined to make my
compliance with his request anything but easy or desirable; but
knowing that you--or your brother I ought, perhaps, rather to
say--were interested in the young woman, I determined to take the very
earliest opportunity of seeing her, and consulting with her medical
attendant. I could not get to her till late in the afternoon. When I
arrived, I found her suffering from one of the worst attacks of Typhus
I ever remember to have seen; and I think it my duty to state
candidly, that I believe her life to be in imminent danger. At the
same time, it is right to inform you that the gentleman in attendance
on her does not share my opinion: he still thinks there is a good
chance of saving her.

"There can be no doubt whatever, that she was infected with Typhus at
the hospital. You may remember my telling you, how her agitation
appeared to have deprived her of self-possession, when she entered the
ward; and how she ran to the wrong bed, before the nurse could stop
her. The man whom she thus mistook for Turner, was suffering from
fever which had not then specifically declared itself; but which did
so declare itself, as a Typhus fever, on the morning when you and your
brother came to the hospital. This man's disorder must have been
infectious when the young woman stooped down close over him, under the
impression that he was the person she had come to see. Although she
started back at once, on discovering her mistake, she had breathed the
infection into her system--her mental agitation at the time,
accompanied (as I have since understood) by some physical weakness,
rendering her specially liable to the danger to which she had
accidentally exposed herself.

"Since the first symptoms of her disease appeared, on Saturday last, I
cannot find that any error has been committed in the medical
treatment, as reported to me. I remained some time by her bedside
to-day, observing her. The delirium which is, more or less, an
invariable result of Typhus, is particularly marked in her case, and
manifests itself both by speech and gesture. It has been found
impossible to quiet her, by any means hitherto tried. While I was
watching by her, she never ceased calling on your name, and entreating
to see you. I am informed by her medical attendant, that her
wanderings have almost invariably taken this direction for the last
four-and-twenty hours. Occasionally she mixes other names with yours,
and mentions them in terms of abhorrence; but her persistency in
calling for your presence, is so remarkable that I am tempted, merely
from what I have heard myself; to suggest that you really should go to
her, on the bare chance that you might exercise some tranquillising
influence. At the same time, if you fear infection, or for any private
reasons (into which I have neither the right nor the wish to inquire)
feel unwilling to take the course I have pointed out, do not by any
means consider it your duty to accede to my proposal. I can
conscientiously assure you that duty is not involved in it.

"I have, however, another suggestion to make, which is of a positive
nature, and which I am sure will meet with your approval. It is, that
her parents, or some of her other relations, if her parents are not
alive, should be informed of her situation. Possibly, you may know
something of her connections, and can therefore do this good office.
She is dying in a strange place, among people who avoid her as they
would avoid a pestilence. Even though it be only to bury her, some
relation ought to be immediately summoned to her bed-side.

"I shall visit her twice to-morrow, in the morning and at night. If
you are not willing to risk seeing her (and I repeat that it is in no
sense imperative that you should combat such unwillingness), perhaps
you will communicate with me at my private address.

"I remain, dear Sir, 
"Faithfully yours,
                                  "JOHN BERNARD.

"P. S.--I open my letter again, to inform you that Turner, acting
against all advice, has left the hospital to-day. He attempted to go
on Tuesday last, when, I believe, he first received information of the
young woman's serious illness, but was seized with a violent attack of
giddiness, on attempting to walk, and fell down just outside the door
of the ward. On this second occasion, however, he has succeeded in
getting away without any accident--as far, at least, as the persons
employed about the hospital can tell."



When the letter fell from my trembling hand, when I first asked of my
own heart the fearful question:--"Have I, to whom the mere thought of
ever seeing this woman again has been as a pollution to shrink from,
the strength to stand by her death-bed, the courage to see her
die?"--then, and not till then, did I really know how suffering had
fortified, while it had humbled me; how affliction has the power to
purify, as well as to pain.

All bitter memory of the ill that she had done me, of the misery I had
suffered at her hands, lost its hold on my mind. Once more, her
mother's last words of earthly lament--"Oh, who will pray for her when
I am gone!" seemed to be murmuring in my ear--murmuring in harmony
with the divine words in which the Voice from the Mount of Olives
taught forgiveness of injuries to all mankind.

She was dying: dying among strangers in the pining madness of
fever--and the one being of all who knew her, whose presence at her
bedside might yet bring calmness to her last moments, and give her
quietly and tenderly to death, was the man whom she had pitilessly
deceived and dishonoured, whose youth she had ruined, whose hopes she
had wrecked for ever. Strangely had destiny brought us
together--terribly had it separated us--awfully would it now unite us
again, at the end!

What were my wrongs, heavy as they had been; what my sufferings,
poignant as they still were, that they should stand between this dying
woman, and the last hope of awakening her to the consciousness that
she was going before the throne of God? The sole resource for her
which human skill and human pity could now suggest, embraced the sole
chance that she might still be recovered for repentance, before she
was resigned to death. How did I know, but that in those ceaseless
cries which had uttered my name, there spoke the last earthly anguish
of the tortured spirit, calling upon me for one drop of water to cool
its burning guilt--one drop from the waters of Peace?

I took up Mr. Bernard's letter from the floor on which it had fallen,
and re-directed it to my brother; simply writing on a blank place in
the inside, "I have gone to soothe her last moments." Before I
departed, I wrote to her father, and summoned him to her bedside. The
guilt of his absence--if his heartless and hardened nature did not
change towards her--would now rest with him, and not with me. I
forbore from thinking how he would answer my letter; for I remembered
his written words to my brother, declaring that he would accuse his
daughter of having caused her mother's death; and I suspected him even
then, of wishing to shift the shame of his conduct towards his unhappy
wife from himself to his child.

After writing this second letter, I set forth instantly for the house
to which Mr. Bernard had directed me. No thought of myself; no
thought, even, of the peril suggested by the ominous disclosure about
Mannion, in the postscript to the surgeon's letter, ever crossed my
mind. In the great stillness, in the heavenly serenity that had come
to my spirit, the wasting fire of every sensation which was only of
this world, seemed quenched for ever.

It was eleven o'clock when I arrived at the house. A slatternly, sulky
woman opened the door to me. "Oh! I suppose you're another doctor,"
she muttered, staring at me with scowling eyes. "I wish you were the
undertaker, to get her out of my house before we all catch our deaths
of her! There! there's the other doctor coming down stairs; he'll show
you the room--I won't go near it."

As I took the candle from her hand, I saw that Mr. Bernard was
approaching me from the stairs.

"You can do no good, I am afraid," he said, "but I am glad you have
come."

"There is no hope, then?"

"In my opinion, none. Turner came here this morning, whether she
recognised him, or not, in her delirium, I cannot say; but she grew so
much worse in his presence, that I insisted on his not seeing her
again, except under medical permission. Just now, there is no one in
the room--are you willing to go up stairs at once?"

"Does she still speak of me in her wanderings?"

"Yes, as incessantly as ever."

"Then I am ready to go to her bedside."

"Pray believe that I feel deeply what a sacrifice you are making.
Since I wrote to you, much that she has said in her delirium has told
me"--(he hesitated)--"has told me more, I am afraid, than you would
wish me to have known, as a comparative stranger to you. I will only
say, that secrets unconsciously disclosed on the death-bed are secrets
sacred to me, as they are to all who pursue my calling; and that what
I have unavoidably heard above stairs, is doubly sacred in my
estimation, as affecting a near and dear relative of one of my oldest
friends." He paused, and took my hand very kindly; then added: "I am
sure you will think yourself rewarded for any trial to your feelings
to-night, if you can only remember in years to come, that your
presence quieted her in her last moments!"

I felt his sympathy and delicacy too strongly to thank him in words; I
could only _look_ my gratitude as he asked me to follow him up stairs.

We entered the room softly. Once more, and for the last time in this
world, I stood in the presence of Margaret Sherwin.

Not even to see her, as I had last seen her, was such a sight of
misery as to behold her now, forsaken on her deathbed, to look at her,
as she lay with her head turned from me, fretfully covering and
uncovering her face with the loose tresses of her long black hair, and
muttering my name incessantly in her fever-dream: "Basil! Basil!
Basil! I'll never leave off calling for him, till he comes. Basil!
Basil! Where is he? Oh, where, where, where!"

"He is here," said the doctor, taking the candle from my hand, and
holding it, so that the light fell full on my face. "Look at her and
speak to her as usual, when she turns round," he whispered to me.

Still she never moved; still those hoarse, fierce, quick tones--that
voice, once the music that my heart beat to; now the discord that it
writhed under--muttered faster and faster: "Basil! Basil! Bring him
here! bring me Basil!"

"He is here," repeated Mr. Bernard loudly. "Look! look up at him!"

She turned in an instant, and tore the hair back from her face. For a
moment, I forced myself to look at her; for a moment, I confronted the
smouldering fever in her cheeks; the glare of the bloodshot eyes; the
distortion of the parched lips; the hideous clutching of the
outstretched fingers at the empty air--but the agony of that sight was
more than I could endure: I turned away my head, and hid my face in
horror.

"Compose yourself," whispered the doctor. "Now she is quiet, speak to
her; speak to her before she begins again; call her by her name."

Her name! Could my lips utter it at such a moment as this?

"Quick! quick!" cried Mr. Bernard. "Try her while you have the
chance."

I struggled against the memories of the past, and spoke to her--God
knows as gently, if not as happily, as in the bygone time!

"Margaret," I said, "Margaret, you asked for me, and I have come."

She tossed her arms above her head with a shrill scream, frightfully
prolonged till it ended in low moanings and murmurings; then turned
her face from us again, and pulled her hair over it once more.

"I am afraid she is too far gone," said the doctor; "but make another
trial."

"Margaret," I said again, "have you forgotten me? Margaret!"

She looked at me once more. This time, her dry, dull eyes seemed to
soften, and her fingers twined themselves less passionately in her
hair. She began to laugh--a low, vacant, terrible laugh.

"Yes, yes," she said, "I know he's come at last; I can make him do
anything. Get me my bonnet and shawl; any shawl will do, but a
mourning shawl is best, because we are going to the funeral of our
wedding. Come, Basil! let's go back to the church, and get unmarried
again; that's what I wanted you for. We don't care about each other.
Robert Mannion wants me more than you do--he's not ashamed of me
because my father's a tradesman; he won't make believe that he's in
love with me, and then marry me to spite the pride of his family.
Come! I'll tell the clergyman to read the service backwards; that
makes a marriage no marriage at all, everybody knows."

As the last wild words escaped her, some one below stairs called to
Mr. Bernard. He went out for a minute, then returned again, telling me
that he was summoned to a case of sudden illness which he must attend
without a moment's delay.

"The medical man whom I found here when I first came," he said, "was
sent for this evening into the country, to be consulted about an
operation, I believe. But if anything happens, I shall be at your
service. There is the address of the house to which I am now going"
(he wrote it down on a card); "you can send, if you want me. I will
get back, however, as soon as possible, and see her again; she seems
to be a little quieter already, and may become quieter still, if you
stay longer. The night-nurse is below--I will send her up as I go
downstairs. Keep the room well ventilated, the windows open as they
are now. Don't breathe too close to her, and you need fear no
infection. Look! her eyes are still fixed on you. This is the first
time I have seen her look in the same direction for two minutes
together; one would think she really recognised you. Wait till I come
back, if you possibly can--I won't be a moment longer than I can
help."

He hastily left the room. I turned to the bed, and saw that she was
still looking at me. She had never ceased murmuring to herself while
Mr. Bernard was speaking; and she did not stop when the nurse came in.

The first sight of this woman, on her entrance, sickened and shocked
me. All that was naturally repulsive in her, was made doubly revolting
by the characteristics of the habitual drunkard, lowering and glaring
at me in her purple, bloated face. To see her heavy hands shaking at
the pillow, as they tried mechanically to arrange it; to see her
stand, alternately leering and scowling by the bedside, an incarnate
blasphemy in the sacred chamber of death, was to behold the most
horrible of all mockeries, the most impious of all profanations. No
loneliness in the presence of mortal agony could try me to the quick,
as the sight of that foul old age of degradation and debauchery,
defiling the sick room, now tried me. I determined to wait alone by
the bedside till Mr. Bernard returned.

With some difficulty, I made the wretched drunkard understand that she
might go downstairs again; and that I would call her if she was
wanted. At last, she comprehended my meaning, and slowly quitted the
room. The door closed on her; and I was left alone to watch the last
moments of the woman who had ruined me!

As I sat down near the open window, the sounds outside in the street
told of the waning of the night. There was an echo of many footsteps,
a hoarse murmur of conflicting voices, now near, now afar off. The
public houses were dispersing their drunken crowds--the crowds of a
Saturday night: it was twelve o'clock.

Through those street-sounds of fierce ribaldry and ghastly mirth, the
voice of the dying woman penetrated, speaking more slowly, more
distinctly, more terribly than it had spoken yet.

"I see him," she said, staring vacantly at me, and moving her hands
slowly to and fro in the air. "I see him! But he's a long way off; he
can't hear our secrets, and he does not suspect you as mother does.
Don't tell me that about him any more; my flesh creeps at it! What are
you looking at me in that way for? You make me feel on fire. You know
I like you, because I _must_ like you; because I can't help it. It's
no use saying hush: I tell you he can't hear us, and can't see us. He
can see nothing; you make a fool of him, and I make a fool of him. But
mind! I _will_ ride in my own carriage: you must keep things secret
enough to let me do that. I say I _will_ ride in my carriage: and I'll
go where father walks to business: I don't care if I splash him with
_my_ carriage wheels! I'll be even with him for some of the passions
he's been in with me. You see how I'll go into our shop and order
dresses! (be quiet! I say he can't hear us). I'll have velvet where
his sister has silk, and silk where she has muslin: I'm a finer girl
than she is, and I'll be better dressed. Tell _him_ anything, indeed!
What have I ever let out? It's not so easy always to make believe I'm
in love with him, after what you have told me. Suppose he found us
out?--Rash? I'm no more rash than you are! Why didn't you come back
from France in time, and stop it all? Why did you let me marry him? A
nice wife I've been to him, and a nice husband he has been to me--a
husband who waits a year! Ha! ha! he calls himself a man, doesn't he?
A husband who waits a year!"

I approached nearer to the bedside, and spoke to her again, in the
hope to win her tenderly towards dreaming of better things. I know not
whether she heard me, but her wild thoughts changed--changed darkly to
later events.

"Beds! beds!" she cried, "beds everywhere, with dying men on them! And
one bed the most terrible of all--look at it! The deformed face, with
the white of the pillow all round it! _His_ face? _his_ face, that
hadn't a fault in it? Never! It's the face of a devil; the
finger-nails of the devil are on it! Take me away! drag me out! I
can't move for that face: it's always before me: it's walling me up
among the beds: it's burning me all over. Water! water! drown me in
the sea; drown me deep, away from the burning face!"

"Hush, Margaret! hush! drink this, and you will be cool again." I gave
her some lemonade, which stood by the bedside.

"Yes, yes; hush, as you say. Where's Robert? Robert Mannion? Not here!
then I've got a secret for you. When you go home to-night, Basil, and
say your prayers, pray for a storm of thunder and lightning; and pray
that I may be struck dead in it, and Robert too. It's a fortnight to
my aunt's party; and in a fortnight you'll wish us both dead, so you
had better pray for what I tell you in time. We shall make handsome
corpses. Put roses into my coffin--scarlet roses, if you can find any,
because that stands for Scarlet Woman--in the Bible, you know.
Scarlet? What do I care! It's the boldest colour in the world. Robert
will tell you, and all your family, how many women are as scarlet as I
am--virtue wears it at home, in secret; and vice wears it abroad, in
public: that's the only difference, he says. Scarlet roses! scarlet
roses! throw them into the coffin by hundreds; smother me up in them;
bury me down deep; in the dark, quiet street--where there's a broad
door-step in front of a house, and a white, wild face, something like
Basil's, that's always staring on the doorstep awfully. Oh, why did I
meet him! why did I marry him! oh, why! why!"

She uttered the last words in slow, measured cadence--the horrible
mockery of a chaunt which she used to play to us at North Villa, on
Sunday evenings. Then her voice sank again; her articulation
thickened, and grew indistinct. It was like the change from darkness
to daylight, in the sight of sleepless eyes, to hear her only
murmuring now, after hearing her last terrible words.

The weary night-time passed on. Longer and longer grew the intervals
of silence between the scattered noises from the streets; less and
less frequent were the sounds of distant carriage-wheels, and the
echoing rapid footsteps of late pleasure-seekers hurrying home. At
last, the heavy tramp of the policeman going his rounds, alone
disturbed the silence of the early morning hours. Still, the voice
from the bed muttered incessantly; but now, in drowsy, languid tones:
still, Mr. Bernard did not return: still the father of the dying girl
never came, never obeyed the letter which summoned him for the last
time to her side.

(There was yet one more among the absent--one from whose approach the
death-bed must be kept sacred; one, whose evil presence was to be
dreaded as a pestilence and a scourge. Mannion!--where was Mannion?)

I sat by the window, resigned to wait in loneliness till the end came,
watching mechanically the vacant eyes that ever watched me--when,
suddenly, the face of Margaret seemed to fade out of my sight. I
started and looked round. The candle, which I had placed at the
opposite end of the room, had burnt down without my noticing it, and
was now expiring in the socket. I ran to light the fresh candle which
lay on the table by its side, but was too late. The wick flickered its
last; the room was left in darkness.

While I felt among the different objects under my hands for a box of
matches: Margaret's voice strengthened again.

"Innocent! innocent!" I heard her cry mournfully through the darkness.
"I'll swear I'm innocent, and father is sure to swear it too. Innocent
Margaret! Oh, me! what innocence!"

She repeated these words over and over again, till the hearing them
seemed to bewilder all my senses. I hardly knew what I touched.
Suddenly, my searching hands stopped of themselves, I could not tell
why. Was there some change in the room? Was there more air in it, as
if a door had been opened? Was there something moving over the floor?
Had Margaret left her bed?--No! the mournful voice was speaking
unintermittingly, and speaking from the same distance.

I moved to search for the matches on a chest of drawers, which stood
near the window. Though the morning was at its darkest, and the house
stood midway between two gas-lamps, there was a glimmering of light in
this place. I looked back into the room from the window, and thought I
saw something shadowy moving near the bed. "Take him away!" I heard
Margaret scream in her wildest tones. "His hands are on me: he's
feeling my face, to feel if I'm dead!"

I ran to her, striking against some piece of furniture in the
darkness. Something passed swiftly between me and the bed, as I got
near it. I thought I heard a door close. Then there was silence for a
moment; and then, as I stretched out my hands, my right hand
encountered the little table placed by Margaret's side, and the next
moment I felt the match-box that had been left on it.

As I struck a light, her voice repeated close at my ear:

"His hands are on me: he's feeling my face to feel if I'm dead!"

The match flared up. As I carried it to the candle, I looked round,
and noticed for the first time that there was a second door, at the
further corner of the room, which lighted some inner apartment through
glass panes at the top. When I tried this door, it was locked on the
inside, and the room beyond was dark.

Dark and silent. But was no one there, hidden in that darkness and
silence? Was there any doubt now, that stealthy feet had approached
Margaret, that stealthy hands had touched her, while the room was in
obscurity?-- Doubt? There was none on that point, none on any other.
Suspicion shaped itself into conviction in an instant, and identified
the stranger who had passed in the darkness between me and the
bedside, with the man whose presence I had dreaded, as the presence of
an evil spirit in the chamber of death.

He was waiting secretly in the house--waiting for her last moments;
listening for her last words; watching his opportunity, perhaps, to
enter the room again, and openly profane it by his presence! I placed
myself by the door, resolved, if he approached, to thrust him back, at
any hazard, from the bedside. How long I remained absorbed in watching
before the darkness of the inner room, I know not--but some time must
have elapsed before the silence around me forced itself suddenly on my
attention. I turned towards Margaret; and, in an instant, all previous
thoughts were suspended in my mind, by the sight that now met my eyes.

She had altered completely. Her hands, so restless hitherto, lay quite
still over the coverlid; her lips never moved; the whole expression of
her face had changed--the fever-traces remained on every feature, and
yet the fever-look was gone. Her eyes were almost closed; her quick
breathing had grown calm and slow. I touched her pulse; it was beating
with a wayward, fluttering gentleness. What did this striking
alteration indicate? Recovery? Was it possible? As the idea crossed my
mind, every one of my faculties became absorbed in the sole occupation
of watching her face; I could not have stirred an instant from the
bed, for worlds.

The earliest dawn of day was glimmering faintly at the window, before
another change appeared--before she drew a long, sighing breath, and
slowly opened her eyes on mine. Their first look was very strange and
startling to behold; for it was the look that was natural to her; the
calm look of consciousness, restored to what it had always been in the
past time. It lasted only for a moment. She recognised me; and,
instantly, an expression of anguish and shame flew over the first
terror and surprise of her face. She struggled vainly to lift her
hands--so busy all through the night; so idle now! A faint moan of
supplication breathed from her lips; and she slowly turned her head on
the pillow, so as to hide her face from my sight.

"Oh, my God! my God!" she murmured, in low, wailing tones, "I've
broken his heart, and he still comes here to be kind to me! This is
worse than death! I'm too bad to be forgiven--leave me! leave me!--oh,
Basil, leave me to die!"

I spoke to her; but desisted almost immediately--desisted even from
uttering her name. At the mere sound of my voice, her suffering rose
to agony; the wild despair of the soul wrestling awfully with the
writhing weakness of the body, uttered itself in words and cries
horrible, beyond all imagination, to hear. I sank down on my knees by
the bedside; the strength which had sustained me for hours, gave way
in an instant, and I burst into a passion of tears, as my spirit
poured from my lips in supplication for hers--tears that did not
humiliate me; for I knew, while I shed them, that I had forgiven her!

The dawn brightened. Gradually, as the fair light of the new day
flowed in lovely upon her bed; as the fresh morning breeze lifted
tenderly and playfully the scattered locks of her hair that lay over
the pillow--so, the calmness began to come back to her voice and the
stillness of repose to her limbs. But she never turned her face to me
again; never, when the wild words of her despair grew fewer and
fainter; never, when the last faint supplication to me, to leave her
to die forsaken as she deserved, ended mournfully in a long, moaning
gasp for breath. I waited after this--waited a long time--then spoke
to her softly--then waited once more; hearing her still breathe, but
slowly and more slowly with every minute--then spoke to her for the
second time, louder than before. She never answered, and never moved.
Was she sleeping? I could not tell. Some influence seemed to hold me
back from going to the other side of the bed, to look at her face, as
it lay away from me, almost hidden in the pillow.

The light strengthened faster, and grew mellow with the clear beauty
of the morning sunshine. I heard the sound of rapid footsteps
advancing along the street; they stopped under the window: and a voice
which I recognized, called me by my name. I looked out: Mr. Bernard
had returned at last.

"I could not get back sooner," he said; "the case was desperate, and I
was afraid to leave it. You will find a key on the
chimney-piece--throw it out to me, and I can let myself in; I told
them not to bolt the door before I went out."

I obeyed his directions. When he entered the room, I thought Margaret
moved a little, and signed to him with my hand to make no noise. He
looked towards the bed without any appearance of surprise, and asked
me in a whisper when the change had come over her, and how. I told him
very briefly, and inquired whether he had known of such changes in
other cases, like hers.

"Many," he answered, "many changes just as extraordinary, which have
raised hopes that I never knew realised. Expect the worst from the
change you have witnessed; it is a fatal sign."

Still, in spite of what he said, it seemed as if he feared to wake
her; for he spoke in his lowest tones, and walked very softly when he
went close to the bedside.

He stopped suddenly, just as he was about to feel her pulse, and
looked in the direction of the glass door--listened attentively--and
said, as if to himself-- "I thought I heard some one moving in that
room, but I suppose I am mistaken; nobody can be up in the house yet."
With those words he looked down at Margaret, and gently parted back
her hair from her forehead.

"Don't disturb her," I whispered, "she is asleep; surely she is
asleep!"

He paused before he answered me, and placed his hand on her heart.
Then softly drew up the bed-linen, till it hid her face.

"Yes, she is asleep," he said gravely; "asleep, never to wake again.
She is dead."

I turned aside my head in silence, for my thoughts, at that moment,
were not the thoughts which can be spoken by man to man.

"This has been a sad scene for any one at your age," he resumed
kindly, as he left the bedside, "but you have borne it well. I am glad
to see that you can behave so calmly under so hard a trial."



Calmly?

Yes! at that moment it was fit that I should be calm; for I could
remember that I had forgiven her.

VIII.

On the fourth day from the morning when she had died, I stood alone in
the churchyard by the grave of Margaret Sherwin.

It had been left for me to watch her dying moments; it was left for me
to bestow on her remains the last human charity which the living can
extend to the dead. If I could have looked into the future on our
fatal marriage-day, and could have known that the only home of my
giving which she would ever inhabit, would be the home of the grave!--

Her father had written me a letter, which I destroyed at the time; and
which, if I had it now, I should forbear from copying into these
pages. Let it be enough for me to relate here, that he never forgave
the action by which she thwarted him in his mercenary designs upon me
and upon my family; that he diverted from himself the suspicion and
disgust of his wife's surviving relatives (whose hostility he had some
pecuniary reasons to fear), by accusing his daughter, as he had
declared he would accuse her, of having been the real cause of her
mother's death; and that he took care to give the appearance of
sincerity to the indignation which he professed to feel against her,
by refusing to follow her remains to the place of burial.

Ralph had returned to London, as soon as he received the letter from
Mr. Bernard which I had forwarded to him. He offered me his assistance
in performing the last duties left to my care, with an affectionate
earnestness that I had never seen him display towards me before. But
Mr. Bernard had generously undertaken to relieve me of every
responsibility which could be assumed by others; and on this occasion,
therefore, I had no need to put my brother's ready kindness in helping
me to the test.

I stood alone by the grave. Mr. Bernard had taken leave of me; the
workers and the idlers in the churchyard had alike departed. There was
no reason why I should not follow them; and yet I remained, with my
eyes fixed upon the freshly-turned earth at my feet, thinking of the
dead.

Some time had passed thus, when the sound of approaching footsteps
attracted my attention. I looked up, and saw a man, clothed in a long
cloak drawn loosely around his neck, and wearing a shade over his
eyes, which hid the whole upper part of his face, advancing slowly
towards me, walking with the help of a stick. He came on straight to
the grave, and stopped at the foot of it--stopped opposite me, as I
stood at the head.

"Do you know me again?" he said. "Do you know me for Robert Mannion?"
As he pronounced his name, he raised the shade and looked at me.

The first sight of that appalling face, with its ghastly
discolouration of sickness, its hideous deformity of feature, its
fierce and changeless malignity of expression glaring full on me in
the piercing noonday sunshine--glaring with the same unearthly look of
fury and triumph which I had seen flashing through the flashing
lightning, when I parted from him on the night of the storm--struck me
speechless where I stood, and has never left me since. I must not, I
dare not, describe that frightful sight; though it now rises before my
imagination, vivid in its horror as on the first day when I saw
it--though it moves hither and thither before me fearfully, while I
write; though it lowers at my window, a noisome shadow on the radiant
prospect of earth, and sea, and sky, whenever I look up from the page
I am now writing towards the beauties of my cottage view.

"Do you know me for Robert Mannion?" he repeated. "Do you know the
work of your own hands, now you see it? Or, am I changed to you past
recognition, as _your_ father might have found _my_ father changed, if
he had seen him on the morning of his execution, standing under the
gallows, with the cap over his face?"

Still I could neither speak nor move. I could only look away from him
in horror, and fix my eyes on the ground.

He lowered the shade to its former position on his face, then spoke
again.

"Under this earth that we stand on," he said, setting his foot on the
grave; "down here, where you are now looking, lies buried with the
buried dead, the last influence which might one day have gained you
respite and mercy at my hands. Did you think of the one, last chance
that you were losing, when you came to see her die? I watched _you,_
and I watched _her._ I heard as much as you heard; I saw as much as
you saw; I know when she died, and how, as you know it; I shared her
last moments with you, to the very end. It was my fancy not to give
her up, as your sole possession, even on her death-bed: it is my
fancy, now, not to let you stand alone--as if her corpse was your
property--over her grave!"

While he uttered the last words, I felt my self-possession returning.
I could not force myself to speak, as I would fain have spoken--I
could only move away, to leave him.

"Stop," he said, "what I have still to say concerns you. I have to
tell you, face to face, standing with you here, over her dead body,
that what I wrote from the hospital, is what I will do; that I will
make your whole life to come, one long expiation of this deformity;"
(he pointed to his face), "and of that death" (he set his foot once
more on the grave). "Go where you will, this face of mine shall never
be turned away from you; this tongue, which you can never silence but
by a crime, shall awaken against you the sleeping superstitions and
cruelties of all mankind. The noisome secret of that night when you
followed us, shall reek up like a pestilence in the nostrils of your
fellow-beings, be they whom they may. You may shield yourself behind
your family and your friends--I will strike at you through the dearest
and the bravest of them! Now you have heard me, go! The next time we
meet, you shall acknowledge with your own lips that I can act as I
speak. Live the free life which Margaret Sherwin has restored to you
by her death--you will know it soon for the life of Cain!"

He turned from the grave, and left me by the way that he had come; but
the hideous image of him, and the remembrance of the words he had
spoken, never left me. Never for a moment, while I lingered alone in
the churchyard; never, when I quitted it, and walked through the
crowded streets. The horror of the fiend-face was still before my
eyes, the poison of the fiend-words was still in my ears, when I
returned to my lodging, and found Ralph waiting to see me as soon as I
entered my room.

"At last you have come back!" he said; "I was determined to stop till
you did, if I stayed all day. Is anything the matter? Have you got
into some worse difficulty than ever?"

"No, Ralph--no. What have you to tell me?"

"Something that will rather surprise you, Basil: I have to tell you to
leave London at once! Leave it for your own interests and for
everybody else's. My father has found out that Clara has been to see
you."

"Good heavens! how?"

"He won't tell me. But he has found it out. You know how you stand in
his opinion--I leave you to imagine what he thinks of Clara's conduct
in coming here."

"No! no! tell me yourself, Ralph--tell me how she bears his
displeasure!"

"As badly as possible. After having forbidden her ever to enter this
house again, he now only shows how he is offended, by his silence; and
it is exactly that, of course, which distresses her. Between her
notions of implicit obedience to _him,_ and her opposite notions, just
as strong, of her sisterly duties to _you,_ she is made miserable from
morning to night. What she will end in, if things go on like this, I
am really afraid to think; and I'm not easily frightened, as you know.
Now, Basil, listen to me: it is _your_ business to stop this, and _my_
business to tell you how."

"I will do anything you wish--anything for Clara's sake!"

"Then leave London; and so cut short the struggle between her duty and
her inclination. If you don't, my father is quite capable of taking
her at once into the country, though I know he has important business
to keep him in London. Write a letter to her, saying that you have
gone away for your health, for change of scene and peace of mind--gone
away, in short, to come back better some day. Don't say where you're
going, and don't tell me, for she is sure to ask, and sure to get it
out of me if I know. Then she might be writing to you, and that might
be found out, too. She can't distress herself about your absence, if
you account for it properly, as she distresses herself now--that is
one consideration. And you will serve your own interests, as well as
Clara's, by going away--that is another."

"Never mind _my_ interests. Clara! I can only think of Clara!"

"But you _have_ interests, and you must think of them. I told my
father of the death of that unhappy woman, and of your noble behaviour
when she was dying. Don't interrupt me, Basil--it _was_ noble; I
couldn't have done what you did, I can tell you! I saw he was more
struck by it than he was willing to confess. An impression has been
made on him by the turn circumstances have taken. Only leave that
impression to strengthen, and you're safe. But if you destroy it by
staying here, after what has happened, and keeping Clara in this new
dilemma--my dear fellow, you destroy your best chance! There is a sort
of defiance of him in stopping; there is a downright concession to him
in going away."

"I _will_ go, Ralph; you have more than convinced me that I ought! I
will go to-morrow, though where--"

"You have the rest of the day to think where. _I_ should go abroad and
amuse myself; but your ideas of amusement are, most likely, not mine.
At any rate, wherever you go, I can always supply you with money, when
you want it; you can write to me, after you have been away some little
time, and I can write back, as soon as I have good news to tell you.
Only stick to your present determination, Basil, and, I'll answer for
it, you will be back in your own study at home, before you are many
months older!"

"I will put it out of my power to fail in my resolution, by writing to
Clara at once, and giving you the letter to place in her hands
to-morrow evening, when I shall have left London some hours."

"That's right, Basil! that's acting and speaking like a man!"

I wrote immediately, accounting for my sudden absence as Ralph had
advised me--wrote, with a heavy heart, all that I thought would be
most reassuring and cheering to Clara; and then, without allowing
myself time to hesitate or to think, gave the letter to my brother.

"She shall have it to-morrow night," he said, "and my father shall
know why you have left town, at the same time. Depend on me in this,
as in everything else. And now, Basil, I must say good bye--unless
you're in the humour for coming to look at my new house this evening.
Ah! I see that won't suit you just now, so, good bye, old fellow!
Write when you are in any necessity--get back your spirits and your
health--and never doubt that the step you are now taking will be the
best for Clara, and the best for yourself!"

He hurried out of the room, evidently feeling more at saying farewell
than he was willing to let me discover. I was left alone for the rest
of the day, to think whither I should turn my steps on the morrow.

I knew that it would be best that I should leave England; but there
seemed to have grown within me, suddenly, a yearning towards my own
country that I had never felt before--a home-sickness for the land in
which my sister lived. Not once did my thoughts wander away to foreign
places, while I now tried to consider calmly in what direction I
should depart when I left London.

While I was still in doubt, my earliest impressions of childhood came
back to my memory; and influenced by them, I thought of Cornwall. My
nurse had been a Cornish woman; my first fancies and first feelings of
curiosity had been excited by her Cornish stories, by the descriptions
of the scenery, the customs, and the people of her native land, with
which she was ever ready to amuse me. As I grew older, it had always
been one of my favourite projects to go to Cornwall, to explore the
wild western land, on foot, from hill to hill throughout. And now,
when no motive of pleasure could influence my choice--now, when I was
going forth homeless and alone, in uncertainty, in grief, in
peril--the old fancy of long-past days still kept its influence, and
pointed out my new path to me among the rocky boundaries of the
Cornish shore.

My last night in London was a night made terrible by Mannion's fearful
image in all my dreams--made mournful, in my waking moments, by
thoughts of the morrow which was to separate me from Clara. But I
never faltered in my resolution to leave London for her sake. When the
morning came, I collected my few necessaries, added to them one or two
books, and was ready to depart.

My way through the streets took me near my father's house. As I passed
by the well-remembered neighbourhood, my self-control so far deserted
me, that I stopped and turned aside into the Square, in the hope of
seeing Clara once more before I went away. Cautiously and doubtfully,
as if I was a trespasser even on the public pavement, I looked up at
the house which was no more my home--at the windows, side by side, of
my sister's sitting-room and bed-room. She was neither standing near
them, nor passing accidentally from one room to another at that
moment. Still I could not persuade myself to go on. I thought of many
and many an act of kindness that she had done for me, which I seemed
never to have appreciated until now--I thought of what she had
suffered, and might yet suffer, for my sake--and the longing to see
her once more, though only for an instant, still kept me lingering
near the house and looking up vainly at the lonely windows.

It was a bright, cool, autumnal morning; perhaps she might have gone
out into the garden of the square: it used often to be her habit, when
I was at home, to go there and read at this hour. I walked round,
outside the railings, searching for her between gaps in the foliage;
and had nearly made the circuit of the garden thus, before the figure
of a lady sitting alone under one of the trees, attracted my
attention. I stopped--looked intently towards her--and saw that it was
Clara.

Her face was almost entirely turned from me; but I knew her by her
dress, by her figure--even by her position, simple as it was. She was
sitting with her hands on a closed book which rested on her knee. A
little spaniel that I had given her lay asleep at her feet: she seemed
to be looking down at the animal, as far as I could tell by the
position of her head. When I moved aside, to try if I could see her
face, the trees hid her from sight. I was obliged to be satisfied with
the little I could discern of her, through the one gap in the foliage
which gave me a clear view of the place where she was sitting. To
speak to her, to risk the misery to both of us of saying farewell, was
more than I dared trust myself to do. I could only stand silent, and
look at her--it might be for the last time!--until the tears gathered
in my eyes, so that I could see nothing more. I resisted the
temptation to dash them away. While they still hid her from me--while
I could not see her again, if I would--I turned from the garden view,
and left the Square.

Amid all the thoughts which thronged on me, as I walked farther and
farther away from the neighbourhood of what was once my home; amid all
the remembrances of past events--from the first day when I met
Margaret Sherwin to the day when I stood by her grave--which were
recalled by the mere act of leaving London, there now arose in my
mind, for the first time, a doubt, which from that day to this has
never left it; a doubt whether Mannion might not be tracking me in
secret along every step of my way.

I stopped instinctively, and looked behind me. Many figures were
moving in the distance; but the figure that I had seen in the
churchyard was nowhere visible among them. A little further on, I
looked back again, and still with the same result. After this, I let a
longer interval elapse before I stopped; and then, for the third time,
I turned round, and scanned the busy street-scene behind me, with
eager, suspicious eyes. Some little distance back, on the opposite
side of the way, I caught sight of a man who was standing still (as I
was standing), amid the moving throng. His height was like Mannion's
height; and he wore a cloak like the cloak I had seen on Mannion, when
he approached me at Margaret's grave. More than this I could not
detect, without crossing over. The passing vehicles and
foot-passengers constantly intercepted my view, from the position in
which I stood.

Was this figure, thus visible only by intervals, the figure of
Mannion? and was he really tracking my steps? As the suspicion
strengthened in my mind that it was so, the remembrance of his threat
in the churchyard: "You may shield yourself behind your family and
your friends: I will strike at you through the dearest and the bravest
of them--" suddenly recurred to me; and brought with it a thought
which urged me instantly to proceed on my way. I never looked behind
me again, as I now walked on; for I said within myself:--"If he is
following me, I must not, and will not avoid him: it will be the best
result of my departure, that I shall draw after me that destroying
presence; and thus at least remove it far and safely away from my
family and my home!"

So, I neither turned aside from the straight direction, nor hurried my
steps, nor looked back any more. At the time I had resolved on, I left
London for Cornwall, without making any attempt to conceal my
departure. And though I knew that he must surely be following me,
still I never saw him again: never discovered how close or how far off
he was on my track.

                         -----

Two months have passed since that period; and I know no more about him
_now_ than I knew _then._



                        JOURNAL.

October 19th--My retrospect is finished. I have traced the history of
my errors and misfortunes, of the wrong I have done and the punishment
I have suffered for it, from the past to the present time.

The pages of my manuscript (many more than I thought to write at
first) lie piled together on the table before me. I dare not look them
over: I dare not read the lines which my own hand has traced. There
may be much in my manner of writing that wants alteration; but I have
no heart to return to my task, and revise and reconsider as I might if
I were intent on producing a book which was to be published during my
lifetime. Others will be found, when I am no more, to carve, and
smooth, and polish to the popular taste of the day this rugged
material of Truth which I shall leave behind me.

But now, while I collect these leaves, and seal them up, never to be
opened again by my hands, can I feel that I have related all which it
is necessary to tell? No! While Mannion lives--while I am ignorant of
the changes that may yet be wrought in the home from which I am
exiled--there remains for me a future which must be recorded, as the
necessary sequel to the narrative of the past. What may yet happen
worthy of record, I know not: what sufferings I may yet undergo, which
may unfit me for continuing the labour now terminated for a time, I
cannot foresee. I have not hope enough in the future, or in myself; to
believe that I shall have the time or the energy to write hereafter,
as I have written already, from recollection. It is best, then, that I
should note down events daily as they occur; and so ensure, as far as
may be, a continuation of my narrative, fragment by fragment, to the
very last.

But, first, as a fit beginning to the Journal I now propose to keep,
let me briefly reveal something, in this place, of the life that I am
leading in my retirement on the Cornish coast.

The fishing hamlet in which I have written the preceding pages, is on
the southern shore of Cornwall, not more than a few miles distant from
the Land's End. The cottage I inhabit is built of rough granite,
rudely thatched, and has but two rooms. I possess no furniture but my
bed, my table, and my chair; and some half-dozen fishermen and their
families are my only neighbours. But I feel neither the want of
luxuries, nor the want of society: all that I wished for in coming
here, I have--the completest seclusion.

My arrival produced, at first, both astonishment and suspicion. The
fishermen of Cornwall still preserve almost all the superstitions,
even to the grossest, which were held dear by their humble ancestors,
centuries back. My simple neighbours could not understand why I had no
business to occupy me; could not reconcile my worn, melancholy face
with my youthful years. Such loneliness as mine looked
unnatural--especially to the women. They questioned me curiously; and
the very simplicity of my answer, that I had only come to Cornwall to
live in quiet, and regain my health, perplexed them afresh. They
waited, day after day, when I was first installed in the cottage, to
see letters sent to me--and no letters arrived: to see my friends join
me--and no friends came. This deepened the mystery to their eyes. They
began to recall to memory old Cornish legends of solitary, secret
people who had lived, years and years ago, in certain parts of the
county--coming, none knew whence; existing, none knew by what means;
dying and disappearing, none knew when. They felt half inclined to
identify me with these mysterious visitors--to consider me as some
being, a stranger to the whole human family, who had come to waste
away under a curse, and die ominously and secretly among them. Even
the person to whom I first paid money for my necessaries, questioned,
for a moment, the lawfulness and safety of receiving it!

But these doubts gradually died away; this superstitious curiosity
insensibly wore off, among my poor neighbours. They became used to my
solitary, thoughtful, and (to them) inexplicable mode of existence.
One or two little services of kindness which I rendered, soon after my
arrival, to their children, worked wonders in my favour; and I am
pitied now, rather than distrusted. When the results of the fishing
are abundant, a little present has been often made to me, out of the
nets. Some weeks ago, after I had gone out in the morning, I found on
my return, two or three gulls' eggs placed in a basket before my door.
They had been left there by the children, as ornaments for my cottage
window--the only ornaments they had to give; the only ornaments they
had ever heard of.

I can now go out unnoticed, directing my steps up the ravine in which
our hamlet is situated, towards the old grey stone church which stands
solitary on the hill-top, surrounded by the lonesome moor. If any
children happen to be playing among the scattered tombs, they do not
start and run away, when they see me sitting on the coffin stone at
the entrance of the churchyard, or wandering round the sturdy granite
tower, reared by hands which have mouldered into dust centuries ago.
My approach has ceased to be of evil omen for my little neighbours.
They just look up at me, for a moment, with bright smiles, and then go
on with their game.

From the churchyard, I look down the ravine, on fine days, towards the
sea. Mighty piles of granite soar above the fishermen's cottages on
each side; the little strip of white beach which the cliffs shut in,
glows pure in the sunlight; the inland stream that trickles down the
bed of the rocks, sparkles, at places, like a rivulet of silver-fire;
the round white clouds, with their violet shadows and bright wavy
edges, roll on majestically above me; the cries of the sea-birds, the
endless, dirging murmur of the surf, and the far music of the wind
among the ocean caverns, fall, now together, now separately on my ear.
Nature's voice and Nature's beauty--God's soothing and purifying
angels of the soul--speak to me most tenderly and most happily, at
such times as these.

It is when the rain falls, and wind and sea arise together--when,
sheltered among the caverns in the side of the precipice, I look out
upon the dreary waves and the leaping spray--that I feel the unknown
dangers which hang over my head in all the horror of their
uncertainty. Then, the threats of my deadly enemy strengthen their
hold fearfully on all my senses. I see the dim and ghastly
personification of a fatality that is lying in wait for me, in the
strange shapes of the mist which shrouds the sky, and moves, and
whirls, and brightens, and darkens in a weird glory of its own over
the heaving waters. Then, the crash of the breakers on the reef howls
upon me with a sound of judgment; and the voice of the wind, growling
and battling behind me in the hollows of the cave, is, ever and ever,
the same thunder-voice of doom and warning in my ear.

Does this foreboding that Mannion's eye is always on me, that his
footsteps are always secretly following mine, proceed only from the
weakness of my worn-out energies? Could others in my situation
restrain themselves from fearing, as I do, that he is still
incessantly watching me in secret? It is possible. It may be, that his
terrible connection with all my sufferings of the past, makes me
attach credit too easily to the destroying power which he arrogates to
himself in the future. Or it may be, that all resolution to resist him
is paralysed in me, not so much by my fear of his appearance, as by my
uncertainty of the time when it will take place--not so much by his
menaces themselves, as by the delay in their execution. Still, though
I can estimate fairly the value of these considerations, they exercise
over me no lasting influence of tranquillity. I remember what this man
_has_ done; and in spite of all reasoning, I believe in what he has
told me he will yet do. Madman though he may be, I have no hope of
defence or escape from him in any direction, look where I will.

But for the occupation which the foregoing narrative has given to my
mind; but for the relief which my heart can derive from its thoughts
of Clara, I must have sunk under the torment of suspense and suspicion
in which my life is now passed. My sister! Even in this self-imposed
absence from her, I have still found a means of connecting myself
remotely with something that she loves. I have taken, as the assumed
name under which I live, and shall continue to live until my father
has given me back his confidence and his affection, the name of a
little estate that once belonged to my mother, and that now belongs to
her daughter. Even the most wretched have their caprice, their last
favourite fancy. I possess no memorial of Clara, not even a letter.
The name that I have taken from the place which she was always fondest
and proudest of, is, to me, what a lock of hair, a ring, any little
loveable keepsake, is to others happier than I am.

I have wandered away from the simple details of my life in this place.
Shall I now return to them? Not to-day; my head burns, my hand is
weary. If the morrow should bring with it no event to write of, on the
morrow I can resume the subject from which I now break off.

October 20th.--After laying aside my pen, I went out yesterday for the
purpose of renewing that former friendly intercourse with my poor
neighbours, which has been interrupted for the last three weeks by
unintermitting labour at the latter portions of my narrative.

In the course of my walk among the cottages and up to the old church
on the moor, I saw fewer of the people of the district than usual. The
behaviour of those whom I did chance to meet, seemed unaccountably
altered; perhaps it was mere fancy, but I thought they avoided me. One
woman abruptly shut her cottage door as I approached. A fisherman,
when I wished him good day, hardly answered; and walked on without
stopping to gossip with me as usual. Some children, too, whom I
overtook on the road to the church, ran away from me, making gestures
to each other which I could not understand. Is the first superstitious
distrust of me returning after I thought it had been entirely
overcome? Or are my neighbours only showing their resentment at my
involuntary neglect of them for the last three weeks? I must try to
find out to-morrow.

21st--I have discovered all! The truth, which I was strangely slow to
suspect yesterday, has forced itself on me to-day.

I went out this morning, as I had purposed, to discover whether my
neighbours had really changed towards me, or not, since the interval
of my three weeks' seclusion. At the cottage-door nearest to mine, two
young children were playing, whom I knew I had succeeded in attaching
to me soon after my arrival. I walked up to speak to them; but, as I
approached, their mother came out, and snatched them from me with a
look of anger and alarm. Before I could question her, she had taken
them inside the cottage, and had closed the door.

Almost at the same moment, as if by a preconcerted signal, three or
four other women came out from their abodes at a little distance,
warned me in loud, angry voices not to come near them, or their
children; and disappeared, shutting their doors. Still not suspecting
the truth, I turned back, and walked towards the beach. The lad whom I
employ to serve me with provisions, was lounging there against the
side of an old boat. At seeing me, he started up, and walked away a
few steps--then stopped, and called out--

"I'm not to bring you anything more; father says he won't sell to you
again, whatever you pay him."

I asked the boy why his father had said that; but he ran back towards
the village without answering me.

"You had best leave us," muttered a voice behind me. "If you don't go
of your own accord, our people will starve you out of the place."

The man who said these words, had been one of the first to set the
example of friendliness towards me, after my arrival; and to him I now
turned for the explanation which no one else would give me.

"You know what we mean, and why we want you to go, well enough," was
his reply.

I assured him that I did not; and begged him so earnestly to enlighten
me, that he stopped as he was walking away.

"I'll tell you about it," he said; "but not now; I don't want to be
seen with you." (As he spoke he looked back at the women, who were
appearing once more in front of their cottages.) "Go home again, and
shut yourself up; I'll come at dusk."

And he came as he had promised. But when I asked him to enter my
cottage, he declined, and said he would talk to me outside, at my
window. This disinclination to be under my roof, reminded me that my
supplies of food had, for the last week, been left on the
window-ledge, instead of being brought into my room as usual. I had
been too constantly occupied to pay much attention to the circumstance
at the time; but I thought it very strange now.

"Do you mean to tell me you don't suspect why we want to get you out
of our place here?" said the man, looking in distrustfully at me
through the window.

I repeated that I could not imagine why they had all changed towards
me, or what wrong they thought I had done them.

"Then I'll soon let you know it," he continued. "We want you gone from
here, because--"

"Because," interrupted another voice behind him, which I recognised as
his wife's, "because you're bringing a blight on us, and our
houses--because _we want our children's faces left as God made
them_--"

"Because," interposed a second woman, who had joined her, "you're
bringing devil's vengeances among Christian people! Come back, John!
he's not safe for a true man to speak to."

They dragged the fisherman away with them before he could say another
word. I had heard enough. The fatal truth burst at once on my mind.
Mannion _had_ followed me to Cornwall: his threats were executed to
the very letter!



(10 o'clock.)--I have lit my candle for the last time in this cottage,
to add a few lines to my journal. The hamlet is quiet; I hear no
footstep outside--and yet, can I be certain that Mannion is not
lurking near my door at this moment?

I must go when the morning comes; I must leave this quiet retreat, in
which I have lived so calmly until now. There is no hope that I can
reinstate myself in the opinions of my poor neighbours. He has arrayed
against me the pitiless hostility of their superstition. He has found
out the dormant cruelties, even in the hearts of these simple people;
and has awakened them against me, as he said he would. The evil work
must have been begun within the last three weeks, while I was much
within doors, and there was little chance of meeting me in my usual
walks. How that work was accomplished it is useless to inquire; my
only object now, must be to prepare myself at once for departure.

(11 o'clock.)--While I was putting up my few books, a minute ago, a
little embroidered marker fell out of one of them, which I had not
observed in the pages before; and which I recognised as having been
worked for me by Clara. I have a memorial of my sister in my
possession, after all! Trifling as it is, I shall preserve it about
me, as a messenger of consolation in the time of adversity and peril.

(1 o'clock.)--The wind sweeps down on us, from off the moorland, in
fiercer and fiercer gusts; the waves dash heavily against our rock
promontory; the rain drifts wildly past my windows; and the densest
darkness overspreads the whole sky. The storm which has been
threatening for some days, is gathering fast.



(Village of Treen, October 22nd.)--The events of this one day have
changed the whole future of my life. I must force myself to write of
them at once. Something warns me that if I delay, though only till
to-morrow, I shall be incapable of relating them at all.

It was still early in the morning--I think about seven o'clock--when I
closed my cottage door behind me, never to open it again. I met only
one or two of my neighbours as I left the hamlet. They drew aside to
let me advance, without saying a word. With a heavy heart, grieved
more than I could have imagined possible at departing as an enemy from
among the people with whom I had lived as a friend, I passed slowly by
the last cottages, and ascended the cliff path which led to the moor.

The storm had raged at its fiercest some hours back. Soon after
daylight the wind sank; but the majesty of the mighty sea had lost
none of its terror and grandeur as yet. The huge Atlantic waves still
hurled themselves, foaming and furious, against the massive granite of
the Cornish cliffs. Overhead, the sky was hidden in a thick white
mist, now hanging, still and dripping, down to the ground; now rolling
in shapes like vast smoke-wreaths before the light wind which still
blew at intervals. At a distance of more than a few yards, the largest
objects were totally invisible. I had nothing to guide me, as I
advanced, but the ceaseless roaring of the sea on my right hand.

It was my purpose to get to Penzance by night. Beyond that, I had no
project, no thought of what refuge I should seek next. Any hope I
might have formerly felt of escaping from Mannion, had now deserted me
for ever. I could not discover by any outward indications, that he was
still following my footsteps. The mist obscured all objects behind me
from view; the ceaseless crashing of the shore-waves overwhelmed all
landward sounds, but I never doubted for a moment that he was watching
me, as I proceeded along my onward way.

I walked slowly, keeping from the edge of the precipices only by
keeping the sound of the sea always at the same distance from my ear;
knowing that I was advancing in the proper direction, though very
circuitously, as long as I heard the waves on my right hand. To have
ventured on the shorter way, by the moor and the cross-roads beyond
it, would have been only to have lost myself past all chance of
extrication, in the mist.

In this tedious manner I had gone on for some time, before it struck
me that the noise of the sea was altering completely to my sense of
hearing. It seemed to be sounding very strangely on each side of
me--both on my right hand and on my left. I stopped and strained my
eyes to look through the mist, but it was useless. Crags only a few
yards off, seemed like shadows in the thick white vapour. Again, I
went on a little; and, ere long, I heard rolling towards me, as it
were, under my own feet, and under the roaring of the sea, a howling,
hollow, intermittent sound--like thunder at a distance. I stopped
again, and rested against a rock. After some time, the mist began to
part to seaward, but remained still as thick as ever on each side of
me. I went on towards the lighter sky in front--the thunder-sound
booming louder and louder, in the very heart, as it seemed, of the
great cliff.

The mist brightened yet a little more, and showed me a landmark to
ships, standing on the highest point of the surrounding rocks. I
climbed to it, recognised the glaring red and white pattern in which
it was painted, and knew that I had wandered, in the mist, away from
the regular line of coast, out on one of the great granite
promontories which project into the sea, as natural breakwaters, on
the southern shore of Cornwall.

I had twice penetrated as far as this place, at the earlier period of
my sojourn in the fishing-hamlet, and while I now listened to the
thunder-sound, I knew from what cause it proceeded.

Beyond the spot where I stood, the rocks descended suddenly, and
almost perpendicularly, to the range below them. In one of the highest
parts of the wall-side of granite thus formed, there opened a black,
yawning hole that slanted nearly straight downwards, like a tunnel, to
unknown and unfathomable depths below, into which the waves found
entrance through some subterranean channel. Even at calm times the sea
was never silent in this frightful abyss, but on stormy days its fury
was terrific. The wild waves boiled and thundered in their
imprisonment, till they seemed to convulse the solid cliff about them,
like an earthquake. But, high as they leapt up in the rocky walls of
the chasm, they never leapt into sight from above. Nothing but clouds
of spray indicated to the eye, what must be the horrible tumult of the
raging waters below.

With my recognition of the place to which I had now wandered, came
remembrance of the dangers I had left behind me on the rock-track that
led from the mainland to the promontory--dangers of narrow ledges and
treacherous precipices, which I had passed safely, while unconscious
of them in the mist, but which I shrank from tempting again, now that
I recollected them, until the sky had cleared, and I could see my way
well before me. The atmosphere was still brightening slowly over the
tossing, distant waves: I determined to wait until it had lost all its
obscurity, before I ventured to retrace my steps.

I moved down towards the lower range of rocks, to seek a less exposed
position than that which I now occupied. As I neared the chasm, the
terrific howling of the waves inside it was violent enough to drown,
not only the crashing sound of the surf on the outward crags of the
promontory, but even the shrill cries of the hundreds on hundreds of
sea-birds that whirled around me, except when their flight was
immediately over my head. At each side of the abyss, the rocks, though
very precipitous, afforded firm hold for hand and foot. As I descended
them, the morbid longing to look on danger, which has led many a man
to the very brink of a precipice, even while he dreaded it, led me to
advance as near as I durst to the side of the great hole, and to gaze
down into it. I could see but little of its black, shining, interior
walls, or of the fragments of rock which here and there jutted out
from them, crowned with patches of long, lank, sea-weed waving slowly
to and fro in empty space--I could see but little of these things, for
the spray from the bellowing water in the invisible depths below,
steamed up almost incessantly, like smoke, and shot, hissing in clouds
out of the mouth of the chasm, on to a huge flat rock, covered with
sea-weed, that lay beneath and in front of it. The very sight of this
smooth, slippery plane of granite, shelving steeply downward, right
into the gaping depths of the hole, made my head swim; the thundering
of the water bewildered and deafened me--I moved away while I had the
power: away, some thirty or forty yards in a lateral direction,
towards the edges of the promontory which looked down on the sea.
Here, the rocks rose again in wild shapes, forming natural caverns and
penthouses. Towards one of these I now advanced, to shelter myself
till the sky had cleared.

I had just entered the place, close to the edge of the cliff, when a
hand was laid suddenly and firmly on my arm; and, through the crashing
of the waves below, the thundering of the water in the abyss behind,
and the shrieking of the seabirds overhead, I heard these words,
spoken close to my ear:--

"Take care of your life. It is not your's to throw away--it is
_mine!_"

I turned, and saw Mannion standing by me. No shade concealed the
hideous distortion of his face. His eye was on me, as he pointed
significantly down to the surf foaming two hundred feet beneath us.

"Suicide!" he said slowly--"I suspected it, and, this time, I followed
close: followed, to fight with death, which should have you."

As I moved back from the edge of the precipice, and shook him from me,
I marked the vacancy that glared even through the glaring triumph of
his eye, and remembered how I had been warned against him at the
hospital.

The mist was thickening again, but thickening now in clouds that
parted and changed minute by minute, under the influence of the light
behind them. I had noticed these sudden transitions before, and knew
them to be the signs which preceded the speedy clearing of the
atmosphere.

When I looked up at the sky, Mannion stepped back a few paces, and
pointed in the direction of the fishing-hamlet from which I had
departed.

"Even in that remote place," he said, "and among those ignorant
people, my deformed face has borne witness against you, and Margaret's
death has been avenged, as I said it should. You have been expelled as
a pest and a curse, by a community of poor fishermen; you have begun
to live your life of excommunication, as I lived mine.
Superstition!--barbarous, monstrous superstition, which I found ready
made to my use, is the scourge with which I have driven you from that
hiding-place. Look at me now! I have got back my strength; I am no
longer the sick refuse of the hospital. Where you go, I have the limbs
and the endurance to go too! I tell you again, we are linked together
for life; I cannot leave you if I would. The horrible joy of hunting
you through the world, leaps in my blood like fire! Look! look out on
those tossing waves. There is no rest for _them;_ there shall be no
rest for _you!_"

The sight of him, standing close by me in that wild solitude; the
hoarse sound of his voice, as he raised it almost to raving in his
exultation over my helplessness; the incessant crashing of the sea on
the outer rocks; the roaring of the tortured waters imprisoned in the
depths of the abyss behind us; the obscurity of the mist, and the
strange, wild shapes it began to take, as it now rolled almost over
our heads---all that I saw, all that I heard, seemed suddenly to
madden me, as Mannion uttered his last words. My brain felt turned to
fire; my heart to ice. A horrible temptation to rid myself for ever of
the wretch before me, by hurling him over the precipice at my feet,
seized on me. I felt my hands stretching themselves out towards him
without my willing it--if I had waited another instant, I should have
dashed him or myself to destruction. But I turned back in time; and,
reckless of all danger, fled from the sight of him, over the rugged
and perilous surface of the cliff.

The shock of a fall among the rocks, before I had advanced more than a
few yards, partly restored my self-possession. Still, I dared not look
back to see if Mannion was following me, so long as the precipice
behind him was within view.

I began to climb to the higher range of rocks almost at the same spot
by which I had descended from them--judging by the close thunder of
the water in the chasm. Halfway up, I stopped at a broad
resting-place; and found that I must proceed a little, either to the
right or to the left, in a horizontal direction, before I could easily
get higher. At that moment, the mist was slowly brightening again. I
looked first to the left, to see where I could get good foothold--then
to the right, towards the outer sides of the riven rocks close at
hand.

At the same instant, I caught sight dimly of the figure of Mannion,
moving shadow-like below and beyond me, skirting the farther edge of
the slippery plane of granite that shelved into the gaping mouth of
the hole. The brightening atmosphere showed him that he had risked
himself, in the mist, too near to a dangerous place. He
stopped--looked up and saw me watching him--raised his hand--and shook
it threateningly in the air. The ill-calculated violence of his
action, in making that menacing gesture, destroyed his equilibrium--he
staggered--tried to recover himself--swayed half round where he
stood--then fell heavily backward, right on to the steep shelving
rock.

The wet sea-weed slipped through his fingers, as they madly clutched
at it. He struggled frantically to throw himself towards the side of
the declivity; slipping further and further down it at every effort.
Close to the mouth of the abyss, he sprang up as if he had been shot.
A tremendous jet of spray hissed out upon him at the same moment. I
heard a scream, so shrill, so horribly unlike any human cry, that it
seemed to silence the very thundering of the water. The spray fell.
For one instant, I saw two livid and bloody hands tossed up against
the black walls of the hole, as he dropped into it. Then, the waves
roared again fiercely in their hidden depths; the spray flew out once
more; and when it cleared off; nothing was to be seen at the yawning
mouth of the chasm--nothing moved over the shelving granite, but some
torn particles of sea-weed sliding slowly downwards in the running
ooze.

The shock of that sight must have paralysed within me the power of
remembering what followed it; for I can recall nothing, after looking
on the emptiness of the rock below, except that I crouched on the
ledge under my feet, to save myself from falling off it--that there
was an interval of oblivion--and that I seemed to awaken again, as it
were, to the thundering of the water in the abyss. When I rose and
looked around me, the seaward sky was lovely in its clearness; the
foam of the leaping waves flashed gloriously in the sunlight: and all
that remained of the mist was one great cloud of purple shadow,
hanging afar off over the whole inland view.

I traced my way back along the promontory feebly and slowly. My
weakness was so great, that I trembled in every limb. A strange
uncertainty about directing myself in the simplest actions, overcame
my mind. Sometimes, I stopped short, hesitating in spite of myself at
the slightest obstacles in my path. Sometimes, I grew confused without
any cause, about the direction in which I was proceeding, and fancied
I was going back to the fishing village.. The sight that I had
witnessed, seemed to be affecting me physically, far more than
mentally. As I dragged myself on my weary way along the coast, there
was always the same painful vacancy in my thoughts: there seemed to be
no power in them yet, of realising Mannion's appalling death.

By the time I arrived at this village, my strength was so utterly
exhausted, that the people at the inn were obliged to help me
upstairs. Even now, after some hours' rest, the mere exertion of
dipping my pen in the ink begins to be a labour and a pain to me.
There is a strange fluttering at my heart; my recollections are
growing confused again--I can write no more.

23rd.--The frightful scene that I witnessed yesterday still holds the
same disastrous influence over me. I have vainly endeavoured to think,
not of Mannion's death, but of the free prospect which that death has
opened to my view. Waking or sleeping, it is as if some fatality kept
all my faculties imprisoned within the black walls of the chasm. I saw
the livid, bleeding hands flying past them again, in my dreams, last
night. And now, while the morning is clear and the breeze is fresh, no
repose, no change comes to my thoughts. Time bright beauty of
unclouded daylight seems to have lost the happy influence over me
which it used formerly to possess.

25th.--All yesterday I had not energy enough even to add a line to
this journal. The strength to control myself seems to have gone from
me. The slightest accidental noise in the house, throws me into a fit
of trembling which I cannot subdue. Surely, if ever the death of one
human being brought release and salvation to another, the death of
Mannion has brought them to me; and yet, the effect left on my mind by
the horror of having seen it, is still not lessened--not even by the
knowledge of all that I have gained by being freed from the deadliest
and most determined enemy that man ever had.

26th.--Visions--half waking, half dreaming--all through the night.
Visions of my last lonely evening in the fishing-hamlet--of Mannion
again--the livid hands whirling to and fro over my head in the
darkness--then, glimpses of home; of Clara reading to me in my
study--then, a change to the room where Margaret died--the sight of
her again, with her long black hair streaming over her face--then,
oblivion for a little while--then, Mannion once more; walking
backwards and forwards by my bedside--his death, seeming like a dream;
his watching me through the night like a reality to which I had just
awakened--Clara walking opposite to him on the other side--Ralph
between them, pointing at me.

27th.--I am afraid my mind is seriously affected; it must have been
fatally weakened before I passed through the terrible scenes among the
rocks of the promontory. My nerves must have suffered far more than I
suspected at the time, under the constant suspense in which I have
been living since I left London, and under the incessant strain and
agitation of writing the narrative of all that has happened to me.
Shall I send a letter to Ralph? No--not yet. It might look like
impatience, like not being able to bear my necessary absence as calmly
and resolutely as I ought.

28th.--A wakeful night--tormented by morbid apprehensions that the
reports about me in the fishing-village may spread to this place; that
inquiries may be made after Mannion; and that I may be suspected of
having caused his death.

29th.--The people at the inn have sent to get me medical advice. The
doctor came to-day. He was kindness itself; but I fell into a fit of
trembling, the moment he entered the room--grew confused in attempting
to tell him what was the matter with me--and, at last, could not
articulate a single word distinctly. He looked very grave as he
examined me and questioned the landlady. I thought I heard him say
something about sending for my friends, but could not be certain.

31st.--Weaker and weaker. I tried in despair, to-day, to write to
Ralph; but knew not how to word the letter. The simplest forms of
expression confused themselves inextricably in my mind. I was obliged
to give it up. It is a surprise to me to find that I can still add
with my pencil to the entries in this Journal! When I am no longer
able to continue, in some sort, the employment to which I have been
used for so many weeks past, what will become of me? Shall I have lost
the only safeguard that keeps me in my senses?

                   * * * * *

Worse! worse! I have forgotten what day of the month it is; and cannot
remember it for a moment together, when they tell me--cannot even
recollect how long I have been confined to my bed. I feel as if my
heart was wasting away. Oh! if I could only see Clara again.

                   * * * * *

The doctor and a strange man have been looking among my papers.

My God! am I dying? dying at the very time when there is a chance of
happiness for my future life?

                   * * * * *

Clara!--far from her--nothing but the little book-marker she worked
for me--leave it round my neck when I--

I can't move, or breathe, or think--if I could only be taken back--if
my father could see me as I am now! Night again--the dreams that will
come--always of home; sometimes, the untried home in heaven, as well
as the familiar home on earth--

                   * * * * *

Clara! I shall die out of my senses, unless Clara--break the news
gently--it may kill her--

Her face so bright and calm! her watchful, weeping eyes always looking
at me, with a light in them that shines steady through the quivering
tears. While the light lasts, I shall live; when it begins to die
out--*

                   NOTE BY THE EDITOR.

* There are some lines of writing beyond this point; but they are
illegible.



                   LETTERS IN CONCLUSION.

LETTER I.

FROM WILLIAM PENHALE, MINER, AT BARTALLOCK, IN CORNWALL, TO HIS WIFE
IN LONDON.

MY DEAR MARY,

I received your letter yesterday, and was more glad than I can say, at
hearing that our darling girl Susan has got such a good place in
London, and likes her new mistress so well. My kind respects to your
sister and her husband, and say I don't grumble about the money that's
been spent in sending you with Susan to take care of her. She was too
young, poor child, to be trusted to make the journey alone; and, as I
was obliged to stop at home and work to keep the other children, and
pay back what we borrowed for the trip, of course you were the proper
person, after me, to go with Susan--whose welfare is a more precious
possession to us than any money, I am sure. Besides, when I married
you, and took you away to Cornwall, I always promised you a trip to
London to see your friends again; and now that promise is performed.
So, once again, don't fret about the money that's been spent: I shall
soon pay it back.

I've got some very strange news for you, Mary. You know how bad work
was getting at the mine, before you went away--so bad, that I thought
to myself after you had gone, "Hadn't I better try what I can do in
the fishing at Treen?" And I went there; and, thank God, have got on
well by it. I can turn my hand to most things; and the fishing has
been very good this year. So I have stuck to my work. And now I come
to my news.

The landlady at the inn here, is, as you know, a sort of relation of
mine. Well, the third afternoon after you had gone, I was stopping to
say a word to her at her own door, on my way to the beach, when we saw
a young gentleman, quite a stranger, coming up to us. He looked very
pale and wild-like, I thought, when he asked for a bed; and then got
faint all of a sudden--so faint and ill, that I was obliged to lend a
hand in getting him upstairs. The next morning I heard he was worse:
and it was just the same story the morning after. He quite frightened
the landlady, he was so restless, and talked to himself in such a
strange way; specially at night. He wouldn't say what was the matter
with him, or who he was: we could only find out that he had been
stopping among the fishing people further west: and that they had not
behaved very well to him at last--more shame for them! I'm sure they
could take no hurt from the poor young fellow, let him be whom he may.
Well, the end of it was that I went and fetched the doctor for him
myself, and when we got into his room, we found him all pale and
trembling, and looking at us, poor soul, as if he thought we meant to
murder him. The doctor gave his complaint some hard names which I
don't know how to write down; but it seems there's more the matter
with his mind than his body, and that he must have had some great
fright which has shaken his nerves all to pieces. The only way to do
him good, as the doctor said, was to have him carefully nursed by his
relations, and kept quiet among people he knew; strange faces about
him being likely to make him worse. The doctor asked where his friends
lived; but he wouldn't say, and, lately, he's got so much worse that
he can't speak clearly to us at all.

Yesterday evening, he gave us all a fright. The doctor hearing me
below, asking after him, said I was to come up stairs and help to move
him to have his bed made. As soon as I raised him up (though I'm sure
I touched him as gently as I could), he fainted dead away. While he
was being brought to, a little piece of something that looked like
card-board, prettily embroidered with beads and silk, came away from a
string that held it round his neck, and dropped off the bedside. I
picked it up; for I remembered the time, Mary, when you and I were
courting, and how precious the least thing was to me that belonged to
you. So I took care of it for him, thinking it might be a keepsake
from his sweetheart. And sure enough, when he came to, he put up his
thin white hands to his neck, and looked so thankful at me when I tied
the little thing again to the string! Just as I had done that, the
doctor beckons me to the other end of the room.

"This won't do," says he to me in a whisper. "If he goes on like this,
he'll lose his reason, if not his life. I must search his papers, to
find out what friends he has; and you must be my witness."

So the doctor opens his little bag, and takes out a square sealed
packet first; then two or three letters tied together; the poor soul
looking all the while as if he longed to prevent us from touching
them. Well, the doctor said there was no occasion to open the packet,
for the direction was the same on all the letters, and the name
corresponded with his initials marked on his linen.

"I'm next to certain this is where he lives, or did live; so this is
where I'll write," says the doctor.

"Shall my wife take the letter, Sir?" says I. "She's in London with
our girl, Susan; and, if his friends should be gone away from where
you are writing to, she may be able to trace them."

"Quite right, Penhale!" says he; "we'll do that. Write to your wife,
and put my letter inside yours."

I did as he told me, at once; and his letter is inside this, with the
direction of the house and the street.

Now, Mary, dear, go at once, and see what you can find out. The
direction on the doctor's letter may be his home; and if it isn't,
there may be people there who can tell you where it is. So go at once,
and let us know directly what luck you have had, for there is no time
to be lost; and if you saw the young gentleman, you would pity him as
much as we do.

This has got to be such a long letter, that I have no room left to
write any more. God bless you, Mary, and God bless my darling Susan!
Give her a kiss for father's sake, and believe me, Your loving
husband,

                      WILLIAM PENHALE.

                         -----

LETTER II.

FROM MARY PENHALE TO HER HUSBAND

DEAREST WILLIAM,

Susan sends a hundred kisses, and best loves to you and her brothers
and sisters. She's getting on nicely; and her mistress is as kind and
fond of her as can be. Best respects, too, from my sister Martha, and
her husband. And now I've done giving you all my messages, I'll tell
you some good news for the poor young gentleman who is so bad at
Treen.

As soon as I had seen Susan, and read your letter to her, I went to
the place where the doctor's letter directed me. Such a grand house,
William! I was really afraid to knock at the door. So I plucked up
courage, and gave a pull at the bell; and a very fat, big man, with
his head all plastered over with powder, opened the door, almost
before I had done ringing. "If you please, Sir," says I, showing him
the name on the doctor's letter, "do any friends of this gentleman
live here?" "To be sure they do," says he; "his father and sister live
here: but what do you want to know for?" "I want them to read this
letter," says I. "It's to tell them that the young gentleman is very
bad in health down in our country." "You can't see my master," says
he, "for he's confined to his bed by illness: and Miss Clara is very
poorly too--you had better leave the letter with me." Just as he said
this, an elderly lady crossed the hall (I found out she was the
housekeeper, afterwards), and asked what I wanted. When I told her,
she looked quite startled. "Step this way, ma'am," says she; "you will
do Miss Clara more good than all the doctors put together. But you
must break the news to her carefully, before she sees the letter.
Please to make it out better news than it is, for the young lady is in
very delicate health." We went upstairs--such stair-carpets! I was
almost frightened to step on them, after walking through the dirty
streets. The housekeeper opened a door, and said a few words inside,
which I could not hear, and then let me in where the young lady was.

Oh, William! she had the sweetest, kindest face I ever saw in my life.
But it was so pale, and there was such a sad look in her eyes when she
asked me to sit down, that it went to my heart, when I thought of the
news I had to tell her. I couldn't speak just at first; and I suppose
she thought I was in some trouble--for she begged me not to tell her
what I wanted, till I was better. She said it with such a voice and
such a look, that, like a great fool, I burst out crying, instead of
answering as I ought. But it did me good, though, and made me able to
tell her about her brother (breaking it as gently as I could) before I
gave her the doctor's letter. She never opened it; but stood up before
me as if she was turned to stone--not able to cry, or speak, or move.
It frightened me so, to see her in such a dreadful state, that I
forgot all about the grand house, and the difference there was between
us; and took her in my arms, making her sit down on the sofa by
me--just as I should do, if I was consoling our own Susan under some
great trouble. Well! I soon made her look more like herself,
comforting her in every way I could think of: and she laid her poor
head on my shoulder, and I took and kissed her, (not remembering a bit
about its being a born lady and a stranger that I was kissing); and
the tears came at last, and did her good. As soon as she could speak,
she thanked God her brother was found, and had fallen into kind hands.
She hadn't courage to read the doctor's letter herself, and asked me
to do it. Though he gave a very bad account of the young gentleman, he
said that care and nursing, and getting him away from a strange place
to his own home and among his friends, might do wonders for him yet.
When I came to this part of the letter, she started up, and asked me
to give it to her. Then she inquired when I was going back to
Cornwall; and I said, "as soon as possible," (for indeed, it's time I
was home, William). "Wait; pray wait till I have shown this letter to
my father!" says she. And she ran out of the room with it in her hand.

After some time, she came back with her face all of a flush, like;
looking quite different to what she did before, and saying that I had
done more to make the family happy by coming with that letter, than
she could ever thank me for as she ought. A gentleman followed her in,
who was her eldest brother (she said); the pleasantest, liveliest
gentleman I ever saw. He shook hands as if he had known me all his
life; and told me I was the first person he had ever met with who had
done good in a family by bringing them bad news. Then he asked me
whether I was ready to go to Cornwall the next morning with him, and
the young lady, and a friend of his who was a doctor. I had thought
already of getting the parting over with poor Susan, that very day: so
I said, "Yes." After that, they wouldn't let me go away till I had had
something to eat and drink; and the dear, kind young lady asked me all
about Susan, and where she was living, and about you and the children,
just as if she had known us like neighbours. Poor thing! she was so
flurried, and so anxious for the next morning, that it was all the
gentleman could do to keep her quiet, and prevent her falling into a
sort of laughing and crying fit, which it seems she had been liable to
lately. At last they let me go away: and I went and stayed with Susan
as long as I could before I bid her good-bye. She bore the parting
bravely--poor, dear child! God in heaven bless her; and I'm sure he
will; for a better daughter no mother ever had.

My dear husband, I am afraid this letter is very badly written; but
the tears are in my eyes, thinking of Susan; and I feel so wearied and
flurried after what has happened. We are to go off very early
to-morrow morning in a carriage, which is to be put on the railway.
Only think of my riding home in a fine carriage, with
gentlefolks!--how surprised Willie, and Nancy, and the other children
will be! I shall get to Treen almost as soon as my letter; but I
thought I would write, so that you might have the good news, the first
moment it could get to you, to tell the poor young gentleman. I'm sure
it must make him better, only to hear that his brother and sister are
coming to fetch him home.

I can't write any more, dear William, I'm so very tired; except that I
long to see you and the little ones again; and that I am,

                    Your loving and dutiful wife,
                    MARY PENHALE.


                   LETTER III.

TO MR. JOHN BERNARD, FROM THE WRITER OF THE FORE-GOING AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

[This letter is nearly nine years later in date than the letters which
precede it.]

                                 Lanreath Cottage, Breconshire.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

I find, by your last letter, that you doubt whether I still remember
the circumstances under which I made a certain promise to you, more
than eight years ago. You are mistaken: not one of those circumstances
has escaped my memory. To satisfy you of this, I will now recapitulate
them. You will own, I think, that I have forgotten nothing.

After my removal from Cornwall (shall I ever forget the first sight of
Clara and Ralph at my bedside!), when the nervous malady from which I
suffered so long, had yielded to the affectionate devotion of my
family--aided by the untiring exercise of your skill--one of my first
anxieties was to show that I could gratefully appreciate your
exertions for my good, by reposing the same confidence in you, which I
should place in my nearest and dearest relatives. From the time when
we first met at the hospital, your services were devoted to me,
through much misery of mind and body, with the delicacy and the
self-denial of a true friend. I felt that it was only your due that
you should know by what trials I had been reduced to the situation in
which you found me, when you accompanied my brother and sister to
Cornwall--I felt this; and placed in your hands, for your own private
perusal, the narrative which I had written of my error and of its
terrible consequences. To tell you all that had happened to me, with
my own lips, was more than I could do then--and even after this lapse
of years, would be more than I could do now.

After you had read the narrative, you urged me, on returning it into
my possession, to permit its publication during my lifetime. I granted
the justness of the reasons which led you to counsel me thus; but I
told you, at the same time, that an obstacle, which I was bound to
respect, would prevent me from following your advice. While my father
lived, I could not suffer a manuscript in which he was represented (no
matter under what excess of provocation) as separating himself in the
bitterest hostility from his own son, to be made public property. I
could not suffer events of which we never afterwards spoke ourselves,
to be given to others in the form of a printed narrative which might
perhaps fall under his own eye. You acknowledged, I remember, the
justice of these considerations and promised, in case I died before
him, to keep back my manuscript from publication as long as my father
lived. In binding yourself to that engagement, however, you
stipulated, and I agreed, that I should reconsider your arguments in
case I outlived him. This was my promise, and these were the
circumstances under which it was made. You will allow, I think, that
my memory is more accurate than you had imagined it to be.

And now, you write to remind me of _my_ part of our
agreement--forbearing, with your accustomed delicacy, to introduce the
subject, until more than six months have elapsed since my father's
death. You have done well. I have had time to feel all the consolation
afforded to me by the remembrance that, for years past, my life was of
some use in sweetening my father's; that his death has occurred in the
ordinary course of Nature; and that I never, to my own knowledge, gave
him any cause to repent the full and loving reconciliation which took
place between us, as soon as we could speak together freely after my
return to home.

Still I am not answering your question:--Am I now willing to permit
the publication of my narrative, provided all names and places
mentioned in it remained concealed, and I am known to no one but
yourself, Ralph, and Clara, as the writer of my own story? I reply
that I am willing. In a few days, you will receive the manuscript by a
safe hand. Neither my brother nor my sister object to its being made
public on the terms I have mentioned; and I feel no hesitation in
accepting the permission thus accorded to me. I have not glossed over
the flightiness of Ralph's character; but the brotherly kindness and
manly generosity which lie beneath it, are as apparent, I hope, in my
narrative as they are in fact. And Clara, dear Clara!--all that I have
said of her is only to be regretted as unworthy of the noblest subject
that my pen, or any other pen, can have to write on.

One difficulty, however, still remains:--How are the pages which I am
about to send you to be concluded? In the novel-reading sense of the
word, my story has no real conclusion. The repose that comes to all of
us after trouble--to _me,_ a repose in life: to others, how often a
repose only in the grave!--is the end which must close this
autobiography: an end, calm, natural, and uneventful; yet not,
perhaps, devoid of all lesson and value. Is it fit that I should set
myself, for the sake of effect, to _make_ a conclusion, and terminate
by fiction what has begun, and thus far, has proceeded in truth? In
the interests of Art, as well as in the interests of Reality, surely
not!

Whatever remains to be related after the last entry in my journal,
will be found expressed in the simplest, and therefore, the best form,
by the letters from William and Mary Penhale, which I send you with
this. When I revisited Cornwall, to see the good miner and his wife, I
found, in the course of the inquiries which I made as to the past,
that they still preserved the letters they had written about me, while
I lay ill at Treen. I asked permission to take copies of these two
documents, as containing materials, which I could but ill supply from
my own resources, for filling up a gap in my story. They at once
consented; telling me that they had always kept each other's letters
after marriage, as carefully as they kept them before, in token that
their first affection remained to the last unchanged. At the same time
they entreated me, with the most earnest simplicity, to polish their
own homely expressions; and turn them, as they phrased, it, into
proper reading. You may easily imagine that I knew better than to do
this; and you will, I am sure, agree with me that both the letters I
send should be printed as literally as they were copied by my hand.

Having now provided for the continuation of my story to the period of
my return home, I have a word or two to say on the subject of
preparing the autobiography for press. Failing in the resolution, even
now, to look over my manuscript again, I leave the corrections it
requires to others--but on one condition. Let none of the passages in
which I have related events, or described characters, be either
softened or suppressed. I am well aware of the tendency, in some
readers, to denounce truth itself as improbable, unless their own
personal experience has borne witness to it; and it is on this very
account that I am firm in my determination to allow of no cringing
beforehand to anticipated incredulities. What I have written is Truth;
and it shall go into the world as Truth should--entirely
uncompromised. Let my style be corrected as completely as you will;
but leave characters and events which are taken from realities, real
as they are.

In regard to the surviving persons with whom this narrative associates
me, I have little to say which it can concern the reader to know. The
man whom I have presented in the preceding pages under the name of
Sherwin is, I believe, still alive, and still residing in
France--whither he retreated soon after the date of the last events
mentioned in my autobiography. A new system had been introduced into
his business by his assistant, which, when left to his own unaided
resources, he failed to carry out. His affairs became involved; a
commercial crisis occurred, which he was wholly unable to meet; and he
was made a bankrupt, having first dishonestly secured to himself a
subsistence for life, out of the wreck of his property. I accidentally
heard of him, a few years since, as maintaining among the English
residents of the town he then inhabited, the character of a man who
had undeservedly suffered from severe family misfortunes, and who bore
his afflictions with the most exemplary piety and resignation.

To those once connected with him, who are now no more, I need not and
cannot refer again. That part of the dreary Past with which they are
associated, is the part which I still shrink in terror from thinking
on. There are two names which my lips have not uttered for years;
which, in this life, I shall never pronounce again. The night of Death
is over them: a night to look away from for evermore.

To look away from--but, towards what object? The Future? That way, I
see but dimly even yet. It is on the Present that my thoughts are
fixed, in the contentment which desires no change.

For the last five months I have lived here with Clara--here, on the
little estate which was once her mother's, which is now hers. Long
before my father's death we often talked, in the great country house,
of future days which we might pass together, as we pass them now, in
this place. Though we may often leave it for a time, we shall always
look back to Lanreath Cottage as to our home. The years of retirement
which I spent at the Hall, after my recovery, have not awakened in me
a single longing to return to the busy world. Ralph--now the head of
our family; now aroused by his new duties to a sense of his new
position--Ralph, already emancipated from many of the habits which
once enthralled and degraded him, has written, bidding me employ to
the utmost the resources which his position enables him to offer me,
if I decide on entering into public life. But I have no such purpose;
I am still resolved to live on in obscurity, in retirement, in peace.
I have suffered too much; I have been wounded too sadly, to range
myself with the heroes of Ambition, and fight my way upward from the
ranks. The glory and the glitter which I once longed to look on as my
own, would dazzle and destroy me, now. Such shocks as I have endured,
leave that behind them which changes the character and the purpose of
a life. The mountain-path of Action is no longer a path for _me;_ my
future hope pauses with my present happiness in the shadowed valley of
Repose.

Not a repose which owns no duty, and is good for no use; not a repose
which Thought cannot ennoble, and Affection cannot sanctify. To serve
the cause of the poor and the ignorant, in the little sphere which now
surrounds me; to smooth the way for pleasure and plenty, where pain
and want have made it rugged too long; to live more and more worthy,
with every day, of the sisterly love which, never tiring, never
changing, watches over me in this last retreat, this dearest
home--these are the purposes, the only purposes left, which I may
still cherish. Let me but live to fulfil them, and life will have
given to me all that I can ask!

I may now close my letter. I have communicated to you all the
materials I can supply for the conclusion of my autobiography, and
have furnished you with the only directions I wish to give in
reference to its publication. Present it to the reader in any form,
and at any time, that you think fit. On its reception by the public I
have no wish to speculate. It is enough for me to know that, with all
its faults, it has been written in sincerity and in truth. I shall not
feel false shame at its failure, or false pride at its success.

If there be any further information which you think it necessary to
possess, and which I have forgotten to communicate, write to me on the
subject--or, far better, come here yourself, and ask of me with your
own lips all that you desire to know. Come, and judge of the life I am
now leading, by seeing it as it really is. Though it be only for a few
days, pause long enough in your career of activity and usefulness, of
fame and honour, to find leisure time for a visit to the cottage where
we live. This is as much Clara's invitation as mine. She will never
forget (even if I could!) all that I have owed to your
friendship--will never weary (even if I should tire!) of showing you
that we are capable of deserving it. Come, then, and see _her_ as well
as _me_--see her, once more, my sister of old times! I remember what
you said of Clara, when we last met, and last talked of her; and I
believe you will be almost as happy to see her again in her old
character as I am.

Till then, farewell! Do not judge hastily of my motives for persisting
in the life of retirement which I have led for so many years past. Do
not think that calamity has chilled my heart, or enervated my mind.
Past suffering may have changed, but it has not deteriorated me. It
has fortified my spirit with an abiding strength; it has told me
plainly, much that was but dimly revealed to me before; it has shown
me uses to which I may put my existence, that have their sanction from
other voices than the voices of fame; it has taught me to feel that
bravest ambition which is vigorous enough to overleap the little life
here! Is there no aspiration in the purposes for which I would now
live?--Bernard! whatever we can do of good, in this world, with our
affections or our faculties, rises to the Eternal World above us, as a
song of praise from Humanity to God. Amid the thousand, thousand tones
ever joining to swell the music of that song, are those which sound
loudest and grandest _here,_ the tones which travel sweetest and
purest to the Imperishable Throne; which mingle in the perfectest
harmony with the anthem of the angel-choir! Ask your own heart that
question--and then say, may not the obscurest life--even a life like
mine--be dignified by a lasting aspiration, and dedicated to a noble
aim?

I have done. The calm summer evening has stolen on me while I have
been writing to you; and Clara's voice--now the happy voice of the
happy old times--calls to me from our garden seat to come out and look
at the sunset over the distant sea. Once more--farewell!








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