Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

peasants thronged to it. Lady Joan, forbidden by Holcroft to show her face beyond the farm, watched the Christmas moon above, the lights below, solitary, from her window. "On earth, peace-good-will toward men?" Oh, mockery!

Her hands were clasped in their old attitude upon her knee. She sat tearless. The pond below her window was frozen, her tears, her soul, were frozen. The whole earth was bound in ice of despair.

a

till last. I drew your money out of the bank when Bostock went I burned and altered papers. There's no time to explain — but there's your money. I invested it in false names, in various places a year ago, when I ran over here for a holiday I told you - you remember? I've dotted down memorandums - you'll find the book in my ulster a lawyer will dovetail them all in for you; get an honest one, mind! The capital's right within £4,000. Play your cards well, and you'll get out of the wood yet."

"But, Tom, what

She stopped short. Were he dying indeed, her question would be cruelty. But he read it in her face.

Suddenly the outer door opened; step wearily climbed the rough stairs. The farmer and his wife were at the church; but she was not afraid. She saw as in a dream, upon her threshold, a figure which might have been her "What have I spent it on? And husband's wraith. The ruddy color when I told you we were so hard up! was gone even from the lips; the dark Joan, I am not like you, I can't live eyes were bloodshot and dim. The without friends of my own kind. I heavy breathing soon dispelled all have had plenty all along, when you ghostly fancies. Holcroft staggered, little thought it—and they have come expensive. But how could I stand such hard lines as we've fallen on since Easter without 'em? I'm not like you, I tell you. I'd have cut my

and fell across the bed.

"Tom! Are you faint? I will go down and see what I can find for you."

She was flitting rapidly away; but he throat long ago if I hadn't drowned caught her dress. thought in pleasure."

"Stop! It will make no difference. I must speak to you first. Raise my head."

She helped him as best she could to a less uneasy posture, and covered him with a shawl.

"I thought you were leagues away, Tom."

"I drove from Goulet the fellow set me down at the gate. It came on yesterday inflammation or something -I wouldn't be beaten-I struggled to get back to you."

66 'To me!" Even in this moment she looked at him with involuntary surprise.

"Yes, I must tell you. Stay! You can get any help you please when I've told you. Listen, Joan.”

He spoke with his old imperiousness, clutching her wrist.

He groaned heavily.

"I'd tell you a lot more, but there's no time. Joan, you had always pity for those wretches. Have you none for me?"

"The greatest, Tom the deepest."
Then pray.
Kneel down and

pray."

The clutch as of a drowning man tightened upon Lady Joan's slight wrist.

"Tom," she said, "I would die for you, in spite of all. I would die instead of you."

XI.

"THEY are all here, my lady. The hall is full.”

"Are the cheques written?"

"Every one. Your ladyship's lawyers have been most particular. And I know every face; so there is no possibility of cheating."

"I won't die like a brute, if I've lived like one-I never meant that either, but circumstances were too strong. Joan, I lied to you from first Rudd.

"I am very grateful to you, Mr. Now I will come."

More than two-and-a-half years had | night will be the first since Easter Monpassed since that Christmas eve in the day, more than three years ago, that I French valley. "Madame Robert," shall sleep in peace. You have sorworking laboriously the while, had sup-rowed, and I have sorrowed with you. ported herself in a single room in But it is over now. I have only one Paris, while the income of her fortune request to make. Will you forgive — accumulated to increase the capital and my husband?" make a vast debt complete. The lawyers remonstrated; but Lady Joan would hear not a word. Secrecy had been carefully maintained. Very few beyond a mile of Bow had any notion of the great act of restitution now at hand.

[merged small][ocr errors]

One half second and deafening shouts rang from wall to roof. "God bless him! God bless him!" they cried, with excited incoherence. Then they came tumbling over the benches, rushing upon that childlike figure. They cheered her again and again, they waved hats and handkerchiefs; they had almost raised her chair on their shoulders, when a commanding voice called, "silence!" A young man of a different order from themselves though thin and brown - sprang upon the platform.

"Lady Joan is worn out. She has given her all for you, and if you are grateful, go home. Go home," he shouted again, as the rush continued ;

night she must rest."

A form still like that of a child, more than ever like a little white spirit, coming forward with a quiet step. She" she will see you another time. Towore the plainest and cheapest mourning; beneath her small black bonnet her fair hair shone like sunlight on flax. Her eyes, as they met the people, were deep and grave. Her face had no tinge of color.

They understood at last, and trooped out, still with cheers and vociferous blessings. A faint color rose in Lady Joan's white cheeks.

"Mr. Darcy! How did you know?” "I am Lady Joan Holcroft," she Before he could reply the tall demasaid in clear tones. "Some of you gogue pressed forward, and wrung her knew me once. I should not have hand. "You are an angel," he said been so long away from you, only I enthusiastically. "Your ladyship is was making up your money. Your an angel from Heaven. He strode money is all ready now, with interest away, brushing tears from his sharp for the last three years and four months."

Then, before they had recovered from the first surprise, the lawyer was calling names, and Lady Joan held a basket full of cheques. A strange solemnity brooded over the hall. Every one, as he was called, stepped forth, received his cheque in silence, went back to his place, found every farthing right, and then watched the others. The long summer evening had closed in, and the gas was lighted, before the last payment was made. Lady Joan looked very tired, yet full of rest. She

rose once more.

eyes.

"Let me take you to your lodging. You have gone through all you can endure," said Darcy.

“I fully approve," said the old lawyer, with a quiet smile.

Darcy smuggled her away by a side door. The sky of the summer night stretched calm and soft above the electric lamps.

Neither spoke until the cab was dismissed before a quiet little house in a prim row. Darcy followed to a tiny sitting-room. She sank at once into the leathern armchair.

"Forgive me - but I can hardly "I thank God," she said. "This stand," she said. Yet she smiled. "I

am so happy! Perhaps I ought to be I can't help it — I am, oh! |

sad. But so happy." "It is your reward," returned Darcy. He sat opposite, his eyes fixed on her, half unconsciously, as if they could never look away.

"How did you hear?" she repeated.

"You see I am continually in and out with the poor; and yesterday I got wind of something, and followed it up. Does Lady Wilmington know ?"

"Certainly not. She tried last year to overthrow my scheme. She will never care to have me with her again; but that is nothing now to me. I shall live here among the people, and work for them till I die."

"And what do you expect to live upon?"

"You haven't heard, then, about my art embroidery? I enjoy it so much! I weave my fancies into pictures with such lovely colors! And it pays well. I can manage upon very little. And in all my spare time I shall be with the sick, or the old people and children; and in the evening I shall make the others happy. I shall tell them to call me Joan. 'Sister' Joan, I think, not 'Lady' any more."

"You have wandered through strange places since that morning at Somersby, when I fixed your probation," said Darcy.

A passing shadow saddened the calm eyes. "And I have learned strange lessons," she said. "I can work better than that ignorant girl whom you would not countenance, nearly seven years ago."

"You will be lonely here; too lonely. Who will take care of you?" "I want to take care of other people," said Lady Joan. But she looked a little desolate.

"I have trusty disciples in the South, who would carry on my plans. What if I came here instead? The Thrift Union buildings are in the market again. I am rich again, too, very rich -I have had legacies. And the two years are over! Would you still wish to work with me if I came ?"

[blocks in formation]

BY SIR HERBERT MAXWELL.

IN the Litany we are made to pray for preservation from sudden death, but how infinitely more sorrowful is a long-drawn, hopeless struggle for life! How many of us, if we were sincere, would pray rather to be spared the flickering in the socket, the feverish rallies, the deadly faints, the everdeepening helplessness?

For many weeks the whole nation was summoned each morning to what it knew was the death-bed of one who was, till lately, among the foremost figures in the public view. Lord Randolph Churchill was never seen at his best unless fighting against tremendous odds. Reckless beyond all men's reckoning in prosperity, he was wont to be swift and dangerous as Rupert when hard pressed. As in the days of his vigor, so in this last mortal struggle with the King of Terrors, he yielded to the irresistible only when all power of resistance had ebbed away.

When the end came at last one sighed, almost as much from relief for

A meeting, conse

the release of the sufferer and those | an appearance. who watched beside him, as from re- quently, was arranged for the following gret for the gallant soul that had gone to its rest.

For it was a gallant soul. Lord Randolph's sternest critics never denied that, and the place he won for himself in the popular fancy was, at one time, second only to that held by Mr. Gladstone. Despite the petulant self-will which flung him out of power, despite the failure of physical faculties which was so painfully visible during the last two years of his life, Lord Randolph remained, to the last, first favorite among his party with a very large section of the people. No one can doubt that, who was in London during the closing weeks of his life, for one had only to lend an ear to the talk on the cab-stands, the streets, even at the public house doors, to hear anxious discussion of the latest bulletins about "Randy," as he was affectionately called.

Saturday, to be addressed by Lord Randolph. The candidate appeared in due course, equipped with plentiful notes, decorously disposed in orthodox fashion in the crown of his hat. These notes got hopelessly disarranged, with fatal effect upon consecutive oratory. Lord Randolph completely broke down.

On the following Monday Mr. Clarke was at the Conservative Central Office when a representative of the Globe arrived to say that they could make neither head nor tail of Lord Randolph's speech. Mr. Clarke was ready for the occasion, and promptly wrote out an eloquent address, which was printed in due form, and had, it may be presumed, excellent effect, for the Conservative candidate came out at the top of the poll.

Few persons can have foreseen that the slim, nervous young dandy who came from Woodstock to swell Disraeli's majority in the new Parliament was so soon and so powerfully to influence the fortunes and policy of the Conservative party. Disraeli himself must have been as unconscious of the watchfulness of the disciple who took a seat behind him as he was of the fervor and fidelity with which Lord Randolph was to exalt his leader's memory when that leader should have passed from the scene.

The initial steps in this strange, eventful history were as little auspicious as those which led to its close. The borough of Woodstock had been kept warm till some member of the house of Marlborough should be ready to represent it. Lord Randolph was nominated at the general election of 1874. Among the first to go there to support his candidature was Mr. (now Sir Edward) Clarke, who was advertised to address a meeting. On his Not until six years later did Churcharrival, Mr. Clarke was brought into a ill's opportunity come, and he was room where thirty or forty respectable ready for it. Pulverized as it had burgesses were seated. These received been at the polls, dispirited by a defeat him with such encouragement as may as crushing as it had been unexpected, be had from the bumping of thirty the Conservative party in the Comor forty sticks and umbrellas upon the mous assembled on the benches behind floor. Gradually it dawned upon him the kind-hearted, mild-mannered counthat this was the meeting he had been try gentleman upon whom had been invited to address. "But is the candi- laid the duty of leading it against the date not to speak ?" he asked. "Well, fiery and radiant captor of Midlothian. sir," was the reply, "the fact is, our The prospect was not encouraging for candidate is a young gentleman with the broken Tories. The conditions of no experience of public speaking, and the campaign were so unequal that it we think it is better he should not ap- seemed almost ludicrous to draw the pear." Whereupon Mr. Clarke made sword. When the young and untried representations that the times were of champion stepped into the ring, few that nature that any Tory candidate among the new members knew him who wished to be returned must put in even by sight, and the old ones only

[ocr errors]

remembered Randolph as having made, | scene, when Churchill, after quoting a couple of years previously, an iso- from one of Bradlaugh's works, ended lated and bitter attack on Mr. Sclater- by flinging it with melodramatic conBooth, the "ponderous mediocrity tempt on the floor of the House; there with a double surname who was -the smoke of a warm encounter with president of the Local Government Mr. Gladstone about the authority of a Board in Mr. Disraeli's ministry, and disputed passage in Origen. His early had introduced a scheme of county speeches on this subject were a trifle government on popularly elective lines. too rhetorical to please the sense of the "I have," Lord Randolph had said on House; but Churchill, too, was sensithat occasion, with his inimitable air of tive; he quickly amended his manner, cultivated effrontery, "no objection to and then it was discovered (and none the president of the Local Government realized this sooner than Mr. GladBoard dealing with such questions as stone) that the Tory party had develthe salaries of inspectors of nuisances, oped a new debater, supple, pungent, but I do entertain the strongest possi- dangerously adroit, a perfect master of ble objection to his coming down here Parliamentary procedure, and curiously with all the appearance of a great law-able to blend personalities after the giver to repair, according to his small democratic taste with the traditions ideas and in his little way, breaches in of Parliamentary chivalry. Northcote the British Constitution." He had ap-himself, unable to the last to shake off pealed to the Tory party not to barter the habits of reverence due by an exaway their cherished institutions "for private secretary towards his old chief, such Brummagem trash as this bill, Mr. Gladstone, began to turn in mostuffed with all the little dodges of a ments of perplexity to that notable corpresident of the Local Government ner below the gangway which the Board," and had declared that he "had | famous Fourth Party claimed as their ransacked the whole arsenal of denun- camp. More and more, as the years ciatory phrases, and had not found of that Parliament rolled on, did men any that adequately expressed his esti- forget their distrust of the madcap mation, or his want of estimation, of "member for Woodstock ;" and, more the measure." This onslaught was significant still, more and more pressing stamped on the memories of members became the demands from the great of the former Parliament by a comical | industrial centres for speeches from the incident. Speaking as he was from young David who never shrank from copious notes, the sheets got mixed up an encounter with Goliath. in the course of his address, some of Space will admit of no more than one them fluttered from his hand and fell extract from the sayings of this platin a gentle shower round the object of form crusade, but it shall be a charachis denunciation, Mr. Sclater-Booth, teristic one, containing a specimen of who was sitting immediately below the audacious, yet good-humored, perChurchill, and who collected and cour-sonalities which, at that period, served teously handed them back to his assail- so greatly to endear the speaker to his vast audiences. Speaking at Blackpool, on January 24th, 1884, he alluded to

ant.

Seldom, however, has the House of Commons been more quickly forced to recognize the merits of a speaker. Lord Randolph made his start in the new Parliament on a peculiarly unpromising and unpopular subject — as the chief opponent to Mr. Bradlaugh being allowed to take the oath. The record of that long and bitter conflict teems with piquant incident; here

a reflection of the Burke-and-dagger

A couple of the Gladstonian advertisements which appeared in the papers the other day. The first described the journey of a deputation of working-men from the pure and immaculate borough of Chester to Hawarden Castle (it has always appeared to me somewhat incongruous and inappropriate that the great chief of the Radical party should reside in a castle). One would have thought that the deputation would

« AnteriorContinuar »