Chapter Eleven.

Awaiting the Proposal.

In the afternoon of that day Belle Mainwaring sat upon the couch in a state of expectation not easily described. The more difficult, from its being so rare—that is, the circumstances under which she was placed. She was in the position of a young lady who expects a proposal of marriage to be made to her, and who has already determined upon declining it. She was strong in this determination; though her strength came not from her own inclinations. She was but acting under the commands of her mother.

She was not without some sinking of spirits as to the course she was about to take. In reality she loved the man she was going to reject—more than she imagined then, more than she knew until long afterwards. Flirt as she had been, and still was, conqueress of many a heart, she was not without one herself,—it might not be of the purest and truest; but, such as it was, Henry Harding appeared to have won it.

For all that, he was not to wear it; unless he could surround her with all the adornments of wealth, and the costliest luxuries of social life. She now knew he could not do this; and, though her heart might still be his, her hand must go to some other. To his brother Nigel, perhaps, she may have whispered to herself. She was a beautiful woman, Belle Mainwaring—tall, large, and exquisitely moulded—a figure that becomes the reclining attitude required by a couch; and, as she so reclined upon ordinary occasions, the coldest observer might well have been excused for admiring her gracefulness.

On the day in question her attitude was not graceful. It was not even easy, nor befitting her figure. She sat bolt upright, now and then starting to her feet; pacing the room in quick, hurried strides; stopping a moment by the window, and scanning the road outside; and then returning to the couch, and staying upon it for a short time, as if a prey to terrible unrest and anxiety.

At times she would sit reflecting on the answer she should give; how it might be shaped, so as to make it least unpalatable to him who was to receive it. She had no doubt about its bitterness; for she felt confident in having the heart of the man about to offer her his hand. She did not wish to unnecessarily give him pain; and she studied the style of her intended refusal, until she fancied she had most cunningly arranged it. But then would come a spasm of her own heart’s pain; for to say “No!” was costing it an effort; and at this the whole structure would give way, leaving her intended answer still unshaped.

Once she was on the point of changing her purpose; and, prompted by the nobility of love, she came near giving way to her better nature. She had almost made up her mind to accept Henry Harding spite his adverse fortune—spite the counsels of her mother.

But the noble resolve remained but one moment in her mind. It passed like a flash of lightning, only showing more distinctly the dark clouds that would surround such a destiny. Henry disinherited—a thousand pounds alone left him! It would scarce be enough to furnish the feast, with the trousseau she might expect upon the day of her marriage. Preposterous! Her mother was right; she would yield to the maternal will.

There was another thought that held her to this determination. She felt confident in her conquest; and if at any future time she might see fit to give way to her predilection, it would still be possible to do so. General Harding would repent the disinheritance of his younger son, and revoke the will he had made, perhaps in a moment of spite or passion. Neither the lawyer who made it, nor her own mother, had any idea of the General’s doing so. It was not in keeping with his character. But Belle believed differently. She saw through the eyes of hope, lighted by the light of love.

In such frame of mind did Miss Mainwaring await the expected visit of Henry Harding. Nor was there any change, when the boy in buttons announced his arrival, and the moment after ushered him into the room. Perhaps, just at that moment, at the sight of his handsome face and manly form, her heart may have faltered in its resolution. But only for an instant. A thought of his disinheritance, and it was again firm.

She was right as to the object of his coming. Indeed, he had all but declared it at their last interview—all but accomplished it. Words had already passed between them, that might have been construed as on his side a proposal, and on hers an acceptance. He now came in all the confident expectation of formally closing the engagement by the terms of a betrothal.

Frank, loyal, and without thought of trick or deception, he at once declared his errand.

The answer went like an arrow through his heart—its poison but little subdued by the fact of its being conditional. The conditions were “the consent of mamma.”

Henry Harding could not understand this. She, the imperious belle, who in his eyes seemed armed with all power and authority, to have her happiness dependent on the will of a mother, and that mother known to be at the same time selfish and capricious! It was a rebuff unexpected, and filled him with forebodings, as to what might be the decision of Mrs Mainwaring. He was not the man long to endure the agony of doubt; and at once demanded to see her.

His wishes were readily complied with; and, in less than five minutes after, the couch lately graced by the fair, frivolous daughter, was occupied by the staid, serious mother—the daughter absenting herself from the interview.

In the frigid face of the widow Henry Harding read his fate. His forebodings were confirmed. Mrs Mainwaring was sensible of the honour he would have conferred by becoming her son-in-law, and deeply thankful for the offer; but the position in which she and her daughter were placed made such a union impossible. Mr Harding must know that, by the sudden death of her late dear husband, she had been left in straitened circumstances—that Belle would therefore be without fortune; and that as he, Mr Harding, was in the same position, a union between the two would not only be impolitic, but absolute insanity. Though poor, her child had always been accustomed, if not to the luxuries, at least to the comforts of a home. What would be her condition as the mother of a family, with a husband struggling to maintain them? Mrs Mainwaring could not speculate on such a fate for her dear child; and, although Mr Harding was young, and had the world all before him, he had not been brought up to any profession promising a maintenance, nor yet to those habits likely to lead to it. For these reasons she, Mrs Mainwaring, must firmly, but respectfully, decline the offered alliance.

Throughout the speech, which partook somewhat of the nature of a lecture, Henry Harding sat listening in silence, but with astonishment strongly depicted in his features. This had reached its climax, long before the last sentence was delivered.

“Surely, madam,” said he, giving vent to his surprise, “you cannot mean this?”

“Mean what, Mr Harding?”

“What you have said of my inability to support a—your daughter. I know nothing of the struggle you speak of. I admit I have no profession; but my expectations are not so poor as to make it necessary I should have one. Half of my father’s estate is sufficient to provide against such a future as you allude to. And there are but two of us to share it.”

“If that be your belief, Mr Harding,” rejoined the widow, in the same cold, relentless tone, in which she had all along been speaking, “I am sorry to be the first to disabuse you of it. The estate you speak of will not be so equally divided. Your share in it will be a legacy of a thousand pounds. Such a trifling sum would not go far towards the maintenance of an establishment.”

Henry Harding stayed not to answer the last remark, made half interrogatively. In those that preceded it he had heard enough to satisfy him, that he had no longer any business in the drawing-room of Mrs Mainwaring; and hurriedly recovering his hat and cane, he bade her an abrupt good morning.

He did not deign to address the same scant courtesy to her daughter. Between him and Belle Mainwaring was now opened a gulf so wide, that it could never be bridged over—not even to save him from a broken heart.

As the rejected lover strode away from the cottage that contained what he so lately looked upon as his fiancÉe, black clouds came rolling over the sky, as if to symbolise the black thoughts in his heart.

In all his youthful life it was the first great shock he had received; a shock both to soul and body—for in the announcement made by Mrs Mainwaring there was a blow aimed at both. His love blighted, his fortune gone—both, as it were, in the same instant! But the bitterest reflection of all was that the love had gone with the fortune. The loss of the latter he could have endured; but to think that the sweet speeches that had been exchanged between him and Belle, the tender glances, and the soft, secret pressure of hands that more than once had been mutually imparted—to think that, on her side, all these had been false, heartless, and hollow, was enough to wound something more than the self-esteem of a nature noble as was his. He could frame no excuse for her conduct. He tried, but without success. It was too clear, the cause of her refusal; too clear were the conditions on which she would have accepted his love, and had led him to believe in its acceptance. Her words and acts had been all pretence—the very essence of coquetry. It was over now, and with a bitter vow he resolved to expel her from his heart—from his thoughts, if that were possible. It was youth entering upon a hard struggle; but to a nature like his, and under such temptation to continue it, there was a chance of success. The woman he had hitherto looked upon as the type of all that was innocent and angelic, had proved herself not only capricious, but cunning, selfish, mean, less deserving of love than contempt. If he could but bear this impression upon his mind, there would be a hope of his recovering the heart he had so inconsiderately sacrificed. He registered a mental vow to do this, and then turned his thoughts towards his father. Against him he was all anger. He had no doubt the threat had been carried out; the will had been made that very morning. The minuteness of Mrs Mainwaring’s information, even to the exact amount of his own legacy, left him no room to question its correctness. How she had obtained it he neither knew nor cared. She was sharp-witted enough to have placed herself in communication with his father’s solicitor, whom he supposed to have made the will. But he did not stay to speculate upon this. His thoughts were all turned upon the testator himself, who by that single stroke had deprived him at once of his love and his living.

In the agony of his soul he could not see how his father had befriended him—how he had saved him from a fate far worse than disinheritance. His contempt for the cruel coquette was not yet decided enough for this.

His father’s threat had been only conditional. He might look forward to a chance of the will being revoked. He might not be restored to full favour. There would be some punishment for his disobedience, which was as complete as if his suit had succeeded. But such a grand penalty would scarce be exacted. It was not compatible with the indulgence he had already experienced.

A meaner spirit would have reasoned thus. Nigel Harding would have done so, and sought restoration to the paternal favour he had forfeited. Not so Henry. His pride had been touched—stung to the quick; and in the midst of his mortification, with his soul suffering from its thwarted passion, while pursuing the path homeward he resolved that his father’s house should know him no more.

And he kept this resolution. On reaching the park-gates, instead of entering, he walked on to the nearest inn, and thence took a fly to the nearest railway station.

In another hour he was in the midst of the great metropolis, with no thought of ever again returning to the green Chiltern Hills, or the shire of Buckingham.

Chapter Thirteen.

London Thugs.

On arriving in London, Henry Harding put up at a West-end hotel, which he had allowed his cabman to select, for he knew very little of London or its life. He had only paid two or three transient visits to it, and but few of his father’s acquaintances resided in the metropolis. Upon these he did not think of calling. He supposed that the affair with his father might have become known to them—perhaps his rejection by Belle Mainwaring—and he had resolved upon keeping out of sight, to avoid the necessity of concealing his chagrin. Henry Harding had a proud spirit, and could neither have brooked ridicule nor accepted sympathy. For this reason, instead of hunting out any old college acquaintances he might have found in London, he rather avoided the chances of meeting them.

Besides the note written to his father, he had addressed one to the footman, simply directing this individual to pack up his clothes, guns, canes, and other impedimenta, and send them on to Paddington station, “till called for.” This was done; and the luggage, in due time, arrived at the hotel where he was staying. Some eight or ten pounds of loose money, that chanced to be in his pocket on leaving home, was all the cash he commanded; and this was out of his pocket before he had been half that number of days in London.

For the first time in his life he began to find what an inconvenient thing it is to be without cash, especially in the streets of a large city—though he yet only knew it as an inconvenience. He expected his father would accede to the request he had made, and send an order for the payment of the thousand pounds. To allow time for the transaction, he kept away from the solicitor’s office for nearly a week. He then called to make the inquiry. It was simply whether any communication relating to him had been received from his father. In case there had been none, he did not wish the lawyer to be any wiser about the affair. None had been—not any. This was the answer given him.

In three days he called again, and reiterated his former inquiry almost word for word. Almost word for word was the answer he had—not from the solicitor himself, but the head clerk of his office. General Harding had written no letter lately to Messrs Lawson and Son (the name of the firm), either in reference to him or any other matter. “He’s not going, to send it,” bitterly soliloquised Henry as he left the solicitor’s office. “I suppose I’m not punished enough—so he thinks, with my precious brother to back him. Well, he can keep it. I shall never ask another shilling from him, if I have to starve.”

There is a sort of pleasure in this self-abnegation—at least, during the incipient stages of it. But it is a pleasure traceable rather to revenge than virtue, and often dies out before the passion that has given it birth.

With Henry Harding it was not so short-lived. His spirit had been sorely chafed by the treatment he had received both from his sweetheart and his father. He could not separate them in his mind; and his resentment, directed against both, was strong enough to lead him to almost any resolution. He formed that of not going back to the office of the solicitor, and he kept it. It cost him a struggle, to which, perhaps, a less proud spirit would have yielded, for he was soon suffering from want of cash. His spendthrift life had suddenly come to an end, since he had no means of continuing it; and he was forced to the reflection how he could find the means of a mere living. He had changed his quarters to a cheaper hotel, but even this would require cash to pay for it, so that his circumstances were approaching desperation. What was he to do? Enlist in the army? Offer himself on board a merchant ship? Drive a cab? Carry a sandwich? Or sweep a crossing? None of these occupations were exactly suited to his taste. Better than any or all of them—go abroad. There, if it come to the worst, he could try one or the other.

But there were other chances to be found abroad; and abroad he determined upon going. Fortunately he had sufficient left to carry him across the sea, even the great Atlantic Ocean; for, if his coin had been all spent, he had still something in the shape of a valuable watch, pins, rings, and other bijouterie, that could be converted into currency. These would yield enough to pay his passage to any part of the New World—for he intended going there, or to some distant land, far away from his father and Belle Mainwaring.

He had converted his chattels into cash—a thing that can be done in London in an incredibly short space of time, if we are not particular about the price. He had made a visit to the West India Docks, for the purpose of inspecting an advertised ship, and was returning home not over-satisfied either with himself or his fortunes. The berth offered him was shabby, and not cheap, and he had hesitated about accepting it. He had gone afterwards to Greenwich Park—the Elysian fields of the humble excursionist—and there, of course, partaken of tea and shrimps. It was nearly twelve at night as he dismounted from the knife-board of a Holborn ’bus, and turned down Little Queen Street on the way to his quarters in Essex Street, Strand. He had taken a Paddington omnibus as the only one plying westward at that late hour.

As he stepped into the little street his eye fell upon an oyster-shop, usually open to the latest hours of the night, and some of the earliest of the morning. Not satisfied with the Greenwich diet of tea and shrimps—long since digested—he entered the oyster-shop, and gave an order for a dozen of those delicious bivalves to be opened for him. There was another guest standing before the bar—a young man who having gone in before him, had given a similar order, and was already engaged in swallowing the shell-fish.

With the appearance of this young man Henry Harding was strangely impressed. He was handsome, of a complexion almost olive, dark curling hair, a full round eye, and an aquiline nose—features that at once proclaimed him a foreigner. The few words to which he gave utterance confirmed it. They were spoken in very imperfect English, with an accent which appeared to be Italian. Notwithstanding a somewhat threadbare suit of clothes, his bearing told either of birth or breeding; in short, one could not have made much of a mistake in supposing him to have been brought up a gentleman.

If Henry Harding had been asked why the young man interested him, he, perhaps, could not have told. But it was his well-bred air, coupled with garments that scarce corresponded; and, above all, the idea that he was looking upon a stranger in a strange land, alone, perhaps friendless—a foreshadowing of his own future. These were the thoughts passing in his mind, which at the moment made him look with a friendly eye upon his fellow oyster-eater at the bar.

He was in the mood to have addressed him; but a certain air of seriousness in the young man’s countenance, coupled with the fact of his speaking English so imperfectly, with a fear that the intrusion might be mistaken, hindered the young ex-squire of the Chilterns from taking this liberty.

The other merely glanced at him, and noticing an aristocratic face, with a Bond Street style of dress, supposed, no doubt, that he was standing beside some “swell,” who had stepped out of the Casino close by. Such a character would be no company for him; and with this reflection he finished his oysters, paid for them over the counter, and passed out into the street.

The young Englishman saw him depart with a reflection just bordering on pain. There was a face that had strangely interested him. It was not likely in the great world of London he would ever see it again. Besides, he would soon himself be beyond the confines of that world, still further lessening the chances of a re-encounter. With this thought he dismissed the stranger from his mind, paid the reckoning at the oyster-bar, and made a fresh start for his lodgings in the Strand.

He had cleared Little Queen Street, and entered the sister street of similar name. The night was a dark one, and not a soul was to be seen or met: for he was now outside the meretricious circle of which at that hour the Holborn Casino is the centre.

He had turned his face towards Lincoln’s Inn Fields, as along the western edge of this square was the shortest route to Essex Street. The ponderous arch was before him, and he was proceeding quietly towards it, when, under the long, low passage, dimly lit, he perceived what appeared to be the figures of three men. One of them was apparently tipsy, the other two taking care of him.

He didn’t much relish squeezing past this group; but there was no help for it, so he kept on. When close up to them he saw that the drunken man was absolutely helpless, his legs refusing to do him the slightest service, and he was only prevented from sinking down on the pavement by the support of his companions, one on each side of him. They halted under the shadow of the archway, and did not show any signs of moving onward. Perhaps they had had a long walk since leaving their “public,” and wanted a little rest. That was no business of Henry Harding’s, and he was quite contented to pass on without interfering—the more so as the countenance of one of the sober parties of the trio, turned for a moment towards him as he came up, clearly counselled the shunning of its owner.

He was passing on, and had already got beyond the group, when curiosity prompted him to glance back. The face of a man so helplessly intoxicated as the one supported between the other two could not be other than a curious spectacle.

Henry Harding looked upon it. There was a lamplight near that enabled him to do so, and further to distinguish the countenance of the inebriate. It was not without an exclamation of surprise that he recognised the features which had so strangely interested him—those of the stranger late seen in the oyster-shop!

“What’s this?” he exclaimed, suddenly turning upon his heel, and facing the trio. “This gentleman drunk?”

“Drunk as Bacchis!” answered one of the men. “We’re tryin’ to get ’im home, an’ ha’ been at it for the best part o’ an hour.”

“Indeed!”

“Yis, sir. He’s had a drop too much, as ye see. He’s a friend of ours, and we don’t want the perlice to take him to the station.”

“Of course you don’t,” said the young sprig of Beechwood Park, now fully comprehending the case. “Well, that’s kind of you both, but, as I am also a friend of this gentleman, you had better leave him in my charge, and save yourselves any farther trouble. Do you agree to it?”

“Agree be blowed! What do you mean?”

“This!” shouted Henry, who could no longer restrain his indignation. “This!” he repeated, delivering a blow of his stout Buckinghamshire stick upon the head of one of the supporters—“and this!” he cried thrice in rapid succession, as the stick descended on the skull of the second scoundrel, and all three, garrotters and garrotted, sank together upon the pavement.

By the merest accident in the world, a policeman appeared upon the spot. In Lincoln’s Inn Fields there are no area safes, and a great scarcity of rabbit-pie. As a consequence, the guardians of the night may be seen occasionally upon their beat; and, as good-luck would have it, one, sauntering along Great Queen Street, heard the scuffle in the archway, and hastened towards the spot.

He came up in time to assist Henry Harding in securing the two garrotters, and stripping them of the spoils they had taken from the person of the stranger, of which they had already possessed themselves. All went together to the police-station, the stranger having by this time partially recovered from his intoxication—of chloroform—whence, in a cab, he was taken by Henry Harding to his own lodgings, and left there—with a promise on the part of his rescuer to return to him on the following day.