'Never mind, dear, you will see enough of them, depend upon it. But where is Brian?'

'Oh! it is one of his harrier days. He left all sorts of apologies for not being at home to receive you. He will be home before dinner. Here is mamma,' as Lady Palliser came sailing out, in a forty-guinea gown from Jay, all glitter of bugles, and sheen of satin, putting Mrs. Wendover's homespun travelling dress to shame. There was a dinner-gown with the luggage, but a gown which, in comparison with Lady Palliser's satin and jet, would be like the cloudy countenance of Luna on a November night, as compared with the glory of Sol on a midsummer morning. But then, happily, Mrs. Wendover was not the kind of person to suffer at being worse dressed than her hostess. Lady Palliser sank in a low curtsey when Ida murmured a rather vague presentation, and again beheld the Countess's eternal laws violated by her guests, for the Colonel and his wife shook hands with a vigour which in the 'Creme de la Creme' was stigmatised as a barbarous vulgarity; while Aunt Betsy was so taken up with Ida that, after a smile and a nod, she actually turned her back upon the lady of the house.

'My poor child, how horridly ill you are looking,' Miss Wendover exclaimed, holding Ida by both hands and looking searchingly into her face. 'Prosperity has not agreed with you. I can see the traces of sleepless nights under your eyes.'

'It was such a shock,' murmured Ida.

'Yes, it was a terrible shock. Those fine frank young fellows! It was ever so long before I could get the images of them out of my mind. And I could not help feeling very sorry for them, in spite of your good fortune—'

'Don't call it my good fortune,' said Ida; 'I am glad my father is better off; but I was happier when I was poor.'

'And yet you used to say such bitter things about poverty?'

'Yes, I was a worshipper of Mammon in those days; but now I have got inside the temple and have found out that he is a false god.'

'He is not a god, but a devil. "The least erected spirit that fell from heaven." My poor Ida! And so you have found out that there are dust and ashes inside golden apples! Never mind; you will learn to enjoy the privileges and comforts of wealth better when you are better used to being rich. And in the meantime tell me that you are happy in your married life, that you and Brian are getting on pleasantly together.'

'We never quarrel,' said Ida, looking downward.

'Oh, that is a bad sign. Tell me something better than that.'

'You all told me that it was my duty to live with my husband. I am trying to do my duty,' Ida answered gravely.

There was no radiance upon her face now. All the happiness—the unselfish delight of welcoming her friends—had faded, and left her pale and despondent.

She threw off all gloomy thoughts presently, and was running about the house, showing her friends their rooms, giving directions to servants, making a good deal more fuss, and making more use of her own hands, than the author of 'La Creme de la Creme' would have tolerated.

'A lady's hands,' said that exalted personage, 'are not for use, but for ornament. Her first object should be to preserve their delicacy of form and colour; her second to be always bien gantee. She should never lift anything heavier than her teacup; and she should rather endure some inconvenience from cold while waiting the attendance of her footman than she should so far derogate from feminine dignity as to put on a shovel of coals. The rule of her life should be to do nothing which her domestics or her dame de compagnie can do for her.'

'My dearest Ida,' remonstrated Lady Palliser, remembering this classic passage, 'what do you mean by carrying that bag?' Are there no servants in the house?'

'Half-a-dozen too many, mamma; but I like to do something with my own hands for those I love.'

Lady Palmer sighed, recalling the days when she had cooked her husband's breakfasts and dinners, and had been happier—so it seemed to her now—in performing that domestic duty than in giving orders to a housekeeper of whom she stood in awe. But Fanny Palliser had made up her mind that she ought to become a fine lady, in order to do credit to her husband's altered fortunes, and she was working assiduously with that intent.

The guests had arrived in time for luncheon, and after luncheon Lady Palliser and the three elders went for a long drive in the landau, to explore the best points in the surrounding scenery, while Ida and Bessie, with Vernon in their company, started for a long ramble in the Park and woods. The boy ran about hither and thither, flitting from bank to bank, in quest of flowers or insects, curious about everything in nature, vivid as a flash in all his movements. Thus the two girls were left very much to themselves, and were able to talk as they liked, only occasionally giving their attention to some newly-discovered wonder of Vernon's, a tadpole in the act of shedding his horny beak, or some gigantic development of the genus toadstool, which species was just then in full season.

At first there was a shadow of constraint upon Bessie's manner; and in one whose nature was so frank, the faintest touch of reserve was painfully obvious. For a little while all her talk was of Wimperfield and its beauties.

'And to think that my dear old pet should be a leading member of our county families!' she exclaimed; 'it is too delightful.'

'Indeed, Bess, I am nothing of the kind. I am a very insignificant person—nothing but my father's daughter. Brian and I are only here on sufferance.'

'Oh, that's nonsense, dear. I heard Sir Reginald tell my father that Wimperfield was to be your home and Brian's as long as ever you both like—as long as your father lives, in fact. Brian can have his chambers in town, and work at his profession, but you are to live at Wimperfield.'

'That can hardly be,' answered Ida, gloomily; 'when Brian goes to London, I must go with him. It will be my duty, you know,' with a shade of bitterness.

'Well, then, this will be your country house—and that will be ever so much better; for after all, you know, however delightful the country may be, it is rather like being buried alive to live in it all the year round. I suppose Brian will soon begin to work at his profession—to read law books, and wait for briefs, don't you know.'

'I hope so,' answered Ida, coldly; 'but I do not think your cousin is very fond of hard work.'

'Oh, but he must work—manhood demands it. He cannot possibly go on sponging upon your father for ever.'

'There is no question of sponging. Brian is welcome here, as you have heard. Lady Palliser likes him very much, and we all get on very well together.'

'But you would like your husband to work, wouldn't you, Ida?'

'I should like him to be a man,' answered Ida, curtly.

In all this time there had been no mention of that other Brian—the owner of Wendover Abbey. No word of congratulation had come to Ida from him upon the change in her fortunes; nor had her husband told her of any communication from his cousin. She concluded, therefore, that Brian the elder had made no sign. It might be that he had dismissed her from his mind as unworthy of further thought or care. He had discovered her falsehood, her worthlessness, and she was no longer the woman he had once loved and honoured She had passed out of his life, like an evil dream which he had dreamed and forgotten.

His voice had been silent when those other voices—the Colonel's and the Curate's—had told her that it was her duty to fulfil the vow she had vowed before God's altar: to share her husband's fate for good or ill. Brian, her lover of a few minutes before, had held his peace. What had he thought of her in those bitter moments? Had there been one touch of pity mingled with his scorn? She could not tell. He had made no sign.

From the moment of her friends arrival she had tremulously expected some mention of Mr. Wendover's name; but that name had not been spoken. The silence was a relief: and yet she yearned to know something more: whether he had spoken of her with friendly feeling, whether he thought of her with compassion.

Not for worlds would she have questioned Bessie upon this subject: not even Bessie, whose childish love so invited confidence, before whose tender eyes she could never feel ashamed.

After that little talk about Brian Walford there followed a good deal of talk about Mr. Jardine. He was promised a living, not a big benefice by any means, but still an actual living and an actual Vicarage, in the vicinity of Salisbury Plain; and he and Bessie were to be married early in the following year, as soon as there were enough spring flowers to decorate Kingthorpe Church, the Colonel had said.

'It is to be in the time of daffodils, just before Lent,' said Bess; 'Easter comes late next year, you know.'

'I don't know; but no doubt you have found out all about it,' Ida answered, laughing. 'God bless you, dear, and make your wedded life one long honeymoon!'

'I have seen marriages like that,' said Bess. 'Father and mother, for instance. They are always spooning. Oh, Ida! doesn't it seem dreadfully soon to be married?'

'There is plenty of time for reflection,' answered Ida, with a sigh.

Bessie remembered how sudden a thing matrimony had been in her friend's case.

'Ah, darling, I know what you are thinking about,' she said tenderly. 'You married on the spur of the moment, and were just a little sorry afterwards; but I have been so fenced and guarded by parental wisdom that I could not do anything foolish—if I tried ever so. And then John is far too wise to propose anything wild or romantic—yet I think if he had come to me and said, "There is a dog-cart at the gate, let us drive over to Romsey Church and be married," I should hardly have known how to say no. But, Ida, dear, tell me that your hasty marriage has turned out a happy one after all. Brian is so very nice. Confess now that you are happy with him!'

Bessie had intended scrupulously to avoid any such home question; but her feelings carried her away directly she began to talk of John Jardine.

'I cannot tell you a lie. Bessie; no, my life is not a happy one. All colour and brightness, all youthfulness and fervour, went out of me when I left Kingthorpe; but it is an endurable life, and I make the best of it.'

'Brian is not unkind to you, I hope?' cried Bessie, prepared to be indignant.

'No, he is not unkind. I have no complaint to make against him.'

'But surely he is nice,' argued Bessie; 'I have always thought him one of the nicest young men I know. He has very good manners, he knows a good deal, can talk of almost any subject, and he is full of life and spirits, when he wants to be amusing.'

'I have no doubt he is a very agreeable person,' answered Ida, gloomily. 'I have never disputed that. And yet our marriage was a mistake, all the same.'

'But when you married him, surely then you must have cared for him, just a little?'

'I thought I did. It was the glamour of his imaginary wealth. It was the worship of the golden calf, exemplified in one of its vilest phases, a mercenary marriage.'

'Do not lower yourself too much, dearest,' pleaded Bessie hugging her friend's arm affectionately, as they tramped across the withered bracken.' You are too good to have been governed by any sordid feeling. The delusion must have gone deeper?'

'It did. I married in a rhapsody of gratitude, thinking that I had found a modern Cophetua. Say no more about it, Bess, if you love me!'

'I will never say another word, dear,' sighed Bess; 'but I do wish you had been single when you met the other Brian, for I know he was more than half in love with you. And now he is going off to the other end of the world again, and goodness knows if he will ever come back.'

The upper tracts of heaven were beginning to grow gray, the sun was sinking in a bed of red and gold behind a clump of oaks on the edge of the horizon—the dark and delicate outline of leafless branches distinctly marked against that yellow light. Wimperfield Park was almost at its best upon such an afternoon as this, the turf soft and springy after autumnal rains, the atmosphere tranquil and balmy, and all animal creation—deer, oxen, rabbits, feathered game, and an innumerable army of rooks—full of life and motion. Ida was slow to reply to Bessie's news about her cousin. The two girls walked on in silence for a little way, Vernon running ever so far ahead of them to look for fallen nuts in a grove of fine old Spanish chestnuts, which stood boldly out on the top of a hill.

'Don't you feel sorry that he is going away?' asked Bessie at last; 'just as he had established himself among us, and begun all kinds of improvement at the Abbey farm, and was even thinking of building new schools.'

'It is a pity,' said Ida.

'It is simply horrid. He is quite as bad as those Irish Absentees who are continually getting murdered; or he would be as bad, if he had not arranged with my father for the carrying on of all his plans while he is away.'

'That is very good of him.'

'Good, yes; but it will be a dreadful responsibility for poor father, and I daresay we shall all be worried about it. He will have builders on the brain till the work is finished. My poor John has promised to look after the schools; and he is so conscientious that he will wear himself to a shadow rather than neglect the smallest detail.'

'But are you not pleased that he can be of so much use?'

'I am obliged to be pleased. I am going to be a clergyman's wife; and I must teach myself to look at everything from the parochial point of view. John and I will not belong to ourselves, but to our parish. Our own pleasure, our own health, our own interests, must be as nothing to us. We must only exist as machines for the maintenance of the proper church services and for the relief of the sick and poor.'

'If you think it too hard a life, dear, there is time for you to draw back!'

'Oh, Ida, do you think I am like Lot's wife, regretting the false frivolous world I am going to renounce? What life could be too hard shared with him?'

'God bless you, dear. I believe your life will be a very happy one,' said Ida, earnestly, and with a touch of melancholy. There was so much that was enviable in Bessie's fate. Then, after a pause, she said hesitatingly, 'Do you know why your cousin is going to leave England?'

'No; I know no reason except his natural restlessness. He is a member of the Geographical, you know, and attends all their meetings. The other day he went up to hear some old fellow prose about the regions north of Afghanistan, and he was so interested that he made arrangements at once for an exploration on his own account. And I daresay he will get killed by some savage tribe, or die of fever.'

'He is not going alone, I hope?'

'No, he has a friend almost as mad as himself, and they are going together. That will mean two for the savages to kill instead of one; and I suppose they will have an interpreter and two or three servants, which will be a few more for the savages.'

'Let us hope they will not go into really dangerous places, There must be so much for a traveller to see in India, without running any great risks,' said Ida, affecting a cheerful tone.

'But you know English travellers love to run risks. It is their only idea of enjoyment. A man like Brian is told of some mountain or some settlement where no Englishman has ever set his foot before, and he says, "That is the very place for me," and the experiment naturally results in his getting murdered.' They had finished their ramble, and were in front of the portico by this time.

'Oh, Bessie!' said Ida, with a stifled sob, 'life is full of sad changes. Do you remember that summer afternoon, three mouths ago, when Vernon and Peter stood on those steps bidding us good-bye, as we drove away with your cousin? and now those two are lying at the bottom of the sea, and he is going to the other end of the world.'

The Wendover visit was altogether a success. There was something so conciliating, so sympathetic, so entirely comfortable in Mrs. Wendover's nature and outward characteristics, that Lady Palliser felt almost immediately at her ease with her, and forgot her newly-acquired manners, becoming a good deal more ladylike in consequence; since the strict and stern system of etiquette, formulated in the 'Creme de la Creme,' did not lie conformably to the original formation of the little woman's disposition. To be free and easy, loquacious, fussy, and kind was Fanny Palliser's nature, and she became odious when she tried to restrain those simple impulses by the armour of formal manners.

'I never had a lady friend I liked better than Mrs. Wendover,' she told Ida, in confidence, on the second day of the visit.

Fanny Palliser was not quite so much at ease with Aunt Betsy. She had an idea that the spinster was satirical, and was inwardly critical of her shortcomings. She was impressed by the wide extent of Aunt Betsy's information, most especially when that lady talked politics with Sir Reginald, and contrived to hem him into corners whence there was no logical thoroughfare. Aunt Betsy was Liberal to the verge of Radicalism; Sir Reginald a Tory of the good old pig-headed type, who looked upon all advance movements as revolutionary, and thought that his own party had gone mad.

'I don't like strong-minded women,' Lady Palliser told Ida when the guests had left. 'I have no doubt Miss Wendover is very kind-hearted and generous—I'm sure her kindness to you was wonderful—but she is not my idea of a lady. That brocade dinner-gown was lovely, and fitted her like a glove; but the way she put her elbows on the table when she talked to Sir Reginald at dessert—well, I never did!'

Brian Walford had made himself particularly agreeable during the brief visit of his kindred—agreeable to both sides of the house. It was his desire to stand well with both. He wanted his uncle and aunts to see that he was thought much of at Wimperfield—that he was a valued member of the household, respected and liked by his wife's family, that he had done well for himself by his marriage, and that whatever cloud had overshadowed the opening of his wedded life had vanished altogether from his horizon. People so soon forgive and forget a little wrong-doing if the sinner comes comfortably out of his difficulties, and becomes a prosperous member of society. The Colonel and his wife, who had always liked Ida, liked her all the better now that they saw her established in a stately home—the only daughter of a man of fortune and position.

On the morning of her departure, Miss Wendover contrived to have a tete-a-tete with Sir Reginald; in the course of which she informed him that she meant to leave half her money to her niece Bessie, and the other half to her nephew—Brian Walford.

'The land, of course, will go to Brian of the Abbey,' she said. 'We Wendovers can't afford to divide the soil. Out chances of doing good in the land depend upon our having a large interest in the neighbourhood.'

'Why, Miss Wendover, I thought you were a Radical!' exclaimed Sir Reginald.

'So I am in many of my ideas, but not for cutting up the land into little bits, to pass from hand to hand like a ten-pound note, until there should not be an estate left in England with a long family history, nor a rich man left in the rural districts to take care of the poor. England would be badly off without her squirearchy.'

Sir Reginald and Miss Wendover were thoroughly agreed upon this point. He thanked her for her generous intentions towards her nephew; and he told her that he meant to provide fairly for his daughter. 'The entail expires in my person,' he said; 'I can do what I like for my girl. Of course the whole of the estate will go to Vernon. He is the last of his race, and I hope I may live to see him married, and the father of sons to inherit his name. It is a hard thing to think that a good old name must perish off the face of the land. However, I am free to make my will as I like, and I shall leave Ida six or seven hundred a year. She and Brian ought to get on very well with that, and his profession. I should like to see him a little more energetic—a little fonder of hard work,' pursued Sir Reginald, with a sigh, conscious of having never felt a strong inclination that way on his own part; 'but I suppose all young men are idle.'

'No, they are not,' retorted Aunt Betsy, sharply. 'There are workers and idlers in all families—men born to honour or to dishonour—races apart—like the drones and the working bees. Look at my other nephew, for example—a man who has seven thousand a year, and not a creature to gainsay him if he chose to dissipate his days and nights on worldly pleasures. He is your true type of worker—a fine Greek scholar—a naturalist, a traveller, a thorough sportsman, where sport means courage, adventure, intelligence, endurance. Fortune made him a rich man, but he has made himself a man of mark in every circle in which he has ever lived, and I am proud to own him for my own flesh and blood. Nature gave Brian Walford many gifts, and what has he done for himself? Learnt to dress as foplings dress, and to think as foplings think!'

'He is a very nice young fellow!' said Sir Reginald kindly; 'we are all fond of him; only we think—for his own sake—it would be better if he took life more seriously.'

'He must be made to take life seriously,' replied the spinster sternly. 'Yes, he is very nice—that is the worst of it; if he were nasty no one would tolerate him. I'm afraid his good qualities will be his ruin.' And thus, promising good things, yet prophesying evil, Miss Wendover left Wimperfield. Ida was to go and stay with her later on at the Homestead, when Brian Walford should be reading law in those new Chambers which he often talked about. There were times when to hear him talk people thought him a youth gnawed and consumed by ambition, only panting for the opportunity to work.

Two days after the Wendovers had gone back, Brian showed his wife a letter from his cousin, Brian of the Abbey.

'I am leaving England for a longer period than usual, and going farther afield,' wrote the master of Wendover Abbey; 'so before starting I feel myself bound to do something definite for you.'

'He has helped me with odd sums now and then, I suppose you know?' said Brian, as Ida read this passage.

'I did not know,' she answered coldly; 'but I am not surprised to hear that he has been generous to you.'

'No, he is your paragon—your preux chevalier—is he not?' sneered Brian. 'Bessie told me as much.'

'She told you only the truth. No one who lives at Kingthorpe can help knowing that your cousin is a good man.'

She went on with the letter.

'Now you are married the claims upon you will be larger than they have been, and I know you will not care to be a pensioner upon your father-in-law's bounty. I have, therefore, arranged with my bankers that you should draw on me quarterly for a hundred and fifty pounds while I am away. This will help you to keep the wolf from the door while you are reading for the Bar. I hope to find you a successful junior, in the first stage of a prosperous journey to the Bench, when I come back.'

'Six hundred a year. Not half bad, is it, Ida?'

'It is very good of him. I hope you will do as he suggests.'

'How do you mean?'

'Work hard at your profession.'

'I shall work hard enough,' answered Brian, turning sullen, 'unless you all badger me. I hate being badgered.'



CHAPTER XXIII.

'ALL OUR LIFE IS MIXED WITH DEATH.'

Four years and more had gone, and there were changes at Wimperfield—changes at Kingthorpe. Death had come to the Georgian mansion among the wood-crowned hills. The easy-going master of that good old house had taken life a little too easily, had disregarded the warnings of wife and doctor, had dined and slept, and drunk his favourite wines—not immoderately, but with utter disregard of medical regimen—had neither walked, nor ridden, but had let life slip by him in a placid, plethoric self-indulgence—shunning all exertion, all pleasure even, if it were allied with activity of any kind. So, in an existence almost as sleepy as the spell-bound slumber in Beauty's enchanted palace, Ida's father had left the door of his mansion ajar to the fell visitor Death, and the fatal day had come suddenly, with no more warning than Sir Reginald heard Sunday after Sunday in church, or read any evening in his favourite Horace, as he turned the carmine-bordered leaves of one of Firmin Didot's exquisite duodecimos, and mused pleasantly over the poet's perpetual variations upon the old theme—

'Brother, we must all die.'

The guest came like a thief in the night, and snatched his prey, in the midst of the family circle, in the leisurely lamplit hour after dinner, with the sound of gay voices and light laughter in the air. The senseless body breathed and throbbed for another day and another light: and then all was over—and Ida and her stepmother knelt side by side, clasped in each other's arms, by the clay which both had fondly loved.

They were alone in their sorrow. Brian was in London. Vernon was with Mr. and Mrs. Jardine, at their parsonage on Salisbury Plain, being prepared for Eton. The two women grieved together in a mournful solitude for the first day on which the house was darkened, and the presence of death was palpable in their midst.

Brian hurried down to Wimperfield directly the news reached him. He was agitated by the event, which had happened without any note of warning. He was not given to forecasting the future, and it had seemed to him that life at Wimperfield was to go on for ever in the same groove—immutable as the course of the planets; that he was always to have a luxurious home there—a fine stable—an indulgent father-in-law. He had been really fond of Sir Reginald, after his manner, and his sudden death shocked and grieved him. And then it gave a shade of uncertainty to his own future. He did not know how the estate might be left—how tied up and hedged round by executors and trustees, shutting him out of his present almost proprietorial enjoyment of the place. Some smug London lawyer, perhaps, would put his sleek paw upon everything during the boy's minority. Sir Reginald had never talked to Brian of his will.

The smug town lawyer came down, but not to impound Wimperfield—only to read the late baronet's will, which was entirely in harmony with the dead man's easy and generous temper.

He left his widow an annuity of fifteen hundred pounds, and the privilege of occupying Wimperfield until his son should come of age, and on leaving Wimperfield she was to receive the sum of two thousand pounds, to enable her to furnish any house she might choose to rent for herself. To his daughter he left any two horses she might select from the existing stud, and seven hundred a year in the Three per Cents, the principal to be divided among her children, if of age at the date of her death, or to be held in trust for them if under age. In the event of Vernon dying unmarried, Ida was to inherit everything; in the event of his marrying but having no children, his widow was to take the same annuity as that bequeathed to Lady Palliser, and the estate was to go to Ida, with reversion to her eldest son, or, in the event of no son, to her eldest daughter, whose husband was to take the name of Palliser. In this manner had short-lived man endeavoured to make his name live after him.

Ida and her stepmother were left joint guardians of the boy, Vernon.

To Brian Walford Wendover, Sir Reginald bequeathed only his favourite hunter, a leash of chumber spaniels, and fifty pounds for a memorial ring. Mr. Wendover could not find fault with a will which left his wife seven hundred a year; but he felt that his position was diminished by his father-in-law's death, and he was morbidly jealous of the boy, who had absorbed so much of his wife's care and affection from the first hour of their coming to Wimperfield.

'I suppose we are to turn out now,' he said to Ida the night after the funeral, when they two were slowly and sadly pacing the terrace, in front of the drawing-room windows. It was the beginning of December—bleak, cheerless weather—and the woods looked black against a dull gray sky. There was only one feeble streak of pale yellow light in the west Bonder, behind gaunt patriarchal oaks.

'Your father's will is a very handsome will,' continued Brian, 'but it leaves no provision for our living on here, and I suppose we shall have to clear out.'

'Leave Wimperfield! Oh, no, I'm sure Lady Palliser has no idea of such a thing. Leave Wimperfield, and Vernon? He has a double claim upon me now, my fatherless darling.'

'Of course, Vernon is your first thought,' sneered Brian. 'But wouldn't it be just as well to think of ways and means! Who is to keep up Wimperfield? Lady Palliser, on her fifteen hundred a year; or you, on your seven hundred?'

'I can help mamma. She can have all my income, except just enough to buy my clothes; and my father gave me gowns enough to last for the next five years. But I heard the lawyer say that the place would be kept up for Vernie. Lady Palliser would hardly have any occasion to spend her income, except in paying for actual personal expenses, her own servants, and so on.'

'Good for Lady Palliser; but that doesn't make our position any more secure, if she should want to get rid of us?'

'I'm sure she will want us to stay. You ought to know her better than to suggest such a thing. You must know her affectionate nature, and how fond she is of us both.'

'I never presume to know anything of any woman. She seems to like us; but who can tell what may lurk under that seeming. She may marry again, and want to make a clean sweep of old associations.'

'Mamma! How can you think of such a horrid thing? No, she is as true as steel; she has been a good and loyal wife to my father.'

'That doesn't prevent her being good and loyal to a second husband; nay, her very virtues—affectionateness, a soft clinging nature—point to the probability of a second marriage. It is just such women who fail into the adventurer's trap. However, we won't quarrel about her, and so long as she is cordial, and likes to have us here, Wimperfield can be our country house.'

This was a somewhat loose way of sneaking, for Wimperfield had been Ida's only house during her married life. Brian had his chambers in the Temple at a rent of a hundred and twenty-five pounds a year, his sitting-room furnished with none of that Spartan ruggedness which so well became George Warrington, of Pump Court, but in the willow-pattern and peacock-feather style of art; the dingy old walls glorified by fine photographs of Gerome's Roman Gladiators, Phryne before her judges, Socrates searching for Alcibiades at the house of Aspasia, and enlarged carbonized portraits of the reigning beauties in London society. But these chambers, though supposed to be devoted to days of patient work and much consumption of midnight oil, had served chiefly as a basis for late breakfasts, club-dinners, and theatre-going, while the midnight oil had been mostly associated with lobster salad at snug little suppers after the play. Ida had never been at these chambers, although she had been invited there frequently during the first few months of her husband's tenancy. As time went by Mr. Wendover found it was more convenient that his town and country residences should be completely distinct; and it had gradually become an accepted fact at Wimperfield that Temple Chambers were a kind of habitation which a man's wife could hardly visit without violating the first principles of legal etiquette.

Brian Walford was speedily reassured as to his position at Wimperfield. Lady Palliser clung to her stepdaughter in her widowhood with a still warmer affection than she had shown during her husband's lifetime. Ida was her adviser, her strong rock, her resource in all difficulties and perplexities, social or domestic. Nor would she allow her stepdaughter or her stepdaughter's husband to share the expenses of housekeeping at Wimperfield. The allowance for the young baronet's maintenance during his minority was large enough to cover all expenses of the very quiet household, likely to be even more quiet now that Sir Reginald Palliser, a man of particularly social habits, was gone.

Lady Palliser had never been able to feel thoroughly at home among the county people. Their language was not her language, nor their habits her habits. She could have got on ever so much better with them had they been less homely and free and easy in their ways. She had schooled herself in a politeness of line and rule, had learnt good manners by rote; and to find all her theories continually ignored or traversed was a perplexity and a trouble to her. If the county people had only treated her with the rigid stiffness enjoined in a three-and-sixpenny manual, she could have met them upon equal ground. She could have remembered the social laws made and provided for her guidance as guest or hostess—how to enter and leave a room, in what attitude to stand or sit, with the fitting use of every item of table furniture, from the fish knife and fork to the salver of rose water. But when she beheld the county people doing outrageous things with their legs, and altogether heterodox in their way of eating and drinking, when she heard them talk very much as the 'lady friends' of her girlhood had talked over their washtubs, or kitchen ranges, yet with an indescribable difference, and never by any chance realising her own innate ideas of company manners, Lady Palliser felt herself more and more at sea in this new world of hers. Thus it was that she fell into the way of letting Ida manage everything for her, and of meekly accepting such friends as Ida brought round her, and making much of those mothers whose boys were of an age to be play-fellows for her own beloved son.

And now the master of the house, the central figure in the family picture, was gone, and the two women had to face life for the most part alone. Brian had grown fonder of London lately. He had held a few briefs during the last twelve months and could plead business in the metropolitan law-courts as a reason for being very little at Wimperfield out of the hunting season. The boy was with the Jardines at Hopsley Vicarage, except during the happy interval of holidays. He was always glad to come home, but he was generally tired of home before the holiday was over, and went back to the Jardines with a keen delight which made his mother's heart ache.

Ida's character had ripened and strengthened in the years which were gone, years of quiet, submissive performance of duty. She had been a fond and obedient daughter, an almost adoring sister, a good and faithful wife. If she had not given her husband the love he had hoped to inspire, she had been more considerate, more sympathetic than many a wife who has married for love. She had never wounded him by hard words, had never exacted sacrifices from him, never pursued her own pleasure when it was at variance with his. She had long ago gauged his shallow nature—she knew but too well that he was a reed, and not a rock, and that in all the trials of life she would have to stand alone; but if she sometimes inwardly scorned him, she never betrayed her scorn, either to him or to the world after she had once made up her mind as to the nature of the bond between them, and the duties attached to that bond. With ripening years and growing wisdom she had atoned nobly for the errors of impulse and reckless anger.

Brian knew that she was good and loyal; but although he admired and respected her, he could not forgive her for that innate superiority which made him all the more conscious of his own shortcomings, for that growing strength of character which accentuated his own weakness. When the charm of novelty had departed, when the triumph of having won her in spite of herself was over, Brian Walford's love for his beautiful wife wore to a very thin thread. The tie was not broken, but it was sorely attenuated. He had never ceased to be jealous of the brother whom she loved so much more fondly than she had ever loved, or even pretended to love, her husband; but he had left off expressing that jealousy in open unbraiding. Once he had been in the habit of saying, 'You will have a boy of your own some day, and then Master Vernie will be nowhere;' but that hoped-for son had never come, and Vernon was still all in all to his sister. Brian knew that it was so, and submitted to his lot in sullen acquiescence. After all, his marriage had brought him much that was good—had smoothed his pathway in life; and if—if, by-and-by, some such fatality as that which had cleared the way for Reginald Palliser, should clear the way for Ida, his wife would be the owner of one of the finest estates in Sussex. He wished no evil to the young baronet, he bore no grudge against him for Ida's idiotic fondness; but the fact remained that the boy's death would make Brian Walford Wendover's wife a rich woman. It is not in the nature of a man living among sharp-witted lawyers and men about town to ignore a fact of this kind. His friends had talked to him about it after the publication of Sir Reginald Palliser's will.

'A fine thing for you if that young gentleman were to go off the hooks,' said they; but Brian protested that he had no desire for such promotion. He was fond of the boy, and was very well satisfied with his own position.

'I daresay you do like the little beggar,' answered his particular friend, who was loafing away the earlier half of the afternoon in Mr. Wendover's chambers, smoking Mr. Wendover's cigarette, and sipping Mr. Wendover's Apollinaris slightly coloured with brandy—a very modest form of entertainment surely, and yet the cigarettes and the superfine cognac, which were always on tap in Elm Court, made no small appearance in the accounts of tobacconist and wine merchant. 'You would be sorry if anything were to happen to him, no doubt; just as I shall be sorry when the governor bursts up—poor old fellow! But I know I want his money very badly; and I think you could spend a good deal more than your present income.'

Brian admitted with a light laugh that his capacity for expenditure was considerably in excess of his resources,

'You know how quietly I live,' he began.

'Comme ci, comme ca,' muttered his friend.

'And yet even now I am in debt.'

'And have been ever since I first knew you, and would be if you had fifty thousand a year!'

'Oh, that's inevitable,' said Brian. 'A man with an income of that kind must always be in debt. He never can know when he comes to the boundary line. When a man starts in life by believing he is enormously rich, and can have everything he wants, he is pretty sure to go to the dogs. That's the way the sons of millionaires so often drift towards the gutter.'



CHAPTER XXIV.

'FRUITS FAIL AND LOVE DIES AND TIME RANGES.'

Brian found Wimperfield duller as a place of residence after Sir Reginald's death; or it may be that he found London gayer, and his professional duties more absorbing. It was not often that his wife and mother-in-law were gratified by any public notification of his engagements; but now and then the name of Mr. Wendover appeared as junior counsel in some insignificant case, and Lady Palliser, who read the Times and Post, diligently apprised Ida of the fact.

'You see Brian is getting on quite nicely,' she said approvingly, 'and by-and-by when he has plenty of work, you will have a small house in town, I suppose—somewhere about Belgravia—and only come to Wimperfield for your holidays.'

Fanny Palliser had never left off compassionating Ida for her frequent separation from her husband. She had never divined that Ida was happier in Brian's absence than when he was with her. The wife had so borne herself that her husband should not be put to shame by her indifference. She lived the larger half of her life apart from him; but Lady Palliser and her gossips believed that in so doing the young couple sacrificed inclination to prudence. So soon as they could afford to maintain a town house they would have one.

It was midsummer weather, and the rose garden at Wimperfield, that garden which had been Ida's own peculiar care for the last four years, the garden which she had improved and beautified with every art learned from that ardent rose-worshipper Aunt Betsy, was glorious with its first blooms. Sir Reginald Palliser had been dead a year and a half, but Ida still wore black gowns, and the widow had in no wise mitigated the severity of her weeds. The two women had lived peaceably and affectionately together ever since the baronet's death, leading a quiet but not unhappy life, the placid monotony of their existence agreeably varied by frequent intercourse with the family at Kingthorpe.

The only changes at The Knoll were of a gentle domestic character. No cloud of trouble had darkened that happy household. Bessie had become a brisk, business-like little matron, dividing her cares between her yearling baby and her husband's parish; troubled, like Martha, about many things, but only in such a manner as women of her temperament like to be troubled. Reginald had begun his University career as an undergraduate of Balliol, and talked largely about Professor Jowett, and Greek. Horatio was still a Wintonian. The Colonel had grown a little stouter, and his wife was too polite to cultivate a slimness which might have seemed a reproach to her husband's comfortable figure. Blanche was 'out,' a development of her being which meant that she was occasionally invited to a friendly dinner-party with her father and mother, that her clothes cost three times as much as they had cost while she was 'in,' that she had ideas about blue china and sunflowers, lamented the shabbiness of The Knoll drawing-room and the general untidiness of the household, and that she abandoned herself to despondency whenever there was a long interval between one garden party and another. The child Eva had become exactly what Blanche had been four years ago. Urania was still Urania Rylance, just a shade more self-opinionated, and more conscious of the inferiority of her fellow-creatures. These innate instincts had been ripened and developed by several London seasons, and were now accompanied by a flavour of sourness which was meant for wit. She had not been without offers, but there had been no offer tempting enough to induce her to abandon her privileges as Dr. Rylance's daughter. She had an idea that her marriage would be the signal for Dr. Rylance to take unto himself a second wife; and she was disinclined to give that signal. The more anxious her father seemed to dispose of her in the marriage market, the more tenaciously she clung to the privileges of spinsterhood.

'I hope you are not in a hurry to get rid of me, father,' she said at breakfast one morning, when Dr. Rylance urged the claims of a cultured youth in the War Office.

'No, my dear; I don't think I have shown any undue haste. This is your fifth London season.'

I hope you do not call my intermittent glimpses of town a season,' sneered Urania.

'I have you here as often and as long as I can,' answered her father, becoming suddenly stony of countenance, 'and I take you out as much as I can. Mr. Fitz Wilson has seven hundred a year. I could give you—say three; and surely with a thousand a year two young people might live in very good style—even in these pretentious days.'

'No doubt. But I don't care for Mr. Fitz Wilson, and I care still less for the kind of style which can be maintained upon a thousand a year,' replied Urania, with the air of a duchess. 'That would mean a small house 011 the skirts of Regent's Park, or a flat in the Marylebone Road, I suppose—and no carriage.'

'Marry whom you please, my love, and when you please,' said her father; 'but remember that time is not standing still with any of us.'

There had been no change at the Abbey in the years which were gone since Brian Walford claimed his bride, except that the new schools had been built under Colonel Wendover's superintendence. The old house still resembled the palace of the sleeping beauty; except that trustworthy servants took care of it, and kept moths, spiders, mice, and all such small deer at a distance. The owner of the mansion was still absent, roaming about somewhere in Northern India, as it was supposed; but his letters were few and far between. His kindred at Kingthorpe were accustomed to think of him as a wanderer in far-away places, and gave themselves very little anxiety about him. To have been anxious once would be to be anxious always, since a traveller's risks are manifold, and there is never a year when the eager spirit of some valiant explorer is not quenched in sudden death. Brian Wendover had been away so long that people had left off talking about him; and it seemed a natural condition for the Abbey to be tenantless—a capital place for picnics and afternoon teas. The Wendovers of The Knoll took all their visitors there as a matter of course—played tennis on the lawn between the goodly old cedars; and Blanche, who was of a much more enterprising disposition than her sister Bessie, had tried her hardest to induce Mrs. Wendover to give a ball in the old refectory.

Ida and her husband were strolling about the rose-garden in the quiet hour after luncheon, while Lady Palliser dozed over her knitting-needles in her favourite chair by the long French window. Brian had come to Wimperfield somewhat unexpectedly, while the London season was still at its height, and all the law courts in full swing. He came home invalided, and wanting rest and care: but he refused to consult the family doctor, a general practitioner born and bred in the adjacent village,—clever, sagacious, homely in dress and manners, and, in the opinion of Lady Palliser, a tower of strength. She liked a fatherly doctor.

'What is the use of seeing old Fosbroke when I have had the best advice in London?' Brian said, peevishly, when urged by his mother-in-law to take advice from the family doctor. 'I know exactly what ails me—nervous exhaustion, an over-worked brain, and that kind of thing. I suppose it is a natural consequence of modern civilisation: men's brains have to go at express speed in order to keep pace with the average intelligence of the time.'

'If you had only a better appetite!' sighed Lady Palliser, who had been distressed at seeing her son-in-law send away plate after plate, with its contents hardly touched.

'I wouldn't mind having a bad appetite if I could sleep, said he; 'it's insomnia that tells upon a fellow.'

Brian did not enter into the causes of this dire malady, which had begun with long nights given to dissipation—not to gross pleasures or vulgar companions, but to a semi-intellectual dissipation: wit, fun, copious talk about all things between heaven and earth, in the society of artists, actors, journalists, Bohemians of all the arts. To the man who begins by doing without sleep there sometimes comes a day when sleep will refuse to answer to his bidding. He has acquired the habit of perpetual wakefulness. The sleep-mechanism of the brain is out of gear. It will go for half-an-hour, perhaps, or for a few minutes, in spasmodic jerks: and then it stops all at once, as if the machinery had gone wrong.

So it was with Brian. Those festive nights given over to the feast of reason and the flow of soul—not to riot or drunkenness, but to the half-unconscious consumption of much brandy and soda—nights in which the atmosphere seemed charged with wit and wisdom as with mental electricity—nights in which a young man, able to talk smartly upon any given topic, was carried away by the consciousness of his power, and thought himself a god.

Brian was a member of all those joyous clubs—the night flowers of the club world, which unfold their petals in the small hours, when the playhouses are shut, and the lights have been extinguished in all sober households. There was no offence in any of these institutions, and they offered a fine intellectual arena, afforded a splendid training for literary youth: but to a man who loved them too well they meant a shattered constitution.

Brian had come to Wimperfield in the hope that quiet and country air would bring back sleep to his eyelids and steadiness to his nerves; but he had been there a week, and his hand was no steadier, his nights were no less wakeful. He fancied himself growing weaker day by day, and although the great authority in Harley Street had strictly forbidden any stimulant except one glass of stout with his mutton chop at luncheon, Brian, who was quite unable to eat the chop, found it impossible to lunch without plenty of dry sherry, or to dine without champagne, and after dinner drank a good deal of that fine old port which had been laid down by old Sir Vernon Palliser in forty-seven.

Ida was very kind and gentle to her husband at this time, seeing that he was really in need of her tenderness. She devoted herself to his amusement, walked with him, rode with him, drove with him; but although he was grateful, he was not happy. A terrible depression of mind, broken by flashes of hilarity, had taken possession of him. The London physician had told him frankly that his nerves were shattered, but that all would be well with him if he left off all stimulants, ate chops and steaks, and lived in the open air; but as yet he had been unable to cope with the most diminutive chop, or to exist for three hours without stimulants. Even those rides and drives with Ida seemed a weariness to him, and he would have escaped them if he could.

This afternoon he paced the rose-garden listlessly by Ida's side, smoking a cigarette—that cigarette which was rarely absent from his lips.

'Are you sure your London doctor does not object to your smoking so much?' Ida asked presently, noting the languid uncertainty of the fingers which held the cigarette.

'I am not sure about anything. I told him I could not live without tobacco, and he said I might smoke two or three cigarettes in the course of the day—'

'Oh, Brian, and you smoke—'

'Two or three dozen! Not quite so bad as that, eh? But no doubt I do go considerably outside the medico's mark. I could no more exist by line and rule in that way than I could fly. No, if I am to die of tobacco and late hours, I am doomed.'

'But there is no such thing as being doomed; every man is his own master—he can mould his life as he likes.'

'Can he? That depends upon the man. I am not going into the mystery of fate and free will. There is the question of temperament—hereditary instinct. If I cannot have intellectual society—new ideas—variety—I must die. I could not lead the life you live here—not life, but stagnation.'

'I have the books I love, this dear park, and all the lovely country round us—horses—dogs—and some very pleasant neighbours: and I try to do a little good in my generation.'

'All very well; but you are as much out of the world as if you were in the centre of Africa. I could not exist under such conditions. Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay. This to me would be as bad as Cathay. But now I suppose you are going to be perfectly happy, now that your brother is coming home.'

'Yes. I am always happy, when I have him—he is more and more companionable every day of his life.'

Vernon was expected that afternoon. He was coming home for a summer holiday, just when summer was at her loveliest He was not bound by public school rules, or obliged to wait for the stereotyped watering-place season. The Jardines were to bring him over this afternoon, and were to stay at Wimperfield for a couple of days. Ida glanced towards the avenue every now and then, expecting to catch a glimpse of the approaching carriage between the leafy elms.

Brian strolled by her side with a listless air, smoking, and murmuring a few words now and then for courtesy's sake. He had very little to say to his wife. She did not care for the things he cared for, or understand the kind of life he lived. She loved books, the books which are for all time; he was a mere skimmer of books and reviews—mostly reviews; and he cared only for new books, new ideas, new theories, new paradoxes. His cleverness was the cleverness of the daily press—the floating froth upon the sea of knowledge. He liked to talk to a man of his own stamp, with whom he could argue upon equal terms; but not to a woman who had steeped her mind in the wisdom and poetry of the past.

He stifled a yawn every now and then, in that half-hour of waiting, longing to go back to the dining-room and refresh his parched lips with the contents of a syphon dashed with brandy. He had given his own orders to the butler, and the spirit stand was always on the sideboard ready for his use. The butler had made a note of the brandy which was dribbled away in this desultory form of refreshment, and had made up his own mind as to Mr. Wendover's habits; but it is a servant's duty to hold his peace upon such matters.

At last there came the sound of wheels, and Ida flew round to the portico to receive her guests, Brian following at his leisure. The slender figure in the black gown reminded Brian of those old days by the river—the tranquil October afternoons—the clear light—the placid water—a gray river under a gray sky, with a lovely line of yellow light behind the tufted willows. How happy he had been in those days!—caring nothing for the future—bent on winning this girl at any price—laughing within himself at her delusion—trusting to his own merits as an ample set-off against his empty purse when he should stand revealed as the wrong Brian.

Things had gone fairly enough with him since then. He had had plenty of pleasure; a good deal of money, though not half enough; and very little work. And yet he felt that his life was a failure—and he was languid and old before his time. An idle life had exhausted him sooner than other men are exhausted by a hard-working career. He knew of men at the Bar who had lived hard and worked like galley slaves, and who yet retained all the fire and freshness of youth.

The guests had alighted by the time Brian reached the portico, and Vernon was in his sister's arms. She held him away from her, to show him to her husband—a thin fair-haired boy of eleven, in a gray highland kilt and jacket, like a gillie—fresh rosy cheeks, bright blue eyes.

'Hasn't he grown, Brian I and isn't he a darling?' she asked, hugging him again.

'He is a jolly little fellow, and he shall go out shooting with me as soon as there is anything to shoot.'

'We can fish,' said Vernon; 'there's plenty of trout; but you don't look strong enough to throw a fly. My rod's ever so heavy,' he added, with a flourish of his arm.

That weakness and languor which was obvious even to the boy, was still more apparent to Mr. and Mrs. Jardine. Bessie had not seen her cousin since Christmas, when he and Ida had spent a couple of days at Kingthorpe.

'Oh, Brian,' she exclaimed, 'have you been ill? Nobody told me anything.'

'I have had no illness worth telling about; but I have not been in vigorous health. London life takes too much out of a man.'

'Then you should not live in London. You ought to be out all day, roaming about on those pine-clad hills yonder—"hangers," I think you call them in these parts.'

'Yes,' answered Ida, 'we are very proud of our hangers; but Brian is not able to walk much just yet.'

Bessie was full of concern for Brian after this. She devoted herself to him in the interval before dinner, and left Ida free to roam about the garden with Vernie. She remembered how he had always been her favourite cousin. She had been angry with him for allowing that foolish practical joke of hers to take so fixed and fatal a form; but now she saw him wan and broken-looking she was prepared to forgive him everything.

'You must take care of yourself, Brian,' she said, when they were sitting side by side in one of the drawing-room windows, while Lady Palliser dispensed afternoon tea.

'I am taking care of myself; I am here for that purpose; but it is dreary work.'

'What! dreary work to live in this lovely place, and with such a sweet wife! But I know you never liked the country.'

'I frankly detest it.'

'And you miss the intellectual society to which you are accustomed in London—literary men—poets—playwrights. How delightful it must be to know the men who write books!'

'They are not always the pleasantest people in the world. I never cared much for your deep-thinker—the man who believes he is sent into the world to promulgate his own particular gospel. But the men who write for newspapers—critics, humourists—they are jolly fellows enough.'

'And you have glorious nights at your clubs, don't you? We had a friend of John's with us the other day who had met you at some literary club near the Strand. Do you ever sing comic songs now?'

'Sometimes, after midnight. One does not feel moved to that kind of thing till the small hours.'

'Ah!' sighed Bessie, 'our only idea of the small hours is getting up at four, to be ready for a five o'clock service. But I don't think the small hours agree with you, Brian. You are looking ten years older than when you were at Kingthorpe last summer.'

'Better wear out than rust out,' said Brian.

After dinner Vernie was eager for an exploration of the village, and Blackman's Hanger, the wild, pine-clad hill which sheltered the village from north-east winds and the salt breath of a distant sea.

Ida was ready to go with him, and the Jardines, always tremendous walkers, were equally anxious for a ramble; but Brian was much too languid for evening walks.

'I'll stay and smoke my smoke and talk to the Mater,' he said, always contriving to keep on pleasant terms with Lady Palliser; 'I hate bats, owls, twilight, and all the Gray's Elegy business.'

'But you stop such a time over your cigar,' said the widow. 'Last night I sat for an hour waiting tea for you. I like company over my cup of tea.'

'To-night you shall have the advantage of intellectual society,' said Brian. 'I will come and dribble out my impressions of the last Contemporary Review, which I dozed over between breakfast and luncheon.'

Brian stayed in the dining-room, dimly lighted by two hanging moderator lamps, while the soft shades of evening were just beginning to steal over the landscape outside. He had his favourite pointer for company—the last Sir Vernon's favourite, a magnificent beast, and of almost human intelligence, and he had plenty of wine in the decanters before him—choice port and claret, which had been set on the table in honour of the Jardines, who had hardly touched it. He had his cigarette case and his own thoughts, which were idle as the smoke-wreaths which went curling up to the ceiling, light as the ashes of his tobacco.

Out of doors the evening was divine. Vernon was delighted to be frisking about upon his patrimonial soil. The five years he had lived at Wimperfield seemed the greater half of his life—seemed, indeed, almost to have absorbed and blotted out his former history. He remembered very little of the shabbier circumstances of his babyhood, and had all the feelings of a boy born in the purple, to whom it was natural to be proprietor of the landscape, and to patronise the humbler dwellers on the soil.

Blackman's Hanger was a rugged ridge of hill above the village of Wimpertield. They lingered here to listen to the nightingales, and to admire the sunset; and then, when the glow above the western horizon was changing from golden to deepest crimson, they all went down into the village, where lights were beginning to glimmer faintly in some of the cottages.

Wimperfield was a snug primitive settlement, consisting of about five-and-twenty habitations, not one of which had been built within the last century, a general shop, a bakery, and three public-houses, a fact which shows that the brewing interests were well protected in this part of the world. One of village taverns, a dingy old low-browed cottage, with a pile of out-buildings which served for stable, piggery, or anything else, and about half an acre of garden, stood a little way aloof from the village, and on the skirt of the copse that clothed the sloping steep below Blackman's Hanger. There was a piece of waste land in front of this inn which served as the theatre for such itinerary exhibitors, Cheap Jacks, and Bohemians of all kinds who took quiet little Wimperfield in the course of their perambulations.

Here to-night in the dusk, there stood a covered cart of the pedler order and Vernon, who had been walking on in front with Mr. Jardine, rushed back to his sister to say that there was a Cheap Jack in front of the 'Royal Oak.'

'Oh, he has been there for a long time—ever since the beginning of the year,' said Ida; 'he is quite an institution.'

'What's an institution?' asked Vernon.

'Something fixed and lasting, don't you know. I believe he does no end of good among the villagers—doctoring them, and advising them, and helping them when they are ill or out of work; but he has a very churlish way with the gentry. Mr. Mason, our curate, says the man always reminds him of the Black Dwarf, except that he is not so ugly, nor deformed in any way.'

'Then he can't be like the Black Dwarf,' said Vernon, who knew almost all Sir Walter's novels, his sister having read Shakespeare, Scott, and Dickens to him for hours on end, during the long winter evenings at Wimperfield.

'Does he live in that cart always?' asked Bessie.

'Not always; he has taken possession of that dilapidated cottage upon the Hanger, which used to be occupied by Lord Pontifex's gamekeeper, and I believe he oscillates between the cart and the cottage. I have hardly seen him, for he is such a morose personage that he always hides when any of the gentry approach his hut.'

'Sulks in his tent, like Achilles,' said Mr. Jardine.

They were on the edge of the little patch of green by this time. The cart—painted a lively yellow, and with a little window on each side—stood in the middle of the green, backed by a clump of tall elms. There was a little crowd in front of the cart, and a man with a black beard and a red fez cap was discoursing in a deep, sonorous voice to the assembly—descanting, with seeming fluency, upon a picture which he held in his hand, his tawny, gipsy-like face only half shown by the flame of a flaring naphtha lamp, and his features rendered grotesque by the play of lights and shadows. The party from the park, however, had very little opportunity for seeing what manner of man he was; for no sooner did he catch sight of Mr. Jardine's tail hat over the circle of rustic heads, than he flung the engraving he had been exhibiting inside the cart, extinguished his lamp, wished his audience an abrupt good night, and shut the door of his dwelling upon the outside world.

The rustics gave him a round of applause before they dispersed. The women and children moved towards the village; the men and lads lingered a little on the green, irresolute, and then slowly gravitated to the 'Royal Oak,' touching their hats as they passed the gentlefolks. Mr. Jardine stopped one of the men midway.

'A curious customer that,' he said, looking towards the cart.

'Yes, sir, so he be; but rale right down clever.'

'Was he trying to sell you that picture?'

'No, sir; him don't often sell things to we; sometimes him do—knives, and comforters, and corderoy waistcoats, and flannel shirts, and such like, and oncommon good they be, too, and oncommon cheap. He wor givin' we a bit of a lecture loike, on lions and tigers, and ryenosed-horses, and such-loike beasts, and on they queer creatures wot lived before the flood. Lord! there was one beast with a long neck, and paddles for swimmin' with, as made we all ready to bust with laughin' when him showed us the pictur' of his skeleton.'

'Does he often give you a lecture of that kind?'

'Yes, sir; him do lecture we about all manner o' things—flowers, and ferns, and insects—kindness to hanimals—hinstinct in dogs—Lord knows what; but he have a way of makin' it all go down—much better nor parson; and ha allus gets a good laugh out o' we. And when there's any on us ill, or out o' work, then Cheap Jack be a real good friend, and very ready with the brass.'

'But can he afford to help you? is he so much better off than you are?'

'Well, sir, you see him haven't got no missus nor young 'uns, and I fancy him's got a few pounds saved in a old stocking. Him don't drink, nayther—not so much as a mug o' beer.'

'Is he a native of these parts?'

'Lor no, sir, turn's a furriner; why, his skin's as brown as a berry!'

'Is he a gipsy, do you think?'

'I ain't sure o' that, but him can talk their patter; and when the gipsies come this way him and them is as thick as thaves.'

'I see—half a gipsy and half a foreigner, and altogether a rover, I suppose. Well, I'm glad he gives you a little instruction and amusement now and then, and I hope he'll find the way to keep you out of the public-house,' said Mr. Jardine.

'Why, you see, parson, a man must have his mug o' beer; but it's summot to the good if he don't sit down over it and make it three or four mugs o' beer. There ain't been so much sitting down since Cheap Jack corned among us.'

'Isn't that a desolate hovel up on the hill where he lives sometimes?'

'It was oncommon deserlate till Cheap Jack took it in hand there ain't a owl in the wood that would have liked to live in it; but Jack hammers a bit of wood here, and a plank there, and a bit o' matting up agen the walla, and puta in a stove from Petersfield, and makes it as snug as a burd's nest. I've smoked many a pipe with him alongside that stove, and drank many a cup o' coffee. That's Jack's drink—not a drain o' beer or sperrits ever goes inside o' he.'

'That accounts for the money in the stocking,' said Bessie.

The rustic shook his head dubiously.

'Him ain't got no childer,' he said. 'It's them as makes the coin go.'

'I wish he'd come out again and go on lecturing,' exclaimed Vernon, with an aggrieved air. 'I do so want to hear him.'

'Oh, but him won't show the end of his nose now you're here, Sir Vernon,' answered the rustic. 'Him can't abide gentlefolks. Parson ha' tried his hardest to get round he, but Jack shuts the door in parson's face. Him don't want nothing of 'em, and don't want their company.'

'A natural corollary,' said Mr. Jardine, laughing. 'But I'm afraid your friend is a desperate radical.'

'Well, I don't know, sir. Him don't speak hard agen the Queen; him don't want to do away with soldiers and sailors, like grocer down street; and though Jack don't go to church, Jack reads his Bible, and holds by his Bible. I fancy as some rich gentleman must ha' done he a great injury once upon a time, and that it turned he agen the breed.'

'Very like the Black Dwarf,' said Mr. Jardine to Ida. 'I daresay I shall hear of your playing the part of Isabella Vere, and interviewing this half-savage, half-Christian recluse. But do you mean to tell me that he has lived here six months, within a mile and a half of your house, and you have never seen him?'

'It is a fact. You had a specimen of his manners just now. Whenever I have passed his cottage he has shut the door or the window in my face, if he happened to be standing at either. To Mr. Mason he has been absolutely rude.'

'It isn't every man who appreciates the privilege of being interviewed by a parson,' said John Jardine.

'Oh, Jack,' cried Bessie! 'all your people love to see you at their doors.'

'Yes, they are a sociable lot. That comes from living on Salisbury Plain, far from the madding crowd.'

After this they went home, watching the golden summer moon rise above the pine-clad Hanger as they went. They found Lady Palliser nodding in her arm-chair in front of the low tea table, the teapot still intact. It was ten o'clock, but Brian had not come in to talk to her after her tea. John Jardine went in quest of him, and found him in the dining-room, mooning over his wine. He murmured a vague excuse about feeling too tired to talk to anybody, and then bade Mr. Jardine good night, and vent up to his room; not to sleep, but to fling the window wide open, and lean his elbows on the sill, and stare out into the exquisite summer night, the leafy wood, the moon-kissed crest of the hill, in a half-dreamy, half-hysterical state of mind.

'I begin to think I am like Swift, and shall go first at top,' he said to himself; 'this quiet life is killing; and yet if I was to go back I should be worse. The nights in Elm Court, when I went home alone after a glorious evening, were devilish.



CHAPTER XXV.

'MY SEED WAS YOUTH, MY CROP WAS ENDLESS CAKE.'

Mr. and Mrs. Jardine went back to their Wiltshire parsonage after a two days' visit, and Ida had her boy all to herself. His education, from a classical and mathematical point of view, had only begun when he went to John Jardine; but the foundations of education, the development of thought and imagination had begun long ago at Les Fontaines, when Ida and he took their long wintry rambles together, and the girl talked to the child of all things in heaven and earth, imparting in the easiest way much of that information which she had acquired as pupil and teacher in the educational mill at Mauleverer. Beyond learning to read and to write, and the most elementary forms of arithmetic, this oral instruction was all the education which Vernie had received up to the time of his leaving home; but then what a large range of information can be imparted by an intelligent woman who reads a great deal, and who reads with the student's deep love of knowledge. Vernon, without being a prodigy, like the infant Goethe, or that wondrous product of paternal scholarship, John Stuart Mill, knew more about things in general, from the course of the planets to the constitution of the glowworms in the hedges, than many full-grown undergraduates. Flowers and ferns, shells and minerals, had been his playthings. His sister had taught him the nature and attributes of all the animals and birds he loved, or slaughtered; and then his imagination had been fed upon Shakespeare and Scott, Dickens and Goldsmith. He had derived his first vivid impressions of history from Shakespeare and Scott, his knowledge of a wide range of life outside his own home from Dickens; and with that knowledge a quickened sympathy with the joys and sorrows of the humbler classes. All that Vernon knew of the struggles of the lower middle classes was derived from that great panorama of life which Charles Dickens painted for us. His own small experiences of village life had taught the boy very little; for he had only seen the rustic from that outside and smoothly varnished aspect which the tiller of the soil presents to the squire.

And now the boy had come home, after an absence of some months, and he wanted to absorb Ida from morning till night She must walk and drive with him, read to him, play with him, be interested in his dogs, his guns, his fishing-tackle, every detail of his busy young life.

Ida was never happier than when thus occupied. The boy seemed to her the incarnate spirit of youth, and joy, and hope, and all those bright impulses which wear out in ourselves at so early a stage of life's journey that we are very glad to taste them vicariously in the unspoiled ardour of childhood. To be with Vernon was to escape from the narrowness of her own fettered life, to forget its disappointments, its disillusions, its one deep incurable regret—regret for her own mad folly, which had bartered freedom for a sordid hope—folly as mad as Esau's when he sold his birthright—regret for him who loved her too late.

Unhappily, even her unselfish delight in her brother's society was not unalloyed with pain. She never forgot her duty as a wife, nor failed in any act of attention to her husband. And yet Brian's morbid jealousy of the boy was but too evident. He rarely spoke of Vernon without a sneer, when he and his wife were alone; although he was careful not to say anything uncivil before Lady Palliser. He scoffed at the little lad's position, as if it had been an offence in the child himself—called him the microscopic baronet, the baby thane, laughed with bitterest laughter at any little touch of arrogance which clouded the natural sweetness of the boy's character.

Ida endured this morbid jealousy with a patience that was almost heroic. She saw that her husband was ill, and that this mysterious malady of his, which had at first seemed to her sheer hypochondriasis, was only too real. It was a malady which affected the mind more than the body. Brian's character had undergone a complete change since his illness. He who had been of old so easy-tempered, so lively, was now melancholy and irritable, at times garrulous to a degree that was painful to his hearers, keenly resentful of trifles, always fancying himself neglected or slighted.

In vain did Lady Palliser and Ida urge the necessity of medical advice. Brian obstinately refused to see the local apothecary; and, as there was nothing tangible in his illness and he was able to be about all day, to go out of doors, and do pretty much as he pleased, there was no excuse for calling in the doctor without his permission.

'If I felt that I wanted advice, I would go up to town and see Mallison,' he said; 'but there is nothing amiss with me, except a disappointed life. I begin to feel that I am a failure. Other fellows of my age have passed me in the race; and it is hard at nine-and-twenty to feel oneself beaten.'

'But, Brian,' his wife answered gently, 'don't you think if your contemporaries have outstripped you, it is because they have tried harder than you? Remember what St. Paul says about the one who obtaineth the prize.'

'For Heaven's sake, don't preach!' cried Brian, irritably. I tell you I tried hard enough; tried—yes, slaved night after night; scribbling articles for those infernal magazines, to get my manuscript returned with thanks after nearly a twelve-month's detention; spelling over dry-as-dust briefs for a guinea fee, in order to post up some bloated Queen's Counsel, who treated me as if I were dirt, and pretended not to know my name. I tell you, Ida, the Bar is a sickening profession; literature is worse; all the professions are played out, Europe is overcrowded with educated men; they swarm like aphides in a hot summer—your single fly the progenitor of a quintillion of living creatures. When I see the men in their wigs and gowns, hurrying up and down the Temple courts, swarming on all the staircases, choking up the doors of the law-courts, they remind me of the busy, hungry creatures on an ant-heap.

"Every door is barred with gold, and opens but to golden keys, Every gate is thronged with suitors, all the markets overflow."

He was walking up and down the room in an agitated way, angry, excited beyond the occasion.

'But in your case, Brian, it seems to me that the path has been made so smooth. With such an independence as ours, it must be so easy to get on.'

'I thank you for reminding me how much I owe your father,' sneered her husband.

'I was not thinking especially of my father. You owe as much to your cousin.'

'Yes, my cousin has been vastly generous—damnably generous; but if I had married any other woman, do you suppose he would have done as much? Of course, I know it was for your sake he gave me that income. Was he ever so liberal before, do you think? No, he dribbled out an occasional hundred or two when I was up a tree, but nothing more. It was for your sake his purse-strings relaxed.'

'You have no right to say that,' Ida answered indignantly. 'I have a right to say what I think to my wife. I have not forgotten what you said to me at the hotel that day. You told me to my face that you loved another man. Do you think I was such a dullard as not to guess that man's name? You fell in love with Wendover of the Abbey, before you saw him; and your innocent love for the shadow grew into guilty love for the man, after you were my wife. I knew all about it; but I was not going to let you give me the slip. I have known all along that I am nothing to you, that you despise me, detest me, perhaps; and that knowledge has made me what I am—a broken, blighted man, a wreck, at nine-and-twenty.'

'Oh, Brian, this is too cruel! Have I ever failed in my duty to you?'

'Damn duty!' cried Brian, savagely. 'I wanted your love, not your duty—love such as I thought you gave me in those autumn days by the river. Great God, how happy I was in those days! I hadn't a sixpence; I was up to my eyes in debt; but I thought you loved me, and that we were going to be happy in our garret till good fortune tumbled down the chimney.'

'I don't think a garret would have suited you long, Brian, had I been ever so devoted. You are too much of a sybarite.'

'I should have been happy with you. I should have thought myself in Eden. Well, fate never meant me to be happy. I am a wretch, judged before I was born, foredoomed to misery in this world and the next. Yes, I begin to think Calvin was right—there are some creatures predestined to damnation. Before ever the stars spun into their places, when all the suns and moons and planets were rings of fiery gas revolving in space, my doom was already written in the book of fate.

It had been a common thing of late for Brian to ramble on in such despondent strains as these, half angry, half despairing. Ida was supremely patient with him, sometimes soothing him, sometimes arguing with him; yet hardly knowing how much of his talk arose from real gloom of mind, or how much was sheer rhodomontade. The hours which she spent with him were intensely painful, and as the days went by he became more and more exacting, more and more resentful of her absence, and grudgingly jealous of Vernon.

Another cause for pain was Ida's growing conviction that her husband's frequent doses of soda and brandy, and the champagne which he drank at dinner, and the port or Burgundy which he took after dinner, had a great deal to do with his altered mental condition. Painful as it was to speak of such a thing, she took courage one morning, and told him plainly that she believed he was suffering from, the effect of habitual—almost unconscious—intemperance.

'You are taking soda and brandy all day long. You have brandy in your bedroom at night, Brian,' she said. 'I am sure you can have no idea how much you take in the course of the twenty-four hours.'

'I have no idea that I am a drunkard, if that's what you mean,' he answered, white with rage; and then he burst into a torrent of abuse—such language as she had never heard from mortal lips until that hour, and his wife fled, shuddering and terror-stricken, from the room.

When next they met he cowed before her with a craven air, and made no allusion to this scene. But after this she observed that he pretended to drink less, and had a crafty way of getting his glass refilled at dinner. He no longer kept a brandy bottle on the table beside his bed, as he had done heretofore, on the pretence that a little weak brandy and water helped him to sleep, nor did the soda-water bottles and spirit decanter adorn one of the tables in his study; but more than once his wife met him creeping to the dining-room with a stealthy air to supply himself at the sideboard, and when she went into his room at night to see if he slept, his fevered breath reeked of brandy. It seemed to her later, as time went on, that even his garments exhaled spirituous odours.

It was not long after this that he began to talk mysteriously of some trouble which menaced him, which gradually took the shape of a criminal prosecution overhanging him. He had been falsely accused of some awful crime—some nameless, unspeakable offence—hateful as the gates of hell. He was innocent, but his enemies were legion; and at any moment a detective might be sent to Wimperfield to arrest him. One evening, in the summer twilight after dinner, he took it into his head that one of the footmen—a man whose face ought to have been thoroughly familiar to him—was a detective in disguise. He flew at the worthy young fellow in a furious rage, and the butler had hard work to prevent his doing poor John Thomas a mischief. But when the lamps were brought in, Brian perceived his mistake, and apologised to the footman for his violence.

'You don't know what devils those detectives are,' he said, deprecatingly; 'they can make themselves look like anybody. And if they once get hold of me, the case will be tried at Westminster Hall. It will take weeks to try, and all the Bar will be engaged; and then it will have to go to the House of Lords. There has not been such a case within the last century. All Europe will ring with it.'

'Dear Brian, I am sure this is a delusion of yours,' said Ida, trying to soothe him; 'you cannot have done anything so wicked.'

'Done! no, I am as innocent as a baby; but the whole Bar—the Bench too—is in league against me. They'll make out their case, depend upon it. "It's a case for a jury;" that's what the Lord Chancellor said when I told him about it.'

After this there could be no doubt that there was actual mental disturbance. Lady Palliser sent for the local medical man, who had very little difficulty in diagnosing the case. Sleeplessness, restless nights, tossing from side to side, an utter inability to keep still, horrible dreams, impaired vision, clouds floating before the eyes,—these symptoms Mr. Fosbroke heard from the wife. The patient himself was obstinately silent about his sensations, declared that there was nothing the matter with him, and let the doctor know he considered his visit an impertinent intrusion.

'I had a touch of brain fever early in the year,' he said. 'I had the best advice in London during my illness, and afterwards. I know exactly how to treat myself. The symptoms which alarm my wife are nothing but the natural reaction after a severe shock to the nervous system. The tonics I am taking will soon pull me up again; but as I am now under a special treatment by Dr. Mallison, of Harley Street, you will under, stand that I don't care about further advice.'

'Undoubtedly,' replied the medical man, meekly. 'But I believe it would be a satisfaction to Lady Palliser and to Mrs. Wendover both if you would do me the honour to consult me, and allow me to look after you while you are here, I could place myself under Dr. Mallison's instructions, if you like.'

'No, there is no necessity. I tell you I know exactly what is amiss, and how to manage my own health.'

Mr. Fosbroke argued the point, but in vain. Brian would not even allow him to feel his pulse. But the doctor knew very well what was amiss, and told Mrs. Wendover, with delicate circumlocution, that her husband was suffering from an imprudent use of stimulants for some time past.

'That is what I feared,' said Ida; but it is too dreadful. It is the very last thing I expected. I thought nobody drank nowadays.'

'Very few people get drunk, my dear Mrs. Wendover,' replied the doctor; 'but, unhappily, though there is very little drunkenness, there is a great deal of what is called "pegging"—an intermittent kind of tippling which goes on all day long, beginning very early and ending very late. A man, whose occupation in life is headwork, begins to think he wants a stimulant—begins by having his brandy and soda at twelve o'clock perhaps; then finds he can't get on without it after eleven; then takes it before breakfast—in lieu of breakfast; and goes on with brandy and soda at intervals till dinner-time. At dinner he has no appetite, tries to create one with a bottle of dry champagne, eats very little, but dines on the champagne, feels an unaccountable depression of spirits later on in the evening, and takes more brandy, without soda this time; and so on, and so on; till, after a period of sleeplessness, he begins to have ugly dreams, then to see waking visions, hear imaginary voices, stumble upon the edge of an imaginary precipice. If he is an elderly man he gets shaky in the lower limbs, then his hands become habitually tremulous, especially in the early morning, when he is like a figure hung on wires—and so on, and so on; and unless he pulls himself up by a great moral effort, the chances are that he will have a sharp attack of delirium tremens.'

'You do not fear such an attack for my husband?

'Mr. Wendover is a young man, but he has evidently abused his constitution; there is no knowing what may happen if you don't take care of him. Alcohol is a cumulative poison, and that "pegging" I have told you of is diabolical. Nature throws off an over-dose of alcohol, but the daily, hourly dose eats into the system.'

'How am I to take care of him?' asked Ida, despairingly.

'You must keep wine and spirits away from him, except in extreme moderation.'

'What! speak to the butler? Tell him that my husband is a drunkard?'

'You need not go quite so far as that, but it will be necessary to cut off the supplies somehow, and to substitute a nourishing diet for stimulants.'

'Yes, if he could eat: but he has no appetite—he eats hardly anything.'

'Unhappily, that is one of the symptoms of his disease, and the most difficult to overcome. But you must do your utmost to make him eat, and to prevent his getting brandy. A little light claret or Rhine wine may be allowed; nothing more. I will send you a sedative which you can give him at bedtime.'

'I do not think he will take anything of that kind. He has set his face against accepting your advice.'

'I believe if you were to take a decided tone, he would succumb; if not, you had better ask Dr. Mallison to come down and see him. It will be a costly visit, and money thrown away, as the case is perfectly simple; but I dare say you will not mind that.'

'I should mind nothing if he could be cured. It is horrible to see such ruin of body and mind in one so young,' Ida answered sadly.

'Well, you must see what influence you can exercise over him for his own good. I will call every other day, and hear how you are getting on with him; and if you fail, we must summon Dr. Mallison.'

Ida spoke to the butler. It was a hard thing to do, and it seemed to her a kind of treachery against her husband—as if she were inflicting everlasting disgrace upon him in secret, like a midnight assassin, who stabs his victim in the back. Her voice trembled, and her face was deadly pale as she spoke to the butler, an old servant who had been in the household from his boyhood.

'Rogers, I want you to be a little more careful in your arrangements about wine and spirits,' she began, falteringly. 'Mr. Wendover is in a low state of health—suffering from a nervous complaint, in fact; and we fear that he is taking too much brandy. Will you kindly try to prevent it?'

'It will be very difficult, ma'am. Mr. Wendover gives his orders, and he expects to be obeyed.'

'But upon this one point you must not obey him. You can say that you have Lady Palliser's orders that no more brandy is to be brought up from the cellar. I shall tell her that I have told you this.'

'Yes, ma'am. I was afraid too much brandy was being drunk, but it was not my place to mention it,' said Rogers, politely.

He would have said the same, perhaps, had the house been on fire.

Neither sherry nor champagne was served at dinner that day, and the claret which was offered Mr. Wendover was of a very thin quality.

'I'll take champagne,' he said to the butler.

'There is not any upstairs, sir.'

Brian turned angrily upon the man, and Ida, pale but resolute, came to the rescue.

'We do not drink champagne at dinner when we are alone, Brian,' she said; 'and I don't think it is quite fair to Vernie's cellars that Moet should be served every day because you are here.

'Vernon's cellars! Ah, I forgot that we are all here on sufferance, and, that I am drinking Vernon's wine.'

'You may have as much of my champagne as you like,' said Vernie, getting very red; 'but I don't think it does you any good, for you are always so cross afterwards.'

Brian looked at the boy with a savage gleam in his eyes, and muttered something, but made no audible reply.

'I'll go back to my chambers to-morrow,' he said: 'I can have a bottle of Moet there without being under an obligation to anybody. Give me some brandy and soda,' he said to the butler; 'I can't drink this verjuice.'

'There is no brandy, sir.'

'Oh! Sir Vernon's cognac is to be kept sacred, too. I congratulate you, Vernon, upon having two such economical guardians. Your minority will be a period of considerable saving.'

He made no further remonstrance, drank neither claret nor hock, ate hardly anything, but sat through the dinner in sullen silence, and went off to his room directly Lady Palliser had said grace, leaving the others to take their strawberries and cream alone. Vernon was what Kogers the butler called 'a mark on' strawberries and cream.

When Vernie had finished his strawberries, Ida went to her husband's study; but the door was locked, and when she asked to be admitted Brian refused.

'I'd rather be alone, thank you,' he answered, curtly. 'I have an article to write for one of the legal papers. You can amuse yourself with the baronet. I know you are always glad to be free.'

'Come for a stroll in the park, Brian,' she pleaded gently, pitying him with all her heart, more tenderly inclined to him in his decay and degradation than she had been in his prime of manhood, before these fatal habits began. 'Do come with us, dear. We won't walk further than you like; it's a lovely evening.'

'I hate a summer twilight,' returned Brian; 'it always gives me the horrors—a creepy time, when all sorts of loathsome creatures are abroad—bats, and owls, and stag-beetles, cockchafers, and other abominations. Can't you let me alone?' he went on, angrily. 'I tell you I have work to do.'

Ida left him upon this, without a word. What was she to do? This was her first experience of a mind diseased, and it seemed to her worse than any trouble that had ever touched her before. She had stood beside her father's death-bed, and the hair of her flesh had stood up at the awful moment of dissolution, when it was as if verily a spirit had passed before her face, calling her beloved from the known to the unknown. Yet in the awe and horror of death there had been holiness and comfort, a whisper of hope leading her thoughts to higher regions, a promise that this pitiful, inexplicable parting was not the end. This dissolution in the living man, this palpable progress of degradation, visible day by day and hour by hour, was worse than death. It meant the decay and min of a mind, the wreck of an immortal soul. What place could there be in heaven for the drunkard, who had dribbled away his reason, his power to discriminate between right and wrong, by perpetual doses of brandy? what could be pleaded in extenuation of this gradual and deliberate suicide?

Ida went slowly downstairs, her soul steeped in gloom, seeing no ray of light on the horizon; for with the most earnest desire to save her erring husband, she felt herself powerless to help him against himself. If he were denied the things he cared for at Wimperfield, there was little doubt that he would go back to his solitary chambers, where he was his own master. He was not so ill either in mind or body as to justify her in using actual restraint.

At the moment she thought of telegraphing for Aunt Betsy, whose firm manly mind might offer valuable aid in such a crisis: but she shrank from the idea of exposing her husband's degradation even to his aunt. She did not want the family at Kingthorpe to know how low he had fallen. Mr. and Mrs. Jardine had been impressed by the change in him, and Bessie had harped upon his lost good looks, habitual irritability, and deteriorated manners; but neither had hinted at an inkling of the cause; and Ida hoped the hideous truth had been unsuspected by either. She decided, therefore, during those few minutes of meditation which she spent in the portico waiting for Vernon, that she would rely on her own intelligence, and upon professional aid rather than upon any family intervention. If she could, by her own strong hand, with the help of the London physician, lead her husband's footsteps out of this Tophet into which he had sunk himself, she would spare no trouble, withhold no sacrifice, to effect his rescue, and she and her stepmother, the kindliest of women, would keep the secret between them.

Vernon came bounding out of the hall, eager for the accustomed evening ramble. This evening walk with the boy had been Ida's happiest time of late, perhaps the only portion of her day in which she had enjoyed the sense of freedom from ever present anxiety, in which she had put away troubled thought. She had gone back to her duty meekly and resignedly when this time of respite was over, but with a sense of unspeakable woe. Wimperfield with its lighted windows, stone walls, and classic portico, had seemed to her only as a prison-house, a whited sepulchre, fair without and loathsome within.

Vernie was full of curiosity about that little scene at the dinner table. The boy had that quick perception of the minds and acts of others which is generally developed in a child who spends the greater part of his life with grown-up people; and he had been quite as conscious as his elders of the unpleasantness of the scene.

'I hope Brian doesn't think I'm stingy about the wine,' he said; 'he might drink it all for anything I should care. I don't want it.'

'I know, darling; but you were quite right in what you said at dinner. The wine does Brian harm, and that's why mamma and I don't want him to take any.'

'Has it always done him harm?' asked Vernon.

'Always; that is, lately.'

'Then why did you let him take so much—a whole bottle, sometimes two bottles—all to himself at dinner? I heard Rogers tell Mrs. Moggs about it.'

'Rogers ought not to have given him so much.'

'Oh! but Rogers said it wasn't his place to make remarks, only he was very sorry for poor Mrs. Wendover—that's you, you know—not Mrs. Wendover at Kingthorpe.'

'Oh, Vernie, you were not listening?'

'Of course not. I wasn't listening on purpose; but I was in the lobby outside the housekeeper's room, waiting for some grease for my shooting boots. I always grease them myself, you know, for nobody else does it properly; and Rogers said the brandy Mr. Wendover had drunk in three weeks would make Mrs. Moggs' hair stand on end; but it couldn't,—could it?—when she wears a front. A front couldn't stand on end,' said Vernon, exploding at his own small joke, which, like most of the witticisms of childhood, was founded on the physical deficiencies of age.

'Look, Vernie! there is going to be a lovely sunset,' said Ida, anxious to change the conversation.

But Vernon's inquiring mind was not satisfied.

'Is it wicked to drink champagne and brandy?' he asked.

'Yes, dear, it is wicked to take anything which we know will do us harm. It would be wicked to take poison; and brandy is a kind of poison.'

'Except for poor people, when they are ill; they always come to the vicarage for brandy when they are ill, and Mrs. Jardine gives them a little.'

'Brandy is a medicine sometimes, but it is a poison if anyone takes too much of it—a poison that ruins body and soul. I hope Brian will not take any more; but we mustn't talk about it, darling, above all to strangers.'

'No, I shouldn't talk of it to anybody but you, because I like Brian. He used to go fishing with me, and to be so good-natured, and to tell me funny stories, and do imitations of actors for me; but now he's so cross. Is that the brandy?'

'I'm afraid it is.'

'Then I hate brandy.'

They were in the park by this time, wandering in the wildest part of the ground, where the bracken grew breast high in great sweeps of feathery green. They came to a spot on the edge of a hill where three or four noble old elms had been felled, and where a couple of men in smock frocks were sawing coffin boards.

'What are those broad planks wanted for?' the boy asked; 'and why do you make them so short?'

'They're not uncommon short, Sir Vernon,' the man answered, touching his hat; 'the shortest on 'em is six foot. Them be for coffins, Sir Vernon.'

'How horrid! I hope they won't be wanted for ages,' said the boy.

'Not much chance o' that, sir; there's allus summun a wantin' a weskit o' this make,' answered the man, with a grin, as Vernon and Ida went on, uncomfortably impressed by the idea of those two men sawing their coffin-boards in the calm, bright evening, with every articulation of the branching fern standing sharply out against the yellow light, as on the margin of a golden sea.

They rambled on, and presently Ida was repeating passages from those Shakespearian plays which had formed Vernon's first introduction to English history, and of which he had never tired. Ida knew all the great speeches, and indeed a good many of the more famous scenes, by heart, and Vernon liked to hear them over and over again, alternately detesting the Lancastrians and pitying the Yorkists, or hating York and compassionating Lancaster, as the fortunes of war wavered. And then there was Richard the Second, more tenderly touched by Shakespeare than by Hume or Hallam; and Richard the Third, whose iniquities were made respectable by a kind of diabolical thoroughness; and that feebler villain John. Vernon was as familiar with them as if they had been flesh and blood acquaintances.

'Cheap Jack knows Shakespeare as well as you do,' said Vernon presently, when they had left the park by a wooden gate that opened into a patch of common land, which lay between the Wimperfield fence and Blackman's Hanger.

'Who is Cheap Jack?' asked Ida absently.

'The man you saw the night I came home, when Mr. Jardine was with us. Don't you remember?'

'The man in the cart—the showman? Yes, I know; but I did not see him.'

'No; he hates the gentry, and women, too, I think. But he likes Shakespeare.'

'I shouldn't have thought he would have known anything about Shakespeare.'

'Oh, but he does—better than you even. When he was mending my fishing-rod—you remember, don't you?—I told you how clever he was at fishing-rods.'