Transcriber's Notes:

1. Page scan source:
http://books.google.com/books?id=hT4VAAAAQAAJ
(Oxford University)

2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe]

MIRACLE GOLD.

MIRACLE GOLD.

A Novel.

BY

RICHARD DOWLING,

AUTHOR OF

"The Mystery of Killard," "The Weird Sisters,"
"Tempest Driven," "Under St. Paul's," &c.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

LONDON:

WARD AND DOWNEY,
12, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C.
1888.

[All rights reserved.]

PRINTED BY
KELLY AND CO., GATE STREET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS,
AND KINGSTON-ON-THAMES.

MIRACLE GOLD.

MIRACLE GOLD.

CHAPTER I

[TOO LATE.]

"The 8.45 for London, miss? Just gone. Gone two or three minutes. It's the last train up to town this evening, miss. First in the morning at 6.15, miss."

"Gone!" cried the girl in despair. She reached out her hand and caught one of the wooden pillars supporting the roof of the little station at Millway, near the south-east coast of England.

"Yes, miss, gone," said the porter. He was inclined to be very civil and communicative, for the last train for London had left, the enquirer seemed in great distress, and she was young and beautiful. "Any luggage, miss? If you have you can leave it in the cloak-room till the first train to-morrow. The first train leaves here at a quarter past six."

She did not speak. She looked up and down the platform, with dazed, bewildered eyes. Her lips were drawn back and slightly parted. She still kept her hand on the wooden pillar. She seemed more afraid of becoming weak than in a state of present weakness.

The porter, who was young and good-looking, and a very great admirer of female charms, thought the girl was growing faint. He said: "If you like, miss, you can sit down in the waiting-room and rest there."

She turned her eyes upon him without appearing to see him, and shook her head in mechanical refusal of his suggestion. She had no fear of fainting. For a moment her mental powers were prostrated, but her physical force was in no danger of giving way. With a start and a shiver, she recovered enough presence of mind to realize her position on the platform, and the appearance she must be making in the eyes of the polite and well-disposed railway porter.

"Thank you, I have no luggage--with me." She looked around apprehensively, as though dreading pursuit.

"Would you like me to call a fly for you, miss?"

"No. Oh, no!" she cried, starting back from him in alarm. Then seeing the man retire a pace with a look of surprise and disappointment, she added hastily, "I do not want a cab, thank you. It is most unfortunate that I missed the train. Is it raining still?"

"Yes, miss; heavy."

From where she stood she could have seen the rain falling on the metals and ballast of the line; she was absolutely looking through the rain as she asked the question, but she was in that half-awakened condition when one asks questions and hears answers without interest in the one or attention to the other. She knew heavy summer rain was falling and had been falling for more than an hour; she knew that she had walked two miles through the rain with only a light summer cloak and small umbrella to protect her from it, and she knew that she could not use a cab or fly for two reasons; first, she could not spare the money; second, she durst not drive back, if back she must go, for she must return unperceived. When she thought of getting back, and the reason for concealment, an expression of disgust came over her face, and she shuddered as one shudders at a loathsome sight unexpectedly encountered.

The porter lingered in the hope of being of use. He had no mercenary motive. He wanted merely to remain as long as possible near this beautiful girl. He would have done any service he could for her merely that he might come and go near where she stood, within the magic radius of her eyes. Even railway porters, when they are in quiet stations, are no more than other men in the presence of the beauty of woman.

It was almost dark now. Nine o'clock had struck. The straight warm rain was falling through the dusky, windless air. It was an evening towards the end of June--the last Wednesday of that month. There was not a sound but the dull muffling beat of the rain upon the roof. Not a soul visible but the girl and porter.

She took her hand away from the wooden pillar, and gathered her cloak round her, in preparation for going.

"Can I do anything for you, miss? Have you far to walk?" asked the man. Offering service was the nearest thing he could do to rendering service.

She did not answer his question; she asked instead: "Do you think the rain will stop soon?"

He glanced at the thin line of dull, dark, leaden sky, visible from where he stood at a low angle between the roofs of the platform. "No, miss, I don't think it will. It looks as if 'twould rain all night." If she had been a plain girl of the dumpy order, or his own degree, he would have tried to make himself agreeable by prophesying pleasant things. But the high privilege of answering so exquisitely beautiful a young lady demanded a sacrifice of some kind, and he laid aside his desire to be considered an agreeable fellow, and said what he believed to be the truth.

She sighed, moved her shoulders under the cloak to settle it, and saying "Thank you," in a listless, half-awake way, moved with down dropped eyes and drooping head, slowly out of the station, raised her umbrella and, turning sharply to the left, walked through the little town of Millway and under the huge beeches of a broad, deserted road leading southward.

The trees above her head were heavy with leaves, the road was very dim, almost dark, this night of midsummer. The perpendicular rain fell unseen through the mute warm evening. A thick perfume of multitudinous roses made the soft air heavy with richness. No sound reached the young girl but the faint clatter of the rain upon the viewless leaves overhead, the pit and splash of the huge drops from the leaves close to her feet, and the wide, even, incessant dull drumming of the shower upon the trees, looming dimly abroad in the vapourous azure dusk of the dark.

After walking a while the girl sighed and paused. Although her pace had not been quick, she felt her breath come short. The mild, moist, scent-laden air seemed too rich for freshening life and cooling the blood. She was tired, and would have liked to sit down and rest, but neither time nor place allowed of pause. She must get on--she must get back as quickly as possible, or she might be too late, too late to regain Eltham House and steal unperceived to her room there. To that hateful Eltham House, under which to-night rested that odious Oscar Leigh. Oscar Leigh, the grinning, bold, audacious man.

Edith Grace turned her attention for a moment away from her thoughts to her physical situation and condition. She listened intently. She heard the patter of the rain near and the murmur of it abroad upon grass and trees. But there was some other sound. A sound nearer still than the patter at her feet, and more loud and distinct, and emphatic and tumultuous, than the roll of the shower far away.

For a while she listened, catching her breath in fear, not knowing what this sound could be. Then she started. It was much nearer than she thought. It was the heavy, fierce, irregular beating of her own heart.

At first she was alarmed by the discovery. She had never felt her heart beat in this way before, except after running when a child. Upon reflection she recollected that nervous excitement sometimes brought on such unpleasant symptoms, and that the best way to overcome the affection was by keeping still and avoiding alarm of any kind. She would stand and, instead of thinking about the unpleasantness and risk of going back to Eltham House, fix her mind upon the events which prompted her flight. She could not hope to keep her mind free from considering her present position, and the occurrences leading to it, but it is less distressing to review the unpleasant past than to contemplate a lowering immediate future.

Owing to the loss of the little money left her by her father, she had been obliged to try and get something to do, as she could not consent to encroach on the slender income of her grandmother, Mrs. Grace, the only relative she had in the world. As she had been so long with Mrs. Grace, she thought the thing to suit her best would be a companionship to an elderly or invalid lady. She advertised in the daily papers, and the most promising-looking reply came from Mr. Oscar Leigh, of Eltham House, Millway, who wanted a companion for his infirm mother. Mr. Leigh could not give much salary, but if advertiser took the situation, she would have a thoroughly comfortable and highly respectable home. Mr. Leigh could make an appointment for a meeting in London.

The meeting took place at Mrs. Grace's lodgings in Grimsby Street, Westminster, and although Miss Grace shrank from the appearance and manners of Mr. Leigh, she accepted the situation. The poor old grandmother was so much overcome by the notion of impending separation between her and Edith, that she took no particular notice of Mr. Leigh, and looked upon him simply as a man indifferent to her, save that he was arranging to carry beyond her sight the girl she had brought up, and who now stood in the place of her own dead children who had clung to her knees in their curly-headed childhood, grown-up, and long since passed away for ever.

Mr. Oscar Leigh was very short, and had shoulders of unequal height, and a slight hunch on his back. His face was long and cadaverous, and hollow-cheeked. The eyes small and black, and piercingly bright. His expression was saturnine, sinister, cruel; his look at one and the same time furtive and bold. His arms were long to deformity. His hands and fingers long, and thin, and bony, and where they were not covered with lank, shining black hair, they were of a dull brown yellow colour. His teeth were fang-like and yellow. His voice hollow when he spoke low, and harsh when he raised it. His breath came in short gasps now and then, and with sounds, as though it disturbed dry bones in its course. He drooped towards the right side, and carried a short and unusually thick stick, with huge rugged and battered crook. When he stood still for any time, he leant upon this stick, keeping his skinny, greedy, claw-like hand on the crook, and the crook close against his right side. He wore a glossy silk hat, a spotless black frock coat, and moved through a vapour of eau-de-cologne. His feet were large, out of all proportion to the largest man. They were flat, with no insteps, more like a monkey's than a man's. She would have pitied him only for his impudent glances. She would have loathed him only she could not forget that his deformities were deserving of pity.

"You will have one unpleasantness to endure," he had said. "You will have to make your mind up to one cruel privation." He smiled a hard, cruel, evil smile.

"May I know what my child will have to do without?" asked Mrs. Grace. And then, without waiting for an answer, she said: "I know what I shall have to do without."

"And what is that, madam? What will you have to do without?"

"I shall have to do without her."

"Ah, that would be a loss," he said, with hideous, offensive gallantry. "You are to be pitied, madam. You are, indeed, to be pitied, madam. Miss Grace will have to make up her mind on her side to do without----"

"Me; I know it," broke in the old woman, bursting into tears.

"Yes, madam; but that is not what I was going to say. I was about to say your granddaughter will have to do without me!" Here he leered at Edith. "I am much occupied with my mechanical studies in London, and am seldom at Eltham House. I hope you may be always able in your heart to do without me." He was standing leaning his misshapen, crooked body on his misshapen, crooked stick. He did not move his right hand from his waist, into which it was packed and driven by the weight of his body upon the handle of the stick. He put his long, lean, left, dark hand on his right breast, and bowed low by swinging himself to the right and downward on the crook of his stick. "Miss Grace will see, oh! so little of me," he added, as he rose and looked with his bold eyes at Edith and her grandmother.

"Oh!" cried the unhappy, tactless old woman, "I dare say she can manage that."

"I dare say she can," he said, gazing at Edith with eyes in which boldness and scorn seemed strangely, abominably blended, or rather conflicting.

At the time she felt she could cry for joy at the notion of seeing little of this hideous, deformed, monstrous dwarf.

The bargain was there and then completed, and it had been arranged that she should go to Eltham House that day week.

This night that was now upon her and around her, this dull, dark, heavy-perfumed, rain-drowned midsummer night, was the night of that day week. Only one week lay between the visit of this hunchback to their place in Grimsby Street, Westminster, and this day. This morning she had left London and seen Millway for the first time in her life. She had got there at noon and driven straight to Eltham House, two miles south of the little coast town. The hire of the cab had made considerable inroad on the money in her pocket. The sum was now reduced to only a few pence more than her mere train fare to London--not allowing even for a cab from Victoria Terminus to Grimsby Street, Westminster. When she got to Victoria she should have to walk home. Oh! walking home through the familiar streets thronged with everyday folk, would be so delightful compared with this bleak, solitary Eltham House, this hideous, insolent, monstrous, deformed dwarf.

It was impossible for her to stay at Eltham House, utterly impossible. This man Leigh had told her he should see little or nothing of her at the place, and yet when she reached the house his was the first face and figure she laid eyes on. He had opened the door for her and welcomed her to Eltham House, and on the very threshold he had attempted to kiss her! Great heavens! it was incredibly horrible, but it was true! The first man who had ever dared to try to kiss her was this odious beast, this misshapen fiend, this scented monster!

Ugh! The very attempt was degradation.

The girl shuddered and looked around her into the dim, dark gloom abroad, beyond the trees where the grass and corn lay under the invisible sky, and where the darkness of the shadow of trees did not reach.

And yet, when she halted here, she had been on her way back to Eltham House! There was no alternative. She had nowhere else to go. For lack of courage and money she could not venture upon an hotel. She had never been from home alone before, and she felt as if she were in a new planet. She was not desperate, but she was awkward, timid, afraid.

Wet and lonely as the night was, she would have preferred walking about till morning rather than return to that house, if going back involved again meeting that horrible man. All the time she was in the house he had forced his odious, insolent attentions upon her. He had followed her about the passages, and lain in wait for her with expostulations for her prudery in not allowing him to welcome her in patriarchal fashion to his house! Patriarchal fashion, indeed! He had himself said he knew he was not an Adonis, but that he was not a Methuselah either, and his poor, simple, paralysed mother told her he was thirty-five years old. She would not take all the money in the world to stay in a house to which he was free. At eight o'clock that evening she had pleaded fatigue and retired to her own room for the night. She then had no thought of immediate flight. When she found herself alone with the door locked, she thought over the events of the day and her position, and in the end made up her mind to escape and return to town at once, that very evening. She wrote a line to the effect that she was going, and placed it on the dressing-table by the window.

Her room was on the ground-floor, and the window wide open. Mrs. Brown, the only servant at the house, slept not in the house but in the gate lodge. Mrs. Brown had told her the gate was never locked until eleven o'clock, when she locked it before going to bed in the lodge. So that if she got back at any hour before eleven, she could slip in through the gate and get over the low sill of her bed-room window. She could creep in and change her wet boots and clothes and sit up in the easy-chair till morning. Then she could steal away again, walk to the railway station and take the first train for London.

She felt rested and brave now. She would go on. Heaven grant she might meet no one on the way!

CHAPTER II.

[VOICES OF THE UNSEEN.]

Edith Grace gathered her cloak around her and began walking once more. The road, under the heavy trees, was now blindly dark. She had taken nothing out of that house but the clothes she wore, not even her dressing bag. In the first place, she had not cared to encumber herself; and, in the second place, if she by chance met Mrs. Brown or Oscar Leigh, she would not appear to be contemplating flight. She could write for her trunk and bag when she found herself safely at home once more.

She was new to the world and affairs. She did not know or care whether her action in leaving Eltham House was legal or not. The question did not arise in her mind. If she had been told she had incurred a penalty, she would have said: "All I own on earth is in that house; but I would forego it all, I would die rather than stay there." If she were asked why, she would have said: "Because that odious, insolent man lied when he said I should see little of him. He was the first person I met. Because he dared--had the intolerable impudence to try and kiss me. Because, having failed in his attempt, he pursued me through the house with his hateful attentions. I am very poor. I am obliged to do something for a living. I am not a cook or a dairymaid. My father was a gentleman, and my mother was a lady. We come of an old Derbyshire family. I am a lady, and you can kill me, but you cannot make me bow my head or shame my blood. If, when he tried to kiss me in the hall, I had had a weapon, I should have stabbed him or shot him. If I had a father or a brother he should be chastised. I know nothing of the law, care nothing for it."

If she had been asked: "Do you think his offence would have been less if you happened to be a cook or a dairymaid?"

She would have answered: "I am not concerned to answer in a purely imaginary case. I am not a cook or a dairymaid. I am a lady. All I know is that attempting to kiss me was an unpardonable outrage, and if he ventured upon such an attempt again I should kill him if I had a weapon by me. Yes, kill him!"

And now, for want of a few shillings, she was returning to the house from which she had fled in indignation and dread a little while ago. She could not walk about all night in this unknown country. She had not the means to secure accommodation at an hotel. She could not spare money enough even for a cab from the railway station. She had in her pocket no more than her fare to London, and a few odd, useless pennies.

Dark and unfamiliar as the road was to Edith Grace, there was no chance of her losing the way. It was an unbroken line from the little town of Millway to Eltham House. A few by roads right and left made no confusion, for they were at right angles. The road itself was not much frequented by day, and by night was deserted. The heavy rain of the evening kept all folk who had the choice under cover. From the time the girl cleared the straggling outskirts of the town until she gained the high hedge and gateway of her destination she did not meet or overtake a soul.

With serious trepidation, she pushed the gate open and entered the grounds. The gate groaned in opening and shutting, and she was thankful that no dog found a roof in that house.

The tiny gate lodge was dark and silent. From this she judged Mrs. Brown had not retired for the night. Mrs. Brown had told her that when Mr. Leigh was not at home, and Mrs. Leigh had no companion, she slept at the house. But that when there was either Mr. Leigh or a companion, she always spent the night in her own little home, the gate lodge. This night Mr. Leigh, his mother, and Mrs. Brown believed a companion and Mr. Leigh would be in the house. Well, there would be, but not exactly as it was designed and believed by them. She had given no word--made no sign that she was leaving. She had found her bed-room window open, and she had not shut it. Owing to the warmth of the night, that fact was of itself not likely to claim attention.

The unshaded carriage-drive from the gate to the house was winding, and about a hundred yards long. A straight line across the ill-kept lawn would not measure more than fifty paces. Edith chose this way because of the silence secured to her footsteps by the grass, and the additional obscurity afforded by its darker colour. In front of the house ran a thick row of trees and evergreen shrubs. So that in daylight, when the trees were in leaf, the ground-floor of the house was hidden from the road, and the road from the ground-floor of the house.

The house itself was of modest appearance and dimensions. In the front stood the porch and door, on each side of which was a window. On the floor above were three windows, and in the roof three dormers. On the right hand of the hall lay the drawing-room, on the left-hand side the dining-room, behind the drawing-room the library, which had been converted into a sleeping chamber for Mrs. Leigh, who, owing to her malady, was unable to ascend the stairs. Behind the dining-room stood the breakfast parlour, which had been converted into a sleeping chamber for Mrs. Leigh's companion, so that the companion might be near Mrs. Leigh in the night time. At the rear of the companion's sleeping chamber was a large conservatory in which the invalid took great delight, seated in her wheeled chair. Behind the library was the kitchen, no higher than the conservatory. The back walls of the breakfast-room and library formed the main wall of the house. The conservatory and kitchen were off-builds, and separated from one another by a narrow flagged yard, in which were a large uninhabited dog kennel, water butts, a pump, and ashbin. Beyond the flagged yard lay a large, neglected vegetable garden. The flower garden spread beneath the conservatory, and on the other side of the house to the right of the kitchen, as one looked from the lawn, languished an uncared-for orchard.

The floor above consisted wholly of bed and dressing-rooms, except the large billiard-room, in which there was no table. Above the first floor nestled a number of attics, for servants and bachelors in emergency. Only two of the bedrooms on the first floor were furnished, and the attic story had been locked up all the time Mrs. Brown acted as lodge-keeper, about five years.

The few people who had ever asked Oscar Leigh why he kept so large a house for so small a household, were informed by him, that it was his white elephant. He had had to take it in lieu of a debt, and he could neither sell nor let it at a figure which would pay him back his money, or fair interest on it. Besides, he said his mother liked it, and it suited him to go there occasionally, and forget the arduous, scientific studies in which most of his days were spent in London.

But very little or nothing of Mr. Oscar Leigh or his affairs was known in Millway. He had no friends or even acquaintances there, and spoke to no one in the town, save the few tradespeople who supplied the household with its modest necessities. Indeed, he came but seldom to his mother's home; not more than once a month, and then his arrival brought no additional custom to the shops of the town, for he generally brought a box or hamper with him full, he told the driver of the fly he hired, of good things from the Great Town. The tradespeople of Millway would gladly have taken more of his money, but they had quite as much of his speech and company as they desired--more than they desired.

Edith Grace walked straight to the left hand corner of Eltham House, and looked carefully through the trees and shrubs before venturing out on the drive. Not a soul was stirring. She could hear no sound but the rain which still fell in heavy sheets. No light was visible in any room, but whether this was due to the absence of light inside, or to heavy curtains and blinds she could not say. Against the glass of the fan-sash in the porch a faint light, like that of a weak candle or dimmed lamp, gleamed, making a sickly solitary yellow patch upon the black, blank front of the house.

The rain and the soddenness of the gravel were in Edith's favour. The sound of the rain would blunt the sound of her footsteps, and the water among the gravel would lessen the grating of the stones.

She emerged from the cover of the trees, and hastened across the open drive. She gained left-hand corner of the house, and passed rapidly under the dining-room windows in the left side.

Should she find the sash of her room down? That would be a distracting discovery. It would mean she should have to pass the night in the open air. That would be bad enough. It would mean that her flight had been discovered already. It might mean that Oscar Leigh was now lying in wait for her somewhere in this impenetrable darkness behind her back. That would be appalling--unendurable. Hurry and see.

Thank heaven, the window was open!

It was much easier to get out through that window than back through it. But at last, after a severe struggle, she found herself in the room. Strange it seemed that she should feel more secure here, under the roof which covered this man, than outside. Yet it was so. He might, in the dark, outside, spring upon her unawares. He looked like a wild beast, like some savage creature that would crouch, and spring, and seize, and rend. Here she felt comparatively safe. The door was locked on the inside. She had locked it on coming into the room hours ago. If she sat down in the old arm-chair she could not be approached from behind. However, ere sitting down she must get some dry clothes to put on her, and she must find them and effect the change without noise or light. It was now past ten o'clock, and no one in the house must fancy she had not gone to bed, or there might be knocking at her door to know if she required anything. She required nothing of that house but a few hours' shelter.

With great caution she searched where she knew her trunk lay open, found the garments she needed, and replaced her wet clothing with dry. This took time; she could not guess how long, but as it was at length accomplished, and she was taking her first few moments of rest in the easy-chair, she heard the front door shut. Mrs. Brown had gone back to her lodge, and under the roof of Eltham House were only Oscar Leigh, his paralysed mother, and herself.

The banging of the front door made her shudder. The knowledge that Mrs. Brown had gone away for the night increased the isolation of the house. There were now only three people within its walls instead of four, and this circumstance seemed to bring the loathsome Oscar Leigh closer to her. She resolved to sit still. It was eleven o'clock. It would be bright daylight in a few hours. As soon as the sun rose she should, if the rain had ceased, leave the house and wander about in the bright open daylight until the time to take the first train for London. It would be dawn at three o'clock. From eleven to three was only four hours. Four hours did not seem long to wait.

The chair she sat in was comfortable, spacious, soft. There was little danger of her falling asleep. In her present state of excitement and anxiety sleep would keep off. But even if she should happen to doze, there was small risk. Nothing could be more unlikely than that she should slip out of that capacious chair and attract attention by the noise of her fall to the floor.

She sat herself further back in the chair to avoid the possibility of such an accident. She had remarked during the day, that sound passed easily and fully through the building, owing, no doubt, to the absence of furniture from many of the rooms and the intense stillness surrounding the house.

Until now, she had not noticed the utter silence of the place. All day long she had been too much agitated to perceive it. She was accustomed to the bustle and hum of Great London, which, even in its quietest streets, day and night, never suffers solution of the continuity of sound, artificial sound, sound the product of man. In that deepest hush, that awful calm that falls upon London between one and three in the morning, there may be moments when distinct, individualized sound is wanting, but there is always a faint dull hum, the murmur of the breathing of mute millions of men.

Here, in this room, was not complete silence, for abroad the rain still fell upon the grass and trees with a murmur like the secret speeding of a smooth fast river through the night.

She sat with her back to the partition between her and the dining-room. She had not dared to move the heavy chair for fear of making noise. The chair stood with its back to the partition. It was midway between the outer wall of the house and the partition of the inner hall. On her left, four yards from where she sat, rose a pale blue luminous space, the open window through which she had entered. On her right, at an equal distance, was the invisible door which she had locked upon retiring hours ago. The large, old-fashioned mahogany four-posted bedstead stood in the middle of the room, between the door and the window. The outline of the bedstead facing the window was dimly discernible in mass. No detail of it could be made out. Something stood there, it was impossible to say what. All the rest of the furniture was lost, swallowed up in gloom, annihilated by the dark.

The room was large and lofty. It was wainscotted as high as a man could reach. Above the wainscot the wall was painted dark green. A heavy cornice ran round the angles of the walls. From door to window was twenty feet. From the partition against which she sat to the wall opposite her was twenty-four feet. The curtains of the bedstead were gathered back at the head and foot posts.

Of all this, beyond the parts of the bedstead fronting the window, Edith could see nothing now. She sat with her hands folded in her lap, her arms close to her side, her head resting on the back of the chair. She closed her eyes, not from drowsiness, but to shut out as much as possible the memory of the place, the thoughts of her situation. She told herself she was once more back in her unpretending little room in Grimsby Street. She tried to make herself believe the beating of the rain on the trees and glass of the conservatory and gravelled carriage sweep in front of the house was the dull murmur of London heard through some new medium. She should hear her grandmother's voice soon.

"Have you done, Oscar?"

"Yes, mother. I have finished for the night."

Edith Grace sat up in her chair and gasped with terror. The words seemed spoken at her ear. The voices were those of Oscar Leigh, the hunchback dwarf, and his mother, Mrs. Leigh, the paralysed old woman! Whence came those voices? What was she about to hear?

For a moment Edith hardly breathed. She had to exercise all her powers of self-control to avoid springing up and screaming. The voices seemed so close to her she expected to hear her own name called out, to feel a hand placed upon her shoulder.

"Yes," the voice of the man said, "I have made the drawings and the calculations. It has taken me time. A great deal of time, mother. But I am right. I have triumphed. I generally am right, mother. I generally do triumph, mother." He spoke in a tone of elation that rose as he progressed in this speech. His accents changed rapidly, and there was a sound of some one moving. "But, mother, you are tired. It has been a long day for you. You would like to go to your room." His voice had fallen, and was low and guttural, but full of eager solicitude and tenderness.

"Not tired; no, Oscar. I am feeling quite well and lively and strong to-night. For an old woman, who has lost the use of her limbs, I keep very well. When you are with me, Oscar dear, I do not seem so old as when you are away from me, my son." The voice was very low, and tremulous with maternal love.

"Old! Old!" he cried with harsh emphatic gaiety. "You are not old, mother! You are a young woman. You are a girl, compared with the old women I know in London, who would fly into a rage if you hinted that they were past middle life--if you did not, in fact, say they were young. Why, mother, what is seventy? Nothing! I know dozens of women over eighty, and they keep up their spirits and are blithe and gay, and ready to dance at a wedding, if any man should only ask them. Up to sixty-five, a woman ages faster than a man, but once over sixty-five, women grow young again." Towards the end his voice had lost its tone of unpleasant excitement, it became merely jocular and buoyant.

"My spirits are always good when you are here, my son. But when you are away I am very dull. Very dull, dear. It is only natural for me to feel dull, when half of my body is dead already. I cannot be long for the world, Oscar."

"Nonsense," said the other voice gaily. "Your affliction has nothing to do with death. The doctors say it is only a local disturbance. Besides, you know, cracked vessels are last broken. You are compelled to take more care of yourself than other women, and you do take care of yourself, I hope. If you do not, I shall be very angry, and keep away altogether from Eltham."

"I take every care of myself, Oscar dear. Every care. I do not want to go away from you. I want to stay with you as long as I can. Oscar dear, I hope it may be granted to me to see your children before I die, dear." The voice was low and tremulous and prayerful. The mournfulness of a mother's heart was in the tone.

"And so you shall, mother," he said briskly, cheerfully. "I mean to astonish you soon. I mean to marry a very handsome wife. I have one in my eye already, mother." He added more gravely, "I have a very handsome wife in my eye. I mean to marry; and I mean to marry her. You know I never make up my mind to do anything that in the end does not come off. But before I marry I must finish my great work. When I have put the last touches to it I shall sell it for a large sum, and retire from business, and live here with you, mother, at my ease."

"And when, my dear son, do you think the great clock will be finished? Tell me all about it. It is the only thing in the world I am jealous of. Tell me how it gets on. Have you added any new wonders to it? When will you be done with it?"

The fright had by this time died out of Edith's heart. She now understood who the owners of the voices were, why the speakers seemed so near. Oscar Leigh was talking to his mother in the dining-room. They both believed she was in deep sleep and could not hear, or they forgot the thinness of the substance separating them. Between the dining-room and where she sat was only the slight panel of a folding door. This room, now a sleeping apartment, had once been the breakfast-parlour. She had not in the daytime noticed that the two rooms were divided only by folding doors. If she had the alternative, she would have got up and left the room. But she had no alternative. She would much rather not hear the words, the voices of these two people. If she coughed, or made a noise, she would but attract attention to herself, bring some one, perhaps, knocking at her door. Nothing could be more undesirable than a visitor, or inquiries at her door. If she coughed, to show the speakers that she was awake, Mrs. Leigh, or he, might knock and speak to her. Mrs. Leigh might, on some plea, ask to see her, ask to be allowed to roll her invalid chair into the room, and then she would find the tenant of it dressed for out of doors, the bed untossed, the floor littered with the scattered contents of her trunk, the wet bedraggled clothes and boots she had taken off. There was nothing for her to do but to remain perfectly still. She was not listening, in the mean or hateful sense of the word. She did not want to overhear, but she could not help hearing. She could not cover her ears, for that would shut out all sound, and the use of hearing was essential to her own safety, her own protection, situated as she found herself. Leigh had given her to understand he was a mechanician. He was telling his mother of his work. He was about to give her particulars of a clock upon which he was engaged. Let them talk on about this clock. It was nothing to her. She was interested intensely in the passage of time, but in no clock. She did not want to hear of an hour-measurer, but of the hour-maker. She cared nothing for man's divisions of time: she prayed with all her heart for a sight of God's time-marker, the sun.

CHAPTER III.

[AN OFFER OF MARRIAGE.]

"Soon, soon, mother. I shall be finished soon. I cannot tell exactly when, but not very far off. I see the end of my labours, the reward of all my study, the fruit of all my life," said the voice of the hunchbacked dwarf.

There was a pause in the speech. "Hah," breathed Leigh, in loud inspiration. Then there was a snuffing sound, and another loud inspiration. "Hah! that is refreshing--most refreshing. Will you have some, mother? Do. You won't? Very well. What was I saying?"

The strong, subtle vapour of eau-de-cologne penetrated through the slits and joints of the folding-doors, and floated past Edith towards the open windows.

"About the clock," said Mrs. Leigh. "You were going to tell me what new wonders you have added to it, and when the crowning wonder of all was to be fixed."

"What?" cried the voice of the dwarf, loudly, harshly, angrily. "What do you know of the crowning wonder? Tell me, woman, at once!" His tone was violent, imperious, threatening.

"Oscar! Oscar! What is the matter? What do you mean by calling me 'woman'? Oscar, my son, are you ill? What is the matter? Why do you look at me in that way? You are crushing my hand. What is the matter, Oscar, my own boy?" The woman's accents were full of alarm.

"Agh! Agh! Pardon me. Agh! Pardon me, my dear mother. Agh!" he coughed violently, hoarsely. "The spirit of the eau-de-cologne must have gone down my throat and caught my breath. I am quite right now. Pray excuse me, mother. What was I saying?"

"Something about the clock, dear. But, Oscar, do not mind telling me about it now. You seem not well. Perhaps you had better rest yourself. You can explain about the clock to-morrow."

"Oh, ay, the clock. Of course. I am quite well, mother. You need not be uneasy about me. What was I going to tell you about the clock?"

"You were going to tell me--I do not know really what. I asked you when it would be completed. That is my chief anxiety, for then you will be always here--always here, near me, my dear son."

"Certainly; when I sell my unrivalled clock, I'll give up living in London and come down here to you, mother, and become a private gentleman."

"But why can't you come down and stop here always, my Oscar? Surely your clock could be brought to Millway, and back to London again when 'tis finished?" The voice of the woman was caressing, pleading. "I have not very long to live, Oscar. Might not I have you near me that little time?" The tone was tremulous and pathetic.

"Dear, dear mother," he said softly, tenderly. "I cannot--I cannot move the clock. You forget how large it is. I have told you over and over again it would half fill this room. Besides, I have other business in London I cannot leave just now. I will come as soon as ever I can. You may take my word for that. Let us say no more on that subject at present. I was going to explain to you about my marvellous clock. Let me see. What have I already told you?"

"Oh, it was too wonderful to remember. Tell me over again."

"Very well. To begin with, it will, of course, measure time first of all. That is the principal and easiest thing to contrive. It will show the year, the month, the day of the month, the day of the week, the hour of the day, the minute of the hour, the second of the minute, the tenth of the second. All these will be shown on one dial."

"That much alone puzzles and astonishes me. It will be the most useful clock in the world."

"So far that is all easy, and would not make it even a very remarkable clock, mother. It will take account of leap year, and be constructed to run till the year ten thousand of the Christian era."

"When once wound up?"

"Oh no, you simple mother. It will have to be wound up every week."

"But will not the machinery wear out?"

"Yes, the metal and the stones will wear out and rust out before eight thousand years. But the principle will have eight thousand years of vitality in it. Steel and brass and rubies yield to friction and time, but a principle lives for ever if it is a true principle----"

"And a good principle," interrupted the voice of the old woman, piously.

"Good or bad, if it is true it will last," said the voice of the hunchback, harshly. Then he went on in more gentle and even tones. "On another face it will tell the time of high water in fifty great maritime cities. There will be four thousand Figures of Time, figures of all the great men of the past, each bearing a symbol of his greatest work, or thought, or achievement, and each appearing on the anniversary of his death, thus there will be from eight to twenty figures visible each day, and that day will be the anniversary of the one on which each of the men died years ago."

"Four thousand figures! Why, it will cost a fortune!"

"Four thousand historic figures each presented on the anniversary of death! I am at work on the figures of those who died on the 22nd of August just now. They are very interesting to me, and one of them is the most interesting of all, the most interesting of all the four thousand figures."

"And who died on the 22nd of August, Oscar? Whose is the figure that interests you most of all, my son?"

"Richard Plantagenet of Gloucester," fiercely.

"Eh?" in a tone of intense pain.

"Richard Plantagenet of Gloucester, commonly called Richard the Third of England, and nicknamed the Hunchbacked Tyrant," maliciously.

"Oscar!" in a tone of protest and misery.

"Yes. Hump and all, I am now making the figure of the most famous hunchback in history. I take a delight in modelling the figure of my Hunchback Tyrant. In body and soul I can sympathise with--him." He spoke furiously, and there was a sound in the room as if he rose.

"Oh, you break my heart, my boy, my boy, my son! Don't, for God's sake, don't. You cut me to the soul! You frighten me when you look in that way." She spoke in terror and anguish.

There were hasty, halting, footsteps pacing up and down the dining-room. The folding-doors behind Edith's head trembled, the windows of the dining-room rattled. The girl wondered he did not think of her. He knew her room lay beyond the dining-room, and he must be aware nothing divided her room from the front one but the thin panels of the folding-doors. It was plain to her now he did not care whether she heard or not.

"Break your heart, mother!" he went on in a tone of excitement but less acerbity. "Why should what I say break your heart? What hurt can words do? Look at me! Me! If I were to say my heart was broken, no one would wonder. I am not reproaching you. Heaven knows, if I turned upon you, I should have no friend left in all the world. Not one soul who would care for me--care whether I lived or died, whether I prospered or was hanged by the common hangman on a gibbet!"

"Oh, Oscar, what is it? What has done it? What has soured you so? You never talked in this way until now. What has changed you?" The voice of the woman was broken. She was weeping through her words.

"A girl's face. A girl's face has changed me. I, who had a heart of adamant, a heart of the core of adamant befitting the crooked carcase in which it is penned and warped and blackened by villainous obstructions. But there! I have been vapouring, mother. Let my words pass. I am a fool and worse to break out in such a way before you, my good, gentle mother." His voice became less excited, his steps more slow and light. "It is passed. I am myself again. I know your advice is good. I mean to follow it. I will marry a wife. I will marry a pretty, shapely wife. You shall have grand children at your knee, mother, before long, before you go. Well-favoured and gay and flawless, and straight-backed, and right-limbed little children who will overtop me, exceed me in height before they begin their teens, but will never, never, never mother, grow to near the degree of love I have for you." His voice and steps ceased, as though he paused at her side.

"Do not kneel," she whispered huskily. "Do not kneel, my son. I was frightened a moment ago, and now I feel suffocated with joy. There! That is right. Sit in your own chair again."

For a while Edith heard sobs--the sobs of a man.

The woman had ceased to weep.

When the sobbing stopped, the woman said: "Who is she? Do I know her? Do I know even her name?"

"All that is my secret, mother. I will not say any more of her but that I am accustomed to succeed, and I will succeed here. I will keep the secret of her name in my heart to goad me on. I am accustomed to succeed. Rest assured I will succeed in this. We will say no more of it. Let it be a forbidden subject between us until I speak of it again; until, perhaps, I bring her to you."

"As you will, Oscar. Keep your secret. I can trust and wait."

"It is best. I feel better already. That storm has cleared the air. I was excited. I have reason to be excited to-day. At this moment--it is now just twelve o'clock--at this moment I am either succeeding or failing in one of my most important aims."

"Just now, Oscar. Do you mean here?"

"No, not here. In London. You do not believe in magic, mother?"

"Surely not. What do you mean? You do not believe in anything so foolish?"

"Or in clairvoyance or spectres, mother?"

"No, my child. Nor you, I hope. That is, I do not believe in all the tales I hear from simple folk."

"And yet not everything--not half everything--is understood even now."

"Will you not tell me of this either?"

"Not to-night, mother. Not to-night. Another time, perhaps, I may. You know I had a week ago no intention of coming here to-day. I did not come to welcome Miss Grace. I had another reason for coming. I am trying an experiment to-night. At this moment I am putting the result of many anxious hours to the touch. If my experiment turns out well I shall come into a strange power. But there, I will say no more about it, for I must not explain, and it is not fair to tell you, all at once, that I have two secrets from you. And now, mother, it is very late for you. We must go to bed. That patent couch still enables you to do without aid in dressing?"

"Yes. I am still able to do without help. I think some of the springs want oiling. You will look at them to-morrow?"

"Yes. But it must be early. I am going back to town at noon."

"So soon? I did not think you would leave till later, Oscar. I don't want to pry into your secrets, but you spoke of gaining some strange powers. Do you think it wise to play with--with--with?"

"With what, mother?"

"With strange powers."

"That depends on what the strange powers are."

"But tell me there is no danger."

"To me? No, I think not."

"Oscar, I am uneasy."

"We have sat and talked too long. You are worn out. I will wheel you to your room. I am sleepy myself."

Edith Grace heard the sound of Mrs. Leigh's invalid chair moving towards the dining room door, then the door open and the chair pass down the hall and into Mrs. Leigh's bedroom. Words passed between the mother and son, but she did not catch their import. She heard the door of Mrs. Leigh's room opposite her own close and then the dragging, lame footsteps of the hunchback on the tiles of the back hall.

The girl listened intently. She did not move. She was sitting bolt upright in her chair with her face turned towards the door of the room.

Leigh's irregular, shuffling footsteps became more distinct. He was crossing the hall from his mother's room to the stairs, which began at the left-hand side of the back hall, close to the door of the room where Edith sat.

"He is going upstairs to his own room. When he is gone the house will be still and I shall be at ease. Daylight will soon come and then I can slip away again and wait till the first train for London--for home! He must be mad. Even if he had not pressed his hateful attentions on me I would not stay in this house for all the world," thought Edith Grace.

The slow, shuffling footsteps did not ascend the stairs. They paused. They paused, she could not tell exactly where. All her faculties were concentrated in hearing, and she heard nothing, absolutely nothing, but the rain. Could it be he had reached the stairs and was ascending inaudibly? Could it be he had already ascended? She thought it was but a moment ago since he closed his mother's door. He might have gone up unheard. It might be longer since the door shut than she thought. She could not judge time exactly in the dark, and when she was so powerfully excited. Should she get up out of that chair, open the door as quietly as possible, and peer into the hall? What good would that do? If he were there he would see her; if he were not there all was well. Besides, it would be quite impossible to unlock the door and open it without making a noise, without the snap of the lock, the grating of the latch, the creaking of the hinge. It was better to remain quiet.

Suddenly she heard a sound that made her heart stand still, her breath cease to come. She grew rigid with terror.

She heard a something soft sliding over the outside of that door. A hand! It touched and rattled the handle. The handle turned, and with a low, dull sound the door opened! She could not see the door. The light which had illumed the fan sash in the porch had evidently been extinguished, for there was no gleam through the open door. That part of the room was so intensely dark, even the masses in it were invisible. But she knew by the dull, puffing sound the door had been opened, and by the surge of the heavy, damp, warm air.

She could not move or cry out if she would. She was completely paralysed, frozen. She was aware of possessing only two senses, hearing and seeing. She was not conscious of her own identity beyond what was presented to her sensations through her ears or her eyes. She did not even ask herself how he had come there, how he had opened from the hall the door she had left locked upon the inside.

He entered the room with slow, deliberate, limping steps. She could hear the footfall of his left foot and the slight, brushing touch of his right foot as he drew it after the left.

On slowly he came until he touched the bed. She could dimly make out the white of his face and shirt-front against the gleam from the window as he advanced. It was plain he could not see as well as she, for he walked up against the bed. His eyes had not become accustomed to the darkness.

He turned to his left, towards where she sat, and came on, feeling his way by the bed. She heard him feeling his way. As soon as he reached the foot-post he turned right, round where she sat in the deepest gloom of the room and then walked to the window.

When he reached the window he stood full in front of it and muttered: "Rain, rain still." He thrust his arms out of the window and drawing them back in a moment, rubbed his face with his hands. "That is refreshing," he muttered. "Hah! They say rainwater is the best lotion for preserving the beauty of the skin. Hah! They do. They say Ninon de L'Enclos kept her beauty up to past seventy by rain-water. Hah! They do. They say she did. Hah! I wonder how long would it preserve my beauty. Ha-ha-ha! More than a century, I suppose. I wonder would rain-water preserve the beauty of my hump. I believe my hump is one of the most beautiful ever man wore. But it doesn't seem to count for much among a man's attractions. People don't appear to care much for humps, whether they are really beauties of this kind or not. Hah! They don't. People don't. Hah! They are not educated up to humps. Hah!"

At each exclamation "Hah!" he made a powerful expiration of breath. Before each exclamation he rubbed his forehead with one hand drawn in wet from the rain falling outside the window.

"She, for instance," he went on, "doesn't care much for humps. She prefers straight-backed men with straight strong legs. And yet straight-backed men with straight strong legs are common enough in all conscience. Most of the beggars even are straight-backed and strong-legged. I am not. Hah! How cool and refreshing this rain-water is. I am a novelty and yet people don't care for such a novelty as I am. No; they prefer men cut to pattern. She would rather have a straight-backed beggar than me, and yet I am more interesting, more uncommon. I am more remarkable to look at, and then I have genius. Yes; I have a form of body far out of the common, and a form of mind far out of the common, too. I have a hump and genius. Hah! But no one cares for a hump or genius. She doesn't, for instance. Hah! But I mean that she shall like me. I mean to make love to her. I mean to woo her, and to win her. Hah! She doesn't know me now as well as she will know me later. I have never been in love before. I can't say I like the feeling. I used to be very valiant and self-sufficing, and at my ease in my mind. Hah! I looked on women as the mere dross of humanity--not worthy to associate with cripples. Hah! Of course, I except my mother, who is the best and dearest soul God ever sent to earth. But now I am in love, and this girl, this young girl, seems precious to me. Hah! Certainly I shall win her. I have not yet learned to fail, and I don't mean to learn how to fail now. Hah! How cool and refreshing the rain is. What is it I came into this room for? Stay. Let me think. Oh, yes! my mother asked me to put the window down before I went upstairs. Hah! Yes. I will. There!"

He let the window down without any regard to the noise. It smote harshly upon the sill. Edith did not move, did not make a sound. She was glad at the moment, though she did not realize that she was glad, because he had let down the window. The diminished light would reduce the chance of his seeing her even now that his eyes had grown used to the darkness. She did not realize that she was glad until afterwards. All her consciousness was still concentrated on hearing and seeing.

Leigh turned away from the window, and began slowly retracing his steps to the door, muttering as he went along the side of the bed opposite the window:

"Yes, she has run away. Run away from this house a few hours after entering it. Run away, frightened, terrified by my ugliness."

He had reached the foot of the bed by this time, and, crossing between where she sat, turned in the darkness at the foot-board. Only his head rose above the high foot-board. His hand moved in dim relief against the background of the white head part of the bed discernible over the foot-board.

As he spoke these words her first thought beyond a desire to hear and see entered her mind. It gave her instant and enormous relief, although as before she was not at the moment attentive to the relief. The feeling, however, took in her mind the form of words. "He knows I left the house. He does not know I have come back."

He paused directly in front of her, and seemed to rest against the foot-board. He muttered in a voice more deep and faint than the one in which he had hitherto spoken:

"She ran away, this Edith Grace, she ran away from my ugliness. Ha-ha-ha! We shall see, Edith Grace. We shall see. I did not tell my mother the name of the girl I mean to marry. She shall know it soon enough, and not all the wiles or force of man shall keep me from my purpose, keep Edith Grace from me!"

He thrust his arms out to their full length in front of him and drew them back swiftly towards him. The air from the motion of his long thin hands touched her cheek.

She drew her head back a hand's breadth. Otherwise she did not stir. She sat motionless. She had no power over the actions of her body. She could not cry out or move further.

Oscar Leigh turned, crept slowly along the foot and right side of the bed, fumbled for the door handle, and, having found it, went out of the room, closing and latching the door quietly after him.

Then she heard him toilfully, ponderously, going up stairs. Presently a door above was closed and complete silence fell upon the house.

The spell lifted from the girl, and covering her face with her hands she sank back in the chair with a tremulous, heavy sigh of relief.

CHAPTER IV.

[ON THE WING.]

Edith lay in the large easy-chair for a long time without stirring. She did not even think. It was enough that she had been delivered from the danger of discovery, and that she was free to take wing and fly away at the streak of earliest dawn.

She did not know how long she sat with her face covered with her hands. She had resolved not to move for a long time, and for a long time she remained motionless. There was no fear of her sleeping. Although her mind was not actively employed about anything it was sharply awake. The first thing to challenge her attention was a sound. No boding or terrible sound, but the faint, weak shrill chirp of a bird. She scarcely realized what it was at first, for she was unfamiliar with the country and unused to the early notes of field and wood.

She took her hands from before her face and looked at the window. The light was still very grey and blue. But it was light, and, moreover, light that would grow stronger every minute, every second. When the day is breaking for joy or deliverance, the light fills the veins with an ethereal intoxication. Thoughts which during darkness can be met only with pallid terror can, when the shadow of night has passed away, be faced with vital courage and endurance.

She rose with care, but there was firmness and decision in her movements. She was fully dressed for walking. The rain had stopped and the sky above the trees spread clear and stainless, a vast plain of open blue.

Oscar Leigh had lowered the window. She caught the sash and raised it very gently but with no trepidation. If the door had that moment opened, she would have simply sprung through the window, without a word. The want of sleep dulls the apprehensions of fear as well as the other faculties of the mind. It sobers the judgment and reduces the susceptibility to extravagance of emotion.

When she had got the sash up to its full height, she stepped resolutely out on the gravelled carriage-sweep. She felt almost at ease. She paused a moment, looked back into the room, and under the shadow of her hand saw that the note she had placed on the table was gone. She turned away from the window and began walking along the gravelled drive towards the gate.

In the face of freedom and the growing light of day the events of last night were beginning to lose all aspect of mystery or terror and to assume a commonplace aspect. The wild talk of the hunchback with his mother grew to have little or no significance worthy of attention, and the soliloquy at the window was, upon review, becoming absurd. Indisputably she was right in leaving that house. It would be entirely unpleasant to live in a house where a man whom she did not like, forced attentions on her. She would go back to London and tell her story at home, and get another place. That was all. No one but her grandmother and herself need know of this first unpleasant experience of trying to earn her bread.

Here was the gate. Locked! Of course. Mrs. Brown had told her the gate was locked by her every night when she came from the house at eleven o'clock. Edith had forgotten this. She had not bargained for finding her way barred a short distance from the house. A couple of hours ago this would have seemed an insuperable obstacle. Now she was free, and quite destitute of terror, of fear, of even grave uneasiness. She felt she could be almost angry, indignant, with this gate and those who had shut and fastened it against her egress.

She turned her face from the gate and looked back at Eltham House. All there appeared quiet and asleep. She looked at the little lodge on her right. Here all seemed quiet and asleep too. The door was shut, the curtains of the windows, one on each side of the door, were close drawn. She could hear no sound but the chatter of the small birds in the hedges, the cawing of distant rooks, and afar off the vexatious crowing of a cock.

The solitude of morning in the country around her was widely different from the solitude of the night just gone by. The solitude of midnight seemed designed for the return of banished spirits; the solitude of the dawn a desert from which man had fled for ever. A sense of desolation came upon her. She wanted to be free, to be at the other side of that gate, but when she found herself on the open road what should she do? For hours to come the people of Millway would not be stirring. She was fleeing from that house into a desolate and uninhabited plain, for though there might be people within call, they were not within sight. Anyway, she could not stay here at the gate. She was now the most conspicuous object on which the upper windows of the house looked, and if he were to come to a front window he could not fail to see her. If anyone happened to pass along that road she would be a conspicuous and most remarkable figure inside that gate at this hour.

She walked to the door of the lodge and softly placed her hand on the latch. It yielded to her touch. She pressed against the door; it moved inward. Disclosed to view was a tiny square hall, in which were two doors. Close to the door which she had opened a large iron holdfast projected from the wall, and upon the holdfast hung a large, clumsy key. The key of the gate? Perhaps so.

In a moment she had taken the key off the hook, gone back to the gate, and inserted the key in the lock. In a minute she was outside the gate on the open road. She closed the gate noiselessly behind her, and hastened away, she knew not whither.

Before she had gone a hundred yards she discovered she had turned to the right instead of to the left. She intended walking towards the town, and it lay on her left as she came through the gateway. She hastened back and found the gate quickly. She kept on at this pace until she was about as far on this side of the gate as she had been on the other. Then she slackened her speed, moving demurely along the road.

After all, from what was she fleeing? Why was she hastening away? What prevented her staying in the house until ten o'clock, and then going to the railway station, in the ordinary way?

She could not remain in the house to be found there when it was believed she had left it for good. But why had she rushed out of it the previous night in a panic? Surely there had been nothing to alarm her. No doubt Mr. Leigh had tried to kiss her upon her arrival, and she could not stay after that affront. It was intolerable that any man should attempt to kiss her. He had tried to excuse himself by saying he had only offered her a patriarchal welcome. The idea of a man who was only thirty-five years claiming the privileges of age was absurd. But, upon reflection, he might not have meant patriarchal to imply length of life, but method of life. He might have intended to convey that he, as male head of the house, assumed the privileges which obtained in patriarchal times, in remote times, when the head of the house posed as the father of all dwelling within its gates. But even if that were so, there was an affront in any such presumption, and she could not consent to remain under that roof longer than necessary. His gallantries of bows, and civil speech, and offers of service, following his atrocious attempt, were enough to warrant her in leaving if there had been no other provocation.

But there had been no occasion for mysterious or surreptitious flight. Plainly no desire existed of detaining her against her will. She had been permitted to retire to her room on pleading fatigue, the window was then fully open, the gate had not been fastened, and even when the gate was locked for the night the key was left lying accessible to anyone within the grounds. True, he believed her to be now in London. He did not know she had lost the train. Seemingly, he had taken not the least trouble to detain her in the house or to ascertain what her movements were when she quitted it.

Viewed by the sober light of day it appeared she had been making a silly romance out of some half-jocular attentions paid to her by a vulgar man, almost old enough to be her father! His soliloquy at the window about making her his wife had been only a little more absurd than his share in the dialogue between him and his mother. Presently, in a few days, the whole affair would appear nothing more than an unpleasant dream. In all likelihood she should never see Mrs. Leigh or her son again. The chances were a million to one against her encountering either during the remainder of her life. She would dismiss the whole affair from her mind and think of other matters.

Not a soul to be seen or heard yet. What a ridiculous thing it was to say that people of the country were earlier risers than people of the town! Fancy walking a mile at any time in the morning through London without meeting a soul!

About half-a-mile from Millway a seat had been placed by the side of the road. It was formed of three square bars of wood supported upon three square pillars of stone. Edith sat down and rested. She did not move until she heard the sound of approaching wheels and horses. She rose and walked briskly in the direction from which she heard the sounds. She walked quickly, with her head down, as though knowing well whither she was going, and being in haste. Two sleepy men in a cart looked with drowsy eyes at her as they passed, but said nothing. These were the first people she had met since she left Eltham House. They did not speak to her, ask her any questions, seem to take the slightest interest in her. This was reassuring. When the cart was out of sight, she returned to the seat and rested again. She would not go back towards the house lest she might be seen by Mr. Leigh or Mrs. Brown; she would not go among the sleeping houses lest she might attract attention, invite inquiries. No one else came near for half-an-hour. Then a scattered group of labourers, tramping doggedly onward from the town, disturbed her solitude. She got up and passed these quickly, as before. One of the men said "Good morning," civilly. Before they disappeared from view a second cart sounded on the road. The country was at length awake. It would not be desirable for her to sit on that bench in the view of people at that early hour. She resolved to keep moving now until the railway station opened.

After leaving that bench finally, she walked into the town as if on business of urgency, but of no alarm. It would not do to seem careless of her route or speed; it would not do to seem eagerly in haste; it would not do to seem as though she was strange to the place. She had no fear but that shy fear of attracting attention instinctively developed in those who flee, no matter from what they flee.

She wandered through many streets and roads that day, but took no note of them. She adopted a plan to avoid losing her bearings. There were six roads leading out of Millway. She took them one after the other from her left hand, went forward upon each a thousand steps, counting each step in her mind, and then came back to the point from which she had started, also counting each step as she returned. This prevented her wandering far, or losing her way. Counting the steps kept her mind fully occupied, and prevented her noticing the fatigue, or becoming unhappily conscious of her unusual position.

Upon comparing the numbers of outward and backward steps, she found that the stretch of road which measured a thousand from town, measured never more than nine hundred and fifty back. As soon as she turned towards Millway, although she knew the station would not be open when she arrived there, she unconsciously increased the length of each pace.

Only once in her monotonous and fatiguing task did anything unpleasant come in her path, and then the unpleasant object was a plain white-washed wall. Yet it gave her a sick thrill of terror. Fortunately it was in her last radiation from Millway.

She was quite unfamiliar with the town. She had never seen it until the day before, and then only as the fly drove from the station to Eltham House. This morning she had determined her course from left to right, taking the wide and open streets, down which she could see far. She passed by several ways which did not look main arteries of traffic. When it was half an hour of train time, she left behind two narrow and unpromising-looking streets, and coming upon the broadest and most open one she had yet encountered, committed herself to it without hesitation, merely making the reflection, "This is my last turn. It will be time to go to the station when I reach this corner again."

After that she took no heed of the street in which she was, but kept on. Fatigue, and the knowledge that her walk was approaching an end, made her duller and more indifferent than before. She did not look around her. She counted her steps in a purely mechanical manner. They, as it were, went on counting themselves without effort on her part. It is doubtful if she then could have stopped the enumeration. Her plan up to this had been to count up to a hundred and then begin again, closing up a finger for each five score told.

The road was not straight. She did not notice that at the end of the first hundred, the street had narrowed, and the flagging ceased. Before the end of the second hundred was chronicled, the pathway disappeared, the houses grew mean and dilapidated. Before she counted two hundred and fifty, she was traversing an alley, filthy under foot, with battered, squalid houses and hovels on either side. This was the most foul and disreputable part of Millway. It was inhabited by the unfortunate, the dissolute, and the disreputable. No one of good repute and appearance had been down there for years and years.

She saw nothing of what lay around her, did not notice the filthy, rutty ground on which she trod; did not observe the windless, noisome air through which she moved.

All at once she drew up with a quick start, and uttered a suppressed cry of alarm. She was in front of a blank white-washed wall. She glanced around in terror, looking for an avenue of escape. There was none except the way by which she had come. She found herself at the end of a frowsy, villainous-looking cul-de-sac.

She shuddered and stood still, not knowing for the moment what to do. There was no going forward; to go back, was to confess she had lost her way. Even the white radiance of the morning could not make that close, fœtid, ruinous street look innocent. It had vice and crime written too deeply on its evil face. Fortunately, no one was stirring in the street, but each house and hovel had windows, and windows of fearful aspect, and behind these windows she imagined hideous winking eyes, and fleering faces. What, if some one, some hulking, slouching figure, should shamble out of one of those sinister doorways, and plant itself in the middle of the lane, blocking up her path, and forbidding her flight!

She caught her breath, and stooped her head, and ran swiftly, fiercely, madly, as though pursued by a pack of ravenous wolves. She fancied she heard the clatter of swift, relentless feet, the clamour of ruthless voices behind her ears. She imagined she felt the touch of claw-like hands upon her shoulder. She imagined she could see out of the corners of her eyes the foul fingers of her pursuers on her shoulder, on her sleeve! She thought she heard, felt, their breathings at her ears! She ran as for life from awful death.

All at once the figure of a man barred her way, blocked her path. With a cry of despair she stood still. The man seemed to be awaiting her approach. He moved a step towards her and said: "Beg pardon, miss. You need not run. There's plenty of time. The train does not start till six-fifteen, and it's only a quarter to six."

This was the friendly railway-porter of the night before. He had just stepped out of his lodging. She had failed to notice that she had left the reeking slum behind her, and was once more in the main street of the town.

She made a powerful effort and collected herself.

"Plenty of time, miss," said the man respectfully, "if you are going up to London by the six-fifteen." He waved his hand in the direction of the station.

"Thank you. I am much obliged to you. I--I did not wish to be late." Her breath was so short from running she spoke irregularly and with difficulty.

"I am going to open the station, miss. Would you like to sit in the waiting room?"

"Thank you. I would."

He drew aside and she passed him. He followed at a deferential distance.

In five minutes they stood on the platform. He opened the door of the waiting room. Then he paused and thought a moment. He turned to her and said, pointing to a line of carriages drawn up at the platform: "That's the train for London. You haven't to change until you get there. Are you going to Victoria or Ludgate?"

"Victoria."

"That," pointing, "part of the train is for Victoria--the forward part, miss." He looked at her again, and noticed that her boots showed signs of a long walk. "Perhaps you would like to go straight into a carriage?"

"I should prefer that."

"I can see to your luggage and get your ticket for you, miss, so that you need not stir once you get in."

"I have no luggage here. It will be sent after me. Not first-class, thank you. I shall travel third, if you please." She coloured a little more deeply. Her usually pale face was faintly flushed from her late haste and excitement. "Here is the money for the ticket. You have been very kind to me--I am extremely sorry I--I--I can't make you a little present--but----"

"Don't mention it, miss. It's my duty, miss, to do what I can to oblige passengers. Take the far corner with your back to the engine. I'll lock you in. We haven't many passengers by this train, and I may be able to keep the carriage altogether for you, at starting, anyway. The ticket office won't be open for a few minutes. With your back to the engine, miss. I'll bring you the ticket in time. You are locked in now, miss, and you need not stir until you get to Victoria."

She thanked him again and he left her. Now the full effect of her long walk, the reaction from the excitement of the night and want of sleep, fell upon her with leaden weight of drowsiness. She was safe, at rest now, on her way home. This was a blessed change from the strain of mind in the darkness, and the weary, weary walking and counting in the light. She went on counting still, exactly at the rate of her paces on the road.

Her head rested in the corner of the narrow compartment. Her brain still went stolidly on counting whether she would or not. She closed her eyes. A delicious numbness began to steal over her. She had a faint consciousness that a few people were out on the platform. She heard as from afar off the sound of voices and feet.

"Your ticket, miss."

Something was placed in her hand, she started and caught it in her gloved fingers, closely.

"I'll lock the door again, miss. You are all right now till you get to Victoria."

"Thank you, very much."

This dialogue sounded faintly in her ears, she had no clear perception that she had taken part in it. In another minute she was fast asleep with her head resting in the corner of the carriage and a soft smile upon her lips.

After her eyelids closed and she became unconscious in sleep, the following dialogue took place on the platform, outside the window of her carriage:

"You are not to go in there, sir, that compartment is engaged."

"Third class compartment engaged! Rubbish! Open the door, I say, at once!"

"No, sir, I cannot. I do not mean that the compartment is engaged by paying for it."

"Open it this instant."

"The lady has been very ill of some catching complaint and must travel alone. See, she is asleep."

"No matter. I too am very ill of a catching complaint. Open the door. You wont! Oh, it doesn't make any difference, I'll open it myself. I always carry a key. Porter, you have lost a shilling. But there, I won't be vindictive, here's a shilling for being good to the lady. She is a friend of mine. You are doing well this morning, porter. She paid you first for reserving the compartment, then I pay you instead of reporting you for being impertinent and corrupt."

"She gave me nothing. The lady had only her bare fare to Victoria, and if you know her she will tell you that I got her ticket and she had no money left."

"You're new to this place. I never saw you here before. Go away. Only you are so young a fool I'd get you into trouble."

All this was said in low voices so as to be inaudible to the girl, even if she had been awake, but she was not awake, she was in profound sleep.

The new passenger was seated in the compartment, and, as the porter turned away, he closed and locked the door softly. In less than a minute the train steamed out of the station. The girl slept on with a smile of relief and deliverance around her fresh young mouth.

The second traveller sat facing the engine on the side opposite Edith, and directly in front of her, by the open window. He was a short deformed man and carried a heavy crooked walking-stick. For a few minutes after the train began to move he remained without moving. The girl slept heavily, swaying slightly from side to side with the motion of the train, her two gloved hands lay placidly on her lap. Between the thumb and fore-finger of her right hand was the ticket bought for her by the friendly porter, and representing all the money she had had beyond a few half pence.

When the train had been five minutes on its way and had gained its full speed, the man leaned forward towards the sleeping girl, and with infinite gentleness and care drew the ticket out of her hand, keeping his eyes on her eyelids the whole time. Without taking his eyes off her face, he raised his right hand, thrust it, holding the ticket between his thumb and finger, out of the carriage window, and dropped the ticket into the rushing air. Then he sat back in his corner opposite Edith, and sighed and smiled.

CHAPTER V.

[MR. LEIGH'S DEPUTY.]

It was early in the afternoon the same day, the last Thursday of June. The rain of the night before had been general in the South of England. It had fallen heavily in London, and washed and freshened the dusty, parched streets. Now all London capable of being made fresh and blithe by weather was blazing gallantly in the unclouded radiance of summer. Even Chetwynd Street, a third rate thoroughfare of the less delectable and low-lying part of Westminster, looked gay in comparison with its usual squalor, for it had been scoured clean and sweetened by the waters of Heaven. The wind, and the rain, and the sun of Heaven, were all the friends Chetwynd Street seemed to have. Man had built it. It was man's own, and man seemed to despise his handiwork, and neglect his duty towards what he had made.

Few civilians with good clothes and sound boots visited Chetwynd Street. Policemen go everywhere, and were to be seen in this street now and then, and soldiers often strayed into it, for they are common in all the region. But although the publicans and pawnbrokers of the thoroughfare were well-to-do people, they did not put their wealth upon their backs. It would have been considered ostentatious for ordinary mortals to wear broadcloth within the precincts of the street. The sumptuary laws of the place forbade broadcloth for every-day wear to all except clergymen, doctors, and undertakers. On Sundays, or festivals, such as marriages and funerals, broad-cloth might be worn by the prosperous tradespeople without exciting anger or reproach.

The two most prosperous shopkeepers in the place were Mr. Williams, landlord of the Hanover public house, at the corner of Welbeck Place, leading to Welbeck Mews, and Mr. Forbes, baker, at the opposite corner of Welbeck Place. Mr. Williams's house was all glitter and brightness on the ground floor. He had two large plate-glass windows, divided only by a green and gilt iron pillar, looking into Chetwynd Street, and two large plate glass windows, divided only by a green and gilt iron pillar, looking into Welbeck Place. The door of Mr. Williams's house faced Chetwynd Street. Mr. Forbes was not so lavish of glass or gaslight as his neighbour, of the Hanover. His only window on the shop-floor, looking into Chetwynd Street, was composed of panes of crown glass of moderate size. In Welbeck Place, on the ground floor, he had a blank wall, and farther up the Place, a modest door. In Chetwynd Street, beyond the shop door, was another door belonging to him; the door to the staircase and dwelling part of the house above the shop. The door in Welbeck Place led also to the base of the staircase, and to the bakehouse at the rear. The side door was not used for business purposes of the bakery. The back of the bakehouse at the rear stood in Welbeck Mews, and here was a door through which Mr. Forbes's flour and coal came in and loaves went out. Mr. Forbes had several bakeries in the neighbourhood. He did not reside in the upper part of his house in Chetwynd Street. He used the first floor as a warehouse. He stored all kinds of odds and ends here, including empty sacks, and sometimes flour. One of the rooms he had used as an office, but gave it up, and now kept it locked, idle. It was not easy to let the upper parts of houses to respectable people in this street. It would not suit his business to let the house in tenements to any lodgers who might offer.

For the second floor he had a most respectable tenant, who paid his rent with punctuality, and gave no trouble at all. There were three rooms on the second or top floor. A sitting-room, a bed-room, and a workshop. The sitting-room was farthest from Welbeck Place, being over the hall and part of the shop. The bed-room was over the middle section of the shop. The work-room was at the eastern end of the house. The bed-room looked into Chetwynd Street. The sitting-room looked into the same street. The work-shop looked into Welbeck Place. The bed-room and sitting-room were immediately over that part of the house used by Mr. Forbes as a store or lumber room. The workshop on the top floor was directly over what once served as an office for the baker, and was now locked up.

The man and his wife in charge of the business slept in the bakehouse at the back which opened into the mews. The only person sleeping in the house proper was the tenant of the second floor. At the top of the staircase, on the second floor, there was a stout door, which could be locked on either side, so that the tenant had a flat all to himself, and was as independent as if he owned a whole house. In the matter of doors, he was rather better off than his neighbours, who had whole houses; for he had, first of all, the door of his own flat at the top of the stairs, and was allowed a key for the outer door into Chetwynd Street, and one for the door into Welbeck Place. For the door at the back, that one from the bakehouse into the mews, he had not been given a key by the landlord, nor did he ask for one. When something was said about it on his taking the place, he laughed, and declared, "Two entrances to my castle are enough for a man of my inches."

The tenant of the top floor of the bakery was Mr. Oscar Leigh. The room over the hall was his bed-room: the room over the store was his sitting-room; the room looking into Welbeck Place was his workshop.

Mr. Oscar Leigh made an unclassified exception to the rule of not wearing broad cloth in Chetwynd Street. He never was seen there in anything else. The residents took no offence at his glossy black frock-coat. The extreme oddness of his figure served as an apology for his infringement upon the rules. In Chetwynd Street the little man was very affable, very gallant, very popular. "Quite the gentleman," ladies of the locality who enjoyed his acquaintance declared. Among the men he was greatly respected. They believed him to be very rich, notwithstanding that he pleaded poverty for living so high up as the top floor of Forbes's bakery, and dispensing with a servant. Mrs. Bolger, the old charwoman, came in the morning and got him his breakfast, and tidied his rooms. That is she tidied the sitting-room and bed-room. No one had ever been admitted to the workshop. Mrs. Bolger left about noon, and that was all the attendance Mr. Leigh needed for the day. He got his other meals out of his lodgings.

The men of the district in addition to believing him rich credited him with universal knowledge. "Mr. Leigh," they said, "knew everything." They always spoke of him as "Mr." Leigh because they were sure he had money. If they believed him to be poor or only comfortable they would have called him little Leigh. His appearance was so uncommon they readily endowed him with supernatural powers. But upon the whole they held his presence among them as a compliment to their own worth, and a circumstance for congratulation, for his conversation when unintelligible seemed to do no one harm, when intelligible was pleasant, and he was free with his society, his talk, and his money.

That Thursday afternoon he walked slowly along Chetwynd Street from the eastern end, nodding pleasantly to those he knew slightly, and exchanging cheerful greetings with those he knew better. When he came to the Hanover public-house, lying between him and his own home, he entered, and, keeping to the right down a short passage, found himself in the private bar.

The Hanover was immeasurably the finest public-house in the neighbourhood. The common bar was plain and rough, and frequented by very plain and rough folk; but the private bar was fitted in mahogany and polished white metal. There no drink of less price than twopence was served, and people in the neighbourhood thought it quite genteel and select. A general feeling prevailed among the men who frequented the private bar of the "Hanover" that the only difference between the best West End club and it was that in the former you got more display, finer furniture, and a bigger room; but that for excellence of liquor and company the latter was the better of the two. It was a well-known fact that Mr. Jacobs, the greengrocer who came from Sloane Street to get three-pennyworth of the famous Hanover rum hot, never smoked anything less than cigars which he bought cheap of his friend, Mr. Isaacs, at sixpence each. It was a custom for the frequenters in turn to say now and then to Mr. Jacobs, "That's a good cigar, Mr. Jacobs; my word, a good cigar." At which challenge Mr. Jacobs became grave, took the cigar out of his mouth and looked at it carefully while he held it as though making up his mind about its merits, and then said "Ay, sir; pretty fair--pretty fair," or other modest words to that effect. He spoke almost carelessly at such times, as though he had something else on his mind. About once a month the thought he was reserving followed and he added: "I bought a case of them from my friend, Isaacs of Bond Street. They come to about sixpence each." After this he would put his cigar back into his mouth, roll it round carelessly between his lips, and take no more heed of it than if he had bought it for twopence across the counter.

When Mr. Oscar Leigh found himself in the private bar, neither Mr. Jacobs nor anyone else was there. Behind the bar in his shirt-sleeves was the potman who attended to the ordinary customers, and Mr. Williams, the proprietor, in a tweed coat of dark and sober hue.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Williams," said the new-comer, wriggling up on a high cane-seated stool, pulling out a white handkerchief and rubbing his face vigorously, puffing loudly the while.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Leigh," said the landlord in a gracious and pleasant voice. "Very hot walking out of doors."

"Very. Will you have a brandy--a split?"

"It's almost too hot. But I will for the sake of company, as you are kind enough to ask me."

The landlord busied himself getting the drinks, and then set them on the counter. Mr. Leigh took his up, nodded to Williams, saying laconically, "Health," to which the other responded in due form. The hunchback drained his glass at one draught, the landlord sipped his.

"I wanted that badly," said Leigh. "It's good stuff. Anything wrong?" "Well, Mr. Williams, it is my breakfast and dinner--up to this."

"Ah. That's bad. Why didn't you get your breakfast. A man isn't any good unless he eats a hearty breakfast, I say. What's the matter, Mr. Leigh. Anything wrong down in the country?"

"No, no. I feel better already. As you say, that's fine brandy. Give me another. I'm tired. I've had such a morning. I feel better, a good deal better. Isn't it hot?"

"Blazing. So you have had a busy morning?"

"Yes. Oh, very busy morning, Mr. Williams, No breakfast yet, but this," tapping the second glass of brandy and soda. "I must be careful not to knock up my digestion, Mr. Williams. When a man's digestion is upset he isn't fit for figures, for calculations, you know. It takes a man all his time, and the coolest head he can saw off a brass monkey, to make calculations such as I deal in."

"You're a wonderful man, and I always say it." Mr. Williams was a personable, good-looking man, with a large white face and lardy skin. He believed that Mr. Leigh knew a vast number of things, and that he himself had a great reserve of solid wisdom which, for reasons undefined to himself, he kept inactive for his own secret pleasure, as a man might hoard a priceless jewel, gloating over the mere sense of possession. He had a firm conviction that if it were only possible to mould Mr. Leigh's mind and his own into one, the compound might be trusted to perform prodigies, always provided that Mr. Leigh had little or nothing to do with the direction of its activities.

Up to this point of the conversation it had been obvious the two men were not speaking freely. Williams was hesitating and laconic beyond his custom; Leigh was too vivacious, tired, exhausted. During the pauses of their talk the pair frequently looked at one another in a way which would have provoked enquiry.

Mr. Williams at last made a backward jerk of his head at the potman, and then a sideway nod of his head towards the door leading into the bar-parlour. The gesture meant plainly, "Shall I get rid of him?"

Leigh nodded quickly and cordially.

"Tom," said the landlord, turning fully round and putting his back against the bar, "the bitter is off. Go down and put on another."

"Right, sir," said Tom, as he hurried away.

As soon as he was out of view, and before he could be heard among the casks and pipes, Mr. Williams turned round and said, leaning over the counter and speaking in a whisper: "He's gone. No one can hear now."

Mr. Leigh sprinkled some eau-de-cologne from a tiny silver flask in his palm, buried his face in his hands and inhaled the perfume greedily. "Hah! That is so refreshing. Hah!" The long lean hands, with the glossy shining black hairs, shook as he held them an inch from his face. The withdrawal of the potman seemed to have relieved him of restraint.

"Well," he said, laying both his thumbs on the pewter top of the counter, and pressing hard with his forefingers under the leaf of the counter, "you were saying, Williams----?" He looked into the face of the other with quick blinking eyes and swayed his misshapen body slowly to and fro.

"I wasn't saying anything at all," said the landlord, raising his black, thin, smooth eyebrows half-way up his pallid, smooth, greasy forehead.

"I know," whispered Leigh eagerly. He now drew himself up close to the counter "I meant what you were going to say. Did you watch?" keenly and anxiously.