Darrell gave the speaker one glance of his keen eye, and thought to himself: "If I were still at the bar I should be sorry to hold a brief for that fellow." However, he returned the bow formally, and, bowing again at the close of a highly complimentary address with which Mr. Poole followed up his opening sentence, expressed himself "much flattered," and thought he had escaped; but wherever he went through the crowd, Mr. Poole contrived to follow him, and claim his notice by remarks on the affairs of the day--the weather--the funds--the crops.

At length Darrell perceived, sitting aloof in a corner, an excellent man whom indeed it surprised him to see in a London drawing-room, but who, many years ago, when Darrell was canva.s.sing the enlightened const.i.tuency of Ouzelford, had been on a visit to the chairman of his committee--an influential trader--and having connections in the town--and, being a very high character, had done him good service in the canva.s.s. Darrell rarely forgot a face, and never a service. At any time he would have been glad to see the worthy man once more, but at that time he was grateful indeed.

"Excuse me," he said bluntly to Mr. Poole, "but I see an old friend." He moved on, and thick as the crowd had become, it made way, with respect as to royalty for the distinguished orator. The buzz of admiration as he pa.s.sed--louder than in drawing-rooms more refined--would have had sweeter music than Grisi's most artful quaver to a vainer man--nay, once on a time to him. But--sugar plums come too late! He gained the corner, and roused the solitary sitter.

"My dear Mr. Hartopp, do you not remember me--Guy Darrell?"

"Mr. Darrell!" cried the ex-mayor of Gatesboro', rising, "who could think that you would remember me?"

"What! not remember those ten stubborn voters, on whom, all and singly, I had lavished my powers of argument in vain? You came, and with the brief words, 'John--Ned--d.i.c.k--oblige me--vote for Darrell!' the men were convinced--the votes won. That's what I call eloquence"--(sotto voce--"Confound that fellow! still after me!" Aside to Hartopp)--"Oh!

may I ask who is that Mr. What's-his-name--there--in the white waistcoat?"

"Poole," answered Hartopp. "Who is he, sir? A speculative man. He is connected with a new Company--I am told it answers. Williams (that's my foreman--a very long head he has too) has taken shares in the Company, and wanted me to do the same, but 'tis not in my way. And Mr. Poole may be a very honest man, but he does not impress me with that idea. I have grown careless; I know I am liable to be taken in--I was so once--and therefore I avoid 'Companies' upon principle--especially when they promise thirty per cent., and work copper mines--Mr. Poole has a copper mine."

"And deals in bra.s.s--you may see it in his face! But you are not in town for good, Mr. Hartopp? If I remember right, you were settled at Gatesboro' when we last met."

"And so I am still--or rather in the neighbourhood. I am gradually retiring from business, and grown more and more fond of farming. But I have a family, and we live in enlightened times, when children require a finer education than their parents had. Mrs. Hartopp thought my daughter Anna Maria was in need of some 'finishing lessons'--very fond of the harp is Anna Maria--and so we have taken a house in London for six weeks. That's Mrs. Hartopp yonder, with the bird on her head--bird of paradise, I believe; Williams says birds of that kind never rest. That bird is an exception--it has rested on Mrs. Hartopp's head for hours together, every evening since we have been in town."

"Significant of your connubial felicity, Mr. Hartopp."

"May it be so of Anna Maria' s. She is to be married when her education is finished--married, by the by, to a son of your old friend Jessop, of Ouzelford; and between you and me, Mr. Darrell, that is the reason why I consented to come to town. Do not suppose that I would have a daughter finished unless there was a husband at hand who undertook to be responsible for the results."

"You retain your wisdom, Mr. Hartopp; and I feel sure that not even your fair partner could have brought you up to London unless you had decided on the expediency of coming. Do you remember that I told you the day you so admirably settled a dispute in our committee-room, 'it was well you were not born a king, for you would have been an irresistible tyrant'?"

"Hush! hush!" whispered Hartopp, in great alarm, "if Mrs. H. should hear you! What an observer you are, sir. I thought I was a judge of character--but I was once deceived. I dare say you never were."

"You mistake," answered Darrell, wincing, "you deceived! How?"

"Oh, a long story, sir. It was an elderly man--the most agreeable, interesting companion--a vagabond nevertheless--and such a pretty bewitching little girl with him, his grandchild. I thought he might have been a wild harumscarum chap in his day, but that he had a true sense of honour"--(Darrell, wholly uninterested in this narrative, suppressed a yawn, and wondered when it would end).

"Only think, sir, just as I was saying to myself, 'I know character--I never was taken in,' down comes a smart fellow--the man's own son--and tells me--or rather he suffers a lady who comes with him to tell me--that this charming old gentleman of high sense of honour was a returned convict--been transported for robbing his employer."

Pale, breathless, Darrell listened, not unheeding now. "What was the name of--of--"

"The convict? He called himself Chapman, but the son's name was Losely--Jasper."

"Ah!" faltered Darrell, recoiling. "And you spoke of a little girl?"

"Jasper Losely's daughter; he came after her with a magistrate's warrant. The old miscreant had carried her off,--to teach her his own swindling ways, I suppose."

"Luckily she was then in my charge. I gave her back to her father, and the very respectable-looking lady he brought with him. Some relation, I presume."

"What was her name, do you remember?"

"Crane."

"Crane!--Crane!" muttered Darrell, as if trying in vain to tax his memory with that name. "So he said the child was his daughter--are you sure?"

"Oh, of course he said so, and the lady too. But can you be acquainted with their, sir?"

"I?--no! Strangers to me, except by repute. Liars--infamous liars! But have the accomplices quarrelled--I mean the son and father--that the father should be exposed and denounced by the son?"

"I conclude so. I never saw them again. But you believe the father really was, then, a felon, a convict--no excuse for him--no extenuating circ.u.mstances? There was something in that man, Mr. Darrell, that made one love him--positively love him; and when I had to tell him that I had given up the child he trusted to my charge, and saw his grief, I felt a criminal myself."

Darrell said nothing, but the character of his face was entirely altered--stern, hard, relentless--the face of an inexorable judge.

Hartopp, lifting his eyes suddenly to that countenance, recoiled in awe.

"You think I was a criminal!" he said, piteously.

"I think we are both talking too much, Mr. Hartopp, of a gang of miserable swindlers, and I advise you to dismiss the whole remembrance of intercourse with any of them from your honest breast, and never to repeat to other ears the tale you have poured into mine. Men of honour should crush down the very thought that approaches them to knaves."

Thus saying, Darrell moved off with abrupt rudeness, and pa.s.sing quickly back through the crowd, scarcely noticed Mrs. Haughton by a retreating nod, nor heeded Lionel at all, but hurried down the stairs. He was impatiently searching for his cloak in the back parlour, when a voice behind said: "Let me a.s.sist you, sir--do:" and turning round with petulant quickness, he beheld again Mr. Adolphus Poole. It requires an habitual intercourse with equals to give perfect and invariable control of temper to a man of irritable nerves and frank character; and though, where Daxrell really liked, he had much sweet forbearance, and where he was indifferent much stately courtesy, yet, when he was offended, he could be extremely uncivil. "Sir," he cried almost stamping his foot, "your importunities annoy me I request you to cease them."

"Oh, I ask your pardon," said Mr. Poole, with an angry growl. "I have no need to force myself on any man. But I beg you to believe that if I presumed to seek your acquaintance, it was to do you a service sir--yes, a private service, sir." He lowered his voice into a whisper, and laid his finger on his nose: "There's one Jasper Losely, sir--eh? Oh, sir, I'm no mischief-maker. I respect family secrets. Perhaps I might be of use, perhaps not."

"Certainly not to me, sir," said Darrell, flinging the cloak he had now found across his shoulders, and striding from the house. When he entered his carriage, the footman stood waiting for orders. Darrell was long in giving them. "Anywhere for half an hour--to St. Paul's, then home." But on returning from this objectless plunge into the City, Darrell pulled the check-string: "To Belgrave Square--Lady Dulcett's."

The concert was half over; but Flora Vyvyan had still guarded, as she had promised, a seat beside herself for Darrell, by lending it for the present to one of her obedient va.s.sals. Her face brightened as she saw Darrell enter and approach. The va.s.sal surrendered the chair. Darrell appeared to be in the highest spirits; and I firmly believe that he was striving to the utmost in his power--what? to make himself agreeable to Flora Vyvyan? No; to make Flora Vyvyan agreeable to himself. The man did not presume that a fair young lady could be in love with him; perhaps he believed that, at his years, to be impossible. But he asked what seemed much easier, and was much harder--he asked to be himself in love.

CHAPTER V.

IT IS a.s.sERTED BY THOSE LEARNED MEN WHO HAVE DEVOTED THEIR LIVES TO THE STUDY OF THE MANNERS AND HABIT OF INSECT SOCIETY, THAT WHEN A SPIDER HAS LOST ITS LAST WEB, HAVING EXHAUSTED ALL THE GLUTINOUS MATTER WHEREWITH TO SPIN ANOTHER, IT STILL. PROTRACTS ITS INNOCENT EXISTENCE, BY OBTRUDING ITS NIPPERS ON SOME LESS WARLIKE BUT MORE RESPECTABLE SPIDER, POSSESSED OF A CONVENIENT HOME AND AN AIRY LARDER. OBSERVANT MORALISTS HAVE NOTICED THE SAME PECULIARITY IN THE MANEATER, OR POCKET-CANNIBAL.

Eleven o'clock, A.M., Samuel Adolphus Poole, Esq., is in his parlour,--the house one of those new dwellings which yearly spring up north of the Regent's Park,--dwellings that, attesting the eccentricity of the national character, task the fancy of the architect and the gravity of the beholder--each tenement so tortured into contrast with the other, that, on one little rood of ground, all ages seemed blended, and all races encamped. No. 1 is an Egyptian tomb!--Pharaohs may repose there! No. 2 is a Swiss chalet--William Tell may be shooting in its garden! Lo! the severity of Doric columns--Sparta is before you!

Behold that Gothic porch--you are rapt to the Norman days! Ha! those Elizabethan mullions--Sidney and Raleigh, rise again! Ho! the trellises of China--come forth, Confucius, and Commissioner Yeh! Pa.s.sing a few paces, we are in the land of the Zegri and Abencerrage:

'Land of the dark-eyed maid and dusky Moor.'

Mr. Poole's house is called Alhambra Villa! Moorish verandahs--plate-gla.s.s windows, with cusped heads and mahogany sashes--a garden behind, a smaller one in front--stairs ascending to the doorway under a Saracenic portico, between two pedestalled lions that resemble poodles--the whole new and l.u.s.trous--in semblance stone, in substance stucco-cracks in the stucco denoting "settlements." But the house being let for ninety-nine years--relet again on a running lease of seven, fourteen, and twenty-one--the builder is not answerable for duration, nor the original lessee for repairs. Take it altogether, than Alhambra Villa masonry could devise no better type of modern taste and metropolitan speculation.

Mr. Poole, since we saw him between four and five years ago, has entered the matrimonial state. He has married a lady of some money, and become a reformed man. He has eschewed the turf, relinquished Belcher neckcloths and Newmarket coats-dropped his old-bachelor acquaintances. When a man marries and reforms, especially when marriage and reform are accompanied with increased income, and settled respectably in Alhambra Villa--relations, before estranged, tender kindly overtures: the world, before austere, becomes indulgent. It was so with Poole--no longer Dolly. Grant that in earlier life he had fallen into bad ways, and, among equivocal a.s.sociates, had been led on by that taste for sporting which is a manly though a perilous characteristic of the true-born Englishman; he who loves horses is liable to come in contact with blacklegs; the racer is a n.o.ble animal; but it is his misfortune that the better his breeding the worse his company:--Grant that, in the stables, Adolphus Samuel Poole had picked up some wild oats--he had sown them now. Bygones were bygones. He had made a very prudent marriage.

Mrs. Poole was a sensible woman--had rendered him domestic, and would keep him straight! His uncle Samuel, a most worthy man, had found him that sensible woman, and, having found her, had paid his nephew's debts, and adding a round sum to the lady's fortune, had seen that the whole was so tightly settled on wife and children that Poole had the tender satisfaction of knowing that, happen what might to himself, those dear ones were safe; nay, that if, in the reverses of fortune, he should be compelled by persecuting creditors to fly his native sh.o.r.es, law could not impair the competence it had settled upon Mrs. Poole, nor destroy her blessed privilege to share that competence with a beloved spouse.

Insolvency itself, thus protected by a marriage settlement, realises the sublime security of VIRTUE immortalised by the Roman muse:

--"Repulse nescia sordidae, Intaminatis fulget honoribus; Nec sumit ant ponit secures Arbitrio popularis aurae."

Mr. Poole was an active man in the parish vestry--he was a sound politician--he subscribed to public charities--he attended public dinners he had votes in half a dozen public inst.i.tutions--he talked of the public interests, and called himself a public man. He chose his a.s.sociates amongst gentlemen in business--speculative, it is true, but steady. A joint-stock company was set up; he obtained an official station at its board, coupled with a salary--not large, indeed, but still a salary.

"The money," said Adolphus Samuel Poole, "is not my object; but I like to have something to do." I cannot say how he did something, but no doubt somebody was done.

Mr. Poole was in his parlour, reading letters and sorting papers, before he departed to his office in the West End. Mrs. Poole entered, leading an infant who had not yet learned to walk alone, and denoting, by an interesting enlargement of shape, a kindly design to bless that infant, at no distant period, with a brother or sister, as the case might be.

"Come and kiss Pa, Johnny," said she to the infant. "Mrs. Poole, I am busy," growled Pa.

"Pa's busy--working hard for little Johnny. Johnny will be better for it some day," said Mrs. Poole, tossing the infant half up to the ceiling, in compensation for the loss of the paternal kiss.

"Mrs. Poole, what do you want?"