Stanley John Weyman

“ I used to wonder why women like to visit dusty chambers; why, they get more joy--I am fain to think they do--out of a scrambling tea up three pairs of stairs in Pump Court, than from the same materials--and comfort withal--in their own house. I imagine it is for the same reason that the bachelor finds a charm in a lady's drawing-room, and there, if anywhere, sees her with a reverent mind. A charm and a subservience which I felt to the full in the Guests' drawing-room--a room rich in subdued colours and a cunning blending of luxury and comfort. ”

“ The other was one of the tallest and thinnest men ever seen outside a show--a man whose very clothes, his worn jacket and shrunken knickerbockers, had the air of sharing his attenuation. He looked like a gamekeeper, and was, in fact, the squire's son-in-law, Jim Foley.
"I really cannot make you out," he said, as the two sighted the house; and, shifting his gun to the other shoulder, he took occasion to glance at his companion. "What do you do, old boy? You never kill anything, unless it is a trout now and then. Now I could not live without killing. Must kill something every day!" ”

“ Burton Smith hurrying homeward--to find when he reached Onslow Mansions that Lady Linacre's bracelet had been discovered in a flounce of her dress--would have been surprised, very much surprised indeed, could he have looked into Wibberley's chambers a minute after his departure. He would have seen his friend down on his knees before a great chair, his face hidden, his form shaken by hysterical sobbing. For Wibberley was moved to the inmost depths of his nature. It is not given to many men to awake and find their doom a dream. ”

“ A wise woman was her mother and clear-sighted; she saw that Clive had a spirit, but no longer a heart of her own. Yet at such a time as this, when her husband was wringing his hands, Clive's insensibility to the family grievance tried Mrs. Dean sorely. It was hard that the Canon's sleepless night, the Præcentor's peevishness, the singing man's influenza, and all the countless counts of the indictment against Mr. Swainson should fail to awaken in the young lady's mind a tithe of the indignation felt by every other person at the Deanery, from the Dean himself to the scullery-maid. ”

“ There is a point in the journey towards intimacy at which one or other of the converging pair turns the conversation inwards, disclosing his or her hopes, fears, ambitions. Pleasance in the purest innocence had reached this stage to-day; arriving at it by the road of that silence which is tolerable only when some progress has been made towards friendship, and which even then invites attack. The tall gentleman, having lopped and picked at her bidding, gathered up the last scraps of the hawthorn which he had ruthlessly broken from the tree. ”

“ Then she tried to think of him with some of the horror, some of the distaste which she had felt at the time of his arrival, when he lay ghastly and blood-stained behind the closed door. But she could not. The face we have known a year can never put on for us the look it wore when we saw it first. The hand of time does not move backward. Pleasance found this was so, and in the solitude of her own room hid her face and trembled. Could anything but evil come of such a--a friendship?
Meanwhile Woolley's state of mind was even less enviable. ”

“ On the mat stood Burton Smith, in a soft slouched hat, his hands thrust into the pockets of his overcoat. Wibberley glanced at him, and saw that he was alone; then leaving him to shut the door, he returned to his chair, and sat down in his old attitude, with his head between his hands. He looked already a broken man.
Burton Smith followed him in, and stood a moment looking at him uncomfortably enough. It is bad to have had such a scene as has been described in your house; it is worse, if a man be a man, to face a fellow-creature in his hour of shame. At any rate, Burton Smith felt it so. ”

“ They were close to the house, and he had referred to the mouldering shield over the doorway, and she was telling its story when she checked herself and stood still. Edgar Woolley had emerged, and was standing before them with a flush of triumph on his check. The tall gentleman could scarcely be in doubt who he was; nor could Woolley well take Pleasance's involuntary cry for a sign of gladness--though he strove to force the smile which was habitual to him. ”

“ As she hurried through the hall, which to her dazzled eyes seemed dusky, she caught a glimpse of the tall gentleman leaning over the bureau with his back to her. Had he heard? The door was open, and so was one window. She could not be sure, but the suspicion was enough. Her face was on fire as she ran up the stairs. How she hated, oh, how she hated that wretch out there! She thought that she had never known before what it was to hate.
For there was something in what he had said. There was the sting. How had she come to be so intimate with one who had done what the tall gentleman had done? ”

“ I found myself walking round a screen at the same time that something in the room, a long dimly-lighted room, fell with a brisk rattling sound. This was followed by the scuffling noise of a person, still hidden from me by the screen, rising to his feet.
Next moment I was face to face with two men. One, a handsome elderly gentleman, who wore grey moustaches and would have seemed in place at a service club, was still seated. He regarded me with a perfectly unmoved face, as if my entrance at that hour were the commonest incident of his life. The other had risen and stood looking at me askance. ”

“ Did she faintly echo my words? or, as her face from which all colour had passed peered into mine, and searched it in infinite hope and infinite fear, did our two minds speak without need of physical lips? "Good news?"
"Yes," I whispered. "He is alive. The Indians did not----"
"Alfred!" Her cry rang through the room, and with it I caught her in my arms as she fell. Beard and long hair, and scar and sunburn, and strange dress--these which had deceived others were no disguise to her--my wife. I bore her gently to the couch, and hung over her in a new paroxysm of fear. "A doctor! Quick! A doctor!" ”

“ How swiftly does a great misfortune, a great loss, a great pain, expel a less! I have known a man lose his wife and go heavily for a month, and then losing a thousand pounds become as oblivious of her as if she had never been born. But the Archdeacon was not such a man, and rattling towards Westminster in a cab he felt not only that a thousand pounds would be a small price to pay for his son's safety, but that, if Providence should take him at his thought, he might have worse news for his wife than those tidings which had almost aged him in a night. ”

“ As she emerged from the shrubbery she saw with surprise two figures standing on the lawn. One was her father. The other--could it be Edgar Woolley come back before his time? No; this man was taller and paler, with an air of distinction which the surgeon lacked. She drew near, and her father, not seeing her, went into the house; while the other sank into an arm-chair which had been set for him, and turned and saw her. He rose with an effort, and raised his hat as she approached. It was the tall gentleman. ”

“ Come with me. For you, sir," he continued, turning to the actor, "your suspicions are natural to you. Nothing I can say will remove them. So be it. They affect me not one whit. It is enough for me that I came here in all honour, and with an honourable purpose."
"Indeed," replied Mr. Kent mockingly. "Indeed? And your son, Mr. Charles Jack Williams Yale, Archdeacon? No doubt you will answer for him, as he has not got a word to say for himself? He, too, came with an honourable purpose, I suppose? Oh yes, of course; we are all honourable men!"
For an instant the Archdeacon quailed. ”

“ Kitty is a companion, a helpmeet, God bless her! She knows that Wellington did not fight at Blenheim, and she does not think that Lucknow is in the Crimea. She knows so much, though she knows no Greek and she loves dancing--her very eyes dance at the thought of it. But she would rather sit at home with the man she loves than waltz at Marlborough House. And if she has not learned a little fortification on the sly, and does not know how many men stand between Jim and his company--I am a Dutchman! ”

“ He felt no great doubt about the answer; and indeed all that June morning, which was by good luck as fine as the preceding one had been gloomy, while he rode from house to house with an unprofessional smile on his lips and in his eyes, the two left at home walked up and down the lawn in the sunshine, planning the life which lay before them, and of which every day was to be as cloudless as this day. A hundred times they passed and repassed the old sundial, but it was nothing to them. Lovers count only the hours when the sun does not shine. ”

“ Foley asked, in the tone of an aggrieved man.
"I was only thinking," the other replied drily, "what a lucky fellow you were to have nothing to do but kill."
The tall man whistled. "I say," he said, "for a man who is to be married in a week or so, you are in roaring spirits, ain't you? I tell you what it is, my boy; you do not take very kindly to your bliss. I can see Patty flitting about in the garden like a big white moth, waiting, I have no doubt, for a word with her lord; and your step lags, and your face is grave, and you try to be cynical! What is up?" ”

“ Wibberley tried to master, but could not, the impulse--the traitor impulse?--which urged him to glance at his wrist. The idea that the bracelet might be visible--that the damning evidence might be plain to every eye--overcame him. He looked down. Of course there was nothing to be seen; he might have known it, for he felt the hot grip of the horrible thing burning his arm inches higher. But when he looked up again--fleeting as had been his glance--he found that something had happened. He faltered, and the chair dropped from his hands. He read in every face save one suspicion or condemnation. ”

“ It was difficult to suppose it the sound of a snapping stick; or of one stone struck against another. It puzzled Master Nickson, who climbed hastily to his seat again and drove on until he was clear of the dip. Then, swearing at himself for an old fool, he looked anxiously back at the top of the ridge, which had come into view again. He was looking for the tall gentleman. But the latter was not to be seen, either standing against the sky-line or moving on the intervening road. "Lord's sakes!" the carrier muttered uneasily, "what has become of him? He cannot have gone back!" ”

“ The "forellin"--the Norse name for trout, and as pretty as their girls' wavy fair hair--were rising so merrily that I hooked and landed one in five minutes, the fly falling from its mouth as it touched the stones. I hate taking out hooks. I used at one time to leave the fly in the fish's mouth to be removed by father at the weighing house; until Clare pricked her tongue at dinner with an almost new, red tackle, and was so mean as to keep it, though I remembered what I had done with it, and was certain it was mine--which was nothing less than dishonest of her. ”

“ The inn was roused from its afternoon slumber, and the policeman was sent for the doctor; with one thing and another half an hour elapsed before Foley left the house and slowly made his way to the Chase. He was thinking a great deal more seriously than was his wont. As hard as nails, some of his friends called him; but there is a soft spot in these men who are as hard as nails, if one can find it. ”

“ Lord! when I see a man marry a doll with a pretty face--not that Kitty has not a pretty face, and a sweet one too, no thanks to her father--I wonder whether he has considered what it will be to sit opposite my lady at, say, twenty thousand nine hundred meals on an average! That is the test, sir.
So I told Kitty all, and the way she took it showed me that I was right. "What?" she exclaimed, when I had finished the story, to which she had listened, with her face turned from me, and her arm on the mantelpiece, "is that all, father?"
"My dear," I said sadly, "you do not understand." ”

“ Ah! what then? What would people say? Would they not say--would not Nickson be ready to swear that the madman had done it again, and with more thoroughness? Woolley's hand closed convulsively on the butt of the weapon in his pocket. One barrel of it was still loaded. No one had seen him take it. No one knew that he knew of its existence. Would not even the doctor conclude that Walton had repossessed himself of it, and in some temporary return of his moody aberration had used it--this time with fatal effect?
The perspiration stood on the tempted man's brow. ”

“ Pleasance cried impulsively. She turned red the next instant, under the tall gentleman's eyes. She had not meant to interfere.
"Indeed!" he said, rising from his chair. "Then please listen to me. There came to a certain house a man who had been a thief."
"No!" she said firmly.
"A man hopeless and despairing."
"No."
"Alas! yes," he answered, shaking his head soberly. "These are facts."
"No, no, no!" she cried. There were tears in her eyes. "I do not want to hear. I care nothing for facts!" ”

“ The doctor had spent the night on a sofa in order that he might be near the stranger.
"He is not conscious," Doctor Partridge answered, "but I think that the brain is recovering from the shock, and if all goes well he will come to himself in a few hours." Pleasance shuddered. Her father, without noticing it, went on: "But he ought not to be left alone, and I must see my patients. It is useless to ask the servants to stay with him--they are as nervous as hares. So you must sit with him for an hour or two after breakfast, Pleasance. There is no help for it." ”

“ The young vicar, the dust on his shoes and an unwonted shade of depression darkening his face, was walking up and down the sward with the squire--a little man as choleric as he was kind-hearted, who passed two-thirds of his waking hours in breeches and gaiters. Jim Foley strode towards them, a purpose in his mind. The vicar, just embarked on his confession, found it interrupted and made a thousand times more difficult. "Jones has come to explain matters, I hope, sir," Jim said. ”