A Prejudiced Verdict.

It has been contumeliously said by insolent Englishmen—a part of our population which may sometimes seem to foreign eyes as large as the whole—that you might put any other of the world's capitals, say Paris or New York, down in London, and your cabman would not be able to find it. However this may be,—and there is no need in this place either for assertions or admissions,—it is certain that you might unload a wagonful of talents in Piccadilly, and they would speedily be absorbed and leave little obvious trace of the new ingredient. Hence the advantage, for a man who does not dislike the digito monstrari et dicier "hic est," of dwelling in small places, and hence, a cynic might suggest, the craving for quieter quarters displayed by some of our less conspicuous celebrities. It is better, says a certain authority, to reign in hell than serve in heaven; and a man may grow weary of walking unrecognized down the Strand, when he has only, to be the beheld of all beholders, to take up his residence in—perhaps it will be more prudent to say Market Denborough, and not point the finger of printed scorn at any better known resort.

This very ungenerous explanation was the one which Miss Victoria Smith chose to adopt as accounting for Dale Bannister's coming to Littlehill. Such an idea had never crossed her mind at first, but it became evident that a man who could leave his friend in the lurch and palter with his principles, as Dale's letter to the Chronicle showed him to be doing, could only be credited with any discoverable motive less bad and contemptible than the worst through mere hastiness and ill-considered good nature. For her part, she liked a man to stick to his colors and to his friends, and not be ashamed before the tea tables of Denshire. No, she had never read his poems, she had no time, but papa had, and agreed with every word of them.

"Gad! does he?" said Sir Harry Fulmer, to whom these views were expressed. "Well played the Colonel!"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, some of them made me sit up rather," remarked Sir Harry.

"Oh, anything would make you 'sit up,' as you call it. I don't consider you a Radical."

"I voted for your friend the Doctor anyhow."

"Yes, that was good of you. You were the only one with an elementary sense of justice."

Sir Harry's sense of justice, elementary or other, had had very little to do with his vote, but he said with honest pride:

"Somebody ought to stand by a fellow when he's down."

"Especially when he's in the right."

"Well, I don't quite see, Miss Smith, what business it was of Roberts' to cut up the Vicar's sermon. Naturally the Vicar don't like it."

"So he takes his medicine from Dr. Spink!"

"Rather awkward for him to have Roberts about the place."

"Oh, of course you defend him."

"The Vicar's a very good fellow, though he's a Tory."

"You seem to think all Tories good fellows."

"So they are, most of them."

"I suppose you think Mr. Bannister's right too?"

"I shouldn't be so down on him as you are."

"You like people who lead their friends on and then forsake them?"

"Bannister never asked him to write the letter."

"Well, it's not my idea of friendship. I wouldn't have a friend who thought that conduct right."

"Then I think it deuced wrong," said Sir Harry promptly.

"It's no compliment to a woman to treat her like a baby," remarked Tora with dignity.

Sir Harry perceived that it would be to his advantage to change the subject.

"Are you going skating?" he asked. "There's nothing else to do in this beastly frost."

"Does the ice bear?"

"Yes, they're skating on the Grange lake. I met Hume, Bannister's friend, and he told me Bannister was there."

"Wasn't he going? I rather like him."

"No, he was walking with Miss Fane. I believe I rather put my foot in it by asking her if she wasn't going."

"Why shouldn't you?"

"She said she didn't know Mrs. Delane, and looked confused, don't you know."

"Hasn't Mrs. Delane called?"

"It seems not," said Sir Harry.

"I wonder how long they are going to stay at Littlehill?"

"Forever, apparently. Shall you come to the lake?"

"Perhaps in the afternoon."

Tora returned to the house, still wondering. She was very angry with Dale, and prepared to think no good of him. Was it possible that she and the Colonel had been hasty in stretching out the hand of welcome to Mrs. Hodge and her daughter? For all her independence, Tora liked to have Mrs. Delane's imprimatur on the women of her acquaintance. She thought she would have a word with the Colonel, and went to seek him in his study. He was not there, but it chanced that there lay on the table a copy of Dale's first published volume, "The Clarion." Three-quarters of the little book were occupied with verses on matters of a more or less public description—beliefs past and future, revolutions effected and prayed for, and so forth; the leaves bore marks of use, and evidently were often turned by the Colonel. But bound up with them was a little sheaf of verses of an amatory character: where these began, the Colonel's interest appeared to cease, for the pages were uncut; he had only got as far as the title. It was not so with his daughter. Having an idle hour and some interest in the matters and affairs of love, she took a paper-knife and sat down to read. Poets are, by ancient privilege, legibus soluti, and Dale certainly reveled in his freedom. Still, perhaps, the verses were not in reality so very, very atrocious as they unhappily appeared to the young lady who now read them. Tora was accustomed to consider herself almost a revolutionary spirit, and her neighbors, half in earnest, half in joke, encouraged the idea; but her revolutions were to be very strictly confined, and the limits of her free-thought were marked out by most unyielding metes and bounds—bounds that stopped very short at the church door and on the domestic threshold. This frame of mind is too common to excite comment, and it had been intensified in her by the social surroundings against which she was in mock revolt. Dale's freedom knew no trammels, or had known none when he wrote "The Clarion"; nothing was sacred to him except truth, everything as nothing beside reason, reason the handmaid of passion, wherein the spirit and individuality of each man found their rightful expression. This theory, embodied in a poet's fancy and enlivened by a young man's ardor, made fine verses, but verses which startled Tora Smith. She read for half an hour, and then, flinging the book down and drawing a long breath, exclaimed: "I can believe anything of him now!"

And she had had this man to dinner! And that girl! Who was that girl?

The Colonel came home to luncheon in very good spirits. He had just succeeded, in the interests of freedom, in stirring up a spirit of active revolt in Alderman Johnstone. The Alderman had hitherto, like his father before him, occupied his extensive premises on a weekly tenancy; he had never been threatened with molestation or eviction; but he felt that he existed on sufferance, and the consciousness of his precarious position had been irksome to him. A moment had come when the demand for houses was slack, when two or three were empty, and when the building trade itself was nearly at a standstill. The Colonel had incited Johnstone to seize the opportunity to ask from the Squire a lease, and Johnstone had promised to take nothing less than "seven, fourteen, or twenty-one." If refused, he declared he would surrender the premises and build for himself on some land of the Colonel's just outside the town.

"Delane must grant it," said the Colonel, rubbing his hands, "and then we shall have one house anyhow where our bills can be put up. Bannister will be delighted. By the way, Tora, he wants us to go in to tea to-day, after skating. I suppose you're going to skate?"

"I am going to skate, but I am not going to Mr. Bannister's," said Tora coldly.

"Why not?"

The Colonel was told why not with explicitness and vehemence. He tugged his white whisker in some perplexity: he did not mind much about the poems, though, of course, no excess of scrupulousness could be too great in a girl like Tora; but if she were right about the other affair! That must be looked into.

The Colonel was one of those people who pride themselves on tact and savoir faire; he aggravated this fault by believing that tact and candor could be combined in a happy union, and he determined to try the effect of the mixture on Dale Bannister. It would go hard if he did not destroy this mare's nest of Tora's.

All the neighborhood was skating on the Grange lake under a winter sun, whose ruddy rays tinged the naked trees, and drew an answering glitter from the diamond-paned windows of the house. The reeds were motionless, and the graze of skaters on the ice sounded sharp in the still air, and struck the ear through the swishing of birch brooms and the shuffle of sweepers' feet. From time to time a sudden thud and a peal of laughter following told of disaster, or there grated across the lake a chair, carrying one who preferred the conquest of men to the science of equilibrium. Rosy cheeks glowed, nimble feet sped, and lissom figures swayed to and fro as they glided over the shining surface, till even the old and the stout, the cripples and the fox hunters, felt the glow of life tingling in their veins, and the beauty of the world feeding their spirits with fresh desire. "It is not all of life to live," but, at such a moment, it is the best part of it.

Dale Bannister was enjoying himself; he was a good skater, and it gave him pleasure that, when people turned to look at the famous poet, they should see an athletic youth: only he wished that Janet Delane would give him an opportunity of offering his escort, and not appear so contented with the company of a tall man of military bearing, who had come down to the water with the Grange party. He was told that the newcomer was Captain Ripley, Lord Cransford's eldest son, and he did not escape without witnessing some of the nods and becks which, in the country, where everybody knows everybody, accompany the most incipient stages of a supposed love affair. Feeling, under these circumstances, a little desolate, for Philip was engrossed in figures and would not waste his time talking, he saw with pleasure Tora Smith and Sir Harry coming toward him. He went to meet them, and, at a distance of a few yards from them, slackened his pace and lifted his hat, not doubting of friendly recognition. Sir Harry returned his salute with a cheery "How are you?" but did not stop, for Tora swept on past Dale Bannister, without a glance at him. In surprise, he paused. "She must have seen me," he thought, "but why in the world——" Bent on being sure, he put himself right in her path as she completed the circle and met him again. There was no mistaking her intention; she gave him the cut direct, as clearly and as resolutely as ever it was given.

Sir Harry had remonstrated in vain. In Tora's uncompromising mind impulse did not wait on counsel, and her peremptory "I have my reasons" refused all information and prevented all persuasion. He felt he had done enough for friendship when he braved her disapproval by declining to follow her example. He did not pretend to understand the ways of women, and Dale Bannister might fight his own battles.

While Dale was yet standing in angry bewilderment,—for who had received him with more cordiality than she who now openly insulted him?—he saw the Colonel hobbling toward him across the slippery expanse. The Colonel fell once, and Dale heard him swear testily at the sweeper who helped him to rise. He thought it kind to meet him halfway; perhaps the Colonel would explain. The Colonel was most ready to do so; in fact, he had come for the very purpose of warning Bannister that some silly idea was afloat, which it only needed a word to scatter.

"Is there?" said Dale. "Possibly that is why Miss Smith failed to see me twice just now?"

"Your poems have shocked her, my boy," said the Colonel, with a knowing look—the look that represented tact and savoir faire.

"Is that all? She takes rather severe measures, doesn't she?"

"Well," answered the Colonel, with the smile which brought candor into play, "that isn't quite all."

"What in the world else is there?"

"You know how censorious people are, and how a girl takes alarm at the very idea of anything—you know?"

Dale chafed at these diplomatic approaches.

"If there's anything said against me, pray let me know."

"Oh, it's nothing very definite," said the Colonel uneasily. He did not find what he had to say so simple as it had seemed.

"Indefinite things are most hopeless."

"Yes, yes, quite so. Well, if you really wish it—if you won't be offended. No doubt it's all a mistake."

"What do they say?"

"Well, we're men of the world, Bannister. The fact is, people don't quite understand your—your household."

"My household It consists of myself alone and the servants."

"Of course, my dear fellow, of course! I knew it was so, but I am glad to be able to say so on your own authority."

The aim of speech is, after all, only to convey ideas; the Colonel had managed, however clumsily, to convey his idea. Dale frowned, and pretended to laugh.

"How absurd!" he said. "I should resent it if it were not too absurd."

"I'm sure, Bannister, you'll acquit me of any meddling."

"Oh, yes. I'm sorry my guests have given rise, however innocently, to such talk."

"It's most unfortunate. I'm sure nothing more is needed. I hope the ladies are well?"

"Yes, thanks."

"I don't see them here."

"No, they're not here," answered Dale, frowning again.

"I hope we shall see some more of them?"

"You're very kind. I—I don't suppose they—will be staying much longer."

As Dale made his way to the bank to take off his skates, Janet and Tora passed him together. Tora kept her eyes rigidly fixed on the chimneys of the Grange. He made no sign of expecting recognition, but Janet, as she drew near, looked at him, blushing red, and bowed and smiled.

"That girl's a trump," said Dale Bannister. "She sticks to her friends."