As it chanced, the surgeons in attendance on Dunborough had enjoined quiet, and forbidden visitors. The staircase on which the rooms lay—a bare, dusty, unfurnished place—was deserted; and the girl herself opened the door to him, her finger on her lips. He looked for a blush and a glance of meaning, a little play of conscious eyes and hands, a something of remembrance and coquetry; and had his hat ready in his hand and a smile on his lips. But she had neither smile nor blush for him; on the contrary, when the dim light that entered the dingy staircase disclosed who awaited her, she drew back a pace with a look of dislike and embarrassment.

'My good girl,' he said, speaking on the spur of the moment—for the reception took him aback—'what is it? What is the matter?'

She did not answer, but looked at him with solemn eyes, condemning him.

Even so Sir George was not blind to the whiteness of her throat, to the heavy coils of her dark hair, and the smooth beauty of her brow. And suddenly he thought he understood; and a chill ran through him. 'My G—d!' he said, startled; 'he is not dead?'

She closed the door behind her, and stood, her hand on the latch. 'No, he is not dead,' she said stiffly, voice and look alike repellent. 'But he has not you to thank for that.'

'Eh?'

'How can you come here with that face,' she continued with sudden passion—and he began to find her eyes intolerable—'and ask for him? You who—fie, sir! Go home! Go home and thank God that you have not his blood upon your hands—you—who might to-day be Cain!'

He gasped. 'Good Lord!' he said unaffectedly. And then, 'Why, you are the girl who yesterday would have me kill him!' he cried with indignation; 'who came out of town to meet me, brought me in, and would have matched me with him as coolly as ever sportsman set cock in pit! Ay, you! And now you blame me! My girl, blame yourself! Call yourself Cain, if you please!'

'I do,' she said unblenching. 'But I have my excuse. God forgive me none the less!' Her eyes filled as she said it. 'I had and have my excuse. But you—a gentleman! What part had you in this? Who were you to kill your fellow-creature—at the word of a distraught girl?'

Sir George saw his opening and jumped for it viciously. 'I fear you honour me too much,' he said, in the tone of elaborate politeness, which was most likely to embarrass a woman in her position. 'Most certainly you do, if you are really under the impression that I fought Mr. Dunborough on your account, my girl!'

'Did you not?' she stammered; and the new-born doubt in her eyes betrayed her trouble.

'Mr. Dunborough struck me, because I would not let him fire on the crowd,' Sir George explained, blandly raising his quizzing glass, but not using it. 'That was why I fought him. And that is my excuse. You see, my dear,' he continued familiarly, 'we have each an excuse. But I am not a hypocrite.'

'Why do you call me that?' she exclaimed; distress and shame at the mistake she had made contending with her anger.

'Because, my pretty Methodist,' he answered coolly, 'your hate and your love are too near neighbours. Cursing and nursing, killing and billing, come not so nigh one another in my vocabulary. But with women—some women—it is different.'

Her cheeks burned with shame, but her eyes flashed passion. 'If I were a lady,' she cried, her voice low but intense, 'you would not dare to insult me.'

'If you were a lady,' he retorted with easy insolence, 'I would kiss you and make you my wife, my dear. In the meantime, and as you are not—give up nursing young sparks and go home to your mother. Don't roam the roads at night, and avoid travelling-chariots as you would the devil. Or the next knight-errant you light upon may prove something ruder than—Captain Berkeley!'

'You are not Captain Berkeley?'

'No.'

She stared at him, breathing hard. Then, 'I was a fool, and I pay for it in insult,' she said.

'Be a fool no longer then,' he retorted, his good-humour restored by the success of his badinage; 'and no man will have the right to insult you, ma belle.'

'I will never give you the right!' she cried with intention.

'It is rather a question of Mr. Dunborough,' he answered, smiling superior, and flirting his spy-glass to and fro with his fingers. 'Say the same to him, and—but are you going, my queen? What, without ceremony?'

'I am not a lady, and noblesse oblige does not apply to me,' she cried. And she closed the door in his face—sharply, yet without noise.

He went down the stairs a step at a time—thinking. 'Now, I wonder where she got that!' he muttered. 'Noblesse oblige! And well applied too!' Again, 'Lord, what beasts we men are!' he thought. 'Insult? I suppose I did insult her; but I had to do that or kiss her. And she earned it, the little firebrand!' Then standing and looking along the High—he had reached the College gates—'D—n Dunborough! She is too good for him! For a very little—it would be mean, it would be low, it would be cursed low—but for two pence I would speak to her mother and cheat him. She is too good to be ruined by that coarse-tongued boaster! Though I suppose she fancies him. I suppose he is an Adonis to her! Faugh! Tommy, my lord, and Dunborough! What a crew!'

The good and evil, spleen and patience, which he had displayed in his interview with the girl rode him still; for at the door of the Mitre he paused, went in, came out, and paused again. He seemed to be unable to decide what he would do; but in the end he pursued his way along the street with a clouded brow, and in five minutes found himself at the door of the mean house in the court, whence the porter of Pembroke had gone out night and morning. Here he knocked, and stood. In a moment the door was opened, but to his astonishment by Mr. Fishwick.

Either the attorney shared his surprise, or had another and more serious cause for emotion; for his perky face turned red, and his manner as he stood holding the door half-open, and gaping at the visitor, was that of a man taken in the act, and thoroughly ashamed of himself. Sir George might have wondered what was afoot, if he had not espied over the lawyer's shoulder a round wooden table littered with papers, and guessed that Mr. Fishwick was doing the widow's business—a theory which Mr. Fishwick's first words, on recovering himself, bore out.

'I am here—on business,' he said, cringing and rubbing his hands. 'I don't—I don't think that you can object, Sir George.'

'I?' said Soane, staring at him in astonishment and some contempt. 'My good man, what has it to do with me? You got my letter?'

'And the draft, Sir George!' Mr. Fishwick bowed low. 'Certainly, certainly, sir. Too much honoured. Which, as I understood, put an end to any—I mean it not offensively, honoured sir—to any connection between us?'

Sir George nodded. 'I have my own lawyers in London,' he said stiffly. 'I thought I made it clear that I did not need your services further.'

Mr. Fishwick rubbed his hands. 'I have that from your own lips, Sir George,' he said. 'Mrs. Masterson, my good woman, you heard that?'

Sir George glowered at him. 'Lord, man?' he said. 'Why so much about nothing? What on earth has this woman to do with it?'

Mr. Fishwick trembled with excitement. 'Mrs. Masterson, you will not answer,' he stammered.

Sir George first stared, then cursed his impudence; then, remembering that after all this was not his business, or that on which he had come, and being one of those obstinates whom opposition but precipitates to their ends, 'Hark ye, man, stand aside,' he said. 'I did not come here to talk to you. And do you, my good woman, attend to me a moment. I have a word to say about your daughter.'

'Not a word! Mrs. Masterson,' the attorney cried his eyes almost bursting from his head with excitement.

Sir George was thunderstruck. "Is the man an idiot?" he exclaimed, staring at him. And then, "I'll tell you what it is, Mr. Fishwick, or whatever your name is—a little more of this, and I shall lay my cane across your back."

"I am in my duty," the attorney answered, dancing on his feet.

"Then you will suffer in it!" Sir George retorted. "With better men. So do not try me too far. I am here to say a word to this woman which I would rather say alone."

"Never," said the attorney, bubbling, "with my good will!"

Soane lost patience at that. "D—n you!" he cried. "Will you be quiet?" And made a cut at him with his cane. Fortunately the lawyer evaded it with nimbleness; and having escaped to a safe distance hastened to cry, "No malice! I bear you no malice, sir!" with so little breath and so much good-nature that Sir George recovered his balance. "Confound you, man!" he continued. "Why am I not to speak? I came here to tell this good woman that if she has a care for this girl the sooner she takes her from where she is the better! And you cannot let me put a word in."

"You came for that, sir?"

"For what else, fool?"

"I was wrong," said the attorney humbly. "I did not understand. Allow me to say, sir, that I am entirely of your opinion. The young lady—I mean she shall be removed to-morrow. It—the whole arrangement is improper—highly improper."

"Why, you go as fast now as you went slowly before," Sir George said, observing him curiously.

Mr. Fishwick smiled after a sickly fashion. "I did not understand, sir," he said. "But it is most unsuitable, most unsuitable. She shall return to-morrow at the latest."

Sir George, who had said what he had to say, nodded, grunted, and went away; feeling that he had performed an unpleasant—and somewhat doubtful—duty under most adverse circumstances. He could not in the least comprehend the attorney's strange behaviour; but after some contemptuous reflection, of which nothing came, he dismissed it as one of the low things to which he had exposed himself by venturing out of the charmed circle in which he lived. He hoped that the painful series was now at an end, stepped into his post-chaise, amid the reverent salaams of the Mitre, the landlord holding the door; and in a few minutes had rattled over Folly Bridge, and left Oxford behind him.



CHAPTER VII

ACHILLES AND BRISEIS

The honourable Mr. Dunborough's collapse arising rather from loss of blood than from an injury to a vital part, he was sufficiently recovered even on the day after the meeting to appreciate his nurse's presence. Twice he was heard to chuckle without apparent cause; once he strove, but failed, to detain her hand; while the feeble winks which from time to time he bestowed on Mr. Thomasson when her back was towards him were attributed by that gentleman, who should have known the patient, to reflections closely connected with her charms.

His rage was great, therefore, when three days after the duel, he awoke, missed her, and found in her place the senior bedmaker of Magdalen—a worthy woman, learned in simples and with hands of horn, but far from beautiful. This good person he saluted with a vigour which proved him already far on the road to recovery; and when he was tired of swearing, he wept and threw his nightcap at her. Finally, between one and the other, and neither availing to bring back his Briseis, he fell into a fever; which, as he was kept happed up in a box-bed, in a close room, with every window shut and every draught kept off by stuffy curtains—such was the fate of sick men then—bade fair to postpone his recovery to a very distant date.

In this plight he sent one day for Mr. Thomasson, who had the nominal care of the young gentleman; and the tutor being brought from the club tavern in the Corn Market which he occasionally condescended to frequent, the invalid broke to him his resolution.

'See here, Tommy,' he said in a voice weak but vicious. 'You have got to get her back. I will not be poisoned by this musty old witch any longer.'

'But if she will not come?' said Mr. Thomasson sadly.

'The little fool threw up the sponge when she came before,' the patient answered, tossing restlessly. 'And she will come again, with a little pressure. Lord, I know the women! So should you.'

'She came before because—well, I do not quite know why she came,' Mr. Thomasson confessed.

'Any way, you have got to get her back.'

The tutor remonstrated, 'My dear good man,' he said unctuously, 'you don't think of my position. I am a man of the world, I know—'

'All of it, my Macaroni!'

'But I cannot be—be mixed up in such a matter as this, my dear sir.'

'All the same, you have got to get her,' was the stubborn answer. 'Or I write to my lady and tell her you kept mum about my wound. And you will not like that, my tulip.'

On that point he was right; for if there was a person in the world of whom Mr. Thomasson stood in especial awe, it was of Lady Dunborough. My lord, the author of 'Pomaria Britannica' and 'The Elegant Art of Pomiculture as applied to Landscape Gardening,' was a quantity he could safely neglect. Beyond his yew-walks and his orchards his lordship was a cipher. He had proved too respectable even for the peerage; and of late had cheerfully resigned all his affairs into the hands of his wife, formerly the Lady Michal M'Intosh, a penniless beauty, with the pride of a Scotchwoman and the temper of a Hervey. Her enemies said that my lady had tripped in the merry days of George the Second, and now made up for past easiness by present hardness. Her friends—but it must be confessed her ladyship had no friends.

Be that as it might, Mr. Thomasson had refrained from summoning her to her son's bedside; partly because the surgeons had quickly pronounced the wound a trifle, much more because the little he had seen of her ladyship had left him no taste to see more. He knew, however, that the omission would weigh heavily against him were it known; and as he had hopes from my lady's aristocratic connections, and need in certain difficulties of all the aid he could muster, he found the threat not one to be sneezed at. His laugh betrayed this.

However, he tried to put the best face on the matter. 'You won't do that,' he said. 'She would spoil sport, my friend. Her ladyship is no fool, and would not suffer your little amusements.'

'She is no fool,' Mr. Dunborough replied with emphasis. 'As you will find, Tommy, if she comes to Oxford, and learns certain things. It will be farewell to your chance of having that milksop of a Marquis for a pupil!'

Now, it was one of Mr. Thomasson's highest ambitions at this time to have the young Marquis of Carmarthen entrusted to him; and Lady Dunborough was connected with the family, and, it was said, had interest there. He was silent.

'You see,' Mr. Dunborough continued, marking with a chuckle the effect his words had produced, 'you have got to get her.'

Mr. Thomasson did not admit that that was so, but he writhed in his chair; and presently he took his leave and went away, his plump pale face gloomy and the crow's feet showing plain at the corners of his eyes. He had given no promise; but that evening a messenger from the college requested Mrs. Masterson to attend at his rooms on the following morning.

She did not go. At the appointed hour, however, there came a knock on the tutor's door, and that gentleman, who had sent his servant out of the way, found Mr. Fishwick on the landing. 'Tut-tut!' said the don with some brusqueness, his hand still on the door; 'do you want me?' He had seen the attorney after the duel, and in the confusion attendant on the injured man's removal; and knew him by sight, but no farther.

'I—hem—I think you wished to see Mrs. Masterson?' was Mr. Fishwick's answer, and the lawyer, but with all humility, made as if he would enter.

The tutor, however, barred the way. 'I wished to see Mrs. Masterson,' he said drily, and with his coldest air of authority. 'But who are you?'

'I am here on her behalf,' Mr. Fishwick answered, meekly pressing his hat in his hands.

'On her behalf?' said Mr. Thomasson stiffly. 'Is she ill?'

'No, sir, I do not know that she is ill.'

'Then I do not understand,' Mr. Thomasson answered in his most dignified tone. 'Are you aware that the woman is in the position of a college servant, inhabiting a cottage the property of the college? And liable to be turned out at the college will?'

'It may be so,' said the attorney.

'Then, if you please, what is the meaning of her absence when requested by one of the Fellows of the college to attend?'

'I am here to represent her,' said Mr. Fishwick.

'Represent her! Represent a college laundress! Pooh! I never heard of such a thing.'

'But, sir, I am her legal adviser, and—'

'Legal adviser!' Mr. Thomasson retorted, turning purple—he was really puzzled. 'A bedmaker with a legal adviser! It's the height of impudence! Begone, sir, and take it from me, that the best advice you can give her is to attend me within the hour.'

Mr. Fishwick looked rather blue. 'If it has nothing to do with her property,' he said reluctantly, and as if he had gone too far.

'Property!' said Mr. Thomasson, gasping.

'Or her affairs.'

'Affairs!' the tutor cried. 'I never heard of a bedmaker having affairs.'

'Well,' said the lawyer doggedly, and with the air of a man goaded into telling what he wished to conceal, 'she is leaving Oxford. That is the fact.'

'Oh!' said Mr. Thomasson, falling on a sudden into the minor key. 'And her daughter?'

'And her daughter.'

'That is unfortunate,' the tutor answered, thoughtfully rubbing his hands. 'The truth is—the girl proved so good a nurse in the case of my noble friend who was injured the other day—my lord Viscount Dunborough's son, a most valuable life—that since she absented herself, he has not made the same progress. And as I am responsible for him—'

'She should never have attended him!' the attorney answered with unexpected sharpness.

'Indeed! And why not, may I ask?' the tutor inquired.

Mr. Fishwick did not answer the question. Instead, 'She would not have gone to him in the first instance,' he said, 'but that she was under a misapprehension.'

'A misapprehension?'

'She thought that the duel lay at her door,' the attorney answered; 'and in that belief was impelled to do what she could to undo the consequences. Romantic, but a most improper step!'

'Improper!' said the tutor, much ruffled. 'And why, sir?'

'Most improper,' the attorney repeated in a dry, business-like tone. 'I am instructed that the gentleman had for weeks past paid her attentions which, his station considered, could scarcely be honourable, and of which she had more than once expressed her dislike. Under those circumstances, to expose her to his suit—but no more need be said,' the attorney added, breaking off and taking a pinch of snuff with great enjoyment, 'as she is leaving the city.'

Mr. Thomasson had much ado to mask his chagrin under a show of contemptuous incredulity. 'The wench has too fine a conceit of herself!' he blurted out. 'Hark you, sir—this is a fable! I wonder you dare to put it about. A gentleman of the station of my lord Dunborough's son does not condescend to the gutter!'

'I will convey the remark to my client,' said the attorney, bristling all over.

'Client!' Mr. Thomasson retorted, trembling with rage—for he saw the advantage he had given the enemy. 'Since when had laundry maids lawyers? Client! Pho! Begone, sir! You are abusive. I'll have you looked up on the rolls. I'll have your name taken!'

'I would not talk of names if I were you,' cried Mr. Fishwick, reddening in his turn with rage. 'Men give a name to what you are doing this morning, and it is not a pleasant one. It is to be hoped, sir, that Mr. Dunborough pays you well for your services!'

'You—insolent rascal!' the tutor stammered, losing in a moment all his dignity and becoming a pale flabby man, with the spite and the terror of crime in his face. 'You—begone! Begone, sir.'

'Willingly,' said the attorney, swelling with defiance. 'You may tell your principal that when he means marriage, he may come to us. Not before. I take my leave, sir. Good morning.' And with that he strutted out and marched slowly and majestically down the stairs.

He bore off the honours of war. Mr. Thomasson, left among his Titian copies, his gleaming Venuses, and velvet curtains, was a sorry thing. The man who preserves a cloak of outward decency has always this vulnerable spot; strip him, and he sees himself as others see or may see him, and views his ugliness with griping qualms. Mr. Thomasson bore the exposure awhile, sitting white and shaking in a chair, seeing himself and seeing the end, and, like the devils, believing and trembling. Then he rose and staggered to a little cupboard, the door of which was adorned with a pretty Greek motto, and a hovering Cupid painted in a blue sky; whence he filled himself a glass of cordial. A second glass followed; this restored the colour to his cheeks and the brightness to his eyes. He shivered; then smacked his lips and began to reflect what face he should put upon it when he went to report to his pupil.

In deciding that point he made a mistake. Unluckily for himself and others, in the version which he chose he was careful to include all matters likely to arouse Dunborough's resentment; in particular he laid malicious stress upon the attorney's scornful words about a marriage. This, however—and perhaps the care he took to repeat it—had an unlooked-for result. Mr. Dunborough began by cursing the rogue's impudence, and did it with all the heat his best friend could desire. But, being confined to his room, haunted by the vision of his flame, yet debarred from any attempt to see her, his mood presently changed; his heart became as water, and he fell into a maudlin state about her. Dwelling constantly on memories of his Briseis—whose name, by the way, was Julia—having her shape and complexion, her gentle touch and her smile, always in his mind, while he was unable in the body to see so much as the hem of her gown, Achilles grew weaker in will as he grew stronger in body. Headstrong and reckless by nature, unaccustomed to thwart a desire or deny himself a gratification, Mr. Dunborough began to contemplate paying even the last price for her; and one day, about three weeks after the duel, dropped a word which frightened Mr. Thomasson.

He was well enough by this time to be up, and was looking through one window while the tutor lounged in the seat of another. On a sudden 'Lord!' said he, with a laugh that broke off short in the middle. 'What was the queer catch that fellow sang last night? About a bailiff's daughter. Well, why not a porter's daughter?'

'Because you are neither young enough, nor old enough, nor mad enough!' said Mr. Thomasson cynically, supposing the other meant nothing.

'It is she that would be mad,' the young gentleman answered, with a grim chuckle. 'I should take it out of her sooner or later. And, after all, she is as good as Lady Macclesfield or Lady Falmouth! As good? She is better, the saucy baggage! By the Lord, I have a good mind to do it!'

Mr. Thomasson sat dumbfounded. At length, 'You are jesting! You cannot mean it,' he said.

'If it is marriage or nothing—and, hang her, she is as cold as a church pillar—I do mean it,' the gentleman answered viciously; 'and so would you if you were not an old insensible sinner! Think of her ankle, man! Think of her waist! I never saw a waist to compare with it! Even in the Havanna! She is a pearl! She is a jewel! She is incomparable!'

'And a porter's daughter!'

'Faugh, I don't believe it.' And he took his oath on the point.

'You make me sick!' Mr. Thomasson said; and meant it. Then, 'My dear friend, I see how it is,' he continued. 'You have the fever on you still, or you would not dream of such things.'

'But I do dream of her—every night, confound her!' Mr. Dunborough said; and he groaned like a love-sick boy. 'Oh, hang it, Tommy,' he continued plaintively, 'she has a kind of look in her eyes when she is pleased—that makes you think of dewy mornings when you were a boy and went fishing.'

'It is the fever!' Mr. Thomasson said, with conviction. 'It is heavy on him still.' Then, more seriously, 'My very dear sir,' he continued, 'do you know that if you had your will you would be miserable within the week. Remember—

''Tis tumult, disorder, 'tis loathing and hate; Caprice gives it birth, and contempt is its fate!'

'Gad, Tommy!' said Mr. Dunborough, aghast with admiration at the aptness of the lines. 'That is uncommon clever of you! But I shall do it all the same,' he continued, in a tone of melancholy foresight. 'I know I shall. I am a fool, a particular fool. But I shall do it. Marry in haste and repent at leisure!'

'A porter's daughter become Lady Dunborough!' cried Mr. Thomasson with scathing sarcasm.

'Oh yes, my tulip,' Mr. Dunborough answered with gloomy meaning. 'But there have been worse. I know what I know. See Collins's Peerage, volume 4, page 242: "Married firstly Sarah, widow of Colonel John Clark, of Exeter, in the county of Devon"—all a hum, Tommy! If they had said spinster, of Bridewell, in the county of Middlesex, 'twould have been as true! I know what I know.'

After that Mr. Thomasson went out of Magdalen, feeling that the world was turning round with him. If Dunborough were capable of such a step as this—Dunborough, who had seen life and service, and of whose past he knew a good deal—where was he to place dependence? How was he to trust even the worst of his acquaintances? The matter shook the pillars of the tutor's house, and filled him with honest disgust.

Moreover, it frightened him. In certain circumstances he might have found his advantage in fostering such a mesalliance. But here, not only had he reason to think himself distasteful to the young lady whose elevation was in prospect, but he retained too vivid a recollection of Lady Dunborough to hope that that lady would forget or forgive him! Moreover, at the present moment he was much straitened for money; difficulties of long standing were coming to a climax. Venuses and Titian copies have to be paid for. The tutor, scared by the prospect, to which he had lately opened his eyes, saw in early preferment or a wealthy pupil his only way of escape. And in Lady Dunborough lay his main hope, which a catastrophe of this nature would inevitably shatter. That evening he sent his servant to learn what he could of the Mastersons' movements.

The man brought word that they had left the town that morning; that the cottage was closed, and the key had been deposited at the college gates.

'Did you learn their destination?' the tutor asked, trimming his fingernails with an appearance of indifference.

The servant said he had not; and after adding the common gossip of the court, that Masterson had left money, and the widow had gone to her own people, concluded, 'But they were very close after Masterson's death, and the neighbours saw little of them. There was a lawyer in and out, a stranger; and it is thought he was to marry the girl, and that that had set them a bit above their position, sir.'

'That will do,' said the tutor. 'I want to hear no gossip,' And, hiding his joy, he went off hot-foot to communicate the news to his pupil.

But Mr. Dunborough laughed in his face. 'Pooh!' he said. 'I know where they are.'

'You know? Then where are they?' Thomasson asked.

'Ah, my good Tommy, that is telling.'

'Well,' Mr. Thomasson answered, with an assumption of dignity. 'At any rate they are gone. And you must allow me to say that I am glad of it—for your sake!'

'That is as may be,' Mr. Dunborough answered. And he took his first airing in a sedan next day. After that he grew so reticent about his affairs, and so truculent when the tutor tried to sound him, that Mr. Thomasson was at his wits' end to discern what was afoot. For some time, however, he got no clue. Then, going to Dunborough's rooms one day, he found them empty, and, bribing the servant, learned that his master had gone to Wallingford. And the man told him his suspicions. Mr. Thomasson was aghast; and by that day's post—after much searching of heart and long pondering into which scale he should throw his weight—he despatched the following letter to Lady Dunborough:

'HONOURED MADAM,—The peculiar care I have of that distinguished and excellent gentleman, your son, no less than the profound duty I owe to my lord and your ladyship, induces me to a step which I cannot regard without misgiving; since, once known, it must deprive me of the influence with Mr. Dunborough which I have now the felicity to enjoy, and which, heightened by the affection he is so good as to bestow on me, renders his society the most agreeable in the world. Nevertheless, and though considerations of this sort cannot but have weight with me, I am not able to be silent, nor allow your honoured repose among the storied oaks of Papworth to be roughly shattered by a blow that may still be averted by skill and conduct.

'For particulars, Madam, the young gentleman—I say it with regret—has of late been drawn into a connection with a girl of low origin and suitable behaviour, Not that your ladyship is to think me so wanting in savoir-faire as to trouble your ears with this, were it all; but the person concerned—who (I need scarcely tell one so familiar with Mr. Dunborough's amiable disposition) is solely to blame—has the wit to affect virtue, and by means of this pretence, often resorted to by creatures of that class, has led my generous but misguided pupil to the point of matrimony. Your ladyship shudders? Alas! it is so. I have learned within the hour that he has followed her to Wallingford, whither she has withdrawn herself, doubtless to augment his passion; I am forced to conclude that nothing short of your ladyship's presence and advice can now stay his purpose. In that belief, and with the most profound regret, I pen these lines; and respectfully awaiting the favour of your ladyship's commands, which shall ever evoke my instant compliance,

'I have the honour to be while I live, Madam,

Your ladyship's most humble obedient servant,

'FREDERICK THOMASSON.

'Nota bene.—I do not commend the advantage of silence in regard to this communication, this being patent to your ladyship's sagacity.'



CHAPTER VIII

THE OLD BATH ROAD

In the year 1757—to go back ten years from the spring with which we are dealing—the ordinary Englishman was a Balbus despairing of the State. No phrase was then more common on English lips, or in English ears, than the statement that the days of England's greatness were numbered, and were fast running out. Unwitting the wider sphere about to open before them, men dwelt fondly on the glories of the past. The old babbled of Marlborough's wars, of the entrance of Prince Eugene into London, of choirs draped in flags, and steeples reeling giddily for Ramillies and Blenheim. The young listened, and sighed to think that the day had been, and was not, when England gave the law to Europe, and John Churchill's warder set troops moving from Hamburg to the Alps.

On the top of such triumphs, and the famous reign of good Queen Anne, had ensued forty years of peace, broken only by one inglorious war. The peace did its work: it settled the dynasty, and filled the purse; but men, considering it, whispered of effeminacy and degeneracy, and the like, as men will to the end of time. And when the clouds, long sighted on the political horizon, began to roll up, they looked fearfully abroad and doubted and trembled; and doubted and trembled the more because in home affairs all patriotism, all party-spirit, all thought of things higher than ribbon or place or pension, seemed to be dead among public men. The Tories, long deprived of power, and discredited by the taint or suspicion of Jacobitism, counted for nothing. The Whigs, agreed on all points of principle, and split into sections, the Ins and Outs, solely by the fact that all could not enjoy places and pensions at once, the supply being unequal to the demand—had come to regard politics as purely a game; a kind of licensed hazard played for titles, orders, and emoluments, by certain families who had the entree to the public table by virtue of the part they had played in settling the succession.

Into the midst of this state of things, this world of despondency, mediocrity, selfishness, and chicanery, and at the precise crisis when the disasters which attended the opening campaigns of the Seven Years' War—and particularly the loss of Minorca—seemed to confirm the gloomiest prognostications of the most hopeless pessimists, came William Pitt; and in eighteen months changed the face of the world, not for his generation only, but for ours. Indifferent as an administrator, mediocre as a financier, passionate, haughty, headstrong, with many of the worst faults of an orator, he was still a man with ideals—a patriot among placemen, pure where all were corrupt. And the effect of his touch was magical. By infusing his own spirit, his own patriotism, his own belief in his country, and his own belief in himself, into those who worked with him—ay, and into the better half of England—he wrought a seeming miracle.

See, for instance, what Mr. Walpole wrote to Sir Horace Mann in September, 1757. 'For how many years,' he says, 'have I been telling you that your country was mad, that your country was undone! It does not grow wiser, it does not grow more prosperous! ... How do you behave on these lamentable occasions? Oh, believe me, it is comfortable to have an island to hide one's head in! ...' Again he writes in the same month,' 'It is time for England to slip her own cables, and float away into some unknown ocean.'

With these compare a letter dated November, 1759. 'Indeed,' he says to the same correspondent, 'one is forced to ask every morning what victory there is, for fear of missing one.' And he wrote with reason. India, Canada, Belleisle, the Mississippi, the Philippines, the Havanna, Martinique, Guadaloupe—there was no end to our conquests. Wolfe fell in the arms of victory, Clive came home the satrap of sovereigns; but day by day ships sailed in and couriers spurred abroad with the news that a new world and a nascent empire were ours. Until men's heads reeled and maps failed them, as they asked each morning 'What new land, to-day?' Until those who had despaired of England awoke and rubbed their eyes—awoke to find three nations at her feet, and the dawn of a new and wider day breaking in the sky.

And what of the minister? They called him the Great Commoner, the heaven-born statesman; they showered gold boxes upon him; they bore him through the city, the centre of frantic thousands, to the effacement even of the sovereign. Where he went all heads were bared; while he walked the rooms at Bath and drank the water, all stood; his very sedan, built with a boot to accommodate his gouty foot, was a show followed and watched wherever it moved. A man he had never seen left him a house and three thousand pounds a year; this one, that one, the other one, legacies. In a word, for a year or two he was the idol of the nation—the first great People's Minister.

Then, the crisis over, the old system lifted its head again; the mediocrities returned; and, thwarted by envious rivals and a jealous king, Pitt placed the crown alike on his services and his popularity by resigning power when he could no longer dictate the policy which he knew to be right. Nor were events slow to prove his wisdom. The war with Spain which he would have declared, Spain declared. The treasure fleet which he would have seized, escaped us. Finally, the peace when it came redounded to his credit, for in the main it secured his conquests—to the disgrace of his enemies, since more might have been obtained.

Such was the man who, restored to office and lately created an earl by the title of Chatham, lay ill at Bath in the spring of '67. The passage of time, the course of events, the ravages of gout, in a degree the acceptance of a title, had robbed his popularity of its first gloss. But his name was still a name to conjure with in England. He was still the idol of the City. Crowds still ran to see him where he passed. His gaunt figure racked with gout, his eagle nose, his piercing eyes, were still England's picture of a minister. His curricle, his troop of servants, the very state he kept, the ceremony with which he travelled, all pleased the popular fancy. When it was known that he was well enough to leave Bath, and would lie a night at the Castle Inn at Marlborough, his suite requiring twenty rooms, even that great hostelry, then reputed one of the best, as it was certainly the most splendid in England, and capable, it was said, of serving a dinner of twenty-four covers on silver, was in an uproar. The landlord, who knew the tastes of half the peerage, and which bin Lord Sandwich preferred, and which Mr. Rigby, in which rooms the Duchess or Lady Betty liked to lie, what Mr. Walpole took with his supper, and which shades the Princess Amelia preferred for her card-table—even he, who had taken his glass of wine with a score of dukes, from Cumberland the Great to Bedford the Little, was put to it; the notice being short, and the house somewhat full.

Fortunately the Castle Inn, on the road between London and the west, was a place of call, not of residence. Formerly a favourite residence of the Seymour family, and built, if tradition does not lie, by a pupil of Inigo Jones, it stood—and for the house, still stands—in a snug fold of the downs, at the end of the long High Street of Marlborough; at the precise point where the route to Salisbury debouches from the Old Bath Road. A long-fronted, stately mansion of brick, bosomed in trees, and jealous of its historic past—it had sheltered William of Orange—it presented to the north and the road, from which it was distant some hundred yards, a grand pillared portico flanked by projecting wings. At that portico, and before those long rows of shapely windows, forty coaches, we are told, changed horses every day. Beside the western wing of the house a green sugarloaf mound, reputed to be of Druidical origin, rose above the trees; it was accessible by a steep winding path, and crowned at the date of this story by a curious summer-house. Travellers from the west who merely passed on the coach, caught, if they looked back as they entered the town, a glimpse of groves and lawns laid out by the best taste of the day, between the southern front and the river. To these a doorway and a flight of stone steps, corresponding in position with the portico in the middle of the north front, conducted the visitor, who, if a man of feeling, was equally surprised and charmed to find in these shady retreats, stretching to the banks of the Kennet, a silence and beauty excelled in few noblemen's gardens. In a word, while the north front of the house hummed with the revolving wheels, and echoed the chatter of half the fashionable world bound for the Bath or the great western port of Bristol, the south front reflected the taste of that Lady Hertford who had made these glades and trim walks her principal hobby.

With all its charms, however, the traveller, as we have said, stayed there but a night or so. Those in the house, therefore, would move on, and so room could be made. And so room was made; and two days later, a little after sunset, amid a spasm of final preparation, and with a great parade of arrival, the earl's procession, curricle, chariot, coaches, chaises, and footmen, rolled in from the west. In a trice lights flashed everywhere, in the road, at the windows, on the mound, among the trees; the crowd thickened—every place seemed peopled with the Pitt liveries. Women, vowing that they were cramped to death, called languidly for chaise-doors to be opened; and men who had already descended, and were stretching their limbs in the road, ran to open them. This was in the rear of the procession; in front, where the throng of townsfolk closed most thickly round the earl's travelling chariot, was a sudden baring of heads, as the door of the coach was opened. The landlord, bowing lower than he had ever bowed to the proud Duke of Somerset, offered his shoulder. And then men waited and bent nearer; and nothing happening, looked at one another in surprise. Still no one issued; instead, something which the nearest could not catch was said, and a tall lady, closely hooded, stepped stiffly out and pointed to the house. On which the landlord and two or three servants hurried in; and all was expectation.

The men were out again in a moment, bearing a great chair, which they set with nicety at the door of the carriage. This done, the gapers saw what they had come to see. For an instant, the face that all England knew and all Europe feared—but blanched, strained, and drawn with pain—showed in the opening. For a second the crowd was gratified with a glimpse of a gaunt form, a star and ribbon; then, with a groan heard far through the awestruck silence, the invalid sank heavily into the chair, and was borne swiftly and silently into the house.

Men looked at one another; but the fact was better than their fears. My lord, after leaving Bath, had had a fresh attack of the gout; and when he would be able to proceed on his journey only Dr. Addington, his physician, whose gold-headed cane, great wig, and starched aspect did not foster curiosity, could pretend to say. Perhaps Mr. Smith, the landlord, was as much concerned as any; when he learned the state of the case, he fell to mental arithmetic with the assistance of his fingers, and at times looked blank. Counting up the earl and his gentleman, and his gentleman's gentleman, and his secretary, and his private secretary, and his physician, and his three friends and their gentlemen, and my lady and her woman, and the children and nurses, and a crowd of others, he could not see where to-morrow's travellers were to lie, supposing the minister remained. However, in the end, he set that aside as a question for to-morrow; and having seen Mr. Rigby's favourite bin opened (for Dr. Addington was a connoisseur), and reviewed the cooks dishing up the belated dinner—which an endless chain of servants carried to the different apartments—he followed to the principal dining-room, where the minister's company were assembled; and between the intervals of carving and seeing that his guests ate to their liking, enjoyed the conversation, and, when invited, joined in it with tact and self-respect. As became a host of the old school.

By this time lights blazed in every window of the great mansion; the open doors emitted a fragrant glow of warmth and welcome; the rattle of plates and hum of voices could be heard in the road a hundred paces away. But outside and about the stables the hubbub had somewhat subsided, the road had grown quiet, and the last townsfolk had withdrawn, when a little after seven the lamps of a carriage appeared in the High Street, approaching from the town. It swept round the church, turned the flank of the house, and in a twinkling drew up before the pillars.

'Hilloa! House!' cried the postillion. 'House!' And, cracking his whip on his boot, he looked up at the rows of lighted windows.

A man and a maid who travelled outside climbed down. As the man opened the carriage door, a servant bustled out of the house. 'Do you want fresh horses?' said he, in a kind of aside to the footman.

'No—rooms!' the man answered bluntly.

Before the other could reply, 'What is this?' cried a shrewish voice from the interior of the carriage. 'Hoity toity! This is a nice way of receiving company! You, fellow, go to your master and say that I am here.'

'Say that the Lady Dunborough is here,' an unctuous voice repeated, 'and requires rooms, dinners, fire, and the best he has. And do you be quick, fellow!'

The speaker was Mr. Thomasson, or rather Mr. Thomasson plus the importance which comes of travelling with a viscountess. This, and perhaps the cramped state of his limbs, made him a little long in descending. 'Will your ladyship wait? or will you allow me to have the honour of assisting you to descend?' he continued, shivering slightly from the cold. To tell the truth, he was not enjoying his honour on cheap terms. Save the last hour, her ladyship's tongue had gone without ceasing, and Mr. Thomasson was sorely in need of refreshment.

'Descend? No!' was the tart answer. 'Let the man come! Sho! Times are changed since I was here last. I had not to wait then, or break my shins in the dark! Has the impudent fellow gone in?'

He had, but at this came out again, bearing lights before his master. The host, with the civility which marked landlords in those days—the halcyon days of inns—hurried down the steps to the carriage. 'Dear me! Dear me! I am most unhappy!' he exclaimed. 'Had I known your ladyship was travelling, some arrangement should have been made. I declare, my lady, I would not have had this happen for twenty pounds! But—'

'But what, man! What is the man mouthing about?' she cried impatiently.

'I am full,' he said, extending his palms to express his despair.' The Earl of Chatham and his lordship's company travelling from Bath occupy all the west wing and the greater part of the house; and I have positively no rooms fit for your ladyship's use. I am grieved, desolated, to have to say this to a person in your ladyship's position,' he continued glibly, 'and an esteemed customer, but—' and again he extended his hands.

'A fig for your desolation!' her ladyship cried rudely. 'It don't help me, Smith.'

'But your ladyship sees how it is.'

'I am hanged if I do!' she retorted, and used an expression too coarse for modern print. 'But I suppose that there is another house, man.'

'Certainly, my lady—several,' the landlord answered, with a gesture of deprecation. 'But all full. And the accommodation not of a kind to suit your ladyship's tastes.'

'Then—what are we to do?' she asked with angry shrillness.

'We have fresh horses,' he ventured to suggest. 'The road is good, and in four hours, or four and a half at the most, your ladyship might be in Bath, where there is an abundance of good lodgings.'

'Bless the man!' cried the angry peeress. 'Does he think I have a skin of leather to stand this jolting and shaking? Four hours more! I'll lie in my carriage first!'

A small rain was beginning to fall, and the night promised to be wet as well as cold. Mr. Thomasson, who had spent the last hour, while his companion slept, in visions of the sumptuous dinner, neat wines, and good beds that awaited him at the Castle Inn, cast a despairing glance at the doorway, whence issued a fragrance that made his mouth water. 'Oh, positively,' he cried, addressing the landlord, 'something must be done, my good man. For myself, I can sleep in a chair if her ladyship can anyway be accommodated.'

'Well,' said the landlord dubiously, 'if her ladyship could allow her woman to lie with her?'

'Bless the man! Why did you not say that at once?' cried my lady. 'Oh, she may come!' This last in a voice that promised little comfort for the maid.

'And if the reverend gentleman—would put up with a couch below stairs?'

'Yes, yes,' said Mr. Thomasson; but faintly, now it came to the point.

'Then I think I can manage—if your ladyship will not object to sup with some guests who have just arrived, and are now sitting down? Friends of Sir George Soane,' the landlord hastened to add, 'whom your ladyship probably knows.'

'Drat the man!—too well!' Lady Dunborough answered, making a wry face. For by this time she had heard all about the duel. 'He has nearly cost me dear! But, there—if we must, we must. Let me get my tooth in the dinner, and I won't stand on my company.' And she proceeded to descend, and, the landlord going before her, entered the house.

In those days people were not so punctilious in certain directions as they now are. My lady put off her French hood and travelling cloak in the lobby of the east wing, gave her piled-up hair a twitch this way and that, unfastened her fan from her waist, and sailed in to supper, her maid carrying her gloves and scent-bottle behind her. The tutor, who wore no gloves, was a little longer. But having washed his hands at a pump in the scullery, and dried them on a roller-towel—with no sense that the apparatus was deficient—he tucked his hat under his arm and, handling his snuff-box, tripped after her as hastily as vanity and an elegant demeanour permitted.

He found her in the act of joining, with an air of vast condescension, a party of three; two of whom her stately salute had already frozen in their places. These two, a slight perky man of middle age, and a frightened rustic-looking woman in homely black—who, by the way, sat with her mouth, open and her knife and fork resting points upward on the table—could do nothing but stare. The third, a handsome girl, very simply dressed, returned her ladyship's gaze with mingled interest and timidity.

My lady noticed this, and the girl's elegant air and shape, and set down the other two for her duenna and her guardian's man of business. Aware that Sir George Soane had no sister, she scented scandal, and lost not a moment in opening the trenches.

'And how far have you come to-day, child?' she asked with condescension, as soon as she had taken her seat.

'From Reading, madam,' the girl answered in a voice low and restrained. Her manner was somewhat awkward, and she had a shy air, as if her surroundings were new to her, But Lady Dunborough was more and more impressed with her beauty, and a natural air of refinement that was not to be mistaken.

'The roads are insufferably crowded,' said the peeress. 'They are intolerable!'

'I am afraid you suffered some inconvenience,' the girl answered timidly.

At that moment Mr. Thomasson entered. He treated the strangers to a distant bow, and, without looking at them, took his seat with a nonchalant ease, becoming a man who travelled with viscountesses, and was at home in the best company. The table had his first hungry glance. He espied roast and cold, a pair of smoking ducklings just set on, a dish of trout, a round of beef, a pigeon-pie, and hot rolls. Relieved, he heaved a sigh of satisfaction.

''Pon honour this is not so bad!' he said. 'It is not what your ladyship is accustomed to, but at a pinch it will do. It will do!'

He was not unwilling that the strangers should know his companion's rank, and he stole a glance at them, as he spoke, to see what impression it made. Alas! the deeper impression was made on himself. For a moment he stared; the next he sprang to his feet with an oath plain and strong.

'Drat the man!' cried my lady in wrath. He had come near to oversetting her plate. 'What flea has bitten you now?'

'Do you know—who these people are?' Mr. Thomasson stammered, trembling with rage; and, resting both hands on the back of his chair, he glared now at them and now at Lady Dunborough. He could be truculent where he had nothing to fear; and he was truculent now.

'These people?' my lady drawled in surprise; and she inspected them through her quizzing-glass as coolly as if they were specimens of a rare order submitted to her notice. 'Not in the least, my good man. Who are they? Should I know them?'

'They are—'

But the little man, whose seat happened to be opposite the tutor's, had risen to his feet by this time; and at that word cut him short. 'Sir!' he cried in a flutter of agitation. 'Have a care! Have a care what you say! I am a lawyer, and I warn you that anything defamatory will—will be—'

'Pooh!' said Mr. Thomasson. 'Don't try to browbeat me, sir. These persons are impostors, Lady Dunborough! Impostors!' he continued. 'In this house, at any rate. They have no right to be here!'

'You shall pay for this!' shrieked Mr. Fishwick. For he it was.

'I will ring the bell,' the tutor continued in a high tone, 'and have them removed. They have no more to do with Sir George Soane, whose name they appear to have taken, than your ladyship has.'

'Have a care! Have a care, sir,' cried the lawyer, trembling.

'Or than I have!' persisted Mr. Thomasson hardily, and with his head in the air; 'and no right or title to be anywhere but in the servants' room. That is their proper place. Lady Dunborough,' he continued, his eyes darting severity at the three culprits, 'are you aware that this young person whom you have been so kind as to notice is—is—'

'Oh, Gadzooks, man, come to the point!' cried her ladyship, with one eye on the victuals.

'No, I will not shame her publicly,' said Mr. Thomasson, swelling with virtuous self-restraint. 'But if your ladyship would honour me with two words apart?'

Lady Dunborough rose, muttering impatiently; and Mr. Thomasson, with the air of a just man in a parable, led her a little aside; but so that the three who remained at the table might still feel that his eye and his reprehension rested on them. He spoke a few words to her ladyship; whereon she uttered a faint cry, and stiffened. A moment and she turned and came back to the table, her face crimson, her headdress nodding. She looked at the girl, who had just risen to her feet.

'You baggage!' she hissed, 'begone! Out of this house! How dare you sit in my presence?' And she pointed to the door.



CHAPTER IX

ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON

The scene presented by the room at this moment was sufficiently singular. The waiters, drawn to the spot by the fury of my lady's tone, peered in at the half-opened door, and asking one another what the fracas was about, thought so; and softly called to others to witness it. On one side of the table rose Lady Dunborough, grim and venomous; on the other the girl stood virtually alone—for the elder woman had fallen to weeping helplessly, and the attorney seemed to be unequal to this new combatant. Even so, and though her face betrayed trouble and some irresolution, she did not blench, but faced her accuser with a slowly rising passion that overcame her shyness.

'Madam,' she said, 'I did not clearly catch your name. Am I right in supposing that you are Lady Dunborough?'

The peeress swallowed her rage with difficulty. 'Go!' she cried, and pointed afresh to the door. 'How dare you bandy words with me? Do you hear me? Go!'

'I am not going at your bidding,' the girl answered slowly. 'Why do you speak to me like that?' And then, 'You have no right to speak to me in that way!' she continued, in a flush of indignation.

'You impudent creature!' Lady Dunborough cried. 'You shameless, abandoned baggage! Who brought you in out of the streets? You, a kitchen-wench, to be sitting at this table smiling at your betters! I'll—Ring the bell! Ring the bell, fool!' she continued impetuously, and scathed Mr. Thomasson with a look. 'Fetch the landlord, and let me see this impudent hussy thrown out! Ay, madam, I suppose you are here waiting for my son; but you have caught me instead, and I'll be bound. I'll—'

'You'll disgrace yourself,' the girl retorted with quiet pride. But she was very white. 'I know nothing of your son.'

'A fig for the lie, mistress!' cried the old harridan; and added, as was too much the fashion in those days, a word we cannot print. The Duchess of Northumberland had the greater name for coarseness; but Lady Dunborough's tongue was known in town. 'Ay, that smartens you, does it? 'she continued with cruel delight; for the girl had winced as from a blow. 'But here comes the landlord, and now out you go. Ay, into the streets, mistress! Hoity-toity, that dirt like you should sit at tables! Go wash the dishes, slut!'

There was not a waiter who saw the younger woman's shame who did not long to choke the viscountess. As for the attorney, though he had vague fears of privilege before his eyes, and was clogged by the sex of the assailant, he could remain silent no longer.

'My lady,' he cried, in a tone of trembling desperation, 'you will—you will repent this! You don't know what you are doing. I tell you that to-morrow—'

'What is this?' said a quiet voice. It was the landlord's; he spoke as he pushed his way through the group at the door. 'Has your ladyship some complaint to make?' he continued civilly, his eye taking in the scene—even to the elder woman, who through her tears kept muttering, 'Deary, we ought not to have come here! I told him we ought not to come here!' And then, before her ladyship could reply, 'Is this the party—that have Sir George Soane's rooms?' he continued, turning to the nearest servant.

Lady Dunborough answered for the man. 'Ay!' she said, pitiless in her triumph. 'They are! And know no more of Soane than the hair of my head! They are a party of fly-by-nights; and for this fine madam, she is a kitchen dish-washer at Oxford! And the commonest, lowest slut that—'

'Your ladyship has said enough,' the landlord interposed, moved by pity or the girl's beauty. 'I know already that there has been some mistake here, and that these persons have no right to the rooms they occupy. Sir George Soane has alighted within the last few minutes—'

'And knows nothing of them!' my lady cried, clapping her hands in triumph.

'That is so,' the landlord answered ominously. Then, turning to the bewildered attorney, 'For you, sir,' he continued, 'if you have anything to say, be good enough to speak. On the face of it, this is a dirty trick you have played me.'

'Trick?' cried the attorney.

'Ay, trick, man. But before I send for the constable—'

'The constable?' shrieked Mr. Fishwick. Truth to tell, it had been his own idea to storm the splendours of the Castle Inn; and for certain reasons he had carried it in the teeth of his companions' remonstrances. Now between the suddenness of the onslaught made on them, the strangeness of the surroundings, Sir George's inopportune arrival, and the scornful grins of the servants who thronged the doorway, he was cowed. For a moment his wonted sharpness deserted him; he faltered and changed colour. 'I don't know what you mean,' he said. 'I gave—I gave the name of Soane; and you—you assigned me the rooms. I thought it particularly civil, sir, and was even troubled about the expense—'

'Is your name Soane?' Mr. Smith asked with blunt-ness; he grew more suspicious as the other's embarrassment increased.

'No,' Mr. Fishwick admitted reluctantly. 'But this young lady's name—'

'Is Soane?'

'Yes.'

Mr. Thomasson stepped forward, grim as fate. 'That is not true,' he said coldly. 'I am a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford, at present in attendance on her ladyship; and I identify this person'—he pointed to the girl—'as the daughter of a late servant of the College, and this woman as her mother. I have no doubt that the last thing they expected to find in this place was one who knew them.'

The landlord nodded. 'Joe,' he said, turning to a servant, 'fetch the constable. You will find him at the Falcon.'

'That is talking!' cried my lady, clapping her hands gleefully. 'That is talking!' And then addressing the girl, 'Now, madam,' she said, 'I'll have your pride pulled down! If I don't have you in the stocks for this, tease my back!'

There was a snigger at that, in the background, by the door; and a crush to get in and see how the rogues took their exposure; for my lady's shrill voice could be heard in the hall, and half the inn was running to listen. Mrs. Masterson, who had collapsed at the mention of the constable, and could now do nothing but moan and weep, and the attorney, who spluttered vain threats in a voice quavering between fear and passion evoked little sympathy. But the girl, who through all remained silent, white, and defiant, who faced all, the fingers of one hand drumming on the table before her, and her fine eyes brooding scornfully on the crowd, drew from more than one the compliment of a quicker breath and a choking throat. She was the handsomest piece they had seen, they muttered, for many a day—as alien, from the other two as light from darkness; and it is not in man's nature to see beauty humiliated, and feel no unpleasant emotion. If there was to be a scene, and she did not go quietly—in that case more than one in the front rank, who read the pride in her eyes, wished he were elsewhere.

Suddenly the crowd about the door heaved. It opened slowly, and a voice, airy and indifferent, was heard remarking, 'Ah! These are the people, are they? Poor devils! 'Then a pause; and then, in a tone of unmistakable surprise, 'Hallo!' the newcomer cried as he emerged and stared at the scene before him. 'What is this?'

The attorney almost fell on his knees. 'Sir George!' he screamed. 'My dear Sir George! Honoured sir, believe me I am innocent of any ill-meaning.'

'Tut-tut!' said Sir George, who might have just stepped out of his dressing-closet instead of his carriage, so perfect was his array, from the ruffles that fell gracefully over his wrists to the cravat that supported his chin. 'Tut-tut! Lord, man, what is the meaning of this?'

'We are going to see,' the landlord answered drily, forestalling the lawyer's reply. 'I have sent for the constable, Sir George.'

'But, Sir George, you'll speak for us?' Mr. Fishwick cried piteously, cutting the other short in his turn. 'You will speak for us? You know me. You know that I am a respectable man. Oh, dear me, if this were told in Wallingford!' he continued; 'and I have a mother aged seventy! It is a mistake—a pure mistake, as I am prepared to prove. I appeal to you, sir. Both I and my friends—'

He was stopped on that word; and very strangely. The girl turned on him, her cheeks scarlet. 'For shame!' she cried with indignation that seemed to her hearers inexplicable. 'Be silent, will you?'

Sir George stared with the others. 'Oh!' said Lady Dunborough, 'so you have found your voice, have you, miss—now that there is a gentleman here?'

'But—what is it all about?' Sir George asked.

'They took your rooms, sir,' the landlord explained respectfully.

'Pooh! is that all?' Soane answered contemptuously. What moved him he could not tell; but in his mind he had chosen his side. He did not like Lady Dunborough.

'But they are not,' the landlord objected, 'they are not the persons they say they are, Sir George.'

'Chut!' said Soane carelessly. 'I know this person, at any rate. He is respectable enough. I don't understand it at all. Oh, is that you, Thomasson?'

Mr. Thomasson had fallen back a pace on Sir George's entrance; but being recognised he came forward. 'I think that you will acknowledge, my dear sir,' he said persuasively—and his tone was very different from that which he had taken ten minutes earlier—'that at any rate—they are not proper persons to sit down with her ladyship.'

'But why should they sit down with her?' said Sir George the fashionable, slightly raising his eyebrows.

'Hem—Sir George, this is Lady Dunborough,' replied Mr. Thomasson, not a little embarrassed.

Soane's eyes twinkled as he returned the viscountess's glance. But he bowed profoundly, and with a sweep of his hat that made the rustics stare. 'Your ladyship's most humble servant,' he said. 'Allow me to hope that Mr. Dunborough is perfectly recovered. Believe me, I greatly regretted his mischance.'

But Lady Dunborough was not so foolish as to receive his overtures according to the letter. She saw plainly that he had chosen his side—the impertinent fop, with his airs and graces!—and she was not to be propitiated. 'Pray leave my son's name apart,' she answered, tossing her head contemptuously. 'After what has happened, sir, I prefer not to discuss him with you.'

Sir George raised his eyebrows, and bowed as profoundly as before. 'That is entirely as your ladyship pleases,' he said. Nevertheless he was not accustomed to be snubbed, and he set a trifle to her account.

'But for that creature,' she continued, trembling with passion, 'I will not sleep under the same roof with her.'

Sir George simpered. 'I am sorry for that,' he said. 'For I am afraid that the Falcon in the town is not the stamp of house to suit your ladyship.'

The viscountess gasped. 'I should like to know why you champion her,' she cried violently. 'I suppose you came here to meet her.'

'Alas, madam, I am not so happy,' he answered—with such blandness that a servant by the door choked, and had to be hustled out in disgrace. 'But since Miss—er—Masterson is here, I shall be glad to place my rooms at her—mother's disposal.'

'There are no rooms,' said the landlord. Between the two he was growing bewildered.

'There are mine,' said Sir George drily.

'But for yourself, Sir George?'

'Oh, never mind me, my good man. I am here to meet Lord Chatham, and some of his people will accommodate me.'

'Well, of course,' Mr. Smith answered, rubbing his hands dubiously—for he had sent for the constable—'of course, Sir George—if you wish it. I did not understand for whom the rooms were ordered, or—or this unpleasantness would not have arisen.'

'To be sure,' Sir George drawled good-naturedly. 'Give the constable half-a-crown, Smith, and charge it to me.' And he turned on his heel.

But at this appearance of a happy issue, Lady Dunborough's rage and chagrin, which had been rising higher and higher with each word of the dialogue, could no longer be restrained. In an awful voice, and with a port of such majesty that an ordinary man must have shaken in his shoes before her towering headdress, 'Am I to understand,' she cried, 'that, after all that has been said about these persons, you propose to harbour them?'

The landlord looked particularly miserable; luckily he was saved from the necessity of replying by an unexpected intervention.

'We are much obliged to your ladyship,' the girl behind the table said, speaking rapidly, but in a voice rather sarcastic than vehement. 'There were reasons why I thought it impossible that we should accept this gentleman's offer. But the words you have applied to me, and the spirit in which your ladyship has dealt with me, make it impossible for us to withdraw and lie under the—the vile imputations, you have chosen to cast upon me. For that reason,' she continued with spirit, her face instinct with indignation, 'I do accept from this gentleman—and with gratitude—what I would fain refuse. And if it be any matter to your ladyship, you have only your unmannerly words to thank for it.'

'Ho! ho!' the viscountess cried in affected contempt. 'Are we to be called in question by creatures like these? You vixen! I spit upon you!'

Mr. Thomasson smiled in a sickly fashion. For one thing, he began to feel hungry; he had not supped. For another, he wished that he had kept his mouth shut, or had never left Oxford. With a downcast air, 'I think it might be better,' he said, 'if your ladyship were to withdraw from this company.'

But her ladyship was at that moment as dangerous as a tigress. 'You think?' she cried. 'You think? I think you are a fool!'

A snigger from the doorway gave point to the words; on which Lady Dunborough turned wrathfully in that direction. But the prudent landlord had slipped away, Sir George also had retired, and the servants and others, concluding the sport was at an end, were fast dispersing. She saw that redress was not to be had, but that in a moment she would be left alone with her foes; and though she was bursting with spite, the prospect had no charms for her. For the time she had failed; nothing she could say would now alter that. Moreover her ladyship was vaguely conscious that in the girl, who still stood pitilessly behind the table, as expecting her to withdraw, she had met her match. The beautiful face and proud eyes that regarded her so steadfastly had a certain terror for the battered great lady, who had all to lose in a conflict, and saw dimly that coarse words had no power to hurt her adversary.

So Lady Dunborough, after a moment's hesitation, determined to yield the field. Gathering her skirts about her with a last gesture of contempt, she sailed towards the door, resolved not to demean herself by a single word. But halfway across the room her resolution, which had nearly cost her a fit, gave way. She turned, and withering the three travellers with a glance, 'You—you abandoned creature!' she cried. 'I'll see you in the stocks yet!' And she swept from the room.

Alas! the girl laughed: and my lady heard her!

Perhaps it was that; perhaps it was the fact that she had not dined, and was leaving her supper behind her; perhaps it was only a general exasperation rendered her ladyship deaf. From one cause or another she lost something which her woman said to her—with no small appearance of excitement—as they crossed the hall. The maid said it again, but with no better success; and pressing nearer to say it a third time, when they were halfway up the stairs, she had the misfortune to step on her mistress's train. The viscountess turned in a fury, and slapped her cheek.

'You clumsy slut!' she cried. 'Will that teach you to be more careful?'

The woman shrank away, one side of her face deep red, her eyes glittering. Doubtless the pain was sharp; and though the thing had happened before, it had never happened in public. But she suppressed her feelings, and answered whimpering, 'If your ladyship pleases, I wished to tell you that Mr. Dunborough is here.'

'Mr. Dunborough? Here?' the viscountess stammered.

'Yes, my lady, I saw him alighting as we passed the door.'



CHAPTER X

MOTHER AND SON

Lady Dunborough stood, as if turned to stone by the news. In the great hall below, a throng of servants, the Pitt livery prominent among them, were hurrying to and fro, with a clatter of dishes and plates, a ceaseless calling of orders, a buzz of talk, and now and then a wrangle. But the lobby and staircase of the west wing, on the first floor of which she stood—and where the great man lay, at the end of a softly lighted passage, his door guarded by a man and a woman seated motionless in chairs beside it—were silent by comparison; the bulk of the guests were still at supper or busy in the east or inferior wing; and my lady had a moment to think, to trace the consequences of this inopportune arrival, and to curse, now more bitterly than before, the failure of her attempt to eject the girl from the house.

However, she was not a woman to lie down to her antagonists, and in the depth of her stupor she had a thought. Her brow relaxed; she clutched the maid's arm. 'Quick,' she whispered, 'go and fetch Mr. Thomasson—he is somewhere below. Bring him here, but do not let Mr. Dunborough see you as you pass! Quick, woman—run!'

The maid flew on her errand, leaving her mistress to listen and fret on the stairs, in a state of suspense almost unbearable. She caught her son's voice in the entrance hall, from which stately arched doorways led to the side lobbies; but happily he was still at the door, engaged in railing at a servant; and so far all was well. At any moment, however, he might stride into the middle of the busy group in the hall; and then if he saw Thomasson before the tutor had had his lesson, the trick, if not the game, was lost. Her ladyship, scarcely breathing, hung over the balustrade, and at length had the satisfaction of seeing Thomasson and the woman enter the lobby at the foot of the stairs. In a trice the tutor, looking scared, and a trifle sulky—for he had been taken from his meat—stood at her side.

Lady Dunborough drew a breath of relief, and by a sign bade the maid begone. 'You know who is below?' she whispered.

Mr. Thomasson nodded. 'I thought it was what you wished,' he said, with something in his tone as near mutiny as he dared venture. 'I understood that your ladyship desired to overtake him and reason with him.'

'But with the girl here?' she muttered. And yet it was true. Before she had seen this girl, she had fancied the task of turning her son to be well within her powers. Now she gravely doubted the issue; nay, was inclined to think all lost if the pair met. She told the tutor this, in curt phrase; and continued: 'So, do you go down, man, at once, and meet him at the door; and tell him that I am here—he will discover that for himself—but that the hussy is not here. Say she is at Bath or—or anywhere you please.'

Mr. Thomasson hesitated. 'He will see her,' he said.

'Why should he see her?' my lady retorted. 'The house is full. He must presently go elsewhere. Put him on a false scent, and he will go after her hot-foot, and not find her. And in a week he will be wiser.'

'It is dangerous,' Mr. Thomasson faltered, his eyes wandering uneasily.

'So am I,' the viscountess answered in a passion. 'And mind you, Thomasson,' she continued fiercely, 'you have got to side with me now! Cross me, and you shall have neither the living nor my good word; and without my word you may whistle for your sucking lord! But do my bidding, help me to checkmate this baggage, and I'll see you have both. Why, man, rather than let him marry her, I'd pay you to marry her! I'd rather pay down a couple of thousand pounds, and the living too. D'ye hear me? But it won't come to that if you do my bidding.'

Still Mr. Thomasson hesitated, shrinking from the task proposed, not because he must lie to execute it, but because he must lie to Dunborough, and would suffer for it, were he found out. On the other hand, the bribe was large; the red gabled house, set in its little park, and as good as a squire's, the hundred-acre glebe, the fat tithes and Easter dues—to say nothing of the promised pupil and freedom from his money troubles—tempted him sorely. He paused; and while he hesitated he was lost. For Mr. Dunborough, with the landlord beside him, entered the side-hall, booted, spurred, and in his horseman's coat; and looked up and saw the pair at the head of the staircase. His face, gloomy and discontented before, grew darker. He slapped his muddy boot with his whip, and, quitting the landlord without ceremony, in three strides was up the stairs. He did not condescend to Mr. Thomasson, but turned to the viscountess.

'Well, madam,' he said with a sneer.' Your humble servant. This is an unforeseen honour! I did not expect to meet you here.'

'I expected to meet you,' my lady answered with meaning.

'Glad to give you the pleasure,' he said, sneering again. He was evidently in the worst of tempers.' May I ask what has set you travelling?' he continued.

'Why, naught but your folly!' the viscountess cried.

'Thank you for nothing, my lady,' he said. 'I suppose your spy there'—and he scowled at the tutor, whose knees shook under him—'has set you on this. Well, there is time. I'll settle accounts with him by-and-by.'

'Lord, my dear sir,' Mr. Thomasson cried faintly, 'you don't know your friends!'

'Don't I? I think I am beginning to find them out,' Mr. Dunborough answered, slapping his boot ominously, 'and my enemies!' At which the tutor trembled afresh.

'Never mind him,' quoth my lady. 'Attend to me, Dunborough. Is it a lie, or is it not, that you are going to disgrace yourself the way I have heard?'

'Disgrace myself?' cried Mr. Dunborough hotly.

'Ay, disgrace yourself.'

'I'll flay the man that says it!'

'You can't flay me,' her ladyship retorted with corresponding spirit.' You impudent, good-for-nothing fellow! D'you hear me? You are an impudent, good-for-nothing fellow, Dunborough, for all your airs and graces! Come, you don't swagger over me, my lad! And as sure as you do this that I hear of, you'll smart for it. There are Lorton and Swanton—my lord can do as he pleases with them, and they'll go from you; and your cousin Meg, ugly and long in the tooth as she is, shall have them! You may put this beggar's wench in my chair, but you shall smart for it as long as you live!'

'I'll marry whom I like!' he said.

'Then you'll buy her dear,' cried my lady, ashake with rage.

'Dear or cheap, I'll have her!' he answered, inflamed by opposition and the discovery that the tutor had betrayed him. 'I shall go to her now! She is here.'

'That is a lie!' cried Lady Dunborough. 'Lie number one.'

'She is in the house at this moment!' he cried obstinately. 'And I shall go to her.'

'She is at Bath,' said my lady, unmoved. 'Ask Thomasson, if you do not believe me.'

'She is not here,' said the tutor with an effort.

'Dunborough, you'll outface the devil when you meet him!' my lady added—for a closing shot. She knew how to carry the war into the enemy's country.

He glared at her, uncertain what to believe. 'I'll see for myself,' he said at last; but sullenly, and as if he foresaw a check.

He was in the act of turning to carry out his intention, when Lady Dunborough, with great presence of mind, called to a servant who was passing the foot of the stairs. The man came. 'Go and fetch this gentleman the book,' she said imperiously, 'with the people's names. Bring it here. I want to see it.'

The man went, and in a moment returned with it. She signed to him to give it to Mr. Dunborough. 'See for yourself,' she said contemptuously.

She calculated, and very shrewdly, that as the lawyer and his companions had given the name of Soane and taken possession of Sir George's rooms, only the name of Soane would appear in the book. And so it turned out. Mr. Dunborough sought in vain for the name of Masterson or for a party of three, resembling the one he pursued; he found only the name of Sir George Soane entered when the rooms were ordered.

'Oh!' he said with an execration. 'He is here, is he? Wish you joy of him, my lady! Very well, I go on. Good night, madam!' The viscountess knew that opposition would stiffen him. 'Stop!' she cried.

But he was already in the hall, ordering fresh saddle-horses for himself and his man. My lady heard the order, and stood listening. Mr. Thomasson heard it, and stood quaking. At any moment the door of the room in which the girl was supping might open—it was adjacent to the hall—and she come out, and the two would meet. Nor did the suspense last a moment or two only. Fresh horses could not be ready in a minute, even in those times, when day and night post-horses stood harnessed in the stalls. Even Mr. Dunborough could not be served in a moment. So he roared for a pint of claret and a crust, sent one servant flying this way, and another that, hectored up and down the entrance, to the admiration of the peeping chambermaids; and for a while added much to the bustle. Once in those minutes the fateful door did open, but it emitted only a waiter. And in the end, Mr. Dunborough's horses being announced, he strode out, his spurs ringing on the steps, and the viscountess heard him clatter away into the night, and drew a deep breath of relief. For a day or two, at any rate, she was saved. For the time, the machinations of the creature below stairs were baffled.



CHAPTER XI

DR. ADDINGTON

It did not occur to Lady Dunborough to ask herself seriously how a girl in the Mastersons' position came to be in such quarters as the Castle Inn, and to have a middle-aged and apparently respectable attorney for a travelling companion. Or, if her ladyship did ask herself those questions, she was content with the solution, which the tutor out of his knowledge of human nature had suggested; namely, that the girl, wily as she was beautiful, knew that a retreat in good order, flanked after the fashion of her betters by duenna and man of business, doubled her virtue; and by so much improved her value, and her chance of catching Mr. Dunborough and a coronet.

There was one in the house, however, who did set himself these riddles, and was at a loss for an answer. Sir George Soane, supping with Dr. Addington, the earl's physician, found his attention wander from the conversation, and more than once came near to stating the problem which troubled him. The cosy room, in which the two sat, lay at the bottom of a snug passage leading off the principal corridor of the west wing; and was as remote from the stir and bustle of the more public part of the house as the silent movements of Sir George's servant were from the clumsy haste of the helpers whom the pressure of the moment had compelled the landlord to call in.

The physician had taken his supper earlier, but was gourmet enough to follow, now with an approving word, and now with a sigh, the different stages of Sir George's meal. In public, a starched, dry man, the ideal of a fashionable London doctor of the severer type, he was in private a benevolent and easy friend; a judge of port, and one who commended it to others; and a man of some weight in the political world. In his early days he had been a mad doctor; and at Batson's he could still disconcert the impertinent by a shrewd glance, learned and practised among those unfortunates.

With such qualifications, Dr. Addington was not slow to perceive Sir George's absence of mind; and presuming on old friendship—he had attended the younger man from boyhood—he began to probe for the cause. Raising his half-filled glass to the light, and rolling the last mouthful on his tongue, 'I am afraid,' he said, 'that what I heard in town was true?'

'What was it?' Soane asked, rousing himself.

'I heard, Sir George, that my Lady Hazard had proved an inconstant mistress of late?'

'Yes. Hang the jade! And yet—we could not live without her!'

'They are saying that you lost three thousand to my Lord March, the night before you left town?'

'Halve it.'

'Indeed? Still—an expensive mistress?'

'Can you direct me to a cheap one?' Sir George said rather crustily.

'No. But doesn't it occur to you a wife with money—might be cheaper?' the doctor asked with a twinkle in his eye.

Sir George shrugged his shoulders for answer, and turning from the table—the servant had withdrawn—brushed the crumbs from his breeches, and sat staring at the lire, his glass in his hand. 'I suppose—it will come to that presently,' he said, sipping his wine.

'Very soon,' the doctor answered, drily, 'unless I am in error.'

Sir George looked at him. 'Come, doctor!' he said. 'You know something! What is it?'

'I know that it is town talk that you lost seven thousand last season; and God knows how many thousands in the three seasons before it!'

'Well, one must live,' Sir George answered lightly.

'But not at that rate.'

'In that state of life, doctor, into which God has been pleased—you know the rest.'

'In that state of life into which the devil!' retorted the doctor with heat.' If I thought that my boy would ever grow up to do nothing better than—than—but there, forgive me. I grow warm when I think of the old trees, and the old pictures, and the old Halls that you fine gentlemen at White's squander in a night! Why, I know of a little place in Oxfordshire, which, were it mine by inheritance—as it is my brother's—I would not stake against a Canons or a Petworth!'

'And Stavordale would stake it against a bootjack—rather than not play at all!' Sir George answered complacently.

'The more fool he!' snapped the doctor.

'So I think.'

'Eh?'

'So I think,' Sir George answered coolly. 'But one must be in the fashion, doctor.'

'One must be in the Fleet!' the doctor retorted. 'To be in the fashion you'll ruin yourself! If you have not done it already,' he continued with something like a groan. 'There, pass the bottle. I have not patience with you. One of these fine days you will awake to find yourself in the Rules.'

'Doctor,' Soane answered, returning to his point, 'you know something.'

'Well—'

'You know why my lord sent for me.'

'And what if I do?' Dr. Addington answered, looking thoughtfully through his wine. 'To tell the truth, I do, Sir George, I do, and I wish I did not; for the news I have is not of the best. There is a claimant to that money come forward. I do not know his name or anything about him; but his lordship thinks seriously of the matter. I am not sure,' the doctor continued, with his professional air, and as if his patient in the other room were alone in his mind, 'that the vexation attending it has not precipitated this attack. I'm not—at all—sure of it. And Lady Chatham certainly thinks so.'