Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XXVII, August 1852, Vol. V

by Various

VENTRILOQUISM.

The art and practice of ventriloquism, has of late years exhibited so much improvement that it deserves and will reward a little judicious attention directed toward its all but miraculous phenomena, and the causes and conditions of their astonishing display. The art is of ancient date, the peculiarity of the vocal organs in which it originates, like other types of genius or aptitude, having been at intervals repeated. References in Scripture to "the familiar spirits that peep and mutter" are numerous. In the early Christian Church the practice also was known, and a treatise was written on it by Eustathius, Archbishop of Antioch, in Greek. The main argument of the book is the evocation of the ghost of Samuel.

By the Mosaic law the Hebrews were prohibited from consulting those who had familiar spirits. By one of such it is stated that the Witch of Endor divined, or perhaps that she was possessed by it; for the Hebrew ob designates both those persons in whom there is a familiar spirit, as well as those who divined by them. The plural oboth corresponds with the word ventriloquism. In the Septuagint, it is associated with gastromancy—a mode of ancient divination, wherein the diviner replied without moving his lips, so that the consulter believed he actually heard the voice of a spirit; from which circumstance, many theologians have doubted whether Samuel's ghost really appeared, or rather whether the whole were not a ventriloquial imposition on the superstitious credulity of Saul. We may see in this unfortunate monarch and his successor the distinction between true religion and false superstition; and, indeed, in the poets and prophets generally of the Israelites, who continually testify against the latter in all its forms. To them, to the Greeks, the Egyptians, and the Assyrians, ventriloquism was evidently well known. By reference to Leviticus, we shall find, as we have said, the law forbids the Hebrews to consult those having familiar spirits. The prophet Isaiah also draws an illustration from the kind of voice heard in a case of divination. "Thou shalt be brought down, shalt speak out of the ground, and thy speech shall be low out of the dust; thy voice shall be as one that hath a familiar spirit out of the ground, and thy speech shall whisper out of the dust." It is curious that the Mormons quote this text as prophetic of the discovery of their Sacred Book. In the Acts, Paul is described as depriving a young woman of a familiar spirit, in the city of Philippi in Macedonia;—she is announced as "a certain damsel possessed with a spirit of divination, which brought her master much gain by sooth-saying." There is also that well-known tale in Plutarch, which is so impressive even to this day on the Christian imagination—the story we mean, of Epitherses, who, having embarked for Italy in the reign of Tiberius Cæsar, suddenly heard a voice from the shore, while becalmed one evening before the Paxe—two small islands in the Ionian sea, which lie between Corcyra and Leucadia; such voice addressing Thamus, a pilot, and an Egyptian by birth, who refused to answer till he received the third summons, whereupon it said, "When thou art come to the Palodes, proclaim aloud that the great Pan is dead!" It is added, that "the passengers were all amazed; but their amazement gave place to the most alarming emotions, when, on arriving at the specified place, Thamus stood in the stern of the vessel, and proclaimed what he had been commanded to announce." St. Chrysostom and the early fathers mention divination by a familiar spirit as practiced in their day; and the practice is still common in the East; as it is also among the Esquimaux. As to the treatise of Eustathius, the good bishop's notion was that the Witch of Endor was really possessed of a demon; whose deception the vision was, being produced by supernatural agency, not, as cited in the Septuagint, by Engastrimism, or Ventriloquy.

In the nineteenth century, we are told by Sir David Brewster, that ventriloquists made great additions to their art. The performances, he says, of Fitzjames and Alexandré were far superior to those of their predecessors. "Besides the art of speaking by the muscles of the throat and the abdomen, without moving those of the face, these artists had not only studied, with great diligence and success, the modifications which sounds of all kinds undergo from distance, obstructions, and other causes, but had acquired the art of imitating them in the highest perfection. The ventriloquist was therefore able to carry on a dialogue in which the dramatis voces, as they may be called, were numerous; and, when on the outside of an apartment, could personate a mob with its infinite variety of noise and vociferation. Their influence over the minds of an audience was still further extended by a singular power which they had obtained over the muscles of the body. Fitzjames actually succeeded in making the opposite or corresponding muscles act differently from each other; and while one side of his face was merry and laughing, the other side was full of sorrow and tears. At one time, he was tall, and thin, and melancholy, and after passing behind a screen, he came out bloated with obesity and staggering with fullness. M. Alexandré possessed the same power over his face and figure, and so striking was the contrast between two of these forms, that an excellent sculptor (M. Joseph) has perpetuated them in marble. This new acquirement of the ventriloquist of the nineteenth century, enabled him in his own single person, and with his own single voice, to represent a dramatic composition which would formerly have required the assistance of several actors. Although only one character in the piece could be seen at the same time, yet they all appeared during its performance; and the change of face and figure on the part of the ventriloquist was so perfect that his personal identity could not be recognized in the dramatis personæ. This deception was rendered still more complete by a particular construction of the costumes, which enabled the performer to appear in a new character, after an interval so short that the audience necessarily believed that it was another person."

Some amusing anecdotes may be gathered, illustrative of ventriloquism.

One M. St. Gille, a ventriloquist of France, had once occasion to shelter himself from a sudden storm in a monastery in the neighborhood of Avranche. The monks were at the time in deep sorrow for the loss of an esteemed member of their fraternity, whom they had recently buried. While lamenting over the tomb of their departed brother the slight honors which had been paid to his memory, a mysterious voice was heard to issue from the vaults of the church, bewailing the condition of the deceased in purgatory, and reproving the monks in melancholy tones for their want of zeal and reverence for departed worth. Tidings of the event flew abroad; and quickly brought the inhabitants to the spot. The miraculous speaker still renewed his lamentations and reproaches; whereupon the monks fell on their faces, and vowed to repair their neglect. They then chanted a De profundis, and at intervals the ghostly voice of the deceased friar expressed his satisfaction.

One Louis Brabant turned his ventriloquial talent to profitable account. Rejected by the parents of an heiress as an unsuitable match for their daughter, Louis, on the death of the father, paid a visit to the widow, during which the voice of her deceased husband was all at once heard thus to address her: "Give my daughter in marriage to Louis Brabant:—he is a man of fortune and character, and I endure the pains of purgatory for having refused her to him. Obey this admonition, and give repose to the soul of your departed husband." Of course, the widow complied; but Brabant's difficulties were not yet all overcome. He wanted money to defray the wedding expenses, and resolved to work on the fears of an old usurer, a M. Cornu, of Lyons. Having obtained an evening interview, he contrived to turn the conversation on departed spirits and ghosts. During an interval of silence, the voice of the miser's deceased father was heard, complaining of his situation in purgatory, and calling loudly upon his son to rescue him from his sufferings, by enabling Brabant to redeem the Christians at that time enslaved by the Turks. Not succeeding on the first occasion, Brabant was compelled to make a second visit to the miser, when he took care to enlist not only his father but all his deceased relations in the appeal; and in this way he obtained a thousand crowns.

There have been few female ventriloquists. Effects produced by the female organs of speech have always manifested a deficiency of power. The artificial voices have been few in number, and those imperfectly defined. A woman at Amsterdam possessed considerable powers in this way. Conrad Amman, a Dutch doctor in medicine, who published a Latin treatise at Amsterdam in 1700, observes of her, that the effects she exhibited were produced by a sort of swallowing of the words, or forcing them to retrograde, as it were, by the trachea, by speaking during the inspiration of the breath, and not, as in ordinary speech, during expiration. The same writer notices also the performances of the famous Casimir Schreckenstein.

Different professors of ventriloquism have given different accounts of the manner in which they succeeded in producing their illusions. Baron Mengen, one of the household of Prince Lichtenstein, at Vienna, said that it consisted in a passion for counterfeiting the cries of animals and the voices of different persons. M. St. Gille referred his art to mimicry; and the French Academy, combining these views, defines the art as consisting in an accurate imitation of any given sound as it reaches the ear. Scientific solutions are various. Mr. Nicholson thought that artists in this line, by continual practice from childhood, acquire the power of speaking during inspiration with the same articulation as the ordinary voice, which is formed by expiration. M. Richerand declares that every time a professor exhibits his vocal peculiarities, he suffers distension in the epigastric region; and supposes that the mechanism of the art consists in a slow, gradual expiration, drawn in such a way, that the artist either makes use of the influence exerted by volition over the parietes of the thorax, or that he keeps the epiglottis down by the base of the tongue, the apex of which is not carried beyond the dental arches. He observes, that ventriloquists possess the power of making an exceedingly strong inspiration just before the long expiration, and thus convey into the lungs an immense quantity of air, by the artistical management of the egress of which they produce such astonishing effects upon the hearing and imagination of their auditors.

The theory propounded by Mr. Gough in the "Manchester Memoir," on the principle of reverberated sound, is untenable, because ventriloquism on that theory would be impossible in a crowded theatre, which admits not of the predicated echoes. Mr. Love, in his account of himself, asserts a natural aptitude, a physical predisposition of the vocal organs; which, in his case, discovered itself as early as the age of ten, and gradually improved with practice, without any artistic study whatever. He states that not only his pure ventriloquisms, but nearly all his lighter vocal imitations of miscellaneous sounds, were executed in the first instance on the spur of the moment, and without any pre-meditation. The artist must evidently possess great flexibility of larynx and tongue. Polyphony, according to our modern professor, is produced by compression of the muscles of the chest, and is an act entirely different from any species of vocal deception or modulation. There is no method, he tells us, of manufacturing true ventriloquists. Nature must have commenced the operation, by placing at the artist's disposal a certain quality of voice adapted for the purpose, as the raw material to work upon. It is like a fine ear or voice for singing—the gift of Nature. It follows, therefore, that an expert polyphonist must be as rare a personage as any other man of genius in any particular art.

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THE INCENDIARY.
FROM THE REMINISCENCES OF AN ATTORNEY.

I knew James Dutton, as I shall call him, at an early period of life, when my present scanty locks of iron-gray were thick and dark, my now pale and furrowed cheeks were fresh and ruddy, like his own. Time, circumstance, and natural bent of mind, have done their work on both of us; and if his course of life has been less equable than mine, it has been chiefly so because the original impulse, the first start on the great journey, upon which so much depends, was directed by wiser heads in my case than in his. We were school-fellows for a considerable time; and if I acquired—as I certainly did—a larger stock of knowledge than he, it was by no means from any superior capacity on my part, but that his mind was bent on other pursuits. He was a born Nimrod, and his father encouraged this propensity from the earliest moment that his darling and only son could sit a pony or handle a light fowling-piece. Dutton, senior, was one of a then large class of persons, whom Cobbett used to call bull-frog farmers; men who, finding themselves daily increasing in wealth by the operation of circumstances, they neither created nor could insure or control—namely, a rapidly increasing manufacturing population, and tremendous war-prices for their produce—acted as if the chance-blown prosperity they enjoyed was the result of their own forethought, skill, and energy, and therefore, humanly speaking, indestructible. James Dutton was, consequently, denied nothing—not even the luxury of neglecting his own education; and he availed himself of the lamentable privilege to a great extent. It was, however, a remarkable feature in the lad's character, that whatever he himself deemed essential should be done, no amount of indulgence, no love of sport or dissipation, could divert him from thoroughly accomplishing. Thus he saw clearly, that even in the life—that of a sportsman-farmer he had chalked out for himself, it was indispensably necessary that a certain quantum of educational power should be attained; and so he really acquired a knowledge of reading, writing, and spelling, and then withdrew from school to more congenial avocations.

I frequently met James Dutton in after-years; but some nine or ten months had passed since I had last seen him, when I was directed by the chief partner in the firm to which Flint and I subsequently succeeded, to take coach for Romford, Essex, in order to ascertain from a witness there what kind of evidence we might expect him to give in a trial to come off in the then Hilary term at Westminster Hall. It was the first week in January: the weather was bitterly cold; and I experienced an intense satisfaction when, after dispatching the business I had come upon, I found myself in the long dining-room of the chief market-inn, where two blazing fires shed a ruddy, cheerful light over the snow-white damask table-cloth, bright glasses, decanters, and other preparatives for the farmers' market-dinner. Prices had ruled high that day; wheat had reached £30 a load; and the numerous groups of hearty, stalwart yeomen present were in high glee, crowing and exulting alike over their full pockets and the news—of which the papers were just then full—of the burning of Moscow, and the flight and ruin of Bonaparte's army. James Dutton was in the room, but not, I observed, in his usual flow of animal spirits. The crape round his hat might, I thought, account for that, and as he did not see me, I accosted him with an inquiry after his health, and the reason of his being in mourning. He received me very cordially, and in an instant cast off the abstracted manner I had noticed. His father, he informed me, was gone—had died about seven months previously, and he was alone now at Ash Farm—why didn't I run down there to see him sometimes, &c.? Our conversation was interrupted by a summons to dinner, very cheerfully complied with; and we both—at least I can answer for myself—did ample justice to a more than usually capital dinner, even in those capital old market-dinner times. We were very jolly afterward, and amazingly triumphant over the frost-bitten, snow-buried soldier-banditti that had so long lorded it over continental Europe. Dutton did not partake of the general hilarity. There was a sneer upon his lip during the whole time, which, however, found no expression in words.

"How quiet you are, James Dutton!" cried a loud voice from out the dense smoke-cloud that by this time completely enveloped us. On looking toward the spot from whence the ringing tones came, a jolly, round face—like the sun as seen through a London fog—gleamed redly dull from out the thick and choking atmosphere.

"Every body," rejoined Dutton, "hasn't had the luck to sell two hundred quarters of wheat at to-day's price, as you have, Tom Southall."

"That's true, my boy," returned Master Southall, sending, in the plentitude of his satisfaction, a jet of smoke toward us with astonishing force. "And, I say, Jem, I'll tell 'ee what I'll do; I'll clap on ten guineas more upon what I offered for the brown mare."

"Done! She's yours, Tom, then, for ninety guineas!"

"Gie's your hand upon it!" cried Tom Southall, jumping up from his chair, and stretching a fist as big as a leg of mutton—well, say lamb—over the table. "And here—here," he added, with an exultant chuckle, as he extricated a swollen canvas-bag from his pocket—"here's the dibs at once."

This transaction excited a great deal of surprise at our part of the table; and Dutton was rigorously cross-questioned as to his reason for parting with his favorite hunting mare.

"The truth is, friends," said Dutton at last, "I mean to give up farming, and—"

"Gie up farmin'!" broke in half-a-dozen voices. "Lord!"

"Yes; I don't like it. I shall buy a commission in the army. There'll be a chance against Boney, now; and it's a life I'm fit for."

The farmers looked completely agape at this announcement; but making nothing of it, after silently staring at Dutton and each other, with their pipes in their hands and not in their mouths, till they had gone out, stretched their heads simultaneously across the table toward the candles, relit their pipes, and smoked on as before.

"Then, perhaps, Mr. Dutton," said a young man in a smartly-cut velveteen coat with mother-of-pearl buttons, who had hastily left his seat farther down the table—"perhaps you will sell the double Manton, and Fanny and Slut?"

"Yes; at a price."

Prices were named; I forget now the exact sums, but enormous prices, I thought, for the gun and the dogs, Fanny and Slut. The bargain was eagerly concluded, and the money paid at once. Possibly the buyer had a vague notion, that a portion of the vender's skill might come to him with his purchases.

"You be in 'arnest, then, in this fool's business, James Dutton," observed a farmer, gravely. "I be sorry for thee; but as I s'pose the lease of Ash Farm will be parted with; why—John, waiter, tell Master Hurst at the top of the table yonder, to come this way."

Master Hurst, a well-to-do, highly respectable-looking, and rather elderly man, came in obedience to the summons, and after a few words in an under-tone with the friend that had sent for him, said, "Is this true, James Dutton?"

"It is true that the lease and stock of Ash Farm are to be sold—at a price. You, I believe, are in want of such a concern for the young couple just married."

"Well, I don't say I might not be a customer, if the price were reasonable."

"Let us step into a private room, then," said Dutton, rising. "This is not a place for business of that kind. Sharp," he added, sotto voce, "come with us; I may want you."

I had listened to all this with a kind of stupid wonderment, and I now, mechanically, as it were, got up and accompanied the party to another room.

The matter was soon settled. Five hundred pounds for the lease—ten years unexpired—of Ash Farm, about eleven hundred acres, and the stock and implements; the plowing, sowing, &c., already performed, to be paid for at a valuation based on present prices. I drew out the agreement in form, it was signed in duplicate, a large sum was paid down as deposit, and Mr. Hurst with his friend withdrew.

"Well," I said, taking a glass of port from a bottle Dutton had just ordered in—"here's fortune in your new career; but, as I am a living man, I can't understand what you can be thinking about."

"You haven't read the newspapers?"

"O yes, I have! Victory! Glory! March to Paris! and all that sort of thing. Very fine, I dare say; but rubbish, moonshine, I call it, if purchased by the abandonment of the useful, comfortable, joyous life of a prosperous yeoman."

"Is that all you have seen in the papers?"

"Not much else. What, besides, have you found in them?"

"Wheat, at ten or eleven pounds a load—less perhaps—other produce in proportion."

"Ha!"

"I see farther, Sharp, than you bookmen do, in some matters. Boney's done for; that to me is quite plain, and earlier than I thought likely; although I, of course, as well as every other man with a head instead of a turnip on his shoulders, knew such a raw-head-and-bloody-bones as that must sooner or later come to the dogs. And as I also know what agricultural prices were before the war, I can calculate without the aid of vulgar fractions, which, by-the-by, I never reached, what they'll be when it's over, and the thundering expenditure now going on is stopped. In two or three weeks, people generally will get a dim notion of all this; and I sell, therefore, while I can, at top prices."

The shrewdness of the calculation struck me at once.

"You will take another farm when one can be had on easier terms than now, I suppose?"

"Yes; if I can manage it. And I will manage it. Between ourselves, after all the old man's debts are paid, I shall only have about nine or ten hundred pounds to the good, even by selling at the present tremendous rates; so it was time, you see, I pulled up, and rubbed the fog out of my eyes a bit. And hark ye, Master Sharp!" he added, as we rose and shook hands with each other—"I have now done playing with the world—it's a place of work and business; and I'll do my share of it so effectually, that my children, if I have any, shall, if I do not, reach the class of landed gentry; and this you'll find, for all your sneering, will come about all the more easily that neither they nor their father will be encumbered with much educational lumber. Good-by."

I did not again see my old school-fellow till the change he had predicted had thoroughly come to pass. Farms were every where to let, and a general cry to parliament for aid rang through the land. Dutton called at the office upon business, accompanied by a young woman of remarkable personal comeliness, but, as a very few sentences betrayed, little or no education in the conventional sense of the word. She was the daughter of a farmer, whom—it was no fault of hers—a change of times had not found in a better condition for weathering them.—Anne Mosley, in fact, was a thoroughly industrious, clever farm economist. The instant Dutton had secured an eligible farm, at his own price and conditions, he married her; and now, on the third day after the wedding, he had brought me the draft of his lease for examination.

"You are not afraid, then," I remarked, "of taking a farm in these bad times?"

"Not I—at a price. We mean to rough it, Mr. Sharp," he added gayly. "And, let me tell you, that those who will stoop to do that—I mean, take their coats off, tuck up their sleeves, and fling appearances to the winds—may, and will, if they understand their business, and have got their heads screwed on right, do better here than in any of the uncleared countries they talk so much about. You know what I told you down at Romford. Well, we'll manage that before our hair is gray, depend upon it, bad as the times may be—won't we, Nance?"

"We'll try, Jem," was the smiling response.

They left the draft for examination. It was found to be correctly drawn. Two or three days afterward, the deeds were executed, and James Dutton was placed in possession. The farm, a capital one, was in Essex.

His hopes were fully realized as to money-making, at all events. He and his wife rose early, sat up late, ate the bread of carefulness, and altogether displayed such persevering energy, that only about six or seven years had passed before the Duttons were accounted a rich and prosperous family. They had one child only—a daughter. The mother, Mrs. Dutton, died when this child was about twelve years of age; and Anne Dutton became more than ever the apple of her father's eye. The business of the farm went steadily on in its accustomed track; each succeeding year found James Dutton growing in wealth and importance; and his daughter in sparkling, catching comeliness—although certainly not in the refinement of manner which gives a quickening life and grace to personal symmetry and beauty. James Dutton remained firm in his theory of the worthlessness of education beyond what, in a narrow acceptation of the term, was absolutely "necessary;" and Anne Dutton, although now heiress to very considerable wealth, knew only how to read, write, spell, cast accounts, and superintend the home-business of the farm. I saw a great deal of the Duttons about this time, my brother-in-law, Elsworthy and his wife having taken up their abode within about half a mile of James Dutton's dwelling-house; and I ventured once or twice to remonstrate with the prosperous farmer upon the positive danger, with reference to his ambitious views, of not at least so far cultivating the intellect and taste of so attractive a maiden as his daughter, that sympathy on her part with the rude, unlettered clowns, with whom she necessarily came so much in contact, should be impossible. He laughed my hints to scorn. "It is idleness—idleness alone," he said, "that puts love-fancies into girls' heads. Novel-reading, jingling at a piano-forte—merely other names for idleness—these are the parents of such follies. Anne Dutton, as mistress of this establishment, has her time fully and usefully occupied; and when the time comes, not far distant now, to establish her in marriage, she will wed into a family I wot of; and the Romford prophecy of which you remind me will be realized, in great part at least."

He found, too late, his error. He hastily entered the office one morning, and although it was only five or six weeks since I had last seen him, the change in his then florid, prideful features was so striking and painful, as to cause me to fairly leap upon my feet with surprise.

"Good Heavens, Dutton!" I exclaimed, "What is the matter? What has happened?"

"Nothing has happened, Mr. Sharp," he replied, "but what you predicted, and which, had I not been the most conceited dolt in existence, I too, must have foreseen. You know that good-looking, idle, and, I fear, irreclaimable young fellow, George Hamblin?"

"I have seen him once or twice. Has he not brought his father to the verge of a work-house by low dissipation and extravagance?"

"Yes. Well, he is an accepted suitor for Anne Dutton's hand. No wonder that you start. She fancies herself hopelessly in love with him—Nay, Sharp, hear me out. I have tried expostulation, threats, entreaties, locking her up; but it's useless. I shall kill the silly fool if I persist, and I have at length consented to the marriage; for I can not see her die." I began remonstrating upon the folly of yielding consent to so ruinous a marriage, on account of a few tears and hysterics, but Dutton stopped me peremptorily.

"It is useless talking," he said. "The die is cast; I have given my word. You would hardly recognize her, she is so altered. I did not know before," added the strong, stern man, with trembling voice and glistening eyes, "that she was so inextricably twined about my heart—my life!" It is difficult to estimate the bitterness of such a disappointment to a proud, aspiring man like Dutton. I pitied him sincerely, mistaken, if not blameworthy, as he had been.

"I have only myself to blame," he presently resumed. "A girl of cultivated taste and mind could not have bestowed a second thought on George Hamblin. But let's to business. I wish the marriage-settlement, and my will, to be so drawn, that every farthing received from me during my life, and after my death, shall be hers, and hers only; and so strictly and entirely secured, that she shall be without power to yield control over the slightest portion of it, should she be so minded." I took down his instructions, and the necessary deeds were drawn in accordance with them. When the day for signing arrived, the bridegroom-elect demurred at first to the stringency of the provisions of the marriage-contract; but as upon this point, Mr. Dutton was found to be inflexible, the handsome, illiterate clown—he was little better—gave up his scruples, the more readily as a life of assured idleness lay before him, from the virtual control he was sure to have over his wife's income. These were the thoughts which passed across his mind, I was quite sure, as taking the pen awkwardly in his hand, he affixed his mark to the marriage-deed. I reddened with shame, and the smothered groan which at the moment smote faintly on my ear, again brokenly confessed the miserable folly of the father in not having placed his beautiful child beyond all possibility of mental contact or communion with such a person. The marriage was shortly afterward solemnized, but I did not wait to witness the ceremony.

The husband's promised good-behavior did not long endure; ere two months of wedded life were past, he had fallen again into his old habits; and the wife, bitterly repentant of her folly, was fain to confess, that nothing but dread of her father's vengeance saved her from positive ill usage. It was altogether a wretched, unfortunate affair; and the intelligence—sad in itself—which reached me about a twelvemonth after the marriage, that the young mother had died in childbirth of her first-born, a girl, appeared to me rather a matter of rejoicing than of sorrow or regret. The shock to poor Dutton was, I understood, overwhelming for a time, and fears were entertained for his intellects. He recovered, however, and took charge of his grandchild, the father very willingly resigning the onerous burden.

My brother-in-law left James Dutton's neighborhood for a distant part of the country about this period, and I saw nothing of the bereaved father for about five years, save only at two business interviews. The business upon which I had seen him, was the alteration of his will, by which all he might die possessed of was bequeathed to his darling Annie. His health, I was glad to find, was quite restored; and although now fifty years of age, the bright light of his young days sparkled once more in his keen glance. His youth was, he said, renewed in little Annie. He could even bear to speak, though still with remorseful emotion, of his own lost child. "No fear, Sharp," he said, "that I make that terrible mistake again. Annie will fall in love, please God, with no unlettered, soulless booby! Her mind shall be elevated, beautiful, and pure as her person—she is the image of her mother—promises to be charming and attractive. You must come and see her." I promised to do so; and he went his way. At one of these interviews—the first it must have been—I made a chance inquiry for his son-in-law, Hamblin. As the name passed my lips, a look of hate and rage flashed out of his burning eyes. I did not utter another word, nor did he; and we separated in silence.

It was evening, and I was returning in a gig from a rather long journey into the country, when I called, in redemption of my promise, upon James Dutton. Annie was really, I found, an engaging pretty, blue-eyed, golden-haired child; and I was not so much surprised at her grandfather's doting fondness—a fondness entirely reciprocated, it seemed, by the little girl. It struck me, albeit, that it was a perilous thing for a man of Dutton's vehement, fiery nature to stake again, as he evidently had done, his all of life and happiness upon one frail existence. An illustration of my thought or fear occurred just after we had finished tea. A knock was heard at the outer door, and presently a man's voice, in quarreling, drunken remonstrance with the servant who opened it. The same deadly scowl I had seen sweep over Dutton's countenance upon the mention of Hamblin's name, again gleamed darkly there; and finding, after a moment or two, that the intruder would not be denied, the master of the house gently removed Annie from his knee, and strode out of the room.

"Follow grandpapa," whispered Mrs. Rivers, a highly respectable widow of about forty years of age, whom Mr. Dutton had engaged at a high salary to superintend Annie's education. The child went out, and Mrs. Rivers, addressing me, said in a low voice: "Her presence will prevent violence; but it is a sad affair." She then informed me that Hamblin, to whom Mr. Dutton allowed a hundred a year, having become aware of the grandfather's extreme fondness for Annie, systematically worked that knowledge for his own sordid ends, and preluded every fresh attack upon Mr. Dutton's purse by a threat to reclaim the child. "It is not the money," remarked Mrs. Rivers in conclusion, "that Mr. Dutton cares so much for, but the thought that he holds Annie by the sufferance of that wretched man, goads him at times almost to insanity."

"Would not the fellow waive his claim for a settled increase of his annuity?"

"No; that has been offered to the extent of three hundred a year; but Hamblin refuses, partly from the pleasure of keeping such a man as Mr. Dutton in his power, partly because he knows that the last shilling would be parted with rather than the child. It is a very unfortunate business, and I often fear will terminate badly." The loud but indistinct wrangling without ceased after a while, and I heard a key turn stiffly in a lock. "The usual conclusion of these scenes," said Mrs. Rivers. "Another draft upon his strong-box will purchase Mr. Dutton a respite as long as the money lasts." I could hardly look at James Dutton when he re-entered the room. There was that in his countenance which I do not like to read in the faces of my friends. He was silent for several minutes; at last he said quickly, sternly: "Is there no instrument, Mr. Sharp, in all the enginery of law, that can defeat a worthless villain's legal claim to his child?"

"None; except, perhaps, a commission of lunacy, or—"

"Tush! tush!" interrupted Dutton; "the fellow has no wits to lose. That being so—But let us talk of something else." We did so, but on his part very incoherently, and I soon bade him good-night.

This was December, and it was in February the following year that Dutton again called at our place of business. There was a strange, stern, iron meaning in his face. "I am in a great hurry," he said, "and I have only called to say, that I shall be glad if you will run over to the farm to-morrow on a matter of business. You have seen, perhaps, in the paper, that my dwelling-house took fire the night before last. You have not? Well, it is upon that I would consult you. Will you come?" I agreed to do so, and he withdrew.

The fire had not, I found, done much injury. It had commenced in a kind of miscellaneous store-room; but the origin of the fire appeared to me, as it did to the police-officers that had been summoned, perfectly unaccountable. "Had it not been discovered in time, and extinguished," I observed to Mrs. Rivers, "you would all have been burned in your beds."

"Why, no," replied that lady, with some strangeness of manner. "On the night of the fire, Annie and I slept at Mr. Elsworthy's" (I have omitted to notice, that my brother-in-law and family had returned to their old residence), "and Mr. Dutton remained in London, whither he had gone to see the play."

"But the servants might have perished?"

"No. A whim, apparently, has lately seized Mr. Dutton, that no servant or laborer shall sleep under the same roof with himself; and those new outhouses, where their bedrooms are placed, are, you see, completely detached, and are indeed, as regards this dwelling, made fire-proof."

At this moment Mr. Dutton appeared, and interrupted our conversation. He took me aside. "Well," he said, "to what conclusion have you come? The work of an incendiary, is it not? Somebody too, that knows I am not insured—"

"Not insured!"

"No; not for this dwelling-house. I did not renew the policy some months ago."

"Then," I jestingly remarked, "you, at all events, are safe from any accusation of having set fire to your premises with the intent to defraud the insurers."

"To be sure—to be sure, I am," he rejoined with quick earnestness, as if taking my remark seriously. "That is quite certain. Some one, I am pretty sure, it must be," he presently added, "that owes me a grudge—with whom I have quarreled, eh?"

"It may be so, certainly."

"It must be so. And what, Mr. Sharp, is the highest penalty for the crime of incendiarism?"

"By the recent change in the law, transportation only; unless, indeed, loss of human life occur in consequence of the felonious act; in which case, the English law construes the offense to be willful murder, although the incendiary may not have intended the death or injury of any person."

"I see. But here there could have been no loss of life."

"There might have been, had not you, Mrs. Rivers, and Annie, chanced to sleep out of the house."

"True—true—a diabolical villain, no doubt. But we'll ferret him out yet. You are a keen hand, Mr. Sharp, and will assist, I know. Yes, yes—it's some fellow that hates me—that I perhaps hate and loathe—" he added with sudden gnashing fierceness, and striking his hand with furious violence on the table—"as I do a spotted toad!"

I hardly recognized James Dutton in this fitful, disjointed talk, and as there was really nothing to be done or to be inquired into, I soon went away.

"Only one week's interval," I hastily remarked to Mr. Flint, one morning after glancing at the newspaper, "and another fire at Dutton's farm-house!"

"The deuce! He is in the luck of it, apparently," replied Flint, without looking up from his employment. My partner knew Dutton only by sight.

The following morning, I received a note from Mrs. Rivers. She wished to see me immediately on a matter of great importance. I hastened to Mr. Dutton's, and found, on arriving there, that George Hamblin was in custody, and undergoing an examination, at no great distance off, before two county magistrates, on the charge of having fired Mr. Dutton's premises. The chief evidence was, that Hamblin had been seen lurking about the place just before the flames broke out, and that near the window where an incendiary might have entered there were found portions of several lucifer matches, of a particular make, and corresponding to a number found in Hamblin's bedroom. To this Hamblin replied, that he had come to the house by Mr. Dutton's invitation, but found nobody there. This however, was vehemently denied by Mr. Dutton. He had made no appointment with Hamblin to meet at his (Dutton's) house. How should he, purposing as he did to be in London at the time? With respect to the lucifer matches, Hamblin said he had purchased them of a mendicant, and that Mr. Dutton saw him do so. This also was denied. It was further proved, that Hamblin, when in drink, had often said he would ruin Dutton before he died. Finally, the magistrates, though with some hesitation, decided that there was hardly sufficient evidence to warrant them in committing the prisoner for trial, and he was discharged, much to the rage and indignation of the prosecutor.

Subsequently, Mrs. Rivers and I had a long private conference. She and the child had again slept at Elsworthy's on the night of the fire, and Dutton in London. "His excuse is," said Mrs. Rivers, "that he can not permit us to sleep here unprotected by his presence." We both arrived at the same conclusion, and at last agreed upon what should be done—attempted rather—and that without delay.

Just before taking leave of Mr. Dutton, who was in an exceedingly excited state, I said: "By-the-by, Dutton, you have promised to dine with me on some early day. Let it be next Tuesday. I shall have one or two bachelor friends, and we can give you a shake-down for the night."

"Next Tuesday?" said he quickly. "At what hour do you dine?"

"At six. Not a half-moment later."

"Good! I will be with you." We then shook hands, and parted.

The dinner would have been without interest to me, had not a note previously arrived from Mrs. Rivers, stating that she and Annie were again to sleep that night at Elsworthy's. This promised results.

James Dutton, who rode into town, was punctual, and, as always of late, flurried, excited, nervous—not, in fact, it appeared to me, precisely in his right mind. The dinner passed off as dinners usually do, and the after-proceedings went on very comfortably till about half-past nine o'clock, when Dutton's perturbation, increased perhaps by the considerable quantity of wine he had swallowed, not drunk, became, it was apparent to every body, almost uncontrollable. He rose—purposeless it seemed—sat down again—drew out his watch almost every minute, and answered remarks addressed to him in the wildest manner. The decisive moment was, I saw, arrived, and at a gesture of mine, Elsworthy, who was in my confidence, addressed Dutton. "By the way, Dutton, about Mrs. Rivers and Annie. I forgot to tell you of it before."

The restless man was on his feet in an instant, and glaring with fiery eagerness at the speaker.

"What! what!" he cried with explosive quickness—"what about Annie? Death and fury!—speak! will you?"

"Don't alarm yourself, my good fellow. It's nothing of consequence. You brought Annie and her governess, about an hour before I started, to sleep at our house—"

"Yes—yes," gasped Dutton, white as death, and every fibre of his body shaking with terrible dread. "Yes—well, well, go on. Thunder and lightning! out with it, will you?"

"Unfortunately, two female cousins arrived soon after you went away, and I was obliged to escort Annie and Mrs. Rivers home again." A wild shriek—yell is perhaps the more appropriate expression—burst from the conscience and fear-stricken man. Another instant, and he had torn his watch from the fob, glanced at it with dilated eyes, dashed it on the table, and was rushing madly toward the door, vainly withstood by Elsworthy, who feared we had gone too far.

"Out of the way!" screamed the madman. "Let go, or I'll dash you to atoms!" Suiting the action to the threat, he hurled my brother-in-law against the wall with stunning force, and rushed on, shouting incoherently: "My horse! There is time yet! Tom Edwards, my horse!"

Tom Edwards was luckily at hand, and although mightily surprised at the sudden uproar, which he attributed to Mr. Dutton being in drink, mechanically assisted to saddle, bridle, and bring out the roan mare; and before I could reach the stables, Dutton's foot was in the stirrup. I shouted "Stop," as loudly as I could, but the excited horseman did not heed, perhaps not hear me: and away he went, at a tremendous speed, hatless, and his long gray-tinted hair streaming in the wind. It was absolutely necessary to follow. I therefore directed Elsworthy's horse, a much swifter and more peaceful animal than Dutton's, to be brought out; and as soon as I got into the high country road, I too dashed along at a rate much too headlong to be altogether pleasant. The evening was clear and bright, and I now and then caught a distant sight of Dutton, who was going at a frantic pace across the country, and putting his horse at leaps that no man in his senses would have attempted. I kept the high-road, and we had thus ridden about half an hour perhaps, when a bright flame about a mile distant, as the crow flies, shot suddenly forth, strongly relieved against a mass of dark wood just beyond it. I knew it to be Dutton's house, even without the confirmation given by the frenzied shout which at the same moment arose on my left hand. It was from Dutton. His horse had been staked, in an effort to clear a high fence, and he was hurrying desperately along on foot. I tried to make him hear me, or to reach him, but found I could do neither: his own wild cries and imprecations drowned my voice, and there were impassable fences between the high-road and the fields across which he madly hasted.

The flames were swift this time, and defied the efforts of the servants and husbandmen who had come to the rescue, to stay, much less to quell them. Eagerly as I rode, Dutton arrived before the blazing pile at nearly the same moment as myself, and even as he fiercely struggled with two or three men, who strove by main force to prevent him from rushing into the flames, only to meet with certain death, the roof and floors of the building fell in with a sudden crash. He believed that all was over with the child, and again hurling forth the wild despairing cry I had twice before heard that evening, he fell down, as if smitten by lightning, upon the hard, frosty road.

It was many days ere the unhappy, sinful man recovered his senses, many weeks before he was restored to his accustomed health. Very cautiously had the intelligence been communicated to him, that Annie had not met the terrible fate, the image of which had incessantly pursued him through his fevered dreams. He was a deeply grateful, and, I believe, a penitent and altogether changed man. He purchased, through my agency, a valuable farm in a distant county, in order to be out of the way, not only of Hamblin, on whom he settled two hundred a year, but of others, myself included, who knew or suspected him of the foul intention he had conceived against his son-in-law, and which, but for Mrs. Rivers, would, on the last occasion, have been in all probability successful, so cunningly had the evidence of circumstances been devised. "I have been," said James Dutton to me at the last interview I had with him, "all my life an overweening, self-confident fool. At Romford, I boasted to you that my children should ally themselves with the landed gentry of the country, and see the result! The future, please God, shall find me in my duty—mindful only of that, and content, while so acting, with whatever shall befall me or mine."

Dutton continues to prosper in the world; Hamblin died several years ago of delirium tremens; and Annie, I hear, will in all probability marry into the squirearchy of the country. All this is not perhaps what is called poetical justice, but my experience has been with the actual, not the ideal world.

---

BLEAK HOUSE.[7]
BY CHARLES DICKENS.

CHAPTER XIV.—Deportment

Richard left us on the very next evening, to begin his new career, and committed Ada to my charge with great love for her, and great trust in me. It touched me then to reflect, and it touches me now, more nearly, to remember (having what I have to tell) how they both thought of me, even at that engrossing time. I was a part of all their plans, for the present and the future. I was to write to Richard once a week, making my faithful report of Ada, who was to write to him every alternate day. I was to be informed, under his own hand, of all his labors and successes; I was to observe how resolute and persevering he would be; I was to be Ada's bridesmaid when they were married; I was to live with them afterward; I was to keep all the keys of their house; I was to be made happy forever and a day.

"And if the suit should make us rich, Esther—which it may, you know!" said Richard, to crown all.

A shade crossed Ada's face.

"My dearest Ada," asked Richard, pausing, "why not?"

"It had better declare us poor at once," said Ada.

"O! I don't know about that," returned Richard; "but at all events, it won't declare any thing at once. It hasn't declared any thing in Heaven knows how many years."

"Too true," said Ada.

"Yes, but," urged Richard, answering what her look suggested rather than her words, "the longer it goes on, dear cousin, the nearer it must be to a settlement one way or other. Now, is not that reasonable?"

"You know best, Richard. But I am afraid if we trust to it, it will make us unhappy."

"But, my Ada, we are not going to trust to it!" cried Richard, gayly. "We know it better than to trust to it. We only say that if it should make us rich, we have no constitutional objection to being rich. The Court is, by solemn settlement of law, our grim old guardian, and we are to suppose that what it gives us (when it gives us any thing) is our right. It is not necessary to quarrel with our right."

"No," said Ada, "but it may be better to forget all about it."

"Well, well!" cried Richard, "then we will forget all about it! We consign the whole thing to oblivion. Dame Durden puts on her approving face, and it's done!"

"Dame Durden's approving face," said I, looking out of the box in which I was packing his books, "was not very visible when you called it by that name; but it does approve, and she thinks you can't do better."

So, Richard said there was an end of it—and immediately began, on no other foundation, to build as many castles in the air as would man the great wall of China. He went away in high spirits. Ada and I, prepared to miss him very much, commenced our quieter career.

On our arrival in London, we had called with Mr. Jarndyce at Mrs. Jellyby's, but had not been so fortunate as to find her at home. It appeared that she had gone somewhere, to a tea-drinking, and had taken Miss Jellyby with her. Besides the tea-drinking, there was to be some considerable speech-making and letter-writing on the general merits of the cultivation of coffee, conjointly with natives, at the Settlement of Borrioboola Gha. All this involved, no doubt, sufficient active exercise of pen and ink, to make her daughter's part in the proceedings, any thing but a holiday.

It being, now, beyond the time appointed for Mrs. Jellyby's return, we called again. She was in town, but not at home, having gone to Mile End, directly after breakfast, on some Borrioboolan business, arising out of a Society called the East London Branch Aid Ramification. As I had not seen Peepy on the occasion of our last call (when he was not to be found any where, and when the cook rather thought he must have strolled away with the dustman's cart) I now inquired for him again. The oyster shells he had been building a house with, were still in the passage, but he was nowhere discoverable, and the cook supposed that he had "gone after the sheep." When we repeated, with some surprise, "The sheep?" she said, O yes, on market days he sometimes followed them quite out of town, and came back in such a state as never was!

I was sitting at the window with my Guardian, on the following morning, and Ada was busy writing—of course to Richard—when Miss Jellyby was announced, and entered, leading the identical Peepy, whom she had made some endeavors to render presentable, by wiping the dirt into corners of his face and hands, and making his hair very wet, and then violently frizzling it with her fingers. Every thing the dear child wore, was either too large for him or too small. Among his other contradictory decorations he had the hat of a Bishop, and the little gloves of a baby. His boots were, on a small scale, the boots of a plowman: while his legs, so crossed and recrossed with scratches that they looked like maps, were bare, below a very short pair of plaid drawers, finished off with two frills of perfectly different patterns. The deficient buttons on his plaid frock had evidently been supplied from one of Mr. Jellyby's coats, they were so extremely brazen and so much too large. Most extraordinary specimens of needlework appeared on several parts of his dress, where it had been hastily mended; and I recognized the same hand on Miss Jellyby's. She was, however, unaccountably improved in her appearance, and looked very pretty. She was conscious of poor little Peepy being but a failure, after all her trouble, and she showed it as she came in, by the way in which she glanced, first at him, and then at us.

"O dear me!" said my Guardian, "Due East!"

Ada and I gave her a cordial welcome, and presented her to Mr. Jarndyce; to whom she said, as she sat down:

"Ma's compliments, and she hopes you'll excuse her, because she's correcting proofs of the plan. She's going to put out five thousand new circulars, and she knows you'll be interested to hear that. I have brought one of them with me. Ma's compliments." With which she presented it sulkily enough.

"Thank you," said my Guardian. "I am much obliged to Mrs. Jellyby. O dear me! This is a very trying wind!"

We were busy with Peepy; taking off his clerical hat; asking him if he remembered us; and so on. Peepy retired behind his elbow at first, but relented at the sight of sponge-cake, and allowed me to take him on my lap, where he sat munching quietly. Mr. Jarndyce then withdrawing into the temporary Growlery, Miss Jellyby opened a conversation with her usual abruptness.

"We are going on just as bad as ever in Thavies Inn," said she. "I have no peace of my life. Talk of Africa! I couldn't be worse off if I was a what's-his-name-man and a brother!"

I tried to say something soothing.

"O, it's of no use, Miss Summerson," exclaimed Miss Jellyby, "though I thank you for the kind intention all the same. I know how I am used, and I am not to be talked over. You wouldn't be talked over, if you were used so. Peepy, go and play at Wild Beasts under the piano!"

"I shan't!" said Peepy.

"Very well, you ungrateful, naughty, hard-hearted boy!" returned Miss Jellyby, with tears in her eyes. "I'll never take pains to dress you any more."

"Yes, I will go, Caddy!" cried Peepy, who was really a good child, and who was so moved by his sister's vexation that he went at once.

"It seems a little thing to cry about," said poor Miss Jellyby, apologetically, "but I am quite worn out. I was directing the new circulars till two this morning. I detest the whole thing so, that that alone makes my head ache till I can't see out of my eyes. And look at that poor unfortunate child. Was there ever such a fright as he is!"

Peepy, happily unconscious of the defects in his appearance, sat on the carpet behind one of the legs of the piano, looking calmly out of his den at us, while he ate his cake.

"I have sent him to the other end of the room," observed Miss Jellyby, drawing her chair nearer ours, "because I don't want him to hear the conversation. Those little things are so sharp! I was going to say, we really are going on worse than ever. Pa will be a bankrupt before long, and then I hope Ma will be satisfied. There'll be nobody but Ma to thank for it."

We said we hoped Mr. Jellyby's affairs were not in so bad a state as that.

"It's of no use hoping, though it's very kind of you!" returned Miss Jellyby, shaking her head. "Pa told me, only yesterday morning (and dreadfully unhappy he is), that he couldn't weather the storm. I should be surprised if he could. When all our tradesmen send into our house any stuff they like, and the servants do what they like with it, and I have no time to improve things if I knew how, and Ma don't care about any thing, I should like to make out how Pa is to weather the storm. I declare if I was Pa, I'd run away!"

"My dear!" said I, smiling. "Your papa, no doubt, considers his family."

"O yes, his family is all very fine, Miss Summerson," replied Miss Jellyby; "but what comfort is his family to him? His family is nothing but bills, dirt, waste, noise, tumbles down stairs, confusion, and wretchedness. His scrambling home, from week's-end to week's-end, is like one great washing-day—only nothing's washed!"

Miss Jellyby tapped her foot upon the floor, and wiped her eyes.

"I am sure I pity Pa to that degree," she said, "and am so angry with Ma, that I can't find words to express myself! However, I am not going to bear it, I am determined. I won't be a slave all my life, and I won't submit to be proposed to by Mr. Quale. A pretty thing, indeed, to marry a Philanthropist! As if I hadn't had enough of that!" said poor Miss Jellyby.

I must confess that I could not help feeling rather angry with Mrs. Jellyby, myself; seeing and hearing this neglected girl, and knowing how much of bitterly satirical truth there was in what she said.

"If it wasn't that we had been intimate when you stopped at our house," pursued Miss Jellyby, "I should have been ashamed to come here to-day, for I know what a figure I must seem to you two. But, as it is, I made up my mind to call: especially as I am not likely to see you again, the next time you come to town."

She said this with such great significance that Ada and I glanced at one another, foreseeing something more.

"No!" said Miss Jellyby, shaking her head. "Not at all likely! I know I may trust you two. I am sure you won't betray me. I am engaged."

"Without their knowledge at home?" said I.

"Why, good gracious me, Miss Summerson," she returned, justifying herself in a fretful but not angry manner, "how can it be otherwise? You know what Ma is—and I needn't make poor Pa more miserable by telling him."

"But would it not be adding to his unhappiness, to marry without his knowledge or consent, my dear?" said I.

"No," said Miss Jellyby, softening. "I hope not. I should try to make him happy and comfortable when he came to see me; and Peepy and the others should take it in turns to come and stay with me; and they should have some care taken of them, then."

There was a good deal of affection in poor Caddy. She softened more and more while saying this, and cried so much over the unwonted little home-picture she had raised in her mind, that Peepy, in his cave under the piano, was touched, and turned himself over on his back with loud lamentations. It was not until I had brought him to kiss his sister, and had restored him to his place in my lap, and had shown him that Caddy was laughing (she laughed expressly for the purpose), that we could recall his peace of mind; even then, it was for some time conditional on his taking us in turns by the chin, and smoothing our faces all over with his hand. At last, as his spirits were not yet equal to the piano, we put him on a chair to look out of window; and Miss Jellyby, holding him by one leg, resumed her confidence.

"It began in your coming to our house," she said.

We naturally asked how?

"I felt I was so awkward," she replied, "that I made up my mind to be improved in that respect, at all events, and to learn to dance. I told Ma I was ashamed of myself, and I must be taught to dance. Ma looked at me in that provoking way of hers, as if I wasn't in sight; but, I was quite determined to be taught to dance, and so I went to Mr. Turveydrop's Academy in Newman Street."

"And was it there, my dear——" I began.

"Yes, it was there," said Caddy, "and I am engaged to Mr. Turveydrop. There are two Mr. Turveydrops, father and son. My Mr. Turveydrop is the son, of course. I only wish I had been better brought up, and was likely to make him a better wife; for I am very fond of him."

"I am sorry to hear this," said I, "I must confess."

"I don't know why you should be sorry," she retorted, a little anxiously, "but I am engaged to Mr. Turveydrop, whether or no, and he is very fond of me. It's a secret as yet, even on his side, because old Mr. Turveydrop has a share in the connection, and it might break his heart, or give him some other shock, if he was told of it abruptly. Old Mr. Turveydrop is a very gentlemanly man, indeed—very gentlemanly."

"Does his wife know of it?" asked Ada.

"Old Mr. Turveydrop's wife, Miss Clare?" returned Miss Jellyby, opening her eyes. "There's no such person. He is a widower."

We were here interrupted by Peepy, whose leg had undergone so much on account of his sister's unconsciously jerking it, like a bell-rope, whenever she was emphatic, that the afflicted child now bemoaned his sufferings with a very low-spirited noise. As he appealed to me for compassion, and as I was only a listener, I undertook to hold him. Miss Jellyby proceeded, after begging Peepy's pardon with a kiss, and assuring him that she hadn't meant to do it.

"That's the state of the case," said Caddy. "If I ever blame myself, I still think it's Ma's fault. We are to be married whenever we can, and then I shall go to Pa at the office, and write to Ma. It won't much agitate Ma: I am only pen and ink to her. One great comfort is," said Caddy, with a sob, "that I shall never hear of Africa after I am married. Young Mr. Turveydrop hates it for my sake; and if old Mr. Turveydrop knows there is such a place, it's as much as he does."

"It was he who was very gentlemanly, I think?" said I.

"Very gentlemanly, indeed," said Caddy. "He is celebrated, almost every where, for his Deportment."

"Does he teach?" asked Ada.

"No, he don't teach any thing in particular," replied Caddy. "But his Deportment is beautiful."

Caddy went on to say, with considerable hesitation and reluctance, that there was one thing more she wished us to know, and felt we ought to know, and which, she hoped, would not offend us. It was, that she had improved her acquaintance with Miss Flite, the little crazy old lady; and that she frequently went there early in the morning, and met her lover for a few minutes before breakfast—only for a few minutes. "I go there, at other times," said Caddy, "but Prince does not come then. Young Mr. Turveydrop's name is Prince; I wish it wasn't, because it sounds like a dog, but of course he didn't christen himself. Old Mr. Turveydrop had him christened Prince, in remembrance of the Prince Regent. Old Mr. Turveydrop adored the Prince Regent on account of his Deportment. I hope you won't think the worse of me for having made these little appointments at Miss Flite's, where I first went with you; because I like the poor thing for her own sake, and I believe she likes me. If you could see young Mr. Turveydrop, I am sure you would think well of him—at least, I am sure you couldn't possibly think any ill of him. I am going there now, for my lesson. I couldn't ask you to go with me, Miss Summerson; but if you would," said Caddy, who had said all this, earnestly and tremblingly, "I should be very glad—very glad."

It happened that we had arranged with my Guardian to go to Miss Flite's that day. We had told him of our former visit, and our account had interested him; but something had always happened to prevent our going there again. As I trusted that I might have sufficient influence with Miss Jellyby to prevent her taking any very rash step, if I fully accepted the confidence she was so willing to place in me, poor girl, I proposed that she, and I, and Peepy, should go to the Academy, and afterward meet my guardian and Ada at Miss Flite's—whose name I now learnt for the first time. This was on condition that Miss Jellyby and Peepy should come back with us to dinner. The last article of the agreement being joyfully acceded to by both, we smartened Peepy up a little, with the assistance of a few pins, some soap and water, and a hair-brush; and went out: bending our steps toward Newman Street, which was very near.

I found the academy established in a sufficiently dingy house at the corner of an arch-way, with busts in all the staircase windows. In the same house there were also established, as I gathered from the plates on the door, a drawing-master, a coal-merchant (there was, certainly, no room for his coals), and a lithographic artist. On the plate which, in size and situation, took precedence of all the rest, I read, Mr. Turveydrop. The door was open, and the hall was blocked up by a grand piano, a harp, and several other musical instruments in cases, all in progress of removal, and all looking rakish in the daylight. Miss Jellyby informed me that the academy had been lent, last night, for a concert.

We went up-stairs—it had been quite a fine house once, when it was any body's business to keep it clean and fresh, and nobody's business to smoke in it all day—and into Mr. Turveydrop's great room, which was built out into a mews at the back, and was lighted by a skylight. It was a bare, resounding room, smelling of stables; with cane forms along the walls; and the walls ornamented at regular intervals with painted lyres, and little cut-glass branches for candles, which seemed to be shedding their old-fashioned drops as other branches might shed autumn leaves. Several young lady pupils, ranging from thirteen or fourteen years of age to two or three and twenty, were assembled; and I was looking among them for their instructor, when Caddy, pinching my arm, repeated the ceremony of introduction. "Miss Summerson, Mr. Prince Turveydrop!"

THE DANCING SCHOOL.

I courtesied to a little blue-eyed fair man of youthful appearance, with flaxen hair parted in the middle, and curling at the ends all round his head. He had a little fiddle, which we used to call at school a kit, under his left arm, and its little bow in the same hand. His little dancing-shoes were particularly diminutive, and he had a little innocent, feminine manner, which not only appealed to me in an amiable way, but made this singular effect upon me: that I received the impression that he was like his mother, and that his mother had not been much considered or well used.

"I am very happy to see Miss Jellyby's friend," he said, bowing low to me. "I began to fear," with timid tenderness, "as it was past the usual time, that Miss Jellyby was not coming."

"I beg you will have the goodness to attribute that to me, who have detained her, and to receive my excuses, sir," said I.

"O dear!" said he.

"And pray," I entreated, "do not allow me to be the cause of any more delay."

With that apology I withdrew to a seat between Peepy (who, being well used to it, had already climbed into a corner-place), and an old lady of a censorious countenance, whose two nieces were in the class, and who was very indignant with Peepy's boots. Prince Turveydrop then tinkled the strings of his kit with his fingers, and the young ladies stood up to dance. Just then, there appeared from a side-door, old Mr. Turveydrop, in the full lustre of his Deportment.

He was a fat old gentleman with a false complexion, false teeth, false whiskers, and a wig. He had a fur collar, and he had a padded breast to his coat, which only wanted a star or a broad blue ribbon to be complete. He was pinched in and swelled out, and got up, and strapped down, as much as he could possibly bear. He had such a neck-cloth on (puffing his very eyes out of their natural shape), and his chin and even his ears so sunk into it, that it seemed as though he must inevitably double up, if it were cast loose. He had, under his arm, a hat of great size and weight, shelving downward from the crown to the brim; and in his hand a pair of white gloves, with which he flapped it, as he stood poised on one leg, in a high-shouldered, round-elbowed state of elegance not to be surpassed. He had a cane, he had an eye-glass, he had a snuff-box, he had rings, he had wristbands, he had every thing but any touch of nature; he was not like youth, he was not like age, he was like nothing in the world but a model of Deportment.

"Father! A visitor. Miss Jellyby's friend, Miss Summerson."

"Distinguished," said Mr. Turveydrop, "by Miss Summerson's presence." As he bowed to me in that tight state, I almost believed I saw creases come into the whites of his eyes.

"My father," said the son, aside to me, with quite an affecting belief in him, "is a celebrated character. My father is greatly admired."

"Go on, Prince! Go on!" said Mr. Turveydrop, standing with his back to the fire, and waving his gloves condescendingly. "Go on, my son!"

At this command, or by this gracious permission, the lesson went on. Prince Turveydrop, sometimes, played the kit, dancing; sometimes played the piano, standing; sometimes hummed the tune with what little breath he could spare, while he set a pupil right; always conscientiously moved with the least proficient through every step and every part of the figure; and never rested for an instant. His distinguished father did nothing whatever, but stand before the fire, a model of Deportment.

"And he never does any thing else," said the old lady of the censorious countenance. "Yet, would you believe that it's his name on the door-plate?"

"His son's name is the same, you know," said I.

"He wouldn't let his son have any name, if he could take it from him," returned the old lady. "Look at the son's dress!" It certainly was plain—threadbare—almost shabby. "Yet the father must be garnished and tricked out," said the old lady, "because of his Deportment. I'd deport him! Transport him would be better!"

I felt curious to know more, concerning this person. I asked, "Does he give lessons in Deportment, now?"

"Now!" returned the old lady, shortly. "Never did."

After a moment's consideration, I suggested that perhaps fencing had been his accomplishment.

"I don't believe he can fence at all, ma'am," said the old lady.

I looked surprised and inquisitive. The old lady, becoming more and more incensed against the Master of Deportment as she dwelt upon the subject, gave me some particulars of his career, with strong assurances that they were mildly stated.

He had married a meek little dancing-mistress, with a tolerable connection (having never in his life before done any thing but deport himself), and had worked her to death, or had, at the best, suffered her to work herself to death, to maintain him in those expenses which were indispensable to his position. At once to exhibit his Deportment to the best models, and to keep the best models constantly before himself, he had found it necessary to frequent all public places of fashionable and lounging resort; to be seen at Brighton and elsewhere at fashionable times, and to lead an idle life in the very best clothes. To enable him to do this, the affectionate little dancing-mistress had toiled and labored, and would have toiled and labored to that hour, if her strength had lasted so long. For, the mainspring of the story was, that, in spite of the man's absorbing selfishness, his wife (overpowered by his Deportment) had, to the last, believed in him, and had, on her death-bed in the most moving terms, confided him to their son as one who had an inextinguishable claim upon him, and whom he could never regard with too much pride and deference. The son, inheriting his mother's belief, and having the Deportment always before him, had lived and grown in the same faith, and now, at thirty years of age, worked for his father twelve hours a day, and looked up to him with veneration on the old imaginary pinnacle.

"The airs the fellow gives himself!" said my informant, shaking her head at old Mr. Turveydrop with speechless indignation, as he drew on his tight gloves; of course unconscious of the homage she was rendering. "He fully believes he is one of the aristocracy! And he is so condescending to the son he so egregiously deludes, that you might suppose him the most virtuous of parents. O!" said the old lady, apostrophizing him with infinite vehemence, "I could bite you!"

I could not help being amused, though I heard the old lady out with feelings of real concern. It was difficult to doubt her, with the father and son before me. What I might have thought of them without the old lady's account, or what I might have thought of the old lady's account without them, I can not say. There was a fitness of things in the whole that carried conviction with it.

My eyes were yet wandering, from young Mr. Turveydrop working so hard to old Mr. Turveydrop deporting himself so beautifully, when the latter came ambling up to me, and entered into conversation.

He asked me, first of all, whether I conferred a charm and a distinction on London by residing in it? I did not think it necessary to reply that I was perfectly aware I should not do that, in any case, but merely told him where I did reside.

"A lady so graceful and accomplished," he said, kissing his right glove, and afterward extending it toward the pupils, "will look leniently on the deficiencies here. We do our best to polish—polish—polish!"

He sat down beside me; taking some pains to sit on the form, I thought, in imitation of the print of his illustrious model on the sofa. And really he did look very like it.

"To polish—polish—polish!" he repeated, taking a pinch of snuff, and gently fluttering his fingers. "But we are not—if I may say so, to one formed to be graceful both by Nature and Art;" with the high-shouldered bow, which it seemed impossible for him to make without lifting up his eyebrows and shutting his eyes—"we are not what we used to be in point of Deportment."

"Are we not, sir?" said I.

"We have degenerated," he returned, shaking his head, which he could do, to a very limited extent, in his cravat. "A leveling age is not favorable to Deportment. It develops vulgarity. Perhaps I speak with some little partiality. It may not be for me to say that I have been called, for some years now, Gentleman Turveydrop; or that His Royal Highness the Prince Regent did me the honor to inquire, on my removing my hat as he drove out of the Pavilion at Brighton (that fine building), 'Who is he? Who the Devil is he? Why don't I know him? Why hasn't he thirty thousand a year?' But these are little matters of anecdote—the general property, ma'am—still repeated, occasionally among the upper classes."

"Indeed?" said I.

He replied with the high-shouldered bow. "Where what is left among us of Deportment," he added, "still lingers. England—alas, my country!—has degenerated very much, and is degenerating every day. She has not many gentlemen left. We are few. I see nothing to succeed us, but a race of weavers."

"One might hope that the race of gentlemen would be perpetuated here," said I.

"You are very good," he smiled, with the high-shouldered bow again. "You flatter me. But, no—no! I have never been able to imbue my poor boy with that part of his art. Heaven forbid that I should disparage my dear child, but he has—no Deportment."

"He appears to be an excellent master," I observed.

"Understand me, my dear madam, he is an excellent master. All that can be acquired, he has acquired. All that can be imparted, he can impart. But there are things"—he took another pinch of snuff and made the bow again, as if to add, "this kind of thing, for instance."

I glanced toward the centre of the room, where Miss Jellyby's lover, now engaged with single pupils, was undergoing greater drudgery than ever.

"My amiable child," murmured Mr. Turveydrop, adjusting his cravat.

"Your son is indefatigable," said I.

"It is my reward," said Mr. Turveydrop, "to hear you say so. In some respects, he treads in the footsteps of his sainted mother. She was a devoted creature. But Wooman, lovely Wooman," said Mr. Turveydrop, with very disagreeable gallantry, "what a sex you are!"

I rose and joined Miss Jellyby, who was, by this time, putting on her bonnet. The time allotted to a lesson having fully elapsed, there was a general putting on of bonnets. When Miss Jellyby and the unfortunate Prince found an opportunity to become betrothed I don't know, but they certainly found none, on this occasion, to exchange a dozen words.

"My dear," said Mr. Turveydrop benignly to his son, "do you know the hour?"

"No, father." The son had no watch. The father had a handsome gold one, which he pulled out, with an air that was an example to mankind.

"My son," said he, "it's two o'clock. Recollect your school at Kensington at three."

"That's time enough for me, father," said Prince. "I can take a morsel of dinner, standing, and be off."

"My dear boy," returned his father, "you must be very quick. You will find the cold mutton on the table."

"Thank you, father. Are you off now, father?"

"Yes, my dear. I suppose," said Mr. Turveydrop, shutting his eyes and lifting up his shoulders, with modest consciousness, "that I must show myself, as usual, about town."

"You had better dine out comfortably, somewhere," said his son.

"My dear child, I intend to. I shall take my little meal, I think, at the French house, in the Opera Colonnade."

"That's right. Good-by, father!" said Prince, shaking hands.

"Good-by, my son. Bless you!"

Mr. Turveydrop said this in quite a pious manner, and it seemed to do his son good; who, in parting from him, was so pleased with him, so dutiful to him, and so proud of him, that I almost felt as if it were an unkindness to the younger man not to be able to believe implicitly in the elder. The few moments that were occupied by Prince in taking leave of us (and particularly of one of us, as I saw, being in the secret), enhanced my favorable impression of his almost childish character. I felt a liking for him, and a compassion for him, as he put his little kit in his pocket—and with it his desire to stay a little while with Caddy—and went away good-humoredly to his cold mutton and his school at Kensington, that made me scarcely less irate with his father than the censorious old lady.

The father opened the room door for us, and bowed us out, in a manner, I must acknowledge, worthy of his shining original. In the same style he presently passed us on the other side of the street, on his way to the aristocratic part of the town, where he was going to show himself among the few other gentlemen left. For some moments, I was so lost in reconsidering what I had heard and seen in Newman Street, that I was quite unable to talk to Caddy, or even to fix my attention on what she said to me; especially, when I began to inquire in my mind whether there were, or ever had been, any other gentlemen, not in the dancing profession, who lived and founded a reputation entirely on their Deportment. This became so bewildering, and suggested the possibility of so many Mr. Turveydrops, that I said, "Esther, you must make up your mind to abandon this subject altogether, and attend to Caddy." I accordingly did so, and we chatted all the rest of the way to Lincoln's Inn.

Caddy told me that her lover's education had been so neglected, that it was not always easy to read his notes. She said, if he were not so anxious about his spelling, and took less pains to make it clear, he would do better; but he put so many unnecessary letters into short words, that they sometimes quite lost their English appearance. "He does it with the best intentions," observed Caddy, "but it hasn't the effect he means, poor fellow!" Caddy then went on to reason, how could he be expected to be a scholar, when he had passed his whole life in the dancing-school, and had done nothing but teach and fag, fag and teach, morning, noon, and night! And what did it matter? She could write letters enough for both, as she knew to her cost, and it was far better for him to be amiable than learned. "Besides, it's not as if I was an accomplished girl who had any right to give herself airs," said Caddy. "I know little enough, I am sure, thanks to Ma!"

"There's another thing I want to tell you, now we are alone," continued Caddy, "which I should not have liked to mention unless you had seen Prince, Miss Summerson. You know what a house ours is. It's of no use my trying to learn any thing that it would be useful for Prince's wife to know, in our house. We live in such a state of muddle that it's impossible, and I have only been more disheartened whenever I have tried. So, I get a little practice with—who do you think? Poor Miss Flite! Early in the morning, I help her to tidy her room, and clean her birds; and I make her cup of coffee for her (of course she taught me), and I have learnt to make it so well that Prince says it's the very best coffee he ever tasted, and would quite delight old Mr. Turveydrop, who is very particular indeed about his coffee. I can make little puddings too; and I know how to buy neck of mutton, and tea, and sugar, and butter, and a good many housekeeping things. I am not clever at my needle, yet," said Caddy, glancing at the repairs on Peepy's frock, "but perhaps I shall improve. And since I have been engaged to Prince, and have been doing all this, I have felt better-tempered, I hope, and more forgiving to Ma. It rather put me out, at first this morning, to see you and Miss Clare looking so neat and pretty, and to feel ashamed of Peepy and myself too; but on the whole, I hope I am better-tempered than I was, and more forgiving to Ma."

The poor girl, trying so hard, said it from her heart, and touched mine. "Caddy, my love," I replied, "I begin to have a great affection for you, and I hope we shall become friends." "Oh, do you?" cried Caddy; "how happy that would make me!" "My dear Caddy," said I, "let us be friends from this time, and let us often have a chat about these matters, and try to find the right way through them." Caddy was overjoyed. I said every thing I could, in my old-fashioned way, to comfort and encourage her; and I would not have objected to old Mr. Turveydrop, that day, for any smaller consideration than a settlement on his daughter-in-law.

By this time, we were come to Mr. Krook's, whose private door stood open. There was a bill, pasted on the door-post, announcing a room to let on the second floor. It reminded Caddy to tell me as we proceeded up-stairs, that there had been a sudden death there, and an inquest; and that our little friend had been ill of the fright. The door and window of the vacant room being open, we looked in. It was the room with the dark door, to which Miss Flite had secretly directed my attention when I was last in the house. A sad and desolate place it was; a gloomy, sorrowful place, that gave me a strange sensation of mournfulness and even dread. "You look pale," said Caddy, when we came out, "and cold!" I felt as if the room had chilled me.

We had walked slowly, while we were talking; and my Guardian and Ada were here before us. We found them in Miss Flite's garret. They were looking at the birds, while a medical gentleman who was so good as to attend Miss Flite with much solicitude and compassion, spoke with her cheerfully by the fire.

"I have finished my professional visit," he said, coming forward. "Miss Flite is much better, and may appear in court (as her mind is set upon it) to-morrow. She has been greatly missed there, I understand."

Miss Flite received the compliment with complacency, and dropped a general courtesy to us.

"Honored, indeed," said she, "by another visit from the Wards in Jarndyce! Ve-ry happy to receive Jarndyce of Bleak House beneath my humble roof!" with a special courtesy. "Fitz-Jarndyce, my dear;" she had bestowed that name on Caddy, it appeared, and always called her by it; "a double welcome!"

"Has she been very ill?" asked Mr. Jarndyce of the gentleman whom we had found in attendance on her. She answered for herself directly, though he had put the question in a whisper.

"O, decidedly unwell! O, very unwell indeed," she said, confidentially. "Not pain, you know—trouble. Not bodily so much as nervous, nervous! The truth is," in a subdued voice and trembling, "we have had death here. There was poison in the house. I am very susceptible to such horrid things. It frightened me. Only Mr. Woodcourt knows how much. My physician, Mr. Woodcourt!" with great stateliness. "The Wards in Jarndyce—Jarndyce of Bleak House—Fitz-Jarndyce!"

"Miss Flite," said Mr. Woodcourt, in a grave, kind voice as if he were appealing to her while speaking to us; and laying his hand gently on her arm; "Miss Flite describes her illness with her usual accuracy. She was alarmed by an occurrence in the house which might have alarmed a stronger person, and was made ill by the distress and agitation. She brought me here in the first hurry of the discovery, though too late for me to be of any use to the unfortunate man. I have compensated myself for that disappointment by coming here since, and being of small use to her."

"The kindest physician in the college," whispered Miss Flite to me. "I expect a Judgment. On the day of Judgment. And shall then confer estates."

"She will be as well, in a day or two," said Mr. Woodcourt, looking at her with an observant smile, "as she ever will be. In other words, quite well, of course. Have you heard of her good fortune?"

"Most extraordinary!" said Miss Flite, smiling brightly. "You never heard of such a thing, my dear! Every Saturday, Conversation Kenge, or Guppy (clerk to Conversation K.), places in my hand a paper of shillings. Shillings. I assure you! Always the same number in the paper. Always one for every day in the week. Now you know, really! So well-timed, is it not? Ye-es! From whence do these papers come, you say? That is the great question. Naturally. Shall I tell you what I think? I think," said Miss Flite, drawing herself back with a very shrewd look, and shaking her right forefinger in a most significant manner, "that the Lord Chancellor, aware of the length of time during which the Great Seal has been open (for it has been open a long time!) forwards them. Until the Judgment I expect, is given. Now that's very creditable, you know. To confess in that way that he is a little slow for human life. So delicate! Attending Court the other day—I attend it regularly—with my documents—I taxed him with it, and he almost confessed. That is, I smiled at him from my bench, and he smiled at me from his bench. But it's great good fortune, is it not? And Fitz-Jarndyce lays the money out for me to great advantage. O, I assure you to the greatest advantage!"

I congratulated her (as she addressed herself to me) upon this fortunate addition to her income, and wished her a long continuance of it. I did not speculate upon the source from which it came, or wonder whose humanity was so considerate. My Guardian stood before me, contemplating the birds, and I had no need to look beyond him.

"And what do you call these little fellows, ma'am?" said he in his pleasant voice. "Have they any names?"

"I can answer for Miss Flite that they have," said I, "for she promised to tell us what they were. Ada remembers?"

Ada remembered very well.

"Did I?" said Miss Flite.—"Who's that at my door? What are you listening at my door for, Krook?"

The old man of the house, pushing it open before him, appeared there with his fur-cap in his hand, and his cat at his heels.

"I warn't listening, Miss Flite," he said. "I was going to give a rap with my knuckles, only you're so quick!"

"Make your cat go down. Drive her away!" the old lady angrily exclaimed.

"Bah, bah!—There ain't no danger, gentle-folks," said Mr. Krook, looking slowly and sharply from one to another, until he had looked at all of us; "she'd never offer at the birds when I was here, unless I told her to do it."

"You will excuse my landlord," said the old lady with a dignified air. "M, quite M! What do you want, Krook, when I have company?"

"Hi!" said the old man. "You know I am the Chancellor."

"Well?" returned Miss Flite. "What of that?"

"For the Chancellor," said the old man, with a chuckle, "not to be acquainted with a Jarndyce is queer, ain't it, Miss Flite? Mightn't I take the liberty?—Your servant, sir. I know Jarndyce and Jarndyce a'most as well as you do, sir. I knowed old Squire Tom, sir. I never to my knowledge see you afore though, not even in court. Yet, I go there a mortal sight of times in the course of the year, taking one day with another."

"I never go there," said Mr. Jarndyce (which he never did on any consideration). "I would sooner go—somewhere else."

"Would you though?" returned Krook, grinning. "You're bearing hard upon my noble and learned brother in your meaning, sir; though, perhaps, it is but nat'ral in a Jarndyce. The burnt child, sir! What, you're looking at my lodger's birds, Mr. Jarndyce?" The old man had come by little and little into the room, until he now touched my Guardian with his elbow, and looked close up into his face with his spectacled eyes. "It's one of her strange ways, that she'll never tell the names of these birds if she can help it, though she named 'em all." This was in a whisper. "Shall I run 'em over, Flite?" he asked aloud, winking at us and pointing at her as she turned away, affecting to sweep the grate.

"If you like," she answered hurriedly.

The old man, looking up at the cages, after another look at us, went through the list.

"Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust, Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin, Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, Wigs, Rags, Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and Spinach. That's the whole collection," said the old man, "all cooped up together, by my noble and learned brother.

"This is a bitter wind!" muttered my Guardian.

"When my noble and learned brother gives his Judgment, they're to be let go free," said Krook, winking at us again. "And then," he added, whispering and grinning, "if that ever was to happen—which it won't—the birds that have never been caged would kill 'em."

"If ever the wind was in the east," said my Guardian, pretending to look out of the window for a weathercock, "I think it's there to-day!"

We found it very difficult to get away from the house. It was not Miss Flite who detained us; she was as reasonable a little creature in consulting the convenience of others, as there possibly could be. It was Mr. Krook. He seemed unable to detach himself from Mr. Jarndyce. If he had been linked to him, he could hardly have attended him more closely. He proposed to show us his Court of Chancery, and all the strange medley it contained; during the whole of our inspection (prolonged by himself) he kept close to Mr. Jarndyce, and sometimes detained him, under one pretense or other, until we had passed on, as if he were tormented by an inclination to enter upon some secret subject, which he could not make up his mind to approach. I can not imagine a countenance and manner more singularly expressive of caution and indecision, and a perpetual impulse to do something he could not resolve to venture on, than Mr. Krook's was, that day. His watchfulness of my Guardian was incessant. He rarely removed his eyes from his face. If he went on beside him, he observed him with the slyness of an old white fox. If he went before, he looked back. When we stood still, he got opposite to him, and drawing his hand across and across his open mouth with a curious expression of a sense of power, and turning up his eyes, and lowering his gray eyebrows until they appeared to be shut, seemed to scan every lineament of his face.

At last, having been (always attended by the cat) all over the house, and having seen the whole stock of miscellaneous lumber, which was certainly curious, we came into the back part of the shop. Here, on the head of an empty barrel stood on end, were an ink-bottle, some old stumps of pens, and some dirty playbills; and against the wall were pasted several large printed alphabets in several plain hands.

"What are you doing here?" asked my Guardian.

"Trying to learn myself to read and write," said Krook.

"And how do you get on?"

"Slow. Bad," returned the old man, impatiently. "It's hard at my time of life."

"It would be easier to be taught by some one," said my Guardian.

"Ay, but they might teach me wrong!" returned the old man, with a wonderfully suspicious flash of his eye. "I don't know what I may have lost, by not being learned afore. I wouldn't like to lose any thing by being learned wrong now."

"Wrong?" said my Guardian, with his good-humored smile. "Who do you suppose would teach you wrong?"

"I don't know, Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House!" replied the old man, turning up his spectacles on his forehead, and rubbing his hands. "I don't suppose as any body would—but I'd rather trust my own self than another!"

These answers, and his manner, were strange enough to cause my Guardian to inquire of Mr. Woodcourt, as we all walked across Lincoln's Inn together, whether Mr. Krook were really, as his lodger represented him, deranged? The young surgeon replied, no, he had seen no reason to think so. He was exceedingly distrustful, as ignorance usually was, and he was always more or less under the influence of raw gin: of which he drank great quantities, and of which he and his back shop, as we might have observed, smelt strongly; but he did not think him mad, as yet.

On our way home, I so conciliated Peepy's affections by buying him a windmill and two flour-sacks, that he would suffer nobody else to take off his hat and gloves, and would sit nowhere at dinner but at my side. Caddy sat upon the other side of me, next to Ada, to whom we imparted the whole history of the engagement as soon as we got back. We made much of Caddy, and Peepy too; and Caddy brightened exceedingly; and my Guardian was as merry as we were; and we were all very happy indeed; until Caddy went home at night in a hackney-coach, with Peepy fast asleep, but holding tight to the windmill.

I have forgotten to mention—at least I have not mentioned—that Mr. Woodcourt was the same dark young surgeon whom we had met at Mr. Badger's. Or, that Mr. Jarndyce invited him to dinner that day. Or, that he came. Or, that when they were all gone, and I said to Ada, "Now, my darling, let us have a little talk about Richard!" Ada laughed, and said—

But, I don't think it matters what my darling said. She was always merry.

---

CHAPTER XV.—Bell Yard.

While we were in London, Mr. Jarndyce was constantly beset by the crowd of excitable ladies and gentlemen whose proceedings had so much astonished us. Mr. Quale, who presented himself soon after our arrival, was in all such excitements. He seemed to project those two shining knobs of temples of his into every thing that went on, and to brush his hair farther and farther back, until the very roots were almost ready to fly out of his head in inappeasable philanthropy. All objects were alike to him, but he was always particularly ready for any thing in the way of a testimonial to any one. His great power seemed to be his power of indiscriminate admiration. He would sit, for any length of time, with the utmost enjoyment, bathing his temples in the light of any order of luminary. Having first seen him perfectly swallowed up in admiration of Mrs. Jellyby, I had supposed her to be the absorbing object of his devotion. I soon discovered my mistake, and found him to be train-bearer and organ-blower to a whole procession of people.

Mrs. Pardiggle came one day for a subscription to something—and with her, Mr. Quale. Whatever Mrs. Pardiggle said, Mr. Quale repeated to us; and just as he had drawn Mrs. Jellyby out, he drew Mrs. Pardiggle out. Mrs. Pardiggle wrote a letter of introduction to my Guardian, in behalf of her eloquent friend, Mr. Gusher. With Mr. Gusher, appeared Mr. Quale again. Mr. Gusher, being a flabby gentleman with a moist surface, and eyes so much too small for his moon of a face that they seemed to have been originally made for somebody else, was not at first sight prepossessing; yet, he was scarcely seated, before Mr. Quale asked Ada and me, not inaudibly, whether he was not a great creature—which he certainly was, flabbily speaking; though Mr. Quale meant in intellectual beauty—and whether we were not struck by his massive configuration of brow? In short, we heard of a great many missions of various sorts, among this set of people; but, nothing respecting them was half so clear to us, as that it was Mr. Quale's mission to be in ecstasies with everybody else's mission, and that it was the most popular mission of all.

Mr. Jarndyce had fallen into this company, in the tenderness of his heart and his earnest desire to do all the good in his power; but, that he felt it to be too often an unsatisfactory company, where benevolence took spasmodic forms; where charity was assumed, as a regular uniform, by loud professors and speculators in cheap notoriety, vehement in profession, restless and vain in action, servile in the last degree of meanness to the great, adulatory of one another, and intolerable to those who were anxious quietly to help the weak from falling, rather than with a great deal of bluster and self-laudation to raise them up a little way when they were down; he plainly told us. When a testimonial was originated to Mr. Quale, by Mr. Gusher (who had already got one, originated by Mr. Quale), and when Mr. Gusher spoke for an hour and a half on the subject to a meeting, including two charity schools of small boys and girls, who were specially reminded of the widow's mite, and requested to come forward with half-pence and be acceptable sacrifices; I think the wind was in the east for three whole weeks.

I mention this, because I am coming to Mr. Skimpole again. It seemed to me that his off-hand professions of childishness and carelessness were a great relief to my Guardian, by contrast with such things, and were the more readily believed in; since, to find one perfectly undesigning and candid man, among many opposites, could not fail to give him pleasure. I should be sorry to imply that Mr. Skimpole divined this, and was politic: I really never understood him well enough to know. What he was to my Guardian, he certainly was to the rest of the world.

He had not been very well; and thus, though he lived in London, we had seen nothing of him until now. He appeared one morning, in his usual agreeable way, and as full of pleasant spirits as ever.

Well, he said, here he was! He had been bilious, but rich men were often bilious, and therefore he had been persuading himself that he was a man of property. So he was, in a certain point of view—in his expansive intentions. He had been enriching his medical attendant in the most lavish manner. He had always doubled, and sometimes quadrupled, his fees. He had said to the doctor, "Now my dear doctor, it is quite a delusion on your part to suppose that you attend me for nothing. I am overwhelming you with money—in my expansive intentions—if you only knew it!" And really (he said) he meant it to that degree, that he thought it much the same as doing it. If he had had those bits of metal or thin paper to which mankind attached so much importance, to put in the doctor's hand, he would have put them in the doctor's hand. Not having them, he substituted the will for the deed. Very well! If he really meant it—if his will were genuine and real: which it was—it appeared to him that it was the same as coin, and canceled the obligation.

"It may be, partly, because I know nothing of the value of money," said Mr. Skimpole, "but I often feel this. It seems so reasonable! My butcher says to me, he wants that little bill. It's a part of the pleasant unconscious poetry of the man's nature, that he always calls it a 'little' bill—to make the payment appear easy to both of us. I reply to the butcher, My good friend, if you knew it, you are paid. You haven't had the trouble of coming to ask for the little bill. You are paid. I mean it."

"But suppose," said my Guardian, laughing, "he had meant the meat in the bill, instead of providing it?"

"My dear Jarndyce," he returned, "you surprise me. You take the butcher's position. A butcher I once dealt with, occupied that very ground. Says he, 'Sir, why did you eat spring lamb at eighteen pence a pound?' 'Why did I eat spring lamb at eighteen pence a pound, my honest friend?' said I, naturally amazed by the question. 'I like spring lamb!' This was so far convincing. 'Well, sir,' says he, 'I wish I had meant the lamb, as you mean the money?' 'My good fellow,' said I, 'pray let us reason like intellectual beings. How could that be? It was impossible. You had got the lamb, and I have not got the money. You couldn't really mean the lamb without sending it in, whereas I can, and do, really mean the money without paying it?' He had not a word. There was an end of the subject."

"Did he take no legal proceedings?" inquired my Guardian.

"Yes, he took legal proceedings," said Mr. Skimpole. "But in that, he was influenced by passion; not by reason. Passion reminds me of Boythorn. He writes me that you and the ladies have promised him a short visit at his bachelor-house in Lincolnshire."

"He is a great favorite with my girls," said Mr. Jarndyce, "and I have promised for them."

"Nature forgot to shade him off, I think?" observed Mr. Skimpole to Ada and me. "A little too boisterous—like the sea? A little too vehement—like a bull who has made up his mind to consider every color scarlet? But I grant a sledge-hammering sort of merit in him!"

I should have been surprised if those two could have thought very highly of one another; Mr. Boythorn attaching so much importance to many things, and Mr. Skimpole caring so little for any thing. Besides which, I had noticed Mr. Boythorn more than once on the point of breaking out into some strong opinion, when Mr. Skimpole was referred to. Of course I merely joined Ada in saying that we had been greatly pleased with him.

"He has invited me," said Mr. Skimpole; "and if a child may trust himself in such hands: which the present child is encouraged to do, with the united tenderness of two angels to guard him: I shall go. He proposes to frank me down and back again. I suppose it will cost money? Shillings perhaps? Or pounds? Or something of that sort? By-the-by. Coavinses. You remember our friend Coavinses, Miss Summerson?"

He asked me as the subject arose in his mind, in his graceful, light-hearted manner, and without the least embarrassment.

"O yes?" said I.

"Coavinses has been arrested by the great Bailiff," said Mr. Skimpole. "He will never do violence to the sunshine any more."

It quite shocked me to hear it; for, I had already recalled, with any thing but a serious association, the image of the man sitting on the sofa that night, wiping his head.

"His successor informed me of it yesterday," said Mr. Skimpole, "His successor is in my house now—in possession, I think he calls it. He came yesterday, on my blue-eyed daughter's birth-day. I put it to him. 'This is unreasonable and inconvenient. If you had a blue-eyed daughter, you wouldn't like me to come, uninvited, on her birthday?' But he staid."

Mr. Skimpole laughed at the pleasant absurdity, and lightly touched the piano by which he was seated.

"And he told me," he said, playing little chords where I shall put full stops. "That Coavinses had left. Three children. No mother. And that Coavinses' profession. Being unpopular. The rising Coavinses. Were at a considerable disadvantage."

Mr. Jarndyce got up, rubbing his head, and began to walk about. Mr. Skimpole played the melody of one of Ada's favorite songs. Ada and I both looked at Mr. Jarndyce, thinking that we knew what was passing in his mind.

After walking, and stopping, and several times leaving off rubbing his head, and beginning again, my Guardian put his hand upon the keys and stopped Mr. Skimpole's playing. "I don't like this, Skimpole," he said, thoughtfully.

Mr. Skimpole, who had quite forgotten the subject, looked up surprised.

"The man was necessary," pursued my Guardian, walking backward and forward in the very short space between the piano and the end of the room, and rubbing his hair up from the back of his head as if a high east wind had blown it into that form. "If we make such men necessary by our faults and follies, or by our want of worldly knowledge, or by our misfortunes, we must not revenge ourselves upon them. There was no harm in his trade. He maintained his children. One would like to know more about this."

"O! Coavinses?" cried Mr. Skimpole, at length perceiving what he meant. "Nothing easier. A walk to Coavinses head-quarters, and you can know what you will."

Mr. Jarndyce nodded to us, who were only waiting for the signal. "Come! We will walk that way, my dears. Why not that way, as soon as another!" We were quickly ready, and went out. Mr. Skimpole went with us, and quite enjoyed the expedition. It was so new and so refreshing, he said, for him to want Coavinses, instead of Coavinses wanting him!

He took us, first, to Cursitor Street, Chancery Lane, where there was a house with barred windows, which he called Coavinses Castle. On our going into the entry and ringing a bell, a very hideous boy came out of a sort of office, and looked at us over a spiked wicket.

"Who did you want?" said the boy, fitting two of the spikes into his chin.

"There was a follower, or an officer, or something, here," said Mr. Jarndyce, "who is dead."

"Yes," said the boy. "Well?"

"I want to know his name, if you please."

"Name of Neckett," said the boy.

"And his address?"

"Bell Yard," said the boy. "Chandler's shop, left hand side, name of Blinder."

"Was he—I don't know how to shape the question," murmured my Guardian—"industrious?"

"Was Neckett?" said the boy. "Yes, wery much so. He was never tired of watching. He'd sit upon a post at a street corner, eight or ten hours at a stretch, if he undertook to do it."

"He might have done worse," I heard my Guardian soliloquize. "He might have undertaken to do it, and not done it. Thank you. That's all I want."

We left the boy, with his head on one side, and his arms on the gate, fondling and sucking the spikes, and went back to Lincoln's Inn, where Mr. Skimpole, who had not cared to remain nearer Coavinses, awaited us. Then, we all went to Bell Yard: a narrow alley, at a very short distance. We soon found the chandler's shop. In it was a good-natured-looking old woman, with a dropsy or an asthma, or perhaps both.

"Neckett's children?" said she, in reply to my inquiry. "Yes, surely, miss. Three pair, if you please. Door right opposite the top of the stairs." And she handed me a key across the counter.

I glanced at the key, and glanced at her; but, she took it for granted that I knew what to do with it. As it could only be intended for the children's door, I came out, without asking any more questions, and led the way up the dark stairs. We went as quietly as we could; but four of us, made some noise on the aged boards; and, when we came to the second story, we found we had disturbed a man who was standing there, looking out of his room.

"Is it Gridley that's wanted?" he said, fixing his eyes on me with an angry stare.

"No, sir," said I, "I am going higher up."

He looked at Ada, and at Mr. Jarndyce, and at Mr. Skimpole: fixing the same angry stare on each in succession, as they passed and followed me. Mr. Jarndyce gave him good-day! "Good-day!" he said, abruptly and fiercely. He was a tall sallow man, with a care-worn head, on which but little hair remained, a deeply-lined face, and prominent eyes. He had a combative look; and a chafing, irritable manner, which, associated with his figure—still large and powerful, though evidently in its decline—rather alarmed me. He had a pen in his hand, and, in the glimpse I caught of his room in passing, I saw that it was covered with a litter of papers.

Leaving him standing there, we went up to the top room. I tapped at the door, and a little shrill voice inside said, "We are locked in. Mrs. Blinder's got the key."

I applied the key on hearing this, and opened the door. In a poor room with a sloping ceiling, and containing very little furniture, was a mite of a boy, some five or six years old, nursing and hushing a heavy child of eighteen months. There was no fire, though the weather was cold; both children were wrapped in some poor shawls and tippets, as a substitute. Their clothing was not so warm, however, but that their noses looked red and pinched, and their small figures shrunken, as the boy walked up and down, nursing and hushing the child, with its head on his shoulder.

"Who has locked you up here alone?" we naturally asked.

"Charley," said the boy, standing still to gaze at us.

"Is Charley your brother?"

"No. She's my sister, Charlotte. Father called her Charley."

"Are there any more of you besides Charley?"

"Me," said the boy "and Emma," patting the limp bonnet of the child he was nursing. "And Charley."

"Where is Charley now?"

"Out a-washing," said the boy, beginning to walk up and down again, and taking the nankeen bonnet much too near the bedstead, by trying to gaze at us at the same time.

We were looking at one another, and at these two children, when there came into the room a very little girl, childish in figure but shrewd and older-looking in the face—pretty faced too—wearing a womanly sort of bonnet much too large for her, and drying her bare arms on a womanly sort of apron. Her fingers were white and wrinkled with washing, and the soap-suds were yet smoking which she wiped off her arms. But for this, she might have been a child, playing at washing, and imitating a poor working woman with a quick observation of the truth.

She had come running from some place in the neighborhood, and had made all the haste she could. Consequently, though she was very light, she was out of breath, and could not speak at first, as she stood panting, and wiping her arms, and looking quietly at us.

"O, here's Charley!" said the boy.

The child he was nursing, stretched forth its arms, and cried out to be taken by Charley. The little girl took it, in a womanly sort of manner belonging to the apron and the bonnet, and stood looking at us over the burden that clung to her most affectionately.

"Is it possible," whispered my Guardian, as we put a chair for the little creature, and got her to sit down with her load: the boy keeping close to her, holding to her apron, "that this child works for the rest? Look at this! For God's sake look at this!"

It was a thing to look at. The three children close together, and two of them relying solely on the third, and the third so young and yet with an air of age and steadiness that sat so strangely on the childish figure.

"Charley, Charley!" said my Guardian. "How old are you?"

"Over thirteen, sir," replied the child.

"O! What a great age," said my Guardian. "What a great age, Charley!"

I can not describe the tenderness with which he spoke to her; half playfully, yet all the more compassionately and mournfully.

"And do you live alone here with these babies, Charley?" said my Guardian.

"Yes, sir," returned the child, looking up into his face with perfect confidence, "since father died."

"And how do you live, Charley? O! Charley," said my Guardian, turning his face away for a moment, "how do you live?"

"Since father died, sir, I've gone out to work. I'm out washing to-day."

"God help you, Charley!" said my Guardian. "You're not tall enough to reach the tub!"

"In pattens I am, sir," she said quickly. "I've got a high pair as belonged to mother."

"And when did mother die? Poor mother!"

"Mother died, just after Emma was born," said the child, glancing at the face upon her bosom. "Then, father said I was to be as good a mother to her as I could. And so I tried. And so I worked at home, and did cleaning and nursing and washing, for a long time before I began to go out. And that's how I know how; don't you see, sir?"

"And do you often go out?"

"As often as I can," said Charley, opening her eyes, and smiling, "because of earning sixpences and shillings!"

"And do you always lock the babies up when you go out?"

"To keep 'em safe, sir, don't you see?" said Charley. "Mrs. Blinder comes up now and then, and Mr. Gridley comes up sometimes, and perhaps I can run in sometimes, and they can play, you know, and Tom ain't afraid of being locked up, are you, Tom?"

"No-o!" said Tom, stoutly.

"When it comes on dark, the lamps are lighted down in the court, and they show up here quite bright—almost quite bright. Don't they, Tom?"

"Yes, Charley," said Tom, "almost quite bright."

"Then he's as good as gold," said the little creature—O! in such a motherly, womanly way! "And when Emma's tired, he puts her to bed. And when he's tired, he goes to bed himself. And when I come home and light the candle, and has a bit of supper, he sits up again and has it with me. Don't you, Tom?"

"O yes, Charley!" said Tom. "That I do!" And either in this glimpse of the great pleasure of his life, or in gratitude and love for Charley, who was all in all to him, he laid his face among the scanty folds of her frock, and passed from laughing into crying.

It was the first time since our entry, that a tear had been shed among these children. The little orphan girl had spoken of their father, and their mother, as if all that sorrow were subdued by the necessity of taking courage, and by her childish importance in being able to work, and by her bustling busy way. But, now, when Tom cried, although she sat quite tranquil, looking quietly at us, and did not by any movement disturb a hair of the head of either of her little charges, I saw two silent tears fall down her face.

I stood at the window with Ada, pretending to look at the housetops, and the blackened stacks of chimneys, and the poor plants, and the birds in little cages belonging to the neighbors, when I found that Mrs. Blinder, from the shop below, had come in (perhaps it had taken her all this time to get up-stairs) and was talking to my Guardian.

"It's not much to forgive 'em the rent, sir," she said: "who could take it from them!"

"Well, well!" said my Guardian to us two. "It is enough that the time will come when this good woman will find that it was much, and that forasmuch as she did it unto the least of these—! This child," he added, after a few moments, "could she possibly continue this?"

"Really, sir, I think she might," said Mrs. Blinder, getting her heavy breath by painful degrees. "She's as handy as it's possible to be. Bless you, sir, the way she tended them two children, after the mother died, was the talk of the yard! And it was a wonder to see her with him after he was took ill, it really was! 'Mrs. Blinder,' he said to me the very last he spoke—he was lying there—'Mrs. Blinder, whatever my calling may have been, I see a Angel sitting in this room last night along with my child, and I trust her to Our Father!'"

"He had no other calling?" said my Guardian.

"No, sir," returned Mrs. Blinder, "he was nothing but a follerer. When he first came to lodge here, I didn't know what he was, and I confess that when I found out I gave him notice. It wasn't liked in the yard. It wasn't approved by the other lodgers. It is not a genteel calling," said Mrs. Blinder, "and most people do object to it. Mr. Gridley objected to it, very strong; and he is a good lodger, though his temper has been hard tried."

"So you gave him notice?" said my Guardian.

"So I gave him notice," said Mrs. Blinder. "But really when the time came, and I knew no other ill of him, I was in doubts. He was punctual and diligent; he did what he had to do, sir," said Mrs. Blinder, unconsciously fixing Mr. Skimpole with her eye; "and it's something, in this world, even to do that."

"So you kept him, after all?"

"Why, I said that if he could arrange with Mr. Gridley, I could arrange it with the other lodgers, and should not so much mind its being liked or disliked in the yard. Mr. Gridley gave his consent gruff—but gave it. He was always gruff with him, but he has been kind to the children since. A person is never known till a person is proved."

"Have many people been kind to the children?" asked Mr. Jarndyce.

"Upon the whole, not so bad, sir," said Mrs. Blinder, "but, certainly not so many as would have been, if their father's calling had been different. Mr. Coavins gave a guinea, and the follerers made up a little purse. Some neighbors in the yard, that had always joked and tapped their shoulders when he went by, came forward with a little subscription, and—in general—not so bad. Similarly with Charlotte. Some people won't employ her because she was a follerer's child; some people that do employ her, cast it at her; some make a merit of having her to work for them, with that and all her drawbacks upon her: and perhaps pay her less and put upon her more. But she's patienter than others would be, and is clever too, and always willing, up to the full mark of her strength and over. So I should say, in general, not so bad sir, but might be better."

Mrs. Blinder sat down to give herself a more favorable opportunity of recovering her breath, exhausted anew by so much talking before it was fully restored. Mr. Jarndyce was turning to speak to us, when his attention was attracted by the abrupt entrance into the room of the Mr. Gridley who had been mentioned, and whom we had seen on our way up.

"I don't know what you may be doing here, ladies and gentlemen," he said, as if he resented our presence, "but you'll excuse my coming in. I don't come in, to stare about me. Well, Charley! Well, Tom! Well, little one! How is it with us all to-day?"

He bent over the group, in a caressing way, and clearly was regarded as a friend by the children, though his face retained its stern character, and his manner to us was as rude as it could be. My Guardian noticed it, and respected it.

"No one, surely, would come here to stare about him," he said mildly.

"May be so, sir, may be so," returned the other, taking Tom upon his knee, and waving him off impatiently. "I don't want to argue with ladies and gentlemen. I have had enough of arguing, to last one man his life."

"You have sufficient reason, I dare say," said Mr. Jarndyce, "for being chafed and irritated—"

"There again!" exclaimed the man, becoming violently angry. "I am of a quarrelsome temper. I am irascible. I am not polite!"

"Not very, I think."

"Sir," said Gridley, putting down the child, and going up to him as if he mean to strike him, "Do you know any thing of Courts of Equity?"

"Perhaps I do, to my sorrow."

"To your sorrow?" said the man, pausing in his wrath. "If so, I beg your pardon. I am not polite, I know. I beg your pardon! Sir," with renewed violence, "I have been dragged for five-and-twenty years over burning iron, and I have lost the habit of treading upon velvet. Go into the Court of Chancery yonder, and ask what is one of the standing jokes that brighten up their business sometimes, and they will tell you that the best joke they have, is the man from Shropshire. I," he said, beating one hand on the other passionately, "am the man from Shropshire."

"I believe, I and my family have also had the honor of furnishing some entertainment in the same grave place," said my Guardian, composedly. "You may have heard my name—Jarndyce."

"Mr. Jarndyce," said Gridley, with a rough sort of salutation, "you bear your wrongs more quietly than I can bear mine. More than that, I tell you—and I tell this gentleman, and these young ladies, if they are friends of yours—that if I took my wrongs in any other way, I should be driven mad! It is only by resenting them, and by revenging them in my mind, and by angrily demanding the justice I never get, that I am able to keep my wits together. It is only that!" he said, speaking in a homely, rustic way, and with great vehemence. "You may tell me that I over-excite myself. I answer that it's in my nature to do it, under wrong, and I must do it. There's nothing between doing it, and sinking into the smiling state of the poor little mad woman that haunts the Court. If I was once to sit down under it, I should become imbecile."

The passion and heat in which he was, and the manner in which his face worked, and the violent gestures with which he accompanied what he said, were most painful to see.

"Mr. Jarndyce," he said, "consider my case. As true as there is a Heaven above us, this is my case. I am one of two brothers. My father (a farmer) made a will, and left his farm and stock, and so forth, to my mother, for her life. After my mother's death, all was to come to me, except a legacy of three hundred pounds that I was then to pay my brother. My mother died. My brother, some time afterward, claimed his legacy. I, and some of my relations, said that he had had a part of it already, in board and lodging, and some other things. Now, mind! That was the question, and nothing else. No one disputed the will! no one disputed any thing but whether part of that three hundred pounds had been already paid or not. To settle that question, my brother filing a bill, I was obliged to go into this accursed Chancery; I was forced there, because the law forced me, and would let me go nowhere else. Seventeen people were made defendants to that simple suit! It first came on, after two years. It was then stopped for another two years, while the Master (may his head rot off!) inquired whether I was my father's son—about which, there was no dispute at all with any mortal creature. He then found out, that there were not defendants enough—remember, there were only seventeen as yet!—but, that we must have another who had been left out; and must begin all over again. The costs at that time—before the thing was begun!—were three times the legacy. My brother would have given up the legacy, and joyful, to escape more costs. My whole estate, left to me in that will of my father's, has gone in costs. The suit still undecided, has fallen into rack, and ruin, and despair, with every thing else—and here I stand this day! Now, Mr. Jarndyce, in your suit there are thousands and thousands involved where in mine there are hundreds. Is mine less hard to bear, or is it harder to bear, when my whole living was in it, and has been thus shamefully sucked away?"

Mr. Jarndyce said that he condoled with him with all his heart, and that he set up no monopoly, himself, in being unjustly treated by this monstrous system.

"There again!" said Mr. Gridley, with no diminution of his rage. "The system! I am told, on all hands, it's the system. I mustn't look to individuals. It's the system. I mustn't go into Court, and say, 'My Lord, I beg to know this from you—is this right or wrong? Have you the face to tell me I have received justice, and therefore am dismissed?' My Lord knows nothing of it. He sits there to administer the system. I mustn't go to Mr. Tulkinghorn, the solicitor in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and say to him when he makes me furious, by being so cool and satisfied—as they all do; for I know they gain by it while I lose, don't I?—I mustn't say to him, I will have something out of some one for my ruin, by fair means or foul! He is not responsible. It's the system. But if I do no violence to any of them, here—I may! I don't know what may happen if I am carried beyond myself at last!—I will accuse the individual workers of that system against me, face to face, before the great eternal bar!"

His passion was fearful. I could not have believed in such rage without seeing it.

"I have done!" he said, sitting down and wiping his face. "Mr. Jarndyce, I have done! I am violent, I know. I ought to know it. I have been in prison for contempt of Court. I have been in prison for threatening the solicitor. I have been in this trouble, and that trouble, and shall be again. I am the man from Shropshire, and I sometimes go beyond amusing them—though they have found it amusing, too, to see me committed into custody, and brought up in custody, and all that. It would be better for me, they tell me, if I restrained myself. I tell them, that if I did restrain myself, I should become imbecile. I was a good-enough-tempered man once, I believe. People in my part of the country, say, they remember me so; but, now, I must have this vent under my sense of injury, or nothing could hold my wits together. 'It would be far better for you, Mr. Gridley,' the Lord Chancellor told me last week, 'not to waste your time here, and to stay, usefully employed, down in Shropshire.' 'My Lord, my Lord, I know it would,' said I to him, 'and it would have been far better for me never to have heard the name of your high office; but, unhappily for me, I can't undo the past, and the past drives me here!'—Besides," he added, breaking fiercely out, "I'll shame them. To the last, I'll show myself in that court to its shame. If I knew when I was going to die, and could be carried there, and had a voice to speak with, I would die there, saying, 'You have brought me here, and sent me from here, many and many a time. Now send me out, feet foremost!'"

His countenance had, perhaps for years, become so set in its contentious expression that it did not soften, even now when he was quiet.

"I came to take these babies down to my room for an hour," he said, going to them again, "and let them play about. I didn't mean to say all this, but it don't much signify. You're not afraid of me, Tom; are you?"

"No!" said Tom. "You ain't angry with me."

"You are right, my child. You're going back, Charley? Ay? Come then, little one!" He took the youngest child on his arm, where she was willing enough to be carried. "I shouldn't wonder if we found a gingerbread soldier down-stairs. Let's go and look for him!"

He made his former rough salutation, which was not deficient in a certain respect, to Mr. Jarndyce; and bowing slightly to us, went down-stairs to his room.

Upon that, Mr. Skimpole began to talk, for the first time since our arrival, in his usual gay strain. He said, Well, it was really very pleasant to see how things lazily adapted themselves to purposes. Here was this Mr. Gridley, a man of a robust will, and surprising energy—intellectually speaking, a sort of inharmonious black-smith—and he could easily imagine that there Gridley was, years ago, wandering about in life for something to expend his superfluous combativeness upon—a sort of Young Love among the thorns—when the Court of Chancery came in his way, and accommodated him with the exact thing he wanted. There they were, matched ever afterward! Otherwise he might have been a great general, blowing up all sorts of towns, or he might have been a great politician, dealing in all sorts of parliamentary rhetoric; but, as it was, he and the Court of Chancery had fallen upon each other in the pleasantest way, and nobody was much the worse, and Gridley was, so to speak, from that hour provided for. Then look at Coavinses! How delightfully poor Coavinses (father of these charming children) illustrated the same principle! He, Mr. Skimpole, himself, had sometimes repined at the existence of Coavinses. He had found Coavinses in his way. He could have dispensed with Coavinses. There had been times, when, if he had been a Sultan, and his Grand Vizier had said one morning, "What does the Commander of the Faithful require at the hands of his slave?" he might have even gone so far as to reply, "The head of Coavinses!" But what turned out to be the case? That, all that time, he had been giving employment to a most deserving man; that he had been a benefactor to Coavinses; that he had actually been enabling Coavinses to bring up these charming children in this agreeable way, developing these social virtues! Insomuch that his heart had just now swelled, and the tears had come into his eyes, when he had looked round the room, and thought, "I was the great patron of Coavinses, and his little comforts were my work!"

There was something so captivating in his light way of touching these fantastic strings, and he was such a mirthful child by the side of the graver childhood we had seen, that he made my Guardian smile even as he turned toward us from a little private talk with Mrs. Blinder. We kissed Charley, and took her down stairs with us, and stopped outside the house to see her run away to her work. I don't know where she was going, but we saw her run, such a little, little creature, in her womanly bonnet and apron, through a covered way at the bottom of the court; and melt into the city's strife and sound, like a dew-drop in an ocean.

---

CHAPTER XVI.—Tom-all-alone's.

My Lady Dedlock is restless, very restless. The astonished fashionable intelligence hardly knows where to have her. To-day, she is at Chesney Wold; yesterday, she was at her house in town; to-morrow, she may be abroad, for any thing the fashionable intelligence can with confidence predict. Even Sir Leicester's gallantry has some trouble to keep pace with her. It would have more, but that his other faithful ally, for better and for worse—the gout—darts into the old oak bed-chamber at Chesney Wold, and grips him by both legs.

Sir Leicester receives the gout as a troublesome demon, but still a demon of the patrician order. All the Dedlocks, in the direct male line, through a course of time during and beyond which the memory of man goeth not to the contrary, have had the gout. It can be proved, sir. Other men's fathers may have died of the rheumatism, or may have taken base contagion from the tainted blood of the sick vulgar; but, the Dedlock family have communicated something exclusive, even to the leveling process of dying, by dying of their own family gout. It has come down, through the illustrious line, like the plate, or the pictures, or the place in Lincolnshire. It is among their dignities. Sir Leicester is, perhaps, not wholly without an impression, though he has never resolved it into words, that the angel of death in the discharge of his necessary duties may observe to the shades of the aristocracy, "My lords and gentlemen, I have the honor to present to you another Dedlock, certified to have arrived per the family gout."

Hence, Sir Leicester yields up his family legs to the family disorder, as if he held his name and fortune on that feudal tenure. He feels, that for a Dedlock to be laid upon his back and spasmodically twitched and stabbed in his extremities, is a liberty taken somewhere; but, he thinks, "We have all yielded to this; it belongs to us; it has, for some hundreds of years, been understood that we are not to make the vaults in the park interesting on more ignoble terms; and I submit myself to the compromise."

And a goodly show he makes, lying in a flush of crimson and gold, in the midst of the great drawing-room, before his favorite picture of my Lady, with broad strips of sunlight shining in, down the long perspective, through the long line of windows, and alternating with soft reliefs of shadow. Outside, the stately oaks, rooted for ages in the green ground which has never known plowshare, but was still a Chase when kings rode to battle with sword and shield, and rode a-hunting with bow and arrow; bear witness to his greatness. Inside, his forefathers, looking on him from the walls, say, "Each of us was a passing reality here, and left this colored shadow of himself, and melted into remembrance as dreamy as the distant voices of the rooks now lulling you to rest;" and bear their testimony to his greatness too. And he is very great, this day. And woe to Boythorn, or other daring wight, who shall presumptuously contest an inch with him!

My Lady is at present represented, near Sir Leicester, by her portrait. She has flitted away to town, with no intention of remaining there, and will soon flit hither again, to the confusion of the fashionable intelligence. The house in town is not prepared for her reception. It is muffled and dreary. Only one Mercury in powder, gapes disconsolate at the hall-window; and he mentioned last night to another Mercury of his acquaintance, also accustomed to good society, that if that sort of thing was to last—which it couldn't, for a man of his spirits couldn't bear it, and a man of his figure couldn't be expected to bear it—there would be no resource for him, upon his honor, but to cut his throat!

What connection can there be between the place in Lincolnshire, the house in town, the Mercury in powder, and the whereabout of Jo the outlaw with the broom, who had that distant ray of light upon him when he swept the churchyard-step? What connection can there have been between many people in the innumerable histories of this world, who, from opposite sides of great gulfs, have, nevertheless, been very curiously brought together!

Jo sweeps his crossing all day long, unconscious of the link, if any link there be. He sums up his mental condition, when asked a question, by replying that he "don't know nothink." He knows that it's hard to keep the mud off the crossing in dirty weather, and harder still to live by doing it. Nobody taught him, even that much; he found it out.

Jo lives—that is to say, Jo has not yet died—in a ruinous place, known to the like of him by the name of Tom-all-alone's. It is a black, dilapidated street, avoided by all decent people; where the crazy houses were seized upon, when their decay was far advanced, by some bold vagrants, who, after establishing their own possession, took to letting them out in lodgings. Now these tumbling tenements contain, by night, a swarm of misery. As, on the ruined human wretch, vermin parasites appear, so, these ruined shelters have bred a crowd of foul existence, that crawls in and out of gaps in walls and boards; and coils itself to sleep, in maggot numbers, where the rain drips in; and comes and goes, fetching and carrying fever, and sowing more evil in its every footprint than Lord Coodle, and Sir Thomas Doodle, and the Duke of Foodle, and all the fine gentlemen in office, down to Zoodle, shall set right in five hundred years—though born expressly to do it.

Twice, lately, there has been a crash and a cloud of dust, like the springing of a mine, in Tom-all-alone's; and, each time, a house has fallen. These accidents have made a paragraph in the newspapers, and have filled a bed or two in the nearest hospital. The gaps remain, and there are not unpopular lodgings among the rubbish. As several more houses are nearly ready to go, the next crash in Tom-all-alone's may be expected to be a good one.

This desirable property is in Chancery, of course. It would be an insult to the discernment of any man with half an eye, to tell him so. Whether "Tom" is the popular representative of the original plaintiff or defendant in Jarndyce and Jarndyce; or, whether Tom lived here when the suit had laid the street waste, all alone, until other settlers came to join him, or, whether the traditional title is a comprehensive name for a retreat cut off from honest company and put out of the pale of hope; perhaps nobody knows. Certainly, Jo don't know.

"For I don't," says Jo, "I don't know nothink."

It must be a strange state to be like Jo! To shuffle through the streets, unfamiliar with the shapes, and in utter darkness as to the meaning, of those mysterious symbols, so abundant over the shops, and at the corners of streets, and on the doors, and in the windows! To see people read, and to see people write, and to see the postmen deliver letters, and not to have the least idea of all that language—to be, to every scrap of it, stone blind and dumb! It must be very puzzling to see the good company going to the churches on Sundays, with their books in their hands, and to think (for perhaps Jo does think, at odd times) what does it all mean, and if it means any thing to any body, how comes it that it means nothing to me? To be hustled, and jostled and moved on; and really to feel that it would appear to be perfectly true that I have no business, here, or there, or any where; and yet to be perplexed by the consideration that I am here somehow too, and every body overlooked me until I became the creature that I am! It must be a strange state, not merely to be told that I am scarcely human (as in the case of my offering myself for a witness), but to feel it of my own knowledge all my life! To see the horses, dogs, and cattle, go by me, and to know that in ignorance I belong to them, and not to the superior beings in my shape, whose delicacy I offend! Jo's ideas of a Criminal Trial, or a Judge, or a Bishop, or a Government, or that inestimable jewel to him (if he only knew it) the Constitution, should be strange! His whole material and immaterial life is wonderfully strange; his death, the strangest thing of all.

Jo comes out of Tom-all-alone's, meeting the tardy morning which is always late in getting down there, and munches his dirty bit of bread as he comes along. His way lying through many streets, and the houses not yet being open, he sits down to breakfast on the door-step of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, and gives it a brush when he has finished, as an acknowledgment of the accommodation. He admires the size of the edifice, and wonders what it's all about. He has no idea, poor wretch, of the spiritual destitution of a coral reef in the Pacific, or what it costs to look up the precious souls among the cocoa-nuts and bread-fruit.

He goes to his crossing, and begins to lay it out for the day. The town awakes; the great tee-totum is set up for its daily spin and whirl; all that unaccountable reading and writing, which has been suspended for a few hours, recommences. Jo, and the other lower animals, get on in the unintelligible mess as they can. It is market-day. The blinded oxen, over-goaded, over-driven, never guided, run into wrong places and are beaten out; and plunge, red-eyed and foaming, at stone walls; and often sorely hurt the innocent, and often sorely hurt themselves. Very like Jo and his order; very, very like!

A band of music comes and plays. Jo listens to it. So does a dog—a drover's dog, waiting for his master outside a butcher's shop, and evidently thinking about those sheep he has had upon his mind for some hours, and is happily rid of. He seems perplexed respecting three or four; can't remember where he left them; looks up and down the street, as half expecting to see them astray; suddenly pricks up his ears and remembers all about it. A thoroughly vagabond dog, accustomed to low company and public-houses; a terrific dog to sheep; ready at a whistle to scamper over their backs, and tear out mouthfuls of their wool; but an educated, improved, developed dog, who has been taught his duties and knows how to discharge them. He and Jo listen to the music, probably with much the same amount of animal satisfaction; likewise, as to awakened association, aspiration or regret, melancholy or joyful reference to things beyond the senses, they are probably upon a par. But, otherwise, how far above the human listener is the brute!

Turn that dog's descendants wild, like Jo, and in a very few years they will so degenerate that they will lose even their bark—but not their bite.

The day changes as it wears itself away, and becomes dark and drizzly. Jo fights it out, at his crossing, among the mud and wheels, the horses, whips, and umbrellas, and gets but a scanty sum to pay for the unsavory shelter of Tom-all-alone's. Twilight comes on; gas begins to start up in the shops; the lamp-lighter, with his ladder, runs along the margin of the pavement. A wretched evening is beginning to close in.

In his chambers, Mr. Tulkinghorn sits meditating an application to the nearest magistrate to-morrow morning for a warrant. Gridley, a disappointed suitor, has been here to-day, and has been alarming. We are not to be put in bodily fear, and that ill-conditioned fellow shall be held to bail again. From the ceiling, foreshortened allegory, in the person of one impossible Roman upside down, points with the arm of Samson (out of joint, and an odd one) obtrusively toward the window. Why should Mr. Tulkinghorn, for such no reason, look out of window? Is the hand not always pointing there? So he does not look out of window.

And if he did, what would it be to see a woman going by? There are women enough in the world, Mr. Tulkinghorn thinks—too many; they are at the bottom of all that goes wrong in it though, for the matter of that, they create business for lawyers. What would it be to see a woman going by, even though she were going secretly? They are all secret. Mr. Tulkinghorn knows that, very well.

But they are not all like the woman who now leaves him and his house behind; between whose plain dress, and her refined manner, there is something exceedingly inconsistent. She should be an upper servant by her attire, yet, in her air and step, though both are hurried and assumed—as far as she can assume in the muddy streets, which she treads with an unaccustomed foot—she is a lady. Her face is vailed, and still she sufficiently betrays herself to make more than one of those who pass her look round sharply.

She never turns her head. Lady or servant, she has a purpose in her, and can follow it. She never turns her head, until she comes to the crossing where Jo plies with his broom. He crosses with her, and begs. Still, she does not turn her head until she has landed on the other side. Then, she slightly beckons to him, and says, "Come here!"

Jo follows her, a pace or two, into a quiet court.

"Are you the boy I have read of in the papers?" she asks, behind her vail.

"I don't know," says Jo, staring moodily at the vail, "nothink about no papers. I don't know nothink about nothink at all."

"Were you examined at an Inquest?"

"I don't know nothink about no—where I was took by the beadle, do you mean?" says Jo. "Was the boy's name at the Inkwhich, Jo?"

"Yes."

"That's me!" says Jo.

"Come farther up."

"You mean about the man?" says Jo, following. "Him as was dead?"

"Hush! Speak in a whisper! Yes. Did he look, when he was living, so very ill and poor!"

"O jist!" says Jo.

"Did he look like—not like you?" says the woman with abhorrence.

"O not so bad as me," says Jo. "I'm a reg'lar one, I am! You didn't know him, did you?"

"How dare you ask me if I knew him?"

"No offense, my lady," says Jo, with much humility; for even he has got at the suspicion of her being a lady.

"I am not a lady. I am a servant."

"You are a jolly servant!" says Jo; without the least idea of saying any thing offensive; merely as a tribute of admiration.

"Listen and be silent. Don't talk to me, and stand farther from me! Can you show me all those places that were spoken of in the account I read? The place he wrote for, the place he died at, the place where you were taken to, and the place where he was buried? Do you know the place where he was buried?"

Jo answers with a nod; having also nodded as each other place was mentioned.

"Go before me, and show me all those dreadful places. Stop opposite to each, and don't speak to me unless I speak to you. Don't look back. Do what I want, and I will pay you well."

Jo attends closely while the words are being spoken; tells them off on his broom-handle, finding them rather hard; pauses to consider their meaning; considers it satisfactory, and nods his ragged head.

"I am fly," says Jo. "But fen larks, you know! Stow hooking it!"

"What does the horrible creature mean?" exclaims the servant, recoiling from him.

"Stow cutting away, you know!" says Jo.

"I don't understand you. Go on before! I will give you more money than you ever had in your life."

Jo screws up his mouth into a whistle, gives his ragged head a rub, takes his broom under his arm, and leads the way; passing deftly, with his bare feet, over the hard stones, and through the mud and mire.

Cook's Court. Jo stops. A pause.

"Who lives here?"

"Him wot give him his writing, and give me half a bull," says Jo in a whisper, without looking over his shoulder.

"Go on to the next."

Krook's house. Jo stops again. A longer pause.

"Who lives here!"

"He lived here," Jo answers as before.

After a silence, he is asked "In which room?"

"In the back room up there. You can see the winder from this corner. Up there! That's where I see him stritched out. This is the public ouse where I was took to."

"Go on to the next!"

It is a longer walk to the next; but, Jo relieved of his first suspicions, sticks to the terms imposed upon him, and does not look round. By many devious ways, reeking with offense of many kinds, they come to the little tunnel of a court, and to the gas-lamp (lighted now), and to the iron gate.

"He was put there," says Jo, holding to the bars and looking in.

"Where? O, what a scene of horror!"

"There!" says Jo, pointing. "Over yinder. Among them piles of bones, and close to that there kitchin winder! They put him very nigh the top. They was obliged to stamp upon it to git it in. I could unkiver it for you, with my broom, if the gate was open. That's why they locks it, I s'pose," giving it a shake. "It's always locked. Look at the rat!" cries Jo, excited. "Hi! Look! There he goes! Ho! Into the ground!"

The servant shrinks into a corner—into a corner of that hideous archway, with its deadly stains contaminating her dress; and putting out her two hands, and passionately telling him to keep away from her, for he is loathsome to her, so remains for some moments. Jo stands staring, and is still staring when she recovers herself.

CONSECRATED GROUND.

"Is this place of abomination, consecrated ground?"

"I don't know nothink of consequential ground," says Jo, still staring.

"Is it blessed?"

"Which?" says Jo, in the last degree amazed.

"Is it blessed?"

"I'm blest if I know," says Jo, staring more than ever; "but I shouldn't think it warn't. Blest?" repeats Jo, something troubled in his mind. "It an't done it much good if it is. Blest? I should think it was t'othered myself. But I don't know nothink!"

The servant takes as little heed of what he says, as she seems to take of what she has said herself. She draws off her glove, to get some money from her purse. Jo silently notices how white and small her hand is, and what a jolly servant she must be to wear such sparkling rings.

She drops a piece of money in his hand, without touching it, and shuddering as their hands approach. "Now," she adds, "show me the spot again!"

Joe thrusts the handle of his broom between the bars of the gate, and, with his utmost power of elaboration, points it out. At length, looking aside to see if he has made himself intelligible, he finds that he is alone.

His first proceeding is, to hold the piece of money to the gas-light, and to be overpowered at finding that it is yellow—gold. His next, is, to give it a one-sided bite at the edge, as a test of its quality. His next, to put it in his mouth for safety, and to sweep the step and passage with great care. His job done, he sets off for Tom-all-alone's; stopping in the light of innumerable gas-lamps to produce the piece of gold, and give it another one-sided bite, as a re-assurance of its being genuine.

The Mercury in powder is in no want of society to-night, for my Lady goes to a grand dinner and three or four balls. Sir Leicester is fidgety, down at Chesney Wold, with no better company than the gout; he complains to Mrs. Rouncewell that the rain makes such a monotonous pattering on the terrace, that he can't read the paper, even by the fireside in his own snug dressing-room.

"Sir Leicester would have done better to try the other side of the house, my dear," says Mrs. Rouncewell to Rosa. "His dressing-room is on my Lady's side. And in all these years I never heard the step upon the Ghost's Walk, more distinct than it is to-night!"

(TO BE CONTINUED.)

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MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.[8]

CHAPTER XIII.

We have seen Squire Hazeldean (proud of the contents of his pocket-book, and his knowledge of the mercenary nature of foreign women), set off on his visit to Beatrice di Negra. Randal, thus left musing lone in the crowded streets, revolved with astute complacency the probable results of Mr. Hazeldean's bluff negotiation; and, convincing himself that one of his vistas toward Fortune was becoming more clear and clear, he turned, with the restless activity of some founder of destined cities in a new settlement, to lop the boughs that cumbered and obscured the others. For truly, like a man in a vast Columbian forest, opening entangled space, now with the ready ax, now with the patient train, that kindles the slower fire, this child of civilized life went toiling on against surrounding obstacles, resolute to destroy, but ever scheming to construct. And now Randal has reached Levy's dainty business-room, and is buried deep in discussion how to secure to himself, at the expense of his patron, the representation of Lansmere, and how to complete the contract which shall reannex to his forlorn inheritance some fragments of its ancient wealth.

Meanwhile, Chance fought on his side in the boudoir of May Fair. The Squire had found the Marchesa at home—briefly introduced himself and his business—told her she was mistaken if she had fancied she had taken in a rich heir in his son—that, thank Heaven, he could leave his estates to his plowman, if he so pleased, but that he was willing to do things liberally; and whatever she thought Frank was worth, he was very ready to pay for.

At another time Beatrice would perhaps have laughed at this strange address; or she might, in some prouder moment, have fired up with all a patrician's resentment and a woman's pride; but now her spirit was crushed, her nerves shattered; the sense of her degraded position, of her dependence on her brother, combined with her supreme unhappiness at the loss of those dreams with which Leonard had for a while charmed her wearied waking life—all came upon her. She listened, pale and speechless; and the poor Squire thought he was quietly advancing toward a favorable result, when she suddenly burst into a passion of hysterical tears; and just at that moment Frank himself entered the room. At the sight of his father, of Beatrice's grief, his sense of filial duty gave way. He was maddened by irritation—by the insult offered to the woman he loved, which a few trembling words from her explained to him; maddened yet more by the fear that the insult had lost her to him—warm words ensued between son and father, to close with the peremptory command and vehement threat of the last.

"Come away this instant, sir! Come with me, or before the day is over I strike you out of my will!"

The son's answer was not to his father; he threw himself at Beatrice's feet.

"Forgive him—forgive us both—"

"What! you prefer that stranger to me—to the inheritance of Hazeldean!" cried the Squire, stamping his foot.

"Leave your estates to whom you will; all that I care for in life is here!"

The Squire stood still a moment or so, gazing on his son, with a strange bewildered marvel at the strength of that mystic passion, which none not laboring under its fearful charm can comprehend, which creates the sudden idol that no reason justifies, and sacrifices to its fatal shrine alike the Past and the Future. Not trusting himself to speak, the father drew his hand across his eyes, and dashed away the bitter tear that sprang from a swelling indignant heart; then he uttered an inarticulate sound, and, finding his voice gone, moved away to the door, and left the house.

He walked through the streets, bearing his head very erect, as a proud man does when deeply wounded, and striving to shake off some affection that he deems a weakness; and his trembling, nervous fingers fumbled at the button on his coat, trying to tighten the garment across his chest, as if to confirm a resolution that still sought to struggle out of the revolting heart.

Thus he went on, and the reader, perhaps, will wonder whither; and the wonder may not lessen when he finds the Squire come to a dead pause in Grosvenor Square, and at the portico of his "distant brother's" stately house.

At the Squire's brief inquiry whether Mr. Egerton was at home, the porter summoned the groom of the chambers; and the groom of the chambers, seeing a stranger, doubted whether his master was not engaged, but would take in the stranger's card and see.

"Ay, ay," muttered the Squire, "this is true relationship—my child prefers a stranger to me. Why should I complain that I am a stranger in a brother's house. Sir," added the Squire aloud, and very meekly—"Sir, please to say to your master that I am William Hazeldean."

The servant bowed low, and without another word conducted the visitor into the statesman's library, and announcing Mr. Hazeldean, closed the door.

Audley was seated at his desk, the grim iron boxes still at his feet, but they were now closed and locked. And the ex-minister was no longer looking over official documents; letters spread open before him, of far different nature; in his hand there lay a long lock of fair silken hair, on which his eyes were fixed sadly and intently. He started at the sound of his visitor's name, and the tread of the Squire's stalwart footstep; and mechanically thrust into his bosom the relic of younger and warmer years, keeping his hand to his heart, which beat loud with disease, under the light pressure of that golden hair.

The two brothers stood on the great man's lonely hearth, facing each other in silence, and noting unconsciously the change made in each during the long years in which they had never met.

The Squire, with his portly size, his hardy, sun-burnt cheeks, the partial baldness of his unfurrowed open forehead, looked his full age—deep into middle life. Unmistakably he seemed the paterfamilias—the husband and the father—the man of social domestic ties. But about Audley (really some few years junior to the Squire), despite the lines of care on his handsome face, there still lingered the grace of youth. Men of cities retain youth longer than those of the country—a remark which Buffon has not failed to make and to account for. Neither did Egerton betray the air of the married man; for ineffable solitariness seemed stamped upon the man, whose private life had long been so stern a solitude. No ray from the focus of Home played round that reserved, unjoyous, melancholy brow. In a word, Audley looked still the man for whom some young female heart might fondly sigh; and not the less because of the cold eye and compressed lip, which challenged interest even while seeming to repel it.

Audley was the first to speak, and to put forth the right hand, which he stole slowly from its place at his breast, on which the lock of hair still stirred to and fro at the heave of the laboring heart. "William," said he, with his rich, deep voice, "this is kind. You are come to see me, now that men say I am fallen. The minister you censured is no more; and you see again the brother."

The Squire was softened at once by this address. He shook heartily the hand tendered to him; and then, turning away his head, with an honest conviction that Audley ascribed to him a credit which he did not deserve, he said, "No, no, Audley; I am more selfish than you think me. I have come—I have come to ask your advice—no, not exactly that—your opinion. But you are busy—?"

"Sit down, William. Old days were coming over me when you entered; days earlier still return now—days, too, that leave no shadow when their suns are set."

The proud man seemed to think he had said too much. His practical nature rebuked the poetic sentiment and phrase. He re-collected himself, and added, more coldly, "You would ask my opinion? What on? Some public matter—some Parliamentary bill that may affect your property?"

"Am I such a mean miser as that? Property—property? What does property matter, when a man is struck down at his own hearth? Property, indeed! But you have no child—happy brother!"

"Ay, ay; as you say, I am a happy man; childless! Has your son displeased you? I have heard him spoken of well, too."

"Don't talk of him. Whether his conduct be good or ill is my affair," resumed the poor father with a testy voice—jealous alike of Audley's praise or blame of his rebellious son. Then he rose a moment, and made a strong gulp as if for air; and laying his broad brown hand on his brother's shoulder, said, "Randal Leslie tells me you are wise—a consummate man of the world. No doubt you are so. And Parson Dale tells me that he is sure you have warm feelings—which I take to be a strange thing for one who has lived so long in London, and has no wife and no child—a widower, and a Member of Parliament—for a commercial city, too. Never smile; it is no smiling matter with me. You know a foreign woman, called Negra or Negro—not a blackymoor, though, by any means—at least on the outside of her. Is she such a woman as a plain country gentleman would like his only son to marry—ay or no?"

"No, indeed," answered Audley, gravely, "and I trust your son will commit no action so rash. Shall I see him or her? Speak, my dear William. What would you have me do?"

"Nothing; you have said enough," replied the Squire, gloomily; and his head sank on his breast.

Audley took his hand, and pressed it fraternally. "William," said the statesman, "we have been long estranged; but I do not forget that when we last met, at—at Lord Lansmere's house, and when I took you aside, and said, 'William, if I lose this election, I must resign all chance of public life: my affairs are embarrassed; I may need—I would not accept money from you—I would seek a profession, and you can help me there,' you divined my meaning, and said—'Take orders; the Hazeldean living is just vacant. I will get some one to hold it till you are ordained.' I do not forget that. Would that I had thought earlier of so serene an escape from all that then tormented me. My lot might have been far happier."

The Squire eyed Audley with a surprise that broke forth from his more absorbing emotions. "Happier! Why, all things have prospered with you; and you are rich enough now; and—you shake your head. Brother, is it possible! do you want money? Pooh, not accept money from your mother's son!—stuff." Out came the Squire's pocket-book. Audley put it gently aside.

"Nay," said he, "I have enough for myself; but since you seek and speak with me thus affectionately, I will ask you one favor. Should I die before I can provide for my wife's kinsman, Randal Leslie, as I could wish, will you see to his fortunes, so far as you can, without injury to others—to your own son?"

"My son! He is provided for. He has the Casino estate—much good may it do him. You have touched on the very matter that brought me here. This boy, Randal Leslie, seems a praiseworthy lad, and has Hazeldean blood in his veins. You have taken him up because he is connected with your late wife. Why should not I take him up, too, when his grandmother was a Hazeldean? I wanted to ask you what you meant to do for him; for if you did not mean to provide for him, why I will, as in duty bound. So your request comes at the right time; I think of altering my will. I can put him into the entail, besides a handsome legacy. You are sure he is a good lad—and it will please you too, Audley?"

"But not at the expense of your son. And stay, William—as to this foolish marriage with Madame di Negra, who told you Frank meant to take such a step?"

"He told me himself; but it is no matter. Randal and I both did all we could to dissuade him; and Randal advised me to come to you."

"He has acted generously, then, our kinsman Randal—I am glad to hear it"—said Audley, his brow somewhat clearing. "I have no influence with this lady; but at least, I can counsel her. Do not consider the marriage fixed because a young man desires it. Youth is ever hot and rash."

"Your youth never was," retorted the Squire, bluntly. "You married well enough, I'm sure. I will say one thing for you: you have been, to my taste, a bad politician—beg pardon—but you were always a gentleman. You would never have disgraced your family and married a—"

"Hush!" interrupted Egerton, gently. "Do not make matters worse than they are. Madame di Negra is of high birth in her own country; and if scandal—"

"Scandal!" cried the Squire, shrinking and turning pale. "Are you speaking of the wife of a Hazeldean? At least, she shall never sit by the hearth at which now sits his mother; and whatever I may do for Frank, her children shall not succeed. No mongrel cross-breed shall kennel in English Hazeldean. Much obliged to you, Audley, for your good feeling—glad to have seen you; and harkye, you startled me by that shake of your head, when I spoke of your wealth; and, from what you say about Randal's prospects, I guess that you London gentlemen are not so thrifty as we are. You shall let me speak. I say again, that I have some thousands quite at your service. And though you are not a Hazeldean, still you are my mother's son; and now that I am about to alter my will, I can as well scratch in the name of Egerton as that of Leslie. Cheer up, cheer up; you are younger than I am, and you have no child; so you will live longer than I shall."

"My dear brother," answered Audley, "believe me, I shall never live to want your aid. And as to Leslie, add to the £5000 I mean to give him, an equal sum in your will, and I shall feel that he has received justice."

Observing that the Squire, though he listened attentively, made no ready answer, Audley turned the subject again to Frank; and with the adroitness of a man of the world, backed by cordial sympathy in his brother's distress, he pleaded so well Frank's lame cause, urged so gently the wisdom of patience and delay, and the appeal to filial feeling rather than recourse to paternal threats, that the Squire grew molified in spite of himself, and left his brother's house a much less angry, and less doleful man.

Mr. Hazeldean was still in the square when he came upon Randal himself, who was walking with a dark-whiskered, showy gentleman, toward Egerton's house. Randal and the gentleman exchanged a hasty whisper, and the former exclaimed,

"What, Mr. Hazeldean, have you just left your brother's house? Is it possible?"

"Why, you advised me to go there, and I did. I scarcely knew what I was about. I am very glad I did go. Hang politics! hang the landed interest! what do I care for either now?"

"Foiled with Madame di Negra?" asked Randal, drawing the Squire aside.

"Never speak of her again!" cried the Squire, fiercely. "And as to that ungrateful boy—but I don't mean to behave harshly to him—he shall have money enough to keep her if he likes—keep her from coming to me—keep him, too, from counting on my death, and borrowing post-obits on the Casino—for he'll be doing that next—no, I hope I wrong him there; I have been too good a father for him to count on my death already. After all," continued the Squire, beginning to relax, "as Audley says, the marriage is not yet made; and if the woman has taken him in, he is young, and his heart is warm. Make yourself easy, my boy. I don't forget how kindly you took his part; and before I do any thing rash, I'll at least take advice with his poor mother."

Randal gnawed his pale lip, and a momentary cloud of disappointment passed over his face.

"True, sir," said he, gently; "true, you must not be rash. Indeed, I was thinking of you and poor dear Frank at the very moment I met you. It occurred to me whether we might not make Frank's very embarrassments a reason to induce Madame di Negra to refuse him; and I was on my way to Mr. Egerton, in order to ask his opinion, in company with the gentleman yonder."

"Gentleman yonder? Why should he thrust his long nose into my family affairs? Who the devil is he?"

"Don't ask, sir. Pray let me act."

But the Squire continued to eye askant the dark-whiskered personage thus thrust between himself and his son, and who waited patiently a few yards in the rear, carelessly readjusting the camellia in his button-hole.

"He looks very outlandish. Is he a foreigner, too?" asked the Squire, at last.

"No, not exactly. However, he knows all about Frank's embarrassments; and—"

"Embarrassments! what, the debt he paid for that woman? How did he raise the money?"

"I don't know," answered Randal; "and that is the reason I asked Baron Levy to accompany me to Egerton's, that he might explain in private what I have no reason—"

"Baron Levy!" interrupted the Squire. "Levy, Levy—I have heard of a Levy who has nearly ruined my neighbor, Thornhill—a money-lender. Zounds! is that the man who knows my son's affairs? I'll soon learn, sir."

Randal caught hold of the Squire's arm: "Stop, stop; if you really insist upon learning more about Frank's debts, you must not appeal to Baron Levy directly, and as Frank's father; he will not answer you. But if I present you to him as a mere acquaintance of mine, and turn the conversation, as if carelessly, upon Frank—why, since, in the London world, such matters are never kept secret except from the parents of young men—I have no doubt he will talk out openly."

"Manage it as you will," said the Squire.

Randal took Mr. Hazeldean's arm, and joined Levy—"A friend of mine from the country, Baron." Levy bowed profoundly, and the three walked slowly on.

"By-the-by," said Randal, pressing significantly upon Levy's arm, "my friend has come to town upon the somewhat unpleasant business of settling the debts of another—a young man of fashion—a relation of his own. No one, sir (turning to the Squire), could so ably assist you in such arrangements as could Baron Levy."

Baron (modestly, and with a moralizing air).—"I have some experience in such matters, and I hold it a duty to assist the parents and relations of young men who, from want of reflection, often ruin themselves for life. I hope the young gentleman in question is not in the hands of the Jews?"

Randal.—"Christians are as fond of good interest for their money as ever the Jews can be."

Baron.—"Granted, but they have not always so much money to lend. The first thing, sir (addressing the Squire)—the first thing for you to do is to buy up such of your relation's bills and notes of hand as may be in the market. No doubt we can get them a bargain, unless the young man is heir to some property that may soon be his in the course of nature."

Randal.—"Not soon—heaven forbid! His father is still a young man—a fine healthy man," leaning heavily on Levy's arm; "and as to post-obits—"

Baron.—"Post-obits on sound security cost more to buy up, however healthy the obstructing relative may be."

Randal.—"I should hope that there are not many sons who can calculate, in cold blood, on the death of their fathers."

Baron.—"Ha, ha—he is young, our friend, Randal; eh, sir?"

Randal.—"Well, I am not more scrupulous than others, I dare say: and I have often been pinched hard for money, but I would go barefoot rather than give security upon a father's grave! I can imagine nothing more likely to destroy natural feeling, nor to instill ingratitude and treachery into the whole character, than to press the hand of a parent, and calculate when that hand may be dust—than to sit down with strangers and reduce his life to the measure of an insurance table—than to feel difficulties gathering round one, and mutter in fashionable slang, 'But it will be all well if the governor would but die.' And he who has accustomed himself to the relief of post-obits must gradually harden his mind to all this."

The Squire groaned heavily; and had Randal proceeded another sentence in the same strain, the Squire would have wept outright. "But," continued Randal, altering the tone of his voice, "I think that our young friend of whom we were talking just now, Levy, before this gentleman joined us, has the same opinion as myself on this head. He may accept bills, but he would never sign post-obits."

Baron (who with the apt docility of a managed charger to the touch of a rider's hand, had comprehended and complied with each quick sign of Randal's).—"Pooh! the young fellow we are talking of? Nonsense. He would not be so foolish as to give five times the percentage he otherwise might. Not sign post-obits! Of course he has signed one."

Randal.—"Hist—you mistake, you mistake."

Squire (leaving Randal's arm and seizing Levy's).—"Were you speaking of Frank Hazeldean?"

Baron.—"My dear sir, excuse me; I never mention names before strangers."

Squire.—"Strangers again! Man, I am the boy's father! Speak out, sir," and his hand closed on Levy's arm with the strength of an iron vice.

Baron.—"Gently; you hurt me, sir; but I excuse your feelings. Randal, you are to blame for leading me into this indiscretion; but I beg to assure Mr. Hazeldean, that though his son has been a little extravagant—"

Randal.—"Owing chiefly to the arts of an abandoned woman."

Baron.—"Of an abandoned woman; still he has shown more prudence than you would suppose; and this very post-obit is a proof of it. A simple act of that kind has enabled him to pay off bills that were running on till they would have ruined even the Hazeldean estate; whereas a charge on the reversion of the Casino—"

Squire.—"He has done it then? He has signed a post-obit?"

Randal.—"No, no; Levy must be wrong."

Baron.—"My dear Leslie, a man of Mr. Hazeldean's time of life can not have your romantic boyish notions. He must allow that Frank has acted in this like a lad of sense—very good head for business has my young friend Frank! And the best thing Mr. Hazeldean can do is quietly to buy up the post-obit, and thus he will place his son henceforth in his own power."

Squire.—"Can I see the deed with my own eyes?"

Baron.—"Certainly, or how could you be induced to buy it up? But on one condition; you must not betray me to your son. And, indeed, take my advice, and don't say a word to him on the matter."

Squire.—"Let me see it, let me see it with my own eyes. His mother else will never believe it—nor will I."

Baron.—"I can call on you this evening."

Squire.—"Now—now."

Baron.—"You can spare me, Randal; and you yourself can open to Mr. Egerton the other affair, respecting Lansmere. No time should be lost, lest L'Estrange suggest a candidate."

Randal (whispering).—"Never mind me.—This is more important. (Aloud)—Go with Mr. Hazeldean. My dear kind friend (to the Squire), do not let this vex you so much. After all, it is what nine young men out of ten would do in the same circumstances. And it is best you should know it; you may save Frank from farther ruin, and prevent, perhaps, this very marriage."

"We will see," exclaimed the Squire, hastily. "Now, Mr. Levy, come."

Levy and the Squire walked on not arm-in-arm, but side by side. Randal proceeded to Egerton's house.

"I am glad to see you, Leslie," said the ex-minister. "What is it I have heard? My nephew, Frank Hazeldean, proposes to marry Madame di Negra against his father's consent? How could you suffer him to entertain an idea so wild? And how never confide it to me?"

Randal.—"My dear Mr. Egerton, it is only to-day that I was informed of Frank's engagement. I have already seen him, and expostulated in vain; till then, though I knew your nephew admired Madame di Negra, I could never suppose he harbored a serious intention."

Egerton.—"I must believe you, Randal. I will myself see Madame di Negra, though I have no power, and no right, to dictate to her. I have but little time for all such private business. The dissolution of Parliament is so close at hand."

Randal (looking down.)—"It is on that subject that I wished to speak to you, sir. You think of standing for Lansmere. Well, Baron Levy has suggested to me an idea that I could not, of course, even countenance, till I had spoken to you. It seems that he has some acquaintance with the state of parties in that borough! He is informed that it is not only as easy to bring in two of our side, as to carry one; but that it would make your election still more safe, not to fight single-handed against two opponents; that if canvassing for yourself alone, you could not carry a sufficient number of plumper votes; that split votes would go from you to one or other of the two adversaries; that, in a word, it is necessary to pair you with a colleague. If it really be so, you of course will learn best from your own Committee; but should they concur in the opinion Baron Levy has formed—do I presume too much on your kindness—to deem it possible that you might allow me to be the second candidate on your side? I should not say this, but that Levy told me you had some wish to see me in Parliament, among the supporters of your policy. And what other opportunity can occur? Here the cost of carrying two would be scarcely more than that of carrying one. And Levy says, the party would subscribe for my election; you, of course, would refuse all such aid for your own; and indeed, with your great name, and Lord Lansmere's interest, there can be little beyond the strict legal expenses."

As Randal spoke thus at length, he watched anxiously his patron's reserved, unrevealing countenance.

Egerton (drily.)—"I will consider. You may safely leave in my hands any matter connected with your ambition and advancement. I have before told you I hold it a duty to do all in my power for the kinsman of my late wife—for one whose career I undertook to forward—for one whom honor has compelled to share in my own political reverses."

Here Egerton rang the bell for his hat, and gloves, and walking into the hall, paused at the street door. There beckoning to Randal, he said slowly, "You seem intimate with Baron Levy; I caution you against him—a dangerous acquaintance, first to the purse, next to the honor."

Randal.—"I know it, sir; and am surprised myself at the acquaintance that has grown up between us. Perhaps its cause is in his respect for yourself."

Egerton.—"Tut."

Randal.—"Whatever it be, he contrives to obtain a singular hold over one's mind, even where, as in my case, he has no evident interest to serve. How is this? It puzzles me!"

Egerton.—"For his interest, it is most secured where he suffers it to be least evident; for his hold over the mind, it is easily accounted for. He ever appeals to two temptations, strong with all men—Avarice and Ambition.—Good-day."

Randal.—"Are you going to Madame di Negra's? Shall I not accompany you? Perhaps I may be able to back your own remonstrances."

Egerton.—"No, I shall not require you."

Randal.—"I trust I shall hear the result of your interview? I feel so much interested in it. Poor Frank!"

Audley nodded. "Of course, of course."

---

CHAPTER XIV.

On entering the drawing-room of Madame di Negra, the peculiar charm which the severe Audley Egerton had been ever reputed to possess with women, would have sensibly struck one who had hitherto seen him chiefly in his relations with men in the business-like affairs of life. It was a charm in strong contrast to the ordinary manners of those who are emphatically called "Ladies' men." No artificial smile, no conventional hollow blandness, no frivolous gossip, no varnish either of ungenial gayety or affected grace. The charm was in a simplicity that unbent more into kindness than it did with men. Audley's nature, whatever its faults and defects, was essentially masculine; and it was the sense of masculine power that gave to his voice a music when addressing the gentler sex—a sort of indulgent tenderness that appeared equally void of insincerity and presumption.

Frank had been gone about half-an-hour, and Madame di Negra was scarcely recovered from the agitation into which she had been thrown by the affront from the father and the pleading of the son.

Egerton took her passive hand cordially, and seated himself by her side.

"My dear Marchesa," said he, "are we then likely to be near connections? And can you seriously contemplate marriage with my young nephew, Frank Hazeldean? You turn away. Ah, my fair friend, there are but two inducements to a free woman to sign away her liberty at the altar. I say a free woman, for widows are free, and girls are not. These inducements are, first, worldly position; secondly, love. Which of these motives can urge Madame di Negra to marry Mr. Frank Hazeldean?"

"There are other motives than those you speak of—the need of protection—the sense of solitude—the curse of dependence—gratitude for honorable affection. But you men never know women!"

"I grant that you are right there—we never do; neither do women ever know men. And yet each sex contrives to dupe and to fool the other! Listen to me. I have little acquaintance with my nephew, but I allow he is a handsome young gentleman, with whom a handsome young lady in her teens might fall in love in a ball-room. But you who have known the higher order of our species—you who have received the homage of men, whose thoughts and mind leave the small talk of drawing-room triflers—so poor and bald—you can not look me in the face and say that it is any passion resembling love which you feel for my nephew. And as to position, it is right that I should inform you that if he marry you he will have none. He may risk his inheritance. You will receive no countenance from his parents. You will be poor, but not free. You will not gain the independence you seek for. The sight of a vacant, discontented face in that opposite chair will be worse than solitude. And as to grateful affection," added the man of the world, "it is a polite synonym for tranquil indifference."

"Mr. Egerton," said Beatrice, "people say you are made of bronze. Did you ever feel the want of a home?"

"I answer you frankly," replied the statesman, "if I had not felt it, do you think I should have been, and that I should be to the last, the joyless drudge of public life? Bronze though you call my nature, it would have melted away long since like wax in the fire, if I had sat idly down and dreamed of a Home!"

"But we women," answered Beatrice, with pathos, "have no public life, and we do idly sit down and dream. Oh," she continued, after a short pause, and clasping her hands firmly together, "you think me worldly, grasping, ambitious; how different my fate had been had I known a home!—known one whom I could love and venerate—known one whose smiles would have developed the good that was once within me, and the fear of whose rebuking or sorrowful eye would have corrected what is evil."

"Yet," answered Audley, "nearly all women in the great world have had that choice once in their lives, and nearly all have thrown it away. How few of your rank really think of home when they marry—how few ask to venerate as well as to love—and how many of every rank, when the home has been really gained, have willfully lost its shelter; some in neglectful weariness—some from a momentary doubt, distrust, caprice—a wild fancy—a passionate fit—a trifle—a straw—a dream! True, you women are ever dreamers. Common sense, common earth, is above or below your comprehension."

Both now were silent, Audley first roused himself with a quick, writhing movement. "We two," said he, smiling half sadly, half cynically—"we two must not longer waste time in talking sentiment. We know both too well what life, as it has been made for us by our faults or our misfortunes, truly is. And once again, I entreat you to pause before you yield to the foolish suit of my foolish nephew. Rely on it, you will either command a higher offer for your prudence to accept; or, if you needs must sacrifice rank and fortune, you, with your beauty and your romantic heart, will see one who, at least for a fair holiday season (if human love allows no more), can repay you for the sacrifice. Frank Hazeldean never can."

Beatrice turned away to conceal the tears that rushed to her eyes.

"Think over this well," said Audley, in the softest tone of his mellow voice. "Do you remember that when you first came to England, I told you that neither wedlock nor love had any lures for me. We grew friends upon that rude avowal, and therefore I now speak to you like some sage of old, wise because standing apart and aloof from all the affections and ties that mislead our wisdom. Nothing but real love—(how rare it is; has one human heart in a million ever known it!) nothing but real love can repay us for the loss of freedom—the cares and fears of poverty—the cold pity of the world that we both despise and respect. And all these, and much more, follow the step you would inconsiderately take—an imprudent marriage."

"Audley Egerton," said Beatrice, lifting her dark, moistened eyes, "you grant that real love does compensate for an imprudent marriage. You speak as if you had known such love—you! Can it be possible?"

"Real love—I thought that I knew it once. Looking back with remorse, I should doubt it now but for one curse that only real love, when lost, has the power to leave evermore behind it."

"What is that?"

"A void here," answered Egerton, striking his heart. "Desolation!—Adieu!"

He rose and left the room.

"Is it," murmured Egerton, as he pursued his way through the streets—"is it that, as we approach death, all the first fair feelings of young life come back to us mysteriously? Thus I have heard, or read, that in some country of old, children scattering flowers, preceded a funeral bier."

---

CHAPTER XV.

And so Leonard stood beside his friend's mortal clay, and watched, in the ineffable smile of death, the last gleam which the soul had left there; and so, after a time, he crept back to the adjoining room with a step as noiseless as if he had feared to disturb the dead. Wearied as he was with watching, he had no thought of sleep. He sate himself down by the little table, and leaned his face on his hand, musing sorrowfully. Thus time passed. He heard the clock from below strike the hours. In the house of death the sound of a clock becomes so solemn. The soul that we miss has gone so far beyond the reach of time! A cold, superstitious awe gradually stole over the young man. He shivered, and lifted his eyes with a start, half scornful, half defying. The moon was gone—the gray, comfortless dawn gleamed through the casement, and carried its raw, chilling light through the open doorway, into the death-room. And there, near the extinguished fire, Leonard saw the solitary woman, weeping low, and watching still. He returned to say a word of comfort—she pressed his hand, but waved him away. He understood. She did not wish for other comfort than her quiet relief of tears. Again, he returned to his own chamber, and his eyes this time fell upon the papers which he had hitherto disregarded. What made his heart stand still, and the blood then rush so quickly through his veins? Why did he seize upon those papers with so tremulous a hand—then lay them down—pause, as if to nerve himself—and look so eagerly again? He recognized the handwriting—those fair, clear characters—so peculiar in their woman-like delicacy and grace—the same as in the wild, pathetic poems, the sight of which had made an era in his boyhood. From these pages the image of the mysterious Nora rose once more before him. He felt that he was with a mother. He went back, and closed the door gently, as if with a jealous piety, to exclude each ruder shadow from the world of spirits, and be alone with that mournful ghost. For a thought written in warm, sunny life, and then suddenly rising up to us, when the hand that traced, and the heart that cherished it, are dust, is verily as a ghost. It is a likeness struck off of the fond human being, and surviving it. Far more truthful than bust or portrait, it bids us see the tear flow, and the pulse beat. What ghost can the church-yard yield to us like the writing of the dead?

The bulk of the papers had been once lightly sewn to each other—they had come undone, perhaps in Burley's rude hands; but their order was easily apparent. Leonard soon saw that they formed a kind of journal—not, indeed, a regular diary, nor always relating to the things of the day. There were gaps in time—no attempt at successive narrative. Sometimes, instead of prose, a hasty burst of verse, gushing evidently from the heart—sometimes all narrative was left untold, and yet, as it were, epitomized, by a single burning line—a single exclamation—of woe, or joy! Everywhere you saw records of a nature exquisitely susceptible; and where genius appeared, it was so artless, that you did not call it genius, but emotion. At the outset the writer did not speak of herself in the first person. The MS. opened with descriptions and short dialogues, carried on by persons to whose names only initial letters were assigned, all written in a style of simple, innocent freshness, and breathing of purity and happiness, like a dawn of spring. Two young persons, humbly born—a youth and a girl—the last still in childhood, each chiefly self-taught, are wandering on Sabbath evenings among green dewy fields, near the busy town, in which labor awhile is still. Few words pass between them. You see at once, though the writer does not mean to convey it, how far beyond the scope of her male companion flies the heavenward imagination of the girl. It is he who questions—it is she who answers; and soon there steals upon you, as you read, the conviction that the youth loves the girl, and loves in vain. All in this writing, though terse, is so truthful! Leonard, in the youth, already recognizes the rude, imperfect scholar—the village bard—Mark Fairfield. Then, there is a gap in description—but there are short weighty sentences, which show deepening thought, increasing years, in the writer. And though the innocence remains, the happiness begins to be less vivid on the page.

Now, insensibly, Leonard finds that there is a new phase in the writer's existence. Scenes, no longer of humble work-day rural life, surround her. And a fairer and more dazzling image succeeds to the companion of the Sabbath eves. This image Nora evidently loves to paint—it is akin to her own genius—it captivates her fancy—it is an image that she (inborn artist, and conscious of her art) feels to belong to a brighter and higher school of the Beautiful. And yet the virgin's heart is not awakened—no trace of the heart yet there. The new image thus introduced is one of her own years, perhaps; nay, it may be younger still—for it is a boy that is described, with his profuse fair curls, and eyes new to grief, and confronting the sun as a young eagle's; with veins so full of the wine of life, that they overflow into every joyous whim; with nerves quiveringly alive to the desire of glory; with the frank generous nature rash in its laughing scorn of the world, which it has not tried. Who was this boy, it perplexed Leonard. He feared to guess. Soon, less told than implied, you saw that this companionship, however it chanced, brings fear and pain on the writer. Again (as before), with Mark Fairfield, there is love on the one side and not on the other; with her there is affectionate, almost sisterly, interest, admiration, gratitude—but a something of pride or of terror that keeps back love.

Here Leonard's interest grew intense. Were there touches by which conjecture grew certainty; and he recognized, through the lapse of years, the boy lover in his own generous benefactor?

Fragments of dialogue now began to reveal the suit of an ardent impassioned nature, and the simple wonder and strange alarm of a listener who pitied but could not sympathize. Some great worldly distinction of rank between the two became visible—that distinction seemed to arm the virtue and steel the affections of the lowlier born. Then a few sentences, half blotted out with tears, told of wounded and humbled feelings—some one invested with authority, as if the suitor's parent, had interfered, questioned, reproached, counseled. And it was now evident that the suit was not one that dishonored;—it wooed to flight, but still to marriage.

And now these sentences grew briefer still, as with the decision of a strong resolve. And to these there followed a passage so exquisite, that Leonard wept unconsciously as he read. It was the description of a visit spent at home previous to some sorrowful departure. There rose up the glimpse of a proud and vain, but a tender wistful mother—of a father's fonder but less thoughtful love. And then came a quiet soothing scene between the girl and her first village lover, ending thus—"So she put M's hand into her sister's, and said: 'You loved me through the fancy, love her with the heart,' and left them comprehending each other, and betrothed."

Leonard sighed. He understood now how Mark Fairfield saw in the homely features of his unlettered wife the reflection of the sister's soul and face.

A few words told the final parting—words that were a picture. The long friendless highway, stretching on—on—toward the remorseless city. And the doors of home opening on the desolate thoroughfare—and the old pollard tree beside the threshold, with the ravens wheeling round it and calling to their young. He too had watched that threshold from the same desolate thoroughfare. He too had heard the cry of the ravens. Then came some pages covered with snatches of melancholy verse, or some reflections of dreamy gloom.

The writer was in London, in the house of some highborn patroness—that friendless shadow of a friend which the jargon of society calls "companion." And she was looking on the bright storm of the world as through prison bars. Poor bird, afar from the greenwood, she had need of song—it was her last link with freedom and nature. The patroness seems to share in her apprehensions of the boy suitor, whose wild rash prayers the fugitive had resisted: but to fear lest the suitor should be degraded, not the one whom he pursues—fears an alliance ill-suited to a highborn heir. And this kind of fear stings the writer's pride, and she grows harsh in her judgment of him who thus causes but pain where he proffers love. Then there is a reference to some applicant for her hand, who is pressed upon her choice. And she is told that it is her duty so to choose, and thus deliver a noble family from a dread that endures so long as her hand is free. And of this fear, and of this applicant, there breaks out a petulant yet pathetic scorn. After this, the narrative, to judge by the dates, pauses for days and weeks, as if the writer had grown weary and listless—suddenly to reopen in a new strain, eloquent with hopes, and with fears never known before. The first person was abruptly assumed—it was the living "I" that now breathed and moved along the lines. How was this? The woman was no more a shadow and a secret unknown to herself. She had assumed the intense and vivid sense of individual being. And love spoke loud in the awakened human heart.

A personage not seen till then appeared on the page. And ever afterward this personage was only named as "He," as if the one and sole representative of all the myriads that walk the earth. The first notice of this prominent character on the scene showed the restless, agitated effect produced on the writer's imagination. He was invested with a romance probably not his own. He was described in contrast to the brilliant boy whose suit she had feared, pitied, and now sought to shun—described with a grave and serious, but gentle mein—a voice that imposed respect—an eye and lip that showed collected dignity of will. Alas! the writer betrayed herself, and the charm was in the contrast, not to the character of the earlier lover, but her own. And now, leaving Leonard to explore and guess his way through the gaps and chasms of the narrative, it is time to place before the reader what the narrative alone will not reveal to Leonard.

---

CHAPTER XVI.

Nora Avenel had fled from the boyish love of Harley L'Estrange—recommended by Lady Lansmere to a valetudinarian relative of her own, Lady Jane Horton, as companion. But Lady Lansmere could not believe it possible that the low-born girl could long sustain her generous pride, and reject the ardent suit of one who could offer to her the prospective coronet of a countess. She continually urged upon Lady Jane the necessity of marrying Nora to some one of rank less disproportioned to her own, and empowered the lady to assure any such wooer of a dowry far beyond Nora's station. Lady Jane looked around, and saw in the outskirts of her limited social ring, a young solicitor, a peer's natural son, who was on terms of more than business-like intimacy with the fashionable clients whose distresses made the origin of his wealth. The young man was handsome, well-dressed, and bland. Lady Jane invited him to her house; and, seeing him struck dumb with the rare loveliness of Nora, whispered the hint of the dower. The fashionable solicitor, who afterward ripened into Baron Levy, did not need that hint; for, though then poor, he relied on himself for fortune, and, unlike Randal, he had warm blood in his veins. But Lady Jane's suggestions made him sanguine of success; and when he formally proposed, and was as formally refused, his self-love was bitterly wounded. Vanity in Levy was a powerful passion; and with the vain, hatred is strong, revenge is rankling. Levy retired, concealing his rage; nor did he himself know how vindictive that rage, when it cooled into malignancy, could become, until the arch-fiend Opportunity prompted its indulgence and suggested its design.

Lady Jane was at first very angry with Nora for the rejection of a suitor whom she had presented as eligible. But the pathetic grace of this wonderful girl had crept into her heart, and softened it even against family prejudice; and she gradually owned to herself that Nora was worthy of some one better than Mr. Levy.

Now, Harley had ever believed that Nora returned his love, and that nothing but her own sense of gratitude to his parents—her own instincts of delicacy, made her deaf to his prayers. To do him justice, wild and headstrong as he then was, his suit would have ceased at once had he really deemed it persecution. Nor was his error unnatural; for his conversation, till it had revealed his own heart, could not fail to have dazzled and delighted the child of genius; and her frank eyes would have shown the delight. How, at his age, could he see the distinction between the Poetess and the Woman? The poetess was charmed with rare promise in a soul of which the very errors were the extravagances of richness and beauty. But the woman—no! the woman required some nature not yet undeveloped, and all at turbulent if brilliant strife with its own noble elements—but a nature formed and full grown. Harley was a boy, and Nora was one of those women who must find or fancy an Ideal that commands and almost awes them into love.

Harley discovered, not without difficulty, Nora's new residence. He presented himself at Lady Jane's, and she, with grave rebuke, forbade him the house. He found it impossible to obtain an interview with Nora. He wrote, but he felt sure that his letters never reached her, since they were unanswered. His young heart swelled with rage. He dropped threats, which alarmed all the fears of Lady Lansmere, and even the prudent apprehensions of his friend, Audley Egerton. At the request of the mother, and equally at the wish of the son, Audley consented to visit at Lady Jane's, and make acquaintance with Nora.

"I have such confidence in you," said Lady Lansmere, "that if you once know the girl, your advice will be sure to have weight with her. You will show her how wicked it would be to let Harley break our hearts and degrade his station."

"I have such confidence in you," said young Harley, "that if you once know my Nora, you will no longer side with my mother. You will recognize the nobility which Nature only can create—you will own that Nora is worthy a rank more lofty than mine; and my mother so believes in your wisdom, that if you plead in my cause, you will convince even her."

Audley listened to both with his intelligent, half-incredulous smile; and wholly of the same advice as Lady Lansmere, and sincerely anxious to save Harley from an indiscretion that his own notions led him to regard as fatal, he resolved to examine this boasted pearl, and to find out its flaws. Audley Egerton was then in the prime of his earnest, resolute, ambitious youth. The stateliness of his natural manners had then a suavity and polish which, even in later and busier life, it never wholly lost; since, in spite of the briefer words and the colder looks by which care and powers mark the official man, the Minister had ever enjoyed that personal popularity which the indefinable, external something, that wins and pleases, can alone confer. But he had even then, as ever, that felicitous reserve which Rochefoucault has called the "mystery of the body"—that thin yet guardian vail which reveals but the strong outlines of character, and excites so much of interest by provoking so much of conjecture. To the man who is born with this reserve, which is wholly distinct from shyness, the world gives credit for qualities and talents beyond those that it perceives; and such characters are attractive to others in proportion as these last are gifted with the imagination which loves to divine the unknown.

At the first interview, the impression which this man produced upon Nora Avenel was profound and strange. She had heard of him before as the one whom Harley most loved and looked up to; and she recognized at once in his mien, his aspect, his words, the very tone of his deep tranquil voice, the power to which woman, whatever her intellect, never attains; and to which, therefore, she imputes a nobility not always genuine—viz., the power of deliberate purpose, and self-collected, serene ambition. The effect that Nora produced on Egerton was not less sudden. He was startled by a beauty of face and form that belonged to that rarest order, which we never behold but once or twice in our lives. He was yet more amazed to discover that the aristocracy of mind could bestow a grace that no aristocracy of birth could surpass. He was prepared for a simple, blushing village girl, and involuntarily he bowed low his proud front at the first sight of that delicate bloom, and that exquisite gentleness which is woman's surest passport to the respect of man. Neither in the first, nor the second, nor the third interview, nor, indeed, till after many interviews, could he summon up courage to commence his mission, and allude to Harley. And when he did so at last, his words faltered. But Nora's words were clear to him. He saw that Harley was not loved; and a joy that he felt as guilty, darted through his whole frame. From that interview Audley returned home greatly agitated, and at war with himself. Often, in the course of this story, has it been hinted that under all Egerton's external coldness, and measured self-control, lay a nature capable of strong and stubborn passions. Those passions broke forth then. He felt that love had already entered into the heart, which the trust of his friend should have sufficed to guard.

"I will go there no more," said he, abruptly, to Harley.

"But why?"

"The girl does not love you. Cease then to think of her."

Harley disbelieved him, and grew indignant. But Audley had every worldly motive to assist his sense of honor. He was poor, though with the reputation of wealth—deeply involved in debt—resolved to rise in life—tenacious of his position in the world's esteem. Against a host of counteracting influences, love fought single-handed. Audley's was a strong nature; but, alas! in strong natures, if resistance to temptation is of granite, so the passions that they admit are of fire.

Trite is the remark, that the destinies of our lives often date from the impulses of unguarded moments. It was so with this man, to an ordinary eye so cautious and so deliberate. Harley one day came to him in great grief; he had heard that Nora was ill; he implored Audley to go once more and ascertain. Audley went. Lady Jane Horton, who was suffering under a disease which not long afterward proved fatal, was too ill to receive him. He was shown into the room set apart as Nora's. While waiting for her entrance, he turned mechanically over the leaves of an album which Nora, suddenly summoned away to attend Lady Jane, had left behind her on the table. He saw the sketch of his own features; he read words inscribed below it—words of such artless tenderness, and such unhoping sorrow—words written by one who had been accustomed to regard her genius as her sole confidant, under Heaven, to pour out to it, as the solitary poet-heart is impelled to do, thoughts, feelings, and confession of mystic sighs, which it would never breathe to a living ear, and, save at such moments, scarcely acknowledge to itself. Audley saw that he was beloved, and the revelation, with a sudden light, consumed all the barriers between himself and his own love. And at that moment Nora entered. She saw him bending over the book. She uttered a cry—sprang forward—and then sank down, covering her face with her hands. But Audley was at her feet. He forgot his friend, his trust; he forgot ambition—he forgot the world. It was his own cause that he pleaded—his own love that burst forth from his lips. And when the two that day parted, they were betrothed each to each. Alas for them, and alas for Harley!

And now this man, who had hitherto valued himself as the very type of gentleman—whom all his young contemporaries had so regarded and so revered—had to press the head of a confiding friend and bid adieu to truth. He had to amuse, to delay, to mislead his boy-rival—to say that he was already subduing Nora's hesitating doubts—and that within a little time, she could be induced to consent to forget Harley's rank, and his parent's pride, and become his wife. And Harley believed in Egerton, without one suspicion on the mirror of his loyal soul.

Meanwhile Audley impatient of his own position—impatient, as strong minds ever are, to hasten what they have once resolved—to terminate a suspense that every interview with Harley tortured alike by jealousy and shame—to put himself out of the reach of scruples, and to say to himself, "Right or wrong, there is no looking back; the deed is done;"—Audley, thus hurried on by the impetus of his own power of will, pressed for speedy and secret nuptials—secret till his fortunes, then wavering, were more assured—his career fairly commenced. This was not his strongest motive, though it was one. He shrank from the discovery of his wrong to his friend—desired to delay the self-humiliation of such announcement, until, as he persuaded himself, Harley's boyish passion was over—had yielded to the new allurements that would naturally beset his way. Stifling his conscience, Audley sought to convince himself that the day would soon come when Harley could hear with indifference that Nora Avenel was another's "The dream of an hour, at his age," murmured the elder friend; "but at mine, the passion of a life!" He did not speak of these latter motives for concealment to Nora. He felt that, to own the extent of his treason to a friend, would lower him in her eyes. He spoke therefore but slightingly of Harley—treated the boy's suit as a thing past and gone. He dwelt only on reasons that compelled self-sacrifice on his side or hers. She did not hesitate which to choose. And so, where Nora loved, so submissively did she believe in the superiority of the lover, that she would not pause to hear a murmur from her own loftier nature, or question the propriety of what he deemed wise and good.

Abandoning prudence in this arch affair of life, Audley still preserved his customary caution in minor details. And this indeed was characteristic of him throughout all his career—heedless in large things—wary in small. He would not trust Lady Jane Horton with his secret, still less Lady Lansmere. He simply represented to the former, that Nora was no longer safe from Harley's determined pursuit under Lady Jane's roof, and that she had better elude the boy's knowledge of her movements, and go quietly away for a while, to lodge with some connection of her own.

And so, with Lady Jane's acquiescence, Nora went first to the house of a very distant kinswoman of her mother's, and afterward to one that Egerton took as their bridal home, under the name of Bertram. He arranged all that might render their marriage most free from the chance of premature discovery. But it so happened, on the very morning of their bridal, that one of the witnesses he selected (a confidential servant of his own) was seized with apoplexy. Considering, in haste, where to find a substitute, Egerton thought of Levy, his own private solicitor, his own fashionable money-lender, a man with whom he was then as intimate as a fine gentleman is with the lawyer of his own age, who knows all his affairs, and has helped from pure friendship, to make them as bad as they are! Levy was thus suddenly summoned. Egerton, who was in great haste, did not at first communicate to him the name of the intended bride; but he said enough of the imprudence of the marriage, and his reasons for secrecy, to bring on himself the strongest remonstrances; for Levy had always reckoned on Egerton's making a wealthy marriage, leaving to Egerton the wife, and hoping to appropriate to himself the wealth, all in the natural course of business. Egerton did not listen to him, but hurried him on toward the place at which the ceremony was to be performed; and Levy actually saw the bride, before he had learned her name. The usurer masked his raging emotions, and fulfilled his part in the rites. His smile, when he congratulated the bride, might have shot cold into her heart; but her eyes were cast on the earth, seeing there but a shadow from heaven, and her heart was blindly sheltering itself in the bosom to which it was given evermore. She did not perceive the smile of hate that barbed the words of joy. Nora never thought it necessary later to tell Egerton that Levy had been a refused suitor. Indeed, with the exquisite taste of love, she saw that such a confidence, the idea of such a rival, would have wounded the pride of her high-bred, well-born husband.

And now, while Harley L'Estrange, frantic with the news that Nora had left Lady Jane's roof, and purposely misled into wrong directions, was seeking to trace her refuge in vain—now Egerton, in an assumed name, in a remote quarter, far from the clubs in which his word was oracular—far from the pursuits, whether of pastime or toil, that had hitherto engrossed his active mind, gave himself up, with wonder at himself, to the only vision of fairyland that ever weighs down the watchful eyelids of hard Ambition. The world for a while shut out, he missed it not. He knew not of it. He looked into two loving eyes that haunted him ever after, through a stern and arid existence, and said murmuringly, "Why, this, then, is real happiness!" Often, often, in the solitude of other years, to repeat to himself the same words, save that for is, he then murmured was! And Nora, with her grand, full heart, all her luxuriant wealth of fancy and of thought, child of light and of song, did she then never discover that there was something comparatively narrow and sterile in the nature to which she had linked her fate? Not there, could ever be sympathy in feelings, brilliant and shifting as the tints of the rainbow. When Audley pressed her heart to his own, could he comprehend one finer throb of its beating? Was all the iron of his mind worth one grain of the gold she had cast away in Harley's love?

Did Nora already discover this? Surely no. Genius feels no want, no repining, while the heart is contented. Genius in her paused and slumbered: it had been as the ministrant of solitude: it was needed no more. If a woman loves deeply some one below her own grade in the mental and spiritual orders, how often we see that she unconsciously quits her own rank, comes meekly down to the level of the beloved, is afraid lest he should deem her the superior—she who would not even be the equal. Nora knew no more that she had genius; she only knew that she had love.

And so here, the journal which Leonard was reading changed its tone, sinking into that quiet happiness which is but quiet because it is so deep. This interlude in the life of a man like Audley Egerton could never have been long; many circumstances conspired to abridge it. His affairs were in great disorder; they were all under Levy's management. Demands that had before slumbered, or been mildly urged, grew menacing and clamorous. Harley, too, returned to London from his futile researches, and looked out for Audley. Audley was forced to leave his secret Eden, and re-appear in the common world; and thenceforward it was only by stealth that he came to his bridal home—a visitor, no more the inmate. But more loud and fierce grew the demands of his creditors, now when Egerton had most need of all which respectability, and position, and belief of pecuniary independence can do to raise the man who has encumbered his arms, and crippled his steps toward fortune. He was threatened with writs, with prisons. Levy said "that to borrow more would be but larger ruin"—shrugged his shoulders, and even recommended a voluntary retreat to the King's Bench. "No place so good for frightening one's creditors into compounding their claims; but why," added Levy, with covert sneer, "why not go to young L'Estrange—a boy made to be borrowed from?"

Levy, who had known from Lady Jane of Harley's pursuit of Nora, had learned already how to avenge himself on Egerton. Audley could not apply to the friend he had betrayed. And as to other friends, no man in town had a greater number. And no man in town knew better that he should lose them all if he were once known to be in want of their money. Mortified, harassed, tortured—shunning Harley—yet ever sought by him—fearful of each knock at his door, Audley Egerton escaped to the mortgaged remnant of his paternal estate, on which there was a gloomy manor-house long uninhabited, and there applied a mind, afterward renowned for its quick comprehension of business, to the investigation of his affairs, with a view to save some wreck from the flood that swelled momently around him.

And now—to condense as much as possible a record that runs darkly on into pain and sorrow—now Levy began to practice his vindictive arts; and the arts gradually prevailed. On pretense of assisting Egerton in the arrangement of his affairs—which he secretly contrived, however, still more to complicate—he came down frequently to Egerton Hall for a few hours, arriving by the mail, and watching the effect which Nora's almost daily letters produced on the bridegroom, irritated by the practical cares of life. He was thus constantly at hand to instill into the mind of the ambitious man a regret for the imprudence of hasty passion, or to embitter the remorse which Audley felt for his treachery to L'Estrange. Thus ever bringing before the mind of the harassed debtor images at war with love, and with the poetry of life, he disattuned it (so to speak) for the reception of Nora's letters, all musical as they were with such thoughts as the most delicate fancy inspires to the most earnest love. Egerton was one of those men who never confide their affairs frankly to women. Nora, when she thus wrote, was wholly in the dark as to the extent of his stern prosaic distress. And so—and so—Levy always near—(type of the prose of life in its most cynic form)—so, by degrees, all that redundant affluence of affection, with its gushes of grief for his absence, prayers for his return, sweet reproach if a post failed to bring back an answer to the woman's yearning sighs—all this grew, to the sensible, positive man of real life, like sickly romantic exaggeration. The bright arrows shot too high into heaven to hit the mark set so near to the earth. Ah! common fate of all superior natures! What treasure, and how wildly wasted!

"By-the-by," said Levy, one morning, as he was about to take leave of Audley and return to town—"by-the-by, I shall be this evening in the neighborhood of Mrs. Egerton."

Egerton.—"Say Mrs. Bertram!"

Levy.—"Ay; will she not be in want of some pecuniary supplies?"

Egerton.—"My wife!—not yet. I must first be wholly ruined before she can want; and if I were so, do you think I should not be by her side?"

Levy.—"I beg pardon, my dear fellow; your pride of gentleman is so susceptible that it is hard for a lawyer not to wound it unawares. Your wife, then, does not know the exact state of your affairs?"

Egerton.—"Of course not. Who would confide to a woman things in which she could do nothing, except to tease one the more?"

Levy.—"True, and a poetess, too! I have prevented your finishing your answer to Mrs. Bertram's last letter. Can I take it—it may save a day's delay—that is, if you do not object to my calling on her this evening."

Egerton (sitting down to his unfinished letter).—"Object! no!"

Levy (looking at his watch).—"Be quick, or I shall lose the coach."

Egerton (sealing the letter).—"There. And I should be obliged to you if you would call; and without alarming her as to my circumstances, you can just say that you know I am much harassed about important affairs at present, and so soothe the effects of my very short answers—"

Levy.—"To those doubly-crossed, very long, letters—I will."

"Poor Nora," said Egerton, sighing, "she will think this answer brief and churlish enough. Explain my excuses kindly, so that they will serve for the future. I really have no time, and no heart for sentiment. The little I ever had is well-nigh worried out of me. Still I love her fondly and deeply."

Levy.—"You must have done so. I never thought it in you to sacrifice the world to a woman."

Egerton.—"Nor I either; but," added the strong man, conscious of that power which rules the world infinitely more than knowledge—conscious of tranquil courage—"but I have not sacrificed the world yet. This right arm shall bear up her and myself too."

Levy.—"Well said! But in the mean while, for heaven's sake, don't attempt to go to London, nor to leave this place; for, in that case, I know you will be arrested, and then adieu to all hopes of Parliament—of a career."

Audley's haughty countenance darkened; as the dog, in his bravest mood, turns dismayed from the stone plucked from the mire, so, when Ambition rears itself to defy mankind, whisper "disgrace and a jail," and, lo, crest-fallen, it slinks away! That evening Levy called on Nora, and ingratiating himself into her favor by praise of Egerton, with indirect humble apologetic allusions to his own former presumption, he prepared the way to renewed visits; she was so lonely, and she so loved to see one who was fresh from seeing Audley—one who would talk to her of him! By degrees the friendly respectful visitor thus stole into her confidence; and then, with all his panegyrics on Audley's superior powers and gifts, he began to dwell upon the young husband's worldly aspirations, and care for his career; dwelt on them so as vaguely to alarm Nora—to imply that, dear as she was, she was still but second to Ambition. His way thus prepared, he next began to insinuate his respectful pity at her equivocal position, dropped hints of gossip and slander, feared that the marriage might be owned too late to preserve reputation. And then what would be the feelings of the proud Egerton if his wife were excluded from that world, whose opinion he so prized? Insensibly thus he led her on to express (though timidly) her own fear—her own natural desire, in her letters to Audley. When could the marriage be proclaimed? Proclaimed! Audley felt that to proclaim such a marriage, at such a moment, would be to fling away his last cast for fame and fortune. And Harley, too—Harley still so uncured of his frantic love. Levy was sure to be at hand when letters like these arrived.

And now Levy went further still in his determination to alienate these two hearts. He contrived, by means of his various agents, to circulate through Nora's neighborhood the very slanders at which he had hinted. He contrived that she should be insulted when she went abroad, outraged at home by the sneers of her own servant, and tremble with shame at her own shadow upon her abandoned bridal hearth.

Just in the midst of this intolerable anguish, Levy reappeared. His crowning hour was ripe. He intimated his knowledge of the humiliations Nora had undergone, expressed his deep compassion, offered to intercede with Egerton "to do her justice." He used ambiguous phrases that shocked her ear and tortured her heart, and thus provoked her on to demand him to explain; and then, throwing her into a wild state of indefinite alarm, in which he obtained her solemn promise not to divulge to Audley what he was about to communicate, he said, with villainous hypocrisy of reluctant shame, "that her marriage was not strictly legal; that the forms required by the law had not been complied with; that Audley, unintentionally or purposely, had left himself free to disown the rite and desert the bride." While Nora stood stunned and speechless at a falsehood which, with lawyer-like show, he contrived to make truth-like to her inexperience, he hurried rapidly on, to reawake on her mind the impression of Audley's pride, ambition, and respect for worldly position. "These are your obstacles," said he; "but I think I may induce him to repair the wrong, and right you at last." Righted at last—oh infamy!

Then Nora's anger burst forth. She believe such a stain on Audley's honor!

"But where was the honor when he betrayed his friend? Did you not know that he was intrusted by Lord L'Estrange to plead for him. How did he fulfill the trust?"

Plead for L'Estrange! Nora had not been exactly aware of this. In the sudden love preceding those sudden nuptials, so little touching Harley (beyond Audley's first timid allusions to his suit, and her calm and cold reply) had been spoken by either.

Levy resumed. He dwelt fully on the trust and the breach of it, and then said—"In Egerton's world, man holds it far more dishonor to betray a man than to dupe a woman; and if Egerton could do the one, why doubt that he would do the other? But do not look at me with those indignant eyes. Put himself to the test; write to him to say that the suspicions amid which you live have become intolerable—that they infect even yourself, despite your reason—that the secrecy of your nuptials, his prolonged absence, his brief refusal, on unsatisfactory grounds, to proclaim your tie, all distract you with a terrible doubt. Ask him, at least (if he will not yet declare your marriage), to satisfy you that the rites were legal."

"I will go to him," cried Nora impetuously.

"Go to him!—in his own house! What a scene, what a scandal! Could he ever forgive you?"

"At least, then, I will implore him to come here. I can not write such horrible words; I can not—I can not—Go, go."

Levy left her, and hastened to two or three of Audley's most pressing creditors—men, in fact, who went entirely by Levy's own advice. He bade them instantly surround Audley's country residence with bailiffs. Before Egerton could reach Nora, he would thus be lodged in a jail. These preparations made, Levy himself went down to Audley, and arrived, as usual, an hour or two before the delivery of the post.

And Nora's letter came; and never was Audley's grave brow more dark than when he read it. Still, with his usual decision, he resolved to obey her wish—rang the bell, and ordered his servant to put up a change of dress, and send for post-horses.

Levy then took him aside, and led him to the window.

"Look under yon trees. Do you see those men? They are bailiffs. This is the true reason why I come to you to-day. You can not leave this house."

Egerton recoiled. "And this frantic, foolish letter at such a time," he muttered, striking the open page, full of love in the midst of terror, with his clenched hand.

O Woman, Woman! if thy heart be deep, and its chords tender, beware how thou lovest the man with whom all that plucks him from the hard cares of the work-day world is a frenzy or a folly! He will break thy heart, he will shatter its chords, he will trample out from its delicate frame-work every sound that now makes musical the common air, and swells into unison with the harps of angels.

"She has before written to me," continued Audley, pacing the room with angry, disordered strides, "asking me when our marriage can be proclaimed, and I thought my replies would have satisfied any reasonable woman. But now, now this is worse, immeasurably worse—she actually doubts my honor! I, who have made such sacrifices—actually doubts whether I, Audley Egerton, an English gentleman, could have been base enough to—"

"What?" interrupted Levy, "to deceive your friend L'Estrange? Did not she know that?"

"Sir," exclaimed Egerton, turning white.

"Don't be angry—all's fair in love as in war; and L'Estrange will live yet to thank you for saving him from such a mésalliance. But you are seriously angry; pray, forgive me."

With some difficulty, and much fawning, the usurer appeased the storm he had raised in Audley's conscience. And he then heard, as if with surprise, the true purport of Nora's letter.

"It is beneath me to answer, much less to satisfy such a doubt," said Audley. "I could have seen her, and a look of reproach would have sufficed; but to put my hand to paper, and condescend to write, 'I am not a villain, and I will give you the proofs that I am not'—never."

"You are quite right; but let us see if we can not reconcile matters between your pride and her feelings. Write simply this: 'All that you ask me to say or to explain, I have instructed Levy, as my solicitor, to say and explain for me; and you may believe him as you would myself.'"

"Well, the poor fool, she deserves to be punished; and I suppose that answer will punish her more than a lengthier rebuke. My mind is so distracted I can not judge of these trumpery woman-fears and whims; there, I have written as you suggest. Give her all the proof she needs, and tell her that in six months at farthest, come what will, she shall bear the name of Egerton, as henceforth she must share his fate."

"Why say six months?"

"Parliament must be dissolved before then. I shall either obtain a seat, be secure from a jail, have won field for my energies, or—"

"Or what?"

"I shall renounce ambition altogether—ask my brother to assist me toward whatever debts remain when all my property is fairly sold—they can not be much. He has a living in his gift—the incumbent is old, and, I hear, very ill. I can take orders."

"Sink into a country parson!"

"And learn content. I have tasted it already. She was then by my side. Explain all to her. This letter, I fear, is too unkind—But to doubt me thus!"

Levy hastily placed the letter in his pocket-book; and, for fear it should be withdrawn, took his leave.

And of that letter he made such use, that the day after he had given it to Nora, she had left the house—the neighborhood; fled, and not a trace! Of all the agonies in life, that which is most poignant and harrowing—that which for the time most annihilates reason, and leaves our whole organization one lacerated, mangled heart—is the conviction that we have been deceived where we placed all the trust of love. The moment the anchor snaps, the storm comes on—the stars vanish behind the cloud.

When Levy returned, filled with the infamous hope which had stimulated his revenge—the hope that if he could succeed in changing into scorn and indignation Nora's love for Audley, he might succeed also in replacing that broken and degraded idol—his amaze and dismay were great on hearing of her departure. For several days he sought her traces in vain. He went to Lady Jane Horton's—Nora had not been there. He trembled to go back to Egerton. Surely Nora would have written to her husband, and, in spite of her promise, revealed his own falsehood; but as days passed and not a clew was found, he had no option but to repair to Egerton Hall, taking care that the bailiffs still surrounded it. Audley had received no line from Nora. The young husband was surprised and perplexed, uneasy—but had no suspicion of the truth.

At length Levy was forced to break to Audley the intelligence of Nora's flight. He gave his own color to it. Doubtless she had gone to seek her own relations, and take, by their advice, steps to make her marriage publicly known. This idea changed Audley's first shock into deep and stern resentment. His mind so little comprehended Nora's, and was ever so disposed to what is called the common-sense view of things, that he saw no other mode to account for her flight and her silence. Odious to Egerton as such a proceeding would be, he was far too proud to take any steps to guard against it. "Let her do her worst," said he, coldly, masking emotion with his usual self-command; "it will be but a nine-days' wonder to the world—a fiercer rush of my creditors on their hunted prey—"

"And a challenge from Lord L'Estrange."

"So be it," answered Egerton, suddenly placing his hand at his heart.

"What is the matter? Are you ill?"

"A strange sensation here. My father died of a complaint of the heart, and I myself was once told to guard, through life, against excess of emotion. I smiled at such a warning then. Let us sit down to business."

But when Levy had gone, and solitude reclosed round that Man of the Iron Mask, there grew upon him more and more the sense of a mighty loss, Nora's sweet loving face started from the shadows of the forlorn walls. Her docile, yielding temper—her generous, self-immolating spirit—came back to his memory, to refute the idea that wronged her. His love, that had been suspended for awhile by busy cares, but which, if without much refining sentiment, was still the master-passion of his soul, flowed back into all his thoughts—circumfused the very atmosphere with a fearful softening charm. He escaped under cover of the night from the watch of the bailiffs. He arrived in London. He himself sought every where he could think of for his missing bride. Lady Jane Horton was confined to her bed, dying fast—incapable even to receive and reply to his letter. He secretly sent down to Lansmere to ascertain if Nora had gone to her parents. She was not there. The Avenels believed her still with Lady Jane Horton.

He now grew most seriously alarmed; and, in the midst of that alarm, Levy contrived that he should be arrested for debt; but he was not detained in confinement many days. Before the disgrace got wind, the writs were discharged—Levy baffled. He was free. Lord L'Estrange had learned from Audley's servant what Audley would have concealed from him out of all the world. And the generous boy—who, besides the munificent allowance he received from the Earl, was heir to an independent and considerable fortune of his own, when he should obtain his majority—hastened to borrow the money and discharge all the obligations of his friend. The benefit was conferred before Audley knew of it, or could prevent. Then a new emotion, and perhaps scarce less stinging than the loss of Nora, tortured the man who had smiled at the warning of science; and the strange sensation at the heart was felt again and again.

And Harley, too, was still in search of Nora—would talk of nothing but her—and looked so haggard and grief-worn. The bloom of the boy's youth was gone. Could Audley then have said, "She you seek is another's; your love is razed out of your life. And, for consolation, learn that your friend has betrayed you?" Could Audley say this? He did not dare. Which of the two suffered the most?

And these two friends, of characters so different, were so singularly attached to each other. Inseparable at school—thrown together in the world, with a wealth of frank confidences between them, accumulated since childhood. And now, in the midst of all his own anxious sorrow, Harley still thought and planned for Egerton. And self-accusing remorse, and all the sense of painful gratitude, deepened Audley's affection for Harley into a devotion as to a superior, while softening it into a reverential pity that yearned to relieve, to atone;—but how—oh; how?

A general election was now at hand, still no news of Nora. Levy kept aloof from Audley, pursuing his own silent search. A seat for the borough of Lansmere was pressed upon Audley not only by Harley, but his parents, especially by the Countess, who tacitly ascribed to Audley's wise counsels Nora's mysterious disappearance.

Egerton at first resisted the thought of a new obligation to his injured friend; but he burned to have it some day in his power to repay at least his pecuniary debt: the sense of that debt humbled him more than all else. Parliamentary success might at last obtain for him some lucrative situation abroad, and thus enable him gradually to remove this load from his heart and his honor. No other chance of repayment appeared open to him. He accepted the offer, and went down to Lansmere. His brother, lately married, was asked to meet him; and there, also, was Miss Leslie the heiress, whom Lady Lansmere secretly hoped her son Harley would admire, but who had long since, no less secretly, given her heart to the unconscious Egerton.

Meanwhile, the miserable Nora, deceived by the arts and representations of Levy—acting on the natural impulse of a heart so susceptible to shame—flying from a home which she deemed dishonored—flying from a lover whose power over her she knew to be so great, that she dreaded lest he might reconcile her to dishonor itself—had no thought save to hide herself forever from Audley's eye. She would not go to her relations—to Lady Jane; that were to give the clew, and invite the pursuit. An Italian lady of high rank had visited at Lady Jane's—taken a great fancy to Nora—and the lady's husband, having been obliged to precede her return to Italy, had suggested the notion of engaging some companion—the lady had spoken of this to Nora and to Lady Jane Horton, who had urged Nora to accept the offer, elude Harley's pursuit, and go abroad for a time. Nora then had refused;—for she then had seen Audley Egerton.

To this Italian lady she now went, and the offer was renewed with the most winning kindness, and grasped at in the passion of despair. But the Italian had accepted invitations to English country houses before she finally departed for the Continent. Meanwhile Nora took refuge in a quiet lodging in a sequestered suburb, which an English servant in the employment of the fair foreigner recommended. Thus had she first came to the cottage in which Burley died. Shortly afterward she left England with her new companion, unknown to all—to Lady Jane as to her parents.

All this time the poor girl was under a moral delirium—a confused fever—haunted by dreams from which she sought to fly. Sound physiologists agree that madness is rarest among persons of the finest imagination. But those persons are, of all others, liable to a temporary state of mind in which judgment sleeps—imagination alone prevails with a dire and awful tyranny. A single idea gains ascendency—expels all others—presents itself every where with an intolerable blinding glare. Nora was at that time under the dread one idea—to fly from shame!

(TO BE CONTINUED.)

---

HENRY CLAY.
PERSONAL ANECDOTES, INCIDENTS, ETC.

We have just returned from the Park and City-Hall, and from witnessing the long procession, "melancholy, slow," that accompanied the remains of the "Great Commoner" and great statesman, Henry Clay, to their temporary resting-place in the Governor's Room. It was not the weeping flags at half-mast throughout the city; not the tolling of the bells, the solemn booming of the minute-guns, nor the plaintive strains of funereal music, which brought the tears to the eyes of thousands, as the mournful cavalcade passed on. For here were the lifeless limbs, the dimmed eye, the hushed voice, that never should move, nor sparkle, nor resound in eloquent tones again!

The last time we had seen Henry Clay was, standing in an open barouche, on the very spot where his hearse now paused, in front of the City-Hall. He was addressing then a vast concourse of his fellow-citizens, who had assembled to do him honor; and never shall we forget the exquisite grace of his gestures, the melodious tones of his matchless voice, and the interior look of his eyes—as if he were rather spoken from, than speaking. It was an occasion not to be forgotten.

It is proposed, in the present article, to afford the reader some opportunity of judging of the character and manner of Mr. Clay, both as an orator and a man, and of his general habits, from a few characteristic anecdotes and incidents, which have been well authenticated heretofore, or are now for the first time communicated to the writer. Biography, in Mr. Clay's case, has already occupied much of the space of all our public journals; we shall, therefore, omit particulars which are now more or less familiar to the general reader.

It was the remark of a distinguished Senator, that Mr. Clay's eloquence was absolutely intangible to delineation; that the most labored and thrilling description could not embrace it; and that, to be understood, it must be seen and felt. During his long public life he enchanted millions, and no one could tell how he did it. He was an orator by nature. His eagle eye burned with true patriotic ardor, or dashed indignation and defiance upon his foes, or was suffused with tears of commiseration or of pity; and it was because he felt, that he made others feel. "The clear conception, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward to his object"—this was the eloquence of Henry Clay; or, rather, to pursue the definition, "it was something greater and higher than eloquence; it was action—noble, sublime, God-like."

While the coffin containing all that remained of the great Orator of Nature was being carried up the steps of the City-Hall, a by-stander remarked, in hearing of the writer:

Well, we never shall look upon his like again. What an orator he was! I heard him speak but once, yet that once I shall always remember. It was a good many years ago, now. It was in the immense car-house, or dépôt, at Syracuse. The crowd was immense; and every eye was turned toward the platform from which he was to speak, as if the whole crowd were but one expectant face.

Presently he arose—tall, erect as a statue; looked familiarly around upon the audience, as if he were in an assembly of personal friends (as in truth he was), and began. He commenced amidst the most breathless silence; and as he warmed up with his subject, there was not a look of his eye, not a movement of his long, graceful right arm, not a swaying of his body, that was not full of grace and effect. Such a voice I never heard. It was wonderful![9]

Once he took out his snuff-box, and, after taking a pinch of snuff, and returning the box to his pocket, he illustrated a point which he was making by an anecdote:

"While I was abroad," said he, "laboring to arrange the terms of the Treaty of Ghent, there appeared a report of the negotiations, or letters relative thereto; and several quotations from my remarks or letters, touching certain stipulations in the treaty, reached Kentucky, and were read by my constituents.

"Among them, was an odd old fellow, who went by the nickname of 'Old Sandusky,' and he was reading one of these letters, one evening, at a near resort, to a small collection of the neighbors. As he read on, he came across the sentence, 'This must be deemed a sine qua non."

"'What's a sine qua non?' said a half-dozen by-standers.

"'Old Sandusky' was a little bothered at first, but his good sense and natural shrewdness was fully equal to a 'mastery of the Latin.'

"'Sine—qua—non?' said 'Old Sandusky,' repeating the question very slowly; 'why, Sine Qua Non is three islands in Passamaquoddy Bay, and Harry Clay is the last man to give them up! 'No Sine Qua Non, no treaty,' he says; and he'll stick to it!'"

You should have seen the laughing eye, the change in the speaker's voice and manner, said the narrator, to understand the electric effect the story had upon the audience.

Previous to Mr. Clay's entrance upon public life in the service of his country, and while he was yet young in the practice of the law, in Kentucky, the following striking incident is related of him:

Two Germans, father and son, were indicted for murder, and were tried for the crime. Mr. Clay was employed to defend them. The act of killing was proved by evidence so clear and strong, that it was considered not only a case of murder, but an exceedingly aggravated one. The trial lasted five days, at the close of which he addressed the jury in the most impassioned and eloquent manner; and they were so moved by his pathetic appeals, that they rendered a verdict of manslaughter only. After another hard day's struggle, he succeeded in obtaining an arrest of judgment, by which his clients, in whose case he thought there was an absence of all "malice prepense," were set at liberty.

They expressed their gratitude in the warmest terms to their deliverer, in which they were joined by an old and ill-favored female, the wife of one and the mother of the other, who adopted a different mode, however, of tendering her thanks, which was by throwing her arms round Mr. Clay's neck, and repeatedly kissing him, in the presence of a crowded court-room!

Mr. Clay respected her feelings too much to repulse her; but he was often afterward heard to say, that it was "the longest and strongest embrace he ever encountered in his professional practice!"

In civil suits, at this period, Mr. Clay gained almost equal celebrity, and especially in the settlement of land claims, at that time an important element in Western litigation. It is related of him, at this stage of his career, that being engaged in a case which involved immense interests, he associated with him a prominent lawyer to whom he intrusted its management, as urgent business demanded his absence from court. Two days were occupied in discussing the legal points that were to govern the instructions of the court to the jury, on every one of which his colleague was frustrated. Mr. Clay returned, however, before a decision was rendered, and without acquainting himself with the nature of the testimony, or ascertaining the manner in which the discussion had been conducted, after conferring a few moments with his associate, he prepared and presented in a few words the form in which he wished the instructions to be given, accompanying it with his reasons, which were so convincing that the suit was terminated in his favor in less than one hour after he re-entered the court-room.

Thus early, and in a career merely professional, did Henry Clay commence his sway over the minds of deliberative men.

The subjoined incident, connected with Mr. Clay's style of "stump-speaking" is related in "Mallory's Life" of our illustrious subject. It illustrates his tact and ingenuity in seizing and turning to good account trivial circumstances:

Mr. Clay had been speaking for some time, when a company of riflemen, who had been performing military exercise, attracted by his attitude, concluded to "go and hear what the fellow had to say," as they termed it, and accordingly drew near. They listened with respectful attention, and evidently with deep interest, until he closed, when one of their number, a man of about fifty years of age, who had seen much back-wood's service, stood leaning on his rifle, regarding the young speaker with a fixed and sagacious look.

He was apparently the Nimrod of the company, for he exhibited every characteristic of a "mighty hunter." He had buckskin breeches, and hunting-shirt, coon-skin cap, black bushy beard, and a visage of the color and texture of his bullet-pouch. At his belt hung the knife and hatchet, and the huge, indispensable powder-horn across a breast bare and brown as the hills he traversed in his forays, yet it covered a brave and noble heart.

He beckoned with his hand to Mr. Clay to approach him.

Mr. Clay immediately complied.

"Young man," said he, "you want to go to the Legislature, I see."

"Why, yes," replied Mr. Clay; "yes, I should like to go, since my friends have put me up as a candidate before the people. I don't wish to be defeated, of course; few people do."

"Are you a good shot, young man?" asked the hunter.

"I consider myself as good as any in the county."

"Then you shall go: but you must give us a specimen of your skill; we must see you shoot."

"I never shoot any rifle but my own, and that is at home," said the young orator.

"No matter," quickly responded the hunter, "here's Old Bess; she never failed yet in the hands of a marksman. She has put a bullet through many a squirrel's head at a hundred yards, and day-light through many a red-skin twice that distance. If you can shoot any gun, young man, you can shoot 'Old Bess!'"

"Very well, then," replied Mr. Clay, "put up your mark! put up your mark!"

The target was placed at about the distance of eighty yards, when, with all the coolness and steadiness of an old experienced marksman, he drew "Old Bess" to his shoulder, and fired. The bullet pierced the target near the centre.

"Oh, that's a chance-shot! a chance-shot!" exclaimed several of his political opponents; "he might shoot all day, and not hit the mark again. Let him try it over!—let him try it over!"

"No, no," retorted Mr. Clay, "beat that, and then I will!"

As no one seemed disposed to make the attempt, it was considered that he had given satisfactory proof of being, as he said, "the best shot in the county;" and this unimportant incident gained him the vote of every hunter and marksman in the assembly, which was composed principally of that class of persons, as well as the support of the same throughout the county. Mr. Clay was frequently heard to say: "I had never before fired a rifle, and have not since!"

It was in turning little things like these to account, that Mr. Clay, in the earlier period of his career, was so remarkable. Two other instances in this kind, although not new, may be appropriately mentioned in this connection.

In 1805 an attempt was made to obtain the removal of the capital from Frankfort, Kentucky. Mr. Clay, in a speech delivered at the time, reverted to the physical appearance of the place, as furnishing an argument in favor of the proposed removal. Frankfort is walled in on all sides by towering, rocky precipices, and in its general conformation, is not unlike a great pit. "It presents," said Mr. Clay, in his remarks upon the subject, "the model of an inverted hat. Frankfort is the body of the hat, and the lands adjacent are the brim. To change the figure, it is Nature's great penitentiary; and if the members would know the bodily condition of the prisoners, let them look at those poor creatures in the gallery."

As he said this, he directed the attention of the members of the Legislature to some half-dozen emaciated, spectre-like specimens of humanity, who happened to be moping about there, looking as if they had just stolen a march from the grave-yard. On observing the eyes of the House thus turned toward them, and aware of their ill-favored aspect, they screened themselves with such ridiculous precipitancy behind the pillars and railing, as to cause the most violent laughter. This well-directed hit was successful; and the House gave their votes in favor of the measure.

The second instance is doubtless more familiar to the reader; but having "spoken of guns," it may not be amiss to quote it here:

During an excited political canvass, Mr. Clay met an old hunter, who had previously been his devoted friend, but who now opposed him, on the ground of "the Compensation bill."

"Have you a good rifle, my friend?" asked Mr. Clay.

"Yes," said the hunter.

"Does it ever flash in the pan?" continued Mr. Clay.

"It never did but once in the world," said the hunter, exultingly.

"Well, what did you do with it? You didn't throw it away, did you?"

"No; I picked the flint, tried it again, and brought down the game."

"Have I ever 'flashed,'" continued Mr. Clay, "except on the 'Compensation bill?'"

"No, I can't say that you ever did."

"Well, will you throw me away?" said Mr. Clay.

"No, no!" responded the huntsman, touched on the right point; "no; I'll pick the flint, and try you again!"

And ever afterward he was the unwavering friend of Mr. Clay.

From the same authority we derive another election anecdote, which Mr. Clay was wont to mention to his friends. In a political canvass in Kentucky, Mr. Clay, and Mr. Pope a one-armed man, were candidates for the same office. An Irish barber, residing at Lexington, had always given Mr. Clay his vote, and on all occasions, when he was a candidate for office, electioneered warmly for him. He was "Irish all over," and was frequently in "scrapes," from which Mr. Clay generally succeeded in rescuing him. Somebody, just before the election took place, "came the evil eye" over him; for when asked who he was going to vote for, he replied, "I mane to vote for the man who can't put more nor one hand into the threasury!"

A few days after the election, the barber met Mr. Clay in Lexington, and approaching him, began to cry, saying that he had wronged him, and repented his ingratitude. "My wife," said he, "got round me, blubbering, and tould me that I was too bad, to desert, like a base spalpeen, me ould frind. 'Niver's the time,' says she 'when you got in jail or in any bad fix niver's the time he didn't come and help you out. Och! bad luck to ye for not giving him your vote!'" Mr. Clay never failed to gain his vote afterward.

An anecdote is related of Mr. Clay, aptly illustrating his ability to encounter opposition, in whatever manner presented. A Senator from Connecticut had endeavored to inspire the younger members of the Senate with a respect for him, nearly allied to awe; and to this end was accustomed to use toward them harsh and haughty language, but especially to make an ostentatious display of his attainments, and his supposed superior knowledge of the subject under discussion. Mr. Clay could ill brook his insolent looks and language, and haughty, overbearing manner, and took occasion in his speech to hit them off, which he did by quoting Peter Pindar's Magpie,

"Thus have I seen a magpie in the street,
A chattering bird we often meet,
A bird for curiosity well known,
With head awry,
And cunning eye,
Peep knowingly into a marrow-bone!"

"It would be difficult," says the biographer who relates this circumstance, "to say which was the greater, the merriment which this sally caused, or the chagrin of the satirized Senator."

A striking instance of the simplicity as well as humanity of Mr. Clay's character is given in the following authentic anecdote of him, while a member of the House of Representatives:

"Almost every body in Washington City will remember an old he-goat, which formerly inhabited a livery-stable on Pennsylvania Avenue. This animal was the most independent citizen of the metropolis. He belonged to no party, although he frequently gave pedestrians 'striking' proofs of his adhesion to the 'leveling' principle; for, whenever a person stopped any where in the vicinity, 'Billy' was sure to 'make at him,' horns and all. The boys took delight in irritating him, and frequently so annoyed him that he would 'butt' against lamp-posts and trees, to their great amusement.

"One day, Henry Clay was passing along the avenue, and seeing the boys intent on worrying Billy into a fever, stopped, and with characteristic humanity expostulated with them upon their cruelty. The boys listened in silent awe to the eloquent appeal of the 'Luminary of the West,' but it was all Cherokee to Billy, who—the ungrateful scamp!—arose majestically on his hind legs, and made a desperate plunge at his friend and advocate. Mr. Clay, however, proved too much for his horned adversary. He seized both horns of the dilemma, and then came the 'tug of war.' The struggle was long and doubtful.

"'Ha!' exclaimed the statesman, 'I've got you fast, you old rascal! I'll teach you better manners than to attack your friends! But, boys, he continued, 'what shall I do now?'

"'Why, trip up his feet, Mr. Clay.' Mr. Clay did as he was told, and after many severe efforts brought Billy down on his side. Here he looked at the boys imploringly, seeming to say, 'I never was in such a fix as this before!'

"The combatants were now nearly exhausted; but the goat had the advantage, for he was gaining breath all the while the statesman was losing it.

"'Boys!' exclaimed Mr. Clay, puffing and blowing, 'this is rather an awkward business. What am I to do next?"

"'Why, don't you know?' said a little fellow, making his own preparations to run, as he spoke: 'all you've got to do is to let go, and run like blazes!' The hint was taken at once, much to the amusement of the boys who had been 'lectured.'"

The collisions between Mr. Clay and Randolph in Congress and out of it, are well known to the public. The following circumstance, however, has seldom been quoted. When the Missouri Compromise question was before Congress, and the fury of the contending parties had broken down almost every barrier of order and decency, Mr. Randolph, much excited, approaching Mr. Clay, said:

"Mr. Speaker, I wish you would leave the House. I will follow you to Kentucky, or any where else in the world."

Mr. Clay regarded him with one of his most searching looks for an instant; and then replied, in an under-tone:

"Mr. Randolph, your proposition is an exceedingly serious one, and demands most serious consideration. Be kind enough to call at my room to-morrow morning, and we will deliberate over it together."

Mr. Randolph called punctually at the moment; they talked long upon the much-agitated subject, without coming to any agreement, and Mr. Randolph arose to leave.

"Mr. Randolph," said Mr. Clay, as the former was about stepping from the house, "with your permission, I will embrace the present occasion to observe, that your language and deportment on the floor of the House, it has occurred to me, were rather indecorous and ungentlemanly, on several occasions, and very annoying, indeed, to me; for, being in the chair, I had no opportunity of replying."

While admitting that this might, perhaps, be so, Mr. Randolph excused it, on the ground of Mr. Clay's inattention to his remarks, and asking for a pinch of snuff while he was addressing him, &c., &c. Mr. Clay, in reply, said:

"Oh, you are certainly mistaken, Mr. Randolph, if you think I do not listen to you. I frequently turn away my head, it is true, and ask for a pinch of snuff; still, I hear every thing you say, although I may seem to hear nothing; and, retentive as I know your memory to be, I will wager that I can repeat as many of your speeches as you yourself can!"

"Well," answered Randolph, "I don't know but I am mistaken; and suppose we drop the matter, shake hands, and become good friends again?"

"Agreed!" said Mr. Clay, extending his hand, which was cordially grasped by Mr. Randolph.

During the same session, and some time before this interview, Mr. Randolph accosted Mr. Clay with a look and manner much agitated, and exhibited to him a letter, couched in very abusive terms, threatening to cowhide him, &c., and asked Mr. Clay's advice as to the course he should pursue in relation to it.

"What caused the writer to send you such an insulting epistle, Mr. Randolph?" asked Mr. Clay.

"Why, I suppose," said Randolph, "it was in consequence of what I said to him the other day."

"What did you say?"

"Why, sir, I was standing in the vestibule of the house, when the writer came up and introduced to me a gentleman who accompanied him; and I asked him what right he had to introduce that man to me, and told him that the man had just as good a right to introduce him to me; whereat he was very indignant, said I had treated him scandalously, and turning on his heel, went away. I think that must have made him write the letter."

"Don't you think he was a little out of his head to talk in that way?" asked Mr. Clay.

"Why, I've been thinking about that," said Randolph: "I have some doubts respecting his sanity."

"Well, that being the case, would it not be the wisest course not to bring the matter before the House? I will direct the sergeant-at-arms to keep a sharp look-out for the man, and to cause him to be arrested should he attempt any thing improper."

Mr. Randolph acquiesced in this opinion, and nothing more was ever heard of the subject.

Another incident, touching Mr. Clay and Mr. Randolph, will be read with interest:

At one time Mr. Randolph, in a strain of most scorching irony, had indulged in some personal taunts toward Mr. Clay, commiserating his ignorance and limited education, to whom Mr. Clay thus replied:

"Sir, the gentleman from Virginia was pleased to say, that in one point at least he coincided with me—in an humble estimate of my philological acquirements. Sir, I know my deficiencies. I was born to no proud patrimonial estate from my father. I inherited only infancy, ignorance, and indigence. I feel my defects: but, so far as my situation in early life is concerned, I may without presumption say, they are more my misfortune than my fault. But, however I may deplore my inability to furnish to the gentleman a better specimen of powers of verbal criticism, I will venture to say my regret is not greater than the disappointment of this committee, as to the strength of his argument."

The particulars of the duel between Mr. Randolph and Mr. Clay may be unknown to some of our readers. The eccentric descendant of Pocahontas appeared on the ground in a huge morning gown. This garment constituted such a vast circumference that the "locality of the swarthy Senator," was at least a matter of very vague conjecture. The parties exchanged shots, and the ball of Mr. Clay hit the centre of the visible object, but Mr. Randolph was not there! The latter had fired in the air, and immediately after the exchange of shots he walked up to Mr. Clay, parted the folds of his gown, pointed to the hole where the bullet of the former had pierced his coat, and, in the shrillest tones of his piercing voice, exclaimed, "Mr. Clay, you owe me a coat—you owe me a coat!" to which Mr. Clay replied, in a voice of slow and solemn emphasis, at the same time pointing directly at Mr. Randolph's heart, "Mr. Randolph, I thank God that I am no deeper in your debt!"

The annexed rejoinder aptly illustrates Mr. Clay's readiness at repartee:

At the time of the passage of the tariff-bill, as the house was about adjourning, a friend of the bill observed to Mr. Clay, "We have done pretty well to-day." "Very well, indeed," rejoined Mr. Clay—"very well: we made a good stand, considering we lost both our Feet;" alluding to Mr. Foote of New York, and Mr. Foot of Connecticut, both having opposed the bill, although it was confidently expected, a short time previous, that both would support it.

After the nomination of General Taylor as a candidate for the Presidency, made by the Whig Convention at Philadelphia, in June, 1848, many of the friends of Mr. Clay were greatly dissatisfied, not to say exasperated, by what they deemed an abandonment of principle, and unfairness in the proceedings of that body: meetings were held in this city, at which delegates from the northern and western parts of this State and from the State of New Jersey attended, and various arrangements, preliminary to placing Mr. Clay again in nomination for that office, were made, and perfected. These steps were not concealed, and many of the friends of General Taylor were so uncharitable as to avow their belief that this dissatisfaction was fostered and encouraged by Mr. Clay himself. The following extract from a letter written to a friend in this city,[10] one who had from the beginning opposed the movement, will exhibit Mr. Clay's true sentiments on that subject:

"Ashland, 16th October, 1848.

"My dear Sir—I duly received your obliging letter of the 5th instant, and I have perused it with the greatest satisfaction.

"The vivid picture which you have drawn of the enthusiastic attachment, the unbounded confidence, and the entire devotion of my warm-hearted friends in the city of New York, has filled me with the liveliest emotions of gratitude.

"There was but one more proof wanting of their goodness, to complete and perpetuate my great obligations to them, and that they have kindly given, in deference to my anxious wishes; it was, not to insist upon the use of my name as a candidate for the Presidency, after the promulgation of my desire to the contrary."

In another letter, to the same party, written a few weeks earlier, occurs the following touching passage, indicating his sense of the oppressive loneliness with which he was then surrounded. Referring to the recent departure of his son James on his mission to Portugal, accompanied by his family, he says:

"If they had, as I hope, a prosperous voyage, they will have arrived at Liverpool about the same day that I reached home. My separation from them, probably for a length of time, the uncertainty of life rendering it not unlikely that I may never see them again, and the deep and affectionate interest I take in their welfare and happiness, has been extremely painful.

"I find myself now, toward the close of my life, in one respect, in a condition similar to that with which I began it. Mrs. Clay and I commenced it alone: and after having had eleven children, of whom four only remain, our youngest son is the sole white person residing with us."

We are indebted to the same obliging gentleman from whom we derive the foregoing, for the following graphic description of a visit paid to Mr. Clay in his sick chamber at Washington:

"On Monday, the first of March last, at about one o'clock, at the National Hotel, Washington, having sent in my name, Mr. Clay kindly admitted me to his room. I found it darkened by heavy closed curtains, and the sufferer seated in an easy chair at the remote end, near a moderate coal-fire. I approached him rapidly, and, taking his extended soft hand and attenuated fingers, said, 'My dear sir, I am most honored and gratified by this privilege of being again permitted to renew to you, personally, the expression of my unabated attachment and reverence.'

"'But, my dear sir,' he playfully answered, 'you have a very cold hand to convey these sentiments to an invalid such as I am. Come, draw up a chair, and sit near me; I am compelled to use my voice but little, and very carefully.'

"Doing as he desired, I expressed my deep regret that he was still confined to a sick room, and added, that I hoped the return of spring, and the early recurrence of warmer weather would mitigate his more urgent symptoms, and enable him again to visit the Senate Chamber.

"'Sir,' said he, 'these are the kind wishes of a friend, but that hope does not commend itself to my judgment. You may remember that last year I visited the Havanna, in the expectation that its remarkably genial and mild climate would benefit me—but I found no relief; thence to New Orleans, a favorite resort of mine, with no better result. I even became impatient for the return of autumn, thinking that possibly its clear bracing atmosphere at Ashland might lessen my distressing cough; but sir, the Havanna, New Orleans, and Ashland have all failed to bring me any perceptible benefit.'

"'May I ask, my dear sir, what part of the twenty-four hours are you most comfortable?'

"'Fortunately, sir, very fortunately—I should add, mercifully—during the night. Then, I am singularly placid and composed: I am very wakeful, and during the earlier part of it my thoughts take a wide range, but I lie most tranquilly, without any sensation of weariness, or nervous excitement, and toward day fall into a quiet and undisturbed sleep; this continues to a late hour in the morning, when I rise and breakfast about ten o'clock. Subsequently my cough for an hour or two, is very exhausting. After one o'clock, and during the evening, I am tolerably free of it, and during this period, I see a few of my close personal friends. And thus passes the twenty-four hours.'

"'I was grieved to learn, through the public prints, that Mrs. Clay has been ill; may I hope that she is better?'

"'She has been sick; indeed, at one time, I was much alarmed at her situation; but I thank God,' (with deep emotion,) 'she is quite recovered.'

"'I almost expected the gratification of meeting your son James and his wife here.'

"'No, sir; you may remember that I once told you that he had made a very fortunate investment in the suburbs of St. Louis. This property has become valuable, and requires his attention and management: he has removed thither with his family. It's a long way off, and I would not have them make a winter journey here; beside, I have every comfort and attention that a sick man can require. My apartments, as you perceive, are far removed from the noise and bustle of the house; and I am surrounded by warm and anxious friends, ever seeking to anticipate my wishes.'

"During this brief conversation—in which we were quite alone—Mr. Clay had several paroxysms of coughing. Once he rose and walked across the room to a spittoon. The most careful use of his voice seemed greatly and constantly to irritate his lungs. I could not prolong the interview, though thoroughly impressed with the belief—since mournfully verified—that it would be the last.

"I rose, took my leave, invoking God's blessing on him; and, as in the presence of Royalty, bowed myself out of the room backward.

"On rising from his seat, as above remarked, he stood as erect and commanding as ever; and while sitting in close proximity to him, his burning eye fixed intently upon me, it seemed as if rays of light were emitted from each. This phenomenon is not unusual in consumptive patients, the extraordinary brilliancy of the eye being often remarked; but in Mr. Clay's case it was so intense as to make me almost nervous, partaking as it did of the supernatural.

"I have thus given you the arrangement, and very nearly the precise words,[11] of this my last interview with one of the greatest men of the age. It was altogether a scene to be remembered—a sick room, with the thoughts of a nation daily directed to it! It is full of pathos, and approaches the sublime."

The day previous to the call and conversation above described, the Editor of the Knickerbocker Magazine saw Mr. Clay in the street at Washington, and thus mentions the fact in the "Gossip" of his April Number: "Passing the National Hotel at two o'clock, on this bright and cloudless warm Sunday, we saw a tall figure, clad in a blue cloak, attended only by a lady and child, enter a carriage before the door. Once seen, it was a face never to be forgotten. It was Henry Clay. That eagle-eye was not dimmed, although the great statesman's force was abated. We raised our hat, and bowed our reverence and admiration. Our salutation was gracefully returned, and the carriage was driven away.

"As we walked on, to keep an engagement to dine, we thought of the late words of that eminent patriot: 'If the days of my usefulness, as I have too much reason to fear, be indeed passed, I desire not to linger an impotent spectator of the oft-scanned field of life. I have never looked upon old age, deprived of the faculty of enjoyment, of intellectual perceptions and energies, with any sympathy; and for such I think the day of fate can not arrive too soon.' One can hardly choose but drop a tear over such a remark from such a man."

Thus "broken with the storms of state," and scathed with many a fiery conflict, Henry Clay gradually descended toward the tomb. "During this period," says one of his Kentucky colleagues, "he conversed much and cheerfully with his friends, and took great interest in public affairs. While he did not expect a restoration to health, he cherished the hope that the mild season of spring would bring him strength enough to return to Ashland, that he might die in the bosom of his family. But, alas! spring, that brings life to all Nature, brought no life nor hope to him. After the month of March, his vital powers rapidly wasted, and for weeks he lay patiently awaiting the stroke of death. The approach of the destroyer had no terror for him. No clouds overhung his future. He met his end with composure, and his pathway to the grave was lightened by the immortal hopes which spring from the Christian faith. Not long before his death, having just returned from Kentucky, I bore to him a token of affection from his excellent wife. Never can I forget his appearance, his manner, or his words. After speaking of his family and his country, he changed the conversation to his own fortune, and, looking on me with his fine eyes undimmed, and his voice full of its original compass and melody, he said: 'I am not afraid to die, sir; I have hope, faith, and some confidence: I do not think any man can be entirely certain in regard to his future state, but I have an abiding trust in the merits and mediation of our Saviour.'"

"On the evening previous to his departure," writes his excellent pastor and faithful attendant, Rev. Dr. Butler, "sitting an hour in silence by his side, I could not but realize—when I heard him in the slight wanderings of his mind, to other days and other scenes, murmuring the words, 'My mother, mother, mother!' and saying, 'My dear wife!' as if she were present. I could not but realize then, and rejoiced to think, how near was the blessed re-union of his weary heart with the loved dead, and the living who must soon follow him to his rest, whose spirits even then seemed to visit and to cheer his memory and his hope."

Mr. Clay's countenance immediately after death looked like an antique cast. His features seemed to be perfectly classical; and the repose of all the muscles gave the lifeless body a quiet majesty, seldom reached by living human being. His last request was that his body might be buried, not in Washington, but in his own family vault in his beloved Kentucky, by the side of his relations and friends. May he rest in peace in his honored grave!

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