XII. LEWIS FORFEITS THE RESPECT OF ALL POOR-LAW GUARDIANS…

XII. LEWIS FORFEITS THE RESPECT OF ALL POOR-LAW GUARDIANS

Equally surprised and mystified at the complete manner in which the tables had been turned upon him, Bracy stood listening with a disgusted expression of countenance to the peals of laughter which his discomfiture elicited from his companions.

“Yes, laugh away,” growled the victimised practical joker; “it’s all very funny, I dare say, but one thing I’ll swear in any court of justice, which is, that you have been talking real Persian, at least if what Frere jabbers is real Persian.”

“Of course I have,” returned Leicester, still in convulsions. “When Frere and I planned this dodge we knew what a wide-awake gentleman we had to deal with, and took our measures accordingly. I learned four Persian sentences by heart from his dictation, and pretty good use I have made of them too, I think.”

“It was not a bad idea, really,” observed Bracy, who, having got over his annoyance at the first sense of defeat, instantly recovered his good-humour. “How well you are got up! I did not recognise you one bit till you pulled off the barnacles.”

“Yes, I got little Stevens, who does the light comic business at one of the minors, to provide the apparel and come and dress me. I hope you admire my complexion; he laid on the red and yellow most unsparingly.”

“He has done it vastly well,” returned Bracy. “I shall cultivate that small man; he may be extremely useful to me on an occasion.”

“Now we ought to be going upstairs,” interrupted Frere; “these waiter fellows are beginning to stare at us suspiciously too. I say, Bracy, cut it short, man; we have had all the fun now, and I’m getting tired of the thing.”

“Ya, Meinheer,” rejoined Bracy aloud, adding in a lower tone, “The slaveys will swallow that or anything else for Persian. They are all more or less drunk, by the fishy expression of their optics.”

Laura Peyton was astonished somewhat later in the evening by the Addiscombe professor leaning over the back of the sofa on which she was seated and asking whether she had enjoyed her last valse at Almack’s the evening before last.

“Surely you can feel no particular interest about such a frivolous and unintellectual matter, sir,” was the reply.

“I was about to follow up the inquiry by asking whether your partner made himself agreeable.”

“To which I shall reply, after the Irish fashion, by asking how it can possibly concern you to know, sir?”

“Merely because I have the honour of the gentleman’s acquaintance.”

“That, in fact, you are one of those uncommon characters who know themselves,” returned Laura with an arch smile. “Is not that what you wish to impress upon me, Mr. Leicester?”

Charley laughed, then continued in a lower tone, “I saw you knew me. Did your own acuteness lead to the discovery, or are there traitors among us?”

“Your friend Mr. Arundel’s expressive features let me into the secret of his acquaintance with the English language before we went down to supper; but I entered into a contract, not to betray the plot if he would tell me all I might wish to know about it, so the moment he came up I made him inform me who you were. What a gentlemanly, agreeable person he is!”

As she said this a slight shade passed across Leicester’s good-natured countenance, and he replied, more quickly than was his wont--

“I had fancied Miss Peyton superior to the common feminine weakness of being caught by the last handsome face.”

“What a thoroughly man-like speech!” returned the young lady. “Did I say anything about his appearance, sir? Do you suppose we poor women are so utterly silly that we can appreciate nothing but a handsome face? Your professor’s disguise has imbued you with the Turkish belief that women have no souls.”

“No one fortunate enough to be acquainted with Miss Peyton would continue long in such a heresy,” replied Leicester, with the air of a man who thinks he is saying a good thing.

“Yes, I knew you would make some such reply,” returned Laura. “You first show your real opinion of women by libelling the whole sex, and then try to get out of the scrape by insulting my understanding with a personal compliment. Wait,” she continued, seeing he was about to defend himself, “you must not talk to me any more now, or you will excite Lady Lombard’s suspicions and betray the whole conspiracy. Go away, and send my new friend Mr. Arundel Hassan Bey here; Lady Lombard committed him to my charge, and I want to cultivate him.”

Leicester tried to assume a languishing look, which he was in the habit of practising upon young ladies with great success, but becoming suddenly conscious of the wig and spectacles, and gathering from Laura’s silvery laugh that such adjuncts to an interesting expression of countenance were incongruous, not to say absurd, he joined in her merriment, then added, “You are in a very wicked mood to-night, Miss Peyton; but I suppose I must e’en do as you bid me, and reserve my revenge till some more fitting opportunity;” then, mixing with the crowd, he sought out Lewis and delivered the young lady’s message to him, adding in his usual drawling tone, “You have made a what-do-ye-call-it--an impression in that quarter. Women always run after the last new face.”

“You are right,” returned Lewis, with a degree of energy which startled his listless companion; “and those men are wisest who know them for the toys they are, and avoid them.”

Leicester gazed after his retreating figure in astonishment, then murmured to himself, “What’s in the wind now, I wonder; is the good youth trying to keep up the Asiatic character, or suddenly turned woman-hater? Confound that little Peyton girl, how sharp she was to-night!”

“How very well Mr. Leicester is disguised!” observed Laura Peyton to Lewis, after they had conversed in German for some minutes on general topics.

“Yes,” replied Lewis; “though I can’t say his appearance is improved by the alteration.”

“A fact of which he is fully aware,” returned Laura, smiling.

A pause ensued, which was terminated by Laura’s asking abruptly, “Do gentlemen like Mr. Leicester?”

“Really I have not sufficient knowledge of facts to inform you, but I should say he is a very popular man.”

“Popular man! I hate that phrase,” returned his companion pettishly. “It is almost as bad as describing any one as a man about town, which always gives me the idea of a creature that wears a pea-jacket, lives at a club, boards on cigars, talks slang, carries a betting-book, and never has its hair cut. Can’t you tell me what you think of Mr. Leicester yourself?”

“Well, I think him gentlemanly, good-natured, agreeable up to a certain point, cleverish---”

^ “Yes, that will do; I quite understand. I don’t think you do him justice--he has a kind heart, and more good sense than you are disposed to give him credit for. You should not form such hasty judgments of people; a want of charity I perceive is one of your faults. And now I must wish you good-night; I hear my kind old chaperone anxiously bleating after me in the distance.”

So saying she arose and hastened to put herself under the protection of “a fine old English gentlewoman,” who, with a hooked nose, red gown, and green scarf, looked like some new and fearful variety of the genus Parroquet. At the same time, Bracy summoned Lewis to join the Prince, who was about to depart, which, after Lady Lombard had in an enthusiasm of gratitude uttered a whole sentence in the largest capitals, he was allowed to do.

Leicester accompanied them, tearing himself away from Professor Malchapeau, who had singled him out as a brother savan, and commenced raconte-ing to him his affecting history, thereby leaving that shaggy little child of misfortune to lament to his sympathising hostess the melancholy fact that “Zie Professor Addiscombe had cut his little tale off short, and transported himselfs avay in von great despatch.”

’Twere long to tell the jokes that were made, the new and additional matter brought to light, as each of the quartette, assembled round a second edition of supper in Bracy’s rooms, detailed in turn his own personal experiences of the evening’s comicalities--the cigars that were smoked, or the amount of sherry cobbler that was imbibed: suffice it to say, that a certain lyrical declaration that they would not “go home till morning,” to which, during their symposium, they had committed themselves, was verified when, on issuing out into the street, the cold grey light of early dawn threw its pale hue over their tired faces and struggled with sickly-looking gas lamps for the honour of illuminating the thoroughfares of the sleeping city.

Leicester’s cab, with his night-horse--a useful animal, which, without a leg to stand upon, possessed the speed of the wind, and having every defect horseflesh is heir to, enjoyed a constitution which throve on exposure and want of sleep, as other organisations usually do on the exact opposites--was in waiting. Into this vehicle Charley (who bore some token of sherry cobbler in the unsteadiness of his gait), having made two bad shots at the step, rushed headlong and drove off at an insane pace, and in a succession of zigzags.

Frere and Lewis watched the cab till, having slightly assaulted an unoffending lamp-post, it flew round a corner and disappeared; then, having exchanged a significant glance suggestive of sympathetic anticipations of a sombre character in regard to the safety of their friend, they started at a brisk pace, which soon brought them to Frere’s respectable dwelling. While the proprietor was searching in every pocket but the right one for that terror of all feeble-minded elders, that pet abomination of all fathers of families, that latest invention of the enemy of mankind--a latch-key--they were accosted by a lad of about fifteen, whose ragged clothes, bronzed features, and Murillo-like appearance accorded well with his supplication, “Per pietà Signor, denaro per un pover’ Italiano.”

Frere looked at him attentively, then exclaimed, “I tell you what, boy, it won’t do; you’re no more an Italian than I am. You should not try to impose upon people.”

The boy hung down his head, and then replied doggedly, “It’s your own fault; you’ll let an English boy starve in the streets before you’ll give him a bit of bread, but you are charitable enough to them foreign blackguards.”

“That’s not true,” replied Frere. “However, liar or not, you must be fed, I suppose; so if you choose to take a soup-ticket, here’s one for you.”

“No,” returned the boy proudly, “you have called me liar, and I won’t accept your miserable bounty. I’d sooner starve first.”

“As you please,” returned Frere, coolly pocketing the rejected ticket. “Now have the goodness to take yourself off. Come, Lewis.”

“I’ll join you immediately,” replied Lewis.

“Mind you shut the door after you, then,” continued Frere, “or we shall have that nice lad walking off with the silver spoons.” So saying, he entered the house.

Lewis waited till his retreating footsteps were no longer audible, then fixing his piercing glance upon the boy, he said in an impressive voice, “Answer me truly, and I will give you assistance. Where did you learn to speak Italian with so good an accent?”

“In Naples, sir!”

“How did you get there?”

“I served on board a man-of-war.”

“And how have you fallen into this state of beggary?”

The boy hesitated for a moment, but something led him instinctively to feel that his confidence would not be abused, and he answered: “When we got back to England and the crew were paid off I received £15. I got into bad company; they tempted me to everything that was wrong. My money was soon gone; I had no friends in London, and I wouldn’t have applied to them after going on so bad if I’d had any. I sold my clothes to buy bread; and when I had nothing left I begged, and lately I’ve passed myself off as an Italian boy, because I found people more willing to give to me.”

“And do you like your present life?”

“No, I have to bear cold and hunger; and when people speak to me as he did just now it makes me feel wicked. Some day it will drive me mad, and I shall go and murder somebody.”

“What do you wish to do, then?”

“If I could buy some decent clothes, I’d walk down to Portsmouth and try and get afloat again.”

“And what would it cost to provide them?”

“I could rig myself out for a pound.”

Lewis paused for a moment, then added quickly: “Boy, I am poor and proud, as you are, therefore I can feel for you. Had I been exposed to temptation, friendless and untaught, I might have fallen as you have done. You have learnt a bitter lesson and may profit by it; it is in my power to afford you a chance of doing so.”

He drew a card from his pocket and wrote upon it a few words in pencil, then handing it to the boy, continued: “There is the direction to a friend of mine, the captain of a ship about to sail in a few days; show him my card, and tell him what you have told me. There is a sovereign to provide your dress, and five shillings to save you from begging or stealing till you get to Portsmouth; and when next you are tempted to sin remember its bitter fruits.”

As he spoke he gave him the money. The boy received it mechanically, fixed his bright eyes for a moment on the face of his benefactor, and then, utterly overcome by such unexpected kindness, burst into a flood of tears. As Lewis turned to depart the first rays of the rising sun fell upon the tall, graceful figure of the young man and the tattered garments and emaciated form of the boy.

Far different was the scene when Lewis Arundel and the creature he was thus rescuing from infamy met again upon the RAILROAD OF LIFE!

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XIII. IS CHIEFLY HORTICULTURAL, SHOWING THE EFFECTS PRODUCED BY TRAINING UPON A SWEET AND DELICATE ROSE

Rose Arundel sat at the open window of her little bedroom and gazed out into the night. The scent of many flowers hung upon the loaded air, and the calm stars looked down from Heaven, contrasting their impassive grandeur with the unrest of this weary world. The evening had been lovely; not a breath of wind was stirring; the long shadows that slept upon the green sward, and afforded a dark background on which the brilliant glow-worms shone like diamonds on a funeral pall, were motionless; the silence, unbroken save when some heavy beetle or other strange insect of the night winged its drowsy way across the casement, was almost oppressive in its depth of stillness; it was a time and place for grave and earnest thought, a scene in which the full heart is conscious of its own sorrow. And Rose, although she had too much good sense and right principle to allow herself to feel miserable, was far from happy. The key to the inner life of every true-hearted woman must be sought in the affections. The only two people whom Rose had loved, as she was capable of loving, were her father and brother; for Mrs. Arundel, though all her impulses were kind and amiable, did not possess sufficient depth of character to inspire any very strong attachment. Between Captain Arundel and his daughter had existed one of those rare affections which appear so nearly to satisfy the cravings of our spiritual nature, that lest this world should become too dear to us they are blessings we are seldom permitted long to enjoy. Rose and her father were by nature much alike in disposition, and in forming her character, and educating and developing her mind, he had for some years found his chief interest, while in her affection lay his only solace for the blighted hopes and ruined prospects of a lifetime.

Originally highly connected, Captain Arundel had incurred the displeasure of his family by forming in the heat of youthful passion, and under peculiar circumstances, a marriage with the daughter of an English resident at Marseilles by a foreign mother. Too proud to seek to conciliate his relations, Mr. Arundel became a voluntary exile, entered into the Austrian army, where he speedily rose to the rank of captain and served with much distinction, till failing health induced him to resign his commission and return to England for the sake of educating his children. His heart was set on one object--namely, to bestow upon his son the education of an English gentleman, and for this purpose he had availed himself of a very unusual talent for painting as a means by which he might increase his slender income sufficiently to meet the expenses of sending Lewis to Westminster and afterwards to a German university. The constant application thus rendered inevitable fostered the seeds of that most insidious of all ailments, a heart-disease, and while still forming plans for the welfare of his family, an unwonted agitation induced a paroxysm of his complaint, and ere Rose could realise the misfortune that threatened her she was fatherless.

Although stunned at first by the unexpected shock, hers was not a mind to give way at such a moment, and to those who judge by the outward expression only Mrs. Arundel’s grief appeared much more intense than that of her daughter. But Rose’s sorrow was not a mere transitory feeling, which a few weeks more or less might serve to dissipate; it had become part of her very nature, a thing too sacred to be lightly brought to view, but enshrined in the sanctuary of her pure heart it remained a cherished yet solemn recollection, which would shed its hallowing influence over the future of her young life. And now, as she sat with her calm, earnest eyes upturned to the tranquil heaven above her, her thoughts wandered back to him she had so dearly loved, and she pondered the solemn questions which have ere now presented themselves to many a mourning spirit, and longed to penetrate the secrets of the grave and learn things which death alone can teach us. Then she recalled conversations she had held with him that was gone on these very subjects, and remembered how he had said that the things which God had not seen fit to reveal, could neither be needful nor expedient for us to know; that such speculations were In themselves dangerous, inasmuch as they tended to lead us to form theories which, having no warrant in Scripture, might be at variance with truth; and that it was better to wait patiently in humble faith--that a time would come when we should no longer see through a glass darkly, and the hidden things of God should be made known unto us. Then her thoughts, still pursuing the same train, led her to reflect how all her father’s aspirations, crushed and disappointed in the wreck of his own fortunes, had centred in his son, and the bitter tears which no personal privations or misfortunes could have forced from her, flowed down her cheeks as she reflected how these bright anticipations seemed doomed never to be realised.

Unselfish by nature, and trained to habits of thoughtfulness by witnessing her father’s life of daily self-sacrifice, Rose had never been accustomed to indulge on her own account in those day-dreams so common to the sanguine mind of youth. But the germs of that pride and ambition which were Lewis’s besetting sins existed in a minor degree in Rose’s disposition also, and found vent in a visionary career of greatness she had marked out for her brother, and for which his unusual mental powers and striking appearance seemed eminently to qualify him. In nourishing these visions her father had unconsciously assisted, when in moments of confidence he had imparted to her his hopes that Lewis would distinguish himself in whatever career of life he might select, and by his success restore them all to that position in society which by his own imprudence he had forfeited. What a bitter contrast did the reality now present! Rose had received that morning a letter from her brother detailing his interview with General Grant and its results; and though, from a wish to spare her feelings, he had been more guarded in his expressions than on the occasion of his conversation with Frere the preceding day, yet he did not attempt to disguise from her his repugnance to the arrangement, or the degradation to which his haughty spirit led him to consider he was submitting.

“Poor Lewis!” murmured Rose, “I know so well what misery it will be to him; the slights, the hourly petty annoyances which his proud, sensitive nature will feel so keenly; and then, to waste his high talents, his energy of character and strength of will on the drudgery of teaching, when they were certain to have led him to distinction if he had only had a fair field for their exercise--it would have broken dearest papa’s heart, when he had hoped so differently for him. But if he had lived this never would have been so. He often told me he had influential friends, and though he never would apply to them on his own account, he declared he would do so when Lewis should become old enough to enter into life. I wonder who they were. He never liked to talk on those subjects, and I was afraid of paining him by inquiring. I am glad there is a Miss Grant: I hope she may prove a nice girl and will like Lewis; but of course she will--every one must do that. Oh! how I hope they will treat him kindly and generously--it will all depend upon that. Poor fellow! with his impulsive disposition and quick sense of wrong--his fiery temper too, how will he get on? And it is for our sakes he does all this, sacrificing his freedom and his hopes of winning himself a name. How good and noble it is of him!”

She paused, and leaning her brow upon her little white hand, sat buried in deep thought. At length she spoke again.

“If I could do anything to earn money and help I should be so much happier. Poor papa got a good deal lately for his pictures; but they were so clever. Lewis can paint beautifully, but my drawings are so tame. I wonder whether people would buy poetry. I wish I knew whether my verses are good enough to induce any one to purchase them. Dearest papa praised those lines of mine which he accidentally found one day. Of course he was a good judge, only perhaps he liked them because they were mine.” And the tears rolled silently down her pale cheeks as memory brought before her the glance of bright and surprised approval, the warm yet judicious praise, the tender criticism--words, looks, and tones of love now lost to her for ever, which the accidental discovery of her verses had drawn forth. With an aching heart she closed the casement, and lighting a candle, proceeded to unlock a small writing-desk, from whence she drew some manuscript verses, which ran as follows:--

THE PREACHER’S ADDRESS TO THE SOUL.

Weary soul,

Why dost thou still disquiet

Thyself with senseless riot,

Taking thy fill and measure

Of earthly pleasure?

The things which thou dost prize

Are not realities;

All is but seeming.

Waking, thou still liest dreaming.

That which before thine eye

Now passeth, or hath past,

Is nought but vanity--

It cannot last.

This evil world, be sure,

Shall not endure.

Art thou a-weary, Soul, and dost thou cry

For rest? Wait, and thou soon shalt have

That thou dost crave,

For Death is real--the Grave no mockery.

THE SOUL’S REPLY.

Preacher, too dark thy mood;

God made this earth--

At its primeval birth

“God saw that it was good.”

And if through Adam’s sin

Death enter’d in,

Hath not Christ died to save

Me from the grave?

Repented sins for His sake are forgiven--

There is a heaven.

For that this earth is no abiding-place,

Shall we displace

The flowers that God hath scatter’d on our path--

The kindly hearth;

The smile of love still brightening as we come,

Making the desert, home;

The seventh day of rest, the poor man’s treasure

Of holy leisure;

Bright sunshine, happy birds, the joy of flowers?

Ah, no! this earth of ours

Was “very good,” and hath its blessings still;

And if we will,

We may be happy. Say, stern preacher, why

Should we then hate to live, or fear to die,

With Love for Time, Heaven for Eternity?

Rose perused them attentively, sighed deeply, and then resumed--

“Yes, he liked them, and said (I remember his very words) there was more vigour and purpose about them than in the general run of girlish verses. How could I find out whether they are worth anything?” She paused in reflection, then clasping her hands together suddenly, she exclaimed--

“Yes, of course, Mr. Frere; he was so good and kind about the pictures, and Lewis says he is so very clever, he will tell me. But may not he think it strange and odd in me to write to him? Had I better consult mamma?”

But with the question came an instinctive consciousness that she was about the last person whom it would be agreeable to consult on such an occasion. Rose, like every other woman possessing the slightest approach to the artist mind, felt a shrinking delicacy in regard to what the Browning school would term her “utterances,” which rendered the idea of showing them where they would not be appreciated exquisitely painful to her. Now, Mrs. Arundel had a disagreeable knack of occasionally brushing against a feeling so rudely as to cause the unlucky originator thereof to experience a mental twinge closely akin to the bodily sensation yclept toothache.

It will therefore be no matter of surprise to the reader to learn that Rose, after mature deliberation, resolved to keep the fact of her having applied to Mr. Frere a secret, at all events till such time as the result should become known to her.

She accordingly selected such of her poetical effusions as she deemed most worthy, in the course of which process she stumbled upon a short prose sketch, the only thing of the sort she had ever attempted, it being, in fact, a lively account of her first appearance at a dinner-party, written for the benefit of a young lady friend, but for some reason never sent. This, after looking at a page or two, she was about to condemn as nonsense, when an idea came across her that if Mr. Frere was to form a just estimate of her powers, it was scarcely fair to select only the best things; so she popped in the sketch of the dinner-party as a kind of destitution test, to show how badly she could write.

Then came the most difficult part of the business--the letter to Frere. True, she had written to him before, acting as her father’s amanuensis, but that was a different sort of thing altogether. Still, it must be done, and Rose was not a person to be deterred by difficulties; so she took a sheet of paper and wrote “Sir” at the top of it, and having done so, sat and looked at it till she became intensely dissatisfied. “Sir”--it seemed so cold and uncomfortable; so she took a second sheet and wrote, “Dear Sir.” Yes! that was better, decidedly. She only hoped it was not too familiar in writing to a young man; but then, Mr. Frere was not exactly a young man; he was a great deal older than Lewis; above thirty most likely; and three or four-and-thirty was quite middle-aged; so the “Dear Sir” was allowed to remain.

“Ce n’est que le premier pas qui coute? and having once started, it was not long before Rose’s nimble pen had covered two sides of the sheet of paper, and the following letter was the result:--

“Dear Sir,--I know not how to offer any excuse for the trouble I am about to give you, otherwise than by explaining the reasons which have induced me to apply to you; and, as I know your time is valuable, I will do so as briefly as I can. Do not think me forgetful of, or ungrateful for, your great kindness to Lewis, when I tell you that ever since I received my brother’s letter informing me of his engagement as tutor to General Grant’s ward, I have felt miserable at the idea of his working hard at an occupation which I fear must be distasteful to him, in order to provide for Mamma and myself the comforts we have hitherto enjoyed. It was impossible to prevent this in any way, for we tried to shake his determination, but in vain. Now I feel that I should be so much happier if I could assist, in ever so small a degree, in relieving him from his burthen; and the only possible idea that occurs to me (for he will not hear of my going out as governess) is that I might be able to earn something by my pen. With this view I have ventured to enclose for your perusal a few verses which I have written at odd times for my own amusement; and I trust to your kindness to tell me honestly whether they possess any merit or not. I dare not hope your opinion will be favourable; but if by possibility it should prove so, will you do me the additional kindness of advising me what steps to take in order to get them published. I have never been in London, but I have heard there are a good many booksellers who live there; and as I dare say you know them all, perhaps you would kindly tell me to which of them you would recommend me to apply. I have not told Mamma that I am writing, for, as I feel a presentiment that your answer will only prove to me the folly of the hopes I am so silly as to indulge, it is not worth while disturbing her about the matter. Once again thanking you for your extreme kindness to Lewis, and hoping that you will not consider me too troublesome in thus applying to you, believe me to remain your sincerely obliged,

“Rose Arundel.

“P.S.--I have enclosed a little prose sketch with the verses, but I am quite sure you will not like that. Perhaps, if Lewis has not left you when this arrives, you will be so very kind as not to say any thing to him about it, as he would be sure to laugh at me.”

When Rose had finished this epistle she felt that she had done something towards attaining the object she had at heart, and went to bed feeling more happy than she had done since the receipt of Lewis’s letter. Straightway falling asleep, she dreamt that she was introduced to Mr. Murray, who offered her £100 to write a short biographical memoir of General Grant for the “Quarterly Review.”

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XIV. PRESENTS TOM BRACY IN A NEW AND INTERESTING ASPECT

Three days passed by, and still poor Rose received no answer to her letter, but remained a prey to alternate hopes and fears and all “The gnawing torture of an anxious mind.” On the fourth arrived the following characteristic note:--

“My dear Miss Arundel,--I dare say you’ve been abusing me like a pick-pocket; at least I must have appeared to you deserving of such abuse, for treating your request so cavalierly; but the fact is, I have been down in a Cornish tin mine for the last two days, and only received your packet on my arrival in town, an hour ago. And now to business. I don’t set up for a judge of poetry, though I know what pleases me and what doesn’t (I should be a donkey if I did not, you’ll say); for instance, the present school of ‘suggestive’ poetry doesn’t suit me at all. But then I have an old-fashioned prejudice in favour of understanding what I read, and calling a railway locomotive a ‘resonant steam eagle,’ for instance, does not tend to simplify literature; the only thing such phrases ‘suggest’ to me is that it would be a great deal better if the authors were content to stick to plain English, and when they have such inexpressibly grand ideas, not to trouble themselves to express them at all. Your verses have at least one good point in them--they are so worded that a plain man may understand them; in fact, all that I have yet read I like--the feeling is invariably pure, true, and beautiful (your heart’s in the right place, and no mistake); the language is well chosen, and sometimes eloquent; there are, of course, plenty of places where it becomes weak and young lady-like, but that was only to be expected. We can’t all be men, unfortunately. I could not help laughing when you ‘supposed I knew’ all the booksellers and publishers in London, Heaven forbid! for in that case I should have a very miscellaneous acquaintance. However, I do know several, and I will go the first thing to-morrow morning and consult one of them--a gentleman on whose judgment I can rely as to what will be the most advisable course for us to pursue. I say us, because, as I don’t mean to let the matter rest till I have succeeded, I consider myself a partner in the concern. Lewis parted from me in high health and very tolerable spirits. He left town, with General Grant, the same morning on which I started for Cornwall. You shall hear from me again when I can report progress. Don’t write any more nonsense about giving me trouble: in the first place, the thing is no trouble; in the second, I should not mind it one bit if it were.

“I am yours very truly,

“Richard Frere.”

The first thing next morning Frere called upon his friend the publisher, who, as soon as he understood that nothing beyond advice was required of him, became very communicative and agreeable; glanced his eye over the verses and approved of them, though he added, with a Burleigh-like shake of the head, that he wished they were anything but poetry. Frere wondered why, and asked him. In reply he learned that the public mind had acquired a sadly practical bias, which leading him to suggest that poetry was the very thing of all others to bring it right again, he was further informed that the evil was much too deeply seated to be affected by so weak an application as the poetry of the present day; and the truth of this assertion appearing undeniable, the subject was dropped.

“The best thing for you to do with these MSS., Mr. Frere,” continued his adviser, “would be to get them inserted in some popular periodical.”

“Well, I don’t object,” returned Frere. “Which had I better send them to? There’s ‘Gently’s Miscellany,’ and the ‘New Weekly,’ and ‘Gainsworth’s Magazine,’ and half-a-dozen more of’em.”

“What do you suppose would be the result of adopting such a line of conduct?” inquired his friend.

“Why, as the things are in themselves good, they’d probably put ’em in next month, and send a cheque for the amount, enclosed in a polite note asking for more.”

“I fear not,” was the answer. “A very promising young friend of mine sent a nicely written paper to the least exclusive of the periodicals you have just mentioned; hearing nothing of it, he ventured at the end of six months to write and inquire its fate. In reply he received a note from the editor, which appeared to him more explicit than satisfactory. It was couched in the following laconic terms:--‘Declined with thanks.’”

“Phewl that’s pleasant,” rejoined Frere. “What would you advise, then, under the circumstances? I place myself quite in your hands.”

His friend leaned back in his chair and considered the matter deeply. At length he seemed to have hit upon some expedient, for he muttered with great emphasis, “Yes, that might do. He could if he would. Yes--certainly!” Then turning suddenly to Frere, he exclaimed, “Mind, you’ll never breathe a word of it to any living being!”

“Not for the world,” returned Frere. “And now, what is it?”

“You’ve heard of ‘Blunt’s Magazine’?”

“Yes; I’ve seen it in several places lately.”

“No doubt; it’s a most admirably conducted publication, and one which is certain to become a great favourite with the public. Now I happen to be acquainted with one of the gentlemen who edit it, and shall be happy to give you a note of introduction to him. But you must promise me to be most careful never to reveal his name.”

“Certainly,” rejoined Frere, “if you wish it. But may I venture to ask what it would signify if all London knew it?”

His companion turned upon him a look of indignant surprise; but perceiving that he made the inquiry in honest simplicity of heart, his face assumed an expression of contemptuous pity as he replied, in such a tone of voice as one would use to a little child who had inquired why it might not set light to a barrel of gunpowder, “My dear sir, you do not know--you cannot conceive the consequences. Such a thing would be utterly impossible.”

He then wrote a few lines, which he handed to Frere, saying, “You will find him at home till eleven.”

“And this mysterious name,” observed Frere, glancing at the address, “is!--eh! nonsense!--Thomas Bracy, Esq. Why, he is an intimate friend of my own! That’s famous. Oh! I’ll have some fun with him. I’m sure I’m extremely obliged to you; good morning.” So saying Frere seized his hat, shouldered his umbrella, and hurried off, overjoyed at his discovery.

The mendacious tiger, of whom we have already made honourable mention, answered Frere’s inquiry as to whether his master was at home with a most decided and unequivocal negative, adding the gratuitous information that, “he had gone down to dine with his uncle at Hampstead the previous day and was not expected home till four o’clock that afternoon.”

“Well, that’s a nuisance,” returned Frere. “I tell you what, boy, I’ll step in and write your master a note.”

“Yes, sir, certainly, if you please, sir; only we’ve been a having the sweeps hin, and the place is hall in a huproar, so as it’s unpossibul to touch nothink.”

At this moment a bell rung violently, and the boy, begging Frere to wait, bounded up the stairs with a cat-like rapidity, returning almost immediately with the information that “He was wery sorry, but he’d just been to the greengrocer’s, and while he was hout master had comed home quite promiscuous.”

“And how about the soot?” asked Frere, a light breaking in upon him.

“Please, sir, cook’s been and cleaned it hup while I were gone.”

“I thought so,” returned Frere; “you’re a nice boy!” Then catching him by the collar of his jacket, he continued, “Tell me, you young scamp, how often do you speak the truth?”

The urchin, thus detected, glanced at Frere’s face, and reading there that any attempt to keep up appearances must prove a dead failure, replied with the utmost sang froid, “Please, sir, whenever I can’t think of nothink better.”

“There’s an answer,” returned Frere meditatively. “Well, you need never learn swimming--water won’t harm you; but mark my words, and beware of hemp.” So saying he loosened his hold on the boy’s collar and followed him upstairs.

The tiger, not having recognised Frere in his European habiliments, had merely told his master that a gentleman wished to see him on business; and Bracy, who had reason to expect a visit from a certain literary Don, had rushed into his dressing-room to exchange a very decidedly “fast” smoking-jacket for the black frock-coat of editorial propriety; for which reason Frere was left to entertain himself for a few minutes with his own society. After examining sundry clever caricature sketches of Bracy’s, which evinced a decided talent for that branch of art, Frere seated himself in an easy-chair in front of a writing-table on which lay a mysterious document, written in a bold, dashing hand, which involuntarily attracted his attention. Perceiving at a glance that it contained no private matter, he amused himself by perusing it. For the reader’s edification we will transcribe it:--

_Blunt’s Magazine, June. Sheets 3 and 4

Questions on Quicksilver...4

The Homeless Heart (Stanzas by L. O. V. E.) . . .1

Hist. Parallels, No. 3 (Cromwell and Cour-de-Lion) . . 7

L’Incomprise (by the Authoress of Inconnue). . .6

Hard Work and Hard Food; or, How would you like it yourself?

A Plea for the Industrial Classes .. . 5

Dog-cart Drives (by the Editor), Chap, 10 The Spicey

Screw;” Chap. II, Doing the Governor” . .. 7

Wanted something light, abt...2_

The last item in this singular catalogue was written in pencil. “Now I should like to know what all that means,” soliloquised Frere. “Something light about two? A luncheon would come under that definition exactly--two whats? that’s the question! Two pounds? It would not be particularly light if it weighed as much as that. Perhaps the figures stand for money--the prices they pay for the magazine articles, I dare say; 4--6--7. Now, if they happen to be sovereigns, that will suit my young lady’s case very nicely. Ah! here he comes.”

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XV. CONTAINS A DISQUISITION ON MODERN POETRY, AND AFFORDS THE READER A PEEP BEHIND THE EDITORIAL CURTAIN

The position in which Frere had placed himself prevented Bracy from discerning his features as he entered, and he accordingly accosted his visitor as follows:--

“My dear sir, I am really distressed to have kept you waiting, but as you arrived I was just jotting down the result of a little flirtation with the Muse.”

“And that is it, I suppose?” observed Frere, turning his face towards the speaker and pointing to the document before alluded to.

“Why, Frere, is it you, man?” exclaimed Bracy in surprise. “As I’m a sinner, I took you for that learned elder, Dr.-------. My young imp told me you were a gentleman who wished to see me on particular business. If that juvenile devil takes to telling lies to instead of for me, I shall have to give him his due for once, in the shape of a sound caning.”

“You may spare yourself the trouble,” returned Frere, “as by some accident he has only spoken the truth this time; for I hope you don’t mean to insinuate that I am anything but a gentleman, and I have most assuredly come to you on business--that is, always supposing Mr. -------- of -------- Street has informed me correctly in regard to your editorial functions.”

“What! has the cacoethes scribendi seized you also, and tempted you into the commission of some little act of light literature?” added Bracy.

“Thank goodness, no,” answered Frere. “I’m happy to say I’m not so far gone as all that comes to yet. No, this is a different case altogether,” and he then proceeded to inform his companion of Rose’s, application, and the necessity which existed to make her talents available for practical purposes.

“Magazine writing affords rather a shady prospect for realising capital in these days,” observed Bracy, shaking his head discouragingly. “Let’s look at the young lady’s interesting efforts. Have you ever seen her? Arundel’s sister ought to be pretty. What’s this? ‘The Preacher’s Address to the Soul.’ Why, it’s a sermon in rhyme. Heaven help the girl! what’s she thinking of?”

“Read it and you’ll see. I like it very much,” returned Frere, slightly nettled at the reception his protégées productions appeared likely to meet with.

“Oh! it’s a sermon clearly,” continued Bracy; “here’s something about vanity and the grave. I heard it all last Sunday at St. Chrysostom’s, only the fellow called it gwave and gwace. He’d picked up some conscientious scruple against the use of the letter R, I suppose. It’s quite wonderful, the new-fangled doctrines they develop nowadays. Hum--ha--‘Making the desert home,’--rather a young idea, eh? ‘Happy birds,’--don’t like that, it puts one too much in mind of ‘jolly dogs’ or ‘odd fish.’ I should have said dicky birds, if it had been me; that’s a very safe expression, and one that people are accustomed to. ‘The joy of flowers,’--what on earth does she mean by that, now? I should say nobody could understand that; for which reason, by the way, it’s the best expression I’ve seen yet. Poetry, to be admired in the present day, must be utterly incomprehensible. We insert very little, but that’s the rule I go by. If I can’t understand one word of a thing, I make a point of accepting it; it’s safe to become popular. ‘Love for time, Heaven for eternity,’--well, that’s all very, nice and pretty, but I’m sorry to say it won’t do; it’s not suited to the tone of the Magazine, you see.”

“I can’t say I do see very clearly at present,” returned Frere; “what kind of poetry is it that you accept?”

“Oh, there are different styles. Now here’s a little thing I’ve got in the June part, ‘The Homeless Heart, by L. O. V. E.’ Her real name is Mary Dobbs, but she couldn’t very well sign herself M.D.; people would think she was a physician. She’s a very respectable young woman (such a girl to laugh), and engaged to an opulent stockbroker. Now listen:

“‘Homeless, forsaken,

Deeply oppress’d,

Raving, yet craving

Agony’s rest;

Bitterly hating,

Fondly relenting,

Sinning, yet winning

Souls to repenting;

When for her sorrow

Comes a to-morrow,

Shall she be bless’d?’”

“That’s a question I can’t take upon myself to answer,” interrupted Frere. “But if those are in the style you consider suited to the tone of your Magazine, it must be a very wonderful publication.”

“I flatter myself it is, rather,” replied Bracy complacently. “But that’s by no means the only style; here’s a thing that will go down with the million sweetly. Listen to this,” and as he spoke he extracted from a drawer a mighty bundle of papers labelled “Accepted Poetry,” and selecting one or two specimens from the mass, read as follows:--

“THE COUNTESS EMMELINE’S DISDAINMENT.”

“Bitter-black the winter’s whirlwind wail’d around the haunted hall,

Where the sheeted snow that fleeted fester’d on the mouldering wall.

“But his blacker soul within him childish calm appear’d to view,

And when gazing, ’twas amazing whence the sceptic terror grew.

“Then her voice, so silver-blended, to a trumpet-blast did swell,

As she task’d him when she asked him, ‘Mr. Johnson, is it well?’

“Ashen-white the curdled traitor paled before her eagle eye,

Whilst denying, in replying, deeper grew his perjury.”

“There! I can’t stand any more of that, at any price!” exclaimed Frere, putting his hands to his ears. “Unless you wish to make me seriously ill, spare me the infliction of those detestable compound adjectives.”

“My dear fellow, you’ve no taste,” returned Bracy. “Why, that’s written by one of our best contributors; an individual that will make Tennyson look to his laurels, and do the Brownings brown, one of these days. But if that’s too grand for you, here’s a little bit of pastoral simplicity may suit you better:--

“‘TO A HERBLET, NAME UNKNOWN.

‘Once upon a holiday,

Sing heigho;

Still with sportive fancy playing

While all nature was a-maying,

On a sunny bank I lay;

Where the happy grass did grow,

‘Neath the fragrant lime-tree row,

Sing heigho!

‘There a little fairy flower,

Sing heigho!

Glancing from its baby eyes

With a look of sweet surprise,

Grew beneath a bower,

Brought unto my soul the dawning

Of a mystic spirit warning,

Sing heigho!

‘Then I wept, and said, despairing,

Sing heigho!

Fate is dark, and earth is lonely,

And the heart’s young blossoms only

Render life worth bearing----”

“Now then, what’s the matter with you?” inquired Bracy, interrupting himself on seeing Frere snatch up his hat and umbrella.

“If you’re going to read any more of that, I’m off; that’s all,” returned Frere. “My powers of endurance are limited.”

“Oh, if you are positively such a Hottentot as to dislike it,” rejoined Bracy, “I’ll not waste any more of its sweet simplicity upon you; but, you’ll see, the gentle public will rave about it to an immense extent.”

“Now tell me honestly, Bracy--you don’t really admire that childish rubbish?”

Thus appealed to, Bracy’s face assumed an expression of most comical significance; and after pausing for a moment in indecision, he replied--

“Well, I’ve a sort of respect for your good opinion, Frere, and I don’t exactly like to send you away fancying me a greater ass than I am; so I’ll honestly confess that, what between affected Germanisms on the one hand and the puerilities of the Wordsworth-and-water school on the other, the poetry of the present day has sunk to a very low ebb indeed.”

“Then don’t you consider it the duty of every honest critic to point this out, and so guide and reform the public taste as to evoke from the ‘well of English undefiled’ a truer and purer style?” returned Frere earnestly.

“My dear fellow, that all sounds very well in theory, but in practice, I’m afraid (to use a metaphor derived from one of the humane and intellectual amusements of our venerated forefathers), that cock won’t fight. It may be all very well for some literary Don Quixote, with a pure Saxon taste and a long purse, to tilt at the public’s pet windmills, because he conceives them to be giant abuses. If he meets with a fall, he need only put his hand in his pocket and purchase a plaster, getting a triple shield of experience in for the money. But it is far otherwise with a magazine. If that is to continue in existence it must pay; in order to pay it must be rendered popular; to make a thing popular you must go with the stream of public opinion, and not against it. The only chance is to head the tide and turn it in the direction you desire. But to attempt that a man ought to possess first-rate talent, and I’m free to confess that I, for one, do not; and therefore, you see, as people must be amused, I’m very willing to amuse them in their own way, as long as I find it pleasant and profitable to do so. Voila! do you comprehend?”

“I comprehend this much,” returned Frere gruffly, “that the ground of your argument is expediency and not principle; and I tell you plainly that does not suit me, and I’m afraid Miss Arundel is too much of my mind in that particular for her writings to suit your wonderful magazine; so the sooner I take my departure the better for your morning’s work.”

“Stay a moment, don’t get on stilts, man,” returned Bracy, resuming his examination of Rose’s papers. “Is there nothing but verses? What have we here? ‘My First Dinner-Party’--this seems more likely.”

He paused, and ran his eye over several of the pages, muttering from time to time as he went along, “Yes, good lively style--quick powers of observation--a very graphic touch--bravo! ha! ha! here, listen to this--

“‘Immediately before me stood a dish which even my inexperience believed itself able to recognise; it was jelly of some kind, with certain dark objects encased in it, as flies occasionally are in amber. These opaque portions I settled, in my own mind, must be preserved fruit, and accordingly (fearful lest, in my ignorance of fashionable dishes, I should say “yes” to some tremendous delicacy which might prove utterly impracticable), when invited to partake of it, I graciously signified my assent. Imagine my horror when, on putting the first mouthful to my lips, I discovered the jelly was savoury--i.e. all pepper and salt, and the creature embedded in it a fragment of some dreadful fish! Eating the thing was out of the question; the mere taste I had taken of it made me feel uncomfortable: an attempt to conceal it beneath the knife and fork proved utterly futile. I glanced at the butler, but he was too much absorbed in his own dignity and the dispensation of champagne to observe me; I gazed appealingly at a good-looking young footman, but he merely pulled up his shirt-collar foppishly, thinking he had made an impression; I even ventured to call, in a low voice, to the sprightly waiter who had eloped with my untouched plate of lamb five minutes before, but he did not hear me; and there I sat with a huge plateful of horrible food before me, which I could neither eat nor get rid of, “a cynosure for neighbouring eyes,” forced, as my fears suggested, to run the gauntlet of all the mocking glances of the assembled company.’”

“There,” continued Bracy, “I call that a stunning description; I could not have done it better myself. The girl writes so easily! Let me see, 18--25--28 lines in a page of manuscript; there’s not much of it, I think I can get it in. I want two pages of amusing matter in the fourth sheet.”

“Ahl something light, about two. Now I understand,” exclaimed Frere, pointing to the mysterious document on the table; “that was not a memorandum in regard to luncheon, then.”

“A what?” returned Bracy, shouting with laughter. “No,” he continued, as soon as he had in some measure recovered his composure, “that is the ‘make-up,’ as we call it, of the third and fourth sheets of the Magazine.”

“Indeed!” returned Frere. “I should think it must require a great deal of careful reflection to select suitable articles and arrange them properly.”

“Eh! no, not a bit; the thing’s simple enough when you once get in the way of it. Have plenty of variety, that’s the grand point--what one doesn’t like, another will. Take large shot for big birds, and small shot for little ones, and then you’ll bag the whole covey; that’s my maxim. Now, look here: first we begin with a scientific article, ‘Questions on Quicksilver.’ There’s not one reader in a hundred that can understand that paper when they’ve read it; and very few even of those who can take it in care two straws about quicksilver--why should they? But they all read it, because it’s a cheap way of getting up the necessary amount of scientific jargon to hash into small talk. I never look at that man’s papers myself; I know they’re safe, though I can’t understand a word of ’em--but they’re a great help to the Magazine. Then comes our friend, the ‘Homeless Heart.’ I put that in as a drop of romantic barley-sugar to soften the women’s throats after swallowing the science. Next we have ‘An Historical Parallel.’ Famous fellows they are; the principal dodge in writing them is to take an ‘entirely new reading of the character,’ as the actors say. In the present article, if I recollect right, they prove Cour-de-Lion to have been a hypocritical fanatic, and Cromwell a chivalric, magnanimous enthusiast. It’s safe to take, depend upon it. ‘L’Incomprise’ tells its own tale--it’s as close an imitation of Eugene Sue and George Sand as English morality will tolerate, though the invention of guttapercha, or some other elastic agent, enables even that stiff material nowadays to stretch to lengths which would astonish our grandmothers. Then comes the ‘Plea for the Industrial Classes’--a regular savage poke at the present Poor Law (we’re obliged to do a little bit of political economy as well as our neighbours, you know); it’s awfully heavy, but it will neutralise any ill effects ‘L’Incomprise’ may have had on fathers of families all the better. Lastly, there’s my own little thing, ‘Dog-cart Drives.’ Ahem! have you seen that?”

“Not I,” replied Frere; “I’ve no time for reading tra---- I mean novels and that sort of thing.”

“I believe it’s liked; I hear it’s a good deal talked about,” continued Bracy with an air of bashful self-complacency. “‘Bell’s Life’ spoke very handsomely of it last week; there were six whole lines devoted to it, I think. Upon my word I should like you to read it.”

At this moment Frere suddenly discovered that he had remained over his time, and should be too late for some deeply interesting experiments that were to come off that morning at what his companion termed his science shop; so receiving an assurance from Bracy that Rose’s sketch should be inserted in the Magazine, and that he would consider what would be her best mode of proceeding in regard to the poetry, the friends shook hands and parted, Frere promising to make himself acquainted with the subject-matter of “Dog-cart Drives” at an early opportunity.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XVI. MISS LIVINGSTONE SPEAKS A BIT OF HER MIND

It was a lovely morning in early summer, when the sun, shining into Lewis’s bedroom at Broadhurst, aroused him from a heavy dreamless sleep, the result of his previous night’s dissipation at Lady Lombard’s. The sensation of waking for the first time in a strange place is usually a disagreeable one; there is an unfamiliar newness in the aspect of everything around us, an absence of old associations, which to an impressible disposition is singularly disheartening. This was peculiarly the case with Lewis; the costly furniture of the room, arranged with a stiff propriety, the spotless carpet, the chair-covers too clean and slippery to be sat upon, the bright cold mirrors, the polished grate, in which a fire would have been high treason, each and all suggestive of the chilling influence of that rigid disciplinarian Miss Livingstone, served painfully to realise his new position. Splendour without comfort was an anomaly he had never before encountered, and in his then frame of mind it aroused all the bitter feelings which even his strength of will was unable to subdue, and he mentally compared himself to a slave working in gilded chains, and longed for independence, no matter through what hardships, struggles, and dangers it must be attained. But there was a healthy energy about his mind which prevented his yielding to these morbid feelings; hastily dressing himself, he found his way into the pleasure garden, and as it was yet early, strolled onward through the park.

After wandering about for nearly an hour, the calm beauty of the scenery and the exhilarating freshness of the morning air producing their natural effect upon his spirits, it occurred to him that his absence might be commented upon, and possibly give offence; accordingly, he retraced his steps towards the house. Ignorant of the locale, however, he was unable to discover the door by which he had gone out, and after making one or two attempts in a wrong direction, was compelled to effect his entrance through a French window opening into a conservatory. Lewis possessed a great taste for, and some knowledge of botany, and his attention was at once attracted by the rare and beautiful plants around him. So completely was he engrossed by his admiration, that not until he heard his own name pronounced did he become aware that he was not the sole tenant of the conservatory. Turning at the sound, he perceived Annie Grant, in a very becoming costume, busily employed in altering the arrangement of certain flower-pots.

Before we proceed farther, it may be as well to afford the reader an insight into Lewis’s feelings towards this young lady, as they were by no means of such a nature as might be expected from a young man towards a pretty and agreeable girl, with whom he was about to be domesticated. In order to account for his peculiar state of mind on this subject we must take a retrospective glance at an episode in Lewis’s student life, which has been already alluded to in a conversation between Frere and his friend. About a year before the period at which our story opened Lewis had encountered, at a festive meeting of the worthy citizens of Bonn, the very pretty daughter of a wealthy shopkeeper, and struck by her bright eyes and a certain naïve simplicity of manner, had danced with her the greater part of the evening. Flattered by the attentions of the handsome young Englishman, the damsel, who (her simplicity being confined entirely to manner) was as arrant a little flirt as ever caused a heartache, took care that the acquaintance should continue; and while she was merely bent on adding to her train of admirers, Lewis fell in love with her as deeply as a man can do with a girl completely his inferior in mind as well as in station. Imagination, however, which at eighteen is alarmingly active, supplied all deficiencies, and Lewis continued to dream his lady-love was an angel, till one fine morning the fact of her elopement with a young German baron, who looked upon matrimony as a superfluous ordinance, induced him to alter his opinion. With the termination of the adventure the reader is already acquainted, but the effect upon Lewis’s disposition was one which time might weaken but could never efface. The fatal lesson that one who seemed true and pure was not so, once learnt could never be forgotten; the seeds of mistrust were sown, and strive as he might, the perfect faith, the bright, eager confidence of youth, were lost to him for ever.

Ànnie, as the reader is aware, was unusually lovely, and Lewis accordingly regarded her in the light of a dangerous man-trap; besides this, oddly enough, she was by no means unlike an ethereal and spiritualised representation of “Gretchen”; the features and colouring were similar, and the arch simplicity of the Fraulein’s manner was part and parcel of Annie’s very nature. The painful recollections which this resemblance excited added unconsciously to the prejudice (for it amounted to that) which Lewis had conceived against the General’s daughter; but the true source of the feeling lay deeper. However circumstances may cause him to affect, or even to believe the contrary, there is in every man’s heart a latent desire to render himself agreeable to any young and pretty woman into whose society he may be thrown, more especially where the individual is conscious of possessing powers of pleasing if he chooses to exert them; and even Lewis’s slight experience of society had sufficed to enlighten him in regard to this point, on which the dullest are usually clear-sighted. But coupled with this feeling came the humiliating consciousness that although by birth and education Miss Grant’s equal, the position he held in the family rendered him her inferior; and this idea was galling in the extreme to Lewis’s haughty nature. Annie, on the other hand, profoundly ignorant of all these wheels within wheels, entertained the most amiable and benevolent intentions towards her new associate. She knew he was unfortunate, she saw he was a gentleman, and she had heard that he was undertaking a duty he disliked, for the sake of his mother and sister; and for all these reasons her woman’s heart warmed towards him, and she determined to do what she was able to render his position as little painful as might be; moreover, she was sufficiently acquainted with the idiosyncrasies of her father and great-aunt to be aware that any particular kindness the young tutor would be likely to meet with in the family must emanate from herself. Accordingly, when Lewis, having replied to her cordial “Good morning, Mr. Arundel,” by slightly raising his hat, and making a formal bow, was about to pass on, she renewed the attack by adding--

“May I trouble you to move this flower-pot for me? it is so heavy.”

Thus appealed to, Lewis stopped short, and for a moment debated with himself the possibility of refusing; but without being actually ill-bred, such a possibility did not exist; so, resigning himself to his fate with a very ill grace, he deposited his hat on a vacant flower-stand, and tossing back his dark curls with the air of a sulky lion shaking his mane, he took the garden-pot, which indeed seemed too heavy for Annie’s little hands, asking, with a stately coldness by no means in character with the mild nature of the inquiry--

“Where would you wish to have it placed, Miss Grant?”

“Here, if you will be so kind,” returned the young lady, indicating the spot by pointing with the end of a pert little parasol.

Lewis, having installed the plant in its appointed place, was again about to take his departure, but ere he did so, glancing involuntarily at the effect of his labour, his quick eye at once discerned the object of the changes Annie was striving to effect, and perceived that, in’ order to carry out her design, several heavy flowers yet required moving. Nothing, however, was farther from his thoughts than the idea of volunteering his assistance, when Annie, catching the direction of his eye, continued--

“Yes, the White Camellia is too low.”

“While the Rhododendron is as much too high,” returned Lewis eagerly, and forgetting his proud scruples in the impulse of the moment, he set to work with the greatest energy to complete the arrangement which his correct taste acknowledged to be an improvement.

The Camellia had been exalted and the Rhododendron abased, and many other “pets of the parterre” had experienced sudden changes of position, and still Lewis worked with unabated zeal, and still his fair companion directed and approved, when just as, poised like a flying Mercury on one foot half-way up a high flower-stand, he was stretching to his utmost to install a gaudy Cactus, all red and green like a paroquet, on the topmost pinnacle, a stately tread was heard approaching, and General Grant entered the conservatory. Lewis coloured with mingled anger and annoyance at being detected in such a situation, but Annie good-naturedly came to his assistance. Tripping up to her father and taking both his hands, she exclaimed--

“Good morning, papa. Welcome to dear old Broadhurst once again. How pretty it all looks! But they have placed my flowers so stupidly, I must have every one of them altered. I’ve been working away for half-an-hour at least, and as Mr. Arundel happened to be passing, I pressed him into the service, for some of the pots are so heavy.”

“Much too heavy for you to attempt to move, my dear,” returned the General in a tone of marked disapproval; “but why did you not summon one of the gardeners to make the alteration you wished, without troubling Mr. Arundel, who must have had other duties to perform?”

“As it was your desire, sir, to be present at my introduction to my future pupil,” replied Lewis, who had by this time reached terra firma and recovered his self-possession, “I have refrained from making any attempt to see him till I should have learned your further wishes on the subject. My time was therefore quite at Miss Grant’s disposal, if I could be in any way useful to her.”

“My daughter is obliged by your politeness, sir, but will not trespass upon it further,” replied the General coldly. “My dear Annie,” he continued, “it only wants ten minutes to nine; you will oblige me by preparing for breakfast. Punctuality is a quality by the neglect of which all order is subverted, propriety set at nought, much valuable time wasted which can never be recalled, and the comfort of a family totally destroyed. Your excellent aunt is aware of my opinion on this subject, and during the twelve years she has done me the favour to preside over my household she has never kept me waiting one minute.”

“‘Well, dear papa, I’ll do my best to please you,” returned Annie; “but,” she added, laying her hand on-his shoulder caressingly, and looking up in his face with a glance half mischievous and half imploring, “you won’t expect me to be so terribly perfect as Aunt Martha? Recollect, she is three times as old as I am, and ought therefore to be three times as wise.”

The General tried to look displeased, but he could not resist Annie for he was human after all; so, stroking her glossy curls, he told her that Mrs. Botherfille (a serious schoolmistress, who, for the trifling consideration of £300 per annum, condescended to allow the youthful female aristocracy of the land to sit at her feet and learn from her lips how to regenerate society through the medium of frivolous accomplishments) had failed in curing her of talking nonsense, at which Annie laughed merrily and then tripped off, turning as she passed Lewis to take a last glance at the newly-arranged flowers, and saying, “Now, don’t they look pretty, Mr. Arundel?”

As the directions in regard to Lewis and his pupil’s separate establishment (for such the isolated suite of rooms they were to occupy might be considered) had not as yet been communicated to the servants, General Grant requested the favour of Lewis’s company at breakfast with as much ceremony as he could have used if he had been inviting a royal duke to a banquet; and as a request from such a quarter was equivalent to a command, Lewis could only comply. Half a minute before the clock struck nine, Miss Livingstone, that human hedge-hog, rustled into the breakfast-room, more stiff and starched in mind and body than any other living creature. As for her cap, a railway train might have passed over it without injuring that rigid mystery, while her gown was at the least sabre, not to say bullet-proof. If ever there were a wife fitted for our Iron Duke, that adamantine spinster was the woman--only that to have married her would have required more courage than twenty Waterloos!

As the clock struck nine the household servants made their appearance, and all the family knelt down (with the exception of Miss Livingstone, who, being evidently fashioned as the ancients believed elephants to be, without knee-joints, merely reared up against the breakfast-table, as the next best thing she could do), while the General read them a short, sharp, but polite prayer, after which he blessed them very much as if he were doing the reverse, and suffered them to depart. The breakfast was excellent as far as the commissariat department was concerned, and the tea was not so cold as might have been expected considering that Miss Livingstone poured it out.

Even Lewis’s short acquaintance with that austere virgin’s usual expression of countenance led him to believe that a darker shade than ordinary lowered upon her brow; nor was he mistaken, for after despatching a piece of dry toast with the air of an acidulated martyr, the spirit (we fear it was not an amiable one) moved her, and she spoke.

“I must say, General, your benevolence has rather overpowered your judgment, to my poor thinking, in this singular addition to the establishment at Broadhurst. I really consider that I ought to have been a little more clearly informed as to the facts of the case before these new arrangements were actually decided on.”

“If you refer to Sir Walter Desborough, madam,” returned the General sternly, “I must recall to your memory the fact of my having mentioned to you, this day week, my intention that my ward should reside at Broadhurst.”

“I am not in the habit of forgetting any communication you do me the honour of making to me, General Grant, nor have I forgotten the conversation to which you refer; but if you mentioned that your ward was a dangerous idiot, and that you expected me to preside over a private lunatic asylum, that circumstance certainly has escaped me.” The wrinkles on the General’s forehead deepened as he replied with a glance towards Lewis, “You forget, Miss Livingstone, that we are not in private.”

“Really,” rejoined the lady, “if, as I believe, that young” (and she laid an ill-natured emphasis on the word) “gentleman has undertaken the duties of keeper----”

“Tutor,” interposed the General sharply.

“Well, tutor, then, if you like to call it so,” continued Miss Livingstone, “the name does not much signify. But if Mr. Arundel is to have the care of this dreadful boy, the sooner he knows what his duties will be, and sets about them, the better; for I tell you plainly, General Grant, that unless there’s a man about the creature who can manage him, I won’t sleep another night in the house with him. There’s no trusting those idiots; we may all be murdered in our beds.”

As the good lady, who had by this time got the steam up to a very high degree of pressure, hazarded the above uncomfortable suggestion, Annie, who had been listening with an expression of painful annoyance to her aunt’s harangue, suddenly turned pale and glanced with a look of appealing inquiry towards her father, who replied to her rather than to Miss Livingstone in the following terms:--

“Really, my dear Annie, I am compelled to say that the fears with which your excellent relative” (and he looked bayonets at Minerva, who shook her head till her terrific cap rustled like an angry hailstorm) “would seek to inspire you are utterly without foundation.” He paused, took a pinch of snuff viciously, as though it were gunpowder and he was priming himself for a fresh discharge; and thus prepared he turned to Lewis, saying--but we will reserve the volley for another chapter.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XVII. CONTAINS MUCH FOLLY AND A LITTLE COMMON SENSE

“The truth of the matter is this, Mr. Arundel,” began General Grant. “From a mistaken policy your future pupil has been indulged in every caprice of his weak intellect, till the slightest opposition to his wishes irritates him beyond all control that has yet been exercised over him; but as his only attendants are an old female domestic who was his nurse, and her son, a lad younger than Sir Walter himself, whom he has been foolishly permitted to look upon in the light of a companion, this is not so much to be wondered at.”

“It will be a difficult task to eradicate faults of temper which have been allowed to become habitual, especially where the reasoning faculties are defective,” observed Lewis thoughtfully.

“You may well say that, sir,” chimed in Miss Livingstone. “His reasoning faculties (as you please to term them) are so defective, that in my humble opinion the boy is neither more nor less than a fool; and you may as well try to drive a pig straight as to talk sense to a fool. But how a man so particular as General Grant can have brought such an inmate into his family, and then expect that things are to go on with the order and precision that----”

“Madam!” began the General in a voice of thunder, his stock of patience utterly exhausted by this indirect mode of attack. But Annie, with a degree of tact and moral courage for which Lewis had by no means been disposed to give her credit, laid her hand imploringly on her father’s arm, and whispered a few magical words which served to avert the storm that had appeared inevitable. An awkward pause ensued, which was broken by the General, who, rising majestically from his chair, informed Lewis that he should request his attendance in half-an-hour; then casting a withering glance at Miss Livingstone, which caused that respectable porcupine of private life to bristle up if possible more fiercely than before, he quitted the room. No sooner had her nephew-in-law’s retreating footsteps ceased to echo through the long corridor than the good lady, freed from the restraint of his presence, did then and there openly, avowedly, and with much vehemence, utter a declaration of war to the knife with that gallant officer, issued a protest against the introduction of “rampant idiots” into that heretofore peaceful family, and finally assert her own liberty of action by promulgating her determination to depart forthwith, leaving her companions to contemplate the agreeable contingencies of “being frightened out of their wits every day, and murdered in their beds all night.”

Having in some degree relieved her mind by this explosion, she applied the superfluous steam still remaining to the purpose of locomotion, her crisp schako rending the air, and her high-heeled shoes knocking sharp little double knocks, as of an angry postman, against the polished oak floor as she swept along.

And these “pleasant passages” were the first votive offering which Lewis saw presented to the Lares and Penates of Broadhurst.

General Grant sat bolt upright in his easy-chair, as if he were on his charger, and his face wore an expression of scrutinising authority, as of a commander about to review his troops, when Lewis, in obedience to his summons, entered the library.

“Take a chair, Mr. Arundel. I have desired the attendance of Sir Walter Desborough, and expect he will be here immediately.”

In compliance with this request, Lewis seated himself to await the arrival of his future pupil; but the minutes glided by, and still no pupil appeared. At length, just as the General’s small stock of patience became exhausted and he had begged Lewis to ring the bell, the butler returned, saying that it was impossible to induce Sir Walter to leave his room unless his female attendant might come with him. General Grant frowned portentously, glanced expressively towards Lewis, muttering, “Some of the evil effects of a grievous system of neglect,” then added, to the servant, “You may desire Mrs. Peters to accompany Sir Walter Desborough.”

“One of the first points to which you will have to direct your attention, Mr. Arundel,” continued the General as the domestic quitted the apartment, “is to induce my ward to dispense with the society of this person and her son. He may retain their services as attendants, but must be taught no longer to regard them as companions.”

As he spoke the door opened and admitted three individuals. Of these, the first who claims our notice was the unfortunate young baronet who was to be Lewis’s future charge. He appeared about fourteen, but was tall for that age; his figure was slight and not ungraceful, and his features were handsome; his forehead was high, but narrow and receding; his eyes were bright and clear, though totally devoid of expression, and there was an appearance of weakness and irresolution about the mouth, which too clearly indicated his want of intellect. Mrs. Peters was a very stout old lady, on whom the cares of life and a rare specimen of the female costume of some bygone age appeared to sit easily; her outline might have suggested to an imaginative beholder the idea of a huge pillow which had “come alive” and made itself a gown out of one of the chintz bed-curtains, forgetting the waist. Her conversation was embellished by a redundancy of mild ejaculations, amongst which a benediction on her own “heart alive,” and an apostrophe to a solitary possessive pronoun which had lost its noun, and agreed with nothing in particular, stood pre-eminent. Her stock of ideas, which was by no means inconveniently large, had been presented to her in her youth, and required altering to suit the present fashion. Still she was a good old woman in her way; her “heart alive” was a very kind one; and she doated on poor Walter, spoiling and indulging him till she had made even a greater fool of him than nature had intended. The trio was completed by her hopeful son Robert, or, as he was more familiarly termed, Bob Peters, who, one year younger than Sir Walter, was as clever and mischievous an imp as ever indued a page’s livery and bore a splendid crop of buttons to fascinate society. Pressing close to his nurse’s side and dragging the pretty page after him by the wrist, Walter entered the alarming presence of his guardian and his tutor, hanging back like a startled colt the moment he perceived a stranger.

“Walter, come here; I want to introduce you to this gentleman,” exclaimed General Grant in the blandest tone he could command; but in vain--Walter only hung his head and shrank closer to his protectress.

“Oh, my! Walter dearie, go to the General. Bless my heart alive, you ain’t so silly as to be afraid of him,” exclaimed Mrs. Peters, emphasising the him. as though it referred to a pet lamb or a tame rabbit.

“Go in and win, Master Walter; the gentleman won’t bite yer,” suggested Bob in an audible whisper.

But their remonstrances produced no effect upon Walter, and served only to increase General Grant’s irritation.

“He must be taught obedience, sir,” he remarked quickly, appealing to Lewis. “Nothing can be done until he becomes obedient;” then turning to the old nurse, he continued, “Mrs. Peters, Sir Walter will not require your attendance at present; you may leave the room, and take your son with you.”

“I’m afeard, sir, you won’t be able to do nothing with Master Walter without one of us stops with him. You see, he’s kind of used to us,” urged Mrs. Peters.

“I shall feel obliged by your leaving the room, Mrs. Peters. When I require your advice! will inform you of the fact,” returned the General, walking with stately steps towards the door, which he held partially open to permit the egress of the servants, while he prevented Walter from following them.

As he saw his friends depart the boy raised his eyes, which gleamed with mingled fear and anger, to General Grant’s face, but cold inflexibility was written there so unmistakably that even the darkened perceptions of the idiot could not fail to perceive it; and apparently feeling instinctively that resistance would be unavailing, his countenance assumed a sulky, dogged expression, and he suffered himself to be led to a seat without opposition. But, despite this success, the General seemed as far from gaining his point as ever; neither kindness nor coercion could induce Walter to pay the slightest attention to the remarks addressed to him, or to utter a single word. Any one, to have seen him at that moment, would have imagined him to be hopelessly imbecile. That such was not the case, however, Lewis, who without interfering openly had been closely observing him from the moment of his entrance, felt convinced. He had particularly watched the play of his features, and had remarked when he first came in that they were characterised by an expression of fear and shyness rather than of stupidity, and that it was not until his guardian had banished those whom he knew well, and in whom he had confidence, that they assumed the look of stolid sulkiness which they now wore. After making several unsuccessful attempts to elicit from his ward some proof of intelligence, General Grant at length quitted the room in search of his daughter, actuated thereunto by a vague consciousness that his own manner might possibly be deficient in conciliatory power, and that Annie, from the fact of her belonging to the softer sex, possessed a decided advantage over him in this particular. Availing himself of this opportunity, Lewis caught up a young kitten which was playing about the room, towards which he had observed Walter cast several furtive glances; and caressing the little animal as he held it in his arms, he approached his pupil, saying quietly--

“I’m sure you like the kitten, Walter, she is so playful and pretty?”

The boy made no answer, but the sullen look in his face gradually gave place to a milder expression, and he glanced from Lewis to the kitten with an appearance of intelligence, for which any one who had seen him a minute before would not have given him credit. Lewis saw that he had touched the right string, and continued in the same kind and gentle manner--

“We must make a great pet of the kitten. She will play with us and amuse us nicely.”

As he said this Walter drew closer to him, and seeming, in his interest about the kitten, to forget his fear of the stranger, held out his hands for the little creature to be given to him.

“Will you be kind to her if I let you have her?” continued Lewis.

Walter nodded in token of assent, and Lewis handed him the kitten, which he immediately began to fondle and play with, laughing with childish glee at its gambols. After amusing himself in this manner for several minutes he suddenly turned to Lewis and asked in a half-whisper--

“Do you like ponies, too?”

Delighted at this proof of the success of his attempt to win his pupil’s confidence, Lewis signified his intense affection for ponies in general, and inquired whether Walter possessed one. On receiving an affirmative nod he continued--

“And are you very fond of riding it?”

This question seemed to perplex the boy, for he made no reply, and a half-puzzled, vacant expression banished the gleam of intelligence which had lighted up his features. Lewis repeated the inquiry in two or three different forms, but with no better success. A pause ensued, during which the young tutor pondered with himself the best means of calling forth and strengthening the faint germs of intellect which evidently existed in the clouded mind of the poor idiot, when Walter again looked up and exclaimed abruptly--

“Bob says I’m to ride the pony when somebody comes to take care of me.”

“And I am that somebody,” returned Lewis, smiling good-naturedly. “You shall ride the pony to-day if you like.”

This seemed to please him, for he nodded and laughed, and resumed his gambols with the kitten. Suddenly a new idea appeared to strike him, for his face became clouded, and drawing close to Lewis, he whispered, pointing to the door by which General Grant had left the apartment--

“Don’t tell him, or he won’t let me go.”

“Why should you think so, Walter? That gentleman is your guardian, and means to be very kind to you,” returned Lewis; but Walter shook his head and repeated--

“Don’t tell him; he won’t let me go.”

At this moment the General returned, accompanied by Annie, whose feelings of sympathy and pity were slightly tempered by the fears which Miss Livingstone had laboured industriously to instil into her mind. Lewis drew the General on one side and gave him an outline of all that had passed during his absence, adding, that although it was of course too soon for him to judge with any degree of accuracy to what extent they might proceed, it was evident his pupil possessed some reasoning powers which cultivation might develop. And he was going on to add that harshness appeared to him likely rather to increase than diminish the evil, when his attention was attracted by an exclamation of anger from Walter.

The moment General Grant returned his ward had relapsed into his former state of sullen apathy, and all Annie’s attempts to induce him to notice her only appeared to increase his obstinacy, till at length she began to stroke the kitten, which he still held in his arms. This, for some unexplained cause (probably because he fancied she might be about to injure his favourite, or to deprive him of it), irritated him beyond control, and forgetting his fear in his anger, he uttered the exclamation above alluded to, and struck at her fiercely with a riding-whip which he had brought in with him. Springing forward, however, before the blow could descend, Lewis caught his uplifted arm and held it in an iron grasp, while in a grave but stern voice he said--

“Walter, I am surprised at you. Attempt to strike a lady! You must never do such a thing again.”

The calm, impressive manner in which he uttered these words appeared to produce a beneficial effect in subduing the boy’s irritation; for after making one furious but unavailing attempt to free himself, he sat perfectly still and unresisting. Nothing, however, could induce him to make friends with Annie, or to allow her to touch his beloved kitten, though when Lewis caressed it, and even took it in his arms, he appeared well contented.

A fortnight’s careful study of the young baronet’s character only served to confirm the impressions Lewis had received during this first interview. That he possessed some powers of reasoning and reflection was evident; but the great difficulty lay in finding a key to the workings of his mind by aid of which these powers might be strengthened and developed. Any direct question seemed to puzzle and confuse him, and the only plan which appeared to offer any hope of success was, if possible, to discover some train of thought (if the vague and desultory fancies which flitted across his feeble brain deserved to be so called), and then to lead him gently on by suggesting new ideas, some of which he might adopt and retain. But it was an up-hill task; and often when Lewis, with a degree of calm perseverance which in one of his eager and impetuous disposition could scarcely have been looked for, had succeeded in making him acquire, as he believed, a leading idea on which he hoped to base some superstructure of elementary knowledge, a look of hopeless vacuity would show that no progress had been made, and that the labour must all be gone through again. At other times some shrewd remark or pertinent question would take Lewis as it were by surprise, and induce him to imagine that he had underrated his pupil’s mental capacity, and that the fault must lie in his own inexperience of such cases. But there was much to be unlearned as well as to be taught. As is often the case in persons of weak intellect, the mere animal tendencies were unusually strong. He was subject to violent bursts of passion, if his will were in the slightest degree thwarted, which it required all Lewis’s firmness and strength of character to contend against successfully. Occasionally fits of melancholy would seize him, during which he would sit for hours without speaking, his head resting dejectedly on his hand, and nothing appearing able to interest or amuse him. If not prevented, he would eat so voraciously as to injure his health. He was also indolent and averse to active exertion of any kind. But Lewis took much pains to teach him to ride, and the exercise thus obtained tended greatly to strengthen his constitution. His fondness for animals was one of the most amiable points in his disposition. He and Faust ere long became inseparable, and Lewis found the dog a most useful auxiliary in inculcating--by example, not precept, for Faust could not quite talk--the necessity of implicit obedience.

A month soon glided by, and at its expiration Lewis informed General Grant that if he still wished him to undertake the care of his ward he was willing to do so; an offer of which that noble commander joyfully availed himself, being in his secret soul equally surprised and pleased at the degree of success which had already attended Lewis’s efforts, and only too glad to secure the services of one who could and would save him all further difficulty in regard to the onerous and troublesome responsibility which he had taken upon himself. For the next six months of his residence at Broadhurst Lewis saw but little of the family. During the greater part of that time the General was absent on a visit to some relations in Scotland, whither his daughter accompanied him. Miss Livingstone, having supplied herself with a resident victim in the person of Miss Susan Pinner, an unhappy little fourteen-year-old cousin once removed (the further the better from such a relative, we should imagine), spent her time very much to her own satisfaction in daily offering up the helpless sacrifice thus acquired at the altar of her evil temper, and in tyrannising over the poor of the neighbourhood with most excruciating benevolence. A sick family was a rare treat to this venerable scourge. Nauseous were the medicines she forced down the throats of the destitute, aggravating the directions with which she tortured the suffering, hateful the dietary on which she nourished all sick persons and young children! Truly an irritating poor man’s plaster was that sphinx of modern society, Minerva Livingstone, and Odipus himself would never have guessed at one-half her modes of ingeniously tormenting indigent merit. Fortunately, working out the details of this ferocious philanthropy occupied so much of the good lady’s time that Lewis enjoyed a happy immunity from her attentions, and was allowed to put in practice his theories for the improvement of his pupil without let or hindrance; and it was with a degree of pleasure, which was in itself sufficient reward for his trouble, that he perceived his plans likely to succeed beyond his most sanguine expectations. Affairs were in this position when--but such an interesting disclosure requires a fresh chapter.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XVIII. LEWIS RECEIVES A MYSTERIOUS COMMUNICATION, AND IS RUN AWAY WITH BY TWO YOUTHFUL BEAUTIES

The arrival of the post-bag was an interesting event to Lewis, as almost the only pleasure he allowed himself was a rapid interchange of letters with his sister; and to this correspondence was he indebted for an amount of warm sympathy, judicious advice, and affectionate interest in his pursuits which tended greatly to relieve the monotony and diminish the irksomeness of his situation; but with the exception of Rose and (occasionally) Frere, his correspondents were exceedingly limited in number, and their epistles few and far between. It was then a matter of no small surprise to him to receive a businesslike-looking letter in an unknown handwriting. To break the seal (which bore the impression of the letters J. and L. united in a flourishing cipher that at first sight looked like a bad attempt to delineate a true lover’s knot) was the work of a moment. The contents were as follows:--

“Sir,--My partner and myself, having some connection with Warlington, were cognisant of the death of your late lamented father, which sad event was reported to have been caused by the sudden discovery of some important information contained in a public journal. It is in our power to impart to you the nature of that information; but as we have every reason to believe its importance has not been overrated, we are only prepared to do so on the following terms:--viz., the present receipt of ten guineas, and a bond pledging yourself to pay to us the sum of £200 should the information prove as valuable as we conceive it to be. Awaiting the favour of a speedy answer,

“We have the honour to remain, Sir,

“Yours obediently,

“Jones & Levi, Attorneys-at-Law.

“----Street, Old Bailey.”

“What a strange letter!” soliloquised Lewis, after perusing it carefully for the second time. “The writer is evidently acquainted with the circumstances of my poor father’s death, but that proves nothing; the newspaper story rests on the evidence of the library-keeper at Warlington, and he probably told it to every one who came into his shop for the next week; and this tale may have been invented to suit the circumstances, with a view to extort money. One has heard of such rogueries; still, in that case, why insist on the £200 bond? That seems as if Messrs. Jones & Levi themselves had faith in the value of their information; or it may only be done in order to give me that impression. I’ll send the letter up to Richard Frere and ask him to ferret out these gents--I dare say they are thorough gents. Walter, I will not allow you to give Faust all your gloves to play with; that is the third pair he has bitten to pieces this week. Faust! drop it, sir! Do you hear me? That’s right--good, obedient dog! Now for Master Richard.”

So saying he took a pen and wrote, in a delicately-formed yet free and bold hand, the following note:--

“Dear old Frere,--Certain individuals, signing themselves ‘Jones & Levi,’ have seen fit to favour me with the enclosed mysterious communication, which on the face of the thing looks very like an attempt to swindle. As there is, however, just a remote possibility that something may come of it (for their account of the circumstances preceding my poor father’s death tallies exactly with the recital my sister gave me on my return), you will, I am sure, add one more to your many kindnesses by investigating this matter for me. You must bear in mind that £10 notes are by no means too plentiful with me, and that, under present circumstances, my bond for £200 would scarcely be worth as many pence. My poor charge progresses slowly; he has become much more docile and tractable, and is considerably improved in manners and general amiability, but his mental capacity is lamentably deficient; his reasoning powers and usual habits of thought are about on a par with those of an average child of six or seven years old; many intelligent children of that age are greatly his superiors in intellect: still, he makes visible progress, and that is recompense sufficient for any expenditure of time and trouble. He appears much attached to me, and (perhaps for that very reason--perhaps from the necessity to love something, which exists in the nature of every man worthy of the name) I have become so deeply interested in him, that duties which six months ago I should have reckoned irksome in the extreme, I now find a real pleasure in performing. I bore you with these details because... because you are so old a friend that I have acquired a prescriptive right to bore you when I like. As Walter and Faust (who clearly knows that I am writing to you, and sends you an affectionate wag of the tail) are becoming impatient at the length of my epistle, there being a walk in prospect dependent on my arriving at a satisfactory conclusion, the sooner I do so the better.

“Yours ever, L. A.”

As Lewis folded and sealed this missive a servant entered with a note on a silver waiter, saying, as he presented it, “For you, sir. I am desired to wait while you read it.”

It was written in a stiff, formal hand, and ran as follows:--

“Miss Livingstone presents her compliments to Mr. Arundel, and requests the favour of an interview with him.”

“What is in the wind now, I wonder?” thought Lewis, but he only said, “Tell Miss Livingstone I will do myself the pleasure of waiting on her immediately,” and the servant retired.

Minerva was enthroned in state in the small drawing-room, the large one being an awful apartment, dedicated to high and solemn social convocations, and by no means lightly to be entered. Care sat upon her wrinkled brow, and looked as uncomfortable there as in such a situation might reasonably have been expected. As Lewis entered, this remarkable woman rose and performed as near an approach to a curtsey as her elephantine conformation would permit; then, graciously motioning her visitor to a seat, she growled an inquiry after the well-being of his pupil, promulgated a decidedly scandalous account of the state of the weather, with a disheartening prophecy appended relative to meteorological miseries yet to come; and having thus broken her own ice, dived into the chilly recesses of her cold water system, and fished up from its stony depths the weighty grievance that oppressed her.

It appeared that the same post which had conveyed the mysterious document from Messrs. Jones & Levi had also brought a letter from General Grant containing the intelligence that he was about to return home forthwith, that the house was to be prepared for the reception of a large Christmas party, and that he wished Miss Livingstone to pay a round of visits preparatory to the issue of innumerable notes of invitation, by which the neighbourhood was to be induced to attend sundry festive meetings at Broadhurst; and all this was to be done more thoroughly and on a larger scale than usual, for some mysterious reason in regard to which the General was equally urgent and enigmatical. But Minerva shall speak for herself.

“Having thus, Mr. Arundel, made myself acquainted with General Grant’s wishes (fourteen beds to be ready this day week, and not even the hangings put up on one of them--but men are so inconsiderate nowadays), I proceeded to give Reynolds (the housekeeper) full and clear instructions (to not one of which did she pay proper attention--but servants are so careless and self-conceited nowadays) as to all the necessary domestic arrangements. I then desired the coachman might be informed that I should require the carriage to be ready for use at two o’clock to-morrow (as you are perhaps aware, sir, that since the General’s departure for Scotland I have restricted myself to a simple pony-chaise). Judge of my amazement when I was told there were no horses fit for use! I begged to see the coachman instantly, but learned that he was confined to his bed with influenza. The second coachman is in Scotland with the General, so that in fact there was not a creature of sufficient respectability for me to converse with to whom I could give directions about the matter. Under these circumstances, which are equally unexpected and annoying, I considered myself justified in applying to you, Mr. Arundel. Would you oblige me by going through the stables and ascertaining whether anything can be devised to meet the present emergency? I am aware that the service I require of you is beyond the strict routine of your duties; but you must yourself perceive the impossibility of a lady venturing among stablemen and helpers without showing a disregard to that strict rule of propriety by which it has been the study of my life to regulate my conduct.”

Having reached this climax, Minerva glanced with an air of dignified self-approval towards Lewis and began a very unnecessary process of refrigeration with the aid of a fan apparently composed, like its mistress, of equal parts of cast-iron and buckram. Lewis immediately signified his readiness to undertake the commission, and promising to return and report progress, bowed and left the room.

On reaching the stables a groom attended his summons, and, after the fashion of his race, entered into a long explanation of the series of untoward circumstances to which the present state of equine destitution might be attributed, in the course of which harangue he performed, so to speak, a fantasia on the theme, “And then do you see, sir, coachman being hill,” to which sentence, after each variation, he constantly returned. The substance of his communication was as follows:--Shortly before the General’s departure one of the carriage horses had fallen and broken his knees, and its companion having an unamiable predilection for kicking, the pair were sold and a couple of young unbroken animals purchased, which, after a summer’s run, were destined to replace the delinquents. Shortly after this the General fell in love with and bought a pair of iron-grey four-year-olds, also untrained. All these young horses were now taken up from grass and about to be broken in, but the coachman’s illness had interrupted their education.

“Well, but are neither pair of the young stock available?” inquired Lewis.

“I’m afeared not, sir,” was the reply. “The bays ain’t never been in harness, and the iron-greys only three times.”

“Oh, the greys have been in harness three times, have they?” resumed Lewis. “Let us take them out to-day and see how they perform.”

“If you please, sir, I am only pad groom, and I can’t say as I should feel myself disactly compertent to drive them wild young devils.”

“Bring out that mail phaeton; put on the break harness, and I’ll drive them myself,” returned Lewis.

“But, if you please, sir,” began the groom in a tone of remonstrance.

“My good fellow, you waste time in talking. Of course if anything goes wrong in consequence of your obeying my directions, I alone shall be answerable; but nothing will go wrong if your harness is sound,” returned Lewis quickly.

The man, seeing the young tutor was determined, summoned one of his fellows, and in a short time the phaeton was made ready and the horses harnessed and led out. They were a splendid pair of dark iron-greys, with silver manes and tails; their heads, small and well set on, their sloping shoulders, and fine graceful legs, spoke well for their descent; but they snorted with fear and impatience as they were led up to their places, and their bright full eyes gazed wildly and restlessly around.

“Be quiet with them!” exclaimed Lewis as one of the men laid a rude grasp on the rein to back the near-side horse into his place. “You never can be too quiet and steady with a young horse. Soho, boy! what is it then? nobody is going to hurt you,” he continued, patting the startled animal, and at the same time backing him gently into the required position.

The operation of putting-to was soon completed; and Lewis saying, “You had better lead them off if there is any difficulty in getting them to start,” took the reins in his hands and sprang up lightly but quietly. Seating himself firmly, he asked, “Now, are you all ready?” and receiving an answer in the affirmative, continued, “Give them their heads;” then making a mysterious sound which may be faintly portrayed by the letters “tchick,” he endeavoured to start his horses. But this was no such easy matter. The near-side horse the moment he felt the collar ran back, pulling against his companion, who returned the compliment by rearing and striking with his fore-feet at the groom who attempted to hold him.

“Steady there!” cried Lewis. “Pat his neck; that’s right. Quiet, horse! stand, sir! One of you call those men here,” he added, pointing to a couple of labourers who were digging in a slip of ground near. “Now, my men,” he resumed as they came up, “take hold of the spokes of the hind wheels and move the carriage on when I give you the signal. Are you ready? Stand clear; all right.” As he spoke he again attempted to start the horses, and this time more successfully.

The animal which had reared at the first attempt sprang forward, and finding the weight which he had probably fancied was immovable yield to his efforts, appeared anxious to proceed, but the other still hung back, and was partly dragged forward by his yoke-fellow, partly pushed on by the men who were propelling the carriage. Lewis again tried mild measures, but without effect; and at length, considering that the soothing system had been carried far enough, he drew the point of the whip smartly across the animal’s shoulder. In reply to this the recusant flung up his heels as high as the kicking-straps would permit; but on a second and rather sharper application of the thong he plunged forward and threw himself into the collar with a bound that tried the strength of the traces; then pulling like a steam-engine, appeared resolved to revenge himself on his driver by straining every sinew of his arms to the utmost pitch of tension. But rowing, fencing, and other athletic exercises had rendered those arms as hard as iron; and though the swollen muscles rounded and stood out till his coat-sleeve was stretched almost to bursting, Lewis continued to hold the reins in a vice-like grasp, and the fiery horses, arching their proud necks and tossing the foam-flakes from their champing jaws, were compelled to proceed at a moderate pace. The grooms ran by their sides for a short distance, then, at a sign from Lewis, one of the men watched his opportunity and scrambled up while the phaeton was still going on; the other, having opened a gate leading down a road through the park, remained gazing after them with looks of the deepest interest.

“Well, sir, you’ve managed to start ’em easier than I expected,” observed the groom, as, in compliance with Lewis’s desire, he seated himself at his side. “Coachman was a good half-hour a getting ’em hout of the yard last time as they was put-to; that near-sider wouldn’t take the collar no how.”

“And yet he’ll turn out the better horse of the two if he’s judiciously managed,” returned Lewis. “He has higher courage than his companion, though they’re both splendid animals. They only require careful driving and working moderately every day to make as good a pair of carriage-horses as a man need wish to sit behind.”

“It ain’t the first time as you’ve handled the ribbons by a good many, I should say, sir,” continued Bob Richards (for that was the man’s name, dear reader, although I’ve never had an opportunity of telling you so before). “I see’d as you know’d what you was about afore ever you got on the box.”

“Before I got up!” returned Lewis. “How did you manage that, my friend?”

“Why, sir, the furst thing as you did was to cast your eye over the harness to see as all was right; then, afore ever you put your foot on the step you took the reins into your hands, so that the minute you was up you was ready for a bolt, hif so be it had pleased Providence to start the ’orses off suddenly. Now, anybody as wasn’t used to the ways of four-footed quadrupals wouldn’t never have thought of that.”

“Your powers of observation do you credit,” returned Lewis, with difficulty repressing a smile. “You are right, I have been accustomed to driving, as you imagine.” And as he spoke the remembrance of scenes and persons now far away came across him, and he thought with regret of pleasant hours passed with his young associates in Germany, when the mere fact of his being an Englishman caused him to be regarded as an oracle on all matters connected with horseflesh.

While this conversation was taking place the iron-greys had proceeded about a mile through the park, dancing, curvetting, and staring on all sides, as though they would fain shy at every object they discerned.

“They are gradually dropping into a steadier pace, you see,” observed Lewis; “they’ll be tired of jumping about, and glad to trot without breaking into a canter, when they get a little warm to their work. Quiet, boy, quiet!” he continued, as the horses suddenly pricked up their ears and stared wildly about them; “gently there, gently! What in the world are they frightened at now?”

The question did not long remain a doubtful one, for in another minute a hollow, rushing sound became audible, and a herd of deer, startled by the rattling of the carriage, broke from a thicket hard by, and bounding over the tall fern and stunted brushwood, darted across the road, their long thin legs and branching antlers, indistinctly seen in the grey light of an autumn day, giving them a strange and spectre-like appearance. But Lewis had no time to trace fanciful resemblances, for the horses demanded all his attention. As the sound of pattering feet approached they began to plunge violently; at the sight of the deer they stopped short, snorting and trembling with fright; and when the herd crossed the road before them, perfectly maddened with terror they reared till they almost stood upright; then, turning short round, they dashed off the road at right angles, nearly overturning the phaeton as they did so, and breaking into a mad gallop, despite all their driver’s efforts to restrain them, tore away with the speed of lightning. For a few seconds the sound of the wind whistling past his ears, and oppressing his breathing to a painful degree, confused Lewis and deprived him of the power of speech; but the imminence of the danger, and the necessity for calmness and decision, served to restore his self-possession, and turning towards his companion, who, pale with terror, sat convulsively grasping the rail of the seat, he inquired--

“Can you recollect whether there are any ditches across the park in this direction?”

“There ain’t no ditches, as I recollects,” was the reply, “but there’s something a precious sight worser. If these devils go straight ahead for five minutes longer at this pace, we shall be dashed over the bank of the lake into ten foot water.”

“Yes, I remember; I see where we are now. The ground rises to the left, and is clear of trees and ditches, is it not?” asked Lewis.

The groom replied in the affirmative, and Lewis continued: “Then we must endeavour to turn them; do you take the whip, stand up, and be ready to assist me at the right moment. What are you thinking of?” he continued, seeing that the man hesitated and was apparently measuring with his eye the distance from the step to the ground. “It would be madness to jump out while we are going at this rate. Be cool, and we shall do very well yet.”

“I’m agreeable to do whatever you tells me, only be quick about it, sir,” rejoined the groom. “For if it comes to jumping hout, or sitting still to be drownded, hout I goes, that’s flat, for I never could abear cold water.”

“I suppose the reins are strong, and to be depended on?” inquired Lewis.

“Nearly new, sir,” was the reply.

“Then be ready; and when I tell you, exert yourself,” continued Lewis.

While these remarks passed between the two occupants of the phaeton, the horses still continued their mad career, resisting successfully all attempts to check the frightful speed at which they were hurrying on towards certain destruction. As they dashed past a clump of shrubs, which had hitherto concealed from view the danger to which they were exposed, the full peril of their situation became evident to the eyes of Lewis and his companion. With steep and broken banks, on which American shrubs, mixed with flags and bulrushes, grew in unbounded luxuriance, the lake lay stretched before them, its clear depths reflecting the leaden hue of the wintry sky, and a slight breeze from the north rippling its polished surface. Less than a quarter of a mile of smooth greensward separated them from their dangerous neighbour. An artist would have longed to seize this moment for transferring to canvas or marble the expression of Lewis’s features. As he perceived the nearness and reality of the danger that threatened him, his spirit rose with the occasion, and calm self-reliance, dauntless courage, and an energetic determination to subdue the infuriated animals before him, at whatever risk, lent a brilliancy to his flashing eye, and imparted a look of stern resolve to his finely cut mouth, which invested his unusual beauty with a character of superhuman power such as the sculptors of antiquity sought to immortalise in their statues of heroes and demigods. Selecting an open space of turf unencumbered with trees or other obstacles, Lewis once more addressed his companion, saying--

“Now be ready. I am going to endeavour to turn them to the left, in order to get their heads away from the lake and uphill; but as I shall require both hands and all my strength for the reins, I want you to stand up and touch them smartly with the whip on the off-side of the neck. If you do this at the right moment, it will help to bring them round. Do you understand me?”

Richards replied in the affirmative, and Lewis, leaning forward and shortening his grasp on the reins, worked the mouths of the horses till he got their heads well up; then assuring himself by a glance that his companion was ready, he checked their speed by a great exertion of strength; and tightening the left rein suddenly, the groom at the same moment applying the whip as he had been desired, the fiery steeds, springing from the lash and yielding to the pressure of the bit, altered their course, and going round so sharply that the phaeton was again within an ace of being overturned, dashed forward in an opposite direction.

“You did that uncommon well, to be sure, sir,” exclaimed Richards, drawing a long breath like one relieved from the pressure of a painful weight. “I thought we was over once, though; it was a precious near go.”

“A miss is as good as a mile,” returned Lewis, smiling. “Do you see,” he continued, “they are slackening their pace; the hill is beginning to tell upon them already. Hand me the whip; I shall give the gentlemen a bit of a lesson before I allow them to stop, just to convince them that running away is not such a pleasant amusement as they appear to imagine.”

So saying, he waited till the horses began sensibly to relax their speed; then holding them tightly in hand, he punished them with the whip pretty severely, and gave them a good deal more running than they liked before he permitted them to stop, the nature of the ground (a gentle ascent of perfectly smooth turf) allowing him to inflict this discipline with impunity.

After proceeding two or three miles at the same speed he perceived another cross-road running through the park. Gradually pulling up as he approached it, he got his horses into a walk, and as soon as they had once again exchanged grass for gravel he stopped them to recover wind. The groom got down, and gathering a handful of fern, wiped the foam from their mouths and the perspiration from their reeking flanks.

“You’ve given ’em a pretty tidy warming, though, sir,” he observed. “If I was you I would not keep ’em standing too long.”

“How far are we from the house, do you imagine?” inquired Lewis.

“About three mile, I should say,” returned Richards. “It will take you nigh upon half-an-hour, if you drives ’em easy.”

Lewis looked at his watch, muttering, “More than an hour to Walter’s dinner-time.” He then continued, “Get up, Richards; I have not quite done with these horses yet;” adding, in reply to the man’s questioning glance as he reseated himself, “I’m only going to teach them that a herd of deer is not such a frightful object as they seem to imagine it.”

“Sure_ly_ you’re never agoin’ to take’em near the deer again, Mr. Arundel; they’ll never stand it, sir,” expostulated Richards.

“You can get down if you like,” observed Lewis, with the slightest possible shade of contempt in his tone. “I will pick you up here as I return.”

Richards was a thorough John Bull, and it is a well-known fact that to hint to one of that enlightened race that he is afraid to do the most insane deed imaginable is quite sufficient to determine him to go through with it at all hazards. Accordingly, the individual in question pressed his hat on his brows to be prepared for the worst, and folding his arms with an air of injured dignity, sat sullenly hoping for an overturn, which might prove him right, even at the risk of a broken neck.

Lewis’s quick eye had discerned the herd of deer against a dark background of trees which had served to screen them from the less acute perceptions of the servant, and he now contrived, by skirting the aforesaid belt of Scotch firs, to bring the phaeton near the place where the deer were stationed without disturbing them, so that the horses were able clearly to see the creatures which had before so greatly alarmed them. It has been often remarked that horses are greatly terrified by an object seen but indistinctly, at which, when they are able to observe it more closely, they will show no signs of fear. Whether for this reason, or that the discipline they had undergone had cooled their courage and taught them the necessity of obedience, the iron-greys approached the herd of deer without attempting to repeat the manoeuvre which had been so nearly proving fatal to their driver and his companion. Lewis drove them up and down once or twice, each time decreasing the distance between the horses and the animals, to the sight of which he wished to accustom them, without any attempt at rebellion on their part beyond a slight preference for using their hind legs only in progression, and a very becoming determination to arch their necks and point their ears after the fashion of those high-spirited impossibilities which do duty for horses in Greek friezes and in the heated imagination of young lady artists, who possess a wonderful (a very wonderful) talent for sketching animals. Having continued this amusement till the deer once again conveyed themselves away, Lewis, delighted at having carried his point and overcome the difficulties which had opposed him, drove gently back to Broadhurst; and having committed the reeking horses to the care of a couple of grooms, who began hissing at them like a whole brood of serpents, returned to make his report and soothe the tribulation of that anxious hyæna in petticoats, Miss Martha Livingstone.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XIX. CHARLEY LEICESTER BEWAILS HIS CRUEL MISFORTUNE

Frere’s answer to Lewis’s note made its appearance at Broadhurst on the morning of the second day after that on which the events narrated in the previous chapter took place. It ran as follows:--

“Dear Lewis,--I think I’ve told you before--(if it wasn’t you it was your sister, which is much the same thing)--not to write such a pack of nonsense as ‘adding to my many kindnesses,’ and all that sort of stuff, because it’s just so much time and trouble wasted. I see no particular kindness in it, that’s the fact. You and she live in the country, and I in town; and if there is anything that either of you want here, why of course it’s natural to tell me to get or to do it for you; and as to apologising, or making pretty speeches every time you require anything, it’s sheer folly; besides, I like doing the things for you. If I didn’t I wouldn’t do them, you may depend upon that; so no more of such rubbish ‘an you love me.’ And now, touching those interesting, or rather interest_ed_, individuals, Messrs. Jones & Levi. I thought when I read their letter they were rascals or thereabouts, but a personal interview placed the matter beyond doubt; and if you take my advice, you’ll see them--well, never mind where--but keep your £10 in your pocket, that’s all. Depend upon it, they are more used to making rich men poor than poor ones rich. However, I’ll tell you all their sayings and doings, as far as I am acquainted therewith, and then you can judge for yourself. As soon as I received your letter I trudged off into the city, found the den of thieves--I mean the lawyer’s office--of which I was in search, sent in my card by an unwashed Israelite with a pen behind each ear and ink all over him, whom I took to be a clerk, and by the same unsavoury individual was ushered into the presence of Messrs. Jones & Levi. Jones was a long cadaverous-looking animal, with a clever, bad face, and the eye of a hawk; Levi, a fat Jew, and apparently a German into the bargain, with a cunning expression of countenance and a cringing manner, who gave one the idea of having been fed on oil-cake till he had become something of the sort himself; a kind of man who, if you had put a wick into him, wouldn’t have made a bad candle, only one should so have longed to snuff him out. Well, I soon told these worthies what I was come about, and then waited to hear all they had to say for themselves. The Gentile, being most richly gifted with speech, took upon him to reply--

“‘Let me offer you a chair, Mr. Frere, sir. Delighted to have the honour of making your acquaintance. I speak for my partner and myself--eh, Mr. Levi?’

“‘In courshe, shir. Moosh playsure, Misthur Vreer, shir,’ muttered Levi, who spoke through his nose, after the manner of modern Israelites, as if that organ were afflicted with a permanent cold.

“When I had seated myself Jones returned to the attack by observing: ‘Our letter contained a certain definite and specific offer. Does Mr. Arundel agree to that, Mr. Frere, sir?’

“‘Mr. Arundel has placed the matter entirely in my hands, Mr. Jones,’ replied I; ‘and before I can agree to anything I must understand clearly what benefit my friend is likely to derive from the information hinted at in your letter.’

“‘May I inquire, Mr. Frere, sir, whether you are a professional man?’ asked Jones.

“‘If you mean a lawyer, Mr. Jones,’ replied I, ‘I am thankful to say I am not.’

“I suppose he did not exactly relish my remark, for he resumed, in a less amicable tone than he had used before--

“‘I believe the letter to which I have already referred contained a clear statement of the only’ (he emphasised the word strongly) ‘terms upon which we should be disposed to communicate the information,’ and he glanced towards his partner, who echoed--

“‘De only turmsh.”

“‘Then, gentlemen,’ said I (gentlemen, indeed!), ‘I beg most distinctly to inform you that my friend shall never, with my consent, pay £10 down and become liable for £200 more, this liability depending on a contingency which you have no doubt provided against, on the mere chance that some information in your possession may refer to the exciting cause of his father’s death and prove valuable to him.’

“‘De informationsh ish mosht faluaple,’ broke in Levi.

“‘I beg pardon, Mr. Levi,’ exclaimed Jones quickly, ‘but I believe we agreed this matter was to be left to my management?’

“Levi nodded his large head and looked contrite, while Jones continued: ‘In that case, Mr. Frere, sir, I have only to add that if Mr. Arundel refuses to comply with our terms we shall not part with the information on any others. At the same time, I should advise him to reconsider the matter, for I do not hesitate to say that I quite coincide with Mr. Levi in his opinion concerning the importance of the information which is in our possession.’

“As he said this an idea occurred to me, and I replied--

“‘Suppose, instead of the bond for £200 in the event of some contingency which may never occur, Mr. Arundel were willing to pay £20 down for the information, would you agree to that?’

“‘Say vive and dirtysh,’ put in the Jew, his dull eyes brightening at the prospect of money. ‘Say vive and dirtysh, and it shall pe von pargainsh.’

“‘Would you agree to take that sum, Mr. Jones?’ asked I.

“He glanced at his partner with a slight contraction of the brow and shook his head; but the spirit of avarice aroused in the Jew was not so easily to be put down, and he continued, in a more positive tone than he had yet ventured to use--

“‘Yesh, he dosh agree. Me and my bardner ve vill take the vive and dirtysh poundsh, ready monish, Mr. Vreer.’

“‘Not quite so fast, my good sir,’ returned I. ‘If you are so very ready to give up the bond for £200, to be paid in case the information should prove as valuable as you assert it to be, the natural inference is that you yourself have mighty little faith in the truth of your assertion; and as I happen to be pretty much of that way of thinking also, I shall wish you both good morning.’

“So saying, I put on my hat and walked out of the room, leaving the Jew and the Gentile to fight it out to their own satisfaction.

“I had not a very strong affection for lawyers before, and I can’t say this visit has served to endear the profession to me particularly. You know the old story of the man who defined the difference between an attorney and a solicitor to be much the same as that between an alligator and a crocodile. Well, Messrs. Jones & Levi realised such a definition to the life, for a more detestable brace of rascals I never encountered; and depend upon it, the less you have to do with them the better; at least, such is the opinion of yours for ever and a day (always supposing such an epoch of time may exist),

“Richard Frere.”

“So,” exclaimed Lewis, refolding the letter, “that chance has failed me. Well, I never expected anything would come of it; and yet--heigho! I certainly was born under an unlucky star. I think Frere was rather precipitate. According to his account of his proceedings, he seems to have felt such an intense conviction that the men were rascals that he called on them rather for the purpose of exposing them than to investigate the matter. He prejudged the question. However, I have no doubt the result would have been the same in any case. What a bore it is that men will be rogues! I shall have out those horses again after Walter has got through his lesson. If they go quietly I shall take him with me for a drive to-morrow.” And thus communing with himself, he summoned Walter and commenced the usual morning routine.

Miss Livingstone had, by Lewis’s advice, ordered post-horses to the carriage, and was in that way enabled to accomplish her round of visits. Lewis carried out his intention of driving the iron-greys, who conducted themselves with so much propriety that on the following day he took his pupil with him, and finding the drive pleased and amused the poor boy he repeated it every fine day. Thus a week slipped away, and the time for the General’s return arrived. It was late on the afternoon of the day on which he was expected, and Lewis was wearily assisting poor Walter to spell through a page of dissyllables, when that peculiar gravel-grinding sound became audible which, in a country house, necessarily precedes an arrival. Then there was a great bustle as of excited servants, a Babel-like confusion of tongues, bumps and thumps of heavy luggage, much trampling of feet, ringing of bells and slamming of doors; then the sounds grew fainter, were remitted at intervals, and at last ceased altogether. The house was no longer masterless--General Grant had returned. Walter’s attention, by no means easy to command for five minutes together at the best of times, became so entirely estranged by the commotion above alluded to, that Lewis closed the book in despair and told him to go and play with Faust, who, sitting upright on a rug in front of the fire, was listening with the deepest interest to all that passed in the hall, and was only restrained from barking by a strict sense of propriety operating on a well-disciplined mind. The boy gladly obeyed, and Lewis, resting his aching head on his hand, fell into deep thought--he thought of old times, when, head of his class at a public school, alike leader and idol of the little world in which he moved, his young ambition had shaped out for itself a career in which the bar, the bench, the senate, were to be but stepping-stones to the highest honours to which energy and talent might attain; and he contrasted his present position with the ideal future his boyish fancy had depicted. Then he bethought him of the tyrant who commanded that a living man should be chained to a corpse, and considered how the cold and numbing influence of the dead, gradually paralysing the vital energy of the living, was, as it were, typical of his own fate. He could not but be conscious of unusual powers of mind, for he had tested them in the struggle for honours with the deep and subtile thinkers of Germany, and had come off victorious; and to reflect that these talents, which might have ensured him success in the game of life, were condemned to be wasted in the wearying attempt to call forth the faint germs of reason in the mind of an almost childish idiot! The thought was a bitter one! and yet for months past he had felt resigned to his fate; and the deep interest he took in his pupil’s improvement, together with the time such a quiet life afforded for reflection and self-knowledge, had rendered him contented, if not what is conventionally termed happy. To what then should he attribute his present frame of mind? At this moment a tap at the study door interrupted his meditations, and he was unable to pursue his self-analysis further. Had he done so, he might possibly have discovered that pride, his besetting sin, lay at the root of the evil. As long as he lived in comparative seclusion his duties sat easily upon him; but now that he was again about to mix in society, his position as tutor became galling in the extreme to his haughty nature. As he heard the summons above mentioned he started from his reverie, and sweeping his hair from his forehead by a motion of his hand, exclaimed, “Come in.” As he spoke the door opened, and our old acquaintance, Charley Leicester, lounged into the room.

“Ah! how do you do, Arundel?” he began in his usual languid tone. “I know all the ins and outs of this place, and I thought I should find you here--this used to be my den once upon a time; many a holiday’s task have I groaned over in this venerable apartment. Is that your incubus?” he continued in a lower tone, glancing towards Walter. “Handsome features, poor fellow! Does he understand what one says?”

“Scarcely, unless you speak to him individually,” returned Lewis. “You may talk as you please before him, the chances are he will not attend; but if he does, he will only understand a bit here and there, and even that he will forget the next moment, when some trifle occurs to put it out of his head. Walter, come and shake hands with this gentleman!”

Thus spoken to, Walter turned sheepishly away, and stooping down, hid his face behind Faust. Lewis’s mouth grew stern. “Faust, come here, sir!” The dog arose, looked wistfully at his playfellow, licked his hand lovingly, then walking across the room, crouched down at his master’s feet.

“Now, Walter, look at me.” At this second appeal the boy raised his eyes to Lewis’s face. “Go and shake hands with Mr. Leicester.”

“Don’t worry him on my account, pray, my dear Arundel,” interposed Leicester good-naturedly.

“The General makes a great point of his being introduced to every one; and I make a great point of his doing as I bid him,” returned Lewis with marked emphasis.

But it was unnecessary, if meant as a hint to Walter, for his tutor’s eye appeared to possess a power of fascination over him. No sooner did he meet his glance than he arose from his kneeling position, and going up to Leicester held out his hand saying, “How do you do?”

Charley shook hands with him kindly, asked him one or two simple questions, to which he replied with tolerable readiness; then observing that his eyes were fixed on a silver-mounted cane he held in his hand, he inquired whether he thought it pretty, and receiving an answer in the affirmative, added, “Then you may take it to amuse yourself with, if you like.”

A smile of childish delight proved that the offer was an acceptable one; and carrying off his treasure with him and calling Faust, who on a sign from his master gladly obeyed the summons, he betook himself to the farther end of the room, which was a very large one, and began playing with his canine associate. Leicester gazed at him for a moment or two, and then observed--

“What a sad pity! Such a fine-grown, handsome lad, too! Why, in a year or two he will be a man in appearance, with the mind of a child. Does he improve much?”

“Yes, he improves steadily, but very slowly,” returned Lewis.

Leicester wandered dreamily up to a chimney-glass, arranged his hair with an air of deep abstraction, pulled up his shirt-collars, caressed his whiskers, then separating the tails of a nondescript garment, which gave one the idea of a cut-away coat trying to look like a shooting-jacket, he extended his legs so as to form two sides of a triangle, and subjecting his frigid zone to the genial influence of the fire, he enjoyed for some minutes in silence the mysterious delight afforded to all true-born Englishmen by the peculiar position above indicated. At length he sighed deeply and muttered, “Heigho! it’s no use thinking about it.”

“That depends on what it is, and how you set to work to think,” returned Lewis.

“That may do as a general rule,” continued Leicester, “but it won’t apply to the case in point. The thing I was trying to cipher out, as the Yankees call it, is the incomprehensible distribution of property in this sublunary life. Now look at that poor boy--a stick for a plaything and a dog for a companion make him perfectly happy. Those are his only superfluous requirements, which together with eating, drinking, clothing, and lodging might be provided for £300 a year. Instead of that, when he is twenty-one he will come into from £8000 to £10,000 per annum, besides no end of savings during his minority. Well, to say nothing of your own case” (Lewis’s cheek kindled and his eye flashed, but Leicester, absorbed in his own thoughts, never noticed it, and continued), “though with your talents a little loose cash to give you a fair start might be the making of you---just look at my wretched position,--the son of a peer, brought up in all kinds of expensive habits, mixing in the best set at Eton and at Oxford, the chosen associate of men of large property, introduced into the highest society in London--of course I must do as others do, I can’t help myself. There are certain things necessary to a young man about town just as indispensable as smock-frocks and bacon are to a ploughman. For instance, to live one must dine--to dine one must belong to a club. Then London is a good large place, even if one ignores everything east of Temple Bar; one must keep a cab if but to save boot-leather--that entails a horse and a tiger. Again, for four months in the year people talk about nothing but the opera--one can’t hold one’s tongue for four months, you know--that renders a stall indispensable. It’s the fashion to wear white kid gloves, and the whole of London comes off black on everything, so there’s a fine of 3s. 6d. a night only for having hands at the end of one’s arms. The atmosphere of the metropolis is composed chiefly of smoke--the only kind of smoke one can inhale without being choked is tobacco smoke; besides, life without cigars would be a desert without an oasis--but unfortunately Havannahs don’t hang on every hedge. I might multiply instances ad infinitum, but the thing is self-evident--to provide all these necessaries a man must possess money or credit, and I unfortunately have more of the latter than the former article. It is, as I have explained to you, utterly impossible for me to exist on less than--say £1500 a year; and even with my share of my poor mother’s fortune and the Governor’s allowance, my net income doesn’t amount to £800; ergo, half the London and all the Oxford tradesmen possess little manuscript volumes containing interesting reminiscences of my private life. It’s no laughing matter, I can assure you,” he continued, seeing Lewis smile; “there’s nothing cramps a man’s”--here he released a coat-tail in order to raise his hand to conceal a yawn--“augh! what do you call ’em?--energies--so much as having a load of debt hanging round his neck. If it hadn’t been for those confounded Oxford bills checking me at first starting, ’pon my word I don’t know that I might not have done something. I had ideas about a parliamentary career at one time, I can assure you, or diplomacy--any fool’s good enough for an attaché. Now, if I had that poor boy’s fortune, and he had my _mis_fortune, what an advantage it would be to both of us; he’ll never know what to do with his money, and I should--rather! Just fancy me with £10,000 a year, and a coat on my back that was paid for. By Jove, I should not know myself. Ah, well! it’s no use talking about it; all the same, I am an unlucky beggar.”

“But,” interposed Lewis eagerly, “if you really dislike the life you lead so much, why don’t you break through all these trammels of conventionality and strike out some course for yourself? With £800 a year to ward off poverty, and the interest you might command, what a splendid career lies before you! Were I in your position, instead of desponding I should deem myself singularly fortunate.”

“So you might, my dear fellow,” returned Leicester, after pausing for a minute to regard Lewis with a smile of languid wonder. “So you might with your talents, and--and wonderful power of getting up the steam and keeping it at high pressure. I dare say we should see you a Field Marshal if you took to the red cloth and pipe-clay trade; or on the woolsack if you preferred joining the long-robed gentlemen. Now, I haven’t got that sort of thing in me: I was born to be a man of property, and nothing else; and the absurdity of the thing is the bringing a man into the world fit only for one purpose, and then placing him in a position in which, to use the cant of the day, he can’t ‘fulfil his mission’ at any price. It’s just as if nature were to form a carnivorous animal, and then turn it out to grass.” Having delivered himself of this opinion with the air of a deeply injured man, the Honourable Charles Leicester consulted a minute Geneva watch with an enamelled back, and replacing it in his waistcoat pocket, continued, “Five o’clock; I shall just have time to smoke a cigar before it is necessary to dress for dinner. I presume tobacco is a contraband article in the interior of this respectable dwelling-house?”

“A salutary dread of Miss Livingstone’s indignation has prevented me from ever trying such an experiment,” returned Lewis.

“Well, I won’t run the risk of offending the good lady,” replied Leicester. “Aunt Martha has a wonderful knack of blighting the whole family for the rest of the day if one happens to run against one of her pet prejudices. By the way, you must have found her a most interesting companion?”

“We are great friends, I can assure you,” rejoined Lewis. “She condescends to patronise me most benignantly; but I have not spoken half-a-dozen times with her in as many months.”

“I suppose she has enlightened you as to the events about to come off during the next three weeks.”

“By no means. Beyond the fact of the General’s return, and the information that the house was to be filled with people, Miss Livingstone has allowed me to remain in a state of the most lamentable ignorance.”

“What! have not you heard that the county is vacant, and the General has been persuaded to allow himself to be nominated as a candidate on the conservative interest?”

“But I thought he was already member for the borough of A--------?”

“Yes; he will resign that if he succeeds for the county. Oh, you’re quite in the dark, I see; we mean to stir heaven and earth to get him in. My father gives him all his interest--Bellefield is coming down to look up the tenantry. You know we (that is, Belle and the Governor, worse luck) have large estates in the county. Belle can do a little bit of love-making in between whiles, and so kill two birds with one stone. And who else do you think is coming?--a very great man, I can assure you; no less a personage, in fact, than--ar--the De Grandeville! He has been induced to--ar--” (and here he mimicked De Grandeville’s pompous manner inimitably) “throw his little influence--ar--into the scale, and--ar--show himself on the hustings, and--ar--arrange one or two matters which will in fact--ar--render the thing secure! The plain truth being that he really is a good man of business, and the General has engaged him as an electioneering agent. Well, then, there are a lot of people coming besides; and balls and dinners will be given to half the county. In short, the General means to do the thing in style, and spend as much money as would keep me out of debt for the next three years. Several parties are to arrive to-morrow, so the General brought Annie and me down with him as a sort of advanced guard. There will be some fun, I dare say; but an awful deal of trouble to counterbalance it. I shall lose my cigar, though, if I stand gossiping here any longer. Let me see, the nearest way to the stables will be to jump out of that window; deduct the distance saved from the amount of exertion in leaping, and the remainder will be the gain of a minute and a half. Well, time is precious, so off we go. I suppose you appear in the course of the evening? Take care, Walter; that is right.”

Thus saying, he flung open the window, sprang out with more agility than from his usual listless movements might have been expected, pulled the sash down again, and having nodded good-naturedly to Walter, disappeared.

General Grant felt and expressed himself greatly delighted at the marked improvement which had taken place in his ward’s manner and appearance, and attributing it with justice to Lewis’s judicious management, that young gentleman rose many degrees in his employer’s favour. The General was essentially a practical man--he was endowed with a clear head, and (save where prejudice interfered) a sound judgment, and being happily devoid of that inconvenient organ, a heart (whence proceed, amongst other reprehensible emigrants, the whole host of amiable weaknesses, which merely gain for their proprietor that most useless, because unsaleable, article--affection), he looked upon his fellow-creatures as machines, and weighing them in the balance, patronised those only who were not found wanting. Lewis had proved himself a good teaching machine, and the General valued him accordingly.

“The great point now, Mr. Arundel,” he said, “is to endeavour to expand your pupil’s mind. You have developed in him (and I give you great credit for the degree of success you have attained) powers of acquiring knowledge,--those powers must be cultivated; he must have opportunities afforded him of seeing people and amassing facts for himself; and to this end it is my wish that he should mix as much as possible in society. I am about to entertain a large party at Broad-hurst, and I conceive that it will be a desirable opportunity to accustom Sir Walter to the presence of strangers, and to enable him, by the force of example acting on his imitative powers, to acquire the manners and habits of those of his own rank. I therefore propose that after two o’clock on each day your pupil and yourself should join the family circle and enter into any schemes for amusement or exercise which may be arranged. I consider myself most fortunate,” continued the General, with a little patronising inclination of the head towards Lewis, “in having secured the services of a gentleman whom I can with such entire satisfaction present to my friends.”

In compliance with this injunction Lewis was forced, much against his will, to withdraw from the retirement under the shadow of which he had hitherto contrived to screen himself from those annoyances to which his dependent situation exposed him, and which his sensitive nature led him especially to dread. On the following day arrivals succeeded one another with great rapidity, and when Lewis joined the party after luncheon there were several faces with which he was unacquainted. One, however, immediately arrested his attention, and turning to Leicester, he inquired the name of the person in question.

“Eh! who is the man with moustaches, did you say? What! don’t you know him?” exclaimed Leicester, if, indeed, the slow, languid manner in which that young gentleman was accustomed to promulgate his sentiments can be properly so termed. “How very odd! I thought everybody knew him; that’s my frère aîné Bellefield; come with me, and I’ll introduce you.”

“Excuse me,” returned Lewis, drawing back with a flushed cheek as the recollection of the scene on the banks of the Serpentine came vividly before him. “I had no idea it was your brother; I never imagined for a moment----”

“My dear Arundel, don’t excite yourself; as a general rule, there’s nothing in this life worth getting up the steam about,” returned Leicester, drawing on a kid glove. “Bellefield will be extremely happy to make your acquaintance--in fact, he is always extremely happy. If you were to cut your throat before his very eyes he would be extremely happy, and if he thought you did it well, probably fold his arms, ask what you would take for the razor, and be extremely happy to buy it of you. But as he’ll be constantly here, there exists a positive necessity for you to know him--so come along.”

Thus saying, Charley Leicester linked his arm in that of Lewis and carried him off, nolens volens, to be introduced to his brother.

Lord Bellefield having seen Lewis only once before, and under very peculiar circumstances, did not immediately recognise him; and having made up his mind that for electioneering purposes it was necessary to bear all species of social martyrdom amiably, underwent his introduction to Lewis with great resignation, curling up his moustaches and showing his white teeth in a ready-made smile--of which article he had always a stock on hand--most condescendingly.

Lewis’s was, however, a face that once seen it was not easy to forget. Moreover, there was at that moment an expression gleaming in his dark eyes not altogether consistent with the conventional indifference befitting a mere social introduction, and Lord Bellefield was too close an observer not to notice it.

“I’ve a strange idea I’ve seen you somewhere before, Mr. Arundel,” he remarked.

“If I am not much mistaken,” returned Lewis, “your lordship once did me the honour,” and he laid a slightly sarcastic emphasis on the words, “to offer me a sum of money for a favourite dog.”

There was something in Lewis’s manner as he uttered these words which showed that he had neither forgotten nor forgiven the insult that had been offered him. Lord Bellefield perceived it, and replied, with a half-sneer--

“Ay, I recollect now--you jumped into the water to fish him out; and I naturally imagined that, as you appeared to set such store by him, you must expect to make money of him. Have you got him still?”

Lewis replied in the affirmative, and his lordship continued--

“Well, I’ll give you your own price for him any day you like to name the sum.”

Without waiting for an answer he turned away and began conversing in an undertone with his cousin Annie.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XX. SOME OF THE CHARACTERS FALL OUT AND OTHERS FALL IN

“So! you’re old acquaintances, it seems!” observed Leicester, who had overheard the conversation following upon Lewis’s introduction to Lord Bellefield. “Frere told me about the dog business, but I never knew till now that it had been Bellefield who offered you money for him. I can see you were annoyed about it. Belle fancies money can buy everything (which is pretty true in the long run), and a dog is a dog to him and nothing more. He’d never dream of making a friend of one; in fact, he votes friendship a bore altogether; so you must not heed his insult to Herr Faust. What are people going to do this afternoon? I wish somebody would settle something. Annie, just attend to me a minute, will you--what are we going to do?”

“Papa talked of a skating party on the lake,” returned Annie, “but I’ve had no definite orders. Where can papa be? Do go and look for him, Charles.”

“Is he in the house, think you?” inquired Charles, rising languidly and gazing round with a look of dreamy helplessness.

“I saw General Grant cross the lawn with a gentleman--Mr. De Grandeville, I believe--not five minutes since,” observed Lewis.

“Exactly; then as you know where to find him, Arundel, and I don’t, I dare say you’ll be kind enough to tell him that--what was it, Annie?” said Leicester, reseating himself in an easy-chair with an expression of intense relief.

“Charley, how idle you are! I am quite ashamed of you,” exclaimed Annie vehemently; then, turning to Lewis, she continued, “If you would be so kind, Mr. Arundel, as to ask papa whether the lake scheme holds good, and if we are to walk or drive there, I should be so much obliged to you.”

Lewis signified his willingness to execute her wishes, and calling to Walter to accompany him, left the room.

“Well, Annie, how do you like Lewis Arundel by this time?” inquired her cousin. “Wasn’t I right in telling you he was quite a catch?”

“Yes, indeed,” returned Annie warmly; “and he is so kind and clever about that poor Walter, I don’t know what we should do without him. I think it is quite delightful to see his manner towards him, poor boy! it combines all the tenderness of a woman with the firmness of a man, he is so patient and forbearing; but it must in some degree repay him for his trouble to see the improvement he has effected, and the strong affection he has inspired. Walter absolutely seems to dote upon him.”

“A most desirable acquisition, certainly, the affection of an idiot,” observed Lord Bellefield with a satirical curl of the lip.

“I never despise real affection of any kind,” returned Annie quickly.

“I am delighted to hear you say so, belle cousine,” replied Lord Bellefield, fixing his bold, roving eyes on her with an expression intended to be fascinating, but which was simply disagreeable.

Annie looked annoyed, and saying she must warn Miss Livingstone of the intended expedition, rose and quitted the apartment.

When the brothers were left together, Charles, after a minute’s pause, began--“I say, Bellefield, I wish you’d try and be a little more civil to young Arundel. You annoyed him by the way in which you offered money for his dog, just after he had risked his life to save it, and I don’t think you mended matters by what you added to-day. Recollect he’s a gentleman by birth, and has the feelings of one.”

“Curse his feelings!” was the unamiable rejoinder; “he’s a proud, insolent young puppy. If he’s a gentleman by birth, he’s a beggar by position, and requires pulling down to his proper level. I’ve no notion of dependents giving themselves such airs, and shall let him know my opinion some of these days.”

Charley Leicester regarded his elder brother with a half-sleepy look of serio-comic disgust, then slightly shrugging his shoulders, he drew on his glove, placed his hat on his head, arranged his curls to his satisfaction at a mirror, and lounged gracefully out of the room.

Scarcely had he done so when the late subject of their conversation entered by another door which opened into the conservatory, and glanced round the apartment as if in quest of some one. Apparently the object of his search was not to be discerned, for turning to Lord Bellefield, he inquired “whether he could direct him where to find Miss Grant?”

The person addressed favoured him for some seconds with a supercilious stare ere he answered, “And what might you want with that young lady, pray?”

Lewis paused for a moment before he dared trust himself to reply, for the tone in which the question had been asked was most insolent. At length he said, “I can have no objection to gratify your lordship’s curiosity. The General wished me to inform Miss Grant that he had arranged a skating party on the lake for this afternoon, and that carriages would be at the door in ten minutes to transport those of the company thither who might prefer driving to walking.”

“Really, you must possess a wonderful memory, Mr. Arundel; I dare swear those were the General’s very words. As, however, I can scarcely imagine it consistent with your onerous duties to play the part of squire to dames, I’ll save you the trouble for once, by delivering your message myself.” And with an irritating smile, as he remarked the anger his words had produced, Lord Bellefield turned and quitted the apartment.

Lewis stood for a moment gazing after the retreating figure, his chest heaving and his nostrils expanded, like those of some hunted animal; then pacing the room (his invariable custom when labouring under strong excitement), he gave vent to the following broken sentences:--

“He meant to insult me--his words, his look, everything proves it--and I did not resent it. Perhaps he thinks I fear him--if I believed so, I’d follow him, and before them all fix on him the blow of shame that he must avenge, or own himself a coward.” As he spoke he took two or three hasty strides towards the door; checking himself, however, as his eye accidentally fell upon Walter, who had entered with him, and who stood regarding him with looks of stupid amazement, he continued: “But I must not think of myself only; the interests of others are at stake--Rose--my Mother--that poor boy--I dare not sacrifice them.” He flung himself into a chair, and pressing his hand against his burning brow, resumed, “Oh, why am I called upon to bear this?--how have I sinned, that this degradation should be forced upon me?--the coward! he knows I am bound hand and foot, or he dare not thus insult me; it is like striking a fettered man--” He paused, then added, “Well, a time may come when I may meet him more as an equal; at all events, now it is my duty to bear as much as human nature can, and I’ll do it.” He remained silent for a few minutes, with his hand over his eyes, waiting till the excitement should pass away. From this state he was aroused by feeling something touch him, and looking up, he perceived the idiot, half kneeling, half sitting by his side, gazing up into his face with looks of wonder and sympathy. This mute evidence of affection acted as a balm to his wounded spirit, and laying his hand kindly on the boy’s shoulder, he said, “Walter, my poor fellow, have I frightened you? I was not angry with you, you know. Come, we will walk down to the lake and see the skating. What has become of Faust, I wonder? We must take him with us, of course.”

“Who was that who went away just now?” returned Walter. “He with the hair over his mouth, I mean?”

“That was Lord Bellefield, your friend Mr. Leicester’s brother.”

“He’s a bad man, isn’t he?”

“Why should you think so, Walter?”

The boy paused for a few moments in reflection, then answered, “His eyes look wicked and frighten me; besides, he made you angry--I hate him.”

“You should not say that, Walter; you know it is not right to hate any one,” returned Lewis, feeling dreadfully hypocritical; then linking his arm in that of his pupil, they passed out through the conservatory.

As the sound of their retreating footsteps died away a figure peeped timidly into the apartment, and seeing it was untenanted, entered and gazed after them long and fixedly. It was Annie Grant, who, returning to learn the result of Lewis’s embassy to her father, had involuntarily overheard both the insult and the burst of wounded feeling which it had called forth.

In that short five minutes were sown seeds that, as they grew to maturity, bore sleepless nights and weary days, and the tearless sorrow of a breaking heart, as a portion of their bitter fruit.

The lake in Broadhurst Park presented a gay scene on the afternoon in question. The General, anxious to propitiate the good-will of the voters, had ordered the park to be thrown open to all who might choose to witness or join in the amusement of skating. A sharp frost, which had continued without intermission for several days, had covered the water with a firm coating of ice, which afforded a surface as smooth as glass for the evolutions of the skaters. The sun was shining brightly, bringing out beautiful effects of light and shade on the steep and rugged banks, and causing the hoar-frost on the feathery branches of a young birch plantation to glitter like sprays of diamonds. On the side approached by the drive from the house a tent had been pitched, in such a direction that any of the party who feared to expose themselves to the cold might witness the performances of the skaters and yet be sheltered from the troublesome intrusion of the north wind.

As Lewis and Walter came in sight of the spot (on which several groups of well-dressed people, together with a considerable number of a lower class, were already assembled) the latter uttered an exclamation of delight, and roused out of his usual state of apathy by the novel excitement, bounded gaily forward till he reached the side of Charles Leicester, to whom he had taken an extreme fancy.

“Mr. Arundel is going to teach me how to skate, Mr. Leicester, and you are to help,” he exclaimed, as soon as he had recovered breath after his run.

“Am I?” returned Leicester with a good-natured smile “How do you know that I will help you?”

“Because Mr. Arundel said so; and everybody minds him--Faust and all.”

“Is that true, Arundel? Am I to do just as you tell me?” inquired Leicester, as the individual alluded to joined them.

“It is quite right that Walter should think so, at all events,” returned Lewis; “but I told him to ask you, as a favour, whether you would lend us your assistance. Walter is anxious to learn to skate, and to save his cranium from getting a few artificial bumps suddenly developed upon it, I propose that you and I should each take one of his arms and keep him from falling, till he learns to stand safely upon his skates without assistance.”

Leicester gave vent to a deep sigh of resignation, then muttered,

“Well, I should certainly never have dreamed of undergoing such an amount of exertion on my own account; but I suppose Walter fancies it will be very charming, and he has not a great many pleasures, poor fellow!” he continued aside. And so, like a good-natured, kind-hearted creature, as, despite his affectation, he really was, he performed the service required of him, and actually exerted himself till his complexion became, as he expressed it, “redder than that of some awful ploughboy.” After a time Walter grew tired with the unaccustomed exercise, and taking off his skates, the trio proceeded to join the party at the tent. As they approached, Annie tripped up to Leicester, and seizing his arm, said, “Where have you been all this time? I wanted you particularly.” She then added something in a low voice which had the effect of heightening her cousin’s unromantic complexion to a still greater degree, and elicited from him the incredulous ejaculation, “Nonsense!”

“I knew you’d be surprised,” returned Annie, laughing. “She is going to remain here till the party breaks up, so you’ll have plenty of time to make yourself agreeable, if it’s not ‘too much trouble,’ or ‘such a bore,’” she continued, mimicking Charles’s languid drawl.

“How was this matter brought about, pray?” inquired her cousin; “and why on earth do you fancy it concerns me in any way?”

“It was all my doing,” returned Annie. “I was not blind when we were in Scotland; and after you left us I made a point of cultivating the young lady, and fortunately for you, approving of her, I asked papa to let me invite her to Broadhurst.”

“Of course, with that discretion which is such a striking characteristic of your amiable sex, imparting to him all your views in doing so.”

“Now, Charley, you are very cross and unkind and disagreeable. I asked her merely because I thought it would give you pleasure; and though I like sometimes to tease you a little myself, of course I never dreamed of saying anything to my father which could annoy you.”

“Well, you are a dear, good little cousin, I know, so I won’t scold you,” was the reply, and they entered the tent together.

A few minutes afterwards Lewis was engaged in pointing out to Walter one of the skaters who was performing some very intricate figure with great success, when he heard a female voice exclaim, “Surely I am not mistaken--that is Mr. Arundel!” and turning at the sound, beheld, leaning on the arm of Charles Leicester, Miss Laura Peyton, the young lady who had penetrated his disguise at Lady Lombard’s party. Not to return her bow was impossible; but at the recollection of all that had passed on that evening his cheek flushed and his features assumed a cold, haughty expression, the result of mingled pride and vexation, under which he strove to conceal his annoyance. Annie, who was not aware that Lewis and her friend had ever met before, glanced from one to the other with looks of the greatest astonishment, which was by no means diminished when Miss Peyton continued, “Now let me inquire after the Prince of Persia. I hope you left his Highness in the enjoyment of good health.”

While Lewis was striving to frame a suitable reply, Annie, who could restrain herself no longer, exclaimed, in a tone of the utmost bewilderment, “The Prince of Persia! My dear Laura, are you out of your senses?”

The only reply her friend was able for some minutes to return was rendered inaudible by a fit of laughing, in which Leicester, and at last even Lewis himself, could not resist joining.

“Now I call that abominable,” continued Annie; “you are all enjoying some excellent joke, and I am left to pine in ignorance. Laura, what are you laughing at?”

“Ask Mr. Leicester,” returned Miss Peyton, breathless with laughter.

“Charles, what is it all about?”

“Ask Arundel,” was the reply; “he is the proper person to explain.”

“Mr. Arundel, you must tell me!”

“Really, I must beg you to excuse me,” began Lewis. “Miss Peyton--that is--Mr. Leicester--in fact, it is utterly impossible for me to tell you. Come, Walter, you’ve rested quite long enough, you’ll catch cold sitting still, after making yourself so hot;” and as he spoke he took his pupil’s arm and hastily quitted the tent.

Of course as soon as he was out of earshot, Annie reiterated her demand that the mystery should be explained, and of course Laura begged Charles to relate the affair, and then, woman-like, interrupted him before he had uttered half-a-dozen words, and being once fairly off, did not stop till she had told the whole history from beginning to end, which she did with much spirit and drollery; then, in her turn, she had to be informed of the position Lewis held in the General’s family; how wonderfully Walter had improved under his care, and how much everybody liked him. When they had fully discussed these matters, they were joined by Lord Bellefield, who escorted them across the ice to witness more closely the proceedings of the skaters.

Later in the afternoon a party of young men had undertaken to skate a quadrille. This being something new, people hurried from all sides to witness the performance, and a crowd speedily collected. Walter had expressed a wish to see it, and Lewis, pleased at the unusual interest he took in all that was going forward, which he rightly regarded as a proof of the decided progress his intellect was making, willingly complied.

The crowd still continued to thicken as the quadrille proceeded, and it had just occurred to Lewis that the weight of so many people collected in one spot would try the strength of the ice pretty severely, when a slight cracking sound confirmed his suspicions, and induced him to withdraw Walter from the group. It was fortunate that he did so, for scarcely were they clear of the crowd when a sharp crack, like the report of a pistol, rang in his ears, followed in rapid succession by one or two similar explosions. Then came a rush of many feet, accompanied by the shrill screaming of women, and on looking round Lewis perceived that a portion of the ice had given way, and that several persons were struggling in the water.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XXI. FAUST GETS ON SWIMMINGLY, AND THE READER IS INTRODUCED TO A DIVING BELLE “WRINGING” WET

The shrieks alluded to in the last chapter still continued, and Lewis, consigning Walter to the care of a servant, hastened to the spot to render any assistance which it might be in his power to afford. As he reached the scene of action the panic and confusion were so great that it was no easy matter to ascertain the extent of the mischief, or to perceive how best it might be remedied. Lord Bellefield, who seemed the only person at all collected, was issuing directions in a loud, authoritative voice, to which the majority of the bystanders appeared too much alarmed and excited to pay attention. The number of persons who were actually immersed had been increased by the injudicious attempts of those who had first endeavoured to assist them by rushing to the edge of the broken ice, which, giving way under their weight, had plunged them also into the water. As Lewis came up a rope was flung across the opening, and held tightly by men on either side. Grasping this firmly with one hand, the young tutor assisted to extricate several persons who were clinging to the edges of the ice. He was just springing back as the portion on which he was standing broke away beneath his feet, when a cry was raised, “There’s a lady in the water!” and immediately some one added, “It’s the General’s daughter--it’s Miss Grant.” Before the words were well spoken Lewis had flung off his greatcoat and was about to plunge into the water, when his eye suddenly caught that of Lord Bellefield, who, having in the confusion accidentally stationed himself by his side, was pointing with vehement gestures to the spot where, partly sustained by the buoyant nature of her dress, partly supported by a mass of floating ice, the form of Annie Grant was to be discerned. At the sight of the eager face of the man who had insulted him some evil spirit seemed to take possession of Lewis’s breast; checking himself suddenly, he stepped back a pace, and fixing his eyes with a piercing glance on Lord Bellefield’s features, said coldly, “I beg pardon, your lordship will, of course, rescue Miss Grant.”

For a moment anger and surprise deprived Lord Bellefield of the power of speaking, but as soon as he could find words he replied, “Go on, sir; as you could risk your life for a dog, you will surely take a cold bath to save your master’s daughter.”

The speech was an ill-chosen one, for it excited a degree of irritation which outweighed all other considerations, and folding his arms across his chest, Lewis replied in a tone of the bitterest irony, “Your lordship must excuse me. I am no squire of dames.”

Lord Bellefield’s only rejoinder was an oath, and flinging off his wrapper, he appeared about to spring into the water. Suddenly changing his intention, he turned to Lewis and exclaimed, his face livid with rage and vexation, “Ten thousand curses on you! You know I cannot swim.”

It is at such moments as these, when by our own wilful act we have laid ourselves open to his attacks, that the tempter urges us on to crimes which in our calmer moments we should shudder to contemplate. A glance of triumph shot from Lewis’s dark eyes; the fearful thought flashed across him, “She is to be his bride--her fortune is to repair his extravagance--perhaps he loves her--let him save her himself, I will not rescue her for him.” And the fiend prompted the idea, worthy of its originator, that he might revenge himself on Lord Bellefield by leaving Annie to perish. But, like many other clever people, for once the demon outwitted himself, the very magnitude of the offence serving to awaken Lewis to the sinfulness of the line of conduct he had meditated. Almost in the same moment in which the idea occurred to him a mist seemed to clear itself away from his mental vision, and he perceived the abyss of guilt on the brink of which he was standing. And now the agonising doubt suggested itself to him whether his repentance might not have come too late--whether Annie might not sink before he could reach her; and as Lord Bellefield ran off impetuously to hasten the movements of a party who were bringing a small flat-bottomed boat towards the spot, Lewis sprang into the water, clearing a quarter of the distance in his leap, and swam with vigorous strokes in the direction of the still floating figure.

His fears were not unfounded. Annie’s dress, which had hitherto served in great measure to sustain her, was rapidly becoming saturated with water; every instant she sank lower, and while he was still some yards from the spot, to his horror he perceived the fragment of ice on which she rested roll round and slip from her grasp. The effect was instantaneous. Uttering a piercing shriek, which rang through his ears like a death-knell, she threw out her arms in a vain attempt to save herself, and disappeared beneath the water. At the same moment there was a rush, a bound, a plunge--some large animal dashed past Lewis, and ere the last fragment of Annie’s dress disappeared Faust had seized it in his mouth and prevented its wearer from sinking. The bystanders now drew the rope which had been flung across the opening in the ice in such a direction that Lewis could grasp it, and thus supported, he contrived to raise Annie’s head above the water, and with some assistance from Faust, to keep both her and himself afloat till such time as the punt should arrive. This, fortunately, was not long. The instant it was launched, Lord Bellefield and one or two others jumped into it, and in another moment Annie Grant was rescued from her perilous situation, to the horrors of which she was, however, by this time happily insensible. As they were lifting her into the boat, poor Faust, who probably did not understand that his services were no longer needed, still retained his hold on her dress, and Lord Bellefield struck him so fiercely with the handle of a boathook that he fell back stunned, and would have sunk had not Lewis, who was still in the water, thrown his arm round him and supported him.

“The punt can hold no more,” exclaimed Lord Bellefield. “Miss Grant’s safety must not be endangered for any consideration and as he spoke he pushed the boat from the spot, leaving Lewis still clinging to the rope and supporting the weight of the dog, which did not as yet begin to show any signs of life.

“We will bring the boat back for you, sir, directly” cried one of the men who were assisting Lord Bellefield in punting.

“You must be quick about it, if you care to be of any use,” returned Lewis in a faint voice, “for I can’t hold on much longer; my limbs are becoming numbed with the cold.”

“Better let go the dog if you’re in any difficulty,” suggested Lord Bellefield with a malicious laugh as the boat moved rapidly away.

“That is the way they would repay your faithful service, eh! my poor Faust,” murmured Lewis. “Never fear, we’ll sink or swim together, my dog. If any one deserves to drown for this day’s work ’tis I, not you.” At the sound of his master’s voice the poor animal opened his eyes and began to show signs of returning animation. Fortunate was it for them both that Lewis had contrived to place the rope under his arms in such a position as almost entirely to support, not only his own weight, but that of the dog also; for long before the boat returned his strength was entirely exhausted, and his limbs, from the length of time he had been immersed in the icy water, had completely lost all sensation, and were powerless as those of a child.

Lord Bellefield contrived to detain the boat on various pretexts, till at last the man who had promised to return lost all patience, and pushed off without waiting for permission; in another moment it was by Lewis’s side.

“Take the dog first,” exclaimed Lewis in a voice scarcely audible from exhaustion. “Now, you must lift me in, for I can’t help myself.” With some difficulty (for even with the assistance of the rope Lewis had been barely able to keep his own head and that of Faust above water) the men in the boat complied with his directions. The dog had by this time nearly recovered from the effects of the blow, and was able to stand up and lick his master’s face and hands as he lay at the bottom of the punt. Lewis, however, by no means appeared in such good case; his cheeks and even lips were deadly pale, his breathing was hard and laborious, and he lay with his eyes closed and his limbs stretched out with unnatural stiffness and rigidity. As the boat approached the spot where a landing was practicable, Charles Leicester, who had assisted his brother in conveying Annie to the carriage, which was fortunately in waiting, came running back, and as his eye fell upon the prostrate form of Lewis, he exclaimed--

“Why, Arundel! good heavens, I believe he’s insensible.”

Nor was he wrong. The instant the necessity for exertion was over the reaction had been too much for Lewis, and he had fainted. He was instantly lifted from the boat and carried to the tent, where such restoratives as could be at the moment procured were applied, at first without success, but after a short time the colour began to return to his lips, and in a few minutes more he was restored to consciousness.

“Bravo, that’s all right,” began Charley Leicester, as Lewis, with a faint smile, sat upright and returned his hearty shake of the hand with a feeble pressure. “You begin to look a little less like a candidate for a coffin than you did five minutes ago. I declare, when I saw you in the boat, thought it was a case of ‘found drowned.’ Faust! good dog, how unpleasantly wet you are--what a bump he’s got on the top of his head, just where the organ of combativeness--no, veneration, isn’t it? ought to be. How did that happen? In fact I’m quite in the dark as to the whole affair, for I had gone to fetch shawls for some of the ladies, and when I reached the scene of action Bellefield was fishing his intended, half-drowned, out of a moist punt, and enlisted me to assist in conveying the dripping damsel to the carriage. Did you fall in together?”

“You will hear enough about it soon, I dare say,” returned Lewis, speaking feebly and with apparent difficulty. “I am afraid I have scarcely sufficient life left in me just now to tell you.”

“Don’t attempt it,” returned Leicester good-naturedly. “And the sooner you get those soaked clothes off, the better. Of course they will send back the trap for you.”

“My carriage is on the spot,” interrupted a tall, aristocratic-looking man who had assisted in conveying Lewis to the tent. “My carriage is on the spot, and is very much at this gentleman’s service. We must all feel anxious to prevent his suffering from the effects of his gallant conduct. The preserver of Miss Grant’s life must be considered as a public benefactor.”

At this praise a slight colour rose to Lewis’s pale cheeks, and a look of pain passed across his features. He to be styled Annie’s preserver!--he who had all but sacrificed her life to his feelings of revenge! and as the recollection occurred to him a slight shudder ran through his frame.

“There, you are actually shivering,” exclaimed Leicester. “I shall not let you stay here any longer. Since Sir Ralph Strickland is so kind as to offer his carriage, there is nothing to delay us. Can you walk? Take my arm.”

Lewis, with an inclination of the head to Sir Ralph, took Leicester’s proffered arm, and having with difficulty risen from his seat, attempted to walk, but at the first step he stumbled, and would have fallen had not his friend supported him.

“Steady, there,” continued Leicester; “you’re hardly in marching order yet. Would you like to wait another minute or two?”

“I think I had better try to proceed,” replied Lewis; “exercise may serve to restore the circulation.”

“Allow me to take your other arm,” said Sir Ralph Strickland kindly; “then I think you will be able to reach the carriage--it is close at hand. The length of time you were in the water has cramped your limbs. I saw the whole affair, and never witnessed anything more interesting than the conduct of your noble dog.”

And as he spoke he stooped and patted Faust, then forcing Lewis to accept his offer of assistance, they left the tent together. As his blood began once again to circulate the cramp and stiffness gradually disappeared, and ere the trio reached the carriage Lewis scarcely required assistance. On reaching Broadhurst he found the General waiting to receive him, and the instant he alighted he had to undergo a long, prosy, and pompous harangue, embodying that noble commander’s gratitude, during the delivery of which oration the subject of it was kept standing in his wet clothes, a compulsory act of homage to the cold-water system, by no means congenial to his feelings, mental or bodily. However, it came to an end at last, and Lewis was permitted to retire to his own room. Moreover, Charles Leicester (instigated thereunto by a hint from Miss Peyton) waylaid the apothecary who had been summoned on Annie’s account, and caused him to inspect Lewis’s condition, which measure resulted in a command to have his bed warmed, and instantly to deposit himself therein; with which medical ordinance Lewis was fain to comply.

There he lay until, from being much too cold, he became a great deal too hot, for before night he was in a high state of feverish excitement, accompanied by violent pains in the head and limbs. His medical adviser was, however, fortunately really skilful, and by vigorous and timely measures he contrived to avert the rheumatic fever with which his patient was threatened; and after spending three days in bed Lewis arose, feeling indeed especially weak, but otherwise little the worse in body for his aquatic exploit. We say in body, for mentally he had suffered, and was still suffering bitterly. As he lay on the couch of sickness in the silent hours of the night, face to face with conscience, the recollection of the sin he had committed (for a sin it was, and he was too honest-hearted in his self-scrutiny not to recognise it as such) haunted him. The fact that he had been unable by his own act to repair the consequences of the evil he had meditated impressed him deeply--but for Faust Annie would have sunk ere he could have reached the spot, probably to rise no more. It appeared a special interference of Providence to convince him of the folly of self-reliance, and to impress upon his mind a sense of the mercy of God, in saving him from the consequences of his revengeful feelings. True, he had repented of his fault almost in the moment of committal; true, he had risked his life in proof of the sincerity of His repentance; true, the provocation he had received might, in the eyes of men, serve in great measure to justify him; still, the knowledge that but for the interposition of Providence he might now have felt himself a murderer filled him with emotions of the deepest penitence, and at the same time of the liveliest gratitude.

In this frame of mind the encomiums passed upon his gallant conduct were most distressing to him, and a short note from Annie, thanking him in a few simple words for having saved her life, added fuel to the fire of his self-condemnation. Amongst other good resolutions for the future he determined to bear any insults Lord Bellefield might offer with as much patient endurance as could by any possibility be consistent with self-respect in one in his dependent situation; and the reader may judge of the sincerity of his repentance if he reflects what such a resolution must have cost his haughty nature. He also determined to seek an opportunity of confessing to Annie how little he deserved her gratitude, and to implore her forgiveness for the wrong he had intended her. The dipping that young lady had undergone did not appear to have affected either her health or her spirits. By the doctor’s orders she also had been sent to bed immediately on her return home, where, falling asleep, she escaped a lecture from Minerva and all other evil consequences of her immersion, and woke the next morning none the worse for the accident.

It was about a week after the day on which these events had taken place, when, the afternoon being fine, Lewis and Walter proposed to take a ride together. Walter had mounted his pony, and Lewis was strapping a greatcoat in front of his horse’s saddle, when Richards, the groom, who had been elevated to the rank of second coachman (as the illness of the head coachman had rendered his resignation an act of necessity, and the next in command had succeeded to his vacant box), came forward, and touching his hat, asked if he could speak to Lewis a minute.

“Certainly; what is it?” returned Lewis, stepping aside a few paces. “Why, sir, p’r’aps you know as the General’s gone out a-driving?”

“I was not aware of the fact,” returned Lewis; “but what then?”

“He’s a-driving of hisself, sir,--our iron-greys, Mr. Arundel. Master ain’t so young as he used to was, and it’s my belief if any-think startles ’em he won’t be able to hold ’em--they go sweetly now, but they do pull most amazing. I drove ’em yesterday, and afore I got home my arms ached properly.”

“Did you mention this to General Grant?” inquired Lewis.

“Well, I told him I was afeard he’d find ’em pull rather stiff; but he only give me one of his dark looks, as much as to say, ‘Keep youi advice to yourself, and mind your own business.’ Master’s rather a hard gentleman to talk to, you see; he’s always been used to shooting and flogging the blacks, out in the Ingies, till it’s kind a-become natural to him; and as he can’t act the same here with us whites, why it puts him out like.”

“I do not see that anything can be done now,” observed Lewis, after a moment’s reflection. “If I had been here when the General started I would have told him the trick the iron-greys played us, and advised him not to drive them just yet; but I dare say it would have done no good; for, as you say, your master is not over fond of advice gratis. I suppose he has one of the grooms with him?”

“Only a mere boy, sir, and Miss Annie,” was the reply.

“What!” exclaimed Lewis in a quick, excited tone of voice; “is Miss Grant with him? Why did you not say so before? Which road have they taken? How long have they been gone?”

“About twenty minutes, or p’r’aps not so long,” returned Richards. “I think they’re gone to Camfield--leastways, I heard master tell Miss Annie to bring her card-case, ’cos he was going to call on Colonel Norton.”

“That must be eight miles by the road, but not much above five across the fields by Churton Wood,” rejoined Lewis.

“That is right, Mr. Arundel,” was the reply; “and the gates is unlocked, for I rode that way with a note for Colonel Norton the day afore yesterday.”

Ere Richards had finished speaking Lewis was on horseback; and as soon as they reached the park he turned to his pupil, saying, “Now, Walter, sit firmly, guide the pony on to the turf, tighten your reins, and then for a good canter; touch him with the whip--not too hard--that’s it.” Putting his own horse in motion at the same time, they rode forward at a brisk canter, which, as the horses grew excited by the rapid motion, became almost a gallop. Crossing the park at this pace, they turned down a bridle-path which led through a wood and across several grass fields, beyond the last of which lay a wide common. As they approached this Lewis took out his watch. “Above four miles in twenty mintues,--I call that good work for a pony. You rode very well, Walter,--you’ve a capital seat on horseback now.”

“I can leap too,” rejoined Walter. “Richards taught me the days when you were ill in bed.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” returned Lewis, who, while his pupil was speaking, had been endeavouring, unsuccessfully, to open a gate, “for they have fastened this gate with a padlock, and we must find our way over the hedge.”

“Oh! but I can’t----” began Walter.

“Yes you can,” interposed Lewis, “when I have cleared the road for you, and shown you how to do it. Sit still and watch me.” So saying, he selected a place where the hedge was thin and the ditch and bank practicable, and putting his horse into an easy canter, rode at it. Being particularly anxious that nothing should go wrong, and that Walter should be convinced of the feasibility of the attempt, Lewis was not best pleased when his horse, instead of rising to the leap, refused it, and replied to a tolerably sharp application of the spur by plunging violently and turning short round. His rider, however, sat as firmly as if he were part of the animal, and cantering round two sides of the field, got him well in hand and again rode him at the hedge, working his mouth with the bit and giving him the spur. This discipline produced the desired effect; for instead of refusing the leap this time, the horse sprang forward with a bound which would have cleared an obstacle of twice the size, and alighted on the other side several feet beyond the ditch. Lewis rode on a few yards, and then turning, leaped back into the field and rejoined his pupil. “Now, Walter, you must do as I have done. Canter up to that gap, give the pony his head, touch him on the flank as he approaches the hedge, sit firmly and press in your knees, and you’ll go over as nicely as possible.”

But poor Walter’s courage failed him; the conflict between Lewis and his horse had destroyed his confidence, and he was afraid to make the attempt. His tutor read it in his blanched cheek and quailing glance, and being as kind and judicious as he was firm, forbore to press the point, and dismounting, led the pony through the gap, and assisted Walter to scramble over on foot; then remounting his steed, he tested his obedience by once more leaping him over; and having thus achieved the adventure of the locked gate, tutor and pupil cantered off across the common. But this little episode had caused some loss of time, and when Lewis reached the lane leading to the village, near which Colonel Norton’s house was situated, he learned from a man who was mending the road that a phaeton, answering the description of General Grant’s equipage, had passed a few minutes before.

“My friend Richards’ fears were needlessly excited then, it seems, and the old gentleman is a better whip than he gave him credit for being,” thought Lewis. “Come, Walter,” he added aloud, “we will go back by the road. Don’t trot just yet; the horses are warm, we must allow them to get a little cool.”

After proceeding about half a mile along the lane, which was only just wide enough to allow vehicles to pass each other, they overtook an elderly woman in a red cloak most picturesquely perched between two panniers on a donkey’s back. Such an arrangement being a novelty to Walter, he was proceeding to inquire of what use the panniers were, when Lewis’s quick sense of hearing caught a sound which caused him to rein in his horse and, enjoining silence, pause to listen. His ears had not deceived him. Owing to the frosty weather the road was particularly hard, the ruts also had been lately mended with coarse gravel, and as he listened the sound of horses’ feet galloping, and the rattle of a carriage proceeding at unusual speed, became distinctly audible in the lane behind them. The vehicle was evidently rapidly approaching. The lane being in this part extremely narrow, Lewis’s first thought was for Walter’s safety. Seizing the pony’s rein, he set spurs to his horse, and they cantered on a short distance till they reached a gateway leading into a field. The gate was fortunately open, and desiring Walter to ride into the field and wait till he joined him, he turned his horse’s head and began, to retrace his steps. As soon as he had passed an old oak-tree which stood at a corner of the road and prevented any one from seeing beyond it, he perceived the cause of the sounds which had reached him, and which he had already but too correctly divined.

At about a hundred yards from the spot where he was stationed appeared a phaeton drawn by a pair of magnificent iron-grey horses, which Lewis had no difficulty in recognising. From the furious pace at which they were advancing, it was evident that their driver had lost all control over them; while about half-way between Lewis and the equipage in question were the donkey and panniers, with the old woman in the red cloak before alluded to. The gentleman driving the phaeton shouted to her to get out of the way, and Lewis made signs as to which side of the road she had better take; but she appeared either paralysed with fear or unable to guide her donkey; and ere she was able to comply with, or probably to comprehend these directions, the infuriated horses had overtaken her, and dashing against her, flung her, donkey, panniers and all, to the ground with a shock like that of a battering-ram. At the same instant Lewis, availing himself of the temporary check, rode forward, and springing from his saddle, seized the heads of the phaeton horses, and with much difficulty, and no inconsiderable personal risk, succeeded in stopping them.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us