CHAPTER XXI.

Still another picture. This one on the sea, to give variety to the group.

A fresh breeze is blowing, the white sails are full, and a noble vessel--the Blue Jacket, a famous clipper--is ploughing her way through the snow-crested waves. Holding on to the bulwarks, a lad, scarcely eighteen years of age, is gazing now into the billowy depths into which they are descending, now to the curling heights up and over which the ship is sailing. A rapture of delight dwells in his great spiritual eyes, and a flush rises to his pale and pensive face, as he gazes on the wonders of the deep. His heart is pulsing with worship of the beautiful, and with his inner sight he sees what is hidden from many. The breeze brings to him musical and thrilling whispers; the laughing, joyous waters teem with images of spiritual loveliness.

By his side, gazing also into the water's depths, and holding on to a rope with a stronger and more careless grip, stands a man whose years exceed two score. A handsome, strongly-built man, with a mole on his right temple which adds to rather than detracts from his beauty. That he is of a commoner order than the lad by whose side he stands is clearly apparent; yet he is one in whom the majority of women would instinctively take a deeper interest because of his riper development and the larger power expressed in him. His features are wanting in the refinement and delicacy which characterise his young companion, but they have boldness and fulness which, allied with good proportion, possess a special and individual attraction of their own.

The young gentleman's name is Arthur Temple; the name of his valet is Ned Chester; and the ship is ploughing her way to England's shores.

What the lad sees in the restless, laughing waters is created by his poetical nature. What the man sees is the issue of an actual experience in the past. In the lad's dreams there is no thread of connection: images of beauty appear and disappear; slowly form themselves, and fade as slowly away; and are not repeated. In the man's, one face is always present, and always visible to his fancy; the face of a beautiful child, whose eyes rival heaven's brightest blue, whose cheeks are blooming with roses, whose head is covered with clusters of golden curls.

A word of retrospect is necessary.

The lad is the only child, by his wife, Lady Temple, of Mr. Temple, a name famous in the superior Law Courts of England, a gentleman of wealth, distinction, and high position in the land. From his birth, Arthur Temple has been the object of the most anxious and devoted care of his parents--the devotion mainly springing from the mother's breast, the anxiety from the father's. Not that the father was wanting in love. On the contrary. As much love as it was in his nature to bestow, he bestowed upon his son. But it was not like the mother's love, purely unselfish; it was alloyed with personal ambition, and was consequently of a coarser grain. From a delicate babe, Arthur Temple grew into a delicate boy--so delicate that his life often hung upon a thread, as ordinary people express it, and he was not sent to a public school for his education. The best private tutors were obtained for him, and the lad showed an eager desire to acquire what they were engaged to teach. But his mental vigour ran ahead of his physical power, and the physicians ordered that his studies should be discontinued. "His brain is too wakeful," they said, "his nerves too sensitive. The difficulty will be not to make him study, but to keep him from it." So it turned out. Free from the trammels of enforced study, and left to follow his own inclination, the lad flew to the books most congenial to his nature, and learnt from them what he most desired to learn. The intellectual power apparent in the lad delighted his father as much as his lack of physical strength distressed him. Mr. Temple's ambition was various. Wealth he loved for the sake of the luxury and ease it conferred; power he coveted, and coveted the more as he rose, for its own sake, and because it placed him above his fellows, and gave him control over them; but beyond all, his chief ambition was to found a family, which should be famous in the land. To the accomplishment of this end two things were necessary: the first, that he himself should become famous, and should amass much wealth; the second, that his son--his only child--should marry, and have children. In the first, he was successful. It is not necessary to inquire by what means--whether by superior talent, by tact, by industry, or by force of patronage--he rose to power, and passed men in the race who at least were equal with himself. The fact is sufficient; he rose above them, and it was acknowledged that the highest prize in his profession might one day be his.

This is an envious world. As worshippers of the successful and powerful are everywhere to be found, so are detractors, and men who by innuendoes throw dirt at those who occupy the best seats. But whatever might be said to his detraction by the envious few, he was quoted in public as a man of rare virtues and integrity. The public prints never neglected an opportunity to point a moral by means of his example. They never tired of quoting his stainless life, his probity, his righteous conduct as an administrator of justice, and holding him forth as a practical illustration of the highest qualities of human nature. It cannot be denied that he, by his conduct, contributed to this result. There was manifest in him a distinct assertion to the possession of spotless honour and blamelessness; so pure a man was he that he had no pity for human failings; that "earthly power doth then show likest God's when mercy seasons justice," found no assenting response within his breast. Woe to the fallen wretches who appeared before him for judgment; he gave them their deservings, with no compassionate regard of the tangled, dirt-stained roads they had been compelled to travel. His stern manner said, "Look upon me. Have I fallen? Why, then, have you?" And in his addresses to criminals when passing sentence, he frequently embodied this in words--whereupon the world would rejoice that the law had such an interpreter, justice such a champion. All other things, therefore, being smooth before him, the full accomplishment of his dearest ambition hung upon the health of his only child, and he experienced the keenest anxiety in the circumstance that as the lad grew in years, he failed in strength. At the age of sixteen, Arthur Temple was a pale, dreamy stripling, full of fine fancies, and sensitive to a fault. The physicians spoke gravely of his condition.

"There is but one chance of his attaining manhood," they said; "a complete change must be effected in his life. He must travel. Not on the Continent, or in cities where money can purchase the indulgences of existence. A long sea-voyage in a sailing vessel, to the other end of the world. A sojourn there of twelve or eighteen months. Then home again, with blood thickened, and bones well set."

"But if he should die!" exclaimed the anxious mother, distracted at the thought of parting with her darling.

"He may," replied the physicians; "but there, at all events, he has a chance of living. Keep him at home, and you condemn him to certain death."

After this there was, of course, nothing to be said, and preparations were made for the lad's temporary exile. Arthur received the news with joy. It was the realisation of a cherished dream. He felt like a knight-errant going out in search of romantic adventures. The glad anticipation made his step lighter, his manner cheerier.

"He is better already," said the physicians.

The difficulty was to find a companion for him. His father's professional duties would not permit of his leaving England; his mother's health was too delicate. The need was supplied by the younger member of a family of rank and distinction, who, with his family, was going out to settle in the new land across the seas. Into their care Arthur Temple was given. Before he left England, his father conversed privately and seriously with the lad, and in some part made a disclosure of his views of the future. Arthur listened with respect and attention; he had a sincere regard for his father, although between their natures existed an undefinable barrier which prevented the perfect merging of their sympathies.

"You are my one only hope," said Mr. Temple to his son; "but for you, all the honours I have gained would be valueless in my eyes. Get strong, for your mother's sake and mine, and come home to take your proper position in society--a position which I have made for you, and which you will worthily sustain. You have yet to choose your career--it will be politics, I hope; it opens out the widest field to a young man of wealth and talent. Before I die, I may see my boy in office."

Arthur shook his head. He had his dreams of the path in which he would choose to walk; the pen should be the weapon by means of which he would carve his way to fame. He expressed his hope, with a boy's timidity and bashfulness, to his father, who was too wise to fan the fire by a show of opposition.'

"All that is in the future," he said; "your first care is to get strong."

This conference between father and son was one of solemnity to the lad; he was going on a long voyage, and he and his father might never meet again; there was a thought in his mind to which he was impelled to give utterance.

"Be sure of one thing, sir," he said, gazing steadily with his truthful eyes into his father's face, "whatever occurs, in whatever groove my life may run, I shall never do anything to disgrace the name of Temple."

"My dear lad!" murmured his father.

"Whatever career I adopt," said the lad, with a heightened colour, "I solemnly promise always and for ever to set right and justice before me, and to be guided by their light."

His right hand was slightly raised as he spoke, and he looked upwards, as though he were registering a vow. The words were the outcome of his truthful nature, and were a fit utterance at such a time and under such circumstances.

"If I believed," continued the lad, "that it were possible I should ever commit an act which would reflect shame upon the name we bear, I should pray to die to-night. I should not be happy if I went away without giving you this assurance. Believe me, sir, I will be worthy of the trust you repose in me."

Mr. Temple received this assurance with averted head. He was accustomed to boyish outbursts from his son, but this last bore with it, in its more earnest tones, a deeper signification than usual.

"You afford me great pleasure, Arthur," he said slowly; "I am sure I shall not be disappointed in you. Yet you must not forget that, in the practical issues of life, sentiment must occasionally be set aside."

The lad pondered for a few moments, saying then:

"I do not quite understand you, sir."

Mr. Temple briefly explained his meaning.

"Merely, my son, that the circumstances of life frequently call for the exercise of wisdom, and that we must look carefully to the results of our actions."

Arthur Temple was always ready for an argument.

"I do not know how I should act if wisdom and sentiment clashed. I have heard you say I am given to sentiment."

"Yes, Arthur; but you are young."

"I hope never to alter, sir. What I intended fully to say was this: that if a matter were before me in which wisdom and sentiment clashed, I do not know how I should act. But I do know how I should act in a matter where wisdom and justice pulled different ways. I may not always be wise; I should despise myself if I suspected that I should not always be just. Had I to choose between a wise and a just man, I know whose hand I should take. Why, sir, it enters into my love for you"--his arm here stole around his father's shoulder--"that I know you to be a just man, incapable of a base or mean action! I will follow in your footsteps; the example you have set me shall not be thrown away."

The conversation was then continued in another strain, and shortly afterwards Arthur Temple bade his parents farewell, and started for the New World. From the moment the lad placed his foot upon the vessel which conveyed him from his native land, it seemed as though he were animated by a new life. The lassitude and languor which had weighed upon him were blown away by the fresh breezes that swept across the seas; his pulses beat more briskly, his blood flowed through his veins with fuller force. The pale, sickly lad whose feeble health had but yesterday caused his parents so much anxiety, became drunk with animal spirits, and was the life and soul of the ship. He had his quiet hours, when he would sit in happy silent communion with the spirit of beauty which touched every natural effect in air and sea with heavenly colour, which whispered to him in the silence of the night, when the stars shone peacefully on the waters, and in the storm, when fierce winds lashed the seas to fury. There was exhibited in him that combination of forces which is the special attribute of some highly-strung sensitive natures: a wild riot of animal spirits which compelled him to become the noisiest and foremost in every noisy crew, and a calm, spiritual repose which demanded perfect peacefulness of body and soul. In the New World, he passed a happy time. His name and his father's position and reputation in the home-land were sufficient to ensure him a welcome in every circle, and the rare qualities he displayed endeared him to all with whom he came into association. Wherever he travelled he heard his father spoken of with honour and respect, as a just man and a just judge; and this oft-repeated experience caused him intense pleasure. He grew prouder than ever of his father's good name, and stronger than ever in his resolve to emulate him. It was during this temporary absence from home that he met and engaged Ned Chester for his valet.

Ned's career in the Australias had been one of adventure, and it had made him a jack of all trades and master of none. He had been by turns a stone-breaker, an auctioneer, a splitter of wood, a storekeeper, a shepherd, many times a gold-digger, a newspaper runner, and Heaven knows what besides. Had he been ordinarily industrious, he would most certainly have verified his mother's prediction that he would one day achieve sudden fortune--saying nothing of honour; but his love of indolence was incurable. His slips 'twixt cup and lip were numerous. Having in a tipsy fit purchased a piece of land for a song at a government land sale, he found himself, by reason of his disinclination for work, compelled to dispose of it, and he sold it--a day too soon. Twenty-four hours after it passed from his hands, rich deposits of gold were discovered in its vicinity, and the allotment was worth thousands of pounds. He sunk a shaft on a gold-lead, and having obtained fifty ounces of gold, "went on the spree" till every shilling was spent. When he returned to his shaft he found it in possession of a party of miners, each of whom was making ten ounces a day out of it. He had by the mining laws forfeited all claim to it by his desertion. This run of misfortune, as he termed it, followed him all through his career, and he failed to see that he was in any way accountable for it. Truth compels the further admission that he made the acquaintance of the interior of some colonial prisons, and that in the entire record of his experiences there was little that redounded to his credit. Strange, however, to state that in the midst of the lawlessness that prevails in all new communities, tempting to excess those whose passions are difficult to control, Ned Chester's besetting sin of intemperance which threatened to cut short his life in the Old Country lessened instead of gained in strength. And almost as strange is the fact that, with some indefinite idea that he would one day be called upon to play a gentleman's part in life, he endeavoured to fit himself, by reading and in manners, for this shadowy framework; with so much success as to cause him occasionally to be sneered at by his equals as a "stuck-up swell," a species of abuse which afforded him infinite satisfaction. Undoubtedly, the tenderness with which he held in remembrance the beautiful child-Duchess of Rosemary Lane was the leading incentive to this partial reformation. Her face and pretty figure were constantly before him, and constituted the tenderest episode in his past life--the only tender one indeed, for any love he may have felt for his devoted mother was so alloyed with rank selfishness as to be utterly valueless. As the years rolled on, thoughts travelled apace, and with them he saw the child-Duchess growing to womanhood--to beautiful womanhood. Then began to creep upon him a thirst to see her, and to be with her--a thirst which increased in intensity the more he dwelt upon his wish. The circumstance that kept them apart was to his sense monstrous. She was his--by what right, or if by any, mattered not; she was his, and he was hers; they belonged to each other. But by this time fortune seemed to have entirely deserted him, and he had settled into a from-hand-to-mouth vagabond condition of life which was destructive of every chance of crossing the seas with a shilling in his pocket. At this point of his career chance brought him into communication with Arthur Temple. He had taken service, under an assumed name, as a shepherd, an occupation which gave full scope to his indolent habits, and he was lying on the hills on a summer day, while through an adjacent forest of iron and silver bark trees, Arthur Temple was cantering, in high spirits. The subtle invisible links which draw lives into fatal connection with one another are too strange and mysterious for human comprehension. Between these two men, unconscious of each other's existence, stretched the link which was to bind them in one mesh thousands of miles across the seas, wherefrom other links were stretching to draw them homewards. Ned Chester, lying on the hill, in gloomy abstraction hitched from his pocket a common tin whistle, and began to play his sorrows through the keys. This one accomplishment had never deserted him; the cheap and common instrument became in his hands a divine medium for sweetest melody. The music reached the ears of Arthur Temple as he rode through the silent woods, and he reined in his horse, and listened. He was alone, making his way to the home station of the rich squatter who employed Ned Chester, and the music stirred his poetic mind. He wove from it romantic fancies; it peopled the woods with beautiful images; it made the stillness eloquent. He rode on to meet it, prepared for any surprise, in the shape of delicate nymph or sprite, and came upon a shabbily-dressed man, with a fortnight's beard on him, playing with dirty coarse fingers upon the keys of a common tin whistle. Ned Chester ceased, and gazed at the newcomer. He saw that he was a gentleman, and he ground his teeth with envy; but he gave no expression to the sentiment. Arthur Temple opened the ball.

"It is you who were playing?"

"Yes."

"On that?" eyeing the tin whistle with intense interest.

"Yes; on this."

"Will you play again for me?"

"I don't mind."

Ned placed the whistle to his lips, and played a simple Scotch air, improvising on the theme with rare skill; his organ of love of approbation was very large.

"Beautiful!" said Arthur Temple. "You have been taught in a good school."

In the slight laugh with which Ned Chester met this assertion was conveyed a suddenly-born reproach against society for having overlooked such superlative talent as he possessed.

"I was taught in no school." Adding proudly, "What I know, I picked up myself."

Arthur Temple corrected himself, "In the school of nature."

"May be."

"What are you?"

"A shepherd--at present."

"You have not been always a shepherd."

"Oh, no;" with an assumption of having seen considerably better times and of moving in a much better position.

"What makes you a shepherd, then?"

"A man must live."

"I beg your pardon," said Arthur, with a sensitive flush. "Are you in Mr. Fitzherbert's employment?"

Mr. Fitzherbert was the name of the squatter for whose home station he was bound, with letters of introduction.

"Yes," replied Ned Chester.

"I have come on a visit to him. Can you direct me to his place?"

"Over the hill yonder you will see a wagon track. It will take you straight to the house."

"Thank you." Arthur, about to depart, suddenly bethought himself. The musician was poor--was a shepherd from necessity. He took his purse from his pocket; a bank-note fluttered in his fingers. He held it towards Ned. Under ordinary circumstances Ned would have had no hesitation in accepting the gratuity, but as his eyes met the earnest eyes of Arthur Temple, a happy inspiration inspired him to refuse it; it was unaccountable, but it happened so. Ned turned his head from the temptation.

"I beg your pardon," said Arthur Temple, his face flushing again; "I had no intention of hurting your feelings. Good day."

"Good day."

Arthur Temple rode slowly off, with many a backward glance at the recumbent form of the musical shepherd--glances of which Ned Chester was perfectly cognisant, but of which he took no apparent notice. Before he was out of earshot, Arthur heard the tin whistle at work once more.

"A genius," thought he, "and a gentleman by instinct. I am sorry I offered him money."

The impression made upon him by the incident was powerful and durable, and he inwardly resolved to see the man again. This resolve being carried out, Ned Chester was not slow in turning to his own advantage the interest exhibited in him by Arthur Temple. His superior cunning enabled him very soon to obtain the particulars of the personal history of the young gentleman who he determined should become his patron. His patron Arthur Temple certainly did become; he engaged the vagabond man of the world as his valet at a liberal salary, and congratulated himself upon securing as his companion a person whose discovery and undoubted genius formed one of the most romantic episodes of his travels. It was fortunate for Ned that during his association with Arthur Temple in the colonies he met with no friend or acquaintance who might have exposed him to his young master. Nothing in his conduct betrayed him; he behaved in the most exemplary manner, and grew day by day in the goodwill of Arthur. He took pride in his personal appearance, and seizing with avidity the advantages such a connection opened out to him, dressed carefully and well, drank little, and was, to all outward appearance, a most respectable character. He became saving in his habits, also, and at the end of the nine months, which brought the visit of Arthur Temple to the colonies to an end, he was in possession of a sum of money larger than his salary; Ned had not fought with the world for nothing, and his experience was a key which fitted many locks. Arthur Temple was recalled home somewhat earlier than he anticipated.

"If you are well," his father wrote, "and if your health is sufficiently established to come home, do so at once, my dear lad. Your mother and myself long for your society. I never cease to think of you, and I want the world to see and appreciate you as I do, though it can never love you as you are loved by your father,

"Frederick Temple."

Arthur made immediate preparations for his departure; his nature was grateful and loving, and his duty also was here concerned. The news of the home journey troubled Ned Chester; according to the terms of his engagement, connection between him and Arthur ceased when the latter quitted Australia. Ned had saved sufficient money to pay for his passage home, but he would arrive there comparatively penniless, and in no position to obtain a livelihood. His efforts, therefore, were now directed to obtaining a permanent appointment with Arthur; and to his surprise, after much man[oe]uvring, he found that he could have succeeded much more easily by a straight than by a crooked method.

"Certainly," said Arthur; "I shall be glad not to part with you; but I thought you would have no wish to leave Australia."

"It has been my endeavour," said Ned, "for years past, but I have not had the means; and it has been my misfortune until now never to have met with a friend."

"My father," said Arthur, "will scarcely be prepared for my bringing home a valet, but he will not object to anything I do. Have you any family in England?"

"No, sir."

He endeavoured to impart a plaintive tone to this negative, to show how utterly hapless a being he was; but he failed; the joy of returning to England and of meeting the Duchess lighted up his features.

"But there is some one at home," said Arthur, with a smile, "whom you will be pleased to see."

Then Ned, with guarded enthusiasm, poured out his soul into the sympathetic ears of Arthur Temple, and spoke, but not by name, of the Duchess of Rosemary Lane, as one whom he had loved for years, and to see whom would complete the happiness of his life. He extolled her beauty, too, with sufficient fervour to carry conviction with it. He knew that these utterances made his position more secure, and imparted to his service a sentiment which was far from disagreeable to Arthur Temple.

This retrospect brings us to the ship, the Blue Jacket, sailing for England, with Arthur and Ned aboard. Arthur enjoys every hour of the voyage. All is fair before him. With youth, with good health, with a pure mind stirred by noble desires, with a father awaiting him holding a high and honourable position in the land, the book of the lad's life, the first pages only of which are opened, is filled with glowing pictures, and he looks forward with calm delight to his arrival home. Ned is less calm. The ship never goes fast enough, the days are longer than they ought to be; he burns with impatience to present himself to the idol of his dreams. Hour by hour the links that bind these men, so strangely brought into association, to other lives in the old land are drawn closer and closer. At length the good ship arrives in port. Arthur is pressed to his father's breast.

"Thank God!" says the father, "that you are home and in good health."

And he holds Arthur's hand with such warmth as he might have felt in his young days for the woman he loved.

Ned Chester looks around, draws a free full breath, and murmurs:

"At last!"