Oh, love! no habitant of earth thou art—
An
unseen seraph, we believe in thee,
A faith,
whose martyrs are the broken heart,
But never
yet hath seen, nor e’er shall see
The naked
eye, thy form, as it should be;
The mind hath
made thee, as it peopled heaven,
Even with its
own desiring phantasy,
And to a thought such
shape and image given,
As haunts, the
unquench’d soul—parch’d, wearied, wrung, and riven.
-Childe Harold.
A sudden involuntary effort of the memory had nearly cost Flora Wilton her life.
In that dreadful moment, when the house in which she had for years resided was a prey to the raging flames, when her own escape—owing to the fearful rapidity with which the fire gained ascendancy—was a question of doubt, she had remembered a packet of papers, which her father had given into her charge, with injunctions to preserve it, even at the hazard of her life.
It had been placed by herself in a spot, which though secret, was yet of easy access. To obtain it would be but the act of a minute; the fire-escape conductor had yet to return to convey her from the burning house, to the street below; and she made the attempt simultaneously with the conception of the thought.
The room she entered was densely filled with smoke. She obtained the object of her search. She remembered no more.
When again consciousness returned to her, she was in the arms of Hal, high in the air, upon a dreadful slope, the ruddy glare of the roaring flames making visible to her the frightful danger of her position. She relapsed into insensibility, and when once more she opened her eyes, she found herself in bed, the motherly face of an elderly woman bending over her, and her wrist in the hand of a white-haired medical attendant, who had himself applied the restoratives which had brought her back to life.
A thousand questions thronged to her lips, first wonder, then incoherence, then, with an awakening sense of what had happened, her desolate destitute condition burst with full force upon her, and she fell into a passionate fit of weeping.
The soft, kindly voice of the woman at her side was addressed to her in soothing tones, while the strictest injunctions fell from the lips of the doctor, forbidding speech on either side. He recommended Flora to commend herself to God, and then endeavour to sleep, under the conviction that the fearful event in which she had borne so prominent a part had not involved any loss of life.
Poor Flora! she had no words at command, no language in which to express the emotions the horrors of the night had occasioned, and she obeyed the doctor’s behest of silence simply because her tongue refused its office.
She listened to the exhortations addressed to her, and made a feeble motion to the effect that she would endeavour to comply with the wishes that had been expressed: and so she was left alone.
Where was she?
She cast her weeping eyes around; but, in the well-furnished room, recognised no object that could enlighten her upon that point. By the aid of the light of the candle, which had been left burning upon a table, she could distinguish everything in the room plainly enough, but there was nothing to tell her whose house she was within.
But she had a surmise. Women, quick at assumption, are rarely far wrong in their suppositions.
Flora, when she opened her eyes to find herself at a dizzy height above the uproar of the excited multitude assembled to witness the destruction of the dwelling by the remorseless fire, saw, too, that she was in the firm grasp of Harry Vivian. She remembered that now; and she was led to believe, therefore, that she had been conveyed by him to the house of his uncle, and that the kind and tender matron who had spoken to her such words of tenderness was his aunt.
Her lip quivered as the thought passed through her mind, and when—following the counsel of the doctor, no less than the dictates of her own pure mind—she offered up a prayer of thankfulness to the Throne of Grace for her escape, she invoked a blessing upon the head of him who had perilled so much to accomplish the work of her deliverance.
It has been said that it is seldom a woman disposes of her own heart—circumstances decide for her. One thing is certain—that she does not long remain in ignorance when her heart has been made captive. A man may for some time believe and assure himself that he only admires and esteems some very pretty girl: an accident will, however, disclose to him that he loves her. This is not the case with woman: a man upon whom she casts at first an indifferent eye may possess attractions which, gradually gaining her good will, ultimately win her affections; but her heart will no sooner be his than she becomes cognizant of the fact, and she takes her position accordingly.
Flora had been present many times when Hal Vivian had visited her father upon business. She had been irresistibly struck by his handsome face and well-formed figure, his pleasant expression of countenance, and his mild, courteous manner; but, if she had then thought of him at all, it was to consider him as an amiable young man—bearing the palm, perhaps, from every other she had as yet seen—nothing more.
Now, as she sought to close her eyes in sleep, she saw vividly his face, the bright red glow of the fire glaring upon it; she saw his glittering eye, his contracted brow, his inflated nostril, and compressed lip, the collective symbols of brave energy; she saw, too, that the contour was handsome and noble—with an almost painful distinctness she perceived that the daring effort of courage, which then so brilliantly animated his fine face, was solely made to save her from a dreadful death.
While giving him full credit for the very noblest impulse, she had not been true to her woman’s nature if she had not instinctively felt that his arduous exertions received an impetus from some favourable impression she had created upon him.
Indefinite, unacknowledged as this conception, in her agitated state, really was, it was not without its influence in composing her to slumber.
Her dead mother’s pale face seemed to look down upon her from its place in heaven, gently and placidly. Her father’s countenance, quivering with an agonised anxiety of expression, disturbed and sorrowful, oppressed her, but the features of Hal floated before her vision, appearing to grow brighter and brighter in her eyes, and to suggest a hopeful and happy future.
It was broad daylight when she awoke. She turned her pained eyes around her, and beheld at her side again that same kind, motherly face which had been the first she looked upon the night before, when recovering from insensibility. She was greeted with kind words as on the previous occasion, and was permitted this time not only to recur mentally to the sad event of the night before, but to obtain some control over her natural emotions before a question was put to her, which called upon her to utter a word. During this interval, she learned that all her surmises had been founded on a true basis; that she was indebted to Hal Vivian for an almost miraculous escape from a dreadful death, and that she had been received and sheltered beneath the roof of Mr. Harper, where she was assured that she was welcome to remain until some arrangements for her comfort and convenience could be made.
Further, Flora was given to understand that the good Samaritan before her was Mrs. Harper, who, though she had servants in the house, believed that her own ministrations to the suffering girl would be attended with more beneficial results than if she had delegated the task to others.
Mrs. Harper was a truly generous, kind-hearted woman, and her efforts to serve others had, at least, the gratifying effect of rewarding herself, for hitherto she had been so fortunate as not to misplace them, or throw them away on unworthy objects. Her doves of pity and goodwill had always brought her back an olive branch, and if they had not, it is doubtful whether she would have ceased to render those services which came so opportunely, and were so grateful to whoever needed them.
When Flora could command herself to speak, she, in warm and eloquent terms, expressed her deep and earnest gratitude for that self-sacrificing bravery which the nephew of Mrs. Harper had exhibited in the behalf of herself, and to the goodness and charity of the old lady, who, in her distress, had granted her so valuable an asylum.
“Don’t speak of it, my child,” returned Mrs. Harper. “For my part, I wish my hospitality had been afforded to you under happier circumstances. And as for Hal, Heaven bless us! I thought I should have died when I saw him crawling with you up the roof of that horrible old house over the way. I’m sure I never expected to see you come down alive, either of you, and, in truth, I don’t believe you would if it hadn’t been for those bold firemen, who, mercy on us! were up in the flames, moving about like a parcel of demons in the fiery regions in the play!”
Flora clasped her hands, and said sorrowfully—
“This perilling of life for me, and I can in no way repay it.”
“Tut, tut, my dear,” returned Mrs. Harper, “don’t think about that—these men are paid for their work; it is their duty, and they are used to it.”
“But Mr. Vivian?” suggested Flora.
“Just what I said, my dear,” observed Mrs. Harper, garrulously. “Hal is neither paid for nor used to such work, but when I said so, he closed my mouth with a kiss, and vowed that it was his duty that he had performed, and if it was to do again he would not hesitate one minute to go through all he did last night.”
“He is so noble!” said Flora, with the faintest of sighs.
“Poor fellow!” ejaculated Mrs. Harper. “He looks rather jaded this morning, and so odd with his whiskers and eyebrows singed with the fierce fire. Ah! it was a dreadful sight.”
“Dreadful!” exclaimed Flora, with a shudder.
“Yes, and he was so eager to know how you were,” continued Mrs. Harper, “Dear me, what a many questions he asked me about you. Ah! well, I told him you should yourself reply to him bye and bye.”
Flora was conscious of a rosy hue stealing into her cheek. She thought of his deep, earnest eyes, and how steadfastly they would after the late event settle upon hers, and how she would never be able to meet his, though she had at other times and recently done so without even a passing thought upon the matter.
Why was this? She sighed—perhaps she guessed.
It was some two or three days before she was enabled to grant an interview to Hal, anxious as she was for the meeting. All her clothes had been consumed by the fire, and Mrs. Harper’s dresses were “a world too wide” for her.
Flora was not affected on the point of dress. She had no unnecessary or false pride in that respect, but she had the natural regard to external appearance, which every woman, young or old, unless utterly lost, possesses; and, though she was not truly cognisant of the influence a tasteful arrangement of well-fashioned garments would have in heightening charms already of a very superior order, she had no desire to present herself to Harry Vivian disguised in a dress sufficiently capacious for Mrs. Harper, but in no degree contract-able to her dimensions.
With most generous spirit and charming willingness, the old lady put the powers of her draper and her dressmaker into active requisition, and Flora was able to quit her room in the time mentioned.
She rapidly recovered her health and a certain serenity of mind. The loss of all her father’s little property, buried among the charred ruins opposite, was an evil to be regretted, but it was a fact which no grief could disturb or obviate. A remedy was to be sought—something was to be done for herself, probably for her father too, who, an inmate of a prison, was scarcely likely to be able to help himself; and from the moment she came to recognise and comprehend her position, her mind busied itself in forming plans for the future, by which she should at least be able to support him who had no one now in the wide, wide world to look up to but herself.
She was hopeful and sanguine, but she knew very little of the world.
Old Mr. Harper knew a very great deal about it, plain and matter-of-fact as he appeared. He had for some time past determined to have a country house at Islington—in fact, had decided upon it, and was slowly having it furnished. He pushed on the work now; for, after a very grave consultation with Mrs. Harper, his wife, he decided that the poor girl, bereaved of home by fire, and of a father by the law, could not turn out into the streets. So, looking upon her as a trust confided to his care by the Almighty, he resolved to take charge of her, house, feed, and clothe her, until something was done in her behalf by such persons as had a better title to perform the good work than himself.
Thus, at the end of a week, he calculated upon entering his new house at Highbury, which he should leave in the morning and return to at night, accompanied by his nephew, and he resolved that Flora Wilton should become an inmate as well as those who constituted his family. He absolutely chuckled to think what a delightful companion she would make his wife, who, having lived so long in the old house in Clerkenwell, would find the solitude of her new home, without such society as that now ready for her, absolutely insupportable.
Mr. Harper confided to Hal the task of imparting to Flora his intentions.
“She owes you something for the service you afforded her in escaping,” said the old goldsmith, “and so if she raises any foolish objection, the prompting of a reluctance to become burdensome, or any such stuff as that—for she is just the sort of girl to show a great deal of pride, you know—you will be able to combat her arguments and reason her out of it.”
Hal’s face lighted up as though a sunbeam had made it radiant.
What happiness to have her dwelling at his home, her eyes to greet him when he returned at night, and follow him when he departed in the morning, her sweet-toned voice to welcome him and to speed him on his way, her delicious presence to smoothe down the fatigues of his daily labour, and to wile away imperceptibly hours which otherwise might drag their slow length tediously along.
Harry Vivian, overflowing with Mr. Harper’s instructions and his own emotions of delight, one morning by arrangement entered the room in which Flora was seated alone, and advanced towards her shyly and slowly.
Flora, who, as the door opened, turned her gaze upon it as though she
Knew whose gentle hand was on the latch,
Ere the door had given him to her eyes,
as he made his way into the apartment, rose up. The colour fled from her cheek, and she was seized with such a sudden and violent palpitation of the heart that she was forced back into her chair again. She trembled all over. Then her cheek flushed, and she felt once more impelled to rise and hurry towards him to grasp his hand, and pour forth a torrent of eloquent gratefulness. The emotion which she experienced was new and strange to her; her every nerve thrilled rather with a sense of pleasure rather than with any other feeling.
She was confused, dizzy. But withal, an overpowering gladness reigned within her soul that he and she were once more face to face.
Ay, they were palm to palm, too. At first without a word. What could they say? their hearts were too full for utterance; both remembered how together they had trembled on the verge of eternity, and there was a deep solemnity in the thought, which, for the moment, forbade speech.
Flora was the first—wonderful gift pertaining to woman—to recover her self-possession. In words, low toned, but earnest and heartfelt, she expressed her sense of the obligation she owed him, and though he, recovering, too, his speech, would have stayed her, she was not to be so checked, but gave utterance to all her full heart dictated.
“For my own life I am your debtor. I am sensible what I owe to you on that account,” she observed, with much feeling, “and I can never, never discharge the obligation; nay, perhaps I would not if I could, for indeed, Mr. Vivian, after the brave and noble conduct you have displayed, it affords me a gratification I have no words to describe, to know that I shall henceforward be attached to you by ties of gratitude which no adverse circumstances can ever sunder.”
Why did she suddenly turn so crimson, and look affrighted at the words which she herself had uttered? Was it that Hal’s eye danced with joy, or that he raised her hand to his lips, and pressed it with them?
Well, it matters not; her eye fell upon the ground, and her hand remained within his; she did not offer to withdraw it, though he had kissed it softly and tenderly it is true, but not without a little empressement—if ever so little.
He had not seen her frightened look, but her words had made his heart leap, and but that he had the proposition of his uncle to make, it is not impossible that he would have responded to them by confessing that her attachment, however ardent, was fully reciprocated by him. As it was, he restrained himself.
“My dear Miss Wilton,” he said, in a somewhat tremulous tone, “do not over-rate my services; I was excited by the occurrence, and acted upon an impulse.”
“A noble one, Mr. Vivian.”
“But not uncommon. Thousands would have done as I have done, had they similar opportunities, and I should have exerted myself equally had you been an entire stranger to me.”
“That I believe,” said Flora, innocently and praise-fully.
“That is to say,” continued Hal, correcting himself, for he did not quite like her to entertain that belief, “my impression is that I should. I must acknowledge, Miss Wilton, that knowing you, as I have had the honour of doing for some time, I had an additional incentive to endeavour to snatch you from an awful death. I very much congratulate myself that I succeeded, and I pray you to believe that you cannot be more overjoyed at my good fortune than myself. Thank God, you are safe, and I hope almost recovered from the fright. We will let the past go, and cast an eye upon the future.”
“I have already done so,” interposed Flora.
“I do not dispute it, my dear Miss Wilton,” returned he, speaking quietly yet firmly, as though to drown all opposition; “but my uncle has been beforehand with you. He is a man of the world, and knows much; he is a wealthy man, too, Miss Wilton, and can well afford to be kind, considerate, and generous. He is quite alive to the very embarrassing position in which the late sad disaster has placed you, and he is anxious that you should not experience its inconvenience during the interval which must elapse between any arrangements you may be able to make hereafter for your future course. He has laid out his plans, with which you are connected; he confesses that they are not without a little selfishness in them, but he is wishful that you should overlook that, and not offer any opposition to the proposal he has empowered me to make to you.”
He, then, in the most delicate words he was able to employ, laid before her his uncle’s plan, and begged her to assent to it.
To have refused, under present circumstances, would have been simply a preposterous absurdity; she had no such notion, but she felt this additional kindness most acutely.
She remained silent, because she felt that she should sob as she spoke, if she attempted to give utterance to her feelings. She turned her large eyes, suffused in tears, upon him—he was easily able to read their language.
With instinctive delicacy, desirous of sparing her further distress from painful recollections, he terminated the interview here.
In a rejoiced spirit he interpreted her look of overflowing gratitude as an acceptance of his uncle’s liberal offer, and he once more pressed her unreluctant hand, as, relieving her of any necessity for speaking, he informed her that he should convey to his kind-hearted relative her judicious decision upon the matter.
If he were not in love now, it is more than doubtful if ever he could be.
During the period which had elapsed between the rescue and the present moment, Flora had not, for an instant, forgotten her father.
The expression of dire misery which pervaded his features, when he parted from her in custody of Messrs. Jukes and Sudds, remained present to her as vividly as though it had been photographed upon her vision. It haunted her, and added greatly to the sad impression with which the recent occurrences and several afflicting events had clouded her young life in the years immediately past.
She wished so much to see her father again, to be with him, to minister to his wants and to his comforts, to both of which, she felt assured, he had no one to attend, and must, therefore, be plunged into a state of despairing wretchedness.
In accepting the offer of Mr. Harper, she saw—in no selfish or narrow-minded spirit, that she would, in her present dreadful strait, be at least provided with a home, until some means were obtained to place her where she would be no longer a burden to Mr. Harper, and she had not, therefore, hesitated thankfully to fall in with the arrangement proposed.
Yet she desired to be the companion and loving attendant upon her father in prison.
In prison!
How that dreadful word rang in her ears!
She had but a vague notion of that receptacle for vice, dishonesty, and misfortune. She had no clear perception of the difference between the debtor’s and the criminal’s place of incarceration. To her it was one huge black building, frowning and grim in its aspect without; all cells, chains, and torture within.
To some such a place she believed her father to have been borne. She shrank not to share his captivity She had a sense that the air would be foul, stifling, pestiferous, and the cell wanting the light of day. She pictured four black, mildewed walls, a straw bed, always damp with slime and dank with humid earth, a small wretched table, a pitcher of water, and a lump of dark, noisome bread. She had heard of such places. There might be some alleviation where the crime was only inability to pay, but a prison was still a prison, and hopeful as she might be that his condition was not so bad, yet she could see it in no other light.
To Mrs. Harper she revealed her wishes, but that good lady not only had a difficulty in believing in its practicability, but even in its propriety.
Mr. Harper was consulted, and he hastened to set Flora right.
“Do not suppose,” he said, “Miss Wilton, that I have overlooked the situation of your father—common humanity would have forbidden that. I made it my duty to send to him, as early as the gates of the establishment where he is detained were open, on the morning after the fire, to let him know that the sad disaster had happened, but that his child was safe in my charge. I further caused him to be informed that as soon as you were able to leave your chamber, you would go to him, and explain all that I was unable to communicate.”
“Oh, sir! let me go to him at once,” cried Flora eagerly.
“If you feel strong enough, certainly,” replied Mr. Harper.
“Oh, sir! I am quite strong enough, quite—indeed I am. I so long to see him; I have so much, so very much to say to him.”
“Be it so; Hal shall accompany you to protect you. You cannot go alone.”
“No?”
“No! it would not be well to do so. Through the agency of some unknown friend, a writ of habeas corpus has been obtained, and your father has been removed from Whitecross Street to the Queen’s Prison—all of which you do not understand. However, there he is, and the place is one of which you can have no conception. The assemblage there is large, mixed, and not scrupulous in its behaviour. You would be bewildered without some one to make inquiries for you, and be, perhaps, rudely assailed by the unreflecting or the callous and the impertinent. Yes; Hal shall go with you, and you will, believe me, find the prison somewhat different to the picture you have sketched in your imagination.”
Flora listened in silence, and acquiesced in the arrangement, not that the disagreeable part of it would be the society of Hal—nay, she would have gone with Jukes rather than not have gone at all, malicious ogre as she considered him—but she would have preferred to have gone alone.
She felt an intuitive reluctance that Hal, whom she so much esteemed, and whom, therefore, she would have wished to have seen her relatives in their best light, should visit her father in a prison, and that the visit should be paid with her.
But inexorable circumstances compelling, she set out with him, her small hand resting upon his arm, and making him feel a far wealthier and happier potentate than any monarch that ever reigned upon earth.
There’s a divinity doth shape our ends,
Rough
hew them how we will.
—Hamlet.
When they together reached the lodge, or gate, as it is called, of the Queen’s Prison, Hal and Flora gazed with surprise on the motley group waiting for the door to be unlocked, that they might enter to see those confined within.
A sallow faced, black-haired turnkey, who seemed all eyes, was what is called “on the lock,” and he “took stock” of every individual about to pass into the prison with a sharp scrutiny, and with a rapidity which told that this had been for years his daily practice.
Young and old, rich and poor, were standing there together, elbow to elbow. The shabby man, who acted as messenger—the aristocrat, moustached and habited in the latest fashion—the slatternly dressed woman, with a basket containing small purchases—and the fine lady, whose husband had settled a fortune upon her, but who was, himself, “in” for a few thousands, and whose carriage waited without the gate—the squalid child, the pampered boy, the virtuous and the vicious—were huddled together, forming no indifferent sample of the congregation gathered within the embrace of the high brick chevaux-de-frise crested walls.
The turnkey, who had been reading a newspaper with one eye and surveying his guests with the other, having found the collection of guests large enough, rose slowly up and opened the door. A crowd was waiting on the opposite side to come out.
As Hal, with his young and beautiful but shrinking companion, passed the turnkey, he inquired where he should find Mr. Wilton, and had to repeat his question before he could obtain a reply. At last, as the way was being stopped up because Hal, with the blood tingling in his forehead, refused to budge until he obtained his answer, the man said, in a low and surly tone—
“No. 5, in No. 10.”
Hal passed on and entered a long quadrangle, where he saw assembled some three or four hundred persons of all descriptions, many of them passing away their hours of confinement in the game of rackets.
An exclamation of surprise burst from both his lips and from Flora’s. Her visions of a damp, horrible dungeon were dissipated in a moment.
The day was cloudless, and as the sun streamed down among the hordes congregated together, bustling here and there, standing in groups, or engaged actively at rackets, laughing, shouting, or speaking in high tones, the scene appeared more like a community enjoying a festival day than a body of prisoners in confinement, visited by condoling friends.
Flora’s surprised eyes ran eagerly over the lively masses, thronging in groups, or moving rapidly to and fro, and she felt a great weight removed from her heart, although even her small stock of worldly knowledge told her that the aspect of the society she beheld gathered here was a shade shabbier, and a dash more slovenly than that met with “outside.”
Both she and her companion were slightly confused, but the latter, after a curious gaze at the motley multitude, turned his attention to the object with which he visited the place.
He saw upon the arched doorways leading to the prison chambers, a painted number upon the key-stone, and shrewdly guessed at the explanation of “No 5 in No. 10,” which had at first a little mystified him.
Before he could advance many paces, an experienced eye picked him out as an “outsider” and a visitor. A dingy tattered man—sallow with long confinement, and the pressure of an enduring poverty, which had, as he who gave it as a toast, said, stuck by him long after his friends had deserted him—touched Hal on the elbow.
“Stranger here, I see,” he observed, as the young man turned sharply around; “come to see a friend, I presume. If you will honour me with the name of the gentleman residing here, I will conduct you straight to his room. If you don’t find him there, I’ll search for him among the players—sure to find him—one of the conveniences of this establishment is, that the friend you call to see is never far from his hutch—‘not at home’ is not known in our vocabulary.”
Hal saw that the information was to be purchased at an arbitrary gift. He felt that a guide was unnecessary, as the information he had received from the turnkey, though not at first clear, was plain enough now. Yet there was something in the careworn aspect of the man’s features—in the wistful, anxious expression of his eye—telling of the strong hope he had now before him of obtaining a breakfast; so that Hal, who had breakfasted heartily, could not find it in his heart to disappoint his expectations; and, after a perusal of the poor fellow’s face, and a hasty glance at his threadbare attire, he said—
“I want to see a Mr. Wilton. Do you know where he is—situated?”
Hal had almost said, confined, but he arrested the word ere it left his lips.
“Wilton, Wilton,” repeated the man; “he is a new comer, eh?”
“He is,” replied Hal.
“Ah!” returned the man, “then he is either 2 in 8, or 7 in 4, or”——
“I can save you the trouble of speculating by telling you”——
“5 in 10,” interrupted the man; “that is the only other room which has been recently occupied. The lawyers—you a lawyer, sir?”
Hal laughed freely.
“No,” he answered, “I am not a lawyer.”
“Glad to hear it. The precious rastals! they have been driving a roaring trade lately. Ah, sir! what a glorious country this would have been without lawyers! No writs, no executions, no imprisonment for debt. By Jove! what a splendid state of things.”
The man shut his eyes to enjoy the ecstacy he felt even in imagining such an Utopia.
“For swindlers no doubt!” observed Hal, with a smile; “but lawyers are essentially necessary to prevent honest men being devoured by rogues.”
“Very true, sir; that is one side of the question. If they confined themselves to that line, they would be a valuable body of professionals, but unfortunately they do not. You are too young and too inexperienced to know that they are much more the rogue’s friend than the honest man’s counsellor and servant.”
Hal shook his head.
“Ah! you don’t know. I hope you may never have occasion to know. I do; God knows I do. I have been here eighteen years, sir. Never in all that time beyond the door through which you entered this pandemonium. The lawyers brought me here, and here I am likely to die.”
“But can’t you take the Benefit”——
“Of the Act. No! I am here for contempt of court—a contempt of which I am intentionally as innocent as you are—a contempt about which I knew nothing—yet the rascally lawyers clapped me in here for it, and here I have been ever since, because I am not able to purge my contempt, as they call it. Besides, if it were not for contempt that I am here, I couldn’t take the Benefit, for I am connected with a large property, and I don’t intend to let the villains have that simply because I should, like a bird, be glad to get out of my cage. However, sir, you want to see Mr. Wilton, and not to listen to my doleful history. Come along, sir, this way.”
He shuffled onward as he spoke, and Hal prepared to follow him.
As he did so, he caught sight of a man within three feet of him, fastening a stare of passionate admiration upon Flora’s sweet face.
His gaze was impudent only so far as that it was fixed and steadfast He had caught sight of her countenance and had stopped short, as though he had been transfixed suddenly to the ground.
He was about forty years of age, evidently a gentleman, probably a military man, for his carriage was remarkably erect, and his upper lip—though that nowadays is no symbol of the profession of arms—was garnished with a thin, black moustache, long at the ends, and having the appearance of being perpetually manipulated by the finger and thumb of either hand.
His complexion was very dark, bearing evidence of having for years been exposed to the tender mercies of an Indian sun. His eyes were a brilliant jet and unusually large; they flashed as he moved them; his hair, which was short, was black, as were his whiskers, which were thin and polished, curling at the edges with a uniformity that spoke of irons.
His attire was plain and dark, but that of a gentleman.
He was evidently one in no common position. Hal ran his eye scrutinisingly over him, and then turned a side glance at Flora, whose face he perceived to be flushed, and its expression that of one distressed at being thus rudely stared out of countenance.
Of course, with the instincts of his youth, he felt convulsed with a jealous rage, and burned to commit himself in some wrathful and violent way.
As Flora was nearest to the stranger, and must have touched him as she passed, Hal moved her by an easy act. Setting his shoulder firm, he increased his pace, as if to follow the messenger, and came into sharp collision with the gentleman, who had not yet removed his eyes from the face of Flora.
The effect of the concussion was to thrust him back some two or three feet, while Hal passed on apparently unmoved.
Another minute, and the latter felt his shoulder rudely seized. He wheeled round instanter. The man he had pushed out of his path was at his side, his features distorted with rage.
“Unmannerly cub!” he cried, “how dare you thrust yourself against me?”
“You are quite able to frame the explanation if you require one, and to comprehend my refusal to make any apology,” returned Hal, with calmness. “Let me also counsel you not to repeat the offence of which you have been guilty, or the consequences, as now, may not terminate in a simple collision.”
He moved on, as the excited individual exclaimed—
“But for that fair creature on your arm, I would have caned you soundly, you insolent puppy.”
Hal’s lip curled contemptuously; he refrained from replying to the threat, and left the man to resent his conduct in any shape he pleased.
They were now before the open dooorway, No. 10, and followed the messenger up the worn stone steps that looked as though water was to them a fable and grease their daily food.
By the aid of the iron banisters and Hal’s arm, Flora, with beating heart, reached the second flight, and saw the messenger who had preceded them halting in the stone corridor before a door.
Upon it was painted the figure 5.
This, then, was 5, in 10, and within the room which that painted door guarded, was her father, a prisoner.
Still there was no grim turnkey, no dripping walls, no dark dungeon—though Heaven knows the vaulted passages lighted by small, arched, iron-grated windows, looked dreary enough.
“This is the place,” said the messenger, “the room where Mr. Wilton is staying; and with better luck than I have. Ah, sir, my friends have all died, or wandered away long ago, and I, without them, or help of any kind, have been obliged to declare myself on the County. That means, sir, that I am supplied with a room and a scanty allowance of food by the authorities, but not a farthing in money, sir, not a farthing. You see before you, sir, a wretch who has not a farthing, nor any means of obtaining one, save through the charity of kind persons like yourself, who reward me with a trifle for conducting them to their friends.”
Hal put his hand into his waistcoat pocket and drew forth half-a-crown. The usual reward was about twopence. Sometimes, by the tough-skinned, a penny was doled out, or a profitless, “Thank you,” but half-a-crown—that was unhoped-for munificence. With economy, how long would it supply him with tobacco and beer?
The man’s eye glistened as a ray of light fell upon the coin. It was one of the last new dies, and was bright as from the Mint.
“What a beautiful piece of silver!” he exclaimed, with a grin of satisfaction. “Well, you are a gentleman! When you come again, sir, ask for me—my name is Maybee: everybody here knows Josh Maybee, anything I can do for you in the prison I will: out of it, you know, is not at present in my line. God bless you, sir! good day—oh! stay, you had better knock and see whether Mr. Wilton is in his room. If not, I’ll run into the ground, and hunt him up.”
Flora tapped gently at the door, but there was no response. She turned the handle of the lock gently, and opened it a little way. She looked into the apartment with a throbbing heart.
Upon a bed she saw seated her father—the very picture of desolation and woe. His head was bowed almost to his knees, and his two hands were spread open over his forehead. He seemed unconscious of everything but the intense anguish under the influence of which his body was swaying to and fro.
Flora ran into the room: she sank upon her knees at his feet: she drew gently his hands from before his eyes, and twined her arms about him with a sweet tenderness.
“Father, dear father!” she said, “look up: see, your own Flo’ has come to you—to be with you—to share your prison—to tend you, and to be a comfort to you as she was at home. Look at me—speak to me, father dear.”
With a startled cry, the old man looked up, as if suddenly roused out of a dream of gloom and horror into a paradise of sunshine.
He caught Flora’s soft cheeks between his withered hands, and gazed upon her young, bright, lovely face with an expression of passionate joy lighting up his wrinkled, pallid, grief-furrowed features.
“Flo’!” he cried, hysterically, “Flo’! Flo’! my—my Flo’, not dead, not consumed! my own Flo, not lost to me for ever! Oh, beneficent Creator! I can bear all now: my sorrows are assuaged. Come what come may, I care not, for my child is spared to me. To my heart, my darling!”
The old man drew her to his breast, and pressed her convulsively there, sobbing, as he did so, like a child. Hal, with water glittering in his eyes, turned his face from them, and looked out upon the bustling noisy groups in the racket ground beneath.
Shabby Josh Maybee made an effort to clear his throat, as if he had swallowed a cobweb, and felt that, in spite of all his economic resolutions, at least twopence of the half-crown would instantly be melted into beer.
He darted away down the stone staircase, two steps at a time, with the practised agility of one who had descended them many hundred times. As soon as Flora could disengage herself from her father’s embrace, she drew his attention to Hal, who had all the time modestly remained close to the threshold of the door. In glowing terms she related to him the part which he had played in the dreadful fire, the origin of which was a mystery. She told him of the desperate hazard he had incurred in his efforts to save her life, and she also related to him what had since occurred. Old Wilton, with tears in his eyes, thanked him:—
“Mr. Vivian,” he said feebly, “the day may be distant, but I have faith that it will come, when I shall in some degree be able to repay you for the past: not that salvation of a life can ever be meetly rewarded, but something in the direction may be achieved—some service may be needed by you, and it may be in my power to render it; it will show, at least, the spirit of my gratefulness towards you. Mr. Vivian, I have not always been the abject wretch you now see me; I may not continue to be such. Ah! my God!” he cried, putting his hands to his forehead, as though smitten with sudden agony, and then, turning to his astonished daughter, who was regarding him with an affrighted look, he said, in a tone of unutterable anguish—“everything was hopelessly, utterly destroyed in that dreadful fire.”
She clasped her hands, bowed her head, and replied, sorrowfully—
“Alas! everything!”
He groaned bitterly.
“The fire was so sudden and so violent,” observed Hal, gently, “even those who escaped had hardly time to save themselves in their night dresses—opportunity was barely afforded for that.”
The old man rose up, and paced the room, murmuring, in accents of acute misery—
“All gone, all gone, the long cherished hope of years—the one link which, through all my misery, has bound me to life. Everything has perished—my long, long sustained hopefulness is swept from me, and henceforth there is nothing left but misery and despair!”
“Father, dear father, do not give way to such gloomy fears,” cried Flora, tenderly caressing him.
“A cloud has long hung over our house; it is at its darkest now, but it will disperse and pass away.”
“Never! never!” cried the old man, hoarsely. “In that dread fire, all our expectations—all the possibilities of restoring them, are consumed; we might have been wealthy in the time to come, now we must be beggars for ever.”
“Your sorrows overpower your better reason, Mr. Wilton,” exclaimed Hal, pained to see the acute grief of the old man, and the sharp tears of anguish coursing down the cheeks of Flora, whom he seemed to love more deeply and fervently each time his eye traced the exquisite beauty of her features.
Old Wilton turned to him.
“You know not the extent of my loss, Mr. Vivian,” he said, almost sharply, “you cannot, therefore, measure the depth of my grief.” Then, addressing his daughter, he said—“Ah! my child, I am to blame that I did not confide to you the true value of that document which I charged you to guard with your life. Had I done so you would”——
“I have saved that packet,” cried Flora, eagerly interrupting him. “I returned for it at the last moment, and I should have died when I secured it, had not Mr. Vivian risked his life to follow me, and bear me through flame and smoke to a place of safety.”
She turned a soft glance upon Hal as she said this, which made his heart leap again.
Old Wilton stood speechless, staring upon her as if distraught while she spoke. As she concluded, he said, in a hoarse whisper—
“Where is it? where is it?”
She drew from beneath her mantle a small packet, and handed it to him. He clutched it with trembling fingers. He ran his eye eagerly over it, though it shook in his hands, so that to decipher a word of that which was written in endorsement upon it seemed impossible. His breath went and came in short convulsive sobs.
“It is the same!” he murmured; “it is the same! Saved!—saved! My Flo’, saved!” The last words sounded feebly, and he staggered as if he was about to fall.
Hal rushed forward and caught him in his arms. The emotion had been too much for him, and he had fallen into a swoon. Hal laid him tenderly on his bed, and unloosed his neckcloth, while Flora, procuring some water from a brown pitcher, which stood in a corner of the apartment, bathed his temples and his lips with it.
After some anxious moments, spent in the endeavour to restore him, he heaved a deep sigh, and opened his eyes.
They fell upon his daughter’s face close to his own. Her soft arm was his pillow, and her gentle hand wiped the clammy dew from his forehead.
“Are you better, dearest father?” she asked, in low tones.
“Better! better!” he ejaculated, “Well! happy! saved!”
He pressed her cheek to his, and they mingled their tears together.
Hal knew they had much to say to each other, private matters to communicate, the past to speak about, and the future to arrange. In such communion, he felt that he would only be an intruder, and he availed himself of the situation to say—
“You would gladly be alone with your father, Miss Wilton. You have much to talk over of importance which my presence would render embarrassing to both. I feel a curiosity to watch the proceedings below. I will return for you in an hour.”
He did not wait for the answer, but quitted the room, closing the door after him.
“Oh! good and generous youth,” exclaimed old Wilton, gazing after him, “would that all the world were like him!”
Flora echoed the sentiment, but in silence. Perhaps, too, she had her thoughts concerning him; or why did her full lid droop as the sound of his descending footstep gradually lost itself in the echoes of the vaulted passages.
As Harry Vivian entered the quadrangle where were assembled the “benchers” and their friends and satellites, he gazed around upon the noisy, active throng, uncertain whither to bend his steps.
He impulsively strolled towards the farther end of the quadrangle, where racket-playing was going on vigorously. As he moved on, his eye suddenly caught sight of the dark, military looking personage who had so rudely stared at Flora Wilton, and whom he had so unceremoniously ejected from his path.
He was in close conversation with old Josh Maybee, and twice or thrice during their conversation he pointed to No. 10, and Josh Maybee pointed there, too—even up at the window of No. 5, where Flora was with her father.
Not for an instant did Hal doubt that Flora was the subject of their conversation. It was so natural for him to surmise it. The moustached man had stared at her in the most marked manner—impertinently and rudely, as Hal believed. He was struck with her beauty—that was certain; he could hardly be to blame for that—how could he help it? But there the matter ought to end. Why was he making inquiries about her, as it was very evident he was? Why should he desire to know who and what she was? Perhaps he wished to see her again, and to speak to her. Nothing more probable.
According to Hal’s calculation of consequences, he thought he had better not make the attempt.
After a few minutes thus occupied, the tall, dark gentleman left Josh Maybee, and walked as if in deep thought towards the end of the quadrangle.
Josh Maybee hurried with a smiling face towards the doorway, where Hal was yet standing.
He would have passed, but Hal caught him by the arm.
“Stay,” he said, “I want a word with you, Maybee?”
“Fifty, if you please, young sir,” cried Maybee, who appeared quite excited. “You have been lucky to me to-day, sir. Just had a crown given to me.”
“I guess who gave it to you—a tall, dark man with whom you were just now speaking.”
“The very same,” returned Maybee, rubbing his hands.
“Is it fair to ask the subject of your conversation?” observed Hal, hesitatingly.
“Certainly,” replied Maybee, “he didn’t caution me to keep what was said to myself. He asked me, first of all, who was that pretty girl—and, dear heart! she has a blessed sweet face—that was with you, sir. And I told him that I didn’t know. Then he gave me a crown piece, which I put away quickly, for fear he should ask for change or to have it back again. Ah! there aint many crowns and half-crowns given away here, sir!”
“Well,” exclaimed Hal, impatiently, “that was not all that passed?”
“Lord bless you! no, sir!” returned Maybee, turning the crown over the half-crown, and the half-crown over the crown in his pocket. “No, he asked me where I conducted you to? I told him 5 in 10. He asked the name of the gentleman you went to visit? I told him ‘Wilton.’ Then he asked me if I knew anything about Mr. Wilton? and I told him no. Was he a scientific man? I said I didn’t know. Had he come up from the country? I couldn’t tell him. He asked me a good many more such questions, but I couldn’t answer him. Then he said he was himself an Indian officer, and had not long returned; he had been away a long, long time he said; but he knew a Mr. Wilton before he went away, and he wondered if he were the same. Of course I told him that I could not answer that question; and then he wished to know the room, and I pointed it out to him, that’s all, sir.”
“Did he mention his own name?” inquired Hal, thoughtfully.
“No, sir; he merely said he was an officer just returned from India, nothing more,” responded Maybee, who felt more disposed for the twopennyworth of beer he had promised himself than ever.
Hal let him go. In less than a minute Mr. Maybee was at the bar and a foaming pint was placed before him.
Hal walked up and down, reflecting upon this event.
He looked after the Indian officer, but he had disappeared, and though he remained in the quadrangle the time he had prescribed for himself to remain away from Wilton’s apartments, he saw nothing more of the man with whom he had come into collision.
The hour having passed, he ascended the stairs with a light step, and paused before the door of No. 5. He fancied he heard voices within, and knocked gently for admission. His summons was, perhaps, not heard, and he repeated it louder. In the interval he was convinced that there were voices which he did not recognise, and this lent a greater firmness to his knock.
He heard old Wilton’s voice exclaim, “Come in,” and he entered.
He was not a little surprised on advancing into the room to perceive the Indian officer, accompanied by a young, dashingly dressed fellow, seated far too near to Flora to be agreeable to him. Old Wilton was standing, and displayed an air of dignity, which Hal, certainly, had never seen him wear before.
There was a silence upon his entrance, and the Indian officer gazed upon him grimly. Old Wilton, however, with a pleasant smile, and the manner of a gentleman, motioned him to a seat, and then, turning to the officer, said—
“Proceed, sir.”
“I was about to ask of you, Mr. Wilton, whether you ever lived in Devonshire?”
“Am I, before I reply, permitted to ask your motive in questioning me? You, a stranger.”
“Unquestionably. I have just returned from India after an absence—with one short exception—-of seventeen years. One of my first objects, on arriving in England, on retiring from the service, has been to find out those old friends, dwelling in this country, who, in my early years, were kind and generous in their conduct to me. Among those I can so class, was a gentleman of the name of Wilton, who dwelt at Harleydale Manor, Devon. A chance glance at that young lady’s exquisite face awakened memories long since slumbering, and the accidental mention of your name, in connection with it, led me to seek you to ask whether you are Eustace Wilton, of Harleydale Manor?”
Old Wilton’s lip quivered; he drew himself up erect, and said—
“I am that man!”
The officer rose to his feet, and grasped his hand, shaking it with great apparent warmth.
“Time has wrought great changes in us both,” he said. “I am Colonel Mires of the Bengal army—that same Ensign Mires whom you defended at a moment when honour, reputation, family, life itself were at stake.”
Old Wilton started as the name fell upon his ears; he raised his eyes to the face of the officer, and appeared to scan every lineament. Then, uttering an exclamation of wonder, he released his hand from the grip of the colonel, and sank into his seat with an air of stupefaction.