III.—The Last Eighteen Shillings

Charles's luck seemed certainly to have deserted him at last. He had got to spend his Christmas with eighteen shillings and a crippled left arm, and had nothing left to trust to but his little friend, the cornet, who had come home invalided, and was living with his mother in Hyde Park Gardens.

The cornet welcomed him with both hands, and, hearing from Charles of his plight, said, "Now, I know you are a gentleman, and I may offend you, but, if you are utterly hard up, take service with me. There!"

"I will do so with the deepest gratitude," said Charles. "But I cannot ride, I fear. My left arm is gone."

"Pish! Ride with your right. It's a bargain."

Then Charles went upstairs, and was introduced to the cornet's mother.

He accepted his new position with dull carelessness. Life was getting very worthless. And all this time, had he but known it, money and a home, and sweet little Mary Corby, who had loved him ever since he was a boy, were waiting for him.

There was also a remarkable advertisement which appeared in the "Times" for a considerable period, and was never seen by Charles. The advertisement was inserted by old Lady Ascot, and offered one hundred guineas to any person who could discover the register of marriage between Peter Ravenshoe, Esq., of Ravenshoe, in the county of Devon, and Maria Dawson, supposed to have been solemnised about 1778.

How was Charles to know that Cuthbert Ravenshoe was dead; that William, now master of Ravenshoe, still hoped for his foster-brother's life, and that old Lady Ascot was doing all she could to atone for a mistake? Charles, in fact, was still very weak and ill, and served his friend the cornet in a poor way. He had not recovered the shock of his fever and delirium in the Crimea, and both nerve and health were gone.

Nobody could be more kind and affectionate than the cornet and his deaf mother. They guessed that he was "somebody," and that things were wrong with him; and the cornet once or twice invited his confidence; but he was too young, and Charles had not the energy to tell him anything.

And life was getting very, very weary business for Charles. By day, riding had become a terror, and at night he got no rest. And his mind began to dwell too much on the bridges over the Thames, and on the water lapping and swirling about the piers.

Then, as it happened, a little shoeblack with whom Charles had struck up a friendship, falling sick in a foul court in South London, Charles must needs go and sit with him. The child died in his arms, and a dull terror came on Charles when he thought of his homeward journey. A scripture reader who had been in the room came towards him and laid his hand upon his shoulder. Charles turned from the dead child, and looked up into the face of John Marston, the best of his old Oxford friends.

They passed out of the house together, Charles clinging tight to John Marston's arms. When they got to Marston's lodgings, Charles sat down by the fire, and said quietly, "John, you have saved me! I should never have got home this night."

But John Marston, by finding Charles, had dashed his dearest hopes to the ground. He had always loved Mary Corby from his first visit to Ravenshoe, and Mary loved Charles, who had loved Adelaide, who had married Lord Welter. Marston thought there was just a chance for him, and now that chance was gone. How did he behave, knowing that?

He put his hand on Charles's shoulder and said, "Charles—Charles, my dear old boy, look up! Think of Mary. She has been wooed by more than one, but I think her heart is yours yet."

"John," said Charles, "that is what has made me hide from you all like this. I know that she loved me above all men; and partly that she should forget a penniless and disgraced man like myself, and partly from a silly pride, I have spent all my cunning on losing myself, hoping that you would believe me dead."

"We have hunted you hard, Charles. You do not know, I suppose, that you are a rich man, and undoubtedly heir of Ravenshoe, though one link is still wanting."

"What do you mean?"

"There is no reasonable doubt, although we cannot prove it, that your grandfather Peter was married previously to his marriage with Lady Alicia Staunton, that your father James was the real Ravenshoe, while poor Cuthbert and William—"

"Cuthbert! I will hide again. I will never displace Cuthbert, mind you."

"Cuthbert is dead. He was drowned bathing last August."

Charles broke down, and cried like a child. When he was quiet, he asked after William.

"He is very well, as he deserves to be. He gave up everything to hunt you through the world and bring you back. Now, my dear old boy, do satisfy my curiosity. What regiment did you enlist in?"

"In the 140th."

He paused, hid his face in his hands, and then his speech became rapid and incoherent.

"At Devna we got wood-pigeons, and I rode the Roucan-nosed bay, and he carried me through it capitally. I ask your pardon, sir, but I am only a poor discharged trooper. I would not beg, sir, if I could help it, but pain and hunger are hard things to bear, sir!"

"Charles—Charles! Don't you know me?"

"That is my name, sir. That is what they used to call me. I am no common beggar, sir. I was a gentleman once, sir, and rode a-horseback. I was in the light cavalry charge at Balaclava. An angry business. They shouldn't get good fellows to fight together like that—"

The next morning, old Lady Ascot, William, Mary, and John Marston were round his bed listening to his half-uttered, delirious babble. The anxious question was put to the greatest of the doctors present. "My dear Dr. B——, will he die?"

"Well, yes," said the doctor. "I would sooner say 'Yes' than 'No'—the chances are so heavy against him. You must really prepare for the worst."

IV.—A Life-Long Shadow

Of course, he did not die—I need not tell you that. The doctors pulled him through. And when he was better the doctors removed the splinters of bone from his arm. He did not talk much in this happy quiet time. William and Lady Ascot were with him all day. William, dear fellow, used to sit on a footstool and read the "Times" to him.

Lord Welter (now Lord Ascot, on the death of his father) came to see Charles one day, and something he said made Charles ask if Adelaide was dead.

"Tell me something," said Lord Ascot. "Have you any love left for her yet?"

"Not one spark," said Charles. "If I ever am a man again, I shall ask Mary Corby to marry me. I ought to have done so sooner, perhaps. But I love your wife, Welter, in a way; and I should grieve at her death, for I loved her once."

"The truth is very horrible. We went out hunting together, and I was getting the gate open for her, when her devil of a horse rushed it, and down they came on it together. And she broke her back, and the doctor says she may live till seventy, but that she will never move from where she lies—and just as I was getting to love her so dearly—"

That same afternoon Charles asked William to get Mary to come and see him, and William straightway departed, and found Mary. And later in the day Miss Mary Corby announced that she and Charles were engaged to be married.

William was still master of Ravenshoe, but he was convinced that the first marriage of his grandfather would be proved, and Charles reinstated.

"Remember, Charles, I am not spending the revenues of Ravenshoe," he said. "They are yours. I know it. I am spending about L400 a year. When our grandfather's marriage is proved, you will provide for me and my wife, I know that. Be quiet."

William had long been engaged, from the time he had been Charles's servant, to a fisherman's daughter, Jane Evans, and the change in his fortunes made no difference in the matter. She was only a fisherman's daughter, but she was wonderfully beautiful, and gentle, and good.

The weddings took place at St. Peter's, Eaton Square. Mary and Charles were not a handsome couple. The enthusiasm of the population was reserved for William and Jane Evans, who certainly were.

Father Mackworth, dying after a stroke of paralysis, told us the date and place of Peter Ravenshoe's first marriage—Finchampstead, Berks, 1778. He had known the truth, but had been anxious to keep Ravenshoe in Catholic hands.

"You used to irritate and insult me, sir," he said, turning to Charles, "and I was not so near death then as now. If you can forgive me, in God's name, say so!"

Charles went over to him, and put his arm round him.

"Forgive you!" he said. "Dear Mackworth, can you forgive me?"

The register was found, and the lawyers were soon busy. One document may be noted, a rent charge on Ravenshoe of two thousand a year in favour of William Ravenshoe.

* * * * *

Well, Charles and William are both happily married now, and I saw Charles last summer playing with his eldest boy. But there was a cloud on his face, for the memory of those few terrible months has cast its shadow upon him, and the shadow will lie, I fancy, upon that forehead until the forehead is smoothed in the sleep of death.

THE END