Lucian's face lengthened. He abandoned the argument, and said, blankly, "I cannot suppose that you would allow yourself to be deceived. If he is a gentleman of position, that of course alters the case completely."

"Very little indeed from my point of view. Hardly at all. And now, worldly cousin Lucian, I have satisfied you that I am not going to connect you by marriage with a butcher, bricklayer, or other member of the trades from which Cashel's profession, as you warned me, is usually recruited. Stop a moment. I am going to do justice to you. You want to say that my unworldly friend Lucian is far more deeply concerned at seeing the phoenix of modern culture throw herself away on a man unworthy of her."

"That IS what I mean to say, except that you put it too modestly. It is a case of the phoenix, not only of modern culture, but of natural endowment and of every happy accident of the highest civilization, throwing herself away on a man specially incapacitated by his tastes and pursuits from comprehending her or entering the circle in which she moves."

"Listen to me patiently, Lucian, and I will try to explain the mystery to you, leaving the rest of the world to misunderstand me as it pleases. First, you will grant me that even a phoenix must marry some one in order that she may hand on her torch to her children. Her best course would be to marry another phoenix; but as she—poor girl!—cannot appreciate even her own phoenixity, much less that of another, she must perforce be content with a mere mortal. Who is the mortal to be? Not her cousin Lucian; for rising young politicians must have helpful wives, with feminine politics and powers of visiting and entertaining; a description inapplicable to the phoenix. Not, as you just now suggested, a man of letters. The phoenix has had her share of playing helpmeet to a man of letters, and does not care to repeat that experience. She is sick to death of the morbid introspection and womanish self-consciousness of poets, novelists, and their like. As to artists, all the good ones are married; and ever since the rest have been able to read in hundreds of books that they are the most gifted and godlike of men, they are become almost as intolerable as their literary flatterers. No, Lucian, the phoenix has paid her debt to literature and art by the toil of her childhood. She will use and enjoy both of them in future as best she can; but she will never again drudge in their laboratories. You say that she might at least have married a gentleman. But the gentlemen she knows are either amateurs of the arts, having the egotism of professional artists without their ability, or they are men of pleasure, which means that they are dancers, tennis-players, butchers, and gamblers. I leave the nonentities out of the question. Now, in the eyes of a phoenix, a prize-fighter is a hero in comparison with a wretch who sets a leash of greyhounds upon a hare. Imagine, now, this poor phoenix meeting with a man who had never been guilty of self-analysis in his life—who complained when he was annoyed, and exulted when he was glad, like a child (and unlike a modern man)—who was honest and brave, strong and beautiful. You open your eyes, Lucian: you do not do justice to Cashel's good looks. He is twenty-five, and yet there is not a line in his face. It is neither thoughtful, nor poetic, nor wearied, nor doubting, nor old, nor self-conscious, as so many of his contemporaries' faces are—as mine perhaps is. The face of a pagan god, assured of eternal youth, and absolutely disqualified from comprehending 'Faust.' Do you understand a word of what I am saying, Lucian?"

"I must confess that I do not. Either you have lost your reason, or I have. I wish you had never taking to reading 'Faust.'"

"It is my fault. I began an explanation, and rambled off, womanlike, into praise of my lover. However, I will not attempt to complete my argument; for if you do not understand me from what I have already said, the further you follow the wider you will wander. The truth, in short, is this: I practically believe in the doctrine of heredity; and as my body is frail and my brain morbidly active, I think my impulse towards a man strong in body and untroubled in mind a trustworthy one. You can understand that; it is a plain proposition in eugenics. But if I tell you that I have chosen this common pugilist because, after seeing half the culture of Europe, I despaired of finding a better man, you will only tell me again that I have lost my reason."

"I know that you will do whatever you have made up your mind to do," said Lucian, desolately.

"And you will make the best of it, will you not?"

"The best or the worst of it does not rest with me. I can only accept it as inevitable."

"Not at all. You can make the worst of it by behaving distantly to Cashel; or the best of it by being friendly with him."

Lucian reddened and hesitated. She looked at him, mutely encouraging him to be generous.

"I had better tell you," he said. "I have seen him since—since—" Lydia nodded. "I mistook his object in coming into my room as he did, unannounced. In fact, he almost forced his way in. Some words arose between us. At last he taunted me beyond endurance, and offered me—characteristically—twenty pounds to strike him. And I am sorry to say that I did so."

"You did so! And what followed?"

"I should say rather that I meant to strike him; for he avoided me, or else I missed my aim. He only gave the money and went away, evidently with a high opinion of me. He left me with a very low one of myself."

"What! He did not retaliate!" exclaimed Lydia, recovering her color, which had fled. "And you STRUCK him!" she added.

"He did not," replied Lucian, passing by the reproach. "Probably he despised me too much."

"That is not fair, Lucian. He behaved very well—for a prize-fighter! Surely you do not grudge him his superiority in the very art you condemn him for professing."

"I was wrong, Lydia; but I grudged him you. I know I have acted hastily; and I will apologize to him. I wish matters had fallen out otherwise."

"They could not have done so; and I believe you will yet acknowledge that they have arranged themselves very well. And now that the phoenix is disposed of, I want to read you a letter I have received from Alice Goff, which throws quite a new light on her character. I have not seen her since June, and she seems to have gained three years' mental growth in the interim. Listen to this, for example."

And so the conversation turned upon Alice.

When Lucian returned to his chambers, he wrote the following note, which he posted to Cashel Byron before going to bed:

"Dear Sir,—I beg to enclose you a bank-note which you left here this evening. I feel bound to express my regret for what passed on that occasion, and to assure you that it proceeded from a misapprehension of your purpose in calling on me. The nervous disorder into which the severe mental application and late hours of the past session have thrown me must be my excuse. I hope to have the pleasure of meeting you again soon, and offering you personally my congratulations on your approaching marriage. "I am, dear sir, yours truly, "Lucian Webber."



CHAPTER XV



In the following month Cashel Byron, William Paradise, and Robert Mellish appeared in the dock together, the first two for having been principals in a prize-fight, and Mellish for having acted as bottle- holder to Paradise. These offences were verbosely described in a long indictment which had originally included the fourth man who had been captured, but against whom the grand jury had refused to find a true bill. The prisoners pleaded not guilty.

The defence was that the fight, the occurrence of which was admitted, was not a prize-fight, but the outcome of an enmity which had subsisted between the two men since one of them, at a public exhibition at Islington, had attacked and bitten the other. In support of this, it was shown that Byron had occupied a house at Wiltstoken, and had lived there with Mellish, who had invited Paradise to spend a holiday with him in the country. This accounted for the presence of the three men at Wiltstoken on the day in question. Words had arisen between Byron and Paradise on the subject of the Islington affair; and they had at last agreed to settle the dispute in the old English fashion. They had adjourned to a field, and fought fairly and determinedly until interrupted by the police, who were misled by appearances into the belief that the affair was a prize-fight.

Prize-fighting was a brutal pastime, Cashel Byron's counsel said; but a fair, stand-up fight between two unarmed men, though doubtless technically a breach of the peace, had never been severely dealt with by a British jury or a British judge; and the case would be amply met by binding over the prisoners, who were now on the best of terms with one another, to keep the peace for a reasonable period. The sole evidence against this view of the case, he argued, was police evidence; and the police were naturally reluctant to admit that they had found a mare's nest. In proof that the fight had been premeditated, and was a prize-fight, they alleged that it had taken place within an enclosure formed with ropes and stakes. But where were those ropes and stakes? They were not forthcoming; and he (counsel) submitted that the reason was not, as had been suggested, because they had been spirited away, for that was plainly impossible; but because they had existed only in the excited imagination of the posse of constables who had arrested the prisoners.

Again, it had been urged that the prisoners were in fighting costume. But cross-examination had elicited that fighting costume meant practically no costume at all: the men had simply stripped in order that their movements might be unembarrassed. It had been proved that Paradise had been—well, in the traditional costume of Paradise (roars of laughter) until the police borrowed a blanket to put upon him.

That the constables had been guilty of gross exaggeration was shown by their evidence as to the desperate injuries the combatants had inflicted upon one another. Of Paradise in particular it had been alleged that his features were obliterated. The jury had before them in the dock the man whose features had been obliterated only a few weeks previously. If that were true, where had the prisoner obtained the unblemished lineaments which he was now, full of health and good-humor, presenting to them? (Renewed laughter. Paradise grinning in confusion.) It was said that these terrible injuries, the traces of which had disappeared so miraculously, were inflicted by the prisoner Byron, a young gentleman tenderly nurtured, and visibly inferior in strength and hardihood to his herculean opponent. Doubtless Byron had been emboldened by his skill in mimic combat to try conclusions, under the very different conditions of real fighting, with a man whose massive shoulders and determined cast of features ought to have convinced him that such an enterprise was nothing short of desperate. Fortunately the police had interfered before he had suffered severely for his rashness. Yet it had been alleged that he had actually worsted Paradise in the encounter—obliterated his features. That was a fair sample of the police evidence, which was throughout consistently incredible and at variance with the dictates of common-sense.

Attention was then drawn to the honorable manner in which Byron had come forward and given himself up to the police the moment he became aware that they were in search of him. Paradise would, beyond a doubt, have adopted the same course had he not been arrested at once, and that, too, without the least effort at resistance on his part. That was hardly the line of conduct that would have suggested itself to two lawless prize-fighters.

An attempt had been made to prejudice the prisoner Byron by the statement that he was a notorious professional bruiser. But no proof of that was forthcoming; and if the fact were really notorious there could be no difficulty in proving it. Such notoriety as Mr. Byron enjoyed was due, as appeared from the evidence of Lord Worthington and others, to his approaching marriage to a lady of distinction. Was it credible that a highly connected gentleman in this enviable position would engage in a prize-fight, risking disgrace and personal disfigurement, for a sum of money that could be no object to him, or for a glory that would appear to all his friends as little better than infamy?

The whole of the evidence as to the character of the prisoners went to show that they were men of unimpeachable integrity and respectability. An impression unfavorable to Paradise might have been created by the fact that he was a professional pugilist and a man of hasty temper; but it had also transpired that he had on several occasions rendered assistance to the police, thereby employing his skill and strength in the interests of law and order. As to his temper, it accounted for the quarrel which the police—knowing his profession—had mistaken for a prize-fight.

Mellish was a trainer of athletes, and hence the witnesses to his character were chiefly persons connected with sport; but they were not the less worthy of credence on that account.

In fine, the charge would have been hard to believe even if supported by the strongest evidence. But when there was no evidence—when the police had failed to produce any of the accessories of a prize-fight—when there were no ropes nor posts—no written articles—no stakes nor stakeholders—no seconds except the unfortunate man Mellish, whose mouth was closed by a law which, in defiance of the obvious interests of justice, forbade a prisoner to speak and clear himself—nothing, in fact, but the fancies of constables who had, under cross-examination, not only contradicted one another, but shown the most complete ignorance (a highly creditable ignorance) of the nature and conditions of a prize-fight; then counsel would venture to say confidently that the theory of the prosecution, ingenious as it was, and ably as it had been put forward, was absolutely and utterly untenable.

This, and much more argument of equal value, was delivered with relish by a comparatively young barrister, whose spirits rose as he felt the truth change and fade while he rearranged its attendant circumstances. Cashel listened for some time anxiously. He flushed and looked moody when his marriage was alluded to; but when the whole defence was unrolled, he was awestruck, and stared at his advocate as if he half feared that the earth would gape and swallow such a reckless perverter of patent facts. Even the judge in the city; and was eventually invited to represent a Dorsetshire constituency in Parliament in the Radical interest. He was returned by a large majority; and, having a loud voice and an easy manner, he soon acquired some reputation both in and out of the House of Commons by the popularity of his own views, and the extent of his wife's information, which he retailed at second hand. He made his maiden speech in the House unabashed the first night he sat there. Indeed, he was afraid of nothing except burglars, big dogs, doctors, dentists, and street-crossings. Whenever any accident occurred through any of these he preserved the newspaper in which it was reported, read it to Lydia very seriously, and repeated his favorite assertion that the only place in which a man was safe was the ring. As he objected to most field sports on the ground of inhumanity, she, fearing that he would suffer in health and appearance from want of systematic exercise, suggested that he should resume the practice of boxing with gloves. But he was lazy in this matter, and had a prejudice that boxing did not become a married man. His career as a pugilist was closed by his marriage.

His admiration for his wife survived the ardor of his first love for her, and she employed all her forethought not to disappoint his reliance on her judgment. She led a busy life, and wrote some learned monographs, as well as a work in which she denounced education as practised in the universities and public schools. Her children inherited her acuteness and refinement with their father's robustness and aversion to study. They were precocious and impudent, had no respect for Cashel, and showed any they had for their mother principally by running to her when they were in difficulties. She never punished nor scolded them; but she contrived to make their misdeeds recoil naturally upon them so inevitably that they soon acquired a lively moral sense which restrained them much more effectually than the usual methods of securing order in the nursery. Cashel treated them kindly for the purpose of conciliating them; and when Lydia spoke of them to him in private, he seldom said more than that the imps were too sharp for him, or that he was blest if he didn't believe that they were born older than their father. Lydia often thought so too; but the care of this troublesome family had one advantage for her. It left her little time to think about herself, or about the fact that when the illusion of her love passed away Cashel fell in her estimation. But the children were a success; and she soon came to regard him as one of them. When she had leisure to consider the matter at all, which seldom occurred, it seemed to her that, on the whole, she had chosen wisely.

Alice Goff, when she heard of Lydia's projected marriage, saw that she must return to Wiltstoken, and forget her brief social splendor as soon as possible. She therefore thanked Miss Carew for her bounty, and begged to relinquish her post of companion. Lydia assented, but managed to delay this sacrifice to a sense of duty and necessity until a day early in winter, when Lucian gave way to a hankering after smiled once or twice; and when he did so the jurymen grinned, but recovered their solemnity suddenly when the bench recollected itself and became grave again. Every one in court knew that the police were right—that there had been a prize-fight—that the betting on it had been recorded in all the sporting papers for weeks beforehand—that Cashel was the most terrible fighting man of the day, and that Paradise had not dared to propose a renewal of the interrupted contest. And they listened with admiration and delight while the advocate proved that these things were incredible and nonsensical.

It remained for the judge to sweep away the defence, or to favor the prisoners by countenancing it. Fortunately for them, he was an old man; and could recall, not without regret, a time when the memory of Cribb and Molyneux was yet green. He began his summing-up by telling the jury that the police had failed to prove that the fight was a prize-fight. After that, the public, by indulging in roars of laughter whenever they could find a pretext for doing so without being turned out of court, showed that they had ceased to regard the trial seriously.

Finally the jury acquitted Mellish, and found Cashel and Paradise guilty of a common assault. They were sentenced to two days' imprisonment, and bound over to keep the peace for twelve months in sureties of one hundred and fifty pounds each. The sureties were forthcoming; and as the imprisonment was supposed to date from the beginning of the sessions, the prisoners were at once released.



CHAPTER XVI



Miss Carew, averse to the anomalous relations of courtship, made as little delay as possible in getting married. Cashel's luck was not changed by the event. Bingley Byron died three weeks after the ceremony (which was civic and private); and Cashel had to claim possession of the property in Dorsetshire, in spite of his expressed wish that the lawyers would take themselves and the property to the devil, and allow him to enjoy his honeymoon in peace. The transfer was not, however, accomplished at once. Owing to his mother's capricious reluctance to give the necessary information without reserve, and to the law's delay, his first child was born some time before his succession was fully established and the doors of his ancestral hall opened to him. The conclusion of the business was a great relief to his attorneys, who had been unable to shake his conviction that the case was clear enough, but that the referee had been squared. By this he meant that the Lord Chancellor had been bribed to keep him out of his property.

His marriage proved an unusually happy one. To make up for the loss of his occupation, he farmed, and lost six thousand pounds by it; tried gardening with better success; began to meddle in commercial enterprises, and became director of several trading companies in the city; and was eventually invited to represent a Dorsetshire constituency in Parliament in the Radical interest. He was returned by a large majority; and, having a loud voice and an easy manner, he soon acquired some reputation both in and out of the House of Commons by the popularity of his own views, and the extent of his wife's information, which he retailed at second hand. He made his maiden speech in the House unabashed the first night he sat there. Indeed, he was afraid of nothing except burglars, big dogs, doctors, dentists, and street-crossings. Whenever any accident occurred through any of these he preserved the newspaper in which it was reported, read it to Lydia very seriously, and repeated his favorite assertion that the only place in which a man was safe was the ring. As he objected to most field sports on the ground of inhumanity, she, fearing that he would suffer in health and appearance from want of systematic exercise, suggested that he should resume the practice of boxing with gloves. But he was lazy in this matter, and had a prejudice that boxing did not become a married man. His career as a pugilist was closed by his marriage.

His admiration for his wife survived the ardor of his first love for her, and she employed all her forethought not to disappoint his reliance on her judgment. She led a busy life, and wrote some learned monographs, as well as a work in which she denounced education as practised in the universities and public schools. Her children inherited her acuteness and refinement with their father's robustness and aversion to study. They were precocious and impudent, had no respect for Cashel, and showed any they had for their mother principally by running to her when they were in difficulties. She never punished nor scolded them; but she contrived to make their misdeeds recoil naturally upon them so inevitably that they soon acquired a lively moral sense which restrained them much more effectually than the usual methods of securing order in the nursery. Cashel treated them kindly for the purpose of conciliating them; and when Lydia spoke of them to him in private, he seldom said more than that the imps were too sharp for him, or that he was blest if he didn't believe that they were born older than their father. Lydia often thonght so too; but the care of this troublesome family had one advantage for her. It left her little time to think about herself, or about the fact that when the illusion of her love passed away Cashel fell in her estimation. But the children were a success; and she soon came to regard him as one of them. When she had leisure to consider the matter at all, which seldom occurred, it seemed to her that, on the whole, she had chosen wisely.

Alice Goff, when she heard of Lydia's projected marriage, saw that she must return to Wiltstoken, and forget her brief social splendor as soon as possible. She therefore thanked Miss Carew for her bounty, and begged to relinquish her post of companion. Lydia assented, but managed to delay this sacrifice to a sense of duty and necessity until a day early in winter, when Lucian gave way to a hankering after domestic joys that possessed him, and allowed his cousin to persuade him to offer his hand to Alice. She indignantly refused—not that she had any reason to complain of him, but because the prospect of returning to Wiltstoken made her feel ill used, and she could not help revenging her soreness upon the first person whom she could find a pretext for attacking. He, lukewarm before, now became eager, and she was induced to relent without much difficulty. Lucian was supposed to have made a brilliant match; and, as it proved, he made a fortunate one. She kept his house, entertained his guests, and took charge of his social connections so ably that in course of time her invitations came to be coveted by people who were desirous of moving in good society. She was even better looking as a matron than she had been as a girl; and her authority in matters of etiquette inspired nervous novices with all the terrors she had herself felt when she first visited Wiltstoken Castle. She invited her brother-in-law and his wife to dinner twice a year—at midsummer and Easter; but she never admitted that either Wallace Parker or Cashel Byron were gentlemen, although she invited the latter freely, notwithstanding the frankness with which he spoke to strangers after dinner of his former exploits, without deference to their professions or prejudices. Her respect for Lydia remained so great that she never complained to her of Cashel save on one occasion, when he had shown a bishop, whose house had been recently broken into and robbed, how to break a burglar's back in the act of grappling with him.

The Skenes returned to Australia and went their way there, as Mrs. Byron did in England, in the paths they had pursued for years before. Cashel spoke always of Mrs. Skene as "mother," and of Mrs. Byron as "mamma."

William Paradise, though admired by the fair sex for his strength, courage, and fame, was not, like Cashel and Skene, wise or fortunate enough to get a good wife. He drank so exceedingly that he had but few sober intervals after his escape from the law. He claimed the title of champion of England on Cashel's retirement from the ring, and challenged the world. The world responded in the persons of sundry young laboring men with a thirst for glory and a taste for fighting. Paradise fought and prevailed twice. Then he drank while in training, and was beaten. But by this time the ring had again fallen into the disrepute from which Cashel's unusual combination of pugilistic genius with honesty had temporarily raised it; and the law, again seizing Paradise as he was borne vanquished from the field, atoned for its former leniency by incarcerating him for six months. The abstinence thus enforced restored him to health and vigor; and he achieved another victory before he succeeded in drinking himself into his former state. This was his last triumph. With his natural ruffianism complicated by drunkenness, he went rapidly down the hill into the valley of humiliation. After becoming noted for his readiness to sell the victories he could no longer win, he only appeared in the ring to test the capabilities of untried youths, who beat him to their hearts' content. He became a potman, and was immediately discharged as an inebriate. He had sunk into beggary when, hearing in his misery that his former antagonist was contesting a parliamentary election, he applied to him for alms. Cashel at the time was in Dorsetshire; but Lydia relieved the destitute wretch, whose condition was now far worse than it had been at their last meeting. At his next application, which followed soon, he was confronted by Cashel, who bullied him fiercely, threatened to break every bone in his skin if he ever again dared to present himself before Lydia, flung him five shillings, and bade him be gone. For Cashel retained for Paradise that contemptuous and ruthless hatred in which a duly qualified professor holds a quack. Paradise bought a few pence-worth of food, which he could hardly eat, and spent the rest in brandy, which he drank as fast as his stomach would endure it. Shortly afterwards a few sporting papers reported his death, which they attributed to "consumption, brought on by the terrible injuries sustained by him in his celebrated fight with Cashel Byron."

THE END