"I'll pay anything. Hush! _pray_. Don't speak so loud. What _must_ my servants think? Consider the frightful risks I run. Why should you wish to make me utterly miserable--to drive me out of my senses? I'll pay anything--anything to be free from this intolerable persecution."

"Pay--pay anythink!" repeated Jim, slightly mollified by her distress, but still in a tone of deep disgust. "Pay. Ah! that's always the word with the likes of you. You think your blessed money can buy us poor chaps up, body and heart and soul Blast your money! says I. There, that's not over civil, my lady, but it's plain speaking."

"What would you have me do?" she asked, in a low plaintive voice.

She had sunk into an arm-chair, and was wringing her hands. How lovely she looked now in her sore distress! It imparted the one feminine charm generally wanting in her beauty.

Gentleman Jim, standing over against her, could not but feel the old mysterious influence pervading him once more. "If you was to say to me, Jim, says you, I believe as you're a true chap!--I believe as you'd serve of me, body and bones. Well, not for money. Money be d----d! But for goodwill, we'll say. I believe as you thinks there's n.o.body on this 'arth as is to be compared of me, says you; and see now, you shall come here once a week, once a fortnit, once a month, even, and I'll never say no more about drivin' of you away; but you shall see me, and I'll speak of you kind and haffable; and whatever I wants done I'll tell you, do it: and it _will_ be done; see if it won't! Why--why I'd be proud, my lady--there--and happy too. Ay, there wouldn't walk a happier man, nor a prouder, maybe, in the streets of London!"

It was a long speech for Jim. At its conclusion he drew his sleeve across his face and bent down to re-arrange the contents of his bundle.

Tears were falling from her eyes at last. Noiselessly enough, and without that redness of nose, those contortions of face, which render them so unbecoming to most women.

"Is there no way but this?" she murmured. "No way but this? It's impossible! It's absurd! It's infamous! Do you know who I am? Do you know what you ask? How dare you dictate terms to _me_? How dare you presume to say I shall do this, I shall not do _that?_ Leave my house this minute. I will not listen to another syllable!"

She was blazing out again, and the fire of pride had dried her tears ere she concluded. Anger brought back her natural courage, but it was too late.

Gentleman Jim's face, distorted with fury, looked hideous. Under his waistcoat lurked a long thin knife. Maud never knew how near, for one ghastly moment, that knife was to being buried in her round white throat.

He was not quite madman enough, however, to indulge his pa.s.sions so far, with the certainty of immediate destruction.

"Have a care!" he hissed through his clenched teeth. "If you and me is to be enemies, look out! You know me--leastways you ought to; and _you_ know I stick at nothing!"

She was still dreadfully frightened. Once more she went back to the old plea, and offered him fifty pounds--a hundred pounds. Anything!

He was tying the knots of his bundle. Completing the last, he looked up, and the glare in his eyes haunted her through many a sleepless night.

"You've done it now!" was all he muttered. "When next you see me you'll wish you hadn't."

It speaks well for Jim's self-command that, as he went down, he could say, "Your servant, my lord," with perfect composure, to a gentleman whom he met on the stairs.

CHAPTER XX

"THE LITTLE CLOUD"

Lord Bearwarden, like other n.o.blemen and gentlemen keeping house in London, was not invariably fortunate in the selection of his servants.

The division of labour, that admirable system by which such great results are attained, had been brought to perfection in his as in many other establishments. A man who cleaned knives, it appeared, could not possibly do anything else, and for several days the domestic arrangements below-stairs had been disturbed by a knotty question as to _whose_ business it was to answer "my lord's bell". Now my lord was what his servants called rather "a arbitrary gentleman", seeming, indeed, to entertain the preposterous notion that these were paid their wages in consideration of doing as they were bid. It was not therefore surprising that figure-footmen, high of stature and faultless in general appearance, should have succeeded each other with startling rapidity, throwing up their appointments and doffing his lordship's livery, without regard to their own welfare or their employer's convenience, but in accordance with some Quixotic notions of respect for their office and loyalty to their order.

Thus it came about that a subordinate in rank, holding the appointment of second footman, had been so lately enlisted as not yet to have made himself acquainted with the personal appearance of his master; and it speaks well for the amiable disposition of this recruit that, although his liveries were not made, he should, during the temporary absence of a fellow-servant, who was curling his whiskers below, have consented to answer the door.

Lord Bearwarden had rung like any other arrival; but it must be allowed that his composure was somewhat ruffled when refused admittance by his own servant to his own house.

"Her ladyship's not at home, I tell ye", said the man, apparently resenting the freedom with which this stranger proceeded into the hall, while he placed his own ma.s.sive person in the way; "and if you want to see my lord, you just can't--_that_ I know!"

"Why?" asked his master, beginning to suspect how the land lay, and considerably amused.

"Because his lordship's particularly engaged. He's having his 'air cut just now, and the dentist's waiting to see him after he's done", returned this imaginative retainer, arguing indeed from his pertinacity that the visitor must be one of the swell mob, therefore to be kept out at any cost.

"And who are _you_?" said his lordship, now laughing outright.

"Who am I?" repeated the man. "I'm his lordship's footman. Now, then, who are _you_? That's more like it!"

"I'm Lord Bearwarden himself", replied his master.

"Lord Bearwarden! O! I dare say", was the unexpected rejoinder. "Well, that _is_ a good one. Come, young man, none of these games here: there's a policeman round the corner."

At this juncture the fortunate arrival of the gentleman with lately-curled whiskers, in search of his _Bell's Life_, left on the hall-table, produced an _eclairciss.e.m.e.nt_ much to the unbeliever's confusion, and the master of the house was permitted to ascend his own staircase without further obstruction.

Meeting "Gentleman Jim" coming down with a bundle, it did not strike him as the least extraordinary that his wife should have denied herself to other visitors. Slight as was his experience of women and their ways, he had yet learned to respect those various rites that const.i.tute the mystery of shopping, appreciating the composure and undisturbed attention indispensable to a satisfactory performance of that ceremony.

But it _did_ trouble him to observe on Lady Bearwarden's face traces of recent emotion, even, he thought, to tears. She turned quickly aside when he came into the room, busying herself with the blinds and muslin window-curtains; but he had a quick eye, and his perceptions were sharpened besides by an affection he was too proud to admit, while racked with cruel misgivings that it might not be returned.

"Gentleman-like man _that_, I met just now on the stairs!" he began, good-humouredly enough, though in a certain cold, conventional tone, that Maud knew too well, and hated accordingly. "Dancing partner, swell mob, smuggler, respectable tradesman, what is he? Ought to sell cheap, I should say. Looks as if he stole the things ready made. Hope you've done good business with him, my lady? May I see the plunder?"

He never called her Maud; it was always "my lady", as if they had been married for twenty years. How she longed for an endearing word, slipping out, as it were, by accident--for a covert smile, an occasional caress. Perhaps had these been lavished more freely she might have rated them at a lower value.

Lady Bearwarden was not one of those women who can tell a lie without the slightest hesitation, calmly satisfied that "the end justifies the means"; neither did it form a part of her creed that a lie by implication is less dishonourable than a lie direct. On the contrary, her nature was exceedingly frank, even defiant, and from pride, perhaps, rather than principle, she scorned no baseness so heartily as duplicity. Therefore she hesitated now and changed colour, looking guilty and confused, but taking refuge, as usual, in self-a.s.sertion.

"I had business with the man", she answered haughtily, "or you would not have found him here. I might have got rid of him sooner, perhaps, if I had known you were to be home so early. I'm sure I hate shopping, I hate tradespeople, I hate--"

She was going to say "I hate everything", but stopped herself in time.

Counting her married life as yet only by weeks, it would have sounded too ungracious, too ungrateful!

"Why should you do anything you hate?" said her husband, very kindly, and to all appearance dismissing every suspicion from his mind, though deep in his heart rankled the cruel conviction that between them this strange, mysterious barrier increased day by day. "I want you to have as little of the rough and as much of the smooth in life as is possible.

All the ups and none of the downs, my lady. If this fellow bores you, tell them not to let him in again. That second footman will keep him out like a dragon, I'll be bound." Then he proceeded laughingly to relate his own adventure with his new servant in the hall.

He seemed cordial, kind, good-humoured enough, but his tone was that of man to man, brother officer to comrade, not of a lover to his mistress, a husband to his lately-married wife.

She felt this keenly, though at the same time she could appreciate his tact, forbearance, and generosity in asking no more questions about her visitor. To have shown suspicion of Maud would have been at once to drive her to extremities, while implicit confidence put her on honour and rendered her both unable and unwilling to deceive. Never since their first acquaintance had she found occasion to test this quality of trust in her husband, and now it seemed that he possessed it largely, like a number of other manly characteristics. That he was brave, loyal, and generous she had discovered already; handsome and of high position she knew long ago, or she would never have resolved on his capture; and what was there wanting to complete her perfect happiness? Only one thing, she answered herself; but for it she would so willingly have bartered all the rest--that he should love her as d.i.c.k Stanmore did. Poor d.i.c.k Stanmore! how badly she had treated him, and perhaps this was to be her punishment.

"Bearwarden," she said, crossing the room to lean on the arm of his chair, "we've got to dine at your aunt's to-night. I suppose they will be very late. I wish there were no such things as dinners, don't you?"

"Not when I've missed luncheon, as I did to-day," answered his lordship, whose appet.i.te was like that of any other healthy man under forty.

"I hoped you wouldn't," she observed, in rather a low voice; "it was very dull without you. We see each other so seldom, somehow. I should like to go to the play to-morrow--you and I, Darby and Joan--I don't care which house, nor what the play is."

"To-morrow", he answered, with a bright smile. "All right, my lady, I'll send for a box. I forgot, though, I can't go to-morrow, I'm on guard."

Her face fell, but she turned away that he might not detect her disappointment, and began to feed her bullfinch in the window.

"You're always on guard, I think", said she, after a pause. "I wonder you like it: surely it must be a dreadful tie. You lost your grouse-shooting this year and the Derby, didn't you? all to sit in plate armour and jack-boots at that gloomiest and stuffiest of Horse Guards. Bearwarden, I--I wish you'd give up the regiment, I do indeed."

When Maud's countenance wore a pleading expression, as now, it was more than beautiful, it was lovely. Looking in her face it seemed to him that it was the face of an angel.