The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Duke's Daughter (aka Lady Jane) and The
Fugitives; vol. 2/3, by Mrs. Margaret Oliphant

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Title: The Duke's Daughter (aka Lady Jane) and The Fugitives; vol. 2/3

Author: Mrs. Margaret Oliphant

Release Date: November 28, 2020 [EBook #63902]

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DUKE'S DAUGHTER (AKA LADY
JANE) AND THE FUGITIVES; VOL. 2/3 ***




                          THE DUKE’S DAUGHTER

                                  AND

                             THE FUGITIVES


    “Lady, you come hither to be married to this count?”
    “I do.”
                --_Much Ado about Nothing._




                          THE DUKE’S DAUGHTER

                                  AND

                             THE FUGITIVES


                                  BY

                             MRS OLIPHANT


                           IN THREE VOLUMES

                               VOL. II.


                      WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
                         EDINBURGH AND LONDON
                                MDCCCXC




CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME.


THE DUKE’S DAUGHTER (CONTINUED)--

CHAP.                           PAGE

  XI. A NEW AGENCY,                3

 XII. HALF-MARRIED,               27

XIII. THE WEDDING-DAY,            54

 XIV. IN PRISON,                  87

  XV. DELIVERANCE,               110

THE FUGITIVES,                   145




                          THE DUKE’S DAUGHTER

                             (_CONTINUED_)




                         THE DUKE’S DAUGHTER.




CHAPTER XI.

A NEW AGENT.


The reader accustomed to the amenities of the highest social circles,
such as those which we are now compelled temporarily to leave, will no
doubt sensibly feel the shock of the descent from the mansion of the
Duke, and his sublime society, to a sphere and condition of life far
removed from these summits of existence. It is seldom that life can be
carried on solely upon those high levels; the necessities of every day
call for the aid of the more humbly born and placed, so that not even
dukes can suffice to themselves. We must then, without further apology,
proceed at once to a room as different as it is possible to conceive
from the halls of Billings--a small sitting-room in a small
rectory-house in the heart of London, belonging to one of the old parish
churches which have been abandoned there by the tide of habitation and
life. The church was close by, a fine one in its way, one of Wren’s
churches, adapted for a large Protestant congregation more solicitous
about the sermon than is usual nowadays--but left now without any
congregation at all. The rectory, a house of very moderate dimensions,
jammed in among warehouses and offices, had little air and less light in
the gloomy November days. The Rector and his wife had just returned
from their yearly holiday, and it was not a cheerful thing to come back
to the fog, and the damp, and the gas-lamps, and all the din of the
great carts that lumbered round the corner continually, and loaded and
unloaded themselves within two steps of the clergyman’s door. How was he
to write his sermons or meditate over his work in the midst of these
noises? his wife often asked indignantly. But, to be sure, the fifty
people or so who quite crowded St Alban’s when they all turned out, were
not very critical. Down in these regions there is not a Little Bethel
always handy, and the inhabitants must take what they can get and be
thankful: which it would be a good thing, Mrs Marston thought, if they
could be oftener obliged in other places to do.

Mr Marston was in his study. It was a small room on one side of the
door, chosen for its handiness that the parish people might be
introduced without trouble, to the Rector: but there were but few that
ever troubled him. At the present moment his verger had just brought him
the parish news, with an intimation of the fact that a marriage was to
take place to-morrow at eleven o’clock, at which Mr Sayers, who had
taken the duty in his absence, hoped the Rector himself would officiate.
The one parish duty that was occasionally necessary in St Alban’s was to
perform marriages, and accordingly the Rector was not surprised. He had
the gas lighted, though it was still early in the afternoon, that he
might look at the book in which the notice of the banns was kept, in
order to make sure that all had been done in order. The gas was lighted,
but the blind was not drawn down, and the upper part of the window was
full of a grey and dingy London sky, without colour in it at all, a
sort of paleness merely, against which the leafless branches of the poor
little tree which flourished in the little grass-plot stood out with a
desolate distinction. Inside the room was unpleasantly warm. The Rector
sat with his back to the fire; he read the entry of the banns in the
book, and saw that all was right. Then after he had closed the book and
put it away, a sudden thought struck him, and he opened it again. Where
had he seen that name before? It was a strange name, a name not at all
like the parish of St Alban’s, E.C. What could she want here, a person
with a name like that? He put down the book the second time, but again
turned back and opened it once more. Pendragon Plantagenet Fitz-Merlin
Altamont! One does not often hear such names strung one after another.
Was it perhaps some player-lady keeping the fine names of her _rôles_
in the theatre? Or was it--could it be?---- Mr Marston could not shake
off the impression thus made upon him. He had two churchings to-morrow
which ought to have occupied him still more, for new members of the
congregation were the most interesting things in the world to the
Rector. But he was haunted by the other intimation, and the churchings
sank into insignificance. He pondered for a long time, disturbed by the
questions which arose in his mind, and at length, not feeling capable of
containing them longer, he took the book in his hand and went across the
hall, which was still in the afternoon gloom, to his wife, whose little
drawing-room on the other side was lighted by the flickering firelight,
and not much more. She was very glad to see him come in. “Did you think
it was tea-time?” she said. “I am sure I don’t wonder, but it’s only
three o’clock. Dear, dear, to think of the fine sunset we were looking
at an hour later than this yesterday. But London is getting worse and
worse.”

“Why don’t you have the gas lighted?” the Rector asked in a querulous
tone. “I have brought something to show you, but there is no light to
see it by.”

“You shall have the light in a moment,” cried Mrs Marston; “that is the
one good thing of gas. It spoils your picture-frames and kills your
flowers; but you can have it instantly, and always clean and no trouble.
There!”

The gas leaping up dazzled them for a moment, and then Mr Marston opened
his book and pointed his finger to the entry. “Look here, Mary--look at
that; did you ever see a name like that before? What do you suppose it
can mean?”

Mrs Marston had to put on her spectacles first, and they had always to
be looked for before they could be put on. She had just adopted
spectacles, and did not like them, nor to have to make, even to herself,
the confession that she wanted them: and they were always out of the
way. The Rector was short-sighted, and had the exemption which such
persons enjoy. He looked upon the magnifying spectacles of his wife with
contempt, and it was always irritating to him to see her hunting about,
saying, “Where have I put my glasses?” as was her wont. “Can’t you tie
them round your neck,” he said, “or keep them in your pocket--or
something?” When, however, they were found at last, he spread the book
out upon the table and, with his finger on the place, waited while she
read. Their two heads stooping over the book under the gas, with the
pale sky looking in at the window, made a curious picture, he eager,
she still fumbling a little to get on her spectacles without further
comment. “‘Reginald Winton,’” she read hesitating, “‘bachelor, of this
parish.’ I never certainly heard of any one of that name in this parish:
stay, it might be the new care-taker perhaps at Mullins and
Makings--or----”

“That’s not the name,” cried the Rector. He would have liked to pinch
her, but refrained. “This is no care-taker, you may be sure; but it is
the other name--look at the other name. Where have you seen it before?
and what is the meaning of it?” Mr Marston cried with excitement. He had
worked himself up to this pitch, and he forgot that she was quite
unprepared. She read, stumbling a little, for the handwriting was
crabbed, “‘Jane Angela Pendragon Plantagenet Fitz-Merlin Altamont,
spinster, of the parish of Billings.’ Dear, dear,” was good Mrs
Marston’s first comment--“I hope she has names enough and syllables
enough for one person.”

“And is that all that strikes you?” her husband said.

“Well--it is an odd name--is that what you mean, William? Very silly, I
think, to give a girl all that to sign. I suppose if she uses it all, it
will be only in initials. She will sign, you know, Jane Angela, or very
likely only Angela, which is much prettier than Jane; Angela P. P.
F.--or F. M.--Altamont, that is how it will be. Angela Altamont; it is
like a name in a novel.”

“Ah, now we are coming to it at last!” cried the Rector; “names in
novels, when they are founded on anything, generally follow the names of
the aristocracy. Now here’s the question: Is this a secret marriage, and
the bride some poor young lady who doesn’t know what she is doing, some
girl running away with her brother’s tutor or some fiddler or other, to
her own ruin, poor thing, without knowing what she is about?”

“Dear me, William! what an imagination you have got!” said Mrs Marston,
and she sat down in her surprise and drew the book towards her; but then
she added, “Why should they come to St Alban’s in that case? There are
no musicians living in this parish. And poor people do give their
children such grand names nowadays. That poor shirtmaker in Cotton Lane,
don’t you remember? her baby is Ethel Sybil Celestine Constantia--you
recollect how we laughed?”

“Family Herald,” said the Rector with a careless wave of his hand, “and
all Christian names, which makes a great difference. It was her last
batch of heroines, poor soul; but do you think a poor needlewoman would
think of Pendragon and Plantagenet? No; mark my words, Mary, this is
some great person; this is some poor deceived girl, throwing away
everything for what she thinks love. Poor thing, poor thing! and all the
formalities complied with, so that I have no right to stop it. Sayers is
an idiot!” cried Mr Marston. “I should have inquired into it at once had
I been at home, with a name before my eyes like that.”

“Dear me!” said Mrs Marston; there is not much in it, but she repeated
the exclamation several times. “After all,” she said, “it must be true
love, or she would not go that length; and who knows, William, whether
that is not better than all their grandeur? Dear, dear me! I wish we
knew a little about the circumstances. If the gentleman is of this
parish couldn’t you send for him and inquire into it?” The Rector was
pacing up and down the room in very unusual agitation. It was such a
crisis as in his peaceful clerical life had never happened to him
before.

“You know very well he is not of this parish,” Mr Marston said. “I
suppose he must have slept here the requisite number of nights; and
besides, he knows I have no right to interfere. The banns are all in
order. I can’t refuse to marry them, and what right have I to send for
the man or to question him? No doubt he would have some plausible story.
It is not to be expected, especially if it is the sort of thing I think
it is, that he should tell me.”

“Dear, dear!” repeated Mrs Marston. “A clergyman should have more power;
what is the good of being a clergyman if you cannot stop a marriage in
your own church? I call that tyranny. Do you mean to tell me you will be
compelled to marry them, whether you approve of it or not?”

“Well, Mary, it is not usual to ask the clergyman’s consent, is it?” he
said with a laugh, momentarily tickled by the suggestion. But this did
not throw any light upon what was to be done, or upon the question
whether anything was to be done; and with a mind quite unsatisfied he
retired again to the study, seeing that it was out of all reason to ring
the bell at half-past three for tea. He drew down his blind with a sigh
as he went back to his room, shutting out the colourless paleness which
did duty for sky, and resigning himself to the close little room though
it was too warm. Mr Marston tried his best to compose himself, to take
up his work, such as it was, to put away from his mind the remembrance
of a world which was not wrapt in fog, and where wholesome breezes were
blowing. St Alban’s was a good living; it had endowments enough to
furnish two or three churches, and to get it had been a wonderful thing
for him; but sometimes he asked himself whether two hundred a-year and a
country parish with cottages in it instead of warehouses would not have
been better. However, all that was folly, and here was something
exciting to amuse his mind with, which was always an advantage. He had
laid down his book (for he thought it right to keep up his reading) for
the fourth or fifth time, to ask himself whether sending for the
bridegroom, as his wife suggested, or going out in search of him, might
not be worth his while, when Mrs Marston came suddenly bursting into the
study with, in her turn, a big volume in her arms. The Rector looked up
in surprise and put away his theology. She came in, he said to himself,
like a whirlwind; which was not, however, a metaphor at all adapted to
describe the movements of a stout and comfortable person of fifty, with
a great respect for her furniture. But she did enter with an assured,
not to say triumphant air, carrying her book, which she plumped down
before him on the table, sweeping away some of his papers. “There!” she
cried, breathless and excited. The page was blazoned with a big coat of
arms. It was in irregular lines like poetry, and ah, how much dearer
than poetry to many a British soul! It was, need we say, a Peerage, an
old Peerage, without any of the recent information, but still not too
old for the purpose. “There!” said Mrs Marston, again flourishing her
forefinger. The Rector, bewildered, looked and read. He read and he grew
pale with awe and alarm. He looked up in his wife’s face with a gasp of
excitement. He was too much impressed even to say, “I told you so,”
for, to be sure, a duke’s daughter was a splendour he had not conceived.
But his wife was more demonstrative in the delight of her discovery.
“There!” she cried, for the third time. “I felt sure, of course, it must
be in the Peerage, if it was what you thought; and there it is at full
length, ‘Lady Jane Angela Pendragon Plantagenet Fitz-Merlin Altamont.’
It fairly took away my breath. To think you should have made such a good
guess! and me talking about Mrs Singer’s baby! Why, I suppose it is one
of the greatest families in the country,” Mrs Marston said.

“There is no doubt about that,” said the Rector. “I have heard the
present Duke was not rich, but that would make it all the worse. Poor
young lady! poor misguided--for of course she can know nothing about
life nor what she is doing. And I wonder who the man is. He must be a
scoundrel,” said Mr Marston, hotly, “to take advantage of the ignorance
of a girl.”

“My dear,” said Mrs Marston, “all that may be quite true that you say,
but if you reckon up you will see that she must be twenty-eight.
Twenty-eight is not such a girl. And Reginald Winton is quite a nice
name.”

“Just the sort of name for a tutor, or a music-master, or something of
that sort,” said the Rector, contemptuously. He had been a tutor himself
in his day, but that did not occur to him at the moment. He got up from
his chair and would have paced about the room as he did in his wife’s
quarters had the study been big enough; but failing in this, he planted
himself before the fire, to the great danger of his coat-tails and
increase of his temperature, but in his excitement he paid no attention
to that. “And now the question is, what is to be done?” he said.

“I thought you told me there was nothing to be done. I shall come to
church myself to-morrow, William, and if you think I could speak to the
poor young lady----: perhaps if she had a woman to talk to--most likely
she has no mother. That’s such an old book, one can’t tell; but I don’t
think a girl would do this who had a mother. Poor thing! Do you think if
I were there a little before the hour and were to talk to her, and try
to get into her confidence, and say how wrong it was----”

“Talk to a bride at the altar!” said the Rector; the indecorum of the
idea shocked him beyond description. “No, no, something must be done at
once--there is no time to be lost. I must write to the Duke.”

“To the Duke!” This suggestion took away Mrs Marston’s breath.

“I hope,” said her husband, raising his head, “that we both know a duke
is but a man: and I am a clergyman, and I want nothing from him, but to
do him a service. It would be wicked to hesitate. The question is, where
is he to be found, and how can we reach him in time? He is not likely to
be in town at this time of the year; nobody is in town I suppose except
you and me, and a few millions more, Mary; but that doesn’t help us--the
question is, where is he likely to be? Thank heaven there is still time
for the post!” Mr Marston cried, and threw himself upon his chair, and
pulled his best note-paper out of his drawer.

But, alas! the question of where the Duke was puzzled them both.
Grosvenor Square; Billings Castle, ----shire; Hungerford Place, in the
West Riding; Cooling, N.B.; Caerpylcher, North Wales. As his wife read
them out one after another, with a little hesitation about the
pronunciation, the Rector wrung his hands. The consultation which the
anxious pair held on the subject ran on to the very limits of the
post-hour, and would take too long to record. Now that it had come to
this, Mrs Marston was inclined to hold her husband back. “After all, if
it was a real attachment,” she said, between the moments of discussing
whether it was in his seat in Scotland, or in Wales, or at his chief and
most ducal of residences that a duke in November was likely to be.
“After all, it might be really for her happiness--and what a dreadful
shock for them, poor things, if they came to be married, thinking they
had settled everything so nicely, and walked into the arms of her
father!” Her heart melted more and more as she thought of it. No doubt,
poor girl, she had been deprived early of a mother’s care; and, on the
other hand, at twenty-eight a girl ought to know her own mind. She
could not be expected to give in to her father for ever. And if it
should be that this was a real attachment, and the poor young lady’s
happiness was concerned----

The Rector made short work of these arguments. He pooh-poohed the real
attachment in a way which made Mrs Marston angry. What could she know of
poverty? he asked; and how was a duke’s daughter to scramble for herself
in the world? As for love, it was great nonsense in most cases. The
French system was just as good as the English. People got to like each
other by living together, and by having the same tastes and habits. How
could a fiddler or a tutor have the same habits as Lady Jane, “or Lady
Angela, if you like it better?” He went on, as Mrs Marston said, like
this, till she could have boxed his ears for him. And the fact was that
he had to pay an extra penny on each of his letters to get them off by
the post; for he wrote several letters--to Billings, to Hungerford, and
to Grosvenor Square. Scotland and Wales were hopeless; there was no
chance whatever that from either of these places his Grace could arrive
in time. Indeed, it would be something very like a miracle if he arrived
now. But the Rector felt that he had done his duty, which is always a
consolation. He retired to rest late and full of excitement, feeling
that no one could tell what the morrow might bring forth--a sentiment,
no doubt, which is always true, but which commends itself more to the
mind in a season when out-of-the-way events are likely. Mrs Marston had
been a little cool towards him all the evening, resenting much that he
had said. But it was not till all modes of communicating with the outer
world were hopeless that she took her revenge and planted a thorn in his
pillow. “If you had not been so disagreeable,” she said, “I would have
advised you not to trust to the post, but to telegraph. I dare say the
Duke would have paid you back the few shillings; then he would have been
sure to get the news in time. At present I think it very unlikely. And I
am sure, for the young people’s sake, I should be sorry. But I should
have telegraphed,” Mrs Marston said. And the Rector, strange to say, had
never thought of that.




CHAPTER XII.

HALF-MARRIED.


Next morning everything was in movement early in St Alban’s, E.C. Orders
had been sent to the verger to have special sweepings-out and settings
in order, a thing which took that functionary much by surprise. For the
marriage: but then marriages were not so uncommon at St Alban’s--less
uncommon than anything else. Churchings were more rare events, and
demanded more consideration: for probably the married pair once united
would never trouble St Alban’s more; whereas there was always a chance
that babies born in the neighbourhood might grow up in it, and promote
the good works of the parish, or be candidates for its charities, which
was also very desirable--for the charities were large and the qualified
applicants few. But it was for the marriage that all this fuss was to be
made. “It must be a swell wedding,” the verger said to his wife. “You
had better put on your Sunday bonnet and hang about. Sometimes they want
a witness to sign the book, and there’s half-crowns going.” Accordingly
all was expectation in the neighbourhood of the church. The best
altar-cloth was displayed, and the pinafores taken off the cushions in
the pulpit and reading-desk, and the warming apparatus lighted, though
this was an expense. Mr Marston felt justly that when there was a
possibility of a duke and a certainty of a duke’s daughter, extra
preparations were called for. He came over himself early to see that all
was ready. There was no concealing his excitement. “Has any one been
here?” he asked, almost before he was within hearing of the verger.
Simms answered “No”--but added, “Them churchings, Rector. You’ll take
’em after the wedding, sir?” “Oh, the churchings,” said the Rector: “are
the women here?--oh, after the wedding, of course.” But then a sudden
thought struck him. “Now I think of it, Simms,” he said, “perhaps we’d
better have them first--at least, keep them handy, ready to begin, if
necessary--for there is some one coming to the marriage who--may be
perhaps a little late----” “Oh, if you knows the parties, sir,” said the
verger. And just at that moment Mrs Marston came in, in her best bonnet
and a white shawl. She came in by the vestry door, which she had a way
of doing, though it was uncanonical, and she darted a look at her
husband as she passed through and went into her own pew, which was quite
in the front, near to the reading-desk. The white shawl convinced Simms
without further words. Unless she knew the parties Mrs Marston never
would have appeared like this. Respectability was thus given to the
whole business, which beforehand had looked, Simms thought, of a
doubtful description; for certainly there was nobody in the parish of
the name of Winton, even if the bridegroom had not looked “too swell” to
suit the locality. But if they were the Rector’s friends!

They arrived a few moments after eleven o’clock, in two very private,
quiet-looking carriages, of which nobody could be quite sure whether
they were humble broughams, of the kind which can be hired, or private
property. The bridegroom was first, with one man accompanying him, who
looked even more “swell” than himself. The bride came a little after in
the charge of a respectable elderly woman-servant, and one other lady
whose dress and looks were such as had never been seen before in St
Alban’s. Mrs Simms was not learned in dress, but she knew enough to know
that the simplicity of this lady’s costume was a kind of simplicity more
costly and grand than the greatest finery that had ever been seen within
the parish of St Alban’s. The bride herself was wrapped in a large
all-enveloping grey cloak. The maid who was with her even looked like a
duchess, and was far above any gossip with Mrs Simms. Altogether it was
a mysterious party. There was a little room adjoining the vestry to
which the ladies were taken to wait till all was ready, while the
gentlemen stood in the church, somewhat impatient, the bridegroom
looking anxiously from time to time at his watch. But now came the
strangest thing of all. The Rector, who had ordered the church to be
warmed and the cushions to be uncovered on purpose for them--he who had
known enough about their arrangements to calculate that some one might
arrive late--the Rector, now that they were here, took no notice. Simms
hurried in to inform him that they had come, but he took no notice; then
hurried back a second time to announce that “the gentlemen says as
they’re all here and quite ready;” but still Mr Marston never moved. He
had his watch on the table, and cast a glance upon it from time to time,
and he was pale and nervous sitting there in his surplice. The clergyman
all ready and the bridal party all ready, and a quarter after eleven
chiming!

“We’ll take the churchings, Simms,” said the Rector, in a voice that was
scarcely audible.

“The churchings, sir!” cried the verger, not believing his ears. Of all
the things to keep a wedding-party waiting for! But what could Simms do?
To obey the Rector was his first duty. He went with his mind in a state
of consternation to fetch the two poor women from the pews where they
sat waiting, wrapping themselves in their shawls, rather pleased with
the idea of seeing a wedding before their own little service. But they,
too, were thunderstruck when they heard they were to go up first. “Are
you sure you ain’t making a mistake?” one of them said; and as he walked
up the aisle, followed by these two humble figures, the elder gentleman,
who wore an eyeglass in his eye, almost assaulted Simms. He said,
“Holloa! hi! what are you after there?” as if he had been in the street
and not in a church.

Simms paused, and came closer than Lord Germaine, who was Winton’s
attendant, thought agreeable. He curved his hand round one side of his
mouth, and under its shelter whispered, “Two ladies, sir, to be
churched----”

“Churched! what’s that?” cried Lord Germaine, with a sort of fright--and
then he recollected himself, and laughed. “But, my good fellow,” he
said, “not before the marriage. Take my compliments to the
clergyman--Lord Ger---- I mean just my compliments, you know,” he added
hurriedly, “and tell him that we are all waiting, really all here and
waiting. He can’t keep a bride and bridegroom waiting for--two
ladies”--and then he glanced through his eyeglass at the two poor women,
who dropped a humble curtsey without meaning it--“who can be churched,
you know quite well, my good fellow, after twelve o’clock.”

“I’ll tell the Rector, sir,” said Simms--but he took his charges to the
altar-steps all the same, for the Rector was a man who liked to be
obeyed. Then he went in and delivered his message.

The Rector was sitting gazing at his watch with a very anxious and
troubled face. “Has any one come?” he said.

“Please, sir, they be all here,” said Simms. “You’ll not keep the bride
and bridegroom waiting, surely, the gentleman says.”

“I hope I am a better judge as to my duty than the gentleman,” said the
Rector, tartly; and without another word he marched into the chancel,
and advancing to the altar-rails, signed to the two women to take their
places. During the interval the bride had been brought from the
waiting-room and divested of her cloak. She was dressed simply in
white, with a large veil over her little bonnet. Lord Germaine had given
her his arm and was leading her to her place, when the voice of the
Rector announced that the other service had begun. The bridal party
looked at each other in consternation, but what could they do? Lord
Germaine, though he was one of the careless, had not courage enough to
interrupt a service in church. They stood waiting, the strangest group.
Lady Jane, when she divined what it was, did her best to pay a little
attention, to follow the prayers and lessons, which were so curiously
out of keeping with the circumstances. Winton, standing by her, crimson
with anger and impatience, could scarcely keep still. He held his watch
in his hand with feverish anxiety. Lord Germaine, adjusting his glass
more firmly in his eye, regarded the Rector as if he was a curious
animal. Lady Germaine, after carefully examining the whole group for a
moment, fell, as it was evident to see, into convulsions of secret
laughter. If it had not been so serious, it would have been highly
comic. And as for the poor women kneeling at the altar, the service so
far did them very little good. They were shocked to the very soul to
think of standing in the way of a bride; they could not resist giving
little glances from the corners of their eyes to see her, or at least
the white train of her dress falling upon the carpet on the altar-steps,
which was all that was within their range of vision as they knelt with
their hands over their faces. They were very well meaning, both of them,
and had really intended to do their religious duty--but there are some
things which are too great a trial for even flesh and blood.

All this time was Mrs Marston’s opportunity if she could have availed
herself of it. She sat in her place in her front pew, in a tremble,
meaning every moment to put force upon herself to do her duty. All the
time she was reminding herself that she was a clergyman’s wife; that she
ought not to be timid; that it was her duty to speak. But how much
easier it had been last night in intention than it was to-day in
reality! For one thing, she had not foreseen the presence of Lady
Germaine. She had thought only of the poor girl, who probably had no
mother, to whom it would make all the difference in the world to have a
woman to speak to. But the presence of the other lady confounded the
Rector’s wife. She sat and looked on in a tremor of anxiety and
timidity, unable to move, yet with her heart pricking and urging her.
And so pretty and modest as the bride looked, poor thing; and surely he
was fond of her. He would not look at her like that if it was an
interested marriage. But when she saw the laughter which “the other
lady” could not suppress, horror overcame all other sentiments in Mrs
Marston’s mind. To laugh in church; to laugh at one of the church
services! She had gone down on her knees, but neither did she, it is to
be feared, give very much attention to the prayers. And even the
Rector’s mind was disturbed. He stumbled twice in what he was saying;
his eyes were not upon the book, but upon the door, watching for some
one to come; and, good heavens! how slowly the time went! After all, it
was not much more than the half-hour when the two poor women, scarcely
knowing what had passed, got up from their knees. He had read more
quickly instead of more slowly in the confusion of his mind. Twenty
minutes yet! and the two poor mothers going down the altar-steps,
stealing into the first vacant seat to sate their eyes with the ceremony
to follow, and the other little group ranged before him, Simms putting
them in their places very officiously, and no help for it, and no sign
of any one coming. Well, a man can do no more than his duty! The Rector
came forward with the sentiments of a martyr, and opened his book and
cleared his voice. He was so much excited and nervous that he could
hardly keep his articulation clear. He had to clear his voice a great
many times in the first address; the figures before him swam in his
eyes. He had an impression of a sweet but pale face, very solemn and
tremulous, yet calm, and of a man who did not look like an adventurer.
It occurred to him, even as he read, that if he had not known anything
about them, he would have been interested in this young pair. Was no one
coming, then? He hardly knew how he began. Three-quarters chiming, and
nothing more that he could do to gain time! He went on, stumbling,
partly from agitation, partly for delay, lifting his eyes between every
two words, committing more indecorum in the course of five minutes than
he had done before in all his clerical life. When he came to the words
“if any man can show any just cause,” it came into his head what a
mockery it was. He made almost a dead stop, and looked round in a sort
of anguish--“any man!”--why, there was not a creature--there was nobody
but Simms, waiting behind obsequious, thoughtful of the half-crowns, and
Mrs Simms staring, and the two poor women who had been churched. Who of
all these was likely to make any objection? And everything perfectly
quiet; not a sound outside except the ordinary din. Then he put on his
most solemn aspect and looked fully, severely, in the face of the
bridal pair. “I require--and charge you both--as ye will answer--at the
dreadful day of judgment.” Tremendous words; and he gave them forth one
by one, pausing at every breathing-place. Surely there never was such an
officiating clergyman. Lord Germaine kept that eyeglass full upon him,
gravely studying the unknown phenomena of a new species. Lady Germaine,
entirely overmastered by the _fou rire_ which had seized her during the
churching, and fully believing that it was all eccentricity of the most
novel kind, crushed her handkerchief into her mouth, and stood behind
Winton that her half-hysterical seizure of mirth might not be perceived.
And now even that adjuration was over. Slow as you can say the words,
there are still but a few of them to say. The Rector was in despair. A
little more, and they would be bound beyond any man’s power to unloose
them. He had to begin, “Wilt thou have this woman----” At this point he
stopped short altogether; his eager ears became conscious of something
strange among the outside noises with which he was so familiar. He made
a sign to Simms, an angry, anxious gesture, pointing to the door. Lady
Germaine was almost beside herself; the little handkerchief now was not
enough; a moment more, she felt, and her laugh must peal through the
church.

But it did not--another moment something else pealed through the church,
a loud voice calling “Stop!” and Lady Germaine’s disposition to laugh
was over in an instant. She gave a little cry instead, and came close to
Lady Jane to support her. Lord Germaine dropped his eyeglass from his
eye. He said, “Go on, sir; go on, sir; do your duty,” imperatively. As
for Winton, he turned half round with a start, then, bewildered,
pronounced his assent to the question which had been but half asked him.
“I will,” he said, “I will!” “Go on, sir,” cried Lord Germaine: “go on,
sir.” In the meantime some one was hurrying up the aisle, pale,
breathless, in a whirl of passion. Even in the excitement and horror of
the moment Mrs Marston could not help giving a second look to see what
like a duke was in the flesh. The new-comer was white with fatigue and
fury. He came up to the very altar-steps where those two poor women had
been kneeling, and thrust Mrs Simms and the alarmed verger almost
violently out of the way. “Stop!” he cried, “stop! I forbid
it--stop--Jane!” and clutched his daughter by the arm. Lady Germaine in
her excitement gave a loud shriek and grasped the bride tighter, holding
her round the waist, while Winton, in a kind of frenzy, seized her
ungloved hand, which was ready to be put into his. Lady Jane thus seized
on every side awoke only then out of the abstraction of that solemn and
prayerful seriousness in which she had been about to perform the
greatest act of her life. She had not noted the breaks and pauses in the
service, she had not thought of anything extraneous, noises or voices.
All that had occupied her was the solemnity of the moment, the great
thing she was doing, the oath she was about to take. Even now, when so
rudely awakened, she was not sure that the hand of the bridegroom
seeking hers was not in the course of the service. She gave it to him,
notwithstanding the grasp upon her arm. “Go on, sir!” shouted Lord
Germaine; “do your duty.” But the Rector could not help for the moment a
little sense of triumph. He made a step backwards and closed his book.
And at this moment there was the little rustle in the throat of the
church tower, and one, two, three,--noon struck, filling the church with
successive waves of sound.

The Duke had begun, “Jane!” and Winton had cried out, echoing his
friend, to the Rector to “go on, go on,” when this sound suddenly fell
upon them all, ringing slowly, steadily, like a doom bell. Something in
the sound stilled every one, even the angry and unhappy young man, who
saw his marriage broken and his hopes made an end of in a moment. Lady
Germaine took her hand away from Jane’s waist and sank down upon the
vacant bench and burst out into sobbing,--she who felt that she must
laugh five minutes before; and Mrs Marston cried in her pew, and the two
poor women looked on with so much sympathy. The Duke’s hand dropped from
his daughter’s arm. The only thing that did not alter was the attitude
of the two chief figures. They stood with clasped hands before the
altar-rails. Even now Lady Jane only half understood what had happened.
It began to dawn upon her as she saw the closed book, and felt the
silence and the sound of the clock. She turned round to Winton with a
questioning look, then smiled and gave a little, the slightest, pressure
of the hand she held. In this way they stood while the clock struck, no
one saying a word. Then there arose several voices together.

“I thank heaven I arrived in time!” the Duke exclaimed. “Jane, let there
be no further scene, but leave off this silly pantomime, and come home
at once with me.”

“Your bishop shall hear of this, sir!” said Lord Germaine, shaking his
fist, in spite of himself, at the Rector.

Winton, on his side, was too sick at heart to find any words. He said,
“It is over,” with a voice of anguish; then added, “but we are pledged
to each other--pledged all the same.”

“Let go my daughter, sir!” cried the Duke.

“We are pledged to each other,” Winton repeated. He took the ring out of
his pocket, where it lay ready, and put it on her finger, trembling.
“She is my wife,” he said, half turning round, appealing to the group.

Lady Jane withdrew her right hand, putting it within his arm. She held
up that which had the ring upon it, and put her lips to it. “I don’t
know what this means,” she said, tremulous and yet clear, “but I am his
wife.”

“Let go my daughter, sir!” cried the Duke. They were all speaking
together. The pair who were not wedded turned round arm in arm as they
might have done had the ceremony been completed. Once more the Duke
caught hold of his daughter roughly. “Jane, leave this man! I command
you to leave him! Come home at once!” he cried. “Mr Winton, if you have
any sense of honour, you will give her up at once. My God! will you
compromise my daughter and pretend to love her? Jane, will you make your
family a laughing-stock? Come, come! You will cover us with shame. You
will kill your mother.” He condescended to plead with her, so intense
was his feeling. “Jane, for the love of heaven----”

Lady Germaine rose up from the bench on which she had flung herself.
“Oh, Duke!” she cried, “don’t you see things have gone too far? Leave
her with me. She will not be compromised with me. Have pity upon your
own child! Don’t you see, don’t you see that it is too late to stop it
now?”

“Lady Germaine!” cried the Duke, “I hope you can forgive yourself for
your share in this, but I cannot forgive you. Certainly my daughter
shall not go with you. There is but one house to which she can go--her
father’s.” He tightened his hold on her arm as he spoke. “Jane!--this
scene is disgraceful to all of us. Put a stop to it at once. Come home;
it is the only place for you now.”

Then there was a pause, and they all looked at each other with a mute
consultation. The little ring of spectators stood and listened. Mrs
Marston, with the tears scarcely dried from her eyes, watched them with
fluttered eagerness, expecting the moment when the Duke should come and
thank her for the warning he had received. She was compunctious for the
sake of the young people; but yet to have the thanks of the Duke---- The
Rector had made haste to get out of his surplice, and now came out with
a little importance and the same idea in his mind.

Lady Jane was the first to speak. She said, “It is cruel for us all; but
perhaps my father is right, things being as they are. I cannot go with
you, Reginald, to our own house.”

Winton’s voice came with a burst, half-groan, half-sob, uncontrollable.
“God help us! I don’t suppose you can, my darling--till to-morrow.”

“Till to-morrow! Then I will go home to my father’s now. Oh no,” she
said, shrinking back a little, “not with you. Reginald will take me
home.”

“Let go my daughter, sir!” the Duke said. “He shall not touch you. He
shall not come near you. What! do you persist? Give her up, Winton; do
you hear me? She says she will come home.”

“Father,” said Lady Jane very low, “it is you who are forgetting our
dignity. I will go home, if Reginald takes me; but not with you. I
suppose no one doubts our honour. It is not the time for delay now,
after you have done all this. Reginald will take me home.”

What the Duke said further it is scarcely necessary to record. He had to
stand by at last, half stupefied, and watch them walk down the aisle arm
in arm, bride and bridegroom, to the evidence of everybody’s senses. He
followed himself as in a dream, and got in, cowed, but vowing vengeance,
into the cab, which was all his Grace could find to reach St Alban’s in
from the railway,--and in that followed the brougham which conveyed his
daughter and her--not husband, and yet not lover--to Grosvenor Square.
But when he had once got her there!

The Rector and his wife stood open-mouthed to see the pageant thus melt
away. The Duke, to whom they had done so great a favour, took no more
notice of them than of the two poor women, who vaguely felt themselves
in fault somehow, and still kept crying, looking after the bride. Not a
word to the poor clergyman, who had almost done wrong for his sake--not
a look even, not the faintest acknowledgment, any more than if he had
nothing to do with it! Simms and his wife stood gaping, too, at the
church door, looking after the party which had been far too much
preoccupied to think of half-crowns. “This is how people are treated
after they have done their best. I always told you not to meddle,” Mrs
Marston said, which was very ungenerous, as well as untrue. But the
Rector said nothing. He was mortified to the bottom of his heart. But
when the excitement had a little died away, he said to himself with
vindictive pleasure that he hoped they were having a pleasant day, those
fine people in Grosvenor Square.




CHAPTER XIII.

THE WEDDING-DAY.


It was not a pleasant day in Grosvenor Square. When the Duke arrived in
his cab the door was opened to him by the humble person who had care of
the house while the family were out of town,--an old servant, to whom
this charge was a sort of pensioning off. She was very much fluttered,
and informed him in an undertone that Lady Jane had arrived a few
minutes before “with a gentleman.” “Her ladyship is in the library, your
Grace, and the gentleman with her,” the old woman said, curtseying and
trembling--for though Lady Jane’s garb was very simple for a bride,
still it was a white dress, and in the middle of winter it is well known
that ladies do not go about their ordinary business in such garments.
The Duke considered a moment and then decided that he would not see his
daughter till her companion was gone. He was tremulous with rage and
discomfiture, yet with the sense that vengeance was in his hands. This
feeling made him conclude that it was more wise not to see Winton, not
to run the risk of losing his temper or betraying his intentions, but to
remain on the watch till he withdrew, and in the meantime to arrange his
own plans. He told the old housekeeper to let him know when the
gentleman was gone, and in the meantime hurried up-stairs to his
daughter’s room, and examined it carefully. Lady Jane had two rooms
appropriated to her use, with a third communicating with them in which
her maid slept. This was a large area to put under lock and key, which
was her father’s determination: but in the ferment of his excited mind
and temper he felt no derogation in the half-stealthy examination he
made of the shut-up rooms, their windows and means of communication, the
locks on the door, and all the arrangements that would be necessary to
shut them off entirely from the rest of the house. With his own hands he
removed the keys, locking all the doors but one, and leaving the key on
the outside of that to shut off all entrance to the prison.

While he was thus occupied the pair so strangely severed stood together
in the library waiting for his appearance, and getting a certain bitter
sweetness out of the last hour they were to spend together. They were
not aware that it was, in any serious sense of the words, their last
hour. “Till to-morrow” was the limit they gave themselves. To-morrow no
further interruption would be possible, the incomplete service would be
resumed, and all would be well. Even the Duke, unreasonable as he might
be, would not think it practicable, when in his sober senses, to
endeavour to sunder those who had been almost put together in the
presence of God. They believed, notwithstanding the tantalising misery
of this interruption, that it could not be but for a few hours; and
though Winton’s impatience and indignation were at first almost frenzy,
Lady Jane recovered her courage before they reached the house, and did
her best to soothe him. She drew good even out of the evil. To-morrow
all would be completed in her father’s presence. When once convinced
that matters had gone too far to be arrested, how could he refuse to
lend his sanction to what must be, whether with his sanction or not?
She pleased herself with this solution of all their difficulties. “My
mother will come, I am sure,” she said, “as soon as the train can bring
her. I shall have her with me, which will be far, far better than Lady
Germaine, and there will be no further need of concealment, which is
odious, is it not, Reginald? There is a soul of goodness in things
evil,” she said. As for Winton, he was past speaking: the
disappointment, and those passions that rage in the male bosom, were too
much for him--fury and indignation, and pride in arms, and the sense of
defeat, which was intolerable. But he permitted himself to be subdued,
to yield to her who had put so much force upon herself, and conquered so
many natural repugnances and womanly traditions for him. Lady Jane would
not even let it appear that she felt the shame of being thus dragged
back to her father’s house. “To-morrow,” she said, “to-morrow,” with a
thousand tender smiles. When it became apparent that the Duke did not
mean to make an appearance, she turned that to their advantage with
soothing sophistry. “He has nothing to say now,” she cried, “don’t you
see, Reginald? You cannot expect him to come and offer us his consent;
if he withdraws his opposition, that is all we can desire. Had he meant
to persevere, he would have come to us at once, and ordered you away,
and made another struggle. That is what I have been fearing. And now in
return for his forbearance you must go. Oh, do you think I wish you to
go? but it is best, it will be most honourable. What could be done in
the circumstances but that you should bring me home? Yes, till your
house is mine this is still home--till to-morrow,” she cried, smiling
upon him. Winton paced up and down the gloomy closed-up room in an
agony of uncertainty, bewilderment, and dismay.

“My home _is_ yours!” he cried; “and what sort of place is this to bring
you to, my darling, without a soul to take care of you or look after
your comfort, without a fire even, or a servant:--on this day! It is
intolerable! And how, how can I go and leave you, on our wedding-day? It
is more than flesh and blood can bear. Jane, I have a foreboding; I
can’t be hopeful like you. If you submitted to the force of
circumstances in that wretched church, there is no force of any kind
here. Don’t send me away; come with me, my love, my dearest. The way is
clear, there is nothing but that old woman----”

“There is our honour,” said Lady Jane. “I pledged it to my father. And
if I went with you, it would only be to separate again. Surely I am
better at home than at Lady Germaine’s:--till to-morrow--till
to-morrow,” she repeated softly. The library was next the door, it was
close to the open street, the free air out-of-doors. The temptation,
though she rejected it, was great upon Lady Jane too. There was a moment
in which, though she did not allow it, she wavered. The next moment,
with more fortitude than ever, she recovered the mastery of herself. It
was she at last who, tenderly persuading and beseeching, induced him to
go away. She went to the door with him and almost put him out with
loving force. “You will come back for me to-morrow--to-morrow! it is not
long till to-morrow,” she said, waving her hand to her distracted
bridegroom as he hurried away. It was well that there was nobody in
town--nobody in Grosvenor Square--except a passing milk-boy, to see the
Duke’s daughter standing in the doorway like the simplest maiden, in her
white dress, a wonderful vision for a murky London day, taking farewell
of her love. She closed the door after him with her own hand, while poor
old Mrs Brown, in such a flutter as she had never before experienced in
her life, came bobbing out from the corner in which she had been keeping
watch. “Oh, my lady! my lady!” the old woman said. She had scarcely been
high enough up in the hierarchy of service below-stairs to have come to
speech of Lady Jane at all, and now to think that she was all the
attendance possible for that princess royal! Lady Jane, it may be
supposed, was in no light-hearted mood, but she stopped with a smile to
reassure the old servant.

“Nurse Mordaunt is with me,” she said; “she will, no doubt, be here
directly, Mrs Brown. You must not vex yourself about me. It will only be
till to-morrow. If you will have a fire lighted in my room, I will go
there.

“Yes, my lady; oh, my lady! but I’m afraid there’s some sad trouble,”
said the old housekeeper.

Lady Jane was far too high-bred to reject this sympathy, but it was
almost more than in her valour she could bear. Her eyes filled in spite
of herself. “It is only an extraordinary accident,” she said. “But
Mordaunt will tell you when she comes.” She was glad to escape into the
library that she might not break down. Turning round to re-enter alone
that huge, cold, uninhabited place, her mind was seized with a spasm of
terror. The blinds were drawn down, the fireplace was cold, it was like
a room out of which the dead had been newly carried, not a place to
receive a woman in the most living moment of life--on her wedding-day!
She had borne herself very bravely as long as her lover was
there--almost too bravely, trying to make him believe that it was
nothing, that she had scarcely any feeling on the subject. But when she
saw him go, the clouds and darkness closed in upon Lady Jane, her lips
quivered sadly as she spoke to Mrs Brown. When she was alone, her
swelling heart and throbbing forehead were relieved by a sudden passion
of tears. Would it be nothing as she had made believe? or was it a
parting, an ending, a severance from Reginald and hope? A black moment
passed over her--blacker than anything that Winton felt, as, distracted
and furious, burning with intentions of vengeance, and a sense of injury
in which there was some relief from the misery of the situation, he
hurried along towards the Germaines’ house. There, at least, he could
plan and arrange, and talk out his fury and wretchedness. But Lady Jane
had no such solace. When she had yielded to that bitter _accès_ of
tears, and felt herself pass under the cloud, she had to gather herself
together again all unaided, and recover her composure as best she could.
That sensation of overwhelming cold which so often accompanies a mental
crisis made her shiver. She drew her cloak closely round her, and went
slowly up-stairs through the hollow silence of the great house, pausing
now and then to take breath in her nervous exhaustion, and looking
anxiously for the appearance of her father. Did he not mean to come to
her at all? Lady Jane had no idea that she was going with all those
hesitations and pauses straight into a prison. Such a thought had never
occurred to her. She believed still in reason and loving-kindness and
truth. Her father, when he saw it impossible, would after all yield, she
thought. Her mother would come to succour her in this extraordinary
emergency. “There is a soul of goodness in things evil,” she murmured
again to herself, but not so bravely as she had said it to her lover.
The house was so cold, such an echoing solitude, no living thing
visible, and she alone in it, left to wear through the weary hours as
she could--on her wedding-day!

Thus with tired and lingering steps, and despondency taking possession
of her soul, Lady Jane went softly up-stairs, longing to divest herself
of her wedding-gown and hide her humiliation, looking vainly for her
father, whose appearance in this wilderness, even if it were only to
upbraid and denounce her, would still have had a certain consolation in
it. The Duke, unseen, watched her progress with a vindictive pleasure in
the downcast air and slow, languid step. He watched her to her very door
with an eagerness not to be described. At the last moment she might turn
round, she might still leave the house, she might escape. In no case
could he have used violence to his daughter. To level thunderbolts of
speech was one thing, to use force was quite another. To lift his hand
was impossible. If she turned round and fled down the stairs and out at
the door, she must do so: there was no way in which he could stop her:
if any third person were present, even Mrs Brown, he would be obliged to
keep a watch upon himself, to demand no more obedience than she would
give, to treat her as a reasonable being. All this the Duke felt,
spying upon her steps as she went slowly up, following her, his
footsteps falling noiselessly on the thick carpets. He heard her sigh,
but this made no difference. To any one else this sigh of the widowed
bride, alone in this dismal empty house on the day that was to have
been, that almost was, her wedding-day, would have contained something
touching. But it did not touch the Duke. He followed at a distance,
keeping out of sight, determined to give her no opportunity to appeal to
him. When he heard her door close, a certain glow of satisfaction came
over his face. He went forward quickly, and turned the key in the lock
and put it in his pocket. He heard her moving about in the room, and he
could hear that she stopped short at the noise and stood listening to
know what it was. But all was quiet again, and Lady Jane suspected
nothing. She had begun to look in her wardrobe for something to put on
instead of her white dress. She thought it was some jar of one of the
doors as she opened them. And he stole down-stairs again, unnoticed and
unobserved. Who was there to notice him? no one in the house, except his
daughter locked into the room, and Mrs Brown with her little niece
down-stairs. The Duke withdrew into the library, where he had sat and
pondered for many a day, but never as now. The old housekeeper had
bestirred herself and had lighted a fire and set out a table with two
places for luncheon. She at least could do her duty if no one else did.
Mrs Brown, indeed, felt as a neglected general has often done when the
moment arrived in which he could distinguish himself. She had never had
this opportunity. Now, at last, in the end of her life it had come to
her. His Grace, who was so particular, should for once in his life know
what it was to eat a chop, an English chop, in its perfection. She had
sent out her handmaiden to fetch them, and lit the fire herself in her
devotion. This is an extent of enthusiasm to which few people would go.
And Lady Jane, sweet creature, who was evidently in trouble somehow with
her papa, who had sent that nice young gentleman off as fast as ever she
could, that the Duke and he might not meet, poor thing! what would be so
good for her as a chop? The old housekeeper betook herself to her work
with the warmest sense at once of benevolence and of power--power to
ameliorate and soften the hardness of destiny, and to win fame and
honour to herself. What enterprise could have a finer motive? Of the
three people in the house, she was the happy one, as happens not
unfrequently among all the twists and entanglements of fate.

Before, however, Mrs Brown had begun to cook her chops, Nurse Mordaunt,
Lady Jane’s devoted attendant since her childhood, arrived in much
anxiety and distress. Nurse had been detained by various matters, by
Lady Germaine, and by the delay in getting her ladyship’s things, which
had been left that morning at Lady Germaine’s house. With a heavy heart
nurse had effaced the direction of Lady Jane Winton from the box. She
had never herself approved of such a marriage any more than the Duke
did. It injured her pride sadly to think of “My Lady” marrying a
commoner at all, and marrying him secretly at a poky little church in
the city! But that she should be married and not married, half a wife,
“dragged from the altar,” was something which no one could contemplate
with calmness. Nurse was more shamed, distracted, broken-hearted than
any of the party. “Oh, don’t ask me,” she answered, shaking her head,
when Mrs Brown humbly, with every respect, begged to know what had
happened. “It is as bad as a revolution--it’s worse than the Chartists;
even Radicals respect the marriage vow,” nurse cried in her dismay. “I
don’t approve of it, and never did, and never will. Up to the church
door I’d have done anything to stop it. But bless us! if you don’t keep
the altar sacred, what have you got to trust to?” She caused the boxes
to be brought into the hall with their erased addresses. There was
nobody to carry them anywhere,--none of the attendance about to which
Mrs Mordaunt was accustomed. “Fetch one of the men,” she had said at
first, but then she remembered there was no man in Grosvenor Square at
this time of the year. “Drat it! as if things were not bad enough
already; no servants, no comfort, nobody but Mrs Brown to look to
everything!” Mrs Mordaunt was too much broken down to go to her young
lady at once. She condescended to go into the kitchen, where it was at
least warm, to eat one of the chops and to rest a little before she went
up-stairs. And her arrival was scarcely over before it was followed by
another more urgent and important. The old housekeeper almost fainted
when, opening the door in answer to the impatient summons of another
arrival, she saw the Duchess herself get out of a hackney-cab. “Bless
us!” the old woman cried; if the Queen had come next she could not have
been more surprised.

The Duchess, it need not be said, was in the secret of all those
arrangements which were to make Lady Jane into Reginald Winton’s wife.
She had a cold that day, partly real, partly no doubt emotional, but
enough to make her keep her room in the morning, leaving her guests to
the care of her sister, who was at Billings on a visit. She got up, as
may be supposed, with a great deal of agitation from her broken rest,
thinking of her Jane, how she would be preparing for her marriage, with
nobody but Lady Germaine to comfort and support her. Lady Germaine was
very kind: she had taken charge of the whole business; she and her
husband had gone to town on purpose to facilitate everything; but still
it was dreadful to the Duchess to think that her child should have no
one but Lady Germaine to lean upon at such a moment of her life. In her
own room, in the stillness of the morning, the thoughts of the mother
were bent upon this subject, which she went over and over, thinking of
everything. She figured to herself how her child would wake, and
realise what a fateful morning it was, and wish for her mother. How she
would say her prayers with all the fervour of such a crisis, and linger
upon the contemplation of the past, and the sweet but awful thought of
the future. Though her husband and his reign were so near, Jane would
think of her home, of the parents who loved her, and shed some tears to
think that the most momentous act of her life was taking place away from
them, in opposition to one of them. The Duchess, who was very much
overcome, at once by what she knew and what she did not know, by
imagination and by fact, shed more tears herself at this point, and she
had to dry them hastily to look up with an unconcerned face when her
maid came into the room bringing a piece of news which in a moment
startled her into activity and alarm. The Duke had gone suddenly off to
town by the early train. After he had read his letters he had seemed
agitated, but said nothing to Bowles (who was his Grace’s valet) except
that business called him to town. And he had been gone an hour when the
news was brought to his wife. The reader may suppose how short a time
elapsed before the anxious mother followed him. She went out quietly in
a close carriage, nobody knowing, and got the next train, arriving in
London two hours later than that by which her husband had travelled. He
was sitting down with a little shrug of his shoulders, but not without
appetite, to Mrs Brown’s chops, when she drove up to the door, and
suddenly came in upon him, pale and full of anguish. Her eye ran round
the room questioning before she said a word:--then she loosened her
cloak and sat down upon the nearest seat with a sigh of relief.

“What have you done with Jane?” she was about to say: but then it
appeared to her that Jane must have escaped, that everything was
accomplished. She could have wept or laughed in the extreme blessedness
of this relief, but she dared not do either. She looked at him instead,
as he sat looking suspiciously at her. “It made me very anxious to hear
of your going,” she said. “I feared something might be wrong. I am going
back directly, and nobody knows I am out of my room: but I felt that I
must hear----”

“What?” he asked with watchful suspicion; it was a terrible ordeal to go
through. The Duchess did all a woman could to take the meaning out of
her own face and put upon it an aspect of affectionate concern alone. “I
did not know what to think,” she said; “I was very anxious: but it
cannot be anything very bad, I hope, since I find you----” How hard it
is to say what is not the truth! While she uttered these commonplace
words her eyes were watching him, keenly questioning everything about
him. At last her heart seemed to stand still. She perceived the two
covers laid on the table. “You have some one with you,” she said, with a
catching of her breath.

He looked at her still more keenly. “I have Jane with me,” he said.

“Jane!” It was all her mother could do not to break down altogether, and
show her anguish and disappointment in passionate tears; but her heart
was leaping in her throat, and she could not speak.

“That is to say,” he added slowly, with unspeakable enjoyment in the
sense of having got the better of the women altogether, and holding them
in his hand, “she is in the house. I arrived in time to save her from
becoming the victim--of a villain. I shall keep her safe now I have got
her,” the Duke said, with an ineffable flourish of his hand.

“The victim--of a villain? What do you mean by such words? They sound as
if you had got them out of a novel,” the Duchess said; but her heart was
beating so that she could scarcely hear herself speak.

“Then you knew nothing about it?” said her husband calmly.

The Duchess got up from her seat. She was too much agitated to be able
to keep still. “I knew, if that is what you mean, that she was to
marry--the man she loved--to-day. What have you done? Have you parted
your own child from her happiness and her life?”

He rose too. He had kept up his calm demeanour as long as he could. Now
his rage got the better of him. “So you were in the plot!” he cried,
“you! I felt it, and yet I could not believe it. You who ought to have
been the first to carry out my will and respect my decision.”

“Augustus,” said his wife, very pale, standing up before him, her hand
upon the back of a tall chair, her head erect, “this must not go too
far. Jane has not one but two parents, and she has always had her
mother’s sanction. You are aware of that.”

“Her mother’s sanction!” cried the Duke, with a tremendous laugh of
passion. “That is a mighty advantage, truly. Her mother! what has her
mother to do with it? Nothing! These are pretty heroics, and do very
nicely to say to the ignorant; but you know very well that, save as my
agent, you have no more to do with Jane or her marriage--no more----”

“It may be so in law,” said the Duchess, recovering her composure, “but
it is certainly not so in nature; nor have I ever considered myself your
agent, in respect to my child. I have yielded to you in a hundred
ways--and so much the worse for you that I have done so; but, as regards
Jane, I have never thought it my duty to yield--and never will; such a
suggestion is intolerable,” she said, with a touch of feminine passion.
“My right and my authority are the same as yours--neither of them
absolute--for she is old enough to judge for herself.”

“Ah, poor girl!” he said, with a knowledge that it was the most
irritating thing he could say, and at the same time a coarse sort of
pleasure in insulting the women, though they were so near to him; “that
is at the bottom of everything. You made her believe it was her last
chance. She was determined anyhow to have a husband.”

The Duchess grew scarlet, but she was sufficiently enlightened by
experience to restrain the angry reply that almost forced its way from
her lips. She looked at him with a silent indignation not unmingled with
pity, then turned her head away. Poor Mrs Brown! Her chops, that had
been so good, so hot, stood neglected on the table. Her opportunity was
over. It was no fault of hers that she had not distinguished herself. So
many another disappointed genius has done its best, and some accident
has stepped in and balked its highest effort. Had the Duchess delayed
but half an hour, his Grace, after so much French cookery, would have
experienced the wholesome pleasure of at least one British chop, and
probably in consequence would have promoted Mrs Brown to a post near his
person. But it was not to be. There was no luncheon eaten that day in
Grosvenor Square. The discussion was prolonged for some time, and then
the Duchess was heard to go hastily up-stairs. She went to her
daughter’s room with tears of hot passion in her eyes and an intolerable
pang in her heart, and knocking softly, called to Jane with a voice
which she could scarcely keep from breaking. “My darling!” she cried,
“my sweet, my own girl!” with something heartrending in her accents. All
had been still before; but now there was a stir in reply.

“Oh, mother dear, come in, come in! How I have longed for you!” Lady
Jane cried; and then there was a little pause of expectation, breathless
with a strange suspicion on one side, and such miserable humiliation and
anguish on the other, as can scarcely be put into words.

“I cannot come in, my dear love. Oh, my darling, you must be patient. I
must go back directly to all those people in the house. You know it
would never do----” Here the Duchess, unable to keep up the farce, began
all at once to cry and sob piteously outside the door.

Lady Jane, fully roused, hurried to it and turned the handle vainly, and
shook the heavy door. “I cannot open it,” she cried wildly. “Mother,
mother! what does this mean? Cannot you come in? What can take you away
from me when I want you--the people in the house? Oh, mother, I want
you, I want you!” she cried as she had never done in her life before.
And then there was such a scene as might be put into a comedy and made
very ridiculous, and which yet was very heartrending as it happened, and
overpowered these two women with a consternation, a sense of
helplessness, a bitter perception of the small account they were of,
which paralysed their very souls--not only that he had the power to do
it, but also the heart: he with whom they had lived in the closest ties,
whom they had loved and served, for whom they had been ready to do all
that he pleased, one for the greater part of her life, the other since
ever she had been born. What did it matter, any one would have said, the
power such a man had over his wife and his daughter? He would never use
it to make them unhappy. But there are capabilities of human misery in
families which no one can fathom, which may seem to make it doubtful by
moments how far the family relation is so blessed as it is thought to
be. The Duke felt that now, for the first time, he had these women under
his thumb, so to speak. He had them so bound that they could not resist,
could not move, could not even call for help from any one without
betraying the secrets of the family. He kept possession of his library,
and, with the key in his pocket, had a moment of triumph. They had
united against him; but now they should feel his power.




CHAPTER XIV.

IN PRISON.


The scenes that followed were at times not only so exciting, but so
tranquil, that we shrink from attempting to depict them. If there had
been anything wanted to confirm the determination of the Duke to hold to
the position he had taken up, it would have been the arrival of the
Duchess, and the prodigious step he took in refusing her admittance to
her daughter. After that there was nothing too much for him. He had
burnt his ships. When Lord and Lady Germaine arrived next morning to
bring away the bride, with some trembling on the part of the lady, but
a contemptuous certainty on that of the gentleman, that “the old
duffer,” though he had let his temper out, was not such a fool as all
that--they were refused admittance peremptorily. After they had parleyed
for some time with the man at the door,--a personage whom the Duke,
roused into energy by the position in which he found himself, had
engaged on the previous day, and who was invulnerable to all assaults
and persuasions,--the Duchess herself came to them, extremely pale, and
with difficulty preserving her composure. She had remained all night
notwithstanding the misery of the circumstances altogether, and though
she did not admit it in words, her quick-witted visitors easily
perceived that she herself had not been permitted to see her daughter.
“You will think it is medieval,” she said with a faint smile. “The Duke
is very determined when he thinks it worth while.”

“I suppose,” said Lady Germaine, touched by the aspect of the suffering
woman, “that one does not have the blood of Merlin in one’s veins for
nothing.”

“Merlin,” said Lord Germaine, who was very slangy, “was the old swell
who was seducted by Miss Vivien. I don’t think it would have been hard
work to get over him.”

The Duchess stood in the doorway pale, supporting with difficulty any
levity on the subject, yet ready to put as brave a face upon it as
possible. “Give Reginald my love, and tell him it is impossible this can
last for ever,” she said. “I am sorry for him to the bottom of my heart,
and sorry for my child, but at present I cannot help even her.”

Lady Germaine stepped within the guarded door to take the Duchess’s
hand and kiss her. “And we are so sorry for you, so indignant----”

“Hush!” the Duchess said. “It is my fault; I should have had the courage
of my convictions. I should have gone with my child myself; the error
was mine.”

Lady Germaine was half disposed to reply, “Oh, if you think we neglected
any precaution----” But she had not the heart to be offended.

The pair drove away after a while considerably discomfited. “I did not
think the old duffer had so much spirit,” Lord Germaine said with secret
admiration. “I say, Nell, if you tried to marry Dolly against my will, I
wonder if I should be up to that?”

“If there was any chance of it I should lock you up first,” said his
dutiful wife.

“And on the edge of a smash, the greatest smash that has been since----
Billings will have to be sold up, and all that is in it,” Lord Germaine
said thoughtfully.

Lady Germaine showed neither surprise nor pain at this piece of news.
“What a chance for Reginald!” she said. “He can buy in all their best
things and do up Jane’s rooms at Winton like her old ones at home.” And
then she laughed and added, “He wouldn’t have those old things in his
house. Taste had not been invented when their Graces were married.”

It was in this mood of partial hilarity that they reached their own
door, where poor Winton was waiting. However sympathetic friends may be,
the way in which they take our troubles is very different from the way
in which we ourselves take them. The Germaines, though they threw
themselves so warmly into his affairs, and had given themselves so much
trouble, had to change their aspect suddenly, to put up shutters and
draw down blinds metaphorically, as they approached the actual sufferer.
But into his misery and rage it is unnecessary to enter. He said, as was
natural, a great many things that it would have been better not to say,
and for some time after he besieged the house. He went in person, he
wrote, he communicated by means of his solicitors with the solicitors of
the Duke, whose mouths watered over the settlements he had made, which
the authorities on his own side thought ridiculous, and professed their
eagerness to do their best, but would not flatter him with any hopes of
success. “No man in his senses would reject a son-in-law like you, Mr
Winton, especially in the circumstances,” the senior partner said; “but
the Duke is the Duke, and there is nothing more to be said. We have
found him very impracticable, extremely impracticable in his own
affairs; things are looking bad for the family altogether. There is
Lord Hungerford now has some sense. He made a capital marriage
himself--you should get him on your side.”

Winton found no great difficulty in getting Hungerford on his side. That
young nobleman was so much excited on the subject, that he even took it
upon him to speak to his father and show him how ridiculous it was.

“You can’t make a house in Grosvenor Square like a castle in the
Apennines,” Hungerford cried; “for heaven’s sake, sir, don’t make us
ridiculous!” Lady Hungerford on her side enjoyed the whole affair
immensely. “I never realised before that I had really married into a
great house,” she said. “It’s like the ‘Family Herald.’ It’s like the
sort of nobility we understand among the lower classes, don’t you know?
not your easygoing, like-other-people kind.” And she offered to take
lessons of a locksmith so that she might be able to break open Jane’s
prison.

To tell the truth, even suggestions of this kind, which were partially
comic and wholly theatrical, came to be entertained by Winton before his
trial was over. One of his friends seriously advised him to get an
Italian servant, used to conspiracies, smuggled into the house, in order
to deliver the captive. Another thought that rope-ladders and a midnight
descent from the window might be practicable; but a rope-ladder from a
second-floor window in Grosvenor Square would not be easy to manage, and
a wag intervened and suggested a fire-escape, which turned the whole
into ridicule. This was one of the aspects of the case, indeed, which
aggravated everything else. The whole situation, being so serious and
painful to two or three people, was, to the rest of the world,
irresistible from the comic side. People drove through Grosvenor Square
on purpose to look up at the second-floor windows: and as the
instruments began to tune up, and the feast to be set in order for the
first arrivals of society, the importance of the strange event grew
greater and greater. A new Home Secretary, and all the consequent
changes in the Cabinet, faded into nothing in comparison. “Have you
heard that Jane Altamont was half-married to Regy Winton some time in
the winter, and that odious old Duke dragged her from the very altar,
and has kept her ever since under lock and key?” Very likely it was Lady
Germaine who first put the story about, but it was taken up by everybody
with all the interest and excitement which such a tale warranted.
Further details were given that were almost incredible; to wit, that
the Duchess herself, though living in the same house, was not allowed to
see her daughter, and that Lady Jane for two months had only breathed
the fresh air through her window, and had never left the suite of rooms
in which she was confined; worse than if she had been in jail, everybody
said. But not even this was the point which most roused the popular
indignation (if we may call the indignation of the drawing-rooms
popular). Half-married! that was the terrible thought.

The Duke paid one or two visits before the opening of Parliament. It may
be supposed that to none but very great houses indeed would his Grace
pay such an honour: and though he was not very quick to observe in
general matters, yet his sense of his own importance was so keen that it
answered for intelligence, so far as he himself was concerned. He saw
that the ladies regarded him with a sort of alarm, that even the
gentlemen after dinner showed a curiosity which was not certainly the
awed and respectful interest which he thought it natural he should
excite. And it was not long before his hostess, who was, he could not
deny, his equal, of his own rank, and of unexceptionable antecedents,
made the matter clear to him. “Duke,” she said, “of course you know I
wouldn’t for the world meddle in any one’s private affairs. But there is
such a strange story going about---- Dear Jane! We had hoped to see her
with you as well as Margaret” (Margaret was the Duchess, and a very
intimate friend of this other great, great lady); “and now neither of
them has come. But it is not possible--don’t think for a moment that I
believe it!--that this story can be true.”

“If your Grace will kindly explain what the story is?” Our Duke, liking
due respect himself, always gave their titles to other people, according
to the golden rule.

“I don’t like even to put it into words; that you stopped her
marriage--at the altar itself; that the dear girl is neither married nor
single; that---- But I give you pain.”

“The statement is calculated to give me pain; but the facts, as of
course your Grace knows very well, are true. I arrived in time to
prevent my daughter from making a marriage which I disapproved.”

“Oh, we are all liable to that,” said the great lady, letting her eyes
dwell regretfully, yet with maternal pride, upon a daughter who had been
so abandoned as to marry a clergyman, but who had produced a baby, for
whose sake the parents had forgiven its father. “Who can guard against
such a misfortune? But Beatrice, poor thing, is very happy,” she added
with a sigh.

The Duke made her a little bow. It said a great deal. It said, if you
are so lost to every sense of what is becoming as to take it in that
way--but I should never have allowed it! He to utter sentences of this
kind, who had made himself the talk of society! “But, Duke,” she said
with spirit, taking up Nurse Mordaunt’s argument, “if the altar is not
held sacred, what will become of us? They say you stopped her when she
was saying the very words----”

“The subject is not a very agreeable one,” said the Duke; “I cannot take
it upon me to recollect at what point they were in the service---- but
at all events, your Grace may be assured it was not too late.”

“Oh, but it must have been too late,” cried the indignant matron. “I
heard he had said ‘I will.’ I heard he had put the ring on her finger. I
could not have believed it was true had not you said so. But you cannot
let it rest like that. Half-married! it’s wicked, you know,” her Grace
cried.

And the other Duke, the gracious host, permitted himself, in a moment of
expansion, to say something of the same sort. “I wouldn’t interfere with
your affairs for the world,” he said; “but I hope, Billingsgate, you
don’t mean to let that sweet girl of yours lie under such a stigma----”

“A stigma! My daughter! There is no stigma,” cried the head of the
Altamonts, growing scarlet.

“Well, I don’t want to be a meddler: but the women say so. They are all
in a fuss about it; one hears of nothing else wherever one goes. You
will have to give in sooner or later,” said the other Duke.

“Never!” said his Grace of Billingsgate, and he hastened his departure
from his friend’s abode. But the next house he went to the same result
was produced. There was a putting together of feminine heads, a
whispering, a direction of glances towards him, from eyes which once had
looked upon him only with awe; and after a little hesitation and beating
about the bush, the same outburst of remark. Half-married! The most
important lady in the company took him to task very seriously. “What is
to become of her? you should think of that. At present she has you to
protect her reputation. But suppose anything were to happen to you? We
are all mortal; and think of dear Jane with such a scandal against her.
People will say it is the man who has drawn back: they will say all
sorts of things; for it is inconceivable that a girl’s father, her own
father, should play with her reputation like that.”

“Her reputation!” the Duke cried, almost with a shriek of indignation.
“My child’s reputation! Who would dare----”

“Oh, nobody would dare,” said his assailant--“but everybody would
understand. People would make sure that there were reasons.
Half-married! There is not one of us that doesn’t feel it. Such a thing
was never heard of. Oh, you must not think you will escape it by going
away. Wherever you go you will hear the same thing. The news has gone
everywhere. Didn’t you see it in the ‘Universe’ at full length? Of
course nobody could mistake the Duke of B---- G----. Oh, I hope you will
think it over seriously, before it is too late.”

The Duke, more angry than ever, went back to Grosvenor Square. He was
determined to face it out. Country houses are proverbially glad of a
piece of gossip to give their dull life an interest. He began to go out
into society, as much as there was at that early season, and present a
bold front to the world. His home was dull enough, with Lady Jane locked
into her room and watched, lest by craft or force she should make her
escape; her mother obstinately refusing to go out, or accompany him
anywhere; his very servants looking at him reproachfully. The butler,
who had been with him for about thirty years, and whose knowledge of
wine and of the cellars at Billings was inexhaustible, threw up his
situation; and so did the housekeeper, who was Jarvis’s wife. “I don’t
hold with no such goings-on,” Mrs Jarvis said. And when he dined with
the leader of his party (which was in opposition) Mrs Coningsby did not
wait till the conclusion of the dinner, but cried, “Duke, it cannot be
true about Lady Jane!” before he had eaten his soup. This lady treated
the subject lightly, which was more odious to him than the other way.
“Oh no, it can’t be true,” she said; “we all know that they say you
dragged her from church by the hair of her head, and snatched her hand
away when the bridegroom was putting on the ring. Mr Coningsby was in a
dreadful way about it. He said it would be such a cry at the elections;
but I told him, Nonsense! the Duke is far too fine a gentleman, I said.”
This was more difficult to answer than the other mode of assault. The
Duke became all manner of colours as he listened. “And the elections are
so near,” the lady said. “Of course the Government will not care how
false it is; they will placard it on all the walls, with a picture as
large as life. They will turn all the clergy against us. Of course, dear
Duke, of course, to people who know you so well as I do--you need not
tell _me_ that it is not true.” The Duke sat grim, and heard all this,
and did not say a word. There was a flutter in the drawing-room as he
came in: everybody looked at him as if he had been a wild beast.
“Dragged her out by the hair of her head!” he heard whispered on every
side of him, and though Mrs Coningsby still affected not to believe, the
bishop’s wife contemplated him with terrible gravity. “Oh, I hope you
will talk it over with the bishop,” she said. “He is so anxious about
it. Lady Jane was always such a favourite. I do hope you will take the
bishop’s advice. After a certain part of the service, I have always
understood it was a sin to interfere.” Later in the evening he was
mobbed by half-a-dozen ladies--there is no other word for it--mobbed and
overwhelmed with one universal cry. Half-married! Poor Lady Jane! Dear
Lady Jane! They pressed round him, each with her protestation, a soft,
yet urgent babel of voices. The poor Duke escaped at last, not knowing
how he got away. It seemed to his Grace that he had escaped out of a
mob, and that his coat must be torn and his linen frayed with the
conflict. He was astonished beyond all description; but he was likewise
appalled by the discovery that even he was not above the reach of public
opinion. It affected him against his will. He felt ashamed, uneasy,
confused even on the points where he was most sure.

And when he came home, he went to his wife’s boudoir, where she sat
alone, to bid her good-night, which was a form he always observed,
though this event had separated them entirely. She was permitted now to
see Jane once a-day; but as she would give no promise that she would not
help her daughter to leave the house, this was the utmost that he had
granted her. She was seated alone, reading, pale and weary. She scarcely
raised her eyes when he came in, though she put down her book. The fire
was low, and there was no light in the room except the reading-lamp. The
Duke could not help feeling the difference from former times. A
temptation came upon him to throw himself upon her sympathy, and tell
her how he had been persecuted. He would have done so had it been on any
other subject, but he remembered in time that on this he had no sympathy
to expect from his wife. So he stood for a minute or two before the
fire, feeling chilled, silenced, an injured man. “No, I have not had a
pleasant evening,” he said shortly; “how should my evening be pleasant
when every one remarks your absence? I am asked if you are ill; I am
asked----”

“Other questions, I imagine, that are still more difficult to answer.”

“And whose fault is it?” he cried, with vehemence. “If you had taken the
steps you ought to have taken, and supported my authority, as was your
duty, there would have been no such questions to ask.”

The Duchess turned away with some impatience; she made no reply: the
question had been often enough discussed in all its bearings. If she had
now thrown herself at his feet and begged his pardon and forbearance,
what a relief it would have been to him! He would have yielded and
saved his position, and recovered the pose of a magnanimous superior.
But the Duchess had no intention of the kind. After a while, during
which they did not look at each other, she seated gazing into the fire,
he standing staring into the vacant air, he took up his candlestick with
an air of impatience. “Good night, then,” he said, with in his turn an
air of impatience.

“Good night,” she said.




CHAPTER XV.

DELIVERANCE.


Lady Jane had been for two months the solitary inhabitant of those two
rooms on the second floor. Yet not altogether solitary--Nurse Mordaunt
had been allowed to join her, and had been the faithful companion of her
captivity. She was a better companion than a younger maid would have
been, for she had been a kind of second mother to Lady Jane, and knew
all her life and everything that concerned her, besides being a person
of great and varied experience, who had anecdotes and tales to
illustrate every vicissitude of life. Nurse Mordaunt was acquainted
even with parallel instances to place beside Lady Jane’s own position.
She knew every kind of thing that had ever happened “in families,” by
which familiar expression she meant great families like those to which
she had been accustomed all her life. Little families without histories
she knew nothing of. The profound astonishment which overwhelmed Lady
Jane when she found herself a prisoner it would be impossible to
describe. She felt once more as she had felt when her father insulted
her womanly delicacy and sent the blood of shame tingling to her cheeks,
shame not so much for herself as for him. Was it possible that her
father, the head of so great a house, the descendant of so many noble
ancestors, and again her father, the man to whom she had looked up with
undoubting confidence and admiration all her life--that at the end he
was no true gentleman at all, but only a sham gentleman, the shadow
without any substance, the symbol, with all meaning gone out of it? Do
not suppose that Lady Jane put this deliberately into words. Ah, no! the
thoughts we put into words do not sting us like those that glance into
our souls like an arrow, darting, wounding before we have time to put up
any shield or defence to keep them out. Deeper even than her separation
at such a moment from her lover, more bitter than her thoughts of his
disappointment, of his rage and misery, was this empoisoned thought: her
father, a great peer, a noble gentleman--yet thus suddenly showing
himself not noble at all, not true, a tyrant, without any understanding
even of the creatures whom he could oppress. Lady Jane was sad enough on
her own account and on Winton’s, it may well be believed: but of this
last wound she felt that she never could be healed. Imagine those
traditions of her rank in which she had been brought up, her proud yet
so earnest and humble sense of its obligations, the martyrdom which in
her youth she had been so ready to accept--all come down to this, that
she was a prisoner in her father’s house, locked up like a naughty
child,--she who had been trained to be the princess royal, the
representative of an ideal race! Ah, if it had but been a revolution, a
rebellion, democracy rampant, such an imprisonment as she had once been
taught to think likely! but to sink down from the grandeur of that
conception to the pettiness and bathos of this! She tried to smile to
herself sometimes, in the long days which passed so slowly, at her own
ludicrous anticipations, and at the entire futility, after all, of this
suffering to which she was being exposed. But she had not a lively
sense of humour, and could not laugh at those young dreams, which, after
all, were the highest of her life. And somehow the sense that the
present troubles could produce no possible result of the kind intended,
made her almost more impatient of them than if they had been more
dangerous. That her father could think to subdue her by such means, that
he could expect to convince her by so miserable an argument, that he
could suppose it possible that she would change for this, abandon what
she had resolved upon at the expense of all her prejudices and so many
of her better feelings, because of being shut up in two rooms for two
months, or two years, or any time he might choose to keep her there! If
she had not thought her filial duty a sufficient reason, would she be
convinced by a lock and key? Lady Jane smiled with high and silent
disdain at so extraordinary a mistake. But it was unworthy, it was
lowering to her moral dignity to be exposed to so vexatious and petty an
ordeal. At a State prison, with the block at the end, she had been
prepared to smile serenely, carrying her high faith and constancy
through even the death ordeal. But confinement in her own room was
laughable, not heroic; it made her blush that she should be exercised in
so miserable a way--in a way so impossible to bring about any result.

Nurse Mordaunt was an excellent companion, but after a while she began
to droop and pine. She wanted the fresh air; she wanted to see her
grandchildren; she wanted, oh, imperiously beyond description! a talk, a
gossip, a little human intercourse with some one of her own kind. Lady
Jane was a darling--the sweetest of ladies; but it was a different
thing talking to that angel and chatting familiarly over things in
general with Mrs Jarvis. Nurse no more than other mortals could be kept
continuously on the higher level. She longed to unbend, to be at her
ease, to feel herself, as the French say, _chez elle_, in which
expression there is almost a more intimate well-being than in that of
being at home, which we English think so much superior. Her health
suffered, which Lady Jane would not allow that hers did; and at last,
Nurse Mordaunt made such strenuous representations on the subject to the
new servant, whose business it was to watch over the prisoners, that she
was allowed to go out. She was allowed to go out and the Duchess to come
in, two proceedings altogether contradictory of the spirit of the
confinement, and which were, indeed, a confession of failure, though the
Duke himself was unaware of it. This made a great change to the
prisoner, whose cheeks, though still pale, got a little tinge of colour
and hope in consequence. It did more for her than merely to bring her
her mother’s society, though that was much. It brought her also other
news of the outer world--news of Winton more definite than the distant
sight of him riding or walking through the Square, which he did
constantly. Now, at last, she received the budget of letters, of which
her mother’s hands were full. Lady Jane smiled and cried a little at the
entreaties her lover addressed to her to be steadfast--not to give him
up. “I wonder what they all think,” she said; “is this an argument
likely to convince one’s reason, mother, or to persuade one for love’s
sake?” She looked round upon her prison--her pretty chamber furnished
with every luxury--and laughed a little. “Is it my head or my heart
that is appealed to?” she said. This, perhaps, was too clear-sighted for
the angelic point of view from which the world in general expected Lady
Jane to view most matters. But, in fact, though she had more poetry in
her than her mother, Lady Jane had come into possession of part of her
mother’s fortune, so to speak, her sense; and that is a quality which
will assert itself. Now the Duchess, in the excitement of standing by
helpless while her daughter suffered, had come to regard the matter more
melodramatically than Lady Jane did, to suffer her feelings to get the
mastery, and to imagine a hundred sinkings of the heart and depressions
of the spirit to which the captive must be liable. She recognised the
change instinctively, for it was one which had taken place long ago in
herself. She, too, had been brought to see the paltriness of many
things that looked imposing, the futility of _les grands moyens_. Lady
Jane’s development had been slow. At twenty-eight she had been less
experienced than many a girl of eighteen. But now her eyes were opened.
Even her lover, who thought it possible that she might yield under such
persuasion, was subject to almost a passing shade of that high but
gentle disdain with which she contemplated the vulgar force to which she
was subjected; for it was vulgar, alas! though a duke was the
originator: and unspeakably weak though it was--what the French call
_brutal_--everything, in short, that a mode of action destined to affect
a sensitive, proud, and clear-seeing soul ought not to be.

The new _régime_ had continued but a short time when Nurse Mordaunt
returned one day from her walk with heightened colour and great
suppressed excitement. Something, it was evident, was in her mind quite
beyond the circle of her usual thoughts; but she talked less, not more,
than usual, and left her lady free to read over and over the last
letters, and to refresh her heart with all the raptures of her lover’s
delight in having again found the means of communicating with her after
the misery of six weeks of silence and complete separation. Something he
said of a speedy end of all difficulties, which Lady Jane took but
little thought of, being far more interested in the reunion with
himself, which his letters brought about. A speedy end: no doubt an end
would come some time; but at present the prisoner was not so sanguine as
those outside. She did not know the gallant stand which the ladies were
making, or the social state of siege which had been instituted in
respect to the Duke; and she sighed, but smiled, at Winton’s hope. All
went on as usual during the long, long evening. It was long, though it
was provided with everything calculated to make it bearable--books and
the means of writing, writing to _him_--which was far more amusing and
absorbing than any other kind of composition. Her fire was bright, her
room full of luxurious comfort--a piano in it, and materials for a dozen
of those amateur works with which time can be cheated out of its length.
But she sighed and wearied, as was natural, notwithstanding the
happiness of having her lover’s letters, and of having talked with her
mother, and of knowing as she did that some time or other this must come
to an end. “After all, nurse,” she said with a little laugh, as she
prepared for bed, “to be in prison is not desirable. I should like to
have a run in the woods at Billings, or even a walk in Rotten Row.”

“Yes, dear,” said nurse, leaning over her, “your ladyship shall do
better than that. Oh yes, my sweet, better days are coming. Don’t you
let down your dear heart.”

“No; that would not do much good,” Lady Jane said with a sigh: but she
did not remark, which was strange, that nurse was full of a secret, and
that a delightful secret, exultingly dwelt upon, and ready to burst out
at the least encouragement. Or perhaps she did perceive it, but was too
tired to draw it forth. And she gave no encouragement to further
disclosure, but went to her rest sighing, with a longing to be free,
such as since the first days of her imprisonment she had not felt
before. And she could not sleep that night. Lady Jane was not of a
restless nature. She did not toss about upon her pillows and make it
audible that she was sleepless: and she had much to occupy her thoughts,
so many things that were pleasant, as well as much that it hurt her to
contemplate. She put the hurtful things away and thought of the sweet,
and lay there in the darkness of the winter’s night, lighted and calmed
by sweet thought. When it was nearly morning, at the darkest and
chilliest moment of all, there came a rustling and soft movement, which,
however, did not alarm her, since it came from Nurse Mordaunt’s room.
Then she perceived dimly, in the faint light from an uncurtained window,
a muffled figure, with which indeed she was very familiar, being no
other than that of nurse herself in a dressing-gown and nightcap, with a
shawl huddled about her throat and shoulders, stealing round the room.
What was nurse doing at this mysterious hour? But Lady Jane was not
afraid. She was rather glad of the incident in the long monotony of the
night. She turned her head noiselessly upon her pillow to watch. But
the surprise of Lady Jane was great at the further operations of her
attendant. Nurse arranged carefully and noiselessly a small screen
between the door and the bed, then with great precaution struck a light
and began with much fumbling and awkwardness to operate upon the door.
What was she doing? The light, throwing a glimmer upward from behind the
screen, revealed her face full of anxiety, bent forward towards the lock
of the door, upon which many scratches and ineffectual jars as of tools
badly managed soon became audible. The candle threw a portentous waving
shadow, over the further wall and roof, of the old woman’s muffled
figure, and betrayed a succession of dabs and misses at the door which
Lady Jane for a long time could not understand. What did it mean? The
noise increased as nurse grew nervous over her failure. She hurt her
fingers, she pursed her mouth, she contracted her brows; it was work
that demanded knowledge and delicate handling, but she had neither. When
Lady Jane raised herself noiselessly on her arm, and said in her soft
voice, “What are you doing, nurse?” the poor woman dropped the tools
with a dull thump on the floor, and almost went down after them in her
vexation. “Oh, my lady, I can’t! I can’t do it, I’m that stupid!” She
wept so that Lady Jane could scarcely console her, or understand her
explanation. At last it came out by degrees that the tools had been
given her, with many injunctions and instructions, to break open the
lock of the door. “By whom?” Lady Jane demanded, with a deep blush and
sparkling eyes. Why she should have felt so keen a flash of indignation
at her lover for thinking of such an expedient is inscrutable, but at
the moment it seemed to her that she could never forgive Winton for such
an expedient. But it was Lady Germaine who was the offender, and Lady
Jane was pacified. She bound up nurse’s finger, and sent her off
summarily to bed. Then, it must be allowed, she herself looked upon the
tools long and anxiously with shining eyes. It seemed to her that it
would be fighting her father with his own weapons. It would be as
unworthy of her to get her freedom that way, as it was of him to make a
prisoner of her. Would it be so? Lady Jane’s heart began to beat, and
her brow to throb. Would it be so? The mere idea that she held her
freedom in her hand filled her whole being with excitement. She locked
them away into a little cabinet which stood near her bed. She was too
tremulous, too much excited by the mere possibility, to be able to think
at all.

That night had been a very exciting one for the Duke. Again he had been
the centre of a demonstration. It did not seem to him that he could turn
anywhere without hearing these words, “Half-married,” murmuring about.
This time it was at the house of the Lord Chancellor that the _émeute_
occurred. A very distinguished lady was the chief guest: not indeed the
most distinguished personage in the realm, but yet so near as to draw
inspiration from that fountain-head. She said, “We could not believe
it,” as Mrs Coningsby had said; but naturally with far more force. “I am
afraid you are not of your age, Duke.”

“There is little that is desirable in the age, madam, that any one
should be of it,” his Grace replied with dignity. Here he felt himself
on safe ground.

“Ah, but we cannot help belonging to it: and it is for persons of rank
to show that they can lead it, not to be driven back into antiquity.
All that is over,” said the gracious lady. The Duke bowed to the ground
as may be supposed. “Lady Jane I hope will appear at the Drawing-Room
_on her marriage_,” his distinguished monitress said as she passed on.
The emphasis was unmistakable. And how that silken company enjoyed it!
They had all gathered as close as possible, and lent their keenest ear.
And there was a whisper ran round that this was indeed the way in which
royalty should take its place in society. As for the Duke, he stumbled
out of these gilded halls, more confused and discomfited than ever duke
was. He did not sleep much more than Lady Jane did all that long and
dark night. What was he to do? Must he _Give In_? These words seemed to
be written upon the book of fate. Relinquish his prejudices, his
principles, all the traditions of his race--retrace his steps, own
himself in error, undo what he had done? No! no! no! a thousand times
no! But then there seemed to come round him again that rush of velvet
feet, that sheen of jewelled brows, the look with which the central
figure waved her lily hand---- The Duke felt his forehead bedewed with
drops of anguish. How could he stand out against that? he, the most
loyal of subjects, and one whose example went so far? If he set himself
in opposition, who could be expected to obey? He thought of nothing else
all night, and it was the first thing which occurred to him when he woke
in the morning. What to do? He was tired of it all, all, and tired of
other things too, if he could have been brought to confess it. His heart
was sore, and his soul fatigued beyond measure. He had not even his wife
to lean the weight of his cares upon, and everything was going wrong.
He could now at last feel the sweep of the current moving towards
Niagara. It bore him along, it carried him off his feet. Ruin at hand:
he would not allow himself even now to believe in it--but in his heart
was aware that it was ruin. And this other matter in the foreground,
occupying the thoughts which had so many other claims upon them! The
reader will feel with us that the subject is too sacred, otherwise there
is enough to fill a volume of the Duke’s self-communings, and perplexed,
distressful thoughts. He got up in the morning, still half-dazed, not
knowing what to do. But in his heart the Duke was aware he was beaten.
There was no more fight in him. He swallowed his breakfast dolefully,
and sat down in his vast, cheerless library by himself to settle what he
was to do, when--But for this we must go back a little in the record of
the family affairs.

Lady Jane had begun the day with a sense of underlying excitement, which
she covered with her usual calm, but which was not her usual calm. She
had the means of escape in her power. She said nothing to nurse, who,
subdued by her failure, and crushed by her lady’s first flash of
indignation, effaced herself as much as possible, and left Lady Jane in
the room which looked out upon the Square, which was her dressing-room
(nominally) and sitting-room, undisturbed. Lady Jane could not forget
that the tools were in that little carved cabinet, which, never in the
course of its existence, had held anything of such serious meaning
before. She could not keep them out of her mind. To use them might be
unworthy of her, a condescension, putting herself on the same level as
her tyrant; but after all, to think that the means were in her power!
Lady Jane was very well aware that, once outside that door, her
captivity was over. It was a thing that could not be repeated. Once upon
the staircase, in the passage, and all the world was free to her. When
you think of that after two months’ imprisonment, it is hard to keep the
excitement out of your pulses. At last it overcame her so much that she
got up, half-stealthily, timidly, and went to the door to examine the
lock, and see whether, by the light of nature, she could make out what
was to be done. It had been closed not long before to permit of the exit
of the maid who carried their meals to the prisoners. The tools were in
the cabinet, and in all likelihood Lady Jane would be as maladroit with
those poor small white hands of hers as nurse had been. She went to the
door and examined the lock closely. All at once something occurred to
her which made her heart jump. She took hold of the handle, it turned in
her hand. Another moment and she flung it open with a little cry of
terror and triumph. Open! and she free, out of her prison. It was but
one step, but that step was enough. Her amazement was so great that it
turned to something like consternation. She stepped out on to the
landing, which was somewhat dark on this February morning: and there she
paused. She was a woman born to be a heroine, one of the Quixotic race.
She paused a moment, holding her head high, and reflected. This must
have been an accident: for once the jailer had made a mistake, had slept
upon his post, had turned the key amiss. Was it good enough to take
advantage of a mistake, to save herself by the slip of a servant? She
hesitated, this spiritual descendant of the great Spanish cavalier,
that noblest knight. But then Lady Jane’s sense came in. She was aware
that now, at this moment, she was delivered,--that no force in the world
could put her again within that door. She gathered the long skirt of her
black gown in her hand, and slowly, stately, not like a fugitive, like
the princess she was, went down-stairs.

The Duke was in his library thinking what to do, and the Duchess--in her
morning-room, with her heart greatly fluttered by that little royal
speech, which had been reported to her already--sat with, strange to
say, only half a thought of Jane, looking in the face that other dark
and gloomy thing,--the ruin that was approaching. She had palpable
evidence of it before her, and knew that it was now a matter of weeks,
perhaps of days, so that though her heart, like an agitated sea after
the storm, was still heaving with the other emotion, her thoughts for
the moment had abandoned Jane. But the Duke’s mind was full of his
daughter. He would have to _Give In_! Look at it how he would, he saw no
escape for that. “The women,” as Lord Germaine in his slangy way
prophesied, “had made it too hot for him,” and royalty itself--clearly
he could not put his head out of his door, or appear in the society of
his peers again, till this was done. But how was it to be done? To make
his recantation in the eye of day, in the sight even of his household,
was more than he could calmly contemplate. It was no longer, What was he
to do? but, How was he to do it? that was in his mind. He had got up,
unable to keep still, and feeling that some step must be taken at once.
When----

       *       *       *       *       *

We had already got this length on a previous page. At this memorable
crisis, when all the world seemed to his consciousness to be standing
still to see what he would do, the door of the library was pushed slowly
open from without. The doors in Grosvenor Square did not squeak and
mutter like the wizards in the Old Testament, as our doors so often do,
but rolled slowly open, majestically, without sound. This was what
happened while the Duke stood still, something within him seeming to
give way, his heart fluttering as if what he expected was a visitor from
the unseen. He stood with his eyes opening wide, his lips apart. Was it
a deputation from Mayfair? was it the royal lady herself? was it---- It
was something more overwhelming, more miraculous than any of these. It
was Lady Jane. The reader is already aware who was coming, but the Duke
was not aware. He gasped at her with speechless astonishment, as if she
had been indeed a visitor from the unseen.

She was very pale after her long incarceration, and the hollow, alas!
very visible on her delicate cheek. She was dressed in a long, soft
cashmere gown, black, with an air of having fitted her admirably once,
but which now was too loose for her, as could be seen. But though she
was thin and pale, she held her head high, and there was a sort of smile
in the look with which she regarded her father. Hers was indeed the
triumph. She was too high-minded, too proud to fly. She came into the
room, and closed the door with a sort of indignant stateliness. “I have
come to tell you,” she said, “that by some accident or misadventure my
door was found unlocked this morning, and I have left my prison.” She
held her head high, and he bowed and crouched before her. But yet, had
she but known, her own relief and ecstasy of freedom was nothing to her
father’s. It was as if the load of a whole universe had been taken off
his shoulders.

“This is Martin’s fault,” he said; “the fellow shall be dismissed at
once. Jane, you will believe me or not as you please, but I had meant to
come myself and open the door to you to-day.”

He dropped down into a chair all weak and worn, and held his head in his
hands: his nerves now more shattered than her own. It was all he could
do to keep himself from bursting like a woman into tears.

“You surely do not imagine that I could doubt what you say? I am glad,
very glad, that it was so----” she said, her voice melting. He was her
father still, and she was not guiltless towards him. “I wish that I had
waited till you came,” she said.

“Yes;” he seized eagerly upon this little advantage. “I wish that you
had waited till I came: but it was not to be expected. I do not say that
it was to be expected.” Then he hoisted himself by his hands pressing
upon the table, and looked at her. “Bless me,” he said, “how thin you
are, and how pale!--is this--is this my doing? Gracious! shut up so
long, poor girl!--I suppose you must hate me, Jane?”

Lady Jane went up to him holding out her hands. “Father, I have sinned
against you too. Forgive me!” she cried, too generous not to take upon
herself the blame; and so the father and daughter kissed each other, he
crying like a child, she like a mother supporting him. Such a moment had
never been in the Duke’s long life before.

And we are bound to allow that neither the Duchess, who was his faithful
wife, nor Winton, always ready to appreciate the noble sentiments of
Lady Jane, could ever understand the fulness of this reconciliation. It
is to be hoped that the reader will comprehend better. They were too
resentful and indignant to resume their old relations in a moment as if
nothing had happened, which Lady Jane did with perhaps more tenderness
than before. But into this question there is no time to enter. When Lady
Jane went in softly, as if she had left her mother half an hour before,
into the morning-room, the Duchess flung away her papers with a great
cry, and rushed upon her daughter, clasping her almost fiercely, looking
over her shoulder with all the ferocity of a lioness in defence of her
offspring. She would have ordered the carriage at once to take Lady Jane
away, or even have gone with her on the spot, on foot or in a cab, to a
place of safety: but Lady Jane would not hear of any such proceeding.
She calmed her mother, as she had soothed her father, and in an hour’s
time Winton was in that little room, which suddenly was turned into
Paradise. He had been carrying about with him all this time a special
licence ready for use, and as everything can be done at a moment’s
notice in town, even in February, Lady Jane Altamont, attended by a
small but quite sufficient train, and before a whole crowd of excited
witnesses, was married next morning at St George’s, Hanover Square, like
everybody else of her degree. Needless to say that there was in the
‘Morning Post’ next morning, as well as in most of the other papers, an
account of the ceremony, with a delicate hint of difficulties,
unnecessary to enter into, which had gone before. This was read by many
who understood, and by a great many more who did not understand; but
nowhere with greater excitement than in the rectory-house of St
Alban’s, E.C., where Mrs Marston took the fashionable paper, poor lady,
because in that wilderness she was so out of the way of everything. She
rushed in upon her husband in his study (who had just seen it in the
‘Standard’ with feelings which are indescribable) with the broadsheet in
her hand. “Listen to this, William,” she cried solemnly; “didn’t I tell
you it was none of our business to meddle! and your fine Duke, whom you
were so anxious to be serviceable to, and that never said thank you----
But I told you what you had to expect,” Mrs Marston cried.





THE FUGITIVES.




CHAPTER I.


Helen Goulburn was sitting alone in the great drawing-room of her
father’s country-house on an evening in October. It had been very sultry
during the day, and the great heat had ended in a thunderstorm and
torrents of rain. Now all the tumult and commotion of the elements were
over. The night was cool and fresh. The great windows were open to the
unseen garden, from which a sweetness of honeysuckle and mignonnette
and late roses came in upon every breath of the fitful night air. The
room was an immense room, far too large for a solitary occupant. She and
her lamp and her white dress made a lightness in one corner; the rest of
the huge drawing-room was faintly lighted with candles, of which there
were regiments about on the walls, reflected vaguely from mirrors here
and there, on tables and consoles and cabinets,--but yet not enough to
give anything like light to the vast shadowy room, which was full of
everything that is rich and rare--of everything at least that the
highest price could buy or the best workmen produce. The windows, a long
line of them, all draped in that shadowy whiteness, stood open, as has
been said. Most girls of Helen’s age would have been afraid to sit all
alone, with so many windows opening on to a lawn, which in its turn
swept downwards into the park, at so late an hour. Sometimes the lace
curtains swayed in the night wind as if put aside by a shadowy hand. It
was difficult to keep the imagination from developing some stealthy
figure half hidden in the drapery, some one coming in, out of the
darkness outside. The house was full of wealth, and the temptations to a
sudden raid might have been many. When the branches swayed in the night
air, bringing down a shower of raindrops, or some twig cracked, or one
of the mysterious noises of which darkness is always full, broke the
absolute quiet--any one of those sounds, which yet were scarcely
definite sounds at all, might have conveyed a tremor to the lonely
occupant of all this mystic space and solitude. But Helen sat unmoved.
She was used to the vacant bigness of the great house, often inhabited
by only herself and her little sister, and a crowd of servants. She had
been in the hands of a governess till very lately, and in the routine of
lessons and the certainty that a schoolgirl was not likely to be
interrupted by visitors, had escaped all consciousness of the isolation
of the great house. It was the most splendid in the county, surrounded
by a beautiful park, embosomed in great trees. When Mr Goulburn bought
it from the decaying proud family to whom its glories belonged, Fareham
was already a noble place; and he had added greatly to it, had built out
a room here and a room there, and enlarged it with every extravagance of
convenience that lavish wealth could think of. He had built and
decorated in the most costly way the splendid room in which his daughter
was sitting; he had fitted out for her a suite of rooms worthy of a
princess; the very servants were lodged as half the well-to-do people in
England would have been glad to be lodged. Outside, in the darkness of
the summer night, full of dew and rain and soft fragrance, were acres of
flower-beds and conservatories, tended by a regiment of gardeners.

But notwithstanding all this splendour, the county looked very shyly on
the new member of its sacred and select society. He had brought very
good introductions, and he gave such dinners as were not to be had
within a hundred miles. The Duke called, an honour scarcely less than
royal condescension; but the surrounding gentry showed no enthusiasm in
following that example. Helen was then still in the school-room, which
furnished the ladies with a very good excuse; but even after the ball,
which was given on the occasion of her coming out, and which certified
that event to all the world, no genial circle of neighbours collected
round her. Even her youth, her solitude, her motherless and friendless
condition, did not call forth the sympathy of the county people. Never
was girl more solitary. Her governess, who it had been arranged was to
stay with her as chaperon, had married suddenly the widowed vicar of the
parish, and deserted her not long before the period of which we speak:
and she was left alone, the mistress of the wealthiest, most barren, and
splendid house in all the district. She had crowds of servants to do
whatever she bade--carriages, horses, whatever, as the servants’ hall
said, heart could desire--but no friends. Little Jane, her little
sister, was the offspring of a marriage which her father had made
“abroad,” and of which, except this child, no trace existed. It was
only on his return with the baby, six years before, that his
extraordinary wealth had shown itself. Before that period Helen had been
left at a school in the country--but not in this part of the
country--where she had been happy enough with her companions. But when
her father returned from “abroad,” everything had been changed for her.
An _ayah_ had brought the baby home, and Helen had first become aware of
the existence of a little sister when she saw a big pair of dark eyes
gleaming out of the palest of little faces over the dusky nurse’s
shoulder. She had been taken away from her school from that day, and
ever since had lived the life of a princess, waited upon by innumerable
servants, and living in luxurious houses. But her father had always
lived the life of a bachelor, notwithstanding his possession of these
two daughters. His friends had been all men. There were great dinners
now and then; and occasionally Helen had seen through an open door a
glimpse of a long splendid table laden with plate and crystal, and
baskets of fruit and flowers, where her father’s friends were being
entertained. But no ladies had come to the house, nor, after the
childish companions of her school, had she had any friends in her new
magnificence, except Miss Temple, who had been very good to her, and
whose departure had brought a poignant sensation of loss into the girl’s
mind. It was almost the only keen feeling she had ever known. She had
come into society with something of the bewildered, uncertain vision of
a creature bred in the darkness, who is dazzled and confused rather than
delighted by the light. The people who came to the ball had been as
figures in a dream to her. The whole scene was like something in the
theatre. She was scarcely aware that she was herself not a spectator,
but an actor in it, walking about mechanically among the guests, making
her mechanical curtsey when her father brought up now one strange face,
now another.

And after that one ball, silence had fallen again upon Fareham. The
porter at the lodge received sheaves of cards, and some carriages even
penetrated through the grand avenue to the hall door; but no one entered
the house. Doubtless there were some hearts in those carriages in which
there vibrated some touch of pity for the millionaire’s shy, motherless,
inexperienced daughter. But the county was wonderfully intact, and its
gentry had made up their minds to discourage the advent of Money among
them. A few years of perseverance would no doubt have made an end of
that irrational notion; but in the meantime they distrusted Mr
Goulburn. He was far too rich; it was insolent of a man who, so far as
any one knew, was nobody, to be richer than all the squires put
together. A ball in such a house might be tolerated. It was like a
public ball; you took your own party (for in this respect the
invitations were most liberal), and, save that one of your men had to
sacrifice himself to ask the girl of the house to dance once, you kept
yourselves to yourselves, as you did at the ball for the hospital or any
other subscription assembly. This was what the county people said. And
as for Helen, she was often dull, but she had not learned to blame
anybody for her dulness. She thought it a law of nature--it was no one’s
fault.

All this explanation is to show how it was that Helen found nothing
unusual in her own position, alone in this great dim room, with all the
windows open. The windows always were open, except in the depth of
winter. The darkness without had no dangers for her; it never occurred
to her that any strange apparition might disturb her solitude. She liked
the stillness, the night air, the fragrance from the garden. Though she
usually went to bed early, yet on this night she was not sleepy. She was
reading a novel; that was one of the luxuries which her father provided
regularly. She had not read many books that were worth reading, but of
novels all kinds. When the butler came softly into the room, with the
intention of closing up the house for the night, she stopped him.

“Are you going to sit up to-night, Brownlow?” she said.

“Yes, Miss Goulburn, as usual on Saturdays, till the last train comes
in,” the man replied.

“Then leave the windows open a little longer.”

“Yes, Miss Goulburn,” he said. But he did not go away forthwith; he
extinguished the candles on the distant tables and in the sconces,
moving like a shadow (though he was very substantial) in that elegant
desert of costly furniture, until finally Helen’s figure in her white
dress, lit up by her lamp, became the one definite point in the
darkness. She was at some distance from the windows, in the winter
corner near the fireplace, now all dark. Everything was dark except that
one spot. The soft and almost stealthy closing of the door was all that
testified to Brownlow’s departure; he had become invisible before. In
the great stillness his soft and regular step, subdued and respectful,
as a good servant’s ought to be, yet stately, was heard retiring, thick
though the carpets were and closely fitting every door. He went away
through those softly carpeted corridors and across the great marble hall
to his own part of the house. And once more absolute silence and
solitude abode with Helen. The night air came in softly, swaying the
curtains; sometimes a bough creaked, a long tendril of some creeping
plant shook out a few rain-drops, a moth dashed against the panes. No
other sound in heaven or earth. And Helen in her white dress gave a
heart to the darkness. All alone, no one near her, yet not afraid!




CHAPTER II.


What was it that stirred?

Scarcely a sound at all--not half so definite as the cracking of the
twigs, the boom of the night moth against the window; yet it affected
Helen as those sounds never did. When it had occurred twice she raised
her head. It was nothing, and yet---- Again! What was it? Though you
would not call it a sound, it made the air thrill as no sound of the
inanimate ever does. She looked up, but the light of her own lamp
blinded her. She could scarcely see beyond its charmed circle. Then a
slight jar succeeded to the soft pressure, as of a human foot upon the
turf. A sound that conveys purpose and energy, how different is it from
the aimless noises of nature! She rose up in great, though restrained
alarm, with a cry almost on her lips. Then Helen reflected that all the
servants were far away, that a scream would not help her much; and
though her heart beat wildly, almost taking from her both sight and
hearing, she still could, after a sort, both hear and see. She stood up,
closely drawn against the wall, looking out with puckered eyelids. Then
a hand stole between the curtains of the nearest window: they were
pushed aside, and a dark figure showed itself, at first
indistinguishable, a something merely, an emblem of mystery and danger.
Helen’s scream got vent, but in a low cry only of fright and dismay.
Then all at once the fluttering of her heart stopped, her pulses
regained their steadiness.

“Papa!” she said, “oh, how you have frightened me! Why didn’t you come
in the other way?” It was a great relief, for her terror had been all
the greater that she had never experienced any visionary alarms before,
and her imagination was unprepared. She put out her hand to the bell, “I
will ring for Brownlow----”

Her father did not leave her time even for another word. He sprang
forward and caught her arm. “Don’t do anything of the kind,” he said. “I
want no Brownlow. I am going again immediately. I want no one. I don’t
wish it to be known that I have been here.”

It was certainly her father, but not the placid, prosperous, moneyed man
she knew. His coat, which was of a rough kind she had never seen him
wear before, was beaded with rain. His face was pale and haggard; his
dress bore traces of mud, as if he had scrambled over ditches; his boots
were wet and clogged with the damp soil. She looked at him with a terror
she could not express, and he looked at her with a somewhat stern
inquiry in his eyes.

“But you are wet: you want--dinner--something?” she faltered. “Shall I
run and bid them bring----”

He shook her slightly, still holding her arm. “Are you good for
anything?” he said. “Have you any stuff in you? Now is the time to test
it. Go and get that white rag off. Put on your darkest dress, and come
with me.”

“Come with you? To-night, papa?”

He gave her a slight shake again. “It will neither be to-night or any
other night if you make so much noise. What are you capable of, Helen?
Are you able to be quick, and silent, and brave? Can I rely upon
you?--if not, say so; but make up your mind, for there is not a moment
to lose.”

She grew whiter than her white dress, and looked at him with gleaming,
wide-open eyes. She had read of appeals like this, but she could not
remember how the heroines responded. She said, faltering, “I can be
quick, and quiet, papa.”

“That is all that is necessary; but we have not a moment’s time to lose.
No one must know that I have been here. I shall go out again outside the
window and wait for you. Go up to my room, to the little Italian cabinet
near my bed, on the right hand. You know it, and you know how to open
the secret drawer? Here is the key: bring me a little portfolio, a sort
of letter-case you will find in it. Stop; that is not all. Change your
dress and put on thick boots, and a cloak, and a veil. Then go and
bring Janey----”

“Janey! papa? She has been in bed for hours.”

“Did I say she was not in bed? Take up the child out of her bed, wrap
her in something, and bring her down-stairs. You can surely carry that
little thing down-stairs. After that I’ll take charge of her myself.”

“But, papa, Janey! she is so little. If I wake her she will cry.”

“Not she! But why wake her at all? Lift her, and wrap her in something
warm; she need not be awoke. My poor little Janey! I can’t go without my
Janey,” he said to himself.

Helen scarcely knew what she was saying in her consternation and
surprise. “If you are going anywhere, papa, and want to take Janey--at
this hour--would it not be best to order the brougham?”

“Would it not be best to order a coach and six, with half-a-dozen fools
to draw it?” he said savagely. Just then some far-off sounds were
audible, some one moving in the silence of the house. Mr Goulburn made a
hurried step towards the window. Then paused and said in a half-whisper,
which he seemed to try to make kind, “Let me see what mettle you are
made of, Helen. Do what I have told you without betraying
yourself--without attracting any one’s attention. Show what you are good
for, once in your life.”

He disappeared, and Helen stood for a moment like one in a dream. Was it
a dream? and would she awake?--or had the rest of her life been a dream
to which this was the awaking? She felt that her father was watching her
from behind the white mist of the curtains, and that she dared not
delay. She went up-stairs mechanically. The huge house lay silent like
an enchanted palace. On Saturdays it was always possible that the master
might not return until the late train, and it was common for the great
household of servants, badly ruled and prodigal, to hold a sort of
domestic saturnalia on that night. Faint sounds of fun and frolic were
to be heard from the servants’ hall--very faint, for Brownlow had a
sense of his responsibilities--and all the guardians of the place were
out of the way. Helen went up, unseen and solitary, to her father’s room
and her own. She did what he had told her--changed her own dress, and
took the Russia leather letter-case, which was full apparently of
papers, out of the secret drawer of the cabinet. But there she paused;
the other part of the mission was more difficult; and Helen stood still
again, with a beating heart, outside the door of little Janey’s nursery,
where the nurse certainly ought to be, even if all the other servants
were off duty. What should she do if the nurse were there? Her mission
was difficult enough without that. When Helen went in, however, to the
luxurious rooms appropriated to her little sister, no nurse was visible.
The child of the millionaire slept, unwatched, like the child of the
poorest clerk. A faint night-light burnt in the inner room. There were
acres of stairs and corridors between little Janey and the highly paid
functionary who was supposed to be devoted to her body and soul. She
might have died of fright before any one could have heard her cry. Helen
stood, breathless, at the foot of the little bed in which Janey lay fast
asleep. She thought she had never realised before what perfect rest was,
or the beauty of the child who lay with her pretty round arms thrown
above her head, rosy with sleep and warmth, her soft breathing making a
little murmurous cadence in the stillness. How can I have the heart to
wake her? Helen said to herself; a new sentiment, half tenderness, half
fear, seemed to awaken in her heart. To wake the little one to this
hurried incomprehensible night journey seemed terrible--yet somehow
Helen felt a reluctant conviction that Janey would adapt herself to the
adventure better than she herself should. The child’s sleep, however,
was so profound, and there was something so contrary to all the
prejudices of education in waking her up at that hour, that only the
thought of her father’s severe and haggard countenance kept Helen to her
errand. She had even turned away to go back to him--to say that she
could not do it--when the greater evil of having to return again, and
of, perhaps, meeting nurse next time, prevailed. She got a warm little
pelisse, with many capes--a piquant little Parisian garment, which had
tantalised all the mothers in the district--out of its drawer, and put
the little shoes ready. Then she bent over her small sister and called
her. “Janey, wake up, wake up; papa wants you. Wake up; we are to go
with him if you are quiet and don’t cry.”

The child sat up in her bed, awake all at once, with big, dark eyes,
opening like windows in her pale face. “I am not doing to cry,” she
said, and stared at her sister through the gloom, which was faintly
illuminated by the night-lamp. Janey was, as Helen had anticipated, much
more at home in the emergency than she was. She woke up in a moment, as
children do, not with a margin of bewilderment and confusion such as is
common to us--but wide awake, with all her little intelligence fresh
and on the alert.

“What is it? what is it, Helen?”

“I don’t know; but you are to go down to papa. You are to be quiet; you
are not to cry. We are going with him.”

“Where? where?”

“I don’t know,” said Helen, ready to weep with the strange and wild
confusion, the sense of misery and wretchedness which was involved to
her in this overthrowal of all habits, this sudden secrecy and adventure
in the dark. But little Janey clapped her hands. It was a delightful
novelty to the child. She pulled on her stockings on her own small pink
feet, her eyes dancing with pleasure and excitement. No need to carry
her down asleep, as Helen with terror and doubt of her own powers had
feared.

“You must be quiet; you must be quiet--not to let the servants know,”
the elder sister whispered.

“I am doing to be quiet,” said the little girl, delighted with the
mystery. She thrust her big doll into her bed, and covered it carefully,
while Helen, not knowing what she did, picked up various fugitive
articles, half-consciously, and put them into the pockets of the ulster
which she had put on.

“Be dood, baby, and keep my little bed warm till I come back,” sang
little Janey.

“Oh, hush, hush! you are to be quiet--you are to be quiet,” Helen said.

They crept down the great stairs like two ghosts, fantastic little
shadows, so unlike anything that could have been expected on that grand
staircase at that hour. But they met no one. The sounds from the
servants’ hall were a little more audible as the evening went on. The
master was absent, the master’s daughter too shy and timid, even had she
heard them, to take any notice. The hours of licence were approaching
when even Mr Brownlow relaxed the bonds of discipline. As these sounds
reached them, little Janey clasped her sister’s hand tighter. But it was
the sense of a mischievous escapade, not of a mysterious calamity, which
was in her mind.

“What will Nursey say?” the child said with a low laugh.

Even the whisper frightened Helen. The lights flared in all those vacant
passages, but gloom lurked in every corner; the great rooms were all
dark and empty: not a living being, not a sound of habitation was in the
magnificent costly place, except the squeak of the footman’s violin, the
far-off laughter of the servants--so much for so little! Amid all the
confusion and terror of the moment, Helen always recollected the vacant
lighted staircase, the hall with its marble pillars, the vast darkness
of the dining-room standing open--not a creature near, except those two
helpless creatures equipped for flight; but on the other hand, the
servants’ merry-making, and the squeak of the fiddle painfully
scratching out a popular tune. They paused to listen for one moment,
holding their breath. Then they went into the drawing-room, where
Helen’s lamp was still burning close to the wall, making the darkness
visible. Her book was still lying open on the table. She had left the
heroine at a painful crisis, but it was not so terrible as this.

Helen closed the door behind her with great precautions, and Janey, a
little frightened at the dark, clung to her closely.

“Where is papa? I don’t see papa,” cried the child.

“Oh, hush, hush!” said Helen, frightened by the sound of her voice.

He was standing behind the curtains waiting for them.

“How long you have been!” he said to her in a low, stern voice; but he
opened his arms to the child. “My little Janey--my little darling!” he
said, bending down on his knees to bring himself within her reach. Janey
clasped her arms round his neck, and kissed him, with open-mouthed
childish kisses.

“Where are you doing to take me, papa?” she said, her dark eyes dancing
with excitement. He raised himself up, holding her closely clasped to
his breast, and carried her out into the night.

What a strange night-walk it was--through the country lanes, all heavy
and muddy after the storm, and dark as the darkest midnight; brushing
against the rustling, thorny hedges, stumbling over heaps of stones,
through the pools at the roadside, and upon the slippery grass; here and
there crossing a stile at haphazard, with no guide but instinct; here
stealing past a cottage, shrinking from the lamps of the doctor’s gig,
which threw a suspicious light upon them. Helen, following, dragging her
weary feet through the muddy ways, holding up the long skirts not
intended for such usage in her arms, her veil over her face, felt
herself shrink, too, when the light flashed upon them. But who could
have supposed that it was the master of Fareham and his children that
were out there in the muddy lanes? Once at the turnpike, where they were
all as well known as the day, her father, whom she always saw before
her, a vague, dark shadow with the child in his arms, replied in a
gruff feigned voice, with a fictitious country accent, which gave Helen
a sharp shock, to the good-night of the gatekeeper. To avoid notice was
one thing, to tell a practical lie was another. This, in the midst of
her confused wretchedness, gave her a painful prick of sensation. Janey
in her excitement had begun to prattle at first, but had been summarily
silenced by her father, and now drooped upon his shoulder fast asleep,
her face half hidden in the rough collar of his coat. Between the other
two not a word passed. Helen was too miserable and too much bewildered
to ask any questions; she followed submissively.

The little station was within about a mile of Fareham, but a mile is
long when trudged through mud and rain by unaccustomed feet, in a gloomy
night, and with a heavy heart. A late train going express to town which
otherwise would have scorned this little station, had been arranged to
stop there for the convenience of the man of business, the well-known Mr
Goulburn, whose affairs were on too colossal a scale to be managed by
the ordinary means of communication open to everybody. Sometimes he had
special parcels to send by the guard: sometimes a clerk who had “run
down” for some special directions, or an associate acting with him on
some great city board, whose time was too valuable to permit the loss of
a moment, took advantage of this train; and sometimes he himself,
jumping into a dogcart the moment the latest guest had departed after a
sumptuous dinner, had rushed up to town by it. The station-master and
the porters were like his own servants, and the whole place all but kept
for his convenience. He crept up to it now, keeping carefully in the
shadow, out of the glare of its poor paraffin lamps.

“Keep yourself muffled up, and your veil down, and go and get the
tickets,” Mr Goulburn said, in the low and peremptory tone in which he
had throughout addressed Helen. She went without a word; she who had
never in her life done any such thing for herself. The clerk peered at
her through his wicket; the solitary porter stared as she stood alone on
the little platform. She was left there by herself until the train came
up, and the three persons who formed the _personnel_ of the station had
nothing to do but to stare at her, and ask about the luggage which she
did not possess. When the train stopped with its usual little fret and
commotion, Mr Goulburn suddenly came forward and plunged into an empty
carriage. His high coat-collar, the slouch of his hat, and finally, the
figure of the child asleep upon his shoulder concealed him effectually.
Helen could not help wondering whether she were as effectually
disguised, and the thought once more gave her a sharp pinch of pain. Why
were they hiding themselves? There was not a word spoken while the train
rushed on, tearing through that darkness which they had just traversed
so slowly and painfully. Only once, and that when they were but just
started, did any communication pass between the father and daughter.
They both looked out towards the home they had left, though it was
invisible as they left the little station. Upon the road close by the
lights of a carriage were visible, slowly approaching. It was the
carriage which, when Mr Goulburn was absent, was despatched to meet the
last train on Saturday nights. The last train from London was not due
for half an hour, and the coachman came along at a leisurely pace,
slowly climbing the road to meet his master, who was flying, disguised
and shameful, in the other direction. The contrast was so strange that
he looked at Helen, and their eyes met. Something piteous was in his
look. It contained a whole world of misery, of consciousness, of appeal
which was almost humorous, amidst the profundity of pain. She had asked
no questions, she had scarcely ventured to form to herself an idea of
what the cause of this flight could be, but for the first time her heart
was touched.

“Does she not tire you, lying on your shoulder? I could take her a
little, papa,” she said. She could think of no other way of showing her
sympathy. He shook his head and pressed the child closer to him. Was it
that the touch of her innocence made him feel less guilty? Was it that
to convince himself of the strength of the natural affection in him made
him think himself a better man? or was it only the one real and true
sentiment which may still preserve the least worthy from perdition?
Helen looked somewhat wistfully at her little sister, lying in all the
_abandon_ of childish sleep, helpless yet omnipotent, across her
father’s breast. She had never been a favourite like little Janey. No
passion of parental affection had ever been lavished upon her, and, in
consequence, she knew her father better, and perhaps secretly trusted
him less, than children ought to do--though she had never said this even
to herself. But for the moment, she sitting alone opposite to them,
carried off from all her anchors, swept into some wild sea of the
unknown, looked at them wistfully, and envied the father and the child.

In a few hours more Helen understood much more perfectly what the
metaphor meant which we have just employed. At midnight they embarked in
a steamer which, after feeling its way down the river through a thousand
dangers, plunged into the Channel just as daybreak made the rough waves
and flying foam visible. It was a small, old, almost worn-out boat, and
the voyage was one of the longer and cheaper ones which tempt the
passengers from the ordinary routes, to their profound suffering and
repentance. Helen had never been at sea before. She lay trembling while
the vessel creaked and plunged, not knowing what to reply to Janey’s
inquiry why the ship went up and down. Why, indeed? It seemed to do so
on purpose, tossing them up one moment and down the other with that
sickening repetition which helps to make up the agony of a voyage to
the inexperienced. In the morning, in the perplexing and painful
daylight of which Helen felt afraid, she did not know why, they landed
on foreign soil. Her father had changed during the night, she could not
tell how. Was it possible that already on the previous evening he had
worn the large whiskers and carefully smoothed hair which seemed to have
grown lighter, redder, than it used to be? She scarcely knew him when he
came on deck, and he gave her an uneasy look when he met her eye. She
did not, however, suspect the truth as yet, nor did she in the least
understand his disguise. She was only full of alarm and wonder, not
knowing what to think.




CHAPTER III.


“Where are we going, papa?” Helen had walked some way, bewildered and
wondering, through the foreign streets, confused by the strange language
round her, the unfamiliar look of everything, the strangeness of her
situation altogether. They had set out walking, and seemed, she thought,
to be going on vaguely from street to street without any aim, passing
hotel after hotel, at any of which she would have been glad to rest and
collect her thoughts after the rough voyage and all the agitations of
the night. “Where are you doing to take us, papa?” said little Janey,
running along by his side. The child was pale, too, and her pretty,
costly clothes had already acquired that look of crumpled finery which
garments too good for common use so easily assume. Helen, too, had found
it very difficult to manage her dress, with its train, made for no
greater exertion than to sweep over the velvet lawns at Fareham. It had
dropped from her hand now and then. It had got crushed and crumpled and
a little soiled with the wet deck. It looked like a dress that had been
worn all night. The signs of the night journey and rough sea were
unmistakable upon them. Mr Goulburn made no reply. He murmured something
to soothe the little girl, but made no answer to Helen. Their questions,
however, seemed to rouse him to action. He went into a shop which was
full of _articles de voyage_, and there bought a large second-hand
portmanteau, considerably battered, and one of those iron-bound trunks
which are used by Continental travellers. Then he put a purse into
Helen’s hand, and took her to the door of another shop, in which were
exhibited all kinds of feminine apparel. “Buy what is wanted for
yourself and _her_,” he said. Helen had scarcely ever in her life so
much as entered a shop alone, but necessity overcomes everything, even
the shy inexperience of a girl. She went in submissively, trembling to
face the brisk saleswoman, all her schoolroom French deserting her in
this earliest emergency. Nevertheless, she managed to do what was
absolutely essential. As for Janey, she proved herself much more a woman
of the world than her elder sister. The whole adventure was a frolic to
Janey--a frolic which the voyage had unpleasantly interrupted, but
which had now regained its jollity and excitement. She made her choice
among the different dresses exhibited to them with unfailing
promptitude. “I am doing to have this,” she said in her childish
peremptory tone, to the great delight of the shopwomen, who gathered
round her, offering her their wares. The little English child,
recovering all the vivacity of her childish spirits, and excited by the
laughter and flatteries, though she did not understand them, of the
French milliners, was an amusing little figure, and the scene like a
scene in a comedy. Janey inspected all the garments, feeling the texture
with her baby fingers, assuming a hundred little airs of importance. She
chattered without ceasing, a perpetual flood of remarks, while the women
laughed and admired.

“What does she say?” they asked the one among them who partially
justified the “_Ici on parle Anglais_,” in the shop-window.

“Elle est délicieuse,” the shopwoman said; “elle est jolie comme un
cœur: et d’un goût!”

Janey did not understand a word, but all the same knew she was being
applauded, and her little head was turned by the notice bestowed upon
her. “We came without any boxes or frocks or anything, and papa is doing
to let me buy whatever I like,” said Janey.

The women were curious beyond description when this was rapidly reported
to them by the one who understood. All this strange little scene went on
while Helen, still half dazed, stammered out her orders in her
faltering, imperfect French, and accepted timidly what was offered to
her. The colour came to her cheeks, and a painful prick of life to her
being, when she heard her little sister’s indiscreet explanation. “We
left all our things behind--by mistake,” she said, trembling, a
tingling, smarting blush dyeing her face. The timid falsehood redoubled
her own confusion, but it did not do much more. It changed, Helen
thought, the looks of the women. They followed her about, she fancied,
trying to elicit further revelations from Janey, pressing every kind of
outfit upon her; watching her as if---- What did they imagine? Did they
think she would steal something? Helen’s heart swelled so in her
simplicity that she thought it would burst. She held Janey’s hand
closely in her own, and squeezed it tight. “Don’t talk so, don’t talk
so,” she whispered. And then asked herself, with an indescribable pang,
why should not the child talk? A grey light of knowledge, a vague,
miserable twilight of consciousness, like the first lightening of a
gloomy dawn, was stealing over her. When she had made her
purchases--two frocks for Janey, the simplest which that little heroine
could be prevailed on to accept, and a plain dark dress for herself, and
a supply of underclothing,--she found her father at the door, with the
box he had bought upon a cab. This was how they were provided with the
luggage which is indispensable to respectability. Helen could not but
look at him with different eyes, now that she felt herself a party to
this fraud, which she began to be conscious of, without knowing what it
meant. What did it mean? Almost involuntarily unawares had not she
herself made a false statement in explanation of the extraordinary
straits in which they were placed? She watched her father, and found him
altered, she could scarcely tell how. His hair had changed its colour;
his beard had grown miraculously in a single night. What did it mean?
Her heart ached with the question, but she did not know how to reply.

He took them to the railway after this--to the railway again, after all
their past fatigue. He was not negligent, however, of their comfort, but
made them eat at the buffet, and took a _coupé_ for them, filling it
with all the picture-books and papers he could find, with baskets of
fruit and chocolate and bonbons. “Here is a corner where my little Janey
can go to sleep,” he said, putting the child tenderly into it when the
train had started. Janey jumped upon his knee, and began to chatter and
give him an account of her own achievements at the shop.

“They understood me,” said the little thing, “better than Helen. I can’t
speak French, but they understood me better than Helen. Papa, do you
hear? they understood me----” Here she paused and gave a sudden cry.
She had a pretty way of calling the attention of the careless listener,
drawing his face round with her little hand upon his chin. “Papa!” she
said, in great alarm, “you have dot hair on your chin, and it moves. Oh!
papa!”

His face grew crimson. He turned the child down from his knee, giving
her a sudden sharp blow on the cheek with his open hand--a blow which
was nothing, yet like a revolution of earth and heaven to Janey, and to
Helen too. Then, muttering a curse under his breath, he turned to Helen,
who was watching him, pale with terror and wonder and indignation.
“Well!” he said, defiantly; “out with it! You are a spy upon me too. Let
me hear what you have got to say.”

“I have nothing to say, papa,” said Helen, trembling. She looked at him
wistfully, with miserable insight in her eyes. She saw now that it was
all false--hair and complexion and even expression. It seemed to her, as
she looked at him, that it was not her father at all; that it was some
strange masquerader of whose identity she never could be sure again.
There had been no special devotion between Helen and her father; he had
been kind but careless, and she too had been careless, though
affectionate enough; but the miserable pang with which she seemed to
lose her hold of him, and with him of everything solid and steadfast in
the world, was more terrible than anything she had ever felt before. Her
life seemed to be rent up by the roots. Janey, whimpering and
astonished, took refuge in her corner, and by-and-by, worn out, dropped
happily asleep. But Helen could not sleep. Worn out too, but watchful,
she sat upright by her father’s side, not venturing to look at him,
seeing the long, flat, level lines of the country fly past the
carriage-windows with a tedium that made her eyes ache. And he too sat
bolt-upright, not looking at her. She had found him out; and he
perceived that she had found him out; but yet she had not got a step
farther, or discovered any real clue to the meaning of the flight which
she shared.

They travelled all that night, the second since they left home, Janey
sleeping in her corner, but Helen sitting sleepless, though worn to
death; and next day in the forenoon stopped at a sleepy little French
town, by a slow, pale, chalk river, amid interminable lines of poplars.
Words could not tell the weariness which possessed Helen, the
overmastering desire she felt to lay herself down anywhere, it did not
matter where; while at the same time the routine of the continued
movement had got into her brain, and it seemed to have become natural
to go on and on, watching those long lines of distance, those flying
plains, monotonous and endless, those rivers and fields. When the train
stopped with a jar, and with cramped limbs they stepped out and stood
upon the ordinary soil, the stoppage itself was a shock to Helen’s
nerves. It was midday of a bright October day when they drove over the
stony pavement in a jumbling omnibus, and rattled into a large square
inhabited by a cathedral and town-hall of imposing architecture, with
two little soldiers in red uniforms lounging under an archway, and two
people crossing the sunshine, going in different directions. The white
houses, tall and trim, with their green _persiennes_, the great tower of
the church cutting the blue sky, the two figures crossing the sunshine
printed themselves vaguely on Helen’s mind. She could not see anything
plainly for that vision of her father always before her who was not her
father. She did not like to look at him, yet saw his changed countenance
and false beard all the time with that sense of the insupportable which
only our own flesh and blood ever give us. She could not forget it as
Janey forgot, from whose little mind the incident of the night had fled
like last year’s snow. Janey ran into the bare, carpetless room at the
inn, and climbed up upon the wooden chair at the window, and called to
papa--“Why do they have all the curtains drawn at the windows, and why
is there nobody in the street, and why are the soldiers so little, and
what have they dot red trousers for?” cried Janey. The blow had gone
from her recollection. She thought no more of that novelty of the beard.
She had slept all night, and she was no longer tired, though she was
pale.

“Do you mean to stay here, papa?” said Helen. It is dreadful to sit at
table with any one and not to speak. She could not bear it; if he would
not say anything to her, she must talk to him.

“It does not look a very interesting place, you mean? No
picture-galleries or fine things to see. That is a pity; but if you do
not object to it too much, it suits me to stay here for a little while.”

“I do not object at all, papa,” said poor Helen, ready to cry,
“only--only----” She looked at him with wistful eyes.

“Only what? If you don’t object to me and everything about me, you
should try not to look as if you did. Understand, once for all, that _I_
understand my own motives and you don’t. And I don’t mean to be forced
to explain by any one, much less my own child.”

“Papa,” said Janey, “you souldn’t be cross. You dave me a slap last
night, but I never was cross. I did not look like this,” and she
covered her innocent forehead with the most portentous of frowns. “I
forgave you,” said the child, mastering the “g” with an effort, and
looking up at him with a countenance clear as the day, not like the
troubled face of Helen. The man was more touched than words could say.
He caught her up in his arms.

“Yes, my little darling,” he said, “I did; God forgive me! I gave this
dear little cheek a tap. I may have done other things as wrong, but none
that I regretted so much. But you forgive your poor old father, Janey? I
would not hurt you, my pet, not a hair of your pretty head, for the
world.”

“I knew you would be sorry, papa,” said the little girl, with the air of
a little queen. Then she lifted up her tiny forefinger, with serious yet
mischievous warning, “But you sould never be cross,” she said.

How different was Helen’s state from the innocent, tender play of the
child! She sat immovable and looked on at this pretty scene, seeing her
father’s countenance change, the hard lines melt, a tender light come
over it. He kissed his little Janey with a kind of reverential passion.
“I will try, my little love,” he said, as humble as a child. And while
he kissed her half weeping, and she clung with both her little arms
round his neck, Helen felt herself rigid as stone. She could not be
touched even by that which was most pathetic in this little episode--the
real emotion of the man whose conscience was certainly not void of
greater offences, yet whose heart melted at the pretty majesty of his
child’s reproof, her innocent counsel and authority. Helen sat and
looked on like some one entirely outside, a world apart from this
tender union. She did not share the emotion of it, nor the sweetness.
Her heart seemed made of lead; her eyes were dry as summer dust. She
turned away from them, not to see the innocent rapture of the father and
child. The bare little _salle à manger_, with its long table thinly
covered; the bare board; the windows with their close white curtains;
the all-prevailing odour of soup and cigars; the clashing of the
ostler’s pails outside; the high-pitched voices; the language only half
comprehensible,--made up a scene for her which she never forgot. Their
strange meal was over--a dozen unknown dishes--and they had been left
with a plate of fruit on the table and a bottle of _vin du pays_, which
Helen thought so sour. She was wearied to death, but she no longer felt
that devouring desire to lie down and go to sleep. The pain had roused
her; it seemed to her for the moment as if she could never sleep again.

Then she went up-stairs to the little bare bedroom above, where two
white beds stood side by side, two windows with the same white, closely
fixed curtains, a carpetless, curtainless room, with everything as bare
and wooden, as clean and white, as could be desired. She had to open the
new trunk and take out all their new things, which did not belong to
her, which belonged to a fugitive, the daughter of a man who had fled
from his own country and home in disguise, and at the dead of night. It
seemed to her that she could never tolerate this livery of shame, or
think of it save with a burning as of disgrace upon her countenance.
Perhaps it was partly because she was so worn out that she took
everything so tragically. She went out afterwards to see the town,
following her father, who led little Janey by the hand, delighted by
all her demands. The little girl prattled without ceasing, asking
questions about everything. “Why are they such little soldiers?” she
said; “they are like the little men in my Swiss village; and why have
they dot red trousers instead of red coats? Is it with walking in the
enemy’s blood, papa? like the Bible,” said Janey.

“Hush, hush! there cannot be anything like that in the Bible, Janey.”

“Ah! that is because you don’t read the lessons. You should read the
lessons every day,” said Janey, delighted with her _rôle_ of counsellor,
“like nurse, papa! How funny it would be when nurse went up-stairs and
found only dolly in my little bed, and Janey gone away!” She laughed,
and then looked at him with a look of examination more keen than that
timid, wistful look of Helen’s. “But I like this,” she added; “it is
funny. Why do the little children wear caps? And what funny little
shoes, that make such a noise! And why do they all speak French, papa?
Who taught them to speak French?” Janey, in her fresh wonder, put all
the threadbare questions that everybody has put before. She skipped upon
the rough stones by her father’s side, holding his hand tight; and the
three people who were in the great square (besides the soldiers) looked
upon the pair with kindly eyes, and pointed out to each other that the
newly arrived _Anglais_ worshipped his child. They have the domestic
instinct above all--they adore their infants. “But _tiens_,” they said;
“is it madame the young wife who follows with a look so _maussade_?”

The sympathies of these spectators were all with the father and the
child. Helen followed like a creature in a dream. The great, silent,
empty, open cathedral, with its altars all dressed in artificial
lilies, and the scent of incense still in the air, came into her silent
picture-gallery with all its details distinct, yet strange; and the long
line of boulevard with its trees, and the white houses with their veiled
windows, and the clanking of the _sabots_, and the little soldiers in
the archway. They gave her no pleasure as of a novel sight, but they
completed the vague, feverish world around her, so dim to her mental
perception, yet keenly clear to her outward eye in the sharp blueness of
the sky, the more vivid tints of an atmosphere without smoke. They went
over all the town thus, mounting to the ramparts, going through all the
narrow streets: Janey dancing along with her hand in her father’s, Helen
following, silent, like a creature walking in her sleep, taking in all
the novel scene only as a background to the pain of her soul.




CHAPTER IV.


The little city of Sainte-Barbe was the quaintest and most slumbrous of
little French towns, and that is saying a great deal. The walls were
intact and in good order, supplying the inhabitants with pleasant walks,
which few people took advantage of. Their pretence at defence was
antiquated and useless, but then there was nothing to defend nor any
enemy intending to attack. From the ramparts you looked out upon a great
plain bounded towards the north with hills, and dropping southwards into
those low swelling slopes and hillocks which form the best vineyards.
Sainte-Barbe was on the edge of a rich wine country verging upon the
Côte d’Or; but there were no vineyards close to the town, which rose up,
with its cluster of towers, its high walls and peaked roofs, out of the
plain. It is to be supposed that in former days it had been a centre of
more important life, for the cathedral was large enough for a
metropolis, and the great town-hall, with its fine belfry, looked like
one of the warlike municipalities of the middle ages. These two great
buildings stood and sunned themselves, resting from whatever labours
they might once have known, in a sort of dull beatitude--the one with
half-a-dozen erratic worshippers coming and going, the other with three
little red-legged soldiers under its grand gateway. Now and then a
tourist who had heard of these buildings stopped for a few hours on his
way from Italy to Paris to see them; but the fame of them was fast
fading out, now that nobody thinks of posting from Paris to Dijon, and
it was the rarest thing in the world to see a stranger in the streets.
For the first week the townsfolk said among themselves, “Tiens! voilà
les Anglais!” when Mr Goulburn and his daughters appeared; but at the
end of that time became familiar with the appearance of them. It was a
curious life which they led at the Lion d’Or--in a quaint discomfort,
which may be amusing to tourists in high spirits, but to the timid and
troubled English girl was the strangest travesty of existence. The
mixture of small discomforts with great troubles is perhaps the
combination above all others which procures most entire and complete
confusion in life. And the want of a room to sit in other than that
wooden bedroom, where every movement of a chair jarred upon the bare
planks, began after a while to mingle in Helen’s mind with all the
painful circumstances of their flight, so that she scarcely knew what it
was that made her so wretched, so disjoined from all her past. Twice a
day the little party ate in company with some of the best people in
Sainte-Barbe. M. le Notaire, who was unmarried, an old bachelor, and M.
le Maire, who was a widower, took their meals regularly at the Lion
d’Or. They tied their napkins round their bottle of wine when they left
after one meal, and tucked them under their chins when they next sat
down. On Sunday there was an officer who came in his uniform, with his
sword clanking, who impressed Janey with great awe, accompanied by his
wife and their little boy and _bonne_, who sat down next her charge and
dined too, cutting the child’s meat for him, and having a little wine
poured out for her by her mistress from the family bottle. Janey could
not eat her own dinner, so absorbed was she in watching this party. She
pulled Helen’s dress to call her attention a dozen times in a minute.
“Oh! what would nurse say?” she cried, with big eyes of astonishment.
“Look, Helen! he has some of that that you would not let me have, and he
is so little--much more little than me. And he has dot wine: and oh,
look! he has put his knife in his mouth--he will kill himself. And now
he has his hand in, the nasty little boy!”

“Cela amuse mademoiselle de voir manger mon petit,” said the lady across
the table in a tone of offence.

Helen blushed as if she had been caught in a mortal sin. “Oh no,
madame--only--elle ne sait pas----” she murmured in apology.

“He has dot his knife in his mouth, and that will kill him,” said Janey.
“She ought to tell him. Oh, little boy, little boy! _couteau--bouche!_”
she cried, with the anxiety of her age to put everything right.

Mr Goulburn tried to apologise. “My little girl thinks it is her
business to set everybody right. She takes it upon her to regulate my
conduct and manners. I hope you will forgive the little impertinent.
Besides, she is astonished to see the _bonne_ by your side, madame, at
table. It is contrary to our English usage. Forgive her,” he said.

“Oh, _de rien_, monsieur,” said the French lady, politely. “We all know
that England is the most aristocratic of countries. Do not apologise;
there is great good in that--the _canaille_ are kept in their place.”

“The _canaille_ are in all places, madame,” said M. le Maire. “They are
among us when we least suspect it. Persons of the best manners, the most
irreproachable in appearance----”

“Ah, if M. le Maire takes the point of view of the highest morals! It
is well known that the blessed apostles were but fishermen and
labourers,” said the lady; “but we could not now invite a sailor
smelling of the sea, or a ploughman fresh from the fields, to eat with
us. There are lines of demarcation.”

“Madame,” said the Maire, “I have been warned from the police of a
person completely _comme il faut_, handsome, young, tall, well brought
up, a hero of romance--you would be enchanted with his description,--who
has done everything that a man can do of perfidious and wicked--if he
should pay us a visit here----”

“Ah, monsieur, what a dreadful idea! But perhaps it is evil companions,
bad influences--and then, when one is young, everything may be
recovered.”

“With _le beau sexe_ youth is always the first of virtues,” said the
Notaire.

“Listen--they are not always young; madame should have seen the
journals of England a little time ago--monsieur here could tell us, no
doubt. A great company of merchants in London has lately made
bankruptcy. Impossible to tell you what ruin they have produced. The
great, the small, widows and orphans, poor officers in retreat, little
functionaries, priests--what in England they call clergymen--all ruined,
without a penny, without bread!” said the Maire, throwing up his hands.
“_Mon Dieu!_ even to hear of it makes one suffer. And figure to yourself
the chief--he who was first in this _compagnie_, a man rich as the
Indies, living _en prince_, and for whom nothing was too good, has taken
flight, instead of ending his life with a pistol-shot, as would have
been done in France--has taken flight, with enormously of money in his
pockets! You have seen it, perhaps, in the journals. Such things happen
only in England. _Mon Dieu!_ he has saved himself with the money of
others. And one talks of _canaille_!” the Maire concluded, wiping his
forehead. He was warm with indignation, feeling the force of his own
eloquence.

Helen did not understand all this--or nearly all; but she caught a word
now and then, and her father’s face filled her with alarm. It had been
smiling enough at first, though with that drawn and artificial smile
which she had only remarked of late; but by degrees Mr Goulburn’s head
had dropped, he stooped over his plate, fixing his attention on that,
yet now and then directed a furtive glance from under his eyebrows at
the speaker. And his face grew ghastly pale, yet he took out his
handkerchief and wiped his forehead with it. His hands trembled as he
raised his glass to his lips. The _vin du pays_ was not likely to
inspire much courage, but he drank a large quantity, large enough to
make the Maire and the Notaire stare. All this Helen remarked, though
perhaps no one else did. He did everything he could to preserve
appearances; but her attention was roused, and she was on the alert and
saw everything, and almost more than everything. What had he to do with
this story of disgrace and ruin? Some one came in at this moment, a
stranger, who was placed in a seat on her other hand; but she was so
intent upon her father that she did not even see who it was. There was a
pause, which seemed terrible to her--and to him; but which to the others
was a most natural and simple, nay, flattering moment of silence after
the Maire’s impressive remarks.

“You say such things happen only in England; is no one ever bankrupt in
France?” Mr Goulburn said at last.

“Alas!” said M. le Maire, “misfortune comes in all countries. But a
French _commerçant_ bears it--not so well as your countrymen, monsieur.
I have known men who have undergone that and now hold up their heads
again; and I have known men, _ma foi!_ who could not bear it, who
thought of nothing but a pistol-shot. One follows the customs of one’s
country. I have heard that Englishmen grow fat upon it. Pardon! you
understand that is a pleasantry. No one can have more respect for the
English than I.”

“It is a pleasantry, M. le Maire, which an Englishman hears with very
little pleasure,” said Mr Goulburn. Helen looking at him with her
anxious eyes, felt that her father was glad of some cause for seeming
angry, and caught at this justification of his own excitement. But while
her mind was intent upon him, watching him with an eager anxiety and
curiosity beyond words, she started to hear herself addressed on the
other side. “Is it possible that it is Miss Goulburn? Can I be mistaken?
a pleasant voice said in English. She turned round quickly, and found a
fair-haired and very sunburnt young man, whom she did not at first
recognise, and upon whom she looked with suspicion and alarm. Her fears
had been excited, she could scarcely tell how or why. Every one who knew
her seemed a possible enemy. Were they not fugitives, whatever might be
the cause?

“You do not remember me,” said the new-comer; “which, perhaps, is not
wonderful. I left Fareham four years ago, Miss Goulburn; but I think I
cannot be mistaken in you. You were only a child then; and now!--but
still I think it is you: and perhaps you will remember my name--Charley
Ashton? I went to India----”

“Yes, I recollect. Are you going home now to--to Fareham?” Helen said,
with fright in her eyes.

“That we should meet here of all places in the world! Yes, I am on my
way home; and there is all about the cathedral in Murray, and besides,
there is a bit of engineering I wanted to see, and I had a day to
spare,--what a lucky chance for me! You, I suppose, are making the grand
tour, as it used to be called. Travelling, like necessity, makes one
acquainted with strange quarters. This is not much like Fareham, is it?”
he said, with a laugh. That careless, happy laugh, without thought of
evil! Helen looked at, admiring it as an old man might have done.

“No; we are only here--for a little while.”

She knew by instinct that this would be their last night at
Sainte-Barbe, and that she must not encourage any renewal of
acquaintance. The young man gazed at her with such a look of kindly
inquiry, almost tender in the sympathy that mingled with it, that Helen
felt the tears come to her eyes. He divined that there was something to
be sorry for, and he was ready to be sorry and to sympathise, whatever
the trouble might be--though the troubles, he said to himself with a
smile, of the rich man’s daughter were not likely to be very hard to
bear.

“That is like my luck,” he said; “unless you are going back to England,
which would be the best of all. Then I should ask leave to follow in
your wake. There is no one now to care much when I get home; a day or
two sooner or later doesn’t matter. My mother is not there now to mind.
And to tell the truth, Miss Goulburn,” said young Ashton, “I am just as
glad to put off the first plunge. Poor old father! I daresay he’ll be
glad to see me; but to find _her_ not only gone, but with another in her
place!”

“Poor Mr Ashton was so lonely,” said Helen, coming out of her own
troubles for one moment, “and Miss Temple is so kind: it does you good
to speak to her. She never meant any harm. She was so sorry for him--do
not be angry with Miss Temple. I think I love her,” the girl said, the
tears slowly gathering in her eyes, “better--oh yes, a great deal better
than any one--than any other woman in the world.”

“Do you?” he said, touched by the sight. Charley Ashton did not know how
many other troubles in poor Helen’s heart found grateful outlet in those
tears. They dropped upon her dress and frightened her lest any one else
should see them, but the young man was altogether melted by Helen’s
emotion. “That shall be my best reason for loving--at least for liking
her too,” he said. “Thank you for showing me how much you care for her.
What a lucky inspiration I had to come to Sainte-Barbe! I had been just
thinking of you, wondering if you would be much changed--if, perhaps, I
should find you at Fareham.”

“I think I am very much changed,” she said, sadly shaking her
head--while he looked at her, smiling, with a look of subdued yet tender
admiration. He did not venture to look all he felt, yet he could not
keep it from appearing.

“Yes, I think you are changed,” he said, with a confused laugh. She was
thinking of the last week, he of the last five years. He had admired her
then as a child--for Helen had been tall and precocious. Now he could
not tell her how much more he admired her as a woman, and Helen was too
sadly preoccupied to interpret justly the lingering glance that dwelt
upon her. She had never had any lover, nor was she at all aware that the
vicar’s son had any special recollection of her; that he should
recognise her at all, filled her with surprise. But at the same time the
sense of something sympathetic by her side, of some one who was young
like herself, and English, and looked kindly at her, gave the girl a
sense of consolation. He laughed, but certainly he meant nothing unkind.
The moment after, young Ashton gave Helen, all unawares, a sudden blow
which forced her back upon herself. He said with a little eagerness, but
calmly, as if it were the most ordinary question in the world, “Do you
go back soon to Fareham? I have come home on sick leave. I shall have
only a little while at home. I hope I shall see you while I am there.”

“Oh!” said Helen, trembling all over with the shock, “I do not
know--papa has never told me. Perhaps--we may not be back for a long
time; perhaps--not at all. I don’t know.”

“Not back at all! Has Mr Goulburn sold it?” young Ashton said, and his
changed countenance grew long. He was as much disappointed as she was
startled; and for a moment both looked, though from very different
reasons, as though not at all indisposed to mingle their tears.

“I don’t know,” said Helen. She looked away from him, her voice
shook,--there was trouble indescribable in her face. And he remembered
that he had been gone for four years; that he had not heard very much
about them for some time back; that many changes might happen,
especially in the fortunes of a man in business, however great he might
be, and apparently beyond the assaults of fortune. What could young
Ashton say or do to show his sympathy? He did not even know how far he
might inquire.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. Helen looked up at him timidly, and gave
him a little nod of assent, and a faint smile. She granted him his
pardon freely. She thanked him for the feeling in his face, but she said
nothing more. The secret was not hers, and she did not even know what
the secret was. Meanwhile her father had begun to see what was going on.
He had looked furtively from the corner of his eyes at the stranger, and
had ended by remembering who he was; and he did not know what young
Ashton knew, where he had come from, what he might be doing there. When
he saw that Helen was fully engaged in conversation, he got up softly
and walked away. The sight of a face he had once known made his heart
beat wildly, and filled him with a sickening sensation. He went out by a
door behind, so as never to come within the stranger’s range of vision.
What did he want here? and what would the girl tell him? Would she have
the sense to hold her tongue? though, indeed, the very sight of her
would be enough if young Ashton knew. He began, without a moment’s
delay, to put back his clothes into his portmanteau, and prepare again
for flight. Who would have thought that such a thing could happen here?
Had the danger been greater, he would have understood. For the sudden
appearance of pursuers in search of him, he was always prepared, but
not for the ludicrous simplicity of a peril like this; a neighbour’s
son! What evil genius had brought him here? It seemed a very long time
before Helen came up-stairs. It had relieved her to see her father
disappear, and she had yielded to the pleasure of talking to her
contemporary, her old friend (as she thought). But after all, in about
ten minutes she had held out her hand to him timidly, rising up as she
did so, to go away. “But I shall see you to-morrow?” he said. She only
smiled faintly and said, “Perhaps,” but even as she said so shook her
head. In her heart she felt certain that they would leave Sainte-Barbe
that night.

And so they did. In France all the great trains go by night; there was
one very late which called at Sainte-Barbe, on the way to Paris. The
clatter and clang of the omnibus which met this train disturbed the
whole town at midnight so much, that M. le Maire had set every kind of
machinery in motion to have it discontinued; but as the convenience of
the two extremities of the railway, Marseilles and Paris, forbade this,
the authorities paid no attention to the protest of Sainte-Barbe. The
few guests in the Lion d’Or felt a double grievance this night, in that
the omnibus, after making its usual noisy circuit from the stables,
waited, pawing and champing for five minutes, under the _porte cochère_,
having baggage placed upon it, and carrying away travellers at that
hour. Who could they be? Oh, _les Anglais_: that went without saying.
Certainly _les Anglais_; they were the sort of people who would do such
a thing simply because it was unlike the rest of the world--though it
was the action of a fiend, the landlady exclaimed afterwards, to take
such an infant from her rest at such an hour. Young Ashton was still
astir, smoking his cigar out of the window with a quite unnecessary
regard for the feelings of his hosts, when the omnibus turned out of the
great doorway. He thought he saw a pale face look up at his window in
the uncertain glimmer of the moon, which was dim with flying clouds, and
he let his cigar drop on the head of an ostler below in consternation.
Could it be that they had gone away? “Gone away, because I am here!”
this young man said to himself. But it seemed a thing too impossible to
be true.




CHAPTER V.


It was scarcely daylight of the ruddy but chill October morning, when
the travellers set out from the station at which they had been dropped.
They had been left there to wait for the diligence, which only left on
the arrival of another train from Paris. All had been black and silent
at the little station of Montdard, when they were shot out, to the
dismay of two or three half-awakened officials, who regarded them with
alarm and suspicion. It was very rarely indeed that any one arrived in
the middle of the night at Montdard, except from Paris, the train from
which did not come in till five o’clock. What were they to do in the
meantime? Mr Goulburn had got little Janey in his arms fast asleep. With
her dangling feet, and her pale little head thrown back on his shoulder,
she looked more like a sick young woman, long and wasted, than a child.
Helen followed closely as a shadow, asking no questions, following every
indication of her father’s will, silent and watchful, cold and
miserable. The gloom around and the suspicious looks of the railway men,
and the cold that went to her heart, all began to be familiar. It did
not even occur to her to think of the existence which had ended about
ten days ago, the life of warmth and luxury and softness, which knew no
disturbance, which was waited upon by assiduous servants, and spent in
such careful guardianship. She thought of it no more. What she wished
for was not her draped and curtained room at Fareham, with its carpets
in which the feet sank, but a comfortable bench somewhere, or
rush-bottomed chair in a corner out of the wind, where she could get her
ulster more closely about her, and put a shawl over Janey’s feet; or, as
the very climax of comfort, another white-curtained wooden room with two
little beds, where she could lie down with Janey next to her. Helen in
her heart had bidden farewell to Fareham for ever and ever. She did not
know even where they were going; and it gave her a gleam of comfort to
hear her father explain to the sleepy yet vigilant porter in his blouse,
that he was going to Latour, where there was to be a sale of the woods
on the property of the late Count Bernard de Vieux-bois. Mr Goulburn
explained that he had heard of this only at the last moment, and that,
as he had no time to lose, he had been obliged to bring his daughters
with him, though the journey was so fatiguing for the little one. The
French heart is very open to children, and the man with the blouse
managed to open the door of a dismal _salle_, where at least _la petite_
would be sheltered from the cold wind. How kind they are to Janey! Helen
thought. The rough peasant-porter with his bristly beard, a man who
might have figured in a revolutionary riot, and probably had done so,
one time or another, caressed a floating lock of her fair hair which
fell from her father’s shoulder with his rough hand, with the softest
look of reverence and pity. “_Pauvre petite!_”--he brought an old
braided overcoat, fine, but faded, from an inner room to lay on her
feet--“It would have been better to leave her _à la maison_,” he said.
_À la maison!_ People who know no better, say the French have no word
that means home; but Helen felt this word go through and through her
like a sword. Where was the house to which Janey belonged, where she
could find her little bed and her little corner by right? As for Mr
Goulburn, he put himself on the bench against the wall in the most
painfully constrained attitude to make Janey comfortable. His face, as
he looked down upon the child, was lighted up with the most trembling
tenderness. He had wronged many people and deprived many children of
bread, but he loved his own with a passionate devotion. He could not
separate himself from his child. Helen, so watchful beside him, saw it
all with an ache of wonder in her heart. She did not understand,
perhaps, that clinging of a guilty man to the one thing innocent and
sweet in his life. She was sorry for her poor little sister thus dragged
about the world, and perhaps a little sorry for herself. If it was
necessary for him to fly from one place to another, why should little
Janey be made to fly too? And Helen turned her thoughts back upon the
Lion d’Or with unspeakable regret. It was not an attractive place, but
still it was shelter and safety. What thoughts were going on in her
father’s mind, who could say? There were other places of refuge which
would have been safer than France, but he had little time to choose. It
was not much more than chance which had determined the route they took
in leaving England, and he had remembered Sainte-Barbe as the most
unfrequented place he had ever seen. But the village which he had chosen
must surely be out of the world if ever village was. Among the hills of
Burgundy, above the vineyards, beyond the reach of commerce, in the
country where the old Gauls fought, and where even the Prussians had not
penetrated--what could be more safe? and yet who could guarantee its
safety? “We should have been better in Spain,” he was saying to himself.

The diligence started at five o’clock for Latour. It was speedily
filled, in the little interior, with five or six young peasant-women in
their white caps, each with a baby, little foundlings, or the children
of poor shopkeepers and workpeople in Paris, brought to the country to
be reared--the healthy hills of _la Haute Bourgogne_ being much approved
for that purpose. The travellers managed with great difficulty to get
possession for themselves of the _banquette_, a covered seat like a sort
of phaeton, with leathern curtains capable of closing in front, which
occupies the place behind the coachman in these rural vehicles. They had
ten long leagues to traverse before they got to their journey’s end.
Poor little Janey, very pale and shivering, lost for the first time her
childish adaptability, and whimpered pitifully, with cold feet, and the
wretchedness of her disturbed rest; and a more melancholy and jaded
party never confronted the morning mists. They rattled along as in a
dream, seeing the country gradually unfold itself, now just visible in
the faint grey of the dawn, anon developing into clearer light, the
hills rising black against the yellow east, then showing their grass
slopes and broken bits of cliff as the sun struck here and there a long
golden dart driving away the shadows. A crisp sprinkling of hoarfrost
was upon the fields, and the roads were hard, and resounded under the
horses’ feet, which made sound enough, with all the jingling of the rude
harness, and all the creaking of the springless coach, for a whole
cavalcade. In front of the _banquette_, beside the coachman, sat a large
priest and a man wrapped in the thick blue overcoat with its braided
collar which the French peasant loves. The talk of these two was all of
the old Count de Vieux-bois’s woods. The hills between which the road
passed were entirely bare of trees, and Count Bernard had been the
subject of much pleasantry, the priest said, when he planted his lands
with an unprofitable crop of forest. But time had proved Count Bernard
to be right. These voices went on dreamily in Helen’s ear, making a sort
of drowsy song to the accompaniment of the wheels and the horses’ hoofs.
But Mr Goulburn listened closely to all the heavy talk. The impulse of
trade was strong in him, and the idea of turning over money now in his
present downfall and fugitive condition roused him. He had seized upon
the pretext, catching it up at the moment of necessity from an
advertisement in one of the papers, to give an excuse for his hurried
journey. But the idea pleased him the more he dwelt upon it. He listened
with the greatest attention to all that was being said; he recovered the
activity and energy of mind that was natural to him. To outwit fate in
such a way would be in itself a kind of triumph. He did not disturb
little Janey’s head, which lay on his shoulder, but he withdrew his arm
from her as his thoughts quickened. A man of business is always a man of
business, however direful may be the plight in which he finds himself.
Pale, uncared for, haggard as he looked in the morning light, his
bosom’s lord sat more lightly upon its throne than it had done since he
left England. So far even as appearances went, there was this good in Mr
Goulburn’s false decorations of hair, that they did not grow in the
night.

They passed through a number of villages, changing horses with much
noise and clangour here and there--a proceeding which cheered up Janey
almost as much as the thoughts of a bargain did her father; and through
one quaint and wonderful town, all walled and embattled, where the
lanterns still hung across the streets as in the days when aristocrats
were hanged by that easy method of getting rid of an undesirable
intruder; and by dreary old _châteaux_, grey and homely, without any
softening of trees or park to link them to the surrounding country.
By-and-by, after a long, long waste of road, they came upon the masses
of trees which had hung upon the horizon like clouds, and which showed
where Count Vieux-bois’s estates began. Beautiful feathery larches, big
pines, and sturdy oaks clothed the slopes, and changed the whole
character of the country. And after a while the diligence rattled into
a long village street with a church at one end and a quaint old castle
at the other, more imposing than anything they had yet seen. The street
was irregular, now broad, now narrow, widening out in the centre into a
kind of place or square, in which there were two or three white houses,
several storeys high, with green _persiennes_ half closed. The rest of
the place consisted of cottages, mostly thatched and humble, with a
little post-office, and a cavernous shop in which were all kinds of
possible and impossible goods. The “general merchant” of France is
different from him of England, just as _sabots_ and blouses are
different from country-made shoes and fustian coats. And at Latour the
_sabots_ and the blouses were universal. M. le Curé himself wore a pair
over his shoes in bad weather, leaving them at the door of every house
he visited. The diligence stopped with a jarring shock and noise,
suddenly drawn up before the humble door of another Lion d’Or, a popular
sign in the district. But this one was little more than an _auberge_, a
village public-house, with its description posted up in straggling
letters, _ICI on loge à Pied et à CHEVAL_. There was no _porte cochère_,
no courtyard to mark the importance of the hotel, but only a _salle à
manger_ looking out upon the pavement, low-roofed and dark, and smelling
as usual, but worse than usual, of bad cigars and the _pot au feu_.

There were several men seated at the long table eating their breakfast
when Helen and little Janey followed their father into the room; one or
two others who had finished their meal were smoking their cigars--they
were all talking in high voices, harsh to unaccustomed ears. The farther
end, the only unoccupied place, was far from the window, and in a kind
of twilight. Little Janey grasped her father’s hand tight till the
little soft fingers almost hurt him. “Oh, take me away,” she cried,
“take me away! I won’t do there. Take me home, papa--take me to my own
home.”

He took her in his arms and carried her to the quiet corner. “My little
pet,” he said, “I wish I could; but it’s a long, long way off, Janey.
You must try and be contented here.”

“Oh, papa,” said the child, “I want to do home! I want to do home! I
don’t like it here. I don’t like--nothing at all but--home.”

“Janey, Janey!--speak to her, Helen. You will like it better after: the
people are always very kind to you. And you are tired, my little love.
You will like it better when you know----”

“I want to do home!” cried Janey; but the sudden odour of the soup put
under her nose wrought a revolution in her mind. “And I am so hungry,”
she said, her tears drying up. She raised her head from her father’s
shoulder where she had been past all consolation the moment before--and
slid down from his knee. Ah! why is six so much more easy to console
than eighteen? or eighteen than fifty? might be said in other
circumstances. But in the present case the father and the little child
had both regained their spirits, and it was only Helen whose heart lay
like a lump of lead in her breast.

That evening Mr Goulburn called her into the small room which he was to
occupy, with an air of some embarrassment. There had been no
sitting-room possible at Sainte-Barbe, yet it was practicable to occupy
a corner in the _salle à manger_, when all was quiet there. But in the
Lion d’Or at Latour it was never quiet. In the evening the villagers
came in to consume slowly their sour _piquette_, or bitter _chope_, and
fill the place with clouds of smoke; and the two crowded yet scantily
furnished bedrooms, in which the strangers were lodged, were the only
places in which they could talk. Mr Goulburn called Helen into his room.
He was embarrassed, and did not know how to begin. Helen’s look of
inquiry seemed to paralyse him. He stammered and hesitated and cleared
his throat. At length he said, with the rapidity of one who is anxious
to get over a painful operation, “I wanted to speak to you, Helen. There
is one little matter: unnecessary to enter into my reasons for it. While
we are here, I mean to call myself by my mother’s name, Harford, instead
of Goulburn.”

“Papa!” her pale countenance was suffused with the most violent colour.
Pale, worn out, and weary as her looks had been a moment since, she was
of the colour of passion now.

“I mean what I say,” he said sharply, his own disguised face catching
fire at hers. There was a touch of shame in his anger, yet his eyes
blazed into a sudden burst of fury, which again was partly put on to
hide the shame. “I do not see that I need enter into all my reasons to
you. I am satisfied that it is expedient, or I would not do it; and that
ought to be enough for my child.”

“It is not enough, it is not enough, papa,” said Helen. “I cannot call
myself out of my name.”

“Then you will do what you please,” he said; “but I shall employ the
name I have told you; you can do what you please: but in that case you
shall not be owned as a daughter of mine.”

The world seemed to go round and round with Helen,--the poor little
world so bare and poverty-stricken, the walls with their blue and white
striped paper, the bare boards and white-curtained windows. She looked
at him piteously, seeing his face blurred and magnified through the two
tears of pain and passion in her eyes. “Why is it?” she said with a
pathetic appeal; “oh, tell me why it is! If I knew why, perhaps I could
bear it better. Oh, papa, tell me why!”

His first impulse was to silence her imperiously and send her away, but
a better inspiration followed. “Did you never hear of men in business
who were ruined, Helen? Did you never read of destruction coming in a
single day? I was a rich man a fortnight since, and never dreamt that
such a calamity--was possible. It came upon me all at once. Misfortune
of the most complete kind--ruin. I had nothing for it but to take you
and the child and hurry away.”

“Oh, is that all, papa? are you sure that is all? Not--what they were
speaking of last night?--not--oh, forgive me!--I did not understand;
only the loss of your money--no more that that, papa?”

A painful contraction, almost a grimace, went over his face. The rage
which he had partially assumed before was now real, but he did not show
it. He clenched his fist at her, but kept it in his pocket, and put on a
smile which looked something between a grin and a snarl. “Most people
would think it was quite enough--and more than enough. Now you know my
secret. I did not want--to make you unhappy,” he said.

“Oh, unhappy! it is the contrary; if you knew how happy you have made
me!” said Helen, with the first real smile that had visited them for
days in her wet eyes. “You have taken off the weight _here_--oh, it is
all gone, and I can breathe. You have lost your money, poor papa! I am
so sorry, and yet I can’t help being glad. After all, what does it
matter? We have enough, and we are together. Oh, if you knew the things
that have been going through my wicked, wretched heart! Papa, will you
forgive me?” the girl cried, growing pale and clasping her hands. “Oh, I
ought to ask your pardon on my knees!”

“We will dispense with that formula,” said her father, with a chilly
smile which froze her fervour; “perhaps this will teach you to refrain
from hasty judgment. There can scarcely be a case, let me entreat you to
believe, in which I shall not be the best judge of us two.”

“Yes, papa,” she said submissively: then added with a timid look, “but
would it not have been better to have stayed and met it in the face,
whatever it was? To be unfortunate is not any harm. What could ruin do
to us, but to make us poor? Papa----”

A sharp laugh from him cut her short; he could have struck her as he
struck Janey when she found out his disguise, but he did not dare to
treat the elder sister so, and she was more easily managed in the other
way. “It seems to me,” he said, “that you are doing precisely what you
have just promised not to do. We have agreed that I am the best judge,
and the judge I mean to be, in my own concerns. Therefore go to bed, and
recollect that to-morrow you are Miss Harford--and know nothing about
that other name.”

She shrank a little away, looking at him with piteous eyes. “Yes, papa,”
she said; “but----” and stood looking with a beseeching, tender
entreaty. She clasped her hands, but she did not say anything, though
every moving line of her face, the glimmer of moisture in her eyes, the
quiver in her lips, all spoke. In his impatience he stamped his foot on
the floor.

“By Jove! you will drive me mad,” he cried, “with your fancies and your
hesitations. Do what I tell you--hold your tongue, if you are so
scrupulous about an innocent social pretence. What does it matter to
those French clowns what name I call myself by? Will they be any the
wiser? And I hold that a man has as much right to his mother’s name as
his father’s. It is the same thing. There, Helen, I forgive your
nonsense, because you are tired out, poor child! Go to bed.”

“Yes, papa,” she said, but still she did not budge. All this time the
voices and noises were going on below, sounds of disputation, quick
fire of talk, more vivacious and louder in tone than anything English;
outside and in, there were sounds of conversation going on. All this
babel of sound continued while these two quiet English persons had their
explanation, which meant so much; the rest meant nothing. When Helen
thought of it after, she always remembered the discussion in the _salle
à manger_, and the clatter of words which Jeannette on the top storey
flung down to her mistress below-stairs.

But as for herself she had said her say. Her father bade her good night
in a peremptory tone, dismissing her beyond appeal. But he was very
kind, and kissed her, though she was conscious of a thrill and tremor
about him when he did so, which she could not understand to be
suppressed rage. But as it was, Helen retired with a weight gone from
her heart, as she said--yet not such a complete relief as she had felt
at the first moment. Only ruin, only poverty! these were nothing. But
then--people were sorry for men who had lost all their money, nobody was
cruel to them, or thought it their fault; it was nothing to be ashamed
of; the best people in the world (she reflected) have been poor;
therefore why, _why_ had he fled from home? Why had he not faced the
worst? Better even, Helen thought, to have endured a little vexation, to
have given up everything, than to have become fugitives, and worn
disguises, and feared a friendly face, and changed their name. The
weight came back as these strange details recurred to her mind. That
false beard! would any deprivation, any scorn of cruel creditors, any
misfortune have been so bad, so debasing, so shameful as _that_? And why
should Charley Ashton’s honest face have so appalled him? Ah! Charley
Ashton could meet the gaze of all the world and never flinch; he would
not disguise himself, nor hide himself, whatever might be the danger.
Helen tried to represent to herself that she was not the judge, as he
had said--that her father must know best; but there is nothing so
difficult to believe as this, especially when reason seems all on our
side.

The pain was gnawing again when she lay down by Janey’s side. Poverty:
but we are not poor! Helen said to herself, almost leaping up in her
bed. They had spent a great deal of money and spared nothing; indeed
there had never been any attempt to spare anything. It was not an art
they understood. But, happily, sleep began to steal upon her young
eyes, even in the midst of her agitation. The night before had been one
long vigil; she could not be kept awake, even by the misery of these
thoughts.


END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.


PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.

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