PART THE SECOND. 

PROLOGUE TO PART THE SECOND. 

The century has advanced. The rush of the deluge has ebbed back; the oldlandmarks have reappeared; the dynasties Napoleon willed into life havecrumbled to the dust; the plough has passed over Waterloo; autumn afterautumn the harvests have glittered on that grave of an empire. Throughthe immense ocean of universal change we look back on the single trackwhich our frail boat has cut through the waste. As a star shinesimpartially over the measureless expanse, though it seems to gild but onebroken line into each eye, so, as our memory gazes on the past, the lightspreads not over all the breadth of the waste where nations have battledand argosies gone down, --it falls narrow and confined along the singlecourse we have taken; we lean over the small raft on which we float, andsee the sparkles but reflected from the waves that it divides. 

On the terrace at Laughton but one step paces slowly. The bride clingsnot now to the bridegroom's arm. Though pale and worn, it is still thesame gentle face; but the blush of woman's love has gone from itevermore. 

Charles Vernon (to call him still by the name in which he is best knownto us) sleeps in the vault of the St. Johns. He had lived longer than hehimself had expected, than his physician had hoped, --lived, cheerful andhappy, amidst quiet pursuits and innocent excitements. Three sons hadblessed his hearth, to mourn over his grave. But the two elder weredelicate and sickly. They did not long survive him, and died within afew months of each other. The third seemed formed of a different mouldand constitution from his brethren. To him descended the ancientheritage of Laughton, and he promised to enjoy it long. 

It is Vernon's widow who walks alone in the stately terrace; sad still, for she loved well the choice of her youth, and she misses yet thechildren in the grave. From the date of Vernon's death, she woremourning without and within; and the sorrows that came later broke morethe bruised reed, --sad still, but resigned. One son survives, and earthyet has the troubled hopes and the holy fears of affection. Though thatson be afar, in sport or in earnest, in pleasure or in toil, working outhis destiny as man, still that step is less solitary than it seems. Whendoes the son's image not walk beside the mother? Though she lives inseclusion, though the gay world tempts no more, the gay world is yetlinked to her thoughts. From the distance she hears its murmurs inmusic. Her fancy still mingles with the crowd, and follows on, to hereye, outshining all the rest. Never vain in herself, she is vain now ofanother; and the small triumphs of the young and well-born seem trophiesof renown to the eyes so tenderly deceived. 

In the old-fashioned market-town still the business goes on, still thedoors of the bank open and close every moment on the great day of theweek; but the names over the threshold are partially changed. The juniorpartner is busy no more at the desk; not wholly forgotten, if his namestill is spoken, it is not with thankfulness and praise. A somethingrests on the name, --that something which dims and attaints; not proven, not certain, but suspected and dubious. The head shakes, the voicewhispers; and the attorney now lives in the solid red house at the vergeof the town. 

In the vicarage, Time, the old scythe-bearer, has not paused from hiswork. Still employed on Greek texts, little changed, save that his hairis gray and that some lines in his kindly face tell of sorrows as ofyears, the vicar sits in his parlour; but the children no longer, blithe-voiced and rose-cheeked, dart through the rustling espaliers. Thosechildren, grave men or staid matrons (save one whom Death chose, andtherefore now of all best beloved!) are at their posts in the world. Theyoung ones are flown from the nest, and, with anxious wings, here andthere, search food in their turn for their young. But the blithe voiceand rose-cheek of the child make not that loss which the hearth missesthe most. From childhood to manhood, and from manhood to departure, thenatural changes are gradual and prepared. The absence most missed isthat household life which presided, which kept things in order, and mustbe coaxed if a chair were displaced. That providence in trifles, thatclasp of small links, that dear, bustling agency, --now pleased, nowcomplaining, --dear alike in each change of its humour; that active lifewhich has no self of its own; like the mind of a poet, though its prosebe the humblest, transferring self into others, with its right to becross, and its charter to scold; for the motive is clear, --it takes whatit loves too anxiously to heart. The door of the parlour is open, thegarden-path still passes before the threshold; but no step now has fullright to halt at the door and interrupt the grave thought on Greek texts;no small talk on details and wise sayings chimes in with the wrath of"Medea. " The Prudent Genius is gone from the household; and perhaps asthe good scholar now wearily pauses, and looks out on the silent garden, he would have given with joy all that Athens produced, from Aeschylus toPlato, to hear again from the old familiar lips the lament on tornjackets, or the statistical economy of eggs. 

But see, though the wife is no more, though the children have departed, the vicar's home is not utterly desolate. See, along the same walk onwhich William soothed Susan's fears and won her consent, --see, what fairyadvances? Is it Susan returned to youth? How like! Yet look again, andhow unlike! The same, the pure, candid regard; the same, the clear, limpid blue of the eye; the same, that fair hue of the hair, --light, butnot auburn; more subdued, more harmonious than that equivocal colourwhich too nearly approaches to red. But how much more blooming andjoyous than Susan's is that exquisite face in which all Hebe smilesforth; how much airier the tread, light with health; how much rounder, ifslighter still, the wave of that undulating form! She smiles, her lipsmove, she is conversing with herself; she cannot be all silent, even whenalone, for the sunny gladness of her nature must have vent like a bird's. But do not fancy that that gladness speaks the levity which comes fromthe absence of thought; it is rather from the depth of thought that itsprings, as from the depth of a sea comes its music. See, while shepauses and listens, with her finger half-raised to her lip, as amidstthat careless jubilee of birds she hears a note more grave andsustained, --the nightingale singing by day (as sometimes, though rarely, he is heard, --perhaps because he misses his mate; perhaps because he seesfrom his bower the creeping form of some foe to his race), --see, as shelistens now to that plaintive, low-chanted warble, how quickly the smileis sobered, how the shade, soft and pensive, steals over the brow. It isbut the mystic sympathy with Nature that bestows the smile or the shade. In that heart lightly moved beats the fine sense of the poet. It is theexquisite sensibility of the nerves that sends its blithe play to thosespirits, and from the clearness of the atmosphere comes, warm andethereal, the ray of that light. 

And does the roof of the pastor give shelter to Helen Mainwaring's youth?Has Death taken from her the natural protectors? Those forms which wesaw so full of youth and youth's heart in that very spot, has the graveclosed on them yet? Yet! How few attain to the age of the Psalmist!Twenty-seven years have passed since that date: how often, in thoseyears, have the dark doors opened for the young as for the old! WilliamMainwaring died first, careworn and shamebowed; the blot on his name hadcankered into his heart. Susan's life, always precarious, had struggledon, while he lived, by the strong power of affection and will; she wouldnot die, for who then could console him? But at his death the power gaveway. She lingered, but lingered dyingly, for three years; and then, forthe first time since William's death, she smiled: that smile remained onthe lips of the corpse. They had had many trials, that young couple whomwe left so prosperous and happy. Not till many years after theirmarriage had one sweet consoler been born to them. In the season ofpoverty and shame and grief it came; and there was no pride onMainwaring's brow when they placed his first-born in his arms. By herwill, the widow consigned Helen to the joint guardianship of Mr. Fieldenand her sister; but the latter was abroad, her address unknown, so thevicar for two years had had sole charge of the orphan. She was notunprovided for. The sum that Susan brought to her husband had been longsince gone, it is true, --lost in the calamity which had wrecked WilliamMainwaring's name and blighted his prospects; but Helen's grandfather, the landagent, had died some time subsequent to that event, and, indeed, just before William's death. He had never forgiven his son the stain onhis name, --never assisted, never even seen him since that fatal day; buthe left to Helen a sum of about 8, 000 pounds; for she, at least, wasinnocent. In Mr. Fielden's eyes, Helen was therefore an heiress. Andwho amongst his small range of acquaintance was good enough for her?--notonly so richly portioned, but so lovely, --accomplished, too; for herparents had of late years lived chiefly in France, and languages thereare easily learned, and masters cheap. Mr. Fielden knew but one, whomProvidence had also consigned to his charge, --the supposed son of his oldpupil Ardworth; but though a tender affection existed between the twoyoung persons, it seemed too like that of brother and sister to affordmuch ground for Mr. Fielden's anxiety or hope. 

From his window the vicar observed the still attitude of the young orphanfor a few moments; then he pushed aside his books, rose, and approachedher. At the sound of his tread she woke from her revery and boundedlightly towards him. 

"Ah, you would not see me before!" she said, in a voice in which therewas the slightest possible foreign accent, which betrayed the country inwhich her childhood had been passed; "I peeped in twice at the window. Iwanted you so much to walk to the village. But you will come now, willyou not?" added the girl, coaxingly, as she looked up at him under theshade of her straw hat. 

"And what do you want in the village, my pretty Helen?"

"Why, you know it is fair day, and you promised Bessie that you would buyher a fairing, --to say nothing of me. "

"Very true, and I ought to look in; it will help to keep the poor peoplefrom drinking. A clergyman should mix with his parishioners in theirholidays. We must not associate our office only with grief and sicknessand preaching. We will go. And what fairing are you to have?"

"Oh, something very brilliant, I promise you! I have formed grandnotions of a fair. I am sure it must be like the bazaars we read of lastnight in that charming 'Tour in the East. '"

The vicar smiled, half benignly, half anxiously. "My dear child, it isso like you to suppose a village fair must be an Eastern bazaar. If youalways thus judge of things by your fancy, how this sober world willdeceive you, poor Helen!"

"It is not my fault; ne me grondez pas, mechant, " answered Helen, hangingher head. "But come, sir, allow, at least, that if I let my romance, asyou call it, run away with me now and then, I can still content myselfwith the reality. What, you shake your head still? Don't you rememberthe sparrow?"

"Ha! ha! yes, --the sparrow that the pedlar sold you for a goldfinch; andyou were so proud of your purchase, and wondered so much why you couldnot coax the goldfinch to sing, till at last the paint wore away, and itwas only a poor little sparrow!"

"Go on! Confess: did I fret then? Was I not as pleased with my dearsparrow as I should have been with the prettiest goldfinch that eversang? Does not the sparrow follow me about and nestle on my shoulder, dear little thing? And I was right after all; for if I had not fanciedit a goldfinch, I should not have bought it, perhaps. But now I wouldnot change it for a goldfinch, --no, not even for that nightingale I heardjust now. So let me still fancy the poor fair a bazaar; it is a doublepleasure, first to fancy the bazaar, and then to be surprised at thefair. "

"You argue well, " said the vicar, as they now entered the village; "Ireally think, in spite of all your turn for poetry and Goldsmith andCowper, that you would take as kindly to mathematics as your cousin JohnArdworth, poor lad!

"Not if mathematics have made him so grave, and so churlish, I was goingto say; but that word does him wrong, dear cousin, so kind and so rough!"

"It is not mathematics that are to blame if he is grave and absorbed, "said the vicar, with a sigh; "it is the two cares that gnaw most, --poverty and ambition. "

"Nay, do not sigh; it must be such a pleasure to feel, as he does, thatone must triumph at last!"

"Umph! John must have nearly reached London by this time, " said Mr. Fielden, "for he is a stout walker, and this is the third day since heleft us. Well, now that he is about fairly to be called to the Bar, Ihope that his fever will cool, and he will settle calmly to work. I havefelt great pain for him during this last visit. "

"Pain! But why?"

"My dear, do you remember what I read to you both from Sir William Templethe night before John left us?"

Helen put her hand to her brow, and with a readiness which showed amemory equally quick and retentive, replied, "Yes; was it not to thiseffect? I am not sure of the exact words: 'To have something we havenot, and be something we are not, is the root of all evil. '"

"Well remembered, my darling!"

"Ah, but, " said Helen, archly, "I remember too what my cousin replied:'If Sir William Temple had practised his theory, he would not have beenambassador at the Hague, or--"

"Pshaw! the boy's always ready enough with his answers, " interrupted Mr. Fielden, rather petulantly. "There's the fair, my dear, --more in yourway, I see, than Sir William Temple's philosophy. "

And Helen was right; the fair was no Eastern bazaar, but how delightedthat young, impressionable mind was, notwithstanding, --delighted with theswings and the roundabouts, the shows, the booths, even down to the giltgingerbread kings and queens! All minds genuinely poetical arepeculiarly susceptible to movement, --that is, to the excitement ofnumbers. If the movement is sincerely joyous, as in the mirth of avillage holiday, such a nature shares insensibly in the joy; but if themovement is a false and spurious gayety, as in a state ball, where theimpassive face and languid step are out of harmony with the evidentobject of the scene, then the nature we speak of feels chilled anddejected. Hence it really is that the more delicate and ideal order ofminds soon grow inexpressibly weary of the hack routine of what arecalled fashionable pleasures. Hence the same person most alive to adance on the green, would be without enjoyment at Almack's. It was notbecause one scene is a village green, and the other a room in KingStreet, nor is it because the actors in the one are of the humble, in theothers of the noble class; but simply because the enjoyment in the firstis visible and hearty, because in the other it is a listless andmelancholy pretence. Helen fancied it was the swings and the booths thatgave her that innocent exhilaration, --it was not so; it was theunconscious sympathy with the crowd around her. When the poetical naturequits its own dreams for the actual world, it enters and transfusesitself into the hearts and humours of others. The two wings of thatspirit which we call Genius are revery and sympathy. But poor littleHelen had no idea that she had genius. Whether chasing the butterfly ortalking fond fancies to her birds, or whether with earnest, musing eyeswatching the stars come forth, and the dark pine-trees gleam into silver;whether with airy daydreams and credulous wonder poring over the magictales of Mirglip or Aladdin, or whether spellbound to awe by the solemnwoes of Lear, or following the blind great bard into "the heaven ofheavens, an earthly guest, to draw empyreal air, "--she obeyed but thehonest and varying impulse in each change of her pliant mood, and wouldhave ascribed with genuine humility to the vagaries of childhood thatprompt gathering of pleasure, that quick-shifting sport of the fancy bywhich Nature binds to itself, in chains undulating as melody, the livelysenses of genius. 

While Helen, leaning on the vicar's arm, thus surrendered herself to theinnocent excitement of the moment, the vicar himself smiled and nodded tohis parishioners, or paused to exchange a friendly word or two with theyoungest or the eldest loiterers (those two extremes of mortality whichthe Church so tenderly unites) whom the scene drew to its temptingvortex, when a rough-haired lad, with a leather bag strapped across hiswaist, turned from one of the gingerbread booths, and touching his hat, said, "Please you, sir, I was a coming to your house with a letter. "

The vicar's correspondence was confined and rare, despite his distantchildren, for letters but a few years ago were costly luxuries to personsof narrow income, and therefore the juvenile letter-carrier who pliedbetween the post-town and the village failed to excite in his breast thatindignation for being an hour or more behind his time which would haveanimated one to whom the post brings the usual event of the day. He tookthe letter from the boy's hand, and paid for it with a thrifty sigh as heglanced at a handwriting unfamiliar to him, --perhaps from some clergymanpoorer than himself. However, that was not the place to read letters, sohe put the epistle into his pocket, until Helen, who watched hiscountenance to see when he grew tired of the scene, kindly proposed toreturn home. As they gained a stile half-way, Mr. Fielden remembered hisletter, took it forth, and put on his spectacles. Helen stooped over thebank to gather violets; the vicar seated himself on the stile. As heagain looked at the address, the handwriting, before unfamiliar, seemedto grow indistinctly on his recollection. That bold, firm hand--thin andfine as woman's, but large and regular as man's--was too peculiar to beforgotten. He uttered a brief exclamation of surprise and recognition, and hastily broke the seal. The contents ran thus:--

DEAR SIR, --So many years have passed since any communication has takenplace between us that the name of Lucretia Dalibard will seem morestrange to you than that of Lucretia Clavering. I have recently returnedto England after long residence abroad. I perceive by my deceasedsister's will that she has confided her only daughter to my guardianship, conjointly with yourself. I am anxious to participate in that tendercharge. I am alone in the world, --an habitual sufferer; afflicted with apartial paralysis that deprives me of the use of my limbs. In suchcircumstances, it is the more natural that I should turn to the onlyrelative left me. My journey to England has so exhausted my strength, and all movement is so painful, that I must request you to excuse me fornot coming in person for my niece. Your benevolence, however, will, I amsure, prompt you to afford me the comfort of her society, and as soon asyou can, contrive some suitable arrangement for her journey. Begging youto express to Helen, in my name, the assurance of such a welcome as isdue from me to my sister's child, and waiting with great anxiety yourreply, I am, dear Sir, Your very faithful servant, LUCRETIA DALIBARD. 

P. S. I can scarcely venture to ask you to bring Helen yourself to town, but I should be glad if other inducements to take the journey afforded methe pleasure of seeing you once again. I am anxious, in addition to suchdetails of my late sister as you may be enabled to give me, to learnsomething of the history of her connection with Mr. Ardworth, in whom Ifelt much interested years ago, and who, I am recently informed, left aninfant, his supposed son, under your care. So long absent from England, how much have I to learn, and how little the mere gravestones tell us ofthe dead!

While the vicar is absorbed in this letter, equally unwelcome andunexpected; while, unconscious as the daughter of Ceres, gatheringflowers when the Hell King drew near, of the change that awaited her andthe grim presence that approached on her fate, Helen bends still over thebank odorous with shrinking violets, --we turn where the new generationequally invites our gaze, and make our first acquaintance with twopersons connected with the progress of our tale. 

 The britzska stopped. The servant, who had been gradually accumulatingpresent dust and future rheumatisms on the "bad eminence" of a rumble-tumble, exposed to the nipping airs of an English sky, leaped to theground and opened the carriage-door. 

"This is the best place for the view, sir, --a little to the right. "

Percival St. John threw aside his book (a volume of Voyages), whistled toa spaniel dozing by his side, and descended lightly. Light was the stepof the young man, and merry was the bark of the dog, as it chased fromthe road the startled sparrow, rising high into the clear air, --favourites of Nature both, man and dog. You had but to glance atPercival St. John to know at once that he was of the race that toils not;the assured step spoke confidence in the world's fair smile. No care forthe morrow dimmed the bold eye and the radiant bloom. 

About the middle height, --his slight figure, yet undeveloped, seemed notto have attained to its full growth, --the darkening down only just shadeda cheek somewhat sunburned, though naturally fair, round which locksblack as jet played sportively in the fresh air; about him altogetherthere was the inexpressible charm of happy youth. He scarcely lookedsixteen, though above four years older; but for his firm though carelessstep, and the open fearlessness of his frank eye, you might have almosttaken him for a girl in men's clothes, --not from effeminacy of feature, but from the sparkling bloom of his youth, and from his unmistakablenewness to the cares and sins of man. A more delightful vision ofingenuous boyhood opening into life under happy auspices never inspiredwith pleased yet melancholy interest the eye of half-envious, half-pitying age. 

"And that, " mused Percival St. John, --"that is London! Oh for the DiableBoiteux to unroof me those distant houses, and show me the pleasures thatlurk within! Ah, what long letters I shall have to write home! How thedear old captain will laugh over them, and how my dear good mother willput down her work and sigh! Home!--um, I miss it already. How strangeand grim, after all, the huge city seems!"

His glove fell to the ground, and his spaniel mumbled it into shreds. The young man laughed, and throwing himself on the grass, played gaylywith the dog. 

"Fie, Beau, sir, fie! gloves are indigestible. Restrain your appetite, and we'll lunch together at the Clarendon. "

At this moment there arrived at the same patch of greensward a pedestriansome years older than Percival St. John, --a tall, muscular, raw-boned, dust-covered, travel-stained pedestrian; one of your pedestrians in goodearnest, --no amateur in neat gambroon manufactured by Inkson, who leaveshis carriage behind him and walks on with his fishing-rod by choice, buta sturdy wanderer, with thick shoes and strapless trousers, a threadbarecoat and a knapsack at his back. Yet, withal, the young man had the airof a gentleman, --not gentleman as the word is understood in St. James's, the gentleman of the noble and idle class, but the gentleman as the titleis accorded, by courtesy, to all to whom both education and the habit ofmixing with educated persons gives a claim to the distinction and impartsan air of refinement. The new-comer was strongly built, at once lean andlarge, --far more strongly built than Percival St. John, but without hislook of cheerful and comely health. His complexion had not the floridhues that should have accompanied that strength of body; it was pale, though not sickly; the expression grave, the lines deep, the facestrongly marked. By his side trotted painfully a wiry, yellowish, footsore Scotch terrier. Beau sprang from his master's caress, cockedhis handsome head on one side, and suspended in silent halt his rightfore-paw. Percival cast over his left shoulder a careless glance at theintruder. The last heeded neither Beau nor Percival. He slipped hisknapsack to the ground, and the Scotch terrier sank upon it, and curledhimself up into a ball. The wayfarer folded his arms tightly upon hisbreast, heaved a short, unquiet sigh, and cast over the giant city, fromunder deep-pent, lowering brows, a look so earnest, so searching, so fullof inexpressible, dogged, determined power, that Percival, roused out ofhis gay indifference, rose and regarded him with curious interest. 

In the mean while Beau had very leisurely approached the bilious-lookingterrier; and after walking three times round him, with a stare and asmall sniff of superb impertinence, halted with great composure, andlifting his hind leg-- O Beau, Beau, Beau! your historian blushes foryour breeding, and, like Sterne's recording angel, drops a tear upon thestain which washes it from the register--but not, alas, from the back ofthe bilious terrier! The space around was wide, Beau; you had all theworld to choose: why select so specially for insult the single spot onwhich reposed the wornout and unoffending? O dainty Beau! O daintyworld! Own the truth, both of ye. There is something irresistiblyprovocative of insult in the back of a shabby-looking dog! The poorterrier, used to affronts, raised its heavy eyelids, and shot the gleamof just indignation from its dark eyes. But it neither stirred norgrowled, and Beau, extremely pleased with his achievement, wagged histail in triumph and returned to his master, --perhaps, in parliamentaryphrase, to "report proceedings and ask leave to sit again. "

"I wonder, " soliloquized Percival St. John, "what that poor fellow isthinking of? Perhaps he is poor; indeed, no doubt of it, now I lookagain. And I so rich! I should like to-- Hem! let's see what he's madeof. "

Herewith Percival approached, and with all a boy's half-bashful, half-saucy frankness, said: "A fine prospect, sir. " The pedestrian started, and threw a rapid glance over the brilliant figure that accosted him. Percival St. John was not to be abashed by stern looks; but that glancemight have abashed many a more experienced man. The glance of a squireupon a corn-law missionary, of a Crockford dandy upon a Regent Streettiger, could not have been more disdainful. 

"Tush!" said the pedestrian, rudely, and turned upon his heel. 

Percival coloured, and--shall we own it?--was boy enough to double hisfist. Little would he have been deterred by the brawn of those great armsand the girth of that Herculean chest, if he had been quite sure that itwas a proper thing to resent pugilistically so discourteous amonosyllable. The "tush!" stuck greatly in his throat. But the man, nowremoved to the farther verge of the hill, looked so tranquil and so lostin thought that the short-lived anger died. 

"And after all, if I were as poor as he looks, I dare say I should bejust as proud, " muttered Percival. "However, it's his own fault if hegoes to London on foot, when I might at least have given him a lift. Come, Beau, sir. "

With his face still a little flushed, and his hat unconsciously cockedfiercely on one side, Percival sauntered back to his britzska. 

As in a whirl of dust the light carriage was borne by the four postersdown the hill, the pedestrian turned for an instant from the view beforeto the cloud behind, and muttered: "Ay, a fine prospect for the rich, --anoble field for the poor!" The tone in which those words were said toldvolumes; there spoke the pride, the hope, the energy, the ambition whichmake youth laborious, manhood prosperous, age renowned. 

The stranger then threw himself on the sward, and continued his silentand intent contemplation till the clouds grew red in the west. When, then, he rose, his eye was bright, his mien erect, and a smile, playinground his firm, full lips, stole the moody sternness from his hard face. Throwing his knapsack once more on his back, John Ardworth wentresolutely on to the great vortex. 

CHAPTER I. 

THE CORONATION. 

The 8th of September, 1831, was a holiday in London. William the Fourthreceived the crown of his ancestors in that mighty church in which themost impressive monitors to human pomp are the monuments of the dead. The dust of conquerors and statesmen, of the wise heads and the boldhands that had guarded the thrones of departed kings, slept around; andthe great men of the Modern time were assembled in homage to the monarchto whom the prowess and the liberty of generations had bequeathed anempire in which the sun never sets. In the Abbey--thinking little of thepast, caring little for the future--the immense audience gazed eagerly onthe pageant that occurs but once in that division of history, --thelifetime of a king. The assemblage was brilliant and imposing. Thegalleries sparkled with the gems of women who still upheld the celebrityfor form and feature which, from the remotest times, has been awarded tothe great English race. Below, in their robes and coronets, were men whoneither in the senate nor the field have shamed their fathers. Conspicuous amongst all for grandeur of mien and stature towered thebrothers of the king; while, commanding yet more the universal gaze, wereseen, here the eagle features of the old hero of Waterloo, and there themajestic brow of the haughty statesman who was leading the people (whilethe last of the Bourbons, whom Waterloo had restored to the Tuileries, had left the orb and purple to the kindred house so fatal to his name)through a stormy and perilous transition to a bloodless revolution and anew charter. 

Tier upon tier, in the division set apart for them, the members of theLower House moved and murmured above the pageant; and the coronation ofthe new sovereign was connected in their minds with the great measurewhich, still undecided, made at that time a link between the People andthe King, and arrayed against both, if not, indeed, the real Aristocracy, at least the Chamber recognized by the Constitution as itsrepresentative. Without the space was one dense mass. Houses, frombalcony to balcony, window to window, were filled as some immensetheatre. Up, through the long thoroughfare to Whitehall, the eye sawthat audience, --A PEOPLE; and the gaze was bounded at the spot whereCharles the First had passed from the banquet-house to the scaffold. 

The ceremony was over, the procession had swept slowly by, the last huzzahad died away; and after staring a while upon Orator Hunt, who hadclambered up the iron palisade near Westminster Hall, to exhibit hisgoodly person in his court attire, the serried crowds, hurrying from theshower which then unseasonably descended, broke into large masses orlengthening columns. 

In that part of London which may be said to form a boundary between itsold and its new world, by which, on the one hand, you pass toWestminster, or through that gorge of the Strand which leads alongendless rows of shops that have grown up on the sites of the ancienthalls of the Salisburys and the Exeters, the Buckinghams andSouthamptons; to the heart of the City built around the primeval palaceof the "Tower;" while, on the other hand, you pass into the new city ofaristocracy and letters, of art and fashion, embracing the whilom chaseof Marylebone, and the once sedge-grown waters of Pimlico, --by thisignoble boundary (the crossing from the Opera House, at the bottom of theHaymarket, to the commencement of Charing Cross) stood a person whosediscontented countenance was in singular contrast with the general gayetyand animation of the day. This person, O gentle reader, this sour, querulous, discontented person, was a king, too, in his own walk! Nonemight dispute it. He feared no rebel; he was harassed by no reform; heruled without ministers. Tools he had; but when worn out, he replacedthem without a pension or a sigh. He lived by taxes, but they werevoluntary; and his Civil List was supplied without demand for the redressof grievances. This person, nevertheless, not deposed, was suspendedfrom his empire for the day. He was pushed aside; he was forgotten. Hewas not distinct from the crowd. Like Titus, he had lost a day, --hisvocation was gone. This person was the Sweeper of the Crossing!

He was a character. He was young, in the fairest prime of youth; but itwas the face of an old man on young shoulders. His hair was long, thin, and prematurely streaked with gray; his face was pale and deeplyfurrowed; his eyes were hollow, and their stare gleamed, cold and stolid, under his bent and shaggy brows. The figure was at once fragile andungainly, and the narrow shoulders curved in a perpetual stoop. It was aperson, once noticed, that you would easily remember, and associate withsome undefined, painful impression. The manner was humble, but not meek;the voice was whining, but without pathos. There was a meagre, passionless dulness about the aspect, though at times it quickened into akind of avid acuteness. No one knew by what human parentage thispersonage came into the world. He had been reared by the charity of astranger, crept through childhood and misery and rags mysteriously; andsuddenly succeeded an old defunct negro in the profitable crossingwhereat he is now standing. All education was unknown to him, so was alllove. In those festive haunts at St. Giles's where he who would see"life in London" may often discover the boy who has held his horse in themorning dancing merrily with his chosen damsel at night, our sweeper'scharacter was austere as Charles the Twelfth's. And the poor creaturehad his good qualities. He was sensitively alive to kindness, --littleenough had been shown him to make the luxury the more prized from itsrarity! Though fond of money, he would part with it (we do not saycheerfully, but part with it still), --not to mere want, indeed (for hehad been too pinched and starved himself, and had grown too obtuse topinching and to starving for the sensitiveness that prompts to charity), but to any of his companions who had done him a good service, or who hadeven warmed his dull heart by a friendly smile. He was honest, too, --honest to the backbone. You might have trusted him with gold untold. Through the heavy clod which man's care had not moulded, nor booksenlightened, nor the priest's solemn lore informed, still natural raysfrom the great parent source of Deity struggled, fitful and dim. He hadno lawful name; none knew if sponsors had ever stood security for hissins at the sacred fount. But he had christened himself by the strange, unchristian like name of "Beck. " There he was, then, seemingly withoutorigin, parentage, or kindred tie, --a lonesome, squalid, bloodless thing, which the great monster, London, seemed to have spawned forth of its ownself; one of its sickly, miserable, rickety offspring, whom it puts outat nurse to Penury, at school to Starvation, and, finally, and literally, gives them stones for bread, with the option of the gallows or thedunghill when the desperate offspring calls on the giant mother forreturn and home. 

And this creature did love something, --loved, perhaps, some fellow-being;of that hereafter, when we dive into the secrets of his privacy. Meanwhile, openly and frankly, he loved his crossing; he was proud of hiscrossing; he was grateful to his crossing. God help thee, son of thestreet, why not? He had in it a double affection, --that of serving andbeing served. He kept the crossing, if the crossing kept him. He smiledat times to himself when he saw it lie fair and brilliant amidst the mirearound; it bestowed on him a sense of property! What a man may feel fora fine estate in a ring fence, Beck felt for that isthmus of the kennelwhich was subject to his broom. The coronation had made one rebelliousspirit when it swept the sweeper from his crossing. 

He stood, then, half under the colonnade of the Opera House as the crowdnow rapidly grew thinner and more scattered: and when the last carriageof a long string of vehicles had passed by, he muttered audibly, --

"It'll take a deal of pains to make she right agin!"

"So you be's 'ere to-day, Beck!" said a ragamuffin boy, who, pushing andscrambling through his betters, now halted, and wiped his forehead as helooked at the sweeper. "Vy, ve are all out pleasuring. Vy von't youcome with ve? Lots of fun!"

The sweeper scowled at the urchin, and made no answer, but begansedulously to apply himself to the crossing. 

"Vy, there isn't another sweep in the streets, Beck. His Majesty KingBill's currynation makes all on us so 'appy!"

"It has made she unkimmon dirty!" returned Beck, pointing to the dingycrossing, scarce distinguished from the rest of the road. 

The ragamuffin laughed. 

"But ve be's goin' to 'ave Reform now, Beck. The peopul's to have theirrights and libties, hand the luds is to be put down, hand beefsteaks isto be a penny a pound, and--"

"What good will that do to she?"

"Vy, man, ve shall take turn about, and sum vun helse will sveep thecrossings, and ve shall ride in sum vun helse's coach and four, p'r'aps, --cos vy? ve shall hall be hequals!"

"Hequals! I tells you vot, if you keeps jawing there, atween me and she, I shall vop you, Joe, --cos vy? I be's the biggest!" was the answer ofBeck the sweeper to Joe the ragamuffin. 

The jovial Joe laughed aloud, snapped his fingers, threw up his raggedcap with a shout for King Bill, and set off scampering and whooping tojoin those festivities which Beck had so churlishly disdained. 

Time crept on; evening began to close in, and Beck was still at hiscrossing, when a young gentleman on horseback, who, after seeing theprocession, had stolen away for a quiet ride in the suburbs, reined inclose by the crossing, and looking round, as for some one to hold hishorse, could discover no loiterer worthy that honour except the solitaryBeck. So young was the rider that he seemed still a boy. On his smoothcountenance all that most prepossesses in early youth left its witchingstamp. A smile, at once gay and sweet, played on his lips. There was acharm, even in a certain impatient petulance, in his quick eye and theslight contraction of his delicate brows. Almaviva might well have beenjealous of such a page. He was the beau-ideal of Cherubino. He held uphis whip, with an arch sign, to the sweeper. "Follow, my man, " he said, in a tone the very command of which sounded gentle, so blithe was themovement of the lips, and so silvery the easy accent; and withoutwaiting, he cantered carelessly down Pall Mall. 

The sweeper cast a rueful glance at his melancholy domain. But he hadgained but little that day, and the offer was too tempting to berejected. He heaved a sigh, shouldered his broom, and murmuring tohimself that he would give her a last brush before he retired for thenight, he put his long limbs into that swinging, shambling trot whichcharacterizes the motion of those professional jackals who, having oncecaught sight of a groomless rider, fairly hunt him down, and appear whenhe least expects it, the instant he dismounts. The young rider lightlyswung himself from his sleek, high-bred gray at the door of one of theclubs in St. James's Street, patted his horse's neck, chucked the rein tothe sweeper, and sauntered into the house, whistling musically, --if notfrom want of thought, certainly from want of care. 

As he entered the club, two or three men, young indeed, but much older, to appearance at least, than himself, who were dining together at thesame table, nodded to him their friendly greeting. 

"Ah, Perce, " said one, "we have only just sat down; here is a seat foryou. "

The boy blushed shyly as he accepted the proposal, and the young men maderoom for him at the table, with a smiling alacrity which showed that hisshyness was no hindrance to his popularity. 

"Who, " said an elderly dandy, dining apart with one of hiscontemporaries, --"who is that lad? One ought not to admit such mere boysinto the club. "

"He is the only surviving son of an old friend of ours, " answered theother, dropping his eyeglass, --"young Percival St. John. "

"St. John! What! Vernon St. John's son?"

"Yes. "

"He has not his father's good air. These young fellows have a tone, asomething, --a want of self-possession, eh?"

"Very true. The fact is, that Percival was meant for the navy, and evenserved as a mid for a year or so. He was a younger son, then, --third, Ithink. The two elder ones died, and Master Percival walked into theinheritance. I don't think he is quite of age yet. "

"Of age! he does not look seventeen. "

"Oh, he is more than that; I remember him in his jacket at Laughton. Afine property!"

"Ay, I don't wonder those fellows are so civil to him. This claret iscorked! Everything is so bad at this d----d club, --no wonder, when atroop of boys are let in! Enough to spoil any club; don't know Larosefrom Lafitte! Waiter!"

Meanwhile, the talk round the table at which sat Percival St. John wasanimated, lively, and various, --the talk common with young idlers; ofhorses, and steeplechases, and opera-dancers, and reigning beauties, andgood-humoured jests at each other. In all this babble there was afreshness about Percival St. John's conversation which showed that, asyet, for him life had the zest of novelty. He was more at home abouthorses and steeplechases than about opera-dancers and beauties and thesmall scandals of town. Talk on these latter topics did not seem tointerest him, on the contrary, almost to pain. Shy and modest as a girl, he coloured or looked aside when his more hardened friends boasted ofassignations and love-affairs. Spirited, gay, and manly enough in allreally manly points, the virgin bloom of innocence was yet visible in hisfrank, charming manner; and often, out of respect for his delicacy, somehearty son of pleasure stopped short in his narrative, or lost the pointof his anecdote. And yet so lovable was Percival in his good humour, hisnaivete, his joyous entrance into innocent joy, that his companions werescarcely conscious of the gene and restraint he imposed on them. Thosemerry, dark eyes and that flashing smile were conviviality of themselves. They brought with them a contagious cheerfulness which compensated forthe want of corruption. 

Night had set in. St. John's companions had departed to their severalhaunts, and Percival himself stood on the steps of the club, resolvingthat he would join the crowds that swept through the streets to gaze onthe illuminations, when he perceived Beck (still at the rein of hisdozing horse), whom he had quite forgotten till that moment. Laughing athis own want of memory, Percival put some silver into Beck's hand, --moresilver than Beck had ever before received for similar service, --andsaid, --

"Well, my man, I suppose I can trust you to take my horse to hisstables, --No. ----, the Mews, behind Curzon Street. Poor fellow, he wantshis supper, --and you, too, I suppose!"

Beck smiled a pale, hungry smile, and pulled his forelock politely. 

"I can take the 'oss werry safely, your 'onor. "

"Take him, then, and good evening; but don't get on, for your life. "

"Oh, no, sir; I never gets on, --'t aint in my ways. "

And Beck slowly led the horse through the crowd, till he vanished fromPercival's eyes. 

Just then a man passing through the street paused as he saw the younggentleman on the steps of the club, and said gayly, "Ah! how do you do?Pretty faces in plenty out to-night. Which way are you going?"

"That is more than I can tell you, Mr. Varney. I was just thinking whichturn to take, --the right or the left. "

"Then let me be your guide;" and Varney offered his arm. 

Percival accepted the courtesy, and the two walked on towards Piccadilly. Many a kind glance from the milliners--and maid-servants whom theilluminations drew abroad, roved, somewhat impartially, towards St. Johnand his companion; but they dwelt longer on the last, for there at leastthey were sure of a return. Varney, if not in his first youth, was stillin the prime of life, and Time had dealt with him so leniently that heretained all the personal advantages of youth itself. His complexionstill was clear; and as only his upper lip, decorated with a slightsilken and well-trimmed mustache, was unshaven, the contour of the faceadded to the juvenility of his appearance by the rounded symmetry itbetrayed. His hair escaped from his hat in fair unchanged luxuriance. And the nervous figure, agile as a panther's, though broad-shouldered anddeep-chested, denoted all the slightness and elasticity of twenty-five, combined with the muscular power of forty. His dress was ratherfantastic, --too showy for the good taste which is habitual to the Englishgentleman, --and there was a peculiarity in his gait, almost approachingto a strut, which bespoke a desire of effect, a consciousness of personaladvantages, equally opposed to the mien and manner of Percival's usualcompanions; yet withal, even the most fastidious would have hesitated toapply to Gabriel Varney the epithet of "vulgar. " Many turned to lookagain, but it was not to remark the dress or the slight swagger; anexpression of reckless, sinister power in the countenance, something ofvigour and determination even in that very walk, foppish as it would havebeen in most, made you sink all observation of the mere externals, in asentiment of curiosity towards the man himself. He seemed a somebody, --not a somebody of conventional rank, but a somebody of personalindividuality; an artist, perhaps a poet, or a soldier in some foreignservice, but certainly a man whose name you would expect to have heardof. Amongst the common mob of passengers he stood out in marked anddistinct relief. 

"I feel at home in a crowd, " said Varney. "Do you understand me?"

"I think so, " answered Percival. "If ever I could become distinguished, I, too, should feel at home in a crowd. "

"You have ambition, then; you mean to become distinguished?" askedVarney, with a sharp, searching look. 

There was a deeper and steadier flash than usual from Percival's darkeyes, and a manlier glow over his cheek, at Varney's question. But hewas slow in answering; and when he did so, his manner had all its wontedmixture of graceful bashfulness and gay candour. 

"Our rise does not always depend on ourselves. We are not all borngreat, nor do we all have 'greatness thrust on us. '"

"One can be what one likes, with your fortune, " said Varney; and therewas a growl of envy in his voice. 

"What, be a painter like you! Ha, ha!"

"Faith, " said Varney, "at least, if you could paint at all, you wouldhave what I have not, --praise and fame. "

Percival pressed kindly on Varney's arm. "Courage! you will get justicesome day. "

Varney shook his head. "Bah! there is no such thing as justice; all areunderrated or overrated. Can you name one man who you think is estimatedby the public at his precise value? As for present popularity, itdepends on two qualities, each singly, or both united, --cowardice andcharlatanism; that is, servile compliance with the taste and opinion ofthe moment, or a quack's spasmodic efforts at originality. But why boreyou on such matters? There are things more attractive round us. A goodankle that, eh? Why, pardon me, it is strange, but you don't seem tocare much for women?"

"Oh, yes, I do, " said Percival, with a sly demureness. "I am very fondof--my mother!"

"Very proper and filial, " said Varney, laughing; "and does your love forthe sex stop there?"

"Well, and in truth I fancy so, --pretty nearly. You know my grandmotheris not alive! But that is something really worth looking at!" AndPercival pointed, almost with a child's delight, at an illumination morebrilliant than the rest. 

"I suppose, when you come of age, you will have all the cedars atLaughton hung with coloured lamps. Ah, you must ask me there some day; Ishould so like to see the old place again. "

"You never saw it, I think you say, in my poor father's time?"

"Never. "

"Yet you knew him. "

"But slightly. "

"And you never saw my mother?"

"No; but she seems to have such influence over you that I am sure shemust be a very superior person, --rather proud, I suppose. "

"Proud, no, --that is, not exactly proud, for she is very meek and veryaffable. But yet--"

"'But yet--' You hesitate: she would not like you to be seen, perhaps, walking in Piccadilly with Gabriel Varney, the natural son of old SirMiles's librarian, --Gabriel Varney the painter; Gabriel Varney theadventurer!"

"As long as Gabriel Varney is a man without stain on his character andhonour, my mother would only be pleased that I should know an able andaccomplished person, whatever his origin or parentage. But my motherwould be sad if she knew me intimate with a Bourbon or a Raphael, thefirst in rank or the first in genius, if either prince or artist hadlost, or even sullied, his scutcheon of gentleman. In a word, she ismost sensitive as to honour and conscience; all else she disregards. "

"Hem!" Varney stooped down, as if examining the polish of his boot, whilehe continued carelessly: "Impossible to walk the streets and keep one'sboots out of the mire. Well--and you agree with your mother?"

"It would be strange if I did not. When I was scarcely four years old, my poor father used to lead me through the long picture-gallery atLaughton and say: 'Walk through life as if those brave gentlemen lookeddown on you. ' And, " added St. John, with his ingenuous smile, "my motherwould put in her word, --'And those unstained women too, my Percival. '"

There was something noble and touching in the boy's low accents as hesaid this; it gave the key to his unusual modesty and his frank, healthful innocence of character. 

The devil in Varney's lip sneered mockingly. 

"My young friend, you have never loved yet. Do you think you evershall?"

"I have dreamed that I could love one day. But I can wait. "

Varney was about to reply, when he was accosted abruptly by three men ofthat exaggerated style of dress and manner which is implied by the vulgarappellation of "Tigrish. " Each of the three men had a cigar in hismouth, each seemed flushed with wine. One wore long brass spurs andimmense mustaches; another was distinguished by an enormous surface ofblack satin cravat, across which meandered a Pactolus of gold chain; athird had his coat laced and braided a la Polonaise, and pinched andpadded a la Russe, with trousers shaped to the calf of a sinewy leg, anda glass screwed into his right eye. 

"Ah, Gabriel! ah, Varney! ah, prince of good fellows, well met! You supwith us to-night at little Celeste's; we were just going in search ofyou. "

"Who's your friend, --one of us?" whispered a second. And the thirdscrewed his arm tight and lovingly into Varney's. 

Gabriel, despite his habitual assurance, looked abashed foz a moment, andwould have extricated himself from cordialities not at that momentwelcome; but he saw that his friends were too far gone in their cups tobe easily shaken off, and he felt relieved when Percival, after adissatisfied glance at the three, said quietly: "I must detain you nolonger; I shall soon look in at your studio;" and without waiting for ananswer, slid off, and was lost among the crowd. 

Varney walked on with his new-found friends, unheeding for some momentstheir loose remarks and familiar banter. At length he shook off hisabstraction, and surrendering himself to the coarse humours of hiscompanions, soon eclipsed them all by the gusto of his slang and themocking profligacy of his sentiments; for here he no longer played apart, or suppressed his grosser instincts. That uncurbed dominion of thesenses, to which his very boyhood had abandoned itself, found a willingslave in the man. Even the talents themselves that he displayed camefrom the cultivation of the sensual. His eye, studying externals, madehim a painter, --his ear, quick and practised, a musician. His wild, prodigal fancy rioted on every excitement, and brought him in a vastharvest of experience in knowledge of the frailties and the vices onwhich it indulged its vagrant experiments. Men who over-cultivate theart that connects itself with the senses, with little counterpoise fromthe reason and pure intellect, are apt to be dissipated and irregular intheir lives. This is frequently noticeable in the biographies ofmusicians, singers, and painters; less so in poets, because he who dealswith words, not signs and tones, must perpetually compare his senses withthe pure images of which the senses only see the appearances, --in a word, he must employ his intellect, and his self-education must be large andcomprehensive. But with most real genius, however fed merely by thesenses, --most really great painters, singers, and musicians, howevereasily led astray into temptation, --the richness of the soil throws upabundant good qualities to countervail or redeem the evil; they areusually compassionate, generous, sympathizing. That Varney had not suchbeauties of soul and temperament it is unnecessary to add, --principally, it is true, because of his nurture, education, parental example, theutter corruption in which his childhood and youth had passed; partlybecause he had no real genius, ---it was a false apparition of the divinespirit, reflected from the exquisite perfection of his frame (whichrendered all his senses so vigorous and acute) and his riotous fancy andhis fitful energy, which was capable at times of great application, butnot of definite purpose or earnest study. All about him was flashy andhollow. He had not the natural subtlety and depth of mind that hadcharacterized his terrible father. The graft of the opera-dancer wasvisible on the stock of the scholar; wholly without the habits of methodand order, without the patience, without the mathematical calculatingbrain of Dalibard, he played wantonly with the horrible and loathsomewickedness of which Olivier had made dark and solemn study. Extravagantand lavish, he spent money as fast as he gained it; he threw away allchances of eminence and career. In the midst of the direst plots of hisvillany or the most energetic pursuit of his art, the poorest excitement, the veriest bauble would draw him aside. His heart was with Falri in thesty, his fancy with Aladdin in the palace. To make a show was hisdarling object; he loved to create effect by his person, his talk, hisdress, as well as by his talents. Living from hand to mouth, crimesthrough which it is not our intention to follow him had at times made himrich to-day, for vices to make him poor again to-morrow. What he called"luck, " or "his star, " had favoured him, --he was not hanged!--he lived;and as the greater part of his unscrupulous career had been conducted inforeign lands and under other names, in his own name and in his owncountry, though something scarcely to be defined, but equivocal andprovocative of suspicion, made him displeasing to the prudent, andvaguely alarmed the experience of the sober, still, no positiveaccusation was attached to the general integrity of his character, andthe mere dissipation of his habits was naturally little known out of hisfamiliar circle. Hence he had the most presumptuous confidence inhimself, --a confidence native to his courage, and confirmed by hisexperience. His conscience was so utterly obtuse that he might almost besaid to present the phenomenon of a man without conscience at all. Unlike Conrad, he did not "know himself a villain;" all that he knew ofhimself was that he was a remarkably clever fellow, without prejudice orsuperstition. That, with all his gifts, he had not succeeded better inlife, he ascribed carelessly to the surpassing wisdom of his philosophy. He could have done better if he had enjoyed himself less; but was notenjoyment the be-all and end-all of this little life? More often, indeed, in the moods of his bitter envy, he would lay the fault upon theworld. How great he could have been, if he had been rich and high-born!Oh, he was made to spend, not to save, --to command, not to fawn! He wasnot formed to plod through the dull mediocrities of fortune; he must tossup for the All or the Nothing! It was no control over himself that madeVarney now turn his thoughts from certain grave designs on Percival St. John to the brutal debauchery of his three companions, --rather, he thenyielded most to his natural self. And when the morning star rose overthe night he passed with low profligates and venal nymphs; when over thefragments on the board and emptied bottles and drunken riot dawn gleamedand saw him in all the pride of his magnificent organization and thecynicism of his measured vice, fair, fresh, and blooming amidst thosemaudlin eyes and flushed cheeks and reeling figures, laughing hideouslyover the spectacle he had provoked, and kicking aside, with a devil'sscorn, the prostrate form of the favoured partner whose head had restedon his bosom, as alone with a steady step, he passed the threshold andwalked into the fresh, healthful air, --Gabriel Varney enjoyed the felltriumph of his hell-born vanity, and revelled in his sentiment ofsuperiority and power. 

Meanwhile, on quitting Varney young Percival strolled on as the whimdirected him. Turning down the Haymarket, he gained the colonnade of theOpera House. The crowd there was so dense that his footsteps werearrested, and he leaned against one of the columns in admiration of thevarious galaxies in view. In front blazed the rival stars of the UnitedService Club and the Athenaeum; to the left, the quaint and peculiardevice which lighted up Northumberland House; to the right, the anchors, cannons, and bombs which typified ingeniously the martial attributes ofthe Ordnance Office. 

At that moment there were three persons connected with this narrativewithin a few feet of each other, distinguished from the multitude by thefeelings with which each regarded the scene, and felt the jostle of thecrowd. Percival St. John, in whom the harmless sense of pleasure was yetvivid and unsatiated, caught from the assemblage only that physicalhilarity which heightened his own spirits. If in a character as yet soundeveloped, to which the large passions and stern ends of life were asyet unknown, stirred some deeper and more musing thoughts andspeculations, giving gravity to the habitual smile on his rosy lip, andsteadying the play of his sparkling eyes, he would have been at a losshimself to explain the dim sentiment and the vague desire. 

Screened by another column from the pressure of the mob, with his armsfolded on his breast, a man some few years older in point of time, --manyyears older in point of character, --gazed (with thoughts how turbulent, --with ambition how profound!) upon the dense and dark masses that coveredspace and street far as the eye could reach. He, indeed, could not havesaid, with Varney, that he was "at home in a crowd. " For a crowd did notfill him with the sense of his own individual being and importance, butgrappled him to its mighty breast with the thousand tissues of a commondestiny. Who shall explain and disentangle those high and restless andinterwoven emotions with which intellectual ambition, honourable andardent, gazes upon that solemn thing with which, in which, for which itlives and labours, --the Human Multitude? To that abstracted, solitaryman, the illumination, the festivity, the curiosity, the holiday, werenothing, or but as fleeting phantoms and vain seemings. In his heart'seye he saw before him but the PEOPLE, the shadow of an everlastingaudience, --audience at once and judge. 

And literally touching him as he stood, the ragged sweeper, who hadreturned in vain to devote a last care to his beloved charge, stoodarrested with the rest, gazing joylessly on the blazing lamps, dead asthe stones he heeded, to the young vivacity of the one man, the solemnvisions of the other. So, O London, amidst the universal holiday tomonarch and to mob, in those three souls lived the three elements which, duly mingled and administered, make thy vice and thy virtue, thy gloryand thy shame, thy labour and thy luxury; pervading the palace and thestreet, the hospital and the prison, --enjoyment, which is pleasure;energy, which is action; torpor, which is want!

CHAPTER II. 

LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT. 

Suddenly across the gaze of Percival St. John there flashed a face thatwoke him from his abstraction, as a light awakes the sleeper. It was asa recognition of something seen dimly before, --a truth coming out from adream. It was not the mere beauty of that face (and beautiful it was)that arrested his eye and made his heart beat more quickly, it was ratherthat nameless and inexplicable sympathy which constitutes love at firstsight, --a sort of impulse and instinct common to the dullest as thequickest, the hardest reason as the liveliest fancy. Plain Cobbett, seeing before the cottage-door, at her homeliest of house-work, the girlof whom he said, "That girl should be my wife, " and Dante, first thrilledby the vision of Beatrice, --are alike true types of a common experience. Whatever of love sinks the deepest is felt at first sight; it streams onus abrupt from the cloud, a lightning flash, --a destiny revealed to usface to face. 

Now, there was nothing poetical in the place or the circumstance, stillless in the companionship in which this fair creature startled the virginheart of that careless boy; she was leaning on the arm of a stout, rosy-faced matron in a puce-coloured gown, who was flanked on the other sideby a very small, very spare man, with a very wee face, the lower part ofwhich was enveloped in an immense belcher. Besides these twoincumbrances, the stout lady contrived to carry in her hands an umbrella, a basket, and a pair of pattens. 

In the midst of the strange, unfamiliar emotion which his eye conveyed tohis heart, Percival's ear was displeasingly jarred by the loud, bluff, hearty voice of the girl's female companion--

"Gracious me! if that is not John Ardworth. Who'd have thought it? Why, John, --I say, John!" and lifting her umbrella horizontally, she pokedaside two city clerks in front of her, wheeled round the little man onher left, upon whom the clerks simultaneously bestowed the appellation of"feller, " and driving him, as being the sharpest and thinnest wedge athand, through a dense knot of some half-a-dozen gapers, while, followinghis involuntary progress, she looked defiance on the malcontents, shesucceeded in clearing her way to the spot where stood the young man shehad discovered. The ambitious dreamer, for it was he, thus detected anddisturbed, looked embarrassed for a moment as the stout lady, touchinghim with the umbrella, said, --

"Well, I declare if this is not too bad! You sent word that you shouldnot be able to come out with us to see the 'luminations, and here you areas large as life!"

"I did not think, at the moment you wrote to me, that-"

"Oh, stuff!" interrupted the stout woman, with a significant, good-humoured shake of her head; "I know what's what. Tell the truth, andshame the gentleman who objects to showing his feet. You are a wildfellow, John Ardworth, you are! You like looking after the pretty faces, you do, you do--ha, ha, ha! very natural! So did you once, --did not you, Mr. Mivers, did not you, eh? Men must be men, --they always are men, andit's my belief that men they always will be!"

With this sage conjecture into the future, the lady turned to Mr. Mivers, who, thus appealed to, extricated with some difficulty his chin from thefolds of his belcher, and putting up his small face, said, in a smallvoice, "Yes, I was a wild fellow once; but you have tamed me, you have, Mrs. M. !"

And therewith the chin sank again into the belcher, and the small voicedied into a small sigh. 

The stout lady glanced benignly at her spouse, and then resuming heraddress, to which Ardworth listened with a half-frown and a half-smile, observed encouragingly, --

"Yes, there's nothing like a lawful wife to break a man in, as you willfind some day. Howsomever, your time's not come for the altar, sosuppose you give Helen your arm, and come with us. "

"Do, " said Helen, in a sweet, coaxing voice. 

Ardworth bent down his rough, earnest face to Helen's, and an evidentpleasure relaxed its thoughtful lines. "I cannot resist you, " he began, and then he paused and frowned. "Pish!" he added, "I was talking folly;but what head would not you turn? Resist you I must, for I am on my waynow to my drudgery. Ask me anything some years hence, when I have timeto be happy, and then see if I am the bear you now call me. "

"Well, " said Mrs. Mivers, emphatically, "are you coming, or are you not?Don't stand there shilly-shally. "

"Mrs. Mivers, " returned Ardworth, with a kind of sly humour, "I am sureyou would be very angry with your husband's excellent shopmen if that wasthe way they spoke to your customers. If some unhappy dropper-in, --somelady who came to buy a yard or so of Irish, --was suddenly dazzled, as Iam, by a luxury wholly unforeseen and eagerly coveted, --a splendid laceveil, or a ravishing cashmere, or whatever else you ladies desiderate, --and while she was balancing between prudence and temptation, your foremanexclaimed: `Don't stand shilly-shally'--come, I put it to you. "

"Stuff!" said Mrs. Mivers. 

"Alas! unlike your imaginary customer (I hope so, at least, for the sakeof your till), prudence gets the better of me; unless, " added Ardworth, irresolutely, and glancing at Helen, --"unless, indeed, you are notsufficiently protected, and--"

"Purtected!" exclaimed Mrs. Mivers, in an indignant tone of astonishment, and agitating the formidable umbrella; "as if I was not enough, with thehelp of this here domestic commodity, to purtect a dozen such. Purtected, indeed!"

"John is right, Mrs. M. , --business is business, " said Mr. Mivers. "Letus move on; we stop the way, and those idle lads are listening to us, andsniggering. "

"Sniggering!" exclaimed the gentle helpmate. "I should like to see thosewho presume for to snigger;" and as she spoke, she threw a look ofdefiance around her. Then, having thus satisfied her resentment, sheprepared to obey, as no doubt she always did, her lord and master. Suddenly, with a practised movement, she wheeled round Mr. Mivers, andtaking care to protrude before him the sharp point of the umbrella, cuther way through the crowd like the scythed car of the Ancient Britons, and was soon lost amidst the throng, although her way might be guessed bya slight ripple of peculiar agitation along the general stream, accompanied by a prolonged murmur of reproach or expostulation whichgradually died in the distance. 

Ardworth gazed after the fair form of Helen with a look of regret; andwhen it vanished, with a slight start and a suppressed sigh he turnedaway, and with the long, steady stride of a strong man, cleared his paththrough the Strand towards the printing-office of a journal on which hewas responsibly engaged. 

But Percival, who had caught much of the conversation that took place sonear him, --Percival, happy child of idleness and whim, --had no motive oflabour and occupation to stay the free impulse of his heart, and hisheart drew him on, with magnetic attraction, in the track of the firstbeing that had ever touched the sweet instincts of youth. 

Meanwhile, Mrs. Mivers was destined to learn--though perhaps the lessonlittle availed her--that to get smoothly through this world it isnecessary to be supple as well as strong; and though, up to a certainpoint, man or woman may force the way by poking umbrellas into people'sribs and treading mercilessly upon people's toes, yet the endurance ofribs and toes has its appointed limits. 

Helen, half terrified, also half amused by her companion's robustresolution of purpose, had in Mrs. Mivers's general courage and successthat confidence which the weak repose in the strong; and though whenevershe turned her eyes from the illuminations, she besought Mrs. Mivers tobe more gentle, yet, seeing that they had gone safely from St. Paul's toSt. James's, she had no distinct apprehension of any practically illresults from the energies she was unable to mitigate. But now, havingjust gained the end of St. James's Street, Mrs. Mivers at last found hermatch. The crowd here halted, thick and serried, to gaze in peace uponthe brilliant vista which the shops and clubs of that street presented. Coaches and carriages had paused in their line, and immediately beforeMrs. Mivers stood three very thin, small women, whose dress bespoke themto be of the humblest class. 

"Make way, there; make way, my good women, make way!" cried Mrs. Mivers, equally disdainful of the size and the rank of the obstructing parties. 

"Arrah, and what shall we make way for the like of you, you oldbusybody?" said one of the dames, turning round, and presenting a veryformidable squint to the broad optics of Mrs. Mivers. 

Without deigning a reply, Mrs. Mivers had recourse to her usual tactics. Umbrella and husband went right between two of the feminine obstructives;and to the inconceivable astonishment and horror of the assailant, husband and umbrella instantly vanished. The three small furies hadpounced upon both. They were torn from their natural owner; they werehurried away; the stream behind, long fretted at the path so abruptlymade amidst it, closed in, joyous, with a thousand waves. Mrs. Miversand Helen were borne forward in one way, the umbrella and the husband inthe other; in the distance a small voice was heard: "Don't you! don't!Be quiet! Mrs. --Mrs. M. ! Oh, oh, Mrs. M. !" At that last repetition ofthe beloved and familiar initial, uttered in a tone of almost superhumananguish, the conjugal heart of Mrs. Mivers was afflicted beyond control. 

"Wait here a moment, my dear; I'll just give it them, that's all!" And inanother moment Mrs. Mivers was heard bustling, scolding, till all traceof her whereabout was gone from the eyes of Helen. Thus left alone, inexceeding shame and dismay, the poor girl cast a glance around. Theglance was caught by two young men, whose station, in these days whendress is an equivocal designator of rank, could not be guessed by theirexterior. They might be dandies from the west, --they might be clerksfrom the east. 

"By Jove, " exclaimed one, "that's a sweet pretty girl!" and, by a suddenmovement of the crowd, they both found themselves close to Helen. 

"Are you alone, my dear?" said a voice rudely familiar. Helen made noreply; the tone of the voice frightened her. A gap in the mob showed thespace towards Cleveland Row, which, leading to no illuminations, wasvacant and solitary. She instantly made towards this spot; the two menfollowed her, the bolder and elder one occasionally trying to catch holdof her arm. At last, as she passed the last house to the left, a housethen owned by one who, at once far-sighted and impetuous, affable andhaughty, characterized alike by solid virtues and brilliant faults, would, but for hollow friends, have triumphed over countless foes, andenjoyed at last that brief day of stormy power for which statesmen resignthe health of manhood and the hope of age, --as she passed that memorablemansion, she suddenly perceived that the space before her had nothoroughfare; and, while she paused in dismay, her pursuers blockaded herescape. 

One of them now fairly seized her hand. "Nay, pretty one, why so cruel?But one kiss, --only one!" He endeavoured to pass his arm round her waistwhile he spoke. Helen eluded him, and darted forward, to find her waystopped by her persecutor's companion, when, to her astonishment, a thirdperson gently pushed aside the form that impeded her path, approached, and looking mute defiance at the unchivalric molesters, offered her hisarm. Helen gave but one timid, hurrying glance to her unexpectedprotector; something in his face, his air, his youth, appealed at once toher confidence. Mechanically, and scarce knowing what she did, she laidher trembling hand on the arm held out to her. 

The two Lotharios looked foolish. One pulled up his shirt-collar, andthe other turned, with a forced laugh, on his heel. Boy as Percivalseemed, and little more than boy as he was, there was a dangerous fire inhis eye, and an expression of spirit and ready courage in his wholecountenance, which, if it did not awe his tall rivals, made them at leastunwilling to have a scene and provoke the interference of a policeman;one of whom was now seen walking slowly up to the spot. They thereforepreserved a discomfited silence; and Percival St. John, with his heartgoing ten knots a beat, sailed triumphantly off with his prize. 

Scarcely knowing whither he went, certainly forgetful of Mr. Mivers, inhis anxiety to escape at least from the crowd, Percival walked on till hefound himself with his fair charge under the trees of St. James's Park. 

Then Helen, recovering herself, paused, and said, alarmed: "But this isnot my way; I must go back to the street!"

"How foolish I am! That is true, " said Percival, looking confused. "I--I felt so happy to be with you, feel your hand on my arm, and think thatwe were all by ourselves, that--that---But you have dropped yourflowers!"

And as a bouquet Helen wore, dislodged somehow or other, fell to theground, both stooped to pick it up, and their hands met. At that touch, Percival felt a strange tremble, which perhaps communicated itself (forsuch things are contagious) to his fair companion. Percival had got thenosegay, and seemed willing to detain it; for he bent his facelingeringly over the flowers. At length he turned his bright, ingenuouseyes to Helen, and singling one rose from the rest, said beseechingly:"May I keep this? See, it is not so fresh as the others. "

"I am sure, sir, " said Helen, colouring, and looking down, "I owe you somuch that I should be glad if a poor flower could repay it. "

"A poor flower! You don't know what a prize this is to me!" Percivalplaced the rose reverently in his bosom, and the two moved back slowly, as if reluctant both, through the old palace-court into the street. 

"Is that lady related to you?" asked Percival, looking another way, anddreading the reply, --"not your mother, surely!"

"Oh, no! I have no mother!"

"Forgive me!" said Percival; for the tone of Helen's voice told him thathe had touched the spring of a household sorrow. "And, " he added, with ajealousy that he could scarcely restrain from making itself evident inhis accent, "that gentleman who spoke to you under the Colonnade, --I haveseen him before, but where I cannot remember. In fact, you have puteverything but yourself out of my head. Is he related to you?"

"He is my cousin. "

"Cousin!" repeated Percival, pouting a little; and again there wassilence. 

"I don't know how it is, " said Percival at last, and very gravely, as ifmuch perplexed by some abstruse thought, "but I feel as if I had knownyou all my life. I never felt this for any one before. "

There was something so irresistibly innocent in the boy's serious, wondering tone as he said these words that a smile, in spite of herself, broke out amongst the thousand dimples round Helen's charming lips. Perhaps the little witch felt a touch of coquetry for the first time. 

Percival, who was looking sidelong into her face, saw the smile, andsaid, drawing up his head, and shaking back his jetty curls: "I dare sayyou are laughing at me as a mere boy; but I am older than I look. I amsure I am much older than you are. Let me see, you are seventeen, Isuppose?"

Helen, getting more and more at her ease, nodded playful assent. 

"And I am not far from twenty-one. Ah, you may well look surprised, butso it is. An hour ago I felt a mere boy; now I shall never feel a boyagain!"

Once more there was a long pause, and before it was broken, they hadgained the very spot in which Helen had lost her friend. 

"Why, bless us and save us!" exclaimed a voice "loud as a trumpet, " butnot "with a silver sound, " "there you are, after all;" and Mrs. Mivers(husband and umbrella both regained) planted herself full before them. 

"Oh, a pretty fright I have been in! And now to see you coming along ascool as if nothing had happened; as if the humbrella had not lost itshivory 'andle, --it's quite purvoking. Dear, dear, what we have gonethrough! And who is this young gentleman, pray?"

Helen whispered some hesitating explanation, which Mrs. Mivers did notseem to receive as graciously as Percival, poor fellow, had a right toexpect. She stared him full in the face, and shook her head suspiciouslywhen she saw him a little confused by the survey. Then, tucking Helentightly under her arm, she walked back towards the Haymarket, merelysaying to Percival, --

"Much obligated, and good-night. I have a long journey to take to setdown this here young lady; and the best thing we can all do is to gethome as fast as we can, and have a refreshing cup of tea--that's my mind, sir. Excuse me!"

Thus abruptly dismissed, poor Percival gazed wistfully on his Helen asshe was borne along, and was somewhat comforted at seeing her look backwith (as he thought) a touch of regret in her parting smile. Thensuddenly it flashed across him how sadly he had wasted his time. Novicethat he was, he had not even learned the name and address of his newacquaintance. At that thought he hurried on through the crowd, but onlyreached the object of his pursuit just in time to see her placed in acoach, and to catch a full view of the luxuriant proportions of Mrs. Mivers as she followed her into the vehicle. 

As the lumbering conveyance (the only coach on the stand) heaved itselfinto motion, Percival's eye fell on the sweeper, who was still leaning onhis broom, and who, in grateful recognition of the unwonted generositythat had repaid his service, touched his ragged hat, and smiled drowsilyon his young customer. Love sharpens the wit and animates the timid; athought worthy of the most experienced inspired Percival St. John; hehurried to the sweeper, laid his hand on his patchwork coat, and saidbreathlessly, --

"You see that coach turning into the square? Follow it, --find out whereit sets down. There's a sovereign for you; another if you succeed. Calland tell me your success. Number ---- Curzon Street! Off, like a shot!"

The sweeper nodded and grinned; it was possibly not his first commissionof a similar kind. He darted down the street; and Percival, followinghim with equal speed, had the satisfaction to see him, as the coachtraversed St. James's Square, comfortably seated on the footboard. 

Beck, dull clod, knew nothing, cared nothing, felt nothing as to themotives or purpose of his employer. Honest love or selfish vice, it wasthe same to him. He saw only the one sovereign which, with astoundedeyes, he still gazed at on his palm, and the vision of the sovereign thatwas yet to come. 

 "Scandit aeratas vitiosa naves Cura; nee turmas equitum relinquit. "

It was the Selfishness of London, calm and stolid, whether on the trackof innocence or at the command of guile. 

At half-past ten o'clock Percival St. John was seated in his room, andthe sweeper stood at the threshold. Wealth and penury seemed broughtinto visible contact in the persons of the visitor and the host. Thedwelling is held by some to give an index to the character of the owner;if so, Percival's apartments differed much from those generally favouredby young men of rank and fortune. On the one hand, it had none of thataffectation of superior taste evinced in marqueterie and gilding, or themore picturesque discomfort of high-backed chairs and mediaevalcuriosities which prevails in the daintier abodes of fastidiousbachelors; nor, on the other hand, had it the sporting character whichindividualizes the ruder juveniles qui gaudent equis, betrayed byengravings of racers and celebrated fox-hunts, relieved, perhaps, if theNimrod condescend to a cross of the Lovelace, with portraits offigurantes, and ideals of French sentiment entitled, "Le Soir, " or "LaReveillee, " "L'Espoir, " or "L'Abandon. " But the rooms had a physiognomyof their own, from their exquisite neatness and cheerful simplicity. Thechintz draperies were lively with gay flowers; books filled up theniches; here and there were small pictures, chiefly sea-pieces, --wellchosen, well placed. 

There might, indeed, have been something almost effeminate in a certaininexpressible purity of taste, and a cleanliness of detail that seemedactually brilliant, had not the folding-doors allowed a glimpse of aplainer apartment, with fencing-foils and boxing-gloves ranged on thewall, and a cricket-bat resting carelessly in the corner. These gave aredeeming air of manliness to the rooms; but it was the manliness of aboy, --half-girl, if you please, in the purity of thought that pervadedone room, all boy in the playful pursuits that were made manifest in theother. Simple, however, as this abode really was, poor Beck had neverbeen admitted to the sight of anything half so fine. He stood at thedoor for a moment, and stared about him, bewildered and dazzled. But hisnatural torpor to things that concerned him not soon brought to him thesame stoicism that philosophy gives the strong; and after the firstsurprise, his eye quietly settled on his employer. St. John rose eagerlyfrom the sofa, on which he had been contemplating the starlit treetops ofChesterfield Gardens, --

"Well, well?" said Percival. 

"Hold Brompton, " said Beck, with a brevity of word and clearness ofperception worthy a Spartan. 

"Old Brompton?" repeated Percival, thinking the reply the most natural inthe world. 

"In a big 'ous by hisself, " continued Beck, "with a 'igh vall in front. "

"You would know it again?"

"In course; he's so wery peculiar. "

"He, --who?"

"Vy, the 'ous. The young lady got out, and the hold folks driv back. Idid not go arter them!" and Beck looked sly. 

"So! I must find out the name. "

"I axed at the public, " said Beck, proud of his diplomacy. "They keeps asarvant vot takes half a pint at her meals. The young lady's mabe aforiner. "

"A foreigner! Then she lives there with her mother?"

"So they s'pose at the public. "

"And the name?"

Beck shook his head. "'T is a French 'un, your honour; but the sarvant'sis Martha. "

"You must meet me at Brompton, near the turnpike, tomorrow, and show methe house. "

"Vy, I's in bizness all day, please your honour. "

"In business?"'

"I's the place of the crossing, " said Beck, with much dignity; "but artereight I goes vere I likes. "

"To-morrow evening, then, at half-past eight, by the turnpike. "

Beck pulled his forelock assentingly. 

"There's the sovereign I promised you, my poor fellow; much good may itdo you. Perhaps you have some father or mother whose heart it willglad. "

"I never had no such thing, " replied Beck, turning the coin in his hand. 

"Well, don't spend it in drink. "

"I never drinks nothing but svipes. "

"Then, " said Percival, laughingly, "what, my good friend, will you everdo with your money?"

Beck put his finger to his nose, sunk his voice into a whisper, andreplied solemnly: "I 'as a mattris. "

"A mistress, " said Percival. "Oh, a sweetheart. Well, but if she's agood girl, and loves you, she'll not let you spend your money on her. "

"I haint such a ninny as that, " said Beck, with majestic contempt. "I'spises the flat that is done brown by the blowens. I 'as a mattris. "

"A mattress! a mattress! Well, what has that to do with the money?"

"Vy, I lines it. "

Percival looked puzzled. "Oh, " said he, after a thoughtful pause, and ina tone of considerable compassion, "I understand: you sew your money inyour mattress. My poor, poor lad, you can do better than that! Thereare the savings banks. "

Beck looked frightened. "I 'opes your honour von't tell no vun. I 'opesno vun von't go for to put my tin vere I shall know nothing vatsomeverabout it. Now, I knows vere it is, and I lays on it. "

"Do you sleep more soundly when you lie on your treasure?"

"No. It's hodd, " said Beck, musingly, "but the more I lines it, thevorse I sleeps. "

Percival laughed, but there was melancholy in his laughter; something inthe forlorn, benighted, fatherless, squalid miser went to the core of hisopen, generous heart. 

"Do you ever read your Bible, " said he, after a pause, "or even thenewspaper?"

"I does not read nothing; cos vy? I haint been made a scholard, likeswell Tim, as was lagged for a forgery. "

"You go to church on a Sunday?"

"Yes; I 'as a weekly hingagement at the New Road. "

"What do you mean?"

"To see arter the gig of a gemman vot comes from 'Igate. "

Percival lifted his brilliant eyes, and they were moistened with aheavenly dew, on the dull face of his fellow-creature. Beck made ascrape, looked round, shambled back to the door, and ran home, throughthe lamp-lit streets of the great mart of the Christian universe, to sewthe gold in his mattress. 

CHAPTER III. 

EARLY TRAINING FOR AN UPRIGHT GENTLEMAN. 

Percival St. John had been brought up at home under the eye of his motherand the care of an excellent man who had been tutor to himself and hisbrothers. The tutor was not much of a classical scholar, for in greatmeasure he had educated himself; and he who does so, usually lacks thepolish and brilliancy of one whose footsteps have been led early to theTemple of the Muses. In fact, Captain Greville was a gallant soldier, with whom Vernon St. John had been acquainted in his own brief militarycareer, and whom circumstances had so reduced in life as to compel him tosell his commission and live as he could. He had always been known inhis regiment as a reading man, and his authority looked up to in all thedisputes as to history and dates, and literary anecdotes, which mightoccur at the mess-table. Vernon considered him the most learned man ofhis acquaintance; and when, accidentally meeting him in London, helearned his fallen fortunes, he congratulated himself on a very brilliantidea when he suggested that Captain Greville should assist him in theeducation of his boys and the management of his estate. At first, allthat Greville modestly undertook, with respect to the former, and, indeed, was expected to do, was to prepare the young gentlemen for Eton, to which Vernon, with the natural predilection of an Eton man, destinedhis sons. But the sickly constitutions of the two elder justified LadyMary in her opposition to a public school; and Percival conceived earlyso strong an affection for a sailor's life that the father's intentionswere frustrated. The two elder continued their education at home, andPercival, at an earlier age than usual, went to sea. The last wasfortunate enough to have for his captain one of that new race of navalofficers who, well educated and accomplished, form a notable contrast tothe old heroes of Smollett. Percival, however, had not been long in theservice before the deaths of his two elder brothers, preceded by that ofhis father, made him the head of his ancient house, and the sole prop ofhis mother's earthly hopes. He conquered with a generous effort thepassion for his noble profession, which service had but confirmed, andreturned home with his fresh, childlike nature uncorrupted, hisconstitution strengthened, his lively and impressionable mind braced bythe experience of danger and the habits of duty, and quietly resumed hisreading under Captain Greville, who moved from the Hall to a small housein the village. 

Now, the education he had received, from first to last, was less adaptedprematurely to quicken his intellect and excite his imagination than towarm his heart and elevate, while it chastened, his moral qualities; forin Lady Mary there was, amidst singular sweetness of temper, a high castof character and thought. She was not what is commonly called clever, and her experience of the world was limited, compared to that of mostwomen of similar rank who pass their lives in the vast theatre of London. But she became superior by a certain single-heartedness which made truthso habitual to her that the light in which she lived rendered all objectsaround her clear. One who is always true in the great duties of life isnearly always wise. And Vernon, when he had fairly buried his faults, had felt a noble shame for the excesses into which they had led him. Gradually more and more wedded to his home, he dropped his oldcompanions. He set grave guard on his talk (his habits now required noguard), lest any of the ancient levity should taint the ears of hischildren. Nothing is more common in parents than their desire that theirchildren should escape their faults. We scarcely know ourselves till wehave children; and then, if we love them duly, we look narrowly intofailings that become vices, when they serve as examples to the young. 

The inborn gentleman, with the native courage and spirit and horror oftrick and falsehood which belong to that chivalrous abstraction, survivedalmost alone in Vernon St. John; and his boys sprang up in the atmosphereof generous sentiments and transparent truth. The tutor was in harmonywith the parents, --a soldier every inch of him; not a meredisciplinarian, yet with a profound sense of duty, and a knowledge thatduty is to be found in attention to details. In inculcating the habit ofsubordination, so graceful to the young, he knew how to make himselfbeloved, and what is harder still, to be understood. The soul of thispoor soldier was white and unstained, as the arms of a maiden knight; itwas full of suppressed but lofty enthusiasm. He had been ill used, whether by Fate or the Horse Guards; his career had been a failure; buthe was as loyal as if his hand held the field-marshal's truncheon, andthe garter bound his knee. He was above all querulous discontent. Fromhim, no less than from his parents, Percival caught, not only a spirit ofhonour worthy the antiqua fides of the poets, but that peculiarcleanliness of thought, if the expression may be used, which belongs tothe ideal of youthful chivalry. In mere booklearning, Percival, as maybe supposed, was not very extensively read; but his mind, if not largelystored, had a certain unity of culture, which gave it stability andindividualized its operations. Travels, voyages, narratives of heroicadventure, biographies of great men, had made the favourite pasture ofhis enthusiasm. To this was added the more stirring, and, perhaps, themore genuine order of poets who make you feel and glow, rather than doubtand ponder. He knew at least enough of Greek to enjoy old Homer; and ifhe could have come but ill through a college examination into Aeschylusand Sophocles, he had dwelt with fresh delight on the rushing storm ofspears in the "Seven before Thebes, " and wept over the heroic calamitiesof Antigone. In science, he was no adept; but his clear good sense andquick appreciation of positive truths had led him easily through theelementary mathematics, and his somewhat martial spirit had made himdelight in the old captain's lectures on military tactics. Had heremained in the navy, Percival St. John would doubtless have beendistinguished. His talents fitted him for straightforward, manly action;and he had a generous desire of distinction, vague, perhaps, the momenthe was taken from his profession, and curbed by his diffidence in himselfand his sense of deficiencies in the ordinary routine of purely classicaleducation. Still, he had in him all the elements of a true man, --a manto go through life with a firm step and a clear conscience and a gallanthope. Such a man may not win fame, --that is an accident; but he mustoccupy no despicable place in the movement of the world. 

It was at first intended to send Percival to Oxford; but for some reasonor other that design was abandoned. Perhaps Lady Mary, over cautious, asmothers left alone sometimes are, feared the contagion to which a youngman of brilliant expectations and no studious turn is necessarily exposedin all places of miscellaneous resort. So Percival was sent abroad fortwo years, under the guardianship of Captain Greville. On his return, atthe age of nineteen, the great world lay before him, and he longedardently to enter. For a year Lady Mary's fears and fond anxietiesdetained him at Laughton; but though his great tenderness for his motherwithheld Percival from opposing her wishes by his own, this interval ofinaction affected visibly his health and spirits. Captain Greville, aman of the world, saw the cause sooner than Lady Mary, and one morning, earlier than usual, he walked up to the Hall. 

The captain, with all his deference to the sex, was a plain man enoughwhen business was to be done. Like his great commander, he came to thepoint in a few words. 

"My dear Lady Mary, our boy must go to London, --we are killing him here. "

"Mr. Greville!" cried Lady Mary, turning pale and putting aside herembroidery, --"killing him?"

"Killing the man in him. I don't mean to alarm you; I dare say his lungsare sound enough, and that his heart would bear the stethoscope to thesatisfaction of the College of Surgeons. But, my dear ma'am, Percival isto be a man; it is the man you are killing by keeping him tied to yourapron-string. "

"Oh, Mr. Greville, I am sure you don't wish to wound me, but--"

"I beg ten thousand pardons. I am rough, but truth is rough sometimes. "

"It is not for my sake, " said the mother, warmly, and with tears in hereyes, "that I have wished him to be here. If he is dull, can we not fillthe house for him?"

"Fill a thimble, my dear Lady Mary. Percival should have a plunge in theocean. "

"But he is so young yet, --that horrid London; such temptations, --fatherless, too!"

"I have no fear of the result if Percival goes now, while his principlesare strong and his imagination is not inflamed; but if we keep him heremuch longer against his bent, he will learn to brood and to muse, writebad poetry perhaps, and think the world withheld from him a thousandtimes more delightful than it is. This very dread of temptation willprovoke his curiosity, irritate his fancy, make him imagine thetemptation must be a very delightful thing. For the first time in mylife, ma'am, I have caught him sighing over fashionable novels, andsubscribing to the Southampton Circulating Library. Take my word for it, it is time that Percival should begin life, and swim without corks. "

Lady Mary had a profound confidence in Greville's judgment and affectionfor Percival, and, like a sensible woman, she was aware of her ownweakness. She remained silent for a few moments, and then said, with aneffort, --

"You know how hateful London is to me now, --how unfit I am to return tothe hollow forms of its society; still, if you think it right, I willtake a house for the season, and Percival can still be under our eye. "

"No, ma'am, --pardon me, --that will be the surest way to make him eitherdiscontented or hypocritical. A young man of his prospects and tempercan hardly be expected to chime in with all our sober, old-fashionedhabits. You will impose on him--if he is to conform to our hours andnotions and quiet set--a thousand irksome restraints; and what will bethe consequence? In a year he will be of age, and can throw us offaltogether, if he pleases. I know the boy; don't seem to distrust him, --he may be trusted. You place the true restraint on temptation when yousay to him: 'We confide to you our dearest treasure, --your honour, yourmorals, your conscience, yourself!'"

"But at least you will go with him, if it must be so, " said Lady Mary, after a few timid arguments, from which, one by one, she was driven. 

"I! What for? To be a jest of the young puppies he must know; to makehim ashamed of himself and me, --himself as a milksop, and me as a drynurse?"

"But this was not so abroad. "

"Abroad, ma'am, I gave him full swing I promise you; and when we wentabroad he was two years younger. "

"But he is a mere child still. "

"Child, Lady Mary! At his age I had gone through two sieges. There areyounger faces than his at a mess-room. Come, come! I know what youfear, --he may commit some follies; very likely. He may be taken in, andlose some money, --he can afford it, and he will get experience in return. Vices he has none. I have seen him, --ay, with the vicious. Send him outagainst the world like a saint of old, with his Bible in his hand, and nospot on his robe. Let him see fairly what is, not stay here to dream ofwhat is not. And when he's of age, ma'am, we must get him an object, apursuit; start him for the county, and make him serve the State. He willunderstand that business pretty well. Tush! tush! what is there to cryat?"

The captain prevailed. We don't say that his advice would have beenequally judicious for all youths of Percival's age; but he knew well thenature to which he confided; he knew well how strong was that young heartin its healthful simplicity and instinctive rectitude; and he appreciatedhis manliness not too highly when he felt that all evident props and aidswould be but irritating tokens of distrust. 

And thus, armed only with letters of introduction, his mother's tearfuladmonitions, and Greville's experienced warnings, Percival St. John waslaunched into London life. After the first month or so, Greville came upto visit him, do him sundry kind, invisible offices amongst his oldfriends, help him to equip his apartments, and mount his stud; and whollysatisfied with the result of his experiment, returned in high spirits, with flattering reports, to the anxious mother. 

But, indeed, the tone of Percival's letters would have been sufficient toallay even maternal anxiety. He did not write, as sons are apt to do, short excuses for not writing more at length, unsatisfactory compressionsof details (exciting worlds of conjecture) into a hurried sentence. Frank and overflowing, those delightful epistles gave accounts fresh fromthe first impressions of all he saw and did. There was a racy, wholesomegusto in his enjoyment of novelty and independence. His balls and hisdinners and his cricket at Lord's, his partners and his companions, hisgeneral gayety, his occasional ennui, furnisbed ample materials to onewho felt he was corresponding with another heart, and had nothing to fearor to conceal. 

But about two months before this portion of our narrative opens with thecoronation, Lady Mary's favourite sister, who had never married, and who, by the death of her parents, was left alone in the worse than widowhoodof an old maid, had been ordered to Pisa for a complaint that betrayedpulmonary symptoms; and Lady Mary, with her usual unselfishness, conquered both her aversion to movement and her wish to be in reach ofher son, to accompany abroad this beloved and solitary relative. CaptainGreville was pressed into service as their joint cavalier. And thusPercival's habitual intercourse with his two principal correspondentsreceived a temporary check. 

CHAPTER IV. 

JOHN ARDWORTH. 

At noon the next day Beck, restored to his grandeur, was at the helm ofhis state; Percival was vainly trying to be amused by the talk of two orthree loungers who did him the honour to smoke a cigar in his rooms; andJohn Ardworth sat in his dingy cell in Gray's Inn, with a pile of lawbooks on the table, and the daily newspapers carpeting a footstool ofHansard's Debates upon the floor, --no unusual combination of studiesamongst the poorer and more ardent students of the law, who often owetheir earliest, nor perhaps their least noble, earnings to employment inthe empire of the Press. By the power of a mind habituated to labour, and backed by a frame of remarkable strength and endurance, Ardworthgrappled with his arid studies not the less manfully for a night mainlyspent in a printer's office, and stinted to less than four hours' actualsleep. But that sleep was profound and refreshing as a peasant's. Thenights thus devoted to the Press (he was employed in the sub-editing of adaily journal), the mornings to the law, he kept distinct the twoseparate callings with a stern subdivision of labour which in itselfproved the vigour of his energy and the resolution of his will. Earlycompelled to shift for himself and carve out his own way, he had obtaineda small fellowship at the small college in which he had passed hisacademic career. Previous to his arrival in London, by contributions topolitical periodicals and a high reputation at that noble debatingsociety in Cambridge which has trained some of the most eminent of livingpublic men [Amongst those whom the "Union" almost contemporaneouslyprepared for public life, and whose distinction has kept the promise oftheir youth, we may mention the eminent barristers, Messrs. Austin andCockburn; and amongst statesmen, Lord Grey, Mr. C. Buller, Mr. CharlesVilliers, and Mr. Macaulay. Nor ought we to forget those brilliantcompetitors for the prizes of the University, Dr. Kennedy (now head-master of Shrewsbury School) and the late Winthrop M. Praed. ], he hadestablished a name which was immediately useful to him in obtainingemployment on the Press. Like most young men of practical ability, hewas an eager politician. The popular passion of the day kindled hisenthusiasm and stirred the depths of his soul with magnificent, thoughexaggerated, hopes in the destiny of his race. He identified himselfwith the people; his stout heart beat loud in their stormy cause. Hiscompositions, if they wanted that knowledge of men, that subtlecomprehension of the true state of parties, that happy temperance inwhich the crowning wisdom of statesmen must consist, --qualities whichexperience alone can give, --excited considerable attention by their boldeloquence and hardy logic. They were suited to the time. But JohnArdworth had that solidity of understanding which betokens more thantalent, and which is the usual substratum of genius. He would not dependalone on the precarious and often unhonoured toils of polemicalliterature for that distinction on which he had fixed his steadfastheart. Patiently he plodded on through the formal drudgeries of his newprofession, lighting up dulness by his own acute comprehension, weavingcomplexities into simple system by the grasp of an intellect inured togeneralize, and learning to love even what was most distasteful, by thesense of difficulty overcome, and the clearer vision which every stepthrough the mists and up the hill gave of the land beyond. Of what thesuperficial are apt to consider genius, John Ardworth had but little. Hehad some imagination (for a true thinker is never without that), but hehad a very slight share of fancy. He did not flirt with the Muses; onthe granite of his mind few flowers could spring. His style, rushing andearnest, admitted at times of a humour not without delicacy, --though lessdelicate than forcible and deep, --but it was little adorned with wit, andstill less with poetry. Yet Ardworth had genius, and genius ample andmagnificent. There was genius in that industrious energy so patient inthe conquest of detail, so triumphant in the perception of results. There was genius in that kindly sympathy with mankind; genius in thatstubborn determination to succeed; genius in that vivid comprehension ofaffairs, and the large interests of the world; genius fed in the laboursof the closet, and evinced the instant he was brought into contact withmen, --evinced in readiness of thought, grasp of memory, even in a rough, imperious nature, which showed him born to speak strong truths, and intheir name to struggle and command. 

Rough was this man often in his exterior, though really gentle and kind-hearted. John Ardworth had sacrificed to no Graces; he would have thrownLord Chesterfield into a fever. Not that he was ever vulgar, forvulgarity implies affectation of refinement; but he talked loud andlaughed loud if the whim seized him, and rubbed his great hands with aboyish heartiness of glee if he discomfited an adversary in argument. Or, sometimes, he would sit abstracted and moody, and answer briefly andboorishly those who interrupted him. Young men were mostly afraid ofhim, though he wanted but fame to have a set of admiring disciples. Oldmen censured his presumption and recoiled from the novelty of his ideas. Women alone liked and appreciated him, as, with their finer insight intocharacter, they generally do what is honest and sterling. Some strangefailings, too, had John Ardworth, --some of the usual vagaries andcontradictions of clever men. As a system, he was rigidly abstemious. For days together he would drink nothing but water, eat nothing butbread, or hard biscuit, or a couple of eggs; then, having wound up someallotted portion of work, Ardworth would indulge what he called a self-saturnalia, --would stride off with old college friends to an inn in oneof the suburbs, and spend, as he said triumphantly, "a day of blesseddebauch!" Innocent enough, for the most part, the debauch was, consisting in cracking jests, stringing puns, a fish dinner, perhaps, andan extra bottle or two of fiery port. Sometimes this jollity, which wasalways loud and uproarious, found its scene in one of the cider-cellarsor midnight taverns; but Ardworth's labours on the Press made that latterdissipation extremely rare. These relaxations were always succeeded by amien more than usually grave, a manner more than usually curt andungracious, an application more than ever rigorous and intense. JohnArdworth was not a good-tempered man, but he was the best-natured manthat ever breathed. He was, like all ambitious persons, very muchoccupied with self; and yet it would have been a ludicrous misapplicationof words to call him selfish. Even the desire of fame which absorbed himwas but a part of benevolence, --a desire to promote justice and to servehis kind. 

John Ardworth's shaggy brows were bent over his open volumes when hisclerk entered noiselessly and placed on his table a letter which thetwopenny-postman had just delivered. With an impatient shrug of theshoulders, Ardworth glanced towards the superscription; but his eyebecame earnest and his interest aroused as he recognized the hand. "Again!" he muttered. "What mystery is this? Who can feel such interestin my fate?" He broke the seal and read as follows:--

Do you neglect my advice, or have you begun to act upon it? Are youcontented only with the slow process of mechanical application, or willyou make a triumphant effort to abridge your apprenticeship and emerge atonce into fame and power? I repeat that you fritter away your talentsand your opportunities upon this miserable task-work on a journal. I amimpatient for you. Come forward yourself, put your force and yourknowledge into some work of which the world may know the author. Dayafter day I am examining into your destiny, and day after day I believemore and more that you are not fated for the tedious drudgery to whichyou doom your youth. I would have you great, but in the senate, not awretched casuist at the Bar. Appear in public as an individualauthority, not one of that nameless troop of shadows contemned whiledreaded as the Press. Write for renown. Go into the world, and makefriends. Soften your rugged bearing. Lift yourself above that herd whomyou call "the people. " What if you are born of the noble class! What ifyour career is as gentleman, not plebeian Want not for money. Use what Isend you as the young and the well-born should use it; or let it at leastgain you a respite from toils for bread, and support you in your struggleto emancipate yourself from obscurity into fame. YOUR UNKNOWN FRIEND

A bank-note for 100 pounds dropped from the envelope as Ardworth silentlyreplaced the letter on the table. 

Thrice before had he received communications in the same handwriting, andmuch to the same effect. Certainly, to a mind of less strength therewould have been something very unsettling in those vague hints of astation higher than he owned, of a future at variance with the toilsomelot he had drawn from the urn; but after a single glance over his loneposition in all its bearings and probable expectations, Ardworth's steadysense shook off the slight disturbance such misty vaticinations hadeffected. His mother's family was indeed unknown to him, he was evenignorant of her maiden name. But that very obscurity seemed unfavourableto much hope from such a quarter. The connections with the rich andwell-born are seldom left obscure. From his father's family he had notone expectation. More had he been moved by exhortation now generallyrepeated, but in a previous letter more precisely detailed; namely, toappeal to the reading public in his acknowledged person, and by somestriking and original work. This idea he had often contemplated andrevolved; but partly the necessity of keeping pace with the manyexigencies of the hour had deterred him, and partly also the convictionof his sober judgment that a man does himself no good at the Bar even bythe most brilliant distinction gained in discursive fields. He had thenatural yearning of the Restless Genius; and the Patient Genius (higherpower of the two) had suppressed the longing. Still, so far, thewhispers of his correspondent tempted and aroused. But hitherto he hadsought to persuade himself that the communications thus strangely forcedon him arose perhaps from idle motives, --a jest, it might be, of one ofhis old college friends, or at best the vain enthusiasm of some morecredulous admirer. But the enclosure now sent to him forbade either ofthese suppositions. Who that he knew could afford so costly a jest or soextravagant a tribute? He was perplexed, and with his perplexity wasmixed a kind of fear. Plain, earnest, unromantic in the commonacceptation of the word, the mystery of this intermeddling with his fate, this arrogation of the license to spy, the right to counsel, and theprivilege to bestow, gave him the uneasiness the bravest men may feel atnoises in the dark. That day he could apply no more, he could not settleback to his Law Reports. He took two or three unquiet turns up and downhis smoke-dried cell, then locked up the letter and enclosure, seized hishat, and strode, with his usual lusty, swinging strides, into the openair. 

But still the letter haunted him. "And if, " he said almost audibly, --"ifI were the heir to some higher station, why then I might have a heartlike idle men; and Helen, beloved Helen--" He paused, sighed, shook hisrough head, shaggy with neglected curls, and added: "As if even then Icould steal myself into a girl's good graces! Man's esteem I maycommand, though poor; woman's love could I win, though rich? Pooh! pooh!every wood does not make a Mercury; and faith, the wood I am made of willscarcely cut up into a lover. "

Nevertheless, though thus soliloquizing, Ardworth mechanically bent hisway towards Brompton, and halted, half-ashamed of himself, at the housewhere Helen lodged with her aunt. It was a building that stood apartfrom all the cottages and villas of that charming suburb, half-way down anarrow lane, and enclosed by high, melancholy walls, deep set in which asmall door, with the paint blistered and weather-stained, gaveunfrequented entrance to the demesne. A woman servant of middle age andstarched, puritanical appearance answered the loud ring of the bell, andArdworth seemed a privileged visitor, for she asked him no question as, with a slight nod and a smileless, stupid expression in a face otherwisecomely, she led the way across a paved path, much weed-grown, to thehouse. That house itself had somewhat of a stern and sad exterior. Itwas not ancient, yet it looked old from shabbiness and neglect. Thevine, loosened from the rusty nails, trailed rankly against the wall, andfell in crawling branches over the ground. The house had once beenwhitewashed; but the colour, worn off in great patches, distained withdamp, struggled here and there with the dingy, chipped bricks beneath. There was no peculiar want of what is called "tenantable repair;" thewindows were whole, and doubtless the roof sheltered from the rain. Butthe woodwork that encased the panes was decayed, and houseleek coveredthe tiles. Altogether, there was that forlorn and cheerless aspect aboutthe place which chills the visitor, he defines not why. And Ardworthsteadied his usual careless step, and crept, as if timidly, up thecreaking stairs. 

On entering the drawing-room, it seemed at first deserted; but the eye, searching round, perceived something stir in the recess of a huge chairset by the fireless hearth. And from amidst a mass of coverings a paleface emerged, and a thin hand waved its welcome to the visitor. 

Ardworth approached, pressed the hand, and drew a seat near to thesufferer's. 

"You are better, I hope?" he said cordially, and yet in a tone of morerespect than was often perceptible in his deep, blunt voice. 

"I am always the same, " was the quiet answer; "come nearer still. Yourvisits cheer me. "

And as these last words were said, Madame Dalibard raised herself fromher recumbent posture and gazed long upon Ardworth's face of power andfront of thought. "You overfatigue yourself, my poor kinsman, " she said, with a certain tenderness; "you look already too old for your youngyears. "

"That's no disadvantage at the Bar. "

"Is the Bar your means, or your end?"

"My dear Madame Dalibard, it is my profession. "

"No, your profession is to rise. John Ardworth, " and the low voiceswelled in its volume, "you are bold, able, and aspiring; for this, Ilove you, --love you almost--almost as a mother. Your fate, " shecontinued hurriedly, "interests me; your energies inspire me withadmiration. Often I sit here for hours, musing over your destiny to be, so that at times I may almost say that in your life I live. "

Ardworth looked embarrassed, and with an awkward attempt at compliment hebegan, hesitatingly: "I should think too highly of myself if I couldreally believe that you--"

"Tell me, " interrupted Madame Dalibard, --"we have had many conversationsupon grave and subtle matters; we have disputed on the secret mysteriesof the human mind; we have compared our several experiences of outwardlife and the mechanism of the social world, --tell me, then, and frankly, what do you think of me? Do you regard me merely as your sex is apt toregard the woman who aspires to equal men, --a thing of borrowed phrasesand unsound ideas, feeble to guide, and unskilled to teach; or do yourecognize in this miserable body a mind of force not unworthy yours, ruled by an experience larger than your own?"

"I think of you, " answered Ardworth, frankly, "as the most remarkablewoman I have ever met. Yet--do not be angry--I do not like to yield tothe influence which you gain over me when we meet. It disturbs myconvictions, it disquiets my reason; I do not settle back to my life soeasily after your breath has passed over it. "

"And yet, " said Lucretia, with a solemn sadness in her voice, "thatinfluence is but the natural power which cold maturity exercises onardent youth. It is my mournful ad vantage over you that disquiets yourhappy calm. It is my experience that unsettles the fallacies which youname 'convictions. ' Let this pass. I asked your opinion of me, becauseI wished to place at your service all that knowledge of life which Ipossess. In proportion as you esteem me you will accept or reject mycounsels. "

"I have benefited by them already. It is the tone that you advised me toassume that gave me an importance I had not before with that oldformalist whose paper I serve, and whose prejudices I shock; it is toyour criticisms that I owe the more practical turn of my writings, andthe greater hold they have taken on the public. "

"Trifles indeed, these, " said Madame Dalibard, with a half smile. "Letthem at least induce you to listen to me if I propose to make your pathmore pleasant, yet your ascent more rapid. "

Ardworth knit his brows, and his countenance assumed an expression ofdoubt and curiosity. However, he only replied, with a blunt laugh, --

"You must be wise indeed if you have discovered a royal road todistinction. 

 'Ah, who can tell how hard it is to climb The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar!'

A more sensible exclamation than poets usually preface with their whining'Ahs' and 'Ohs!'"

"What we are is nothing, " pursued Madame Dalibard; "what we seem ismuch. "

Ardworth thrust his hands into his pockets and shook his head. The wisewoman continued, unheeding his dissent from her premises, --

"Everything you are taught to value has a likeness, and it is thatlikeness which the world values. Take a man out of the streets, poor andragged, what will the world do with him? Send him to the workhouse, ifnot to the jail. Ask a great painter to take that man's portrait, --rags, squalor, and all, --and kings will bid for the picture. You would thrustthe man from your doors, you would place the portrait in your palaces. It is the same with qualities; the portrait is worth more than the truth. What is virtue without character? But a man without virtue may thrive ona character! What is genius without success? But how often you bow tosuccess without genius! John Ardworth, possess yourself of theportraits, --win the character; seize the success. "

"Madame, " exclaimed Ardworth, rudely, "this is horrible!"

"Horrible it may be, " said Madame Dalibard, gently, and feeling, perhaps, that she had gone too far; "but it is the world's judgment. Seem, then, as well as be. You have virtue, as I believe. Well, wrap yourself init--in your closet. Go into the world, and earn character. If you havegenius, let it comfort you. Rush into the crowd, and get success. "

"Stop!" cried Ardworth; "I recognize you. How could I be so blind? Itis you who have written to me, and in the same strain; you have robbedyourself, --you, poor sufferer, --to throw extravagance into these stronghands. And why? What am I to you?" An expression of actual fondnesssoftened Lucretia's face as she looked up at him and replied: "I willtell you hereafter what you are to me. First, I confess that it is Iwhose letters have perplexed, perhaps offended you. The sum that I sentI do not miss. I have more, --will ever have more at your command; neverfear. Yes, I wish you to go into the world, not as a dependant, but asan equal to the world's favourites. I wish you to know more of men thanmere law-books teach you. I wish you to be in men's mouths, create acircle that shall talk of young Ardworth; that talk would travel to thosewho can advance your career. The very possession of money in certainstages of life gives assurance to the manner, gives attraction to theaddress. "

"But, " said Ardworth, "all this is very well for some favourite of birthand fortune; but for me--Yet speak, and plainly. You throw out hintsthat I am what I know not, but something less dependent on his nerves andhis brain than is plain John Ardworth. What is it you mean?"

Madame Dalibard bent her face over her breast, and rocking herself in herchair, seemed to muse for some moments before she answered. 

"When I first came to England, some months ago, I desired naturally tolearn all the particulars of my family and kindred, from which my longresidence abroad had estranged me. John Walter Ardworth was related tomy half-sister; to me he was but a mere connection. However, I knewsomething of his history, yet I did not know that he had a son. Shortlybefore I came to England, I learned that one who passed for his son hadbeen brought up by Mr. Fielden, and from Mr. Fielden I have since learnedall the grounds for that belief from which you take the name ofArdworth. "

Lucretia paused a moment; and after a glance at the impatient, wondering, and eager countenance that bent intent upon her, she resumed:

"Your reputed father was, you are doubtless aware, of reckless andextravagant habits. He had been put into the army by my uncle, and heentered the profession with the careless buoyancy of his sanguine nature. I remember those days, --that day! Well, to return--where was I?--WalterArdworth had the folly to entertain strong notions of politics. Hedreamed of being a soldier, and yet persuaded himself to be a republican. His notions, so hateful in his profession, got wind; he disguisednothing, he neglected the portraits of things, --appearances. He excitedthe rancour of his commanding officer; for politics then, more even thannow, were implacable ministrants to hate. Occasion presented itself. During the short Peace of Amiens he had been recalled. He had to head adetachment of soldiers against some mob, --in Ireland, I believe; he didnot fire on the mob, according to orders, --so, at least, it was said. John Walter Ardworth was tried by a court-martial, and broke! But youknow all this, perhaps?"

"My poor father! Only in part; I knew that he had been dismissed thearmy, --I believed unjustly. He was a soldier, and yet he dared to thinkfor himself and be humane!"

"But my uncle had left him a legacy; it brought no blessing, --none ofthat old man's gold did. Where are they all now, --Dalibard, Susan, andher fair-faced husband, --where? Vernon is in his grave, --but one son ofmany left! Gabriel Varney lives, it is true, and I! But that gold, --yea, in our hands there was a curse on it! Walter Ardworth had hislegacy. His nature was gay; if disgraced in his profession, he found mento pity and praise him, --Fools of Party like himself. He lived joyously, drank or gamed, or lent or borrowed, --what matters the wherefore? He wasin debt; he lived at last a wretched, shifting, fugitive life, snatchingbread where he could, with the bailiffs at his heels. Then, for a shorttime, we met again. "

Lucretia's brow grew black as night as her voice dropped at that lastsentence, and it was with a start that she continued, --

"In the midst of this hunted existence, Walter Ardworth appeared, lateone night, at Mr. Fielden's with an infant. He seemed--so says Mr. Fielden--ill, worn, and haggard. He entered into no explanations withrespect to the child that accompanied him, and retired at once to rest. What follows, Mr. Fielden, at my request, has noted down. Read, and seewhat claim you have to the honourable parentage so vaguely ascribed toyou. "

As she spoke, Madame Dalibard opened a box on her table, drew forth apaper in Fielden's writing, and placed it in Ardworth's hand. After somepreliminary statement of the writer's intimacy with the elder Ardworth, and the appearance of the latter at his house, as related by MadameDalibard, etc. , the document went on thus:--

The next day, when my poor guest was still in bed, my servant Hannah cameto advise me that two persons were without, waiting to see me. As is mywont, I bade them be shown in. On their entrance (two rough, farmer-looking men they were, who I thought might be coming to hire my littlepasture field), I prayed them to speak low, as a sick gentleman was justoverhead. Whereupon, and without saying a word further, the twostrangers made a rush from the room, leaving me dumb with amazement; in afew moments I heard voices and a scuffle above. I recovered myself, andthinking robbers had entered my peaceful house, I called out lustily, when Hannah came in, and we both, taking courage, went upstairs, andfound that poor Walter was in the hands of these supposed robbers, whoin truth were but bailiffs. They would not trust him out of their sightfor a moment. However, he took it more pleasantly than I could havesupposed possible; prayed me in a whisper to take care of the child, andI should soon hear from him again. In less than an hour he was gone. Two days afterwards I received from him a hurried letter, withoutaddress, of which this is a copy:--

DEAR FRIEND, --I slipped from the bailiffs, and here I am in a safe littletavern in sight of the sea! Mother Country is a very bad parent to me!Mother Brownrigg herself could scarcely be worse. I shall work out mypassage to some foreign land, and if I can recover my health (sea-air isbracing), I don't despair of getting my bread honestly, somehow. If everI can pay my debts, I may return. But, meanwhile, my good old tutor, what will you think of me? You to whom my sole return for so much pains, taken in vain, is another mouth to feed! And no money to pay for theboard! Yet you'll not grudge the child a place at your table, will you?No, nor kind, saving Mrs. Fielden either, --God bless her tender, economical soul! You know quite enough of me to be sure that I shallvery soon either free you of the boy, or send you something to preventits being an encumbrance. I would say, love and pity the child for mysake. But I own I feel---By Jove, I must be off; I hear the first signalfrom the vessel that-- Yours in haste, J. W. A. 

Young Ardworth stopped from the lecture, and sighed heavily. Thereseemed to him in this letter worse than a mock gayety, --a certain levityand recklessness which jarred on his own high principles. And the wantof affection for the child thus abandoned was evident, --not one fondword. He resumed the statement with a gloomy and disheartened attention. 

This was all I heard from my poor, erring Walter for more than threeyears; but I knew, in spite of his follies, that his heart was sound atbottom (the son's eyes brightened here, and he kissed the paper), and thechild was no burden to us; we loved it, not only for Ardworth's sake, butfor its own, and for charity's and Christ's. Ardworth's second letterwas as follows:--

En iterum Crispinus! I am still alive, and getting on in the world, --ay, and honestly too; I am no longer spending heedlessly; I am saving for mydebts, and I shall live, I trust, to pay off every farthing. First, formy debt to you I send an order, not signed in my name, but equally valid, on Messrs. Drummond, for 250 pounds. Repay yourself what the boy hascost. Let him be educated to get his own living, --if clever, as ascholar or a lawyer; if dull, as a tradesman. Whatever I may gain, hewill have his own way to make. I ought to tell you the story connectedwith his birth; but it is one of pain and shame, and, on reflection, Ifeel that I have no right to injure him by affixing to his early birth anopprobrium of which he himself is guiltless. If ever I return toEngland, you shall know all, and by your counsels I will abide. Love toall your happy family. Your grateful FRIEND AND PUPIL. 

From this letter I began to suspect that the poor boy was probably notborn in wedlock, and that Ardworth's silence arose from his compunction. I conceived it best never to mention this suspicion to John himself as hegrew up. Why should I afflict him by a doubt from which his own fathershrank, and which might only exist in my own inexperienced anduncharitable interpretation of some vague words? When John was fourteen, I received from Messrs. Drummond a further sum of 500 pounds, but withoutany line from Ardworth, and only to the effect that Messrs. Drummond weredirected by a correspondent in Calcutta to pay me the said sum on behalfof expenses incurred for the maintenance of the child left to my chargeby John Walter Ardworth. My young pupil had been two years at theUniversity when I received the letter of which this is a copy:--

"How are you? Still well, still happy? Let me hope so! I have notwritten to you, dear old friend, but I have not been forgetful of you; Ihave inquired of you through my correspondents, and have learned, fromtime to time, such accounts as satisfied my grateful affection for you. I find that you have given the boy my name. Well, let him bear it, --itis nothing to boast of such as it became in my person; but, mind, I donot, therefore, acknowledge him as my son. I wish him to think himselfwithout parents, without other aid in the career of life than his ownindustry and talent--if talent he has. Let him go through the healthfulprobation of toil; let him search for and find independence. Till he isof age, 150 pounds per annum will be paid quarterly to your account forhim at Messrs. Drummond's. If then, to set him up in any business orprofession, a sum of money be necessary, name the amount by a line, signed A. B. , Calcutta, to the care of Messrs. Drummond, and it willreach and find me disposed to follow your instructions. But after thattime all further supply from me will cease. Do not suppose, because Isend this from India, that I am laden with rupees; all I can hope toattain is a competence. That boy is not the only one who has claims toshare it. Even, therefore, if I had the wish to rear him to theextravagant habits that ruined myself, I have not the power. Yes, lethim lean on his own strength. In the letter you send me, write fully ofyour family, your sons, and write as to a man who can perhaps help themin the world, and will be too happy thus in some slight degree to repayall he owes you. You would smile approvingly if you saw me now, --asteady, money-getting man, but still yours as ever. "

"P. S. --Do not let the boy write to me, nor give him this clew to myaddress. "

On the receipt of this letter, I wrote fully to Ardworth about theexcellent promise and conduct of his poor neglected son. I told himtruly he was a son any father might be proud of, and rebuked, even toharshness, Walter's unseemly tone respecting him. One's child is one'schild, however the father may have wronged the mother. To this letter Inever received any answer. When John was of age, and had made himselfindependent of want by obtaining a college fellowship, I spoke to himabout his prospects. I told him that his father, though residing abroadand for some reason keeping himself concealed, had munificently paidhitherto for his maintenance, and would lay down what might be necessaryto start him in business, or perhaps place him in the army, but that hisfather might be better pleased if he could show a love of independence, and henceforth maintain himself. I knew the boy I spoke to! Johnthought as I did, and I never applied for another donation to the elderArdworth. The allowance ceased; John since then has maintained himself. I have heard no more from his father, though I have written often to theaddress he gave me. I begin to fear that he is dead. I once went up totown and saw one of the heads of Messrs. Drummond's firm, a very politegentleman, but he could give me no information, except that he obeyedinstructions from a correspondent at Calcutta, --one Mr. Macfarren. Whereon I wrote to Mr. Macfarren, and asked him, as I thought verypressingly, to tell me all he knew of poor Ardworth the elder. Heanswered shortly that he knew of no such person at all, and that A. B. Was a French merchant, settled in Calcutta, who had been dead for abovetwo years. I now gave up all hopes of any further intelligence, and wasmore convinced than ever that I had acted rightly in withholding frompoor John my correspondence with his father. The lad had been curiousand inquisitive naturally; but when I told him that I thought it my dutyto his father to be so reserved, he forebore to press me. I have only toadd, first, that by all the inquiries I could make of the survivingmembers of Walter Ardworth's family, it seemed their full belief that hehad never been married, and therefore I fear we must conclude that he hadno legitimate children, --which may account for, though it cannot excuse, his neglect; and secondly, with respect to the sums received on dearJohn's account, I put them all by, capital and interest, deducting onlythe expense of his first year at Cambridge (the which I could not defraywithout injuring my own children), and it all stands in his name atMessrs. Drummond's, vested in the Three per Cents. That I have not toldhim of this was by my poor dear wife's advice; for she said, verysensibly, --and she was a shrewd woman on money matters, --"If he knows hehas such a large sum all in the lump, who knows but he may grow idle andextravagant, and spend it at once, like his father before him? Whereas, some time or other he will want to marry, or need money for someparticular purpose, --then what a blessing it will be!"

However, my dear madam, as you know the world better than I do, you cannow do as you please, both as to communicating to John all theinformation herein contained as to his parentage, and as to apprising himof the large sum of which he is lawfully possessed. MATTHEW FIELDEN. 

P. S. --In justice to poor John Ardworth, and to show that whatever whim hemay have conceived about his own child, he had still a heart kind enoughto remember mine, though Heaven knows I said nothing about them in myletters, my eldest boy received an offer of an excellent place in a WestIndia merchant's house, and has got on to be chief clerk; and my secondson was presented to a living of 117 pounds a year by a gentleman henever heard of. Though I never traced these good acts to Ardworth, fromwhom else could they come?

Ardworth put down the paper without a word; and Lucretia, who had watchedhim while he read, was struck with the self-control he evinced when hecame to the end of the disclosure. She laid her hand on his and said, --

"Courage! you have lost nothing!"

"Nothing!" said Ardworth, with a bitter smile. "A father's love and afather's name, --nothing!"

"But, " exclaimed Lucretia, "is this man your father? Does a father'sheart beat in one line of those hard sentences? No, no; it seems to meprobable, --it seems to me almost certain, that you are--" She stopped, and continued, with a calmer accent, "near to my own blood. I am now inEngland, in London, to prosecute the inquiry built upon that hope. Ifso, if so, you shall--" Madame Dalibard again stopped abruptly, andthere was something terrible in the very exultation of her countenance. She drew a long breath, and resumed, with an evident effort at self-command, "If so, I have a right to the interest I feel for you. Sufferme yet to be silent as to the grounds of my belief, and--and--love me alittle in the mean while!"

Her voice trembled, as if with rushing tears, at these last words, andthere was almost an agony in the tone in which they were said, and in thegesture of the clasped hands she held out to him. 

Much moved (amidst all his mingled emotions at the tale thus made knownto him) by the manner and voice of the narrator, Ardworth bent down andkissed the extended hands. Then he rose abruptly, walked to and fro theroom, muttering to himself, paused opposite the window, threw it open, asfor air, and, indeed, fairly gasped for breath. When he turned round, however, his face was composed, and folding his arms on his large breastwith a sudden action, he said aloud, and yet rather to himself than tohis listener, --

"What matter, after all, by what name men call our fathers? We ourselvesmake our own fate! Bastard or noble, not a jot care I. Give meancestors, I will not disgrace them; raze from my lot even the very nameof father, and my sons shall have an ancestor in me!"

As he thus spoke, there was a rough grandeur in his hard face and thestrong ease of his powerful form. And while thus standing and thuslooking, the door opened, and Varney walked in abruptly. 

These two men had met occasionally at Madame Dalibard's, but no intimacyhad been established between them. Varney was formal and distant toArdworth, and Ardworth felt a repugnance to Varney. With the instinct ofsound, sterling, weighty natures, he detected at once, and dislikedheartily, that something of gaudy, false, exaggerated, and hollow whichpervaded Gabriel Varney's talk and manner, --even the trick of his walkand the cut of his dress. And Ardworth wanted that boyish and beautifulluxuriance of character which belonged to Percival St. John, easy toplease and to be pleased, and expanding into the warmth of admiration forall talent and all distinction. For art, if not the highest, Ardworthcared not a straw; it was nothing to him that Varney painted andcomposed, and ran showily through the jargon of literary babble, or toyedwith the puzzles of unsatisfying metaphysics. He saw but a charlatan, and he had not yet learned from experience what strength and what dangerlie hid in the boa parading its colours in the sun, and shifting, in thesensual sportiveness of its being, from bough to bough. 

Varney halted in the middle of the room as his eye rested first onArdworth, and then glanced towards Madame Dalibard. But Ardworth, jarredfrom his revery or resolves by the sound of a voice discordant to his earat all times, especially in the mood which then possessed him, scarcelyreturned Varney's salutation, buttoned his coat over his chest, seizedhis hat, and upsetting two chairs, and very considerably disturbing thegravity of a round table, forced his way to Madame Dalibard, pressed herhand, and said in a whisper, "I shall see you again soon, " and vanished. 

Varney, smoothing his hair with fingers that shone with rings, slid intothe seat next Madame Dalibard, which Ardworth had lately occupied, andsaid: "If I were a Clytemnestra, I should dread an Orestes in such ason!"

Madame Dalibard shot towards the speaker one of the sidelong, suspiciousglances which of old had characterized Lucretia, and said, --

"Clytemnestra was happy! The Furies slept to her crime, and haunted butthe avenger. "

"Hist!" said Varney. 

The door opened, and Ardworth reappeared. 

"I quite forgot what I half came to know. How is Helen? Did she returnhome safe?"

"Safe--yes!"

"Dear girl, I am glad to hear it! Where is she? Not gone to thoseMiverses again? I am no aristocrat, but why should one couple togetherrefinement and vulgarity?"

"Mr. Ardworth, " said Madame Dalibard, with haughty coldness, "my niece isunder my care, and you will permit me to judge for myself how todischarge the trust. Mr. Mivers is her own relation, --a nearer one thanyou are. "

Not at all abashed by the rebuke, Ardworth said carelessly: "Well, Ishall talk to you again on that subject. Meanwhile, pray give my love toher, --Helen, I mean. "

Madame Dalibard half rose in her chair, then sank back again, motioningwith her hand to Ardworth to approach. Varney rose and walked to thewindow, as if sensible that something was about to be said not meant forhis ear. 

When Ardworth was close to her chair, Madame Dalibard grasped his handwith a vigour that surprised him, and drawing him nearer still, whisperedas he bent down, --

"I will give Helen your love, if it is a cousin's, or, if you will, abrother's love. Do you intend--do you feel--an other, a warmer love?Speak, sir!" and drawing suddenly back, she gazed on his face with astern and menacing expression, her teeth set, and the lips firmly pressedtogether. 

Ardworth, though a little startled, and half angry, answered with thelow, ironical laugh not uncommon to him, "Pish! you ladies are apt tothink us men much greater fools than we are. A briefless lawyer is notvery inflammable tinder. Yes, a cousin's love, --quite enough. Poorlittle Helen! time enough to put other notions into her head; and then--she will have a sweetheart, gay and handsome like herself!"

"Ay, " said Madame Dalibard, with a slight smile, "ay, I am satisfied. Come soon. "

Ardworth nodded, and hurried down the stairs. As he gained the door, hecaught sight of Helen at a distance, bending over a flower-bed in theneglected garden. He paused, irresolute, a moment. "No, " he muttered tohimself, "no; I am fit company only for myself! A long walk into thefields, and then away with these mists round the Past and Future; thePresent at least is mine!"

CHAPTER V. 

THE WEAVERS AND THE WOOF. 

"And what, " said Varney, --"what, while we are pursuing a fancied clew, and seeking to provide first a name, and then a fortune for this younglawyer, --what steps have you really taken to meet the danger that menacesme, --to secure, if our inquiries fail, an independence for yourself?Months have elapsed, and you have still shrunk from advancing the greatscheme upon which we built, when the daughter of Susan Mainwaring wasadmitted to your hearth. "

"Why recall me, in these rare moments when I feel myself human still, --why recall me back to the nethermost abyss of revenge and crime? Oh, letme be sure that I have still a son! Even if John Ardworth, with hisgifts and energies, be denied to me, a son, though in rags, I will givehim wealth!--a son, though ignorant as the merest boor, I will pour intohis brain my dark wisdom! A son! a son! my heart swells at the word. Ah, you sneer! Yes, my heart swells, but not with the mawkish fondnessof a feeble mother. In a son, I shall live again, --transmigrate fromthis tortured and horrible life of mine; drink back my youth. In him Ishall rise from my fall, --strong in his power, great in his grandeur. Itis because I was born a woman, --had woman's poor passions and infirmweakness, --that I am what I am. I would transfer myself into the soul ofman, --man, who has the strength to act, and the privilege to rise. Intothe bronze of man's nature I would pour the experience which has broken, with its fierce elements, the puny vessel of clay. Yes, Gabriel, inreturn for all I have done and sacrificed for you, I ask but co-operationin that one hope of my shattered and storm-beat being. Bear, forbear, await; risk not that hope by some wretched, peddling crime which willbring on us both detection, --some wanton revelry in guilt, which is notworth the terror that treads upon its heels. "

"You forget, " answered Varney, with a kind of submissive sullenness, --forwhatever had passed between these two persons in their secret and fearfulintimacy, there was still a power in Lucretia, surviving her fall amidstthe fiends, that impressed Varney with the only respect he felt for manor woman, --"you forget strangely the nature of our elaborate and masterproject when you speak of 'peddling crime, ' or 'wanton revelry' in guilt!You forget, too, how every hour that we waste deepens the peril thatsurrounds me, and may sweep from your side the sole companion that canaid you in your objects, --nay, without whom they must wholly fail. Letme speak first of that most urgent danger, for your memory seems shortand troubled, since you have learned only to hope the recovery of yourson. If this man Stubmore, in whom the trust created by my uncle's willis now vested, once comes to town, once begins to bustle about hisaccursed projects of transferring the money from the Bank of England, Itell you again and again that my forgery on the bank will be detected, and that transportation will be the smallest penalty inflicted. Part ofthe forgery, as you know, was committed on your behalf, to find themoneys necessary for the research for your son, --committed on the clearunderstanding that our project on Helen should repay me, should enableme, perhaps undetected, to restore the sums illegally abstracted, or, atthe worst, to confess to Stubmore--whose character I well know--that, oppressed by difficulties, I had yielded to temptation, that I had forgedhis name (as I had forged his father's) as an authority to sell thecapital from the bank, and that now, in replacing the money, I repaid myerror and threw myself on his indulgence, on his silence. I say that Iknow enough of the man to know that I should be thus cheaply saved, or atthe worst, I should have but to strengthen his compassion by a bribe tohis avarice; but if I cannot replace the money, I am lost. "

"Well, well, " said Lucretia; "the money you shall have, let me but findmy son, and--"

"Grant me patience!" cried Varney, impetuously. "But what can your sondo, if found, unless you endow him with the heritage of Laughton? To dothat, Helen, who comes next to Percival St. John in the course of theentail, must cease to live! Have I not aided, am I not aiding youhourly, in your grand objects? This evening I shall see a man whom Ihave long lost sight of, but who has acquired in a lawyer's life the truescent after evidence: if that evidence exist, it shall be found. I havejust learned his address. By tomorrow he shall be on the track. I havestinted myself to save from the results of the last forgery the gold towhet his zeal. For the rest, as I have said, your design involves theremoval of two lives. Already over the one more difficult to slay theshadow creeps and the pall hangs. I have won, as you wished, and as wasnecessary, young St. John's familiar acquaintance; when the hour comes, he is in my hands. "

Lucretia smiled sternly. "So!" she said, between her ground teeth, "thefather forbade me the house that was my heritage! I have but to lift afinger and breathe a word, and, desolate as I am, I thrust from that homethe son! The spoiler left me the world, --I leave his son the grave!"

"But, " said Varney, doggedly pursuing his dreadful object, "why force meto repeat that his is not the only life between you and your son'sinheritance? St. John gone, Helen still remains. And what, if yourresearches fail, are we to lose the rich harvest which Helen will yieldus, --a harvest you reap with the same sickle which gathers in yourrevenge? Do you no longer see in Helen's face the features of hermother? Is the perfidy of William Mainwaring forgotten or forgiven?"

"Gabriel Varney, " said Lucretia, in a hollow and tremulous voice, "whenin that hour in which my whole being was revulsed, and I heard the cordsnap from the anchor, and saw the demons of the storm gather round mybark; when in that hour I stooped calmly down and kissed my rival'sbrow, --I murmured an oath which seemed not inspired by my own soul, butby an influence henceforth given to my fate: I vowed that the perfidydealt to me should be repaid; I vowed that the ruin of my own existenceshould fall on the brow which I kissed. I vowed that if shame anddisgrace were to supply the inheritance I had forfeited, I would notstand alone amidst the scorn of the pitiless world. In the vision of myagony, I saw, afar, the altar dressed and the bride-chamber prepared; andI breathed my curse, strong as prophecy, on the marriage-hearth and themarriage-bed. Why dream, then, that I would rescue the loathed child ofthat loathed union from your grasp? But is the time come? Yours may become: is mine?"

Something so awful there was in the look of his accomplice, so intense inthe hate of her low voice, that Varney, wretch as he was, andcontemplating at that very hour the foulest and most hideous guilt, drewback, appalled. 

Madame Dalibard resumed, and in a somewhat softer tone, but softened onlyby the anguish of despair. 

"Oh, had it been otherwise, what might I have been! Given over from thathour to the very incarnation of plotting crime, none to resist the evilimpulse of my own maddening heart, the partner, forced on me by fate, leading me deeper and deeper into the inextricable hell, --from that hourfraud upon fraud, guilt upon guilt, infamy heaped on infamy, till I standa marvel to myself that the thunderbolt falls not, that Nature thrustsnot from her breast a living outrage on all her laws! Was I notjustified in the desire of retribution? Every step that I fell, everyglance that I gave to the gulf below, increased but in me the desire forrevenge. All my acts had flowed from one fount: should the stream rollpollution, and the fount spring pure?"

"You have had your revenge on your rival and her husband. "

"I had it, and I passed on!" said Lucretia, with nostrils dilated as withhaughty triumph; "they were crushed, and I suffered them to live! Nay, when, by chance, I heard of William Mainwaring's death, I bowed down myhead, and I almost think I wept. The old days came back upon me. Yes, Iwept! But I had not destroyed their love. No, no; there I had miserablyfailed. A pledge of that love lived. I had left their hearth barren;Fate sent them a comfort which I had not foreseen. And suddenly my hatereturned, my wrongs rose again, my vengeance was not sated. The lovethat had destroyed more than my life, --my soul, --rose again and cursed mein the face of Helen. The oath which I took when I kissed my rival'sbrow, demanded another prey when I kissed the child of those nuptials. "

"You are prepared at last, then, to act?" cried Varney, in a tone ofsavage joy. 

At that moment, close under the window, rose, sudden and sweet, the voiceof one singing, --the young voice of Helen. The words were so distinctthat they came to the ears of the dark-plotting and guilty pair. In thesong itself there was little to remark or peculiarly apposite to theconsciences of those who heard; yet in the extreme and touching purity ofthe voice, and in the innocence of the general spirit of the words, triteas might be the image they conveyed, there was something that contrastedso fearfully their own thoughts and minds that they sat silent, lookingvacantly into each other's faces, and shrinking perhaps to turn theireyes within themselves. 

 HELEN'S HYMN. 

 Ye fade, yet still how sweet, ye Flowers! Your scent outlivesthe bloom! So, Father, may my mortal hours Grow sweeter towardsthe tomb!

 In withered leaves a healing cure The simple gleaners find;So may our withered hopes endure In virtues left behind!

 Oh, not to me be vainly given The lesson ye bestow, Ofthoughts that rise in sweets to Heaven, And turn to use below. 

The song died, but still the listeners remained silent, till at length, shaking off the effect, with his laugh of discordant irony, Varney said, --

"Sweet innocence, fresh from the nursery! Would it not be sin to sufferthe world to mar it? You hear the prayer: why not grant it, and let theflower 'turn to use below'?"

"Ah, but could it wither first!" muttered Lucretia, with an accent ofsuppressed rage. "Do you think that her--that his--daughter is to me buta vulgar life to be sacrificed merely for gold? Imagine away your sex, man! Women only know what I--such as I, woman still--feel in thepresence of the pure! Do you fancy that I should not have held death ablessing if death could have found me in youth such as Helen is? Ah, could she but live to suffer! Die! Well, since it must be, since my sonrequires the sacrifice, do as you will with the victim that deathmercifully snatches from my grasp. I could have wished to prolong herlife, to load it with some fragment of the curse her parents heaped uponme, --baffled love, and ruin, and despair! I could have hoped, in thisdivision of the spoil, that mine had been the vengeance, if yours thegold. You want the life, I the heart, --the heart to torture first; andthen--why then more willingly than I do now, could I have thrown thecarcass to the jackal!"

"Listen!" began Varney; when the door opened and Helen herself stoodunconsciously smiling at the threshold. 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE LAWYER AND THE BODY-SNATCHER. 

That same evening Beck, according to appointment, met Percival and showedhim the dreary-looking house which held the fair stranger who had soattracted his youthful fancy. And Percival looked at the high walls withthe sailor's bold desire for adventure, while confused visions reflectedfrom plays, operas, and novels, in which scaling walls with rope-laddersand dark-lanterns was represented as the natural vocation of a lover, flitted across his brain; and certainly he gave a deep sigh as hiscommon-sense plucked him back from such romance. However, having nowascertained the house, it would be easy to learn the name of its inmates, and to watch or make his opportunity. As slowly and reluctantly hewalked back to the spot where he had left his cabriolet, he entered intosome desultory conversation with his strange guide; and the pity he hadbefore conceived for Beck increased upon him as he talked and listened. This benighted mind, only illumined by a kind of miserable astuteness andthat "cunning of the belly" which is born of want to engender avarice;this joyless temperament; this age in youth; this living reproach, risingup from the stones of London against our social indifference to the soulswhich wither and rot under the hard eyes of science and the deaf ears ofwealth, --had a pathos for his lively sympathies and his fresh heart. 

"If ever you want a friend, come to me, " said St. John, abruptly. 

The sweeper stared, and a gleam of diviner nature, a ray of gratitude andunselfish devotion, darted through the fog and darkness of his mind. Hestood, with his hat off, watching the wheels of the cabriolet as it boreaway the happy child of fortune, and then, shaking his head, as at somepuzzle that perplexed and defied his comprehension, strode back to thetown and bent his way homeward. 

Between two and three hours after Percival thus parted from the sweeper, a man whose dress was little in accordance with the scene in which wepresent him, threaded his way through a foul labyrinth of alleys in theworst part of St. Giles's, --a neighbourhood, indeed, carefully shunned atdusk by wealthy passengers; for here dwelt not only Penury in itsgrimmest shape, but the desperate and dangerous guilt which is not to belightly encountered in its haunts and domiciles. Here children imbibevice with their mother's milk. Here Prostitution, commencing withchildhood, grows fierce and sanguinary in the teens, and leagues withtheft and murder. Here slinks the pickpocket, here emerges the burglar, here skulks the felon. Yet all about and all around, here, too, may befound virtue in its rarest and noblest form, --virtue outshiningcircumstance and defying temptation; the virtue of utter poverty, whichgroans, and yet sins not. So interwoven are these webs of penury andfraud that in one court your life is not safe; but turn to the righthand, and in the other, you might sleep safely in that worse than Irishshealing, though your pockets were full of gold. Through these hauntsthe ragged and penniless may walk unfearing, for they have nothing todread from the lawless, --more, perhaps, from the law; but the wealthy, the respectable, the spruce, the dainty, let them beware the spot, unlessthe policeman is in sight or day is in the skies!

As this passenger, whose appearance, as we have implied, was certainlynot that of a denizen, turned into one of the alleys, a rough hand seizedhim by the arm, and suddenly a group of girls and tatterdemalions issuedfrom a house, in which the lower shutters unclosed showed a lightburning, and surrounded him with a hoarse whoop. 

The passenger whispered a word in the ear of the grim blackguard who hadseized him, and his arm was instantly released. 

"Hist! a pal, --he has the catch, " said the blackguard, surlily. Thegroup gave way, and by the light of the clear starlit skies, and a singlelamp hung at the entrance of the alley, gazed upon the stranger. Butthey made no effort to detain him; and as he disappeared in the distantshadows, hastened back into the wretched hostlery where they had beenmerry-making. Meanwhile, the stranger gained a narrow court, and stoppedbefore a house in one of its angles, --a house taller than the rest, somuch taller than the rest that it had the effect of a tower; you wouldhave supposed it (perhaps rightly) to be the last remains of some ancientbuilding of importance, around which, as population thickened and fashionchanged, the huts below it had insolently sprung up. Quaint and massivepilasters, black with the mire and soot of centuries, flanked the deep-set door; the windows were heavy with mullions and transoms, and stronglybarred in the lower floor; but few of the panes were whole, and only hereand there had any attempt been made to keep out the wind and rain byrags, paper, old shoes, old hats, and other ingenious contrivances. Beside the door was conveniently placed a row of some ten or twelve bell-pulls, appertaining no doubt to the various lodgments into which thebuilding was subdivided. The stranger did not seem very familiar withthe appurtenances of the place. He stood in some suspense as to theproper bell to select; but at last, guided by a brass plate annexed toone of the pulls, which, though it was too dark to decipher theinscription, denoted a claim to superior gentility to the rest of thatnameless class, he hazarded a tug, which brought forth a 'larum loudenough to startle the whole court from its stillness. 

In a minute or less, the casement in one of the upper stories opened, ahead peered forth, and one of those voices peculiar to low debauch--raw, cracked, and hoarse--called out: "Who waits?"

"Is it you, Grabman?" asked the stranger, dubiously. 

"Yes, --Nicholas Grabman, attorney-at-law, sir, at your service; and yourname?"

"Jason, " answered the stranger. 

"Ho, there! ho, Beck!" cried the cracked voice to some one within; "godown and open the door. "

In a few moments the heavy portal swung and creaked and yawned sullenly, and a gaunt form, half-undressed, with an inch of a farthing rushlightglimmering through a battered lantern in its hand, presented itself toJason. The last eyed the ragged porter sharply. 

"Do you live here?"

"Yes, " answered Beck, with the cringe habitual to him. "H-up the ladder, vith the rats, drat 'em. "

"Well, lead on; hold up the lantern. A devil of a dark place this!"grumbled Jason, as he nearly stumbled over sundry broken chattels, andgained a flight of rude, black, broken stairs, that creaked under histread. 

"'St! 'st!" said Beck between his teeth, as the stranger, halting at thesecond floor, demanded, in no gentle tones, whether Mr. Grabman lived inthe chimney-pots. 

"'St! 'st! Don't make such a rumpus, or No. 7 will be at you. "

"What do I care for No. 7? And who the devil is No. 7?"

"A body-snatcher!" whispered Beck, with a shudder. "He's a dillicutsleeper, --can't abide having his night's rest sp'ilt. And he's thehoutrageoustest great cretur when he's h-up in his tantrums; it makesyour 'air stand on ind to 'ear him!"

"I should like very much to hear him, then, " said the stranger, curiously. And while he spoke, the door of No. 7 opened abruptly. Ahuge head, covered with matted hair, was thrust for a moment through theaperture, and two dull eyes, that seemed covered with a film like that ofthe birds which feed on the dead, met the stranger's bold, sparklingorbs. 

"Hell and fury!" bawled out the voice of this ogre, like a clap of nearthunder, "if you two keep tramp, tramp, there close at my door, I'll makeyou meat for the surgeons, b---- you!"

"Stop a moment, my civil friend, " said the stranger, advancing; "juststand where you are: I should like to make a sketch of your head. "

That head protruded farther from the door, and with it an enormous bulkof chest and shoulder. But the adventurous visitor was not to bedaunted. He took out, very coolly, a pencil and the back of a letter, and began his sketch. 

The body-snatcher stared at him an instant in mute astonishment; but thatoperation and the composure of the artist were so new to him that theyactually inspired him with terror. He slunk back, banged to the door;and the stranger, putting up his implements, said, with a disdainfullaugh, to Beck, who had slunk away into a corner, --

"No. 7 knows well how to take care of No. 1. Lead on, and be quick, then!"

As they continued to mount, they heard the body-snatcher growling andblaspheming in his den, and the sound made Beck clamber the quicker, tillat the next landing-place he took breath, threw open a door, and Jason, pushing him aside, entered first. 

The interior of the room bespoke better circumstances than might havebeen supposed from the approach; the floor was covered with sundry scrapsof carpet, formerly of different hues and patterns, but mellowed by timeinto one threadbare mass of grease and canvas. There was a good fire onthe hearth, though the night was warm; there were sundry volumes piledround the walls, in the binding peculiar to law books; in a corner stooda tall desk, of the fashion used by clerks, perched on tall, slim legs, and companioned by a tall, slim stool. On a table before the fire werescattered the remains of the nightly meal, --broiled bones, the skeletonof a herring; and the steam rose from a tumbler containing a liquidcolourless as water, but poisonous as gin. 

The room was squalid and dirty, and bespoke mean and slovenly habits; butit did not bespeak penury and want, it had even an air of filthy comfortof its own, --the comfort of the swine in its warm sty. The occupant ofthe chamber was in keeping with the localities. Figure to yourself a manof middle height, not thin, but void of all muscular flesh, --bloated, puffed, unwholesome. He was dressed in a gray-flannel gown and shortbreeches, the stockings wrinkled and distained, the feet in slippers. The stomach was that of a portly man, the legs were those of a skeleton;the cheeks full and swollen, like a ploughboy's, but livid, bespeckled, of a dull lead-colour, like a patient in the dropsy. The head, coveredin patches with thin, yellowish hair, gave some promise of intellect, forthe forehead was high, and appeared still more so from partial baldness;the eyes, embedded in fat and wrinkled skin, were small and lustreless, but they still had that acute look which education and abilitycommunicate to the human orb; the mouth most showed the animal, --full-lipped, coarse, and sensual; while behind one of two great ears stuck apen. 

You see before you, then, this slatternly figure, --slipshod, half-clothed, with a sort of shabby demi-gentility about it, half ragamuffin, half clerk; while in strong contrast appeared the new-comer, scrupulouslyneat, new, with bright black-satin stock, coat cut jauntily to the waist, varnished boots, kid gloves, and trim mustache. 

Behind this sleek and comely personage, on knock-knees, in torn shirtopen at the throat, with apathetic, listless, unlighted face, stood thelean and gawky Beck. 

"Set a chair for the gentleman, " said the inmate of the chamber to Beck, with a dignified wave of the hand. 

"How do you do, Mr. --Mr. --humph--Jason? How do you do? Always smart andblooming; the world thrives with you. "

"The world is a farm that thrives with all who till it properly, Grabman, " answered Jason, dryly; and with his handkerchief he carefullydusted the chair, on which he then daintily deposited his person. 

"But who is your Ganymede, your valet, your gentleman-usher?"

"Oh, a lad about town who lodges above and does odd jobs for me, --brushesmy coat, cleans my shoes, and after his day's work goes an errand now andthen. Make yourself scarce, Beck! Anatomy, vanish!"

Beck grinned, nodded, pulled hard at a flake of his hair, and closed thedoor. 

"One of your brotherhood, that?" asked Jason, carelessly. 

"He, oaf? No, " said Grabman, with profound contempt in his sicklyvisage. "He works for his bread, --instinct! Turnspits and truffle-dogsand some silly men have it! What an age since we met! Shall I mix you atumbler?"

"You know I never drink your vile spirits; though in Champagne andBordeaux I am any man's match. "

"And how the devil do you keep old black thoughts out of your mind bythose washy potations?"

"Old black thoughts--of what?"

"Of black actions, Jason. We have not met since you paid me forrecommending the nurse who attended your uncle in his last illness. "

"Well, poor coward?"

Grabman knit his thin eyebrows and gnawed his blubber lips. 

"I am no coward, as you know. "

"Not when a thing is to be done, but after it is done. You brave thesubstance, and tremble at the shadow. I dare say you see ugly goblins inthe dark, Grabman?"

"Ay, ay; but it is no use talking to you. You call yourself Jasonbecause of your yellow hair, or your love for the golden fleece; but yourold comrades call you 'Rattlesnake, ' and you have its blood, as itsvenom. "

"And its charm, man, " added Jason, with a strange smile, that, thoughhypocritical and constrained, had yet a certain softness, and addedgreatly to the comeliness of features which many might call beautiful, and all would allow to be regular and symmetrical. "I shall find atleast ten love-letters on my table when I go home. But enough of thesefopperies, I am here on business. "

"Law, of course; I am your man. Who's the victim?" and a hideous grin onGrabman's face contrasted the sleek smile that yet lingered upon hisvisitor's. 

"No; something less hazardous, but not less lucrative than our oldpractices. This is a business that may bring you hundreds, thousands;that may take you from this hovel to speculate at the West End; that maychange your gin into Lafitte, and your herring into venison; that maylift the broken attorney again upon the wheel, --again to roll down, itmay be; but that is your affair. "

"'Fore Gad, open the case, " cried Grabman, eagerly, and shoving aside theignoble relics of his supper, he leaned his elbows on the table and hischin on his damp palms, while eyes that positively brightened into anexpression of greedy and relentless intelligence were fixed upon hisvisitor. 

"The case runs thus, " said Jason. "Once upon a time there lived, at anold house in Hampshire called Laughton, a wealthy baronet named St. John. He was a bachelor, his estates at his own disposal. He had two niecesand a more distant kinsman. His eldest niece lived with him, --she wassupposed to be destined for his heiress; circumstances needless to relatebrought upon this girl her uncle's displeasure, --she was dismissed hishouse. Shortly afterwards he died, leaving to his kinsman--a Mr. Vernon--his estates, with remainder to Vernon's issue, and in default thereof, first to the issue of the younger niece, next to that of the elder anddisinherited one. The elder married, and was left a widow withoutchildren. She married again, and had a son. Her second husband, forsome reason or other, conceived ill opinions of his wife. In his lastillness (he did not live long) he resolved to punish the wife by robbingthe mother. He sent away the son, nor have we been able to discover himsince. It is that son whom you are to find. "

"I see, I see; go on, " said Grabman. "This son is now the remainderman. How lost? When? What year? What trace?"

"Patience. You will find in this paper the date of the loss and the ageof the child, then a mere infant. Now for the trace. This husband--didI tell you his name? No? Alfred Braddell--had one friend more intimatethan the rest, --John Walter Ardworth, a cashiered officer, a ruined man, pursued by bill-brokers, Jews, and bailiffs. To this man we have latelyhad reason to believe that the child was given. Ardworth, however, wasshortly afterwards obliged to fly his creditors. We know that he went toIndia; but if residing there, it must have been under some new name, andwe fear he is now dead. All our inquiries, at least after this man, havebeen fruitless. Before he went abroad, he left with his old tutor achild corresponding in age to that of Mrs. Braddell's. In this child shethinks she recognizes her son. All that you have to do is to trace hisidentity by good legal evidence. Don't smile in that foolish way, --Imean sound, bona fide evidence that will stand the fire of cross-examination; you know what that is! You will therefore find out, --first, whether Braddell did consign his child to Ardworth, and, if so, you mustthen follow Ardworth, with that child in his keeping, to MatthewFielden's house, whose address you find noted in the paper I gave you, together with many other memoranda as to Ardworth's creditors and thosewhom he is likely to have come across. "

"John Ardworth, I see!"

"John Walter Ardworth, --commonly called Walter; he, like me, perferred tobe known only by his second baptismal name. He, because of a favouriteRadical godfather; I, because Honore is an inconvenient Gallicism. Andperhaps when Honore Mirabeau (my godfather) went out of fashion with thesans-culottes, my father thought Gabriel a safer designation. Now I havetold you all. "

"What is the mother's maiden name?"

"Her maiden name was Clavering; she was married under that of Dalibard, her first husband. "

"And, " said Grabman, looking over the notes in the paper given to him, "it is at Liverpool that the husband died, and whence the child was sentaway?"

"It is so; to Liverpool you will go first. I tell you fairly, the task isdifficult, for hitherto it has foiled me. I knew but one man who, without flattery, could succeed, and therefore I spared no pains to findout Nicholas Grabman. You have the true ferret's faculty; you, too, area lawyer, and snuff evidence in every breath. Find us a son, --a legalson, --a son to be shown in a court of law, and the moment he steps intothe lands and the Hall of Laughton, you have five thousand pounds. "

"Can I have a bond to that effect?"

"My bond, I fear, is worth no more than my word. Trust to the last; if Ibreak it, you know enough of my secrets to hang me!"

"Don't talk of hanging; I hate that subject. But stop. If found, doesthis son succeed? Did this Mr. Vernon leave no heir; this other sistercontinue single, or prove barren?"

"Oh, true! He, Mr. Vernon, who by will took the name of St. John, heleft issue; but only one son still survives, a minor and unmarried. Thesister, too, left a daughter; both are poor, sickly creatures, --theirlives not worth a straw. Never mind them. You find Vincent Braddell, and he will not be long out of his property, nor you out of your 5, 000pounds! You see, under these circumstances a bond might become dangerousevidence!"

Grabman emitted a fearful and tremulous chuckle, --a laugh like the laughof a superstitious man when you talk to him of ghosts and churchyards. He chuckled, and his hair bristled. But after a pause, in which heseemed to wrestle with his own conscience, he said: "Well, well, you area strange man, Jason; you love your joke. I have nothing to do except tofind out this ultimate remainderman; mind that!"

"Perfectly; nothing like subdivision of labour. "

"The search will be expensive. "

"There is oil for your wheels, " answered Jason, putting a note-book intohis confidant's hands. "But mind you waste it not. No tricks, no falseplay, with me; you know Jason, or, if you like the name better, you knowthe Rattlesnake!"

"I will account for every penny, " said Grabman, eagerly, and clasping hishands, while his pale face grew livid. 

"I do not doubt it, my quill-driver. Look sharp, start to-morrow. Getthyself decent clothes, be sober, cleanly, and respectable. Act as a manwho sees before him 5, 000 pounds. And now, light me downstairs. "

With the candle in his hand, Grabman stole down the rugged steps evenmore timorously than Beck had ascended them, and put his finger to hismouth as they came in the dread vicinity of No. 7. But Jason, or ratherGabriel Varney, with that fearless, reckless bravado of temper which, while causing half his guilt, threw at times a false glitter over itsbaseness, piqued by the cowardice of his comrade, gave a lusty kick atthe closed door, and shouted out: "Old grave-stealer, come out, and letme finish your picture. Out, out! I say, out!" Grabman left the candleon the steps, and made but three bounds to his own room. 

At the third shout of his disturber the resurrection-man threw open hisdoor violently and appeared at the gap, the upward flare of the candleshowing the deep lines ploughed in his hideous face, and the immensestrength of his gigantic trunk and limbs. Slight, fair, and delicate ashe was, Varney eyed him deliberately, and trembled not. 

"What do you want with me?" said the terrible voice, tremulous with rage. 

"Only to finish your portrait as Pluto. He was the god of Hell, youknow. "

The next moment the vast hand of the ogre hung like a great cloud overGabriel Varney. This last, ever on his guard, sprang aside, and thelight gleamed on the steel of a pistol. "Hands off! Or--"

The click of the pistol-cock finished the sentence. The ruffian halted. A glare of disappointed fury gave a momentary lustre to his dull eyes. "P'r'aps I shall meet you again one o' these days, or nights, and I shallknow ye in ten thousand. "

"Nothing like a bird in the hand, Master Grave-stealer. Where can weever meet again?"

"P'r'aps in the fields, p'r'aps on the road, p'r'aps at the Old Bailey, p'r'aps at the gallows, p'r'aps in the convict-ship. I knows what thatis! I was chained night and day once to a chap jist like you. Didn't Ibreak his spurit; didn't I spile his sleep! Ho, ho! you looks a bit lessvarmently howdacious now, my flash cove!"

Varney hitherto had not known one pang of fear, one quicker beat of theheart before. But the image presented to his irritable fancy (alwaysprone to brood over terrors), --the image of that companion chained to himnight and day, --suddenly quelled his courage; the image stood before himpalpably like the Oulos Oneiros, --the Evil Dream of the Greeks. 

He breathed loud. The body-stealer's stupid sense saw that he hadproduced the usual effect of terror, which gratified his brutal self-esteem; he retreated slowly, inch by inch, to the door, followed byVarney's appalled and staring eye, and closed it with such violence thatthe candle was extinguished. 

Varney, not daring, --yes, literally not daring, --to call aloud to Grabmanfor another light, crept down the dark stairs with hurried, ghostlikesteps; and after groping at the door-handle with one hand, while theother grasped his pistol with a strain of horror, he succeeded at last inwinning access to the street, and stood a moment to collect himself inthe open air, --the damps upon his forehead, and his limbs trembling likeone who has escaped by a hairbreadth the crash of a falling house.