:^:^^d:i^m €^>^ ^' , :-'«%*' EX-LIBRIS F. E. Din SHAW p L I B RARY OF THL UN IVERSITY Of ILLINOIS B4Gth Y.I /^ THIS SON OF VULCAN, BT THE AUTHORS OF "ready -MONEY MORTIBOY," "MY UTTLE GIRL," WITH HARP AND CROWN," "THE CASE OP MR. LrCRAPT," "the GOLDEN BCTTERFLY," ETC., ETC. IN TEBEE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: SAMPSON LOW, MAESTON, SEARLE & RIVINGTON, CBOWN BUILDINGS, 188, FLEET STREET. 1876. (All rights reserved.) LONDON : PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFOKD STKEET AND CHARING CROSS. V.I ^ PREFACE Ix sending out this, the fifth of our series of novels, we are anxious to say a few words of preface. The works ; which precede " This Son of Vulcan " have been repro- • duced, principally by pu'ates, in America, Canada, \ India, Victoria, and South Australia. As regards j America, we desire to express our sense of the honour- 'iable treatment we have received from Messrs. Osgood, 'of Boston ; and if we only considered the advantage of widening indefinitely our circle of readers, wo ought , ,also to express our gratitude for the treatment we hav©^ • received from our friends the pirates. The sale of a three-volume novel thus does not represent the circu- lation, because the readers of all those papers which have done us the honour of unlicensed reproduction are like the midges of the river-side for multitude. But L there are other considerations besides notoriety. And, ^th these before us, we are not gi-ateful. It was rhaps kind in one honourable gentleman, who runs IV PREFACE. a i)aper in New York, to reprint " My Little Girl" in his journal, even though he changed the title to " The Mulatto's Son, or the Stain of Blood ; " but we cannot altogether forgive him for printing it, as if it was a comedy fi-om the French, as an entirely new and original piece, written expressly for his paper. We are waiting, also, for proofs of the repentance of that Canadian editor who sent us word, on expostulation, that we might bring an action agauist him and be blanked, but that, meantime, he intended to go on reprinting our novel. We did not bring that action, and he did go on with the novel. Again, we shall perhaps never know what atonement the Melbourne editor who infringed our copyright may be willing to make. And we remind the proprietors of a certain agricultural journal in Adelaide, and an Indian weekly which shall be nameless, that the eighth command- ment is still supposed to be binding. Meantime, as these reproductions of novels take place every day in Greater Britain, to the serious loss and injury of writers, we most earnestly beg any of our readers who may notice one of our novels in a colonial paper to forward us, through oui- publishers, a copy of the journal. The Toronto Globe is, at present, the only colonial paper with which we have made arrange- ments. Wo have next to express om* best thanks to the PREFACE. V kindly critics who have reviewed our books. They have given us more favourable notices than we could have hoped or even wished ; and, on the whole, their fault-finding, now that we can look back on a past book as if it was the work of somebody else, was fair and just. In one or two little points we still keep our own opinion. The pretended marriage in " My Little Gu'l " was said to be impossible. Very well : a year after the novel appeared, a case was reported in the papers which exactly reproduced all our details, and might have been copied from our pages. And the girl in real life was deceived, in just the same manner as the girl in fiction. So, again, the character of Dicky Carew was said to be taken from that of Dick Swiveller. It was not. Dicky was a real character : his real life, somewhat softened, because it was a life of degrada- tion and failure, far worse than we dared to di-aw, is sketched in the novel of " With Harp and Crown," with certain incidents which actually befell him. But the end is altered. The real Dicky, after losing through drunkenness the two or three small Hterary posts which he held, went upon the stage at Drury Lane as a super, wore armour, carried a banner, and in this occupation died of di'ink. One critic has also accused us of using " mock slang " in the early part of this present novel. Perhaps it is mock slang, but it is the exact language used by the persons from whom we VI PREFACE. received the information which enabled us to write these chapters. For all the characters in them are real, and sometimes not even the names are changed. The incidents in " This Son of Vulcan " are not inven- tions, and some of the persons whose experience is here embodied are still living. The real Cardiff Jack is dead, and he died, we are sorry to say, like the real Dicky Carew, of intemperance. The Bastables are well known to all spiritualists and mu-acle -mongers under their real name : people will show you in the North of England a man who has the marvellous power which Jack Armstrong acquired : Captain Perrymont still casts nativities, and labours to trans- mute metals : Cuolahan, who has kept the temper- ance pledge for five and twenty years, is hale and hearty, in spite of his sixty summers : and we are very much mistaken if we did not meqt Mrs. Merrion only yesterday in Regent Street, about four o'clock in the afternoon. W. B.) J. E. PART THE FIRST. THIS SON OF VULCAN PEOLOGUE. The place is Esbrough, a rising — not yet risen — town in the north of England. The time is eleven o'clock, on the last night of the year 1849. Myles Cuolahan, standing on the steps of the Packhorse and Talbot public-house, recognises his acquaintance, Mr. Paul Bayhss, who is passing down the High Street on his way home. Seizing him in a very friendly manner by the arm, he gives him " Good evening." "Ay, ay! good night, Myles; good night," 2 THIS SON OF VULCAN. says Bayliss, trying to pass on, and with the roughness of one who does not wish to be stopped; but the strong fingers that clutch the sleeve of his rough pilot-coat hold him too tightly ; he cannot shp from their gi*asp. " Ye'll not have the heart to say no to a glass of just whativer ye like best with Myles Cuolahan this night, Misther BayHss; an' if ye do, I'll not belave ye, nor be the mane man to tak' ye at your word nayther. So there ! " he cries, making a move of a yard or so in the direction of mine host of the Packhorse's snug red-cm'tained parlour. There is a suspicion of mellowness in the tone of voice in which Bayhss's captor says this ; and Bayliss replies — "But you must let me say no, and thank ye with it, Cuolahan, lad ..." " It's New Year's Eve," urges Myles, never relaxing his grip of Bayhss's coat sleeve, " an' divil's the bit o' luck ye'll have the year to come, Misther BayHss, if ye don't have one glass of wliisky wi' me on this present oc- casion." A shrewd observer, noting the look on the Enghshmau's face as the Irishman said this. THIS SON OF VULCAN. 6 would probably have inferred that the goddess Fortune could not well treat Paul Bayliss worse in the year to come, than she had done in the year past. Which, indeed, was nearly true. "Ye'U come into the Packhorse?" said Myles. "No, no, Cuolahan," Bayliss persisted; " I'U not take another glass this year : and I'll just remind you, my lad, you've got the walk to Back End before you, and if you hke to walk with me as far as I go, I'll be glad of yom- company; and if not, I'U wish you a happy new year when it comes^ and say good night." " TeU that to the marines for a tale, Misther BayUss," cried Myles; "ye'U not be for Back End yet." " Yes, but I shall," said Bayliss, sinking his voice to the tone of a confidential whisper. "You see, Myles, if I'm out many seconds after our kitchen clock strikes eleven, either on New Year's Eve or any other eve, we don't want vinegar with om* cabbage for a week after. My sister Barbara is, I suppose, about as near perfection as a mortal Methodist can be. Now you understand." 4 THIS vSOK OF YULCAN. He tapped Myles playfully on the shoulder, and freed himself from his grasp. Under the lamp at the street-door of the Packhorse and Talhot Myles Cuolahan winked a wink of passing comprehension. Then he responded to Bayliss's invitation to walk home with him. " Misther Bayhss," he said, " I'd come out just to take a momentaiy peep at the stars and all the other heavenly bodies — including, av coorse, the planets and the comets — when who should I see but yourself, looking as brave as the best of them ; an' what would I do in dacency but ask you to step in and dhrink a glass with me ? It's hard that you won't, on you and on me. But I am not the boy to be after getting you into trouble mth a lady — least of all Miss Barbara Bayhss. Bless her purty eyes ! — if they are purty, which I don't rightly remember. An', thank- ing you aU the same, I'll not want for company home as far as I go, an' farther. Johnny's inside" — pointing over his shoulder. " Some- body '11 have to see Johnny home to his own door, an' it's hkely I'll be the man." As Cuolahan finished speaking, there was a THIS SON OF VULCAN. 5 shuffling noise of footsteps on the stone floor of the passage. Both Myles and BayUss looked round, as the Company, in the form of " P: Bayhss and Co., Ironfounders, General and Jobbing Smiths, etc., etc., Holcotes, near Esbrough," came slowly but surely into the full hght of the lamp which hung over the door of the inn, and advertised boldly, in red glass and white letters, those neat wines and genuine spirits the said Company loved too well. The mood of the Company, as convoyed by two boon fellows he reached the threshold, was thickly sportive. ''What— soi-t— of— night .... eh, Myles?" he asked, in seven very dehberate jerks, before he steadied himself against the door-post. " Hould your whisht, Johnny: here's Bay- liss ! " said Cuolahan, in his friend's ear. The Company, whose faculties were not at their brightest, had failed to notice the presence of the head of the firm. Cuolahan's hint fell short of its purpose also ; for Johnny Armstrong only said, "Eh?" with a veiy wide sense of interrogation generally. " We're going down to the Yorkshire Grey. Let him :ome if he likes." G THIS SOX OF VULCAN. " Johnny," said Myles, giving his friend a good shake, "you don't hear me. Look round you, man; it's Misther Bayhss." Johnny being now made to understand, suddenly lost his jovial tone, and became absurdly dignified. He looked sulkily at his partner, and resented vith some spirit the uncalled-for innuendo con- veyed in the offer of a friendly arm to support him. But his legs most inopportunely spoke the truth in the plainest language ; and ha^dng served him this shabby trick, left him at the mercy of Cuolahan and Bayhss, who, taking his arm in theirs, turned his back for him on the Yorkshire Grey and the convoy who had brought him from the parlour of the Pack- horse, and walked him off in the dii'ection of Marsh Eoad, a mile and a half away in the outskii'ts of Esbrough. Theii" way led through the town, where, though it was eleven o'clock, the shops were ablaze with gas, and thi'onged with customers. For it is Friday night, and the streets, which at Christmas time are almost like a fair, are crowded with buyers and lookers-on ; THIS SON OF VULCAN. 7 people with baskets, and good folk who have come out to stare about them, see the sights iu the shop-windows, enjoy the bustle, hear the politic patter of Cheap Jack, and spend divers pence, one at a time, for the privilege of an interview with the " Giant American Sisters, the Fattest Women in the World," the largest horse ever known, the cmious blue ring-tailed " Gorilla Ape from Central Afi'icay," and other vaunted celebrities of the market-place. Being still Christmas time, eveiything to eat is bedecked mth holly, and the darkest shops are bright with unaccustomed hghts. In the by-streets. New Year's Eve is kept in every house where there are cliildren or old people : kept mostly in the simple fashion of something extra to eat and diink. In the pubhc-houses, that orthodox tribe, the topers, who • neglect no privileged occasion of re- joicing, keep the feast after their own manner, and as they keep every feast, saint's day or holiday, either of State or Church, by making it a day more than usually unholy. It is a night when the pulse of the noisy little manu- facturing town, always quick and active, beats W THIS SON OF VULCAN. fierce and feverish. For generally, as becomes a young town whose future is all before it, by eleven o'clock its lights are put out, and the workers are in bed and asleep, and nothing is left stilling but the pohceman who keeps watch and ward. The stream of people in the streets is already setting homeward, but not before the butchers' shops have been pretty nearly cleared of the great piles of yellow and red meat, on which Esbrough housewives look with loving but critical eyes ; not before the grocer, wiping his brow, has remarked, with a sober joy that will lend a brightness tp next Sunday's services, the hghtness of his shelves and the fulness of his till ; not before the fruiterer has got rid of those pyramids of golden oranges, bursting figs, brown nuts, and rosy apples, which will form the children's feast of the morrow. As Cuolahan and Bayliss, with their stagger- ing charge, pass through the full streets, they meet plenty of people they know. But Johnny Armstrong's ways are famihar, and they only remark to each other — " It's Johnny : they're taking him home." THIS SON OF VULCAN. 9 Observe, that it is a bad sign when a man past thii-ty is called by the diminutive Chiis-^ tian name that belongs to a boy. Armstrong the toper — for he had no other occupation — — was, with all the world except his wife, " Johnny," and nothing else. In the last ten years he had been steadily drinking, drinking and singing songs, had done no manner of work, got no money and cared to get none. People began to whisper that Johnny Arm- strong was coming to the end of his resources ; it was even said that he had begun to raise money by means of the house with the three golden balls. And his ^dfe was growing more and more careful as the inevitable day of destitution drew near. ''It's Johnny Ai'mstrong going home. Happy New Year, all three ! Johnny's dnmk as usual.- A pretty New Year he'U spend, poor fellow ! " Ay. Another New Year's Day would be his. For it was the last time he was to stagger home. Johnny Ai-mstrong had sung his last song, smoked his last pipe, drained his last glass, and was staggering bHndly down the street to meet his miserable doom — di-imk. 10 THIS SON OF YULCAN. They left the town behind them and walked along the road in the open country. In the fields it was a clear, cold Christmas night ; the stars as bright as on that eve when the angels sang their song — the only song of heaven ever heard on earth, and the shep- herds listened and wondered with hearts that burned within them ; one of those nights when the world seems to have forgotten its troubles and to be at peace for ever ; when you might wander abroad like the great Sheikh Abraham, listening and waiting for the word of the Lord. To him it came in a Voice ; to us it comes in a restful calm and trust. But the holy stillness of the night found no reflection in the hearts of the three men as they walked along the h'ost-bound road. The one idea that possessed Ai-mstrong was that of making Bayliss beheve that nobody was so much sm-prised at the um-easonable refusal of Ms legs to carry him steadily as theii* owner was himself. As if Bayhss was ignorant of his partner's weaknesses ! Bayhss, cogitating of the hopelessly insolvent state of the finn of which he was the head and Armstrong the tail, speculated on his chance of getting rid THIS SON OF VULCAN. 11 of Johnny without an hour's delay, and then wheedling his sister out of another loan; or making a new appearance in the Gazette. Myles Cuolahan's conscience smote him hard for having left an appreciative company of particularly jolly fellows just as the ball was rolling fastest, and his sense of what was decent in the way of behaviour being thus outraged by his own wiKul act, the light- hearted Celt was as gloomy as Myles could be. So, without having interchanged many words by the way, they leave Johnny at the wicket-gate of his little garden at Back End. He staggers up the path alone. His wife, who is waiting up for him, hearing his weU-known footsteps on the stones out- side, springs to her feet and runs to open the door. It is no new sight to her, this of her husband's slow and heavy entry. She is not surprised when he sits at the table and, leaning his head upon his hands, falls sound asleep. She goes on quickly mth her work, her thin nimble fingers setting stitch after stitch. Not even a sigh — not even a re- proach : for this ^Ndfe has passed aU that. She is tied to a drunkard, and she knows 12 THIS SON OF VULCAN. that her fate is beyond all hope. Other men may change. The passionate man may grow calm and long-suffering ; the wiKiil man may Hsten kindly to the voice of reason ; the selfish man may — I have never knoT\Ti a case, but he may — learn to feel sympathy for others ; the cmel man become softened ; the malicious man may become generous ; the nervous, contented ; the improvident man may take to the ways of thrift : but the di-unkard never improves. For him there is but one remedy ; and since he seldom takes it, there is but one end — misery, shame, an unhonoured and premature old age. Look at Johnny Ai'mstrong as he sleeps in his chair ! In those swelling veins, that red and bloated face, that hair grey too soon, would you re- cognize the handsome young feUow, the last of the Armstrong race, owners of Esbrough for seven hundred years, who brought home with him, ten years ago, his bonny bride fi-om the Border country, where the Armstrongs first came fi-om? How handsome he was then ! How hopeful was the household ! How fuU of projects was its master, for the restoration of the faUen Ai'mstrong fortunes ! THIS SOX OF VULCAN. 13 And for her, his wife, who can tell the tragedj^ of a life wasted and hopes shattered ? There is no tragedy in history, no drama of the Greek stage, grander, more siibhme, more full of pity, and terror, than that of a woman's life, as the hero of her youtliful love slowly, bit by bit — not letting fall a borrowed drapeiy, but adding others to his own features, putting out new and hideous Hmbs as a tree puts forth new branches — develops into a monster like the laidly worm of Dunstanburgh. It is a tragedy which has never been wiittei^ per- haps because we see it before us every day. Some day, another Shakespeare shall put it on the stage for us. '' I am gainjg to bed, John," she said at last, as the clock struck one, shaking him by the shoulder. He looked up, shook his head and went to sleep again. She put away her work, raked out the last embers of the fire, took away the candle and went upstairs. At two, Johnny Ai-mstrong woke again, stupid, cold, trying to think. Bayliss,"^ he said — " Bayliss is to come ID- morrow to pay his rent." Then he struck 14 THIS SON OP VULCAN. a match and looked about for the candle. Then he slipped somethmg from his pocket and stooped to find it. The Hght di'opped out of his hand, his head grew heavy as lead, and he lay along the floor insensible and breathing stertotously. Presently a Uttle wi'eath of light smoke crept stealthily upwards, as if avoiding the sleeper's face ; then there came a dull-red glow, visible, had Johnny Ai'mstrong's eyes been open, which they were not, between the boards of the carpetless floor where the lighted match had fallen ; then the glow brightened into a broad hght with crackling and sputter- ing of wood, for the laths of the ceiling were on fire, and in the kitchen below the flame was running out tongues of fire here and there, that caught the wainscoting of the old house, crept behind the wall with the whispered hiss of a serpent, and mounted higher and higher, intent to destroy, but resolved upon silence till the moment for decisive action anived. The woman slept upstaii's, di'eaming of her Northumbrian home or of the unborn child. Downstaii's her husband, Johnny Ai-mstrong, lay snoring loudly, too di-imk for any di-eams. THIS SON OF VULCAX. 15 Fire ! fire ! The flames were roaring and screaming as they devom-ed the last rafter of Johnny Armstrong's cottage, and what had been, an horn* before, a man with his infinite possibilities was now an impossible heap of ashes, useless for ever ! When the clock struck three the terrified people, some dozen or so fi'om the neighbour- ing works, were carrying to the nearest place of shelter, the works themselves, for no other house stood near Johnny Armstrong's, the one thing saved fi-om the fire — his wife. Two or three women followed the men as they bore her, helpless and swooning, fi'om the scene of the disaster. The town was asleep. Too late help came. The bright hght in the *sky above Ai-mstrong's house had quite faded out before the engine started fi'om Esbrough. " Lay her in the foundry — it is the only place," said one. They spoke in whispers ; for in face of a great calamity, we are in a kind of church, conscious of our own weakness, recognising, in spite of ourselves, the dangers that sur- round us. She opened her eyes and moaned. They made haste to lay her do"^Ti on some 16 THIS SON OF VULCAN. rough bed extemporised out of workmen's coats. It was a long, low shed, lit here and there by flaming gas jets, roofed with a great glass arch, of which half the panes were broken, those, namely, at the upper end where the furnace stood, and through the broken glass you might watch, if you looked up — though these men never did look up — the tranquil stars gazing upon the scene. And you might fancy they gazed with a sort of curiosity, as if here was a noticeable thing in the world's history. Noticeable indeed, though it happens every day, for a child was to be born, and a woman was to die. The working men never looked round, hearing and seeing nothing but the surly roaring of the furnace, and watching for the moment to begin the pouring out. In front of the fire, dressed in some rough wraps, kept wet, were those whose duty it was to guide the streaming mass of molten metal into the ladles, great ii-on buckets with huge handles, which stood ready to receive it when the time should come ; and close at hand were the moulds, long prisons a they seemed, cut regularly in the floor. Johnny Armstrong's wife they had laid at THIS SON OF VULCAN. 17 the other end of the shed. She was left alone with the women behind a rude screen of can- vas and shawls. Presently, these gathered close round her under the gas flame over their heads. ''John," she murmured faintly, mth lips that grew whiter every moment, " John, dear John, don't drink it, all ; leave something for the baby and me. Leave something, John." John would drink no more ; but that she did not know. They laid her baby by her side. She revived for a moment to kiss the new- bom cheek, so soft, so fragile ; then she" looked round her, and saw the women bending over her. All was strange to her in these last moments when life was ebbing away. "It's a boy, dear," said one, "a beautiful boy." " Try* to bear up; poor thing !" said an- other, in kindly accents. But she lay back on the rough bed quite still, and they saw she was dead. " Let be ; let be ! " said a man. Miles Cuo- lahan, no other ; his face was blackened, his 18 THIS SON OF VULCAN. hair singed, and clothes torn, and his hand bleeding. " My Biddy will take the child. 'Twill do instead of the Uttle one we buried last week. God bless him ! " Presently came the doctor, too late. By this time the iron, molten, was pouring out from the furnace in a white stream into the ladles. As they dragged them to the moulds it streamed across the floor in rivulets of silver. " Strong! " cried the woman who held the child ; " he's the strongest baby I ever handled. Give me another pin, and he'll be beautiful. To think, poor lamb, that his mother only just had time to set her eyes on him ! " *' The mother is dead," said the doctor, though they knew that abeady. "Poor thing! the flight has killed her. Where is her drunken husband ? " Nobody answered for a while. " Myles Cuolahan saved her," said one, pointing to the shrinking hero, who had that night performed a deed worthy to be chroni- cled among the gests even of the London Fire Brigade; "but her husband was not in the bed-room." THIS SON OF VULCAN. 19 " Perhaps he never went home." "But he did; he was taken home to his own door." "Then he " "He's dead," said Myles. " Bm-ned in the fire, he is. Poor Johnny Armstrong ! The drink was in him, and he hadn't the sinse to get out." The doctor shook his head and looked at the speaker, who turned away his face uneasily, for he read in the doctor's eyes the warning to himself that was left unspoken. " Come, come," he said, turning to the woman who held the child, " we must see after the Hving. Now then, Mrs. Cuolahan, let us . . ." — he glanced at the furnace, the streaming metal, the men of the night shift, the lurid Hght that played upon the poor help- less bimdle in the woman's arms, and hesitated for a moment — " now then, let us look at this Son of Vulcan." 20 THIS SON OF VULCAK II. Five and twenty years ago ill news flew as fast at Esbrough as at places more and less im- portant. But it was nearly breakfast-time with Paul Bayliss when the news of Johnny Armstrong's death reached him : for the simple reason that nobody thought of starting off to fetch him, in the excitement of the fire and the anxiety of the scene that followed it. So Bayhss snored while his partner and his part- ner's house were perishing. But the morning brought the news to him. A puddler from the works came over to his sister's house to tell liim, as it was argued among the men, that he was one of those who '' ought to know." Not that it was felt he could do anything in par- ticular pending the coroner's inquest, but, in general terms, the opinion was expressed that be should be told. The volunteer who arrived with the message did not even get thanks for his pains. Bayliss was too much moved by his n ews to be punctilious in the matter of the minor civihties. In one second he was out of bed. In six minutes he was striding along at THIS SON OF VULCAN. 21 a swinging pace to the scene of the cata- strophe. We have to see more of him, and may describe him at once. Paul BayHss is now a man of about thirty years of age — the same age as his partner, Johnny Ai-mstrong, dead and gone. He is a man rather below- the middle height, fresh- coloured, healthy, vigorous of appearance. Perhaps his eyes are too small and too close together ; perhaps it is his chin, which is coarse and fuU ; perhaps it is something about his mouth, which is large, and generally a little open ; perhaps it is the redness of his hair and whiskers ; perhaps it is his big, heavy nose ; perhaps it is the presence of all these featui-es together, which gives the impression that Paul Bayhss would be a man of passably good looks, if something were not in the way. He is not a handsome man, nor is he eveii prepossessing. On the other hand, he has a free, open way with him. He laughs loudly ; he teUs a stoiy ; he is always ready to say the proper thing that stands for sympathy ; he can sing a good song ; he can drink with any man of his inches, and does too, when he gets the 22 THIS SON OF VULCAN. chance of doing it for nothing. He is affable to every one. He never forgets a face, to cdmmit which fault has brought thousands of short-sighted men to grief. He pays his way as far as he can, and would wish to owe no man anything. And yet, with all these ad- mirable quahties, Paul is not popular. To be sure, he has had, as he is never tired of say- ing, luck dead against him. To be only thirty, and to have failed as a blacksmith and imple- ment-maker, the trade to which he was brought up — as a farmer and seedsman, the trade which he tried next — and as an auctioneer and estate agent ;, and now, to be in a bad way as a farmer and jobbing smith, shows a mahgnity of fate against which few men could struggle. At the same time, there are not wanting those who say that Paul Bayhss has only himseK to thank ; that he had good chances, and that, if he could have kept out of the way of Johnny Armstrong, and the seductions of his convivial set, he would not have failed in any of his undertakings, and might have been a well-to- do man by this time. But, with all this, he was still a hopeful man, and had one answer always ready for the "candid" remarks of THIS SON OF VULCAN. 23 friends: "You wait till I tiu-u up trumps." To the friends it seemed that the turn of his suit never came. Candour compelled them to express a pious doubt that it ever would come. Such was Paul BayKss at the time my story begins. We left him, with busy mind and quick strides, making the best of his way to the hot ashes of Johnny Armstrong's roof- tree. A mile on his way was a point where three roads met. He came to a stop. After all, four blackened walls and a heap of charred debris could have nothing more to tell him than he knew already. Myles Cuolahan, on . the other hand, might know a good deal more. He had learned fi'om the messenger the brave part played by the Irishman, and he took the road that led to Myles's habitation. He came presently to a row of small two-storey houses, all exactly ahke, all with gi-een doors, green shut- ters, white blinds, only some of them whiter than others ; all bearing an air of meekness ^ and dependence, which proclaimed the fact that they were occupied by the employes at the works. Even at this early hour their tenants, heads of the famihes, were away at 24 THIS SON OF VULCAN. the factory. The door of the first, like all the rest, stood hospitably back, and opened, as is the practice of such doors, upon the living- room. In this room — his throat tied round with a red silk handkerchief, di'essed in a thick pea-jacket, rusty black hat, and a dilapidated pair of trousers, such duds and gleanings in the way of clothes as his friends could lend him to replace the garments destroyed by the lire — sat Myles Cuolahan: Myles — a httle man, thin and spare, with a shai-p, clear-cut nostiH, black eyes as bright as beads and as clear as a bell, crisp curly black hair, thin cheeks, and a long straight chin — was sitting on an inverted box, his own pack-box, in front of the fire ; in his Hps was a pipe, but it was empty; and in his arms — Bayliss noticed it with great surprise — hugged by about the biggest pair of hands that ever belonged to man, was a baby ; and to the baby — a tiny creature, wrapped and swathed in flannel, with, its httle face sleepily turned upwards — Myles wa8 singing, in a high-toned voice that might h^e been heard miles off, some sort of non- sense, a reminiscence of his native country and his own childish days : — THIS SON OF YULCAX. 25 " A turf and a clod Spells Nabuchod ; A knife and a razor * Spells Nabuchodnezzar ; A silver spoon and a gold ring Spells Nabuchodnezzar the king ; An old pair of slippers, and a new pair of shoes, Spells Nabuchodnezzar the king of the Jews." As for the time, it was a queer old Irish melody. Moore never heard it, fortunately, and so you will not find it in those five big volumes, where there is so much sweet old music, and so much sugary, brand-new senti- ment. I heard an imitation of it myself the other day, played and simg by a young lady, to some affecting words about love and part- ing, which made me laugh, because I thought of Myles and Nabuchod. He beat time to the music with his right hand, keeping the left leg a foot and a half or so above the ground, so as to preserve the equilibrium of the baby. Paul BayHss moved softly towards him. " A turf and a clod spells Nabuchod. Thim's Irish hieroglyphics, Masther Johnny Armstrong. There's Egyptian hieroglyphics, too ; but I'll teU ye all about thim when you 26 THIS SOX OF YULCAX. get older and I get wiser. Eaith, now, ye see, .there's room for improvement for both of us. Don't shut your eyes again, ye httle divil. The strongest babby I ever see. Keep 'em wide open, for manners, while I'm talking to ye. And never a ciy since ye was bom ! Why don't ye ciy, thin, with your father burned to a cinder, and nothing better. Lord forgive us ! than a handful of sut and ashes, and yer mother lying in her cowld coffin, ye ungrateful httle divil. A knife and a razor spells Nabuchodnez-zar." Bayliss had not made his entrance heard. He now stepped up to Myles, and touched him on the shoulder. ''Cuolahan!" The Irishman, startled, dropped his left leg, and brought up his right with a sudden jerk that caught the infant, fortunately, in the safest place possible, and thi-ew it a good foot or so into the air. Myles caught it cleverly in his two great open hands. " Bedad, now, Paul Bayliss, 'tis easy to see ye're not a married man. Stealin' on a man in that secret way, when he's got a few hours' i THIS SON OF VULCAN. 27 old babby in his arms, and his wife washin' up, and the babby might have been bruk, and kilt. Then where should we be ? — where should we be, I axes you, Paul Bayliss ? The beaks sitting on us — six months only, and no hard labour, for Myles Cuolahan, licensed hawker, in consideration of his excellent character — six years, and the treadmill, for Paul Bayliss, Esquire, because he's such an unlucky divil. But sit down, Paul ; sit down, and have a dhrink in memory of the poor departed. Johnny's no more, Paul; the Co.'s come to an end intirely. Here's all that's left of him. Biddy won't cry over the child, for fear of bad luck." Bayhss shook his head mournfully. " Ye've heard, av coorse, what 'tis with poor Johnny. Why, 'tis murder, Paul, or next door to it, becase a man can't be hanged for murdherin' himself. There can't even be a funeral, becase there's nothing left to buiy. They wouldn't do that, not even in poor ould Ireland — God bless her I No, sir ; the base Saxon tyrants " " Never mind the Saxons, Myles. Tell me all about Ai'mstrong." 28 . THIS SON OF VULCAN. " Lord rest his soul for a good, honest, dare-divil chap that never refused his glass ! " Myles heaved a natural sigh. '' We tuk him home safe to his own door, you and me, and then he sets fire to the house and himself, and everything's burnt up. All the sticks and the beautiful ould pictures he was so fond of, the pictures of the ould Ai-m- "strongs; and the poor \\-ife's dead with this little spalpeen here, nothing at all saved for him ; and I'm here, wasting my time nursing of him, and that's all about it. Paul, it's lucky for Johnny that it was at Christmas-tide he died, for blessed Peter leaves the doors of heaven wide open till Twelfth Night, and no questions axed. We're six nights off that. Johnny '11 be in by this, praise the Lord ! and plenty of time to spare." A curious expression came over Bayliss's face. But just then Mrs. Cuolahan appeared at the door, and he spoke to her. An Irish girl, bright-faced and rosy-cheeked, some five and twenty years old. She looked inquiringly at her husband. ''It's Paul BayHss, Mary, and he's come to see after his friend and partner Johnny Armstrong, dead, poor chap ! " THIS SON OF VULCAN. 20 '' Friend, were you ? " she replied. *' Then you might have done him the good turn to keep him away from the dhrink. Partners in what, were you ? was it in the whisky ? " '' Hould your tongue, Biddy ! With poor Johnny and his wife dead as an ould turf," said Myles ; " and about as much of him left, more's the pity." " If you're a friend," went on the woman, " you'll give Christian burial to his wife. It's hard on her, poor respectable woman, toihng and slaving for the babby that was to come ; hard on her to have nothing but a pauper's funeral." "Ay," said Paul, "it's hard. Was nothing saved from the fire ? " " Nothing," said Myles. " Come to the cottage with me," returned Paul, in whose face the strange expression stiU dwelt. " Come to the cottage, and let us look at the ruins." The two walked away to the roofless and burnt-out wi-eck, and BayHss, getting inside the iiiins, began poking about with his stick among the hot and smoking embers. There were charred ends of timber, bits of 30 THIS SON OF VULCAN. broken pottery, glass melted down and run in shapeless heaps, metal also melted, but not a scrap of anything whole. As for papers, these, of course, were all gone together. " Nothing saved " — he spoke to himself, not to Myles — " not a scrap of paper ; not a vestige of anything left." " Sorrur a bit of paper at all, at all." " I shall go to Esbrough, and see what is to be done," said Bayhss. "No, no, don't come with me ; I can't talk now. This has been a great shock to me." He left the Irishman standing outside the ruins, and strode off down the road. Now, this man, who had had so many failures and disappointments, whose appear- ance in the Bankruptcy Court was an event regularly looked for and anticipated by his friends, was, up to this moment, one of the most honest creatures in the whole world. He had never robbed, defrauded, stolen, nor cheated. Simply a plain ne'er-do-well. Temptation assailed him, doubtless, in other forms, but never in the form of dishonesty. Lais, who lures everybody, might have lured him ; Bacchus, in the shape of Johnny Arm- THIS SON OF VULCAN. 31 strong, had certainly often beguiled him ; Mercury, the god of thieves and speculators, never. And now, as he marched along the road, with his hands in his pockets, the colour in his face came and went as an idea in his brain took form and coherency. ** If Cuolahan were to take the child . . ." He spoke the words to himseK as he sat on a stile by the roadside, deep in thought. After remaining seated for several minutes, he rose -w-ith a look of resolution, wiped his forehead hurriedly with his handkerchief, and walked briskly by the field-path into Esbrough. Across fields which had once been owTied in fee by Armstrongs, ancestors of Johnny's, but which, generations back, had passed into the hands of a thriftier race. There had remained, however, to John the Last — they were all Johns — of the broad but somewhat barren acres around Esbrough, held by the Ai-m- strongs in the times of the Tudors and Stuarts, two farms, one close to the town, large and good ; the other, three or four miles away, small and bad. The land on this farm — Holcotes, it was called — would feed geese indifferently, and starve a few 32 THIS SON OF VULCAN. head of inferior cattle. Oats in favourable seasons came to something, barley struggled for existence, and wheat declined to grow at all. On the property were a huge barn and three labourers' cottages, dilapidated, curious for their antiquity — one had a stone built into the front, bearing the date 1585 — and adapted to the domestic requirements of pigs of homely tastes. There was no home- stead, and two or three rotting wooden struc- tures did duty for farm buildings. An old grand-uncle of Johnny's left the two farms to him, with the stock on both and the fur- niture in the large substantial house on the good farm. Johnny Aimstrong, one and twenty, came from Northumberland, whither his grandfather, an Esbrough Armstrong, had withdi'awn to find other far-off Cousin Armstrongs, to enter into possession of his unexpected own. He brought' his young and comely wife with him ; and everybody thought him a lucky fellow. This grand- uncle had *' gone over to the majority " in the very nick of time. Too soon, as the result showed. For Johnny was young, in- experienced, and a jolly fellow in company. THIS SON OF VULCAN. 33 Before six harvests had been garnered, the good farm was the property of Captain Perry- mont, a local landowner. The sale was effected through the agency of BayHss, and was his only transaction during his short career as an estate agent. After mortgages were paid off, and debts, of which there were plenty, paid, there was not veiy much money left for Johnny. But a few hundreds remained. Johnny removed, "till he got a farm to suit him," to the house he died in ; for he never got the farm to suit, him, nor, as far as anybody knew, ever looked for it. There was money in the ancient metal cash- box in the old grand-imcle's bm-eau to dig at, and Johnny dug. BayHss also took his shovel there. For he liked Johnny well enough, "in company," and Johnny liked him well enough to lend him certain portions of his small stock of cash, taking " a memorandum " in return for each successive loan. And Bayhss was the tenant of the ninety-three acres some odd perches at Holcotes, and carried on a small smith's and foundiy busi- ness in the barn metamorphosed into a factory. And at length Johnny, being a 34 THIS SON OF VULCAN. gentleman with unoccupied time and capital, and Bayliss a too-persuasive friend of a ver- satile turn as to matters generally, the two men became partners in the business of blacksmiths, makers and menders of the neighbouring farmers' ploughs and harrows, and smiths' work in general. One sensible stipulation Johnny made. He knew some- thing about farming ; knew warm land from cold; and he made a proviso that the faiTQ should be no part of the partnership. But BayHss should carry on the Holcotes geese and cows, and barley and oats, on his o^ti sole account. And he took " a memorandum " about all this. Between friends this was enough, and Johnny hated the prospect of " lawing." Bayhss, too, had a clear head, and wrote a good hand. Under such prin- cipals it is not surprising that business was bad, or that the two or three men employed in the blacksmith's shop followed the example of the masters pretty often, and let Punch wait for his new set of shoes, and httle Hodge call a good many times for the new plough- share. So Johnny lived upon the capital that lay still, a starveling remnant, in the bureau, THIS SON OF VULCAN. 35 instead of upon the expected profits of " Bay- liss & Co." This fund at last was exhausted. There remained, however, Holcotes, the rental value of which was fifteen shillings an acre, which Bayliss declared was foui-teen more than it was worth. Sixty-five pounds a year ! But nobody about Esbrough would buy the land at any reasonable price. Johnny had tried to sell it with his other farm ; and it was not to be supposed, Bayhss said, that "far-comers" would be found to drop down from the clouds as purchasers of this barren patch. Further, as Johnny reasoned with his wife, it would not be "the right thing," as Bayliss, a friend and partner, was the tenant, to sell Holcotes at all. That poor uncomplaining woman made a speech of unusual force and determination. " John," she said, thi'owing her arms round the ne'er-do-well whom she had taken, out of her great girHsh love, for better or for worse — all for worse, poor gh'l! — "John, I wish we had never known Mr. Bayhss." "Bayliss is the best friend I've got — I know that," replied the fool. And wifely wisdom rejoined not. But money must be had. It was tantalizing to be a landowner, and want the price of a 36 THIS SON OF VULCAX. glass of refreshing whisky of an evening at the Packhorse and Talbot. It was nearly as bad as this to be told by the butcher that *'his terms were quarterly": to you, that is; but yearly to the rest of his " propertied " clients. The genius of Paul Bayhss cut the knot. He was, as he confided to his partner, " up a damned tree " himself. He whispered in Johnny's ear the insidious, fatal word Mort- gage. Expatiated on the difficulty of getting the thing done in Esbrough ; shortness of money ; greedy nature of the natives ; and then earned Johnny's eternal gratitude — and a share of the sovereigns — by telling him his sister could and would lend on the title deeds of Holcotes at five per cent. Barbara Bayliss, strict Methodist as she was, confessed to "unworldly" fiiends, over tea and the "thin" bread-and-butter served only at such love-feasts, that she "liked a snug mortgage." She had not, being a lady as well as a Methodist, fi'equented pubhc-house parlours, or been in any respect that rolling stone that gathers no moss. Consequently she had every penny of her moiety of the little fortune she and her brother had divided THIS SON OF VULCAN. 37 between them, and considerable increment thereon. To his partner's proposal Johnny, seeing a comfortable vista of legs of mutton, with " glasses," harmonious evenings and hilarity, in place of the stinted Saturday night's allow- ance and a meagre Sunday's dinner, cried content to BayUss's proposal with all his heart. At the same time, he even devoted himseK to serious business to the extent of forming some vague resolutions on the score of some day paying off the debt, principal and interest. As it was, the title deeds of Holcotes passed into Miss Barbara Bayliss's possession, and she handed over to her brother the sum of two hundred pounds in the form of forty dirtyish five-pound notes of the Kaven- dale Banking Company. Between friends a mortgage deed was looked upon as a useless piece of extravagance. Johnny declared, in his most social way, as he signed his name with a flomish, that he "hated lawyers and lawing;" and on his way home bought his poor httle wife a black silk gown to mark a red-letter day in his calendar. Miss Barbara Bayhss was perfectly satisfied ; 38 THIS SON OF VULCAN. she had the solid and tangible security of the deeds, good old parchments, yellow and crumpled, with plenty of large seals upon them. And for Johnny's security the amount of the loan was indorsed with the signatures of the parties on the back of the newest of the deeds, and duly witnessed by Paul Bayhss. Months passed by, and the state of affairs warranted a further apphcation for one hundred pounds. Over this loan the same process w^as gone through ; and Johnny felt quite cheered by the business-like aspect of the transaction. Lastly, about twelve months before his death, there was a third loan of two hundred pounds, indorsed on the back of the deed. There was thus a debt of five hundred pounds on the tlolcotes Farm, about a third of its value. So that, at the time of his death, his income from his land was reduced to forty pounds a year by the payment of twelve pounds ten shillings of half-yearly interest to Miss Bayliss. Half a year's rent Bayliss was to have paid him on the day of his death. And this twenty pounds he now saw a prospect of keeping in his own pocket, together vdth many future THIS SON OF VULCAN. d9 half-years' rent. For Johnny was a "far- Comer" himself; his grand-uncle's one son had died; the Armstrongs had all left Esbrough; and if he had any relatives, they were his wife's, people in Northumberland, a long way off, who were not in the least likely to come south, and inquire into the possessions of a man who had destroyed his movables by his own act, and who, as all the world about Esbrough behoved, had mort- gaged his few acres of wi-etched land for more than they were worth. And Myles Cuolahan was offering to take the heir. Where ? Anywhere, out of the way. On the tramp. In the pack of a hawker, who might never come back. Part of the "swag" he trotted fi'om fair to fair, or from door to door. Babies often died, too ; and if liis father had hved, he never would have had a halfpenny. And everybody who knew any- thing — Bayliss reasoned — knew that he had over-persuaded his sister to advance money by way of mortgage on such bad property; and nobody knew the amount, for Barbara was close. And as mortgagee she had a right to foreclose, and nobody would bid against him 40 ^ THIS SON OF VULCAX. if he bought in with her monej^ And a great many other things, more or less knavish, and therefore instigated by the devil; every one of them aimed at defrauding this little Son of Vulcan of his interest in forty bits of yellow metal year by year. The power of gold to tear up the roots of that old tree honesty, and leave no shoot nor sucker to show the spot where it stood, has been too often a theme for novehsts and other moral philosophers, for it to be necessary that I should explain how it came about that the mind of Paul Bayliss, broodiug over his l)ankrupt smithy; his hard year with the cattle and poultry ; the cow that died of foot and mouth disease, and the rascally butcher who thought her carcass '' too far gone for sendin' to London"; the cart-horse that was struck by lightning a couple of years ago, and that he had never been able to replace ; chickens with pip; gosHngs trampled out of life by the pigs ; the failure of the barley crop ; all the evils that could befall a foot-ball of fortune in the agricultural line — decided to let matters slide at all events; and as one thing leads to another, he presently determined THIS SOX OF VULCAN. 41 to give them a kick on the way he wanted them to sUde. " We shall see, Barbara," he said to his sister, "what the estate will fetch towards yom- mortgage when we sell it up. Meantime you've got yoiu* interest -safe." Barbara BayUss, content with her twenty- five pounds a year, asked no questions about the farm. Her brother resolved also, now that Johnny was dead, to say good-bye to Packhorse and Talbot habits ; for Paul Bayliss was no reck- less profligate. He knew that the day comes to all ahke, when atonement by hard labour or by suffering must come for ill-gotten pleasures and young follies. So he began well by expressing himself with much pro- priety of language about the calamity ; grieved over Johnny's career and its untimely euding ; put it about that there would not be a shilling left when the mortgage was cleared off, if the estate, indeed, would ever pay it; and after the inquest, behaved handsomely in the matter of the funeral, -heading the subscription list got up very readily among Johnny's fiiends. After the dead, the living. 42 THIS SOX OF YULCAK The inquest over, he sought Myles Cuolahan, and asked liim what he proposed to do about the child. "Let Biddy keep him," said the hawker. " She's grown to the hoy, and you wouldn't break her heart by taking him away." "It seems a good arrangement," rephed Bayliss. "To be sure, Armstrong has no relations here ; and everybody knows the child is with her . . . and . . . and . . . But, Cuolahan, you are not likely to stay in this town ? " " No, we have been in Esbrough too long ; my legs ache to be out in the open; so do Biddy's. We shall go on the tramp again. But niver you fear; the boy will be well looked after, and it's a healthy hfe." Bayliss did not fear for the boy; he only feared for the voice of popular opinion. As it happened, popular opinion was silent on the subject. It was known that Johnny Ai'm- strong's infant was put out to nurse, and thus the child was forgotten. "A healthy life," he murmured. "Yes" —with a secret shudder at the impious hope lying in his mind that perhaps the boy might THIS SON OF' VULCAN. 43 die. "You Tvdll let me know from time to time that lie is flom-ishing ? " ''I will," said Myles. " And if he wants help at any time, if I can give it, I will give it," he went on, trying to compound with present wickedness by imaginary and future benevolence. '' Myles Cuolahan, it's good of you to take the boy. It reminds me of my own conduct at the fimeral." He alluded, in these dehcate terms, to his subscription. *' The town will speak well of both of us." Myles grinned. He cared little for the opinion of the town, and thought little of Paul Bayliss's generosity. Then Paul, with a wry face, lugged out — the term is the only one possible for the leathern instrument then in use — his long purse, and fished up two sovereigns. They were a part of the twenty pounds due to his late partner. ** That is for the child, Myles. God knows I'm poor enough, and how to get through this year I do not know. But there it is. They shall never say that I deserted my poor partner's child after his death." "Poor Johnny Armstrong!" said Myles. " Biddy shall have this money." 44 THIS SON OF VULCAN. " Ay, poor Johuny ! " said the other. A week after this, Myles gave the signal for departure. He carried the " swag " on his back — a box full of needles, pins, and cotton twdst. Biddy carried the baby. There was a rising ground a mile out of the town, where Myles called a halt. "Turn him round, Biddy," he said. "Let him look at the place where his mother died. Look ye, poor httle creetur. There's where all the Armstrongs lie buried. Ye come of as good a stock as meself, Myles Cuolahan — nearly. And it'll be about as- much good for you. Look at the ould place, for Lord knows when ye'll see it again. Say God bless you, Biddy alaunah ! " As he turned on his way, a tear rolled down the cheek of the Irishman ; but, as he was walking in fi'ont of his wife, after the manner of the patriarch Jacob, Mohammed the Pro- phet, and the modern race of tramps, Biddy did not see it. But she heard him sigh imder his breath, and she clutched the baby the tighter out of sympathy — " Poor Johnny Arm- strong ! " THIS SOX OF YULCAN. 45 CHAPTER I. It is niiie years later. The memoiy of poor Johnny Armstrong and his tragical end has well-nigh become a tradition. The lusty revellers whose voices joined in his choruses have gone the way that all lusty revellers go as the fatal fortieth year draws nigh ; that is, they have either settled down into quiet folk who keep their eyes well open to the main chance, have maiTied wives, and go to chui'ch regu- larly, or they have gone under altogether, and are no more seen. Some among them lie in the churchyard, their merriment stilled for ever. Some, ruined and beggared, have crept sadly up to London — the common refiige — where they perform the lowest duties in a city clerk's office, or prowl mournfully, with sad and wistful eyes, about the streets. Go ask, among those who have become respect- 46 Tins SOX OF vulcax. able, what has become of their former friends. Charley is married and settled — that is good for Charley. Jack? When last you heard about Jack he was selling medicines on com- mission — that is bad for Jack. Tom is a billiard marker. Hariy is at Portland, for his country's good. The fast set of a country town is Hke the fast set at a West-End club : those only emerge safely who are wise enough to come out in good time ; and the plungers in gin-and-water, pipes, and harmonious even- ings, meet with much the same fate as the plungers in baccarat, badminton, loo, and opera-dancers. Which is, of course, just what it should be ; for there ought not to be one fate for the rich and well-born, and another for those who never had a grandfather, and to whom the Funds are the shadow of a name. Paul BayHss is at Holcotes, going on . quietly, but more prosperously. Barbara, his sister, is bmied, and he has inherited her little fortune. He is comfortably putting a small sum of money away every year out of the proceeds of the horse-shoes, pigs, poultiy, and crops, at which he was disposed to swear when we fii'st met him. There is a house on THIS SON OF VULCAN. 47 the Holcotes land now. Bayliss lives there ; but he pays no rent. In uneasy moments a thought flashes across him that the time may come when he will have to pay up in full. To meet this evil, he puts the rent reHgiously into the bank every half-year, for he defi'auds no one. Where is John Armstrong's heir ? No one knows, and it is not his duty to run after him. Nor is it his duty to tell all the world to whom Holcotes belongs. There is no one living, since Barbara breathed her last, to ask him questions ; no one who dares challenge his right to the land where, for nine long years, he has rested undistm'bed. Discovery ? What is there to discover ? The rent is lying lq the bank, ready for the owner to claim ivhen the owner is able to claim it. But where is the owner ? Nine years ago there was a baby : he is doubtless dead. Carried about the roads by a drunken Irish hawker and his wife ; badly fed, perhaps ; neg- lected, most probably. Wliy, the children of the poor, as Bayhss has read, die at the rati; of fifty per cent, before they are five years old. Things have thriven with him, too, which all couiitry people take for a clear sign 48 THIS SON OF VULCAN. that Providence is on his side. He has given up his bad habits, is temperate, works hard, is a churchwarden ; and though his farm is small, he turns it to the best advantage, and stands well among his neighbours ; insomuch that, when he marries, everybody says that his wife is a lucky woman ; and the girls envy Mrs. Bayliss, who has a husband so prosper- ous, so cheery, and so good-natured. To be sure, the baby may be living. Well, and if he is, let him turn up and claim his own. Then Paul Bayhss pictures himself, after dis- puting the identity of the boy as long as possible, enacting the part of the virtuous guardian. ''Young man," he will say, "the farm is yours ; but I am your tenant. There is your rent, safely and regularly paid into the bank year after year, to a separate account in my own name, but never touched. Take it, and let your father's oldest fi'iend still remain your friend and tenant." True it is, that there are moments when another drama is acted unwillingly before his eyes, when he perforce sees hirnself in quite another cha- racter, when he welcomes young Armstrong as an intruder, denies his right even to the THIS SON OF YULCAX. 4U name he bears, and says nothing about the ownership of the farm. Strangely enough, these thoughts generally crowd across his brain at church-time, during the morning sermon; and at such an hour he envies his neighbours, the fat, jolly farmers, who can sit with their heads back and their eyes up- turned in a subhme rapture of indijQference, while the clergyman harangues sinners — that is, the farm labourers — on their sins, and exhorts the profligates, the worldly-minded, the proud, the uplifted, the Hcentious, the thoughtless, and the sensual — always the farm labourers — to turn fi'om their evil ways. The baby living ? Could such a baby die ? Come with me to Long Lane, to one of the most wretched streets in the most wretched part of Sheffield, and see for yourself. In a poor and dirty room, whose wainscoted walls were, perhaps, once white ; whose ceiling could never, sui-ely, have been white ; whose fui-nitiu-e consists of a bed — a straw mattress spread in a corner — a table, and one chair, are two children, sitting side by side and hand in hand upon the mattress. It is seven o'clock and a bright May evening ; the 50 THIS SON OF YULCAX. democratic sun, wlio is not particular, and warms eveiything with a fine impartiality, shines through the dii'ty panes of glass upon the pair. One is a boy — look at him — the image, the perfect resemblance of poor Johnny Armstrong, with the same dark-brown curly hair ; the same bright eyes, fearless and keen — hazel eyes, deep and true ; the same broad forehead, and — but here the likeness ceases. For his lips are finn and strong, while his unlucky father's were weak and shifty; his chin is full and square, while Johnny's was small and retreating ; and in these two signs of a merciful fortune those who knew his mother might have traced a resemblance to her. For this is no other than Jack Arm- strong himself, the httle son of Vulcan, born in a foundry while the seething metal ran up and down the moulds, and the furnace flashed its red Hght upon his opening eyes, carried up and down the roads of England for the fi-esh breezes of heaven to strengthen his fi-ame, and the pure country food — the milk and bread ungrudgingly bought for him by poor Biddy Cuolahan — to make him wax strong and lusty. A big boy, mark you, for his THIS SON OF VULCAN. 51 years ; brave and determined : about him noue of the London street boy's craft and impudence, for he knows them not. Myles Cuolahan, hive all the rest, has been to London, but the boy has not nm wild with others : he has had grave duties to perform ; and when they are in a town, as now, while Myles goes out with his pins, needles, and twist to earn the daily bread, httle Jack must stop at home and look after Norah, or must lead her up and down into the fields to play, pick the daisies where he can, and breathe such fresh air as may be found within hail of the Sheffield streets. Norah is poor Biddy's parting bequest to Jack. When, four years ago, she lay down and died, stricken with some mortal disease of over-fatigue and trouble, she made Jack take a great oath. "Swear to me, now," she said; "swear. Jack, asthore — you that I carried in my arms and nm'sed at my own breast, Jack, my own son, almost — swear now, so help you Mary and the blessed saints, that you'll always look to the ghi. I'm going, Jack, but I'll die aisy if you'll promise for little Norah." Jack was eight at the time, and Norah LIBRARY UNJVERSmr OF ItllNni!: 52 THIS SON OF VULCAX. three, but the boy was perfectly acquainted ■vsdth the nature and responsibilities of the trust, though he had not, as yet, even a nodding acquaintance with the blessed saints. But he repeated after her, crying the while, " So help me Mary and the blessed saints, Biddy, I'll never leave little Norah ! Why would I ? " Indeed, he held the child in his httle arms as he spoke, and her cheek was nestled against his. " 'Tis no use spakin' to Myles ; no use at all, at all. Oh ! Jack, and he so good when the dhrink isn't upon him. And promise me something for yourself. Jack, darhn', and then I'U die happy as well as aisy ; becase I know then that you'U be always good to my little Norah. Promise me that you'll never, never dhrink." Jack promised readily enough, having, at that early age, little experience of the tempta- tions of whisky, beer, or rum, and, as yet, no discrimination of vintages. " I'll never drink, Biddy. And, see, perhaps some day Myles '11 leave it off." " Lave it off ! " she repeated' with a bitter sneer. "Lave it off, is it? He'll never lave THIS SOX OF VULCAN. 53 it oif so long as he's got a copper to spend at the house. Lave it off? Did ye iver know man or woman that • left it off when once they'd begun? Lave it off? 'Tis meat and clothing : 'tis hope : 'tis love : 'tis their wives, God help us : 'tis their children : 'tis their salvation : 'tis their praste : 'tis their mass, I tell ye. Lave it off? Myles is dhrinkin' now, when his Biddy Ues a-dyin'. Oh dear ! oh dear ! " She stopped, growing weaker every moment, and wept silent tears of resignation and sorrow. Presently the last tear rolled down her thin and sunbm'nt cheek, and her features lay in the trustful smile of death. The Lacedaemonians, in their laudable anxiety to hold up to their much-suffering youth the dangers of wine in their proper light, were energetic, but elementary. They got certain Helots, who were, no doubt, delighted at getting the office, and made them gloriously drunk at stated times; then the Spartan youth admhed the wondrous magic of wine, in that it turns an intelligent creature, usually firm on his legs and sharp with his tongue, into a*shambUng, in-kneed, slobbering animal, incapable of walking, confused of 54 THIS SON OF VULCAN. speech, and muddy of intellect. The lesson was, perhaps, well enough in a country where there was no whisky, and where they actually mixed their finest wine with turpentine, so as to make it more nauseous than the black broth, and a less-to-be-desired drink than the sparkling Eurotas, but it would not do in an advanced civilization. Could we contrive such a lesson, it might be managed, with a little more cruelty, by first inspiring one Helot — for one would be enough — ^with a steady imconquerable love of w^hisky, and by then in^dting the attention of the callow brood to the sufi'erings of his wife and children. For they would see how, while the disease grew stronger and stronger, the wife would go about, her face set fail' to meet the world, but with a heart ever more bitter and miser- able ; how the childi-en would grow shabbier in spite of her constant efforts ; how the table would become daily more meagre ; how the furniture would disappear bit by bit ; and how, lastly, there would be nothing left to stave ofi" starvation for another day. Little Jack knew nothing of his father's sins : but all these things he had seen and THIS SON OF VULCAN. 55 noticed, in liis brief life of nine years, in Lis benefactor, Myles Cuolahan, as lie went faster and faster down that fatal path whose flowers seem at first so bright, whose briars, so strong and cruel, as you hurry down the slope, rend your garments as well as your hearts. Biddy died. Myles came home too far gone to know it. Next day, TN^th the passionate self-reproof that his better nature taught him, he wept and prayed over his wife's cold body, and after the funeral, kept sober for a fortnight. Then it began all over again. The childi'en had been out in the afternoon, Jack leading Norah. Then they came home and waited for Myles. For breakfast they had bread-and-milk ; for dinner they had bread without the milk ; for tea, because the bread was all gone, and Myles not come home, they liad nothing. Jack told all his stories, one after the other; then he danced to the child ; then he tossed her in his strong arms ; then he sat down beside her, and caressed her. The fretful Ininger was too strong at last to bear, and she bm'st into a low wail of pain. 56 THIS SON OF VULCAN. " Hush, Norah, darliu', hush ! Father'll come presently." '' Jack, I am so hungry." "Not yet," said the sage of nme. " You know you must never be hungry till father comes home. Norah shall have her tea directly." Not, you see, that the children kept fashion- able hours, and had tea late, in this rookery ; only Myles had left no money, and they had to wait. A thought struck the boy. He put Norah off his knees, and searched in the cupboard. There was a single crust of bread — dry, it is true, but still a piece of bread — lying in the corner of the cupboard unnoticed. This he put into a cup and poured a little water over it so as to soften it, and then he fed the child, who gnawed it as ravenously as a dog gnaws a bone. "There, Norah," he whispered, "we shall have more presently, when father comes home. I didn't know it was there. Eat it all up, Norah." She devoured it by degrees, taking her time over the simple meal, while poor Jack THIS SON OF VULCAN. 57 looked at her with ravenous eyes and envied. Presently, she laid her head upon his shoulder and went fast asleep. Jack took the blanket from the bed, laid it over her, with his arm for pillow, took off her shoes and socks, and lay down beside her. She was quieted ; that, at least, was something : but where was Myles ? For the first time in his life, little Jack felt the horrible stings of suspicion : he thought that Myles had deserted them both. He was too hungry to sleep, and lay silently beside the Httle girl, staring at the red hght of sunset in the httle -bit of sky above him. He began to think of going downstairs to beg a piece of bread, but he was too proud for that, yet. So the sunset faded and the darkness came on, and there was no Myles, and Jack lay broad awake while the church clock struck nine, and ten, and eleven. Then the pain grew so gi-eat as to be in- tolerable, and he was fain to moan for hunger in his childish misery. Twelve o'clock struck, and the street grew quieter ; and one o'clock, and the street was almost hushed, but no Myles came, and the 58 THIS SOX OF VULCAN. boy's heart sank lower and lower. Then Norah awoke and called him. He crept back to the mattress, and so fell asleep with the girl in his arms. The moon shone in and lit up the room : presently the Hght, shifting round, fell full upon the sleeping figures, the sweet round faces of cliildhood, the little limbs tossed carelessly, and the curly locks lying together ; and with it all, a sense of the girl's confidence in her protector, the boy's courage for the helpless child, shown in the attitude of theii' hands. In such a Hght, on such a scene, we might fancy the room tenanted by the guardian angels of the children. Are there, or is it fancy, the bending figures of two women praying hand in hand above the bed ? Are those white streaks upon the wall only the ignoble stains of poverty and neglect, or are they the white robes of the two dead mothers, jealous for theii' childi-en ? THIS SON OF VULCAN. . 59 CHAPTEE II. ]\Iyles Cuolahan, obKvions of the children, was at his club, a select circle of Irish gentle- men who used to meet nightly, or on such nights as were convenient, for the club was one of Perpetual Adoration of Bacchus, at that famous tavern the Fox and Hounds. This was a night of more than common interest, for it was Monday, and there were gathered together, quite by accident, a col- lection of celebrities of whom Ireland had indeed reason to be proud. There was Paddy FHnn, hero of a hundred fights, whose life and exploits are recorded in the chronicles of the P.R. ; Anthony Noon, than whom none better wielded a bunch of fives ; and Ahck Reed, a heavj^-weight who feared not even to mthstand the godlike twins, first patrons of the Art of Boxinir. There was 0' Carrol, who 60 THIS SON OF VULCAN. could prove lineal descent from the Irish kings of the same name, and now deemed it no dis- honour to advance civilization as a hodman. There was Tape the "translator," of whom it is related that, being once entrusted with a pair of boots to translate, — that is, to fit with new solesi and heels — he disposed of the raw material for what it would fetch as leather in the rough, and di'ank the proceeds, afterwards humorously translating the boots by means of the binding of an old leather-bound volume which happened to be lying handy. He was the same man who, one Sunday morning, was left in charge of as noble a piece of beef as was ever dropped into a pot to boil, while his mates went out to di-ink. The temptation of thirst came upon him : I grieve to say that Mr. Tape jdelded to the whisperings of the devil, took out the beef, replacing it by a lapstone, and sold it for what it would fetch in old ale. When the two mates came back in time to boil the cabbage they naturally took the joke iu ill part, and the honest translator kept out of their way till at least one more Sunday had passed. A fellow of an Lufinite wit was Tape, and a clubable man. THIS SON OF VULCAN. Gl able to sing and dance as well as drink. Then there was Anthony Noon again, above men- tioned, who had retired fi-om the ring, and now found his means of subsistence in an occupation which began about the 1st of Sep- tember and ended somewhere about February. For he was accustomed to purchase, at low rates, the leanest, skinniest birds that came up to market, and could thus act by them in the same unprincipled manner as the Ameri- can, perhaps an imitator of Mr. Noon, adopted for the jumping frog : he filled them with small shot and sold them by weight. It was a lucra- tive business, but it left his summers a mere blank, and during a good six months in the year honest Anthony lived chiefly in seclusion. Patsy M'Nulty was there, as good-natured a braiser as ever stripped ; he had just lost his fight vdth Nailer, owing to a too-confident belief in Myles Cuolahan's training powers. And there, too, was Denys 0' Toole, grown old now, and grey-headed, but respected still, by reason of the handsome thrashing he had once given the Prince of Wales, when that potentate, accompanied by two fiiends, neither of them members of the Temperance League, G2 THIS SON OF YULCAN. or even of the Christian Young Men's Associa- tion, ventured one night into the Rookery at Westminster, and assisted at an Irish wake. And it was reckoned part of the general meanness of the Enghsh character that when the Prince came to the throne he did not seek out Denys and reward him with a pension for life. Yet Denys was the only man in all his life who ever showed the Prince what a thing it is to have your head in Chancery. The room was a long low room at the baclv of the tavern; on the table at the end sat a fiddler, at his feet a hat into which every new- comer dropped a sixpence, a collection for Brien M'Taverty, now in trouble, and about to be tried the next day on a trumped-u}) charge of assaulting the poHce while intoxi- cated. Every man had his pipe in his mouth, and some of the ladies too-^this was a club in which ladies' society, so far from being avoided, was even courted — and everybody, man or woman, had his mug of diink hand to his fingers. Among them was Myles Cui > lahan, the httle spare man with the big hand- singing, drinking, and roaring with the bes; If you look in his face you will notice a queei THIS SOX OF ^'ULCAX. 63 expression, one of anxiety, a sort of fear upon it. His cheeks are puffed, liis nose is red, lie looks twenty years older than when we met liini last. Poor Myles has been going down- hill fast since his ^\ife died, and is now very near the end of his tether, though there is still time to turn back. There is dancing ; there is singing ; there is the music, not low and rippling', but loud and harsh, of women's voices ; there is fiddhng ; there is stamping on the floor ; and presently there are indications of a coming duel. " Fight it out, lads ! " cries Myles, springing to the floor. " More's the fun. Pity 'twould be if the dhrink don't make an alteration. We come in sad, and we go out happy; we come in peaceful, and we go out quarrelsome : Glory be to whisky ! " Whether the club danced, or sang, or di-ank, or fought, the fiddle went on exactly the same, playing Irish jigs. The fiddler sat with his nose in the aii' and his eyes on the ceiling, as •If absorbed in thought. Now and then he moved his right foot in time, but besides this he gave no sign of life beyond the movement of his arms and fingers. 64 THIS SON OF VULCAN. The row began, if one may trace things back to their ultimate cause, like all rows since the Siege of Troy, through a woman. There was a neat and extremely pretty little Welshwoman, remarkable among the other ladies present for the careful purity of her attu-e. She had black hair, very bright eyes, and a very striking expression in her face which, when she was watching a fight, made you understand how the Eoman ladies managed to enjoy a gladiatorial contest. She was the lawful wife and better-half of Patsy M'Nulty. She spoke with a pure and beau- tiful accent in "book" EngHsh, perfectly different from that of the rough Irish round her, and as if, which was in fact the case, she was speaking a foreign language. And though she sometimes used the " argot " of her asso- ciates, she preferred the tongue of Addison, which she had been taught at school. " My husband," she remarked to Mr. Nailer, already mentioned above, who showed signs of grogginess about the head, '* would scorn to be intoxicated by six little glasses of whisky. My husband is a ferry much petter man than you or Myles Cuolahan either, though you did beat TUTS SOX OF VULCAN. 65 him and win the money at the match. But everybody knows that was because Myles trained him, and they both got drunk together every day. He would be perfectly prepared to fight you again to-morrow. Do not think my husband is afraid of you." After firing this blow in a calm and collected manner she retired to the other end of the room, nearest the door, where she sat and smilingly watched the effect. Mr. Nailer, whose sensibihties were as keen as his propor- tions were large, was stimg to the quick by this observation, and, instantly leaping to his feet, began a circuit round the room, pushing liis way through the dancers with the careless- ness of superior strength. Encumbered as he was with many glasses of whisky, which made liis head roll about and his legs lurch, his l)rogress was unsteady. " Where's M'Nulty ? " he shouted. " Show me M'Nulty. Bring out your Patsy M'Nulty ; him as I tlu'ashed already, and him as I'm ready to thrash again for five pounds or a hundred. Come out. Myles Cuolahan — Myles the trainer — Ho ! ho !— Myles with the big fist, come out both of ye, till I kill ye at wunst." 66 THIS SON OF VULCAN. Patsy and Myles, who were side by side, rushed to the front, and in a moment the bridge of battle was Homerically set with com- batants, in which all, save the modest little Welshwoman, who only looked on and smiled, took an active and a pleasurable part. After it had raged for ten minutes or so, the landlord, thinking that enough blood was shed for the preservation of honour, turned out the hghts, and when quiet was restored, threatened to turn out the combatants as well, unless they consented to take their drink " quiet and sober, like Christians." They shook hands and sat down again. The lights were Ht once more, the fiddler, who had been stopped, struck up another jig, and all was harmony again. " You're getting dhrunk, Myles," said Patsy as a fi-iendly observation. ''Ye were dhi'unk last night; and ye were dhrunk the night afore last night. How long have ye been in it, now ? " " Six weeks to-night. Patsy. I've been dhrunk for six weeks every night ; and spent all the money. Lord help the childher ! " " Then don't do it again," rejoined the bruiser. "Go home now, Mjdes, and go to bed." THIS SON OF VULCAN. G7 *' I had 'em last night, Pat. I had the horrors worse than iver they come before. I got out of bed and I tuk the razor — think o' that, now — and I stood over the childher on their matthrass and . . and . . I don't know how it was I got safe to bed again, and they woke up safe this morning. I'm afraid to go home, Pat, I'm afraid." He finished his glass of whisky, which was not adulterated and spoiled with water, and wiped the perspkation from his forehead. Then he looked furtively round the room, and behind him, as if there might be some feaiful thing prowHng in the rear, and tried to laugh. But the httle Welshwoman with the demure countenance, seeing no further prospect of any fighting, came and carried away his fiiend. "Patsy, you are comiug home with me. You have to begin training to-morrow, and your fight is to take place in a fortnight. It is only for a ten-pound note, but you must wi^ it. You have had two more glasses of whisky than by a right you should have taken. Come home at once." Patsy was like a lamb, and followed his G8 THIS SON OF YULCAX. commanding officer. He was not a bit the worse for the little skii'mish he had just gone through; a cut Hp heals very soon, and a black eye is one of those things that few gen- tlemen of his habits of thought and occupation are long without. Myles, left alone, began to drink harder. In course of time he found himself pleasantly and hopelessly drank, and rejoiced, for he could now bid defiance — a drunken man's defiance — to the dreams that haunted him night after night, when the fumes of the whisky left his brain. It was past one in the morning when he stumbled up the stairs, threw himself upon the bed, dressed as he was, and in a moment was fast asleep. It might have been an horn* later-^not more, because there was yet no Hght in the sky, and tlie moon shone bright and clear through the window — that he stirred on the bed, put -out an arm as if to feel for something,, and then, with a start and a groan, sat up and looked wildly round him. There was nothing in the room, not even furniture ; there was nobody save the sleeping children in the corner ; but he glared round and round the room as if Tins SON OF VULCAN. 6'J following some Shape or spectral image of his brain. Presently his eyes dilated and became fixed. The creature of his di'unken fancy resolved itseK into something . resembling a form ; took to itseK arms and legs ; assumed eyes that looked into Myles's face, and fingers that beckoned him on ; put on a face which was one of unimaginable cunning, devilry, and mockery; and, stooping close to his bedside, moved cadaverous hps through which no sound came, but which spoke words easy to be under- stood. " Come, Myles, now is the time to do it." Yet there was nobody in the room at all, except himself and the two children ; these were sleeping on theii- mattress in the corner ; the moon lay full upon them, showing Httle Norah with her head nestled on Jack's shoul- ders, her arms about his neck, her long dark hair Ijdng in masses over Jack's head and face ; and the boy, weary with himger and watching, lying on his back and sleeping off the pain. The eyes of the di-unkard, fixed upon the Person who walked slowly from the bedside, passed over the space from tlie bed to the cupboard, fi-om the cupboard, still 70 THIS SON OF VULCAN. more slowly, to the mattress where the children lay asleep. Then Myles groaned aloud, and, slipping from the bedside, stood upright, steady as a i-ock, though he had been almost helplessly drunk but an houi' before, and sighed heavily. Then he sat down again on the bed, dehbe- rately took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, unlaced and took off his boots, which were the heavy double-soled boots worn by trampers and bought by those gentlemen of Lancashii-e who correct theii* wives with booted feet. Then, in his stockings, he crept silently to the cupboard. What is it his hands feel for in the dark as he tries each shelf, one after the other, in vain ? He forgets, perhaps, how only that very morning he took his razor to a neigh- bour, under the pretence of wanting an edge put on it, and left it with him for safety. Unable to find it, he turns round, still fol- lowing his invisible director. Then his eye brightens, and he creeps across the room to the fireplace. The poker hes there. As he steps a plank creaks beneath his feet, and little Jack wakes up. THIS SOX OF YULCAX. 71 With a start, like Myles, and with a dread- ful fear upon him, for he sees Myles out of bed, dressed, and stealthily creeping towards the mattress, with the poker in his hand. He is moving so slowly, so slowly, that at first you would think him standing in the middle of the room. But he does move, for all that, and it is always in the direction of the bed ; while in his hand he carries, hfted in readiness to strike, the poker, which flashes as he gets within the moonhght fi'om the window. Jack, hke some poor Indian bird in presence of the snake, sat spell-bound, motionless, his eyes fixed on the white face and menacing features of Myles. The room was light enough, in the t^^ihght of the summer and the bright morn of May, for him to see something more — something that he had never yet seen in his di'unken benefactor — a purpose. His mouth was drawn back, his dry lips trembled with impatience, his white teeth gleamed, his eyeballs starting from his head, his body was bent double, as he stole, slowly, slowly, over the boards with the weapon in his hand. And tlien Jack saw, fm'ther, that, though Myles was looking him 72 THIS SON OF VULCAN. straight in the face, he did not see him — he was looking at some one else. For between Myles and the children stood the devilish spectre of his brain ready to make poor Myles a murderer ! But as yet he had not given the signal. Jack nevei' knew how long this lasted — probably but half a minute — for his nerves were frozen with terror. Then little Nor ah moved in her sleep, and w^hispered in her dreams ; and Jack, recovering fi-om his stupe- faction, sprang out of the bed and stood face to face with Myles. Stripling and child as he was, the boy was ready to do battle with the di'unkard for the life of Nor ah. On the bare arms of the man the muscles stood out like the ropes of the rigging of a yacht ; in his face there was set a look of di-eadful reso- lution ; his eyes gleamed with the purpose of destruction : he was possessed with a devil. To meet all this force there was nothing but a child of nine, weak with long hunger, too, if that made any difference, and only strong of wlQ. On his forehead fell the hot and poisonous breath of the di-unken man, hke that gas which, descending upon the earth. THIS SON OF VULCAN. 73 poisons and chokes the hfe out of man and plant. Ahnost T;\dthin reach of the heavy iron weapon, the child stood gazing into the face of the haunted man; who dragged forward his feet, inch by inch, as if drawn by some- thing beyond his will. And the boy saw, ^ while he shivered and trembled to see it, that Myles had no perception at all of his presence : theii- faces were not a foot apart, for Myles was stooping ; their eyes looked into and were reflected in each other : but Myles saw nothing. And Jack would have screamed and cried for help, but he was afraid ; for he did not know what to do, or what would happen. The man made a hasty step forward — one more, and he would be upon the boy. Jack stepped aside and seized him by the right arm, turning him suddenly and violently away froni the mattress where little Norah lay sleeping, with her white bare limbs tossed carelessly and gleaming in the moonhght. To Jack's astonishment, Myles made no sign, but con- tinued slowly advancing in the new dii'ection. This was that of his own bed, which lay but a yard off". Jack — always with one eye upon 74 THIS SON OF VULCAX. the villainous poker — pulled him gently hy the shii-t-sleeve tiU he nearly touched the bed, and then fell back and watched. As his knee struck the iron edge of the bed, Myles gave a fierce but muffled cry, and raised the poker to strike. Once — twice — thiice ; and then he redoubled the blows upon the un- offenduig pillow, while the great drops roUed off his forehead and his chest heaved at the exercise. Then, suddenly, dropping the poker, he fell dovm upon his knees by the bedside, and burst into violent prayers and sobs. When he was fairly spent and the danger was over, the day was breaking. Jack quietly took the poker and hid it beneath his own mattress. Little Norah still slept, undisturbed. Then, mindful of poor Biddy's last injunction, he feU upon his knees and thanked God as one who has escaped a great and terrible peril. And then he turned to watch Myles. His face buried in his hands — his whole fi-ame shaken and trembhng with emotion, he was crying, praying, and cursing, aU in the same breath. "Oh, Lord!" he groaned, ''forgive me! I have killed them both! My httle Norah THIS SOX OF VULCAN. 75 — Norali, alaunah, my darKnt ! my love ! my little baby — my black-haired Norah, ma- voumeeu ! will ye niver spake to me again ? — uiver kiss your wicked father's cheeks ? — niver twine, yom* little arms round his neck ? Niver again — niver again ! May the Lord curse the dhrink ! Oh, Jack ! now it's your blood my arms are dabbhn' in — youi* innocent blood, my purty boy that I love as well as Norah, and better. Oh, Lord ! Lord ! . . . forgive me ! forgive me ! ' ' '* What's the use, Myles, of askin' to be forgiven ? Why don't you get up, Myles Cuolahan, ye blackhearted murdherin' Prodes- dan — why don't ye get up, and run away ? They'll find ye, and they'll hang ye, and sarve ye right ! " * -Sr -v^ -Jr -S^ '' I can't get up. I'm tied to the bed. 'Tis the Lord that houlds me tight and won't let me go. Lord ! Lord ! let me go and be hanged, but show me once more — oh I show me once more the childher, if only to mock me, before I die. And I'll take the poker and beat out my o^ti brains, and thin we shall all 76 THIS SON OF VULCAX. three come to You at wunst. Norah and Jack will go to heaven, where Biddy sits playin' on a goulden harrup and waitin' for us ; but I shaU niver go there, and they'll be all there miserable for iver and for iver, cryin' out their blessed eyes when they ought to be singin' and makin' glory. Oh, Jack ! oh, Biddy ! 'tis Myles has spoiled youi- heaven for ye. For the Lord can niver forgive this night — He can't do it. I musn't ax it. It wouldn't be fair on Patsy M'Nulty, who niver killed anybody, except by accident and in his divar- shin. Lord ! I dussn't ax it — I don't "' Then he began again almost in the same words. When he prayed again to see the ''childher" once more, Jack, who had no terror now that he had once successfully diverted him from the mattress, put his hand under his forehead and lifted it up, lying down so that his face met Myles's. Myles showed no surprise. He thought it was an answer to his prayer, and only kissed the boy silently and solemnly, his tears faUing upon his face. " Then he mur- mured, " Now Norah, oh, Lord ! Glory be to all the saints." THIS SOX OF VULCAN. 77 Jack brought Norah, still asleep, and laid ,her in frout of him. When the man saw the cliild he burst into a fit of fresh sobs and lamentations, waking her up. Little Norah began to prattle, but Jack took her up again, and laid her on the mattress. '' Norah must go to sleep again directly." "Iss," said Norah, lying down and shutting her eyes very obediently. Directly Jack left her, however, she sat up and began to crow and toss her arms about. Myles got up from his knees, wringing his hands, and' began de- bating aloud whether he' should run away or not. Before he had settled that important point, the fit of repentance and despair seemed to leave him as suddenly as it came, and he lay down on the bed with his eyes shut, and fell fast asleep. Jack proceeded leisurely to undress him. This partially accomplished, he bethought him of the next day, and proceeded to examine his pockets. In the coat-tail there was a small loaf. In the pockets there was a penny. Not another farthing had the man, though his receipts the day before had amounted to some eight or nine shillings. Poor Jack had eaten 78 THIS SON OF VULCAN. nothing for nearly twenty hours, and he could wait no longer. Dividing the loaf into two parts, he took one for himself and the other he kept for Norah, giving her a little piece at a time. His own was soon gone, and he was hungry still. But he would not touch the child's portion, and sat down again on the hed, wearied with watching and waiting ; and presently the two children were sound asleep again in each other's arms ; and when the morning roused them up all was but a dream of the night. THIS SON OF VULCAN. 79 CHAPTER III. It was not till one o'clock in the day that Myles Cuolahau awoke, first with the feeling of lazy contentment which always follows \iolent exertion and long sleep ; then with a sense of disconifoi-t, due to the whisky ; and then with a sudden, agonizing pang at the heart, when he remembered his di-eadful deed of the night, a pang which made him leap from the bed and stare wildly round, crying, ** Jack !— Norah !— the cliildher." He remembered it all : the devil who came to his bedside and whispered ; who went to the cupboard and pointed to where the razor generally lay ; who led him to the poker, and put it into his hand ; who bid him creep softly, so as not to wake the little ones ; who nerved his arm to strike, and then, when the deed was done, left him despairing. What he could nut 80 THIS SON OF VULCAN. remember, trying to recall the time when he crept slowly round the room, with his arm half- raised, and his head bent forrv^ard, was the reason : why had the devil told him to kill the children ? Yet he knew there was a reason, and a good one, because it seemed the only thing left to do, the one possible thing, before the whole was finished. He was standing with his back to the children's mattress, and suddenly it flashed across him that behind him, silent, battered, bathed with blood, were the murdered chil- di'en. Then a wors^ horror fell upon his heart, and it became colder than stone^ The beads of such a sweat as stood upon Macbeth's brow in the morning, stood upon his brow ; his limbs shook beneath him ; he turned up his face, and met the sun's great eye staring in upon him hke an accuser ; and then, not daring to turn round, he stepped to the win- dow, threw it open, and leaned his head out, looking into the crowded street below. When the mind is laden with some great and terrible burden of anxiety or guilt, it takes an interest, by way of refuge, in any httle trifle that meets it. Oliver Cromwell, when he signs the death- I THIS SON OF VULCAX. 81 warrant of Charles, flirts the ink in his neigh- bour's face. " Bnital flippancy ! " cry the fool- ish critics, not discerning here a proof of the man's terrible mental struggles. If you read the ghastly stories of gi-eat crimes, you will find everj^where, and in grim contrast against the tenible reality, the importance of the trifle. As when Beatrice Cenci is led to execution, her last words were not of terror, of repent- ance, of blind wrath against the cruelty of fate, but about the arrangement of her hail' : — " Here, mother, tie My girdle for me, and bind up this hair In any simple knot : ay, that docs well. And yours, I see, is coming down." So poor Myles Cuolahan, the mm*derer, leaned out of his window and watched the passers-by. There was a Punch and Judy, the drama just finishing with Toby the dog, the beadle, and — the gallows. He laughed at the beadle, but when it came to the gallows he felt a sort of uneasiness, just as if something had been said or done wliich jarred upon him. Then there was a lusty quarrel between two ladies just beneath him, touching a disputed debt of two- 82 THIS SON OF VULCAN. pence. Before the policeman sauntered round the corner there was a little fight, in which mischief was done to the extent of many two- pences, and both went off in custody together — in chains, so to speak, but preserving still grandem- of spirit and freedom of tongue. The sight of the man in blue gave Myles another feeling of distrust which annoyed him ; but that, too, passed away. And then he watched the children who swarmed in the crowded street, or marked their sports, which were many ; for some danced on the pavement to the tune of a barrel-organ — girls these, who would, if they were lucky, eventually become ladies of the corps de ballet : some sailed bits of wood, purloined from the shop, do'^Ti the flowing gutter : some hung about the stalls, and tried to steal the fruit : some addressed themselves gravely to the task of nursing their younger brothers and sisters. It was a warm afternoon, and all were out. Myles began to get hungry, and once, under the first impulse, drew in his head and half turned round ; then, with a hollow groan, leaned out again, and, for a few jninutes, knew and saw nothing but his misery. He THIS SON OF YULCAX. 83 did not hear a step on the stairs and a knock at his door, which, no notice having been taken at first, was repeated, and then, there being still silence, the door was opened, and a lady came in. She looked round the room, bare and deso- late of everything except the bed and the mattress, and saw the man standing at the windows She called him. As he made no answer, she crossed the room and pulled him by the sleeve. " Myles Cuolahan " — her voice w^as low and deep, and sounded to him like that of an ac- cusing spirit. " Myles Cuolahan, where are the children?" Instead of turning round to speak to her, he moaned an inarticulate reply, and still keeping his face to the window, he backed to the bed and sat down, his head in his hands. '' Myles Cuolahan," she repeated, "where are the childi'en ? " He only groaned, for it was with him as with David when Nathan turned upon him and said, " Thou art the man." Where were the children ? He only pointed with his hand to the corner where lay the 84 THIS SON OF VULCAN. mattress with its dreadful burden, and waited for the cry of horror which was to follow. But no cry of horror came. "Is the man mad? Myles Cuolahan, you have been drinking again this morning; and it is only two o'clock." He was too much shaken to say anything ; but the words fell upon him as if they were a dream. You see, he was Hving stiQ in dehrium and the crime of the night. There were steps of children and the prattle of voices on the stairs. They might be, thought Myles, if that was possible, the voices of Jack and Norah. They even came into the room — the steps and the voices — and his brain went round, because he thought they were the accusing spuits of the slain. Was it an accusing si)irit that laid two little hands upon his knees, and pulled aside his fingers from his face, crying " Dada — dada " ? He sprang to his feet, with a sudden gesture and a wild cry, then looked round. " Miss Ferens ! The childher ! " Then he pushed his visitor roughly to one side, and looked at the mattress. It was just as he had seen it the day before, covered with THIS SON OF VULCAN. 85 its single blanket — no mangled remains of mm-dered children, no blood and di-eadful evidences of the crime, nothing at all ; and staring him in the face were the laughing eyes of his Httle Norah, Jack with, for once, a hard, resentful look, and Miss Ferens, the district visitor. He caught the little girl in his arms, and kissed and hugged her, laughing and crying together, for it came upon his mind suddenly how the whole dreadful thing was a dream, and he had not killed- the chil- di'en after all. '' It's a dhrame," he said, keeping the child in his anns. "It's a great, big, ugly dhrame." ''It's no dream, Myles," said Jack solemnly. Myles turned ashy pale. *' It's no dream, Myles. Ma'am, he left us all yesterday without a bit of bread, and not a penny to get any with. He went out at nine, and we had no breakfast. Then Norah began to cry, and then I went and begged a shoe of bread fi'om downstaii-s. And he never came home, and we had no dinner, and I was ashamed to beg any more. And it got dark, and he never came back ; and I found a crust in the cupboard, and Norah had it 86 THIS SON OF VULCAN. in water ; and then we went to sleep. In the night I woke up, and Myles was over us with the poker in his hand. . . . See, ma'am, here's the poker" — he di-ew it out fi*om the mat- tress. *' Standing over us, so, with hand up to kill us." "It's all tnie for you, Jack," groaned Myles; " it's all true." "He didn't see me when I woke and got up ; and I pulled him away by the arm, and then — you was mad drunk, Myles, or else you wouldn't have done it, you know — he banged and beat his pillow, and then he knelt down and cried because he said he'd killed the children." Miss Ferens snatched the child from his arms. " Myles Cuolahan, you are worse than Cain!" "I am," he groaned humbly, "I am; and Abel was a born angel alongside o' me, the blaygaifd ! ' ' His meaning was doubtless good, though his knowledge of Scripture was confiised. " And I looked in your pocket, Myles, and there was a twopenny loaf and a penny." THIS SON OF VULCAN. 87 '' I've been dhnmk," Myles murmured, looking up and addi'essing nobody in par- ticular, "every night for six weeks. And this is the end of it." "At all events," said Miss Ferens, "it's the end of one thing. You shall not have the children here any longer." " What will I do then ? " he asked. " You have had deluium tremens. If you drink any more, it will kill you." " And a goo'd thing, too." " Perhaps not," she replied grimly. " Now, Myles Cuolahan, you are dangerous. How do I know that you may not have a fit now, and kill us all ? I shall take this httle girl home with me for to-night. The boy I will take somewhere else. You shall be left alone till you can take care of yourself. Jack, where are Norah's things ? " " She's got 'em aU on," said Jack. " So have I." " I've sold 'em aU," said the drunkard, " for w^hisky. I've sold aU my own things, too, and all my sticks. There's nothing left to sell now. Even the bed and the matthrass is lent to me by the landlord." 88 THIS SON OF VULCAK *'If I leave you alone," said Miss Ferens, " you will go out and get drunk again." Myles turned out both his pockets with a significant gesture which silenced the lady. " Now, Myles, I'll do this for you, and you shall have one more ch^^nce — I will take care of the childi'en for a day or two, myself. If you do not mend youi- ways you shall never see either of them again. Do you hear ? You shall never see them again — not Jack, not little Norah ; and you shaU be left alone without a fiiend to help you while you drink and di'ink yourself lower and lower, till the devil clutches you by the throat and bids you kill yourself. And your child shall never know even the name of her di'imken, worthless father." She took Norah in her arms, and Jack by the hand, and turned to the door. Jack left her, and ran back to Myles. "Never mind, Myles. Don't cry. You didn't mean to kill us, you know. It was^, only the drink." - " Oh, Jack ! Jack, darlint ! " Myles groaned, spreading out his hands in distress. " Come, Jack," said Miss Ferens. " If THIS SON OF VULCAN. 89 Myles reforms he shall have you back again;" and disappeared, shutting the door behind her. For a ^Yhile Myles sat brooding, motionless. Then he stood up, and mechanically put on his boots and his hat ; and then a curious change suddenly fell upon his face — a look of desire, of cunning, of devilry, while the sad- dened air of repentance vanished. For Myles was hungry, and the demon of drink had seized him again. He stole down the stairs and into the street, and stealthily made for the Fox and Hounds. Looking up and down the street to make sure that Miss Ferens was not watcliing him, he stole into the place, and carelessly nodded to the landlord. "Bring Misther Cuolahan's score," said that great man, calhng to a potboy. " You're come to pay for last night, I reckon." Myles's face fell, and he shook his head. " Then, Misther Cuolahan, as you don't pay, and as there was a fight last night — and there always is a fight when you and Patsy M'Nulty do come together — and the pohce have been here to-day, you don't get any more drink here till you've paid for your last, and that's thii-teen shillins and twopence- 90 THIS SON OF VULCAN. ha'penny. So you'd better get out of this, and get some money." He turned and went away, wandering up and down streets, and whenever he passed a public-house a wild longing seized him, and he looked into the bar, if it was only to see and smell the drink. But if the Fox and Hounds would not trust him, no one would. There was nothing that he could turn into money, for his pockets were empty : there was not even a pipeful of tobacco to console him, and his pipe was broken ; and of all wretched men in Sheffield that day, Myles Cuolahan was the most wi-etched. Presently he found himself, as he strolled carelessly along, one of a great crowd Hstening to a man preachmg. He stopped and hstened too. It was on a dismal stretch of road and blank space lying outside the town, and some hundreds of people were gathered together, while one man spoke to them. He was a stout, well set-up man of fifty or so, handsome and florid in looks, mth shaven cheeks, full rich lips, and an aquihne nose, dressed some- thing like an Enghsh clergyman. Myles felt the voice of the man, even before he knew THIS SON OF VULCAX. 9l what lie was saying, thrill through him, and make him tremhle ; for in the shaken and shattered state of his nerves he was open to any emotion. He pressed through the crowd, which, somehow, parted easily to let him through, and, getting gradually to the fi-ont, stood in front of the speaker and listened. " 'Tis Father Mathew, bedad ! " he said to a man standing by. It was Father Mathew, the apostle of tem- perance, haranguing the Sheffield people on their great sin of drunkenness. Myles listened, while his conscience smote him more and more. Presently he trembled and turned pale, for Father Mathew began to describe, almost step by step, his delirium and madness. Yes, all of it — how the clothes of the children went, and the furniture and — "Some one's told him," said Myles — and how the drunken man in his frenzy took the poker to murder the little ones — "He's seen Miss Ferens this morning," said Myles. He heard no more; for when the preacher went on to talk of other things, he stood still, gazing into space, with the re-awakened horror of the night upon 'him. Stood still, while the 92 THIS SON OF VULCAN. preacher ended and the people crowded round him to take the pledge, jostling him about ; for his heart was mad with shame and remorse, and he could neither move nor speak. The crowd dispersed, and Father Mathew, looking round, saw this man almost alone, standing pale and motionless, wdth quivering lips and fixed eyes. He knew the symptoms. " My poor man ! " he said, with his strong Irish accent and his full, rich voice, "what will I do for you? " "Father Mathew," groaned Myles, "where was ye hid last night to see it all? 'Tis all true. I was mad with the whisky, and I tried to mui'dher the childher, just as you tould all the people. Don't tell 'em that 'twas myself that done it." "I only help those who help themselves," repUed the priest. " And will ye give me the pledge, yom- river- ence ? — and me a Prodesdan, and a black, murdherin villain to boot ! Will ye give me the pledge that will cm-e me for iver ? " The preacher hesitated. Finally, and after much exhortation, he consented to take his promise. THIS SON OF VULCAN. 93 " I, Myles Ciiolahan, promise to abstain from all intoxicating liquors, and to prevent as much as possible, by advice and example, intemperance in others." Myles repeated the words after him, bare- headed, solemn. * Then he signed the printed form. '' God grant you grace and strength to keep yom' pledge," said Father Mathew. " And now, Myles Cuolahan, where do you live ? " Myles told him ; and then, encoui'aged by his recent solemn vow, began to tell him all his stoiy ; to which the priest listened as if his time was not valuable, only bidding him walk with him, as he had another appointment to keep. They passed a cookshop in the street. Myles turned a hungry eye upon the window, out of which there issued a volume of steam, full warrant of the richness of the good things ^^dthin. Father Mathew noted it, and with- out a word led him in, and sat patiently while he ravenously devoured a plate of meat and l)otatoes. Then he poured out a glass of water and held it towards him. 94 THIS SOX OF YULCAN. Myles sipped it, gave a comical look at the priest, and making a wry face, drank it all up. "When you get on in the world," said Father Mathew, ''you will drink coffee; till then, you must di'ink water. . . . "Go home now, Myles,'* said the priest. " You have had your dinner, and can wait till to-morrow morning. Here is some tobacco for you. Think of your pledge, and wait in all the evening, for I am going to send you a visitor." They parted presently, and Myles never saw the good priest again. Myles went home. He no longer wept ; he walked erect, in his pocket the pledge that was to save him from himself. He had had a good dinner ; he had a handful of tobacco ; and, with a light heart and clear conscience, he sprang up the stairs. But his heart fell at sight of the wretched room, the scene of all his troubles — deserted, too, lor the children were gone ; and he sat down on the bed and pulled out his pipe witli a depression that surprised him. Even tlu' memory of the pledge tailed to put him in good spirits. THIS SON OF VULCAN. 95 At six o'clock, or thereabouts, some one ran up the stah's. It was httle Jack, who opened the door, and creeping quietly in, sat on the bed and threw his arm round Myles's neck. *'I'm not afraid, Myles," he whispered. " Miss Ferens has got Norah ; but I won't stay where she sent me, and I've come back here. I've had dinner, and tea too. You won't do me any harm, wiU you, Myles ? " Myles pulled out the pledge, with great pride, and showed it to the boy ; and then they spent an hour in building castles in the air of the great things they would do, now there was to be no more money spent in di'ink. But then Myles grew silent, and began to walk up and down the room, slowly at first, but presently faster and faster. At last he cried out, as if the dreadful truth were extorted fi'om him — " Oh, Jack ! the pledge hasn't cured me at all at all ; and I've got a live divil inside o' me again ! What will I do ? " Jack looked on in terror while Myles paced the little room, with his wild eyes rolling back- wards and forwards, and his body swinging imeasily, as if he were at sea in a rough night. 96 THIS SON OF VULCAN. There was to be one more visitor, though, in this, the most eventful day in all Myles Ciiolahan's life. A doctor, this time, who called about eight o'clock. Finding the room dark, he went away and bought candles, with- out sajdng a word. Jack ht one, and he turned to the patient, whose story he knew already from Father Mathew. " Take off yom- clothes and go to bed," he said, keeping his eyes full upon him. Myles obeyed without a word, but there was a dangerous glimmer in his look as he shiftily glanced at the doctor. Jack saw his eye catch at the poker, and instantly edged away in its direction, seizing it furtively when Myles' s back was turned. He was in bed, but his eyes rolled back- wards and forwards with a strange and di-ead- ful wildness. " Go downstairs, boy, and bring me a glass and a jug of water." Jack, glad of an opportunity of getting the poker out of the room, hastened on his errand. The doctor sat down and looked at his patient. Myles said never a word, but glanced THIS SON OF VULCAN. 97 uneasily at his bedside, as if with a desii-e to escape. When Jack came up, the doctor put some crystals into the tumbler, and poured water over them. "Now, Myles Cuolahan, my fine fellow, you've got to go to sleep ; and it's no use you trying to keep awake, because this is liydrate of chloral, and go to sleep you must. Leave off rolling your eyes, my man, and drink it off." Myles di*ank it, and lay back. For a minute or two he kept his eyes shut. Then he started up in bed and began to moan. The doctor laid him back. "More chloral," he said. "Now, Myles, I've got to see you asleep before I go ; and perhaps there ^ill be other drunken rascals besides yourself waiting for me to-night. Now, then, off you go." Again the doctor dosed his patient, and time after time he started back to sleeplessness and torture. As for Jack, he had long since fallen back upon his mattress, and was now sleeping soimdly, wearied out mth the last night's watching and terror. ^ VOL. I. H 98 THIS SON OF VULCAN. '' We must try something else, then," said the doctor. '^ You mustn't take any more chloral, though your nerves are like so many red-hot wires. Now, Myles, look at me." He bent over him, with his eyes full upon the raving man, and compelled him to look him in the face. Then he made a few passes with his hands, and Myles closed his eyes. He had fallen into a sleep, at first mesmeric, and then natural. ** Sleep now," said the doctor, ''for twelve hours, and you will be cured. Wake up once, and you will be a raving maniac." It was past twelve o'clock when he got his i^atient comfortably off. He had had but little sleep the night before : the thought crossed him that if Myles awoke it might be death to the boy, and so he stayed and watched by the bedside. From time to time he listened to the breathing of the sleeper : it was full, deep, and regular. At three o'clock Jack woke up. *' Let me watch now," he whispered. " I am not afi'aid of him." "Wake me if he moves or opens his eyes." And, throwing himself on Jack's mattress, the doctor was asleep in a moment. THIS SON OF VULCAN. 99 « * * « # It was at two o'clock in the afternoon that Myles Cuolahan woke up. Jack was by his bedside. " Myles," he whispered, " have you had enough sleep ? The doctor said you was to sleep till you woke up of your own accord." He sat up in bed and looked round. Every- thing was changed with him. The delirium had passed away with the blessed sleep : his forehead and his hands were cool: his eyes were calm : he remembered all ; and, better than everj^thing, the first thing he thought of was the pledge. " Jack, asthore, it's a happy man I am this morning, and yesterday was a blessed day. And now I'll get up." 100 THIS SON OF VULCAN. CHAPTEE IV. Miss Feeens came to see him the next day, but without Norah. " Of course," she said, " I shall not let Norah come back yet." " Av coorse," said Myles humbly. " Not till I am sure that you intend to keep the pledge that you have taken. And even then — but we shall see. Now, how are you going to live ? Have you got no money at all ? Myles shook his head. '' How much do you want to start you with ? " "There's Jack," he said, ''he's had no breakfast, and he'U have no dinner — no more shall I, for that matther." "I will find breakfast and dinner for both of you. But to start you in trade again ? " THIS SON OF VULCAN. 101 " Tinpence will do it, with the blessin' of tlie Lord." " Tenpence — ten — pence ? " ''It's this way," said Myles. ''With tin- pence I buy a thousand needles — that's tinpence. I tie thim up in bundles of five- aud-twenty. Fom- five-and-twenties is a hundi'ed — five two hundreds is a thousand — four — tens — tens — bad sthress to it ! how much is it? " "Foi-ty, I suppose." " I never could learn the multiplication table. When I was Jack's size there, I went to Misther M'Brearty's school in Belfast. The sight of thim rows of figures always made me ill, and Pat M'Brearty told my father wunst that I was a born dunce. So says my father, taking • the book to him in one hand and a mighty big stick in the other, ' Myles, let's learn the tables.' You see, my father was very long-sighted, and obliged to hould the book close to the candle, where I could see it too ; and, bedad, I rattled off the nmltiplication table like Alexander the Great. So my father went to see the masther. ' Bad end to your sowl,' says he, ' Myles knows his 102 THIS SON OF VULCAN. tables.' ' Does he ? ' says M'Brearty. ' Let's have him up, then.' So I was had up again, and bruk down." " But about the needles, Mr. Cuolahan ? " " Forty, was it ? I sell the needles at a penny a bundle, and I get forty pence — forty ; and I gave tinpence for thim — that is thirty pence profit, isn't it? Lend me tinpence, miss, and I'll bless you for iver. I'll keep the pledge, niver fear. For I've had a lesson, and I'm a changed man." Miss Ferens lent him the tenpence, which Myles returned the day after, and the new hfe began in earnest. A changed man, yes ; but, though the delii'ium had left him, the craving after strong diink was strong upon him stiU, and for many and many a day Myles Cuolahan could not pass a pubHc-house without a feeling as if strong ropes were dragging him to its doors. But changed, save for the same liability to temptation ; and poor Biddy's prophecy was not' destined to come true. '' Lave it ? " she had cried in her bitterness. " They never lave it." She reckoned without the lesson which a night's misery was to give her THIS SON OF VULCAN. 103 husband, and without the eloquence of Father Mathew ; for Myles left it. Thenceforth he was lijie a son of Eechab, inasmuch as, for a vow he had made, he would taste no strong drink for evermore. At first his ways were feeble and his steps trembhug ; for every street has its taverns, and every tavern has its long, invisible tentacles, like some gigantic polyi^us, stretched out to claim and di-ag to its nest some poor sinner like Myles. It was only in the evening, when safe at home, that he felt happy. There — for his trade was a prosperous one, and the money was no longer spent in whisky — he would sit talking over his early days in Ireland with Httle Jack, smoking liis pipe after the day's fatigue, and drinking strong coffee, which Jack made for him. There was considerable annoyance felt in certain cii'cles at the defection of Myles Cuolahan. Others had left the club at the Fox and Hounds before, for different reasons, indeed. There were generally a few who en- joyed the privileges of non-resident or foreign niembersliip, some being retained by the extra- ordinary affection of the Newgate and Millbank warders, some being away in the country on 104 THIS SON OF YULCAN. business, some perhaps laid up in hospital, working off the effects of the last free fight. But none, up to this moment, had gone over to the enemy ; there had been no temperance man in the club, and it was strongly felt that the resentment of the members should in some form be conveyed to the offender. Mrs. Patsy M'Nulty, the little Welshwoman, undertook to be the representative of the wish, and in that capacity paid a visit to Myles one evening, when he had just made his coffee, and was sitting with Jack in calm meditation on his own victory. She knocked at the door, came in softly, and sat down, after shaking hands with Myles and patting Jack on the head. She talked, as I have said abeady, nothing but the finest book Enghsh, quite like an old- fashioned novel. " You are quite well, Myles Cuolahan ? And what is the reason why you have abandoned your former associates ? Has prosperity so far changed your disposition towards my husband and the rest as to prevent your meeting them again in friendship ? " *' Mrs. M'Nulty," retm-ned Myles with pride, THIS SON OF VULCAN. 105 " I have taken the pledge. Will ye have a drop of- coffee ? " She shook her head, and taking a little bottle out of her pocket, re- moved the cork, and ostentatiously took a longish pull. Then she handed it over to Myles, who took it mechanically, and held it to his nose. It was — it was, indeed — the finest Irish whisky, and for a moment, while his heart melted to his old friend, his knees shook and his hands trembled. Then httle Jack, who was watching the proceedings with an anxious eye, quietly took the bottle out of his hand, and gave it back to the woman. ''Myles only drinks coffee and tea now," he said. *' Don't tempt him with the whisky." " Tempt him ! " she cried, flashing into a white-hot rage. " I tempt him ? Let me tell you, youthful offspring of the devil, that I tempt no one. What ! cannot Myles Cuo- lahan follow the incHnations of his heart without the interference of a child ? Axe you again in leading-strings, Myles Cuolahan ? Will you be put back into the cradle ? Shall we dress you in long clothes ? Shall we give you to Jack to carry about the streets ? Ai'e you " 106 THIS SOX OF A^ULCAN. ''All the same, Mrs. ISI'Xnlty, I've taken the pledge, and I'm not going to meet your husband at the Fox and Hounds any more." " Then, Mr. Cuolahan," she repHed, rising with the dignity of a duchess, " if you vrill not di'ink with my husband, you shall fight with him. I'm going now to fetch him fi-om the club. We shall be back in the court in five minutes. We wiU see, Mr. Cuolahan who takes the pledge — Mr. Cuolahan who is led by the nose by a measly little boy — Mr. Cuolahan who will not drink whisky — which is the best man. Poor Myles ! Patsy M'Nulty will- grind you and crush you to powder." She was a very extraordinary young woman this, because, though she was in a furious rage, being indeed a lady of a disposition as fitful and as uncertain as the sea of Galilee, she spoke no faster, and only articulated her words a little more clearly ; only, when she had finished, she brandished the bottle in Myles's face triumphantly, pulled out the cork, and took another long pull. After which she went quite peacefully away. *' Myles, must you fight ? " THIS SON OF VULCAN. 107 Myles nodded, and made such preparations as the exigencies of the case allowed ; that is, he tightened his waistband, loosened his shii't- collar, took off the long, many-pocketed coat, and then, followed by Jack, he walked slowly do^\'n the staii-s, and out into the street with- out his hat. Myles, although anxious to be. first in the field, found Patsy M'Nulty waiting for him, and shook hands warmly with his old friend. Neither made any reference to the impending combat; but, after congratulating Patsy on his recent victory — he had defeated the Tipton champion only a w^eek before for tw^enty-five pounds a side — he recognized a few other friends among the crowd, and prepared for business by turning back his shirt-cuffs. Mrs. M'Nulty, wdth a keen look of expectation, sat in the front row of the stalls, so to speak, hke a critic on a first night. The w^oman was one of that class who, in Spain, attend every bull-, fight, in Rome would have gone to every exhibition of lions and Christians, and now^- adays take pleasure at HurUngham. She was, as her husband once mildly complained, almost too fond of fighting. 108 THIS SON OF VULCAN. Eoimd one. — I think I have mentioned Myles Cuolahan's gigantic hand; to the big hand was attached a wrist of ii'on and an arm of steel. He was small, spare, sHght, but he was active. His antagonist, a big, heavy man, would have been more than a match for Myles, but for one thing — he was in bad condition. A fortnight's training had been followed by a week's steady drinking, and Patsy was puffy. First blood, and frantic cheers for Patsy. '' Patsy M'Nulty ! Patsy M'Nulty ! Death to the teetotaller ! " It was not Mrs. M'Nulty who interrupted the business of the fight by any such vulgar cry as this ; it was quite a common outsider, a lady of no education, of Shefl&eld extraction, with no eye for the artistic beauties of a fight. Quite the contrary. Mrs. M'lSIulty sat per- fectly quiet ; and when the apparent advantage came to her husband, she was the only one who observed that it was not real, and that a great deal of force was expended by her hus- band with a very small result — only, in fact, a scratch. She nodded approvingly to Myles, as much as to say that it was very neatly doni on his part ; only a single inch less to the left, THIS SON OF VULCAN. 109 and Patsy's big fist would have finished the fight at once. As it was, a mere trifle of flesh off the cheek — nothing. ♦ . * * * * Eound twenty. — The fickle populace. They are cheering Myles now, for Patsy M'Nulty is rolhng about Hke some great three-decker in a storm, with its rudder gone. His great, good- natured face is beaten into a huge pulpy mass; his eyes are bunged up ; his nose is bleeding; his mouth is sweUing fast, and in fi'ont of him, as lusty as when he began, is Myles Cuolahan, his bright eyes sparkhng, his Ups set back, his whole frame dancing with the deHght of battle and victory. Finally he plants a tremendous blow, which resounds like the stroke of a ham- mer on an anvil, in the chest of his mighty antagonist. Patsy M'Nulty reels and falls, and rises no more. Myles is the victor. Mrs. M'Nulty claps her hands, not because her husband has fallen, but because the battle lias been conducted on the soundest principles of art, and with considerable skill on both sides. And presently the festive party breaks up, Patsy being led home by his w^ife, who expatiates on the various rounds, all the time 110 THIS SON OF VULCAN. she is attending to his bruises, as if she were herseK a Professor. Myles is dragged by a few attendants in the direction of the Fox and Hounds, but breaks away, and peaceably goes home mth Jack. Then popularity becomes contempt. ** Ugh ! Ugh ! Teetotaler— Myles the tee- totarel. " You're a fine lot," said Myles, feehng his wrist, which began to show signs of having been too hard worked. *' You're a poor lot. Ye shouted when I went down, and ye shouted when Patsy went down. Jack, niver you mind how people shout ; they're only like dumb sheep that follow the leader — Hke the Belfast Orange boys when they sing ' Croppies lie down.' I'm proud o' meself. Jack, and proud of the pledge ; but then — 'tis the divil not to drop in, in a frindly way, after the fight too, for a shan aghan. What wud my father say, and my grandfather, an' aU the Cuolahans, to see me going away home to have coffee with my pipe afther a fight ? " Next evening Miss Ferens called upon him, bringing little Nor ah. " Good heavens! man, what is the matter?" THIS SON OF VULCAN. Ill For Myles's face had a patchy appearance, swoUen in some places and dented in others, a strip of plaster crossed his forehead, and another adorned his Up, while a huge dis- coloured stain upon his eye showed where Patsy's fist had found a temporary home. " He's been fighting," cried Jack in great glee ; " he's been fighting Patsy M'Nulty." Myles stood in a deprecatory attitude. " It is all true," it seemed to say. " I am the conquering hero ; but not too much praise, if you please. Do not overrate what is really a small episode in a glorious career." "You disgraceful man ! " said Miss Ferens. Never had the cm-rent of Myles's thoughts been so stiikingly disturbed, except, perhaps, on that memorable day when he awoke and, behold ! it was but a dream. No praise at aU then. " You disgraceful man." *'It was Patsy M'Nulty," Jack interposed. In his eyes the victory of Myles over that great bruiser was more glorious than Blen- heim. Myles said nothing, only looked straight before him. 112 THIS SON OF VULCAN. *' Fighting, indeed ! . . . and for a man who has only just taken the pledge ! " Myles pulled it out of his pocket, unfolded and read it, with a- dreadful fear that there was something in it against fighting. " Now, Myles Cuolahan, I came to see you this evening on important business, and I am sorry indeed to see you in this deplorable condition." *' I bet him," murmured the discomfited Myles. " Now Ksten. It has long been on my mind that you are not a proper person to bring up a child like Nor ah . . . not a proper person at aU." " Jack always washed and dressed her," said the poor father. " Jack can't go on always washing and dressing her. Besides, Jack must work for himself. I am going to take Norah fi'om you. . . . Don't look indignant, Myles ; it is for your own good. I do not Hve in Shefl&eld, I live in Bedesbury. Norah shall stay with me and be my daughter. I will educate her and be kind to her .... yes, Myles, I wiU be very kind to her " — her plain features THIS SON OF VULCAN. 113 softened as she spoke — '' very kind to the little one. When she is fifteen or sixteen, she shall herself choose whether to live with you or with me. You shall see her as often as you j^lease, say two or three times a year." ''And Jack too?" " And Jack too. You will leave this dread- ful place, and go back to your old hfe on the road, but without the di'inking. Send me every week what you can save, and remember that you will be saving for the child." "Ay . . . But Jack can't go on the tramp yet. He's too httle. What wiU I do about Jack?" ''Never mind me, Myles," said Jack, with the wisdom of thirty. " You get away from here, and I'll do, somehow." " Mrs. Bastable wants to have you. Jack ; but I don't know." " If Mrs. What-is-her-name," observed Miss Ferens, '' wants Jack, and she is a respectable person, you had better send him there." " You wouldn't hke Jack, as well as Norah, mum ? " said Myles with an ingratiating wave of his hand. It was so big, and now so swollen YOL. I. I 114 THIS SON OF VULCAN. with the recent fight, that it was like waving a fan. " Certainly not ..." rephed Miss Ferens. "Certainly not; that is . . . ." observing Jack flushing with wounded pride — " that is .... I could not possibly have a boy in my house ; a Httle girl I should like, but no boys. I could not bear the responsibihty." It was late when she w^ent away. But she bore with her, triumphantly, little Norah, sound asleep in her arms. And as she drove back to her lodgings a smile of triumph lay upon her Hps. " I do not expect they will find their way to Bedesbury. Norah, my darling, we will be all in all to each other. You shall be my child, the child the Lord ought to have given me long ago. . . . Myles will break the pledge . . . they always do. He will get killed in some drunken brawl. The boy will disappear in this great town, or go up to London, or somewhere, and you, my Norah, shall never know your parents, and shall be my own daughter, my pride and my joy, my pretty, pretty, black-eyed darhng." "Bedesbury, Jack," said Norah's father, THIS SON OF YULCAN. 115 undressing for the night — " remember Bedes- bury. Miss Ferens is right about Norah. About the fighting I don't know. Father Mathew said nothing against it ; and, well — maybe, the next fightin' she won't hear nothing of. Mrs. Bastable wants you, Jack, to make you a page, she says. She's a quare crayture, and her husband's a quare crayture. She's the fool, and he's the knave, so it's betwix and between. They'll be good to you ; we'll try thim for a month, and if you don't like it then we'll try something else. On the tramp again ; well, I'll miss poor Biddy, and I'll miss you, Jacky, and I'U be a lonely man ; no dhrink and notlnn'. Put out the candle, Jack." 116 THIS SON OF VULCAN. CHAPTER V. Mr. Bastable, justly considered one of the most remarkable men in Sheffield, Hved with his wife in one of a long row of houses, all exactly the same in appearance, colour, and age, which formed a naiTow street in one of the poorer quarters of the town. His pro- fession, according to a zinc plate affixed to the door, was that of " HerbaHst and Bird-stuffer ; " and in the window, to show that he was not a har, stood a case filled with birds which had once been stuffed. It was so long ago that they were tumbling off theii' wires in various stages of decay, and lay about, some with eyeless sockets, some with the stuffing come out in a shameful manner, some with feather- less tails and wings — a gruesome spectacle, reminding the travelled native of the Natural History Department in the British Museum, THIS SON OF VULCAN. 117 and conveying to the untravelled a new view of nature's wonders. On a dish beside the glass case stood, in further confirmation of his professional pretensions, a bundle of herbs, black and withered, which might have been groundsel, or chickweed, or anything. No doubt they were rare and valuable, culled on the higher slopes of Himalaya, and possessing cm-ious medicinal properties known only to their owner. Though the front room thus ap- peared to be the surgery or consulting-room, it was in the "back parlour" — I quote Mrs. Bastable — where Mr. Bastable received Myles Cuolahan when he brought Jack for final inspection after Miss Ferens's last visit. This was much the larger room of the two, because Mr. Bastable, at considerable expense, had built out an addition to it in the form of an arched alcove about ten feet broad and the same deep, where had been formerly a window. For some pui-poses of liis own he had provided the back of this recess with tightly-closing shutters, by which he could exclude ever.y ghmmer of daylight. At present the shutters were not let down, and the full hght of day, with such brilliancy of sun as you might 118 THIS SON OF VULCAN. expect in Sheffield at twelve in the morning, streamed in through the small window upon Mr. Bastable and his belongings. Eed cm-tains of heavy texture, but rusty colour, were looped up on either side of the recess ; its floor was raised about six inches above the level of the rest of the room, and was covered with canvas, on wliich was painted a strange device, which Jack was as yet unable to explain. It was, in reality, a circle with the twelve signs of the zodiac. Pushed carelessly into a corner was a chair, the Hke of which, for magnificence, Jack had never seen ; for it was overlaid with scarlet cloth, it had gilded feet, and on the cloth, embroidered in gold, was a large Jeru- salem cross, very gorgeous to behold. The rest of the room had nothing remarkable in it ; in fact it was empty, except for a common deal table and a couple of cane chairs ; and there was no carpet. Mr. Bastable requested Myles to sit down, and then began to examine the boy — feeling the suppleness of his fingers and looking at his eyes, as if he were pm-chasing a colt or a slave — talking all the while. "Yes, Cuolahan, yes — we want a boy some- THIS SON OF VULCAN. 119 times ; not for odd jobs, but for business that requires a lad something out of the way. This boy — he's very young — arms pretty good — hands a httle too large — fingers rather clumsy — pull up your trousers, boy, and show your legs. Ah ! he's very young, very young indeed — but he's good-looking, got the face of a gentleman, somehow — he might suit my pur- poses. Not your ovm boy, I beUeve, Cuolahan. That makes it come cheaper to part with him, don't it? Well, and what do you put his figure at?" "Eh?" " Don't be rapacious, my friend. One boy, for whom I gave a — well — more than you'd beHeve, ran away only a week after I bought him. What do you think he's worth ? " "Well," said Myles, a httle taken aback, " he's not worth very much yet, but give him his meals regular with potatoes and pudding, and treat him kindly, and he'll be worth a good deal in course of time ; and he won't ask for any wages." " Wages, man ! I am going to buy the boy — I always buy them out and out." Myles seized Jack and dragged him within 120 THIS SON OF VULCAN. the protection of his big fists. *' Buy my Jack, wiUyou?" " Why, he isn't your son, you know." *'I may he a Prodesdan," said Myles, "and a black teetotaler — m ore's the pity and the shame — but I'm not a Pagan. He isn't mine, and he's nobody's but the Lord Almighty's — and would I sell him ? Buy my Jack ! Come now, Misther Bastable, it's joking you are — say so, man, or else wait there till I smash ye ! " Mr. Bastable hastened to make the peace. " Come, I thought you wanted to sell the boy. Look here, Cuolahan, I like the boy's looks, and he'll do for me. He's nine years old. Leave him with me for a year or two while you go on your beat again. I will dress him, feed him, and be kind to him. I don't beat boys in this house, and I don't swear at them — whatever others may do," he added, meaningly. " 'Tis the misthress, perhaps," said Myles, "undertakes that department, like Pat M' Swire's wife wid the apprentices in Belfast." " No," repHed the other. " However, leave him with me : let him understand that he has got to obey, and we shall all be satisfied." TIUS SON OF VULCAN. 121 " What is it, now, the boy will do ? will he stuff birds ? Bedad, .Misther Bastable, them in the window is in a bad way, wid all your stuffin'." "Perhaps. I want him to help in the business. My wife, the famous clairvoy- ante " ''The what?" " The clairvoyante. You do not under- stand. She has the gift of commimication with the spirits of the other world." • ' 'Twixt us and harm," murmured Myles, crossing himself, though he was a " Prodes- dan." " They told her where to look for such a boy as we want. They mean well, the spiiits, though they certainly somehow have an awk- ward way of showing their benevolence What is the matter, my fi-iend ? " For Myles shrieked out and began to dance. *' Who was it?" he cried; ''Jack, 'twas you. No, 'twasn't. Misther Bastable, you are afther your tricks with me, and ye'd best not. Look here ! " He drew a long pin from his caK, and ex- hibited it. 122 THIS SON OF VULCAN. " I can't help it," said Mr. Bastable calmly; " tilings go on in this house that — well, the spirits won't hurt the boy. They told me so. They told me, too, that he is destined to be a great man by their agency — another reason why you should let me have him." " I must find a place for the poor little chap," Myles said, with a sigh, " for I'm off again on my old beat, and he's too young to come with me. It's a lonely life I'll have ; Norah with Miss Ferens, Bedesbmy way. Jack all by himseK with you, and me alone with the pledge in me pocket and the cowld water lyin' deadly chill in me stomach, for company. Jack, will ye stay with Misther Bastable ? " " If you like, Myles ; come back soon and see me — don't leave me altogether, Myles," cried the child. " I'U come back, niver you fear, Jack asthore. And you'll be a good boy and a credit to yourself and me, and — not take to dhrink, eh, Jack ? " So with scant but hearty fareweU he left the lad with his new protector, and departed. Mr. Bastable was a short, thick-set man, of forty or thereabouts. He had the appearance THIS SON OF VULCAN. 123 of a workman rather than a man of science, .as he sat in his shirt-sleeves, with his right arm pai'tly bare. He wore no collar, and a great shaggy black beard, growing far back at the throat, fell over his breast, and left a white projecting chin like an ivory carving in the midst of it. A mass of black hair, thick and cm'ly, lay upon his forehead, which was high, but not broad. His eyes were small, and set close together. His nose was long, not broad, but yet coarse, while his lips were thin. It was the face of a man who at first sight repelled you ; after a while you became accustomed to him : but the man had no friends. There are, if you think of it, two great classes of men, the one which has fi'iends, and the one which has only acquaint- ances. Some men, I mean, go thiough the world without attaching to themselves a single creature who cares for them — who live without the sympathy, and die without the regret, of any one man or woman. Bastable was one of these : all men distrusted him at first sight ; all men grew to tolerate him ; none grew to like him or to confide in him. And then his profession was against him. 124 THIS SON OF VULCAN. When Myles was gone, Jack stood looking at him in his fearless way. " There are many curious things," said his master — '' many curious things that take place in this house, which you need not ask any- thing about. You saw just now how Cuolahan was pricked with a pin. I don't understand these things, and there's no reason why you should. If I hear knocks at night, and tap- pings in the wainscoting" — as he spoke he pointed to the fireplace, whence there came a faint tapping—*' like that " *'It's a mouse," said Jack. ''We'll call it a mouse," said his master; " I never inquii'e. If at night messages come to the bedside T\dth taps, I don't ask if they're mice — I only listen and write them down, and then I go to sleep again. If I walk up the stairs after dark, and feel fingers in my hair, I don't say to myself ' That's mice ' ; I only stand stiU, and never move hand nor foot tiU they leave their hold of me. I don't cry out, because that only exasperates them ; and I don't run away, because that drives them wild; and don't you." Jack did not understand one single syllable. THIS SON OF VULCAN. 1*25 " Chains I have heard — that was mice, per- haps ; also banging open of doors, and smash- ing of crockery if they get enraged — as enraged the best of us will get sometimes — whether wise blessed spirits or sinfiil men. But that's rare. Only don't you be surprised, whatever you see and hear ; and don't you go crying out in the middle of the night, and running down the street yelping, like the last boy I had." "What should I run away for?" asked Jack. " What, indeed ! What should you say if you was to see the table, this here very identical table, stand up on its hind legs ? " As he spoke, the table began to agitate itself with the agihty and grace of a cow, and pre- sently stood up on two legs, presenting its other two to Jack. '' Myles could do that," said the boy uncon- cernedly. "If he was to try, he could do better hanky than that. I've seen him make a chair walk." "Did he tell you how he did it?" asked Mr. Bastable. " Yes, once he showed me how he did it with a string, but I've forgotten." 126 THIS SON OF VULCAN. " Well — now you know what to expect. Go downstairs, and you'll find my wife ; tell her you've come to be the new boy, and she'U give you some clothes." Jack found Mrs. Bastable cooking in the front kitchen ; that is, she was sitting in fi'ont of a gi'eat fire on which stood a boihng pot, and she held a hook in her hand. She was a woman of five-and-thirty or so, with singularly light flaxen hair, and eyes of a clear pale blue ; not the cold grey-blue that goes with a cruel disposition, but a distinct Hght tint that had no grey at all. They were large eyes, too, which would have been lustrous but for a painful look of expectation that always lin- gered in them. Her features were soft and characterless, as if they had left the sculptor's hands without the final touch. Her hands were large, soft, and extremely white ; and Jack noticed that they shook very much whenever she spoke. At the boy's footsteps she dropped her hook into the fender and gave a little shriek, staring wildly at him. " I'm the new boy, ma'am," said Jack, advancing boldly, though somewhat startled THIS SON OF VULCAN. 127 by the singularity of his reception. She re- covered a httle, took him by the shoulders, looked him in the face, and then laughed, patting him kindly on the cheek. " I thought it was one of Them," she said. '' Well, it's thoughtful of him to give me another boy, if it's only for companionship ; for lonely isn't the word, I do assure you, when he's gone, and they're about. The last boy ran away, and his mother came and abused Them, she did. Wasn't it shameful ? " ''Who did she abuse?" " The sperruts, my dear. No consideration for me — no thought of the rage they would fall in — no regard whatever to the property. The way the tongs banged about when she was gone, and me left alone in this awfiil empty place, was more than words can paint, or music tell, or brush can sing. Ah!" She paused, and looked round, whispering, *' Ai-e you afraid of the speiTuts, boy ? " "I don't know," said Jack. "What do they do to you? " " They stroke your face on the staii's and in bed — they rap at windows and doors — they call from the fireplace — they make noises all day 128 THIS SON OF VULCAN. long — they get angry, and won't let you sleep at night with their noise. And sometimes you see them — here a head, and* there a hand, or mayhe a sperrut leg." " I don't think I should be afraid of that," said the boy. " There used to be dreadful noises all night in our court; Noises don't hurt people." "Ah ! " she rephed, "it's very brave of you to say so, and I hope you'll act according, and not go running away, bringing the neighbours down on us, and discredit on a woman who only wants to live quiet. For it's a hard life, after all, though my Benjamin will have it it's a glorious life — chosen, you see, and selected by the sperruts themselves. There isn't a house in all Sheffield — no, nor iu all Yorkshii-e, that's haunted like om-s. There isii't a mes- merizer in England that's like my husband ; and there isn't in all the world round a clari- voyong Hke me." As she spoke, she stood upright with an aii- of pride for a moment, and then suddenly dropped her arms to her side, and, while her colour changed and the look of expectation in her eyes grew intensified, gazing into space, she murmm-ed, " He is coming." THIS SOX OF VULCAX. 120 Jack thought she was play-acting. At tlie same time the aii- about him seemed suddenly cold; and then there were heard rappings about all over the room, apparently under his feet, in the ceiling, behind the fireplace, at the door. He took no notice. The door opened, and Mr. Bastable appeared. He threw a hurried glance at his wife, adjusted her haii', which was in some disorder, smoothed out her dress — Jack noticed that she preserved her rigid look, and neither moved nor gave the least .sign of comprehending what was done to her — and then turned to the boy. "Tut, tut," he muttered. "Too bad! I sent you down to be dressed. Here, take off all these things." He hastily imdi'essed Jack, and looking in a di-awer, di-ew out a suit of green and scarlet cloth, which he put on him quicldy and ner- vously. " You are to come upstairs, and you are not tu say a single word, mind — not a word. If the visitor speaks to you, don't answer. Look as if you do not hear him and do not see him. If you dare to disobey me " It was the fii'st time the boy had ever been 130 THIS SON OF VULCAN. threatened, and a new feeling came over him of resistance and rebeUion. Nevertheless, he held his peace. The dress which he wore was pictm-esque and theatrical. It consisted of a green cap, something like a fez, with a scarlet tassel; a green jacket, embroidered with scarlet; and a pair of short trousers, terminating above the knee, where they were gathered ip by an elastic band. The jacket was buttoned, so as to hide the common coarse shirt he wore ; and Mr. Bastable had dragged off his shoes and stockings, so that he was barefooted as well as barelegged. Altogether the costume had an oriental look, only Jack did not know it. As for his master, he, too, was metamor- phosed. He wore a four-sided pyramidal cap of some black material, with two lapp6ts hanging down, one over each ear. Over his shoulder, suspended by a crimson scarf, hung a sword, whose hilt was studded with sparkling gems, real or false ; he wore a broad girdle, covered with the same curious figm-es that Jack had remarked on the circle round the thi'one in the alcove upstaii's, the signs of the zodiac. But, besides these, there were other THIS SON OF VULCAN. 131 things : the Labarum, the cross and circle conjoined, the turtle's head, plain crosses, plain circles, circles -mth smaller circles placed within, and trines, the whole interlaced by an inscription, running in and out among the figures, in Hebrew characters. Two daggers lay crosswise over his breast. Beneath all this a pure white linen robe, reaching to his knees; and below them sandals, with red leather fastenings, which crossed each other halfway up his bare legs. BUs arms — great, massive arms, with enormous sinews standing on them Hke ropes — were bare, Uke his legs, save for short brown leather sleeves, on each of which was marked a Maltese cross ; and in his hand he carried, when he came into the kitchen, a curious implement, fashioned in ivory or very white wood, which at first looked like a fantaisie of intercrossing lines, and finally resolved itself into what Jack soon learned to caU the pentacle, that odd fancy of the occult sciences, in which, by means of an equilateral and equiangular pentagon, you get the five senses represented by the five angles ; and by joining the angles, and so forming five isosceles, and as many oblique-angled triangles, 132 THIS SON OF VULCAN. you get the functions of the Deity; and by drawing other lines you develop a bewildering mass of symbolism which makes the brain to stagger at the mere contemplation. The mes- merist's face was changed, too ; for the great bushy whiskers were brushed straight down, and added to the luxuriance of his long black beard, while the chin, whiter and more poHshed than before, seemed to stand out in a more aggressive manner. All these de- tails, which I give for the right understand- ing of the man, were not, of course, taken in all at once by the child; but the general impression produced upon him was, that he was experiencing quite a new set of sensations, and that he was about to witness some very remarkable " hanky," in which he was proudly to bear a part. In truth, Mr. Bastable's house was the principal scene at that time of what has since become so common as to be passed by, either with a grin of contempt or a deprecatory wave of the hand. "Do not," said a lady to me once — " do not take to table-turning and spiritual seances. You are fit for better things." I was pleased and flattered by this THIS SON OF YULCAX. 133 tribute to my superior promise (not since realized), and it was not till I had left her that I began to speculate on what she meant. She meant two things, but I was not certain which she meant. Spiritualism, she thought, must be a humbug, in which case everybody is meant for better things ; or it must be a reahty, which up to the present time has done no good for mankind. After all, it was no great compHment ; but it illustrates the atti- tude which people assume towards pretensions which may or may not be tme, but which are nevertheless supported' by those whose veracity, si qua fides, if there is any trust to be placed in position, education, honour, and the respon- sibilities attaching to the grand modern word of gentleman, ought to be beyond all doubt. It is not my purpose to wiite a treatise on spiritual manifestations, either here or any- where else. I only record what Jack saw and experienced during his stay in the house • of the Bastables. As for the woman, she was a clairvoyante by profession. Wliat she did or said was done or said, as in the case of the prophetesses of Delphi, Dodona, and the Syrian shrines, under the influence of a mys- 134 THIS SON OF VULCAN. terious power which, since the oracles are dumb, seems fallen permanently into the hands of gentlemen adventurers Kke the illustrious Count Cagliostro and Mr. Benjamin Bast able. There was a certain grandeur in the carriage and bearing of the man when, his preparations completed, he turned to the door and led the way. As he turned, though her back was towards him, the woman turned too, and followed silently, moving as if with a painful effort, her limbs being rigid and fixed. Jack, though nothing had be'en said, followed too, with a sense that it was expected of him. They went upstairs, this strange procession of three, all silent, into the mystic, though shabby, back parlour. It was changed since Jack had left it a quarter of an hour before. Then it was poorly fm-nished, with its wi-etched table and one or two chau's. Now it had a Turkey carpet upon the floor; tapestry hung round the walls ; there was a writing-table, with several curious articles, the nature of which Jack could not guess, in one corner. The Httle mndow at the back was closed, and a soft hght filled the room, which came THIS SOX OF VCLCAN. 135 from an opening in the chimney, shaped and coloured Hke a human eye. On the opposite wall was a mirror, which reflected the rays, and showed that the eye was inclosed in a triangle, over which were certain letters in Hebrew character. In the centre of the room was a circle, formed of forty-nine — seven times seven — small vases, in the midst of which was a triangle formed of three swords. And the alcove itself was hung round not only with the red curtains that Jack had seen there before, but also w4th rich, heavy drapery of a deep scarlet, against which the throne stood out, splendid in its decorations. It all seemed wonderful and incomprehensible to the boy, who stood at the door waiting. Mr. Bastable motioned his finger, without looking at his wife, to the throne. She obeyed instantly, though, as in the previous case, she was not looking at him, and seated herself in the great chair. He threw a long white robe, of some curious soft stuff, Uke a Madagascar lamba, over her. Then he put a white wand in Jack's hands. " Stand at the door, here, and do not move or speak. If I put you anywhere else, do ex- 186 THIS SON OF VULCAX. actly what you see that I want yon to do. Neither speak, nor listen, nor move. And whatever happens, remember that you will not be hurt, unless you move. Do you understand? Tell me what you have to do." " Neither speak nor move. I'm not afraid,' ■ said Jack, still confident that he was going to take part in some capital scene of conjuring. I have, I think, made it clear that he was a child of no education whatever. Consequently, he had not imbibed the idea of superstition — knew nothing about Bogy the Terrible, hob- goblin, or the devil ; and, owing to Myles's more than parental care, had not conceived the idea of fear. It never entered into Jack's untutored brain that anybody would dehbe- rately try to hurt him. Fighting — of course between people of the same age, and fairly matched as to physical strength and skill — was one of the dehghts of hfe, as he had already experienced. Bigger boys had buUied him ; then Jack had learned to show such fight as was in his power, making the process of bullying unpleasant and troublesome to the big victor, and had received such punishment as his oppressor had strength to give. But he THIS SON OF VULCAN. 137 had perfect confidence in grown-iip people. It is one of the virtues of the working classes that they are seldom rough or brutal to children. The women whack their own, out of an un- conquerable instinct to assert their power in some du-ection, rather than from the wisdom and experience of tried virtue ; the little girls slap the smaller boys and girls, still with a sense of the responsibilities of power ; but the men generally whack no helpless httle ones ; and you will find — at least, I have found — that the lads of nineteen or twenty regard their fathers, if not with that honour and reverence which the straight-walking Christians in the higher ranks command, at least as personal friends, who have trodden on Saturday nights, and still tread, the same flowery paths as themselves. " Where," asked Bastable, making passes with a wand, " where is he now ? " " Six doors off"," murmm-ed his wife in a hollow voice, her eyes looking farther away than ever. " Where now ? " a moment after. *' At tlie next house." He pulled a string which hung behind the 138 THIS SOX OF VULCAX. tapestry at his back ; there were steps in the hall ; the street-door was shut heavily ; the red curtains of the alcove dropped as if by themselves before the clairvoyante ; Mr. Bas- table seated himself at his table, and began to adjust his instruments, and the visitor appeared. THIS SOX OF VULCAN. 139 . CHAPTEE VI. The ^-isitor was a small thin man of about fifty, carefully and precisely dressed in a blue frock-coat and white trousers. He carried liimseK with his head a little on one side, as one who was capable of making shrewd re- marks. He wore small whiskers, being other- wise clean shaven. His lips were full and mobile, as those of a sensitive man ; and his eyes, when they were notht with the mii-th of a humorous nature, had a far-off look which somewhat resembled the expression in those of Keziah Bastable. When he sat down, his shoulders di'opped and his head bent forward, showing that he was one who habitually sat over a desk. Captain Perrymont, of the Royal Navy% was 'an astrologer and alchemist, an inquirer into old allegories and symboHsm ; one who thought there was once a time when 1^0 THIS SON OF VULCAX. people knew a way to lift the veil, and who was spending the best years of his life in try- ing to rediscover it, in his old house near Esbroiigh. Apparently, it was not his first visit to the house, for he did not appear in the least sur- prised at the preparations. Looking about him with an amused air, his eye fell on Jack, and he drew the boy towards himself and examined him critically. "Eh! the new youngster? He's got on the same uniform as the last. Bastable, I've told you before that gold lace does not matter. Nice boy ; nice boy : will he stand quiet, or will he scream and bolt, as the other one did, like a nigger paid with hot pitch ? " '' He'll stand quiet," said Bastable, with an attempt at dignity combined with respect. The effect of great submission and great dignity combined was as ludicrous — only Jack's edu- cation was too incomplete to enable him to see the incongruity of the thing — as if the Ai'ch- bishop of Canterbury, in full pontificals, were entreating a Eoyal Duke in plain clothes not to kick him ; or the whole proceeding had the ail- of being behind the scenes during a di-ess THIS SON OF VULCAN. 141 rehearsal, proAdded auy of the peiformers had ever been behmd the scenes, and could make the comparison. "Where's your wife, Bastable ? — dressed in all her finery, and shut up in her box ? Ah ! she might as well be dressed for her kitchen work, you know. What's the good of all these flummeries?" "Captain Perrymont ! — for heaven's sake, sir ! — They might hear and be offended. Remember how we failed last time." " That was because the boy sheered off in the middle." "Yes, sir; yes," — Bastable was growing nervous, — " but the books order it so, and I daren't go against the books. And now, Captain Penymont — now that we have got the greatest and most glorious chance — for heaven's sake don't spoil it by offending Them ! The boy's pure, and the woman's deeper gone than ever I knew her before ; and I've been engaged for months getting up the details. Do be quiet. Captain Perrymont." The Captain looked queerly at the man, as if he only half beheved him. " Come, Bastable, if there is anything to be done, let us do it." 142 THIS SON OF VULCAN. " Take my chair, sir. There ! Of course you will not speak. You are not afi-aid ! " ''I afraid!" '' I need not tell you, sir, as a master of the divine art, that there is danger — very great danger — if the rales are broken. Boy, stand here." He placed Jack upright in the circle ot cressets, within the triangle of the s'v^ords. " Eemember what I told you," he whispered in an agitated voice. "Whatever you see or hear, be silent, and do not dare to move out- side the triangle." He lit the cressets, which at first burned dimly, sending up a volume of white smoke of a pleasant, heavy odour. Then he knelt down in the corner of the room, and began, in a high-pitched monotone, an incantation of which Jack understood nothing. At the same time the great curtain before the alcove fell back, and Jack remembered — the last thing before the smoke curled round him and he could see nothing at all — the figure of Mrs. Bast able, erect on her platform, covered with a purple robe, in an attitude of expectation, one hand raised as if to listen. TPIIS SON OF YULCAX. 143 The wizard went on with his chant. Cap- tain Perrymont sat in the comer, his chin upon his hand, watching and Hstening. Outside, the people who Hve in the present, and are content with the philosophy of the phenomenal, went backwards and forwards in the street, ignorant that a few feet from them was a man performing rites which Catherine de' Medici might have witnessed, and Albei-tus Magnus invented. The Captain saw wreaths of white smoke, intertwined Uke ropes, twisting round and round and forming a cone, the apex of which was under the bright eye in the ceiling. Through this the light fell upon the smoke in coloured rays. The Captain's head reeled as he saw the endless wi-eaths of smoke curling round and round ; strange sounds, haK musi- cal, fell upon his ear ; the pei-fume mounted to his brains, and the slow monotone of Bas- table fell on his ears like the low notes of the organ, without which the hymn is imperfect, and which are yet unnoticed. He was roused by a voice — Bastable's. The wizard had ceased his hymn : the smoke, tinged with a hundi'ed Hghts, was curling 144 THIS SON OF VULCAX. round and round; in the alcove stood the clairvoyante, gazing into the mist with fixed and strained eyes. '' What does the boy see ? " asked Bastable. She replied without hesitation : " The smoke of the cressets stands away from the boy like a tent. He hears sounds which are not Hke the words of any speech ; he sees figm-es moving in the wreaths; human heads and arms. There are faces that come and go. He looks round him, and is not afraid. They beckon and nod at him; he only laughs. Hands clutch at him for a moment, and then fall back in the smoke. He has no fear, because he remembers his orders, neither to speak nor to move. The forms become thicker, and the faces fiercer and more threatening." " What does the boy see now ? " asked Mr. Bastable again, after a pause. The clakvoyante replied once more, in a clear, cold voice : " The boy is in the first circle of the jealous guardian spirits. He is surrounded by those who would, if they could, take him by the throat and wring the life out of hmi. But still he is not afr-aid." "He is in the circle," whispered Mr. THIS SON OF VULCAN. 145 Bastable, ** into which, with all our science, we cannot penetrate. Captain Perrymont. Only the ptire in heart — the innocent in intent — can see the things that he sees. When we dis- solve the spell, he shall remember nothing." *' "VMiat now does the boy see ? " he asked again. " The smoke has changed its colour, from the thick pure white to a pale rosy hue. The angry faces have vanished, and the threatening figm-es gone. Now he sees forms with glow- ing robes, and strange, cold faces, which float round and round, seeming not to regard him. He is in the second circle." " He can pass no further," said Bastable. " No mortal can see beyond the second circle. They are the only spirits we can communicate with, unless the higher spirits come volun- tarily. Shall we question them, Captain Per- rymont ? " " Ask them if I am on the right track in my great endeavour." ** They hear your question. — Spirits ! .if it may be, speak to the boy through the clair- voyante." The aiiswer came, as before, from the VOL. I, L 146 THIS SON OF VULCAN. priestess : '• The knowledge of old can always be found again. But the secrets of Nature can only be given to those who seek for the good of others." Captain Perrymont groaned aloud. " Ask them," he said, " if they are happy." This time there came no answer at all. " Ask them of the future," said the Captain. "Your own?" " I know it. It is labour unrewarded till the end. To men like me there is but one future. Ask them to read the boy his future : that matters nothing to any of us," " Tell us what the boy sees." The clairvoyante made answer : " He sees a wilderness of chimneys and furnaces ; he sees a forest of masts ; he sees a multitude of men toihng. There is a roar of steam, the clang of machinery, the din of the mighty hammers, the hissing and bubbhng of molten metal ; and in the centre, king and lord of all, he sees — himself. The spirits are smiling on him ; they breathe into his face ; they are fiUing his brain with great thoughts ; they inspire him with strength and fearlessness. Now his senses leave him ; he falls, but they THIS SON OF VULCAN. 147 bear him gently to the ground. The work is done." As she spoke, the rosy tinge of the smoke changed again into white ; the clouds that issued from the cressets suddenly diminished, and the smoke itself disappeared, leaving no trace behind it but the heavy smell of some incense which was never burned in churches. The boy was lying, with closed eyes and head resting on his arm, within the triangle where Mr. Bastable had placed him upright. The curtains of the alcove dropped again, and evei7thing was as it had been before. " Captain Perrymont," said Mr. Bastable, "to work this miracle of the divining art I have read all books of magic that ever have been written. You have witnessed what no one has seen since -the days of the great Para- celsus. He was the last who communicated with the better spirits. I, I alone, possess the secret." " Can you teach it to me ? " " Perhaps," he answered ; " but what is the use ? Have you magnetic power ? You could not even mesmerize your own son. Have you a clairvoyante to tell you what goes on beneath 148 THIS SON OF VULCAN. the magic bell ? Have you a child, pure, inno- cent, and fearless ? I have all. I have tried for years to get such a boy. It is by chance alone that I have succeeded; and how long will he remain innocent ? Until the first temptation. When the serpent finds us out, we faU." *' And what have they told us ? " " Captain Perrymont, I have questioned the other world for thirty years. No direct answer can be got from them for questions such as^ yours. Knowledge must be sought. In every alchemist's books you will find that the secrets are to be wrested from Nature itself ; it is the great and universal law. I, too, have tried to get information," — Mr. Bastable dropped the magician and became again himself. " Once, if you'U beheve me, Captain Perrymont, they gave me the winner of the Derby, six months before the event, and when he was forty to one. I actually never backed my moral — let the time go by. Next year came ; one of my patrons, a noble gentleman on the Tm-f, got me to get the information again. Well, sir, I first asked him for a paltry tenner, and then I made him promise me fifty per cent, on all his THIS SON OF VULCAN. 149 winniiigs. You'll hardly credit me, Captaiu Perrymont, but the spiiTuts gave me the wrong horse, and my noble backer was let in for a cool thousand. Then he came here and carried on that shameful against the spirruts as you never heard. There was no peace in the house for months afterwards, neither for Mrs. B. nor myself." " Well, serve you right for trjing to make money out of your knowledge. What do you think about your wife's prophecy, and the boy's future?" • " There, you see, sir, I don't think anything. She told what she knew. Make no mistake about that ! As for the boy, why shouldn't he get on in the world ? He's a strong boy, and looks a clever boy. Wait a moment." He removed the cressets, took up the swords, and placed the boy, still unconscious, upon the sofa. " Now for the other matter. Captain Perry- mont. Where is the map of your estate ? " The Captain gave him a rolled-up plan, which he had been carrying in his hand. "So . . . The estate is at Esbrough, is it not?" 150 THIS SON OF VULCAN. "Esbrough." " I know it — I tnow it. My wife came from Never mind. Show me the map." He spread it flat upon his table, and took from a drawer a small hazel rod about twelve inches long, pierced in the centre, with a hole which had been set with an ivory casing. Through this was passed a green silk string. " This is the divining rod — la verge de Jacob — that you first came to see me about, Captain Perrymont. Now, any one can use this that knows its indications, as I do ; but to use it on the plan of your estate, instead of on the ground itself, requires the aid of my clairvoyante. Some people will tell you that the hazel rod must be forked, and held by the two hands. Here is one of these elementary things — mere savagery. Captain Perrymont. You may cut one yourself, and prospect your estate to find water, -if you like. That is so simple that any gipsy woman will do it for you; what you are going to see now is a different thing altogether." He held up his hand, and his wife pushed aside the curtain, and came down fi'om the THIS SON OF VULCAN. 151 throne. She had put off the purple robe ; but her eyes were stiU rigid, and she moved with the same painful constraint. Her husband put the thread in her hund, and placed it in position over the map, so that the rod hung free. The map was about four feet by five, and Mrs. Bastable held the instnmient exactly over the centre. At first the rod was motionless ; then Mr. Bastable made a few passes before his wife's face, and her fiugers held the thread with a tighter grasp. The rod began to osciUate, and moved round and roimd, sometimes stopping for a moment, sometimes having one end downwards, but always uncertain. At every stoppage, Mr. Bastable, who held in his left hand half-a-dozen smaU glass tubes, applied them rapidly one after the other. Sometimes there was no result; at other times the rod would incHne more decidedly, and stand, so to speak, fixed to the spot. Then Mr. Bastable would make a Uttle pencil mark. At last, and after many experiments, the tube being always changed, the rod seemed 152 THIS SON OF VULCAN. to become endowed with a sort of volition, and moved, as if with a purpose, from spot to spot. Finally it inclined vigorously to one corner of the map, and when Mr. Bastable applied his tube it pointed one end directly to the place, and refused to move again. Then it pulled, or seemed to pull, the hand of its holder in a direction away from the estate, following the tube. Mr. Bastable changed colour, and held his breath. " This piece is not coloured as part of your estate. Captain Perrymont ? " '* No ; it is Holcotes. There are about a himdred acres of it altogether. This is the worst part. It belongs, I beheve, to a man of the name of Bayliss, Paul Bayhss." *'BayKss . . . I know him," Bastable whis- pered excitedly to himself. " Paul Bayliss . . . Holcotes, near Esbrough. . . . That will do." He took the rod fi'om his wife's hands, and replaced it in the drawer. Then he made another sort of pass, and the rigid look disappeared from his wife's eyes altogether. She seemed to awake suddenly, and laid her hand upon her head as if in pain. THIS SON OF VULCAN. 153 ** Where am I ? Ah ! . . . I remember. Oh, Benjamin, Benjamin ! another wicked- ness ! Oh, dear ! oh, dear ! and me a Christian woman, and my father the parish clerk ! " " Don't be a fool, Keziah ! Wake up the boy, and take him downstairs. You've got the dinner to look after." She shook Jack by the shoulder, who awoke at once and sprang to his feet. Without say- ing a word, she led him, wondering what had happened, down to the kitchen again. " She remembers nothing, and the boy remembers nothing. Captain Perrymont ; it may be that we shall never -again succeed in the great fimction of magic which you. have assisted at. We will try again, but I doubt. As for the hazel rod, that is always at your service. By its means I am now able to make a perfect geological map of your estate, which presents some very curious features." '^ I wish it would present some better arable land," said the Captain. " I would sell it all, if I could." " Don't sell it. Captain," said Mr. Bastable hurriedly. " For heaven's sake, don't sell it yet ! See now, I will go over to Esbrough, 154 THIS SON OF VULCAN. and walk round the estate with you. I cannot do it yet, because I have many expeiiments to make ; but I want to see it very particu- larly. I do, indeed, and in your interest." " Will you make me the map ? " " I will bring it over to Esbrough with me." The Captain rose. '^ It will be best," he said, *'to tell no one of the scene that you and I have witnessed. Here, Mr. Bastable, is the honorarium which I promised you." He placed a bank-note in his hand, and went away. " Paul BayHss," mm-mm-ed Mr. Bastable, " Paul Bayliss. The hazel never lies. Now I must think what to do." Down in the kitchen Jack had resumed his ordinary clothes., and was sitting by the fire, feeHng heavy and dazed. " What did it all mean, Mrs. Bastable ? " he asked. '' I thought it was what Mylesused to call hanky. But I went to sleep somehow. There was a lot of smoke, and I heard some- body talking, and that is all I know about it." *' Don't ask me," she answered. " 1 don't know, boy ; I never do know ; I'm all of a THIS SON OF VULCAN. 155 shake. Benjamin hasn't done it before, not for a year and a half, and I thought he was never going to do it again. It's a wickedness and a tempting, it is. my poor head ! Jack, my dear, hft up the lid and stick the fork in the beef — such a beautiful bit of beef, too, silverside — lovely; and me not able to eat a morsel of it. Oh ! what a thing it is to be a clairvoyong! " Mr. Bastable, you will have discovered before this, was a professor of the magic art. He did not waste his energies over spirit rap- pings, and seances at half-a-crown a head, where vulgar cheats prove the incompleteness of the spiritual education by their bad spelling. Nor did he tell fortunes by cards ; nor did he tie himself up in knots and be released by spirits in a dark box ; nor did he practise the arts of jugglery. He went in for high art, and boldly attacked the fortress which had been assailed by the great men of old. He read books of magic ; he knew the arts of alchemy, astrology, and conjuration. How far, in the scene we have so faithfully described that many will recognise it, the clairvoyante spoke the truth we know not. All that Captain 156 TUIS SON OF VULCAN. Perrymont saw was the bell-sliaped cloud of smoke ; all that he heard was from the priestess herself. As we have seen, he heard Uttle to do himself any good. The science of magic sometimes sleeps — it never dies. A hundred years ago the Parisians were flocking to see the miracles performed by a practician not much higher than Mr. Benjamin Bastable — the Count Cag- liostro. A hundred years before that, the lamp was handed down in secret, and with much trembling, in the south of France and in London. A hundred years before, the magicians and astrologers held as much power in the courts of Europe as ever they did in the courts of Pharaoh and Belshazzar ; and now, when we are in the age of reality, and nothing is beheved but what is seen, we are on the verge of another outbreak of belief in magic, to which, perhaps, all the preceding shall be mere child's play. In any great city are men like Mr. Bastable, who live poorly because they will not work at their trade, and whose spare time is wholly given up to prying into the secrets of the other world. What the THIS SON OF VULCAN. 157 spirits tells them does tliem no good. What the spirits have taught men in all ages has never done them any good. The oracles are dumb, the sacred cone of Delphi is lost, and yet the art of divining, advising, and foretell- ing has never died. Still, as before, clairvoy- ance and mesmerism hold men's minds in thrall ; still the world is looking for some new revelation from that dark and mysterious source whence nothing good has ever come ; and now, as before, the thing which a gene- ration ago seemed a part and parcel of the dreadful past, has sprung once more into life to tease and pei-plex philosophers, as well as fools. The promised fruit lures on the searchers after the unknowable — they are as keen as ever ; and to Captain Perrymont and all his kin, old Chaucer's words on the philoso- pher's stone might well be addressed this day:— " Than thus conclude I, syn that God in hevene He wol not that the philosophrcs nevene How that a man schall come unto this stone I rede as for the beste, let it goon." Mr. Bastable presently appeared dressed in the garb of everyday hfe, and partook of the 158 THIS SON OF VULCAN. beef, which was overdone ; nor did he make any allusion to the ceremonial they had just gone through. After dinner he took the boy and gave him some light work in the assaying of metals. It was an uncanny house. Noises went on everywhere, by day and night, at which Mrs. Bastable continuously trembled. When the boy went up and down the stairs he heard voices, and felt invisible fingers in his hair or on his cheek ; any one of the things, indeed, which occurred in that house was enough by itself to make the fortune for ever of an ordi- nary haunted house. But here they were com- paratively unnoticed. The master went about as unmoved as Prospero : the mistress shook and trembled, but expected them ; Jack listened and wondered. Whatever the real truth about these manifestations, one thing is quite certain, that Jack preserves to this day a clear and distinct recollection of things for which no intelligible cause can be assigned. Handbells, placed on the table, rang ; pencils moved about on their pointed ends ; rappings came from behind the fireplace ; tables Hfted their straight and fooUsh legs ; laughter and THIS SON OF VULCAN. 159 groans came from unexpected quarters when there was, so far as Jack and Mrs. Bastable saw, no one to produce them. The boy lis- tened, and was not afi'aid. He saw that, somehow or other, the noises were connected with Mr. Bastable's presence in the house, and were regarded by his wife with an ever-increas- ing terror. Then, the noises were manifest to some who came to the house, but not to aU. Once the tax-collector, who insisted on wait- ing till the money was produced, was terrified out of his wits, and rushed fi*anticaUy from the place. This never happened to the baker or the butcher, who were paid regularly by Mrs. Bastable. People came to consult Mr. Bastable, who received them in his back room, when Jack waited as page. On these occasions there was a good deal of rapping, and the spirits were called for with a persistence which some- times drove them into a rage. And noticing that, whatever was done, nobody was hurt. Jack grew famihar with "manifestations" of all kinds, and regarded them with contempt. As regards his work, he learned the elementary experiments in metals which teach the dis- 160 THIS SON OF VULCAN. tinction between iron ore and lead, tin and silver. As for Mrs. Bastable, she spent her time chiefly in lamenting her lot. Jack, she often said, was the only creatmre in the world who was any comfort to her; but, as her conver- sation was wholly confined to relating the sorrows of a clairvoyante and her separation from the common lot of humanity, she was not cheerful company. People pointed at the house, and made dis- paraging remarks, too, on the sanity and honesty of its residents, which annoyed Jack when he took his walks abroad. It was not pleasant to have the finger of admiration, or scorn, pointed at you as the magician's boy, or the conjuror's devil; nor is it nice when you are walking with a lady to hear the crowd begin to hoot and ciy out at that lady as a witch. Jack spent two months in this abode of the dead, this last lingering fane of the super- natural. His connection with the Bastables was rudely severed by Myles Cuolahan. For the honest pedlar happened to call at the house while a clairvoyante exhibition was pro- THIS SON OF VULCAN. 101 ceeding. The lady, in her curtained alcove, sat upon the velvet throne staring before her with rigid eyes. Prospero, or rather Mr. Bastable, armed with a wand, made all sorts of passes in fi'ont of her. Jack, dressed in Syrian garb, swung a censer before the ma- gician, evidently considering the whole exhi- bition as one eminently calculated to amuse and instruct the three gentlemen who were pajdng for it. Myles took in the whole pro- ceedings at a glance ; seized the boy by the arm, dragged him off to his bedroom, changed his dress, and bore him back in triumph to the astonished Mr. Bastable. " Gentlemen all," he said, " 'tis only little Jack, and not a hay than pagan, though he was dressed up in green and gold. Misther Bastable, ye'U find another boy, av ye plase, to do j^er conjurin' tricks — conjurin' indeed ! betther conjmin' I've seen at Pettigo Fail*. Can ye swaUer a red-hot poker, tell me that ? Can ye pass a shillin' out of yer own pocket into mine, tell me that ? Can ye lick up a plateful o' fire without so much as winkin', tell me that ? Spirits, is it ? — what is it, at all, that they do for ye? Come, Jack, we'll 162 THIS SON OF VULCAN. be going. The next time ye want a boy, spick and span new, Bastable, bid him come to me for a charackter, and it's a fine one as we'll give ye. And as for ye " — he turned upon the unhappy three who were about to pay a five-pound note for a spiritual manifestation of a superior order, and now stood aghast at the unexpected turn — " as for ye, ye three poor misguided fools, go home wid ye. Tell yer wives that ye are not to be trusted out alone ; and say yer prayers to be forgiven for the wicked tempting of Providence. Bastable, I'll take Jack, and I forgive ye." THIS SON OF VULCAN. 163 CHAPTER VII. "But what am I to do with yon, Jack?" asked Myles, as they left the oracular dweUing of the Bastables. " What am I to do with you at aU ? " '' I'll go with you, Myles." Myles looked at the httle figure before him critically. He was a sturdy boy, fuU of Ufe, vigour, aud strength; not a delicately pretty boy, with his rough, firm features, but a boy whom mothers of deUcately pretty children might sigh to look upon. Everything about him denoted strength, from the curly brown locks, the clear blue eyes, the square fore- head, the clean-cut nostril, the projecting chin, down to his sturdy legs. A boy, like his border ancestor, of the strong arm. Some boys dance when they walk ; the passing moments play them a kind of waltz, to which 164 THIS SOX OF VULCAN. their feet go ever tripping in cadence : these are the imaginative boys ; out of such stuff are made poets, artists, preachers, enthusiasts. Some boys slouch, and of such are made, if they are well born, sensuaHsts of the lower order, and if their cradle be the gutter, habitual criminals. Some boys walk ever gravely at the same pace, never quickening at the agitation of a pulse, never slackening at a disturbing thought : these boj^s are the successful ones in life ; they follow the beaten track, are never tempted aside from the line of duty, dutifully swim in the current of the world ; they get money, they have children at their desire, their eyes swell out with fatness, and they go to heaven. Other boys there are whose step is a sort of triumphal march ; they dream great things, of what kind they know not yet ; and as they go theii- feet move in a rhj^thmic beat to the grand orchestral pro- ' cession in their minds. Such boys as these are perhaps the happiest of all, for if they succeed they win great names and power as well as fortune ; and if they fail, as needs must oftenest happen, they fall gloriously in the ^reat battle of hfe. Jack was one of these, Tins SON OF VULCAN. 105 liis mind as yet full of grand confidence, and the world teeming with all kinds of glorious possibihties. He knew nothing except to read and write, and to discern the ores. He had no book learning at all : did not know whether the world was round or square ; absolutely could not teU you whether England — I think he had never heard the name of England — was an island or a continent : had not yet, even, though it seems incredible, learned the names of the kings of Judah; so that what the boy had for the basis of his dreams the Lord only knows. If you watch a baby asleep you will see the ridiculous Httle animal every now and then smile in unconscious appreciation of some dream-told joke, some imexpected combina- tion of events, some hilarious recollection, which must have been produced out of the events of his shoi-t Ufe. So with Jack. In the squalor and misery of his past hfe there had been nothing, absolutely nothing, to furnish him with hopes or ambitions. All was mean, pitiful, and degrading ; and yet here he was, at ten yeni'H old, \nth the audacity of a young Prince of Wales, looking forward to a future which 166 THIS SON OF VULCAN. was all, in some undefined way, to be spent in realms of splendour and joy. In Jack's mind, splendour and joy meant work, and the only form of work with which he was acquainted was the assaying of metals and the analysis of compounds. " Go with me, Jack ? ' said Myles. " I've been with you before, you know, Myles." " And then I had to cany you most of the way. Jack. But it's four years ago, and you've grown since then." "Cany me?" Jack blushed with shame. "Why, Myles, do you think But tell me, Myles, you would like me with you on the road, wouldn't you? — we could talk about Norah, you know ; and I could carry the pack when you were tired — and — and — you know, Myles, if you felt inclined to break the pledge, you could tell me, and I'd prevent you." Myles laughed. " Break the pledge, is it ? Niver a fear, lad. Bedad, barrin' a weakness in the legs when I pass a house, which is force of habit, may- be, I never feel desire for dhrink. Ah ! boy, if I'd known before what a good dhrink ginger- THIS SON OF VULCAN. ]G7 beer is, and how much better you get along -s^dth coffee, I'd be a rich man this day. But you shall go with me. Jack, and — don't laugh Jack — I've been reshuming my education at the point where I left it thirty years ago. That was when Misther M'Brearty turned me out of his academy at Belfast. He was a Connaught man, ye know, and a great friend of my father's, bein' almost of as ancient a family. And he used to hang up legs of mutton in the chimney to smoke, and when he was hungry, which was pretty well always, for he had a divil of a twist on him, he would cut off a collop, put it in the frying-pan and eat it whilst he went on wi' the studies. He was an illigant scholar, John M'Brearty; but one day he went out on important busmess with my father, nothin' short of swearing an alibi for an illicit distiller, and left the school in charge of me and Mike Feargus, one of the poor scholars that used to go up and down Ireland. ' Myles,' says Mike, * I'm mortial hungiy,' looking at the collops. ' Is there time ? ' says I. ' Lashins,' saj^s he. With tliat he whips down a leg of mutton, and in a minute the coUops was on the fire. Would 1G8 THIS SON OF VULCAN. you believe the bad luck? Before we'd well finished the first frying-pan full, and were beginning the second, who should come in but the masther and my father ! The masther took Mike, and my father took me. " ' My collops, ye young divil ! ' cries M'Brearty, with the sthrap in his hand over Mike. ' Collops o' mutton ! ' cries my father, with his big stick over me. 'If it hadn't been Friday I shouldn't have minded, ye black murdherin Prodesdan.' " And then my educa- tion finished, for I left school the same day, and my father and aU, and a black Prodesdan I've been ever since. A quare rehgious conver- sion, wasn't it. Jack ? But my father was a votedheen, what the Scotch call unco guid." " And what have yon got in your hand, Myles ? " asked Jack, impatient at this long story. "It's a joggrephy book, Jack, and we'U go through it together when we've got a quiet evening to ourselves. Joggrephy and histoiy, tlie bookseller said it was. Maybe it will throw a light on the dirty Saxons in Ii-eland. We'll start to-morrow, if it's fine." Jack's preparations were easily made, and THIS SON OF VULCAN. 1G9 consisted entirely, having exchanged his green page's suit, in getting together such rougher and stronger garments as might be better fitted for road work, Myles himseK superin- tending his outfit with great care. The finish- ing stroke was completed by taking off the boy's white collar and wi-apping a common red handkerchief round his throat. More depends upon the presence of a collar than would be generally supposed, and I think, respectable reader, you would be surprised at the change in youi* personal appearance which you may effect by the simple process of tying up your neck ^ath a common red wrapper. However, it mattered httle for Jack. He was tired of one life, and was going to begin another. Back to that old hfe on the road, of which he had the faint recollections that cling about the age of four and five. He could remember being carried in Myles's arms. He could remember the wood fire by the roadside, the camp of gipsies, the cart hung round with brooms and brushes, all sorts of httle things. Myles's regidar beat was about Yorkshire, with oc- casional visits to certain towns in the moro northern coimties ; once a year, for instance, 170 THIS SOX OF VULCAN. but not oftener, he proposed to visit Bedes- bury, and see how his little girl was getting on. Once a week, since his reform 1^ him regularly with money to spare, he seill .off his earnings, without keeping account, to Miss Ferens. And it was on this beat that he now intended for a time, at least, to take Httle Jack about with him. What to do with him afterwards, what was to become of the boy eventually, of course never entered into honest Myles's head to consider. He carried the pack in a box slung on to his back. It was filled with all sorts of hght things likely to be wanted at the farms and cottages. There were pins, needles, tape, rib- bon, string, scissors, thimbles, thread, silk, worsted, white twist, and more besides, all in a flat, square box, that lay across the hawker's shoulders, and, by long practice in carrying, caused -iiim no inconvenience at all. In his hand he earned a stout stick. A pipe was stuck in his felt hat ; and if you had examined the inside of his coat you would hav^ound it filled mth pockets, some of them buttjpd up containing money, and some occupied wdth the small articles of toilet and personal luggage THIS SON OF VULCAN. 171 which Mr. Ciiolahan — a man of simple habits — considered indispensable. All Jack's luggage was a liltle knapsack, picked up a great bargain by Myleft^ and strapped empty to his back. " The common tramps, Jack," said his patron, " carry all their traps in a red handkerchief. We are respectable hawkers; so you fix up the knapsack." They started next day at six. The day was fine — one of those clear, cool days in July, when the wind, in the shade, makes you think that summer is hardly yet arrived. They had theii- breakfast — coffee and bread-and-butter — and were out of the town and well among the fields before the lazy maids had opened the shutters and taken in the milk. Jack walked soberly enough while they were within the streets ; but once outside and in the country lanes — for Myles did not afi'ect highroads — he ran and danced about like some little puppy beside its master. Myles's trade was chiefly in the cottages. He knew everybody on his road, especially the wwes and daughters, and was in great esteem among the ladies as one who never went to a pubhc-house, and saved his money. 172 THIS SON OF VULCAN. Thus he acted either as an example or a scarecrow. The affability with which he would sit down, tell a story, drink a glass of milk, and even, as frequently happened, bestow a fatherly kiss upon any of the girls that might be comely, had a good deal to do with his popularity. And then another thing helped : Myles was honest. If people bought a reel of cotton marked fifty yards, there was no need to measure it, because — you see it was twenty years ago — Myles did not cheat, and the manufactm-ers then were honest. Now, nothing pays so well as honesty if you are in trade. If you are not, perhaps honesty is not so necessary. Considering, then, that Myles had to visit every cottage, to talk to every old woman, to open his pack at least, and to introduce little Jack, it is not sui-pris- ing that his rate of progress should be slow ; and after giving time for all these occupa- tions, and for having dinner and tea on the road — neither of them banquets of great luxury — the first day's work, enough for Jack, consisted of some twelve miles in all. The day's journey brought them to the manufacturing town of Daylesford. Cuolahau THIS SOX OF VULCAN. 173 led the way, the boy dragging th-ed limbs after him, to a tavern which stood in a by- street. Outside it was a quiet, dingy-looking place, with nothing to mark it but a sign- post swinging from the wall. Inside, those who knew it were wont to say that it was the resort of all the devils in Yorkshire. Thither resorted the better class of tramps, those who unite the doubtful callings of beggar and impostor, ladies and gentlemen who have mostly at different times made acquaintance with the inside of the country's gaols. It must be recorded, perhaps to the disadvantage of Myles, that, though the very paragon of rectitude himself, he regarded the departure fi'om virtue in others as an unfor- tunate accident due to circumstances, rather than as a thing in itself to cause any nipture of friendly relations with the victim. In other words, Myles Ciiolahan had been, for twenty years and more, out of a Hfe of forty years, a wanderer and a tramp. His lines of hfe had thrown him among other wanderers and tramps not so honest as himself; and he had learned to regard the habitual criminal as a gentleman who made his living by ways which he did 174 THIS SON OF VULCAN. not follow mainly because he had never had any occasion to desert his own. Some people are honest because they get on in the world. It never does to inquire too closely into motives, but perhaps Myles was one of these : for the licensed hawker makes good earnings, and Myles had very early in life found out the secret that it is best to give people their money's worth. The landlord was behind the bar, a short, thickset man, with a stubbly beard and a fat spotty face, smoking the short pipe that never left his hps except when he was sleeping or eating. He wore rings on his bloated fingers, had a big gold breast-pin, a huge watch-chain, and looked what he was, an unscrupulous, greedy, sensual creature, with just pluck enough to caiTy out the plans that his narrow and crafty mind suggested. He grinned a welcome. " Myles Cuolahan ! It is a year and more since you came here last. What will you drink ? Oh ! I forgot. Well, here's a bottle of ginger beer. And who have you got with you?" " We'll have the best room, Misther Coger, THIS SON OF VULCAN. 175 the double-bedded room, and no one else in it. This boy is Jack Armstrong, my boy, you know, that I told you of. He's tired now, poor chap, and we'll have a cup of tea and a chop for supper. AVho is in the house to- night ? " ''You may w^ell ask who," said Mr. Coger. " I don't suppose there's been such a houseful since I opened this bar. Why, to begin with, there's Captain Cardiff himself, drinking sherry wine by the pint, and smoking cigars at four- pence. None of your yards of clay and two- penny smokes with gin-and-water for the Captain." '' No ! " said Myles, slapping his leg. " Car- diff Jack ? Why, the last I heard of him he was in Millbank for that little affair you know of ." "Ay, ay," returned the landlord. " Best say nothing about Millbank to Mr. Cardiff; he wants that forgotten. Then there's General Duckett." "What's the General doing here?" asked Myles. " I thought he and his boys were always doTvii in Kent." "So they are . . . so they are. But I think 176 THIS SON OF VULCAX. he is looking out for more boys. Ah, Myles ! if you'd only think of it, what a lovely bonnet that child of yours would make ! " Myles put a protecting hand on little Jack, who had taken advantage of the conversation to fall fast asleep on a settle. "No, no, Coger. You know me. Jack and me are on another lay. General Duckett ! General Duckett ! Why, he must be nigh eighty years of age." " EightJ if he's a day ; and as fresh and spry as most men of sixty. But there's lots more behind. There's Shallow Bob, the turn- pike sailor ; there's Liverpool Joe, the quack ; there's the fellow with the queer name — what is it ? — the foreign chap, with his patter and his religion. We never were so Hvely before. You don't drink as you used, Myles ; and I'm sorry for you, because they will have their joke." " All right, Coger, all right. We'll have a jolly evening, though I am a teetotaller. Send us in the chops, vdU. you? — Wake up. Jack my boy. You shall have your supper and go to bed presently." He woke up the boy, and they passed on into the inner room. THIS SOX OF VULCAX. 177 CHAPTER VIII. A FORMER proprietor had coustnicted at the back of the house a long and tolefably lofty room, designed — for it was before the inven- tion of music haUs — for a free-and-easy or harmonic meeting-room, one of those delight- ful retreats whidh still flourish in., country places, combining all the actual evils of the nmsic hall with none of those undeveloped possibilities which the latter possesses for the improvement of popular taste. The first builder and original owner of this temple speedily found himself so far deceived by the smiles of Hope that one night, after carefully emptjang the contents of the tiU, disposing of his spirits to private friends, and entertaining a select circle with a farewell symposium, at which all that was left of the beer was con- sumed, he was fain to " shoot the moon," and VOL. I. N 178 THIS SON OF VULCAX. was no more seen. His successor for a time maintained the free-and-easy, and then, the place becoming under his benignant rule more and more a chosen house of call for tramps, he resei*ved it for them as a saloon or with- drawing-room, where they might spend then- evenings in the mutual exchange of ideas, in intellectual conversation, or in the cultivation, by means of the higher classical music, of their aesthetic faculties. It also served as a kitchen for the preparation of supper. There were two fireplaces, one at each end of the long room. The evening was warm, and only the supper fire was burning when Myles and Jack entered. The windows were closed ; the smoke of sausages, bloaters, and chops, with that of twenty or thirty pipes, and the fragrant memories of many thousands of such evenings as this, imparted to the room a smell which was like a London fog, inasmuch as it was so thick as to be almost visible — a smell which might have been savoury in the nostrils of a Homeric god — a smell which a chemist might study with curiosity — a smeU which could never be forgotten. The science of THIS SON OF YULCAX. 170 smells is yet in its infancy. They have not been even classified, yet some rude classifica- tion is possible to the most shallow thinker. There is an acrid, penetrating smell, such as I once experienced in visiting Greenwich Hospital Chapel on a Smiday in summer, just after service. It haunts one for weeks. That particular smell — which was a chemical compound of boy, beadle, and corduroy, and although a compound, was one and indivisible, with an individuality of its own — haunted me for months. There is, next, a keen and sharp smell which runs you through Uke the point of a bayonet, and makes you yell and suddenly drop. This you may get in a hospital. There is a smell which is like the blow of a hammer, and knocks the sense out of you. It may be found in the forecastle of a ship anywhere about the region of the Doldrums or in the Eed Sea. There is the smell of a poultry shop, the smell of vinegar, the smell of niggerdom, the smell of burning paper ; but all these smells are like mignonette, heUotrope, otto of roses, wood violet, lily of the valley, blackberry jam, or the perfume that rises from youi- Lesbia's tresses, com- 180 THIS SON OF VULCAX. pared with the tiu'bid mixture of all vile smells which floated about the atmosphere of this room, and gave it a character pecuhar to itself. You remembered the place, not by the fat cook who, with bare arms and ruddy cheeks, stood over frying-pan and gridiron, tossing from time to time fish, flesh, or sausage, as it was done, into three dishes that stood before her. You might forget the cook. You might even forget the Uttle crowd that was congregated round her waiting their turn — boys and men, women and girls. They were tramps ; they belonged to the population which is called floating ; they were the dregs and refuse of the Enghsh-speaking race ; they were a mixture of gipsy, pedlar, and Irish vagrants. They sat, or stood, or leaned against the wall, without much talk, waiting to be fed, the eyes of each fixed steadily upon his own portion. As it emerged from the frying-pan, each in turn laid hasty hands upon it, and devoured it at the great table that stood handy for the pm'pose. Scant grace was theirs, small the preparations for the meal, and weak the response of a thankful heart when all was finished to the last crumb. THIS SON OF VULCAN. 181 and stiU an imfoi'tunate stomach craved for more. It might be possible to forget the lack-histre faces, the weary looks, the soulless eyes of that httle group of English-born savages. There was nothing horrible about them, nothing comic, nothing cheei-ful, nothing attractive. Among them there was one face, and only one, on which the eye would rest with pleasure. It was the face of a young girl of seventeen. She leaned against the table, and fixed her eyes hungi'ily upon a gaunt and pinched-up bloater on the gridiron, her supper. Her eyes ! painters of the ideal — painters of the sweet woman's face, look into the depths of those eyes, and transfer to the canvas, if you can, the Hmpid eternity of thought, feeling, passion, and hope apparent in that gaze ! So live for ever. Her mouth is a very rosebud of a mouth ; lips haK parted and open show pearl-white teeth. Her features are cut clean and straight ; her hair is thick and abundant. She wears it tied in a careless grace about her head. She is a goddess, whose every movement is a grace, and every thought a step heaven- ward. And, alas ! it is all a He to look at ! 182 THIS SOX OF YULCAX. There are no thoughts in that head with the sweet and gracious curve, save thoughts that are bad and detestable. Those eyes, which were designed for a Sappho, belong to the commonest and most hopeless tramp. Her rosebud mouth is the passage of coarse words and rough execrations ; her features are yet dehcate, because she is so young, and they have not had time to grow thick with drink and debauchery. And yet the pity of it — oh ! the pity of it. It seems, somehow, so natural that a thick-hpped, low-browed, coarse- featm-ed creature should be a criminal and a drunkard, that we have no pity for him. It is only because by a wholesome instinct we associate goodness with beauty that we pity the tender and lovely girl standing yet, to appearance, on the brink of infamy, though in reahty she has been steeped in it since the first day that she could imderstand what went on in the world around her. Tm-n from the pretty creatm-e, and forget her. You had best, because you cannot help her. Look at her companion. Shallow Bob by name. He has been a pretended sailor, -vsath a lying story of shipwreck and disaster, and is now, THIS SON OP VULCAX. 183 like Myles Cuolahan, a pedlar and hawker. But, unlike his Mendly rival, he is an ardent votaiy of Bacchus. That is the reason why his young wife has only a single red herring for her supper, and why Bob himseK is asleep on the settle, with no supper at all but a skinful of beer. Bob, you see, is drunk. You might, I say again, forget the occupants of the room, its shape, its appearance, its "situa- tion. What you never could forget, if you had once experienced it, was the smell. Myles knew it of old, and took no notice of it as he walked to the farther end, followed by Jack. Here, where the emj)ty fii'eplace formed a natm-al centre, sat in a semicircle half a dozen gentlemen whose well-di-essed appearance, as well as a certain haughtiness of carriage, proclaimed their superiority to the noisy troop at the other end. They were accommodated partly with settles and partly with wooden chairs, which bore signs of having seen rough usage. In the largest and most comfortable chair, the arms of which were yet unbroken, sat a man of apparently fifty years of age. His legs were crossed, and in one hand he nursed a pint pot containiug 184 THIS SON OF VULCAN. what Mr. Coger confidently called Sheriy Wine. He was drinking it, rather ostenta- tiously, like beer. A cigar graced his lips, which were thin, shifty, and subject to nervous twitchings. His shaven cheek was pale ; his features were straight, regular, and even handsome ; the crow's-feet, cai-ved like some delicate chasing, lay thickly about the corners of his eyes ; and these were quick, keen, and cruel. He was of middle height and thin; dressed in a suit of black, with a white neck-cloth that might . have served the most uncompromising of Baptist minis- ters ; and his hands, white and shapely, were furnished with fingers as slender and tapering as those of any girl. This gentle- man's name, among his intimates, was Cardiff Jack, and he was so called, like a mediaeval warn or, after the supposed place of his birth. Among those who only aspii'ed to the honour of a partial acquaintance with him it was Mr. Cardiff, or Captain Cardiff. And it was significant of the greatness of his m^ts that the lower any lady or gentleman was sunk into the slough of habitual criminalism the more she or he honoured and respected THIS SON OF VULCAN. 185 Captain Cardiff. Mr. Cardiff? Why, the man lived Uke a nobleman, eating and drinking the best. What the flesh craved for, Mr. Cardiff could give the flesh. Ho slept in feather-beds every night ; he knew no casual wards; the hard labour of the treadmill had only occasionally been his lot during a run of at least twenty years; and there seemed no end or limit to the prosperity which attended all his ventures. So when Antonio borrowed that money of the Jew, liis keels floated safely in the harbom-s, or sailed merrily before the wind. Fine weather may change. No man was ever safe from the strokes of fortime until they invented the three-per- cents ; and even with these we may have to travel by railway, and so miserably perish ; or we may have to sleep in a friend's house, and catch typhus from a drain ; or we may have supper at a ball, and die the next day from the quassia which was in the beer, the sour gooseberry in the glass before the last saraband, or the fusel oil in the stuTup-cup. ^Ir. Cardiff, who spent his money as he got it, had not yet advanced to the three-per- cents, and so was exposed to eveiy breeze of Fortune the mutable. 186 THIS SON OF TULCAN. Opposite to him sat, side by side, on the settle, two gentlemen, one of advanced years, who were beaming upon each other with a benignity that spoke of mutual affection and tnist, with that long separation from each other that is requisite — such is our fallen humanity — for the maintenance of perfect trust among friends. One, who *' enjoyed the title," as the Peerage says, of General — General Duckett, indeed — was a white-haii-ed man, whose long flowing locks, coupled with a white beard, a pair of red eyes, a nose very much like those bottle-noses which any one over thirty can just remember — they have entirely disappeared now — and two thick, protruding lips, gave a combination of expressions very remarkable. Looked at in profile, he appeared benevolent, soft-hearted, gentle, though un- doubtedly plain. Looked at fi*om a three- quarter-face point of view, the nose, being foreshortened, lost, somehow, its benevolence, and you got the effect of both eyes. Then you began to thuik there might be another side to the character of this good old man. Seen full-face, with both those orbs upon you in all their Mars-like redness, theii* steady THIS SOX OF VULCAN. 187 fervour, you wondered if all vii'tue liad left the world, since the mere tui'ning of a face could make you feel cold and doubtful of its very existence. As for his companion, he was dressed in the garb of the Lusty Turk. A vast turban was wi-apped round his head, the corners of which hung down in graceful plaits; his face, covered with an immense black beard, was of a deep chocolate brown, as were also his hands. A Spian jacket, of embroidered scarlet cloth, was over a loose shirt or waistcoat of purple cloth, and the dress terminated in flowing Oriental trousers, falling in folds about his heels. He wore Enghsh boots. In his belt was stuck a dagger-knife, a brass ink-horn such as Syrians wear, and out of his pocket protruded the end of a voluminous roll. Myles looked at him with surprise. He knew the other two, and nodded famiharly as he entered ; but the third man he did not know. They all three roared mth laughing. Myles, with no further ceremony, took the immense beard in his hand, and, to Jack's enormous surprise, removed it bodily. The face which it revealed was, like the part ex- # 188 THIS SOX OF A'ULCAN. posed, of a deep brown; and Myles knew it now, and gave back the beard to the owner with a laugh in which the moralist would have missed the reproof that should have fallen. " It's only Tom Lock," he said. ''Yussuf Ben Ibn Hassan Effendi, if you please," said Mr. Lock, putting back the beard very carefully. "Wallah! A poor Arabian Jew, persecuted for his faith, and now wandered to the shores of England, -where alone he can hope to receive help from the charitable." " He talks English too well," said Captain Cardiff. " Yussuf is poor; Yussuf is pious. The rabbis have chased Yussuf from the syna- gogue. From earliest childhood Yussuf has' studied English with the good missionaries. He knows it better than Arabic." " A good deal better," said Mr. Cardiff. ''Bismillah! May I show your gracious Excellency my copy of the Hebrew Scrip- tures? Behold it!" "Tom Lock, you are going it too strong," observed Myles. THIS SOX OF VULCAN. ISU " Not at all. I've been to the Levant ; I knocked about among them for half a dozen years. I know all their Httle dodges, and I twig their lingo — at least, enough of it. The hind wheel of a carriage will pass where the fore wheel has passed. That's a Turkish proverb. Wallah ! " " Better do a day's work, Tom," said Myles the moral. "Another Turkish proverb: To the lazy man every day is a holiday. Wallah ! " '"And what are you doing up here, • General?" " I'm here for the good of my health, Mr. Cuolahan. There was a httle unpleasantness about me and two or three of my dear, dear childi-en ; and they kept me a year and more iu Maidstone while they looked into it. Was so pressing that I couldn't get away. Now I have got away, they have kept the kids, poor things, and I want one or two more. Them Eefoiinatories cuts me up dreadful." He lixed his unholy eyes on Jack, who looked uneasily at Myles. " No, no. General ! " he said good-natm-edly ; you don't get that boy. Your Kentish 190 THIS SON OF VULCAN. Brigade must break up altogether if it can't get on Tvdthout my Jack." "Don't think, Mr. Cuolahan," said the Commander of the Brigade Tsath pride — " do not think that I have to beg my boys of any one. Parents who know what's, good for their children bring them to me, sii', I would have you to know, to be taught the Profession and made rich men of." The Profession was the Art of Eobbery in all its branches, the General being one of those enthusiasts who, without actually being in practice, devote their talents to " coach- ing" and instructing aspii-ants. In every branch of learning, in every mystery, there are such men. The Civil Service, the Army, the Church, have every avenue crowded with those whom, if the competitive- system people were logical, they would invite to the highest places, because they know most. The General had only lately, as he hinted to Myles, quitted Maidstone prison, where he had spent a twelvemonth in durance for recei\dng stolen goods, and was now in the North for the benefit of his health. "I found Maidstone," he said, taking a sip THIS SOX OF VULCAN. 101 at the nim-and- water, "pleasant for a chang^e; but I got tired of it. At my tinie of life the doctor, you see, always orders a ration of wine or spirits every day, so that I didn't altogether go without my whack, and there was no hard labour or me. As for the tobacco — well, after all, it does not matter much. You do get lonely sometimes at night, and away from the dear boys and aU; but. Lord, regular hours is very good for an old man. And then you can reflect, as the Chaplain said." "The fish comes, to his senses after he is in the net. Turkish proverb — wallah!" said Yussuf Ibn Hassan Efi"endi. " The Bible to read — weU — weU — there's good stories in the Bible, when you come to read them with understanding. Did you ever hear the story of Samson, Cardiff Jack ? " "Hang Samson — " "No; don't swear at Samson — don't; because you might be sorry for it afterwards. And it's a good story. There was the makinc^s of a very successful man about Samson, if only he'd had the advantages of my education. When Samson lost his bet, Cardiff — it was a rum bet, thii'ty sheets and thiity changes 192 THIS SON OF VULCAN. of gaiTQents — I suppose they must have been in the slop trade, and it really seems a good deal : wuth — ^ah ! if the garments wasn't only a little gone, they might be wuth a matter of five pound, take them in the lump . . . ." ''Well, General, get on — get on. Samson lost his bets, and then he stepped it, I suppose. You don't call that a dodge ? " "Now, there's yom- error, Cardiff. That's what the common practitioner would have done. Any mean thief could step it. Do you hear, boys and girls?" He raised his voice, and addressed himself to the other end of the room. ''Anybody could step it. What did Samson do?" He looked round and whis- pered. " Well ; when you read the story you'll see what Samson did when he lost. But he paid up aU his bets like a gentleman, and nobody never suspected how he done it, so artful he done it." After delivering himself of this proof of the advantages of prison discipline and Biblical study, the General feU back in his settle. "Yes, I'd a very peaceful and quiet twelve months at Maidstone. It was a pleasure to gammon the Chaplain — he was that soft — THIS SON OF VULCAN. 193 and the people was most civil and attentive — nobody more so. You see they all knows General Duckett, the head of the Kentish Brigade. ' General,' said one of the warders, 'it does a man's 'art good to see yon back here again in the old place. Eighty years of age, and half of 'em spent in quod, and quite the gentleman still. I calls you. General, a credit to the country.' It's very flatterin', that kind of thing, Myles, and friends all; and I do hope" — his voice grew a little tremulous — " that when you are as old as me, you will have the same respect used, and find the same good feeling, in whatever jug you gets to. The worst of it was the disorder the Brigade fell into. Mostly broken up and scat- tered — my dear boys. Some of them promising lads, too." He turned to his fiiend the Oriental, on his right, and began to smile upon him. " My own boy," he murmured, waving his hand at Yussuf Ibn Hassan; "my boy — / made him what he is." "Who is the kid, Myles?" asked Mr. Cardiff. Myles explained, briefly, that Jack was his 194 THIS SON OF VULCAN. pal, disdaining any statement of the circum- stances that had led to. theii' connection. " He seems a nice boy," said the other, looking at him much as General Duckett had done. "Yes, Jack's a good boy. What's more," continued My],*?, ''he's going to be a good boy. Jack Cardiff." " Ay, ay ; so I suppose. Well, good boys are scarce. I never was a good boy, for my own part." The noise of plates and chattering at the other end of the room had by this time sub- sided, most of the people having taken their supper and gone off to bed or to somewhere else. Only the unfortunate Bob was left, still sleeping off the effects of the beer, and with him the gui, sitting at his side with feminine patience, waiting till her lord should waken. So sat Jael the Kenite, till the thought came into her head to get that hammer and the nail, and finish off her guest at one blow. "I never was a good boy," Mr. Cardiff repeated, looking round, and seeing that they were alone. "I was a bad boy fi-om the beginning." «* THIS SON OF VULCAN. 195 Myles looked at him in amazement. Was Cardiff Jack, after all, going to repent his ways ? " I was a gentleman, Myles, though you wouldn't think it now." ''Why not?" asked Myles persuasively. " Shure the coat you wear— J- " " The coat, man ! " returned the other im- patiently. "I was just such another boy to look at as that little devil there. The same curly hair — and — what does it matter, eh ? " He finished his pint of sherry at a single draught, and laughed. '' I once read in a hook that there is sure to be a scapegrace in every family. As, you see? I was very fond of all my brothers and sisters, and most careful of the family honom-, I was anxious to avert this calamity from the rest of them by any means possible. After a good deal of thought, I hit upon the only plan which seemed to me quite sure of success. I resolved upon becoming the family scapegrace myself. I was expelled from school. I went to an army coach, and was expelled by liim, though he needn't have been so nasty particu- lar ; and then I got my commission. By Gad ! 196 THIS SON OF VULCAN. Myles, I've had the Queen's commission, and worn the scarlet. Somehow I didn't get time to sow the wild oats before I was exp I