What an afternoon it was for Esther!

'Ah!' she said at last, 'it's good to hear all this!  My
aunt, you should know, is narrow and too religious; she
cannot understand an artist's life.  It does not frighten
me,' she added grandly; 'I am an artist's daughter.'

With that speech, Dick consoled himself for his imposture;
she was not deceived so grossly after all; and then if a
fraud, was not the fraud piety itself? - and what could be
more obligatory than to keep alive in the heart of a daughter
that filial trust and honour which, even although misplaced,
became her like a jewel of the mind?  There might be another
thought, a shade of cowardice, a selfish desire to please;
poor Dick was merely human; and what would you have had him
do?



CHAPTER IV - ESTHER ON THE FILIAL RELATION



A MONTH later Dick and Esther met at the stile beside the
cross roads; had there been any one to see them but the birds
and summer insects, it would have been remarked that they met
after a different fashion from the day before.  Dick took her
in his arms, and their lips were set together for a long
while.  Then he held her at arm's-length, and they looked
straight into each other's eyes.

'Esther!' he said; you should have heard his voice!

'Dick!' said she.

'My darling!'

It was some time before they started for their walk; he kept
an arm about her, and their sides were close together as they
walked; the sun, the birds, the west wind running among the
trees, a pressure, a look, the grasp tightening round a
single finger, these things stood them in lieu of thought and
filled their hearts with joy.  The path they were following
led them through a wood of pine-trees carpeted with heather
and blue-berry, and upon this pleasant carpet, Dick, not
without some seriousness, made her sit down.

'Esther!' he began, 'there is something you ought to know.
You know my father is a rich man, and you would think, now
that we love each other, we might marry when we pleased.  But
I fear, darling, we may have long to wait, and shall want all
our courage.'

'I have courage for anything,' she said, 'I have all I want;
with you and my father, I am so well off, and waiting is made
so happy, that I could wait a lifetime and not weary.'

He had a sharp pang at the mention of the Admiral.  'Hear me
out,' he continued.  'I ought to have told you this before;
but it is a thought I shrink from; if it were possible, I
should not tell you even now.  My poor father and I are
scarce on speaking terms.'

'Your father,' she repeated, turning pale.

'It must sound strange to you; but yet I cannot think I am to
blame,' he said.  'I will tell you how it happened.'

'Oh Dick!' she said, when she had heard him to an end, 'how
brave you are, and how proud.  Yet I would not be proud with
a father.  I would tell him all.'

'What!' cried Dick, 'go in months after, and brag that I had
meant to thrash the man, and then didn't.  And why?  Because
my father had made a bigger ass of himself than I supposed.
My dear, that's nonsense.'

She winced at his words and drew away.  'But when that is all
he asks,' she pleaded.  'If he only knew that you had felt
that impulse, it would make him so proud and happy.  He would
see you were his own son after all, and had the same thoughts
and the same chivalry of spirit.  And then you did yourself
injustice when you spoke just now.  It was because the editor
was weak and poor and excused himself, that you repented your
first determination.  Had he been a big red man, with
whiskers, you would have beaten him - you know you would - if
Mr. Naseby had been ten times more committed.  Do you think,
if you can tell it to me, and I understand at once, that it
would be more difficult to tell it to your own father, or
that he would not be more ready to sympathise with you than I
am?  And I love you, Dick; but then he is your father.'

'My dear,' said Dick, desperately, 'you do not understand;
you do not know what it is to be treated with daily want of
comprehension and daily small injustices, through childhood
and boyhood and manhood, until you despair of a hearing,
until the thing rides you like a nightmare, until you almost
hate the sight of the man you love, and who's your father
after all.  In short, Esther, you don't know what it is to
have a father, and that's what blinds you.'

'I see,' she said musingly, 'you mean that I am fortunate in
my father.  But I am not so fortunate after all; you forget,
I do not know him; it is you who know him; he is already more
your father than mine.'  And here she took his hand.  Dick's
heart had grown as cold as ice.  'But I am sorry for you,
too,' she continued, 'it must be very sad and lonely.'

'You misunderstand me,' said Dick, chokingly.  'My father is
the best man I know in all this world; he is worth a hundred
of me, only he doesn't understand me, and he can't be made
to.'

There was a silence for a while.  'Dick,' she began again, 'I
am going to ask a favour, it's the first since you said you
loved me.  May I see your father - see him pass, I mean,
where he will not observe me?'

'Why?' asked Dick.

'It is a fancy; you forget, I am romantic about fathers.'

The hint was enough for Dick; he consented with haste, and
full of hang-dog penitence and disgust, took her down by a
backway and planted her in the shrubbery, whence she might
see the Squire ride by to dinner.  There they both sat
silent, but holding hands, for nearly half an hour.  At last
the trotting of a horse sounded in the distance, the park
gates opened with a clang, and then Mr. Naseby appeared, with
stooping shoulders and a heavy, bilious countenance,
languidly rising to the trot.  Esther recognised him at once;
she had often seen him before, though with her huge
indifference for all that lay outside the circle of her love,
she had never so much as wondered who he was; but now she
recognised him, and found him ten years older, leaden and
springless, and stamped by an abiding sorrow.

'Oh Dick, Dick!' she said, and the tears began to shine upon
her face as she hid it in his bosom; his own fell thickly
too.  They had a sad walk home, and that night, full of love
and good counsel, Dick exerted every art to please his
father, to convince him of his respect and affection, to heal
up this breach of kindness, and reunite two hearts.  But
alas! the Squire was sick and peevish; he had been all day
glooming over Dick's estrangement - for so he put it to
himself, and now with growls, cold words, and the cold
shoulder, he beat off all advances, and entrenched himself in
a just resentment.



CHAPTER V - THE PRODIGAL FATHER MAKES HIS DEBUT AT HOME



THAT took place upon a Tuesday.  On the Thursday following,
as Dick was walking by appointment, earlier than usual, in
the direction of the cottage, he was appalled to meet in the
lane a fly from Thymebury, containing the human form of Miss
M'Glashan.  The lady did not deign to remark him in her
passage; her face was suffused with tears, and expressed much
concern for the packages by which she was surrounded.  He
stood still, and asked himself what this circumstance might
portend.  It was so beautiful a day that he was loth to
forecast evil, yet something must perforce have happened at
the cottage, and that of a decisive nature; for here was Miss
M'Glashan on her travels, with a small patrimony in brown
paper parcels, and the old lady's bearing implied hot battle
and unqualified defeat.  Was the house to be closed against
him?  Was Esther left alone, or had some new protector made
his appearance from among the millions of Europe?  It is the
character of love to loathe the near relatives of the loved
one; chapters in the history of the human race have justified
this feeling, and the conduct of uncles, in particular, has
frequently met with censure from the independent novelist.
Miss M'Glashan was now seen in the rosy colours of regret;
whoever succeeded her, Dick felt the change would be for the
worse.  He hurried forward in this spirit; his anxiety grew
upon him with every step; as he entered the garden a voice
fell upon his ear, and he was once more arrested, not this
time by doubt, but by indubitable certainty of ill.

The thunderbolt had fallen; the Admiral was here.

Dick would have retreated, in the panic terror of the moment;
but Esther kept a bright look-out when her lover was
expected.  In a twinkling she was by his side, brimful of
news and pleasure, too glad to notice his embarrassment, and
in one of those golden transports of exultation which
transcend not only words but caresses.  She took him by the
end of the fingers (reaching forward to take them, for her
great preoccupation was to save time), she drew him towards
her, pushed him past her in the door, and planted him face to
face with Mr. Van Tromp, in a suit of French country
velveteens and with a remarkable carbuncle on his nose.
Then, as though this was the end of what she could endure in
the way of joy, Esther turned and ran out of the room.

The two men remained looking at each other with some
confusion on both sides.  Van Tromp was naturally the first
to recover; he put out his hand with a fine gesture.

'And you know my little lass, my Esther?' he said.  'This is
pleasant; this is what I have conceived of home.  A strange
word for the old rover; but we all have a taste for home and
the home-like, disguise it how we may.  It has brought me
here, Mr. Naseby,' he concluded, with an intonation that
would have made his fortune on the stage, so just, so sad, so
dignified, so like a man of the world and a philosopher, 'and
you see a man who is content.'

'I see,' said Dick.

'Sit down,' continued the parasite, setting the example.
'Fortune has gone against me.  (I am just sirrupping a little
brandy - after my journey.)  I was going down, Mr. Naseby;
between you and me, I was DECAVE; I borrowed fifty francs,
smuggled my valise past the concierge - a work of
considerable tact - and here I am!'

'Yes,' said Dick; 'and here you are.'  He was quite idiotic.

Esther, at this moment, re-entered the room.

'Are you glad to see him?' she whispered in his ear, the
pleasure in her voice almost bursting through the whisper
into song.

'Oh yes,' said Dick, 'very.'

'I knew you would be,' she replied; 'I told him how you loved
him.'

'Help yourself,' said the Admiral, 'help yourself; and let us
drink to a new existence.'

'To a new existence,' repeated Dick; and he raised the
tumbler to his lips, but set it down untasted.  He had had
enough of novelties for one day.

Esther was sitting on a stool beside her father's feet,
holding her knees in her arms, and looking with pride from
one to the other of her two visitors.  Her eyes were so
bright that you were never sure if there were tears in them
or not; little voluptuous shivers ran about her body;
sometimes she nestled her chin into her throat, sometimes
threw back her head, with ecstasy; in a word, she was in that
state when it is said of people that they cannot contain
themselves for happiness.  It would be hard to exaggerate the
agony of Richard.

And, in the meantime, Van Tromp ran on interminably.

'I never forget a friend,' said he, 'nor yet an enemy: of the
latter, I never had but two - myself and the public; and I
fancy I have had my vengeance pretty freely out of both.'  He
chuckled.  'But those days are done.  Van Tromp is no more.
He was a man who had successes; I believe you knew I had
successes - to which we shall refer no farther,' pulling down
his neckcloth with a smile.  'That man exists no more: by an
exercise of will I have destroyed him.  There is something
like it in the poets.  First, a brilliant and conspicuous
career - the observed, I may say, of all observers, including
the bum-bailie: and then, presto! a quiet, sly, old, rustic
BONHOMME, cultivating roses.  In Paris, Mr. Naseby - '

'Call him Richard, father,' said Esther.

'Richard, if he will allow me.  Indeed, we are old friends,
and now near neighbours; and, A PROPOS, how are we off for
neighbours, Richard?  The cottage stands, I think, upon your
father's land - a family which I respect - and the wood, I
understand, is Lord Trevanion's.  Not that I care; I am an
old Bohemian.  I have cut society with a cut direct; I cut it
when I was prosperous, and now I reap my reward, and can cut
it with dignity in my declension.  These are our little
AMOURS PROPRES, my daughter: your father must respect
himself.  Thank you, yes; just a leetle, leetle, tiny -
thanks, thanks; you spoil me.  But, as I was saying, Richard,
or was about to say, my daughter has been allowed to rust;
her aunt was a mere duenna; hence, in parenthesis, Richard,
her distrust of me; my nature and that of the duenna are
poles asunder - poles!  But, now that I am here, now that I
have given up the fight, and live henceforth for one only of
my works - I have the modesty to say it is my best - my
daughter - well, we shall put all that to rights.  The
neighbours, Richard?'

Dick was understood to say that there were many good families
in the Vale of Thyme.

'You shall introduce us,' said the Admiral.

Dick's shirt was wet; he made a lumbering excuse to go; which
Esther explained to herself by a fear of intrusion, and so
set down to the merit side of Dick's account, while she
proceeded to detain him.

'Before our walk?' she cried.  'Never!  I must have my walk.'

'Let us all go,' said the Admiral, rising.

'You do not know that you are wanted,' she cried, leaning on
his shoulder with a caress.  'I might wish to speak to my old
friend about my new father.  But you shall come to-day, you
shall do all you want; I have set my heart on spoiling you.'

'I will just take ONE drop more,' said the Admiral, stooping
to help himself to brandy.  'It is surprising how this
journey has fatigued me.  But I am growing old, I am growing
old, I am growing old, and - I regret to add - bald.'

He cocked a white wide-awake coquettishly upon his head - the
habit of the lady-killer clung to him; and Esther had already
thrown on her hat, and was ready, while he was still studying
the result in a mirror: the carbuncle had somewhat painfully
arrested his attention.

'We are papa now; we must be respectable,' he said to Dick,
in explanation of his dandyism: and then he went to a bundle
and chose himself a staff.  Where were the elegant canes of
his Parisian epoch?  This was a support for age, and designed
for rustic scenes.  Dick began to see and appreciate the
man's enjoyment in a new part, when he saw how carefully he
had 'made it up.'  He had invented a gait for this first
country stroll with his daughter, which was admirably in key.
He walked with fatigue, he leaned upon the staff; he looked
round him with a sad, smiling sympathy on all that he beheld;
he even asked the name of a plant, and rallied himself gently
for an old town bird, ignorant of nature.  'This country life
will make me young again,' he sighed.  They reached the top
of the hill towards the first hour of evening; the sun was
descending heaven, the colour had all drawn into the west;
the hills were modelled in their least contour by the soft,
slanting shine; and the wide moorlands, veined with glens and
hazelwoods, ran west and north in a hazy glory of light.
Then the painter wakened in Van Tromp.

'Gad, Dick,' he cried, 'what value!'

An ode in four hundred lines would not have seemed so
touching to Esther; her eyes filled with happy tears; yes,
here was the father of whom she had dreamed, whom Dick had
described; simple, enthusiastic, unworldly, kind, a painter
at heart, and a fine gentleman in manner.

And just then the Admiral perceived a house by the wayside,
and something depending over the house door which might be
construed as a sign by the hopeful and thirsty.

'Is that,' he asked, pointing with his stick, 'an inn?'

There was a marked change in his voice, as though he attached
importance to the inquiry: Esther listened, hoping she should
hear wit or wisdom.

Dick said it was.

'You know it?' inquired the Admiral.

'I have passed it a hundred times, but that is all,' replied
Dick.

'Ah,' said Van Tromp, with a smile, and shaking his head;
'you are not an old campaigner; you have the world to learn.
Now I, you see, find an inn so very near my own home, and my
first thought is my neighbours.  I shall go forward and make
my neighbours' acquaintance; no, you needn't come; I shall
not be a moment.'

And he walked off briskly towards the inn, leaving Dick alone
with Esther on the road.

'Dick,' she exclaimed, 'I am so glad to get a word with you;
I am so happy, I have such a thousand things to say; and I
want you to do me a favour.  Imagine, he has come without a
paint-box, without an easel; and I want him to have all.  I
want you to get them for me in Thymebury.  You saw, this
moment, how his heart turned to painting.  They can't live
without it,' she added; meaning perhaps Van Tromp and Michel
Angelo.

Up to that moment, she had observed nothing amiss in Dick's
behaviour.  She was too happy to be curious; and his silence,
in presence of the great and good being whom she called her
father, had seemed both natural and praiseworthy.  But now
that they were alone, she became conscious of a barrier
between her lover and herself, and alarm sprang up in her
heart.

'Dick,' she cried, 'you don't love me.'

'I do that,' he said heartily.

'But you are unhappy; you are strange; you - you are not glad
to see my father,' she concluded, with a break in her voice.

'Esther,' he said, 'I tell you that I love you; if you love
me, you know what that means, and that all I wish is to see
you happy.  Do you think I cannot enjoy your pleasures?
Esther, I do.  If I am uneasy, if I am alarmed, if - .  Oh,
believe me, try and believe in me,' he cried, giving up
argument with perhaps a happy inspiration.

But the girl's suspicions were aroused; and though she
pressed the matter no farther (indeed, her father was already
seen returning), it by no means left her thoughts.  At one
moment she simply resented the selfishness of a man who had
obtruded his dark looks and passionate language on her joy;
for there is nothing that a woman can less easily forgive
than the language of a passion which, even if only for the
moment, she does not share.  At another, she suspected him of
jealousy against her father; and for that, although she could
see excuses for it, she yet despised him.  And at least, in
one way or the other, here was the dangerous beginning of a
separation between two hearts.  Esther found herself at
variance with her sweetest friend; she could no longer look
into his heart and find it written with the same language as
her own; she could no longer think of him as the sun which
radiated happiness upon her life, for she had turned to him
once, and he had breathed upon her black and chilly, radiated
blackness and frost.  To put the whole matter in a word, she
was beginning, although ever so slightly, to fall out of
love.



CHAPTER VI - THE PRODIGAL FATHER GOES ON FROM STRENGTH TO
STRENGTH



WE will not follow all the steps of the Admiral's return and
installation, but hurry forward towards the catastrophe,
merely chronicling by the way a few salient incidents,
wherein we must rely entirely upon the evidence of Richard,
for Esther to this day has never opened her mouth upon this
trying passage of her life, and as for the Admiral - well,
that naval officer, although still alive, and now more
suitably installed in a seaport town where he has a telescope
and a flag in his front garden, is incapable of throwing the
slightest gleam of light upon the affair.  Often and often
has he remarked to the present writer: 'If I know what it was
all about, sir, I'll be - ' in short, be what I hope he will
not.  And then he will look across at his daughter's
portrait, a photograph, shake his head with an amused
appearance, and mix himself another grog by way of
consolation.  Once I heard him go farther, and express his
feelings with regard to Esther in a single but eloquent word.
'A minx, sir,' he said, not in anger, rather in amusement:
and he cordially drank her health upon the back of it.  His
worst enemy must admit him to be a man without malice; he
never bore a grudge in his life, lacking the necessary taste
and industry of attention.

Yet it was during this obscure period that the drama was
really performed; and its scene was in the heart of Esther,
shut away from all eyes.  Had this warm, upright, sullen girl
been differently used by destiny, had events come upon her
even in a different succession, for some things lead easily
to others, the whole course of this tale would have been
changed, and Esther never would have run away.  As it was,
through a series of acts and words of which we know but few,
and a series of thoughts which any one may imagine for
himself, she was awakened in four days from the dream of a
life.

The first tangible cause of disenchantment was when Dick
brought home a painter's arsenal on Friday evening.  The
Admiral was in the chimney-corner, once more 'sirrupping'
some brandy and water, and Esther sat at the table at work.
They both came forward to greet the new arrival; and the
girl, relieving him of his monstrous burthen, proceeded to
display her offerings to her father.  Van Tromp's countenance
fell several degrees; he became quite querulous.

'God bless me,' he said; and then, 'I must really ask you not
to interfere, child,' in a tone of undisguised hostility.

'Father,' she said, 'forgive me; I knew you had given up your
art - '

'Oh yes!' cried the Admiral; 'I've done with it to the
judgment-day!'

'Pardon me again,' she said firmly, 'but I do not, I cannot
think that you are right in this.  Suppose the world is
unjust, suppose that no one understands you, you have still a
duty to yourself.  And, oh, don't spoil the pleasure of your
coming home to me; show me that you can be my father and yet
not neglect your destiny.  I am not like some daughters; I
will not be jealous of your art, and I will try to understand
it.'

The situation was odiously farcical.  Richard groaned under
it; he longed to leap forward and denounce the humbug.  And
the humbug himself?  Do you fancy he was easier in his mind?
I am sure, on the other hand, that he was acutely miserable;
and he betrayed his sufferings by a perfectly silly and
undignified access of temper, during which he broke his pipe
in several pieces, threw his brandy and water in the fire,
and employed words which were very plain although the drift
of them was somewhat vague.  It was of very brief duration.
Van Tromp was himself again, and in a most delightful humour
within three minutes of the first explosion.

'I am an old fool,' he said frankly.  'I was spoiled when a
child.  As for you, Esther, you take after your mother; you
have a morbid sense of duty, particularly for others; strive
against it, my dear - strive against it.  And as for the
pigments, well, I'll use them, some of these days; and to
show that I'm in earnest, I'll get Dick here to prepare a
canvas.'

Dick was put to this menial task forthwith, the Admiral not
even watching how he did, but quite occupied with another
grog and a pleasant vein of talk.

A little after Esther arose, and making some pretext, good or
bad, went off to bed.  Dick was left hobbled by the canvas,
and was subjected to Van Tromp for about an hour.

The next day, Saturday, it is believed that little
intercourse took place between Esther and her father; but
towards the afternoon Dick met the latter returning from the
direction of the inn, where he had struck up quite a
friendship with the landlord.  Dick wondered who paid for
these excursions, and at the thought that the reprobate must
get his pocket money where he got his board and lodging, from
poor Esther's generosity, he had it almost in his heart to
knock the old gentleman down.  He, on his part, was full of
airs and graces and geniality.

'Dear Dick,' he said, taking his arm, 'this is neighbourly of
you; it shows your tact to meet me when I had a wish for you.
I am in pleasant spirits; and it is then that I desire a
friend.'

'I am glad to hear you are so happy,' retorted Dick bitterly.
'There's certainly not much to trouble YOU.'

'No,' assented the Admiral, 'not much.  I got out of it in
time; and here - well, here everything pleases me.  I am
plain in my tastes.  'A PROPOS, you have never asked me how I
liked my daughter?'

'No,' said Dick roundly; 'I certainly have not.'

'Meaning you will not.  And why, Dick?  She is my daughter,
of course; but then I am a man of the world and a man of
taste, and perfectly qualified to give an opinion with
impartiality - yes, Dick, with impartiality.  Frankly, I am
not disappointed in her.  She has good looks; she has them
from her mother.  So I may say I CHOSE her looks.  She is
devoted, quite devoted to me - '

'She is the best woman in the world!' broke out Dick.

'Dick,' cried the Admiral, stopping short; 'I have been
expecting this.  Let us - let us go back to the "Trevanion
Arms" and talk this matter out over a bottle.'

'Certainly not,' went Dick.  'You have had far too much
already.'

The parasite was on the point of resenting this; but a look
at Dick's face, and some recollection of the terms on which
they had stood in Paris, came to the aid of his wisdom and
restrained him.

'As you please,' he said; 'although I don't know what you
mean - nor care.  But let us walk, if you prefer it.  You are
still a young man; when you are my age -  But, however, to
continue.  You please me, Dick; you have pleased me from the
first; and to say truth, Esther is a trifle fantastic, and
will be better when she is married.  She has means of her
own, as of course you are aware.  They come, like the looks,
from her poor, dear, good creature of a mother.  She was
blessed in her mother.  I mean she shall be blessed in her
husband, and you are the man, Dick, you and not another.
This very night I will sound her affections.'

Dick stood aghast.

'Mr. Van Tromp, I implore you,' he said; 'do what you please
with yourself, but, for God's sake, let your daughter alone.'

'It is my duty,' replied the Admiral, 'and between ourselves,
you rogue, my inclination too.  I am as matchmaking as a
dowager.  It will be more discreet for you to stay away to-
night.  Farewell.  You leave your case in good hands; I have
the tact of these little matters by heart; it is not my first
attempt.'

All arguments were in vain; the old rascal stuck to his
point; nor did Richard conceal from himself how seriously
this might injure his prospects, and he fought hard.  Once
there came a glimmer of hope.  The Admiral again proposed an
adjournment to the 'Trevanion Arms,' and when Dick had once
more refused, it hung for a moment in the balance whether or
not the old toper would return there by himself.  Had he done
so, of course Dick could have taken to his heels, and warned
Esther of what was coming, and of how it had begun.  But the
Admiral, after a pause, decided for the brandy at home, and
made off in that direction.

We have no details of the sounding.

Next day the Admiral was observed in the parish church, very
properly dressed.  He found the places, and joined in
response and hymn, as to the manner born; and his appearance,
as he intended it should, attracted some attention among the
worshippers.  Old Naseby, for instance, had observed him.

'There was a drunken-looking blackguard opposite us in
church,' he said to his son as they drove home; 'do you know
who he was?'

'Some fellow - Van Tromp, I believe,' said Dick.

'A foreigner, too!' observed the Squire.

Dick could not sufficiently congratulate himself on the
escape he had effected.  Had the Admiral met him with his
father, what would have been the result?  And could such a
catastrophe be long postponed?  It seemed to him as if the
storm were nearly ripe; and it was so more nearly than he
thought.

He did not go to the cottage in the afternoon, withheld by
fear and shame; but when dinner was over at Naseby House, and
the Squire had gone off into a comfortable doze, Dick slipped
out of the room, and ran across country, in part to save
time, in part to save his own courage from growing cold; for
he now hated the notion of the cottage or the Admiral, and if
he did not hate, at least feared to think of Esther.  He had
no clue to her reflections; but he could not conceal from his
own heart that he must have sunk in her esteem, and the
spectacle of her infatuation galled him like an insult.

He knocked and was admitted.  The room looked very much as on
his last visit, with Esther at the table and Van Tromp beside
the fire; but the expression of the two faces told a very
different story.  The girl was paler than usual; her eyes
were dark, the colour seemed to have faded from round about
them, and her swiftest glance was as intent as a stare.  The
appearance of the Admiral, on the other hand, was rosy, and
flabby, and moist; his jowl hung over his shirt collar, his
smile was loose and wandering, and he had so far relaxed the
natural control of his eyes, that one of them was aimed
inward, as if to watch the growth of the carbuncle.  We are
warned against bad judgments; but the Admiral was certainly
not sober.  He made no attempt to rise when Richard entered,
but waved his pipe flightily in the air, and gave a leer of
welcome.  Esther took as little notice of him as might be.

'Aha!  Dick!' cried the painter.  'I've been to church; I
have, upon my word.  And I saw you there, though you didn't
see me.  And I saw a devilish pretty woman, by Gad.  If it
were not for this baldness, and a kind of crapulous air I
can't disguise from myself - if it weren't for this and that
and t'other thing - I - I've forgot what I was saying.  Not
that that matters, I've heaps of things to say.  I'm in a
communicative vein to-night.  I'll let out all my cats, even
unto seventy times seven.  I'm in what I call THE stage, and
all I desire is a listener, although he were deaf, to be as
happy as Nebuchadnezzar.'

Of the two hours which followed upon this it is unnecessary
to give more than a sketch.  The Admiral was extremely silly,
now and then amusing, and never really offensive.  It was
plain that he kept in view the presence of his daughter, and
chose subjects and a character of language that should not
offend a lady.  On almost any other occasion Dick would have
enjoyed the scene.  Van Tromp's egotism, flown with drink,
struck a pitch above mere vanity.  He became candid and
explanatory; sought to take his auditors entirely into his
confidence, and tell them his inmost conviction about
himself.  Between his self-knowledge, which was considerable,
and his vanity, which was immense, he had created a strange
hybrid animal, and called it by his own name.  How he would
plume his feathers over virtues which would have gladdened
the heart of Caesar or St. Paul; and anon, complete his own
portrait with one of those touches of pitiless realism which
the satirist so often seeks in vain.

'Now, there's Dick,' he said, 'he's shrewd; he saw through me
the first time we met, and told me so - told me so to my
face, which I had the virtue to keep.  I bear you no malice
for it, Dick; you were right; I am a humbug.'

You may fancy how Esther quailed at this new feature of the
meeting between her two idols.

And then, again, in a parenthesis:-

'That,' said Van Tromp, 'was when I had to paint those dirty
daubs of mine.'

And a little further on, laughingly said perhaps, but yet
with an air of truth:-

'I never had the slightest hesitation in sponging upon any
human creature.'

Thereupon Dick got up.

'I think perhaps,' he said, 'we had better all be thinking of
going to bed.'  And he smiled with a feeble and deprecatory
smile.

'Not at all,' cried the Admiral, 'I know a trick worth two of
that.  Puss here,' indicating his daughter, 'shall go to bed;
and you and I will keep it up till all's blue.'

Thereupon Esther arose in sullen glory.  She had sat and
listened for two mortal hours while her idol defiled himself
and sneered away his godhead.  One by one, her illusions had
departed.  And now he wished to order her to bed in her own
house! now he called her Puss! now, even as he uttered the
words, toppling on his chair, he broke the stem of his
tobacco-pipe in three!  Never did the sheep turn upon her
shearer with a more commanding front.  Her voice was calm,
her enunciation a little slow, but perfectly distinct, and
she stood before him as she spoke, in the simplest and most
maidenly attitude.

'No,' she said, 'Mr. Naseby will have the goodness to go home
at once, and you will go to bed.'

The broken fragments of pipe fell from the Admiral's fingers;
he seemed by his countenance to have lived too long in a
world unworthy of him; but it is an odd circumstance, he
attempted no reply, and sat thunderstruck, with open mouth.

Dick she motioned sharply towards the door, and he could only
obey her.  In the porch, finding she was close behind him, he
ventured to pause and whisper, 'You have done right.'

'I have done as I pleased,' she said.  'Can he paint?'

'Many people like his paintings,' returned Dick, in stifled
tones; 'I never did; I never said I did,' he added, fiercely
defending himself before he was attacked.

'I ask you if he can paint.  I will not be put off.  CAN he
paint?' she repeated.

'No,' said Dick.

'Does he even like it?'

'Not now, I believe.'

'And he is drunk?' - she leaned upon the word with hatred.

'He has been drinking.'

'Go,' she said, and was turning to re-enter the house when
another thought arrested her.  'Meet me to-morrow morning at
the stile,' she said.

'I will,' replied Dick.

And then the door closed behind her, and Dick was alone in
the darkness.  There was still a chink of light above the
sill, a warm, mild glow behind the window; the roof of the
cottage and some of the banks and hazels were defined in
denser darkness against the sky; but all else was formless,
breathless, and noiseless like the pit.  Dick remained as she
had left him, standing squarely upon one foot and resting
only on the toe of the other, and as he stood he listened
with his soul.  The sound of a chair pushed sharply over the
floor startled his heart into his mouth; but the silence
which had thus been disturbed settled back again at once upon
the cottage and its vicinity.  What took place during this
interval is a secret from the world of men; but when it was
over the voice of Esther spoke evenly and without
interruption for perhaps half a minute, and as soon as that
ceased heavy and uncertain footfalls crossed the parlour and
mounted lurching up the stairs.  The girl had tamed her
father, Van Tromp had gone obediently to bed: so much was
obvious to the watcher in the road.  And yet he still waited,
straining his ears, and with terror and sickness at his
heart; for if Esther had followed her father, if she had even
made one movement in this great conspiracy of men and nature
to be still, Dick must have had instant knowledge of it from
his station before the door; and if she had not moved, must
she not have fainted? or might she not be dead?

He could hear the cottage clock deliberately measure out the
seconds; time stood still with him; an almost superstitious
terror took command of his faculties; at last, he could bear
no more, and, springing through the little garden in two
bounds, he put his face against the window.  The blind, which
had not been drawn fully down, left an open chink about an
inch in height along the bottom of the glass, and the whole
parlour was thus exposed to Dick's investigation.  Esther sat
upright at the table, her head resting on her hand, her eyes
fixed upon the candle.  Her brows were slightly bent, her
mouth slightly open; her whole attitude so still and settled
that Dick could hardly fancy that she breathed.  She had not
stirred at the sound of Dick's arrival.  Soon after, making a
considerable disturbance amid the vast silence of the night,
the clock lifted up its voice, whined for a while like a
partridge, and then eleven times hooted like a cuckoo.  Still
Esther continued immovable and gazed upon the candle.
Midnight followed, and then one of the morning; and still she
had not stirred, nor had Richard Naseby dared to quit the
window.  And then, about half-past one, the candle she had
been thus intently watching flared up into a last blaze of
paper, and she leaped to her feet with an ejaculation, looked
about her once, blew out the light, turned round, and was
heard rapidly mounting the staircase in the dark.

Dick was left once more alone to darkness and to that dulled
and dogged state of mind when a man thinks that Misery must
now have done her worst, and is almost glad to think so.  He
turned and walked slowly towards the stile; she had told him
no hour, and he was determined, whenever she came, that she
should find him waiting.  As he got there the day began to
dawn, and he leaned over a hurdle and beheld the shadows flee
away.  Up went the sun at last out of a bank of clouds that
were already disbanding in the east; a herald wind had
already sprung up to sweep the leafy earth and scatter the
congregated dewdrops.  'Alas!' thought Dick Naseby, 'how can
any other day come so distastefully to me?'  He still wanted
his experience of the morrow.



CHAPTER VII - THE ELOPEMENT



IT was probably on the stroke of ten, and Dick had been half
asleep for some time against the bank, when Esther came up
the road carrying a bundle.  Some kind of instinct, or
perhaps the distant light footfalls, recalled him, while she
was still a good way off, to the possession of his faculties,
and he half raised himself and blinked upon the world.  It
took him some time to recollect his thoughts.  He had
awakened with a certain blank and childish sense of pleasure,
like a man who had received a legacy overnight; but this
feeling gradually died away, and was then suddenly and
stunningly succeeded by a conviction of the truth.  The whole
story of the past night sprang into his mind with every
detail, as by an exercise of the direct and speedy sense of
sight, and he arose from the ditch and, with rueful courage,
went to meet his love.

She came up to him walking steady and fast, her face still
pale, but to all appearance perfectly composed; and she
showed neither surprise, relief, nor pleasure at finding her
lover on the spot.  Nor did she offer him her hand.

'Here I am,' said he.

'Yes,' she replied; and then, without a pause or any change
of voice, 'I want you to take me away,' she added.

'Away?' he repeated.  'How?  Where?'

'To-day,' she said.  'I do not care where it is, but I want
you to take me away.'

'For how long?  I do not understand,' gasped Dick.

'I shall never come back here any more,' was all she
answered.

Wild words uttered, as these were, with perfect quiet of
manner and voice, exercise a double influence on the hearer's
mind.  Dick was confounded; he recovered from astonishment
only to fall into doubt and alarm.  He looked upon her frozen
attitude, so discouraging for a lover to behold, and recoiled
from the thoughts which it suggested.

'To me?' he asked.  'Are you coming to me, Esther?'

'I want you to take me away,' she repeated with weary
impatience.  'Take me away - take me away from here.'

The situation was not sufficiently defined.  Dick asked
himself with concern whether she were altogether in her right
wits.  To take her away, to marry her, to work off his hands
for her support, Dick was content to do all this; yet he
required some show of love upon her part.  He was not one of
those tough-hided and small-hearted males who would marry
their love at the point of the bayonet rather than not marry
her at all.  He desired that a woman should come to his arms
with an attractive willingness, if not with ardour.  And
Esther's bearing was more that of despair than that of love.
It chilled him and taught him wisdom.

'Dearest,' he urged, 'tell me what you wish, and you shall
have it; tell me your thoughts, and then I can advise you.
But to go from here without a plan, without forethought, in
the heat of a moment, is madder than madness, and can help
nothing.  I am not speaking like a man, but I speak the
truth; and I tell you again, the thing's absurd, and wrong,
and hurtful.'

She looked at him with a lowering, languid look of wrath.

'So you will not take me?' she said.  'Well, I will go
alone.'

And she began to step forward on her way.  But he threw
himself before her.

'Esther, Esther!' he cried.

'Let me go - don't touch me - what right have you to
interfere?  Who are you, to touch me?' she flashed out,
shrill with anger.

Then, being made bold by her violence, he took her firmly,
almost roughly, by the arm, and held her while he spoke.

'You know well who I am, and what I am, and that I love you.
You say I will not help you; but your heart knows the
contrary.  It is you who will not help me; for you will not
tell me what you want.  You see - or you could see, if you
took the pains to look - how I have waited here all night to
be ready at your service.  I only asked information; I only
urged you to consider; and I still urge and beg you to think
better of your fancies.  But if your mind is made up, so be
it; I will beg no longer; I give you my orders; and I will
not allow - not allow you to go hence alone.'

She looked at him for awhile with cold, unkind scrutiny like
one who tries the temper of a tool.

'Well, take me away, then,' she said with a sigh.

'Good,' said Dick.  'Come with me to the stables; there we
shall get the pony-trap and drive to the junction.  To-night
you shall be in London.  I am yours so wholly that no words
can make me more so; and, besides, you know it, and the words
are needless.  May God help me to be good to you, Esther -
may God help me! for I see that you will not.'

So, without more speech, they set out together, and were
already got some distance from the spot, ere he observed that
she was still carrying the hand-bag.  She gave it up to him,
passively, but when he offered her his arm, merely shook her
head and pursed up her lips.  The sun shone clearly and
pleasantly; the wind was fresh and brisk upon their faces,
and smelt racily of woods and meadows.  As they went down
into the valley of the Thyme, the babble of the stream rose
into the air like a perennial laughter.  On the far-away
hills, sun-burst and shadow raced along the slopes and leaped
from peak to peak.  Earth, air and water, each seemed in
better health and had more of the shrewd salt of life in them
than upon ordinary mornings; and from east to west, from the
lowest glen to the height of heaven, from every look and
touch and scent, a human creature could gather the most
encouraging intelligence as to the durability and spirit of
the universe.

Through all this walked Esther, picking her small steps like
a bird, but silent and with a cloud under her thick eyebrows.
She seemed insensible, not only of nature, but of the
presence of her companion.  She was altogether engrossed in
herself, and looked neither to right nor to left, but
straight before her on the road.  When they came to the
bridge, however, she halted, leaned on the parapet, and
stared for a moment at the clear, brown pool, and swift,
transient snowdrift of the rapids.

'I am going to drink,' she said; and descended the winding
footpath to the margin.

There she drank greedily in her hands and washed her temples
with water.  The coolness seemed to break, for an instant,
the spell that lay upon her; for, instead of hastening
forward again in her dull, indefatigable tramp, she stood
still where she was, for near a minute, looking straight
before her.  And Dick, from above on the bridge where he
stood to watch her, saw a strange, equivocal smile dawn
slowly on her face and pass away again at once and suddenly,
leaving her as grave as ever; and the sense of distance,
which it is so cruel for a lover to endure, pressed with
every moment more heavily on her companion.  Her thoughts
were all secret; her heart was locked and bolted; and he
stood without, vainly wooing her with his eves.

'Do you feel better?' asked Dick, as she at last rejoined
him; and after the constraint of so long a silence, his voice
sounded foreign to his own ears.

She looked at him for an appreciable fraction of a minute ere
she answered, and when she did, it was in the monosyllable -
'Yes.'

Dick's solicitude was nipped and frosted.  His words died
away on his tongue.  Even his eyes, despairing of
encouragement, ceased to attend on hers.  And they went on in
silence through Kirton hamlet, where an old man followed them
with his eyes, and perhaps envied them their youth and love;
and across the Ivy beck where the mill was splashing and
grumbling low thunder to itself in the chequered shadow of
the dell, and the miller before the door was beating flour
from his hands as he whistled a modulation; and up by the
high spinney, whence they saw the mountains upon either hand;
and down the hill again to the back courts and offices of
Naseby House.  Esther had kept ahead all the way, and Dick
plodded obediently in her wake; but as they neared the
stables, he pushed on and took the lead.  He would have
preferred her to await him in the road while he went on and
brought the carriage back, but after so many repulses and
rebuffs he lacked courage to offer the suggestion.  Perhaps,
too, he felt it wiser to keep his convoy within sight.  So
they entered the yard in Indian file, like a tramp and his
wife.

The grooms eyebrows rose as he received the order for the
pony-phaeton, and kept rising during all his preparations.
Esther stood bolt upright and looked steadily at some
chickens in the corner of the yard.  Master Richard himself,
thought the groom, was not in his ordinary; for in truth, he
carried the hand-bag like a talisman, and either stood
listless, or set off suddenly walking in one direction after
another with brisk, decisive footsteps.  Moreover he had
apparently neglected to wash his hands, and bore the air of
one returning from a prolonged nutting ramble.  Upon the
groom's countenance there began to grow up an expression as
of one about to whistle.  And hardly had the carriage turned
the corner and rattled into the high road with this
inexplicable pair, than the whistle broke forth - prolonged,
and low and tremulous; and the groom, already so far
relieved, vented the rest of his surprise in one simple
English word, friendly to the mouth of Jack-tar and the sooty
pitman, and hurried to spread the news round the servants'
hall of Naseby House.  Luncheon would be on the table in
little beyond an hour; and the Squire, on sitting down, would
hardly fail to ask for Master Richard.  Hence, as the
intelligent reader can foresee, this groom has a part to play
in the imbroglio.

Meantime, Dick had been thinking deeply and bitterly.  It
seemed to him as if his love had gone from him, indeed, yet
gone but a little way; as if he needed but to find the right
touch or intonation, and her heart would recognise him and be
melted.  Yet he durst not open his mouth, and drove in
silence till they had passed the main park-gates and turned
into the cross-cut lane along the wall.  Then it seemed to
him as if it must be now, or never.

'Can't you see you are killing me?' he cried.  'Speak to me,
look at me, treat me like a human man.'

She turned slowly and looked him in the face with eyes that
seemed kinder.  He dropped the reins and caught her hand, and
she made no resistance, although her touch was unresponsive.
But when, throwing one arm round her waist, he sought to kiss
her lips, not like a lover indeed, not because he wanted to
do so, but as a desperate man who puts his fortunes to the
touch, she drew away from him, with a knot in her forehead,
backed and shied about fiercely with her head, and pushed him
from her with her hand.  Then there was no room left for
doubt, and Dick saw, as clear as sunlight, that she had a
distaste or nourished a grudge against him.

'Then you don't love me?' he said, drawing back from her, he
also, as though her touch had burnt him; and then, as she
made no answer, he repeated with another intonation,
imperious and yet still pathetic, 'You don't love me, DO you,
DO you?'

'I don't know,' she replied.  'Why do you ask me?  Oh, how
should I know?  It has all been lies together - lies, and
lies, and lies!'

He cried her name sharply, like a man who has taken a
physical hurt, and that was the last word that either of them
spoke until they reached Thymebury Junction.

This was a station isolated in the midst of moorlands, yet
lying on the great up line to London.  The nearest town,
Thymebury itself, was seven miles distant along the branch
they call the Vale of Thyme Railway.  It was now nearly half
an hour past noon, the down train had just gone by, and there
would be no more traffic at the junction until half-past
three, when the local train comes in to meet the up express
at a quarter before four.  The stationmaster had already gone
off to his garden, which was half a mile away in a hollow of
the moor; a porter, who was just leaving, took charge of the
phaeton, and promised to return it before night to Naseby
House; only a deaf, snuffy, and stern old man remained to
play propriety for Dick and Esther.

Before the phaeton had driven off, the girl had entered the
station and seated herself upon a bench.  The endless, empty
moorlands stretched before her, entirely unenclosed, and with
no boundary but the horizon.  Two lines of rails, a waggon
shed, and a few telegraph posts, alone diversified the
outlook.  As for sounds, the silence was unbroken save by the
chant of the telegraph wires and the crying of the plovers on
the waste.  With the approach of midday the wind had more and
more fallen, it was now sweltering hot and the air trembled
in the sunshine.

Dick paused for an instant on the threshold of the platform.
Then, in two steps, he was by her side and speaking almost
with a sob.