Chapter XLV

All day long, Mr Dupuy lay speechless and almost motionless on his bed, faint with loss of blood, and hovering between life and death, but gradually mending by imperceptible degrees, as Marian fancied. The brain had been terribly shaken, and there were some symptoms of stunning and concussion; but the main trouble was merely the excessive drain on the vascular system from the long-continued and unchecked bleeding. About mid-day, he became hot and feverish, with a full pulse, beating unsteadily. Macfarlane, who had remained in the house all night, ordered him at once a rough mixture of sal-volatile, bismuth, and whisky. ‘And whatever ye do,’ he said emphatically, ‘don’t forget the whisky—a good wine-glassful in half a pint of cold water.’

Mr Dupuy was raised in the bed to drink the mixture, which he swallowed mechanically in a half-unconscious fashion; and then a bandage of pounded ice was applied to his forehead, and leeches were hastily sent for to Port-of-Spain to reduce the inflammation. Long before the leeches had time to arrive, however, Nora, who was watching by his bedside, observed that his eyes began to open more frequently than before, and that gleams of reason seemed to come over them every now and again for brief intervals. ‘Give him some more whisky,’ Macfarlane said in his decided tone; ‘there’s nothing like it, nothing like it—in these cases—especially for a man of Dupuy’s idiosyncrasy.’

At that moment Mr Dupuy’s lips moved feebly, and he tried to turn with an effort on the pillow.

‘Hush, hush!’ Nora cried; ‘he wants to speak. He has something to tell us. What is it he’s saying? Listen, listen!’

Mr Dupuy’s lips moved again, and a faint voice proceeded slowly from the depths of his bosom: ‘Not fit to hold a candle to old Trinidad rum, I tell you, doctor.’

Macfarlane rubbed his hand against his thigh with evident pleasure and satisfaction. ‘He’s wrong there,’ he murmured, ‘undoubtedly wrong, as every judicious person could easily tell him; but no matter. He’ll do now, when once he’s got life enough left in him to contradict one. It always does a Dupuy good to contradict other people. Let it be rum, then—a wine-glassful of Mr Tom’s best stilling.’

Almost as soon as the rum was swallowed, Mr Dupuy seemed to mend rapidly for the passing moment. He looked up and saw Nora. ‘That’s well then,’ he said with a sigh, recollecting suddenly the last night’s adventures. ‘So they didn’t kill you after all, Nora?’

Nora stooped down with unwonted tenderness and kissed him fervently. ‘No, papa,’ she said; ‘they didn’t; nor you either.’

Mr Dupuy paused for a moment; then he looked up a second time, and asked, with extraordinary vehemence for an invalided man: ‘Is this riot put down? Have they driven off the niggers? Have they taken the ringleaders? Have they hanged Delgado?’

‘Hush, hush!’ Nora cried, a little appalled in her cooler mood, after all that had happened, at this first savage outcry for vengeance. ‘You mustn’t talk, papa; you mustn’t excite yourself. Yes, yes; the riot is put down, and Delgado—Delgado is dead. He has met with his due punishment.’

‘That’s well!’ Mr Dupuy exclaimed, with much gusto, in spite of his weakness, rubbing his hands feebly underneath the bedclothes. ‘Serves the villain right. I’m glad they’ve hanged him. Nothing on earth comes up to martial law in these emergencies; and hang ’em on the spot, say I, as fast as you catch ’em, red-handed! Flog ’em first, and hang ’em afterwards!’

Marian looked down at him speechless, with a shudder of horror; but Nora put her face between her hands, overwhelmed with awe, now her own passion had burst itself out, at that terrible outburst of the old bad barbaric spirit of retaliation. ‘Don’t let him talk so, dear,’ she cried to Marian. ‘O Marian, Marian, I’m so ashamed of myself! I’m so ashamed of us all—us Dupuys, I mean; I wish we were all more like you and Mr Hawthorn.’

‘You must not speak, Mr Dupuy,’ Macfarlane said, interposing gently, with his rough-and-ready Scotch tenderness. ‘Ye’re not strong enough for conversation yet, I’m thinking. Ye must just take a wee bit sleep till the fever’s reduced. Ye’ve had a narrow escape of your life, my dear sir; and ye must not excite yourself the minute ye’re getting a trifle better.’

The old man lay silent for a few minutes longer; then he turned again to Nora, and without noticing Marian’s presence, said more vehemently and more viciously than ever: ‘I know who set them on to this, Nora. It wasn’t their own doing; it was coloured instigation. They were put up to it—I know they were put up to it—by that scoundrel Hawthorn—a seditious, rascally, malevolent lawyer, if ever there was one. I hope they’ll hang him too—he deserves it soundly—flog him and hang him as soon as they catch him!’

‘O papa, papa!’ Nora cried, growing hotter and redder in the face than ever, and clutching Marian’s hand tightly in an agony of distress and shamefacedness, ‘you don’t know what you’re saying! You don’t know what you owe to him! It was Mr Hawthorn who finally pacified and dispersed the negroes; and if it hadn’t been for his coolness and his bravery, we wouldn’t one of us have been alive to say so this very minute!’

Mr Dupuy coughed uneasily, and muttered to himself once more in a vindictive undertone: ‘Hang him when they catch him!—hang him when they catch him! I’ll speak to the governor about it myself, and prove to him conclusively that if it hadn’t been for this fellow Hawthorn, the niggers’d never have dreamed of kicking up such a hullabaloo and bobbery!’

‘But, papa,’ Nora began again, her eyes full of tears, ‘you don’t understand. You’re all wrong about it. If it hadn’t been for that dear, good, brave Mr Hawthorn’——

Marian touched her lightly on the shoulder. ‘Never mind about it, Nora, darling,’ she whispered consolingly, with a womanly caress to the poor shrinking girl at her elbow; ‘don’t trouble him with the story now. By-and-by, when he’s better, he’ll come to hear the facts; and then he’ll know what Edward’s part was in the whole matter. Don’t distress yourself about it, darling, now, after all that has happened. I know your father’s feelings too well to take amiss anything he may happen to say in the heat of the moment.’

‘If you speak another word before six o’clock, to-night, Dupuy,’ Macfarlane put in with stern determination, ‘I’ll just clear every soul that knows ye out of the room at once, and leave you alone to the tender mercies of old Aunt Clemmy. Turn over on your side, man, when your doctor tells ye to, and try to get a little bit of refreshing sleep before the evening.’

Mr Dupuy obeyed in a feeble fashion; but he still muttered doggedly to himself as he turned over: ‘Catch him and hang him! Prove it to the governor!’

As he spoke, Edward beckoned Marian out into the drawing-room through the open door, to show her a note which had just been brought to him by a mounted orderly. It was a few hasty lines, written in pencil, that very morning by the governor himself, thanking Mr Hawthorn in his official capacity for his brave and conciliatory conduct on the preceding evening, whereby a formidable and organised insurrection had been nipped in the bud, and a door left open for future inquiry, and redress of any possible just grievances on the part of the rioters and discontented negroes. ‘It is to your firmness and address alone,’ the governor wrote, ‘that the white population of the island of Trinidad owes to-day its present security from fire and bloodshed.’

Meanwhile, preparations had been made for preventing any possible fresh outbreak of the riot that evening; and soldiers and policemen were arriving every moment at the smouldering site of the recent fire, and forming a regular plan of defence against the remote chance of a second rising. Not that any such precautions were really necessary; for the negroes, deprived of their head in Delgado, were left utterly without cohesion or organisation; and Edward’s promise to go to England and see that their grievances were properly ventilated had had far more effect upon their trustful and excitable natures than the display of ten regiments of soldiers in marching order could possibly have produced. The natural laziness of the negro mind, combining with their confidence in the young judge, and their fervent faith in the justice of Providence under the most apparently incongruous circumstances, had made them all settle down at once into their usual listless _laissez-faire_ condition, as soon as the spur of Delgado’s fiery energy and exhortation had ceased to stimulate them. ‘It all right,’ they chattered passively among themselves. ‘Mistah Hawtorn gwine to ’peak to Missis Queen fur de poor naygur; an’ de Lard in hebben gwine to watch ober him, an’ see him doan’t suffer no more wrong at de heavy hand ob de proud buckra.’

When the time arrived to make preparations for the night’s watching and nursing, Nora came to Marian once more with her spirit vexed by a sore trouble. ‘My dear,’ she said, ‘this is a dreadful thing about poor Mr Noel having to go on stopping here. It’s very unfortunate he couldn’t have been nursed through his illness at your house or at Captain Castello’s. He’ll be down in bed for at least a week or two, in all probability; and it won’t be possible to move him out of this until he’s better.’

‘Well, darling?’ Marian answered, with an inquiring smile.

‘Well, you see, Marian, it wouldn’t be so awkward, of course, if poor papa wasn’t ill too, because then, if I liked, I could go over and stop with you at Mulberry until Mr Noel was quite recovered. But as I shall have to stay here, naturally, to nurse papa, why’——

‘Why, what then, Nora?’

Nora hesitated. ‘Why, you see, darling,’ she went on timidly at last, ‘people will say that as I’ve helped to nurse Mr Noel through a serious illness’——

‘Yes, dear?’

‘O Marian, don’t be so stupid! Of course, in that case, everybody’ll expect me—to—to—accept him.’

Marian looked down deep into her simple, little, girlish eyes with a curious smile of arch womanliness. ‘And why not, Nora?’ she asked at last with perfect simplicity.

Nora blushed. ‘Marian—Marian—dear Marian,’ she said at length, after a long pause, ‘you are so good—you are so kind—you are so helpful to me. I wish I could say to you all I feel, but I can’t; and even if I did, you couldn’t understand it—you couldn’t fathom it. You don’t know what it is, Marian, to be born a West Indian with such a terrible load of surviving prejudices. O darling, darling, we are all so full of wicked, dreadful, unjust feelings! I wish I could be like you, dear, I wish indeed I could; but I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, somehow!’

Marian stroked her white little hand with sisterly tenderness in perfect silence for a few minutes; then she said, rather reproachfully: ‘So you wish Mr Noel wasn’t going to be nursed under your father’s roof at all, Nora! That’s a very poor return, isn’t it, my darling, for all his bravery and heroism and devotion?’

Nora drew back like one bitten suddenly by a venomous creature, and putting her hand in haste on her breast, as if it pained her terribly, answered, with a little deep-drawn sigh: ‘It isn’t that, Marian—it isn’t that, darling. You know what it is, dear, as well as I do. Don’t say it’s that, my sweet; oh, don’t say it’s that, or you’ll kill me, you’ll kill me with remorse and anger! You’ll make me hate myself, if you say I’m ungrateful. But I’m not ungrateful, Marian—I’m not ungrateful. I admire, and—and love him; yes, I love him, for the way he acted here last evening.’ And as she spoke, she buried her head fervidly, with shame and fear, in Marian’s bosom.

Marian smoothed her hair tenderly for a few minutes longer, this time again in profound silence, and then she spoke once more very softly, almost at Nora’s ear, in a low whisper. ‘I went this morning into Mr Noel’s room,’ she said, ‘darling, just when he was first beginning to recover consciousness; and as he saw me, he turned his eyes up to me with a beseeching look, and his lips seemed to be moving, as if he wanted ever so much to say something. So I stooped down and listened to catch the words he was trying to frame in his feverish fashion. He said at first just two words—“Miss Dupuy;” and then he spoke again, and said one only—“Nora.” I smiled, and nodded at him to tell him it was all well; and he spoke again, quite audibly: “Have they hurt her? Have they hurt her?” I said: “No; she’s as well as I am!” and his eyes seemed to grow larger as I said it, and filled with tears; and I knew what he meant by them, Nora—I knew what he meant by them. A little later, he spoke to me again, and he said: “Mrs Hawthorn, I may be dying; and if I die, tell her—tell Nora—that last night, when she stood beside me there so bravely, I loved her, I loved her better even than I had ever loved her!” He won’t die, Nora; but still I’ll break his confidence, darling, and tell it you this evening.—O Nora, Nora! you say you wish to goodness you hadn’t got all these dreadful, wicked, West Indian feelings. You’re brave enough—I know that—no woman braver. Why don’t you have the courage to break through them, then, and come away with Edward and me to England, and accept poor Mr Noel, who would gladly give his very life a thousand times over for you, darling?’

Nora burst into tears once more, and nestled, sobbing, closer and closer upon Marian’s shoulder.

‘My darling,’ she cried, ‘I’m too wicked! I only wish I could feel as you do!’

SWIMMING.

The extent to which the power of swimming is cultivated amongst Englishmen is scarcely creditable to the citizens of a country which boasts both that it is the greatest naval power, and that it possesses infinitely the largest mercantile marine on the face of the earth. It is only within recent years that it has been anything but a rare exception for a sailor to be able to swim. Amongst old naval officers it is still remembered as a notable occurrence that some fifty years ago, Lord Ingestre, when in command of a ship on the Mediterranean station, refused to rate as an able seaman any man who could not swim, and that from time to time other captains followed his example. That this should be still recalled to mind shows how rare an accomplishment swimming was amongst sailors in past times; and if this has now been remedied in the royal navy, where, at the present day, swimming is taught, a similar improvement has by no means taken place in the mercantile marine, in which a seaman who can swim is still a curiosity. Probably the same remark would apply to our ‘long-shore’ population, to our lightermen and professional watermen, and to the inhabitants of our numerous canal-boats. And yet English people of both sexes and of the average type seem to take to the water as naturally as a duck. The difference is that they delight to disport themselves on the waves instead of in them. Every seaport, every suitable stretch of river, every lake, has its Rowing Club; Cockneys, whose ideas of rowing are original if not elegant, and whose notions of boat-management constitute a minus quantity, make summer Sundays and the August Bank Holiday hideous on the Thames in the neighbourhood of Hampton Court; and if ’Arry takes his ’Arriet for a day’s excursion to some one of the seaside resorts which they patronise, the enjoyment of both is incomplete if they do not court the woes of sea-sickness by going for a sail.

In face of this national taste for aquatic pursuits, it is a painfully suggestive reflection that comparatively few Englishmen, and still fewer Englishwomen, possess sufficient knowledge of swimming to save their own lives if they were suddenly plunged into deep water, and were called upon to support themselves for, perhaps, five minutes by their own exertions. No doubt, the power of swimming is a far more common accomplishment amongst men than it was a quarter of a century ago. Swimming has shared in the athletic revival which has marked the period, and has found its devotees amongst the practical adherents of muscular Christianity; but if, as some seem to think, there are not wanting signs that the rage for athletic pursuits has passed its meridian, and has begun its decline, swimming will probably suffer, in common with other sports, from the reaction. No doubt, too, our changeful English climate, our cold waters, are against this particular form of exercise. In the tideless, sun-warmed Mediterranean, in the coral-bound lagoons of the Southern Ocean, or by the grove-clad banks of Burmese rivers, swimming becomes both a luxury and a second nature. Let those testify who remember the untrammelled urchins flinging themselves from the bows of boats in Malta harbour to dive for and secure the coins flung from the deck of some newly arrived vessel, or disporting themselves day after day in the fetid, drain-polluted waters of the Dockyard Creek. Let travellers bear witness who, with possibly some humorous exaggeration, have told us how, in Burmah, toddling infants can swim at least as soon as they can walk; and how a mother, too busy for the time to look after her youngest born, will cheerfully and confidently place it in the river, to amuse itself with its playmates; and then, when she has leisure, will swim about among the gamboling children until she has found her own and brought it to land. In such a case as this there can be but little teaching; swimming must come almost naturally—shall we say from hereditary instinct, developed by the constant calls made upon it, and transmitted from generation to generation?

The lower temperature of the sea, or of fresh water fully exposed to the air, in our latitudes will doubtless always prevent Englishmen, as a nation, from becoming expert swimmers; but the common-sense of a people which prides itself on its possession of the quality should suffice to evade or overcome this natural obstacle so far as to release us from at least a large proportion of the grim death-tribute which we pay every year to our national ignorance. To any one who has noted the characteristic recklessness with which people intrust themselves to frail craft with whose management they are ludicrously unacquainted, it may perhaps be a matter for surprise that this tribute is not more heavy than it is; but certainly not a few of the deaths by drowning that go to swell our annual calendar of disasters can only be properly called accidents if we extend the signification of the word so as to include those misfortunes which, though unforeseen, arise from perfectly preventable causes. The climate of Paris and the north of France is not warmer than that of England, but the proportion of Parisians—perhaps even of Frenchmen in general—who can swim is certainly greater than that of Englishmen. When it was pointed out to the librarian at Boulogne-sur-Mer that the library did not possess a single work on swimming, he replied good-humouredly: ‘Ah! c’est comme ça, Monsieur—on apprend naturellement ici;’ and in Thévenot’s _Art de Nager, démontré par Figures, avec des Avis pour se baigner utilement_, published in Paris in or about 1696, some of the plates represent ladies swimming, and would thus seem to show that with Frenchwomen it has been a custom for centuries. In the year 1859, Miss Powers, the secretary to the Ladies’ National Association for the diffusion of sanitary knowledge, published a twopenny pamphlet entitled, _Why do not Women Swim?—a Voice from many Waters_; but the question thus propounded was not satisfactorily answered, and an Englishwoman who can swim still remains a rarity—how great a one, any one may easily ascertain for himself by watching the small crowd that speedily assembles to watch a lady-swimmer at any seaside resort.

In extenuation of our national ignorance of swimming, we have not even the excuse that the acquisition of the art is difficult. On the contrary, it is one of the most easily acquired of accomplishments. The one secret of it is confidence, though, like most other things, it is best learned young. There is no reason why it should not—on the contrary, on the ground both of health and of saving of life, there is every reason why it should—be made a necessary part of the education of young people of both sexes and of all classes. At Eton and in some other schools, it is systematically taught; but it would be far cheaper and more useful than many of the things for which parents cheerfully pay as ‘extras’ in private establishments; whilst in these days, when we are concerning ourselves so greatly about the education of the masses, and paying such a price for the privilege, swimming would certainly be a far more useful subject to form one of the items of Board School education than many of the things for which the long-suffering ratepayer is now compelled to put his hand in his pocket. As a certain William Woodbridge remarked in a manual published by him in 1864:

To swim with ease and confidence and grace,
Should in Great Britain have acknowledged place
Of recognition; and by law decreed,
Be taught as fully as we’re taught to read;
Forming a part in education’s rule
In every college and in every school.

This is the merest doggerel. In fact, the recommendation of the book is not its literary merit, for it possesses none, but the fact that it is what it professes to be—in itself a matter of congratulation after the nonsense which, from time to time, it has been sought to palm off upon the public by utilising the names of various prominent swimmers who were far too ignorant to have written a line of the compilations with which their names have been associated—and that the instruction conveyed in it is thoroughly sound, practical, and to the point. Woodbridge died in 1868; and the little manual has, I believe, been long out of print, so that in saying this I may be acquitted of the desire to give any one a gratuitous advertisement. I come back, however, to my point: Why, provided there be water at hand, should not every one be taught to swim during the period of his or her school career; and how can parents reconcile it to their consciences to permit their children to run a perfectly needless risk, by failing to have them taught what they ought to learn as regularly and easily as they learn to walk?

A TALE OF TWO KNAVERIES.

IN FOUR CHAPTERS.—CHAP. II.

Tom and Lucy Wedlake were two young people who had loved one another well enough, and had had sufficient courage to marry on two hundred pounds a year in the teeth of their respective families, both of which were highly respectable, extremely proud, but very poor. Tom was a Civil Service clerk, aged twenty-eight, whose salary had reached the above annual sum; and it was insisted by all their relations that the young people ought to wait until he should get his first class—which he might hope to do about forty—and be in receipt of three hundred a year; that being the smallest income upon which any lady and gentleman could contrive to support existence together. The pair declined to accept this view; so they got married; and Tom took his pretty gentle wife to live in a little house on the north-east of the Regent’s Park, which he had furnished with money lent him, free of interest, by a well-to-do friend. For the rest, they were content to trust to youth, health, and determination to keep from absolute destitution themselves and any little folks who might hereafter come.

They did not, after all, find the struggle so terrible as it had been described to them. They were not blessed—or burdened—with children until they had been some time married, nor until circumstances had put it into their power to maintain and educate them without difficulty; and they had no expensive tastes. They were extremely fond of one another, and lived in great happiness for one year. Then Uncle Franklin took up his abode with them, and their happiness was for a time considerably clouded. Mr Franklin was Lucy’s maternal uncle. In his business—that of a wine-merchant—he had made money, which he had increased by successful speculation. But in proportion as his purse grew bulky, his manners deteriorated. The latter fact was forgiven in consideration of the former; and by the time he retired, the master of a moderate fortune, the family toleration of him had developed into positive affection. Yet he was as we have seen him—rough, harsh, coarse, selfish, and overbearing; faults which were easily overlooked by the half-dozen sets of brothers and sisters, plentifully garnished with nephews and nieces, who remembered only that Uncle Franklin was old, rich, and a bachelor, and forgot the wine-merchant’s business, and the continual snubs and insults which it had always been the old gentleman’s pleasure to inflict upon his affectionate relatives. So that, when he began to lament the loneliness of his age, and to hint at his longings for the comforts and pleasures of family life, quite a number of hospitable doors flew open to him on the instant. Uncle Franklin entered all those doors, and left each of them before many weeks were over, shaking the dust off his feet against the inhabitants. In every house which he honoured with a brief sojourn, he comported himself more like a fiend than a human being. His selfishness, his ill-temper, his insolence, his coarseness, his tyranny, his general powers of exasperation, would have been unendurable by any save possible legatees, whose meekness, however, instead of disarming the old savage, seemed to incite him to yet greater cruelties. The end was the same in every case. He would fasten some perfectly unreasonable quarrel upon his hosts, and fling out of the house in a furious passion; subsequently amusing himself by inditing from his next abode injurious replies to the petitions for pardon and reconciliation which pursued him.

One day a cab drove up to Tom Wedlake’s door, and Uncle Franklin, alighting therefrom, walked into the parlour, plumped himself into the most comfortable armchair, and announced his intention of remaining, adding that his luggage would arrive shortly. Lucy, in consternation, entertained him as well as she could, which did not appear to be very well, until her husband came home and they were able to take counsel together.

Tom was at first entirely opposed to the whole thing; and being himself of a somewhat fiery temper, hinted at forcible expulsion as a means of solving the difficulty. But Lucy begged him to do nothing hastily, and suggested that the self-invited guest might at all events remain for a few days, until they should be able to see for themselves whether he were in reality so black as he had been painted. And whether it was the excellence of the little dinner which Lucy dished up, or the bright though homely comfort around him, or certain indications in Tom’s look and manner, the dreadful uncle, having come in like a lion, seemed disposed to remain in the character of a lamb. He actually tried, in the course of the evening, to pay Lucy a compliment on her good looks, which only missed fire because no one could possibly have understood it.

Before he went to bed, Uncle Franklin repeated his proposal, offering very liberal terms; and he lamented his lonely old age and the evident disposition of all his relatives to quarrel with him, in a way which went to Lucy’s soft heart. Even Tom, than whom there was no better fellow breathing, was taken in so far that he forgot much that he had heard of the woes attending Uncle Franklin’s irruption into any household. It so happened that he had never troubled Lucy’s own family circle, who alone of all his relatives lived at some distance from London. The young couple sat late that night, discussing the matter from all sides, and at last determined to make the trial. Lucy was influenced partly by pity, partly by the hope, which had in it little indeed of the mercenary element, that her uncle might leave her some small legacy, so that her darling husband might not, after all, have an altogether undowered bride. Tom, on his side, thought only of the wife he loved; the additional income would enable her to keep another servant, would relieve her from hard and menial labour, and would even afford her some few little feminine luxuries which had hitherto been beyond her reach. So each, for the other’s sake, was willing to bow the back for the burden.

For a time all went well. The old man seemed to have made a sudden and vast amendment. True, he was generally irritable, always selfish, and sometimes expressed himself in rather odd language. But these, after all, were mere eccentricities, failings of old age, results of a life apart from all refining influences. They were not insupportable by two people who had youth, health, and good spirits to their aid. And it was evident that Uncle Franklin had taken a fancy to his niece. He liked to have her sitting near him at work; and she made an exemplary listener while he fought over again the battles of business, or indulged in tirades against the baseness and ingratitude of mankind in general and his other relations in particular. To Tom he was civil, and even friendly after his fashion; altogether, he was an endurable inmate; and his entertainers began to believe that the tales which they had heard must at least have been highly coloured.

But after a month of this, Tom and Lucy began to discover that very little present advantage was likely to result to them from the arrangement, which was also irksome in many ways. Uncle Franklin paid well; but then his ideas on the subjects of eating and drinking and minor luxuries were on an even more liberal scale. In fact, after his requirements in this way were provided for, and the expense of the necessary additional servant met, there was little or no margin of profit remaining. And the demands upon Lucy’s time and energies were considerable. Uncle Franklin liked attention, and was unsparing in exacting it; he was, in truth, something of an invalid, which perhaps partly accounted for his temper and other peculiarities; so that Tom began to think seriously of hinting to his guest that it was hardly convenient to entertain him longer; when one evening the old man, being alone with his host and in an unusually equable frame of mind, made an explicit declaration of his intentions. Having first anathematised all his other relations in a general but very hearty manner, he vowed that his niece and her husband were so far the only people with whom he had been able to get on; that he found himself more comfortable with them than he had ever been in his life; and that, with their permission, he proposed to end his days in their company. Tom looked a little awkward; but Mr Franklin, as if guessing at what was in his mind, went on to say that on this condition he should make Lucy his sole legatee; there being, as he considered, no one who had a better claim upon him, or to whom he would willingly leave a fraction of his wealth. Of course Tom could only express his grateful acknowledgments. He was too poor, his prospects were too uncertain for him to be justified in standing in the light of his wife and possible children; so Uncle Franklin was given to understand that his proposal was accepted.

Lucy was full of delight when her husband told her what had passed; but Tom himself was by no means disposed to be sanguine.

‘It’s all very well, little woman,’ said he; ‘and so far he has behaved with tolerable decency. But I don’t think he’s exactly a person to be trusted. You see, he is very comfortable here, thanks to you, and he is undeniably selfish. Naturally, he would like to stay; and some men will say or promise anything to get what they want at the moment. Let him stay, by all means; we must not throw away such a chance. But don’t allow yourself to build too much on his promises, my dear. I, for my part, shall not be at all surprised if he gets tired of us, and quarrels with us, as he has with the rest; nor even if we find, after he has ended his days here and got all he can out of us, that his money is left elsewhere.’

Lucy said little, but she could not bring herself to believe in the existence of such duplicity, and in her heart she was convinced of her uncle’s _bona fides_. She even felt a little shocked that her husband, whom she so loved and admired, could entertain such narrow and unworthy suspicions; and she resolved that, so far as it depended on her, the old man should have no just cause to reconsider his testamentary intentions.

But it is to be feared that this attack of amiability, coupled with the repression of the past few weeks, had put a strain upon Uncle Franklin which he was unable to bear. Perhaps he thought that his munificent promise entitled him to relax a little; perhaps he considered that he had now made his footing in the house absolutely safe. However that may have been, within a very few days after this conversation, the old Adam began to appear in him once more. In Tom’s presence, he was still on his good behaviour, having an instinctive fear of him, as one not likely to submit tamely to oppression. But Tom was absent all day at his office; and when Uncle Franklin had no one to withstand him but a woman, and a very timid and gentle one to boot, he began to ‘let himself out.’ His powers of fault-finding were perfectly microscopic; he passed his time in devising vexations and enjoying them with the keenest relish. As for his language, it daily increased in majesty and ornament. He spoke to the servants in such a manner that one of them—the new one—threatened to give warning, and was with difficulty persuaded to remain; and Lucy was obliged to keep them as much as possible from contact with her guest. He would begin with a grumble at some trifle, round which he would gradually crystallise his grievances, and work himself up by their contemplation into a condition of insane rage, in which he would amble about the room like an angry baboon, knocking down chairs and scattering verbal brimstone all around. On these occasions, his liking for Lucy seemed to disappear altogether, and he would indulge in the most unpleasant criticisms on her appearance, her intellect, and her housekeeping abilities. Neither would he spare her husband, whom he was accustomed to sum up with similarly uncomplimentary results, inviting Lucy to report his comments to their object—a course which, he understood very well, nothing would induce her to take.

She bore it all heroically. She knew what the consequence would be if the slightest hint of the treatment to which she was subjected should ever reach Tom’s ears; so she contented herself with uncomplaining good-temper so long as that was possible, and tears—which added fuel to her uncle’s wrath—when endurance was pushed beyond its limits. Of her own profit she thought little; or rather, the loss of her expectations would have seemed to her humble and contented nature but a small price to pay for release from her sufferings. But for Tom’s sake—in the hope of seeing him relieved of that anxiety for her future which she knew to be always present to his mind—for the sake of those who might hereafter cling around her knees—she was prepared to endure silently the worst that Uncle Franklin could do to her.

This state of things, however, came to a sudden end in a manner to her most unwelcome. Her husband came home one afternoon much earlier than usual. He had thought of late that his wife looked rather pale and worn, and had resolved to treat her to a little dinner at a restaurant, and to take her afterwards to the theatre, in the hope that the outing might give her a much-needed fillip. The consequence was that he met her unexpectedly, as she came out of the dining-room. Could she have had a few moments’ time, she would have utilised it in sponging her eyes and generally smoothing down her ruffled plumage, for this was one of the days on which she had given way under Uncle Franklin’s inflictions; her face was all blurred with tears, and she was sobbing so that she could not immediately stop. All that he had heard of the old man rushed into Tom’s mind, and he suspected at once the state of the case. He took her up-stairs, and then and there had it all out of her, with that gentle and perfectly unbending firmness which she could never resist. He said no more than to bid his little wife dry her eyes and be comforted, kissed her, and went down-stairs, quite deaf to her feeble efforts to excuse the offender. Uncle Franklin had a bad half-hour of it that afternoon; he probably heard more solid truth than he had been favoured with for many years. It was never exactly known what Tom said to him; but before bedtime that night, it was quite understood by all the household that their guest was under orders to quit within a week. Uncle Franklin did not utter a word all the evening, but sat in his armchair, blinking furtively at his host, feeling guilty and detected, but yet unrepentant. Before he went to bed, he announced his intention of keeping to his own room for the remainder of his stay, and requested that a fire might be lit there in the morning. Also, he wrote a letter, and sent a servant to post it. This letter it was which occasioned Mr Blackford’s visit.

That worthy solicitor prepared the will, which was very short and simple, with the care demanded by a document of such importance to his own interests. He even took the precaution to fair-copy it for signature himself, so as to pay strict regard to the desire of the testator that no inkling of its purport should leak out prematurely; and with it he next day repaired to Camden Town, taking with him, as requested, two witnesses—his own clerk, and a writer in the employ of his law-stationer.

Mr Franklin chuckled a great deal as he wrote his name. ‘You can take it away and keep it yourself, Blackford,’ said he, after the witnesses had done their part and retired; ‘I’ll warrant you to take good care of it.—By the way, I don’t think the date’s inserted.’

The solicitor began to unbutton the greatcoat, in an inner pocket of which he had buried the precious piece of paper.

‘Oh, bother that! Do it when you get back. It’s your concern—not mine. I’ve had enough of you for one while; and I feel confoundedly queer. I suppose this business has upset me, though I don’t know why it should. It wouldn’t have done so, once on a time.—Good-day.’ And, nothing loth, Mr Blackford took himself off with his treasure.

The prize was his; but only conditionally. This unreliable testator might alter his mind at any moment and undo his freak. Mr Blackford, with all his faults, was not murderously inclined; but it is to be feared that if some burglar in the pursuit of his calling had found it necessary to eliminate Mr Franklin that night, and had confided his intentions beforehand to the solicitor, something would have happened to prevent that gentleman from warning the police. He re-entered his office with a sigh. Never had it appeared to him so gloomy as at this moment, when, with the possibility of future wealth in his pocket, he found himself still confronted with the necessity of solving that difficult and importunate bread-and-cheese problem.

Uncle Franklin had rightly estimated his chances of remaining an inmate of the Wedlake nest. On the morning after the execution of his will, he came down to the dining-room at breakfast-time, and then and there ate humble-pie with the best grace he could assume. He apologised formally to Lucy, and promised never to repeat his behaviour. He pleaded to Tom his failing health and increasing age, and drew a moving picture of himself as an outcast upon the world, at the mercy of landladies; and he did this with a certain rough pathos which produced its effect. Tom was very short and stern in his replies, and would commit himself to nothing definite, but promised to think the matter over during the day. And when he returned at night, Lucy the soft-hearted met him with an appeal, before which he gave way.

‘He has been very humble and quiet all day,’ said she. ‘I think, my boy—so savage about his little wife!—has quite broken the poor old man’s spirit. I don’t think we ought to send him away. Of course, there is the money; and it’s nonsense to pretend that we shouldn’t be glad if he were to leave us a little. We can’t afford to despise it, Tom. I am sure he likes me, though he is so cross; and I am not much afraid that this affair will make any difference in the end. But besides all that, he is so friendless and alone, rich as he is.—We will try to keep him, won’t we, Tom dear?’

‘He must be on his good behaviour, then,’ said Tom, only half mollified. ‘I’ll stand no more nonsense, let him be as rich as Crœsus.’

‘Leave him to me,’ said Lucy; ‘there will be no more trouble with him. It was my own fault for giving way so much. I shall be wiser now, and so will he.’

‘As you like, dear,’ said her husband. ‘I have no right to oppose you in this matter, if you are willing to sacrifice yourself. I am very much afraid you will be disappointed. Forgiveness of injuries is not in your dear uncle’s nature, or I am much mistaken. He hates me like poison now, of course; and he can’t benefit you without doing the same by me, to some extent.’

‘I don’t know,’ returned Lucy thoughtfully. ‘I think you will find him very different in future. He seems to me as if he had had a shock. No one has ever stood up to him before, you know; and the treatment may have a good effect.’

It did not occur to either of them to attach any importance to the visits of Mr Blackford, of whose profession they were ignorant. Uncle Franklin, though he had retired from trade, continued his speculative investments; and the calls of gentlemen of unmistakable ‘business’ appearance were of such common occurrence, that they had almost ceased to attract notice in the household, the master and mistress of which were two of the least curious people in the world.

The old man certainly was altered, suddenly and strangely. His ill-temper had disappeared; he even refrained from swearing when, on one occasion, a mishap in the kitchen ruined his lunch. He became remarkably silent; he gave up his morning walk, seldom read his paper, and moped all day in his armchair, following Lucy about the room with his eyes whenever she was present. She was rather anxious about him, and did her best, by redoubled kindness and attention, to soothe what she supposed to be his mortification under the sharp rebuke which he had received. For a long time he scarcely noticed her efforts, remaining sullen and unresponsive; but after a while she found that he still liked her to be near him, and got restless and uneasy if she were long absent. He seemed to have something on his mind, and would gaze into the fire and mutter anxiously to himself for hours together. For Tom he entertained a hearty and unconcealed aversion, never speaking to him unless obliged to do so, and glaring at him with no doubtful expression whenever his back was turned. Of this Tom was almost oblivious, and entirely careless; for no ‘expectations,’ however important to himself or to others, could have enabled him to dissemble his real feelings towards any one whom he either loved or disliked.

DREAM-FANCIES.

Whence are ye that come to us
In the stilly night?
Wherefore do you torture thus,
Phantoms of delight?
Say, if ye are only fancies,
Why your presence so entrances—
So deceives our sight?

Where, oh, where’s your stronghold, tell,
In what fairy land?
O’er what meads of Asphodel
Sport your elfin band?
Tell me truly, flitting fancies,
Where you hold those fairy dances,
On what sunny strand?

When you, with your subtle spell,
Hold our senses fast,
Absent comrades with us dwell,
Present seems the Past:
Say, if ye are idle fancies,
Why, when overpast the trance is,
Its impressions last?

Wherefore bring before us still
Those from whom we sever?
Mean you, that you tyrants will
Grant oblivion never?
Say, if ye are dreams and fancies,
Why in dreams young Cupid’s lances
Strike as deep as ever?

Tell me who your power confers,
Say from whom ye borrow
All your magic—harbingers
Ushering joy or sorrow;
Why, if ye’re but fickle fancies,
These dream-faces, these dream-glances
Haunt us so to-morrow?

Mortal mind may never know,
Mortal wisdom cite
Whence ye come or whither go,
Spirits of the night:
Yet your mystery enhances,
And your witchery entrances
More than pen may write.

E. W. H.

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Printed and Published by W. & R. CHAMBERS, 47 Paternoster Row, LONDON, and 339 High Street, EDINBURGH.

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_All Rights Reserved._