Beyond Atonement: a story of London life

Front matter

stew Books b£ Bellafrs £L Co. EIGHTY YEARS AGO; or, the Recollections of an old Army Doctor, his adventures on the fields of Quatre Bras and Waterloo, and during the occupation of Paris, 1815. By the late Dr. Gibney, of Cheltenham. Edited by his Son, Major Gibney. Crown 8vo, cloth, 5s. net. "Pictures of the inner life of the British Army, which forcibly recall the works of Charles Lever, glimpses of war from the surgeon's point of view, and interesting observations of the France of 1815, serve to make up a most readable book, and incidentally to supplement the history of a great campaign." — The Times, June 4, 1896. NEW SPORTING STORIES. By G. G. Crown 8vo,cloth, 3s. 6d.net. The new sporting writer, G. G., has been eulogised in The Ti?nes, Sportsman, Field, Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, Sporting Life, Morning Post, Saturday Review, Scotsman, &>c. "G. G. IS A BENEFACTOR TO HIS SPECIES. . . .

Nothing more irresistibly mirth-moving has been written for many a year." — Daily Telegraph. "New Sporting Stories are written by a man who evidently knows what he is writing about. They will be welcomed by admirers of Mr. Jorrocks and Mr. Sponge who do not object to a superfluity of sporting slang. Yet even votaries of the turf and the hunting field may be puzzled by the crvptogramic curtness of the allusive phraseology and by the references to racers and racing men under sobriquets that seem to be current in inner sporting circles. But the sketches are short, racy, and to the point ; and they are the more entertaining that the author ostentatiously disclaims all pretensions to rigid morality ; he selects his friends among the most shady characters, who are ever ready for a swindle in any shape, and is made the confidant by the chuckling con trivers of many an ingenious 'plant.' The point of the best jokes is the difficulty and delicacy of losing races and pulling horses in public without being found out.

We need hardly add that the clever author does not mean his own morality to be taken seriously, and the simpleton or novice might do much worse than study him with the view of picking up ■ wrinkles ' as to the snares and traps that are set for the unwary." — The Times, May 29. IN SCARLET AND SILK ; or, Recollections of Hunting and Steeplechase Riding. By Fox Russell. With 2 Drawings in colour by Finch Mason. Crown 8vo, cloth, 5s. net. "The best sporting book published for many a day." — Black and White. "Racy of the soil, a work to take up again and again." — Sportsman. "One which a sportsman should hasten to possess himself of." — Sporting Times. "Fox Russell is most practical in all he says." — Sporting Life. "The stay-at-home or arm-chair reader will find it exhilarating reading equally with the regular hunting man." — Glasgow Herald.

Chapter I

A COMMON-SENSE GIRL. " Ah, well ! I suppose we all grow better or worse as we grow older. You've grown better, and I've grown worse." " It is very nice of you to say so, Mr. Melville, but I am afraid it is like most com pliments — only half true." "Then suppose we say the first half's true, and I'm not such a bad fellow as I feel; shall we?" " But I'm not so sure I did not mean that all the truth was in the latter half." '•' You couldn't mean anything so cruel ! " "Oh, really, Mr. Melville—" " Mr. Melville again ? It used to be Charley — not so very long ago. How many years is it? Six — seven, is it? Good Lord! And it* seems only the day before yesterday. Do you ever think of the dear old times now, Flo?" Charley Melville leaned back, sighing, as he asked the question, and gazed languishingly at the young girl beside him.

She looked per haps even younger than she was, and this semblance of extreme youth was one of her most potent charms. There was nothing strik ingly beautiful in her small, regular features, but as her long lashes lifted, and she turned an answering glance upon him, her dark, lustrous eyes seemed in an instant to animate and transfigure all her face with a stange, fascinating loveliness that dazzled like sudden light. Most wonderful eyes they were: large and bright, full of a bewildering tenderness, and raying into eyes that met them subtle magnetic influences as difficult to describe as to resist. Not that Melville made any effort of resist ance: he willingly yielded himself up to their witchery. It was pleasant to feel his pulses quicken as the once familiar ecstasy tingled through his veins again, pleasant to feel about him again the gossamer meshes of that enchanted web in which her siren glances had so often entangled him in the dear old days that he remembered.

" Do you ever think of them now, Flo? " he repeated. " Sometimes," she responded, smiling thought fully. " Don't you ever wish we could have them all over again?" "It might spoil them, even as a memory, if we could," she said carelessly. "Last year's fashions were sufficient — for last year." "That's a very different thing," he protested. " For my part, I would willingly give a year of the future for every day of the past I could get in exchange for it, if I might choose the days." " Ah ! you young barristers are always so poetical," she laughed. "Is it the melancholy result of waiting for the briefs that will not come ? " " Not in my case," he said, colouring. " You wrong me if you count me among the briefless. No, I mean I have grown tired of life alto gether, everything has lost its freshness.

I used to be a human being with sensibilities of a sort, but I have degenerated into a machine. I put my brain and my tongue into the law, my tongue and my heels into society, but I never put my heart into anything. If I didn't sometimes feel it beat I should forget I had one." " How very dreadful ! " " I mean it. Why, I'm so sick of all the society I can get here that, do you know, I had not been to a dance — I was going to say for years — for a year, at least, till I put myself about to get an invitation to Mrs. Munster- Barlow's last month; and do you know why I went there ? " " Because you did not know what else to do with yourself? " " Because I heard you were in town, and that you were going to be there." "You surprise me," she said, archly. "Put ting your tongue so much into society seems to have worn it lovely and smooth."

"But I mean it, Flo. I do, indeed." " And do you really ever mean anything ? " "Well," he replied, with the little forced laugh that was habitual with him. "Perhaps not, as a general thing. But I mean all I say to you. Surely you can't suppose I have met you at so many different houses in these last few weeks by mere coincidence? I would not have taken so much trouble for any other girl in the world." " Hadn't we better go in now ? " " No, let us sit out one more dance. This is the first opportunity I have had for a quiet talk with you since we met again." They had strolled out of the noisy, heated ball-room to a secluded seat among the cool shadows of the conservatory. Between the motionless palm leaves they caught glimpses of the dancers flitting past the half-curtained doorway, and the dreamy waltz music came to them like the voice of their remembrances, softened by distance and tremulous with a tender human pathos.

They had loved, they had parted, with tears and hopes and promises; but he had forgotten her, and she — ? Now, they were met once more, and at sight of her, all the dear, lost past had come back to him ; it seemed to be opening, flowerlike, from the heart of the music, and sweet, for him, with all its old-time fragrance. But for her? "Although we have lost sight of each other so long," Melville resumed, "you seem to be — well, I can't fancy you and I feeling like strangers to each other, Flo, can you?" She said nothing, and presently he continued with his usual affected laugh : " Do you remember how I used to call you my little sweetheart?" " Yes, " she answered calmly. " I suppose we were as silly as most young people, weren't we ? " "I wish we were silly like that still." " Don't you think we are quite silly enough as we are?"

" You won't believe I am in earnest, Flo, but I am, indeed," he insisted. "I only wish you would let me call you my little sweetheart again. " " If I did — you would soon wish I had not ! " " Never ! Flo, my dear Flo ! " he cried, urged into unwonted earnestness, partly by his own emotional impetuosity and partly by her persistent indifference. " I know you loved me once; you — you used to love me. What has changed you?" REYOND ATONEMENT. "I might ask what has changed you?" she returned. " What has changed everybody, since we amused ourselves, as children will, by play ing at being in love with each other ? " "But I have not changed," he declared. "I love you now, Flo, as dearly as I loved you then." " You think so just at this moment — " No, I am sure of it. I have loved you always. " " Only you kept forgetting to write and tell me so."

" Don't be too hard on me, Flo, " he replied. " I know I ought to have written — but I have never forgotten you. You would not believe me if I told you how constantly I have thought of you." He laid his hand gently upon hers, and held it with a tightening clasp. " I have been as bad as most men, I believe — but I should have been far worse if it hadn't been for the hold your memory had on me. I might do better, God knows ; but I'm such an un^ reliable fool. I am trying now, my hardest, to make a fresh start, and if there is anyone who could help me, it is you, Flo." " Now, how much of this is real feeling, Charley ? " she interrupted, quietly withdrawing her hand from his, " and how much mere fancy and the impulse of the moment?" He laughed ruefully. " Didn't. I say you wouldn't believe me?

And yet I have never spoken to you thoughtlessly, as I do to others." His vehemence of manner gradually returned upon him as he proceeded. "What can I say? How shall I make you believe me? Flo — don't laugh at me, for pity's sake! You'll drive me mad. I love you — I love you with all my heart. I loved you as a boy loves, in the dear old days when you loved me, and I love you now as a man loves. I have never loved anyone else, and never shall. I own I have had foolish passing fancies for other women, but no love. I have never dreamed of asking any one of them to be my wife. And Flo — my darling! I ask you " He hesitated; the rush and eagerness of his emotion so overcame him that his voice quavered and faltered under the strain. But the girl either had her feelings under the most complete control, or was really indifferent to his evident agitation; she affected not to have noticed it.

" Do let us talk sense. You are not the man who could be happy with a wife, to begin with," she said, with an air of conviction. " You would grow tired of seeing the same woman's face every day at the other side of your table. You must not think of me still as the simple, ignorant country girl I used to be. This is not even my first London season, you know. I have been up each season for the last four years, but I suppose you did not happen to hear of it? Anyhow, although aunt and I saw nothing of you, we heard of you. Some of the stories we heard of you were quite shocking ! " He was silent. " Even if a wife could make you happy, could you afford to make her happy ? " she added, laughingly. "Some wives want so much to make them happy, and that runs into money. I am one of that sort." "I don't pretend to be a rich man," he re plied, very much subdued.

"The poor old dad was pretty well broke by that Hacker's Bank failure; he only left me just enough to make me hungry for more. But now it has all gone — I have sown my wild oats, as they say, and am settling down to work in real earnest. My practice is growing rapidly, and there are great prizes to be won in the law, you know — there is no reason why — If I did not press you for an answer now, but waited and asked you again, when " "But I am ambitious," she interrupted lightly. " How long do you think it would take you to get to the woolsack ? " "You see," he continued, disregarding her bantering question, " I have never had any definite object to work for. So long as I could have my pleasures and pay for them, or — ha! ha! — or owe for them, I have never troubled myself about anything else.

I had, somehow, lost sight of you — I got somehow to feel that you didn't really care for me, and it made me reckless — for except dear old Kenneth Wynne — do you remember Wynne? He and I were at school together, you know; I used to tell you about him. He was always my guide, philos opher and friend. Except dear old Kenneth, I haven't a genuine friend in the world, but you. If you would give me hope — if you would let me work for you, Flo" — he kindled into sudden fervour. " If you care to see me any thing better than I am, promise that you will wait for me, Flo; give me three years, and if I have you to work for " His voice became hoarse and broken again; he was touched, probably, as much by a vague self-pity as by any more genuine sentiment; and the girl knew him well enough to know that.

" Like Jacob serving his time for Rachel — was it Rachel? A nice pair of biblical characters we should make, too, shouldn't we?" she said, with playful deliberation. " No, Charley. I have always liked you, but — I should never make you a good wife, and I'm afraid you would make me a very bad husband." He grasped her hand again, passionately, desperately, but she withdrew it and silenced him with an imperious gesture. "Now, it is best for both of us that we should understand each other. We have had our little romance, and now we come to the reality. After the meat, the bone." She tapped his hand with her fan carelessly, and laughed. " I am as poor as you are. I literally haven't a penny to call my own, and when my aunt dies her annuity dies with her. I have seen something — not much, but enough — of poverty to make me look at life, and especially married life, from a common sense point of view.

Dreadfully practical, am I not? But then I'm not a young barrister! Don't interrupt, please. I haven't finished yet. I was going to say, it is only poor working people who can afford to marry for love — people who are too poor to be ruined by anything. We have not reached that bliss ful state yet. We couldn't be angels in a heaven where there are no golden haloes. What you want to do is to marry a nice young heiress, or a wealthy old dowager; and I am neither. My duty, my aunt tells me (and I know she is right), is also to marry money; and you have none. If I am so far favoured — I told you I was ambitious — as to get a title with the money, why, love and money will go hand in hand!" She spoke so unconcernedly, with such a bewildering light of laughter in those irresistible eyes of hers, that it was impossible to guess how much she meant of all she said or how little.

"You only say this to torment me," Mel ville began, reproachfully. " Indeed, I do not ! " she ejaculated. " Com mon-sense is a more reliable god than Cupid, and if I loved you to distraction, I would not marry you — for your sake as well as my own. You would grow tired of bread and cheese and kisses, sooner than I should — and I should very soon grow tired of them. No ; we should never make a Darby and Joan, Charley, so we won't try to." He leaned towards her, looking yearningly into her face, as if he thought to read there the hope that she would not speak. The idea of losing her, though in her absence he had so easily forgotten her for so many years, seemed to fill him with a wild despair. And he saw now in her eyes, or fancied he could see, a pensive, yielding tenderness that was all at variance with her cold worldly wisdom ; a reflection of the sweet look that was in them when he and she were boy and girl together, and she timorously confessed her innocent maiden love for him.

Instantly an exultant consciousness that her heart was not in the words she had spoken, that under all her practical prudence and assumed indifference her old love for him was living still, overleaped and scattered all his doubts, ahd in a reckless spirit of confidence and triumph he suddenly clasped his arms about her, drew her head down upon his shoulder, and pressed his burning lips again and again to hers. The next moment she had freed herself, and started up indignantly. "You forget yourself, Mr. Melville," she cried, with angry dignity. But he was not to be so easily repressed ; he seized her two hands fervently, and, rising, stood before her. "Flo," he said, speaking rapidly and with an eager intensity, "I forget everything ex cept that I love you. You must forgive me. I love you — and — and, for all that you have said, I feel that you still love me.

If you don't — if you do not love me — say so. plainly, for God's sake, and leave me to go to the devil, as I am going ! So long as I know you love me, so long as I only think it, it will help to steady me. I will work and slave for you; I will be a better man than I have been, Flo, for your sake; I'll try my hardest to be worthy of you. I shall have an object to work for — I shall work to win you for my wife. Do try to believe me. Don't laugh at me, Flo, I can't bear it from you. Only say that you love me, and I won't ask you to promise me anything now." She looked down persistently at the delicate white hands that held hers, and made no answer. "I'll never believe that you don't," he re iterated, earnestly, "until you say so. I shall work for you and think of you still as my my little sweetheart, unless you will tell me you have changed, and do not love me."

The drifting wail of the music blended with their thoughts again, while he waited for her to speak. Was there any stirring of pity for him, or for herself, any touch of unselfish love at her heart that she was too worldly-wise to reveal, any blind sense within her that stretched, as it were, hands of pathetic longing towards some vision of a sweeter, ampler life than she found in the present, or expected to find in the future? Perhaps she had some momentary dream of taking to her breast this fallen idol of her girlhood, helping him, seeking to lift him up again, or even, if need were, sharing his fall, and making love only all-sufficient. He could not see if any tell-tale weakness welled into her downcast eyes; if her lips quivered it was so slightly that before he could be sure of it she spoke, and her voice betrayed nothing : she had completely recovered her easy, nonchalant self-possession — if she had ever lost it.

" What a splendid actor you would make ! " she said, with a smile. " But we have had enough of promises and performances for one evening, haven't we? Come! Let us go in, and if you behave yourself and are very good," she added archly, " you shall have the very next dance with me. There ! "

Chapter II. In Chambers

Even if Flo Sidley had responded to Mel ville's appeal in the most idyllic spirit, and given him the conditional pledge he asked, nobody who knew him Would have expected him to carry out his part of the compact; and Flo knew him, probably, as well as anybody. The years that had changed him from the frank and healthy-hearted boy she had almost wor shipped into a shallow, shifty man-about-town, had changed her from a simple, unsophisticated Country lassie into a calculating and ambitious woman. Melville could not be altogether blind to this change in her, but he knew she had loved him once, and as she had pointedly avoided saying that she did not love him now, his natural vanity gave her silence the meaning he wished it to have. He found something humiliating in the mere idea that she could have grown indifferent to him ; and yet, if he could have been truthful with himself, he would have acknowledged that her influence over him was no longer what it used to be.

He felt it only in her presence; it lost all hold upon him as soon as he was away from her, and left him wondering at his own transitory susceptibility. Idleness, a crav ing for new excitement, a fatuously good-natured impression that she expected it of him — these were at the root of such motives as in dviced him to go out of his way so often to renew his acquaintance with her. He certainly had never gone with any serious intention of reviving the old relations between them, and yet now, almost before he actually realised what he was doing, he had declared a passion which he had not felt an hour before he uttered it, and did not feel an hour after. He was a little piqued, however, by her coolness towards himself; her irritating disbelief in his sincerity, although he knew he was not sincere, so rankled in his memory that it served to keep alive within him an obstinate determi nation to win her and prove his consistency, and made him more enthusiastic over the pro ject of his own reformation than he had been over almost anything since he was a boy.

His enthusiasm burnt so fiercely that it was burnt out within a day or two, but he shut his eyes to the fact at first, turned a deaf ear to the whisperings of his own weaknesses, and went on deluding himself with a pretence of carrying out a resolution upon which he was no longer resolved. There is no good to be gained, though, by hammering cold iron ; once the red heat has gone out of it, all the ham mering in the world will not shape it; it will snap it sooner. He chafed under the restraints he placed upon himself, and wearied of the irksome mono tony of systematic work; life without plenty of seasoning was tasteless to him and unsatisfying, and he would not have kept to it half so long as he did if repeated meetings with Flo had not stimulated his always-waning zeal. He flattered himself by telling her of the efforts he was making for her sake ; he naturally exaggerated those efforts in the telling, and so, for the time being, became warmed and eager again with new resolves ; and sometimes, when she responded with a few words of encouragement and his eyes met the old tender look in hers, all lassitude and doubt and indecision fell from him, and he found himself again and again reiterating earnestly that he loved her, and was driven by her tantalizing opposition into more and more passionately entreating her to give him some hope, some promise, some assurance that he was not striving, with such noble self-denial, for what was unattainable ; and there were times when he felt that she was on the verge of yielding; but she never yielded.

In this perfunctory fashion Melville managed to tread the path of virtue for, perhaps, rather more than a fortnight ; then Flo told him, one evening, that the state of her aunt's health made it impossible for her to remain in London, and they were, therefore, going out to the Riviera as soon as they could complete their arrange ments for the journey; they had not definitely fixed the date of their departure or return. And calling at the house less than a week later he was told they had gone ; they went the day before. He came away feeling hurt and indignant. She had sent him no word of good-bye; she might, at least, have written to say she was going, so that he could have called to see her once more before she went. She zvould have written if she really cared anything for him, and whether he went right or wrong.

He argued himself into a reckless and resentful mood; secretly, he was not altogether sorry to have so much excuse to relieve his feelings by giving way to them; the time for hesitation and un certainty was happily past, and without delay, to adopt his own phraseology, he paved the road to hell with his good intentions, and ran a devil of a race all down the pavement. He was vaguely remorseful and decidedly seedy next morning. He slept at his chambers in the Temple, and did not wake until the charwoman, who had a duplicate key, knocked on his bedroom door to say that breakfast was ready and waiting for him in the next room ; and he had only just finished dressing, and was trifling with the half cold tea and quite cold toast when he heard his clerk let himself in at the outer door and go into his office.

" Piffle ! " he shouted, seating himself at the writing table, and opening " Chitty on Contracts" before him for the sake of appearances. "Piffle!" There was a slow shuffle of feet in the crazy old passage without, a gasping cough, and a hesitating knock on the door. " Come in. Come in. Don't stand tapping out there like an old woodpecker ! " cried Mel ville impatiently. The door opened, and a tall, shrivelled, feeble looking old man came in with an expression of mild protest on his face. It was a long, narrow face, and the expression of mild protest was permanent; the nose was thin and pointed, with a smear of snuff about the tip of it; the eyes were weak and small, but stared with a latent, inbred curiosity through a pair of mag nifying spectacles. He kept his hat on, a round felt article with a strangely limited .brim, and had a large red handkerchief clutched in his skinny hand.

"I thought I heard you call, sir." His voice was a kind of creaking monoto nous baritone with an intermittent bass break in it. "Yes," began Melville. "I'm not very well this morning, Piffle." "Oh! You don't look well, mister." "You've got a small bottle outside there, haven't you ? " " Yes, sir. "Just go round to the Deverell and get me six-penn'orth of brandy and a bottle of soda, will you? I'm very queer this morning." " Small soda, sir ? " "'Yes. And, I say ! You needn't carry them out so that everybody can see what you've got, you know." " Oh, dear no ! I never do that, sir. They go into my pocket all right. Oh ! Eight-pence that'll be, sir, won't it?" Mr. Piffle groaned and gasped spasmodic ally as he counted the coppers over in his wrinkled palm, then shuffled slowly out of the room, and away on his unprofessional errand.

" Well ! " mused Melville, gloomily. " She's gone, and Ken won't be back for a couple of months yet, thank God, so I shall have time to look round in peace. She wanted to get rid of me, that's about it; and I suppose I am a pretty bad lot. Wonder dear old Ken hasn't got tired of me, too, long before this. I'm tired of myself. I shall tire him out one of these days and he'll chuck me ; then I shall go to the deuce with all steam on — or else settle down to hard work and astonish every body : nobody more than myself! " He laughed drearily. " Poor old Ken ! It's a dirty business, there's no doubt about that — always playing on his good nature as I am. He's a good fellow, and a deal more grateful for nothing than I am for anything. Come to that, though, he can afford it. He never misses it. And, of course, I shall pay him back one of these days.