Love shall resume her dominion,When striving no more to be free; Comes back my lost love to me!

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CHAPTER XXXIV

Love shall resume her dominion,

Striving no more to be free;

When on her world-weary pinion,

Comes back my lost love to me!

THAT night the 9:45 train from Euston Square puffed slowly down into Staffordshire with Cora Bell. But an hour before it arrived at Mudbury, the midnight express from Shoreditch had gone shrieking and flying southward with the delinquent cher ami, bound for Harwich, whence he intended to cross by the earliest packet boat for the coast of Holland. Vaurien had selected by design this most vulgar and plebian of the London starting points, believing it probable that any falcons of the law who might be charged with a special mission to himself, would be fain to seek their fashionable and fastidious quarry rather at such stately termini as the Victoria or Charing-cross, than at a grim, uncleanly station among the purlieus of the East End.

But now I have a word or two to say about Mrs. Archibald. Among the host of unfaithful wives in modern novels (their name indeed is legion) I have not yet found one resembling Cora Bell. Without exception the offending dames pourtrayed by our recent romances, have all some grievance, real or imaginary, against their liege-lords, whom they regard according to circumstances, with savage hatred, abject fear, scornful aversion, or cold indifference. Their lovers are their consolers, their protectors, their divinities; and the choicest sublunary bliss which could befall these naughty ladies, would be the premature decease, violent or otherwise, of their respective husbands. But in the company of these

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fictitious heroines, Cora Bell must be conceded to be unique. She had nothing in common with women of their stamp, and the cause of her peculiarity may perhaps be found in the broadly masculine element which ever asserted itself in her tastes and mode of reasoning. Much therefore, as she had doated upon Vaurien, her affection for him had been exactly that of a man for his mistress, not of a woman for her master; and her final separation from him, bitter and poignant as it was for the time, had been the deliberate choice, not of her duty, but of her inclination. She saw that the game between Vane and herself was played out, and she put the cards by with resigned regret, and prepared to go virtuously home to bed. But her whilom partner in folly had not anticipated such unlikely behaviour; he had imagined himself the primary object of her devotion, and complacently fancied that in the penetralia of Cora’s heart the image of the Reverend Mr. Archibald had long since yielded precedence to the supreme god-head of Vane Vaurien.

Perhaps too, the singular romance and adventure which had distinguished Mrs. Bell’s matrimonial engagement, may have been largely accountable for the love which she still preserved paramount towards the spouse of her choice, a love which she carried unscathed through all her many post-nuptial flirtations, and which even stood triumphantly the severer ordeal of an intrigue with so dangerously handsome and fascinating a mortal as our Norman friend.

After a wearisome and melancholy journey of nearly five hours through the darkest of nights and the dreariest of scenes, Cora found herself deposited at the doors of her home; a dingy, rambling, crazy old tenement through whose dark unlighted passages the wind roved and the rats scampered at will; a house suggestive of family ghosts and bloody deeds, – a poorly furnished, shabby, apologetic house, full of creaking boards and tumbling plaister and damp mouldy walls; a house that in time past had been an inn, and that still displayed upon all its small cracked window-panes scores of elaborate initials and flowery sentiments,

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inscribed there in the old coaching days, fifty years back, by the passing guests of mine host Thomas Brown, honest tenant, under my Lord Tweed, of that most celebrated house of entertainment the Tweed Arms, situate on the Stafford side of the river Severn, on the high road between London and Holyhead. Yes, in its time the rickety old place had seen fine doings and gay dinners, the wheels of dashing-vehicles had rattled over its great paved courtyard, where now the grass sprouted and the May primroses peered through the broken stones; in yonder huge, many-stalled stables, fretful coach-horses had neighed and champed impatiently, where now the solitary cob of the Reverend Mr. Archie stood munching his beans and repentantly reviewing his late turbulence of humour. In that empty old hall pretty barmaids had coquetted and smiled, country squires had drunk His Majesty’s health and thrown glasses over their heads by dozens in honour of the loyal toast; and merry bucks of former times had laid their hands on their embroidered waistcoats and wafted showers of kisses to the fair attendant Hebes, congregated under that worm-eaten porch, while shrill bugles sounded and passengers scrambled into their places, and with flying wheels and light farewells, the four-in-hand rolled gallantly through the swaying gates and away midst clouds of curling dust into the King’s highway!

But this was half a century ago, and now the solemn antiquated old building is a changed place. The frivolities of its youth are over, and it stands here now in a mangy old age pondering over that wonderful past. Swallows build under its roof, spiders weave their grey threads across its casements, and mice career unchecked along its spacious empty cellars where once the “foreign wines” of Thomas Brown were piled, and the barrels of goodly home-brewed stood in bulky rows. So do the times change, so change we as they roll!

It was not the corpse of the Reverend Mr. Archie, which Cora found awaiting her at home, but the Reverend Mr. Archie in esse, severely

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hurt and grotesquely bandaged, but still in his right mind, and stoutly resolved to recover his legs if possible, in spite of the surgeon. Cora’s unexpected appearance, the knowledge that she had travelled alone a hundred and twenty miles in the dead of night for his sake, and the loving concern and distress her face betrayed, all these were potent medicines of healing to the shattered cleric, and from the hour of his wife’s arrival, he began to mend with vigorous decision. Mrs. Archie nursed him tenderly, and if sometimes she indulged in a private cry of regret over Vane’s absconding, her tears on that score were tempered with gratitude that things had not turned out by any means so ill as on that miserable night at the Langley they had threatened to become. That dreadful prospect of Widowhood had been removed from her, and these blue eyes and hyacinthine curls still remained her own.

It was settled that when Mr. Archie recovered, he should give his rector notice to look out for a new curate, and should quit the bogie-like habitation which had been his haunt during the past three years for some more civilized and genial residence. This sapient determination was duly carried into effect, and when last I heard news of the ecclesiastical couple, they were rejoicing in the possession of a pretty little villa near a continental town to the chaplaincy of which, Mr. Archie, through favour of the S. P. G. had been presented. I am told that the kind-hearted fellow is much beloved in his new voisinage, even among the Catholic poor, and that although the accident just recounted has left him a very perceptible limp which will last for life, he is yet to be seen industriously climbing mountains, penetrating gorges, and pioneering his friends through glens and passes with all the unabated fervour of his greener days. As for Cora, she has a charming little son, born about a year after her husband’s mishap, a little rosy sturdy-legged urchin with his father’s eyes and love-locks, who is the extatic delight of gushing picturesque peasants and the genuine admiration of the British tourist feminine. Let us hope that in the future, which has opened thus pleasantly for Mr. and

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Mrs. Bell, our audacious little friend will consider the sowing of her wild oats Iegitimately accomplished, and dispose herself to settle down into the rôle of a discreet and sober housekeeper.