to-morrow, if there is no change of plan?"
Here I certainly thought there was a slight, scarce perceptible, alteration in Mr Peacock's countenance, but he answered readily, "To-morrow? a little assignation, if we can both get out; —
'Woo me, now I am in a holiday humour,
And like enough to consent.'
Swan again, sir!"
"Humph! – so then Mr Gower and Mr Vivian are the same person."
Peacock hesitated. "That's not my secret, sir; 'I am combined by a sacred vow.' You are too much the gentleman to peep through the blanket of the dark, and to ask me, who wear the whips and stripes – I mean the plush small-clothes and shoulder-knots – the secrets of another gent, to whom 'my services are bound.'"
How a man past thirty foils a man scarcely twenty! – what superiority the mere fact of living-on gives to the dullest dog! I bit my lip, and was silent.
"And," pursued Mr Peacock, "if you knew how the Mr Vivian you inquired after loves you"! When I told him incidentally, how a young gentleman had come behind the scenes to inquire after him, he made me describe you, and then said, quite mournfully, 'If ever I am what I hope to become, how happy I shall be to shake that kind hand once more,' – very words, sir! – honour bright!
'I think there's ne'er a man in Christendom
Can lesser hide his hate or love than he.'
And if Mr Vivian has some reason to keep himself concealed still – if his fortune or ruin depend on your not divulging his secret for awhile – I can't think you are the man he need fear. 'Pon my life, as the Swan touchingly exclaims. I dare swear that was a wish often on the Swan's lips in the privacy of his domestic life!"
'I wish I was as sure of a good dinner,'
My heart was softened, not by the pathos of the much profaned and desecrated Swan, but by Mr Peacock's unadorned repetition of Vivian's words; I turned my face from the sharp eyes of my companion – the cab now stopped at the foot of London Bridge.
I had no more to ask, yet still there was some uneasy curiosity in my mind, which I could hardly define to myself, – was it not jealousy? Vivian, so handsome and so daring —he at least might see the great heiress; Lady Ellinor perhaps thought of no danger there. But – I – I was a lover still, and – nay, such thoughts were folly indeed!
"My man," said I to the ex-comedian, "I neither wish to harm Mr Vivian (if I am so to call him,) nor you who imitate him in the variety of your names. But I tell you, fairly, that I do not like your being in Mr Trevanion's employment, and I advise you to get out of it as soon as possible. I say nothing more as yet, for I shall take time to consider well what you have told me."
With that I hastened away, and Mr Peacock continued his solitary journey over London Bridge.
CHAPTER LXXVIII
Amidst all that lacerated my heart, or tormented my thoughts, that eventful day, I felt at least one joyous emotion, when, on entering our little drawing-room, I found my uncle seated there.
The Captain had placed before him on the table a large Bible, borrowed from the landlady. He never travelled, to be sure, without his own Bible, but the print of that was small, and the Captain's eyes began to fail him at night. So this was a Bible with large type; and a candle was placed on either side of it; and the Captain leant his elbows on the table, and both his hands were tightly clasped upon his forehead – tightly, as if to shut out the tempter, and force his whole soul upon the page.
He sate, the image of iron courage; in every line of that rigid form there was resolution. "I will not listen to my heart; I will read the Book, and learn to suffer as becomes a Christian man."
There was such a pathos in the stern sufferer's attitude, that it spoke those words as plainly as if his lips had said them.
Old soldier! thou hast done a soldier's part in many a bloody field; but if I could make visible to the world thy brave soldier's soul, I would paint thee as I saw thee then! – Out on this tyro's hand!
At the movement I made, the Captain looked up, and the strife he had gone through was written upon his face.
"It has done me good," said he simply, and he closed the book.
I drew my chair near to him, and hung my arm over his shoulder.
"No cheering news then?" asked I in a whisper.
Roland shook his head, and gently laid his finger on his lips.
CHAPTER LXXIX
It was impossible for me to intrude upon Roland's thoughts, whatever their nature, with a detail of those circumstances which had roused in me a keen and anxious interest in things apart from his sorrow.
Yet, as "restless I roll'd around my weary bed," and revolved the renewal of Vivian's connexion with a man of character so equivocal as Peacock, the establishment of an able and unscrupulous tool of his own in the service of Trevanion, the care with which he had concealed from me his change of name, and his intimacy at the very house to which I had frankly offered to present him; the familiarity which his creature had contrived to effect with Miss Trevanion's maid, the words that had passed between them – plausibly accounted for, it is true, yet still suspicious – and, above all, my painful recollections of Vivian's reckless ambition, and unprincipled sentiments – nay, the effect that a few random words upon Fanny's fortune, and the luck of winning an heiress, had sufficed to produce upon his heated fancy and audacious temper: when all these thoughts came upon me, strong and vivid, in the darkness of night, I longed for some confidant, more experienced in the world than myself, to advise me as to the course I ought to pursue. Should I warn Lady Ellinor? But of what? – the character of a servant, or the designs of the fictitious Gower? Against the first I could say, if nothing very positive, still enough to make it prudent to dismiss him. But of Gower or Vivian, what could I say without, not indeed betraying his confidence – for that he had never given me – but without belying the professions of friendship that I myself had lavishly made to him? Perhaps, after all, he might have disclosed whatever were his real secrets to Trevanion; and, if not, I might indeed ruin his prospects by revealing the aliases he assumed. But wherefore reveal, and wherefore warn? Because of suspicions that I could not myself analyse – suspicions founded on circumstances most of which had already been seemingly explained away? Still, when morning came, I was irresolute what to do; and after watching Roland's countenance, and seeing on his brow so great a weight of care, that I had no option but to postpone the confidence I pined to place in his strong understanding and unerring sense of honour, I wandered out, hoping that in the fresh air I might re-collect my thoughts, and solve the problem that perplexed me. I had enough to do in sundry small orders for my voyage, and commissions for Bolding, to occupy me some hours. And, this business done, I found myself moving westward; mechanically, as it were, I had come to a kind of half-and-half resolution to call upon Lady Ellinor, and question her, carelessly and incidentally, both about Gower and the new servant admitted to the household.
Thus I found myself in Regent Street, when a carriage, borne by post-horses, whirled rapidly over the pavement – scattering to the right and left all humbler equipages – and hurried, as if on an errand of life and death, up the broad thoroughfare leading into Portland Place. But, rapidly as the wheels dashed by, I had seen distinctly the face of Fanny Trevanion in the carriage, and that face wore a strange expression, which seemed to me to speak of anxiety and grief; and, by her side – was not that the woman I had seen with Peacock? I did not see the face of the woman,
