The man was pleading for his life, you see. Was it pitiable, or only ludicrous, that his voice and manner had to be toned down to the staid pitch of general conversation, that a fat and happy German was puffing at a cornet-a-piston within arm's length of him? But for a quiver of his lip, any bystander might have supposed he was asking Miss Bruce if he should bring her an ice.

"I have seen enough!" she replied, very resolutely, "and I am determined to see no more. Mr. Ryfe, if you have no pleasanter subjects of conversation than yourself and your arrangements, I will ask you to move for an instant that I may pa.s.s and find Mrs.

Stanmore."

Lord Bearwarden was at the other end of the room, looking about apparently for some object of unusual interest. Perhaps Miss Bruce saw him--as ladies do see people without turning their eyes--and the sight fortified her resolution.

"Then you defy me!" whispered Tom, in the low suppressed notes that denote rage, concentrated and intensified for being kept down. "By heaven, Miss Bruce, you shall repent it! I'll show you up! I'll expose you! I'll have neither pity nor remorse! You think you've won a heavy stake, do you? Hooked a big fish, and need only pull him ash.o.r.e? _He_ sha'n't be deceived! _He_ shall know you for what you are! He shall, by----!"

The adjuration with which Mr. Ryfe concluded this little ebullition was fortunately drowned to all ears but those for which it was intended by a startling flourish on the cornet-a-piston. Miss Bruce accepted the challenge readily. "Do your worst!" said she, rising with a scornful bow, and taking Lord Bearwarden's arm, much to that gentleman's delight, walked haughtily away.

Perhaps this declaration of open war may have decided her subsequent conduct; perhaps it was only the result of those circ.u.mstances which form the meshes of a certain web we call Fate. Howbeit, Miss Bruce was too tired to dance. Miss Bruce would like to sit down in a cool place.

Miss Bruce would not be bored with Lord Bearwarden's companionship, not for an hour, not for a week--no, not for a lifetime!

d.i.c.k Stanmore, taking a lady down to her carriage, saw them sitting alone in the tea-room, now deserted by Puckers [Ill.u.s.tration: "'O, d.i.c.k!' she said, 'I couldn't help it!'"] and her a.s.sistants. His honest heart turned very sick and cold. Half-an-hour after, pa.s.sing the same spot, they were there still; and then, I think, he knew that he was overtaken by the first misfortune of his life.

Later, when the ball was over, and he had wished Mrs. Stanmore good-night, he went up to Maud with a grave, kind face.

"We never had our waltz, Miss Bruce," said he; "and--and--there's _a reason_, isn't there?"

He was white to his very lips. Through all her triumph, she felt a twinge, far keener than she expected, of compunction and remorse.

"O, d.i.c.k!" she said, "I couldn't help it! Lord Bearwarden proposed to me in that room."

"And you accepted him?" said d.i.c.k, trying to steady his voice, wondering why he felt half suffocated all the time.

"And I accepted him."

CHAPTER XVI

"MISSING--A GENTLEMAN"

"Age about thirty. Height five feet nine inches and a half--fair complexion--light-grey eyes--small reddish-brown whiskers, close-trimmed--short dark hair. Speaks fast, in a high key, and has a habit of drawing out his shirt-sleeves from beneath his cuffs. When last seen, was dressed in a dark surtout, fancy necktie, black-cloth waist-coat, Oxford-mixture trousers, and Balmoral boots. Wore a black hat with maker's name inside--Block and Co., 401 Regent Street.

Whoever will give such information to the authorities as may lead to the discovery of the above, shall receive--A Reward!"

Such was the placard that afforded a few minutes' speculation for the few people who had leisure to read it, one fine morning about a week after Mrs. Stanmore's eventful ball, and towards the close of the London season; eliciting at the same time criticism not altogether favourable on the style of composition affected by our excellent police. The man was missing no doubt, and had been missing for some days before anxiety, created by his absence, growing into alarm for his safety, had produced the foregoing advertis.e.m.e.nt, prompted by certain affectionate misgivings of Mr. Bargrave, since the lost sheep was none other than his nephew Tom Ryfe. The old man felt, indeed, seriously discomposed by the prolonged absence of this the only member of his family. It was unjustifiable, as he remarked twenty times a day, unfeeling, unheard-of, unaccountable. He rang for the servants at his private residence every quarter of an hour or so to learn if the truant had returned. He questioned the boy at the office sharply and repeatedly as to orders left with him by Mr. Ryfe before he went away, only to gather from the answers of this urchin, who would, indeed, have forgotten any number of such directions, that he looked on the present period of anxiety in the light of a holiday and festival, devoutly praying that his taskmaster might never come back again.

Finally in despair poor Bargrave cast himself on the sympathy of Dorothea, who listened to his bewailings with stolid indifference when sober, and replied to them by surmises of the wildest improbability when drunk.

Alas, in common with so many others of her cla.s.s, the charwoman took refuge from care in constant inebriety. Her imagination thus stimulated, pointed, like that of some old Castilian adventurer, steadily to the west.

"Lor, Mr. Bargrave," she would say, staring helplessly in his face, and yielding to the genial hiccough which refused to be kept down, "he be gone to 'Merriky, poor dear, to better hisself, I make no doubt.

Don't ye take on so. It's a weary world, it is; and that's where he be gone, for sure!"

Yet she knew quite well where he was hidden all the time; and, inasmuch as she had some regard for her kind old employer, the knowledge almost drove her mad. Therefore it was that Dorothea, hara.s.sed by conflicting feelings, drowned her sorrows perseveringly in the bowl.

For a considerable period this poor woman had suffered a mental torture, the severest, perhaps, to which her s.e.x can be subjected. She had seen the man she loved--and, though she was only a drudge, and not by any means a tidy one, she could love very dearly--she had seen, I say, the man she loved gradually learning to despise her affection, and to estrange himself from her society. She was a good deal afraid of "Gentleman Jim"--perhaps she liked him none the less for that--and dared neither tax him with falsehood nor try to worm out of him the a.s.surance that she had or had not a rival. Nevertheless, she was determined to ascertain the cause of her lover's indifference to herself, and his changed conduct in other relations of life.

Jim had always been somewhat given to the adornment of his person, affecting that flash and gaudy style of decoration so much in favour with dog-stealers and men of like dubious professions. Of late, however, he had adopted, with different tastes and habits, a totally different costume--when "off duty," as he called it--meaning thereby release from the fulfilment of some business engagement subject to penalties affixed by our criminal code. He now draped himself in white linen, dark-coloured clothes, a tall hat, and such outward marks of respectability, if not station, going even so far as to invest in kid gloves and an "umbrellier," as he called that instrument. At first sight, but for his boots, Jim might almost have been mistaken for a real gentleman. About this period, too, he left off vulgar liquors, and shamefully abandoned a short black pipe that had stuck by him through many ups and downs, subst.i.tuting for these stimulants a great deal of brown sherry and certain sad-coloured cigars, demanding strong lungs and a strong stomach as well. These changes did the forlorn Dorothea note with increasing anxiety, and, because every woman becomes keen-sighted and quick-witted where her heart is concerned, drew from them an augury fatal to her future happiness. After a while, when the suspense grew intolerable, she resolved on putting a stop to it by personal inquiry, and with that view, as a preliminary, kept herself tolerably sober for twenty-four hours, during which probationary period she inst.i.tuted a grand "clean up" of his premises; and so, as she mentally expressed it, "with a cool head and a clean house and a clear conscience," confronted her employer on the stairs.

Old Bargrave had of late become very nervous and uneasy. The full meals, the daily bottle of port, the life of self-indulgence, though imparting an air of portliness and comfort while everything went well, had unfitted him sadly for a contest with difficulty or reverse.

Like the fat troop-horse that looks so sightly on parade, a week's campaigning reduced him to a miserable object--flabby, shrunk, dispirited, and with a sinking heart at least, if not a sore back.

Dorothea's person blocked up the staircase before him, or he would have slipped by and locked himself unnoticed in his chambers.

"Can I speak with you, sir?" said the charwoman. "Now, sir, if you please--himmediate."

Old Bargrave trembled.

"Certainly, Dorothea, certainly. What is it, my good girl? You've heard something. They've traced him--they've found him. One minute, my good girl--one minute, if you please."

He had preceded her through the office to his own inner room, and now, shaking all over, sat down in his easy-chair, pressing both hands hard on its arms to steady himself. Dorothea, staring helplessly at the wall over his head, made a m.u.f.f of her ap.r.o.n, and curtsied; nothing more.

"Speak!" gasped the old gentleman convulsively.

"It's my haunt, if you please, sir," said Dorothea, with another curtsey.

"D----n your aunt!" vociferated Bargrave. "It's my nephew! Have you heard nothing? I'm hasty, my good girl; I'm anxious. I--I haven't another relation in the world. Have they told you anything more?"

Dorothea began to cry.

"He be gone to 'Meriker, for sure," she whimpered, trying back on the old consolatory suggestion; "to better hisself, no doubt. It's me, sir; that's my haunt. She's wuss this turn. An' if so be as you could spare me for the day--I've been and cleaned up everythink, and I'd wipe over that there table and shake the dust out o' them curtains in five minutes, and----"

"That will do--that will do!" exclaimed the old gentleman, aghast, as well he might be, at the proposal, since none of the furniture in question had been subjected to such a process for years, and immediate suffocation, with intolerable confusion of papers, must have been the result. "If you want to go and see your aunt, my girl, go, in heaven's name. I can spare you as long as you like. But you mustn't tidy up here. No; that would never do. And, Dorothea, if you should hear anything, come and tell me that instant. Never mind the expense. I'd give a great deal to know he was safe. Ah, I'd give all I have in the world to see him back again."

She curtsied and hurried out, leaving Bargrave to immerse himself in law-papers and correspondence. From sheer force of habit he took refuge in his daily work at this hour of anxiety and sad distress. In such sorrows it is well for a man to have disciplined his mind till it obeys him instinctively, like a managed steed bearing its rider at will out of the crowd of a.s.sailants by whom he is beset.

Dorothea, scrubbing her face with yellow soap till it shone again, proceeded to array herself in raiment of many colours, and, when got up to her own satisfaction, scuttled off to a distant part of London, making use of more than one omnibus in her journey; and so, returning almost upon her tracks, confronted Gentleman Jim as he emerged from his usual house of call in the narrow street out of Holborn.

He started, and his face lengthened with obvious disgust.

"What's up now, la.s.s?" said he. "I've business tonight. D'ye mind?

Blessed if my mouth isn't as dry as a cinder-heap. You go home, like a good gal, and I'll take ye to the theaytre, perhaps, to-morrow. I haven't a minnit to stop. I didn't ought to be here now."

The promised treat, the hurried manner, above all the affected kindness of tone, roused her suspicions to the utmost; and Dorothea was woman enough to feel for the moment that she dared match her wits against those of her betrayer.

"It's lucky," she answered coolly; "for I've got to be home afore dark, and they're lighting the lamps now. I've been down to see arter him, Jim, an' I thought I'd just step round and let you know. I footed it all the way back, that's why I'm so late now."

She paused and looked steadily in his face.

"Well?" said Jim, turning very pale, while his eyes glared in hers with a wild horrible meaning.

She answered his look rather than his exclamation.

"He's a trifle better since morning. He don't know nothing yet, nor he won't neither, not for a while to come. But he ain't a-goin' to die, Jim--not this turn."