 
Transcriber's Note:
THE YELLOW FLAG.
THE YELLOW FLAG.
A Novel.
By EDMUND YATES.AUTHOR OF "A WAITING RACE." "BROKEN TO HARNESS," ETC.
"That single effort by which we stop short in the downhill path to perdition is itself a greater exertion of virtue than an hundred acts of justice." OLIVER GOLDSMITH.
IN THREE VOLUMES. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. | |
| CHAP. | |
| I. | Calverley's Agent. |
| II | Exit Tom Durham. |
| III | Home, Sweet Home |
| IV | Pauline. |
| V | A little Paradise. |
| VI | A safe Investment. |
| VII | In the City. |
| VIII | The Vicar of Lullington. |
| IX | Tom Durham's Friend. |
| X | Mr. Tatlow on the Track. |
| XI | L'Amie de la Maison. |
| XII | When Doctors Disagree. |
THE YELLOW FLAG.
CHAPTER I.
CALVERLEY'S AGENT.
"So you have conquered your dislike to leaving England, Tom; I am very glad. I felt certain you would give-in to our wishes, and see the wisdom of what we suggested to you."
"Well, I am not so certain about that, Ally; I don't go-in for magnanimity; and I believe there is just that touch of obstinacy in my nature, which would induce me to run counter to any proposition which was very hardly pressed. But when the suggestion was backed as it has been in this instance, I could not possibly doubt the sincerity of those who made it. And so, as you see, I am off."
The place where the conversation, of which a fragment has just been given, occurred, was a broad gravelled path, the favourite promenade of such of the worthy townspeople of Southampton as prefer the beauties of nature to the attractions of the shops in the High-street. On one side was the broad water glistening in the bright, cheerful October sun, on the other a large strip of greensward fringed on the farther edge by a row of shining, white-faced lodging-houses and hotels. On the promenade, the grim cannons--trophies taken during the Russian war--were surrounded by happy children, fearlessly climbing upon the now innocuous engines of death, within hailing distance of the shore a few boatmen were lazily pulling about, some young men were intent on watching the progress of two dogs who were making a neck-and-neck race for a stick which had been thrown into the water for them to fetch, and the whole scene was one of pleasant cheerfulness.
Not out of harmony with it were the two persons whose words have been recorded. The first speaker was a young woman about two-and-twenty, of middle height, with a slight and graceful figure, and with a face which, while some would have called it pretty, would have been pronounced agreeable by all. The features were not regular, the nose was decidedly not classical, the mouth was a little too large, and the lips were a little too full; but there was a wonderful charm in the whiteness and regularity of the teeth, in the bright flash of the hazel eyes, in the crisp ripples of the dark brown hair, and in the clear, healthy red and white of her complexion. She was very becomingly dressed in a black silk gown, a dark-gray jacket trimmed with velvet of the same colour, and a coquettish little black straw hat, and she wore perfectly-fitting gloves and boots. Her companion was some twelve years older, a short, squarely-built man, whose breadth of shoulders and length of arms showed much muscular power. The lower part of his face was covered with a thick copper-red beard; the heavy moustaches falling over his mouth so completely as to defy any revelation which might be made by the movements of that tell-tale organ; but his eyes, small and set close together, had a shifty expression, and round them there was that strained, seared look, which in some men is always indicative of dissipation and late hours. He wore a travelling suit of gray tweed, and a wide-awake hat, and from under his beard the ends of a loosely-tied red silk neckerchief fluttered in the wind. Lounging along with a rolling gait, his hands buried in his jacket-pockets, he seemed to take but little heed of his companion or her conversation, but paid particular attention to various nursemaids in charge of the children who were playing about, honouring each of them in turn with a long, peculiar, and offensive stare.
He had half turned round to look after a particularly attractive damsel, when his companion, wishing to resume the conversation, touched him on the arm, and said, "You will get to Ceylon in--"
"O yes, in so many weeks--what matters one or two more or less? It will be jolly enough on board ship, and when I arrive--I arrive."
"I hope you have made up your mind to be steady, Tom, and to work hard. You have now the means for a capital start in life, and for my sake, if for nothing else, you ought to show yourself worthy of what has been done for you."
"Look here, Ally, don't preach," he said, turning sharply round to her; "everybody thinks they can have a fling at me, and it is, 'O Tom Durham this, and O Tom Durham that,' until I am sick enough of it without being sermonised by my half-sister. Of curse it was very kind of old Claxton--I beg your pardon," he said with a sneer, as he saw a shade pass over her face; "I ought to speak with more deference of your husband and my benefactor--of course it was very kind of Mr. Claxton to pay my passage out to Ceylon, and give me two thousand pounds to set myself up in business on my arrival there; but he is a very long-headed fellow, and he knows I am no fool, and if the agency turns out rightly, he will get a very considerable profit on his outlay."
"I am sure John has no such notion in doing this, Tom, and you have no right to impute such a motive to him."
"I impute nothing; I merely suggested; and, after all, perhaps he only did it out of love for you, Ally, whom he worships as the apple of his eye, in order to give your reckless half-brother a chance of reform--and to get him out of his way," he muttered under his breath.
"I am sure John is kindness itself," said Alice Claxton. "If there were nothing to prove that, it could be found in the fact of his wishing me to come down here to see the last of you."
"Nothing like giving the old--I mean your husband, every possible credit, Ally. You know just now he is away on one of his regular tours and that therefore he won't miss you from Hendon."
"I know," said the girl, half-pettishly, "these horrible business-tours are the bane of my life, the only thing I have to complain about. However, John says he hopes, it will not be very long before they are over, and then he will be always at home."
"Does he?" said Tom Durham, looking at her keenly; "I would not have you depend upon that, Ally; I would not have you ask him to give up the business which takes him away. It is important for him that he should attend to it for the present, and indeed until there is no longer a necessity for him to do so."
"You need not speak so earnestly, Tom," said Alice, with a half-laugh; "I assure you I do not worry John about it; it is he who speaks about it much oftener than I do. He is constantly talking of the time when he shall be able to retire altogether, and take me away for a long foreign travel, perhaps to settle entirely abroad, he said, in Florence or Vienna, or some charming place of that kind."
"Old idiot!" muttered Tom Durham; "why can't he leave well alone?"
"I told him," said Alice, not hearing or heeding the interruption, "that I am perfectly content with Rose Cottage. All I wish is, that he could be more there to enjoy it with me."
"Yes," said Tom Durham, with a yawn. "Well, that will come all right, as I told you; only don't you worry him about it, but leave it alone, and let it come right in its own way. Now look here, Ally. You had better go back to London by the 11.15 train, so that we have only half an hour more together."
"But you know, Tom, John told me I might wait and see the Massilia start. Indeed, he particularly wished me to do so."
"My dear child, the Massilia does not sail until half-past two; and if you waited to see me fairly off, you would not have time to get over to the railway to catch the three o'clock train. Even if you did, you would not get to town until nearly six, and you would have a long dreary drive in the dark to Hendon. Now, if you go by the quarter-past eleven train, I shall see you off, and shall then be able to come back to Radley's, and write a few letters of importance before I go on board."
"Very well, Tom," said Alice; "perhaps it will be better; only, John--"
"Never mind John on this occasion, Ally; he did not know at what time the Massilia sailed. Now, Ally, let us take one final turn, and finish our chat. I am not going to be sentimental--it is not in my line--but I think I like you better than anybody else in the world, though I did not take to you much at first. When I came back from sea, a boy of fifteen, and went home and found my father had married again, I was savage; and when he showed me a little baby lying in the cradle, and told me it was my half-sister, I hated you. But you were a sweet little child, and fended off many a rough word, and many a blow for the matter of that, which the governor would have liked to have given me, and I took to you; and when you grew up, you did me a good turn now and then, and of course it is owing to you, one way or the other, that I have got John Claxton's two thousand pounds in my pocket at this moment. So I love you, and I leave you with regret, and I say this to you at parting. Take this envelope, and lock it away somewhere where it will be safe, and where you can lay your hand upon it at any moment. It contains the address of an old pal of mine--a friend I mean--one of the right sort, a staunch, tried, true, honest, upright fellow. Hardworking and persevering too; such a kind of man, that you may be astonished at his ever having been intimate with me. But he was, and is, and I know that I may reckon upon him to the utmost. If ever you come to grief, if ever you are in trouble, no matter of what kind, go to the address which you will find there, and seek him out, and tell him all about it; I will warrant he will see you through it."
"Thank you, dear Tom; it is very kind and thoughtful of you to say this, but you know I have John and--"
"Yes, of course, you have John now; but there may be a time when--however, that is neither here nor there. There is the envelope, take it, and don't forget what I say. Now come round to the hotel and pack your bag; it is time for you to start."
The bell rang, and with a scream the engine attached to the eleven-fifteen train for London forged slowly out of the Southampton station. Tom Durham, with an unusual expression of emotion on his face, stood upon the platform kissing his hand to Alice, who, with the tears in her eyes, leant back in the carriage and covered her face with her handkerchief. In a second-class compartment next to that which she occupied were two middle-aged, plainly-dressed men, who had been observing the parting of the half-brother and sister with some interest.
"Was not that Tom Durham?" said one, as the train sped on its way.
"Right you are," said the other; "I knew his face, but could not put a name to it. What is he at now--working on the square or on the cross?"
"On the square, I believe," said the first; "leastways I saw him walking with Mr. Calverley in the City the other day, and he would not have been in such respectable company if he had not been all right."
"I suppose not," said the other man, "for the time being; but Tom Durham is a shaky kind of customer anyways."
CHAPTER II.
EXIT TOM DURHAM.
Mr. Durham remained watching the departing train until it had passed out of sight, when he turned round and walked quietly out of the station. The emotion he had shown--and which, to his great astonishment, he had really felt--had vanished, and left him in a deeply contemplative state. He pushed his arms half way up to his elbows in his pockets, and muttered to himself as he strode along the street; but it was not until he found himself in the sitting-room at Radley's Hotel, and had made himself a stiff glass of brandy-and-water from the bottle, duly included in the bill which Alice had paid, that he gave his feelings much vent. Then loading a short black pipe from a capacious tobacco-pouch, he seated himself at the table, and as he went through his various papers and memoranda thought aloud.
"This is a rum start, and no mistake! Twenty years ago, when I left this very same place a 'prentice on board the old Gloucestershire, I never thought I should have the luck to stay in this swell hotel, and, better still, not to have to put my hand in my own pocket to pay the bill. It is luck, no doubt; a large slice of luck, larded with talent and peppered with experience. That's the sort of meal for a man that wants to get on in the world, and that's just what I have got before me. Now, when I walk out of this hotel, I shall have two thousand pounds in my pocket. In my pocket!--not to be paid on my arrival at Ceylon, as the old gentleman at first insisted. Ally was of great assistance there. I wonder why she backed me so energetically? I suppose, because she thought it would have been infra dig. for her brother to appear in the eyes of those blessed natives, over whom he is to exercise superintendence, as though he had not been considered worthy of being trusted with the money, and she was delighted with the notion of bringing it down here herself and handing it to me.
"If I hadn't touched the money until my arrival at Ceylon, I should have had to wait a pretty long time. You're a dear old gentleman, Mr. Claxton, and you mean well; but I don't quite see the fun of spending the rest of my days in looking after a lot of niggers under a sun that would dry the life-blood out of me before my time. There is an old saying, that everyone must eat a peck of dirt in the course of their lives. Well, I ate mine early, took it down at one gulp, and I don't want any more of the same food. Besides, it is all very well for Ally to talk about gratitude and that kind of thing; but she does not know what I do, and it is entirely because I know what I do about my worthy brother-in-law, that I have been enabled to put the screw upon him, and to get out of him that very respectable bundle of bank-notes. That was just like my luck again, to find that out, and be able to bring it home to him so pat; directly I first got on the scent, I knew there was money in it, and I followed it up until I placed it chuck-a-block before him, and he parted freely. In such a respectable way, too. None of your extortion; none of your threatening letters; none of your 'left till called for,' under initials, at the post-office; none of your hanging about London spending money which nobody can imagine how you get, and thereby starting suspicions of other matters which might not come out quite so nicely if looked into. 'Agent at Ceylon to the firm of Calverley and Company, brokers, Mincing-lane, London; iron-smelters and boiler-makers, Swartmoor Foundry, Cumberland;' that's what Thomas D. will have engraved on his card when he gets there; and the two thousand pounds, as John gravely remarked before Alice, were for fitting-up the office, and other necessary expenses. I wonder what that poor child thought the other necessary expenses could possibly be, to take such an amount of money?
"No, dear sir, thank you very much. I am willing to allow that the whole thing was done extremely well, and without causing the smallest suspicion in the mind of little Ally; but you paid me the money because you could not help it, and you will have to pay me a great deal more for that very same reason. You're a very great scoundrel, John Claxton, Esquire; a much greater scoundrel than I am, though I have taken your money, and have not the remotest intention of becoming your agent in Ceylon. You're a cold-blooded villain, sir, carrying out your own selfish ends, and not, like myself, a generous creature, acting upon impulse. Notwithstanding the fact that I have your money in my pocket, I almost grudge you the satisfaction you will experience when, in the course of to-morrow or the next day, you will hear the news which will lead you to imagine that you are rid of me for ever. But I console myself with the reflection, that when I turn up again, as I undoubtedly shall, your disgust will be proportionately intensified.
"There," as he selected two or three papers from a mass before him and carefully tore the rest into pieces, "there is the letter relating to the document which has already done so much for me, and which is to be my philosopher's-stone. I must not run the chances of wetting and spoiling that paper when I take my midnight bath, so I shall hand it over to Mrs. D. when I give her the money to take care of. May as well put a seal on it though, for Mrs. D. is naturally curious, and as jealous as a female Othello. One o'clock; just the time I promised to meet her. Now then, the money in this pocket, the letter in that, and the other papers torn up, and the brandy-bottle emptied. What you may call a clean sweep of the whole concern."
After settling his hat to his satisfaction, and looking at himself in the glass with great complacency, Tom Durham strolled from the room, leaving the door wide open behind him. He nodded familiarly to a waiter whom he passed in the passage, but who, instead of returning the salutation, stared at him in wrathful wonder--they were unaccustomed to such gentry at Radley's--and then he passed into the street. Looking leisurely around him, he made his way back again to the promenade on which he had held his conversation with Alice Claxton, and there, standing by one of the cannon, was another woman, apparently awaiting his arrival. A woman about thirty years of age, with swarthy complexion, bright beady black eyes, and dull blue-black hair. French, without doubt. French in the fashion of her inexpensive garments and the manner in which they were put on; undeniably French in her boots and gloves, in her gait, in the gesture and recognition which she made when she saw Tom Durham approaching her. That estimable gentleman, apparently, was displeased at this gesture, for he frowned when he saw it, and when he arrived at the woman's side, he said, "Don't be so infernally demonstrative, Pauline; I have told you of that before."
"Mais, should I stand like a stone or stock when you come before me?" said the woman, with the slightest trace of a foreign accent. "I was longing to see you, and you came. Is it, then, astonishing--"
"No, all right; don't jaw," said Tom Durham shortly. "Only, in our position it is not advisable to attract more notice than necessary. Well, here you are."
"Yes, I am here."
"All goes well; I told you there was an old gentleman--Claxton by name--connected with Calverley's firm, for which I'm supposed to be going out as agent, from whom I could get a sum of money, and I have got it--he sent it to me."
"Ah, ah, he sent it to you?"
"Yes, by--by a messenger whom he could trust; and this is not by any means the last that I shall have from him. He thinks I am off for the East, and that he is rid of me; but as soon as this sum is spent, he shall know the difference."
"You have made the arrangements about that?"
"I have arranged everything. I saw the pilot; he told me it was blowing hard outside, and that he shall pass the night off the Hurst. I have been on board, and seen exactly how best to do what I intend; and now there is nothing left but to give you your instructions."
"Stay," said the woman, laying her hand on his breast, and looking earnestly into his face. "You are certain you run no risk; you are certain that--"
"Take your hand away," he said; "you will never understand our English ways, Pauline; the people here cannot make out what you are about. I am all right, depend upon it. I could swim four times the distance in much rougher weather; and even if there were any danger, the prize is much too great to chance the loss of it for a little risk. Don't be afraid, Pauline," he added, with a little softening of his voice, "but clear that quick, clever brain of yours and attend to me. Here is the bundle of bank-notes, and here is a letter which is almost as important; place them both securely in the bosom of your dress, and don't take them out for one instant until you hand them over to me to-morrow morning at Lymington station--you understand?"
"Perfectly," said the woman, taking the packets from him. "What time will you be there?"
"By half-past seven, when the first train passes. We can loaf away the day on the beach at Weymouth--we might go over to Portland, if you have any fancy to see the place; I have not; all in good time, say I--and start for Guernsey by the midnight boat. Now is there anything more to say?"
"No," said Pauline; then suddenly, "Yes. Apropos of Portland, Wetherall and Moger were in this place to-day. I saw them at the station, in the train going up to town. They put their heads out of the window to look after you."
"The devil!" cried Tom Durham; "they were down here, were they, and you saw them? Why, what on earth were you doing at the station?"
"I arrived here too soon, and walked up there to pass the time."
"Did you--did you see any one else?" asked Tom Durham, looking fixedly at her.
"Any one else? Plenty--porters, passengers, what not; but of people that I knew, not a soul," answered the woman, raising her eyes and meeting his gaze with perfect calmness.
"That's all right," he muttered; then louder, "Now it's time for me to go on board. Goodbye, Pauline; make your way to Lymington, and look out for me at the station at seven-thirty to-morrow morning."
As she stood looking after him, a hard, defiant expression came over the woman's face. "Did I see any one else?" she said between her set teeth; "yes, mon cher, I saw the pale, white-faced girl whom you held in your arms and kissed at parting, and who fell back into the carriage and cried like a baby, as she is. This, then, was the secret of your refusing to go to India with the money of this old fool whom you have robbed! Or rather whom she has robbed; for she was the messenger who brought it to you, and it is doubtless she who has beguiled this dotard out of the bank-notes which she handed over to you, her lover. Peste! If that slavish love I have for you were not mixed with the dread and terror which I have learnt from experience, I would escape with this money to my own land, and leave you and your mignonne to make it out as best you might. But I am weak enough to love you still, and my revenge on her must wait for a more fitting opportunity."
Her passion spent, Pauline gathered her shawl tightly round her and walked away towards the town.
On board the steam-ship Massilia matters had happened pretty much as Tom Durham had foreseen. That capital sample of the Peninsular and Oriental Company's fleet worked out of harbour at half-past two, and, in charge of a pilot, made her way slowly and steadily down Southampton Water. The wind freshened, and darkness coming on, the captain decided on anchoring off Hurst Castle for the night, and proceeding on his voyage at daylight. This decision was greatly to the delight of the passengers, who had not yet shaken down into that pleasant companionship which such a voyage frequently brings about, and who, restless and strange in their unaccustomed position, were glad to seek their berths at a very early hour. During the afternoon's run Tom Durham had succeeded in creating for himself a vast amount of popularity. He chatted with the captain about nautical matters, of which he had obtained a smattering when he was apprentice on board the old East Indiaman; he talked to the lady passengers, deprecating their dread of sea-sickness, and paying them pleasant attention, while he smoked with the gentlemen, and took care to let them all know the important position which he occupied, as the agent of Calverley and Company. Never was there so agreeable a man.
At about one in the morning, when perfect quiet reigned throughout the ship, the passengers being asleep in their berths, the men, save those on duty, sound in the forecastle, and the echo of the watch-officer's footsteps dying away in the distance, Tom Durham suddenly appeared at the head of the saloon companion, and made his way swiftly towards the middle of the ship. He was dressed as in the morning, save that he wore no coat, and that instead of boots he had on thin light slippers. When he arrived opposite the huge half-circle of the paddle-box he stopped, and groping with his hands speedily found an iron ring, seizing which he pulled open a door, which revolved on its hinges, disclosing a wooden panel, which he slid back, and stepping through the aperture found himself standing on one of the broad paddles of the enormous wheel. In an instant he had pulled the first door back to its previous position, and stepping lightly from paddle to paddle stood on the nethermost one just above the surface of the water. He paused for a moment, bending down and peering out into the darkness, then raising his hands high up above his head and clasping them together, he dived down into the water, scarcely making a splash.
Ten minutes afterwards, one of the two men always on duty in the little telegraph hut under Hurst Castle, opened the door, and accompanied by a big black retriever, who was growling angrily, walked out into the night. When he returned, his companion hailed him from the little bedroom overhead.
"What's the matter, Needham--what's the dog growling about?"
"I thought I heard a cry," said the man addressed; "Nep must have thought so too, by the way he's going on; but I can see nothing. When I was out a few minutes ago I thought I saw something like a dog swimming near the Massilia, lying at anchor there, but it isn't there now. I doubt, after all, it may have been my fancy."
"I wish you would keep your fancy to yourself, and not let it rouse me up," growled his mate. "One don't get too much rest in this blessed place at the best of times."
CHAPTER III.
HOME, SWEET HOME.
Fashion, amidst the innumerable changes which she has insisted on, seems to have dealt lightly with Great Walpole-street. It may be that she has purposely left it untouched to remain an example of the heavy, solemn, solid style of a hundred years ago; a striking contrast to the "gardens," "crescents," "mansions," all stucco, plate-glass, and huge portico, of modern days; or it may be that finding it intractable, unalterable, unassailable, she has looked upon it as a relic of barbarism, and determined altogether to ignore its existence. However that may be, the street is little changed since the days of its erection; it still remains a long, and, to those gazing down it from either end, apparently interminable line of large, substantial, three-storied, dull-coloured brick houses, stretching from Chandos-square in the south to Guelph Park in the north, so long, so uniform, so unspeakably dreary, as to give colour to the assertion of a celebrated wit, who, on his death-bed moaning forth that "there is an end to all things," added feebly, "except Great Walpole-street."
In its precincts gravity and decorum have set up their head-quarters; on many of its door-plates the passers-by may read the names of distinguished members of the faculty, old in age and high in renown, pupils of Abernethy and Astley Cooper, who with the first few hundreds which they could scrape together after their degrees were obtained, hired, and furnished, as a first step to professional status, the houses in which they still reside, and in which they have since inspected so many thousand tongues, and passed the verdict of life or death upon so many thousand patients. Youth must be resident here and there in Great Walpole-street, as in other places, but if so, it is never seen. No nursemaids with heads obstinately turned the other way drive the pleasant perambulator against the legs of elderly people airing themselves in the modified sunlight which occasionally visits the locality; no merry children troop along its pavement; from the long drawing-room windows, hung with curtains of velvet and muslin, issues no sound of piano or human voice. Although there is no beadle to keep inviolate its sanctity, the street-boy as he approaches its confines stops his shrill whistling, and puts his tip-cat into his pocket; the "patterers" of the second editions pass it by, conscious that the rumours of war, or of the assassinations of eminent personages, will fall flat upon the ears of the inhabitants; while even the fragmentary announcement, "Elopement--young lady--noble markis," will fail in extracting the pence from the pockets of the denizens of the lower regions in this respectable quarter.
It is essentially a carriage neighbourhood, with ranges of mews branching out of and running parallel to it; and the vehicles are quite in keeping with the street and with their owners. Besides the doctors' broughams, high swinging chariots, now scarcely ever seen save on drawing-room days or in carriage bazaars, with huge hammercloths and vast emblazoned panels, are there common enough. Roomy landaus, broad barouches, with fat-horses, the leather of whose harness is almost invisible beneath the heavy silver plating, coachmen in curly white bob-wigs, and giant footmen gorgeous in hair-powder; all these are to be found in Great Walpole-street.
Money, money, money! it all seems to say. We have money, and we will take care that you shall know it. We will not pay enormous rents for poky tenements in Mayfair, or straggling caravanserais in Tyburnia; we do not expend our substance in park-phaetons or Victorias, any more than in giving "drums" or "at homes." We have, during the season, several dinner-parties, at which the wine set before you does not come from the grocer's or the publican's, but has been in our cellars for years; several musical evenings, and one or two balls. We go to the Opera three or four times during the season, occasionally to the theatre, frequently to a classical concert, or an oratorio; but we would as soon think of attending a prize-fight as a pigeon-match, or of prohibiting our womankind from going to church, as of taking them to listen to comic songs in a supper-room. We are rich, which you may be; but we are respectable, which you are not! Vaunt your fashion as much as you please, but the home of moneyed decency and decorum is Great Walpole-street.
Six o'clock on an October evening, with a chill damp wind howling at intervals through the funnel made by the opposing lines of houses, is not the time in which this locality looks its best. If it is dreary in the spring brightness, in the summer sunshine, it is doubly dreary in the autumn decadence, when the leaves torn from the trees in Guelph Park mix with the dust and bits of straw and scraps of paper which gather together in swerving eddies in every possible corner, and when in most of the houses the shutters are still closed, and the blinds have not shed the newspaper coverings in which they have been enwrapped during the absence of the inhabitants. In one of the largest houses of the street, on one particular October evening, no such signs of absenteeism were visible; the whiteness of the broad door-step was unsullied, the plate-glass windows were free from speck or spot, the dwarf wire-blinds in the dining-room stood rigidly defiant of all criticism, and the muslin curtains in the drawing-room seemed to have lost all the softness and pliancy of their nature, and hung stiff, and white, and rigid, as the gaunt and bony hands which from time to time pushed them on one side, as the blank and colourless face which from time to time peered through them into the street. These hands and that face belonged to Mrs. Calverley, the mistress of the mansion. A thin, spare woman of fifty years of age, with a figure in which were angles where there should have been roundness, and straightness of outline where there should have been fulness. Her silk dress was of an undecided fawn-colour, and in place of any relieving white collar, she wore a wisp of black net round her throat. Her face was long, with a large straight-nose, prominent eyes of steely blue, and a long upper lip, between which and its thin pallid companion there gleamed a row of strong white teeth. Her thin scanty iron-gray hair was taken off from her forehead above the temples and gathered into a small knot at the back. Such an expanse of colourless flesh, such a dull level waste of human features unrelieved by the slightest scintilla of interest or sympathy!
In her prim, flat-soled creaking shoes, Mrs. Calverley walked to the window, pushed back the curtains, and looked out down the silent street; then, with a sound which was something between a sigh of despair and a snort of defiance, she returned to the low prie-dieu chair worked in wool, but covered with a shiny, crackling, yellow substance; and arranging her scanty drapery around her, interwove her bony fingers in her lap and sat bolt upright, staring rigidly before her. All the furniture in the room which was capable of being covered up was clad in a uniform of brown holland; the chairs were dressed in pinafores, the big broad sofa had a loosely cut greatcoat of the same material; even the chandeliers had on holland bags. There was no light in the room, but the gas lamps in the street were reflected from the bare shining rosewood table, from the long grand pianoforte, from the huge ormolu clock ticking gravely on the mantelpiece, from the glass shades enshrining wax flowers and fruit, which, made such a poor pretence of being real, and from the old-fashioned handsomely-cut girandoles. By the chair in which Mrs. Calverley was seated stood a frame of Berlin work; in the middle of the hearth-rug before the fireplace--fireless now, and filled with a grim pattern of cut coloured paper--lay a stuffed white-haired dog, intently regarding his tail through his glass eyes, and apparently wondering what he had done in life to be consigned to such a degraded position.
A quarter-past six, half-past, a quarter to seven, ring out from the neighbouring church, and at each sound of the chimes Mrs. Calverley rises to her feet, creaks across to the window, looks forth, creaks back again, and resumes her stony position. At length there comes a half-timid ring of the bell, which she recognises at once, straightens her back, and settles herself more rigidly than ever. A few minutes after, the drawing-room door opens, and a voice, the owner of which cannot be seen, is heard saying, "Dear me, all in darkness, Jane?"
Mrs. Calverley makes no reply, but rings the bell, and when the servant appears, says to him in a thin acid voice, "You can light the gas, James; and now that your master has come home at last, dinner can be served."
Upon this remark Mr. Calverley's only comment is a repetition of "Dear me!" He is a middle-sized, pleasant-looking man, with fair hair slightly sprinkled with gray, gray whiskers, light-blue eyes, and marvellous pink-and-white complexion like a doll: a gentlemanly-looking man in his plain black frock-coat and waistcoat, gray trousers, black-silk cravat and pearl pin, and neat buttoned boots. He looks rather nervously to his wife, and edges his way towards her round the table. When he is within a few feet of her he produces a newspaper from his pocket, and makes a feeble tender of it, saying, "The evening paper, my dear; I thought you would like to see--"
"I should like to see you attempt to relieve the monotony of my life, Mr. Calverley, and not to leave me here alone, while you were doubtless enjoying yourself."
"My dear, I assure you I have come straight home."
"Did business detain you until after six o'clock in Mincing-lane?"
"No, my dear, of course not till six o'clock; I walked home, and on my way I just looked in at the club, and--"
"At the club!" That was all Mrs. Calverley said, but the manner in which she said it had its due effect. Mr. Calverley opened the leaves of a photograph album, with every portrait in which he was thoroughly familiar, and began to be extremely interested in its contents.
"Dinner will be ready directly," said Mrs. Calverley; "had you not better wash your hands?"
"Thank you, my dear," said the disconsolate man; "but I washed them at the cl--"
He pulled himself up just in time; the obnoxious word had very nearly slipped out, but the servant announcing dinner at the moment, and Mrs. Calverley laying the tips of her bony fingers in the hollow of her husband's arm, the happy pair proceeded to the banquet.
It was a good dinner, handsomely served, but Mr. Calverley can scarcely be said to have enjoyed it. At first he audibly asked for wine, but after he had been helped three or four times, he glanced hurriedly across the long table, at the other end of which his wife was seated, and furtively motioned to the butler by touching his glass. This pantomime and its results were soon noticed by Mrs. Calverley, who, after glaring at her husband for a moment, gave a little shiver, and said:
"It is of no use paying Doctor Chipchase his fees if his advice is to be scouted in this manner; you know what he said about your drinking wine."
"My dear, I only--"
"You only fly in the face of Providence, Mr. Calverley, and behave unjustly to the office in which your life is insured. You only add another to the long catalogue of weaknesses and moral cowardices, by the constant display of which you render my life a burden to me. I am sick of talking to you myself; I shall write and ask Martin to come and stay with us for a few weeks, and see what effect his influence will have upon you."
"I am sure I shall be very glad to see Martin, my dear," said Mr. Calverley, after standing up reverently to say grace on the removal of the cloth; "he is a very good fellow, and--"
"Don't talk of a clergyman of the Church of England in that way, Mr. Calverley, if you please. 'Good fellow,' indeed! My son Martin is a good man, and an ornament to his calling."
"Yes, my dear, of course he is; preaches an excellent sermon, does Martin, and intones quite musically. I should like to see him a little more cheerful, I mean a little less ascetic, you know; take his wine more freely, and not look quite so much as if he was fed upon parched peas and filtered water."
"You are profane, as usual," said his wife. "Whenever you touch upon any member of my family, your temper gets the better of you, and your uncontrollable tendency to scoffing and scepticism breaks forth. Perhaps you will not think it too much trouble to pass me the biscuits."
"My dear Jane!" murmured the wretched man; and after handing the silver biscuit-barrel to his wife, he sat by, not daring to help himself to another glass of wine from the well-filled decanters before him, while the mere fact of seeing her munching away at the hard farinaceous food nearly drove him mad with thirst.
When Mrs. Calverley had concluded this succulent repast, she rose from her seat, and, without taking any notice of her husband, creaked stiffly out of the room. John Calverley, lover of ease and tranquillity as he was, scarcely regretted this little conjugal dispute, inasmuch as that if Mrs. Calverley had not, in consequence of the words that had passed between them, been on her dignified behaviour, she would have remained to lock up the wine. Whereas John managed to swallow two glasses of his favourite Madeira before he joined her in the drawing-room.
It was not very cheerful in the drawing-room. The gas had been turned low down, and the principal light in the room, much softened and shaded, came from a reading-lamp placed immediately above the work-frame at which Mrs. Calverley's bony fingers were busily engaged depicting the story of Jael, with a very rugged profile, and Sisera, the death-glare in whose eyes was represented by a couple of steel beads. John Calverley, furtively wiping his lips after the Madeira, shambled awkwardly into the room, and could scarcely repress a groan at the ghastliness of its appearance. But the generous wine which he had drunk helped to cheer him a little; and after wandering to and fro in a purposeless manner, he approached his wife, and said: "Won't you play something, dear?"
"No, thank you," replied Mrs. Calverley; "I wish to finish this work."
"It is rather a nice thing," said John, bending over the production, and criticising it in a connoisseur-like manner; "what is it all about?"
"It is well that no one is here to hear this lamentable display of ignorance," said Mrs. Calverley, with a snort. "It is a scriptural story, Mr. Calverley, and is intended as a footstool for the Church of St. Beowulph."
"O yes," said John, nodding his head; "I know--Bewsher's place."
"It would be more decent, as well as more correct, to speak of it as the church in which Mr. Bewsher is officiating minister, I think," said Mrs. Calverley with another snort.
"To be sure, my dear; quite correct," said peace-loving John. "By the way, talking about officiating ministers, perhaps you had better not ask Martin to come to us just yet; I have got to go down to that place in the North next week."
"What place in the North?" said Mrs. Calverley, looking up.
"What place? Why, my dear, Swartmoor, of course--the foundry, you know; that's the only place I go to in the North."
"I don't know what place you do or do not go to in the North, or anywhere else, Mr. Calverley," said his wife, sticking her needle into the canvas, and interlacing her bony fingers and sitting bolt upright, as she glared straight at him; "I only know this, that I am determined not to stand this state of things much longer."
"But, my dear--"
"Don't 'my dear' me, if you please, but listen to what I have to say. When I married you, Mr. Calverley, to my sorrow, now some ten years ago, you were nothing more than the head clerk in the house of Lorraine Brothers, which my grandfather had founded, which my father and uncles had established, and in which my late husband, Mr. Gurwood, had been a sleeping partner."
"I must say that--"
"Silence, if you please; I will not be interrupted. I took you from that inferior position, and made you my husband. I made you master of this house and my fortune. I raised you, Mr. Calverley. I tell you, I raised you, sir, from obscurity to position, from comparative penury to wealth; and what is my reward? Day after day you are absent from home at your counting-house in Mincing-lane. I don't object to that; I suppose it is necessary; but I know--yes, I know, Mr. Calverley--this is not my first experience of men of business; I have been a grand-daughter, a daughter, and a sister of the firm, and though latterly Mr. Gurwood was not quite regular in his attendance, at least at one time he was an excellent man of business--so that I may say also the wife of the firm, and I know that business hours are over at five, and that my sainted father used then to come straight home to Clapham by the omnibus."
"I--"
"You must allow me to speak, if you please; I will not be interrupted. Instead of which, I find you going to your club and dawdling there to the latest minute, often keeping my dinner waiting; and when you return home, your conversation is frivolous, your manner light and flighty, and wanting in repose; your tastes and habits evidently unsuitable to a person in the position of my husband. I have borne all this without complaint; I know that all of us mortals--sinful mortals--have a cross to bear, and that you have been bestowed upon me in that capacity. But, be a lone deserted woman when I have a husband whose legitimate business it is to stay at home and take care of me, I will not. These Swartmoor works are all very well, I daresay, and I know you declare that they bring in a vast deal of profit; but there was profit enough in my father's time without any of your iron works; and if you intend to continue paying them a visit every fortnight, and staying several days away, as you have done lately, they shall be given up, Mr. Calverley--they shall be given up, I say. I may be of no more concern to you than a chair or a table, but I will not be a deserted woman, and these iron works shall be given up."
Those who had seen but little of the pleasant-faced John Calverley, would scarcely have recognised him in the darkly-frowning man who now strode forward, and crossing his arms on the back of a chair immediately in front of his wife, said in a very quiet but very determined voice:
"They shall not be given up. Understand that once for all--they shall not be given up. You may say what you like, but I am master in my business, if not in my home, and they shall not be given up. And now, Jane, you must listen to me; must listen to words which I never intended to have said, if the speech you have just made had not rendered it necessary. You have told me what you have pleased to call facts; now I will give you my version of them. When I married you ten years ago--and God knows you cannot deplore that marriage more heartily than I do--I was, as you say, the head clerk of the firm which your father had established. But in his latter days he had been ill and inattentive to business; and after his death your uncles, to whom the concern was left, proved themselves utterly inadequate to its guidance; and if it had not been for me, the firm of Lorraine and Company would have been in the Gazette. You know this well enough; you know that I, as head clerk, took the whole affair on my shoulders, reorganised it, opened out new avenues for its commerce, and finally succeeded in making it what it was when you first saw me. You taunt me with having been raised by you from penury to position; but you know that the whole of your fortune was embarked in the business, and that if it had not been for my clear head and hard work, you would have lost every penny of it. You accuse me of being light and frivolous and unsuited to you, of being away from my home; though, except on these business expeditions, not an evening do I pass out of your society. In return, I ask you what sort of a home you make for me? what sign of interest, of comfort, of anything like womanly grace and feeling is there about it? What reception do I meet with on my return from business? what communion, what reciprocity is there between us? Every word I say, every remark I make, you either sneer or snap at. You are a hard, intolerant Pharisee, Jane Calverley. By your hardness and intolerance, by your perpetually nagging and worrying at him, you tried to break the spirit of your former husband, George Gurwood, one of the kindest fellows that ever lived. But you failed in that; you only drove him to drink and to death. Now I have said my say, have said what I never intended should pass my lips, what never would have passed them, if it had not been for your provocation. I wish you good-night--I am now going to the club."
So saying, John Calverley bowed his head and passed from the room, leaving his wife no longer rigid and defiant, but swaying herself to and fro, and moaning helplessly.
CHAPTER IV.
PAULINE.
The cold gray morning light, shining through the little window of a small bedroom in a second-rate hotel at Lymington, made its way through the aperture between the common dimity curtains, which had been purposely separated overnight, and fell on the slumbering figure of Pauline. The poor and scanty furniture of the room, with its dingy bed-hangings, its wooden washstand, two rush-bottomed chairs, and rickety one-sided chest of drawers, all painted a pale stone-colour, were in strong contrast with the richness of colouring observable in the sleeper,--observable in her jet-black hair, now taken from off her face and gathered into one large coil at the back of her head; in her olive complexion, sun-embrowned indeed, but yet showing distinctly the ebb and flow of her southern blood; and in the deep orange-hued handkerchief daintily knotted round her neck. See, now, how troubled are her slumbers; how from between her parted lips comes a long though scarcely audible moan; how the strong thin hand lying outside the coverlet clutches convulsively at nothing; and how she seems in her unrest to be struggling to free herself from the thraldom of the troublous dream, under the influence of which part of the torture suffered by her during the previous day is again pressing upon her!
Yes; the woman with the pale tear-blurred face is there once again. Once again Tom Durham stands at the carriage-door, whispering to her with evident earnestness, until the guard touches him on the shoulder, and the whistle shrieks, and then she bends forward, and he holds her for a moment in his outspread arms, and kisses her once, twice, thrice on her lips, until he is pulled aside by the porter coming to shut the door of the already-moving carriage, and she falls back in an agony of grief. There is a moisture in his eyes too; such as she, Pauline, with all her experience of him, has never seen there. He is the lover of this pale-faced woman, and therefore he must die! She will kill him herself! She will kill him with the pearl-handled knife which Gaetano, the mate of the Italian ship, gave her, telling her that all the Lombard girls wore such daggers in their garters, ready for the heart of any Tedesco who might insult them, or any other girl who might prove their rival. The dagger is upstairs, in the little bedroom at the top of the house, overlooking the CannebiÈre, which she shares with Mademoiselle Mathilde. She will fetch it at once; and after it has served its purpose she will carry it to the chapel of Notre Dame de la Garde, and hang it up among the votive offerings: the pictures of shipwrecks, storms, sea-fights, and surgical operations; the models of vessels, the ostrich-eggs, the crutches left by cripples no longer lame, and the ends of the ropes by which men have been saved from drowning. How clearly she can see the place, and all its contents, before her now! She will leave the dagger there: as the weapon by which a traitor and an Englishman has been slain, it will not be out of place, though PÈre Gasselin shake his head and lift his monitory finger. She will fetch it at once. Ah, how delicious and yet how strange seem to her the smell of the pot-au-feu, and the warm aroma of the chocolate! How steep the stairs seem to have become; she will never be able to reach the top! What is this, Pierre and Jean are saying? The sea has swept away the breakwater at La Joliette, and is rapidly rushing into the town! It is here; it is in the street below! Fighting madly with the boiling waters is one man--she can catch a glimpse of his face now. Grand Dieu, it is Tom! She will save him--no, too late, he is borne swiftly past, he is--
And with a short suppressed scream she woke.
It was probably the rapping of the chambermaid at the bedroom door which dissipated Pauline's dream, and recalled her to herself, and it is certain that the chambermaid, whose quick ears caught the scream, went downstairs more than ever impressed with terror at the "foreign person" whom she had scarcely had sufficient courage to conduct to her room on the previous evening. Notwithstanding the bizarre shape which they had assumed, these reminiscences of a portion of Pauline's past life had been so vivid, that it was with great difficulty she could clear her brain, and arrive at an idea of why she found herself in the dingy bedroom of a country inn, and of what lay before her. Sitting upon the edge of her bed, with her arms crossed upon her bosom, she gradually recalled the occurrences of the previous day, and came to comprehend what had been the key-note of her dream, and who was the pale-faced woman whose presence had so disturbed her. There was, however, no time for reflection at that moment; she had been aroused in accordance with instructions given on the previous night, and there was but little time for her to dress herself and make her way to the station, where she was to await the arrival of her husband. Her toilet completed, she hurried downstairs, and declining to taste any of the substantial breakfast which the hearty Hampshire landlady was then engaged in discussing, and to which she invited her visitor, issued out into the broad street of the quiet old town.
Past the low-windowed shops, where the sleepy 'prentice-boys were taking down the shutters, and indulging in such fragmentary conversation as could be carried on under the eyes of their masters, which they knew were bent upon them from the upper rooms; past the neat little post-office, where the click of the telegraph-needles was already audible, and whence were issuing the sturdy country post-men, each with his huge well-filled leathern wallet on his back; past the yacht-builder's yard, where the air was redolent of pitch and tar, and newly-chipped wood, where through the half-opened gates could be seen the slender, tapering masts of many yachts already laid up for the season in the creek, and where a vast amount of hammering and sawing and planing was, as the neighbours thought interminably, going on. Not but what the yacht-building yard is one of the great features of the place; for, were it not for the yacht-owners, who first come down to give orders about the building of their vessels; then pay a visit to see how their instructions are being carried out; and finally, finding the place comfortable, tolerably accessible, and not too dear, bring their wives and families, and make it their head-quarters for the yachting season, what stranger would ever come to Lymington? what occupants would be found for its lodging-houses and hotels?
The clock struck seven as Pauline passed through the booking-office at the railway station, and stepped out on to the platform. She looked hastily round her in search for Tom Durham, but did not see him. A sudden chill fell upon her as the remembrance of her dream flashed across her mind. The next instant she was chiding herself for imagining that he would be there. There was yet half an hour before the arrival of the train by which they were to proceed to Weymouth; he would be tired by his long swim from the ship to the shore, his clothes would of course be saturated, and he would have to dry them; he would doubtless rest as long as he could in the place where he had found shelter, and only join her just in time to start. There was no doubt about his finding shelter somewhere; he was too clever not to do that; he was the cleverest man in all the world; it was for his talent she had chosen him from all the others years ago; it was for--and then Pauline's face fell, remembering that Tom Durham was as unscrupulous as he was clever, and that if this pale-faced woman were really anything to him, he would occupy his talent in arranging how and when to meet her in secret, in planning how to obtain farther sums of money from the old man whose messenger she had been.
How the thought of that woman haunted her! How her whole life seemed to have changed since she had witnessed that parting at the railway station yesterday! She felt that it would be impossible for her to hide from Tom the fact that she was labouring under doubt and depression of some kind or other. She knew his tact and determination in learning whatever he thought it behoved him to find out; and she thought it would be better to speak openly to him, to tell him what she had seen, and to ask him for some explanation. Yes, she would do that. The train was then in sight; he would no longer delay putting in an appearance on the platform, and in a few minutes they would be travelling away to soft air and lovely scenery, with more than sufficient money for their present wants, and for a time at least with rest and peace before them. Then she would tell him all; and he would doubtless reassure her, showing her how silly and jealous she had been, but forgiving her because she had suffered solely through her love for him.
By this time a number of passengers had gathered together on the platform, awaiting the arrival of the train, and Pauline passed hastily among them looking eagerly to the right and left, and, retracing her steps through the booking-office, opened the door and glanced up the street leading to the station. No sign of Tom Durham anywhere! Perhaps he had found a nearer station to a point at which he had swum ashore, and would be in the train now rapidly approaching.
The train stopped; two or three passengers alighted, and were so soon mixed up with the crowd of sailors, ship-carpenters, and farm-labourers rushing to take their seats, that Pauline could not distinguish them, but she knew Tom was not amongst them; and when she walked quickly down the line of carriages, throwing a rapid but comprehensive glance round each, she saw him not; and the train passed on, and she was left once more alone upon the platform.
Then, with frowning brows and set rigid lips, Pauline commenced walking up and down, covering with her long striding footsteps, so different from her usual easy, swimming gait, exactly the same amount of space at every turn, wheeling, apparently unconsciously, at the same point, treading almost in the same prints which she had previously made, keeping her eyes steadfastly fixed on the ground, and being totally unaware of all that was passing around her. She was a clear-headed as well as a strong-willed woman, accustomed to look life and its realities boldly in the face, and, unlike the majority of her countrymen and women, swift to detect the shallowness of sophistry when propounded by others, and careful never even to attempt to impose upon herself. Throughout her life, so long as she could remember, she had been in the habit of thinking-out any project of importance which had arisen in her career while walking to and fro, just as she was doing then. It was perhaps the sameness of the action, perhaps some reminiscence of her dream still lingering in her mind, that turned her memory to the last occasion when she had taken such thoughtful exercise; and the scene exactly as it occurred rose before her.
The time, early morning, not much after six o'clock; the place, the Prado at Marseilles; the persons, a few belated blue-bloused workmen hurrying to their work, a few soldiers lounging about as only soldiers always seem to lounge when they are not on duty, a limonadiÈre with her temple deposited on the ground by her side, while she washes the sparkling tin cups in a sparkling tin cups in a drinking-fountain; two or three water-carts pounding along and refreshingly sprinkling the white dusty road, two or three English grooms exercising horses, and she, Pauline Lunelle, dame du comptoir at the Restaurant du Midi, in the CannebiÈre, pacing up and down the Prado, and turning over in her mind a proposition on the acceptance or rejection of which depended her future happiness or misery. That proposition was a proposition of marriage, not by any means the first she had received. The handsome, black-eyed, black-haired, olive-skinned dame du comptoir was one of the reigning belles of the town, and the Restaurant du Midi was such a popular place of resort, that she never lacked admirers. All the breakfast-eaters, the smokers, the billiard-players, even the decorated old gentlemen who dropped in as regularly as clockwork every evening for a game of dominoes or tric-trac, paid their court to her, and in several cases this court was something more than the mere conventional hat-doffing or the few words of empty politeness whispered to her as she attended to the settlement of their accounts. Adolphe de Noailles--only a sous-lieutenant of artillery, to be sure, but a man of good family, and who, it was said, was looked upon with favour by Mademoiselle Krebs, daughter Of old Monsieur Krebs, the German banker, who was so rich and who gave such splendid parties--had asked Pauline Lunelle to become his wife, had "ah-bah-d" when she talked about the difference in their positions, and had insisted that in appearance and manner she was equal to any lady in the south of France. So had Henrich Wetter, head clerk and cashier in the bank of Monsieur Krebs aforesaid--a tall, fair, lymphatic young man, who until his acquaintance with Pauline, had thought of nothing but Vaterland and the first of exchange, but who professed himself ready to become naturalised as a Frenchman, and to take up his abode for life in Marseilles, if she would only listen to his suit. So had Frank Jenkins, attached to the British post-office, and in that capacity bringing the Indian mails from London to Marseilles, embarking them on board the Peninsular and Oriental steamer, and waiting the arrival of the return mail which carried them back to England--a big, jolly, massive creature, well known to everybody in the town as Monsieur Jenkins, or the "courrier anglais," who had a bedroom at the HÔtel de Paradis, but who spent the whole of his time at the Restaurant du Midi, drinking beer or brandy or absinthe--it was all the same to him--to keep the landlord "square," as he phrased it, but never taking his eyes off the dame du comptoir, and never losing an opportunity of paying her the most outrageous compliments in the most outrageous French ever heard even in that city of polyglot speech.
If Pauline Lunelle had a tenderness for any of them, it was for the sous-lieutenant; at the Englishman, and indeed at a great many others--Frenchmen, commis-voyageurs, tradesmen in the city, or clerks in the merchants' offices on the Quai--she laughed unmercifully; not to their faces, indeed--that would have been bad for business, and Pauline throughout her life had the keenest eye to her own benefit. Her worth as a decoy-duck was so fully appreciated by Monsieur Etienne, the proprietor of the restaurant, that she had insisted upon receiving a commission on all moneys paid by those whose visits thither were unquestionably due to her attraction. But when they had retired for the night, the little top bedroom which she occupied in conjunction with Mademoiselle Mathilde would ring with laughter, caused by her repetition of the sweet things which had been said to her during the evening by her admirers, and her imitations of the manner and accents in which they had been delivered. So Adolphe de Noailles had it all his own way, and Pauline had seriously debated within herself whether she should not let him run the risk of offending his family and marrying him out of hand (the disappointment to be occasioned thereby to Mademoiselle Krebs, a haughty and purse-proud young lady, being one of her keenest incentives to the act), when another character appeared upon the scene.
This was another Englishman, but in every way as different as possible to poor Mr. Jenkins--not merely speaking French like a Parisian, but salting his conversation with a vast amount of Parisian idiomatic slang, full of fun and wild practical jokes, impervious to ridicule, impossible to be put down, and spending his money in the most lavish and free-handed manner possible. This was Tom Durham, who had suddenly turned up in Marseilles, no one knew why. He had been to Malta, he said, on a "venture," and the venture had turned out favourably, and he was going back to England, and had determined to enjoy himself by the way. He was constantly at the Restaurant du Midi, paid immense attention to the dame du comptoir, and she in her turn was fascinated by his good temper, his generous ways, his strange eccentric goings-on. But Tom Durham, laughing, drinking, and spending his money, was the same cool observant creature that he had been ever since he shipped as 'prentice on board the Gloucestershire, when he was fifteen years of age. All the time of his sojourn at the Restaurant du Midi he was carefully "taking stock," as he called it, of Pauline Lunelle. In his various schemes he had long felt the want of a female accomplice, and he thought he had at last found the person whom he had for some time been seeking. That she was worldly-wise he knew, or she would never have achieved the position which she held in Monsieur Etienne's establishment; that there was far more in her than she had ever yet given proof of he believed; for Mr. Tom Durham was a strong believer in physiognomy, and had more than once found the study of some use to him. Sipping his lemonade-and-cognac and puffing at his cigar, he sat night after night talking pleasantly with any chance acquaintance, but inwardly studying Pauline Lunelle; and when his studies were completed, he had made up his mind that he saw in her a wonderful mixture of headstrong passion and calm common sense, unscrupulous, fearless, devoted, and capable of carrying out anything, no matter what, which she had once made up her mind to perform. "A tameable tiger, in point of fact," said Tom Durham to himself as he stepped out into the street and picked his way across the filthy gutters towards his home; "and if only kept in proper subjection, capable of being made anything of." He knew there was only one way by which Pauline could be secured, and he made up his mind to propose to her the next night.
He proposed accordingly; but Pauline begged for four-and-twenty hours to consider her decision, and in the early morning went out into the Prado to think it all through, and deliberately to weigh the merits of the propositions made respectively by Adolphe de Noailles and Tom Durham; the result being that the sous-lieutenant's hopes were crushed for ever--or for fully a fortnight, when they blossomed in another direction--and that Pauline, dame du comptoir no longer, linked her fate with that of Tom Durham. Thenceforward they were all in all to each other. She had no relatives, nor, as he told her, had he. "I have not seen Alice for five years," he said to himself; "and from what I recollect of her, she was a stuck-up, straitlaced little minx, likely to look down upon my young friend the tiger here, and give herself airs which the tiger certainly would not understand; so, as they are not likely to come together, it will be better to ignore her existence altogether." In all his crooked schemes, and they were many and various, Pauline took her share, unflagging, indefatigable, clear in council, prompt in action, jealous of every word, of every look he gave to any other woman; at the same time the slave of his love and the prop and mainstay of his affairs. Tom Durham himself had not that quality which he imputed to his half-sister; he certainly was not strait-laced; but his escapades, if he had any, were carefully kept in the background, and Pauline, suspicious as she was, had never felt any real ground for jealousy until she had witnessed the scene at parting at the Southampton station.
The Prado and its associations had faded out of her mind, and she was trying to picture to herself the various chances which could possibly have detained her husband, when a porter halted before her, and civilly touching his cap, asked for what train she was waiting.
"The train for Weymouth," she replied.
"For Weymouth!" echoed the porter; "the train for Weymouth has just gone."
"Yes, I know that," said Pauline; "but I was expecting some one--a gentleman--to meet me. He will probably come in time for the next."
"You will have a longish waiting bout," said the man; "next train don't come till two-forty-five, nigh upon three o'clock."
"That is long," said Pauline. "And the next?"
"Only one more after that," said the porter--"eight forty--gets into Weymouth somewhere between ten and eleven at night. You'll never think of waiting here, ma'am, for either of them. Better go into the town to one of the hotels, or have a row on the river, or something to pass the time."
"Thank you," said Pauline, to whom a sudden idea had occurred. "How far is it from here to--how do you call the place--Hurstcastle?"
"To where, ma'am? O, Hurst Castle. I didn't understand you, you see, at first--you didn't make two words of it. It is Hurst Castle, where the king was kept a prisoner--him as had his head cut off--and where there's a barracks and a telegraph station for the ships now."
"Yes," she said, "exactly; that's the place. How far is it from here?"
"Well, it's about seven mile, take it altogether; but you can't drive all the way. You could have a fly to take you four miles, and he'd bring you to a boat, and he'd take you in and out down a little river through the marshes, until you came to a beach, on the other side of which the castle stands. But, lor' bless me, miss, what's the use o' going at all, there's nothing to see when you get there?"