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FAR ABOVE RUBIES.
A Novel.

BY

Mrs. J. H. RIDDELL,

AUTHOR OF “GEORGE GEITH,” “CITY AND SUBURB,” “TOO MUCH ALONE,” “THE RACE FOR WEALTH,” ETC., ETC.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

LONDON:

TINSLEY BROTHERS, CATHERINE STREET, STRAND.

1867.

[The Right of Translation and Reproduction reserved.]

LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.

CONTENTS OF VOL. II.

FAR ABOVE RUBIES

CHAPTER I.
MR. BLACK WRITES HIS PROSPECTUS.

Amidst the anxieties of making salads, the desire to convert Heather from the evils and dangers of English cookery, skirmishes with Mrs. Ormson, criticisms on Bessie, and the personal enjoyment of such luxuries as ripe fruit, coffee of her own manufacture, chocolate and claret ad libitum, Miss Hope by no means forgot Mr. Black’s commercial scheme, and the efforts she felt confident he was making to induce Arthur to embark in it with him.

A woman sharp and clever enough in her generation, she was yet no match, either in sharpness or cleverness, for Mr. Black. If she knew a few things about him, he “was up,” so he phrased it, “to two or three of her moves,” and could turn the tables on her, when she tried his temper, as is often the wise fashion of her sex, a little too much.

The very first morning she opened fire upon him, the promoter informed Arthur, he “knew what the old lady was up to.”

This was the peculiarly diplomatic manner in which Miss Hope, finding that Heather inclined to do nothing, commenced her operations.

The time was breakfast; scene, the dining-room at Berrie Down, with all the windows open; actors, Miss Hope and Mr. Black: interested spectators, the family and visitors generally.

“Pray,” began the spinster, coquetting, as she spoke, with a peach which might have been grown in Eden, it looked so fresh and tempting; “pray, Mr. Black, can you tell me of a good investment for a small sum of money?”

Across the table Mr. Black looked at her, with a merry twinkle in his eyes; then he answered,—

“Yes, the Three per Cents.”

“But my friend would not be satisfied with three per cent.,” said Miss Hope.

“A mortgage, or some good freehold estate, might suit her then,” suggested Mr. Black.

“I did not say it was a lady, so far as I am aware,” remarked Miss Hope.

“No; but I concluded no man would ask a lady friend to make such inquiries for him,” explained her antagonist. “She might get four, or even four and a half, and still be safe enough.”

“But what is four and a half?” observed Miss Hope.

“Four pounds ten shillings per cent. per annum,” answered Mr. Black, at which reply Arthur laughed.

“You won’t make much of him, aunt,” he said; “you cannot get him to advise an unsafe investment.”

For a moment Miss Hope turned towards her nephew, evidently meditating an attack on him. Changing her mind, however, she addressed herself to Mr. Black once more.

“But there is more surely than four and a half per cent. to be had now-a-days, is there not; in some of those great companies, for instance?”

“All swindles, ma’am,” declared the promoter. “Should not advise you, or at least your friend, to have anything to do with them. In the companies that are bona fide, all the shares are snapped up before the project is well before the public. Whenever you hear of shares going a-begging, depend upon it the whole concern is rotten.”

“You are an authority in such matters?” she suggested.

“Not a better authority than Miss Hope,” replied Mr. Black, gallantly.

“What do you mean; do you think I know anything about investments?” she asked.

“I have heard that either you or some friend of yours does,” he answered. “I have heard of very good ventures you have made,—of shares sold in the nick of time, and bought wisely, and at a very low figure.”

“I assure you, Mr. Black, you have been misinformed,” said the spinster, eagerly; “all my money is sunk in a life annuity.”

“Which, no doubt, ma’am, you purchased on as favourable terms as those shares in the Great Britain and Ireland Canal Company.”

“Then you had to do with that!” exclaimed Miss Hope, setting down her claret-glass with most unladylike vehemence, and looking at the promoter as though he were a culprit caught in the very act. “I always thought that was one of your schemes; but never felt sure of it till now.”

“It is not wise to be too sure of anything,” Mr. Black answered. “I had nothing, as it happened, to do with the Great Britain and Ireland Canal Company. If I had, perhaps you might not have lost by your shares; but a man I know, a confoundedly clever fellow, got rid of his the day before the smash came, and it was he who told me you had got your fingers burnt. Your friend, Mr. Pembroke, did not advise you with his customary caution there, Miss Hope.”

“Mr. Pembroke had nothing to do with the matter,” said Miss Hope, angrily; “and how you happen to be so well acquainted with my private affairs is a mystery to me. I do not consider such prying gentlemanly. I do not know what may be thought of such conduct among business people, Mr. Black, but in a different circle——”

“I thought it was of business we were talking,” interrupted the promoter, “of affairs which were strictly commercial! The moment any one goes on the market, Miss Hope, either personally or by deputy, that moment he or she becomes public property. I never pretended to be a gentleman; but I do not think I would go prying into my neighbour’s secret concerns for all that, any more than you would do,” he added, significantly.

Almost involuntarily Heather’s eyes sought Miss Hope’s face at this statement, and under Mrs. Dudley’s look the spinster turned redder even than she had done at the conclusion of Mr. Black’s speech.

“I am perfectly incapable of impertinent or undue meddling in any person’s concerns,” she said. “Thank God, curiosity is a feeling that I was born without.”

“Then you ought to be sent to the South Kensington Museum,” remarked Mr. Black.

“Don’t you think, aunt, that is going a little too far?” inquired Arthur.

“Miss Hope only meant that she had no curiosity about indifferent subjects,” put in Mrs. Black, as usual making matters worse by trying to mend them.

“Miss Hope meant no such thing,” snapped that lady. “I meant precisely what I said; that I have no curiosity, and that I never had any.”

“Not even to see unfinished pictures and statues in course of chiselling,” suggested Mrs. Ormson.

“I do not think Miss Hope has any undue curiosity,” said Heather; “at least, I know she has not nearly so much as I. It interests me to know the name, and occupation, and worldly means, even, of Dora Scrotter’s lover down at the mill. In the country one learns to be inquisitive about one’s neighbours. There is so little excitement or amusement, that every piece of gossip is seized on eagerly.”

“You dear Heather, as if you were a gossip!” exclaimed Bessie.

“That is just what I say about the country,” remarked Mr. Black; “life stagnates here; you should come to London, Mrs. Dudley; come and bring the girls, and we will take you about. There are lots of rooms in Stanley Crescent crying out for some one to come and occupy them. Persuade your husband to give himself a holiday whenever the crops are in; you have never paid us a visit yet, and I call it mean.”

“We should be only too delighted if you would come,” murmured Mrs. Black.

“Well, all I can say is,” remarked Miss Hope, “that if I had such a place as Berrie Down, I would never leave it.”

“Not even to go abroad?” asked Mrs. Ormson.

“Not even to go abroad,” answered Miss Hope, deliberately—an assertion which took every one so much by surprise, that no person disputed its truthfulness; not even Arthur, who, feeling his aunt’s words were intended as a useful moral lesson for him, longed to argue the matter out with her, and say he should go to London, or stay at Berrie Down, or take a still longer journey if it pleased him to do so, without consulting any one in the matter.

“You would like greatly to have my nephew staying in Stanley Crescent?” Miss Hope said to Mrs. Black later on in the course of the same day.

“I should greatly,” answered the promoter, and thus war was declared between them; and from that day forth Miss Hope began unintentionally playing into her enemy’s hands.

“Take care what you are about with that man, Arthur,” she entreated.

“My dear aunt, I am much obliged to you for your kindness, but I believe I can manage my own affairs,” he returned.

“Heather, you must speak to Arthur,” she then declared; “if you do not speak, you will one day repent your weakness.”

“But I am afraid of vexing him,” Mrs. Dudley objected.

“Vex, nonsense; better vex him than lose every sixpence you have in the world.”

“Do you think my speaking likely to do any good?”

“It cannot do any harm;” and thus exhorted, Heather inquired,—

“Have you any intention, Arthur, of—of going into business?”

“Business,” he repeated; “what in the world put such an idea as that into your mind?”

“You and Mr. Black are always talking together.”

“And you object to our talking?”

“No; only I love Berrie Down, Arthur.”

“Which my aunt thinks I am in danger of losing; is that it, Heather? No, I won’t lose Berrie Down, nor beggar you and the children. Does that content you?”

“Yes, Arthur;” and she put her arm round his neck, and kissed him; and he, in return, kissed her, grateful, perhaps, for a wife whom so little confidence satisfied, or at least silenced; and who was as grateful for a kind word, for a loving look, as many a woman for the devotion of a life.

In those days, Arthur Dudley was a much more agreeable individual than he had seemed for many a year previously.

He was gayer, brighter, kindlier. He refrained from grumbling, and ceased to recite the benefits he had conferred upon his family.

There had come a summer to his winter, and in the bright sunshine all the good plants that were formerly hidden under the snows of adversity, put forth and blossomed into flower.

For such a change, could Heather be otherwise than thankful? Did not every creature about the house—every man, woman, and child, and even the very dumb animals—feel happier and better because the head of the family, believing fortune was coming towards him, looked out over the world with different eyes, and thought there was at last good to be found in it?

The labourers worked more willingly; the very cattle seemed to thrive better; the dogs, forgivingly forgetful that their master had been wont to repulse their demonstrations of affections with an angry, “Get off, will you!” came bounding towards him over the meadows and across the yard. They were so pleased with the notice he took of them in those days, that they lost their heads and made themselves perfectly ridiculous with their rejoicings and gambolings. They rolled each other over on the grass, and barked and worried each his companion in the friendliest manner possible. When Arthur entered the room, Muff, Lally’s dearly beloved and much-enduring kitten, now kept her position, instead of walking off gravely shaking her hind legs at him as she went. He had been wont to kick her also out of the way, but now he did not disdain to look when Bessie held the saucer of milk for which she had taught Muff to beg.

Even Jinny, the ill-conditioned goat, came in for her share of the universal sunshine; while as for Heather, she basked in it. Had it not been for Miss Hope’s eternal warnings, she would have forgotten her anxieties; ay, even the unpromising page of her own life which had been suddenly opened for her inspection.

Arthur was happy; and she is but a poor wife to whom the sight of her husband’s happiness does not bring rejoicing also! As for Lally, a new leaf in her book also was turned over. One day she came in to her mother—hot, breathless, excited—exclaiming, “Lally’s been to the mill, and Mr. Scrotter gave her two—beau—ful bantams!”

“Who went with you to the mill, my pet?” asked Heather; little expecting, however, to hear Lally say in reply,—

“Pa tooked me; and pa says, when Lally’s a big girl she shall have a nicer pony than Jack to ride, and that he’ll go out with her. Pa says it!” and Lally stood and looked at her mother as though expecting Heather to make an immediate memorandum of these remarkable words.

Ah! Heaven, how the poor Squire built his castles and furnished them in that glorious summer weather; in what a fairy edifice he lived; through what rose-coloured glass he surveyed his future life! How different everything looked; how changed he felt; how swiftly the stream of his existence flowed by! He was galloping on to fortune, and he never thought of the chance of fall or accident by the way. He believed in his steed, and the idea of stumbling or breaking down never occurred to him. He was in for it now; he had—as Mr. Black said to himself at the conclusion of their first actual conversation on the subject—“tasted blood;” and till the game was hunted down, Arthur was never likely to look back.

Besides, there was such perpetual excitement about the matter. Letters arrived, letters were answered, advertisements were drawn up, a prospectus had to be written. Post time became a longed-for hour at Berrie Down.

There was something to do, something to expect; the monotony of that country existence was broken up. Life at the Hollow, all at once, ceased to be mere vegetation. For himself the Squire never could have made an object and a purpose; but here, constantly at his right hand, was a man full of energy and expedients—a man who had confidence both in himself and in his project; who, pulling away with might and main towards opulence and success, was kind enough to take Arthur Dudley as a passenger in the same boat, and amuse him, as they rowed along, with descriptions of that fair land whither they were journeying.

Many a wiser person than Arthur Dudley has been led away by much more delusive prospects of fortune than those concerning which Mr. Black waxed daily more and more eloquent.

Besides, the mere fact of having anything actually to do—“anything to get up for,” so Mr. Black put the matter—proved an agreeable variety to the Squire.

He was not yet old enough to prefer repose to action, to dislike change, to distrust novelties; and there can be no question but that the brisk confidence of Mr. Black’s ideas—the sharp decision of Mr. Black’s manner, seemed a pleasant variety to a man who had for years and years been droning through life, wandering over the fields with his hands in his pockets, grumbling at his labourers, lamenting concerning his inferior crops, and his cattle that would not grow beef fast enough.

Other trifles also conspired to gratify him at this time; such trifles as a man must have lived very quietly and very economically even to notice. But then it was many a long day since Arthur had lived otherwise than quietly and economically, and for that reason one or two journeys taken to town about this period with Mr. Black—when the pair went about London regardless of expense, rushed from one end of town to the other in hansoms, kept cabs waiting for them without a thought of the ultimate cost; tipped footmen, porters, watermen; took trains from all parts of London for all suburbs and country districts that could be mentioned; treated subordinates to wonderful luncheons, or else had them up for dinner to Stanley Crescent, and went with them afterwards to the play—made a curious impression on the mind of a man who had hitherto looked conscientiously at a sovereign before spending it; who had almost ever since he left college travelled second-class, affected omnibuses, shunned staying in great houses on account of needful gratuities, and generally pinched himself as much as an honest gentleman, left but with a small property and many incumbrances, was likely to do.

Of course, this recital of scraping, careful, unexciting poverty must prove as wearisome and unendurable in a book as the reality does, when your neighbour (a person to be shunned) says he has to count his sixpences carefully and walk to the station for the sake of his family. The least said is soonest mended in such cases, no doubt; and the terrible economics poor Squire Dudley had been guilty of are now reluctantly named only to render intelligible the reason why rattling about London, in company with Mr. Black, seemed to him pleasant by contrast.

To be sure—and this is really the singular part of the business—what was spent came out of Arthur’s pocket. Various heads of cattle speedily followed Nellie, and the money they yielded was distributed by Mr. Black with no niggardly hand.

He knew the means by which to float a company; he believed that the way to every man’s heart was through the palm of his right hand.

Mesmerism, he said, was a round-about way of putting yourself en rapport with any one, in comparison to slipping a sovereign between his fingers.

Further, to get up other people’s steam, it is necessary, first, to raise your own; and Mr. Black held, and held truly, that there is no easier way of doing this than to rush from office to office, from station to bank, from bank to private house, all at express speed.

“This is how we live,” he was wont to say to Arthur Dudley; and, on the whole, the Squire thought such a way of living far from disagreeable.

They did not ask or want money from anyone, I pray you recollect. The great ship was still on the stocks; there had not occurred a single hitch in the business; it was all fair weather work, so far, at least, as Arthur could see; all like ordering goods and writing cheques; giving employment and paying cash; and it never occurred to the Squire that there could be another side to the picture; that sometimes business assumed the form of selling goods, and asking for payment. He was but a novice, and believed implicitly their ship would glide smoothly into the water; that she would carry a good cargo; that the profits on her freight would be enormous; that the passengers would all have a fair voyage, and agree well by the way; that there would be plenty, and to spare, for everybody; and that he should never have any harder work to do than running up to town with Mr. Black, and holding interviews with all sorts and conditions of men.

They saw printers and got estimates; they ticked off the best advertising media in “Mitchell’s Newspaper Guide;” they looked at offices in the City, they had long and confidential discourses with auctioneers and house-agents; they drove to Stangate and went over the mills, which were in full work, and in and out of which went and came men covered with flour, and of a generally white and dusty appearance; they dined at Wandsworth with Mr. Bailey Crossenham, and at Sydenham with Mr. Robert Crossenham.

They netted their thousands and their tens of thousands easily enough, after the ladies left the room, over wine which could not have been better. Capital, the Messrs. Crossenham agreed, was all that any business needed to ensure success. They made fortunes by the aid of pen and ink. Hundreds of tons of wheat—millions upon millions of loaves; the merest gains, the slightest margin of profit, swelled up to something almost incredible per annum. The Messrs. Crossenham were in the highest spirits about the new undertaking; but then certainly one fact concerning those worthy brothers must be borne in mind, namely, that they had been tottering on the very verge of bankruptcy when Mr. Black rushed to the rescue. This, which of course remained a secret amongst the trio, accounted for much that even in those early days puzzled Arthur Dudley—as, for instance, the intense respect wherewith these apparently well-to-do men treated Mr. Peter Black; the deference they paid to his opinions; the readiness with which they fell into all his views; the rapidity with which they seized and acted on his suggestions. There was not that independence of manner about the brothers which Arthur considered their means and position might have warranted them in assuming; but the conclusion he drew from all this was that, clever as he thought Mr. Black to be, people who ought to know much more about the promoter than it was possible for him to do, thought him cleverer still; and, had anything been wanting to increase Squire Dudley’s confidence in his leader, the manner in which that individual was treated by those with whom they came into actual contact, must have raised Mr. Black considerably in his kinsman’s esteem.

To the men amongst whom they mixed freely, the promoter, in fact, stood precisely in the same enviable position as that dog who has got a good bone, down to other curs.

With a certain envious deference they followed him, hoping to get a portion of the spoil, or the reversion, perhaps, of the bone itself, should Mr. Black by any accident drop it; whilst as for Arthur, the promoter had told and hinted such falsehoods concerning his position, his wealth, his tremendous pluck, his untiring energy, his determination to make the “Protector” a success, that the Squire was welcomed in the City with open arms, and became all of a sudden a person of consequence.

“Lord Kemms walks in and out of his house just as I might do in and out of yours,” remarked Mr. Black, with calm impertinence, to a man who, though worth a hundred thousand pounds, and the owner of a fine place twenty miles from town, had utterly failed in all his attempts to get grander people to dine with him than Miller, a tallow-chandler, who dropped his Hs, and then following the universal law of compensation picked them up, and stuck them in where they had no business to make their appearance; who was for ever inverting his personal pronouns, and vexing the soul of the rich man’s daughter with reminiscences which, though possibly faithful, were by no means pleasant to hear related in the presence of a limp young curate the lady hoped to fascinate.

It would have amazed Arthur to know that any human being held him in high esteem, because a lord was, truly or untruly, reported to be running loose about his house; and it might have annoyed him still more to know that the cool insolence of Mr. Black’s words brought the man who was worth a “plum” on to the direction, where certainly no politeness or entreaty on the part of the promoter could have compassed such an end.

Behind the scenes Squire Dudley was never, however, permitted to peep. He saw the play go on, and was fascinated by its variety, its excitement, its rapid dialogue, its sunshiny hopefulness. How it was really got up, he had not a suspicion. That it was all tinsel and paint, and hollowness and sham, he had not a ghost of an idea.

It made a good show, and promised fair to draw a full house. Was not that the only thing which concerned him? Mr. Black was of this opinion, at any rate, and took very good care he should see none of the dirty work in course of execution. The unpleasantnesses and difficulties, present and to come, were all kept studiously out of view. The king was never beheld without crown and sceptre; if the queen ate bread and honey, it was partaken of with locked doors, and in a decorous privacy.

No fairy met Arthur’s view destitute of gauze; unadorned with spangles, rouge, and pearl powder. The back of the canvas had no existence for him. If disagreeable letters arrived, Mr. Black did not show them to his coadjutor, but stated generally these private epistles concerned his other ventures. If a man’s consent were doubtful, the promoter saw him first alone. On insecure ground he knew better than to let Arthur step; and if the Squire returned to his country home, thinking the new company had hitherto not met with a check, who can feel surprised?

Whenever there was the faintest chance of a gale, his clever captain got him into the cabin, and kept him there till the storm had blown by, or the danger was over.

He saw the life and the fun of the voyage, but none of the peril; and so he went back to Berrie Down brighter and more cheerful than ever, and Heather seeing him happy could not brace up her courage for the explanation Miss Hope assured her was essential, if she would save herself and the children from beggary.

Perhaps the part of the business which Arthur enjoyed most was that of assisting to write the prospectus.

On that document, Mr. Black asserted, hung the fate of the “Protector Bread and Flour Company, Limited,” and the mutual talents of Arthur Dudley and Peter Black, Esquires, were employed for one entire fortnight in writing, correcting, and revising the production which ultimately went forth to the world, like many another great and good work, anonymously.

“It may seem an easy thing to write a prospectus,” remarked Mr. Black. “The fellows that do histories, and novels, and newspaper articles, I dare say imagine there can be no trouble about drawing up an attractive advertisement; but let one of them try to do it—that is all I say. Why, a prospectus combines within itself every literary difficulty you could mention: it has to be got up to suit the tastes of all readers; it must contain something to tickle the palate of each man and woman who looks at it. Who is to check history, and say whether it is right or wrong? but any fool can check statistics. I had a hack once, who used to do some of this kind of work for me, and he said it was all very fine for Macaulay and Alison, who could write just what they liked, and were not compelled to stick to facts, which are such stubborn things there is sometimes no dressing them up attractively or even decently; but he declared there was a heap of dry bones flung to us, and we have to compose out of those promising materials brilliant pictures, exciting romances, perfect blue-hooks full of sound statistical information. And what he said was true. Our style must be at once brief and persuasive. We must be eloquent in order to draw shareholders, and yet mindful that each word costs money. We must say nothing we are not prepared to verify. We must be as well up in grammar as in the price of shares. We must not slander our neighbour, nor unduly exalt ourselves; and yet we are bound to show that, since the beginning of time, the heart of man never imagined, and the brain of man never conceived, such a project as that which we have the honour of submitting to the consideration of the intelligent and discriminating British public.”

“You should write a pamphlet on the subject,” suggested Arthur, laughing.

“I wish I could—I wish I dare. It would be a comfort and a satisfaction to me to tell that same enlightened British public what I think of its sense. Upon my honour, Dudley, the worse your company is, the easier it is to write a prospectus about it. If you only want to float a thing, not to carry it through, why, you can say whatever you please about the matter, and the more you say the better the shares sell.”

“And why do you not put down whatever you please about the ‘Protector’?” asked his companion.

“Just because it is bona fide—because I must stick to facts and figures—figures that will satisfy not country simpletons, and ambitious widows, and discontented governesses, but sound commercial men. It is a serious matter, my friend, and must be wisely concocted and wisely executed. That is why I put in merely a preliminary advertisement hitherto. I knew the grand coup would require both time and thought. We must have a little of the moral, the philanthropic, the hygienic, the scientific, the statistical, and the profitable; and we ought to put a Latin quotation at the top: it will look classical, and complimentary to the attainments of the people to whom it is addressed. Greek might be better, or Hebrew; but I suppose you do not understand Hebrew?”

To which accusation Arthur pleading guilty, Mr. Black urged upon him the immediate necessity of “rubbing up” his Latin, and finding an appropriate heading for the prospectus.

“We shall want one to go round the stamp also,” proceeded the promoter; “but that is not immediately required. Yes, it is, though,” he added, “for I must mention the stamp at the end of the prospectus. Now, Dudley, look alive; if I do the composing, the compiling, and the inventing, surely I may depend on you for the Latin and correct English!”

After fourteen years, the Squire’s classical education had the dust thus brushed off it, in order to furnish a plausible swindler with a couple of Latin mottoes.

For twice seven years he had kept this thing by him, that it might serve Mr. Black’s turn at last.

“Dudley’s!” said that individual, in frank explanation to his City friends. “Devilish neat and taking, ain’t it? Bring in the parsons; they’ll think the whole thing has been drawn up by some Oxford man, as the Latin was, for that matter, out of a well which has not had any water pumped from it for Heaven knows how long. If you have any suggestion to make on the subject make it, or else hereafter hold your tongues, for I am going to have the prospectus printed off to-morrow.”

“Could not be better!” answered his friends in chorus; and the programme of the “Protector Bread and Flour Company, Limited,” was accordingly sent down to Harp Lane, where it was printed (on credit) by a protégé of Mr. Black’s, on a very superior satin paper, procured on credit likewise.

Next day after delivery, proof was duly forwarded, and the day afterwards the prospectus was returned—pressed, folded, multiplied a thousand-fold—to Peter Black, Esq., at the Temporary Offices of the Company, 220, Dowgate Hill. The bundle, containing programmes of the “Protector Bread and Flour Company, Limited,” was flung down on the counter in the outer office of 220, Dowgate Hill, at five to five precisely, and, at three minutes to six, four hundred and twenty-five prospectuses were wrapped up, directed, stamped, and posted at the chief office, Lombard Street.

“She’s off the stocks at last, thank God!” said Mr. Black to Squire Dudley, who stood beside him; “she’s off the stocks and afloat!”

CHAPTER II.
MRS. PIGGOTT’S ASSISTANT.

It was late on in the autumn by this time, and most of the visitors who had come down to the Hollow in the bright summer weather were now elsewhere.

Miss Hope, having patched up a peace with her nephew, was at Copt Hall; Mrs. Ormson at Torquay, with her eldest son, the state of whose health was considered unsatisfactory; Mrs. Black, at Hastings; Mr. Black, much in town; Mr. Harcourt, in Scotland; and Bessie, at home, keeping house for her father.

There was no one left at Berrie Down, in fact, excepting Master Marsden, who remained on at the Hollow, because the state of Dr. Marsden’s finances prevented the boy being sent to school; while the state of his mother’s health rendered it an act of real charity to keep the “noisy, ill-mannered, ill-conditioned young whelp” (this was Arthur’s summary of him) away from that small, uncomfortable, wretchedly-managed suburban house.

Early in November, Alick was to enter on his new duties; and at Christmas, by special desire of Arthur, there was to be another and, larger family gathering in Berrie Down. All kinds of people were to meet all other kinds of people; and the Hollow, he said, “should see Christmas kept in thorough good old English style, for once.”

Already the younger Dudleys were speculating as to whether there would be an abundance of berries on the holly bushes, and Mrs. Piggott was looking to the fattening of her turkeys, and meditatively calculating how many of those unfortunate birds the expected guests would, in all probability, consume.

Already she was pouring into the ears of her youthful handmaiden, Prissy Dobbin by name, tales which sounded to that unsophisticated damsel like romances, anent the number of plums she should have to stone, currants to wash and dry and pick, about the quantity of mixed peel she must cut up, and the amount of suet she would have to chop, for the Christmas puddings. As for mincemeat, Mrs. Piggott avowed her intention of commencing that whenever the twenty-first of November was come and past; and had the Israelites been journeying, for a second time, out of Egypt, and purposed making a halt at Berrie Down on their way, the worthy housekeeper could scarcely have “salted down” a larger quantity of butter, nor looked more anxiously at the tenants of the poultry-yard and the contents of the nests than she did.

As for herbs—Miss Priscilla Dobbin’s private opinion was, that “the deuce was in Mrs. Piggott about them.” For ever, so she told her mother, she was rubbing off those herbs into bottles, and tying them down; while, in respect of pickles, it is on record, the assistant made herself so frightfully ill with devouring those exhilarating articles of diet wholesale, that the cook assured her she should be sent home forthwith if she could not content herself for the future with cooler viands than chilies and chutnee.

“Drat them girls!” exclaimed Mrs. Piggott; “they’re every one alike now—for crinolines, and vinegar, and piccalilly. I remember a young housemaid as used to come and see me when I was taking care of General Furdie’s house in Gloucester Place—I believe she used to live on pickles—bought them at the oilman’s, sixpenny-worth at a time, and if she came and sat with me for half an hour, she would finish the lot while she sat talking. Ah! girls ain’t like what they used to be.”

“And a good job too that they bain’t,” retorted Priscilla, who was certainly as unlike one of Mrs. Piggott’s ideal maidens as can well be conceived.

Except that she could “get through her work,” when she chose to devote herself to it, and that she was sufficiently “owdacious and comical” to make time pass fast in the Berrie Down kitchen, Priscilla Dobbin was not possessed, in Mrs. Piggott’s eyes, of a solitary virtue.

She was not “one” the cook would ever have had about the house; but, of course, Mrs. Dudley knew best—a severely ironical expression, which meant that Mrs. Dudley knew nothing whatever about the matter; indeed, Mrs. Piggott had been heard to say, that “a baby in arms was as fit to choose a servant as her mistress.”

After all, however, Priscilla was not exactly an importation of Mrs. Dudley’s. A girl had been wanted, and this girl, a protégée of Bessie’s, stepped at once from a wretched home to service at Berrie Down, where she worked harder, and idled more persistently, than any young person “of her inches,” that it had ever been Mrs. Piggott’s misfortune previously to come into contact with.

And yet with all she was as good company, in her rank, as Bessie Ormson in a higher; better, perhaps, for she possessed artistic, histrionic, and imitative powers, of which the young lady was utterly destitute.

Miss Dobbin had been taught at school to curtsey, or “bob,” as she called it; but elsewhere she had learned to dance with anybody, and to execute “steps” which were the delight and envy of the kitchen at Berrie Down. At school she had been taught psalms and hymns and spiritual songs; but out of hours she had acquired a stock of ballads that would have horrified the propriety of the vicar of North Kemms, Priscilla’s native parish, had he been privileged to hear them. At school she was taught to read, write, cipher, and do sampler work; out of school it had ever been her pleasure and delight to mimic the peculiarities of mistress and master, of clergyman and clergyman’s wife, of the ladies who visited the school, and of her fellow-companions, playmates, father, mother, and society generally.

She was but a young thing when she came to the Hollow, sixteen or thereabouts, with a scanty supply of clothes, a crinoline which was at once the plague and delight of her life, a net to contain her hair, and induce people to believe it was long like a grownup woman’s, and a stock of impudence that was, were Mrs. Piggott’s testimony on the subject reliable, “more than enough.”

With Priscilla it was not, however, perhaps, that she had so much impudence as that she had so little reverence; and for this reason, spite of Mrs. Piggott’s high social position, her imposing cap, her stately manner, and her reminiscences of the good old times, the young girl treated her with as little ceremony as she might one of her playmates, and “answered the housekeeper back,”—an indignity which had never previously been inflicted on that individual by anyone, gentle or simple.

“She had always lived with people above and below, as knew their places and kept to them, till ‘you came,’” she stated to Miss Dobbin; whereupon Miss Dobbin inquired—

“O Lor’, there, ain’t you glad I am come, that you may see some new life?”

Did Mrs. Piggott threaten to report Prissy to Mrs. Dudley, that young person entreated of her to make haste and do so, “before her shoes wore out.” Did the housekeeper, talking at Priscilla, endeavour to point a moral and adorn a tale by stating what was done in her young days—and what her first mistress, the lady of Mr. Serjeant Hickley, counsellor to the King (so Mrs. Piggott understood K.C.), said when she saw a servant with a bow or a bonnet, let alone a flower, added Mrs. Piggott parenthetically—Priscilla, rich in ribbons, flowers, and laces, flung to her from Miss Ormson’s stores, thanked her stars “she had not lived in them days, and thought it was quite time the good old times were gone and past, if anybody was to have any comfort of their lives.”

“I’m sure I’m glad I warn’t born then, Mrs. Piggott; for one thing I’d be as old as you, and have nothing before me; I’d have lived it all, and not have a thing to look forward to.”

“Better have nothing to look forward to than some things to look back upon,” answered Mrs. Piggott, sententiously; which immediately elicited from Miss Dobbin the inquiry whether she had got that out of her own head or somebody else’s, and if these were some things she did not care to look back upon.

Clearly, the housekeeper said the girl could come to no good, and yet in her heart Mrs. Piggott liked this feminine ne’er-do-weel, and would have felt the house lonely without her.

On the whole, she preferred Prissy’s chatter to the more staid and sensible discourse of Jane, the housemaid, or Sarah, her assistant in dairy and kitchen. Though torture could not have wrung such a confession from her, Mrs. Piggott dearly loved gossip; and, if she had searched the home counties through, she could not have discovered a more industrious collector and retailer of news than Priscilla Dobbin.

From the colour of the moire antique the vicar’s wife wore when she went to dine at Moorlands, to the name of Miss Amy Raidsford’s “intended,” Priscilla had every atom of parish information at her fingers’ ends. Why the lady’s-maid was dismissed from Moorlands—what Lord Kemms said when he found his gardener sending all the best fruit to Covent Garden, and only retaining windfalls for dessert at the Park—Prissy knew as well as though she had been present.

Nor was it only from the neighbourhood of North Kemms that Miss Dobbin collected materials for conversation. She knew all about the low marriage Mr. Harry Camperdon, the Fifield rector’s son, had contracted with the sexton’s daughter from Palinsbridge.

“And I wouldn’t ha’ married her if she had been hung with diamonds—should always ha’ felt or thought she had been dug up out of the graves. Seen her?—to be sure I have, Mrs. Piggott—as thin as a hurdle, and as pale and sickly-looking as a bit of your underdone crust. She’s a contrast to Mrs. Raidsford. You don’t mean to say you have never had a sight of Mrs. Raidsford! then you have a treat to come; like the side of a house, and mean! would look after the candles’ ends, if her husband let her, and grudges throwing away her nail-parings. There is not a servant in the house dare give a glass of beer unbeknown, and they all say a nicer gentleman nobody need wish to serve. It is thought Lord Kemms would make up to one of the daughters, if it wasn’t for her; but he can’t abide her. Well, if I was Lord Kemms, I know who I’d have—money or no money.”

And so on, ad libitum, the whole day long. Making beds, cleaning plates, shelling peas, stirring preserves, Priscilla Dobbin’s tongue never ceased; and let the burden of her song be what it would, the refrain never varied, and that refrain was to the effect, that, since time began, there never had been before, and never would be again, such a young lady as Bessie Ormson. Bessie had made her acquaintance at a period of (to Miss Dobbin) infinite trouble. Having been despatched to the mill to purchase some flour, she contrived by the way to lose the money entrusted to her. Feeling it useless to proceed, and being afraid to return home, she did the only thing which seems natural to boys and girls under such circumstances, namely, lifted up her voice and wept.

While she sat on the stile leading away towards North Kemms, with her bonnet tilted over her face, her knuckles in her eyes, and making a display of feet encased in strong leather boots, and a pair of sturdy legs, which only the extremest distress could excuse being exhibited to public view, Bessie, coming along the field path, paused to inquire into the cause of such despair.

A greater contrast than that presented by the pair could scarcely have been imagined. Hot and weary with running about searching after the lost money, sick and tired with crying, and the fear of the “hiding,” which she explained to Bessie was sure to follow on confession; her cheeks wet with tears, and her face generally smeared by reason of having been rubbed over with her dirty hands, Priscilla’s personal appearance alone entitled her to the profoundest commiseration.

Attired, on the other hand, in the coolest of muslin dresses, with the most coquettish of hats for head-gear, with a lace shawl thrown carelessly round her, holding a parasol, edged with deep fringe, a little on one side, more apparently to protect the trimming of her hat than her bright, fresh, beautiful face from the rays of the sun, Bessie, leaning against the stile, held converse with Miss Dobbin concerning the loss she had experienced.

“It was a whole harf a crown, Miss,” said the girl, amid a perfect gust of sobs, “and I put it in my pocket, and I never left the path the whole way, except to pull a branch of roses (the poor things were lying withered and miserable, sodden and faded in her lap), and I suppose it was when I reached up to get them the money jumped out; but I have looked and looked, and I can’t see it. No, no more nor if it had had legs and run away. See, it was over in the corner of that far held. I’ll show you, if you like,” she added, with a faint hope, perhaps, that Bessie might be able to find where she had searched in vain.

“The scene of such a catastrophe has not the slightest interest for me,” answered Bessie. “I will take your word that the half-crown is lost, and I will give you another in its place, or at least two shillings and sixpence, which comes to much the same thing. You go, or have gone, to school, I suppose?”

“Yes, Miss.”

“Then you know what a moral means?”

“I think so, Miss.”

“Well, the moral of this afternoon’s work is: For the future, when your mother sends you out for flour, don’t stop to gather roses by the way, for it is extremely unlikely that you will a second time meet any one in these fields worth half-a-crown.”

Having finished which speech, Bessie, toying with her dainty parasol, still stood looking at the girl, for whom she felt that compassion, which always moved her when she saw anything of the feminine gender unkempt, forlorn, untidy, unhopeful, uglier than she had “a right to be.”

To her, an ill-dressed girl or woman was precisely what a daub is to an artist, a series of discords to a musician. She loved prettiness. Let a woman’s dress be of cotton or of velvet, she still loved to see that dress worn with a certain consciousness; and the terrible want of self-assertion, the utter abandonment of all self-appreciation in the girl who now stood opposite to her, was so distressing to Bessie, that she entreated of her as a parting favour to wash her face, and push her hair out of her eyes before she proceeded to the mill.

“There is plenty of water in the stream,” Bessie added; “and do make use of it freely, for at present you look as if you had been buried without a coffin.”

A week after, the young lady, who had forgotten all about this occurrence, was told that a girl wanted to speak to her—a girl from North Kemms—Priscilla Dobbin by name.

“She does not want another half-crown, I hope,” laughed Bessie, when she heard the name; and she went out into the hall, looking, as she always did, pretty enough to drive any man to distraction.

“Well, Priscilla, you have not lost your money again, have you?” thus Bessie commenced the conversation.

“No, Miss—I found it. I could not rest; and so, the first afternoon mother could spare me, I had a good look, and I took one of my little brothers, and he got it in among a lot of weeds growing in the ditch; and here it is back again, please, Miss—and—my duty to you,” finished Prissy, who evidently considered the last four words an appropriate ending to her sentence.

Bessie took the half-crown, and held it in the palm of her hand for a moment, doubtfully.

The coin had evidently been washed, as had also Miss Dobbins face, which was painfully red and shiny. Then she looked at the thick clump boots, laced up with a leathern thong—at the sturdy legs, showing below the short, scanty, hailstorm-pattern cotton gown—at the little old-fashioned black pelerine—at the coarse school bonnet—at the light brown hair, cut so short all round—at the greenish-grey eyes, sparkling with pleasure—at the unmanageable mouth, which would smile and break into grins of delight at the recovery of so great a treasure—at the hard hands, that seemed to have done so much work—before she said—

“Sit down for a moment, I shall be back presently.” She wanted to tell the story to Heather, and ask her advice; but, as Heather happened to be out of the way, Bessie returned to the hall discomforted.

She did not like to give the girl back the money, or its equivalent, and she was racking her brains what to offer, when Lally appeared on the scene of action, with a huge wedge of cake in her hand, which it is only right to state she was absolutely unable to eat.

“Lally, come here,” exclaimed Bessie. “I wish to give this little girl something by which to remember me—something to remind her of having been very careless and very good. What do you think she would like best?” and Bessie took the child in her arms and waited, hoping, perhaps, the stranger might suggest some desirable memento for herself.

But Prissy never spoke, nor, for some time, did Lally, who first stared at Priscilla from head to foot, and then gravely turned and looked at Bessie, wondering apparently whether that young lady could conveniently part with her face as an appropriate offering to the stranger. Then her eyes wandered to Bessie’s throat, and so fell on a tiny brooch which fastened her collar. The moment they did so—

“Dive her ’at,” said Lally, unhesitatingly, a suggestion which she would have made all the same had the trinket been worth a hundred guineas; as it was, Bessie abode by her decision, and taking out the brooch, handed it to Priscilla, remarking at the same time that, “although she might not care for it then, she would perhaps when she grew up to be a woman.”

Not to be outdone in generosity, Lally at once presented the girl with her piece of cake, assuring her it was “very dood,” the truth of which statement Bessie doubted exceedingly.

Next day, over came Mrs. Dobbin to know whether it was “correct as a young lady at Berrie Down had given her gal a golden brooch? She did not think her gal would tell a lie, but still young uns wanted to be looked arter.”

Assured of the rectitude of the transaction, Mrs. Dobbin, after having been refreshed with ale and a slice of bread and meat, was permitted to depart. “Altogether, the half-crown threatens to prove a costly matter,” Bessie remarked; but Heather only said they seemed to be very honest, worthy people, and the subject dropped.

But when, a little later on in the summer, Mrs. Dudley perceived it would be necessary to procure some young person to assist in the housework, Bessie proposed that a trial should be given to Priscilla; and never ceased her entreaties for the girl to be engaged until Heather said Bessie and the girls might walk over to North Kemms and talk to Mrs. Dobbin about the matter.

Nothing loath was Mrs. Dobbin for Priscilla to “go out,” “except,” she said, “that in the matter of clothes she feared Prissy warn’t fit to be seen in a gentleman’s house.”

“Let her come over to me, and we will arrange that,” Miss Ormson answered; and accordingly, when Prissy came, out of her own wardrobe the young lady furnished that of the new servant—telling her at the same time, laughingly, she was “made up for life.”

“And you may think yourself a lucky gal,” remarked the mother on the first Sunday when Priscilla went home, about a month after her entrance on her duties at Berrie Down—“having plenty of victuals, and good clothes to your back, and a kind mistress.”

John Dobbin was sitting in the porch during this colloquy, looking askance at his daughter’s finery the while. When she came to exhibit her new dress to him, he observed, first, that “fine feathers didn’t make fine birds,” and then inquired—

“Who was that chap I saw thee talking to last evening, this side Moorlands?”

“I warn’t out yesterday evening, father,” answered the girl.

“Warn’t thou?”

“No,” was the reply.

“Thou mayn’t have told a lie about that half-a-crown piece, but I doubt thou’rt telling a lie now, my lass,” he said.

“Well, you can ask Mrs. Dudley if I went out yesterday,” retorted Prissy, defiantly.

“I take it Madam Dudley has something else to do than watch the coming and going of a wench like thou,” he answered; “mayhap she don’t know the one-half of what anybody in the house does; but I can tell thee this much, Prissy—that if I catches thee going wrong, I’ll break every bone in thy body, if it was covered an inch thick with silks and satins.”

“I warn’t out,” persisted Prissy.

“See that thou bain’t then,” returned her uncompromising parent; and as the weeks and the months passed by without John having any further occasion to find fault with his first-born, it may reasonably be presumed that she heeded his admonition.

Further, in a general way, she gave satisfaction at the Hollow, where she was on good terms with every one, unless, indeed, it might be Master Marsden, who was, as she took various opportunities of informing him, an “ill-behaved limb,” and no “young gentleman.”

The last occasion on which Priscilla found herself moved to this confession of faith, was when she boxed Master Marsden’s ears for holding Muff, and instructing Leonard to rub turpentine over her coat, preliminary—so she ascertained from Lally, who came rushing to her in an agony of distress—to “making a bonfire of my poor tittens.”

That Master Marsden never forgave this interference with his legitimate pleasures, and that his wrath was very grievously moved, both at Lally’s tale-bearing and Prissy’s prompt interference, may be gathered from the fact that he informed Lally she was a “nasty little tell-tale tit.”

“Lally not,” lamented the child.

“Yes, you are—and ‘your tongue shall be slit, and every little puppy-dog shall get a little bit,’” persisted Master Marsden, with his own tongue very far out; adding, to Priscilla, by way of appendix to this poem—

“As for you, you ugly, snub-nosed, green-eyed little——”

“No names, Harry,” interposed Alick, who chanced to come up at the instant; “and what have you been doing with the cat? What’s all this, I ask?” and he looked angrily round the group.

“I was only going to singe her hair; it is too long, like some people’s tongues,” answered the boy, impudently.

“Now look here, Harry,” said Alick; “I won’t take you to Arthur, because he would not lay a finger on you; but I’m your brother, and I’ll give you a thrashing for this you’ll perhaps remember. Teaching Leonard such tricks, too, you cruel little cur!”

“Cur yourself!” retorted Harry; and in a moment he was grappling with Alick, trying to wrest the riding-whip he held out of his hand—kicking, plunging, biting even; and all the time Alick kept shaking and striking him,—Lally crying bitterly the while—till, panting and frightened, the boy shrieked out for mercy.

Then the elder loosed his grasp and bade him go, saying, “Though you make such a noise I know you are not much hurt, but never let me catch you playing such tricks again, or I will hurt you next time.”

“I’ll be even with you all yet,” observed Harry, gratefully, as he skulked away; and this threat, which probably had not the slightest meaning attached to it in the boy’s mind, was remembered to his disadvantage subsequently.

When the day came that it was remembered, no one believed his declaration of not having “meant anything”—of not having intended to do anybody any harm. When every creature in the house treated him like a pariah, and avoided him as though he had leprosy, Harry felt that he could better have endured a dozen worse thrashings than such social ostracism. When his assertions were received with silent incredulity—when his questions were answered reluctantly and with withering disdain and dislike—when his food was handed to him as if he were some unclean animal, unfit to eat or associate with civilized beings—when there was a great silence in the house—when people went about on tiptoe, and, if they met the boy, passed him either with averted heads or with looks of reproach and anger—when Leonard turned king’s evidence and bore testimony against him—when he sat in his own room, or else wandered about the farm, kicking twigs and stones listlessly before him—Harry felt it was all more than he could bear, and, turning at last on Cuthbert, told that youth he did not see why they were all so hard upon him. “You were not a bit better, any one of you, when you were young,” he finished, passionately.

“We did not try to kill people,” answered his step-brother, with dignity, as he retreated from the room, followed by Harry’s indignant remonstrance of—

“No more didn’t I—no more didn’t I!”

CHAPTER III.
HEATHER’S DARLING.

It was late in the autumn, as I have said; the leaves were falling rapidly, and, but for the constant sweeping and supervision of “the boys,” the walks and lawns at Berrie Down would have been littered with the decaying foliage.

As it was, barrowful after barrowful of dead leaves disappeared from the grass in front of the drawing-room windows, and often as not Lally sat on the top of the load which Alick or Cuthbert wheeled away to a corner of the kitchen-garden, and there deposited in a great heap to make leaf-mould for the next year’s geraniums.

No more pride than Lally had these young Dudleys. If work were not to them prayer, it was, at all events, pleasure. It would have been a weary life to those lads, lounging about the Hollow, taking purposeless walks, rising in the morning to do nothing, going to bed at night after having performed no task, executed no duty; but, as matters stood, each season brought its labours with it to them. They loved the place, and they loved Heather, and they loved work.

What need is there to say more? because of all these reasons, Berrie Down looked the Berrie Down we have visited.

But a change was coming, and Heather knew it—knew Alick was going away, that her best helper was about to be taken from her. Many a talk had the pair held together over the inevitable parting; many a word had they exchanged in the twilight, under the shadow of those dear old trees; and, if Alick thought Bessie’s words and talk had been more sad and more attractive, still he knew Heather’s discourse was the best, and so listened to it attentively.

“You have been my very right hand, Alick,” she repeated over and over again; “and I do not know what I shall do without you.”

“Nor I without you, mother,” he answered, sadly.

“And you are going all alone, my boy, to a place which every one says is very, very wicked. I do not know much about wickedness myself, Alick,” she added, with that sweet simplicity that made her seem so inexpressibly innocent to people who did know much about that wicked world, which was a terra incognita to Heather Dudley; “but I hope, dear, that a person may be as good in London as in the country; that you will not be led away, nor fall into expensive habits, nor associate with undesirable people, if only for my sake, Alick.”

“You darling mother!”

“If ever anyone asks you to do what is wrong, it you are ever tempted to extravagance, to folly, or to sin,” she added, “think of me at Berrie Down, and of how your trouble would grieve me, Alick, will you?”

“Mother, there is no need for fear; I hope there is no need.”

“I hope not, either,” she answered; “but yet who, setting out to travel a strange road, can tell what companions he may meet with by the way—what troubles may assail him? More than all, Alick,” and the sweet voice which was never hurried, never much excited, grew low and pleading as she spoke, “If ever you do fall into any trouble, promise to come and tell me; promise, whether I can help you or not, to come and talk it over. If you cannot come to me, I will go to you; and do not think any sin or sorrow—however bad it may seem to you—too bad to tell me. If you have to bear its consequences, I can bear to hear of it. Promise me, Alick! If I think you mean to keep no great sorrow from me, I can let you go—not otherwise.”

“Mother—Heather—what are you afraid of?” he asked.

“I am afraid of nothing except the indefinite,” she answered, through her tears. “It is a new country to me this life on which you are entering. Were I going to explore it myself, probably it would not seem so terrible. Promise, Alick.”

“I promise,” he answered; and then their talk flowed on to calmer ground—to such commonplace affairs as, “where he should lodge, what amount of worldly belongings he should take with him, what edibles it would be advisable for Heather to send for him to his London home.”

In all these minor matters Mrs. Dudley was intensely interested; not that the other subjects on which she had touched lay farther from her heart, but only that they seemed less within her province than such homely affairs as seeing that his linen was in proper order, that he had flannels for the winter, and an abundant supply of towels and soap; to say nothing of more animal luxuries, in the shape of fresh butter, preserves, poultry, and eggs.

It was arranged how all these necessaries, which Mrs. Piggott believed were to be had genuine nowhere out of Hertfordshire, could be forwarded periodically to London; and then Heather set to work on Alick’s wardrobe—condemning socks, examining shirts, turning over collars, and so forth.

“Alick had better take everything new with him,” she said to Agnes, “and leave these for Cuthbert;” and the poor soul sighed.

Perhaps she felt intuitively Alick would never require her again to furnish him with an outfit—that from the day his foot passed forth from Berrie Down he would never need hosen nor shirt from her more.

The great change was at hand, such as arrives to the mother when her darling marries a husband able to provide her with her heart’s desire, and more than her heart’s desire, if such a thing were possible; to the sister, whose brother’s wife takes from that day forth to all eternity charge of the mending, airing and making of an idol’s linen, and it was natural at such an hour Heather should desire “her boy’s” wardrobe to be unexceptionable, that she should wish the very stitches in his collars, the very marking of his clothes, to remind him of the “far-away home,” where she would never cease praying he might be kept from all the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil.

Dear Heather; oh! dear, dear Heather! I know cleverer women do greater things than your imagination ever compassed—that they write books and paint pictures, that they compose music and preach sermons, that they scribble reviews and manage warehouses, that they are owners of various business establishments in the City, and serve writs to unsuspecting debtors; and yet I doubt if all these mementoes of women’s work and women’s talents would rest so long in the mind as one sweet word from you!

All this time she had full leisure to devote to Alick, for Arthur was away, staying at no other place than Copt Hall, where, through the instrumentality of Miss Alithea Hope, both he and Heather had been invited to spend a week.

Of his cousin, Arthur had hitherto known as little as his cousin knew of him; but on her return to Copt Hall, after many years of absence, it became the desire of Miss Hope’s life to promote an intimacy between the respective families.

“He is your own cousin,” she said to Walter Hope, “and it is really scandalous that you do not visit each other;” acting on which hint, often repeated, Mrs. Walter Hope wrote a very gracious note to Heather, trusting she and her husband would spare them a few days before all the fine weather was gone. Mrs. Walter Hope laid considerable stress on the point, that she and Mr. Hope were much distressed at the fact of such near relations and neighbours remaining for so long a time comparative strangers. She hoped for the future they should see more of each other. She had heard so much about Mrs. Dudley from dear Miss Hope that she felt as if she (Heather) were quite an old acquaintance. She described the best railway route from Palinsbridge to Foldam (the station nearest to Copt Hall), just as if Arthur had never journeyed there in days gone by, and begged to know on which day and by what train Mr. and Mrs. Dudley were likely to arrive, in order that the carriage might meet them.

Never was a more cordial letter penned, and Arthur, with new prospects of wealth before him, did not read it ungraciously.

On the contrary, he extracted an augury of success from these overtures of friendship, and urged upon Heather the advisability of accepting Mrs. Hope’s invitation.

But Heather did not wish to go, at least not at that particular juncture. She had much to do, she told Arthur. She had to set her household in order after the summer visiting; she had to make and to mend; she wanted to be with Alick during the latter part of his sojourn at Berrie Down; she was tired, really tired, of talking and company, and desired rest; all of which reasons only provoked Arthur, and caused him to declare that she thought of every person except him, and acceded to every person’s wishes except his.

Then Heather, with a smile, told him she knew he was not in earnest, and added that she had another reason for wishing to remain at home, viz., the state of her wardrobe.

“Dress which is quite sufficient for me at Berrie Down,” she said, “would scarcely he suitable at Copt Hall.”

Upon that Arthur gave his wife a fifty-pound note, and bade her get what she wanted; but Heather, turning very white, folded up the note, and handed it back to him, saying, “I would rather not, dear; I would, indeed——”

“And why not?” he demanded.

“Because I do not think we can afford it,” she answered, “at least not yet,” she added, seeing how vexed he looked.

“Not yet! Will you tell me what you mean, Heather?”

“Why, I mean, Arthur, that though you have not told me anything of what you are doing, still, I cannot be blind. I see the stock gone, the crops sold. I know you are engaged in some business with Mr. Black, and that there is money needed for it. You would never have sold the crops so soon, had there not been a necessity for selling them; and then, Arthur, perhaps, when Christmas comes, you may want all the money we can save, and I should not like to spend any unnecessarily now.”

“I shall have money long before Christmas,” he answered.

“You may,” she said, “but you may not. I cannot tell what it is you are doing or expecting, but——”

“Hang it!” broke in Arthur, “is a man bound to tell his wife everything? When you can’t help me—when you would only be trying to dissuade me from my purpose, and keep me from ever rising out of the slough of poverty in which I have passed year after year—why should I talk to you about what I am doing or expecting? Women’s ideas are so contracted; they take such short views; they are so cautious, and so fearful, and so fond of certainties, that there is no use in even trying to make confidantes of them. Because you are happy yourself here, Heather, you think I ought to be so too; because you can endure the cursed monotony of such a life, you would keep me bound to the wheel for ever.”

“I think you are a little mistaken,” she answered. “I have been very happy here; I do love Berrie Down very much; but I would leave it to-morrow, and go with you anywhere in the world, if I thought by so doing I could contribute to your comfort, happiness, or prosperity.”

“If you thought,” he repeated. “Ay, there’s just the rub; you never could think so.”

“If you thought that leaving Berrie Down would make you happier, I would do it. I would do anything for you. I have tried to please you, Arthur,” she went on, speaking almost entreatingly. “I have never contradicted your will. I have never put myself in opposition to you. I have never teazed you with questions. I have striven to do my best; but, as you are not satisfied, tell me how I can do better; and it shall not be my fault if I fail. Only, Arthur, only don’t let us drift away from one another; don’t let us begin to have secrets, and treat me as though I had done something to shake your trust and confidence in me.”

Never before had Arthur Dudley seen his wife so moved; never before had he heard such a sentence from her lips. For a moment he felt tempted to tell her all; to make a full and ample confession; to explain to her not merely that his stock was gone, and his crops also, but that he had put his “name” on paper, to an extent which, if the Protector Bread and Flour Company failed to fulfil the hopes of its promoters, would certainly cripple his resources seriously.

Of course his name was only “lent;” but occasionally misgivings would cross his mind that in the event of any hitch occurring, he might be liable for the whole amount of every bill which was at that moment wandering about London, passing from hand to hand.

If the Protector “smashed up,” to use Mr. Black’s concise phrase, Arthur Dudley would be smashed up with it; he had gone on little by little, till he was afraid of reckoning how much of Berrie Down was set up in type at Printing House Square, and in various newspapers throughout the country.

If the Protector failed—but then the Protector could not fail—and because it could not fail, and because if it did fail, so much must go with it, Arthur decided not to tell his wife (who would be certain to look on the worst side of things), but to humour her, as Mr. Black recommended, and answer—

“I do not know, Heather, what you mean by drifting away; you and the children are never out of my thoughts by day or night. I have gone into a very good thing with Mr. Black, in company with Lord Kemms, Mr. Allan Stewart, Mr. Aymescourt Croft, and a number of other persons, all gentlemen of position and fortune, not likely to rush into any foolish speculation. I hope to be a wealthy man yet. I hope to get rid of this eternal worry about money—which makes life not worth the having. I know you would help me, Heather, if you could; there, there, don’t look pitiful. I can’t bear it. There is nothing you can do for me now, except buy yourself some handsome dresses, and come over to Copt Hall.”

She put her hand out to take the money, then a second time she returned it to him, saying, “Let me have my own way this time, Arthur; when you have made your fortune, I will spend as much money as you like; only till you have made it, I should not feel happy to be extravagant. Don’t be angry, love!” she pleaded; “don’t be vexed because I ask to have my own will for once in a way.”

“Once in a way!” repeated Arthur. “Always, you mean, don’t you? No, I’m not angry; stay at home, if you like. I do not think that there are many husbands who would press their wives so much to accompany them;” and with this undeniably true remark, Arthur Dudley strode out of the room, leaving Heather to think over the matter at her leisure.

Very patiently she did so—very resolutely she took up the facts of her married life, and looked at them from beginning to end. There was nothing new in what she saw—nothing. It had been coming upon her for months past, that she did not possess—had never possessed—her husband’s love. When she beheld Gilbert Harcourt’s devotion to Bessie, she knew Arthur had never been similarly devoted to her. She was not the love of his life, and neither was she the friend of his heart. He trusted in others; he confided in others. What was the reason of all this? Was it a fault in herself, she wondered. If it were, how did it happen that the boys and the girls, the men-servants and the maid-servants, and the stranger who came within their gates, all turned to her for sympathy and companionship? Without any undue vanity, it was still impossible for Heather not to know that she was greatly beloved by those with whom she came in contact; and yet, what was the use of being beloved, if the one person on earth she cared for threw her off?

Threw her off! Had they ever been near enough for him to do so; were not they quite as near now as ever they had been? Was it not only the blessed darkness of her mental vision which had hitherto kept her from discovering this fact? “He never loved me,” Heather decided—“never; and he has found it out too late.”

And then there came over her soul a terrible pity for him, which swallowed up all sense of personal wrong—all anger—all selfishness. She could not unmarry him; she could not give him the woman he might have loved, the wealth that might have made him contented. She was no heroine—this Heather of mine; tragedy was not in her nature. The idea of freeing him from the yoke under which he had voluntarily put his neck, never occurred to her. To flee to the ends of the earth, to part from him, leaving a note of insufficient explanation behind; to rush off with the first man who whispered a few civil words to her, and let her husband walk through the Divorce Court to liberty; to purchase a little bottle of poison and kill first her children and then herself—these very feasible and proper courses, were ideas which never even crossed Mrs. Dudley’s mind.

Outside of lunatic asylums, amongst the decorous and unexcitable people to be met with in society, or when we take our walks abroad, we are told, by those who profess to know their fellow-creatures thoroughly, that such impulsive, devoted, unselfish creatures exist; but Heather’s imagination never soared to such heights of passionate self-sacrifice.

They were married, and the time for even thinking of parting with Arthur being past for ever, all she could do was to try to make him as happy as possible.

For who could tell? Like David, she thought that the Lord might yet be gracious to her, that some day, perhaps, Arthur would know how much she loved him, and give her back a portion of love in return.

But, meantime, she never blinded herself—from the hour knowledge began to dawn, she never refused to open her eyes and see the dull grey morning-sky of reality which had broken for her. Though she did not sit down and weep, still she made no attempt to fly from the presence of her trouble. There came no change over her face, unless it might be that the look of which I have previously spoken, oftener sat like a brooding shadow across her eyes. She did not weary her husband with her affection, or load him with caresses; yet, although an ordinary observer could have detected no difference in her manner, Arthur had long felt there was a change; that his comfort was more considered, if that were possible, than formerly; that his every wish was anticipated; that his caprices were more attended to, his complainings more rarely combated, than of old. He felt there was a change, though he could not have put a name on that change; and as it irritates sick people to be humoured, so it irritated Arthur to find that even the faint opposition of old was withdrawn—that, let his commands be as unreasonable, as fretful, as provoking as they would, they were still obeyed implicitly.

Never, excepting where some question of right and wrong was involved, did Heather lift up her voice in opposition to his, and he was, therefore, the more annoyed and surprised when Heather ventured to demur about going to Copt Hall.

“So deucedly provoking, too, when I wanted her, and just at this time,” he remarked to Mr. Black, whom he met in London—that being the route he took to Copt Hall—whereupon Mr. Black said, consolingly—

“That, perhaps, it was as well; Mrs. Dudley might have put her foot in it.”

“She would have come if I had pressed her, you know,” continued Arthur, not wishing Mr. Black to believe Heather the better horse at Berrie Down; “but I was not going to do that.”

“You had a bit of a tiff, I suppose, is about the English of the matter,” commented Mr. Black. “Well, such things will happen, even in the best-regulated families.”

“We had no tiff,” answered Arthur; “my wife is the last woman on earth to make a row about anything.”

“I am aware of that, of course,” said Mr. Black, drily; “but still she does not go to Copt Hall.”

“Oh! damn Copt Hall!” exclaimed Arthur.

“No, no, don’t do that yet—not, at any rate, till we see if Walter Hope, Esquire, J.P., will appear on our direction—eh!” suggested the promoter, poking Arthur in the ribs, and winking slyly as he spoke. “Never mind the wife, Dudley, she’ll come to, no fear, when she sees our spec succeed, and you keeping your carriage and horses, and having your box at the Opera, and God knows what besides. Don’t trouble yourself about any persons’ thoughts now; their thoughts will be all right when you have a clear five thousand a year, and the chance of adding another five to that. Never fear; those that win, laugh, you know.”

And with this assurance Arthur departed for Copt Hall, where he was most cordially received and most hospitably entertained, and where he met again, after years, Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Aymescourt Croft.

Meanwhile, Heather remained at home, doubtful whether she had done right in refusing to accompany her husband, in throwing cold water on his proposal that she should array herself like the Queen of Sheba, and thus attired, repair to the courts of Arthur’s relatives.

She could not decide the question to her own contentment—she could not satisfy her understanding as to whether, when a woman promises to obey a man, she thereby excludes herself ever after from all title to take up her own parable and express her opinions boldly.

She knew other women had no such qualms of conscience—that to most of the wives she knew obedience was a dead letter; but this did not prevent Heather fretting and fidgeting. She had vexed her husband at a time when she wanted most to please him, and he had told her before he left, when he saw her busy with preparations for his brother’s departure, that she “liked Alick better than she did him—that she thought of studying every person’s pleasure sooner than his.”

“I do not know what to do, I am sure,” she reflected, as she drove over to South Kemms in an old tumble-down, rattling phaeton, that was the very shame of Arthur’s life, but which she, nevertheless, preferred to the, in her opinion, still more dilapidated fly from the Green Man at Fifield, which was in the habit of conveying visitors to Palinsbridge Station; “I do not know what to do.” She had written every day to Arthur since his departure, but never a line did he vouchsafe to her in return, and she was wondering whether she ought or ought not to write again.

“Of course, if I do not teaze him to answer, if I merely send a line to say we are all well, it cannot seem like worrying,” she decided; and having so decided, she made her purchases (which were principally in Alick’s interest) at South Kemms, returning home with Ned, who was charioteer, as the evening shadows were settling down upon the Hollow.

When she reached the door, Alick was there to help her alight, and carry in her shawls, and wraps, and parcels.

She was full of her little purchases: a woman must, indeed, be in a terrible state of despair—a depth of despondency too great for a spectator to contemplate calmly—when the prospect of opening a draper’s parcel fails to send a thrill of expectant pleasure through her heart.

“Take them into the dining-room, Alick,” she said. “Oh! I am very glad to see that fire, it is so cold out of doors;” and she walked into the apartment and pulled off her bonnet and threw back her mantle, and stood with her hands stretched out towards the blazing coals, warming her numbed fingers.

“Where are the girls?” she asked, at length.

“Upstairs,” Alick answered, stooping over the parcels he had brought in as he spoke.

“Is anything the matter?” Heather asked, quickly turning from the fire. He had only uttered one word, and yet his tone filled her with a vague alarm.

“Is anything the matter?” she repeated, finding he did not reply. “Alick, look at me; why do you keep your face turned away?”

Then Alick looked up, but his eyes fell under Heather’s scrutiny.

“Alick, tell me this instant what is the matter,” she said. In a moment her fancy conjured up all sorts of horrors—her husband was dead, there had been a railway collision, perhaps. Thought is sometimes as quick in our waking moments as in our dreams; and her imagination flew to him over all the miles that intervened between them. “You have heard bad news,” she went on. “Is it about Arthur; is he ill?”

“Not that I know of,” Alick answered. “But, mother, we have had an accident since you went away.”

“An accident!” she repeated. “What kind of an accident—what is it—who is it? Alick, you will drive me mad if you stand there looking at me without speaking.”

He tried to speak, but he could not do it; he had been nerving himself up to tell her, and now, when the moment came for explanation, the words died away upon his lips.

“Heather,” he began, in a tone of deprecating entreaty,—and then suddenly the truth flashed upon her.

“It’s Lally,” she cried; “it’s Lally; oh! my child.”

He caught her as she was about to rush past him out of the room. “Mother, mother,” he said, “listen to me; she fell into the mill-pond, and they brought her home, and the doctor is here, and we have been doing everything.”

“And she is dead!” finished Heather.

“No, she is not,” said Agnes, entering at the moment. “She has this instant opened her eyes;” and she broke out sobbing almost hysterically.

“Thank God!” exclaimed Alick, solemnly, after the manner of a person rescued from some fearful danger.

Then Heather, looking from one to the other, understood that while she had been driving to South Kemms, and making her purchases, and never thinking of evil, her darling had been standing in the very valley of the shadow—that she had brushed garments with the angel of Death; and her first feeling, when she did understand all this, was, not one of gratitude that her child was saved, but of anger and resentment at her ever having been permitted to get into danger.

She had not encountered the ordeal which the younger Dudleys passed through while Lally lay seemingly dead before them; she had not fought for the child as they did, both before and after the doctor’s arrival; she had not endured the agony—an agony not to be described—which filled Alick’s heart when he met the little body being carried home across the fields; she had not ridden for the doctor and followed him from house to house as hard as the best horse in Arthur’s stables could gallop; she had not stood in suspense by the bedside; she had not wondered with them, “How shall we tell Heather—what will Heather say?”

That had been the one thought of every person in and about the house,—“What will Heather do; what will Mrs. Dudley say!”

The very regret for Lally seemed merged in dread of her mother’s sufferings.

How should any one face Heather and tell her Lally’s life was still problematical? Who should prove brave enough to break the tidings to her, and look upon her agony?