The Cornhill Magazine (Vol. I, No. 5, May 1860)

by Various

Lovel the Widower.

CHAPTER V.
In which I am Stung by a Serpent.

If, when I heard Baker call out Bessy Bellenden, and adjure Jove, he had run forward and seized Elizabeth by the waist, or offered her other personal indignity, I too should have run forward on my side and engaged him. Though I am a stout elderly man, short in stature and in wind, I know I am a match for that rickety little captain on his high-heeled boots. A match for him? I believe Miss Bessy would have been a match for both of us. Her white arm was as hard and polished as ivory. Had she held it straight pointed against the rush of the dragoon, he would have fallen backwards before his intended prey: I have no doubt he would. It was the hen, in this case, was stronger than the libertine fox, and au besoin would have pecked the little marauding vermin’s eyes out. Had, I say, Partlet been weak, and Reynard strong, I would have come forward: I certainly would. Had he been a wolf now, instead of a fox, I am certain I should have run in upon him, grappled with him, torn his heart and tongue out of his black throat, and trampled the lawless brute to death.

Well, I didn’t do any such thing. I was just going to run in,—and I didn’t. I was just going to rush to Bessy’s side to clasp her (I have no doubt) to my heart: to beard the whiskered champion who was before her, and perhaps say, “Cheer thee—cheer thee, my persecuted maiden, my beauteous love—my Rebecca! Come on, Sir Brian de Bois Guilbert, thou dastard Templar! It is I, Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe.” (By the way, though the fellow was not a Templar, he was a Lincoln’s Inn man, having passed twice through the Insolvent Court there with infinite discredit.) But I made no heroic speeches. There was no need for Rebecca to jump out of window and risk her lovely neck. How could she, in fact, the French window being flush with the ground floor? And I give you my honour, just as I was crying my war-cry, couching my lance, and rushing à la recousse upon Sir Baker, a sudden thought made me drop my (figurative) point: a sudden idea made me rein in my galloping (metaphorical) steed, and spare Baker for that time.

Suppose I had gone in? But for that sudden precaution, there might have been a Mrs. Batchelor. I might have been a bullied father of ten children. (Elizabeth has a fine high temper of her own.) What is four hundred and twenty a year, with a wife and perhaps half-a-dozen children? Should I have been a whit the happier? Would Elizabeth? Ah! no. And yet I feel a certain sort of shame, even now, when I think that I didn’t go in. Not that I was in a fright, as some people choose to hint. I swear I was not. But the reason why I did not charge was this:—

Nay, I did charge part of the way, and then, I own, stopped. It was an error in judgment. It wasn’t a want of courage. Lord George Sackville was a brave man, and as cool as a cucumber under fire. Well, he didn’t charge at the battle of Minden, and Prince Ferdinand made the deuce and all of a disturbance, as we know. Byng was a brave man,—and I ask, wasn’t it a confounded shame executing him? So with respect to myself. Here is my statement. I make it openly. I don’t care. I am accused of seeing a woman insulted, and not going to her rescue. I am not guilty, I say. That is, there were reasons which caused me not to attack. Even putting aside the superior strength of Elizabeth herself to the enemy,—I vow there were cogent and honourable reasons why I did not charge home.

You see I happened to be behind a blue lilac bush (and was turning a rhyme—heaven help us!—in which death was only to part me and Elizabeth) when I saw Baker’s face surge over the chair-back. I rush forward as he cries “by Jove.” Had Miss Prior cried out on her part, the strength of twenty Heenans, I know, would have nerved this arm; but all she did was to turn pale, and say, “Oh, mercy! Captain Baker! Do pity me!”

“What! you remember me, Bessy Bellenden, do you?” asks the captain, advancing.

“Oh, not that name! please, not that name!” cries Bessy.

“I thought I knew you yesterday,” says Baker. “Only, gad, you see, I had so much claret on board, I did not much know what was what. And oh! Bessy, I have got such a splitter of a headache.”

“Oh! please—please, my name is Miss Prior. Pray! pray, sir, don’t.”—

“You’ve got handsomer—doosid deal handsomer. Know you now well, your spectacles off. You come in here—teach my nephew and niece, humbug my sister, make love to the ah——. Oh! you uncommon sly little toad!”

“Captain Baker! I beg—I implore you,” says Bess, or something of the sort: for the white hands assumed an attitude of supplication.

“Pooh! don’t gammon me!” says the rickety captain (or words to that effect), and seizes those two firm white hands in his moist, trembling palms.

BEDFORD TO THE RESCUE.

Now do you understand why I paused? When the dandy came grinning forward, with looks and gestures of familiar recognition: when the pale Elizabeth implored him to spare her:—a keen arrow of jealousy shot whizzing through my heart, and caused me well-nigh to fall backwards as I ran forwards. I bumped up against a bronze group in the gardens. The group represented a lion stung by a serpent. I was a lion stung by a serpent too. Even Baker could have knocked me down. Fiends and anguish! he had known her before? The Academy, the life she had led, the wretched old tipsy, ineffective guardian of a father—all these antecedents in poor Bessy’s history passed through my mind. And I had offered my heart and troth to this woman! Now, my dear sir, I appeal to you. What would you have done? Would you have liked to have such a sudden suspicion thrown over the being of your affection? “Oh! spare me—spare me!” I heard her say, in clear—too clear—pathetic tones. And then there came rather a shrill “Ah!” and then the lion was up in my breast again; and I give you my honour, just as I was going to step forward—to step?—to rush forward from behind the urn where I had stood for a moment with thumping heart, Bessy’s “Ah!” or little cry was followed by a whack, which I heard as clear as anything I ever heard in my life;—and I saw the little captain spin back, topple over a chair heels up, and in this posture heard him begin to scream and curse in shrill tones...

Not for long, for as the captain and the chair tumble down, a door springs open;—a man rushes in, who pounces like a panther upon the prostrate captain, pitches into his nose and eyes, and chokes his bad language by sending a fist down his naughty throat.

“Oh! thank you, Bedford!—please, leave him, Bedford! that’s enough. There, don’t hurt him any more!” says Bessy, laughing—laughing, upon my word.

“Ah! will you?” says Bedford. “Lie still, you little beggar, or I’ll knock your head off. Look here, Miss Prior!—Elizabeth—dear—dear Elizabeth! I love you with all my heart, and soul, and strength—I do.”

“O Bedford! Bedford!” warbles Elizabeth.

“I do! I can’t help it. I must say it! Ever since Rome, I do. Lie still, you drunken little beast! It’s no use. But I adore you, O Elizabeth! Elizabeth!” And there was Dick, who was always following Miss P. about, and poking his head into keyholes to spy her, actually making love to her over the prostrate body of the captain.

Now, what was I to do? Wasn’t I in a most confoundedly awkward situation? A lady had been attacked—a lady?—the lady, and I hadn’t rescued her. Her insolent enemy was overthrown, and I hadn’t done it. A champion, three inches shorter than myself, had come in, and dealt the blow. I was in such a rage of mortification, that I should have liked to thrash the captain and Bedford too. The first I know I could have matched: the second was a tough little hero. And it was he who rescued the damsel, whilst I stood by! In a strait so odious, sudden, and humiliating, what should I, what could I, what did I do?

Behind the lion and snake there is a brick wall and marble balustrade, built for no particular reason, but flanking three steps and a grassy terrace, which then rises up on a level to the house-windows. Beyond the balustrade is a shrubbery of more lilacs and so forth, by which you can walk round into another path, which also leads up to the house. So as I had not charged—ah! woe is me!—as the battle was over, I—I just went round that shrubbery into the other path, and so entered the house, arriving like Fortinbras in Hamlet, when everybody is dead and sprawling, you know, and the whole business is done.

And was there to be no end to my shame, or to Bedford’s laurels? In that brief interval, whilst I was walking round the bypath (just to give myself a pretext for entering coolly into the premises), this fortunate fellow had absolutely engaged another and larger champion. This was no other than Bulkeley, my Lady B.’s first-class attendant. When the captain fell amidst his screams and curses, he called for Bulkeley: and that individual made his appearance, with a little Scotch cap perched on his powdered head.

“Hullo! what’s the row year?” says Goliah, entering.

“Kill that blackguard! Hang him, kill him!” screams Captain Blacksheep, rising with bleeding nose.

“I say, what’s the row year,” asks the grenadier.

“Off with your cap, sir, before a lady!” calls out Bedford.

“Hoff with my cap! you be blo——”

But he said no more, for little Bedford jumped some two feet from the ground, and knocked the cap off, so that a cloud of ambrosial powder filled the room with violet odours. The immense frame of the giant shook at this insult: “I will be the death on you, you little beggar!” he grunted out; and was advancing to destroy Dick, just as I entered in the cloud which his head had raised.

“I’ll knock the brains as well as the powder out of your ugly head!” says Bedford, springing at the poker. At which juncture I entered.

“What—what is this disturbance?” I say, advancing with an air of mingled surprise and resolution.

“You git out of the way till I knock his ’ead off!” roars Bulkeley.

“Take up your cap, sir, and leave the room,” I say, still with the same elegant firmness.

“Put down that there poker, you coward!” bellows the monster on board wages.

“Miss Prior!” I say (like a dignified hypocrite, as I own I was), “I hope no one has offered you a rudeness?” And I glare round, first at the knight of the bleeding nose, and then at his squire.

Miss Prior’s face, as she replied to me, wore a look of awful scorn.

“Thank you, sir,” she said, turning her head over her shoulder, and looking at me with her grey eyes. “Thank you, Richard Bedford! God bless you! I shall ever be thankful to you, wherever I am.” And the stately figure swept out of the room.

She had seen me behind that confounded statue, then, and I had not come to her! O torments and racks! O scorpions, fiends, and pitchforks! The face of Bedford, too (flashing with knightly gratitude anon as she spoke kind words to him and passed on), wore a look of scorn as he turned towards me, and then stood, his nostrils distended, and breathing somewhat hard, glaring at his enemies, and still grasping his mace of battle.

When Elizabeth was gone, there was a pause of a moment, and then Blacksheep, taking his bleeding cambric from his nose, shrieks out, “Kill him, I say! A fellow that dares to hit one in my condition, and when I’m down! Bulkeley, you great hulking jackass! kill him, I say!”

“Jest let him put that there poker down, that’s hall,” growls Bulkeley.

“You’re afraid, you great cowardly beast! You shall go, Mr. What-d’ye-call-’em—Mr. Bedford—you shall have the sack, sir, as sure as your name is what it is! I’ll tell my brother-in-law everything; and as for that woman——”

“If you say a word against her, I’ll cane you wherever I see you, Captain Baker!” I cry out.

“Who spoke to you?” says the captain, falling back and scowling at me.

“Who hever told you to put your foot in?” says the squire.

I was in such a rage, and so eager to find an object on which I might wreak my fury, that I confess I plunged at this Bulkeley. I gave him two most violent blows on the waistcoat, which caused him to double up with such frightful contortions, that Bedford burst out laughing; and even the captain with the damaged eye and nose began to laugh too. Then, taking a lesson from Dick, as there was a fine shining dagger on the table, used for the cutting open of reviews and magazines, I seized and brandished this weapon, and I daresay would have sheathed it in the giant’s bloated corpus, had he made any movement towards me. But he only called out, “hI’ll be the death on you, you cowards! hI’ll be the death of both on you!” And snatching up his cap from the carpet, walked out of the room.

“Glad you did that, though,” says Baker, nodding his head. “Think I’d best pack up.”

And now the Devil of Rage which had been swelling within me gave place to a worse devil—the Devil of Jealousy—and I turned on the captain, who was also just about to slink away:—

“Stop!” I cried out—I screamed out, I may say.

“Who spoke to you, I should like to know? and who the dooce dares to speak to me in that sort of way?” says Clarence Baker, with a plentiful garnish of expletives, which need not be here inserted. But he stopped, nevertheless, and turned slouching round.

“You spoke just now of Miss Prior?” I said. “Have you anything against her?”

“What’s that to you?” he asked.

“I am her oldest friend. I introduced her into this family. Dare you say a word against her?”

“Well, who the dooce has?”

“You knew her before?”

“Yes, I did, then.”

“When she went by the name of Bellenden?”

“Of course, I did. And what’s that to you?” he screams out.

“I this day asked her to be my wife, sir! That’s what it is to me!” I replied, with severe dignity.

Mr. Clarence began to whistle. “Oh! if that’s it—of course not!” he says.

The jealous demon writhed within me and rent me.

“You mean that there is something, then?” I asked, glaring at the young reprobate.

“No, I don’t,” says he, looking very much frightened. “No, there is nothin’. Upon my sacred honour, there isn’t, that I know.” (I was looking uncommonly fierce at this time, and, I must own, would rather have quarrelled with somebody than not.) “No, there is nothin’ that I know. Ever so many years ago, you see, I used to go with Tom Papillion, Turkington, and two or three fellows, to that theatre. Dolphin had it. And we used to go behind the scenes—and—and I own I had a row with her. And I was in the wrong. There now, I own I was. And she left the theatre. And she behaved quite right. And I was very sorry. And I believe she is as good a woman as ever stept now. And the father was a disreputable old man, but most honourable—I know he was. And there was a fellow in the Bombay service—a fellow by the name of Walker or Walkingham—yes, Walkingham; and I used to meet him at the Cave of Harmony, you know; and he told me that she was as right as right could be. And he was doosidly cut up about leaving her. And he would have married her, I dessay, only for his father the general, who wouldn’t stand it. And he was ready to hang himself when he went away. He used to drink awfully, and then he used to swear about her; and we used to chaff him, you know. Low, vulgarish sort of man, he was; and a very passionate fellow. And if you’re goin’ to marry her, you know—of course, I ask your pardon, and that; and upon the honour of a gentleman I know nothin’ against her. And I wish you joy and all that sort of thing. I do now, really now!” And so saying, the mean, mischievous little monkey sneaked away, and clambered up to his own perch in his own bedroom.

Worthy Mrs. Bonnington, with a couple of her young ones, made her appearance at this juncture. She had a key, which gave her a free pass through the garden door, and brought her children for an afternoon’s play and fighting with their little nephew and niece. Decidedly, Bessy did not bring up her young folks well. Was it that their grandmothers spoiled them, and undid the governess’s work? Were those young people odious (as they often were) by nature, or rendered so by the neglect of their guardians? If Bessy had loved her charges more, would they not have been better? Had she a kind, loving, maternal heart? Ha! This thought—this jealous doubt—smote my bosom: and were she mine, and the mother of many possible little Batchelors, would she be kind to them? Would they be wilful, and selfish, and abominable little wretches, in a word, like these children? Nay—nay! Say that Elizabeth has but a cold heart; we cannot be all perfection. But, per contra, you must admit that, cold as she is, she does her duty. How good she has been to her own brothers and sisters: how cheerfully she has given away her savings to them: how admirably she has behaved to her mother, hiding the iniquities of that disreputable old schemer, and covering her improprieties with decent filial screens and pretexts. Her mother? Ah! grands dieux! You want to marry, Charles Batchelor, and you will have that greedy pauper for a mother-in-law; that fluffy Bluecoat boy, those hob-nailed taw-players, top-spinners, toffee-eaters, those underbred girls, for your brothers- and sisters-in-law! They will be quartered upon you. You are so absurdly weak and good-natured—you know you are—that you will never be able to resist. Those boys will grow up: they will go out as clerks or shopboys: get into debt, and expect you to pay their bills: want to be articled to attornies and so forth, and call upon you for the premium. Their mother will never be out of your house. She will ferret about in your drawers and wardrobes, filch your haberdashery, and cast greedy eyes on the very shirts and coats on your back, and calculate when she can get them for her boys. Those vulgar young miscreants will never fail to come and dine with you on a Sunday. They will bring their young linendraper or articled friends. They will draw bills on you, or give their own to money-lenders, and unless you take up those bills they will consider you a callous, avaricious brute, and the heartless author of their ruin. The girls will come and practise on your wife’s piano. They won’t come to you on Sundays only; they will always be staying in the house. They will always be preventing a tête-à-tête between your wife and you. As they grow old, they will want her to take them out to tea-parties, and to give such entertainments, where they will introduce their odious young men. They will expect you to commit meannesses, in order to get theatre tickets for them from the newspaper editors of your acquaintance. You will have to sit in the back seat: to pay the cab to and from the play: to see glances and bows of recognition passing between them and dubious bucks in the lobbies: and to lend the girls your wife’s gloves, scarfs, ornaments, smelling-bottles, and handkerchiefs, which of course they will never return. If Elizabeth is ailing from any circumstance, they will get a footing in your house, and she will be jealous of them. The ladies of your own family will quarrel with them, of course; and very likely your mother-in-law will tell them a piece of her mind. And you bring this dreary certainty upon you, because, forsooth, you fell in love with a fine figure, a pair of grey eyes, and a head of auburn (not to say red) hair! O Charles Batchelor! in what a galley hast thou seated thyself, and what a family is crowded in thy boat!

All these thoughts are passing in my mind, as good Mrs. Bonnington is prattling to me—I protest I don’t know about what. I think I caught some faint sentences about the Patagonian mission, the National schools, and Mr. Bonnington’s lumbago; but I can’t say for certain. I was busy with my own thoughts. I had asked the awful question—I was not answered. Bessy had even gone away in a huff about my want of gallantry, but I was easy on that score. As for Mr. Drencher, she had told me her sentiments regarding him; and though I am considerably older, yet thought I, I need not be afraid of that rival. But when she says yes? Oh, dear! oh, dear! Yes means Elizabeth—certainly, a brave young woman—but it means Mrs. Prior, and Gus, and Amelia Jane, and the whole of that dismal family. No wonder, with these dark thoughts crowding my mind, Mrs. Bonnington found me absent; and, as a comment upon some absurd reply of mine, said, “La! Mr. Batchelor, you must be crossed in love!” Crossed in love! It might be as well for some folks if they were crossed in love. At my age, and having loved madly, as I did, that party in Dublin, a man doesn’t take the second fit by any means so strongly. Well! well! the die was cast, and I was there to bide the hazard. ‘What can be the matter? I look pale and unwell, and had better see Mr. D.?’ Thank you, my dear Mrs. Bonnington. I had a violent—a violent toothache last night-yes, toothache; and was kept awake, thank you. And there’s nothing like having it out? and Mr. D. draws them beautifully, and has taken out six of your children’s? It’s better now; I daresay it will be better still, soon. I retire to my chamber: I take a book—can’t read one word of it. I resume my tragedy. Tragedy? Bosh!

I suppose Mr. Drencher thought his yesterday’s patient would be better for a little more advice and medicine, for he must pay a second visit to Shrublands on this day, just after the row with the captain had taken place, and walked up to the upper regions, as his custom was. Very likely he found Mr. Clarence bathing his nose there, and prescribed for the injured organ. Certainly he knocked at the door of Miss Prior’s schoolroom (the fellow was always finding a pretext for entering that apartment), and Master Bedford comes to me, with a wobegone, livid countenance, and a “Ha! ha! young Sawbones is up with her!”

“So my poor Dick,” I say, “I heard your confession as I was myself running in to rescue Miss P. from that villain.”

“My blood was hup,” groans Dick,—“up, I beg your pardon. When I saw that young rascal lay a hand on her I could not help flying at him. I would have hit him if he had been my own father. And I could not help saying what was on my mind. It would come out; I knew it would some day. I might as well wish for the moon as hope to get her. She thinks herself superior to me, and perhaps she is mistaken. But it’s no use; she don’t care for me; she don’t care for anybody. Now the words are out, in course I mustn’t stay here.”

“You may get another place easily enough with your character, Bedford!”

But he shook his head. “I’m not disposed to black nobody else’s boots no more. I have another place. I have saved a bit of money. My poor old mother is gone, whom you used to be so kind to, Mr. B. I’m alone now. Confound that Sawbones, will he never come away? I’ll tell you about my plans some day, sir, and I know you’ll be so good as to help me.” And away goes Dick, looking the picture of woe and despair.

Presently, from the upper rooms, Sawbones descends. I happened to be standing in the hall, you see, talking to Dick. Mr. Drencher scowls at me fiercely, and I suppose I return him haughty glance for glance. He hated me: I him: I liked him to hate me.

“How is your patient, Mr.—a—Drencher?” I ask.

“Trifling contusion of the nose—brown paper and vinegar,” says the doctor.

“Great powers! did the villain strike her on the nose?” I cry, in terror.

“Her—whom?” says he.

“Oh—ah—yes—indeed; it’s nothing,” I say, smiling. The fact is I had forgotten about Baker in my natural anxiety for Elizabeth.

“I don’t know what you mean by laughing, sir?” says the red-haired practitioner. “But if you mean chaff, Mr. Batchelor, let me tell you I don’t want chaff, and I won’t have chaff!” and herewith, exit Sawbones, looking black doses at me.

Jealous of me, think I, as I sink down in a chair in the morning-room, where the combat had just taken place. And so thou, too, art fever-caught, my poor physician! What a fascination this girl has. Here’s the butler: here’s the medical man: here am I: here is the captain has been smitten—smitten on the nose. Has the gardener been smitten too, and is the page gnawing his buttons off for jealousy, and is Mons. Bulkeley equally in love with her? I take up a review, and think over this, as I glance through its pages.

As I am lounging and reading, Mons. Bulkeley himself makes his appearance, bearing in cloaks and packages belonging to his lady. “Have the goodness to take that cap off,” I say, coolly.

“You ’ave the goodness to remember that if hever I see you hout o’ this ’ouse I’ll punch your hugly ’ead off,” says the monstrous menial. But I poise my paper-cutter, and he retires growling.

From despondency I pass to hope; and the prospect of marriage, which before appeared so dark to me, assumes a gayer hue. I have four hundred a year, and that house in Devonshire Street, Bloomsbury Square, of which the upper part will be quite big enough for us. If we have children, there is Queen Square for them to walk and play in. Several genteel families I know, who still live in the neighbourhood, will come and see my wife, and we shall have a comfortable, cosy little society, suited to our small means. The tradesmen in Lamb’s Conduit Street are excellent, and the music at the Foundling always charming. I shall give up one of my clubs. The other is within an easy walk.

No: my wife’s relations will not plague me. Bessy is a most sensible, determined woman, and as cool a hand as I know. She will only see Mrs. Prior at proper (and, I trust, distant) intervals. Her brothers and sisters will learn to know their places, and not obtrude upon me or the company which I keep. My friends, who are educated people and gentlemen, will not object to visit me because I live over a shop (my ground floor and spacious back premises in Devonshire Street are let to a German toy-warehouse). I shall add a hundred or two at least to my income by my literary labour; and Bessy, who has practised frugality all her life, and been a good daughter and a good sister, I know will prove a good wife, and, please heaven! a good mother. Why, four hundred a year, plus two hundred, is a nice little income. And my old college friend, Wigmore, who is just on the Bench? He will, he must get me a place—say three hundred a year. With nine hundred a year we can do quite well.

Love is full of elations and despondencies. The future, over which such a black cloud of doubt lowered a few minutes since, blushed a sweet rose-colour now. I saw myself happy, beloved, with a competence, and imagined myself reposing in the delightful garden of Red Lion Square on some summer evening, and half-a-dozen little Batchelors frisking over the flower-bespangled grass there.

After our little colloquy, Mrs. Bonnington, not finding much pleasure in my sulky society, had gone to Miss Prior’s room with her young folks, and as the door of the morning-room opened now and again, I could hear the dear young ones scuttling about the passages, where they were playing at horses, and fighting, and so forth. After a while good Mrs. B. came down from the schoolroom. “Whatever has happened, Mr. Batchelor?” she said to me, in her passage through the morning-room. “Miss Prior is very pale and absent. You are very pale and absent. Have you been courting her, you naughty man, and trying to supplant Mr. Drencher? There now, you turn as red as my ribbon! Ah! Bessy is a good girl, and so fond of my dear children. ‘Ah, dear Mrs. Bonnington,’ she says to me—but of course you won’t tell Lady B.: it would make Lady B. perfectly furious. ‘Ah!’ says Miss P. to me, ‘I wish, ma’am, that my little charges were like their dear little nephews and nieces—so exquisitely brought up!’ Pop again wished to beat his uncle. I wish—I wish Frederick would send that child to school! Miss P. owns that he is too much for her. Come, children, it is time to go to dinner.” And, with more of this prattle, the good lady summons her young ones, who descend from the schoolroom with their nephew and niece.

Following nephew and niece comes demure Miss Prior, to whom I fling a knowing glance, which says, plain as eyes can speak—Do, Elizabeth, come and talk for a little to your faithful Batchelor! She gives a sidelong look of intelligence, leaves a parasol and a pair of gloves on a table, accompanies Mrs. Bonnington and the young ones into the garden, sees the clergyman’s wife and children disappear through the garden gate, and her own youthful charges engaged in the strawberry-beds; and, of course, returns to the morning-room for her parasol and gloves, which she had forgotten. There is a calmness about that woman—an easy, dauntless dexterity, which frightens me—ma parole d’honneur. In that white breast is there a white marble stone in place of the ordinary cordial apparatus? Under the white velvet glove of that cool hand are there bones of cold steel?

“So, Drencher has again been here, Elizabeth?” I say.

She shrugs her shoulders. “To see that wretched Captain Baker. The horrid little man will die! He was not actually sober just now when he—when I—when you saw him. How I wish you had come sooner—to prevent that horrible, tipsy, disreputable quarrel. It makes me very, very thoughtful, Mr. Batchelor. He will speak to his mother—to Mr. Lovel. I shall have to go away. I know I must.”

“And don’t you know where you can find a home, Elizabeth? Have the words I spoke this morning been so soon forgotten?”

“Oh! Mr. Batchelor! you spoke in a heat. You could not think seriously of a poor girl like me, so friendless and poor, with so many family ties. Pop is looking this way, please. To a man bred like you, what can I be?”

“You may make the rest of my life happy, Elizabeth!” I cry. “We are friends of such old—old date, that you know what my disposition is.”

“Oh! indeed,” says she, “it is certain that there never was a sweeter disposition or a more gentle creature.” (Somehow I thought she said the words “gentle creature” with rather a sarcastic tone of voice.) “But consider your habits, dear sir. I remember how in Beak Street you used to be always giving, and in spite of your income, always poor. You love ease and elegance; and having, I daresay, not too much for yourself now, would you encumber yourself with—with me and the expenses of a household? I shall always regard you, esteem you, love you as the best friend I ever had, and—voici venir la mère du vaurien.”

Enter Lady Baker. “Do I interrupt a tête-à-tête, pray?” she asks.

“My benefactor has known me since I was a child, and befriended me since then,” says Elizabeth, with simple kindness beaming in her look. “We were just speaking—I was just—ah!—telling him that my uncle has invited me most kindly to St. Boniface, whenever I can be spared; and if you and the family go to the Isle of Wight this autumn, perhaps you will intercede with Mr. Lovel, and let me have a little holiday. Mary will take every charge of the children, and I do so long to see my dear aunt and cousins! And I was begging Mr. Batchelor to use his interest with you, and to entreat you to use your interest to get me leave. That was what our talk was about.”

The deuce it was! I couldn’t say No, of course; but I protest I had no idea until that moment that our conversation had been about aunt and uncle at St. Boniface. Again came the horrible suspicion, the dreadful doubt—the chill as of a cold serpent crawling down my back—which had made me pause, and gasp, and turn pale, anon when Bessy and Captain Clarence were holding colloquy together. What has happened in this woman’s life? Do I know all about her, or anything; or only just as much as she chooses? O Batch—Batch! I suspect you are no better than an old gaby!

“And Mr. Drencher has just been here and seen your son,” Bessy continues, softly; “and he begs and entreats your ladyship to order Captain Baker to be more prudent. Mr. D. says Captain Baker is shortening his life, indeed he is, by his carelessness.”

There is Mr. Lovel coming from the city, and the children are running to their papa! And Miss Prior makes her patroness a meek curtsey, and demurely slides away from the room. With a sick heart I say to myself, “She has been—yes—humbugging is the word—humbugging Lady B. Elizabeth! Elizabeth! can it be possible thou art humbugging me too?”

Before Lovel enters, Bedford rapidly flits through the room. He looks as pale as a ghost. His face is awfully gloomy.

“Here’s the governor come,” Dick whispers to me. “It must all come hout now—out, I beg your pardon. So she’s caught you, has she? I thought she would.” And he grins a ghastly grin.

“What do you mean?” I ask, and I daresay turn rather red.

“I know all about it. I’ll speak to you to-night, sir. Confound her! confound her!” and he doubles his knuckles into his eyes, and rushes out of the room over Buttons, entering with the afternoon tea.

“What on earth’s the matter, and why are you knocking the things about?” Lovel asks at dinner of his butler, who, indeed, acted as one distraught. A savage gloom was depicted on Bedford’s usually melancholy countenance, and the blunders in his service were many. With his brother-in-law Lovel did not exchange many words. Clarence was not yet forgiven for his escapade two days previous. And when Lady Baker cried, “Mercy, child! what have you done to yourself?” and the captain replied, “Knocked my face against a dark door—made my nose bleed,” Lovel did not look up or express a word of sympathy. “If the fellow knocked his worthless head off, I should not be sorry,” the widower murmured to me. Indeed, the tone of the captain’s voice, his ton, and his manners in general, were specially odious to Mr. Lovel, who could put up with the tyranny of women, but revolted against the vulgarity and assumption of certain men.

As yet nothing had been said about the morning’s quarrel. Here we were all sitting with a sword hanging over our heads, smiling and chatting, and talking cookery, politics, the weather, and what not. Bessy was perfectly cool and dignified at tea. Danger or doubt did not seem to affect her. If she had been ordered for execution at the end of the evening she would have made the tea, played her Beethoven, answered questions in her usual voice, and glided about from one to another with her usual dignified calm, until the hour of decapitation came, when she would have made her curtsey, and gone out and had the amputation performed quite quietly and neatly. I admired her, I was frightened before her. The cold snake crept more than ever down my back as I meditated on her. I made such awful blunders at whist that even good Mrs. Bonnington lost her temper with her fourteen shillings. Miss Prior would have played her hand out, and never made a fault, you may be sure. She retired at her accustomed hour. Mrs. Bonnington had her glass of negus, and withdrew too. Lovel keeping his eyes sternly on the captain, that officer could only get a little sherry and seltzer, and went to bed sober. Lady Baker folded Lovel in her arms, a process to which my poor friend very humbly submitted. Everybody went to bed, and no tales were told of the morning’s doings. There was a respite, and no execution could take place till to-morrow at any rate. Put on thy night-cap, Damocles, and slumber for to-night, at least. Thy slumbers will not be cut short by the awful Chopper of Fate.

Perhaps you may ask what need had I to be alarmed? Nothing could happen to me. I was not going to lose a governess’s place. Well, if I must tell the truth, I had not acted with entire candour in the matter of Bessy’s appointment. In recommending her to Lovel, and the late Mrs. L., I had answered for her probity, and so forth, with all my might. I had described the respectability of her family, her father’s campaigns, her grandfather’s (old Dr. Sargent’s) celebrated sermons; and had enlarged with the utmost eloquence upon the learning and high character of her uncle, the Master of Boniface, and the deserved regard he bore his niece. But that part of Bessy’s biography which related to the Academy I own I had not touched upon. A quoi bon? Would every gentleman or lady like to have everything told about him or her? I had kept the Academy dark then; and so had brave Dick Bedford the butler; and should that miscreant captain reveal the secret, I knew there would be an awful commotion in the building. I should have to incur Lovel’s not unjust reproaches for suppressio veri, and the anger of those two viragines, the grandmothers of Lovel’s children. I was more afraid of the women than of him, though conscience whispered me that I had not acted quite rightly by my friend.

When, then, the bed-candles were lighted, and every one said good-night, “Oh! Captain Baker,” say I, gaily, and putting on a confoundedly hypocritical grin, “if you will come into my room, I will give you that book.”

“What book?” says Baker.

“The book we were talking of this morning.”

“Hang me, if I know what you mean,” says he. And luckily for me, Lovel giving a shrug of disgust, and a good-night to me, stalked out of the room, bed-candle in hand. No doubt, he thought his wretch of a brother-in-law did not well remember after dinner what he had done or said in the morning.

As I now had the Blacksheep to myself, I said calmly, “You are quite right. There was no talk about a book at all, Captain Baker. But I wished to see you alone, and impress upon you my earnest wish that everything which occurred this morning—mind, everything—should be considered as strictly private, and should be confided to no person whatever—you understand?—to no person.”

“Confound me,” Baker breaks out, “if I understand what you mean by your books and your ‘strictly private.’ I shall speak what I choose—hang me!”

“In that case, sir,” I said, “will you have the goodness to send a friend of yours to my friend Captain Fitzboodle? I must consider the matter as personal between ourselves. You insulted, and as I find now, for the second time—a lady whose relations to me you know. You have given neither to her, nor to me, the apology to which we are both entitled. You refuse even to promise to be silent regarding a painful scene which was occasioned by your own brutal and cowardly behaviour; and you must abide by the consequences, sir! you must abide by the consequences!” And I glared at him over my flat candlestick.

“Curse me!—and hang me!—and,” &c. &c. &c. he says, “if I know what all this is about. What the dooce do you talk to me about books, and about silence, and apologies, and sending Captain Fitzboodle to me? I don’t want to see Captain Fitzboodle—great fat brute! I know him perfectly well.”

“Hush!” say I, “here’s Bedford.” In fact, Dick appeared at this juncture, to close the house and put the lamps out.

But Captain Clarence only spoke or screamed louder. “What do I care about who hears me? That fellow insulted me already to-day, and I’d have pitched his life out of him, only I was down, and I’m so confounded weak and nervous, and just out of my fever—and—and hang it all! what are you driving at, Mr. What’s-your-name?” And the wretched little creature cries almost as he speaks.

“Once for all, will you agree that the affair about which we spoke shall go no further?” I say, as stern as Draco.

“I shan’t say anythin’ about it. I wish you’d leave me alone, you fellows, and not come botherin’. I wish I could get a glass of brandy-and-water up in my bed-room. I tell you I can’t sleep without it,” whimpers the wretch.

“Sorry I laid hands on you, sir,” says Bedford sadly. “It wasn’t worth the while. Go to bed, and I’ll get you something warm.”

“Will you, though? I couldn’t sleep without it. Do now—do now! and I won’t say anythin’—I won’t now—on the honour of a gentleman, I won’t. Good night, Mr. What-d’-ye-call—.” And Bedford leads the helot to his chamber.

“I’ve got him in bed; and I’ve given him a dose; and I put some laudanum in it. He ain’t been out. He has not had much to-day,” says Bedford, coming back to my room, with his face ominously pale.

“You have given him laudanum?” I ask.

“Sawbones gave him some yesterday,—told me to give him a little—forty drops,” growls Bedford.

Then the gloomy major-domo puts a hand into each waistcoat pocket, and looks at me. “You want to fight for her, do you, sir? Calling out, and that sort of game? Phoo!”—and he laughs scornfully.

“The little miscreant is too despicable, I own,” say I, “and it’s absurd for a peaceable fellow like me to talk about powder and shot at this time of day. But what could I do?”

“I say it’s she ain’t worth it,” says Bedford, lifting up both clenched fists out of the waistcoat pockets.

“What do you mean, Dick?” I ask.

“She’s humbugging you,—she’s humbugging me,—she’s humbugging everybody,” roars Dick. “Look here, sir!” and out of one of the clenched fists he flings a paper down on the table.

“What is it?” I ask. It’s her handwriting. I see the neat trim lines on the paper.

“It’s not to you; nor yet to me,” says Bedford.

“Then how dare you read it, sir?” I ask, all of a tremble.

“It’s to him. It’s to Sawbones,” hisses out Bedford. “Sawbones dropt it as he was getting into his gig; and I read it. I ain’t going to make no bones about whether it’s wrote to me or not. She tells him how you asked her to marry you. (Ha!) That’s how I came to know it. And do you know what she calls you, and what he calls you,—that castor-hoil beast? And do you know what she says of you? That you hadn’t pluck to stand by her to-day. There,—it’s all down under her hand and seal. You may read it, or not, if you like. And if poppy or mandragora will medicine you to sleep afterwards, I just recommend you to take it. I shall go and get a drop out of the captain’s bottle—I shall.”

And he leaves me, and the fatal paper on the table.

Now, suppose you had been in my case—would you, or would you not, have read the paper? Suppose there is some news—bad news—about the woman you love, will you, or will you not, hear it? Was Othello a rogue because he let Iago speak to him? There was the paper. It lay there glimmering under the light, with all the house quiet.