"Why, I was afraid she would go," said he, in a strained voice; and that was all.

Whenever I saw him during the rest of the evening, he was silent, pale, a little shaky methought. He was not as I had been before my maiden duel: blustering and gay, in a trance-like recklessness; assuming self-confidence so well as to deceive even myself and carry me buoyantly through. He seemed rather in suspense like that of a lover who has to beg a stern father for a daughter's hand. As a slight hurt will cause a man the greatest pain, and a severe injury produce no greater, so will the apprehensions of a trivial ordeal equal in effect those of a matter of life and death; there being a limit to possible sensation, beyond which nature leaves us happily numb. Sometimes, upon occasion, Tom smiled, but with a stiffness of countenance; when he laughed, it was in a short, jerky, mechanical manner. As for me, I was in different mood from that preceding my own first trial of arms: I was now overcast in spirit, tremulous, full of misgivings.

The moon did not disappoint us as we set out for the tavern. There were but a few fleecy clouds, and these not of an opaqueness to darken its beams when they passed across it. The snow was frozen hard in the fields, and worn down in the road. The frost in the air bit our nostrils, and we now and again worked our countenances into strange grimaces, to free them from the sensation of being frozen hard.

"'Tis a beautiful night," said Tom, speaking in more composure than he had shown during the early evening. The moonlight had a calming effect, as the clear air had a bracing one. His eyes roamed the sky, and then the moonlit, snow-clad earth—hillock and valley, wood and pond, solitary house bespeaking indoor comfort, and a glimpse of the dark river in the distance—and he added:

"What a fine world it is!"

When we entered the warm tap-room of the tavern—the house above Kingsbridge, outside the barriers where the passes were examined and the people searched who were allowed entrance and departure; not Hyatt's tavern, South of the bridge—we found a number of subalterns there, some German, some British, some half-drunk, some playing cards. Our Irish surgeon sat in a corner, reading a book—I think 'twas a Latin author—by the light of a tallow candle. He nodded to us indifferently, as if he had no engagement with us, and continued to read. Tom and I ordered a hot rum punch mixed for us, and stood at the bar to drink it.

"You look pale and shaky, you two," said the tavern-keeper, who himself waited upon us.

"'Tis the cold," said I. "We're not all of your constitution, to walk around in shirt-sleeves this weather."

"Why," says the landlord, "I go by the almanac. 'Tis time for the January thaw, 'cordin' to that. Something afoot to-night, eh? One o' them little trips up the river, or out East Chester way, with De Lancey's men, I reckon?"

We said nothing, but wisely looked significant, and the host grinned.

"More like 'tis a matter of wenches," put in a half-drunken ensign standing beside us at the bar. "That's the only business to bring a gentleman out such a cursed night. Damn such a vile country, cold as hell in winter, and hot as hell in summer! Damn it and sink it! and fill up my glass, landlord. Roast me dead if I stick my nose outdoors to-night!"

"A braw, fine nicht, the nicht, gentlemen," said a sober, ruddy-faced Scot, very gravely, with a lofty contempt for the other's remarks. "Guid, hamelike weather."

But the feelings and thoughts prevailing in the tap-room were not in tune with those agitating our hearts, and as soon as Captain Falconer and his friend came in, we took our leave, exchanging a purposely careless greeting with the newcomers. We turned in silence from the road, crossed a little sparsely wooded hill, and arrived in the thicket-screened hollow.

'Twas in silence we had come. I had felt there was much I would like, and ought, to say, but something in Tom's mood or mine, or in the situation, benumbed my thoughts so they would not come forth, or jumbled them so I knew not where to begin. Arrived upon the ground with a palpitating sense of the nearness of the event, we found ourselves still less fit for utterance of the things deepest in our minds.

"There'll be some danger of slipping on the frozen snow," said I, trying to assume a natural, even a cheerful, tone.

"'Tis an even danger to both of us," said Tom, speaking quickly to maintain a steadiness of voice, as a drunken man walks fast to avoid a crookedness of gait.

While we were tramping about to keep warm, the Irish surgeon came to us through the bushes, vowing 'twas "the divvle's own weather, shure enough, barrin' the hivvenly moonlight." Opening his capacious greatcoat, he brought from concealment a small case, which Tom eyed askance, and I regarded ominously, though it had but a mere professional aspect to its owner.

We soon heard the tread, and the low but easy voices, of Captain Falconer and Lieutenant Campbell; who joined us with salutations, graceful on Falconer's part, and naturally awkward on that of Campbell. How I admired the unconcerned, leisurely manner in which Falconer, having gone a little aloof from Tom and me, removed his overcoat, laced coat, and waistcoat, giving a playful shiver, purposely exaggerated, as he stood in his ruffled shirt and well-fitting boots and breeches. I was awkward in helping Tom off with his outer clothes. The moonlight, making everything in the hollow well-nigh as visible as by day, showed Tom's face to be white, his eyes wide-open and darkly radiant; while in Falconer's case it revealed a countenance as pleasant and gracious as ever, eyes neither set nor restless.

Campbell and I perfunctorily compared the swords, gave them a bend or two, and handed them to the principals. We then stood back. Doctor McLaughlin looked on with a mild interest. There was a low cry, a ring of steel, and the two men were at it.

I recall the moonshine upon their faces, the swift dartings of their faintly luminous blades, their strangely altering shadows on the snow as they moved, the steady attention of us who looked on, the moan of the wind among the trees upon the neighbouring heights, the sound of the men's tramping on the crusted snow, the clear clink of their weapons, sometimes the noise of their breathing. They eyed each other steadfastly, seeming to grudge the momentary winks enforced by nature. Falconer's purpose, I began to see, was but to defend himself and disarm his opponent. But Tom gave him much to do, making lightning thrusts with a suddenness and persistence that began at length to try the elder man. So they kept it up till I should have thought they were tired out.

Suddenly Tom made a powerful lunge that seemed to find the captain unready. But the latter, with a sharp involuntary cry, got his blade up in time to divert the point, by pure accident, with the guard of his hilt. His own point was thus turned straight toward his antagonist; and Tom, throwing his weight after his weapon, impaled himself upon the captain's. For an infinitesimal point of time, till the sword was drawn out, the lad seemed to stand upon his toes, leaning forward, looking toward the sky with a strange surprise upon his face, eyes and mouth alike open. And then he collapsed as if his legs and body were but empty rags; and fell in a huddle upon the snow: with a convulsive movement he stretched himself back to the shape of a man; and lay perfectly still.

The captain bent over him with astonishment. The surgeon ran to him, and turned him flat upon his back. I was by this time kneeling opposite the surgeon, who tore open Tom's shirts and examined his body.

"Bedad, gentlemen," said the Irishman sadly, in a moment, "he's beyont the need of my profession. 'Tis well ye had that sthory ready, in case of accident."

I stared incredulously at the surgeon, and then buried my face upon the dear body of the dead, mingling my wild tears with his blood.

"Oh, Madge, Madge," thought I, "if you could see what your folly has led to!"



CHAPTER XVI.

Follows the Fortunes of Madge and Ned.

But Madge could know nothing yet of that night's occurrence. She was then many miles out to sea, her thoughts perhaps still lingering behind with her old life, but bound soon to overtake her, and to pass far ahead to the world she was sailing for, the world of her long-cherished desires.

I shall briefly relate a part of what she afterward recounted to me. The voyage from New York to Bristol lasted six weeks. She suffered much from her cramped quarters, from the cold weather, from seasickness; but she bore up against her present afflictions, in the hope of future compensations. She put away from her, with the facility of an ambitious beauty, alike her regrets for the past, and her misgivings of the future.

Not to risk any increase of those misgivings, she refrained from questioning Ned as to his resources, nor did she require of him a minute exposition of his plans. She preferred to leave all to him and to circumstance, considering that, once launched upon the sea of London, and perfectly unrestricted as to her proceedings, she could make shift to keep afloat. She had an earnest of the power of her beauty, in its effect upon the ship's captain, who, in the absence of passengers, was the only person aboard whose admiration was worth playing for. She had the place of honour at his table, and in her presence he was nothing but eyes and dumb confusion, while the extraordinary measures he took for her comfort proclaimed him her willing slave.

She listened without objection or comment when Ned, in confidential moods, forced his purposes upon her attention.

"We'll make 'em stare, my dear," said he. "We'll make 'em open their eyes a bit; just you wait! We'll find lodgings somewhere in the thick of the town, and I'll take you to the theatres, and to walk in St. James Park, and to the public assemblies, and wherever you're sure to be seen. I wish 'twere Summer; then there'd be Vauxhall and Ranelagh, and all that. 'Tis a bad time of year in London now; but we'll do our best. There'll be young sparks of quality enough, to ask each other who that goddess is, and that Venus, and that angel, and all that kind of thing; and they'll be mad to make your acquaintance. They'll take note of me, and when they see me at the coffee-houses and faro-tables, they'll fall over one another in the rush to know me, and to be my friends. And I'll pick out the best, and honour 'em with invitations to call at our lodgings, and there'll be my pretty sister to mix a punch for us, or pour out tea for us; and once we let 'em see we're as good quality as any of 'em, and won't stand any damn' nonsense,' why, you leave it to brother Ned to land a fat fish, that's all!"

She had a fear that his operations might at length become offensive to her taste, might stray from the line of her own ambitions; but she saw good reason to await developments in silence; and to postpone deviating from Ned's wishes, until they should cease to forward hers.

Upon her landing at Bristol, and looking around with interest at the shipping which reminded her of New York but to emphasise her feeling of exile therefrom, her thrilling sense of being at last in the Old World, abated her heaviness at leaving the ship which seemed the one remaining tie with her former life. If ever a woman felt herself to be entering upon life anew, and realised a necessity of blotting the past from memory, it was she; and well it was that the novelty of her surroundings, the sense of treading the soil whereon she had so long pined to set foot, aided her resolution to banish from her mind all that lay behind her.

The time-worn, weather-beaten aspect of the town, its old streets thronged with people of whom she was not known to a soul, would have made her disconsolate, had she not forced herself to contemplate with interest the omnipresent antiquity, to her American eyes so new. And so, as she had heroically endured seasickness, she now fought bravely against homesickness; and, in the end, as nearly conquered it as one ever does.

'Twas a cold ride by stage-coach to London, at that season; there were few travellers in the coach, and those few were ill-natured with discomfort, staring fiercely at the two strangers—whose strangeness they instantly detected by some unconscious process—as if the pair were responsible for the severe February weather, or guilty of some unknown crime. At the inns where they stopped, for meals and overnight, they were subjected to a protracted gazing on the part of all who saw them—an inspection seemingly resentful or disapproving, but indeed only curious. It irritated Madge, who asked Ned what the cause might be.

"Tut! Don't mind it," said he. "'Tis the way of the English, everywhere but in London. They stare at strangers as if they was in danger of being insulted by 'em, or having their pockets picked by 'em, or at best as if they was looking at some remarkable animal; but they mean no harm by it."

"How can they see we are strangers?" she queried. "We're dressed like them."

"God knows! Perhaps because we look more cheerful than they do, and have a brisker way, and laugh easier," conjectured Ned. "But you'll feel more at home in London."

By the time she arrived in London, having slept in a different bed each night after landing, and eaten at so many different inns each day, Madge felt as if she had been a long while in England.[8] She came to the town thus as to a haven of rest; and though she was still gazed at for her beauty, it was not in that ceaseless and mistrustful way in which she had been scrutinised from top to toe in the country; moreover, the names of many of the streets and localities were familiar to her, and in her thoughts she had already visited them: for these reasons, which were more than Ned had taken account of, she did indeed feel somewhat at home in London, as he had predicted.

The night of their arrival was passed at the inn, in the Strand, where the coach had set them down. The next morning Ned chose lodgings in Craven Street: three rooms, constituting the entire first floor; which Madge, though she thought the house had a dingy look, found comfortable enough in their faded way; and wherein the two were installed by noon. They spent the afternoon walking about the most famous streets, returning to their lodgings for dinner.

"I think," said Ned, while they were eating, "'twon't do any harm to get on one of your best gowns, and your furbelows, and we'll go to the play, and begin the campaign this very night."

"Bless me, no! I'm tired to death with sightseeing," replied Madge. "I could fall asleep this moment. Besides, who's here to dress my hair? I couldn't go without a commode."

"Oh, well, just as you like. Only be pleased to remember, ma'am, my purse isn't a widow's mite—widow's cruse of oil, I mean, that runs for ever. I've been at a great expense to bring you here, and pounds and shillings don't rain from heaven like—like that stuff the Jews lived on for forty years in the wilderness. The sooner we land our fish, the sooner we'll know where the money's coming from. I sha'n't be able to pay for lodgings and meals very long."

"Why, 'tis a pretty pass if you've no more money—"

"Well, it is a pretty pass, and that's just what it is. I didn't count the cost when I made the generous offer to bring you. Oh, we can last a week or so yet, but the sooner something is done, the sooner we shall be easy in our minds. On second thoughts, though, you'd better go to bed and rest. It mightn't be well to flash on the town to-night, looking fagged, and without your hair dressed, and all that. So you go to bed and I'll go around and—call upon a few friends I made when I was here before."

Ned had so improved his attire, by acquisitions in New York, Bristol, and London, that his appearance was now presentable in the haunts of gentlemen. So he went out, leaving her alone. She could no longer postpone meditating upon what was before her.

Now that she viewed it for the first time in definite particulars, its true aspect struck her with a sudden dismay. She was expected to do nothing less than exhibit herself for sale, put herself up at auction for the highest bidder, set out her charms as a bait. And when the bait drew, and the bidders offered, and the buyer awaited—what then? She would never, her pride alone would never let her, degrade herself to a position at the very thought of which she caught her breath with horror. Come what may, the man who purchased her must put the transaction into the form of marriage. True, she was already married, in the view of the law; but, with a woman's eye for essentials, she felt her divorce from Philip already accomplished. The law, she allowed, would have to be satisfied with matters of form: but that was a detail to be observed when the time came; Philip would not oppose obstacles.

So she would let matters take their course, would wait upon occurrences. In very truth, to put herself on view with intent of catching a husband, of obtaining an establishment in life, was no more than young ladies of fashion, of virtue, of piety, did continually, under the skilled direction of the most estimable mothers. In Madge's case, the only difference was, on the one side, the excuse of necessity; on the other side, the encumbrance of her existing marriage. But the latter could be removed, whereas the former would daily increase.

She must, therefore, benefit by Ned's operations as long as they did not threaten to degrade her. By the time they did threaten so, she would have gained some experience of her own, circumstances would have arisen which she could turn to her use. Of actual destitution, never having felt it, she could not conceive; and therefore she did not take account of its possibility in her case.

So, having recovered from her brief panic, she went to bed and slept soundly.

The next morning Ned was in jubilant spirits. His visit the previous night had been to a gaminghouse in Covent Garden, and fortune had showered him with benefactions. He saw the margin of time at their disposal lengthened by several weeks. He bade his sister put herself at her best, drank with her to their success, and went and engaged a hairdresser and a maid. They went that night, in a hackney-coach, to the play at Drury Lane.

The open-mouthed gazing of her new maid, the deftly spoken admiration of her hairdresser, and the mirror upon her dressing-table, had prepared Madge for triumph. Her expectations were not disappointed, but they were almost forgotten. Her pleasure at sight of the restless, chattering crowd; her interest in the performance; her joy in seeing, in fine: supplanted half the consciousness of being seen. But she was, indeed, stared at from all parts of the house; people looked, and nudged one another; and the powdered bucks and beauties in the side-boxes, glancing up, forgot their own looks in examining hers.

Ned was elated beyond measure. He praised her all the way home in the coach, and when they stood at last on the step of their lodging-house, he waited a moment before going in, and looked back toward the Strand, half-thinking that some susceptible and adventurous admirer might have followed their conveyance to the door.

The next day, Sunday, he took her to church, at St. James's in Piccadilly, where they had difficulty in getting seats, and where several pious dowagers were scandalised at the inattention of their male company to the service. Ned walked out alone in the afternoon, but, to his surprise, he was not accosted by any gentleman pretending to recognise him as some one else, as a means of knowing him as himself.

On Monday he made himself seen at numerous coffee-houses and taverns, but, although he came upon two or three faces that he had noted in the theatre, no one looked at him with any sign of recollection. "Well, well," thought he, and afterward said to Madge, "in time they will come to remember me as the lovely creature's escort; at first their eyes will be all for the lovely creature herself."

They went to Covent Garden that evening, and to the Haymarket the next; and subsequently to public assemblies: Madge everywhere arresting attention, and exciting whispers and elbowings among observers wherever she passed. At the public balls, she was asked to dance, by fellows of whom neither she nor Ned approved, but who, Ned finally came to urge, might be useful acquaintances as leading to better ones. But she found all of them contemptible, and would not encourage any of them.

"If we could only get an invite to some private entertainment, the thing would be done in a jiffy," said Ned, "but damn it, you won't lead on any of these fellows—sure they must know ladies to whom they would mention you."

"I shouldn't think much of ladies that sought acquaintances on their recommendation."

"Why, curse it, we must begin somewhere, to get in."

"If we began where these could open the doors, I warrant we shouldn't get very far in."

"Rat me if I understand why the men that are taken with you at the play, and elsewhere—real gentlemen of quality, some of 'em—never try to follow you up through me. I've put myself in their way, the Lord knows. Maybe they think I'm your husband. Curse it, there is a difficulty! If you walked alone, in St. James Park, or past the clubs—?"

"You scoundrel, do you think I've come to that?"

Her look advised him not to pursue his last suggestion. By this time his expectations from their public appearances together had been sadly dampened. They must make acquaintances; creditable ones, that is to say, for of another kind he had enough and to spare.

But at last, after some weeks, during which he remained unapproached, and at the end of which he came to a belated perception of the insuperable barrier between the elect and the undesirable, and of his own identity with the latter class, he decided he must fall back upon his friends for what they might be worth. He had undergone many snubs in his efforts to thrust himself upon fine gentlemen in taverns, coffee-houses, and gaming-places. As for Madge, her solitude had been mitigated by her enjoyment of plays and sights, of the external glimpses of that life to which her entrance seemed impossible.

Ned began therefore to bring his associates to their lodgings: chiefly, a gambling barrister of Lincoln's Inn, a drunken cashiered captain of marines, and a naval surgeon's mate with an unhealthy outbreak on his face. One meeting with each rascal sufficed to make Madge deny her presence upon his next visit. At this Ned raged, declaring, that these gentlemen, though themselves in adverse circumstances, had relations and friends among the quality or the wealthy. And at length he triumphantly made good his assertion by introducing a youth to whom the barrister had introduced him, and who, he whispered to Madge, though not blessed with a title, was the heir in prospect of an immense fortune. It came out that he was the son of a prosperous fishmonger in the city.

He was a fat, good-humoured fellow, expensively dressed, and clean, being in all these points an exception among Ned's acquaintances. Madge found him, as a mere acquaintance, more amusing than intolerable; but as a possible husband, not to be thought of save with laughter and contempt.

Her refusal to consider him in the desired light, made Ned very wroth; and in revenge he went out, and, between drink and gaming, rid himself of every penny he possessed. He thereupon begged that Madge would let him pawn some of her jewelry. She refused to do so; until their landlady threatened ejection and suit.

After that, matters went from bad to worse. With part of the money obtained upon what trinkets she gave him, Ned tried to repair his fortunes at the gaming-table; and that failing, he consoled himself in drunkenness. More of her valuables were demanded; yielded up after terrible quarrels with Ned, and humiliating scenes with the landlady. The visits to the play ceased, the maid was discharged, the hairdresser was no more brought into requisition. Their fall to destitution was worthy of the harebrained design, the bungling conduct, of Ned; the childish inexperience, the blind confidence, of Madge. 'Twas a fall as progressive as a series of prints by Hogarth. The brother was perpetually in liquor; he no longer took Madge out with him. Often he stayed away nights and days at a time.

She resolved to entrust nothing further to him, but to dispose of her ornaments herself, and to devote the proceeds to necessities alone, as he had wasted them in drink and gaming. When she acted upon this resolution, he behaved like a madman. Fearful quarrels ensued. He blamed her for defeating his plans, she upbraided him for alluring her to London. Recriminations and threats filled the hours when he was with her; loneliness and despondency occupied the periods of his absence. Finally, while she slept, he robbed her of money she had got upon a bracelet; then of some of the jewelry itself. She dared no longer sleep soundly, lest he might take away her last means of subsistence. She was in daily and nightly terror of him.

She made up her mind, at last, to flee to some other part of the town, and hide from him; that her few resources left might be devoted to herself alone, and thus postpone the day of destruction to the furthest possible time. After her last jewel, she might dispose of her dresses. It was on a moonlight night in spring that she came to this determination; and, as Ned had gone out in a mood apparently presaging a long absence, she set about packing her clothes into her trunks, so as to take them with her when she left by hackney-coach at early daylight to seek new lodgings.

Suddenly she heard the door below slam with a familiar violence, and a well-known heavy tread ascend the stairs. There was no time to conceal what she was at, ere Ned flung open the door, and stumbled in. He stared in amazement at her trunks and dresses.

"What's this?" he cried. "Why is all this trash lying around? Why, damme, you're packing your trunks!"

She had passed the mood for dissembling. "Well," she retorted, "I may pack my trunks if I please. They're my trunks, and my things in 'em."

"What! You thankless hussy, were you going to run away?"

"'Tis no concern of yours, what I was going to do!"

"Oh, isn't it? We'll see about that! Begad, 'tis lucky I came back! So you were going to desert me, eh? Well, I'm damned if there was ever such ingratitude! After all I've done and suffered!"



She gave a derisive laugh, and defiantly resumed her packing.

"What! you're rebellious, are you?" quoth he. "But you'll not get away from me so easy, my lady. Not with those clothes, at least; for yourself, it doesn't much matter. I'll just put those things back into the press, and after this I'll carry the key. But your rings and necklace—I'll take charge of them first."

He stepped forward to lay hands upon the ornaments, which, for their greater security from him, she now wore upon her person at all times. She sprang away, ready to defend them by every possible means, and warning him not to touch her. Her flashing eyes and fiery mien checked him for a moment; then, with a curse, he seized her by the neck and essayed to undo the necklace. Thereupon she screamed loudly for help. To intimidate her into silence, he struck her in the face. At that she began to struggle and hit, so that he was hard put to it to retain hold of her and to save his face from her hands. Enraged by her efforts, he finally drew back to give her a more effectual blow; which he succeeded in doing, but at the cost of relaxing his grasp, so that she slipped from him and escaped by the door. She hastened down the stairs and into the street, he in wrathful pursuit. She fled toward the Strand.

At the corner of that thoroughfare, she ran into a trio of gentlemen who just at the moment reached the junction of the two streets.

"The deuce!" cried one of the three, flinging his arms around her. "What have we here? Beauty in distress?"

"Let me go!" she cried. "Don't let him take me."

"Him!" echoed the gentleman, releasing her. He was a distinguished-looking fellow of twenty-eight or so, with a winning face and very fine eyes. "Oh, I see. The villain in pursuit!"

"Egad, that makes you the hero to the rescue, Dick," said one of the young gentleman's companions.

"Faith, I'll play the part, too," replied Dick. "Fear not, madam."

"Thank you, sir, for stopping her," said Ned, coming up, panting.

"Pray, don't waste your thanks. What shall I do to the rascal, madam?"

"I don't care," she answered. "Don't let him have me."

"None of that, sir," spoke up Ned. "She's a runaway, and I'm her natural protector."

"Her husband?" inquired Dick.

"No—"

"I congratulate you, madam."

"I'm her brother," said Ned.

"And condole with you in the same breath," finished Dick, to Margaret. "You're a lady, I see. Pardon my familiarity at first. Sure you needn't fear me—I have a wife as beautiful as yourself. As for this relation of yours—"

"He tried to rob me of my necklace and rings. We lodge yonder, where the light is in the window. He found me packing my trunks to leave him—"

"And leave him you shall. Shall she not, gentlemen?"

His two companions warmly assented. Ned savagely measured them with his eyes, but did not dare a trial of prowess against three. Moreover, their courtly address and easy manners disconcerted him.

"Oh, I sha'n't harm her," he grumbled. "'Twas but a tiff. Let her come back home; 'twill be all well."

But Madge was not for resigning herself a moment to his mercy. She briefly explained her situation and her wishes. The upshot of all was, that the young gentleman called Dick turned to his friends and said:

"What say you, gentlemen? Our friends at Brooks's can wait, I think. Shall we protect this lady while she packs her trunks, find lodgings for her this very night, and see her installed in them?"

"Ay, and see that this gentle brother does not follow or learn where she goes," answered one.

"Bravo!" cried the other. "'Twill be like an incident in a comedy, Dick."

"Rather like a page of Smollett," replied Dick. "With your permission, madam, we'll accompany you to your lodgings."

They sat around the fireplace, with their backs to her, and talked with easy gaiety, while she packed her possessions; Ned having first followed them in, and then fled to appease his mind at an ale-house. Finally Dick and one of the gentlemen closed her trunks for her, while the other went for a coach; wherein all three accompanied her to the house of a wigmaker known to Dick, in High Holborn; where they roused the inmates, made close terms, and left her installed in a decent room with her belongings.

As they took their leave, after an almost tearful burst of thanks on her part, Dick said:

"From some of your expressions, madam, I gather that your resources are limited—resources of one kind, I mean. But in your appearance, your air, and your voice, you possess resources, which if ever you feel disposed to use, I beg you will let me know. Pray don't misunderstand me; the world knows how much I am in love with my wife."[9]

When he had gone, leaving her puzzled and astonished, she turned to the wigmaker's wife, who was putting the room to rights, and asked:

"Pray what is that last gentleman's name?"

"Wot, ma'am! Can it be you don't know 'im?"

"He forgot to tell me."

"Sure 'e thought as you must know already. Everybody in London knows the great Mr. Sheridan."

"What! Mr. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the dramatist?"

"And manager of Drury Lane Theaytre. Didn't you 'ear 'im hoffer to put you on the stage, w'en 'e spoke about your looks and voice?"

Madge turned to the mirror; and saw, for the—first time in weeks, a sudden light of hope, a sense of triumphs yet in her power, dawn upon her face.



CHAPTER XVII.

I Hear Again from Winwood.

Meanwhile we passed through a time of deep sorrow at the Faringfield house and ours. The effect of Tom's untimely fate, coming upon Margaret's departure and the disclosures regarding her and Ned, was marked in Mr. Faringfield by a haggardness of countenance, an averted glance, a look of age, pitiful to see. His lady considered herself crushed by affliction, as one upon whom grief had done its worst; and she resigned herself to the role of martyr in the comfortably miserable way that some people do, without losing her appreciation of the small consolations of life, such as morning chocolate, afternoon tea, and neighbourly conversation upon the subject of her woes. Poor Fanny bore up for the sake of cheering her parents, but her face, for a long time, was rarely without the traces of tears shed in solitude. Of that household of handsome, merry children, whose playful shouts had once filled the mansion and garden with life, she was now the only one left. I sighed to think that my chances of taking her away from that house were now reduced to the infinitesimal. Her parents, who had brought into the world so promising a family, to find themselves now so nearly alone, must not be left entirely so: such would be her answer to any pleas I might in my selfishness offer.

What a transformation had been wrought in that once cheerful household! How many lives were darkened!—Mr. Faringfield's, his wife's, Fanny's, Philip's (when he should know), Madge's (sooner or later), the sympathetic Cornelius's, my mother's, my own. And what a promising, manly, gentle life had been cut short in its earliest bloom! I knew that Tom's life alone had been worth a score of lives like Captain Falconer's. And the cause of all this, though Margaret was much to blame, was the idle resolve of a frivolous lady-killer to add one more conquest to his list, in the person of a woman for whom he did not entertain more than the most superficial feelings. What a sacrifice had been made for the transient gratification of a stranger's vanity! What bitter consequences, heartrending separations, had come upon all of us who had lived so close together so many pleasant years, through the careless self-amusement of a chance interloper whose very name we had not known six months before!

And now, the pleasure-seeker's brief pastime in that quarter being ended, the lasting sorrows of his victims having begun; his own career apparently not altered from its current, their lives diverted rudely into dark channels and one of them stopped short for ever: was the matter to rest so?

You may easily guess what my answer was to this question. When I pondered on the situation, I no longer found Captain Falconer a hard man to hate. The very lightness of his purpose, contrasted with the heaviness of its consequences, aggravated his crime. To risk so much upon other people, to gain so little for himself, was the more heinous sin than its converse would have been. That he might not have foreseen the evil consequences made possible, was no palliation: he ought to have examined the situation; or indeed he ought to have heeded what he must have known, that little offences may always entail dire evils. Measured by their possibility to work havoc with lives, there are no small sins. The man who enters carelessly upon a trivial deviation is therefore as much to be held responsible as he that walks deliberately into the blackest crime. Not to know this, is not to have studied life; and not to have studied life is, in a person of mature years, a mighty sin of omission, because of the great evils that may arise from ignorance. But Captain Falconer must have known life, must have seen the hazards of his course. Therefore he was responsible in any view; and therefore I would do my utmost toward exacting payment from him. Plainly, in Philip's absence, the right fell to me, as his friend and Tom's—nay, too, as the provisionally accepted husband of Mr. Faringfield's second daughter.

But before I got an opportunity to make a quarrel with Falconer (who had moved his quarters from the Faringfield house, wherein he had not slept or eaten since the night of Margaret's leaving it, though he had spent some time in his rooms there on the ensuing day) I had a curious interview with Mr. Faringfield.

While in the town one day, I had stopped as usual to see my mother. Just as I was about to remount my horse, Mr. Faringfield appeared at his garden gate. Beckoning me to him, he led the way into the garden, and did not stop until we were behind a fir-tree, where we could not be seen from the house.

"Tell me the truth," said he abruptly, his eyes fixed piercingly upon mine, "how Tom met his death."

After a moment's confusion, I answered:

"I can add nothing to what has been told you, sir."

He looked at me awhile in silence; then said, with a sorrowful frown:

"I make no doubt you are tongue-tied by a compact. But you need not fear me. The British authorities are not to be moved by any complaint of mine. My object is not to procure satisfaction for my son's death. I merely wish to know whether he took it upon himself to revenge our calamities; and whether that was not the true cause of his death."

"Why, sir," I said awkwardly, as he still held me in a searching gaze that seemed to make speech imperative, "how should you think that?"

"From several things. In the first place, I know Tom was a lad of mettle. The account of the supposed attack that night, has it that Falconer was in your party; he was one of those who returned with you. What would Tom have been doing in Falconer's society, when not under orders, after what had occurred? Other people, who know nothing of that occurrence, would see nothing strange in their being together. But I would swear the boy was not so lost to honourable feeling as to have been Falconer's companion after what had taken place here."

"'Twas no loss of honourable feeling that made him Falconer's companion!" said I, impulsively.

"Then," cried he, quickly, with eagerness in his voice, "'twas to fight Falconer?"

"I didn't say that."

"Thank God, then, if he had to die, 'twas not as that man's friend, but his antagonist! My poor, brave Tom! My noble boy! Oh, would I had known him better while he lived!"

"He was all that is chivalrous and true, sir."

"I wanted only this assurance. I felt it in my heart. Don't fear my betraying you; I understand how these affairs have to be managed at such times. Alas, if I had but known in time to prevent! Well, well, 'tis too late now. But there is one person I must confide this to—Philip."

"But I haven't told you anything, sir."

"Quite true; and therefore what I shall confide to Philip will not be of your telling. He will be silent, too. We shall make no disclosures. Falconer shall receive his punishment in another manner."

"He shall, sir," said I, with a positiveness which, in his feeling of sorrow, and yet relief, to know that Tom had died as champion of the family honour, escaped his notice. I thereupon took my leave.

As I afterward came to know, he sent Philip an account of the whole lamentable affair, from Ned's reappearance to Tom's death; it was written in a cipher agreed upon between the two, and 'twas carried by Bill Meadows. Mr. Faringfield deemed it better that Philip should know the whole truth from his relation, than learn of Madge's departure, and Tom's fate, from other accounts, which must soon reach his ears in any case.

I know not exactly how many days later it was, that, having a free evening in the town, I went to the Faringfield house in hope of bearing some cheer with me. But 'twas in vain. Mrs. Faringfield was keeping her chamber, and requiring Fanny's attendance. Mr. Faringfield sat in a painful reverie, before the parlour fire; scarce looked up when I entered; and seemed to find the lively spirits I brought in from the cold outer world, a jarring note upon his mood. He had not ordered candles: the firelight was more congenial to his meditations. Mr. Cornelius sat in a dark corner of the room, lending his silent sympathy, and perhaps a fitting word now and then, to the merchant's reflections.

Old Noah, the only servant I saw, reflected in his black face the sorrow that had fallen on the home, and stepped with the tread of a ghost. I soon took my leave, having so far failed to carry any brightness into the stricken house, that I came away filled with a sadness akin to its own. I walked forward aimlessly through the wintry dusk, thinking life all sorrow, the world all gloom.

Suddenly the sound of laughter struck my ears. Could there indeed be mirth anywhere—nay, so near at hand—while such woe dwelt in the house I had left? The merriment seemed a violence, a sacrilege, an insult. I looked angrily at the place whence the noise proceeded. 'Twas from the parlour of the King's Arms tavern—for, in my doleful ponderings, my feet had carried me, scarce consciously, so far from Queen Street. I peered in through the lighted window. A number of officers were drinking, after dinner, at a large table, and 'twas the noise of their boisterous gaiety that my unhappy feelings had so swiftly resented.

While the merry fellows dipped their punch from the great bowl steaming in the centre of the table, and laughed uproariously at the story one was telling, I beheld in sharp contrast this jocund scene and the sad one I had so recently looked upon. And, coming to observe particulars, I suddenly noticed that the cause of all this laughter, himself smiling in appreciation of his own story as he told it, his face the picture of well-bred light-hearted mirth, was Captain Falconer. And he was the cause of the other scene, the sorrow that abode in the house I loved! The thought turned me to fire. I uttered a curse, and strode into the tavern; rudely flung open the parlour door, and stood in the presence of the laughing officers.

Falconer himself was the first to recognise me, though all had turned to see who made so violent an entrance.

"Why, Russell," cried he, showing not a whit of ill-humour at the interruption to his story, "this is a pleasure, by George! I haven't seen you in weeks. Find a place, and dive into the punch. Ensign Russell, gentlemen—if any of you haven't the honour already—and my very good friend, too!"

"Ensign Russell," I assented, "but not your friend, Captain Falconer. I desire no friends of your breed; and I came in here for the purpose of telling you so, damn you!"

Falconer's companions were amazed, of course; and some of them looked resentful and outraged, on his behalf. But the captain himself, with very little show of astonishment, continued his friendly smile to me.

"Well acted, Russell," said he, in a tone so pleasant I had to tighten my grip upon my resolution. "On my conscience, anybody who didn't know us would never see your joke."

"Nor would anybody who did know us," I retorted. "If an affront before all this company, purposely offered, be a joke, then laugh at this one. But a man of spirit would take it otherwise."

"Sure the fellow means to insult you, Jack," said one of the officers to Falconer.

"Thank you," said I to the officer.

"Why, Bert," said the captain, quickly, "you must be under some delusion. Have you been drinking too much?"

"Not a drop," I replied. "I needn't be drunk, to know a scoundrel. Come, sir, will you soon take offence? How far must I go?"

"By all that's holy, Jack," cried one of his friends, "if you don't knock him down, I shall!"

"Ay, he ought to have his throat slit!" called out another.

"Nay, nay!" said Falconer, stopping with a gesture a general rising from the table. "There is some mistake here. I will talk with the gentleman alone. After you, sir." And, having approached me, he waited with great civility, for me to precede him out of the door. I accepted promptly, being in no mood to waste time in a contest of politeness.

"Now, lad, what in the name of heaven—" he began, in the most gentle, indulgent manner, as we stood alone in the passage.

"For God's sake," I blurted irritably, "be like your countrymen in there: be sneering, resentful, supercilious! Don't be so cursed amiable—don't make it so hard for me to do this!"

"I supercilious! And to thee, lad!" he replied, with a reproachful smile.

"Show your inward self, then. I know how selfish you are, how unscrupulous! You like people for their good company, and their admiration of you, their attachment to you. But you would trample over any one, without a qualm, to get at your own pleasure or enrichment, or to gratify your vanity."

He meditated for a moment upon my words. Then he said, good-naturedly:

"Why, you hit me off to perfection, I think. And yet, my liking for some people is real, too. I would do much for those I like—if it cost not too many pains, and required no sacrifice of pleasure. For you, indeed, I would do a great deal, upon my honour!"

"Then do this," quoth I, fighting against the ingratiating charm he exercised. "Grant me a meeting—swords or pistols, I don't care which—and the sooner the better."

"But why? At least I may know the cause."

"The blight you have brought on those I love—but that's a cause must be kept secret between us."

"Must I fight twice on the same score, then?"

"Why not? You fared well enough the first time. Tom fought on his family's behalf. I fight on behalf of my friend—Captain Winwood. Besides, haven't I given you cause to-night, before your friends in there? If I was in the wrong there, so much the greater my offence. Come—will you take up the quarrel as it is? Or must I give new provocation?"

He sighed like a man who finds himself drawn into a business he would have considerately avoided.

"Well, well," said he, "I can refuse you nothing. We can manage the affair as we did the other, I fancy. It must be a secret, of course—even from my friends in there. I shall tell them we have settled our difference, and let them imagine what they please to. I'll send some one to you—that arrangement will give you the choice of weapons."

"'Tis indifferent to me."

"To me also. But I prefer you should have that privilege. I entreat you will choose the weapons you are best at."

"Thank you. I shall expect to hear from you, then. Good-night!"

"Good-night! 'Tis a foggy evening. I wish you might come in and warm yourself with a glass before you go; but of course—well, good-night!"

I went out into the damp darkness, thanking heaven the matter was settled beyond undoing; and marvelling that exceptional, favoured people should exist, who, thanks to some happy combination of superficial graces, remain irresistibly likable despite all exposure of the selfish vices they possess at heart.

But if my prospective opponent was one who could not be faced antagonistically without a severe effort, the second whom he chose was one against whose side I could fight with the utmost readiness, thanks to the irritating power he possessed upon me. He was Lieutenant Chubb, whom I had worsted in the affair to which I have alluded earlier, which grew out of his assumption of superiority to us who were of American birth. I had subjected this cock to such deference in my presence, that he now rejoiced at what promised to be my defeat, and his revenge by proxy, so great reliance he placed upon Captain Falconer's skill with either sword or pistol. I chose the latter weapon, however, without much perturbation, inwardly resolved that the gloating Chubb should so far fail of his triumph, as to suffer a second humiliation in the defeat of his principal. For my own second, Lieutenant Berrian, of our brigade, did me the honour to go out with me. A young New York surgeon, Doctor Williams, obliged us by assuming the risk which it would have been too much to ask Doctor McLaughlin to undertake a second time. At my desire, the place and hour set were those at which Tom Faringfield had met his death. I felt that the memory of his dying face would be strongest, there and then, to make my arm and sight quick and sure.

A thaw had carried away much of the snow, and hence we had it not as light as it had been for Tom's duel; although the moon made our outlines and features perfectly distinct as we assembled in the hollow, and it would make our pistol-barrels shine brightly enough when the time came, as I ascertained by taking aim at an imaginary mark.

Falconer and I stood each alone, while the seconds stepped off the paces and the surgeon lighted a small lantern which might enable him to throw, upon a possible wound, rays more to the purpose than the moon afforded. I was less agitated, I think, than the doctor himself, who was new to such an affair. I kept my mind upon the change wrought in the Faringfield household, upon the fate of Tom, upon what I imagined would be Philip's feelings; and I had a thought, too, for the disappointment of my old enemy Chubb if I could cap the firing signal with a shot the fraction of a second before my antagonist could. We were to stand with our backs toward each other, at the full distance, and, upon the word, might turn and fire as soon as possible. To be the first in wheeling round upon a heel, and covering the foe, was my one concern, and, as I took my place, I dismissed all else from my mind, to devote my entire self, bodily and mental, to that one series of movements: all else but one single impression, and that was of malicious exultation upon the face of Chubb.

"You'll smile on t'other side of your face in a minute," thought I, pressing my teeth together.

I was giving my hand its final adjustment to the pistol, when suddenly a man dashed out of the covert at one side of the hollow, and ran toward us, calling out in a gruff voice:

"Hold on a minute. Here's su'thin' fur you, Ensign Russell."

We had all turned at the first sound of the man's tread, fearing we had been spied upon and discovered. But I now knew there was no danger of that kind, for the voice belonged to old Bill Meadows.

"What do you mean?" I asked sharply, annoyed at the interruption.

"Nothin'. Read this here. I've follered yuh all evenin', thinkin' to ketch yuh alone. I gev my word to get it to yuh, fust thing; an' fur my own sake, I tried to do it unbeknownst. But now I must do it anyhow I ken. So take it, an' my compliments, an' I trust yuh to keep mum an' ask no questions, an' furget 'twas me brung it. And I'll keep a shet mouth about these here goings on. Only read it now, fur God's sake."

He had handed me a sealed letter. My curiosity being much excited, I turned to Falconer, and said:

"Will you grant me permission? 'Twill take but a moment."

"Certainly," said he.

"Ay," added Chubb, against all the etiquette of the situation, "it can be allowed, as you're not like to read any more letters."

I tore it open, disdaining to reply in words to a gratuitous taunt I could soon answer by deed. The doctor having handed me his lantern, I held it in one hand, the letter in the other. The writing was that of Philip Winwood, and the letter read as follows:

"DEAR BERT:—I have learned what sad things have befallen. You will easily guess my informant; but I know you will not use your knowledge of my communication therewith, to the detriment thereof. And I am sure that, since I ask it, you will not betray (or, by any act or disclosure, imperil or hamper) the messenger who brings this at risk of his life; for the matter is a private one.

"Pondering upon all that has occurred, I am put in a fear of your forgetting whose right it is to avenge it, and of your taking that duty to yourself, which belongs by every consideration to me. This is to beg, therefore, that you will not forestall me; that while I live you will leave this matter to me, at whatsoever cost though it be to your pride and your impatience. Dear Bert, I enjoin you, do not usurp my prerogative. By all the ties between us, past and to come, I demand this of you. The man is mine to kill. Let him wait my time, and I shall be the more, what I long have been, Ever thine,

"PHILIP."

I thought over it for a full minute. He asked of me a grievous disappointment; nay, something of a humiliation, too, so highly had I carried myself, so triumphant had my enemy Chubb become in anticipation, so derisive would he be in case of my withdrawal.

If I receded, Chubb would have ground to think the message a device to get me out of a peril at the last moment, after I had pretended to face it so intrepidly thereunto. For I could not say what my letter contained, or who it was from, without betraying Meadows and perhaps Mr. Faringfield, which both Philip's injunction and my own will prohibited my doing. Thus, I hesitated awhile before yielding to Philip what he claimed so rightly as his own. But I am glad I had the courage to face Chubb's probable suspicions and possible contempt.

"Gentlemen," said I, folding up the letter for concealment and preservation, "I am very sorry to have brought you out here for nothing. I must make some other kind of reparation to you, Captain Falconer. I can't fight you."

There was a moment's pause; during which Lieutenant Chubb looked from me to his principal, with a mirthful grin, as much as to say I was a proven coward after all my swagger. But the captain merely replied:

"Oh, let the matter rest as it is, then. I'm sorry I had to disappoint a lady, to come out here on a fool's errand, that's all."

He made that speech with intention, I'm sure, by way of revenge upon me, though doubtless 'twas true enough; for he must have known how it would sting a man who thought kindly of Madge Faringfield. It was the first cutting thing I had ever heard him say; it showed that he was no longer unwilling to antagonise me; it proved that he, too, could throw off the gentleman when he chose: and it made him no longer difficult for me to hate.



CHAPTER XVIII.

Philip Comes at Last to London.

A human life will drone along uneventfully for years with scarce a perceptible progress, retrogression, or change; and then suddenly, with a few leaps, will cover more of alteration and event in a week than it has passed through in a decade. So will the critical occurrences of a day fill chapters, after those of a year have failed to yield more material than will eke out a paragraph. Experience proceeds by fits and starts. Only in fiction does a career run in an unbroken line of adventures or memorable incidents.

The personal life of Philip Winwood, as distinguished from his military career, which had no difference from that of other commanders of rebel partisan horse, and which needs no record at my hands, was marked by no conspicuous event from the night when he learned and defeated Madge's plot, to the end of the war. The news of her departure, and of Tom's death, came to him with a fresh shock, it is true, but they only settled him deeper in the groove of sorrow, and in the resolution to pay full retribution where it was due.

He had no pusillanimous notion of the unworthiness of revenge. He believed retaliation, when complete and inflicted without cost or injury to the giver, to be a most logical and fitting thing. But he knew that revenge is a two-edged weapon, and that it must be wielded carefully, so as not to cause self-damage. He required, too, that it should be wielded in open and honourable manner; and in that manner he was resolved to use it upon Captain Falconer. As for Madge, I believe he forgave her from the first, holding her "more in sorrow than in anger," and pitying rather than reproaching.

Well, he served throughout the war, keeping his sorrow to himself, being known always for a quietly cheerful mien, giving and taking hard blows, and always yielding way to others in the pressure for promotion. Such was the state of affairs in the rebel army, that his willingness to defer his claims for advancement, when there were restless and ambitious spirits to be conciliated and so kept in the service, was availed of for the sake of expediency. But he went not without appreciation. On one occasion, when a discontented but useful Pennsylvanian was pacified with a colonelcy, General Washington remarked to Light Horse Harry Lee: "And yet you are but a major, and Winwood remains a captain; but let me tell you, there is less honour in the titles of general and colonel, as borne by many, than there is in the mere names of Major Lee and Captain Winwood."

When Lee's troop was sent to participate in the Southern campaign, Philip's accompanied it, and he had hard campaigning under Greene, which continued against our Southernmost forces until long after the time of the capitulation of Lord Cornwallis's army at Yorktown, to the combined rebel and French armies under Washington. It happened that our battalion, wherein I was promoted to a lieutenantcy shortly after my abortive meeting with Captain Falconer near Kingsbridge, went South by sea for the fighting there, being the only one of De Lancey's battalions that left the vicinity of New York. We had bloody work enough then to balance our idleness in the years we had covered outposts above New York, and 'twas but a small fraction of our number that came home alive at last. I never met Philip while we were both in the South, nor saw him till the war was over.

Shiploads of our New York loyalists left, after Cornwallis's defeat at Yorktown showed what the end was to be; some of them going to England but many of them sailing to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, there to begin afresh the toiling with the wilderness, and to build up new English colonies in North America. Others contrived to make their way by land to Canada, which thereby owes its English population mainly to those who fled from the independent states rather than give up their loyalty to the mother country. The government set up by the victorious rebels had taken away the lands and homes of the loyalists, by acts of attainder, and any who remained in the country did so at the risk of life or liberty. What a time of sad leave-taking it was!—families going forth poor to a strange land, who had lived rich in that of their birth—what losses, what wrenches, what heart-rendings! And how little compensation England could give them, notwithstanding all their claims and petitions! Well, they would deserve little credit for their loyalty if they had followed it without willingness to lose for it.

But my mother and I had possessed nothing to lose in America but our house and ground, our money being in the English funds. Fortunately, and thanks to our insignificance, we had been overlooked in the first act of attainder, and, taking warning by that, my mother had gratefully accepted Mr. Faringfield's offer to buy our home, for which we had thereafter paid him rent. Thus we had nothing to confiscate, when the war was over. As for Mr. Faringfield, he was on the triumphant side of Independence, which he had supported with secret contributions from the first; of course he was not to be held accountable for the treason of his eldest son, and the open service of poor Tom on the king's side.

My mother feared dreadful things when the victorious rebels should take possession—imprisonment, trial for treason, and similar horrors; and she was for sailing to England with the British army. But I flatly refused to go, pretending I was no such coward, and that I would leave when I was quite ready. I was selfish in this, of course; but I could not bring myself to go so far from Fanny. Our union was still as uncertain a possibility as ever. Only one thing was sure: she would not leave her parents at present.

The close of the war did not bring Philip back to us at once. On that day when, the last of the British vessels having gone down the bay, with the last British soldier aboard, the strangely empty-looking town took on a holiday humour, and General Washington rode in by the Bowery lane, with a number of his officers, and a few war-worn troops to make up a kind of procession of entry, and the stars and stripes were run up at the Battery—on that day of sadness, humiliation, and apprehension to those of us loyalists who had dared stay, I would have felt like cheering with the crowd, had Philip been one of those who entered. But he was still in the South, recovering from a bullet wound in his shoulder.

My mother and I were thereafter the recipients of ominous looks, and some uncomfortable hints and jeers, and our life was made constantly unpleasant thereby. The sneers cast by one Major Wheeler upon us loyalists, and upon our reasons for standing by the king, got me into a duel with him at Weehawken, wherein I gave him the only wound he ever received through his attachment to the cause of Independence. Another such affair, which I had a short time afterward, near the Bowery lane, and in which I shot a Captain Appleby's ear off, was attributed by my mother to the same cause; but the real reason was that the fellow had uttered an atrocious slander of Philip Winwood in connection with the departure of Phil's wife. This was but one of the many lies, on both sides of the ocean, that moved me at last to attempt a true account of my friend's domestic trouble.

My mother foresaw my continual engagement in such affairs if we remained in a place where we were subject to constant offence, and declared she would become distracted unless we removed ourselves. I resisted until she vowed she would go alone, if I drove her to that. And then I yielded, with a heart enveloped in a dark mist as to the outcome. Well, I thought with a sigh, I can always write to Fanny, and some day I shall come back for her.

It was now Summer. One evening, I sat upon our front step, in a kind of torpid state of mind through my refusal to contemplate the dismal future. My eye turned listlessly down the street. The only moving figure in it was that of a slender man approaching on the further side of the way. He carried two valises, one with each hand, and leaned a little forward as he strode, as if weary. Instantly I thought of years ago, and another figure coming up that street, with both hands laden, and walking in a manner of fatigue. I rose, gazed with a fast-beating heart at the man coming nearer at every step, stifled a cry that turned into a sob, and ran across the street. He saw me, stopped, set down his burdens, and waited for me, with a tired, kind smile. I could not speak aloud, but threw my arms around him, and buried my clouded eyes upon his shoulder, whispering: "Phil! 'Tis you!"

"Ay," said he, "back at last. I thought I'd walk up from the boat just as I did that first day I came to New York."

"And just as then," said I, having raised my face and released him, "I was on the step yonder, and saw you coming, and noticed that you carried baggage in each hand, and that you walked as if you were tired."

"I am tired," said he, "but I walk as my wounds let me."

"But there's no cat this time," said I, attempting a smile.

"No, there's no cat," he replied. "And no—"

His eye turned toward the Faringfield garden gate, and he broke off with the question: "How are they? and your mother?"

I told him what I could, as I picked up one of his valises and accompanied him across the street, thinking how I had done a similar office on the former occasion, and of the pretty girl that had made the scene so bright to both him and me. Alas, there was no pretty girl standing at the gate, beside her proud and stately parents, and her open-eyed little brother, to receive us. I remembered how Ned and Fanny had come upon the scene, so that for a moment the whole family had stood together at the gateway.

"'Tis changed, isn't it?" said Philip, quietly, reading my thoughts as we passed down the garden walk, upon which way of entrance we had tacitly agreed in preference to the front door. "I can see the big dog walking ahead of me, and hear the kitten purring in the basket, and feel little Tom's soft hand, and see at the other side of me—well, 'tis the way of the world, Bert!"

He had the same boyish look; notwithstanding his face was longer and more careworn, and his hair was a little sprinkled with gray though he was but thirty-one.

I left him on the rear veranda, when old Noah had opened the hall door and shouted a hysterical "Lor' bress me!—it's Massa Phil!" after a moment's blinking inspection to make sure. From the cheered look on Mr. Faringfield's face that evening, and the revived lustre in Mrs. Faringfield's eyes, I could guess what welcome Philip had received from the stricken pair.

I told him the next day, in our garden, how matters stood with Fanny and me, and that Captain Falconer had sailed for England with the royal army.

"I don't think Mr. Faringfield will hold out for ever," said Philip, alluding to my hopes of Fanny. "'Faith, he ought to welcome the certainty of happiness for at least one of his children. Maybe I can put the matter to him in that light."

"But Fanny herself will not leave, as long as she thinks they need her."

"Why, then, he must use his parental authority, and bid her come to you. He's not the man who would have his child wait upon his death for happiness. We must use the hope of grandchildren as a means of argument. For you'll come back to America at last, no doubt, when old hurts are forgot. And if you can come with a houseful of youngsters—egad, I shall paint a picture to his mind, will not let him rest till he sees it in way of accomplishment! Go to England without fear, man; and trust me to bring things to pass before you've been long away."

"But you? Surely—"

"Oh, I shall follow you soon. I have matters of my own to look to, over there."

He did not confide to me, at this time, his thoughts and intentions regarding his wife (of whom we were then ignorant whether she was dead or alive, but supposed she must be somewhere in London), or regarding Captain Falconer; but I knew that it was to her future, and to his settlement with Falconer, that he alluded. I guessed then, and ascertained subsequently, that Phil gave Fanny also encouragement to believe all should come right between her and me, and yet not to the further sorrow of her parents. I divined it at the time, from the hopeful manner in which she supported our departure, both in the busy days preceding it, and in the hour of leave-taking. True, she broke down on the ship, whither Philip and Cornelius had brought her to bid us farewell; and she wept bitter tears on my mother's breast, which I knew were meant chiefly for me. But at last she presented a brave face for me to kiss, though 'twas rather a cold, limp hand I pressed as she started down the ladder for the boat where Cornelius awaited.

"Good-bye, lad," said Phil, with the old smile, which had survived all his toils and hurts and sorrows; "I shall see you in London next, I hope. And trust me—about Fanny."

"Thank you, dear Phil, and God bless you! Always working for other people's happiness, when your own—well, good-bye!"

He had made no request as to my course in the possibility of my meeting Madge in London; but he knew that I knew what he would wish, and I was glad he had not thought necessary to tell me.

Philip and Cornelius rowed the boat back, Fanny waving her handkerchief. We saw them land, and stand upon the wharf to watch our ship weigh anchor. My mother would wave her handkerchief a moment, and then apply it to her eyes, and then give it another little toss, and then her eyes another touch. I stood beside her, leaning upon the gunwale, with a lump in my throat. Suddenly I realised we were under way. We continued to exchange farewell motions with the three upon the wharf. How small Fanny looked! how slender was Philip! how the water widened every instant between us and them! how long a time must pass ere we should see them again! A kind of sudden consternation was upon my mother's face, and in my heart, at the thought. 'Twas a foretaste—indeed it might prove the actuality—of eternal separation. Our three friends were at last hidden from our sight, and in the despondency of that moment I thought what fools men are, to travel about the world, and not cling all their days to the people, and the places, that they love.

* * * * *

We lodged at first in Surrey Street, upon our arrival in London; but when October came, and we had a preliminary taste of dirty fog, my mother vowed she couldn't endure the damp climate and thick sky of the town; and so we moved out to Hampstead, where we furnished a small cottage, and contrived with economy to live upon the income of our invested principal, which was now swelled by money we had received from Mr. Faringfield for our home in New York. The proceeds of the sale of our furniture there had paid our passage, and given us a start in our new abode. Meanwhile, as an American loyalist who had suffered by the war, and as a former servant of the king; though I had no claim for a money indemnity, such as were presented on behalf of many; I was lucky enough, through Mr. De Lancey's offices, to obtain a small clerkship in the custom-house. And so we lived uneventfully, in hope of the day when Phil should come to us, and of that when I might go and bring back Fanny.

The letters from Philip and Fanny informed us merely of the continued health, and the revived cheerfulness, of Mr. and Mrs. Faringfield; and presently of the good fortune of Mr. Cornelius in being chosen to fill two pulpits in small towns sufficiently near New York to permit his residence in Queen Street. Mr. Faringfield and Philip were occupied in setting the former's business upon its feet again, and something like the old routine had been resumed in the bereaved house. I knew that all this was due to Phil's imperceptible work. At last there came great news: Philip was to follow his letter to England, in the next Bristol vessel after the one that carried it. 'Twas but a brief note in which he told us this. "There is some news," wrote he, "but I will save it for word of mouth. Be prepared for a surprise that I shall bring."

With what expectation we awaited his coming, what conjectures we made regarding the promised surprise as we talked the news over every evening in the little parlour where we dined on my return from the city, I leave my reader to imagine. I had my secret notion that it concerned Fanny and me.

At the earliest time when a ship might be expected to follow the one by which the letter came, I began to call every evening, ere starting for Hampstead, at the inn where the Bristol coaches arrived. Many a long wait I had in vain when a coach happened to be late. I grew so accustomed to the disappointment of seeing no familiar figure among the passengers alighting, that sometimes I felt as if Phil's letter were a delusion and he never would appear.

But one evening as I stared as usual with the crowd in the coach yard, and had watched three portly strangers already emerge from the open door to the steps, and was prepared for the accustomed sinking of my heart, what did that heart do but give a great bound so as almost to choke me! There he was in the doorway, the same old Phil, with the same kindly face. I rushed forward. Before I reached him, he had turned around toward the inside of the coach, as if he would help some one out after him. "Some decrepit fellow traveller," thought I, and looked up indifferently to see what sort of person it might be: and there, as I live, stepping out from the coach, and taking his offered hand, was Fanny!

I was at her other side before either of them knew it, holding up my hand likewise. They glanced at me in the same instant; and Phil's glad smile came as the accompaniment to Fanny's joyous little cry. I had an arm around each in a moment; and we created some proper indignation for a short space by blocking up the way from the stage-coach.

"Come!" I cried. "We'll take a hackney-coach! How happy mother will be!—But no, you must be hungry. Will you eat here first?—a cup of coffee? a glass of wine?"

But they insisted upon waiting till we got to Hampstead; and, scarce knowing what I was about, yet accomplishing wonders in my excitement, I had a coach ready, and their trunks and bags transferred, and all of us in the coach, before I stopped to breathe. And before I could breathe twice, it seemed, we were rolling over the stones Northward.

"Sure it's a dream!" said I. "To think of it! Fanny in London!"

"My father would have it so," said she, demurely.

"Ay," added Phil, "and she's forbidden to go back to New York till she takes you with her. 'Faith, man, am I not a prophet?"

"You're more than a prophet; you're a providence," I cried. "'Tis your doing!"

"Nonsense. 'Tis Mr. Faringfield's. And that implacable man, not content with forcing an uncongenial marriage upon this helpless damsel, requires that you immediately resign your high post in the king's service, and live upon the pittance he settles upon you as his daughter's husband."

"'Tis too generous. I can't accept."

"You must, Bert," put in Fanny, "or else you can't have me. 'Tis one of papa's conditions."

"But," Phil went on, "in order that this unhappy child may become used to the horrible idea of this marriage by degrees, she is to live with your mother a few months while I carry you off on a trip for my benefit and pleasure: and that's one of my conditions: for it wouldn't do for you to go travelling about the country after you were married, leaving your wife at home, and Fanny abominates travelling. But as soon as you and I have seen a very little of this part of the world, you're to be married and live happy ever after."

We had a memorable evening in our little parlour that night. 'Twas like being home again, my mother said—thereby admitting inferentially the homesickness she had refused to confess directly. The chief piece of personal news the visitors brought was that the Rev. Mr. Cornelius had taken a wife, and moved into our old house, which 'twas pleasant to know was in such friendly hands; and that the couple considered it their particular mission to enliven the hours of Mr. and Mrs. Faringfield, with whom they spent half their time.

Philip's first month in England was spent in exploring London, sometimes with me, sometimes alone, for 'tis needless to say in whose society I chose to pass much of my time. What sights he saw; what unlikely corners he sought out because some poet had been born, or died, or drunk wine there; what streets he roamed: I am sure I never could tell. I know that all the time he kept eyes alert for a certain face, ears keen for a certain name; but neither in the streets, nor at the shops, nor in the parks, nor at the play, did he catch a glimpse of Margaret; nor in the coffee-house, or tavern, or gaming-place, or in the region of the clubs, did he hear a chance mention of the name of Falconer. And so, presently, we set about making the tour he had spoken of.

There was a poor family of Long Island loyalists named Doughty, that had settled in the seacoast town of Hastings in Sussex, in order that they might follow the fisheries, which had been their means of livelihood at home. Considering that a short residence in the more mild and sunny climate of the Channel might be a pleasant change for my mother, and not disagreeable to Fanny, we arranged that, during the absence of Phil and me, we should close our cottage, and the ladies should board with these worthy though humble people, who would afford them all needful masculine protection. Having seen them comfortably established, we set forth upon our travels.

We visited the principal towns and historic places of England and Scotland, Philip having a particular interest in Northamptonshire, where his father's line sprang from (Sir Ralph Winwood having been a worthy of some eminence in the reigns of Elizabeth and James),[10] and in Edinburgh, the native place of his mother. Cathedrals, churches, universities, castles, tombs of great folk, battle-fields—'twould fill a book to describe all the things and places we saw; most of which Phil knew more about than the people did who dwelt by them. From England we crossed to France, spent a fortnight in Paris, went to Rheims, thence to Strasburg, thence to Frankfort; came down the Rhine, and passed through parts of Belgium and Holland before taking vessel at Amsterdam for London. "I must leave Italy, the other German states, and the rest till another time," said Philip. It seemed as if we had been gone years instead of months, when at last we were all home again in our cottage at Hampstead.

After my marriage, though Mr. Faringfield's handsome settlement would have enabled Fanny and me to live far more pretentiously, we were content to remain in the Hampstead cottage. Fanny would not hear to our living under a separate roof from that of my mother, whose constant society she had come to regard as necessary to her happiness.

Philip now arranged to pursue the study of architecture in the office of a practitioner of that art; and he gave his leisure hours to the improving of his knowledge of London. He made acquaintances; passed much time in the Pall Mall taverns; and was able to pilot me about the town, and introduce me to many agreeable habitues of the coffee-houses, as if he were the elder resident of London, and I were the newcomer. And so we arrived at the Spring of 1786, and a momentous event.



CHAPTER XIX.

We Meet a Play-actress There.

It was Philip's custom, at this time, to attend first nights at the playhouses, as well from a love of the theatre as from the possibility that he might thus come upon Captain Falconer. He always desired my company, which I was the readier to grant for that I should recognise the captain in any assemblage, and could point him out to Phil, who had never seen him. We took my mother and Fanny excepting when they preferred to stay at home, which was the case on a certain evening in this Spring of 1786, when we went to Drury Lane to witness the reappearance of a Miss Warren who had been practising her art the previous three years in the provinces. This long absence from London had begun before my mother and I arrived there, and consequently Philip and I had that evening the pleasurable anticipation of seeing upon the stage a much-praised face that was quite new to us.



There was the usual noisy throng of coaches, chairs, people afoot, lackeys, chair-men, boys, and such, in front of the playhouse when we arrived, and though we scanned all faces on whom the light fell, we had our wonted disappointment regarding that of Captain Falconer. We made our way to the pit, and passed the time till the bell and the chorus "Hats off!" signalled the rising of the green curtain, in watching the chattering assemblage that was every moment swelled from the doors; but neither among the lace-ruffled bucks and macaronis who chaffed with the painted and powdered ladies in the boxes, nor among those dashing gentry who ogled the same towering-haired ladies from the benches around us in the pit, did I perceive the elegant and easy captain. We therefore fell back upon the pleasure to be expected from the play itself, and when the curtain rose, I, for one, was resigned to the absence of him we had come partly in quest of.

No sooner had Miss Warren come upon the stage, in her favourite part of Fanny in "The Clandestine Marriage," revived for the occasion, than I knew her as Madge Faringfield. I bent forward, with staring eyes and gaping mouth; if I uttered any exclamation it was drowned in the sound of the hand-clapping that greeted her. While she curtseyed and pleasantly smiled, in response to this welcome, I turned abruptly to Phil, my eyes betokening my recognition. He nodded, without a word or any other movement, and continued to look at her, his face wearing a half-smiling expression of gentle gladness.

I knew, from my old acquaintance with him, that he was under so great emotion that he dared not speak. It was, indeed, a cessation of secret anxiety to him, a joy such as only a constant lover can understand, to know that she was alive, well, with means of livelihood, and beautiful as ever. Though she was now thirty-one, she looked, on the stage, not a day older than upon that sad night when he had thrown her from him, six years and more before—nay, than upon that day well-nigh eleven years before, when he had bade her farewell to go upon his first campaign. She was still as slender, still had the same girlish air and manner.

Till the curtain fell upon the act, we sat without audible remark, delighting our eyes with her looks, our ears with her voice, our hearts (and paining them at the same time) with the memories her every movement, every accent, called up.

"How shall we see her?" were Phil's first words at the end of the act.

"We may be allowed to send our names, and see her in the greenroom," said I. "Or perhaps you know somebody who can take us there without any preliminaries."

"Nay," returned Philip, after a moment's thought, "there will be other people there. I shouldn't like strangers to see—you understand. We shall wait till the play is over, and then go to the door where the players come out. 'Twill take her some time to dress for going home—we can't miss her that way."

I sympathised with his feelings against making their meeting a scene for the amusement of frivolous lookers-on, and we waited patiently enough. Neither of us could have told, when the play was over, what was the story it presented. Even Madge's speeches we heard with less sense of their meaning than emotion at the sound of her voice. If this was the case with me, how much more so, as I could see by side-glances at his face, was it with Philip! Between the acts, we had little use for conversation. One of our thoughts, though neither uttered it, was that, despite the reputation that play-actresses generally bore, a woman could live virtuously by the profession, and in it, and that several women since the famous Mrs. Bracegirdle were allowed to have done so. 'Twas only necessary to look at our Madge, to turn the possibility in her case into certainty.

When at last the play was ended, we forced our way through the departing crowd so as to arrive almost with the first upon the scene of waiting footmen, shouting drivers, turbulent chair-men, clamorous boys with dim lanterns or flaming torches, and such attendants upon the nightly emptying of a playhouse. Through this crush we fought our way, hastened around into a darker street, comparatively quiet and deserted, and found a door with a feeble lamp over it, which, as a surly old fellow within told us, served as stage entrance to the theatre. We crossed the dirty street, and took up our station in the shadow opposite the door; whence a few actors not required in the final scene, or not having to make much alteration of attire for the street, were already emerging, bent first, I suppose, for one or other of the many taverns or coffee-houses about Covent Garden near at hand.

While we were waiting, two chair-men came with their vehicle and set it down at one side of the door, and a few boys and women gathered in the hope of obtaining sixpence by some service of which a player might perchance be in need on issuing forth. And presently a coach appeared at the corner of the street, and stopped there, whereupon a gentleman got out of it, gave the driver and footman some commands, and while the conveyance remained where it was, approached alone, at a blithe gait, and took post near us, though more in the light shed by the lamp over the stage door.