Now let us shake the kaleidoscope and take a peep at another combination of our dramatis personæ at this particular phase of their destinies. Lord Bellefield is breakfasting in his private sitting-room; a bright fire blazes on the hearth; close to it has been drawn a sofa, upon which, wrapped in a dressing-gown of rich brocaded silk, lounges the tenant of the apartment; a breakfast-table stands by the sofa, on which are placed an empty coffee cup, a small flask of French brandy, and a liqueur glass, together with a plate of toast apparently scarcely touched, a cut-glass saucer containing marmalade, and a cigar-case. His lordship appears to be by no means in an amiable frame of mind. He had sat up the previous night some two hours after the ball was over, playing Ecarté with certain intimates of his own, whom he had caused to be invited to Broadhurst, during which time he had contrived to lose between £200 and,£300. Earlier in the past day he had formed a canvassing engagement with General Grant for eleven o’clock on the following morning, which had obliged him to rise sooner than was by any means agreeable to his tastes, or consonant with his usual habits; and lastly, he expected an important letter, and the post was late. While he was pondering this agglomerate (to choose a euphonious word) of small evils, the door opened noiselessly, and Antoine, the French valet, carrying a well-brushed coat as tenderly as if it had been a baby, stole on tiptoe across the room. Lord Bellefield, whose head was turned away from the door, stretched out his hand, exclaiming impatiently, “Well, where are they?”
“Milor!” returned the astonished Frenchman, who in his interest about the coat had forgotten the letters.
“The letters, fool, where are they?” reiterated his lordship angrily.
“Mille pardons, Milor; but ven I did valk myself up zie stair, I am not avare dat zie lettairs had made zemselves to arrive,” rejoined Antoine with a self-satisfied smile, as if he had said something clever.
“Did you ask?” returned his master with a frown.
“Non pas précisément—I did not exactly demand,” stammered Antoine with (this time) a deprecatory smile.
Lord Bellefield’s only reply was an oath; then, seeing the man remained, uncertain what to do, he added—
“Go down again directly, idiot, and don’t return without my letters, unless——” a menacing gesture of his clenched fist supplied the blank, and the valet quitted the room, muttering with a shrug as he closed the door, “Qu’ils sont barbares, ces Anglais; but, parbleu, like all zie savage, dey are made of gold—eh! bien, c’est égal,—he shall pay me veil for him.”
Lord Bellefield was not fated to enjoy the blessing of peace that morning, for scarcely had his servant closed the door ere some one else tapped at it. “Come in,” shouted the victimised peer, appending a wish concerning his visitor, of which the most charitable view we can take is that he was desirous of offering him a warm reception. However this may be, Charles Leicester (for he it was to whose lot his brother’s left-handed benediction had fallen) entered the room, his face reflecting the joy of his heart, and drawing a chair to the opposite side of the fire-place, seated himself thereupon, and began rubbing his hands with a degree of energy totally opposed to his usual listless indifference.
“Is there no other fire in the house that you are necessitated to come and warm your hands here, Mr. Leicester? I fancied you were aware that if there is one thing in the world which annoys me more than another, it is to be intruded on in a morning,” observed his lordship pettishly. Then, for the first time catching sight of his brother’s face, he continued, “What on earth are you looking so absurdly happy about?”
“Now, don’t growl this morning, Belle; be a little bit like a brother for once in your life. I’m come to receive your congratulations,” returned Leicester.
“Has your Jewish money-lender turned Christian and burned his books, like the magicians of old?” inquired Bellefield sarcastically.
“Something almost as wonderful,” replied his brother, “for I live in good hopes of paying him.”
“Why, you don’t mean to say my father is going to be such a confounded fool as to pay your debts?” continued Bellefield, springing up in the excitement of the moment. “I swear I’ll not allow it; he’ll burden the estates so that when I come into the title I shall be a beggar.”
“Keep yourself cool, my good brother; you might be sure I should never in my wildest moments dream of asking you to congratulate me on any good fortune which could by the most remote contingency either affect your interests or interfere with your ease and comfort,” replied Leicester, for once provoked to say a cutting thing by his brother’s intense selfishness.
“Really, Charles, I’m in no humour for foolery or impertinence,” said Lord Bellefield snappishly. “If there’s anything you wish me to know, tell it at once; if not, I am expecting important letters, and should be glad to be alone.”
“What should you say if you heard I was going to be hanged, Belle?” asked Charley.
“Wish you joy of your exalted destiny, and think things might have been worse,” was the answer.
“Apply both the wish and reflection to the present emergency,” returned Leicester, “for I’m in nearly as sad a case—I’m going to be married.”
“On the principle that what is not enough to keep one can support two, I suppose!” rejoined Lord Bellefield in a tone of the most bitter contempt. “Well, I did not think—but I wash my hands of the affair entirely. Only mind this—the property is strictly entailed, my father can do nothing without my consent, and if you expect that you’re to be supported in idleness at our expense——”
“My dear fellow, I expect nothing of the kind,” returned Charley, caressing his whiskers. “My wife and I mean to set up a cigar divan, and all we shall look for from you is your custom; we certainly do hope to make a decent living out of that.”
Lord Bellefield uttered an exclamation expressive of disgust, and then inquired abruptly—
“Well, who is the woman?”
“She isn’t exactly a woman,” returned Charley meekly; “that is, of course, speaking literally and in a physiological point of view she is a woman, but in the language of civilised society she is something more than a mere woman—for instance, by birth she is a lady. Nature has bestowed on her that somewhat unusual feminine attribute, a mind, to which art, through the medium of the various educational sciences, has added cultivation; then she has the sweetest, most lovable disposition——
“There! spare me your lovers’ raptures,” returned Lord Bellefield; “of all stale trash they are the most sickening; and tell me plainly, in five words, who she is, and what she has.”
“Laura Peyton—heiress—value unknown,” returned Leicester emphatically and concisely.
“Miss Peyton!” exclaimed Lord Bellefield in surprise. “My dear Charles,” he continued in a more cordial tone than he had yet used, “do you really mean that you’re engaged to Laura Peyton? Why, she is said to have between four and five thousand a year in the funds, besides a princely estate in———shire. Are you in earnest?”
“Never was so much so about anything before in my life,” returned Leicester. “If I don’t marry Laura Peyton, and that very soon too, I shall do something so desperate that society had better shut up shop at once, for it’s safe to be ‘uprooted from its very foundations,’ as the conservative papers say if a poor devil of a chartist happens to strop his razor before committing the ‘overt act’ by which he cuts his own throat.”
“’Pon my word,” exclaimed Lord Bellefield, as he became convinced that his brother was really in earnest, “ ’pon my word, you’ve played your cards deucedly well. I declare, if I hadn’t been booked for little Annie here, I wouldn’t have minded marrying the girl myself. Why, Charley, you’ll actually become a creditable member of society.”
As he spoke a tap was heard at the door, and Antoine made his appearance, breathless with the haste in which he had run upstairs.
“Enfin elles sont arrivées,” he exclaimed, handing the letters on a silver waiter; “vhy for zey vos si tard, zie postman, he did slip up on von vot you call—(ah! q té ils sont difficiles, ces sacrés mots Anglais)—slid? oui! oui! he did slip himself up on von slid, and tumbled into two ditches.”
Lord Bellefield seized the letters eagerly. Signing to the valet to leave the room, without heeding his lucid explanation of the delay, he selected one in a particular handwriting, and tearing it open, hastily perused the first few lines; then rubbing his hands, he exclaimed with an oath, “By ———! Beppo’s won, and I’m a clear, £12,000 in pocket. Charley, boy,” he continued, with a sudden impulse of generosity (for no one is all bad), “how much are your debts?”
“I believe about £2000 would cover them,” returned Leicester.
“Then I’ll clear you, old fellow,” replied Lord Bellefield, clapping him on the shoulder, “and you shall marry your rich bride a free man.”
“My dear Bellefield, I can’t allow it—you are too kind—I—I really don’t know how to thank you—I can’t think what’s come to everybody this morning,” cried poor Charley, as, fairly overpowered by his good fortune, he seized Lord Bellefield’s hand and wrung it warmly. At that moment those two men, each warped and hardened differently, as their dispositions differed, by the world’s evil influence, felt more as brothers should feel towards each other than they had done since they played together years ago as little children at their mother’s knee. With one the kindly feeling thus revived was never again entirely forgotten; with the other—but we will not anticipate.
“Well, what is it? for I can see by your eyes that you have something you wish to ask me, Walter,” observed Lewis, as his pupil stood before him nervously moving his feet and twisting the lash of a dog-whip round his hands.
“Only Millar wanted—that is, he didn’t want, but he said he would take me out with him to see him shoot those great pretty birds.”
“Pheasants,” suggested Lewis.
“Yes, to see him shoot pheasants,” continued Walter, “if you would let me go. Millar says,” he added, seeing that Lewis appeared doubtful, “Millar says all real gentlemen like shooting, and that I’m quite old enough to learn.”
One great change wrought in Walter since he had been under Lewis’s direction—a change from which his tutor augured the most favourable results—was the almost total disappearance of those fits of morbid despondency and indifference to external objects, at times almost amounting to unconscious imbecility, to which he had formerly been subject; it was therefore a part of Lewis’s system to encourage him to follow up vigorously any pursuit for which he evinced the slightest predilection; indeed, so effectual a means did he consider this of arousing his faculties, that he often sacrificed to it the daily routine of mechanical teaching. Having, therefore, run over in his mind the pros and cons, and decided that if he accompanied his pupil no danger could accrue, he graciously gave his consent, and having encased his feet in a stout pair of boots, and seen that Walter followed his example, both master and pupil hastened to the stable-yard to join the worthy individual with whom the expedition had originated.
Millar, who, as the reader has probably ere this divined, was none other than General Grant’s head gamekeeper, appeared anxious to be off without delay, as he had received orders to kill a certain amount of game which was required for a forthcoming dinner-party. The morning was, as we have already said, lovely, and Lewis enjoyed the brisk walk through some of the most wild and picturesque scenery the country afforded with a degree of zest at which he was himself surprised. The pheasants, however, not being endowed with such superornithological resignation as certain water-fowl, who, when required for culinary purposes were invited, as the nursery rhyme relates, to their own executions by the unalluring couplet,
“Dilly dilly dilly ducks, come and be killed!”
appeared singularly unwilling to face death at that particular epoch, and contrived accordingly by some means or other to render themselves invisible. In vain did Millar try the choicest spinnies, in vain did he scramble through impassable hedges, where gaps there were none, rendering himself a very pin-cushion for thorns; in vain did he creep along what he was pleased to term dry ditches, till from the waist downwards he looked more like a geological specimen than a leather-gaitered and corduroyed Christian; still the obdurate pheasants refused to stand fire, either present or prospective (gun or kitchen), and at the end of three hours’ hard walking through the best preserves the disconsolate gamekeeper had only succeeded in bagging a brace. At length completely disheartened, he came to anchor on a stile, and produced a flask of spirits, with the contents of which (after fruitlessly pressing Lewis and Walter to partake thereof) he proceeded to regale himself. Finding himself the better for this prescription, he shouted to a dishevelled individual yclept the beater, who for the trifling consideration of eighteenpence per diem and a meal of broken victuals, delivered himself over to the agreeable certainty of being wet to the skin, and scratched and torn through it, with the by no means remote contingency of getting accidentally shot into the bargain. The creature who appeared in answer to this summons, and who in spite of the uncomfortable description we have given of his occupation, seemed to enjoy his day’s sport excessively, was too old for a boy and too young for a man. His face was, of course, scratched and bleeding, and his elf locks, drenched with the hoar frost, now melted into a species of half-frozen gelatine, gave him a strange, unearthly appearance. His clothing, if rags which looked like the cast-off garments of an indigent scarecrow deserved the name, was so tattered and torn, that the fact of their hanging upon him at all was calculated to shake one’s faith in the Newtonian theory of gravitation, till one gained a clue to the mystery by recollecting the antagonistic principle “attraction of cohesion;” the only personal attraction, by the way (save a pair of clear grey eyes giving a shrewd expression to his face), that our friend possessed.
“Villiam,” began his superior—and here let it be remarked parenthetically that it was the custom of this excellent gamekeeper invariably to address his satellite for the time being as “Villiam,” utterly disregarding the occasional fact that the sponsors of the youth had seen fit to call him otherwise—“Villiam,” observed Mr. Millar, “you’re vet.” This being an incontrovertible certainty, evident to the meanest capacity, “Villiam” did not feel called upon to reply in words, merely shaking himself like a Newfoundland dog for the benefit of the bystanders, and glancing wistfully at the flask. “Yer vet right thro’ yer, Villiam,” resumed his employer dogmatically; “so shove a drop o’ this here down yer throat, and make spurrits and vater of yerself.”
To this proposition “Villiam” replied by stretching out his hand, grasping the flask eagerly, then tugging at a tangled lock of hair on his forehead as a salutation to the assembled company, and growling out in a hoarse, damp voice, “Here’s wushin’ hall yer ’ealths,” he proceeded to “do his spiriting,” though by no means as “gently” as the delicate Ariel was accustomed to perform that operation. Having thus qualified his cold-water system by the introduction of alcohol, the spirit moved him and he spake.
“Yer ain’t bagged much game, Master, this mornin’, I reckon?”
“Not I,” was the reply; “no man can’t shoot things as ain’t wisibul, yer know, Villiam. I can’t think vot’s got all the game.”
“They do tell I as pheasands as looks wery like ourn goes to Lunnun in t’carrier’s cart twice a veek,” observed “Villiam” in a dreamy, absent kind of manner, as if the remark were totally foreign to the subject under discussion.
“Ah! that’s vot yer hear, is it, Villiam?” returned Millar carelessly. “Hif that’s the case, I suppose (for ’tain’t likely they valks there of themselves) somebody must take ’em?”
“That is right, Master,” was the rejoinder.
“Has it hever cum across yer—take another drop of spurrits, Villiam; yer vet—has it hever cum across yer who that somebody his?” demanded Millar in an easy, careless tone of voice.
“His it true as ther General thinks o’ puttin’ hon a second hunder-keeper?” rejoined “Villiam,” replying, like an Irish echo, by another question.
“Hi’m avake, Villiam,” returned his patron with an encouraging wink, “it certingly his possibul hif I vas to tell ther General that I knowed a quick, hintelligent lad has might be wery useful in catchin poarchers—yer understand, Villiam—sich a thing might cum about.”
“In that case hi’m free to mention that hi see three coves a cummin’ hout o’ Todshole Spinney vith a sack as vosn’t haltogither hempty, atween three and four o’clock this here blessed mornin’.”
“And vot might yer be a’ doin’ yerself, hout o’ bed at that time o’ night, Villiam?” inquired Millar suspiciously.
“A lying in a dry ditch vith my heyes open,” returned the imp significantly.
“I sees!” rejoined the keeper reflectively. “Yer didn’t happen haccidentally to know any o’ they three coves, Villiam, I suppose?”
“Ther von has carried the sack worn’t haltogither unlike long Hardy, the blacksmith,” was the reply.
The worthy Mr. Millar meditated for some minutes in silence on the information thus acquired; then rousing himself with a sudden start, he observed, “Now, Villiam, hif you’ll be so hobliging has to beat along that ere ’edgerow to the right, ve’ll see hif ve can knock hover another brace o’ longtails, and ve can talk about Mr. Hardy ven ve have finished our day’s vork. There’s a precious young limb o’ vickedness,” he added, turning to Lewis as the boy got out of earshot, “he’s von hof ’em, bless yer, only he’s turned again ’em with a mercenary view hof getting a hunder-keeper’s sitivation.”
“In which rascality do you mean to allow him to succeed?” asked Lewis.
“Not by no manner o’ means—halways supposing I can pump him dry without,” was the prudent reply; and shouldering his doublebarrel the gamekeeper quitted his perch on the stile and resumed his shooting.
Whether the intelligence he had received had affected his nervous system (reserving for future discussion the more doubtful question of his possessing such an aristocratic organisation), or whether in the excitement of the moment he had allowed himself to imbibe an unusually liberal allowance of the contents of the spirit-flask, we do not pretend to decide; but certain it is that he missed consecutively two as fair shots as ever presented themselves to the gun of a sportsman, and ended by wounding, without bringing down, a young hen pheasant, despite the warning cry of “‘ware hen” from the perfidious “Villiam,” then located in a quagmire.
“Veil, I never did!” exclaimed the unfortunate perpetrator of this the greatest crime which in a gamekeeper’s opinion a sportsman can commit; “I ’aven’t done sich a think has that since I wos a boy o’ thirteen year old, and father quilted me with the dog-whip for it, and sarve me right, too. This here’s a werry snipey bit, too,” he continued dejectedly; “but hif I can’t ’it apheasand, hit’s useless to ’old up my gun hat a snipe.”
“Your ill luck in the morning has made you impatient and spoiled your shooting,” observed Lewis, wishing good-naturedly to propitiate his companion.
This speech, however, seemed to produce just a contrary effect, for Millar answered gruffly, “Perhaps, Mister, you fancies as you can do better yourself; hif so, you’re velcome to take the gun and try.”
“I’ve no objection,” replied Lewis, smiling at the very evident contempt in which, as a “Lunnuner,” his companion held him; “I’ll try a shot or two, if you like.”
“Here you are, then, sir,” was the reply, as the keeper handed him the gun; “the right barrel’s shotted for pheasands, and the left for snipes; so look hout, and if yer don’t bag Villiam, or Master Valter here, hit’ll be a mercy, I expects.”
If the unfortunate Millar hoped to console himself for his own failure by witnessing a similar mishap on the part of the young tutor, he was once more doomed to be disappointed; for scarcely had Lewis taken possession of the gun when a splendid cock-pheasant rose within distance, though farther off than either of the shots the keeper had just missed, and, ere its gaudy plumage had well caught the rays of the sun above the tops of the young plantation, fell to the ground, quivering in the agonies of death. As the smoke from the discharge cleared away, a snipe, scared alike by the report of the gun and the approach of the beater, sprang from a thick clump of alder bushes and darted away, uttering its peculiar cry.
“No use—hit’s clean out o’ shot,” exclaimed Millar, as Lewis, swift as thought, again raised the gun to his shoulder. Slightly piqued by the keeper’s contemptuous manner, he determined not to throw away a chance of vindicating his skill as a marksman, and though he felt by no means sure of success, on the “nothing venture nothing have” principle, the instant he got a clear sight of the bird he blazed away at it. Great then was his delight to perceive the snipe suddenly tower upwards and then drop to the ground, as if struck by lightning.
“Vel, if that hain’t a clever shot!” ejaculated Millar, surprised into admiration in spite of himself; “bless’d if yer ’aven’t tuk the shine hout of me properly. I thort yer vos a reg’lar green un, but I’m free to confess I couldn’t ’ave killed that ere bird at that distance ther best o’ times.”
“Nor have I, it seems,” exclaimed Lewis, as the snipe, which was only wounded, rose, flew a short distance, and dropped again.
“Hit’s dead this time. I’ll bet a quart,” observed Millar; “hit’ll never git hup no more, hif ve can honly find it.”
“I think I can,” said Lewis; “I marked the exact spot where it fell. Walter, do you stay with Millar till I come back. I should not like to lose it.”
So saying, Lewis, completely carried away by the excitement of the sport, returned the gun to its owner, and dashing the branches aside, bounded forward, and was soon hidden amongst the trees, as he forced his way through the dense underwood towards the spot where he trusted to find the snipe. With some difficulty, and after much energetic scrambling, Lewis reached the place where he had seen the bird fall, but even then it was no such easy matter to find it, nor was it till he had nearly decided that he must relinquish the search that he discovered his victim caught in a forked branch, and perfectly dead. Having secured his prize, the next object was to rejoin his companions, and this accordingly he endeavoured to accomplish without delay; but since the days of pious Æneas the task of retracing our steps, the revocare gradus, has been a work of difficulty, more especially if we have begun by taking a few in a wrong direction, and Lewis’s case proved no exception to the rule. After one or two wrong turns he became completely bewildered, and feeling sure that he should never discover his right course while surrounded by the thick underwood, he struck into the first path which presented itself, and following its windings, found himself, almost immediately, close to the hedge which separated that side of the plantation from a grass-field beyond. As he made his way towards a gap in this hedge his attention was attracted by the sound of voices, and on approaching the spot he perceived two persons engaged in earnest conversation.
They were a man and a girl, the former, who wore the dress of a gentleman, having his arm round his companion’s waist. The interview seemed, however, about to terminate, for as Lewis paused, uncertain whether or not to make himself known to the lovers (for such he conjectured them to be), the gentleman stooped, imprinted a kiss on the damsel’s brow, then saying, “Remember, you have promised!” loosed the bridle of a horse which was fastened to the branch of a tree, sprang into the saddle, and rode hastily away. Not, however, before Lewis had recognised the features of Lord Bellefield.
Surprise at this discovery was the first feeling of which Lewis was conscious, then a sudden desire seized him to ascertain who the girl could be, and without waiting to reflect on what further course it might be advisable for him to pursue, he crossed the gap, sprang over the ditch beyond, and presented himself before her. With a violent start and a slight scream at this sudden apparition, the girl raised her head, disclosing to Lewis the intelligent face and earnest eyes of the young female who had accosted him on the previous evening immediately after the affair of the glove had taken place. Lewis was the first to speak.
“I have startled you, I fear,” he began. “I quitted my companions to go in search of a snipe I had just shot, and becoming bewildered in the wood, have contrived to miss them. Hearing voices in this direction, I jumped over the hedge, hoping I should find some one who could tell me how to retrace my steps.”
“Were you in the hazel walk when you left your party, sir?” inquired the girl in a voice which faltered from various conflicting emotions.
Lewis answered in the affirmative, and she continued—
“Then, if you go straight on till you come to the corner of the field you will see a gate on your left hand; get over that and follow the road which leads into the wood, and it will bring you to your friends.”
Lewis thanked her, and then stood a moment, irresolute whether or not to allude to the parting he had just witnessed. It was no affair of his, and yet could he answer it to his conscience not to warn her against the designs which, he did not doubt, Lord Bellefield entertained against her?
“Do not think me interfering without reason,” he observed, “but I was an involuntary witness to your parting with that gentleman, and I wish to ask you if you are acquainted with his name and position?”
The girl cast down her eyes, and after a pause, murmured that she knew he was very rich.
“And his name?” urged Lewis.
“Mr. Leicester, brother to the young Lord,” she believed.
“He has told you that, has he?” returned Lewis sternly; “and did it not occur to you to inquire of the servants last night whether your wealthy admirer had revealed to you his real name?”
“No; she had never doubted that he had done so,” making game of a fellow.
“And perhaps were unwilling to call attention to your connection with him by making the inquiry?” resumed Lewis.
A bright blush proved that he had hit upon the truth; but the probing nature of his questions roused the girl’s spirit, and raising her eyes, she looked him full in the face as she in her turn inquired—“And pray, sir, who are you? and what right have you to question me in this way?”
“My name is Lewis Arundel; I reside at Broadhurst, as tutor to Sir Walter Desborough,” was the reply; “and my right to ask you these questions is the right every man possesses to do his best to counteract the designs of a heartless libertine; for such I take your friend to be, and now I will give you my reasons for thinking him so. In the first place, he has not told you his true name: he is not Lord Bellefield’s brother, as he pretends, but Lord Bellefield himself; and in the second place, at the very moment when he is making professions of affection here to you, he is engaged to be married to his cousin, the daughter of General Grant.”
“It is not true, you hate him,” exclaimed the girl with flashing eyes. “You quarrelled with him last night, and now you seek to revenge yourself by sowing dissension between him and me, but you shall not succeed. I see through your meanness, and despise you for it.”
“Girl, you are infatuated,” returned Lewis angrily, “and must reap the fruits of your obstinate folly. I spoke only for your good, and told you the simple truth. If you choose to disbelieve me, the sin will lie at your door, and not mine.”
As he spoke he turned and left her. By the time he reached the gate into the wood his conscience began to reproach him for having been too hasty. He looked back to see if the girl were still there; she had not moved from the spot where he had quitted her, but stood motionless, apparently buried in the deepest thought. Suddenly observing that his eyes were directed towards her, she started, and drawing her shawl closer around her, hurried away in an opposite direction. Lewis watched her retreating figure till it became no longer visible; then getting over the gate, he walked leisurely along the turfed road to rejoin his companions. He was no coward, far from it; but had he known that at that moment a gun-barrel covered him, levelled by the stalwart arm and keen eye of one before whose unerring aim by the broad light of day, or beneath the cold rays of the moon, hare, pheasant, or partridge fell like leaves in autumn—one who, hiding from the gaze of men, had witnessed his parting from the girl not five minutes since,—had he known the deep interest felt for her by this person, and how, his suspicions being aroused, he had watched day after day to discover the features of her clandestine suitor, but had never succeeded, till, creeping through the bushes, he had accidentally come up at the moment when Lewis, having spoken eagerly to her, turned and left the spot,—had he known the struggle between the good and evil principle in that man’s heart, a struggle on the result of which depended life or death,—had he known all this, Lewis Arundel, though a brave man, would scarcely have paced that greenwood alley with a pulse so calm, a brow so unruffled and serene.
UNPLEASANT as was the situation in which Lewis was left at the end of the last chapter, we can scarcely imagine that any of our readers, however they may be accustomed to look on the “night side of nature,” can have coolly made up their minds to the worst, and settled to their own dissatisfaction that he fell a victim to the poacher’s gun. We say we cannot imagine such a possibility; not because we have any very deep reliance on the tender-heartedness of all our fellow-creatures, seeing that this tale may fall into the hands of a poor-law guardian or a political economist; that a butcher may read it fresh from the shambles, or a barrister after defending some confessed murderer. But we feel certain, butcher or barrister, law-giver or guardian must alike perceive that, as we are writing the life and adventures of Lewis Arundel, we cannot commit manslaughter without adding thereunto suicide; or, to speak plainly, we cannot kill Lewis without docking our own tale; therefore, the utmost extent for which our most truculent reader can possibly hope must be a severe gun-shot wound, entailing a lingering illness and a shattered constitution. But even these pleasant and reasonable expectations are doomed to meet with disappointment, the fact being that almost at the moment in which “long Hardy” (for he it was) levelled his gun at Lewis’s retreating figure, his quick ear had caught a sound betokening the advance of some person through the bushes in his immediate vicinity; and neither wishing to encounter any of the gamekeeper’s satellites, nor considering the deed he had meditated exactly calculated to be performed before any, even the most select audience, the poacher slowly recovered his gun and proceeded to convey himself away, after a singular snake-like fashion of his own, reserving to himself the right of shooting his supposed enemy at some more convenient season. In the meantime Lewis walked quietly on, unconscious of the danger he had escaped, until a turn in the road brought him in sight of his companions. During the course of their homeward walk Lewis questioned the gamekeeper as to his intentions concerning the poachers to whose proceedings he had that morning gained a clue.
“Veil, yer see, Mr. Arundel,” returned Millar, in whose estimation Lewis had risen fifty per cent, since his clever shot at the snipe, “yer see, it ain’t ther fust time as this chap Hardy has give us a good deal o’ trouble: we catched him a poarchin’ about three year ago, and he wor in ————— gaol for six months at a stretch. Veil, ven he cum out, he tuk to bad courses altogether—jined ther chartists, them chaps as preaches equalerty, ’cos, being at the wery bottom of ther ladder therselves, equalerty would pull them hup and their betters down; vunce let ’em get to ther middle round, and they’d soon give up equalerty—hit would be the ‘haristogracy of talent,’ or ther ‘shu-premacy of physic-all force’ (vich means, adwisability of pitching into somebody else) vith ’em then. I hates such cant as I hates varmint, so I do.”
Having delivered himself of this opinion with much emphasis, the keeper proceeded to relieve his mind by flogging an inoffensive dog for an imaginary offence ere he continued—
“Veil, arter he jined the chartists he vent to Lunnun as a Delicate, as they calls ’em; and has they found him in wittles and drink, lodgin’ and hother parquisites, in course he worn’t in no hurry to cum back; howsomdever, I suppose at last they diskivered what I could a told ’em at furst—that he wasn’t worth his keep; and so they packed him off home agen. I ’spected vhen I heard he vas arrived vot he’d be hup to. He calls hisself a blacksmith, but he drives more shots into ’ares and pheasands than nails into ’orses’ ’oofs, you may depend.”
“And how do you propose to put a stop to his depredations?” inquired Lewis.
“Vy, I should like to catch him in the wery act—nab him vith the game upon him,” returned the keeper meditatively; “then ve could get him another six months. But he’s precious sly, and uncommon swift of foot too, though he ain’t fur hoff my age, vich shall never see five-and-forty no more.”
“I wish, Millar,” said Lewis, after a moment’s consideration, “I wish that whenever you receive information which you think likely to lead to this man’s capture, you’d send me word; there’s nothing I should like better than to lend you a hand in taking him. I might be useful to you, for I am considered a fast runner.”
“And suppose it comes to blows? Them poarching chaps is rough customers to handle sometimes,” rejoined Millar, with a cunning twinkle in his eye, as if he expected this information would alter his companion’s intentions.
“So much the more exciting,” returned Lewis eagerly; “an affray with poachers would be a real treat after such a life of inaction as I’ve been leading lately.”
As he spoke—throwing off for a moment the cold reserve which had now become habitual to him—his eyes flashed, he drew himself up to his full height, and flung back his graceful head with an air of proud defiance. The gamekeeper regarded him fixedly, and mentally compared him with, not the fighting gladiator, for Millar’s unclassical education had never rendered him acquainted with that illustrious statue, but he had once been present at a prize-fight, in which a tall, athletic youth, rejoicing in the ornithological sobriquet of “the spicy Dabchick,” proved victor, and to that dabchick did he assimilate Lewis. At length his thoughts found vent in the following ejaculation—
“Veil, Mr. Arundel, hif ther’s many more like you hup there, that blessed Lunnun can’t be as bad a place as I thought it.”
Lewis smiled. Perhaps (for, after all, he was human and under twenty-one) the evident admiration which had replaced the no less evident contempt with which the sturdy gamekeeper had regarded him earlier in their acquaintance was not without its charm; at all events, when, after another hour’s shooting, Millar went home to dinner, and Lewis and Walter returned to Broadhurst, the young tutor diminished his income to the extent of half-a-crown, and the keeper, as he pocketed the “tip,” renewed his assurance that he would send Mr. Arundel timely notice “vhenever there vas a chance of being down upon that poarching willain, Hardy.”
Charley Leicester, as he did not start for Constantinople, found himself at liberty to escort Laura Peyton and his cousin Annie to view the ruins of Monkton Priory, which in themselves were quite worth the trouble of a ride; had they, however, been even a less interesting combination of bricks and mortar than the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square (supposing such a thing possible), it would not have signified to the party who then visited them. Never were three individuals less inclined to be critical, or more thoroughly determined to be pleased with everything. The old grey ruins, frowning beneath the clear wintry sky, appeared the colour of strawberry ice to them; every object reflected the rose-tint of their happiness. As for Charley, a change had come o’er him. The indolent, fastidious man of fashion, whose spotless gloves and irreproachable boots were the envy and admiration of Bond Street, had disappeared, and in his place arose an honest, genuine, light-hearted, agreeable, sensible being, to whom nothing seemed to come amiss, and who appeared endowed with a preternatural power of diffusing his own superabundant happiness amongst all who came in contact with him. The girth of his saddle broke; they had no groom with them. “Grooms were such a bore, he would be groom,” Charley had said; consequently there were no means at hand by which the injury could be repaired.
“Well, never mind; he would get some string at the first cottage and tie it up; he was rather glad it had happened, riding without a girth was great fun.”
But Laura’s horse stumbled, and Charley, forgetting his precarious seat, dashed in the spurs, intending to spring forward to her assistance. The horse did spring forward, but the saddle turned round. Mr. Leicester was, however, fated that day to fall on his legs, literally as well as metaphorically, and beyond being splashed up to his knees by alighting on a spot where the sun had thawed the ice into a puddle, he sustained no further injury. Laura was frightened; he must not mount again till he had been able to get the girth mended.
“Very well,” returned Charley; “he would lead the horse then; it was pleasanter to walk than to ride such a cold day as that; he liked it particularly.”
So he marched sturdily through mud and mire, leading his own horse and resting his hand on the mane of the animal ridden by Laura, for the space of some five miles, laughing and talking all the time so agreeably that the young lady came to the conclusion that she had never properly appreciated his powers of conversation till that moment. Altogether, despite the broken girth and the mud and the cold, to say nothing of a slight snowstorm which overtook them ere they reached home, each member of that little party felt mentally convinced that they had never before enjoyed a ride so much in all their lives.
“Arundel, where are you?” exclaimed Leicester, putting his head into the study as he passed the door on his way to his apartment. “Can you spare me five minutes’ conversation?” he continued, as Lewis, closing a book, rose to receive him.
“Certainly,” was the reply; “pray come in.”
“I’ve been wishing to see you all day,” resumed Leicester, carefully shutting the door and glancing round the room. “Where is your charge?”
“He is with the General,” was the reply. “He likes to have him for half-an-hour every day before he goes to dress; he talks to him, and tries to instil into his mind correct notions regarding things in general, and his own future social position in particular. Walter sits still and listens, but I’m afraid he does not understand much about it.”
“No great loss either, I’ve a notion,” returned Charley irreverently. He paused, whistled a few bars of “Son Geloso,” entangled his spur in the hearthrug, extricated it with much difficulty, then turning abruptly to Lewis, he exclaimed, “Arundel, I’m no hand at making fine speeches, but recollect if ever you want a friend I owe you more than I can possibly repay you. Not that this is such a very uncommon relation for me to stand in towards people,” he added with a smile.
“Nay,” returned Lewis, “you are reversing our positions: I am your debtor for my introduction to this family, and for an amount of kindness and consideration which you must be placed, like myself, in a dependent situation fully to appreciate. But,” he added, glancing at his friend’s happy face, “I hope you have some good new’s to tell me?”
“You are right in your conjecture,” replied Leicester, “but it is mainly owing to your straightforward and sensible advice that I have gained the prize I strove for. I was within an ace of losing it, though;” and he then gave a hasty outline of his day’s adventures, with which the reader has been already made acquainted.
Lewis congratulated him warmly on his good fortune. “You see I was right when I told you Miss Peyton was not so indifferent to you as you imagined,” he said, “and that she liked you, not because you were a man of fashion, the admired of all admirers, but because she had sufficient penetration to discover that you were something more—that you possessed higher and better qualities, and were not——”
“Go on, my dear Arundel,” urged Leicester as Lewis paused, “go on. I like plain speaking when it comes from a friendly mouth.”
“The mere butterfly you strove to appear, I was going to say,” resumed Lewis; “but you will think me strangely impertinent.”
“Not at all,” returned Leicester, “it’s the truth; I can see it plainly now. I’ve taken as much trouble to make myself appear a fool as other men do to gain a reputation for wisdom. Well, it’s never too late to mend. I shall turn over a new leaf from this time forth, give up dress, restrict myself to one cigar a day, moderate my affection for pale ale, invest capital in worsted gloves and a cotton umbrella, and become a regular business character.” He paused, and drawing a chair to the fire, seated himself, and stretching out his legs, subjected his boots, which bore unmistakable traces of his pedestrian episode, to the influence of the blazing wood. Having thus made himself comfortable, he fell into a fit of musing which lasted till, after gazing vacantly at his extended legs for some moments, his features suddenly assumed an eager expression, and he exclaimed, “Confound those blockheads, Schneider & Shears: I suppose if I’ve told them once I’ve told them fifty times to give more room in the leg for riding-trousers. A horse’s back is a wide thing, and of course when you stretch your legs across it you require the trousers to fit sufficiently loosely to accommodate themselves to the position; they need not set like a couple of hop sacks either; the thing’s simple enough. I know if I’d a pair of scissors I could cut them out myself.”
Glancing at Lewis as he spoke, Leicester perceived that he was struggling, not over successfully, to preserve his gravity, and the absurdity of the thing striking him for the first time, he indulged in a hearty laugh at his own expense ere he added, “Heigh-ho! it’s not so easy to get rid of old habits as one imagines. I see it will take me longer to unpuppyise myself than I was aware of. Seriously, however, I don’t mean to continue a mere idler, living on my wife’s fortune. My father has interest with Government, and I shall ask him to push it and obtain for me some creditable appointment or other. He will have no difficulty; the Hon. Charles Leicester, husband to the rich Miss Peyton, will possess much stronger claims upon his country than Charley Leicester the portionless younger son. In this age of humbug it is easy enough to get a thing if you don’t care whether you have it or not; but if you chance to be some poor wretch, to whom the obtaining it is life or death, ten to one but you are done out of it. Poverty is the only unpardonable sin in these days; the worship of the golden calf is a species of idolatry to which Christians are prone as well as Jews. It’s rare to find a sceptic as to that religion, even amongst the most inveterate unbelievers.”
Lewis, to whom Leicester in his self-engrossment had not perceived that his remarks would apply, bit his lip and coloured; then wishing to save his companion the mortification of discovering that he had accidentally wounded his feelings, he hastened to change the conversation by observing—
“How will the magnanimous Marmaduke bear the news of your success?”
“Oh! to be sure, I was going to tell you about him when something put it out of my head,” returned Leicester. “The great De Grandeville was greater than ever on the subject—it was such fun. He came up to me after breakfast this morning, and catching hold of my button, began: ‘Ar—Mr. Leicester—excuse—ar—won’t detain you five minutes, but—ar—you see in regard to—ar—the matter we conversed on yesterday, when you were good enough to give me the benefit of your opinion concerning a certain proposed alliance, if I may call your attention once more to the subject; you will perceive that—ar—the affair has assumed a very different aspect—ar—indeed so completely different that I feel confident you will agree with me in considering the—ar—in fact the arrangement no longer desirable.’
“I told him I was quite prepared to think as he did on this point, and begged to know in what the mysterious impediment consisted. ‘Well, sir—ar—I don’t say it—ar—by way of a boast—ar—such things are quite out of my line, but you must have yourself perceived the very marked encouragement which my advances met with yesterday evening—ar—in fact the game was—ar—in my own hands!’ I succeeded in repressing a strong desire to kick him, and he continued with bland dignity: ‘Ar—finding that this was the case, I felt that, as a man of honour, I was bound—ar—to make up my mind definitely as to my future course, and had—ar—all but resolved to acquaint the young lady with the brilliant, that is—ar—in many points unexceptionable position which awaited her, when fortunately—I might say providentially—it occurred to me to open a letter I had that evening received from my friend in the Herald’s College. Imagine my horror to learn that her actual father, the immediately previous Peyton himself, had—ar—horresco referais, as Pliny has it— ’pon my word it quite upset me!’
“‘This dreadful Papa, had he murdered somebody?’ inquired I.
“‘No, sir,’ was the answer; ‘Lord Ferrers and other men with unexceptionable pedigrees have committed that crime. There is nothing necessarily vulgar about murder; the case was far worse. This intolerable proximate ancestor, who has not rested in his dishonoured grave above half-a-dozen years, was not only guilty of belonging to an intensely respectable firm in Liverpool, but had actually been insane enough to allow his name to be entered as sleeping partner in a large retail house on Ludgate Hill! Fancy a De Grandeville marrying the daughter of ‘Plumpstern & Peyton’, dealers in cotton goods!”—’pon my word, sir, it took away my breath to think of the narrow escape I’d had!’ ‘And the young lady?’ inquired I.
“‘Ar—of course it will be—ar—disappointment, as I’ve no doubt she considered—ar—that she’d made her book cleverly and stood to win, as the betting men say; but—ar—she soon had tact enough to perceive that the grapes were sour—ar—took that tone immediately,—clever girl, sir, very—ar—I shouldn’t wonder if she were to give out that she had discouraged my attentions—ar—in fact, virtually refused me—ar—I shall not contradict her, I owe her that—ar—with the exception of yourself, Mr. Leicester, her secret will be perfectly safe in my keeping.’ It was now my turn; so drawing myself up as stiffly as old Grant himself, I said, ‘Confidence begets confidence, Mr. De Grandeville; so in return for your candour allow me to inform you that Miss Peyton, doubtless driven to despair by your desertion, has done me the honour to accept me as your substitute! One word more,’ I continued, as, completely taken aback, he flushed crimson and began stammering out apologetical ejaculations, ‘I have listened in silence to your account of the transaction. I confess I have my own opinion about the matter, but should you adhere to your intention of preserving a strict secrecy in regard to the affair, I shall do so likewise; if not, I may feel called on to publish a somewhat different version of these love passages—one which will scarcely prove so agreeable to your self-esteem; unless, indeed,’ I added, seeing that he was about to bluster, ‘you prefer settling the business in a shorter way; in which case I shall be quite at your service.’ So saying I raised my hat, bowed, and turning on my heel, left him to his meditations.”
“Which must have been of a singularly unsatisfactory nature, I should imagine,” returned Lewis, laughing. “But there is no chance of your fighting, I hope?”
“Not the slightest, I expect,” replied Leicester. “De Grandeville, to do him justice, is no coward, but he will have sense enough to see that he can gain no éclât by giving the affair publicity, and will remain quiet for his own sake. Luckily, I’m not of a quarrelsome temperament, or I should have horse-whipped him, or at least tried at it, when he was talking about Laura.”
“It was a temptation which in your place I could not have resisted,” rejoined Lewis.
“Ah, it’s easy to be magnanimous when one is happy,” returned Leicester; “besides, I really was rather sorry for the poor devil, for, as I dare say you’ve guessed long ago, it is clear Laura refused him last night—in fact she as good as told me so.”
“Perhaps it may benefit him,” remarked Lewis. “His vanity was too plethoric, and a little judicious lowering may conduce to the general health of his moral system.”
“I’m afraid it’s a case of too long standing,” replied Leicester. “Such a lamentable instance of egotism on the brain is not so easily to be cured; however, he’s had a pretty strong dose this time, I must confess. And now, seeing that my boots have been wet through for the last three hours, the sooner I get rid of them the better.” So saying, Charley Leicester took himself off, preparatory to performing the same operation on his perfidious boots.