All in Belfield knew both Mrs. Lenox and Georgy so well—their history, the miserable shortcomings of their home, the girl's scanty education both of intellect and morals—that we could but attribute their faults to sheer worldliness combined with the evils of their bitter poverty. Jack and myself, at least, with the most meagre excuse readily forgave Georgy everything. She was so beautiful, so radiant in all the phases of her dingy life, so good-natured even in her contempt of our stupidity and dulness, so eager to find enjoyment in everything, that we were willing to accept all her faults with her charms, to love her idolatrously, and blame ourselves for harshness if we were momentarily angry with the lovely creature.

We had all, even Georgy, been reasonably happy in Belfield until Mr. Floyd and Antonio Thorpe came. My guardian's influence I will speak of later, for it touched only myself perhaps; but Tony's was felt more or less by us all. He widened our horizons at once, and, as usual, enlarged our imaginations at the expense of our belief in ourselves. We were not used exactly to be complimented on our ignorance of the world, but in Belfield habits of thought tended toward a pleasant conviction of the uselessness of all knowledge and experience that our best inhabitants did not happen to possess. Until Tony came we were in the habit of deploring the fate of people who were not born and brought up in Belfield. Almost the entire population were descendants of the original proprietors of the soil, and we had our own ideas about our first families. Thorpe's views, however, were not flattering: he was, in fact, one of those elegant young men whose innermost souls are penetrated with convictions of the inadequacy of intellects in general to appreciate theirs in particular.

Both Jack and I passed sleepless nights at first, wretched at the thought of his sleeping beneath the same roof with Georgy Lenox—of his enjoying that mystical, beautiful experience of coming down every morning to find her at table with her hair freshly curled, to enjoy the felicity of passing her eggs and toast, to carve a slice for her from the joint which the welcome addition of the young man's payment for board allowed Mrs. Lenox to provide for her dinner. Then, too, we felt with a pang that he would receive with his unequalled grace all sorts of little services from the daughter of the house: she would pour his tea for him, counting the lumps of sugar and dropping cream upon them in the distracting way we knew; she would amuse him with her sweet-voiced chatter. He was so old, so handsome with his velvety eyes and his moustache, she might even fall in love with him. However, Georgy was not given to sentiment, and Tony, for his part, was utterly indifferent to her: indeed, the most exclusive circles in Belfield opened to him at once, for a young man with a moustache was a rara avis there, the masculine element in the village falling short of social requirements, as its representatives were generally either in their first or second childhood. But the only intimacy he cultivated was with me and my mother: he criticised everybody else, and it was evident that he considered nothing in Belfield quite good enough for him.

"What a great man my master is!" says the French valet: "nothing suits him." And it must be confessed that the valet's state of mind concerning his master much resembled ours regarding Thorpe. At every woman in the place except my mother he levelled trenchant sarcasms: the men, he declared, possessed every trait which could shock or weary a man of the world, and not only displeased his eyes, but were so foreign to his spheres of thought that he was obliged to ignore them. At the habits and customs of everybody alike he shrugged his shoulders, and we used to wonder to each other why so great a man stayed in Belfield at all. But he did us no harm, and it is not impossible that he did us good. He laughed freely at our provincialisms, accustomed us to take raillery good-naturedly, disillusionized us in many ways, and showed us always a pattern of polished and careful demeanor.

He used to entertain us frequently—if I may use the word "entertain" to describe his indifferent toleration of us and his acceptance of such listeners in default of better—by a description of Mr. Raymond's place, "The Headlands," as it was usually called. He had been in the habit of spending a few days of his vacations there for years, and was in a position to enlighten Georgy about her distant cousin and mine, Helen Floyd, Mr. Raymond's probable heiress. Perhaps he liked to tease Georgy, yet it is possible that the little daughter of Mr. Floyd, growing up in the quiet, stately place, really possessed something already to arouse Tony's admiration for a child ten years old; but he would dwell upon her beauty, her brilliant prospects in the future and the grandeur of her present possessions, until Georgy was enraged with him. The train was perhaps already laid in the mind of the young girl which led up to a magazine of hatred and anger against more successful mortals, and needed but a chance spark to light it. She made a rival of little Helen Floyd at once, and every action of her life became infused with ambitious desires to surpass her in some way. She besieged me with questions concerning my guardian, his ideas, views, tastes and habits, and beset me feverishly to use my influence to get her invited to The Headlands.

Mr. Floyd's visits became more and more frequent as the summer advanced, and I began with some jealousy to notice a growing change in my mother. In former times she had shown an exquisite poise of strength and peace in every phase of her life, but of late she seemed possessed with a sort of girlish fluttering and disquiet: her eyes were dreamy and her voice softer and less decided in its inflexions, and her manner to me, instead of continuing its old noble habits of command, became timid and caressing, as if she were anxious to propitiate me. In the evenings, instead of sitting among us boys on the piazza, she would leave us and walk by herself under the laburnums in the garden; and if I followed her and put my arm about her, I found, with vague pain and rebellion at my heart, that although she amply responded to my tenderness, she had sweet and sacred thoughts that she was smiling over all by herself. It had been her wont to busy herself with housekeeping cares from morning until night: our income was small, and she was very busy, for she gave thought to everything and decided wisely upon the smallest matter. In these duties she had found pleasant occupation apparently: she had shown no fatigue, had marred nothing by impatience or over-haste—had judiciously studied how to manage every detail of our lives. Now all at once there seemed a little lassitude upon her: she left all questions concerning the housekeeping for her domestic, Ann, to decide; she would drop her sewing in her lap and fall into reverie, her cheeks crimsoning, her eyes growing dark and misty, and emerge into reality presently with a beautiful trembling smile on her lips. I grudged her those reveries and those smiles: I quaked at the thought that her heart was turning toward Mr. Floyd, much as I loved and venerated him. I knew that she had worshipped my father, and I wanted her to carry that one feeling supreme to the end of her days. Cet age est sans pitie. I realized nothing of the preciousness of those impulses which were quickening her again into happy youth: I realized nothing of her having been lonely—nothing of the pain and passion of longing which must have tried her through these eight years of widowhood, without any companionship save mine, with such cruel silence when she had been used to every tenderness, to constant loving flatteries, to gentlest ministrations—or I hope I should not so bitterly have resented this new hope of hers which made her almost afraid to look me in the face.

When Mr. Floyd did not come he wrote frequently to my mother. I used to bring his letters to her with a swelling heart and bitter tears in my eyes; but she knew nothing of those tears, for she never looked up, nor when she took the letters did she read them before me. He wrote frequently to me as well as to her, but while her envelopes covered numerous well-filled pages, his notes to me were adorned with just one degree more ample verbiage than we use in a telegram.

But nothing was said between us until one night early in September. It was a rainy evening, but so warm that both doors and windows stood wide open, and we heard the faint pattering music of the swift succeeding showers mingled with the monotonous chant of the katydids. My mother sat at the table with a pretence of work in her hands, but I saw that she trembled so much that she could not draw the thread. I had brought her in a letter at seven o'clock directed in Mr. Floyd's fine cramped handwriting, and I too had a note from him. My mother had taken hers from me with a devouring blush, and as if to hide it had thrust it beneath a pile of cambric ruffles on the table.

Her look and manner had made me turn almost sick with pain, for it seemed to me she no longer loved or trusted me. I had lost everything, I told myself with profound dreariness. I laid my own letter from Mr. Floyd open in her lap without a word. It ran thus:

"MY DEAR BOY: I have had a trying week: Helen has been at the point of death, and that she is now convalescent fills me with gratitude to God too great for words. I think she would have died if I had not been here. As soon as she is well I want you to spend a few weeks at The Headlands: you need the change, and my little girl needs a friend. Love to your dear mother and for yourself.

"JAMES FLOYD."

But although my mother took up the letter, something seemed to blind her: she could not read it, and put it by and resumed her work. We spent an hour in complete silence.

"We are very dull," she said at last, looking over at me with a little trembling smile. "Have you nothing to tell me, Floyd?"

"Why do you not read your letter, mother?"

"Oh, Floyd!" she cried, "it seems to me you are a little hard and cruel to me of late."

"Read your letter, mother, and mine too. If it is impossible for you to open a letter from Cousin James before me, I will leave the room."

She obeyed me, calmly taking her missive out from its hiding-place, opening it and reading it through: then she handed it to me with her old habit of command: "I wish you to read it, my boy."

I did so: it was just as I had thought. Mr. Floyd loved her: he had spoken of his feelings many times, and was waiting for her answer.

"Poor little Helen!" said my mother tenderly. "I am so thankful she is better! You will like to go to The Headlands, Floyd? 'Tis a beautiful place: your father and I attended Cousin James's wedding there. I remember still how superb and stately the place was."

"I do not feel as if I ever wanted to do anything any more, mother."

She gave me a piteous glance, and her hands locked and unlocked as they lay together in her lap.

"I used to think you loved me, mother," I blurted out.

In another moment she had me in her arms. There was no more doubt between us: she had given him up, and our old sweet, strong comradeship returned.

ELLEN W. OLNEY.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]



THE WASHER AT THE WELL: A BRETON LEGEND.

Nigh a league to the castle still: Twelve! booms the bell from the old clock-tower. Now, brave mare, for the stretch up the hill, Then just a gallop of half an hour.

Half an hour, and home and rest! Is she watching for him on the oriel stair, Or cradling the babe on her silken breast In the hush of the drowsy chamber there?

Hola! steady, good Bonnibelle! Scared at the wind, or the owlet's flight? Ha! what stirs by the Washing Well? Who goes there at the dead of night?

Over the stream below the slope, Where the women wash their webs at noon, A form like a shadow seems to grope, Doubtful under the doubtful moon.

Good mother, your task is late and lone. All goes well at the castle? say!— Not a word speaks the withered crone, Gray as a ghost in the moonlight gray.

Stone-still over the running stream, Steadily, swiftly, round and round, Plying her web through gloom and gleam, Out and in, with never a sound—

Never a sound save the blasted oak That shakes in the wind, and the bubbling well: This is no face of the peasant-folk!— With the sign of the cross he bars the spell.

Slowly, slowly she turns about: Oh the creeping horror that chokes his breath As slowly she draws the linen out, And fashions its folds in guise of death—

Long and loose like a winding-sheet! So sharp he pulls at the bridle-rein The mare stands straight on her trembling feet Before she cowers to the ground again.

Now he knows, with a shudder of dread, The Ghost of the Well he has looked upon Washing the shroud for some one dead— Some one dear to him, dead and gone!

Well and washer and funeral-pall Swim under his sight in pale eclipse. The good God send that the shroud be small!— He bites the words in his bloodless lips.

Over the lonely moor alone, Praying a prayer for the dearest life, Stifling a cry for the dead unknown, Child or wife: is it child or wife?

Over the threshold and up the stair, And into the hush of the deathly room, To a motionless form in the midnight there Under the tapers' glimmering gloom;

And the babe on her bosom—child and wife! Child and wife! and his journey done. Hark! overhead, with a sullen strife, The bell in the old clock-tower booms—One!

KATE PUTNAM OSGOOD.



THE REAL PRISONER OF CHILLON: A GENTLEMAN GROSSLY MISREPRESENTED.



"A character more celebrated than known" is Francis Bonivard, prior of St. Victor and Prisoner of Chillon. It is not by any intentional imposture on his part that he goes stalking through modern literature disguised in the character of hero, saint and martyr, and shouting in a hoarse chest-voice his "appeal from tyranny to God." In fact, if he could be permitted to revisit his cherished little shelf of books about which has grown the ample library of the University of Geneva, and view the various delineations of himself by artist, poet, and even serious historian, it would be delightful to witness his comical astonishment. Perhaps it is not to be laid to the fault of Lord Byron, who after visiting the old castle and its dungeon beguiled the hours of a rainy day at the inn at Ouchy with writing a poem concerning which he frankly confesses that he had not the slightest knowledge of its hero. Hobhouse, his companion, ought to have been better informed, but was not. If anybody is to blame, it is the recent writers, who do know the facts, but are unwilling to hurt so fine an heroic figure or to dethrone "one of the demigods of the liberal mythology." Enough to say that the Muse of History has been guilty of one of those practical jokes to which she is too much addicted, in dressing with tragic buskins and muffling in the cloak of a hero of melodrama, and so palming off for earnest on two generations of mankind, the drollest wag of the sixteenth century.

A wild young fellow like Bonivard, with a lively appreciation of the ridiculous, could not fail to see the comic aspect of the fate which invested him with the spiritual and temporal authority and emoluments of the priory of St. Victor. This was a rich little Benedictine monastery just outside the eastern gate of Geneva, on the little knoll now crowned by the observatory, surrounded with walls and moat of its own, independent of the bishop of Geneva in spiritual matters, and in temporal affairs equally independent of the city: in fact, it was a petty sovereignty by itself, and its dozen of hearty, well-provided monks, though nominally under the rule of Cluny, were a law to themselves, and not a very rigid one either. The office of prior, by virtue of a little arrangement at Rome, descended to Bonivard from his uncle, immediately upon whose demise the young potentate of twenty-one took upon him the state and functions of his office in a way to show the monks of St. Victor that they had no King Log to deal with. The document is still extant, in the Latin of the period, in which Prior Bonivard ordains that every new brother at his initiation shall not only stand treat all round, but shall, at his own cost and charges, furnish every one of his brethren with a new cap. Another document of equal gravity makes new ordinances concerning the convent-kitchen, which seems to have been one of the good prior's most religious cares.[6] Not only his own subjects, but those of other jurisdictions, were made to feel the majesty of his sovereign authority. He would let them know that he had "just as much jurisdiction at St. Victor as the duke of Savoy had at Chambery." He heard causes, sentenced to prison, even received ambassadors from his brother the duke, but not without looking sharply at their credentials. If these were wanting, the unfortunate wretches were threatened with the gallows as spies, and when they had been thoroughly frightened the monarch would indulge himself in the exercise of the sweetest prerogative of royalty, the pardoning power, and, when it was considered that the majesty of the state had been sufficiently asserted, would wind up with asking the whole company to dinner.

]

It had been considered a clever stroke of policy, at a time when the dukes of Savoy and the bishops of Geneva, who agreed in nothing else, were plotting, together or separately, to capture and extinguish the immemorial liberties of the brave little free city, to get this fortified outpost before its very gate officered by a brilliant and daring young Savoyard gentleman, who would be bound to the duke by his nativity and to the Church by his office, and to both by his interests. To the dismay of bishop and duke, it appeared that the young prior, who had led a gay life of it at the University of Turin, had nevertheless read his classics to some purpose, and had come back with his head full of Plato and Plutarch and Livy and of theories of republican liberty. So that by putting him into St. Victor they had turned that little stronghold from an outpost of attack upon Geneva liberties into the favorite resort and rendezvous of all the young liberal leaders of that gay but gallant little republic, who found themselves irresistibly drawn to young Bonivard, partly as a republican and still more as a jolly good fellow.

The first manifestation of his sympathies in that direction occurred soon after his installation as prior. His uncle on his deathbed had confessed to young Francis the burden on his conscience in that he had taken Church money and applied it to the making of a battery of culverins wherewith to levy war against one of his neighbors in the country; and bequeathed to his nephew the convent and the culverins, with the charge to melt down the latter into a chime of church-bells which should atone for his evil deeds. Not long after, Bonivard was telling the story to his friend Berthelier, the daring and heroic leader of the "Sons of Geneva" in their perilous struggle against tyranny, when the latter exclaimed, "What! spoil good cannon to make bells? Never! Give us the guns, and you shall have old metal to make bells enough to split your ears. But let guns be guns. So the Church will be doubly served. There will be chimes at St. Victor and guns in Geneva, which is a Church city." The bargain was struck, as a vote in the records of the city council shows to this day. But it was the beginning of a quarrel with the duke of Savoy which was to cost Bonivard more than he had counted on. There was reckless deviltry enough among all these young liberals, but some of them—not Bonivard—were capable of seriously counting the cost of their game. On one occasion—it was at the christening of Berthelier's child, and Bonivard was godfather—Berthelier took his friend aside from the guests and said, "It is time we had done with dancing and junketing and organized for the defence of liberty."—"All right!" said the prior. "Come on, and may the Lord prosper our crazy schemes!" Berthelier took his hand, and with a serious look that sobered the rattle-headed ecclesiastic for a moment, replied, "But let me warn you that this is going to cost you your living and me my head."—"I have heard him say this a hundred times," says Bonivard in his Chronicles. The dungeon at Chillon and the mural tablet in the Tour de l'Isle at Geneva tell how truly the prophecy was fulfilled.

There was so little of the strut of the stage-hero about Bonivard that he could not be comfortable in doing a chivalrous thing without a joke to take off the gloss of it. Before the ducal party had quite given up hopes of him there was a serious affair on their hands—the need of putting out of the way by such means, treacherous and atrocious, as the Savoyards of that day loved to use, one of the noblest of the Geneva magistrates, Aime Levrier. An emissary of the duke, of high rank, kinsman to Bonivard, came to St. Victor and offered the prior magnificent inducements to aid in the plot. With a gravity that must have convulsed the spectators if there had been any, Bonivard pointed to his monastic gown, his prayer-book and his crucifix, and pleaded his deep sense of the sacredness of his office as a reason for having nothing to do with the affair. "Then," says his kinsman, rising in wrath, "I will do the business myself. I'll have Levrier out of his bed and over in Savoy this very night."—"Do you really mean it, uncle? Give me your hand!"—"Then you consent, after all, to help me in the matter?"—"Oh no, uncle: that isn't it. But I know these Genevese are a hasty sort of folk, and I am just going to raise thirty florins to be spent in saying masses to-morrow for the repose of your soul." Before the evening was over, Bonivard found an opportunity of slipping in disguise over to the house of Levrier and giving a hint of what was intended: the notes of preparation for resistance that Berthelier and his friends began at once to make wrought upon the excited nerves of the ambassador and his armed retinue to such a point that they were fain to escape from the town by a secret gate before daylight.

The affair of his rescue of Pecolat is another illustration of his character and of the strange, turbulent age in which he lived; and it went far to embitter the hatred of the duke and the bishop against him. This poor fellow was the jester, song-singer and epigrammatist of the madcap patriots who were associated under the title of "Sons of Geneva." Under a trumped-up charge of plotting the death of the bishop he was kidnapped and carried away to one of the castles in the neighborhood, and there tortured until a false confession was wrung from him implicating Berthelier and others. To secure his condemnation to death he was brought back into the city and presented before the court; but the sight of the poor cripple, racked and bruised with recent tortures, and his steadfastness in recanting his late confession, wrought more with the judges than the fear of the duke, and he was acquitted. But the feeble and ferocious bishop, moved partly by malignity and partly, no doubt, by sincere and cowardly terror, was resolved to kill him; and by some fiction declaring him to have been in the minor orders, he clapped him into the bishop's prison, claiming to try him by ecclesiastical law. The story of renewed tortures inflicted on their helpless comrade, and their knowledge of the certain death that awaited him, stirred the blood of the patriots of Geneva. It was just the moment for the prior of St. Victor to show that the studies at Freiburg and Turin that had made him doctor utriusque juris had not been in vain. He would fight the bishop with his own weapon of Church law. He despatched Pecolat's own brother with letters to the archbishop of Vienne, metropolitan to the bishop of Geneva, and, using his family influence, which was not small, he secured a summons to the bishop and chapter of Geneva to appear before the archiepiscopal court and give account of the affair, and meanwhile to cease all proceedings against the prisoner.



It was comparatively easy to procure the summons. The difficulty was to find some one competent to the functions of episcopal usher and bold enough to serve it. Bonivard bethought him of a "caitiff wretch"—an obscure priest—to whom he handed the document with two round dollars lying on it, and bade him hand the paper to the bishop at mass the next day in the cathedral. The starving clergyman hesitated long between his fears and his necessities, but finally promised to do the work on condition that the prior should stand by him in person and see him through. The hour approached, and the commissioner's courage was oozing rapidly away. His knees knocked together, and he slipped back in the crowd, hoping to escape. The vigilant prior darted after him, seized him, and laying his hand on the dagger that he wore under his robe whispered in his ear, "Do it or I'll stab you!" He adds, in his Chronicles, "I should have been as good as my word: I do not say it by way of boasting. I know I was acting like a fool, but I was quite beside myself with anxiety for my friend." Happily, there was no need of extreme measures. He gripped his terrified victim by the thumb, and as the procession moved toward the church-door he thrust the paper into his hand, saying, "Now's the time! You've got to do it." And all the time he held him fast by the thumb. The bishop came near, and Bonivard let go the wretch's thumb and pushed him to the front, pointing to the prelate and saying, "Do your work!" The bishop turned pale with terror of assassination as he heard the words. But the trembling clerk, not less terrified than the bishop, dropped on his knees and presented the archiepiscopal mandate, gasping out, "My lord, inhibitur vobis, prout in copia." Bonivard retreated into his inviolable sanctuary of St. Victor. "I was young enough and crazy enough," he says, "to fear neither bishop nor duke." He had saved poor Pecolat's life, although the work was not finished until the publication of an interdict from the metropolitan silencing every church-bell and extinguishing every altar-candle in the city had brought the bishop to terms.[7]

It is a hardship to the writer to be compelled to retrench the story of the early deeds for liberty of Bonivard and his boon companions. There is a rollicking swagger about them all, which by and by begins to be sobered when it is seen that on the side of the oppressor there is power. By violence, by fraudulent promises, by foul treachery on the part of cowardly citizens, the duke of Savoy gains admittance with his army within the walls of Geneva, and begins his delicious and bloody revenge for the indignities that have been put upon his pretensions and usurpations. Berthelier, a very copy from the antique—a hero that might have stepped forth into the sixteenth century from the page of Plutarch[8]—remained in the town serenely to await the death which he foreknew. On the day of the duke's entrance Bonivard, who had no such relish for martyrdom for its own sake, put himself between two of his most trusted friends, the lord of Voruz and the abbot of Montheron of the Pays de Vaud, and galloped away disguised as a monk. "Come first to my convent," said the abbot, "and thence we will take you to a place of safety." The convent was reached, and in the morning Bonivard was greeted by his comrade Voruz, who came into his room, and, laying paper and pen before him, required him to write a renunciation of his priory in favor of the abbot of Montheron. Resistance was vain. He was a prisoner in the hands of traitors. The alternative being "Your priory or your life!" he frankly owns that he required no time at all to make up his choice. Voruz took the precious document, with the signature still wet, and went out, double locking the door behind him. His two friends turned him over to the custody of the duke, who locked him up for two years at Grolee, one of his castles down the Rhone, and put the honest abbot of Montheron in possession of the rich living of St. Victor.

But Bonivard in his prison was less to be pitied than the citizens of Geneva who remained in their subjugated city. The two despots, the bishop and the duke, who had seized the unhappy town, combined to crush the gay and insubordinate spirit out of it. All this time, says Bonivard, "they imprisoned, they scourged, they tortured, they beheaded, they hung, so as it is pitiful to tell."

Meanwhile, the influential family friends of Bonivard, some of them high in court favor, discovering that he was yet alive and in prison, bestirred themselves to procure his liberation; and not in vain, for the possession that had made him dangerous, the priory of St. Victor, having been wrested from him, there was little harm that he could do. His immediate successor in the priory, good Abbot de Montheron, had not indeed long enjoyed the benefice. He had gone on business to Rome, where certain Churchmen who admired his new benefice invited him (so Bonivard tells the story) to a banquet more Romano, and gave him a dose of the "cardinal powder," which operated so powerfully that it purged the soul right out of the body. He left a paper behind him in which, as a sign of remorse for his crime, he resigned all his rights in the priory back to Bonivard.[9] But the pope, whose natural affection toward his cousins and nephews overflowed freely in the form of gifts of what did not belong to him, bestowed the living on a cousin, who commuted it for an annual revenue of six hundred and forty gold crowns—a splendid revenue for those days—and poor Bonivard, whose sole avocation was that of gentleman, found it difficult to carry on that line of business with neither capital nor income. He came back, some five years later, into possession of the priory. They were five years of exciting changes, of fierce terrorism and oppression at Geneva, followed by a respite, a rallying of the spirit of the people, an actual recovery of some of the old rights of the city, and, presently, by the beginning of some signs of religious light coming from the direction of Germany. And the way in which Bonivard at last got reinstalled into his convent is curiously illustrative of the strange condition of society in those times. One May morning in 1527 the little town was all agog with strange news from Rome. The Eternal City had been taken by storm, sacked, pillaged, burned! The Roman bishop was prisoner to the Roman emperor, if indeed he was alive at all. In fact, there was a rumor—dreadful, no doubt, but attended by vast consolations—that the whole court of Rome had perished. Immediately there was a rush to the bishop's palace, and a scramble for the vacant livings in the diocese that had been held by absentees at Rome. The bishop, delighted at such a windfall of patronage, dispensed his favors right and left, not forgetting, says Bonivard, to reserve something comfortable for himself in the shape of a fat convent that had been held by a cardinal. This was Bonivard's opportunity, and, times and the bishop having changed, he got back once more into his cherished quarters as prior of St. Victor. The convent was there, and the friars, but the estates that had been wont to keep them all right royally were mostly in the hands of the duke and his minions. It is in the effort to recover these that Bonivard shines out in his most magnificent character, that of military hero. The campaign of Cartigny includes the most memorable of his feats of arms.

Cartigny was an estate about six miles down the left bank of the Rhone from Geneva, appertaining to St. Victor. "It was a chastel of pleasaunce, not a forteresse," says our hero, who is the Homer of his own brave deeds. But the duke kept a garrison there, and to every demand the prior made for his place he replied that he did not dare give it up for fear of being excommunicated by the pope. Rent-time came, and the Savoyard government enjoined the tenants not to pay to the prior. Whereupon that potentate declared that, being refused civil justice, he "fell back on the law of nations."

The military resources of his realm were limited. He counted ten able-bodied subjects, but they were monks and not liable to service. The culverins of his uncle were gone, but he had six muskets—a loan from the city—and there were four pounds of powder in the magazine. But this was not of itself sufficient for a war against the duke of Savoy. He must subsidize mercenaries.

About this time there chanced to be at Geneva a swashbuckler from Berne, Bischelbach by name, by trade a butcher, who had found the new regime of the Reformers at that city too strait-laced for his tastes and habits, and had come to Geneva, with some vagabonds at his heels, in search of adventures and a livelihood. Him did the prior of St. Victor, greatly impressed with his own accounts of his powers, commission as generalissimo of the forces. Second in command he set a priest, likewise just thrown out of business by the Reformation in the North; and in a council of war the plan of campaign was determined. But before the actual clash of arms began the solemn preliminaries usual between hostile powers must be scrupulously fulfilled. A herald was commissioned to make proclamation in the name of the lord of St. Victor, through all the lands of Cartigny, that no man should venture to execute there any orders, whether of pope or duke, under penalty of being hung. This energetic procedure struck due terror, for when Bonivard's captain with several soldiers appeared before the castle it capitulated without a blow.

It was a brief though splendid victory. The very first raid in which the "Knights of the Spoon"—an association of neighboring country gentlemen—harried that region they found that the captain and entire garrison of the castle had gone to market (not without imputations of treason), leaving the post in charge of one woman, who promptly surrendered.

The sovereign of St. Victor's blood was up. He resolved to draw, if need were, on the entire resources of his realm. The army was promptly reinforced to twenty men, and Bonivard took the field in person at the head of his forces. On what wise this array debouched in two corps d'armee one Sunday morning from two of the gates of Geneva; how the junction of the forces was effected; the military history of the march; how they appeared, at last, before the castle of Cartigny,—are these not written by the pen of the hero himself in his Chronicles of Geneva? But Bonivard, though brave, was merciful. Willing to spare the effusion of blood, he sent the general-in-chief, Bischelbach, with his servant, Diebolt, as an interpreter, to summon the castle. The answer was a shot that knocked poor Diebolt over with a mortal wound; whereupon the attacking army fell back in a masterly manner into the woods and made good their way into Geneva, bringing one prisoner, whom they had caught unarmed near the castle, and leaving Diebolt to die at a roadside inn.

We may not further narrate the deeds of Bonivard as a martial hero, though they are neither few nor uninteresting.[10] But he is equally worthy of himself as a religious reformer. It was about this time that the stirrings of religious reformation at Berne and elsewhere began to be heard at Geneva, and the thought began to be seriously entertained by some of the patriotic "Sons of Geneva" that perhaps that liberty for which they had dared and suffered so much in vain might best come with that gospel which had wrought such wonders in other communities. There was one man who could advise them what to do; and they went together over to the convent and sought audience and ghostly counsel of the prior. "We are going to have done with all popish ceremonies," said they, "and drive out the whole rabble-rout of papistry, monks, priests and all: then we mean to send for gospel ministers to introduce the true Christian Reformation." It is pleasant to imagine the expression of Bonivard's countenance as he replied to his ardent friends: "It is a very praiseworthy idea. There is no doubt that all these ecclesiastics sadly need reformation. I am one of them myself. But who is to do the reforming? Whoever it is, they had better begin operations on themselves. If you are so fond of the gospel, why don't you practise it? It looks as if you did not so much love the gospel as you hate us. And what do you hate us for? It is not because we are so different from you, but because we are so like. You say we are a licentious lot; well, so are you. We drink hard; so do you. We gamble and we swear; but what do you do, I should like to know? Why should you be so hard on us? We don't interfere with your little enjoyments: for pity's sake, don't meddle with ours. You talk about driving us out and sending for the Lutheran ministers. Gentlemen, think twice before you do it. They will not have been here two years before you will wish they were gone. If you dislike us because we are too much like you, you will detest them because they are so different from you. My friends, do one thing or the other. Either let us alone, or, if you must do some reforming, try it on yourselves."

Thus did this excellent pastor, in the spirit of the gospel injunction to count the cost, give spiritual counsel to those who sought reformation of the Church. "I warrant you," he wrote concerning them, "they went off with their tails between their legs. I am as fond of reformation as anybody, but I am a little scrupulous as to who shall take it in hand."[11]

Bonivard's harum-scarum raids into the duke of Savoy's dominions after rents or reprisals at last became so embarrassing to his Geneva friends that, much as they enjoyed the fun of them, it became necessary to say to the good monk that this sort of thing really must stop; and feeling the force of his argument, that he must have something to live on, the city council allowed its neighboring potentate a subvention of four crowns and a half monthly to enable him to keep up a state worthy of the dignity of a sovereign. He grumbled at the amount, but took it; and thereafter the peace of Europe was less disturbed on his part.

But bad news came to the gay prior in his impoverished monastery. His mother was ill at his old home at Seyssel in Savoy, and he must see her before she died. It was venturing into the tiger's den, as all his friends told him, and as he did not need to be told. But he thought he would adventure it if he could get a safe-conduct from the tiger. The matter was arranged: the duke sent Bonivard his passport, limited to a single month; and the prior arrived at Seyssel, and nearly frightened the poor old lady out of her last breath with her sense of the peril to which he had exposed himself.

Our hero's incomparable genius for getting himself into difficulties never shone more brightly than at this hour. While here in the country of his mortal enemy, on the last days of his expiring safe-conduct, he got news of accusations gravely sustained at Geneva that he had gone over into Savoy to treat with the enemy. He did not dare to stay: he did not dare to go back. If he could get his safe-conduct extended for one month, to the end of May, he would try to make his way through the Pays de Vaud (then belonging to Savoy) to Fribourg in the Swiss Confederation. The extension was granted, and with many assurances of good-will from friends of the duke he pushed on. It was a fine May morning, the 26th, that he was on his last day's journey to Lausanne, and passing through a pine wood. Suddenly men sprang from ambush upon Bonivard, who grasped his sword and spurred, calling to his guide, "Put spurs!" But instead of so doing the guide turned and whipped out his knife and cut Bonivard's sword-belt; "Whereupon these worthy gentlemen," says Bonivard's Chronicle, "jumped on me and took me prisoner in the name of my lord duke." Safe-conducts were in vain. A bagful of ropes was produced, and he was carried on a mule, bound hand and foot, in secrecy, to the duke's castle of Chillon, the captain of which was one of the ambuscading party. For six years he was hidden from the world, and at first men knew not whether he was alive or dead. But his sufferings at the hand of the common foe put to shame the suspicions that had been engendered at Geneva, and it is recorded, to the honor of the Genevese, that during all that period, whenever negotiations were opened between them and the duke of Savoy, the liberation of Bonivard was always insisted on as one of the conditions.

The story of the imprisonment is soon told; for, strangely enough, this most garrulously egotistical of writers never alludes to it but twice, and then briefly. The first two years he was kept in the upper chambers of the castle and treated kindly, but at the end of this time the castle received a visit from the duke, and from that time forth the Prisoner of Chillon was remanded to the awful and sombre crypt. A single sentence in his handwriting is all that he tells us of this period, of which he might have told so much, and in this he shows a disposition to look at the affair rather in its humorous than in its Byronesque aspect. For his one recorded reminiscence of his four years of dungeon-life is, that "he had such abundant leisure for promenading that he wore in the rock pavement a little path as neatly as if it had been done with a stone-hammer."[12]

One March morning in 1536 the Prisoner of Chillon heard through the windows of his dungeon the sound of a cannonade by land and lake. It was the army of Berne, which was finishing its victorious campaign through the Pays de Vaud by the siege of the duke's last remaining stronghold, the castle of Chillon. They were joyfully aided by a flotilla fitted out by Geneva, which had never forgotten its old friend. That night the dungeon-door was burst open, and Bonivard and three fellow-prisoners were carried off in triumph to Geneva.

Not Rip Van Winkle when he awoke from his long slumber in the Catskills, not the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus when they came back from their sepulchre and found their city Christian, had a better right to be surprised than the prior of St. Victor when he got back to Geneva. Duke and bishop and all their functionaries were expelled; priests and preaching-friars were gone; the mass was abolished; in the cathedral of St. Peter's and all the lesser churches, which had been cleared of their images, there were singing of psalms and preaching of fiery sermons by Reformers from France; and the streets through which he had sometimes had to move by stealth were filled with joyous crowds to hail him as a martyr. St. Victor was no more. If he went to look for his old home, he found a heap of rubbish, for all the suburbs of the city that might give shelter to an enemy had been torn down by the unsparing patriots of Geneva, and the trees had been felled. The joyous city had ceased, and Bonivard's prophecy to his roystering companions was not long in being fulfilled for himself as well as for them: they soon found Calvin's little finger to be heavier than the bishop's loins.

And yet the heroic little town showed a noble gratitude toward the old friend of its liberties. The house which he chose out of all the city was given him for his own and furnished at the public expense. A pension of two hundred crowns a year in gold was settled on him, and he was made a senator of the republic. To all which was added a condition that he should lead a respectable life—a proviso which is practically explained in the very next appearance of his name in the records on account of a misdemeanor for which his accomplice was ordered to quit the town within three days.

The more generous was the town the more exacting became the Martyr. He could not get over his free-and-easy way of living in the gay old days when the tithes of his benefice yielded him nigh a thousand yellow crowns a year. He could not see why he was not entitled to have his rents back again; and after a vain effort on the part of the council to make him see it, he went off to Berne, where he had been admitted a citizen, to ask it to interfere for him, sending back an impudent letter renouncing his Geneva citizenship, on the ground that in his reduced circumstances he could not afford to be a citizen in two places at once. For a while the patient city lost its patience with its unruly beneficiary, but the genuine grateful and kindly feeling that every one felt for the poor fellow, and the general admiration for his learning and wit, conspired with his growing embarrassments to bring about a settlement of the affair on the basis of a reduced pension with a round lump sum to pay his debts.

They sent for him two or three years later to come to Geneva as historiographer, and he came, bringing with him a wife from Berne, who died soon after his arrival. For a man of his years, he had a remarkable alacrity at getting married, and his second venture was an unlucky one. For from the wedding-day onward, when he was not before the council with some quarrel or some affair of debt he was apt to come before it to get them to compel his wife to live with him, or, failing that, to get her money to live on himself. What time could be saved from these wranglings, which lasted almost till the poor woman's death, was devoted ardently to his literary work. The history grew apace, and other books besides. In the seditions of the Libertine party against the austerities of the new regime the old man took the side of law and order and good morals (in his book on L'ancienne et nouvelle Police de Geneve) with an ardor that was the more surprising as one remembered his antecedents. In the midst of his toils he found time to get married to a third wife and to go to law with his neighbors. He is continually coming to the council, sometimes for a little loan to help him with his lawsuits, sometimes for relief in his embarrassments. It is touching to see how tender they are toward the poor foolish old man. They make him little grants from time to time, always looking to it that their money shall be applied to the object designated, and not "on his fantasies." They take up one of his notes for him, looking to see that it has not been tampered with, because "he is easily circumvented and not adroit in his business." He complains of the heat during an illness one summer, and the seigneurie give him the White Chamber in the town-hall, and when winter comes on, and he is old and infirm, they assign him the lodging lately occupied by Mathurin Cordier (famous schoolmaster Corderius, whose Dialogues were the first book in Latin of our grandfathers), because it contained a stove—a rare luxury. He thanks them for their kindness as his fathers, and makes them heirs of his library and manuscripts.

There was another and more solemn assemblage, his relations with which were less tender. This was the consistory of the Church, which found it less easy to allow for the old man's infirmities. His first appearance before this body was under accusation of playing at dice with Clement Marot, another famous character and the sweet singer of the French Reformation. He comes next time of his own accord, asking the venerable brethren to interfere because his second wife ran away from him on their wedding-day, she defending herself on the ground of a bad cold. His domestic troubles bring him thither so often as to put the clergy out of patience. He is called up for beating his wife, but shows that the discipline was needed, and she is admonished to be more obedient in future. Later on he is questioned why he does not come to church. He can't walk, is the answer. But he is told that if he can get himself carried to the hotel de ville to see the new carvings, he could get carried to church. And why does he neglect the communion? Answer: He has been debarred from it. "Then present your request to be restored." So the poor old gentleman presents himself six weeks later, asking to be readmitted to the Church; which is granted, but with the remark, entered on the record, that he "does not show much contrition in coming with a bunch of flowers over his ear—a thing very unbecoming in a man of his years."

The dreadful consistory had a principal concern in the affair that darkened the declining days of Bonivard with the shadow of a tragedy. An escaped nun had found refuge in his lodgings after his third wife's death; and after some love-making—on which side was disputed—there was a promise of marriage given by him, which, however, he was in no hurry to fulfil. The consistory deemed it best to interfere, in the interests of propriety, and insist on the marriage; and the decrepit old invalid in vain pleaded his age and bodily infirmities. So he was married in spite of himself to his nun, and showed his disposition to make the best of it by making her a wedding-present of his new Latin treatise, just finished, on The Origin of Evil, and receiving in tender return a Greek copy of the Philippics of Demosthenes. Three years later the wretched woman was accused of adultery, and being put to the torture confessed her crime and was drowned in a sack, while her paramour was beheaded. Bonivard, being questioned, declared his belief of her innocence, and that her worst faults were that she wanted to make him too pious, and tormented him to begin preaching, and sometimes beat him when he had a few friends in to drink.[13]

For five years after this catastrophe the old man lingered, tended by hirelings, but watched with filial gratitude by the little state whose liberties he had helped to save, and whose heroic history he had recorded. He had at least the comfort of having finished that great work; and when he brought the manuscript of it to the council, they referred it to a committee with Master Calvin at the head; who reported that it was written in a rude and familiar style, quite beneath the dignity of history, and that for this and other reasons it had better not be printed. The precious manuscript was laid on the shelf until in the lapse of years it was found that the very reasons why those solemn critics rejected it were the things that gave it supreme value to a later age. It has been the pride of Geneva scholars to print in elegant archaic style every page written by the Prisoner of Chillon in prose or verse, on history, polity, philology and theology.

Somewhere about September, 1570, Francis Bonivard died, aged seventy-seven, lonely and childless, leaving the city his heir. The cherished collection of books that was the comfort of his harassed life has grown into the library of a university, and the little walled town for whose ancient liberties he ventured such perils and suffered such imprisonment is, and for the three hundred years since has been, one of the chief radiant centres of light and liberty for all the world. LEONARD WOOLSEY BACON.

NOTE.—Like every subject relating to the history of Geneva, the life of Bonivard has been thoroughly studied by local antiquarians and historians. The most important work on the subject is that of Dr. Chaponniere, before cited: this is reprinted (but without the documents attached) as a preface to the new edition of the Chronicles. M. Edmond Chevrier, in a slight pamphlet (Macon, 1868), gives a critical account both of the man and of his writings. Besides these may be named Vulliemin: Chillon, Etude historique, Lausanne, 1851; J. Gaberel: Le Chateau de Chillon et Bonivard, Geneva. Marc Monnier, Geneve et ses Poetes (Geneva, 1847), gives an excellent criticism on Bonivard as author. For original materials consult (besides the work of Chaponniere) Galiffe: Materiaux pour l'Histoire de Geneve, and Cramer: Notes extraites des Registres du Consistoire, a rare book in lithography (Geneva, 1853). A weak little article in the Catholic World for September, 1876, bravely attacks Bonivard as "one of the Protestant models of virtue," and triumphantly proves him to have been far from perfect. The charge, however, that he was "a traitor to his ecclesiastical character," and "quitted his convent and broke his vows," is founded on a blunder. Bonivard never took monastic vows or holy orders, but held his living in commendam, as a lay-man. The main resource, however, for Bonivard's life up to his liberation from Chillon is in his own works, especially the Chronicles (Geneva, edition Fick, 1867).



"FOR PERCIVAL."



CHAPTER XXXI.

WHY NOT LOTTIE?



It was all over. The neighborhood had paid due honor to Godfrey Thorne. Old Garnett, who was kept at home by his gout, had written a letter of condolence to Mrs. Middleton, and expressed his deep regret at his enforced absence. She was pleased with the letter. She did not care for Dick Garnett, but he had known her brother all his life. She would not have been so pleased, perhaps, had she seen old Dick grinning and showing his fierce old teeth as he wrote it: "Ought to have been there—believe I was his best man fifty years ago. But half a century takes the shine out of most things—and people too." He shrugged his shoulders, eyed the last sentence he had written, and perceiving a little space at the end of a line, put in an adjective to make it rather warmer. "Won't show," he said to himself—"looks very natural. Lord! what a farce it all is! Fifty years ago there was Thorne, like a fool, worshipping the very ground Fanny Harvey trod on, and a few years later he wasn't particularly sorry to put her safe underneath it. Wonderful coal-scuttle of a bonnet she wore that wedding-day, to be sure! And I was best man!" Dick chuckled at the thought. "I shouldn't look much like best man now. Ah, well! I mayn't be best, but I'm a better man than old Godfrey to-day, anyhow." (And so, no doubt, for this world's affairs, Richard Garnett was, on the principle that "a living dog is better than a dead lion.") "And the candlemaker's daughter begins her reign, for that poor lad will never marry. Upon my word, I believe I'm a better man than Master Horace now. And I'm not likely to play the fool with physic-bottles, either: I know a little better than that." No, Aunt Harriet would not have liked Garnett's train of thought as he folded and addressed the letter which pleased her. And yet the old fellow meant the best he could.

And now it was all over, and Brackenhill would know Godfrey Thorne no more. But for that one day he was still all-powerful, for they had met to hear his will read.

Horace sat by the table with an angry line between his brows, and balanced a paper-knife on his finger. He tried to appear composed, but a shiver of impatience ran through him more than once, and the color came and went on his cheek. His mother was by his side, controlling her face to a rigidly funereal expression. But the effort was evident.

Godfrey Hammond said to himself, "Those two expect the worst. And if the worst comes, if Percival is mistaken and Horace is cut off with just a pittance, we shall see what Hunting Harry's temper really is. We may have an unpleasant quarter of an hour, but it will give us a vivid idea of the end of the millennium, I fancy."

Aunt Harriet was unfeignedly troubled and anxious.

Percival was rather in the background. Sitting on one chair, he laid his folded arms on the back of another and rested his chin on his wrists. In this attitude he gazed at Hardwicke with the utter calm of an Assyrian statue. He felt his pulses throbbing, and it seemed to him as if his anxiety must betray itself. But it did not. If you have a little self-restraint and presence of mind you can affect to have much. Percival had that little.

Just before Hardwicke began to read Mrs. James leant toward her son and whispered with an air of mystery. He answered with a short and sullen nod.

Hardwicke read clearly but monotonously. The will was dated four days after Alfred Thorne's death—not only before Percival came to Brackenhill, but before any overtures had been made to him. Mrs. Middleton came first with a legacy of ten thousand pounds and a few things which the dead man knew she prized—their mother's portrait and one or two memorials of himself. Sissy had five thousand pounds and a small portion of the family jewels, which were very splendid. His godson, Godfrey Hammond, had three pictures and a ring, all of considerable value, and two or three other things, which, though of less importance, had been looked upon as heirlooms by successive generations of Thornes. Hammond perfectly understood the wilful pride and remorseful pangs with which that bequest was made.

Then came small legacies to old friends. Duncan the butler and one or two of the elder servants had annuities, and the others were not forgotten. Two local charitable institutions had a hundred pounds each. By this time Horace was white to his very lips and drawing his breath painfully. Percival preserved an appearance of calm, but he could feel his strong, irregular heart-throbs as he leant against the chair.

The lawyer went on to read the words which gave Brackenhill to Horace for his life. If he died and left no son to inherit the estate, it was to go to Percival Thorne. But unless Horace died first, and died childless, Percival would not take sixpence under his grandfather's will.

It was a heavy blow, and his lips and hands tightened a little as he met it. He had known that the great prize was for his cousin, but he had fancied that there might be some trifling legacy for him. He would have been more thankful than words could say for half the annuity which was left to the butler. The remembrance of that paper which but for him would have been all powerful rose vividly before his eyes. Did he repent now that he was certain of the greatness of the sacrifice? Again from the bottom of his heart he answered, No. But even while Hardwicke read the words which doomed him to beggary it almost seemed to young Thorne as if the wrinkled waxen face and shrunken figure must suddenly become visible in the background to protest—as if a dead hand must be laid on that lying will which was itself more dead than the newly-buried corpse. Even in that bitter moment Percival was sorry for the poor old squire.

Hardwicke finished, and thought it all very well. He did not pity the young fellow opposite him who had listened so intently and now was looking thoughtfully into space. The lawyer summed up Percival's position in his own mind thus:

He had an income of his own, amount unknown, but as during Alfred Thorne's life it had sufficed for both, it must be more than enough to support the son.

He was engaged to Sissy Langton. Her father had left her at least eight hundred pounds a year, besides which there were all the accumulations of a long minority and this legacy. Mr. Hardwicke thought that the united incomes would be more than fifteen hundred pounds a year.

There were expectations too. Mrs. Middleton was rich, and though some of her property would revert to her husband's family, Hardwicke knew that she had saved a considerable sum. He had no doubt that those savings and her brother's ten thousand pounds would go to Sissy, and consequently to Percival.

And lastly he looked at the new owner of Brackenhill. No, Mr. Hardwicke did not pity Mr. Percival Thorne.

All these thoughts had flashed through his mind as he folded the paper and laid it down. Mrs. Middleton broke the silence. "But Percival—" she exclaimed in utter bewilderment: "I don't understand. What does Percival have?"

"Nothing," said the young man quickly, lifting his head and facing her with a brave smile.

"Nothing? It isn't possible! It isn't right!"

"That will was made before ever I came here. It doesn't mean any unkindness to me, for he didn't know me."

"But did he never make another?—Horace!—Oh, Mr. Hardwicke, you know Godfrey never meant this! That was what his letter was about, then?"

"He intended to make some change, no doubt," said Hardwicke.

"Perhaps Mr. Percival Thorne would like to dispute the will." It was evident that Mrs. James perfectly comprehended the position. Aunt Harriet looked helplessly at her boy, unable to understand his silence.

Horace, though unconscious of the glance, rose suddenly to his feet. "I want to understand," he began in a high thin voice—an unnatural voice—which all at once grew hoarse.

"Yes—what?" said Hardwicke, looking up at the young man, who rested both his quivering hands on the table to support himself. All eyes were turned to the one erect figure.

"That"—Horace nodded at the will—"that makes me master here, eh?"

"Undoubtedly," Hardwicke replied, wondering whether Horace was unusually slow of comprehension.

"Nothing can alter it?" said Horace. "I may do what I please in everything? I want to be sure."

"You can't sell it, if you mean that," said the lawyer. "Didn't you understand? You have only—"

"I know—I know that." The interruption was hasty, as if the speaker would not be reminded of an unpleasant truth.

Hardwicke's eyes rested on the two hands which were pressed on the table. They were painfully weak and white. "You are master here," he said gently. "Certainly. Your grandfather has made no conditions whatever. Brackenhill is yours for your life."

Horace looked fixedly at him, and half opened his lips as if to speak, but no sound came. It was so evident that he had something to say that the others waited in strained anxiety, and no one spoke except Mrs. James. She laid her fingers on his and said, "Now—why not now?"

"Leave me to manage it," he answered, and drew his hand away, provoking a lofty "Oh, very well!" He walked hurriedly to the hearth-rug and stood in the master's place with an air of having taken possession. Hardwicke moved his chair a little, so as to look sideways at the new squire: Hammond put up his glass.

Mrs. James was like a living explanation of the text, "As an adamant harder than flint have I made thy forehead." Though she was sulky and persistently silent, there was a lurking triumph in her eyes, and it was easy to see that she listened eagerly for the words which seemed to die on her son's lips. He glanced quickly round, stepped back, and rested his elbow on the chimney-piece so awkwardly that a small china cup fell and was shivered to atoms on the hearth.

"Oh, Horace!" exclaimed Aunt Harriet.

"It's mine," said the young man with a nervous little laugh. "And—since Brackenhill is mine too—it is time that my wife should come home."

There was a startled movement and a sudden exclamation of surprise, though it would have been impossible to say who moved or spoke.

"Your wife! Do you mean that you are going to be married?" said Hardwicke.

"No. I mean that I am married," Horace replied. "Oh, it's all right enough. I took care of that. You shall know all about it."

"But how? when? who is she?" Mrs. Middleton had her hand on his arm and was stammering in her eagerness. "Oh, my dear boy, why didn't we know?"

"Because Mrs. Horace Thorne was Miss Adelaide Blake," said Hammond decisively.

Horace turned upon him and said "No," and he was utterly confounded.

"But who, then? Tell us."

Horace looked at Percival, the only one who had been silent. "Why not Lottie?" he said, and the tone was full of meaning.

Percival stared at him for a moment, and then leapt to his feet. "It isn't true!" he exclaimed.

"Indeed! And why not?" said Horace. "If I may ask—"

"Lottie do anything underhand! Lottie! It can't be true!"

"You're very kind, but Lottie doesn't want your championship, thank you," said Horace with an angry sneer. "No doubt you find it very incredible that she should prefer mine."

"Oh, by all means, if it suits her," scoffed Percival, and sat down again, feeling stunned, robbed and duped.

"And as to anything underhand—" Horace began fiercely.

Aunt Harriet, scared by the menacing clash of words, uttered a faint little cry.

"Percival! Horace!" said Godfrey Hammond, "you forget what day this is—you forget Mrs. Middleton. For God's sake don't quarrel before her!—Horace, is this really true? Is Lottie your wife?"

"Yes," said the young man, turning quickly toward him: there was a sudden light of tenderness in his glance—"since last November." He paused, and then added softly, "the third," as if the date were something sacred. "Hammond, you know her: you know how young she is—only eighteen this month. If you choose to blame any one, blame me. And I'm not ashamed of what I've done." He looked defiantly round. "I'm proud of having won her; and as to my having concealed it, I ask you, in common fairness, what else could I do? My grandfather used to be very good to me, but of late he was set against me." A quick glance at Percival, who smiled loftily. "Whatever I did was wrong. If I'd told him I was going to marry a princess, it wouldn't have satisfied him. Since this time last year I've hardly had a good word. I've been watched and lectured, and treated like an outsider here, in my own home. You know it's true, and you know to whom I owe it. I never expected to have my rights: I thought my grandfather would have no peace till I was driven out of Brackenhill. And even now I can't understand how it is that I am master here." Percival smiled again, to himself this time. "But Lottie was willing to share my poverty—God bless her!—and I won't let an hour go by without owning my wife. I should be ashamed of myself if I did."

Horace paused, not unconscious of the weakness of his position, yet more like the Horace of old days to look at—flushed, with a happy loyalty in his eyes and his proud head high in the air.

"No one will blame you for marrying the girl you loved," said Percival in his strong voice. "That is exactly what my father did. It is true that you manage matters in a different way, and naturally the result is different." He rose. "I prefer my father's way—result and all." And with a bow to the assembled company young Thorne walked out of the room.

Horace looked round to see how the attack was received—at Aunt Harriet, who was wiping away the quick coming tears; at Hardwicke, who was looking at the door through which Percival had vanished; at Hammond, who came forward a step or two. "I ordered a dog-cart to come over from Fordborough for me," he said. "If you will allow me I will ring and have it brought round."

"You are going?" said Horace.

"We shall just catch the four-o'clock train very comfortably if we go now," Godfrey replied. "Thorne will prefer going by that."

"I see: you take his part. Very well. I suppose sooner or later you must choose between us: as well now as later." Horace rang the bell.

"Horace," said Hammond, dropping his voice, yet speaking in the same tone of authority he had used once before that day, "for the first time in your life Mrs. Middleton is your guest. If you have a spark of right feeling—and you have more than that—you will not make her position here more painful than it must be. We will defer all discussion: there must be a truce while she is here.—My dog-cart," he said over his shoulder to the servant. "It was to come from Fordborough. At once.—Keep out of the way ten minutes hence when your cousin goes," he added to Horace: "it will be best."

The young squire bent his head in sulky acquiescence.

"I shall take Percival with me," said Hammond to Mrs. Middleton as he went by. "He wants to be off, I know, and I shall be of more use with him than here."

He found Percival crushing his things into his little portmanteau and in hot haste to get away from Brackenhill.

"I'm going by the four train," Hammond remarked, "and I've told them you'll drive with me."

"In one of his carriages?" said young Thorne, looking up with furious eyes. "No, thank you: I'll walk."

"If you jumped out of that window you wouldn't have to go down his staircase," said Hammond.

"Oh, if you came here to—" began the young man, tugging at a strap.

"I came here to ask you to drive with me in the dog-cart from the Crown. It's no use pulling a strap much past the tightest hole. Come, you are not going to quarrel with me?"

"I'm a fool," said Percival. "I shall feel it all in a minute or two, I suppose. Just now I only feel that everything belongs to the man who has duped me, and every breath I draw is choking me."

"I understand," returned Hammond. "Percival, Mrs. Middleton is coming: I hear her step. For her sake—to-day—Thorne, you will not break her heart?"

The old lady was knocking at the half-open door. "Come in," said Percival in a gentle voice. His portmanteau was strapped, and he rose as she entered. "Come to say good-bye to me, Aunt Harriet? I'm off, you see."

"Oh, Percival, I can't understand it!" she exclaimed. "Horace married—married! And you going away like this! It is like a dream."

"So it seems to me," said the young man.

"And one of those Miss Blakes! Oh dear! what would Godfrey have said? Oh, Percival, he never meant this!" She had her hand to her forehead as she spoke.

"No," said Percival. "But don't fret about me: I shall do very well."

"But it isn't right. Oh, I don't know what to say or think, I am so bewildered. Perhaps Horace has hardly had time to think yet, has he?" she said faintly. "He will do something, I'm sure—"

"He mustn't—don't let him! I can hold my tongue if I'm let alone. But if he insults me—" said Percival. "Aunt Harriet, for God's sake, don't let him offer me money."

"Ah!" in an accent of pain. "But my money! Percival, do you want any? It's a good thing, as he said, that Mr. Lisle didn't fail before you came into yours, but if you want any—"

"But I don't," said Percival. "As you say, it's a good thing I have some of my own." He had his fingers in his waistcoat pocket, and was wondering which of the coins that he felt there would prove to be gold. It was an important question. "Don't vex yourself about me, Aunt Harriet. Kiss me and say good-bye: there isn't much time, is there? Tell Sissy—" he stopped abruptly.

"What?" said the old lady.

"Tell her—I don't know. You'll let me hear how she is. You've been very good to me, Aunt Harriet. It's best as it is about Sissy, isn't it, seeing how things have turned out?"

He caught up his luggage and went quickly out, but only to turn and pause irresolutely in the doorway.

"I'll not say anything about Horace: we are best apart. But Lottie! I liked Lottie: we were very good friends when she was a school-girl. She is very young still. Perhaps she didn't understand. I ought to say this, because you never knew her, and I did."

And having said it, he went away with a light on his sombre face. Mrs. Middleton looked up at Hammond with streaming eyes and shook her head: "I shall never like that girl: I shall never have anything to do with her. Godfrey was right."

"In what way?"

"Percival was his favorite always."

"I'll look after him," said Hammond; and with a quick pressure of her hand he followed the young man down stairs.

As they drove away Percival sat erect and grave, with a face as darkly still as if it were moulded in bronze. He went away from the dear old house without one backward glance: Horace might be looking out. He never spoke, and when they reached the station he took his ticket and got into the carriage without the least reference to Hammond, who followed him quietly. There was no one else with them. The silence was unbroken till they drew near their journey's end, when Thorne took out his ticket and examined it curiously. "I wonder if I shall ever see another?" he said.

"Another what?"

"First-class ticket. I ought to have gone third."

"You get an opportunity of studying character, no doubt. But I think this is better to-day," said Hammond.

Percival was silent for a moment. Then he spread all his money on his open hand and eyed it: "What do you think of that for a fortune, eh, Godfrey?"

Godfrey glanced at the little constellation of gold and silver coins. "Wants a little more spending," he said. "Two-pence halfpenny is the mystic sum which turns to millions. So Lisle has swindled you, has he? I thought as much."

Percival nodded: "Keep my secret. They sha'n't say that I lived on my grandfather first, and then on Aunt Harriet or Sissy. They may find it out later, and welcome if I have shown them that I can do without them all."

"Ah yes," said Hammond a little vaguely. "Here we are."



CHAPTER XXXII.

LOTTIE WINS.

Percival had not been wrong about Lottie: she had at any rate only partially understood what she was doing. The poor child had been bitterly humiliated by the discovery that he did not love her, and felt that she was disgraced for life by her ill-judged advance. The feeling was high-flown and exaggerated no doubt, but one hardly expects to find all the cool wisdom of Ecclesiastes in a brain of seventeen. Lottie, flying from Percival's scorn as she supposed, was ready for any desperate leap. What wonder that she took one into Horace's open arms! How could she find a better salve for wounded pride than by captivating the man who had passed her by as nothing but a child, and who had been, as she would have said, "much too great a swell to take any notice of her"? He had dangled in a half-hearted fashion after Addie, and had given himself airs. Wounded vanity had attracted him to Lottie, but, smitten by sudden passion, he wooed her hotly, with an eagerness which startled even himself. How could she be unconscious of the difference and of her triumph? Percival Thorne, who had slighted her, should see her reigning at Brackenhill!

Proud, pleased, grateful, excited, dizzy with success, Lottie was swept away by the torrent of mingled feelings. Her sorrow for her father's death was violent, but not lasting. She could not feel his loss for any length of time, she had always been so much more her mother's child. Even during her mourning there was something of romance in Horace's letters of comfort, for Horace, who had always been the laziest correspondent in the world, wrote ardent letters to Lottie, and used all the hackneyed yet ever fresh expedients for transmitting them which have been bequeathed to us by generations of bygone lovers. There were meetings too, more romantic still. No one is so sentimental as the man who is startled out of a languid scorn of sentiment. He does not know where to stop. Horace would have been capable of serenading Lottie if Mrs. Blake would only have slept on the other side of the house.

Addie was unconscious of the fiery romance which went on close at hand. She felt that the languid attentions which she had prized were fading away and would never ripen to anything more. Her sorrow for her father's death was deeper than Lottie's, and while it was fresh she hardly thought of Horace Thorne's coldness, except as a part of the general dreariness of life, and did not attempt to seek out its cause. Even Mrs. Blake never for a moment expected the revelation which was made to her near the beginning of October.

It was Lottie who told her, coming to her one night with a white face of agony and resolution.

Horace was dangerously ill. He had been ill before, but this was something altogether different. The cold which led to such alarming results had been caught in one of his secret expeditions to see Lottie. She had been forced to keep him waiting, and a chilly September rain had drenched him to the skin. He had gone away in his wet clothes, had tried to pretend that there was nothing amiss with him, and had gone out the next day in order to be able to attribute his cold to a ride in the north-east wind. Since that time Lottie had had three letters—the first a gallant little attempt at gayety and hopefulness; the second, after a considerable interval, depressed and anxious. They had ordered him abroad. "I am sure they think badly of me," he wrote, "though I'll cheat the grave yet—if I can. But how am I to live through the winter in some horrible hole of a place without my darling? Suppose I get worse instead of better, and die out there, and never see you again—never once?" And so on for a page of forebodings. Lottie's fondness for him, fanned by pity and remorse—was it not for her that he had risked his life?—flamed up to passion. They say that a woman always puts the real meaning of her letter into the postscript. I don't know how that may be, but I do not think she would ever fail to give full weight to any postscript she might receive. Horace's postscript was, "After all, I've a great mind to stay in England and chance it."

Lottie was terrified. She replied, wildly entreating him to go, and vowing that they should meet again and not be parted. She did not yet know what she would do, but—Then followed a few notes of music roughly dashed in.

He was puzzled. He tried the notes furtively on the piano, but they told him nothing. That day, however, there came to his mother's house a girl with whom he had had one of his numerous flirtations in bygone days. He asked her to play to him, and then to sing, hanging over the piano meanwhile, and thrilling her with his apparent devotion and with the melancholy which reminded her of the fate which threatened him. When she had finished her song he said, "But you'll sing me one more, won't you? I sha'n't have the chance again, you know." He looked down as he spoke and struck the notes which haunted him. "Do you know what that is?" he asked. "It has been going in my head all day, and I can't put a name to it."

She tried it after him. "What is it?" she said: "I ought to remember," and paused, finger on lip. Horace's eager eyes flashed upon hers, when she suddenly exclaimed, "I know. It's one of Chappell's old songs;" and, dashing her hands victoriously upon the keys, she sang "Love will find out the way."

"Ah!" said Horace, and stood erect in a glow of passion and triumph. He remembered himself enough to ask again for one more song, but when, with a wistful tremor in her voice, she said, "This? you used to like this," he assented, without an idea what it was, and dropped into the nearest arm-chair to ponder Lottie's message. He was quite unconscious that the girl at his side was singing "O Fair Dove! O Fond Dove!" with an earnestness of meaning, a pathos and a power, which she never attained before or since. But he was sorry when she stopped, for he had to come out of a most wonderful castle in the air and say "Thank you." When she went away he looked vaguely at her and let her hand fall, as was only natural. How we listen for the postman when we are longing for a letter and sick with hope deferred! But who thinks of him when he has dropped it into the box and is going down the street? Horace felt almost sure as he said good-bye that Love had found out the way.

And his next note sent Lottie to her mother.

Mrs. Blake was utterly confounded when her younger daughter announced that she was engaged to Horace Thorne. "It was no good saying anything," said Lottie frankly, "for his old wretch of a grandfather wouldn't think we were good enough to marry into his family, and I dare say he would go and leave all his money to Percival if Horace thwarted him. So we thought we would wait. People can't live very much longer when they are seventy-seven, can they? At least they do sometimes, I know," Lottie added, pulling herself up. "You see them in the newspapers sometimes in their ninety-eighth or ninety-seventh year, I've noticed lately. But I'm sure it will be very wicked if he lives twenty years more. And now Horace is ill, and we can't wait. For he must not and shall not go away, and perhaps die, without me." And Lottie broke down and wept.

"But what do you want to do?" said Mrs. Blake. It was a shock to her, and she was sorry for Addie, but she could not repress a thrill of exultation at the thought that Horace Thorne, whom she had so coveted for a son-in-law, was caught. The state of his health was serious of course, but they must hope for the best, and the idea of an alliance with one of the leading county families dazzled her.

"We want to be married before he goes out, and nobody to know anything about it," said Lottie; "and then you must take me abroad this winter."

Mrs. Blake declared that it was utterly impossible.

"Oh, very well," said Lottie, drying her tears. "Then I give you fair warning. I shall run away, and get to Horace somehow. I don't know whether we can get married abroad—"

"I should think not—a child like you, without my consent," said Mrs. Blake.

"No, I suppose we couldn't. Well, then, it will be your doing, you know, if we are not. I shouldn't like to have such a thing on my conscience," said Lottie virtuously. "But perhaps you don't mind."

Mrs. Blake said that it was impossible that Lottie could be so lost to all sense of propriety, so wicked, so unwomanly—

The girl stood opposite, slim, white and resolute. Her slender hands hung loosely clasped before her and a fierce spark burned in her eyes.

"Oh, that's impossible too, is it?" she said quietly. "We'll see."

Mrs. Blake quailed, but murmured something about her "authority."

"Oh yes," was the calm reply. "You might lock me up. Try it: I think I should get out. Make a fuss and ruin Horace and me. That you can do, but keep us apart you can't."

"You don't know, you can't know, what it is you talk of doing, or you couldn't stand there without blushing."

"Very likely not," said Lottie. "But since I know enough to do it—"

"You are a wicked, wilful child."

"Wicked? Perhaps. Yes, I think I am wicked. I'm a child, I know. Help me, mother, for I love him!"

The argument was prolonged, but the end could not be doubtful. Mrs. Blake could scold and bluster, but Lottie was determined. The mother was in bondage to Mrs. Grundy: the daughter played the trump card of her utter recklessness and won the game.

Having yielded, Mrs. Blake threw herself heart and soul into the scheme. She announced that painful recollections made Fordborough impossible as a place of residence, that Lottie was looking ill, and that they both required a thorough change. She dropped judiciously disagreeable remarks about her stepson till Addie was up in arms, and said that her mother and Lottie might go where they liked, but she should go to her aunt, Miss Blake, till Oliver, who was on his way, came home. Then Mrs. Blake shut up her house and went quietly off to Folkestone: Horace was to start from Dover in rather more than a fortnight's time.



After that the course was clear. Horace found out that he was worse, and must put off his departure for a week or ten days. Then, when the time originally fixed arrived, he said that he was better and would start at once. Naturally, Mrs. James was not ready, and he discovered that the house was intolerable with her dressmakers and packing, that he must break the journey somewhere, and that he might as well wait for her at Dover. The morning after his arrival there he took the train to Folkestone, met Lottie and her mother, went straight to the church, and came back to Dover a lonely but triumphant bridegroom, while Mrs. Blake and Mrs. Horace Thorne crossed at once to Boulogne.

It was necessary that Mrs. James should be enlightened, but Horace was not alarmed: he knew that she had no choice but to make common cause with him. Mrs. Blake, however, could hardly make up her mind what should be done about Addie. She more than suspected that the tidings would be a painful humiliation to her daughter. "We mustn't tell her," she said at last to Lottie. "She might be spiteful: it wouldn't be safe."

"It will be quite safe," said Lottie. "Because of what we used to say about Horace, you mean? But that is just what makes it safe. I know Addie: she won't let any one say that she betrayed me because she wanted Horace herself once. She said she didn't, but I think there was something in it; and if there was, she'd be torn in pieces sooner than let any one say so."

There was a curious straightforwardness about Lottie, even while she schemed and plotted. She calculated the effect of her sister's tenderness for Horace as frankly and openly as one might reckon on a tide or a train, and behaved as if the old saying, "All is fair in love and war," were one of the Thirty-nine Articles.

She wrote her letter without difficulty or hesitation. It was after Horace had joined them, and he laid his hand lightly on her shoulder as she was contemplating her new signature.

"Nearly done?" he said. "And who is to have the benefit of all this?"

"Addie: she ought to know."

"Ah!" There was something of uneasiness in his tone, as if an unpleasant idea had been presented to him. Horace had felt, when he arranged his secret marriage, that he and Lottie were doing a daring and romantic deed, and risking all for love in a truly heroic fashion. But when she told him that she had written to Addie the matter wore a less heroic aspect. Lottie might be unconscious of this in her sweet sincerity, thought the ardent lover, but he remembered old days and felt like anything but a hero.

"Do you want to see what I have said?" She tilted her chair backward and looked up at him with her great clear eyes.

"No," Horace answered with a smile: "I'm not going to pry into your letters." In his heart he knew that it was impossible to put the revelation of their secret to Addie into any words that would not be painful to him to read.

"Shall I give any message for you?"

"N-no," said Horace, doubtfully: "I think not."

"It might be considered more civil if you sent one."

"Then say anything you please," was the half-reluctant rejoinder.

"Oh, I'm not going to invent your messages, you lazy boy! A likely story!" Lottie sprang up and put the pen into his hand: "There! write for yourself, sir."

Horace thought that a refusal would betray his feelings about Addie, and he sat down, wondering what he was going to say. But his eye was caught by the last two words of the letter, "LOTTIE THORNE;" and as he looked at them the young husband forgot Addie and his lips curved in a tender smile.

"Make haste," said Lottie from the window—"make haste and come to me."

Horace started from his happy reverie, set his teeth and wrote:

"DEAR ADDIE: I suppose Lottie has told you everything. It was a reckless thing to do, no doubt: perhaps you will say it was wrong and underhand. Some people will, I dare say, but I hope you won't, for I should like to start with your good wishes. May I call myself

"Your brother, H.T.?"

In due time came the answer:

"DEAR HORACE: I will not pass judgment on you and your doings: I am not clever in arguing such matters. I will only say (which is more to the point, isn't it?) that you and Lottie have my best wishes for the safe-keeping of your secret, and anything I can do to help you I will. We are having very cold damp weather, so I am glad you are safe in a warmer climate, and hope you are the better for it.

"Your affectionate sister,

"ADELAIDE BLAKE."

Horace showed this to Lottie, and then thrust it away and forgot it all as quickly as he could. Addie had read this little scrap in her own room, had stood for a moment staring at it, had kissed it suddenly, then torn it into a dozen pieces and stamped upon it. Then she gathered up the fragments, sighed over them, burnt them, and vowed she would think no more of it or him. But as she went about the house there floated continually before her eyes, "Your brother, H.T.;" and the word which had been so sweet to her, which had always meant her dear old Noll, and which she had uttered so triumphantly to Percival in Langley Wood when she said "I have a brother," became her torment.