With a Silken Thread, and other stories

Front matter

OUIDA'S NEW NOVEL. One volume, crown 8vo. At every Library. PIPISTRELLO, and other Stories. By OUIDA. CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY, W. WITH A SILKEN THREAD etc. With a Silken Thread AND OTHER STORIES By E. LYNN LINTON AUTHOR OF "PATRICIA KEMBALL," " THE ATONEMENT OF LEAM DUNDAS, "THE WORLD WELL LOST," " UNDER WHICH LORD?" ETC. IN THREE VOLUMES VOL. II. _lon .on CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY 1880 [The right of translation is reserved] Printed by U 'ffliatn Clowes and Sons, Limited, London and Beccles. CONTENTS OF VOL. II. For Love — CHAPTER r.ir.E I. Hast thou found me, 0 mine Enemy ? ... ... 3 II. Muscle and Mind ... ... ... 25 III. Harold as Hero ... ... ... ... 47 IV. In the Gloaming ... ... ... ... 06 V. The Serpent in Eden ... ... ... ... 8.1 VI. Truth at any Price ... ... ... 108 VII.

The Wolf and the Lamb ... ... ... 125 VIII. Unmasked ... ... ... ... 144 IX. Forgiven ... ... ... ... ... 107 The White Witch or Combe Andrew ... ... IS3 Galloping Dick ... ... ... ... ... 209 The Fate of Madame Cabanel ... ... ... 231 Wild and Tame ... ... ... ... ... B VOL.

Chapter I. Hast Thou Found Me

0 MINE ENEMY? It was iu the dusk of a dull winter's evening, when business men were hurrying westwards from tbe city, and fine ladies were driving home from tbe parks, that Charles Lanfear, leaving tbe office where he too had been doing his day's work like the rest, turned up the darkening streets to his lodgings in Bloomsbury. He was not a man to attract attention by any outward peculiarity, being just of average condition iu most things — in height, in colour, in dress, in bearing — and yet his face, when studied, had in it the signs of a history and a sorrow bevond that which even excep tional men often know. It was a handsome face, and the features were singularly delicate ; beautiful in its regularity of outline and the golden tints of hair and beard, yet weak throughout — weak in the smooth receding forehead and the wavering undefined eyebrows— weak in the small loosely shut lips, in the narrow jaw, the pointed chin, the soft uncurled hair weak in its very sensitiveness, coupled as this was with indecision and want of courage, showing a man who, how virtuous soever he might be by nature, could yet be used as a tool for evil because he was plastic, affectionate and a coward— one who, if he had not force enough to do wrong on his own account, yet neither would he have strength enough to resist tbe sin imposed on him by another.

It was the face of a man who had no central independence of his own, but who was just what chance and circumstance might choose to make him. As he passed along the streets with his furtive glancing eyes and restless lips, his body bending for ward, his head lowered and his hat drawn well over his brows, slipping past obstructions with his shoulder set back rather than meeting the world broadside as its equal, his whole bearing bad on it a painful impress of suspicion and of fear — like one expecting a pursuer and living on dread as on his daily food — like one, too, nervously afraid of giving offence or attracting observa tion, and asking of the world only the grace of oblivion and disregard. Walking rapidly now, still with his glancing eyes watching furtively and his shoulder set back, as he threaded his way through the human tangles throno-ino- BAST THOU FOUND ME, 0 MINE ENEMY . 5 the streets, he was met by a jaunty, active, well-dressed man of about his own ago but looking younger, and as careless and confident in. bearing as he himself was troubled and suspicious.

The man glanced at him sharply as they met, and turned to look after him when he had passed ; then followed him for a few hundred yards, saying aloud : " By Jove, I believe there's Charley turned up again ! " Presently he quickened his steps and soon closed with him, laying his hand suddenly on his shoulder, and saying, in a ringing metallic voice ; " Charley, my boy, is that you ? " Charles Lanfear gave a little exclamation, and shrank back with a sudden start. He had no need to look into the cruel laughing face above him, with the two sharp rodent-like teeth displayed beneath the thin lips ; he knew who it was well enough ; but after that first movement he made no further sign. He seemed to accept an unwelcome presence with the patient humbleness of one born into all things cruel and unpleasant, and over whom pain had the bitter rights of use.

Besides, was it not the thing that he had been hourly dreading ? Had he not known all along that his enemy was behind him, and that sooner or later he would come up with him and stand there face to face, as he stood now ? " Yes, Alick," he said quietly ; " you see I have come home again." FOE LOVE. " I was looking for you about this time," said Alick, with a boisterous kind of cordiality, as false as it was boisterous. " But why did you not hunt up old friends, hey ? " with a sounding laugh. " That was unhandsome of you, Charley ! " "What old friends care to be hunted up by me, Alick ? " answered Lanfear. " Pshaw ! we all have to square up our little accounts with society some time or other. You happen to have made a greater hole in your moral capital than some others, and you were found out ; but what of that ?

The more boldly you face those two facts — the hole and the discovery — the sooner you'll get yourself put through. There is no use in running away from one's difficulties, Charley. The only thing to do is to fight them to the end ; one gets out of one's misery all the sooner, whether one wins or loses." " Yes, it is all very well to say ' fight them to the end,' " returned Charles Lanfear peevishly ; " but there are some men who cannot fight, and who have nothing for it but to submit to circumstances and wait on chances." " You were always soft, Charley," sneered Alick ; " a good fellow, but decidedly pappy ! " " So you found, and made your account of, Alick," flashed out Charley — the bitterness of the weak man, taunted alter he has been used, breaking down his natural timidity for just a moment.

EAST THOU FOUND ME, 0 MINE ENEMY? 7 " Well, so I did, I confess ; but I paid you, Master Charley ; and handsomely too. You must not forget that when you sum up your little bill against me." " Yes, you paid me handsomely for doing your dirty work," said Charley ; " I have never denied that. You paid me handsomely." " And if the work was dirty, you had time enough to see the dirt," laughed Alick. " And you were paid in proportion," he added. " Then we have no claim against each other," said Charley quickly ; " we are quits, Alick." "Claim! who talks of claim, my boy? Not I! It would be ' no assets ' if I did," answered Alick, still laughing in that hard, ringing way of his, which had neither mirth nor heart in it. " I only want to see you start fair again ; and if I could lend you a helping hand I would, that is all."

" Thank you ; but I want no helping hand. I can do for myself," said Charles Lanfear. He spoke hastily, and as if instinctively shrank away to the other side of the pavement. He seemed to dread this man's power over him, and to fear the future quite as much as he lamented the past. " Do for yourself, can you ? You are a lucky fellow then, and I congratulate you. It is not everyone who can do for himself without friends to help him ; and if you can, you have distanced me, that is all I can say." When he said this, squaring his shoulders and thrusting out his chest, while using that tone of affected humility which is used by some prosperous men boasting of their prosperity under the guise of bewailing their lower condition, Charley wondered — as indeed he had often wondered in these later years — how he ever came to love Alick Farmer, false, boastful, cruel, as he had always been from boyhood upward.

What had been the spell upon him ? — why had he not been always able to read him as he read him now, and in that reading to despise and shun him? " You are talking nonsense, Alick," he said quite quietly ; " and you know it. Yet, for all you are so much above me, I do not want your help." " You always were a marvel, Charley ! Not want my help, after such an upset asTyou have had ? Won derful ! But I remember at school the way you used to fall soft was something unapproachable — what the Yankees would call a caution. And the boy was father to the man, hey ? You have still that faculty of land ing on your legs ? " " If you call it landing on my legs," said Charley, half sadly, half derisively. By this time they had reached the door of Charley's lodgings in Hart Street, and involuntarily he stopped ; then hurried on again to conceal that he had stopped.

His life was full of these odd little bits of patchwork EAST THOU FOUND ME, 0 MINE ENEMY? 9 these steps backward to recover lost ground, and irre solution and timidity^ following on incautious self betrayal. But Alick's eyes were as keen as a hawk's and his senses as acute as a bloodhound's ; and he caught both the error and the embarrassment as quickly as the one was committed and the other shown. " You live here, I see ? " he asked, halting. " Yes," said Charley Lanfear, always " unable to tell a lie at a pinch," as Alick had once said of him in disdain. " Good night, then ; I will not take you further. What is your number ? Oh, I see ! " — looking at it, then writing it in his pocket-book. " I'll come and look you up one of these days ; I'd like to see how you get on. For all that you are so deuced independent of me now, I might be able to bear a hand if you wanted me — who knows?

Stranger things have happened! By the bye, I have never asked after the fair Amy yet; is she well ? Ah ! glad of that," in recognition of Charley's dumb assent. " Eemember me to her, will you? and, once more, good night." Saying which, Alick nodded to his friend with care less disrespect, and, turning back, drove off to his club, laughing to himself; as cruel men do laugh when they have done an act of wanton mischief. His head depressed and his pale face wan and weary, Charles Lanfear mounted the dingy stairs, and entered the sitting room where his family lived. Three people were in the room as he entered — his wife Amy, a small, dark, careworn woman, who had once been as beautiful as an olive-coloured Hebe, but whose pinched and painful face had lost all traces now of its former loveli ness and was merely intense, drawn and anxious; his daughter Edith, a tall fair girl of nineteen or twenty, but with a subdued manner little in accordance with the bright blue eyes, the rounded dimpled chin, and the rich colouring of cheeks and hair ; and Harold, his son, a year younger than Edith, tall like Edith, dark like his mother, but with his father's features and ex pression.

Yet, perhaps because of the freshness of youth, perhaps because of the admixture of the more fibrous nature of his mother, he did not look so weak and irresolute as Charley, though, unhappily for him self, he was as sensitive and loving ; and, more un happily still, imaginative and poetical ; which Charley was not. Amy needed to look only once at her husband to see that something was wrong, perhaps to guess what it might be. She rose from her chair, laying down her work with a certain weariness of manner, as of one hounded out of a pleasant resting place and obliged to take up again a burden laid aside for a moment. She looked neither annoyed nor surprised at what she be lieved to be the forecasting of a new misfortune — only very weary, but very resolute. EAST TEOU FOUND ME, 0 MINE ENEMY? 11 " You are tired, Charley ?

" she said, laying her hand in his, and speaking with a tenderness of manner scarcely to have been expected from her, judging from her face only. " Or, has anything happened to vex you ? " she added. " Yes," answered Charley in a low voice ; " I want to speak to you alone, Am}'." Amy looked behind her sharply to where Edith was sitting, talking to her brother in whispers. " Leave the room, Edith, and take Harold with you," she said quickly, speaking as if Harold were a child and under the control of his sister. The two young people rose and left the room without remonstrance or remark ; both looking wistfully at their father as they passed, but neither speaking to him though their young faces were full of love and a troubled wish to share the trouble which they saw in him. " What is it, Charley?" asked Amy, when they were alone.

" I have met Alick Farmer." The careworn, sharp-featured wife gave no melo dramatic scream or start; there was no outward ex pression of anguish or despair ; but her face grew old and hard, her brows contracted, the lines about her mouth deepened, her figure straightened, and her thin throat seemed strung with beating threads of wire, It was fighting with wild beasts at Ephesus again and fighting to defend not only herself, but him and them. " Did he speak to you, Charley ? did he know you ? " " Yes ; he came upon me suddenly, and walked with me. " Did you let him know where you lived ? " " I could not help it, Amy ; indeed I could not ! He came with me to the door, and so saw where we lived." She sighed — a sigh her husband knew too well, eloquent as it was of the hopelessness lying in the ever recurring attempt to protect one who could not help himself, and who was continually spoiling all her plans by his weakness.

" Does he know your present name ? " she continued, after a pause. " Surely you did not tell him that, Charley ! " " No, he did not ask," said Charley simply. " I suppose he thinks it what it was." " That is good, so far," Amy answered. Then she said suddenly and authoritatively : " We must leave London, and at once — to-morrow ; there is no time to be lost." " You know best, Amy ; I will do just what you like," said Charley submissively. ' Just what I like ! If only you would have some MINE ENEMY? 13 opinion of your own, Charley!" — that hopeless sigh again repeated — " if only you would care to plan and arrange for yourself ! " " Why should I, dear, when you do everything so much better than I could? There can be only one head in every family, and I am sure you make a far better head than I should."

He spoke with almost boyish simplicity and with more than boyish humility ; and Amy, touched if wear)-, loving if hopeless, stooped and kissed his forehead as he sat on the low chair beside her, feeling, as she had often felt before, that, heavy as her trouble was, she would bear even more and weightier for love. That was just the barter — sorrow, disgrace and fear, for the sole exchange of Love ! " I must tell Edith," she then said ; " she must ex plain it to Harold." " Poor Edith ! " said Charley, tears filling his soft blue eyes ; " poor, poor Edith ! " "Why do you pity her, Charley?" asked the wife, with a jealous accent. " Why should she be pitied ? Have I not borne everything that she should be kept from trouble ? And what will she know now to distress her ? That we leave town suddenly !

What is there in that to make her an object of compassion ? — and after all that I have suffered ! " Her lips quivered, but her eyes were hard rather than moist. " Yes ; I pity her, and I pity you much more, Amy ! " said Charley tenderly. But Amy was ruffled. She could not share the love for which she had suffered so much even with a daughter, and demanded that her husband should be as entirely absorbed in her as if there were no children to claim, part of his affection. He was all in all to her ; why should she not be all in all to him ? Unlike women in general, she had sunk the mother in the wife and placed the children below the husband ; and what she had done for him he too must do for her. Not indeed, that she had seen much of her children until quite of late. They had been sent over to England so soon as they were old enough for school, and were thus in a manner unknown to their parents.

Six months' companionship had not bridged over the gap of fifteen years' separation ; and Edith and Harold were still little more than strangers to the father and mother who lived their own life in secret and apart, and seemed only anxious to prevent their children from sharing it. Such at least was the mother's ruling. Charley, left to himself, would have made friends, perhaps confidants, of both son and daughter; but Amy stood between them, and kept him jealously to herself. It had always been so. No one might attend to Charley, no one might love him, or give him pleasure, or bo loved by him, but herself; and, from tho earliest MINE ENEMY? 15 time, the children had been taught to keep away and to themselves, and told that their caresses teased poor papa. Thus the young things had grown up all in all to each other; the elder girl more like a young mother to her sensitive, sickly brother than like a sister play mate of equal age ; for Harold was as entirely her care as Charley was Amy's, and as jealous of his love as her mother was of his father's. It was a strange repetition of feeling and circumstance, and in both cases the woman was the stronger.

Her jealous pain had not quite passed away when Mrs. Lanfear opened the door of the sitting room and called Edith, harshly, to come to her at once. The girl ran down hurriedly. The hard accent of her mother's voice startled her, and she too, seemed conscious of a coming trouble. She had learnt of late to feel afraid of something, she did not know what; it was the atmosphere of a secret which she might not know, yet could not ignore, that made her thus anxious and fearful; for the young feel what they can neither formularize nor understand. " Edith," said her mother abruptly, " you must pack up your things and Harold's to-night. We leave London to-morrow." " Leave London to-morrow, mamma ! Why ? " cried Edith. It was a very natural question — indeed, rather an exclamation than a question— but it annoyed Amy who dreaded nothing so much as questions, and who had often asked herself what she should do when Edith grew old enough to have perceptions and the right to exercise them.

" It is not your place to ask why," she said sharply. "Your duty is to obey orders, Edith, not dispute them." " I do not dispute them, dear mamma ; I was only surprised — it is so sudden!" said Edith, with a pretty deprecating smile, but sadly too timid for a daughter. " Tell your brother that we leave London to-morrow," continued Mrs. Lanfear, not suffering herself to be softened by that sweet young face, loving and lovely though it was, but keeping her eyes fixed steadily just above her head. " I am busy, and must attend to my duty." And her words confessed unconsciously that she did not consider kindly intercourse with her boy, or the association of her children with herself in even the minor things of life, one of the duties which she was bound to perform. Had she spoken for hours, she could have said nothing more expressive.

"Shall I tell him anything else, mamma?" asked Edith ; " explain anything to him ? " "Yes; toll him that your father's health is had— that the work at Chaplin's offico is too much for him — MINE ENEMY? 17 and that we must go out of town at once, and get him into the country, else he will be ill." Mrs. Lanfear spoke in a hard dry way, as if repeating a lesson learned by heart ; looking back at her husband, not her daughter. " Poor papa ! " said Edith lovingly. Charley Lanfear dropped his eyes. Amy's brows contracted. " If you have nothing else to say, you had better go and do your work, Edith," she said coldly. " You have not much time." " I have only one thing to say," Edith answered ; " what am I to do about my pupils? Poor little things ! I shall be quite sorry to lose them ! " a little sadly.

" They were getting on so nicely, and I was so glad to feel that I was earning a little for myself and helping poor papa. How shall I let them know we are going away so suddenly ? " " Write," said her mother laconically. " But they owe me some money ! " said Edith, And money was by no means a drug in the Lanfear market; least of all to Edith, who had spent in imagination her little earnings twenty different ways already, but always on Harold and papa, and something for mamma too — not quite so beautiful as for Harold and papa — never on anything for herself. " How much do they owe you ? " asked her mother. c VOL. "Nearly the quarter— almost five pounds," said Edith. It seemed such a large sum, as she gave it out with a pretty girlish pride in her bread-winning powers ! " It will be useful for our settling in ; they can send it by post-office order when we are settled.

No," Amy then said, interrupting herself and speaking with a suspicious kind of accent ; " you must go for it yourself to-morrow morning, Edith. You must explain your position to them, and they will pay you. They had better not write." " I should not know where to tell them to write to, said Edith ; " I do not know where we are going." " I will tell you to-morrow," answered her mother. ' ' Papa and I have not quite made up our minds yet, and it will be time enough for you and your brother to know when we are on our journey. So go and do as I have said, Edith. Tell your brother what I have told you, and pack up for him. I cannot tell you any more." And Edith went back to Harold, who had been wait ing for her at the head of the stairs imagining every kind of romance that could possess a young brain, and old him the news — the two wondering greatly at this sudden resolve of mamma's, and speculating wildly as o the cause, and where they were going, aud what kind of life they would lead in the country.

MINE ENEMY? 19 " So long as we are together, Edith, it does not make much matter where we are," said Harold, bringing his hands together with a nervous clasp, as he often did when speaking to Edith. " No, not if poor papa keeps well, and has some work to do." " If I keep well too, Edith," returned Harold quickly. " Papa is stronger than I am, and has mamma to look after him ; why don't you say if I keep well ? " " And if you keep well, too, dear," she answered, going over to him and kissing his flushed face. " You must never like anyone as much as you like me Edith ! " said Harold quite gravely ; " not even papa or mamma — no one ? " " No one," answered Edith ; " I never could like any one as much as you, Harold. We are all we have for each other." " And quite enough," he said. " So long as we have each other, what more should we want ?

" " Nothing," said Edith. There was no more time now for talk of any kind. The rest of the evening was spent in collecting together and packing the not too numerous possessions of the family ; and by noon the following day all outlying business had been gone through, and they were on the Great Western railway steaming rapidly out of town and away from that source and centre of hidden danger — the man Alick, who had spoken to Charlie Lanfear last night. "Now I will tell you where we are going, Edith," said Mrs. Lanfear, drawing a deep breath as they passed the last of the new houses bordering the line and dashed out into the free country. " To Alton Roadend." " And where is Alton Eoadend, mamma? " asked the girl, whom the mere name made no wiser. " And why are we going there ? " she added. " Alton Eoadend is a little village I used to hear of when a girl," said her mother ; " where the air is very soft, and likely to do your father good."

" Poor darling papa, I hope it will ! " said Edith tenderly, looking at the weak, handsome face with a compassionate love in her own, and laying her hand in his timidly. He lifted his face to her with a yearning that was as sad as it was strange. It seemed as if those two hearts wanted only leave to understand each other, for the one to find happiness and the other to give joy hy love. " Talk to me, Edith ! " said Harold, pulling her dress impatiently. " Yes, Edith, attend to your brother, and amuse him ; I will take care of your papa," said her mother coldly. " Besides, poor papa is tired." And then the two stole away to the other end of the carriage, and talked in the whispered noiseless way HAS T THOU FOUND ME, 0 MINE ENEMY? 21 habitual to them, till the train reached Horsley, the small town which was the metropolis to Alton Eoadend — feeding it with news and fashions and the fine arts, in return for the farm produce and the dairy goods which the little village sent in with punctual care on market days.

Alton Eoadend was a secluded village about seven miles from Horsley, and a dozen miles from everywhere else. It consisted of tbe Hall, the Vicarage, the doctor's square white stuccoed house at the north end, and a fancy cottage in the Elizabethan style at the south end of the village, off the main road and down a little lane ; of the village inn, the village smithy, and a few dusty little depots for miscellaneous goods, called drapers' shop or grocers,' indiscriminately ; while the rest of the human dwellings were little better than huts and hovels clustered about the old grey church, or scattered on the outskirts of the various farms. The Hall was owned by the Shenstones, the great landed pro prietors of the plaee ; the vicar was the Eeverend Mitchell Seymour ; Mr. James Bent was the doctor ; and Eosehill, the fancy cottage in the Elizabethan style standing back from the main road, was at present unoccupied.

An old grand-aunt of Amy's used to live there in bygone times ; which was how it came about that she knew anything of the place at all ; but the old lady had been dead now for many years, and, as her name had not been Lanfear, there was no danger of any recognition. And very likely the place had passed into other hands, she thought, as she prepared to set out to the village with her husband ; leaving the two young people at Horsley in charge of the luggage till their return. It was that old bygone association with Eoadend, as the place was usually called, dropping the Alton for shortness, which had induced her to try their fortune there on their flight from London. And as she was personally unknown, never having visited here before, and as her grand-aunt had been dead so many years now, leaving neither child nor dependent behind her, there was no possible danger in that slender little link with the past.