Bound to the Wheel

Front matter

VOL. I'A JOHN SAUNDERS, AUTHOR OF "ABEL DRAKE'S WIFE," ifcc, &c m THREE VOLUMES. VOL. II. LONDON: HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS, SUCCESSORS TO HENRY COLBURN, 13, GREAT 1IARLBOROUGH STREET. 1866. Atl rt'jhls r&tttfld LONDON PRINTED BY MACDONALD AND TDGWELL, BLENHEIM BODSR, BLENHEIM STREET, OXFORD STREET. CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME. CHATTER PAGE I. How Anthony and Clarissa Take Care of THE GrIG 1 II. Negotiations . : . . . .21 III. Mount Ararat 50 IV. Kinsmen 71 V. The Casket Opened 76 VI. Richard Sleuth Studies a New Theory of Exchanges 91 VII. A Busy Night . . ■ . . . .98 VIII. The Doctor thinks Prophets are Honoured in their Own Country . . . .113 IX. Is it Time 122 X. How a certain Lamb was Shorn . . . 136 XI. An Entire turn of the Wheel . . . 143 XII. Anthony's Ingratitude . . . .164 XIH.

The Alderman's Appeal Answered . . 190 XIV. Like a Thief in the Night . . . CONTENTS. VI CHA11ER PAGE XV. Lord of all 213 XVI. Richard Sleuth in search of a Friend . 225 XVII. The dull House of Long Sutton . . 233 XVTH. Esau and Jacob 261 XIX. The New Partner makes a Speech . . 265 XX. The Little Lass 274 XXI. Primrose Gathering 285 XXII. The New World declines a Present from the Old 297 XXIII. Esau asks for Bread and gets a Stone .

Chapter I. How Anthony And Clarissa Take Care Of The Gig

THEY were riding slowly, Anthony looking not in the best of tempers, Clarissa either per fectly unconscious of the fact, or showing a gay, obstinate indifference concerning it, that seemed to provoke her companion more and more every step they advanced. It was the first time that Anthony had seen his fair neighbour since that morning when he had been sent into her room to tell her about Mr.Macguire's doings concerning the workhouse diet question. All the first day he had stayed at home expecting the return of John Harris's casket, and feeling a grim satisfaction as hour after hour passed and it did not come. When the second day passed with out any different result, he took it as a sure sign that Clarissa was waiting to see if he would not call and entreat her still to keep it. On the third day — the day on which Sleuth was expected home — the doctor came to ask Anthony VOL. II.

B to go for a ride with himself and Clarissa. Al though his companions were both in excellent spirits, the ride threatened to be a very uninterest ing one to Anthony, till the doctor recollected he ought to go and see a friend living in the Warren, at the beginning of the Rimboldon Road. OwiDg to a long feud that had existed between this friend and Alderman Maude, the doctor could not very well have introduced Anthony to him without some preparation ; so, with many apologies, he requested him to ride on with Clarissa while he went alone. For the first minute or two Anthony maintained a grim silence, half expecting that she might offer him some excuse for her behaviour about the casket. But Clarissa seemed to have forgotten all about it, and given herself up to enjoyment of the evening, and Anthony noticed her face had caught something of its rich glow and soft tran quillity.

But he was determined not to be won to amiability by her evident desire for there to be peace between them. The clouds had been gathering about him too long to be dispersed by mere sunshine, and his soul refused to reflect the sunshine, or reflected it as reflects the storm-ex pectant sea, that lies waiting and listening in leaden silence for the rattle of the thunder and the lashing of the rain. It was not long before Anthony's storm burst. After repeated efforts to draw him from his ill temper, Clarissa said, "Mr. Maude, I am afraid we have persuaded 3'ou to accompany us this evening against your will r Anthony became suddenly attentive — there was the ring of anger in her voice that he had been longing to hear. "If so," continued she, " why not go back now? I can easily join my father at the Warren.

In deed, I should have gone with him, had we not been honoured with your company." " I am sorry, Miss Pompess, that " "Excuse me, Mr. Maude, but you have no thing in the world to apologise for. We ought to apologise to you." " May I ask why V " For dragging you into our country recreations, forgetting how humdrum and cloddish they must seem to you, who have been used to amusements so refined, so " " Miss Pompess !" " So intellectual, so noble." " I thought Miss Pompess did not indulge in satire." " Will you please go back, and leave me to join my father ?" " If you insist upon my doing so, of course I have no choice ; but, unless it comes to that, I b2 shall stay till your father comes, however disagree able my society may be to you — and I am aware it must be very wearisome, as compared with that of another gentleman of your acquaintance ; par ticularly, if he always enjoys the exuberant spirits I had the pleasure of seeing him in the other morning." n "Another gentleman of my acquaintance, as you are pleased to call him," said Clarissa, blush ing, and speaking in a less angry voice, " would hardly have become engrossed by a field of blighted cattle-beans when a lady called his atten tion to a house on the opposite side of the road, or stopped to stroke a hobbled donkey with his whip when she asked him the name of a bird that was flying past."

" Or," continued Anthony, " remain serious and unmoved when the same lady told him a most capital joke." Clarissa glanced inquiringly at him : — " I do not understand you," she said, haughtily. " At the same time," he went on, " I must con fess that, in this case, I think the gentleman's politeness to the lady might have given way a little to charity for the unhappy being against whom her railery was directed, so as to allow him to make his escape from her father's gates before giving way to such boisterous mirth." Clarissa, at first, looked surprised and bewildered ; then a pained look came on her face, which she tried to conceal by stooping and patting her horse's neck. It was at this moment, and when they were nearly close to the scene of the accident, that they saw the gig. Anthony, who had seen nothing of Gibbs, recognised it immediately, and viewed its broken and deserted state with blank astonish ment.

" What in the world can have become of Dick?" he exclaimed, riding round the gig and examining it. "Your cousin was not alone, I hope?" said Clarissa. " No — at least, Gibbs went to fetch him ; but perhaps he may have waited at Rimboldon, for some reason or other, and in that case Dick would be obliged to go on for help himself." "Had we not better wait near, and watch it till it returns ?" asked Clarissa. " I don't think it ought to be left like this," said Anthony, after a pause, in which he had been wondering what he had best do ; " but still I don't like to interrupt your ride. Perhaps you would like me to go back with you as far as the War ren?" " Thank you, you are very kind," answered Clarissa ; " but I've no particular wish to go to the Warren. And more than that, Mr. Maude, I do not care to be accused of having treated a friend and neighbour uncourteously, without demanding more explanation than you have chosen to give me, and an opportunity of offering explanation myself."

" You can only offer one excuse, Miss Pompess — you thought me further off than I was. Yet I got out as quickly as 1 could, too." "Before you talk of excuses, we must please see what there is to excuse," said Clarissa. Anthony, who had dismounted, and was examining the gig, or pretending to do so, merely bowed, and remained standing where he was, and for a minute or so both were silent. The woods behind them rustled with that rich liquid sound that is only heard in full summer, when boughs are all well covered, and leaves all glossy and soft. A girdle of many colours lay round the sky, glowing through the trees, and making the blue of the mid air more delicately pale ; and, across the open country to the west the sun, as its rim touched the horizon, sent long rays of concentrated heat to where they stood, making the two young horses pant, and paw the ground, and show their scarlet nostrils.

Clarissa shaded her eyes with her hand, and looked on each side of the road, as if hoping to see some cool spot, but there was none except the wood, where, indeed, were all the sights and sounds of evening — the rushing and quarrelling of birds, sudden noises amongst the fern of home ward-bound rabbits, deep patches of shade, and little slender, pale trees, with all their foliage dropping earthward, like green fountains. Anthony saw her look, and said — " It is insufferably hot here. As you are so kind as to say you will wait, will you dismount, and come under the trees ?" " How about the horses ?" asked Clarissa, doubtfully. " I can tie them here, and we can easily keep them in sight," he answered, with affected careless ness. " Very well," said Clarissa ; " fasten your own first." But Anthony disobeyed, and came to assist her.

" Fasten your own first, please," repeated Cla rissa. " I don't care to get down while they're both prancing about." He turned away, jerking Nell's bridle with no very gentle hand, and, by the time he had secured her to the tree, Clarissa stood beside him;— having managed to do without any assistance from him — with a quiet smile on her face, that irritated him without his exactly knowing why. While he fas tened her horse, she stepped up the little weedy bank, and walked slowly on into the wood. " Well," she said, turning suddenly, as she heard him close behind her, " and pray, what may be this crime of which Mr. Robertson and myself stand convicted ?" "Or, rather," said Anthony, "what startling absurdity of mine could have endangered the soundness of Mr. Robertson's lungs? And you, too ? I see the very recollection of it makes you smile."

" It does, indeed," answered Clarissa. " I un derstand it all now. You heard us laughing the other morning when you left us. Well, do you know, I cannot deny that you were the cause of our mirth." " I thank you — you are frank, certainly ; but it was easy for me to perceive that, considering I had but that instant left you." " Well, and now let me tell you what it was, and you will see, if anyone is to blame, it is your Mrs. Milton, whom I'm sure you wouldn't behave harshly to on any account whatever. You must know she often goes to take tea with Mrs. Cross, Mr. Robertson's housekeeper. She went a few nights ago, and told her in strict confidence some doings of yours. Mrs. Cross, also in strict confi dence, told Mr. Robertson, and Mr. Robertson told me. Can you not now guess what it was about ?"

Anthony told her " No," and told himself he'd be hanged if he could. " Well," said Clarissa, " it was about that poor little Esau and his washing ; and — yes, I must confess — it all came out about your false alarm concerning the mare and the chace after the pony in the paddock, and all. But are you very much vexed that I knew about it ? I assure you that, when I think of the whole story, I do not feel only mirth. I have little patience with those people who, when a man does an act of kindness and generosity, shrug their shoulders, and wait in silence to see whether the object of his kindness turns out good or bad, and then, according to the result, proclaim that man wise and deep-seeing, or a fool. For my own part, I can rejoice over a good action, and say, ' That is good — that is noble !' without waiting to found my verdict on its result.

If the good deed brings immediate gain to the doer, I am glad with him ; but if he loses by it, I only say to myself, ' His losses have en nobled the deed.' It is not what we gain, but what we lose by goodness that on earth makes goodness divine. A gift given with expectation of imme diate benefit to the giver, is no gift at all, but a common loan. But I declare I am positively preaching !" " What a saint I should have been," said Anthony, " if I had always had such a preacher ! " "I doubt it," said Clarissa, laughing. "But tell me, are you satisfied about your supposed insult?" " Satisfied, yes, and ready to own myself a most consummate " " There, hush !" cried Clarissa, accepting his outstretched hand. " And now, are we friends again ?" " Not yet — not just yet," said Anthony, bending over her hand, and pressing his lips to the glove.

" Your explanations, Clarissa, are so much to my satisfaction that I would fain listen to them a little longer." " But that I really have no more to offer," in terrupted Clarissa, laughingly, and trying to draw away her hand. But Anthony held it resolutely. " Yes, you have. You have to tell me what it was in my casket you wouldn't let me see." " Indeed ! I was not aware of that," said Cla rissa, colouring, and drawing back. " You are — you must be aware of it. You made it a point of honour with me that I should not look into it, when I had power to do so ; and now it ought to be a point of honour with you to satisfy my curiosity." "But I don't see what right you have to be curious." " But I am, madly curious." "If," said Clarissa, "I had intended to show you or tell you what it was, I need not have humiliated myself by asking you, as a favour, not to look at it."

" Humiliated yourself !" " Yes ; I can assure you I felt it a humiliation to have to beg and pray for what ought to have been yielded at my slightest wish." "Why, then, did you do it? Would your humiliation have been greater if I had seen what you were trying to conceal ?" " Hadn't we better change the subject, Mr. Maude ?" asked Clarissa, with a certain gravity of face, and severity of tone. " Take care, Clarissa !" " Of what, if you please ?" " Of what thoughts you force upon me." " / force upon you ! Excuse me, Mr. Maude, but I decline being made guilty of your thoughts." " But do you not see, Clarissa, when you speak of humiliation, how inevitably it must occur to me that there is but one thing could cause you humiliation ; and how, if you have sinned in your own pure eyes, I must feel it can only be as the angels, perhaps, may sometimes sin : that you have found in your heart a little, it may be very little — too much, shall I say — charity for one so un worthy of it as myself ?

And poor Harris's casket contained some little token of this — this sin — so bitter, I can well imagine : so bitter to your pride, so sweet to me, that the very suspicion of it is more delicious than any hope that ever raised a worthless and erring man, and made him loathe his worthlessness and his errors, as I at this moment — when I seem to be trembling on the threshold of a new world — look back and loathe mine. Clarissa," he said, turning away his face, and speaking in a low, unsteady voice, " have I been utterly wrong in this hope? Tell me the truth, but with a little mercy !" Anthony, as he ceased speaking, sent one glance, keen and wistful, round the green little arcade, with its lustrous bits of mossy ground where the sunshine fell, its soft shadows, and darkly towering or pale, drooping trees ; and he wondered, with a vague, yearning wonder, that seemed to stand apart from all his other deeper feelings, whether, in the next minute, the beauty of the spot should have increased for him tenfold, or have darkened and died out.

But the airily waving boughs and the sleepy sunbeams refused to prophesy for him, and left his fate to come upon him suddenly and mercilessly in the first tones of Clarissa's voice, and in the first flashing glances he encountered when he looked at her. " Mr. Maude," she said, suppressing under an icy tone the passion that made her cheek burn, and tried to find vent in her voice, " before I answer you, let me put the sense of what you have just said into plain words. It is better for us both : better for you, that you may see, clearly and unvarnished, the question that you put to me ; better for me, that I may answer it as it deserves. In plain English, then, you ask me — ' Am I in love with you ?' " " Clarissa !" " You ask me this ! You, whose name, till you came here, I scarcely ever heard without its being coupled with some disgraceful epithet.

What I myself have seen at your own house, you know. You come down here to enjoy your fortune, and, weary of a life of dissipation, like thousands of other young men, to whose lofty souls the idea of a wife and home, at the beginning of their noble career, was too narrow and commonplace to be entertained, but who at last say to themselves — ' Now I am weary of all else, I will marry a lady of family and fortune.' You think of marrying, and settling down into a respectable country gentleman. But does Mr. Anthony Maude trouble himself with wooing ? Oh, no ! Why should he, when he fancies that the lady who, for the want of a better, might suit him, is dying for love of him?" " Clarissa, is this just ?" "Well, Mr. Maude, I have considered your question ; and now let me answer it plainly, that you may be under no more mistakes.

Am I in love with you? No! Is that clear? Do you hear it ? I say— No .'" She was leaning against the tree, trembling all over, and bending her riding-whip in her two hands, till, in trying to make the ends meet, the slender thing snapped and broke ; and Anthony, starting at the noise from his stupor, and looking up, she flung the pieces on the ground, hid her face in her hands, and burst into tears. Clarissa leaned against the tree with her face buried in her hands, and Anthony stood near her looking down on the pieces of the broken whip, and struggling in silence against the shame, in dignation, and grief with which she had over whelmed him. A rustling noise near them made Clarissa start, and hastily press her handkerchief to her eyes ; but the sound was caused by a ragged little band of fagot gatherers, who passed in single file between her and Anthony, staring so hard that more than one of them spilt some of the treasures from their pinafores and skirts.

The last of the band, and the smallest, could not resist making a dead stand be fore Clarissa, and remained there gazing at her with big, sleepy eyes, full of awful wonder and gravity, which increased, as she gazed, so much that she felt it necessary to lift her little fat finger and put it in her mouth, as if to warn her tongue to keep silence. But to do this, the child let go her pinafore, and all her little hoard of sticks fell to the ground. At the sound — a very little one, for they were bnt small twigs ; but an awful crash to the little labourer — she withdrew her eyes from Clarissa's face, and looked down at them, and at her empty pinafore, at the bushes through which the last of her companions had disappeared ; and then, looking again on her fallen load, she slowly carried a fist to each eye, and began to roar lustily.

Anthony, just before whom she had uncon sciously placed herself, and to whose feet the disaster had happened, frightened her into silence again suddenly, by stopping to pick up the sticks, just as Clarissa also came to her assistance. Clarissa, kneeling down on the moss, held up the child's pinafore, while Anthony put the sticks in. Two or three times they thought the task finished, but were warned, by the little one's eyes gazing obstinately on the ground, that some morsels of her evening's labours yet remained there. At last, however, when not a vestige of a twig was to be seen within a square yard of where they stood, the little damsel contentedly gathered up the corners of her pinafore in her hands, together with a sixpence Clarissa gave her, turned her back upon them, ahd shouting with the full power of her lungs, " Jer-ony !

Jer-ony !" disappeared down the footpath by which her companions had gone before her. They both stood looking after her with a sort of gratitude. Her little accident had been a blessing to them, for it had broken through the most pain ful embarrassment that either had ever known. When the shouting little fagot-gatherer was fairly out of sight, and Anthony felt he was again alone with Clarissa, he was self-possessed enough to pick up her glove, and give it to her, saying, coldly — "What do you wish me to do? Shall I go on with you to meet Doctor Pompess, or will you go alone ?" Clarissa bowed, as if accepting the last pro position, and followed him slowly as he went out of the wood. It was much lighter in the road than under the trees, and Clarissa, glancing at Anthony's face as he stood holding her horse, saw that it was pale, but almost calm.

When he had assisted her to mount, and put the reins into her hand, he laid his own hand on them, and said — " One moment, if you please, Miss Pompess." She looked down at her horse's nervous, restless ears, and waited silently for Anthony to speak. He did speak after a pause, and spoke slowly, as if weighing every word before uttering it. "What I now wish to say, Miss Pompess, I do not think I should say if I were certain there was any kind of — of engagement between yourself and Mr. Robertson— in fact, I'm sure I should not say it." He paused a moment, as if to give her time to silence him by saying that there was an engage ment ; but she remained perfectly still ; and, in a voice something more deep and natural, Anthony went on : — "My doubt on this matter, and the doubts caused by my own unworthiness, have hitherto kept me silent, and made me watch for and catch at little straws of hope, which I thought I saw, but which I now know never existed.

I thought it was a hope I saw in this foolish business of poor Harris's box. I caught at it wildly — rudely — savagely — for I hurt you, wounded you too deeply ever to be forgiven ; and you — you answered me in words which, perhaps, I can never forgive. But I feel I have no right noiv to leave you with out telling you it was no mere conceit — no assur ance — that made me speak to you as I did ; but doubt — doubt that fancied it saw a little flickering ray of light, and that, like a great blind moth, rushed at it, and put it out for ever." Clarissa turned her head, haughtily erect still, a little on one side, and something rolled down her cheek and fell into the dust — something which, VOL. II. C had it fallen on the hand holding the reins, might have made it tremble more than it did. " One minute," said Anthony, thinking her movement one of impatience.

" I will not have you feel, when I have so hurt your pride, that I have been too tender over my own. I will not so spare myself the pain of confessing what is a bitter thing to confess in utter hopelessness, as I now confess it — I love you. The reverence which my dead mother never received from me I have given you ; the tenderness which I have never had a sister to bestow on, I have felt for you ; the first passionate love of my life has been — is for you. Worse gambler than I ever was before, I have risked my all on one throw, and — lost !" At this moment they both heard the doctor's horse approaching. Anthony, hardly knowing what he was doing, went and unfastened the mare, and mounted. Once more, as he passed her, he caught Clarissa's reins, and said — " Tell the doctor I was obliged to go on for help about the gig — anything : I can't see him just now.

And one word. You shall not be troubled by this sort of thing agaiu. To remove all risk of it, I will give up for a few years what you call the life of a respectable country gentleman. I have some cousins who reside in India, but who happen just now to be in England, who have condescended to write to me since I have been rich, and ask me to enter their regiment. I have not answered then letters yet, but now I shall do so, gratefully. So, good-bye, Miss Pompess. Clarissa, good-bye for the last time." As the doctor came nearer, Anthony drew a little into the shadow of the trees ; but Clarissa, as if to avoid being questioned in his hearing, did not let her father come near the gig, but rode to meet him. Then the doctor turned round with her, and soon Anthony saw nothing but a cloud of dust. When he could no longer hear their horses' feet he followed slowly along the same road.

By this time the sun had gone down, and the soft light that before, when the sun was out, had seemed shadows, lay unbroken over everything. The silence of the lanes and fields was now and then disturbed by a rustling and chattering in the hedges, attendant on the arrival of pauper sparrows, who were trying to force admittance into places where they were evidently not wanted. Sometimes through the stillness would rise a woman's voice, calling shrilly but cheerily at some stile to a man still at work in the fields, and the cry would be many times repeated, that the mother and the ap parently deaf father might have the pleasure of hearing it echoed by the little one in the woman's arms. And these sounds, and others like them, which Anthony heard as he went along the roads, years C2 afterwards, whenever he chanced to hear simi lar ones, brought back to him a sharp thrill of the anguish that was upon him as he rode home that night.

Chapter II. Negotiations

" TS it business now, Mr. Sleuth?" asked Sam, J. as he saw Clarissa and Anthony get out of their way. " If you please," responded Sleuth. "S'pose you wouldn't mind letting me hold the pistol while we talk?" " Thank you — it isn't heavy." The man laughed— a good long, loud laugh — as though, responding to Sleuth's secret feeling, he too recognised some secret ties of intellectual and moral sympathy in the man before him, and there fore liked him — in a way. " Single-barrelled, ain't it ?" " Yes, as you see," and Sleuth held the muzzle so that Sam could see. "Loaded?" " Yes ; but there, I have put it away." So saying, Sleuth restored it to the gig-box, and replaced the cushion, and Sam was satisfied. " And so you've bin to Leeds. Might a humble fellow like me ask what for ?" " To seek a man of the name of Stonor."

" Stonor ! How may you spell that word? " " S-t-o-n-o-r," condescendingly explained Sleuth. " Hm ! You didn't find him, p'raps ?" "No." " Shouldn't wonder but you wouldn't. If 1 were ever to fall in with him — unlikely things do hap pen in life, Mister Sleuth — what shall I tell him you wanted of him ?" "Well, Sam, if you will persist in knowing other people's business, when, I must confess, it would be wiser for you, in my opinion " " Quite right there, Mr. Sleuth — in your' opinion : stick to that !" said Sam, significantly. " If you must know, I wanted to discover if a child of his were alive." "Boy or gal?" " Don't know. The alderman's letter didn't tell us that." " Oh ! it's the dead alderman as wants the live child, is it ?" "Yes, the fellow Stonor was the alderman's groom, and he married the alderman's daughter."