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Title: The extraordinary confessions of Diana Please

Author: Bernard Capes

Release date: January 27, 2023 [eBook #69885]
                Most recently updated: October 19, 2024

Language: English

Original publication: United Kingdom: METHUEN & CO

Credits: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EXTRAORDINARY CONFESSIONS OF DIANA PLEASE ***

 THE EXTRAORDINARY
 CONFESSIONS OF
 DIANA PLEASE

 HERE “ENGLISHED” FROM THE ORIGINAL
 SHORTHAND NOTES, IN FRENCH, OF M. LE
 MARQUIS DE C----, A FRIEND TO WHOM
 SHE DICTATED THEM,

 BY
 BERNARD CAPES
 AUTHOR OF
 “THE LAKE OF WINE,” “PLOTS” ETC. ETC.


 METHUEN & CO.
 36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
 LONDON
 1904




 CONTENTS

 INTRODUCTORY
 I. I MAKE MY DÉBUT
 II. I AM ABDUCTED
 III. I ESCAPE
 IV. I FALL INTO THE HANDS OF A COLLECTOR
 V. I AM CARRIED AWAY AS A SPECIMEN
 VI. I AM “PINNED OUT”
 VII. I AM PUT AWAY IN CAMPHOR
 VIII. I MEET MR. NOEL DE CRESPIGNY
 IX. I AM COMMITTED TO THE ----
 X. I BEWITCH A MONSTER
 XI. I ADD THE LAST TOUCH TO A PORTRAIT
 XII. I AM INFAMOUSLY RETALIATED ON
 XIII. I AM WOOED TO SELF-DESTRUCTION
 XIV. I AM RESCUED BY MY MONSTER
 XV. I BECOME AN INMATE OF “RUPERT’S FOLLY”
 XVI. I PUT AN END TO ONE FOLLY
 XVII. I AM CONSIGNED TO A GREEN GRAVE
 XVIII. I BEGIN ANOTHER FOLLY
 XIX. I AM MAID MARIAN
 XX. I PUT AN END TO FOLLY NUMBER TWO
 XXI. I AM METAMORPHOSED
 XXII. I RUN ACROSS AN OLD FRIEND
 XXIII. I AM MADE FORTUNE’S MISTRESS
 XXIV. I FIND A FRIEND IN NEED
 XXV. I DECLARE FOR THE KING
 XXVI. I RENEW AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE
 XXVII. I KNOW HOW TO WAIT
 XXVIII. I RETURN TO NAPLES
 XXIX. I STILL KNOW HOW TO WAIT
 XXX. I AM JUSTIFIED IN MY POLICY
 XXXI. I KNOW MY OWN HEART




 INTRODUCTORY

 “_I am convinced she rivalled, at fifty, the exquisite Diane de
 Poitiers herself, in the brightness of her wit and the perfection of
 her form, and might have passed as triumphantly a like test of the
 marble._”

                       The Marquis de C---- in his “Foreword.”

If the public seeks any apology for this introduction to it, at a
late date, of the extraordinary woman whose self-dictated Memoirs form
the staple of the following pages, it must look for it in the
references of her contemporaries; it will be far from gathering it
from her own autobiography.

Diane Rosemonde de St. Croix (to give her her proper mother-title)
considered that she owed to Romance, in a glowing age, what, in a
practical one, is conceded by a thousand dull and petty vanities to a
vulgar curiosity--her personal reminiscences. She had at least the
justification of her qualities, and the good fortune to find, in her
latter-day friend, the Marquis de C----, an enthusiastic historian of
them. In the question of their appeal, one way or the other, to the
English reader, the present transcriber (from the original French
notes) must hold himself responsible both for choice and style.

Madame de St. Croix was a “passionist,” as the French called Casanova;
and, indeed, she had many points in common with that redoubtable
adventurer: an unappeasable vagabondism; a love of letters; an ardent
imagination; an incorruptible self-love; and, lastly, what we may term
an exotic orthodoxy. If, subscribing to the universal creed which
makes man’s soul his fetish, she worshipped an exacting god, she was
at least always ready to sacrifice the world to gratify it, and now,
no doubt, very logically sings among the angels.

In the matter of her more notorious characteristics, M. de C----, lest
her part on earth should suffer misconstruction by the censorious, is
so good as to speak with some show of finality. “I deny,” he says,
“the title adventuress to my charming and accomplished friend. It is
nothing if not misleading. Every day we venture something, for love,
for hunger, for ambition. He who deviates from rice and barley-water,
venturing on spiced dishes, makes every time an assault on his
epigastrium. He who is not content with an ignoble mediocrity, though
he do no more than take pains with a letter, is a candidate for fame.
And as for love, it does not exist on the highway. Why should it imply
distinction to call a man an adventurer, and be invidious to style a
woman adventuress? Ulysses dallying in Ææa is surely no more
honourable a sight than Godiva traversing Coventry in an adorable
deshabille. To have the wide outlook, the catholic sympathy--is that
to merit defamation? No, it is to be heroically human. Better sin like
an angel, I say, than be a sick devil and virtuous.”

It remains only to mention that the present transcript conducts no
further than to the finish of a dramatic period of Madame de St.
Croix’s story; and to that, even, at the expense of a considerable
lacuna (referred to in its place), which no research has hitherto been
successful in filling. It is hoped, however, that, in what is given,
enough will be found to interest.

                                                        B. C.

[_Note_.--An ingenious etymologist supplies a likely derivation for
the “duck-stone,” so often mentioned in the text, from the Slavic
_dook_ or _duk_, signifying to spirit away. Accepting this genesis,
the duck-stone, given to Mrs. Please by the gypsy, becomes the _dook_,
or _bewitching_-stone, and is imbued with whatever virtues our faith
or our credulity may suggest.]




 THE EXTRAORDINARY
 CONFESSIONS OF DIANA PLEASE[1]

 I.
 I MAKE MY DÉBUT

At my friend M. de C----’s instigation I sit down in the noon of my
life to talk of its morning.

I look first to your gallantry, my dear Alcide, to see that this
statement is not misconstrued. That I have a past argues nothing of my
remoteness from it. In comparison with the immortality which is surely
to be mine, everything on this side is youth. I am seventeen, or
thirty-seven, or whatever I choose; and I intend that Heaven, whenever
it calls me, shall find me irresistible. Possessing all the ages, it
cannot grudge me my arbitrary disposition of my own little term.

Now, tell your friends, my dear Alcide, that to succeed in life one
must never ask a woman her age or a man his intentions; and so we
shall all be comfortable.


I owe my mother the most whimsical of grudges, my existence. I will
nickname her the Comtesse de l’Ombre, and so shall abuse no
confidences in relating of my debt to her, and to “Lovelace,” her
collaborator in the romance of which I am the heroine. She was very
beautiful; and he, an English cadet of distinction, was an
aristocratic paragon.

At the age of sixteen, convinced of the hollowness of life, she had
taken the veil, and become the Sister Agnès of the Communauté de
Madelonnettes, Notre Dame de la Charité, in Paris, whence a year
later she was transferred to an English branch of the house. Hence and
from her duty my father, whom she had approached upon a begging
mission, succeeded unhappily in inveigling her.

To the day of her death my mother bore the disfiguring sign of a
little cross on her breast. It has succeeded to me, but in a faint
reflection, a _grain de beauté_, only. I will tell you, in a word,
the story of my inheritance.

The ladies of les Madelonnettes had, in inviting all the feminine
vices to their inauguration ceremony, with the object to pension them
off handsomely, overlooked the bad fairy Jealousy. Thou knowest,
Alcide, the meanness of this witch. To revenge herself, she cast
Lovelace into their midst, as Eris cast the apple of discord upon the
nuptial board of Thetis; and poor de l’Ombre was made the consequent
scapegoat. Driven forth in ignominy from the fold, she could not
suffer so much but that one, over zealous or jealous, must strike her
an envious blow across the bosom, on which she always wore a little
crucifix, the gift of her father. The ebony cut in and left an
indelible scar, to which I was to succeed in pathetic earnest of my
origin. It has never ceased to be a symbol to me of the vanity of
self-renunciation. How can we deny our_selves_, and not deny One after
whose image we are made?

I was born in a lodging at Brighthelmston, whither my father had
conveyed my mother. The town, which has always possessed an attraction
for me, was at that time a very paltry affair of scattered houses, to
which the mumpish or melancholic came periodically to salt their
spleens against a fresh course of dissipations. Locality has never,
however, influenced my temper. The perfume of contentment breathes
from within, and is not to be affected by soil or surroundings. Let us
who have good constitutions continue, as the way is, to accept them
for virtues, and to abhor the dyspeptic as unclean. Let us have the
discretion to ask no questions of our neighbours about what we don’t
understand in this entertaining comedy of life. So shall we justify
ourselves to ourselves, and avoid being made uncomfortable. Is it not
so, my friend?

My mother had never, I do believe, had a doll till I came. She was
very young, even then, and could not tire of playing with me in our
pretty cottage near the Steine. And I responded in all endearing
gaiety and innocence, with the very trustfulness of which she must, I
fear, have come to reproach her apostasy.

Maybe she did, for, as time went on, I can recall a cloud settling
upon her brow--the shadow, perhaps, of the yoke under which she was
passing from girlhood to womanhood. I was already four _when she came
of age_. O, _mon chéri_! think of the tragedy of those italics! And
think of me, a child of a precocious observation, and little ears as
pinkly susceptible to murmurs as the inside of a shell, doomed to
wake--wake to some misty understanding of the unusual in our
relations!

By and by I even confided my suspicions to my father, whom I adored,
and who visited us occasionally, coming down from town very elegant
and _mondain_ and in great company. He laughed, and then frowned over
at mamma, who returned his look steadily.

“Dear sir,” she said only, “the child is growing very critical. Do not
encourage her, and make this cross harder than I can bear.”

“But I too have a cross,” I said; “only it is little and faint, and
not blushing like _maman’s_.”

My papa laughed again, and again frowned, saying, “It is a fact, and
hard on the infant, who has done nothing to deserve it.”

Then he pushed me from him, and rose, and, going to the door, turned
at it with a peevish face.

“I weary of these heroics,” said he. “If you persist in them, remember
that you are qualified, more than ever, for les Madelonnettes.”

He went; and she cried out, as if over some dreadful awakening. But
thenceforth, for some reason, our confidences grew estranged. I loved
my poor mamma so well, that I think she should not have responded by
striving to make heir to her melancholy the innocent cause of it. At
the root of all our moral revolt is a sense of the injustice of
original sin. I, at least, had done nothing to make me unhappy.

Presently I was given a governess, my dear careless father’s nominee.
She was French, a _ci-devant maîtresse de pension_, very lazy and
self-indulgent, and, if not sleeping, she was always ogling for
unattached beaux. Vicious and insolent, she delighted in prompting me
to reflections on my mother’s self-reserve, and “honour” was as much
in her mouth as false teeth. I learned nothing from her but indecorum
and innuendo.

One day--for the moral to her teaching (it was when I was ten years
old)--I was playing truant on the downs, when I saw a small smutty
baby crawl from under a bush into the road at the very moment that a
carriage, wildly driven, was approaching. I had just time to notice
the gilded splendour of the equipage, and, perhaps,--let us be frank,
my friend,--to be inspired to heroism by the sight, before I leapt and
snatched up the child from under the very feet of the galloping
horses. As the chariot thundered by, an elegantly groomed head thrust
itself from the window, and a ruffled hand, waving to me standing
there unhurt but bewildered, flung back a gold coin into the dust. I
turned my back immediately, disillusioned, by the insolence of the
acknowledgment, as to the disinterested quality of my deed, and the
more so as the baby was, _parler franchement_, decidedly unpleasant. I
put the imp down, and began to re-order my little ruffled plumes.
Wouldst thou hear what they were, my Alcide? I can recall them at this
hour: A dainty gipsy hat knotted to a blue ribbon; a stomacher laced
over with silver twist, and a skirt to the ankles, both of flowered
lustring; three pair of ruffles at my bare elbows; a black solitaire
at my neck, and black shoes with red heels and the prettiest of paste
buckles.

Alas! how better than our sins of yesterday do we remember the
stockings we wore to sin in! Let me, for penance, concede to history
these my failings. I was, in fact, colourless in complexion, like
tinted porcelain, with what my detractors used to call spun-glass
hair, and the eyes of a Dresden shepherdess. And I was not at that
time light on my feet, with which my volatile spirits were always at
odds.

Now, as I smoothed my skirt, I was aware of a mad gipsy woman hurrying
from the bank towards me, and crying and gesticulating as she came.
She caught up the infant, and, finding it unharmed, put it down again,
and fawned upon me inarticulate. Then she broke off to curse the
distant carriage up hill and down, and finally went to pick up the
coin from the very spot where she had not failed to mark its fall.

“It is yours,” she said, striding back to me. “Take it!”

“You can keep it,” I answered, with my little nose in the air. “A lady
does not want for money.”

She slipped it into her pocket, and fell on her knees before me.

“Nor beauty, nor love, nor silken raiment,” she cried; “and yet they
are not all. Think, my darling! There be no need so wild but the poor
grateful gipsy may show a way to gratify it.”

I laughed, half annoyed and half frightened; and then, suddenly and
oddly, there came into my head the thought of the stocking needle the
_gouvernante_ was wont to stick into my bosom at meals, to prevent me
stooping and rounding my back. Must I confess, my Alcide, that there
was ever a time when thy Diane was a little less or more than a sylph?

“Make me light,” I said, “so that I can dance without feeling the
ground.”

She looked at me strangely a moment, then all about her in a stealthy
way, while she slipped her hand into her pocket.

“Hush!” she said. “For none other but you. Only tell not of it.” And
she brought up a little greasy packet, of parchment writ round with
characters, like a Hebrew phylactery.

“Have you ever heard tell of the duck-stone?” she whispered.

I shook my head, full of curiosity.

“No,” she said, “nor any of thine. It fell from the sky, from another
world, deary, that’s strange to ours, and the gipsies found it in the
wild places of the woods. There was a smell came from it like the
sugar of all flowers, and it was as light as foam and as hard as the
beaten rocks.”

She undid the packet while she spoke, and I saw a number of tiny grey
cubes, like frothy pumice-stone, one of which she detached, and gave
to me.

“It wrought upon them even to madness,” she said, “so that they took
and broke it with their mattocks. And, lo! the nameless thing was
found in its scattered parts a virtue, even like the poisons which,
taken in little, heal. Smell to it when the world is dark, and your
brain shall flash into light, like an inn to the tired traveller.
Smell to it when your feet go sick and heavy, and you shall feel them
like the birds’ whose bones are full of wind. But tell not of the gift
or giver, lest I die!”

Involuntarily, as she spoke, I had raised the stone to my nostrils. A
faint scent as of menthene intoxicated my brain. The downs and the sky
swam before me in one luminous mist. Lightness and delight took all my
soul and body with rapture....

A shout brought me to myself. I was sitting on the grass, with the
duck-stone still tight in my clutch. The gipsy was gone, how long I
could not tell, and up the road was coming a second cortège, more
brilliant than the former. A dozen young fellows, all volunteer
runners and dressed in white, preceded a coach in which sat a
rich-apparelled lady, very bold and handsome, and escorted by a
splendid cavalcade of gentlemen. It was the Duchess of Cumberland, who
followed her husband to the seaside, as I was to learn by and by; for
while I was collecting my drowsy young wits to look, a wonderful thing
happened. A horseman drew up with a cry, dismounted, seized and bore
me to his saddle, and rode away with me after the carriage. It was my
father, flushed and jovial, the pink and Corinthian of his company, as
he always was.

He showed no curiosity over the encounter, nor scruple in taking me
with him. He was in wild spirits, laughing and teasing, and sometimes
he reeled in his saddle in a way to endanger my balance. But the rush
of air restored me to myself, and I had the wit, for all my
excitement, to slip my charm, which I still held, into a pocket.

So we raced for the town, and presently drew up at the Castle Tavern,
where His Royal Highness and his wife, the late Mrs. Horton, were
quartering themselves.

The time which followed is confused in my remembrance. I was put in
charge of a chambermaid, given a dish of tea and cake, and presently
fell fast asleep, to awake smiling and rosy to the summons of my
pleasant Clarinda. A lackey in a magnificent scarlet livery awaited me
at the door, received me into his arms, and carried me downstairs to a
long room blazing with waxlights, where, at a white table spilt all
over with a profusion of fruit and crystal, sat a gorgeous company of
gentlemen and ladies. Such silks and laces, such feathers and
diamonds, I had never in my young day encountered. It was like the
most beautiful fair I had ever seen, and the red faces of the company
were the coloured bladders bobbing in the stalls. Still, I had not
lost my self-possession, when my father reeled round in his chair, and
catching me away from the servant, set me on my feet on the table
itself.

I was a little confused by the tumult which greeted my exaltation.

“Diane,” whispered my father in my ear, “go and tell the duke in a
pretty speech that I send my love to him.”

I flicked up my skirts, and went off immediately among the fruit and
decanters. My progress was a triumph. The women clapped in artificial
enthusiasm, and the men stopped me to kiss my little shoes. And
presently down that long lane I saw the duke’s smiling face awaiting
me. It was not a temperate face, it is true; its thirty-four years
were traced upon it in very crooked hieroglyphics. But then--_c’est la
dernière touche qu’informe_--the royal star of the garter glittering
on the apricot coat beneath made everything handsome. By his side sat
the lady his duchess, _née_ Luttrell, as brand-new as I to her
exaltation. But it was the difference between Hebe and Thais. For all
my innocence I felt that, and did not fear her rivalry. I dropped a
little curtsey amongst the grapes and melons.

“Monsieur,” I said, “my papa wishes to make you a pretty gift, and
sends you his love.”

He applauded, laughing, as did all the table, and lifted me down to
his lap.

“What price for the love?” he cried. “See, I return him a dozen
kisses.”

He kept me, however, plying me with bonbons, while madam tittered and
fanned herself vexedly.

“You will make the little ape sick, Enrico,” she said. “Put her down;
for shame!”

“I know where to stop,” I retorted; and “By God, you do!” said the
duke, with a great laugh, and held me tight.

I had a thimbleful of liqueur from his hand by and by, which made me
think of the duck-stone. I was the little queen of the evening, and a
delight to my father and all.

“Faith!” said a merry Irish _rapparee_, a bit of a courtier captain,
“man has been vainly trying to fit woman into the moral scheme ever
since she made herself out of his ninth rib, and the fashions out of a
fig-leaf; and here, in the eighteenth century Anno Domini, is the
result.”

I was carried on to the Steine presently by my father, my little brain
whirling. The whole of the Castle Tavern, and every house and shop
adjacent, were illuminated; and the lights and crowds of people quite
intoxicated me. There were sports enacting on all sides, and I
screamed with laughter to see a jingling match, played for a laced
coat and hat, in which the jingler, hung with bells, dodged and eluded
and dropped between the legs of the blindfolded who sought to capture
him. Then there was a foot-race, run by young women for a Holland
smock; and I jeered at their self-conscious antics with all my little
might, as they went giggling into place, coy and hobbledehoy, and
pushed and quarrelled secretly, and stopped the starter to do up their
greasy tresses, and then, all but the winner, snivelled over the
result, pronouncing it unfair.

Presently I was taken to see an ox roasted whole; and it was here,
while we were looking on at the lurid tumult, occurred a rencontre
which was to alter the whole current of my life. A fat, drunken sweep
in his war-paint jostled my father, who, himself in the fury of wine,
turned and felled the beast to the ground. We were isolated from our
friends at the moment, and a ring was immediately formed, and the
sweep called upon to stand up and pay his interest like a man. He
rose, nothing loth, it seemed, and faced my father, who was forced to
engage.

“My little ’orse and cart to a red-un that I whop ye!” cried the
sweep.

“Done!” answered my father, and they fell to.

I was sure of the result, and stood by quite self-possessed and eager
while they fought. A round or two settled it, and there sat the sweep,
unable to rise again, with a white tooth dropped on his coat-front.

When my father came away, I clung to him and kissed him in ecstasy. He
was quite cool, and only a little breathed; and when, for the honour
of sport, he had settled for the sweep’s trap to be driven round to
his door in the morning, intending to put it up to auction, he
shouldered me laughing, and carried me away amidst cheers.

It was near midnight by then, and, happening upon a royal servant, he
gave me into the man’s charge, and, in spite of my remonstrances, bade
him convey me home. I sulked all the way, and was in no mood, after my
excitement, to sympathise with my mother’s agitated reception of her
truant. She had been near distracted all these hours, thinking me
drowned or kidnapped, and could not control a gust of temper upon
hearing how I had been employed.

“O, my _maman_,” I said saucily, “you must understand I have never
been in a convent, and so know how to take care of myself.”

It was wicked; but it was my governess speaking, not I.




 II.
 I AM ABDUCTED

My mamma questioned me again in the morning about my adventures. She
was very hollow-eyed and nervous, which offended me; for for her to
appear ill in body or ill at ease in mind seemed to make my own young
sanity something that it was wrong or selfish in me to enjoy. I was
inconsiderate, no doubt; yet tell me, my Alcide, is it, on the other
hand, considerate of dyspepsia to be always wet-blanketing health and
contentment? Is not the human the only animal permitted of right to
inflict his sickness on his fellows, while in every other community
the invalid is “out of the law” of nature? It is thus, undoubtedly,
that deterioration is provided against. To be attracted to the sweet
and wholesome, and repelled by distemper, is _that_ selfishness? If it
is not, then am I content to be misunderstood by all others, so long
as Heaven will recognise the real love of humankind which inspires my
wish to secure its untainted image in myself. There must be a divine
virtue in health, seeing how disease is the heir of sin. Is not to
sympathise, then, with depression, to condone evil?

I leave the answer to profounder moralists than I, content, in
default, to admit that the misery which now befell me was the direct
consequence of my wickedness.

“Papa,” said I, tossing my head, “gave me to the beautiful duke, and
he took me in pledge of the love papa bears him. Will he come and
fetch me, do you think, mamma? I shall be glad to belong to one who
does not have headaches whenever the sun shines.”

She went quite white, and broke into a torrent of French invective.

“I do not understand these hard words,” I said. “Is it so they pray in
les Madelonnettes?”

My sauciness took her completely aback. She stared at me for some
moments in silence, and then cried out suddenly, “God forgive you,
Diane, and the vile creature who has instructed you to this, and your
father, who I am going at once to ask that she may be removed!”

And she went out, unconsciously consigning me to my fate; and I never
saw her again, may Heaven pardon her!

I was a little frightened, though still defiant; and I loitered about
the house, singing in my small voice, which, though never an “organ,”
has always been attractive, so people say.

Presently I remembered my duck-stone, and thought I would seek a case
for it. I was alone in the house, for our one maid was gone marketing,
and the governess not yet arrived. I went upstairs, and rummaged in my
mother’s bureaux, and by and by found a tiny silver vinaigrette into
which the stone fitted beautifully. Then I went and sat in our little
front garden which overlooked the road running to the downs, and there
rocked and mused amongst the flowers in a recovered temper. I hoped my
father would fetch me again; I expected he would; and so, smiling and
dreaming, put up the vinaigrette half-consciously, and sniffed at it.
In a moment all sense of my surroundings went from me, and sky and
flowers and the grey downs were blended in a rapture of unreality.

I came to myself amidst an impression of jolting. I thought it was
night, and that I was suffocating in my bedclothes. I threw something
from my face, saw daylight, and cried out incoherently.

Immediately the jerky motion ceased, and a horrible mask looked over
and down at me. It was fat and sooty, with a handkerchief, startlingly
white by contrast, going obliquely across its forehead.

“Stow that, my pigeon!” it said hoarsely and shortly. But at the first
sound of its voice, black inspiration had come upon me in a flood. It
was the sweep of my last night’s adventure, and he was bearing me away
captive in the very little cart he had lost to my father. Whether he
had driven that up, sportingly, to time, or was merely escaping in it,
I never learned. Anyhow, temptation had come to him recognising me
lying there, senseless and unprotected, in the garden, and moved,
perhaps, by some sentiment between cupidity and revenge, he had seized
the opportunity to kidnap me.

He swung his fat legs over the sitting board, and lifted me up from
the midst of the empty bags where he had concealed me. We were in the
thick of a little wood, and the pony was quietly cropping at the
trackside grass. The sense of loss and isolation, the filth of my
condition, the terror of this startled awakening from happy dreams,
wrought a desperation in me that was near madness. I screamed and
reviled and fought. The man opposed to my struggles just his two
hands; but their large persuasive strength, unctuous as they were with
soot, was more deadly than any violence. Alas! how the star that lit
last night’s heaven may be found fallen in the mud to-day, my Alcide!

When I was quiet, he put me up between his knees, and smacked my face
twice, deliberately, on either side--not hard, but in a lustful,
proprietary way.

“Blow for blow,” says he, and lifted the bandage a little from his
eye. It was horribly swollen and discoloured.

“Knew how to handle his morleys,” he said. “D’ee see’t? Now it be my
turn.”

“What are you going to do with me?” I sobbed.

“Make ’ee my climbing boy,” he answered promptly, and with a hideous
grin. “You’re my luck. D’ee see? Say you’re a gurl, and I’ll”-- He
hissed in his breath, and looked at me like a beast of prey.

“There,” he ended; “get under, and so much’s sniff at your peril!”

Some distant sound, perhaps, startled him. He stuffed me into my
former position, and, covering me again with the bags, turned and
clicked up his pony. I lay in a half faint, scarce daring to breathe,
so utterly had this monster succeeded in subduing me. I cried,
incessantly but quietly, hearing hour by hour the wheels grind under
my ear, till the sound and physical exhaustion induced in me a sort of
delirium. All this time, the hope of pursuit and rescue never occurred
to me, I believe. Did they occur to Proserpine having once felt the
inhumanity of her sooty abductor?

But now all of a sudden the anguish grew unendurable. I must move or
die. And at the moment I became conscious of the vinaigrette still
clutched convulsively in my little fist.

Sure never death offered a sweeter release. Very softly I raised it,
and found oblivion. I might have sought to use it on my enemy, and
escape; but, alas! the unsophisticated mind of the child could compass
no such artifice.

We went on all day, as I realised during the intervals of my waking,
by the unfrequented roads, jolting, loitering, sometimes in lonely
places halting to rest the pony. The moral force my master (as I must
now call him) put upon himself to avoid the wayside taverns, is the
most convincing proof of his tenacity.

At last, a thicker darkness descended upon me, lying there in hopeless
apathy, and night and sleep stretched their shroud over my miseries.

I awoke to rough movement and the sound of voices. My master was
carrying me into a little ill-lighted cottage, which stood solitary
upon the edge of a common. Sharp and brilliant, at no great distance,
in a soughing night, sparkled the first lamps of a town.

I was borne into a tiny room, where something, covered with a cloth,
lay stretched upon a rickety table. My master put me to the ground,
and stood back to regard me. Another man, an expressionless sweep like
himself, but gaunt and bent-shouldered, joined silent issue in this
scrutiny.

“Well,” said the latter at length, “they’ll fit right enow; but damn
the exchange!”

He stopped to cough rendingly; then went on--

“If you mean a deal, I’m game for half a bull, and there’s my word on
it. But burn them duds, Johnny! I won’t take the risk on ’em.”

My master considered.

“Mayhap you’re right,” said he. “Call it done.”

The words were hardly out of his mouth before the other had jerked the
cloth from the table. And there underneath lay the dead stiff body of
a little sooty boy. His hands were griped at his chest, as if in agony
of its œdematous swelling, and his bared eyeballs and teeth were as
white as porcelain.

I could not cry out, or do anything but stare in horror, while the
gaunt man, with some show of persuasion, began to strip the little
body of its coat and vest and trousers--all its poor harness. Then, in
a sickness beyond words, I comprehended. I was to be made exchange,
for these foul vestments, my own pretty silken toilet.

“Come along, Georgy,” wheedled his late master. “You wouldn’t be so
unhandsome as to deny a lady, and she doing you honour to accept of
them.”

He rolled the body gently from side to side, so coaxingly forceful and
intent, that someone, bursting in upon him at the moment, took him
completely by surprise.

It was a wretchedly clad woman, with resinous blots of eyes in a
hungry face, and a little black moustache over a toothless
mouth--strange contrast!--that was never more still than a crab’s.

“So he’s dead, you dog!” she cried, seeming to feed on the words; “and
you druv him to his death; and may God wither you!”

The bent man jumped, like a vulture, from the body, and hopped and
dodged, keeping it between him and the woman.

“You took the odds!” he cried, coughing, and kneading his cracking
knuckles together, “you took the odds, and you mustn’t cry out like a
woman if they gone agen ye. I did no more’n my duty, as the Lord hears
me!”

“Both on us,” said the woman. “Well, speak out!”

“He stuck,” said the sweep. “He stuck beyond reason. It were a good
ten-inch square, for all it were a draw-in bend. I were forced to
smoke him; but his lungs were that crowded, there was no loosening the
pore critter till they bust and let him down. He were a good boy, and
worth a deal to me.”

“That’s true,” put in my master. “A man, though he _be_ a flue-faker,
don’t cut off his nose to spite his face, missus.”

She made no answer, staring fixedly at the corpse.

“He were my seventh,” she said. “He made no cry when you come and took
him away from me--a yellow-haired devil. Did he cry for his mammy,
chokin’ up in the dark there?”

“No,” said the man--“an unnat’ral son!”

She threw up her hands with a frightful gesture.

“I could have borne it if he had--I could have borne it, and cut my
throat. What were you doing with him?”

The sweep hesitated; but my master took the word from him.

“It’s a question of his slops, missus.” (He jerked a thumb over his
shoulder at me, where I stood in the background paralysed with
terror.) “Half a bull or nothing, and you and him to share.”

The woman put her arms akimbo.

“Ho, indeed!” she said. “And where does _he_ come in?”

“It’s my own smalls,” swore the man, excited and truculent at once. “I
won’t bate an inch of ’em, if I’m to die for it.”

They were facing each other across the body like tom cats, when my
master pulled his friend aside, and whispered in his ear.

“Amongst ladies and gentlemen,” said he, and waited, smiling and oily,
while the other fetched a black bottle from a cupboard. The woman
visibly relaxed at the sight of this. Its owner uncorked it, and
putting it to his mouth, gurgled, and smacked his black lips.

“The deal passes!” cried my master; and he snatched the bottle, and
handed it to the woman with an ingratiatory smile.

It was the psychologic moment, which loosened and harmonised their
tongues. They waxed confiding and genial. Presently the woman,
commissioned politely to effect my transformation, swaggered across to
me with devil-daring eyes, and began roughly to pull off my clothes.

“Damn you!” she said, with such a heat and violence of hate that my
very sobs were withered in my throat. “Come up, you young limb! What
the deuce! We’ll cry quits for my Georgy when the black smoke finishes
your ladyship.”

She never had had a doubt of the meaning of my presence in that vile
den, but my beauty and refinement and helplessness were only so many
goads to her implacability. Her fingers were like rakes in my tender
flesh. She would have torn me with her teeth, I believe, if any had
been left to her. And I could only shrink and shiver under her hands,
terrified if they wrung so much as a gasp from me.

When I was stripped, she seized a blunt dinner knife, and sawed off
all my golden hair close to my head, a horrible experience. The tears
gushed silent down my cheeks. They might have moved the heart of a
wolf.

“There!” she said, when finished; “chuck us the duds!” and as she
received them, scrubbed my face with the filthy tatters before she
vested me in them.

I had hoped, perhaps, until thus hopelessly transformed; and then, at
once, I hoped no more. _Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’ entrate_--I
was behind the bars; I wore the devil’s livery. O, my Alcide! Pity
this poor little Proserpine so ravished from her Plains of Enna.




 III.
 I ESCAPE

Hast thou the nerve to follow me, my friend? My martyrdom was
severe, but, after all, brief. Comfort thyself with the thought of the
brilliant moth which is to emerge from this sad chrysalis.

My master was an itinerant sweep. He jogged from town to village and
from village to town in his little cart, an untaxed Bohemian, and
carried me always with him. I had wild weepings at first, and frantic
schemes of escape, and fits of sullen rebellion; but they were all
persuaded out of me presently by his thick black hand. Then, as the
past grew obscured behind me in ever-densifying clouds of soot, I came
by degrees provisionally reconciled to my destiny, and even--canst
thou believe it?--to some enjoyment of its compensations.

These were its changefulness, its irresponsibility, its little
adventures, that always had our bodily solace for their end. We
pilfered orchards, snatched an occasional fat duckling from a pond,
smoked hives at night and carried away the dripping comb to eat under
warm ricks in the moonlight. And I had little to complain of
ill-treatment, except when engaged professionally. My master’s ample
receptivities laughed and grew fat on self-indulgence. Liquor made
him, to my good fortune, beatifically helpless; rich meats, paternally
benevolent, and even poetical. It was only in business that he
chastised, with a large and incorruptible immorality.

I learned the jargon more readily than I did the practice of my
abominable trade. My first ascent of a chimney was a hideous
experience--an ascent into hell, reversing all geographical orthodoxy.
But my particular devil was a Moloch, who would either be served by
exaltation or vindicate his majesty in smoke and fire. He was
diplomatic to put me through my first paces, so to speak, in a
dismantled vicarage that was in preparation for a new tenant. He
simply thrust an iron scraper into my hand, and, with the briefest
directions, drove me up. I was refractory, of course; and at that,
without wordy persuasion, he lit a brand of tow and applied it to my
bare ankles. The pain made me scream and writhe, as he had
philosophically counted upon its doing. Involuntarily I found myself
ascending the flue, as an awn of barley travels up inside one’s
sleeve. The very ease of it made me rebel, and I stopped. Immediately
the brand below, flaring at the end of a stick, was lifted to spur me.
Frenzied and sobbing, I felt its hot rowel, and struggled on. The
soot, with which the chimney was choked, began to fall upon me, half
stifling, and filling my pockets. Then self-preservation, the great
mother, recalled to me my directions. I looked up, and saw a far eye
of light denoting freedom, and I began desperately to scrape clear my
passage towards it, letting always the black raff descend between my
knees before I rose to take its place. The eye enlarged, and with it
grew the dawn of a strange new enthusiasm. I rose to it, like a fish
to the angle, as my master had calculated I should. These fiends bait
their hooks with heaven.

Suddenly, the last feet were conquered, and I emerged, and saw below
me a beautiful village prospect of trees and homesteads.

Did I then sit there and weep? On the contrary, I was radiant. Account
for it, thou _fripon_, as thou wilt. Thou knowest, Better the devil to
applaud us than none at all. I swear to thee that, for the moment, I
coveted nothing but my master’s admiring praise. Breathless as I was,
I bent and uttered down the chimney the shrill cry “All up!” as he had
bidden me. A little strained laugh came back, and, with an oath of
distant approval, a command to descend. But at that, oddly enough, the
horror came. I could not stomach the evil pit, with its reeling return
into a night from which I had mounted to heaven. My knees trembled
beneath me. I sat crying and shivering, while my master stormed thin
gusty blasphemy up the flue. At length I remembered my duck-stone. It
was in my trousers pocket, safe in its silver case, which, having
dropped in the cart, I had found again to my delight lying
undiscovered amongst the soot bags. I took it out, let myself down
gingerly to the arm-pits, clutched it tightly in my hand, and sniffed,
but not vigorously. I awoke to find myself sitting on the hearth, and
smiling foolishly into the frightened face of my master. He recovered
himself at the moment I did, and was the implacable martinet again and
at once.

“Why, you cust little back-slummer!” he said, “to let loose and think
to take a chalk of me like that! I’ll larn your nerves!”

And he pulled me to my feet, with his hand raised, but thought better
of it, and gave me another chance. Chimney after chimney I must mount,
till, fagged and heart-broken, I stood rebellious against his
extremest persuasion, and he was obliged, with at least a few healing
words of commendation, to postpone the finish of his job.

So began this terror of my new life, and so fortunately ended within a
period that was not stretched beyond my endurance.

In this phase of it, after the first, there were no compensations, but
only degrees of misery. If my master had ever thought to make capital
out of my restoration, he soon abandoned the idea as impracticable,
and devoted all his persuasion to turning me, after the inhuman
methods of his class, to his best profit. Once I stuck tight in one of
those clogged “draw-in bends” which had been fatal to my predecessor.
I could move no way, and in my struggles, a little crossed stay of
iron, fixed in the chimney, so pressed upon my breast as almost to
stop my heart. I was in a dreadful condition of terror and suffering,
and in the midst he lit some damp straw on the hearth to smoke me
down. The fumes took away my senses, and so, perhaps flattening the
resistance of my lungs, released me. But I was in a sort of conscious
delirium for days afterwards. Sometimes, where he had got the worst of
a housewife’s bargaining, he would shout to me, working two-thirds up,
“Pike the lew, boy!” which, in sweep’s jargon, meant, Leave the job
unfinished, to spite the old slut! And then I would descend at once.
Sometimes, where a cluster of flues ran into one shaft, I would come
down into the wrong room, causing consternation amongst its inmates.
But, through all, the idea of escape was very early a dead passion in
me, so utterly in soot and sexlessness was I lost to any sense of
self-identity.

So, always homeless, always enslaved, always wandering, I was one day,
some nine months after my abduction, come with my master into the
neighbourhood of Streatham, which is a little rural suburb of London,
reclaimed, with other contiguous hamlets, from the thick woods and
gipsy-haunted commons of that part of the country. For some days past
we had moved, unhurriedly as was our wont, through an atmosphere
charged with a curious nervous excitement. Housewives, avoiding
contact with us, as with possibly compromising emissaries of ill-omen,
had vanished into their cottages as we came near; tavern cronies,
grouped at tap-doors, were to be seen looking citywards, until dark,
tramping up the long white roads, drove them within with unreasonable
frights of shapeless things approaching. Then, sure enough, the night
horizon grew patched with flaring cressets, and we learned that London
was in the hands of a No-Popery mob.

Its area of destruction spreading like an unchecked ink-blot, and we
moving to meet it, brought us presently involved in the fringe of the
disorder. Protestant Dulwich had sent its contingent to help petition
Parliament against the legalising of the poor harried Catholics, and
had got its warrant, as it chose to consider, for an anti-Romish
crusade. And for that, whether right or wrong, I, at least, owe it
gratitude.

We were rolling one afternoon along a certain Knight’s Hill or road
which skirted a stretch of common, when we came upon a great inn,
called The Horns, where was a considerable concourse of people
assembled, all in blue cockades, and buzzing like a hive about to
swarm. The word most in the mouths of this draff was Pope, which at
first we took to mean the Vicar of Rome, but soon understood for the
name of a young Jesuit who was lately come as chaplain to a Catholic
family of the neighbourhood. Now, such insolent defiance of the penal
laws was not to be tolerated, and so the loyal Protestant burghers of
Dulwich were going, with no disrespect to the family, to cast down its
graven images, and hang up its chaplain for a scarecrow to all
propagandists who should venture out of the Holy See into our tight
little island. And here they were gathered to organise themselves, the
process taking good account of malt liquors; and hence, when they
moved off, we, to cut the story short, accompanied them walking,
foreseeing some prospect of “swag” in the crusade.

Going in a pretty compact body, with a great deal of howling and
hymning, such as that with which all conscripts, either of the cross
or guillotine, are accustomed to stimulate one another’s courage and
vanity, we crossed a Croksted Lane, and again a sweep of wild heath,
that spread towards the dense forests called Northwood, which fill all
that shallow valley from Sydenham Wells on the north to Penge Common
on the south. And presently coming to the trees, and entering a wide,
elegant clearing amidst them, where the woods were banked behind, and
the ground dropped towards us in terraces, on the highest we saw the
house standing, a great sunny block of brick and stone, but shuttered
now, and apparently lifeless.

The mob at first knocked on the door with a diffidence inspired of its
varnished and portly exclusiveness; but, provoking no response,
presently grew bolder and more clamorous. Still, I believe, its
fervour would ultimately have wasted itself on this inflexible
barrier, had not my master, with some disgusted expressions of
contempt, come to the front and taunted it on to a violence the more
vicious because it was shamefaced. Under his stimulus, then, the
panels were beginning to crack, when in a moment the bolts flew, and
there stood in the opening a little sinister fellow in grey, who asked
us, curt and ironic, our business.

All but my master fell back before him, though there were some broken
cries touching the Scarlet Woman, which the sweep took up.

The little man wrinkled his little acrid nose. He was nobody, it
turned out, but the Scotch steward, holding staunch to his post; but
he was cut and coloured like steel.

“D’ye ask here for your doxy?” he said. “Go back, man, and look where
you left her in the tavern.”

The sweep, only half understanding, spat out a mouthful of oaths.

“We want that there Pope!” he roared. “Bring us to the black devil,
you.”

“After you, sir,” answered the other politely.

My master, looking horribly ugly, repeated his demand.

“Well,” said the steward, “this is fair humours, Newcastle asking for
coals!”

The words were hardly out of him, when my master smote him down, and
pushed into the house. He gave a little quiver, like unstrung wire,
and lay senseless, the red running from his nostrils.

_Mon chéri_, hast thou ever seen a pack of mongrels snarl aloof,
fearful and agitated, about a dog-fight, and in a moment break in with
coward teeth upon the conquered? So over the body of the steward
trampled this rabble, blooded now at another’s expense, and reckless
in its consciousness of self-irresponsibility. They had found a
champion to take the onus of this, and all worse that might happen,
off their shoulders.

But they were destined to discover no further chestnuts for their
catspaw. The Jesuit had fled, it appeared, with the rest of the
family; and so they must content themselves with wrecking the private
chapel, where the household was wont to practise its treasonable
rites.

Now, my master, who was eager after spoil, sweating and toiling in the
thick of the press, left me unguardedly to my own devices; and
suddenly I found myself quite alone in a closet hung with vestments,
where there was a fireplace with an open bricked hearth, having no
signs of usage, which immediately, from habit, caught my attention.
And straight, at last, God, pitiful to His poor little derelict,
touched the cross on my breast, and quickened inspiration in that
where I had supposed all was dead. I slid into the chimney, and went
up, up, like an eel in a well rising for air. The sounds of
destruction grew attenuated beneath me; I smelt life and freedom, and
swarmed faster in my agony to attain them. The chimney, clean as at
its building, let down no token of my passage by it, and in a few
moments I emerged from the summit, and, tumbling into the cleft of a
long double roof--found myself face to face with a man who was there
before me.




 IV.
 I FALL INTO THE HANDS OF A COLLECTOR

At least I call him a man; but O, my Alcide, he was a marionnette!
His joints creaked. All the bran in his body seemed to have been
shaken down into his calves. His hat supported itself on his ears and
the top of his coat collar. His sleeves were sacks. His nose was
nothing but a wen, and being no better adapted to the burden of some
enormous spectacles he wore, had led his fingers to an incessant trick
of adjusting those in their place. He carried under his arm an immense
folio, with which, as I appeared, he aimed an agitated blow at me,
only to miss and fall forward on his face on the roof.

I instantly dodged past him, and stood panting while he collected
himself. His glasses, without which he was helpless, had flown off,
and I saw his eyes, which before had seemed to fill the whole field of
the great lenses, mere swollen slits, like a pig’s. He groped about in
the utmost consternation as he knelt, pawing the tiles for his lost
property.

“Who are you? Wait! I’ll be with you,” he ejaculated excitedly, as his
bony hands swept the roof.

I backed out of their reach without replying.

At last he found what he sought, and fitting the rims to his nose,
rose to his feet and stared at me.

“Hey, what!” he said--“a sweep! Well!”--and blew out a rumbling grunt,
which he checked suddenly, as if he had turned a cock on it.

A moment after, he put his hand into his pocket, and fetching out a
dirty fragment of biscuit, held it to me persuasively, as one might
lure a colt. Seeing, however, that I still held away from him, he
threw the biscuit down in a pet, and stood to canvass me in a baleful
manner.

“What do you want?” he snapped out suddenly. “How did you find your
way here?”

Still with my eyes on him, I answered, in a husky whisper--

“Don’t you know? Up the closet chimney.”

“Ay,” he said, dropping his own voice in tacit response to the warning
in mine, “but not to sweep it?”

“No,” I said; “to escape by it.”

His hand went up to his glasses. He glared at me through their
restored focus.

Watchful of him, lest, before I could explain, he should silence me
provisionally with some stunning blow, I ventured to approach him a
little nearer.

“There’s killing,” I whispered, “going on down there--a poor old man
in a grey coat.”

He started violently, and pulling his jaw down, uttered a sort of
mechanical crow, and let it go again.

“Grey!” he muttered. “It’s the steward, then. He didn’t give _me_
away, did he?”

I shook my head dumbly. He was readjusting his glasses to meet the
answer.

“Ay,” he gulped, swallowing with relief, “poor Mackenzie! And to think
that for all his loyalty he must burn!”

I whispered, “Why must he?”

“Because,” he said, “he wasn’t of the faith.”

This uncouth creature was getting horrible to me. I suppose he read my
repulsion in my face, for his own suddenly grew agitated and menacing.

“Are you thinking of betraying me?” he said.

I retreated before him, working my foolish young arms.

“Keep away!” I cried; “I don’t even know who you are.”

“O!” he said, and stopped, and was at his spectacles again. Then
suddenly he held up his hand.

“Hark!” he said.

I listened. Far and faint below, through the hubbub of destruction
came wafted at intervals the name of the chaplain--Pope--the cynosure
of all this iconoclastic zeal.

“Yes, it’s you they want,” I said.

“And you,” he retorted fiercely, “are pointing the way, you little”--

“It’s a lie!” I cried vehemently. “I came up here to escape from them,
like you.”

He looked at me doubtfully.

“You said you didn’t know who I was.”

“No more I did,” I protested, “till you told me.”

“_I_ told you!” he cried. “Humph!” And he glared at me sourly. “Sit
down, then,” he said, “and hold your tongue till I speak to you
again.”

It was the wise policy, certainly. He squatted himself between me and
the chimney, and we dwelt in silence, while the mob wreaked its blind
vengeance below. I was in a dreadful fright all the time. Every moment
I expected to hear my master’s voice boom up the flue by way of which
I had climbed; and, desperate as I was, I devised the naughty
expedient to curry favour, if necessary, by claiming the credit of
having run this fugitive to bay. It was a base thought, perhaps,
though natural under the stress of the occasion. Chiefly, however, I
regret it because it was uncalled for, and it is aggravating to burden
one’s conscience with unprofitable frailties. The monster I had run
from was never, in point of fact, to cross my path again. Probably,
thinking I had fled from the house, he went hunting counter, and so
put ever a wider interval between us.

It was not, after all, so very long before the racket of despoliation
down below died away, and we heard the mob clatter from the house, and
go streaming and singing across the common in its retreat. I believe
that, either realising how in my master it had evoked a demon to its
own legal discomfiture, or perhaps frightened by the bugbear of some
reported troop of militia assembling in the neighbourhood, it was
suddenly decided to temper Protestantism with prudence, and so
dissipating itself with great speed and piety, left the building to a
solitude more dense by contrast than before.

It was not, however, until every whisper and echo had long ceased that
I durst let myself be persuaded of the reality of my reprieve; and
when at last I did, the joy that grew minutely in my heart came near
to upsetting my reason.

My excitement hungered for something on which to flesh itself. I rose
and went up and down, quickly and softly, in the space left me,
seeking the means to some larger action. Then I saw the great folio
lying discarded on the roof where the chaplain had dropped it, and all
of a sudden felt itching to know what it could contain to tempt this
man to burden himself with its care in so anxious a situation.

He sat with his face in his hands--or cuffs, rather. He appeared to be
in a sort of uncouth trance. I stole very noiseless by him, and,
unobserved as I supposed, had actually lifted the book, when he
started awake in a moment.

“Hey!” he cried. “That’s mine!”

“I was going to bring it to you,” I said.

He scuttled towards me on his hands and toes, and snatching the book
from me, squatted down, hugging it, and glaring at me in a sort of
dumb malevolence.

I had no retort for such rudeness. I stood crimsoning under my black a
moment, then, in default of a better answer, began to cry.

He was not the least moved, the ill-conditioned boor, but he was
disturbed by the noise.

“Ur-rh!” he bullied. “That’ll do. Do you hear?”

Indignation gave me decision. I turned my back on him.

“Where are you going?” he cried.

I stalked on without a word.

“No, you don’t!” he said, scrambling up; and he followed and caught
hold of my jacket.

“Let me go!” I cried, struggling. “My master will be looking for me.”

“O!” he said, quite suddenly agitated. “Come here and I’ll show you a
picture.”

I let myself be drawn reluctant.

“Is it of the Scarlet Woman?” I said.

He started, and roared, “The Scarlet--!” then, conscious of his
mistake, dropped his voice to a panic whisper.

“There’s no such moth,” said he. “If you mean _heraclia dominula_, the
scarlet tiger, come and I’ll show you one.”

He persuaded me to sit by him on the roof slope, and gingerly opened
the book away from me.

“Don’t touch,” he said. “It’s called _Fasti Sanctorum Naturæ
Cultoribus Proprii_.”

“Is that Latin?” I asked.

“Yes,” he growled; but he looked at me rather curiously. “It means The
Naturalist’s Calendar of the Saints. How did you know?”

“O, I know,” I said.

He turned some leaves, while scanning me covertly and sourly; and I
exclaimed becomingly over their contents. On each was a picture of a
saint, hastily illuminated, and of many insects most beautifully
coloured after nature. The saints, it is true, were pigmies, and the
moths life size; but it was through the former that this uncivilised
Churchman justified himself in a secular hobby. He was, as I came to
learn presently, a crazy collector of the small game of fields and
hedges, and had only drifted into the Church after a particularly fine
specimen of the Painted Lady, or some such immoral creature.

I tried to appreciate in order to conciliate him; but I could see that
my flattery was not expert, or perhaps fulsome enough for his taste.
Presently, on the score that my mere neighbourhood threatened the
lustre of his illuminations, he shut the book, and placed it
discontentedly by his side.

“Did you do it all by yourself?” I asked.

“Ay,” he grunted.

“And why did you bring it up here, when”--

He smacked his great hand on his knee, interrupting me--

“If you haven’t the intelligence to see--sooner part with my blood to
those Vandals! There; let the book alone, and tell me what brought you
here.”

“I’ve said already--I was escaping from my master.”

“A master sweep?”

“Yes.”

“Now,” he said, “how did you know this was Latin?”

I hung my head.

“Come,” he threatened, “you’d best tell me.”

I was considering what I should do. I reddened excited under my mask,
and rose to my feet again. After all these months of obliteration, a
wonderful thought was beginning to dawn in me--the thought of my sex
as a possible factor in my redemption. For how long, my dear friend,
had I not lost the art to play it for the value of so much as a
sugar-plum? And what was there now to prevent me from reassuming that
charming confidence in men which so disarms them? Alas! it was a vain
recovery here--a waste of art on a material no more responsive to it
than a pulpit hassock.

“How did you know?” he repeated angrily.

“Because,” I whispered, blushing, and lingering over the sensation I
felt I was about to produce--“because--Father--I am a little daughter
of the Church.”

He had been gnawing his knuckles, as he bent his morose brows on me;
and at my words stopped suddenly, his great teeth bared, like a dog
looking up from a bone.

“I am the child of a great gentleman. I was stolen from my parents,” I
said, and clasped my hands to him. “I am not a boy at all, but a
girl.”

He leapt up as if I had struck him.

“How dare you!” he shouted; then, choking, in another hoarse reaction
to panic, “How dare you try to impose upon me!”

“I’m not!” I cried, in a childish fury of chagrin over his
insensibility. “It’s true, every word. My mother was a Sister of les
Madelonnettes, and I was stolen from her, and I want to be sent back.”

I did not in truth, save in so far as that way only lay my chance of
restoration to my darling father. But the point was inessential.

The priest’s eyes, dilated monstrosities, devoured me through their
lenses.

“Les Madelonnettes--the Magdalens!” he muttered, amazed and frowning.
His hand, caressing his chin, grated on the stubble of it. “Come,” he
said brutally, “I’m an old bird to be caught by chaff. Confess to me,
if you’re a Catholic, you wretched little sinner.”

I wanted nothing better. This sacrament of penance must convince and
win him. In a moment my young elastic soul had leapt the dark
interlude which divided me from my past, and my little feet were
tripping once more in fancy down the royal prince’s table. I fell on
my knees.

“Say your Confiteor,” he commanded harshly.

I repeated it without a mistake.

“Humph!” said he. “What are you waiting for?”

I told him my whole story. He listened to it, after the first,
abstractedly, with one eye caressing his abominable book. At the end
he gave me absolution, canvassing me distastefully as he pondered the
penance. Presently he spoke.

“I order you,” he said, “twenty Ave Marias, and to return to your
master.”

I jumped to my feet.

“My master--the sweep!” I cried.

“Certainly,” he replied stubbornly. “You were obviously the foundling
of Providence, which has elected this honest tradesman to be your
foster-father.”

“But, my mother?” I choked.

“It is her judgment,” he said, “to remain and mingle her weeping with
the ashes of this sacrifice, in the hospital of which her crimes have
made her an inmate.”

He had listened with his elbows, as I supposed. I recognised the
hopelessness of my task.

“Very well,” I said. “I daresay he has finished with the steward by
now. I will go and tell him what you say”--and I made for the chimney.

He was after me in a moment, at a gallop.

“Stop!” he cried. “What do you mean? That your master was one of this
rabble?”

“One? The worst of them all,” I answered. “It was he knocked down the
poor grey gentleman; and the last I heard of him was crying for you.”

He released me, to throw up his hands.

“The intolerance of these heretics!” he cried. “Stop! Don’t go. I
withdraw my pronouncement. You shall name your own penance.”

I breathed quickly, standing before him.

“Father, that is soon done. I will go with you.”

“With me--with me?” he complained, stamping distracted. “Where to?”

“Anywhere from here,” I pleaded. “You can’t stop. The whole country’s
up, and a second time, if they come, you’ll be caught.”

Snorting with agitation, he took off his spectacles to wipe them.

“It’s quite impossible,” he said. “I know of only one asylum beyond,
and that”--

With a quick little snatch I ravished the glasses from his hand, and,
running away with them, hid behind a chimney. For a minute or two he
raved round, stumbling, and grabbing at the air, and finally tripped
over his book and subsided, quite prostrate, upon the roof.

“Little sweep!” he panted, in a trembling voice. “My daughter--child
of Magdalen--where are you?”

I held my breath; and he went on, in broken sentences--

“Come back--give me my glasses--where are you?--I believe all you
say--What! will you give me up, and the Calendar unfinished?”

Then, as I still did not answer, “Holy saints! The little devil has
hobbled me, and I shall be caught and martyred.”--A longish
pause--“_In manus tuas, Domine, com_-- I wonder if in Paradise--the
scarce copper--h’m!”

He began to gnaw his knuckles, with a sort of pleased abstraction over
the thought. It would never do. I came out of my hiding.

“Will you take me with you?” I repeated.

“O, it’s you?” he cried, with a start. “Where are my glasses?”

“In my hand.”

“Will you return them to me?”

“Will you let me go with you?”

“Scandalous!”

“I will carry the book.”

“Pooh!”

“I will walk behind.”

“Pish!”

“If anything happens to me, then”--

“Fah!” he interposed; and then added, “What could happen to you?”

“Do you suppose I shall stay in these clothes?” I said. “I shall
return to be a girl; and what am I to do then, without someone to
protect and help me back to my parents?”

“That’s nothing to me,” he said.

“Good-bye,” said I.

He scrambled to his feet with a roar: “Give me back my glasses!”

I stood quite still, making no sound. He thought I had really gone
this time, and began taking little strides hither and thither, and
throwing his arms about. Suddenly he stopped, sweating with agitation.

“Are you there?” he said.

I did not answer. He hopped from leg to leg, pulling with one hand at
the other, as if at a tight glove.

“Child!” he cried, “you’re a good child--a perfect little sweep. You
shall come--do you hear?--if we ever get off this roof. We’ll escape
by the woods--nobody will see us there together--and I can catch some
arguses (_lasiommata ægeria_) that will be in season.”




 V.
 I AM CARRIED AWAY AS A SPECIMEN

The very rudeness of the creature nominated by Fate to be my warden
gave me a feeling of confidence. Here was a shepherd’s dog ugly enough
to frighten away the wolf himself, should he cross us in the shape of
my master. I thrilled to have secured his promise, which, for all his
boorishness, and perhaps because of it, I had faith in. The dark pit
was already half bridged in my foolish young imagination, and I
dreamed of alighting on the farther side--to what? Not, indeed, to the
old melancholy life of the cottage near the Steine. For all my sad
experience, I never entertained that prospect for one moment. I was
but now in my eleventh year, yet some instinct informed me that the
dead--amongst whom, surely, I must be written--should not return if
they would avoid the mortification of home truths; that broken threads
cannot be made one again, and leave no scar. Perhaps the spirit of
vagabondage even had entered a little into my blood. In any case, it
was the breezy security of my father’s, not my mother’s, protection to
which I hurried in thought, with this reverent cur for escort.

As for him, accounting for his presence on the roof, he growled out to
me once after this, in order to still my inquisitive importunity,
while I still held the spectacles in pledge, that he had indeed taken
the alarm that morning, with the rest of the family to whom he was
spiritual director; but that, remembering his book left behind, he had
insisted upon quitting the general flight and returning for it--with
what awkward results for the steward had appeared, though, as a fact,
I believe the poor man recovered later. Now, I was to understand, he
had the intention, if he could make good his escape, to seek asylum,
while the storm blew over, with a lady, a co-religionist and
connection of his patrons, who lived distant a two days’ journey on
foot. And so, having grudgingly informed me, he subsided into his
unsavoury self, and would speak no more.

I did not much care, once being put in possession of the facts and the
chances they afforded me. No one, it was evident, guessed at our
retreat; and, for the rest, I was content to bide my time, and the
opportunity I foresaw of impressing even this dull animal with a
revelation of the pretty romance he had undertaken to squire.

Evening fell, and we were still sitting there. Not a footstep sounded
in the house beneath us; not a voice but the birds’ came from the
garden. Presently, emboldened by the quiet, I went softly climbing and
investigating, finding the trap-door by way of which the chaplain had
ascended, and peeping between the gables and over the roof ridges. So
far as I could see, nothing human was stirring in all the placid
demesne. The sundial on the lawn, the arbour in the corner, the brook
embroidering the low trees, like a ribbon run through lace, were
things inanimate in a painted picture. But there was something in
their voiceless watchfulness that made me long to open the door, as it
were, and run into the air. I was not born, like my mother, for
cloisteral seclusions.

I was passing my companion once soft-footed, when he startled me by
demanding, suddenly and savagely, “What’s your name?”

“Diana, please,” I answered, in a flutter.

“_Diana--Please!_” he protested crossly. “Fah! Diana Please don’t
please”--and he subsided into himself again.

But he had christened me. I had gone lacking nothing but a name of my
own hitherto and here was one given me, apt and pat. From that moment
I became Diana Please.

The very sense of its possession made me forward.

“Aren’t we safe now?” I said, “or are you going to stop here all
night?”

He looked up at me hurriedly, and, scowling, motioned me away from
him. Then, without a word, he snatched his book, rose, and striding to
the trap-door, began to descend. I followed him closely. The way led
by a flight of steps in the walls to a cupboard under the main stairs
where they rose from the hall. We emerged from darkness into a wide
echoing twilight. For the first time the thought of my master secreted
somewhere, watchful and waiting for me, sent my spirits reeling. I
slunk against the wall.

“Where was it?” demanded my companion brusquely.

I stared at him. He stamped his foot, so that the noise resounded
horribly through the empty house.

“The steward!” he cried. “Where did they leave him?”

“By the door,” I whispered, trembling--“out there.”

It was still ajar. He hurried to it, looked out, went out, returned
after a minute or two, and slammed the oak thunderously.

“There are trails of blood down the steps. He has been removed, or has
removed himself,” he said, and began immediately to ascend the stairs.

“O, where are you going?” I cried fearfully.

“To bed,” he snapped.

“To bed!”

I clung to his coat-tails. There was a sort of nightmare struggle
between us, up as far as the first landing. There he rent himself
away, and, leaving me sprawling, banged and locked himself into a
room. I crouched on the mat outside, sobbing and imploring. “What am I
to do? Where am I to go?”

He answered not a word to my pleading. Presently I heard him snoring,
and--would you believe it?--the gross carnival of sound was heavenly
music in my ears. In all that vast loneliness it was my only human
stay and comfort. O, my Alcide! To think of thy Diane owing her reason
to the grunting of a hog.

It was a terrible night. I dared not move--scarcely breathe. But fear
and exhaustion at last overcame me, and I slept.

I awoke to sweet, soundless daylight. The look and smell of sunshine
restored me in a moment to myself. I had not been disturbed. The house
was utterly abandoned. I arose, resolved at once to put into effect
the plan I had formed. A little memory of something I had noticed
yesterday was urging me. I fled softly upstairs. Signs of the raid met
me at every turn: broken crucifixes, torn vestments, scattered
Hosts--up and down they lay, trodden into dirty rubbish by the
swarming footsteps. There had been, I believe, no secular looting,
unless, as was probable, by my master, who would be sure, on that
account, to have withdrawn himself remote from consequences. I had
nothing to fear from him. I looked for a room where I had seen some
children’s clothes scattered, and finding it still undisturbed,
quickly selected from among the litter the simplest outfit I could
adapt in mind to my figure.

A common watch lay ticking on a table. I examined it--scarce five
o’clock--lingered, hesitated, and left it where it was. I had not yet
come to thieve, even had it been less bulky for my juvenile fob.
Hastily I snatched soap and towels from a washing-stand, and holding
the clothes so as not to soil them against my own, stole out. There
was not water enough in all the house for my cleansing. My spirit
rushed to the little river I had seen gleaming under the trees.

At the back of the hall I found a low window, unlatched it, and
dropped into the garden. A light fog was spread abroad, which,
dripping from the trees, alarmed me with a thought of unseen things
moving near. But presently a bird piped close above my head, with a
note of reassurance, and I slipped on and made my way stealthily
towards the river until I heard it gurgling; and in a moment later I
came upon it.

There, with only the wild things in the grass to scare my modesty, I
made my bath. The ecstasy of it, as all that foul husk slipped off,
and was carried from me down the stream! The joy to recover my
near-forgotten self, the thing of pink and pearl, from its long
mourning! The wonder, and the strangeness of that reincarnation to a
maturer estate! I was not, like the Sleeping Beauty, to renew my old,
but to awake to a newer self--a different from the Diana from whom I
had departed nine months before. It seemed incredible; and still when
I was washed as white as a lamb, I must sluice, and relather, and
sluice again, to convince myself that no stain of my horrible livery
remained. Then, at last, I came out, and dried and dressed myself
hurriedly; and so, being secure, sat awhile on the bank to let my hair
sun. It had never been but roughly clipped since that first cruel
shearing, and now was down to my collar, thick and golden. I could see
it in the water glass, when I bent over, reflected like a dim glory,
and I nodded and laughed to the picture in my delight, and was only
sorry presently to bind it about gipsy fashion with the silk
handkerchief I had brought down with me for the purpose. But time was
moving, and so must I be. I rose, and returned to the house.

I heard a shuffling on the stairs as I re-entered by the window, and
in a moment, tripping lightly, came upon Father Pope descending. He
had his great book under his arm, and he tiptoed with a sort of scared
effort to hush the creaking of his tell-tale shoes. He gave a guilty
start on seeing me standing smiling before him, and stumbled and
caught himself erect by the banisters, frowning at me.

I did not speak. I stood dumbly to let him canvass the transformation;
but the creature had no nerve of sentiment in all his dull anatomy.

“What do you want?” he said; “who are you?”

I could see he only fenced with the truth to recover himself. I
dropped him a pretty little curtsey.

“Diana, please,” I said.

I was in trepidation that he would deny me, as I was convinced he had
designed to give me the slip; and, though for policy’s sake I must
propitiate him, I hated the creature for his treachery. But, despite
his being a Jesuit, he was too crude a wit for the double part.

“Humph!” he growled. “I was wondering what had become of you,”--which,
no doubt, was true enough.

He glowered at me dislikingly; then bidding me wait for him, stalked
off into the gloom of passages, from which he presently re-emerged
with a bagful of bread and biscuit ends which he had collected.

“I have no money,” he said. “You must manage with your share of these
or nothing. If you look for better, it must be out of my company.”

“What does for you, will do for me, Father,” I said meekly; but
nothing would disarm his churlishness.

“That’s a matter of opinion,” said he. “I could do very well without
you, to begin with.”

I dropped my eyes.

“Now, then, bestir yourself,” he bullied. “If you’re to come at all,
come before the world’s awake.”

He strode off, and I followed, through shuttered glooms, and along
silent corridors to a distant part of the building, emerging from a
door in which we found ourselves in a close shrubbery-walk going up
towards woods. Very soon the comforting screen of trees was about us,
and the peril of watchful enemies surpassed. We pushed on without rest
or pause. My spirit and my feet danced together. It was all so free
and fragrant, and the rapture of my new emancipation was like a second
sight. Fays and sweet things seemed to melt before me round green
corners, or overhead among the branches, leaving a scent of the
unknown world in their footsteps. I sang low, I laughed to the birds,
I seemed incapable of weariness. And, indeed, my late training served
me in good stead, for this clerical Caliban had no mercy on my tender
limbs. He desired only the least excuse to shake me off, and I would
not gratify him with one.

All day he led me south by wood and common, avoiding the living places
where men were like to be alert on the new Crusade. We hardly
exchanged a word, as he swung on with the gait of a camel; but in the
end it was he who succumbed first. The weight of his great folio
crushed him--that is the truth. He called a halt in an unfrequented
copse, and flung himself exhausted on the grass.

“Go, find yourself a lodging,” he said. “I will sleep here.”

I did not dare cross him. I crept away; but only so far as a low thorn
tree, mounting into which I could easily hold him in view. But I need
not have feared. The poor wretch was sunk in fatigue, and incapable of
further effort. He had an odious night, I am sure, while I, from my
late habits, slept as securely as in an arm-chair.

Early next morning we were afoot again. My companion, mouldy-cheeked
and limping, greeted me with a scowl.

“What have I not suffered of humiliation as a priest,” he said, “to
have thee breathing in the same wood!”

The world must have been an insufficient dormitory to this misogynist.

At noon, having wandered for hours through forest so green, so
profound, that its deer-haunted vistas seemed the very byways to the
infinite, we came out suddenly, when half faint with toil and hunger,
upon the foot of a low hill, on whose summit was a queer octagonal
stone tower, crowned with a dome like a pepper-box. My companion
sputtered anathema upon seeing it, and stood stock still.

“What is it, Father?” I whispered, creeping up to him.

“We’ve overshot the mark, that’s all,” he growled, conceding a point
to civility. “Here’s Shole beyond; and I aimed at no farther than
Wellcot-Herring. Well, we must go over as the shortest way,” and he
began to mount the slope.

I followed him, emboldened to ask, “What’s this we’re coming to?”

“Rupert’s Folly,” he answered viciously. “Old Lousy’s spy-house.”

“What’s he?” I asked.

He gave a rude laugh.

“He’s an itch on the skin of my lord that he can’t scratch away;” and,
with these coarse, enigmatic words, he motioned me to fall behind.

The tower sprouted clean from the grass. Reaching and skirting it, I
had occasion barely to notice a figure seated under a low door against
its farther angle, before the liveliest prospect below engaged all my
attention. The hill went down on this side into a wide valley, in the
midst of whose trees and pastures, dominating a tiny village with
forge and tavern, stood a great old house of grey stone. On the green
before, as we could see, was a merry-making: sports, and dancing, and
long tables spread, and a vast broaching of casks. And the villagers
in their ribbons were all there, so that my eyes and my heart danced
to see them.

But my companion stood looking down with a most venomous expression.

“Fah! A nest of heretics!” he muttered. “What golden calf are they met
to worship?”

“The red herring’s spawn, good sir,” said the voice of the creature
behind us. I turned and stared at him for the first time. He sat
sucking at a long pipe at the open door of the tower--the filthiest
little scrub you could imagine. His face was like old crumpled
parchment, his crafty eyes floated in rheum, and he scratched a dusty
tag of beard down upon his breast as he leered at us.

“What! Lousy John,” said the priest. “Is it our heir of all the
Herrings come of age?”

“Ay,” said the old wretch. “Nephew Salted. You know him? Ay, ay. You
should be the man Pope, of course, by your rudeness? Go down to your
whore of Babylon, sir. She mingles with yonder company.”

“You’d have me into the range of your burning-glass, hey?” said the
priest, with a snort between laughter and contempt.

The other smoked on unperturbed.

“All in good time, priest,” he said. “I’m not for anticipatin’ the
devil. Is that his scriptures you’re a-carryin’ to propagate?”

My companion uttered a furious exclamation, and, hugging his book,
shuffled out of range. Most like a woman, he could not bear to have
his spiteful humour returned upon him.

I understood nothing of all this, of course, and was standing
bewildered, when the old obscenity beckoned me.

“See,” he said, taking his pipe from his mouth and pointing with the
scarlet tongue of it: “a beautiful landscape, ain’t it?”

“Yes,” I faltered.

“Ah!” said he. “I’ll tell you--just you, mind. I don’t take a-many
into my confidence. It’s the beauty of pain, child; a local
inflammation in the system.”

I murmured something, and he chuckled.

“They call this tower ‘Rupert’s Folly,’” he said privately; “and I
laugh, settin’ up here in my shell. D’ye think they’d laugh too, if
they guessed where the smut came from that blasted of their crops?”

“From you?” I whispered.

He bent over, and pointed upwards. For the first time I noticed that
the muzzle of a telescope projected from the little dome on the roof.
While I was gazing, I suddenly felt my wrist in the clutch of his
apish claw.

“Hush!” he said. “It’s there I gathers my star-powder, and discharges
it where I will. I’m Briareus, the last of the Uranids, left behind to
rack the world to all eternity for its presumption.”

He let me go, squinting and nodding at me. I backed from him in
horror. Nothing was plain to me but that here was one of those
astrologic demons who delight to bring heaven close that they may
measure our remoteness from it, and to cast away poor souls amidst the
eternal silences. That he seemed to rave was nothing. Such inhumanity
is in itself a madness.

“Ay,” he chuckled, hugging himself in a secret way, “you didn’t expect
that, did you? You must be a god to lust in pain. Why, lord, child!
the earth would be drab all over but for its galls and breakings. See
where I’ve set a withered crop among the green; see where I’ve teased
the soil to scarlet--a blazing core of fever. I know the World, the
wanton. So long as she can cover her cancer with a ribbon, she’ll
smile. By and by I shall set a spark to the west, and burn up the
day’s rubbish. Look when the sun drops, and you’ll see it a little
point of white, and afterwards a bonfire.”

I backed still farther.

“Lord!” he cried, doubling with laughter, “what headaches I’ve
projected into their beer-barrels down there! What poison laid on the
lasses’ lips! I shall have some fine incense of sufferin’ risin’ to me
to-morrow! What, you’re goin’, are you? Down into the fire, hey? A
pretty little faggot to mend its blazin’!” And he kneaded his hands
rapturously between his knees.

I saw the priest had disappeared over the crest, and, half crying,
pursued him. He turned on me angrily as I came up.

“Now,” said he, adjusting his spectacles to glare through them, “if
that old carrion speaks truth, I come to an end with you.” He gripped
my shoulder. “Hold your tongue, d’you hear? Not a word of us till we
find out how the land lies.”

He dropped his hold, on a sudden thought, to my elbow, and, with a
muttered menace, marched me down the hill.

At the bottom, in a little lane, with hedges to screen it from the
view beyond, we came unexpectedly upon a lady gathering wild flowers.
She started violently upon observing my companion, and dropped her
nosegay. He accosted her, with a manner of gruff civility, and here it
was somehow that, as they broke into talk of an urgent nature, we got
separated.




 VI.
 I AM “PINNED OUT”

The festivities were to celebrate the majority of the Viscount
Salted, only son to Hardrough, fourth Earl of Herring, Baron Rowe of
Shole and Wellcot-Herring, Warden of the Cinque Ports, and official
Verderer of the Forest of Down. The Lady Sophia Rowe, aunt to the
young gentleman, had driven over from Wellcot--her estate in tail
female, and distant from Shole by road seven miles--to lend her
saintly countenance to the gathering, and it was she whom Father Pope,
steering his course erroneously for Shole instead of Wellcot-Herring,
had fortuitously encountered culling wild flowers in her brother’s
lordlier demesne.

The Lady Sophia was, unlike her orthodox kinsman, a convert to the
Catholic from the Established Church, and within her limits, and
because of them, a zealous fanatic. In her one saw acutely
demonstrated the denaturalising power of creed. Gentle as a dove by
temperament, there was no crime but self-destruction which she would
not have gloried in to justify hers. She would have thought the world
well lost to save her own soul, colourless as that dear little article
was. Though she was modesty incarnate, her self-importance in this
respect was amazing. She schemed through all the virtues for the
apotheosis of Lady Sophia, and she called her scheming the vindication
of truth, which she held to be a Romish monopoly. She would have made
me a nun, as part of it, and taken all the credit with Heaven. I can
hardly regret that she was foiled. I love truth as well as any woman,
only, being a woman, _à contre-cœur_, and not a saint, for me it
must be coloured, and in the newest shades. To ask me to love it for
its own sake is to ask me to be a dowd; and, for all my respect for
Lady Sophia, I have never fancied a heaven of dowds.

When we alighted on her, she was by great good chance withdrawn from
her company, and communing with Nature for relaxation. Flowers, to
her, were sanctified of the altar, so bringing her faith and her
inclinations into line. She was terribly agitated over her encounter
with Father Pope, whom she knew, and over his peril, which she
exaggerated. The shock of intolerance was hardly extended to Shole;
but she had heard, by private despatch, of her Dulwich kinsfolk’s
flight, and of the chaplain’s eccentric desertion, and all the day had
tormented herself with fears of the fate which he had invited to
befall him. Now, while they were engaged in earnest discussion,
eschewing for the moment all thought of me, I was driven by curiosity
to steal down the lane, till, through a gap in the hedge, I was able
to observe at close hand the lively scene that was enacting on the
green below.

It had certainly looked prettier from the hill. I saw links of
red-faced oafs sway roaring across the turf, and whip themselves in
mere drunken impulse about any mock-bashful hoyden who stood, feigning
unconsciousness, in their path. I saw blowzed, over-fed women,
dragging squalling babies, struggle vainly to be included in the
amorous capture, and when they failed or were ignored, vindicate their
outraged respectability in coarse recriminations. I saw farmers,
seated under trees, weep fuddled tears because they could hold no
more, and stuffed children, crying for nothing so much as breath. I
had been drawn, as was natural to me, by the bait of gaiety and life,
and this was my reward. The ground between the booths was strewed with
trampled fragments of bread and meat, and sodden with rejected ale. It
was a fair, with all the licence of a day gathered into an hour.

I don’t know how long I had been standing, absorbed in contemplation
of this Gehenna, and of the stately mansion across the green, on whose
terraces a gay company, gathered to see the beasts feed, was clearly
distinguishable, when a sound of hoofs coming up the lane behind me
brought me to myself; and almost immediately three horsemen, with very
flushed faces, rode into view, and, perceiving me, halted. One was a
fox-featured gentleman, in fulvous cloth; one, good-humoured and
quiet, wore a grey coat; and the third was resplendent all over, and
as drunk as Chloe. He, at the first sight of me, tumbled rather than
dismounted from his horse, and, forsaking the reins, which the grey
gentleman caught, came staggering upon me.

“Hey, my vitals!” he lisped, “whom the devil have we here?”

He was quite young, and like a pretty toy, with a spangled coat in the
Maccaroni Club style, a great bow at his neck, and ribbons to his
knees. But he frightened me with the stare in his glazed eyes; and as
he advanced, I backed into the hedge.

“I was only looking,” I fluttered. “I didn’t mean any harm. Please let
me go.”

“Harm!” he exclaimed, with a tipsy crow. “O, but you’re trespassing,
missy, and must give an hic-count of yourself. Come ’long, now, before
my lord.”

I saw the eldest of the three regarding us from his saddle with a sort
of mordant humour, and the sudden recognition of his state made my
heart leap. Red, and lank-jawed, and vicious, he sat watching us as a
fox might watch his cub negotiating the helpless struggles of a lamb.
He always had a fine appetite for such occasions, and could sin very
sweetly by proxy, could Hardrough.

“Wounds, my lord!” cried the boy, “is this a larsh surprise for me
you’ve ’ranged? Besh preshent of all the day. Come cock-horse, child,
and we’ll kiss a-riding.”

He put an arm about me. For all my distress, the musky contact of him,
so precious after my long degradation, seemed half to drug me from
resistance. I struggled feebly to push him away.

“Get on with your gallophic,” said he, addressing his companions
knowingly. “I’ll follerer by-m-by.”

“Come, Salted,” cried the grey gentleman suddenly, in a laughing,
half-vexed way. “Remember what’s due to your guests, child, now and to
be. Come along and ride yourself sober, as you engaged.”

“Shober, nunky! shober, you cake!” sputtered the fool. “Shober ’nough
yourself to wa’t me go on and break my neck--hey, my lord?”

He leered tipsily to the earl his father, who grinned, and blinked his
red eyes.

“Let him be, George,” said the nobleman. “Damme, the boy’s not fit to
ride a broomstick. You’re precious anxious for the gipsy, brother. I’d
as lief you was concerned for your nephew.”

“And so I am,” says the other hotly. “’Tis foul so to take advantage
of a stranger and a child. Call your cub off, sir,” says he, “if I’m
not to take a whip to him.”

He gathered his reins in, and twitched his heels. He was bronzed and
comely, a man of thirty or so, younger by ten years than the earl. He,
the latter, had turned quite white. A frost seemed to have pinched his
cheeks. In another moment, I believe, he would have drawn his
riding-switch across the handsome face, but in that moment I was aware
of a lady hurrying up, and I broke from my captor, and fled to meet
her.

“Help me!” I cried. “Don’t let him hurt me!”

She received me very kindly. She was a tall and colourless figure,
gentle in mien but with a bad complexion--the lady, in short, in whose
company I had left Father Pope.

“Hardwick! George!” she whispered, in an outraged voice.

The earl pushed up to her, with a snigger.

“There, Sophy,” said he. “What are you doin’ here? But I’m glad you’ve
come. Is this here your protégée? Well, take the little baggage
away, that was near bringing us to words about her.”

“Words!” she said. “This child!”

“O,” he exclaimed, “that’s all one! Come, boy!”

She detained him some minutes, murmuring to him as he bent down. At
the end he rose, grinning at me.

“What!” says he--“the sly old crow! Be sure the little sweep wasn’t
fathered by a black cassock before you adopt her.”

She started back, flushing scarlet.

“Hardrough!” she said; “I ask you to go on.”

“Well, I will,” said he, with a little breathless laugh, “and carry
your secret, sister, safe in my keepin’.”

He half wheeled, and in an ironic voice summoned the young viscount.
The boy got to his horse as sulky as sin. In another minute the three
gentlemen were ridden out of sight.

The moment they had disappeared the lady turned to me.

“Why didn’t you keep by your friend?” she asked, rather sharply. “From
what he tells me, you are in need of one.”

I hung my head and broke into sobs. She was softened immediately.

“There,” she said. “I didn’t mean to be harsh; but discretion was so
necessary. Will you come with me--I am the Lady Sophia Rowe--and we
can discuss your case in safety at home? But every instant means
peril, and we must hasten.”

I suffered her to hurry me up the lane. Her gait took no grace from
urgency, being awkward as with most over-tall women, and the worse to
view because she was reckless how she raised her skirts. In a little
we came round a curve that swept beyond the limits of the green; and
here, under some trees, we found her coach, which had been ordered
round earlier, with the priest and his great folio ensconced glowering
in it. In a moment we were in, and rolling along quiet country roads.
The noise of the fairing died behind us. The world of new peace and
beatitude lay before. For seven miles we sped soberly on, deeper and
deeper into the pleasant hush, that was broken only by the incessant
confidential murmuring of my companions.

At last, taking a road high above a little village bowered in trees,
we turned between beautiful scrolled gates into a drive that seemed to
me to pierce gardens as enchanting as the hanging ones of Babylon.
There were soft lawns and placid groves of timber, with lofty
rookeries. There were vivid parterres, and terraces stooping to blue
depths, wheredown a little silver brook bubbled through mists of
foliage. There were rose bowers, and great jars, like Plenty’s horn,
brimming petunias. There was a mossy fountain, with lilies and
goldfish, and a baby Triton in the midst spurting a jet to heaven.
There were grassy walks, and beyond their vistas the eternal solace of
distance. And, dominating all, there was the house.

At least it seemed less to command than to partake of the serenity of
which it was the habitable nucleus--the human nest in the garden. It
stood before us, not suddenly, but in quiet revelation, a simple old
structure of red brick, unlaboured with ornament, unweighted of stone,
a pleasant home for happiness set on a wide level platform of grass
and gravel. My eyes had hardly accepted it before my heart.

We alighted into a fragrant hall, and madam led me at once into a
large low room with windows bent upon a heavenly prospect of woods and
meadows; and there, bidding me await her until she could come and talk
with me, shut me in, and withdrew.

I had not stood many minutes, in a silent dream of wonder and
expectation, when the door opened softly again, and a little girl
stole in. She was about my own age, or somewhat older, and very dark
and pretty, but with foolish large eyes like a dog’s. For some moments
she stared at me, wondering, without a smile, then came and touched my
hand.

“Madam sent me,” she said. “I live here. I am her adoption child. Are
you come to stay?”

I shook my head, bewildered.

“O,” she whispered, “I hope so. I have no little friend at all, and
you are so pretty.”

“I have golden hair,” I said. “We can’t all be the same. But yours at
least is very curly. What is your name?”

“Patience Grant,” she said. “My mother died in the convent, and I have
no father. I am not allowed to play with the village children. What is
_your_ name?”

I told her “Diana Please.”

“It is a nice name,” she said. “Did _your_ mother too die in the
convent? I am very happy here, but I shall be happier if you come.”

Lady Sophia had entered softly while she spoke.

“Hush, Patty!” said she, with a smile. “And run away now.”

The child went, looking wistfully back. _Ah, mignonnette, ma petite à
jamais mémorable, toi que j’aime sans discontinuer!_ How wert thou to
me from the first the most attached of little dogs!

Madam drew me into a window, and looked earnestly into my eyes. As she
held me, Father Pope entered and stood near, my morose and baleful
inquisitor.

“Do you like my home?” she said, in her level, toneless voice. The
labour of lifting it seemed always constitutionally beyond her.

I clasped my hands. “O, madam,” I said, “I could be a very good
Catholic here!”

She smiled, in a surprised way, then looked grave. I waited in a fever
of expectation for her to speak again. I had already decided that I
would wish to be adopted like Patience, in whom I seemed to foresee a
little adoring vassal, so welcome after my own long slavery, and that
I must be adroit to gain my point. Brighthelmston, with its
questionable potentialities, had darkened in contrast with this
paradise. I felt even that it would not be good for me to return
there; that I was destined for a virtuous, if not a devout life. It is
no contradiction that I had not thought so an hour before. Our moral
development is intermittent. Its phases of growth are inspirations of
adaptation to circumstance. A fever made of Francis of Assisi a saint
out of a profligate. These high lawns had revealed to me the pit from
which I had escaped.

Lady Sophia looked very sweet and grave.

“Or anywhere, I hope,” she said. “Faith is not a question of
surroundings.”

I was not so sure of that; but I held my tongue, hanging my head.

“Let me see your face,” she insisted, and put her thin hand under my
chin.

“It is a pretty and an innocent one,” she declared. “How came you,
child, in the position in which Father Pope found you?”

I told her how I had been stolen by the sweep, and had escaped from
him rather than seem to concur in the violence offered to my religion.

“It was an ingenious and a courageous act,” she said, gently kindling;
“was it not, Father?”

The bear snorted, dissent or commendation--it was all one.

“Ask her about her mother,” he growled.

“True,” said the lady, with a gesture of involuntary repulsion, for
which she the moment after atoned with a caress.

“She had been a Sister in the Hospital of St. Magdalen, Father Pope
tells me,” she said very low. “She had returned there to expiate
her--her”--

“No,” I broke in.

“You told me so,” roared the priest.

“I didn’t,” I said, half crying. “You were looking at your book all
the time I confessed.”

Madame Sophia could not restrain a smile.

“Fie, Father!” she said. “I admit it does not sound the least probable
part of the child’s experiences.”

But she sobered again in a moment.

“She did not return?” she asked. “Then”--

“She is dead,” I whispered.

After all, I believed it was true; that she could not have survived
the wreck of all things which my abduction must have meant to her. The
gentlewoman gave a gasp of pity and self-rebuke, and enfolded me in
her arms.

“Forgive me!” she cried. “O, I was cruel! The poor lost lamb! So
white, so helpless, so delivered to the wolves! But”--she bethought
herself--“where was this?-- And your unhappy father?”

“He had taken me to Brighthelmston,” I stammered; “he was not of our
religion--of any. He made me dance before the pretty prince, and would
have given me to him, but that the sweep whom he fought stole me out
of revenge first.”

The priest and the lady exchanged looks.

“Am I justified?” she asked. “The peril, the iniquity! O, surely,
Father--surely!”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Write to the Magdalens first,” said he, “and verify it.”

She thought a little, then addressed me again.

“And if I do, would you like to make your home here in the meantime,
Diana?”

The strain had been very severe. I fell on my knees before her,
weeping. I knew, from what my governess had once told me, that les
Madelonnettes must confirm the worst of my story.

“O, madam,” I cried, “if you would train me in goodness and piety!”

She kissed me, then looked up, her immobile face quite transfigured.

“Perhaps,” she thrilled, “some day, perhaps some day to fill the place
and vindicate the vows of the poor weak apostate who gave you life!”

“Write to the Magdalens,” growled Father Pope.




 VII.
 I AM PUT AWAY IN CAMPHOR

I cannot hold Lady Sophia altogether irresponsible for the loss to
the Calendar of a very promising saint. I entered Wellcot enthusiastic
to devote the rest of my days to the practices of piety and
self-renunciation, and I was moved to this resolve not least by the
example my benefactress seemed to offer me of the most perfect
detachment from the world. Alas! I was too soon to realise how the
chaste aloofness of a mind may mean only a vanity so sensitive, and an
irritability so nervous, as for ever to be on their defence against
unwarranted approaches. I had thought her serenely above the
littlenesses of life; and all the time she only sat on a level with
them, but apart, in alarm lest her moral distinction should be held to
justify familiarities with her social. The folded wings of piety may
be used to conceal some uncelestial humours. I had supposed, at least,
that passion was the remotest from her temperament; and there even I
was wrong, as you shall learn.

She wrote, in accordance with Father Pope’s advice, to the Superioress
of the sisterhood to which my mother had belonged. I confess, for all
my confidence, I awaited the answer in some trepidation. It fulfilled,
however, when it came, my best expectations. The charitable Mother
confirmed the story of her former postulant’s recreancy and flight
with a profligate man of fashion--whither, she had never concerned
herself to inquire. The woman, in leaving the convent gates, she said,
had died to her--to all, save the lord of hell, who, she was rejoiced
now to hear, had so soon claimed and secured his own. She would
command a Magnificat that night in praise of the eternal chastity; and
there her interest in the matter ended. She wrote in French, with much
Pharisaic unction, which betrayed, nevertheless, its underlying gall.
Madam quoted to me only so much (I found an opportunity later to read
the whole) as appeared to justify her in the course upon which she was
resolved--my present adoption, that was to say, by her, for the sake
of my soul. I was becomingly meek and grateful in placing myself
unreservedly in her hands; and in this manner began my
self-obliterating martyrdom of five long years in the placid nunnery
of Wellcot.

For a time I was very happy, until a ripening intelligence revealed to
me by degrees the limitations of my moral and material surroundings. I
have no intention to detail the processes of that growth. I can
hardly, indeed, claim an independent life until detached from its dull
experiences. It is enough here briefly to review them.

My first warning disillusionment was the knowledge, to my infinite
disgust, that Father Pope was to remain a permanency in the asylum to
which accident had translated him. Whether his former patrons seized
this opportunity--in the first reactionary days after riot--to rid
themselves of an ungainly incubus, or whether--which is more
probable--he himself manœuvred for transference to new
hunting-grounds, not of souls, but grubs, I do not know. Anyhow, his
baggage being his book, the change was easy, and at Wellcot he
remained, titular chaplain to the Lady Sophia, but positive to a
community of nuns across the valley, who were her most cherished
protégées, and to whose ranks I, in the first blind fervour of my
redemption, unprovisionally dedicated myself.

I had not been long settled before, speculating on the relationship
between Shole and Wellcot-Herring, I began to wonder if I was destined
ever to see again the young gentleman who had so insulted me. Perhaps,
I thought, I might help by my example, and even persuasion, to wean
him from his evil courses. However, the opportunity was not to be
given me, as it appeared he was not sufficiently in love with his
aunt’s ways to pay her even the periodic courtesy of a visit. But his
father the earl came occasionally, and from him I was bent upon
discovering whether or not my image was entirely effaced from the
son’s remembrance.

Happening to meet him alone in the gardens one day, I was actually
emboldened to beg him to convey a message from me to the viscount that
I forgave him.

He stopped, and looked at me with admiration; then took my chin in his
hand.

“I shall do nothing of the sort, Miss Presumption,” he said, in his
thin, ironic voice. “But I’m not so particular for myself. You shall
give me all of your confidences that you like.”

“Thank you,” I said saucily; “I will choose a handsomer to fill the
place of my papa.”

“Was he so handsome?” says he, grinning.

“He was the most beautiful man in the world,” I answered.

“Well, I can believe it,” he said. “But not so handsome as my brother
George, hey?”

“Fifty thousand times,” I said.

“And fifty thousand times better?”

“I don’t know. He was good enough for me.”

“That I can well believe,” he chuckled; then took a turn or two and
came back.

“Harkee, missy,” says he, “I’m not going to peach on you, whatever you
say, so you can be as free as air with me. Only promise not to make me
jealous of my own son, and we’ll be fast friends some day.” And with a
laugh, he left me.

I hated him instinctively, and longed for the time when I could set my
wits to discompose him. He was a widower, and socially and politically
a man of bad character; and it should have been madam’s duty to see
that we were not brought into contact. But she could conceive no evil
of the head of her house.

The brother, the good one, came near us no more than the viscount;
which, nevertheless, did not trouble me, because I owed him a debt,
and he was too poor in purse and reputation to expect me to liquidate
it. Little Patty, after her manner, loved this unfortunate, whom she
had seen often in former days, before his character went over some
racing transaction, which ruined him and made him shy of his
familiars. Her loyalty was proof against the worst. Where she was
pledged, she never dropped away, and her heart had the truest instinct
for finding and attaching itself to what was lovable in another. She
adored nobility of mind, and was always my most faithful little
adherent. I came early to discover that her origin was none of the
most select, and on this account, perhaps, condescended to her more
than I should. She repaid me with a blind devotion and admiration
which were sometimes more affecting than diplomatic; and, before I had
been at Wellcot a year, would have followed me at a word to shame or
death, in very despite of her duty to her patroness. But by then, I
think, she was coming with me to recognise certain flaws in the
character of her former divinity.

It was from her in the first instance that I learned all that she knew
of the family history: How my lord was a brute and libertine, who had
done his wife to death, and was hated and feared of all, unless,
perhaps, by the old dirty astrologer on the hill, who was his kinsman
and Naboth and defier in one, holding the “Folly” in fee simple, as he
did, from a scientific ancestor, and persistently refusing to be
coaxed or bought out of it. How my lady, as pious as her brother was
worldly, had embraced the Romish doctrine many years before, and had
not scrupled, on the Jesuit principle, to procure herself through his
most questionable political relations a virtual exemption from the
penalties which attached to the open exercise of her religion. How,
trading on this connection, she had planted in Wellcot-Herring a
community of the “Sisters of Perpetual Invocation,” whose munificent
patroness and dupe (Heaven forgive me! They were certainly very
plausible little sybarites) she had constituted herself. How the
honourable Mr. Rowe, his lordship’s younger brother, was suspected of
royal blood in his veins, and was only spared the scandal of proof so
long as his nephew, the Viscount Salted, kept him out of the
succession. How, in fine,--and this was where my interest was most
intimately engaged,--her ladyship had once had an _affaire de cœur_
with a Mr. de Crespigny, an artist, who came to paint her portrait,
and who left it on the canvas half finished, being given, it was
whispered, his congé in reluctant return for his insensibility to the
proselytising advances of his sitter.

From little Patty I extracted all this _chronique scandaleuse_, and if
she enlightened me in her own inimitable bashful way, blundering
prettily on the truth out of innocence, I was not so backward even
then as to be imposed upon by half-revelations, or to refrain from
construing them on my own account into the language of experience.

And so I entered on my new life, having, to endear its strangeness,
and soon, alas! its monotony to me, the most loving, simple-minded
little comrade one might imagine. From the first my position, like my
friend’s, was undefined. We were not adopted daughters, or servants,
or companions to madam, but a sort of pious pensioners on her bounty.
She claimed some personal menial duties of us, which might be likened
to those exacted of ladies of a royal bed-chamber. As was befitting
with so great a princess, we might approach and handle her, but
reverently as one might uncover a reliquary of sanctified bones. And,
indeed, she was little else. For myself, I did not much care. My eyes
and ears served me for all her case, howsoever little of her intimacy
was vouchsafed me.

I often put her to bed after supper and prayers, when she would love
to engage me in little drony dialectics on faith. We had amicable
contests of wit, God save me! on the qualities which endeared our
favourite saints to us. I observed that the male beatitudes were her
choice. Her room was hung with as many “Fathers” as a fribble’s is
with Madonnas of the opera-house. The ways of piety are strange. I was
no _dévote_, alas! like madam, yet I should have been abashed to go
to bed in such company.

But, indeed, there was no disputing with her principles. Faith was her
covering argument in everything. She wore it like a garment,
high-necked and impenetrable; only, to my taste, it was none the more
becoming for being fitted over broken stay-bones. Then, too, she moved
so stately by faith, that I had often speculated why her heels should
be trodden over, until I discovered that she had bandy legs. Truly
faith, like charity, covers a multitude of sins. I attribute it to her
that mine came so soon to be in myself. I have never had reason to be
ashamed of anything it hid; only instinct tells me to be more
particular about my garters than my scapular. If the Lady Susannah
Rowe had found herself being spied upon by the Elders, she would have
snatched and donned the latter, and had complete faith in its shelter.
That may be grace, but it is not graceful, I think. Since the first
mother started the fashions, there has been every obligation on us to
consult appearances; and I at least, though never more worldly than
the most, have persistently declined to let Faith make an ostrich of
me.

She used often to send me to the convent across the valley with
messages to the nuns; and I was early in discovering that I was the
more welcomed by them when a little offering of fowls or hothouse
grapes accompanied me. Then I could gain indulgences as many as I
wanted for my peccadilloes--up to twenty at least for a couple of fat
gallinas--and perhaps rather presumed upon my purgatory in
consequence.

This community was a praying order and eternally vowed from washing,
as a personal indelicacy; or from stepping beyond its convent gates,
as a first _faux pas_ into the world; or from ministering to any needs
but its own; or, in short, from being of any practical use on the
earth whatever, save as an authorised agency for the distribution of
“indulgences.” A natural consequence of all of which was that it grew
to be a very pot-bellied little community, as tight-skinned and ruddy
as the pears on its own south wall, and, through its Superioress, as
knowing a judge as any of old port and early asparagus. The bell that
prostrated it on its fat little knees to Angelus was the same that
rang it to dinner. The throat of the thing was hoarse with the steam
of rich pasties and salmis of game that rose from the convent kitchen
hard by. It had mushroom pits and a peach-hung pleasaunce, and,
indeed, by the help of my lady, was altogether as epicurean a little
company for saints’ feast days as could be gathered. The devil, it is
certain, sets up his tent in an empty stomach. He would have found
close quarters, as was proper, in the Convent of Perpetual Invocation.
I will say for the Sisters that I never heard a cross word among them.

Now, to have the command of indulgences, for feast days, and for
dispensations from fast, in such a neat little paradise as theirs,
seemed to me at the first a very desirable thing. Only I hoped that by
the time I was ripe for the novitiate, the chaplain would have been
replaced by one more personable. The Mother had, in common decency, to
undertake to instruct me and Patty by and by in the articles of our
creed, and Father Pope, complete gentleman, to conduct our secular
finishing. We never saw any other man, except village chawbacons and,
at rare intervals, the foxy earl. It was a deadly life. I could not
have endured it but for the society of my sweet little _adoratrice_.
She grew up the dearest thing, with the face of a Christian
shepherdess. One saw lambs, not babies, in her eyes. Holding her
little kind hand in memory, I pass over four years of this
self-obliteration, until I awaken to find myself in my seventeenth
year.




 VIII.
 I MEET MR. NOEL DE CRESPIGNY

Life without the male element is worse than being limited to shop
windows for the fashions. We can read with patience in a nunnery of
the modes, but not of marrying and giving in marriage. Still, I will
ask any candid critic to judge if an utmost desperation could have
induced me to a conduct, with an accusation of which madam inaugurated
the series of misunderstandings which came to arise between us--an
attempted corruption of Father Pope, to wit! The whole truth of this
fantastic invention is as follows.

When I was near fifteen I had begun to grow troubled in my conscience
as to my Confirmation. How could I face the cloister, an uncertified
soldier of my creed? The chaplain had seemed kinder to me of late; or
perhaps it would be truer to say, less bearishly unapproachable. To be
sure, he could not always be adamant to the natural graces it was his
business to help adorn. And, in proportion as he relaxed, I was moved
to conciliate him with fifty little winning attentions, to which he
could not be altogether insensible. I found plausible excuses for his
confounding entomology with theology, citing the “little Bedesman of
Christ” in vindication of the Nature God. I learned to rear clammy
grubs in pots of earth, that I might surprise him with the
results--beautiful winged creatures which I likened to the souls
emancipated under his tutelage. I discovered, or invented, a hundred
symbols for his hagiology. I sewed buttons on his coat, and brushed
his great hat, with actual reverence for the moth which had settled in
it from the brain below. Was it my fault if the ridiculous creature
misconstrued all these little wistful _égards_? I sought my way only
by him, as one might propitiate a surly but indispensable guide, and
in my utter innocence took his morose silences, and the scowling
suspicion which grew in his eyes, for some late dawn of sympathy, some
increased consideration, if not tenderness, towards the pupil whom he
was conscious of his heart having maligned. How cruelly my trust was
abused, will show in an interview to which madam unexpectedly summoned
me.

“Diana,” she said--she was seated knitting a comforter for the monster
himself, and her lips, as she bent over her work, had a mechanical but
rather shaky smile on them--“have you a daughter’s regard for our good
chaplain?”

“O yes, madam!” I answered, wondering what was to come.

“Yet it is not a daughter’s part to indite love sonnets to her
Father,” she said steadily, without looking up.

I stared, and flushed, and burst into tears. She also reddened, and
produced a paper from her pocket.

“Is this yours?” she demanded. “He found it slipped into his breviary.
It appears to me to bear only one construction.”

“And what is that, madam?” I asked coldly. My little outbreak had been
mastered as soon as vented. My heart blazed with anger over this
outrageous Cymon in a cassock.

“I put the question to you,” she said, her thin bosom heaving a
little. “If it is as I suspect, I should blush to name it.”

“Blush rather for yourself,” I said, in the same chill tone, “to plant
the slander in a young girl’s soul. I will be a Catholic no more.”

She rose, pale and agitated.

“Do you know what you say?” she breathed in fear. “_You!_
self-dedicated to the cloister!”

“I renounce the pledge!” I cried, in a sudden burst of passion. “I
will no longer believe what Father Pope believes, or confess again to
him anything but lies, since those are what he likes to trade in.”

“Hush!” she said, aghast at my fury. Her hands trembled, fluttering
the paper. “Hush! Be calm! You say things you cannot mean. God forgive
you the threat of such apostasy!”

“And you,” I cried, still stormily, “such a witness against a poor
child’s character.”

“No, no,” she entreated, almost abjectly, “I wish only the truth.
Father Pope wishes only the truth. Tell me frankly, do you recognise
these lines?”

With a great effort I subdued my emotion, and took the paper frigidly
from her hand. It was folded at the following verse, which I had to
bite my lips, pretending to read:--

  “Thrice happy she who from thy kindling eye
    Shall draw some spark to illuminate her breast,
  A wistful wanderer between earth and sky,
    With doubts of love’s true haven sore oppressed.”

“Do you recognise them?” she repeated.

“Yes, madam,” I acknowledged, looking up between reserve and defiance.

“You do?” she murmured, taken aback. “And it is your hand?”

“No, madam,” I answered quietly. “It is Miss Grant’s, but disguised.”

She echoed the word, at once incredulous, and fearful of exciting
another outbreak by appearing so.

“Disguised! For what purpose? And to whom addressed?”

“To me,” I answered. “It was part of a game between us; but we will
play it no more.”

She echoed in amazement, “A game!” Then asked faintly, “What game?”

“I was the Hermit of the Rocks,” I said, “and Miss Grant the Princess
Camilla, who wrote to consult me as to her vocation, whether for the
cloister or for marriage with a pious young gentleman.”

It was an inspiration, which I had no sooner uttered than I feared for
my rashness. But I need not have. Madam, as her slow perceptives
kindled, grew one shine of happy intelligence.

“A game!” she repeated, smiling holy-motherly over the decorous
innocence of our inventions. “Well, I will say it was a very proper
one, though a little ambiguous in the articles of love to be addressed
to a hermit. But how came it in the chaplain’s book, child?”

I confessed that I had had the curiosity to read in the Father’s
breviary, and must unwittingly have left the paper there for a marker.
She kissed me then, and, while deprecating my inquisitiveness in
matters which did not concern me, apologised very handsomely, I will
say, for having so traduced me on a shred of evidence.

“It shall be a lesson to me, and a penance,” she said. “But, child, go
now and retract your wicked recantation, before perhaps the devil
shall claim you to your sin.”

“It was very hard, madam,” I said, still rebellious. “Why, being
disguised, should Father Pope have decided as of course that the
verses were mine?”

“Ah!” she said, blushing and embarrassed. “That I do not know--I
think; but little Patty is no genius.”

The moment I was free, I hurried palpitating to my friend, and
confessed all, and implored her, by the love between us, to play her
part in the little innocent deception I had practised. She gazed at me
with her sweet shocked eyes, as if I were inviting her to murder.

“You really meant them for him, for Father Pope?” she whispered, half
choking. “O, Diana! It was blasphemy!”

“It was,” I said, “to waste the Princess Camilla on such a block.”

Then, as my friend still cried out, I knelt, and took her waist
prisoner in my arms, and begged to her.

“I am not like you, darling. I pine and pinch in this cold air. If it
was not for you, you little warm thing, I should run away with Giles,
the handsome stable-boy.”

“Don’t,” she wept. “You don’t mean it. Say you only intended it for a
joke!”

“Of course I only meant it for a joke,” I said, urging her; “though
it’s true I believed the creature was expecting it of me. But ’tis a
joke that will cost me dear if you don’t back me.”

“O!” she cried, despairing, “I do, I will. But how can I ever pretend
to have wrote them, when that cat rhymes with lap is the best I know
of verse.”

“You little dear,” I said, laughing in sheer love of her artlessness.
“Pretend nothing, but hold your tongue.”

That she would have done for me, I think, though they racked her to
confess; and all might yet have gone well, had not the Lady Sophia,
meddlesome like most self-righteous consciences, sent for her to
question if, after all, her simple verses might not have been the
instinctive expression of _her_ leaning towards the cloister. My poor
transparent angel managed to articulate a panic denial of any such
tendency; though, indeed, there was no need to, to any but a
blindworm. If ever little maid was built for loving, or to lay her
pretty hair in a puddle for some rogue to reach heaven by, it was she.
The sense of guilt would confound her, however; and, what between her
duty to madam and her loyalty to me, she must have answered her
examination so ambiguously as to raise some new doubts and suspicions
in the minds of her inquisitors.

She flew back to me with very red eyes, and a fresh horror of the
imposition she was forced to practise.

“I will never, never tell,” she sobbed, “though they tear me to
pieces. But O, Diana! I don’t want to be a nun.”

I comforted her, though furious with the others for their Jesuitical
practices on her innocence.

“Wait,” I cried, “and I will pay them both out! What right had they,
after what I said, to try and torture a lie out of you? Don’t fear for
the convent, child. I pledge my word you shall have a husband and
fifty children, nun or no nun.”

“I want no husband,” she answered, blushing and clinging to me, “and
no lover but you.”

I have taken pains to record her fond little reply, in view of an
odious charge, once concocted to my injury, of my having traded upon
my friend’s faith in me to rob her heart of its dearest possession.
That, indeed, was, then and always, no less than her loved Diana, of
whom none was ever permitted by her to take precedence. Any sacrifice
which was designed to maintain those mutual relations she thought too
cheap for discussion.

One result, however, of her “questioning” was that madam’s attitude
towards me was thenceforth marked by a reserve and jealousy which,
inasmuch as I was unconscious of having done anything to merit it,
served only to prejudice me against a religion which could be used for
a cloak to so much hypocrisy. I grew quickly disenamoured of my
supposed vocation, and decided that faith, which seemed largely a
matter of digestion, could be better realised through independence. In
short, in the world I could reach beatitude through twenty
self-indulgences to one in the convent; and, such being the case, and
my constitution perfect, it seemed folly to take the short way.

Madam seized an early opportunity after this to inquire into my plans
for retiring from the world and taking the veil. I confessed to her,
in reply, that her late suspicions had engendered in me thoughts, a
sense of grievance, inimical to my right contemplation of so momentous
a sacrifice. She was very much shocked and troubled, and recommended
me a stricter observance of all those self-obliterating virtues which
are such a comfort to those who don’t practise them. She rebuked my
pride; she prescribed fasting and discipline and maceration--tortures
which would have killed a dray-man--in order to lower and submit my
system to its final severance from the world. She would have had me at
her mercy before she drove in the knife; only, unluckily for her, my
constitution was impregnable. It flourished equally whether on bread
and water or _vol au vent_; and, finally, she surrendered to it. I
rather liked a little pious game we played, called the Moral Lotto, in
which the discs were sins, and those left uncovered at the end
entailed an obligation on the losers to maintain a particular guard
against the temptations they expressed. Though we all, in the end,
must have been warned through the calendar, from simony to
powder-puffs, I believe the contest was so sanctified to her by
intention that she read a design of Heaven in every missing counter;
and the fact that I generally won, did more than many assurances to
convince her that I was perhaps after all not so black as she had
painted me.

But, between me and Father Pope, after that little _malentendu_, there
was no quarter asked or given. He treated me with a persistent coarse
rudeness, and I retaliated with all the interest of wit I dared. I
dropped blobs of wax on his spectacles; left his Hagiology open under
a drip from the ceiling; put crumbs of cheese in his cabinets of moth
to tempt the mice in; and confessed his own most obvious sins to him
as mine, for which I accepted furious penances as meekly as a lamb. He
hated me, and I contrived at least to give him a substantial reason
for such an abuse of his cloth.

Now, I will mention one only other little incident before I pass on to
the subject of this chapter. I was playing in Wellcot attics on a
certain wet afternoon with Patty, when I discovered a locked Bluebeard
chamber.

“What is it?” I said; but she did not know. I tried the handle; I
peered vainly into the keyhole; finally, I took a pin from my hair,
and contrived a little pick of it.

“O, what are you going to do?” whispered the child, quite scared.

“Get in, if I can,” said I.

“Don’t!” she said, horrified. “If we are shut out, ’tis for a reason.”

“Of course,” I answered. “And it’s no good looking for it on this side
of the door.”

She clasped her hands in a little paralysis of curiosity while I
worked. It was a simple lock, and I was successful. As the door swung
open, we saw before us a sky-lit room, wedged under the slope of the
roof, and quite empty save for a framed picture, which leaned to the
wall back outwards. Patty uttered a tiny cry--

“O, Diana! It’s the portrait!”

In a moment, all excitement, we stole in a-tiptoe. The place was very
still and ghostly. Only on the dusty canvas itself lay a melancholy
grid of light. Palpitating in our sense of guilt, we turned the frame
round, let it drop softly back again; and there, before our eyes,
bloomed a smiling, wistful face. The light, which had saddened it in
reverse, was quickened now to an illuminating glory. It greeted and
dimpled to us--the face of a dead woman risen.

A dead woman. Had she ever lived? I could not believe it, thinking of
that unsympathetic _dévote_ downstairs.

“Was she _ever_ like that?” I whispered.

“She was beautiful,” murmured Patty fervently. “I remember him
painting this.”

“And going away, and leaving it unfinished?” said I: for, indeed, the
portrait was but sketched in, though masterly in its promise.

“Yes,” said the little girl, gulping. “And I never supposed what had
become of it till now.”

It seemed incredible, the change that but a few envious years had
wrought. Had love done this thing before me? Or could love forsaken so
warp the loveliness which Love himself had created? It gave me a new
little thrill of respect for the humanised Sophia; because, whatever
the truth of her face, a man had been found to see this beauty in it.

“She was St. Cecilia,” whispered Patty. “There is the harp in her
lap.”

It was without strings--an unborn music. Perhaps the Christian lady
had declined to accept a pagan Muse for midwife, and had temporised
with her would-be deliverer, hoping to convert him. If so, she had
played her cards badly. I wondered if the man had been a
fortune-hunter. But in that event Madame Sophia would certainly be
Madame de Crespigny.

Whatever the case, however, the picture made a deep impression on me,
and from my first moment of seeing it I was haunted by the desire to
become myself the subject of such a master’s devotion. _Ma vue et mes
minauderies firent tout-à-coup tourner la girouette._ For the first
time I felt myself a woman, encumbered with the heavy responsibilities
of her sex.

One day--it was some eighteen months later--returning from a
commission to the convent, I walked straight into the presence of the
original of the picture and its painter. Yes, that is the truth. He
had run faith at last to earth, it seemed, and, armed with it, was
returned to add the strings to the abortive harp, and perfect the
ancient harmony. I could have thought that, to do so, he had need of
faith indeed; until, looking at madam, I started in sheer wonder. She
was transfigured--rejuvenated. The happiest light--bashful, coy,
defiant, and surrendering its defiance--was in her eyes. She was more
like a wife in the first wonder of motherhood than the starved
_religieuse_ of yesterday.

And the cause! Ah, my Alcide! The creature rose upon my entrance, and
I could have laughed in the face of my own befooled ideal. I had
thought of Raphael and the Fornarina; and, behold! a slack,
half-drowned-looking figure, with an expression, and conduct of its
limbs, as if it were just risen gasping from a pond--there he stood,
no sort of natural fowl at all, but a freak of genius like a
five-legged calf at a fair.

“He! he!” giggled he, and held himself as if he were waiting to be
told what to do next.

He was tall, it is true; and there was a good deal of him, mostly
gnarled bone, if that counted to his credit. His forehead, streaked
with dark hair turning grey, was strong and ample, and in itself
something of a feature; but, mercy! the loose indetermination of his
lower lip, and the way it overhung, foolish and disproportionate as an
elephant’s, the little folded chin! As I stared, too mortified for
manners, he returned my gaze, suddenly startled, it seemed, into a
speechlessness so stertorous that little Patty, who had entered with
and stood behind me, fell back a step in confusion.

“Ah!” he exclaimed at that, chuckling, “and is hee-ar the little girl
I knew?”

He spoke, when he did at last, drawlingly, and ended, as was his way,
by wrinkling his thin hooked nose and hee-hawing a little laugh
through it.

“She is grown, is she not?” said madam, answering for Patty, to whom
he had referred, though indeed his eyes were all the time on me. Her
voice was so changed and soft, I hardly recognised it.

“She is grown,” he said. “She is become, it appears, a double cherry.”

“No,” said madam seriously, “the other is a second little foundling of
my care, and destined to God’s--_our_ God’s” (she added
coyly)--“service, de Crespigny.”

She had no sense of humour, the dear creature. The next moment,
noticing the direction of his gaze, with a little frown she bade us
begone to our books.

We fled, and, once remote, I turned, with a tragi-hysteric stamp, upon
my companion.

“Patience! And is that donkey _him_?”

“It is Mr. Noel de Crespigny,” she said, amazed. “He is not-- O,
Diana, do you really think him”--

“Hee-haw!” I broke in, with a little passion of laughter; and then
fury overcame me.

“How dared she,” I stormed, “how dared she tell him that lie about
me?”

“What lie?” said poor Patty.

“Why, to claim me to her worship of a golden ass,” I cried.

“It was a calf,” said my friend, bewildered.

I screamed with laughter.

“O, don’t!” Patty implored. “It really was, Diana.”

“You dear!” I gasped. “I daresay it was. But he was so badly made, I
couldn’t tell.”

She followed me upstairs, utterly bewildered. On the landing above we
encountered a strange sight. The picture--_the_ picture--was already
on its way down from the attics. A groom and maid bore it, and the
oddest creature stood above, superintending its resurrection.

“Gogo!” whispered Patty; “it’s Gogo!”

I could well believe it of such a monster.

He was a man, and a huge one, down to his mid-thighs; and there he
ended in a couple of wooden stumps. His face, lapped in a very mask of
red bristle, was as savage as sin; and he growled and rumbled like an
interdicted volcano.

“Ay,” he thundered, “I’m Gogo, the Dutch tumbler. Who calls me by my
name?”

Holding with one hand by the banisters, he struck with the strong
stick he carried at the stairs, missed the tread, and was within an
inch of falling. The stick rattled down, and he swung and clung with
both hands to the rail. In an instant, some whimsical impulse sent me
tripping lightly up to help him.

“Take my arm,” I said, “down to the landing.”

The giggling servants paused in their task to stare up; but the
monster himself laboured round, with quite a stunned look.

“To help--_me_,” he whispered hoarsely; “the little scented rush to
prop the oak!”

I was in love with his changed voice at once. It was something to meet
only two-thirds of a man.

“No, no,” he said, touching my arm as if it were a relic. “I’m Gogo,
the colour-grinder, the bottle-washer--not worthy to latch your
ladyship’s little shoe. I’ll go down--I’ll go down. Ho-ho! it’s easy.
I’ve done it all my life.”

While he spoke, the odd creature had descended unaided, and,
recovering his stick, struck his wooden limbs fiercely with it.

“Do you see?” he cried. “A stiff-kneed dog as ever limped after
Fortune!”

He flounced upon the servants, and roared them into care of their
charge; then turned again to me, where I stood with my friend, who had
run trembling to my shelter.

“’Tis our market, ladies,” he said in apology. “I must be particular
in its custody. We deal in new lamps for old; in”--

He descended a few steps, then turned again.

“Ah!” he groaned, tragic and comical in one. “Pity the poor genii who
has to serve; pity him--pity him.”

He heaved a sigh that would have turned a windmill, and followed the
picture, and disappeared.

“Patty!” I whispered, when he was gone--“Patty! Lord, Patty! who _is_
the creature?”

“I’m terrified of him,” she gulped. “He’s Mr. de Crespigny’s dog, he
calls himself, and follows his master everywhere, loving and growling
at him. He used to say there was no such painter in the world, if he
could be kept to it; but he always frightened me dreadfully. I do hope
they won’t stop long.”

“H’m!” I said. “And is that queer name all he’s got?”

“I never heard of another,” she answered. “But anyhow, it suits him.”

“Yes,” I said--and sighed--“_if_ he only had legs!”




 IX.
 I AM COMMITTED TO THE ----

I learned, as you shall understand, to readjust my first impression
of de Crespigny. It is certain one must not judge the quality of the
wine by the vessel. He was a great artist, who ran quickly to waste in
the passions evoked of his own conceptions. From the mouth downwards
he was a sensualist, and not fit to trust himself with a fair model.
Shut into a monastery, he would have been a Fra Angelico.

At the first he captured me, when once I was familiarised with the
ungainly exterior of the creature. To see him work--ardent, engrossed,
unerring in the early enthusiasm of a subject--was a revelation. He
stood so slack, he ran so to moral exhaustion when delivered of his
inspiration, it was impossible to recognise the master of a moment ago
in this invertebrate body with the loose wrists and silly laugh. If he
could only have been kept always at the high pressure of his
conceptions! Sometimes I wondered if it was in me to make him great
and hold him. It would have been splendid to be the Hamilton to this
Romney. Yet in the end I found the game not worth the candle. He was
soft wax, indeed, for seven-eighths of his length, and the littlest
puff from red lips could blow all the flame out of his head.

Still, while it lasted, his influence over me was an education. His
portfolios were the very minutes of inspiration--suggestions,
impressions of loveliness, caught and recorded and passed by for
others. He finished little, and perhaps would have been a lesser
artist and a stronger man if he could have laboured to consolidate his
dreams. He taught me that not facts, but shadows of facts--the
reflections, most moving, most intimate which they cast--are the real
appeals to the emotions; that there is no landscape so beautiful as
its reflection in a mirror, no chord so pathetic as its silent
vibration in one’s heart. Perhaps the heavens are an eternity of
echoes, of spectral perfumes, of dreams derived from experience, and
we the authors of our own immortality. If so, we should live
passionately who would dream well.

What this man lacked in nerve and backbone, his strange servant and
comrade supplied, and many times over. He was the oddest
monstrosity--savage in criticism, caustic in humour, a Caliban
bellowing grief and tenderness through hairy lungs. How he could ever
have come to attach himself, and passionately, to so flaccid a
bear-leader, was a problem pure for psychology. Now, at least, the two
were inseparable as-- Ah, my friend! I was on the point of saying as
Valentine and Proteus, but the analogy, I protest, is too poignant;
for have not I too been cruelly declared the Sylvia who divided them?

The portrait, on that first afternoon, was carried down to a
convenient closet on the ground floor; and there de Crespigny worked
on it, always alone, or in the sole company of his henchman. When
finished for the day, he would invariably lock the canvas into a
press, and none, not even I (there is virtue in that parenthesis), was
permitted to see it. The room was held sacred to him; and madam
herself refrained so religiously from intruding on its privacy as to
evoke, in her guileless trust of the singleness of his conversion, the
very hypocrisy which to her faith was inconceivable. For, indeed, he
converted this closet--which stood safely remote and approached by a
back-stair way--into a sanctuary for deceit. Often, to confess the
whole truth, when she supposed me engrossed in books or the
construction of celestial samplers, was I closeted with de Crespigny
and Gogo, learning to handle a brush, or inspire one, while Patty,
with a code of signals, kept panic watch on the stairs.

Madam’s exclusion, no doubt, cost her many a patient sigh. She
wondered over the idiosyncrasies of genius, which preferred, or
professed to prefer, to labour its mental impressions rather than toil
to record the living and mechanical pose. Still, it was true, the
Sophia of to-day, however rejuvenated, was scarcely the model of that
older time; and that he could finish that beautiful inspiration from
her staider personality was what it was folly, perhaps, in her to
expect.

Poor woman! Though I had my grudge, and no taste or reason to
commiserate such vanity, I suffered some qualms of remorse for the
part I was led to play. It is natural, after all, for the sex to see
itself never so immortal as through the eyes of love; and, when a man
has once praised its complexion, to claim for itself an eternity of
roses.

Father Pope, the old spiritual curmudgeon, never quite credited, I
think, the genuineness of this late conversion. I daresay, from his
experience in the confessional box, he knew his man pretty well, and
the value of such emotional abjurations. The sick devil turned monk
was not to his taste; and, if he ventured to intimate as much, the
coldness which certainly befell between madam and him at this time was
easily to be accounted for. It all amused me hugely; and I felt
delightfully wicked while the fun lasted. But retribution, my friend,
was to overtake your naughty little Diana.

One day, stealing into the studio, I found Gogo alone, grinding
colours into a little mortar.

“God ye good e’en, little serpent,” said he. “You can sit and beguile
me for practice till my master comes.”

“Gogo,” I said, shocked. “Why do you call me by such a name?”

“Because you are as like Eve as two peas,” growled he.

“Eve was not a serpent, but a beautiful woman,” I answered, pouting.

“And so was Lamia; and yet she was a serpent,” he grunted.

“I don’t know what you mean. You said Eve.”

“Well, why not?” he replied, turning his red, morose-looking eyes on
me. “Eve accused the serpent of beguilement, didn’t she? and Adam Eve?
But Eve was made out of the man, therefore Adam accused himself. But
Eve accused the serpent; therefore Adam accused the serpent. Yet he
accused Eve; therefore Eve was the serpent, which is what she would,
and will, never understand. O, God bless her! God bless her! Which, if
He would do, blessing the serpent, might unriddle this sinful problem
of life!”

He set to pounding vigorously with his pestle, and for a minute I
watched him in a bewildered silence. There was always something in
this shorn Cyclops which oddly attracted me.

“Gogo,” I said quite softly.

He threw down his pestle at once, and faced round, writhing his hands
together, and glaring at me.

“Who spoke?” he said, in hoarse, trembling tones. “A voice from the
garden making me in love with my own clown name. O, always so, always
so, thou spirit of Eve; and, though it lost the world to God, I’d take
the apple from thy hand.”

I laughed a little tremulously, as he stumped across the floor and
stood close before me. The vision of this great storm of a creature,
condemned to play the “comic relief” in the tragedy of his own
manhood, came as near my heart as anything.

“Look!” he cried, his rugged chest heaving; “I can’t kneel to you, and
I’m your slave. I walk open-eyed, hating and adoring you, into the
toils you spread for our feet. Feet!” he groaned, looking down, with a
despairing gesture. “Perhaps--who knows?--having them, I might have
escaped.”

“How did you lose them, poor Gogo?” I said.

“Hating and adoring,” he groaned, unheeding my question, “hating and
adoring. Look, little serpent: I could crush your slender throat for
what you do, and hold on, and sob my soul away to see you die. Why
have you come between us? United, we were strong, he and I. I drove
his genius on, and loved the poor ape for its spark of divinity, and
propped the weak spirit while it wrought. You knock the prop away, you
knock the prop away, and we both fall; and where is _my_ compensation
for the injury?” He clasped his great hands to me: “Give me back my
genius,” he cried in pain, “and let us go.”

I rose to my feet, half moved and half resentful.

“It is not I who take him or want him. I will not come here again.”

As I turned, he barred my way.

“No,” he said, near sobbing, “I lied. Do what you will with us: make
us angels or swine--I am content, so long as I may serve you.”

As he spoke, the door opened, and de Crespigny entered. He greeted me
with a rather shifty look, I thought, and his manner seemed too
distraught to affect any particular notice of his servant’s obvious
emotion.

“O, well, _ma bella_ Unanina,” said he; “but a little sitting for this
afternoon, please.”

I flushed, and was about to refuse to remain at all, when an imploring
scowl from Gogo softened me. With plenty of hauteur, I stalked into a
little curtained-off alcove which was consecrated to me for
tiring-room, and there dressed for model. When I emerged again, my
feet and arms were bare, my hair loose in a golden fillet, and, for
the rest, I wore a kind of seraph smock, in which _les convenances_
had been constrained to clothe me for the peerless Una.

For as Una I was being painted. Looking one day through de Crespigny’s
portfolios, I had come upon some “impressions,” royal, strenuous, of
lions in the Tower menagerie, and was admiring the lithe, strong
darlings, when his voice breathed behind me, with that little eternal
foolish giggle.

“Have you decided, naughty?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “I will be the fairy lady whom the lion came to
devour, and remained to serve and protect, because she was so pure and
innocent.”

He did not know who I meant; so I found him the book and place.

“Ah, to be sure!” said he, reading eagerly. “She laid her stole aside,
did she? Yes, it is an inspiration. It will suit me, if it does you.”

So I was painted wonderfully as Una, making my own “stole” from one of
Patty’s bedgowns, and glorying, out of my very shamefacedness, to feed
the inspiration, while it lasted, of this impassioned art. Now, for
days it had wrought without slackening, so that it was an offence to
me to find it suddenly become, it seemed, without apparent cause or
reason, out of tune with its subject. He worked fitfully, dully,
almost, as it were, disregarding my presence, and drawling
commonplaces the while to Gogo, who had returned to his pestle and
mortar, and was grinding away sullenly.

“Gogo,” he yawned presently, after an idle, preoccupied silence,
“which would you rather marry, a woman of wit or virtue?”

“Neither, you blattering genius!” cried the other, turning round with
such an instant roar that I was almost frightened off my perch.

The master, accustomed to his strange fellow’s moods, only laughed,
and leaned back indolent.

“Why, you old dear?” said he.

Gogo thundered.

“She’s a rotten fish at best, shining the more the more corrupt she
is.”

“But if she don’t shine?” said de Crespigny coolly.

“Then she’s a dull fish,” said Gogo, “but a fish still.”

The other mused, and sniggered.

“--Who’s for ever playing to be caught,” added Gogo, grumbling. “She
loves the angle. Play her what you like, man, only throw her back when
hooked.”

“Mr. Gogo!” I exclaimed.

“Ay, Mistress Una,” said he, “you’re all pretty players, from miss to
my lady dowager. Don’t tell me. You all love to excite the emotions
you don’t understand, and then off with you from the stage, sweet
ethereals, to the suppers of steak and porter which you do, while Jack
and my lord are wetting their pillows with tears over your
sensibility.”

“Thank you,” I said, rising, highly offended. “As I, for one, am not
playing to be hooked, I’ll take your warning in time.”

I had expected de Crespigny to strike in, in angry protest over his
servant’s insolence; but, to my astonishment, he did not move or
interfere. A little pregnant silence ensued, and the tears were
already rising to my eyes, when, to my horror, I heard madam’s voice
at the door.

“De Crespigny,” she said, “may I come in for once?”

He stumbled to his feet, and stood paralysed a moment, before he
answered--

“A minute. You know the conditions: I must hide it away, and then”--

When she entered a little later, there was he standing to receive her
with a spasmodic grin; his easel was empty, Gogo pounded at his
mortar, and I--I was shrunk behind the curtain, peeping in a very
shiver of terror.

She looked at him with a little shaky propitiating smile. Her eyes
were red, as if she had been crying. She tried to speak, and could
not. He understood so far, the poor clown, and bade his servant
withdraw. When they were alone, she turned upon him with a little
appealing motion of her hands.

“Am I never to be allowed to see it?” she asked.

He frowned, and bit his trembling lip.

“No, no,” she said, “I know the sensitiveness of your beautiful art.
Only, O, Noel! I cannot rest where we ended just now. Believe me, it
was so far from my wish to offend or alarm you. But time goes on, and
the pledge this finished picture was to redeem is withheld, until I am
at a loss how to explain.”

“To whom?” he muttered sullenly, “to that priest? O, I know. What
right has he, a grudging Churchman, and you a saint?”

“O, indeed, I am but a weak woman!” she said, with a faint smile, “and
he an anointed Father. He does right--dear, he does--to be jealous for
his daughter. It is only that he would ask you, that I would ask you,
what period”--

“Art is not to be forced,” he interrupted her peevishly. “I made the
finishing of this picture, as it was begun--as it was begun, mind--the
condition of my being received into your Church. Didn’t I, now?”

“Yes,” she sighed; “but there are some vows better broken.”

“A bad recommendation to what you call the truth,” he sneered.

“But, Noel, it _is_ the truth,” she cried. “O, say you are convinced
that it is!”

“Well, I don’t know,” he answered, “since you bid me to a lie.”

“I will take the burden,” she cried, her eyes streaming, “to save the
soul I love.”

She hardly breathed the final word. For a wonder, the poor creature
she entreated found enough in it to move him.

“There,” he said, “don’t distress yourself, Sophia. I’ll work
hot-handed on the picture to-morrow. There, I promise I will.”

“Thank you, Noel,” she whispered, so kindling, so grateful, that de
Crespigny shrunk before her. “I--I won’t interrupt you any longer. It
was like you, kind and considerate, not to blame me for breaking your
rule.”

The room remained so still after her going that I thought he too had
followed, until, stealing out presently in a panic, I found him seated
in a corner, biting his nails.

“I had better go now, hadn’t I?” I whispered, half choking.

“Yes,” he growled, “to the devil!”




 X.
 I BEWITCH A MONSTER

On the following morning, going indifferently by the studio, where
was a back way into the grounds, I encountered Gogo.

“He’s at work on the portrait,” he said, standing moodily against the
room door. “He’ll be at it all day. It’s no good your coming.”

I tossed my head, vouchsafing no reply, and, singing to myself, passed
on and out.

The day after, descending the stairs, I observed that the studio door
was left ajar. I laughed, taking no other notice, and went my way into
the garden.

On the third day, seeing de Crespigny walk out with his Sophia, I
borrowed the opportunity to slip down and investigate. The truth was,
I was devoured with curiosity to learn how madam’s little explosion
had stimulated the artistic verve, and to obtain a glimpse of the
portrait, even, if necessary, by bending myself to the corruption of
my poor infatuated Gogo. But I was to be disappointed, for the room
was empty, and the canvas locked into its press.

Peering here and there, considerably chagrined, in the hope of
discovering the key, I came, in the alcove, upon the full-sleeved
waistcoat in which the artist usually worked, and, diving eagerly into
the pockets thereof, found, not the key indeed, but some scraps of
paper, much scribbled over, which instantly aroused my curiosity, and,
presently, my amusement.

“Ho-ho!” thought I, “you are inspired in other than the pictured arts,
are you, my gentleman? A poet, and fainting in the perfume of some
little naughty Mignonette!”

So he had fancy-named the subject of his agonised Muse; and, indeed,
why should I prevaricate to myself about the application? I blushed a
little, making myself merry over these suffering scrawls and
scratches, of which, I was sure, my own poor little person must be the
victim. I had a face, it seemed, the calendar of innocence; _une bonne
poitrine_; a sweetest little double chin, like a robin’s throat
swelled with song. I put my hand to my neck. I could not but admit
that the poor man had taken a poetic licence; but, in truth, it was a
very example of the licence that was wont to drug his art. The flesh
held his fine imagination in thrall, and laboured his first spiritual
conceptions into Parisian models. He was divine only in his
sketches--impressions. When he wrought to improve upon them, he became
transubstantiated.

So this was his repentance! He had spent the brief period of it in
painting me in verse, since he was debarred my presence in actuality.
I smiled, reading--

  “Mignonette, Mignonette,
  Of all flowers the pet.”

and “Indeed!” thought I, tossing my head; “but not _yours_ as yet,
sir!”

While I studied to disentangle the scribble, I heard breathing near
me, and started to find Gogo regarding me with a cynical,
half-diverted scowl. The creature walked like a cat on carpet. He had
no creaking leather to betray him.

“So-ho!” growled he; “you can yet blush to be found out by your dog?”

I laughed, vexed, and a little embarrassed.

“O,” said he, “never mind! I am honoured in even that little rose of
shame. You won’t grow it long.”

“Gogo,” I said, “how dare you?”

“Why,” said he, “as dogs dare, who love without respect, and see no
more harm to serve a thief than a prince.”

I looked at him a moment, between tears and defiance.

“You are very unkind,” I said. “What is the good of my confessing
anything to you, if you so distrust me?”

“Confessing?” said he, “the good? Why, because I have no legs to run
away, and a man’s better judgment is always in his legs. My foolish
heart is nearer the ground than most. Tread on it, thou Circe; and
prove me less than half Ulysses. Confess to me--confess; and I will
stay, and smile--and believe.”

“No,” I said, recovering my confidence. “I swear not to, unless you
confess first. I asked you the other day how--how you came to lose
them; and you put my question by, sir, and were dreadfully rude into
the bargain. Very well, I am waiting to have you atone by answering
it.”

I dropped into a chair, and he followed me, and squatted himself on
the floor, a very abortion of passion, yet moving somehow in his
grotesqueness. I kicked off my slippers, and put my feet into his
hands--

“There,” I said, “they are tired, Gogo. Soothe them while you talk.”

He caressed the weariness from them, as gentle as a woman.

“I am at odds,” he said, in a low great voice, full of emotion, “I am
at odds with what remains of myself. How can I reconcile this with my
loyalty to the poor inspired ape I serve, and love through serving?”

“How did you come to serve him?” I whispered, half drugged by the
creature’s touch. “You are cleverer than he, better educated, and all
that.”

“I love,” he groaned, “I have always loved, to find romantic excuses
for the material uglinesses of life; to get a little salt out of its
offences. Who are those who say the visible form is but an expression
of the individual spirit--an internal autocracy shaping itself on the
surface? Poor atomists who cannot feel the pressure of all eternity
moulding them from without! Amidst sordid functions they go groping
for the essence, turning blank faces to the sweet air, the sun in the
trees, the far-drawn winds, the song of birds and scent of flowers,
all the spirit influences which really shape us. The soul ceases at
the portals of the senses. The dross it carries with it alone goes on
and in. _We_ are but so many obstructions in the vast harmony--foreign
bodies which it is for ever striving to penetrate and decompose. It
focuses its burning light upon us; it takes the swimming heavens for
its lens; and we die and are dissolved into it. Only in rare instances
does the process wring from us a fine frenzy, or melt us into song;
and then we see genius--genius, which fools call self-issuing, but
which is really spirit reflected, like heat cast back from a wall.”

“You odd creature,” I murmured. “You may go on, though I don’t
understand you a bit. Has Mr. de Crespigny been half melted into song?
I shouldn’t be surprised, by his appearance.”

“Nor do _I_ understand,” he said. “I can find romance in everything
external to man, but I can’t pursue it into his organic tissues. Can
_you_ be so penetrated by it, and yet not perish, or even show one
scar? I think you are immortal, woman; unless it is the genius of
human beauty which you reflect, and which will presently destroy and
annihilate you. Why, then, I would give my own soul to keep you
soulless, you wretched, adorable child.”

“Gogo!” I protested, too languid to be resentful.

“Ay!” he said, his voice hoarse with miserable passion. “Let me speak.
It is all the licence I ask. I know my place, if I have grown confused
about my service. What I don’t know is why I, a free spirit, who have
never before truckled to the flesh, should suddenly find myself bound
to it, soul and honour.”

He bent and kissed the foot he was caressing; then quickly sat up, and
set his strong teeth.

“You ask me how I came by my hurts,” he said. “Well, listen to the
story of this most laughable butt of Fortune. It is soon told.”

He passed his hand across his forehead.

“It has been my doom to serve Nature; to worship her through those
visible concentrations of her light upon individuals whom we call
geniuses. How I discovered too late that her preferences were
arbitrary, fanciful, often unworthy; that her signal gifts could be
used to stultify her own creed of natural faith, natural justice,
natural order, let these witness and call me fool.”

He jerked up his poor stumps so comically that I could not help
laughing.

“Ay,” he said, “a tragic prolegomena to the history of a Dutch
tumbler, isn’t it? Well, for the text. It was at Oxford that I met and
worshipped my first genius. He was a man of great family, an inspired
naturalist, an unerring shot and rare sportsman. In those early days
we had already planned an expedition together to the unexplored North
Western ‘Rockies,’ for the purpose of making such a collection of
their flora and fauna as should bring us wealth and reputation. Though
the world of Nature seemed even too cramped a stage for my boundless
lust of life, the prospect of those unspeakable teeming solitudes,
inviting all that was most strenuous in me to conquer, was a certain
solace in itself. My soul sought territory; it seeks it still; and,
though I be what I am, the stars, this poor earth once subdued, still
enter into my plan of campaign.

“I was not rich. When the time came, I had to realise all my capital
to sail with my friend. We reached, after considerable hardships, the
Athabasca territory, and thence started on our exploration westwards.
I soon found that my comrade, though a genius in comparative analysis
and definition, lacked the physique necessary to the task we had set
ourselves. He was often ailing and querulous, and the gathering of the
specimens practically devolved upon me. Still, we had garnered and
classified a considerable harvest in one of the little settlements of
the Fur Company, before the accident befell which was to deprive me
for ever of the fruits of my devotion. We were one day duck-shooting
over a lake, when the ice broke and my friend was plunged in frozen
water to the knees. His frantic cries brought me hurriedly to his
assistance. By the greatest good fortune a little gravelly shallow had
received us; but, inasmuch as this shelved away acutely on every side,
our desperate scrambles to escape only let us into deeper water. There
was nothing for it but to stay where we were till rescue could reach
us from the shore, and so we set ourselves to endure. Not long, on my
companion’s part. He soon complained that he must die unless relieved.
He was frail and spare, and I only something less than a giant. I took
him first into my arms, then upon my shoulders, designing to hold him
so until succour came. It reached us in the shape of some Indians from
the shore, who pushed a canoe towards us over the ice. But by then I
was stark frozen, and my legs to the knees insensible. By chance there
was an ex-medical student in the settlement, who turned what rough
knowledge of surgery was his to the best account he was able. One of
my legs was mortified beyond recovery; and this he amputated. The
other, after incredible suffering, was saved to me. For weeks,
however, I was kept knocking at death’s door; and, when at length I
could creep from under the shadow, it was to the knowledge of an
anguish more cruel than the other. This man, this genius, whom I had
given so much to save, had deserted me while I lay stricken, and,
carrying with him all the rare accumulations of our enterprise, had
gone south to Vancouver. There was no message left, no consideration
for me in all his vile philosophy of self-interest. It was just a case
of treacherous abandonment.

“When I was sufficiently recovered, I pursued him by tedious
heart-breaking stages, long months in their accomplishment. I will not
weary you, you thing of thoughtless life, with their particulars. I
was sustained, and only sustained, through all by the thought of
wresting from this scientific egoist an acknowledgment of my share in
the practical success of our expedition. At last, poor, friendless,
crippled, I ran him to earth in London. I found him there, his name
writ famous in the annals of the Royal Society; himself the honoured
recipient of its gold medal; his collection--_our_ collection--already
on view in the hallowed precincts of Crane Street.

“I faced, and upbraided him with his treachery. He retorted coldly
that he had never considered me but as the servant of his enterprise,
useless to it when once, through my own folly, disabled. I found a
friend, and the affair made a little stir. To my accusations he
answered that he had employed, but had been forced to discard me,
through the irregularity of my habits. Outraged beyond words, I
challenged him; he accepted, and we met at Richmond. His first shot,
aimed with diabolical ingenuity, shattered the bones of my sound knee;
and, in the result, the limb had to be amputated above. When I was
discharged from the hospital, it was to find the exhibition closed,
the town empty, and myself thrust upon it, a helpless, destitute hulk.

“The friend I have mentioned, humorous and good-natured, came to my
assistance. He commanded some pale interest at Court. By means of it,
he procured me, as an expert naturalist, the post of Royal Ratcatcher,
in succession to a Mr. Gower, who had lately filled the office at a
yearly salary of one hundred pounds. The royal economy, however,
docked me, as only two-thirds of a man, of a third of the sum. I wore
a uniform of scarlet and yellow worsted, with emblematic figures of
rats destroying wheat-sheaves embroidered on it; and in this I stood,
the laughing-stock of the maids of honour, for three years.

“At the end of that time, having had the misfortune to overlook a rat
which had made its nest in a pair of the Duke of Cumberland’s state
breeches, I was dismissed without a character. Again I applied to my
friend, and was recommended by him, for my scientific attainments, to
a French nobleman, who was troubled by the croaking of frogs in his
ponds, and employed me to whip the water all night with a long wand of
willow that his rest might be undisturbed. But the constant immersion
rotting my stumps, and he refusing to supply me with others, I was
obliged to resign my post, and returned to England.

“In the meantime, my friend had died of a humour, and I was stranded
entirely without resources. For some time I earned a precarious
livelihood, in my naturalist character, by worming dogs; and again,
one still more precarious, by cleansing ladies’ _toupées_ of the
vermin which long usage engendered in them. It was here, while serving
my master, a wig-maker, that chance brought me acquainted with my
present manner of service.

“During all this time, I will say, I had never ceased to regard soul
as external to form, or to scout that introspection which is the real
unhappiness. What did it concern me, if I was destroying rats, or
picking fleas out of a poodle? In any case, I was helping Nature to
its freer manifestations on matter, and, in my constant communion with
it, prepared to welcome such rare accidents of genius as might come my
way. My master’s business brought him into frequent relations with the
theatre; and it was thus that I first encountered de Crespigny, who
was at the time acting scene-painter to the new house at Sadler’s
Wells. I had no sooner had the chance to see his work than I
recognised genius, glaring and manifest. He did wonders in a few
touches, that he might idle for an hour. My opportunity was come, and
I entreated him to employ me, in however menial a capacity. He was
touched by my enthusiasm; flattered, perhaps, by my admiration;
persuaded by my strength. He engaged me, first as his assistant; soon
as his nurse and mentor. For years I have helped to direct his career,
have goaded his inspirations, cossetted his weaknesses. Ah, child! He
is _my_ child, made glorious by my faith in him. Do not seduce me from
my allegiance to my child, and for the first time make me out of love
with Nature!”

He ended with a groan, and flung himself prostrate on the floor,
beating, I think, his forehead against it.

“Poor Gogo!” I said. “You have confessed; and so will I now. He is my
child too. I adore him, and am so ravished by his art that I could not
rest with thinking what he had made of the portrait. Do you know,
Gogo? I will tell you the truth. I was hunting for the key of the
press when you came in and caught me.”

He lay, without answering.

“Won’t you lend it me, Gogo?” I coaxed softly.

“Thank God,” he muttered, raising his head, “I am tied from the
temptress. It is not in my power, thou Circe. He always carries it
with him.”




 XI.
 I ADD THE LAST TOUCH TO A PORTRAIT

That same night, while undressing, with my room door open for the
heat, I suddenly thought I distinguished an unwonted footstep on the
landing below me, from which Patty’s little chamber led. I listened,
quite still, for some moments; then, the stealthy sounds seeming to
recede into the hall and thence die away, descended cat-footed to the
landing, and, after hearkening an instant, opened her door swiftly and
noiselessly upon my friend. Instantly I knew that the amazed suspicion
which had sprung upon my heart was justified. The child stood before
me, terror in her startled eyes, her dark hair falling upon her
shoulders, a brush in one hand, a paper in the other.

“Diana!” she gasped, in a whisper. “What do you want?”

“Has he been with you?” I asked instantly, leaving her no time to
prevaricate.

“_With_ me!” she exclaimed, so scandalised and incredulous that the
worst of my qualm was laid on the spot.

Without another word I held out my hand. Without a word she put the
paper into it. I took it, and read--

  “Mignonette, Mignonette,
  Of all flowers the pet,”--

(“O, shameful!” I whispered, and set my lips.)

  “O, beautiful, beautiful, sweet Mignonette!
      Dear, kind little blossom,
      Soft, soft in the bosom,
  Who gives to thee, takes from thee, sweet Mignonette?
  Was it thou at her ear that shed sweets passing by me?
  Is it thou in her shape, or herself that doth fly me?
  Is it thou, is it she, Mignonette, Mignonette,
      That I follow, must follow,
      As the Summer the Spring,
      Who hides warm in the wing
      Of its darling the swallow?

      As love chases the swallow
      To the eaves and the leaves
      High up under the roof,
      Mignonette, so I follow.
      Ah! to whose little chamber,
      Sweetheart?
            As I clamber,
      I trow not, I know not
  What dream flew before to the room high aloof.
      But my heart pants delight
      In the thought, half a fright,
      Half delirious sweetness,
      That the spirit of the flower,
      That the spirit of the hour
      Shall reveal love’s completeness.”

She was as pale as death and trembling all over as I looked up. For
the moment my heart withered to her. The shock, the outrage was
unendurable.

“Who wrote this?” I demanded, in a hoarse whisper.

She did not answer.

“Speak,” I said. “How did it come to you?”

“I heard it slipped under the door,” she muttered.

“By him? O, you little traitor and wanton!”

She fell on her knees, sobbing and clinging to me in a soft anguish of
desperation.

“O, my dear, don’t look at me so! I’m not untrue to you. I never
imagined it was me--no, not for one moment--till to-night.”

“And you are shocked, no doubt, to find your precious virtue at fault.
O, you little serpent that I have trusted and warmed in my bosom!”

“Diana!” she wept, in a very frenzy of despair. “O, what can I say or
do? I thought it was you. It shall be you, Diana!”

“Yes, it shall be me,” I answered, “but no thanks to you. Don’t think
that this is anything but a passing mood of his, played upon you for
my delectation because I have been cold to him of late.”

“I think it is, I know it is,” she said, brightening.

“And you hope it is, I daresay,” I said scornfully.

“Yes, indeed,” she answered. “There is no love in the world but yours
that I care for, Diana!”

“Love!” I exclaimed. “Don’t flatter this poor half-breeched makeshift
with the sentiment.”

But I looked down on her more kindly, with a vexed laugh. My
good-humour was returning to me. It seemed too comical, the way we
three pious spinsters were scrambling for the favour of a
sheep’s-eyes. A pair of small-clothes flung into our nunnery had been
worse than an apple of discord. Skirts were so _de rigueur_ with us,
that I think even Gogo’s wooden legs seemed a little _outrés_.

“I do believe you were innocent, in everything but your cuddlesome
looks,” I said, relenting.

“O yes, Diana!” she answered eagerly. “And I can’t help them.”

“Would you if you could?” I questioned doubtfully. “I don’t know.
There is a good deal of method in artlessness. It can always plead
itself in excuse for enjoying the pleasures which we sinners must take
at the expense of our consciences.”

She knelt at my feet, silently fondling and kissing my hands.

“Are you sure you don’t regret giving him up?” I asked.

“Quite--sure,” she answered, so faintly as to set me off laughing.

“There, Patty _mia_,” I said; “you are not to be sacrificed to a
self-indulgent vapours. You will see some day how kind I am being to
you; and you shall have a large family yet.” And with that I kissed
and left her, taking the paper with me.

I will admit that the shock to my vanity was for the moment acute,
until reflection came to convince me that this rickety light-o’-love,
wearying of his one day’s abstinence, and finding me inaccessible, had
only palmed off on my friend the reversion of sentiments inspired by
me. On further reflection, too, I was not the more angry upon
realising that I had acquired a useful weapon for goading him to a
definite decision upon an action long deferred--our flight together,
that is to say, and, when once emancipated from the stunting
influences of Wellcot, the union which, it was understood, was to be
conditional on his satisfying me that his ambitions and mine were
mutually accommodating partners. But now, if for no other reason, I
felt that I owed it to my affection for my poor little friend to
precipitate this step, lest she should be led, through her natural
incapacity for denying anyone, to making herself miserable for life;
and so, armed with my _pièce de conviction_, I ended by sleeping very
soundly and comfortably.

I did not even hesitate the next morning, but, about noon, singing
very cheerfully to myself, descended to Mr. de Crespigny’s studio. The
door was locked. “Open, please,” I said.

“Go away,” he answered crossly. “I’m at work on the portrait.”

“Yes?” I said; “but I want to come in.”

Perhaps there was something in my tone. Anyhow, after a short
interval, during which I heard him wheeling his easel about, he
unlocked the door himself. I marched straight in, and, quite radiant,
nodded to Gogo, who, busy in a corner, gazed at me with a sort of
gloomy alarm.

“Mayn’t I look?” I said, smiling.

“No!” said de Crespigny sharply.

I went and held the paper under his nose.

“Didn’t you slip this under the wrong door last night?” I asked
calmly.

“There!” growled Gogo, and throwing down his tools faced about
furiously.

De Crespigny’s face went mottled, and he began to shake all over. Then
suddenly he rallied, and flamed on me, stuttering.

“Wha-what right have you to ask? I may address whom I like, without
requesting your leave. My-my lady shall be informed what spies she’s
got in her house.”

“You ass!” roared Gogo.

“From me--yes,” I said. “I’m going straight to tell her.”

Gogo stumped fiercely, and put himself between me and the door. His
master collapsed like a pricked bladder.

“You’ll ruin yourself,” he gasped, between tears and bullying. “If you
ruin me, you come down too--don’t forget that.”

“O, in a noble cause!” I said mockingly: “to open the eyes of my
mistress and my friend.”

He stamped about in a little impotent frenzy, then came and almost
prostrated himself before me.

“I--I thought you’d forsaken me,” he cried; “I swear I did, Di;
and--and I was as miserable as a dog, and wanted sympathy, I did, in
this cursed strait-laced nunnery. Don’t tell on me--don’t; and I’ll go
on with your picture here and now.”

In a fever of trepidation, he hurried from me, calling on me not to
go, and fetched the canvas from the press and brought it to me.

“See,” he said, “you little injured innocent--yes, you was quite right
to be hurt; but--but it’s you I love, Di--it really is--and”--

The canvas fell from his hand. He stood, gaping, as if in the first
shock of a stroke. And I turned; and there was madam standing in our
midst, every atom of colour gone from her face.

There are some situations, my Alcide, that can only be ended brutally.
I don’t know what deadly instinct drove me to the portrait; but to it
I ran, and turned it with the easel about. Then, I declare, I felt as
if I had committed murder. The wretch, with what fatal purpose I could
not tell, had done nothing less than mutilate his own inspiration. In
place of the lovely roses of yesterday was the worn, haggard woman of
to-day, and the harp in her lap was a tangle of broken strings.

I felt for her. Looking in her face, I almost repented my part. There
was a dreadful smile on it, as she went very quiet and breathless, and
lifted the “Una” from the ground.

“It is very pretty,” she said, “but hardly proper to a child of the
Good Shepherd.”

Then I hated her as I had never done before, and rejoiced in her
downfall.

“I was looking for you, Diana,” she said, in her straitened tones,
“and heard your voice here. Will you come with me, please?”

And so she went out, deigning not one look at that insult of her own
face, nor one word to the hangdog perpetrator of it. She went out, as
cold as ice, and I saw Gogo, standing by the door, droop his head as
she passed. Tingling with the joy of battle, I followed her. I knew
that my long martyrdom was nearing its end.

Outside in the hall she turned to me, quite stiff--I wondered how her
limp corsets could support so much dignity--and bade me retire to my
room till she should send for me.

“And if it is to find you on your knees,” she said, “why, by so much
will the duty I have to perform be made the easier.”

Well, to do her justice, I believe that her heart was as near broken
as one can be.

“Thank you, ma’am,” I answered. “Do you want to flog me? ’Twould
scarce improve your case, I think, with Mr. de Crespigny.”

I ran up lightly, humming to myself. I heard her give a little gasp,
and then go on her way to the parlour. Nobody came near me while I
waited, until, in a little while, a servant knocked, to summon me. I
went down at once, as jaunty as you please. Father Pope was with her,
I saw, as I entered the room.

“I wonder how much of the truth she has told him?” I thought.

She was seated, perfectly colourless, while her companion stood,
lowering and uneasy, by a table hard by. She bent a little forward,
drawing her breath, I fancied, with difficulty, and addressed me at
once.

“You have asked pardon of God, I hope?”

I tossed my head.

“For what, madam? What have I done?”

She appealed to the priest, with a little momentary helpless gesture;
then bit her thin lips, as if stung by his silent perversity to
resolution.

“For the deceit you have long practised on us,” she said.

“O, madam,” I answered, “do you refer to the gentleman’s attentions to
me? I could hardly be so immodest as to confess of them to you, when I
did not even know to what end they were advanced.”

She held up her hand dully.

“I allude to your privately sitting to him for--for that--for his
model,” she said.

“Why, I had my respected example, madam,” said I. “I didn’t know but
what we were expected to accommodate the gentleman, seeing you
yourself gave us the lead.”

She rose quickly, striking her hand on the table.

“To make of yourself, pledged to Heaven, a shame and a wanton in his
eyes! O, ’twas infamous!--Not that,” she checked herself hurriedly, “I
blame him--not altogether. Art is a strange creditor, that makes
demands, scarce comprehensible to us, upon those who practise it. But,
_you_”--

“Are you blaming _me_, madam,” I cried, “because he has not paid _you_
to your liking?”

She turned away, as if quite sick. Father Pope took up the tale.

“Silence!” he roared, “you little dirty liar and trollop!”

“O, no doubt!” I piped him back, “because I rejected _your_
attentions.”

He took a step forward, his great fist clenched, his glasses blazing.
I don’t know how he might not have forgotten himself, had not Lady
Sophia come quickly between.

“Hush!” she said. “It is all to end here, Father.” She turned quietly
on me. “Father Pope is, I am sorry to say, justified. You have
deceived us in more things than one, Diana. It is not so long, I must
tell you, since I heard from the Sisters of les Madelonnettes that
your original story of your unhappy mother’s death was false, she
having but a few months ago returned penitent and broken to die in the
very convent she had so shamed and disgraced.”

I gazed at her, bewildered, for an instant, and then, as the truth
penetrated me, with a horror and passion beyond control.

“O,” I cried, “this is too much! And I believed her long dead of
grief; and you never told me--never let me see her: and I think you
are the wickedest woman in the world!”

She stood staring at me, silent, as if stricken.

“_Cave anguem!_” sneered the priest, with a brutal laugh.

I turned upon the pale woman with a furious stamp.

“Why did you never let me know? How dared you keep it from me? I will
go to law about it and have you hanged!”

“If I could have thought”--she began, in a whisper; “if I have by
chance done wrong”--

“Wrong!” I cried violently, “you have done me nothing but wrong since
I came here. You have always misunderstood and disbelieved in me; and
now, it seems, you had no right to adopt me at all.”

I ended with a torrent of tears.

“I want to leave you,” I sobbed; “I want to go away into the convent,
and be at peace where no one can hate and slander me.”

“Ha!” said Father Pope, moving, and hunching his shoulders, “then
there our wishes jump, and no time like the present. So go collect
your duds.”

“Diana!” whispered madam again, in her stunned way, and made a little
movement towards me. But I shrunk from her, shivering.

“No, don’t touch me--_please_,” I said. “I’ll go to the Sisters,
who’ll be kind to me. I’ll do anything you want--only not stop here.”

I saw her put her hand to her heart as I tottered from the room. Then
I ran upstairs, and hurried to put some little properties together.

I quite acquiesced in the movement--was eager to hasten it, in fact.
The truth is, that, of Wellcot and the convent, the latter appeared to
me by far the less formidable as a present asylum. Any further meeting
here between me and Noel was rendered virtually impossible; nor was it
likely that the outraged spinster would prove so accommodating to our
purposes as the artless little fatties across the valley. One need
have no fear of being buried alive in a dovecot.

While I was hastily collecting a few necessaries, my sweet girl crept
in, and made a little sweet nuisance of herself, distressing and
impeding me.

“There, dearest,” I said, as I wrought preoccupied, “you are the best
of loving chickens, and I shall have plenty of use for you by and by.
Only at present--there, don’t pout--I am too jubilant in the prospect
of escape to cling and kiss and cry with you. I’m not going to Land’s
End, only across the way; and mind, no more communications from a
certain gentleman, miss, unless on my behalf.”

She promised, with new floods of tears.

“Then,” I said, pushing her playfully away, “find me my vinaigrette,
child. Father Pope is going to convey me in the carriage.”




 XII.
 I AM INFAMOUSLY RETALIATED ON

I remember once dining in Sorrento with the Marquis de P----, a most
exclusive sybarite and dilettante. The table was spread with a flesh
silk damask, whose very touch was a caress. Before each of the
company--a small and appreciative one--was placed one iridescent
Venetian goblet, and a bunch of lavender in a floss silk
napkin--nothing else whatever. The room--vaulted into Moorish
arabesques, and swimming with a slumberous half-penetrable light, in
which the crusted gold of stalactites, high in the groining, alloyed
and confused itself with the stain from purple windows--gave upon a
dusky pillared court, where zithers and the plash of a fountain wedded
in soft music, and the breath of orange blossoms made us a dim
impalpable barrier against the world. The plates were served each
ready charged, and each with a golden spoon only; for knives were not
to be allowed to sever this dream of sensuous rumination. There was
but a single wine--the Château Yquem, which is reserved for the
nobility of its district, and which never goes beyond but in a few
favoured directions. We talked but little and idly, with a mingling of
delicious sighs and happy low laughter. Towards the end the zithers
ceased; the remote fountain tinkled alone; and a girl, a ghost of
loveliness, danced and wreathed herself without in a flood of
moonlight. It was all perfect satisfaction without surfeit. Of such is
the kingdom of heaven. And yet there are times when I wonder if my
host has gone to join Lazarus or Dives. _Mon ami_, I am often full of
such wonders; and then sometimes--when, perhaps, I have not kept the
perfect proportion, and my head aches--I think I will end my days in a
convent, and purify my wicked digestion on lentils and spring water.
Only, where is the convent? I have seen some in my day, and in not one
have they cultivated their little paradise on cabbages. I find myself
standing aghast on that neutral ground between the world and the
Church; and, alas! there are so many other nice people standing there
to keep me company. With such, this desert itself becomes an Eden, and
on either side I cannot escape from it but into another.

The Convent of Perpetual Invocation received me with open arms from my
morose jailer. It conducted me, in the person of its Mother, to the
sunny parlour, and there sleeked and patted me fondly.

“You dear,” she said. “I am so glad we have got you at last.”

Her coif looked as if she had slept in it, and her plump hands were by
no means over clean. She was a stumpy, beaming little woman, moist
with good living. Her skin worked so freely, and in such prosperous
folds, it might have made a dyspeptic sigh with envy. I felt at home
with her directly.

“There, dear,” she said, “you have brought us many good things in your
time, but none so good as yourself; and now we take you in pledge of
better.”

It may have been meant as a little sly spiritual reflection, but she
smacked her ripe lips over it as if she already tasted in me, as
madam’s direct protégée, a very plethora of venison and larded
fowls. For many years, I believe, these good little women had been
secretly looking forward to the term of my novitiate as their
gastronomic millennium. I could laugh, I declare, with remorse to
think how the dear pink little pigs were defrauded.

I had been delivered without directions, but with a surly intimation
that madam would call on the morrow. It was not my business to
enlighten anyone; and so I enjoyed the best of my present favour.

She trotted me out by and by to see her asparagus and strawberry beds,
fat in promise, though tucked now and slumbering under their autumn
blankets of manure; her hives; her mushroom pits; her stewpond thick
with fat carps stuffed up to the neck and something her own shape; her
pigeon cotes and rabbit hutches. There was an odd family likeness, a
general assimilation to the neckless, apoplectic type amongst them
all--Sisters, animals, and vegetables. Perpetual invocation, it was
evident, had an obliterating effect on the individual. I shifted my
own dimpled shoulders. How long would they be rounding to the contour
of these squat little vessels? I thought with a certain terror of my
admirable digestion, and determined as long as I remained here to live
sparely. What if, like the wolf in the fable, I were to eat so many
fat pancakes that I could not escape through the hole in the wall
again!

That evening we had a refection of sweet bread and fruit and prayers,
and a delightful supper (alas for my resolution!) and comfortable
droning prayers again. Then we went each to her cosy cell, which was
like a crib for a fat baby, and slept the round of the clock to
prayers and breakfast. My fellow-sisters delighted me. I never saw
such a community of bow-windows, the most comfortable little parlours
one could imagine for the spirit to be entertained in. They had their
scapulars made very large, and of flannel, so as to serve the double
purpose of tokens and liver pads. At meals we were forbidden to
talk--a most fattening proscription, or prescription. Prayer, at all
seasons or out of them, was the single ordinance of the
society--perpetual invocation on behalf of our unenlightened land. We
were safe, perhaps, in not considering the logical result of its
efficacy, or, indeed, the prospect of a second reformation might have
frightened us into heresy. For, our point once gained, our occupation
would be gone, and our creed of self-content be called upon to
vindicate itself very likely in self-denial. However, England as yet
was far from recanting its heresy of prosperity-worship. Our very
fatness was the best argument in the world to it of our right to
survive; so it showed no tendency to do other than keep us eternally
praying for it.

Madam drove over on the day following my arrival, and was closeted for
a considerable time with the Mother. I was not summoned to her
presence, but I think she did not dare to vent her full heart of
spleen upon me in her report. She could not very well, without
compromising herself. She must have revealed, or intimated, however,
so much as give the poor woman a hopelessly bewildered impression of
my personal contribution to art. For the rest, I think she was
satisfied with having scotched her terrible little snake, and did not
doubt that, having done so, my own sense of final commitment to my
calling would keep me immured out of harm’s way, and hers, to the end
of time. It must have been with a feeling of guilty relief that she
drove back to conclusions with her inamorato.

The Mother, having sent for me on her withdrawal, looked at me with
the most cherubic doubt and dread, and pressed my hand quite
speechless.

“Dear,” she whispered, all of a sudden, “so very _décolletée_! and
think of the draughts!”

“Why more than the angels?” I said, pouting. “They don’t wear
underclothes.”

“They are symbols,” she answered doubtfully. “Besides, we don’t know.”

“O, _ma mère_!” I cried. “What’s the good of being an angel, if one
has to?”

“Hush!” she said. “Anyhow, they may take liberties denied to us.
Besides, this young person was not an angel.”

“There you are wrong,” I cried. “She was an angel of purity.”

“Is that so?” she asked a little curiously. “Well, it makes a
difference, of course. But it would have been more becoming of her to
be painted by a woman. There is the respectable Madame Kauffmann, for
instance, who, I am told, depicts religion and the virtues. But there,
dear, we will say no more about it; only pray to the good Father, now
the naughty little episode’s over, that we may be accepted meekly into
His fold.”

I heard no more from Wellcot after this for a couple of days, and was
beginning already to torment myself with qualms of jealousy of my
sweet little vicegerent there, being at the last almost driven to
break out and precipitate matters, when I was saved by a call from the
darling herself. Our meeting, to which the Mother’s presence gave a
conventual sanction, though fond and cordial, would have been barren
of result had not my friend, with a finesse which delighted me, and
the more because I had thought her incapable of it, rid us of our
incumbrance.

“Good lud!” said she, after the first embrace, twinkling through her
tears, “if I haven’t left my little basket of cream cheeses for the
Sisters melting outside in the sun!”

The bait took instant. The Mother, with a little gentle reproof for
her carelessness, waddled out with such a benevolent glare as though
she had heard the last trump.

“Wait, dears, and I’ll be with you again!” said she.

The moment she was gone, Patty threw herself upon me.

“I hid it under some bushes,” she said, “just to keep her hunting, and
where it wouldn’t melt really.”

Her second reason was characteristic enough. She could never offer the
tiniest hurt from one hand without its remedy from the other. I
foresaw she’d whip her children by and by with a strap of
healing-plaister, the poor little weak creature.

“O, you _naughty_ little thing!” I giggled; but was serious the next
moment, questioning and urging her.

“Quick!” I said. “What’s he going to do? Have you a letter?”

She shook her head.

“He’ll have a postchaise outside in a night or two, and will let you
know; but for the moment he’s watched, and daren’t move, or commit
himself to paper.”

“The hero! He’s still there, then, at Wellcot? If it had been me, I’d
have had my servants flog him out of the house.”

“O, Diana! How can you say such a thing, and you in love with him!”

“Whom I love I chasten. I’m in love, like Mrs. Sophia, with myself
through him. He’s going to make me great. Now, tell me what’s the
state of things there.”

She shook her head rather piteously.

“I don’t know. It’s all very sad and lonely without you. I think she
wants to forgive him; but he’s proud and angry, and holds aloof.”

I turned up my nose with a sniff.

“It’s nicer to be a healthy sinner. Her fulsomeness makes me sick. And
how did you get leave to come and see me?”

“I didn’t get leave at all,” she said. “I daren’t even ask it, feeling
sure she’d refuse. I slipped out without telling, hearing cook had
something to send. I expect she’ll be very angry when she hears.”

“_If_ she hears,” I corrected her.

She looked at me with sad, puzzled eyes, the comical dear.

“How shall I ever bear with it all after you are gone, Diana?” she
said. “You’ll let me come and stay with you sometimes, when you’re
married?”

“Now, Patty,” I said, “tell me the truth. Is the creature still making
eyes at you?”

“No,” she answered stoutly; then added, conscience-stricken, “At
least, I don’t know. I never look at him. But--but--O, Diana! I wish
he’d go altogether, and leave us, you and me, as we were.”

“That’s perhaps not a very kind wish, child,” said I. “But you shall
come and stay with us when once I’ve got him under control, never
fear.” Then, as I heard the step of the Mother returning, “Hush!” I
whispered; “tell him I’ve no idea of being buried alive here: that he
must arrange it very quickly, or I shall return and give everything
away.”

She answered silently, with a hug and a gush of tears. She looked
haggard and distraught, poor little wretch; yet I had no alternative
but to use her.

I waited two days longer, in an anxiety that rose to distraction.
Still no message came from him; and at last I made up my mind, and
sent him an upbraiding letter by a misbegotten old beldame, with a
leery eye, who helped in the convent laundry. She brought me back an
answer--that he would be waiting for me, with a postchaise, in the
lane without, at nine o’clock that very night. O, my friend! how
dreadful is the first realisation of perfidy in those whom our
inexperience trusts! This cursed Hecate was all the time in the pay of
the authorities whom my innocence thought to hoodwink. When the time
came, I wondered, indeed, to find Fortune so blind in my interest. So
far seemed there from being the least suggestion of suspicion, of
uneasiness abroad, chance appeared to invite me with open portals.
What Sisters I encountered, even the Mother herself, manœuvred, I
could have thought, to leave me my way unobstructed. Miserable
parasites of power, subordinating their consciences to the lusts of
their abominable little stomachs! To pamper those, they were lending
themselves without scruple to a deed of unutterable darkness--the
consigning of their innocent sister to a living death.

I found the chaise waiting in a dusk corner beneath trees. A cloaked
and sombre figure, engaging me in the shadow, hurried me within, leapt
after, slammed the door, and gave the word to proceed. In a moment we
were tearing through the night.

So great was the flurry of my nerves, I had not, until the lamp at the
convent gate flashed upon us and was gone, noticed that we were four
in company. Then, all at once, I started. The man who sat beside me
had removed his hat and was wiping his brow. Two thick-set, motionless
figures sat facing me.

“Easy done, sir,” said one of these.

“Ha!” said my companion, “yes.”

In a sudden terror, I struggled to rise. He restrained me.

“Mr. de Crespigny!” I exclaimed.

“Ha!” said my companion again. “You hear that, Willing?”

“I hear,” responded the second of the others gruffly.

My companion turned to me suavely.

“Mr. de Crespigny?” he said. “Yes, and what about him, madam?”

“You are not he!” I cried wildly. “Let me out! He was to have met me!”

With a sort of tacit understanding, they all hemmed me in with their
knees, imprisoning and controlling me at once.

“You make a mistake, madam,” said my captor. “He was not to have met
you. But, be reconciled; time and judicious treatment, I have not the
least doubt, will cure you of this delusion.”

In an instant the whole horror of this snare, of this most wicked
scheme, opened like a black gulf before my eyes. The convent--to
anticipate an analogy--had been my Elba; now my St. Helena was to be
an asylum. She had discovered; or he, the dastard, had betrayed me;
and, in the result, she had not hesitated, with the connivance of some
sycophant doctor, to stoop to this.

It was night; the chaise drove on by back ways; I sunk back, sick and
almost senseless, and abandoned myself to despair.




 XIII.
 I AM WOOED TO SELF-DESTRUCTION

Dr. Peel’s Asylum was known generically as “The House,” perhaps in
cynical allusion to its licensed irresponsibility to any laws but its
own. It was conceived on the principle of an eel-pot--the easiest
thing to slip, or be driven, into; the hardest to escape from. It was
not so much an asylum as an oubliette; never so much a house of
correction as of annihilation. There, in addition to the
constitutionally weak-minded, troublesome heirs, irreclaimable
prodigals, jealous wives, importunate creditors, distinguished
blackmailers, chance recipients of deadly secrets--all such, in fact,
as threatened the peace of that grand seigniory which has a
prescriptive monopoly in it--could be immured by _lettre de cachet_
(it amounted to nothing less) from any accommodating physician, and
afterwards “treated,” or disposed of, by private contract. Its methods
were delicate, tasteful, and exceedingly sure. With rib-breaking,
starvation, strait-waistcoats, all the vulgar apparatus of the
ordinary _médecin de fous_, it had no commerce. Where the removal of
undesirables was in question, it rather killed with kindness;
suffocated, like Heliogabalus, with roses; persuaded to the happy
despatch with a silken cord. It drove its poor Judases to suicide by
putting by, as useless, their moral reparations, and took care to have
at hand the seductive means. If one escaped--a rare occurrence--it
possessed a kennel of highly trained bloodhounds, whose belling warned
the dark nights with menace. It asked no questions, and expected to be
asked none. Its formula was a hint and a cheque.

The asylum _ménage_ was perfectly refined, and its cuisine lavish. It
entertained none but the nominees of the wealthy. The extensive
grounds of the house were a literal maze of beauty, the shrubberies
being so disposed as to preclude all thought of restraint. It was only
upon piercing them, at any point, that one found oneself opposed by a
high boundary wall, which contained between itself and the estate it
enclosed a waste interval incessantly patrolled, day and night, by the
asylum watch. Then, indeed, one realised the iron hand in the velvet
glove, and started back dismayed from the grin of the nearest sentry
whom one’s movements had called light-footed to the spot.

“A fine view, mum,” he might say, stepping up between ingratiatory and
insolent. “Was you looking for anything?”

Whereupon one would do best to retire, and precipitately; because
there was no appeal from any brutality offered, in his own domain, by
any servant of, or partner in, this lawless oligarchy.

Rising from my little bed, and mattresses full of fragrance and down,
on the morning first after my arrival--rising, fevered and exhausted,
to the full realisation of my awful position, my eyes encountered the
vision of a wholesome, even luxurious, little chamber, and through an
unbarred window a most heavenly prospect. I could hardly believe in
the reality of my fate. This was no prison, but an inn, to escape from
which it seemed only necessary to pay the score, and have the landlord
cry “Bon voyage!” I remembered him the night before--a little tough,
square man, drily courteous in manner, with the head and depressed
forehead of a burglar. He had been already on the steps to receive me,
when we drove up, standing in a patch of light with an expression on
his face as if we had caught him in the act of breaking into his own
premises. Those we had reached, within two hours of my first
kidnapping, by dark and devious roads. They stood, remote from all
other homesteads, a little colony self-contained, some six miles south
of Shole.

On the way thither I had soon abandoned all thought of resistance, or
of appeal to my captors. They may have heard my sobs and prayers with
a certain emotion: virtuous distress had no chance to prevail with
cupidity. I sunk into a sullen apathy, my heart smouldering with rage,
principally against the craven who had either betrayed me to this
living death, or, at least, had weakly acquiesced in my doom. The
prospect of revenge, though alternating with despair, alone preserved
me from a condition of the last prostration. And in this state I was
driven up to the House, and to it consigned, the sold slave of
madness.

In the first terror, with staring eyes, a storm in my breast that
would not rise and break, dishevelled hair, and, it may be, a look of
the part I was called upon to play, I shrunk into a corner of the room
into which I was introduced, and stood there panting. Dr. Peel went
into a thin chuckle of laughter, curiously small and inward from so
thick-set a frame.

“Brava!” said he. “Very well observed, madam! But, if you will look
round, you will see there are no bolts, no bars, no locks here, save
as the ordinary appurtenances of a domestic household.”

There were not, indeed, to the common view. To most doors, as I came
to discover, the locks were inside; and, where it was otherwise, it
was--mark this!--to insure from any chance insane attack, especially
at night, the lives of those which it was particularly desired should
be preserved. To be given the full freedom of the House was always a
significant privilege, implying, as it did, one of two things: either
that the proprietor had accepted at the outset a round sum down for
one’s perpetual incarceration, or a hint that one’s accidental removal
would be handsomely acknowledged by those interested.

Now, as I said, waking on that first morning to free prospects, my
spirit experienced a rebound to the most delightful reassurance.
Surely, I thought, no worse harm could be designed me than the
punishment implied in my enforced temporary detention in this charming
home, where, it seemed likely, a nominal deprivation of one’s liberty
was used to convey a gentle moral or adorn a kindly tale of reproval.
I waxed jubilant. If a meek acquiescence in my fate delayed to move my
jailers to liberate me, I was confident that my wits would soon find
me a way to free myself from so indulgent a thraldom. And in the
meantime I would resign myself to the enjoyment of a very novel
experience.

A loud bell summoned us all to breakfast, _à la table d’hôte_, in a
pleasant refectory. Dr. Peel took the head of the table, and a plenty
of attentive lackeys waited. There was no restriction, nor
interference with one’s individual tastes. I accepted silently the
place assigned me between a gaunt, supernaturally solemn gentleman,
with mended clothes, a wigless head, and prominent fixed eyes, and the
tiniest, most conceited-looking creature with humped shoulders I have
ever seen. An uproarious gabble of conversation, interspersed with
occasional hoots and groans, accompanied the meal throughout.
Occasionally my solemn neighbour would turn to me and remark,
fiercely, as though daring a contradiction, “Enough is as good as a
feast; but more than enough is less than nothing.”

On the third repetition of this formula, the little man on my other
side addressed me with an ill-tempered chuckle--

“Bring him down, ma’am, bring him down, or the creature will scorch
his head in the moon.”

While I was shrinking back in confusion, Dr. Peel bent to the
solemnity.

“Captain,” says he, with an ingratiatory grin, “you’re drinking
nothing.”

“I don’t want anything,” said the other, in a loud, bullying voice.

“Nonsense,” answered the doctor. “You must keep up your character.
Here, John.”

He spoke to a lackey, who was ready on the moment with a decanter. To
my amazement, the man filled up the gentleman’s breakfast cup with raw
brandy.

He shifted, glared, hesitated, and caught up the pungent stuff.

“Enough is as good as a feast, but more than enough is less than
nothing,” howled he, and swallowed the fire at a draught.

He had hardly consumed it, when he cast the cup into splinters on the
board, staggered to his feet, and, moaning to himself, left the room.
The conversation died down for a moment, and was instantly resumed
more recklessly than ever. I felt suddenly sick.

“He-he!” sniggered my little companion. “He’s been long taking his
hint, the fool, and outstaying his welcome. But Peel’s done it at
last, I do believe.”

I did not ask him what. My spirit felt engulfed in deep waters of
terror. I sat dumb and shivering, till the meal ended, and the company
broke up and dispersed itself about the grounds. Many, rude, curious,
fantastic, came about me to inquire, mockingly or fulsomely, into my
malady. To all their solicitations my little companion, who had
appropriated me, turned a rough shoulder and rougher tongue.

“The lady has confided her case to me, you pestilent cranks!” he
screamed, and succeeded in extricating and convoying me to a remoter
part of the grounds. On the way we encountered two men, like
gamekeepers, carrying a ghastly sheet-covered burden on a litter.

“Ho-ho!” said my friend, stopping. “It was arranged for the tower, was
it?”

“Now, lookee here, Jimmy,” said one of the carriers, while the two
paused for a moment, “you’re too precious fond of poking your nose
where you ain’t wanted, you are. You go along to your games, and leave
your elders to theirs till you’re growed up.”

“Grown up!” screeched my companion, whose chin, indeed, was thick with
a grey bristle, “grown up, you puppy, you calf, you insolent lout!”

Crazy in a moment, he danced in the path, screaming and shaking his
fists. The men resumed their way, laughing. Suddenly he caught himself
to a sort of reason, white and shaking.

“They want to drive me to it,” he said. “They want me to break a
blood-vessel; but I see through them, and I won’t be drawn.”

He wiped his forehead, and looked anxiously up in my face.

“You see it, don’t you?” he said. “The fools are envious of my inches.
But you ain’t, are you, being a woman?”

“No, no,” I said, smiling, in a sort of ghastly spasm, in full
understanding of his mania. “No, no; or should I select you for my
champion in this? Let us go on, _please_. Was that--?”

“Yes,” he answered, the question that my fainting spirit shrunk from
formulating, “yes, it was the Captain--good riddance to a conceited
ass.”

He strutted along, pluming himself on my praise. All that I have
stated--the truth about this smiling, damned Gehenna--I drew from him
then or thereafter. I cannot recall it now without a shudder like
death’s.

Once that morning we came, in a retired corner, upon the prettiest,
greenest graveyard--the sweetest God’s-acre, God pity it! in all the
sad world. It was studded with quiet flowers, screened with fragrant
shrubs, thick with graves, _each a nameless grassy barrow_. What depth
of tragedy in it all! I cannot, I vow, dwell any longer on the
picture, but must cover the details of it at a gallop.

I was nine weeks, before I found release, in this appalling hell--a
time the most stupendous of my life. I will acquit the Lady Sophia of
intending the worst; I cannot acquit her of implying it. Whether from
jealousy, or a true conviction as to the unpardonable nature of my
recreancy, she failed, at least, to assure the instruments of her
cruelty that my death-sentence was not intimated in the bond. It is
possible she may have been totally ignorant of the real character of
the place to which she condemned me. She is none the less responsible
for the conclusions the Rhadamanthus of that inferno elected to draw
from her dubiety. Anyhow, I am convinced that my destruction was
designed, before I had been there many days.

In the meantime--O, my Alcide, pity thy Diane! What had she done to
merit this fate, the most awful that could befall a brilliant sanity?
Very, very soon that early buoyancy was like nothing but the memory of
a bright star, that had exploded and scattered as soon as realised. A
sickness, a deadly apprehension, took its place; a sense of some
creeping, circumventing terror, which hemmed me in, stealthy and
pitiless, concentrating my thoughts on a single point in this cursed
paradise. I was inoculated with the disease of the morbid intellects
about me. My reason suffered deliberate contamination by the
remorseless ghoul my keeper. No fewer than three times during my short
sojourn in his inferno did the corpse of a self-destroyer witness to
the success of his methods. They went to swell the bloody tally of
shrouds under the grass in the little graveyard; and, thinking of them
there, their awful waiting testimony, I would look up to find the evil
eye of their murderer fixed upon me in covert, lustful speculation.

For long I remained incredulous that my wit could be utterly impotent
to devise a means to escape. Gradually, only, the sinister
watchfulness which guarded every outlet of this green prison, and the
fiendish incorruptibility of its warders, was bitten into my brain.
Pleas and graces were accepted for nothing but an encouragement to
unwelcome attentions, indeed. It was not supposed that one could be
insane and modest. Many sold their virtue for a little surcease from
tyranny, bartered their dearer than life for a poor extension of
living. At the same time, and for the same reason, a most rigid
embargo was placed on all communications with the outside world. Worse
than a Russian censorship doomed these utter exiles from hope.

In the worst of my despair I had written to Patty, to de Crespigny,
begging them to intercede for me with the cruel woman, who yet _could_
not be aware of the inhuman character of her revenge. Finally, I wrote
to madam herself--an appeal that would have melted a heart of stone.
My cries were uttered into space. They were never allowed, in spite of
all specious pretence, to penetrate the boundaries of my doom. They
recoiled only upon my own fated head, precipitating its calamity, and
the swifter because I was persistent in justifying my birth-name to my
hateful would-be destroyer.

The little craze they called Jimmy was my sole stay and buckler. He
attached himself to me vigorously, and by his quickness and
waspishness more than made up for his lack of inches. I never knew who
he was, or immured at whose instigation. There was warrant, anyhow,
for his detention; yet not sufficient, it appeared, for his “removal.”
His philosophy of madness was just a counterbuff to that of the
deceased Captain. If, in short, more than enough was less than
nothing, then less than nothing was more than enough; wherefore Jimmy,
twitted with being less than nothing, knew himself really to be
greatly better than most, though he could never get over the envy of
smaller souls in refusing him the credit of his stature. What is
apparently little is relatively great, he often assured me, while
bemoaning his inability to knock the truism into the thin asparagus
heads that shot above his own sturdy one. He spent the most of his
time, and I with him, in what was known as the workshop--a detached
ivy-grown shed, buried amongst trees, very private, and with a deep
well in it, and furnished with all sorts of dangerous tools for cranks
of a mechanical turn. There he wrought incessantly, for he was a
capable carpenter; and there, watching and helping him, I strove to
forget something of my misery. One morning, entering this shed, we
found a little group of employés gathered about the well, talking and
laughing, and fishing with a long grapnel. A partition separated us
from the obscene crew, whose movements, unobserved by them, we
crouched to watch.

“A thousand to one it’s old Star-jelly,” whispered my companion.
“’Twas plain from the first the creature was booked.”

They hauled it to the surface while he muttered--a sodden body caught
by its waistband and doubled backwards--and slopped their hideous
burden on the floor. The white sightless face settled backwards, as if
with a sigh of rest, and I could hardly refrain from a scream of
terror. I had known this poor thing for the few days since he had been
admitted--a wreck so torn, so noisome, so straining the remnant of
life through fretted lungs, it should have seemed a mockery to
precipitate its end. I had known, and never, till now seeing it
clothed in the white uniform of death, had recognised it. It was the
mad incubus of “Rupert’s Folly,” caught somehow tripping at last and
consigned to his doom. The red earl had succeeded by long waiting in
curing himself of this itch. He was one of a deadly persistent family.

That night I could not even cry myself to sleep.


I don’t know how it was that I was at last driven to visit the Suicide
Tower. I had caught glimpses, remote in the grounds, of a picturesque,
creeper-hung pagoda set in flowering thickets; but had always, since
that first morning of deadly association with it, turned with loathing
from the sight. Now, somehow, by degrees, the thing began to impress
itself with a certain fascination on me. I felt drawn to it by a
horrible curiosity, none the less morbidly self-indulgent because I
knew that my jailer, a proselyte of the subtle Mesmer, had long been
practising to master my will and get me entirely under his influence.
Snuffing here, nibbling there, as it were, like a heifer approaching
in pretended unconsciousness the stranger in the field, I gradually
lost my power of resistance, the circumference of my orbit slowly
lessened, until, behold! one day the attraction found me helpless to
oppose it, and, with a little cry to myself, I yielded and went
rapidly towards the tower. As I approached the spot, I could hardly
feel my limbs; my soul, penetrated with a sort of exquisite nausea,
seemed already straining to leave the earth; a mist, luminous, vaguely
peopled, eddied before my eyes. Perhaps a confidence derived from the
possession of my duck-stone--which all this time I had been jealous to
preserve, using it even occasionally, in moments of prostration, for a
drug to my nerves--conduced to my undervaluing the force of
temptations to which I owned such a counter-charm. In any case, I made
so little resistance in the end, that the evil thing concealed amongst
the thick bushes by the tower, whence and whither he had drawn me by
his spells, must have chuckled to see me so easily netted.

The place was perfectly silent and beautiful. A tinkle of water, a
twitter of birds reached my ears from some remote height. The tower
sprang from a circular platform of stone, went up loftily, and broke
at near its top into two or three little tiled flounces. Under the
lowest I could see an opening pierced through a rose trellis; and
right before me the unlatched door of the building was reached by a
shallow flight of steps.

My heart was fluttering like a netted butterfly as I mounted them.
What sinister design could possibly obtain in this still and fragrant
enclosure? A flight of spiral stairs, going up the interior, was set
in a very bower of plumy palms, and ferns, and clambering rich mosses,
made greener by the light which entered through green _jalousies_.
Here and there tiny rills of water, lowering themselves down miniature
precipices, were fretted into spray that hung in the twinkling emerald
atmosphere and was showered on the leaves. Caged cunningly amidst the
foliage, birds of brilliant plumage chirped and flirted; or red
squirrels sprang and clung, staring at me with glossy eyes; or
lizards, liquid green as the sun through lime leaves, raised their
pulsing throats, and whisked and were gone. Once a snake, raising a
gorgeous enamelled head, lashed its thread of tongue on the glaze of
its little prison, seeming to taste my passing beauty in a wicked
lust. I felt quite secure and happy. Up and up I climbed, and
presently started singing softly, irresistibly, in response to the
growing rapture of my flight. New beauties were revealed with every
step, until in a moment, passing, at an angle, through a very thicket
of blossoms into white daylight, I saw the meaning, and tottered on
the brink of it all.

I had emerged upon a little ledge, a foot in width, which ringed the
outside of the tower just below the first roof. I was standing there,
suddenly, instantly, with not so much as an inch of parapet between my
feet and the edge. Behind was the wall of the tower; below, a reeling
abyss and the bare, merciless pavement. Dazzled, irresistibly drawn
forward, I longed only to reach the stones and be at rest. But in that
terrible moment my talisman occurred to me. Swaying, half fainting,
fighting for every movement, I succeeded in drawing it from my pocket
and lifting it to my nostrils--and instantly my resistance was
relaxed, and I floated down on the wings of enchantment.

When I opened my eyes, drugged and smiling, it was to the vision of
Dr. Peel standing before me like an awed and baffled demon. He dressed
his twitching features, and came and cringed.

“Are--are you much hurt?” he stammered.

“No, sir,” I murmured. “Not at all, I thank you.”

“It was your skirts ballooned,” he said. “I could not have thought it
possible.”

I sat up, reordering my hair.

“Do you now?” I said quietly. “Such an escape could hardly come within
your calculations, I think.”

“What do you mean?” he began loudly, and as instantly collapsed again.
“You had no right to be there at all,” he said.

“Nor should I,” I replied, “but to show you that virtue may have a
familiar as well as vice, and one, too, capable of answering to a
wicked challenge.”

I got to my feet as I spoke. He stared at me utterly disconcerted,
and, as I withdrew, followed me like a scourged dog.

From that time he sought rather to preserve than to destroy me, and I
found myself, as one of the elect, locked into my room at night. He
had realised, I suppose, that wickedness could over-reach itself in
the chance entertainment of spirits potent beyond the worst it could
of itself evoke; and, though he still clung to me as a sort of hostage
for his own miserable salvation, made many abject efforts towards my
conciliation, amongst which I had great reason to reckon a relaxation
in the watchfulness which had hitherto dogged my every movement.




 XIV.
 I AM RESCUED BY MY MONSTER

Have you not noticed, my little friend, how the wicked are always
the superstitious? It is because life is to them full of dark corners,
in which the unsuspected hides. The atheist will still be for baiting
a deity whose existence he denies; he will wring a response from a
vacuum, which failing, he fears to canvass emptiness for the reason.

Dr. Peel knew well the impotence of virtue to conquer. He saw it of
such poor force in the world as to figure of no moment at all in a
contest with vice. He did not fear God, but he feared that the devil
was God, and vindictive where the harming of his protégées--of whom
he had no thought but that I must be one--was concerned. He had been
eye-witness of the, to him unaccountable, foiling of his project; and
it struck him as if he had fallen upon an ambush in one of those dark
corners. He shrunk back terrified, and thenceforth exchanged his
noisome attentions to me for an attitude of propitiation which was as
unwelcome, and even more stultifying, in seeming, to my hopes,
inasmuch as it included an increased jealous concern for my
safeguarding. But there, in the end, his service of his dark master
was made to recoil upon his own head, through his very scepticism of
the more divinely cunning power which works for good. He would lock
me, as I said, into my room at night, thereby securing me not only
from prowling evils, but an asylum in which I might ponder undisturbed
what plans I could of escape. And it was that security from
interruption which enabled me presently to realise on an opportunity
of which I was quite unexpectedly made the mistress.

It fell early very cold and wintry that November, but the chill in my
heart was colder than any hailstones. Presently such an apathy of
despair found me that I would hardly leave my room all day, but would
sit in a sullen misery gazing, gazing from my unbarred open window
upon the fraction of stiffening world it commanded. It was at a front
angle of the house, pretty high above the ground; and under it the
stony drive went round an elbow of lofty trees to the fatal unseen
gates of the entrance beyond.

One morning, after breakfast, I was seated there, when a chaise rolled
up to the steps of the door below, and a moment later Dr. Peel entered
and was driven rapidly away, on some fresh marauding devilry, I
conjectured. The vehicle, sped by a heart-whole curse from my lips,
had disappeared scarce a minute, when round the bend of the shrubs it
had taken came striding the oddest figure--an interloper by way of the
open portals, it seemed. Such an event had never, in my knowledge,
happened before. I stared, and roused myself, elate even over this
momentary grotesque vision from the world beyond. It was just a
stilt-walker, a monstrous pierrot, with floured absurd face and
conical cap, his legs, cased in linen trousers, rising an immense
height from the ground. As he came on, ridiculously gyrating, he blew
a pipe, and rattled at a little tabor that hung from his neck. In the
same moment he saw me where I stood, and danced up, rolling and
wallowing--for he was an incomprehensibly great creature for such a
trade--and broke into a mad, jerky little chaunt, half French, half
English, as he approached--

“_O-ha, mamselle! Je vous trouve, je vous salue! A la fin çà, çà,
çà!_

  “‘Be’old the mountaineer,
    He sik for edelweiss,
  I have found my dear
    Very high and very nice--_çà, çà, çà!_’”

He flicked off his cap--with a grin that showed, though against the
flour, a set of perfect teeth--and in three strides was at the window,
his eyes and huge white face above the level of the sill. Even in the
instant, as if the former were a cypher momentarily isolated for my
reading, I understood, and was stricken to stone.

“The graveyard!” whispered the pierrot in that instant: “be at the
wall over against it at ten o’clock to-night”--and reeled away, to a
pantomime of grins and pirouettes, as the lodge-keeper came raging
round the corner in pursuit.

“_O que nenni dà!_” cried the intruder, twisting and turning and
affecting to bend with laughter. “O, madame! O, fie! I am very
honourable z’jentlemans. Wat, I say! I make you good proposals to
marry. I display my parts, _v’là_!”

He contorted himself, with absurd coquetry. “Wat!” he protested,
pausing; “madame declines of the ravishment? She does not move herself
to fly with me? Vair well”-- He pretended of a sudden to espy his
pursuer, and pressing his cap to his breast, waltzed up to him.

“Hey, my little fellow,” he cried (the lodge-keeper was at least as
big as Daniel Lambert), “it is for you, then. You know the best wat is
good. I will not abduct madame: I will not marry at all. It is vair
much satisfaction. You see me dance, _hein_? Come on, jolly
_garçon_!--

  “‘Love miscarries--heh?
  When a man marries--heh?’

When a man’s single he live at his is--you spik French, but yes?”

The lodge-keeper hawked up a glair of oaths, and discharged them. He
swore by all his gods that he would cut off the intruder by the legs,
unless he went out, and double quick, the way he had come. Then ensued
a comical scene. The pierrot, affecting to retreat after a brief
altercation, swerved suddenly and seated himself on the branch of a
tree--

“O-ho!” he said, as the other came lumbering up, “it is vair well, but
I make up my mind. I refuse madame, it is true. You know to marry,
what it is? Listen, then--

  “‘At the end of one year one baby:
    That is jolly-fun!’”

The lodge-keeper, cursing, made a snatch at the man’s stilts; but,
incredibly strong, he whipped them up out of reach, and held them so
horizontal.

  “‘At the end of two year two baby--
    How it is a little serious!’”

he sang.

The lodge-keeper swore and jumped, till he was running wet for all the
cold; but he was too fat a fox for these grapes.

  “‘At the end of three year three baby--
    But that is the very devil,’”

bawled the pierrot ferociously, and clashed the stilts like great
castanets.

Then he settled himself firmly.

“‘One asks for bread,’” bellowed he; and suddenly flourishing his
right stilt, caught the lodge-keeper a stinging smack across the head
with it--

“‘Another for soup,’” he yelled, and gave such a counter blow with his
left, that the lodge-keeper fairly reeled and went rolling over--

  “‘_L’aut’ qui demande à téter,_
    _Et les seins sont tarie,_’”

shouted the pierrot, and was up and out of sight in a moment, striding
like Talus. The infuriate lodge-keeper rose, when he had recovered
himself, to pursue; but he was too late. The pierrot had got clean
away.

Not till all had been vanished many minutes did I awake from the
stunned trance into which I had been thrown by those few whispered
words. Then, still by the window, I sank upon the floor, and,
simultaneously, into a very reel and passion of ecstasy.

How had he traced me? Whence devised this strange method of procuring
speech? Ah! as to that, there were no doubt experiences in his past
life still unrelated; and, after all, did he not always in a
measure--strictly in a measure--walk on stilts? This was only to
extend his wooden legs indefinitely. But after what secret practices,
and suspicions averted? For I held him still the creature of his
despicable master. My Gogo--for it was he! My Gogo, the great
resourceful, affectionate, crippled giant! It was inexpressibly
touching to me to know myself, the poor persecuted, wistful dupe of
Fate, still the cynosure of this burning soul--not forgotten, schemed
for, held the sacred object of its desire. All the time I had thought
myself abandoned, he had been weaving a ladder for my despair. Good
Gogo! Dear, kind, honest Caliban! He would save me yet--he would save
me; and the tears flowed from my eyes. How was he such an actor? It
was true I had known hitherto only one side of him--the saturnine--the
shadow of the great fallen rock. Ah, he could show a lighter for my
sake--little roguish sparklets twinkling in the sun of his hot
yearning. I loved him at that moment, and my tears fell for him and
myself.

But, stay! What had he whispered? I must remember. At ten o’clock--the
wall over against the graveyard? Why had he so chosen--so nicely
specified? Did he know nothing of the patrol? Yes, likely; but it was
a desperate expedient, calculated upon a possible superstition, upon a
presumptive avoidance of so haunted a spot. I pressed my hands to my
wet forehead and tangled hair. He had dared and done all he could: the
rest was for me, whom he knew and could trust. I would not be
unworthy. I would answer to him wit for wit.


Half an hour later, serene and wicked as he could have wished, I took
my way, singing, into the grounds, and, unaccosted, sought that remote
quarter where the graveyard was situated. Still softly singing, I
pushed between the trees, and came out into the waste interval against
the boundary wall which was devoted to the watch. Stooping here to
pick some chance berries, I had not to wait a minute before the local
sentinel, as I had calculated, was upon me. I dropped my spray, with
an aspect of alarm that struggled into piteousness.

“O, I am so sorry!” I said.

The man--he was personable enough to make my task the less
nauseous--eyed me, insolent and masterful.

“All right,” he said. “Blow me if you ain’t done it now. Why, don’t
you know as this here’s Prisoner’s Base, and you’re out of bounds?”

I went up to him fearlessly, and taking his hands, muffled in great
hairy gloves, looked up into his face. I saw a spot of deeper colour
come into his cheeks, and he breathed fast.

“Shall I confess,” I said, low and urgent, and glancing quickly about
me, “that I wanted to be caught?”

“Ah!” he said, and showed his teeth in a twitching grin.

“Hush!” I whispered. “I am in great despair. You know perfectly well I
am sane; I shall die if I am detained here longer.”

“O! will you?” he responded.

“Listen,” I said, flushing and hanging my head. “I offer you no money,
which I have not got. But there are things--other things--sold here,
which”--

I tore my hands away, and, putting them to my face, fell back from
him.

“Hey!” he said, in a thick whisper, and pursued me. “Why do you pick
_me_ out for your favours, you little beauty?”

I did not answer.

“Why?” he insisted.

“If it has to be,” I muttered from my refuge, “you--O, don’t ask me!”

“Why?” he said.

“Well, of twenty evils, choose the best-looking.”

He gave a low chuckle.

“Come along, where we can be private,” said he, and put a hand on me;
but I started back, affecting an agony of shame.

“O! what have I said--what promised? Let me go. Don’t think any more
of it.”

“Won’t I?” he said; and added threateningly: “You’ve given your
promise, remember.”

I looked about me, and again upon my twined fingers.

“To-night, then, at--at ten o’clock.”

“Where?”

“In the workshop.”

“You can get out?”

“Yes; I have a way.”

“That you have,” he said, coveting me with his eyes; “and a pretty
one, my darling.”

I entreated him once more, in a passion of emotion--

“If--if I consent, you’ll hold to your part of the bargain?”

“Eh?” he questioned.

“Help me to escape?”

“No fear o’ my forgetting,” he answered. “You may lay to that.”

I knew he meant to betray me in the double sense, and would have given
more than I feigned to barter at that moment for the leave to beguile
him to me, and slip a knife into his lying throat. But I tasted part
of my revenge in the thought of his freezing alone there by and by, in
the rendezvous to which my wits had decoyed him, while I went to my
other undisturbed.

He was jealous of me, and suspicious still of so light a surrender.
But the prize was worth the risking; and in the end he let me go,
gloating over my stealthy retreat, as a cruel schoolmaster might watch
the slinking away of a delinquent whom he had ordered up for
punishment later.

That night fell a harder frost, with glittering stars but no moon.
Early secured in my sanctum, I awaited the great moment in such an
indescribable agony of mind as I have never felt before or since.
Every step near my door was a tread upon a nerve. The stable clock,
when it rang out, clear and sonorous, the last quarter after nine,
seemed to brain me with its every stroke. I stole to the open window,
took intent stock of the quiet, seated myself, poised to spring, on
the sill, and passed my duck-stone at a little distance under my
nostrils. The next instant I had alighted safely on my feet, and
reeling against the wall beneath, stood a minute to recover. The next,
I was round the angle of the house, and sped into the dark
shrubberies, where were safety and concealment.

Going very softly in my stockinged feet, and careful of my knowledge
not to penetrate the thicket until close upon the appointed place, I
reached my goal upon the stroke of the hour.

“Well!” whispered a voice from the starlight. “I could trust you.”

He had been stretched recumbent on the wall top, and now rose
cautiously to my view, no longer the whitened fool, but the true Gogo
of my affections. I looked up at him as from a well; and he swung his
long stilts over, as he sat, so that they rested on the ground
beneath.

“Quick!” he muttered; “without a moment lost--swarm! I can’t bend.”

Heaven knows how I did it--with no better show of grace than Lady
Sophia, I fear. But somehow I scrambled up, until he could reach my
hands, and haul me with a mighty power beside him. Then, once more,
swing went his legs, and there was the ladder for my descent on the
other side.

I clung to him convulsively; I kissed his hands; I could not refrain
from sobbing.

“O, Gogo!” I said; “what you have saved me from--O, Gogo, what!”

His breath caught like a wounded lion’s.

“Not yet,” he whispered. “There is far to go first!”

“Put me down, then,” I answered, alert in the stress of things.

“No,” he said. “On my back--quick!”

“You are going to carry me?”

“There are bloodhounds,” he replied. “There must be no tracks but the
stilts’--no scent for them to follow.”

Then I understood the fulness of his plan; but still I lingered,
amazed.

“I am not a child. What strength, though yours, could bear me so?”

He showed me a long staff that leaned to him against the outer wall.

“There is my third prop,” he said. “When I am driven, I can still seat
you upon a branch, and save the scent. The ground is iron, and”--he
struck his chest--“these ribs. Come, and let me wear my heart upon my
sleeve.”

The next moment we were off. The great creature swayed beneath me like
a tree; but he never staggered or faltered, save periodically to rest
himself and me. The sweet night wind blew upon my face, cold and
colder. I snuggled from it into the vast nape of his neck, which was
like a mat for warmth. I had no idea or care whither he was taking me,
and the knowledge only that it was by roads deserted at this silent
hour. Still he held on, and, when frost and weariness threatened to
numb my brain, could spare a strong hand to imprison both mine lest I
fell. And still the flight endured, and I asked, could ask, no
question, not even when I grew penetrated by a dull consciousness of
ascent--of my comrade straining and toiling beneath me like a stricken
Sisyphus--of the groaning of the giant spirit in him who would not be
subdued. Then, at last, came a pause, and darkness and release; and I
felt myself swung gently down to rest upon a mat of scented leaves,
whose warmth and fragrance wooed me to such a sleep as I had never
known before.




 XV.
 I BECOME AN INMATE OF “RUPERT’S FOLLY”

I awoke, flushed and happy as a dormouse from its winter bed of
leaves. The world was good again, with all its potentialities of love
and freedom; the sun was somewhere seeking me; there was no ache, but
the sweet ache of memory, in my whole heart and body. Locality, I have
said before, has never influenced my temper. I make the only
reservation now of liberty to change it at my will.

I remained some time, with my hands beneath my head, taking stock
motionlessly of my new surroundings. They were odd enough. I lay near
the wall, it seemed, of a sort of circular ground chamber or cellar,
roofed in at an inexplicable height above me. Twice, at intervals
between, projecting corbels appeared to show the one-time existence of
upper floors, which, having either rotted away or been removed, had
left the chamber of a height quite disproportionate with its ground
dimensions. In lieu of stairs, a make-shift ladder went up into the
roof at a crazy angle, and disappeared through a trap; but it started
from the ground so close to a rude fireplace in the wall, that its
butt was scorched, and more than one of the lower rungs snapped in its
socket.

Over the floor itself were scattered tokens of some late or present
occupation--a common table, a rush chair or two, battered saucepans, a
greasy gridiron, and, hanging on the walls, a frowzy account of
clothes. A line, stretched across a segment of the room, had once held
suspended a litter of foul-washed clouts; but the string had broken,
and its filthy load been kicked aside or trodden into the floor, half
brick half muck, which paved the apartment.

There were no windows, but, at irregular intervals, narrow loops such
as one sees in old castles; and the single ground opening was a
doorway, which let in just such a smear of daylight as served to
emphasise the uncleanness.

Recognising in all this the reverse of familiar, I let my wondering
eyes travel round to the parts more contiguous to my bed, and so gave
a little pleased start and smile. There, like guardian posts to my
slumber, were the long stilts leaned against the wall, their straps
hanging loose; and pendent from a nail close by was the very clown’s
dress of my memory. I could have drawn it to me and kissed it; but,
contenting myself with conceding to it a sigh of affection, I sank
back and closed my eyes. Lying thus deliciously, half-submerged in a
very nest of dry fern, and with a heavy cloak for blanket over me, I
would delay luxuriously the moment of revelation; but it was very
evident, I thought, that Gogo had brought me to some wrecked and
deserted mill.

Suddenly, unable to rest longer, I peeped. He was going softly about
the hearth, preparing something at a little fire, whose every thicker
waft of smoke he would jealously dissipate with his hands. He still
feared observation, then! Watching him silently, my heart welled up
with a gush of love for the dear, patient, faithful monster. “Gogo!” I
said softly.

He started, looked across, and came to me at once, stumping over the
floor in a rapture of response. He took a stool, and, sitting on it by
me, gazed eagerly into my face, his own--animal, sinful, and
divine--looking from a very burning bush of stubble.

Smiling, in a drowsy warmth, I put out a hand, and let him imprison it
in his own. Ah, foolish little bird, so to commit thyself to the snare
of the fowler! I thought he would have killed it, and tore it back
fluttering and wounded.

“O, how could you?” I cried. “I was so happy; and you have hurt me!”

He leaned in a hoarse agony to me; his breath groaned in his chest.

“O, come to me!” he implored, “while I make one mouthful of you!”

Then, all in an instant, he was sobbing, and tearing at his short
hair, and crying incoherently--

“What have I done?--to wound my dear! Ride me, flog me, use me, but
trust me no more. Bitter, bitter are the gods, who make a man
stiff-kneed for their sport! Not love or penance for me, never, never.
Never to kneel--to lie prone only for a show! O, child! it seems a
little thing not to kneel, but--ah, to see others pray and love,
yourself forbidden--what pity, what pity! I am the Olympian fool; I am
the ass and clown. Behold my livery!”

He pointed to the dress on the wall, and hung his head and arms in a
very grief of despondency. But by now my hurt and little fright were
gone, and my heart touched again to softness.

“Gogo,” I said, “give it me down, please.” And he looked up wondering,
and stirred and obeyed.

“This, and this, and this,” I said, “in pledge of our one-day contract
before Jove, or Jehovah, when the maimed shall be made whole.”

My tears dropped on it, as I kissed it three times and gave it back to
him. He received it wonderingly first, then sadly, and held it
drooping over his knees.

“Whole!” he muttered. “Ay, I don’t question I shall find my legs in
Avalon; but can even Jove restore the rifled flower its honey?”

Suddenly he cast himself down beside me, groaning like a bull.

“O, little maid, little maid! I am a beggar, I am a beggar; but I want
no reversion of a used estate. Though my own goes lame, I am proud.
Give me new-minted money, that no man has worn in his pocket, or none
at all.”

For a moment the great human urgency of the creature made me falter. I
owed him so much! could the devotion of my life more than repay him?
But, alas! it needed but a little reflection to see the fond
ridiculous picture the caricature it was. Had I the right even to risk
a new generation of Gogos? I saw myself in imagination walking abroad,
the proud convoyer of an uncountable number of little shock-headed
Dutch tumblers. Perhaps if our Sovereign King had received that
Carpenters’ Petition, and brought wooden legs into fashion, I might
have been tempted; but it was still the vogue to walk on one’s own
feet.

I sat up, my lips twitching perilously near laughter.

“Dear Gogo,” I said, “I am so thankful to you, and so sorry; and I
would not have said or done what I did, if I had known it would
disturb you so. Won’t you let me get up?”

He scrambled to his feet--ah, fie upon the unmeant cruelty of the
word!--and stood knotting his great hands, while his breast heaved
stormily.

“Well, I think I was mad,” he roared suddenly. “Strike me! Stamp on
me! Bind me to a pillar, and let the eternal remorse batten on my
vitals! Whatever the spark at my tail, it started me up like a rocket:
and behold me at the end, a blackened and empty case!”

He entreated me with his hands--

“Ah, the pagan sight of you! Ah, your wild hair, growing from the fern
or melting into it! Ah, your face, the very flowering of a hamadryad!
It wrought a frenzy in my brain. Forgive me, forgive me! And I will
serve you seven times seven years, for the promise only to be
godfather to your last--your Benjamin!”

He sank down on the stool, and, burying his face in his hands, was
silent.

I thought a practical rescue of the situation best, and rising from my
bed, went to bestir myself over the fire, which was burning redly.
Moreover, a delectable odour had already reached my nostrils from the
little caldron he had hung there, and whose contents were beginning to
inspire me with a very lively curiosity.

I turned to the poor sufferer.

“Gogo, please, it is very sad; but if I am to go on being a hamadryad
I must be fed. Gogo, what is in the pot?”

He lifted his head, with a sigh.

“Snipe,” he said, most tragically.

“Ah! What else?”

“A hare, a partridge, teal.”

“O!”

“Onions, potatoes, carrots.”

“O--o!”

“Larks, chestnuts”--

“Be quiet, lest I cry. You are the best of creatures, and I am the
hungriest.”

“Eat what you will. It is my _pot au feu_--nothing finished before the
next is added.”

“I can wait no longer. You are the hermit of hermits. Who is your
commissariat-general?”

“Who but the child your little friend.”

“My”--

“Miss Grant.”

“Patty!”

He had arisen, and come across to me.

“She lays it in a hollow tree, twice a week, and twice a week I go
down by night and fetch it.”

I stood gaping, staring at him.

“Gogo! Where are we?”

“In ‘Rupert’s Folly.’”

“In--!”

I gave a little cry. He seized me by the wrist, and dragged me towards
the opened door.

“O, Gogo!” I choked, struggling and resisting, “we shall be seen.”

“What does it matter if we are,” he said fiercely, “since you loathe
me?”

I wept and fondled him, in an agony of fear.

“I don’t loathe you. You are my one stay and comfort. Gogo! Will you
give me back to that terror?”

He fell squatting at my feet--it was his substitute for kneeling--and
clasped his arms about my skirt.

“Beast!” he groaned; “I neither meant nor could help it. To play upon
your fears!--To taste love by deputy!--O, forgive me, forgive me!”

“Yes,” I said quietly, “for the second time and always, because of
what you have done. But I fear for myself now, and shall go on
fearing. Let me go--O, Gogo, let me escape into the woods, and break
my heart on frost and hunger rather than wrong.”

Still clutching at me, with a look of horror, as if he felt the shadow
of his last hope eluding him, he scrambled erect again.

“Hunger!” he said. “Think of the snipe and teal! Listen to me, Diana.
Before God, I will not offend again. Base, black coward that I am!
Before God, Diana!”

I gazed at him intently.

“Why have you brought me here, Gogo?”

“Because,” he answered, “there was no nearer and surer refuge.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Ah, child! But you have not heard the story.”

“Well,” I murmured, reassured, though still shy of him, “if you will
keep your promise and be good, you shall tell it me by and by.”

He gave a great sigh, and, gently disengaging myself, I stole to the
door, while he followed me with his agitated eyes, and peered out. It
was Shole, indeed, and the familiar village green that I saw beneath
me, looking down the long wintry slope. Quiet and deserted in the
chill mists of dawn, no view apparently less tragic, less harmful,
could have greeted me. I returned to my companion, who received me
with a pathetic relief. He was quite pale and trembling.

“If my arms had the reach of my heart!” he said. “Well, you have come
back; and so--for breakfast.”

“Patty’s pot,” said I merrily. “The dear shall put new heart into me,
as her wont was.”

He had bread, and some bottles of wine, a little of which I drank
mixed with water. It was the loveliest, most intoxicating meal; and,
when it was over, full of a new grace I bid Gogo to my side.

“Now,” said I, “tell me your story.”

“Well, first,” he said with a grunt, “for your safety here. It was the
astrologer’s, and now is ours. He was carried away in a thunderstorm,
on a red cloud.”

“What do you mean, Gogo, please?”

“I repeat the common superstition. Anyhow, he is gone, and the place
is haunted and avoided since. Not a clown but myself will come within
a mile of it; and as for me, I have lived here for a month undisturbed
already.”

“You? But I know where the poor wretch was taken, and where he died.”

“In the asylum, eh? It is what I supposed; and the red earl comes to
his own. Tell me about it.”

“By and by. I want to know first what brought you here.”

“The wish to lose myself and be lost, where I could devise a plan for
your rescue.”

“You knew where I had been taken, then?”

“No perspicacity of mine. It was the common report. You had lost your
head over love unrequited, and it had become necessary to confine you
for a while.”

“O, indeed! Go on.”

“I hear your little white teeth clicking. Rest content. You are
avenged: he has married her.”

I jumped to my feet.

“He! de Crespigny?”

“Yes.”

I burst into a shriek of laughter.

“They were reconciled, then? O, the dear particular lady! Does he wipe
his boots on her? Did he take his love-potion very strong on the
wedding night?”

“Very strong, no doubt,” said Gogo. And then suddenly he clasped my
skirt, and buried his face in it.

“He would; it was his way,” he muttered. “O, girl, spare me and my
unhappiness--my broken dreams! Did you not know? I had always a
struggle to keep him from it. And now he will go down, down.”

“Yes,” I said, “while she clings to his legs, as fools drown
together.”

“Would you not have had her try to save him?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“Ah! You are vindictive.”

“Don’t you hear me laughing?”

“Yes; like the devil.”

“Is it? I should be mad indeed if I could applaud her. Do you bear in
mind what she has done to me? She is of the sort who make cruelty
their pander--a frowsy, garterless Jezebel. O, how I hate prudery! For
five years I longed to open the windows on it, and let the air in, and
whatever wholesome little devils beside. I declare I loathe myself to
be of her sex. Touch me, Gogo. Am I the same, or different? O, to be
sure! I wish her joy of her bargain--and him.”

“She will pay. But for Noel, weak child of genius--leave me the sorrow
of my broken hopes, Diana.”

“And nothing else? Why did he not meet me?”

“He had not the courage at the last moment.”

“And so, having cut the ground from under me, he stepped back, and
instigated madam to her little _coup de theâtre_, I suppose, and
helped her to push me over the precipice. And you--you sympathised
with and abetted him?”

“Ay,” he said sorrowfully: “witness my long exile here, gnawing my
fingers in the hungry moonlight.”

I sank upon the ground in a passion of tears, and he mingled his grief
with mine.

“Child, I had loved him; and I had but to learn how he had abandoned
you, to leave him. I cursed him--cursed de Crespigny. Will Jove
forgive me? What matter, if I have saved you?”

I lifted my drowned eyes and agonised arms.

“Take me to Patty,” I cried, “and let me weep my soul out on her kind
little heart.”

He shook his head.

“What!” I said; “you will not?”

“She must not even know,” he said. “I could not trust her anxious
love. She must rest as she is, aware of my endless scheming, but not
of its fruits. Some day, perhaps. And in the meanwhile my lady is gone
honeymooning; there is no hope of appeal to her. A breath would
redeliver you to your fate, and perhaps a worse. Come, and tell me all
you have suffered, poor mistress.”

I crept to his feet, and in broken tones gave him the history of my
misery, to the day, to the hour when he had appeared before me.

“And you have not told me,” I said, “how that was.”

“Once,” he answered, “after I had hidden and settled here, I was
spying through the telescope above--(Ay,” he interrupted himself, to
my exclamation, “they could be bold to capture the dying sorcerer, but
to meddle with his tools was beyond their courage)--when I was witness
of a characteristic little _affaire_ on the green below. There were a
stilt-walker and his wench--a couple of the wandering tribe--a
long-legged bird of passage and his little _cocotte_ of bright
plumage. I could see her glitter where I stood--could see her
spangles, and the ribbons float from her tambour as she danced. And
then suddenly my lord viscount was on the scene. He had been sporting,
and carried his gun. He had keepers with him (they were his own; not,
as might have seemed apter to his wits, Dr. Peel’s); and his dogs
‘pointed’ at the gipsy, I suppose. Anyhow, there was an altercation;
and the next I saw was the clown tipped up by his wooden heels, and
lying prone. They carried off the girl--willing or unwilling, it would
have needed a stronger telescope than the astrologer’s to discern--and
presently the poor stunned fool came to his senses and sat up. I could
see him try to gather his wits with his hand, plucking at his brow. He
was alone, who had been in company. Where were the rest--his ravished
mate, and the mob for whom she had tripped and sung? By and by I saw
him, with many starts and delays, unbuckle his stilts, and, having
shouldered them, hobble with slow, painful steps towards the village.
He disappeared, and till night I sat thinking of him, and of the
‘Contrat Social,’ which M. Rousseau wrote for the angels, and which,
therefore, you would not understand, Diana, though, for all my better
sense, I adore you. About dark I descended into the woods at the back
yonder; and there I came upon my stilt-walker seated dying against a
tree. Yes, he was dying. His fall had shattered some ribs, and driven
one into his lung, and death was already thawing the white snow on his
face into patches of blue. I carried him up to the tower, and eased
what I could of his agony, and received his last message to the world.
It is a callous world, this world of ’87; a world of serf and Satan
and Christianity crushed between. But I tell you I would rather give
that message than receive it: would rather be Gogo, the clown and
pariah, than the Viscount Salted with all his prospective acres. Well,
he died, and I took a spade, and buried him at the foot of the tree
where he had rested. Pray God it bears wholesome acorns, for why
should he wish to poison the swine his brothers? Then I inherited his
property; and a thought, an inspiration, occurred to me how I might
use it. Was I not wont to stump the country, like a halting orator? I
could stump it to higher purpose now--the purpose of your redemption.
Sure the spirit of the dead clown would uphold me, for was it not
privilege I fought? So, with no great practice necessary, I became a
stilt-walker; and presently ventured afield, starting by night,
reaping my little harvest of pence in the far villages by day, and
under cover of dark returning. Gradually I contracted my circuit,
hovering about your prison; and so, once upon a time, peering over the
wall in a wintry evening, spied your figure come and go in the light
of a high room. It might be yours! I must dare all, and cast the die.
Well, Fortune favours--the fortunate.”

He ended, to a little silence.

“Poor Gogo,” I said softly. “It is true, I do believe, that I am her
spoilt doll.”

“And I,” he said, “her Dutch tumbler.”




 XVI.
 I PUT AN END TO ONE FOLLY

Hanging and wiving go by Destiny, which must be my excuse for
accepting the silken cord which was weaving for my neck all this time.
I knew no more than patient Griselda about my impending fate; yet
Destiny was not to be gainsaid because I seemed content to resolve
upon Gogo for my present welfare and protection.

He, good monster, never alluded again, during all the days I was with
him, to his unhappy passion. He was slavish in his loyalty to his
word, and in his attentions to the poor creature so utterly in his
power. And if I could not but understand the significance of his sighs
and oglings and contortions, my feigned ignorance of those
hieroglyphics was undoubtedly the most merciful of all the tortures I
might have inflicted on him. Thinking of this, I find salve for
certain bruises on my conscience, which, nevertheless, were, I am
sure, quite unnecessarily self-inflicted. I acted for the best, and
with great pain to myself. He has admitted this since, though
confessing he was long in forgiving me.

I was in the tower, in all, but four days, which, nevertheless, might
have been as many weeks for their tediousness. Gogo was an
incomparable slave and henchman, only his devotion necessarily lacked
the relish of publicity. If I could have had but one other to whom to
boast it, I could have endured it longer. But to be Single-heart’s
exclusive fetish, immured in his wigwam and appropriated to his sole
company, was what never appealed to me. Nor do I believe that it does
truthfully to any other. We are omnivorous; we can’t live on
spoon-meat alone; and there is an end of it.

“Gogo,” I said once, “why are you so attached to me?”

“Why?” said he, throwing up his hands, after his fashion, with a sort
of protesting groan to the powers that be. “Because I am a creature of
surfaces and impressions; because, drawing my life from the great
external of all, it is my doom to worship externals. We talk of our
inheriting the world. Pooh! we are just an itch on the skin of this
monster, whose dark internals are as remote from us as our own hated
organs. Have we ever a thought of possessing our kingdom? Think with
what terror we contemplate a living burial. We are the dust of contact
between earth and sky; are bandied between space and matter, the dross
of one or the scum of the other. Love itself is but the measure of our
penetration. It is the propagation of superficies: it probes no
farther: and all the time is breathing in the air like a swimmer. Are
my eyes in my feet? Ask me why I hate the dark, and am attached to the
light--to the brightest gnat of an hour flying within it.”

“Thank you, sir,” said I. “And that is me, I suppose?”

“That is you,” he said--“dancing on a window-pane, and wondering what
fate keeps you from the garden beyond.”

“And you,” I said, “are the spider lurking in the window-corner,
_n’est ce pas_, and wondering what fate keeps you from devouring me.
Well, you are very complimentary; but, for my part, I would rather
have an hour’s dancing on the surface than possess all the world
that’s under.”

“Ay,” he answered, “and that’s why I covet you.”

Now, was he not an inexplicable creature, and, it must be said, a
depressing? Moreover, for all his advocacy of my cause, I could never
quite reconcile him to my view of madam.

“Remember the day of the picture,” he would say; “and how she rebuked
us all by her attitude. If I testify to your martyrdom, Diana, I must
testify to hers that preceded it.”

“She is welcome to the palm,” I cried. “And may she live long to
flaunt her conquest.”

He did not answer; and so letting his dissent pass by default, put a
bar between us that was never quite surmounted.

In the meanwhile, day followed day, and the frost held, and I was cold
and _ennuyée_; and still he delayed our flight on the score of peril.
I had come but poorly clad for the test, and I cried and shivered much
in our dismal refuge, where what fire we could afford must be kept low
from dread of the smoke betraying us. Present food we had, and some
wine that helped a little to comfort our dejection; and on the Friday
he was due, tramping fourteen miles thither and back over the hills,
to claim his fresh dole of the tree above Wellcot, where faithful
Patty--who was in his confidence as to his retreat, and the means
towards my salvation he hoped to make of it--was wont to conceal it.
Dear darling! How I longed to convey her a message; but he would not
hear of it.

“Of all ephemera,” he said, “she is the very transparent-bodied fly,
the secrets of whose own heart she cannot help but reveal.”

So I had to submit, and hold her sweet image in my arms o’ nights,
when the wind came in at the door and the stars crackled with cold.
But Gogo was right, I had to confess, when once from the deep woods
beyond Shole we heard the clanging of bloodhounds, and knew that my
enemies were vainly seeking the trail which had no existence. Then I
cowered low, and felt a new gush of affection for the resourceful
giant who was so wise in the singleness of his passion.

Often by day I would climb up the ladder to the loft where the
astrologer’s telescope yet remained, commanding, like a disused
cannon, the house and village he had fancied under its dominion, and
there spend hours spying hungrily for what tokens of life the bitter
season afforded. They were not many or inspiriting; but they served at
least to keep me in touch with that world of my fellows that seemed
eternally lost to me.

On the Friday I fell at Gogo’s feet.

“Safe or unsafe,” I cried, “take me away! I can stand this loneliness
no longer.”

His face was full of a sorrowful ecstasy.

“And it was a garden to me,” he murmured; “blind that I am!”

“I shall die,” I cried terribly, “and you will lay me with the dead
clown under the tree.”

“So would you be for ever mine,” he continued, in a sort of dream.

I shrunk from him, and seeing my look, he cast himself down on his
face before me.

“Command me as you will,” he cried; “only never, never bid me from
serving you.”

“You will go?” I sat back, eagerly canvassing him. “Why should I dream
of parting with you? Are not our fortunes pledged together, even if I
did not owe you the best of all gratitude? You are so wise and brave;
you will find a plan and a direction. Only I can stop here no
longer.--O, I can’t!--Gogo, take me away--to London--anywhere.”

He raised himself.

“Spare me this evening to forage,” he said, “so that to-morrow we can
at least start provided.”

In deep night he left me, to go to the tree. It was the first time I
had been abandoned to my sole self. So long as I could discern his
figure, striding over the fields, like some unearthly goblin, on its
high stilts, I stood by the door gazing into the starlight. Then, when
I could see him no more, I sat down just within, my back to the vast
emptiness, and hugged and cried to myself against the long panic of
waiting.

Not many minutes had I sat thus, when something--a footstep, a
shadow--seemed to fall upon my heart with a shock that stopped its
beating. Too terrified for look or utterance, I crouched low, hoping
the thing would pass, and leave me unobserved.

“I have come, madam, to invite you to a safer asylum,” said a low and
musical voice.

I gave an irresistible cry, suppressing it instinctively, even in its
emission, lest it should call back my faithful squire, from his long
toil across the fields, to a need which these gentle tones were far
from justifying. I struggled to my feet, and made myself as small as
possible against the wall.

“Who are you?” I whispered.

“An outcast like yourself,” answered the shadow; “a fellow-sufferer at
the hands of the very family to which you owe your misfortunes.”

“Who are you?” I could only whisper again.

“I am George Rowe,” it said. “Do you remember me? We have met once--an
ineffaceable impression to me. I have followed your career since;
unknown to you, have traced you by the flowers in your footsteps--yes,
even to that wicked place, and your flight from it. I have watched you
since from the woods below; have stood at this door at night and
listened to your breathing till I maddened; have sorely bided my time,
seeking to speak to you. I have tracked the honest tracker, your good
servant and saviour; and, while I applaud his devotion, must warn you
against the equivocal position in which your further acceptance of
that devotion may place you.”

I could not see his face, but only the dusk of a comely form, as it
stood now before me. Well could I recall, indeed, “the good-humoured
gentleman in the grey coat,” who had once so espoused my childish
cause, and earned thereby the hatred of his kinsmen. My confidence was
returning to me with my wits.

“You are very considerate for us,” I said deridingly. “Do you come as
madam your sister’s emissary, since you are so particular for my
character?”

“Alas!” he said, “you do well to doubt me, being so related. But I am
an outlaw from all that house’s influence and consideration.”

“An outlaw--you!” I murmured.

“Ay,” he answered; “ruined, menaced, and driven forth to nurse my
wrongs in hiding.”

“Why, where?” I asked.

“To the woods,” he answered, “like Robin Hood.”

“O, an attractive asylum, sir, for distressed ladies,” I said.

He replied, “Maid Marian thought so.”

“Perhaps she had an attachment there,” said I. “I miss the application
to myself.”

He laughed softly.

“Whether we fly from fear, or fly to love, we fly,” he said. “You may
hold your enemies too cheap, not knowing that my lord makes interest
with his sister, and for his own purposes, to subsidise your Dr. Peel.
For the sake of the secrets of the prison-house, he will not leave her
solus to the hue and cry. You have planted two dragon-heads in place
of the one you severed.”

I shrunk before him.

“What do you mean? How do you know?”

“By the token,” he said, “that he destined me to your fate, and I
answered with the better part of valour, which you will be wise to
imitate.”

“To-morrow,” I muttered; “we had already decided.”

“That is not all, nor enough,” he urged. “You may be Una, _with_ a
rhinoceros, and that is not enough. My lord rides a thunder-bolt. It
is not enough to flee him; you must vanish--be no more.”

Now all of a sudden--I know not how--his words seemed to wake me to
the fond illusion of my state. How, indeed, was I situated, with a
legless Caliban to show me how to run? I had been blinded, by Gogo’s
devotion, to the real nature of the presumption it had thought to
justify. What honest right had he to have undertaken so responsible a
deed, save he had provided for it to the last details? I felt suddenly
very naked and forlorn--shiftless and crying, like some poor exposed
child in the night. I clasped my fingers to the shadow, entreating it
in a broken voice--

“What am I to do? Advise me, help me!”

It moved upon me, soft, and swift, and irresistible. I felt my hands
imprisoned--seized as out of the grave into an assurance of human
warmth and sympathy.

“For what else am I here?” demanded the fervent voice. “Have I not the
prior claim? Have you never thought of me in all these years--of what
you might be now, save for my interference?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “Indeed, indeed I am not one to forget.”

“Well,” he said, “I am just a vagabond at last, and desperate in
romance; and you--your reason is forfeit, if not your life. Be under
no delusion about it; nor about the real impotence of this good fellow
to save you. Come with me, then, while there is time, and be my little
sister. I am lonely in the deep woods.”

I did not move or speak, but I gazed up intently into the white bloom
of his face. The strangest thought was struggling for expression in
me--of some conscious gravitation, through all these years, towards an
affinity which had been shadowed out to me at that first and only
meeting. I felt no shyness, but only a restful confidence in his
company. Was not that strange? To be brother and sister, one and
indivisible in the candid sympathies of Nature. I recognised in a
moment that it was that ideal relationship which had always appealed
to me for the best and purest--that I could never be happy again
divorced from it.

Suddenly the tears were in my eyes.

“If I could truly be your little sister,” I said, “and keep house for
you, as Gretel did for the gentle shepherd who had plucked her when a
flower.”

He heaved a long sigh, full of rapture.

“Quick, then! let me pluck my flower,” says he, “and run.”

But now, at that, for some reason, a revulsion of feeling took me. I
sank down upon the ground away from him, and hid my face in my hands.

“No, no,” I cried--“not yet, not now. O, leave me, _please_!”

Perhaps he was wise to understand and temporise. Anyhow, he went,
though no farther than the door.

For a moment I hated myself; for a moment I felt the basest thing on
earth. What use to reflect that reason and kindness were on my side:
that, since I could not cure a poor fond fool, it were no mercy, but
the contrary, to submit him to the continued infection of my presence?
I said so to myself, and saying it, saw his face returning--full of
light and eagerness--to learn the damning truth! To be held accursed
in that great heart! I could not, I could not! Poor Gogo! Had he not
given up everything for me? I would not desert him. Why should he not
come too? But no: I saw in the same instant that that was impossible,
since he himself had no thought, no wish, to be my brother. And
perhaps, if I went, I should never see him again. Well, would not that
be the best for him? Let me nurse my grief eternal, so long as he
found _his_ cure in separation. It were better I should go. Freed of
this incubus, he would have no longer need to crouch and starve. The
world had no reason, so far as I knew, to identify him with my flight.
And now every hour he remained with me was an added peril to his
safety, his very existence!

Quite wild, I rose to my feet and went panting to the shadow.

“Take me away,” I said, “before he breaks my heart, returning.”

He took my hand tight in his, drew me under the starlight, and
together we fled down the hill and into the woods.




 XVII.
 I AM CONSIGNED TO A GREEN GRAVE

To you, my dear Alcide, conscience is, I know, a disease, and virtue
its relapse. I do not, then, ask your sympathy, but only your
commiseration in that long struggle with my better self in which I was
now to engage--a struggle which found me child, and left me woman--a
struggle through whose intermittent deliriums moved ever the sorrowful
figure of my poor lost Gogo.

Yet I must own that the oasis in which this destiny was to be
fulfilled figured for a period the greenest in all my desert career.
It was a dear time, in truth; a dear, abandoned, wonderful time, until
the inevitable disenchantment came. Alas! to take profit of your own
unselfishnesses is, with a stern Providence, to convert them into the
plainest of worldly transactions!

No word passed between me and my companion as we hurried, deeper and
deeper, into the fathomless woods. Sure of foot and, it seemed, of
destination, he drew me unresisting by cloudy deeps of foliage, by
starlit alleys, by ways so thronged and massed with trunks as to seem
impenetrable. Often I shrunk before some imaginary charge of shadows;
often cried out in the silent rush of woodland things across our path.
There was no wind that could reach and buffet those packed
desolations; no frost, save where in the clearings it could find space
to bloom. And these, for precaution’s sake, we avoided, lest our
footsteps should betray us. On and on we sped, till my heart was sick
in my breast, and I cried out to rest and die. But he would not let me
stop.

“Courage, little sister!” he cried; “we are within a cast of home.”

We mounted, after that, a long and gentle hill, from whose sides the
trees fell away, till, on the summit, there was none. But here, sunk
deep in the crest, was, as I could discern, an ancient gravel pit,
whose slopes were rough with brake and brush to a giddy distance down.

“Come,” he whispered, and clasped my hand secure.

We descended by a path, that was no path to me, and, at the bottom,
stooped under a very thicket of bush, and gained once more a sense of
space and movement, but so deadly close-shut that for a little I dared
not stir.

“Come,” whispered my companion again. “It is nothing but a cleft in
the hill, but so overgrown above that no mortal would guess it there.”

Still I dared not move. When suddenly I felt his arm about me, and his
lips on mine. Then I started to myself with a shock of anger.

“Is this to be a brother?” I cried.

“What else,” he murmured, “to give his little sister confidence.”

The low laugh with which he said it made my blood fire. I could have
struck him in my fury.

“Go on!” I said, in a repressed voice. “I have come so far; I must
follow, I suppose.”

“Will you not let me lead you?”

“No.”

“You may stumble in the dark.”

“Not to the fall you think.”

“I am sorry.”

“Very well. Go on.”

He went before, submissively. The gully cut straight, like a giant
furrow, through the hill. It was narrow and pitch-dark, sodden here
and there with dripping water, and always smelling like a vault. Not
once in its entire length, so far as I could see, did the dense mat of
overgrowth thin to that texture that a star of all the hosts above was
visible.

At last he stopped so suddenly that I near fell against him.

“Hush!” he whispered, “we are at the end. Can you see enough to follow
me?”

“Yes,” I said; “my eyes are opened now.”

He had hard work, I knew, to suppress a chuckle over my tragic tone.

“Well, keep them so,” said he; and, elbowing up a great pad of
foliage, beckoned to me to pass. I obeyed, holding my skirts from him,
and in a moment discovered myself in the open once more.

We had emerged, it seemed, high on the near perpendicular side of
another pit, or cutting. Right beneath us, shouldering the very steep
on which we were perched, was the thatched roof of a cottage, an open
skylight in the midst gaping at us scarce ten feet below. So close did
it invite us, in the bewildering starlight, that I was near springing,
on the thought, to gain its shelter. But my companion restrained me.

“Wait,” he whispered drily. “A little of your discretion, please.”

Doubtful of me, he let go his hold reluctantly, and stooping once more
under the curtain of foliage, dragged out a ladder, which was
concealed behind, and which he now, with infinite precaution, lowered
through the skylight till it rested.

“Now,” he said, “climb down, while I hold it firm.”

It was the rudest thing; just slats nailed across a pole--a ladder for
bears, not men. But I was young and lithe, and quickly was down and
through, and standing, trembling over this finish to my adventure, on
the floor of a little dark, invisible room. And so, before I had time
to collect myself, the other was descended in my footsteps, and the
ladder hauled in and laid along the wall, and a little silence ensued.

“Well,” said his voice at length, “you are safe at last, little
sister.”

Then, I don’t know how it was, the tears would come.

“Why, don’t you believe it?” he whispered, groping a step nearer.

“Have you given me reason to?” I answered, shrinking from his touch,
and gulping down my sobs.

He drew away at once.

“The best reason in the world,” he said coldly, “since I have placed
my life in your hands--since I leave you here the means to escape, if
you will, and curry favour by betraying me.”

I could have cried out on his cruelty, but dared not.

“Understand, this is your sanctuary,” he went on, “prepared against
your coming, and which none, in their turn, will betray. The path to
it is sacred to me. No one will disturb you; you are secure as a bird
in its nest. There is a bed in a corner; rushlight and holder and
tinder-box on a table by. Light, and take possession. I must go and
reassure Portlock.”

I heard him move softly over the floor; a trap opened somewhere,
letting in a momentary weak film of light, and he was gone.

For a time I stood motionless, hearing the murmur of voices somewhere
below; then, suddenly panic-struck, groped for the table and tinder,
and shakily struck fire. The wick caught, flamed up and settled, and I
saw my possession.

It was the tiniest, kindest little room, under a sloping roof, clean
and friendly, with a white bed. I was dazed and weary beyond
speculation. Leaving the light burning, I crept under the coverlet as
I was, and fell into a profound sleep.




 XVIII.
 I BEGIN ANOTHER FOLLY

I opened my eyes to a sense of utter restfulness and peace. A
feeling of green isolation, of a quiet and guarded security, such as
not all Gogo’s watchfulness could accomplish for me in the tower, came
instantly to comfort the first startled shock of my waking. Little
demure clouds drifted over the skylight; I heard a faint twitter of
birds on the hillside; there were woodland berries and flaming leaves
in my room; pictures, too; and a dozen pretty attentions to reassure
me. Sure he must have made very certain of his capture before he
decorated the cage so handsomely. And for how long, pray, had he held
his hand and aloof, biding his opportunity? He must have kept his
secret well, at least, for I had never known a hint of his presence.

I smiled, and closed my eyes again. It was a most endearing thought,
the thought of that brotherly haunting, while I had been bemoaning my
abandonment by all the world. There was still that in me, then, to
attract admiration, to ensure my affinity with the strong and shapely.
I was sick to death of malformations, mental and bodily. What had
become of him? I had not reached the end of my resentment, but I did
not wish him to think it insurmountable; and I was certainly curious
to learn how far my romantic memory of him was justified.

And, in the meantime, where was I? in what remote eyrie of the green
forest? For all I could see, I might be imprisoned in a well.

I rose, and, after making my toilette, had paused undecided, wondering
what was to come next, when I heard his voice, very mock-humble, at
the trap--

“Little sister, will you come down to breakfast?”

The blood thrilled in my temples, but I hardened my heart, and
answered “Yes,” as frigid as a nun.

He flung up the hatch at once, and for the first time I saw the ladder
going down into candlelight, whence a smell of warm dust and tallow
rose to my nostrils. He descended before me, and I followed, into the
leanest of little cellars, with a rough board on trestles in it and a
stool or two. The rafters were hung with cobwebs; there were a couple
of dismal dips in horn sconces on the walls; a closed door showed
dimly at the farther end, and that was all.

I turned in amazement upon my companion, to find him regarding me with
a curious expression. But it sobered at once before my gaze. It was
not, indeed, now I came to con him, quite the expression of my memory.
The sweet humour of it had fallen, I could have thought, upon more
mocking times. There was a look in his face as if he had got to love
himself the better, the worse he had been depreciated by others; as if
injustice had somewhat crooked the old lines of chivalry. But for the
rest, he was as bronzed and comely as ever, as lithe and muscular; and
the common woodman’s dress (coarse grogram jacket and leggings to the
hips), which, whether for convenience or disguise, he had adopted,
showed off his fine figure to perfection.

“Where is it, the breakfast?” I asked.

“Cooking, by Portlock,” said he. “I’m waiting to pull it through.”

He stood stooping, indeed, and holding a string in his hand, by what
looked like a black gap at the foot of the wall beyond the table.

“To pull it through!” I cried out. “Are we to eat it here?”

He turned his head, as he leaned, to scan me.

“We can take it up under the skylight, if you like,” said he.

“My room!”

A violent retort was on my lips; but something in his face warned me,
and it died unuttered. For all his affected humility, there was a
masterfulness here I had not guessed. I realised on the instant that
I did not know, had never known him. It was not altogether a
disagreeable awakening.

I sat down, silent, on one of the stools; and he addressed me again
quietly from his place--

“Little sister, you have committed yourself to my care--very properly,
I think, and very properly trustful of an elder brother. Do you know
my age? I am thirty-four--just double your seventeen; and at least
worldly-wise enough to direct you.”

“That is all very well,” I said, half stifled; “but why have you
brought me here?”

“Have I not told you?” he answered. “To save you from a wolf, who
would have set his teeth in my little white lamb.”

“No, you have not told me,” I cried; “and I am no more lamb of yours
than his; and anyhow, I had my shepherd already.”

“A poor shepherd,” he said. “Witness his watchfulness!”

I bit my lip, and said no more. For a moment I hated myself and
him--his specious reasonings, which had led me to abandon my honest,
good comrade and saviour. While I sat dumb, a low whistle sounded
through the wall; and instantly he turned to me.

“You do not like your dining-parlour?” he said. “But, believe me, it
has a thousand conveniences of privacy, of which here is not the
least.”

And, with the word, drawing on the string he held in his hand, he
brought a tray into light. It was packed with comestibles--bread, and
honey, and collops of venison that smelt royally; but, when he
transferred these to the table, I had no stomach for them, and pushed
away the plate he offered me.

“What! You won’t eat?” he said.

“I can’t breakfast in a sewer.”

“Very well.”

He fell to himself, without further delay, and with plenty of
appetite. I watched him out of the corners of my eyes, half maddened
already by the abstinence I had imposed on myself. He was dressed like
a forester, I have said; and now I observed that he affected the
manners of a forester, consciously, it would seem, effacing in himself
the more gentle observances. It may have been an effort to him; but,
anyhow, he tore his bread and gnawed his bones with the air of one
bred to the soil--with a set of perfect white teeth, too, it must be
conceded. And, while he despatched, throwing his litter on the board,
he continued talking to me fitfully.

“Yes,” he said, “it is very convenient for such as we, who desire not
only to save our labour, but our lives certainly, and our self-respect
if possible. You don’t ask me where we are?”

I shook my head in indifference.

“Well,” he said, “you must know some time, when you might be more
curious; and short explanations suit me best. We are immured, child,
in a wall; and so long as we don’t betray ourselves, nothing can
betray us--not even into an acknowledgment of what one of us may owe
to the other.”

“I am grateful to you,” I said coldly, and said no more. The truth is,
I was hardly listening to him, so intense had grown my desire that he
would coax me at last into eating something.

He laughed, and, pushing his plate away, settled his fists on his
hips, and began, like a satisfied man, to troll a soft little song. I
could stand it no longer.

“Give me a little piece,” I said, “and I will show you how collops
should be eaten.”

“You mean,” he answered at once, “that you will show me how to behave.
But I have done with all that hypocrisy.”

He rose with the words, having finished, and, to my anger and
astonishment, cleared the board, piecemeal and deliberately, and,
piling all on the tray, gave the signal for its withdrawal. It
disappeared instantly. Then he returned to his stool, and, pulling out
pipe and tobacco, began to smoke placidly. Fury overcame me.

“Have you not forgotten to ask my permission?” I cried.

“Punctilio in a sewer!” he answered, puffing; “that is hardly to be
expected.”

I rose at once.

“I wish to be by myself,” I said.

He took his pipe from his lips.

“You know the way. If you object to mine, there is the ladder in your
room--and the skylight--and all the forest to choose from”--and he
began to smoke again.

I left him, without another word, and, ascending to my closet, dropped
the trap with a slam. It was an outrage beyond endurance. I threw
myself upon my bed, and wept tears of rage. What a fool I had been,
what a fool, to commit my destinies to a savage! I had thought romance
had come to find me, walking on two feet in the starlight, and all the
time it had been leaving me, stumping sorrowfully away on its poor
wooden legs. My soul gushed out in fresh mourning for the dear monster
I had wronged.

More than once I rose, in the full determination to fly and rejoin
him. As often, the hopelessness of my position cast me down again. I
had no idea where I was; I dared not face the prospect of wandering,
lost and alone, in those savage solitudes. The wretch had played his
part well--and for what? Why for me.

The thought, at last, quieted my grief--brought me to a little reason.
After all, I had been cold with him, something less than grateful.
What had brought him to repudiate the customs of his caste? I fell
into a fit of speculation. Perhaps it was in scorn of an order that
had basely disinherited him. His words had seemed to imply so. Perhaps
he had meant no more than to read me a lesson in feeling.

I sighed. I was wilful and imperious, I knew, I said to myself. I had
been spoilt a little, perhaps, by admiration, and my better qualities
obscured. It was a wonder he could have seen anything to covet in me.
Was it my part to convince him of his mistake?

I sighed again, and then rose and walked about. Every detail of the
tiny chamber was witness to the loving expectations he had formed of
me. What was I to do? How climb down and keep my place in my own eyes?

He meant to leave me to resolve the question for myself, it appeared.
All day I waited and hungered, and not a sound of his footstep
approaching did I hear. At length, when it was dark, quite desperate
I took my candle, and, softly opening the trap, listened a moment, and
descended. The cellar was empty; only the board and stools, and
nothing else. I went swiftly scanning it, holding the light overhead.
I tried the door at the end; it was fast locked. Unless he had gone
out that way, there was no accounting for his disappearance.

All at once I heard the thin mutter of voices--his and another’s, I
was sure. Seeking to localise them, I came upon the low hole in the
wall through which he had dragged the breakfast tray. I stooped, and
hearing, I thought, the whisper clearer, sunk to my knees and looked
through. Here was a passage, I found to my surprise, wide enough for a
man to creep by; and, beyond, it seemed, a faintly lighted room. As I
bent, I heard the chairs of the talkers drag, as if the two were
rising, and, fearful of discovery, fled on tiptoe to my room once
more, and, noiselessly closing the trap, stood panting and rigid by
it. To what dark mystery was I being made the innocent and unconscious
accessory? I felt suddenly bewildered and terrified. The light in my
hand swayed and leaped, evoking gusty phantoms on the wall. A wind
seemed to boom in my brain. I was really light-headed with hunger, I
think. Presently, from sheer giddiness, I threw myself on my bed once
more, and fell into a sort of waking stupor.

In the midst, after how long I know not, a voice reached me. He was
summoning me, if I needed it, to supper. If I needed it! What cruelty!
He would not give my pride a chance. Half in fear, half fury, I turned
my face to the wall, and did not answer.

He wasted no time on me. I heard him withdraw in a moment, whistling.
I had hoped he would think me escaped; would venture in, perhaps,
panic-struck, to encounter the full torrent of my indignation. But he
showed no concern whatever. He felt secure of his wretched little
trapped bird, I supposed. And he was justified--was justified. Then I
cried as I had never cried before. He might have had some patience,
some consideration. At last, quite famished and exhausted, I fell
asleep.

I awoke, in full day, to find him standing over and regarding me. I
felt weak, and too utterly subdued to resent his presence as it
deserved. There was no pity in his eyes even then. I closed my own,
feeling my throat swell.

“I thought you might be hungry,” he said. “Are you?”

At that, for all my efforts, the tears came.

“Don’t you know?” I said. “But I suppose you think to starve me into
submission.”

“Submission to what?” said he. “You were offered food, and refused it.
But I have brought you some bread.”

He held out to me a dry crust. I turned from it in anger.

“O, very well!” said he, and was returning it to his pocket.

Then physical need conquered me. I could not face the thought of
another day’s starvation. I sat up, and held out my hands.

“If you will be so cruel,” I said. “Let me have it, please.”

He gave it to me at once, stood by with a sort of sombre smile on his
face, while I appeased my ravenous first hunger.

“That’s right,” he said. “Are you better? There was room for
improvement.”

I did not answer.

“Well, are you quite good now?” said he.

My throat began to swell again.

“You treat me like a child!” I cried.

“Yes,” he said, “because it’s only little girls who quarrel with their
bread and butter.”

“Haven’t you punished me enough already?” I said.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “But, if more’s wanted, I hope it will be
with less smart to myself.”

I laughed through my tears.

“O, I mean nothing sentimental,” said he; “but only that, _my_ room
being next to yours, and the common ladder to both conducting through
_your_ room, I’ve been forced by your wilfulness to sleep all night
below in a chair. But we’ll remedy that somehow with a screen, and so
settle any question of precedence in going to bed.”

I stared at him, half fearfully.

“Why have you brought me here?” I whispered.

“What! again?” he said, shaking a finger at me.

“It seems, for no reason but to humble and abuse me. I was happy with
poor Gogo.”

“Damn Gogo!” he said, in such a sudden heat that it brought a cry from
me. Then, all in an instant, to my amazement and distress, he had
fallen on his knees beside the bed.

“What is Gogo to you, or you to him?” he cried, in a low, intense
voice. “Has he ruined himself for you as I have done? Has he risked
death, destruction, madness? pined for you in dreams, and plotted to
gain you waking, as I have ever since you, a child, took my reason by
storm, and bound it to you by golden chains?”

His fervour and passion quite overwhelmed me. I could only cower,
trembling, before him.

“What do you mean?” I whispered. “How have you ruined yourself--for my
sake?”

He caught at my hands. He was breathing fast and thick.

“O, child, you don’t know!” he cried--“the peril that has dogged
you--the love that has foreseen and provided--not for a moment the
truth of how my heart bled to hurt you. Now--now! O, will you not come
to me and hear?”

“No,” I whispered, in a hurry of emotion. “For pity’s sake leave me! I
will come to you presently: I will, indeed.”

He rose to his feet at once, commanding himself. He was all
changed--softened and transfigured. I felt swimming on the edge of a
whirlpool--fighting giddily against some helpless, rapturous plunge to
which I was being urged. I longed only for breathing time--some little
space to be alone in.

He went and stood by the trap: “I will wait for you,” he said
hoarsely; and so descended, closed it behind him, and was gone.

When, in an hour, I rejoined him, he was pacing the cellar like a
caged wolf. He uttered a glad exclamation upon seeing me, and took my
hand and led me to a stool. He was himself again, but with a new
strange wistfulness in his gaiety.

“You will not mind the ‘sewer’ now?” said he. “And presently you will
ask me everything, and I will tell you.”

He drew in our breakfast, by the same method as before; and I could at
last enjoy my collops with a free conscience and appetite. Then, our
meal over, he drew his stool beside me, and, without offering to
smoke, started upon his relation.




 XIX.
 I AM MAID MARIAN

“But, first,” said he, kindling, “ask me where you are.”

“Short explanations suit me best,” I said. “Immured in a wall. Is not
that enough?”

“Quite, for me,” said he, “since you are here. But whose wall, now?”

I shook my head.

“Why, in Ranger Portlock’s cottage,” said he, “buried, out of all
whooping, in the forest. Would you like to be introduced to your
host?”

“Yes, if you please,” I said. “Will you call him in?”

He laughed.

“Mahomet will have to go to the mountain. You will understand why,
when you see it. Well, for this cottage. Did you mark its position in
the dark? Poor little bewildered brain--poor little brain! Harkee!”
(He was fondly touching and smoothing the hair on my temples.) “I
loved this Diana as a little girl. What a phenomenal brother, to be
sure! This cottage you are in, child--did you not observe?--lies
snuggled in the shoulder of the hill, warm as a baby in its mother’s
arm--as warm and as safe too. Its back wall here” (he turned and
tapped the plaster) “is just a windowless buttress, built strong
against any chance falling of the soil beyond. This” (he pointed to
the inner wall) “terminates the kitchen, and not the house itself, as
a body entering the building is meant to suppose. ’Tis a blind, as one
might call it, and not discernible from the outside to any but a
conjurer.”

“And there?” I said, pointing to the closed door at the end.

“That, madam,” said he, with some momentary return to dryness, “is
Bluebeard’s Chamber, if you please, and not at present in the articles
of discussion.”

I was surprised--a little startled, perhaps--but said no more; and he
went on--

“Well, now: this same cottage is a half-timbered structure, very
ancient, and as full of odd little compartments as a bureau. Where we
lie is its secret drawers, Diana, a nest of ’em--two below and two
over. And how to reach here, miss? Ay, there’s the master stroke you’d
never guess. No, ’tis no way by the door yonder.”

“If you please, sir,” says I, “if ’twas left to my innocence to
decide, I should e’en choose the way the tray went.”

“Well, come and look,” says he, and made me go and stoop to the hole.
To my surprise, it was closed, and black.

“’Twas not so I saw it last night,” I said, rising.

“What!” cried he, “you were prowling, were you? Thank you kindly for
the hint”--and he gave a great laugh, but sobered in a moment.

“Did you listen, then?” said he.

“I was going to,” I answered; “but the moment I bent, your chairs
moved, and I was frightened, and ran away.”

“That sounds frank,” said he. He sat musing a little. “You’re a child,
’tis true, mutable and thoughtless; but where could be the harm? If
the secret were mine only-- Well, study for my confidence, and some
day, perhaps”--

He broke off with a smile, which I had a difficulty to return. So
there _was_ a mystery in reality. There and then I vowed a Delilah
oath to myself to get the better of it.

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said; “I had no thought to surprise
any secrets. Is that the way through, indeed?”

“Yes,” he said; “fairly, it is. ’Tis pierced under the big copper in
the kitchen, which has a detachable grate to be pulled all out in one
piece. God knows the original use of this contrivance--this space in
the wall--unless ’twere always for the purpose that we”--(he checked
himself again). “Anyhow, ’tis utterly inaccessible else, save by way
of the skylight which your ladyship knows; and now you’re acquainted
with your prison, ask me further what you will.”

“_Ranger_ Portlock, did you say?”

“Ay, ranger; once my brother’s keeper (not like Cain, unhappily), and
since promoted.”

“You seem to love your brother.”

“I have reason.”

“And this Portlock is still in his service?”

“Yes.”

“And in _your_ confidence?”

“Ay, is he not! I must tell you I am a proper sportsman, madam, and
always more popular with Hardrough’s people than the noble verderer
himself. Well, I have taught them something here and there, and put
money in their pockets, maybe. Have no fear. Not Portlock nor any
other will betray us. I have my merry men of Down, who sink or swim
with me. And now I have my Maid Marian. What more? You shall see this
Portlock. Bear in mind he was once a thread-paper of a man. I have
known him since I was a boy. What else?”

“Can you ask me?” I said low, hanging my head. “The reason--what you
hinted up there--why you are ruined and in hiding?”

He ventured to put an arm about me. How could I refuse him, who was my
Bayard? Yet, when he told me, it was not all. He never to the end
acquainted me of what social dereliction of his had originally
delivered him into the earl his brother’s power, and placed him and
his remnant fortunes under the hand of that remorseless nobleman to
use and crush at his will. He never even admitted but indirectly that
stain on his birth, in which a high person was whispered to be
implicated, and which was at the root, perhaps, of all the trouble.

“He always hated me,” he said of the Lord Herring; “and never more
than when he foresaw my succession in the death of his promising limb,
my nephew.”

“What, is he dead?” I asked, astonished.

“No,” he said, “but only rotten. He will never come into the title,
believe me.”

“And you,” I said, curiously interested. “How will he keep you out, if
the worst should happen to him?”

“Why,” he said, “he would threaten an inquiry, an exposure; and there
are those who, rather than suffer it, would countenance his quiet
disposal of me--have done so, perhaps, already. And there you come
in.”

“Me!” I cried.

“Child,” he responded, “how can I speak it without offence? You have
long been marked down by this man, my brother, for his prey. I have
known it, trust me, and writhed under the knowledge. But you were in
proper hands, and he must bide his opportunity. Believe me, he was no
privy to Sophia’s schemes of husbandry. Had he guessed, he would have
anticipated the end, so far as you was concerned, by carrying you away
by force. When he learned the truth at last, he was mad. But he
recovered his sanity on reflection. It was no bad thing to let you
ripen in that hell for his purposes--to subdue you by that torture to
his will. Then, when reduced, he would exchange your sweet person with
Dr. Peel for mine, would sell me to your place in the madhouse, so
killing his two birds with one wicked stone. But his plan miscarried.
I had a friend in the household--someone, a poor dancer, whom he had
used for a day and thrown aside. She revealed all to me, and I fled,
leaving him only my bitter curse for legacy. And I came here, into
hiding, to mature my plans for revenge--came back to Nature,
renouncing my kindred and all the vile social policies of a world I
had got to loathe. He had beggared me, and I would fleece the
plunderer. He had thought to debauch my love, and I would disappoint
him of even that moiety of his bargain. Have I done so? Judge, if he
loved me before, how he would spare me now, who have baffled his
schemes and stolen his dear! A knowledge of but half the truth has
already, in these few weeks, set him turning every stone to discover
where I lie; but I am well served by my friends. He would burn the
forest if he guessed the whole. As you regard me, as you value
yourself, child, concede nothing to chance--not so much as a peep over
the roof. Ay, I know your activity. But you must lie close as a hare
if you would be safe--through these first days of peril, at least.
Later, when the chase less presses, you may venture out, perhaps, by
the ladder; but always with infinite caution, as you love me. Little
sister, do you agree?”

I buried my face in my hands. My whole heart cried out on the cruel
tyranny of a code that could let such monsters as this wreak their
passions on the pure and innocent, and yet find absolution. O, that I
could find a way, in the lawful junction of our fortunes, to vindicate
this dear oppressed creature, and establish him in his rights before
the world! I leaned to him, with wet eyes.

“If you love _me_ so, brother,” I murmured, “what made you behave so
cruel to me?”

He gave a happy, low laugh, and tightened his hold.

“Why, dear,” he said, “are not a woman’s extremes of love all for the
man who will beat her, or the man she can cherish and protect? I vow I
chose only my natural part.”

“Well,” said I, “I’m glad you stopped short of the beating. It would
only have stiffened me, like cream.”

“Whipt cream is very good with cherries,” said he, and bent to my
lips.

But I started from him gaily, and leapt to my feet.

“Come,” I said; “I’m waiting to be introduced to Mr. Portlock.”

He laughed, and stretched himself, and, rising, stooped to the hole in
the wall and scratched with his finger, like a rat gnawing, on the
iron stop therein. In a little something was withdrawn, and a weak
wash of light flowed through.

“Now,” said he, “I will go first, and do you follow, little mouse.”

He dropped on his hands and knees, and crawled in, and disappeared. It
was an attitude that lacked romance, and I was glad there was none
behind to witness my passing. But the journey was so short that I was
hardly in before my head was free on the farther side; and in a moment
George had helped me to my feet, and I saw our host.

I saw nothing else, indeed. There were, I believe, the open range, and
herb-hung rafters, and settle and dresser of the ordinary cottager’s
kitchen. The huge creature before me absorbed three-fourths of the
field of my vision. I understood at once why Mahomet must come to the
mountain.

He had an enormous tallowy face, had this person, with an expression
so excessively melting that it might have been said to be no
expression at all. He could have had no more intimacy with his own
skeleton than a hippopotamus. Ages ago he must have left it buried
within himself as useless, and turned his wits to balancing on the
twin globes of fat that were his legs. His eyes were slits, his nose a
wart, his mouth the mere orifice of a blow-pipe. If his neck by any
possibility had been broken, one might have stretched it till his head
touched the ceiling.

I was conscious of George standing by watching me, and instinctively I
dropped a curtsey. Immediately the mountain rumbled, and dusted a
chair for my reception. It swung in his vast hand like a signboard
from an inn. Relatively, I had some fear of sitting on it; it looked
for a moment so like a doll’s.

“Mr. Portlock,” I murmured, casting down my eyes, “I--I am your humble
servant, sir.”

He bowed--bagged, would be the better expression. The whole weight of
his chin was against his recovery; but he managed it, with an effort.

“You--you are very good to give me shelter,” said I. “I’m afraid
we--we shall crowd you dreadfully, sir.”

A low gale vibrated in him somewhere. I seemed to be able to detach
certain indistinct utterances from it, of which “welcome: what can do:
Maid Marian” were the clearest.

I made an effort to respond fitly--struggled, and was dumb. Then, in a
moment--I saw George with his hand to his mouth--the demon exploded in
me.

“Were you--were you always like that?” I shrieked, and fell across my
chair-back, half hysteric.

The poor fellow may have laughed himself--there was no guessing what
emotions that curtain of flesh concealed--but he looked, if anything,
more abashed than offended.

“Hush!” said George, recovering himself, “or I must drag you back,
miss.”

We shook, facing one another with gleaming eyes and teeth.

“Didn’t I tell you,” he gasped, “that he was a thread-paper of a man
once?”

He went and clapped a hand on the mountain’s shoulder.

“Come, Johnny, no offence,” said he. “None knows better than her
ladyship that your heart’s in the right place.”

I subdued myself by a vast effort, and rose, and went to conciliate
the poor creature.

“Haven’t I reason to?” I said. “And--and I put my faith in you, sir;
and--and faith moves mountains”--and I was near off again.

He shifted, and flushed faintly, and delivered himself once more.

“’Tis the wittles--have done it.”

“He means,” said George, “that he’s made up for lost time and
opportunities, since his promotion.”

“Ay, ’twas the nerves,” went on the oracle--“kep’ me down--once.
Shook, I did--hear thunder. Walk a mile round--avoid row. When the
crows holloa’d--see funeral pass--turned blood water. ’Twas lack
ballast--that was it.”

“Of course,” said George, “that was it. What a coward you was, Johnny,
in your thin time. D’you remember the day we shot the home covers,
with a great person for company, and the sky came raining cobwebs, so
that we were near stifled with ’em; and you stuck your head in a bush,
till we gave you with our ramrods something better than cobwebs to
roar about?”

“Ay, I do,” said the mountain, and rumbled again. “Not much
cobweb--’bout me now.”

Well, I told him that one couldn’t have too much of a good thing; and
very soon we were fast friends. But that morning George haled me back
into shelter before much was said; and afterwards our acquaintance
ripened by fits and starts. The very immobility of the creature was
our and his salvation. There was no conscious expression to betray
itself on that vast desert of a countenance. Periodically, he was
visited by the steward; fitfully, by units of the hunt which his
lordship sought to lay on his vanished brother’s trail. He was never,
so far as I knew, suspected; and with the deepening of winter the
chase slackened.

And, in the meantime, what was I doing there, buried alive like a
recreant novice in the wall? Wilt thou believe, Alcide, that I, with
all my free aspirations, could have remained at peace in the little
prison for a day? Well, with rare excursions beyond, and those not
till I had been long immured, I lived there for more than a year, and
was near all the time as happy as a swallow under the eaves. It is
love makes the dimensions of our estate.




 XX.
 I PUT AN END TO FOLLY NUMBER TWO

It was not till early in the second spring of my idyll that the
clouds began to darken, and my conscience to stir uneasily in those
gloomy last hours before the final waking. Many things had contributed
to this state, some cardinal, but most, no doubt, indifferent--mere
little tributary streams which had come to swell the volume of my
disenchantment. Misunderstanding, alas! does not walk to challenge us
on the highway. It spies from behind hedges, and listens at keyholes;
and when at length its tally of grievances is made, we wonder at the
weight of the evidence it has accumulated.

Late in the previous year I had been very ill. During the worst of my
disorder an unconscionable old hag, some withered afreet of the
forest, who was in the secret of our retreat, had been brought in to
attend me. She disappeared soon, thank God, in a whisk of sulphur; and
thereafter George nursed me devotedly. But, strangely enough, as I
grew convalescent I developed an odd impatience of him, which rose by
degrees to a real intolerance and dislike. That feeling abated as I
grew strong, but never to such degree as to make us again quite the
friends we had been. He made some study to propitiate me, even to the
extent of renouncing those ridiculous principles of “Nature,” which he
had affected to exchange for the whole sum of social accommodations.
It was a relief, though an aggravation, to have him refine himself
again out of a savage, since I no longer could find the entertainment
I once had in the dear _poseur_. Orson, in truth, was never so little
attractive as when, for the sake of tired love’s favour, he confessed
his ruggedness a humbug. His recantation, though welcome enough in one
way, only disillusioned me in another. So long as he had been
consistent, he was absolute; now his weakness had made me so. I
remembered the times when I had pleaded with him, and had found him
only more covetable in his inaccessibility to my arguments.

“We can’t return to Nature, in the sense of rudeness,” I had often
said to him, “any more than we can recover our childhood. We have
grown out of it, and there’s an end. A man playing the child is only
sorry make-believe; or, if it isn’t, the man’s an idiot. Nature
herself, you see, isn’t stationary: she’s always refining on her first
conceptions.”

“What!” he would protest, grumbling; “is all that hypocrisy of
‘breeding,’ that high _goût_, which is so fastidious in its appetite
for crawling meats, and rotten policies, and bruised virtues, Nature?”

“Yes, to be sure,” I would answer: “’tis _human_ nature--the fruits of
her desire to hasten her social apotheosis by a union with the sons of
God.”

“Ay,” would growl my Timon--“the fruits of incontinence.”

“I don’t see it,” I would cry. “I can’t see but that a knife and fork
are in the right succession to a beak. We may use our fingers, you
will say. Would you wish me, sir, to fondle my love with the same
hands I tear my meat withal? No, you wouldn’t--except for the sake of
argument,--and therefore I protest I am the truer child of that little
liaison. _Vive la Nature!_ say I; the Nature who is my mother, and the
God who is my father. They have taught me between them to study, in
studying myself, to make the gift of prettiness to my neighbours.”

“And I swear you are a dutiful child,” he would answer, with the
readiness that made me love him.

“O, believe me, sir!” I would cry; “there is nothing artificial about
the civilisation you have professed to renounce--as if that were
responsible for your downfall. On its main lines it always makes for
beauty”--

“Which is truth, I suppose,” he would interrupt with a sneer.

“Which is truth, as much as anything is,” I would reply. “Truth is
only a cant word for what we don’t understand; and, if we could get
to, there would be an end of all fun in the world.”

“O, upon my word, you are a very learned minx!” he would crow; but I
would continue, not minding him--

“If we had to start again from the beginning, don’t tell me but that
we should develop the very same conventions as now, or at least near
’em. Why, sir, not to lean our elbows on the table, for instance,
while we sup our tea, isn’t a tyrannous edict of society. ’Tis a
natural recognition of the unhandsome; a natural effort to qualify
ourselves for the better company we all look to some day. Don’t we all
feel that we are only rehearsing here for a greater piece? Well, for
my part, I don’t want to be damned in it. But you--you cry, like a
poor actor, ‘Leave me alone to my pipe and beer. I shall be all right
on the night itself!’”

Then he would laugh bravo; and, pulling out his tobacco, silence me
with a kiss.

But now--well, he had abdicated, and I ruled, that was the difference.

There had been a time when I would have consolidated the understanding
between us by taking, on the first dawn of liberty, our friendship to
church. In those days, indeed, I even hinted as much to him, touching
upon the duty he owed me so to establish my innocence with the world.
Then he would fall back upon his cant of Nature; of vows dishonoured
in her sight; of laws that crossed the plainest mandate that ever she
had given to earth. And I must be content at the time, because we were
helpless outcasts together, because he was kind to me, because he
flattered me with a thousand attentions which made me forget the
equivocalness of my position.

But now, at the last, it was he must sue and I be cold. For, under our
altered relations, I had come to recognise, though late, how wrong was
this continued communion, however platonic, between us. It was not
that I loved my brother less, but that I respected myself more. I had
been blinded by all the novelty and glamour. He was pagan at heart, I
saw, and I was at heart religious. My thoughts turned with affection
to the quiet nunnery at Wellcot. I longed to see my kind again, to
recover something of the world I had lost. I had no real faith in his
protestations, no real belief that, should it ever chance to him to
recover his rights--which, in truth, seemed impossible--he would claim
me to my legitimate share in them. And I found no room in my world for
a paradise of sinful loves.

He sighed much, and was very pathetic, poor fellow, over my changed
attitude, and wearied me to death. Then he took to verse, and
depressed me more. He had a strange faculty for a sort of big-sounding
line, which he would invent and declaim in his odd moments while
engaged over mending his snares or sewing buttons on his gaiters. It
was quite impressive in its place, but was not exhilarating when
applied to _les amours_.

  “This world” (he declared once) “is but the weed-heap of the spheres,
  Whereon we rot and fester, torn from the skies,
  And are consumed in fire, to manure
  And quicken old fields of heaven with new love.
  O, sweet! wind with me on the damnéd pile,
  So of our mingled dust shall blossom heaven”--

A romantic use to put your poor little Diana to, eh, my friend? But,
indeed, I would have none of it. I hate that fashion of decrying the
flesh, because your poet has a stomachache. My body is the only
certain God I know in the midst of these shadows. I cling to it,
worshipping it with all the pretty gifts I can think. When it goes,
where shall I be? Seeking and crying for it again through space. I
will not have it abused to such uses, my sweet body that I love so.

Well, it had all vastly interested me once: the fond, comical
incongruity; the unexpected soul of my Nimrod revealing itself through
suffering. He did not, dear simpleton, in the least understand his own
inconsistency: how, loving all birds and beasts, as he professed to
do, and so claiming affinity with Nature, he could use and approve the
latest engines of civilisation for their slaughter. He called the red
deer “the spirit of the antlered tree,” and went to shoot it with a
gun. He made me a pretty waistcoat of squirrel skins (I went sweetly
befurred, indeed, throughout the cold winters), and dwelt lovingly on
the primeval romance of woodlands, meaning, in fact, that rapture of
flight and pursuit of visible things which alone appeals to the
unredeemed barbarian. In the end, to speak truth, his mad rhapsodies
came to remind me, only too uncomfortably, of the dead astrologer; and
I looked askance on what seemed a common derivation from a crazy
stock.

But now, lest it appear that I attach too much importance to these
minor discords, let me relate of the much darker and more formidable
shadow which had arisen between us, and which, as the months but added
to its density, grew at last to be the insuperable barrier to our
reconciliation.

It was the _secret_ dividing us--the secret which I had once half
surprised, and to the existence of which he had virtually confessed,
only, it seemed, to torture me by withholding it. This much alone I
knew: that he went somehow practising, in his banishment, to be
revenged on the society which he held responsible for it. Often, at
first, I tried to coax the truth from him. He was not, for all his
love, to be beguiled. There were others concerned, he said, who by no
means shared his faith in my discretion; with whom, in fact, he had
come to open dispute on the subject of my continued sojourn in the
cottage, and whom, in the end, he had had to propitiate--seeing his
safety lay in their hands--by a vow to reveal nothing to me.

I had no doubt, in my heart, but that these unknown were the “merry
men” of his boasting--woodmen, verderers, perhaps, who--treacherous to
the earl their master--were aiding and abetting the exile in those
very malpractices he concealed from me. I was right as to that, it
appeared; but what I could never understand was the nature of my
reputation with them: how they had so learned to misapprehend my
character for faith and loyalty. However, mistaken as they were, they
had nothing to complain of their leader’s constancy to his oath--a
constancy, alas! which I can only not commend because of its miserable
sequel. If he had only had the strength to trust me, neither would he
have lost his liberty, nor I been condemned to the torments of a quite
unmerited remorse. At this date of time, I can insist, with a clear
but sorrowful conscience, that the poor infatuated fool brought what
happened upon his own head.

When I recognised at last that he was adamant to my pleadings, I
waived the subject, but not by any means my private concern in it. The
secret, I was naturally enough convinced, lay to be revealed behind
the locked door of that Bluebeard Chamber; and one night--after my
friend had gone out--I took a taper and my courage in hand, and
descended softly through the trap to investigate.

After he had gone out, I say; and therein lay the key to my growing
apprehensions. For not many days had I been in hiding before I
discovered that my comrade was a night-walker. He would wait,
soft-shut into his room, until he fancied I was drowned in sleep, then
list-footed creep out and by the screen--which he had put up to
protect me--and either descend by way of the trap, or, less often,
mounting the ladder which communicated with the hidden gully,
disappear, and pull his means of exit after him. Then I would wait,
shivering and wondering through the whole gamut of formless fears,
till stupor overtook me, or perhaps by and by, after long hours, a
terrified half-consciousness of his stealthy return.

Where did he thus nightly go? To what dark business or witches’
frolic? I tormented my brain for the solution, and of my love and
loyalty could find none. But the poison of a yet-unrealised fear was
working in me early.

Now, on this night, waking out of tormented dreams, I was on the
instant desperate to solve the mystery. But hardly had I crossed the
little cellar when a warning rumble from Portlock, seated in the room
beyond, told me that I was discovered. So this vast creature was in
the conspiracy! Quite panic-struck, I fled, and, mounting to my
room--found George there. He had returned, descending by the ladder,
during the minute of my absence.

He made no allusion whatever to my escapade; but just laughed softly,
and took my cold hand in his, as I stood trembling and aghast before
him.

“Poor little maid,” he said; “she has been dreaming”--and he led me to
my bed, and tucked me in warm, and left me with a kiss.

I never thought it necessary to confess; but always after that, as I
came to learn, he descended by the trap and _bolted it behind him_.

That did not assuage my fears, though it was some comfort henceforth
to be spared the pretence of blindness to his flittings--a comfort, I
think, to him as well as to me, though his silence on the main point
was not to be broken. Ah! if he had only had the courage to set my
mind at rest, before its fears grew to a frenzy beyond my control!

Now, as time went on, my hearing grew morbidly acute--during the dark
hours of his nightly absences, when I was fastened lonely and
frightened into my attic, and sleep refused to come to me--to certain
shufflings and whisperings--sounds scarce to be distinguished from the
wind and the rain--which filtered to me from the depths below.
Sometimes it would seem a sough of blown voices; sometimes a
suggestion of _dragging_; sometimes the low rumble of a cart on the
turf, which set my pulses knocking in my ears. Then when, succeeding
an ominous silence, George’s step would come mounting stealthily by
the trap, on tiptoe thence to his room, I would shudder in the thought
of dreadful footprints going by my screen, and would feign the
deep-breathing of slumber, lest he should be moved to stop and call to
me softly in the voice I had not yet learned to resist.

And so at last, out of all this torment of apprehension, out of the
sleepless waitings and breathless listenings, had emerged a spectre,
real and present in the end, to whose whispered hauntings I had long
struggled to close my ears; whose approach I had sought to stay,
beating my hands in air; whose name I had not dared to breathe to
myself. And it was murder.

Yes, murder. So only, and only so, was logically expounded that
perverted creed of Nature. Livid, terrifying, his hands stained with
blood, I saw him in its ghastly glair; saw him savagely wreaking on
the social order the wrongs he had suffered at its hands; saw him
reverted to the beast he worshipped, tearing his kind, a common robber
and assassin.

I will not say that I was convinced and overwhelmed in a breath. For
long the hideous shadow of the phantom was poor proof against the sun
of present love; would thin, attenuate to a mere gross mist in the
light of kind embraces, and honest laughter, and a manly candour--on
all, alas! but the subject that most corroded. Only when that later
spectre of our estrangement crept between, did it assume a dreadful
complexion, glooming through the other. And so, at last, the appalling
confirmation.

It had been for weeks a terror to me to creep by the secret passage
into Portlock’s kitchen, on the rare occasions when my brief visits
there, for the sake of some small change and play of liberty, were
invited. For the hole entered close by the locked door, which had come
to figure to me for the seal on all most nameless horrors; and I could
not pass it by but with averted head, and nostrils held from
breathing, and a sickness like to the death I felt it contained.
Rather would I strain a little the chance of capture without; and
often now, when George was sleeping--for he lay late after his night
excursions--I would put the ladder to the hill, and climb, and wander
in the hidden furrow above, sometimes as far as the gravel-pit, and
there indulge my misery, daring even at the worst a thought of escape.
For at length, so far as we knew, the chase of us had ceased
altogether, and Portlock was no longer interrogated for possible
information.

Wandering thus, greatly unhappy, my thoughts would often recur for
shelter to the peaceful nunnery; to my little loving Patty, the
dearest pleader of a sister’s repentance; most, and with a
self-humbling remorse, to the faithful, unexacting soul whom I had
deserted in the tower. What if I had been misled by specious arguments
to wound incurably where I had wrought to cure? Could I ever in that
case forgive the false advocate? O, surely there was a greater Nature
than she in whose name were perpetrated deeds of violence and
reprisal? There was the human, the humorous, the tolerant large
philosophy of being which Gogo had revealed in his story of himself.
_His_ misfortunes had but made him forswear the false goddess in whom
weaker men sought to justify their passions. I could never think of
him but as the Pan of these later days--the poor limping Pan of our
era, beguiled into a hospital, and persuaded to an operation, and
shorn of his limp and his legs together. One might meet him begging on
a city bridge, and look wondering down for the song of the water in
the rushes that were not; one might read his hairy breast into dreams
of red dead bracken, and see his eyes, under their matted brows, like
little forest pools reflecting glimpses of the sky, and not guess who
he was, for he would never whine of better days. He always took
fortune like a fallen god, did Gogo. He always smelt sweet, did my
monster. And he had not erred in love before he found me.

Could that be said of another? I was never quite able to forget that
discarded favourite who had warned a threatened brother and assisted
him to escape. Though I had never deigned to give the thought place in
my mind, the unacknowledged shadow of it, of what had been her
inducement to the act, slept in me, to rise presently and add its
quota of darkness to the whole. I was very unhappy--very forlorn and
tired and unhappy.

But, on that morning, as it blew bitter cold without, and I longed for
the fire that was never ours in that chill cellar but by proxy of the
chimney-back, I brought myself to go down, and scratch out the signal
to Portlock to let me pass if it were practicable. He responded at
once, drawing away the grate; and I crept in and through, and stood up
on the farther side. Instantly a grumpy exclamation from him, as
instantly clapped back with his great hand on his mouth, took my eyes
to my skirt, whereto for a flash I had seen his directed. And there,
smearing the pale folds of it, was a long, foul streak of blood.

“Where did this come from?” I cried in a dismayed voice, for the
moment too shocked to reflect.

I fancied he shook upon his great gelatinous calves, that the little
eyes set in the vast oyster of his face were blinking shiftily, alert
to my movements while he turned over the dull masses of his brain for
an answer.

“Rabbits--dinner,” at length he rumbled.

But I had realised it all while he stuck fast. Desperate in my
heart-sickness, I made a hurried step to pass him; and instantly he
moved backwards, and filled the doorway into the little front parlour
by way of which I had hoped to escape into the forest.

“Let me pass,” I cried wildly. “I want air.”

He pointed to the copper.

“Not safe. That way.”

“I can’t,” I cried. “It was there I picked this up: you know it was.”
Then I quite lost my reason. “You are a murderer!” I shrieked. “You
are all murderers here! You rob and kill, and drag the poor bodies
through and hide them in the cellar behind the door. Let me pass--I
can’t live here--I can bear it no longer!”

I raved and cried; I beat helplessly on that huge drum of flesh. It
stood stolid, insensible, completely stopping the aperture.

“Go--ask cap’en,” was all it said.

I fell back from him on the word. The sense of an immediate necessity
of self-control was flashed upon my consciousness. Above or
below--either way my passage was guarded. I was between the devil and
the deep sea; and, in an irrepressible burst of frenzy, I had
confessed myself, let slip my tortured demon, and so, perhaps, spoken
my own death-sentence. The terror of the thought drove out the lesser
loathing. I must temporise--finesse.

“Yes,” I said, “I will. I will not rest now till I know.”

The return by that foul sewer, the fearful issue by the closed door,
were experiences as horrible as any in my life. What crawling thread
might not be still drawing from the obscure reservoir beyond? What
hideous witness not fastening silent to me in the darkness, that it
might rise with my rising and shriek to the light for vengeance? But I
forced myself, in my mortal fear, to tread softly, and on very panic
tiptoe climbed from the hateful pit, and crossed the room above. I
paused a moment, on my shuddering way, for assurance of _his_ steady
breathing; and then with cold deft hands set the ladder in place, and
mounted it, and, drawing it after me into the thicket, fled along the
passage. I had no thought of what I should do. I only wanted to
escape: to put as long a distance as possible between myself and that
spectre, confessed in all its blood-guiltiness at last. Half blinded,
torn by flint and briar, I broke at length through the farther
thicket, and sank, trembling and exhausted, upon the bank of the
gravel-pit beyond.

I had sat there I know not how long, my face in my hands, the alarum
in my heart deafening me to all outward sounds--the storming trees
above; the cold sabre of the wind slashing into the bushes of my
refuge, as if it would lay me bare--when suddenly I felt the clinch of
a hand on my shoulder, and screamed, and looked up. Three fellows, in
a common livery, had descended softly upon me from above, and I was
captured without an effort.

I rose, staggering, to my feet, my face like ashes, my poor hands
clasped in entreaty. But not a word could I force from my white lips.

“You must come with us, miss, if you please,” said the man who held
me, civilly enough.

“Where?” I made out to whisper.

He pointed with a riding-whip. I followed the direction of his hand;
and there, on the rim of the pit above, silhouetted against the sky,
sat a single horseman. I had no reason to doubt who it was. Even at
that distance, the lank red jaw of him was sign enough of the fox. I
was trapped at last, and when I had thought myself securest.

Now, I do not know what desperate resignation came to me all in a
moment. As well this way out as another. “Very well,” I said quietly,
“I will go with you.”

They were surprised, I could see, by my submission, and all the more
alert, on its unexpected account, to hover about my going. But their
strong arms were not the less considerate, for that reason, to support
me, overwrought as I was, in my passage to the open daylight above;
and, almost before I realised it, I was standing before the Earl of
Herring.

He sat as stiff and relentless in his saddle as an Attila, his red
eyes staring, a very wickedness of foretasted relish grinning in his
hungry teeth. A fourth servant in livery stood a little apart, holding
his own and the others’ horses.

“So,” said the master, whispering as out of a dream, “you are caught
at last, my lady.”

I felt for the first time a little flush come to my cheeks, and
answered his gaze resolutely.

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘caught,’ my lord,” I said. “These are
not the days of King John.”

He rubbed his gloved hand across his chin.

“No, by God!” he said, with a hoarse chuckle. “But they are the days
of King Hardrough, by your leave.”

“I have done no wrong.”

“Tell that to my lady,” said he.

“Jealousy has no ears.”

He gave a hyæna laugh.

“Misfortune has not chastened you, I see,” crowed he.

“It has not tried to,” I said, “till this moment. Now you have seen
me, will you let me go, and ride back to tell Mrs. de Crespigny that
she has nothing more to fear from my rivalry?”

He regarded me with a delighted humour.

“When I go, you come with me.”

“O no!”

“O yes! straight back to Dr. Peel and his whippings.”

“You will not--you will not!” I clasped my hands upon his knee in a
frenzy of terror. I was quite broken in a moment. “Don’t send me back
to that hell!” I implored.

He lusted over my fear. He could not for long bring himself to ease
it.

“What have you got to offer me to stay my hand?” he said at last.

I was silent.

“Harkee!” he said. “I will help you out. Will you give me my bastard
brother?”

“He is my brother too; I swear it.”

“Pish!” said he; “will you give up your paramour?”

“Not if you call him by that name.”

“Why, there, I knew,” said he, “you was in hiding together somewhere.
Smoke the red earl, if you can. Call him by what name you will, and
lead me to him.”

I hung my head, and burst into tears.

“He has deceived me.”

“What did I say?”

“Not that--not that. If I betray him, ’tis only in the hope of his
being persuaded to some reformation. You will not work him evil?”

“That I swear. ’Tis only that I want to keep him out of harm’s way.”

I looked up, breathless. This assurance was at least a comfort.

“What will you do with him?”

“Leave that to me. The question is, what has he done with you?”

How could I not answer him? To win my brother from this vileness--was
it not worth the sacrifice of myself? With many tears and falterings,
I told him the story of my sojourn in the verderer’s cottage; of the
secret chambers, and our life therein; finally, with bitter
reluctance, of the shadow that had risen to estrange us, and the
bloody confirmation of my fears that was to witness even now on my
gown.

He grinned horribly over the revelation.

“That Portlock!” he rejoiced to himself; “that Portlock! A good throat
for the hangman! But, for your murderings--I warrant ’tis a fatter
bone I’ve to pick with our gentleman.”

He fell into a little musing, scowling fit; then, suddenly
dismounting, bade me get into his saddle.

“Where are you going to take me?” I said.

“Where,” he answered, “but to your cottage?”

“O no!” I cried; “not back there!”

“What!” he said, grinning; “is Madam Judas yet short of her price?”

“What price have I taken? It is not to be Judas to betray brother to
brother for virtue’s sake.”

He bent, in a sawing laugh.

“How apt the jade is! Let me tell you, madam, that virtue is an inner
commodity, and spoils when too much on the lips.”

He forced me to mount, signed to his fellows to follow, and, taking
the bridle, led me down the hill.

“Now, for your price,” said he, as he walked. “Well, I would have bid
more for sound goods; but--what say ye?--you are happy on
relations--would you like to be my daughter?”

I hung my head, without replying. It was true he was old enough to be
my father. This misery must cast me once more on the world, a prey to
all unimaginable evils. What chance else remained to me to protect
myself and make my fortune serve my honour?

While I was still quietly weeping, we reached the cottage from the
front, and halted. The earl motioned, and his suite gathered round and
knocked on the door. In the silence that ensued we could hear the
sound as of an unwieldy beast within shuffling to and fro. The
verderer had seen us through the window, and knew himself for lost.
Presently one put his knee to the panels, whispering for orders.

“Curse it, no,” hissed his master; “he may hear us.”

“If he does, he cannot escape,” I murmured. “I pulled the ladder after
me.”

With that he raised his hand, and the door crashed in. I caught one
glimpse of Portlock’s face--it was a mere white slab of terror--and
turned away.

“Now,” said the earl in my ear; but I shuddered from him.

“I won’t--don’t ask me--it is not in the price!”

He uttered an impatient oath, bade one of his men hastily to my side,
and himself, with the other three, strode into the cottage.

I don’t know how long passed; it may have been minutes, and seemed an
hour. All the time a low snuffling reached me from the interior. The
bitter wind had loosened my hair, and I caught its strands to my ears,
to my eyes, and rocked in my saddle, trying to shut out everything.
Presently a man came forth, to join the other by my side.

“Garamighty, Job!” muttered he; “his honour be cap’en of the gang, and
no mistake. You should see his larder.”

“Ah! what’s in it?” asked the first.

“Ten fat bucks, as I’m a saint,” answered the other. “We know now
where the pick o’ the herd’s gone to, eh?”

I sat up, listening.

“What larder?” I asked faintly; for, indeed, I knew of none.

The man touched his hat, half deferential, half impudent.

“’Tis through the secret passage your ladyship, so to speak, opened to
us--a locked door in the little cellar beyant.”

I shrunk from him.

“You said--what did you say was in it?”

“What but a show of venison, miss--piled to the roof, one might say.
He must ’a made a ryle living out o’ deer-stealing, by your leave.”

He had--and that was the whole truth of the secret he had withheld
from me! All the time I had been torturing my fears into madness, he
had been abroad in the midnight woods, murdering, not men, but deer;
in league with an ignoble crew for a paltry gain. This romance of a
social ostracism revenging itself on a social hypocrisy: savage,
melancholy, yielding to love only the troubled sweetness of its
soul--what did it confess itself at last? O, glorious, to be first
consul to a little republic of poachers! To vindicate one’s
independence by picking the pockets of the king! It was all explained
now--the whisperings, the draggings, the creaking carts--in that
butchers’ shambles, the secret store of a gang of deer-stealers. He
was no better than a cutpurse. In my bitter mortification, I could
have wept tears of shame. “I am justified of my act,” I cried to
myself. “Better that he should think me a traitor now, than live to
curse me for withholding my hand when there was time and opportunity
to save him!”

Nevertheless, when they led him forth presently bound and quiet, I
could not face his eyes, but cowered before the unspoken reproach and
sorrow in them. He came up quite close to me.

“It was your own fault,” I muttered in my hair. “Why would you never
tell me?”

“I was wrong,” he said, quite simply. “You must forgive me for what I
have taken from you, Diana. If it is any comfort to you to know, the
poor little unrealised bond between us reconciles me to this--and all
that is to come.”

I felt as if my heart broke then and there. I was conscious of the red
earl watching us. The other turned to him, with a laugh like death’s.

“Take your reversion, brother,” said he. “As for me, I am for the
madhouse, I suppose.”

At a grinding word, two of the men helped him to mount, and moved away
with him. I never saw him again. The other two entered the cottage, to
fetch and escort Mr. Portlock to his doom. I was left alone with his
lordship.

My heart was broken. I left it scattered on the turf, with all the
fragments of the past.

“Now, papa devil,” I said, with a shriek of laughter, “what about your
dutiful daughter?”




 XXI.
 I AM METAMORPHOSED

I had loved, and lost, and buried my dream of yesterday. It lay
fathoms deep in the green forest. From the moment of my resurrection I
knew myself for a changeling--a fairy creature quite other than the
soft, emotional child who had cried herself to sleep on last night’s
hearth. George was in his house of discipline; Portlock, with others,
transported; my past was broken for me beyond repair. Facing me
instead were the battlements and pinnacles of a new dominion, with
what infinite potentialities behind its walls! Conscience makes no
conquests. With my rebirth had come the lust to supply the
deficiencies of the old. I laid my love in its grave with tears and
kisses, and turned intrepid to the assault.

Memory, my friend, makes men good critics, but bad romancers. I was
too indulgent of my kind to be the first: beauty invited me: I would
forget. Remorse is, indeed, of all self-indulgences the most useless.
It reconciles an offended Heaven to us no more than do tearful sighs
win a wife her husband’s condonation of an ill-cooked dinner. An
inch-narrow of reformation is better than an ell-broad of apology. Let
our sweetness of to-day, rather, be our experience of yesterday. The
gods find no entertainment in regrets. They shower their benefits on
the unminding; and in the gifts of the present we are justified of our
past actions. It is only when we are rich that we can afford to put up
tablets to our memories; whence follows that we cannot more honour the
dead than by taking our profit of the living. Well, once I had lived
_for_ others; now I would live _on_ them--a word of distinction and a
world of difference.

His lordship took me straight to London, and gave me a little suite of
rooms in his fine house in Berkeley Square, where I was to remain
during the next three years, until, in fact, I was come legally of
age. He had decided, on reflection, that I was to be his niece. He was
a very great man, and this gift was only one of many in his disposal.
It was no business of mine how he accounted to the world for my title.
_My_ interest was only to justify it, with a view to my position in
life when I was become marriageable. Wherefore I would consent to give
him none of my duty until he had drawn up a settlement in my favour,
to date from my majority. I had had enough of unprofitable bargains.

Perhaps he would never have consented to this--for, like all covetous
pluralists, he was parsimonious--had not the death of the young
viscount about this time moved him to seek comfort in an artificial
relationship for the real one he had lost. In the hearts of the worst
of us, I suppose, such vacancies yearn to be filled; and so the poor
childless wretch took his opportunity, and adopted me. I hope I
acquitted myself properly for the favour; but, in truth, I could never
quite forgive him his treachery to his brother.

In the meantime, I developed rapidly, and had my little court, quite
exclusive of _les convenances_. The ladies, of course, looked askance
at me; but what did I care? I had only to curtsey to my glass to
procure the reason. And they made their _modistes_ their deputies in
paying me the sincerest flattery. Instead, I experienced the high
distinction of a whole _entourage_ of carpet-knights--captains and
parsons and diplomatists unending--who came to ogle their own images
in my blue eyes, and, losing their heads like Narcissus from
giddiness, tumbled in by the score, until I was stocked as full under
each brow as an abbot’s pond. It was a rare sport to throw crumbs of
comfort to these gaping creatures, and see them rise and jostle one
another for the best pickings. I assure you, my friend, I was a queen
in my sphere, and had as much need to practise diplomacy. It was that
first attached me to politics--the knowledge of into what good coin
for bribery and the traffic of State secrets those pretty orbs might
be converted. So soon, sure, as amongst my parliamentary followers I
distinguished my favourites, I began to sift my political opinions,
and to work for the handsomest. I have traced my measures in both
Houses, believe me, my little monsieur: I have pulled some strings,
sitting in my boudoir, with results as far-reaching as St. Stephen’s.
Ah, well! they were days! But I will be true to myself in not
bewailing them. Memory, in my philosophy, is a very lean old pauper,
crumbling dried herbs into his broth. I never could abide mint sauce
unless plucked from the green.

Chief among my favourites was a madcap young member, whose wit was
never so impertinent as when, flitting here and there for an
opportunity, it could prick the sides of some great parliamentary
bull, and elicit a roar for its pains. He was that Mr. Roper who,
indeed, went so far, on somebody’s instigation, as to tease the great
Mr. Pitt himself on certain measures introduced for the betterment of
the Roman Catholics, and who, in consequence, redeemed himself a
little, it was whispered, in the eyes of high personages with whom he
had long been in disgrace. His father was Robert Lord Beltower, that
deplorable old nobleman who was reported early in life to have staked
his honour on some trifling issue, and lost; and who always described
himself as living a posthumous life, since he had been carried off by
a petticoat in the fifteenth year of his age. Father and second son
(the heir to the title, Lord Roper of Loftus, was eminently
respectable and pious) were known as Bob Major and Bob Minor; and,
indeed, apart or together, could ring the changes on some very pretty
tunes. But the minor, who had been a scapegrace page at court and
early dismissed, was _my enfant gâté_, as well for his wit and
information as for a daring that recked nothing of the deuce itself.
He owned to no party, and as to his principles, “Why,” said he, “I
throw up my hat to the best shot, and that isn’t always to the
heavenly marksman. I have known the devil score some points in
charity.”

He never truckled to me, which was perhaps one of the reasons of my
favour; but was like a licensed brother--a relationship I had come to
regard. Indeed, he most offended me by his outrageous independence of
my partialities.

“Hey! Come, rogue, rogue!” sniggered his father to him once, on the
occasion of some abominable impertinence; “you go too far. What the
devil means this disrespect to our goddess? You’ll be pricked, egad,
one of these days, like that fellow Atlas, or Actæon, or what the
devil was his name, that was tore for his impudence.”

The son bowed to the sire, quoting Slender’s words to Shallow: “‘I
will marry her, sir, at your request; but if there be no great love in
the beginning, yet Heaven may decrease it upon better acquaintance,
when we are married and have more occasion to know one another: I
hope, upon familiarity will grow more contempt; but if you say “Marry
her,” I will marry her, that I am freely dissolved, and dissolutely.’”

“Why, you villain,” said his lordship, with a grin, “if you’re the
devil quoting Scripture, I’m done with you.”

“Nay, sir,” said the other, “you flatter yourself. I quote no better
than my father.”

“No better, you dog! And how?”

“Why, sir, wasn’t it you taught me that the more one sees of a woman
the less one respects her?”

“I?”

“’Twas _à propos_ the Chudleigh, sir, you may remember, whom you met
at Ranelagh--in ’49, I think it was--undressed as Iphigenia. She came
clothed in little but her virtue, and caught a bad cold a-consequence.
You may have forgot the moral of your sermon, sir, but I, as a dutiful
son, have stored it.”

“Hang you, Bob! What moral?”

“Why, sir, that a woman dreads exposure in nothing but her weakness to
stand the test of it. If she’s a peculiar fineness anywhere, she’ll
take some means to let you know.”

“Then, sir,” cried I, with a flaming face, “I pride myself on nothing
so much as my hand!”--and I brought it down stingingly on his ear.

“But I don’t want your hand,” he cried, stamping about, while his
father roared, “Didn’t I tell you as much?”

Nevertheless, we were fast comrades, and together in some captivating
peccancies, of which I only learned to rue the publicity when they led
to my undoing.

Mr. Roper, as I have said, found a particular delight in galling--_on
somebody’s instigation_--the sides of the promoters of the new
pro-Papish Bills. Well, I will ask you, what did I owe to that Church?
Was it likely that my treatment at its hands had left any love between
us, or that I should wish its disabilities removed, who had suffered
so much from it muzzled? I had been educated, under its shadow, to a
full understanding of its juggleries and impostures. Now was the time,
the country being still in a ferment over its heir-apparent’s alleged
marriage with the Fitzherbert, to relate my experiences.

There was at that date published in London a little fashionable
scapegrace of a paper called the _World_, the property of a Major
Topham, who made it the vehicle for such a _chronique scandaleuse_ as
the town had never yet known; and in this paper I began (by preconcert
with my political ally) to disclose, over the signature “Angélique,”
the true story and circumstances of a certain beautiful young lady,
who had been practised upon, and in the very heart of Protestant
England, by a worse than Spanish Inquisition. The series, cautiously
as I began by handling it, made an immediate sensation, and was, you
may be sure, deftly engineered in the House by Mr. Roper for the
Opposition. Moreover, “Angélique”--which delighted me as much--gave
her sweet and melancholy name to a mourning gauze, which was so pretty
that I had to kill an aunt to give me a title to wear it. At the same
time her instant popularity made me tremble for my incognito, which,
nevertheless, I knew to be the major’s very best asset in a profitable
bargain. Still, not even his tact could altogether explain away the
association of ideas implied in Mr. Roper’s common friendship with me
and with that poor persecuted anonymity; and that I had made myself by
no means so secure as Junius was a fact disagreeably impressed upon me
on a certain evening.

I had been entertaining late that night, when his lordship entered
unexpected. He came from St. James’s and from playing backgammon with
the king, and wore his orders on a pearl-silk coat and, for contrast,
a mighty scowling face over. I took no heed of him as he walked up the
room towards me, humping his shoulders, and acknowledging wintrily the
salutations of my little court, but went on laughing and rallying a
dear little ensign Percy, with whom I was in love just then, _pour
faire passer le temps_. However, the boy could not stand the
inquisition of the red eyes, and joked himself into other company,
with a blush and a bow to the ogre; at which I laughed, lolling back
in my chair.

“Well, madam,” said Hardrough, knuckling his snuff-box softly, “when
you can vouchsafe me a moment of your attention.”

I recognised the compelling tone in his voice, and rose, with a little
show of indolence.

“O!” I said, yawning, “what sin has found me out now? I vow it can
never be so ugly as it looks.”

He gave me his arm, mighty ceremonious, and, conducting me into an
antechamber, shut the door.

“That is for you to prove,” he said, taking snuff, and stood glaring
into my soul. “So, madam,” he said, “you are for setting your little
teeth into the hands that have warmed you?”

I sat down, fluttering my fan, and pretty pale, I daresay. But I was
not surprised. My conscience had pricked me at the first sight of his
face. He pulled from his pocket a copy of the damning sheet, and “Tell
me,” says he, “if His Majesty was justified in asking me if this did
not refer to some member of my family?”

I did not answer, and he threw the paper on the floor.

“Well, you are condemned,” he said drily; and at that I found my wits.

“Condemned?” I cried. “By whom? Why, my lord, how can you, being of
the Court party and in Opposition, condemn an anti-papish tract?”

“That is all very well,” he said acridly; “but the stone once set
rolling against a house, who knows who may be included in the ruin?”

I knew very well, of course, to what he referred; for had he not been
subsidised by his sister (and during the time, too, when he had
figured hottest against Catholic emancipation) into overlooking the
establishment by her, in the very heart of his estate, of that
community of Sisters whose complicity in my abduction I was bent upon
exposing? And was I not aware, too, that the appointment he coveted to
a vacant garter trembled at the moment in the balance of such
revelations? O, I held some strings, my friend, you may believe!
though at present I had the opposite to any inducement to pull this
particular one.

“Why, Nunky!” I cried, “is not this, your succour and protection of
madam’s poor victim, the best proof of your orthodoxy?”

He regarded me grimly, but with some shadow of returning good-humour.

“That’s true enough,” he said, “so long as you use _me_, if at all,
for no worse than to point the moral of _her_ damnation.”

“Why should I not? ’Tis my interest to, at least.”

“Ha!” he said; “there you speak. And stap me if I love you the less
for it.”

He took a turn or two, and came back grinning.

“They’re damn clever, Di: there, I’ll admit they’re damn clever! But
’tis a perilous game you play, my girl; and you’ll do well to take
care you play it to none but your own interests.”

He went off again, and returned.

“Harkee!” he said; “there’s Beltower’s whelp, and--and I don’t care a
fig for your predilections. Work your oracle as you will; only be
faithful to me, and you won’t suffer for’t in the end.”

He finished in such spirits that he was moved to show me a letter he
had received from his sister but a few days before. In it she
upbraided him for his treachery,--of which she only recently had
certain information--in converting his capture of me to such infamous
account; and called upon him, as he valued his soul, to turn his
Jezebel adrift again to her merited deserts.

“_Enfin_,” I said, handing him back the effusion, “for a respectable
lady she shows a vigorous vocabulary. She writes in London, I see.”

He chuckled like a demon.

“She writes in hell, and bites the more viciously for her roasting.
’Tis that fellow has led her here, dancing after some new fancy of
his; and, by God, she’s paid for her stubbornness, and must vent her
spite on someone.”

“Well,” I said, “tell her so from me; and that, for my part, I’d
rather be Jezebel than what came to lap her blood.”

At which he neighed, vowing he’d take me at my word.




 XXII.
 I RUN ACROSS AN OLD FRIEND

It has always been my fate to suffer most at the hands of my best
friends; and now it was to be my dearest, my little sister, who was to
shoot her arrow over the house and wound me. In innocence, Heaven
forgive her; and, in forgiving, answer to itself for making me the
unconscious instrument of its retribution.

It was in the third year of my “minority,” and while in the full zest
of my conspiracy with young Roper, that one night we made up a party
for Vauxhall Gardens, and crossed from Whitehall Stairs--very merry
with French horns and lanterns and a little Roman boy, Ugolino, who
sang like an angel--to witness the new picture of a tempest in the
cascade house. This we had seen, and were gone for supper into one of
the boxes (which Bob called the loose boxes) in a retired corner of
the grove, when occurred the _contretemps_ which was to change the
whole face of my fortunes. I had observed, without marking them, a
couple enter the adjoining booth, and was bawling my part in a catch,
while waiting for the chickens and cheesecakes, when a fellow put his
head round the partition, and, kissing his dirty hand with a leer,
“Beg pardon, leddies,” says he, “but I can supplement that ’ere chaunt
with a better”--and immediately, disappearing from sight, began to
bang the table beyond and to roar out a filthy ballad.

Roper leapt to his feet--there was a crowd lingering by, attracted by
our merriment--and ran round to the front.

“Stop, you sot!” screamed he, “or I’ll nail your ears to the table!”

The fellow ceased dead, and in a moment came staggering out with a
furious face. He was a coarse, blotched ruffian, and as drunk as
David’s sow.

“What, the ’ell,” said he, lurching up his words; “ain’t one song as
good as another in this here bordel, mister?”

Bob struck like Harlequin, and the wretch went down. I had once before
heard the smack of flesh on flesh, and it made my blood jump.

There was a fine uproar: we had all risen to our feet; and in the
midst I observed the girl (we had forgot the creature had a companion)
slip out of the box and away, taking advantage of the confusion to mix
with the crowd. I just saw her white face melt from me, and gave one
gasp, and started in pursuit. My companions called; but I took no
notice, and was lost in a moment.

She was making for the Druid’s Walk, unheeding my cries in her
blindness. But in a little she began to falter, and then to sway, and
I came up with her, and caught her into my arms.

“Patty!” I whispered, frantic, “Patty!”

She looked at me quite dumb and bewildered, the poor thing; and then
sighed, and mechanically put her hair back from her temples.

“Patty!” I urged again, “don’t you know me?”

And at that, all of a sudden she had burst into tears, and was
clinging to me.

“Is it you, Diana?” she sobbed, “really you at last? O, I have so
longed, since we came, and I knew you was here in London! Take me
away; don’t let me be carried back.”

She was near choking me with her arms.

“Hush!” I said. “What have they been doing with you? Pish, child! that
was never--no, no; with all your softness, you couldn’t be such a
fool. Who the deuce was it, then? Now, don’t answer; but come with me
where we can talk.”

We were already being accosted and offered genteel squiring. The child
held to me, terrified, while I laughed, and convoyed her in safety to
the open, where we were lucky to encounter one of my party.

“Is it over?” I asked.

“O, faith!” he answered, quizzing my friend, “the manster’s floored;
and Parseus refreshing himself on Roman panch; and here, by my soul,
’s Andrameda come to give thanks to her presarver.”

“Well,” I said, “Andromeda’s in better hands for the present; so you
must e’en take us where we can talk private, while you mount guard.”

He looked mightily astonished; but, obeying, conducted us to the
farthest limits of the grounds--where was little company but the
keepers, put to restrain interlopers from the fields beyond--and there
set us on a seat, and withdrew. And the moment we were alone, I took
the girl and held her at arm’s length.

She was the same as ever, though her figure grown a thought too full
for perfection, perhaps. But there were the soft, bashful eyes, and
the naïve face, too white under its dark hair, that I loved so well.

“So,” I said, nodding my head, “we meet again, like the town and
country mice. And are you still under her dominion, you little brown
frump?”

She could not have enough of wondering, and fondling me, and weeping;
but her inarticulateness filled me with a horrible foreboding.

“What!” I cried, giving her a little shake; “don’t tell me, miss,
that--but, no, I won’t hear it! ’Tis grotesque beyond reason.”

“What do you mean?” she whispered.

I looked searchingly into her eyes.

“No,” I said, reassured; “there are the same unborn babies there. But
who, then, was that brute you ran from?”

She put her arms round my neck.

“He--he is a groom of madam’s, and high in favour with her because a
good Catholic. She bids me listen to him; and--and I don’t know what
she means, Diana, or what he means. He is a coarse and violent
man--sometimes. But she forces me into his company, and to see the
town together. And O, Diana! I am almost sure he drinks too much.”

I burst into a laugh.

“You should be whipped for the slander, child. But I suspect the
truth. We don’t run but from those we have a partiality for. Watch
Moll and Meg at dragging-time in the fairs.”

She cried “Diana!” and, looking up horrified into my face, read its
mockery, and, gasping out, “I am very unhappy,” fell away from me.

“You poor little creature!” I cried, fiercely moved by her distress;
“if _you_ don’t know what madam means, _I do_. ’Tis the way with the
quality to pension off their discarded fancies on Jack or Molly.”

She showed by her manner that she did not understand me, but my
indignation would not let me explain. Moreover, I was too satisfied
with my own solution to wish it contradicted.

“Never mind,” I said, stamping my foot. “Tell me everything--every
word.”

Then it all came out in a flood: How, since my removal, madam had
visited more and more upon her innocent head the trespasses of her
poor little friend and sister; how this habit, vindictive at the best,
had grown into a very fury of spite (which I laughed much to hear
about) when de Crespigny’s wandering fancy had begun (as it inevitably
had) to turn from the hop-pole, which had invited it to be wreathed
about itself, to the ripe little sapling growing so snug beside; how,
in her jealousy, my lady had driven her below stairs, and at last made
her altogether consort with the servants as her proper peers, who had
only been lifted by her generosity out of the gutter; how, not content
with this, literal, debasement, she had thought further to soil her by
forcing upon her the reversion of her tipsy _cavaliere servente_ (as,
anyhow, I chose to think him), a tyranny which had at last driven the
soft little creature to despair and rebellion. So she told me all,
though with less force and conviction, poor simplicity, than I have
chosen to put into her relation.

“And you was gone--and how did you escape, Diana?--and I hated Mr. de
Crespigny as much as I hate this one--and it all makes no difference,
and I don’t know how I can bear it longer,” she cried, in a breath.

“Very well, then,” I said, and looked sternly at her. “You must find
the courage to run away.”

I had thought that the very suggestion would make her faint; but
instead, to my surprise, a rose of colour flew to her pale cheeks.

“Yes,” she whispered. “If I only knew where!”

O, fie on madam! She must have been a cruel task-mistress, indeed!

“There!” I said, “you naughty little thing! But confess to me first
what you have heard tell about your sister.”

“What does that matter,” she murmured, hanging her head, “when nothing
in the world can ever alter my love for you?”

I took her in my arms, and touched her little simple toilette into
shape here and there.

“You are very desperate, in truth, child. What do you say--will you
risk all, and come and be my duenna? You are older than I, sure, and
shall defend your little sister from slander. I will get the earl to
consent, if you will say yes.”

She seemed beyond answering, but could only cling to me in a kind of
frenzied rapture.

“And I will make a fine bird of my Jenny Wren,” I said, still busy
with her; “for she has a thousand pretty little modest graces which
will do me a vast credit in the dressing. You shall keep your natural
hair, miss, for powder, since the tax, is not _à la mode_ with the
best; but a gentleman’s arm--_le cas échéant_--would never go round
this waist by three inches.”

I peeped, with a smile, into her face.

“O, if I only dared!” she sighed.

“Sir Benjamin,” I cried, rising instantly, “escort us to the gates,
please, and call a coach.”

An hour later I broke upon his lordship’s privacy.

“Nunky,” I cried, “I want permission for a new toy, please.”

He looked up askew. He was in the hands of his valet.

“I have been taking thought for my reputation,” I said, “and desire a
duenna.”

He screwed out a laugh and an oath.

“I’ll have no old hags about.”

“’Tis a young hag but a little older than myself. Will you let me?”

“No, I won’t.”

“It will please me.”

“No.”

“It will spite Lady Sophia to death.”

“Curse it, you viper! I’ll think about it.”

“Very well. I’ll bring her to be introduced.” And, before he could
remonstrate, I was gone.

We found him in demi-toilette when I returned, dragging my reluctant
baggage with me, like a lamb to the slaughter. She was as terrified as
if ’twere for him I coveted her, and not for myself. He started,
seeing her, and came and put his hand on her shoulder.

“Well, I vow,” said he, “’tis a toy for a king. Whence come you,
child? From my sister? She was wise to dismiss you, egad!”




 XXIII.
 I AM MADE FORTUNE’S MISTRESS

I have ruled myself all my life to be none but Fortune’s mistress.
Let who will question it, the gift of fine clothes has never bought my
independence. Honesty, as the little plant of that name tells us, may
go dressed in satin. And, as with me, so would I have it with my
sister.

I was not long in discovering that I had erred in bringing her to
Berkeley Square, though I will not, for her sake, detail the processes
of my enlightenment. Let it suffice to say that the nobleman, my
guardian, was not exactly intellectual. He was one of those who, like
Tony Lumpkin, reckon beauty by bulk; and in that respect, it is
certain, Patty could more than fill my place with him. She had no
notion, of course, dear innocent, that she was being invited to do so.
She was all blindness and affection; but that made it none the less my
duty to save her the consequences of her own simplicity, seeing how it
was I had unwittingly brought it imperilled. The worldly may sneer and
welcome. That I _did_ preserve her, and at the last cost to myself, is
the only proof needed of that same disinterested honesty which in the
beginning had welcomed her, without a selfish second thought, to its
arms.

Now, the moment I realised my mistake, I set myself to combat its
results. I think I may say I gave my lord some _mauvais quarts
d’heure_. He, for his part, when I thought it time to throw off the
mask, did not spare me insult and brutality. In very disdain I will
not report the quarrel. And all the while the silly child its subject
trembled apart, in an atmosphere she felt but could not understand,
while the shepherdess and the butcher disputed for her possession.

At length came the climax. One day, at the end of a furious scene, he
told me roundly that he had had enough of me, and that it would be
well for me to agree to commute my proposed settlement for--for what?
A sum that was less than a valet’s pension. I refused it; I refused
everything. Let that at least speak in my vindication. He assured me
that in that case I had nothing further to expect from him. The
dotard! Did he laugh when I told him, perfectly quietly, that I quite
understood that the debt was mine, and that I should pay it? Did he
still count himself the better tactician, when I affected to be
terrified over my own rashness, and to slink away from him to lament
and reconsider?

I went straight to my bedroom, where for an hour or two I sat writing.
At the end, I despatched two letters, one to the _World_, one to Mr.
Roper, who lived hard by, and whose reply I set myself to await with
what philosophy I could muster. It came in a little; and then,
singing, I sought out Patty, in the pretty boudoir that was hers of
late. She flew to greet me, and coaxed me to a couch. The moment we
were seated, I hushed her head into my breast.

“Patty,” I whispered, “do you love the earl?”

I could feel her breath stop, then recover itself in wonder.

“He is so good to us, Diana--like a father. And I had always lived in
such terror of his mere name. How easily we may be deceived.”

“Yes, child,” I answered. “How easily--how easily.”

Her pulses answered to my tone, I could feel again. She slipped upon
her knees before me, and clasping her hands looked up, dumbly
questioning, into my face.

“You are so simple, _ma mignonette_; I hardly know how to tell you,” I
began pitifully.

“Tell me! O, what, Diana? I am frightened.”

“I wish you to be. Patty”--I took her two entreating hands into one of
mine, and with the other made a significant gesture--“all this--these
little costly gifts--has it never occurred to you, child, that they
are bribes”-- I stopped.

“To me?” she whispered, with a whole heart of astonishment.

“To your honour, child.”

“To--?”

She gulped, and turned as pale as death.

“He has promised to show you his Richmond cottage?”

“Yes.”

“To-night?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“Never mind. I know. You must not go.”

“How can I help it? Diana!”

She sunk down before me, quite helpless and unnerved.

“Patty,” I said, “you have never ceased to love and trust your
sister?”

“Never, never--you are before all the world to me. Diana! You will
find a way!”

“If you are strong--yes. I have been alert and watchful, child, while
you never knew it. But he did; and he means to separate us; to rid
himself of the watch-dog, that he may seize the lamb. He has but this
moment told me I must go--with what coarseness and insult I will not
soil your ears by repeating. If you love your honour, as I love and
have sacrificed myself to save it, you must come with me.”

“I will come”--she rose hurriedly to her feet. “How can I ever repay
you, sister? The old, wicked man! At once--Diana! let us fly at once!”

“Hush! We must be circumspect. You don’t know-- There, child, I will
die to save you.”

She clung to me, in a gush of silent tears. Hastily I instructed
her--it was necessary in escaping to leave no trail--in my plan. It
was that, in an hour’s time, she should order out her barouche (there
was one put at her disposal), and, having driven to Grosvenor Gate,
alight and dismiss it, as if with the intention to walk in the park.
Thence she was to make her way on foot to Mrs. Trix’s toy-shop in
Piccadilly, and, having asked very privately to be shown into the
parlour, await me there, in whatever company she should find.

She obeyed, heedful, in her panic, to the last details. Luckily, my
lord, being gone abroad to his lawyers, there were no prying eyes to
criticise her. No sooner was she driven off than--having collected
into a stocking all our jewels, and whatever money I could lay hands
on, which I hung from my waist out of sight--I stole forth by the back
way into the stables, and thence to the street, where I found a
hackney coach, and drove after my friend.

I found her, as I had hoped, with Mr. Roper. He looked mighty serious
over our escapade, but informed me that he had loyally attended to my
instructions, and procured us a lodging, as for two country ladies who
had come up to view the sights, in as distant a part of the town as he
could compass on short notice. We went out immediately by a side door,
and, having all got into a coach that was in waiting, were driven to
Holborn, where we alighted, and thence, for precaution, walked to a
quiet house in Great Coram Street, near the Foundlings, where our
handsome escort left us, promising to call, at discretion, in a few
days, and recommending us in the meanwhile to lie as close as rabbits
in a furrow.

He was as good as his word, coming in a week later, after dark, with a
face as long as a lawyer’s writ.

“Well, madam,” he said, “you have cut the ground from under your own
feet with a vengeance.”

I laughed.

“You have been reading ‘Angélique’s’ Last Testament?”

“Pray the Fates it may not be so indeed,” he said gravely; and,
pulling a paper out of his pocket, began to refer to it.

“Why, do you not know,” said he, “that others besides our _Volpone_
are reported interested in that strange disappearance of a one-time
heir-presumptive to _Volpone’s_ own title?”

“Perfectly.”

“And yet you go and put your head into the lion’s mouth?”

“I would do more to expose a villain. I would go all lengths to right
an injured man. He is no more mad than I am.”

“That seems probable.”

He unfolded a second paper from the other, and pointing silently to a
paragraph, handed it to me.

“The king” (I read from the _Gazette_) “has bestowed the vacant garter
upon the newly created Marquis of Synge;” and a little lower down: “It
is stated that the Earl of Herring has been relieved, at his own
request, of all offices which he held under the Crown. His lordship is
understood to have long contemplated a complete retirement from public
life.”

I shrieked with laughter. I danced about the room, waving the paper
over my head. The noise I made brought up one of two gentlemen who
lived below. He put his head in at the door, with a leer and a grin:
“O, a thousand pardons!” said he; “I thought you was alone, and that
something had happened”--and he vanished.

“He thought something had happened!” groaned Bob dismally; and, taking
the paper from me, he read out elsewhere: “His Majesty’s final
decision is supposed not unconnected with the _esclandres_ of a
certain notorious lady, which have exercised the public curiosity for
some time past, and which culminated on Saturday sennight in an attack
too obvious in its direction to be overlooked.”

I heard, glistening.

“Well, I told him I recognised my debt, and should pay him,” I said.

Bob folded the papers, and returned them to his pocket. His mouth and
eyes were set in a kind of suffering smile.

“You may know best how to play your hand for yourself,” he said. “God
preserve your partner, that’s all.”

“What have you to fear?”

“Your prudence, first of all--not a very trustworthy asset, if one may
judge by your apparent confidence in your fellow-lodgers.”

“O! him that looked in!” I said. “I will answer there with my life.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“Yes, that is the point,” said he. “Do you quite realise what you have
done, Diana?”

“O, quite!”

“Well, that is a comfort. It gives me a sort of confidence in my
future. So long as I can be played as live-bait for your capture, I
shall be spared, no doubt.”

He came up to me, and spoke very earnestly--

“Do you understand? He will try to trace you through me. If he
succeeds”--

“There is an end of both of us,” I said cheerfully.

“Well,” he answered, with admiration, “you are a game little partlet.
But remember, at least, that revenge which evokes retribution misses
the best half of itself. For that reason, if for no other, I must keep
away from you. This visit to-night, even--I only dared it after
infinite precautions. If you want me, write: I will risk some means to
see you. For the rest, live close as death, till some of this, at
least, is blown over. Your friend, the pretty simpleton, where is
she?”

“In bed and asleep.”

“Keep her there. Make a dormouse of her. My Lady Sophia is nosing for
her tracks, as my lord her brother for yours. Did you suppose she
would acquiesce quietly in the abduction of her handmaid? I tell you,
she has got wind of the truth; and there has been tempest in the house
of Herring. Keep her close. Above everything, cut all further
communication with the _World_--as you love yourself, and me a little,
perhaps, Diana.”

“As I love the truth,” I said; and went up and kissed him.

“Ah!” he sighed, “that is very pretty. But, believe me, the truth, as
represented by His Majesty, wishes your love at the devil before it
meddled in his family affairs.”




 XXIV.
 I FIND A FRIEND IN NEED

You know the truth, _mon ami_--that the face which looked in at my
door was the face of my father. O, heavens, the reunion, so wonderful,
so pathetic! and the sequel, so interesting! Truly, through our living
fidelities do the gods chastise our worldliness.

We had not been a day in the house when I ran across him in a passage.
He was, it appeared, one of two gentlemen who lodged below. He was
plainly, almost shabbily dressed; bloated a little; prematurely aged:
but I knew him instantly. Though eleven years had gone since my
childish eyes had last acknowledged and adored him, the instinct of
nature was too sure to be deceived. I gasped, I trembled, as he stood
ogling me; finally I threw myself into his arms.

“Papa!” I cried; “papa!”

“Hey!” he responded; “is that all?”

“Do you not remember your little Diana?” I implored, in an ecstasy of
emotion.

“Wait,” he said, and put a hand to his forehead. “It may be on my
notes. I’ve a damned bad memory.”

The door of a room hard by stood open. He led me in, closed it, and
seated himself officially at a table.

“Now,” he said, “what mother?”

The shock, my friend! I had remembered him so strong and
gallant--wicked, if you will; but then I had always pictured myself
the cherished pledge of his wickedness. And now, it appeared, I was
only one of a large family. Without a word, I turned my back upon him.

“Don’t go,” he said, disturbed at that. “What name did you say?”

I confronted him once more, sorrow and disdain battling in my face.

“I said Diana.”

“Of course,” he answered, beating his forehead; “the child of”--

After all, it was a long lapse of time. I told him my mother’s name.

“She was my one real love,” he said, shedding tears. “I recall her
among the peats of Killarney as if it were to-day. When she died (she
is dead, isn’t she?) I buried my heart in her grave. I have never
known a moment’s happiness since. Speak to me of her, Dinorah.”

He followed me up a little later, when Patty was sitting with me, and
peeped round the door.

“May I--daughter Di?” he said. I believe he had really in the interval
been looking among his notes, or letters, and with such benefit to his
memory that he felt secure, at least, in that monosyllabic compromise.
Blame my fond heart, thou _fripon_. I was softened even in my
desperate disillusionment by this half recognition. With a father,
fashionable and well-connected, possibly rich, to safeguard my
interests, I need no longer fear the light.

Receiving no answer, he sidled himself into the room, and to a sofa,
on which he sat down. Patty, dropping her work, looked at him with all
her might of astonishment.

“And is this dear child your sister?” he asked.

“Yes,” I answered; “from the very first.”

“Twins?” he exclaimed. “I am very sure there is no such entry.”

He sat frowning at the carpet for a little. Then, “Wait,” he said. “It
is my misfortune to serve small beer.” And with these enigmatic words
laid himself down and fell asleep.

With his first snore, Patty flew over to me.

“Who is it?” she whispered, frantic.

“_It_ is a wise father that knows his own child.”

“_Father_?” she said.

“Hush!” I answered; “yes.” And would say no more till he woke.

He came to himself presently, in a properer sense of the word. During
the interval I had been curiously observing his condition. It was very
different in seeming from that of the spark of eleven years since. It
showed an assumption of finery, it is true; but the trappings were
tawdry and soiled, and the materials cheap.

He sat up with a prodigious yawn, his face, in the midst, lapsing into
a watery, paternal smile. But it was evident at once that something of
the thread of memory was restored in him; and he began questioning me
much more shrewdly and to the point.

“Why, ecod,” said he presently, “was it a fact that the sweep had
stole you? If I’d only learnt the truth before Charlie Buckster put a
bullet in himself. I’d a double pony on it with the man.”

Then we got on famously. He cried much over his poor lost love, and
was so tender with me that he completely won me from my reserve, and I
ended by recounting to him the whole tale of my fortunes, even up to
the present moment.

“That Herring!” he said: “a fine guardian to my girl! I knew the stoat
well in my time. Let him beware, now that she has found her natural
protector.”

He swelled with indignation, as I with pleasure.

“You have gifts, presents from him, no doubt,” he said fiercely. “What
do you say to my taking them all back, and throwing them in his face?”

“I say, certainly not,” I answered.

“Ah well!” he said, “you have got them, anyhow; and the thought will
wring his covetous soul.”

At this moment a great voice roared, “Johnson, you devil!” down below
somewhere.

My father got quickly to his feet.

“Ay,” he answered, to my look; “’tis me, Di--the pseudonym I go by.
Fact is, child, I’m temporarily under a financial cloud, and forced to
eke out a living, while awaiting the moment of my complete restoration
to fortune, by service--that is to say, by taking it, hem!”

“By taking service?”

“Exactly. A sort of elegant cicerone and social introducer to a damned
old parvenu curmudgeon, who wants to learn at what lowest outlay to
himself he can pose as a gentleman. ’Tis tiresome, though in its way
amusing; but I really think I shall have to cut the old rascal on his
taste in liquor. For a palate like mine, you know--small beer and blue
ruin, faugh! You haven’t change for a guinea, my angelic?”

“Johnson!” roared the voice again.

“Coming, sir, coming!” cried my papa; and, seeing me unresponsive,
skipped out of the room.

He was with us continually during the fortnight after our arrival; and
I had no least idea of the consequences awaiting me, when one
afternoon a hastily scribbled note, dated “_en route_ for the
Continent,” was delivered at the house door by a porter, and sent up
to me. I read it, shrieked, and sank half fainting into a chair.

“I have taken, dear daughter,” it said, “the entire responsibility for
our monetary affairs upon my own shoulders. To live on one’s capital
is, like the self-eating pelican, to devour the substance of the
unborn generations. Seeing how you appeared quite unaccountably
callous to the natural claims of your prospective family (for, with
your attractions, you cannot hope to escape one), I, as its
prospective grandfather, have asserted my prerogative by appropriating
our principal to its properest uses of investment. The stocking you
will find still reposing in its secret _cache_ behind the hangings of
your dressing-table; but you will find it empty. Do not blame me, but
console yourself with the conviction that in a few weeks I shall be in
a position to return you your principal _at least trebled_. In the
meanwhile, accept the assurances of my love and protection.”

Half dazed with the shock, I tottered, with Patty’s assistance, into
our bedroom. It was too true. The desperate wretch, seizing his
opportunity by night while we slept, had robbed us of everything. He
had left us not a sixpence. We were ruined.

I tore my hair. I uttered cries and imprecations. I cursed Heaven, my
own fond gullibility, the cruelty of the fate that would not let me
live and be honest. Patty, poor fool, tried to calm me. I drove her
away with blows, and, in a reaction to fury, rushed downstairs and
into the room of the remaining lodger.

“Where is my money, where are my jewels?” I shrieked. “You are his
accomplice. I will swear an information against you unless you tell.”

He was a gross, coarse man, of a violent complexion.

“Ho-ho!” he bellowed; “blackmail is it? Wait, while I call a witness.”

He pulled the bell down, summoning our landlady. When she came, there
was an outrageous scene. Quite cowed in the end, I retreated to our
apartments, where, however, I was not to be left in peace. Within an
hour the harridan appeared with her bill, an extravagant one, which of
course I was unable to settle. The next morning, driven forth with
contumely, we were arrested at her suit, and carried to a
sponging-house. Thence, quite self-collected now in my desperation, I
despatched a note to Mr. Roper, who, without delay, good creature,
waited upon us. I told him the whole unreserved truth.

“Very well,” he said, “I will quit you of this, child; and, for the
rest, find accommodation for you in humbler quarters till you can help
yourself. With your genius, that should not be long. You know my
circumstances, and that I cannot afford luxuries.”

“I will work my fingers to the bone,” I said, with tears in my eyes.

“Not quite so bad as that,” he answered. “Bones ain’t negotiable
assets. Have you ever thought on the stage, now, for a living?”

“I believe, without much study, I could make an actress,” I said.

“With none at all,” said he confidently. “I have a friend in Westley
of Drury Lane, and will see if he can put you in the way to a part. I
should fear the publicity, i’ faith, but that my lord has taken his
grievances to the Continent for an airing, and in the interval we are
safe to act.”

Good loyal friend! He found us pretty snug quarters over a little shop
in Long Acre, where, keeping to our pseudonym of the Misses Rush, we
bided while he negotiated terms for me. He was successful, when once I
had been interviewed by the management; and, to cut short this
melancholy story, I made my first appearance on the boards as the
fairy Primrose in the Christmas masque of the _Dragon of Wantley_. I
had a little song to sing about a butterfly, which never failed to
bring down the house; and altogether, I was growing not unhappy in the
novelty of the venture, when that, with almost my life, was ended at a
blow.

But first I must relate of the most surprising _contretemps_ that ever
I was to experience, and which had the strangest and most immediate
bearing on my destinies.

I had noticed frequently that the hind legs of the dragon would linger
unaccountably, when the absurd monster, on his way off the stage,
happened to pass me standing in the wings. This would lead to much
muffled recrimination from the forequarters, which, exhausted by their
antics, aimed only at getting to their beer; the consequence being
that one eventful night, what between the haulings and contortions,
the back seam of the creature split, and out there rolled before my
eyes--Gogo.

He picked himself up immediately, and stood regarding me silently,
with a most doleful visage. My dear, I cannot describe what emotions
swept my soul in a little storm of laughter--the astonishment, the
pity, the bewilderment! In the midst, too confounded to arrange my
thoughts, I turned away, affecting not to recognise him; seeing which,
he uttered one enormous sigh, and stumped off to face the battery of
the stage-manager’s indignation.

I must have put a world of feeling that night into my little song
about the poor butterfly, that was stripped of its wings by a cruel
boy, and so prevented from keeping its assignation with the rose,
insomuch that it moved a very beautiful lady, who was present in a
private box, to send for me that she might thank me in person.

We had all of us, of course, heard of, and some of us remembered,
perhaps, chucking under the chin, the ravishing Mrs. Hart, who, from
pulling mugs of beer to the pinks of Drury Lane, had risen to be
_chère amie_ to his excellency the British Ambassador at Naples, and,
quite recently, his lady. She had lately come to London, _à travers
tous les obstacles_, to be made an honest woman of, and it was she who
craved the introduction, to which you may be sure I responded with as
much alacrity as curiosity. I could have no doubt of her the moment I
entered the box, and made, with becoming naïveté, my little curtsey.
She was certainly very handsome, in spite of her twenty-seven years
and her large feet, though, I thought, lacking in grace. But her face
was beautifully formed, with a complexion of apple-blossoms, and red
lips a little swollen with kissing, and, to crown everything, a great
glory of chestnut hair. There were tears in her fine eyes as she
turned impulsively to address me--

“La, you little darling, you’ve made me cry with your butterflies and
things. Come here while I buss you.”

There was a gentleman sitting by her, foremost of two or three that
were in the box, and he made room for me with an indulgent smile. He
was a genial, precise-looking person, with a star on his right breast,
and the queue of his wig reaching down his back in long curls that
were gathered into a ribbon. I took him, rightly, to be Sir William,
the husband, and made him my demure bow as I passed. His lady gave me
a great kiss, in full view of the house, and taking a little jewel
from her bosom, pinned it into mine.

“There,” she said, “wear this for Lady Hamilton, in token of the only
reel feeling she has come across in your beastly city.”

Sir William put his hand on her arm.

“My dear,” he said.

She fanned herself boisterously. She had been disappointed, everyone
knew, in her designs to be received at court, and was to leave England
in a few days missing the coveted honour. Somehow she reminded me of
the “bouncing chit” that our gentlemen call a champagne bottle--she so
gushed and sparkled, and was a little large and loud.

I made my acknowledgments quite prettily, and left the box; and, once
got outside, leaned for a moment against the wall, with a feeling of
mortal sickness come over me. For, as I retreated, I had come face to
face with those seated at the back--_and one of them was the Earl of
Herring_.

Had he recognised me? He had not appeared to lift his eyes, even, as
he sat at discussion with his neighbour. And that might be the most
deadly sign of all.

I don’t know how I got through the rest of my part. But that night I
clung to Patty as if she were my only support in a failing world.

Morning brought some reassurance; and so, for a further evening or
two, finding myself still unmolested, I struggled to convince myself
that he had not seen, or that I was forgotten, and my fault passed
over. But all the time the terror lay at my heart.

On the third evening, as I was entering the theatre, I encountered a
poor creature standing by the stage door. I went to him; I almost fell
upon his breast in my agitation.

“Gogo!” I said, “Gogo!” and stood dumb and shame-stricken before him.

He threw up his hands with that odd familiar gesture, with that
tempestuous sigh which found such an immediate response in my soul.

“Are you not coming in?” I faltered.

He shook his head.

“You are dismissed?”

“I spoiled their dragon for them.”

I burst into tears.

“It was for me, dear. Do you see to what I have come? Forgive me,
Gogo.”

“I can’t help myself,” he groaned. “You are my destiny.”

“Gogo, I am frightened; I am in danger. Help me, Gogo.”

The poor fellow smiled.

“In everything but running away, Diana.”

“And that is just where I want your help. Come to me: come and see me
to-morrow, Gogo, will you? O, Gogo, will you?”

“Don’t be foolish, Diana. At what time?”

“You know my address?”

“Of course I do.”

“As early as early, then; the moment I am out of bed.”

Strangely comforted, and looking to see if we were alone, I dropped a
tiny kiss on his rough cheek, and ran in gaily, wiping my eyes as I
went.

That night I sang my little song with renewed feeling, and ended to a
burst of applause. As I was standing at the wings, flushed and
radiant, a note was put into my hand. I opened it, and read: “_You are
in danger. Don’t go home._”

I never learned who had sent it; some one, probably, from amongst the
few friends I could still number in that wicked household. It had been
handed in at the stage door by a messenger, and that was all I could
discover. The lights of my triumph were darkened. I knew myself at
last hunted--and alone. Why had I not bid my monster wait for me? But
it were idle now to moan. Despair gave me readiness. I finished my
part quite brilliantly, without a stumble, and chatted gaily, while
disrobing, with the poor pretty little _coryphée_ who was my chief
friend in the dressing-rooms. By one pretext or another I detained her
until we were alone. Then, “Fanny,” I said, “keep mum; but I think it
unlikely I shall come here again.”

She looked at me with her large grey eyes. We were much of a figure,
and not unlike in features.

“O, Miss Rush!” she whispered. “And I’d ’oped always to ’ave you for a
friend.”

“So you shall, Fanny,” I said: “but there are contingencies--you
understand?”

Her lip was trembling. I think she wanted to tell me to keep good.

“And so,” I said hastily, “as I have liked you so, I want to exchange
little presents with you, as a remembrance, if you will.”

The poor child had often cast admiring eyes on a calash which it was
my habit to wear to the theatre, and which was indeed a very becoming
thing of crimson velvet and cherry-coloured lining, with a frame of
costly fur to the face. It had been given me by Bob, and certainly
nothing short of my present desperation would have brought me to part
with it; but it was, more than anything I wore of late, associated
with me; and necessity has no conscience.

Fanny’s eyes sparkled against her will, as I held the thing out to
her.

“O no, miss!” she entreated; “it’s too good for me, and I can’t give
you nothing the same in exchange.”

“You shall give me your neckerchief,” I said; and, cutting the
discussion short, drove her away at length, with her pretty face in
the hood, and tears in her eyes.

I gave her five minutes’ start, then followed her out, with a brain as
hot as my heart was shivering. “They must discover their mistake very
soon,” I thought, “and will be returning on their tracks.”

However, I reached home, running by byways, in safety; and there,
quite unnerved now the terror was passed, threw myself into Patty’s
arms and told her everything. She was the sweet, simple counsel and
consoler she always was to grief, and distressed me only by some
concern she could not help showing for the fate of Fanny.

“You try to make me out a devil,” I cried passionately. “They will let
her alone, of course, when they find she isn’t who they want.”

We slept in one another’s arms that night, fearful of every sound in
the street. But morning brought the sun and Gogo--though the latter
inexcusably late to his appointment--and both were a heavenly joy to
me.

I saw at once by his expression that he carried news; but he did not
speak.

“Gogo!” I whispered.

He uttered a strange sound, like a wounded beast, and turned his face
from me.

“Did you exchange head-dresses with her last night?” he muttered.

“What do you mean?”

My heart seemed to stop.

“They said it was your hood. She was jostled by ruffians in the
street, it seems, and thrown under the traffic, and killed.”

I fell on my knees before him, shuddering and hiding my face.

“You didn’t mean _that_, Diana?”

“Before God, no. I thought they would leave her when they found out.”

He gave a heart-breaking sigh, and looked at me for the first time.

“I wouldn’t go near the theatre again, if I was you. They’ll not judge
you as--as favourably as I, perhaps.”

“I’ve done with the theatre. Fate is very cruel. No one understands me
or believes in me. At least, don’t tell Patty anything of this. I
think you will break my heart among you. How did you even know I was
threatened?”

“Didn’t you tell me you were in danger?”

I cried out to him in a sudden agony--

“I _am_ in danger. O, Gogo! for God’s sake tell me what I am to do!”

Then the great human love of the creature went down before me. He
fondled me, with tears and broken exclamations; he swore himself once
more, through all eternity, through sin and sorrow, my bondman.

Presently, without extenuation, I had confessed all to him; and he had
forgiven me; had admitted, even, that I had had the reason of a better
regard on my side. But as to what had happened to himself during the
long interval, he would tell me nothing as yet.

“I am the ex-hind legs of a dragon,” he said, “that was conquered by
the Chevalière Primrose, and turned into two-thirds of a prince. I
date myself from the translation. The curtain’s down on all that was
before.”

Now, when we came to discussing the ways and means for my escape from
a desperate situation, my dear resourceful monster was ready with a
suggestion at once.

“The Hamilton,” said he, “sails from England in a day or two. She is
disposed, by the tokens, to make a pet of you. Why not go to her;
relate everything; throw yourself upon her charity, and ask to be
conveyed abroad in her suite?”

“Gogo! When?” I cried. It was an inspiration.

“No moment like the present.”

“I will go. But you must come too, to protect me.”

“Of course.”

“And Patty?”

“All three of us together. Pack your box, pay your bill, and be ready
while I wait. At the worst, ’tis something gained to shift your
quarters and cover your trail.”

I demurred only at the bill; for, indeed, we needed every penny of our
ready money. But he settled the matter by paying it himself.

“I have become of a saving disposition,” he said; “and whatever trifle
there be, you are its heir. This is only drawing on your
reversion”--and, indeed, he valued money at nothing at all. If he
could have picked a living from the earth, he would never have been to
the trouble of putting a penny in his pocket.

In a little, all being prepared, we took a coach and drove to the
Ambassador’s hotel. My lady was fortunately at her toilette, and sent
down a surprised message, that, whatever the deuce I wanted, I was to
be shown up. I found her, tumbled a little abroad, in the hands of her
_perruquier_, whom she dismissed while she talked to me.

“Why, child,” she said, “what a face! ’Tis as white, I vow, as the
wings of your butterfly. Out with your trouble now.”

I threw myself at her feet. I made a clean breast of my story--of the
inhuman cruelty of which I was the destined victim; and I ended by
imploring her to let me and my friends enjoy the bounty of her
protection. She fired magnificently, as I had hoped she would, over
the recital. She embraced my cause impulsively and without a thought
for possible consequences to herself.

“The infamous old fox!” she cried of my lord; “I was flattered by his
attentions, hang him! until I found they was of the worst consequence
to me as a lady of position. To think of the old beast wanting to
murder you because of a lampoon--pasquinades we call ’em in Italy! La,
child! if _I_ answered so to every dig that’s made at me, I’d better
turn public executioner at once. Let’s keep our own characters clean
against the light being turned on ’em, say I; and, if we don’t,
there’s only ourselves to thank. It’s too late to talk of bein’ a lady
when the crowner comes to sit on our dirty stockin’s.”

She made me repeat my little song to her, and cried over it again.

“Trot up your friends,” she said, wiping her eyes. “There’s room for
you all here till we start for France--or Naples, if you will. Let me
see the old devil dare to follow you into this sancshery! We’ll be
even with him, gnashin’ his yellow teeth left behind. Go and fetch
’em. I want to see what they’re like.”

And she gave me a tempest of a kiss, and pushed me out at the door.


_It is here we encounter that considerable lacuna in the Reminiscences
to which reference was made in the “Introductory.” An examination of
the MS. shows that the large section--of more than a hundred
pages--which related to Mrs. Please’s experiences during the terrific
period of the Revolution, and afterwards so far as the year_ ’98,
_when the narrative is resumed, was at some time bodily removed,
whether with a view to separate publication_ (_of which, however, no
proof can be found_), _or through one of those intermittent panics of
conscience to which the lady was subject, there is no evidence to
show. While this breach is to be regretted--from her editor’s point of
view, at least--it must be said that innumerable contemporary
references to Madame “Se-Plaire” enable us in some measure not only to
follow the career of that redoubtable adventuress_ (_pace M. le Comte
de C----_), _but to supply to ourselves at least one presumptive
reason for her shyness, on reflection, of perpetuating certain of its
incidents. However, not to confuse matters, we will take our
stepping-stones in the order of their placing._

_It appears, then, that Mrs. Please and her friends were conveyed
safely in the Ambassador’s entourage, to Paris, where Madame the
Ambassador’s wife received, during the few days of her stay in the
French capital on her way to Italy, some salve to her hurt vanity in
the reception accorded her at the Tuileries by the queen, who took the
opportunity to intrust her with a letter to her sister of Naples.
Whether elated, indirectly, by the royal condescension, or electrified
by the state of the national atmosphere, or for whatever reason,
Diana, it appears, decided to remain where she was. She even, there is
some reason for believing, sought, in the character of a very loyal
little_ moucharde, _to ingratiate herself with the queen, going so far
as to imply that Lady Hamilton had taken this delicate means of
placing in Her Majesty’s hands a counter-buff to Mr. Pitt, whom Miss
Diana had often seen in my lord of Herring’s house in Berkeley Square,
and whose sinister designs against France she was quite ready to
quote--or invent._

_However this may be, it seems certain that Her Majesty was
inexplicably so far from being prepossessed by her fair visitor’s fair
protégée, that_ (_assuming even that she gave her her countenance at
the first_) _she did not hesitate long in turning upon her the coldest
of cold shoulders. We know at least that within a month of her arrival
in Paris, Diana_ (_which always equals, be it understood, Diana_ plus
_her two inseparables_) _had established herself, far from the
precincts of the court, in very good rooms in a house in the Rue St.
Jacques; where with characteristic suddenness and thoroughness she
announced her complete conversion to the principles of
ultra-republicanism. It must have been about this time, moreover, that
she found interest to return to the stage; for in addition to the
inclusion of her name in the bill of that stirring melodrama_, Les
Victimes Cloîtrées, _which set all fermenting Paris overflowing,
there exists that reference to her in the rather spiteful
Reminiscences of Adrienne Lavasse, which, I think, is worth
transcribing. “Mademoiselle Please,” says the actress, “was for a
little our_ ingénue _at the Français. She was imported from England;
but, it must be confessed, had a pretty gift_ [une belle facilité]
_for our tongue. One night, after a_ mêlée _in the green-room, she
lifts her voice in a furious outcry about her having been ravished of
a neckerchief which had been given her by a fellow_-comédienne _in
London, and which, she declares, she would not have parted with for a
louis-d’or. But I never observed”_ (_adds the little spitfire_) _“that
she took the trouble to replace it with another; from which it is
evident that it was not her modesty that she valued at so high a
figure.”_

_How long Mrs. Please continued on the stage at this time_ (_she
returned to it again later_) _is not certain. Probably her engagement
was terminated by that famous split in the company, when democratic
Talma and Vestris migrated to the Rue de Richelieu, bequeathing the
remnant honours of the old house in the Faubourg St. Germain to the
royalist Fleury, Dazincourt, and Company. What we_ do _know is that
about this critical period a lucky_ coup _in a State lottery
established our heroine on her feet, and that thenceforth she
flourished. She kept a little salon in those same historic rooms,
through which a regular progression of nationalists passed and
vanished. There, in their time, were to be seen Brissot, Guadet,
Gensonné, the Roman Roland, the handsome Barbaroux, Pétion,
Vergniaud, the sweet and indolent, in his ragged coat, Desmoulins,
Barrére, Billaud-Varennes, Barras. The order is significant of our
lady’s political, or politic, evolution. The life of the State, she
came to think, was only to be saved by ruthless amputation; and,
unfortunately, the disease was in the head. As the atmosphere
thickens, our glimpses of her become rarer and more lurid. She appears
once as the proprietress of a sort of_ Mont de piété, _very private
and exclusive, in which she amassed good quantity of property, pledged
by the proscribed, who never returned to redeem it. Among these,
curiously, seems to have been her father, whom, as characteristically
as possible, she forgave and attempted to shelter, though without
avail, for he was guillotined. It was probably to propitiate the
Government for this filial dereliction that she reappeared on the
boards, in_ ’93, _in that grotesque monument to the dulness of the
Sovereign People_, The Last Judgment of Kings; _and there, so far as
we can trace, ended her connection with the stage._

_During all this period, it is only fair to her to say, she seems to
have played the inflexible duenna to her little friend and adoratrice,
Miss Patty Grant, protecting the child from outside evil and her own
kind pliability, and, when she was called away from her side,
committing her to the care of that faithful and incorruptible monster,
the cripple._

_Towards the end of_ ’93 _she appears to have been so far in favour
with the powers that she was despatched on a secret propagandist
mission to the Neapolitan States--a portentous departure. She was not
back in Paris again until the spring of_ ’95, _when she returned to
find the Terror overthrown, its “tail” in process of being docked by
Sanson, and the_ jeunesse dorée _patrolling the streets._

_Not much record of this journey remains, beyond the single weighty
fact that it brought her acquainted with the young revolutionary
enthusiast, Nicola Pissani, who accompanied her home by way of Tuscany
and Piedmont, propagating their gospel of Liberty on the road._

_We may perhaps be pardoned for thinking it probable that Mrs. Please,
on her return to Paris, would have recanted her extremist views, had
it not been for this romantic_ exalté, _to whom, no doubt, she at the
time was sincerely attached. It is possible, indeed, that she did
persuade him of the necessity of an_ open _recantation, in order that
she might consort with him the more safely in those measures which he,
and for his sake she, had at heart--the violent establishment of a
republic at Naples, to wit. For, for the moment, sanscullotism was out
of fashion, and propagandists at a discount. It made no difference to
her, apparently, that her former patroness and saviour was heart and
soul with the court of Ferdinand. She was of the Roman mettle, and
would have sacrificed her own child to Liberty--with Pissani. I swear
my heart bleeds for her; for_ (_the truth has to be uttered_) _that
passionate young zealot was no sooner made free of the house in the
Rue St. Jacques, than he fell hopelessly entangled in the unconscious
meshes of poor blameless, lovable little Patty Grant. And, worse: Miss
Grant, without a thought of disloyalty to her friend and sister--who,
indeed, persistently, and perhaps justifiably, posed for no more than
the Neapolitan’s pious fellow-missionary--yielded her whole sweet soul
to him!_

_Nothing was declared, or came of this at the time. Pissani went back
to Naples; the two--he and Diana: not he and another, you may be sure,
unless by stealth--corresponded regularly; the march of events
proceeded; our heroine managed, no doubt, to console herself,
provisionally, for the separation. Perhaps she may have been conscious
of an alteration in her friend; a hint of some sad preoccupation; the
bright eyes dulling, the white face growing ever a little more white
and drawn. If she did, she chose, while biding her time of
enlightenment, to attach any but the right reason to the change. She
seems to confess, indeed, that she had the suspicion. Like enough, in
that case, she indulged it for a perpetual stimulant to her romance,
which might have withered without. She was not one to bear tamely her
supplanting by another--least of all by the little humble slave of her
passions and caprices, of her kisses and disdains. And, in the
meantime, the years went over them, while she was studying to
ingratiate herself with the Directory, so that presently her house
knew again its succession of ministers and deputies--men who came to
lighten their leisure with a little interlude of love or wit. And so
we reach the crisis._

_Naples, about the middle of_ ’98, _was in a last state of ferment.
Jacobinism threatened it within and without, the former but awaiting
the advance of the French under Championnet to arise and hand over the
city to its sympathisers. In September Nelson came sweeping to its
sea-gates in his_ Vanguard; _in October General Mack posted from
Vienna to take command of its rabble army of resistance; in November
its king led another army to Rome, nominally to restore the Pope his
kingdom, and, having done some ineffective mischief, returned
ingloriously, to find his capital in a state of anarchy. Finally, in
December, the whole royal family sneaked on board the_ Vanguard, _and
transferred itself_ pro tempore _to Palermo, where it remained until
the danger was laid, when it returned to exact a bloody vengeance._

_Therewithin lies the whole tragedy of Pissani and a little English
maid. Early in the February of that year the man had written, hurried
and agitated, to Mrs. Please, to announce that the moment was ripe,
the tree of despotism tottering to its fall, to be replaced by the
more fruitful one of Liberty; and to urge her to come at once, if she
would see consummated the glorious work for which they had both
laboured so long and so self-sacrificially. No doubt that he believed
in her single-heartedness, as she, in another way, in his. He assured
her that she might be, if she would, a second Pucelle. He fired her
vanity: he rekindled her passion. With characteristic impetuosity, she
broke up her household, and_ (_here figures either her blindness or
her imperious self-confidence_) _prepared to transport it, stock and
block, to the scene of her anticipated triumphs. She had no difficulty
in procuring passports. Indeed, there is reason to suppose that she
was intrusted with despatches for General Berthier, then occupying
Rome. At any rate she, in company with Mademoiselle Grant and her
inseparable Gogo, embarked at Marseilles for Civita Vecchia; were in
the Eternal City before the end of the month; and had thence,
travelling again by sea, reached Naples without accident by the middle
of March. Here, by preconcerted arrangement_ (_as regarded only
herself and the Neapolitan, however_) _they were met by Pissani, who
conducted them in the first instance to a little cabaret in the dark
quarters near the Arsenal. And here, from the glooms of that dingy
rendezvous, Mrs. Please is pleased to enter again upon her own story._

                                                       _B. C._

[_Note_.--To the curious in matters of personal appearance, the
following extract from the _Roper Correspondence_ (Hicks & Beach,
London, 1832) may be of interest. The passage occurs in a
letter--dated Paris, January 1798--from the Hon. Robert Roper to his
cousin Lord Carillon, and runs as follows:--

“I have renewed my acquaintance with the Please, who is twenty-seven,
and nothing if not the ripe fruit of her promise. Dost remember, Dick,
how she was your ‘Long-legged Hebe’? I tell you, sir, she is by Jove
out of Leda, a very Helen. She moults her years, like the swan her
father its feathers, and is always ready with a virgin bosom of down
for the next quilt. The same sprightly insolence; the same _perfect
irregularity_ of feature--and conduct; the same zeal in making the
interests of others her own--and the profits thereof. Her face retains
its pretty _moue_; her hair has only ripened a little, like corn. She
is still slender, as we remember her--in everything now but the
essentials; still as pale, with the flawless eyebrows and bob-cherry
lips. I would be sentimental; but, alack! she tells me our past is put
away in a little bag like lavender. ‘Would you wish the gift of it,
sir,’ she says, ‘to lay among your bed-linen? ’Tis grown too scentless
for my use. _Il n’y a si bonne compagnie qu’on ne quitte._’ O, Dick,
to be rebuked for one’s years, and by an immortal! O, Dick, for the
time ‘when wheat is green and hawthorn buds appear’! Why may not our
feet continue to dance with our hearts? I have a _débutante_ always
within my breast, and because _I_ am forty, _she_ must be a wallflower
forsooth!

“She has realised at last _la grande passion_, she tells me. She is
perfectly frank. _He_ is gone elsewhere, and she only waits for his
whistle to follow. _This_ to me! She has her little salon, as pretty
as a bonbon box, and a dozen of powdered ministers at her feet. The
morning after our meeting I breakfasted with her and her friend. You
recall the little soft brunette, with the motherly eyes and the
caressing bashfulness? She is still with her, the foil, as of old, to
her ladyship, and virgin soil to this day, I believe.... Madam took
her tea laced with a little _eau de vie_. There was a curious legless
monster in waiting: something between a dumb-waiter and a Covent
Garden porter. She defers to him in everything; and he growls.”]




 XXV.
 I DECLARE FOR THE KING

We were landed upon the Mole, not far from the Castel Nuovo, a vast,
sullen pile like the Bastille, on whose ruins I had danced. It was a
dark and rainy night. Pissani, who had been squatted amongst some
boats down by the water, rose, came forward in two or three swift
strides, and exclaimed, in an eager, agitated undertone, “Mother of
God! You are accompanied?”

I could not see his face, but my heart responded unerringly to the
dear remembered tones. I went quickly to him, and put up my hands to
his breast.

“Nicola _mio_--my brother, my comrade!” I whispered, “by all that,
next to you, I hold most dear.”

“What? Whom?” he asked, in a low voice of amazement. “Not--?”

“Yes,” I said, “by my servant and my sister. You called and I came,
Nicola, ‘bringing my sheaves with me.’”

He was breathing fast, but he did not answer.

“Are you not pleased,” I said, “that I give up everything for you and
to you; that I devote my best to the cause--our cause, Nicola; that at
the bidding of my brother I have moved my tent into the wilderness?
Are you not pleased with me?”

“There is danger in the wilderness,” he muttered. “No, I am not
pleased.”

I fell back with a little shiver. “No more for her than for me,” I
answered.

“It is not the same,” he said; “it is not the same thing at all.” In
an instant he had gripped my wrist. “Send her back into safety. She
shall not risk her life here--by God, she shall not!”

And then I think I understood. I was calm as death, and as cold. It
had needed but these few words to turn me into stone. My God! all my
fervour and self-sacrifice--and this for their reward! I laughed out
quite gaily--

“O, _mon chéri_! in the rain and the dark? Are you mad? Please to
convey us to some shelter.”

He hesitated a moment; then beckoned to Patty, who came running like a
dog to the whistle. Pissani turned his back as she approached.

“Tell your servant to await your orders here,” he muttered; “and, for
you, follow me.”

Patty stole by my side, dumb over her reception. The fool! the little
adorable traitress! How would she have chattered, teeth and heart, had
she seen my nails, hid under my cloak, dug into the soft palms they
were clinched on. Yet I had an admiration for her, even while I
crouched to spring. That she, self-obliterating, undemonstrative with
men, could all the time have been softly insinuating herself between
me and my love! I had not credited her with so much cleverness.

Our sombre patriot led us to a little _osteria_ in a sewer hard by,
where the rain beat on a lurid scrap of window, and a mutter of voices
from within seemed to mingle in a throaty discussion with a gurgling
water-pipe at our feet. There were two or three wine-drinkers revealed
as he pushed open the door--strangely respectable folk in these
incongruous surroundings. They but glanced up as we entered and passed
on by a stone passage to a little remote room, where were a bare table
and a single taper glimmering sickly on the wall.

Pissani shut the door and faced us. He was very pale and grim; grown
sterner than my memory of him, but still the melancholy, romantic
brigand of my heart. For a moment he seemed unable to speak; and in
that moment I could see my little sister’s hand shake on the table on
which she had leaned it for support. The truth was confessed amongst
us all in that silence. And I--I knew it suddenly, instantly, for what
I had long suspected but struggled to conceal from myself; knew it for
the real solution of this my conscious unconscious caprice in bringing
Patty with me. It had been to force it, to satisfy myself of the best
or the worst, that I had acted as I had done. That I recognised now.
And, after all, I was the first to speak.

“Well, M. Pissani,” I said, “it seems that one of us at least is _de
trop_.”

His mouth twitched with nervousness.

“She cannot help the cause,” he said. “She will only be in the way.
What is her use in this pass?”

“Patty,” I said, turning on the child, “M. Pissani does not want you.
You can go back.”

She looked at me, the helpless fool. Her lip trembled, and her eyes
filled with tears. But Pissani by that was smiling.

“I do not want you, child, _I_?” he said, in a sick voice, and held
out his hands fondly to her across the table. “Ah, but we know better
the truth of our hearts! When the battle is won, then, O gentle my
love, that betakest thyself to love as the lark to heaven, come to me,
as you promised! But not now--not now, when the storm is in the air,
and this so dear shrine of my hopes might be struck and violated. You
have not changed, you could not change: it is enough, I have seen you.
Come now with me, Pattia, and I will take you back to the boat, to my
friends, that they may see you secured in Rome until I can send to you
and say, ‘It is time, most dear wife, it is time. Return to me, and
give thyself to be the mother of patriots!’”

She moved, and gave a little sob. Her response was not to him but to
me--to the stunned questioning of my eyes. She had no wit but to utter
her whole self-condemnation in it.

“Diana! I did not know! I have not been untrue to you.”

I struck her on the mouth, and she staggered back, with that red lie
printed on it for the delectation of her paramour. She clutched at the
table, reeled, and sank down beside it moaning. It was too much. My
fury had flashed to an explosion in that wicked falsehood.

Pissani, with a sudden and terrible cry at the sight of his mistress’s
disgrace, drew a knife from his hip, and leapt like a goat across the
table. Stumbling as he alighted, she caught him frantic round the
knees, and held him raging and snarling while he stabbed at the air in
his frenzy. I stood fallen back a little, white and scornful, but with
not a thrill of fear at my heart; and, so standing, saw how, in the
thick blindness of his rage, he was yet tender of her in his struggles
to free himself. And then in a moment he had fallen upon his knees,
the blade yet in his hand, and was kissing and caressing her, moaning
inarticulate love into her ear. She tried feebly to repulse him; to
drag herself away and towards me. I had always known that she was of
the fools who caress the hands that scourge them. But I sprang back,
loathing her neighbourhood.

“Don’t come near me,” I cried.

He had kissed the blood from her mouth to his own. He struck the spot
there with a furious hand, as he turned on me.

“By this,” he said, “your death or mine!”

I laughed scornfully.

“So brutes revenge themselves on the innocence they have despoiled!”

“It is a lie!” he raged; and, on the word, put a fierce arm about his
_wife_. “Believe it is a lie, thou!”

But she was still struggling to reach me.

“Diana! Not this end to all our love! Not this end to the high hopes
with which we came. It is not ourselves, but Liberty, sister. See, he
will be good; he will not hurt you” (she was groping eagerly for the
knife, which he ended by letting her secure). “I did not know,” she
cried, “I did not guess--until this moment I did not. I will never see
him again, if you wish. I will be no man’s wife to your hurt. Diana!
It is the truth!”

I let her rave. I never took my eyes from his devil’s face.

“So,” I said, deeper now, and with my hands upon my storming bosom,
“you would make your sacrifice to Reason, monsieur, in me--me! _My_
mission was to be the Pucelle’s, and her glorious fate, with which, I
suppose, you were to assure your little after-paradise of loves. O, a
grateful use for this poor heart, to be a stepping-stone to the
respectable amours of Monsieur and Madame Pissani! Only I renounce the
honour, as I renounce the cause of the paragon of taste who could
prefer that for this.”

I tore at my dress.

“You have made your choice,” I cried; “it is all said. Only think,
monsieur, think sometimes of what you have lost, before you talk of
the battle being won!”

I hurried from the room, even as my false friend called to me again in
agony, “Diana! Believe me! Listen to me! O, what shall I do?” But,
even in my frenzy, I had the wit to pause the other side of the door,
listening for his response.

“Thou shalt go back to Rome, my dearest, my heart,” he said. “Hearken
to me, my Pattia.”

But she only sobbed dreadfully, “Not like this--not in this disgrace.
I must follow her, even if she kills me.”

“By my soul, no,” he said; “for your life is mine.”

I could hear them wrestling together; till, in a moment, he prevailed,
even before I had guessed he would.

“Hush, my bird,” he panted softly; “there is one other way--if it must
be so indeed.”

There followed a pause. I could have laughed in the mad joy of my
revenge. He was an upstart, this patriot; a son of the people. He
would commit her to his own--wive her, I most fervently prayed--and
deposit his jewel, this little pet of luxury, in the squalid cabin at
Camaldoli where he was born. He had often told me of it; of his early
experiences of the joys of life in a place where the peasant could not
fasten his coat against cold, or take refuge from the sun under a
tree, or borrow a stone from the hill for his paths, or renew his
starved patch with manure of leaves, or set a water-butt to catch the
showers, or be buried decently when he dropped at the plough-tail and
died, because buttons, and the shade of trees, and stones, and dead
leaves, and rain-water, and a dead peasant were all taxed alike--items
in a hundred other feudal impositions which left existence hardly its
own shadow to prevail by. And now these joys would be hers; for I knew
that she had not the strength to oppose him, though enough to damn her
own fool fortune by insisting on the Church’s sanction to her
possession of an estate of mud and wattles. I listened eagerly for the
next.

“If thou wilt be my mother’s daughter?” he said.

I could have clapped my hands. I hurried down the passage and out into
the night, fierce, burning, but with an exultation in my rage. The
sight of men risen, scared and listening, as I passed through the
wineshop, served to recall me to myself and to my danger. I was
outcast from these conspirators--if only they had known!

With an effort I composed myself, and turned to them with a smile--

“Messieurs, but the door is between me and the street!”

One of them at that stepped forward, opened it, and gravely bowed me
forth. As gravely I stepped into the rain, and made without hurry for
the beach.

So this was the end to all my exaltation, to my dreams of love and
sacrifice! I stamped in the puddles. “_Vive la tyrannie! vive les
Bourbons!_” I cried to myself as I sped on. So shamed, so wronged, so
spurned! was not the worst justified to me? I saw the shadow of my
loved monster standing solemn sentinel over the single trunk we had
brought with us. Our heavy baggage we had left in Rome. O, _mon
fidèle_! how at that moment I could have stormed my wounded heart out
on thy breast!

“Canst thou lift it and follow me?” I said only.

He answered, the dear Caliban, by obeying.

“Whither?” he growled.

I looked desperately about me. Near at hand it was all a tangle of
spars and sheds, and the rain driving between. But inland, the night
went up in glistening terraces, scattered constellations all shaken in
the thunder of a great city. Far south, what looked like the red light
of a forge alternately glared, and faded, and grew again, battling, it
seemed, with drowning flaws of tempest. It was the glimmering bonfires
of Vesuvius, those hot ashes of a consumed empire, from which,
according to Pissani, the phœnix Liberty was to arise. I laughed:
“Not yet, my poet, my friend; since thou choosest another than Pucelle
to breed thee thy patriots!”

I turned to the north. There, upon a huddle of tall buildings, looming
near and enormous in the dark, the stars of the hills seemed to have
drifted down, clinging thickly over all, like primroses under a bank.

“It is the royal palace,” said Gogo.

“It is _our_ way, then,” I panted, on fire. “Follow me, and quickly;
we are not safe here.”

Along wharfs and causeways, plashing over the filthy stones, by
squalid alley and reeking wall, I fled and he pursued. I had no
lodestar save my hate; but it served. The growing scream and thunder
of the town drove towards us as we advanced; but few people in that
bitter night; until, skirting the massed buildings of the arsenal and
palace, we emerged suddenly through a little lane into the Strada di
St. Lucia, and paused a moment undecided and amazed.

It was as if the devil had taken his glowing pencil and ruled off this
quarter of the city for his own. A noisome ravine of houses it was,
with life like a fiery torrent brawling along its bed. Song and tumult
and mad licence; fingers quick to stab, or to snap like castanets to a
dancing child; doorways that were the mouths of tributary sewers
vomiting filth and tatters into the main; fishermen, at their flaring
stalls, bawling crabs and oysters, _frutti di mare_--my God! what
fruit, and from what a sea that drained a shambles; women out in the
rain and the open, making their shameless toilettes, and screaming the
while such damnation by the calendar on their sister doxies for a
word, a retort, a mere flea-bite (the commonest experience, after all)
as to leave themselves, one would have thought, no vocabulary for the
more strenuous encounters of fists and claws; children swarming
everywhere in the double sense, and scattering shrill oaths like
vermin; rags and nakedness and insolence--a loafing melodrama--an
epitome of the worst squalor and viciousness in all Naples--such was
the district upon which we had alighted, the mid-ward of the
Lazzaroni.

As we stood, a ruffian, swaggering past, swerved, and approached a
handsome, impudent face. Gogo, without a word, heaved his shoulder
between. But I had no fear. These Lazzari were the king’s friends--and
mine. I pushed aside my henchman.

“_Pour le roi!_” I cried, and pointed towards the palace.

He understood, and whipped off his greasy hat.

“_Viva il re!_” he answered enthusiastically, showing his white teeth,
and motioned us to a street going eastwards up the hill. I saw and
recognised the same fellow once or twice afterwards. He was a Michele
di Laudo--Mad Michael, they called him--who, as chief of his
vagabonds, was to take a prominent part in the defence of the suburbs
against the French.

We crossed the street under his protection, and on its farther side,
before waving us on, he bent and snatched a kiss. The rank sweet touch
of his lips was like a _visé_ on my passport into hell. It seemed to
bring the blaze, the colour, the stench of the reeling streets
clashing to a focus in my brain, and it sent me speeding on half drunk
and half sick, loathing and hugging myself. I was an angel in Sodom,
running blindly for the refuge of God’s wing in a dazzle of roaring
lights, and confused by the glare, knowing not whether I turned to the
self I had left or to the self that was awaiting me. Gogo, straining
in my wake, panted as I hurried before him--

“For every dog but the watch-dog, a bone.”

I turned on him, with a stamp.

“A bone! I am meat for your masters, I tell you.”

“I serve no Pissani,” he said sullenly.

I shook him in my anger.

“Never breathe his name to me again, or we part.”

“Very well,” he said. “I thought as much. He has got his deserts.”

“_Has_ he?”

I glared at him one moment, then turned and sped on--up the street of
the Giant, passing the north flank of the palace, where sentries stood
on guard, and so into an open piazza, the Largho S. Ferdinando, into
which the palace itself stuck a shoulder, and where were churches and
the flaring portico of a theatre, and other buildings strangely fine
in their contiguity to the slums we had left.

And here, amidst the wild drift and gabble of a throng less foul but
as aimless, we plunged and were absorbed, and stood together again to
breathe.

All Naples, it seemed, was bent on shouting down its brother.

“What next?” bawled Gogo in my ear.

A handsome inn, the “Orient,” stood comparatively quiet and isolated
in an odd corner of the _Place_.

“Rooms--there!” I answered.

“Its exclusiveness makes it prominent,” boomed Gogo, with as much
dryness as he could put into a roar.

I beckoned him on imperiously.

_On n’a jamais bon marché de mauvaise marchandise._

In a little we were installed in comfortable rooms.

“Now order wine,” I said, “and we will drink.”

I sipped, while he sat on a stool at my feet, soothing the weariness
from them with a touch that was only my monster’s. The Chianti and the
sorcery of his hand began to drug me.

“Drink you too,” I murmured.

He reached for his glass.

“To whom?” he said. “What are we now? It makes no difference; only I
must know.”

“Death to all republics,” I cried, “and long life to the King of
Naples!”

“Ah!” he said, between a groan and a sigh. “Well--the poor child--you
have cast her off, I suppose,” and he drained his glass.

I stared at him a moment, then fell sobbing upon his shoulder.

“You pity everyone but me,” I cried, “and my heart is broken.”

“What, in the old place?” said he.

But I was too miserable to retort; and half the night afterwards he
held me, fallen fast asleep, in his arms.




 XXVI.
 I RENEW AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE

For three days I remained shut into my rooms at the “Orient,” not
daring to go out, a prey to the utmost nervousness and agitation. Do
not suppose that on that account I was the less determined in my plans
for vengeance. But revenge that lays itself open to retribution misses
the better half of itself. I remembered my old friend Mr. Roper’s
dictum, and beat my brains only for the means to strike with impunity.
I was not from the first without a design. The difficulty was to give
it practical effect; because for the moment I could not use Gogo. For
myself, under my assumed name, I might lie secure in this hiding. To
make _him_ my carrier to the English Embassy would be to mark a sure
track to my retreat with every punch of his wooden legs. I dared not
let him out; I dared not even temporarily part with him in my peril; I
dared not come to a decision, while knowing that my life depended on a
wise one. For I was a renegade revolutionary--I could not blink the
fact. Though I had never hitherto actually set foot in Naples itself,
there must be many to know me by report for that apostle of the new
creed of equality who, but a few years before, had stumped their
country, winning converts. And now! the safety of many men--and women
too--was in my hands; and not Pissani, nor those others when they came
to learn, would have forgotten the nature of my secession, or the
significance of the threats which had accompanied it. If passion had
given me away, caution must redeem me. I had no faith in Patty’s power
to protect me. The occasion was too desperate; the interests involved
were too many. Pissani was a reformer before he was a lover. I _must_
be sacrificed, if possible, to the cause I had the means to betray.

All day, peeping from behind the curtains of our windows, we saw the
piazza below like a seething cauldron of unrest. As significant of
that as anything were the out-at-elbows letter-writers under the
arcades of the old theatre of San Carlo, who, at a time when every man
feared to commit his simplest thoughts to paper, did less than enough
business to keep themselves in macaroni. They served to exhibit the
popular bankruptcy as well as the briefless advocates, who, from
thriving on the countless abuses of the law, found themselves
abandoned to the lawlessness they had created; as well as the
journalists, who, having been brought under a strict moral censorship,
starved as vampires might on a diet of milk; as well as the professors
and _savants_, who were hampered, it must be confessed, by a thousand
childish restrictions in their efforts to make life beautiful by
turning it inside out, and to teach men to follow in themselves, while
eating an omelet, the whole process of absorption and digestion; as
well as the bolder demagogues, who, mounted on steps or tubs, screamed
denunciations of their misgoverning sovereigns, under the transparent
veil of Claudius and Messalina, and called upon their hearers, by many
classical examples, to strike for liberty and political cleanliness.
At which the Lazzari laughed, understanding just so much that, if they
were to be no longer flea-bitten, they would be deprived of the
traditional luxury of scratching; and shaking their heads over that
new idea of equality, which was in fact so old an idea as to be
embodied in a popular proverb: “_Tu rubbi a me, io rubbo a te_,” which
one might expound: “‘If Taffy robs me, I rob Taffy’--so what the
devil’s all this fuss about?” Naples was rich in charitable
institutions for the encouragement of indolent beggary; and what sort
of a reform was it that sought to deprive an honest loafer of his
soup? And so to a man _they_ held out for dirt, moral and material,
and for the king who assured them a continuance in both--a condition
of things which made revolution a very different affair from what it
had been in starving Paris.

Since the date of my first visit in ’94 this ferment had been rising,
in spite of all efforts of the authorities to check it. As well try to
stop the decomposition of a dead body--for such was the national
credit. The foolish, vile queen, panic-sick that she was destined to
the fate of her better-meaning but as foolish sister in Paris,
persuaded her weak, common husband into a counter-blast to the
Terror--with as much effect as King James the First’s against smoking.
It is bad policy to try to suppress an evil by advertising it.
Self-martyrdom is the most popular of all notorieties. They
inaugurated a system of espionage, which in itself was an education to
conspirators; they read Jacobinism across the forehead of all
learning, and so alienated the intelligence which might have saved the
land; they crammed the filthy prisons with suspects, and broke the
hearts and fortunes of those who were the best leaven to corruption;
they made it criminal to wear scarlet waistcoats and long trousers;
finally, for some such dereliction, or one less momentous, they hung
up two or three respectable boys in a public square, varying the
entertainment by shooting down some scores of spectators who had
fallen into a panic at the noise of a distant musket-shot. And then,
having thrown their sacrifice on the flames of discontent, and so
lowered them, they settled down with an affectation of the strong arm,
and a blindness to the embers smouldering underneath.

These had not ceased to smoulder, nevertheless, feeding on their new
fuel; and by and by the blaze was to come.

_Eh bien! la voix du peuple est la voix de Dieu!_ So they say; only,
unfortunately, here the Lazzari were the crack in it. It was a pretty
Naples I had come to.

One afternoon, while looking out of the window, I saw a magnificent
equipage cross the square, and, turning the corner towards the palace,
disappear. I had been waiting during these long days for some such
vision, the nature of which now, if, indeed, the plaudits of the
loafers had not confirmed it in my mind, was established in the
glimpse of a bold, beautiful face which I obtained in its passing. On
the instant my resolution was made, and I ran to the table and hastily
scribbled off a note:--

 “_One whom you formerly befriended seeks your help and protection. She
 is in possession of important secrets, which you cannot afford to
 discard. Ask for her, under the name of Madame Lavasse, at the_
 ‘_Orient_.’”

I called Gogo, and hurriedly instructed him--

“Lady Hamilton has just passed, driving to the palace. Her coach is
gilt, with four dapple-greys. Go secretly out by the back; make your
way there circumspectly, wait for her reappearance, and throw this in
at the window of her carriage. Then return here, but by a roundabout
way, and not till after dark. Be swift and sure. Everything--our
safety, our lives--depends on this opportunity.”

He groaned out a little sigh: “And our honour, Diana? Think of the
time when we shall be damned together, before you betray the child.”

I walked up and down in terrible agitation when he was gone. Betray!
Who had been the traitor, of us two? Not a drop of water for her,
though I were to lie in Abraham’s bosom!

Night came, but no Gogo. Tortured with doubts and apprehensions, I
could neither eat nor rest. Had he too repented at last of his
loyalty, and abandoned me in my need? They all fell from me, those I
had succoured and most trusted. Sometimes, in my agony of mind, I
upbraided his selfishness, cursed my own irreclaimable fondness in
putting faith in man. I believed he had sold himself--whether to
cupidity or an emotion, what did it matter. At length, quite exhausted
by my passions, I fell asleep on my bed, dressed as I was.

I slept far into the morning, and awoke to a consciousness of a
presence in the next room. Was it he, returned at last? Dazed, and
sick with excitement, I rose and ran to meet him. A lady only was
there, cloaked and mysterious. She lifted her veil, and showed me the
face I had desired.

It had not, indeed, so much altered in these years as her person’s
amplitude. Conceive, my dear friend, the head of a Circe on the body
of a hippopotamus! Now I perceived Nature’s forethought in the gift of
those immense feet. They were disproportionate no longer. She had
grown colossal. The mountain had come to Mahomet. It was wonderful
how, in spite of all, she could have retained the general fine contour
of her features. One would have thought she could hardly have kept her
countenance, seeing the changes below. I certainly found it difficult
to keep mine, as I fell on my knees before her, and, catching at her
hands, hung my head.

She stepped back from me, shaking the room. I understood then in a
moment that the old glamour was only to be recovered, if at all, with
discretion.

“Now, madam,” she said, “being come at your request, I must ask you
for your reason, and as short as you’ll please to make it.”

“My messenger”--I began.

“Your messenger,” she interrupted me promptly, “is put under lock and
key till we know more about him and you. He got a cut on the cheek
before he was took by the guards; but that wasn’t my fault.”

I buried my face in my hands.

“I thank you, madam,” I said, with emotion. “He lies at least in
better security than I.”

“Well, I won’t answer for that,” she replied, “till I come to hear
what you’re after.”

I looked up.

“O, madam, my benefactress!” I cried. “It is much to expect, perhaps;
but do you not know me?”

“O, perfectly, madam!” she said, with a curtsey that made her balloon.
“We make it our pains to know all about our visitors. Believe me, you
was under surveillance from the moment you stepped ashore at the Mole.
It was not very likely, was it, that we should overlook the arrival of
her as seemed wishin’ to reap the discord she had sowed among us a
while back? Be sure we know you, madam, well enough, and the
reputation you built for yourself in Paris too!”

Startled as I was, I had a difficulty to refrain from retorting that
my reputation would bear comparison with hers. But I bit my lip on the
temptation, and for the moment took refuge from everything in tears,
to which, however, she listened silent.

“I did not refer to that,” I cried, looking up with clasped hands and
swimming eyes, “but to the goodness of a great and beautiful lady, who
once succoured a poor girl in distress.”

“And I include that too in my knowledge,” said she; “and much
gratitude you’ve shown to the class as befriended you.”

“Gratitude!” I cried. “O, believe me, that, until I reached here, I
never even guessed that, in conspiring against royalty, I was
conspiring against you, my saviour.”

She sat down on a chair, near breaking it.

“Didn’t you?” she said, gathering the folds of her cloak about her.
“Well, supposing you didn’t, what then? You ain’t goin’ to forego your
principles for a sentiment like that--don’t tell me.”

“If you won’t believe me”--I murmured despairingly.

“Why look here, Madame Lavasse, or Please, or whatever your damned
name is,” she said, shaking a hectoring finger at me, “one may help a
girl, but a woman helps herself, which I make no bones of guessing
you’ve managed to do pretty free. The question with you is whether
Jacobinism or royalty is going to pay best; and if you’re proposin’ to
change about and turn informer, no better moral than profit is at the
bottom of your little game, I’ll vow. Well, I don’t say but in that
case we’re open to treat; only I’ll ask you to drop the artless girl,
which don’t sit well on you at your age, and talk with me like one
woman of the world to another.”

I rose to my feet with a burning face.

“Go!” I said, with an imperious gesture; “insult me no more. Have I
not suffered wrong and outrage enough, but my heart must be made the
sport of every common”--

“Highty-tighty, miss!”

She rose in astonishment. For a moment she stood conning me, my
quivering lips and heaving bosom. Then of a sudden she smiled.

“Well, perhaps”--she said. “There, I’ve a way of letting my tongue run
away with me; but it’s no example for you to follow. I should have
remembered the glass houses in the sayin’ before I twitted you with
your past. Only for sure, Diana Please, it can never be said against
me that I betrayed my love that betrayed me.”

My rage was all gone. I dropped my head, with a sad little cry. The
sound of it brought her to my side.

“Was he not your love,” she whispered--“him that came with you?”

And I answered, “He was my love.”

“Was--was,” she repeated. “Well--I see. They take other fancies.”

“You was sold yourself--is it not true?” I muttered.

“Ay,” she answered, and sighed. “But it was for gold.”

“_You_ can forgive, then, and forget,” I said; “but not I--no, never.”

“You would ruin him?”

“Yes, and her.”

“Bring him to the gallows?”

“That is why I sent for you. You can trust me.”

“And in the meantime you fear for yourself?”

“I struck her. He tried to stab me. I cried, _Vive le Roi!_ You know
what that means.”

“Cry _Vive la Reine_ for the future. ’Tis the sweet saint who suffers
most. Well, it seems the truth at last; and you have your
provocation--by God, you have! Only for me, having one different, to
help myself by you?--it goes against my stomach somehow. I wish it was
your principles instead of your jealousy.”

“Help me in nothing but to some place of safety, where I can inform
and direct the court. _It_ will not be troubled with your ladyship’s
scruples.”

“How do you know? ’Tis so you have been taught to regard my sweet
queen, I suppose?”

“O, madam!” I cried, “you know what made me an ardent pupil.”

She stood musing upon me long and earnestly.

“Yes, perhaps,” she said at length, and sighed; “what a fool preacher
is Love, not to be able to keep his own faith! To drive woman for
refuge on woman--’tis like banishing your physician to the enemy’s
camp. Well”--she took my hands; I thought she was going to kiss me,
but she made no offer--“for myself, I don’t want to hear none of your
inculpations; but I’ll put you in train to satisfy your passions on
others that may. Will that suit you?”

She turned before I could answer, and was going.

“It must be soon,” I urged hoarsely, following her; “O, madam! don’t
you understand that it must be soon?”

“Within an hour or two,” she said, over her shoulder. “Have no fear.
You are already protected--and watched.”

I set myself, with what self-control I could, to await her return;
for, after our emotional confidences, I expected nothing less than
that she would come for me presently in person. But in that I was
mistaken, as was made evident in the ushering up to me by and by of a
very courtly young gentleman, of a shrewd, sallow visage, who informed
me, with a bow, that he was Love’s emissary.

“His Majesty, sir,” I said, with a faint smile, and some intentional
ambiguity, “is well represented. Do we go to the palace?”

“We go,” he said, “_to_ the palace. Will madam be pleased to accept my
escort?”

I took the arm he offered me. In view of some such contingency, I had
spent the interval in making my toilette agreeably to it.

He conducted me out by the back way to the stables, where, in a little
court, we found an ordinary post-chaise, with two horses, awaiting us.

“_Faire comme on le juge à propos_,” murmured my companion; and,
seeing my trunk (pregnant with damning evidence) well secured in
front, he handed me in, followed himself, pulled down the blinds, and
gave the word. In an instant we were rolling over the stones.

It was a very roundabout way, it seemed to me, that we took to the
palace; yet for long--so potent was my trust in myself as an emissary
of vengeance, and so engaging the chatter of my comrade--I suspected
no treachery. But at length, losing conscious sense, through the
thunder of the wheels, of a roar and racket which had once accompanied
it, I started as it were awake, and, in an immediate panic, peeped
from behind the blind nearest me. And then I saw that we had already
left the town, and were tearing along country roads.

I half rose, with a cry: “The palace! This is not the way to it!”

My companion seized my wrist in a grip of steel, forcing me to reseat
myself.

“The very nearest, I can assure you, madam.”

“You are taking me to prison?”

“My faith! a prison that some would like,” he said, showing his teeth.

I struggled with him. “Let me out! I will raise the country else!”

He released me at once.

“As madam wills. Madam will claim protection of her friends the
Jacobins? For me, I consult only her safety.”

“What!” I panted at him, sinking back. “Tell me who are you?”

“Luigi de’ Medici, at madam’s service,” he said, with a bow; “a name,
at least, that should be a guarantee of some worth.”

“No doubt, sir; but, as a stranger, at your mercy”--

“I have the honour to be, madam, the chief of the police.”

The word awoke new frenzy in me.

“My God! I am betrayed. For pity’s sake, sir, tell me where we go.”

“I answered, madam, to the palace. I am a man of my word.”

“What palace?”

“Ah! At length madam talks reason. To the Palace of Caserta, ten
leagues away.”

I stared at him aghast.

“To be immured there?”

“Truly,” he said, “to be immured in a paradise, amongst fountains and
flowers! It is not like the inside of a wall.”

“You are pleased to mock me, sir. But why am I brought so far?”

“Madam shall ask of her mirror,” he said, with a charming grin. “Shall
I so abuse my office as to admit that His Majesty is susceptible; and
that Madame the English Ambassadress--who, nevertheless, is of a
perfect honour--is jealous for her friend the queen, and, perhaps, for
her own pre-eminence in beauty? Certainly not. It is quite enough to
say that Madame Lavasse, being in some danger of assassination in
Naples, is removed to a distance for her own security; to a place, in
short, whence she can direct the lightning, without exciting suspicion
of collusion with Jupiter.”

He bent and looked into my face.

“I vow, madam,” he said, “that the last frost of discretion must melt
in the fire of such beauty. Take my word for it, that the Queen of
Olympus never of her will would have admitted Venus to be of her
court.”

This was very disarming, to be sure; and already, before we reached
Caserta, Signor de’ Medici was in possession of some preliminary
information that proved useful to him.




 XXVII.
 I KNOW HOW TO WAIT

Caserta Palace was a sort of Versailles to the Palazzo Reale. It was
a fine, long, rectangular building, lofty and imposing in the
eighteenth century style of grand architecture, with marble colonnades
and innumerable windows. The town it dominated, being a royal town
_par excellence_, was comparatively clean and reposeful; and the
palace gardens were as extensive and as beautiful as any in the world.

It was not, however, to a corner of this stately pile that I found
myself committed, but to rooms in the Casino of St. Lucius, which
stood in the park some two miles north of the main building, and
commanded a noble view, not only of the surrounding country, but of
the dark pruned alleys beset with white statues, and the terraces and
fountains and cascades of the gardens themselves--a lovely spot. And
here, for the moment secure and at peace, I resolved upon a life of
placid enchantment, treated like a queen’s hostage, and biding the
development of events.

I had my little sleepy, soft-footed household--an old groom, a pretty
maid or two, and a quite delectable cook. No restrictions were placed
upon me; I was free to wander as I listed, and, indeed, had no
inducement to venture without the cordon of sentries who were my best
protection. The month was April, the most lovely in all Naples; and,
save when Capri, showing near and blue, gave indications of the
scirocco, I spent all my days out of doors. So tranquil was it, so
remote from the centres of ferment, I could have thought myself in
Avalon, though all the while and around the clouds of a coming tempest
were gathering to burst. As I loitered by those empty corridors of
green, smiling back the smiles of the unruffled statues, listening to
the drowsy thunder of the waters, seeing only for all tokens of human
life the little marionnettes of place swarming, quite distant and
minute, about the steps of the palace, France was preparing to launch
her legions on Naples both by land and sea; scared refugee cardinals
were trotting by the dozen into the city; Nelson, off Toulon, was
shaping his course, by way of Aboukir, to the arms of Mrs. Hart;
Ferdinand was tremblingly fastening his warlike greaves on his fat
shins; and, finally, Maria Carolina was making her bloody tally for
the hangman. And only of the last was I actively cognisant, seeing
that it was there alone lay my concern with the outer world.

From time to time M. de’ Medici would visit me in this connection,
coming ingratiatory and quite lover-like to refresh his portfolio with
new names from my list, or to examine my correspondence, which was
entirely at his service. I had taken no half-measures. The spared
assassin comes to strike again, was my motto.

“Have I not proved myself a sincere convert?” I said to him once.

“Assuredly, most beautiful,” he answered; and fell to counting on his
fingers. “You have given us already certain proof of the guilty
complicity of--One: Signor Domenico Cirillo, professor of botany,
arborist, edenist, pupil of Jean Jacques, too delicate a flower for
this climate; two: Francesco Conforti, court theologian, a priest and
ambitious--nothing singular, but he will be beaten in the race for
power by a neck; three: Carlo Muscari; four: his excellency the
Marquis of Polvica, a lamentable case; five: Pasquale Baffi, professor
of dead languages, for which he will soon be literally qualified; six:
Gennaro Serra di Cassano, a very pretty young gentleman, late released
from confinement--but it is sometimes policy to spare the cub, if one
would learn the way to the dam; seven:--but, ’tis enough, madam: those
six will vindicate you.”

“You are welcome to them, monsieur,” I said, “if only you would
exchange against them all my dear, indispensable Gogo.”

At which, as usual, he shook his head, tightening his lips.

“A bond of sentiment. You are better apart.”

“At least you might acquaint me where he is?”

“As to that, he is very safe and well cared for.”

“In prison?”

“Nominally--nominally, _ma belle_. But, observe--so are you, you know.
What then? There are prisons and prisons.”

“Well, if he is as well off as I?” I sighed. And, indeed, the
assurance was a wonderful comfort to me.

As a matter of course he kept me constantly informed--though I never
questioned him--as to the career of the Pissanis, the head and front
of all offending.

“Signor Nicola is our bell-wether,” he would say. “We have hung a
little invisible cymbal about his neck, which has the strange quality
of sounding only to us. O, we police are the latter-day fairies,
believe me! All unconsciously to himself, he calls the flock about
him; and we--we have nothing to do but keep count of them, till the
season of the butcher arrives. Then we shall see. I shall want,
perhaps, all the fingers of my own hands, and of yours too--my God, a
dainty tally! And madam, you ask--though your lips do not move? It is
very laughable, take my word. At once, since her marriage, the dear
little frog emulates the bull. O, fie, fie! Madam misreads me. Such a
scandal! I would say only that it has inoculated her with her
husband’s ambition; that she is become an enthusiast in the cause,
attending meetings, distributing tracts, haranguing multitudes in her
sweet round voice, that is like pelting giants with sugar-plums. Yes,
as madam implies, it is marvellous. What will not love do? But for me,
I am susceptible: I adore all beauty. I could wish the poor child
another embrace than the hangman’s.”

“Well, sir,” I answered, “you will have occasion, perhaps, to offer
her the alternative.”

“O, fie!” he said. “Is not my heart engaged immutably? Otherwise--who
knows? It is a sad world.”

It was a very dark and bitter one to me from the moment of his
revelations. So, she could be independent of me, and happy in her
independence! What a world of hypocrisy and double-dealing was exposed
in this her easy repudiation of my claims upon her! During all these
years that I had counted her my slave, she had been nursing her
schemes of treachery--been manœuvring, probably, to make me the
instrument of her conveyance to her lover’s arms. And now, no doubt,
they were laughing over their outwitting of me. Well, who laughs last
laughs best.

One day I had a notable visit. Two ladies, walking through the
grounds, came upon me where I was seated in a grove of myrtle. One was
Lady Hamilton, very great and gorgeous in a shell-shaped hat _de
sparterie_, trimmed with butterflies and a violet ribbon knotted under
one ear; while the other, whom I did not know, a dowdy, ignoble old
figure with watery eyes, wore a plain _fichu-chemise_, and an immense
bonnet with a veil thrown back over it. They both stopped upon seeing
me, and Lady Hamilton beckoned. I rose, advanced, and curtsied.

“Here, your Majesty,” said my friend, “is the very person herself.”

Her Majesty! I paled and trembled; then ventured a glance from under
my lashes. Sure I was not to blame for my remissness. I vow I could
have thought my lady had brought her monthly nurse with her for an
airing in the country. The poor woman looked steeped in caudle, flocky
with child-beds, and no wonder. In some two dozen years out of her
forty-five or so she had borne near as many children. She had prayed
for an heir, and Heaven had sent her a tempest. The eternal lyings-in
had soured her temper, which was not further improved by neuralgia and
opium. Nursing, as she did, outside her litter, a perpetual ambition
to wear the breeches of government, it had been characteristically
mean of her husband to adopt this method to correct it. Yet, in spite
of all she had borne both from and to her lord, her vigour remained
unquenchable. Indeed, in a kingdom which annually abandoned some
twenty-five thousand babies to the foundlings, a child was the
cheapest present one could make to one’s favourite of the moment. Yet,
as I saw her now, she was the farthest from imposing or attractive.
Her legs were short, and her upper lip so long that her nose stood
nearer her forehead than her chin, on the former of which she wore a
single fat curl like a clock-spring. She put a hand to it two or three
times, before she addressed me, very quick and hoarse, in French.

“_Maria! Mais elle fait une bonne mine à mauvais jeu!_ Come hither,
child. So this is our redoubtable little _moucharde_? We have need of
her in these days of the devil’s advocacy.”

Her eyes looked injected; her flabby face puckered at the temples like
yellow milk skin. As I approached, she turned away in evident pain.
Lady Hamilton was all effusive attentions at once. She waved me to
stop, and supported her friend to the seat I had just occupied,
commiserating, explaining, and fondling in one.

“O, my darling queen! It is the neuralgia that worries my sweet like a
dog. Lean on your Emma. Have you nothing, child--no salts, no drops?”

I fetched a certain vinaigrette from my pocket, and bending before the
royal knees, snapped the stopper once or twice under the royal nose.
The effect was instantaneous. An expression of maudlin relief
succeeded to the strain. She lay breathing peacefully, with a smile on
her lips, until, after some minutes, she aroused herself with a sigh.

“What was it, then? It is a Circe, with her witch’s face and her
potions!”

But this was to trespass on the other’s domain.

“Give it to me, if you please,” said Mrs. Hart coldly. “Her Majesty
would prefer to take it from my hand.”

I returned it quietly to my pocket.

“Nay, madam,” I said; “it is a remedy that must not be repeated.”

She looked at me astounded; then broke into a forced laugh. “Hey-day!
We are pretty absolute, are we not?” But the queen, grown suddenly
very affable and communicative, put her aside with a hand which she
laid upon my arm--

“We will not quarrel with our physician. She knows what she knows.
Moreover, for all her long exile and the little errors which she has
redeemed, she is of the great nation which we love. Is it not so,
child? and hast thou heard what are the best and latest news? None
other than that thy glorious captain, the supreme Nelson, has within
the last few days annihilated the French fleet at Aboukir! Ah! that
rose is from thy heart. It speaks the proud blood, the red rose of
England, mantling above all foolish sophistries. Thou canst not but
rejoice with us in the destruction of the enemies of thy race--of all
the world!”

And then she and the other began a little litany of excommunication:--

“Dogs and assassins!”

“Despoilers of churches and women!”

“Hordes of anti-Christ vomited from hell!”

“Scum and rabble of an infamous democracy!”

“Monsters of sacrilege!”

“Cowards curst of God!”

“Whom to slay is righteousness!”

“To whom to give quarter is deadly sin!”

“Subverters of all order and decency!”

“The devil hang the lot!” said Lady Hamilton.

The queen rose, quite refreshed and reinvigorated. Suddenly she was
holding me with a piercing look. Craft and villainy peeped out of her
little inflamed eyes.

“I come to put a question to you, madam,” she said. “There is a lady
of our retinue--the Signora de Fonseca Pimentel. Your correspondence
contains no proof of her disloyalty to us?”

“No, madam, or I should have informed M. de’ Medici,” I answered, in a
faint terror; but rallied immediately. “I know only that she is in
communication with the Signor Carafa since his escape.”

“Ha!”

The red eyes of the ferret closed a moment, then reopened to an
ineffable smile. She held out her hand to me to kiss.

“We find you an invaluable physician, Madame Lavasse. To have eased a
poor queen--it is something; but to cure this land of its headache”--

“Ah, madam!” I said, “there I yield to the hangman.”

Both ladies burst out laughing as they moved away. The queen turned
and waved her hand.

“You shall not be forgotten,” she cried; and I curtsied.

A few days later M. de’ Medici called upon me. He read out a little
indictment he had prepared for my behoof--

“Eleonora de Fonseca Pimentel, wife to Pasquale Tria de Solis,
Neapolitan officer, noble, now deceased: emotional; authoress of some
panegyrical sonnets to royalty and the age of gold; since suspect of
schemes for the education of the populace; shows a partiality for red;
advocates an appropriation of the Punch and Judy shows to the lessons
of national virtue; claims the liberty of the press to print her
halting rhapsodies;” (Monstrous!) “imputed sympathiser with Ettore
Carafa (son to the Duke of Andria, the king’s major-domo, and to the
duchess, Her Majesty’s mistress of the robes) in said Ettore’s late
conspiracy to print and distribute an Italian version of the ‘Rights
of Man,’ which conspiracy resulted in the execution of some companion
malignants, and the escape from Naples of said Ettore; finally,
convicted of corresponding with said fugitive, to the end of His
Majesty’s overthrow and the subversion of his government!”

“Not convicted, M. de’ Medici.”

“That is all one, most beautiful,” said the chief of police, folding
his paper. “Madame Lavasse’s word is as good as her bond.”

Within a week the Pimentel was lodged in the prison of the Vicaria.

That was in October; and thenceforward things moved fast, though
scarce quick enough for me, who was beginning to beat my wings against
the gilded bars of my cage. For what was all the national excitement
to me but a means to my personal vengeance? And I feared, feared that
while I lay aside for others’ use, my prey would find a means to
escape me.

On the 22nd of September I had heard the guns of the citadels down
below in the bay welcoming Nelson’s arrival. The sound shook every
nerve in my restless heart, so that I could hardly eat or sleep that
night; and I laughed myself into hysterics over my little maid
Martita’s description of how Madame l’Ambassadrice d’Angleterre had
flown up the side of the _Vanguard_, and cast herself upon the breast
of her hero, who was a very little man, and quite unable to support so
much emotion.

Still, thereafter, as day by day drums beat, and recruits were
gathered, and men hanged themselves to avoid serving, and the English
admiral was urging upon the poor fat, wind-blown king one of three
alternatives: To advance upon the French, and conquer; to die sword in
hand; or to remain and be kicked out--while all Naples was seething
and roaring in a vortex about my garden, the garden itself remained
silent and empty, an island in the midst of a whirlpool.

But at last His Majesty _did_ set out, and reaching actually as far as
Rome, while the republican general Championnet was falling back for a
spring, blustered naughtily for a little, killing a few Jews,
threatening the wounded enemy in the hospitals, committing to sack and
pillage the very sacred city he had come to relieve, and finally, upon
the approach of the concentrated French, deserting his demoralised
army, and pelting back, with all the might of his perspiring legs, to
where?--why, to Caserta.

It was evening of the 19th of December, and a thunderstorm, to terrify
one to death in that desolate park, had broken over the town. All the
imprisoned electricity of months past seemed to me, as I stood
fascinated at an upper window of the Casino, to have torn itself free,
and to be hunting in and out of the trees for fugitives from its fury.
Far away and below the thousand eyes of the palace shut sickly to each
blaze, and blinked and were staring frightened again in the crash that
followed. The hand of an incensed God bent the proud necks of the
trees, and His wrath drove a roar of leaves and twigs criss-cross
about the alleys. It was the anarchy beginning.

In the midst I saw two figures, cloaked and dusk, butt their way to
the door below; and a moment later Martita summoned me to receive
messengers from the palace. I went down, and found two officers, pale
and glaring, awaiting me in the parlour. The rain dripped from their
unbonneted locks; their hands were restless with their hats and
sword-hilts. I curtsied in wonder; and the elder, with a shaky,
conciliatory smile, addressed me.

“You will pardon this intrusion, madam. The occasion is our excuse.
You have in your possession some charm, some restorative, by which Her
Majesty the queen has already greatly benefited?”

“Assuredly, monsieur. It is in my pocket now.”

“It is much needed at the moment. You will vouchsafe us the loan?”

“You must forgive me, monsieur. Its virtue is incommunicable save by
the possessor.”

“That is so? Then will madam, perhaps, administer it in person?”

“To whom, monsieur? Monsieur will consider the night.”

“Alas, madam! But to assure that this night shall not be endless--that
the sun of our hopes be not extinguished for ever?”

“Pray, sir, have mercy on me. To whom do you allude?”

“To His Majesty--no less.”

“The king?”

“He has but now ridden--been driven, would be truer--from Albano. For
the moment everything seems lost. Ferdinand is at the last extreme of
exhaustion and agitation. Madam will come to quiet him?”

“I will come, monsieur.”

“Ah! _Dio mercè! Questo benefizio è una grande grazia._”

We set out without delay. My companions took each an arm of me,
laughing very gallant scorn of the lightning and my fright thereat.
Between them, however, they bruised my poor shoulders horribly, in
their instinctive efforts to come together and clutch one another
whenever the thunder slammed.

I was so dazed with the rain and uproar that I had little wit left me
to note my surroundings as they hurried me, blown and breathless, up a
flight of steps into a great hall, blazing with lights, thronged with
confusion. Courtiers, nobles, mud-stained soldiers; weeping women,
frightened maids--here they stood in gabbling, gesticulating groups,
which were constantly detaching and discharging units into other
groups, the whole contributing to a sum of frenzy which swayed the
candle-flames. And throughout, threading the frantic maze, went scared
pages and lackeys; all, from captain to scullion, looking for orders,
and receiving none.

There were a few whispers, a few who observed and remarked upon me, as
my conductors forced me through the press, crying a passage to the
royal closet.

“It is the beautiful English witch! _O, quanti vezzi!_ They are going
to try to cure him like King David!”

The opening and swinging-to of a door; as instant a muffling of the
tumult; the peace of a lofty anteroom, padded with thick carpets; a
muttered challenge, a muttered answer; the passage of a further
portal--and I was in the royal presence.

Now, all my life I have had to battle with a fatal sense of humour. I
will simply undertake to relate the test to which it was here put.

The room, shut away from all disturbance, was brilliantly lighted. In
the midst, at a gorgeous escritoire, sat a secretary in black, biting
a pen. Hard by stood a staff officer--in a glittering uniform, but
sopped and mud-splashed--who incessantly, with a white, nervous hand,
turned down and bit at his moustache, making a motion with his lips as
if he were talking to himself. The two all the time followed with
their eyes the movements of a third figure, the only other in the
room, which went to and fro, up and down, in a sort of tripping dance,
gabbling an eternal accompaniment the while to its own _chassé_, and
at odd moments ringing a little gilt bell which it carried in its
hand. This in itself, to be sure, was sufficiently remarkable; but O,
my friend, for the appearance of this eccentric, who indeed was no
other than the monarch himself. Cocked on the top of his large head
was a little tie-wig, which, for the last touch to disguise, he had
borrowed during his flight from the Duke of Ascoli, after exchanging
clothes with that peer, who was a much smaller man. The effect may be
imagined. His Majesty’s breeches’ ends were half-way up his thighs;
his waistcoat was a mere rope under his arm-pits; his coat-tails stuck
apart from the small of his back like ill-fitting wing-cases. Add to
this that he was pinned all over with holy pictures, and hung with
reliquaries and medals like a mountebank at a fair, and the picture is
complete.

The lightning penetrated the ruddy blinds with no more than the silent
flicker of a ghost; but no glass could muffle the shattering reports
of the thunder, at every clap of which His Majesty whinnied and
crossed himself--

“O Lord, spare Thine anointed! Beloved saints, be particular to point
out to Him where I am!” (ring). “This, you must know, is not my usual
cabinet; but I will withdraw to my own, if you desire it, though it is
in the hands of the decorators. There!--O!--San Gennaro, protect me!
Caution our Master of the risk of striking among the chimneys, lest
the levin brand, following a wrong course, enter this room instead of
another, and destroy me in mistake for a lesser man” (ring). “_Dio non
vóglia!_ O, saints! I believe I am struck! No, it is my breeches
splitting. But they are Ascoli’s. Make no mistake, Lord. I am not
Ascoli. Take the breeches, but spare the king!”

He shut his ears distracted to a louder boom, and immediately was off
again at a tangent--

“O Lady of Loretto, plead for thy servant!” (crash). “_Mea maxima
culpa_--I will confess--if your Majesty will condescend to keep it to
yourself--I am really a stupid man” (loud ring)--“well meaning, holy
mother; well meaning, San Gennaro, but dull, as kings go, and
surrounded by greater fools than myself. I have been seventeen times a
father” (ring)--“at least” (loud ring), “and only once a husband”
(groan). “Fool though I be, I have propagated my race for the glory of
Holy Mother Church--and the confusion of the learned, her enemies. For
the sake of my family, Madonna, succour me!”

He chattered so loud, racing up and down all the time, that I could
hear his every word where I stood, awaiting events, by the door. Once,
in a lull of the storm, he swooped round my way, and, suddenly
becoming aware of me, stopped as if petrified, then rattled out, in a
thick, gulping voice--

“Do you know who I am, madam? Do you know who I am?”

I curtsied profoundly.

“Sire,” I murmured, “--such a little cloud--to hide the sun of
Majesty!”

He stared at me, and down at himself. “I am the king,” he muttered;
“is it not so?”

The officer hurried to him, and whispered in his ear.

“Eh!” he exclaimed, “my wife’s physician? You find me very distraught,
madam, very overtasked. I am so constituted I never could abide
thunder”--and he was off again.

“Monsieur,” I whispered, “if we could get him prostrated on a sofa.”

“Ah!” replied the officer, “for myself, it would be madness. But
you--you are beautiful--you may dare.”

I did not hesitate, but, stealing catlike to a couch, took the
opportunity of His Majesty’s passing to seize him by his wing-cases,
and with such effect that in a moment he was sprawling on his back on
the cushions, with his legs in the air. Then, before he could protest
or avoid me, I had clapped the duck-stone to his nostrils. Instantly
the convulsion of his limbs relaxed, and a great sigh heaved itself
out of his depths. His wig had tumbled off; his brows were dark over
goggle eyes; he had a long, aquiline nose falling to a slack jaw.
Imagine all this revealing itself in an expression of the most perfect
contentment and idiocy.

The soldier tiptoed across, and looked down scared.

“God in heaven, madam!” he whispered, “what have you done to His
Majesty? He is not himself.”

“Pardon me, monsieur,” I said; “never so much so.”

He came round in about ten minutes, and gazed at me in a sort of
affectionate beatitude.

“_Dio mercè!_” he murmured; “I dreamt I was in purgatory, and awake
to find myself in paradise. Another dose--one more.”

I shook my head.

“Enough is as good as a feast.”

“I will give thee a fortune for thy talisman.”

“Its virtue lies in myself.”

“Ah! Then the casket must be mine too.”

He sat up suddenly, all rumpled, and bellowed out in a thick, slurred
voice,--

“Away, dolts and rapscallions! What! are you prying and listening?”

The secretary hurried to the door, and disappeared. The officer
lingered only to protest--

“Affairs of urgency, sire”--

“Pooh!” said the king. “I am attending to them.”

I drew away.

“Pardon me, sire”--I began, when a clap of thunder rattled the glass.
His Majesty ran at me whimpering--

“You think to leave me? No, no, madam. I am but half recovered yet. I
must be watched, or I shall die. For yourself, you are as safe as in a
convent.”

He drew himself up, and endeavoured to thrust his hand into the breast
of his waistcoat; but not finding any, caught at his braces instead.

“Though all else be lost to Ferdinand, honour remains.”




 XXVIII.
 I RETURN TO NAPLES

What a business I had with that father of babies--himself the
greatest baby of all! He would not let me leave him, but took my wits
to physic his irresolution as my duck-stone his nerves. As the night
sped darker and wilder, bringing distracted generals and ministers,
who, desperate to gather some clew out of chaos, would not be denied,
he clung ever closer to my presence beside him, goggling at me mutely
when faced by a poser, and laughing and applauding hysterically when I
supplied an answer to it.

At last a cry rose in the palace that the French were got between Rome
and Naples, with only General Mack at Capua a little north of us to
oppose them.

“He is not to be trusted,” cried poor Ferdinand, wringing his hands.
“He will sit down there and do nothing! Besides, I am not at war with
France!”

“_He_ is not everything,” I answered, ignoring the other fatuous
pretence. “Quick, now, and light a fire between!”

“A fire!” said he, aghast.

“To be sure,” said I--“the fire of a crusade. Call upon the whole
population north of us to fly to arms and exterminate the impious
invaders. Declare you are coming to their help, and bid them strive
their utmost in the meantime. It may be, in such a war of bigotry,
your peasants will do your chief work for you, leaving you no task but
to come presently and kill the wounded.”

“But,” cried the king disconsolately, “they must know too well already
that I have run a--that I have thought it best to retire!”

“Date your manifesto from Rome, sire, and it will give the lie
to--ahem! the truth. Quick! we will compose it together; and within an
hour you can have it flying north, east, and west.”

He liked the idea. That thought of being reserved to give the
unhazardous _coup de grâce_ tickled him sensibly. But, though we
acted upon it with all despatch, it was helpless to still the rumour
of coming disaster. The report of the king’s flight and of the army’s
demoralisation were too well confirmed. Hordes of robbers and
cut-throats rose, it is true, at the word; swarms that committed
woeful deeds of plunder and outrage and massacre, making the smiling
campagna a hell. But these were without concentration or discipline,
and as ready, when the lust had bitten in, to torture Italians as
French.

And, in the meanwhile, courier after courier, racing to the palace
with distorted legends, finished the last self-control of the king,
and drove him near morning to order out his carriage for Naples.

Even then, as he went thundering by the dark fields and long
glimmerings of the dawn, I was beside him. He would not part with
me--with “his councillor, his dear little nurse”--but lavished upon me
the wildest eulogies, the most reckless promises, while entreating me
all the time to sit tight against him, for his better sense of
security in the event of his dosing. And when he _did_ dose, and fell
upon me--good Lord! it was a nightmare, like having a mattress for a
quilt, and with a voice! If his nod had failed to shake Olympus, his
snore might have uprooted it.

Long before we reached the capital, the signs of a coming anarchy were
increasing about us most wild and threatening. Swarms of excited
countryfolk; strings of hard-driven carts loaded with household
furniture, shedding a tithe of their contents, to be crashed over or
spun aside by other pursuing wheels; haggard soldiers sobbing
children; cries, threats, _vivas_, furious banter--all went sweeping
in one flurry of uproar and motion towards the gates. Sometimes, when
we were recognised, it would be to a shout of jubilation: “_Ohi! O me
beato!_ It is our king, our father, come to tell us the devils are
singed and scattered!” Sometimes it was to a vision of black menace,
that surged up, and showed a moment at the windows, and dropped behind
in a wake of curses; more often it was to evoke a scattering volley of
laughter, that broke into a regular sing-song refrain: “_Venne, vide e
fuggì, venne, vide e fuggì!_ He came, he saw, he fled! Way for
Cæsar, way for Cæsar, who marches for Rome hind-first!” The
frightened, sweating postilions scourged their sweating cattle,
struggling to escape these gadflies, who nevertheless only clung and
stung and sung the thicker. But at last we won through, and were in
the city, and whipping for the royal palace through denser agitated
crowds, which still, through a prescriptive respect, offered no
effective bar to our progress.

I will not say but that throughout this ordeal my blood did not come
and go the quicker. I will swear, at the same time, that I was always
more exhilarated than terrified. To be quit of my weary exile; to find
myself in the thick of events once more; best, to know that I had won
to active co-operation in my revenge the most powerful instrument of
all--these, at least, were a sufficient offset to the perils I must
encounter in my race to realise them. And it ended to our credit, when
all had been said and sung. We reached in safety the Palazzo Reale,
where were being enacted, in a more massed and vehement form, the
scenes of Caserta. The king, holding to my hand, drove a way for us,
with kicks and curses, through the throng.

“Her Majesty!” he yelled.

She was in her apartments, to which he hurried me, scattering maids of
honour like fowls. He shut the door upon her and me and himself alone.

“My love!” he said.

She was in like pass with himself. She was going up and down,
muttering entreaties to the saints, her stays stuck full of prayers
and pious ejaculations writ on scraps of paper. Every now and again
she would pluck out one of these in a spasm, dip it in a plate of
broth that stood on a table, and swallow it.

“My soul!” murmured the king.

She noticed us all in a moment, and stopped dead.

“Who are you?” she demanded witheringly.

“Angel of my heart, don’t you know your lord?”

She advanced quickly, and whipped him this way and that. He was still
in Ascoli’s clothes.

“Is this all they have left of you, you poor rag of royalty?”

He tried a little bluster.

“How now, madam! I adopted it for a disguise.”

“What!” she said, “by revealing yourself? I should have thought that
one exposure had been enough.”

“Hush!” he said, perspiring; “there is a witness.”

“One!” she cried; “the whole nation!” and she left him for me.

“What do _you_ do here?” she demanded.

The king put in a word.

“I bring you your physician, madam--our physician. If it had not been
for her, your Ferdinando would have lost his mind.”

“Better that than his kingdom,” she answered bitterly, and stood
scowling on me. “I understand, madam, I understand. I called you
Circe, and not, it seems, without excellent reason.”

“I was persuaded, madam,” I said, raising my head. “My honour is as
precious to me as your Majesty’s. If you have no further use for me, I
beg your permission to withdraw.”

At which, if you will believe me, this stormy queen ran to a chair,
and flinging herself down on it, began to weep violently.

“I am deserted of all,” she cried; “in the hour of my tribulation they
all forsake and disown me.”

The king skipped to her and fell on his knees before.

“My soul,” he wept, “all is not yet lost. General Mack”--

“General post,” she snapped. “What do you know of your own city, or of
the anarchy that reigns in it? It only needed this spark to the mine.
All _is_ lost, I tell you. They are clamouring for a republic. We
shall be sacrificed like the King of France and my sister to the fury
of the Jacobins--I feel the knife at my neck--O! O!”

She rose in a frenzy of horror, shuffling her billets like cards to
find a trump. “Gennaro, Valentino, Jeromio?” she whispered tearfully,
and ended by making a sippet of the hermit. He was old and a
misogynist. It was evident for some moments that he disagreed with
her.

“Nothing remains to us,” she said at last, with a wry gulp, “but
flight. We have foreseen it for days. For days, while you have been
playing with tin trumpets, we have been transferring our royal effects
to the ships: pictures, plate, jewels; the specie from the banks; the
last soldi from the treasury. We have seen to everything, I and my
sweet darling Emma, my only, truest, and best of friends. Nelson but
awaits our signal to take us on board. You must give it him, at once,
for this night, do you hear?”

“I will send a message by Ferreri,” said the king, rising, with a face
as scared now as her own. “I will send Ferreri at once,” and he
skipped to leave the room.

“Stay!” she cried, in agitation. “Be sure to bind him to the last
privacy.”

“O, poor me!” said the king, with a spasm of a smile. “Must I then
cheat my excise by smuggling my own orders through?”

“It is no time for fooling,” cried his angry spouse. “My God! do you
not understand? Whether our plan should be suspected by Lazzari or
Jacobins, the result would be the same. To the one it would mean
desertion; to the other escape. They would combine at least to
frustrate it.”

He stared, nodded sagely, and this time stole away on tiptoe, so that
the Lazzari in the square should not hear him, I suppose. I was
following, when the queen stopped me. Her expression in the act had
fallen a little piteous, like that of a smiling saint sitting on
spikes.

“Has Circe, then, no ministrations for the anguished of her own sex?”
she asked.

I hurried to her. “O, madam!” I cried, “if I might serve _you_ alone!”

Nevertheless, the whole present prospect dismayed me. Whither was it
their scheme to remove the court, and for how long? and in the
meantime, what Government was to represent it? I had immutably ranged
myself against my former party, burning my boats behind me. What, now,
if that party were to triumph, as I had already seen it triumph wholly
and tragically elsewhere? The tables of vengeance would be a trifle
turned, I thought.

However, I gained some reassurance on this point from de’ Medici, upon
whom, in the midst of a distracted rush and scurry, I stumbled in the
course of the afternoon.

“Hush!” he replied to my question. “Whisper it not in Gath. You are
indiscreet, most beautiful. Listen: _if_ we go, it will be but as a
fowler withdraws from his nets, that the foolish birds may fly more
confident into the lure.”

_If_ we go! An event which happened in the morning resolved that
question for ever. Ferreri, the poor courier, was hardly sent on his
message (luckily a verbal one) when the suspecting mob fell upon him,
dragged him all torn and bleeding to the palace square, and there,
with savage cries: “A spy! a Jacobin spy,” despatched him with their
knives before the very eyes of the king, whom they had insisted should
be witness to this proof of their loyalty. The poor monarch tottered
back aghast into our midst; and from that moment the end was sure.

As the day waned, the confusion in the palace waxed indescribable.
Tendency, no doubt, there was in the seeming chaos: I, as a stranger,
could do no more than commit myself blindly to the stream, resolved in
one matter alone--that I would not remain stranded and left behind.
All questions of precedence but in flight--of etiquette, of privacy
even--were blown to the winds. We were become a mere commonwealth of
terror. Great ladies issued puffing and lumbering from their
apartments, their arms loaded with goods and dresses, which they
tripped over like clowns as they ran; nervous warriors got entangled
in their swords, and lay gasping on their backs like dying fish. I
never laughed so much or so hysterically in my life. With all but the
almighty family itself it was _sauve qui peut_; and I was beginning to
formulate my own desperate plans, when de’ Medici whispered quick in
my ear--

“Follow me without seeming to!”

It had been impossible in that frantic crowd, had not my wits already
noted his every trick and mannerism. Fortunate in being utterly
unencumbered, I pursued the shadow. It led me by intricate ways, out
of the light into darkness, out of the tumult into silence, by a back
passage through the arsenal, and so down to the waterside, where a
little boat with dusk figures was waiting. Without ceremony we tumbled
in, and sat panting.

“Any more?” said a voice in my own good English tongue.

De’ Medici answered in the negative.

“Give way, men!” cried the officer sharply.

In an instant we were speeding for the bay. The lights quivered and
shrunk behind us; the uproar attenuated, and was drawn out to a
murmur. Yard by yard there swelled up before our eyes vast
ribbon-girded bulks, that rocked lazily on the tide, tracing intricate
patterns with their masts among the stars. To one of these, the
greatest, we galloped, and came round with a surge and hollow lap of
water under its quarter. The next moment we were aboard the
_Vanguard_.




 XXIX.
 I STILL KNOW HOW TO WAIT

I sing Palermo, “_la felice_,” the languorous, the sunny, the lotus
island to all shipwrecked mariners. O, those five days in the gulf!--a
hundred hours in which to think of nothing but one’s crimes, and one’s
mistake, saving the sinfulness, in not having been born a mermaid. I
declare I was not ill myself, except in the illness of others; but to
hear the groaning of the ship’s ribs mimicked a hundredfold by the
straining ribs of my companions was an eternal bone in my throat. As a
canary sings the louder the more we talk, so, as the ship talked, the
more fervent rose all round the chaunt of suffering--

“O, San Gennaro, grant it passage! O, Santa Maria, I can give no more;
you have it all! Father of pity, I am like a squeezed wineskin!”

Then, perhaps, from Lady Hamilton, mistaking, in her prostration, the
steward for the admiral: “O, my dear lord! though I cannot rise to
thank you, believe me that for all you have done my heart goes out to
you.” To which the honest sailor would respond, “Give it went, mum,
and take the basin.”

In truth it seemed the stars fought against us with the sea. The
_Vanguard_ itself was none too big a vessel. She was what they call, I
believe, a seventy-four with two tiers of guns--not a first-rater. I
saw her commander sometimes, in the glimpses of the moon. He was not
utterly impervious himself to the calls of the deep. His right arm was
gone, and the sleeve pinned to his breast. He had a gentle, sober
face, blind of one eye, and the scar of a late healed wound on his
forehead. Casually met, I should have taken him for a little mild
professor, who had once said Bo to a goose and been well pecked for
his pains.

We had weighed anchor on the 22nd, and at once run into baffling
winds. The day before, the king had received on board a deputation
mixed of the marine, the city, and representatives of the Lazzari, who
were all aghast to learn that His Majesty projected a withdrawal to
his Sicilian capital. He was very short with them. When facts should
reassure him of their loyalty, he said, he would return. In the
meantime, he left General Pignatelli (a poor bemused creature) as his
regent to restore order. He said nothing of his wholesale plunder of
the public funds, and was only in a perspiration to escape before it
should be discovered. Then he went below, having lighted and flung
ashore the brand which was to set the city blazing.

And the following day we sailed for Palermo, in a vessel as full of
royal livestock as if it had been a training ship for kings. Besides
their Majesties, and as many of their progeny as they could recollect
at the moment, there were on board the ineffable Hamiltons; English
Acton, their minister and the queen’s lover; princes of the blood
Castelcicala and Belmonte, and a few others of condition. Amongst us
all, from the first, there was little affectation of state, and none
of stateliness. It was just a scurry and tumble--an encumbering mass
of royalty, in the thick of which the unhappy crew were hard put to it
to find quarters. One of the poor children even died of sickness; and
the queen screamed lamentations over it whenever she could recall its
name.

At length, more dead than alive, we were all pitchforked ashore out of
a battered hulk, and carried piecemeal through the city to the old
fortified palace at its southernmost end, where, for the next seven
months, was to be enacted the royal intermezzo in the tragedy of
Naples.

Those months passed livelily enough for me. The king, what time he
could spare from his hunting and fishing and the building of a new
country lodge, was quite my devoted servant, paying my gambling
debts--when it sometimes grew beyond my own power to liquidate
them--and assigning me the new post, fruit of his own incomparable
invention, of stillroom maid to his royal person. He was not really a
bad-hearted man; and, if he could only have accomplished his eternal
wish to be left alone, and not bothered while others were arranging
his affairs for him, would probably have resumed his Neapolitan
dominions without vindictive bloodshed, when the way was once paved
and swept level for him.

We heeded little (I except, in one main question, myself) the volcanic
throes which were wrenching that doomed town across the water while we
feasted and played. While Lazzaro and Jacobin, each dominant in his
turn, were flushing the kennels with blood; while imperious Nelson,
now promoted to his _Foudroyant_, was circling and swooping on and
off, issuing edicts, arrogating to himself the lead, in infatuated
touch all the time with his substantial mistress; while the French
were planting the Tree of Liberty in the palace square, and giving
birth, amidst song and jubilation, to the new republic; while,
following their withdrawal, Cardinal Ruffo was descending, with his
brutish swarms, upon the fated walls, which he was destined to retake
in the king’s name, the king himself was absorbed in ombre or
lansquenet, chuckling over charades, playing practical jokes upon the
most reverend Spanish señors of the place, guzzling and drinking, and
in every lazy way luxuriating in an utter self-abandonment to
pleasure.

And indeed, in that wine-soft climate, there were many temptations to
him as to us all. We were like Boccaccio’s company, forgathered out of
range of the plague, and telling stories to pass the time. The
similarity of our condition, in fact, gave me an idea. I set my wits
to work, and became a public _raconteuse_. I invented and told in
those days more tales than I can remember, but a selection from which
the curious may find included in my _Des Royautés Depouillées_,
first published in Paris in 1806.

The series became so popular, that poor Mrs. Hart found her nose quite
put out of joint in the matter of her own contributions to the fund of
gaiety. She might flop and pose like the most enormous of Greek
goddesses; she might assail our ears with her voice, for she had still
the remains of a very handsome one; or our hearts with her faculty for
mimicry, which, being ill-natured, went deeper. Once my début was
made, she must be content to play second fiddle; and that did not suit
her at all. The result was a coldness towards me, which, by inevitable
process, led to my disgrace with herself and her royal mistress, and
my dependence, as much for my interests as my safety, upon the favour
of the king. The court, in fact, became divided into the party of
Diana and the party of Emma, and was much more concerned over our
rivalry than over the ultimate destinies of the kingdom.

It mattered little to me, so long as I could keep the interest alive
until the moment when my vengeance on a certain couple should be a
_fait accompli_. That once executed, the two Sicilies, for all I
cared, might disappear under the sea. O, believe me that Nicola
Pissani did an ill thing when he loosed an insulted mistress on his
track!

It is not to be supposed that throughout those idle months I had once
lost sight of my purpose, or had failed to inform myself, through de’
Medici, of the real progress of events. And when at last the end came,
and Ruffo with his bloody Calabrians was master of the city, and the
republic had collapsed like a rotten hoarding, I prepared my hands for
their share of the price to be exacted, and laughed to think how great
a fool he had been who claimed to represent Reason by yielding his
soul to the passion of a foolish face.

Now, at this end, Naples had become a shambles. Shot and fire and
sharp steel, butchery and festering wounds and starvation, had left of
the “patriot” hosts but a little mean swarm, that rotted out its
remnant life in the prisons, awaiting the holocaust. Pissani and all
his high hopes were scattered. The gods had no desire to be worshipped
by Reason, missing their perquisites, as this “long-legged Hebe” might
well at the first have assured Liberty’s apostles, if they had not
been at the pains to discard her. She had been in Paris; had seen
Reason sit in the churches; had heard the millennium proclaimed, and
Olympus echo laughter. And what had been the result? Not till the
temples of superstition were razed in all the lands, not till Reason
sat in the fields, would the first glimmer of that golden dawn appear.
This she knew from the table-talk whispers of the new race, which had
decreed the old Titan Nature a vulgarity, and, having overthrown it in
the common hearts of men, dreaded nothing but the destruction of the
countless schools of sophistry on which its own lease of dominion
depended. And I, who had preached, who had been ardent again to preach
their crusade against a detestable lie, had been insulted by these
wise reformers, and been driven back to pour headstrong wine to the
gods of rank desire, and help them to hold the world a market to their
passions! O, Pissani had done well indeed!

And yet he was not among the captured.

One day, near the finish, de’ Medici accosted me alone in the palace
gardens. It was mid-June, and the scent of roses was thick in the air.
I looked in his face, and, for all the warmth and fragrance, my heart
was winter.

“He still baffles you, monsieur?”

“Most beautiful, the man is a fox, or perhaps already a ghost.”

“Go on. You have something else to say.”

A stealthy smile creased his mouth.

“Keen as thou art fair. Know, then, that his wife is in our hands.”

“Again, go on,” I whispered. I could hardly breathe.

“We found her like a little torn rat in a sewer--ragged, half
starved.” He gulped, and looked up with a pallid grin. “Have I not
deserved? It is the better half of the bargain. Vouchsafe me my reward
in advance.”

I paid no heed to his question, asking him only--

“Where is she?”

“In the Carmine.”

“And a hostage?”

He shivered, and hung his head.

“I understand you, madam,” he muttered. “But she is dumb to all our
questions, to all our threats.”

I turned away with a laugh.

“And you are a humane man, monsieur, and a susceptible. Well, it is
not for me to teach the inquisitor his trade.”

“Understand,” I said, facing round once more, “that I cannot rest, or
live, or love, while this remains unaccomplished.”

He did not answer; but, standing irresolute a moment, shrugged his
shoulders and left me.

But I knew at last that the moment was near.


On the 22nd of that same month the penalties of rivalry were ended for
Lady Hamilton by the arrival, in the _Foudroyant_, of the Lord
Admiral, who came to transport his mistress to Naples, as Her
Majesty’s deputy in the latest Reign of Terror inaugurated in that
capital.

A fortnight later the king himself, taking me with him as his simpler
and nerve-doctor, and leaving the amiable English Ambassador behind to
play dry-nurse to his queen in Palermo--followed in the _Sea Horse_,
which, after a short fair passage, anchored in the bay. Thence, rather
to my annoyance, we were transhipped no farther than to the
_Foudroyant_--his mightiness being timid for the moment of venturing
into his distracted city--and, there, were scarcely on board before my
services were called into requisition in an odd enough connection.

The king--Nelson and his _cara sposa_ being gone ashore--was looking
idly out seawards over the taffrail of the quarter-deck, and
chattering desultorily with members of his suite behind him, when he
broke off abruptly to stare under his palm at some object in the
water, which, first seen at a distance, grew rapidly nearer, drifting
with the tide upon the ship. Then, in an instant, he gave a hoarse
scream; and, seeing him pointing and articulating confusedly, we all
ran to the side, and followed with our eyes the direction of his hand.

“_Vátene!_” he shrieked: “_è Caracciolo!_” and he shuddered down, so
that nothing but his nose and goggle eyes were peeping over the
railing.

I held my breath, staring fascinated, while the others echoed his cry:
“_Caracciolo! è Caracciolo! O me miserábile, Caracciolo!_” in a
dozen accents of terror.

I had heard of the poor scapegoat admiral,[2] whom Nelson--always
bearing a grudge against him for his better seamanship--had caused ten
days before to be hanged with every refinement of savagery, and
afterwards flung into the water. Now risen, it seemed, from its first
sleep on the floor of the bay, the sopt and dreary spectre was come
riding to sear the eyeballs of the master, whom it had failed to serve
only through being deeper pledged to humanity. Fouling our hawser, the
body swung upright, bobbing and reeling as if it were treading water.
Its hair and long beard swayed on its cheeks; its dead stiff eyes
stared unwinking in the spray; its arms were flung wide, as if
inviting its destroyer to a mocking embrace. Turning a moment, it
drifted loose, and went dancing towards the shore, where the poor
fishermen of Santa Lucia, who had loved the man, were to find and give
it Christian burial.

The king staggered back.

“Mother of saints!” he sobbed, “what does the creature want?”

“Sire,” whispered a voice, “he asks for a consecrated grave.”

“Give it him, give it him!” gasped His Majesty, and signed to me to
follow him below, where, however, I was not long in laying his
“horrors.”

“_Enfin, mon père_,” I said, “the man, by his appearance, was only
asking your forgiveness.”

“Magnificent,” he answered, with a shaky laugh. “He was certainly in
need of it”--and he turned to me gratefully, but with a rather scared
look.

“Little agent of Providence, if thou hast ever a poor friend thou
wouldst save in the dark time coming, ask of my Majesty’s mercy, and
it will listen. There may be some who err through the mind’s nobility.
Of that I know nothing; only--only, I would have something to balance
my possible mistakes.”

It was true enough, though the blood-lust was not long in mastering
him, when once, without risk to himself, he could taste the spice of
vengeance. Even while he spoke the depleting of the gaols and
prison-ships was begun, and the hurried trials, and the false
testimony, and the hangings. And the wail of the thousand doomed was
already mingling itself in the streets with the roar of a grand State
lottery, when at last we could venture ashore and to safe quarters in
the reconsecrated palace.

We were all triumphant then, or about to be. I remember the last night
we spent on the _Foudroyant_. It was a full moon; and, seated under an
awning on the upper deck, Lady Hamilton sang “Rule Britannia,” with a
cockney fervour which must have pierced reassuringly to the ears of
the poor wretches imprisoned behind the floating walls that surrounded
us. She was always so much more than equal to the occasion, was Emma.




 XXX.
 I AM JUSTIFIED IN MY POLICY

It was a dark and gusty night when I issued forth with de’ Medici
from a side door of the palace.

“She is condemned,” he had whispered to me a minute earlier.

A needle of ice had seemed to enter my heart. The question my lips
could not ask had flown to my eyes. Comprehending it, he had caught at
his throat and lolled out his tongue grotesquely. To the same dumb
inquisitors he had answered, as confidently as if I had spoken,
“To-morrow.”

Then I had found my voice, as if after a fit of choking--

“And she has not spoken?”

“And she has not spoken.”

He had hesitated, before suggesting deprecatingly, “There remains only
to make your appeal to her in person.”

I had struck my hands together, hearing that.

“You might have forced her, had you chosen. Now, leaving it to me, our
bargain is dissolved.”

“Madonna, you will not so requite my faithful services?”

“I will answer nothing till I have seen her.”

“Then what time like now?” he had replied desperately, “when she sits
buried alive in the darkness, with the spectre of to-morrow whispering
in her ear.”

“It is well spoken, then. I will go.”

The town was so full of reek and passion, that, most in the low
quarters it was necessary for us to traverse, I doubt if I could have
survived without him. But he was too well known and feared to leave my
safety much in question. Then the Lazzari and their allies of the
conquering army were such sworn blood-brothers, that it needed never
more than the smallest bone of dispute to set either tearing at the
other’s throat, whereby a flying petticoat, circumnavigating both, was
able to avoid shipwreck between. Indeed, we had committed more than
one red scrimmage to our wake by the time we were arrived, breathless
but whole, at the door of the Carmine.

A roar and drift of torches surged upon us from a side alley at the
moment that we reached our goal. Here was a wave of passion broken
from the main wastes, and bearing forward on its crest a single victim
to its fury, whom it seemed about to fling against the sullen walls of
the prison. He was a mere boy, and his face as white as wax. By the
door stood a Calabrese sentry, armed with a musket and a great sabre,
and a rose in his hand, the gift thorn and all of some amorous
_contadina_. As the boy was hurled up the steps, “Smell to this, poor
lad,” said he; “art faint?”--and he thrust the rose violently against
the victim’s nostrils. The poor wretch staggered back, uttering a
horrible scream, his face bathed in blood. There had been a long pin
concealed among the petals, which had stung him almost to the brain. I
am not sentimental, but I shall hope some day to be to that Calabrese
in the relation of Lazarus to Dives. The mob, however, roared laughter
over the jest, clapping their victim with a certain good-humour on the
back, as we were all carried together in a confused struggle up the
steps and into a vaulted stone hall beyond.

This stronghold, massive and mediæval, had only lately been the scene
of the treacherous massacre of a patriot garrison, and its stones were
yet mapped and mottled with the story of the deed. And since, being
made a State butchery, without regard to accommodation or cleanliness,
from every carrion Jacobin, it seemed, had emerged a living swarm,
predestined children of the grave, who haunted the corridors with
unclean cries, and showed ghastly visions of wounds and suffering at
the grates as we hurried by. It was a catacomb, in whose rotting lanes
of stone walked a hundred vampires, gloating over their huddled pens
of victims.

Typical of the worst was the gaoler who, at de’ Medici’s summons, had
risen to attend us. This was a creature, like an obscene lank bird,
who hopped before us chuckling and pecking forward with his long nose,
as if as he went he sought the corners for offal. At his waist jingled
a bunch of keys, and often he cracked, after the Italian habit, a
thong of leather with a lash which he carried in one hand, his other
being occupied in holding aloft a flaring taper. He led us by a
descending passage, so narrow and so low that the flame of his torch
made sooty blotches on the roof as he advanced, into a murmuring
drain, at whose termination he at length paused before a door sunk in
the wall.

“_Guái a lei_, Messer de’ Medici,” he chuckled, as, groping for the
lock, he leered round at us. “Wait till, having opened, I can block
the passage. There is another here besides our little bird.”

“Another?”

“Courage, most excellent; ’tis but half a man when all’s said. He was
a State prisoner in the Vicaria, until the mob released him with the
rest. Then he disappeared, God knew whither; but he was retaken, with
a few more, in the prisoner Pissani’s company. Well then, his day will
come, no doubt; and in the meantime, waiting orders, we keep them
caged together.”

De’ Medici grunted, rubbing his chin, “I should have been told; but,
hurry, friend.”

The man waved him back.

“Let me entreat messer, in case of an attempt.”

The chief withdrew a little.

“Open, and come thou too,” said he. “Madam would speak alone with the
condemned.”

The key grated in the lock; the creature flung wide the door.

“Pissani!” cried he, on a sharp note; and that was all.

Even as he retreated, having uttered his cry, she stood in the
opening. A dank and mortal odour came with her, a reel of filthy
darkness unbroken but by the dim splotch of a tiny grating, which, set
in the wall opposite, made an aureole behind her head as she stood.

God of mercy! It was a spectre from which I shrunk in instinctive
loathing. Had it ever been one with beauty, and with me? Its very
tattered gown seemed fallen into harsh, lean folds. Love must have
trodden, not sat, in those hollow eyes, so to discolour and bury them.
It was a just retribution--the more providential in that so squalid a
vision sickened my heart from sympathy.

Yet, to break this withered reed! It seemed a despicable task for my
strong hands. They must withhold a little, caress a little first, with
whatever reluctance to themselves. Nevertheless, I could not but be
conscious how forced and artificial rung the tenderness I sought to
convey into my voice.

“Patty--Patty Grant! I have come to offer you life and liberty!”

The tiny smile that broke then from her lips was my first earnest of
her reality. The sigh she gave was such as a dead sleeper might yield
to the dawn of Judgment. Yet she did not move, or come to me, or show
one sign of the collapse I had expected and calculated on. And, as the
light of the flaring taper fell upon her figure, a new hate and
loathing surged in me, so that the persuasiveness with which I sought
to dress my tones shivered into a mockery of itself--

“Did you not expect me? Did you not know that I hold your life in my
hands?”

“Else why should you have left me to come to this, Diana?”

I shrunk back. What new knowledge of herself, or me, was implied in
the chords of that wasted voice? Yet she smiled still, like one waking
out of a frightful dream.

“Is it not strange, Diana, this end to all we have known and
experienced together? Do you remember the sundial, and the old green
garden, and the nuns in the sleepy village? We are Englishwomen, after
all, Diana. I should like to rest in England.”

“It lies with yourself,” I answered, half choking. “You have but to
speak--I tell you, it needs but a word from you, and all this false
sacrifice is passed by and forgotten.”

Her eyes had been fixed on some vision beyond me. Now in a moment they
were scorching my soul.

“Yes,” she said, “and the word?”

The shame of its utterance should be mine, she meant. If I had shrunk
from the challenge, it would have been to discredit my claim to the
greater wrong.

“Where your husband lies hidden?” I said, with a cold fury at my
heart.

“God forgive you,” she answered only, and fell back.

Her assumption of the holier strength, of the worser grievance, stung
me to madness. I leapt and clutched her by the wrist.

“Fool!” I shrieked; “do you know what you are bringing on yourself? Do
you know how they will kill you? It is not, as in Paris, a shock, and
a sob, and forgetfulness. They will push you from a ladder, and one
will spring and swing himself by your feet, and another leap upon your
shoulders, and squat there like a hideous toad, making sport for the
crowd. And you will be minutes choking and dying, and not one to pity
or relieve you!”

Her eyes had a smile of agony in them; but still it was a smile, and I
could have torn myself in my impotence to change it.

“Ah, yes, one!” she said; “my little unborn baby.”

I sprang back.

“Wretch! Your obstinacy murders it!”

“It gives its life for its father!”

Without sound or warning, she sank at my feet, and lay motionless, her
white face turned upward.

A harsh jest was uttered at my shoulder.

“Bravo! It is so they always think to sport with our feelings. But we
have an infallible medicine”--and the gaoler, coming from behind me,
cut across the senseless face with his whip.

With a roar, a figure bounded out of the darkness of the cell, and
whirling long arms about the beast, fell with and upon him, and
battered out his brains upon the stone floor. It all passed in a
moment; and in that moment I knew my lost monster again, gaunt and
foul and tattered, yet even in his wasted strength a god, and
glorious. Then against a coming tumult and scurry of feet I flung my
body.

“Back!” I shrieked; “the king gives me a life! I claim his--do you
hear? If by a hair it is injured, the bitter worse for you all!”


Sobbing, burning, in a flurry of passion, I threw myself, an hour
later in the palace, at the king’s knees.

“Sire,” I cried, “I claim your royal promise. I ask mercy for a
friend.”

Taken off his guard, bewitched, perhaps, “It is granted,” he said.

Then he recovered himself, and laughed, and patted my shoulder.

“_Enfin_,” he said; “what has he done?”

“He has killed a gaoler who was ill-treating a prisoner.”

He startled, frowned, then laughed again, but less easily.

“O, well,” he said, “a gaoler is no great matter. But I must know his
name first.”

“Sire, it is my own servant Gogo, that you have robbed me of this long
time.”

“O, him!” he said, relieved. “Well, perhaps, after all, we owe him a
gaoler or two.”




 XXXI.
 I KNOW MY OWN HEART

I had hardly got into the street before a hand touched my arm. I
turned and saw Gogo.

“It was you,” he said, “won my deliverance this morning?”

“Yes.”

“From the king?”

“From the king.”

He said not a word more. I questioned him in my turn.

“I sent you a message by the courier. Why did you not come direct to
me?”

“I had business first. I answered, ‘If you will tell her that I will
witness for her and bring my report this evening, she will
understand.’”

“I understood nothing but that you were in no hurry to thank me.”

He made no reply.

“It is only after a struggle with my pride, sir,” I continued, “that I
am here to keep your appointment. I think, perhaps, your business
might have kept better.”

“Do you? Well, perhaps, after all, you have a shallow wit.”

I looked at him in dumb amaze. We were loitering on, to me aimlessly,
though I knew presently how all the time he had been rigidly enforcing
our direction. The city was in its hottest night-fever of excitement
over the executions that had taken place that day, in a mood already
too monstrous to take much heed of the shock and tattered prodigy that
stumped by my side. Once, passing a group, I caught a name, and
startled, and was hurrying on; but he snatched my wrist, and forced me
to linger, absorbing horror to the dregs. I knew his temper by that,
and to what I had delivered myself; but I never feared him so much as
when he would not speak.

“Gogo,” I whispered suddenly, “you will give me credit for having
known nothing of your state all this time. Whenever I asked M. de’
Medici, he assured me of your comfort and prosperity. I am not to
blame if he is a cursed liar.”

He did not answer.

“The moment I could,” I said, trembling, “I begged your life. It is
the dearest of all I know to me. Are you going to punish me for that?”

Still no answer.

“O!” I said, with a little rally to anger, “if you will not thank me,
at least you might say whether or not you received my enclosure this
morning?”

“The money?” he muttered. “Yes, I received it.”

I was moved to a little agitated laughter.

“Is everything poisonous that comes from my hands? If you had spent a
little of it on food and clothes, my obligation to you would not have
been the less.”

“I thought you sent it to me to pay your debts.”

“What debts?”

Again that grim silence. I feared him more than I can tell; feared him
so much that no thought of the conquering guile by which I had once
been wont to sway him occurred to me to use. I shivered, and drew my
cloak faster about me, and hurried by his side without another word.

Whither was he bent? By the roaring quays, it seemed, towards the dark
prison from which, only a few hours earlier, she had gone to her
self-elected doom.

“Not there!” I sobbed, struggling--“not there! What good can it do
now?”

But he turned, short of reaching it, to his left, into a street
leading to the great square adjoining, where the gallows was erected;
and here, under the shadow of the fortress, stood a church with a
lofty tower. Stopping at a door which opened into the base of this
last, he tapped three times; and in a moment it yawned, and engulfed
us, and the tumult of the living town was become in our ears like the
murmur of the sea in a dead cavern.

Our guide, taper in hand, went on before us. The sound of our
footsteps reeled and laughed behind, echoing up to unknown altitudes.
Ward of that little star of radiance, I had no terror so great as that
of its flashing away and committing me to the shadows that seemed
always dancing and clutching for me outside its circumference. And
then suddenly we were come to a narrow iron gate set in the stone, and
to the cowled, motionless figure of a monk who stood thereby.

Without a word uttered by this spectre, the folds of its robe
contracted, and a long white hand was thrust forth palm upwards. Gogo
put a purse into it.

“Bear witness, Diana,” he said, in a low voice, that boomed and
clanged among the stones, “that I deliver the account of my
stewardship to the last penny.”

I was sobbing dreadfully, moved by some terror that had in it,
nevertheless, no thought of evil intended by him to myself.

“You will take nothing from me?” I gasped.

He addressed the monk.

“It is enough?”

The cowled head bent.

“Then let us through, father, and alone.”

The grate clanked. He gripped my arm, and, seizing the taper from the
sacristan, led me down a long flight of steps, through a low doorway,
into a crypt. And there, on the damp ground, full in our view, was
something lying, and a sheet over.

“No, no!” I screamed. “You have tortured me enough already!”

Never releasing my arm, he set the taper in a crevice, and dragged me
to the dreadful bed.

“What!” he said, “are you afraid to look on your work?”

And, pinning me forcibly, he bent and drew the cloth away. And side by
side with the other, I saw the dead face of Pissani.

Without a word, I sank down where I stood, and he fell back from me.

“O, woman!” he cried, in a terrible voice, “that you could talk of
your pride, with this lying at your heart!”

He clasped his hands, and unclasped them, and struck his forehead, and
again writhed them together, as if his grief baffled him from speech.
Dragging my body towards him, I huddled cowering at his feet.

“What!” he cried; “no word? no word?”

I moaned, and moved my head in negative.

“Grant he stabbed himself under the gallows,” he said, “since he found
he could not look on her agony and live. Are you the more guiltless of
his death?”

Again I shook my head.

“At least they are together,” he cried. “By so much you did them
service, sending her first. But the price, woman, the price!”

I rose, blind, staggering, to my feet.

“It was my honour. I will go and pay it, and die.”

He caught at and held me.

“To whom?”

“To de’ Medici. Let me go. Only you could have saved me, and you will
not; and it is right.”

Never quitting his hold, he turned from me, with a wild gesture of his
free arm.

“It was her life or yours,” I said. “Make it my curse, if you will,
that I chose the dearer to me.”

With a mad groan, he snatched me from my feet, and, holding me
fiercely against his breast, carried me out and to the foot of the
steps.

 [The End]




 NOTES.

 [1]
 #Diana Please# Born _circa_ 1770.

 [2]
 #scapegoat admiral# The unhappy patriot Caracciolo, whose hurried
 execution at the yardarm of the _Minerva_ raised such a storm of
 mingled protest and justification at the time. Madame Please’s
 insinuation must be accepted, if at all, as characteristic; yet there
 is no denying that Caracciolo’s court-martial (on a charge of
 deserting his king; to which the culprit pleaded very reasonably that
 it was his king who had deserted him), conviction by a narrow margin
 of votes, vindictive sentence, and hasty despatch thereon, afforded
 the great captain’s enemies the means to as unpleasant an indictment
 as any they could bring against his conduct of this unhappy Naples
 business.




 TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES.

Minor spelling inconsistencies (_e.g._ caldron/cauldron,
counterbuff/counter-buff, gravel-pit/gravel pit, etc.) have been
preserved.

Text version only: “#” is used to indicate bolded text.

Alterations to the text:

Convert footnotes to endnotes.

Silently correct a few punctuation errors (quotation mark pairings,
missing periods, etc.)

[Introductory]

Change “so often mentioned in the text, from the _slavic_” to
_Slavic_.

[Chapter VIII]

(“She is _grern_ ... She is become, it _appe-ars_,) to _grown_
and _appears_, respectively.

[Chapter IX]

(“Why, you old _de-ar_?” said he.) to _dear_.

[Chapter XVII]

“then, suddenly _panicstruck_, groped for the table” to
_panic-struck_.

[Chapter XXIV]

“and, _unfortuntely_, the disease was in the head” to _unfortunately_.

“At _anyrate_ she, in company with Mademoiselle” to _any rate_.

 [End of text]



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