THETUTOR’SSTORY.
BY THE LATE CHARLES KINGSLEY,
REVISED AND COMPLETED BY
HIS DAUGHTER, LUCAS MALET.
Copyright by Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co. in the United States of America.
CHAPTER XXIII.
It was the beginning of the Lent term. I had stayed up during the vacation, my College being also my home. And during that vacation a weight of loneliness descended upon me. This was wrong, since had I not very much to be thankful for? My position was a secure, and, from the university standpoint, an even brilliant one. I liked my work. It interested me. Yet, in some aspects, this university life seemed to me narrow. It pained me to see old faces depart, and new ones enter who knew naught of me. Other men halted here, but for a while, on their life’s journey, moving forward to meet the larger issues, to seek ‘fresh woods and pastures new.’ And I remained—as one, held up by accident, remains at some half-way house, seeing the stream of traffic and of wayfarers sweep for ever forward along the great crowded highroad, and pass him by.
If I had not had that break in my university course, if I had not spent those two years at Hover in a society and amid interests and occupations—pleasures, let me put it roundly—foreign to my own social sphere, Cambridge, and all Cambridge stood for, would not probably have palled upon me. But I had beheld wider horizons; beheld them, moreover, through the windows of an enchanted castle. Thus memory cast its shadow over the present, making me— it was faithless, ungrateful, I had nearly said, sinful—dissatisfied and sad.
However, being in good health, I was not too sad to eat a good dinner; and so, one fine day at the beginning of term, when the bell rang for hall, I crossed the quadrangle and went in—or went rather to the door, and there stopped short. For, face to face, I met none other than Mr. Halidane, in all the glory of a freshman’s brand-new gown.
‘Ah! Mr. Brownlow,’ he exclaimed, with his blandest and most beaming smile, ‘it is indeed a gracious dispensation to meet you, sir, an old and valued friend, on my first day within these hallowed and venerable walls. I feared you might not have come up yet. Allow me to congratulate you upon your distinctions, your degree, your fellowship. With what gladness have I heard of them, have I welcomed the news of your successful progress. I trust you are duly thankful to an over-ruling providence!’
‘I trust I am,’ quoth I.
I believed the man to be a hypocrite. He had done me all the harm he could. Yet, what with my loneliness, what with my memories of that enchanted castle, I could not but be moved at this unexpected meeting with him. I choked down my disgust, my resentment for the dirty tricks he had played me, and shaking him by the hand asked what had brought him here.
‘The generosity of my pious patron,’ he answered, casting up his eyes devoutly. ‘Ah! what do I not owe—under providence—to that true ornament of his exalted station! Through his condescending liberality I am enabled to fulfil the wish long nearest my heart; and by taking, as I humbly hope in due time, Holy Orders, to enter upon a more extended sphere of Christian and national usefulness.’
I abstained from asking how he had suddenly discovered the Church of England suited his religious convictions and abilities better than the sect of the ‘Saints indeed,’ and contented myself, not without a beating heart, by enquiring after Lord Longmoor and all at Hover.
I got answers; but none that I wanted. The Earl was perfection; the Countess perfection; even for Colonel Esdaile he had three or four superlatives. The Countess, he trusted, had been lately brought to the knowledge of the truth. The Colonel only needed to be brought to it—and he was showing many hopeful signs—to be more than mortal man.—It was evidently his cue to approve highly of Hover and all dwellers therein. And when, with almost a faltering voice, I asked news of my dear boy, he broke out into fresh superlatives; from amid the rank growth of which I could only discover that Lord Hartover was a very dashing and popular young man about town, and that it served Mr. Halidane’s purpose to approve—or seem to approve—of his being such.
‘The pomps and vanities of this wicked world, you know, my dear Brownlow,’—the fellow began to drop the ‘Mr.’ now—‘the pomps and vanities—but we must make allowances for youth—and those to whom little is given, you know, of them will little be required.’
‘Little given!’ thought I with a shudder, as I contrasted Halidane’s words with my own old lessons.—God grant that this fellow may not have had the opportunity of undoing all the good which I had done! I made the boy believe once that very much had been given him.— But I said nothing. Why waste words where the conversation will never go deeper than words?
So we went in to hall together; and, what was more, came out together, for it was plainly Mr. Halidane’s plan to quarter himself upon me, physically and morally—physically, in that he came up into my rooms and sat down therein, his countenance falling when he perceived that I brought out no wine.
‘You are a Nazarite still?’ he said at last, after looking uneasily several times towards door and cupboard.
‘I am, indeed,’ I replied, amused at his inability to keep his own counsel.
‘Ah—well. All the more freedom, then, for the wine of the Spirit. I trust that we shall have gracious converse together often, my dear
Brownlow, and edify one another with talk of that which belongs to our souls’ health as we wander through this wilderness of tears.’
I replied by asking, I fear a little slyly, after Lord Longmoor’s book on prophecy.
‘As was to be expected—a success,’ he replied—‘a magnificent success, though I say so. Not perhaps in the number of copies sold. But what is worldly fame, and how can we expect the carnal man to favour spiritual things? Not, again, from a pecuniary point of view. But what is filthy lucre? His lordship’s philanthropy has enabled him, so to speak, to make the book a present, a free gift to the elect. No, not in such material gains as Christians will leave to the unsanctified, to a Scott or a Byron, does success lie; but in the cause of the Gospel. And, if humble I have been instrumental to that success, either in assisting his lordship’s deeper intellect, as the mouse might the lion, or in having the book properly pushed in certain Gospel quarters where I have a little unworthy influence—’ (Unworthy indeed, I doubt not, thought I!)—‘why, then—have I not my reward I say, have I not my reward?’
I thought he certainly had. For being aware he wrote the whole book himself, and tacked his patron’s name to it, I began to suspect shrewdly he had been franked at College as hush-money, the book being a dead failure.
And so I told the good old Master next day, who slapped his thigh and chuckled, and then scolded me for an impudent truth-speaking fellow who would come to ruin by his honesty.
I assured him that I should tell no one but him, having discovered at Hover that the wisdom of the serpent was compatible with the innocence of the dove, and that I expected to need both in my dealing with Mr. Halidane.
‘Why, I understood that he was an intimate friend of yours. He told me that your being here was one of the main reasons for his choosing this College. He entreated humbly to be allowed rooms as near you as possible. So—as he came with the highest
recommendations from Lord Longmoor—we have put him just over your head!’
I groaned audibly.
‘What’s the matter? He is not given to playing skittles, or practising the fiddle at midnight, is he?’
‘Heavens, no!’
But I groaned again, at the thought of having Halidane tied to me, riding me pick-a-back as the Old Man of the Sea did Sindbad, for three years to come. In explanation I told the Master a good deal of what I knew. About Nellie, however, I still said not one word.
The Master smiled mischievously.
‘I suspect the object of his sudden conversion from sectarianism is one of my lord’s fat livings. You may see him a bishop yet, Brownlow, for a poor opinion of his own merits will never stand in the way of his promotion.—Well, I will keep my eye on this promising convert to the Church of England as by Law Established, meanwhile—and you may do the same if you like.’
I did like—the more so because I found him, again and again, drawing round to the subject of Mr. Braithwaite and of Nellie. He slipped away smoothly enough when he saw I avoided the matter, complimenting me greasily upon my delicacy and discretion. I was torn two ways—by longing to hear something of both father and daughter, and repulsion that this man should soil the name of her whom I loved by so much as daring to pronounce it. But of all living creatures lovers are the most self-contradictory, fearing the thing they desire, desiring that which they fear.
At last one day, when he had invaded my rooms after hall, he said something which forced me to talk about Hover with him. He had been praising, in his fulsome fashion, Mademoiselle Fédore among the rest. She too, it appeared, was under gracious influences, aware of her soul’s danger and all but converted—the very dogs and cats of the house were qualifying for salvation, I believe, in his suddenly
charitable eyes. He finished up with—‘And how nobly the poor thing behaved, too, when that villain Marsigli absconded.’
‘Marsigli absconded?’ I exclaimed, in great surprise.
‘Of course—I thought you knew⸺’
‘I know nothing of what happens at Hover now,’ I said, foolishly allowing bitterness to get the better of caution.
‘No—you don’t tell me so!—Really, very strange,’ and he eyed me sharply. ‘But the facts are simple and lamentable enough. This villain, this viper, the trusted and pampered servant—for far too much kindness had been lavished upon him by my lord and lady, as upon all—yes, all—my unworthy self included.—How refreshing, how inspiring is condescension in the great!—This pampered menial, I say—ah I what a thing is human nature when unregenerate!—as was to be expected—for what after all, my dear Brownlow, can you hope from a Papist?—disappeared one fine morning, and with him jewels and plate—plate belonging to our sainted friend and patron, in whose service the viper had fattened so long, to the amount of four thousand pounds.’
I listened in deepening interest.
‘This is serious,’ I said. ‘Has any of the property been traced and recovered?’
‘Not one brass farthing’s worth.’
‘And is there no clue?’
‘None, alas! save what Mademoiselle Fédore gave. With wonderful subtlety and instinct—Ah! that it were further quickened by divine grace!—she pieced together little incidents, little trifling indications, which enabled the police to track the miscreant as far as Liverpool. But, after that, no trace. They concluded he must have sailed for America, where he is doubtless even now wantoning, amid the licentious democracy of the West, upon the plunder of the saints.’
He buried his face in his hands and appeared to weep.
I remained silent, greatly perturbed in mind. For there flashed across me those words of Warcop’s, spoken on the morning of my departure, when I sat with him in his sanctum, dedicated to the mysteries of the stud-farm and the chase: ‘By times they—Marsigli and Mamzell—are as thick as thieves. By times they fight like cat and dog or’—with a knowing look—‘like man and wife.’ There flashed across me, too, a strange speech of Fédore’s I had overheard, as I walked along one of the innumerable dimly lighted passages at Hover, one night, on my way from the library, where I had worked late, to my own study. To whom she spoke I did not know, for a door was hastily closed immediately I passed, though not hastily enough to prevent my hearing a man’s voice answer.—‘Ah! you great stupid,’ she had said. ‘Why not what these English call feather your own nest? I have no patience with you when, if you pleased, you could so easily be rich.’—The episode made an unpleasant impression upon me at the time, but had almost faded from my mind. Now in the light of my conversation with Halidane it sprung into vivid relief.
The loss of a few thousand pounds’ worth of jewels and plate was a small matter. But that Mademoiselle Fédore should remain in the household as Marsigli’s accomplice—and that she was his accomplice I suspected gravely—perhaps to regain her power over the boy, was intolerable. As to her assisting the police by pointing out the probable route of the delinquent, what easier than to do so with a view to putting them on a false scent?
‘This is indeed ugly news,’ I said at last. ‘I wonder if the Master knows.’
‘Why not? It was reported in the papers at the time.’
‘Ah! and I was absorbed in my work and missed it. How unfortunate!’
‘Do you think you know anything, then?’ he said greedily, with sharp interest.
But the question I did not answer, perceiving he was curiously anxious to be taken into my confidence.
CHAPTER XXIV.
I sat long, till the fire in the grate burnt low and the chill of the winter night drove me shivering to my bed, revolving this conversation in my mind. If it could be proved that Mademoiselle Fédore was in league with the Italian, still more, if it could be proved she and he were married, Hartover could be permanently set free from her intrigues and her influence. I did not want to be vindictive; but with every fibre of my being I wanted to free the boy. For, as I realised in those lonely midnight hours, while the wind rumbled in the chimneys and roared through the bare branches of the elms in the Fellows’ Garden just without, the boy’s redemption, the boy’s growth into the fine and splendid character he might be, could be— as I believed—even yet, was dearer to me than any advantage of my own.
Had I not promised, moreover, to stand by him and help him to the end? Could I then, in honour, sit with folded hands, when the chance, however remote, of helping him presented itself? I had always feared Mademoiselle Fédore had not relinquished her designs on the boy, but merely bided her time. For a while my presence frustrated those designs; as, in even greater degree, did his passion for Nellie Braithwaite. But marriage with Nellie forbidden, and he surrounded, as he must be, by the flatteries lavished on, and snares set for, a rich and popular young nobleman in London, was it not too probable that in hours of idleness or reaction from dissipation she might gain an ascendency over him once more? Not only selfinterest was involved. He being what he was, might she not only too easily fall genuinely in love with him? I would give her the benefit of the doubt, anyhow. Upon the exact nature of that love, whether of the higher, or the baser and animal sort, I did not choose to dwell. The difference in age, too, struck me now—more versed as I had grown in the ways of the world and of human nature—as no bar to
inclination on his part. She was a clever woman and a beautiful one, of a voluptuous though somewhat hard type—to the Empress Theodora I had often compared her in my own mind. Further, as Warcop said to me long ago, did not ‘the she-kite know her business?’—Alas! and for certain, only too well!
So sitting there, through the lonely hours, the idea grew on me that the boy was actually in very grave peril; and that—neglect and silence notwithstanding—in his innermost heart he clung to me, and to the lessons of duty and noble living which I had taught him, still. This idea might, as I told myself, be a mere refinement of personal vanity and egoism. Yet I could not put it aside. If he called, even unconsciously, and I failed to answer, a sin of omission and a heavy one would assuredly lie at my door.
Finally I decided to seek counsel of my kind old friend the Master. The opportunity of doing so presented itself next day. For the Master had bidden me to a dinner party at the Lodge, given in honour of his widowed sister and her daughters, who were staying with him. This flutter of petticoats in our bachelor, not to say monastic, atmosphere produced in some quarters, I had reason to fancy, a corresponding flutter of hearts. Ladies were conspicuous by their absence in the Cambridge of those days, save during the festivities of the May term; and I own to a certain feeling of mild elation as I found myself seated beside Miss Alice Dynevor, the elder of the two young ladies, at the Master’s hospitable board.
I cannot assert that she appeared to be remarkable either for good looks or cleverness; but she was fresh and young—about twenty, I judged her—modest in manner, and evidently desirous to please; full of innocent questions concerning Cambridge and Cambridge ways, concerning our famous buildings, their names and histories, which I found it pleasant enough to answer. In the drawing-room, when we rejoined the ladies after dinner, she went to the piano, at her uncle’s request, and sang some Scotch songs and some sentimental ballads then much in vogue, with no great art, I admit, but with pleasing simplicity and a tuneful voice.
The evening left me under impressions at once agreeable and not a little sad. For, from the time I returned to Cambridge, I had hardly spoken to a woman. Doing so now, memories of Mere Ban and of Nellie crowded upon me thick and fast; and, throwing me back into that fantastic inner life of unsatisfied and consuming love, threw me also into a necessity for renewed self-abnegation and self-torment. At all costs I must find means to set the dear boy free of Fédore’s influence—set him free—and for what?
I stayed after the other guests had left and asked for a little private talk with the Master; recounted the substance of my conversation with Halidane last night, and stated my own convictions and the ground of them. He had heard of Marsigli’s disappearance, but had not mentioned it to me simply because he supposed I had seen it in the newspapers. I was much vexed at the strange oversight. Had I but learned it at the time, how much might have been saved! How much truly—more a thousand times than I then imagined. Yet how know I that? No—I will believe all the events of our lives are well ordered, so long as they do not arise from our wilful ill-doings; and will never regret, as the result of blind chance, that which is in truth the education given each one of us, for our soul’s good, by an all-merciful and all-wise Father in Heaven.
CHAPTER XXV.
I told the Master enough for him to agree it would be well I should go to town; and to town two days later I went. I had learned, by cautious questioning of Mr. Halidane, that the family was in London, as was Hartover.
So I made my way to the great house in Grosvenor Square, which was not altogether unknown to me. I had stayed there once, for a few days, with the dear boy, during the time of my tutorship; and to my delectation had made acquaintance with its many treasures in the matter of pictures, furniture, and objetsd’art. Oh! the priceless possessions of these people, and the little care they had for them!
The men servants, who received me, were unknown to me, supercilious in manner and only just not insolent. I asked for my young lord. He was on guard at St. James’s. They supposed I should hear of him there. Where he lived, when not staying here, they did not know.—Odd, I thought; but the ways of great folks were odd sometimes!
I took a coach and drove to the Palace. My longing to see the boy again was very strong; yet I felt anxious. Would he be greatly changed? Would he be glad or would he think my coming a bore? Above all, how would he take my interference? A sense of the extreme delicacy of my mission increased on me, making me nervous and diffident.
An orderly ushered me into a room where half a dozen dandies were lounging. These stared at me sufficiently, and thought me, evidently, a dun. One beardless youth, indeed, after brushing past me, turning his back to me, and otherwise bristling up like a dog at a strange dog, expressed his opinion aloud.
‘MacArthur!’ to the orderly. ‘Are you not aware that this is a private room?’
‘I am sorry,’ I said instantly, for their impertinence restored my self-confidence, ‘if I am intruding. I simply asked for Lord Hartover, and was, as simply, shown in here.’
I thought the lad might have known me for a gentleman by my voice; but possibly his experience in life had not extended so far, for he answered:
‘Lord Hartover, I imagine, pays his bills at his own house.’
I did redden, I confess, being still young and sensitive; but, after staring at him as full as he stared at me, I answered, bowing:
‘I am afraid I am not so useful a person as a tradesman. I am only a Cambridge scholar, formerly Lord Hartover’s tutor, who wishes to see him upon urgent private business.’
‘I—I really beg your pardon. Pray sit down, sir,’ quoth the sucking hero, evidently abashed, handing me a chair.
But at that moment a pair of broad shoulders, which had been bent over a card-table at the farther end of the room, turned about with:
‘Hey? Why, Brownlow, by all that’s— Odd trick, Ponsonby—wait one moment.—How are you, my dear fellow? And what on earth brings you here among us warriors?’
And the mighty Rusher rose, like Saul the son of Kish a head and shoulders above his fellows. At first I believe he was really pleased to see me. His handsome face was genial, a light of good-natured and kindly amusement in his eye.
‘Well, how are you?’ he repeated. ‘Do you remember Brocklesby Whins and the brown horse? Come up this winter and you shall ride him again; by Jove, you shall—and take the rascally little grey fox home with you. I’ve got him stuffed and ready, as I promised I would; and wondered why you’d not claimed your property before.’
I was beginning to speak, but he ran on:
‘Brother officers, let me introduce you to my friend Mr. Brownlow, as fine a light-weight across country as you need wish to know, and who saved my pack from destruction at the risk of his own life,—a long and prosperous one may it be!’
‘My hunting days are over, I fear,’ I said, as the men of war stared all the more at the lame young don, black-coated, black-breeched and black-stockinged—thinking, I doubt not, I was a ‘rum ’un to look at’ even if a ‘good ’un to go.’
‘But I beg of you to tell me where I can find Lord Hartover; or, if I cannot see him, to let me have a few words with you.’
‘Where is Faublas—anyone know?’ the Colonel asked of the company in general, and so doing I fancied his geniality waned a little and a trace of uneasiness came into his manner. As for me, my
heart sank as I heard that name, of all others, used as my poor boy’s sobriquet.
‘Gone down to Chelsea, I believe,’ said the youth who had first spoken to me, hardly repressing a smile. ‘He announced he should dine to-night with the fair unknown.’
‘I question whether he will be at home even to you, then, Brownlow,’ the Colonel declared, forcing a laugh.
‘In that case I am afraid I must ask for a few minutes’ conversation alone with you.’
We went out into the Park; and there, pacing up and down under the leafless trees, I told all I thought fit. I watched his face as I did so. It was unusually serious.
‘I think, my dear fellow,’ he said at last, ‘you had very much better leave this matter alone.’
I asked why. He fenced with me, pointing out that I had nothing more than suspicion to go upon—no real evidence, circumstantial or otherwise. I urged on him the plain fact that the matter could not be let alone. A great felony had been committed; and it was an offence, not only against honour and right, but against law, to withhold such information as I could give.
‘You will repent it,’ he said.
Again I asked why.
‘I beg you to take my word for it, there are reasons,’ he said earnestly. ‘Be advised, my dear Brownlow. Let sleeping dogs lie.’
I was puzzled—how could I help being so? But, more and more, I began to fear the connection between Fédore and Hartover had been resumed.
‘And where is Mademoiselle Fédore now?’ I said presently.
‘’Pon honour, I am not responsible for the whereabouts of gay damsels.’
‘Then she is no longer with lady Longmoor?’
‘No, no—has left her these two months—may be in St. Petersburg by now, or in Timbuctoo, for aught I know.’
‘The police could find her there as well as here.’
His tone changed, becoming as sarcastic as his easy good-nature and not very extensive vocabulary permitted.
‘And so you would really hunt that poor girl to the gallows? Shut her up in gaol—eh? I thought you preached mercy, went in for motives of Christian charity, and so forth. We live and learn—well, well.’
He took another turn, nervously, while I grew increasingly puzzled. Was it possible Fédore might be connected with him, and not with Hartover? If so, what more natural and excusable than his reluctance to satisfy me? That thought softened me.
‘I will do nothing further,’ I said, ‘without consulting his lordship.’
‘His lordship?’ He shrugged his shoulders, laughing contemptuously.
‘Her ladyship, then.’
He paused a moment.
‘Yes,’ he said; ‘you’re right.’ A new light seemed to break on him. ‘Yes,’ he repeated; ‘we’ll go at once on the chance of finding her at home. It is only seven now. Let’s call a coach.’
So back we drove to Grosvenor Square, both in deep thought. Arrived at the house, he took me into a small room, off the hall, and kept me waiting there for the best part of an hour. I began to wonder, indeed, if he had forgotten me altogether, and whether I had not best ring and make some enquiry of the servants.
The room was dimly lit with wax candles, set in sconces high on the silk-panelled wall; yet not so dimly but that, when the Colonel at last returned, I could see he looked pale and agitated, while his hands and lips trembled as he spoke. And my mind carried back to
the day of the meet at Vendale Green, when her ladyship—Queen of Beauty that she was—stepped down from her pony-chaise, and stood on the damp turf beside his great bay horse, talking to him; and how, straightening himself up with a jerk, his face grey and aged as that of a man smitten with sudden illness, he answered her: ‘Impossible, utterly impossible’; and how she, turning, with a light laugh, got into the pony-chaise again, waving her hand to him and wishing him good fortune.
‘Yes—you are to go,’ he said to me hurriedly. ‘See Hartover at once. His address is number ⸺ Church Lane, Chelsea. You’ll remember?’
‘I shall.’
‘Remember, too, I am no party to this proceeding of yours. I warned you against it. Whatever happens you will have brought on yourself.’
‘Very good. I am perfectly ready to accept the responsibility of my own actions.’
‘And I say—see here, Brownlow. You won’t tell Hartover I gave you his address.’
‘Of course not, if you desire it. I can decline to say where I learnt it.’
‘He’ll find out, though, through the other officers,’ he muttered, as we crossed the hall and he saw me into the still waiting coach. ‘It’s an accursed business, and we shall come ill out of it. I know we shall; but a woman must have her way.’
‘For Heaven’s sake,’ I cried, ‘remember you are not alone.’
He looked fiercely at me, as one who should say, ‘What have I betrayed?’ Then added with a sneer:
‘Brownlow, I wish to God we’d never seen you. You’re a devilish deal too honest a fellow to have got among us.’
With which cryptic words he went back into the great house, leaving me to drive down to Chelsea, and to my thoughts. What they were I hardly knew myself. Sufficient that I was most miserable and full of questioning dread.
We passed, as it seemed, through endless streets, until we reached the then lonely King’s Road; drove along it, turned to the left down Church Lane, and drew up at a door in a high wall apparently enclosing a garden. I got out of the coach and rang the bell. A moment after I heard a woman’s quick tripping footsteps within. The door was flung wide open, disclosing a covered way leading to a pretty hall, gay with coloured curtains and carpets, and a voice cried:
‘Ah! c’est toi enfin, mon bien aimé. A-t-il perdu le clef encore une fois, le petit étourdi?’
The speaker and I recoiled apart. For, immediately before me, under the passage lamp, was Fédore.
Superbly lovely, certainly, if art can create loveliness, with delicately tinted cheeks and whitened skin; her raven hair arranged, according to the prevailing mode, so as to add as much as possible to her height. Dressed, or rather undressed—for women then wore only little above the waist—in richest orange and crimson; her bare arms and bosom sparkling with jewels—none brighter, though, than these bold and brilliant eyes—there she stood, more like her namesake Empress Theodora than ever, and flashed lightnings into my face—disappointment, rage, scorn, but no trace of fear.
‘And what, pray, does Monsieur Brownlow wish at such an hour of the night?’
‘Nothing, Mademoiselle,’ I answered gravely and humbly. ‘I came to see Lord Hartover, and he is not, I perceive, at home.’
Was she going to shut the door on me? Nothing less. Whether from sheer shamelessness, or whether as I have often fancied since—she read my errand in my face, she composed herself in an instant, becoming amiable and gracious.
‘Could not Monsieur come in and wait? Would he not stay and sup with us?’
I bowed courteously. She was so superb, so daringly mistress of herself, I could do no less; and said I should be shocked at interrupting such a tête-à-tête. I apologised for having brought her to the door on so cold a night; and, raising my hat, departed, having, at least, taken care to tell her nothing.
Why should I not depart? Had I not seen enough, and more than enough? The Rusher was right so far—for who was I to interfere? What had I to offer Hartover as against that gorgeous and voluptuous figure? If my suspicions could be proved, and I succeeded in parting him from her, would he not go to someone else? And who was I, after all, to judge her, to say hard words to her? If she were dazzled by him, what wonder? If he by her, what wonder either?—Ah! that they had let him marry Nellie, boy though he was, two years ago! But such is not the way of the world; and the way of the world, it seemed, he was doomed to go.—Oh! weary life, wherein all effort for good seemed but as filling the sieve of the Danaides. Oh! weary work for clean living and righteousness, which seemed as a rolling of Sisyphus’ stone for ever up the hill, to see it roll down again. What profit has a man of all his labour? That which has been shall again be, and there is no new thing under the sun.
I went back to Cambridge unhappy, all but cynical and despairing, and settled down to my routine of work again, and to the tender attentions of Mr. Halidane, to whom however I told no word about my fruitless expedition to London. And so sad was I, and in such a state of chronic irritation did Halidane keep me, that I verily believe I should have fallen ill, had not the fresh evil been compensated for by a fresh good—and that good taken the form of renewed intercourse with Mr. Braithwaite.
CHAPTER XXVI.
It fell out on this wise. In the hope of lightening the weight of depression under which I laboured, I took to riding again so many afternoons a week—an indulgence which I could now afford. True, a hack from a livery stable was but a sorry exchange for the horses upon which Warcop had been wont to mount me; but if love of horse-flesh takes you that way—and take me that way it did—the veriest crock is better to bestride than nought.
The day was fine, with sunshine and white fleets of blithely sailing cloud. Hedges and trees thickened with bud, and the rooks were nesting. I had made a long round by Madingley and Trumpington, and was walking my horse back slowly over the cobbles of King’s Parade—admiring, as how many times before, the matchless Chapel, springing from the greensward, its slender towers, pinnacles and lace-work of open parapet rising against spaces of mild blue sky— when, amid groups upon the pavement wearing cap and gown, or less ceremonial boating and football gear, a tall heavily built figure, clothed in a coat with bulging skirt-pockets to it, breeches and gaiters of pepper-and-salt-mixture, attracted my eye. The man halted now and again to stare at the fine buildings; and at last, crossing where the side street runs from King’s Parade to the Market Place, turned into the big bookseller’s at the corner.
I thought I could hardly be mistaken as to his identity; and, calling a down-at-heels idler to hold my horse, I dismounted and followed him into the shop. If I had made a mistake, it would be easy to ask for some book or pamphlet and so cover my discomfiture.
But I had made no mistake. Though older and greyer, his strong intellectual face more deeply lined by thought, and, as I feared, by care, Braithwaite himself confronted me.
‘Thou hast found me, O mine enemy,’ he exclaimed, while the clasp of his hand gave the lie to this doubtful form of greeting. ‘And, to tell the truth, I hoped you might do so; though I was in two minds about seeking you out and calling on you myself.’
