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 Of ILLINOIS 
 
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 sponsible for its return to the library from 
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 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 
 
 DEC lf)1!J73 
 DEC 10 1973 
 
 L161 — O-1096
 
 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 NEW AND POPULAR NOVELS 
 
 AT ALL THE LIBRARIES 
 
 THE TRACK OF THE STORM. By Dora Russell, 
 
 author of ■ Footprints in the Snow,' ' The Broken Seal,' &c. 3 vols. 
 
 HUGH ERRINGTON. By Gertrude Forde, author of 
 
 'Driven before the Storm,' 'Only a Coral Girl,' &c. 3 vols. 
 
 THE DEATH SHIP : A Strange Story. By W. Clark 
 
 Russell, author of ' The Wreck of the Grosvenor,' &c. 3 vols. 
 
 THE YOUNGEST MISS GREEN. By F. W. Robinson, 
 
 author of 'Grandmother's Money,' &c. 3 vols. 
 
 A DAUGHTER OF DIVES. By Leith Derwent, 
 
 author of 'Circe's Lovers,' 'King Lazarus,' &c 3 vols. 
 
 HURST & BLACKETT, 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
 
 THROUGH 
 
 THE LONG NIGHT 
 
 Br 
 
 E. LYNN LINTON 
 
 PATRICIA KEMBALL,' 'THE ATONEMENT OF LEAM DUNDAS, 
 ' IONE ' 'PASTON CAREW,' ETC. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 HURST AND BLACKETT, LIMITED, 
 
 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET 
 
 1889. 
 
 All Rights Reserved.
 
 8£3 
 L658Jt 
 
 
 
 « 
 
 
 
 AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED 
 TO 
 
 SIR BRUCE AND LADY SETON 
 
 gn gtaoriam, 1887. 
 
 1888.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 OF 
 
 THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
 GHAVTEB 
 I. 
 
 II. 
 III. 
 
 IV. 
 
 V. 
 
 VI. 
 
 VII. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 IX. 
 
 X. 
 
 XI 
 
 XII 
 
 BOOK THE FIRST. 
 twilight. 
 
 The 'Sacra Fames' • 
 The Cymon of Kingshouse 
 His Iphigenia - 
 The Gold that Glitters 
 The Mouse and the Lion 
 Star or Moonlight . 
 
 Between Two Fires . 
 
 Lovers 1 Vows . 
 
 In Doubt and Dread 
 
 The Crossing of the Rubicon 
 
 On the Other Side . 
 
 The Power of Love 
 
 PAOK 
 
 3 
 16 
 
 M 
 51 
 
 66 
 82 
 98 
 119 
 133 
 149 
 169 
 186
 
 mi 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Anticipations .... 
 
 . 202 
 
 XIV. 
 
 The Angel of Healing . 
 
 . 222 
 
 XV. 
 
 Proffered Manna . 
 
 . 239 
 
 XVI. 
 
 How it Came About 
 
 . 259 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Panem et Circenses 
 
 . 275 
 
 BOOK THE SECOND. 
 
 MIDNIGHT. 
 
 I. The New Trustee . 
 
 295
 
 BOOK THE FIRST. 
 
 TWILIGHT. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE ' SACRA FAMES.' 
 
 Preaching down a daughter's heart was not a 
 difficult task to a mother like Mrs. Clanricarde. 
 Circumstances compelled her conduct and char- 
 acter strengthened her resolve; and, when 
 conditions and feelings are in accord, there we 
 have that triple wall of brass which no human 
 power can break down. 
 
 We will enumerate the conditions and cir- 
 cumstances which made the mother preach 
 down her daughter's heart. These were : — An 
 unbusiness-like husband who never realized a 
 security but he lost, nor moved an investment 
 
 B 2
 
 4 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 but he lessened it, yet who, believing in his 
 commercial i flair,' was always dabbling in the 
 stock and share market for the benefit of every- 
 one but himself; — The love of luxury and the en- 
 forced privations of genteel penury ; — The pride 
 of ambition and the consciousness of gradual 
 social decline ; — The irritation, coupled with con- 
 tempt, natural to a clever woman keenly alive 
 to the mistakes of her partner, yet powerless to 
 prevent and doomed only to suffer ; — The mother's 
 natural desire that her daughter's rare gift of 
 supreme beauty, utilized as her dowry, should 
 be the means of placing her beyond the reach 
 of that grim wolf so closely investing her own 
 homestead. All these created that * auri sacra 
 fames' which made Mrs. Clanricarde as hard as 
 iron, as cold as ice, and as cruel as death in the 
 matter of Estelle's present love and potential 
 marriage. It made her as one stone-deaf to the 
 alternate hymns and threnodies of love poured 
 forth by Charlie Osborne — as handsome as a 
 Greek god and as penniless as a church mouse. 
 It made her as one stone-blind to Estelle's tears 
 and sighs and loss of appetite and slightly faded
 
 THE ' SACRA FAMES.' 5 
 
 bloom — save that this last indeed aroused in her 
 a certain secret anger which was the sworn foe 
 of pity. For this depreciation of her capital was 
 as heinous an offence in Estelle, according to 
 the mother's way of looking at things, as were 
 Mr. Clanricarde's speculations in the House, 
 whereby a thousand became five hundred, and 
 percentage was the ' peau cle chagrin ' which 
 every touch made smaller. 
 
 In this momentous question of her marriage, 
 Mrs. Clanricarde assumed to know better than 
 her daughter; and perhaps she was not far 
 wrong in her assumption. Charlie Osborne had 
 everything that a romantic girl adores, but that 
 a far-seeing mother despises as the foundation 
 of the home and family. And with Mrs. Clan- 
 ricarde the mother's outlook overlapped the 
 daughter's romance. 
 
 It made no difference in the ordering of 
 things that no eligible parti was at hand to 
 take up the silver thread, which she was re- 
 solved Charlie Osborne should not hold. The 
 two moneyless curates, the one scantily-endowed 
 squireen, and the rosy-gilled doctor who made up
 
 b THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 the bachelordom round about Kingshouse, were 
 not a whit more desirable than this impecuni- 
 ous Eudemon, and not half so charming. And 
 Caleb Stagg, the only son and heir of old Miles 
 Stagg, the wealthy owner of Redhill and a for- 
 mer coal-miner, was impossible — at least to 
 Estelle, if Mrs. Clanricarde would have shut her 
 eyes and swallowed the gilded sausage whole. 
 But the chapter of accidents has a long coda ; 
 and the chapter of accidents in the life-story 
 of a lovely girl of twenty has only just begun. 
 
 'It is of no use, Estelle,' Mrs. Clanricarde 
 would say in her high-pitched voice and petu- 
 lant French intonation ; ' it is of no use to cry 
 and make a miserable face. If you marry Char- 
 lie Osborne you will marry into misery ; and I 
 would rather see you dead than go through what 
 I have done.' 
 
 ' If only you would believe in his future, and 
 let us wait !' pleaded Estelle, tears in her large 
 soft eyes which were like big brown moths lying 
 within a white seashell. 
 
 < His future ! What of it ? Child, how fatally 
 touched you are with these stupid English
 
 THE ' SACRA FAMES.' 7 
 
 notions V said Mrs. Clanricarde warmly. ' What 
 is this young man's future?' 
 
 'Fame,' said Estelle; 'and fame is always 
 fortune.' 
 
 1 Fame from what 1 A picture hung by the 
 Royal Academy? — a drama accepted by a 
 theatrical manager? — a poem published by an 
 enterprising publisher ? — and none of the three 
 strong enough for that success which includes 
 a banker's book ! That is the future of your 
 handsome Joconde who aims at eagles and does 
 not bring down even sparrows ! And, out of 
 these, where, 1 ask you, is the pot-au-feu V 
 
 1 You misjudge him, mother ; you do not give 
 him credit for what he is,' said Estelle, doing 
 battle for her beloved with gentle persistency 
 rather than overt spirit. ' He can be great in 
 anything he undertakes. He is great already ; 
 only the world has not yet recognized his 
 genius, as it will later— as it must.' 
 
 < My dear Estelle, you speak like an ignorant 
 child as you are. Real genius is concentrated, 
 and does not go squandering itself abroad on 
 everything alike,' returned Mrs. Clanricarde,
 
 8 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 sensibly enough. ' A universal genius is a fated 
 failure, and never rises beyond mediocrity. He 
 is always close to excellence, but never actually 
 touches success. He is always just the line 
 short. The golden water which is to fill a dry 
 trench must run through a broad pipe in one 
 flow, and not filter through a dozen little pin- 
 holes like a watering-pot. And we want our 
 dry trench filled, Estelle ; your poor miserable 
 father has taken care of that !' 
 
 Mrs. Clanricarde never lost an opportunity of 
 impressing on Estelle the contemptible delin- 
 quencies of her father. To the jealous French 
 mother the daughter ought to belong to her 
 exclusively, and she did not approve of divided 
 sympathies. Besides, that patriotism which 
 means opposition to the present condition of 
 things, counted for something in her jealousy; 
 and the French woman born and bred and 
 never sincerely naturalized, for all that she was 
 as English in speech and manner as anyone 
 else, did her best to prevent her daughter from 
 becoming too Britannic in her ideas. This 
 daughter had already imbibed that fatal poison
 
 THE < SACRA FAMES.' 9 
 
 of belief in love and romance which ruined half 
 the English girls and shamed the common-sense 
 of half the mothers ; and Mrs. Clanricarde's one 
 great desire was to root out these pernicious 
 weeds from Estelle's mind, and plant in their 
 stead wise views of social life and a just esti- 
 mate of the creature-comforts to be got by 
 money. 
 
 1 Girls are so silly !' she used to say, curling 
 her thin mobile lips into that expressive line of 
 contempt which only such lips can take. ' As 
 if love can pay the rent, or kisses feed the chil- 
 dren ! — as if the husband matters one jot so 
 long as he has money and knows how to use 
 it! — as if I would not rather have married a 
 veritable gnome than this wretched creature of 
 mine, with his six feet of folly and his barber's 
 block of vanity !' 
 
 It did not mend matters that Mr. Clanricarde 
 was secretly on his daughter's side in this matter 
 of her young love, seeing that for peace' sake 
 he was compelled to be openly on his wife's. 
 Taking his own disastrous way as he did in the 
 manipulation of the family funds, which had
 
 10 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 been unwisely left in his sole control, he made 
 a point of following her lead in all else ; and 
 while he was ruining her fortunes by his mania 
 for bad speculations, and alienating her affec- 
 tions by refusing to listen to her advice, he 
 made himself so supple, so sweet and tender in 
 the home that, although she despised and dis- 
 liked him heartily enough, she had no more 
 power to find cause against him — outside oppo- 
 sition for its own sake only — than she would 
 have had to crush an indiarubber ball. His 
 prompt acquiescence in her repudiation of Char- 
 lie Osborne as a husband for Estelle almost 
 made her waver in her own decision. If George 
 could see good reasons why it should not be, 
 the chances were those reasons were bad, and 
 the other side might have something to say for 
 itself. But maternal prudence was stronger 
 than even conjugal dissension ; and, after the 
 wife had cased her mind by a few sniffs and 
 sneers at the husband, the mother went on as 
 she had begun, and Estelle was no nearer her 
 desired destruction than before. 
 
 Despite the opposition and the vigilance of
 
 THE < SACRA FAMES.' 11 
 
 Mrs. Clanricarde, the lovers met in secret as 
 well as openly in society; for it would have 
 been impossible to keep Estelle shut np in the 
 house or to demand the social ostracism of 
 Charlie Osborne. And, as people with gardens 
 will give tennis-parties and strawberry-feasts,, 
 the Clanricardes were forced to go to them 
 with the rest, and take the consequences en- 
 suing. The alternative of leaving Kingshouse 
 was also an impossibility. The domestic money- 
 market was too tight; and those last invest- 
 ments had restricted it yet more. Hence, the 
 matter was one of those problems which even 
 the most skilful diplomatist among matrons 
 finds it hard to solve ; and in the game of chess 
 between love and prudence for the possession 
 of the fair Estelle, no one could as yet foresee 
 which would be the winner. 
 
 And indeed she was fair — taking the word as- 
 beauty, not colour. Somewhat above the middle 
 height — straight as a palm-tree but supple and 
 slender as a willow-branch — graceful as a fawn 
 and almost as shy — she was one of those women 
 to whom poets write sonnets and musicians.
 
 12 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 dedicate nocturnes ; one of the women who 
 make brave men braver still, and weak ones yet 
 more self-indulgent. In her character the two 
 main streams of womanly feeling ran side by 
 side — the gentlest and most captivating reliance 
 on those who were her superiors by age, sex, 
 condition ; and the power of self-sacrifice for 
 love. She was woman — pure womanly through- 
 out. Body, heart and mind were essentially 
 feminine — feminine with all the strength and all 
 the weakness of her sex and type. Weak to 
 the strong and strong only for love, her love 
 was of the kind which justifies itself and re- 
 deems its own excess— whole-hearted, pas- 
 sionate, unselfish, and pure as flame is pure. 
 Pliant before a firm will, quivering beneath 
 a brutal hand, she yet had that kind of 
 courage which could brave the world, the law, 
 and the commandments, should he who need- 
 ed her and whom she loved, find himself on 
 the outside of virtuous convention. Submis- 
 sive as another Lucy Ashton to authority, 
 she had that power of revolt for the sake of 
 .another which belongs to a certain kind of gen-
 
 THE ■ SACRA FAMES.' 13 
 
 tie and tenacious nature — that power which not 
 even the mother who bore her suspected, and 
 which would be shown only when called forth 
 by circumstances. 
 
 Meanwhile, as things were, she was to all ap- 
 pearance just a shy, gentle-mannered, pretty 
 English girl with a foreign name and face : 
 tightly held by her mother ; secretly adored and 
 openly neglected by her father ; as secretly wor- 
 shipped by the one scantily-endowed squireen 
 and the two impecunious curates ; frankly ad- 
 mired by the rosy-gilled doctor; and frantically 
 beloved by Charlie Osborne, who saw in her his 
 tenth Muse, his Egeria, his good angel, and the 
 one absolute necessity of his life. And save 
 that she met her handsome lover in secret, and 
 let him say things which would have made her 
 mother furious had she heard them — more furi- 
 ous still had she heard the girl's replies — she 
 obeyed her mother in all things : especially in 
 the one grand essential of not marrying a man 
 who could not keep even a servant, not to speak 
 of a wife, and whose sole possessions were 
 beauty, love, poetry, art, that delicacy of mind
 
 14 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 which belongs to the artistic temperament, and 
 a constitution which was decidedly fragile and 
 on the line of something worse. Just so much 
 grace of common-sense had this young man, and 
 no more — he did not urge Estelle to run away 
 with him and begin life and housekeeping on 
 that one hundred a-year, which was all his fixed 
 income. Of course in the future he would be a 
 rich man, because a famous one. That was as 
 certain as the rising of to-morrow's sun, to him 
 as well as to Estelle. Pending that certainty, 
 however, he was forced to hold his hand and 
 hope for the best. No one else was to the fore 
 at Kingshouse — Caleb Stagg being impossible ; 
 and with this negative comfort he and she must 
 be content. 
 
 Kingshouse was not a rich field for the ad- 
 ventures of life or the vagaries of fortune. The 
 scenery was beautiful in a quiet, sleepy, rural 
 way ; the old-fashioned country town was 
 quaint and stagnant ; the society was restricted, 
 and the income-tax collector did not cover much 
 ground. Save Anne Aspline, whose mother had 
 been a successfully-married cook, not a girl had
 
 THE ' SACRA FAMES.' 15 
 
 twopence-halfpenny for dower money; and, save 
 Caleb Stagg, of Redhill, whose father had been 
 a miner, not a man had more. Charlie Osborne, 
 the son of the late vicar, stood a head and 
 shoulders above them all for personal charms ; 
 and the bachelordom of the district, so sparsely 
 represented on the tennis-ground, did not touch 
 him in all that makes a young man desirable 
 and dangerous. So that Mrs. Clanricarde, while 
 she repudiated the handsome genius sent back 
 to his native place because his constitution 
 could not bear the exhaustion and bad air of 
 London, had no other string to her slack bow. 
 And, if the love that could be had was undeni- 
 ably supperless, the love that was wanted was 
 as undeniably bodiless. 
 
 So matters stood in the pretty village town 
 of Kingshouse, when this story opens and the 
 serious play was about to begin.
 
 16 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE CYMON OF KTNGSHOUSE. 
 
 Nothing, to the high-nosed, blue-blooded gen- 
 try of Kingshouse, seemed so contrary to the 
 providential ordering of things as that the heir, 
 par excellence, of the district should be a man 
 like young Caleb Stagg — the heiress a girl like 
 Anne Aspline; though, indeed, in this latter 
 case, the girl was well enough, taken by herself. 
 It was the mother who was the stumbling-block, 
 albeit not of a very formidable kind. With 
 Caleb, on the contrary, the disabilities went all 
 the way, like a rope coiled round him ; crushing 
 the social vitality out of his elsewise vigorous 
 condition, and reducing what should have been 
 beauty of circumstances to a mere shapeless 
 mass of inert uselessness.
 
 THE CYMOX OF KIXGSHOUSE. 17 
 
 As good as the proverbial gold in bis essential 
 nature, and with a really fine, if limited, tract of 
 intelligence, young Caleb was as heavy as lead 
 in his bearing, and as dull as so much unpolished 
 pudding-stone in his conversation. He had in- 
 herited his physique, but not her blunted intel- 
 lect, from his mother — a plain, honest, straight- 
 ward kind of creature, good for her man and 
 her child, apt at scrubbing and washing when 
 she ceased to be a pit-brow woman, but always 
 stupid at cooking, and absolutely unteachable 
 for her needle — a creature who had not a per- 
 sonal charm so soon as she lost the fresh com- 
 plexion and plump firmness of youth ; and who 
 had not an ounce more brain than just lifted her 
 over the line of the 'half-baked,' and enabled 
 her to keep her boy from harm and her house 
 from dirt. She had transmitted herself to Caleb ; 
 and, like mother, like son, in all things save the 
 absolute quality of the brain. For Caleb was as 
 heavily-built and as round-limbed as she ; with 
 the same light grey eyes, coarse sandy hair, 
 fresh red and white complexion, small snubby 
 nose, and large, full, fleshy, unpoetic lips. And 
 
 VOL. I. C
 
 18 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 what kind of social credentials can be got out 
 of such an inventory ? 
 
 To add to this heavy handicap of nature, the 
 strong character and close grip of old Miles had 
 wrought on both wife and child the usual effect 
 of domination over comparative flaccidity. It 
 had crushed out of them all such initiative, all 
 such spirit, as might have been developed, at 
 least in Caleb, had he been under a more elastic 
 rule and allowed a freer seaboard. 
 
 A man of character and shrewd intelligence, 
 but utterly untaught, Miles Stagg was what the 
 country people were wont to call a queer fish 
 and a rough customer, or, perhaps, a regular 
 Tory, when he got drunk — which was often er 
 than should have been, but not so often as might 
 have been expected. As a set-off, however, he 
 had that comprehensive quality known as a good 
 heart — that is, if he broke a man's head he gave 
 him a golden plaister wherewith to mend it. 
 And to be free with his fists and open with his 
 hand seemed to the former miner as fair a 
 division of things as a reasonable man could 
 expect.
 
 THE CYMON OF KINGSHOUSE. 19 
 
 Having come to his abundant wealth by the 
 lucky chance of a fine seam of coal in the bank- 
 rupt co-operative mine which he had doggedly 
 taken on his own square shoulders, he came to it 
 unprepared by training or even by anticipation ; 
 and now, with his hundreds of thousands, he 
 was never more than the miner in his Sunday 
 clothes, well brushed up and with all the grime 
 washed off, but with his heart in the skip and 
 his interests on the bank. Naturally, however, 
 he thought his money would do, if but little for 
 himself, much for his son — more, indeed, than it 
 would. Seeing where it had landed this and 
 that and t'other, he thought that he, too, had 
 but to command, and the social forces would 
 obey. But he did not take into consideration 
 the difference between himself as represented 
 by his son, and those others who had brushed 
 themselves up into passable imitations, if no art 
 nor science ever yet discovered could make 
 them the real thing. Miles was but Sly the 
 tinker in my lord's best bed ; and the freaks of 
 fortune are no more really metamorphic than 
 those of great men. Sly may surround himself 
 
 c2
 
 20 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 with costly luxuries, pillow his scrubby head 
 on satin, eat dainties out of a golden plate, and 
 splash his spatulous fingers in rose-water after- 
 wards. He may clothe his hirsute body in 
 velvet and embroidery as fine as an emperor's, 
 — all the same, the rust of the pots and pans 
 he has passed his life in tinkering will not leave 
 his horny hands; and Plutus himself cannot 
 make that silken purse we wot of out of a pig- 
 gish ear. 
 
 Unfortunately — or, perhaps, fortunately — who 
 knows yet? — young Caleb had none of his 
 father's social ambition. Specially did he in no 
 wise share the old man's wishes about marry- 
 ing blood and founding a family. Lady Eliza- 
 beth Inchbold, the all but dowerless daughter 
 of the all but ruined Earl of Kingshouse, was 
 the mark at which old Miles aimed the shaft of 
 his desire. If Caleb should accomplish that, 
 his father would settle well-nigh all his fortune 
 on the young people, and would withdraw with 
 his wife for ever from the neighbourhood. He 
 would content himself with the knowledge of 
 the fact. He would not seek to share in its
 
 THE CYMON OF KIXGSHOUSE. 21 
 
 glory, nor even to see the splendour of its rays. 
 In the midst of the coarse materialism of his 
 nature lay this one little flower of love, this 
 purest pearl of unselfishness. If Caleb would 
 make himself the man he should be, and go in 
 and win as he ought, he, and not Miles, should 
 then be the millionaire — he, and not Miles, 
 should be the great man of the county and the 
 commander of the future. 
 
 But Caleb would as soon have gone into a 
 lion's den as into the Dower House, where the 
 earl and countess and their family lived in 
 secret penance and public pride. The castle 
 was let to one Mr. Hermann Schmidt, a stock- 
 broker who knew both how to spend his money 
 like a prince and make a bargain like Shylock, 
 and who was at once a generous friend of 
 whom to ask a favour and a dangerous man 
 with whom to do business. Old Miles never 
 made the smallest doubt but that Lady Eliza- 
 beth would accept the golden bait as eagerly as 
 a hungry trout would take a May-fly. It was 
 money that ruled the world, so far as he 
 could see; and, without being personally purse-
 
 22 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 proud, he had an exaggerated sense of its 
 value. 
 
 He was a man of a coarse, ripe, Rabelaisian 
 kind of humour, to whom nothing in the world 
 was sacred or forbidden. He had no more faith 
 in humanity than the most gloomy pessimist 
 who thinks he saves his own soul by calling 
 those of others, well — not saved. To him life 
 was a jolly kind of comedy, where the fools 
 were tricked and lost what they had, and the 
 wise men held their own and got more. He 
 laughed and was not offended at this lapse and 
 that stumble. It was human nature when all 
 was said and done, he would say ; and that the 
 4 furred puss-cats ' should scramble for the gold 
 pieces — the stronger punching the heads of the 
 weaker, and the weaker scratching slily when 
 they could not fight openly — that, too, he con- 
 fessed and laughed at with the rest. 
 
 For himself he knew what he wanted ; and he 
 meant to have it if he could get it. As he 
 walked about the house and grounds of Redhill, 
 loud of voice, sturdy of limb, direct of intent, he 
 was wont, as he expressed it, to make the
 
 THE OTMON OF KINGSHOUSE. 23 
 
 feathers fly. He was wont to make them fly so 
 thick and fast that all avoided him when they 
 could, in spite of the broad laugh that followed 
 the verbal insult, and the * Here, lad ! here's a 
 plaister for thy head,' which was to salve over 
 a blow. One man alone stood up to him. This 
 was an old gang-mate of his, one Jim Fisher, 
 now made head-gardener, for all that he knew 
 about as much of modern cultivation as he did 
 of the differential calculus, and would have 
 thought it flying in the face of Providence had 
 he raised strawberries in May or cut grapes in 
 April. And Jim Fisher — a sturdy, tough old 
 tyke, who was more like a rough old sea-dog 
 than a land snail — he withstood his old mate, 
 now his master, boldly enough, and gave him 
 back as good as he brought, and sometimes a 
 trifle beyond. Consequently, he was almost the 
 only person in existence for whom Miles Stagg 
 had the faintest feeling of respect, or of whom 
 he stood in so much wholesome awe as made 
 him decently well-behaved when his humour 
 pointed otherwise. 
 
 With his timid, silent, and of late years —
 
 24 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 when she could no longer keep herself awake 
 by active work — somnolent wife, old Miles was 
 not so much roughly brutal as oppressive — 
 coercing rather than tormenting, and not wish- 
 ing in the least to torment. On the contrary, 
 he meant to be kindly, and he was in truth as 
 kindly as he knew how to be. 
 
 ' She has been a good wife to me/ he used to 
 say, when a little in his cups ; ' and what the — 
 expletive — if I cannot make a lady of her I'll 
 not let her feel the differ'.' 
 
 He had no idea that his close grip and 
 strong will had suffocated her, and that not all 
 his broad laughter nor coarse jokes could bring 
 back to life the feeble spark of individuality he 
 had crushed out of her. His * Give us a buss, 
 old lass,' after he had mentally trampled on her, 
 was on a par with his sovereign given to the 
 man he had cuffed till he had lamed. The torn 
 flesh none the worse gaped ; the broken bone 
 was none the less apart ; and the bruise ached 
 all the same — that golden ointment notwith- 
 standing. So with Nancy. Kisses, jokes, 
 laughter — what you will — nothing restored
 
 THE CYMON OF KIXGSHOUSE. 25 
 
 the broken will nor reanimated the destroyed 
 spirit. 
 
 It was the same with his son whom he loved 
 better than his life, bnt whom he now rated like 
 a hound for his want of character and energy, 
 and now cursed for a rebel if he dared to say 
 his soul was his own and he thought he had the 
 best right to it. He wanted to see the young 
 fellow take part in the life of the place, and 
 make his mark as a man of his means should. 
 He would spare no expense if he could set him 
 astride on the high-horse of public power and 
 favour ; and he could not be made to see that 
 the very tyranny of his endeavour to fashion the 
 man he would have him to be, frustrated his 
 efforts, and that, by the means he took, he 
 thwarted his own ends. How can you get a free- 
 spirited, high-mettled youth out of a creature 
 belaboured and bethrashed with words and 
 whips as Caleb Stagg had ever been? From 
 the day when he was a ten-months' old baby in 
 his mother's arms and made a wry face at his 
 daddy's beer, up to now, when he was a grown 
 man of six-and-twenty, and would not put him-
 
 26 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 self forward to win the matrimonial blue riband 
 his father made sure was within his reach, he 
 had been hustled and hounded and rated and 
 rasped — all for his own good, mind you ! — and 
 treated with no more human respect than if he 
 had been a bit of wax, to be pinched and pulled 
 and patted and posed as the modeller thought 
 best. 
 
 Old Miles was vexed that he could not make 
 the lad what he wanted him to be. He wished 
 him to be a smart, gallant, adventurous kind of 
 gentleman, who, by sheer pluck and audacity, 
 would make good his entrance into society, and 
 know how to keep what he had got till he wished 
 to go higher. Then he might fling down the 
 ladders by which he had mounted if he would. 
 Miles Stagg was no sentimentalist ; and though 
 he stuck to his old mate, Jim Fisher, to the 
 detriment of his houses, that was no reason 
 why young Caleb should play the same soft 
 game with society. He wished him to do well 
 for himself, not for others; and, if chestnuts 
 were to be pulled out of the fire, it was not the 
 lad's fingers which were to get burned. Whose>
 
 THE CYMON OF KINGSHOUSE. 27 
 
 was not Miles Stagg's affair. He wished the 
 boy to join the hunt and ride to hounds as a lad 
 of spirit should. He should have the freshest 
 bit of pink and the best horse to be seen at the 
 cover-side, bar none, if he would. He wished 
 him to learn how to dance and to go to all the 
 subscription balls. 
 
 * Lord, mother ! but it would be rare sport to- 
 see our Caleb a-kopping about the floor like a 
 parched pea on a drum-head !' he would say to 
 his wife Nancy, with a loud guffaw, after he had 
 sworn at his son till you thought you saw blue 
 fire. He wanted him to be hand-in-glove with 
 this great name and that big swell ; to put him- 
 self forward and make a dash — there was money 
 enow. And when Caleb, ever mindful of the 
 fact that he had worked with his father in the 
 mines up to the age of seventeen, when the coal 
 was found, kept to his books and his microscope 
 upstairs, and slunk sheepishly about the lanes 
 afoot like a tramp — grubbing in the hedges for 
 bugs or fishing for slime in the ponds, instead of 
 capering here and there like a lord, with a groom 
 at his heels and the money jingling in his pockets
 
 28 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 — old Miles used to have a turn at swearing and 
 cursing that was like a fever-fit or a bout of 
 whooping-cough, as irrepressible and severe. 
 Then, as a solatium, he would buy the lad a 
 diamond pin or a set of studs which Caleb would 
 rather have been flayed alive than wear, and 
 which he accepted with the painful smile that 
 is on a man's face what tears are in a woman's 
 eyes. 
 
 This kind of treatment had the sole effect of 
 making young Caleb devote himself yet more 
 sedulously to the life he had chosen and the 
 pursuits which delighted him — keeping out of 
 his boisterous parent's way as much as he could, 
 and abjuring with the dogged passivity of his 
 kind the line laid down for him with so many 
 sharp nails and so many hard knocks. Brought 
 up as a rough mining lad for all his early life, 
 at eighteen he had gone to a lecal college, after 
 a year's private training at a clergyman's. But 
 the grit of the coal-dust, which he had breathed 
 from his infancy, was never got out of him. 
 Sensitive, observant, up to a certain point clever 
 in his own way, and naturally shy and awk-
 
 THE CYMON OF KINGSHOUSE. 29 
 
 ward, he knew and felt all his own disabilities 
 as his coarser-fibred father did not ; and he kept 
 within the obscurity which he felt was his best 
 friend, following the studies which alone made 
 him forget the sordid realities of things. His 
 only happy hours were when he was watching 
 the ways of bird or beast, spying out the secret 
 arts of attack and defence of reptile and insect, 
 or getting into the very workshop of Nature 
 through the microscope. Add to this a close 
 study of Shakespeare and the translated classics, 
 and his list was complete. For of late years he 
 had left off romping with the kitchen-maid in 
 the hay-loft, as had been his wont when younger 
 and less developed — the stablemen keeping 
 watch lest old Miles should come along and 
 blow the whole place about their ears. But, 
 even now, a romp with the kitchen-maid would 
 be preferable to making up to Lady Elizabeth 
 Inchbold at the Dower House, for all that she 
 had nothing of the aristocrat about her save 
 her name, her traditions, her self-respect and 
 her grace. 
 
 1 Thou'lt never do no good, Caleb,' his father
 
 30 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 one day said to him, with an angry shrug of his 
 ■stalwart shoulders. k What use have it been to 
 waste all this brass on thy learning, when thou'rt 
 nought but a dommed fool at the end of it ? Thy 
 mother's no lady, and thee's no gent ; and, hang 
 me, if the money had not better go to make a 
 hospital for dead jackasses than to such lily- 
 livered spenders as you two.' 
 
 Miles had often said the same thing before; 
 but to-day he emphasized his disapprobation 
 with stronger intonation ; impelled thereto by 
 his vexation that Caleb had refused to take up 
 an invitation to a garden-party at the vicarage 
 — Mr. and Mrs. Stewart, the vicar and vicaress, 
 being of that good and wholesome sort which 
 likes to draw all society into the one golden net 
 of kindly feeling, and therefore including young 
 Caleb Stagg in their invitations. 
 
 'You know, father, that I do not care for 
 these parties,' said Caleb, awkwardly. ' They 
 are not in my line, and I am never my own man 
 in them.' 
 
 He spoke with a better accent than his father, 
 and in a more finely modulated voice ; but there
 
 THE CYMOX OF KINGSHOUSE. 31 
 
 was always the unmistakable provincial accent ; 
 and neither the clergyman nor the college had 
 knocked the rustic out of him, to put in its place 
 even the semblance of a gentleman. 
 
 'And thee doesn't make account of thy duty 
 to me, as brought thee up,' said Miles. * What 
 thy father wishes doesn't weigh so much as the 
 tail-end of a mouse with thee. Thy father, who 
 has slaved for thee, and thought night and day 
 of nought but thee and what would be for thy 
 good — thou'st nought better to do than flout 
 and fleer, when he wants thee to hold up thy 
 head as thou should'st with the best.' 
 
 8 You know, father, I never meant to flout or 
 fleer you/ said Caleb, earnestly ; ' but I do not 
 feel called on to go about among these people. 
 They think themselves of another make of flesh 
 and blood from us, and they don't care a jot for 
 our money — got, as it were, by a fluke, and with 
 such owners as we.' 
 
 ' Such osvners as we ! And what the dickens 
 dost mean by that, jackanapes V shouted Miles. 
 
 ' Why, just this, father — we are not gentlemen, 
 and we can't pretend that we are,' said Caleb.
 
 32 THROUGH THE LONG SIGHT. 
 
 ' Toots — toots, lad ! Brass'll gild a miner's 
 pick till it is as fine as my lord's sword,' said 
 Miles, half in fun and half in anger. ' The 
 gentry at Kingshouse ain't far different from 
 men and women elsewhere, I reckon ; and a full 
 purse goes as far, my lad, as those mouldy old 
 coats-of-arms, with nothing behind them but 
 lean chaps and family pride. Go thy w r ays, I 
 tell thee. Hie upstairs, Caleb, like a good lad, 
 and do as thy father bids. Don thy best coat, 
 and go to the vicarage with the rest. And if 
 thou'lt bring me home a well-doing, likely 
 daughter-in-law, like that Lady Elizabeth yon- 
 der, I'd not care to call the king my uncle. 
 And I'd set thee up in housekeeping so that the 
 king shouldn't be put about to call thee nephew.' 
 
 Caleb still hesitated — silent, awkward, reluc- 
 tant, abashed ; when his father suddenly flew 
 into a rage such as even he was not accustomed 
 to see ; and with curses, kicks, blows and oaths 
 offered him his choice — to go or to leave the 
 house that very moment, disinherited for ever. 
 His son had therefore nothing for it but to bend 
 before the storm, and yield to his father's desire ;
 
 THE CYMON OF KINGSHOUSE. 33 
 
 and thus it was that for the first time in his life 
 he formed one of the Kingshouse gatherings, 
 and made his entrance into the fair company of 
 whom Lady Elizabeth Inchbold was the social 
 queen andEstelle Clanricarde the Star of Beauty. 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 HIS IPHIGENIA. 
 
 One of old Miles Stagg's favourite aphorisms was 
 that fine birds are made by fine feathers. Give 
 Colin Clout a good coat, a flashy necktie, a gold 
 chain as thick as a ship's rope, studs as big as 
 sixpences, and all the rest to correspond, and 
 Miles could see no difference between his ap- 
 pearance and that of the smartest young Jemmy 
 Jessamy in the land. If Jemmy were to be 
 dressed in flannels, the difference, indeed, would 
 be to the good of Colin. Consequently, though 
 Caleb, from his experience of college life, knew 
 slightly better than his father, and from his more 
 delicately-organized brain had at all times keener 
 and quicker perceptions, he was forced to obey 
 the old man's imperative command that he should
 
 HIS IPHIGENIA. 35 
 
 make himself as smart as ninepence, and take 
 the shine out of that gang of genteel paupers he 
 would meet in the vicarage gardens to-day. 
 
 His close-fitting frock-coat was new to raw- 
 ness and distractingly faultless; his black 
 trousers were still in the tailor's well-defined 
 creases ; his glossy hat shone like a blackened 
 mirror; his jewellery was resplendent. Over 
 the edge of his stiff white collar, guillotined 
 with an aniline crimson tie fastened by a large 
 diamond horseshoe pin, his round, flat, unmean- 
 ing face rose like a pug-dog's changed from 
 black to red and white, and from caninity into 
 a fairly good sketch of humanity. His fawn- 
 coloured gloves matched the colour of his hair ; 
 and his patent leather boots crippled the flat 
 feet which, for the most part, expatiated in 
 greased boots where his corns were not tortured. 
 Such as he was, holding himself as stiffly as if 
 trussed beneath his clothes, shy, sheepish, un- 
 comfortable, self-conscious, and not a whit re- 
 assured by his father's boisterous commendation 
 nor by his mother's vacant smile, the young 
 man mounted the dog-cart, which the coach- 
 
 D 2
 
 36 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 man drove — the smart groom sitting behind, his 
 arms folded and his tongue in his cheek — and 
 went off to one of those informal tennis-parties 
 which Mr. and Mrs. Stewart gave weekly for 
 the pleasure of the young people and the pro- 
 motion of social good feeling. 
 
 It need hardly be said what impression the 
 poor young man made when he came on the 
 lawn, somewhat after time because of the 
 struggle at home, his wonderful get-up con- 
 trasting so sharply with the loose flannels of the 
 rest — the tightly-buckled belts, the turned-up 
 sleeves, the well-worn cricket shoes, and all the 
 other loose points of the time and occasion. Not 
 the dear good vicaress herself could resist that 
 little smile which comes unbidden on the first 
 flush of a ridiculous surprise, while some of the 
 worse bred and less kindly tittered audibly. 
 Lord Eustace, Lady Elizabeth's younger brother, 
 — the elder, Lord Royne, was in India, which 
 allowed the cadet to give himself the airs of the 
 major, — gave a slight whistle, which was the 
 rudest thing of all. But then he was a lord and 
 entitled to his own private code. Charlie
 
 HIS TPHIGENIA. 37 
 
 Osborne, who, as poet, painter, musician, and 
 artist generally, assumed to know more about 
 the religion of beauty and the morality of 
 aesthetics than anyone else, looked at the new- 
 comer with the same expression on his face as 
 he would have had if a false chord had been 
 played, a halting rhyme repeated, or a man 
 been detected hiding the ace up his sleeve. 
 
 As for Caleb himself, if that old familiar wish 
 about the earth opening and swallowing him up 
 alive could have been fulfilled for his benefit, 
 how gladly would he have sunk beneath the 
 sod, never to reappear ! He was not sufficiently 
 enlightened in the ethics of society to under- 
 stand the full extent of his personal enormities, 
 but he understood enough to make him miser- 
 able, and to make him wish that he had died 
 before he had come. His distress was so appar- 
 ent, his awkwardness so pitiful, his whole bear- 
 ing so abject and humiliated that three charitable 
 souls took him into the sacred precincts of their 
 compassion, and forgot to ridicule for the sake 
 of pity. One of these three was, of course, Mrs. 
 Stewart herself — a woman of that liberal, kindly,
 
 38 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 but not sentimental nature sometimes found in 
 the arid wastes of society as might be found a 
 fountain and a palm-tree in the desert; the 
 other, Estelle, who thought how dreadful it 
 must be to be like that ! and the third was 
 Lady Elizabeth Inchbold, the fair-set mark at 
 which old Miles aimed the presumptuous shaft 
 of his paternal desires. 
 
 But then this was Lady Elizabeth's way. 
 Whatever there was of hurt and sorry, of low- 
 lying, trampled on, helpless, mishandled, Lady 
 Elizabeth was willing to lift up and comfort. 
 Could she have wiped away all tears from all 
 eyes at the cost of her own eternal weeping, 
 she would have done so ; could she have healed 
 all wounds by the blood of her own heart, she 
 would have healed them. No thought of self, 
 no calculation of the extent or cost of her sacri- 
 fice, troubled the pure stream of her human 
 pity. That she should besmirch herself by 
 touching the besmirched never occurred to her 
 as possible. And if it had? Well! those who 
 give themselves up to the care of the lepers 
 doom themselves to the disease they live to
 
 HIS IPHIGENIA. 39 
 
 soothe and die in assuaging. Had the loss of 
 her own soul redeemed the souls of the world, 
 she would have carried it as her offering before 
 the judgment-seat, to save the humanity 
 she loved so well — and pitied as much as she 
 loved. 
 
 Estelle Clanricarde's great friend, she and 
 Charlie Osborne, whom Estelle loved, stood at 
 the opposite sides of that great triangle of life 
 and thought, the apex of which is truth. Where 
 he, bitten by the sentimental cynicism of a cer- 
 tain school, despised his kind and held life but 
 a blotch and a blunder — more especially modern 
 life and all the changes wrought by steam and 
 science — she saw good everywhere ; and, like 
 those who bore for underground waters on a 
 sandy track, knew how to find the deeper 
 beauties hidden beneath superficial ugliness. 
 For her, unselfish, generous, glad to serve and 
 eager to save, were more harmonies than dis- 
 cords in this great diapason of suffering and joy, 
 of vice and virtue ; for him, self-indulgent to 
 pleasure and weak to pain, unable to bear, of 
 irritable fibre all through, were mainly discords,
 
 40 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 with here and there a harmony in a gorgeous 
 sunset or finely-worded objurgation by the high- 
 priest of his own restricted sect, or in Estelle 
 Clanricarde, when he could get her to himself 
 and forget his artificial pessimism in the light of 
 her dear eyes. Lady Elizabeth did not lose 
 touch of the real in the ideal. She therefore 
 loved mankind, and pitied as much as she loved. 
 Charlie Osborne refused sympathy, because of 
 his abhorrence for that which was mean and 
 low and ugly in man. Her love went to peo- 
 ple, his to things ; hers to facts, his to thoughts. 
 Between them lay the whole difference between 
 the two great schools of humanism and idealism 
 — humanity and art. 
 
 It was not then out of the usual ordering of 
 things, but the reverse, that when her grave, 
 calm eyes had taken the whole circumstances 
 of this unhappy omadhaun, so painfully out of 
 place, Lady Elizabeth should go to where Mrs. 
 Stewart was still talking to him in her brisk, 
 bee-like manner, and join in the conversation as 
 one who had the right of previous knowledge. 
 She had that way. Her manner was that of
 
 HIS IPHIGENIA. 41 
 
 one who had already established a claim of sym- 
 pathy, and counted the points of contact. She 
 never stood on the defensive, as even well-bred 
 people are wont to do with strangers, but as- 
 sumed from the first that touch of nature which 
 makes the whole world kin. 
 
 * By Jove ! that sister of mine is stark, staring 
 mad. Look at her talking to that Polichinelle,' 
 said Lord Eustace, not below his breath, to 
 Estelle, to whom he was paying exaggerated 
 court, to take a rise out of Charlie Osborne — for 
 mischief, not malice. 
 
 1 On the contrary, I think she is very sweet to 
 be so kind to such an object. But then she 
 always is so kind !' returned Estelle, glad to be 
 able to contradict her adhesive companion, whom 
 she could not shake off and wished anywhere 
 but where he was. 
 
 She knew Charlie's sensitive jealousy and 
 faculty for self-tormenting ; and she had no wish 
 to vex him for Lord Eustace's pleasure. She was 
 far too gentle and sweet-nurtured to wish to vex 
 him for her own — just to see the power she had 
 over him — as is the way with certain of her sex.
 
 42 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 ' Are you, too, one of the new sort V asked 
 Lord Eustace, contemptuously. 'I thank my 
 good stars I am out of it. All this playing at 
 democracy seems to me not only the worst form 
 but the vilest rot afloat. It is rank atheism to 
 pretend that we have no distinction of classes, 
 and that gentlemen and boors are own brothers. 
 And only cads are atheists.' 
 
 ' All the same, I think Lady Elizabeth is very 
 sweet to go and talk to that dreadful creature,' 
 said Estelle, with her pretty doggedness. 
 
 And then — her mother's back being conveni- 
 ently turned at the moment — she looked round 
 to Charlie Osborne, and sent him a telegraphic 
 message with her eyes which allayed some of 
 the fever burning in his veins. After all, Lord 
 Eustace had but the appearance, the simulacrum 
 of things, and he himself held the reality. But 
 to the sensuous artistic temperament, * founded 
 on ultimates,' as this generally is — unlike the 
 dreamy poetic — mental knowledge does not 
 satisfy like personal holding ; and Lord Eustace 
 was none the less detestable in his usurpation 
 because Estelle was adorable in her faithfulness.
 
 HIS IPHIGENIA. A3 
 
 Meanwhile, Lady Elizabeth took it in hand to 
 make poor Caleb's present torture a little less 
 unendurable. She found him. hard work. There 
 was not a solecism that he did not commit, not 
 a gaucherie that he left untouched. He called 
 her * Miss,' to start with, and when Mrs. Stewart 
 gave her her title formally, he made ' Lady 
 Elizabeth' flank every sentence, now before, 
 now behind, and sometimes fore and aft together. 
 
 When Mrs. Stewart said : 
 
 1 1 don't think you know many people here, 
 Mr. Stagg?' poor Caleb blushed like a peony 
 and looked like a fool. 
 
 'No, Mrs. Stewart, not to speak to,' he 
 answered. 
 
 Then, when she presented him to Lady 
 Elizabeth, he forgot his hat and shook hands 
 instead. When, pointing to the garden-seat 
 near to where they were standing, Lady Eliza- 
 beth said : ■ Shall we sit down V he planted him- 
 self at once on the edge in the shade, and let 
 her sit in the sun with the light in her eyes. 
 When he saw his mistake he was too awkward 
 to get up and rectify it, though he would have
 
 44 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 let her walk over his body and use his fine new 
 clothes for a door-mat had she had the mind. 
 And when she, with that wonderful insight 
 which belonged to her, divining the cause of 
 his apparent discourtesy and knowing that the 
 little sacrifice would be his pleasure, said, 
 quietly : * I am sure your eyes are stronger than 
 mine, Mr. Stagg; would you mind changing 
 places with me ? ' he very nearly tumbled 
 headforemost into her lap in his eagerness to 
 obey her, and, for her benefit, wiped with his 
 handkerchief the place where he had been 
 sitting. 
 
 But by slow degrees he ceased to twirl his 
 hat between his knees ; his heart left off beating 
 in those painful gasps which are more like sobs 
 than beats ; those invisible needles ceased to 
 prick him as they had been pricking him ever 
 since he drove up to the gates ; he got to feel 
 that he knew this Lady Elizabeth, this daugh- 
 ter of the earl, quite well, though not intimately 
 — as one would know one's guardian-angel say, 
 something to revere but not to be afraid of; 
 while over all his being stole a divine sense of
 
 HIS IPHIGENIA. 45 
 
 calm as with a lost wanderer when he sees the 
 welcome light of a human home. 
 
 After probing and ploughing this barren tract 
 and that arid acre, Lady Elizabeth at last fell 
 on Caleb's own particular subject — flowers and 
 birds and natural history generally. It needed 
 patience and good engineering to draw from 
 the poor omadhaun the fact that he knew any- 
 thing at all ; but the ' Delight ' — as her father 
 sometimes called her — who had him in hand, 
 was both patient and a good conversational 
 engineer; and though her shy and awkward 
 naturalist never ventured on a positive assertion, 
 but said what he had to say with a modest * I 
 think,' as the grating behind which his know- 
 ledge took refuge — even to ' thinking ' that 
 field-mice eat honey bees, and that the sun-dew 
 entraps flies — she got a great deal out of him 
 that was pleasant and new, and that made her 
 uphill grind a little less arduous. 
 
 Also, it somewhat tightened the slack cords 
 of his own self-esteem to find that he could 
 interest her by what he said. How glad he was 
 that she cared for nature and things ! He was
 
 46 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 indemnified now for all the ridicule and coarse 
 opposition his student's tastes had had to face 
 and bear at home. This divine creature, who 
 reminded him of some Greek goddess, met him 
 on his own ground and asked him for informa- 
 tion. It was an honour which seemed to crown 
 his head with a fillet of gold when she said that 
 she would like him to show her in his micro- 
 scope things she had not yet seen, and teach her 
 more than she already knew. It was the noble 
 touch of womanly dependence which rouses in 
 a man's soul all that he has of heroism and de- 
 votion. Younger than himself, but how im- 
 measurably superior, this beautiful girl-woman 
 seemed to draw his whole being into hers, as 
 the lake receives the rill, as the formless mist 
 over the morass is absorbed into the infinite 
 heaven. Had he been a Greek, she would have 
 represented to him the chaste splendour of that 
 goddess who kissed the sleeping boy on Mount 
 Latinos ; had he been a Roman, she would have 
 been the renewal of Numa's sacred counsellor ; 
 as a Roman Catholic he would have seen in her 
 the holy likeness of the Blessed Virgin ; as a
 
 HIS IPHIGENIA. 47 
 
 Hindu, she would have been Lachshmi, the 
 female energy of Vishnu. She was, in any 
 case, semi-divine, and he was glad now that he 
 had braved the torment of this ordeal, seeing 
 what great gift of grace and joy it had brought 
 him. His pug-dog face beamed like one who 
 has met an angel by the way ; and something 
 deeper than its ordinary flat and level senti- 
 ments seemed to have come into it. But this 
 delightful state of things could not last very 
 long. Lady Elizabeth was too valuable a mem- 
 ber of the small society on the lawn to be 
 allowed to give herself to one only — especially 
 such a one as Caleb Stagg. 
 
 Estelle was the one who came to disturb an 
 interview which was beginning to really in- 
 terest Lady Elizabeth, and to set the butterfly 
 stirring within the chrysalis with Caleb. She 
 was bored by Lord Eustace, and, under the 
 strict patrol of her mother's watchful eyes, she 
 could not get so much as a whispered word 
 with Charlie — scarcely a fleeting look. He at 
 last, in a fit of jealous rage and despair, had 
 gone to the hammock that swung untenanted
 
 48 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 between the two evergreen oaks. Estelle thought 
 that, if she were sheltered and shielded by Lady 
 Elizabeth, she might perhaps snatch a perilous 
 five minutes of joy, soothe her lover's perturbed 
 spirit, and drink another draught of that sweet 
 poison without which young life is but a desert 
 and young hearts as dry as potsherds. Accord- 
 ingly, she came strolling up to where this 
 strangely-mated pair were sitting on the garden- 
 seat backed by azaleas and rhododendrons, and 
 in a pretty, beseeching way asked her friend to 
 come with her for a little walk — and that walk 
 would be to the two evergreen oaks between 
 which the hammock was swinging, with Charlie 
 Osborne eating out his heart. The winding of 
 the paths and the friendly intervention of flower- 
 ing shrubs would hide them from Mrs. Clanri- 
 carde; and all would be well and without 
 danger. 
 
 As Lady Elizabeth had it also at heart as a 
 duty to help poor Estelle when she could, and 
 as she did not think that a new interest should 
 overset an old one, she said : ' Yes, I will go with 
 you, dear — ' as Estelle knew she would.
 
 HIS IPHIGENIA. 49 
 
 Then, turning to Caleb, she asked : 
 
 ' Shall I introduce you to anyone before I go V 
 
 ' Thank you, Lady Elizabeth, I don't think I 
 
 care to know anyone else, thank you, Lady 
 
 Elizabeth,' said Caleb, with a blush that made 
 
 his ears as red as fleshy flames. 
 
 * But you will be dull, knowing no one,' said 
 the daughter of the Earl of Kingshouse, with as 
 much kindly consideration and courtesy as if 
 her brother's Polichinelle had been the son of a 
 king. 
 
 * I think not, Lady Elizabeth,' was his stam- 
 mered reply. 
 
 She could not say : ' Will you come with us V 
 That would not have been fair to Estelle ; but 
 she wished she could have carried him with her, 
 as she would have rescued some bird from boys, 
 some monkey from a brutal showman. 
 
 'I'll just keep to myself now that you are 
 going, Lady Elizabeth,' said Caleb after a pause, 
 between the Scylla of not liking to make an in- 
 dependent observation and the Charybdis of not 
 wishing this beautiful woman to trouble herself 
 on his account. 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 50 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 ' I am sorry to take Lady Elizabeth away,' 
 said Estelle very kindly. 
 
 Had it been anyone but Charlie Osborne she 
 would have kept the poor fellow in his present 
 safety, and have thrown over all the rest. 
 
 1 Oh ! don't vex yourself, miss,' Caleb an- 
 swered with another torrent of blushes. * I 
 couldn't expect that ladies like Lady Elizabeth 
 and yourself, miss, would stay with such as me,' 
 he added, with the deep humility of his kind. 
 
 ' I am so sorry ; but, oh ! come, dear !' whis- 
 pered Estelle, the selfishness of love sweeping 
 away her philanthropy ; and Lady Elizabeth 
 turned away with a smile to poor Caleb that left 
 on his bewildered soul the impression of moon- 
 light on the water, of soft moss, of cool green 
 forest glades, of a rare wild-flower found on the 
 edge of a sheltered pool, of all that there is of 
 soothing and entrancing in nature. And, while 
 the two friends strolled away to carry comfort 
 and bring joy to poor irritated Charlie Osborne, 
 Caleb slunk into the shrubbery that sloped 
 sharply downwards to the river. 
 
 If he could have left the vicarage at this
 
 HIS IPHIGENIA. 51 
 
 moment he would ; but he was bound. He had 
 not arrived punctually, and that had been a 
 grievous thing to him. The card of invitation 
 had said ' four to seven,' and he had not been 
 there till half-past four. He had ordered the 
 trap to return punctually on the stroke of seven, 
 and it never occurred to him that he could leave 
 before it came. He had then two long mortal 
 hours to fill up, and how was he to fill them ? 
 The best thing he knew was to keep out of sight 
 of everyone ; so he slunk into the shrubbery, and 
 for the first time in these late enthusiastic years 
 of study he forgot to look for creatures. 
 
 All nature seemed transformed, and he knew 
 nothing of what he saw, or, rather, he saw nothing 
 as it was about him. He felt as if in some strange 
 place full of mild glory and an all-pervading 
 but indefinite light. Was this the unconscious 
 effect of the laburnums under which he was 
 walking, knowing nothing of the fountains of 
 gold falling all around and above him 1 He was 
 companioned by beings of whose presence he 
 was conscious but whose forms he could not 
 see. Voices spoke to his inner heart sweeter 
 
 E 2 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 ,LLIN 0IS UBRARi
 
 52 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 than the songs of thrush and linnet, as sugges- 
 tive and as wordless ; and the earth beneath his 
 feet was no more solid than so much iridescent 
 cloud. A strange sense of inward prayer pos- 
 sessed him, and he seemed to have come into 
 another phase and region of life altogether — he 
 seemed to have come to some new but un cata- 
 logued knowledge. He sat down on the mossy 
 bank, far from the path, and looked fixedly 
 before him — not to observe, not to think, but to 
 be wafted unresistingly on this divine air, to 
 float unsteered down this exquisite stream. 
 Tears, of which he was not conscious, slowly 
 gathered in his wide-opened eyes and fell on 
 his red silk tie. He was trembling with that 
 kind of rapturous tremor which overpowers us 
 in the presence of some sublime beauty of 
 nature. The poor omadhaun ! the poor Polichin- 
 elle ! Who would have credited hitn with those 
 birth-pangs of a new soul — he, in his glossy 
 hat and tailors triumphs of coat and trousers, 
 his fawn-coloured gloves, and flashing horse- 
 shoe diamond pin ! The satyr which enclosed 
 the god, the temple, the gift of man to maid,
 
 HIS IPHIGENIA. 53 
 
 of mother to child, was the architype of poor 
 Caleb's soul, imprisoned in such a body and 
 overlaid by such conditions as nature and for- 
 tune had made for him.
 
 54 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE GOLD THAT GLITTERS. 
 
 The matrimonial market at Kingshouse was 
 really too heartbreaking ! So Mrs. Clanricarde 
 thought, in the incessant way of one who has a 
 perennial grievance, though she had enough 
 self-control not to think aloud. Here in Estelle 
 was the winning number, and no prize to take ! 
 It was as though a thoroughbred, trained for 
 the Oaks, had only costermongers' donkeys to 
 contend against, and a bunch of turnip-tops 
 when the post was passed. It was indeed 
 heartbreaking — with those family funds always 
 decreasing, and good guineas going after bad 
 like so many 'moutons de Panurge.' Lord 
 Eustace was as purely a detrimental as Charlie 
 Osborne himself, and from the same cause. He
 
 THE GOLD THAT GLITTERS. 55 
 
 wanted money with his wife to float him off the 
 financial shallows where at present he and all 
 his house were stranded. He could not afford 
 to many for mere love and beauty ; no man can 
 now-a-days who has not a good fortune firmly 
 secured. Certainly no one in Kingshouse could ; 
 unless he were prepared to bring up a family on 
 stirabout and to dress them in blue house-flan- 
 nel and workhouse sheeting. 
 
 Caleb Stagg was the only monied man avail- 
 able ; and even Mrs. Clanricarde shrank from a 
 creature who wore tailor's triumphs at an infor- 
 mal tennis-party, and flaunted a flaring red tie 
 with a flashing diamond pin. Still, he was rich 
 beyond those dreams of avarice we all have 
 heard of ; and on the principle of the living dog 
 and the dead lion, a golden calf is better than 
 a leaden phoenix, and those who want butter to 
 their bread must not be very nice as to the 
 shape of the knife wherewith it is spread. 
 Besides, no plastic substance is utterly hopeless 
 to reform ; and, if Caleb Stagg had a mind at all, 
 and his proper complement of limbs and senses, 
 surely an astute mother-in-law could pull him
 
 56 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 into shape ! Even all princes are not personable 
 men ; and other poets than Pope have been out- 
 side the pale of manly beauty. 
 
 Stirred then by all these reasons, more or less 
 deliberately recognized, Mrs. Clanricarde went 
 to Mrs. Stewart, and in her pretty French way, 
 which beat all the English manner out of the 
 field, asked what had become of Mr. Stagg? 
 Poor young man ! — it must be very triste for 
 him, here among so many strangers ! and should 
 they find him and console him ? 
 
 ' He is somewhere about,' said Mrs. Stewart, 
 looking vaguely round. Truth to say, she had 
 forgotten him. Like many kind-hearted, brisk, 
 and energetic women, she was apt to be spor- 
 adic in her interests and a little unordered in 
 her ways. 
 
 'Let us go and find him,' said Mrs. Clan- 
 ricarde, looking behind a rose-bush as if he 
 might be hiding in its shadow. 
 
 But they soughfin vain. Deep down in the 
 shrubbery, off the path and on the border of the 
 river, the poor oraadhaun sat cradling his new- 
 born soul, and the things of time and space were
 
 THE GOLD THAT GLITTERS. 57 
 
 to him as nought. Mrs. Stewart went the length 
 of even a shrill little call, to which was no re- 
 sponse ; and the search was perforce abandoned. 
 Meanwhile, Estelle and Charlie Osborne made 
 the most of their chance, and Mrs. Clanricarde 
 lost on all sides at once. 
 
 The hours of pleasure passed and that of 
 departure came on. That automatic memory 
 of time, which seems to belong to the body 
 rather than the mind, made Caleb know that he 
 must rouse himself from his mental ecstacy and 
 physical stupor, and go through the ordeal of 
 saying good-day to Mr. and Mrs. Stewart. He 
 came to himself and unlocked his eyes from 
 their gaze on vacancy ; his face relaxed from its 
 fixed immobility, and with the release of the 
 muscles he found it wet ; and yet it had not 
 been raining — his clothes were dry. He took 
 his bright blue silk handkerchief from his 
 pocket and wiped it vigorously — wiped it so 
 that it glowed and shone, while the two thick 
 ears stood out again like flames within a trans- 
 parent cover, set against his sandy hair. He 
 stared about him as a man does when suddenly
 
 58 THROUGN THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 awakened ; and for a moment was dazed as to 
 his whereabouts and how he got there. Then 
 he pulled himself together, as the phrase is, 
 and went up the steep path — his ordinarily 
 slouching stride a little clipped because of his 
 aching feet imprisoned in their tight new boots. 
 As he came on to the lawn the whole party was 
 assembled together. No one had yet gone. It 
 seemed to Caleb as if all England was there. 
 His round eyes took in no one precisely, no one 
 personally. He only saw a sea of bonnets and 
 cricket caps, of coloured frocks and white 
 flannels, of women's faces and men's moustaches. 
 Then he caught sight of two large lustrous 
 grey eyes, and all the rest vanished like a 
 phantasmagoria. Only those glorious eyes re- 
 mained, as his home, his lode-star, his anchor- 
 age, in this bewildering sea of unfamiliar 
 humanity. 
 
 Nothing of all this was shown. The face of 
 a man is not as a sheet of glass through which 
 can be read his thoughts and feelings. All that 
 the assembled company saw was a round, flat, 
 red-faced young man in an absurd get-up,
 
 THE GOLD THAT GLITTERS. 59 
 
 staring at Lady Elizabeth Inchbold with all his 
 might, and standing stock-still, as if struck to 
 stone. 
 
 Lady Elizabeth herself broke the spell by 
 saying, with marked kindness, to this mute star- 
 gazer whom she knew the rest were mutely 
 ridiculing : 
 
 1 Have you seen that beautiful avenue of 
 laburnums, Mr. Stagg? You were in the 
 shrubbery, I think ? Did you see them V 
 
 Caleb blushed, as he naturally would when 
 thus brought back to the things of the actual 
 present. 
 
 1 No, Lady Elizabeth,' he said. 
 
 Poor fellow ! As little as Jim Bludso did he 
 know how to lie. Even those white lies of 
 society, which save appearance and mask con- 
 fession, were as far from his understanding as 
 were the recognized shibboleths and authorized 
 formulas. 
 
 'It was a pity to have missed them/ said 
 Mrs. Clanricarcle, adopting Lady Elizabeth's 
 tone, and looking with artificial benignity on 
 the omadhaun, so thickly plated with gold
 
 60 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 as to be an almost possible associate— perhaps 
 oven something more : — who knows? 
 
 Caleb turned his round face and rounder eyes 
 on the speaker with pitiable bewilderment. 
 It was all like some distressful dream. Why 
 should these people stand there looking at him? 
 Their eyes, multiplied to hundreds, stuck like 
 lances into his heart. He felt as if he had un- 
 wittingly committed some offence, and this was 
 his arraignment. It was a nightmare ; but he 
 retained just so much of consciousness as to 
 let him understand that Mrs. Clanricarde had 
 spoken ; and, not knowing too clearly what 
 she had said nor what he ought to reply, his 
 native courtesy came to his aid, and he an- 
 swered simply : * Thank you, Mrs. Clanricarde,' 
 as the only thing that presented itself. 
 
 Though he had not been formally introduced 
 to anyone but Lady Elizabeth Inchbold, he 
 knew quite well each individual of the assembly, 
 when he could detach his wits from their wool- 
 gathering and force them into concrete observa- 
 tion. The Sunday club of church is the great 
 photograph of a neighbourhood, where people
 
 THE GOLD THAT GLITTERS. 61 
 
 learn to know one another without speech or 
 contact. 
 
 6 Let me take yon,' said Mrs. Clanricarde, still 
 benign and humane. 
 
 1 I'm loth to trouble you, Mrs. Clanricarde,' 
 answered Caleb. 
 
 1 It would be a pleasure,' said Estelle's mother, 
 with her airy French politeness; and Caleb, 
 feeling as one in a mill-race dragged into the 
 deep waters by a force he could not resist, was 
 led like a calf by a wisp of straw to where 
 the laburnums hung like golden fountains 
 against the sky. 
 
 As she went, Mrs. Clanricarde commanded 
 Estelle to accompany her by the look her 
 daughter knew so well. Even she, bold player 
 as well as astute calculator as she was, could 
 scarcely show her hand so plainly as to say : 
 1 Come with me,' before the world. As things 
 were, her action might pass for that kind of 
 maternal kindness which sits not ungracefully 
 on a woman of forty when dealing with young 
 men under thirty, Eudemons or omadhauns. 
 Had she commanded Estelle openly, the colour
 
 62 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 of the whole thing would have been different. 
 But Estelle herself might come of her own proper 
 motion. That would be a pretty reduplication 
 of an amiable condescension and would give no 
 one cause to sneer. 
 
 But Estelle remained impassive, and Charlie 
 Osborne got the good of her contumacy. 
 
 Through all the time of their walk, which 
 Mrs. Clanricarde did not hurry, the weight of 
 conversation rested on her alone ; she got an- 
 swers of a kind from Caleb — but they were 
 -emphatically of a kind. At the end she was no 
 nearer anything like acquaintance or sympathy 
 than she had been at the beginning. She had 
 not that subtle art, that magic of sympathy, 
 which made Lady Elizabeth able to strike the 
 rock and let the imprisoned flood roll forth. 
 Her action had in it no real kindliness. It was 
 •essentially egotistic and well calculated ; and 
 the poor omadhaun felt the difference he could 
 not have defined. But he was grateful all the 
 same ; and he looked at the laburnums with 
 proper admiration, and was glad that he had 
 seen them. How he had gone into the shrub-
 
 THE GOLD THAT GLITTERS. 63 
 
 beiy at all, if not by this path, was a problem 
 to Mrs. Clanricarde. It was the entrance whence 
 branched out other winding ways ; but Caleb 
 could not answer her when she put him to the 
 question, save by saying, in his confused, dis- 
 tracted, muddled way : 
 
 ' I was in the shrubbery, Mrs. Clanricarde, but 
 1 don't know how I got there.' 
 
 That self-praise which parents are not averse 
 from heaping on themselves when they go out 
 of their way to help their children, was rather 
 largely drawn on by Mrs. Clanricarde during this 
 walk with such a dummy as Caleb Stagg. Over 
 and over again she said to herself how r grateful 
 Estelle ought to be to her for her self-sacrifice ; 
 and what a good mother she was : and how 
 little children knew of all the trouble and pain 
 and annoyance they cause their parents ; and 
 what a thankless task it was when all is said 
 and done. Her self-praise went far to soothe 
 her rasped nerves ; for we must confess that, to 
 a brisk-witted, French-blooded woman, mono- 
 syllabic answers, with the invariable guard of 
 the name and the blankest look of ignorance
 
 64 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 as to the essential meaning of the remark, are 
 not inspiriting, and may excuse some inward 
 objurgations. But she went through her self- 
 appointed task with gallant consistency, and 
 got so far on the way she wanted to go as to 
 fix a day for Caleb to call at ' Les Saules ' — 
 which local orthography spelt, and local intona- 
 tion pronounced, ' Lissols.' As he had at last 
 entered society through the vicarage gate, there 
 was no impropriety in opening her own. And 
 she could try her hand at his re-formation. If 
 he proved hopeless she had but to abandon 
 him ; if he were practicable — Estelle had before 
 now taken a silver-coated pill. This of gold 
 would also have to be taken. 
 
 When they returned to the lawn the great 
 bulk of the company had gone. Lady Elizabeth 
 was no longer there, and Estelle and Charlie 
 Osborne had also disappeared. They had walked 
 to the gate, where the carriage would overtake 
 them — Estelle, resigned to brave the maternal 
 tempest that she knew would follow on her act 
 of disobedience and temerity, if only she could 
 comfort and make happy her handsome lover 
 meanwhile.
 
 THE GOLD THAT GLITTERS. 65 
 
 Then Caleb, shaking hands with Mr. and Mrs. 
 Stewart and with Mrs. Clanricarde, so heartily 
 that the ladies nearly shrieked as their fingers 
 were cut by their rings, said, in his strange old- 
 world way, vivified from rnummydom only by 
 excessive embarrassment : < And thank yon, Mrs. 
 Stewart, for my entertainment ' — and the same 
 to Mrs. Clanricarde, varying only the name. 
 But his heart was heavy, and the world seemed 
 empty, and he felt that he had been worse than 
 a boor and less polite than a coalheaver in that 
 he had not been able to say the same to Lady 
 Elizabeth, to whom he owed so much more than 
 to anyone else. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 66 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE MOUSE AND THE LION. 
 
 The big estates of landed proprietors, where 
 neither coal nor iron has been found, where no 
 new towns have sprung rip, and the semi-de- 
 tached villas dear to the jerry-builder are as 
 yet unknown, do not represent their former in- 
 come nor consideration. Farms are no longer 
 fortunes, and fields do little more than pay for 
 themselves ; but families increase, debts bear 
 interest, the younger children's portions have 
 to be paid, and mortgages and rent-charges eat 
 np more than half the revenue coming from 
 landed property. Gold, too, is cheaper than it 
 was, and the buying value of a sovereign lessens 
 yearly. So that all conspires together against 
 the monied position of the ancient landowner,
 
 THE MOUSE AND THE LION. 67 
 
 while commerce, trade and speculation fill the 
 purses of new men almost to bursting. 
 
 The Earl of Kingshouse was an example of 
 the ruthlessness of the times. There was no 
 possible blame to be found with him and his. 
 They had lived the ordinary lives of ordinary 
 gallant gentlemen, enjoying the sunshine while 
 it lasted, and believing in its everlasting con- 
 tinuance by direct providential ordering for 
 their benefit. They had not been spendthrifts 
 of an extravagant kind, and they had not been 
 monstrously vicious. Neither had they come to 
 the front as great generals nor as noted states- 
 men, though they had been for generations 
 officers in the Army and Navy ; nor had they 
 ended as Government officials of high rank after 
 beginning as attaches of very problematic value. 
 Still, the family wealth had slowly decreased 
 both in actual bulk and relative proportions, 
 till, as has been said, the present earl had been 
 forced to let the castle for what rental it would 
 fetch, and live in the Dower House with as 
 much economy as he could command and more 
 modesty than he enjoyed.
 
 68 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 It was, however, his only hope; but even 
 with this things did not mend, and the red lion 
 couchant, which was their proud family crest,, 
 was daily more sharply pinched within that 
 galling net of debt and difficulty drawing ever 
 tighter and tighter round it. What was to be 
 done ? How from that proverbial stone get the 
 desired blood ? All the wood that was available 
 had been already cut down, and many an out- 
 lying corner had been docked off the estate. 
 There were more that might follow, Lord Royne 
 consenting; and there was one bit that must 
 follow. 
 
 It went sorely against the grain, and the 
 pride of the aristocrat resented the necessity. 
 But it was a necessity ; and when this is to the 
 fore, where, I pray you, is the counteracting 
 law — the controlling force? The Kingshouse 
 estate must be still further clipped ; and if the 
 foul fiend himself held the shears he must be 
 dealt with as a gentleman and courteously en- 
 treated. The estate went up as far as the 
 garden-wall of Redhill ; and that bit was just 
 what would suit the ex-miner to buy. It was
 
 THE MOUSE AND THE LION. 69 
 
 grief and pain to traffic the land, which repre- 
 sented his dignity, for the gold of a man whom, 
 in former days, my lord would not have taken 
 into his service as a groom, nor admitted his son 
 into his house as a shoeblack. But those debts 
 were pressing ; money was absolutely necessary, 
 yet as difficult to find as if buried in a pot 
 beneath the rainbow ; the Jews were sharks of 
 a more formidable land than Miles Stagg would 
 be ; and that bit of poor land would fetch a 
 good price if the hirsute millionaire, on whose 
 garden-wall it abutted, should desire to have it, 
 and so throw out another runner into the rich 
 soil of landed proprietorship. It was like a 
 braid of living snakes. Each strand was inter- 
 twined with the others, and the whole had to 
 be accepted — heads and tails and stings in- 
 cluded. 
 
 My lord was no Christian Democrat after the 
 pattern of his daughter. On the contrary, he 
 looked on states and principalities as of divine 
 ordination, and held the tamperers therewith as 
 rebels against the express decree of the Al- 
 mighty — rebels with whom the policeman's
 
 70 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 truncheon was the only valid argument and a 
 felon's prison-cell the righteous remedy. In 
 this sweeping condemnation, however, he did 
 not include that daughter — his Delight, as it 
 has been said he used to call her. Like many 
 other loving, and therefore illogical, people, 
 love made a private line of its own and allowed 
 a new principle to appear when it touched him- 
 self. Had it been Molly, the dairymaid, for 
 instance, or Mrs. Clanricarde, or even Mrs. 
 Stewart — though, as the wife of a clergyman, 
 she was officially free of certain philanthropic 
 fads caviare to the million — who had maintained 
 the essential superiority of the human being 
 over the conventional claims of aristocratic 
 gentlehood — he would have consigned any one 
 of them to the eternal perdition for which she 
 had qualified herself. But Lady Elizabeth was 
 different. The inexhaustible fountain of mercy 
 would grant forgiveness for a mistake which, in 
 the boundless expanse of divine knowledge, 
 would figure as a virtue — a little awry, and 
 with a kink somewhere in the golden thread ; 
 but always a virtue, and to be rewarded as one.
 
 THE MOUSE AND THE LION. 71 
 
 Lord Eustace had told his father of Lady 
 Elizabeth's damaging condescension at the 
 tennis-party ; and he had himself, with his own 
 aristocratic and august eyes, seen her shake 
 hands with the omadhaun at the church-door 
 on the Sunday following. He had seen and 
 wondered, but he had not interfered — partly 
 because of that bit of land which had been 
 weighing on his mind for some time past — 
 partly because he thought that if it was her 
 good pleasure to find any merit in that extra- 
 ordinary-looking young man called Caleb Stagg 
 — to my lord his very name was enough — if, in 
 the plenitude of her seraphic sweetness, she 
 thought her grace and condescension would in 
 any way, or to the smallest degree, redeem him 
 from the gross burden of his inheritance — well, 
 that was just her goodness warping her intel- 
 lect. The earl, her father, did not share her 
 belief and had no part in her choice. Sly is 
 always Sly, and the sty does not breed lions. 
 Nor is it politically desirable to aim at such 
 social or personal transmutation. Morally and 
 religiously, of course, it was all right ; but then
 
 72 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 he was not so moral, nor so religious either, in 
 a transcendental way, as she. Men never are 
 so good as women ; and she was better than 
 most women, if he was no worse than the aver- 
 age man. All this gentle playing at providence 
 and philanthropy pleased her, his Delight, who 
 took the shine out of them all ; and, if no one 
 profited, it did no one any harm. Wherefore 
 he merely raised his eyebrows when he saw his 
 daughter's act of condescension before the whole 
 congregation, and said not a word to bring a 
 shade of sorrow on that pure, sweet, holy face, 
 which was to him the dearest thing in life. 
 
 Besides, again, my lord had the true English 
 gentleman's feeling with respect to the action 
 of his own women. He gave them their head 
 up to a certain point ; on the one hand, because 
 they were of his own order, whose status touched 
 his, and who were therefore entitled to re- 
 spect as their birthright ; on the other, for con- 
 tempt as to what they might do. The two 
 motives had their common source in pride ; 
 which is not wholly bad. When tenderness is 
 superadded, as with my lord for his daughter,
 
 THE MOUSE AND THE LION. 73 
 
 the thing takes another complexion, and what 
 was the lofty toleration of contempt becomes 
 the free gift of love, recognizing equal moral 
 rights. 
 
 All the same, the ex-miner and his family were 
 of a different flesh and blood from the flesh and 
 blood of those born in the purple, in my lord's 
 estimate of human value ; and his dear Delight's 
 undoubted virtue had as undoubtedly a queer 
 twist in it somewhere. 
 
 It was a proud day for Miles Stagg when my 
 lord's agent wrote to him, offering him that 
 parcel of land known as the Redhill Braes for 
 such and such a sum, w T hich, truth to say, was 
 about three times its market value. One-third 
 had been added because of that abutment of 
 the garden- wall ; the other because it was the 
 Earl of Kingshouse who opened negotiations at 
 second-hand with Miles Stagg, the ex-miner; 
 the third was the solid base-line of which these 
 other two made the sides of the triangle. 
 
 Without a trace of snobbishness in his rough- 
 hewn character, Miles could not be indifferent 
 to such topsy-turveydom of condition as was
 
 74 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 implied in this offer. It was simply human 
 nature that he should be proud of the conscious- 
 ness that he, only a few years ago a mere day- 
 labourer, earning his twenty to thirty shillings 
 a-week, should now be able to help my lord, 
 who was like a little God Almighty among them 
 all. 
 
 1 Proud ! ay, that was he surely,' as he said 
 to Nancy, who was partly dazed and partly 
 frightened by the event. 
 
 And yet he felt sorry — almost ashamed — that 
 the great and powerful should be so humbled 
 and brought so far low. He would rather have 
 negotiated for Lady Elizabeth's hand on the 
 more equal terms of money for rank, and as 
 good a lad as ever stepped for a likely lady's 
 husband and the father of her ladyship's bairns. 
 That would have been a fair exchange and no 
 robbery, he said ; but this offer of a parcel of 
 poor land for three times its market value was 
 such a confession of need ! It made him down- 
 right sorry for the grand old family ; and he was 
 no wise minded to sniff at the evident extortion, 
 nor would he haggle over the price. He would
 
 THE MOUSE AND THE LION. lb 
 
 pay my lord what he asked ; and much good 
 might the brass do him — not said ironically, but 
 in serious earnest. 
 
 For Miles had none of that sour envious- 
 ness which rejoices in the discomfiture of others, 
 after having bitten its nails in futile hatred of 
 their success ; none of that travestied demo- 
 cratic feeling which likes to see the downfall of 
 former greatness, and would, if it could, reduce 
 all things to one dead level of worse than 
 mediocrity. Neither was he afflicted with that 
 baser kind of the social trading spirit which 
 takes advantage of need. It never occurred to 
 him to make this business transaction a basis 
 for further operations, and to add, as a stipula- 
 tion on the back of his cheques, the social 
 recognition of the man he was serving. He 
 was too honest for that, and too proud in his 
 own way. He left that kind of thing to the 
 society worms who wriggle up the ladder of 
 drawing-rooms by all the means they can com- 
 mand, and are not particular as to what those 
 means may be. 
 
 He, Miles, wanted nought with society for
 
 76 THROQGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 himself, though he was main glad that Caleb 
 should have his whack. He wanted, truly, to 
 see his lad wedded to a lass with a grand name, 
 so that he should thus be able to found a family, 
 as such wealth as theirs should do. He wanted 
 Lady Elizabeth as his daughter-in-law ; but he 
 was not going to put this on the back of the 
 cheque. Things must come as they would, and 
 Caleb must strike his own seam in his own wa}^, 
 knowing as how his daddy was at his back to 
 second his darrack. At all events, he was not 
 going to trouble my lord now that he was a bit 
 in his power, and he would leave that question 
 of the marriage settlements till the young folk 
 were better acquainted. 
 
 Hence, the bargain was concluded between 
 the horny-handed Croesus and the empty-handed 
 aristocrat on the strictest business footing ; and 
 my lord never knew how much he owed to the 
 generosity of the man he generally designated 
 -as ' that brute ' when he spoke of him at all. 
 It was the old fable of the mouse and the lion, 
 when the insignificant little animal gnaws the 
 cords by which the king of beasts is bound, and
 
 THE MOUSE AXD THE LION. 7 t 
 
 sets him once more free to pace the desert and 
 devour the weaker creatures. My lord paid 
 part of his more pressing debts with the ex- 
 miner's money; and the ex-miner wondered what 
 on earth he was to do with the land now that 
 he had it, and what good would be the Braes to 
 him when they were of none to his lordship ? 
 
 ' They'll do to remind thee, Miles, that a fool 
 and his money's soon parted,' said Jim Fisher, 
 stroking his long chin. 
 
 And Miles answered, with a voice like a fog- 
 horn : 
 
 ' Ay, man, that will they !' laughing as if the 
 loss of so many thousands stood as a huge 
 financial joke. 
 
 ' The worst bit of land round all the country- 
 side,' continued Jim, always in his quality of 
 Janus — Mentor on the one side and Thersites on 
 the other. 
 
 ' That's about it, Jim,' returned his former 
 gang-mate and present patron. 
 
 4 Them thistles and ragwort fairly bet my gar- 
 den,' continued Jim. ' It takes a man's time to- 
 keep down t' weeds as flies over the wall.'
 
 78 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 ' We'll stub 'em up, Jim,' said Miles, roughly 
 cheery. ' Thou'st got to be glad, man, as I've 
 bought the land. Thy garden'll be all the 
 cleaner now that I've my right to the plough- 
 ing on't.' 
 
 ' Ploughing !' repeated Jim disdainfully ; ' as 
 if ary a plough as was ever forged would go in 
 among them stones ! I think thou'st losing thy 
 eyesight, Miles. Why, t' land is fell-land, top 
 and bottom ; and, unless ye can stuff pillows with 
 thistle-seed, I don't see what ye'll make of it, nor 
 where the vally of it lies, no-how.' 
 
 ' We'll see !' said Miles, laughing amain and 
 slapping his pockets as he was wont when 
 pleased. ' If I don't find a vally for the land, 
 tell me my name's not Miles Stagg, and call me 
 Jack Robinson instead.' 
 
 ' Jack-pudding, Jack-fool, Jack-ass ! That's 
 what I'll call thee,' grumbled Jim, walking back 
 to his turnips as stiff as a soldier on parade and 
 as sour as an unripe lemon. 
 
 But if the purchase of this parcel of land — 
 this part of the great earl's estate, with its rich 
 crop of ragwort and thistles — did not add much
 
 THE MOUSE AND THE LION. 79 
 
 to Miles Stagg's essential position as a landed 
 proprietor, still less advance by even a hair's- 
 breadth that darling dream of aristocratic 
 alliance which he caressed, as Bottom might 
 have caressed Titania — it touched Caleb's posi- 
 tion in the society of the place, and materially 
 improved his questionable holding. It was one 
 thing for this rough and hirsute Sly, this ex- 
 miner Stagg, to have bought Redhill ; to have 
 built a hideous new house on the site of the old 
 dark, tumble-down, inconvenient Elizabethan 
 gem ; to have set up * glass ' by the acre, and to 
 let surly old Jim Fisher neglect all their poten- 
 tialities when he had done so — and another 
 thing to buy the Braes direct from my lord him- 
 self. 
 
 The former owner of Eedhill had been an ab- 
 sentee — holding a coffee-plantation in Jamaica 
 which he could neither leave nor sell, though it 
 did not pay its working expenses — and the house 
 had been let to anyone who would take it : now, 
 to a shady captain, who, as they said in those 
 parts, ' shot the moon ' one night when the place 
 had become too hot for him : and now to a
 
 80 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 farmer who had turned the banqueting-hall into 
 a granary. Thus the neighbourhood had felt no 
 twinge of resentful sympathy for dispossession of 
 an honoured holder when Miles Stagg bought 
 the plaee, nor disapprobation of the new man's 
 land-grabbing. Nor had it felt personally or, 
 locally enriched by the miner's gold, which had 
 flowed over the seas and had done no good to 
 anyone at home. When it came to the opening 
 of a direct conduit — when my lord lowered his 
 crest so far as to condescend to sell part of the 
 great Kingshouse estate to the former miner, 
 and had got three times its market value for the 
 parcel — then the neighbourhood pricked up its 
 ears and rubbed its dry hands together, and 
 wondered if perchance any drops of this beau- 
 tiful golden ointment would ever moisten this 
 and that and the other of those curved and 
 hungry palms? 
 
 And thinking this, and feeling that this trans- 
 action brought these awful Staggs within the 
 possibilities of human recognition and direct 
 contact, it bestowed some amount of social con- 
 sideration on Caleb ; and doors opened wider
 
 THE MOUSE AND THE LION. 81 
 
 than they would have done had not the Braes 
 been covered with that fertile coal-dust which 
 Fortune's alchemy had turned to gold. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 82 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 STAR OR MOONLIGHT. 
 
 The Earl of Kingshouse was devoted to as- 
 tronomy; his wife to embroidery. Between 
 these two absorptions lay a wide tract of do- 
 mestic freedom by which Lady Elizabeth 
 profited — no one interfering. Her father, whose 
 favourite pursuit caused him to turn night into 
 day, was asleep when he should have been 
 awake. Her mother, who had grown indolent 
 in her comparative poverty and seclusion, asked 
 only to be let alone, wrestling with the diffi- 
 culty of shades and stitches, and mourning 
 in completion the annihilation of endeavour. 
 Hence, Lady Elizabeth lived her own life 
 emphatically, and carried out to the utmost of 
 which she was capable the philanthropic doc-
 
 STAR OR MOONLIGHT. 83 
 
 trines which, in * Parson Lot's ' time, would 
 have gone under the name of Christian Social- 
 ism. She had her own little suite of rooms in 
 the Dower House, as she had had in the castle. 
 Bed-room, dressing-room and boudoir, all gave 
 off the first landiDg; and her isolation was as 
 complete as her liberty. She received whom 
 she would and did as she would ; and the only 
 one who ever dreamed of objecting was her 
 brother Eustace — and he found no audience. 
 His father pooh-poohed him in favour of his 
 Delight, and his mother followed suit in favour 
 of her indolence. If Elizabeth really went too 
 far, and did what she ought not — that, proved, 
 would necessitate her own stricter surveillance 
 and more active companionship ; and for this 
 the effort would be too great. Of the two, she 
 preferred to be an ostrich rather than a fly, and 
 to stick her head into the sand, seeing nothing, 
 rather than to light on a window-pane, looking 
 all ways at once. 
 
 * Eustace was so fidgety,' she said plaintively 
 to my lord; 'and he had always been jealous 
 of Elizabeth. 4 Why could he not let her 
 
 g2
 
 84 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 alone ? She was not a child now to be in 
 leading-strings ; and really, in the dull life to 
 which their straitened circumstances doomed 
 them, it was a blessing that she could find any- 
 thing to amuse her. If she liked to have dirty 
 little children about her, and give them tea and 
 cakes in the park, there was plenty of room and 
 no one suffered. And if she chose to admit this 
 wonderful young man — this hideous young 
 Stagg — and to talk to him as if he were a 
 human being like any other, that was her affair, 
 and no other person's. She, my lady, supposed 
 the girl was not thinking of marrying him ; and 
 it was very amiable of her to try to make him 
 less odious than he was. In view of his re- 
 sponsibilities, indeed, it was more than amiable 
 — it was meritorious ; for, assuredly, the napkin 
 hi which this immense nugget was wrapped 
 left much to be desired on the score of pattern 
 and get-up generally/ 
 
 By the grace of which reasoning it came 
 about that Lady Elizabeth was unmolested ; 
 that Lord Eustace went back to his regiment 
 decidedly not the victor ; and that Caleb Stagg
 
 STAR OR MOONLIGHT. 85 
 
 was made free of those wide and shallow stairs 
 which led up to Lady Elizabeth's quaint and 
 artistically-furnished room. 
 
 This was one of the doors which opened for 
 him in some sense consequent on that sale of 
 Redhill Braes. Perhaps, if my lord had not 
 pouched those two extra values he might have 
 objected. As things were, being a gentleman, 
 he felt that a certain return was necessary. If 
 his Delight liked to take the burden on her 
 own graceful shoulders and make return in this 
 manner of kindness to the omadhaun, that was 
 her affair ; and he was proportionately grateful. 
 So the matter rested ; and Lord Eustace looked 
 on them all as a trifle mad ; and, as his parting 
 shot, assured his sister that not a man in all his 
 set would dream of marrying her, so wanting 
 in the pride, the self-respect, the dignity of her 
 order as she was. 
 
 Thus it came about that Caleb was really a 
 good deal at the Dower House, which at one 
 time he would rather have gone into a lion's 
 den than enter ; and that Lady Elizabeth, taking 
 her mother's view of his responsibilities, and
 
 86 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 agreeing with her as to the pattern and get-up 
 of the napkin, did what she could to bring this 
 heir to millions somewhat into line with at least 
 the ordinary gentry of the country. If she 
 could make him so that he might pass muster 
 among them — as of the lowest rank truly, but 
 of a rank lifted above that of the proletariat, 
 washed and brushed and in his Sunday clothes 
 — she would have done all she hoped and all 
 that seemed possible. And her example influ- 
 enced others. 
 
 It influenced Mrs. Clanricarde perhaps more 
 than any other. Where Lady Elizabeth went, 
 meaner folk might follow ; and Mrs. Clanricarde 
 followed so fast as to outrun her pioneer alto- 
 gether. Her door opened as wide as it would 
 go ; and not a week passed without some ex- 
 pression of maternal interest on the part of the 
 mother of Estelle for the only son of that rough- 
 hewn Croesus of Redhill. But it was up-hill 
 work. Caleb responded to her invitations with 
 far less zeal and much rarer acquiescence than 
 to those of Lady Elizabeth or Mrs. Stewart. 
 And when he did respond, and did render him-
 
 STAR OR MOONLIGHT. 87 
 
 self according to her bidding, he was so shy 
 and awkward, so abashed and distressed, that 
 the lady felt her efforts were all in vain — like 
 the labours of Sisyphus or the pursuit of a flying 
 phantom. Still she persevered. No battle is 
 lost till it is won, she thought to herself. Be- 
 tween her resolve to domesticate Caleb Sta gg 
 and his distress and evident disinclination to 
 submit to the process, who would win % 
 
 ( Tt shall not be he,' said the Frenchwoman, 
 setting her teeth hard when she read the young 
 man's refusal to the third invitation she had 
 sent him. 
 
 4 But if he does not want to come, poor fellow, 
 why ask him, mother V said Estelle, full of com- 
 passion for the unhappy creature whom her 
 mother so amiably persecuted and so hospitably 
 distressed. 
 
 1 It is our duty,' said Mrs. Clanricarde with 
 admirable self-command. * As Lady Elizabeth 
 says, it is such a pity that the owner of such 
 large responsibilities should be so little fitted to 
 use them.' 
 
 * But it makes him so unhappy,' said Estelle.
 
 88 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 * He is miserable all the time he is here. He 
 gives me the impression of a worm that has 
 been trodden on. I am sure he is far happier 
 with his own people than with us.' 
 
 ' You might be of more use to him than you 
 are, my dear,' said Mrs. Clanricarde. ' Young 
 people understand each other so much better 
 than they understand us older folk. If you 
 would take him in hand, as Lady Elizabeth 
 does, you would perhaps make something of a 
 gentleman of him.' 
 
 ' He seems even more miserable with me than 
 with you,' objected Estelle. 
 
 'That is because he sees that you shrink 
 from him — that you despise him,' said her 
 mother. 
 
 8 No ; I do not despise him, mother,' returned 
 Estelle, gravely; 'that would be uncharitable 
 and unchristian/ 
 
 * Yes, that is just what it is,' said Mrs. Clanri- 
 carde, a little eagerly. ' It is really uncharitable, 
 really unchristian, Estelle, and I am very sorry 
 to see my daughter cherish such an unholy 
 temper. You know that I am not one of your
 
 STAR OR MOONLIGHT. 89 
 
 dreadful Democrats, and that I hold to the 
 distinction of classes and all that — but this is 
 different. It is not an ordinary case at all. God 
 has endowed these people with wonderful 
 means, either for good or evil ; and it is our 
 duty — all of us — to do what w r e can to ensure 
 that they shall be for good.' 
 
 'Yes; I see,' said Estelle slowly. 
 
 ' So that I hope, my dear, you will be kinder 
 to this poor desolate young man,' continued 
 Mrs. Clanricarde, bringing down the hammer of 
 principle once more on the heated iron of sym- 
 pathy. ' You are doing a religious duty, 
 remember ; and Lady Elizabeth sets you .the 
 good example.' 
 
 Warmed by her mother's words, and with all 
 her conscience aroused, Estelle took heart of 
 grace for her charitable work ; and the next 
 time that Caleb Stagg suffered himself to be 
 caught she was so sweet and kind and gentle 
 that her trodden worm scarce knew on what 
 leaf he was resting, nor what bird was singing 
 there in the bushes overhead. As he sat by her 
 side while she showed him her drawings, his
 
 90 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 pug-dog face beamed with inner glory, and his 
 round eyes shone with a light that went near 
 to redeem their insignificance. He had that 
 look of being, as it were, coated with bliss — 
 enveloped in a kind of ecstatic spiritual gar- 
 ment — which for the time lifts up the human 
 being into a region higher than its own. He 
 even forgot to be ungainly ; and Self fell from 
 him like a mask. But this state lasted for a 
 moment only. Things went back to their nor- 
 mal ugliness, and poor Caleb was once more 
 the omadhaun whose social crassitude and per- 
 sonal awkwardness seemed as unlikely to be 
 subdued as the Alps when Hannibal marched 
 up their steeps. It was the fate of Sisyphus 
 again ; and the stone once more rolled back to 
 earth. 
 
 And at this moment Mrs. Clanricarde hated 
 the young millionaire, and would have slain him 
 if she could. But Estelle was not so passion- 
 ately discouraged as her mother. She had not 
 the same reasons. 
 
 ' Poor fellow !' she thought pityingly. ' What 
 a misfortune to be so shy and ungainly ! And
 
 STAR OR MOONLIGHT. 91 
 
 fancy his being so much afraid of me ! As if 
 anyone in the world need be afraid of me !' 
 
 And then she thought of Charlie Osborne — 
 dear, handsome, well-mannered Charlie, that 
 facile princeps among men, who could do every- 
 thing better than anyone else, and who was the 
 dearest fellow in the world — as beautiful in 
 heart as he was in person — and without a flaw 
 that she, his lover, and, in a manuer, his wor- 
 shipper, could discover ! Ah, if mother would 
 only believe in him as he deserved to be be- 
 lieved in, and allow the engagement between 
 them to be openly confessed — standing four 
 square on that solid ground of future success 
 — that ground which was to Estelle as true as 
 the jasper foundations of the Great City wall ! 
 
 But mother was inexorable on this point. It 
 was like asking one parched with thirst to eat 
 ham and anchovies, to beseech her, penniless as 
 she was, to allow of a prospective marriage and 
 present engagement between her daughter and 
 Charlie Osborne — burying her one available 
 talent in the earth, and planting her best invest- 
 ment in foredoomed failure ! It was absurd to
 
 •92 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 ask it — it would be criminal madness to grant 
 it. And there the matter ended, and no more 
 need be said. 
 
 Which was but cold comfort for Estelle to 
 carry on her quivering little lip, when Charlie 
 had urged her to press his claim on Mrs. Clanri- 
 carde once again, as so often before — when, per- 
 haps, he had written a letter as sad as tears and 
 as warm as living blood, and had had for all 
 response a negative as sharp as knives and as 
 cold as it was sharp. Then the two poor tor- 
 tured lovers had nothing for it but to hold each 
 other by the hand ; look into each other's beau- 
 tiful eyes ; swear to be faithful through life and 
 unto death ; and separate in haste — fear of 
 detection mingled with doubt whether they 
 could meet again to-morrow, on Estelle's side 
 doubled with shame at her deceit. For by this 
 time Charlie was forbidden Les Saules alto- 
 gether ; and his intercourse with Estelle was 
 contraband from start to finish. 
 
 And really, for a girl who had been properly 
 educated and sagely lectured, to have to run 
 like a lapwing under cover of a hedge, then
 
 STAR OR MOONLIGHT. 93 
 
 suddenly to appear in the garden sauntering up 
 the broad-walk as cool as a cucumber, with 
 eyes yet bright from unshed tears, and lips a 
 little redder than usual by force of being unduly 
 pressed — really, to have to stoop to these sub- 
 terfuges for the sake of a lover as against a 
 mother, is a trial to the conscience of a severe 
 kind. 
 
 No wonder, then, to indemnify that mother 
 for this unconfessed infraction of her orders the 
 poor girl made herself so sweet and gentle to 
 Caleb Stagg that he was sometimes dazed as 
 by a vision of glory, and sometimes made to 
 feel like a bruised worm trodden under foot by 
 a bird of paradise. Then he would plunge into 
 the woods and bury himself out of sight ; or 
 he would mount the fells and disappear over 
 the other side ; and often, in these latter 
 days, he would he down with his face turned 
 to the earth, and sob like a child for some 
 strange pain about his heart for which he 
 could give no name nor cause. When in these- 
 moods, he used to be so still that the birds flew 
 low about him and the bees buzzed round his
 
 94 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 hair, losing their way among this queer and 
 barren heather. Hours would pass while he 
 was in this state, half of trance and half of 
 agony. He did not know his place, nor did he 
 take note of time ; he was only conscious of 
 suffering — he did not know why. It seemed to 
 him as if he bore on his heart all the sorrows of 
 the world — as if he and nature made common 
 cause with death, and joy was blotted out for 
 ever. And then sometimes this mood would 
 pass, for nothing more intrinsic than the cry of 
 a lark in the sky or the sunlight shining on a 
 tract of grass of Parnassus or on the bronzed 
 spikes of the bog asphodel ; and a strange cloud 
 of glory would envelope him so that life was 
 like the heaven fulfilled of one's desire. 
 
 Changeable as an April day, he did not know 
 himself at times — and, if he did not, still less did 
 his parents. Miles was of the two the more 
 seriously disturbed. He thought his lad was 
 losing such wits as he ever had ; but Nancy said 
 it was just dyspepsia — which she pronounced 
 ' dishpepsy ' — and prescribed peppermint-drops 
 as a fine remedy. Then the mood would pass al-
 
 STAR OR MOONLIGHT. 95 
 
 together, and not a trace of this dreamy madness 
 would remain. Invitations would come either 
 from the vicarage or from the Clanricardes, from 
 the curate or the doctor, the retired major or 
 the half-pay captain ; and Caleb would go to 
 the gatherings with the rest and be the ' cyno- 
 sure' on more accounts than one. Or Lady 
 Elizabeth would write to him for information 
 on such and such point of natural history ; when 
 the door of that blue boudoir would be open to 
 him, and he would sit, as in the courts of the 
 Temple, with prayer in his heart and incense in 
 his hands. And when he had been with Lady 
 Elizabeth he was calmer, more reconciled with 
 himself and life, and fitter for such duties as fell 
 to his share. She had that power over him, 
 which some women possess, of soothing the 
 perturbed spirit, as when a cool hand rests 
 lightly on a fevered brow. Had it not been for 
 her, the poor old omadhaun would have found 
 things harder than they were ; though why 
 they should be hard at all was a puzzle to him, 
 for which he had no solution handy. 
 
 Every now and then he broke into verse,
 
 96 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 which he could not make scan. Every now and 
 then he burst into song like the note of the 
 screech-owl. He was changing, manifestly ; but 
 as yet he was like a ship that has altered her 
 course but has missed stays, and is, for the 
 moment, emphatically nowhere. The Redhill 
 miner lad, whom so lately no one had known, 
 was now quite a personage iu the place ; and, 
 though he was as roughly cast and rudely 
 moulded as could well be, he was, all the same, 
 the Golden Calf to those wanderers in the desert 
 of impecuniosity ; and being golden, though a 
 calf, was gently entreated and courteously enter- 
 tained. What only son — whose father would give 
 three times its market value for a piece of land, 
 bearing mostly ragwort and thistles, and pay the 
 money down like a man, on the spot, neither dis- 
 count asked nor objection made — would not have 
 been ? No wonder that he was made much of by 
 the society of Kingshouse ! No wonder that he 
 was courted by Mrs. Clanricarde, to whom at 
 this moment Cymon still in the rough, Caliban, 
 Frankenstein's monster, Satan himself if a mil- 
 lionaire, would have been welcome as a potential
 
 STAR OR MOONLIGHT. 97 
 
 son-in-law ! — and no wonder that, as a conse- 
 quence, this unwonted excitement was almost 
 too much for him, and, together with other 
 things, disturbed his mental equilibrium some- 
 what gravely. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 98 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 BETWEEN TWO FIRES. 
 
 Bound up with all these changes in social 
 standing and consideration was a corresponding 
 increase in Caleb's painful personal humility. 
 Formerly he had been simply conscious of those 
 more material conditions which made him unfit 
 for the society of the well-born and delicately- 
 nurtured. He never lost the sense of the barrow 
 between his hands ; he never felt himself more 
 than a superficially-educated miner, brushed 
 and washed and in his better clothes for Sun- 
 days and off-days — but always the miner whose 
 business lay with picks and shovels, skips and 
 trolleys — even when he was reading Homer and 
 iEschylus, or following biological developments 
 through a microscope.
 
 BETWEEN TWO FIRES. 99 
 
 Now his self-depreciation swept a wider circle 
 and made a deeper groove. The more he saw 
 of these nobler creatures — these vessels of finer 
 clay — the more he despised himself body and 
 mind, outside and in. He had formerly seen 
 himself as merely a worker, perhaps a little 
 better than the most loutish of his kind ; but, 
 being a worker, therefore not on an equality 
 with the leisured class. Now he looked on him- 
 self as, in truth, a kind of brute-man body and 
 soul, not yet emerged from the husk of animal- 
 ism. His consciousness of demerit, of personal 
 and intellectual boorishness, of spiritual and 
 aesthetic failure all through, became morbid and 
 diseased — a pain as sharp as knives in his flesh. 
 But this pain varied. Before Lady Elizabeth 
 he felt as any man might if the Madonna of 
 God had turned his eyes inward, so that he 
 saw the true substance of his own gross earthly 
 nature when compared with her divine sweet- 
 ness, her ethereal purity. Before Estelle Clan- 
 ricarde he was as the Beast when he stood by 
 the gate while Beauty passed him by, her eyes 
 fixed elsewhere — her heart closed against him. 
 
 h2
 
 100 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 Estelle did not stand so far above him as Lady 
 Elizabeth, yet she caused him more self-humilia- 
 tion and far more bitterness of regret. With 
 Lady Elizabeth he was purely and simply the 
 inferior creature, conscious of his inferiority, 
 but in a sense not humiliated because equality 
 was impossible. With Estelle he wished that 
 this equality had been a fact and fought 
 against the fetters, forged by nature, that 
 bound him to such low relative conditions. 
 The one was the Divine — superior, unattain- 
 able, and not to be profaned by sinful man with 
 even the desire of near approach ; the other 
 was the beautiful and gracious Human, with 
 whom he might have been on a level had fate 
 and the stars been kind. There was no essen- 
 tial reason why he and she should not have stood 
 on the same plane. Circumstance, not substance, 
 separated them ; and the separation was a pang. 
 It was the birth-hour of his soul with the one — 
 of his social humanity with the other. In both 
 he suffered ; but the pangs of the latter were 
 unspeakable and unappeasable, while the joys 
 in the former overshadowed the pain. When
 
 
 BETWEEN TWO FIRES. 101 
 
 the soul confesses its sins, is not the very con- 
 fession self-healing ? We have no shame before 
 God as before man. We weep more but blush 
 less, and the Divine Hand has balm in the hol- 
 low, even when it smites ; but who does not 
 know that sting in the human ringers which yet 
 seem to caress? 
 
 To those who cannot read the secret writ- 
 ing of the heart, and from whom all subtleties 
 are hidden, it might have seemed anomalous 
 enough that, to Lady Elizabeth, the nobler 
 character and more highly-placed personage, 
 this poor translated miner should have been so 
 far more at his ease than with Estelle — younger, 
 slighter, less supreme in all things than was the 
 earl's daughter. The psychologist would have 
 read the * mot d'enigme.' But then psycholo- 
 gists worthy of the name are about as many as 
 there are fingers on your hand ; while those who 
 read only as they see, and understand nothing 
 beyond, are in their millions with the grains of 
 sand on the sea-shore. Assuredly there was 
 no mind-reader in Kingshouse who could have 
 solved the problem had it been set him. Caleb
 
 102 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 himself could not ; though he often wondered 
 why he should feel soothed and released when 
 with Lady Elizabeth while tongue-tied and tor- 
 mented with Estelle — abashed if she spoke to 
 him ; in an agony of humiliation if she passed 
 him by; and always with the sense of some 
 despite wrought him by an unfriendly fortune, 
 such as need not have been had the powers 
 which ruled men's destinies so willed. 
 
 And all this time his father added to his 
 anguish by his coarse congratulations whenever 
 he came home from one of those Kingshouse 
 gatherings — his ripe imagination plucking the 
 fruit that was not yet even in the bud, when 
 he urged his son to carry the earl's daughter in 
 terms that burnt the poor fellow's heart within 
 him like so much shrivelled parchment — each 
 word a letter of fire showing the terrible dis- 
 tance between his new friends and his old home 
 — what they were, and what he and his could 
 never be. Then he would consume his nights 
 and waste his days in fruitless despair ; and the 
 white-winged dove of peace flew from him over 
 the void as if never to return.
 
 BETWEEN TWO FIRES. 103 
 
 Meanwhile, all this mental torture was hidden 
 from the two who caused it. To Lady Eliza- 
 beth poor Caleb was a well-desiring, well-de- 
 serving, unformed but capable creature to in- 
 struct and develop ; to Estelle he was a human 
 animal to whom, for compassion's sake, she was 
 as gentle as she would have been to a horse or a 
 dog, but with whom she felt no more possibility 
 of comradeship and infinitely less familiarity of 
 affection. Of a truth, it was the Beauty and 
 the Beast ; and the Beast was the sacrifice. 
 
 Sometimes a horrible thought crossed Es- 
 telle's mind, but it was one so degrading to her 
 mother as well as to herself as to be almost 
 blasphemous. And yet she could not wholly 
 banish it. Mrs. Clanricarde, usually so intolerant 
 of all social solecisms, so hard to all ' rotouriers,' 
 as she used to call those who were not up to 
 her own level, was so wonderfully kind to this 
 round-faced, sandy-haired, snub-nosed omad- 
 haun — this Caleb Stagg, who at the best was 
 but a well- washed miner with a smattering of 
 science and literature ! She asked him still 
 oftener and oftener to the house, and pushed
 
 1 04 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 Estelle into such close companionship as to 
 make his visits so much torture to her, while 
 they broke up those secret little meetings which 
 up to now had kept her heart light and Charlie 
 Osborne's alive, and had helped to sweeten the 
 bitter cup they had perforce to drink. She spoke 
 to him with almost maternal tenderness — she, 
 Mrs. Clanricarde, the sharpest-tongued critic in 
 Kingshouse ! She dilated on his goodness, his 
 fine intelligence, his purity of mind, his honour, 
 generosity, down to his native courtesy and 
 good feeling. f One of nature's gentlemen,' she 
 used to say, levelling her keen black eyes at her 
 daughter with a meaning behind them that 
 made Estelle shiver. 
 
 What did it all portend ! Her mother's praises 
 pricked the poor girl like witches' needles. She 
 felt their invisible points and smarted under 
 them, but she had to keep silence. Of what 
 good to cry out ? and to whom could she cry ? 
 Lady Elizabeth's liking for the Beast sealed her 
 lips to her ; and Charlie had enough troubles to 
 bear as things were — she need not add to them 
 her own share.
 
 BETWEEN TWO FIRES. 105 
 
 Never bad Mrs. Clanricarde l voiced aloud 
 with shriller throat ' her views on the unimpor- 
 tance of the man and the all-importance of the 
 purse in marriage. Never had her scorn for 
 personal love and physical beauty been hotter, 
 more pungent, more severe. To hear her, one 
 would have thought love before marriage the 
 doom of happiness after, and a man's beauty not 
 only a snare but a sin. She dwelt on the supe- 
 riority of moral graces and intellectual sound- 
 ness to all else, till Estelle's fair face grew wan 
 and white with secret loathing, and Caleb's 
 flamed with thoughts to which he dared give 
 neither form nor voice. He was modest to self- 
 abasement, but even he could not fail to see 
 that Mrs. Clanricarde substantially offered him 
 her daughter, and told him that the way was 
 clear and the running already made for him. 
 But Estelle herself ? The verdict in her averted 
 eyes was differently framed and spelt from that 
 in Mrs. Clanricarde's ; and Caleb was too sensi- 
 tive to confound compassion with affection. 
 He knew that he was but the Beast to her — no 
 more desirable than Caliban — as little lovely as
 
 106 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 the hunchback, within whose hump, however, 
 are folded the wings which will one day cany 
 him to heaven. And, as something under the 
 ban of Love, he bore himself with the patience, 
 the very dignity, indeed, of self-effacement, and 
 the quiet hopelessness which accepts the doom 
 of fate and yields to the pressure of the in- 
 evitable. 
 
 Near to Les Saules ran the prettiest lane in 
 the district. Deep, leafy, cool, fern-full, it 
 matched for beauty a water-lane in Guernsey or 
 one of those deep-cut Devonshire ways which 
 wind like ribands between the high, hedge- 
 topped banks and flowery meadows. It led to 
 the Close — a wood made by man and Nature for 
 Love. 
 
 Love, unspoken, estranged, content — for all 
 its phases this wood had special shrines and 
 green-arched temples where to rest and be re- 
 freshed. It was the favourite place of meeting 
 for Estelle and Charlie Osborne; and to both 
 every fern and tree and flower was sanctified 
 and carried its own secret message and reminder. 
 It had also become a favourite hunting-ground
 
 BETWEEN TWO FIRES. 107 
 
 with Caleb Stagg, being full of precious crea- 
 tures not to be found elsewhere. 
 
 It was on one of those rare days in England 
 when the house must empty itself and the 
 world must be abroad. Carriage folks drive ; 
 horsemen ride ; the cyclist flashes past like a 
 huge spider on a glancing thread ; the humbler 
 people walk ; the humbler still, sit about their 
 cottage doors and transact their household 
 business on the step. No one, not an invalid, 
 consents to remain within those stifling four 
 walls of home ; and the Clanricardes had been 
 touched by the all-pervading oestrum with the 
 rest. 
 
 'Come for a little walk, Estelle,' said Mrs-. 
 Clanricarde to her daughter. 
 
 And Estelle, who really loved her mother, 
 though she feared her — and at this moment 
 hated her line of action — was glad to go. But 
 she knew by that secret ' telepathy' which 
 lovers have as a sixth sense — by one of those 
 ' messengers which love sends to and fro,' and 
 of which the earth is full — that Charlie was 
 waiting for her in the wood — there, behind the
 
 108 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 old beech-tree to the right, which was their 
 place of meeting. Still, she was glad to go 
 with her mother. The undoubted cloud at 
 present between them pained her sorely, and 
 «he would have given many drops of her 
 rose-red blood could she have cleared it 
 away. 
 
 ' Where shall we go, mother V she asked, 
 kissing her mother as in the days now grown 
 unhappily a little old. 
 
 * Oh ! anywhere,' answered Mrs. Clanricarde. 
 
 ' To Grantown V proposed Estelle. 
 
 Grantown was a picturesque little hamlet, 
 about a mile from Les Saules, across the fields, 
 and by the river. It was a charming walk, and 
 one of the points of the place. 
 
 'No,' answered Mrs. Clanricarde. 
 
 'Towards the Dower House V — another pretty 
 leafy way. 
 
 1 No,' she replied again. 
 
 'Where, then, mother?' was Estelle's per- 
 plexed demand. 
 
 ' To the Close,' said Mrs. Clanricarde. 
 
 ' Will it not be very stifling there to-day V
 
 BETWEEN TWO FIRES. 10$ 
 
 asked Estelle, with as much indifference as she- 
 could command. 
 
 * No, it will be cool,' said her mother. 
 
 And Estelle had nothing to object. It would 
 be cool in the wood. Undoubtedly, from a 
 layman's point of view, it was the very place 
 for the day. But to the initiated — that word, 
 that gesture, that press of the finger has a very 
 different meaning from anything the outsider 
 knows ! There was nothing for it, however, 
 but to acquiesce ; and the two went by the 
 little side-walk into the leafy lane which led to 
 the deep-bosomed wood. But all Estelle's joy 
 had gone, and the cloud between her and her 
 mother lowered more dense than before. 
 
 They sauntered down the lane — Estelle, 
 bitten with an insane desire for wild flowers, 
 lingering greatly as she went — till they came 
 to the gate which opened into the paradise of 
 her heart. A hundred yards further on, round 
 the projection made by an overhanging rock, 
 and they would come in sight of the beech-tree 
 under which she knew that Charlie Osborne 
 was sitting. Her only hope was that, hearing
 
 110 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 their voices, he would hide himself away in 
 time, and not let the very shadow of his shadow 
 be seen by the mother whose eyes were as 
 quick as her thoughts. Even the * helmet of 
 Hades ' itself would have been sure to have a 
 broken strap or a loose buckle if Mrs. Clanri- 
 carde had been set on discovering the wearer. 
 
 The girl's uneasiness was too great to be con- 
 cealed. Her very efforts to appear indifferent 
 betrayed her anxiety. The way in which she 
 talked — so volubly, so unlike herself — and the 
 sharper ring of her voice, more highly pitched 
 than usual and thrown out as if for other ears 
 than her mother's — all were eloquent enough 
 for Mrs. Clanricarde, who had missed her voca- 
 tion and her epoch. She should have been one 
 of Fouche's ' souricieres '; when she would have 
 made her fortune, dug out of the graves of those 
 she had overshadowed. 
 
 {Suspecting, watching, she said never a word 
 — only paid out the rope which Estellc twisted 
 yet tighter round her slender throat. Then they 
 rounded the rock, and, with one rapid look — 
 caught by Mrs. Clanricarde as a sportsman
 
 BETWEEN TWO FIRES. Ill 
 
 shoots flying — the girl's heart gave one full 
 bound of relief — Charlie Osborne was not there. 
 But in his stead, peering on all sides — now his 
 nose flattened against the bark of a tree ; now 
 down on the ground turning over last year's 
 dead leaves and dry twigs ; a butterfly-net in 
 his hand, some creatures in his hat, a green tin 
 case strapped round him, in full pursuit of his 
 fancy, riding his hobby knees and chin together 
 — they came upon Caleb Stagg searching for 
 creatures in Estelle's sacred grove where her 
 god was hidden. Then Mrs. Clanricarde blessed 
 herself for her insistance, and looked on her 
 decision as providential and inspired. 
 
 To Estelle it was the other way ; and, what to 
 her mother was the benevolent work of the 
 good angels, was to her the undoubted mischief- 
 making of the bad. 
 
 Caleb blushed wdien he met them, as of 
 course he would ; but the mother caught on the 
 wing a look in his eyes, as she had caught that 
 in her daughter's. And it was a look that satis- 
 fied her. She had made up her mind. Estelle 
 should marry the omadhaun, failing a better
 
 112 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 provision. If anyone more eligible should 
 come along, then the poor omaclhaun would be 
 thrown over with no more remorse than we 
 have when we drop one peach in favour of 
 another better favoured to the eyes and softer 
 to the touch. 
 
 'A lucky chance!' she said, in her kindest 
 way, as she put out her hand for Caleb's, dirt- 
 begrimed as it was. 
 
 Instinctively he wiped his hand on his coat 
 before he gave it. 
 
 * I'm not lit,' he said, bashfully. 
 
 * The hand of an honest man is always fit — fit 
 for a queen,' said Mrs. Clanricarde, with royal 
 condescension of air and manner. 
 
 Her compliment was really regal. Her ap- 
 preciation of essential qualities was grandly 
 philosophic — nobly heroic. 
 
 Caleb blushed again, as painfully as before ; 
 and Estelle lifted her pretty chin and curled her 
 lips with the daintiest little line of disdain — 
 which he saw and writhed under, as if it had 
 been a barbed arrow in his breast. 
 
 1 Let us go and sit there,' said Mrs. Clanri-
 
 BETWEEN TWO FIRES. 113 
 
 carde, pointing to the seat beneath the beech- 
 tree on the right. 
 
 ' Oh, mother !' exclaimed Estelle, hurriedly. 
 ( We shall be eaten up by midges !' she added, 
 after a second's pause, to explain and conceal 
 the very pronounced opposition — the opposition 
 that was a prayer and a cry — in her voice. 
 
 ' No more there than elsewhere,' returned 
 Mrs. Clanricarde, smoothly, as she turned up 
 the trodden path to the tree. ' Come, Mr. 
 Stagg ; come with us, and show us your inter- 
 esting collection,' she added, sweetly, to Caleb. 
 ' I know that Estelle will be glad to see it/ 
 
 ' Do you care for creatures, Miss Clanricarde ? J 
 asked Caleb, awkwardly. 
 
 * She is devoted to them,' put in Mrs. Clanri- 
 carde before Estelle could answer. 
 
 'I did not know that I was, mother,' said 
 Estelle, her face white, as it was wont to grow 
 when her mother flung her too openly at the 
 omadhaun's head. Besides, she knew that 
 Charlie Osborne was within earshot somewhere, 
 spying at them through the smoke coloured 
 glasses of jealousy. 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 114 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 ' Indeed, I should be glad if you would give 
 her some instruction, Mr. Stagg,' said Mrs. Clan- 
 ricarde, ignoring Estelle's disclaimer. * It is so 
 much better to work under the guidance of a 
 master — and such a good master as you would 
 be/ 
 
 She smiled benignly. The present need at 
 home was great. Nothing but a rich marriage, 
 with a margin for herself and that fatal husband 
 of hers, would save them. It was a pity — 
 surely a pity ! — that she had no better salvation 
 in view than Caleb Stagg; but in the storm 
 who cares for the beauty of the port ? 
 
 *I should be sorry to take up Mr. Stagg's 
 time,' said Estelle, in a clear, renunciatory voice. 
 
 ' It would be a pleasure, Miss Clanricarde,' 
 said Caleb, in a low one. 
 
 4 1 should like it,' said Mrs. Clanricarde, a little 
 shrilly. * We will begin our first lesson now, if 
 you please, Mr. Stagg,' she added, with a laugh 
 yet more shrill than her spoken words had been. 
 
 And Caleb, opening his case, began his roll- 
 call of names and characteristics of which neither 
 mother nor daughter understood one word, nor
 
 BETWEEN TWO FIRES. 115 
 
 from which they gained one rational idea. But 
 Mrs. Clanricarde thanked him with the most 
 enthusiastic and becoming effusiveness when he 
 had finished ; and, catching at the one word 
 which she had retained, called the sulphur-moth 
 a coleoptera, and thought she showed her tact 
 and quick study in that term. But Estelle said 
 little that was pleasant and nothing that was 
 encouraging. 
 
 ' It is far too difficult for me, and I hate those 
 long, learned names,' she said, coldly. 
 
 Charlie hated all science, too, and looked on 
 scientific nomenclature as a kind of spiritual 
 deformity — next thing to a crime. She knew 
 that her confession of faith, which she felt sure 
 was heard somehow by him, would please him. 
 
 ' We must have them, you see, Miss Clanri- 
 carde/ said Caleb, humbly apologizing for the 
 necessities of science. ' They make a kind of 
 general language for all nations. A Russian ' 
 — he pronounced it ' Rooshian ' — * or a French- 
 man, or an Englishman, they all know what 
 " papilio vanessa " means, but the " peacock 
 butterfly" would not cany far.' 
 
 i2
 
 116 THROUGH THE LOXG NIGHT. 
 
 ' Still, science is horrid. Art and poetry are 
 the only things worth living for,' said Estelle, 
 in the same rather unnaturally high-pitched 
 voice she had had throughout. 
 
 * I know nothing of cither,' said Caleb, 
 sadly. 
 
 ' You arc none the worse for that, Mr. Stagg,' 
 said Mrs. Clanricarde, with her ambiguous smile. 
 ' Poets and artists generally are wretchedly poor 
 creatures, not worth their salt. I so much prefer 
 honest merit and more solid acquirements.' 
 
 ' Mother ! as if the greatest gifts God has to 
 give should be spoken of so slightingly !' cried 
 Estelle, in hot haste and hotter anger. ' Why, 
 what should wo be without poetry and art — 
 mere earthworms, knowing nothing of the 
 diviner things of life — seeing nothing but our- 
 selves, and shut out from heaven !' This was 
 Charlie's latest phrase ; and Mrs. Clanricarde 
 knew it. ' Science is soul-destroying,' con- 
 tinued Estelle, still hot and eager. * Scientific 
 people are atheists.' 
 
 'Not necessarily, my dear child,' said Mrs, 
 Clanricarde, blandly.
 
 BETWEEN TWO FIRES. 117 
 
 ' I think not all, Miss Clanricarde,' said Caleb, 
 humbly. 
 
 1 1 hate science, and all that is scientific,' said 
 Estelle, almost in tears ; * and nothing should 
 ever make me learn it.' 
 
 'Come to dinner to-morrow, Mr. Stagg,' said 
 Mrs. Clanricarde. ' I give you this foolish child 
 of mine to convert from her dreams to your 
 better ways.' 
 
 * Mother, this is too bad !' flamed out Estelle. 
 6 1 will not take lessons from Mr. Stagg.' 
 
 4 Come to dinner, Mr. Stagg,' repeated Mrs. 
 Clanricarde; and the unhappy pendulum, swung 
 thus between mother and daughter, had no 
 excuse ready. Yet he would have liked to 
 refuse, only he could not see the loophole. 
 
 * She will have none of me,' he said to himself 
 as he trudged through the wood, no longer a 
 place of enchantment for him. ' Her mother 
 will, for they are but in a poor way, and father's 
 means would set them bravely up ; but that 
 dainty blossom is not for the like of me, and she 
 will not, were it ever so. I feel her tremble 
 with disgust and shame when I touch her
 
 118 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 hand. God help me ! but the smart is sore.' 
 All this time Charlie had been lying hidden 
 within the bracken, which grew in a miniature 
 forest among the underwood. He had heard 
 every word, and through the crossing stems 
 which gave one clear passage not larger than 
 his eye he had seen every gesture, every look. 
 He understood the Avhole play. She was to be 
 sacrificed to that cad, that ruffian, that low- 
 lived beast, sitting in his own especial place 
 beneath their holy trysting-tree. There was no 
 term of obloquy, however unfitting, that Charlie 
 did not shower on Caleb Stagg — he whose own 
 humility rated him low enough, as things were 
 — he who would willingly give his life for 
 Estelle's good, and whose sacrifice would be as 
 his crowning, if it ensured her gain. But 
 Charlie's thought was only after the rule and 
 line of men's judgments on each other. The 
 glass through which we read hearts and motives 
 is indeed dark ; and few of us have enough 
 unselfishness or love to clear it.
 
 119 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 LOVERS VOWS. 
 
 A CHANGE had come into Estelle's sweet face. 
 It had lost its normal shyness for what was a 
 look of fear ; and something of that watching, 
 suspicious, hunted sharpness, which belongs to 
 those who have a secret to hide, had taken the 
 clearness out of her candid eyes. Between her 
 lover and her mother, she had come to moral 
 grief. Devoted to each, but adding to her love 
 for Charlie fear to hurt him and determination 
 to be faithful — to her love for her mother, that 
 piety of obedience natural to a gently-nurtured 
 girl — she had fallen into deceit and intrigue. 
 Of course the knowledge that it was 'for 
 Charlie ' justified a great deal, as it always does 
 in love ; but the fact remained the same — she
 
 120 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 was deceiving her mother, and thereby com- 
 mitting a sin which covered her soul with 
 spiritual shame. 
 
 For herself she could have been strong- 
 enough to give up this sweet, secret fault, but, 
 when she spoke of it to Charlie, her tears of 
 self-accusation, her gentle prayers to be ren- 
 dered back to the ways of truth and uprightness, 
 failed against the overmastering need of his 
 egotism — the passionate demands of his love. 
 He softened her moral fibre by the softness of 
 his own, and his tears of supplication dried hers 
 of remonstrance. Then things would go on as 
 before. The meetings, which played with 
 Estelle's very life, were planned and executed 
 with almost double zest for the break which had 
 seemed too likely to come. But Mrs. Clanri- 
 carde's suspicions were aroused. She was not 
 a nature-born ' souriciere ' for nothing ; and, by 
 the very fact that she suspected some kind of 
 underhand association between Estelle and that 
 fascinating, detrimental Charlie Osborne, she 
 determined to push on this matter with Caleb 
 Stagg, and to force her daughter into the life-
 
 lovers' vows. 121 
 
 long misery and financial redemption of a mar- 
 riage which would be eminently a gilded horror 
 and legalized slavery. 
 
 'She would get over it/ the mother argued. 
 * Other women have had to suppress their own 
 feelings in favour of their family need, and 
 marry where they did not love, leaving behind 
 them the desired and adored. So must she. 
 No one is absolutely unique in this life, and the 
 rod with which souls are ruled by society is 
 heavy and impartial. We all have to submit — 
 so must Estelle. With such a father her fate 
 was predestined. If anyone was to blame it 
 was George — that luckless pilot of the financial 
 ship — that sieve through which money ran as 
 fast as the water which the Danaides were 
 doomed to bring ! To him were principally 
 owing all the difficulties of the house by which 
 Estelle was to be made to suffer in her person — 
 according to the way of women and the weaker.' 
 
 So she glozed over her conscience, and added 
 to her reasoning a thick layer of whitewash 
 for poor Caleb, whereby she got rid of a great 
 many of his defects, and made him out at last
 
 122 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 to be really quite personal and presentable. 
 His « good heart ' stood for so much ! Shake- 
 speare and Burns were both quoted in his 
 behalf, and the skimmings of his science and 
 his classics stood for thick, rich, soul-sustaining 
 cream. 
 
 « So much better,' she used to say, * solid 
 knowledge of the kind Mr. Stagg possessed, 
 than the mere flashy, trumpery accomplishments 
 of painting a little, and rhyming a little, and 
 playing a little — such as certain ignorant young 
 men, too idle for hard, substantial work, made 
 out were the noblest things a man could do !' 
 
 When she let fly these arrows Estelle gene- 
 rally put up the buckler of silence and always 
 edged away from the subject. She knew that 
 her mother wanted to be more explicit and to 
 ' have it out ' with her ; and she dreaded only 
 one thing more — the discovery of her secret 
 trysts with Charlie. 
 
 Of late, since that encounter with Caleb Stagg 
 in the wood, those trysts had been considerably 
 fewer. In some subtle way, she never could 
 define how nor yet could she circumvent, Mrs.
 
 LOVERS' vows. 123 
 
 Clanricarde kept Estelle closer than ever by her 
 side. There was always some little domestic 
 duty to be done that held her indoors and pre- 
 vented her liberty. It was nothing irksome and 
 nothing- overt ; and the requests to stay with 
 her and do this and that, were made with so 
 much sweetness — such perfect unconsciousness 
 that a fond daughter should find anything un- 
 pleasant in association with so charming, so 
 sympathetic, so delightful a mother — that poor 
 Estelle's heart was torn into still more painful 
 bits, and she scarce knew where to turn or 
 what to do. Charlie eating out his heart in 
 the wood ; her's lacerated in the house ; her 
 lover's yearning and her mother's pleasant com- 
 mand — poor Estelle ! And then, to crown all, 
 the frequent presence of the snub-nosed omad- 
 haun and her mother's extraordinary craze in 
 his favour ! 
 
 For himself, poor fellow, this time was a time 
 of torture to Caleb. He saw the whole play, 
 and suffered from it as such a man naturally 
 would. Not to gain the kingdom of heaven for 
 himself would he have forced Estelle's inclina-
 
 124 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 tion — taking her on her mother's invitation 
 against her own desire. And yet, would he 
 have been human not to have desired ? Lady 
 Elizabeth alone knew what he felt, and to her 
 alone he showed the hidden wound that was 
 destroying the value of his life — to her, always 
 his goddess, his Madonna, to worship and to 
 serve, to love and adore, but the hem of whose 
 garment was as sacred as the veil of Isis, and 
 not to be carried to his lips nor touched by his 
 hands. 
 
 In this way things were not much advanced, 
 nor did they seem likely to advance. Mrs. 
 Clanricarde offered Estelle to the rich miner as 
 evidently as if she had made the proposal in so 
 many words ; Caleb, ever more and more dis- 
 traught by the mother's patent desire, let the 
 sweet poison of that proffered and yet self-for- 
 bidden presence creep nearer and nearer to his 
 soul. Estelle's revulsion against him grew 
 stronger with her mother's increasedadvocacy ; 
 Charlie Osborne's feverish despair grew greater 
 as the sacrilege which now all Kingshouse was 
 discussing seemed almost possible. These
 
 lovers' vows. 125 
 
 stolen meetings were becoming rarer and more 
 perilous, and everything seemed slipping down 
 the decline. Like that village on the slopes of 
 Etna which is kept from sliding down into the 
 valley solely by the huge buttressing rock in 
 front, so, in Caleb's steadfast delicacy — in the 
 very unselfishness of his resolve, was the only 
 salvation of the lovers. When the day should 
 come, if it ever should, when passion would be 
 stronger than this unselfishness, then would the 
 sun see the last of the poor young lovers' hap- 
 piness — Charlie's death-knell and EstehVs en- 
 during martyrdom. Meanwhile they had still 
 some brief and sparsely-strewn rays of comfort 
 when they met in the shelter of the wood and 
 renewed the dear light of their love, as lovers 
 can, from the airy nothings of hope and the 
 snatched fragments of consolation. 
 
 ' Nothing could tempt you to such a sacrifice, 
 Estelle V Charlie asked, as he had asked a dozen 
 times before. Lovers' assurances are never 
 enough. 
 
 4 Nothing,' she answered, with fervour. ' I 
 am very sorry we are so poor — very sorry that
 
 126 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 mother is so anxious — but I would no more 
 many Caleb Stagg than I would jump into the 
 river. I would rather jump into the river, 
 indeed !' 
 
 'I do not want to speak harshly of your 
 mother, but I must say she astonishes me !' said 
 Charlie, tossing back his hair. ' The only 
 excuse I can make for her is to suppose she is a 
 little off her head. The idea of her thinking of 
 your marrying that cad ; still less wishing it ! 
 Good heavens ! I wonder she is not struck dead 
 for such a crime !' he said excitedly. ' It makes 
 my blood curdle, Estelle, and would, even if 1 
 did not love you.' 
 
 ' It is too dreadful to think of,' said Estelle 
 shuddering. * But, Charlie dear, do not distress 
 yourself. I would rather die than do it.' 
 
 ' Or come with me, which would be better 
 than dying,' he said, looking up into her face. 
 
 She stole her hand gently into his — her shy 
 little hand with the pointed fingers and rose- 
 pink nails like transparent shells. 
 
 ' A great deal,' she said softly ; and for a mo- 
 ment caressed the idea as possible.
 
 lovers' vows. 127 
 
 That empty purse dangling between them 
 both, as powerful a line of separation as was 
 ever Sigurd's sword, was forgotten, and only 
 the sweet vision of life and love together re- 
 mained as fair as Geraldine's pale face seen by 
 Surrey in the magic mirror — as delusive as Rose 
 Mary's picture in the beryl stone. 
 
 1 And you will not, Estelle V Charlie sank his 
 voice to the softest tones of which spoken music 
 is capable. 'With you by my side/ he con- 
 tinued, ' I could work as I have never worked 
 before, and do great things. It is all this 
 miserable suspense that kills me ! If I had but 
 you ! Ah ! Estelle, it is more than one man's 
 life and love that is sacrificed to these criminal 
 arrangements of society. It is the world's 
 great work ! Think ! I could do something to 
 make my life splendid and my name famous, 
 and you say you will not have it ! Estelle, will 
 you not brave everything and come with me ? 
 Would you rather see me die of this fever and 
 yourself the wife of Caleb Stagg V 
 
 1 Oh, Charlie, how cruel you are V was all that 
 Estelle could say. Tears were in her voice as
 
 128 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 well as iii her eyes, and Charlie was in the mood 
 when to make the beloved suffer is some kind of 
 balm to one's own pains. 
 
 ' It seems like it,' he returned, again tossing 
 back his hair. ' That cad lives in your pocket. 
 All Kingshouse is talking of it, and your mother 
 is offering you to him as if you were a bunch 
 of flowers or a basket of fruit for sale. It is 
 disgusting ; it is maddening ; and you expect me 
 to stand it ! I wonder at myself that I do not 
 put a bullet through the felknv's brain. That is 
 what he deserves.' 
 
 ' But he does not make love to me, Charlie,' 
 said Estelle, earnestly, less moved by this advo- 
 cacy for care for the truth, or even to defend 
 poor Caleb himself against a false imputation, 
 than to give peace to her lover's tortured mind. 
 'He is always most distant and respectful — 
 almost ludicrously so. He does not make love 
 in any way — by word or look.' 
 
 4 And your mother offers you, as she does, to a 
 fellow who has not even the grace to acknow- 
 ledge the prize you are !' cried Charlie, his sails 
 filling on the other tack.
 
 LOVERS' VOWS. 129 
 
 'That is better than presumption,' said Es- 
 telle ; ' and less disagreeable to me.' 
 
 ' And you can live in such an atmosphere !' 
 cried Charlie. ' You know what I suffer, and yet 
 you can support it.' 
 
 ' What can I do, dear V she asked, in her 
 sweet, gentle way. ' 1 cannot forbid my mother 
 to ask him to the house. It would only make 
 her angry and do no good ! I must trust to 
 myself, as I have done all along. I will never 
 be false to you, Charlie — never V 
 
 'You swear that?' said Charlie, holding her 
 hands as in a vice. 
 
 6 Yes, I swear it,' she returned. 
 
 * By your hopes of salvation you will be true 
 to me, and me only V 
 
 ' I will !' she said, her cheeks pale with the 
 very fervour of her vow. 
 
 'No one shall ever take you from me V 
 
 ' No one ! no one !' she repeated. 
 
 ' Kiss me, Estelle, on this,' he said. ' You 
 have solemnly vowed yourself to me, remember ! 
 You are mine in the sight of God and heaven, 
 and if you deceive me you will commit a great 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 130 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 and shameful crime. No man can now call you 
 wife without your perjury — your infidelity — too 
 gross to give it a name. Now I hold you mine 
 for ever ! for ever !' 
 
 1 You always have,' said Estelle, simply. 
 ' Ever since we were boy and girl together I 
 have loved you, Charlie, and you know it. I 
 could not love anyone else !' 
 
 * Nor I you,' he answered. ' Women think 
 they have all the constancy, but they have not. 
 Men are far more constant. And it counts 
 more with us than with you, for we have more 
 temptations.' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Estelle, dutifully ; and her lover 
 caught the word on her lip and kept it there 
 with his own. 
 
 Talks such as these were the very wine of lift- 
 to Charlie. He drooped and flagged without 
 them, and felt as if all the forces of God and 
 nature were arrayed against him. When he 
 had had this spell of refreshment he was another 
 man. His pulses beat more slowly, his blood 
 was not so heated, the thronging fancies of his 
 brain were lighter, his thoughts were gayer,
 
 LOVERS' vows. 131 
 
 and his life was not the wretched blunder it 
 seemed to be when Estelle was not its potent 
 centre, and only doubt held him by the hand 
 and loneliness spread over him her black veil. 
 Yes, he felt sure of her. He knew how much 
 she loved him. For all their lives this love had 
 been the main fact of feeling. It had grown 
 with their growth from childhood up to now, 
 full youth. Like the vine, which flings its 
 branches from tree to tree, it had bound them 
 in one firm, fragrant bondage. Force might 
 separate them, as force might sever the vine ; 
 but nature would only keep them more closely 
 tied. He had no real fear of Caleb Stagg, 
 though it suited his jealous exactingness to 
 feign it for the pleasure of assurance. He had 
 no fear of anyone, indeed, but himself. Should 
 he ever be able to keep a wife 1 Times were 
 bad for art ; and he had not yet got his foot 
 securely placed on one of all the rungs of the 
 great Ladder of Success. Should he ever ? — with 
 a heart that failed him on a climb ; with cheeks 
 which flushed a hectic red on small exertion ; 
 with that cough which so often tormented him ; 
 
 k2
 
 132 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 that fever which so often consumed him? 
 Nevertheless, he loved ; and he had the lover's 
 unconscious and imperative selfishness. As 
 now, when he held Estelle to his heart at the 
 parting of the ways, and made her swear again 
 and again, by all her hopes of salvation, that 
 she would be true to him for time and eternity 
 — true to him as he to her ; and that she would 
 never marry anyone else, so help her God ! So 
 might God do to her as she to him, if ever she 
 forsook him, her own true love !
 
 133 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 IN DOUBT AND DREAD. 
 
 ALLURED by Mrs. Clanricarde ; spurred on by his 
 father, who, however, was in a wrong latitude 
 altogether ; conscious of the * res angusta ' in 
 the home of her he loved, and without private 
 means of his own to help her secretly, as else 
 he would ; personally loathed by Estelle, and 
 knowing that he was, while he himself loved her 
 with the mingled passion, hopelessness and 
 humility of an inferior for one raised above him by 
 origin, and placed within his power to protect by 
 fortune — poor Caleb's sense of general haze and 
 confusion rendered his life at this moment a 
 real tragedy — if we allow that feelings are as 
 tragic as events. Shaken and distraught, he
 
 134 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 scarce knew what he ought to do ; for nothing 
 is harder than to hold fast by our own clear 
 perceptions of the inappropriate and impossible 
 against reasonings and enticements which go 
 the same way as our inclinations. No ' cross- 
 hatching ' of the engraver is fuller of interrupted 
 lines and angles than the mind of one so tempted 
 while so convinced ; and Caleb spent his days 
 and nights in wondering whether ; and if ; and 
 could it be; and no! it never could; and he 
 was a fool for his pains — none bigger. 
 
 Yet often the flattering thought passed through 
 his brain, like a shooting-star cleaving the dark 
 heavens before his eyes: ' I would make her so 
 good a husband — I would so tenderly care for 
 her — so guard her from all pain and trouble — I 
 would worship and reverence her so deeply that 
 in time she would learn to care for me. And if 
 she could never love me as I love her, she would 
 at least come to peace with herself and forbear- 
 ance with me. I would love her so that she 
 must at least endure, and perhaps even a little 
 love me !' 
 
 Man ever makes the same mistake, and the
 
 IN DOUBT AND DREAD. 135 
 
 loving think that the very gift of love — its very 
 passion and intensity — perforce must win re- 
 turn. Oh, fools and blind ! who water the barren 
 rock with your heart's blood, and look for the 
 rare red rose as your reward ! As if reluctant 
 love ever was bought, even by love ! — as if the 
 heart was not its own free gift, and gratitude 
 for an unshared affection but so much snow 
 new-fallen on the ice ! Love may burn at the 
 stake and die a beggar for the beloved ; it may 
 stand in the pillory and be pelted by the world ; 
 it may give its all — faith, home and fame — as 
 freely as our dying hero gave that cup of water 
 to the wounded soldier ; but by the force of its 
 own strength only will it gain nothing in return. 
 Can the sun compel the dew, save by the free 
 gift of the generous earth ? Does it rise at his 
 bidding from the shores of the Dead Sea, from 
 the sand of the desert, from the marble rocks of 
 Pentelicus? Yet the same glory pours down on 
 these as on the flower-full meadow — the fra- 
 grant garden — where the dew lies thick like 
 living jewels — that lavish boon of beauty given 
 out by the earth in voluntary response. So
 
 136 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 with love. If not spontaneous it is not to be 
 compelled ; and the heart sheds its blood in 
 vain. 
 
 And all this Caleb knew, as well as he knew 
 that the chrysalis must develop according to 
 its own laws, and that folding* it in rose-leaves 
 or cushioning it on satin will be of no avail, if 
 the hour of its butterfly birth has not come. 
 Yet he suffered himself to be at times deceived 
 by hope and desire, and the mirage which looked 
 as if it might be real ! 
 
 His father was not one of the least of his trials 
 at this moment. Not only had his association 
 with the better-bred and more gently nurtured 
 shown Caleb the great gulf fixed between his 
 own people and them — himself and them — but 
 it had also told so far on his own nature as to 
 make him painfully sensitive to things he for- 
 merly accepted as of the natural order of life. 
 His father's rude jokes and coarse good-humour 
 had once been as pleasant as those rough-and- 
 tumble larks with the kitchen wench in the hay- 
 loft or the stable-boys in the harness-room. 
 Now the one was as abhorrent as the other, and
 
 IN DOUBT AND DREAD. 137 
 
 he wondered how he could have ever enjoyed a 
 mental diet so coarse and brutal. 
 
 When Miles shouted to him, as he came home 
 after he had been with Lady Elizabeth or the 
 Clanricardes : * Well, lad ! how's thy wooing 
 going ? W hen's I to have my lady's daughter 
 to hand into her carriage, and her little one to 
 give his first silver mug to V Caleb thought, 
 with a shudder, of the sacrilege it would be to 
 see Estelle familiarly treated by such hands; 
 and how could he ask her to come to such a 
 home 1 Not all the wealth of Golconda could 
 gild over their essential poverty of condition, 
 nor make this gorgeous, flashy, brand-new hide- 
 ous house of theirs — this cross between a bar- 
 rack and a gin-palace — fit for her reception. 
 His father to hold her in his arms ; to kiss her ; 
 to pinch her cheek and dig her in the ribs ; to 
 crack jokes at the expense of her delicacy, her 
 modesty ; or, if he were so minded, to profane 
 her ears by words and oaths she did not know 
 existed : — His mother, good, weak, painful soul, 
 to treat her as a timid servant might treat 
 a gracious mistress playing at companionship : —
 
 138 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 He himself unlovely, ungainly — when he looked 
 at himself in the glass, hot blushes dyed his 
 cheeks, and impotent despair convulsed his 
 heart for shame of the thing he saw — that 
 thing which no woman could love — that Beast 
 for whose salvation no Beauty would give her 
 redeeming kiss. 
 
 No, he could not ask her. He had nothing to 
 give her : no family worthy of her adoption ; no 
 home where she ought to abide ; no husband 
 who was fit to touch the tips of her slender 
 fingers, still less take her by the hand and call 
 her sweet body his! He had nothing but his 
 money that she could value ; his love he knew 
 too well she would not. 
 
 Then — his round, light eyes, a little red about 
 the rims, staring into vacancy, and his clumsy, 
 mouth half open — he would look such a pitiful 
 woe-begone creature that old Miles scarce 
 knew whether to laugh in his face for derision 
 or ' give him a clout on the head ' for wrath. 
 He managed to convey the effect of both by 
 the way in which he used to clap him on the 
 back with that heavy, shoulder-of-mutton fist of
 
 IN DOUBT AND DREAD. 139' 
 
 his ; while, braying as much as shouting, he 
 would call out in tones that made Caleb writhe 
 and his mother start and quiver with sudden 
 fear : 
 
 'Now then, mooncalf, where be thy wits — 
 a wool-gathering after thy painted bugs or the 
 lasses 1 Sakes alive ! but thou'rt verily the 
 biggest fool that ever walked on two legs since 
 Nebuchadnezzar went on four !' 
 
 After such an ordeal as this Caleb would rouse 
 himself and try to do a son's devoir and be 
 something of a fit companion for his roystering* 
 parent. But all that he did was done so faint- 
 heartedly he only fell deeper into the mire of 
 his fathers disgrace, and widened the distance 
 between them, already wide enough as things 
 were. These awkward efforts at congenial fes- 
 tivity of mind and manner were for the most 
 part cut short by a fit of swearing like to the 
 rolling of thunder ; when his father would either 
 order him out of his sight for a jackass that 
 was not worth a man's meat— a half-baked 
 potato that was not fit for a pig to eat ; or else 
 he himself would dash out of the room in a rage
 
 140 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 that nothing short of a good half-bottle of 
 whisky could reduce into his ordinary wide- 
 mouthed good-humour. 
 
 ' That I should be plagued with such double- 
 dyed donnerts as I have !' he one day said to 
 Jim Fisher, after an outburst of more than 
 usual violence with Caleb. * There's the missis, 
 she's as dumb as a codfish, and as dunt as a 
 dead n eddy ; and, except for prayers and parsons, 
 hardly knows her right hand from her left, or 
 which leg to put foremost. She doesn't know 
 the value of a good gown when she's got one 
 on her back, and would as lief go in rags as 
 silks and satins. She's not to be made a lady 
 of, were t' angel Gabriel himself to put his 
 ihand to it ! And that lad of hers is not a pound 
 better. Neither one nor t'other knows meat 
 from meal, and whether it's raw turmuts or a 
 juicy pear from t' south wall, they neither take 
 heed or care. She's only a pit-brow lass when 
 all's said and done ; and, as for the lad, he's as 
 cracked as an old tin kettle, and fit for nought 
 but to be tied to a dog's tail and sent a-whuz- 
 zling over t' fells. He's not worth his salt, isn't
 
 IN DOUBT AND DREAD. 141 
 
 Caleb, take him how you will ; and money does 
 him no more good than a sackful of oats to a 
 dead jackass. I'm fairly be't and moidered 
 between the pair of them ; and that's a fact r 
 Jim, let who will hear me !' 
 
 1 I've always told ye, Miles, ye cannot change 
 the nature of man or beast,' said Jim, senten- 
 tiously. 
 
 He enjoyed these occasions for taking down 
 his former mate and present master and making 
 him feel that luck was not equal to sense, and 
 that though he, Miles, had the purse it was him- 
 self, Jim, who had the brains. 
 
 * The missis is one of them who are frightened 
 at their own shadows, and cannot say bo to a 
 goose, were't ever so ; and her lad is bound to 
 take after her,' he continued. ' And then yon 
 yourself, Miles, are but a bad paymaster for such 
 as they ; for you have a hard hand and a heavy 
 way with you that doesn't fit with feared folk ; 
 and you don't spare the rough side of your 
 tongue when you've a mind to give 'em a lick, 
 which is as often as you are anyway crossed.' 
 
 ' And you'd give 'em a lick too, Jim, let me
 
 112 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 toll you, if you wore bothered with such a couple 
 of jennies,' retorted Miles. 
 
 ' I'd know my catechism better,' said Jim, 
 drawing down his long upper lip with puritan- 
 ical grimness. ' What's the good of wanting 
 pigs to fly, Miles, I ask you ? Each creature 
 has its own nature, and your lad and his mother 
 have theirs.' 
 
 ' Good Lord ! what do I ask of 'em !' roared 
 Miles in a fury. « Only that they should enjoy 
 themselves and take the good of what I've got 
 to give 'em. If I were like some, now, as 
 skimped and grudged, then they might cry 
 out ; but I'm not of that make. I want those I 
 have to do with to be as well-off as myself, and 
 to take the good of what I have. If the missis 
 and the lad had a mind to eat off gold, they 
 should have it. And what — the devil take it ! — 
 I'd rather they spent like water than be what 
 they are, that lily-livered they can't enjoy 
 themselves any more than a couple of scare- 
 crows in a cherry-tree !' 
 
 * Ah, well, you see, Miles, lad, a boy can take 
 a horse to the water, but ten men can't make
 
 IN DOUBT AND D FIE AD. 143 
 
 him drink. Your folk are not bom that way. 
 They don't value all this here ' — Jim described 
 a vague circle in space — ' and they'll never use 
 themselves to it. That's my opinion, and I'll 
 maintain it.' 
 
 1 Then,' said Miles with a comprehensive 
 oath that took in the sight of his eyes and the 
 salvation of his soul, ' if they don't and won't 
 I'll wring their necks for them.' 
 
 ' Just so,' said Jim sedately. ' That's a main 
 brave way to make birds sing.' 
 
 On which Miles broke out into a huge Gar- 
 gantuan laugh, and made a feint to square up 
 to his old mate, as in the days when they were 
 lads together, and were always trying it on 
 with their fists to prove which was the better 
 man of the two, like two bull-calves butting at 
 each other in the farm-yard. 
 
 1 And thou'd be the better for a jolly good 
 whacking thyself, Jim !' he said, flourishing his 
 huge fists about his old friend's head. 
 
 * I doubt if ye'd be able to give it, Miles,' said 
 Jim in his cool, didactic way, which Miles took 
 as the acme of philosophic nobleness. * Ye've
 
 144 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 got too fat and pursy with all your good living, 
 and I'm as lean as a greyhound, as you see, and 
 as hard as an oak plank. I doubt if ye'd come 
 over me, if we set to !' 
 
 ' I'd bray thee into mincemeat !' shouted 
 Miles, with a peal of laughter. ' Only thou'st 
 that lean the very crows wouldn't pick thy 
 bones.' 
 
 ' And they'd get scomfished in fat before they 
 got at thine,' retorted Jim. 
 
 And here the horse-play ended. 
 
 But for all that easily-excited laughter and 
 broad good-humour, traversing his irascibility 
 like the shine and shade of a rough-visaged 
 April day, Miles Stagg stuck to his point with 
 the tenacity of his kind, and never ceased to 
 flog the dead horse of his wife's social pride and 
 the jibbing jade of his son's matrimonial ambi- 
 tion. And the more he flogged the colder and 
 stiffer grew the lifeless carcase he sought to 
 stir. Nancy took yet firmer hold of that nar- 
 row creed of universal forbidding which made 
 her idea of religion. More and more things be- 
 came sinful to her ; and her husband was the
 
 IN DOUBT AND DREAD. 145 
 
 biggest sin of all. His large appetite and love 
 of good cheer ; his fondness for a glass and the 
 flush on his broad, fat, rubicund cheeks ; his 
 rattling oaths and Homeric laughter ; the money 
 he spent on his house and garden, on his car- 
 riages and horses, on gold chains for her and 
 diamond studs for Caleb ; his going to church 
 in his carriage like a lord on Sundays, and his 
 preferring church to chapel; all the pomp and 
 magnificence in which he revelled, and, as it 
 were, morally sprawled, like a cat on the warm 
 gravel in the sunshine — all was sinful to poor 
 weak-eyed, meek-spirited Nancy. And the 
 worst of her many secret sorrows was that she 
 had not courage to testify. She dared not 
 openly defy her conjugal master; and thus, be- 
 tween him and her spiritual Lord, and the fear 
 of each, her life was a very torment, which 
 secret weeping and ungrammatical prayers did 
 but little to assuage. Poor Nancy ! how much 
 rather she would have gone back to her epicene 
 dress and hard manual labour at the pit-brow 
 than be seated here in her gorgeous drawing- 
 room, in that flaming red tartan satin which 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 Miles bad bought for ber and commanded her 
 to wear as sbe valued ber life and bead left un- 
 broken — with a heavy gold chain about ber 
 neck — her large, thin, flat ears weighted with 
 big diamonds — a brooch like a small saucer at 
 ber throat — and on the top of her thin, soft, 
 grizzled hair a cap got out of Bond Street, and 
 about as fit for her as a silver strap for a kick- 
 ing milch-cow. But the conjugal hand was 
 one not to be ignored nor yet denied ; and the 
 burdened soul had to make its peace between 
 fear and sin as it best could. 
 
 With Caleb, matters were as bad. That 
 spurring of the jibbing jade went on without 
 intermission ; and though the father always 
 navigated in the wrong waters, and set his sails 
 for Lady Elizabeth, Caleb knew that any lady 
 whatever of Kingshouse would be welcome; 
 and Estelle, in her pearly grace and beauty, 
 more welcome than another. 
 
 ' Thou shalt have it all, lad,' Miles used to 
 say, as his biggest bribe. ' If thou'st shamed 
 of thy own, thou shalt have it all to thyself and 
 my lady yonder. Grapes and peaches, furni-
 
 IX DOUBT AND DREAD. 147 
 
 ture and land, nags and coaches, I'll not keep 
 the value of a brass farthing from thee, more 
 nor I and thy mother'll want for our old age. 
 A clean shirt o' Sundays, lad, and a good glass 
 for a friend, that's all I ask out of the many 
 thousands as we have. Only let me see thee 
 mated with the best in the land, and I'll die 
 content.' 
 
 But when Caleb said, as he did once : ' Give 
 me something of my own now, father. Out 
 of so much, you could well spare me a few 
 hundreds in my pocket;' Miles answered him 
 back by such a turbid stream of abuse and ob- 
 jurgation that he never ventured to repeat the 
 experiment. 
 
 ' All, if thou'll give me a lady for my daugh- 
 ter,' he said. ' All, dost hear, jackass ! but, by 
 the Lord, not so much as'll buy thee a crust of 
 bread while thou bides here as my son in my 
 house ! I'll be my own ganger and captain 
 of my own ship as long as I'm at the head. I'll 
 give way to thee the day thou hast thy wife, but 
 not an hour sooner. So now you know.' 
 
 Which declaration greatly increased the poor 
 
 l2
 
 148 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 omadhauu's general perplexity, when matched 
 with Mrs. Clanricarde's hints — as broad as cart- 
 wheels, according to Caleb's unspoken simile — 
 with only his own consciousness of nnworthi- 
 ness to keep him steady to his self-imposed 
 negation.
 
 149 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE CROSSING OF THE RUBICON. 
 
 Things financial at Les Sanies had gone from 
 bad to worse. Mr. Clanricarde's last investments, 
 made in faith, had fructified in failure. One 
 turn more of that Stock Exchange screw, and 
 the bailiffs would take possession ; and then, 
 where would Estelle's matrimonial market be ? 
 For beauty, although such a splendid jewel in 
 itself, wants a certain amount of material set- 
 ting to give it stability. A man with intrinsic 
 advantages looks for some kind of equivalent 
 besides that which, great as it is, can be de- 
 stroyed by an infected laundry or a runaway 
 horse. The value of birth, for instance, is a con- 
 stant quantity and the multiplication of riches
 
 150 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 is potentially infinite ; but beauty is a radiant 
 mass subject to perpetual shrinkage — a floating- 
 capital slowly but surely diminishing. Hence 
 it needs some kind of background — something 
 besides itself; else would all the fair-faced 
 Cicelys of the milking-pail and handsome 
 Jennies of the spinning-mill find as many King 
 Cophetuas as there were monied men in the 
 district, and no Nut-brown Maid would go with- 
 out her earl's son. And a man in possession, 
 with a father squeezed flat under the Stock 
 Exchange screw, is not exactly the best 
 kind of buttress to be imagined, even for such 
 a monument of loveliness as was Estclle Clan- 
 ricarde. 
 
 These thoughts, in other forms of words, pos- 
 sessed Mrs. Clanricarde night and day. The 
 peril of the moment — the fear of still further 
 decline — the fact that no one else was at hand 
 — all made her resolve to bring about this 
 hideous marriage ; whereof, however, the pre- 
 sent prominent obstacle was Caleb's own un- 
 conquerable shyness. Shyness — not disinclina- 
 tion. Mrs. Clanricarde was too astute not to
 
 THE CROSSING OF THE RUBICON. 151 
 
 see the difference. The latter would, perhaps, 
 have daunted even her. The former was no 
 more to be regarded than a child's fear of the 
 dark, to which it was analogous. Of Estelle 
 herself the mother had no grave doubts. For 
 all her suspicions of that underground rivulet 
 of love still flowing between her and Charlie 
 she did not mistrust the weight of her own 
 influence when the time for using it should 
 have come. It was Caleb, not Estelle, that 
 had to be conquered — the man to be encour- 
 aged, not the woman to be coerced — which 
 made the whole position more embarrassing, 
 and the tactics to be pursued more difficult. 
 But time and need pressed, and something must 
 be done. 
 
 Accordingly, an invitation to dinner was sent 
 to the heir of Redhill ; and the extra cost to 
 the housekeeping of a couple of chickens, with 
 the sacrifice of one of those rare old bottles of 
 port bought before the Bears of the House had 
 had a hand in Mr. Clanricarde's affairs, was not 
 grudged by the lady general of the forces. It 
 was the tub to the whale — the sprat to the her-
 
 152 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 ring — an investment of greater probable value 
 than those usually made by that unlucky George 
 of hers. 
 
 The long summer evening was favourable to 
 confidential talk as well as redolent of love. 
 Mrs. Clanricarde left Est ell e in the drawing- 
 room, and proposed a little stroll in the garden 
 with Mr. Stagg. Like the pimpernel before a 
 shower— like birds and beasts before a storm — 
 Caleb, sensitive and double-sensed, knew that a 
 crisis was at hand. Everything showed it. 
 Mrs. Clamicarde's oppressive kindness; her hus- 
 band's evidently forced attempt to follow suit ; 
 Estelle's unconcealed depression — the fear, the 
 scorn, the prayer, the loathing that passed in 
 changing waves of feeling over her face, whence 
 all pity was banished in the passion of her own 
 paiu ; yes, they stood on the brink of the great 
 Rubicon, and Caleb knew that it would be 
 passed to-night. And how should he bear him- 
 self? What should he do ? The girl would be 
 offered to him by her mother, and passionately 
 denied by herself; and he would have to choose 
 between saving her position and sacrificing her
 
 THE CROSSING OF THE RUBICON. 153 
 
 person — or respecting her feelings and letting 
 her fortunes be destroyed. He did not think of 
 himself. His sole perplexity was — what was 
 best for her ? 
 
 The handsome, brisk and hard-pressed lady 
 shut her eyes to all that stood against her. She 
 would not let herself be troubled. Her future 
 son-in-law, when he forgot himself — and he was 
 so preoccupied to-day that' he forgot himself 
 very often — ate with his knife, then helped him- 
 self to salt on the tip, picked his teeth with his 
 fingers, bit his bread without breaking it, drank 
 with unwiped lips and a full mouth, tossed off 
 his custard like wine, and spqoned his cherry 
 tart like so much porridge ; then, remembering 
 his offences, he blushed till his sandy hair looked 
 washed with red, and became so confused and 
 humiliated that he did not understand what was 
 said to him, nor could have answered if he had 
 understood. 
 
 ' Trifles as light as gossamer webs !' thought 
 Mrs. Clanricarde. * But those solid thousands 
 are facts.' 
 
 ' I cannot tell you how glad I am that we
 
 154 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 have come to know you better,' she said, when 
 she had him alone and safe in the garden — 
 bending her vivacious black eyes with as much 
 maternal tenderness as she could command on 
 the miserable creature at her side. 
 
 « You are very kind, Mrs. Clanricarde,' said 
 Caleb, feeling that he must say something. 
 
 4 We all have the highest possible esteem and 
 affection for you,' she continued, still maternal 
 and tender. 
 
 'I'm not worth it,' stammered Caleb. 
 
 She took his hand with a fine impulsiveness. 
 
 ' Don't say that !' she cried ; and her voice 
 was both flattering and deprecatory. ' You are 
 one of the best and dearest young men I have 
 ever known ; a man to trust with one's greatest 
 treasure, and to be sure of in every relation of 
 life. I do not know a fault that you have — but 
 one.' Here Caleb opened his round eyes and 
 stared. Out of all the blemishes and faults of 
 which he felt conscious, on which was this 
 glozing tongue about to fasten ? * And that 
 is your modesty,' continued Mrs. Clanricarde. 
 4 You are a great deal too modest, my dear Mr.
 
 THE CROSSING OF THE RUBICON. 155 
 
 Stagg. But let me call you Caleb — such a fin<^ 
 suggestive name it is ! You do not hold your- 
 self in as high esteem as you should. You are 
 fit to marry a princess.' 
 
 ' Oh, Mrs. Clanricarde !' put in poor Caleb, his 
 modesty bleeding at every pore. 
 
 ' 1 can read you, you see,' she continued, her 
 smile as soft as swansdown and her voice as 
 sweet as honey can make even vinegar. ' You 
 do not think yourself worthy of a grand lady, 
 do you?' 
 
 ' No,' said Caleb in a low voice ; ' T don't, 
 Mrs. Clanricarde.' 
 
 * And I do,' she replied, her vivacious black 
 eyes again levelled full on his face. 
 
 ' I am not fit to be the husband of a real lady, 
 Mrs. Clanricarde,' returned Caleb after a pause,, 
 speaking with desperate steadiness. • I am 
 nought but a miner's son, and I was nought 
 but a miner myself till I was a grown lad of 
 seventeen. And what's bred in the bone will 
 out in the flesh, Mrs. Clanricarde ; and not all 
 father's money can make gentlefolks of us, or 
 fit to go shares with the quality.'
 
 156 THROUGH THE LONG XIGHT. 
 
 Intentionally, Caleb went back on his old 
 habit of speech, which was more purely pro- 
 vincial than it had been of late. 
 
 • You are better than a gentleman,' said Mrs. 
 Clanricarde, with desperate steadiness on her 
 own part. * You are a good man, my dear Mr. 
 •Caleb.' 
 
 ' I am a fool ; that's what 1 am, Mrs. Clanri- 
 carde,' said Caleb. 
 
 ' Why do you say that V asked Estelle's mother, 
 doing battle for him against himself. . 
 
 * I ought never to have let myself be per- 
 suaded,' said Caleb. ' Me and mine are not fit 
 for gentlefolks, and I should have known that, 
 and stuck to the old shop, and not come out of 
 it.' 
 
 ' You dear, foolish, modest fellow !' cried Mrs. 
 Clanricarde. ' Why, we all love you ! You 
 are the delight of the place — for everyone in it 
 knows what a good, honest creature you are. 
 Look at Lady Elizabeth ! Anyone would say 
 she was in love with you, for the fuss she makes 
 with you— the affection she has for you,' she 
 •added, correcting herself.
 
 THE CROSSING OF THE RUBICON. 157 
 
 ' Lady Elizabeth is an angel, and pities me/' 
 said Caleb. ' She knows me better than any- 
 one, and she is sorry for my false position.' 
 
 ' False ! where is the falseness ? Young, rich, 
 clever, good — what does it signify that your 
 father made his own fortune, and that you have 
 not a long line of ancestry behind you? How 
 many of our best men are self-made V 
 
 ' Not quite so near the ground as we,' said 
 Caleb, still maintaining the self-humiliation 
 which was but another name for desperation. 
 
 ' They that humble themselves shall be ex- 
 alted,' said Mrs. Clanricarde ; * and so shall you 
 be, my dear young friend.' 
 
 ' Mrs. Clanricarde, ma'am, don't,' cried Caleb, 
 feeling like a drowning man with the waters 
 closing over his head. 
 
 1 To show you how highly 1 esteem, and, I 
 may say, x love you,' Mrs. Clanricarde went on to 
 say, * and to show you, too, how clearly I have 
 read your secret heart, I am going to be your 
 interpreter to yourself. You love Es telle, and 
 are too bashful to say so. Is it not so ? Have 
 I not read your secret, as I say V
 
 158 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 Caleb's face changed to a very piteousness of 
 embarrassment. From red to white, and back 
 again, his staring eyes suffused with tears, his 
 open lips twitching, his hands nervously pluck- 
 ing at the huge chain that crossed his waistcoat 
 — he looked as he felt, as if tortured by a thou- 
 sand contradictory demons — torn by a thousand 
 different emotions. 
 
 Mrs. Clanricarde laid her hand on his arm, 
 and her slight, slim fingers pressed like slender 
 rods of iron into his flesh. 
 
 ' Is it not so V she repeated. 
 
 ' I admire your daughter, Mrs. Clanricarde,' 
 stammered Caleb in a strange voice. 
 
 ' You love her,' insisted Estelle's mother. 
 
 The poor fellow put up his hands before his 
 face. 
 
 * Yes; God help me, I do,' he sobbed. 
 
 His guard was beaten down. He was at his 
 adversary's mercy. 
 
 1 Then you shall marry her,' said Mrs. Clanri- 
 carde, in tones the cold determination of which 
 no affected tremor could hide — that cold, hard 
 ■determination, as pitiless as an inquisitor's de-
 
 THE CROSSING OF THE RUBICON. 159 
 
 cree of death, just touched with a certain 
 breadth of triumph which made it rather more 
 diabolical than human. 
 
 1 How can I, Mrs. Clanricarde V said Caleb, 
 still behind the mask of his freckled hands. 
 * She doesn't value me. She never could love 
 me. How can I wed her against her will, as it 
 would be V 
 
 ' She will learn to love you,' said Mrs. Clanri- 
 carde. 'You are too good a man not to be 
 loved. She respects you already. That is one 
 step gained. The rest will follow.' 
 
 Caleb slowly shook his head. He Avas just 
 enough master of himself to disbelieve this flat- 
 tering promise, sweet as it was — responsive to 
 his own ideas as it also was. 
 
 'My dear young man, you do not know a 
 woman,' said Mrs. Clanricarde, a pitying smile 
 borne like the breath of flowers on her words. 
 6 We are such creatures of the heart ! We are 
 so easily gained by men ! Give such a girl as 
 my Estelle, so sweet and gentle as she is, such 
 a husband as yourself, and in a very short time 
 she will learn to prize and adore you. Your
 
 160 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 goodness, your patience, your cleverness and 
 knowledge, will all fascinate and win her. I 
 know what I am saying/ 
 
 Still Caleb held his hands before his face, and 
 slowly shook his sandy-coloured head from side 
 to side. The rod had not yet budded ; the 
 waters imprisoned in the rock had not yet been 
 released. Mrs. Clanricarde was beginning to 
 feel doubtful whether her Waterloo would be 
 won or not. Then she said, fervently : 
 
 1 Believe me, my clear, I speak as a woman, 
 avec counaissance de cause. Once married to 
 you, Estelle will learn to love you, because you 
 will treat her well, and because you love her so 
 fondly. Why, my dear Mr. Caleb, what else 
 makes women love, but because the man loves 
 them ! They do not give their hearts unsought 
 — unwooed ! Your love for my daughter is the 
 guarantee that she will love you.' 
 
 At this Caleb took down his hands and showed 
 his tear-stained face in yet more pitiable plight 
 than before. But into its disorder had flashed 
 a ray of hope and happiness and exaltation so 
 supreme as almost to beautify its homely out-
 
 THE CROSSING OF THE RUBICON. 1G1 
 
 lines. It was the soul of an angel looking 
 through the eyes of an animal. 
 
 Do you really think so, Mrs. Clanricarde V 
 he said, clasping his hands as in prayer. 'If 
 you thought I could make her happy, and get 
 but so much as a sparrow's meal of love from 
 her, 1 would let her walk over my body if she'd 
 a mind — I would lie down and die at her feet ! ? 
 
 < What a drivelling idiot !' thought Mrs. Clan- 
 ricarde, contemptuously. 
 
 Nothing in her nature answered to this fervid 
 enthusiasm. Hard, worldly, practical, calcu- 
 lating, life was to her a chess-table, where emo- 
 tions were good only as they might be used for 
 defence or attack, but where the main object 
 was success. She despised all unworkable and 
 unpractical impulses, and, though she used them 
 to her own advantage — as now — she would 
 rather have dealt with more rational and im- 
 personal arguments. Had Caleb made a business- 
 like bargain with her, offering his money as an 
 equivalent for Estelle's beauty, she would have 
 discussed the terms on the basis of their needs 
 as coolly as she would have bargained for a 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 162 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 carriage-horse or a wheelbarrow. It would have 
 been a train of thought — a genesis of motives — 
 which she would have respected and understood. 
 To meet all this passionate sincerity and hu- 
 mility with sentiments to her as unstable as 
 so many mist-wreaths on the mountain, was 
 fatiguing, embarrassing, and in some sense de- 
 grading. Like many clever diplomatists she 
 did not love deceit for its own sake, but would 
 rather meet her adversary and frame her proto- 
 col on facts as they were — gaining the victory by 
 dexterous handling and skilful marshalling rather 
 than by deceptions which lessened the value of 
 her own intellect by showing the worthlessness 
 of her opponent's. 
 
 ' What a drivelling idiot !' she thought. 
 ' Trust me, my dear,' she said aloud. ' I pledge 
 you my word, as a woman who knows her own 
 sex and her daughter best of all, Estelle will 
 love you as much as you can desire. It will be 
 your own fault if she does not. And I think 
 we are sure of your part.' 
 
 * God bless you for those comforting words !' 
 said Caleb, now carried away from his former
 
 THE CROSSING OF THE RUBICON. 163 
 
 moorings as completely as a skiff in a tidal wave. 
 4 If she will have me, she shall never have cause 
 to repent it, so help me God in heaven !' 
 
 ' Thank you, my son,' said Mrs. Clanricarde. 
 
 With again an outburst of fine impulsiveness 
 she kissed the poor omadhaun on his cheek and 
 slightly shuddered as she did so. Then, hastily 
 rising from the seat where they had placed 
 themselves — that seat under the shade of the 
 spreading cedar where Estelle had so often sat 
 and dreamed of Charlie and their unlucky love — 
 she said with well-acted emotion : ' Stay where 
 you are, dear boy, and Estelle shall come to 
 you.' 
 
 Her bashful icicle was now thawed. His 
 fancy, hope, love, enthusiasm had swept away 
 his timid self-distrust, and he was where she 
 would have him— where she had taken such 
 infinite pains to carry him. The iron must be 
 struck while it was hot, and Estelle must be 
 amenable to discipline. She had had trouble 
 enough to bend one of the recalcitrants to her 
 will. The other must be made to yield — by 
 force, if necessary. 
 
 m2
 
 1 04 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 ' Stay where you are,' she repeated, the smile 
 on her face like sunshine on a glacier. ' Estelle 
 will not be long.' 
 
 With which she swept away, and Caleb was 
 left to his own reflections, or rather to his men- 
 tal turmoil, wherein he w r as conscious of only a 
 many-coloured haze of indefinite joy, like the 
 foam of a fountain where a rainbow quivers. 
 
 Was it all true ? Would she indeed be now 
 brought to love him as her mother promised ? 
 After long years of patient waiting, of loving 
 serving and faithful apprenticeship, would she 
 some day come to him, and of her own free will 
 hold out her hand to him — give him her sweet 
 lips to kiss as one who had the right — offer him 
 the treasures of her love, and say to him : ' I love 
 you?' Could it be true ? How loyally he would 
 shape his life to earn this great reward ! If she 
 would be his, it should be hers to set the lines of 
 their relations. She should be to him as a bird 
 whose broken wing kept her from free flight 
 and chained her captive to the earth — but she 
 should not be caged. She should be as a wan- 
 dering angel of God, lost for a season from her
 
 THE CROSSING OF THE RUBICON. 1(55 
 
 home in the distant heaven, but he would not 
 make her bear the burdens of hej assumed 
 womanhood, unless for love of him she renounced 
 her higher place and gave herself to him of her 
 own will. Sacred, untouched, reverenced, he 
 would care for her and surround her with all 
 comfort and protection, but he would never 
 forget the elemental differences between them, 
 nor sacrilegiously step over the gulf that divided 
 them. She should be his queen, not his wife ; 
 and to her alone should belong the crown of 
 sovereignty and the sceptre of dominion. 
 
 So he dreamed and thought, wrapped in his 
 love like that sleeping babe in his robe of fire, 
 while Mrs. Clanricarde in the drawing-room 
 undertook the subjugation of her daughter, and 
 drew the cords of her maternal authority to the 
 utmost they would bear. 
 
 Her task was harder than she had anticipated. 
 Fortified by her love for the one, which gave 
 increased poignancy of disgust for the other, 
 Estelle rebelled and refused, till her mother's 
 patience gave way, and violent words were 
 spoken which terrified the girl to hear while
 
 166 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 they lashed to increased fury by their very 
 echo the mother who had said them. Dark 
 threats of public disgrace and eternal separa- 
 tion ; of life-long banishment from home and 
 country, and consignment to those French rela- 
 tions who would know how to treat an un duti- 
 ful daughter as she deserved ; passionate re- 
 minders of the curse lying on the head of a 
 discarded child, like a crown of thorns ever 
 pressing into the flesh — like a shadow on the 
 path blotting out all sunshine ; a sudden return 
 to the pathos of appeal ; the picture of father 
 and mother turned into the streets to starve, 
 reduced to a beggary which the sacrifice of her 
 own impossible fancy could avert — all that 
 could most terrify a young girl's imagination 
 and touch a daughter's heart, Mrs. Clanricarde 
 poured forth into Estelle's ears like a boiling- 
 flood of mingled blood and tears — a fiery storm 
 of mingled wrath and sorrow. 
 
 For some time it was all in vain. Estelle 
 kept the image of her Love before her eyes, and 
 clung to the pedestal whereon he stood. Then, 
 at last, like something that gives way with a
 
 THE CROSSING OF THE RUBICON. 167 
 
 sudden snap, she, as Caleb had done before her, 
 threw down her arms and yielded herself 
 prisoner to the force she could no longer resist. 
 
 'I will do as you wish, mother,' she said 
 abruptly, standing stiff and rigid as if made of 
 marble. * I will go out to Mr. Stagg.' 
 
 ' And God will bless you !' said Mrs. Clanri- 
 carde, putting her arms round the slender form 
 that felt as if stricken to stone. * God will 
 bless you as your mother does,' she repeated, 
 trying to draw down the averted head so that 
 she might kiss that clay-cold face. 
 
 But Estelle tore herself away. 
 
 * Don't!' she said harshly. 'I cannot bear 
 that, mother ! And leave God's name out of a 
 sacrilege and a sin/ 
 
 1 As you will, my poor dear darling !' said her 
 mother, with a sigh admirably executed, droop- 
 ing her own head with tender resignation. 
 
 So long as she had the main thing secure she 
 cared little for the accessories ; and, whether 
 Estelle counted her self-sacrifice as virtue or as 
 sin, made no change in her mother's mind. As 
 has been said, she was not one to spend time or
 
 168 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 strength on sentimentalities which produced 
 nothing. Provided the facts came out right 
 and the sum was duly proved, the rest was 
 mere verbiage. As now, with Caleb's ecstatic 
 love and Estelle's heart-stricken despair. 
 
 Then Estelle, her face as pale as the face of 
 a corpse and the feeling of living death in her 
 soul, went slowly over the lawn to the seat 
 under that now desecrated cedar where Caleb 
 Stagg sat — dreaming of the time when he should 
 call her his wife and make her his queen.
 
 169 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 ON THE OTHER SIDE. 
 
 * My mother tells me you want to speak to me, 
 Mr. Stagg,' said Estelle, as she came up to 
 where Caleb sat, still enveloped in that pris- 
 matic haze of hope through which he saw no- 
 thing but her possible love and his assured 
 devotion, like flowers seen through the loosened 
 silver of the fountain. 
 
 Like a sleeper suddenly awakened from a 
 dream of treasure to the knowledge of loss, her 
 dead white face and stiffened figure, the cold- 
 ness of her voice and the way in which she 
 stood — her head turned away and her eyes 
 looking into space — all brought Caleb back 
 from hope to fact, from dream to reality, and
 
 170 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 made him conscious of his true position. The 
 exaltation of his fancy died down and left his 
 soul like the burnt-out slag of a furnace. He 
 saw it all — as he had seen it before he had 
 suffered himself to be flattered into folly by 
 Mrs. Clanricarde's false words. Put it as he 
 would — be as tender, as devoted as he would — 
 he was but the purchaser and she was the 
 slave — he, the absolute Agamemnon, and she 
 the bound and helpless Iphigenia who had to 
 bleed at the altar under his hand. 
 
 As she stood there, so sad and cold and 
 lovely and reluctant — her natural shyness hard- 
 ened to disdain, and dread of what was to come 
 turning her ordinary fear to wound into the 
 very cruelty of self-defence — a new spirit sud- 
 denly seemed to possess Caleb. His painful 
 nervousness passed, his painful awkwardness 
 disappeared. In his very love for her he forgot 
 himself, and the consciousness of his personal 
 shortcomings ceased to trouble him. He could 
 not change his dog-like face, nor the ' wersh ' 
 colour of his hair and eyes, nor the ungainly 
 lines described by his gestures, nor the grating
 
 ON THE OTHER SIDE. 171 
 
 quality of his voice, but the mind and thoughts 
 and spirit behind these unpleasing externals 
 were different from his ordinary presentation ; 
 and purity of motive — the heroism of unselfish- 
 ness — conquered poverty and ugliness of ma- 
 terial, as must needs be when a man is passionate- 
 and in earnest. 
 
 ' Nay, never look like that, Miss Clanricarde. 
 You must decide this matter for yourself,' he 
 said gently. ' I doubt you know what it all 
 means.' 
 
 Estelle was silent. 
 
 'Mrs. Clanricarde has told me that you are 
 willing to many me,' he continued, his eyes 
 fixed with grave tenderness on the girl's pallid 
 face. 
 
 Estelle shivered through all her body, and her 
 red full lips drew themselves into a close line, 
 like one who prevents a cry of pain. 
 
 ' I understand it all,' then said Caleb, still 
 watching her. ' Your affairs are in but a poor 
 way, from all I hear, and not likely to get better. 
 Father, he has more money than he can count 
 or knows what to do with ; and, as his only
 
 172 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 child, I shall have it all when he and mother go. 
 I should have most of it now if I were to many ; 
 and Mrs. Clanricarde thinks it would be a good 
 thing for the family to get you well settled for 
 gear. And I'm the only big purse-holder here 
 away. So she wants me for you, and you are 
 not willing. That's just the long and short of it 
 all.' 
 
 He spoke in a quiet, firm, level tone, very 
 unlike his usual interrupted manner which left 
 on the hearer the impression of physical writhing. 
 
 'How can I be willing when 1 do not love 
 you?' said Estelle hastily. 'What girl wants 
 to marry a man she does not love?' 
 
 ' And you do not love me, Miss Clanricarde— 
 and never could?' asked Caleb. 'It is idle to 
 ask if you love me now,' he added, with the 
 profoundest sadness in his voice. ' God help 
 me! how could you? But do you think that 
 after years and years of kindness from me — of 
 worship and devotion, and treating you as a 
 queen, and never asking you for nought, you 
 would not give me something of your own free 
 will — do you think that years after now you
 
 ON THE OTHER SIDE. 173- 
 
 could come to have some land of patience with 
 me — some little kindness for me V 
 
 Even Estelle was touched by the humility 
 and unselfishness of her ungainly lover. Great 
 as was her peril — and Charlie's — she could not 
 be so inhuman as not to recognize the intrinsic- 
 goodness of her assigned executioner, who- 
 handled the knife so delicately and was so- 
 gentle and tender. 
 
 ' I should respect you, Mr. Stagg, and I respect 
 you now,' she answered in a low voice ; ' but I 
 could never love you — never ! never ! never !' 
 she repeated with sudden passion. ' How could 
 IV she added, her eyebrows arched, and her 
 under lip, which i a bee had newly stung,' just 
 a line thrust forward. 
 
 ' Nay, indeed, how could you, Miss Clanri- 
 carde?' sighed Caleb. 'I'm not of the kind for 
 a dainty lady like you to love. I know it only 
 too well, Miss Clanricarde ; and small blame to 
 you, I say.' 
 
 'It is not that,' said soft-hearted Estelle, 
 shamed to compassion by this complete self- 
 surrender. ' Many girls would love you, Mr.
 
 174 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 Stagg, so kind and good as you are — many 
 would. I am sure of that.' 
 
 1 But not you, Miss Olamicarde V 
 
 'How can I?' she replied, with the desperate 
 calmness of a gambler throwing his last chance. 
 'I love Mr. Osborne, and only him — and I could 
 never care for any other man in the world. How 
 -could I say that I should ever love you ? — or 
 anyone, indeed V she added. 
 
 * Ay ! is it so V said Caleb, with a little start. 
 4 1 had heard there was a something between 
 you and Mr. Osborne, but I didn't know it had 
 gone that length.' 
 
 ' We have been engaged since we were boy 
 &nd girl/ said Estelle ; ' and I will never desert 
 him. I will wait for him all my life. If I can- 
 not marry him, I will never marry anyone else, 
 and, if I were dragged into the church, I would 
 say " No" before the altar.' 
 
 'And your mother — Mrs. Clanricarde — knows 
 this?' he asked. 
 
 ' Yes,' said Estelle. 
 
 ' Then, how could she offer me to marry yon, 
 and say that you would consent V asked Caleb
 
 ON THE OTHER SIDE. 175 
 
 again, with the honest clown's amaze at refined 
 double-dealing. 
 
 4 She spoke as she wished,' said Mrs. Clan- 
 ricarde's daughter, with the finest edge of 
 scorn in her flexible voice. ' My father has 
 lost a quantity of money lately — all our for- 
 tune, indeed ; Charlie is poor ; you are rich ; 
 and that is the whole story. You know that 
 yourself. The thing is plain and simple 
 enough.' 
 
 ' Yes, that is just as I put it,' said Caleb, as 
 quietly as if he were speaking of the most in- 
 different matter possible, and not of a thing 
 which went with his very life and touched the 
 innermost recesses of his being. But he was 
 anxious to spare her both pain and embarrass- 
 ment. 'And that brings us round to our start- 
 ing-point, Miss Clanricarde,' he went on to say, 
 after a moment's pause. ' What is to be done 
 for you, if you will not take me for my money's 
 sake ? You are just where you were.' 
 
 1 They must go into a smaller house, and I 
 must go out as a governess, or something, till 
 Charlie can afford to marry,' said Estelle bravely.
 
 176 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 'There are worse things in the world than 
 either work or poverty,' she added. 
 
 ' Ay, that there are/ said Caleb a little 
 dreamily. ' An unloved man is worse.' 
 
 6 Yes, a great deal,' she replied quite simply — 
 to repent of her candour when she saw those 
 poor round, pale eyes grow red with sudden tears. 
 
 ' If I could help you in your strait I would, 
 Miss Clanricarde,' then said Caleb, turning away 
 from the thoughts of his own sorrow to lose 
 himself in her difficulties. ' But I have no 
 means of my own. Father, he's a tight hander 
 and docs not make me so much as an allowance. 
 He gives me all I want, and pays all I buy 
 without a word, that I will say for him ; but he 
 never lets me have more than a couple of pounds 
 in my pocket, and won't, he says, till I bring 
 home a wife. And then all will be mine, and 
 he'll keep back only what'll do for him and 
 mother. So that, you see, Miss Clanricarde, I can 
 do nothing out of myself. I'm like the Irish 
 boggle,' he added, with a little dash of bitter- 
 ness in his voice ; ' that leprechaun who went 
 with the estate/
 
 ON THE OTHER SIDE. 177 
 
 'Some one will like to have you with or 
 without your money,' said Estelle by way of 
 consolation. 
 
 She thought of the gardener's daughter, and 
 of their own pretty, well-mannered parlourmaid. 
 
 ' And I should have the same answer to give 
 that you have just given to me,' returned Caleb, 
 with a quietness that was in itself a reproach. 
 * A man's heart, Miss Clanricarde, can no more 
 be played battledore and shuttlecock with than 
 a woman's. It stays where it has once been 
 given.' 
 
 Estelle gave another shiver. 
 
 ' Don't say that !' she exclaimed. 
 
 So far she was like her mother. She could 
 discuss this matter now on an impersonal and 
 unemotional basis calmly enough ; when poor 
 Caleb slipped into sentiment the old revulsion 
 overtook her. And the revulsion was easy 
 enough to see, especially to one enlightened by 
 humility as was this unhappy omadhaun. 
 
 ' Well, no, you are right, Miss Clanricarde, 
 that was out of the way,' he returned ; ' and it's 
 not me, but you, as we have to think of ; and I 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 can't see my way for you. What will your 
 mother, Mrs. Clanricarde, say to it V he asked. 
 ' She knew that I was proud to have her 
 promise, and that I was not wanting on my 
 part. What will she say when nothing comes 
 of it!' 
 
 Estelle looked scared. 
 
 * She will be very angry,' she said, realizing 
 the scene that would have to follow on this 
 consultation. 
 
 ' With you, Miss Clanricarde V 
 
 < With me.' 
 
 4 And how will that be for you?' he asked 
 anxiously. 
 
 'I shall be very sorry,' answered the girl, 
 still with that shadow of fear over her sweet 
 face. * But what else can I do, Mr. Stagg ? 
 There is Charlie to think of as well as my father 
 and mother. And then there is my promise. 
 How could I ever look at myself in the glass 
 were I to perjure myself, as I should do, if I 
 were to marry anyone else % I cannot do other 
 than I have done. It would be too sinful and 
 shameful if I did.'
 
 ON THE OTHER SIDE. 179 
 
 1 But it hurts me to think of your being trou- 
 bled — of your mother, Mrs. Clanricarde, being 
 vexed with you,' said Caleb, his honest heart in 
 his eyes. 
 
 * I must bear it as patiently as I can,' answered 
 Estelle ; * unless ' 
 
 She stopped short, then looked at Caleb with 
 a strange suggestive, half-beseeching appeal in 
 her beautiful eyes and quivering lips, which he 
 read but did not understand. She wanted 
 something of him. What was it? The prayer 
 was patent — the words were inaudible. How 
 could he come by their sense ? 
 
 'Unless what, Miss Clanricarde?' he asked. 
 6 Is it aught I can do for you ? Oh, but I would, 
 even to die for you !' he added, not with a burst 
 of tenderness so much as a solemn kind of 
 declaration — a proffer of service wherein sacri- 
 fice would be for healing. 
 
 ' It is mean of me to ask it ?' said Estelle 
 hesitatingly. 'But mother will be so angry 
 with me, and to be angry with you will not 
 matter. But it is so mean and cowardly of me,' 
 she repeated. * Only you are so good !' 
 
 n2
 
 180 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 'If I can serve yon, I will. I can say no 
 more, Miss Clanricarde,' said Caleb, his lips, too, 
 twitching nervously. 
 
 She called him good ! — she whose favour he 
 would have given his life to gain ! What, in- 
 deed, would he not do to deserve her praise? 
 She could not love him, but he could serve her. 
 He could not rescue her from poverty by the 
 devotion of his whole life, but she said that he 
 could be of use to her. Would he not, then ? 
 Ay, gladly, even to the sacrifice of his life, if 
 need be ! 
 
 1 You cau, indeed, help me with my mother,' 
 said Estelle, a deep blush on her face — a blush 
 of shame for her own cowardice and selfishness. 
 ' Tell her that it is you who will not marry me, 
 not I who will not marry you — that I am willing, 
 but that you, of your own free will, will not.' 
 
 Something passed through Caleb as if he had 
 been struck about the heart. For a moment 
 thought and life and clear perception of things, 
 and even feeling, seemed to fail him, and he 
 was conscious of only a sharp pain and a chok- 
 ing at his throat, so that he could not speak
 
 ON THE OTHER SIDE. 181 
 
 and could scarcely breathe. This, then, was to 
 be his crowning martyrdom. Of his own free 
 will he was to renounce her — this exquisite 
 treasure of loveliness whom a king might well 
 give his crown to gain. Ah, it was hard ! Any 
 trial rather than this, he thought — as we do, 
 when the keen edge of the knife is on our flesh. 
 It was as the offer of food to a starving man, 
 who then is bidden to refuse it, and to go on 
 his weary way, faint with fatigue and chill to 
 the very heart with hunger. It was hard ! Oh, 
 dear Lord, but it was a sore trial ! He might — 
 and he must not. If he chose to press, she 
 must yield. The mother would make her ; and 
 his dream of ultimately winning her might 
 come true. And here was he asked, not only 
 to refuse this proffered joy, but to take on him- 
 self an ingratitude that was like to blasphemy. 
 
 'You will — will you not, Mr. Staggf said 
 Estelle's soft voice, pleading, enticing. 
 
 Still Caleb could not speak. His heart was 
 too big ; his throat too constricted ; his anguish 
 too great. She laid her hand on his, and the 
 touch roused him. He looked at her almost in
 
 182 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 bewilderment — first at her, and then at her hand 
 lying on his. 
 
 1 It will be the greatest kindness you can do 
 me,' he heard her say. ' Take it on yourself. 
 Tell my mother you will not marry me, though 
 I said I would marry you. I do not know what 
 will become of me, if you do not. Perhaps she 
 will turn me out of the house, and curse me. 
 She said she would, before I came out to you. 
 I dare not tell her. But it will all come right, 
 if you give me up of your own accord. Do 
 this, Mr. Stagg. I shall be so grateful to you, 
 and so will Charlie,' she added, with a girl's 
 unconsciousness of cruelty to the man who 
 loves her and whom she does not love — for sake 
 of the woman's fidelity to the man she does 
 love. 
 
 On that Caleb found his voice. 
 
 'Never mind him,' he said hurriedly. 'I will 
 do for you what will be a shame to me, as a 
 man ; but I'll do it for you,' he repeated huski- 
 ly. ' But it is only for you. And may he you 
 favour reward you as you deserve, and care for 
 you as I would have done.'
 
 ON THE OTHER SIDE. 183 
 
 1 How good you are !' said Estelle, beginning 
 to realize the full meaning of the moment. 
 'I can never thank you enough, nor repay 
 you.' 
 
 ' If thou'rt happy, my bonny lass, that'll be 
 my meed/ said Caleb, with infinite tenderness, 
 lapsing into his old forms of speech and accent ; 
 the intensity of his feelings causing him to for- 
 get his later manners. ' If I can spare thee 
 pain, what matters what such as I suffer ? Thou 
 shalt walk over the body of me, if thou'st a 
 mind.' 
 
 He raised his hand — hers still lying on it — 
 till his lips just touched the long white fingers 
 athwart his. With the trembling reverence of 
 a worshipper at a shrine — with the holy ten- 
 derness of a mother with her first-bom — he 
 just touched, he did not kiss, those precious 
 fingers, white and fragrant as the petals of a 
 
 * God bless thee !' he then said with a sob 
 that was as the sob of death — that was in very 
 truth the sob of death for him. < God bless 
 thee, my queenly lass, and may the Lord abide
 
 184 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 with thee always, to thy joy and gladness for 
 ever and ever.' 
 
 * Don't, Mr. Stagg,' said Estelle, beginning to 
 weep. 
 
 He was no longer the distasteful omadhaun 
 fit only for the laughter of the well-conditioned 
 — the ungainly Beast whom no maiden born of 
 woman could love. He was the hunchback 
 whose wings had unfolded — the prince whose 
 gross disguise was rent and cast away. She 
 could not love him nor marry him, but she could 
 respect and pity him — and she did. 
 
 6 Now let us go, Miss Clanricarde,' said Caleb, 
 with the same kind of sad firmness he had 
 shown at the first. ' We know what we have 
 to do, both one and t'other, and I think we 
 understand each other. But oh !' he added, 
 with one last return to the old loving, yearning 
 spirit, ' whenever you think of them as loved 
 you best, remember poor Caleb Stagg, the miner 
 lad, who broke his heart to save yours a pang. 
 Ay, my bonny queen, who would have died for 
 you if so be as you would have lived. And 
 greater love hath no man than that he should
 
 ON THE OTHER SIDE. 185 
 
 give his life for a friend. Now let us get this 
 job over. I shall sleep lighter if I know that 
 I have done your bidding, and pleasured you, 
 no matter how.'
 
 186 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE POWER OF LOVE. 
 
 Mrs. Clanricarde was ill in bed. That was 
 but natural. Breakfast in bed and a bad head- 
 ache when things go cross are, to a woman, 
 what a sulky dinner at his club and a bottle of 
 that claret with the yellow seal are to a man. 
 And to weep unavailing tears with one's head 
 buried in a pillow and one's mind possessed by 
 spiteful thoughts, is perhaps, on the whole, a 
 better way of overcoming a trouble than to blot 
 it out with wine-stains, which obliterate every- 
 thing save the memory of colour, savour and 
 fragrance. 
 
 Last night's scene with Caleb Stagg, or rather 
 the disappointment and despair included in it,
 
 THE POWER OF LOVE. 187 
 
 had temporarily disabled Estelle's mother. She 
 was like a defeated general, deserted by his 
 friends and in hiding from his foes ; and she 
 wanted time to rally those scattered forces 
 which were her schemes, and reform her plan 
 of campaign. Caleb's self-immolation had not 
 done much by way of protection for Estelle ; 
 for even he conld not pretend that he rejected 
 her for want of his own love for her. Out of 
 very respect for her he was forced to say that 
 he would not accept her sacrifice, though she 
 was willing to make it. He was bound to tell 
 so much of the truth as should both save her 
 dignity and accentuate her unfortunate love for 
 her fascinating Detrimental. Though what was 
 the good of that when circumstance was even 
 harder than Mrs. Clanricarde, and the two young 
 people could not marry, short of qualifying 
 themselves for a lunatic asylum ? Still, there 
 was no other way; and as Estelle did not in- 
 tend to give up her lover, come what might, 
 Caleb's chief duty, as it seemed to him, was to 
 aid her at all costs. And no mother, whatever 
 her desire or whatever her need, can fling her
 
 188 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 daughter so persistently at the head of a man 
 who says he will not and cannot marry her, as 
 to argue the merits of the case and discuss his 
 motives like a recipe for frying potatoes. 
 
 To a bystander, personally uninterested there- 
 fore philosophically tolerant, the irrepressible 
 freedom of thought and the unconquerable 
 nature of love — and the right of each individual 
 to maintain both — are truisms which no one can 
 contravene. You can neither force faith nor 
 disentangle yourself when it holds you ; and 
 you have a right to your own belief in all mat- 
 ters not mathematically demonstrated. Also, if 
 you love, you love, and cannot help yourself ; 
 and there is an end of the argument. Harry- 
 o'-the-Wynd himself could not separate two 
 hearts which have welded themselves into one 
 substance, like the fused and hammered barrel 
 of a gun ; and it would be as reasonable to rail 
 at scarlet-fever as at this overwhelming and 
 omnipotent passion we call Love. But to the 
 family, and those whose own fortunes are im- 
 plicated in these mental conditions, divergence 
 from the received catechism is a sin, and per-
 
 THE POWER OF LOVE. 189' 
 
 sistency of love is a crime when the one brings 
 sectarian disesteem and the other matrimonial 
 disadvantage. For the angle makes all the dif- 
 ference ; and more than magnets have negative 
 and positive poles. 
 
 Hence, though she might be unphilosophic, 
 Mrs. Clanricarde was very human when she had 
 her breakfast in bed ; deluged half-a-dozen 
 handkerchiefs with her tears ; revolved in her 
 mind countless plans of punishment for Estelle; 
 refused to see her ; and for the time thrust her 
 on the outside of her affections, because Charlie 
 Osborne still held the citadel of that obstinate 
 heart, which had not struck its flag nor sur- 
 rendered as it should when summoned. If she 
 had not loved that horrid young man, thought 
 Mrs. Clanricarde bitterly, she would have ac- 
 cepted Caleb Stagg with no more reluctance 
 than that which so many women have felt and 
 got over in time. It was all this foolish, wicked, 
 undutiful attachment that stood in the way and 
 reduced the miner's money to Rubezahl's dry 
 leaves. And Mrs. Clanricarde thought herself 
 justified in her displeasure that Estelle had not
 
 190 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 conquered her rebellious heart and thrown that 
 intruding love once for all into space and the 
 limbo of the past. It was her duty so to do, 
 she argued ; and a mother does well to be angry 
 with a daughter who fails in her duty — loves 
 where she ought not and refuses money when 
 she has the offer. 
 
 By all of which it came about that Estelle 
 had a morning of full liberty — with Charlie Os- 
 borne waiting on chance in the wood hard by. 
 
 What is that we love in each other ? Who 
 can tell ? It is not only beauty. ' There is no 
 such thing as that we beauty call,' but fancy 
 makes all as it lists, and to many unbeautiful 
 creatures is given the most entire and heartwhole 
 devotion. Nor is it necessarily youth — the old 
 thank God for that, when dear eyes shine with 
 the light of love on their faded faces, and those 
 who, had Time ruled their ages straight, would 
 have clasped them in their arms as lovers now 
 lie on their hearts as children. Nor is it even 
 intellect ; else would those stupid amiabilities of 
 whom we know so many, go wearily through 
 life, wanting that of which they have so great
 
 THE POWER OF LOVE. 191 
 
 abundance now. Nor yet again is it goodness ; 
 for many whose souls stand shivering and 
 naked, without so much as a rag of virtue to 
 cover them — many, cruel, vain, selfish, false — 
 receive such passionate incense of love-worship 
 so that no temple of the gods is more fragrant 
 than theirs, and no car of Juggernaut drives 
 over more faithful hearts than those which 
 break at the feet of these smiling demons. We 
 love because we love ; and our love is no less 
 strong because its genesis is obscure, and we 
 cannot trace the flood to its source. All we 
 know is the fact of that flood, on the margin of 
 which bloom roses and forget-me-nots — or hem- 
 lock and the deadly nightshade. 
 
 Tried by certain tests, there was no question 
 of comparative merit between Charlie Osborne 
 and Caleb Stagg. Tried by others, the scale 
 gave another measurement. In person, bearing, 
 charm of manner, delightfulness of acquire- 
 ments, flexibility of intellect, the penniless 
 young artist — the unemployed Eudemon — stood 
 supreme. For the mere human creature that 
 he was, Venus might have taken him to replace
 
 192 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 Adonis, and she would not have found him so 
 reluctant; and Libussa might have well ex- 
 changed her sceptre for his love. Had he and 
 Hylas bathed together, the water-nymphs who 
 drown men for their beauty would have chosen 
 him as the fairest; and no Norseman would 
 have mourned Baldur dead while Charlie Os- 
 borne had been alive. Everything was in har- 
 mony. Person, voice, manner, accomplishments, 
 all balanced and fitted together like the scent, 
 shape, and colour of a flower. The qualities of 
 the root — whether poisonous, nutritious, or use- 
 ful only to itself — were on another page of the 
 great book altogether. Such as he was to the 
 outer senses, he was worthy of any woman's 
 love ; and that he was intrinsically weak, and 
 selfish because weak — unable to rise to the 
 height of any form of heroism because self- 
 indulgent on all sides of life — was one of those 
 things hidden within, like the worm which has 
 reduced the firm white kernel to blackened 
 dust. If Estelle quieted her conscience with the 
 magic words : ' It is for Charlie,' Charlie used the 
 same on his own account. His own needs,
 
 THE POWER OF LOVE. 193 
 
 desires and wishes were imperative and beyond 
 all other considerations. And what was vice 
 and what was virtue in another, changed their 
 name and complexion when translated into the 
 language of his thoughts and deeds. There are 
 more kinds of self-made men than one; and 
 their own gods are as many as architects of 
 their own fortunes and builders of their own 
 monuments. 
 
 Like a bird running to her nest, Estelle stole 
 quickly up the lane and into the leafy temple, 
 where she knew she should find her shrine 
 already tenanted. And, sure enough, there was 
 Charlie, diligently sketching the forms and leaf- 
 age of the trees as a kind of excuse to himself, 
 as well as to others who might see him sitting 
 there in that holy place, waiting on chance and 
 Estelle Clanricarde. When he saw her turn 
 that corner and come swiftly up the narrow 
 path, his heart leaped within him, and he sprang 
 forward to meet her with a young lover's fervour 
 and delight. For all the selfish quality of his 
 love it was very real ; and perhaps the more im- 
 perative because of its selfishness. 
 
 VOL. I. O
 
 194 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 ' This is a joy !' he said, ecstatically, holding 
 her hands in his and looking into her face with 
 those insatiable eyes which no amount of look- 
 ing satisfies. ' My sweetest ! my darling ! how 
 dear of you to come ! How have you been able 
 to get away so early V 
 
 1 Mother has a headache and is in bed, so I 
 thought I would not be missed, and that we 
 should be safe,' said Estelle, laughing for very 
 happiness. 
 
 She did not realize her mother's headache. 
 She thought only of being with Charlie. 
 
 'That is jolly,' said Charlie, realizing the 
 occasion no more than Estelle. ' But, my Star, 
 what has happened ? ' he asked suddenly. 
 4 You have something to tell me ; I can see you 
 have.' 
 
 ' Yes, indeed, I have something very great to 
 tell you/ answered Estelle ; ' but not just at this 
 moment, Charlie. Let us forget everything but 
 each other for just a minute. Tell me of your- 
 self — how you are ; what you have been doing ; 
 where you have been ; whom you have seen ; 
 everything that has happened to you since the
 
 THE POWER OF LOVE. 195 
 
 day before yesterday — and then I will tell you 
 my news.' 
 
 But Charlie had no great events to tell. He 
 had seen Lady Elizabeth and finished the 
 sketch of the water-mill in the lane leading 
 down to Hindfleet ; he had not slept very well 
 last night and he had not eaten much break- 
 fast to-day ; he had had a pain in his side 
 and in his right temple, and now he was quite 
 well and as jolly as a sand-boy, seeing that she 
 was here. To which catalogue of insignificant 
 ailments, magnified by love into dangerous 
 symptoms, Estelle listened with a grave face 
 that seemed really sad enough for threatened 
 death, while her eyes grew brighter and larger 
 and more tender than ever with the tears that 
 lay behind them and crept slowly within the 
 lids. 
 
 'Poor darling,' she said ; 'you want some one 
 to take care of you.' 
 
 1 Yes, you,' said Charlie. ' I shall never be 
 quite well till I have you as my sweet little 
 wife. That is the only thing I am living for, 
 Estelle. I believe I should die if I lost you.' 
 
 o2
 
 196 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 ' You shall not do that/ she answered. * Do 
 not be afraid, Charlie. I am yours now and for 
 ever, in life and to death. No one and nothing- 
 could part us.' 
 
 'Not even Mr. Caleb Stagg?' asked Charlie, 
 with a fine disdain that, as things were, looked 
 almost like divination. 
 
 1 No, that is all at an end,' she said simply. 
 ' That is wmat I have to tell you, darling. We 
 have had such a scene at home ! Such a dread- 
 ful time ! Mother made that poor fellow propose 
 to me ! Just fancy ! And I had to refuse him. 
 That is why she has such a headache to-day — 
 poor mother !' 
 
 ' Why do you call him poor fellow, Estelle?' 
 said Charlie, suddenly stiffened and chilled into 
 a very human icicle. 
 
 ' Because he behaved so well,' said Estelle. 
 6 He was so generous and land, and did all I 
 wanted him to do so nicely, and bore mother's 
 anger so bravely for my sake. He did behave 
 well, Charlie/ 
 
 1 Don't, Estelle,' cried Charlie, rising in wrath- 
 ful agitation. ' I cannot bear this. By heavens !
 
 THE POWER OF LOVE. 197 
 
 I will go and insult the fellow. That he should 
 presume — that he should have the insolence to 
 lift his eyes to your face ! He deserves a horse- 
 whipping, and I have the best mind in the world 
 to give him one.' 
 
 1 Charlie dear ' began Estelle. 
 
 'Don't!' he said, again interrupting her: 'if you 
 say a word in his favour you will send me mad !' 
 
 ' Charlie dear !' she remonstrated again. 
 
 ' Do you think it very pleasant for a man to 
 hear the girl he loves praise and defend another 
 fellow who has had the insolence to make love 
 to her V cried the angry upholder of love's ex- 
 clusive privileges. ' 1 tell you, Estelle, he de- 
 serves horsewhipping ; and for the turn of a hair 
 I will give him one.' 
 
 1 Well, I will not say anything if it vexes you,' 
 said Estelle meekly. ' You see, I was bound to 
 tell you the truth, dear, else I would not have 
 spoken of it at all/ 
 
 1 And you would have kept secrets from me V 
 he said in an aggrieved voice. 
 
 ' No. It is because I could not do this that I 
 told you,' was her patient answer.
 
 198 THROCJGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 1 The scoundrel ! How dare he V fumed 
 Charlie. 
 
 She did not speak. She only slid her hand 
 within his arm and gave it a little squeeze with 
 her fingers. 
 
 ' Now you are sulky/ said Charlie, with the 
 injustice of his kind. 
 
 ' Indeed, darling, I am not !' she answered, 
 her sweet eyes full of love and tears. 
 
 ' What a brute I am !' cried her handsome 
 tyrant, suddenly penitent and submissive. 
 'Now I have made you cry! What a vile 
 temper I have ! I am not worthy of your love, 
 Estelle.' 
 
 6 You are worthy of ten times more, if I could 
 possibly feel it ! But I cannot,' said Estelle. 
 
 On which he kissed her, and the little skirmish 
 ended in the way in which their little skirmishes 
 — which, by the way, were always on his side — 
 always did end. 
 
 Then, having come to his rational and natural 
 senses again, Charlie condescended to hear par- 
 ticulars of the affair ; and, when Estelle had told 
 him all, even he was constrained to admit that
 
 THE POWER OF LOVE. 199 
 
 the omadhann had behaved like a gentleman 
 and a man of honour, and that he was not half 
 a bad fellow, after all, and really he, Mr. Charles 
 Osborne, might almost forgive him this invol- 
 untary trespass on his own property, so hand- 
 somely had it been repented of and atoned for. 
 
 Which was just about the way the world goes 
 in its estimate of human action — just about the 
 amount of perception to be found among men 
 and women when they judge of others from 
 the centre of self, and have not so much sym- 
 pathy as enables them to see into motives and 
 judge of actions by the nobler standard. What 
 had been the highest effort of unselfish love in 
 Caleb was to Charles Osborne a confession of 
 comparative inferiority, which redeemed an act 
 of else wise gross presumption. And what it 
 had cost, and from what source it had sprung, 
 entered into his calculations no more than the 
 conversion of so much ammonia into corn trou- 
 bles the participating poppies — nor how much 
 consumption of phosphorus has gone into that 
 thought interests the thinker. The most curious 
 part of selfishness is its absolute unconscious-
 
 200 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 ness, so that you might as well try to make a, 
 statue aware of its defects as selfishness to 
 recognize itself. 
 
 Estelle's thoughts were by no means as defin- 
 ite as this, but she had a dim perception some- 
 how that Charlie had not got quite the right end 
 of things. But she was not one of those stead- 
 fast souls which could say, ' a friend of Plato, 
 but the greater friend of truth.' She was the 
 lover of Charlie Osborne, and all the rest might 
 go. She was of the kind of whom most men 
 make their ideal of womanhood. She gave not 
 only herself to love, but also her soul, her prin- 
 ciples, her mind. ' He to God and she to God 
 through him,' was her unspoken creed ; and her 
 lover was also her master and her priest. Still, 
 she thought Caleb Stagg had behaved better and 
 more nobly than Charlie quite allowed ; and if 
 Lady Elizabeth had been there she felt sure that 
 she would have seen things as she did, and would 
 have given fuller credit and richer praise than 
 was included in her darling's half-haughty con- 
 descension of acknowledgment. 
 
 All this, however, was by-the-by, and need
 
 THE POWER OF LOVE. 201 
 
 not trouble her — or him. As things were, the 
 shining hour had to be improved, and let all 
 else be forgotten. The mother's tears ; the 
 father's failures ; Caleb's love rejected and prof- 
 fered wealth refused ; Charlie's impecuniosity 
 and the hopeless outlook of the future — all were 
 flung into the great river like so much thrashed- 
 out chaff, and only the joy of the moment was 
 retained. 
 
 Meanwhile, a princely patron was in course 
 of moulding for Charlie Osborne's benefit ; and 
 Anthony Harford was steaming across the At- 
 lantic in the Greyhound. The gods were creep- 
 ing on with their feet of wool, and in a short 
 time would be up with those on whom they were 
 minded to lay their hands of iron. Old Her- 
 rick's advice was never more timely than now, 
 and to gather rosebuds while they might, was 
 the young lovers' highest wisdom.
 
 202 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 ANTICIPATIONS. 
 
 In the lane down the hill, where the worn old 
 water-mill was the picturesque point much 
 affected by artists, lived the Asplines, at their 
 pretty place called Hindfleet. They were not 
 autochthones entitled to wear the golden grass- 
 hopper of Kingshouse, but had come here from 
 their own county some twelve years ago — for 
 reasons not difficult to be imagined. 
 
 Mrs. A spline's story was not unique, nor yet 
 was it disgraceful. A buxom cook to a rich old 
 bachelor, she had filled with credit all the offices 
 connected with the tradesmen's books and the 
 kitchen range. In fact, she had filled them 
 with so much credit that in the end she came to
 
 ANTICIPATIONS. 20$ 
 
 greater security than befalls those rash women 
 who trust to man's momentary weakness and 
 their own abiding influence. Her master mar- 
 ried her — as her spotless discretion demanded — 
 and, dying when their little daughter was but 
 five years old, left her as buxom a widow as 
 she had been a cook and a wife, and the assured 
 possessor for her life of his handsome fortune. 
 At her death it passed on to Anne, who was 
 thus an heiress worth any man's looking after. 
 
 Besides being a woman of means, Mrs. Aspline 
 was also a woman of strong good sense and of 
 more than average ability. She had less vanity 
 than belongs to her sex in general and to suc- 
 cessful roturieres in particular, and could ap- 
 praise things at their true value without adding 
 her own individuality as a makeweight. One 
 fact of modern society especially had she taken 
 to heart — the omnipotence of money. What 
 birth and valour and virtue and learning were 
 in bygone generations your banker's book is 
 now; and, from a childhood passed in the gutter 
 to actions deserving the treadmill, society agrees 
 to cover its eyes with a bandage, provided the
 
 204 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 gold of the embroidery is thick enough and 
 Tieavy enough. This was the main lesson which 
 Mrs. Aspline had learned during her translation 
 from the kitchen to the drawing-room; and she 
 acted on it. She had sense enough never to 
 flaunt her wealth, especially in the faces of those 
 who wanted what she had in such abundance. 
 But she had tact enough to force them all to 
 feel its value by the generous use she made of 
 it, and the freedom with which she gave when 
 help was asked for, or needed without being 
 asked for. She subscribed handsomely to all the 
 local charities and some that were national; 
 but she gave even more in that kind of semi- 
 secresy wherein the right hand whispers melo- 
 diously to the left, and the left lets fall the 
 •echoes. The vicar could count on her for a 
 five-pound note whenever he had a mind to 
 save the Sacrament-money ; and the doctor had 
 only to tell her of this case of distressing illness 
 and that of ailing poverty, when she would slip 
 a sovereign into his hand, and tout for further 
 help in a way that betrayed her own. She gave 
 liberal wages to her servants and secured their
 
 ANTICIPATIONS. 205" 
 
 good word whenever they discussed her with 
 their kind. She kept a generous table and was 
 not lynx-eyed in the matter of remnants and 
 perquisites. Her wine was proverbial in the 
 place, and freely drawn for all comers; her 
 fruits and flowers and choicer vegetables were 
 as freely distributed. She made costly presents 
 once a year when she gave a Christmas-tree ; 
 and she made them with a certain deprecating 
 air — a certain apologetic manner— which robbed 
 them of all * bounce,' and placed them in the 
 category of tribute rather than donation. Also 
 she took great pains that they should be per- 
 fectly appropriate. Thus she held the recipients 
 on all sides, and won her way up the golden 
 stair with marvellous tact and ability. 
 
 Being rubicund and stout, she dressed in the 
 austere dignity of black ; which somewhat con- 
 cealed the exuberance of her lines and toned 
 down the warmth of her carnations. She never 
 committed the mistake of wearing colour, not 
 even in her cap or bonnet ; nor in the warmest 
 months of summer allowed herself the betraying 
 ' liquefaction/ or vapoury expansion of flimsi-
 
 206 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 ness, in material. She had the softest velvets, 
 the richest satins, the thickest silks to be had 
 for love or money ; and she broke up the dead 
 surface with lavish powderings of jet, which 
 still further concealed her outlines and made 
 her inches yet more delusive. In manner she 
 was noticeably friendly ; but a critic might have 
 taken exception to a certain overstrained refine- 
 ment as too evidently a mask against nature. 
 As hospitable as an Arab whose gourd hangs on 
 the outside of his tent, no mouth came to her 
 amiss ; and, from way-side beggars to Lord 
 Eustace himself, no meal was withheld from 
 those who cared to take their share. Her cook 
 was such as might be expected in the kitchen 
 of an expert ; and the sans facon of her hospi- 
 tality added to its pleasurable conditions, as 
 those conditions gave added zest to her sans 
 facon. Thus, thanks to her tact, good sense, 
 discernment of social motives, and strict observ- 
 ance of certain unwritten laws touching the 
 implied subserviency of relative inferiority, Mrs. 
 Asplinc, of Hindfleet, had conquered a position 
 in Kingshouse — which else might have held out
 
 ANTICIPATIONS. 207 
 
 against her to the end. And some of the people 
 of the place made it a point of Christian charity 
 to forget the cook they had never known, and 
 to recognize only the widow of a gentleman — 
 the possessor of a handsome fortune and the 
 mother of a desirable heiress. 
 
 Others, however, did not ; notably Mrs. Clanri- 
 carde, who had a daughter to marry and no 
 son for whom to find a wife. Had the sex of 
 her child been reversed, her action would have 
 been reversed too. As things were, Anne Asp- 
 line was in her way, not on her side ; and the 
 spit was held up as an unconquerable barrier 
 between their houses. The miner's pick did not 
 count. 
 
 For herself, Anne was pretty enough to have 
 floated safely on the social wave had there 
 even been no shining sails of gold to carry her 
 forward. She was a fair-haired, gentle-man- 
 nered girl, who bore no salient marks of her 
 maternal ancestry, save that she had square- 
 topped fingers with broad, flat, opaque, white 
 nails, and that her ears stood out from her head 
 like jug-handles. They were not large nor
 
 208 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 fleshy nor badly shaped, but they were dis- 
 tressingly prominent, and, seen from behind, 
 made her small head more animal than human. 
 Save these two sign-manuals, stamped by nature 
 on the living parchment, she had a clear physical 
 pedigree enough ; and her inheritance contained 
 more than the mere money which had to come 
 to her on her mother's death. In temperament 
 she was languid ; in constitution anasmic. She 
 had an unappeasable appetite for day-dreaming, 
 and she was great in the art of doing nothing. 
 Indolent and unpractical, she never did a hand's 
 turn for herself that she could get auyone else 
 to do for her; and she quite understood the 
 Eastern's contempt for unnecessary physical 
 exertion. She did not so much as put on her 
 own shoes and stockings ; had the arrangement 
 of her hair been left to her, she would have cut 
 it as short as a charity schoolboy's ; and, had 
 tapes and buttons been her care, she would 
 have bristled all over with pins like a sea-egg. 
 She never worked and rarely played, though 
 she had been taught embroidery by a mistress 
 and the piano by a master. From morning to
 
 ANTICIPATIONS. 209 
 
 night she sat thrown far back in an easy-chair 
 — before the fire in winter, by the open window 
 in summer — reading novels when she was not 
 dozing, and dozing when she was not dreaming. 
 She spent most of her time in devising scenes 
 and situations for herself, where she would have 
 a grand part to play and be the favourite of 
 fortune and the adored of men. Sometimes she 
 went out as an army-hospital nurse, and nursed 
 some young earl from wounds to wedlock — for, 
 indeed, who could resist her, so quaintly beau- 
 tiful as she would be in her official costume ! 
 Sometimes she was the heroine of a shipwreck, 
 when she and the captain were flung ashore 
 together on a desert island in the tropics, where 
 they lived elegantly on fruits and furtive love, 
 on sighs and sunsets and poetry and platonic 
 philandering, at once ardent and respectful. 
 Then she saw herself as the belle of a London 
 season, distinguished by a royal connoisseur, and 
 made the fashion for the meaner fry. How 
 often sleep overtook her as she saw herself 
 mobbed by a frantic crowd of admirers and 
 enviers in the classic regions of Hyde Park, or 
 VOL. I. P
 
 210 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 followed by a train through the rooms of some 
 palace where she was the cynosure ! And some- 
 times, when her fancy was more modest and 
 her ambition less exalted, she was onlv found 
 in some interesting position by some delightful 
 stranger — either asleep in the wood, with one 
 arm thrown above her head, or carrying com- 
 forts to a sick cottager, or bravely rescuing 
 a child from danger, when, had the thing 
 been real, she would infallibly have shrieked 
 and run away, or collapsed altogether. By 
 which it may be seen that, nice dear girl as 
 she was, our Anne was decidely a goose, and 
 entirely wanting in that kind of common-sense 
 grip of which her mother had made such good 
 use. Meanwhile, as all her energy exhaled itself 
 in these dreams, and left her nothing for action, 
 the practical upshot was a life of pure indolence 
 and abortive fancy, wherein she did no good 
 to anyone, though also as little harm — and was 
 just a pretty, innocuous, human flower keeping 
 the ground against worts and weeds alike. 
 
 Mr. Aspline had had full belief in his wife's 
 integrity and prudence. All the same she was
 
 ANTICIPATIONS. 211 
 
 only a woman, and whether you say with the 
 gallant Francis : ' Sou vent fern me varie : Bien 
 fol qui s'y fie ;' or in the dalesman's vernacular, 
 'Women are kittle cattle to shoe ahint,' it comes 
 to much the same thing. The less power they 
 have the more chance of justice to others ; and 
 the more strictly they are held the better in the 
 end for themselves. Hence, although he had 
 left the interest of all he possessed to his widow 
 for her life, he had strictly entailed it on his 
 daughter and her children; so that the one 
 should not be enabled to enrich a second hus- 
 band beyond her own natural term, and if the 
 other grew up plain or weak-minded it would 
 not be to the advantage of any scoundrel to 
 many her for the use of her money one week and 
 poison her for full possession the next. If she 
 did not many and bear children, the money was 
 disposed of in other ways ; and to neither woman 
 was left the power of making a will — not even 
 of her savings. For trustees he had left two 
 old friends of his — one a Major Campbell and 
 the other Jack Harford, of Thrift. Major Camp- 
 bell had renounced trust from the beginning, 
 
 ?2
 
 212 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 and Jack Harford had died ; but his son An- 
 thony, who had been travelling in America — 
 who had, indeed, been living in America for some 
 years — was on his way home to take up his 
 father's affairs, and, among other things, to see 
 about that trusteeship to the Asplines whom he 
 had known when a lad and remembered with 
 pleasure now as a man. ' Cookey,' as the irrev- 
 erent young scamp used to call Mrs. Aspline, 
 had always been kind and generous to him and 
 his ; and little Anne had been the prettiest and 
 softest and whitest sort of plaything possible — 
 as much like a powder-puff or a poodle-puppy 
 as a little girl in white frocks and multitudinous 
 frills ; good to toss up into the air and catch as 
 she came down, or to carry on his shoulder, 
 while she clutched his short, curled hair and 
 screamed with delight when he kicked like a 
 donkey or pranced like a horse. Perhaps she 
 had been a little too much of a cry-baby for a 
 vigorous young scamp thirteen years her senior; 
 but, on the whole, he had managed pretty well, 
 and had been able to curb his natural ferocity 
 to quite commendable patience when the wee
 
 ANTICIPATIONS. 213 
 
 waterspout cried for a mere nothing, and 
 squeaked for less than nothing. So that, min- 
 gled with regrets for the father whom he had 
 not seen for so many years, and regrets for the 
 friends and intimates he was leaving behind, 
 were pleasanter speculations as to how he should 
 find his old friends ' Cookey ' and pretty, wee 
 Anne — now, of course, grown up, and come to 
 the stateliness of Miss Asplinehood. 
 
 They, on their side, speculated on the change 
 time must have worked on him, and came to the 
 conclusion that, having been so long in America, 
 he must needs be a perfect barbarian by now — 
 and what a pity it was that an English gentle- 
 man should so spoil and lower himself! 
 
 ■ I hope he will not think it necessary to come 
 here/ said Mrs. Aspline, looking round her pretty 
 drawing-room with its ship-load of furniture and 
 ornaments. ' I would so much rather transact 
 my business with him by letter or at the law- 
 yer's ; for, of course, he will have that horrid 
 habit of chewing tobacco and of spitting all over 
 the place ; and that will be too disgusting, you 
 know.'
 
 214 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 ' Detestable !' said Anne. 
 
 ' I wonder if lie has been living much with 
 the Indians V then said Mrs. Aspline. ' Perhaps 
 he is married to a squaw in beads and a blanket. 
 One never knows what these wild young men 
 are up to when they are once out of one's 
 sight.' 
 
 < No,' said Anne, visions of Lara and the Cor- 
 sair making a hotch-potch of ideas with Prince 
 Florizel and the Reverend John Creedy. ' It is 
 dreadful to think of,' she added, with a little 
 shudder. 
 
 ' And if he brings his wife home with him, and 
 she carries her babies in a basket at her back, 
 how very painful it will all be V continued Mrs. 
 Aspline, who was fond of reading books of 
 travel. 
 
 6 1 wonder Mr. Harford let him stay away so 
 long,' said Anne, who was the freest if the most 
 indolent She alive. Mrs. Aspline did not give 
 her even advice, still less did she attempt 
 discipline or coercion — which, by the way, was 
 not needed. Her languid independence natu- 
 rally inclined the fair-haired dreamer to the
 
 ANTICIPATIONS. 215 
 
 strictest kind of rule for others. * If the first 
 Mrs. Harford had lived, it would have been dif- 
 ferent. She would have brought him home long 
 ago,' she added. 
 
 1 Yes,' said Mrs. Aspline ; ' a mother has more 
 power in a family than any father can have- 
 Better lose a dozen fathers than one mother ; 
 for even the best men are but poor creatures in 
 a house compared to women.' 
 
 She spoke with that curious conviction of 
 superiority by the grace of sex characteristic of 
 the women of to-day. She had been made by 
 her husband, but she believed that she had been 
 the sole architect of her fortunes, while her 
 master and his thousands had been but the hod- 
 man with his bricks. 
 
 ' Yes,' said Anne, who would have said ' yes ' 
 to just the contrary proposition. 
 
 ' It was the saddest pity when the first poor 
 Mrs. Harford died !' said Mrs. Aspline. ' If she 
 had lived, she would not have let Conny marry 
 that old major of hers' — a man just fifteen years 
 older than his wife, and making the best hus- 
 band to be found within the four seas — ' and, if
 
 216 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 she had lived, this young Anthony would have 
 been kept from ruin. The second wife was a 
 poor creature, and cared only for her own.' 
 
 ' By-the-by, Anthony is not so very young, 
 mother,' said Anne. ' He is thirteen years older 
 than I am/ 
 
 'And you are over twenty?' asked her 
 mother. 
 
 * Yes, last February ; so that he is thirty- 
 three/ 
 
 'Old enough at all events to know better,' 
 said Mrs. Aspline. 
 
 ' He may not be quite so bad as we think,' 
 said Anne, as a reflection rather than a remon- 
 strance. ' You see, we do not know anything 
 against him, do we, mother ! And he may not 
 have been living with the Indians. All Ameri- 
 cans do not/ 
 
 'He cannot be worth much to have kept 
 away in a half-civilized place like that for 
 all these years,' said Mrs. Aspline, a little 
 severely. 'You know they are not like us, 
 Anne. They are not gentlefolks, like the 
 English.'
 
 ANTICIPATIONS. 217 
 
 ' No, I know,' said Anne. ' But perhaps he 
 has not forgotten all his English ways. He may 
 not be so bad as the rest/ 
 
 6 Well, as you say, he may not,' returned her 
 mother, making the most of a concession which 
 she conscientiously could. ' But I have always 
 my doubts of young men who prefer foreign 
 parts to home ; and I have seen something of 
 life by now.' 
 
 1 Yes,' said Anne, with her customary air of 
 non-combative submission, by which she never 
 fought over differences of opinion, but always 
 kept her own. 
 
 This quiet tenacity was the form which her 
 mother's shrewd resoluteness of aim had taken 
 in her. It was the same with a difference, like 
 the ' alternate generations ' of a Medusa or the 
 tadpole which precedes the frog. 
 
 4 I only hope he will make a good man of 
 business if he decides on continuing my trustee,' 
 said her mother. ■ If not I shall appoint 
 another.' 
 
 4 Why not at first V asked Anne. 
 
 4 Well, no ; I should scarcely like to do that
 
 218 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 -without giving him a chance,' replied Mrs. 
 Aspline. * You see, Jack Harford was poor Mr. 
 Aspline's best friend, and I would not like to 
 throw a slight on his son all at once and without 
 good grounds.' 
 
 ' No,' said Anne ; ' that would not be fair.' 
 And here the conversation came to a sudden 
 standstill by the prosaic interruption of luncheon. 
 Afterwards, when Anne's customary siesta was 
 over, the carriage, with its showy bays, and a 
 drive through the village and so on to the 
 moor, gave a new turn to their thoughts, and 
 the ladies ceased to discuss Anthony Harford 
 and his hypothetical misdemeanours. They 
 turned instead to what was on Mrs. Aspline's 
 part a rather acrimonious commentary on Lady 
 Elizabeth's extraordinary craze for that dreadful 
 lout, that Caleb Stagg. For the two were 
 to be seen at some little distance off the 
 main road, she on horseback and he walk- 
 ing by her side, evidently in earnest conversa- 
 tion together. 
 
 1 I consider it downright indecent,' said 
 Mrs. Aspline a little hotly. * Such as Caleb
 
 ANTICIPATIONS. 219 
 
 Stagg is no fit companion for an earl's daugh- 
 ter, put it how you will ; and Lady Elizabeth, 
 good creature as she is, lets herself down too 
 much.' 
 
 1 She has not quite enough pride,' said Anne y 
 who, for all her social admiration of Lady 
 Elizabeth, thought, with her mother — she had a 
 great deal too much condescension when it 
 came to consorting with miners' sons. 
 
 i If the creature was tolerably well educated 
 I'd not be the one to say no,' said Mrs. Aspline. 
 'But such a thing as he is, I would not take him 
 to clean the boots and knives in my house ! And 
 here is an earl's daughter as thick as thieves 
 with him ! And his father only a miner, and his 
 mother a pit-brow lass.' 
 
 ' He is not fit company for her,' said Anne. 
 ' It is far better when people stay in their own 
 class.' 
 
 ' Far,' said her mother. Then she < remem- 
 bered herself/ as she would have phrased it,, 
 and her peony-like cheeks grew a yet livelier 
 red. 'Now there is myself,' she went on to 
 say, answering her own thought ; ' I was a poor
 
 220 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 officer's daughter' — he had been a colour-ser- 
 geant ; but let that pass — < so, of course, I was 
 a lady. But when poor papa died I had to 
 go out and get my own living, as we all had. 
 I was lady-housekeeper till your father took a 
 fancy to me and married me.' — Oh, cookey ! 
 cookey ! Thou who dished up those nice little 
 dinners which warmed the cockles of Mr. As- 
 pline's heart, so that he made the concoctor 
 thereof his lawful wife ! — ' But even I hold my- 
 self not quite equal to the rest, because I had 
 to work for my living. And that is always 
 against a lady.' 
 
 4 It should not be,' put in Anne, with dutiful 
 care. 
 
 * It is though,' said her mother. * But, Lord 
 alive, if I am not quite the tip-top thing, what 
 is this trash V she exclaimed with real passion. 
 
 ' No ; what, indeed ?' said Anne. 
 
 ' And consorting there with Lady Elizabeth as 
 if he was her lapdog,' cried Mrs. Aspline. 
 
 ' It is a pity,' said Anne. 
 
 And then she blushed a little ruefully, and 
 wished that her mothor had not spoken quite so
 
 ANTICIPATIONS. 221 
 
 vehemently, for Lady Elizabeth was so good — 
 and, being an earl's daughter, she was justified 
 in any eccentricity it pleased her to commit.
 
 222 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE ANGEL OF HEALING. 
 
 Lady Elizabeth had been from home, and it 
 was during her absence that the sorry chapter 
 of history already recorded had been transacted 
 between Caleb and Estelle. Had she been at 
 home to check and advise, she might have 
 saved her poor, ungainly friend the pain which 
 attends unfruitful effort. She would have 
 shown him the insecurity of Mrs. Clanricarde's 
 method, the selfishness of her desires, and the 
 impracticability of his own dreams. For how 
 could any good girl, pledged to one beloved, 
 marry another even for the sake of her family 
 and his money ? The instinct which denies the 
 body where the love is not — which forbids
 
 THE ANGEL OF HEALING. 223 
 
 that ' lips should meet over a gulf so wide as 
 separates heart from heart,' is the wholesome 
 one — though it may sometimes topple over on to 
 the other side and find justification by its own 
 excess in what the law refuses for the first part 
 and punishes for the second. And Estelle had 
 been right, not only in view of her own purity 
 but for Caleb's future happiness, when she 
 virtually refused to marry him, though that 
 refusal had taken the form of an appeal to his 
 generosity — making his very love consent to his 
 renunciation. 
 
 All this Lady Elizabeth had thought, and 
 some of it she had said this very morning 
 when she had been over to see Estelle, and 
 had learned from her the whole stoiy as it 
 it stood. Sorry as she was for the pain that 
 had flowed like a river of bitterness among 
 them all, she would not condemn — not even 
 poor, distracted, worldly-minded Mrs. Clanri- 
 carde, who honestly held the arrangement of 
 her daughter's rich marriage as a mother's 
 most pressing duty. She had acted only 
 according to her lights when she had offered
 
 224 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 Estelle to Caleb Stagg. In her mind his for- 
 tune redeemed his person, and his wealth 
 condoned all offences against manner ; and 
 Estelle would do far better to marry Caliban 
 with a gold-mine on Mount Setebos than the ship- 
 wrecked Ferdinand who had lost his coronet 
 among the rocks. And Lady Elizabeth had 
 mastered that most difficult rule of all in the 
 philosophy of charity— that of judging of a 
 person from his own standpoint, and looking 
 at life through his windows. 
 
 Thinking all these things, and full of care 
 and perplexity for those she loved, whose sor- 
 rows she had made her own, Lady Elizabeth 
 had turned her horse's head towards the moor, 
 and was cantering • briskly over its breezy 
 breadth, when she saw poor Caleb moving 
 mournfully among the gorse and heather, think- 
 ing he was looking for plants and creatures, as 
 was his wont, but not seeing even the broad- 
 leaved sun-dew at his feet — nor conscious that 
 the lark was singing overhead — nor that the 
 sun was shining down on the earth like that 
 song translated into glory. He was conscious
 
 THE ANGEL OF HEALING. 225 
 
 of nothing that was about him. He was think- 
 ing only of Estelle; of the difficulties of her 
 position with her mother ; of their pecuniary 
 entanglements ; of the hopelessness of her love 
 for Charlie Osborne, and his own inability to 
 help her — always with that dull pain at his 
 heart, like some physical smart for which is no 
 anodyne known of man. 
 
 When Lady Elizabeth saw him, she rode on 
 to the moor and came up to him. Even at the 
 distance at which he was she could see some- 
 thing of his grief. That unlovely face was a 
 mirror, blurred and distorted by inferior work- 
 manship, but expressive ; and the kindly heart 
 of the earl's daughter, who cared for humanity 
 more than for art, and believed in sympathy 
 rather than in sestheticism, was moved to more 
 than ordinary compassion — to the desire to 
 relieve and the wish to share. 
 
 At the same time, it is only just to say that, 
 with all her deep insight into essential qualities, 
 the woman in her understood and sympathized 
 with Estelle's physical repulsion for the man ; 
 and, with all her theoretic and practical deino- 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 226 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 cracy, had Caleb Stagg, the miner's son, made 
 love to her as her equal, she would have with- 
 ered him into a heap of dead ashes by the light- 
 ning of her scorn, and would herself have 
 recognized more clearly than she did now the 
 difference between condescension and amalga- 
 mation. As things were, she had no need to 
 draw these finer lines. His human love had 
 gone to Estelle ; to her was given that pure 
 worship which honours the heart that holds it 
 even more than the feet at which it is offered. 
 
 Caleb, mooning along, his eyes on the ground, 
 seeing nothing of all they looked on, did not 
 hear the tread of the horse, softened as it was 
 by the moss and heather ; and not until Lady 
 Elizabeth was by his side, and had called him 
 by his name, did he know that she was near 
 him. He started when she drew up, leaning 
 from her saddle and offering him her hand — her 
 beautiful face a little flushed with her ride — her 
 large grey eyes sweet and mild and full of kind- 
 ness — her tall, slim figure, at once so graceful 
 and so dignified, looking, as it always did, at its 
 best in her riding-habit — and in her whole atti-
 
 THE ANGEL OF HEALING. 227 
 
 tude and over her whole person that nameless 
 charm of mingled tenderness and nobility, lov- 
 ingness and dignity, which made her appear to 
 some like a maiden queen and to others like a 
 mother-angel. 
 
 * Lady Elizabeth ! Ah ! but I am main glad 
 to see you!' cried Caleb with simple fervour, 
 provincial as he always was when deeply moved 
 or taken unawares. He was like some stiff- 
 screwed telescope that wanted a little time 
 and management before it could be properly 
 adjusted. 
 
 ' I recognized you from the road, and came 
 across to speak to you,' said the lady. 
 
 1 Thank you, Lady Elizabeth,' he answered. 
 * That was kind of you. But then you always 
 are kind, Lady Elizabeth.' 
 
 6 Not more so than others,' she said, with a 
 smile. 
 
 1 / think so,' he returned, with that humble 
 kind of gratitude which means so much suf- 
 fering and pain. ' There is only one Lady 
 Elizabeth Inchbold in the world,' he added 
 simply. 
 
 Q2
 
 228 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 'Have you learned to flatter during my 
 absence V she asked, trying to speak lightly. 
 
 1 Nay/ he answered very sadly, looking into 
 the distance in that far-off way which shows a 
 mastery of preoccupation the very reverse of 
 flattering. ' I have learned nothing so pleasant, 
 Lady Elizabeth. I have learned only pain since 
 you left.' 
 
 ' I am sorry for that,' she returned, knowing 
 well what he meant. 
 
 But, among other sweet traits of good breed- 
 ing, she had that of never forestalling a con- 
 fession nor checking an anecdote by saying 
 that she already knew what was coming. 
 
 6 1 have missed you, Lady Elizabeth,' he then 
 said, looking into her face. 'When you go 
 away it is as if you somehow took my guardian 
 angel along with you. Things go all to wrongs 
 with me, and I feel as if I had lost my compass 
 to steer by.' 
 
 ' Have they been going wrong V she asked. 
 6 1 am sorry to hear that.' 
 
 ' Ay, that they have !' he answered. ' I am 
 not one to cry out if my finger aches, and I
 
 THE ANGEL OF HEALING. 229 
 
 think that the most of us get in the world much 
 as we deserve ; but sometimes life is hard, and 
 one scarce knows which road to take. All seem 
 to lead to muck and mire alike !' 
 
 The round, red-lidded eyes filled up with 
 tears, and the loose, clumsy mouth quivered. 
 Men, who can bear torture without a groan, 
 break down in the presence of a loving-natured 
 woman who feels for them, and whom they can 
 trust. 
 
 '* For the moment only,' said Lady Elizabeth 
 softly. ' The darkest cloud, you know, has its 
 silver lining. Surely no symbol was truer !' 
 
 1 So they say, and may be it is true ; but to 
 be offered a crown that will not fit, and to hold 
 in your hand a dove that will not bide — to have 
 a palace for your soul that is nought but a 
 cloud and that fades away as you look — it's 
 long looking for the silver lining there !' he said, 
 a little passionately and more despairingly. 
 ' And that's what has come to me, Lady Eliza- 
 beth, since you left your home !' 
 
 * 1 am grieved it has all happened so,' she 
 said. ' I was afraid it would, from what she
 
 230 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 told me, and from what I saw the mother 
 wished. And I knew she would not consent. 
 How could she ? Ask yourself, Mr. Stagg, how 
 could she?' 
 
 ' Nay, as you say, Lady Elizabeth, how could 
 she !' he repeated, the ellipsis fully intelligible 
 to each. ' She had no choice but to say me 
 nay ; and I was a fool for letting myself dream 
 of aught different.'' 
 
 6 If you had thought — if you had reflected — ' 
 said the lady gently. 
 
 'Yes, yes, I know,' he answered humbly. 
 ' But, believe me, Lady Elizabeth, I would not 
 have given in — for I know her value and myself 
 too well — but that I was so sore tempted. It 
 was all right, they said as ought to have known ; 
 and I had only to be patient and hopeful for 
 just the first, and then all things would right 
 themselves. But it was a false promise ; and 
 when she came out, so white and pitiful, I 
 learned the truth I ought never to have let 
 slip/ 
 
 1 You must forgive even her who caused you 
 all this needless pain,' said Lady Elizabeth
 
 THE ANGEL OF HEALING. 231 
 
 gently. ' Poor woman ! She is just distracted 
 with anxiety, and does not know which way to 
 turn. And she might have deceived herself. 
 Her very desire that this thing should come to 
 pass might have made her believe it possible. 
 Our own hopes and wishes do deceive us so 
 much !' 
 
 I But she could only desire it for the sake of 
 father's money,' said Caleb without bitterness 
 or excitement, simply stating a fact. ' I knew 
 it all along ; but I hoped, as fools will.' 
 
 ' They are in great straits,' said Lady Eliza- 
 beth. ■ Mr. Clanricarde has made an unlucky 
 speculation and lost almost all they had.' 
 
 ' And I have nothing of my own,' said Caleb ; 
 ' and not a trade at my fingers' ends to make 
 anything by. If I had thousands, I would give 
 her to the last farthing, and be proud that I had 
 been able to help her.' 
 
 I I am sure of that,' said Lady Elizabeth, look- 
 ing at him with eyes as soft as a dove's, for 
 surely a fairer soul than this of the ungainly 
 omadhaun's were never lodged in human body ; 
 and friendship does not demand beauty of per-
 
 232 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 son nor grace of manner, as does love. It 
 demands mainly goodness and the assurance 
 of stability ; and of these Caleb had large posses- 
 sion. ' And, indeed,' she added, still those soft, 
 dove-like eyes on his, ' the only way in which 
 we can forget our own pain is by sympathy 
 with others — losing self in unselfishness/ 
 
 * Yes,' said Caleb. 
 
 'And we are only good according to our 
 trials,' she continued. ' It is easy to be generous 
 and unselfish, and all that, if we are not put to 
 the test. When we are, how we bear ourselves 
 decides our worth.' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Caleb again. 
 
 ' And nursing unavailing sorrow is but a poor 
 way,' she said, still so gentle but so direct. 
 
 ' That is it,' he sighed. 
 
 1 And jealousy is even a worse,' she said. 
 
 ' Ay, that is it !' was his reply. 
 
 Then there was a short pause between them, 
 when Lady Elizabeth said, rather suddenly : 
 
 'Of course the best thing would be if Mr. 
 Osborne could marry as soon as possible, and 
 so, at least, save Estelle.'
 
 THE ANGEL OF HEALING. 233 
 
 Caleb blenched just a trifle. It might have 
 been that a gadfly had stung him or a cock- 
 chafer had struck him. It was no more than 
 just the sudden curve of a surprise. 
 
 ' Yes/ he said, a little huskily. 
 
 But he cleared his throat as one who wished 
 to make his voice resonant. 
 
 ■ I do not see how that can be, however,' the 
 lady continued ; ' for he does not make money. 
 He does not sell his pictures well, and those 
 are the best things he does. Somehow, he has 
 either not struck the right vein or he has ex- 
 ceptionally ill luck, for his pictures are badly 
 hung when they are accepted and seldom or 
 never sold. I am always hoping his luck will 
 turn, for he is really very clever and his work is 
 above the average.' 
 
 ' I am no judge, Lady Elizabeth/ said Caleb, 
 still husky in spite of his efforts, and finding 
 speech difficult. 
 
 ' No,' she answered ; ' perhaps not ; but, take 
 it from me, they deserve more recognition than 
 they get. They are really very good — though, 
 of course, they are not of extreme merit like
 
 234 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 any of the masters. However, I hope I have 
 done him some good. A very rich man I met 
 with when I was in London — a Mr. Smythe 
 Smith — is going to have his new house in 
 Piccadilly painted in the modern style of con- 
 tinuous decoration ' — Caleb made his round 
 eyes rounder than ever — ' that is, the rooms are 
 to be painted, some with birds and some with 
 flowers and some with figures and landscapes 
 and things like that — the walls, you know ; not 
 papered, but painted like pictures.' (' Oh !' said 
 Caleb.) ' And I recommended him to employ 
 Charlie Osborne. It would be a costly matter, 
 and Charlie would make a very good thing by 
 it, and perhaps that would be a nest-egg for his 
 marriage.' 
 
 'That was kind,' said Caleb, turning away 
 his head. There are times when the soul 
 would fain hide itself even from its guardian 
 angel ! 
 
 ' But I do not know when Mr. Smythe Smith's 
 house will be ready for decoration,' continued 
 Lady Elizabeth ; ' meantime, something ought 
 to be done.'
 
 THE ANGEL OF HEALING. 235 
 
 ' Yes,' said Caleb. 
 
 A sudden thought seemed to strike his friend. 
 She looked at the homely face before her, still 
 a little averted — looked, as if measuring some- 
 thing in her own mind. 
 
 So she was. She was measuring the extent 
 of Caleb Stagg's unselfishness and nobleness* 
 Then she spoke. 
 
 4 1 wonder if your father would like such a 
 room at Redhill V she said. ' Does he care for 
 modern fashions ? Would he care for a decorated 
 room in the new style V 
 
 * I don't know,' said Caleb, after a pause. ' He 
 might.' 
 
 He could scarcely speak, and his face was 
 ashy pale. 
 
 ' And you V said Lady Elizabeth. ' You 
 would not oppose it if your father liked the 
 idea V 
 
 Over that pale face passed a spasm of 
 acute pain. Then a sudden rush of blood 
 made the rose in Lady Elizabeth's breast pale 
 by contrast. 
 
 'No,' he said firmly. « I would try to per-
 
 236 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 snade father to have it. It would be to her 
 good !' 
 
 ' God bless you ! God bless you !' said Lady 
 Elizabeth fervently, laying her hand on Caleb's 
 shoulder and looking in his face with eyes that 
 were as a caress on his. ' You are as I thought 
 you were, Mr. Stagg — a true, good, noble- 
 hearted man — and one of whose friendship I am 
 proud/ 
 
 * Do not say that, Lady Elizabeth,' he an- 
 swered humbly. ' What else could I do when 
 I love her and she is not for me V 
 
 It was just at this juncture that Mrs. Aspline 
 saw these two apparently mismatched associates, 
 and pronounced with so much asperity on their 
 friendship. That is the way in which the 
 world always judges things unknown ; and to 
 condemn does raise one so many inches higher 
 in one's own estimation and so pleasantly 
 smoothes down the Pharisaical silk within 
 us! 
 
 Soon after this, Lady Elizabeth rode off to the 
 Dower House, where she ought to have been 
 an hour ago ; and Caleb trudged back over the
 
 THE ANGEL OF HEALING. 237 
 
 moor and on to Redhill, where he was eager 
 to fasten the knot his good resolve had tied. 
 His heart felt lighter, and life had a brighter 
 outlook than an hour agone, and nature had 
 once more her echo in his soul. He heard the 
 birds in the bushes, and he noted how the but- 
 terflies circled in the air. His eye took in all 
 the flowers and plants at his feet — all the 
 lovely cloudlets in the sky — and his ear noted 
 eacli cry and note of the hidden creatures. He 
 would not think of himself. He would not see 
 that he was helping his rival to his happiness at 
 his own cost. He resolutely fixed his mind on 
 Estelle and her joy rand more than once he had 
 to clear his eyes of their gathering mists when 
 he pictured her sweet face smiling into his and 
 her soft hands held out to him as she thanked 
 him for his help. 
 
 'And maybe then she will give a warm 
 thought and take me into her heart,' he mused. 
 ' God bless her ! the Lord love her ! ay, at any 
 cost to myself/ 
 
 1 And God bless that good honest fellow !* 
 said Lady Elizabeth half-aloud, as she rode
 
 238 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 along the lanes and thought of that unlovely 
 omadhaun as the hero he was, and saw how 
 shapely was the spirit which inhabited so un- 
 gainly a form.
 
 239 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 PROFFERED MANNA. 
 
 Lady Elizabeth's scheme of finding work for 
 Charlie Osborne, by painting the walls of the 
 great drawing-room at Redhill, was hugely 
 approved of by Miles Stagg when the thing 
 was proposed by Caleb, who half doubted his 
 father's consent. 
 
 ■ Nay, I care naught for fashion,' he said with 
 his big fat laugh, when Caleb shot his first bolt 
 from behind the shelter of his stalking-horse. 
 'I'm not much of a fashionable man myself; but 
 what her ladyship says is right, that is right to 
 me ; and what she says ought to be done, that 
 has to be done where I'm captain of the gang, 
 or I'll know the reason why. If she likes to
 
 240 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 have the walls all a-painted with dicky-birds 
 and turnip-tops, it's all one to me so long as she 
 is suited. It's for her eyes in the long run, 
 not mine, I reckon ; and the long run has most 
 claim.' 
 
 Then he chuckled and grew red in the face 
 for joy of his dancing, light-limbed thoughts ; 
 and Caleb grew redder still for shame of his 
 and them. But of what use to remonstrate 
 with density interpenetrated with obstinacy? 
 To let it stumble forward in its own way and 
 to go on our own path unheeding, is the only 
 wise course when we do not wish to spend time 
 and strength on futilities. Granite is no more 
 to be patted into a new form than a dense- 
 witted, obstinate person is to be stirred by 
 reason or demonstration. So Caleb knew, and 
 on that line he lived. His father had made up 
 his mind that Lady Elizabeth Inchbold was to 
 be his daughter-in-law. She was not only his 
 Abracadabra, and the Name of Power to which 
 he yielded instant submission, but she was his 
 Hope fulfilled, his Ambition impersonated ; and 
 no besom ever wielded by truth and impossi-
 
 PROFFERED MANNA. 241 
 
 bility together could sweep him out of the fool's 
 paradise where he had niched himself so se- 
 curely. That she should have proposed this 
 thing was but another proof where so many had 
 already accumulated. What to her were the 
 ■walls of the great drawing-room at Kedhill 
 unless she had it in view to spend her life in 
 looking at them ? Had Caleb told him the 
 truth, he would not have believed it for the first 
 part ; and, if he had, then would he have refused 
 his consent for the second. He would give his 
 money for her ladyship's own pleasure, but for 
 the sake of her friends, nay, he would be hanged 
 first. 
 
 The father consented with his broad Panta- 
 gruelistic humour; but the mother opposed a 
 feeble, fatuous negative. This notable scheme 
 of wall-decoration did not smile at her. She 
 was sure she did not know how all the furni- 
 ture and things were to be moved, she said in 
 her weak-knee'd, lachrymose way. She hadn't 
 so much strength in her arms and back as she 
 used to have, and she would be sorry to see 
 good things like theirs spoilt with mishandling. 
 
 VOL. I. R
 
 242 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 And she thought the walls did well enough 
 with the paper that was on them, now that it 
 was there. It had cost a powerful sight of 
 money when it was first put up, and it was as 
 good as new — for they never used the big 
 drawing-room, except sometimes on a Sunday to 
 give it an airing, or when they wanted a fire in to 
 keep the damp out. And, though she didn't quite 
 like that girl and bairn, the rest of the paper 
 was graclely pretty. Them roses and poppies 
 were like life ; and she was never tired of them 
 blue-bottles, just like what she had picked so 
 many a time in the corn-fields when a lass ; and 
 it was a pity, that it was, to strip it from the 
 walls for a new fad that, maybe, wouldn't look 
 so well as it when all was said and done. 
 
 So she objected in her maundering, monoto- 
 nous way, till Miles came down on her with a 
 heavy back-hander : after which, poor soul, she 
 subsided into sniffles and silence on the sofa, and 
 the voice of her complaining was heard no more 
 in the land. 
 
 Her opposition had, however, its customary 
 effect of strengthening Miles in his resolve. He
 
 PROFFERED MANNA. 243 
 
 had not taken a bankrupt mine in faith on his 
 broad shoulders and made his fortune in con- 
 sequence, to be crossed by his own wife. Let 
 her mind her own business and he would mind 
 his, he said ; and if he chose to give her the 
 finest drawing-room in the county, that was his 
 doing, not hers. All that she had to do was to 
 take what was given her and make no bones 
 about it; else he'd soon let her see who was 
 master ; and now she knew ! 
 
 These scenes were too frequent to cause much 
 commotion when they occurred. Nancy was 
 one of those women who are easily subdued, 
 but can never be taught. Her man was her 
 master, and she knew it — had always had to 
 recognize it — had lived for the last six-and- 
 twenty years under his rule, and for all that 
 time had not been allowed to call her soul her 
 own. And yet she could not give spontaneous 
 submission. She had to be dinged and donged 
 into obedience, according to her husband's 
 phraseology. She had not strength nor sense 
 enough to yield of her own free will and before 
 that inevitable scene of brutality and pitiful 
 
 r2
 
 244 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 tears had taken place. But then, if she had had 
 strength and sense enough for that voluntary 
 bending to tyrannous power, she would have 
 been probably able to circumvent what she 
 could not avoid, and to slip from under what 
 she could not bend. 
 
 In this case, then, as in every other, neither 
 her fatuous objections nor her silent sniffles on 
 the sofa moved the rampant will of her iron- 
 fisted husband any more than the whip of the 
 rain on the glass ; and Caleb was ordered to 
 write now at once to Mr. Charles Osborne to 
 offer him the job at his own valuation. Miles 
 did not care what it cost ; and it might go into 
 the hundreds or into the thousands for what he 
 had a mind. In truth, secretly he was glad of 
 the opportunity for spending. These lily-livered 
 donnerts of his — this wife and son who were not 
 worth their meat — never wanted naught, as he 
 used to complain to Jim Fisher ; and what was 
 the use of a pot of money if it was to lie buried 
 in the croft, as one might say, and 'not a body 
 of them all to see the colour of the gold or to 
 profit by it, though it were never so little !
 
 PROFFERED MANNA. 245 
 
 Wherefore, let the great drawing-room, which 
 was still spick-and-span new, be redecorated 
 according to Caleb's wish, young Mr. Osborne's 
 fancy, and Lady Elizabeth's desire. And Jim's 
 sententious : ' I'll see ye in t' union yet, Miles,' 
 went for nothing, if not for an extra puff of wind 
 to the already well-filled sails. 
 
 It was a difficult letter for Caleb to write. 
 Looked at in ariy light he would, it was a main 
 sore task. He was not fond of writing letters 
 at any time — no man with his up-bringing is — 
 but to write to Charlie Osborne, who held him- 
 self as high as Lord Royne or the earl himself, 
 who loved that beautiful star of his life and 
 light of his dreams, and who was in turn loved 
 by her — to write to him, offering what Miles 
 called this job that he might be well paid, and 
 so brought nearer to the goal of his desire — 
 yes, in all ways it was a difficult thing to do for 
 one so painfully conscious as Caleb Stagg. The 
 sheets of good note-paper he spoiled by unfit 
 beginnings, uncomfortable endings and imper- 
 fect middles, would have made poor Nancy's 
 grizzled hair stand on end in horror at the waste,
 
 246 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 had she seen it. At last, however, the tortured 
 scribe got the thing done ; and, after all his 
 false starts, wrote what he might have written 
 at the outset — a simple, plain, unaffected pro- 
 posal, based on Lady Elizabeth's recommen- 
 dation. 
 
 Wheu he received this letter, Charlie Osborne 
 exploded first into laughter and then into wrath. 
 The gentleman in him revolted at the thought 
 of working for Miles Stage's pleasure ; and his 
 pride took fire when he realized the indignity of 
 taking money from such a brute. He, Charlie 
 Osborne, to be indebted to a coarse, rude miner 
 for the means of living — to be paid by him as 
 he, the miner, had once been paid by his em- 
 ployers — he a gentleman and his employer a 
 boor of the lowest kind ! He got up and looked 
 at himself in the glass, pulling down his coat- 
 skirt and settling his collar and cravat. It was 
 a curiously instinctive movement — the half-un- 
 conscious expression of his very conscious pride 
 — for few families of long descent are more 
 conscious of superiority of condition than are 
 the sons and daughters of the country clergy.
 
 PROFFERED MANNA. 247 
 
 Their place is one of moral influence ; they have 
 direct authority in schools and choirs, and in 
 other matters as well ; their example is note- 
 worthy, and they are under the same induce- 
 ment to behave well as are the confessedly 
 aristocratic — the father's office standing for 
 family traditions. To the poor, with whom 
 their business chiefly lies, they are as noble as 
 the noblest ; and as all things in life are relative 
 — social superiority among the rest — the clergy- 
 man's son and the belted knight stand equally 
 high in their several places — which is all that is 
 wanted to ensure the feeling of relative equality. 
 
 Hence Charlie Osborne, though only a poor 
 artist who must work to live, as the son of a 
 gentleman and himself a gentleman held him- 
 self in his right to break into sardonic laughter 
 passing on to wrath, when he received Caleb's 
 letter and realized its conditions. 
 
 To work for those mere brutes ! To put his 
 delicate thoughts and subtle fancies into a house 
 tenanted by creatures with no more perception 
 of art and beauty than so many human pigs 
 littered in a golden stye ! No, he could not, and
 
 248 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 he would not. He was an artist, not a trades- 
 man nor a hodman ; and he conld not degrade 
 himself to work for those whose eyes, unpurged 
 of their grossness — eyes which no euphrasy of 
 refinement had ever touched — would not under- 
 stand the essential meaning of what they saw. 
 Put out of court the fact that the younger 
 scoundrel (all undesirable men are scoundrels to 
 gentlemen in a rage) had dared to raise his 
 insolence so high as to Estelle : he had perhaps 
 atoned for his insult in the best way he could ; 
 and perhaps Mrs. Clanricarde had been more to 
 blame than he — she must have been, indeed, by 
 what Estelle had said — well, let that all pass, 
 though it was difficult to forget it, and almost 
 beyond his power to forgive ; yet, going back on 
 the mere crass stupidity and ignorance of the 
 creatures themselves, he could not do it — he 
 would not — sorely as he needed funds at this 
 moment, and dark as was his horizon. 
 
 Tempest-tossed, revolted, passionate, inflamed, 
 he debated within himself all that evening, and 
 carried the thought like a fire in his brain 
 through all the night ; and in the morning he
 
 PROFFERED MANNA. 249 
 
 had come to no definite decision, no absolute 
 assertion of yea or nay. He, too, wrote and de- 
 stroyed half-a-dozen letters, some accepting, 
 some refusing ; and then he suddenly decided on 
 going in person to Redhill. He should be better 
 able to judge when he had seen the place ; and 
 if there were capabilities perhaps it was his duty 
 to utilize them. One never knows where one 
 may do good ; and he should be sorry if he had 
 neglected an opportunity for spreading the 
 religion of true taste. Whereat, warmed by this 
 sudden outblaze of artistic philanthropy, Charlie 
 took his hat and sketching-book and walked off 
 to Redhill to interview his would-be patrons. 
 
 When he came to the house and was ushered 
 into the great drawing-room his heart sank and 
 his disgust swelled. It was revolting to see 
 this mingled mass of magnificence and hideous- 
 ness — pitiable to note the inharmoniousness, the 
 incongruity, everywhere alike. Over the house 
 and the inmates, and in every fact and circum- 
 stance, reigned the same barbarous confusion 
 and inartistic misfit — the same crying want of 
 taste and almost profligate expenditure. How
 
 250 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 could he throw his soul on such a rag-heap ? 
 Fancy — painting a frieze of stately peacocks for 
 people who could have lived with this gaudy 
 wall-paper of execrable design, where a simper- 
 ing sylph, with mauve-coloured flesh, ogled a 
 lumpish Cupid, all knobs as if made out of 
 apples — sylph and Cupid repeated a dozen times 
 in a couple of breadths, with the same eternal 
 bouquet and sprawling garland of red and blue 
 and yellow floAvers, bright enough to give a 
 sensitive brain inflammation on the spot ! What 
 would such people think of a dead-gold 
 ground behind delicate traceries of maidenhair 
 ferns, where not two fronds were alike ? What 
 would they say to a dado of ebony inlaid with 
 mother-of-pearl and « pietre dure ' in arabesques 
 and stiff, conventionalized, geometrical forms? 
 It would be emphatically casting pearls before 
 swine, thought Charlie Osborne, who appraised 
 his own art as the highest outcome of human 
 intellect, and himself as by no means the wooden 
 spoon among the candidates for honours. 
 
 And he was thinking this when the door burst 
 open with a rude kind of bang, and Miles Stagg,
 
 PROFFERED MANNA. 251 
 
 with Caleb and Nancy at his heels, came noisily 
 into the room. 
 
 * Well, Mr. Osborne, sir, so you're taking 
 stock, are ye V shouted Miles, in that way he 
 had as if speaking to a deaf world. 
 
 ' I was looking at your room,' returned Char- 
 lie, glacially polite. 
 
 ' It's Lady Elizabeth's whim/ laughed Miles, 
 showing all his teeth ; * and we're bound to 
 follow my lady's lead, ain't we, Caleb, lad?' 
 slapping his son's shoulder. 
 
 * I'd like to do as Lady Elizabeth wishes,' said 
 Caleb, stiffly, meaning rebuke ; and Charlie, who- 
 was what the Scotch call ' gleg at the uptak',' 
 wondered what the deuce was underneath this 
 odd jocularity and constrained reply. But not 
 the wildest of the speculations which shot like 
 4 northern streamers ' through his brain came 
 near the presumptuous truth, as Miles Stagg had 
 conceived it and as Caleb repudiated. 
 
 * Well,' said Miles after a pause, ' and what 
 may you be thinking of the job, Mr. Osborne ? 
 Cost's no question.' He visibly swelled with 
 pride as he said this, his thumbs in his waist-
 
 252 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 coat pockets and his big coarse fingers playing 
 a jubilant tattoo on the flaring flowers of the 
 embroidered satin. ' I've enough and to spare 
 for my lady's fancies and thy work, my lad ' — 
 here he lapsed into his ordinary familiarity of 
 tone — ' and thou'lt not put a wrong price, were 
 it ever so.' 
 
 Charlie's handsome face flushed ; his small, 
 cleanly-moulded head and finely-cut features 
 wore the air and look of royal disdain. The 
 money was a temptation, as he had before ad- 
 mitted, but gained at such a price — by associa- 
 tion with such dreadful creatures — by work on 
 such a really 'awful' house — it would be too 
 dearly bought. He was not of the kind to see 
 the fun of the position nor to make capital out 
 •of its humour. He was only disgusted with its 
 vulgarity ; and he scarcely cared to conceal what 
 he felt. 
 
 ' I fear that to begin at all in the room will 
 entail too many alterations,' he said coldly. 
 ' These curtains must be changed. This 
 blue will not suit my scheme of colour, and 
 it is too hard and crude in itself; and this yellow
 
 PROFFERED MANNA. 253 
 
 border is inadmissable, even as things are/ 
 
 1 Lo ye now !' said Miles, all in amaze. < And 
 I, who thought these curtains tip-toppers ! They 
 cost a power of money, so they should be some- 
 thing good. And th' stuff on them is of the 
 best — that I know.' 
 
 He rubbed the heavy silk between his finger 
 and thumb as affectionately as a man pulls a 
 dog's ears. 
 
 'The material is handsome, but the colour is 
 bad,' said Charlie with a shudder. 
 
 ' Lo ye now !' said Miles again, screwing up 
 his eyes a little ominously, and making a depre- 
 catory kind of click with his tongue. 
 
 'And the carpet will not do,' continued 
 Charlie. ' This fiery red will kill everything. 
 And the chairs and sofas are not right; the 
 shapes and coverings are both wrong.' 
 
 1 Ay ! them's all wrong too V said Miles, with 
 unwonted quietness. 
 
 ' Quite wrong,' said Charlie, deceived by 
 appearances and giving the reins to his hobby- 
 horse. ' The ottomans, too, are just impossible — 
 and that modern china is dreadful. And you
 
 254 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 cannot have those heavy cut-glass chandeliers. 
 You cannot have gas in the room at all.' 
 
 He grew warmer as he went on — his artistic 
 taste was so thoroughly outraged. 
 
 1 Oh, Miles, man alive, it's just a wicked 
 waste of money !' cried Nancy, unable to con- 
 tain herself longer. * All this here, that's as good 
 as new, as a body might say, and as fine as five- 
 pence, to be carted off for a whim that's to do 
 no good to anyone. It's just shameful, and I'll 
 say it were it ever so. It'll not bring a blessing 
 on thee, Miles, to scatter thy brass in this wild 
 gate, and so I tell thee.' 
 
 'Nay, but I think the wife is about right,' 
 said Miles, speaking very slowly, for he was 
 truly aghast at the wholesale condemnation of 
 his grand room. He and the local upholsterer 
 had furnished it between them; for he had 
 loyally done his best to give all of his own a 
 lift, and neither cost nor material had been 
 spared. And now to have it touched with this 
 cruel spear that blackened and blighted wher- 
 ever it struck. It was more than he could stand : 
 and Nancy, woman, was about right. The
 
 PROFFERED MANNA. 255 
 
 paper he would not stand out for, nor, for the 
 matter of that, would she. She had never liked 
 the mauve-fleshed young woman with nothing 
 on but a scarf in a bow above her head and 
 in a line down her shoulders ; and that lumpy 
 Cupid, made of apples strung together and as 
 naked as when he was born, had always shocked 
 her sense of what a well-conditioned bairn 
 should be. But when it came to the curtains 
 and the carpets, the sofas and the chairs, that 
 huge cut-glass chandelier with its drops like 
 diamonds, the tables and ornaments — in fact, to 
 every individual thing in the big room — then 
 Miles himself paused and faltered before he 
 took the leap. He did not care about the 
 money the change would cost. Quite the 
 contrary. What he did care for was the slap in 
 his face in the matter of taste, and the con- 
 demnation of things he had learned not only to 
 connect with his prosperity, but to regard as 
 the dumb witnesses of his own merit. 
 
 4 It is a clean sweep, anyhow,' he went on to 
 say, his colour rising as he spoke. ' We have 
 been content and pretty proud, Nancy and me
 
 256 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 and the lad, with what we have had ; and I 
 don't like the looks of turning one's back on all 
 of one's own for the word of a stranger who 
 doesn't feel with us— and maybe has other 
 thoughts,' he added darkly. * So I think, Mr. 
 Osborne, sir, we'll sleep on this matter before we 
 make a serious calculation.' 
 
 'Of course, that is just as you wish,' said 
 Charlie coldly. 
 
 « Well, you see, I'm a little out of breath and 
 flabbergasted ; and I'm not so sure as I'd like 
 all these changes when made ; and I'd like to 
 see a proof before I paid,' said Miles. ' One 
 doesn't do so well to give oneself up too soon 
 into the hands of a stranger as has other 
 thoughts,' he repeated. 
 
 ' Oh !' said Charlie, with all a gentleman's 
 pride and artist's disdain in his voice and 
 manner ; ' if you do not think I understand my 
 own business, we had better not say any more 
 about it. In such a thing as this I must have 
 carte-blanche or none at all/ 
 
 ' I don't know what you mean about carts nor 
 barrows neither,' shouted Miles, thoroughly
 
 PROFFERED MANNA. 257 
 
 nettled ; ' but if you think you are a-going to 
 ride roughshod over me, young man, you are 
 mistaken, Mr. Osborne, sir, and so I tell you. 
 It is me as pays, and me as has to be agreeable 
 to this, that, and t'other — not for a stranger to 
 come in and order shifts and gangs, and set the 
 seams as he has a mind, and never a body to 
 say him nay. Not if I know it — and now you 
 know.' 
 
 ' Whisht, Miles— whisht, honey !' said Nancy 
 in a terrified voice. 
 
 'Hold hard, father,' said Caleb with un- 
 wonted decision. 
 
 ' Nay, but I'll have my say if I die for it !' 
 said Miles, his voice raised to its angry bellow. 
 His thumbs were thrust deeper into his waist- 
 coat pockets, and the tattoo played by his coarse 
 fingers was no longer spread and jocund, but 
 with hard, jerky, irritated taps — his fingers 
 coming down on the flaring flowers with blows 
 like miniature sledge-hammers. 
 
 ' You have said enough,' said Charlie. * No- 
 thing you could offer me would induce me to 
 accept this work, and I wish you good-day.' 
 
 VOL. I. S
 
 258 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 ' And good-day to you, sir, for a jackadandy, 
 if ever there was one !' shouted Miles ; while 
 Nancy besought the young gentleman to take a 
 snack, and Caleb went with him to the door, 
 saying he must not mind what father had said 
 — father's bark was worse than his bite, and Mr. 
 Osborne was not to feel offended — he knew so 
 much better than father, he could afford to let 
 him rave. 
 
 He spoke with so much good feeling — with 
 the dignity even of earnestness and sincerity — 
 that Charlie could not but recognize the poor 
 scoundrel's partial value ; and, though he went 
 off in a fluff and a fume, he thought that, after 
 all, worse men were in the world than Caleb 
 Stagg, who, creature as he was, was yet a good 
 fellow in his own detestable way.
 
 259 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 HOW IT CAME ABOUT. 
 
 Still boiling with indignation — in a fluff and a 
 fume all through — Charlie Osborne walked on 
 to the Dower House, where he hoped to see 
 Lady Elizabeth and Estelle. Since the collapse 
 of her notable scheme for her daughter's en- 
 dowment with unhappiness and wealth, Mrs. 
 Clanricarde had in a manner let go the reins, 
 laid down the whip, and given the girl her head. 
 She had more liberty because less care was 
 taken of her ; Mrs. Clanricarde feeling, as people 
 do who are disappointed, that if she wanted to 
 go to destruction she must, and it was too hard a 
 task to restrain her. This phase, however, would 
 not last long. It was only the first inevitable 
 
 S2
 
 260 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 reaction following on baffled endeavour. Very 
 ►soon the managing, . putting-to-rights nature 
 of a mcntresse femme would reassert itself, and 
 then the slackened rein would be all the more 
 sharply drawn because of this temporary relaxa- 
 tion. Meanwhile Estelle, being but a maid of 
 mortal mould, made good use of her increased 
 liberty ; and Charlie Osborne profited. Means 
 of meeting were found every day, while the 
 mother sat behind the close-drawn blinds of Les 
 Saules, and broke the vials of her wrath over 
 the head of her unlucky George. 
 
 It had been already arranged between the 
 young lovers that they were to meet at the 
 Dower House to-day, by that lucky chance 
 which is part of the craft and diplomacy of love. 
 Thus Charlie felt sure of falling in with Estelle 
 somewhere about the place, should Lady Eliza- 
 beth be out — which was not likely, as he knew 
 she would be anxious to hear the result of her 
 recommendation. 
 
 So it all proved. Lady Elizabeth w r as at 
 home in her own private ' work-room,' and 
 Estelle Clanricarde was with her, sitting as her
 
 HOW IT CAME ABOUT. 261 
 
 model for the head of Ruth gleaning in the 
 fields of Boaz; — at which the dear lady was 
 working with as much zeal as if painting was 
 her profession. 
 
 ' Well !' said Lady Elizabeth, after the first 
 greetings were over ; ' and what about the 
 commission V 
 
 ' Oh !' said Charlie, tossing up his handsome 
 head ; ' it has come to nothing, of course I' 
 
 * Why of course?' and ' Oh, Charlie !' said the 
 two girls in a breath. Lady Elizabeth's large, 
 limpid grey eyes expressed surprise — Estelle's 
 beautiful brown moths, regret. 
 
 ' Because I am a gentleman, Lady Elizabeth,' 
 said Charlie with infinite disdain ; ' and I could 
 not consent to work for such scoundrels if 1 had 
 not a penny piece in the world ! I would 
 rather buy a broom and sweep a crossing !' 
 
 ' Caleb Stagg is not a scoundrel,' said Lady 
 Elizabeth gently. 
 
 * His father is, if he is not,' broke in Charlie, 
 with more heat than courtesy. 
 
 'Rude, perhaps, and boorish, but I should 
 scarcely call him a scoundrel,' the lady again
 
 262 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 insisted, as gently as before, but also as firmly. 
 
 4 In any case, how could I work for a wretch 
 who has not the smallest rudiment of taste 
 — who puts together the vilest and most immoral 
 colours — prefers hideous forms to righteous ones 
 — and knows no more of values than what is so 
 much money worth ! Lady Elizabeth, it is 
 impossible !' 
 
 ' But you might be a missionary, and teach 
 the heathen,' continued the lady. 
 
 'Can you teach pigs?' retorted Charlie scorn- 
 fully. ' Besides, that old scoundrel insulted me. 
 How could I accept a commission from a man 
 who not only does not know one thing from 
 another, but who also does not know how to 
 behave with common decency ? How should he ! 
 — a mere brute like that — a miner yesterday, 
 and nothing but a miner to-day with a pot of 
 money he avouIcI be far better without. Such a 
 trio as they are ! I declare they made me 
 ashamed of my own species.' 
 
 f We cannot help their wealth,' said Lady 
 Elizabeth. 'They have the money, you see, 
 and it was honestly earned ; so they must keep
 
 HOW IT CAME ABOUT. 263 
 
 it. But, if we could make them distribute it 
 wisely, that would be a gain to everyone alike. 
 That was what I thought of when I proposed 
 this room to them and to you. I thought that 
 it would be both a noble piece of work for the 
 future occupier of Redhill, if the present would 
 scarcely appreciate it at its full value — and that 
 you would be the gainer by so much, and,' look- 
 ing at Estelle, ' would be so much nearer your 
 happiness.' 
 
 ' I know all that, dear Lady Elizabeth,' said 
 Charlie, feeling more contrite than he cared to 
 express, but resolved to fight it out on his chosen 
 lines of dignity and gentlehood ; ' and you may 
 be sure it cost me something to turn my back on 
 "vhat would have been a splendid bit of work all 
 through. But, believe me, I could not! It 
 vould have been impossible ! and neither you 
 nor Estelle would have wished it had you under- 
 stood all the conditions.' 
 
 ' I am sure you did right, Charlie,' put in Es- 
 telle hastily. Not for worlds would she let him 
 see that she was disappointed or in any way 
 doubted the absolute wisdom of his action. ' As
 
 264 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 Charlie says, it would have been impossible,' 
 she added. 
 
 A tender smile, a little tinged with sadness, 
 crossed Lady Elizabeth's face. The three years 
 that lay between her and Estelle, as well as the 
 difference in their characters, gave her the air 
 and sentiment of far more experience than 
 perhaps the reality warranted. But experience 
 is sometimes, as it were, forestalled — foreseen 
 — by the qualities of the character ; and Lady 
 Elizabeth's — thoughtful, self-controlled and in- 
 tense — had a grip and an outlook of more value 
 than is got by such heady impulsiveness as that 
 which ruled Charlie Osborne's life, or such weak- 
 ness to her affections as was Estelle's governing 
 motive. 
 
 * Well, we must think of something else as 
 this has failed,' said the lady, after a pause. 
 'I must try to get you a commission — ' to 
 Charlie, with one of her charming, generous 
 smiles, meaning to say that she was in no wise 
 offended by this rejection of her first efforts. 
 1 I am determined you shall succeed,' she went 
 on to say playfully ; * and I feel strong enough
 
 HOW IT CAME ABOUT. 265 
 
 to conquer fortune for you. We will introduce 
 you to Mr. Smythe Smith. He is coming down 
 to stay with us for a few days ; and perhaps 
 that will be a better thing for you in the end 
 than this would have been. But this would 
 have kept you here — which was a consideration ;' 
 looking at Estelle as girls do when they are sym- 
 pathetic with a love-affair. 
 
 1 It cannot be helped,' said Charlie, still 
 mounted on his very highest horse. * Essential 
 as money is to me, I cannot barter for it my self- 
 respect ; and to have worked for this old ruffian, 
 and for such a house of Jhorrors, would have 
 been to practically sell myself. Art, to be 
 worthy of its high mission, ought to be worthily 
 represented,' he added loftily. * In this deplor- 
 able age of ours the artist is the only true priest, 
 and he must be equal to his office.' 
 
 6 Yes,' said Estelle, her soft eyes full to over- 
 flowing with that kind of love which stirs a 
 man's inmost soul — the love that unites in- 
 tellectual obeisance with spiritual adoration and 
 personal fondness — the love that makes of the 
 lover a hero and a demi-god to himself — the
 
 266 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 love on which artists and poets live as the en- 
 chantress Maimouna lived on the breath of 
 flowers, as birds of paradise are intoxicated 
 with the dews of heaven — that love of all the 
 most dangerous both to her who gives and to 
 him who receives. The one it robs of self-re- 
 spect and a higher standard ; the other it robs of 
 a god greater than himself. 
 
 ' Yes,' said Lady Elizabeth. ' But there is 
 also something grand in being nobler than one's 
 own pride,' she added. ' Self-forgetfulness has 
 its own splendour, has it not 1 And I always 
 think that line of George Herbert's, "Who 
 sweeps a room as for Thy laws," might be used 
 as a rule of conduct more often than it is.' 
 
 1 That is a very different thing from doing 
 artist's work for human pigs, and taking money 
 from a ruffian who does not know how to be- 
 have,' said Charlie. ' I would be as humble as 
 anyone to true greatness. I am. I reverence 
 every word that the Master says/ — (' Even 
 when he curses all travellers by railways V put 
 in Lady Elizabeth) — * and I should not dream of 
 opposing his dictum in anything,' continued
 
 HOW IT CAME ABOUT. 267 
 
 Charlie, not noticing ; ' but that is quite another 
 thing. To reverence true greatness and knuckle 
 under to wealthy ruffianism do not come into the 
 same category, dear Lady Elizabeth.' 
 
 * Do not call it ruffianism, Charlie,' she 
 answered. ' Call it ignorance. I daresay Mr. 
 Stagg did not know that he was behaving 
 badly. He acted only after the law of his kind.' 
 
 1 Yes,' said Charlie grandly ; * that is just it. 
 He acted after the law of his kind — like a brute ; 
 and I after that of my kind — like a gentleman. 
 He insulted me, and I repudiated him.' 
 
 Lady Elizabeth got up and went over to the 
 young artist. His handsome face was flushed, 
 but set and stern with indignation ; hers — that 
 tender Madonna face — was pale, and, as it were, 
 quivering and instinct with something that was 
 more sublime than pity, more noble than 
 sympathy. 
 
 4 Who was it said, " Father, forgive them, for 
 they know not what they do " V she said with 
 infinite feeling. ' Oh, Charlie, the longer I live, 
 the more and more deeply I feel the need we 
 have in ourselves of forgiveness, and the duty
 
 268 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 laid on us of forgiving others ! It is not for- 
 giveness so much as understanding. If we 
 could see into a person's heart and all round a 
 circumstance, we should never be angry. At 
 the worst, we should be only sorry !' 
 
 'Lady Elizabeth, you are an angel,' said 
 Charlie, moved by her earnestness, but not tak- 
 ing fire at her flame. ' I am only a weak sinful 
 man, and I cannot follow you in your higher 
 flights. You can be patient where I cannot. 
 We are not all made of the same material ; and 
 mine is less ethereal that yours.' 
 
 Lady Elizabeth took herself back with a 
 nervous little laugh. 
 
 1 1 daresay I am silly and exaggerate things,' 
 she said hurriedly. ' Eustace says I do ; but I 
 should like to see certain principles more acted 
 on; and this of forgiving others — tolerating 
 ugly appearances, and not taking offence easily 
 — is one of them.' 
 
 ' Then would you have me pocket the 
 affront, and take the commission simply for the 
 gain V asked Charlie, his handsome face again 
 flushing.
 
 HOW IT CAME ABOUT. 269 
 
 ' No, not unless you could have seen the thing 
 from my standpoint,' was her reply. ' I would 
 never wish anyone to do what seemed to him 
 mean or degrading/ 
 
 ' You would only wish me to do what was- 
 mean and degrading from another platform — 
 blinded by another set of motives?' said 
 Charlie. 
 
 It was Lady Elizabeth's turn now to flush. A 
 transient gleam of reproach darkened the tender 
 radiance of her soft grey eyes. But it passed as 
 quickly as it came. 
 
 * Of course, it all depends on the way in which 
 we look at things,' she said quietly ; and Charlie, 
 rather ashamed of himself, but too proud to con- 
 fess it, said ' Yes,' just as quietly. Which ended 
 the conversation, and decomposed all the 
 thoughts that had created it. 
 
 ' But,' as Charlie said to Estelle afterwards, 
 1 but that I really love Lady Elizabeth like my 
 sister, I should get provoked at her ultra ideas. 
 I am, I hope, as high-minded as any man, and 
 would scorn to do a mean or pitiful action as 
 much as anyone, but really I cannot follow her
 
 270 THROUGH THE LONG XIGHT. 
 
 — and no one could ! It is just Utopia that she 
 imagines. It would be the millennium if it 
 were all true ; and that is ridiculous.' 
 
 1 Yes,' said Estelle ; ' and yet ' — loyalty to her 
 friend colouring even her submission to her 
 lover — ' she is so good ! She is an angel !' 
 
 * That's just it,' said Charlie ; ' she is more of 
 an angel than a woman ; and I confess I like 
 women better than angels ! I know one, how- 
 ever, who is both !' he added fondly. 
 
 Whereon they started off into the mellifluous 
 babble of love, and forgot all in the delight of 
 the moment and the joy of the hour. 
 
 A few days after this Mr. and Mrs. Smythe Smith, 
 the new millionaires, came down to visit Lord 
 and Lady Kingshouse ; and Lady Elizabeth, this 
 transparent and angelic creature, laid her kindly 
 traps and baited them as deftly as Mrs. Clanri- 
 •carde herself could have done. She spoke to 
 Mrs. Smythe Smith of their clever and delight- 
 ful young artist, of his beautiful ideas, his delicate 
 fancies, his original genius, his certainty of 
 future fame. He was at the right moment for 
 plucking by afar-seeing and intelligent patron.
 
 HOW IT CAME ABOUT. 271 
 
 It would be a proud thing to be able to say iu 
 future time : f I made this now famous genius !' 
 It was always such a grand thing to be the 
 patron of as yet undiscovered talent ! Mr. 
 Osborne would make a quite unique monument 
 — a perfectly beautiful success of their magnifi- 
 cent house. She hoped they would think of it ; 
 for a beautiful thing is in very truth a joy for 
 ever, and does the world so much good ! And, 
 if only for the delight she had in beauty and 
 perfectness, she would like them to have Mr. 
 Osborne's work in their place. And so on. But 
 it must always be remembered that Lady Eliza- 
 beth did really believe all this of her old friend 
 and childish playmate, and that she was in no 
 wise touting for the good of a mediocrity to the 
 damage of a Croesus. 
 
 Mr. Smythe Smith said he would rather prefer 
 a man of known repute — a man whose name 
 alone would add lustre to his worth, and cause 
 the envious world to admire without cavil. Mrs. 
 Smythe Smith, on the other hand, inclined to 
 the undiscovered genius, whom also she thought 
 she could a little deflect, if not bully and make
 
 272 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 subservient to her wishes. It would then be 
 < we.' ' Mr. Osborne and I planned this room — 
 made out this decoration — arranged these details. 
 I proposed this colour ; I worked up that subject ; 
 and I found Mr. Osborne most civil and obliging 
 — most ready to adopt my suggestions and 
 carry them out.' 
 
 Yes, she was certainly on the side of 
 the undiscovered genius ; and as Mr. Smythe 
 Smith knew that it was good form to give 
 way to a wife before folk, he yielded the 
 point in this instance, and Mrs. Smythe Smith 
 stuck to it. Whence it came to pass that 
 Charlie Osborne and his portfolio were had up 
 to the Dower House, when the designs he had 
 made at Lady Elizabeth's suggestion were 
 looked at, admired, criticized, and pronounced 
 eminently workable and satisfactory. 
 
 For the look of the thing, and to maintain an 
 independent attitude as well as to sustain their 
 character as people of taste, judgment and dis- 
 cernment, Mrs. Smythe Smith made one sug- 
 gestion and Mr. Smythe Smith another — of no 
 vital importance and touching no organic prin-
 
 HOW IT CAME ABOUT. 273 
 
 ciple ; and Charlie Osborne was too well-bred to 
 object to modifications which pleased the pride 
 of those who made them and hurt nothing that 
 was essential to his own ideas. 
 
 His manners and appearance both impressed 
 the wealthy parvenu and his wife to a high 
 degree of favour. That air he had of semi- 
 royal dignity sat so well on his extremely hand- 
 some person ; his voice was so melodious ; his 
 eyes were so very fine ; his hands were so per- 
 fectly well-shaped — the hands emphatically of a 
 gentleman ; Lady Elizabeth was so friendly ; 
 the countess was so almost maternal — she was 
 in the plot and took to it as naturally as a duck- 
 ling to the water ; what woman would not ? — 
 my lord was so good-humouredly familiar — 
 glad to follow his dear Delight's lead and to do 
 as she desired — all these considerations stirred 
 the brains of Mr. and Mrs. Smythe Smith like 
 sweet must in new wine, so that the bargain 
 was made and the arrangement come to with- 
 out boggling or delay. And before Charlie 
 Osborne well knew where he was, or all that it 
 included, he had agreed to leave Kingshouse 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 274 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 and Estelle and go to London with the Smythe 
 Smiths for the art-decoration of their magnifi- 
 cent house in Piccadilly. The whole future of 
 the drama hung on this one apparently unim- 
 portant act. Had he taken the Redhill commis- 
 sion and stayed where he was, the story of his 
 life and Estelle's would have been completely 
 changed.
 
 275 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 PANEM ET CIRCENSES. 
 
 In this queer life of ours, with its intricacies of 
 sacrifice and its interdependence of circum- 
 stances, no pleasure comes to one without pain 
 to another. As in social ordering the helot 
 makes the aristocrat, so from the smiles of the 
 endowed spring the tears of the bereaved. The 
 wedding-wreath is gathered from the rose-trees 
 on the grave ; the mother suffers that the child 
 may rejoice ; the accumulated wealth of one 
 comes from the loss or toil of many; and all 
 work by which mankind has benefited has cost 
 blood and treasure and the burden of such 
 grave care as must needs go with endeavour. 
 Gethsemane is the mirror of the world and co- 
 
 T 2
 
 276 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 oval with the ages ; and the stream of those who 
 pass through the gates of its mournful garden 
 is as large as life itself. 
 
 Now, here at Kingshouse in a small way and 
 with narrow borderings, was enacted the old 
 familiar drama of gain and loss. The 'panem 
 et circenses ' offered to Charlie meant banyan 
 days in the house of happiness to Estelle ; and 
 Love suffered equally with each because Pros- 
 perity took up the running with one. There 
 was this consolation, however — Charlie's pros- 
 perity would eventually be Estelle's happiness ; 
 for, of course, she was as fixed in her deter- 
 mination to wait for him, all her life if need be, 
 and never marry another come what might 
 — as fixed as those stars in the sky, which some- 
 how seemed her sympathizers and confidantes 
 when her mother was acrid and Charlie in- 
 visible. 
 
 Their parting was in secret, as their meetings 
 had been. When the handsome young Detri- 
 mental called at Les Saules to salve over old 
 sores and blot out old scores, he saw Mr. and 
 Mrs. Clanricarde only. Estelle was in the wood,
 
 PANEM ET CIRCENSES, 277 
 
 and her mother was not too curious as to her 
 daughter's whereabouts. She was too grateful to 
 providence and Mr. Smythe Smith to grudge a 
 few crumbs of content to the poor little dove who 
 was to be the sacrifice. Believing as she did 
 in the transforming power of change and 
 absence, she trusted in these to destroy the love 
 into which the old boy and girl affection had 
 developed. Besides, the chapter of accidents 
 for a beautiful young creature like Estelle has 
 a broad margin. Hence, she could afford to be 
 quite humane to Charlie Osborne when he came 
 to take his leave of them all ; and she even con- 
 descended to speak of Estelle's absence as some- 
 thing in which he might be supposed to take an 
 interest. It was a folly well over, she thought 
 — something like measles or nettlerash, or haply 
 scarlatina, and she did not foresee ' sequela?/ 
 
 Hidden in the wood from all eyes but those 
 friendly ones of the Great Mother, poor Estelle 
 was breaking her heart, yet doing her best not 
 to be too selfish in her sorrow. It was for 
 Charlie's good in every way that he should 
 have this splendid commission ; and she knew
 
 278 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 as well as he that it was for her good too in 
 the end. Were not their lives essentially one, 
 although to all appearance as yet divided? 
 Still, the moment was bitter, and Estelle was 
 not ashamed to suffer. But all things came 
 to an end. * Tout casse, tout lasse, tout 
 passe,' says the melancholy French proverb ; 
 and sorrow itself stumbles slowly forward to 
 oblivion as anguish creeps onwards to death. 
 Tears and protestations — the kisses consecrated 
 to pain and those which are pledges of 
 future joy — farewells repeated solemnly as the 
 last, then, lost and confounded in another 
 embrace — smiles which are sadder than tears, 
 and assurances which somehow carry no weight 
 and bring no content — who that has ever loved 
 does not know the whole diapason of this suffer- 
 ing, the whole sad framing of this threnody 1 
 Those two young creatures in the wood went 
 through the old familiar tragedy ; and then the 
 moment came when they must absolutely part 
 — his face turned to the mighty world of 
 London, where he should find the grand anodyne 
 of work and the noble stimulus of active en-
 
 PAXEM ET CIRCENSES. 279 
 
 deavour — she to the restricted life of home 
 where her mother would not be her friend and 
 her father might not. But so it is. The weak 
 one is ever singled to * endure what it once pos- 
 sessed ;' and while the men dare and die the 
 women live and weep. 
 
 Spring and summer, and even autumn itself, 
 had fled now for Estelle. It was the winter of 
 her soul. Her lover was away and the sun had 
 gone out of her sky. She would have felt it in 
 a certain sense treacherous to her great trust 
 had she been even moderately happy in his 
 absence. To have been gay would have been 
 impiety. She carried her sorrow as the 
 Christians of old times carried the sign of their 
 faith, hidden within her breast, but ever to be 
 made visible to those who should care to pluck 
 it forth. She gave up society, and found the 
 vicarage parties the very haunts of dulness and 
 the homes of ennui. She suddenly became 
 miserly of time, and her diligence at home was 
 really edifying to the whole household. She 
 was very sweet and good to her mother ; sub- 
 missive to the last degree in all small matters,
 
 280 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 as if wanting to atone for her disobedience in 
 that one, the largest and most important of all ; 
 making up by pennyworths for the transference 
 of the whole capital. She got up early and she 
 did a vast amount of needlework ; but here and 
 there, when the colours were not quite fast, 
 there were blotches as if the thread had * run ' 
 and stained the cloth. 
 
 Her extreme docility touched Mrs. Clanricarde, 
 who was by no means a bad-hearted woman, 
 though she was what we call concretely Worldly 
 — with cause enough, poor soul! But though 
 it touched her on one side, it made her sus- 
 picious and watchful on another, for she under- 
 stood to a nicety that art of making up by 
 pennyworths when the main capital has been 
 squandered. Was she not accustomed to it from 
 her husband 1 
 
 This suspiciousness, however, was not suffered 
 to appear. Mrs. Clanricarde was far too clever 
 to spoil the whole brew for want of a little 
 sugar. Nor was she in any sense an unnatural 
 mother, indifferent to her daughter's love and 
 careless of her happiness. On the contrary, it
 
 PANEM ET CIRCENSES. 281 
 
 was because she honestly believed this happi- 
 ness was to be found in the long-run in money 
 rather than in love, that she had opposed Charlie 
 Osborne and taken up with Caleb Stagg — a 
 better not being at hand. She responded then 
 to all Estelle's sweet little advances with 
 sympathetic acceptance ; and went half way to 
 meet her. She never alluded to the late cloud 
 that had been between them, nor to him whose 
 shape it bore. She seemed to have forgiven 
 and even forgotten that little episode about 
 Caleb Stagg, with all the disappointment it had 
 brought, and to have wiped it off the slate of 
 life's past transactions altogether. She looked 
 narrowly after the post, and let her daughter 
 receive all Charlie's letters unintercepted — know- 
 ing that to have prevented these first deliveries 
 would have simply created an underground 
 post-office, where she would have had no super- 
 vision. What she would do in the future was 
 another matter altogether. She believed in the 
 Fabian policy of weakening by delay, and that 
 * Les absents ont toujours tort.' But as matters 
 were for the moment, all things stood on velvet,
 
 282 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 and, save for that wolf of impecuniosity prowling 
 ever more closely round the door, one would 
 have said that the household at Les Saules was 
 in better case than it had been for months past 
 — indeed, ever since handsome Charlie Osborne 
 had come down from London to [translate his 
 boyish affection into a man's conscious passion, 
 and Estelle had passed from a maidenhood as 
 undisturbed as Bonnie Kilmeny's into one be- 
 sieged, possessed and overmastered by love. 
 
 Meanwhile, Charlie Osborne found his place 
 in London one after his own heart. Had he 
 had the ordering of things he could not have 
 framed a better pattern. The Srnythe Smiths 
 were charming people — for parvenus. Of course, 
 they were pretentious. That is the very essence 
 of the condition. For, being afraid to show 
 ignorance, and not knowing into what circles of 
 knowledge high-bred people are in a manner 
 born, the parvenu assumes to know everything, 
 and makes bad shots in consequence. But 
 they were substantially sensible people, and 
 amenable. To apparently yield was in reality 
 to direct ; as Charlie soon found out, and sagely
 
 PANEM ET CIRCENSES. 283 
 
 acted on. When Mrs. Symthe Smith made her 
 suggestions — which were blemishes, and Mr. 
 S my the Smith made his— which were suicidal, 
 the young artist accepted them as though they 
 were absolutely worth considering. He began 
 by praising them en bloc, and ended by deftly 
 whittling them away to nothing. But he made 
 the renunciation come from them, as their own 
 spontaneous decision, and so saved their self- 
 love, his own credit, and the harmony of his 
 ideas unbroken. Then, they were generous 
 people, and spared no expense in any direction* 
 And next to the pleasure of spending one's own 
 money is that of manipulating other people's — a 
 pleasure of which Charlie was keenly conscious, 
 and by no means shy in its use. Mrs. Smythe 
 Smith, too, a showy, well-preserved woman on 
 the right side of forty, had taken an immense 
 fancy for this handsome artist, guest and friend. 
 She called herself his mother, and treated him 
 with as much affection as she treated her own 
 son, Lawrence — a tall, well-built young athlete 
 of twenty, who looked more like her younger 
 brother than her son. She petted him greatly,.
 
 284 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 and made much of him in all ways. She flatter- 
 ed him both delicately and deliciously; and 
 yielded to his opinion with that mixture of 
 dignity and tenderness which no young man 
 alive can resist. Not Estelle herself touched 
 that irritable self-love of his with a softer hand 
 than did this wealthy parvenue whom Charlie 
 himself was not ashamed to own as his 
 patroness. 
 
 On his side Mr. Smythe Smith was just as kind, 
 just as satisfactory. He had taken to heart Lady 
 Elizabeth's hint about discovering genius and 
 making a great artist's career, and he was re- 
 solved that Charlie Osborne should have his 
 way made in royal fashion. He was building 
 his own monument in this potential fame of the 
 ■as yet unfledged phoenix. When Charlie should 
 be Sir Charles and the President of the Royal 
 Academy, it would be in everyone's mouth 
 how the great Mr. Smythe Smith had seen 
 his power from the first, had dug him out 
 from obscurity and given him his first job. 
 Maecenas has come down to posterity together 
 with the great men he feasted and patron-
 
 PANEM ET CIRCENSES. 285- 
 
 ized ; and he, Mr. Smythe Smith, would play 
 the part of a modem Maacenas, begiiming with 
 Charlie Osborne. So that, as may be seen, 
 everything went well for the lover of Estelle 
 Clanricarde ; and even Lawrence, who did not 
 care a pennypiece for friezes or dados, peacocks 
 or sunflowers, had a younger comrade's admiration 
 for the artist, who was a gentleman and a good 
 fellow all round. And he did not grudge either 
 his salary or his command of the governor's 
 money, seeing that he had as much as he wanted 
 for himself; nor yet did he grudge him the 
 mater's affection, seeing that he was too much 
 occupied in making his own experience out of 
 doors to be very observant of things at home. 
 
 To do Charlie justice, nothing of all this 
 touched his fidelity to Estelle. It was intoxi- 
 cating and delightful enough ; but it swept over 
 his senses rather than his heart, and captivated 
 his vanity more than his love. He did not 
 make the mistake of supposing that Mrs. Smythe 
 Smith's very pronounced affection for him meant 
 more than it assumed to mean. It never 
 occurred to him to ' try it on ' with the wife of
 
 286 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 his patron, who was also his host and friend; 
 nor to imperil his advantageous present for the 
 dangerous excitement of a possible intrigue. 
 He was also wise enough to know that the 
 patron is always more or less the lion, while 
 the patronized is correspondingly the mouse. 
 Hence, he never allowed himself to feel secure 
 to the extent of taking liberties — which also 
 were not, in his code, permitted to true gentle- 
 hood. And he was a conscientious worker — 
 more especially when his heart was in his work, 
 as now, when every success he scored was to the 
 good of the future and brought him so much 
 the nearer to Estelle. He never forgot her, 
 and wrote to her at the first frantically and 
 frequently — as time went on, with the most 
 lovely and consoling regularity, but not so 
 often, and with less of the poison of despair 
 and more of the honey of hope in his 
 letters. He was evidently cheerful to happiness 
 and full of rose-coloured schemes for the future. 
 He told Estelle all that he was doing, and sent 
 her little thumb-nail sketches of his principal 
 ideas. This associated her with him, and kept
 
 PANEM ET CIRCENSES. 287 
 
 the bond between them unbroken and un- 
 strained ; and though she was too sweet and 
 loving to be either jealous or suspicious, exact- 
 ing or insistent, still this voluntary confidence 
 and strict association made her very happy — so 
 far as a girl separated for an indefinite time from 
 the man she passionately loves, and with whom 
 her engagement is in secret and against her 
 mother's permission, can be said to be happy in 
 any sense. 
 
 So time passed, and the autumn and the 
 winter flowed once more into the spring, and 
 still things were exactly where they were. The 
 grand house in Piccadilly was now almost 
 finished, and the Smythe Smiths would soon 
 move into it. Charlie had made a good 'hat- 
 full ' of money, as he phrased it, and he had 
 been careful — for a young artist — and not ex- 
 travagant. He had looked on it as a nest-egg 
 and treated it as such ; seeing in it fair shapes 
 of home and wife, of fame and fortune, and 
 reverencing it for what it was set aside to bring. 
 But a thunderbolt fell out of the blue ; and a 
 cloud at first no bigger than a man's hand soon
 
 288 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 swept over the whole sunny south. Charlie's 
 health, which had long been giving Mrs. 
 Smythe Smith uneasiness, though he himself 
 made light of her fears, suddenly gave way 
 with a run, and a broken blood-vessel brought 
 him to the brink of the grave and kept him 
 there for some time. 
 
 As no one knew of his engagement to Estelle 
 Clanricarde, there was no one to write and tell 
 her what had happened, nor what was the reason 
 of this sudden cessation of letters. The poor 
 girl fretted herself ill in sympathy with her 
 absent lover; feeling sure that it was illness 
 with him, and in no wise treachery nor deser- 
 tion. At her instance, Lady Elizabeth took it 
 on herself to write to Mrs. Smythe Smith, 
 making general inquiries as to the work, and 
 whether they were not pleased with their artist, 
 and when would it be finished, &c, &c. All 
 meaning the one simple little question : ' Why 
 has not Charlie Osborne written for so long to 
 Estelle Clanricarde V 
 
 Then Mrs. Smythe Smith answered, and the 
 sorrowful truth came out. They were more
 
 PAXEM ET CIRCENSES. 289 
 
 than pleased, she said, with all that Mr. Osborne 
 had done for them, and felt they could never 
 repay Lady Elizabeth for her recommendation. 
 Mr. Osborne was not only a delightful artist, 
 but he was a most charming young man ; and 
 they had all taken him into their affections as 
 if he had been a member of their family. Un- 
 fortunately his health had broken down, and 
 that very seriously. But he was mending, and 
 the doctor said he would soon be patched up 
 sufficiently to be moved. He would never be a 
 very robust man, but he would probably quite 
 recover from this failure ; and as soon as he was 
 able to bear it they were going to put him on 
 board their steam yacht, and send him round 
 the world with their son. A long sea-voyage 
 to cooler latitudes in summer and warmer in 
 winter would reinstate him entirely ; and they 
 hoped when he returned that he would bring 
 back a stock of strength to last him for all his 
 life after. 
 
 Here, then, the secret was explained, and 
 poor Estelle knew of what material her heavy 
 cross was made. 
 
 VOL. I. U
 
 290 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 There was no help for it. Nor tears nor 
 prayers can stay the tide, put back the hand of 
 time, nor make that broken blood-vessel as 
 good as new without absence, care, and long 
 delay. As things were, it was a merciful order- 
 ing of providence that Charlie had such good 
 friends— people both able and willing to help 
 him in his day of need. Had he been as he was 
 last year, alone in lodgings with only that 
 hundred a year to fall back on — with occasional 
 remittances from an unknown hand, sent for 
 the last four or five years regularly but not to 
 be counted on — his fate might have been very 
 different. Now, all that could be done had 
 been and would still be done ; and this voyage 
 would be perhaps the turning-point in his 
 physical health as this commission had been 
 that of his fortune. 
 
 So Lady Elizabeth argued, doing her best to 
 comfort poor Estelle, who, unselfish and un ex- 
 acting as she might be, yet felt as if this voyage 
 were the doom of her eternal separation, and 
 that she should never more see her beloved. 
 Hope lay dead at her feet, and happiness was
 
 PANEM ET CIRCENSES. 291 
 
 but a broken bubble. Her life was widowed ; 
 her soul was sunk into eternal mourning. 
 Henceforth she had only memory and her own 
 eternal faith. For she would die as she was 
 now — devoted to Charlie and to Charlie only. 
 
 All this she replied to her friend's more cheer- 
 ful arguments, and Lady Elizabeth could not 
 help her. She, as must we all, had to dree her 
 own weird and bear her own burden ; and solace 
 from without there was none. Charlie going 
 away for perhaps a year, perhaps two — ill, un- 
 seen, unkissed, bearing with him only her heart 
 and all her joy — what solace could she have ! 
 Not even her mother's increased tenderness made 
 amends for this supreme loss ; and so the black- 
 ness came, and what had been only the twilight 
 of hope unfulfilled was now the midnight of 
 despair, and a darkness which no star melted and 
 not even a meteor illumined. 
 
 u2
 
 BOOK THE SECOND. 
 
 MIDNIGHT.
 
 295 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE NEW TRUSTEE. 
 
 In the county where they lived the Harfords 
 had that character for eccentricity which belongs 
 to all people of originality of thought or marked 
 individuality of character. Strong, energetic, 
 undisciplined, as lads they ran away from school 
 — as men they shot big game and sought adven- 
 tures in the wilds. Some of them were explorers, 
 and added the source of a river or the exact 
 latitude of a mountain to the possessions of 
 geography. Some of them tried the north-west 
 passage, and died of cold and starvation on the 
 ice ; and others, to whom savages were no more 
 men and brothers than so many rats and mice, 
 were killed by poisoned arrows on a South-Sea 
 island when they did not die of fever in a man-
 
 296 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 grove swamp or were not eateu by crocodiles in 
 the river. As a family, they had gone all over 
 the world, seen every kind of life and died every 
 kind of death. Even the heirs to the estate had, 
 more than once, set the pleasures of wild adven- 
 tures against the possession of a t stake,' and 
 found the * stake ' the lighter of the two. Not 
 a Harford among them all had ever demeaned 
 himself to commerce, to medicine, or to law. 
 Some had gone into the army, and some into 
 the navy ; both of which services they generally 
 managed to make somewhat too hot for them, 
 and thus were either cashiered or given a roving 
 commission, which allowed them more liberty of 
 adventure than the regulars enjoyed. Some- 
 times, when they had kicked over the traces at 
 home more recklessly than usual, they had 
 enlisted as privates or gone as sailors before the 
 mast ; when, either their unruly spirit had been 
 so far knocked out of them as to make them glad 
 to be bought off and reduced to conventional 
 conformity — or else they had deserted, to be 
 caught and shot — or they had fled into space, 
 to be never heard of again.
 
 THE NEW TRUSTEE. 297 
 
 All sorts of wild traditions floated through the 
 family annals. A white man had been heard of 
 as a medicine-man of power among the Black- 
 feet Indians — and he was a Harford. The most 
 daring pirate in the Chinese seas was said to be 
 an Englishman, and if so, who could he be but a 
 Harford? The mysterious Europeans always 
 turning up as Mohammedans, in turbans and 
 baggy breeches, were Harfords to a man : and 
 there was never a time when there was not a 
 Harford, under another name, in the workhouse 
 or in prison, driving a cab or sweeping a cross- 
 ing. In short, they were the modern represen- 
 tatives of the Vikings, the knights-errant, the 
 Crusaders, the Uscoques, the freelances of all 
 times and nations. But they made good mem- 
 bers of society when they did settle down; 
 and as owners of the estate were as hard on 
 poachers as if they were not of the same kidney 
 themselves. 
 
 The Jack Harford who had just died had been 
 in his youth quite up to the family traditions for 
 wildness, which had not prevented his marrying 
 a well-conditioned lady, who gave him two
 
 298 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 children, and then no more. She died when 
 young Anthony was about twelve years old and 
 his sister Constance two years hig junior ; and 
 next year the widower married again. "Which 
 second marriage, adding fuel to the fire of the 
 wild Harford blood, sent Anthony off on his un- 
 authorized travels when he was eighteen — 
 whence he did not return till brought back by 
 his father's death and his own inheritance. 
 
 For the first months more pressing business 
 than that Aspline trusteeship took up his time 
 and absorbed his attention. There was his 
 father's widow to deal with ; his half-brothers 
 and sisters to see ; their claims to look into — to 
 dispute when he could, and to settle with as 
 good a grace as might be when he could not. 
 Not that he was close-fisted ; but he had ever 
 cherished that old resentment against the 
 marriage which had landed him in the Wild 
 West of America so soon as he had got his head ; 
 and he was reconciled to his step-mother no 
 more now than before. He was a man with that 
 close-set tenacity of feeling which creates a ven- 
 detta or heads a crusade, and is as likely to come
 
 THE NEW TRUSTEE. 299 
 
 to the scaffold for crime as to the stake for heroism. 
 Forgiveness was a virtue so hard as to have 
 been hitherto impossible, and so distasteful as to 
 appear to him a vice because a weakness; while 
 revenge was the strong man's prerogative — the 
 inalienable right of the injured. No man who 
 had ever crossed Anthony Harford's path or in- 
 flicted on him any kind of loss or wrong, had 
 lived long to celebrate his victory. But with all 
 his fiery passions he had kept his masculine in- 
 tegrity without a flaw ; and the man did not live 
 who could say that Anthony Harford had ' ever 
 funked or ever lied,' had hurt the defenceless, 
 injured the innocent, or lured wife or maid to 
 the undoing of her fair fame. 
 
 In the Border states and cities, where he had 
 carried his life in his hand, he had been com- 
 pelled into the line of action to which his in- 
 herited proclivities naturally drew him. There, 
 where a man's virtue is still emphatically his 
 courage and his manliness, passion reaching 
 into ferocity is only a defect, and self-respect, 
 quickly kindling into passion, is certainly a 
 quality. To brook no impertinence; to wash
 
 300 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 out an insult in blood ; to be the second to show 
 and the first to draw ; to brush aside him who 
 else will brush you aside ; to court no quarrel but 
 to avoid none that courts you ; to respect all and 
 demand respect from all, with revolver and 
 bowie knife if need be — these are among the 
 first principles of life in such lawless places as 
 those where Anthony Harford had lived. And 
 they were principles which accorded only too 
 well with his own nature. But by this very 
 lawlessness, this very necessity for self-defence, 
 he had learned self-control. 
 
 When folks live in a powder magazine they are 
 careful about fire ; and insolence or aggression 
 among quick-tempered men, handy with their 
 shooting-irons and unrestrained by law, is too 
 dangerous a pastime to be often indulged in. 
 Hence Anthomy Harford had learned to watch 
 himself as well as others, and his passions, which 
 were once like unbroken steeds, were now those 
 same steeds in harness, curbed, bitted and 
 directed. But they were essentially the same 
 creatures. It was only the training that was 
 different. And, as we all know, harness will
 
 THE NEW TRUSTEE. 301 
 
 sometimes break, and the best trained beast 
 will sometimes take the bit between his teeth 
 — and then farewell to all the arts of the 
 manege ! 
 
 His return to old scenes and the consciousness 
 of responsibility, together with that invisible 
 but omnipotent influence of public opinion, 
 wrought, as might be expected, on Anthony. 
 At first he did not like the change. After those 
 boundless wastes, those pathless forests, those 
 'unharvested seas' of prairie land, those un- 
 scaleable mountains crowned with eternal snow, 
 those uninhabited regions where the snake hissed 
 and the grizzly roamed, England seemed both 
 painfully crowded and ludicrously small. To 
 stand on a hill a few hundred feet above the 
 plain and see the fields and farms mapped out 
 below, gave him the impression of a child's toy 
 a puzzle on a rather large scale, cunningly con- 
 trived and neatly fitted, but wanting in dignity 
 and reality. His own place, beautiful as it was, 
 seemed scarce large enough for a man's full 
 breathing ; and the details of management were 
 pitifully mean and sordid and minute. To waste
 
 302 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 words or give two thoughts to Dick's drain or 
 Joe's chimney — to hesitate for a moment before 
 ordering Tom's lean-to or Will's new barn — 
 why, it all seemed the meanest thing out ; and he 
 acceded to this and that with a generosity of 
 sweep which made his bailiff stand aghast, 
 gatherer-in as he was of the numerous pickles 
 which in the aggregate make a mickle. By 
 degrees, however, the returned wanderer learnt 
 the lesson of proportion, and narrowed the wide 
 generosity of his first sweep to dimensions bet- 
 ter fitted to home life. He no longer thought 
 it shame to accept little rents of a few pounds 
 a-year from labourers whose children went 
 barefooted and whose cupboard often wanted 
 bread. He held it as part of the obligations of 
 his state as landlord and proprietor to higgle 
 over every little improvement or repair needed 
 by his tenants ; and to force them, for the sake 
 of the principle, to contribute so many shillings, 
 on their own side — representing empty stomachs 
 and shivering bodies, where he felt neither the out- 
 lay nor the saving more than he felt the weight 
 of a fly on his shoulder. He was never a grasp-
 
 THE NEW TRUSTEE. 303 
 
 ing landlord nor a greedy, and his name stood 
 high in the county for largeness of generosity ; 
 but he learnt to curb his natural instincts into 
 exacter conformity with the public feeling and 
 general action of his class, and something of 
 the scent of the wild sage-bushes passed off him. 
 But he retained certain characteristics and 
 qualities gained by contact with lawlessness and 
 association with danger ; and he added to the 
 unmistakable carriage of an English gentleman 
 that peculiar air of dignity, reserve and self-re- 
 spect which sits like a garment on the shoulders 
 of one used to the rough life of the Wild West. 
 
 Brave as a lion and as strong as he was 
 brave ; handsome as a Greek bronze ; with the 
 eyes of a scout and the port of a king ; supple as 
 a panther and stately as a stag ; Anthony Har- 
 ford was one to move all women's hearts to love 
 — all men's eyes to admiration. Wherever he 
 went a little cloud of whispered incense rose 
 round him — and his face, figure, attitude, the 
 way in which he stood and the way in which he 
 looked, were all freely commented on, sometimes 
 within ear-shot. Whether he heard or not his
 
 304 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 commentators never knew. His face showed 
 nothing. The erect bearing, statuesque and 
 still; the keen eyes, watchful, expectant, waiting, 
 never aggressive, never provocative, simply- 
 watchful and expectant; the immobile face, 
 neither frowning nor smiling, not hard, not ex- 
 pressionless, but the face of one waiting for 
 indications ; all gave the new owner of Thrift a 
 distinction which no man could either imitate or 
 obscure. His manner, too, was on a par with 
 his appearance, and was the active side of his 
 bearing. He spoke to everyone in the same 
 tone and with the same kind of dignified respect, 
 which was but the expression of his own self- 
 respect. The lord and the labourer received 
 precisely the same measure. If the scent of the 
 wild sage-bushes was slowly passing, the impress 
 of the habit of equality remained. He neither 
 kow-towed to superior greatness for his own 
 part, nor demanded that the inferior should kow- 
 tow to him. He reckoned men by their manhood, 
 not by their possessions ; and when the labourers 
 were servile and his tenants too humble, his 
 gorge rose against them, and he despised them
 
 THE NEW TRUSTEE. 305 
 
 in proportion to the suppleness of their backs 
 and the weakness of their knees. He expected 
 even poverty to be self-respecting, and he was 
 revolted when he saw the survival of serfdom 
 and the taint of personal degradation, still 
 remaining among his countrymen as the inherit- 
 ance of poverty and the badge of class. But all 
 this, too, wore away in time ; at least the out- 
 ward expressions and manifestations wore away, 
 and simply left him graver, more dignified, 
 more austere even than the rest — but deprived 
 of his expectations that his tenants should treat 
 him as their equal and not as their superior — as 
 a man and not a demi-god. 
 
 After he had got all his own affairs in smooth 
 working order, Anthony Harford bethought him- 
 salf of that trusteeship which he had to take up. 
 The image of his fluffy little playmate and 
 humanized puff-ball had often come before him 
 like a pretty picture; and he had as often laid 
 that image aside till the more important matters 
 connected with his succession had been settled. 
 Now, however, he had leisure ; and his desire to 
 renew those pleasant links between boyhood and 
 
 VOL. I. X
 
 306 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 fairyland grew with that leisure and finally took 
 the lead. He wrote to Mrs. Aspline a cold 
 letter of business details. He began ' Dear 
 madam,' and he ended ' truly yours.' But at the 
 end he infused a little dash of humanity, well 
 iced, by hoping that her daughter, Miss Aspline, 
 was well, and desiring to be recalled to her 
 memory. The letter was purposely made in- 
 complete and somewhat disappointing. He 
 thought it would probably bring a request for a 
 personal interview, which was what he desired 
 and was too proud to propose. 
 
 His little ruse had the desired effect. His 
 letter piqued and annoyed Mrs. Aspline — it 
 piqued and disappointed Anne. 
 
 1 This man is going to give me worlds of 
 trouble — I can see that P said the mother, her face 
 flushing seriously. ' He is as stupid as a boiled 
 owl !' she added. Then she wished she had left 
 out the boiled. 
 
 * He seems rather confused,' said Anne, follow- 
 ing her mother's lead at a discreet distance, 
 echoing her thought as faintly as the second 
 rainbow repeats the first.
 
 THE NEW TRUSTEE. 307 
 
 ' I shall have to go to London to consult Mr. 
 Niemand,' said Mrs. Aspline peevishly. ' I should 
 so much like to have another trustee ! This 
 savage will never do any good. I daresay he 
 has forgotten his own language by now.' 
 
 * He writes correctly,' said Anne with an air 
 of deliberation. 
 
 ' Oh ! his bailiff wrote for him,' said Mrs. 
 Aspline with an air of conviction. 
 
 Her daughter smiled in that vague pretty 
 way which may mean deprecation, assent, or 
 amusement, just as you like to take it. And you 
 take it according to your mood. 
 
 ' If I were not afraid of his habits I would ask 
 him to come here, and we could talk matters 
 over,' said Mrs. Aspline, who hated trouble and 
 dreaded travelling. 
 
 1 1 dare say he would be bearable,' returned 
 Anne, who secretly wanted him to come and 
 privately intended that he should be asked. 
 
 She had already woven two separate dreams 
 out of the flimsy web of her fancy— the one that 
 her old playmate had been a kind of corsair 
 creature, like Conrad, for instance ; a daring, 
 
 x2
 
 308 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 beautiful, reckless sort of unauthorised hero, 
 ruthless to men, but as soft as satin and rose- 
 leaves to women — a perverted but ever noble 
 soul, whom she would bring back to conformity 
 and the catechism, and so stand as the god- 
 mother to his spiritual redemption. The other 
 was, that he was a naive and delightful savage, 
 whom she would educate into the right use of 
 his spoon and fork. A misty and indistinct 
 recollection of some story she had once read 
 somewhere, gave her this idea ; and the name 
 of Anthony Harford did as well as any other for 
 her imaginary Huron. In any case she foresaw 
 gleams of sunshine and streaks of prismatic 
 colours across that rather dull sky of her daily 
 life, should this new element of interest be intro- 
 duced, and she hoped to imbue her mother with 
 her desire so as to make it appear her own — as 
 in general she was able to do. 
 
 ' It will scarcely do for us to present a savage 
 to our friends,' said Mrs. Aspline dubiously. 
 
 ' No,' said Anne ; * unless he amused them. 
 And Kingshouse is so dull, perhaps it would 
 brighten it up a little.'
 
 THE NEW TRUSTEE. 309 
 
 'But if he is horrid in his habits, Anne'?' 
 objected her mother. 
 
 ' We must tell him,' said Anne. 
 
 ' 1 am sure / would not !' said Mrs. Aspline 
 warmly. 
 
 ' I would if you liked,' said Anne calmly. 
 
 * Well, Anne, if you like to take the responsi- 
 bility of the creature I am sure I do not mind,' 
 Mrs. Aspline returned after a moment's pause. 
 ' Bad as he very likely is, Thrift is a lovely 
 place, and the old family name is worth some- 
 thing, though the Harfords are such a queer lot. 
 We are not responsible for him after all. He 
 stands on his own feet. He is not like a nobody 
 whom we introduced and vouched for. He is a 
 Harford when all is said and done. So perhaps 
 I may venture.' 
 
 'I think you may,' said Anne in her usual 
 languid dreamy manner, though she could 
 scarcely repress the smile which rose to her 
 lips. 
 
 But it was not her way to be frank nor ex- 
 pansive. Her theory was to govern with con- 
 cealed methods — holding the lever by which
 
 310 THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT. 
 
 the ship was quickened or slackened, but out of 
 sight of all eyes and unfelt by all hands. With 
 her mother she used these concealed methods 
 more carefully than with any one else. She 
 feared her jealousy — the jealousy of the reign- 
 ing sovereign, ever ready to take umbrage at 
 the heir-apparent, and to find freedom of action 
 usurpation and the premature discounting of 
 future powers. Mrs. Aspline had never quite 
 forgiven her lord and master for that tightly- 
 drawn will. She thought he might have left 
 her daughter to her care, and not have tied-up 
 the money as if she had been a swindler, or some 
 unnatural mother who did not regard her 
 daughter's interests as she ought. She had 
 often fluffed and fumed to Anne over that 
 provision of her father's will ; and Anne knew 
 exactly what she thought and how she felt. 
 Hence the substantial reason for her discreet 
 following, her repeating echo, her faint repro- 
 duction of her mother's moods and words while 
 she had her hand on that lever by which the 
 concealed machinery below was moved. 
 
 * I think you may,' she said languidly ; ' and,
 
 THE NEW TRUSTEE. 311 
 
 as you say, he is a Harford, not an Aspline. 
 Thrift condones a great many faults/ 
 
 Hence it came about that Anthony's wish 
 was fulfilled, and that a letter of invitation was 
 sent to him at Thrift — a letter almost as coldly 
 worded as his own, and written in Mrs. Aspline's 
 scratchy, fugitive kind of hand, which gave top 
 loops to all her consonants and lower twists to 
 all her vowels, and took four times as much 
 space as one twice as large would have taken. 
 
 * Good,' said Anthony Harford when he 
 received the letter. ' I will go next week. 1 
 wonder what I shall find — whether little 
 Anne has grown into a bright girl or is a little 
 cuss, and whether Cookey is as fat as she used 
 to be when she gave me cakes and sweeties, 
 and I thought her the prettiest lady in the 
 county, who could beat the whole lot — hands 
 down !' 
 
 END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
 LONDON : PRINTED BY DUNCAN MACDONALD, BLENHEIM HOUSE.