His friend sauntered away, and we went on talking. My heart longed to rest with his for a moment on the past.

'I had a dreary time of it after you left, Charley,' I said.

'Not so dreary as I had, Wilfrid, I am certain. You had at least the mountains to comfort you. Anywhere is better than at home, with a meal of Bible oil and vinegar twice a day for certain, and a wine-glassful of it now and then in between. Damnation's better than a spoony heaven. To be away from home is heaven enough for me.'

'But your mother, Charley!' I ventured to say.

'My mother is an angel. I could almost be good for her sake. But I never could, I never can get near her. My father reads every letter she writes before it comes to me—I know that by the style of it; and I'm equally certain he reads every letter of mine before it reaches her.'

'Is your sister at home?'

'No. She's at school at Clapham—being sand-papered into a saint, I suppose.'

His mouth twitched and quivered. He was not pleased with himself for talking as he did.

'Your father means it for the best,' I said.

'I know that. He means his best. If I thought it was the best, I should cut my throat and have done with it.'

'But, Charley, couldn't we do something to find out, after all?'

'Find out what, Wilfrid?'

'The best thing, you know; what we are here for.'

'I'm sick of it all, Wilfrid. I've tried till I am sick of it. If you should find out anything, you can let me know. I am busy trying not to think. I find that quite enough. If I were to think, I should go mad.'

'Oh, Charley! I can't bear to hear you talk like that,' I exclaimed; but there was a glitter in his eye which I did not like, and which made me anxious to change the subject.—'Don't you like being here?' I asked, in sore want of something to say.

'Yes, well enough,' he replied. 'But I don't see what's to come of it, for I can't work. Even if my father were a millionnaire, I couldn't go on living on him. The sooner that is over, the better!'

He was looking down, and gnawing at that tremulous upper lip. I felt miserable.

'I wish we were at the same college, Charley!' I said.

'It's better as it is,' he rejoined. 'I should do you no good. You go in for reading, I suppose?'

'Well, I do. I mean my uncle to have the worth of his money.'

Charley looked no less miserable than I felt. I saw that his conscience was speaking, and I knew he was the last in the world to succeed in excusing himself. But I understood him better than he understood himself, and believed that his idleness arose from the old unrest, the weariness of that never satisfied questioning which the least attempt at thought was sure to awaken. Once invaded by a question, Charley must answer it, or fail and fall into a stupor. Not an ode of Horace could he read without finding himself plunged into metaphysics. Enamoured of repose above all things, he was from every side stung to inquiry which seldom indeed afforded what seemed solution. Hence, in part at least, it came that he had begun to study not merely how to avoid awakening the Sphinx, but by what opiates to keep her stretched supine with her lovely woman face betwixt her fierce lion-paws. This also, no doubt, had a share in his becoming the associate of Geoffrey Brotherton, from whose company, if he had been at peace with himself, he would have recoiled upon the slightest acquaintance. I am at some loss to imagine what could have made Geoffrey take such a liking to Charley; but I presume it was the confiding air characterizing all Charley's behaviour that chiefly pleased him. He seemed to look upon him with something of the tenderness a coarse man may show for a delicate Italian greyhound, fitted to be petted by a lady.

That same evening Charley came to my rooms. His manner was constrained, and yet suggested a whole tide of pent-up friendship which, but for some undeclared barrier, would have broken out and overflowed our intercourse. After this one evening, however, it was some time before I saw him again. When I called upon him next he was not at home, nor did he come to see me. Again I sought him, but with like failure. After a third attempt I desisted, not a little hurt, I confess, but not in the least inclined to quarrel with him. I gave myself the more diligently to my work.

And now Oxford began to do me harm. I saw so much idleness, and so much wrong of all kinds about me, that I began to consider myself a fine exception. Because I did my poor duty—no better than any honest lad must do it—I became conceited; and the manner in which Charley's new friend treated me not only increased the fault, but aided in the development of certain other stems from the same root of self-partiality. He never saluted me with other than what I regarded as a supercilious nod of the head. When I met him in company with Charley, and the latter stopped to speak to me, he would walk on without the least change of step. The indignation which this conduct aroused drove me to think as I had never thought before concerning my social position. I found it impossible to define. As I pondered, however, a certainty dawned upon me, rather than was arrived at by me, that there was some secret connected with my descent, upon which bore the history of the watch I carried, and of the sword I had lost. On the mere possibility of something, utterly forgetful that, if the secret existed at all, it might be of a very different nature from my hopes, I began to build castles innumerable. Perceiving, of course, that one of a decayed yeoman family could stand no social comparison with the heir to a rich baronetcy, I fell back upon absurd imaginings; and what with the self-satisfaction of doing my duty, what with the vanity of my baby manhood, and what with the mystery I chose to believe in and interpret according to my desires, I was fast sliding into a moral condition contemptible indeed.

But still my heart was true to Charley. When, after late hours of hard reading, I retired at last to my bed, and allowed my thoughts to wander where they would, seldom was there a night on which they did not turn as of themselves towards the memory of our past happiness. I vowed, although Charley had forsaken me, to keep his chamber in my heart ever empty, and closed against the entrance of another. If ever he pleased to return, he should find he had been waited for. I believe there was much of self-pity, and of self-approval as well, mingling with my regard for him; but the constancy was there notwithstanding, and I regarded the love I thus cherished for Charley as the chief saving element in my condition at the time.

One night—I cannot now recall with certainty the time or season—I only know it was night, and I was reading alone in my room—a knock came to the door, and Charley entered. I sprang from my seat and bounded to meet him.

'At last, Charley!' I exclaimed.

But he almost pushed me aside, left me to shut the door he had opened, sat down in a chair by the fire, and began gnawing the head of his cane. I resumed my seat, moved the lamp so that I could see him, and waited for him to speak. Then first I saw that his face was unnaturally pale and worn, almost even haggard. His eyes were weary, and his whole manner as of one haunted by an evil presence of which he is ever aware.

'You are an enviable fellow, Wilfrid,' he said at length, with something between a groan and a laugh.

'Why do you say that, Charley?' I returned. 'Why am I enviable?'

'Because you can work. I hate the very sight of a book. I am afraid I shall be plucked. I see nothing else for it. And what will the old man say? I have grace enough left to be sorry for him. But he will take it out in sour looks and silences.'

'There's time enough yet. I wish you were not so far ahead of me: we might have worked together.'

'I can't work, I tell you. I hate it. It will console my father, I hope, to find his prophecies concerning me come true. I've heard him abuse me to my mother.'

'I wish you wouldn't talk so of your father, Charley. It's not like you. I can't bear to hear it.'

'It's not like what I used to be, Wilfrid. But there's none of that left. What do you take me for—honestly now?'

He hung his head low, his eyes fixed on the hearth-rug, not on the fire, and kept gnawing at the head of his cane.

'I don't like some of your companions,' I said. 'To be sure I don't know much of them.'

'The less you know, the better! If there be a devil, that fellow. Brotherton will hand me over to him—bodily, before long.'

'Why don't you give him up?' said I.

'It's no use trying. He's got such a hold of me. Never let a man you don't know to the marrow pay even a toll-gate for you, Wilfrid.'

'I am in no danger, Charley. Such people don't take to me,' I said, self-righteously. 'But it can't be too late to break with him. I know my uncle would—I could manage a five-pound note now, I think.'

'My dear boy, if I had borrowed—. But I have let him pay for me again and again, and I don't know how to rid the obligation. But it don't signify. It's too late anyhow.'

'What have you done, Charley? Nothing very wrong, I trust.'

The lost look deepened.

'It's all over, Wilfrid,' he said. 'But it don't matter. I can take to the river when I please.'

'But then you know you might happen to go right through the river, Charley.'

'I know what you mean,' he said, with a defiant sound like nothing I had ever heard.

'Charley!' I cried, 'I can't bear to hear you. You can't have changed so much already as not to trust me. I will do all I can to help you. What have you done?'

'Oh, nothing!' he rejoined, and tried to laugh: it was a dreadful failure. 'But I can't bear to think of that mother of mine! I wish I could tell you all; but I can't. How Brotherton would laugh at me now! I can't be made quite like other people, Wilfrid! You would never have been such a fool.'

'You are more delicately made than most people, Charley—"touched to finer issues," as Shakspere says.'

'Who told you that?'

'I think a great deal about you. That is all you have left me.'

'I've been a brute, Wilfrid. But you'll forgive me, I know.'

'With all my heart, if you'll only put it in my power to serve you. Come, trust me, Charley, and tell me all about it. I shall not betray you.'

'I'm not afraid of that,' he answered, and sunk into silence once more.

I look to myself presumptuous and priggish in the memory. But I did mean truly by him. I began to question him, and by slow degrees, in broken hints, and in jets of reply, drew from him the facts. When at length he saw that I understood, he burst into tears, hid his face in his hands, and rocked himself to and fro.

'Charley! Charley! don't give in like that,' I cried. 'Be as sorry as you like; but don't go on as if there was no help. Who has not failed and been forgiven—in one way if not in another?'

'Who is there to forgive me? My father would not. And if he would, what difference would it make? I have done it all the same.'

'But God, Charley—' I suggested, hesitating.

'What of him? If he should choose to pass a thing by and say nothing about it, that doesn't undo it. It's all nonsense. God himself can't make it that I didn't do what I did do.'

But with what truthful yet reticent words can I convey the facts of Charley's case? I am perfectly aware it would be to expose both myself and him to the laughter of men of low development who behave as if no more self-possession were demanded of a man than of one of the lower animals. Such might perhaps feel a certain involuntary movement of pitifulness at the fate of a woman first awaking to the consciousness that she can no more hold up her head amongst her kind: but that a youth should experience a similar sense of degradation and loss, they would regard as a degree of silliness and effeminacy below contempt, if not beyond belief. But there is a sense of personal purity belonging to the man as well as to the woman; and although I dare not say that in the most refined of masculine natures it asserts itself with the awful majesty with which it makes its presence known in the heart of a woman, the man in whom it speaks with most authority is to be found amongst the worthiest; and to a youth like Charley the result of actual offence against it might be utter ruin. In his case, however, it was not merely a consciousness of personal defilement which followed; for, whether his companions had so schemed it or not, he supposed himself more than ordinarily guilty.

'I suppose I must marry the girl,' said poor Charley with a groan.

Happily I saw at once that there might be two sides to the question, and that it was desirable to know more ere I ventured a definite reply.

I had grown up, thanks to many things, with a most real although vague adoration of women; but I was not so ignorant as to be unable to fancy it possible that Charley had been the victim. Therefore, after having managed to comfort him a little, and taken him home to his rooms, I set about endeavouring to get further information.

I will not linger over the affair—as unpleasant to myself as it can be to any of my readers. It had to be mentioned, however, not merely as explaining how I got hold of Charley again, but as affording a clue to his character, and so to his history. Not even yet can I think without a gush of anger and shame of my visit to Brotherton. With what stammering confusion I succeeded at last in making him understand the nature of the information I wanted, I will not attempt to describe; nor the roar of laughter which at length burst bellowing—not from himself only, but from three or four companions as well to whom he turned and communicated the joke. The fire of jests, and proposals, and interpretations of motive which I had then to endure, seems yet to scorch my very brain at the mere recollection. From their manner and speech, I was almost convinced that they had laid a trap for Charley, whom they regarded as a simpleton, to enjoy his consequent confusion. With what I managed to find out elsewhere, I was at length satisfied, and happily succeeded in convincing Charley, that he had been the butt of his companions, and that he was far the more injured person in any possible aspect of the affair.

I shall never forget the look or the sigh of relief which proved that at last his mind had opened to the facts of the case.

'Wilfrid,' he said, 'you have saved me. We shall never be parted more. See if I am ever false to you again!'

And yet it never was as it had been. I am sure of that now. Henceforth, however, he entirely avoided his former companions. Our old friendship was renewed. Our old talks arose again, And now that he was not alone in them, the perplexities under which he had broken down when left to encounter them by himself were not so overwhelming as to render him helpless. We read a good deal together, and Charley helped me much in the finer affairs of the classics, for his perceptions were as delicate as his feelings. He would brood over an Horatian phrase as Keats would brood over a sweet pea or a violet; the very tone in which he would repeat it would waft me from it an aroma unperceived before. When it was his turn to come to my rooms, I would watch for his arrival almost as a lover for his mistress.

For two years more our friendship grew; in which time Charley had recovered habits of diligence. I presume he said nothing at home of the renewal of his intimacy with me: I shrunk from questioning him. As if he had been an angel who who had hurt his wing and was compelled to sojourn with me for a time, I feared to bring the least shadow over his face, and indeed fell into a restless observance of his moods. I remember we read Comus together. How his face would glow at the impassioned praises of virtue! and how the glow would die into a grey sadness at the recollection of the near past! I could read his face like a book.

At length the time arrived when we had to part, he to study for the Bar, I to remain at Oxford another year, still looking forward to a literary life.

When I commenced writing my story, I fancied myself so far removed from it that I could regard it as the story of another, capable of being viewed on all sides, and conjectured and speculated upon. And so I found it as long as the regions of childhood and youth detained me. But as I approach the middle scenes, I begin to fear the revival of the old torture; that, from the dispassionate reviewer, I may become once again the suffering actor. Long ago I read a strange story of a man condemned at periods unforeseen to act again, and yet again, in absolute verisimilitude each of the scenes of his former life: I have a feeling as if I too might glide from the present into the past without a sign to warn me of the coming transition.

One word more ere I pass to the middle events, those for the sake of which the beginning is and the end shall be recorded. It is this—that I am under endless obligations to Charley for opening my eyes at this time to my overweening estimate of myself. Not that he spoke—Charley could never have reproved even a child. But I could tell almost any sudden feeling that passed through him. His face betrayed it. What he felt about me I saw at once. From the signs of his mind, I often recognized the character of what was in my own; and thus seeing myself through him, I gathered reason to be ashamed; while the refinement of his criticism, the quickness of his perception, and the novelty and force of his remarks, convinced me that I could not for a moment compare with him in mental gifts. The upper hand of influence I had over him I attribute to the greater freedom of my training, and the enlarged ideas which had led my uncle to avoid enthralling me to his notions. He believed the truth could afford to wait until I was capable of seeing it for myself; and that the best embodiments of truth are but bonds and fetters to him who cannot accept them as such. When I could not agree with him, he would say with one of his fine smiles, 'We'll drop it, then, Willie. I don't believe you have caught my meaning. If I am right, you will see it some day, and there's no hurry.' How could it be but Charlie and I should be different, seeing we had fared so differently! But, alas! my knowledge of his character is chiefly the result of after-thought.

I do not mean this manuscript to be read until after my death; and even then—although partly from habit, partly that I dare not trust myself to any other form of utterance, I write as if for publication—even then, I say, only by one. I am about to write what I should not die in peace if I thought she would never know; but which I dare not seek to tell her now for the risk of being misunderstood. I thank God for that blessed invention, Death, which of itself must set many things right, and gives a man a chance of justifying himself where he would not have been heard while alive. Lest my manuscript should fall into other hands, I have taken care that not a single name in it should contain even a side-look or hint at the true one; but she will be able to understand the real person in every case.



CHAPTER XXV.

MY WHITE MARE.

I passed my final examinations with credit, if not with honour. It was not yet clearly determined what I should do next. My goal was London, but I was unwilling to go thither empty-handed. I had been thinking as well as reading a good deal; a late experience had stimulated my imagination; and at spare moments I had been writing a tale. It had grown to be a considerable mass of manuscript, and I was anxious, before going, to finish it. Hence, therefore, I returned home with the intention of remaining there quietly for a few months before setting-out to seek my fortune.

Whether my uncle in his heart quite favoured the plan, I have my doubts, but it would have been quite inconsistent with his usual grand treatment of me to oppose anything not wrong on which I had set my heart. Finding now that I took less exercise than he thought desirable, and kept myself too much to my room, he gave me a fresh proof of his unvarying kindness, He bought me a small grey mare of strength and speed. Her lineage was unknown; but her small head, broad fine chest, and clean limbs indicated Arab blood at no great remove. Upon her I used to gallop over the fields, or saunter along the lanes, dreaming and inventing.

And now certain feelings, too deeply rooted in my nature for my memory to recognize their beginnings, began to assume colour and condensed form, as if about to burst into some kind of blossom. Thanks to my education and love of study, also to a self-respect undefined yet restraining, nothing had occurred to wrong them. In my heart of hearts I worshipped the idea of womanhood. I thank Heaven, if ever I do thank for anything, that I still worship thus. Alas! how many have put on the acolyte's robe in the same temple, who have ere long cast dirt upon the statue of their divinity, then dragged her as defiled from her lofty pedestal, and left her lying dishonoured at its foot! Instead of feeding with holy oil the lamp of the higher instinct, which would glorify and purify the lower, they feed the fire of the lower with vile fuel, which sends up its stinging smoke to becloud and blot the higher.

One lovely Spring morning, the buds half out, and the wind blowing fresh and strong, the white clouds scudding across a blue gulf of sky, and the tall trees far away swinging as of old, when they churned the wind for my childish fancy, I looked up from my book and saw it all. The gladness of nature entered into me, and my heart swelled so in my bosom that I turned with distaste from all further labour. I pushed my papers from me, and went to the window. The short grass all about was leaning away from the wind, shivering and showing its enamel. Still, as in childhood, the wind had a special power over me. In another moment I was out of the house and hastening to the farm for my mare. She neighed at the sound of my step. I saddled and bridled her, sprung on her back, and galloped across the grass in the direction of the trees.

In a few moments I was within the lodge gates, walking my mare along the gravelled drive, and with the reins on the white curved neck before me, looking up at those lofty pines, whose lonely heads were swinging in the air like floating but fettered islands. My head had begun to feel dizzy with the ever-iterated, slow, half-circular sweep, when, just opposite the lawn stretching from a low wire fence up to the door of the steward's house, my mare shied, darted to the other side of the road, and flew across the grass. Caught thus lounging on my saddle, I was almost unseated. As soon as I had pulled her up, I turned to see what had startled her, for the impression of a white flash remained upon my mental sensorium. There, leaning on the little gate, looking much diverted, stood the loveliest creature, in a morning dress of white, which the wind was blowing about her like a cloud. She had no hat on, and her hair, as if eager to join in the merriment of the day, was flying like the ribbons of a tattered sail. A humanized Dryad!—one that had been caught young, but in whom the forest-sap still asserted itself in wild affinities with the wind and the swaying branches, and the white clouds careering across! Could it be Clara? How could it be any other than Clara? I rode back.

I was a little short-sighted, and had to get pretty near before I could be certain; but she knew me, and waited my approach. When I came near enough to see them, I could not mistake those violet eyes.

I was now in my twentieth year, and had never been in love. Whether I now fell in love or not, I leave to my reader.

Clara was even more beautiful than her girlish loveliness had promised. 'An exceeding fair forehead,' to quote Sir Philip Sidney; eyes of which I have said enough; a nose more delicate than symmetrical; a mouth rather thin-lipped, but well curved; a chin rather small, I confess;—but did any one ever from the most elaborated description acquire even an approximate idea of the face intended? Her person was lithe and graceful; she had good hands and feet; and the fairness of her skin gave her brown hair a duskier look than belonged to itself.

Before I was yet near enough to be certain of her, I lifted my hat, and she returned the salutation with an almost familiar nod and smile.

'I am very sorry,' she said, speaking first—in her old half-mocking way, 'that I so nearly cost you your seat.'

'It was my own carelessness,' I returned. 'Surely I am right in taking you for the lady who allowed me, in old times, to call her Clara? How I could ever have had the presumption I cannot imagine.'

'Of course that is a familiarity not to be thought of between full-grown people like us, Mr Cumbermede,' she rejoined, and her smile became a laugh.

'Ah, you do recognize me, then?' I said, thinking her cool, but forgetting the thought the next moment.

'I guess at you. If you had been dressed as on one occasion, I should not have got so far as that.'

Pleased at this merry reference to our meeting on the Wengern Alp, I was yet embarrassed to find that nothing more suggested itself to be said. But while I was quieting my mare, which happily afforded me some pretext at the moment, another voice fell on my ear—hoarse, but breezy and pleasant.

'So, Clara, you are no sooner back to old quarters than you give a rendezvous at the garden-gate—eh, girl?'

'Rather an ill-chosen spot for the purpose, papa,' she returned, laughing, 'especially as the gentleman has too much to do with his horse to get off and talk to me.'

'Ah! our old friend Mr Cumbermede, I declare! Only rather more of him!' he added, laughing, as he opened the little gate in the wire fence, and coming up to me, shook hands heartily. 'Delighted to see you, Mr Cumbermede. Have you left Oxford for good?'

'Yes,' I answered—'some time ago.'

'And may I ask what you're turning your attention to now?'

'Well, I hardly like to confess it, but I mean to have a try at—something in the literary way.'

'Plucky enough! The paths of literature are not certainly the paths of pleasantness or of peace even—so far as ever I heard. Somebody said you were going in for the law.'

'I thought there were too many lawyers already. One so often hears of barristers with nothing to do, and glad to take to the pen, that I thought it might be better to begin with what I should most probably come to at last.'

'Ah! but, Mr Cumbermede, there are other departments of the law which bring quicker returns than the bar. If you would put yourself in my hands now, you should be earning your bread at least within a couple of years or so.'

'You are very kind,' I returned, heartily, for he spoke as if he meant what he said; 'but you see I have a leaning to the one and not to the other. I should like to have a try first, at all events.'

'Well, perhaps it's better to begin by following your bent. You may find the road take a turn, though.'

'Perhaps. I will go on till it does, though.'

While we talked, Clara had followed her father, and was now patting my mare's neck with a nice, plump, fair-fingered hand. The creature stood with her arched neck and small head turned lovingly towards her.

'What a nice white thing you have got to ride!' she said. 'I hope it is your own.'

'Why do you hope that?' I asked.

'Because it's best to ride your own horse, isn't it?' she answered, looking up naively.

'Would you like to ride her? I believe she has carried a lady, though not since she came into my possession.'

Instead of answering me, she looked round at her father, who stood by smiling benignantly. Her look said—

'If papa would let me.'

He did not reply, but seemed waiting. I resumed.

'Are you a good horsewoman, Miss—Clara?' I said, with a feel after the recovery of old privileges.

'I must not sing my own praises, Mr—Wilfrid,' she rejoined, 'but I have ridden in Rotten Row, and I believe without any signal disgrace.'

'Have you got a side-saddle?' I asked, dismounting.

Mr Coningham spoke now.

'Don't you think Mr Cumbermede's horse a little too frisky for you, Clara? I know so little about you, I can't tell what you're fit for.—She used to ride pretty well as a girl,' he added, turning to me.

'I've not forgotten that,' I said. 'I shall walk by her side, you know.'

'Shall you?' she said, with a sly look.

'Perhaps,' I suggested, 'your grandfather would let me have his horse, and then we might have a gallop across the park.'

'The best way,' said Mr Coningham, 'will be to let the gardener take your horse, while you come in and have some luncheon. We'll see about the mount after that. My horse has to carry me back in the evening, else I should be happy to join you. She's a fine creature, that of yours.'

'She's the handiest creature!' I said—'a little skittish, but very affectionate, and has a fine mouth. Perhaps she ought to have a curb-bit for you, though, Miss Clara.'

'We'll manage with a snaffle,' she answered, with, I thought, another sly glance at me, out of eyes sparkling with suppressed merriment and expectation! Her father had gone to find the gardener, and as we stood waiting for him she still stroked the mare's neck.

'Are you not afraid of taking cold,' I said, 'without your bonnet?'

'I never had a cold in my life,' she returned.

'That is saying much. You would have me believe you are not made of the same clay as other people.'

'Believe anything you like,' she answered carelessly.

'Then I do believe it,' I rejoined.

She looked me in the face, took her hand from the mare's neck, stepped back half-a-foot and looked round, saying—

'I wonder where that man can have got to. Oh, here he comes, and papa with him!'

We went across the trim little lawn, which lay waiting for the warmer weather to burst into a profusion of roses, and through a trellised porch entered a shadowy little hall, with heads of stags and foxes, an old-fashioned glass-doored bookcase, and hunting and riding whips, whence we passed into a low-pitched drawing-room, redolent of dried rose-leaves and fresh hyacinths. A little pug-dog, which seemed to have failed in swallowing some big dog's tongue, jumped up barking from the sheep-skin mat, where he lay before the fire.

'Stupid pug!' said Clara. 'You never know friends from foes! I wonder where my aunt is.'

She left the room. Her father had not followed us. I sat down on the sofa, and began turning over a pretty book bound in red silk, one of the first of the annual tribe, which lay on the table. I was deep in one of its eastern stories when, hearing a slight movement, I looked up, and there sat Clara in a low chair by the window, working at a delicate bit of lace with a needle. She looked somehow as if she had been there an hour at least. I laid down the book with some exclamation.

'What is the matter, Mr Cumbermede?' she asked, with the slightest possible glance up from the fine meshes of her work.

'I had not the slightest idea you were in the room.'

'Of course not. How could a literary man, with a Forget-me-not in his hand, be expected to know that a girl had come into the room?'

'Have you been at school all this time?' I asked, for the sake of avoiding a silence.

'All what time?'

'Say, since we parted in Switzerland.'

'Not quite. I have been staying with an aunt for nearly a year. Have you been at college all this time?'

'At school and college. When did you come home?'

'This is not my home, but I came here yesterday.'

'Don't you find the country dull after London?'

'I haven't had time yet.'

'Did they give you riding lessons at school?'

'No. But my aunt took care of my morals in that respect. A girl might as well not be able to dance as ride now-a-days.'

'Who rode with you in the park? Not the riding-master?'

With a slight flush on her face she retorted,

'How many more questions are you going to ask me? I should like to know, that I may make up my mind how many of them to answer.'

'Suppose we say six.'

'Very well,' she replied. 'Now I shall answer your last question and count that the first. About nine o'clock, one—day—'

'Morning or evening?' I asked.

'Morning of course—I walked out of—the house—'

'Your aunt's house?'

'Yes, of course, my aunt's house. Do let me go on with my story. It was getting a little dark—'

'Getting dark at nine in the morning?'

'In the evening, I said.'

'I beg your pardon, I thought you said the morning.'

'No, no, the evening; and of course I was a little frightened, for I was not accustomed—'

'But you were never out alone at that hour,—in London?'

'Yes, I was quite alone. I had promised to meet—a friend at the corner of——You know that part, do you?'

'I beg your pardon. What part?'

'Oh—Mayfair. You know Mayfair, don't you?'

'You were going to meet a gentleman at the corner of Mayfair—were you?' I said, getting quite bewildered.

She jumped up, clapping her hands as gracefully as merrily, and crying—

'I wasn't going to meet any gentleman. There! Your six questions are answered. I won't answer a single other you choose to ask, unless I please, which is not in the least likely.'

She made me a low half merry, half mocking courtesy and left the room.

The same moment her father came in, following old Mr Coningham, who gave me a kindly welcome, and said his horse was at my service, but he hoped I would lunch with him first. I gratefully consented, and soon luncheon was announced. Miss Coningham, Clara's aunt, was in the dining-room before us. A dry, antiquated woman, she greeted me with unexpected frankness. Lunch was half over before Clara entered—in a perfectly fitting habit, her hat on, and her skirt thrown over her arm.

'Soho, Clara!' cried her father; 'you want to take us by surprise—coming out all at once a town-bred lady, eh?'

'Why, where ever did you get that riding-habit, Clara?' said her aunt.

'In my box, aunt,' said Clara.

'My word, child, but your father has kept you in pocket-money!' returned Miss Coningham.

'I've got a town aunt as well as a country one,' rejoined Clara, with an expression I could not quite understand, but out of which her laugh took only half the sting.

Miss Coningham reddened a little. I judged afterwards that Clara had been diplomatically allowing her just to feel what sharp claws she had for use if required.

But the effect of the change from loose white muslin to tight dark cloth was marvellous, and I was bewitched by it. So slight, yet so round, so trim, yet so pliant—she was grace itself. It seemed as if the former object of my admiration had vanished, and I had found another with such surpassing charms that the loss could not be regretted. I may just mention that the change appeared also to bring out a certain look of determination which I now recalled as having belonged to her when a child.

'Clara!' said her father, in a very marked tone; whereupon it was Clara's turn to blush and be silent.

I started some new subject, in the airiest manner I could command. Clara recovered her composure, and I flattered myself she looked a little grateful when our eyes met. But I caught her father's eyes twinkling now and then as if from some secret source of merriment, and could not help fancying he was more amused than displeased with his daughter.



CHAPTER XXVI.

A RIDING LESSON.

By the time luncheon was over, the horses had been standing some minutes at the lawn-gate, my mare with a side-saddle. We hastened to mount, Clara's eyes full of expectant frolic. I managed, as I thought, to get before her father, and had the pleasure of lifting her to the saddle. She was up ere I could feel her weight on my arm. When I gathered her again with my eyes, she was seated as calmly as if at her lace-needlework, only her eyes were sparkling. With the slightest help, she had her foot in the stirrup, and with a single movement had her skirt comfortable. I left her, to mount the horse they had brought me, and when I looked from his back, the white mare was already flashing across the boles of the trees, and Clara's dark skirt flying out behind like the drapery of a descending goddess in an allegorical picture. With a pang of terror I fancied the mare had run away with her, and sat for a moment afraid to follow, lest the sound of my horse's feet on the turf should make her gallop the faster. But the next moment she turned in her saddle, and I saw a face alive with pleasure and confidence. As she recovered her seat, she waved her hand to me, and I put my horse to his speed. I had not gone far, however, before I perceived a fresh cause of anxiety. She was making straight for a wire fence. I had heard that horses could not see such a fence, and if Clara did not see it, or should be careless, the result would be frightful. I shouted after her, but she took no heed. Fortunately, however, there was right in front of them a gate, which I had not at first observed, into the bars of which had been wattled some brushwood. 'The mare will see that,' I said to myself. But the words were hardly through my mind, before I saw them fly over it like a bird.

On the other side, she pulled up, and waited for me.

Now I had never jumped a fence in my life. I did not know that my mare could do such a thing, for I had never given her the chance. I was not, and never have become, what would be considered an accomplished horseman. I scarcely know a word of stable-slang. I have never followed the hounds more than twice or three times in the course of my life. Not the less am I a true lover of horses—but I have been their companion more in work than in play. I have slept for miles on horseback, but even now I have not a sure seat over a fence.

I knew nothing of the animal I rode, but I was bound, at least, to make the attempt to follow my leader. I was too inexperienced not to put him to his speed instead of going gently up to the gate; and I had a bad habit of leaning forward in my saddle, besides knowing nothing of how to incline myself backwards as the horse alighted. Hence when I found myself on the other side, it was not on my horse's back, but on my own face. I rose uninjured, except in my self-esteem. I fear I was for the moment as much disconcerted as if I had been guilty of some moral fault. Nor did it help me much towards regaining my composure that Clara was shaking with suppressed laughter. Utterly stupid from mortification, I laid hold of my horse, which stood waiting for me beside the mare, and scrambled upon his back. But Clara, who, with all her fun, was far from being ill-natured, fancied from my silence that I was hurt. Her merriment vanished. With quite an anxious expression on her face, she drew to my side, saying—

'I hope you are not hurt?'

'Only my pride,' I answered.

'Never mind that,' she returned gaily. 'That will soon be itself again.'

'I'm not so sure,' I rejoined. 'To make such a fool of myself before you!'

'Am I such a formidable person?' she said.

'Yes,' I answered. 'But I never jumped a fence in my life before.'

'If you had been afraid,' she said, 'and had pulled up, I might have despised you. As it was, I only laughed at you. Where was the harm? You shirked nothing. You followed your leader. Come along, I will give you a lesson or two before we get back.'

'Thank you,' I said, beginning to recover my spirits a little; 'I shall be a most obedient pupil. But how did you get so clever, Clara?'

I ventured the unprotected name, and she took no notice of the liberty.

'I told you I had had a riding-master. If you are not afraid, and mind what you are told, you will always come right somehow.'

'I suspect that is good advice for more than horsemanship.'

'I had not the slightest intention of moralizing. I am incapable of it,' she answered, in a tone of serious self-defence.

'I had as little intention of making the accusation,' I rejoined. 'But will you really teach me a little?'

'Most willingly. To begin, you must sit erect. You lean forward.'

'Thank you. Is this better?'

'Yes, better. A little more yet. You ought to have your stirrups shorter. It is a poor affectation to ride like a trooper. Their own officers don't. You can tell any novice by his long leathers, his heels down and his toes in his stirrups. Ride home, if you want to ride comfortably.'

The phrase was new to me, but I guessed what she meant; and without dismounting, pulled my stirrup-leathers a couple of holes shorter, and thrust my feet through to the instep. She watched the whole proceeding.

'There! you look more like riding now,' she said. 'Let us have another canter. I will promise not to lead you over any more fences without due warning.'

'And due admonition as well, I trust, Clara.'

She nodded, and away we went. I had never been so proud of my mare. She showed to much advantage, with the graceful figure on her back, which she carried like a feather.

'Now there's a little fence,' she said, pointing where a rail or two protected a clump of plantation. 'You must mind the young wood though, or we shall get into trouble. Mind you throw yourself back a little—as you see me do.'

I watched her, and following her directions, did better this time, for I got over somehow and recovered my seat.

'There! You improve,' said Clara. 'Now we're pounded, unless you can jump again, and it is not quite so easy from this side.'

When we alighted, I found my saddle in the proper place.

'Bravo!' she cried. 'I entirely forgive your first misadventure. You do splendidly.'

'I would rather you forgot it, Clara,' I cried, ungallantly.

'Well, I will be generous,' she returned. 'Besides, I owe you something for such a charming ride. I will forget it.'

'Thank you,' I said, and drawing closer would have laid my left hand on her right.

Whether she foresaw my intention, I do not know; but in a moment she was yards away, scampering over the grass. My horse could never have overtaken hers.

By the time she drew rein and allowed me to get alongside of her once more, we were in sight: of Moldwarp Hall. It stood with one corner towards us, giving the perspective of two sides at once. She stopped her mare, and said,

'There, Wilfrid! What would you give to call a place like that your own? What a thing to have a house like that to live in!'



'I know something I should like better,' I said.

I assure my reader I was not so silly as to be on the point of making her an offer already. Neither did she so misunderstand me. She was very near the mark of my meaning when she rejoined—

'Do you? I don't. I suppose you would prefer being called a fine poet, or something of the sort.'

I was glad she did not give me time to reply, for I had not intended to expose myself to her ridicule. She was off again at a gallop towards the Hall, straight for the less accessible of the two gates, and had scrambled the mare up to the very bell-pull and rung it before I could get near her. When the porter appeared in the wicket—

'Open the gate, Jansen,' she said. 'I want to see Mrs Wilson, and I don't want to get down.'

'But horses never come in here, Miss,' said the man.

'I mean to make an exception in favour of this mare,' she answered.

The man hesitated a moment, then retreated—but only to obey, as we understood at once by the creaking of the dry hinges, which were seldom required to move.

'You won't mind holding her for me, will you?' she said, turning to me.

I had been sitting mute with surprise both at the way in which she ordered the man, and at his obedience. But now I found my tongue.

'Don't you think, Miss Coningham,' I said—for the man was within hearing, 'we had better leave them both with the porter, and then we could go in together? I'm not sure that those flags, not to mention the steps, are good footing for that mare.'

'Oh! you're afraid of your animal, are you?' she rejoined. 'Very well.'

'Shall I hold your stirrup for you?'

Before I could dismount, she had slipped off, and begun gathering up her skirt. The man came and took the horses. We entered by the open gate together.

'How can you be so cruel, Clara?' I said. 'You will always misinterpret me! I was quite right about the flags. Don't you see how hard they are, and how slippery therefore for iron shoes?'

'You might have seen by this time that I know quite as much about horses as you do,' she returned, a little cross, I thought.

'You can ride ever so much better,' I answered; 'but it does not follow you know more about horses than I do. I once saw a horse have a frightful fall on just such a pavement. Besides, does one think only of the horse when there's an angel on his back?'

It was a silly speech, and deserved rebuke.

'I'm not in the least fond of such compliments,' she answered.

By this time we had reached the door of Mrs Wilson's apartment. She received us rather stiffly, even for her. After some commonplace talk, in which, without departing from facts, Clara made it appear that she had set out for the express purpose of paying Mrs Wilson a visit, I asked if the family was at home, and finding they were not, begged leave to walk into the library.

'We'll go together,' she said, apparently not caring about a tete-a-tete with Clara. Evidently the old lady liked her as little as ever.

We left the house, and entering again by a side door, passed on our way through the little gallery, into which I had dropped from the roof.

'Look, Clara, that is where I came down,' I said.

She merely nodded. But Mrs Wilson looked very sharply, first at the one, then at the other of us. When we reached the library, I found it in the same miserable condition as before, and could not help exclaiming with some indignation,

'It is a shame to see such treasures mouldering there! I am confident there are many valuable books among them, getting ruined from pure neglect. I wish I knew Sir Giles. I would ask him to let me come and set them right.'

'You would be choked with dust and cobwebs in an hour's time,' said Clara. 'Besides, I don't think Mrs Wilson would like the proceeding.'

'What do you ground that remark upon, Miss Clara?' said the housekeeper in a dry tone.

'I thought you used them for firewood occasionally,' answered Clara, with an innocent expression both of manner and voice.

The most prudent answer to such an absurd charge would have been a laugh; but Mrs Wilson vouchsafed no reply at all, and I pretended to be too much occupied with its subject to have heard it.

After lingering a little while, during which I paid attention chiefly to Mrs Wilson, drawing her notice to the state of several of the books, I proposed we should have a peep at the armoury. We went in, and, glancing over the walls I knew so well, I scarcely repressed an exclamation: I could not be mistaken in my own sword! There it hung, in the centre of the principal space—in the same old sheath, split half-way up from the point! To the hilt hung an ivory label with a number upon it. I suppose I made some inarticulate sound, for Clara fixed her eyes upon me. I busied myself at once with a gorgeously hiked scimitar, which hung near, for I did not wish to talk about it then, and so escaped further remark. From the armoury we went to the picture-gallery, where I found a good many pictures had been added to the collection. They were all new and mostly brilliant in colour. I was no judge, but I could not help feeling how crude and harsh they looked beside the mellowed tints of the paintings, chiefly portraits, among which they had been introduced.

'Horrid!—aren't they?' said Clara, as if she divined my thoughts; but I made no direct reply, unwilling to offend Mrs Wilson.

When we were once more on horseback, and walking across the grass, my companion was the first to speak.

'Did you ever see such daubs!' she said, making a wry face as at something sour enough to untune her nerves. 'Those new pictures are simply frightful. Any one of them would give me the jaundice in a week, if it were hung in our drawing-room.'

'I can't say I admire them,' I returned. 'And at all events they ought not to be on the same walls with those stately old ladies and gentlemen.'

'Parvenus,' said Clara. 'Quite in their place. Pure Manchester taste—educated on calico-prints.'

'If that is your opinion of the family, how do you account for their keeping everything so much in the old style? They don't seem to change anything.'

'All for their own honour and glory! The place is a testimony to the antiquity of the family of which they are a shoot run to seed—and very ugly seed too! It's enough to break one's heart to think of such a glorious old place in such hands. Did you ever see young Brotherton?'

'I knew him a little at college. He's a good-looking fellow!'

'Would be if it weren't for the bad blood in him. That comes out unmistakeably. He's vulgar.'

'Have you seen much of him, then?'

'Quite enough. I never heard him say anything vulgar, or saw him do anything vulgar, but vulgar he is, and vulgar is every one of the family. A man who is always aware of how rich he will be, and how good-looking he is, and what a fine match he would make, would look vulgar lying in his coffin.'

'You are positively caustic, Miss Coningham.'

'If you saw their house in Cheshire! But blessings be on the place!—it's the safety-valve for Moldwarp Hall. The natural Manchester passion for novelty and luxury finds a vent there, otherwise they could not keep their hands off it; and what was best would be sure to go first. Corchester House ought to be secured to the family by Act of Parliament.'

'Have you been to Corchester, then?'

'I was there for a week once.'

'And how did you like it?'

'Not at all. I was not comfortable. I was always feeling too well-bred. You never saw such colours in your life. Their drawing-rooms are quite a happy family of the most quarrelsome tints.'

'How ever did they come into this property?'

'They're of the breed somehow—a long way off though. Shouldn't I like to see a new claimant come up and oust them after all! They haven't had it above five-and-twenty years or so. Wouldn't you?'

'The old man was kind to me once.'

'How was that? I thought it was only through Mrs Wilson you knew anything of them.'

I told her the story of the apple.

'Well, I do rather like old Sir Giles,' she said, when I had done. 'There's a good deal of the rough country gentleman about him. He's a better man than his son anyhow. Sons will succeed their fathers, though, unfortunately.'

'I don't care who may succeed him, if only I could get back my sword. It's too bad, with an armoury like that, to take my one little ewe-lamb from me.'

Here I had another story to tell. After many interruptions in the way of questions from my listener, I ended it with these words—

'And—will you believe me?—I saw the sword hanging in that armoury this afternoon—close by that splendid hilt I pointed out to you.'

'How could you tell it among so many?'

'Just as you could tell that white creature from this brown one. I know it, hilt and scabbard, as well as a human face.'

'As well as mine, for instance?'

'I am surer of it than I was of you this morning. It hasn't changed like you.'

Our talk was interrupted by the appearance of a gentleman on horseback approaching us. I thought at first it was Clara's father, setting out for home, and coming to bid us good-bye; but I soon saw I was mistaken. Not, however, until he came quite close, did I recognize Geoffrey Brotherton. He took off his hat to my companion, and reined in his horse.

'Are you going to give us in charge for trespassing, Mr Brotherton?' said Clara.

'I should be happy to take you in charge on any pretence, Miss Coningham. This is indeed an unexpected pleasure.'

Here he looked in my direction.

'Ah!' he said, lifting his eyebrows, 'I thought I knew the old horse! What a nice cob you've got, Miss Coningham.'

He had not chosen to recognize me, of which I was glad, for I hardly knew how to order my behaviour to him. I had forgotten nothing. But, ill as I liked him, I was forced to confess that he had greatly improved in appearance—and manners too, notwithstanding his behaviour was as supercilious as ever to me.

'Do you call her a cob, then?' said Clara. 'I should never have thought of calling her a cob.—She belongs to Mr Cumbermede.'

'Ah!' he said again, arching his eyebrows as before, and looking straight at me as if he had never seen me in his life.

I think I succeeded in looking almost unaware of his presence. At least so I tried to look, feeling quite thankful to Clara for defending my mare: to hear her called a cob was hateful to me.

After listening to a few more of his remarks upon her, made without the slightest reference to her owner, who was not three yards from her side, Clara asked him, in the easiest manner—

'Shall you be at the county ball?'

'When is that?'

'Next Thursday.'

'Are you going?'

'I hope so.'

'Then will you dance the first waltz with me?'

'No, Mr Brotherton.'

'Then I am sorry to say I shall be in London.'

'When do you rejoin your regiment?'

'Oh! I've got a month's leave.'

'Then why won't you be at the ball?'

'Because you won't promise me the first waltz.'

'Well—rather than the belles of Minstercombe should—ring their sweet changes in vain, I suppose I must indulge you.'

'A thousand thanks,' he said, lifted his hat, and rode on.

My blood was in a cold boil—if the phrase can convey an idea. Clara rode on homewards without looking round, and I followed, keeping a few yards behind her, hardly thinking at all, my very brain seeming cold inside my skull.

There was small occasion as yet, some of my readers may think. I cannot help it—so it was. When we had gone in silence a couple of hundred yards or so, she glanced round at me with a quick sly half-look, and burst out laughing. I was by her side in an instant: her laugh had dissolved the spell that bound me. But she spoke first.

'Well, Mr Cumbermede?' she said, with a slow interrogation.

'Well, Miss Coningham?' I rejoined, but bitterly, I suppose.

'What's the matter?' she retorted sharply, looking up at me, full in the face, whether in real or feigned anger I could not tell.

'How could you talk of that fellow as you did, and then talk so to him?'

'What right have you to put such questions to me? I am not aware of any intimacy to justify it.'

'Then I beg your pardon. But my surprise remains the same.'

'Why, you silly boy!' she returned, laughing aloud, 'don't you know he is, or will be, my feudal lord. I am bound to be polite to him. What would become of poor grandpapa if I were to give him offence? Besides, I have been in the house with him for a week. He's not a Crichton; but he dances well. Are you going to the ball?'

'I never heard of it. I have not for weeks thought of anything but—but—my writing, till this morning. Now I fear I shall find it difficult to return to it. It looks ages since I saddled the mare!'

'But if you're ever to be an author, it won't do to shut yourself up. You ought to see as much of the world as you can. I should strongly advise you to go to the ball.'

'I would willingly obey you—but—but—I don't know how to get a ticket.'

'Oh! if you would like to go, papa will have much pleasure in managing that. I will ask him.'

'I'm much obliged to you,' I returned. 'I should enjoy seeing Mr Brotherton dance.'

She laughed again, but it was an oddly constrained laugh.

'It's quite time I were at home,' she said, and gave the mare the rein, increasing her speed as we approached the house. Before I reached the little gate she had given her up to the gardener, who had been on the look-out for us.

'Put on her own saddle, and bring the mare round at once, please,' I called to the man, as he led her and the horse away together.

'Won't you come in, Wilfrid?' said Clara, kindly and seriously.

'No, thank you,' I returned; for I was full of rage and jealousy. To do myself justice, however, mingled with these was pity that such a girl should be so easy with such a man. But I could not tell her what I knew of him. Even if I could have done so, I dared not; for the man who shows himself jealous must be readily believed capable of lying, or at least misrepresenting.

'Then I must bid you good-evening,' she said, as quietly as if we had been together only five minutes. 'I am so much obliged to you for letting me ride your mare!'

She gave me a half-friendly, half-stately little bow, and walked into the house. In a few moments the gardener returned with the mare, and I mounted and rode home in anything but a pleasant mood. Having stabled her, I roamed about the fields till it was dark, thinking for the first time in my life I preferred woods to open grass. When I went in at length I did my best to behave as if nothing had happened. My uncle must, however, have seen that something was amiss, but he took no notice, for he never forced or even led up to confidences. I retired early to bed, and passed an hour or two of wretchedness, thinking over everything that had happened—-the one moment calling her a coquette, and the next ransacking a fresh corner of my brain to find fresh excuse for her. At length I was able to arrive at the conclusion that I did not understand her, and having given in so far, I soon fell asleep.



CHAPTER XXVII.

A DISAPPOINTMENT.

I trust it will not be regarded as a sign of shallowness of nature that I rose in the morning comparatively calm. Clara was to me as yet only the type of general womanhood, around which the amorphous loves of my manhood had begun to gather, not the one woman whom the individual man in me had chosen and loved. How could I love that which I did not yet know: she was but the heroine of my objective life, as projected from me by my imagination—not the love of my being. Therefore, when the wings of sleep had fanned the motes from my brain, I was cool enough, notwithstanding an occasional tongue of indignant flame from the ashes of last night's fire, to sit down to my books, and read with tolerable attention my morning portion of Plato. But when I turned to my novel, I found I was not master of the situation. My hero too was in love and in trouble; and after I had written a sentence and a half, I found myself experiencing the fate of Heine when he roused the Sphinx of past love by reading his own old verses:—

Lebendig ward das Marmorbild, Der Stein begann zu aechzen.

In a few moments I was pacing up and down the room, eager to burn my moth-wings yet again in the old fire. And by the way, I cannot help thinking that the moths enjoy their fate, and die in ecstasies. I was, however, too shy to venture on a call that very morning: I should both feel and look foolish. But there was no more work to be done then. I hurried to the stable, saddled my mare, and set out for a gallop across the farm, but towards the high road leading to Minstercombe, in the opposite direction, that is, from the Hall, which I flattered myself was to act in a strong-minded manner. There were several fences and hedges between, but I cleared them all without discomfiture. The last jump was into a lane. We, that is my mare and I, had scarcely alighted, when my ears were invaded by a shout. The voice was the least welcome I could have heard, that of Brotherton. I turned and saw him riding up the hill, with a lady by his side.

'Hillo!' he cried, almost angrily, 'you don't deserve to have such a cob.' (He would call her a cob.) 'You don't know-how to use her. To jump her on to the hard like that!'

It was Clara with him!—on the steady stiff old brown horse! My first impulse was to jump my mare over the opposite fence, and take no heed, of them, but clearly it was not to be attempted, for the ground fell considerably on the other side. My next thought was to ride away and leave them. My third was one which some of my readers will judge Quixotic, but I have a profound reverence for the Don—and that not merely because I have so often acted as foolishly as he. This last I proceeded to carry out, and lifting-my hat, rode to meet them. Taking no notice whatever of Brotherton, I addressed Clara—in what I fancied a distant and dignified manner, which she might, if she pleased, attribute to the presence of her companion.

'Miss Coningham,' I said, 'will you allow me the honour of offering you my mare? She will carry you better.'

'You are very kind, Mr Cumbermede,' she returned in a similar tone, but with a sparkle in her eyes. 'I am greatly obliged to you. I cannot pretend to prefer old crossbones to the beautiful creature which gave me so much pleasure yesterday.'

I was off and by her side in a moment, helping her to dismount. I did not even look at Brotherton, though I felt he was staring like an equestrian statue. While I shifted the saddles Clara broke the silence, which I was in too great an inward commotion to heed, by asking—

'What is the name of your beauty, Mr Cumbermede?'

'Lilith,' I answered.

'What a pretty name! I never heard it before. Is it after any one—any public character, I mean?'

'Quite a public character,' I returned—'Adam's first wife.'

'I never heard he had two,' she rejoined, laughing.

'The Jews say he had. She is a demon now, and the pest of married women and their babies,'

'What a horrible name to give your mare!'

'The name is pretty enough. And what does it matter what the woman was, so long as she was beautiful.'

'I don't quite agree with you there,' she returned, with what I chose to consider a forced laugh.

By this time her saddle was firm on Lilith, and in an instant she was mounted. Brotherton moved to ride on, and the mare followed him. Clara looked back.

'You will catch us up in a moment,' she said, possibly a little puzzled between us.

I was busy tightening my girths, and fumbled over the job more than was necessary. Brotherton was several yards ahead, and she was walking the mare slowly after him. I made her no answer, but mounted, and rode in the opposite direction; It was rude of course, but I did it. I could not have gone with them, and was afraid, if I told her so, she would dismount and refuse the mare.

In a tumult of feeling I rode on without looking behind me, careless whither—how long I cannot tell, before I woke up to find I did not know where I was. I must ride on till I came to some place I knew, or met some one who could tell me. Lane led into lane, buried betwixt deep banks and lofty hedges, or passing through small woods, until I ascended a rising ground, whence I got a view of the country. At once its features began to dawn upon me: I was close to the village of Aldwick, where I had been at school, and in a few minutes I rode into its wide straggling street. Not a mark of change had passed upon it. There were the same dogs about the doors, and the same cats in the windows. The very ferns in the chinks of the old draw-well appeared the same; and the children had not grown an inch since first I drove into the place marvelling at its wondrous activity.

The sun was hot, and my horse seemed rather tired. I was in no mood to see any one, and besides had no pleasant recollections of my last visit to Mr Elder, so I drew up at the door of the little inn, and having sent my horse to the stable for an hour's rest and a feed of oats, went into the sanded parlour, ordered a glass of ale, and sat staring at the china shepherdesses on the chimney-piece. I see them now, the ugly things, as plainly as if that had been an hour of the happiest reflections. I thought I was miserable, but I know now that, although I was much disappointed, and everything looked dreary and uninteresting about me, I was a long way off misery. Indeed, the passing vision of a neat unbonneted village girl on her way to the well was attractive enough still to make me rise and go to the window. While watching, as she wound up the long chain, for the appearance of the familiar mossy bucket, dripping diamonds, as it gleamed out of the dark well into the sudden sunlight, I heard the sound of horse's hoofs, and turned to see what kind of apparition would come. Presently it appeared, and made straight for the inn. The rider was Mr Coningham! I drew back to escape his notice, but his quick eye had caught sight of me, for he came into the room with outstretched hand.

'We are fated to meet, Mr Cumbermede,' he said. 'I only stopped to give my horse some meal and water, and had no intention of dismounting. Ale? I'll have a glass of ale too,' he added, ringing the bell. 'I think I'll let him have a feed, and have a mouthful of bread and cheese myself.'

He went out, and had I suppose gone to see that his horse had his proper allowance of oats, for when he returned he said merrily:

'What have you done with my daughter, Mr Cumbermede?'

'Why should you think me responsible for her, Mr Conningham?' I asked, attempting a smile.

No doubt he detected the attempt in the smile, for he looked at me with a sharpened expression of the eyes, as he answered—still in a merry tone—

'When I saw her last, she was mounted on your horse, and you were on my father's. I find you still on my father's horse, and your own—with the lady—nowhere. Have I made out a case of suspicion?'

'It is I who have cause of complaint,' I returned—'who have neither lady nor mare—unless indeed you imagine I have in the case of the latter made a good exchange.'

'Hardly that, I imagine, if yours is half so good as she looks. But, seriously, have you seen Clara to-day?'

I told him the facts as lightly as I could. When I had finished, he stared at me with an expression which for the moment I avoided attempting to interpret.

'On horseback with Mr Brotherton?' he said, uttering the words as if every syllable had been separately italicized.

'You will find it as I say,' I replied, feeling offended.

'My dear boy—excuse my freedom,' he returned—'I am nearly three times your age—you do not imagine I doubt a hair's breadth of your statement! But—the giddy goose!—how could you be so silly? Pardon me again. Your unselfishness is positively amusing! To hand over your horse to her, and then ride away all by yourself on that—respectable stager!'

'Don't abuse the old horse,' I returned. 'He is respectable, and has been more in his day.'

'Yes, yes. But for the life of me I cannot understand it. Mr Cumbermede, I am sorry for you. I should not advise you to choose the law for a profession. The man who does not regard his own rights will hardly do for an adviser in the affairs of others.

'You were not going to consult me, Mr Coningham, were you?' I said, now able at length to laugh without effort.

'Not quite that,' he returned, also laughing. 'But a right, you know, is one of the most serious things in the world.'

It seemed irrelevant to the trifling character of the case. I could not understand why he should regard the affair as of such importance.

'I have been in the way of thinking,' I said, 'that one of the advantages of having rights was that you could part with them when you pleased. You're not bound to insist on your rights, are you?'

'Certainly you would not subject yourself to a criminal action by foregoing them, but you might suggest to your friends a commission of lunacy. I see how it is. That is your uncle all over! He was never a man of the world.'

'You are right there, Mr Coningham. It is the last epithet any one would give my uncle.'

'And the first any one would give me, you imply, Mr Cumbermede.'

'I had no such intention,' I answered. 'That would have been rude.'

'Not in the least. I should have taken it as a compliment. The man who does not care about his rights, depend upon it, will be made a tool of by those that do. If he is not a spoon already, he will become one. I shouldn't have iffed it at all if I hadn't known you.'

'And you don't want to be rude to me.'

'I don't. A little experience will set you all right; and that you are in a fair chance of getting if you push your fortune as a literary man. But I must be off. I hope we may have another chat before long.'

He finished his ale, rose, bade me good-bye, and went to the stable. As soon as he was out of sight, I also mounted and rode homewards.

By the time I reached the gate of the park, my depression had nearly vanished. The comforting power of sun and shadow, of sky and field, of wind and motion, had restored me to myself. With a side glance at the windows of the cottage as I passed, and the glimpse of a bright figure seated in the drawing-room window, I made for the stable, and found my Lilith waiting me. Once more I shifted my saddle, and rode home, without even another glance at the window as I passed.

A day or two after, I received from Mr Coningham a ticket for the county ball, accompanied by a kind note. I returned it at once with the excuse that I feared incapacitating myself for work by dissipation.

Henceforward I avoided the park, and did not again see Clara before leaving for London. I had a note from her, thanking me for Lilith, and reproaching me for having left her to the company of Mr Brotherton, which I thought cool enough, seeing they had set out together without the slightest expectation of meeting me. I returned a civil answer, and there was an end of it.

I must again say for myself that it was not mere jealousy of Brotherton that led me to act as I did. I could not and would not get over the contradiction between the way in which she had spoken of him, and the way in which she spoke to him, followed by her accompanying him in the long ride to which the state of my mare bore witness. I concluded that, although she might mean no harm, she was not truthful. To talk of a man with such contempt, and then behave to him with such frankness, appeared to me altogether unjustifiable. At the same time their mutual familiarity pointed to some foregone intimacy, in which, had I been so inclined, I might have found some excuse for her, seeing she might have altered her opinion of him, and might yet find it very difficult to alter the tone of their intercourse.



CHAPTER XXVIII.

IN LONDON.

My real object being my personal history in relation to certain facts and events, I must, in order to restrain myself from that discursiveness the impulse to which is an urging of the historical as well as the artistic Satan, even run the risk of appearing to have been blind to many things going on around me which must have claimed a large place had I been writing an autobiography instead of a distinct portion of one.

I set out with my manuscript in my portmanteau, and a few pounds in my pocket, determined to cost my uncle as little as I could.

I well remember the dreariness of London, as I entered it on the top of a coach, in the closing darkness of a late Autumn afternoon. The shops were not yet all lighted, and a drizzly rain was falling. But these outer influences hardly got beyond my mental skin, for I had written to Charley, and hoped to find him waiting for me at the coach-office. Nor was I disappointed, and in a moment all discomfort was forgotten. He took me to his chambers in the New Inn.

I found him looking better, and apparently, for him, in good spirits. It was soon arranged, at his entreaty, that for the present I should share his sitting-room, and have a bed put up for me in a closet he did not want. The next day I called upon certain publishers and left with them my manuscript. Its fate is of no consequence here, and I did not then wait to know it, but at once began to fly my feather at lower game, writing short papers and tales for the magazines. I had a little success from the first; and although the surroundings of my new abode were dreary enough, although, now and then, especially when the Winter sun shone bright into the court, I longed for one peep into space across the field that now itself lay far in the distance, I soon settled to my work, and found the life an enjoyable one. To work beside Charley the most of the day, and go with him in the evening to some place of amusement, or to visit some of the men in chambers about us, was for the time a satisfactory mode of existence.

I soon told him the story of my little passage with Clara. During the narrative he looked uncomfortable, and indeed troubled, but as soon as he found I had given up the affair, his countenance brightened.

'I'm very glad you've got over it so well,' he said.

'I think I've had a good deliverance,' I returned.

He made no reply. Neither did his face reveal his thoughts, for I could not read the confused expression it bore.

That he should not fall in with my judgment would never have surprised me, for he always hung back from condemnation, partly, I presume, from being even morbidly conscious of his own imperfections, and partly that his prolific suggestion supplied endless possibilities to explain or else perplex everything. I had been often even annoyed by his use of the most refined invention to excuse, as I thought, behaviour the most palpably wrong. I believe now it was rather to account for it than to excuse it.

'Well, Charley,' I would say in such a case, 'I am sure you would never have done such a thing.'

'I cannot guarantee my own conduct for a moment,' he would answer; or, taking the other tack, would reply: 'Just for that reason I cannot believe the man would have done it.'

But the oddity in the present case was that he said nothing. I should, however, have forgotten all about it, but that after some time I began to observe that as often as I alluded to Clara—which was not often—he contrived to turn the remark aside, and always without saying a syllable about her. The conclusion I came to was that, while he shrunk from condemnation, he was at the same time unwilling to disturb the present serenity of my mind by defending her conduct.

Early in the Spring, an unpleasant event occurred, of which I might have foreseen the possibility. One morning I was alone, working busily, when the door opened.

'Why, Charley—back already!' I exclaimed, going on to finish my sentence.

Receiving no answer, I looked up from my paper, and started to my feet. Mr Osborne stood before me, scrutinizing me with severe grey eyes. I think he knew me from the first, but I was sufficiently altered to make it doubtful.

'I beg your pardon,' he said coldly—'I thought these were Charles Osborne's chambers.' And he turned to leave the room.

'They are his chambers, Mr Osborne,' I replied, recovering myself with an effort, and looking him in the face.

'My son had not informed me that he shared them with another.'

'We are very old friends, Mr Osborne.'

He made no answer, but stood regarding me fixedly.

'You do not remember me, sir,' I said. 'I am Wilfrid Cumbermede.'

'I have cause to remember you.'

'Will you not sit down, sir? Charley will be home in less than an hour—I quite expect.'

Again he turned his back as if about to leave me.

'If my presence is disagreeable to you,' I said, annoyed at his rudeness, 'I will go.'

'As you please,' he answered.

I left my papers, caught up my hat, and went out of the room and the house. I said good morning, but he made no return.

Not until nearly eight o'clock did I re-enter. I had of course made up my mind that Charley and I must part. When I opened the door, I thought at first there was no one there. There were no lights, and the fire had burned low.

'Is that you, Wilfrid?' said Charley.

He was lying on the sofa.

'Yes, Charley,' I returned.

'Come in, old fellow. The avenger of blood is not behind me,' he said, in a mocking tone, as he rose and came to meet me. 'I've been having such a dose of damnation—all for your sake!'

'I'm very sorry, Charley. But I think we are both to blame. Your father ought to have been told. You see day after day went by, and—somehow—'

'Tut, tut! never mind. What does it matter—except that it's a disgrace to be dependent on such a man? I wish I had the courage to starve.'

'He's your father, Charley. Nothing can alter that.'

'That's the misery of it. And then to tell people God is their father! If he's like mine, he's done us a mighty favour in creating us! I can't say I feel grateful for it. I must turn out to-morrow.'

'No, Charley. The place has no attraction for me without you, and it was yours first. Besides, I can't afford to pay so much. I will find another to-morrow. But we shall see each other often, and perhaps get through more work apart. I hope he didn't insist on your never seeing me.'

'He did try it on; but there I stuck fast, threatening to vanish and scramble for my living as I best might. I told him you were a far better man than I, and did me nothing but good. But that only made the. matter worse, proving your influence over me. Let's drop it. It's no use. Let's go to the Olympic.'

The next day I looked for a lodging in Camden Town, attracted by the probable cheapness, and by the grass in the Regent's Park; and having found a decent place, took my things away while Charley was out. I had not got them, few as they were, in order in my new quarters before he made his appearance; and as long as I was there few days passed on which we did not meet.

One evening he walked in, accompanied by a fine-looking young fellow, whom I thought I must know, and presently recognized as Home, our old school-fellow, with whom I had fought in Switzerland. We had become good friends before we parted, and Charley and he had met repeatedly since.

'What are you doing now, Home?' I asked him.

'I've just taken deacon's orders,' he answered. 'A friend of my father's has promised me a living. I've been hanging-about quite long enough now. A fellow ought to do something for his existence.'

'I can't think how a strong fellow like you can take to mumbling prayers and reading sermons,' said Charley.

'It ain't nice,' said Home, 'but it's a very respectable profession. There are viscounts in it, and lots of honourables.'

'I dare say,' returned Charley, with drought. 'But a nerveless creature like me, who can't even hit straight from the shoulder, would be good enough for that. A giant like you, Home!'

'Ah! by-the-by, Osborne,' said Home, not in love with the prospect, and willing to turn the conversation, 'I thought you were a church-calf yourself.'

'Honestly, Home, I don't know whether it isn't the biggest of all big humbugs.'

'Oh, but—Osborne!—it ain't the thing, you know, to talk like that of a profession adopted by so many great men fit to honour any profession,' returned Home, who was not one of the brightest of mortals, and was jealous for the profession just in as much as it was destined for his own.

'Either the profession honours the men, or the men dishonour themselves,' said Charley. 'I believe it claims to have been founded by a man called Jesus Christ, if such a man ever existed except in the fancy of his priesthood.'

'Well, really,' expostulated Home, looking, I must say, considerably shocked, 'I shouldn't have expected that from the son of a clergyman!'

'I couldn't help my father. I wasn't consulted,' said Charley, with an uncomfortable grin. 'But, at any rate, my father fancies he believes all the story. I fancy I don't.'

'Then you're an infidel, Osborne.'

'Perhaps. Do you think that so very horrible?'

'Yes, I do. Tom Paine, and all the rest of them, you know!'

'Well, Home, I'll tell you one thing I think worse than being an infidel.'

'What is that?'

'Taking to the Church for a living.'

'I don't see that.'

'Either the so-called truths it advocates are things to live and die for, or they are the veriest old wives' fables going. Do you know who was the first to do what you are about now?'

'No. I can't say. I'm not up in Church history yet.'

'It was Judas.'

I am not sure that Charley was right, but that is what he said. I was taking no part in the conversation, but listening eagerly, with a strong suspicion that Charley had been leading Home to this very point.

'A man must live,' said Home.

'That's precisely what I take it Judas said: for my part I don't see it.'

'Don't see what?'

'That a man must live. It would be a far more incontrovertible assertion that a man must die—and a more comfortable one, too.'

'Upon my word, I don't understand you, Osborne! You make a fellow feel deuced queer with your remarks.'

'At all events, you will allow that the first of them—they call them apostles, don't they?—didn't take to preaching the gospel for the sake of a living. What a satire on the whole kit of them that word living, so constantly in all their mouths, is! It seems to me that Messrs Peter and Paul and Matthew, and all the rest of them, forsook their livings for a good chance of something rather the contrary.'

'Then it was true—what they said about you at Forest's?'

'I don't know what they said,' returned Charley; 'but before I would pretend to believe what I didn't—'

'But I do believe it, Osborne.'

'May I ask on what grounds?'

'Why—everybody does.'

'That would be no reason, even if it were a fact, which it is not. You believe it, or rather, choose to think you believe it, because you've been told it. Sooner than pretend to teach what I have never learned, and be looked up to as a pattern of godliness, I would 'list in the ranks. There, at least, a man might earn an honest living.'

'By Jove! You do make a fellow feel uncomfortable!' repeated Home. 'You've got such a—such an uncompromising way of saying things—to use a mild expression.'

'I think it's a sneaking thing to do, and unworthy of a gentleman.'

'I don't see what right you've got to bully me in that way,' said Home, getting angry.

It was time to interfere.

'Charley is so afraid of being dishonest, Home,' I said, 'that he is rude.—You are rude now, Charley.'

'I beg your pardon, Home,' exclaimed Charley at once.

'Oh, never mind!' returned Home with gloomy good-nature.

'You ought to make allowance, Charley,' I pursued. 'When a man has been accustomed all his life to hear things spoken of in a certain way, he cannot help having certain notions to start with.'

'If I thought as Osborne does,' said Home, 'I would sooner 'list than go into the Church.'

'I confess,' I rejoined, 'I do not see how any one can take orders, unless he not only loves God with all his heart, but receives the story of the New Testament as a revelation of him, precious beyond utterance. To the man who accepts it so, the calling is the noblest in the world.'

The others were silent, and the conversation turned away. From whatever cause, Home did not go into the Church, but died fighting in India.

He soon left us—Charley remaining behind.

'What a hypocrite I am!' he exclaimed;—'following a profession in which I must often, if I have any practice at all, defend what I know to be wrong, and seek to turn justice from its natural course.'

'But you can't always know that your judgment is right, even if it should be against your client. I heard an eminent barrister say once that he had come out of the court convinced by the arguments of the opposite counsel.'

'And having gained the case?'

'That I don't know.'

'He went in believing his own side anyhow, and that made it all right for him.'

'I don't know that either. His private judgment was altered, but whether it was for or against his client, I do not remember. The fact, however, shows that one might do a great wrong by refusing a client whom he judged in the wrong.'

'On the contrary, to refuse a brief on such grounds would be best for all concerned. Not believing in it, you could not do your best, and might be preventing one who would believe in it from taking it up.'

'The man might not get anybody to take it up.'

'Then there would be little reason to expect that a jury charged under ordinary circumstances would give a verdict in his favour.'

'But it would be for the barristers to constitute themselves the judges.'

'Yes—of their own conduct—only that. There I am again! The finest ideas about the right thing—and going on all the same, with open eyes running my head straight into the noose! Wilfrid, I'm one of the weakest animals in creation. What if you found at last that I had been deceiving you! What would you say?'