He might even have come on the tramp or poacher or whatever he was, though to be sure the latter had vanished very quickly indeed after he had picked himself up. . . . Proceedings, it was true, had opened with a somewhat scrambling corps à corps encounter after Raoul had torn him away from Miss Forrest, but the end had been more in style, though he himself had broken his knuckles over it. . . . Miss Forrest had been shaking so much when it was over that he had been obliged to support her to a tree stump, on which she had sunk down, while he knelt beside her and fanned her—it was the only treatment he could think of—with his hat. And really she had looked almost more beautiful when she was as white as a lily. But she was never near swooning, he thought, except, perhaps, just for the first second or two after he had disposed of her assailant—that first second or two in which she had clung to him . . . moments which, neither at the time nor in retrospect, were at all disagreeable ones. . . .
In the end he had escorted her to the boundary of the Mulholland domain. And just before they parted she had said, in a voice full of emotion, “Will you . . . would you care to . . . keep my little Rasselas for your own . . . in memory of my undying gratitude?”
So Miss Forrest’s book was now his, a memento of an episode which would have been wholly pleasurable to contemplate if it had not been for the encounter with Mulholland—on top of yesterday’s, too! But Raoul now put Sir Francis resolutely from his mind, and, ensconcing himself in his one fairly comfortable chair, took out the book in question from his pocket. By the absence of any sounds from the room above, where lodged another prisoner, a naval lieutenant named Lamotte, he surmised that the latter was not home yet. He had invited him to partake that evening of a hare recently presented to him, which, as its arrival almost coincided (of course, unknown to the British donor) with the second anniversary of the birth of the little King of Rome, would be treated as a commemorative feast on the eve of the event, combining in one both dinner and supper. It was a pity that Miss Hitchings had insisted on cooking the animal to-night, on the ground that it would keep no longer, for the birthday was not till to-morrow.
As every well-conducted reader should, Raoul began at the first page; and the stately and beautifully rounded exordium impressed him as much as Miss Forrest herself could have desired. “Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow, attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.” And soon he was reading of the delights of that blissful place of captivity, the Happy Valley, with its remarkable floral and zoological riches, and the even more remarkable juxtaposition of the latter, since “on one part were flocks and herds feeding in the pastures, on another all the beasts of the chase frisking on the lawns; the sprightly kid was bounding on the rocks, the subtle monkey frolicking in the trees, and the solemn elephant reposing in the shade.” A momentary reflection that the Happy Valley must have been rather like the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, and the student, struck with the justice of these last epithets, repeated them several times to himself. Then he went on to read of the human inhabitants, who “wandered in gardens of fragrance and slept in the fortresses of security,” and by six o’clock had reached the passage in the fourth chapter where Rasselas, carried away by a day-dream of that outer world which he has never seen, actually pursues the imaginary robber of an imaginary damsel whom he pictures as appealing to him for help, until he is brought up short by the foot of the impassable mountain hemming in the Happy Valley.
“Here he recollected himself, and smiled at his own impetuosity. Then, raising his eyes to the mountain, ‘This,’ said he, ‘is the fatal obstacle that hinders at once the enjoyment of pleasure and the exercise of virtue. How long is it that my hopes and wishes have flown beyond this boundary of my life which yet I have never attempted to surmount!’ ”
The incident, in more ways than one, had sufficiently close a resemblance with what had happened to Miss Forrest and himself in Fawley Copse that afternoon to make “Mr. Rowl” lay down the book and smile. But the smile had a spice of melancholy. In his situation, just as much as in that of Dr. Johnson’s hero, was “a fatal obstacle that hinders at once the enjoyment of pleasure and the exercise of virtue”—his parole. And it was more insurmountable than Rasselas’s mountain. No doubt he was fortunate that his military rank entitled him to the indulgence, but, nevertheless, comparative ease and pleasant society had to be paid for—in the same coin in which Rasselas paid. Wanfield was rather like the Happy Valley!
Upon this reflection the door opened, and Miss Hitching’s voice observed in a somewhat minatory manner: “Mr. Bannister to see you, Sir!”
The reader jumped up, as there entered the retired chemist who was his very good friend and custodian.
“I was thinking about you, Sir!” exclaimed Raoul. “If I had not been sure that you would have left your office, I think I should have paid you a visit this afternoon.”
“Well, you see that I am paying you one,” returned Mr. James Bannister rather heavily, as he took a chair. “And I wish I had not to; but I did it rather than send for you. I expect you know what I have come about. You are the last man I thought I should have trouble with on such a score.”
Raoul stood looking down on him with a slightly heightened colour. “You wish to know why I was out of bounds this afternoon? On my honour, Mr. Bannister, I could not avoid it. I had to go—as you will acknowledge when you hear of the circumstances. But first, who told you of my crime?”
“You can guess, I should think. Sir Francis Mulholland.”
Raoul made a face. “He has not lost much time. Well, I suppose he was able to tell himself that he was doing his duty. But as it was on account of a person in whom he is deeply interested that I had to transgress, his zeal is a little misplaced.”
“What do you mean—what person? Sir Francis said nothing——” began the Agent.
“No, no, I told him nothing. The sheep reserves the tale of its misdemeanours for its own shepherd,” announced Raoul cheerfully, bestowing a smile on the gentleman in question, and sitting down on the arm of a chair. “Voyons donc. . . .” And he proceeded with his tale—a strictly truthful narrative in all but its suppression of Miss Forrest’s previous whereabouts.
By the end of this recital Raoul’s shepherd looked decidedly relieved. “No, my dear fellow, you certainly could not have done anything else. But why the deuce didn’t you tell Sir Francis about Miss Forrest?”
“Because he had no right to demand an explanation of me,” replied the champion. “I said that to the right person I would give one, if necessary.”
“But you see, you hothead, if you had done it there and then he would not have lodged information against you for breaking your parole!”
“Breaking my parole!” exclaimed the young soldier, indignantly. “How dare he suggest. . . . But I suppose I was breaking it—in a sense!” he finished in some dismay.
Mr. Bannister laughed. “Technically, perhaps, but certainly not in the spirit, if that is all you went out of bounds for.”
“I hope you do not think it was for any other reason, Mr.