One Of Them

by Charles James Lever

“Let us down to the cottage, then, and learn this at once,” said Quackinboss; “I 'd be sore riled if he was to slip his cable while we thought him hard aground.”

“Yes,” said the doctor. “We need not necessarily go and ask for him; Winthrop can just drop in to say a 'good-evening,' while we wait outside.”

“I wish you had chosen a craftier messenger,” said Winthrop, laughing. And now, taking their hats, they set out for the Gebhardts-Berg.

Alfred contrived to slip his arm within that of Quackinboss, and while the others went on in front, he sauntered slowly after with the Colonel. He had been anxiously waiting for a moment when they could talk together, and for some days back it had not been possible. If the others were entirely absorbed in the pursuit of those who had planned this scheme of fraud, Alfred had but one thought,—and that was Clara. It was not as the great heiress he regarded her, not as the owner of a vast property, all at her own disposal; he thought of the sad story that awaited her,—the terrible revelation of her father's death, and the scarcely less harrowing history of her who had supplied the place of mother to her. “She will have to learn all this,” thought he, “and at the moment that she hears herself called rich and independent, she will have to hear of the open shame and punishment of one who, whatever the relations between them, had called her her child, and assumed to treat her as her own.”

To make known all these to Quackinboss, and to induce him, if he could, to regard them in the same light that they appeared to himself, was young Layton's object. Withoat any preface he told all his fears and anxieties. He pictured the condition of a young girl entering life alone, heralded by a scandal that would soon spread over all Europe. Would not any poverty with obscurity be better than fortune on such conditions? Of what avail could wealth be, when every employment of it would bring up an odious history? and lastly, how reconcile Clara herself to the enjoyment of her good fortune, if it came associated with the bitter memory of others in suffering and in durance? If he knew anything of Clara's heart, he thought that the sorrow would far outweigh the joy the tidings of her changed condition would bring her; at least, he hoped that he had so read her nature aright, and it was thus that he had construed it.

If Quackinboss had none of that refined appreciation of sentiment which in a certain measure is the conventionality of a class, he had what is infinitely and immeasurably superior, a true-hearted sympathy with everything human. He was sorely sorry for “that widow-woman.” He had forgotten none of the charms she threw around their evenings at Marlia long ago, and he was slow to think that these fascinations should always be exercised as snares and deceptions, and, last of all, as he said, “We have never heard her story yet,—we know nothing of how she has been tried.”

“What is it, then, that you propose to do?” asked the Colonel, at the end of a somewhat rambling and confused exposition by young Layton.

“Simply this: abandon all pursuit of these people; spare them and spare ourselves the pain and misery of a public shame. Their plot has failed; they will never attempt to renew it in any shape; and, above all, let not Clara begin the bright path before her by having to pass through a shadow of suffering and sorrow.”

“Ay, there is much in what you say; and now that we have run the game to earth, I have my misgivings that we were not yielding ourselves more to the ardor of the pursuit than stimulated by any love of justice.”

While they were thus talking, the others had passed the little wicket and entered the garden of the cottage. Struck by the quietness and the unlighted windows, they knocked hastily at the door. A question and answer revealed all, and the doctor called out aloud, “They are off! They are away!”