THE

GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE.

OCTOBER 1880.

QUEEN COPHETUA.

BY R. E. FRANCILLON.

CHAPTER XXVI,

Three Flavours of Folly: A Sour Thought, a Bitter Heart, and a Sweet Desire.

Three Songs of Sorrow: Will without Might, Love without Right, Day without Night.

Three Sayers of Sooth: A Dull Ear, a Sharp Eye, and a Rough Tongue.

WALT

ALTER GRAY-as he called himself-had grasped at the opportunity which chance had given him of making Alan Reid his friend. Alan would never recognise, under the disguise of a false name, a man whom he had never seen, and who would be, as a matter of course, the very opposite of what he would imagine him to be. It would never come into his head that a greedy adventurer, fresh in the possession of a great estate, would be amusing himself, as an amateur, with the discomforts of war. Victor Waldron-to call him once more by his true name-had felt few emotions stronger than that wherewith, among the Bats, he had for the first time grasped in comradeship the hand of the man who would have refused the grasp had he known his comrade's name. He was claiming friendship and brotherhood on false pretences; but better on these than on none at all. It was intolerably infamous that Alan should go through life believing the man to be his unscrupulous enemy who would have given a hundred Coplestons to be openly his friend. After all, it was the false name that would represent the inward truth of the matter, since the true name belonged to a lie. Under a false name, and in a false guise, Alan would surely come to VOL, CCXLVII, NO. 1798.

CC

know him, and to see that he was incapable of the meanness and treachery with which he had been charged; for he believed in himself as thoroughly as a man can, and could not conceive that anybody who really knew him could fail to believe in him too. He was conscious, too, that the personal liking he had taken to Alan at first sight was quite sufficiently returned to make a good beginning. One can tell so much by the feel of a man's hand; one can even measure the degree, so long as one can keep the folly of reason from intruding. Victor felt that he and his cousin were made to be friends; and, if only for his own sake, friends they must become. When that came to pass, he could say some day, "I am Victor Waldron, who robbed you of Copleston-what do you think of me now? and will you be so contemptibly and abjectly proud as to refuse to take an unbearable burden from the back of a Friend?"

The friendship had grown: the time was very near when Victor might think of claiming his reward. And then-but why tell the story of Alan's end over again? Helen herself could not feel Alan's death more bitterly than he. He began to feel as if there were a curse upon him, as if he were doomed to be the instrument of death as well as of ruin to all who bore the name of Reid. It is true that he once coveted his neighbour's land; but surely the punishment should have fallen upon the covetous man himself, and not upon his neighbour. Hatred is too weak a word for his feelings towards Copleston. To have seen a friend and comrade whom he had grown to love struck down by his side would have been shock enough at any time, without having to feel that it was his own hand which, by no means indirectly, had dealt the blow. Had he never come with Gideon Skull to Copleston in the hope of recalling to life a longburied claim, Alan Reid, instead of dying in Paris, would even now be living at Copleston, rich and happy. "Why are men always thinking of their rights instead of their duties?" thought he. "One's own rights always seem to mean somebody else's wrongs."

So he had not returned when the war was over, but had gone on travelling about, something in the spirit of a wandering Jew. He knew that he might as hopefully and as wisely contrive plans for flying from place to place as for helping Alan's mother and sister in despite of their pride. And even if he could, what fresh evil might he not bring down upon them-he, who had already robbed them of land, life, home, hope, brother, and son? Hatred would be their least return for all he could try to do. He could never have imagined a network of circumstances under which a man could be so utterly helpless to do right and justice as he was with regard to the

Reids. If they had been only commonplace people, with commonplace views about the inherent rightness of their own rights, nothing would have been more easy than to know what to do. They would have taken all Copleston because they wanted it, and there would have been an end. But these uncomfortable people would refuse the offer of a grain of its dust as an insult, if it came from him.

But now it seemed as if there were a destiny deeper than destiny, since almost the first day of his return to England had brought him into the presence of his friend's sister. He could not help being glad that caprice, or habit, or the general use of it among new friends, had let him retain his new name. Could it mean that friendship, above and outside circumstances, was possible between her also and Walter Gray, while Victor Waldron must still remain an enemy? It was not strange that she had not recognised him, though she had the advantage over her brother in having seen him twice, while Alan had never seen him at all. For when she had seen him, he had been on the first occasion frankly light-hearted, almost her play-fellow, in the church tower; on the second, they had been engaged in a duel, wherein she was not careful to study his face, but trying to crush his spirit, if he had one. There was no reason why she should look for an enemy and a coward in her brother's friend-for Victor Waldron least of all: and, as all the world knows, no eye sees what it does not look for. On both occasions, too, there had been the absence of beard and sunburn, which were the best reasons of all for failure to recognise him; while there is little distinctive individuality in foreign voices to English ears. He was not likely to repeat a single phrase to her now that he had ever said to her before. Nothere was no reason why Walter Gray should not become the friend of Helen Reid.

Yes, but there was, though! There was Gideon Skull.

How had that come to pass-that Helen Reid, in any shuffling of the cards of life, should be the wife of Gideon? It seemed the very wildest of mysteries: it felt to Victor like some horrible sort of profanation, though he could not, for the life of him, have told himself why. Alan, he knew, would have revolted at the idea of such a marriage. "Well there is no accounting for what women do," he said to himself, with that every-day philosophy which so admirably accounts for everything by accounting for nothing. After all, there have been many much stranger matches in the world, so far as she was concerned. But that Gideon should have married for love alone that was the arch-mystery of the whole world.

Nothing was more natural than that he should drop in, during

the course of the next day, upon his and Alan's old companion in arms, Dr. Dale; it was clearly his best way of learning more about Helen and Gideon. He made his call prepared with a string of questions, and was anything but prepared for his greeting.

you

"You haven't heard the news? No? Didn't you say last night knew Skull ?"

"What of him?”

"I hope you didn't know him as your debtor, like Aristides, and I don't know who besides. I thought it would happen at last—and, when I saw his wife out without him-well, that comes to the total of two and two. He's blown up-bolted-I don't know the proper slang, but that's what it comes to. I was attending little Themistocles Aristides, who's down with the measles-and there's a panic in Greece, I can tell you, to-day."

"Good God, Dale! What do you mean?"

"You are a creditor, then? Well, there may be something in the pound, after all. Take a glass of sherry. You can trust that, anyhow-I know where that came from, which is more than one can say of the Skulls. Yes, he's another bubble gone.

It seems

that our Greek friends went on the faith that he was a pigeon instead of a hawk, and he on the same faith about them. He bought on their credit, and they were the sellers: they sold to him, and he couldn't pay as well as I can understand. So the end of it is, that they're left with a lot of worthless stock on their hands, and he with nothing at all. They can stand it well enough, but he's off to Boulogne."

"To Boulogne ?"

"So they say. So probably it's not really to Boulogne. That isn't the only place in Europe and America where the dogs live, and where Gideon Skulls go. But it's usual to say Boulogne."

"And his wife-has she gone, too?"

say

"That woman in black velvet? I don't know, but I should it depends. He may have to cut off unnecessary expenses, you see. What makes you think about her?"

But Victor did think about his friend's sister, far too much to notice the way in which the Doctor persisted in speaking of any woman who bore Gideon's name. He invented an appointment as an excuse for not staying to lunch to be introduced to Mrs. Dale, and left the house as soon as he could in order to think over this new chapter in the history of Copleston. To think of Helen, Alan's sister, as the wife of Gideon Skull, rich and prosperous, was bad enough; but to picture her as the wife of the very Gideon whom he

remembered always fighting tooth and nail with fortune, always on the point of winning, always losing, the Lord Adventurer of millions in the air of which he never realised a single dollar, and now driven into the maze of his old shifts again—that was a great deal worse than bad to think of for any woman of the commonest spirit and pride. Perhaps it was not true that she had not left London with him; she might have gone out last night to blind the public eyes while Gideon was on the road to Boulogne. If so, what a flood of mean and sordid troubles must be upon her! He almost hoped it might be so, so that the plain duty of helping her to face them might be forced and thrust upon any man who had ever taken her brother by the hand. There could be no difficulty about his calling upon her; indeed, seeing that she must needs wish to see the man who had been with Alan when he fell, his not going to see her would be worse than discourtesy. But, if she had gone-well, he could do nothing, then.

"I have heard the news.

Your brother Alan was my 1?”

dearest friend. . . . . Is there anything I can do for you i

He had found Helen at home; she had received him, and these were his first words. But he had no sooner spoken them than he found them less sufficient than he had looked for. He had expected to find her either crushed or defiant; he found her quiet and composed but still there were signs enough that she had been passing through no common trouble. She was very pale, and her eyes were bright rather with the effects of fever than of tears.

"It is good of you to come and see me, Mr. Gray," said she. "I wished to see you-for my brother is still everything I have in the world. I was very foolish last night-but your news was sudden. I see now that death was the best thing for him. He was not like us-too bad for anything but living. When I say 'we,' of course I have no right to mean you."

Bitterness and coldness were the last things he had ever associated with his memories of Helen Reid-memories that were reviving in proportion as her reality had changed.

"I came to be of service to his sister, if I could," said he. "There are many things-small enough to me, I dare say, but great to you that a man can do for a woman, and that I shall be too glad to do for you, till you can join your husband

"You can tell me of Alan, if you please"

"I am told that a heavy trouble has fallen upon you. Is it true?"