Hard Cash

CHAPTER XLVI

JULIA, as I have said, went to her own room, wounded unintentionally by a chance speech: she sat down sick at heart; and presently opened her window and looked out upon the starry night, and wondered where Alfred was now; that Alfred for whom nobody else had a Human heart, it seemed. “Alfred! my poor Alfred!” she sighed, and half-expected to hear him reply. Then she said to herself, “They all called you false but me; yet I was right: and now they all call you mad; but not I: I believe nothing against you. You are my own Alfred still. Where have the wretches driven you to?” At this her feelings carried her away, and she cried aloud on him despairingly, and leaned upon the window-sill, and the tears ran fast for him.

Presently out of the silence of the night seemed to struggle a faint but clear voice:

“Julia.”

She started, and a muffled scream came from her. Then she listened, all trembling. Again the voice sighed, faintly but clear, “Julia!”

“Alfred?” said she, quavering.

“Yes. Pray be cautious; give no alarm. The house is watched; bring Edward.”

She flew downstairs, and electrified Edward and Sampson with the news. “Oh, promise me not to betray him!” she cried.

“Hut!” said the doctor, starting to his feet, “what should we betray him for? I'll cure him for you. I can cure any lunatic that has lucid intervals. Where is he?”

“Follow me,” gasped Julia. “Stay. I'll get rid of the servants first. I'll not play the fool, and betray him to his enemies.” She sent Sarah eastward, and Jane westward, and then led the way through the kitchen door into the yard.

They all searched about, and found nothing. Then Julia begged them to be silent. She whispered, “Alfred!” And instantly a faint voice issued from the top of a waggon laden with hay and covered with a tarpaulin. “Julia.”

They all stood staring.

“Who are those with you?” asked Alfred uneasily.

“Only friends, dear! Edward and Dr. Sampson.”

“Ned, old fellow,” groaned Alfred, “you pulled me out of the fire, won't you help me out of this? I think my leg is broken.”

At this Julia wrung her hands, and Edward ran into the house for his rope, and threw it over the waggon. He told Julia and Sampson to hold on by one end, and seizing the other, was up on the waggon in a moment. He felt about till he came to a protuberance; and that was Alfred under the tarpaulin, in which he had cut breathing-holes with his penknife. Edward sent Julia in for a carving-knife, and soon made an enormous slit: through this a well-known figure emerged into the moonlight, and seemed wonderfully tall to have been so hidden. His hands being uninjured, he easily descended the rope, and stood on one leg, holding it. Then Sampson and Edward put each an arm under his, and helped him into the house.

After the body the mind. That is the rule throughout creation. They examined, not his reason, but his leg. Julia stood by with clasped hands, and a face beaming with pity and anxiety, that repaid his pain. Sampson announced there were no bones broken, but a bad sprain, and the limb very red and swollen. “Now,” inquired he briskly of the company, “what is the practice in sprains? Why, leeches and cold water.”

Edward offered at once to run and get them.

“Are you mad?” was the reply. “Daun't I tell ye that is the practice? And isn't the practice sure to be th' opposite of the remedy? So get water as hot as he can bear it, and no leeches.”

Julia remonstrated angrily. “Is this a case for jesting?”

“Deevil a jest in it,” replied the doctor. “'Well then, if ye must know, th' opera-dancers apply hot water to sprains: now what is their interest? T' expedite the cure: and the faculty apply cold water: and what is their interest? To procrastinate the cure, and make a long job of it. So just hold your toungues, and ring for hot water.”

Julia did not ring; she beckoned Edward, and they flew out and soon brought a foot-pan of hot water. Edward them removed Alfred's shoes and stockings, and Julia bared her lovely arms, and blushed like a rose.

Alfred divined her intention. “Dear Julia,” he said, “I won't let you: that is too high an honour. Sarah can do that.”

But Julia's blood was up. “Sarah?” said she contemptuously; “she is too heavy handed: and—hold your tongue; I don't take my orders from you;” then more humbly to the doctor, “I am a district visitor: I nurse all manner of strangers, and he says I must leave his poor suffering leg to the servants.”

“Unnatural young monster,” said the doctor. “G'im a good nip.”

Julia followed this advice by handling Alfred's swollen ankle with a tenderness so exquisite, and pressing it with the full sponge so softly, that her divine touch soothed him as much or more than the water. After nursing him into the skies a minute or two, she looked up blushing in his face, and said coaxingly, “Are you mad, dear Alfred? Don't be afraid to tell us the truth. The madder you are, the more you need me to take care of you, you know.”

Alfred smiled at this sapient discourse, and said he was not the least mad, and hoped to take care of her as soon as his ankle was well enough. This closed that sweet mouth of hers exceeding tight, and her face was seen no more for a while, but hid by bending earnestly over her work, only as her creamy poll turned pink, the colour of that hidden face was not hard to divine.

Then Edward asked Alfred how in the world he had escaped and got into that waggon. The thing was incredible. “Mirawculous,” said Dr. Sampson in assent.

“No,” said Alfred, “it looks stranger to you than it is. The moment I found my pistol was gone, I determined to run. I looked down and saw a spout with a great ornamental mouth, almost big enough to sit on; and, while I was looking greedily at it, three horses came into the yard drawing a load of hay. The waggoner was busy clearing the pavement with his wheel, and the waggon almost stopped a moment right under me. There was a lot of loose hay on the top. I let myself down, and hung by the spout a moment, and then leaped on to the loose hay. Unfortunately there were the hard trusses beneath it, and so I got my sprain. Oh, I say, didn't it hurt? However, I crept under the hay and hid myself, and saw Wolf's men come into the yard. By-and-by a few drops of rain fell, and some fellows chucked down a tarpaulin from the loft, and nearly smothered me: so I cut a few air-holes with my penknife. And there I lay, Heaven knows how long: it seemed two days. At last I saw an angel at a window I called her by the name she bears on earth: to my joy she answered, and here I am, as happy as a prince among you all, and devilish hungry.”

“What a muff I was not to think of that,” said Edward, and made for the larder.

“Dear doctor,” said Julia, lifting a Madonna-like face with swimming eyes, “I see no change in him: he is very brave, and daring, and saucy. But so he always was. To be sure he says extravagant things, and stares one out of countenance with his eyes: well, and so he always did—ever since I knew him.”

“Mayn't I even look my gratitude?” whined Alfred.

“Yes, but you need not stare it.”

“It's your own fault, Miss Julee,” said Sampson. “With you fomenting his sprain the creature's fomenting his own insensate passion. Break every bone in a puppy's body, and it's a puppy still; and it doesn't do to spoil puppies, as ye're spoiling this one. Nlist me, ye vagabin. Take yonr eyes off the lady; and look me in the face—if ye can: and tell me how you came to leave us all in the lurch on your wedding morn.”

Julia fired up. “It was not his fault, poor thing; he was decoyed away after that miserable money. Ah, you may laugh at me for hating money; but have I not good reason to hate it?”

“Whist, whist, y' impetuous cracter; and let him tell his own tale.”

Alfred, thus invited, delivered one of his calm, luminous statements; which had hitherto been listened to so coldly by one official after another. But the effect was mighty different, falling now on folk not paid to pity. As for Dr. Sampson, he bounced up very early in the narrative, and went striding up and down the room: he was pale with indignation, and his voice trembled with emotion, and every now and then he broke in on the well-governed narrative with oaths and curses, and observations of this kind—“Why dinnt ye kill um? I'd have killed um. I'd just have taken the first knife and killed um. Man, our Liberty is our Life. Dith to whoever attacks it!”

And so Edward coming in with Alfred's dinner on a tray, found the soi-disant maniac delivering his wrongs with the lofty serenity of an ancient philosopher discussing the wrongs of another, Julia crying furtively into the tub, and the good physician trampling and raving about the room, like what the stoical narrator was accused of being. Edward stopped, and looked at them all over the tray. “Well,” said he, “if there's a madman in the room, it is not Hardie. Ahem.”

“Madman? ye young ijjit,” roared the doctor, “he's no madder than I am.”

“Heaven forbid,” said Alfred drily.

“No madder than you are, ye young Pump.”

“That's an ungenerous skit on Edward's profession,” objected the maniac.

“Be quite now, chattering,” said the excited doctor; “I tell ye ye niver were mad, and niver will be. It's just the most heartless imposture, the most rascally fraud I've ever caught the Mad Ox out in. I'll expose it. Gimme pninkpapr. Man, they'll take y' again if we don't mind. But I'll stop that: these ineequities can only be done in the dark. I'll shed the light of day on 'em. Eat your dinner, and hold your tongue a minute—if ye can.” The doctor had always a high sense of Alfred's volubility.

He went to work, and soon produced a letter headed, “PRIVATE MADHOUSES.” In this he related pithily Alfred's incarceration, and the present attempt to recapture him, with the particulars of his escape. “That will interest th' enemy,” said he drily. He vouched for Alfred's sanity at both dates, and pledged himself to swear to it in a court of law. He then inquired what it availed to have sent one tyrant to Phalaris and another to Versailles in defence of our Liberty, since after all that Liberty lies grovelling at the mercy of Dr. Pill-box and Mr. Sawbones, and a single designing relative? Then he drew a strong picture of this free-born British citizen skulking and hiding at this moment from a gang of rogues and conspirators, who in France and other civilised countries that brag less of liberty than we do, would be themselves flying as criminals from the officers of justice; and he wound up with a warm appeal to the press to cast its shield over the victim of bad laws and foul practices. “In England,” said he, “Justice is the daughter of Publicity. Throughout the world deeds of villainy are done every day in kid gloves: but, with us, at all events, they have to be done on the sly! Here lies our true moral eminence as a nation. Utter then your 'fiat lux,' cast the full light of publicity on this dark villainy; and behold it will wither, and your oppressed and injured fellow-citizen be safe from that very hour.”

He signed it and read it out to them, or rather roared it. But he had written it so well he could not make it bad by delivery. Indeed, he was a masterly writer of English, you must know. Julia was delighted, but Alfred shook his head. “The editor will not put it in.”

“Th' editor! D'ye think I'm so green as to trust t' any one editor? D'ye think I've lived all these years and not learned what poor cowardly things men are? Moral courage! where can you find it? Except in the dickshinary? Few to the world their honest thoughts avow; the groveller policy robs justice now—

Now, lad, I'm off to my printer with this. They are working night and day just now: there will be two hundred copies printed in half an hour.”

“And me, doctor,” said Julia. “Am poor I to have no hand in it? How cruel of you? Oh pray, pray, pray let me help a little.”

“Put on your bonnet, then, directly,” said he: “in war never lose a minute.”

“But I am so afraid they may be lying in wait for him outside.”

“Then we'll give them a good hiding: there are three of us; all good men and staunch,” said the indomitable doctor.

“No, no,” said the pugnacious Alfred. “Julia does not like fighting: I heard her screaming all the time I was defending myself on the stairs: let us be prudent: let us throw dust in their eyes. Put me on a bonnet and cloak.”

“And a nice little woman you'll make, ye fathom.”

“Oh, I can stoop—to conquer.”

Julia welcomed this plan almost with glee, and she and Edward very soon made a handsome brazen-looking trollop six feet high. Then it had to stoop, and Edward and Julia helped it out to the carriage, under the very noses of a policeman and a keeper, who were watching for Alfred: seeing which—oh frailty of woman!—the district visitor addressed it aloud as her aunt, and begged it to take care: which she afterwards observed was acting a falsehood, and “where was her Christianity?”

Alfred was actually not recognised: the carriage bowled away to the great printing house; it was on that side the water. The foreman entered into the thing with spirit, and divided the copy, small as it was, among two or three compositors: so a rough proof was ready in an incredibly short time; the doctor corrected it: and soon they began to work off the copies. The foreman found them Mitchell's newspaper list, and envelopes by the hundred, and while the copies were pouring in, all hands were folding and addressing them to the London and provincial editors. The office lent the stamps. The doctor drove Alfred to his own lodgings, and forbade him to reappear in Pembroke Street until the letter should come out in the London journals.

That night the letters were all posted, and at daybreak were flying north, south, east and west. In the afternoon the letter came out in four London evening papers, and the next morning the metropolis and the whole kingdom were ringing with them, and the full blaze of publicity burst upon this dark deed.

Ay, stout Sampson, well you knew mankind, and well you knew the nation you lived in. Richard Hardie, in the very act of setting detectives to find Alfred's lurking-place, ran his nose against this letter in the Globe. He collapsed at the sight of it; and wrote directly to Dr. Wolf, enclosing it and saying that it would be unadvisable to make any fresh attempt. His letter was crossed by one from Dr. Wolf, containing Sampson's thunderbolt extracted from the Sun, and saying that no earthly consideration should induce him to meddle with Alfred now. Richard Hardie flung himself into the train, and went down to his brother at Clare Court.

He was ill at ease. He felt like some great general, who has launched many attacks against the foe, very successful at first, then less successful, then repulsed with difficulty, then repulsed with ease, till at last the foe stands before him impregnable. Then he feels that ere long that iron enemy will attack him in turn, and that he, exhausted by his own onslaughts, must defend himself how he can. Yet there was a pause; he passed a whole quiet peaceful day with his brother, assuring him that the affair would go no further on either side; but in his secret soul he felt this quiet day was but the ominous pause between two great battles: one of the father against the son, the other of the son against the father.

And he was right: the very next day the late defender attacked, and in earnest. But for certain reasons I prefer to let another relate it:

“DEAR SIR,—If you had been in my office when I received your favour of yesterday relating deft.'s ruffian-like assault, you would have seen the most ridiculous sight in nature—videlicet, an attorney in a passion. I threw professional courtesy to the winds, and sent Colls off to Clare Court to serve the writ personally. Next day, he found the deft, walking in his garden with Mr. Richard Hardie. Having learned from the servant which was his man, he stepped up and served copy of the writ in the usual way. Deft turned pale, and his knees knocked together, and Colls thinks he mistook himself for a felon, and was going to ask for mercy. But Mr. Richard stopped him, and said his attorneys were Messrs. Heathfield, in Chancery Lane; and was this the way Mr. Compton did business? serving a writ personally on a gentleman in weak health. So Colls, who can sneer in his quiet way, told him 'No,' but the invalid had declined to answer my letter, and the invalid had made a violent attack upon our client's person, avoiding his attorney, 'so, as his proceedings are summary, we meet him in kind,' says little Colls. 'Oho,' says Mr. Richard, 'your are a wit, are you? Come and have some luncheon.' This was to get him away from the weaker brother, I take it. He gave Colls an excellent luncheon, and some admirable conversation on policy and finance: and when he was going, says this agreeable host: 'Well, Mr. ——-, you have had your bellyful of chicken and Madeira; and your client shall have his bellyful of law.' And this Colls considers emphatic but coarse.—I am, yours faithfully,

“JOHN COMPTON.”

“P.S.—Colls elicited that no further attempt will be made to capture you. It seems some injudicious friend of yours has been writing to the newspapers. Pray stop that.”

On receiving this letter, Alfred bought another double pistol, loaded it, hired a body-guard of two prizefighters, and with these at his heels, repaired to 66 Pembroke Street. No enemy was near: the press had swept the street alike of keepers and police with one Briarian gesture. He found Julia and Edward in great anxiety about their father. The immediate cause was a letter from Mrs. Dodd, which Edward gave him to read; but not till he had first congratulated him heartily on the aegis of the press being thrown over him. “The 'Tiser has a leader on it,” said he.

Mrs. Dodd's letter ran thus:—

“My DEAR DEAR CHILDREN,—I am coming home to you heartbroken, without your poor father. I saw an East Indian ship go to sea, and some instinct whispered, suppose he should be on board that ship! But, foolishly, I did not utter my thoughts: because they call these instincts women's fancies. But now even Mr. Green thinks he is gone to sea; for the town has been ransacked, and no trace of him can we find. I met my cousin, Captain Bazalgette, here, and he is promoted to the Vulture frigate, and sails to-day. I have told him all our misfortunes, and he has promised to overhaul that merchant ship if he comes up with her: but I can see by the way his eye shuns mine he has no real hopes. His ship is the swifter, but he may pass her in the night. And then he is bound for New Zealand, not India. I told Reginald my poor husband's expression of face is altered by his affliction, and that he takes himself for a common sailor, and has his medal still round his neck. Our cousin is very kind, and will do all he can. God can protect my darling at sea, as He has ashore: and in His power alone have I any trust. Any further stay here is vain: my heart, too, yearns for my other treasures, and dreads lest whilst I am here, and because I am here, some evil should befall you too. Expect me soon after this letter, and let us try and comfort one another under this the heaviest of all our many troubles.—With sad heart, I am, both my darlings' loving mother and friend,

“LUCY DODD”

In the discussion of this letter Alfred betrayed a slight defect of character. He pooh-poohed the calamity: said David had now a chance, and a good one, of being cured: whereas confinement was one of the common causes of insanity even in sane persons. And he stoutly maintained that David's going to sea was a happy inspiration. Edward coloured, but deigned no reply. Julia was less patient, and though she was too loving and too womanly to tell Alfred to his face he was deceiving himself, and arguing thus indirectly to justify himself in taking her father out of the asylum at all, yet she saw it, and it imparted a certain coldness into her replies. Alfred noticed this, and became less confident and louder, and prodigiously logical.

He was still flowing on with high imperious voice, which I suppose overpowered the sound of Mrs. Dodd's foot, when she entered suddenly, pale and weary, in her travelling-dress.

Alfred stopped, and they all started to their feet.

At sight of Alfred she stood dumbfoundered a single moment; then uttered a faint shriek; and looked at him with unutterable terror.

He stood disconcerted.

Julia ran, and throwing her arms round Mrs. Dodd's neck, entreated her not to be afraid of him: he was not mad; Dr. Sampson said so. Edward confirmed her words; and then Julia poured out the story of his wrongs with great gushes of natural eloquence that might have melted a rock, and, as anticlimax is part of a true woman, ended innocently by begging her mother not to look so unkindly at him; and his ankle so sprained, and him in such pain. For the first time in her life Mrs. Dodd was deaf to her daughter's natural eloquence; it was remarkable how little her countenance changed while Julia appealed. She stood looking askant with horror at Alfred all through that gentle eloquent appeal. But nevertheless her conduct showed she had heard every word: as soon as ever her daughter's voice stopped, she seemed to dilate bodily, and moved towards Alfred pale and lowering. Yes, for once this gentle quiet lady looked terrible. She confronted Alfred, “Is this true, sir?” said she, in a low stern voice. “Are you not insane? Have you never been bereft of your reason?”

“No, Mrs. Dodd, I have not.”

“Then what have you done with my husband, sir?”

CHAPTER XLVII

IT was a thunderbolt. Alfred hung his head, and said humbly, “I did but go upstairs for one moment to wash my hands for dinner; and he was gone.”

Mrs. Dodd went on in her low stern voice, almost as if he had not answered her at all: “By what right did you assume the charge of him? Did I authorise you to take him from the place where he was safe, and under my eye?”

Alfred replied sullenly: “He was not very safe, for he was almost burnt to death. The fire liberated him, not I. After the fire I ran away from him: he followed me; and then what could I do? I made the best of it; and gave up my own desires to try and cure him. He longed for the sea: I tried to indulge him: I hoped to bring him back to you sane: but fate was against me. I am the most unfortunate of men.”

“Mr. Hardie,” said Mrs. Dodd, “what you have done was the act of a madman; and, if I believed you to be anything but a madman, the sight of you would be intolerable to me; for you have made me a widow, and my children orphans.”

With this she gave a great shudder, and retired in tears.

Alfred rose, pale and defiant. “That is her notion of justice,” said he bitterly; “pray is it yours, you two?”

“Well, since you ask my opinion,” said Edward, “I think it was rather presumptuous of you to undertake the care of my father: and, having undertaken it, you ought not to have left him a moment out of your sight.”

“Oh, that is your opinion, is it? And you, dear Julia?”

Julia made no reply, but hid her face in her hands and sighed deeply.

“I see,” said Alfred sorrowfully. “Even you are against me at heart. You judge by the event, not the motive. There is no justice in this world for me. I'm sick of life. I have no right to keep the mistress of the house out of her own room: there, I'll go, my heart is broken. No, it is not, and never shall be, by anything that breathes. Thank Heaven, I have got one friend left in this bitter world: and I'll make her the judge whether I have deserved this last injustice. I'll go to my sister.”

He jumped up and hobbled slowly across the room, while Julia and Edward sat chilled to the bone by those five little words, so simple, so natural, yet so incredible, and to the hearers so awful. They started, they shuddered, they sat petrified, staring at him, while he hobbled across the room to go to his sister.

As he opened the door to go out he heard stout Edward groan and Julia utter a low wail. He stood confounded a moment. Then he hobbled down a stair or two. But, ere he had gone far, there was a hasty whispering in the drawing-room, and Edward came after him in great agitation, and begged him to return; Julia must speak with him. He turned, and his face brightened. Edward saw that, and turned his own face away and stammered out, “Forget what I said to you. I am your friend, and always must be for her sake. No, no, I cannot go into that room with you; I'll go and comfort mamma. Hardie, old fellow, we are very unhappy, all of us. We are too unhappy to quarrel.”

These kind words soothed Alfred's sore heart. He brightened up and entered the drawing-room. He found Julia standing in the middle of it, the colour of ashes. Alfred was alarmed. “You are unwell, dearest,” he cried; “you will faint. What have I done with my ungoverned temper?” He moved towards her with a face full of concern.

“No, Alfred,” said she solemnly, “I am not the least ill. It is sorrow, deep sorrow for one I love better than all the world. Sit down beside me, my poor Alfred; and—God help me to speak to him!”

Alfred began to feel dire misgivings.

“Yes,” said she, “I love you too well to let any hand but mine wound you.” And here she took his sinewy hand with her soft palm. “I want to soften it in the telling: and ah, how can I? Oh, why can I not throw myself body and soul between you and all trouble, all sorrow?”

“My Julia,” said Alfred gravely, “something has happened to Jane.”

“Yes, Alfred. She met with a terrible accident.”

“Ah!”

“She was struck by an unfortunate man; he was not in his right mind.”

“Struck? My sister struck. What, was there no man by?”

“No. Edward nearly killed him afterwards.”

“God bless him.”

“Alfred, be patient. It was too late.”

“What, is she hurt seriously? Is she disfigured?”

“No, Alfred,” said Julia solemnly; “she is not disfigured; oh far from that.”

“Julia, you alarm me. This comes of shutting her brother up. May Heaven's eternal curse light on those who did it. My poor little sister! How you weep, Julia. My heart is lead.”

“I weep for you, darling, not for her.”

“Ah, that is how they talk when those we love are——One word! I shall never see my poor little Jenny again; shall I?”

“Yes, Alfred; if you will but follow her steps and believe in Him, who soothed her last hour, and made her face shine with joy like an angel's while we all wept around. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, he said he had but one true friend in the world. Alas it is so; you have but me now, who pity you and love you more than heart can utter; my own, my beloved, my bereaved.”

What could soften such a shock as this? It fell, and his anguish was frightful, all the more so that he ascribed the calamity to his imprisonment, and mingled curses and threats of vengeance with his bursts of grief. He spurned the consolations of religion: he said heaven was as unjust as earth, as cruel as hell.

She cried out and stopped his mouth with her hand; she almost forced him to kneel beside her, and prayed aloud for him: and when at last his agony found vent in tears, she put her innocent arms round his neck and wept with him.

Every now and then the poor fellow would almost shriek with remorse. “Oh, if I had only been kinder to her! if I had but been kinder to her!”

“You were kind to her,” said Julia softly, but firmly. “Oh, no; I was always sneering at her. And why? I knew her religion was sincere: but my little mind fixed on a few phrases she had picked up from others, and I——” He could say no more, but groaned with anguish. And let his remorse be a caution to us all. Bereaved we all must be, who live on and on: but this, bereavement's bitterest drop, we may avoid.

“Alfred,” said Julia, “do not torment yourself. We girls care little about a few sarcasms; it is the cold heart that wounds us. You loved Jane, and she knew it well, and joyed in it. You were kinder to her than you think, and so her dying thoughts were for you. It was for you she asked, and made your father send for you, and poor I hoped you would come. And, dearest, her last act was to write a few words to you, and trust them to her who she knew loved you better than heart can utter. Since it was her wish, let us try and read them together, the last words of a saint (I have never seen them), and, if they do not prove words of love, then I will let you think you were not a good brother to her you and I, and poor, poor Edward, have lost.”

He made a sad sign of assent; and Julia rose and got the enclosure. But, as Jane's last written words reappeared on the scene in a somewhat remarkable way, I will only say here, that both these poor young things tried in vain to read them, and both in turn burst out sobbing, so that they could not: so they held the paper and tried to see the words out of their streaming eyes. And these two mourners had the room to themselves till midnight; for even Mrs. Dodd's hostility respected Alfred then; and as for Julia, she was one of those who rise with the occasion: she was half wife, half angel from Heaven to her bereaved lover through all those bitter hours.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

No life was ever yet a play: I mean, an unbroken sequence of dramatic incidents. Calms will come; unfortunately for the readers, happily for the read. And I remember seeing it objected to novelists, by a young gentleman just putting his foot for the first time into “Criticism,” that the writers aforesaid suppress the small intermediate matters which in real life come by the score between each brilliant event: and so present the ordinary and the extraordinary parts of life in false proportions. Now, if this remark had been offered by way of contrast between events themselves and all mortal attempts to reproduce them upon paper or the stage, it would have been philosophical; but it was a strange error to denounce the practice as distinctive of fiction: for it happens to be the one trait the novelist and dramatist have in common with the evangelist. The Gospels skip fifteen years of the most interesting life Creation has witnessed; they relate Christ's birth in full, but hurry from His boyhood to the more stirring events of His thirtieth and subsequent years. And all the inspired histories do much the same thing. The truth is, that epics, dramas, novels, histories, chronicles, reports of trials at law, in a word, all narratives true or fictitious, except those which, true or fictitious, nobody reads, abridge the uninteresting facts as Nature never did, and dwell as Nature never did on the interesting ones.

Can nothing, however, be done to restore, in the reader's judgment, that just balance of “the sensational” and the “soporific,” which all writers, that have readers, disturb? Nothing, I think, without his own assistance. But surely something with it. And, therefore, I throw myself on the intelligence of my readers; and ask them to realise, that henceforth pages are no strict measure of time, and that to a year big with strange events, on which I have therefore dilated in this story, succeeded a year in which few brilliant things happened to the personages of this tale: in short, a year to be skimmed by chronicler or novelist, and yet (mind you) a year of three hundred and sixty-five days six hours, or thereabouts, and one in which the quiet, unobtrusive troubles of our friends' hearts, especially the female hearts, their doubts, divisions, distresses, did not remit—far from it. Now this year I propose to divide into topics, and go by logical, rather than natural, sequence of events.

Alfred came every day to see Julia, and Mrs. Dodd invariably left the room at his knock.

At last Julia proposed to Alfred not to come to the house for the present; but to accompany her on her rounds as district visitor. To see and soothe the bitter calamities of the poor had done her own heart good in its worst distress, and she desired to apply the same medicine to her beloved, who needed it: that was one thing: and then another was, that she found her own anger rising when her mother left the room at that beloved knock: and to be angry with her poor widowed, mother was a sin. “She is as unfortunate as I am happy,” thought Julia; “I have got mine back.”

Alfred assented to this arrangement with rather an ill grace. He misunderstood Julia, and thought she was sacrificing him to what he called her mother's injustice. This indeed was the interpretation any male would have been pretty sure to put on it. His soreness, however, did not go very far; because she was so kind and good to him when they were together. He used to escort her back to the door of 66: and look imploringly; but she never asked him in. He thought her hard for this. He did not see the tears that flowed for that mute look of his the moment the door was closed; tears she innocently restrained for fear the sight of them should make him as unhappy as his imploring look made her. Mauvais calcul! She should have cried right out. When we men are unhappy, we like our sweethearts to be unhappier—that consoles us.

But when this had gone on nearly a month, and no change, Alfred lost patience: so he lingered one day at the door to make a request. He asked Julia to marry him: and so put an end to this state of things.

“Marry you, child?” cried Julia, blushing like a rose with surprise and pleasure. “Oh, for shame!”

After the first thrill, she appealed to his candour whether that would not be miserably selfish of her to leave her poor mother in her present distressed condition. “Ah, Alfred, so pale, so spiritless, and inconsolable! My poor, poor mother!”

“You will have to decide between us two one day.”

“Heaven forbid!” said Julia, turning pale at the very idea. But he repeated doggedly that it must come to that, sooner or later. Then he reminded her of their solemn engagement, and put it to her whether it was a moral proceeding in her to go back from her plighted troth? What had he done to justify her in drawing back from her word? “I admit,” said he, “that I have suffered plenty of wrong for your sake: but what have I done wrong?”

Undeterred by the fear of immorality, the monotonous girl had but one reply to his multiform reasons: “This is no time for me to abandon my mother.”

“Ah, it is her you love: you don't care for me,” snapped Alfred.

“Don't I, dear Alfred?” murmured Julia.

“Forgive me! I'm a ruffian, a wretch.”

“You are my Alfred. But oh, have a little patience, dear.”

“A little patience? I have the patience of Job. But even his went at last.”

[I ought to have said they were in the passage now. The encroaching youth had gained an entrance by agitating her so at the door that she had to ask him in to hide her own blushes from the public.] She now gently reminded him how much happier they were than they had been for months. “Dear me,” said she, “I am almost happy: happier than I ought to be; could be quite so, but that I see you discontented.”

“Ah, you have so many about you that you love: I have only you.”

“And that is true, my poor Alfred.”

This softened him a little; and then she interwove her fingers together, and so put both palms softly on his shoulder (you never saw a male do that, and never will), and implored him to be patient, to be generous. “Oh,” said she, “if you knew the distress it gives me to refuse to you anything on earth, you would be generous, and not press me when my heart says 'Yes,' but my lips must say 'No.'”

This melted him altogether, and he said he would not torment her any more.

But he went away discontented with himself for having yielded: my lord did not call it “yielding,” but “being defeated.” And as he was not only very deep in love, but by nature combative, he took a lodging nearly opposite No. 66, and made hot love to her, as hot as if the attachment was just forming. Her mother could not go out but he was at the door directly: she could not go out but he was at her heels. This pleased her at first and thrilled her with the sense of sweet and hot pursuit: but by-and-by, situated as she was between him and her mother, it worried her a little at times, and made her nervous. She spoke a little sharply to him now and then. And that was new. It came from the nerves, not the heart. At last she advised him to go back to Oxford. “I shall be the ruin of your mind if we go on like this,” said she sadly.

“What, leave the field to my rivals? No, thank you.”

“What rivals, sir?” asked Julia, drawing up.

“Your mother, your brother, your curates that would come buzzing the moment I left; your sick people, who bask on your smiles and your sweet voice till I envy them: Sarah, whom you permit to brush your lovely hair, the piano you play on, the air you deign to breathe and brighten, everybody and everything that is near you; they are all my rivals; and shall I resign you to them, and leave myself desolate? I'm not such a fool.”

She smiled, and could not help feeling it was sweet to be pestered. So she said with matronly dignity, and the old Julian consistency, “You are a foolish impetuous boy. You are the plague of my life: and—the sun of my existence.” That passed off charmingly. But presently his evil genius prompted Alfred to endeavour to soften Mrs. Dodd by letter, and induce her to consent to his marriage with her daughter. He received her answer at breakfast-time. It was wonderfully polite and cold; Mrs. Dodd feigned unmixed surprise at the proposal, and said that insanity being unfortunately in her own family, and the suspicion of insanity resting on himself, such a union was not to be thought of; and therefore, notwithstanding her respect for his many good qualities, she must decline with thanks the honour he offered her. She inserted a poisoned sting by way of postscript. “When you succeed in publicly removing the impression your own relations share with me, and when my husband owes his restoration to you, instead of his destruction, of course you will receive a very different answer to your proposal—should you then think it consistent with your dignity to renew it.”

As hostile testators used to leave the disinherited one shilling, not out of a shilling's worth of kindly feeling, but that he might not be able to say his name was omitted through inadvertency, so Mrs. Dodd inserted this postscript merely to clench the nail and tantalise her enemy. It was a masterpiece of feminine spite.

She would have been wonderstruck could she have seen how Alfred received her missive.

To be sure he sat in a cold stupor of dejection for a good half hour; but at the end of that time he lifted up his head, and said quietly, “So be it. I'll get the trial over, and my sanity established, as soon as possible: and then I'll hire a yacht and hunt her husband till I find him.”

Having settled this little plan, he looked out for Julia, whose sympathy he felt in need of after such a stern blow.

She came out much later than usual that day, for to tell the truth, her mother had detained her to show her Alfred's letter, and her answer.

“Ah, mamma,” said poor Julia, “you don't love me as you did once. Poor Alfred!”

Mrs. Dodd sighed at this reproach, but said she did not deserve it. No mother in her senses would consent to such a match.

Julia bowed her head submissively and went to her duties. But when Alfred came to her open-mouthed to complain of her mother's cruelty, she stopped him at once, and asked him how he could go and write that foolish, unreasonable letter. Why had he not consulted her first? “You have subjected yourself to a rebuff,” said she angrily, “and one from which I should have saved you. Is it nothing that mamma out of pity to me connives at our meeting and spending hours together? Do you think she does no violence to her own wishes here? and is she to meet with no return?”

“What, are you against me too?” said poor Alfred.

“No, it is you who are our enemy with your unreasonable impatience.”

“I am not so cold-blooded as you are, certainly.”

“Humility and penitence would become you better than to retort on me. I love you both, and pray God on my knees to show me how to do my duty to both.”

“That is it; you are not single-hearted like me. You want to please all the world, and reconcile the irreconcilable. It won't do: you will have to choose between your mother and me at last.”

“Then of course I shall choose my mother.”

“Why?”

“Because she claims my duty as well as my love; because she is bowed down with sorrow, and needs her daughter just now more than you do; besides, you are my other self, and we must deny ourselves.”

“We have no more right to be unjust to ourselves than to anybody else; injustice is injustice.”

“Alfred, you are a high-minded Heathen, and talk Morality. Morality is a snare. What I pray to be is a Christian, as your dear sister was, and to deny myself; and you make it, oh so difficult.”

“So I suppose it will end in turning out your heathen and then taking your curate. Your mother would consent to that directly.”

“Alfred,” said Julia with dignity, “these words are harsh, and—forgive me for saying so—they are coarse. Such words would separate us two, without my mother, if I were to hear many of them; for they take the bloom off affection, and that mutual reverence, without which no gentleman and lady could be blessed in holy wedlock.”

Alfred was staggered and mortified too: they walked on in silence now.

“Alfred,” said Julia at last, “do not think me behind you in affection, but wiser, for once, and our best friend. I do think we had better see less of one another for a time, my poor Alfred.”

“And why for a time? Why not for ever?”

“If your heart draws no distinction, why not indeed?”

“So be it then: for I will be no woman's slave. There's my hand, Julia: let us part friends.”

“Thank you for that, dear Alfred: may you find some one who can love you more—than—I do.”

The words choked her. But he was stronger, because he was in a passion. He reproached her bitterly. “If I had been as weak and inconstant as you are, I might have been out of Drayton House long before I did escape. But I was faithful to my one love. I have some right to sing 'Aileen Aroon,' you have none. You are an angel of beauty and goodness; you will go to Heaven, and I shall go to the devil now for want of you; but then you have no constancy nor true fidelity: so that has parted us, and now nothing is left me but to try and hate you.”

He turned furiously on his heel.

“God bless you, go where you will,” faltered Julia.

He replied with a fierce ejaculation of despair, and dashed away.

Thus temper and misunderstanding triumphed, after so many strange and bitter trials had failed.

But alas! it is often so.