The Catholic World, Vol. 22, October, 1875, to March, 1876 / A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and Science

by Various

A MESSAGE.

Is there anything more tantalizing than to be caught with a toothache and swelled face just at Christmas time, when one’s hands are full of work that must be finished, of plans that have been begun in time and carried on prosperously to within a few days of their fulfilment? This is just what befell Mr. Stephen Walpole on the 20th of December in the year of grace 1870. You remember what a terrific winter that was? How the bleak north wind blew over ice and snow, and added tenfold horrors to the poor soldiers fighting in that terrible Franco-German war—how all our hearts shuddered in pity for them, as we sat stitching and knitting in their service by the glow of our Christmas fires! This 20th of December was, perhaps, the bitterest day of the whole season. The snow was deep on the ground, the ice hung in long spikes from rails and roofs, and the east wind blew cruelly over all. Stephen Walpole ought to have been out breasting it, but, instead of this, he sat at home moaning, in a voice that sounded like a fog-bell at sea, through poultices, wadding, and miles of flannel that swelled his head out of all human proportions.

“To think of a man being knocked down by a thing no bigger than a pin’s point!” he grumbled. “A prick of that miserable atom one calls a nerve turns the seat of one’s intellect into a monster calf’s head, and makes one a spectacle to gods and men. I could whip myself for being such a milksop as to knock under to it. I’d rather have every tooth in my head pulled out than play the woman like this.… Och! Whew!”

“Serves you right, sir, for your impertinence!” protested Nelly Walpole, bridling up and applying a fresh hot poultice to her brother’s cheek, which she bade him hold; but Stephen, in his manly inability to bear the toothache with composure, dropped the soft mess under a sudden sting that jerked it out of his hand.

“What an unmanageable baby it is!” cried Nelly, catching the poultice in time to save her pretty violet cashmere dress. “I told you to hold your cheek while I fastened the bandage; make haste now before it cools.”

“O my unfortunate brother! Ill-fated man! Is this how I find you, bound and poulticed in the hands of the Philistines?”

This was from Marmaduke, Nelly’s younger brother, who entered while the operation was going on, and stood surveying the victim in serene compassion.

“Yes,” cried Stephen, “and all the pity a poor devil gets is being bullied for not holding his jaw.”

“Oh! come, you’re not so bad, since there’s vice enough in you for a pun!” said Marmaduke. “How did you catch the thing?”

“What thing—the pun?”

“The toothache.”

“It caught me,” said Stephen resentfully.

“Then it caught you in some of those villanous cut-throat places where you go pottering after beggars and blackguards and the Lord knows what!” said Marmaduke with airy contempt, drawing his slim, beringed fingers gracefully through a mass of remarkably fine curls that clustered over his high, white forehead, and gave a boyish look to his handsome young face, and added to its attractions. He was extremely prepossessing, this perfumed, patent-leather-booted young gentleman of two-and-twenty. You could not look at him without liking him. His eye was as clear as a child’s, his smile as frank, his laughter as joyous and catching. Yet, as it sometimes happens with the graces of childhood, these things were a deceptive promise. The frankness and the joy were genuine; but there was a cold gleam of contempt, a cold ring of selfishness, in the bright eyes and the merry voice that were very disappointing when you found them out. But people were slow to find them out. Even those who lived with Marmaduke, and thus had ample opportunities of judging, remained under the spell of his attractive manners and personal charms until some accident revealed their worthlessness. A false coin will go on passing current through many hands, until one day some one drops it to the ground, and the glittering sham is betrayed. He had not a bad heart; he was kind even, when he could be brought to forget himself for a moment and think of others. But it required a shock to do this; and shocks are, happily, rare in every-day life. So Marmaduke slept on undisturbed in his egotism, hardening unconsciously in self-absorbed enjoyment. He had never taken trouble about anything, made a genuine effort of any sort except for his amusement. He had just the kind of brains to enable him to get through college with a decent amount of success easily—tact, ready repartee, a quick, retentive memory that gave the maximum of result for the minimum of work. He would pass for clever and well informed where an awkward, ugly youth, who had ten times his intellect and studied ten times harder, would pass for knowing nothing. Stephen was eight years older than he, and had not yet discovered his brother’s real value. Perhaps this arose partly from Stephen’s not being of a particularly observant or analytical turn of mind. He took people pretty much at their own valuation, as the world is rather apt to do. Marmaduke set a very high price on his handsome face and limited attainments, and his brother had never dreamed of disputing it. He would sometimes naïvely express his surprise that people were so fond of Duke when he did so little to please them; and wonder how popular he was, considering that he never gave himself the smallest trouble to oblige or humor people.

“I suppose it’s his handsome face that mankind, and womankind in particular, find so taking,” Stephen would remark to Nelly. “He certainly has a wonderful knack for getting on with people without caring twopence whether they like him or not. I wish I knew his secret. Perhaps it’s his high spirits.”

Nelly would sometimes suggest that Marmaduke’s fine temper might count for something in the mystery. And Stephen never contradicted her. His temper was not his best point. He had a heart of gold; he had energy, patience, and endurance to any extent—except in case of toothache; he was unselfish and generous; but he was sensitive and exacting. Like most persons who dispense liberally, he was impatient of the selfishness and ingratitude of men who take all they can get and return nothing. Marmaduke had no such accounts to square with human beings, so he never felt aggrieved, never quarrelled with them. Stephen was working hard at his profession—he was an engineer—and so far he had achieved but moderate success. Marmaduke had been called to the bar, but it was a mere formality so far; he spent his time dawdling about town, retailing gossip and reading poetry, waiting for briefs that never came—that never do come to handsome young gentlemen who take it so easy. His elder brother laid no blame on him for this want of success. He was busy all day himself, and took for granted that Marmaduke was busy on his side. The law was up-hill work, besides; the cleverest and most industrious men grew gray in its service before they made a name for themselves; and Duke was after all but a boy—he had time enough before him. So Stephen argued in his brotherly indulgence, in ignorance of the real state of things.

Nelly was, as yet, the only person who had found out Marmaduke, who knew him thoroughly. She knew him egotistical to the core, averse to work, to effort of every sort, idle, self-indulgent, extravagant; and the knowledge of all this afforded much anxious thought to her little head of nineteen years. They lived alone, these three. Nelly was a mother to the two young men, watching and caring for them with that instinctive child-motherhood that is so touching in young girls sometimes. She was a spirited, elfin little creature, very pretty, blessed with the sweetest of tempers, the shrewdest of common sense, and an energy of character that nothing daunted and few things resisted. Marmaduke described this trait of Nelly’s in brother-like fashion as “a will of her own.” He knew his was no match for it, and, with a tact which made one of his best weapons of defence, he contrived to avoid clashing with it. This was not all policy. He loved his pretty sister, and admired her more than anything in the world except himself. And yet he knew that this admiration was not mutual; that Nelly knew him thoroughly, saw through him as if he were glass; but he was not afraid of her. His elder brother was duped by him; but he would have staked his life on it that Nelly would never undeceive him; that she would let Stephen go on believing in him so long as the deceiver himself did not tear off the mask. Yet it was a source of bitter anxiety to the wise little mother-maiden to watch Marmy drifting on in this life of indolence and vacuity. Where was it to end? Where do such lives always end? Nothing but some terrible shock could awake him from it. And where was the shock to come from? Nelly never preached—she was far too sensible for that—but when the opportunity presented itself she would say a few brief words to the culprit in an earnest way that never irritated him, if they worked no better result. He would admit with exasperating good-humor that he was a good-for-nothing dog; that he was unworthy of such a perfection of a sister and such an irreproachable elder brother; but that, as nature had so blessed him, he meant to take advantage of the privilege of leaving the care of his perfection to them.

“If I were alone on my own hook, Nell, I would work like a galley-slave,” he protested once to her gentle upbraiding. “But as it is, why need I bother myself? You will save my soul, and pray me high and dry into heaven; and Stephen—Stephen the admirable, the unimpeachable, the pink of respectability—will keep me out of mischief in this.”

“I don’t believe in vicarious salvation for this world or the next, and neither do you, Marmy. You are much too intelligent to believe in any such absurdity,” replied Nelly, handing him a glove she had been sewing a button into.

Marmaduke did not contradict her, but, whistling an air from the Trovatore, arranged his hat becomingly, a little to one side, and, with a farewell look in the glass over the mantel-piece, sauntered out for his morning constitutional in the park. Nelly went to the window, and watched the lithe young figure, with its elastic step, until it disappeared. She was conscious of a stronger solicitude about Marmaduke this morning than she had ever felt before. It was like a presentiment. Yet there was nothing that she knew of to justify it. He had not taken to more irregular hours, nor more extravagant habits, nor done anything to cause her fresh anxiety; still, her heart beat as under some new and sudden fear. Perhaps it was the ring of false logic in his argument that sounded a louder note of alarm and warned her of worse danger than she had suspected. One might fear everything for a man starting in life with the deliberate purpose of shifting his responsibility on to another, setting his conscience to sleep because he had two brave, wakeful ones watching at his side.

“If something would but come and wake him up to see the monstrous folly, the sinfulness, of it!” sighed Nelly. “But nothing short of a miracle could do that, I believe. He might, indeed, fall ill and be brought to death’s door; he might break his leg and be a cripple for life, and that might serve the purpose; but oh! dear, I’m not brave enough to wish for so severe a remedy.”

Two months had passed since this little incident between the brother and sister, and nothing had occurred to vindicate Nelly’s gloomy forebodings. Marmaduke rose late, read the newspaper, then Tennyson, Lamartine, or the last novel, made an elaborate toilet, and sauntered down to the courts to keep a lookout for the coming briefs. But it was near Christmas now, and this serious and even tenor of life had been of late broken in upon by the getting up of private theatricals in company with some bachelor friends. What between learning his own part, and hearing his fellow-actors and actresses theirs, and overseeing stage arrangements, Marmaduke had a hard time of it. His hands were full; he was less at home than usual, seldom or never of an evening. He had come in very late some nights, and looked worn and out of spirits, Nelly thought, when he came down to his late breakfast.

“I wish those theatricals were over, Marmy. They will kill you if they last much longer,” she said, with a tender, anxious look on her pretty little face. This was the day he came home and found Stephen in the hands of the Philistines.

“’Tis hard work enough,” assented the young man, stretching out his long limbs wearily; “but the 26th will soon be here. It will be too bad if you are laid up and can’t come and applaud me, Steevy,” he added, considering his elder brother’s huge head, that looked as if it would take a month to regain its natural shape.

“Humph! That’s the least of my troubles!” boomed Stephen through his poultice.

“Civil! Eh, Nell? I can tell you it’s as bad as any toothache, the labor I’ve had with the business—those lazy dogs, Travers and Milford, throwing all the weight of it on me, under pretext of never having done that sort of thing before.”

“That’s always the fate of the willing horse,” said Stephen, without the faintest idea of being sarcastic. “That’s just what I complain of with those idle fellows X—— and W——; they throw the burden of all the business on me, because, forsooth, I understand things better! I do understand that people can’t get work done unless they bestir themselves and attend to it.”

“I wouldn’t be such an ass as to let myself be put on in that way,” said Marmaduke resentfully. “I would not be fooled into doing the work of three people instead of one.”

“And yet that’s what you are doing at present,” replied Stephen.

“Oh! that’s different; it is only en passant,” explained Marmaduke; “and then, you see, it.…”

“Amuses you,” Nelly had it on the tip of her tongue to say; but she checked herself, and finished the sentence for him with, “It is not the same thing; people cannot make terms for a division of labor, except it be in the case of real business.”

“Of course not,” assented Stephen. Marmaduke looked at his boots, and inwardly voted Nelly “no end of a trump.”

Did she guess this mental vote, and did she take advantage of it to ask him a favor?

“Perhaps Marmy would go and see that poor man for you, Stephen?” she said in the most natural way possible, without looking up from her work.

“I wish he would; I should be ever so much obliged to him. Would you mind it, Duke?”

“Mind what?”

“Taking a message for me to a poor fellow that I wanted badly to go and see to-day.”

“Who is he? Where does he hang out?”

“His name is John Baines, and he hangs out in Red Pepper Lane, ten minutes from here, at the back of the square.”

“Some abominable slum, no doubt.”

“The locality is not Berkeley Square or Piccadilly, but it would not kill you to walk through it once,” rejoined Stephen.

“Do go, there’s a dear boy!” coaxed Nelly, fixing her bright eyes on Marmaduke’s face, with a smile that would have fascinated a gorilla.

Marmaduke rose, stretched his arms, as if to brace himself for an effort.

“Who’s your friend John Baines?” he said. “A ticket-of-leave man?”

“Nothing so interesting; he’s only a rag-and-bone man.”

Marmaduke said nothing, but his nose uttered such an unmistakable pshaw! that Nelly, in spite of herself, burst out laughing.

“What the deuce can make him cultivate such company?” he exclaimed, appealing to Nelly, and joining good-humoredly in her merriment.

“To help them and do them good; what else?” she replied.

“Every man to his taste; I confess I have none for evangelizing rag-and-bone men, or indeed men of any station, kind, or degree,” observed Marmaduke emphatically.

“Then you won’t go?” said Stephen.

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t. I don’t mind devoting myself for once to oblige you. What’s your message for John Baines? Not a leg of mutton or a bottle of port? I won’t bargain for carrying that sort of article.”

“I don’t want you to carry anything that will encumber you,” replied the elder brother. “Tell him I cannot get to see him to-day, and why, and that I am very sorry for it. Meantime, you can say I have done his commission. See if he wants anything, and, if so I will send it at once.”

“What ails him?” enquired Marmaduke with a sudden look of alarm.

“Poverty: hunger, and cold, and misery.”

“Oh! that’s all! I mean it’s not a case of typhus or small-pox. I should not care to imperil my valuable life by running in the way of that sort of thing,” observed Marmaduke.

“Have no fear. The complaint is not catching,” replied his brother. “Whatever good he may do you, he’ll do you no harm.”

“Dear Marmy! it’s very good of you!” whispered Nelly, as she tripped down-stairs after the reluctant messenger, and helped him on with his fur coat in the hall.

“It’s not a bit good; it’s an infernal bore, and I’m only doing it to please you, Nell,” protested Marmaduke. “What a fool’s errand it is! I sha’n’t know from Adam what to say to the man when I get there. What am I to say to him?”

“Oh! anything,” suggested Nelly. “Say you have come to see him because Stephen is ill, and ask him how he is. You’re never at a loss for something to say, you know that right well; and whatever you say is sure to be right.”

“When I know who I’m talking to; but I don’t know this interesting party, or what topics of conversation he particularly affects. He won’t expect me to preach him a sermon, eh?” And Marmaduke faced round with a look of such comical terror at the thought that Nelly again burst out laughing.

“Heaven forbid! That’s the last thing you need dream of,” she cried. “He is much more likely to preach to you.”

“Oh! indeed; but I didn’t bargain for that. I would very much rather be excused,” protested Marmaduke, anything but reassured.

“You foolish boy! I mean that he will preach to you as the poor always do—by example; by their patience, and their gratitude for the least thing one does for them.”

“I’m not going to do anything for John Baines that I can see; only bothering him with a visit which he would very likely rather I spared him.”

“You will give him Stephen’s message,” suggested Nelly, “and then let him talk. There is nothing poor people enjoy so much as a good listener. They are quite happy when they can pour out their grievances into a willing ear. The sympathy of the rich is often a greater comfort to the poor than their alms.”

“Humph! That’s lucky, anyhow,” grunted Marmaduke. “Well, I’ll let the old gentleman have his head; I’ll listen till he pulls up of his own accord.” He had his hand on the door-latch, when Stephen’s muffled tones were heard calling from the room above. Nelly bounded up the stairs, and was back in an instant.

“He says you are to give Baines half a sovereign from him; he had nearly forgotten it.”

“Where is it?” said Marmaduke, holding out his hand.

“Stephen has not his purse about him, so he begs you will give it for him.”

“Neither have I mine,” said the young man.

“Well, run up for it; or shall I? Where is it?” inquired willing Nelly.

Marmaduke hesitated for a moment, and then said abruptly: “It doesn’t matter where it is; there’s nothing in it.”

“What have you done with your money? You had plenty a few days ago!” exclaimed Nelly in childlike surprise.

“I have lost it; I haven’t a brass farthing in the world!” He said this in a reckless, dogged sort of way, as if he did not care who knew it; and yet he spoke in an undertone. For one moment Nelly looked at him in blank astonishment.

“Lost it?” she repeated, and then, the truth flashing on her suddenly, she cried in a frightened whisper: “O Marmaduke! you have not been gambling? Oh! tell me it’s not true.” She caught hold of his arm, and, clinging to it, looked into his face, scared and white.

“Nonsense, Nell! I thought you were a girl of sense,” he exclaimed pettishly, disengaging himself and pushing back the bolt. “Let me be off; tell Stephen I had not change, so his friend must wait till he can go and tip him himself.”

“No, no; he may be hungry, poor man. Stay, I think I have ten shillings here,” said Nelly; and she pulled out her porte-monnaie, and picked four half-crowns from the promiscuous heap of smaller coins. “Take these; I will tell Stephen you will give the ten shillings.”

Her hand trembled as she dropped the money into Marmaduke’s pocket. He was about to resist; but there was something peremptory, a touch of that will of her own, in her manner that deterred him.

“I’m sorry I said anything about it; I should not if I thought you would have minded it so much,” he observed.

“Minded it? O Marmaduke! Minded your taking to gambling?”

“Tush! Don’t talk nonsense! A man isn’t a gambler because once in a way he loses a twenty-pound note.”

And with this he brushed past her, and closed the hall-door with a loud bang.

Nelly did not sit down on one of the hall chairs and cry. She felt mightily inclined to do so; but she struggled against the weakness and overcame it. Walking quietly up the stairs, she hummed a few bars of a favorite air as she passed the door of Stephen’s sitting-room, and went on to her own room on the story above. But even here, safe and alone, the tears were bravely held back. She would not cry; she would not be seen with red eyes that would betray her brother; she would do her very utmost to rescue him, to screen him even now. While she is wrestling and pleading in the silence of her own room, let us follow the gambler to Red Pepper Lane.

Marmaduke had described the place accurately when he called it an abominable slum. Red Pepper Lane was one of those dismal, frightful dens of darkness and dirt that cower at the back of so many of our wealthy squares and streets—poison-pits for breeding typhus and every social plague that desolates great cities. The houses were so high and the lane so narrow that you could at a stretch have shaken hands across from window to window. There was a rope slung half-way down the alley, with a lantern hanging from it which looked more like a decoration or a sign than a possible luminary; for the glass was too thickly crusted with dirt to admit of the strongest light piercing it. In the middle of the lane was a gutter, in which a few ragged, begrimed, and hungry-looking little mortals were playing in the dirty snow. The east wind whistled through the dreary tenements with a sharp, pitiless cry; the sky was bright outside, but here in Red Pepper Lane its brightness did not penetrate. Nothing but the wind could enter, and that came with all its might, through the crannies in the walls, through the rickety doors, through the window-frames glazed with brown paper or battered old hats—any rag that could be spared to stuff the empty panes. Not a head was seen anywhere protruding from windows or doors; the fierce blast kept every one within who had a roof to cover them. If it were not for the sooty little objects disporting themselves in the gutter, the lane might have been the precincts of the jail, so deserted and silent was it. Marmaduke might have wandered up and down for an hour without meeting any one whom he could ask to direct him to where John Baines lived, but luckily he recognized the house at once by Stephen’s signal of an old broom nailed over the door. He searched for a knocker or a bell; but seeing neither, he sounded a loud rat-ta-ta-tat with the gold knob of his walking-stick, and presently a voice called out from somewhere to “lift the latch!” He did so, and, again left to his own devices, he followed Stephen’s injunctions and went straight up to the second story, where he knocked, and in obedience to a sharp “Come in!” entered.

The gloom of the lane had prepared him gradually for the deeper gloom of the room, and he at once distinguished a person, whom he rightly surmised to be the rag-and-bone man, sitting at the farther end, near the fire-place, wrapped up in a brown blanket, with his feet resting on the hearth-stone, as if he were toasting them. If he was, it was in imagination; for there was no fire—only the ghost of one as visible in a mass of gray ashes, and they did not look as if even a glow of the late warmth remained in them. He had his back to the door, and, when it opened, he turned his head in that direction, but not sufficiently to see who came in. Marmaduke, as he stood on the threshold, took in the surroundings at a glance. There was a bed on the floor in one corner, with no bed-clothes to speak of, the blanket being just now in requisition as a cloak; a miserable-looking table and two chairs—an unoccupied one and the one Baines sat in; a bag and a basket were flung under the window, and some dingy old utensils—a saucepan, kettle, etc.—lay about. There was nothing particularly dreadful in the scene; it was, compared with many such, rather a cheerful one on the whole; but Marmaduke, who had no experience of the dwellings of the poor, thought it the most appalling picture of misery and desolation that could be conceived. He was roused from the stupor of horror into which the sudden spectacle had thrown him by hearing the figure in the blanket ask rather sharply a second time “Who’s there?”

“I beg your pardon,” said Marmaduke, advancing within a step of the chair. “My name is Walpole; I have come to see if there is anything I can do for you—anything that you … that …” he stammered, not knowing how to put it.

“Oh! Mr. Walpole, I am obliged to you for calling, sir. I want nothing; but I am glad to see you. It is very kind of you. Pray take a chair. You must excuse me for not getting up; my leg is still very painful.”

“I am only the brother of the Mr. Walpole whom you know,” said Marmaduke, surprised beyond measure at the good address of the man. “My brother is laid up with a violent face-ache. He was greatly put out at not being able to keep his appointment with you this afternoon, and sent me to see how you were getting on, and to tell you he had done something that you commissioned him to do.”

“Your brother is extremely kind,” said the man. “I am sorry to hear he is ill. This weather is trying to everybody.”

“You seem to be a severe sufferer from it,” remarked Marmaduke. He had opened his fur coat, and sat back in the rickety chair, in mortal fear all the while that it would go to smash under him. This was the most extraordinary specimen of the rag-and-bone tribe—he could not say that he had ever known, for he had never known one in his life, but—that he could have imagined. He spoke like an educated man, and, even in his blanket, he had the bearing of a gentleman. If it were not for his swollen nose and the glare of his red eye-balls, which were decidedly not refined, there was nothing in his appearance to indicate that he belonged to the very dregs of human society. It was impossible to say how old he was, but you saw at a glance that he was more broken than aged.

“Yes, I am suffering rather severely just now,” he replied in a quiet, conversational way; “I always do when the cold sets in. But, added to my chronic complaint of sciatica, I slipped on the ice some time ago, and sprained my left foot badly. Your brother made my acquaintance at the hospital where I was taken to have it set right.”

“And has it been set right?”

“Yes; I can’t get about easily yet, but it will be all right by and by.” And then, dismissing the selfish subject, he said: “I am distressed, sir, that you should have had the trouble of coming to such a place as this; pray don’t let me detain you longer.”

“I’m in no hurry,” replied Marmaduke, whose interest and curiosity were more and more excited. “Is there nothing I can do for you? It’s dismal work sitting here all day with a sprained ankle, and having nothing to do; would you care to have some books?” It did not occur to him to ask if he knew how to read; he would as soon have inquired if he knew how to speak.

Baines looked at him with a curious expression.

“I don’t look like a man to lend books to, do I?” he said. “There’s not much in common between books and a rag-and-bone man.”

“Quite as much, I should say, as there is between some men and rags and bones,” retorted Marmaduke, meeting the man’s eyes with a responsive question in his own.

Baines turned away with a short laugh. Perhaps it was mere accident or the force of habit that made him look up at the space over the mantel-piece; but there was something in the deliberate glance that made Marmaduke follow it, and, doing so, he saw a faded but originally good engraving of Shakspere hung in a frame against the wall. Repressing the low whistle which rose involuntarily to his lips, he said, looking at the portrait:

“You have a likeness of Shakspere, I see. Have you read his plays?”

“Ay, and acted them!”

“Acted them! You were originally on the stage, then? I saw at once that you were not what you seem to me,” said Marmaduke, with that frankness that seemed so full of sympathy and was so misleading, though never less so, perhaps, than at this moment. “Would it be disagreeable to you to tell me through what chapters of ill-luck or other vicissitudes you came to be in the position where I now see you?”

The man was silent for a few minutes; whether he was too deeply offended to reply at once, or whether he was glancing over the past which the question evoked, it was impossible to say. Marmaduke fancied he was offended, and, vexed with himself for having questioned him, he stood up, and laying Nelly’s four half-crowns on the chimney-piece, “I beg your pardon if I seemed impertinent; I assure you I did not mean it,” he said. “I felt interested in you, and curious to know something more of you; but I had no right to put questions. Good-morning.” He made a step towards the door, but Baines, rousing himself, arrested him by a sign.

“I am not offended,” he said. “I saw quite well what made you ask it. You would have every right to catechise me if I had come to you for help; as it is, your kindness and your brother’s makes a claim which I am in no mind to dispute. If you don’t mind shivering in this cold place for half an hour, pray sit down, and I will tell you my story. I have not a cigar to offer you,” he added with a laugh, “but perhaps you don’t affect that vice?”

“I do indeed very considerably,” said Marmaduke, and, pulling out a handsome cigar-case, he handed it to Baines, and invited him to help himself; the rag-man hesitated just for a moment, and then, yielding to the instinct of his good-breeding, took one.

“It’s not an amusing story,” he began, when they had sent up a few warm puffs from their fragrant weeds, “but it may not be uninteresting to you. You are very young; would it be rude to ask how young?”

“Two-and-twenty next week, if I live so long,” replied Marmaduke.

“Humph! I was just that age when I took the fatal turn in the road that led to the honorable career in which I am now embarked. My father was an officer in the line. He had no fortune to speak of; a couple of thousand pounds left him by an aunt was all the capital he possessed. When he was still young, he married, and got three thousand pounds with his wife. I was their only child. My father died when I was ten years old, and left me to the sole care of my mother, who made an idol of me and spoiled me to my heart’s content. I was not a bad boy, I had no evil propensities, and I was not deficient in brains. I picked up things with little or no effort, and got on better at school than many who had twice the brains and four times the industry. I was passionately fond of poetry, learned pages of Byron and Shelley by heart, and declaimed with a good deal of power. There could not have been a greater curse than such a gift to a boy of my temperament and circumstances. When I left school, I went to Oxford. My poor mother strained every nerve to give me a university education, with a view to my becoming a barrister; but instead of repaying her sacrifices by working hard, I spent the greater part of my time acting. I became infatuated about Shakspere, and took to private theatricals with a frenzy of enthusiasm. As ill-luck would have it, I fell in with a set of fellows who were drama-mad like myself. I had one great chum named Hallam, who was stark mad about it, and encouraged me in the folly to the utmost. I soon became a leading star in this line. I was sought for and asked out by everybody in the place, until my head got completely turned, and I fancied I had only to walk on to the stage to take Macready’s place and achieve fame and fortune. The first thing that roused me from the absurd delusion was seeing Charles Kean in Macbeth. I felt utterly annihilated under the superiority of his acting; it showed me in an instant the difference there is between ordinary taste and talent and the divine afflatus of genius. And yet an old friend who happened to meet me in the theatre that night assured me that the younger Kean was not a patch upon his father, and that Macready outshone the elder Kean. I went back to Oxford a crestfallen man, and for a time took refuge from my disappointment in real work. I studied hard, and, when the term came for going up for my degree, I was confident of success. It was a vain confidence, of course. I had only given myself to study for a period of two months or so, and it would have been little short of a miracle if I had passed. My mother was terribly disappointed; the sight of her tears cut me up more than the failure on my own account, and I determined to succeed or die in the effort, if she consented to let me make one more. She did consent, and I succeeded. That was the happiest day of my life, I think.” He drew a long breath, and repeated in an undertone, as if he forgot Marmaduke’s presence, and were speaking aloud to himself: “Yes, the happiest day of my life!”

“You worked very hard to pull up for lost time!” observed Marmaduke.

“Lost time! Yes, that was it—lost time!” said Baines, musing; then he continued in his former tone: “My poor mother was very happy. She declared I had repaid her amply for all her sacrifices. She saw me already at the top of my profession, a Q.C., a judge, the chief of all the judges, seated in robes on the woolsack. I came home, and was in due time called to the bar. I was then just twenty-four. We lived in a pretty house on the road to Putney; but my mother thought it now desirable to move into London, that I might have an office in some central neighborhood, where my clients would flow in and out conveniently. I remember that I strongly opposed the plan, not from dislike, but from some feeling like a presentiment, a dread, that London would be a dangerous place for me, and that I was taking the road to ruin by leaving the shelter of our secluded home, with its garden and trees, away from a thousand temptations that beset a young man in the great city. But my mother’s heart was set on it. She was convinced my character had thoroughly changed, that I had broken off for ever from old habits and old propensities, and that I was strong enough to encounter any amount of temptation without risk. Poor mother! It was no fault of hers if she was blinded by love. The fault was all mine. I fed her with false hopes, and then I betrayed them. She gave in so far to my wishes as to consent only to let the house, instead of selling it, as she first intended; so that our removal to London took the appearance more of an essay than a permanent arrangement. I was thankful for this, and set about the change in high spirits. We were soon comfortably settled in a very small house in Wimpole Street. I found it rather like a bird-cage after our airy, roomy abode in the suburbs; but it was very snug, and my mother, who had wonderful taste, soon made it bright and pretty. She was the brightest and prettiest thing in it herself; people used to take her for my elder sister when she took me to parties of an evening. I was very proud of her, and with better reason than she was of me.”

He paused again, looking up at the Shakspere print, as if he saw his mother’s likeness there. The sunken, red eyes moistened as he gazed on it.

“It is a great blessing to have a good mother,” said Marmaduke. “I lost mine when I was little more than a child.”

“So much the better for both of you,” retorted Baines bitterly; “she did not live for you to break her heart, and then eat out your own with remorse. But I am talking wildly. You would no doubt have been a blessing to her; you would have worked like a man, and she would have been proud of you to the end. It was not so with me. I was never fond of work. I was not fond of it then; indeed, what I did was not worthy of being called work at all. I moped over a law-book for an hour or so in the morning, and then read Shakspere or some other favorite poet, by way of refreshing myself after the unpalatable task, and getting it out of my head as quickly as possible. I went down regularly to the courts; but as I had no legal connection, and nothing in myself to make up for the want of patronage, or inspire confidence in my steadiness and abilities, the attorneys brought me no business; and as I was too lazy, and perhaps too proud, to stoop to court them, I began to feel thoroughly disgusted with the profession, and to wish I had never entered it. I ceased to go through the farce of my law-reading of a morning, and devoted myself entirely to my dilettante tastes, reading poetry, and occasionally amusing myself with writing it. My old longing for the stage came back, and only wanted an opportunity to break out actively. This opportunity was not far off. My mother suspected nothing of the way I was idling my time; she knew the bar was up-hill work, and was satisfied to see me kept waiting a few years before I became famous; but it was matter of surprise to her that I never got a brief of any description. She set it down to jealousy on the part of my rivals at the courts, and would now and then wax wroth against them, wondering what expedient could be devised for showing up the corrupt state of the profession, and forcing my enemies to recognize my superiority as it deserved. Don’t laugh at her and think her a fool; she was wise on every subject but this, and I fear I must have counted for something in leading her to such ridiculous conclusions. I held very much to preserving her good opinion, but, instead of striving to justify it by working on to the fulfilment of her motherly ambition, I took to cheating her, first tacitly, then deliberately and cruelly. Things were going on in this way, when one day, one ill-fated day, I went out as usual in the afternoon, ostensibly to the courts, but really to kill time where I could—at my club, in the Row, or lounging in Pall Mall. I was passing the Army and Navy Club, when I heard a voice call out:

“‘Halloo, Hamlet!’ (This was the name I went by at Oxford, on account of my success in the part.) ‘How glad I am to see you, old boy! You’re the very man I’ve been on the look-out for.’

“‘Hallam!’ I cried, returning his friendly grasp, and declaring how delighted I was to see him.

“‘I’ve been beating about for you ever since I came to town, ten days ago,’ he said. ‘I wrote to your old address, but the letter was sent back to me. Where have you migrated to; and what are you doing?’

“I told him the brief history of my existence since we had parted at Oxford, he to enter the army, I to begin my course of dinners-eating at the Temple. He was now on leave; he had just come from the north, where his regiment was quartered, and he was in high spirits at the prospect of his month’s holiday. I asked him what it was he had been wanting me so particularly for.

“‘I wanted to see you, first of all, for your own sake, old boy,’ he answered heartily; ‘and in the next place I want you badly to help us to get up some private theatricals at the Duchess of B——’s after Easter. I suppose you are a perfect actor—a Garrick and Charles Mathews combined—by this time. You have had plenty of practice, I’ll be bound.’

“I assured him that I had not played since the last time he and I had brought down the house together. He was immensely surprised, and loudly deplored my mistake in burying such a talent in the earth. He called me a conceited idiot to have let myself be crushed by Kean, and vowed a year’s training from a professional would bring me out a better actor than ever Kean was. Amateur acting was all very well, but the finest untaught genius ever born could no more compete successfully with a man who had gone through the regular professional drill than a civilian could with a trained soldier in executing a military manœuvre.

“‘I told you before, and I tell you again,’ he continued, as arm in arm we paced a shady alley of the park—‘I tell you that if you went on the stage you would cut out the best actor we have; though that is not saying much, for a more miserable, ignorant lot of drivelling idiots no stage ever saw caricaturing the drama than our English theatres can boast at this moment.’

“My heart rose high, and my vanity swelled out like a peacock’s tail, pluming itself in this luxurious air of flattery. I knew Hallam meant what he said; but I knew that he was a light-headed young fellow, not at all competent to judge dramatic power, and still less to counsel me. Yet such is the intoxicating effect of vanity that I swallowed his praise as if it had been the purest wisdom. I opened my whole heart to him, told him how insufferably bored I was at the bar, that I had no aptitude for it, that I was wasting my time waiting for briefs that never came—I did not explain what pains I took to prevent their coming—until, kindling with my own exaggerated statement as I went on, I ended by cursing the day I took to the bar, and declaring that if it were not for my mother I would abandon the whole thing and try my luck on the stage to-morrow.

“‘And why should you let your mother stand in your way?’ said Hallam. ‘If she is too unreasonable to see the justice of the case, why, then … well, I can’t for the life of me see why your happiness and fortune should be sacrificed to it.’

“He was not a bad fellow—far from it. He did not mean to play the devil’s advocate. I am certain he thought he was giving me excellent advice, using his superior knowledge of the world for my benefit. But he was a fool—an ignorant, silly, well-meaning fool. Such men, as friends, are often worse than knaves. If he had proposed anything obviously wicked, dishonest, or unprincipled, I should have scouted it indignantly, and walked off in contempt. But he argued with a show of reason, in a tone of considerate regard for my mother’s wishes and feelings that deceived and disarmed me. He represented to me the folly of sticking to a life that I hated and that I had next to no chance of ever succeeding in; he had a score of examples at his fingers’ ends of young fellows teeming with talent, patient as asses, and hard working as negroes, who had gone for the bar and given it up in despair. My mother, like all fond mothers, naturally expected me to prove an exception to the general rule, and to turn out a lord chancellor of the romantic sort, rising by sheer force of merit, without patronage, without money, without any of the essential helps, by the power of my unaided genius. ‘This is simply bosh, my dear fellow—innocent maternal bosh,’ persisted Hallam, ‘but as dangerous as any poison. Cut the bar, as your better genius prompts you to do, and take to your true calling—the drama.’

“‘For aught I know, I may have lost any talent I had,’ I replied; ‘it is two years, remember, since I acted at all.’

“‘That is very easily ascertained,’ said my friend. ‘You will take a part in these theatricals we are going to get up, and we will soon see whether your talent has evaporated or not. My own impression is that it will come out stronger than ever; you have studied, and you have seen something, if not very much, of life since your last attempts.’

“‘My mother has a horror of the theatre,’ I said, unwilling to yield without a show of resistance; ‘it would break her heart to see me take to the stage.’

“‘Not if you succeed; hearts are never broken by success.’

“‘And how if I fail?’

“‘You are sure not to fail,’ he urged. ‘But look here: do nothing rashly. Don’t say anything about this business until you have tried your hand at it in private. We have not settled yet what the play is to be; they left it to me to select, and I will choose one that will bring out your powers best—not tragedy; that never was your line, in my opinion. At any rate, you must for the present confine yourself to light parts, such as.…’

“I interrupted him in high dudgeon.

“‘Why, if I’m not tragic, I’m nothing!’ I exclaimed. ‘Every one who ever saw me in Hamlet declared they had never seen the part so well rendered! And you said many a time that my Macbeth was.…’

“‘First-rate—for an amateur; and I will say it again, if you like,’ protested Hallam; ‘but since then, I have seen real acting.…’

“‘Then mine was not real? I can’t for the life of me see, then …’ I broke in.

“‘Don’t get so infernally huffy,’ said Hallam, shaking my arm with good-humored impatience. ‘If you want to know what real, trained, professional acting is, you must go abroad, and see how the actors of the Théâtre Français, for instance, study and train and drill. If you will start with the English notion that a man can take to the stage as he does to the saddle, give up the plan at once; you will never rise above an amateur. But to come back to our present purpose; we will select a part to suit you, and if the rehearsals promise a genuine success—as I have not a doubt they will—we will invite your mother to come and see you, and she will be so proud of your triumph that the cause will be won.’

“‘My dear Hallam, it was some good fairy sent you in my way assuredly this morning!’ I cried, grasping his arm in delight.

“I was highly elated, and took to the scheme with enthusiasm. We spent the afternoon discussing it. It was settled that the play should be The Taming of the Shrew; the part of Benedict would suit me to perfection, Hallam declared, and I was so subdued by the amount of worldly wisdom and general knowledge of life which he had displayed in his arguments about my change of profession that I yielded without difficulty, and consented to forego tragedy for the present.

“For the next week I was in a whirl of excitement. He took me to the Army and Navy Club, and introduced me to a number of swells, all military men, who were very agreeable and treated me with a soldier-like cordiality that charmed me. I fancied life must be a delightful thing in such pleasant, good-natured, well-bred company; that I was now in my proper sphere; and that I had been hitherto out of place amidst rusty lawyers and hard-working clerks, etc. In fact, I was a fool, and my head got turned. I spent all my time in the day lounging about with Hallam and his aristocratic captains and colonels, and the evenings I devoted to the business of rehearsal, which was carried on at Lady Arabella Daucer’s, the married daughter of the duchess at whose house the theatricals were to be performed. I had been very graciously received by her grace, and consequently all the lords and ladies who composed her court followed suit. I was made as much of as if I had been ‘one of them,’ and my acting soon established me as the leading star of the select company. I suppose Hallam was right in saying that more mature reading and so on had improved my dramatic talent; for certainly it came out with a brilliancy that surprised myself. The artistic, high-bred atmosphere that surrounded me seemed to infuse fresh vigor into me. I borrowed or revealed a power that even my vanity had never suspected. Hallam was enchanted, and as proud of my success as if it had been his own.

“‘I can fancy how your mother will enjoy this!’ he exclaimed one evening, as I walked home with him to his chambers in Piccadilly. ‘She will be beside herself with pride in you, old fellow. Fancy what it will be the night of your first public representation! I expect a seat in her box, mind!’

“It was just two days before the grand night, and we were having our last rehearsal—the final one—in the theatre at B—— House, which was lighted up and filled with a select few, in order to judge of the general effect for the following night. I was in great spirits, and acted better than I had done yet. The audience applauded warmly, the ladies clapping their white-kid hands and shaking their handkerchiefs, that filled the air with the perfumes of Arabia, while the gentlemen, more audible in their demonstrations, cheered loudly.

“When it was over, we sat down to supper, about a hundred, of us. I sat next the duchess, and my beautiful Katharina on the other side of me. She was a lovely girl of twenty, a cousin of the duchess. I had been struck by her beauty at the first, but the more I saw of her the less she pleased me; she was a vain, coquettish young lady, and only tolerated me because I was useful as a good set-off to her acting, which, to be just, was excellent. I never saw anything so good off the stage, and very seldom saw it equalled even there. Flushed with her recent triumph, which had borrowed additional lustre from mine she was more gracious and conversational than I had yet known her. I was flattered, though I knew perfectly how much the caprice was worth, and I exerted myself to the utmost to be agreeable. We were altogether a very merry party; the champagne flowed freely, and with it the spirits of the guests rose to sparkling point. As we rose from the table, some one called out for a dance before we broke up. The musicians had gone to have refreshments after the rehearsal, but they were still in the house. The duchess, a good-natured, easy-going person, who always agreed with everybody all round, at once ordered them in; people began to engage partners, and all was laughing confusion round the supper-table. I turned to my pretty neighbor, and asked if she was engaged; she replied, laughing, that being neither a sibyl nor a clairvoyant, she could not have known beforehand that there was to be dancing. ‘Then may I have the honor of claiming you for the first dance, whatever it may be?’ I said; and she replied that I might. I offered her my arm, and we took our way back into the theatre, which was still brilliantly illuminated. We were to dance on the stage. As we were pushing on with the crowd, I felt a strong hand laid on my arm, and, before I had time to prevent it, Lady Caroline’s hand was withdrawn, and the intruder stood between us. He was a square-built, distinguished-looking man, not very young, but handsome and with the beau stamped all over him.

“‘Excuse my want of ceremony,’ he said in an easy, supercilious tone to me. ‘I claim the first dance with Lady Caroline.’

“‘On what grounds?’ I demanded stiffly. We were still moving on, carried with the crowd, so it was impossible to make him stand aside or to regain my post next Lady Caroline.

“‘On the grounds of her promise,’ he replied haughtily.

“Lady Caroline uttered a laughing ‘O Lord George!’ but did not draw away the hand which he had so unceremoniously transferred from my arm to his.

“‘Lady Caroline made no engagement before she came here to-night,’ I said, ‘and she promised this dance to me. I refer you to herself whether this be true or not.’

“‘Gentlemen are not in the habit of catechising ladies as to their behavior—not, at least, in our set; and while you happen to be in it you had better conform to its customs,’ observed Lord George, without looking towards me.

“I felt my blood boil so that it was an effort not to strike him. Two ladies near me who had heard the passage between us cried, ‘Shame! No gentleman would have said that!’ This gave me courage to maintain my self-command. We were now in the theatre; the orchestra was playing a brilliant prelude to a waltz, and Lord George, as if he had forgotten all about me, prepared to start. I laid my hand peremptorily on his arm.

“‘In my set,’ I said, and my voice shook with agitation, ‘gentlemen don’t tolerate gratuitous impertinence; you either make me an apology, or I shall exact reparation of another kind.’

“‘Oh! indeed. I shall be happy to hear from you at your convenience,’ sneered Lord George, with a low bow. He turned away, and said in a voice loud enough to be heard by me or any one else near, ‘The puppy imagines, I suppose, that I would meet him in a duel. The next thing will be we shall have our footmen sending us challenges. Capital joke, by Jove! Come, we are losing time, Lady Caroline! The waltz is half over.’

“They were starting this time, when a voice behind me called out imperiously: ‘A moment, Lord George Halberdyne! The gentleman whom you have insulted is a friend of mine and a guest of the Duchess of B——; two conditions that qualify him, I think, to be an adversary of yours.’

“‘Oh! he’s a friend of yours, is he?’ repeated Lord George, facing around. ‘That’s a natural phenomenon that I shall not stop to investigate just now; but it certainly puts this gentleman in a new light. Good-evening, sir. I shall have the pleasure, probably, of seeing you to-morrow.’

“‘You shall, my lord,’ I replied; and allowing Hallam to link my arm in his and draw me away, I turned my back on the brilliant scene, and hurried out of the house, feverish, humiliated, desperate.

“‘The idiot! The snob! You shall give him a lesson that he’ll not forget in a hurry,’ said Hallam, who seemed nearly as indignant and excited as myself. ‘Are you a good shot? Have you ever stood fire?’

“I answered both questions in the negative. He was evidently put out; but presently he said in a confident tone:

“‘Well, it does not so much matter; you are the offended party, and consequently you have the choice of weapons. It shall be swords instead of pistols. I suppose you’re a pretty good swordsman?’

“‘My dear Hallam,’ I said, ‘you forget that these things are not in my line at all. I never handled a sword since we flourished them in the fencing hall at Oxford. In fact, if the choice be mine, as you say it is, I think I would do better to choose pistols. I have a chance with them; and if Lord George be a swordsman, I have none with the other.’

“Hallam seemed seriously disconcerted.

“‘It’s not quite such an affair of chance as you appear to imagine,’ he said. ‘Halberdyne is one of the best shots in the service; he never misses his mark; and he is a first-rate swordsman. ’Pon my honor I don’t know what to advise you.’

“‘I must stand advised by myself then, and here goes for pistols,’ I said, trying to put a bold face on it, though I confess I felt anything but cheerful at the prospect. ‘You will stand by me, Hallam, will you not?’

“‘Of course I will! I’ve committed myself to as much already,’ he answered cordially; but I saw he was uncomfortable. ‘I shall take your card to the scoundrel to-morrow morning. I wonder who he’ll have for second—that bully Roper, very likely,’ he went on, talking more to himself than to me.

“‘Is the meeting to take place to-morrow morning?’ I inquired; and a sudden rush of anguish came on me as I put the question. I thought of my mother, of all that might be in store for her so soon.

“‘We must try and put it off for a day,’ said Hallam. ‘It is deucedly awkward, you see, if it comes off to-morrow, because of the play. You may get hit, and it would be a terrible business if you were hors de concours for the evening.’ There was something so grimly comical in the earnestness with which he said this that, though I was in no merry mood, I burst out laughing.

“‘A terrible business indeed!’ I said. ‘How exceedingly unpleasant for Lady Caroline particularly to be left in the lurch on such an occasion! However, if I go to the wall, and Lord George comes off safe, he might get up the part in a hurry and replace me, eh?’ I had hit the mark without knowing it. It was jealousy that had provoked Lord George to the gratuitous attack. I suppose there was something sardonic in my voice that struck Hallam with the inappropriateness of his previous remarks. He suddenly stopped, and grasping my arm warmly—

“‘I’m used to this sort of thing, my dear fellow,’ he said; ‘but don’t fancy from that that my feelings are turned to stone, or that I forget all that is, that may be, unpleasant in the matter. But there is no use talking of these things; they unman a fellow, and he wants all his nerves in working order at a moment like this. Take my advice and go home now, and cool yourself by a quiet night for to-morrow’s work, if it is to be to-morrow. You may have some letters to write or other things to attend to, and they had better be done at once.’

“I replied that I had no letters to write and no business instructions to leave. The idea of facing my home, passing my mother’s door, and then going to bed as if the world had not turned right round; as if all life, the present and the future, were not revolutionized—this was what I did not, at this moment at least, feel equal to, and I said so.

“‘I would rather go for an hour to the club,’ I said, ‘if you don’t mind, and we will have a game of billiards. I don’t feel inclined to go home, and I should not sleep if I went to bed.’

“‘Just as you like,’ he said; ‘but the night is so fine we may as well take a few more turns in the open air. It does one good after those heated rooms.’

“It did me no good. I felt the most miserable man in this miserable world. I would have given any happiness the world could have offered me to undo this night’s work, to be as I was an hour ago, free, guiltless of projected murder or suicide. I repeated to myself that it was not my fault; that I had been gratuitously provoked beyond endurance; that as a gentleman I could not have done otherwise; but these sophistries neither calmed nor strengthened me. Truer voices rose up and answered them in clear and imperious tones that drowned the foolish comforters. Why had I ever entered the society where my position exposed me to such results? What business had I there? What good could it do myself or any one else to have been tolerated, even courted, as I fancied I was, by these fine people, who had nothing of any sort in common with me? I had forsaken my legitimate place, the profession that my mother had made such heavy sacrifices to open to me. I had deliberately frittered away my life, destroyed my prospects of honorable success; and this is what it had brought me to! I was going either to shoot a man who had done me no graver injury than offend my pride and punish my folly, or to be shot down by him—and then? I saw myself brought home to my mother dangerously wounded, dead perhaps. I heard her cry of agony, I saw her mortal despair. I could have cried out loud for pity of her. I could have cursed myself for my folly—for the mad, sinful folly that had rewarded her by such an awakening.

“There is an electric current that runs from mind to mind, communicating almost like an articulate voice the thoughts that are passing within us at certain moments. I had not spoken for several minutes, as we paced up and down Pall Mall, puffing our cigars in the starlight; but this current I speak of had passed from my brain to Hallam’s, and informed him of what my thoughts were busy on.

“‘Don’t let yourself down, old boy,’ he said good-naturedly. ‘No harm may come of it after all; I’ve known a score of duels where both sides came off with no more than a pin-scratch, sometimes with no scratch at all. Not that I suspect you of being faint-hearted—I remember what a dare-devil you were at Oxford—but the bravest of us may be a coward for others.’

“I felt something rise in my throat as if it would choke me. I could not get a word out.

“‘Who knows?’ continued Hallam in his cheeriest tone; ‘you may be bringing down the house to-morrow night, and your mother may be the proudest woman in London, seeing you the king of the company, cheered and complimented by “fair women and brave men!” I feel as sure of it, do you know, as if I saw it in a glass.’

“He spoke in kindness, but the levity of his tone, the utter hollowness of his consolations, were intolerable. They mocked my misery; every word pierced me like a knife. What evil genius had led me across this man’s path? Only a few weeks ago I said it was the work of an angel, a good fairy, or some absurdity of the sort. It was more likely a demon that had done it. If I had never met him, I said to myself, I would never have known this hour; I should have been an innocent and a happy man. But this would not do either. I was neither innocent nor happy when I met him. I was false to my duty, wasting my life, and sick to death of both; only longing for the opportunity which Hallam had brought me. If I had not met him, I should have met or sought out some other tempter, and bitten greedily at the bait when it was offered. Still, I felt embittered toward Hallam. I accused him, as if he had been the sole author of my misfortune; as if I had been a baby or an idiot without free-will or responsibility.

“‘Come into the club,’ I said, dropping his arm and throwing away the end of my cigar.

“He did not notice the impatient movement, but readily crossed over, and we entered the club. The lofty, spacious rooms were blazing with light and filled with groups of men. Some were lounging on luxurious couches, reading the evening papers, some were chatting, some were playing cards. An air of easy grandeur, prosperity, and surface happiness pervaded the place. I felt horribly out of keeping with it all. I had no business amongst these wealthy, fashionable men; I was like a skeleton stalking into the feast. I believe it was nothing but sheer human respect, the fear of making myself ridiculous, that prevented me from turning on my heel and rushing straight out of the house. I mechanically took up the Globe, which a member tossed on to a table near me, and sat down as if I were going to read it.

“‘Leave that alone, and come into the billiard-room,’ said Hallam. And he whipped the paper out of my hands with brotherly unceremoniousness.

“I rose and followed him like a dog. I would have gone anywhere, done anything, he or anybody else suggested. Physically, I was indifferent to what I did; my brain on fire, I felt as if I were walking in a dream.

“We were passing into the billiard-room when a gentleman who was seated at a card-table cried out to Hallam to come and join them. It was Col. Leveson, a brother officer and great friend of his. Hallam replied that he was going on to have a pull at the balls; but he strolled over to see how the game was going. I mechanically followed him. Some of the players knew me, and greeted me with a friendly nod. They were absorbed in the game; it was lansquenet. I knew very little about cards; but lansquenet was the one game that interested me. I had lost a few sovereigns a night or two before at it, and, as the luck seemed set in against the banker, it flashed over me I could not do better than to take a hand and win them back now. I did not, however, volunteer to join the game. In my present state of smarting pride I would not run the risk of being made to feel I was an intruder. Unluckily, Hallam’s friend, reading temptation on my countenance perhaps, said, holding up his cards to me: “I’m in splendid vein, but I must be off. I’ll sell you my hand for half a sovereign, if you like.”

“‘Done!’ I said; and paying the half-sovereign, I sat down. I had scarcely taken his place when there was a noise in the adjoining room announcing fresh arrivals. I recognized one loud, domineering voice above the others, and presently Lord George Halberdyne came in.

“‘Going, Leveson?’ he said. ‘Luck against you, I suppose?’

“‘On the contrary, never was in better vein in my life,’ replied the colonel. ‘I sold my hand for a song, because I have an appointment that I can’t forego.’

“‘Who’s the lucky dog you sold it to?’ asked Lord George.

“‘Mr. Botfield,’ said Col. Leveson. (My real name is Botfield; I only took the name of Baines when I fell into disgrace and misery.)

“Lord George muttered an exclamation of some sort—whether of surprise or vexation I could not tell—and advanced to the table.

“‘Do you mind my joining you?’ he said, appealing to nobody in particular. There was a general assent, and he sat down. Hallam would not take a hand. He hated cards; his passion was for billiards, and he played nothing else. He came and stood behind me to watch the game. I felt him lay his hand on my shoulder, as if to encourage me and remind me that he was there to stand by me and take my part against my late bully, if needs be. It did not seem as if he was likely to be called upon to do so. My late bully was as gracious as man could be—at least he intended to be so; but I took his familiar facetiousness for covert impertinence, and it made my blood boil quite as fiercely as his recent open insult had done. I was not man of the world enough to understand that Lord George was only doing his duty to society; that he was in fact behaving beautifully, with infinite tact, like an accomplished gentleman. I could not understand that the social canons of his ‘set’ made it incumbent on a man to joke and laugh and demean himself in this lively, careless fashion towards the man whom he was going to shoot in a few hours. I grew inwardly exasperated, and it was nothing but pride and an unprecedented effort of will that enabled me to keep my temper and remain outwardly cool. For a time, for about twenty minutes, the luck continued in the same vein; my half-sovereign had been paid back to me more than fifty times. Col. Leveson was right when he said he had sold his hand for a song. Hallam was all this time standing behind my chair, smoking his cigar, and throwing in a word between the puffs. The clock struck two.

“‘Come off now, Botfield,’ he said, tapping me on the shoulder—‘come off while your star is shining; it is sure to go down if you stay too long.’

“‘Very likely, most sage and prudent mentor,’ retorted Lord George; ‘but that cuts both ways. Your friend has been pocketing our money up to this; it’s only fair he should give us a chance of winning it back and pocketing a little of his. That is a law universally recognized, I believe.’ As he said this, he turned to me good-humoredly enough; but I saw where the emphasis pointed, and, stung to the quick, I replied that I had not the least intention of going counter to the law; I would remain as long as the game lasted.

“‘Halloo! That’s committing yourself somewhat rashly,’ interposed Hallam. ‘You don’t know what nefarious gamblers these fellows are; they’re capable of keeping it up till morning!’

“‘If they do, I shall keep it up with them,’ I replied recklessly. I was desperate, and my luck was good.

“Hallam said no more, but sauntered to the other side of the table, where I felt his eyes fixed on me warningly, entreatingly.

“I looked up at last, and met them fastened on me in a mute, impatient appeal. I answered it by a peremptory nod. He saw I would not brook farther interference, so he took himself off to the billiard-room, and did not reappear for an hour.

“I cannot recall clearly what passed during the interval. The luck had turned suddenly against me; but, nothing daunted, I went on playing desperately, losing as fast as I had been winning, only in much heavier sums; for the stakes had risen enormously on the change of luck. There was a large pool, immense it seemed to me—some two hundred pounds. I lost again and again. At last terror sobered me. I began to realize the madness of my conduct, and wanted to withdraw; but they cried out against it, reminded me that I had pledged myself to remain and see the game out. Lord George was loudest in protesting that I must remain. ‘One can’t have luck always,’ he said, ‘A man must put up with it when the tide turns. It is of good omen for you, Mr. Botfield,’ he added pointedly; ‘you will be in splendid luck to-morrow.’

“I shuddered. I can remember the horrible, sick sensation that ran through me as he said this, lightly, pleasantly, as if he alluded to a rowing-match I had in view. I saw my mother’s pale face beckoning me to come away—to stop before I ruined her utterly. I almost made a movement to rise, but something glued me to the chair. The game went on. I again held the bank, and again lost. I had no money about me except the forty pounds or so I had won at the outset; but several leaves out of my pocketbook were strewn about the table bearing I. O. U.’s for nine times that sum. I suppose by this time I had quite lost my senses. I know that I went on betting like a maniac, with the feverish, triumphant impulse of a man in delirium. I was losing tremendously. I remember nothing except the sound of my own voice and Lord George’s calling banco! again and again, and how the cry ran through me like a blade every time, and how I hastily tore out fresh leaves and wrote down the sums I lost, and tossed them to the winner, and went on. All this time we had been drinking deeply of brandy and water. I was naturally abstemious, but to-night I drank recklessly. The wonder was—and I was going to say the pity—that it had not stupefied me long ago, and so made me physically incapable of continuing my insane career. But excitement acted, I suppose, as an antidote, and prevented the alcohol from taking effect as it otherwise must have done. At last Hallam came back. I have a vague recollection of hearing him exchange some remarks in an undertone with one of the players, who had given up and was now watching the game with a number of others who had dropped in from adjoining rooms. I then heard him say, ‘Good God! he is ruined twice over!’ I heard nothing more. I had fallen back insensible in my chair. Everybody started up; the cards were dropped, and all was confusion and terror. It appears that at the first moment they thought I was dead. A young guardsman present declared I was, and that it was disease of the heart; a young kinsman of his had dropped down on parade only a month ago just in the same way. There was a cry for a doctor, and two or three ran out to fetch one. Before he arrived, however, I had given signs of returning consciousness. Up to this moment Lord George had been anxiously looking on, silent and pale, they said. He had borne me with Hallam to a couch in the next room, where the air was free from cigar-fumes, and had opened the window to admit the fresh night-breeze. He had done, in fact, what any humane person would have done under the circumstances; but he had done it in a manner that betokened more than ordinary interest. He drew an audible breath of relief the moment he saw my eyelids quiver and heard me breathe like a man awaking to life. Hallam signed to him to leave the room; he did not wish his face to be the first I saw on opening my eyes. Lord George no doubt understood; for he at once withdrew into the card-room. He drew the door after him, but he did not quite close it, so that I heard dreamily, yet distinctly, all that was said. Lord George’s second for the morrow’s meeting, the Hon. Capt. Roper, inquired eagerly how I was going on. ‘Oh! he’ll be all right presently,’ was the reply, spoken in Lord George’s off-hand way. ‘There was nothing to make such a fuss about; the poor devil was scared to see how much money he had lost, and fainted like a girl—that’s all.’

“‘Hallam says he is quite cleared out by to-night’s ill-luck,’ observed some one.

“‘Served him right,’ said Lord George; ‘it will teach puppies of his kind not to come amongst us and make fools of themselves.’

“‘And do you mean to shoot him to-morrow?’ inquired the same voice.

“‘I mean to give him a chance of shooting me; unless,’ he continued—and I saw in imagination, as vividly as if my bodily eyes had seen it, the cold sneer that accompanied the remark—‘unless he shows the white feather and declines fighting, which is just as likely.’

“While this little dialogue had been going on in subdued tones close by the door which opened at the head of the sofa where I lay, Hallam was conversing in animated whispers with two gentlemen in the window. He was not more than a minute absent, when he returned to my side, and, seeing my eyes wide open, exclaimed heartily: ‘Thank God! he’s all right again!’

“I grasped his hand and sat up. They gave me some sal-volatile and water to drink, and I was, as he said, all right again. But it was not the stimulant that restored me, that gave me such sudden energy, and nerved me to act at once, to face my fate and defy it. I took his arm, and led him, or let him lead me, to some quieter place near, and then I asked him how much he thought I had lost.

“‘Don’t think of that yet, my dear fellow,’ he said; ‘you are too done up to discuss it. We will see what can be done to-morrow.’

“‘Five thousand pounds!’ I said. ‘Do you hear that? Five thousand pounds! That means that I am a beggar, which an’t of much consequence; and that I’ve made a beggar of my mother. She will have to sell the bed from under her to pay it, to save my honor. A curse upon me for bringing this blight upon her!’

“‘Tut! tut! man, don’t take on like a woman about it!’ said Hallam. ‘These things can be arranged; no need to make matters out worse than they are. I’ll speak to Lord George, and see what terms we can make with him.’

“He made me light a cigar, and left me alone, while he went back to parley with the man who held my fortune, my life, my all in his hands. I never heard exactly all that passed between them. I only know that in answer to Lord George’s question, put in a tone of insulting haughtiness, ‘Has the fellow pledged himself for more than he’s worth? Can’t he pay?’ Hallam replied: ‘He can, but it will ruin him’; upon which the other retorted with a laugh, ‘What the devil is that to me?’ and turned his back on my second, who had nothing left but to take Capt. Roper aside and arrange for the morrow’s meeting. He came back, and told me all was settled; that Halberdyne was behaving like a brute, and would be tabooed in the clubs and every decent drawing-room before twenty-four hours. This thought seemed to afford him great satisfaction. It gave me none. Anguish had drowned resentment. I could think of nothing except that I was a ruined man, that I had beggared my mother, and that I was going to fight a duel in a few hours. Richmond Park—6 A.M.—pistols at thirty paces! This was how the appointment was notified by our seconds to both of us. Suddenly a light burst on me—a ray of hope, of consolation: I might be killed in this duel, and, if so, surely my honor would be saved and my debt cancelled. Lord George would not pursue my mother for the money. She should know nothing of this night’s work until after the meeting. If I escaped with a wound, I would tell her; if I died, who would have the cruelty to do so? I told Hallam of this sudden thought as he walked home with me. He approved of it, and cheered me up by almost assuring me that I should be shot. Halberdyne was a dead-shot; it was most likely that I should not leave the field alive.

“The night passed—the few hours of it that must elapse before the time named for the meeting. 0 God! how did I live through them? And yet this was nothing, absolutely nothing, compared to what was yet in store for me.…

“The duel took place. Lord George wounded me in the hip. He escaped unhurt; I fired in the air. I was carried home on a door, insensible. Hallam had gone before to prepare my mother. For some weeks it was feared I would not live. Then amputation was talked of. I escaped finally with being a cripple for life. Before I was out of danger, Hallam’s leave expired, and he went to rejoin his regiment. He had been very assiduous in calling to inquire for me, had seen my mother, and, judging by her passionate grief that I was in a fair way not to recover, he had forborne mentioning anything about the five thousand pounds. She promised to write and let him know when any change took place. Meantime, she had found out my secret. I had talked incessantly of it in my delirium, and with an accuracy of iteration that left no doubt on her mind but that there was a foundation of truth in the feverish ravings. The doctor was of the same mind, and urged her to give me an opportunity of relieving my mind of the burden, whatever it was, as soon as this was possible.

“The first day that I was strong enough to bear conversation she accordingly broached the subject. I inferred at once that Hallam had told her everything, and repeated the miserable story, only to confirm what I supposed he had already said.

“My mother was sitting by my bedside. She busied herself with teaseling out linen into lint for my wound, and so, purposely no doubt, kept her face continually bent or averted from mine.

“Seeing how quietly she took it, I began to think I had overrated the misfortune; that we had larger resources in some way than I had imagined. ‘Then it is possible for us to pay this horrible debt and save my honor, and yet not be utterly beggared, mother?’ I said eagerly. She looked at me with a smile that must surely have been the reflex of some angel near her whom I could not see. ‘Yes, my boy; he shall be paid, and we shall not be beggars,’ she said gently, and pressed my hand in both her own. ‘You should have told me about it at once; it has been preying on your mind and retarding your cure all this time. I will see Mr. Kerwin to-day, and have it arranged at once. Promise me now, like a good boy, to forget it and think no more of it until you are quite well. Will you promise?’

“I did not answer, but signed with my lips for her to kiss me. She rose and twined her arms around me, and let me sob out my sorrow and my love upon her breast.

“It was about three days after this that she handed me a letter to read; it was from Lord George to Mr. Kerwin, and ran thus:

“Sir: I beg to acknowledge the receipt of the sum of five thousand pounds which you have forwarded to my lawyers in the name of Mr. Botfield. I make this acknowledgment personally in order to express my sincere satisfaction at the happy progress of Mr. Botfield’s recovery, and beg you will convey this sentiment to him.—I remain, etc.,

“Halberdyne.”

“‘Mother! mother!’ I cried out, and opened my arms to her in a passion of tears. But she laid her finger smilingly on my lips, and made me be silent. In a month hence, when I was well, we should talk it all over, but not now.

“Before the month was out, she was dead!”…

Marmaduke started to his feet with a cry of horror, and Botfield, unable to control the anguish that his own narrative evoked, dropped his head into his hands, and shook the room with his sobs.

“O dear God! that I should have lived to tell it!—to talk over the mother that I murdered! Brave, tender, generous mother! I killed you, I broke your heart, and then—then I brought shame upon your memory! O God! O God! why have I outlived it?” He rocked to and fro, almost shouting in his paroxysm of despair. Marmaduke had never beheld such grief; he had never in his life been so deeply moved with pity. He did not know what to say, what to do. His heart prompted him to do the right thing: he fell on his knees, and, putting his arms around the wretched, woe-worn man, he burst into tears and sobbed with him.

Botfield suffered his embrace for a moment, and then, pressing his horny palm on the young man’s blond head, he muttered: “God bless you! God bless you for your pity!”

As soon as they were both calmed, Marmaduke asked him if he would not prefer finishing the story to-morrow. But he signed to him to sit down; that he would go on with it to the end.

“What is there more to tell?” he said, sadly shaking his head.

“I was lying a cripple on my bed when she was carried to her grave. I was seized with a violent brain fever, which turned to typhus, and they took me to the hospital. The servants were dismissed; they had received notice from my mother. She had foreseen everything, taken every necessary step as calmly as if the catastrophe I had brought upon her had been a mere change of residence for her own convenience. All we had was gone. That brave answer of hers to my question about our resources was a subterfuge of her love. If ever a sin was sinless, assuredly that half-uttered falsehood was. She had directed the lawyer to raise the money immediately, at every sacrifice. She meant to work for her bread, and trusted to me to make the task light and short to her. I would have done it had she been spared to me. So help me God, I would! But now that she was gone, I had nothing to work for. I left the hospital a cripple and a beggar. I did not even yet know to what an extent. I went straight to our old house, expecting to find it as I had left it—that is, before all consciousness had left me. I found it dismantled, empty; painters busy on scaffolding outside. I went to Mr. Kerwin, and there learned the whole truth. Nothing remained to me but suicide. Nothing kept me from it, I believe, but the prayers of my mother.”

“You were a Christian, then?” interrupted Marmaduke in a tone of unfeigned surprise.

“I ought to have been. My father was, and my mother was; I was brought up as one, until I went to the university and lost what little belief I had. For a moment it seemed to come back to me when I found myself alone in the world. I remember walking deliberately down to the river’s side when I left the lawyer’s office, fully determined to drown myself. But before I reached the water, I heard my mother’s voice calling so distinctly to me to stop that I felt myself arrested as by some visible presence. I heard the voice saying, ‘Do you wish never to see me again even in the next world?’ Of course it was the work of imagination, of my over-wrought feelings; but the effect was the same. I stopped, and retraced my steps to Mr. Kerwin’s.”

“It was your guardian angel, perhaps your mother’s, that saved you,” said Marmaduke.

“Oh! I forgot,” said Botfield. “Your brother is a Catholic; I suppose you are too?”

Marmaduke nodded assent; he felt that his Catholicity was not much to boast of. Like the poor outcast before him, he had lost his faith practically, though he adhered to it in name.

“Yes, it was an angel of some sort that rescued me,” said Botfield; “it was no doubt my own fault if the rescue was not complete. I went back to Mr. Kerwin, and asked him to give me, or get me, something to do. My chance on the stage was at an end, even if I could have turned to that: I was dead lame. He got me a situation as clerk in an office; but the weariness of the life and the pressure of remorse were more than I could bear. I took to drink. They forgave me once, twice; the third time I was dismissed. But of what use is it to go over that disgusting, pitiable story? Step by step I went down, lower and lower, sinking each time into fouler depths, drinking more loathsome draughts, wallowing in mire whose very existence such as you don’t dream of. I will spare you all those details. Enough that I came at last to what you see me. One day when hunger was gnawing me, and even the satanic consolation of the public-house was shut against me for want of a sixpence to pay for a glass of its diabolical elixir, I fell in with a man of the trade; he offered me work and bread. Hunger is not a dainty counsellor. I closed with the offer, and so sank into the last slough that humanity can take refuge in.…

“Now, Mr. Walpole, you have heard my history; it was a pain, and yet, somehow, a relief, to me to tell it. It has not been a very pleasant one for you to listen to; still, I don’t regret having inflicted it on you. You are very young; you are prosperous and happy, and, most likely, perfectly free from any of the temptations that have been the bane of my life; still, it never hurts a young man starting in life to hear an older man’s experience. If ever temptation should come near you, dash it from you with all your might; scorn and defy it from the first; hold no parley with it; to treat with perdition is to be lost.”

“You have done me a greater service than you know of,” said Marmaduke, rising and preparing to take leave of his singular entertainer. “Perhaps one day I may tell you.…” He took a turn in the narrow room, and then, coming back to Botfield, resumed in an agitated manner: “Why should I not own it at once? You have trusted me with all; I will tell you the truth.”

Botfield looked up in surprise, but said nothing.

“I stand on the very brink of the abyss against which you warn me. Like you, I am a barrister; like you, I hate my profession, and spend my time reading poetry and playing at private theatricals. They are my passion. A few nights ago I tried my luck at cards, and won. This tempted me; I played last night and lost—precisely the sum of twenty pounds.”

Botfield started and uttered a suppressed exclamation.

“I am in debt—not much—a mere trifle, if it lead to no worse! You see now what a service you may have done me; who knows? Perhaps my mother’s guardian angel prompted you to tell me your story as a warning, to save me before it was too late! I know that I came here to-day at the bidding of an angel; and reluctant enough I was to take the message!”

“I never thought to be of use to any one while I lived,” said Botfield with emotion. “I bless God, anyhow, if my wretched example proves a warning to you. Who sent you to me? I understood it was your brother?”

“So it was; but it was to please my sister that I consented to come. She is one of those angels that people talk about, but don’t often see. You will let her come and see you, Mr. Botfield, will you not?”

He held out his delicate lavender kid hand, and pressed Botfield’s grimy fingers cordially.

When Marmaduke got home, he inquired at once where his sister was, and, hearing she was in her room, he crept up quietly to the door and knocked. He entered so quietly that Nelly had scarcely time to jump off her knees. Marmaduke saw at once that he had taken her by surprise; he saw also that her eyes were red.

“What is the matter?” she asked, with a frightened look. “Has anything happened? You have been away so long! What kept you, Marmaduke? Where have you been?”

“Where you sent me.”

“To Stephen’s poor man? Why, you have been out nearly two hours! It did not take all that time to give your message?” said incredulous Nelly, and her heart beat with recent apprehension.

“No; but Stephen’s poor man had a message for me. Sit down here, and I will tell you what it was. But how cold you are, darling! You are positively perished! Where have you been?”

“Here,” said Nelly.

“Ever since I went out?”

“Ever since you went out.”

“What were you doing?” he persisted, fixing a strange look on her.

She blushed, hesitated, and then said simply, “I was praying for you, Marmaduke.”

He folded her in his arms, and whispered, “I was right to say it was an angel sent me.”

Then, taking a warm shawl that he saw hanging up, he wrapped her in it, and sat down beside her, and told the story as it had been told to him. When it was over, Nelly’s head was on his breast, and the brother’s tears of penitence were mingling with the sister’s tears of joy.

“Let us go down now and tell Stephen,” said Marmaduke, when he had finished.

“Will you tell him everything?” asked Nelly.

“Yes, everything.”

“Dear Marmy! I am so happy I could sing for joy,” she said, smiling through her tears. “Let us kneel down here and say one little prayer together; will you?”

And he did.

“How did you thaw the man and break up the ice he seemed to be buried under?” was Stephen’s amazed inquiry when other more precious and interesting questions were exhausted.

“I merely did what Nelly told me,” said Marmaduke: “I listened to him.”

On Christmas morning Marmaduke announced his intention of dining out. It was a sacrifice to all three, but no one opposed him. Nelly made up a store of provisions, including a hot plum-pudding, which was put with other steaming hot dishes into the ample basket that the gay young man carried off in a cab with him to Red Pepper Lane. There he found a clean hearth, a blazing fire, and a table spread with a snowy cloth, and all necessaries complete. Some fairy had surely been at work in that gloomy place. The host was clean and brushed, looking like an eccentric gentleman in his new clothes amidst those incongruous surroundings. He and Marmaduke unpacked the basket with many an exclamation at its inexhaustible depths. That was the happiest, if not the very merriest, Christmas dinner that ever Marmaduke partook of.

When it was over, and they were puffing a quiet cigar over the fire, steps were heard on the rickety stairs, and then a knock at the door, and a silvery voice saying: “May we come in?” It was Stephen and Nelly.

“I don’t see why you should have all the pleasure to yourself,” said Nelly, with her bright laugh; “you would never have been here at all if I had not teased you into taking the message!”

If this were a romance instead of a true episode, the story should end by the some-time rag-and-bone man becoming a Catholic, rising to wealth and distinction, and marrying Nelly. But the events of real life don’t adjust themselves so conveniently to the requirements of the story-teller. Stephen Walpole got Mr. Botfield a situation in the post-office, where, by good conduct and intelligent diligence, he rose gradually to a position of trust, which was highly paid. He never married. Who knows? Perhaps he had his little romance, and never dared to tell it.

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