CHAPTER III.

MR. DESMOND TO THE RESCUE.

LAURENCE DESMOND had received a whole packet of invitations to country-houses, where Christmas was to be kept with something of the traditional warmth and joviality, and with ample entertainment in the way of carpet-dances, and amateur concerts, and impromptu comedies in the style popular at that Italian theatre which was so dangerous a rival to the house of Molière. But to all such invitations Mr. Desmond had returned the same kind of answer. The laborious duties of the _Areopagus_ kept him prisoner in town, and would so keep him throughout the winter.

This was what the editor told his friends, but the fact was that Mr. Desmond dared not indulge any natural yearnings for jovial hunting-breakfasts, or private theatricals, or country gatherings of pretty girls and hard-riding young men. He was bound to devote all Christmas leisure to the society of Mrs. Jerningham. The lady received her share of invitations from the chiefs of those very houses to which Mr. Desmond was bidden, but elected to refuse all.

“I do not care to be stared at and gossiped about, as if I were some kind of natural curiosity,” she said, when she discussed the subject with her friend. “The men watch you with malicious grins whenever you are decently civil to me, and the women watch me with more intense malice whenever you talk to other women. There are times when we are compelled to walk upon red-hot ploughshares, and then, of course, _noblesse oblige_, we must tread the iron with a good grace. But I don’t see why we should go out of our way to find the ploughshares.”

“My dear Emily, you insist on looking at everything in this bitter spirit.”

“I know the world in which I live.”

“I think the world has been extremely gracious to you.”

“Perhaps so; but the world has taken care to let me know that I am accepted on sufferance. Your position in literature, and Mr. Jerningham’s fortune, sustain a platform for me, but it is a slippery platform at best. I am happier in my own house than anywhere else.”

“But unhappily you are not happy in your own house.”

“At any rate, I am less miserable.”

Mr. Desmond shrugged his shoulders. He felt that his burden was growing heavier day by day, but he could not find it in his heart to be hard upon this beautiful woman, whose worst error was to love him with a jealous, suspicious love that made her own torment and his.

And by and by, when the demon of discontent had been exorcised, Mrs. Jerningham grew animated and gracious, and put on her sweetest smiles for the man she loved.

“You will spend Christmas Day with me, Laurence, will you not?” she pleaded. “I suppose I shall be honoured by your society on that day _at least_?”

The little, piteous air with which she uttered the last words, was scarcely justified by circumstances; since Mr. Desmond spent always one day, and sometimes two days a week at the Hampton villa.

So all the invitations were refused, and Laurence ate his Christmas dinner at Eiver Lawn, where he met a second-rate literary celebrity and his wife, and an elderly magnate of the War Office, who had been a bosom-friend of Mrs. Jerningham’s father. They were people whom he met very frequently at Hampton. He knew the literary gentleman’s good stories by heart, and loathed them; he knew the bad stories of the War Office magnate, and loathed them with a still deeper aversion; indeed, there were different series of Castlereaghiana and Wellingtoniana, which inspired him with a wild desire to throw claret-jugs and other instruments of warfare at the head of the narrator. Mrs. Jerningham’s circle grew narrower every day. The green-eyed monster held her in his fatal grip, and one by one she struck the best names from her visiting-list. She did not care to invite very pretty women or very charming women; for every word or look of Laurence Desmond’s was a sufficient cause for doubt and terror in her diseased imagination. She was jealous even of very agreeable men, if they absorbed too much of the editor’s attention. She condemned him to dulness, and yet upbraided him because he was not gay.

“I fear you have not enjoyed your evening, Laurence,” she said, as he lingered for a few minutes’ confidential talk before hurrying off to catch the last train for London.

“I have enjoyed my little snatches of talk with you,” he answered, mildly; “but I am getting rather tired of Stapleton, and your old friend’s Wellington stories are almost too much for human endurance.”

“How do you like Mrs. Stapleton?”

“I have told you at least a dozen times. She is neither particularly pretty nor particularly amusing. She gave me some very interesting details about her elder boy’s experiences in the way of whooping-cough, and the trouble she has with her cook. How is it I never see your friends the Westcombes? He is a very nice fellow, and Mrs. Westcombe a most delightful little woman.”

“You think her pretty?”

“Amazingly pretty, in the soubrette style. You used to admire her so much.”

“I think it was you who admired her so much,” answered Mrs. Jerningham, with suppressed acrimony.

“I only echoed your sentiments. Have you quarrelled with her?”

“I am not in the habit of quarrelling with my acquaintance.”

“No; but you have a knack of dropping them. Your house used to be the pleasantest in England.”

“And it has ceased to be so because Mrs. Westcombe has ceased to visit me? If I cannot make my house pleasant to you myself, I will not ask you to come to it.”

“Your house is always pleasant to me when I find you and Mrs. Colton alone; but even you cannot make dull people agreeable. If you invite people for my pleasure, you should choose those I like.”

“Very well, Monsieur le Soudain, in future I will send you my visiting-list.”

“You are always unjust, Emily. You cross-question me, and then object to my candour.”

Although Mr. Desmond was accustomed to relate almost all the details of his existence for the amusement of Mrs. Jerningham, he had refrained from telling her his experiences at the Oxford Road Theatre, or his renewal of an old friendship with Tristram Alford. Experience was fast teaching him a reticence that was the next thing to hypocrisy. It would have been very pleasant to him to tell the lady of River Lawn the story of Lucy Alford’s trials and aspirations; but he had an ever-present terror of awakening that slumbering monster, always lurking in the deeps of Emily Jerningham’s mind. He knew that to speak of Lucy would bring upon him a sharp interrogation; and he shrunk from the idea of a possible scene which might arise out of the mention of that damsel’s name.

He expected Mr. Alford to breakfast on the morning after that uncongenial evening at Hampton, and had taken care that a tempting meal should be prepared for the dweller on the heights of Ball’s Pond. He waited breakfast for more than an hour, and only gave his visitor up when his own engagements obliged him to drink his tea and eat his dry toast with business-like haste, while the kippered salmon and devilled kidneys remained neglected in their hot-water dishes on a stand by the fire.

“I suppose poor old Tristram has forgotten our engagement,” he said to himself, as he began his morning’s work; “I should like to have seen him, in order to have some talk with him about that poor little girl’s prospects; and yet what good can I hope to achieve for her, if the father is a drunkard? Nothing else could have brought him so low: for he had an excellent position when I knew him twelve years ago. Even then Waldon and I suspected his attachment to the brandy-bottle. He was so fond of recommending brandy and cold water as the remedy for every disease common to mortality. And now it has come from brandy to gin--which indicates a decadence of a hundred per cent. in his social status. Poor girl! she is such a pretty, winning, childlike creature, and of that sympathetic nature which is so susceptible to all suffering.”

Neither letter nor message of apology or explanation came from Mr. Alford during that day, but very late at night came a mysterious boy, with a damp and dirty-looking missive from the learned Tristram. Mr. Alford was one of those people whose letters usually arrive late at night; so Laurence was in nowise disconcerted when his man informed him that a boy had brought this damp epistle, and was waiting for an answer.

“Has the letter come from Islington by hand?” asked Laurence, surprised that the needy tutor should have preferred to employ the expensive luxury of a messenger to the cheap convenience of a postage-stamp.

The major-domo departed to question the boy, and returned to tell his master that the letter had not come from Islington, but from Whitecross Street.

That fatal name explained all. Mr. Desmond tore open the flabby envelope, and read the following epistle, in the penmanship whereof was ample evidence of the flurry and distraction of mind incident upon a first night in bondage.

“MY DEAR DESMOND,--The sword of Damocles has been long suspended above my unhappy head. This morning the hair snapped, and a writ issued by a butcher at Henley, who enjoyed my custom for many years, but whose later accounts I have been unable to discharge, has brought me to this place. The necessity for the step which I am about to take has long been obvious; but I have hoped against hope, and struggled on bravely, with the idea of making some kind of compromise with my old Henley creditors. I now feel that this desire is vain:

‘Longa via est, nec tempora longa supersunt.’

“I am too old to accomplish the Sisyphean labour of paying debts which seem to spring from the very earth, like the armed antagonists of Cadmus. I have resolved, therefore, to endure that shame which worthier men than I have suffered. I must avail myself of the protection which the law affords to honest poverty; and with this view I have sent for a solicitor versed in this kind of practice, and have made arrangements for placing my petition on the file.

“I am told by one of my fellow-prisoners that the small amount of my debts will in all likelihood be a hindrance to my release. If my liabilities were of a colossal character, their extinction would be a mere affair of accountancy, and I might enjoy the mildness of a winter in the south of France while my lawyers arranged an agreeable settlement in Walbrook, and might return in the spring to make my bow before the commissioner, and to be complimented on the excellence of my bookkeeping. But for the man who owes a few paltry hundreds are reserved the extreme rigours of the law; and I am advised to prepare myself for much harassing delay before I obtain my protection and can once more walk at liberty among my fellow-men.

“This, for myself, I could bear with stoical fortitude; but what is my child to do while I am detained in this wretched place? The old Queen’s Bench gave a hospitable shelter to the prisoner, and afforded a comfortable home for his family; but here stern warders refuse me the privilege of my daughter’s company, nor could I bring her even for an hour into a common ward where she would be, in all probability, the subject of rude remark or insolent observation. The poor child is yet in ignorance of my incarceration. I left her upon a pretence of business in the City, intending to inform her by letter of my whereabouts; but now the night has come, I have not courage to write that letter; and in my dilemma I venture to appeal to you, the only friend on whose goodness I can count.

“Will you, my dear Desmond, call at Paul’s Terrace early to-morrow morning, and tell my poor Lucy the reason of my non-appearance? If you will, at the same time, generously advance her a small sum for the payment of the account owing to Mrs. Wilkins, the landlady, and for the expenses of Lucy’s journey to Market Deeping--which she must now take alone--you will confer a boon upon one who to his last hour will cherish the memory of your goodness. The cessation of even Mr. de Mortemar’s pitiful stipend has been felt by us.

“Pardon this long epistle from your distracted friend,

“T. A.

“_White X Street Prison, nine o’clock._”

“Alone, and her father in prison! Poor, ill-used girl!” exclaimed Laurence, as he finished this letter. He had been thinking of her, with regret and compassion, more than once that day; but he had little known the utter misery of her position. She was quite alone, this girl, who was of an age to need all the protecting influences of home--alone in a shabby lodging; perhaps with vulgar, sordid people, who would use her harshly because of those unpaid bills alluded to so lightly by the captive of Whitecross Street.

“What a father!” mused Mr. Desmond. “He leaves his daughter, in ignorance of his fate, to suffer the tortures of suspense all day, and at night writes to ask me, a single man of something less than five-and-thirty years of age, to befriend and protect the poor, helpless girl. I am the only friend he has; and he can trust me, he says. How does he know that he can trust me? and what guarantee has he for my honour? Only the fact that I read with him twelve years ago, and have lent him money since that time. And on the strength of this he asks me to befriend his daughter in her loneliness! If I were a scoundrel, he would have done the same. Indeed, how does he know that I am not a scoundrel? And this poor little girl must go through life with no better guardian; and the world is full of scoundrels.”

Mr. Desmond looked at the dial on the low Belgian marble mantelpiece, where a lank and grim Mephistopheles, with peaked beard and pointed shoes, kept watch and ward over an ivy-mantled clock-tower. It was nearly eleven o’clock.

“I dare say she is sitting up, waiting for him, at this moment,” Laurence said to himself. “Why should she be kept in suspense till to-morrow morning? It will be no more trouble to me to go up there to-night than to-morrow; and I can much better spare the time now. It would be actual cruelty to let that poor girl suffer twelve hours more of uncertainty and apprehension; for I dare say she loves this reprobate father of hers as fondly as it is the luck of such reprobates to be loved. He is the kind of father who ruins himself and his children with the most affectionate intentions, and would perish rather than speak an unkind word to the child whose prospects he is destroying.”

Upon this Mr. Desmond threw down his book, and went in quest of his hat and overcoat.

The streets were clear at this time, and a hansom carried Laurence Desmond to Paul’s Terrace in half an hour. He saw the feeble light burning in the parlour-window as he stepped from the cab, and before he could knock, the door was opened, and a tremulous voice cried, “Papa, papa! Oh, thank God you have come!”

It was Lucy. She recognized Laurence in the next moment, and recoiled from him, with a faint shriek of horror.

“Something has happened to papa!” she cried, and then began to tremble violently.

“My dear Lucy--my dear girl, your father is well--quite well,” Laurence exclaimed, eager to relieve the terrified girl, whose chattering teeth revealed her agony of fear. He took her by the arm with gentle firmness, and led her into the parlour.

“It has been very wrong of your father to leave you ignorant of his whereabouts,” he said; “but I am sure you will forgive him when you know the cause. He is quite well; but he is a prisoner in Whitecross Street, and is likely to remain there for a week or two. He had not courage to write to you the tidings of his troubles, and so sent me to tell you his misfortune.”

“Poor, dear papa! Thank heaven he is well! You--you are not deceiving me, Mr. Desmond?” she said, suddenly, with the look of terror coming back to her pale, sad face; “my father is really well? The only trouble is the prison?”

“That is the only trouble.”

“Then I can bear it very patiently,” answered Lucy, with a plaintive resignation that seemed inexpressibly touching to Laurence. “We have long known that trouble of that kind was inevitable. Poor, dear papa! It is a very uncomfortable place, is it not? He was in a prison on the other side of the Thames once, when I was a little girl, and poor mamma and I used to go and see him; and it seemed quite a pleasant place, like a large hotel. But even the prisons are wretched now, papa says. I may go and see him, may I not?”

“Yes; I believe you can be allowed to see him. But it is not a nice place for you to visit.”

“I do not mind that in the least, if I may only see him. Can I go very early to-morrow? Papa will want linen, and razors, and things. Oh, why did he not send a messenger for a portmanteau? It would have been so much more comfortable for him to have his things ready for the morning.”

“And he would have spared you many hours of anxiety,” said Mr. Desmond, touched by the unselfishness of the girl, who in this hour of trouble had not one thought for herself. He could not avoid making a comparison, as he reflected how Emily Jerningham, under the same circumstances, would have bewailed her own misery, and the horror and degradation of her position.

“She could suffer slow death at the stake, with a smile upon her splendid face, for pride’s sake,” that impertinent inward voice, which he was always trying to stifle, remarked, obtrusively; “but she has no idea of enduring patiently, as this girl endures, unconscious of her own suffering in her thoughtfulness for others. With Emily the virtues are different phases of egotism.”

“Yes; I have been very wretched since two o’clock, when I expected papa to dinner,” said Lucy; “but I feel almost happy now that I know he is well. Do you think the prison is a _very_ uncomfortable place?”

“Well, I dare say it is rather a rough kind of lodging; but no doubt your father will contrive to make himself tolerably comfortable. It will not be for long, you know. He is almost sure to get his protection in a week or two.”

“Whose protection did you say,” Lucy faltered, at a loss to understand this phrase.

“His own protection--an immunity from arrest--his liberty, in point of fact. It is only a technical term. But what will you do in the mean time? That is the question.”

“I fear I shall have to leave town before poor papa gets his release. The Market Deeping theatre opens on New-Year’s night; and I think I must go on the 28th at latest. They are going to do the burlesque of _Lucrezia Borgia_, and I am to play Gennaro.”

“Gennaro?”

“Yes. The son, you know. I believe he gets poisoned, or something, at the end. I have to sing parodies on ‘Sam Hall,’ and the ‘Cat’s-meat Man;’ and I have to dance a--a--cellar-flap breakdown, I believe they call it. It is a very good part.”

“Indeed! The ‘cellar-flap breakdown,’ and ‘Sam Hall,’ and the ‘Cat’s-meat Man,’ constitute a very good part. I am sorry for the legitimate drama.”

“Oh, of course it is not like Pauline or Julia,” cried Lucy; “but as a burlesque part it is very good. And in the country one has to play burlesque, and farce, and everything.”

“And for that I suppose your salary is only four or five pounds a week?”

“My salary at Market Deeping will be twenty-five shillings,” Lucy answered, blushing.

Four or five pounds!--it was a salary which she had thought of sometimes in her dreams. She knew that there were people in London who actually had such salaries; but to her the sum seemed fabulous as the golden treasure of Raleigh’s unknown lands may have seemed to his mutinous crew.

Mr. Desmond made no remark upon the smallness of this pitiful stipend, though the thought of it smote his heart with actual pain.

“Your father sent you some money,” he said, not without embarrassment, “to carry on the housekeeping, and so on.”

“Papa sent me money! You have seen him, then?” Lucy asked, eagerly.

“No--a messenger brought me his letter.”

“And the money. Where could papa get money? I know he had none when he left home this morning; and he has no friend in the world but you. Ah, I understand, Mr. Desmond. It is your own money you are giving me; and you are so kind, so thoughtful, that you fear I should be pained by knowing how much we owe you. I am used to feel the weight of such obligations, and I have sometimes felt the burden very heavy; but with you it is different. Your kindness takes the sting out of the obligation; and--and it does not seem so deep a humiliation to accept your charity----”

Here the sweet, low voice trembled and broke down, and the tutor’s daughter burst into tears.

“Lucy, my dear girl--my dearest Lucy--for God’s sake don’t do that,” cried Laurence, overcome in a moment by the aspect of that half-averted face, which the girl vainly strove to cover with her hands. The water-drops trickled through those slender fingers. All day her heart had been well-nigh bursting with grief, and unhappily her fortitude must needs give way at this very inconvenient crisis.

Truly a pleasant situation for the editor of the _Areopagus_. Called upon, at a moment’s notice, to play the part of comforter and benefactor to a pretty, sensitive girl of eighteen, whose father was in prison!

“If Emily Jerningham could see me now!” Mr. Desmond said to himself, involuntarily.

He had called Miss Alford his dear--nay, indeed, his dearest--Lucy; but it was in the same spirit of compassion that would have prompted him to address endearing epithets to the charwoman who cleaned his rooms, had he found that honest creature in bitter need of consolation. His conscience whispered no word of reproof to him on that score; but he felt somehow that his position was a perilous one, though he wondered what the peril could be.

“Am I a fool or a reprobate, that I cannot befriend an innocent girl without some kind of danger to her or myself?” the inward voice demanded, angrily.

Miss Alford had recovered her composure by this time.

“I have been so unhappy all day, that your kindness quite overcame me,” she said, quietly. “I hope you will forgive me for being so silly.”

“Do not talk of my kindness,” answered the editor, who seemed now the more embarrassed of the two. “It is a great pleasure to me to serve--your father. You must go to Lincolnshire on the 28th, the day after to-morrow. Shall you be obliged to travel alone?”

“Yes; but I am not at all afraid of travelling alone.”

“Una was not afraid of the lion,” Mr. Desmond murmured to himself, softly; and then he added, aloud, “If you really wish to see your father to-morrow, I will take you to him.”

“You are too kind; but I cannot consent to give you so much trouble. I don’t at all mind going to the prison alone.”

“No, no; you shall not do that. There might be all kinds of difficulty about getting admitted, and so on. I shall call for you at twelve o’clock to-morrow. You must let me play the part of your elder brother upon this occasion, or your father. I am almost old enough to stand in the latter position, you know.”

At this Lucy blushed crimson; and the sight of that shy, blushing face sent a strange thrill to the heart of the editor. He bade her a hasty good-night and went back to his cab. The interview had only lasted ten minutes--though the cabman mulcted him of sixpence by and by on account of the delay--and the grim-visaged landlady, who stood lurking at the head of the kitchen-stairs, had no ground for complaint that the proprieties had been outraged.

He stopped to say a word or two to this grim-visaged individual.

“Mr. Alford is unavoidably detained out of town for a few days,” he said. “I hope you will take care of his daughter during his absence.”

“I hope my little account will be paid before Miss St. Halbings goes to Lincolnshire,” answered the woman, sternly. “I’ve had a many theatricals from the ‘Wells’ in my parlours; though theatricals in general are parties I avides taking; but I never had any theatrical backward in his rent till Mr. St. Halbings came to me.”

“Miss St. Albans can pay you to-night, if you please,” replied the editor; “her father has sent her money for that purpose.”

“Ho, indeed,” cried the landlady, with a tone of satisfaction that was not without a shade of irony; “circumstances alters cases. I am glad to find that Miss St. Halbings has got so rich all of a suddent.”

“She is rich enough to find new lodgings, if you make these disagreeable to her,” answered Laurence, angrily. There was an insolence about the woman’s tone which made his blood boil.

Yet what could he do? It would have been very pleasant to him to horsewhip this grim-visaged landlady; but one of the perplexities of social existence lies in the fact that the opposite sexes cannot horsewhip each other. Mr. Desmond ground his teeth, and departed with a sentiment of anger against a universe in which such a girl as Lucy Alford was subject to the insolence of grim-visaged landladies.