Chapter III: "the Raven for a Guide."

What thou wouldst highly
That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false,
And yet wouldst wrongly win.
_Macbeth._

Till life is coming back, our death we do not feel,
Light must be entering in, our darkness to reveal.
ARCHBISHOP TRENCH.

As the autumn wove on, both the dog and his master began to show traces of the life they were living. Poor Waif pined for the country. He had always been his master's companion in his long rides and walks, and town life was of course a great and very undesirable change for him. Donovan, too, lost his strength considerably. It was an unhealthy life he was leading, full of the worst kind of excitement; at times idle and unoccupied, at times full of fatigue. Naturally, too, his state of mind told on his physical strength. The year beginning with the terrible strain of little Dot's death, had brought him overwhelming grief; the long spring months had been spent in a fierce inward struggle, a vain search for peace; then had followed his quarrel with Ellis and his expulsion from Oakdene, and ever since that he had been in the poisoned atmosphere of the society into which Noir Frewin had led him. No wonder that as the winter advanced he began to fail; even the Frewins, who were not more observant of such trivial matters than selfish people usually are, noticed at last that something was wrong.

"There's no getting a rise out of the boy now," observed Rouge, one December afternoon. "I don't know what's come to him, unless, as I expect, it's this absurd fad he's taken into his head about water-drinking. I told him it was enough to kill a fellow to give it up all at once like that. I should have died that very week, if I'd kept my agreement."

Noir gave a contemptuous sneer.

"No fear of your dying in that way, at any rate. I wonder Donovan was ever such a fool as to think you'd give it up. He is an odd fish. There's no making him out."

Rouge glanced at the subject of all this talk, who was lying asleep on the sofa, and then for the first time he noticed how worn and thin he was. All the boyishness had gone from his face now.

"I say, Noir, he looks to me uncommonly queer," said the old captain. "I've seen one or two fellows look like that before now. There was one, I remember, on the _Metora_."

"Pooh! I daresay many of them looked badly enough before they'd found their sea-legs," said Noir, coolly.

"Well, the fellow I mean died," said the captain, impressively. "And I must say milord does look to me awfully out of health."

"Oh! nonsense. He's only seedy--a cold, or something of that sort. We got drenched the other night coming from Legge's place. It's time we were starting. Just wake him up."

Rouge complied, and Donovan started up at once, and looked sleepily at his watch.

"Time to go? Oh! I'd forgotten. It's this Brighton scheme."

He looked wretchedly ill and tired, not at all fit to turn out of the warm room into the cold drizzle of the December twilight, but he was not one to shirk an engagement for the sake of mere bodily disinclination, and there was no one to tell him what madness it was to trifle with such a severe chill as he had taken. He drew on his great-coat, and without a word stood waiting for Noir, who was sorting his cards on a side-table.

"Take my advice," said Rouge, paternally, "and have something just to hearten you up before you go. With such a cold you want something to warm the cockles of your heart."

For the moment Donovan was strongly tempted. He did feel very much in need of some such comfort, but his hesitation was but momentary. He knew that his only hope of influencing the old captain lay in the steadiest adherence to his plan of abstinence. The three months of the agreement were over, but, though Rouge had long ago broken his pledge, his companion's example had often kept him from excess, and Donovan knew well enough that even for his own sake the safe-guard was a very good thing.

"Oh! as to the cockles of one's heart," he said, laughing, "that's all bosh; one only takes cold the easier, as any doctor would tell you. Present loss, future gain, is our motto to-day; ought to bag a good many head of game to make up for turning out in this wet mist. Good-bye, captain; look after Waif."

And then Noir and his young accomplice set out on their expedition. As they passed the window of the print-shop, Donovan involuntarily paused.

"Why, there's your very double," he said, laughing; and, in spite of the rain, Noir stopped to see what he meant.

It was an old print of Brunei the engineer. The curious forehead and eyebrows, and the general cast of countenance, certainly bore a strong resemblance to Noir, though the expression was very different. Underneath, in copper-plate, was written the couplet--

"Whose public works will best attest his fame,
Whilst private worth adds value to his name."

It was rather a curious contrast to Noir Frewin's life, and the words stung him.

"Well, well!" he said, with his bitter laugh, "my 'public works' are not of the first water, perhaps; you needn't give me that epitaph."

The Brighton expedition proved a great success. Noir and Donovan returned in two or three days' time well content. They had chosen an evening train to come back by. Noir went on as usual to select a favourable carriage; Donovan followed him more leisurely, for it answered their purpose best not to appear to be companions. Donovan's part was usually that of a decoy, a well-to-do, gentlemanly-looking fellow who consented to play, and thus induced others to try their hand. Noir had this evening chosen a most auspicious-looking carriage full of young men returning to town, for it was the week after Christmas, and, the brief holiday being over, many had chosen this late train to take them back to the busy London life again. Scarcely had they left the station, however, when Noir's countenance suddenly fell; two or three of the passengers were commenting on a placard which, printed in large letters, was put up on the side of the carriage. He was vexed and disconcerted, for it effectually put an end to his schemes for the journey. With a slight warning pressure on his companion's foot, he drew his attention to the placard which was above his head. Not in the least knowing what to expect, Donovan took off his hat and put it in the netting, thus getting an opportunity of turning round, and there, staring at him in large type, were words which he never forgot, words which seemed to burn themselves in upon his brain at the very first reading. "Caution. Passengers are earnestly recommended to beware of pickpockets and card-sharpers dressed as gentlemen," £c, &c. He could read no further; he fell back into his place like one stunned, then the hot colour rushed to his cheeks, mounted higher and higher till his whole face seemed to burn and tingle. Had he actually come to this? Was he, Donovan Farrant, a cheat against whom the public must be warned, classed with pickpockets? He, his father's only son, had sunk so low then, that this description would apply to him--a "card-sharper dressed as a gentleman!" That moment's sharp realisation was terrible. Noir, anxious to veil his sudden confusion, held out a newspaper to him; but he only shook his head, and the elder man, who was merely annoyed by the occurrence, began to feel alarmed at the strange effect the caution had had on his accomplice. Such misery, such shame, were written on his face that Noir began to fear he should lose his able assistance.

They got out at London Bridge, and he linked his arm within Donovan's with an anxious attempt at raillery.

"Why, milord, what made you play such a false card just now, colouring up like a girl at a mere piece of paper? I gave you credit for more self-control."

Donovan bit his lip; the last words vexed him, and changed the current of his thoughts, for he rather prided himself on his powers of self-control, which were indeed considerable.

"It startled me," he confessed, after a brief silence. Then again, with a slight hesitation, "Noir, do you consider yourself a card-sharper?"

The question was asked with a kind of innocence which made Noir shudder; he forced up a mocking laugh, however.

"Ask a thief if he considers himself a thief, and he will tell you 'no,' but a professional adept, with a gift for acquiring other people's property."

Donovan winced.

"If that's the definition of a thief, you and I belong pretty much to the same class."

Noir wrenched away his arm.

"And what do I care if we do?" he cried, angrily; "I don't know what makes you so cantankerous to-night. Have you forgotten your favourite maxim, that the world is a mass of injustice, and that a little more or less evil makes no difference? You stand by that, and I'll undertake to stand by you, for the world is unjust, and I delight in cheating it when I've the opportunity. If you're going to turn moral, milord, we'll dissolve partnership at once, and you can go back to those fine friends you know, who were so ready to help you before you came to us."

Donovan did not reply to this taunt, he only shivered and drew his comforter over his mouth. He felt worn out and giddy, his steps began to falter, and Noir, who in his strange rough fashion loved him, forgot his anger, and taking his arm again, half dragged him home.

"The fact is, you're seedy and down in the mouth, Donovan," he said, as they reached their rooms, "you'll see things very differently to-morrow."

Donovan did not answer, he stumbled up the dark staircase after Noir, and followed him into the parlour. There, with the gas flaring, a huge fire blazing up the chimney, and supper waiting on the table, was the old captain; his hearty welcome was generally pleasant enough, but this evening Donovan felt he could not stand it. He was half perished with cold and involuntarily made for the fire, but it was only for a minute, the warm comfortable room was not in keeping with his doubt and misery.

"Double, double,
Toil and trouble,"

sang Sweepstakes, following the tall dark figure with his shrewd eye, "Double--double--dou-ble----dou--ble."

"First-rate luck all three days," Noir was saying. "To-night our little game was stopped, and milord's down in the depths. Here, Donovan, come to supper, we didn't get much of a feed at Brighton."

But Donovan shook his head.

"Good night, captain," he said, and, disregarding Rouge's remonstrances, left the room. He opened his own door, and Waif, with whines of delight, sprang to greet him.

"Waif--poor old fellow!" he exclaimed, stooping for a minute over the dog, but hastily raising himself again. "No, no, down, get down, I say, I'm not fit to touch you."

Poor Waif was utterly bewildered, his master had never spoken to him in that way before, something must be wrong, very much wrong. It was dark, but the faintest glimmer of light from the uncurtained window served to show him that his master had thrown himself on the ground, it was a sure sign that he was in trouble, Waif knew that perfectly well, and did not just at first dare to interrupt him; he walked disconsolately round and round him, stopping. every minute or two to sniff at him, listen, whine in a subdued way.

Donovan was beyond dog help just then, in the depth of his self-abasement he could not sink low enough, in his abject self-loathing to be touched by a being whom he loved would have been unbearable. He had known well enough that he was doing wrong before. Something of his blackness had been borne in upon him when Gladys Tremain had spoken those words in the Park, but now it was all before him, in hideous array, the very vision of sin itself. How could he have delighted in anything so ghastly? it was not even a great revenge he had taken on the unjust world, but the pettiest, meanest, most despicable revenge. What had he not fallen to in these months? why, these hands of his--the hands that had waited on Dot--had stooped to pick up paltry half-crowns won by cheating foolish wretches in a railway-carriage. And then came the remembrance of his father. "You are hardly in a position, Dono, to speak of breaches of honour." Not even then! oh! what would his father have said to him now! Yet little as he had known of him, that little was enough to tell him that his father would always think more of the future than of the past. There was a future for him even now, he must no longer wage war upon the unjust world, he must--he _would_ alter his way of living if only for the sake of redeeming his father's name. But for the first time in his life he felt a want in himself, that agony of remorse, despair, utter self-abhorrence had done its work, he was no longer blindly confident in his own strength.

Presently from sheer exhaustion he fell asleep. Waif was happier when he heard the deep regular breaths; a strange process of thinking began in the dog mind. He went back to his woolly rug and lay down, but in a minute jumped up again, ran to his master, licked his hand, and then returned to his rug. Still he could not settle himself to sleep, a second and a third time he got up, making an uneasy circuit round the prostrate figure on the ground. At last, as if unable to lie on his rug while Donovan was on the floor, he curled himself up at his feet, and there slept peacefully.

In the adjoining room Noir, having made a hearty meal, drew up his chair to the fire and lighted his evening pipe. The old captain was evidently uneasy. Noir was uneasy, too, in reality, but he kept it to himself.

"He's a very queer customer that lad," said Rouge, meditatively. "You think it really is this piece of paper which frightened him?"

"Yes, he's young," said Noir, in an excusing tone. "It gave him a turn, I daresay it will soon pass off. If not we must get a little change somehow. It wouldn't be a bad plan to go abroad for a month or two, plenty to be done there, and he'd be sure to like it. After all, of course we do run some risk here; a month or two of absence wouldn't be a bad notion."

"'He who prigs what isn't his'n,'" quoted Rouge. "Well, don't carry it too far, and don't drive the boy away, whatever you do."

"No, no, I'd sacrifice a good deal to keep him," said Noir, "but he's thoroughly upset to-night about it."

Presently the old captain lighted his candle and went up to bed, but Noir sat on long after his pipe was finished, long after the fire had sunk down in the grate to a handful of dying embers; he was thinking, brooding painfully over the comparative innocence of his boy accomplice, and his own villainy. How despairing and wild the fellow had looked, too, as he left the room; he quite started when the door opened, and Rouge, with his nightcap on, appeared again upon the scene.

"I say, Noir, I don't feel happy about that boy. It was very strange of him to go off like that with no supper."

"Pooh!" said Noir, contemptuously, though his father was speaking his own thoughts. "He's ashamed of himself and vexed about that caution."

"Yes; but to go off ill as he is, cold and supperless. If he was a Catholic he might do it as penance, but he's nothing, you know."

It did not strike them that in very deep inward trouble it is at times impossible to enjoy or permit bodily ease; indeed, if the poor old captain had been guilty of the most heinous crime, he would probably have eaten his supper after its committal, and found a solace in the eating to his pangs of remorse. He could not understand anything which went deeper than this, and his good heart had been stirred with pity as he lay down warmed and satisfied in his comfortable feather-bed.

Noir's thoughts went at once to darker suspicious; he had seen something of that same despairing look on Donovan's face when, on that bright June afternoon, he had watched him unknown on Westminster Bridge. He had read his intentions then, was it possible that misery and shame had driven him again to the same longing?

"We'll just give him a look on our way up," he said, carelessly. And then he turned the door-handle noiselessly, and with well-disguised anxiety stole in; the room was very quiet, the bed empty. Noir's heart stood still, and, with an exclamation of dismay, he hurried to the dark form which was stretched out on the floor.

"Bring the candle quick," he said to his father, and Rouge, trembling with fear, held the light nearer, while Waif growled a little at the unusual disturbance.

Noir bent down for a moment close to the half-hidden face, then he started up again with an expression of relief, which came rather oddly from his lips--

"Thank God!"

"Well, it did give me a turn," said the old captain, stooping to pat the dog.

"Hush!" said Noir, "you'll wake him."

And then for a minute the shabby little room witnessed a strange scene. Donovan stirred uneasily, half turned round, but sank again into profound sleep, and the two Frewins bent over him, why, they could scarcely have said, but in their relief it seemed almost a necessity. They watched the face of the sleeper--flushed as if even now the shame were making itself felt--the sad face which seemed all the more despairing because of its stillness, the fixedness of its misery. And Noir's heart smote him, his conscience cried out loudly, "You have brought him to this, you have dragged this boy down into shame and dishonesty."

Rouge thought only of the discomforts of a night on the floor.

"Wake him up," he urged. "It's frightfully cold, he oughtn't to be there."

But Noir would not wake him, he knew that it would be cruel to bring him back to his anguish of remorse. Rouge could never understand anything higher than bodily comfort, it was what he lived for; his son, though a far worse man, had nevertheless a capability of entering into greater things, he had himself sinned and suffered, and though it was years since he had known real remorse, he had once known it, and to a certain extent he understood Donovan's feelings.

"Better leave him," he said; but, with the words upon his lips, he nevertheless turned to the bed, and, dragging off a railway-rug which covered it, threw it over the prostrate form on the floor. Strangely indeed in life do the lights and shades intermix, faint flickering of the light divine stealing in, in spite of the vast black shades of sin.

The next day--the last of the year--was a dreary one in the Frewins' rooms. Noir kept out of the way, not caring to face his accomplice; old Rouge, in great depression, dusted his curiosities as usual, and put things tidy and ship-shape; and Donovan sat coughing and shivering over the fire, with an expression of such despondency, often of such terrible suffering, that the old captain scarcely dared to speak to him. The sharpness of his remorse had for the time died away, it was swallowed up in the misery of his recollections, for this was the anniversary of Dot's last day of life, and remembrances strange, tender, pitiful, but always full of pain, thronged up in his mind. Brooding over it all, his brain excited with the events of the past night, his body worn out with pain, it was no wonder that the overtaxed nature at last gave way.

His mood seemed to change; Rouge, who had not been able to extract a word from him all day, was astounded as the evening drew on to find him suddenly in the wildest spirits.

"Come," he said, "we'll go to Olliver's; it's time we had dinner. Come along, captain."

And poor old Rouge found himself dragged off, in spite of his remonstrances.

"You'd better not go out, milord; you're really not fit."

"Not fit!" said Donovan, with a mad laugh, cut short by a cough. "I'm fit for anything. Come along, old fellow; we'll drown care, stifle it, kill it, what you like!"

Rouge, really frightened, panted along after his crazy companion, with difficulty keeping pace with his fevered steps; and then ensued an evening of mad merriment. A year ago, only a year ago, and Donovan had been watching Dot's last agony; with the strong manly tenderness of great love he had held the little quivering hands in his, now in a crowded billiard-room he grasped the cue instead, and betted wildly, losing, winning, winning again considerably, then with the Frewins, and Legge, and two or three other companions returning to Drury Lane and gambling the old year out and the new year in.

"I back the winner, I back the winner!" screamed Sweepstakes from his cage.

And above the sounds of dispute, and merriment, and eager play, the clock of St. Mary's Church struck twelve, and in the distance Big Ben's deep notes echoed over the city, and, just because an agony of remembrance rushed back into Donovan's mind, he staked higher and higher. The room rang with his wild laughter.

Noir broke up the gathering much earlier than usual, and with flushed cheeks and wild glittering eyes Donovan staggered to his feet; but he could hardly stand, his head seemed weighted, his limbs powerless.

"I've done for myself now," he said, catching at Noir to keep himself up. Noir did not answer; with his father's assistance he helped him into the next room, and with some pangs of conscience kept guard over him through the night of mad excitement and misery which followed.

The next morning the bright new year broke over the great city, there were _fêtes_, and rejoicings, and merry family parties, but in the lodging-house in Drury Lane all was silent, even at night no gamblers' wild revelry broke the stillness, for Donovan was prostrated by an attack of congestion of the lungs in its acutest form.