Mr Edward Hugh Bloomfield having announced
his intention to stay in the neighbourhood of Maidenhead,
what more probable than that the Maestro Jimson should
turn his mind toward Padwick? Near this pleasant
riverside village he remembered to have observed an
ancient, weedy houseboat lying moored beside a tuft
of willows. It had stirred in him, in his careless
hours, as he pulled down the river under a more familiar
name, a certain sense of the romantic; and when the
nice contrivance of his story was already complete
in his mind, he had come near pulling it all down
again, like an ungrateful clock, in order to introduce
a chapter in which Richard Skill (who was always being
decoyed somewhere) should be decoyed on board that
lonely hulk by Lord Bellew and the American desperado
Gin Sling. It was fortunate he had not done so,
he reflected, since the hulk was now required for
very different purposes.
Jimson, a man of inconspicuous costume,
but insinuating manners, had little difficulty in
finding the hireling who had charge of the houseboat,
and still less in persuading him to resign his care.
The rent was almost nominal, the entry immediate,
the key was exchanged against a suitable advance in
money, and Jimson returned to town by the afternoon
train to see about dispatching his piano.
‘I will be down tomorrow,’
he had said reassuringly. ’My opera is waited
for with such impatience, you know.’
And, sure enough, about the hour of
noon on the following day, Jimson might have been
observed ascending the riverside road that goes from
Padwick to Great Haverham, carrying in one hand a basket
of provisions, and under the other arm a leather case
containing (it is to be conjectured) the score of
Orange Pekoe. It was October weather; the stone-grey
sky was full of larks, the leaden mirror of the Thames
brightened with autumnal foliage, and the fallen leaves
of the chestnuts chirped under the composer’s
footing. There is no time of the year in England
more courageous; and Jimson, though he was not without
his troubles, whistled as he went.
A little above Padwick the river lies
very solitary. On the opposite shore the trees
of a private park enclose the view, the chimneys of
the mansion just pricking forth above their clusters;
on the near side the path is bordered by willows.
Close among these lay the houseboat, a thing so soiled
by the tears of the overhanging willows, so grown upon
with parasites, so decayed, so battered, so neglected,
such a haunt of rats, so advertised a storehouse of
rheumatic agonies, that the heart of an intending
occupant might well recoil. A plank, by way of
flying drawbridge, joined it to the shore. And
it was a dreary moment for Jimson when he pulled this
after him and found himself alone on this unwholesome
fortress. He could hear the rats scuttle and flop
in the abhorred interior; the key cried among the
wards like a thing in pain; the sitting-room was deep
in dust, and smelt strong of bilge-water. It
could not be called a cheerful spot, even for a composer
absorbed in beloved toil; how much less for a young
gentleman haunted by alarms and awaiting the arrival
of a corpse!
He sat down, cleared away a piece
of the table, and attacked the cold luncheon in his
basket. In case of any subsequent inquiry into
the fate of Jimson, It was desirable he should be
little seen: in other words, that he should spend
the day entirely in the house. To this end, and
further to corroborate his fable, he had brought in
the leather case not only writing materials, but a
ream of large-size music paper, such as he considered
suitable for an ambitious character like Jimson’s.
’And now to work,’ said he, when he had
satisfied his appetite. ’We must leave
traces of the wretched man’s activity.’
And he wrote in bold characters:
Orange pekoe.
O.
J. B. Jimson.
Vocal and p. f. score.
‘I suppose they never do begin
like this,’ reflected Gideon; ’but then
it’s quite out of the question for me to tackle
a full score, and Jimson was so unconventional.
A dedication would be found convincing, I believe.
“Dedicated to” (let me see) “to William
Ewart Gladstone, by his obedient servant the composer.”
And now some music: I had better avoid the overture;
it seems to present difficulties. Let’s
give an air for the tenor: key O,
something modern! seven sharps.’
And he made a businesslike signature across the staves,
and then paused and browsed for a while on the handle
of his pen. Melody, with no better inspiration
than a sheet of paper, is not usually found to spring
unbidden in the mind of the amateur; nor is the key
of seven sharps a place of much repose to the untried.
He cast away that sheet. ’It will help to
build up the character of Jimson,’ Gideon remarked,
and again waited on the muse, in various keys and
on divers sheets of paper, but all with results so
inconsiderable that he stood aghast. ‘It’s
very odd,’ thought he. ’I seem to
have less fancy than I thought, or this is an off-day
with me; yet Jimson must leave something.’
And again he bent himself to the task.
Presently the penetrating chill of
the houseboat began to attack the very seat of life.
He desisted from his unremunerative trial, and, to
the audible annoyance of the rats, walked briskly up
and down the cabin. Still he was cold. ‘This
is all nonsense,’ said he. ’I don’t
care about the risk, but I will not catch a catarrh.
I must get out of this den.’
He stepped on deck, and passing to
the bow of his embarkation, looked for the first time
up the river. He started. Only a few hundred
yards above another houseboat lay moored among the
willows. It was very spick-and-span, an elegant
canoe hung at the stern, the windows were concealed
by snowy curtains, a flag floated from a staff.
The more Gideon looked at it, the more there mingled
with his disgust a sense of impotent surprise.
It was very like his uncle’s houseboat; it was
exceedingly like it was identical.
But for two circumstances, he could have sworn it
was the same. The first, that his uncle had gone
to Maidenhead, might be explained away by that flightiness
of purpose which is so common a trait among the more
than usually manly. The second, however, was
conclusive: it was not in the least like Mr Bloomfield
to display a banner on his floating residence; and
if he ever did, it would certainly be dyed in hues
of emblematical propriety. Now the Squirradical,
like the vast majority of the more manly, had drawn
knowledge at the wells of Cambridge he was
wooden spoon in the year 1850; and the flag upon the
houseboat streamed on the afternoon air with the colours
of that seat of Toryism, that cradle of Puseyism, that
home of the inexact and the effete Oxford. Still
it was strangely like, thought Gideon.
And as he thus looked and thought,
the door opened, and a young lady stepped forth on
deck. The barrister dropped and fled into his
cabin it was Julia Hazeltine! Through
the window he watched her draw in the canoe, get on
board of it, cast off, and come dropping downstream
in his direction.
‘Well, all is up now,’ said he, and he
fell on a seat.
‘Good-afternoon, miss,’
said a voice on the water. Gideon knew it for
the voice of his landlord.
‘Good-afternoon,’ replied
Julia, ’but I don’t know who you are; do
I? O yes, I do though. You are the nice
man that gave us leave to sketch from the old houseboat.’
Gideon’s heart leaped with fear.
‘That’s it,’ returned
the man. ’And what I wanted to say was as
you couldn’t do it any more. You see I’ve
let it.’
‘Let it!’ cried Julia.
‘Let it for a month,’
said the man. ’Seems strange, don’t
it? Can’t see what the party wants with
it?’
‘It seems very romantic of him,
I think,’ said Julia, ’What sort of a
person is he?’
Julia in her canoe, the landlord in
his wherry, were close alongside, and holding on by
the gunwale of the houseboat; so that not a word was
lost on Gideon.
‘He’s a music-man,’
said the landlord, ’or at least that’s
what he told me, miss; come down here to write an
op’ra.’
‘Really!’ cried Julia,
’I never heard of anything so delightful!
Why, we shall be able to slip down at night and hear
him improvise! What’ is his name?’
‘Jimson,’ said the man.
‘Jimson?’ repeated Julia,
and interrogated her memory in vain. But indeed
our rising school of English music boasts so many professors
that we rarely hear of one till he is made a baronet.
’Are you sure you have it right?’
‘Made him spell it to me,’
replied the landlord. ’J-I-M-S-O-N Jimson;
and his op’ra’s called some
kind of tea.’
‘Some kind of
tea!’ cried the girl. ’What a
very singular name for an opera! What can it
be about?’ And Gideon heard her pretty laughter
flow abroad. ’We must try to get acquainted
with this Mr Jimson; I feel sure he must be nice.’
’Well, miss, I’m afraid
I must be going on. I’ve got to be at Haverham,
you see.’
‘O, don’t let me keep
you, you kind man!’ said Julia. ‘Good
afternoon.’
‘Good afternoon to you, miss.’
Gideon sat in the cabin a prey to
the most harrowing thoughts. Here he was anchored
to a rotting houseboat, soon to be anchored to it still
more emphatically by the presence of the corpse, and
here was the country buzzing about him, and young
ladies already proposing pleasure parties to surround
his house at night. Well, that meant the gallows;
and much he cared for that. What troubled him
now was Julia’s indescribable levity. That
girl would scrape acquaintance with anybody; she had
no reserve, none of the enamel of the lady. She
was familiar with a brute like his landlord; she took
an immediate interest (which she lacked even the delicacy
to conceal) in a creature like Jimson! He could
conceive her asking Jimson to have tea with her!
And it was for a girl like this that a man like Gideon Down,
manly heart!
He was interrupted by a sound that
sent him whipping behind the door in a trice.
Miss Hazeltine had stepped on board the houseboat.
Her sketch was promising; judging from the stillness,
she supposed Jimson not yet come; and she had decided
to seize occasion and complete the work of art.
Down she sat therefore in the bow, produced her block
and water-colours, and was soon singing over (what
used to be called) the ladylike accomplishment.
Now and then indeed her song was interrupted, as she
searched in her memory for some of the odious little
receipts by means of which the game is practised or
used to be practised in the brave days of old; they
say the world, and those ornaments of the world, young
ladies, are become more sophisticated now; but Julia
had probably studied under Pitman, and she stood firm
in the old ways.
Gideon, meanwhile, stood behind the
door, afraid to move, afraid to breathe, afraid to
think of what must follow, racked by confinement and
borne to the ground with tedium. This particular
phase, he felt with gratitude, could not last for
ever; whatever impended (even the gallows, he bitterly
and perhaps erroneously reflected) could not fail to
be a relief. To calculate cubes occurred to him
as an ingenious and even profitable refuge from distressing
thoughts, and he threw his manhood into that dreary
exercise.
Thus, then, were these two young persons
occupied Gideon attacking the perfect number
with resolution; Julia vigorously stippling incongruous
colours on her block, when Providence dispatched into
these waters a steam-launch asthmatically panting
up the Thames. All along the banks the water
swelled and fell, and the reeds rustled. The houseboat
itself, that ancient stationary creature, became suddenly
imbued with life, and rolled briskly at her moorings,
like a sea-going ship when she begins to smell the
harbour bar. The wash had nearly died away, and
the quick panting of the launch sounded already faint
and far off, when Gideon was startled by a cry from
Julia. Peering through the window, he beheld
her staring disconsolately downstream at the fast-vanishing
canoe. The barrister (whatever were his faults)
displayed on this occasion a promptitude worthy of
his hero, Robert Skill; with one effort of his mind
he foresaw what was about to follow; with one movement
of his body he dropped to the floor and crawled under
the table.
Julia, on her part, was not yet alive
to her position. She saw she had lost the canoe,
and she looked forward with something less than avidity
to her next interview with Mr Bloomfield; but she had
no idea that she was imprisoned, for she knew of the
plank bridge.
She made the circuit of the house,
and found the door open and the bridge withdrawn.
It was plain, then, that Jimson must have come; plain,
too, that he must be on board. He must be a very
shy man to have suffered this invasion of his residence,
and made no sign; and her courage rose higher at the
thought. He must come now, she must force him
from his privacy, for the plank was too heavy for her
single strength; so she tapped upon the open door.
Then she tapped again.
‘Mr Jimson,’ she cried,
’Mr Jimson! here, come! you must come,
you know, sooner or later, for I can’t get off
without you. O, don’t be so exceedingly
silly! O, please, come!’
Still there was no reply.
‘If he is here he must be mad,’
she thought, with a little fear. And the next
moment she remembered he had probably gone aboard like
herself in a boat. In that case she might as
well see the houseboat, and she pushed open the door
and stepped in. Under the table, where he lay
smothered with dust, Gideon’s heart stood still.
There were the remains of Jimson’s
lunch. ’He likes rather nice things to
eat,’ she thought. ’O, I am sure he
is quite a delightful man. I wonder if he is
as good-looking as Mr Forsyth. Mrs Jimson I
don’t believe it sounds as nice as Mrs Forsyth;
but then “Gideon” is so really odious!
And here is some of his music too; this is delightful.
Orange Pekoe O, that’s what he meant
by some kind of tea.’ And she trilled with
laughter. ‘Adagio molto espressivo,
sempre legato,’ she read next. (For
the literary part of a composer’s business Gideon
was well equipped.) ’How very strange to have
all these directions, and only three or four notes!
O, here’s another with some more. Andante
patetico.’ And she began to glance
over the music. ‘O dear me,’ she
thought, ’he must be terribly modern! It
all seems discords to me. Let’s try the
air. It is very strange, it seems familiar.’
She began to sing it, and suddenly broke off with
laughter. ’Why, it’s “Tommy
make room for your Uncle!"’ she cried aloud,
so that the soul of Gideon was filled with bitterness.
’Andante patetico, indeed! The
man must be a mere impostor.’
And just at this moment there came
a confused, scuffling sound from underneath the table;
a strange note, like that of a barn-door fowl, ushered
in a most explosive sneeze; the head of the sufferer
was at the same time brought smartly in contact with
the boards above; and the sneeze was followed by a
hollow groan.
Julia fled to the door, and there,
with the salutary instinct of the brave, turned and
faced the danger. There was no pursuit. The
sounds continued; below the table a crouching figure
was indistinctly to be seen jostled by the throes
of a sneezing-fit; and that was all.
‘Surely,’ thought Julia,
’this is most unusual behaviour. He cannot
be a man of the world!’
Meanwhile the dust of years had been
disturbed by the young barrister’s convulsions;
and the sneezing-fit was succeeded by a passionate
access of coughing.
Julia began to feel a certain interest.
’I am afraid you are really quite ill,’
she said, drawing a little nearer. ’Please
don’t let me put you out, and do not stay under
that table, Mr Jimson. Indeed it cannot be good
for you.’
Mr Jimson only answered by a distressing
cough; and the next moment the girl was on her knees,
and their faces had almost knocked together under
the table.
‘O, my gracious goodness!’
exclaimed Miss Hazeltine, and sprang to her feet.
‘Mr Forsyth gone mad!’
‘I am not mad,’ said the
gentleman ruefully, extricating himself from his position.
’Dearest. Miss Hazeltine, I vow to you upon
my knees I am not mad!’
‘You are not!’ she cried, panting.
‘I know,’ he said, ’that
to a superficial eye my conduct may appear unconventional.’
‘If you are not mad, it was
no conduct at all,’ cried the girl, with a flash
of colour, ’and showed you did not care one penny
for my feelings!’
‘This is the very devil and
all. I know I admit that,’ cried
Gideon, with a great effort of manly candour.
‘It was abominable conduct!’ said Julia,
with energy.
‘I know it must have shaken
your esteem,’ said the barrister. ’But,
dearest Miss Hazeltine, I beg of you to hear me out;
my behaviour, strange as it may seem, is not unsusceptible
of explanation; and I positively cannot and will not
consent to continue to try to exist without without
the esteem of one whom I admire the moment
is ill chosen, I am well aware of that; but I repeat
the expression one whom I admire.’
A touch of amusement appeared on Miss
Hazeltine’s face. ’Very well, I said
she, ’come out of this dreadfully cold place,
and let us sit down on deck.’ The barrister
dolefully followed her. ‘Now,’ said
she, making herself comfortable against the end of
the house, ’go on. I will hear you out.’
And then, seeing him stand before her with so much
obvious disrelish to the task, she was suddenly overcome
with laughter. Julia’s laugh was a thing
to ravish lovers; she rolled her mirthful descant with
the freedom and the melody of a blackbird’s song
upon the river, and repeated by the echoes of the
farther bank. It seemed a thing in its own place
and a sound native to the open air. There was
only one creature who heard it without joy, and that
was her unfortunate admirer.
‘Miss Hazeltine,’ he said,
in a voice that tottered with annoyance, ’I
speak as your sincere well-wisher, but this can only
be called levity.’
Julia made great eyes at him.
‘I can’t withdraw the
word,’ he said: ’already the freedom
with which I heard you hobnobbing with a boatman gave
me exquisite pain. Then there was a want of reserve
about Jimson ’
‘But Jimson appears to be yourself,’ objected
Julia.
‘I am far from denying that,’
cried the barrister, ’but you did not know it
at the time. What could Jimson be to you?
Who was Jimson? Miss Hazeltine, it cut me to
the heart.’
‘Really this seems to me to
be very silly,’ returned Julia, with severe
decision. ’You have behaved in the most
extraordinary manner; you pretend you are able to
explain your conduct, and instead of doing so you
begin to attack me.’
‘I am well aware of that,’
replied Gideon. ’I I will make
a clean breast of it. When you know all the circumstances
you will be able to excuse me.
And sitting down beside her on the
deck, he poured forth his miserable history.
‘O, Mr Forsyth,’ she cried,
when he had done, ’I am so sorry!
wish I hadn’t laughed at you only
you know you really were so exceedingly funny.
But I wish I hadn’t, and I wouldn’t either
if I had only known.’ And she gave him
her hand.
Gideon kept it in his own. ‘You
do not think the worse of me for this?’ he asked
tenderly.
’Because you have been so silly
and got into such dreadful trouble? you poor boy,
no!’ cried Julia; and, in the warmth of the moment,
reached him her other hand; ‘you may count on
me,’ she added.
‘Really?’ said Gideon.
‘Really and really!’ replied the girl.
‘I do then, and I will,’
cried the young man. ’I admit the moment
is not well chosen; but I have no friends to
speak of.’
‘No more have I,’ said
Julia. ’But don’t you think it’s
perhaps time you gave me back my hands?’
‘La ci darem la
mano,’ said the barrister, ’the merest
moment more! I have so few friends,’ he
added.
’I thought it was considered
such a bad account of a young man to have no friends,’
observed Julia.
‘O, but I have crowds of friends!’
cried Gideon. ’That’s not what I
mean. I feel the moment is ill chosen; but O,
Julia, if you could only see yourself!’
‘Mr Forsyth ’
‘Don’t call me by that beastly name!’
cried the youth. ‘Call me Gideon!’
‘O, never that,’ from
Julia. ’Besides, we have known each other
such a short time.’
‘Not at all!’ protested
Gideon. ’We met at Bournemouth ever so long
ago. I never forgot you since. Say you never
forgot me. Say you never forgot me, and call
me Gideon!’
‘Isn’t this rather a
want of reserve about Jimson?’ enquired the girl.
‘O, I know I am an ass,’
cried the barrister, ’and I don’t care
a halfpenny! I know I’m an ass, and you
may laugh at me to your heart’s delight.’
And as Julia’s lips opened with a smile, he once
more dropped into music. ‘There’s
the Land of Cherry Isle!’ he sang, courting her
with his eyes.
‘It’s like an opera,’ said Julia,
rather faintly.
‘What should it be?’ said
Gideon. ’Am I not Jimson? It would
be strange if I did not serenade my love. O yes,
I mean the word, my Julia; and I mean to win you.
I am in dreadful trouble, and I have not a penny of
my own, and I have cut the silliest figure; and yet
I mean to win you, Julia. Look at me, if you
can, and tell me no!’
She looked at him; and whatever her
eyes may have told him, it is to be supposed he took
a pleasure in the message, for he read it a long while.
‘And Uncle Ned will give us
some money to go on upon in the meanwhile,’
he said at last.
‘Well, I call that cool!’
said a cheerful voice at his elbow.
Gideon and Julia sprang apart with
wonderful alacrity; the latter annoyed to observe
that although they had never moved since they sat
down, they were now quite close together; both presenting
faces of a very heightened colour to the eyes of Mr
Edward Hugh Bloomfield. That gentleman, coming
up the river in his boat, had captured the truant
canoe, and divining what had happened, had thought
to steal a march upon Miss Hazeltine at her sketch.
He had unexpectedly brought down two birds with one
stone; and as he looked upon the pair of flushed and
breathless culprits, the pleasant human instinct of
the matchmaker softened his heart.
‘Well, I call that cool,’
he repeated; ’you seem to count very securely
upon Uncle Ned. But look here, Gid, I thought
I had told you to keep away?’
‘To keep away from Maidenhead,’
replied Gid. ’But how should I expect to
find you here?’
‘There is something in that,’
Mr Bloomfield admitted. ’You see I thought
it better that even you should be ignorant of my address;
those rascals, the Finsburys, would have wormed it
out of you. And just to put them off the scent
I hoisted these abominable colours. But that is
not all, Gid; you promised me to work, and here I
find you playing the fool at Padwick.’
‘Please, Mr Bloomfield, you
must not be hard on Mr Forsyth,’ said Julia.
‘Poor boy, he is in dreadful straits.’
‘What’s this, Gid?’
enquired the uncle. ’Have you been fighting?
or is it a bill?’
These, in the opinion of the Squirradical,
were the two misfortunes incident to gentlemen; and
indeed both were culled from his own career.
He had once put his name (as a matter of form) on a
friend’s paper; it had cost him a cool thousand;
and the friend had gone about with the fear of death
upon him ever since, and never turned a corner without
scouting in front of him for Mr Bloomfield and the
oaken staff. As for fighting, the Squirradical
was always on the brink of it; and once, when (in
the character of president of a Radical club) he had
cleared out the hall of his opponents, things had
gone even further. Mr Holtum, the Conservative
candidate, who lay so long on the bed of sickness,
was prepared to swear to Mr Bloomfield. ’I
will swear to it in any court it was the
hand of that brute that struck me down,’ he was
reported to have said; and when he was thought to
be sinking, it was known that he had made an ante-mortem
statement in that sense. It was a cheerful day
for the Squirradical when Holtum was restored to his
brewery.
‘It’s much worse than
that,’ said Gideon; ’a combination of
circumstances really providentially unjust a in
fact, a syndicate of murderers seem to have perceived
my latent ability to rid them of the traces of their
crime. It’s a legal study after all, you
see!’ And with these words, Gideon, for the
second time that day, began to describe the adventures
of the Broadwood Grand.
‘I must write to The Times,’ cried Mr
Bloomfield.
‘Do you want to get me disbarred?’ asked
Gideon.
‘Disbarred! Come, it can’t
be as bad as that,’ said his uncle. ’It’s
a good, honest, Liberal Government that’s in,
and they would certainly move at my request.
Thank God, the days of Tory jobbery are at an end.’
‘It wouldn’t do, Uncle Ned,’ said
Gideon.
‘But you’re not mad enough,’
cried Mr Bloomfield, ’to persist in trying to
dispose of it yourself?’
‘There is no other path open to me,’ said
Gideon.
‘It’s not common sense,
and I will not hear of it,’ cried Mr Bloomfield.
’I command you, positively, Gid, to desist from
this criminal interference.’
‘Very well, then, I hand it
over to you,’ said Gideon, ’and you can
do what you like with the dead body.’
‘God forbid!’ ejaculated
the president of the Radical Club, ’I’ll
have nothing to do with it.’
‘Then you must allow me to do
the best I can,’ returned his nephew. ‘Believe
me, I have a distinct talent for this sort of difficulty.’
‘We might forward it to that
pest-house, the Conservative Club,’ observed
Mr Bloomfield. ’It might damage them in
the eyes of their constituents; and it could be profitably
worked up in the local journal.’
‘If you see any political capital
in the thing,’ said Gideon, ’you may have
it for me.’
’No, no, Gid no,
no, I thought you might. I will have no hand in
the thing. On reflection, it’s highly undesirable
that either I or Miss Hazeltine should linger here.
We might be observed,’ said the president, looking
up and down the river; ’and in my public position
the consequences would be painful for the party.
And, at any rate, it’s dinner-time.’
‘What?’ cried Gideon,
plunging for his watch. ’And so it is!
Great heaven, the piano should have been here hours
ago!’
Mr Bloomfield was clambering back
into his boat; but at these words he paused.
’I saw it arrive myself at the
station; I hired a carrier man; he had a round to
make, but he was to be here by four at the latest,’
cried the barrister. ‘No doubt the piano
is open, and the body found.’
‘You must fly at once,’
cried Mr Bloomfield, ‘it’s the only manly
step.’
‘But suppose it’s all
right?’ wailed Gideon. ’Suppose the
piano comes, and I am not here to receive it?
I shall have hanged myself by my cowardice. No,
Uncle Ned, enquiries must be made in Padwick; I dare
not go, of course; but you may you could
hang about the police office, don’t you see?’
‘No, Gid no, my dear
nephew,’ said Mr Bloomfield, with the voice of
one on the rack. ’I regard you with the
most sacred affection; and I thank God I am an Englishman and
all that. But not not the police, Gid.’
‘Then you desert me?’ said Gideon.
‘Say it plainly.’
‘Far from it! far from it!’
protested Mr Bloomfield. ’I only propose
caution. Common sense, Gid, should always be an
Englishman’s guide.’
‘Will you let me speak?’
said Julia. ’I think Gideon had better leave
this dreadful houseboat, and wait among the willows
over there. If the piano comes, then he could
step out and take it in; and if the police come, he
could slip into our houseboat, and there needn’t
be any more Jimson at all. He could go to bed,
and we could burn his clothes (couldn’t we?)
in the steam-launch; and then really it seems as if
it would be all right. Mr Bloomfield is so respectable,
you know, and such a leading character, it would be
quite impossible even to fancy that he could be mixed
up with it.’
‘This young lady has strong
common sense,’ said the Squirradical.
‘O, I don’t think I’m
at all a fool,’ said Julia, with conviction.
‘But what if neither of them
come?’ asked Gideon; ’what shall I do
then?’
‘Why then,’ said she,
’you had better go down to the village after
dark; and I can go with you, and then I am sure you
could never be suspected; and even if you were, I
could tell them it was altogether a mistake.’
‘I will not permit that I
will not suffer Miss Hazeltine to go,’ cried
Mr Bloomfield.
‘Why?’ asked Julia.
Mr Bloomfield had not the least desire
to tell her why, for it was simply a craven fear of
being drawn himself into the imbroglio; but with the
usual tactics of a man who is ashamed of himself, he
took the high hand. ’God forbid, my dear
Miss Hazeltine, that I should dictate to a lady on
the question of propriety ’ he began.
‘O, is that all?’ interrupted
Julia. ‘Then we must go all three.’
‘Caught!’ thought the Squirradical.