Mr. Saltram was a barrister, almost a briefless one at present, for his habits were desultory, not to say idle, and he had not taken very kindly to the slow drudgery of the Bar. He had some money of his own, and added to his income by writing for the press in a powerful trenchant manner, with a style that was like the stroke of a sledge-hammer. In spite of this literary work, for which he got very well paid, Mr. Saltram generally contrived to be in debt; and there were few periods of his life in which he was not engaged more or less in the delicate operation of raising money by bills of accommodation. Habit had given him quite an artistic touch for this kind of thing, and he did his work fondly, like some enthusiastic horticulturist who gives his anxious days to the budding forth of some new orchid or the production of a hitherto un.o.btainable tulip. It is doubtful whether money procured from any other source was ever half so sweet to this gentleman as the cash for which he paid sixty per cent to the Jews. With these proclivities he managed to rub on from year to year somehow, getting about five hundred per annum in solid value out of an income of seven, and adding a little annually to the rolling ma.s.s of debt which he had begun to acc.u.mulate while he was at Balliol.

"Why, Jack," cried Gilbert, starting up from his reverie at the entrance of his friend, and greeting him with a hearty handshaking, "this is an agreeable surprise! I was asking for you at the Pnyx last night, and Joe Hawdon told me you were away--up the Danube he thought, on a canoe expedition."

"It is only under some utterly impossible dispensation that Joseph Hawdon will ever be right about anything. I have been on a walking expedition in Brittany, dear boy, alone, and have found myself very bad company. I started soon after you went to your sister's, and only came back last night. That scoundrel Levison promised me seventy-five this afternoon; but whether I shall get it out of him is a fact only known to himself and the powers with which he holds communion. And was the rustic business pleasant, Gil? Did you take kindly to the syllabubs and new milk, the summer sunrise over dewy fields, the pretty dairy-maids, and prize pigs, and daily inspections of the home-farm? or did you find life rather dull down at Lidford? I know the place well enough, and all the country round about there. I have stayed at Heatherly with Sir David Forster more than once for the shooting season. A pleasant fellow Forster, in a dissipated good-for-nothing kind of way, always up to his eyes in debt. Did you happen to meet him while you were down there?"

"No, I don't think the Listers know him."

"So much the better for them! It is a vice to know him. And you were not dull at Lidford?"

"Very far from it, Jack. I was happier there than I have ever been in my life before."

"Eh, Gil!" cried John Saltram; "that means something more than a quiet fortnight with a married sister. Come, old fellow, I have a vested right to a share in all your secrets."

"There is no secret, Jack. Yes, I have fallen in love, if that's what you mean, and am engaged."

"So soon! That's rather quick work, isn't it, dear boy?"

"I don't think so. What is that the poet says?--'If not an Adam at his birth, he is no love at all.' My pa.s.sion sprang into life full-grown after an hour's contemplation of a beautiful face in Lidford church."

"Who is the lady?"

"O, her position is not worth speaking of. She is the adopted niece of a half-pay captain--an orphan, without money or connections."

"Humph!" muttered John Saltram with the privileged candour of friendship; "not a very advantageous match for you, Gilbert, from a worldly point of view."

"I have not considered the matter from that point of view."

"And the lady is all that is charming, of course?"

"To my mind, yes."

"Very young?"

"Nineteen."

"Well, dear old follow, I wish you joy with all heartiness. You can afford to marry whom you please, and are very right to let inclination and not interest govern your choice. Whenever I tie myself in the bondage of matrimony, it will be to a lady who can pay my debts and set me on my legs for life. Whether such a one will ever consider my ugly face a fair equivalent for her specie, is an open question. You must introduce me to your future wife, Gilbert, on the first opportunity. I shall be very anxious to discover whether your marriage will be likely to put an end to our friendship."

"There is no fear of that, Jack. That is a contingency never to arise. I have told Marian a great deal about you already. She knows that I owe my life to you, and she is prepared to value you as much as I do."

"She is very good; but all wives promise that kind of thing before marriage. And there is apt to come a day when the familiar bachelor friend falls under the domestic taboo, together with smoking in the drawing-room, brandy-and-soda, and other luxuries of the old, easy-going, single life."

"Marian is not very likely to prove a domestic tyrant. She is the gentlest dearest girl, and is very well used to bachelor habits in the person of her uncle. I don't believe she will ever extinguish our cigars, Jack, even in the drawing-room. I look forward to the happiest home that ever a man possessed; and it would be no home of mine if you were not welcome and honoured in it. I hope we shall spend many a summer evening on the lawn, Jack, with a bottle of Pomard or St. Julien between us, watching the drowsy old anglers in their punts, and the swift outriggers flashing past in the twilight. I mean to find some snug little place by the river, you know, Saltram--somewhere about Teddington, where the gardens slope down to the water's edge."

"Very pleasant! and you will make an admirable family man, Gil. You have none of the faults that render me ineligible for the married state. I think your Marian is a very fortunate girl. What is her surname, by the way?"

"Nowell."

"Marian Nowell--a very pretty name! When do you think of going back to Lidford?"

"In about a month. My brother-in-law wants me to go back to them for the 1st of September."

"Then I think I shall run down to Forster's, and have a pop at the pheasants. It will give me an opportunity of being presented to Miss Nowell."

"I shall be very pleased to introduce you, old fellow. I know that you will admire her."

"Well, I am not a very warm admirer of the s.e.x in general; but I am sure to like your future wife, Gil, if it is only because you have chosen her."

"And your own affairs, Jack--how have they been going on?"

"Not very brightly. I am not a lucky individual, you know. Destiny and I have been at odds ever since I was a schoolboy."

"Not in love yet, John?"

"No," the other answered, with rather a gloomy look.

He was sitting on a corner of the ponderous desk in a lounging att.i.tude, gazing meditatively at his boots, and hitting one of them now and then with a cane he carried, in a restless kind of way.

"You see, the fact of the matter is, Gil," he began at last, "as I told you just now, if ever I do marry, mercenary considerations are likely to be at the bottom of the business. I don't mean to say that I would marry a woman I disliked, and take it out of her in ill-usage or neglect. I am not quite such a scoundrel as that. But if I had the luck to meet with a woman I _could_ like, tolerably pretty and agreeable, and all that kind of thing, and weak enough to care for me--a woman with a handsome fortune--I should be a fool not to snap at such a chance."

"I see," exclaimed Gilbert, "you have met with such a woman."

"I have."

Again the gloomy look came over the dark strongly-marked face, the thick black eyebrows contracted in a frown, and the cane was struck impatiently against John Saltram's boot.

"But you are not in love with her; I see that in your face, Jack. You'll think me a sentimental fool, I daresay, and fancy I look at things in a new light now that I'm down a pit myself; but, for G.o.d's sake, don't marry a woman you can't love. Tolerably pretty and agreeable won't do, Jack,--that means indifference on your part; and, depend upon it, when a man and woman are tied together for life, there is only a short step from indifference to dislike."

"No, Gilbert, it's not that," answered the other, still moodily contemplative of his boots. "I really like the lady well enough--love her, I daresay. I have not had much experience of the tender pa.s.sion since I was jilted by an Oxford barmaid--whom I would have married, by Jove. But the truth is, the lady in question isn't free to marry just yet. There's a husband in the case--a feeble old Anglo-Indian, who can't live very long. Don't look so glum, old fellow; there has been nothing wrong, not a word that all the world might not hear; but there are signs and tokens by which a man, without any vanity--and heaven knows I have no justification for that--may be sure a woman likes him. In short, I believe that if Adela Branston were a widow, the course would lie clear before me, and I should have nothing to do but go in and win. And the stakes will be worth winning, I a.s.sure you."

"But this Mr. Branston may live for an indefinite number of years, during which you will be wasting your life on a shadow."

"Not very likely. Poor old Branston came home from Calcutta a confirmed invalid, and I believe his sentence has been p.r.o.nounced by all the doctors. In the mean time he makes the best of life, has his good days and bad days, and entertains a great deal of company at a delightful place near Maidenhead--with a garden sloping to the river like that you were talking of just now, only on a very extensive scale. You know how often I have wanted you to run down there with me, and how there has been always something to prevent your going."

"Yes, I remember. Rely upon it, I shall contrive to accept the next invitation, come what may. But I can't say I like the idea of this prospective kind of courtship, or that I consider it quite worthy of you, Saltram."

"My dear Gilbert, when a fellow is burdened with debt and of a naturally idle disposition, he is apt to take rather a liberal view of such means of advancement in life as may present themselves to him. But there is no prospective courtship--nothing at all resembling a courtship in this case, believe me. Mrs. Branston knows that I like and admire her. She knows as much of almost every man who goes to Rivercombe; for there are plenty who will be disposed to go in against me for the prize by-and-by.

But I think that she likes me better than any one else, and that the chances will be all in my favour. From first to last there has not been a word spoken between us which old Branston himself might not hear. As to Adela's marrying again when he is gone, he could scarcely be so fatuous as not to foresee the probability of that."

"Is she pretty?"

"Very pretty, in rather a childish way, with blue eyes and fair hair. She is not my ideal among women, but no man ever marries his ideal. The man who has sworn by eyes as black as a stormy midnight and raven hair generally unites himself to the most insipid thing in blondes, and the idolater of golden locks takes to wife some frizzy-haired West Indian with an unmistakable dip of the tar-brush. When will you go down to Rivercombe?"

"Whenever you like."

"The nabob is hospitality itself, and will be delighted to see you if he is to the fore when you go. I fancy there is some kind of regatta--a race or two, at any rate--on Sat.u.r.day afternoon. Will that suit you?"

"Very well indeed."