"Mr. Thurnall, I am glad to meet you, sir. You did me good service at Pentremochyn, and did it cheaply. I was agreeably surprised, I confess, at receiving a bill for four pounds seven shillings and sixpence, where I expected one of twenty or thirty."

"I charged according to what my time was really worth there, my lord. I heartily wish it had been worth more."

"No doubt," says my lord, in the blandest, but the driest tone.

Some men would have, under a sense of Tom's merits, sent him a cheque off-hand for five-and-twenty pounds: but that is not Lord Minchampstead's way of doing business. He had paid simply the sum asked: but he had set Tom down in his memory as a man whom he could trust to do good work, and to do it cheaply; and now—

"You are going to join the Turkish contingent?"

"I am."

"You know that part of the world well, I believe?"

"Intimately."

"And the languages spoken there?"

"By no means all. Russian and Tartar well; Turkish tolerably; with a smattering of two or three Circassian dialects."

"Humph! A fair list. Any Persian?"

"Only a few words."

"Humph! If you can learn one language I presume you can learn another.

Now, Mr. Thurnall, I have no doubt that you will do your duty in the Turkish contingent."

Tom bowed.

"But I must ask you if your resolution to join it is fixed?"

"I only join it because I can get no other employment at the seat of war."

"Humph! You wish to go then, in any case, to the seat of war?"

"Certainly."

"No doubt you have sufficient reasons…. Armsworth, this puts the question in a new light."

Tom looked round at Mark, and, behold, his face bore a ludicrous mixture of anger and disappointment, and perplexity. He seemed to be trying to make signals to Tom, and to be afraid of doing so openly before the great man.

"He is as wilful and as foolish as a girl, my lord; and I've told him so."

"Everybody knows his own business best, Armsworth; Mr. Thurnall, have you any fancy for the post of Queen's messenger?"

"I should esteem myself only too happy as one."

"They are not to be obtained now as easily as they were fifty years ago; and are given, as you may know, to a far higher class of men than they were formerly. But I shall do my best to obtain you one, when an opportunity offers"

Tom was beginning his profusest thanks: for was not his fortune made? but Lord Minchampstead stopped him with an uplifted finger.

"And, meanwhile, there are foreign employments of which neither those who bestow them, nor those who accept them, are expected to talk much: but for which you, if I am rightly informed, would be especially fitted."

Tom bowed; and his face spoke a hundred assents.

"Very well; if you will come over to Minchampstead to-morrow, I will give you letters to friends of mine in town. I trust that they may give you a better opportunity than the Bashi-bazouks will, of displaying that courage, address, and self-command, which, I understand, you possess in so uncommon a degree. Good morning!" And forth the great man went.

Most opposite were the actions of the two whom he had left behind him.

Tom dances about the room, hurrahing in a whisper—

"My fortune's made! The secret service! Oh, what bliss! The thing I've always longed for!"

Mark dashes himself desperately back in his chair, and shoots his angry legs straight out, almost tripping up Tom.

"You abominable ass! You have done it with a vengeance! Why, he has been pumping me about you this month! One word from you to say you'd have stayed, and he was going to make you agent for all his Cornish property."

"Don't he wish he may get it? Catch a fish climbing trees! Catch me staying at home when I can serve my Queen and my country, and find a sphere for the full development of my talents! Oh, won't I be as wise as a serpent? Won't I be complimented by – himself as his best lurcher, worth any ten needy Poles, greedy Armenians, traitors, renegades, rag-tag and bob-tail! I'll shave my head to-morrow, and buy me an assortment of wigs of every hue!"

Take care, Tom Thurnall. After pride comes a fall; and he who digs a pit may fall into it himself. Has this morning's death-bed given you no lesson that it is as well not to cast ourselves down from where God has put us, for whatsoever seemingly fine ends of ours, lest, doing so, we tempt God once too often?

Your father quoted that text to John Briggs, here, many years ago. Might he not quote it now to you? True, not one word of murmuring, not even of regret, or fear, has passed his good old lips about your self-willed plan. He has such utter confidence in you, such utter carelessness about himself, such utter faith in God, that he can let you go without a sigh. But will you make his courage an excuse for your own rashness? Again, beware; after pride may come a fall.

* * * * *

On the fourth day Elsley was buried. Mark and Tom were the only mourners; Lucy and Valencia stayed at Mark's house, to return next day under Tom's care to Eaton Square.

The two mourners walked back sadly from the churchyard. "I shall put a stone over him, Tom. He ought to rest quietly now; for he had little rest enough in this life….

"Now, I want to talk to you about something; when I've taken off my hatband, that is; for it would be hardly lucky to mention such matters with a hatband on."

Tom looked up, wondering.

"Tell me about his wife, meanwhile. What made him marry her? Was she a pretty woman?"

"Pretty enough, I believe, before she married: but I hardly think he married her for her face."

"Of course not!" said the old man with emphasis; "of course not! Whatever faults he had, he'd be too sensible for that. Don't you marry for a face, Tom! I didn't."

Tom opened his eyes at this last assertion; but humbly expressed his intention of not falling into that snare.

"Ah? you don't believe me: well, she was a beautiful woman.—I'd like to see her fellow now in the county!—and I won't deny I was proud of her. But she had ten thousand pounds, Tom. And as for her looks, why, if you'll believe me, after we'd been married three months, I didn't know whether she had any looks or not. What are you smiling at, you young rogue?"

"Report did say that one look of Mrs. Armsworth's, to the last, would do more to manage Mr. Armsworth than the opinions of the whole bench of bishops."

"Report's a liar, and you're a puppy! You don't know yet whether it was a pleasant look, or a cross one, lad. But still—well, she was an angel, and kept old Mark straighter than he's ever been since: not that he's so very bad, now. Though I sometimes think Mary's better even than her mother. That girl's a good girl, Tom."

"Report agrees with you in that, at least."

"Fool if it didn't. And as for looks—I can speak to you as to my own son—Why, handsome is that handsome does."

"And that handsome has; for you must honestly put that into the account."

"You think so? So do I! Well, then, Tom,"—and here Mark was seized with a tendency to St. Vitus's dance, and began overhauling every button on his coat, twitching up his black gloves, till (as undertakers' gloves are generally meant to do) they burst in half-a-dozen places; taking off his hat, wiping his head fiercely, and putting the hat on again behind before; till at last he snatched his arm from Tom's, and gripping him by the shoulder, recommenced—

"You think so, eh? Well, I must say it, so I'd better have it out now, hatband or none! What do you think of the man who married my daughter, face and all?"

"I should think," quoth Tom, wondering who the happy man could be, "that he would be so lucky in possessing such a heart, that he would be a fool to care about the face."

"Then be as good as your word, and take her yourself. I've watched you this last week, and you'll make her a good husband. There, I have spoken; let me hear no more about it."

And Mark half pushed Tom from him, and puffed on by his side, highly excited.

If Mark had knocked the young Doctor down, he would have been far less astonished and far less puzzled too. "Well," thought he, "I fancied nothing could throw my steady old engine off the rails; but I am off them now, with a vengeance." What to say he knew not; at last—

"It is just like your generosity, sir; you have been a brother to my father; and now—"

"And now I'll be a father to you! Old Mark does nothing by halves."

"But, sir, however lucky I should be in possessing Miss Armsworth's heart, what reason have I to suppose that I do so? I never spoke a word to her. I needn't say that she never did to me—which—"

"Of course she didn't, and of course you didn't. Should like to have seen you making love to my daughter, indeed! No, sir; it's my will and pleasure. I've settled it, and done it shall be! I shall go home and tell Mary, and she'll obey me—I should like to see her do anything else! Hoity, toity, fathers must be masters, sir! even in these fly-away new times, when young ones choose their own husbands, and their own politics, and their own hounds, and their own religion too, and be hanged to them!"

What did this unaccustomed bit of bluster mean? for unaccustomed it was; and Tom knew well that Mary Armsworth had her own way, and managed her father as completely as he managed Whitbury.

"Humph! It is impossible; and yet it must be. This explains his being so anxious that Lord Minchampstead should approve of me. I have found favour in the poor dear thing's eyes, I suppose: and the good old fellow knows it, and won't betray her, and so shams tyrant. Just like him!" But—that Mary Armsworth should care for him! Vain fellow that he was to fancy it! And yet, when he began to put things together, little silences, little looks, little nothings, which all together might make something. He would not slander her to himself by supposing that her attentions to his father were paid for his sake: but he could not forget that it was she, always, who read his letters aloud to the old man: or that she had taken home and copied out the story of his shipwreck. Beside, it was the only method of explaining Mark's conduct, save on the supposition that he had suddenly been "changed by the fairies" in his old age, instead of in the cradle, as usual.

It was a terrible temptation; and to no man more than to Thomas Thurnall. He was no boy, to hanker after mere animal beauty; he had no delicate visions or lofty aspirations; and he knew (no man better) the plain English of fifty thousand pounds, and Mark Armsworth's daughter—a good house, a good consulting practice (for he would take his M.D. of course), a good station in the county, a good clarence with a good pair of horses, good plate, a good dinner with good company thereat; and, over and above all, his father to live with him; and with Mary, whom he loved as a daughter, in luxury and peace to his life's end.—Why, it was all that he had ever dreamed of, three times more than he ever hoped to gain!—Not to mention (for how oddly little dreams of selfish pleasure slip in at such moments!)—that he would buy such a Ross's microscope! and keep such a horse for a sly by-day with the Whitford Priors! Oh, to see once again a fox break from Coldharbour gorse!

And then rose up before his imagination those drooping steadfast eyes; and Grace Harvey, the suspected, the despised, seemed to look through and through his inmost soul, as through a home which belonged of right to her, and where no other woman must dwell, or could dwell; for she was there; and he knew it; and knew that, even if he never married till his dying day, he should sell his soul by marrying any one but her. "And why should I not sell my soul?" asked he, almost fiercely. "I sell my talents, my time, my strength; I'd sell my life to-morrow, and go to be shot for a shilling a day, if it would make the old man comfortable for life; and why not my soul too? Don't that belong to me as much as any other part of me? Why am I to be condemned to sacrifice my prospects in life to a girl of whose honesty I am not even sure? What is this intolerable fascination? Witch! I almost believe in mesmerism now!– Again, I say, why should I not sell my soul, as I'd sell my coat, if the bargain's but a good one?"

And if he did, who would ever know?—Not even Grace herself. The secret was his, and no one else's.

Or if they did know, what matter? Dozens of men sell their souls every year, and thrive thereon; tradesmen, lawyers, squires, popular preachers, great noblemen, kings and princes. He would be in good company, at all events: and while so many live in glass houses, who dare throw stones?

But then, curiously enough, there came over him a vague dread of possible evil, such as he had never felt before. He had been trying for years to raise himself above the power of fortune; and he had succeeded ill enough: but he had never lost heart. Robbed, shipwrecked, lost in deserts, cheated at cards, shot in revolutions, begging his bread, he had always been the same unconquerable light-hearted Tom, whose motto was, "Fall light, and don't whimper: better luck next round." But now, what if he played his last court-card, and Fortune, out of her close-hidden hand, laid down a trump thereon with quiet sneering smile? And she would! He knew, somehow, that he should not thrive. His children would die of the measles, his horses break their knees, his plate be stolen, his house catch fire, and Mark Armsworth die insolvent. What a fool he was, to fancy such nonsense! Here he had been slaving all his life to keep his father: and now he could keep him; why, he would be justified, right, a good son, in doing the thing. How hard, how unjust of those upper Powers in which he believed so vaguely, to forbid his doing it!

And how did he know that they forbid him? That is too deep a question to be analysed here: but this thing is noteworthy, that there came next over Tom's mind a stranger feeling still—a fancy that if he did this thing, and sold his soul, he could not answer for himself thenceforth on the score of merest respectability; could not answer for himself not to drink, gamble, squander his money, neglect his father, prove unfaithful to his wife; that the innate capacity for blackguardism, which was as strong in him as in any man, might, and probably would, run utterly riot thenceforth. He felt as if he should cast away his last anchor, and drift helplessly down into utter shame and ruin. It may have been very fanciful: but so he felt; and felt it so strongly too, that in less time than I have taken to write this he had turned to Mark Armsworth:—

"Sir, you are what I have always found you. Do you wish me to be what you have always found me?"

"I'd be sorry to see you anything else, boy."

"Then, sir, I can't do this. In honour, I can't."

"Are you married already?" thundered Mark.

"Not quite as bad as that;" and in spite of his agitation Tom laughed, but hysterically, at the notion. "But fool I am; for I am in love with another woman. I am, sir," went he on hurriedly. "Boy that I am! and she don't even know it: but if you be the man I take you for, you may be angry with me, but you'll understand me. Anything but be a rogue to you and to Mary, and to my own self too. Fool I'll be, but rogue I won't!"

Mark strode on in silence, frightfully red in the face for full five minutes. Then he turned sharply on Tom, and catching him by the shoulder, thrust him from him.

"There,—go! and don't let me see or hear of you; that is, till I tell you! Go along, I say! Hum-hum!" (in a tone half of wrath, and half of triumph), "his father's child! If you will ruin yourself, I can't help it."

"Nor I, sir," said Tom, in a really piteous tone, bemoaning the day he ever saw Aberalva, as he watched Mark stride into his own gate. "If I had but had common luck! If I had but brought my £1500 safe home here, and never seen Grace, and married this girl out of hand! Common luck is all I ask, and I never get it!"

And Tom went home sulkier than a bear: but he did not let his father find out his trouble. It was his last evening with the old man. To-morrow he must go to London, and then—to scramble and twist about the world again till he died! "Well, why not? A man must die somehow: but it's hard on the poor old father," said Tom.

As Tom was packing his scanty carpet-bag next morning, there was a knock at the door. He looked out, and saw Armsworth's clerk. What could that mean? Had the old man determined to avenge the slight, and to do so on his father, by claiming some old debt? There might be many between him and the doctor. And Tom's heart beat fast, as Jane put a letter into his hand.

"No answer, sir, the clerk says."

Tom opened it, and turned over the contents more than once ere he could believe his own eyes.

It was neither more nor less than a cheque on Mark's London banker for just five hundred pounds.

A half-sheet was wrapped round it, on which were written these words:—

"To Thomas Thurnall, Esq., for behaving like a gentleman. The cheque will be duly honoured at Messrs. Smith, Brown, and Jones, Lombard Street. No acknowledgment is to be sent. Don't tell your father. MARK ARMSWORTH."

"Queer old world it is!" said Tom, when the first burst of childish delight was over. "And jolly old flirt, Dame Fortune, after all! If I had written this in a book now, who'd have believed it?"

"Father," said he, as he kissed the old man farewell, "I've a little money come in. I'll send you fifty from London in a day or two, and lodge a hundred and fifty more with Smith and Co. So you'll be quite in clover while I am poisoning the Turkeys, or at some better work."

The old man thanked God for his good son, and only hoped that he was not straitening himself to buy luxuries for a useless old fellow.

Another sacred kiss on that white head, and Tom was away for London, with a fuller purse, and a more self-contented heart too, than he had known for many a year.

And Elsley was left behind, under the grey church spire, sleeping with his fathers, and vexing his soul with poetry no more. Mark has covered him now with a fair Portland slab. He took Claude Mellot to it this winter before church time, and stood over it long with a puzzled look, as if dimly discovering that there were more things in heaven and earth than were dreamed of in his philosophy.

"Wonderful fellow he was, after all! Mary shall read us out some of his verses to-night. But, I say, why should people be born clever, only to make them all the more miserable?"

"Perhaps they learn the more, papa, by their sorrows," said quiet little Mary; "and so they are the gainers after all."

And none of them having any better answer to give, they all three went into the church, to see if one could be found there.

And so Tom Thurnall, too, went Eastward-Ho, to take, like all the rest, what God might send.

CHAPTER XXVI.
TOO LATE

And how was poor Grace Harvey prospering the while? While comfortable folks were praising her, at their leisure, as a heroine, Grace Harvey was learning, so she opined, by fearful lessons, how much of the unheroic element was still left in her. The first lesson had come just a week after the yacht sailed for Port Madoc, when the cholera had all but subsided; and it came in this wise. Before breakfast one morning she had to go up to Heale's shop for some cordial. Her mother had passed, so she said, a sleepless night, and come downstairs nervous and without appetite, oppressed with melancholy, both in the spiritual and the physical sense of the word. It was not often so with her now. She had escaped the cholera. The remoteness of her house; her care never to enter the town; the purity of the water, which trickled always fresh from the cliff close by; and last, but not least, the scrupulous cleanliness which (to do her justice) she had always observed, and in which she had trained up Grace,—all these had kept her safe.

But Grace could see that her dread of the cholera was intense. She even tried at first to prevent Grace from entering an infected house; but that proposal was answered by a look of horror which shamed her into silence, and she contented herself with all but tabooing Grace; making her change her clothes whenever she came in; refusing to sit with her, almost to eat with her. But, over and above all this, she had grown moody, peevish, subject to violent bursts of crying, fits of superstitious depression; spent, sometimes, whole days in reading experimental books, arguing with the preachers, gadding to and fro to every sermon, Arminian or Calvinist; and at last even to Church—walking in dry places, poor soul; seeking rest, and finding none.

All this betokened some malady of the mind, rather than of the body; but what that malady was, Grace dare not even try to guess. Perhaps it was one of the fits of religious melancholy so common in the West country— like her own, in fact: perhaps it was all "nerves." Her mother was growing old, and had a great deal of business to worry her; and so Grace thrust away the horrible suspicion by little self-deceptions.

She went into the shop. Tom was busy upon his knees behind the counter.

She made her request.

"Ah, Miss Harvey!" and he sprang up. "It will be a pleasure to serve you once more in one's life. I am just going."

"Going where?"

"To Turkey. I find this place too pleasant and too poor. Not work enough, and certainly not pay enough. So I have got an appointment as surgeon in the Turkish contingent, and shall be off in an hour."

"To Turkey! to the war?"

"Yes. It's a long time since I have seen any fighting. I am quite out of practice in gunshot wounds. There is the medicine. Good-bye! You will shake hands once, for the sake of our late cholera work together."

Grace held out her hand mechanically across the counter, and he took it.

But she did not look into his face. Only she said, half to herself,—

"Well, better so. I have no doubt you will be very useful among them."

"Confound the icicle!" thought Tom. "I really believe that she wants to get rid of me." And he would have withdrawn his hand in a pet: but she held it still.

Quaint it was; those two strong natures, each loving the other better than anything else on earth, and yet parted by the thinnest pane of ice, which a single look would have melted. She longing to follow that man over the wide world, slave for him, die for him; he longing for the least excuse for making a fool of himself, and crying, "Take me, as I take you, without a penny, for better, for worse!" If their eyes had but met! But they did not meet; and the pane of ice kept them asunder as surely as a wall of iron.

Was it that Tom was piqued at her seeming coldness: or did he expect, before he made any advances, that she should show that she wished at least for his respect, by saying something to clear up the ugly question which lay between them? Or was he, as I suspect, so ready to melt, and make a fool of himself, that he must needs harden his own heart by help of the devil himself? And yet there are excuses for him. It would have been a sore trial to any man's temper to quit Aberalva in the belief that he left fifteen hundred pounds behind him. Be that as it may, he said carelessly, after a moment's pause,—

"Well, farewell! And, by the bye, about that little money matter. The month of which you spoke once was up yesterday. I suppose I am not worthy yet; so I shall be humble, and wait patiently. Don't hurry yourself, I beg of you, on my account."

She snatched her hand from his without a word, and rushed out of the shop.

He returned to his packing, whistling away as shrill as any blackbird.

Little did he think that Grace's heart was bursting, as she hurried down the street, covering her face in her veil, as if every one would espy her dark secret in her countenance.

But she did not go home to hysterics and vain tears. An awful purpose had arisen in her mind, under the pressure of that great agony. Heavens, how she loved that man! To be suspected by him was torture. But she could bear that. It was her cross; she could carry it, lie down on it, and endure: but wrong him she could not—would not! It was sinful enough while he was there; but doubly, unbearably sinful, when he was going to a foreign country, when he would need every farthing he had. So not for her own sake, but for his, she spoke to her mother when she went home, and found her sitting over her Bible in the little parlour, vainly trying to find a text which suited her distemper.

"Mother, you have the Bible before you there."

"Yes, child! Why? What?" asked she, looking up uneasily.

Grace fixed her eyes on the ground. She could not look her mother in the face.

"Do you ever read the thirty-second Psalm, mother?"

"Which? Why not, child?"

"Let us read it together then, now."

And Grace, taking up her own Bible, sat quietly down and read, as none in that parish save she could read:

"Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, and whose sin is covered.

"Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile.

"When I kept silence, my bones waxed old, through my groaning all the day long.

"For day and night Thy hand was heavy upon me; my moisture is turned to the drought of summer.

"I acknowledge my sin unto Thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid.

"I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin."

Grace stopped, choked with tears which the pathos of her own voice had called up. She looked at her mother. There were no tears in her eyes: only a dull thwart look of terror and suspicion. The shaft, however bravely and cunningly sped, had missed its mark.

Poor Grace! Her usual eloquence utterly failed her, as most things do in which one is wont to trust, before the pressure of a real and horrible evil. She had no heart to make fine sentences, to preach a brilliant sermon of commonplaces. What could she say that her mother had not known long before she was born? And throwing herself on her knees at her mother's feet, she grasped both her hands and looked into her face imploringly,—"Mother! mother! mother!" was all that she could say: but their tone meant more than all words.—Reproof, counsel, comfort, utter tenderness, and under-current of clear deep trust, bubbling up from beneath all passing suspicions, however dark and foul, were in it: but they were vain.

Baser terror, the parent of baser suspicion, had hardened that woman's heart for the while; and all she answered was,—

"Get up! what is this foolery?"

"I will not! I will not rise till you have told me."

"What?"

"Whether"—and she forced the words slowly out in a low whisper, "whether you know—anything of—of—Mr. Thurnall's money—his belt?"

"Is the girl mad! Belt! Money? Do you take me for a thief, wench!"

"No! no! no! Only say you—you know nothing of it!"

"Psha! girl! Go to your school:" and the old woman tried to rise.

"Only say that! only let me know that it is a dream—a hideous dream which the devil put into my wicked, wicked heart—and let me know that I am the basest, meanest of daughters for harbouring such a thought a moment! It will be comfort, bliss, to what I endure! Only say that, and I will crawl to your feet, and beg for your forgiveness,—ask you to beat me, like a child, as I shall deserve! Drive me out, if you will, and let me die, as I shall deserve! Only say the word, and take this fire from before my eyes, which burns day and night,—till my brain is dried up with misery and shame! Mother, mother, speak!"

But then burst out the horrible suspicion, which falsehood, suspecting all others of being false as itself, had engendered in that mother's heart.

"Yes, viper! I see your plan! Do you think I do not know that you are in love with that fellow?"

Grace started as if she had been shot, and covered her face with her hands.

"Yes! and want me to betray myself—to tell a lie about myself, that you may curry favour with him—a penniless, unbelieving—"

"Mother!" almost shrieked Grace, "I can bear no more! Say that it is a lie, and then kill me if you will!"

"It is a lie, from beginning to end! What else should it be?" And the woman, in the hurry of her passion, confirmed the equivocation with an oath; and then ran on, as if to turn her own thoughts, as well as Grace's, into commonplaces about "a poor old mother, who cares for nothing but you; who has worked her fingers to the bone for years to leave you a little money when she is gone! I wish I were gone! I wish I were out of this wretched ungrateful world, I do! To have my own child turn against me in my old age!"

Grace lifted her hands from her face, and looked steadfastly at her mother. And behold, she knew not how or why, she felt that her mother had forsworn herself. A strong shudder passed through her; she rose and was leaving the room in silence.

"Where are you going, hussy? Stop!" screamed her mother between her teeth, her rage and cruelty rising, as it will with weak natures, in the very act of triumph,—"to your young man?"

"To pray," said Grace, quietly; and locking herself into the empty schoolroom, gave vent to all her feelings, but not in tears.

How she upbraided herself!—She had not used her strength; she had not told her mother all her heart. And yet how could she tell her heart? How face her mother with such vague suspicions, hardly supported by a single fact? How argue it out against her like a lawyer, and convict her to her face? What daughter could do that, who had human love and reverence left in her? No! to touch her inward witness, as the Quakers well and truly term it, was the only method: and it had failed. "God help me!" was her only cry: but the help did not come yet; there came over her instead a feeling of utter loneliness. Willis dead; Thurnall gone; her mother estranged; and, like a child lost upon a great moor, she looked round all heaven and earth, and there was none to counsel, none to guide— perhaps not even God. For would He help her as long as she lived in sin? And was she not living in sin, deadly sin, as long as she knew what she was sure she knew, and left the wrong unrighted?