



Produced by James Rusk.  HTML version by Al Haines









THE GUILTY RIVER


by

Wilkie Collins




CONTENTS

  Chapter I  On the Way to the River
  Chapter II  The River Introduces Us
  Chapter III  He Shows Himself
  Chapter IV  He Explains Himself
  Chapter V  He Betrays Himself
  Chapter VI  The Return of the Portfolio
  Chapter VII  The Best Society
  Chapter VIII  The Deaf Lodger
  Chapter IX  Mrs. Roylake's Game: First Move
  Chapter X  Warned!
  Chapter XI  Warned Again!
  Chapter XII  Warned for the Last Time!
  Chapter XIII  The Claret Jug
  Chapter XIV  Gloody Settles the Account
  Chapter XV  The Miller's Hospitality
  Chapter XVI  Bribery and Corruption
  Chapter XVII  Utter Failure
  Chapter XVIII  The Mistress of Trimley Deen




CHAPTER I

ON THE WAY TO THE RIVER

FOR reasons of my own, I excused myself from accompanying my stepmother
to a dinner-party given in our neighborhood. In my present humor, I
preferred being alone--and, as a means of getting through my idle time, I
was quite content to be occupied in catching insects.

Provided with a brush and a mixture of rum and treacle, I went into
Fordwitch Wood to set the snare, familiar to hunters of moths, which we
call sugaring the trees.

The summer evening was hot and still; the time was between dusk and dark.
After ten years of absence in foreign parts, I perceived changes in the
outskirts of the wood, which warned me not to enter it too confidently
when I might find a difficulty in seeing my way. Remaining among the
outermost trees, I painted the trunks with my treacherous mixture--which
allured the insects of the night, and stupefied them when they settled on
its rank surface. The snare being set, I waited to see the intoxication
of the moths.

A time passed, dull and dreary. The mysterious assemblage of trees was
blacker than the blackening sky. Of millions of leaves over my head, none
pleased my ear, in the airless calm, with their rustling summer song.

The first flying creatures, dimly visible by moments under the gloomy
sky, were enemies whom I well knew by experience. Many a fine insect
specimen have I lost, when the bats were near me in search of their
evening meal.

What had happened before, in other woods, happened now. The first moth
that I had snared was a large one, and a specimen well worth securing. As
I stretched out my hand to take it, the apparition of a flying shadow
passed, swift and noiseless, between me and the tree. In less than an
instant the insect was snatched away, when my fingers were within an inch
of it. The bat had begun his supper, and the man and the mixture had
provided it for him.

Out of five moths caught, I became the victim of clever theft in the case
of three. The other two, of no great value as specimens, I was just quick
enough to secure. Under other circumstances, my patience as a collector
would still have been a match for the dexterity of the bats. But on that
evening--a memorable evening when I look back at it now--my spirits were
depressed, and I was easily discouraged. My favorite studies of the
insect-world seemed to have lost their value in my estimation. In the
silence and the darkness I lay down under a tree, and let my mind dwell
on myself and on my new life to come.


I am Gerard Roylake, son and only child of the late Gerard Roylake of
Trimley Deen.

At twenty-two years of age, my father's death had placed me in possession
of his large landed property. On my arrival from Germany, only a few
hours since, the servants innocently vexed me. When I drove up to the
door, I heard them say to each other: "Here is the young Squire." My
father used to be called "the old Squire." I shrank from being reminded
of him--not as other sons in my position might have said, because it
renewed my sorrow for his death. There was no sorrow in me to be renewed.
It is a shocking confession to make: my heart remained unmoved when I
thought of the father whom I had lost.

Our mothers have the most sacred of all claims on our gratitude and our
love. They have nourished us with their blood; they have risked their
lives in bringing us into the world; they have preserved and guided our
helpless infancy with divine patience and love. What claim equally strong
and equally tender does the other parent establish on his offspring? What
motive does the instinct of his young children find for preferring their
father before any other person who may be a familiar object in their
daily lives? They love him--naturally and rightly love him--because he
lives in their remembrance (if he is a good man) as the first, the best,
the dearest of their friends.

My father was a bad man. He was my mother's worst enemy; and he was never
my friend.

The little that I know of the world tells me that it is not the common
lot in life of women to marry the object of their first love. A sense of
duty had compelled my mother to part with the man who had won her heart,
in the first days of her maidenhood; and my father had discovered it,
after his marriage. His insane jealousy foully wronged the truest wife,
the most long-suffering woman that ever lived. I have no patience to
write of it. For ten miserable years she suffered her martyrdom; she
lived through it, dear angel, sweet suffering soul, for my sake. At her
death, my father was able to gratify his hatred of the son whom he had
never believed to be his own child. Under pretence of preferring the
foreign system of teaching, he sent me to a school in France. My
education having been so far completed, I was next transferred to a
German University. Never again did I see the place of my birth, never did
I get a letter from home, until the family lawyer wrote from Trimley
Deen, requesting me to assume possession of my house and lands, under the
entail.

I should not even have known that my father had taken a second wife but
for some friend (or enemy)--I never discovered the person--who sent me a
newspaper containing an announcement of the marriage.

When we saw each other for the first time, my stepmother and I met
necessarily as strangers. We were elaborately polite, and we each made a
meritorious effort to appear at our ease. On her side, she found herself
confronted by a young man, the new master of the house, who looked more
like a foreigner than an Englishman--who, when he was congratulated (in
view of the approaching season) on the admirable preservation of his
partridges and pheasants, betrayed an utter want of interest in the
subject; and who showed no sense of shame in acknowledging that his
principal amusements were derived from reading books, and collecting
insects. How I must have disappointed Mrs. Roylake! and how considerately
she hid from me the effect that I had produced!

Turning next to my own impressions, I discovered in my newly-found
relative, a little light-eyed, light-haired, elegant woman; trim, and
bright, and smiling; dressed to perfection, clever to her fingers' ends,
skilled in making herself agreeable--and yet, in spite of these
undeniable fascinations, perfectly incomprehensible to me. After my
experience of foreign society, I was incapable of understanding the
extraordinary importance which my stepmother seemed to attach to rank and
riches, entirely for their own sakes. When she described my unknown
neighbors, from one end of the county to the other, she took it for
granted that I must be interested in them on account of their titles and
their fortunes. She held me up to my own face, as a kind of idol to
myself, without producing any better reason than might be found in my
inheritance of an income of sixteen thousand pounds. And when I expressed
(in excusing myself for not accompanying her, uninvited, to the
dinner-party) a perfectly rational doubt whether I might prove to be a
welcome guest, Mrs. Roylake held up her delicate little hands in
unutterable astonishment. "My dear Gerard, in your position!" She
appeared to think that this settled the question. I submitted in silence;
the truth is, I was beginning already to despair of my prospects. Kind as
my stepmother was, and agreeable as she was, what chance could I see of
establishing any true sympathy between us? And, if my neighbors resembled
her in their ways of thinking, what hope could I feel of finding new
friends in England to replace the friends in Germany whom I had lost? A
stranger among my own country people, with the every-day habits and
every-day pleasures of my youthful life left behind me--without plans or
hopes to interest me in looking at the future--it is surely not wonderful
that my spirits had sunk to their lowest ebb, and that I even failed to
appreciate with sufficient gratitude the fortunate accident of my birth.

Perhaps the journey to England had fatigued me, or perhaps the
controlling influences of the dark and silent night proved irresistible.
This only is certain: my solitary meditations under the tree ended in
sleep.

I was awakened by a light falling on my face.

The moon had risen. In the outward part of the wood, beyond which I had
not advanced, the pure and welcome light penetrated easily through the
scattered trees. I got up and looked about me. A path into the wood now
showed itself, broader and better kept than any path that I could
remember in the days of my boyhood. The moon showed it to me plainly, and
my curiosity was aroused.

Following the new track, I found that it led to a little glade which I at
once recognized. The place was changed in one respect only. A neglected
water-spring had been cleared of brambles and stones, and had been
provided with a drinking cup, a rustic seat, and a Latin motto on a
marble slab. The spring at once reminded me of a greater body of water--a
river, at some little distance farther on, which ran between the trees on
one side, and the desolate open country on the other. Ascending from the
glade, I found myself in one of the narrow woodland paths, familiar to me
in the by-gone time.

Unless my memory was at fault, this was the way which led to an old
water-mill on the river-bank. The image of the great turning wheel, which
half-frightened half-fascinated me when I was a child, now presented
itself to my memory for the first time after an interval of many years.
In my present frame of mind, the old scene appealed to me with the
irresistible influence of an old friend. I said to myself: "Shall I walk
on, and try if I can find the river and the mill again?" This perfectly
trifling question to decide presented to me, nevertheless, fantastic
difficulties so absurd that they might have been difficulties encountered
in a dream. To my own astonishment, I hesitated--walked back again along
the path by which I had advanced--reconsidered my decision, without
knowing why--and turning in the opposite direction, set my face towards
the river once more. I wonder how my life would have ended, if I had gone
the other way?



CHAPTER II

THE RIVER INTRODUCES US

I stood alone on the bank of the ugliest stream in England.

The moonlight, pouring its unclouded radiance over open space, failed to
throw a beauty not their own on those sluggish waters. Broad and muddy,
their stealthy current flowed onward to the sea, without a rock to
diversify, without a bubble to break, the sullen surface. On the side
from which I was looking at the river, the neglected trees grew so close
together that they were undermining their own lives, and poisoning each
other. On the opposite bank, a rank growth of gigantic bulrushes hid the
ground beyond, except where it rose in hillocks, and showed its surface
of desert sand spotted here and there by mean patches of health. A
repellent river in itself, a repellent river in its surroundings, a
repellent river even in its name. It was called The Loke. Neither popular
tradition nor antiquarian research could explain what the name meant, or
could tell when the name had been given. "We call it The Loke; they do
say no fish can live in it; and it dirties the clean salt water when it
runs into the sea." Such was the character of the river in the estimation
of the people who knew it best. But I was pleased to see The Loke again.
The ugly river, like the woodland glade, looked at me with the face of an
old friend.

On my right hand side rose the venerable timbers of the water-mill.

The wheel was motionless, at that time of night; and the whole structure
looked--as remembered objects will look, when we see them again after a
long interval--smaller than I had supposed it to be. Otherwise, I could
discover no change in the mill. But the wooden cottage attached to it had
felt the devastating march of time. A portion of the decrepit building
still stood revealed in its wretched old age; propped, partly by beams
which reached from the thatched roof to the ground, and partly by the
wall of a new cottage attached, presenting in yellow brick-work a hideous
modern contrast to all that was left of its ancient neighbor.

Had the miller whom I remembered, died; and were these changes the work
of his successor? I thought of asking the question, and tried the door:
it was fastened. The windows were all dark excepting one, which I
discovered in the upper storey, at the farther side of the new building.
Here, there was a dim light burning. It was impossible to disturb a
person, who, for all I knew to the contrary, might be going to bed. I
turned back to The Loke, proposing to extend my walk, by a mile or a
little more, to a village that I remembered on the bank of the river.

I had not advanced far, when the stillness around me was disturbed by an
intermittent sound of splashing in the water. Pausing to listen, I heard
next the working of oars in their rowlocks. After another interval a boat
appeared, turning a projection in the bank, and rowed by a woman pulling
steadily against the stream.

As the boat approached me in the moonlight, this person corrected my
first impression, and revealed herself as a young girl. So far as I could
perceive she was a stranger to me. Who could the girl be, alone on the
river at that time of night? Idly curious I followed the boat, instead of
pursuing my way to the village, to see whether she would stop at the
mill, or pass it.

She stopped at the mill, secured the boat, and stepped on shore.

Taking a key from her pocket, she was about to open the door of the
cottage, when I advanced and spoke to her. As far from recognizing her as
ever, I found myself nevertheless thinking of an odd outspoken child,
living at the mill in past years, who had been one of my poor mother's
favorites at our village school. I ran the risk of offending her, by
bluntly expressing the thought which was then in my mind.

"Is it possible that you are Cristel Toller?" I said.

The question seemed to amuse her. "Why shouldn't I be Cristel Toller?"
she asked.

"You were a little girl," I explained, "when I saw you last. You are so
altered now--and so improved--that I should never have guessed you might
be the daughter of Giles Toller of the mill, if I had not seen you
opening the cottage door."

She acknowledged my compliment by a curtsey, which reminded me again of
the village school. "Thank you, young man," she said smartly; "I wonder
who you are?"

"Try if you can recollect me," I suggested.

"May I take a long look at you?"

"As long as you like."

She studied my face, with a mental effort to remember me, which gathered
her pretty eyebrows together quaintly in a frown.

"There's something in his eyes," she remarked, not speaking to me but to
herself, "which doesn't seem to be quite strange. But I don't know his
voice, and I don't know his beard." She considered a little, and
addressed herself directly to me once more. "Now I look at you again, you
seem to be a gentleman. Are you one?"

"I hope so."

"Then you're not making game of me?"

"My dear, I am only trying if you can remember Gerard Roylake."

While in charge of the boat, the miller's daughter had been rowing with
bared arms; beautiful dusky arms, at once delicate and strong. Thus far,
she had forgotten to cover them up. The moment mentioned my name, she
started back as if I had frightened her--pulled her sleeves down in a
hurry--and hid the objects of my admiration as an act of homage to
myself! Her verbal apologies followed.

"You used to be such a sweet-spoken pretty little boy," she said, "how
should I know you again, with a big voice and all that hair on your
face?" It seemed to strike her on a sudden that she had been too
familiar. "Oh, Lord," I heard her say to herself, "half the county
belongs to him!" She tried another apology, and hit this time on the
conventional form. "I beg your pardon, sir. Welcome back to your own
country, sir. I wish you good-night, sir."

She attempted to escape into the cottage; I followed her to the threshold
of the door. "Surely it's not time to go to bed yet," I ventured to say.

She was still on her good behavior to her landlord. "Not if you object to
it, sir," she answered.

This recognition of my authority was irresistible. Cristel had laid me
under an obligation to her good influence for which I felt sincerely
grateful--she had made me laugh, for the first time since my return to
England.

"We needn't say good-night just yet," I suggested; "I want to hear a
little more about you. Shall I come in?"

She stepped out of the doorway even more rapidly than she had stepped
into it. I might have been mistaken, but I thought Cristel seemed to be
actually alarmed by my proposal. We walked up and down the river-bank. On
every occasion when we approached the cottage, I detected her in stealing
a look at the ugly modern part of it. There could be no mistake this
time; I saw doubt, I saw anxiety in her face. What was going on at the
mill? I made some domestic inquiries, beginning with her father. Was the
miller alive and well?

"Oh yes, sir. Father gets thinner as he gets older--that's all."

"Did he send you out by yourself, at this late hour, in the boat?"

"They were waiting for a sack of flour down there," she replied, pointing
in the direction of the river-side village. "Father isn't as quick as he
used to be. He's often late over his work now."

Was there no one to give Giles Toller the help that he must need at his
age? "Do you and your father really live alone in this solitary place?" I
said.

A change of expression appeared in her bright brown eyes which roused my
curiosity. I also observed that she evaded a direct reply. "What makes
you doubt, sir, if father and I live alone?" she asked.

I pointed to the new cottage. "That ugly building," I answered, "seems to
give you more room than you want--unless there is somebody else living at
the mill."

I had no intention of trying to force the reply from her which she had
hitherto withheld; but she appeared to put that interpretation on what I
had said. "If you will have it," she burst out, "there is somebody else
living with us."

"A man who helps your father?"

"No. A man who pays my father's rent."

I was quite unprepared for such a reply as this: Cristel had surprised
me. To begin with, her father was "well-connected," as we say in England.
His younger brother had made a fortune in commerce, and had vainly
offered him the means of retiring from the mill with a sufficient income.
Then again, Giles Toller was known to have saved money. His domestic
expenses made no heavy demand on his purse; his German wife (whose
Christian name was now borne by his daughter) had died long since; his
sons were no burden on him; they had never lived at the mill in my
remembrance. With all these reasons against his taking a stranger into
his house, he had nevertheless, if my interpretation of Cristel's answer
was the right one, let his spare rooms to a lodger. "Mr. Toller can't
possibly be in want of money," I said.

"The more money father has, the more he wants. That's the reason," she
added bitterly, "why he asked for plenty of room when the cottage was
built, and why we have got a lodger."

"Is the lodger a gentleman?"

"I don't know. Is a man a gentleman, if he keeps a servant? Oh, don't
trouble to think about it, sir! It isn't worth thinking about."

This was plain speaking at last. "You don't seem to like the lodger," I
said.

"I hate him!"

"Why?"

She turned on me with a look of angry amazement--not undeserved, I must
own, on my part--which showed her dark beauty in the perfection of its
luster and its power. To my eyes she was at the moment irresistibly
charming. I daresay I was blind to the defects in her face. My good
German tutor used to lament that there was too much of my boyhood still
left in me. Honestly admiring her, I let my favorable opinion express
itself a little too plainly. "What a splendid creature you are!" I burst
out. Cristel did her duty to herself and to me; she passed over my little
explosion of nonsense without taking the smallest notice of it.

"Master Gerard," she began--and checked herself. "Please to excuse me,
sir; you have set my head running on old times. What I want to say is:
you were not so inquisitive when you were a young gentleman in short
jackets. Please behave as you used to behave then, and don't say anything
more about our lodger. I hate him because I hate him. There!"

Ignorant as I was of the natures of women, I understood her at last.
Cristel's opinion of the lodger was evidently the exact opposite of the
lodger's opinion of Cristel. When I add that this discovery did decidedly
operate as a relief to my mind, the impression produced on me by the
miller's daughter is stated without exaggeration and without reserve.

"Good-night," she repeated, "for the last time." I held out my hand. "Is
it quite right, sir," she modestly objected, "for such as me to shake
hands with such as you?"

She did it nevertheless; and dropping my hand, cast a farewell look at
the mysterious object of her interest--the new cottage. Her variable
humor changed on the instant. Apparently in a state of unendurable
irritation, she stamped on the ground. "Just what I didn't want to
happen!" she said to herself.



CHAPTER III

HE SHOWS HIMSELF

I too, looked at the cottage, and made a discovery that surprised me at
one of the upper windows.

If I could be sure that the moon had not deceived me, the most beautiful
face that I had ever seen was looking down on us--and it was the face of
a man! By the uncertain light I could discern the perfection of form in
the features, and the expression of power which made it impossible to
mistake the stranger for a woman, although his hair grew long and he was
without either moustache or beard. He was watching us intently; he
neither moved nor spoke when we looked up at him.

"Evidently the lodger," I whispered to Cristel. "What a handsome man!"

She tossed her head contemptuously: my expression of admiration seemed to
have irritated her.

"I didn't want him to see you!" she said. "The lodger persecutes me with
his attentions; he's impudent enough to be jealous of me."

She spoke without even attempting to lower her voice. I endeavored to
warn her. "He's at the window still," I said, in tones discreetly
lowered; "he can hear everything you are saying."

"Not one word of it, Mr. Gerard."

"What do you mean?"

"The man is deaf. Don't look at him again. Don't speak to me again. Go
home--pray go home!"

Without further explanation, she abruptly entered the cottage, and shut
the door.

As I turned into the path which led through the wood I heard a voice
behind me. It said: "Stop, sir." I stopped directly, standing in the
shadow cast by the outermost line of trees, which I had that moment
reached. In the moonlight that I had left behind me, I saw again the man
whom I had discovered at the window. His figure, tall and slim; his
movements, graceful and easy, were in harmony with his beautiful face. He
lifted his long finely-shaped hands, and clasped them with a frantic
gesture of entreaty.

"For God's sake," he said, "don't be offended with me!"

His voice startled me even more than his words; I had never heard
anything like it before. Low, dull, and muffled, it neither rose nor
fell; it spoke slowly and deliberately, without laying the slightest
emphasis on any one of the words that it uttered. In the astonishment of
the moment, I forgot what Cristel had told me. I answered him as I should
have answered any other unknown person who had spoken to me.

"What do you want?"

His hands dropped; his head sunk on his breast. "You are speaking, sir,
to a miserable creature who can't hear you. I am deaf."

I stepped nearer to him, intending to raise my voice in pity for his
infirmity. He shuddered, and signed to me to keep back.

"Don't come close to my ear; don't shout." As he spoke, strong excitement
flashed at me in his eyes, without producing the slightest change in his
voice. "I don't deny," he resumed, "that I can hear sometimes when people
take that way with me. They hurt when they do it. Their voices go through
my nerves as a knife might go through my flesh. I live at the mill, sir;
I have a great favour to ask. Will you come and speak to me in my
room--for five minutes only?"

I hesitated. Any other man in my place, would, I think, have done the
same; receiving such an invitation as this from a stranger, whose
pitiable infirmity seemed to place him beyond the pale of social
intercourse.

He must have guessed what was passing in my mind; he tried me again in
words which might have proved persuasive, had they been uttered in the
customary variety of tone.

"I can't help being a stranger to you; I can't help being deaf. You're a
young man. You look more merciful and more patient than young men in
general. Won't you hear what I have to say? Won't you tell me what I want
to know?"

How were we to communicate? Did he by any chance suppose that I had
learnt the finger alphabet? I touched my fingers and shook my head, as a
means of dissipating his delusion, if it existed.

He instantly understood me.

"Even if you knew the finger alphabet," he said, "it would be of no use.
I have been too miserable to learn it--my deafness only came on me a
little more than a year since. Pardon me if I am obliged to give you
trouble--I ask persons who pity me to write their answers when I speak to
them. Come to my room, and you will find what you want--a candle to write
by."

Was his will, as compared with mine, the stronger will of the two? And
was it helped (insensibly to myself) by his advantages of personal
appearance? I can only confess that his apology presented a picture of
misery to my mind, which shook my resolution to refuse him. His ready
penetration discovered this change in his favour: he at once took
advantage of it. "Five minutes of your time is all I ask for," he said.
"Won't you indulge a man who sees his fellow-creatures all talking
happily round him, and feels dead and buried among them?"

The very exaggeration of his language had its effect on my mind. It
revealed to me the horrible isolation among humanity of the deaf, as I
had never understood it yet. Discretion is, I am sorry to say, not one of
the strong points in my character. I committed one more among the many
foolish actions of my life; I signed to the stranger to lead the way back
to the mill.



CHAPTER IV

HE EXPLAINS HIMSELF

Giles Toller's miserly nature had offered to his lodger shelter from wind
and rain, and the furniture absolutely necessary to make a bedroom
habitable--and nothing more. There was no carpet on the floor, no paper
on the walls, no ceiling to hide the rafters of the roof. The chair that
I sat on was the one chair in the room; the man whose guest I had rashly
consented to be found a seat on his bed. Upon his table I saw pens and
pencils, paper and ink, and a battered brass candlestick with a common
tallow candle in it. His changes of clothing were flung on the bed; his
money was left on the unpainted wooden chimney-piece; his wretched little
morsel of looking-glass (propped up near the money) had been turned with
its face to the wall. He perceived that the odd position of this last
object had attracted my notice.

"Vanity and I have parted company," he explained; "I shrink from myself
when I look at myself now. The ugliest man living--if he has got his
hearing--is a more agreeable man in society than I am. Does this wretched
place disgust you?"

He pushed a pencil and some sheets of writing-paper across the table to
me. I wrote my reply: "The place makes me sorry for you."

He shook his head. "Your sympathy is thrown away on me. A man who has
lost his social relations with his fellow-creatures doesn't care how he
lodges or where he lives. When he has found solitude, he has found all he
wants for the rest of his days. Shall we introduce ourselves? It won't be
easy for me to set the example."

I used the pencil again: "Why not?"

"Because you will expect me to give you my name. I can't do it. I have
ceased to bear my family name; and, being out of society, what need have
I for an assumed name? As for my Christian name, it's so detestably ugly
that I hate the sight and sound of it. Here, they know me as The Lodger.
Will you have that? or will you have an appropriate nick-name? I come of
a mixed breed; and I'm likely, after what has happened to me, to turn out
a worthless fellow. Call me The Cur. Oh, you needn't start! that's as
accurate a description of me as any other. What's _your_ name?"

I wrote it for him. His face darkened when he found out who I was.

"Young, personally attractive, and a great landowner," he said. "I saw you
just now talking familiarly with Cristel Toller. I didn't like that at
the time; I like it less than ever now."

My pencil asked him, without ceremony, what he meant.

He was ready with his reply. "I mean this: you owe something to the good
luck which has placed you where you are. Keep your familiarity for ladies
in your own rank of life."

This (to a young man like me) was unendurable insolence. I had hitherto
refrained from taking him at his own bitter word in the matter of
nick-name. In the irritation of the moment, I now first resolved to adopt
his suggestion seriously. The next slip of paper that I handed to him
administered the smartest rebuff that my dull brains could discover on
the spur of the moment: "The Cur is requested to keep his advice till he
is asked for it."

For the first time, something like a smile showed itself faintly on his
lips--and represented the only effect which my severity had produced. He
still followed his own train of thought, as resolutely and as
impertinently as ever.

"I haven't seen you talking to Cristel before to-night. Have you been
meeting her in secret?"

In justice to the girl, I felt that I ought to set him right, so far.
Taking up the pencil again, I told this strange man that I had just
returned to England, after an absence of many years in foreign
countries--that I had known Cristel when we were both children--and that
I had met her purely by accident, when he had detected us talking outside
the cottage. Seeing me pause, after advancing to that point in the
writing of my reply, he held out his hand impatiently for the paper. I
signed him to wait, and added a last sentence: "Understand this; I will
answer no more questions--I have done with the subject."

He read what I had written with the closest attention. But his inveterate
suspicion of me was not set at rest, even yet.

"Are you likely to come this way again?" he asked.

I pointed to the final lines of my writing, and got up to go.

This assertion of my will against his roused him. He stopped me at the
door--not by a motion of his hand but by the mastery of his look. The dim
candlelight afforded me no help in determining the color of his eyes.
Dark, large, and finely set in his head, there was a sinister passion in
them, at that moment, which held me in spite of myself. Still as
monotonous as ever, his voice in some degree expressed the frenzy that
was in him, by suddenly rising in its pitch when he spoke to me next.

"Mr. Roylake, I love her. Mr. Roylake, I am determined to marry her. Any
man who comes between me and that cruel girl--ah, she's as hard as one of
her father's millstones; it's the misery of my life, it's the joy of my
life, to love her--I tell you, young sir, any man who comes between
Cristel and me does it at his peril. Remember that."

I had no wish to give offence--but his threatening me in this manner was
so absurd that I gave way to the impression of the moment, and laughed.
He stepped up to me, with such an expression of demoniacal rage and
hatred in his face that he became absolutely ugly in an instant.

"I amuse you, do I?" he said. "You don't know the man you're trifling
with. You had better know me. You _shall_ know me." He turned away, and
walked up and down the wretched little room, deep in thought. "I don't
want this matter between us to end badly," he said, interrupting his
meditations--then returning to them again--and then once more addressing
me. "You're young, you're thoughtless; but you don't look like a bad
fellow. I wonder whether I can trust you? Not one man in a thousand would
do it. Never mind. I'm the one man in ten thousand who does it. Mr.
Gerard Roylake, I'm going to trust you."

With this incoherent expression of a resolution unknown to me, he
unlocked a shabby trunk hidden in a corner, and took from it a small
portfolio.

"Men of your age," he resumed, "seldom look below the surface. Learn that
valuable habit, sir--and begin by looking below the surface of Me." He
forced the portfolio into my hand. Once more, his beautiful eyes held me
with their irresistible influence; they looked at me with an expression
of sad and solemn warning. "Discover for yourself," he said, "what devils
my deafness has set loose in me; and let no eyes but yours see that
horrid sight. You will find me here tomorrow, and you will decide by that
time whether you make an enemy of me or not."

He threw open the door, and bowed as graciously as if he had been a
sovereign dismissing a subject.

Was he mad?

I hesitated to adopt that conclusion. There is no denying it, the deaf
man had found his own strange and tortuous way to my interest, in spite
of myself. I might even have been in some danger of allowing him to make
a friend of me, if I had not been restrained by the fears for Cristel
which his language and his manner amply justified, to my mind. Although I
was far from foreseeing the catastrophe that really did happen, I felt
that I had returned to my own country at a critical time in the life of
the miller's daughter. My friendly interference might be of serious
importance to Cristel's peace of mind--perhaps even to her personal
safety as well.

Eager to discover what the contents of the portfolio might tell me, I
hurried back to Trimley Deen. My stepmother had not yet returned from the
dinner-party. As one of the results of my ten years' banishment from
home, I was obliged to ask the servant to show me the way to my own room,
in my own house! The windows looked out on a view of Fordwitch Wood. As I
opened the leaves which were to reveal to me the secret soul of the man
whom I had so strangely met, the fading moonlight vanished, and the
distant trees were lost in the gloom of a starless night.



CHAPTER V

HE BETRAYS HIMSELF

The confession was entitled, "Memoirs of a Miserable Man." It began
abruptly in these words:


I

"I acknowledge, at the outset, that misfortune has had an effect on me
which frail humanity is for the most part anxious to conceal. Under the
influence of suffering, I have become of enormous importance to myself.
In this frame of mind, I naturally enjoy painting my own portrait in
words. Let me add that they must be written words because it is a painful
effort to me (since I lost my hearing) to speak to anyone continuously,
for any length of time.

"I have also to confess that my brains are not so completely under my own
command as I could wish.

"For instance, I possess considerable skill (for an amateur) as a painter
in water colors. But I can only produce a work of art, when irresistible
impulse urges me to express my thoughts in form and color. The same
obstacle to regular exertion stands in my way, if I am using my pen. I
can only write when the fit takes me--sometimes at night when I ought to
be asleep; sometimes at meals when I ought to be handling my knife and
fork; sometimes out of doors when I meet with inquisitive strangers who
stare at me. As for paper, the first stray morsel of anything that I can
write upon will do, provided I snatch it up in time to catch my ideas as
they fly.

"My method being now explained, I proceed to the deliberate act of
self-betrayal which I contemplate in producing this picture of myself."


II

"I divide my life into two Epochs--respectively entitled: Before my
Deafness, and After my Deafness. Or, suppose I define the melancholy
change in my fortunes more sharply still, by contrasting with each other
my days of prosperity and my days of disaster? Of these alternatives, I
hardly know which to choose. It doesn't matter; the one thing needful is
to go on.

"In any case, then, I have to record that I passed a happy
childhood--thanks to my good mother. Her generous nature had known
adversity, and had not been deteriorated by undeserved trials. Born of
slave-parents, she had not reached her eighteenth year, when she was sold
by auction in the Southern States of America. The person who bought her
(she never would tell me who he was) freed her by a codicil, added to his
will on his deathbed. My father met with her, a few years afterwards, in
American society--fell (as I have heard) madly in love with her--and
married her in defiance of the wishes of his family. He was quite right:
no better wife and mother ever lived. The one vestige of good feeling
that I still possess, lives in my empty heart when I dwell at times on
the memory of my mother.

"My good fortune followed me when I was sent to school.

"Our head master was more nearly a perfect human being than any other man
that I have ever met with. Even the worst-tempered boys among us ended in
loving him. Under his encouragement, and especially to please him, I won
every prize that industry, intelligence, and good conduct could obtain;
and I rose, at an unusually early age, to be the head boy in the first
class. When I was old enough to be removed to the University, and when
the dreadful day of parting arrived, I fainted under the agony of leaving
the teacher--no! the dear friend--whom I devotedly loved. There must
surely have been some good in me at that time. What has become of it now?

"The years followed each other--and I was Fortune's spoilt child still.

"Under adverse circumstances, my sociable disposition, my delight in the
society of young people of my own age, might have exposed me to serious
dangers in my new sphere of action. Happily for me, my father consulted a
wise friend, before he sent me to Cambridge. I was entered at one of the
smaller colleges; and I fell, at starting, among the right set of men.
Good examples were all round me. We formed a little club of steady
students; our pleasures were innocent; we were too proud and too poor to
get into debt. I look back on my career at Cambridge, as I look back on
my career at school, and wonder what has become of my better self."


III

"During my last year at Cambridge, my father died.

"The profession which he had intended that I should follow was the Bar. I
believed myself to be quite unfit for the sort of training imperatively
required by the Law; and my mother agreed with me. When I left the
University, my own choice of a profession pointed to the medical art, and
to that particular branch of it called surgery. After three years of
unremitting study at one of the great London hospitals, I started in
practice for myself. Once more, my persistent luck was faithful to me at
the outset of my new career.

"The winter of that year was remarkable for alternate extremes of frost
and thaw. Accidents to passengers in the streets were numerous; and one
of them happened close to my own door. A gentleman slipped on the icy
pavement, and broke his leg. On sending news of the accident to his
house, I found that my chance-patient was a nobleman.

"My lord was so well satisfied with my services that he refused to be
attended by any of my elders and betters in the profession. Little did I
think at the time, that I had received the last of the favours which
Fortune was to bestow on me. I enjoyed the confidence and goodwill of a
man possessing boundless social influence; and I was received most kindly
by the ladies of his family. In one word, at the time when my
professional prospects justified the brightest hopes that I could form,
sudden death deprived me of the dearest and truest of all friends--I
suffered the one dreadful loss which it is impossible to replace, the
loss of my mother. We had parted at night when she was, to all
appearance, in the enjoyment of her customary health. The next morning,
she was found dead in her bed."


IV

"Keen observers, who read these lines, will remark that I have said
nothing about the male members of my family, and that I have even passed
over my father with the briefest possible allusion to his death.

"This curious reticence on my part, is simply attributable to pure
ignorance. Until affliction lay heavy on me, my father, my uncle, and my
grandfather were hardly better known to me, in their true characters,
than if they had been strangers passing in the street. How I contrived to
become more intimately acquainted with my ancestors, I am now to reveal.

"In the absence of any instructions to guide me, after my mother's death,
I was left to use my own discretion in examining the papers which she had
left behind her. Reading her letters carefully, before I decided what to
keep and what to destroy, I discovered a packet, protected by an unbroken
seal, and bearing an inscription, addressed abruptly to my mother in
these words:

'For fear of accidents, my dear, we will mention no names in this place.
The sight of my handwriting will remind you of my devotion to your
interests in the past, and will satisfy you that I am to be trusted in
the service that I now offer to my good sister-friend. In the fewest
words, let me tell you that I have heard of the circumstances under which
your marriage has taken place. Your origin has unfortunately become known
to the members of your husband's family; their pride has been deeply
wounded; and the women especially regard you with feelings of malignant
hatred. I have good reason for fearing that they may try to excuse their
inhuman way of speaking of you, by making public the calamity of your
slave-birth. What deplorable influence might be exercised on your
husband's mind, by such an exposure as this, I will not stop to inquire.
It will be more to the purpose to say that I am able to offer you a sure
means of protecting yourself--through information which I have
unexpectedly obtained, and the source of which I am obliged to keep
secret. If you are ever threatened by your enemies, open the packet which
I have now sealed up, and you will command the silence of the bitterest
man or woman who longs to injure you. I may add that absolute proof
accompanies every assertion which my packet contains. Keep it carefully,
as long as you live--and God grant you may never have occasion to break
the seal.'

"Such was the inscription; copied exactly, word for word.

"I cannot even guess who my mother's devoted friend may have been.
Neither can I doubt that she would have destroyed the packet, but for the
circumstance of her sudden death.

"After hesitating a little--I hardly know why--I summoned my resolution,
and broke the seal. Of the horror with which I read the contents of the
packet I shall say nothing. Who ever yet sympathized with the sorrows and
sufferings of strangers? Let me merely announce that I knew my ancestors
at last, and that I am now able to present them in their true characters,
as follows:


V

"My grandfather was tried on a charge of committing willful murder--was
found guilty on the clearest evidence--and died on the scaffold by the
hangman's hands.

"His two sons abandoned the family name, and left the family residence.
They were, nevertheless, not unworthy representatives of their atrocious
father, as will presently appear.

"My uncle (a captain in the Army) was discovered at the hazard table,
playing with loaded dice. Before this abject scoundrel could be turned
out of his regiment, he was killed in a duel by one of his brother
officers whom he had cheated.

"My father, when he was little more than a lad, deserted a poor girl who
had trusted him under a promise of marriage. Friendless and hopeless, she
drowned herself and her child. His was the most infamous in the list of
the family crimes--and he escaped, without answering to a court of law or
a court of honor for what he had done.

"Some of us come of one breed, and some of another. There is the breed
from which I drew the breath of life. What do you think of me now?"


VI

"I looked back over the past years of my existence, from the time of my
earliest recollections to the miserable day when I opened the sealed
packet.

"What wholesome influences had preserved me, so far, from moral
contamination by the vile blood that ran in my veins? There were two
answers to that question which, in some degree, quieted my mind. In the
first place, resembling my good mother physically, I might hope to have
resembled her morally. In the second place, the happy accidents of my
career had preserved me from temptation, at more than one critical period
of my life. On the other hand, in the ordinary course of nature, not one
half of that life had yet elapsed. What trials might the future have in
store for me? and what protection against them would the better part of
my nature be powerful enough to afford?

"While I was still troubled by these doubts, the measure of my disasters
was filled by an attack of illness which threatened me with death. My
medical advisers succeeded in saving my life--and left me to pay the
penalty of their triumph by the loss of one of my senses.

"At an early period of my convalescence, I noticed one day, with languid
surprise, that the voices of the doctors, when they asked me how I had
slept and if I felt better, sounded singularly dull and distant. A few
hours later, I observed that they stooped close over me when they had
something important to say. On the same evening, my day nurse and my
night nurse happened to be in the room together. To my surprise, they had
become so wonderfully quiet in their movements, that they opened the door
or stirred the fire, without making the slightest noise. I intended to
ask them what it meant; I had even begun to put the question, when I was
startled by another discovery relating this time to myself. I was certain
that I had spoken--and yet, I had not heard myself speak! As well as my
weakness would let me, I called to the nurses in my loudest tones. "Has
anything happened to my voice?" I asked. The two women consulted
together, looking at me with pity in their eyes. One of them took the
responsibility on herself. She put her lips close to my ear; the horrid
words struck me with a sense of physical pain: 'Your illness has left you
in a sad state, sir. You are deaf.'"


VII

"As soon as I was able to leave my bed, well-meaning people, in and out
of the medical profession, combined to torment me with the best
intentions.

"One famous aural surgeon after another came to me, and quoted his
experience of cases, in which the disease that had struck me down had
affected the sense of hearing in other unhappy persons: they had
submitted to surgical treatment, generally with cheering results. I
submitted in my turn. All that skill could do for me was done, and
without effect. My deafness steadily increased; my case was pronounced to
be hopeless; the great authorities retired.

"Judicious friends, who had been waiting for their opportunity, undertook
the moral management of me next.

"I was advised to cultivate cheerfulness, to go into society, to
encourage kind people who tried to make me hear what was going on, to be
on my guard against morbid depression, to check myself when the sense of
my own horrible isolation drove me away to my room, and, last but by no
means least, to beware of letting my vanity disincline me to use an
ear-trumpet.

"I did my best, honestly did my best, to profit by the suggestions that
were offered to me--not because I believed in the wisdom of my friends,
but because I dreaded the effect of self-imposed solitude on my nature.
Since the fatal day when I had opened the sealed packet, I was on my
guard against the inherited evil lying dormant, for all I knew to the
contrary, in my father's son. Impelled by that horrid dread, I suffered
my daily martyrdom with a courage that astonishes me when I think of it
now.

"What the self-inflicted torture of the deaf is, none but the deaf can
understand.

"When benevolent persons did their best to communicate to me what was
clever or amusing, while conversation was going on in my presence, I was
secretly angry with them for making my infirmity conspicuous, and
directing the general attention to me. When other friends saw in my face
that I was not grateful to them, and gave up the attempt to help me, I
suspected them of talking of me contemptuously, and amusing themselves by
making my misfortune the subject of coarse jokes.

"Even when I deserved encouragement by honestly trying to atone for my
bad behavior, I committed mistakes (arising out of my helpless position)
which prejudiced people against me. Sometimes, I asked questions which
appeared to be so trivial, to ladies and gentlemen happy in the
possession of a sense of hearing, that they evidently thought me imbecile
as well as deaf. Sometimes, seeing the company enjoying an interesting
story or a good joke, I ignorantly appealed to the most incompetent
person present to tell me what had been said--with this result, that he
lost the thread of the story or missed the point of the joke, and blamed
my unlucky interference as the cause of it.

"These mortifications, and many more, I suffered patiently until, little
by little, my last reserves of endurance felt the cruel strain on them,
and failed me. My friends detected a change in my manner which alarmed
them. They took me away from London, to try the renovating purity of
country air.

"So far as any curative influence over the state of my mind was
concerned, the experiment proved to be a failure.

"I had secretly arrived at the conclusion that my deafness was
increasing, and that my friends knew it and were concealing it from me.
Determined to put my suspicions to the test, I took long solitary walks
in the neighborhood of my country home, and tried to hear the new sounds
about me. I was deaf to everything--with the one exception of the music
of the birds.

"How long did I hear the little cheering songsters who comforted me?

"I am unable to measure the interval that elapsed: my memory fails me. I
only know that the time came, when I could see the skylark in the
heavens, but could no longer hear its joyous notes. In a few weeks more
the nightingale, and even the loud thrush, became silent birds to my
doomed ears. My last effort to resist my own deafness was made at my
bedroom window. For some time I still heard, faintly and more faintly,
the shrill twittering just above me, under the eaves of the house. When
this last poor enjoyment came to an end--when I listened eagerly,
desperately, and heard nothing (think of it, _nothing!_)--I gave up the
struggle. Persuasions, arguments, entreaties were entirely without effect
on me. Reckless what came of it, I retired to the one fit place for
me--to the solitude in which I have buried myself ever since."


VIII

"With some difficulty, I discovered the lonely habitation of which was in
search.

"No language can describe the heavenly composure of mind that came to me,
when I first found myself alone; living the death-in-life of deafness,
apart from creatures--no longer my fellow-creatures--who could hear:
apart also from those privileged victims of hysterical impulse, who wrote
me love-letters, and offered to console the 'poor beautiful deaf man' by
marrying him. Through the distorting medium of such sufferings as I have
described, women and men--even young women--were repellent to me alike.
Ungratefully impatient of the admiration excited by my personal
advantages, savagely irritated by tender looks and flattering
compliments, I only consented take lodgings, on condition that there
should be no young women living under the same roof with me. If this
confession of morbid feeling looks like vanity, I can only say that
appearances lie. I write in sober sadness; determined to present my
character, with photographic accuracy, as a true likeness.

"What were my habits in solitude? How did I get through the weary and
wakeful hours of the day?

"Living by myself, I became (as I have already acknowledged) important to
myself--and, as a necessary consequence, I enjoyed registering my own
daily doings. Let passages copied from my journal reveal how I got
through the day."


IX

EXTRACTS FROM A DEAF MAN'S DIARY

"Monday.--Six weeks today since I first occupied my present retreat.

"My landlord and landlady are two hideous old people. They look as if
they disliked me, on the rare occasions when we meet. So much the better;
they don't remind me of my deafness by trying to talk, and they keep as
much as possible out of my way. This morning, after breakfast, I altered
the arrangement of my books--and then I made my fourth attempt, in the
last ten days, to read some of my favorite authors. No: my taste has
apparently changed since the time when I could hear. I closed one volume
after another; caring nothing for what used to be deeply interesting to
me.

"Reckless and savage--with a burning head and a cold heart--I went out to
look about me.

"After two hours of walking and thinking, I found that I had wandered to
our county town. The rain began to fall heavily just as I happened to be
passing a bookseller's shop. After some hesitation--for I hate exposing
my deafness to strangers--I asked leave to take shelter, and looked at
the books.

"Among them was a collection of celebrated Trials. I thought of my
grandfather; consulted the index; and, finding his name there, bought the
work. The shopman (as I could guess from his actions and looks) proposed
sending the parcel to me. I insisted on taking it away. The sky had
cleared; and I was eager to read the details of my grandfather's crime.


"Tuesday--Sat up late last night, reading my new book. My favorite poets,
novelists, and historians have failed to interest me. I devoured the
Trials with breathless delight; beginning of course with the murder in
which I felt a family interest. Prepared to find my grandfather a
ruffian, I confess I was surprised by the discovery that he was also a
fool. The officers of justice had no merit in tracing the crime to him;
his own stupidity delivered him into their hands. I read the evidence
twice over, and put myself in his position, and saw the means plainly by
which he might have set discovery at defiance.

"In the Preface to the Trials I found an allusion, in terms of praise, to
a work of the same kind, published in the French language. I wrote to
London at once, and ordered the book."


"Wednesday.--Is there some mysterious influence, in the silent solitude
of my life, that is hardening my nature? Is there something unnatural in
the existence of a man who never hears a sound? Is there a moral sense
that suffers when a bodily sense is lost?

"These questions have been suggested to me by an incident that happened
this morning.

"Looking out of window, I saw a brutal carter, on the road before the
house, beating an over-loaded horse. A year since I should have
interfered to protect the horse, without a moment's hesitation. If the
wretch had been insolent, I should have seized his whip, and applied the
heavy handle of it to his own shoulders. In past days, I have been more
than once fined by a magistrate (privately in sympathy with my offence)
for assaults committed by me in the interests of helpless animals. What
did I feel now? Nothing but a selfish sense of uneasiness, at having been
accidentally witness of an act which disturbed my composure. I turned
away, regretting that I had gone to the window and looked out.

"This was not an agreeable train of thought to follow. What could I do? I
was answered by the impulse which commands me to paint.

"I sharpened my pencils, and opened my box of colors, and determined to
produce a work of art. To my astonishment, the brutal figure of the
carter forced its way into my memory again and again. It (without in the
least knowing why) as if the one chance of getting rid of this curious
incubus, was to put the persistent image of the man on paper. It was done
mechanically, and yet done so well, that I was encouraged to add to the
picture. I put in next the poor beaten horse (another good likeness!);
and then I introduced a life-like portrait of myself, giving the man the
sound thrashing that he had deserved. Strange to say, this representation
of what I ought to have done, relieved my mind as if I had actually done
it. I looked at the pre-eminent figure of myself, and felt good, and
turned to my Trials, and read them over again, and liked them better than
ever."


"Thursday.--The bookseller has found a second-hand copy of the French
Trials, and has sent them to me (as he expresses it) 'on approval'.

"I more than approve--I admire; and I more than admire--I imitate. These
criminal stories are told with a dramatic power, which has impelled me to
try if I can rival the clever French narrative. I found a promising
subject by putting myself in my grandfather's place, and tracing the
means by which it had occurred to me that he might have escaped the
discovery of his crime.

"I cannot remember having read any novel with a tenth part of the
interest that absorbed me, in constructing my imaginary train of
circumstances. So completely did the reality of the narrative impress
itself on my mind, that I felt as if the murder that I was relating had
been a crime committed by myself. It was my own ingenuity that hid the
dead body, and removed the traces of blood--and my own self-control that
presented me as an innocent person, when the victim was missing, and I
was asked (among other respectable people) to say whether I thought he
was living or dead."


"A whole week has passed--and has been occupied by my new literary
pursuit.

"My inexhaustible imagination invents plots and conspiracies of which I
am the happy hero. I set traps which invariably catch my enemies. I place
myself in positions which are entirely new to me. Yesterday, for
instance, I invented a method of spiriting away a young person, whose
disappearance was of considerable importance under the circumstances, and
succeeded in completely bewildering her father, her friends, and the
police: not a trace of her could they find. If I ever have occasion to
do, in reality, what I only suppose myself to do in these exercises of
ingenuity, what a dangerous man I may yet prove to be!

"This morning, I rose, planning to amuse myself with a new narrative,
when the ideal world in which I am now living, became a world annihilated
by collision with the sordid interests of real life.

"In plainer words, I received a written message from my landlord which
has annoyed me--and not without good cause. This tiresome person finds
himself unexpectedly obliged to give up possession of his house. The
circumstances are not worth relating. The result is important--I am
compelled to find new lodgings. Where am I to go?

"I left it to chance. That is to say, I looked at the railway time-table,
and took a ticket for the first place, of which the name happened to
catch my eye. Arrived at my destination, I found myself in a dirty
manufacturing town, with an ugly river running through it.

"After a little reflection, I turned my back on the town, and followed
the course of the river, in search of shelter and solitude on one or the
other of its banks. An hour of walking brought me to an odd-looking
cottage, half old and half new, attached to a water-mill. A bill in one
of the windows announced that rooms were to be let; and a look round
revealed a thick wood on my left hand, and a wilderness of sand and heath
on my right. So far as appearances went, here was the very place for me.

"I knocked at the door, and was admitted by a little lean sly-looking old
man. He showed me the rooms--one for myself, and one for my servant.
Wretched as they were, the loneliness of the situation recommended them
to me. I made no objections; and I consented to pay the rent that was
asked. The one thing that remained to be done, in the interests of my
tranquillity, was to ascertain if any other persons lived the cottage
besides my new landlord. He wrote his answer to the question: 'Nobody but
my daughter.' With serious misgivings, I inquired if his daughter was
young. He wrote two fatal figures: '18'.

"Here was a discovery which disarranged all my plans, just as I had
formed them! The prospect of having a girl in the house, at the age
associated with my late disagreeable experience of the sensitive sex, was
more than my irritable temper could endure. I saw the old man going to
the window to take down the bill. Turning in a rage to stop him, I was
suddenly brought to a standstill by the appearance of a person who had
just entered the room.

"Was this the formidable obstacle to my tranquillity, which had prevented
me from taking the rooms that I had chosen? Yes! I knew the miller's
daughter intuitively. Delirium possessed me; my eyes devoured her; my
heart beat as if it would burst out of my bosom. The old man approached
me; he nodded, and grinned, and pointed to her. Did he claim his parental
interest in her? Did he mean that she belonged to him? No! she belonged
to me. She might be his daughter. She was My Fate.

"I don't know what it was in the girl that took me by storm. Nothing in
her look or her manner expressed the slightest interest in me. That
famous "beauty" of mine which had worked such ravages in the hearts of
other young women, seemed not even to attract her notice. When her father
put his hand to his ear, and told her (as I guessed) that I was deaf,
there was no pity in her splendid brown eyes; they expressed a momentary
curiosity, and nothing more. Possibly she had a hard heart? or perhaps
she took a dislike to me, at first sight? It made no difference to my
mind, either way. Was she the most beautiful creature I had ever seen?
Not even that excuse was to be made for me. I have met with women of her
dark complexion who were, beyond dispute, her superiors in beauty, and
have looked at them with indifference. Add to this, that I am one of the
men whom women offend if they are not perfectly well-dressed. The
miller's daughter was badly dressed; her magnificent figure was profaned
by the wretchedly-made gown that she wore. I forgave the profanation. In
spite of the protest of my own better taste, I resigned myself to her
gown. Is it possible adequately to describe such infatuation as this?
Quite possible! I have only to acknowledge that I took the rooms at the
cottage--and there is the state of my mind, exposed without mercy!

"How will it end?"



CHAPTER VI

THE RETURN OF THE PORTFOLIO

With that serious question the last of the leaves entrusted to me by the
Lodger at the Mill came to an end.

I betray no confidence in presenting this copy of his confession. Time
has passed since I first read it, and changes have occurred in the
interval, which leave me free to exercise my own discretion, and to let
the autobiography speak for itself.

If I am asked what impression of the writer those extraordinary pages
produced on me, I feel at a loss how to reply.

Not one impression, but many impressions, troubled and confused my mind.
Certain passages in the confession inclined me to believe that the writer
was mad. But I altered my opinion at the next leaf, and set him down as a
man with a bitter humor, disposed to make merry over his own bad
qualities. At one time, his tone in writing of his early life, and his
allusions to his mother, won my sympathy and respect. At another time,
the picture of himself in his later years, and the defiant manner in
which he presented it, almost made me regret that he had not died of the
illness which had struck him deaf. In this state of uncertainty I may
claim the merit of having arrived, so far as my own future conduct was
concerned, at one positive conclusion. As strangers he and I had first
met. As strangers I was determined we should remain.

Having made up my mind, so far, the next thing to do (with the clock on
the mantel-piece striking midnight) was to go to bed.

I slept badly. The events that had happened, since my arrival in England,
had excited me I suppose. Now and then, in the wakeful hours of the
night, I thought of Cristel with some anxiety. Taking the Loger's
exaggerated language for what it was really worth, the poor girl (as I
was still inclined to fear) might have serious reason to regret that he
had ever entered her father's cottage.

At the breakfast table, my stepmother and I met again.

Mrs. Roylake--in an exquisite morning dress; with her smile in perfect
order--informed me that she was dying with curiosity. She had heard, from
the servants, that I had not returned to the house until past ten o'clock
on the previous night; and she was absolutely bewildered by the
discovery. What could her dear Gerard have been doing, out in the dark by
himself, for all that time?

"For some part of the time," I answered, "I was catching moths in
Fordwitch Wood."

"What an extraordinary occupation for a young man! Well? And what did you
do after that?"

"I walked on through the wood, and renewed my old associations with the
river and the mill."

Mrs. Roylake's fascinating smile disappeared when I mentioned the mill.
She suddenly became a cold lady--I might even say a stiff lady.

"I can't congratulate you on the first visit you have paid in our
neighborhood," she said. "Of course that bold girl contrived to attract
your notice?"

I replied that I had met with the "bold girl" purely by accident, on her
side as well as on mine; and then I started a new topic. "Was it a
pleasant dinner-party last night?" I asked--as if the subject really
interested me. I had not been quite four and twenty hours in England yet,
and I was becoming a humbug already.

My stepmother was her charming self again the moment my question had
passed my lips. Society--provided it was not society at the mill--was
always attractive as a topic of conversation. "Your absence was the only
drawback," she answered. "I have asked the two ladies (my lord has an
engagement) to dine here to-day, without ceremony. They are most anxious
to meet you. My dear Gerard! you look surprised. Surely you know who the
ladies are?"

I was obliged to acknowledge my ignorance.

Mrs. Roylake was shocked. "At any rate," she resumed, "you have heard of
their father, Lord Uppercliff?"

I made another shameful confession. Either I had forgotten Lord
Uppercliff, during my long absence abroad, or I had never heard of him.

Mrs. Roylake was disgusted. "And this is a foreign education!" she
exclaimed. "Thank Heaven, you have returned to your own country! We will
drive out after luncheon, and pay a round of visits." When this prospect
was placed before me, I remembered having read in books of sensitive
persons receiving impressions which made their blood run cold; I now
found myself one of those persons, for the first time in my life. "In the
meanwhile," Mrs. Roylake continued, "I must tell you--excuse me for
laughing; it seems so very absurd that you should not know who Lord
Uppercliff's daughters are--I must tell you that Lady Rachel is the
eldest. She is married to the Honorable Captain Millbay, of the Navy, now
away in his ship. A person of extraordinary strength of mind (I don't
mean the Captain; I mean Lady Rachel); I admire her intellect, but her
political and social opinions I must always view with regret. Her younger
sister, Lady Lena--not married, Gerard; remember that!--is simply the
most charming girl in England. If you don't fall in love with her, you
will be the only young man in the county who has resisted Lady Lena. Poor
Sir George--she refused him last week; you really _must_ have heard of
Sir George; our member of parliament; conservative of course; quite
broken-hearted about Lady Lena; gone away to America to shoot bears. You
seem to be restless. What are you fidgeting about? Ah, I know! You want
to smoke after breakfast. Well, I won't be in your way. Go out on the
terrace; your poor father always took his cigar on the terrace. They say
smoking leads to meditation; I leave you to meditate on Lady Lena. Don't
forget--luncheon at one o'clock, and the carriage at two."

She smiled, and kissed her hand, and fluttered out of the room. Charming;
perfectly charming. And yet I was ungrateful enough to wish myself back
in Germany again.

I lit my cigar, but not on the terrace. Leaving the house, I took the way
once more that led to Fordwitch Wood. What would Mrs. Roylake have said,
if she had discovered that I was going back to the mill? There was no
other alternative. The portfolio was a trust confided to me; the sooner I
returned it to the writer of the confession--the sooner I told him
plainly the conclusion at which I had arrived--the more at ease my mind
would be.

The sluggish river looked muddier than ever, the new cottage looked
uglier than ever, exposed to the searching ordeal of sunlight. I knocked
at the door on the ancient side of the building.

Cristel's father--shall I confess I had hoped that it might be Cristel
herself?--let me in. In by-gone days, I dimly remembered him as old and
small and withered. Advancing years had wasted him away, in the interval,
until his white miller's clothes hung about him in empty folds. His
fleshless face would have looked like the face of a mummy, but for the
restless brightness of his little watchful black eyes. He stared at me in
momentary perplexity, and, suddenly recovering himself, asked me to walk
in.

"Are you the young master, sir? Ah, yes, yes; I thought so. My girl
Cristy said she saw the young master last night. Thank you kindly, sir;
I'm pretty well, considering how I've fallen away in my flesh. I have got
a fine appetite, but somehow or other, my meals don't show on me. You
will excuse my receiving you in the kitchen, sir; it's the best room we
have. Did Cristy tell you how badly we are off here for repairs? You
being our landlord, we look to you to help us. We are falling to pieces,
as it were, on this old side of the house. There's first drains----"

He proceeded to reckon up the repairs, counting with his fleshless thumb
on his skinny fingers, when he was interrupted by a curious succession of
sounds which began with whining, and ended with scratching at the cottage
door.

In a minute after, the door was opened from without. A brown dog, of the
companionable retriever breed, ran in and fawned upon old Toller. Cristel
followed (from the kitchen garden), with a basket of vegetables on her
arm. Unlike the river and the cottage, she gained by being revealed in
the brilliant sunlight. I now saw, in their full beauty, the luster of
her brown eyes, the warm rosiness of her dark complexion, the delightful
vivacity of expression which was the crowning charm of her face. She
paused confusedly in the doorway, and tried to resist me when I insisted
on relieving her of the basket.

"Mr. Gerard," she protested, "you are treating me as if I was a young
lady. What would they say at the great house, if they knew you had done
that?"

My answer would no doubt have assumed the form of a foolish compliment,
if her father had not spared her that infliction. He returned to the
all-important question, the question of repairs.

"You see, sir, it's no use speaking to the bailiff. Saving your presence,
he's a miser with his master's money. He says, 'All right,' and he does
nothing. There's first, as I told you just now, the truly dreadful state
of the drains----"

I tried to stop him by promising to speak to the bailiff myself. On
hearing this good news, Mr. Toller's gratitude became ungovernable: he
was more eager than ever, and more eloquent than ever, in returning to
the repairs.

"And then, sir, there's the oven. They do call bread the staff of life.
It's a burnt staff at one time, and a clammy staff at another, in our
domestic experience. Satisfy yourself, sir; do please cross the kitchen
and look with your own eyes at the state, the scandalous state, of the
oven."

His daughter interfered, and stopped him at the critical moment when he
was actually offering his arm to conduct me in state across the kitchen.
Cristel had just put her pretty brown hand over his mouth, and said, "Oh,
father, do pray be quiet!" when we were all three disturbed by another
interruption.

A second door communicating, as I concluded from its position, with the
new cottage, was suddenly opened. In the instant before the person behind
it appeared, the dog looked that way--started up, frightened--and took
refuge under the table. At the next moment, the deaf Lodger walked into
the room. It was he beyond all doubt who had frightened the dog,
forewarned by instinct of his appearance.

What I had read of his writing disposed me, now that I saw the man by
daylight, to find something devilish in the expression of his face. No!
strong as it was, my prejudice failed to make any discoveries that
presented him at a disadvantage. His personal attractions triumphed in
the clear searching light. I now perceived that his eyes were of that
deeply dark blue, which is commonly and falsely described as resembling
the color of the violet. To my thinking, they were so entirely beautiful
that they had no right to be in a man's face. I might have felt the same
objection to the pale delicacy of his complexion, to the soft profusion
of his reddish-brown hair, to his finely shaped sensitive lips, but for
two marked peculiarities in him which would have shown me to be
wrong--that is to say: the expression of power about his head, and the
signs of masculine resolution presented by his mouth and chin.

On entering the room, the first person, and the only person, who
attracted his attention was Cristel.

He bowed, smiled, possessed himself abruptly of her hand, and kissed it.
She tried to withdraw it from his grasp, and met with an obstinate
resistance. His gallantry addressed her in sweet words; and his voice
destroyed their charm by the dreary monotony of the tone in which he
spoke. "On this lovely day, Cristel, Nature pleads for me. Your heart
feels the sunshine and softens towards the poor deaf man who worships
you. Ah, my dear, it's useless to say No. My affliction is my happiness,
when you say cruel things to me. I live in my fool's paradise; I don't
hear you." He tried to draw her nearer to him. "Come, my angel; let me
kiss you."

She made a second attempt to release herself; and this time, she wrenched
her hand out of his grasp with a strength for which he was not prepared.

That fiercest anger which turns the face pale, was the anger that had
possession of Cristel as she took refuge with her father. "You asked me
to bear with that man," she said, "because he paid you a good rent. I
tell you this, father; my patience is coming to an end. Either he must
go, or I must go. Make up your mind to choose between your money and me."

Old Toller astonished me. He seemed to have caught the infection of his
daughter's anger. Placed between Cristel and his money, he really acted
as if he preferred Cristel. He hobbled up to his lodger, and shook his
infirm fists, and screamed at the highest pitch of his old cracked voice:
"Let her be, or I won't have you here no longer! You deaf adder, let her
be!"

The sensitive nerves of the deaf man shrank as those shrill tones pierced
them. "If you want to speak to me, write it!" he said, with rage and
suffering in every line of his face. He tore from his pocket his little
book, filled with blank leaves, and threw it at Toller's head. "Write,"
he repeated. "If you murder me with your screeching again, look out for
your skinny throat--I'll throttle you."

Cristel picked up the book. She was gratefully sensible of her father's
interference. "He shall know what you said to him," she promised the old
man. "I'll write it myself."

She took the pencil from its sheath in the leather binding of the book.
Controlling himself, the lover whom she hated advanced towards her with a
persuasive smile.

"Have you forgiven me?" he asked. "Have you been speaking kindly of me? I
think I see it in your face. There are some deaf people who can tell what
is said by looking at the speaker's lips. I am too stupid, or too
impatient, or too wicked to be able to do that. Write it for me, dear,
and make me happy for the day."

Cristel was not attending to him, she was speaking to me. "I hope, sir,
you don't think that father and I are to blame for what has happened this
morning," she said. He looked where she was looking--and discovered, for
the first time, that I was in the room.

He had alluded to his wickedness a moment since. When his face turned my
way, I thought it bore witness to his knowledge of his own character.

"Why didn't you come to my side of the house?" he said to me. "What am I
to understand, sir, by seeing you here?"

Cristel dropped his book on the table, and hurried to me in breathless
surprise. "He speaks as if he knew you!" she cried. "What does it mean?"

"Only that I met him last night," I explained, "after leaving you."

"Did you know him before that?"

"No. He was a perfect stranger to me."

He picked up his book from the table, and took his pencil out of
Cristel's hand, while we were speaking. "I want my answer," he said,
handing me the book and the pencil. I gave him his answer.

"You find me here, because I don't wish to return to your side of the
house."

"Is that the impression," he asked, "produced by what I allowed you to
read?"

I replied by a sign in the affirmative. He inquired next if I had brought
his portfolio with me. I put it at once into his hand.

In some way unknown to me, I had apparently roused his suspicions. He
opened the portfolio, and counted the loose leaves of writing in it
carefully. While he was absorbed in this occupation, old Toller's
eccentricity assumed a new form. His little restless black eyes followed
the movements of his lodger's fingers, as they turned over leaf after
leaf of the manuscript, with such eager curiosity and interest that I
looked at him in surprise. Finding that he had attracted my notice, he
showed no signs of embarrassment--he seized the opportunity of asking for
information.

"Did my gentleman trust you, sir, with all that writing?" he began.

"Yes."

"Did he want you to read it?"

"He did."

"What's it all about, sir?"

Confronted by this cool inquiry, I informed Mr. Toller that the demands
of curiosity had their limits, and that he had reached them. On this
ground, I declined to answer any more questions. Mr. Toller went on with
his questions immediately.

"Do you notice, sir, that he seems to set a deal of store by his
writings? Perhaps you can say what the value of them may be?"

I shook my head. "It won't do, Mr. Toller!"

He tried again--I declare it positively, he tried again. "You'll excuse
me, sir? I've never seen his portfolio before. Am I right if I think you
know where he keeps it?"

"Spare your breath, Mr. Toller. Once more, it won't do!"

Cristel joined us, amazed at his pertinacity. "Why are you so anxious,
father, to know about that portfolio?" she asked.

Her father seemed to have reasons of his own for following my example and
declining to answer questions. More polite, however, than I had been, he
left his resolution to be inferred. His daughter was answered by a few
general remarks, setting forth the advantage to the landlord of having a
lodger who had lost one of senses.

"You see there's something convenient, my dear, in the circumstance of
that nice-looking gentleman over there being deaf. We can talk about him
before his face, just as comfortably as if it was behind his back. Isn't
that so, Mr. Gerard? Don't you see it yourself, Cristy? For instance, I
say it without fear in his presence: 'tis the act of a fool to be
fumbling over writings, when there's nothing in them that's not well
known to himself already--unless indeed they are worth money, which I
don't doubt is no secret to _you,_ Mr. Gerard? Eh? I beg your pardon,
sir, did you speak? No? I beg your pardon again. Yes, yes, Cristy, I'm
noticing him; he's done with his writings. Suppose I offer to put them
away for him? You can see in his face he finds the tale of them correct.
He's coming this way. What's he going to do next?"

He was going to establish a claim on my gratitude, by relieving me of
Giles Toller.

"I have something to say to Mr. Roylake," he announced, with a haughty
look at his landlord. "Mind! I don't forget your screaming at me just
now, and I intend to know what you meant by it. That will do. Get out of
the way."

The old fellow received his dismissal with a low bow, and left the
kitchen with a look at the Lodger which revealed (unless I was entirely
mistaken) a sly sense of triumph. What did it mean?

The deaf man addressed me with a cold and distant manner. "We must
understand each other," he said. "Will you follow me to my side of the
cottage?" I shook my head. "Very well," he resumed; "we will have it out,
here. When I trusted you with my confession last night, I left you to
decide (after reading it) whether you would make an enemy of me or not.
You remember that?" I nodded my head. "Then I now ask you, Mr. Roylake:
Which are we--enemies or friends?"

I took the pencil, and wrote my reply:

"Neither enemies nor friends. We are strangers from this time forth."

Some internal struggle produced a change in his face--visible for one
moment, hidden from me in a moment more. "I think you will regret the
decision at which you have arrived." He said that, and saluted me with
his grandly gracious bow. As he turned away, he perceived Cristel at the
other end of the room, and eagerly joined her.

"The only happy moments I have are my moments passed in your presence,"
he said. "I shall trouble you no more for to-day. Give me a little
comfort to take back with me to my solitude. I didn't notice that there
were other persons present when I asked leave to kiss you. May I hope
that you forgive me?"

He held out his hand; it was not taken. He waited a little, in the vain
hope that she would relent: she turned away from him.

A spasm of pain distorted his handsome face. He opened the door that led
to his side of the cottage--paused--and looked back at Cristel. She took
no notice of him. As he moved again to the door and left us, the
hysterical passion in him forced its way outward--he burst into tears.

The dog sprang up from his refuge under the table, and shook himself
joyfully. Cristel breathed again freely, and joined me at my end of the
room. Shall I make another acknowledgment of weakness? I began to fear
that we might all of us (even including the dog!) have been a little hard
on the poor deaf wretch who had gone away in such bitter distress. I
communicated this view of the matter to Cristel. She failed to see it as
I did.

The dog laid his head on her lap, asking to be caressed. She patted him
while she answered me.

"I agree with this old friend, Mr. Gerard. We were both of us frightened,
on the very first day, when the person you are pitying came to lodge with
us. I have got to hate him, since that time--perhaps to despise him. But
the dog has never changed; he feels and knows there is something dreadful
in that man. One of these days, poor Ponto may turn out to be right.--May
I ask you something, sir?"

"Of course!"

"You won't think I am presuming on your kindness?"

"You ought to know me better than that, Cristel!"

"The truth is, sir, I have been a little startled by what I saw in our
lodger's face, when he asked if you were his enemy or his friend. I know
he is thought to be handsome--but, Mr. Gerard, those beautiful eyes of
his sometimes tell tales; and I have seen his pretty complexion change to
a color that turned him into an ugly man. Will you tell me what you wrote
when you answered him?"

I repeated what I had written, word for word. It failed to satisfy her.

"He is very vain," she said, "and you may have wounded his vanity by
treating him like a stranger, after he had given you his writings to
read, and invited you to his room. But I thought I saw something much
worse than mortification in his face. Shall I be taking a liberty, if I
ask how it was you got acquainted with him last night?"

She was evidently in earnest. I saw that I must answer her without
reserve; and I was a little afraid of being myself open to a suspicion of
vanity, if I mentioned the distrust which I had innocently excited in the
mind of my new acquaintance. In this state of embarrassment I took a
young man's way out of the difficulty, and spoke lightly of a serious
thing.

"I became acquainted with your deaf Lodger, Cristel, under ridiculous
circumstances. He saw us talking last night, and did me the honor to be
jealous of me."

I had expected to see her blush. To my surprise she turned pale, and
vehemently remonstrated.

"Don't laugh, sir! There's nothing to be amused at in what you have just
told me. You didn't go into his room last night? Oh, what made you do
that!"

I described his successful appeal to my compassion--not very willingly,
for it made me look (as I thought) like a weak person. Little by little,
she extracted from me the rest: how he objected to find a young man,
especially in my social position, talking to Cristel; how he insisted on
my respecting his claims, and engaging not to see her again; how, when I
refused to do this, he gave me his confession to read, so that I might
find out what a formidable man I was setting at defiance; how I had not
been in the least alarmed, and had treated him (as Cristel had just
heard) on the footing of a perfect stranger.

"There's the whole story," I concluded. "Like a scene in a play, isn't
it?"

She protested once more against the light tone that I persisted in
assuming.

"I tell you again, sir, this is no laughing matter. You have roused his
jealousy. You had better have roused the fury of a wild beast. Knowing
what you know of him, why did you stay here, when he came in? And, oh,
why did I humiliate him in your presence? Leave us, Mr. Gerard--pray,
pray leave us, and don't come near this place again till father has got
rid of him."

Did she think I was to be so easily frightened as that? My sense of my
own importance was up in arms at the bare suspicion of it!

"My dear child," I said grandly, "do you really suppose I am afraid of
that poor wretch? Am I to give up the pleasure of seeing you, because a
mad fellow is simple enough to think you will marry him? Absurd,
Cristel--absurd!"

The poor girl wrung her hands in despair.

"Oh, sir, don't distress me by talking in that way! Do please remember
who you are, and who I am. If I was the miserable means of your coming to
any harm--I can't bear even to speak of it! Pray don't think me bold; I
don't know how to express myself. You ought never to have come here; you
ought to go; you _must_ go!"

Driven by strong impulse, she ran to the place in which I had left my
hat, and brought it to me, and opened the door with a look of entreaty
which it was impossible to resist. It would have been an act of downright
cruelty to persist in opposing her. "I wouldn't distress you, Cristel,
for the whole world," I said--and left her to conclude that I had felt
the influence of her entreaties in the right way. She tried to thank me;
the tears rose in her eyes--she signed to me to leave her, poor soul, as
if she felt ashamed of herself. I was shocked; I was grieved; I was more
than ever secretly resolved to go back to her. When we said good-bye--I
have been told that I did wrong; I meant no harm--I kissed her.

Having traversed the short distance between the cottage and the wood, I
remembered that I had left my walking-stick behind me, and returned to
get it.

Cristel was leaving the kitchen; I saw her at the door which communicated
with the Lodger's side of the cottage. Her back was turned towards me;
astonishment held me silent. She opened the door, passed through it, and
closed it behind her.

Going to that man, after she had repelled his advances, in my presence!
Going to the enemy against whom she had warned me, after I had first been
persuaded to leave her! Angry thoughts these--and surely thoughts
unworthy of me? If it had been the case of another man I should have said
he was jealous. Jealous of the miller's daughter--in my position? Absurd!
contemptible! But I was still in such a vile temper that I determined to
let Cristel know she had been discovered. Taking one of my visiting
cards, I wrote on it: "I came back for my stick, and saw you go to him."
After I had pinned this spiteful little message to the door, so that she
might see it when she returned, I suffered a disappointment. I was not
half so well satisfied with myself as I had anticipated.



CHAPTER VII

THE BEST SOCIETY

Leaving the cottage for the second time, I was met at the door by a fat
man of solemn appearance dressed in black, who respectfully touched his
hat. My angry humor acknowledged the harmless stranger's salute by a rude
inquiry: "What the devil do you want?" Instead of resenting this uncivil
language, he indirectly reproved me by becoming more respectful than
ever.

"My mistress desires me to tell you, sir, that luncheon is waiting." I
was in the presence of a thoroughbred English servant--and I had failed
to discover it until he spoke of his mistress! I had also, by keeping
luncheon waiting, treated an English institution with contempt. And,
worse even than this, as a misfortune which personally affected me, my
stepmother evidently knew that I had paid another visit to the mill.

I hurried along the woodland path, followed by the fat domestic in black.
Not used apparently to force his legs into rapid motion, he articulated
with the greatest difficulty in answering my next question: "How did you
know where to find me?"

"Mrs. Roylake ordered inquiries to be made, sir. The head gardener--"
There his small reserves of breath failed him.

"The head gardener saw me?"

"Yes, sir."

"When?"

"Hours ago, sir--when you went into Toller's cottage."

I troubled my fat friend with no more questions.

Returning to the house, and making polite apologies, I discovered one
more among Mrs. Roylake's many accomplishments. She possessed two
smiles--a sugary smile (with which I was already acquainted), and an acid
smile which she apparently reserved for special occasions. It made its
appearance when I led her to the luncheon table.

"Don't let me detain you," my stepmother began.

"Won't you give me some luncheon?" I inquired.

"Dear me! hav'n't you lunched already?"

"Where should I lunch, my dear lady?" I thought this would induce the
sugary smile to show itself. I was wrong.

"Where?" Mrs. Roylake repeated. "With your friends at the mill of course.
Very inhospitable not to offer you lunch. When are we to have flour
cheaper?"

I began to get sulky. All I said was: "I don't know."

"Curious!" Mrs. Roylake observed. "You not only don't get luncheon among
your friends: you don't even get information. To know a miller, and not
to know the price of flour, is ignorance presented in one of its most
pitiable aspects. And how is Miss Toller looking? Perfectly charming?"

I was angry by this time. "You have exactly described her," I said. Mrs.
Roylake began to get angry, on her side.

"Surely a little coarse and vulgar?" she suggested, reverting to poor
Cristel.

"Would you like to judge for yourself?" I asked. "I shall be happy, Mrs.
Roylake, to take you to the mill."

My stepmother's knowledge of the world implied considerable
acquaintance--how obtained I do not pretend to know--with the characters
of men. Discovering that she was in danger of overstepping the limits of
my patience, she drew back with a skill which performed the retrograde
movement without permitting it to betray itself.

"We have carried our little joke, my dear Gerard, far enough," she said.

"I fancy your residence in Germany has rather blunted your native English
sense of humor. You don't suppose, I hope and trust, that I am so
insensible to our relative positions as to think of interfering in your
choice of friends or associates. If you are not aware of it already, let
me remind you that this house is now yours; not mine. I live here--gladly
live here, my dear boy--by your indulgence; fortified (I am sure) by your
regard for your excellent father's wishes as expressed in his will--"

I stopped her there. She had got the better of me with a dexterity which
I see now, but which I was not clever enough to appreciate at time. In a
burst of generosity, I entreated her to consider Trimley Deen as her
house, and never to mention such a shocking subject as my authority
again.

After this, need I say that the most amiable of women took me out in her
carriage, and introduced me to some of the best society in England?

If I could only remember all the new friends to whom I made my bow, as
well as the conversation in which we indulged, I might write a few pages
here, interesting in a high degree to persons with well-balanced minds.
Unhappily, so far as my own impressions were concerned, the best society
proved to be always the same society. Every house that we entered was in
the same beautiful order; every mistress of the house was dressed in the
best taste; every master of the house had the same sensible remarks to
make on conservative prospects at the coming election; every young
gentleman wanted to know how my game preserves had been looked after in
my absence; every young lady said: "How nice it must have been, Mr.
Roylake, to find yourself again at Trimley Deen." Has anybody ever
suffered as I suffered, during that round of visits, under the desire to
yawn and the effort to suppress it? Is there any sympathetic soul who can
understand me, when I say that I would have given a hundred pounds for a
gag, and for the privilege of using it to stop my stepmother's pleasant
chat in the carriage, following on our friends' pleasant chat in the
drawing-room? Finally, when we got home, and when Mrs. Roylake kindly
promised me another round of visits, and more charming people in the
neighborhood to see, will any good Christian forgive me, if I own that I
took advantage of being alone to damn the neighborhood, and to feel
relieved by it?

Now that I was no longer obliged to listen to polite strangers, my
thoughts reverted to Cristel, and to the suspicions that she had roused
in me.

Recovering its influence, in the interval that had passed, my better
nature sharply reproached me. I had presumed to blame Cristel, with
nothing to justify me but my own perverted view of her motives. How did I
know that she had not opened that door, and gone to that side of the
cottage, with a perfectly harmless object in view? I was really anxious,
if I could find the right way to do it, to make amends for an act of
injustice of which I felt ashamed. If I am asked why I was as eager to
set myself right with a miller's daughter, as if she had been a young
lady in the higher ranks of life, I can only reply that no such view of
our relative positions as this ever occurred to me. A strange state of
mind, no doubt. What was the right explanation of it?

The right explanation presented itself at a later time, when troubles had
quickened my intellect, and when I could estimate the powerful influence
of circumstances at its true value.

I had returned to England, to fill a prominent place in my own little
world, without relations whom I loved, without friends whose society I
could enjoy. Hopeful, ardent, eager for the enjoyment of life, I had
brought with me to my own country the social habits and the free range of
thought of a foreign University; and, as a matter of course, I failed to
feel any sympathy with the society--new to me--in which my lot had been
cast. Beset by these disadvantages, I had met with a girl, possessed of
remarkable personal attractions, and associated with my earliest
remembrances of my own happy life and of my mother's kindness--a girl, at
once simple and spirited; unspoilt by the world and the world's ways, and
placed in a position of peril due to the power of her own beauty, which
added to the interest that she naturally inspired. Estimating these
circumstances at their true value, did a state of mind which rendered me
insensible to the distinctions that separate the classes in England,
stand in any need of explanation? As I thought--and think still--it
explained itself.


My stepmother and I parted on the garden terrace, which ran along the
pleasant southern side of the house.

The habits that I had contracted, among my student friends in Germany,
made tobacco and beer necessary accompaniments to the process of
thinking. I had nearly exhausted my cigar, my jug, and my thoughts, when
I saw two men approaching me from the end of the terrace.

As they came nearer, I recognized in one of the men my fat domestic in
black. He stopped the person who was accompanying him and came on to me
by himself.

"Will you see that man, sir, waiting behind me?"

"Who is he?"

"I don't know, sir. He says he has got a letter to give you, and he must
put it in your own hands. I think myself he's a beggar. He's excessively
insolent--he insists on seeing you. Shall I tell him to go?"

The servant evidently expected me to say Yes. He was disappointed; my
curiosity was roused; I said I would see the insolent stranger.

As he approached me, the man certainly did not look like a beggar. Poor
he might be, judging by his dress. The upper part of him was clothed in
an old shooting jacket of velveteen; his legs presented a pair of
trousers, once black, now turning brown with age. Both garments were too
long for him, and both were kept scrupulously clean. He was a short man,
thickly and strongly made. Impenetrable composure appeared on his ugly
face. His eyes were sunk deep in his head; his nose had evidently been
broken and not successfully mended; his grey hair, when he took off his
hat on addressing me, was cut short, and showed his low forehead and his
bull neck. An Englishman of the last generation would, as I have since
been informed, have set him down as a retired prize-fighter. Thanks to my
ignorance of the pugilistic glories of my native country, I was totally
at a loss what to make of him.

"Have I the honor of speaking to Mr. Roylake?" he asked. His quiet steady
manner prepossessed me in his favour; it showed no servile reverence for
the accident of birth, on the one hand, and no insolent assertion of
independence, on the other. When I had told him that my name was Roylake,
he searched one of the large pockets of his shooting jacket, produced a
letter, and silently offered it to me.

Before I took the letter--seeing that he was a stranger, and that he
mentioned no name known to me--I thought it desirable to make some
inquiry.

"Is it a letter of your own writing?" I asked.

"No, sir."

"Who sends you with it?"

He was apparently a man of few words. "My master," was the guarded answer
that this odd servant returned.

I became as inquisitive as old Toller himself.

"Who is your master?" I went on.

The reply staggered me. Speaking as quietly and respectfully as ever, he
said: "I can't tell you, sir."

"Do you mean that you are forbidden to tell me?"

"No, sir."

"Then what do you mean?"

"I mean that I don't know my master's name."

I instantly took the letter from him, and looked at the address. For once
in a way, I had jumped at a conclusion and I had proved to be right. The
handwriting on the letter, and the handwriting of the confession which I
had read overnight, were one and the same.

"Are you to wait for an answer?" I asked, as I opened the envelope.

"I am to wait, sir, if you tell me to do so."

The letter was a long one. After running my eye over the first sentences,
I surprised myself by acting discreetly. "You needn't wait," I said; "I
will send a reply." The man of few words raised his shabby hat, turned
about in silence, and left me.



CHAPTER VIII

THE DEAF LODGER

The letter was superscribed: "Private and Confidential." It was written
in these words:


"Sir,--You will do me grievous wrong if you suppose that I am trying to
force myself on your acquaintance. My object in writing is to prevent you
(if I can) from misinterpreting my language and my conduct, on the only
two occasions when we happen to have met.

"I am conscious that you must have thought me rude and
ungrateful--perhaps even a little mad--when I returned your kindness last
night, in honoring me with a visit, by using language which has justified
you in treating me as a stranger.

"Fortunately for myself, I gave you my autobiography to read. After what
you now know of me, I may hope that your sense of justice will make some
allowance for a man, tried (I had almost written, cursed) by such
suffering as mine.

"There are other deaf persons, as I have heard, who set me a good
example.

"They feel the consolations of religion. Their sweet tempers find relief
even under the loss of the most precious of all the senses. They mix with
society; submitting to their dreadful isolation, and preserving
unimpaired sympathy with their happier fellow-creatures who can hear. I
am not one of those persons. With sorrow I say it--I never have
submitted, I never can submit, to my hard fate.

"Let me not omit to ask your indulgence for my behavior, when we met at
the cottage this morning.

"What unfavorable impression I may have produced on you, I dare not
inquire. So little capable am I of concealing the vile feelings which
sometimes get the better of me, that Miss Cristel (observe that I mention
her with respect) appears to have felt positive alarm, on your account,
when she looked at me.

"I may tell you, in confidence, that this charming person came to my side
of the cottage, as soon as you had taken your departure, to intercede
with me in your favour. 'If your wicked mind is planning to do evil to
Mr. Roylake,' she wrote in my book, 'either you will promise me to give
it up, or I will never allow you to see me again; I will even leave home
secretly, to be out of your way.' In that strong language she
expressed--how shall I refer to it?--shall I say the sisterly interest
that she felt in your welfare?"


I laid down the letter for a moment. If I had not already reproached
myself for having misjudged Cristel--and if I had not, in that way, done
her some little justice in my own better thoughts--I should never have
recovered my self-respect after reading the deaf man's letter. The good
girl! The dear good girl! Yes: that was how I thought of her, under the
windows of my stepmother's boudoir--while Mrs. Roylake, for all I knew to
the contrary, might be looking down at me, and when Lady Lena, the noble
and beautiful, was coming to dinner!

The letter concluded as follows:


"To return to myself. I gave Miss Cristel the promise on which she had
insisted; and then, naturally enough, I inquired into her motive for
interfering in your favour.

"She frankly admitted that she was interested in you. First: in grateful
remembrance of old times, when you and your mother had been always good
to her. Secondly: because she had found you as kind and as friendly as
ever, now that you were a man and had become the greatest landowner in
the county. There was the explanation I had asked for, at my service.
And, on that, she left me.

"Did I believe her when I was meditating on our interview, alone in my
room? Or did I suspect you of having robbed me of the only consolation
that makes my life endurable?

"No such unworthy suspicion as this was admitted to my mind. With all my
heart, I believe her. And with perfect sincerity, I trust You.

"If your knowledge of me has failed to convince you that there is any
such thing as a better side to my nature, you will no doubt conclude that
this letter is a trick of mine to throw you off your guard; and you will
continue to distrust me as obstinately as ever. In that case, I will
merely remind you that my letter is private and confidential, and I will
not ask you to send me a reply.

"I remain, Sir, yours as you may receive me,
  "THE DEAF LODGER


I wonder what another man, in my position, would have done when he had
read this letter? Would he have seen in it nothing to justify some
respect and some kindly feeling towards the writer? Could he have
reconciled it to his conscience to leave the afflicted man who had
trusted him without a word of reply?

For my part (do not forget what a young man I was in those days), I made
up my mind to reply in the friendliest manner--that is to say, in person.

After consulting my watch, I satisfied myself that I could go to the
mill, and get back again, before the hour fixed for our late
dinner--supper we should have called it in Germany. For the second time
that day, and without any hesitation, I took the road that led to
Fordwitch Wood.

Crossing the glade, I encountered a stout young woman, filling a can with
water from the spring. She curtseyed on seeing me. I asked if she
belonged to the village.

The reply informed me that I had taken another of my servants for a
stranger. The stout nymph of the spring was my kitchen-maid; and she was
fetching the water which we drank at the house; "and there's no water,
sir, like _yours_ for all the country round." Furnished with these stores
of information, I went my way, and the kitchen-maid went hers. She spoke,
of course, of having seen her new master, on returning to the servants'
hall. In this manner, as I afterwards heard, the discovery of me at the
spring, and my departure by the path that led to the mill, reached Mrs.
Roylake's ears--the medium of information being the lady's own maid. So
far, Fordwitch Wood seemed to be a place to avoid, in the interests of my
domestic tranquillity.

Arriving at the cottage, I found the Lodger standing by the open window
at which I had first seen him.

But on this occasion, his personal appearance had undergone a singular
process of transformation. The lower part of his face, from his nostrils
to his chin, was hidden by a white handkerchief tied round it. He had
removed the stopper from a strangely shaped bottle, and was absorbed in
watching some interesting condition in a dusky liquid that it contained.
To attract his attention by speaking was of course out of the question; I
could only wait until he happened to look my way.

My patience was not severely tried: he soon replaced the stopper in the
bottle, and, looking up from it, saw me. With his free hand, he quickly
removed the handkerchief, and spoke.

"Let me ask you to wait in the boat-house," he said; "I will come to you
directly." He pointed round the corner of the new cottage; indicating of
course the side of it that was farthest from the old building.

Following his directions, I first passed the door that he used in leaving
or returning to his room, and then gained the bank of the river. On my
right hand rose the mill building, with its big waterwheel--and, above
it, a little higher up the stream, I recognized the boat-house; built out
in the water on piles, and approached by a wooden pier.

No structure of this elaborate and expensive sort would have been set up
by my father, for the miller's convenience. The boat-house had been
built, many years since, by a rich retired tradesman with a mania for
aquatic pursuits. Our ugly river had not answered his expectations, and
our neighborhood had abstained from returning his visits. When he left
us, with his wherries and canoes and outriggers, the miller took
possession of the abandoned boat-house. "It's the sort of fixture that
don't pay nohow," old Toller remarked. "Suppose you remove it--there's a
waste of money. Suppose you knock it to pieces--is it worth a rich
gentleman's while to sell a cartload of firewood?" Neither of these
alternatives having been adopted, and nobody wanting an empty boat-house,
the clumsy mill boat, hitherto tied to a stake, and exposed to the worst
that the weather could do to injure it, was now snugly sheltered under a
roof, with empty lockers (once occupied by aquatic luxuries) gaping on
either side of it.

I was looking out on the river, and thinking of all that had happened
since my first meeting with Cristel by moonlight, when the voice of the
deaf man made itself discordantly heard, behind me.

"Let me apologize for receiving you here," he said; "and let me trouble
you with one more of my confessions. Like other unfortunate deaf people,
I suffer from nervous irritability. Sometimes, we restlessly change our
places of abode. And sometimes, as in my case, we take refuge in variety
of occupation. You remember the ideal narratives of crime which I was so
fond of writing at one time?"

I gave the affirmative answer, in the usual way.

"Well," he went on, "my literary inventions have ceased to interest me. I
have latterly resumed the chemical studies, associated with that happy
time in my life when I was entering on the medical profession. Unluckily
for you, I have been trying an experiment to-day, which makes such an
abominable smell in my room that I dare not ask you to enter it. The
fumes are not only disagreeable, but in some degree dangerous. You saw me
at the window, perhaps, with my nose and mouth protected before I opened
the bottle?"

I repeated the affirmative sign. He produced his little book of blank
leaves, and opened it ready for use.

"May I hope," he said, "that your visit is intended as a favorable reply
to my letter?"

I took the pencil, and answered him in these terms:

"Your letter has satisfied me that I was mistaken in treating you like a
stranger. I have come here to express my regret at having failed to do
you justice. Pray be assured that I believe in your better nature, and
that I accept your letter in the spirit in which you have written it."

He read my reply, and suddenly looked at me.

Never had I seen his beautiful eyes so brightly soft, so irresistibly
tender, as they appeared now. He held out his hand to me. It is one of my
small merits to be (in the popular phrase) as good as my word. I took his
hand; well knowing that the action committed me to accepting his
friendship.

In relating the events which form this narrative, I look back at the
chain, as I add to it link by link--sometimes with surprise, sometimes
with interest, and sometimes with the discovery that I have omitted a
circumstance which it is necessary to replace. But I search my memory in
vain, while I dwell on the lines that I have just written, for a
recollection of some attendant event which might have warned me of the
peril towards which I was advancing blindfold. My remembrance presents us
as standing together with clasped hands; but nothing in the slightest
degree ominous is associated with the picture. There was no sinister
chill communicated from his hand to mine; no shocking accident happened
close by us in the river; not even a passing cloud obscured the sunlight,
shining in its gayest glory over our heads.

After having shaken hands, neither he nor I had apparently anything more
to say. A little embarrassed, I turned to the boat-house window, and
looked out. Trifling as the action was, my companion noticed it.

"Do you like that muddy river?" he asked.

I took the pencil again: "Old associations make even the ugly Loke
interesting to me."

He sighed as he read those words. "I wish, Mr. Roylake, I could say the
same. Your interesting river frightens me."

It was needless to ask for the pencil again. My puzzled face begged for
an explanation.

"When you were in my room," he said, "you may have noticed a second
window which looks out on The Loke. I have got into a bad habit of
sitting by that window on moonlight nights. I watch the flow of the
stream, and it seems to associate itself with the flow of my thoughts.
Nothing remarkable, so far--while I am awake. But, later, when I get to
sleep, dreams come to me. All of them, sir, without exception connect
Cristel with the river. Look at the stealthy current that makes no sound.
In my last night's sleep, it made itself heard; it was flowing in my ears
with a water-music of its own. No longer my deaf ears; I heard, in my
dream, as well as you can hear. Yes; the same water-music, singing over
and over again the same horrid song: "Fool, fool, no Cristel for you; bid
her good-bye, bid her good-bye." I saw her floating away from me on those
hideous waters. The cruel current held me back when I tried to follow
her. I struggled and screamed and shivered and cried. I woke up with a
start that shook me to pieces, and cursed your interesting river. Don't
write to me about it again. Don't look at it again. Why did you bring up
the subject? I beg your pardon; I had no right to say that. Let me be
polite; let me be hospitable. I beg to invite you to come and see me,
when my room is purified from its pestilent smell. I can only offer you a
cup of tea. Oh, that river, that river, what devil set me talking about
it? I'm not mad, Mr. Roylake; only wretched. When may I expect you?
Choose your own evening next week."

Who could help pitying him? Compared with my sound sweet dreamless sleep,
what dreadful nights were his!

I accepted his invitation as a matter of course. When we had completed
our arrangements, it was time for me to think of returning to Trimley
Deen. Moving towards the door, I accidentally directed his attention to
the pier by which the boat-house was approached.

His face instantly reminded me of Cristel's description of him, when he
was strongly and evilly moved. I too saw "his beautiful eves tell tales,
and his pretty complexion change to a color which turned him into an ugly
man." He seized my arm, and pointed to the pier, at the end of it which
joined the river-bank. "Pray accept my excuses; I can't answer for my
temper if that wretch comes near me." With this apology he hurried away;
and sly Giles Toller, having patiently waited until the coast was clear,
accosted me with his best bow, and said: "Beautiful weather, isn't it,
sir?"

I had no remarks to make on the weather; but I was interested in
discovering what had happened at the cottage.

"You have mortally offended the gentleman who has just left me," I said.
"What have you done?"

Mr. Toller had purposes of his own to serve, and kept those purposes (as
usual) exclusively in view: _he_ presented deaf ears to me now!

"I don't think I ever remember such wonderful weather, sir, in my time;
and I'm an old fellow, as I needn't tell you. Being at the mill just now,
I saw you in the boat-house, and came to pay my respects. Would you be so
good as to look at this slip of paper, Mr. Gerard? If you will kindly ask
what it is, you will in a manner help me."

I knew but too well what it was. "The repairs again!" I said resignedly.
"Hand it over, you obstinate old man."

Mr. Toller was so tickled by my discovery, and by the cheering prospect
consequent on seeing his list of repairs safe in my pocket, that he
laughed until I really thought he would shake his lean little body to
pieces. By way of bringing his merriment to an end, I assumed a look of
severity, and insisted on knowing how he had offended the Lodger. My
venerable tenant, trembling for his repairs, drifted into a question of
personal experience, and seemed to anticipate that it might improve my
temper.

"When you have a woman about the house, Mr. Gerard, you may have noticed
that she's an everlasting expense to you--especially when she's a young
one. Isn't that so?"

I inquired if he applied this remark to his daughter.

"That's it, sir; I'm talking of Cristy. When her back's up, there isn't
her equal in England for strong language. My gentleman has misbehaved
himself in some way (since you were with us this morning, sir); how, I
don't quite understand. All I can tell you is, I've given him notice to
quit. A clear loss of money to me every week, and Cristy's responsible
for it. Yes, sir! I've been worked up to it by my girl. If Cristy's
mother had asked me to get rid of a paying lodger, I should have told her
to go to---- we won't say where, sir; you'll know where when you're
married yourself. The upshot of it is that I have offended my gentleman,
for the sake of my girl: which last is a luxury I can't afford, unless I
let the rooms again. If you hear of a tenant, say what a good landlord I
am, and what sweet pretty rooms I've got to let."

I led the way to the bank of the river, before Mr. Toller could make any
more requests.

We passed the side of the old cottage. The door was open; and I saw
Cristel employed in the kitchen.

My watch told me that I had still two or three minutes to spare; and my
guilty remembrance of the message that I had pinned to the door suggested
an immediate expression of regret. I approached Cristel with a petition
for pardon on my lips. She looked distrustfully at the door of
communication with the new cottage, as if she expected to see it opened
from the other side.

"Not now!" she said--and went on sadly with her household work.

"May I see you to-morrow?" I asked.

"It had better not be here, sir," was the only reply she made.

I offered to meet her at any other place which she might appoint. Cristel
persisted in leaving it to me; she spoke absently, as if she was thinking
all the time of something else. I could propose no better place, at the
moment, than the spring in Fordwitch Wood. She consented to meet me
there, on the next day, if seven o'clock in the morning would not be too
early for me. My German habits had accustomed me to early rising. She
heard me tell her this--and looked again at the Lodger's door--and
abruptly wished me good evening.

Her polite father was shocked at this unceremonious method of dismissing
the great man, who had only to say the word and stop the repairs. "Where
are your manners, Cristy?" he asked indignantly. Before he could say
another word, I was out of the cottage.

As I passed the spring on my way home, I thought of my two appointments.
On that evening, my meeting with the daughter of the lord. On the next
morning, my meeting with the daughter of the miller. Lady Lena at dinner;
Cristel before breakfast. If Mrs. Roylake found out _that_ social
contrast, what would she say? I was a merry young fool; I burst out
laughing.



CHAPTER IX

MRS ROYLAKE'S GAME: FIRST MOVE

The dinner at Trimley Deen has left in my memory little that I can
distinctly recall. Only a faintly-marked vision of Lady Lena rewards me
for doing my best to remember her. A tall slim graceful person, dressed
in white with a simplicity which is the perfection of art, presents to my
admiration gentle blue eyes, a pale complexion delicately touched with
color, a well-carried head crowned by lovely light brown hair. So far,
time helps the reviving past to come to life again--and permits nothing
more. I cannot say that I now remember the voice once so musical in my
ears, or that I am able to repeat the easy unaffected talk which once
interested me, or that I see again (in my thoughts) the perfect charm of
manner which delighted everybody, not forgetting myself. My unworthy
self, I might say; for I was the only young man, honored by an
introduction to Lady Lena, who stopped at admiration, and never made use
of opportunity to approach love.

On the other hand, I distinctly recollect what my stepmother and I said
to each other when our guests had wished us good-night.

If I am asked to account for this, I can only reply that the conspiracy
to lead me into proposing marriage to Lady Lena first showed itself on
the occasion to which I have referred. In her eagerness to reach her
ends, Mrs. Roylake failed to handle the fine weapons of deception as
cleverly as usual. Even I, with my small experience of worldly women,
discovered the object that she had in view.

I had retired to the seclusion of the smoking-room, and was already
encircled by the clouds which float on the heaven of tobacco, when I
heard a rustling of silk outside, and saw the smile of Mrs. Roylake
beginning to captivate me through the open door.

"If you throw away your cigar," cried this amiable person, "you will
drive me out of the room. Dear Gerard, I like your smoke."

My fat man in black, coming in at the moment to bring me some soda water,
looked at his mistress with an expression of amazement and horror, which
told me that he now saw Mrs. Roylake in the smoking-room for the first
time. I involved myself in new clouds. If I suffocated my stepmother, her
own polite equivocation would justify the act. She settled herself
opposite to me in an armchair. The agonies that she must have suffered,
in preventing her face from expressing emotions of disgust, I dare not
attempt to imagine, even at this distance of time.

"Now, Gerard, let us talk about the two ladies. What do you think of my
friend, Lady Rachel?"

"I don't like your friend, Lady Rachel."

"You astonish me. Why?"

"I think she's a false woman."

"Heavens, what a thing to say of a lady--and that lady my friend! Her
politics may very reasonably have surprised you. But surely her vigorous
intellect ought to have challenged your admiration; you can't deny that?"

I was not clever enough to be able to deny it. But I was bold enough to
say that Lady Rachel seemed to me to be a woman who talked for the sake
of producing effect. She expressed opinions, as I ventured to declare,
which (in her position) I did not believe she could honestly entertain.

Mrs. Roylake entered a vigorous protest. She assured me that I was
completely mistaken. "Lady Rachel," she said, "is the most perfectly
candid person in the whole circle of my acquaintance."

With the best intentions on my part, this was more than I could patiently
endure.

"Isn't she the daughter of a nobleman?" I asked. "Doesn't she owe her
rank and her splendor, and the respect that people show to her, to the
fortunate circumstance of her birth? And yet she talks as if she was a
red republican. You yourself heard her say that she was a thorough
Radical, and hoped she might live to see the House of Lords abolished.
Oh, I heard her! And what is more, I listened so attentively to such
sentiments as these, from a lady with a title, that I can repeat, word
for word, what she said next. "We hav'n't deserved our own titles; we
hav'n't earned our own incomes; and we legislate for the country, without
having been trusted by the country. In short, we are a set of impostors,
and the time is coming when we shall be found out." Do you believe she
really meant that? All as false as false can be--that's what I say of
it."

There I stopped, privately admiring my own eloquence.

Quite a mistake on my part; my eloquence had done just what Mrs. Roylake
wished me to do. She wanted an opportunity of dropping Lady Rachel, and
taking up Lady Lena, with a producible reason which forbade the
imputation of a personal motive on her part. I had furnished her with the
reason. Thus far, I cannot deny it, my stepmother was equal to herself.

"Really, Gerard, you are so violent in your opinions that I am sorry I
spoke of Lady Rachel. Shall I find you equally prejudiced, and equally
severe, if I change the subject to dear Lady Lena? Oh, don't say you
think She is false, too!"

Here Mrs. Roylake made her first mistake. She over-acted her part; and,
when it was too late, she arrived, I suspect, at that conclusion herself.

"If you hav'n't seen that I sincerely admire Lady Lena," I said, as
smartly as I could, "the sooner you disfigure yourself with a pair of
spectacles, my dear lady, the better. She is very pretty, perfectly
unaffected, and, if I may presume to judge, delightfully well-bred and
well-dressed."

My stepmother's face actually brightened with pleasure. Reflecting on it
now, I am strongly disposed to think that she had not allowed her
feelings to express themselves so unreservedly, since the time when she
was a girl. After all, Mrs. Roylake was paying her step-son a compliment
in trying to entrap him into a splendid marriage. It was my duty to think
kindly of my ambitious relative. I did my duty.

"You really like my sweet Lena?" she said. "I am so glad. What were you
talking about, with her? She made you exert all your powers of
conversation, and she seemed to be deeply interested."

More over-acting! Another mistake! And I could see through it! With no
English subject which we could discuss in common, Lady Lena's ready tact
alluded to my past life. Mrs. Roylake had told her that I was educated at
a German University. She had heard vaguely of students with long hair,
who wore Hessian boots, and fought duels; and she appealed to my
experience to tell her something more. I did my best to interest her,
with very indifferent success, and was undeservedly rewarded by a patient
attention, which presented the unselfish refinements of courtesy under
their most perfect form.

But let me do my step-mother justice. She contrived to bend me to her
will, before she left the smoking-room--I am sure I don't know how.

"You have entertained the charming daughters at dinner," she reminded me;
"and the least you can do, after that, is to pay your respects to their
noble father. In your position, my dear boy, you cannot neglect our
English customs without producing the worst possible impression."

In two words, I found myself pledged, under pretence of visiting my lord,
to improve my acquaintance with Lady Lena on the next day.

"And pray be careful," Mrs. Roylake proceeded, still braving the
atmosphere of the smoking-room, "not to look surprised if you find Lord
Uppercliff's house presenting rather a poor appearance just now."

I was dying for another cigar, and I entirely misunderstood the words of
warning which had just been addressed to me. I tried to bring our
interview to a close by making a generous proposal.

"Does he want money?" I asked. "I'll lend him some with the greatest
pleasure."

Mrs. Roylake's horror expressed itself in a little thin wiry scream.

"Oh, Gerard, what people you must have lived among! What shocking
ignorance of my lord's enormous fortune! He and his family have only just
returned to their country seat, after a long absence--parliament you
know, and foreign baths, and so on--and their English establishment is
not yet complete. I don't know what mistake you may not make next. Do
listen to what I want to say to you."

Listening, I must acknowledge, with an absent mind, my attention was
suddenly seized by Mrs. Roylake--without the slightest conscious effort
towards that end, on the part of the lady herself.

The first words that startled me, in her flow of speech, were these:

"And I must not forget to tell you of poor Lord Uppercliff's misfortune.
He had a fall, some time since, and broke his leg. As I think, he was so
unwise as to let a plausible young surgeon set the broken bone. Anyway,
the end of it is that my lord slightly limps when he walks; and pray
remember that he hates to see it noticed. Lady Rachel doesn't agree with
me in attributing her father's lameness to his surgeon's want of
experience. Between ourselves, the man seems to have interested her. Very
handsome, very clever, very agreeable, and the manners of a gentleman.
When his medical services came to an end, he was quite an acquisition at
their parties in London--with one drawback: he mysteriously disappeared,
and has never been heard of since. Ask Lady Lena about it. She will give
you all the details, without her elder sister's bias in favour of the
handsome young man. What a pretty compliment you are paying me! You
really look as if I had interested you."

Knowing what I knew, I was unquestionably interested.

Although the recent return of Lord Uppercliff and his daughter to their
country home had, as yet, allowed no opportunity of a meeting, out of
doors, between the deaf Lodger and the friends whom he had lost sight
of--no doubt at the time of his serious illness--still, the inevitable
discovery might happen on any day. What result would follow? And what
would be the effect on Lady Rachel, when she met with the fascinating
young surgeon, and discovered the terrible change in him?



CHAPTER X

WARNED!

We were alone in the glade, by the side of the spring. At that early hour
there were no interruptions to dread; but Cristel was ill at ease. She
seemed to be eager to get back to the cottage as soon as possible.

"Father tells me," she began abruptly, "he saw you at the boathouse. And
it seemed to him, that you were behaving yourself like a friend to that
terrible man."

I reminded her of my having expressed the fear that we had been
needlessly hard on him; and, I added that he had written a letter which
confirmed me in that opinion. She looked, not only disappointed, but even
alarmed.

"I had hoped," she said sadly, "that father was mistaken."

"So little mistaken," I assured her, "that I am going to drink tea with
the man who seems to frighten you. I hope he will ask you to meet--"

She recoiled from the bare idea of an invitation.

"Will you hear what I want to tell you?" she said earnestly. "You may
alter your opinion if you know what I have been foolish enough to do,
when you saw me go to the other side of the cottage."

"Dear Cristel, I know what I owe to your kind interest in me on that
occasion!" Before I could say a word of apology for having wronged her by
my suspicions, she insisted on an explanation of what I had just said.

"Did he mention it in his letter?" she asked.

I owned that I had obtained my information in this way. And I declared
that he had expressed his admiration of her, and his belief in her, in
terms which made it a subject of regret to me not to be able to show what
he had written.

Cristel forgot her fear of our being interrupted. Her dismay expressed
itself in a cry that rang through the wood.

"You even believe in his letter?" she exclaimed. "Mr. Gerard! His writing
in that way to You about Me is a proof that he lies; and I'll make you
see it. If you were anybody else but yourself, I would leave you to your
fate. Yes, your fate," she passionately repeated. "Oh, forgive me, sir!
I'm behaving disrespectfully; I beg your pardon. No, no; let me go on.
When I spoke to him in your best interests (as I did most truly believe)
I never suspected what mischief I had done, till I looked in his face.
Then, I saw how he hated you, and how vilely he was thinking in secret of
me--"

Pure delusion! How could I allow it to go on? I interrupted her.

"My dear, you have quite mistaken him. As I have already said, he
sincerely respects you--and he owns that he misjudged me when he and I
first met."

"What! Is _that_ in his letter too? It's worse even than I feared. Again,
and again, and again, I say it"--she stamped on the ground in the fervor
of her conviction--"he hates you with the hatred that never forgives and
never forgets. You think him a good man. Do you suppose I would have
begged and prayed of my father to send him away, without having reasons
that justified me? Mr. Gerard, you force me to tell you what my unlucky
visit did put into his head. Yes, he does believe--believes firmly--that
you have forgotten what is due to your rank; that I have been wicked
enough to forget it too; and that you are going to take me away from him.
Say what he may, and write what he may, he is deceiving you for his own
wicked ends. If you go to drink tea with him, God only knows what cause
you may have to regret it. Forgive me for being so violent, sir; I have
done now. You have made me very wretched, but you are too good and kind
to mean it. Good-bye."

I took her hand, I pressed it tenderly; I was touched, deeply touched.

No! let me write honestly. Her eyes betrayed her, her voice betrayed her,
while she said her parting words. What I saw, what I heard, was no longer
within the limits of doubt. The sweet girl's interest in my welfare was
not the merely friendly interest which she herself believed it to be. And
I said just now that I was "touched." Cant! Lies! I loved her more dearly
than I had ever loved her yet. There is the truth--stripped of poor
prudery, and the mean fear of being called Vain!

What I might have said to her, if the opportunity had offered itself, may
be easily imagined. Before I could open my lips, a man appeared on the
path which led from the mill to the spring--the man whom Cristel had
secretly suspected of a design to follow her.

I felt her hand trembling in my hand, and gave it a little encouraging
squeeze. "Let us judge him," I suggested, "by what he says and does, on
finding us together."

Without an attempt at concealment on his part, he advanced towards us
briskly, smiling and waving his hand.

"What, Mr. Roylake, you have already found out the virtues of your
wonderful spring, and you are drinking the water before breakfast! I have
often done it myself when I was not too lazy to get up. And this charming
girl," he went on, turning to Cristel, "has she been trying the virtues
of the spring by your advice? She won't listen to me, or I should have
recommended it long since. See me set the example."

He took a silver mug from his pocket, and descended the few steps that
led to the spring. Allowing for the dreadful deaf monotony in his voice,
no man could have been more innocently joyous and agreeable. While he was
taking his morning draught, I appealed to Cristel's better sense.

"Is this the hypocrite, who is deceiving me for his own wicked ends?" I
asked. "Does he look like the jealous monster who is plotting my
destruction, and who will succeed if I am fool enough to accept his
invitation?"

Poor dear, she was as obstinate as ever! "Think over what I have said to
you--think, for your own sake," was her only reply.

"And a little for _your_ sake?" I ventured to add.

She ran away from me, taking the path which would lead her home again.
The deaf man and I were left together. He looked after her until she was
out of sight. Then he produced his book of blank leaves. But, instead of
handing it to me as usual, he began to write in it himself.

"I have something to say to you," he explained.

It was only possible, while the book was in his possession, to remind him
that I could hear, and that he could speak, by using the language of
signs. I touched my lips, and pointed to him; I touched my ear, and
pointed to myself.

"Yes," he said, understanding me with his customary quickness; "but I
want you to remember as well as to hear. When I have filled this leaf, I
shall beg you to keep it about you, and to refer to it from time to
time."

He wrote on steadily, until he had filled both sides of the slip of
paper.

"Quite a little letter," he said. "Pray read it."

This is what I read:

"You must have seen for yourself that I was incapable of insulting you
and Miss Cristel by an outbreak of jealousy, when I found you together
just now. Only remember that we all have our weaknesses, and that it is
my hard lot to be in a state of contest with the inherited evil which is
the calamity of my life. With your encouragement, I may resist temptation
in the future, and keep the better part of me in authority over my
thoughts and actions. But, be on your guard, and advise Miss Cristel to
be on her guard, against false appearances. As we all know, they lie like
truth. Consider me. Pity me. I ask no more."

Straightforward and manly and modest--I appeal to any unprejudiced mind
whether I should not have committed a mean action, if I had placed an
evil construction on this?

"Am I understood?" he asked.

I signed to him to give me his book, and relieved him of anxiety in these
words:

"If I had failed to understand you, I should have felt ashamed of myself.
May I show what you have written to Cristel?"

He smiled, more sweetly and pleasantly than I had seen him smile yet.

"If you wish it," he answered. "I leave it entirely to you. Thank
you--and good morning."

Having advanced a few steps on his way to the cottage, he paused, and
reminded me of the tea-drinking: "Don't forget to-morrow evening, at
seven o'clock."



CHAPTER XI

WARNED AGAIN!

The breakfast hour had not yet arrived when I got home. I went into the
garden to refresh my eyes--a little weary of the solemn uniformity of
color in Fordwitch Wood--by looking at the flowers.

Reaching the terrace, in the first place, I heard below me a man's voice,
speaking in tones of angry authority, and using language which expressed
an intention of turning somebody out of the garden. I at once descended
the steps which led to the flower-beds. The man in authority proved to be
one of my gardeners; and the man threatened with instant expulsion was
the oddly-dressed servant of the friend whom I had just left.

The poor fellow's ugly face presented a picture of shame and contrition,
the moment I showed myself. He piteously entreated me to look over it,
and to forgive him.

"Wait a little," I said. "Let me see if I have anything to forgive." I
turned to the gardener. "What is your complaint of this man?"

"He's a trespasser on your grounds, sir. And, his impudence, to say the
least of it, is such as I never met with before."

"What harm has he done?"

"Harm, sir?"

"Yes--harm. Has he been picking the flowers?"

The gardener looked round him, longing to refer me to the necessary
evidence, and failing to discover it anywhere. The wretched trespasser
took heart of grace, and said a word in his own defence.

"Nobody ever knew me to misbehave myself in a gentleman's garden," he
said; "I own, sir, to having taken a peep at the flowers, over the wall."

"And they tempted you to look a little closer at them?"

"That's the truth, sir."

"So you are fond of flowers?"

"Yes, sir. I once failed in business as a nurseryman--but I don't blame
the flowers."

The delightful simplicity of this was lost on the gardener. I heard the
brute mutter to himself: "Gammon!" For once I asserted my authority over
my servant.

"Understand this," I said to him: "I don't confine the enjoyment of my
garden to myself and my friends. Any well-behaved persons are welcome to
come here and look at the flowers. Remember that. Now you may go."

Having issued these instructions, I next addressed myself to my friend in
the shabby shooting jacket; telling him to roam wherever he liked, and to
stay as long as he pleased. Instead of thanking me and using his liberty,
he hesitated, and looked thoroughly ill at ease.

"What's the matter now?" I asked.

"I'm afraid you don't know, sir, who it is you are so kind to. I've been
something else in my time, besides a nurseryman."

"What have you been?"

"A prize-fighter."

If he expected me to exhibit indignation or contempt, he was
disappointed. My ignorance treated him as civilly as ever.

"What is a prize-fighter?" I inquired.

The unfortunate pugilist looked at me in speechless bewilderment. I told
him that I had been brought up among foreigners, and that I had never
even seen an English newspaper for the last ten years. This explanation
seemed to encourage the man of few words: it set him talking freely at
last. He delivered a treatise on the art of prizefighting, and he did
something else which I found more amusing--he told me his name. To my
small sense of humor his name, so to speak, completed this delightfully
odd man: it was Gloody. As to the list of his misfortunes, the endless
length of it became so unendurably droll, that we both indulged in
unfeeling fits of laughter over the sorrows of Gloody. The first lucky
accident of the poor fellow's life had been, literally, the discovery of
him by his present master.

This event interested me. I said I should like to hear how it had
happened.

Gloody modestly described himself as "one of the starving lot, sir, that
looks out for small errands. I got my first dinner for three days, by
carrying a gentleman's portmanteau for him. And he, if you please, was
afterwards my master. He lived alone. Bless you, he was as deaf then as
he is now. He says to me, 'If you bawl in my ears, I'll knock you down.'
I thought to myself, you wouldn't say that, master, if you knew how I was
employed twenty years ago. He took me into his service, sir, because I
was ugly. 'I'm so handsome myself;' he says, 'I want a contrast of
something ugly about me.' You may have noticed that he's a bitter
one--and bitterly enough he sometimes behaved to me. But there's a good
side to him. He gives me his old clothes, and sometimes he speaks almost
as kindly to me as you do. But for him, I believe I should have perished
of starvation--"

He suddenly checked himself. Whether he was afraid of wearying me, or
whether some painful recollection had occurred to him, it was of course
impossible to say.

The ugly face, to which he owed his first poor little morsel of
prosperity, became overclouded by care and doubt. Bursting into
expressions of gratitude which I had certainly not deserved--expressions,
so evidently sincere, that they bore witness to constant ill-usage
suffered in the course of his hard life--he left me with a headlong haste
of movement, driven away as I fancied by an unquiet mind.

I watched him retreating along the path, and saw him stop abruptly, still
with his back to me. His deep strong voice travelled farther than he
supposed. I heard him say to himself: "What an infernal rascal I am!" He
waited a little, and turned my way again. Slowly and reluctantly, he came
back to me. As he approached I saw the man, who had lived by the public
exhibition of his courage, looking at me with fear plainly visible in the
change of his color, and the expression of his face.

"Anything wrong?" I inquired.

"Nothing wrong, sir. Might I be so bold as to ask--"

We waited a little; I gave him time to collect his thoughts. Perhaps the
silence confused him. Anyhow, I was obliged to help him to get on.

"What do you wish to ask of me?" I said.

"I wished to speak, sir--"

He stopped again.

"About what?" I asked.

"About to-morrow evening."

"Well?"

He burst out with it, at last. "Are you coming to drink tea with my
master?"

"Of course, I am coming! Mr. Gloody, do you know that you rather surprise
me?"

"I hope no offence, sir."

"Nonsense! It seems odd, my good fellow, that your master shouldn't have
told you I was coming to drink tea with him. Isn't it your business to
get the things ready?"

He shifted from one foot to another, and looked as if he wished himself
out of my way. At a later time of my life, I have observed that these are
signs by which an honest man is apt to confess that he has told, or is
going to tell, a lie. As it was, I only noticed that he answered
confusedly.

"I can't quite say, Mr. Roylake, that my master didn't mention the thing
to me."

"But you failed to understand him--is that it?"

"Well, sir, if I want to ask him anything I have to write it. I'm slow at
writing, and bad at writing, and he isn't always patient. However, as you
reminded me just now, I have got to get the things ready. To cut it
short, perhaps I might say that I didn't quite expect the tea-party would
come off."

"Why shouldn't it come off?"

"Well, sir, you might have some other engagement."

Was this a hint? or only an excuse? In either case it was high time, if
he still refused to speak out, that I should set him the example.

"You have given me some curious information," I said, "on the subject of
fighting with the fists; and you have made me understand the difference
between 'fair hitting' and 'foul hitting'. Are you hitting fair now? Very
likely I am mistaken--but you seem to me to be trying to prevent my
accepting your master's invitation."

He pulled off his hat in a hurry.

"I beg your pardon, sir; I won't detain you any longer. If you will allow
me, I'll take my leave."

"Don't go, Mr. Gloody, without telling me whether I am right or wrong. Is
there really some objection to my coming to tea tomorrow?"

"Quite a mistake, sir," he said, still in a hurry. "I've led you wrong
without meaning it--being an ignorant man, and not knowing how to express
myself. Don't think me ungrateful, Mr. Roylake! After your kindness to
me, I'd go through fire and water for you--I would!"

His sunken eyes moistened, his big voice faltered. I let him leave me, in
mercy to the strong feeling which I had innocently roused. But I shook
hands with him first. Yielding to one of my headlong impulses? Yes. And
doing a very indiscreet thing? Wait a little--and we shall see.



CHAPTER XII

WARNED FOR THE LAST TIME!

My loyalty towards the afflicted man, whose friendly advances I had seen
good reason to return, was in no sense shaken. His undeserved
misfortunes, his manly appeal to me at the spring, his hopeless
attachment to the beautiful girl whose aversion towards him I had
unhappily encouraged, all pleaded with me in his favour. I had accepted
his invitation; and I had no other engagement to claim me: it would have
been an act of meanness amounting to a confession of fear, if I had sent
an excuse. Still, while Cristel's entreaties and Cristel's influence had
failed to shake me, Gloody's strange language and Gloody's
incomprehensible conduct had troubled my mind. I felt vaguely uneasy;
irritated by my own depression of spirits. If I had been a philosopher, I
should have recognized the symptoms of a very common attack of a very
widely-spread moral malady. The meanest of all human infirmities is also
the most universal; and the name of it is Self-esteem.

It is perhaps only right to add that my patience had been tried by the
progress of domestic events, which affected Lady Lena and myself--viewed
as victims.

Calling, with my stepmother, at Lord Uppercliff's house later in the day,
I perceived that Lady Rachel and Mrs. Roylake found (or made) an
opportunity of talking together confidentially in a corner; and, once or
twice, I caught them looking at Lady Lena and at me. Even Lord Uppercliff
(perhaps not yet taken into their confidence) noticed the proceedings of
the two ladies, and seemed to be at a loss to understand them.

When Mrs. Roylake and I were together again, on our way home, I was
prepared to hear the praise of Lady Lena, followed by a delicate
examination into the state of my heart. Neither of these anticipations
was realized. Once more, my clever stepmother had puzzled me.

Mrs. Roylake talked as fluently as ever; exhausting one common-place
subject after another, without the slightest allusion to my lord's
daughter, to my matrimonial prospects, or to my visits at the mill. I was
secretly annoyed, feeling that my stepmother's singular indifference to
domestic interests of paramount importance, at other times, must have
some object in view, entirely beyond the reach of my penetration. If I
had dared to commit such an act of rudeness, I should have jumped out of
the carriage, and have told Mrs. Roylake that I meant to walk home.

The day was Sunday. I loitered about the garden, listening to the distant
church-bell ringing for the afternoon service. Without any cause that I
knew of to account for it, I was so restless that nothing I could do
attracted me or quieted me.

Returning to the house, I tried to occupy myself with my collection of
insects, sadly neglected of late. Useless! My own moths failed to
interest me.

I went back to the garden. Passing the open window of one of the lower
rooms which looked out on the terrace, I saw Mrs. Roylake reading a book
in sad-colored binding. She was yawning over it fearfully, when she
discovered that I was looking at her. Equal to any emergency, this
remarkable woman instantly handed to me a second and similar volume. "The
most precious sermons, Gerard, that have been written in our time." I
looked at the book; I opened the book; I recovered my presence of mind,
and handed it back. If a female humbug was on one side of the window, a
male humbug was on the other. "Please keep it for me till the evening," I
said; "I am going for a walk."

Which way did I turn my steps?

Men will wonder what possessed me--women will think it a proceeding that
did me credit--I took the familiar road which led to the gloomy wood and
the guilty river. The longing in me to see Cristel again, was more than I
could resist. Not because I was in love with her; only because I had left
her in distress.

Beyond the spring, and within a short distance of the river, I saw a lady
advancing towards me on the path which led from the mill.

Brisk, smiling, tripping along like a young girl, behold the
mock-republican, known in our neighborhood as Lady Rachel! She held out
both hands to me. But for her petticoats, I should have thought I had met
with a jolly young man.

"I have been wandering in your glorious wood, Mr. Roylake. Anything to
escape the respectable classes on Sunday, patronizing piety on the way to
afternoon church. I must positively make a sketch of the cottage by the
mill--I mean, of course, the picturesque side of it. That fine girl of
Toller's was standing at the door. She is really handsomer than ever. Are
you going to see her, you wicked man? Which do you admire--that gypsy
complexion, or Lena's lovely skin? Both, I have no doubt, at your age.
Good-bye."

When we had left each other, I thought of the absent Captain in the Navy
who was Lady Rachel's husband. He was a perfect stranger--but I put
myself in his place, and felt that I too should have gone to sea.

Old Toller was alone in his kitchen, evidently annoyed and angry.

"We are all at sixes and sevens, Mr. Gerard. I've had another row with
that deaf-devil--my new name for him, and I think it's rather clever. He
swears, sir, that he won't go at the end of his week's notice. Says, if I
think I'm likely to get rid of him before he has married Cristy, I'm
mistaken. Threatens, if any man attempts to take her away, he'll shoot
her, and shoot the man, and shoot himself. Aha! old as I am, if he
believes he's going to have it all his own way, he's mistaken. I'll be
even with him. You mark my words: I'll be even with him."

That old Toller--the most exasperating of men, judged by a quick
temper--had irritated my friend into speaking rashly was plain enough.
Nevertheless, I felt some anxiety (jealous anxiety, I am afraid) about
Cristel. After looking round the kitchen again, I asked where she was.

"Sitting forlorn in her bedroom, crying," her father told me. "I went out
for a walk by the river, and I sat down, and (being Sunday) I fell
asleep. When I woke, and got home again just now, that was how I found
her. I don't like to hear my girl crying; she's as good as gold and
better. No, sir; our deaf-devil is not to blame for this. He has given
Cristy no reason to complain of him. She says so herself--and she never
told a lie yet."

"But, Mr. Toller," I objected, "something must have happened to distress
her. Has she not told you what it is?"

"Not she! Obstinate about it. Leaves me to guess. It's clear to my mind,
Mr. Gerard, that somebody has got at her in my absence, and said
something to upset her. You will ask me who the person is. I can't say I
have found that out yet."

"But you mean to try?"

"Yes; I mean to try."

He answered me with little of the energy which generally distinguished
him. Perhaps he was fatigued, or perhaps he had something else to think
of. I offered a suggestion.

"When we are in want of help," I said, "we sometimes find it, nearer than
we had ventured to expect--at our own doors."

The ancient miller rose at that hint like a fish at a fly.

"Gloody!" he cried.

"Find him at once, Mr. Toller."

He hobbled to the door--and looked round at me. "I've got burdens on my
mind," he explained, "or I should have thought of it too." Having done
justice to his own abilities, he bustled out. In less than a minute, he
was back again in a state of breathless triumph. "Gloody has seen the
person," he announced; "and (what do you think, sir?) it's a woman!"

I beckoned to Gloody, waiting modestly at the door, to come in, and tell
me what he had discovered.

"I saw her outside, sir--rapping at the door here, with her parasol."
That was the servant's report.

Her parasol? Not being acquainted with the development of dress among
female servants in England, I asked if she was a lady. There seemed to be
no doubt of it in the man's mind. She was also, as Gloody supposed, a
person whom he had never seen before.

"How is it you are not sure of that?" I said.

"Well, sir, she was waiting to be let in; and I was behind her, coming
out of the wood."

"Who let her in?"

"Miss Cristel." His face brightened with an expression of interest when
he mentioned the miller's daughter. He went on with his story without
wanting questions to help him. "Miss Cristel looked like a person
surprised at seeing a stranger--what _I_ should call a free and easy
stranger. She walked in, sir, as if the place belonged to her."

I am not suspicious by nature, as I hope and believe. But I began to be
reminded of Lady Rachel already.

"Did you notice the lady's dress?" I asked.

A woman who had seen her would have been able to describe every morsel of
her dress from head to foot. The man had only observed her hat; and all
he could say was that he thought it "a smartish one."

"Any particular color?" I went on.

"Not that I know of. Dark green, I think."

"Any ornament in it?"

"Yes! A purple feather."

The hat I had seen on the head of that hateful woman was now sufficiently
described--for a man. Sly old Toller, leaving Gloody unnoticed, and
keeping his eye on me, saw the signs of conviction in my face, and said
with his customary audacity: "Who is she?"

I followed, at my humble distance, the example of Sir Walter Scott, when
inquisitive people asked him if he was the author of the Waverley Novels.
In plain English, I denied all knowledge of the stranger wearing the
green hat. But, I was naturally desirous of discovering next what Lady
Rachel had said; and I asked to speak with Cristel. Her far-seeing father
might or might not have perceived a chance of listening to our
conversation. He led me to the door of his daughter's room; and stood
close by, when I knocked softly, and begged that she would come out.

The tone of the poor girl's voice--answering, "Forgive me, sir; I can't
do it"--convicted the she-socialist (as I thought) of merciless conduct
of some sort. Assuming this conclusion to be the right one, I determined,
then and there, that Lady Rachel should not pass the doors of Trimley
Deen again. If her bosom-friend resented that wise act of severity by
leaving the house, I should submit with resignation, and should remember
the circumstance with pleasure.

"I am afraid you are ill, Cristel?" was all I could find to say, under
the double disadvantage of speaking through a door, and having a father
listening at my side.

"Oh no, Mr. Gerard, not ill. A little low in my mind, that's all. I don't
mean to be rude, sir--pray be kinder to me than ever! pray let me be!"

I said I would return on the next day; and left the room with a sore
heart.

Old Toller highly approved of my conduct. He rubbed his fleshless hands,
and whispered: "You'll get it out of Cristy to-morrow, and I'll help
you."

I found Gloody waiting for me outside the cottage. He was anxious about
Miss Cristel; his only excuse, he told me, being the fear that she might
be ill. Having set him at ease, in that particular, I said: "You seem to
be interested in Miss Cristel."

His answer raised him a step higher in my estimation.

"How can I help it, sir?"

An odd man, with a personal appearance that might excite a prejudice
against him, in some minds. I failed to see it myself in that light. It
struck me, as I walked home, that Cristel might have made many a worse
friend than the retired prize-fighter.

A change in my manner was of course remarked by Mrs. Roylake's ready
observation. I told her that I had been annoyed, and offered no other
explanation. Wonderful to relate, she showed no curiosity and no
surprise. More wonderful still, at every fair opportunity that offered,
she kept out of my way.

My next day's engagement being for seven o'clock in the evening, I put
Mrs. Roylake's self-control to a new test. With prefatory excuses, I
informed her that I should not be able to dine at home as usual.
Impossible as it was that she could have been prepared to hear this, her
presence of mind was equal to the occasion. I left the house, followed by
my stepmother's best wishes for a pleasant evening.

Hoping to speak with Cristel alone, I had arranged to reach the cottage
before seven o'clock.

On the river-margin of the wood, I was confronted by a wild gleam of
beauty in the familiar view, for which previous experience had not
prepared me. Am I wrong in believing that all scenery, no matter how
magnificent or how homely it may be, derives a splendor not its own from
favouring conditions of light and shade? Our gloomy trees and our
repellent river presented an aspect superbly transfigured, under the
shadows of the towering clouds, the fantastic wreaths of the mist, and
the lurid reddening of the sun as it stooped to its setting. Lovely
interfusions of sobered color rested, faded, returned again, on the upper
leaves of the foliage as they lightly moved. The mist, rolling
capriciously over the waters, revealed the grandly deliberate course of
the flowing current, while it dimmed the turbid earthy yellow that
discolored and degraded the stream under the full glare of day. While my
eyes followed the successive transformations of the view, as the hour
advanced, tender and solemn influences breathed their balm over my mind.
Days, happy days that were past, revived. Again, I walked hand in hand
with my mother, among the scenes that were round me, and learnt from her
to be grateful for the beauty of the earth, with a heart that felt it. We
were tracing our way along our favorite woodland path; and we found a
companion of tender years, hiding from us. She showed herself; blushing,
hesitating, offering a nosegay of wild flowers. My mother whispered to
me--I thanked the little mill-girl, and gave her a kiss. Did I feel the
child's breath, in my day-dream, still fluttering on my cheek? Was I
conscious of her touch? I started, trembled, returned reluctantly to my
present self. A visible hand touched my arm. As I turned suddenly, a
living breath played on my face. The child had faded into a vanishing
shade: the perfected woman who had grown from her had stolen on me
unawares, and was asking me to pardon her. "Mr. Gerard, you were lost in
your thoughts; I spoke, and you never heard me."

I looked at her in silence.

Was this the dear Cristel so well known to me? Or was it a mockery of her
that had taken her place?

"I hope I have not offended you?" she said.

"You have surprised me," I answered. "Something must have happened, since
I saw you last. What is it?"

"Nothing."

I advanced a step, and drew her closer to me. A dark flush discolored her
face. An overpowering brilliancy flashed from her eyes; there was an
hysterical defiance in her manner. "Are you excited? are you angry? are
you trying to startle me by acting a part?" I urged those questions on
her, one after another; and I was loudly and confidently answered.

"I dare say I am excited, Mr. Gerard, by the honor that has been done me.
You are going to keep your engagement, of course? Well, your friend, your
favorite friend, has invited me to meet you. No! that's not quite true. I
invited myself--the deaf gentleman submitted."

"Why did you invite yourself?"

"Because a tea-party is not complete without a woman."

Her manner was as strangely altered as her looks. That she was beside
herself for the moment, I clearly saw. That she had answered me
unreservedly, it was impossible to believe. I began to feel angry, when I
ought to have made allowances for her.

"Is this Lady Rachel's doing?" I said.

"What do you know of Lady Rachel, sir?"

"I know that she has visited you, and spoken to you."

"Do you know what she has said?"

"I can guess."

"Mr. Gerard, don't abuse that good and kind lady. She deserves your
gratitude as well as mine."

Her manner had become quieter; her face was more composed; her expression
almost recovered its natural charm while she spoke of Lady Rachel. I was
stupefied.

"Try, sir, to forget it and forgive it," she resumed gently, "if I have
misbehaved myself. I don't rightly know what I am saying or doing."

I pointed to the new side of the cottage, behind us.

"Is the cause there?" I asked.

"No! no indeed! I have not seen him; I have not heard from him. His
servant often brings me messages. Not one message to-day."

"Have you seen Gloody to-day?"

"Oh, yes! There's one thing, if I may make so bold, I should like to
know. Mr. Gloody is as good to me as good can be; we see each other
continually, living in the same place. But you are different; and he
tells me himself he has only seen you twice. What have you done, Mr.
Gerard, to make him like you so well, in that short time?"

I told her that he had been found in my garden, looking at the flowers.
"As he had done no harm," I said, "I wouldn't allow the servant to turn
him out; and I walked round the flower-beds with him. Little enough to
deserve such gratitude as the poor fellow expressed--and felt, I don't
doubt it."

I had intended to say no more than this. But the remembrance of Gloody's
mysterious prevarication, and of the uneasiness which I had undoubtedly
felt when I thought of it afterwards, led me (I cannot pretend to say
how) into associating Cristel's agitation with something which this man
might have said to her. I was on the point of putting the question, when
she held up her hand, and said, "Hush!"

The wind was blowing towards us from the river-side village, to which I
have already alluded. I am not sure whether I have mentioned that the
name of the place was Kylam. It was situated behind a promontory of the
river-bank, clothed thickly with trees, and was not visible from the
mill. In the present direction of the wind, we could hear the striking of
the church clock. Cristel counted the strokes.

"Seven," she said. "Are you determined to keep your engagement?"

She had repeated--in an unsteady voice, and with a sudden change in her
color to paleness--the strange question put to me by Gloody. In his case
I had failed to trace the motive. I tried to discover it now.

"Tell me why I ought to break my engagement," I said.

"Remember what I told you at the spring," she answered. "You are deceived
by a false friend who lies to you and hates you."

The man she was speaking of turned the corner of the new cottage. He
waved his hand gaily, and approached us along the road.

"Go!" she said. "Your guardian angel has forgotten you. It's too late
now."

Instead of letting me precede her, as I had anticipated, she ran on
before me--made a sign to the deaf man, as she passed him, not to stop
her--and disappeared through the open door of her father's side of the
cottage.

I was left to decide for myself. What should I have done, if I had been
twenty years older?

Say that my moral courage would have risen superior to the poorest of all
fears, the fear of appearing to be afraid, and that I should have made my
excuses to my host of the evening--how would my moral courage have
answered him, if he had asked for an explanation? Useless to speculate on
it! Had I possessed the wisdom of middle life, his book of leaves would
not have told him, in my own handwriting, that I believed in his better
nature, and accepted his friendly letter in the spirit in which he had
written.

Explain it who can--I knew that I was going to drink tea with him, and
yet I was unwilling to advance a few steps, and meet him on the road!

"I find a new bond of union between us," he said, as he joined me. "We
both feel _that._" He pointed to the grandly darkening view. "The two men
who could have painted the mystery of those growing shadows and fading
lights, lie in the graves of Rembrandt and Turner. Shall we go to tea?"

On our way to his room we stopped at the miller's door.

"Will _you_ inquire," he said, "if Miss Cristel is ready?"

I went in. Old Toller was in the kitchen, smoking his pipe without
appearing to enjoy it.

"What's come to my girl?" he asked, the moment he saw me. "Yesterday she
was in her room, crying. To-day she's in her room, praying."

The warnings which I had neglected rose in judgment against me. I was
silent; I was awed. Before I recovered myself, Cristel entered the
kitchen. Her father whispered, "Look at her!"

Of the excitement which had disturbed--I had almost said, profaned--her
beautiful face, not a vestige remained. Pale, composed, resolute, she
said, "I am ready," and led the way out.

The man whom she hated offered his arm. She took it!



CHAPTER XIII

THE CLARET JUG

I perceived but one change in the Lodger's miserable room, since I had
seen it last.

A second table was set against one of the walls. Our boiling water for
the tea was kept there, in a silver kettle heated by a spirit-lamp. I
next observed a delicate little china vase which held the tea, and a
finely-designed glass claret jug, with a silver cover. Other men,
possessing that beautiful object, would have thought it worthy of the
purest Bordeaux wine which the arts of modern adulteration permit us to
drink. This man had filled the claret jug with water.

"All my valuable property, ostentatiously exposed to view," he said, in
his bitterly facetious manner. "My landlord's property matches it on the
big table."

The big table presented a coarse earthenware teapot; cups and saucers
with pieces chipped out of them; a cracked milk jug; a tumbler which
served as a sugar basin; and an old vegetable dish, honored by holding
delicate French sweet-meats for the first time since it had left the
shop.

My deaf friend, in boisterously good spirits, pointed backwards and
forwards between the precious and the worthless objects on the two
tables, as if he saw a prospect that delighted him.

"I don't believe the man lives," he said, "who enjoys Contrast as I
do.--What do you want now?"

This question was addressed to Gloody, who had just entered the room. He
touched the earthenware teapot. His master answered: "Let it alone."

"I make the tea at other times," the man persisted, looking at me.

"What does he say? Write it down for me, Mr. Roylake. I beg you will
write it down."

There was anger in his eyes as he made that request. I took his book, and
wrote the words--harmless words, surely? He read them, and turned
savagely to his unfortunate servant.

"In the days when you were a ruffian in the prize-ring, did the other
men's fists beat all the brains out of your head? Do you think you can
make tea that is fit for Mr. Roylake to drink?"

He pointed to an open door, communicating with another bedroom. Gloody's
eyes rested steadily on Cristel: she failed to notice him, being occupied
at the moment in replacing the pin of a brooch which had slipped out of
her dress. The man withdrew into the second bedroom, and softly closed
the door.

Our host recovered his good humor. He took a wooden stool, and seated
himself by Cristel.

"Borrowed furniture," he said, "as well as borrowed tea-things. What a
debt of obligation I owe to your excellent father. How quiet you are,
dear girl. Do you regret having followed the impulse which made you
kindly offer to drink tea with us?" He suddenly turned to me. "Another
proof, Mr. Roylake, of the sisterly interest that she feels in you; she
can't hear of your coming to my room, without wanting to be with you. Ah,
you possess the mysterious attractions which fascinate the sex. One of
these days, _some_ woman will love you as never man was loved yet." He
addressed himself again to Cristel. "Still out of spirits? I dare say you
are tired of waiting for your tea. No? You have had tea already? It's
Gloody's fault; he ought to have told me that seven o'clock was too late
for you. The poor devil deserved that you should take no notice of him
when he looked at you just now. Are you one of the few women who dislike
an ugly man? Women in general, I can tell you, prefer ugly men. A
handsome man matches them on their own ground, and they don't like that.
'We are so fond of our ugly husbands; they set us off to such advantage.'
Oh, I don't report what they say; I speak the language in which they
think.--Mr. Roylake, does it strike you that the Cur is a sad cynic?
By-the-by, do you call me 'the Cur' (as I suggested) when you speak of me
to other people--to Miss Cristel, for instance? My charming young
friends, you both look shocked; you both shake your heads. Perhaps I am
in one of my tolerant humors to-day; I see nothing disgraceful in being a
Cur. He is a dog who represents different breeds. Very well, the English
are a people who represent different breeds: Saxons, Normans, Danes. The
consequence, in one case, is a great nation. The consequence, in the
other case, is the cleverest member of the whole dog family--as you may
find out for yourself if you will only teach him. Ha--how I am running
on. My guests try to slip in a word or two, and can't find their
opportunity. Enjoyment, Miss Cristel. Excitement, Mr. Roylake. For more
than a year past, I have not luxuriated in the pleasures of society. I
feel the social glow; I love the human family; I never, never, never was
such a good man as I am now. Let vile slang express my emotions: isn't it
jolly?"

Cristel and I stopped him, at the same moment. We instinctively lifted
our hands to our ears.

In his delirium of high spirits, he had burst through the invariable
monotony of his articulation. Without the slightest gradation of sound,
his voice broke suddenly into a screech, prolonged in its own discord
until it became perfectly unendurable to hear. The effect that he had
produced upon us was not lost on him. His head sank on his breast; horrid
shudderings shook him without mercy; he said to himself not to us:

"I had forgotten I was deaf."

There was a whole world of misery in those simple words. Cristel kept her
place, unmoved. I rose, and put my hand kindly on his shoulder. It was
the best way I could devise of assuring him of my sympathy.

He looked up at me, in silence.

His book of leaves was on the table; he did once more, what he had
already done at the spring. Instead of using the book as usual, he wrote
in it himself, and then handed it to me.

"Let me spare your nerves a repetition of my deaf discord. Sight, smell,
touch, taste--I would give them all to be able to hear. In reminding me
of that vain aspiration, my infirmity revenges itself: my deafness is not
accustomed to be forgotten. Well! I can be silently useful; I can make
the tea."

He rose, and, taking the teapot with him, went to the table that had been
placed against the wall. In that position, his back was turned towards
us.

At the same time, I felt his book gently taken out of my hand. Cristel
had been reading, while I read, over my shoulder. She wrote on the next
blank leaf: "Shall I make the tea?"

"Now," she said to me, "notice what happens."

Following him, she touched his arm, and presented her request. He shook
his head in token of refusal. She came back to her place by me.

"You expected that?" I said.

"Yes."

"Why did you ask me to notice his refusal?"

"Because I may want to remind you that he wouldn't let me make the tea."

"Mysteries, my dear?"

"Yes: mysteries."

"Not to be mentioned more particularly?"

"I will mention one of them more particularly. After the tea has been
made, you may possibly feel me touch your knee under the table."

I was fool enough to smile at this, and wise enough afterwards to see in
her face that I had made a mistake.

"What is your touch intended to mean?" I asked.

"It means, 'Wait,' she said."

My sense of humor was, by this time, completely held in check. That some
surprise was in store for me, and that Cristel was resolved not to take
me into her confidence, were conclusions at which I naturally arrived. I
felt, and surely not without good cause, a little annoyed. The Lodger
came back to us with the tea made. As he put the teapot on the table, he
apologized to Cristel.

"Don't think me rude, in refusing your kind offer. If there is one thing
I know I can do better than anybody else, that thing is making tea. Do
you take sugar and milk, Mr. Roylake?"

I made the affirmative sign. He poured out the tea. When he had filled
two cups, the supply was exhausted. Cristel and I noticed this. He saw
it, and at once gratified our curiosity.

"It is a rule," he said, "with masters in the art of making tea, that one
infusion ought never to be used twice. If we want any more, we will make
more; and if you feel inclined to join us, Miss Cristel, we will fill the
third cup."

What was there in this (I wondered) to make her turn pale? And why, after
what he had just said, did I see her eyes willingly rest on him, for the
first time in my experience? Entirely at a loss to understand her, I
resignedly stirred my tea. On the point of tasting it next, felt her hand
on my knee, under the table.

Bewildered as I was, I obeyed my instructions, and went on stirring my
tea. Our host smiled.

"Your sugar takes a long time to melt," he said--and drank his tea. As he
emptied the cup, the touch was taken off me. I followed his example.

In spite of his boasting, the tea was the worst I ever tasted. I should
have thrown it out of the window, if they had offered us such nasty stuff
at Trimley Deen. When I set down my cup, he asked facetiously if I wished
him to brew any more. My negative answer was a masterpiece of strong
expression, in the language of signs.

Instead of sending for Gloody to clear the table, he moved away the
objects near him, so as to leave an empty space at his disposal.

"I ought perhaps to have hesitated, before I asked you to spend the
evening with me," he said, speaking with a gentleness and amiability of
manner, strongly in contrast with his behavior up to this time. "It is my
misfortune, as you both well know, to be a check on conversation. I dare
say you have asked yourselves: How is he going to amuse us, after tea? If
you will allow me, I propose to amuse you by exhibiting the dexterity of
my fingers and thumbs. Before I was deaf, I should have preferred the
piano for this purpose. As it is, an inferior accomplishment must serve
my turn."

He opened a cupboard in the wall, close by the second table, and returned
with a pack of cards.

Cristel imitated the action of dealing cards for a game. "No," he said,
"that is not the amusement which I have in view. Allow me to present
myself in a new character. I am no longer the Lodger, and no longer the
Cur. My new name is more honorable still--I am the Conjurer."

He shuffled the pack by pouring it backwards and forwards from one hand
to the other, in a cascade of cards. The wonderful ease with which he did
it prepared me for something worth seeing. Cristel's admiration of his
dexterity expressed itself by a prolonged clapping of hands, and a
strange uneasy laugh. As his excitement subsided, her agitation broke
out. I saw the flush again on her face, and the fiery brightness in her
eyes. Once, when his attention was engaged, she stole a look at the door
by which Gloody had left the room. Did this indicate another of the
mysteries which, by her own confession, she had in preparation for me? My
late experience had not inclined me favorably towards mysteries. I
devoted my whole attention to the Conjurer.

Whether he chose the easiest examples of skill in sleight of hand is more
than I know. I can only say that I never was more completely mystified by
any professor of legerdemain on the public platform. After the
performance of each trick, he asked leave to time himself by looking at
his watch; being anxious to discover if he had lost his customary
quickness of execution through recent neglect of the necessary practice.

Of Cristel's conduct, while he was amusing us, I can only say that it
justified Mrs. Roylake's spiteful description of her as a bold girl. The
more cleverly the tricks were performed, the more they seemed to annoy
and provoke her.

"I hate being puzzled!" she said, addressing herself of course to me.
"Yes, yes; his fingers are quicker than my eyes--I have heard that
explanation before. When he has done one of his tricks, I want to know
how he does it. Conjurers are people who ask riddles, and, when one can't
guess them, refuse to say what the answer is. It's as bad as calling me a
fool, to suppose that I like being deceived. Ah," she cried, with a
shocking insolence of look and manner, "if our friend could only hear
what I am saying!"

He had paused while she was speaking, observing her attentively. "Your
face doesn't encourage me," he said, with a patience and courtesy of
manner which it was impossible not to admire. "I am coming gradually to
my greatest triumph; and I think I can surprise and please you."

He timed his last trick, and returned to the table placed against the
wall.

"Excuse me for a moment," he resumed; "I am suffering as usual, after
drinking tea. I so delight in it that the temptation to-night was more
than I could resist. Tea disagrees with my weak stomach. It always
produces thirst."

"What nonsense he talks!" Cristel exclaimed. "All mere fancy! He reminds
me of the old song called 'The Nervous Man.' Do you know it, Mr.
Roylake?"

In spite of my efforts to prevent her, she burst out with the first verse
of a stupid comic song. Spared by his deafness from this infliction of
vulgarity, our host filled a tumbler from the water in the claret jug,
and drank it.

As he set the tumbler down, we were startled by an accident in the next
room. The floor was suddenly shaken by the sound of a heavy fall. The
fall was followed by a groan which instantly brought me to my feet.

Although his infirmity made him unconscious of the groan, my friend felt
the vibration of the floor, and saw me start up from my chair. He looked
even more alarmed than I was, judging by the ghastly change that I saw in
his color; and he reached the door of the second room as soon as I did.
It is needless to say that I allowed him to enter first.

On the point of following him, I felt myself roughly pulled back. When I
turned round, and saw Cristel, I did really and truly believe that she
was mad. The furious impatience in her eyes, the frenzied strength of her
grasp on my arm, would have led most other men to form the same
conclusion.

"Come!" she cried. "No! not a word. There isn't a moment to lose." She
dragged me across the room to the table on which the claret jug stood.
She filled the tumbler from it, as _he_ had filled the tumbler. The
material of which the jug had been made was so solid (crystal, not glass
as I had supposed) that the filling of the two tumblers emptied it.
Cristel held the water out to me, gasping for breath, trembling as if she
saw some frightful reptile before her instead of myself.

"Drink it," she said, "if you value your life!"

I should of course have found it perfectly easy to obey her, strange as
her language was, if I had been in full possession of myself. Between
distress and alarm, my mind (I suppose) had lost its balance. With or
without a cause, I hesitated.

She crossed the room, and threw open the window which looked out on the
river.

"You shan't die alone," she said. "If you don't drink it, I'll throw
myself out!"

I drank from the tumbler to the last drop.

It was not water.

It had a taste which I can compare to no drink, and to no medicine, known
to me. I thought of the other strange taste peculiar to the tea. At last,
the tremendous truth forced itself on my mind. The man in whom my boyish
generosity had so faithfully believed had attempted my life.

Cristel took the tumbler from me. My poor angel clasped her free arm
round my neck, and pressed her lips, in an ecstasy of joy, on my cheek.
The next instant, she seized the claret jug, and dashed it into pieces on
the floor. "Get the jug from his washhand-stand," she said. When I gave
it to her, she poured some of the water upon the broken fragments of
crystal scattered on the floor. I had put the jug back in its place, and
was returning to Cristel, when the poisoner showed himself, entering from
the servant's room.

"Don't be alarmed," he said. "Gloody's name ought to be Glutton. An
attack of giddiness, thoroughly well deserved. I have relieved him. You
remember, Mr. Roylake, that I was once a surgeon--"

The broken claret jug caught his eye.

We have all read of men who were petrified by terror. Of the few persons
who have really witnessed that spectacle, I am one. The utter stillness
of him was really terrible to see. Cristel wrote in his book an excuse,
no doubt prepared beforehand: "That fall in the next room frightened me,
and I felt faint. I went to get some water from the jug you drank out of,
and it slipped from my hand."

She placed those words under his eyes--she might just as well have shown
them to the dog. A dead man, erect on his feet--so he looked to our eyes.
So he still looked, when I took Cristel's arm, and led her out of that
dreadful presence.

"Take me into the air!" she whispered.

A burst of tears relieved her, after the unutterable suspense that she
had so bravely endured. When she was in some degree composed again, we
walked gently up and down for a minute or two in the cool night air.
"Don't speak to me," she said, as we stopped before her father's door. "I
am not fit for it yet; I know what you feel." I pressed her to my heart,
and let the embrace speak for me. She yielded to it, faintly sighing.
"To-morrow?" I whispered. She bent her head, and left me.

Walking home through the wood, I became aware, little by little, that my
thoughts were not under the customary control. Over and over again, I
tried to review the events of that terrible evening, and failed.
Fragments of other memories presented themselves--and then deserted me.
Nonsense, absolute nonsense, found its way into my mind next, and rose in
idiotic words to my lips. I grew too lazy even to talk to myself. I
strayed from the path. The mossy earth began to rise and sink under my
feet, like the waters in a ground-swell at sea. I stood still, in a state
of idiot-wonder. The ground suddenly rose right up to my face. I remember
no more.

My first conscious exercise of my senses, when I revived, came to me by
way of my ears. Leaden weights seemed to close my eyes, to fetter my
movements, to silence my tongue, to paralyze my touch. But I heard a
wailing voice, speaking close to me, so close that it might have been my
own voice: I distinguished the words; I knew the tones.

"Oh, my master, my lord, who am I that I should live--and you die! and
you die!"

Was it her warm young breath that quickened me with its vigorous life? I
only know that the revival of my sense of touch did certainly spring from
the contact of her lips, pressed to mine in the reckless abandonment of
grief without hope. Her cry of joy, when my first sigh told her that I
was still a living creature, ran through me like an electric shock. I
opened my eyes; I held out my hand; I tried to help her when she raised
my head, and set me against the tree under which I had been stretched
helpless. With an effort I could call her by her name. Even that
exhausted me. My mind was so weak that I should have believed her, if she
had declared herself to be a spirit seen in a dream, keeping watch over
me in the wood.

Wiser than I was, she snatched up my hat, ran on before me, and was lost
in the darkness.

An interval, an unendurable interval, passed. She returned, having filled
my hat from the spring. But for the exquisite coolness of the water
falling on my face, trickling down my throat, I should have lost my
senses again. In a few minutes more, I could take that dear hand, and
hold it to me as if I was holding to my life. We could only see each
other obscurely, and in that very circumstance (as we confessed to each
other afterwards) we found the needful composure before we could speak.

"Cristel! what does it mean?"

"Poison," she answered. "And _he_ has suffered too."

To my astonishment, there was no anger in her tone: she spoke of him as
quietly as if she had been alluding to an innocent man.

"Do you mean that he has been at death's door, like me?"

"Yes, thank God--or I should never have found you here. Poor old Gloody
came to us, in search of help. 'My master's in a swoon, and I can't bring
him to.' Directly I heard that, I remembered that you had drunk what he
had drunk. What had happened to him, must have happened to you. Don't ask
me how long it was before I found you, and what I felt when I did find
you. I do so want to enjoy my happiness! Only let me see you safely home,
and I ask no more."

She helped me to rise, with the encouraging words which she might have
used to a child. She put my arm in hers, and led me carefully along
through the wood, as if I had been an old man.

Cristel had saved my life--but she would hear of no allusion to it. She
knew how the poisoner had plotted to get rid of me--but nothing that I
could say induced her to tell me how she had made the discovery. In view
of Trimley Deen, my guardian angel dropped my arm.

"Go on," she said, "and let me see the servant let you in, before I run
home."

If she had not been once more wiser than I was, I should have taken her
with me to the house; I should have positively refused to let her go back
by herself. Nothing that I could say or do had the slightest effect on
her resolution. Does the man live who could have taken leave of her
calmly, in my place? She tore herself away from me, with a sigh of
bitterness that was dreadful to hear.

"Oh, my darling," I said, "do I distress you?"

"Horribly," she answered; "but you are not to blame."

Those were her farewell words. I called after her. I tried to follow her.
She was lost to me in the darkness.



CHAPTER XIV

GLOODY SETTLES THE ACCOUNT

A night of fever; a night, when I did slumber for a few minutes, of
horrid dreams--this was what I might have expected, and this is what
really happened. The fresh morning air, flowing through my open window,
cooled and composed me; the mercy of sleep found me. When I woke, and
looked at my watch, I was a new man. The hour was noon.

I rang my bell. The servant announced that a man was waiting to see me.
"The same man, sir, who was found in the garden, looking at your
flowers." I at once gave directions to have him shown up into my bedroom.
The delay of dressing was more than I had patience to encounter. Unless I
was completely mistaken, here was the very person whom I wanted to
enlighten me.

Gloody showed himself at the door, with a face ominously wretched, as
well as ugly. I instantly thought of Cristel.

"If you bring me bad news," I said, "don't keep me waiting for it."

"It's nothing that need trouble You, sir. I'm dismissed from my master's
service--that's all."

It was plainly not "all." Relieved even by that guarded reply, I pointed
to a chair by the bedside.

"Do you believe that I mean well by you?" I asked.

"I do, sir, with all my heart."

"Then sit down, Gloody, and make a clean breast of it."

He lifted his enormous fist, by way of emphasizing his answer.

"I was within a hair's breadth, sir, of striking him. If I hadn't kept my
temper, I might have killed him."

"What did he do?"

"Flew into a furious rage. I don't complain of that; I daresay I deserved
it. Please to excuse my getting up again. I can't look you in the face,
and tell you of it." He walked away to the window. "Even a poor devil,
like me, does sometimes feel it when he is insulted. Mr. Roylake, he
kicked me. Say no more about it, sir! I would never have mentioned it, if
I hadn't had something else to tell you; only I don't know how." In this
difficulty, he came back to my bedside. "Look here, sir! What I say
is--that kick has wiped out the debt of thanks I owe him. Yes. I say the
account between us two is settled now, on both sides. In two words, sir,
if you mean to charge him before the magistrates with attempting your
life, I'll take my Bible oath he did attempt it, and you may call me as
your witness. There! Now it's out."

What his master had no doubt inferred, was what I saw plainly too.
Cristel had saved my life, and had been directed how to do it by the poor
fellow who had suffered in my cause.

"We will wait a little before we talk of setting the law in force," I
said. "In the meantime, Gloody, I want you to tell me what you would tell
the magistrate if I called you as a witness."

He considered a little. "The magistrate would put questions to
me--wouldn't he, sir? Very good. You put questions to me, and I'll answer
them to the best of my ability."

The investigation that followed was far too long and too wearisome to be
related here. If I give the substance of it, I shall have done enough.

Sometimes when he was awake, and supposed that he was alone--sometimes
when he was asleep and dreaming--the Cur had betrayed himself. (It was a
paltry vengeance, I own, to gratify a malicious pleasure--as I did
now--in thinking of him and speaking of him by the degrading name which
his morbid humility had suggested. But are the demands of a man's dignity
always paid in the ready money of prompt submission?) Anyway, it appeared
that Gloody had heard enough, in the sleeping moments and the solitary
moments of his master, to give him some idea of the jealous hatred with
which the Cur regarded me. He had done his best to warn me, without
actually betraying the man who had rescued him from starvation or the
workhouse--and he had failed.

But his resolution to do me good service, in return for my kindness to
him, far from being shaken, was confirmed by circumstances.

When his master returned to the chemical studies which have been already
mentioned, Gloody was employed as assistant, to the extent of his limited
capacity for making himself useful. He had no reason to suppose that I
was the object of any of the experiments, until the day before the
tea-party. Then, he saw the dog enticed into the new cottage, and
apparently killed by the administration of poison of some sort. After an
interval, a dose of another kind was poured down the poor creature's
throat, and he began to revive. A lapse of a quarter of an hour followed;
the last dose was repeated; and the dog soon sprang to his feet again, as
lively as ever. Gloody was thereupon told to set the animal free; and was
informed at the same time that he would be instantly dismissed, if he
mentioned to any living creature what he had just seen.

By what process he arrived at the suspicion that my safety might be
threatened, by the experiment on the dog, he was entirely unable to
explain.

"It was borne in on my mind, sir; and that's all I can tell you," he
said. "I didn't dare speak to you about it; you wouldn't have believed
me. Or, if you did believe me, you might have sent for the police. The
one way of putting a stop to murdering mischief (if murdering mischief it
might be) was to trust Miss Cristel. That she was fond of you--I don't
mean any offence, sir--I pretty well guessed. That she was true as steel,
and not easily frightened, I didn't need to guess; I knew it."

Gloody had done his best to prepare Cristel for the terrible confidence
which he had determined to repose in her, and had not succeeded. What the
poor girl must have suffered, I could but too readily understand, on
recalling the startling changes in her look and manner when we met at the
river-margin of the wood. She was pledged to secrecy, under penalty of
ruining the man who was trying to save me; and to her presence of mind
was trusted the whole responsibility of preserving my life. What a
situation for a girl of eighteen!

"We made it out between us, sir, in two ways," Gloody proceeded. "First
and foremost, she was to invite herself to tea. And, being at the table,
she was to watch my master. Whatever she saw him drink, she was to insist
on your drinking it too. You heard me ask leave to make the tea?"

"Yes."

"Well, that was one of the signals agreed on between us. When he sent me
away, we were certain of what he had it in his mind to do."

"And when you looked at Miss Cristel, and she was too busy with her
brooch to notice you, was that another signal?"

"It was, sir. When she handled her silver ornament, she told me that I
might depend on her to forget nothing, and to be afraid of nothing."

I remembered the quiet firmness in her face, after the prayer that she
had said in her own room. Her steady resolution no longer surprised me.

"Did you wonder, sir, what possessed her," Gloody went on, "when she
burst out singing? That was a signal to me. We wanted him out of our way,
while you were made to drink what he had drunk out of the jug."

"How did you know that he would not drink the whole contents of the jug?"

"You forget, sir, that I had seen the dog revived by two doses, given
with a space of time between them."

I ought to have remembered this, after what he had already told me. My
intelligence brightened a little as I went on.

"And your accident in the next room was planned, of course?" I said. "Do
you think he saw through it? I should say, No; judging by his looks. He
turned pale when he felt the floor shaken by your fall. For once in a
way, he was honest--honestly frightened."

"I noticed the same thing, sir, when he picked me up, off the floor. A
man who can change his complexion, at will, is a man we hav'n't heard of
yet, Mr. Roylake."

I had been dressing for some time past; longing to see Cristel, it is
needless to say.

"Is there anything more," I asked, "that I ought to know?"

"Only one thing, Mr. Roylake, that I can think of," Gloody replied. "I'm
afraid it's Miss Cristel's turn next."

"What do you mean?"

"While the deaf man lodges at the cottage, he means mischief, and his eye
is on Miss Cristel. Early this morning, sir, I happened to be at the
boat-house. Somebody (I leave you to guess who it is) has stolen the
oars."

I was dressed by this time, and so eager to get to the cottage, that I
had already opened my door. What I had just heard brought me back into
the room. As a matter of course, we both suspected the same person of
stealing the oars. Had we any proof to justify us?

Gloody at once acknowledged that we had no proof. "I happened to look at
the boat," he said, "and I missed the oars. Oh, yes; I searched the
boat-house. No oars! no oars!"

"And nothing more that you have forgotten, and ought to tell me?"

"Nothing, sir."

I left Gloody to wait my return; being careful to place him under the
protection of the upper servants--who would see that he was treated with
respect by the household generally.



CHAPTER XV

THE MILLER'S HOSPITALITY

On the way to Toller's cottage, my fears for Cristel weighed heavily on
my mind.

That the man who had tried to poison me was capable of committing any
other outrage, provided he saw a prospect of escaping with impunity, no
sane person could hesitate to conclude. But the cause of my alarm was not
to be traced to this conviction. It was a doubt that made me tremble.

After what I had myself seen, and what Gloody had told me, could I hope
to match my penetration, or the penetration of any person about me whom I
could trust, against the fathomless cunning, the Satanic wickedness, of
the villain who was still an inmate with Cristel, under her father's
roof?

I have spoken of his fathomless cunning, and his Satanic wickedness. The
manner in which the crime had been prepared and carried out would justify
stronger expressions still. Such was the deliberate opinion of the lawyer
whom I privately consulted, under circumstances still to be related.

"Let us arrive at a just appreciation of the dangerous scoundrel whom we
have to deal with," this gentleman said. "His preliminary experiment with
the dog; his resolution to make suspicion an impossibility, by drinking
from the same tea which he had made ready for you; his skilled
preparation of an antidote, the color of which might court appearances by
imitating water--are there many poisoners clever enough to provide
themselves beforehand with such a defence as this? How are you to set the
circumstances in their true light, on your side? You may say that you
threw out the calculations, on which he had relied for securing his own
safety, by drinking his second dose of the antidote while he was out of
the room; and you can appeal to the fainting-fits from which you and he
suffered on the same evening, as a proof that the action of the poison
was partially successful; in your case and in his, because you and he
were insufficiently protected by half doses only of the antidote. A bench
of Jesuits would understand these refinements. A bench of British
magistrates would look at each other, and say: Where is the medical
evidence? No, Mr. Roylake, we must wait. You can't even turn him out of
the cottage before he has had the customary notice to quit. The one thing
to take care of--in case some other suspicions of ours turn out to be
well founded--is that our man shall not give us the slip. One of my
clerks, and one of your gamekeepers shall keep watch on his lodgings,
turn and turn about, till his time is up. Go where he may after that, he
shall not escape us."


I may now take up the chain of events again.

On reaching Toller's cottage, I was distressed (but hardly surprised) to
hear that Cristel, exhausted after a wakeful night, still kept her bed,
in the hope of getting some sleep. I was so anxious to know if she was at
rest, that her father went upstairs to look at her.

I followed him--and saw Ponto watching on the mat outside her door. Did
this indicate a wise distrust of the Cur? "A guardian I can trust, sir,"
the old man whispered, "while I'm at the mill."

He looked into Cristel's room, and permitted me to look over his
shoulder. My poor darling was peacefully asleep. Judging by the miller's
manner, which was as cool and composed as usual, I gathered that Cristel
had wisely kept him in ignorance of what had happened on the previous
evening.

The inquiry which I had next in my mind was forestalled by old Toller.

"Our deaf-devil, Mr. Gerard, has done a thing this morning which puzzles
me," he began; "and I should like to hear what you think of it. For the
first time since we have had him here, he has opened his door to a
visitor. And--what a surprise for you!--it's the other devil with the hat
and feather who got at my Cristy, and made her cry."

That this meeting would be only too likely to happen, in due course of
time, I had never doubted. That it had happened, now, confirmed me in my
resolution to keep guard over Cristel at the cottage, till the Cur left
it.

I asked, of course, how those two enemies of mine had first seen each
other.

"She was just going to knock at our door, Mr. Gerard, when she happened
to look up. There he was, airing himself at his window as usual. Do you
think she was too much staggered at the sight of him to speak? At any
rate, he got the start of her. 'Wait till I come down,' says he--and
there he was, almost as soon as he said it. They went into his place
together; and for best part of an hour they were in each other's company.
Every man has his failings; I don't deny that I'm a little inquisitive by
nature. Between ourselves, I got under the open window and listened. At a
great disadvantage, I needn't tell you; for she was obliged to write what
she had to say. But _he_ talked. I was too late for the cream of it; I
only heard him wish her good-bye. 'If your ladyship telegraphs this
morning,' says he, 'when will the man come to me?' Now what do you say to
that?"

"More than I have time to say now, Mr. Toller. Can you find me a
messenger to take a note to Trimley Deen?"

"We have no messengers in this lonesome place, sir."

"Very well. Then I must take my own message. You will see me again, as
soon as I can get back."

Mr. Toller's ready curiosity was roused in a moment.

"Perhaps, you wish to have a look at the repairs?" he suggested in his
most insinuating manner.

"I wish to see what her ladyship's telegram brings forth," I said; "and
mean to be here when 'the man' arrives."

My venerable tenant was delighted. "Turn him inside out, sir, and get at
his secrets. I'll help you."

Returning to Trimley Deen, I ordered the pony-chaise to be got ready, and
a small portmanteau to be packed--speaking in the hall. The sound of my
voice brought Mrs. Roylake out of the morning-room. She was followed by
Lady Rachel. If I could only have heard their private conference, I
should have seen the dangerous side of the Cur's character under a new
aspect.

"Gerard!" cried my stepmother, "what did I hear just now? You can't be
going back to Germany!"

"Certainly not," I answered.

"Going to stay with some friends perhaps?" Lady Rachel suggested. "I
wonder whether I know them?"

It was spitefully done--but, in respect of tone and manner, done to
perfection.

The pony-chaise drew up at the door. This was another of the rare
occasions in my life on which I acted discreetly. It was necessary for me
to say something. I said, "Good morning."

Nothing had happened at the cottage, during the interval of my absence.
Clever as he was, old Toller had never suspected that I should return to
him (with luggage!) in the character of a self-invited guest. His jaw
dropped, and his wicked little eyes appealed to the sky. Merciful
Providence! what have I done to deserve this? There, as I read him, was
the thought in the miller's mind, expressed in my best English.

"Have you got a spare bed in the house?" I asked.

Mr. Toller forgot the respect due to the person who could stop the
repairs at a moment's notice. He answered in the tone of a man who had
been grossly insulted: "No!"

But for the anxieties that oppressed me, I should have only perceived the
humorous side of old Toller's outbreak of temper. He had chosen his time
badly, and he got a serious reply.

"Understand this," I said: "either you receive me civilly--or you make up
your mind to find a flour-mill on some other property than mine."

This had its effect. The miller's servility more than equalled his
insolence. With profuse apologies, he offered me his own bedroom. I
preferred a large old-fashioned armchair which stood in a corner of the
kitchen. Listening in a state of profound bewilderment--longing to put
inquisitive questions, and afraid to do so--Toller silently appealed to
my compassion. I had nothing to conceal; I mentioned my motive. Without
intending it, I had wounded him in one of his most tender places; the
place occupied by his good opinion of himself. He said with sulky
submission:

"Much obliged, Mr. Gerard. My girl is safe under my protection. Leave it
to me, sir--leave it to me."

I had just reminded old Toller of his age, and of the infirmities which
age brings with it, when his daughter--pale and languid, with signs of
recent tears in her eyes--entered the kitchen. When I approached her, she
trembled and drew back; apparently designing to leave the room. Her
father stopped her. "Mr. Gerard has something to tell you," he said. "I'm
off to the mill." He took up his hat, and left us.

Submitting sadly, she let me take her in my arms, and try to cheer her.
But when I alluded to what I owed to her admirable devotion and courage,
she entreated me to be silent. "Don't bring it all back!" she cried,
shuddering at the remembrances which I had awakened, "Father said you had
something to tell me. What is it?"

I repeated (in language more gentle and more considerate) what I had
already said to her father. She took my hand, and kissed it gratefully.
"You have your mother's face, and your mother's heart," she said; "you
are always good, you are never selfish. But it mustn't be. How can I let
you suffer the discomfort of staying here? Indeed, I am in no danger; you
are alarming yourself without a cause."

"How can you be sure of that?" I asked.

She looked reluctantly at the door of communication.

"Must I speak of him?"

"Only to tell me," I pleaded, "whether you have seen him since last
night."

She had both seen him and heard from him, on reaching home. "He opened
that door," she told me, "and threw on the floor one of the leaves out of
his book. After doing that, he relieved me from the sight of him."

"Show me the leaf, Cristel."

"Father has got it. I thought he was asleep in the armchair. He snatched
it out of my hand. It isn't worth reading."

She turned pale, nevertheless, when she replied in those terms. I could
see that I was disturbing her, when I asked if she remembered what the
Cur had written. But our position was far too serious to be trifled with.
"I suppose he threatened you?" I said, trying to lead her on. "What did
he say?"

"He said, if any attempt was made to remove me out of his reach, after
what had happened that evening, my father would find him on the watch day
and night, and would regret it to the end of his life. The wretch thinks
me cruel enough to have told my father of the horrors we went through!
You know that he has dismissed his poor old servant? Was I wrong in
advising Gloody to go to you?"

"You were quite right. He is at my house--and I should like to keep him
at Trimley Deen; but I am afraid he and the other servants might not get
on well together?"

"Will you let him come here?"

She spoke earnestly; reminding me that I had thought it wrong to leave
her father, at his age, without someone to help him.

"If an accident separated me from him," she went on, "he would be left
alone in this wretched place."

"What accident are you thinking of?" I asked. "Is there something going
on, Cristel, that I don't know of?"

Had I startled her? or had I offended her?

"Can we tell what may or may not happen to us, in the time to come?" she
asked abruptly. "I don't like to think of my father being left without a
creature to take care of him. Gloody is so good and so true; and they
always get on well together. If you have nothing better in view for
him--?"

"My dear, I have nothing half so good in view; and Gloody, I am sure,
will think so too." I privately resolved to insure a favorable reception
for the poor fellow, by making him the miller's partner. Bank notes in
Toller's pocket! What a place reserved for Gloody in Toller's estimation!

But I confess that Cristel's allusion to a possible accident rather
oppressed my mind, situated as we were at that time. What we talked of
next has slipped from my memory. I only recollect that she made an excuse
to go back to her room, and that nothing I could say or do availed to
restore her customary cheerfulness.

As the twilight was beginning to fade, we heard the sound of a carriage.
The new man had arrived in a fly from the station. Before bedtime, he
made his appearance in the kitchen, to receive the domestic instructions
of which a stranger stood in need. A quiet man and a civil man: even my
prejudiced examination could discover nothing in him that looked
suspicious. I saw a well-trained servant--and I saw nothing more.

Old Toller made a last attempt to persuade me that it was not worth a
gentleman's while to accept his hospitality, and found me immovable. I
was equally obstinate when Cristel asked leave to make up a bed for me in
the counting-house at the mill.

With the purpose that I had in view, if I accepted her proposal I might
as well have been at Trimley Deen.

Left alone, I placed the armchair and another chair for my feet, across
the door of communication. That done, I examined a little door behind the
stairs (used I believe for domestic purposes) which opened on a narrow
pathway, running along the river-side of the house. It was properly
locked. I have only to add that nothing happened during the night.

The next day showed no alteration for the better, in Cristel. She made an
excuse when I proposed to take her out with me for a walk. Her father's
business kept him away from the cottage, and thus gave me many
opportunities of speaking to her in private. I was so uneasy, or so
reckless--I hardly know which--that I no longer left it to be merely
inferred that I had resolved to propose marriage to her.

"My sweet girl, you are so wretched, and so unlike yourself, in this
place, that I entreat you to leave it. Come with me to London, and let me
make you safe and happy as my wife."

"Oh, Mr. Roylake!"

"Why do you call me, 'Mr Roylake'? Have I done anything to offend you?
There seems to be some estrangement between us. Do you believe that I
love you?"

"I wish I could doubt it!" she answered.

"Why?"

"You know why."

"Cristel! Have I made some dreadful mistake? The truth! I want the truth!
Do you love me?"

A low cry of misery burst from her. Was she mastered by love, or by
despair? She threw herself on my breast. I kissed her. She murmured, "Oh
don't tempt me! Don't tempt me!" Again and again, I kissed her. "Ah," I
broke out, in the ecstasy of my sense of relief, "I know that you love
me, now!"

"Yes," she said, simply and sadly, "I do love you."

My selfish passion asked for more even than this.

"Prove it by being my wife," I answered.

She put me back from her, firmly and gently.

"I will prove it, Gerard, by not letting you disgrace yourself."

With those horrible words--put into her mouth, beyond all doubt by the
woman who had interfered between us--she left me. The long hours of the
day passed: I saw her no more.

People who are unable to imagine what I suffered, are not the people to
whom I now address myself. After all the years that have passed--after
age and contact with the world have hardened me--it is still a trial to
my self-control to look back to that day. Events I can remember with
composure. To events, therefore, let me return.

No communication of any sort reached us from the Cur. Towards evening, I
saw him pacing up and down on the road before the cottage, and speaking
to his new servant. The man (listening attentively) had the master's book
of leaves in his hand, and wrote in it from time to time as replies were
wanted from him. He was probably receiving instructions. The Cur's
discretion was a bad sign. I should have felt more at ease, if he had
tried to annoy Cristel, or to insult me.

Towards bedtime, old Toller's sense of hospitality exhibited marked
improvement. He was honored and happy to have me under his poor roof--a
roof, by the way, which was also in need of repairs--but he protested
against my encountering the needless hardship of sleeping in a chair,
when a bed could be set up for me in the counting-house. "Not what you're
used to, Mr. Gerard. Empty barrels, and samples of flour, and
account-books smelling strong of leather, instead of velvet curtains and
painted ceilings; but better than a chair, sir--better than a chair!"

I was as obstinate as ever. With thanks, I insisted on the chair.

Feverish, anxious, oppressed in my breathing--with nerves unstrung, as a
doctor would have put it--I disturbed the order of the household towards
twelve o'clock by interfering with old Toller in the act of locking up
the house-door.

"Let me get a breath of fresh air," I said to him, "or there will be no
sleep for me to-night."

He opened the door with a resignation to circumstances, so exemplary that
it claimed some return. I promised to be back in a quarter of an hour.
Old Toller stifled a yawn. "I call that truly considerate," he said--and
stifled another yawn. Dear old man!

Stepping into the road, I first examined the Cur's part of the cottage.
Not a sound was audible inside; not a creature was visible outside. The
usual dim light was burning behind the window that looked out on the
road. Nothing, absolutely nothing, that was suspicious could I either
hear or see.

I walked on, by what we called the upper bank of the river; leading from
the village of Kylam. The night was cloudy and close. Now the moonlight
reached the earth at intervals; now again it was veiled in darkness. The
trees, at this part of the wood, so encroached on the bank of the stream
as considerably to narrow and darken the path. Seeing a possibility of
walking into the river if I went on much farther, I turned back again in
the more open direction of Kylam, and kept on briskly (as I reckon) for
about five minutes more.

I had just stopped to look at my watch, when I saw something dark
floating towards me, urged by the slow current of the river. As it came
nearer, I thought I recognized the mill-boat.

It was one of the dark intervals when the moon was overcast. I was
sufficiently interested to follow the boat, on the chance that a return
of the moonlight might show me who could possibly be in it. After no very
long interval, the yellow light for which I was waiting poured through
the lifting clouds.

The mill-boat, beyond all doubt--and nobody in it! The empty inside of
the boat was perfectly visible to me. Even if I had felt inclined to do
so, it would have been useless to jump into the water and swim to the
boat. There were no oars in it, and therefore no means of taking it back
to the mill. The one thing I could do was to run to old Toller and tell
him that his boat was adrift.

On my way to the cottage, I thought I heard a sound like the shutting of
a door. I was probably mistaken. In expectation of my return, the door
was secured by the latch only; and the miller, looking out of his bedroom
window, said: "Don't forget to lock it, sir; the key's inside."

I followed my instructions, and ascended the stairs. Surprised to hear me
in that part of the house, he came out on the landing in his nightgown.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Nothing very serious," I said. "The boat's adrift. I suppose it will run
on shore somewhere."

"It will do that, Mr. Gerard; everybody along the river knows the boat."
He held up his lean trembling hand. "Old fingers don't always tie fast
knots."

He went back into his bed. It was opposite the window; and the window,
being at the side of the old cottage, looked out on the great open space
above the river. When the moonlight appeared, it shone straight into his
eyes. I offered to pull down the blind.

"Thank you kindly, sir; please to let it be. I wake often in the night,
and I like to see the heavens when I open my eyes."

Something touched me behind: it was the dog. Like his noble and beautiful
race, Ponto knew his friends. He licked my hand, and then he walked out
through the bedroom door. Instead of taking his usual place, on the mat
before Cristel's room, he smelt for a moment under the door--whined
softly--and walked up and down the landing.

"What's the matter with the dog?" I asked.

"Restless to-night," said old Toller. "Dogs _are_ restless sometimes. Lie
down!" he called through the doorway.

The dog obeyed, but only for a moment. He whined at the door again--and
then, once more, he walked up and down the landing.

I went to the bedside. The old man was just going to sleep. I shook him
by the shoulder.

"There's something wrong," I said. "Come out and look at Ponto."

He grumbled--but he came out. "Better get the whip," he said.

"Before you do that," I answered, "knock at your daughter's door."

"And wake her?" he asked in amazement.

I knocked at the door myself. There was no reply. I knocked again, with
the same result.

"Open the door," I said, "or I will do it myself."

He obeyed me. The room was empty; and the bed had not been slept in.

Standing helpless on the threshold of the door, I looked into the empty
room; hearing nothing but my heart thumping heavily, seeing nothing but
the bed with the clothes on it undisturbed.

The sudden growling of the dog shook me back (if I may say so) into the
possession of myself. He was looking through the balusters that guarded
the landing. The head of a man appeared, slowly ascending the stairs.
Acting mechanically, I held the dog back. Thinking mechanically, I waited
for the man. The face of the new servant showed itself. The dog
frightened him: he spoke in tones that trembled, standing still on the
stairs.

"My master has sent me, sir--"

A voice below interrupted him. "Come back," I heard the Cur say; "I'll do
it myself. Toller! where is Toller?"

The enraged dog, barking furiously, struggled to get away from me. I
dragged him--the good honest creature who was incapable of concealments
and treacheries!--into his master's room. In the moment before I closed
the door again, I saw Toller down on his knees with his arms laid
helplessly on the window-sill, staring up at the sky as if he had gone
mad. There was no time for questions; I drove poor Ponto back into the
room, and shut the door.

On the landing, I found myself face to face with the Cur.

"_You!_" he said.

I lifted my hand. The servant ran between us. "For God's sake, control
yourself, sir! We mean no harm. It's only to tell Mr. Toller that his
boat is missing."

"Mr. Toller knows it already," I said. "No honest man would touch your
master if he could help it. I warn him to go; and I make him understand
me by a sign." I pointed down the stairs, and turned my head to look at
him.

He was no longer before me. His face, hideously distorted by rage and
terror, showed itself at the door of Cristel's empty room. He rushed out
on me; his voice rose to the detestable screech which I had heard once
already.

"Where have you hidden her? Give her back to me--or you die." He drew a
pistol out of the breast-pocket of his coat. I seized the weapon by the
barrel, and snatched it away from him. As the charge exploded harmlessly
between us, I struck him on the head with the butt-end of the pistol. He
dropped on the landing.

The door of Toller's room opened behind me. He stood speechless; the
report of the pistol had terrified him. In the instant when I looked at
the old man, I saw, through the window of his room, a rocket soar into
the sky, from behind the promontory between us and Kylam.

Some cry of surprise must, I suppose, have escaped me. Toller suddenly
looked round towards the window, just as the last fiery particles of the
rocket were floating slowly downwards against the black clouds.

I had barely time enough to see this, before a trembling hand was laid on
my shoulder, from behind. The servant, white with terror, pointed to his
master.

"Have you killed him?" the man said.

The same question must have been in the mind of the dog. He was quiet
now. Doubtfully, reluctantly, he was smelling at the prostrate human
creature. I knelt down, and put my hand on the wretch's heart. Ponto,
finding us both on a level together, gave me the dog's kiss; I returned
the caress with my free hand. The servant saw me, with my attention
divided in this way between the animal and the man.

"Damn it, sir," he burst out indignantly, "isn't a Christian of more
importance than a dog?"

A Christian!--but I was in no humor to waste words. "Are you strong
enough to carry him to his own side of the house?" I asked.

"I won't touch him, if he's dead!"

"He is _not_ dead. Take him away!"

All this time my mind was pre-occupied by the extraordinary appearance of
the rocket, rising from the neighborhood of a lonely little village
between midnight and one in the morning. How I connected that mysterious
signal with a possibility of tracing Cristel, it is useless to inquire.
That was the thought in me, when I led my lost darling's father back to
his room. Without stopping to explain myself, I reminded him that the
cottage was quiet again, and told him to wait my return.

In the kitchen, I overtook the servant and his burden. The door of
communication (by which they had entered) was still open.

"Lock that door," I said.

"Lock it yourself," he answered; "I'll have nothing to do with this
business." He passed through the doorway, and along the passage, and
ascended his master's stairs.

It struck me directly that the man had suggested a sure way of protecting
Toller, during my absence. The miller's own door was already secured; I
took the key, so as to be able to let myself in again--then passed
through the door of communication--fastened it--and put the key in my
pocket. The third door, by which the Cur entered his lodgings, was of
course at my disposal. I had just closed it, when I discovered that I had
a companion. Ponto had followed me.

I felt at once that the dog's superior powers of divination might be of
use, on such an errand as mine was. We set out together for Kylam.

Wildly hurried--without any fixed idea in my mind--I ran to Kylam, for
the greater part of the way. It was now very dark. On a sandy creek,
below the village, I came in contact with something solid enough to hurt
me for the moment. It was the stranded boat.

A smoker generally has matches about him. Helped by my little short-lived
lights, I examined the interior of the boat. There was absolutely nothing
in it but a strip of old tarpaulin--used, as I guessed, to protect the
boat, or something that it carried, in rainy weather.

The village population had long since been in bed. Silence and darkness
mercilessly defied me to discover anything. For a while I waited,
encouraging the dog to circle round me and exercise his sense of smell.
Any suspicious person or object he would have certainly discovered.
Nothing--not even the fallen stick of the rocket--rewarded our patience.
Determined to leave nothing untried, I groped, rather than found, my way
to the village ale house, and succeeded at last in rousing the landlord.
He hailed me from the window (naturally enough) in no friendly voice. I
called out my name. Within my own little limits, it was the name of a
celebrated person. The landlord opened his door directly; eager to answer
my questions if he could do it. Nothing in the least out of the common
way had happened at Kylam. No strangers had been seen in, or near, the
place. The stranded boat had not been discovered; and the crashing flight
of the rocket into the air had failed to disturb the soundly-sleeping
villagers.

On my melancholy way back, fatigue of body--and, far worse, fatigue of
mind--forced me to take a few minutes' rest.

The dimly-flowing river was at my feet; the river on which I had seen
Cristel again, for the first time since we were children. Thus far, the
dreadful loss of her had been a calamity, held away from me in some
degree by events which had imperatively taken possession of my mind. In
the darkness and the stillness, the misery of having lost her was free to
crush me. My head dropped on the neck of the dog, nestling close at my
side. "Oh, Ponto!" I said to him, "she's gone!" Nobody could see me;
nobody could despise me--I burst out crying.



CHAPTER XVI

BRIBERY AND CORRUPTION

Twice, I looked into Toller's room during the remainder of the night, and
found him sleeping. When the sun rose, I could endure the delay no
longer. I woke him.

"What is it?" he asked peevishly.

"You must be the last person who saw Cristel," I answered. "I want to
know all that you can tell me."

His anger completely mastered him; he burst out with a furious reply.

"It's you two--you my landlord, and him my lodger--who have driven Cristy
away from her home. She said she would go, and she has gone. Get out of
my place, sir! You ought to be ashamed to look at me."

It was useless to reason with him, and it was of vital importance to lose
no time in instituting a search. After the reception I had met with, I
took care to restore the key of the door leading into the new cottage,
before I left him. It was his key; and the poor distracted old man might
charge me with taking away his property next.

As I set forth on my way home, I found the new man-servant on the
look-out.

His first words showed that he was acting under orders. He asked if I had
found the young lady; and he next informed me that his master had revived
some hours since, and "bore no malice." This outrageous assertion
suddenly fired me with suspicion. I believed that the Cur had been acting
a part when he threatened me with his pistol, and that he was answerable
for the disappearance of Cristel. My first impulse now was to get the
help of a lawyer.

The men at my stables were just stirring when I got home. In ten minutes
more, I was driving to our town.

The substance of the professional opinion which I received has been
already stated in these pages.

One among my answers to the many questions which my legal adviser put to
me led him to a conclusion that made my heart ache. He was of opinion
that my brief absence, while I was taking that fatal "breath of air" on
the banks of the river, had offered to Cristel her opportunity of getting
away without discovery. "Her old father," the lawyer said, "was no doubt
in his bed, and you yourself found nobody watching, in the neighborhood
of the cottage."

"Employ me in some way!" I burst out. "I can't endure my life, if I'm not
helping to trace Cristel."

He was most kind. "I understand," he said. "Try what you can get those
two ladies to tell you--and you may help us materially."

Mrs. Roylake was nearest to me. I appealed to her womanly sympathies, and
was answered by tears. I made another attempt; I said I was willing to
believe that she meant well, and that I should be sorry to offend her.
She got up, and indignantly left the room.

I went to Lady Rachel next.

She was at home, but the servant returned to me with an excuse: her
ladyship was particularly engaged. I sent a message upstairs, asking when
I might hope to be received. The servant was charged with the delivery of
another excuse: her ladyship would write. After waiting at home for hours
I was foolish enough to write, on my side; and (how could I help it?) to
express myself strongly. The she-socialist's reply is easy to remember:
"Dear Mr. Roylake, when you have recovered your temper, you will hear
from me again."

Even my stepmother gained by comparison with this.

To rest, and do nothing, was to exercise a control over myself of which I
was perfectly incapable. I went back to the cottage. Having no hopeful
prospect in any other quarter, I persisted in believing that Toller must
have seen something or heard something that might either help me, or
suggest an idea to my legal adviser.

On entering the kitchen, I found the door of communication wide open, and
the new servant established in the large armchair.

"I'm waiting for my master, sir."

He had got over his fright, and had recovered his temper. The respectful
side of him was turned to me again.

"Your master is with Mr. Toller?"

"Yes, sir."

What I felt, amply justified the lawyer in having exacted a promise from
me to keep carefully out of the Cur's presence. "You might knock him on
the head again, Mr. Roylake, and might hit a little too hard next time."

But I had an idea of my own. I said, as if speaking to myself: "I would
give a five pound note to know what is going on upstairs."

"I shall be glad to earn it, sir," the fellow said. "If I make a clean
breast of what I know already, and if I tell you to-morrow what I can
find out--will it be worth the money?"

I began to feel degraded in my own estimation. But I nodded to him, for
all that.

"I am the innocent cause, sir, of what happened last night," he coolly
resumed. "We kept a look-out on the road and saw you, though you didn't
see us. But my master never suspected you (for reasons which he kept to
himself) of making use of the boat. I reminded him that one of us had
better have an eye on the slip of pathway, between the cottage and the
river. This led to his sending me to the boathouse--and you know what
happened afterwards. My master, as I suppose, is pumping Mr. Toller.
That's all, sir, for to-night. When may I have the honor of expecting you
to-morrow morning?"

I appointed an hour, and left the place.

As I entered the wood again, I found a man on the watch. He touched his
hat, and said: "I'm the clerk, sir. Your gamekeeper is wanted for his own
duties to-night; he will relieve me in the morning."

I went home with my mind in a ferment of doubt. If I could believe the
servant, the Cur was as innocent of the abduction of Cristel as I was.
But could I trust the servant?

The events of the next morning altered the whole complexion of affairs
fatally for the worse.

Arriving at the cottage, I found a man prostate on the road, dead
drunk--and the Cur's servant looking at him.

"May I ask something?" the man said. "Have you been having my master
watched?"

"Yes."

"Bad news, in that case, sir. Your man there is a drunken vagabond; and
my master has gone to London by the first train."

When I had recovered the shock, I denied, for the sake of my own credit,
that the brute on the road could be a servant of mine.

"Why not, sir?"

"Do you think I should have been kept in ignorance of it, if my
gamekeeper had been a drunkard? His fellow servants would have warned
me."

The man smiled. "I'm afraid, sir, you don't know much about servants.
It's a point of honor among us never to tell tales of each other to our
masters."

I began to wish that I had never left Germany. The one course to take now
was to tell the lawyer what had happened. I turned away to get back, and
drive at once to the town. The servant remembered, what I had
forgotten--the five pound note.

"Wait and hear my report, sir," he suggested.

The report informed me: First, that Mr. Toller was at the mill, and had
been there for some time past. Secondly: that the Cur had been alone, for
a while, on Mr. Toller's side of the cottage, in Mr. Toiler's
absence--for what purpose his servant had not discovered. Thirdly: that
the Cur had returned to his room in a hurry, and had packed a few things
in his travelling-bag. Fourthly: that he had ordered the servant to
follow, with his luggage, in a fly which he would send from the railway
station, and to wait at the London terminus for further orders. Fifthly,
and lastly: that it was impossible to say whether the drunkenness of the
gamekeeper was due to his own habits, or to temptation privately offered
by the very person whose movements he had been appointed to watch.

I paid the money. The man pocketed it, and paid me a compliment in
return: "I wish I was your servant, sir."



CHAPTER XVII

UTTER FAILURE

My lawyer took a serious view of the disaster that had overtaken us. He
would trust nobody but his head clerk to act in my interests, after the
servant had been followed to the London terminus, and when it became a
question of matching ourselves against the deadly cunning of the man who
had escaped us.

Provided with money, and with a letter to the police authorities in
London, the head clerk went to the station. I accompanied him to point
out the servant (without being allowed to show myself), and then returned
to wait for telegraphic information at the lawyer's office.

This was the first report transmitted by the telegram:

The Cur had been found waiting for his servant at the terminus; and the
two had been easily followed to the railway hotel close by. The clerk had
sent his letter of introduction to the police--had consulted with picked
men who joined him at the hotel--had given the necessary
instructions--and would return to us by the last train in the evening.

In two days, the second telegram arrived.

Our man had been traced to the Thames Yacht Club in Albemarle Street--had
consulted a yachting list in the hall--and had then travelled to the Isle
of Wight. There, he had made inquiries at the Squadron Yacht Club, and
the Victoria Yacht Club--and had returned to London, and the railway
hotel.

The third telegram announced the utter destruction of all our hopes. As
far as Marseilles, the Cur had been followed successfully, and in that
city the detective officers had lost sight of him.

My legal adviser insisted on having the men sent to him to explain
themselves. Nothing came of it but one more repetition of an old
discovery. When the detective police force encounters intelligence
instead of stupidity, in seven cases out of ten the detective police
force is beaten.

There were still two persons at our disposal. Lady Rachel might help us,
as I believed, if she chose to do it. As for old Toller, I suggested (on
reflection) that the lawyer should examine him. The lawyer declined to
waste any more of my money. I called again on Lady Rachel. This time, I
was let in. I found the noble lady smoking a cigarette and reading a
French novel.

"This is going to be a disagreeable interview," she said. "Let us get it
over, Mr. Roylake, as soon as possible. Tell me what you want--and speak
as freely as if you were in the company of a man."

I obeyed her to the letter; and I got these replies:

"Yes; I did have a talk, in your best interests, with Miss Toller. She is
as sensible as she is charming, and as good as she is sensible. We
entirely agreed that the sacrifice must be on her side; and that it was
due to her own self-respect to prevent a gentleman of your rank from
ruining himself by marrying a miller's daughter."

The next reply was equally free from the smallest atom of sympathy on
Lady Rachel's part.

"You are quite right--your deaf man was at his window when I went by. We
recognized each other and had a long talk. If I remember correctly, he
said you knew of his reasons for concealing his name. I gave my promise
(being a matter of perfect indifference to me) to conceal it too. One
thing led to another, and I discovered that you were his hated rival in
the affections of Miss Toller. I proved worthy of his confidence in me.
That is to say, I told him that Mrs. Roylake and I would be only too
glad, as representing your interests, if he succeeded in winning the
young lady. I asked if he had any plans. He said one of his plans had
failed. What it was, and how it had failed, he did not mention. I asked
if he could devise nothing else. He said, "Yes, if I was not a poor man."
In my place, you would have offered, as I did, to find the money if the
plan was approved of. He produced some manuscript story of an abduction
of a lady, which he had written to amuse himself. The point of it was
that the lover successfully carried away the lady, by means of a boat,
while the furious father's attention was absorbed in watching the high
road. It seemed to me to be a new idea. "If you think you can carry it
out," I said, "send your estimate of expenses to me and Mrs. Roylake, and
we will subscribe." We received the estimate. But the plan has failed,
and the man is off. I am quite certain myself that Miss Toller has done
what she promised to do. Wherever she may be now, she has sacrificed
herself for your sake. When you have got over it, you will marry my
sister. I wish you good morning."

Between Lady Rachel's hard insolence, and Mrs. Roylake's sentimental
hypocrisy, I was in such a state of irritation that I left Trimley Deen
the next morning, to find forgetfulness, as I rashly supposed, in the gay
world of London.

I had been trying my experiment for something like three weeks, and was
beginning to get heartily weary of it, when I received a letter from the
lawyer.


"Dear Sir,--Your odd tenant, old Mr. Toller, has died suddenly of rupture
of a blood-vessel on the brain, as the doctor thinks. There is to be an
inquest, as I need hardly tell you. What do you say to having the report
of the proceedings largely copied in the newspapers? If it catches his
daughter's eye, important results may follow."


To speculate in this way on the impulse which might take its rise in my
poor girl's grief--to surprise her, as it were, at her father's
grave--revolted me. I directed the lawyer to take no steps whatever in
the matter, and to pay the poor old fellow's funeral expenses, on my
account. He had died intestate. The law took care of his money until his
daughter appeared; and the mill, being my property, I gave to Toller's
surviving partner--our good Gloody.

And what did I do next? I went away travelling; one of the wretchedest
men who ever carried his misery with him to foreign countries. Go where I
might on the continent of Europe, the dreadful idea pursued me that
Cristel might be dead.



CHAPTER XVIII

THE MISTRESS OF TRIMLEY DEEN

Three weary months had passed, when a new idea was put into my head by an
Englishman whom I met at Trieste. He advised turning my back on Europe,
and trying the effect of scenes of life that would be new to me. I hired
a vessel, and sailed out of the civilized world. When I next stood on
_terra firma,_ my feet were on the lovely beach of one of the Pacific
Islands.

What I suffered I have not told yet, and do not design to tell. The
bitterness of those days hid itself from view at the time--and shall keep
its concealment still. Even if I could dwell on my sorrows with the
eloquence of a practised writer, some obstinate inner reluctance would
persist in holding me dumb.

More than a year had passed before I returned to Trimley Deen, and
alarmed my stepmother by "looking like a foreign sailor."

The irregular nature of my later travels had made it impossible to
forward the few letters that had arrived for me. They were neatly laid
out on the library table.

The second letter that I took up bore the postmark of Genoa. I opened it,
and discovered that the--

No! I cannot write of him by that mean name; and his own name is still
unknown to me. Let me call him--and, oh, don't think that I am deceived
again!--let me call him the Penitent.

The letter had been addressed to me from his deathbed, and had been
written under dictation. It contained an extraordinary enclosure--a small
torn fragment of paper with writing on it.

"Read the poor morsel that I send to you first" (the letter began). "My
time on earth is short; you will save me explanations which may be too
much for my strength."

On one side of the fragment, I found these words:

"... cruise to the Mediterranean for my wife's health. If Cristel isn't
afraid of passing some months at sea..."

On the other side, there was a fragment of conclusion:

"... thoroughly understand. All ready. Write word what night, and what
... loving brother, Stephen Toller."

I instantly remembered the miller's rich brother; thinking of him for the
first time since he had been in my mind for a moment, on the night of my
meeting with Cristel. On the fourteenth page of this narrative Toller's
brother will be found briefly alluded to in a few lines.

I returned eagerly to the letter. Thus it was continued:


"That bit of torn paper I found under the bed, while I was secretly
searching Mr. Toller's room. I had previously suspected You. From my own
examination of his face, when he refused to humor my deafness by writing
what I asked him to tell me, I suspected Mr. Toller next. You will see in
the fragment, what I saw--that Toller the brother had a yacht, and was
going to the Mediterranean; and that Toller the miller had written,
asking him to favour Cristel's escape. The rest, Cristel herself can tell
you.

"I know you had me followed. At Marseilles, I got tired of it, and gave
your men the slip. At every port in the Mediterranean I inquired for the
yacht, and heard nothing of her. They must have changed their minds on
board, and gone somewhere else. I refer you to Cristel again.

"Arrived at Genoa, on my way back to England, I met with a skilled
Italian surgeon. He declared that he could restore my hearing--but he
warned me that I was in a weak state of health, and he refused to answer
for the result of the operation. Without hesitating for a moment, I told
him to operate. I would have given fifty lives for one exquisite week of
perfect hearing. I have had three weeks of perfect hearing. Otherwise, I
have had a life of enjoyment before I die.

"It is useless to ask your pardon. My conduct was too infamous for that.
Will you remember the family taint, developed by a deaf man's isolation
among his fellow-creatures? But I had some days when my mother's sweet
nature tried to make itself felt in me, and did not wholly fail. I am
going to my mother now: her spirit has been with me ever since my hearing
was restored; her spirit said to me last night: "Atone, my son! Give the
man whom you have wronged, the woman whom he loves." I had found out the
uncle's address in England (which I now enclose) at one of the Yacht
Clubs. I had intended to go to the house, and welcome her on her return.
You must go instead of me; you will see that lovely face when I am in my
grave. Good-bye, Roylake. The cold hand that touches us all, sooner or
later, is very near to me. Be merciful to the next scoundrel you meet,
for the sake of The Cur."


I say there _was_ good in that suffering man; and I thank God I was not
quite wrong about him after all. Arriving at Mr. Stephen Toller's country
seat, by the earliest train that would take me there, I found a last
trial of endurance in store for me. Cristel was away with her uncle,
visiting some friends.

Cristel's aunt received me with kindness which I can never forget. "We
have noticed lately that Cristel was in depressed spirits; no uncommon
thing," Mrs. Stephen Toller continued, looking at me with a gentle smile,
"since a parting which I know you must have felt deeply too. No, Mr.
Roylake, she is not engaged to be married--and she will never be married,
unless you forgive her. Ah, you forgive her because you love her! She
thought of writing to tell you her motives, when she visited her father's
grave on our return to England. But I was unable to obtain your address.
Perhaps, I may speak for her now?"

I knew how Lady Rachel's interference had appealed to Cristel's sense of
duty and sense of self-respect; I had heard from her own lips that she
distrusted herself, if she allowed me to press her. But she had
successfully concealed from me the terror with which she regarded her
rejected lover, and the influence over her which her father had
exercised. Always mindful of his own interests, the miller knew that he
would be the person blamed if he allowed his daughter to marry me. "They
will say I did it, with an eye to my son-in-law's money; and gentlefolks
may ruin a man who lives by selling flour." That was how he expressed
himself in a letter to his brother.

The whole of the correspondence was shown to me by Mrs. Stephen Toller.

After alluding to his wealthy brother's desire that he should retire from
business, the miller continued as follows:


"What you are ready to do for me, I want you to do for Cristy. She is in
danger, in more ways than one, and I am obliged to get her away from my
house as if I was a smuggler, and my girl contraband goods. I am a bad
hand at writing, so I leave Cristy to tell you the particulars. Will you
receive her, brother Stephen? and take care of her? and do it as soon as
possible?"


Mr. Stephen Toller's cordial reply mentioned that his vessel was ready to
sail, and would pass the mouth of The Loke on her southward voyage. His
brother caught at the idea thus suggested.

I have alluded to Giles Toller's sly look to his lodger, when I returned
the manuscript of the confession. The old man's unscrupulous curiosity
had already applied a second key to the cupboard in the lodger's room.
There he had found the "criminal stories" mentioned in the
journal--including the story of abduction referred to by Lady Rachel.
This gave him the very idea which his lodger had already relied on for
carrying Cristel away by the river (under the influence, of course, of a
soporific drug), while her father was keeping watch on the road. The
secreting of the oars with this purpose in view, had failed as a measure
of security. The miller's knowledge of the stream, and his daughter's
ready courage, had suggested the idea of letting the boat drift, with
Cristel hidden in it. Two of the yacht's crew, hidden among the trees,
watched the progress of the boat until it rounded the promontory, and
struck the shore. There, the yacht's boat was waiting. The rocket was
fired to re-assure her father; and Cristel was rowed to the mouth of the
river, and safely received on board the yacht. Thus (with his good
brother's help) the miller had made the River his Guilty accomplice in
the abduction of his own child!

When I had read the correspondence, we spoke again of Cristel.

"To save time," Mrs. Stephen Toller said, "I will write to my husband
to-day, by a mounted messenger. He shall only tell Cristel that you have
come back to England, and you shall arrange to meet her in our grounds
when she returns. I am a childless woman, Mr. Roylake--and I love her as
I should have loved a daughter of my own. Where improvement (in external
matters only) has seemed to be possible, it has been my delight to
improve her. Your stepmother and Lady Rachel will acknowledge, even from
their point of view, that there is a mistress who is worthy of her
position at Trimley Deen."


When Cristel returned the next day, she found that her uncle had deserted
her, and suddenly discovered a man in the shrubbery. What that man said
and did, and what the result of it was, may be inferred if I relate a
remarkable event. Mrs. Roylake has retired from the domestic
superintendence of Trimley Deen.









End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Guilty River, by Wilkie Collins

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