The window was still far above him, and the glare within showed that the fire had reached the room; but a gutter ran down the wall to the leaden roof of the portico, and he was seen through the smoke to clasp it by a rusty projection and to draw his chin on a level with the sill, to cling to the sill itself with his arm and elbow, and with one tremendous effort to sit there amidst the smoke and to force the sash upward. They had scarcely had time to cry out that he had entered the room when he was out again--pursued by the flame that now roared from the open s.p.a.ce, but with something under his arm. Somebody had brought out a large blanket, and four men were holding it; the engine was just beginning to play feebly where it wasn't wanted; and a short ladder had been borrowed from somewhere. He dropped a little heavily from the window, but was on his feet when they called to him to let the child fall, and a cheer went up as he seemed to gather up his strength, and tossed his living burden from him, so that it cleared the edge of the wood-work, and was caught and placed in her father's arms.

"Jump! jump for your life!" they cried, for the wretched portico had begun to sway, and every lip turned white. It was too late; he had stooped to swing himself off, when the whole thing fell in ruin, and he in the midst of it, covered with the heavy lead and woodwork, and the stone and bricks that had come down with it.

A score of strong and willing hands lifted the wreck away piecemeal, and, under the direction of the doctor, got him out and placed him on a hurdle made soft with blankets and straw. He was insensible, but his face and head were uninjured, for he was found lying with his arms protecting both. Carefully they bore him to the vicarage, the vicar following, and his sister already at the door with everything ready.

It was nearly an hour before the sad group of men who stood outside anxiously waiting heard that he was so seriously injured that his life was in danger, and that he was still unconscious. Raspall was crying more for the accident than for his injured house, which was still smouldering, though the engine had at last put out the fire. His child was safe, but he felt almost guilty for rejoicing that her life had been spared. Binks and Clodd sat patiently on the fence opposite the vicarage talking in low tones. At last the vicar came out to them and told them to go home. The patient would not be left for a moment. In the morning he would let them know if there was any change.

There was a change, but only after long efforts to restore consciousness; and the vicar himself sat by the injured man's bedside, with something in his hand upon which his tears fell as he looked at it by the light of the shaded lamp. When De Montfort had been carried in and placed upon the bed the doctor had asked to be allowed to undress him--without help--as it required a practised hand, and for a moment the vicar left the room to bring up some restorative and the bandages which had been sent for to the surgery. He had turned into the dining-room, when to his surprise the doctor came quickly but softly downstairs, entered the room, and gently closed the door.

"Do you feel that you could bear another great shock just now?" he said in a curious tone, taking hold of the vicar's wrist as he spoke. "Yes, I think you can; your nerves are pretty firm."

"What do you mean? Is he dead?"

"No; but I have undressed him, and under his shirt near his heart found something which I think you ought to see. I may be mistaken, but I seldom miss observing a likeness, especially one so strong as this"--and he held out a locket attached to a silken cord and holding a likeness.

The vicar trembled as he stretched out his hand for it. Some prevision of the truth had already flashed upon him; and as he carried the trinket to the candle above the mantel-piece he leaned heavily against the wall and groaned as though he had been smitten with sudden pain.

"A man like that could scarcely have been cruel to a woman, at all events," said the doctor in a low but emphatic tone. "Poverty is not the worst of human ills, and even occasional want, if it be not too prolonged, is endurable--more endurable than brutal neglect and indifference. This poor fellow was going home to his child, I think?"

The vicar clasped the young man's hand, and bent his n.o.ble gray head upon his shoulder. "Take my thanks, my dear friend," he said with a sob.

"You have recalled me to myself. He was my sister's husband."

As the vicar sat by the bedside that night watching, watching, the injured man moved and tried to raise himself, but fell back with a heavy sigh.

The good parson was bending over him in a moment.

"Shall I fetch the doctor again?" he asked.

"No; I must speak to you now, alone."

It was nearly an hour before the vicar went to the stair-head, and called for his sister and the doctor to come up. We never heard quite what took place--what was the conversation between the vicar and his guest. But the next day the vicar went to London, and before the week was out a plain funeral went from the vicarage to the old churchyard, and the curate conducting the burial service had to stop with his handkerchief to his eyes, for in the church, clad in deep mourning, was a little girl whose silent sobbing was only hushed when the aunt whom she had but just found took her in her arms and pressed the little pale face to her bosom.

n.o.body knew what name was on the locket, for it was replaced where it so long had rested, and was buried when the heart beneath it had ceased to beat; but the name afterwards carved on the tombstone was not De Montfort.

"I don't think I shall be able to collect my wits enough to _tell_ a story this evening," said our governess as we sat at tea on the Thursday evening, "for I've had a long letter to answer and to think over; but I fancied you liked my story about the Baby's Hand, and so if you please I'll read you another from a little black-covered ma.n.u.script book which my old friend gave me. He said it was a story about a very near friend and schoolfellow of his, and was one of the most pathetic and affecting histories that he had ever known. I don't suppose you'll think so. Still it is rather affecting, though it is only a tale of disappointment in love; but then it was a love that lasted for a lifetime and survived death."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER V.

THE STORY OF A BOOKWORM.

YES, she is dead, and on her snow-strewn grave I left a bunch of winter flowers but yesterday. Ah, me! I never go and wander in that dingy churchyard, where the sound of the great roaring city is hushed to a sleepy murmur, but I seem to leave half my poor life there; would that I could leave it all, I sometimes think, and that when the s.e.xton comes to bring the keys of the church on a Sunday morning he should find the mere body of me lying there, my head leaning on the stone that bears her name--not _his_ name--_her_ name, her one dear name by which I called her last of all.

But these are ill thoughts, and as the poet says "this way madness lies." Let me get to my books, there is comfort and companionship in them; and yet I have held my finger in this page till the light is gone and it's too dark to read.

I suppose I was meant for a bookworm, and yet I didn't like school. At all events I didn't like the Free Grammar School of St. Bothwyn By-Church, to which I had the privilege of being elected when my poor father was clerk of the Company, and lived in the old hall till he bought this little house in Hoxton. Ah me! how I seem to see the old black oaken wainscot of the court room, and the little parlour where the firelight danced in deep crimson flecks and pools in the polished floor, and the shadowy panels! How I can remember going in after dark in winter evenings and sitting there, a lonely motherless boy, and seeming to be lost in some mysterious way to the outside world, as I pored over tales of old romance, or when I grew older traced the origin of some quaint custom in one of the heavy leather-bound volumes that filled the narrow cramped bookcase of the clerk's office!

In the midst of my dreaming one thing was real to me, and I suppose it was a part of my queer character, that what was said to be fancy in other young men was the one fact of my life. I mean love. Apart from the daily routine of the office, which often became mechanical, so that I could pursue it and think of other things even while it was going on, I had no true life in the present--that is to say no strongly conscious life of my own, apart from the region of imagination--except when I was sitting in the deep old escutcheoned bay-window of the Hall, looking out upon the old shaded courtyard, where the sunlight, darting amidst the spreading plane-trees, flecked and chequered the marble pavement, and the little carved fountain trilled and rippled till it incited the canary hanging in its gilded cage to break into song that drowned its splashing murmur, and silenced the sparrows twittering about the heavy woodwork of the old porch. That was my real world, because there was one figure, one face, that held me to it, as though by a spell that I could not, and never sought to break. I scarcely remember the time I did not love her.

Mary never suspected, as I sat watching her at work, or reading to her on those summer evenings, that my heart was ready to break out into words of pa.s.sionate entreaty. She had been so used to see me sitting there, or to run with me round the little paved courtyard, or the old dingy gra.s.s plot in the midst of its prim gravel walks at the side of the hall that I had become an ordinary a.s.sociation of her life. I had left school while she was still learning of a governess, who came four times a week to teach her, for her father was a man of more consideration than mine. But Mary was motherless as I was. Our mothers had been dear friends in their school-girl days and afterwards; and our fathers were old acquaintances; and so it came about that I was often at the Hall for the week round after office hours, and that I seemed to belong as much to the place as the old, fat, wheezy, brown spaniel that stood upon the broad stone step and welcomed me with tail and tongue.

But while I remained, as it were, stationary--an old-fashioned boy, an older-fashioned youth, an antiquated man--she altered. Occasionally when I went to see her she had gone out visiting, and I was left to dream away the evening in the old window waiting for her return, or, if I knew which way she came, loitering in the street in case she should be unattended by the maid who was usually sent to meet or to fetch her when her father did not go himself.

It was on one of these evenings that I suddenly understood what was the cause of the undefinable change that I had noticed in her manner some time before. In the previous week the company had held a court dinner, and that was the evening when the alderman introduced his son--"My son, the captain," as he called him--a captain by purchase, and with the right to wear a brilliant uniform and long moustachios. A chuckle-pated fellow, for all his scarlet coat and clanking heels, but with a bullying, insolent air. When the feast was over, and the guests were preparing to go, it was time for me to go too, for I had been late helping to make up some of the accounts in the office; and, after taking my hat off the hook in the pa.s.sage, turned to the old sitting-room to look for Mary, that I might say, "Good-night."

It was beyond her time for being about, especially on the court nights, but to my surprise, as I opened the door she was standing there with the captain, who was holding her hand. He had no business there, and she knew it. The other diners were already coming down the stairs at the end of the pa.s.sage. He must have stolen down quickly, and she must have been waiting for him. This all pa.s.sed through my mind in a moment as I stood looking at him, such an ugly leer upon his face as he bent over her hand that I had to clench my fingers till the blood started in the nails to keep down my rising wrath.

"Hallo! who is this?" he said, as he turned with a swagger, but without dropping her hand.

"Oh! Richard, I thought you'd gone home long ago. It's only a friend of my father's, and he's so near-sighted I suppose he did not see anybody here," she replied in a flutter.

"Confounded little manners," said the captain, staring at me.

I was dumb--and my limbs seemed to be rigid.

"Is he deaf too?" asked the captain with a grin. "Confounded little manners, really."

"You're welcome to the little there are," I blurted out; "you have none of your own. Mary, shall I take you to your father?"

She pushed away my outstretched hand and hurried from the room; and he went out also after bestowing upon me an oath which I could hear him repeat as he sought his hat and cloak in the hall. I stood there without a word. My heart had seemed to drop within me as a coal fire burnt to ashes falls together in a grate. The warmth that kept it alive had gone out suddenly. But it smouldered yet, and when I went to meet her a few evenings afterwards I had determined to gather courage and speak to her once for all. I walked mechanically through the streets between the Hall and Doctors' Commons, where she had gone on a visit, and was just turning by the old garden beyond the Proctors' College when I heard voices close to me, and looking up, saw her walking with _him_, clinging to his arm, looking into his face. I hesitated for a moment, and they saw me. "Good-night!" said she in a formal voice as she clutched his arm tighter, and they both pa.s.sed on.

So all was over. It was many weeks before I went again to see her father. It might have been many more. I think I should never have gone again but for my own father saying to me, "d.i.c.k, my son, I can see and feel for you too, but bear up; you are no boy now, you know. And I had set my heart on it too; so had our old friend. He wants you to go and see him, d.i.c.k, to help him make up his quarterly account, as you used to do. Perhaps she'll tire of this popinjay--and, when she comes to her senses--"

"Or when he deserts her," I interrupted bitterly.

The dear old man said no more, but pressed my hand--his other hand upon my shoulder. "Go and see our old friend," he repeated presently.

I went--taking care to avoid the familiar sitting-room and to go only to the office. There her father sat, looking strangely worn and anxious, but he rose to greet me.

He was pleased to see me. I could see that by the smile that brought something of the old look back upon his face; but his voice shook as he told me that at the first rumour of active service the pompous alderman had bought the captain off, and that now he had all his time to dangle after Mary. It had broken him, he said; he was not the man he had been.

His accounts confused him, and his cash-balance was short. He was going that very night to see an old cousin, to ask if she would take charge of Mary for a while; and if I would only once more look through the books while he was gone, perhaps I might put them right.

It was a cold night, near Christmas, and there was a bright fire in the office, which seemed to light the room with a ruddy glow that quite paled the flame of the shaded lamp upon the writing-table. All was so still that the ticking of the old clock upon a bracket seemed to grow into an emphatic beat upon my ear quickened with nervous pain; but I sat down and was soon immersed in my accustomed drudgery of figures, so that, when I had taken out sundry balances, and checked the totals with a sum of money in gold and silver that lay upon the table in a leather bag, I had ceased to note how the night wore on; and after tying up the cash and placing it inside the secretaire, of which I turned the key, I sat down before the fire in a high-backed old leather chair and began to think, or dream, no matter which.

Above the high carved mantel was a little round old-fashioned mirror, and as I lay back in the chair my purblind eyes were fixed upon it as it reflected the mingled gleams of lamp and fire that touched the shining surfaces of the oaken wall or the furniture of the room. My back was to the door, and yet by the sudden pa.s.sing of a shadow across the gla.s.s I saw that it was being opened stealthily--and all the doors were too heavy and well hung to make a sound, if only the locks were noiselessly turned. I was so concealed by the great chair, and by the darkness of the corner where I sat beyond the radius of the lamp, that the intruder advanced quickly. He evidently expected to find n.o.body there, and, with scarcely a glance round, went to the table, peered amongst the books, and then, as though not finding what he sought, turned to the secretaire, and with a sudden wrench of the key opened it. I had had time to think what I should do, and as his hand closed on the bag of money I sprang to the bell beside the fireplace and rang it furiously; then darted across the room and stood with my back to the door. The captain--for it was he, and I had known him by his height and figure--gave a sort of shriek and turned livid as he dropped the bag and came towards me.

"You here!" he said. "It's well that I happened to come in and catch you."

"Stand back!" I cried, "or I'll raise the neighbourhood to see the n.o.ble captain who has turned thief. You don't go till the servants at least know who and what you are."

"You fool!" he retorted, his face working. "It's only your word against mine; and who has the most right here, I'd like to know?"

All this time some one was pushing heavily against the door from the outside, and a woman was whimpering there. I stepped back, still facing him, and flung it open. It was Mary, looking white and wild, and holding a sealed letter in her hand.