Only a clod

Francis Tredethlyn went back to the hotel in Covent Garden with the little sheepskin-covered volume appertaining to the gentleman who called himself Robert Lesley, safely stowed in his pocket. He went straight back to the hotel, ate his simple dinner, drew the candles near him, and then, taking up a poker from the hearth, made short work of the lock under which the stranger had kept his secrets. All thought of those sunny gardens and drawing-rooms at Twickenham, the glancing river, the woody background, faded out of his mind for a time, and gave place to one settled purpose—the discovery of his missing cousin’s destroyer.

In the little volume before him Francis Tredethlyn hoped to find some further clue to that sad history. He seemed to take a savage pleasure in punishing the neat brazen lock, which he shattered with a couple of vigorous blows from the handle of the poker.

“I wonder whether, when a man’s a villain, he writes that down?” thought Mr. Tredethlyn. “I can’t fancy a scoundrel putting the truth about himself even on paper; and if the truth isn’t here, I can’t see how the book will help me. And yet there must be secrets in it, too, or he’d never have had such a lock as this. Mr. Lowther used to throw his journal about any where, and I don’t think he ever did anything that was particularly worth writing down.”

The Cornishman began to turn over the volume very slowly, looking at the pages cautiously, almost as if he expected to see some venomous creature crawl out from between the leaves. The first twenty pages of the book were filled with the records of a college life, in which brief memoranda of study were interspersed with boating slang and turf calculations. The name of a certain Rosa, of the King’s Head, appeared very often in these earlier pages; and there were little epigrams about Rosa, bespeaking the easy-going morality of a Rochester or a Sedley, rather than the pure sentiments of a Tennyson or a Longfellow. Altogether there was a reckless, swaggering manner about the book, which very well corresponded with Mrs. Burfield’s description of the prancing stranger.

But the volume had no interest for Francis Tredethlyn until he came to the twentieth page, where the name of Coltonslough figured for the first time.

“November 8.—The abomination of desolation, and just the place for a fellow that wants to read hard and be delivered from the society of his fellow-creatures! Arrived yesterday afternoon; found civil landlady, stereotyped sea-side accommodation; decrepit easy-chair, slippery horsehair cushions; no window-curtains to speak of, and a great deal of unnecessary drapery festooned about a rickety tent-bedstead; wash-hand-stand one size too large for a doll, and fifty sizes too small for any civilized being; shells and shepherdesses on the mantelpieces, and any amount of blown-glass decanters on the sideboard. Dined on chops, which were fried, soddened in their own grease. Must speak to the landlady to-morrow, and insist on gridiron. The woman who would fry chops would think nothing of human sacrifices. A girl waited upon me, a good deal younger than Rosa, and I think prettier—but we have changed all that, so I didn’t take particular notice of her. Read hard till after one, and write this before retiring to my couch,—flock, and lumpy, for I dug my knuckles into the counterpane while examining the apartment.

“November 9.—The girl, who is infinitely superior to Rosa, brought me my breakfast. More chops, not fried, but soddened in relic of the dark ages entitled Dutch oven, for I inquired; and underdone French rolls. Why, O provincial taker, always underdone? What grudge dost thou bear against thy fellow-man that thou seekest insidiously to undermine his constitution with thy clammy bread-stuffs? Girl, infinitely prettier than Rosa, cleared away breakfast. Very shy, and only answers polite inquiries in monosyllables. Asked if she was relation of woman of house. No, no relation; nursery governess to children. Comes from some remote district in the west of England; evidently objects to be precise as to locality. Heard her go down kitchen stairs with tea-things, and did not hear her reascend them. Conclude that the nursery is somewhere in the cellarage. Read hard all day. Smoke and stroll in the evening. Landlady waited on me at dinner. Dismal change, after monosyllabic girl, recalling Death’s-head at Egyptian banquets, but not crowned with flowers. More reading after dinner, brandy-and-water cold, and now to bed. Have ordered mattress to be put over flock. Sleeping on knobby surface all very well now and then, but not for a permanence. Mem: To keep my eye upon Lord Paisley’s ‘Blazing Tom,’ for the Craven meeting.

“November 12.—No diary yesterday or the day before. Read with German crib: wonderful fellows those Germans for first-class translations of classic fogies. Wrote to H. C. to put a pony on ‘Blazing Tom.’ Walked on the Esplanade in the afternoon, and made the acquaintance of monosyllabic Cornish girl, infinitely prettier than Rosa. Yes, I succeeded in breaking the ice, with considerable trouble; for I never did see anything feminine so shy and frightened as this brown-eyed Cornish girl. ‘Her eye’s dark charm,’ &c. Well, there is something of the gazelle in her eyes, something shrinking and fawn-like. I could fancy the white doe of what’s-its-name looking as she looked at me yesterday.

“I went out for my smoke and stroll rather earlier than I had intended. I saw the Cornish girl and three uncouth children in rusty leather boots wending their way across the piece of waste ground which forms the delicious prospect before my window. A nice, cool, gray afternoon, with a low yellow streak on the western horizon; a gray sea, melting into a gray sky, with only just that one golden streak glimmering along the edge of the waters; the sort of afternoon that reminds one of Tennyson’s poetry. So I lighted my cigar, and went out for a stroll. Perhaps I followed the monosyllabic girl. What do I know? as that amiable French nuisance, who is perpetually quoted in newspaper leaders, remarked. Enough that I went, found the Cornish girl, very shabbily dressed, but unutterably pretty, strolling listlessly up and down the paved walk beside the sea. They call it the sea; but, Oh for the roaring breakers of the Atlantic, or the long hoarse roar of the waves as the German Ocean surges on broad yellow sands yonder, far away in the North!

“And so, having lighted my cigar, I strolled up and down the Esplanade. Of course I began to talk to the children. If children have any use in this world—which I have been frequently inclined to doubt—surely it must be in this matter of serving as a means of introduction to pretty nursemaids. The children and I were intimate in no time; the presuming little imps became, of course, obnoxiously familiar; and, like all go-betweens, were very difficult to shake off when done with. But I got the Cornish girl to talk at last. She is not stupid, only shy; and she told me a good deal, in a pretty, simple, girlish way, about her native county, always keeping clear of all precise allusion to locality, by the bye. She is very pretty,—I had almost written lovely, but that adjective can only be applied to a high-bred beauty. She is extremely pretty, and that white doe of Rhylston (isn’t it?) look in her eyes haunted me all last night while I was reading. Yes, it was very pleasant, that stroll upon the Esplanade. I threw away my first cigar, and forgot to light another, though she would have allowed me to smoke, I dare say. It was very pleasant, that cool gray sea, and the yellow streak fading in the west, and the flat gray shore, and the generally Tennysonian aspect of everything. It was very much better than the King’s Arms, and a lot of fellows drinking no end of Bass, and chaffing Rosa. I don’t suppose this Cornish girl knows what chaff means. I almost shudder when I think of Rosa, with her big, round, black eyes, and the sticky little curls upon her forehead, and the tartan neck-ribbons, and great yellow earrings. And Oxonians have married Rosas before my time, and have deservedly gone to the dogs thereupon. But fifty thousand is your figure, my dear Robert,—fifty thousand, well sounded, and no separate-use-and-maintenance humbug either. Something in the commercial-widow line, I suppose you will have to put up with, my poor Bob; but no greedy old parent to interfere with the disposal of the money. The widow, or the orphan, if a fifty thousand pounder, is the sort of article for you, dear child.

“November 13.—She brought me my breakfast this morning—(what, is she she already? Alas, poor Rosa!)—and I got her to pour out my tea. I couldn’t detain her long: she was so very busy, she said, and seemed painfully anxious to get away. I made her talk a little. She has a nice low voice,—‘an excellent thing,’ &c.! Now Rosa had a vixenish way of speaking, that always jarred upon me, even when I was deepest down that pit into which the fair barmaid’s admirers cast themselves. She—the Cornish girl—is what people call a genteel young person, with white hands and a slim waist, and a nice way of doing her hair, and putting on her collars and cuffs. Her name is Susan Turner, by the bye; and the children call her Susy. Could anything sound more pastoral? Susy. The name of Rosa was always so painfully suggestive of nigger melodies. Another cool gray afternoon, and another low yellow line across the sky; so I went out for my smoke at the same time as yesterday. She was on the Esplanade with the children. She instructs them in arithmetic, writing, and elementary smatterings of history, geography, and grammar, after dinner, and then brings them out for a walk till tea-time, after which they ‘retire to rest,’ as the novelists have it, not without considerable rebellious scuffling in the passage and on the stairs. That is the order of the day. In the morning, I suspect, she is housemaid, parlour-maid, needlewoman, or anything else that my landlady’s necessities oblige her to be. But she is always equally neat and pretty; and if she were only provided with that trifling little matter of fifty thousand or so in the elegant simplicity of the three per cents, I should be decidedly inclined to fall in love with her. Does one ever fall in love with a fifty-thousand pounder, by the bye? I rather think not. She—Susy—was not quite so shy this afternoon, and we talked a good deal. I offered to lend her some books. I offered to lend Rosa books once, when I was in the lowest depths of spooneyism, and was unhappy about her grammar—those dreadful superfluous ‘whiches,’ and intolerable ‘as hows’!—but Rosa rejected my literature, as dry rubbish that gave her the horrors. I had lent her the ‘Bride of Lammermoor.’ My little Susy won’t turn up that innocent nose of hers at any sentimental story, I’ll be bound. I’ve found an odd volume of Byron, containing ‘Parisina,’ and the ‘Prisoner of Chillon,’ and a lot of the ‘To Thirza’ business.

“N.B.—I find that I’ve called her my little Susy! Pretty well, as I’ve been only a week in the place. Am I going down into another pit, I wonder—a deeper abyss than that into which Rosa casts her victims? Poor, pretty, fawn-eyed little darling! Take care of yourself, my dear Robert. Poor, friendless Susy! She couldn’t well be worse off under any circumstances than she is in this place, that’s one blessing: the drudge of a mistress who is herself a slave in the bondage of poverty. I went down to the kitchen yesterday to get a fresh supply of coals—these people are ready to fall down and worship me because I’m not proud, as they put it; but there are numerous orders of pride, I think,—and I saw their dinner. Such a poor bone of mutton! Poor little Susy! how she would open her eyes at sight of the Richmond and Greenwich banquets that I have seen given to persons as inferior to herself as—Hyperion to the other person. What a frightful hindrance to original composition is that abominable habit of hackneyed quotation!—the great newspaper-mill going round three-hundred-and-thirteen times a year, and only one little limited stock of quotations for all the leader-writers.

“November 16.—Sunday, and a wet day: saw Susan start for church in the morning with prayer-books and children. Strolled out with umbrella a little after twelve; found church; unpleasant new building, smelling of damp stucco, and looking like an edifice of soddened brown paper; waited in the porch, patient as that young idiot in Arthur Pendennis’s poem, until my lady came out, and conducted her home in triumph under my umbrella, while the awkward squad of children brought up the rear under cover of the maternal gingham. She was obliged to take my arm; and as the walk from the church is rather a long one, we got alarmingly intimate—when I say alarmingly intimate, I mean that she has taken to blushing when I speak to her. That’s the worst of these fawn-like girls; they will blush! And when they’re pretty, the blushes are so bewitching. And when they don’t happen to have fifty thousand or so, what is a fellow to do? Take to his heels, replies the stern moralist, who has sown his own wild oats twenty years ago, and is envious of the young scatterers of to-day. I came to Coltonslough to read; and come what may, I shall stay there till it’s time to go back to St. B. In the meantime, Susan is a brown-eyed angel—an angel who leads the life of a low-bred drudge, and for whom any possible change of circumstances must be a change for the better.

“Of course I questioned her about the sermon as we walked home. Take an interest in sermons, and women will believe in you, though you were the veriest scoundrel that ever admired Voltaire and considered the ‘Pucelle’ his chef-d’œuvre. What a little Puritan she is! She has been to church twice every Sunday ever since she can remember, she told me, and to Sunday-school, and to all kinds of examinations and cross-examinations in the vicar’s parlour. I don’t suppose she would have floundered as I did, and come to grief over some of the questions those old fogies at Oxford asked me about Biblical history. She knows all about Saul, and David, and Jonathan, and those everlasting wars with the Philistines, I dare say. She is very pretty, lovely—yes, lovely, though not high-bred. I sometimes fancy, though, that she must have decent blood in her veins. I never saw a prettier little hand upon my arm than that which rested there to-day, as I brought her home from church. If I were—something utterly different from what I am, I would get my degree, go in for a country curacy, and little Susy should be my wife. But noblesse oblige: which very elastic aphorism means, in my case, that I must marry a rich woman, and hold my own in my native county whenever the reigning potentate is polite enough to retire to the dusky shades whither all earthly sovereigns must go.

“Poor little Susan! pretty little Susan! When I am a county magnate, laying down the law at the head of my table in the great dining-room at the hall, shall I look back and think of these days, and smile at myself, remembering that I could be so foolish as to go out on a wet Sunday to escort a little nursemaid along a damp clay road?

“Read hard all the afternoon: dined on an elderly fowl flavoured with Dutch oven—a bird that must have known Coltonslough when the first bow-windowed house was a damp brickwork skeleton, grim and open to the howling of the winds. Read for some time after dinner, and let my fire out. Went downstairs to hunt up matches and firewood, and found my landlady and Susan sitting opposite to each other at a little table with one tallow-candle, reading pious compositions of an evangelical tendency. They both seemed glad to see me; so I stopped and talked to them. Susan had read the ‘Prisoner of Chillon;’ she read it last night, and cried over it ‘fearful,’ my landlady informed me; so we were able to talk about the poem, and I read two or three of the fugitive pieces aloud. I used to be rather great at the debating-club at O., and I gave them the ‘Thyrzas’ and ‘Day of my Destinys’ very strong. I could see the tears shining in Susan’s eyes before I’d finished. I used to recite poetry to Rosa sometimes, when I’d been taking too much Bass, and we stood in the moonlit porch at the King’s Arms, with the river, and the willows, and the towing-path all of a shimmer in the silvery light; but one is apt to get tired of reciting sentimental poetry to a young person who cries, ‘Lor’, how funny!’ at the close of some passionate verse. I remember thundering out that grand anathema of Tom Moore’s against the Prince Regent, ‘Go, deceiver, go!’ and my Rosa asked me naïvely what the gentleman had done that the other gentleman should use such bad language to him. No, Rosa, your strong point was not intellect. In the matter of sticky curls and large black eyes you are unsurpassed, but the sentimental element in your nature may be represented by zero.

“November 30th.—More blanks in my journal. I said we were growing alarmingly intimate; such an intimacy is alarming to a fellow who came to Coltonslough bent on devoting himself to Aristotle and Aristophanes, Æschylus and Euripides, and all that sort of people. Have been reading ‘The Clouds’ all this morning, but found a strange undercurrent of Susan Turner pervading that classic satire; and I mean to go in and win this time: those fellows at St. Boniface sha’n’t be able to laugh at my discomfiture a second time. Why were women created for the trouble and confusion of the superior sex? I thought I should be so safe at Coltonslough, remote from Rosa, the Delilah of my youth; and lo! here is another Delilah, a thousand times more dangerous—a shy, brown-eyed Omphale, for whose sake any intellectual Hercules on this earth would meekly hold the distaff. She is so pretty; and all those modest, shrinking ways have such an unspeakable fascination after a long course of Rosa’s sharp repartees, all redolent of the bar and the beer-engines. I can never dissociate Rosa from the smell of malt liquors and ardent spirits, with just a faint suspicion of lemons and stale pork-pie. But there must be something extraordinary about this girl, for her vulgar surroundings do not seem to vulgarize her. I don’t mean that she is one of nature’s duchesses, or any humbug of that sort. I have no belief in nature’s nobility, and to my mind a duchess is a person who has been cradled in Belgravia, whose long-clothes were flounced with point d’Alençon, and to whom the wrong side of Temple Bar would be as strange as the centre of Africa. I should by no means care to see my little Susy in a London drawing-room; but I can fancy her domiciled in some rustic cottage in the lake district, a patient Wordsworthian little handmaiden, waiting upon and worshipping her husband, and getting him cosy breakfasts, with silvery trout broiled to perfection, and mushrooms newly-gathered from the neighbouring plains. If I were only an embryo curate, with neither expectations nor ambitious desires, I scarcely think that I could find a better wife than this simple gazelle-eyed maiden; but— Oh, that terrible monosyllable! The history of all the world seems made up of buts and ifs.

“My afternoon stroll upon the Esplanade has grown into an established thing. Sixpence judiciously bestowed upon the children despatches those young abominations scurrying over the waste ground to an emporium which they call ‘the shop,’ whence they return after an interval, embrowned and sticky with the traces of ginger-bread and barley-sugar. In the meanwhile Susan and I are alone on that dreary Esplanade. What is it Byron says about youth, and solitude, and the sea? Well, that sort of thing is rather a dangerous combination; and I begin to think that if I want to redeem my character at St. B., I shall be obliged to take myself and my books away from Coltonslough. ‘Breathes there the wretch with soul so dead,’ who could sit in that dingy parlour, coaching himself in the classics, while one of the prettiest girls in all the British dominions is walking up and down the Esplanade opposite his window, and thinking of him? Yes, she thinks of me, and expects me, when that yellow streak begins to glimmer in the west. I have seen her head turned towards my window; and then I pitch my friend Sophocles into the remotest corner, and go out for my afternoon stroll.

“December 10.—Yes, the dismal confession must be written, or the account between R. L. and self closed for ever. I am in love—seriously, desperately, unreasonably in love—with a young person whose social status is something between that of a parlour-maid and a nursery-governess. Could she be worse off than she is now? Could any turn in the wheel of fortune leave her in a lower place than that she now occupies? Scarcely! I don’t believe in those dismal histories which the Minerva Press was wont to disseminate. Susan is just the sort of girl to fall on her feet. Those shy, sensitive creatures always know how to take care of themselves, and often do remarkably well in life. It’s your dashing, high-spirited, strong-minded girl who goes to the bad. Goodness knows I’m not a bad-hearted fellow. I can’t look at such a girl as Susan without worrying myself about her future career. There’s scarcely any sacrifice I wouldn’t make—short of the sacrifice of my own prospects—in order to insure her welfare. Yes, the little stranger, let into my dwelling unawares, has strung his bow and twanged his arrow home to my heart. I am really in love this time. I used to feel savage with those St. B. fellows when they talked nonsense to Rosa: but I think I should annihilate the man who so much as looked at this girl. Yes; I am prepared to make any sacrifice—short of the destruction of my own prospects. Your really rich man, or your penniless beggar, can afford to make a fool of himself; but I stand just in that middle distance between the golden lands of plenty and the sterile plains of poverty, in which a man must needs be peculiarly circumspect.

“17th.—I have broken the ice at last. What a little Puritan she is! And yet I know that she loves me, with the regular Haidee or Zuleika sort of devotion: would like to kneel at my feet and offer me tiresome flowers, when I was absorbed in the classic fogies, and all that sort of thing. A long interview on the Esplanade this afternoon. I beat the ground with the greatest discretion; for it would have been the easiest thing in the world to frighten her. It must be a marriage—a bonâ fide marriage, secret, of course. She won’t object to that. But upon the other point I can see she would be inflexible. Those quiet people are always obstinate. Ay di me, my pretty Susy, I fear that you and I must say Good-bye. And I am really over head and ears in that dismal pit. I am most absurdly fond of her; that’s the worst of it. Yes, we must say Good-bye. The catechisms in the rector’s parlour and the Sunday-school have done their work, and Susan Turner will be a drudge all her life rather than surrender those ridiculous prejudices which it is the fashion to implant in the minds of rustic youth. Addio, my pretty Susan. I cannot imagine anything more delightful than our quiet walks in the cold gray twilight; I cannot conceive any eyes—out of a Murillo—so beautiful as those brown orbs of yours—orbs is the proper phrase, I think, when a fellow is sentimental;—but the price demanded is too heavy. One may buy gold in too dear a market; and ten years hence, with blighted prospects, and half-a-dozen children, I might grow tired of my white doe of what’s-its-name, and fancy a blue-eyed Greuze—how wonderful that man was in his manipulations of violet-hued pupils swimming in enamelled whiteness!—instead of my Murillo.

“20th.—I began to pack my books the day before yesterday, and yet I linger. ‘Tell me, my heart, if this be love!’ Not much doubt about it, I fear. But only a day or two more, and then—and then good-bye, pretty puritanical Susan, with your Sunday-school morality, and all that innate obstinacy peculiar to quiet women. I shall have forgotten her in six weeks, I dare say. But then that consolatory idea of the future oblivion won’t lessen the present anguish of parting. We may forget all about a gigantic triple-pronged carious tooth when we turn our back upon the dentist’s torture-chamber, but the pang of extraction is none the less. I shall forget her, and some other eyes will haunt me in my sleep; but there must be a long blank interval of weariness before the Lethean waters can wash away that artless face. I have plumbed her simple mind to its uttermost depths, and have found nothing like deception or pretence. So we must part. I to go forth and do my best at opening the great oyster; she to remain here as my landlady’s drudge and companion. Poor little thing! I hope she’ll miss me when I go. I shouldn’t like to think of her enjoying a flirtation with some new lodger—a city clerk, who would wear ready-made clothes bought somewhere in Shoreditch, and smoke cheap Manillas. No, I shouldn’t like to fancy her happy when I am gone. It wouldn’t have been pleasant to the Corsair to imagine Medora flirting with mercantile mariners in his absence.

“21st.—I have packed all my books, except a few German cribs. Perhaps it was as well, for my studies had grown very desultory. How can a fellow read hard when there is a pretty girl in the case, and he has been so profound an idiot as to fall in love with her? But ‘it is written’, as the followers of the prophet observe, and I must go. I have told Susan. We had a very affecting interview yesterday. How the poor little girl cried! And I hate to see a woman cry; it’s so excruciating to the feelings of a good-hearted fellow; and the prettiest woman’s nose is apt to get just a leetle red when ‘the tears come trickling down, down, down.’ O Susan, that I should quote that familiar ballad of Lord Lovell when I write of your sorrow! But I suppose there is something of the persifleur in my nature, for I don’t often find myself very earnest about anything. And so we walked up and down the Esplanade; she crying, and I talking. I flatter myself I talked rather well. There was just that dash of excitement about the business which makes a fellow talk well. But my eloquence was all of no avail; Alfred de Musset, Byron, George Sand, Rousseau, and Thomas Moore, all combined, cannot prevail against the tenets of the Sunday-school; and so we are to part, ‘in silence and tears, half broken-hearted, to sever,’ &c., unless I were prepared to sacrifice my prospects and put the fatal noose about my neck.

“Bah! it would be too absurd, too utterly preposterous. Such things have been, and have always resulted in pretty much the same way. Your poet Shelley gets expelled from the University because he can’t keep his convictions to himself, marries a simple rustic maiden, grows tired of her, and falls in love with someone else, whereon rustic maiden drowns herself, whence unspeakable esclandre and confusion.

“January 2nd.—No, the thing cannot be done; the sacrifice would be too great. The days of the Minerva Press are past. The yellow post-chaise, the lonely country inn, the college friend who is introduced in a surplice, and acts as clergyman—alas! are not these exploded with the dark ages? Were there ever any such marriages, I wonder? or were they only figments of the romancer’s brain? At any rate, anything of that kind must be impossible nowadays. And then a man must be a consummate scoundrel who could devise such a plot. I don’t pretend to the Sunday-school species of morality; but nemo repente fuit turpissimus, as Juvenal has it. I am not so bad as that.

“5th.—She is very unhappy; and how hard it seems to leave her to this drudgery and desolation—Coltonslough, and my landlady, and my landlady’s children, all the year round! And she is just the ‘creature not too bright or good,’ &c.; the very woman of all others for a cottage in the lake districts, or a Devonshire fishing-village, or any pretty out-of-the-way haven, where a man might take his rest. And yet I must leave her here, baffled entirely by the Sunday-school precepts with which her shallow mind has been imbued. I have no time to play the Lovelace, and I don’t want such a victory as his. I have had tiresome letters from home. They will expect me to get my degree; and I am free to confess that my reading since I have been at Coltonslough has been the merest moonshine. Decidedly I must leave this place by to-night’s express. ‘Better to die by sudden shock,’ &c.: and as for Susan, it is only a natural chapter in such a girl’s history. She will break her heart, and then marry a small tradesman, who will give her a Paisley shawl and a black-silk gown to wear on Sundays.

“6th. Another day, and I am still here. I was awake all last night, thinking of all manner of possibilities, or perhaps impossibilities. The yellow post-chaise and the college friend in a surplice are obsolete absurdities; but how about a marriage before the Registrar? Is there anything so very impossible in a marriage before the Registrar, which shall not be, say, too binding? Why not a marriage before the Registrar, between eight and twelve in the forenoon, with open doors, in the presence of two witnesses, &c.? You walk into an office, very much like any other office, and you see an official very much like any other official, and there is a trifling formula, and a little signing and countersigning, and so on, and the business is done. But even about this there would be a good deal of trouble, and the college friend would still be necessary, though not in a surplice—and the witnesses—and the office. Is the game worth the candle? Am I really so desperately in love? And then, again, supposing the game worth the cost of illumination, these sort of games are so apt to be dangerous; and awkward stories crop up against one in after-life; with perhaps Chancery suits, and so forth. No, it is too much trouble. It will be better for Susan and I to shake hands, like sensible people, and say Good-bye.

“7th.—A very long talk with Susan. I told her that we must part; our roads in life lying separate, and so on. Poor child! her grief was something very terrible. We had wandered out to some lonely ground beyond the Esplanade, leaving those abominable children to disport themselves as they pleased. We sat down upon a little bank at the edge of a great ploughed field, with the grey sea before us. The poor child sobbed as if her heart would have broken. I am no deliberate Lovelace, but I suppose I have in this instance pursued the prey with something of a Mexican trapper’s intensity. I never meant to be in earnest; but have been drifted, as it were, by the chances of the situation; and people who let lodgings at dull watering-places really should not employ such pretty parlour-maids. Poor, tender-hearted little Susy! I never thought she could have grown so fond of me, or that a little sentimental spouting, and a few pretty speeches, could have gone so far. I should have been a callous wretch if I had not been touched by her grief; and I was inexpressibly touched; so much so that I flung all good resolutions to swell the general heap of paving material for the halls of Pluto, and told my Susy that there was an alternative for this miserable parting if she would—trust me—and consent to a marriage before the Registrar.

“She will trust me. I explained to her the nature of the ceremonial I proposed, and how all unnecessary publicity and the ruin of my prospects might be avoided thereby. And then the poor little thing burst out with a whole string of romantic protestations.

“Did she want me to sacrifice my prospects? Oh no, no! Did she want to be acknowledged before the world as my wife? No, a thousand times. She knew very well that she was too ignorant and humbly educated to support such an honour. She only wanted to know herself that she was my wife, my own lawful wife, united to me by the laws of heaven and earth.

“The laws of heaven and earth as administered in a Registrar’s office. I have cast prudence to the winds, and am now committed to the step which I only dreamed of as a possibility last night. I have a sort of foreboding that the business will bring me into trouble; but having gone so far now, am I to recede? And then I am really desperately in love with this Cornish girl.

“How is it to be done? These things seem so simple when one contemplates them in a dreamy reverie engendered by tobacco-smoke. It will be rather a complicated business, I fear; and the college friend, that is the grand question. Who is to be the convenient college friend? Perhaps I had better sleep upon it.

“8th.—After a world of serious consideration, I can think of no one but my brother. He’s a selfish beggar, who’d scarcely wet the tips of his fingers to save an entire ship’s crew from drowning; but he owes me money, and ought to go through fire and water to serve me. At any rate he is not troubled by any scruples or compunctions of the Sunday-school order; and then he’s a clever fellow, and on the spot. I’ll go up to town to-morrow and sound him about it.”

There was no more. The journal ended here; and Francis Tredethlyn sat staring at the last half-page, sorely puzzled as to how he was to read that broken history.

That the lines before him had been written by a heartless profligate he could scarcely doubt, little as he had been accustomed to sit in judgment on his fellow-men. But he was slow to understand the full measure of the writer’s depravity. A more subtle mind than his was required to read the hidden meaning of that carelessly-written diary. Francis Tredethlyn only understood that his cousin had fallen into the hands of a selfish worldling, who had been fascinated by her pretty face, but who set his own welfare and his own happiness before all thought of her love or sorrow.

“He meant to marry her,” thought the young man; “thank heaven for that. No matter how secret or clandestine the marriage may have been, it shall be my task to find Susan, and to make that marriage public.”

Mr. Tredethlyn went early the next day to Gray’s Inn, there to hold a solemn consultation with the chief of that firm which had transacted all Oliver Tredethlyn’s legal affairs during a period of some forty years.

To Mr. Kursdale, Francis told all that he had been able to discover of his cousin Susan’s history; and to the lawyer’s hands he confided the manuscript volume surrendered to him by Mrs. Burfield.

“You’ll be able to make more out of it than I can, Mr. Kursdale,” he said. “Heaven knows I read it carefully; but I can only understand that the man is a scoundrel, and that it was my cousin’s evil fortune to love him. I wonder how it is that a simple innocent country girl always does fall in love with a scoundrel, if he has only got a handsome face and a smooth tongue?”

The next day was Saturday, and Francis Tredethlyn’s thoughts were strangely divided between the contemplation of his cousin’s unknown wrongs, and the expectation of a day in the sunny gardens and drawing-rooms at the Cedars. Late in the evening there came a letter from Mr. Kursdale, the solicitor,—

“Dear Sir,—After a very careful perusal of the MS. volume intrusted to me by you yesterday, I regret to say that I can only come to one conclusion respecting the intentions of the writer.

“I believe that it was this person’s design to involve Miss Susan Tredethlyn in a fictitious marriage, which should be, in fact, no marriage at all.

“A marriage before the Registrar would have been as entirely valid, if duly performed, as any religious solemnization.

“I conclude, therefore, that the writer of the MS. diary contemplated a sham ceremony, in the presence of some person, falsely representing himself to be the Superintendent Registrar.

“I much fear that your cousin’s simplicity would render her likely to be the dupe of any such plot.

“Should you wish to communicate with me further on this subject, I shall be glad to wait upon you at any time you may appoint.

“I am, dear Sir, yours very obediently,

“A mock marriage!” thought Francis Tredethlyn. “Yes; I understand it all now. There was an insolence in his manner of writing of my pretty Susy that stung me to the very heart. No honest man ever wrote like that of any woman; no man would write like that of a woman whom he meant to make his wife.”

Francis Tredethlyn spent the bright summer Sunday afternoon and evening at the Cedars. Mr. Hillary generally filled his house with company on the day of rest; and hard-working commercial magnates, and lazy West-end loungers, were alike glad to spend their Sabbath amongst the flower-beds and trellised walks, under the shadow of black spreading cedars, or on the terrace by the river. The merchant’s house was only another Star-and-Garter, where the menu was always irreproachable, and where one escaped that little bugbear so common to the close of all social entertainments, and known by the vulgar name of “Bill.” Mr. Tredethlyn found the house full of strangers, and Miss Hillary very difficult of approach. He was not allowed to feel embarrassed, however; for Julia Desmond always happened to be in his neighbourhood, and he found her society as charming as on the previous occasion. She was so very handsome, and there was really something so bewildering about her dark eyes, and white teeth, and fluent talk upon every possible subject, that the young man—who had never been accustomed to the society of well-educated women—may be forgiven if he admired her. He admired her, but not as he admired Maude Hillary. No thrill of half-fearful rapture stirred his pulses as he stood by Julia’s side upon the moonlit terrace, looking down at the rippling water, darkened by the tremulous shadows of the trees; but the faintest flutter of Maude’s airy flounces stirred his soul like a burst of music.

But she was only a beautiful, far-away creature, who never could have any part in his destiny. He acknowledged this in a half-despairing way; and then resigned himself to look at her only now and then from a distance, and to behold her always surrounded by those elegant amber-whiskered loungers, whose admiration of her loveliness never made them awkward in her presence; who could approach her without suffering from a sudden determination of blood to the head; who could hover near her without trampling half-a-yard of her lace flounce to destruction under the savage tread of a clumsy foot.

“Those fellows are fit to talk to her,” he thought; “they’ve been brought up to it, I suppose: but I’m better out of her way; for even if she speaks to me, I make a fool of myself somehow, and feel as if I couldn’t answer her. I get on better with Miss Desmond; she’s so kind, and she doesn’t seem to mind my being awkward and stupid.”

Yes, Miss Desmond was very kind to the simple-hearted Cornishman. So kind is Madame Arachne to a big blundering blue-bottle fly that hovers ignorantly about the net she has spread for him. Julia had angled very patiently for the last two years in the great matrimonial fisheries, and had brought several fish to land, only to lose her hook and leave them to gasp and perish on the bank when she discovered their quality. But now, for the first time, she knew she had a prey worthy her skill and patience. She had taken good care to ascertain that Francis Tredethlyn’s thirty thousand a year was no mere figment of a gossip’s brain, and she set herself deliberately to work to win this prize so newly offered for competition in the matrimonial market. Mr. Hillary interested himself in the young man’s fortunes, and gave him some advice about the management of some of his Uncle Oliver’s numerous investments. This, of course, necessitated interviews at the merchant’s offices in Moorgate Street; and no interview ever came to a close until Francis had received hospitable Mr. Hillary’s invitation to “run down” to Twickenham.

The young man seemed always running down to the Cedars. He slept there sometimes, in a pretty chintz-curtained chamber, all rosebuds and maplewood, and from whose jasmine-festooned windows he looked out upon the river—the perpetual river, now shimmering in the moonlight, now twinkling and glancing in the sunshine, but always “a thing of beauty and a joy” for the people who dwell upon its banks.

Yes, he was always riding down to the Cedars. He had departed very little from his simple habits; but he had bought a couple of horses at Tattersall’s—such horses as a man who has been used to ride across wild moorland districts without saddle or stirrups from his earliest boyhood knows how to choose. He kept the horses at livery near his hotel, and he hired a smart young groom to attend to them, and even to ride behind him on occasions.

Miss Hillary grew accustomed to the young man’s presence, and greeted him kindly when he came; but then she had so many friends, such enthusiastic female adorers in crisp muslins, who found the millionaire’s daughter the dearest darling in the world, and were always eager to pour some new confidence into her willing ears. She had so many friends, so many admirers, that Francis Tredethlyn always found her more or less difficult of approach. And in the meanwhile there was Miss Desmond perpetually smiling upon him, and talking to him, and listening to him.

So things went on very pleasantly for Mr. Tredethlyn, until one day his eyes were very suddenly opened to a fact that well-nigh overpowered him. He was lounging on the terrace one sunny afternoon, and, for a wonder, Julia Desmond was not by his side. She had been summoned into the midst of a conclave of pretty girls holding solemn discussion with Maude Hillary on the lawn. Francis was looking down at the water, as it was his habit to do, and thinking. He was leaning against the balustrade of the terrace, all amongst the foliage which had been so bright when he had first come to the Cedars, but which was brown and withered now: he was watching the dead leaves slowly drifting in the wind, and dropping one by one into the water; and he was thinking of his cousin Susan. Nothing had yet come of his search for her. Perhaps he had left the matter too much in the hands of his lawyers, trusting to their legal acumen for the unravelment of the tangled skein. It may be that he had been a little too much at the Cedars, absorbed in the delights of a new existence. This afternoon, watching the drifting leaves upon the river, the gold and crimson tints of autumn on the woodland and on the hill-side, Francis Tredethlyn remembered how the time had slipped by him, and how little nearer he was to the discovery of Susan Tredethlyn’s fate than when he had listened to Martha’s story in the dreary Cornish grange, and had sworn to go to the end of the world in search of his cousin. There was some feeling of remorse in his mind as he thought of the past three months, the idle days in that luxurious river-side retreat, the billiard-playing and cigar-smoking, the pleasant rides to and fro in the dewy evenings, with genial gentlemanlike companions, who thought him a good fellow, and very rarely laughed at his ignorant simplicity.

He was roused from his reverie now by one of these young men, Mr. Montagu Somerset, of the War-Office, the scion of a noble house, the presumptive heir to nothing a-year, and one of the most hopelessly devoted of Maude Hillary’s adorers.

“Why, Tredethlyn,” exclaimed the young man, without removing a gigantic cigar from between his lips, “how dismally you’re staring at that water! It looks as if you were contemplating felo de se, b’ Jove. What’s the row, old boy? and how do you happen to be alone? Where’s the fiancée?”

“I—I was thinking of some family matters, not very pleasant ones,” Mr. Tredethlyn answered, simply.

“But where’s the future?”

“The what?”

“The future—Mrs. Francis Tredethlyn that is to be—the Desmond. Why, has the lovely Julia deserted her Frank? Why, you dear, simple old baby, how you blush! Is it a crime to be in love with a handsome girl? I only wish your young affections had fixed themselves on one of my five sisters—all most amiable girls, but without so much as a spoonful of what our lively neighbours call potage.”

Francis Tredethlyn stared aghast at the young official.

“Why, you don’t suppose—you don’t think that I—that Miss Desmond—that—”

“You know those silversmiths on the Boulevards—no, you don’t know Paris, by the bye. Well, dear boy, there are Parisian silversmiths who make a great display in their shop windows by means of a concatenation of table-spoons and a strong flare of gas; but I doubt if in all Paris there was ever such a notorious case of spoons as the present; and I don’t blame you, my dear Tredethlyn. If I were not Alexander, I would be the other person. If I were not madly and hopelessly in love with blue-eyed Maude, I should fling myself at the feet of dark-eyed Julia: such teeth, and such a generally regal tournure, with thirty-thousand a-year, ought to make a sensation. Frank, I congratulate you! Bless you, my boy, and be happy!” Mr. Somerset wrung his friend’s hand with effusion.

“But, my dear Somerset—but, upon my word and honour,” cried Mr. Tredethlyn, in extreme terror and perplexity, “Miss Desmond has been very kind to me; and feeling myself out of place here, I’ve been grateful for her kindness; but, as I am an honest man, not one word has ever passed between us upon any but the commonest subjects; and I am sure that neither she nor I have the slightest idea of—”

“Oh, you haven’t, eh?” asked Montagu Somerset, taking his cigar from his mouth, and staring at it in a contemplative manner, as he knocked away the ash; “never mind about Miss Desmond; you haven’t any idea of making her mistress of yourself and your property, real and personal, eh? You admire her very much, and are very grateful to her for being civil to you, and so on, but you have no idea of making her an offer of marriage?”

“No more than I have of making you such an offer.”

“Then in that case,” replied Mr. Somerset deliberately, “all I have to say is to this effect: look out for squalls; when you are coasting on a shore renowned for its quicksands, you’d better beware of any strange light you may see ahead, for the illumination generally means danger. When you meet with such a girl as the Desmond, don’t trifle with her. Of course it’s very pleasant to ride, and drive, and play billiards, and loiter through a summer month or so with a handsome girl, meaning nothing serious all the time; and it is to be done with impunity, if you are careful in your selection of the young lady. But I don’t think Julia Desmond is exactly the sort of girl you should try it on with. There are men in our place, apoplectic old fogies in starched neckcloths and no end of waistcoat, who knew the Desmond’s father; he was a south-of-Ireland man and a notorious duellist. They say that Julia inherits his eyes and teeth.”

“But you don’t mean to say that I’ve done Miss Desmond any wrong?” cried Francis. “How should I be otherwise than grateful to her when she was kind to me, and set me at my ease somehow, and made me feel a little less like an Ojibbeway Indian suddenly let loose amongst fashionable people? How should I imagine that she would think of me except as—as Miss Hillary thinks of me?” His voice grew low, and an inexpressible change came over his whole manner as he mentioned Maude Hillary’s name. “They know my history, and that this time last year I was a private in a foot regiment, with nothing higher to hope for than an extra stripe upon my sleeve.”

“Miss Hillary is one person and Miss Desmond is another,” Mr. Somerset replied, with just the least suspicion of hauteur. “The lovely Julia’s face is her fortune, you know, dear boy. You ask me if you’ve been wrong; and I tell you frankly, as a gentleman, that I think you have. A man can’t be exclusive in his attentions to a woman without other people perceiving the fact, and forming their own conclusions thereupon. I know everyone who comes here regards the matter as settled, and I heard Maude say the other day that she thought you a very good fellow—she didn’t say fellow,—and would be delighted to see her dear Julia so pleasantly established.”

“Did she say that?” cried Francis, with a dusky blush kindling under his dark skin; “did she speak well of me? And if—if she should think I have done Miss Desmond some kind of wrong by usurping her society and setting people talking about us—if she should think me mean or base—”

Montagu Somerset interrupted Mr. Tredethlyn by a long whistle.

“Oh! the wind’s in that quarter, is it?” he exclaimed; “you’re down in that list; then in that case I’ve nothing more to say. The river flows at your feet, my dear friend; and I dare say there’s a rope for sale somewhere in the villages of Twickenham or Isleworth.”

The young man sauntered away, leaving Francis with his arms folded on the balustrade, and his face darker than it had been, even when he had thought remorsefully of his missing cousin.

Miss Desmond had not made such very bad use of her time. With consummate tact she had contrived to detain Francis Tredethlyn at her side in all those pleasant walks, and drives, and boating excursions, which made up a great part of life at the Cedars; and it had seemed that the young man, of his own option, devoted himself to Colonel Desmond’s daughter. Julia had been clever enough to set the simple Cornishman entirely at his ease in her presence, and having done that, all the rest followed naturally enough. It was to Miss Desmond that Francis Tredethlyn confided his opinions upon every subject; it was to Miss Desmond that he applied for enlightenment when his ignorance fenced him about with cloud and darkness, and seemed to shut him out from the people round him. When the visitors at the Cedars were busy in the animated discussion of some new book whose name Francis had never heard, and whose contents would have been utterly beyond his untrained understanding, Julia would explain to him the nature of the volume, simplifying the subject with a dexterity that was all her own, but never humiliating her companion by any display of her own superiority. If art was the subject of discussion, Julia insidiously demonstrated to the Cornishman the merits and demerits of any given picture. So Francis Tredethlyn had been considerably benefited by three months of intimacy with a handsome and accomplished woman, and he began to feel something like a well-disposed Maori who had been admitted into familiar intercourse with a family of friendly settlers.

But all this time, in spite of handsome, dark-eyed Julia’s kindness, in spite of all the benefits to be derived from intimate relations with such agreeable people as the guests who were always to be found at Twickenham, the one charm that had held the young man constant to the Cedars,—like some spell-bound knight in a fairy story, who cannot leave an enchanted castle, though he knows that peril and ruin lurk within its walls,—the one supreme influence that had taken possession of Francis Tredethlyn had been the presence of Maude Hillary. From first to last his faith had never wavered, but his devotion had been the servile worship of an idolater, who was prepared to find his divinity hard and merciless. No thought of ever being anything nearer to Maude Hillary than he now was entered the young man’s mind. She was beautiful, amiable, loving,—for had he not seen her with her father? She was all that is most lovely and adorable in womankind: but she was not for him. In her presence his ignorance and awkwardness seemed to weigh him down to the very dust; and yet she was never unkind to him, or supercilious, or insolent. She was only indifferent: but Oh, the bitterness of her indifference! the anguish of the slavish worshipper who prostrates himself before his idol, and knows all the while that it is stone, and cannot have pity upon him! Again and again Francis Tredethlyn had determined that he would come no more to the Cedars. He would call on Mr. Hillary in the City some morning, and thank him for his hospitable kindness; and then he would buy a commission in a cavalry regiment newly ordered for Indian service.

“Why should I be always coming here?” he thought. “They’re all very good to me, the young swells. But I feel awkward amongst them still; and even if I could fall into their ways, and make myself like them, which I can’t, where would be the good? I don’t want to be a ‘swell;’ I should like to be a soldier, with a regiment of glorious fellows to call me captain; or a farmer, with half a county to ride over, and a thousand sturdy labourers to take wages from me on a Saturday night; or a merchant, like Mr. Hillary, with a small fleet of ships on the high seas. That sort of thing would be life. But to dawdle in a billiard-room; or lounge at Tattersall’s, and buy a horse one doesn’t want, out of sheer idleness, and sell him at a loss three weeks afterwards; or to go for a yachting excursion off the Isle of Wight, with men to do all the work, and nothing to do one’s self except lie on one’s back and smoke and drink pale ale all day long: I can’t fancy such a life as that. So, why should I come here any more? I can’t fall naturally into these people’s habits. I think sometimes that I was happier out yonder, brushing the captain’s clothes and talking to the convicts. What a fellow that Surly Bill was! By Jove, that man had seen life!”

Mr. Tredethlyn, lounging perpetually in the gardens by the river, conscious of his incapability of breaking the spell that bound him, thought, with some touch of envy, of the brilliant career of his late acquaintance, Surly Bill the burglar. But now the Cornishman had been all at once aroused from the pleasant torpor which had crept upon him in this modern Castle of Indolence. All that was most generous in the young man’s nature arose in revolt against the thought that he had wronged Julia Desmond. “It seems so hard that she should have set these people talking about her by her kindness to an ignorant fellow like me. It must do a girl harm to have her name bandied about by an idle young fellow like Somerset. And she stands alone in the world, too, with no father or brother to take her part. I ought to have told that fellow to hold his tongue, and I will, too, before I leave this house to-night. But this decides me, at any rate. I’ve been here too much; I’ll buy a commission and go out to India, and the lawyers must look after poor little Susy.”