Two Years Ago, Volume I

But most fretting of all was the discovery that Lucia knew—if not all about his original name—still enough to keep him in dread lest she should learn more.

It was now twelve months and more that this new terror had leapt up and stared in his face. He had left a letter about—a thing which he was apt to do—in which the Whitbury lawyer made some allusions to his little property; and he was sure that Lucia had seen it; the hated name of Briggs certainly she had not seen; for Elsley had torn it out the moment he opened the letter: but she had seen enough, as he soon found, to be certain that he had, at some time or other, passed under a different name.

If Lucia had been a more thoughtful or high-minded woman, she would have gone straight to her husband, and quietly and lovingly asked him to tell her all: but, in her left-handed Irish fashion, she kept the secret to herself, and thought it a very good joke to have him in her power, and to be able to torment him about that letter when he got out of temper. It never occurred, however, to her that his present name was the feigned one. She fancied that he had, in some youthful escapade, assumed the name to which the lawyer alluded. So the next time he was cross, she tried laughingly the effect of her newly-discovered spell; and was horror-struck at the storm which she evoked. In a voice of thunder, Elsley commanded her never to mention the subject again; and showed such signs of terror and remorse, that she obeyed him from that day forth, except when now and then she lost her temper as completely, too, as he. Little she thought, in her heedlessness, what a dark cloud of fear and suspicion, ever deepening and spreading, she had put between his heart and hers.

But if Elsley had dreaded her knowledge of his story, he dreaded ten times more Tom's knowledge of it. What if Thurnall should tell Lucia? What if Lucia should make a confidant of Thurnall? Women told their doctors everything; and Lucia, he knew too well, had cause to complain of him. Perhaps, thought he, maddened into wild suspicion by the sense of his own wrong-doing, she might complain of him; she might combine with Thurnall against him—for what purpose he knew not: but the wildest imaginations flashed across him, as he hurried desperately home, intending as soon as he got there to forbid Lucia's ever calling in his dreaded enemy. No, Thurnall should never cross his door again! On that one point he was determined, but on nothing else.

However, his intention was never fulfilled. For long before he reached home he began to feel himself thoroughly ill. His was a temperament upon which mental anxiety acts rapidly and severely; and the burning sun, and his rapid walk, combined with rage and terror to give him such a "turn" that, as he hurried down the lane, he found himself reeling like a drunken man. He had just time to hurry through the garden, and into his study, when pulse and sense failed him, and he rolled over on the sofa in a dead faint.

Lucia had seen him come in, and heard him fall, and rushed in. The poor little thing was at her wits' end, and thought that he had had nothing less than a coup-de-soleil. And when he recovered from his faintness, he began to be so horribly ill, that Clara, who had been called in to help, had some grounds for the degrading hypothesis (for which Lucia all but boxed her ears) that "Master had got away into the woods, and gone eating toadstools, or some such poisonous stuff;" for he lay a full half-hour on the sofa, death-cold, and almost pulseless; moaning, shuddering, hiding his face in his hands, and refusing cordials, medicines, and, above all, a doctor's visit.

However, this could not be allowed to last. Without Elsley's knowledge, a messenger was despatched for Thurnall, and luckily met him in the lane; for he was returning to the town in the footsteps of his victim.

Elsley's horror was complete, when the door opened, and Lucia brought in none other than his tormentor.

"My dearest Elsley, I have sent for Mr. Thurnall. I knew you would not let me, if I told you; but you see I have done it, and now you must really speak to him."

Elsley's first impulse was to motion them both away angrily; but the thought that he was in Thurnall's power stopped him. He must not show his disgust. What if Lucia were to ask its cause, even to guess it? for to his fears even that seemed possible. A fresh misery! Just because he shrank so intensely from the man, he must endure him!

"There is nothing the matter with me," said he languidly.

"I should be the best judge of that, after what Mrs. Vavasour has just told me," said Tom, in his most professional and civil voice; and slipped, catlike, into a seat beside the unresisting poet.

He asked question on question: but Elsley gave such unsatisfactory answers, that Lucia had to detail everything afresh for him, with—"You know, Mr. Thurnall, he is always overtasking his brain, and will never confess himself ill,"—and all a woman's anxious comments.

Rogue Tom knew all the while well enough what was the cause: but he saw, too, that Elsley was very ill. He felt that he must have the matter out at once; and, by a side glance, sent the obedient Lucia out of the room to get a table-spoonful of brandy.

"Now, my dear sir, that we are alone," began he blandly.

"Now, sir!" answered Vavasour, springing off the sofa, his whole pent-up wrath exploding in hissing steam, the moment the safety-valve was lifted. "Now, sir! What—what is the meaning of this insolence, this intrusion?"

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Vavasour," answered Tom, rising, in a tone of bland and stolid surprise.

"What do you want here, with your mummery and medicine, when you know the cause of my malady well enough already? Go, sir! and leave me to myself."

"My dear sir," said Tom firmly, "you seem to have forgotten what passed between us this morning."

"Will you insult me beyond endurance?" cried Elsley.

"I told you that, as long as you chose, you were Elsley Vavasour, and I the country doctor. We have met in that character. Why not sustain it? You are really ill; and if I know the cause, I am all the more likely to know the cure."

"Cure?"

"Why not? Believe me, it is in your power to become a much happier man, simply by becoming a healthier one."

"Impertinence!"

"Pish! What can I gain by being impertinent, sir? I know very well that you have received a severe shock; but I know equally well, that if you were as you ought to be, you would not feel it in this way. When one sees a man in the state of prostration in which you are, common sense tells one that the body must have been neglected, for the mind to gain such power over it."

Elsley replied with a grunt; but Tom went on, bland and imperturbable.

"Believe me, it may be a very materialist view of things: but fact is fact—the corpus sanum is father to the mens sana—tonics and exercise make the ills of life look marvellously smaller. You have the frame of a strong and active man; and all you want to make you light-hearted and cheerful, is to develop what nature has given you."

"It is too late," said Elsley, pleased, as most men are, by being told that they might be strong and active.

"Not in the least. Three months would strengthen your muscles, open your chest again, settle your digestion, and make you as fresh as a lark, and able to sing like one. Believe me, the poetry would be the better for it, as well as the stomach. Now, positively, I shall begin questioning you."

So Elsley was won to detail the symptoms of internal malaise, which he was only too much in the habit of watching himself; but there were some among them which Tom could not quite account for on the ground of mere effeminate habits. A thought struck him.

"You sleep ill, I suppose?" said he carelessly.

"Very ill."

"Did you ever try opiates?"

"No—yes—that is, sometimes."

"Ah!" said Tom, more carelessly still, for he wished to hide, by all means, the importance of the confession. "Well, they give relief for a time: but they are dangerous things—disorder the digestion, and have their revenge on the nerves next morning, as spitefully as brandy itself. Much better try a glass of strong ale or porter just before going to bed. I've known it give sleep, even in consumption—try it, and exercise. You shoot?"

"No."

"Pity; there ought to be noble cocking in these woods. However, the season's past. You fish?"

"No."

"Pity again. I hear Alva is full of trout. Why not try sailing? Nothing oxygenates the lungs like a sail, and your friends the fishermen would be delighted to have you as super-cargo. They are always full of your stories to them, and your picking their brains for old legends and adventures."

"They are noble fellows, and I want no better company; but, unfortunately, I am always sea-sick."

"Ah! wholesome, but unpleasant: you are fond of gardening?"

"Very; but stooping makes my head swim."

"True, and I don't want you to stoop. I hope to see you soon as erect as a Guardsman. Why not try walks?"

"Abominable bores—lonely, aimless—"

"Well, perhaps you're right. I never knew but three men who took long constitutionals on principle, and two of them were cracked. But why not try a companion; and persuade that curate, who needs just the same medicine as you, to accompany you? I don't know a more gentleman-like, agreeable, well-informed man than he is."

"Thank you. I can choose my acquaintances for myself."

"You touchy ass!" said Thurnall to himself. "If we were in the blessed state of nature now, wouldn't I give you ten minutes' double thonging, and then set you to work, as the runaway nigger did his master, Bird o' freedom Sawin, till you'd learnt a thing or two." But blandly still he went on.

"Try the dumb-bells then. Nothing like them for opening your chest. And do get a high desk made, and stand to your writing instead of sitting." And Tom actually made Vavasour promise to do both, and bade him farewell with—

"Now, I'll send you up a little tonic; and trouble you with no more visits till you send for me. I shall see by one glance at your face whether you are following my prescriptions. And, I say, I wouldn't meddle with those opiates any more; try good malt and hops instead."

"Those who drink beer, think beer," said Elsley, smiling; for he was getting more hopeful of himself, and his terrors were vanishing beneath Tom's skilful management.

"And those who drink water, think water. The Elizabethans—Sidney and Shakspeare, Burleigh and Queen Bess, worked on beef and ale,—and you would not class them among the muddle-headed of the earth: Believe me, to write well, you must live well. If you take it out of your brain, you must put it in again. It's a question of fact. Try it for yourself." And off Tom went; while Lucia rushed back to her husband, covered him with caresses, assured him that he was seven times as ill as he really was, and so nursed and petted him, that he felt himself, for that time at least, a beast and a fool for having suspected her for a moment. Ah, woman, if you only knew how you carry our hearts in your hands, and would but use your power for our benefit, what angels you might make us all!

"So," said Tom, as he went home, "he has found his way to the elevation-bottle, has he, as well as Mrs. Heale? It's no concern of mine: but as a professional man, I must stop that. You will certainly be no credit to me if you kill yourself under my hands."

Tom went straight home, showed the blacksmith how to make a pair of dumb-bells, covered them himself with leather, and sent them up the next morning with directions to be used for half an hour morning and evening.

And something—whether it was the dumb-bells, or the tonic, or wholesome fear of the terrible doctor—kept Elsley for the next month in better spirits and temper than he had been in for a long while.

Moreover, Tom set Lucia to coax him into walking with Headley. She succeeded at last; and, on the whole, each of them soon found that he had something to learn from the other. Elsley improved daily in health, and Lucia wrote to Valencia flaming accounts of the wonderful doctor who had been cast on shore in their world's end; and received from her after a while this, amid much more—for fancy is not exuberant enough to reproduce the whole of a young lady's letter.

"—I am so ashamed. I ought to have told you of that doctor a fortnight ago; but, rattle-pate as I am, I forgot all about it. Do you know, he is Sabina Mellot's dearest friend; and she begged me to recommend him to you; but I put it off, and then it slipped my memory, like everything else good. She has told me the most wonderful stories of his courage and goodness; and conceive—she and her husband were taken prisoners with him by the savages in the South Seas, and going to be eaten, she says: but he helped them to escape in a canoe—such a story—and lived with them for three months on the most beautiful desert island—it is all like a fairy tale. I'll tell it you when I come, darling—which I shall do in a fortnight, and we shall be all so happy. I have such a box ready for you and the chicks, which I shall bring with me; and some pretty things from Scoutbush beside, who is very low, poor fellow, I cannot conceive what about: but wonderfully tender about you. I fancy he must be in love; for he stood up the other day about you to my aunt, quite solemnly, with, 'Let her alone, my lady. She's not the first whom love has made a fool of, and she won't be the last: and I believe that some of the moves which look most foolish, turn out best after all. Live and let live; everybody knows his own business best; anything is better than marriage without real affection.' Conceive my astonishment at hearing the dear little fellow turn sage in that way!

"By the way, I have had to quote his own advice against him; for I have refused Lord Chalkclere after all. I told him (C. not S.) that he was much too good for me: far too perfect and complete a person; that I preferred a husband whom I could break in for myself, even though he gave me a little trouble. Scoutbush was cross at first; but he said afterwards that it was just like Baby Blake (the wretch always calls me Baby Blake now, after that dreadful girl in Lever's Novel); and I told him frankly that it was, if he meant that I had sooner break in a thorough-bred for myself, even though I had a fall or two in the process, than jog along on the most finished little pony on earth, who would never go out of an amble. Lord Chalk may be very finished, and learned, and excellent, and so forth: but, ma chère, I want, not a white rabbit (of which he always reminds me), but a hero, even though he be a naughty one. I always fancy people must be very little if they can be finished off so rapidly; if there was any real verve in them, they would take somewhat longer to grow. Lord Chalk would do very well to bind in Russian leather, and put on one's library shelves, to be consulted when one forgot a date; but really even your Ulysses of a doctor—provided, of course, he turned out a prince in disguise, and don't leave out his h's—would be more to the taste of your naughtiest of sisters."

CHAPTER XII.

A PEER IN TROUBLE

Somewhere in those days, so it seems, did Mr. Bowie call unto himself a cab at the barrack-gate, and, dressed in his best array, repair to the wilds of Brompton, and request to see either Claude or Mrs. Mellot.

Bowie is an ex-Scots-Fusilier, who, damaged by the kick of a horse, has acted as valet, first to Scoutbush's father, and next to Scoutbush himself. He is of a patronising habit of mind, as befits a tolerably "leeterary" Scotsman of forty-five years of age and six-feet three in height, who has full confidence in the integrity of his own virtue, the infallibility of his own opinion, and the strength of his own right arm; for Bowie, though he has a rib or two "dinged in," is mighty still as Theseus' self; and both astonished his red-bearded compatriots, and won money for his master, by his prowess in the late feat of arms at Holland House.

Mr. Bowie is asked to walk into Sabina's boudoir (for Claude is out in the garden), to sit down, and deliver his message: which he does after a due military salute, sitting bolt upright in his chair, and in a solemn and sonorous voice.

"Well, madam, it's just this, that his lordship would be very glad to see ye and Mr. Mellot, for he's vary ill indeed, and that's truth; and if he winna tell ye the cause, then I will—and it's just a' for love of this play-acting body here, and more's the pity."

"More's the pity, indeed!"

"And it's my opeenion the puir laddie will just die, if nobody sees to him; and I've taken the liberty of writing to Major Cawmill mysel', to beg him to come up and see to him, for it's a pity to see his lordship cast away, for want of an understanding body to advise him."

"So I am not an understanding body, Bowie?"

"Oh, madam, ye're young and bonny," says Bowie, in a tone in which admiration is not unmingled with pity.

"Young indeed! Mr. Bowie, do you know that I am almost as old as you?"

"Hoot, hut, hut—" says Bowie, looking at the wax-like complexion and bright hawk-eyes.

"Really I am. I'm past five-and-thirty this many a day."

"Weel, then, madam, if you'll excuse me, ye're old enough to be wiser than to let his lordship be inveigled with any such play-acting."

"Really he's not inveigled," says Sabina, laughing. "It is all his own fault, and I have warned him how absurd and impossible it is. She has refused even to see him; and you know yourself he has not been near our house for these three weeks."

"Ah, madam, you'll excuse me: but that's the way with that sort of people, just to draw back and draw back, to make a poor young gentleman follow them all the keener, as a trout does a minnow, the faster you spin it."

"I assure you no. I can't let you into ladies' secrets; but there is no more chance of her listening to him than of me. And as for me, I have been trying all the spring to marry him to a young lady with eighty thousand pounds; so you can't complain of me."

"Eh? No. That's more like and fitting."

"Well, now. Tell his lordship that we are coming; and trust us, Mr.

Bowie: we do not look very villainous, do we?"

"Faith, 'deed then, and I suppose not," said Bowie, using the verb which, in his cautious, Scottish tongue, expresses complete certainty. The truth is, that Bowie adores both Sabina and her husband, who are, he says, "just fit to be put under a glass case on the sideboard, like twa wee china angels."

In half an hour they were in Scoutbush's rooms. They found the little man lying on his sofa, in his dressing-gown, looking pale and pitiable enough. He had been trying to read; for the table by him was covered with books; but either gunnery and mathematics had injured his eyes, or he had been crying; Sabina inclined to the latter opinion.

"This is very kind of you both; but I don't want you, Claude. I want Mrs. Mellot. You go to the window with Bowie."

Bowie and Claude shrugged their shoulders at each other, and departed.

"Now, Mrs. Mellot, I can't help looking up to you as a mother."

"Complimentary to my youth," says Sabina, who always calls herself young when she is called old, and old when she is called young.

"I didn't mean to be rude. But one does long to open one's heart. I never had any mother to talk to, you know; and I can't tell my aunt; and Valencia is so flighty; and I thought you would give me one chance more. Don't laugh at me, I say. I am really past laughing at."

"I see you are, you poor creature," says Sabina, melting; and a long conversation follows, while Claude and Bowie exchange confidences, and arrive at no result beyond the undeniable assertion; "it is a very bad job."

Presently Sabina comes out, and Scoutbush calls cheerfully from the sofa:—

"Bowie, get my bath and things to dress; and order me the cab in half an hour. Good-bye, you dear people, I shall never thank you enough."

Away go Claude and Sabina in a hack-cab.

"What have you done?"

"Given him what he entreated for—another chance with Marie."

"It will only madden him all the more. Why let him try, when you know it is hopeless."

"Why, I had not the heart to refuse, that's the truth; and besides, I don't know that it is hopeless."

"All the naughtier of you, to let him run the chance of making a fool of himself."

"I don't know that he will make such a great fool of himself. As he says, his grandfather married an actress, and why should not he?"

"Simply because she won't marry him."

"And how do you know that, sir? You fancy that you understand all the women's hearts in England, just because you have found out the secret of managing one little fool."

"Managing her, quotha! Being managed by her, till my quiet house is turned into a perfect volcano of match-making. Why, I thought he was to marry Manchestrina."

"He shall marry who he likes; and if Marie changes her mind, and revenges herself on this American by taking Lord Scoutbush, all I can say is, it will be a just judgment on him. I have no patience with the heartless fellow, going off thus, and never even leaving his address."

"And because you have no patience, you think Marie will have none?"

"What do you know about women's hearts? Leave us to mind our own matters."

"Mr. Bowie will kill you outright, if your plot succeeds."

"No, he won't. I know who Bowie wants to marry; and if he is not good, he shan't have her. Besides, it will be such fun to spite old Lady Knockdown, who always turns up her nose at me. How mad she will be!

Here we are at home. Now, I shall go and prepare Marie."

An hour after, Scoutbush was pleading his cause with Marie; and had been met, of course, at starting, with the simple rejoinder,—

"But, my lord, you would not surely have me marry where I do not love?"

"Oh, of course not; but, you see, people very often get love after they are married:—and I am sure I would do all to make you love me. I know I can't bribe you by promising you carriages and jewels, and all that:—but you should have what you would like—pictures and statues, and books—and all that I can buy—Oh, madam, I know I am not worthy of you—I never have had any education as you have!"—

Marie smiled a sad smile.

"But I would learn—I know I could—for I am no fool, though I say it: I like all that sort of thing, and—and if I had you to teach me, I should care about nothing else. I have given up all my nonsense since I knew you; indeed I have—I am trying all day long to read—ever since you said something about being useful, and noble, and doing one's work:—I have never forgotten that, madam, and never shall; and you would find me a pleasant person to live with, I do believe. At all events, I would—oh, madam—I would be your servant, your dog—I would fetch and carry for you like a negro slave!"

Marie turned pale, and rose.

"Listen to me, my lord; this must end. You do not know to whom you are speaking. You talk of negro slaves. Know that you are talking to one!"

Scoutbush looked at her in blank astonishment.

"Madam? Excuse me: but my own eyes—"

"You are not to trust them; I tell you fact."

Scoutbush was silent. She misunderstood his silence: but went on steadily.

"I tell you, my lord, what I expect you to keep secret: and I know that I can trust your honour."

Scoutbush bowed.

"And what I should never have told you, were it not my only chance of curing you of this foolish passion. I am an American slave!"

"Curse them! Who dared make you a slave?" cried Scoutbush, turning as red as a game-cock.

"I was born a slave. My father was a white gentleman of good family: my mother was a quadroon; and therefore I am a slave;—a negress, a runaway slave, my lord, who, if I returned to America, should be seized, and chained, and scourged, and sold.—Do you understand me?"

"What an infernal shame!" cried Scoutbush, to whom the whole thing appeared simply as a wrong done to Marie.

"Well, my lord?"

"Well, madam?"

"Does not this fact put the question at rest for ever?"

"No, madam! What do I know about slaves? No one is a slave in England. No madam; all that it does is to make me long to cut half-a-dozen fellows' throats—" and Scoutbush stamped with rage. "No, madam, you are you: and if you become my viscountess, you take my rank, I trust, and my name is yours, and my family yours; and let me see who dare interfere!"