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Alfred forgave him. And thus his whole life was changed, and for nearly
twelve months (for Dr. Alder let him reside in the Hall through the
vacation) he pursued the quiet tenor of a student's life, interrupted at
times by law; but that is another topic.

WIFE AND NO WIFE.

Mrs. Dodd was visibly shaken by that calamity which made her shrink with
horror from the sight of Alfred Hardie. In the winter she was so unwell
that she gave up her duties with Messrs. Cross and Co. Her connection
with them had been creditable to both parties. I believe I forgot to say
why they trusted her so; well, I must tell it elsewhere. David off her
hands, she was independent, and had lost the motive and the heart for
severe work. She told the partners she could no longer do them justice,
and left them, to their regret. They then advised her to set up as a
milliner, and offered her credit for goods at cash prices up to two
thousand pounds. She thanked them like a sorrowful queen, and went her
way.

In the spring she recovered some spirit and health; but at midsummer a
great and subtle misfortune befell her. Her mind was bent on David night
and day, and used to struggle to evade the laws of space that bind its
grosser companion, and find her lost husband on the sea. She often dreamt
of him, but vaguely. But one fatal night she had a dream as clear as
daylight, and sharp as white pebbles in the sun. She was on a large ship
with guns; she saw men bring a dead sailor up the side; she saw all their
faces, and the dead man's too. It was David. His face was white. A clear
voice said he was to be buried in the deep next morning. She saw the deck
at her feet, the breeches of the guns, so clear, so defined, that, when
she awoke, and found herself in the dark, she thought reality was the
illusion. She told the dream to Julia and Edward. They tried to encourage
her, in vain. "I saw him," she said, "I saw him; it was a vision, not a
dream; my David is dead. Well, then, I shall not be long behind him."

Dr. Sampson ridiculed her dream to her face. But to her children he told
another story. "I am anxious about her," he said, "most anxious. There is
no mortal ill the distempered brain may not cause. Is it not devilish we
can hear nothing of him? She will fret herself into the grave, as sure as
fate, if something does not turn up."

Her children could not console her; they tried, but something hung round
their own hearts, and chilled every effort. In a word, they shared her
fears. How came she to see him on board a ship with guns? In her waking
hours she always said he was on a merchant ship. Was it not one of those
visions, which come to mortals and give them sometimes a peep into Space,
and, far more rarely, a glance into Time?

One day in the autumn, Alfred, being in town on law business, met what
seemed the ghost of Mrs. Dodd in the streets. She saw him not; her eye
was on that ghastly face she had seen in her dreams. It flashed through
his mind that she would not live long to part him and Julia. But he
discouraged the ungenerous thought; almost forgave her repugnance to
himself, and felt it would be worse than useless to ask Julia to leave
her mother, who was leaving her visibly.

But her horror of him was anything but softened; and she used to tell Dr.
Sampson she thought the sight of that man would kill her now. Edward
himself began to hope Alfred would turn his affections elsewhere. The
house in Pembroke Street was truly the house of mourning now; all their
calamities were light compared with this.

THE DISTRICT VISITOR.

While Julia was writing letters to keep up Alfred's heart, she was very
sad herself Moreover, he had left her for Oxford but a very few days,
when she received an anonymous letter; her first. It was written in a
female hand, and couched in friendly and sympathetic terms. The writer
thought it only fair to warn her that Mr. Alfred Hardie was passionately
fond of a lady in the asylum, and had offered her marriage. If Miss Dodd
wished to be deceived, let her burn this letter and think no more of it;
if not, let her insert this advertisement in the Times: "The whole
Truth.--L. D.," and her correspondent would communicate particulars by
word or writing.

What a barbed and poisoned arrow is to the body, was this letter to
Julia's mind. She sat cold as a stone with this poison in her hand. Then
came an impetuous impulse to send it down to Alfred, and request him to
transfer the other half of his heart to his lady of the asylum. Then she
paused; and remembered how much unjust suspicion had been levelled at him
already. What right had she to insult him? She would try and keep the
letter to herself. As to acting upon it, her good sense speedily
suggested it came from the rival in question, real or supposed. "She
wants to make use of me," said Julia; "it is plain Alfred does not care
much for her; or why does she come to me?" She put the letter in her
desk, and it rankled in her heart. _Hoeret lateri lethalis arundo._ She
trembled at herself; she felt a savage passion had been touched in her.
She prayed day and night against jealousy.

But I must now, to justify my heading, skip some months, and relate a
remarkable incident that befell her in the said character. On the first
of August in this year, a good Christian woman, one of her patients,
asked her to call on Mr. Barkington, that lodged above. "He is a decent
body, miss, and between you and me, I think his complaint is, he don't
get quite enough to eat."

"Barkington!" said Julia, and put her hand to her bosom. She went and
tapped at his door.

"Come in," said a shrillish voice.

She entered, and found a weazened old man seated, mending his own coat.

He rose, and she told him she was a district visitor. He said he had
heard of her; they called her the beautiful lady in that court. This was
news to her, and made her blush. She asked leave to read a chapter to
him; he listened as to some gentle memory of childhood. She prescribed
him a glass of port wine, and dispensed it on the instant. Thus
physicked, her patient became communicative, and chattered on about his
native place--but did not name it--and talked about the people there. Now
our district visitor was, if the truth must be told, a compounder. She
would permit her pupils to talk about earthly affairs, on condition they
would listen to heavenly ones before she went. So she let this old man
run on, and he told her he had been a banker's clerk all his life, and
saved a thousand pounds, and come up to London to make his fortune on the
Stock Exchange; and there he was sometimes a bull, and sometimes a bear,
and whichever he was, certain foxes called brokers and jobbers got the
profit and he the loss. "It's all the same as a gambling-table," said he.
"The jobbers and brokers have got the same odds the bank has at Rouge et
Noir, and the little capitalist like me is doomed beforehand." Then he
told her that there was a crossing-sweeper near the Exchange who came
from his native place, and had started as a speculator, and come down to
that. Only he called it rising, and used to speak with a shudder of when
he dabbled in the funds, and often told him to look sharp, and get a
crossing. And lo! one day when he was cleaned out, and desperate, and
hovering with the other ghosts of little capitalists about the tomb of
their money, he saw his countryman fall flat, and the broom fly out of
his hand. Instantly he made a rush, and so did a wooden-legged sailor;
but he got first to the broom, and began to sweep while others picked up
his countryman, who proved dead as a herring; and he succeeded to his
broom, and it made money by the Exchange, though he never could. Still,
one day he picked up a pocket-book in that neighbourhood, with a lump of
money, which he straightway advertised in--no newspapers. And now, Julia
thought it time to interpose the eighth commandment, the golden rule, and
such branches of learning.

He became a favourite of hers: he had so much to say: she even thought
she had seen his face before: but she could not tell where. She gave him
good books and tracts; and read to him, and ploughed his heart with her
sweet voice, and sowed the good seed in the furrows--seed which, like
wheat or other grain, often seems to fall flat and die, but comes out
green after many days.

One Saturday she invited him to dine with the servants next day. He came
during church time, and went away in the afternoon while she was with her
mother. But she asked Sarah, who proved eager to talk about him. "He was
a rum customer; kept asking questions all dinner time. 'Well,' says I,
'you're good company you are; be you a lawyer; for you examines us; but
you don't tell us nothing.' Ye see, Miss, Jane she is that simple, she
was telling him everything, and about Mr. Alfred's lawsuit with his
father and all."

Julia said that was indiscreet; but after all what did it matter?

"Who knows, Miss?" Sarah replied: "least said is soonest mended. If you
please, Miss, who is he? Where does he bide? Where does he come from?
Does he know Hardies?"

"I should think not. Why?"

"Because I'm much mistaken if he doesn't." Then putting on a stolid look,
she asked, "Does he know your papa?"

"Oh no, Sarah. How should he?"

"There now," said Sarah; "Miss, you are all in the dark about this old
man: I'll tell you something; I took him out of the way of Jane's temper
when she began a dishing up, and I had him into the parlour for a minute;
and in course there he sees the picture of your poor papa hung up. Miss,
if you'll believe me, the moment he claps eyes on that there picture, he
halloes out, and out goes his two hands like this here. 'It's him!' says
he; 'it's him!' and stares at the picture like a stuck pig. Forgot I was
close behind him, I do believe. 'She's _his_ daughter,' says he, in a
whisper, a curious whisper; seemed to come out of his stomack. 'What's
the matter now?' says I, just so. He gave a great start, as if my
speaking had wakened him from a dream, and says he, 'nothing,' as quiet
as a lamb. 'Nothing isn't much,' says I, just so. 'It usedn't to be
anything at all when I was your age,' says he, sneering. But I paid him a
good coin: says I, 'Old man, where you comes from do the folks use to
start and hallo out and cry "It's him! she's his daughter!" and fling
their two arms abroad like a wiumdmill in March, and all for--nothing?'
So at that he changed as white as my smock, and fell all of a tremble.
However, at dinner he perks up, and drew that poor simple Jane out a good
one. But he didn't look towards me much, which I set opposite to watch my
lord."

"Sarah," said Julia, "this is really curious, mysterious; you are a good,
watchful, faithful girl; and, to tell the truth, I sometimes fancy I have
seen Mr. Barkington's face. However, I will solve this little mystery
to-morrow; for I will ask him: thank you, Sarah."

On Monday she called on Mr. Barkington to solve the mystery. But, instead
of solving, her visit thickened it: for Mr. Barkington was gone bag and
baggage. When Edward was told of this business, he thought it remarkable,
and regretted he had not seen the old man.

So do I; for it is my belief Edward would have recognised him.

DAVID DODD.

The history of a man is the history of his mind. And that is why you have
heard so little of late about the simplest, noblest, and most unfortunate
of all my personages. Insanity is as various as eccentricity. I have
spared the kind-hearted reader some of David's vagaries. However, when we
parted with him, he had settled into that strange phase of lunacy, in
which the distant past seems nearly obliterated, and memory exists, but
revolves in a narrow round of things present: this was accompanied with a
positive illusion, to wit, a fixed idea that he was an able seaman: and,
as usual, what mental power he retained came out strongest in support of
this idea. All this was marked by a bodily agility somewhat more than
natural in a man of his age. Owing to the wind astern, he was enabled to
run into Portsmouth before the steam-tug came up with him: and he did run
into port, not because he feared pursuit, but because he was desperately
hungry; and he had no suicidal tendencies whatever.

He made for a public-house, and called for some bread and cheese and
beer; they were supplied, and then lo! he had no money to pay for them.
"I'll owe you till I come back from sea, my bo," said he coolly. On this
the landlord collared him, and David shook him off into the road, much as
a terrier throws a rat from him; then there was a row, and a naval
officer, who was cruising about for hands, came up and heard it. There
was nothing at all unseamanlike in David's conduct, and the gentleman
took a favourable view of it, and paid the small demand; but not with
unleavened motives. He was the second lieutenant of H. M. frigate
_Vulture;_ she had a bad name, thanks to her last captain, and was short
of hands: he took David aside and asked him would he like to ship on
board the _Vulture._

David said yes, and suggested the foretop. "Oh yes," growled the
lieutenant, "you all want to be there." He then gauged this Jacky Tar's
intellects; asked him _inter alia_ how to send a frigate's foretop
gallant yard down upon deck: and to show how seamanship sticks in the
brain when once it gets there, David actually told him. "You are rather
old," said the lieutenant, "but you are a seaman:" and so took him on
board the _Vulture_ at Spithead, before Green began to search the town in
earnest. Nobody acts his part better than some demented persons do: and
David made a very tolerable sailor notwithstanding his forty-five years:
and the sea did him good within certain limits. Between him and the past
lay some intellectual or cerebral barrier as impenetrable as the great
wall of China; but on the hither side of that wall his faculties
improved. Of course, the crew soon found out the gap in his poor brain,
and called him Soft Billy, and played on him at first. But by degrees he
won their affection; he was so wonderfully sweet-tempered: and besides
his mind being in an abnormal state, he loathed grog, and gave his
allowance to his messmates. One day he showed an unexpected trait; they
were lying becalmed in southern latitudes, and, time hanging heavily,
each wiled it how he might: one fiddled, another wrote to his Polly,
another fished for sharks, another whistled for a wind, scores fell into
the form of meditation without the reality, and one got a piece of yarn
and amused himself killing flies on the bulwark. Now this shocked poor
Billy: he put out his long arm and intercepted a stroke. "What is the
row?" said the operator.

"You mustn't," said Billy solemnly, looking into his face with great
dreamy eyes.

"You be----," said the other, and lent him a tap on the cheek with the
yarn. Billy did not seem to mind this; his skin had little sensibility,
owing to his disorder.

Jack recommenced on his flies, and the bystanders laughed. They always
laughed now at everything Billy said, as Society used to laugh when the
late Theodore Hook asked for the mustard at dinner; and would have
laughed if he had said, "You see me sad, I have just lost my poor
father."

David stood looking on at the slaughter with a helpless puzzled air.

At last he seemed to have an idea, he caught Jack up by the throat and
knee, lifted him with gigantic strength above his head, and was just
going to hurl him shrieking into the sea, when a dozen strong hands
interfered, and saved the man. Then they were going to bind Billy hand
and foot; but he was discovered to be perfectly calm; so they
remonstrated instead, and presently Billy's commander-in-chief, a
ship-boy called Georgie White, shoved in and asked him in a shrill
haughty voice how he dared do that. "My dear," said Billy, with great
humility and placidity, "he was killing God's creatures, no allowance: *
so, ye see, to save their lives, I was _obliged._"

*Nautical phrase, meaning without stint or limit, or niggardly
admeasurement as there is of grog.

At this piece of reasoning, and the simplicity and gentle conviction with
which it was delivered, there was a roar. It subsided, and a doubt arose
whether Billy was altogether in the wrong.

"Well," said one, "I daresay life is sweet to them little creatures, if
they could speak their minds."

"I've known a ship founder in a fair breeze all along of killing 'em,"
said one old salt.

Finally, several sided with Billy, and intimated that "it served the
lubber right for not listening to _reason._" And, indeed, methinks it was
lovely and touching that so divine a ray of goodness and superior reason
should have shot from his heart or from Heaven across that poor benighted
brain.

But it must be owned his mode of showing his humanity was somewhat
excessive and abnormal, and smacked of lunacy. After this, however, the
affection of his messmates was not so contemptuous.

Now the captain of the _Vulture_ was Billy's cousin by marriage. Reginald
Bazalgette. Twenty years ago, when the captain was a boy, they were great
friends: of late Bazalgette had seen less of him; still it seems strange
he did not recognise him in his own ship. But one or two causes
co-operated to prevent that. In the first place, the mind when turned in
one direction is not so sharp in another; and Captain Bazalgette had been
told to look for David in a merchant ship bound for the East Indies. In
the next place, insanity alters the expression of the face wonderfully,
and the captain of a frigate runs his eye over four hundred sailors at
muster, or a hundred at work, not to examine their features, but their
dress and bearing at the one, and their handiness at the other. The worst
piece of luck was that Mrs. Dodd did not know David called himself
William Thompson. So there stood "William Thompson" large as life on the
ship's books, and nobody the wiser. Captain Bazalgette had a warm regard
and affection for Mrs. Dodd, and did all he could. Indeed, he took great
liberties: he stopped and overhauled several merchant ships for the
truant; and, by-the-by, on one occasion William Thompson was one of the
boat's crew that rowed a midshipman from the _Vulture_ alongside a
merchant ship to search for David Dodd. He heard the name and
circumstance mentioned in the boat, but the very name was new to him. He
remembered it, but only from that hour; and told his loving tyrant,
Georgie White, they had been overhauling a merchant ship and looking for
one David Dodd.

It was about Midsummer the _Vulture_ anchored off one of the South Sea
islands, and sent a boat ashore for fruit. Billy and his dearly beloved
little tyrant, Georgie White, were among the crew. Off goes Georgie to
bathe, and Billy sits down on the beach with a loving eye upon him. The
water was calm: but the boy with the heedlessness of youth stayed in it
nearly an hour: he was seized with cramp and screamed to his comrades.
They ran, but they were half a mile from the boat. Billy dashed into the
water and came up with Georgie just as he was sinking for the last time;
the boy gripped him; but by his great strength he disentangled himself
and got Georgie on his shoulders, and swam for the shore. Meantime the
sailors got into the boat, and rowed hastily towards them.

Now Billy was undermost and his head under water at times, and Georgie,
some thought, had helped strangle him by gripping his neck with both
arms. Anyway, by the boy's account, just as they were getting into
shallow water, Billy gave a great shriek and turned over on his back; and
Georgie paddled with his hands, but Billy soon after this sunk like a
dead body while the boat was yet fifty yards off. And Georgie screamed
and pointed to the place, and the boat came up and took Georgie in; and
the water was so clear that the sailors saw Billy lie motionless at the
bottom, and hooked him with a boat hook and drew him up; but his face
came up alongside a deadly white, with staring eyes, and they shuddered
and feared it was too late.

They took him into a house and stripped him, and rubbed him, and wrapped
him in blankets, and put him by the hot fire. But all would not do.

Then, having dried his clothes, they dressed the body again and laid him
in the boat, and cast the Union Jack over him, and rowed slowly and
unwillingly back to the ship, Georgie sobbing and screaming over the
body, and not a dry eye in the boat.

The body was carried up the side, and uncovered, just as Mrs. Dodd saw in
her dream. The surgeon was sent for and examined the body: and then the
grim routine of a man-of-war dealt swiftly with the poor skipper. He was
carried below to be prepared for a sailor's grave. Then the surgeon
walked aft and reported formally to the officer of the watch the death by
drowning of William Thompson. The officer of the watch went instantly to
the captain in his cabin and reported the death. The captain gave the
stereotyped order to bury him at noon next day; and the body was stripped
that night and sewed up in his hammock, with a portion of his clothes and
bedding to conceal the outline of the corpse, and two cannon balls at his
feet; and so the poor skipper was laid out for a watery grave, and
covered by the Union Jack.

I don't know whether any of my amorous young readers are much affected by
the catastrophe I have just related. If not, I will just remind them that
even Edward Dodd was prepared to oppose the marriage of Julia and Alfred,
if any serious ill should befall his father at sea, owing to Alfred's
imprudent interference in rescuing him from Drayton House.

CHAPTER L

LAW

MINUTE study of my fellow-creatures has revealed to me that there are
many intelligent persons who think that a suit at law commences in court.
This is not so. Many suits are fought and decided by the special
pleaders, and so never come into court; and, as a stiff encounter of this
kind actually took place in Hardie _v._ Hardie, a word of prefatory
explanation may be proper. Suitors come into court only to try an issue:
an issue is a mutual lie direct: and towards this both parties are driven
upon paper by the laws of pleading, which may be thus summed: 1. Every
statement of the adversary must either be contradicted flat, or confessed
and avoided: "avoided" means neutralised by fresh matter. 2. Nothing must
be advanced by plaintiff which does not disclose a ground of action at
law. 3. Nothing advanced by defendant, which, if true, would not be a
defence to the action. These rules exclude in a vast degree the pitiable
defects and vices that mark all the unprofessional arguments one ever
hears; for on a breach of any one of the said rules the other party can
demur; the demurrer is argued before the judges in Banco, and, if
successfully, the faulty plaint or faulty plea is dismissed, and often of
course the cause won or lost thereby, and the country saved the trouble,
and the suitors the expense of trying an issue.

So the writ being served by Plt.'s attorney, and an appearance put in by
Deft.'s, the paper battle began by Alfred Hardie, through his attorney,
serving on Deft.'s attorney "THE DECLARATION." This was drawn by his
junior counsel, Garrow, and ran thus, after specifying the court and the
date:

_Middlesex to wit_ Alfred Hardie by John Compton his attorney sues Thomas
Hardie For that the Deft, assaulted Plt. gave him into custody to a
certain person and caused him to be imprisoned for a long space of time
in a certain place to wit a Lunatic Asylum whereby the Plt. was much
inconvenienced and suffered much anguish and pain in mind and body and
was unable to attend to his affairs and was injured in his credit and
circumstances.

And the Plt. claims L. 5000.

Mr. Compton conveyed a copy of this to Alfred, and said it was a sweet
"declaration." "What," said Alfred, "is that all I have suffered at these
miscreants' hands? Why, it is written with an icicle."

Mr. Compton explained that this was the outline: "Counsel will lay the
colours on in court as thick as you like."

The defendant replied to the above declaration by three pleas.

By statute 8 & 9 Vic., c. 100, s. 105.

1. The Deft. by Joseph Heathfield his attorney says he is not guilty. 2.
And for a further Plea the Deft, says that before and at the time of the
alleged imprisonment Plt, was a person of unsound mind and incompetent to
take care of himself and a proper person to be taken care of and detained
and it was unfit unsafe improper and dangerous that he should be at large
thereupon the Deft, being the uncle of the Plt. and a proper person to
cause the Plt. to be taken charge of under due care and treatment in that
behalf did cause the Plt. to be so taken charge of and detained under due
care and treatment, &c. &c.

The third plea was the stinger, but too long to cite _verbatim;_ it went
to this tune, that the plaintiff at and before the time &c. had conducted
himself like a person of unsound mind &c. and two certificates that he
was insane had been given by two persons duly authorised under the
statute to sign such certificates, and the defendant had believed and did
_bona fide_ believe these certificates to be true, &c. &c.