«iu*'^*j^- * -^ f .^ y, . BERKELEY LIBRARY CALIfOIW^A CITY AND SUBURB. S lobcl. BY MRS. J. H. RIDDELL, AUTHOR OK 'GEORGE GEITH,' 'THE WORLD IN THE CHURCH,' 'TOO MUCH ALONE, 'MAXWELL DREWITT,' ' PHEMIE KELLER,' 'THE RICH HUSBAND,' ETC. ETC. A NEW EDITION, LONDON: HUTCHINSON & CO., 25, PATERNOSTER SQUARE. \AU rights resei~ved.^ i3ii ij)c same ^utfjor. AUSTIN FRIARS. TOO MUCH ALONE. THE RICH HUSBAND. MAXWELL DREWITT. FAR ABOVE RUBIES. A LIFE'S ASSIZE. THE WORLD IN THE CHURCH. HOME, SWEET HOME. PHEMIE KELLER. RACE FOR WEALTH. THE EARLS PROMISE. MORTOMLEY'S ESTATE. FRANK SINCLAIR'S WIFE. THE RULING PASSION. MV FIRST AND MY LAST LOVE. CITY AND SUBURB. ABOVE SUSPICION. JOY AFTER SORROW. CONTENTS. If00'± «. '^'^^^ PAOB 1. A DROP IN THE OCEAN 1 II. THE CITY ,10 III. HUGH ELTOT ....... 17 rV RUBY 31 V. REALITY . . . , , , , .42 VI. MR. ruthven's ward 57 VII. RUBY IN LONDON 67 Till. NEW ACQUAINTANCES . . - , . .77 IX. JOHN PERMAN, ESQ 84j X. LOVING . . , , ^ . . . . 93 XI. ruby's HOUSE-KEEPIKG 100 XII. ON THE RIVER lOS XIII. ENGINEERING 116 XIV MR. PERMAN's UNCLE 124 XV. UPHILL HALL . 136 XVI. VISITORS 145 XVII. ruby's TROUBLES 158 XVIII. M0SQUIT03 171 XIX. WOOING AND WINNING 180 XX OPINIONS DIPPER 195 XXI. MARRYING 204 XXII. STILL LIFE 212 XXIII. EXPLANATIONS 219 XXIV. BROTHER AND SISTER 230 XXV. BARTHOLOMEWS 236 710 IV C0XTENT3. CBAPTKB XWr. XEW HOME XXVII. ME. AND MRS. PERMAN XXVIII. LIFE AT MAT?SH HALL XXIX. A NEW DIGNITV XXX. MY LADY . XXXI. MV LADY IN SECLUSION xxxri. alan's inventiojt XXXIir. MY LORD AND MY LADY XXXIV. RUBY AT HOME XXXV. ALAN ERRS XXXVI. HUSBAND AND BROTHER XXXVII. STRANGE LIGHTS XXXVIII. ACHING HEARTS XXXTX. THE STRIKE XL. THE END OF IT ALL . XLI. alan's new EMPLOYMENT XLII. THE COLLISION . ILIII. the INQUEST ILIV. SUSPICION. XLV. ACROSS THE SEA XLVI. THE RETURN . XLVII. IRREVOCABLE XLVIII. HUGH ELYOT's SKCRET . XLIX. MAN TO MAN L. HUSHED TO REST CONCLUSION . - ^ > . 21G . 253 . 205 . 273 285 . 293 . 301 . 313 . 329 . 339 .317 . 353 . 3G7 . 379 . 392 . 39S . 405 . 410 . 418 . 430 . 440 . 447 . 453 . 4G5 . 473 . 4S0 CITY AND SUBUKB. CHAPTEE I. A DROP IN THE OCEAN. Late in ihe afternoon of a day in August, Alan Euthven passed under Higligate Archway on his way to London. He was coming to the great city to seek his fortune ; behind him — white, straight and dusty, lay the Great North Eoad he had traversed — before him was the goal he desired to reach ; Riid yet, instead of pushing faster and faster forward, he paused where the firs and the elms grow far above the highway — ■ paused, and, for the first time since leaving Cumberland- — loohed back. There, framed by the high, narrow archway, he beheld tho white, level, monotonous road, that looked as though through green fields, edged with dusty hedgerows, it went straight ou for ever ; whilst, at the end of it, hundreds of miles away, thoughtfully gazing bade, for the first and the last time, he eaw the home he had left behind. Ay, there it was, just the same as formerly to every one but him ; with the sun shining through its stately trees, and falling on its grassy elopes ; with its terraced walks winding up the mountain side, and its summer glory of roses and fuchsiaa dazzling the sight ; the old, old home that was. It lay behind, and after he had looked, as men do look when they are weary, back along a road they have travelled to the point w^hence they started, Alan Euthven turned his eyes once again forward, to the new home that was to be. Yet still he did not hurry on : ho was weary, as I have said, and, therefore, instead of pushing forward in haste, as many a pilgrim entering London might have done, he climbgd the bank .-i CITY AND SUBURB. tliat on the rigbt hand side of tlie road lericllng from the norOi is crowned with firs ; and when he had gained the top, stood for a moment looking over tlie great ocean that lay below. Then he sat down ; he was in no haste to continue his jour- Bey ; London was not waiting for him. Through her myriad streets the stream of human life was flowing, all unconscioua of his advent. Landlords were not aware that a possible tenant — tradesmen did not know that a new customer had passed along the Great North Eoad. Tbere was no wife, no fcister, no friend waiting, longing for the traveller ; inthe wliole of the mighty Babylon there did not beat a heart that held a j^lace for him. Truly London was stretching out no eager arms to welcome the stranger; wherefore Alan Euthven sate him down on the turf imder the shadow of those trees, in Avhich, this very spring, rooks are building their nests, to gaze at his leisure on the view presented to him of the Monarch of Cities. Churches and houses, lines and lines of streets, a sea of roofs Btretching away as far as the eye could reach ; Pentonville, nnd HolJoway, and Islington, to the left; Kentish Town, Primrose Hill, the Eegent's Park, and the great tract appro- priated to fashion to the right ; Tufuell Park, and Camden New Town, and Agar Town straight before, with the city, the heart of the gigantic body he beheld, lying far below. It was enough to stir the calmest spirit, to see that dream-London, of eveiy country imagination, thus unveiled to view. How much more, then, did the sight quicken the pulses of the man who eat among the firs, for it was in some of those to him still nameless streets, he knew the battle of his life must be fought out. "What a vague, strange, painful, pleasureable thing is the first glimpse of a great city, where we know no one, and yet are going to live; that holds the home, and friends and ene- mies, and pains and pleasures, to which we are so surely ad- vancing, but of which as yet we know nothing. The woman who shall jilt, the wife who may bless, the friend who will be true, and the man who is to betray — they are all walking about the streets, or sitting in their quiet homes, or busy in their counting-houses, recking not of us, whilst wo cannot even picture them. And yet we are to meet, we are to stand face to face with these utter strangers in the years to come, and their hands will mould our destinies, for good or for ill, for ever. Just so cer- tainly as that w^ealth or poverty, success or lailure, awaits us whither we ftre journeying, so surely aro there those \n the great A DROP IN THE OCEAN. 3 city with whose lots ours shall be cast eventually ; we are going to them, we shall meet in some of those streets, in one of those houses ; we shall one day have hopes and fears, and memories bound up, and associated with special spots in that great me- tropolis, which is now generalized before us. The days when we must particularize have yet to come. I will not say that such ideas as the foregoing passed in any definite form through Alan Euthven's mind. He was looking out on London with that vague sort of wonder, which most Englishmen, I apprehend, have felt at the first glimpse of their metropolis. He regarded it also as a market where he should be able to trade with his talents, and change mind away for gold ; and, besides, there is a strange faculty amongst persons who have been long absorbed either in country employments, or business, or the pursuit of money, to think without reflec- tion ; I mean, to permit thoughts to float across their brains without considering their import. Strange sails that come, we know not whence, are perpetually appearing and disap- pearing on the soul's horizon ; but there are few who can bring those ships to port ; only some when they hear of the same vessels being anchored in another's heart, remember that years and years before, they too beheld them dimly cross the main, so crowded with merchant craft, and youth's frail toy-boats, that they did not recognise their colours till they taw them reflected against a stranger shore. And yet poets, and philosophers, and savans arrogate thought to themselves, and would make society believe that the fancies and absurdities, truths and falsehoods, wherewith they crowd their pages, are the birthright of genius alone. Break down such a prejudice, reader, if we are to go cordially through this book together. It were as idle to declare that women have deeper feelings than men, becaiise they can tell you all about them, as to affirm that it is only reflective men who think. I tell you, no : the grand difterence between the author and the ehop-keeper, is but in the power of expression. The masses of society are mentally dumb ; they cannot fa- shion into words, and shape into sentences, the Avonderings, and foreshadowings, and aspirations that it is the gift and business of a writer to clothe with language. The ships of thought laden with great questions and vague fancies are sailing, oh ! my reader, through all human seas, and if you are great and learned, you would perhaps not care to be shewn how much the complete man-of-war you contemplate launching from your brain, into the wide ocean of public opiuion, resembles the unrig-gedj unmanned hulk, that foun- 4 CITY AND SUBURB. dered in a menial fop; years since, in tlie brain of a man who lacked tlie ability to talk. Thus, though the traveller knew that his destiny was wait- ing fur liim in London, though he wondered, in a vague sort of wav, which of the people at that moment walking in the Btreets would become friends or acquaintances of his, though he thought of the house in which he should live, and the love, and the joy, and the pain, and the death, that might come to him under some one of the roofs the summer sun shone on, he could not have told an inquisitive questioner what he wa3 thinking of, or whether, in fact, he was thinking at all. IMost probably had anyone pushed him hard, he would have said he was marvelling where, and at what rent, he could get lodgings, and considering what he should do that evening and the next day. He really had so much to attend to, he scarcely knew where to begin his work ; his head was in a state of con- fusion, for though it may seem an easy enough thing to come to London to make a fortune, it has occasionally struck a man at first sight of the metropolis, that he will experience some diffi- culty in compassing his object. Now, Alan Euthven was a man, and not a youth ; he had been wealthy, and he was poor ; lie had travelled so far, not from impulse, but because of conviction ; very soberly and unenthusiastically, therefore, he sat among the firs, looking down on London and his own pecuniary future, calmly and practically, whilst all the time indefinite fancies of what might be to come, floated lightly before him. Knowing hoAv most new comers would have conducted them- Belves in his place, an unenlightened observer might have con- cluded that Alan Euthven was an individual tolerably certain of success ; that a man of his abilities, blessed by nature with perseverance, integrity, and health, must find the struggle of life, even in London, comparatively easy. I say a stranger might naturally enough have formed such an opinion, for Mr. Euthven was so gravely quiet that none except those who knew iiim intimately were aware that whilst he carried within his breast the se^-ds of success, he likewise bore the germ of failure. His talents stood out like goodly flowers for the world to see ; but there was a worm gnawing at the roots — pride — Avhich as surely goeth before a fall as that sin pro- duceth sorrow. He had a pride in him which was from the devil, which he pampered, and nurtured, and loved, but which tore and tor- mented him — which latent in ])rosperity, sprang into action at the first touch of adversity — which waauot so hurtful to others A DROP IN THE OCEAN. 5 as dangerous to himself — whicli promised to undermine the foundation of wliatever castle of happiness and content he should ever strive to build ; whicli, handed from father to - 8v:n for generations past, had been hoarded and cherished hy each succeeding Euthven like a patent of nobility, a Moloch Avhich every heir male was to kneel down to and worship, and guard. I thank heaven that I have never known another besides Alan Euthven, who, either by education or inheritance, was cursed with a similar form and intensity of pride. Proud, and haughty, and vain men are to be met with every day, but there are degrees of everything, and the pride which was a tradition and a religion in the Euthven family mioht have been wept over by the angels of God. It was not an in- solence which hurt the beggar by the wayside, or bearded the king on his throne ; it was rather a consuming fire, which burnt up every green thing they stretched out their hands to seize, which neutralized their talents, and prostrated their efibrts, and at last in bitter sport, after seeing him stripped of houses and lands, and position, accompanied the eldest born of an old house to London, and sat close by his side among tho fir trees, writing in scorching letters upon every liope and aspi- ration he had, " Mine to reduce to dust and ashes, scheme aud toil, plan and Avork, sketch and build, make palaces for me to inhabit and ruin, pile up the edifice of your life as you will, I shall be the destroying genius of it all." A pleasant sort of inmate that for a man to hold in his heart, an impracticable tenant for life, devised into the deed by virtue of which he held the leasehold of existence. How should you, my reader, whose pride is a very serviceable de- scription of pride, capable of being remembered or forgotten at j)leasure, like to have to start in the race of life with a demon such as AlanEuthven's familiar, hindering your footsteps and chalking out your course ? How very little you, who drive your steeds of ambition, pride, fame and vain-glory successfully into high places, can imagine what different sorts of animals these prove when tliey come to drive you. A great passion is a great vice, and as bodily excess leaves its marks behind it on the outward man, so the predominance and indulgence of any one feeling traces lines upon the soul, that are visible to none but God. Alan Euthven's pride was like an overmastering sorrow, it underlay every project, every hope of his life. It made no out- ward show for the world to see, but it was there. It had come down to him rs sl sole inheritance: the Euthven lands and CITY AND SUBURB. houses were gone, but the Ivulhven pride remained. It was travellincf to London with the eldest son of a ruined house. He sat amonf» the fir trees looking over the great wilderuesa of roofs, stretching away in the distance to the pleasant Surrey liills ; and he tried to form more definite plans tlian any thought of previously for his future life. The prospect before his eyes appalled the man. "What could he do in such a place ? what should he be falling into it greater than a rain drop in the ocean ? what did the ocean know of the drop ? what would Loudon know of him? Standing on the shore, he felt a mo- mentary reluctance to plunge into the waves of human opinion and worldly endeavour. If he had travelled in the ordinary way to London, he would have seen nothing of this immensity, and only by degrees learnt the extent of the ocean when his bark was fairly launched upon its waves. Had he come by rail, he would have been born into the greatness of his metropolis as a child is born into the great- ness of the universe, naturally. He would have seen first a little, and then more and more as his experience enlarged, and his ideas developed : but sitting among the trees at Highgate, the whole map was unrolled at once ; a lifetime of experience Kcemed thrust upon him in a moment. There was no reason why he should not have entered London by one of the regular approaches, or why he should have toiled along that weary road, and finally sat him doA^Ti to rest on the spot where we find him, except for this — that Alan Ruthven had started to walk to London from Cumberland, and having started, walked on. Time in those days, unhappily, was not money to him, and accordingly he chose rather to spend the former than the lat- ter ; once, when he had plenty of money, he had walked through Scotland for his own pleasure, why therefore, he argued, sliould he not walk to London for his o\vn profit. Besides, this mode of travelling gave him leisure tor refiection ; beyond all, it deferred the evil hour of action; whilst he was walking his twenty miles a day, he could assure his own conscience that he was working hard, and he could reiuse to listen to his own conscience which declared it was because he felt afraid of Lon- don, that he lengthened the way thither. He intended to risk his all, his money and hopes, and strength and enemy, on the besom of the awful ocean he now contemplated, and though he believed ho had so decided for the best, he knew that then and all along he was not ])ressing on to London with hope, but f^hrinking back from it with fear; there was no denying his cowardice now, even to himself; gazing with eager eyes on the A DROP IN THE OCEAN. 7 Eea of roofs and hoiipes, he confessed his wealmess. For lie Lad come so far out of his own heart, and because of his own fancy, and as no person chanced to have urged him to the step : aa he and be alone throughout all the years to come would liave to bear the burden of the pain and the sorrow he thus planted for himself, he grew, as was natural, afraid of the great re- sponsibility. There were others dependent on him, and if, having ventured everything and every chance, he failed, what could they do ? They, Murray, and Ruby, and Lorine ? Starve, or beg, an- sw^ered back his pride, and he sickened at the thought of such a possibility. " If you fail," TTsaid, " there is no other resource for them." " Then I must not fail, that is all," muttered his self-reliant spirit; and having arrived at this conclusion, he rose from his Bcat among the fir trees, and after one long look more over the great city, which he felt he should never see again, the same man from the same place, in the same mind, he descended tho banic, and hastened on his way. Through the turnpike gates, where a toll was asked, even from tliis travel-stained, dusty foot-passenger, past the " Horse and Groom," down the Ilolloway Eoad, to Highbury, thence to Islington, he paced Avearil}'-, never flinching for an instant however, from his design of walking into London, and declining tlie profi'ered courtesies of conductors by scores. At last he was out of Upper Street, and found himself stand- ing in front of a tavern, surrounded by omnibuses, cads, drivers, and passengers innumerable ; five roads or streets met at this point. He seemed to have been walking for ever, and to his country ears the noise and tumult sounded like the bustle of Loudon itself. " Is this London ?" he asked of a maa uho stood waiting for a West End 'bus. " Lord bless you, no," was the prompt reply, " this is the ' Angel ' at Islington." " Would you be kind enough to tell me my best way to London ?" asked Alan. " Which part of it ?" queried the other, keeping a sharp look out as he spoke, down the City Eoad. " St. Paul's Cathedral ; Cheapside ; any place about there." " Best way for you is to take a Blackfriars 'bus, and get down at the top of Cheapside. Hallo ! here comes my man at last — Hi there !" and away the little fellow bustled in a hurry to &)i omnibus which did not start for several minutes after. " l^ow then," yelled out another conductor, balancing hin?* O CITY AND SULURB. eel f with a strap, while be stooped to open the door of his omnibus ; " Goswell Street, Murtiu-le-Graud, Blacklriars ; look sharp, make haste, sir." " 1 am not going with you," answered Mr. Euthven, which curt reply caused the conductor to bang to the door with a malediction, and shout out " all right," to his driver, in a tone which conveyed a general impression of everything being all wrong. In the wake of the omnibus our traveller followed, and turn- ing along the Goswell Eoad, kept on his way through Goswell Street, under the wall of the Charter-house, to Aldcrsgate Street, where his journey was almost ended. Dimly he wondered whether he should ever know, ever liavo business transactions with any of the people living and trading in the thoroughfares thus traversed. Very curiously he lookctl into cross streets, and surveyed the passers by, listening with strained, cracked ears the while to the roar and rush of London the Mighty. It was a turbulent, noisy ocean this great citv, the human weaves of which rolled on before his eyes, but still without coming into contact with him. For a time he felt excited, interested, taken out of himself; but all at once, when he reached that point whei-e St. Martiu's- le-Grand breaks oif so abruptly, and is lost in Cheapside and Newgate Street; where a million* of people flow from East to AVest, and from West to East in a single day, he suddenly stood still, and a sense of utter desolation and abandonment; came over him. Eeader, have you ever known what it is to stand in any great thoroughfare in London alone, without a friend or rela- tion, or acquaintance within hundreds of miles of you ? llavo you ever felt what it is to look away along the Strand or Hoi- born, or the Borough, or Fenchurch Street, without a home or room in the hundred and forty-four square miles of building that surrounds you ? Have you come friendless to seek your fortune w^ithout one in all the great city who knew your need, and suddenly turned solitary, weary and anxious into a street crowded with strange people, who were pursuing their scliemes which were not your schemes, returning to homes tliat wore not yours, liailing omnibuses which were travelling you knew not whither, or alighting from cabs that were coming you kue\v not whence ? A life diflerent from any life you have ever seen before, 13 bubbling, boiling, seething along the pavements, and all at ouco • This of course does not ijicau a njilliou of sipaiate imlividuals, but a CiiUiou pf passages A DROP IN THE OCEAN. 9 it etrikegyou that you have come to a place wliere you are not expected and not wanted ; where everybody has too much to do for himself to attend to you, where you are nobody but an unregarded stranger who had much better have staid away altogether. If you have ever come thus into London, you will know how Alan Ruthven turned after a pause into Cheapside, walking for Do earthly reason, save that his senses were bewildered by the noise, objectless past Bow Church and across Queen Street to Bucklersbury, where he got out of the turmoil and began to wonder why he was there. Where should he go ? would anybody stop in his rapid walk to give him the information he wanted ? If he went into a shop and inquired about lodgings, the proprietor would imagine him an impostor ; if he accosted anybody in the street and asked to be directed to a respectable boarding-house, the man would think him a fool. He had not realised London to himself; no country imagina- tion does. Visitors know it will be large ; but they fancy it large, simply as an aggregation of small towns, not with a size peculiar to itself He could not walk about the streets like au idiot for ever. He wished he had remained for the night in the suburbs ; that would have been an introduction ; he wished he had taken a cab, and trusted to the instinct of the driver depositing him some place. Should he take a cab still ? yes, he thought it was better late than never, and he walked briskly off with this idea till the Bight of a policeman suggested another. " Is there any place near here where I could get a chop — not an hotel," he explained, getting hot all over at the look of benignant compassion with which the man regarded him. " You are a stranger ?" interrogated the other. " And if I am ?" retorted Mr. Ruthven sharply. " You can't do better than first cofiee-house round the cor- ner," blandly responded the policeman, "Deacon's, in Wal- brook, to the right." " Tliank you," Mr. Euthven said these words with the air of a grand vizier, and walked off to Walbrook, followed by the eyes of 1050, who smiled as policemen do with the corners of his mouth, and then very significantly shook his head and raised hia shoulders. Meanwhile Alan turned the corner. 10 CITY AND SUBUKU CHAPTER IL THE CITY. Deacon's was, ana lor that matter is, as like any other respect- able coffee-house as two peas of the same size. Once across the tlireshold, these refuges for hungry merchants and early dining clerks are all alike. Excepting an additional penny to pay, a shade of more or less meat on the three ounce chop, a degree of greater civility in the ubiquitous waiter, there is no diflerence. Every one knows he can never get a steak or chop done to Buch perfection by his own cook as he can at one of these hospitable caravansera in the desert of city life. There is no- thing an exacting individual may not liave at every established coffee-house in London save quantity and strong tea. Every eatable is cut down to the minimum requirement of a human appetite, whilst the tea is usually of the weakest, its constitution is delicate, it wants stamina and vitality, it is eminently adapted for nervous persons and those apocryphal individuals who once drank hyson, which " kept them awake for hours." It is only good for one thing, namely to put a maa in training for " married tea." 'Was it for the latter purpose, or to keep himself from falling asleep over the " IMcehanic's Magazine," or as a mere matter of habit that the solitary individual in the box to which Alan Kuthven was conducted had ordered tea? Is it a matter of antagonism or by mere choice and chance that Mr. Euthven calls for coflee ? After he had eaten his chop, remember, and thought how very little there was on a chop, and what a pity it was sheep did not manage to grow larger loins, and wliilst the coflee was being procured from far oft' regions, our traveller, for want of something better to do, looked at his sludioua companion. Tliere was nothing very attractive in his appearance, ho looked, as the child said of the king, just like any other man — that sort of indefinite personage whom one meets everywhere; to-day in an omnibus, and to-morrow on the boat ; we do busi- ness with him sometimes, and are introduced to him often. His face tells no tales about him, he may be anything, or everything, or nothing. AVe jjass him by without notice in tho Btreet, and forget the man lives when we leave his office ; women do not go insane for his sake ; he is not handsome, he TH£ CITY. 11 18 — the person whom Alau Kuthven looks at with tired eyes for a moment. Not for the sake of the portrait, but for the sake of its ori- ginal, let me sketch what he saw. A pale face in proille, features delicate though not regular, thin brown hair pushed back from his temples, whiskers of the same colour biding a certain hollowness of cheek, a mouth which was kept persistently closed, soft, dark lashes that told they hid a woman's light brown eyes under them. Those eyes were the one beauty of the man's face, and Alan could not see them, so, after a single glance, he turned from his companion's face to the paper he was reading ; the title of which set him thinking again of his own position, and he rumiuated on what he was to do that night and the morrow, and the many, many morrows to come, whilst he stirred his coifee slowly and re- flectively. Suddenly he lifted his eyes ; he never could tell exactly what induced him to do so at that particular juncture, but he did to perceive that the studious gentleman afore-mentioned had ceased reading, and was looking, not at him, but at his cup, with a curiously amused expression. Meeting Mr. Ruthven's glance, a smile broke out over his face, eye and lip, answering to each other, and both telling the same tale. " I beg your pardon," he said, noticing that the blood rushed angrily into the stranger's dark face, " but I seldom see that done here;" and he looked again towards the coffee cup, though this time with visible embarrassment. " May I enquire what you mean, sir ?" Alan demanded. " Eeally I fear I have been guilty of a piece of unpardonable rudeness," said the other, answering the tone rather than the words of Mr. Ruthven's question. "I believe 1 have made a great mistake, but I imagined you must be an experimenter." " I confess I cannot exactly perceive how what I am, can possibly concern you," was Alan's uncompromising answer; " but I am quite willing to plead guilty to the charge of having dabbled in experiments, if you will tell me bow you jumped to your conclusion." "Easily enough," he replied, "I was not thinking at all about you till I chanced to see you reverse the movement of your tea-spoon, then I felt I must watch you, and I saw that whilst you were revolving some weighty affair in your mind, as a mere matter of habit, you stirred from right to left and from left to right continuously. Now no man but an experimenter does Buch a thing more than once by accident, and 1 could not avoid 12 CITY AND SUBURB. noticing it. I am sorry, however, I did so, and ho^ j-onr par- don for my incivility." The hrowa eyes were fixed on Alan during their owner's delivery of the foregoing speech, wistfully as a woman niiglit look at a man to whom she wanted to offer some passing courtesv, which she was afraid he might misconstrue or refuse. Tliere was at once something so gracious and graceful, frank, simple and true about the face, and the voice, and the words, that Alan found some better spirit than his own answering back for iiim. " You have no occasion to ask my pardon. I was annoyed for a moment, but it was only because I did not know what you were smiling at. I really feel greatly obliged to you for breaking me of a bad habit:" he added after a pause, "a man would not wish to hang out thesign of his occupatioa from every house top." " It is only those who have been among thieves that know the pass-words," was the reply. " Then you have travelled the same road ?" queried Mr. Euthven. " Unfortunately, yes." *' It is not a good one ?" " That depends on whether you travel on foot, or in a car- riage." " Ah !" Alan said this to himself with a kind of catching back of his breath, then continued, " I have known people who set out in a carriage, and ended on foot." " And I have known others who started on foot, and were fain to sit down by the wayside," was the rejoinder. "Then, judging from our united experiences, it is not a good road, traverse it as we will." " So it appears." There was a pause after this assent, during which Alan finished his coffee, and his new acquaintance turned over a fresh leaf in his paper : at last the former began, " 1 have never been in London before, and know nothing of it. Could you give me the name of any place where I might be able to remain for a few days^ — I ought to apologise " " Pray do not do anything of the sort," interrupted the otlicr quickly. " Let me see," and he pushed the magazine aside and thought for a moment. " I suppose you do not wish to be faahion;ibk% and drive to some West-End hotel?" *' Do 1 look as if I did?" returned Allan, " I do not know — possibly not to-night," waa the answer. " There are plenty of good hotels in the city, and close at baud, too." THE CITY. 13 ** I would rather not go to an hotel, I want — " " Something cheap and respectahle," supplied his compa- nion, " am I right, now ? a place you can atford to stay in till you have drawn your hreath and looked about for a little. Yes, I think I do know what might suit, and if you like I will shew you the way to it." " I could not think — " Mr. Euthven commenced. " It is not five minutes out of my way, and it is no trouble," was the rejoinder. " Shall we go — that is, if you will trust yourself to my guidance ?" " I am not afraid of your taking me into bad pasture," Alan answered ; whereupon the other murmured something about his reply exhibiting a refreshing amount of country faith, and led the way out. " This is Walbrook," said Alan, standing still for a moment, when he found himself in the open air, " I must try to re- member that." "And just opposite is the church of St. Stephen, so justly celebrated, &c., as the guide-books say ; and that building a little higher up, which looks like a prison, is the Mansion House. We are going now into Cannon Street :" and so say- ing he turned his face southward, and the two men walked, one in the horse-road, and the other on the side path, to the bot- tom of Walbrook. " We will cross into Dowgate Hill," said Alan's guide, when they reached Cannon Street. " Now, remember," he added, •' if they take you in — I do not mean if they cheat you — but if they can give you house-room, you had better write the name and address down in your pocket-book before you go out to- morrow, for ten to one you will lose yourself, and it is well to know what place to ask for." *' I will," he promised, then said, " I am really quite at a loss to — " " Pray don't — " the stranger cut across his sentence with these words and a light touch on his arm. " We old residents are the finger-posts of the metropolis ; when you have been liere six months, you will find yourself converted into one. It is the only use to which society can put us, and we are very glad to be useful. AVe are reminded of the pleasant days when we were strangers in London, too, and imagined that Hyde Park and the East India Docks were within a stone's throw of each other." " And you call such ignorance pleasant ?" queried Alan. " Yes, in contrast to the excess of subsequent knowledge ; but you have been attending to me instead of thinking about 14 CITY AND SUBURB. our route, anJ now, here we are at last. I will just enquire whether the house is lull or empty." It was neither; so the extremely pert maid, who appeared inside the glass doors, informed both gentlemen, looking at Alan whilst answering his companion. Her garments were of the most ridiculously prim, unfashion- able and respectable eervantish cut, but all the dress-makers and mistresses in England could not have neutralized the co- quettish expression of her face, and the forward at-homcucss of her manner. A strange thought about the world, the flesh, and the devil masquerading in Quaker's clothes crossed Mr. Ruthven'smind, when he looked from her black, saucy eyes to the faultless simplicity of her garments. She was a type of a new race to him, whilst, to his friend, she was only a fair specimen of a class ; he saw her fac-simile, and the fac-simile of hundreds like her, every week in the year. " I am glad you can be accommodated," he said, turning to Alan, " and I hope you will be comfortable. Good night." "My name is Euthven, and I thank you most sincerely." ** My name is Elyot," was the reply, " and it was no trouble at all. Goodnight." Half hesitatingly he put out his hand, which Alan grasped gratefully. That was the first hand which touched his in London ; and like the first foot on your threshold in the new year, or tho first step in life, the fact, simple as it seems, is yet worthy of notice. AVe shall see, as the story progresses, what that hand did for Alan Ruthven, and what he did for the owner of it. All un- consciously, each by that meeting wound into his shuttle fresh threads wherewith to go on weaving the web of life ; and of that web, the one was the weft and the other the woof. Shall I leave my hero thus standing on the door-step, and looking after the retreating figure that walked rapidly away, or follow him in, through the double glass doors, that had to op- posite neighbours a curious significance in their opening. For a married pair, both sides flew wide, and the mistress of the house, followed by one or more servants, stood on the throsliold to receive the flies who came buzzing in cabs, laden with baggage, to her spider's net. If a geutlemau drove up solus to the Family and Commercial, black eyes alone went out to welcome him and his portmanteau, one only of the gla.ss-doors being fastened back for his entrance. AVhilst for the pedestrian, who arrived with baj; in hand aud wrapper on arm, the door THE CITY. 15 jjwurg merely open and sliut, and lie was kept waiting in the ball under the gas-lamp, whilst progress was reported to the soider in her side parlor, who came out and looked at him, and tLsn made him over to the tender mercies of a red-haired female, who usually spent her mornings in looking out of the upper windows, resting two fat elbows on the sill the while. (Shall I leave him here ? I think we must see how he walks upstairs after the aforementioned young woman who ushers him into a small apartment on the second floor, and after pulling down the blinds and lighting his gas, takes up her candle, and trips, as though she imagined ten thousand eyes were upon her paces, out of the room. I cannot refrain either, from telling how, when he had washed and brushed, Alan Euthven was taken in charge again by an- other young person whom he encountered on the stairs, and conducted to the general assembly-room_ofJh_e^.establishinent, where he was turned in among about fifty individuals of both sexes, who were reading, chatting, flirting, and laughing to their hearts' content. Some sat by the open windows, others in the full flare of the gas : there were young girls in very thin muslin dresses, old ladies in remarkably stifl" silks, country farmers and their buxom wives, provincial manufacturers and their half-fine ladyish daughters, a bride and bridegroom on their wedding trip, many commercial travellers who could talk about every place, and who said they knew every person. Alan with his stiff" courtesy bowed to the assembled individuals as he entered, then retreat^ lag to the quietest and shadiest corner of the room, he wrapped himself up in himself, and tried to look comfortable. It is scarcely necessary for me to add that he declined all proffers of books, newspapers, and conversation — that he an- swered men's remarks concerning the crops in monosyllables, and found little to say about London sights in reply to the observations of a faded lady dressed in violet silk, with a tropi- cal growth of yellow ribbons on her head. He set down the girls, who according to their light were well-behaved, unaffected young persons, as plain and underbred ; and it was only by his gentlemanly courtesy and attention during the progress ot an interminable supper, that he at all redeemed his character in tlie eyes of those among whom chance had thrown him. There was one fact patent however to everybody, the new comer was a gentleman ; and the spider who presided at the end of the table, complacently surveying the flies she had succeeded in trapping, had some serious misgivings concerning the chamber she had assigned her guest. Next day she told IG CITY AND SUBURB. him a better apartment was vacant, but Alan declined lier offer. " The room was quite good enough for him," he said, with a certain touch of haughtiness, " at least for all the time he pro- posed occupying it:" and the lady having done licr devoir, curtseyed and was satisfied, though had she seen Ahin on the evening of his arrival, surveying his location, she might per- haps have pressed the point with more vehemence. We will take a look at hiin though before leaving him for the night, sitting on a chair by the bedside, and making a men- tal inventory of every article around. Bed, stained deal, nut over-clean white curtains, trimmed with a sort of fringe tliat was of a most ridiculous design, interspersed witli soft nasty- looking tassels. Counterpane, Marseilles, had seen service and dirt, and the same observation is applicable to the blankets, which, as the weather was warm, ]\Ir. Euthven pulled off the bed when he had completed his scrutiny. " I think the sheets have seen water," he muttered to him- self, as he laid down the corner of one of them, and then his eyes wandered away to the small dressing-table with its large toilet cover and infinitesimal glass. On the table stood a croffc of water, surmounted by a tumbler, which, when held up between the traveller and the gaslight, showed unmistakeable signs of having been hastily wiped on a dirty apron. Alan was assisted to this conclusion by having, by means of a tell- tale mirror, seen the same performance gone through by black ©yes during supper. There might once have been a pattern on the small piece of carpet, but if so it was gone, and the floor looked as though it had never felt a scrubbing-brush from the day the carpeutera finished laying down the planks till then. The towel-horse wanted a foot, and the washstand would have been all the cleaner if Eed llead had devoted a little of her leisure to the mysteries of house-flannel and hot water. There was a close, unventilated smell in the room, attributable poss?ibly to a fire-board which had been put up with the friend! s^ intention of preventing any occupant being suH'ocated with return smoke. AVith some little difllculty, the pulley-cord being broken, Alan managed to open a window, and while tlie hot sultry air of a summer's night in London breathed unrefresh- ingly on his face, he looked up into a sky in which the crescent moon was shining. Then the man's thoughts flew back to the home he had once fancied was to be his for life — many a niglit from his room in the south-west side of the oid house, he had S04?u that samv* HUGH ELYOT. 17 moon sailing away over the tops of the dark silent trees, that looked so grandly solemn just at that season and at that hour. He had heard distinctly in the silence the dripping of not far distant waterfalls, whilst the sweet flowers sent forth their perfumes into the still night air. For a few minutes he beheld the home that had been, but never might again be his ; and then he took his eyes fi'om the silver crescent overhead, and looked out at the red-tiled roofs, and listened to the roar and rattle of tlie fire engines speeding along the streets ; then to the never-ceasing noise of carts and carriages, and last, but not least, to the tramping upstairs and along passages, and giggling and whispering, and loudly uttered good-nights, within a few feet of where he stood. "When at last the house was quiet, and the roll of conveyancea became less continuous, Alan Ruthven drew back from the window where he had been holding a not over-pleasant con- versation with himself. He had reviewed the events of the day, and seen where his purpose faltered, where his strength had turned to weakness, and his courage to fear, and after that bitter self-communion which men must sometimes hold with their own souls, he buried his haughty face in his hands, r.nd out of the very extremity of his need, exclaimed, '' Oh ! God give me energy to be a man !" CHAPTER III. HUGH ELTOT. ** I HAVR been here a fortnight, and done nothing." Alan lluthven was the individual who said this, and he was talking to himself, iuaudibly ; for not being a Londoner, he could think whole sentences without letting other people hear them. *' I have been here a fortnight, and done nothing." He sat in his old seat at Deacon's, with the invariable cup of eoftee before him, whilst he counted up the days he had been in London. He still clung to the first roof he had rested under after his journey, as he might have done to a pair of down-at- the heel slippers, or an easy morning coat. He seemed to know the place, and the place knew him. The waiter made brief remarks about the weather, and brought him what he wanted without having to be told to do so ; the seat he had first selected was generally vacant at the hour he came j be 18 CITY AND SUBURB. had only to speak, and the " Times" was pulled from the midst of the heap of papers lying on the table, and presented to him with the advertisement sheet uppermost. He received a great deal of civility for very little cost; and beyond all, his e\ea had grown accustomed to the room, and it neither looked new nor strange. Everything else in London was new and strange, except hia landlady, and her house, and her guests, and these were in- tolerable to him — wherefore evening after evening he turned into Walbrook, and entered the old cofiee-house and read the paper, and tried to reconstruct his plans. It is not a pleasant thing for a man to find himself alone in London, with the steeds on which he had hoped to travel to opulence, lame of all their legs ; it is a frightful idea that of being lost in the wilderness, and owning no chart. Alan Euthven was thus lost — he had been floundering through London for fourteen days, and found himself at the expiration of that time just so much worse than when he started from Cumberland as this — that every one of his practicable schemes had dislocated a joint, and was perfectly unfit for ser- vice over the rough metropolitan pavements. "With money and myself, the liuthven had modestly con- sidered, I can make my way in any place ; but he speedily dis- covered that whatever a Euthven might have been able to accomplish in other regions, he was, without friends, introduc- tions, or connexion, likely to fare very badly in the city. Localities in the city bad a bad way of lying far apart — landlords had a habit of asking for references, house agents had a few other clients beside himself, and were, moreover, given to attend auctions and being out of town. He did not know where to find the meu he wanted — and was not aware of the existence of back-stairs' porters who enable fortunate acquaintances to avoid clerks and procui-e audience with principals. The hive was swarming with busy bees, who would not take his northern honey — indeed, were occasionally unpleasantly sceptical about his owning the article at all, and he felt dis- heartened like many a better man by the conviction that Lon- don could do without him — that he must work hard before Bitting at her table, and meantime be thankful for her crumbs. Ml". Euthven would have accepted crumbs, but he could not get them, and therefore he said to himself as he sat looking at his coft'ce — "I have been hero a fortnight and have done nothing." He took up the" Times," and turning to the " Oliices" began HUGH ELYOT. 19 to sldm over the " light and airy," " ground-floor," first- floor furnished and unfurnished — suites — sets — together — moderate — and eligible advertisements that are penned by expectant landlords, and perused every day by expecting tenants. He read first of all about the offices, then wandered on into the " residences," and had got deeply interested in an estate agent's legend anent a house with bold carriage drive, ornamental sheet of water, a fabulous number of bed-chambers, diniog and drawing rooms that were noble on paper, the whole with lour acres of land, stabling, cow-shed, poultry-yard, con- servatory and the like for seventy pounds per annum — when he was roused by a touch on his shoulder. " Good evening," said Mr. Elyot, and the reader flung aside his paper and returned the greeting. They had met before — since that night when they first became acquainted — once or twice, but only in a hurried way in the street, or in the passage of the cofiee-house among a number of people elbowing tlieir way out — never near enough and quiet enough to exchange more than a passing word, a " how d'ye do" or bow, or smile. ISTow, however, they were once again in the same box alone together, Elyot looking really glad to see his companion, while Euthven met the advances of the man who had befriended him as he never would have done those of a stranger, had he not been too lonely and depressed to remember anything save the arid dreariness of the land in which he was sojourning. Poverty makes us acquainted with — and solitude, that soli- tude which we never feel except in the midst of a multitude, makes us thankful for strange bed-fellows. Something like this passed through Mr. Euthven's mind as he looked up at the great skylight above his head, then along the narrow room, and last at his companion, before answering that companion's question of — " How do you like London ?" " Not so well as I expected." " That is to say — " suggested Mr. Elyot with a smile. " That I did not expect to like it much, and that I like it little," was the reply. " Ah ! you will soon get aceuatomed to it," said the other thoughtfully. *' I must." Have you ever, my reader, known what it is not only to speak but to feel those two little words, which Alan uttered in a tone that made his companion look at him. Have you ever blindly, or iguorantly, or passionately, or obstinately, or per* 20 CITY AND SUBURB. force taken any course which promised well, but which you could )iot find heart to persevere in to the end, save for that inexorable " I must." ]f you have — if you know anything of that point iu the road of endeavour where the ideal ceases and the real begins ; if you are standing even now looking back at what you have left, and striving to replace with those words, " I must" — determinatiou for inclination, I rejoice even Avhilst I pity ; for if you con the lesson they teach aright, you will find that, though inclination may lead you to duty, duty will never carry you back to incli- nation — and first to find out your duty and then to do it are the tasks One greater than man has given us life to finish. So if you know how to use it properly, "I must" is the solu- tion of the enigma of your daily existence — the key to the cas- ket of peace ; not spoken carelessly, nor lightly, nor defiantly, nor angrily — but calmly, sorrowfully, and determinedly — thus — " I must." Alan Kuthven said the sentence as I mean, and Hugh Elyot wlio knew — God help him — who better — all the five letters implied, answered him back in kind. " You are right ; there is no return along the road of life ; and when you do find yourself in a dark, black tunnel, it is wise to keep up the steam, and make for daylight at the other end. Back — why there is no back to existence except in memory. If you went out of London to-morrow by the road you entered it, you could not undo having made the journey, and therefore you do wisely to make the best and the worst of your position. Are you still w'here I left you ?" " Yes, with thanks for your kindness." " You put me in mind of a little girl for whom I was one© gathering flowers," answered Mr. Elyot laughing. " She asked }ne, befoi'e her nosegay was half couiplcte, not lo give her any more, because she had to thank me each time. ' Don't thank me then, my dear,' said I ; but that was her rule, and she could not make any exception in my favour. You are like my little lady — you imagiue yourself under an obligation, and thank me for the simplest act of courtesy with as much energy as though 1 had made your fortune. Are you at all comfortable ?" " Pretty well, but I have not been juuch accustomed to lodg- ings." " Then you really think you might be better ?*' " And worse by many degrees." "If I have guessed rightly, you purpose remaining in Lon- don for some time," said INIr. Elyot, inclining his head slightly in acknowledgment of his companion's reply. "Perhaps, as HUGH EI.YOT. 21 you are a stranger here, you will forgive my asking why you do not look out for some more suitable abode. Lodgings are better for a permanency than a boarding-bouse, though the latter is more convenient for birds of passage." " But I must have a house," explained Mr. Euthven. *' I beg your pardon," said Mr. Elyot, and tliere was a pause. *' As you do not seem to mind trouble," began Alan at length, " will you be good enough to tell me bow strangers in London manage to get into houses." " AVhy, they take them from the landlords or their agents, I should imagine," was Mr. Elyot's response. "Yes, but how do they take them?" persisted his ques- tioner. " I want to know — in fact, what 1 mean is this, how do strangers satisfy Londoners about their respectability r" " By means of reference. You give them the name of your richest and most responsible acquaintance, and he assures all whom it may concern that you are not a swindler, or forger, or thief, or adventurer. As a rule, references are not of the slightest use, because in Loiidon one would require to have a reference of respectability about the referee ; but still Lon- doners have an idea that they are the thing, and accordingly a man must get somebody to stand sponsor for him." " But suppose he cannot ?" " In that case he is likely to remain unhoused." Alan did not answer, but a sort of disconsolate look came into his face, which moved his companion to continue his sen- tence, " unless indeed he were to offer country references, or six months' rent in advance." " They will not take rent ; they would take a premium, but that is so heavy." " And the country references r" "I only tried thera in one instance; and the landlord, a Biu-ly brute, said he should lose four days at least, and perhaps obtain no satisfaction after all ; besides, he could let his house without stepping across his threshold to people he knew, and did not feel inclined to waste his time in useless correspond- ence." " And you ?" " Suggested that, if he were speaking the truth, it was a pity he had gone to the expense of advertising, and given me tho trouble of calling on him." "A plain observation," remarked the listener. " He seemed to find it so, for he ordered me out of his ofEce." "And you went peaceably, and without the society of the police?" 22 CITY AND SUBURB. " Of course. I bad finished my business, such as it wag : •why sliould I remain ?" " I do not know," replied Mr. Elyot. " Why are we waiting here now ? We seem to have finished our business. If you are not engaged, will you come over to my office with me ? It is very dark and dingy, and small, and dusty, and belongs, moreover, to a man who has been standing in fortune's ante- chamber ever since he began to work ; but still it is quiet, and I want to talk to you. Will you come ?" •' With many thanks." "There now you are my little girl again," said his friend, with the old pleasant smile shining in his eyes. "You will teach me to be equally ceremonious, and to thank you, iSlr. Euthven, for the distinguished honour you do an humble iudi- vidual like myself in entering my office." He had shot wonderfully near the truth, so near that Alan ■winced and felt the arrow had never been sent at random. Out of his sphere though he was in London, he still retained a general impression that society was beneath him ; and his per- petual reiteration of thanks was as much a protest against being compelled to accept help as an expression of gratitude for the assistance afforded. There was no especial reason why he should have supposed Mr. Elyot to be his inferior in any respect ; but still it had been an article of his faith since babyhood, that a Euthven was a superior sort of being to ordinary human beings, and Mr. Elyot guessed the fact. The knowledge, however, did not affect his manner ; for walking in the horse-road as he had done that first night when he showed Alan his way to shelter, he continued to speak as heartily and cheerily to his companion as though pride were a feeling unknown to either. Many a man he had seen come to London with exalted ideas of his own importance, who after a time found a grievously low level. He had seen the nonsense knocked out of poor Irish gentry, who thought at the outset England ought to be obliged to them for bringing histories of their apocryphal ancestors into Saxon society. He had seen youths, wlio at homo would have sneered at tradesmen, glad enough to take a situation under any honest liian, and talk big about having been asked down to dinner with tlieir governor. He had heard Scotchmen who came to the south ibr the sake of its milk and honey deafen people witli genealogical details, and set up for Bomething above the common, and he had likewise seen theui come down heforc thov rose. HUGH ELYOT. 23 It was in liia experience likewise that foreigners who camo vapouring across the Channel with stories of their chateaux and palaces, were glad occasionally to forget their station, and borrow half a sovereign from anybody who was kind enough or foolish enough to lend it to them on the intangible security of their honour and their gratitude. He had seen German Counts, once the companions of princes, stealing into pawnbrokers and raising money for bread on the rings they took off their fingers. He had known English country gentlemen, who thought they at least had a right to expect a welcome from London, hidden away in attics starving and hopeless. He had seen men who picked and chose their work, and who declined this because it was ill-paid, and that because it was not genteel, and something else because they fancied they might do better, only too glad when the daric days came to take what they could get. He had come in contact with poor and proud, and ridiculous and mistaken individuals so often, that seeing the end he could bear with the beginning. Besides, his new friend's pride was to a certain extent less braggart than self-reliant. It was the pride of a man who being lame remembered his strength, and winced at having to lay his hand for help on the shoulder of another ; it was not a weak, sickly feeling which first took fiivours and then denied they had been granted, for it was that of a man who was manly even in his pride, who was determined not to draw back from any course because it hurt him to proceed, who had something to do in life and meant to finish it, and who wanted to walk right away to his object without the aid of mortal being. All this Hugh Elyot saw dimly, and I trust that I have made you, who read these pages, understand by what I have said wherein the pride of Alan E-uthven diftered from that of ordi- nary individuals. There is a pride which is not vanity, nor assumption, nor in- solence, but misery — that from which every Sunday we pray the Lord to deliver us, which rears its giant front against Grod Him- self, and is beaten and trodden down by the Almighty into the dust, so that the man's soul may live. It was this pride which Alan Euthven carried with him a3 his curse — a child of that parent who waged the war in Heaven on which angels looked appalled ; and he we read shall never be conquered till he is " cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are," and " tormented day and night for ever and ever." Typical, oh ! my brother, of the fiery furnace of affliction, through which day and night the poor proud soul must pass. 24 CITY AND SUBURB. till in sacliclotli and aslics it learns to kneel before its !MaItei and Saviour praying to be made whole. I do not think any superficial observer would believe bow charitable to the foibles and failings of bunianity a long experi- ence makes a tliougbtful man in London. Seeing constantly fresh beginnings and remembering old ends, renders him tolerant of present arrogance, knowing the pain, and the sin, and the sorrow^ be becomes pitiful— reilect- ing on what the fresh comer must of necessity pass through before he reaches his point,. if ever, with God's assistance, he does reach it at all, tends to soften his judgment, and enables him to bear with the impatience of inexperience as he would bear with the restlessness of a child. It was thus at all events with Hngh Elyot. Though low in the world's service, he still bad fought the battle of life as bravely as any man, and he was sorry for a fresh recruit who enlisted under the delusion that be should find the strife easy and pleasant. " Tiiis is my den," he said, pausing before a house in Laurence Pountney Lane, and Alan at the words stood still and looked up. A dull, dingy, brick house, without a token of respectable antiquity about it, except an elaborate and strangely carved oak- screen which overhung the enti'auce, two steps up to the door, three windows wide — very black, very dirty, very shabby-look- ing — this was Mr. Elyot's den, and the owner laughed as he followed the glance his companion bestowed first on the house and then on tlie lane in which it was situated. " It is not very much of a place to look at," said Mr. Elyot, "but still I wish I bad as much business as I could manage to transact in my share of it. It may, however, be well for you to know before you commence liouse-huuting in good earnest, that the rents paid for offices in this and such like alleys would secure quite a mansion in the country. We cannot all aflbrd to be merchant princes, and have warehonses and ofiices as grand as Buckingham Palace, but we have all to pay the piper, nevertheless." They were ascending the staircase as lie spoke, a grand old staircase with banisters as thick as young Corinthian pillars, and wide easy steps that creaked under the feet of the new comer. " Our ancestors bad a mania for halls and staircases," re- marked Mr. Elyot. " There is not a good room in the house, but we have a fine approach to them. This is my sanctum," lie added, taking a l(cy from the ledge over the door, aJid throwing it open to admit bis visitor. HUGH ELYOT. 25 Alan entered, and Avhilst his companion pulled down tlie blind and lighted the gas, and picked up some letters that had been pushed underneath the door by the postman, looked about him. He stood in a small outer oflSce or waiting-room, furnished with a desk, stool, one chair, an ink bottle, some pens, and a newspaper. He was able, however, to see into an adjoining chamber, the walls of which appeared to be lined with shelves, on which were ranged books and bottles. Passing by request of JNIr. Elyot tlirough the door of com- munication, lie found himself in an apartment not more than fourteen feet square, which, nevertheless, was provided with two doors and two windows. On one side the fire-place stood a well-filled book-case ; on the other, close to the window, was placed a small library table provided with a desk slant and covered with papers ; near this was a little cabinet fitted with drawers, the slab which formed its top being littered Avith, to Alan, a perfectly intelligible assortment of odds and ends, phials, glasses, little parcels, bits of ore, scales, specimens of earths, and so forth. On the shelves around, he ?aw colours, common and essential oUs, salts, test solutions, &c. The floor was covered with a mesa pattern carpet ; a great map of Australia hung over the mantel-piece, and there were four chairs in the room, one of wkich Mr. Elyot pulled for- ward for his visitor. "Do you smoke r" he asked, taking his cigar case fi-om the chimney-piece. Mr. Ruthven accepted the offered politeness, and when he nad handed him a light, and taken the green shade off" the gas- lamp, Mr. Elyot sat down, and coquetting with his cigar for a moment, remarked : " This is too great a luxury for business hours ; I always have a cigar just at this time before going home." " Then you do not live here ?" " In the City— no." '* INIay I inquire why not ?" "Well, for two reasons — one because nobody does live in the City, and 1, of course, must be as great a fool as my neigh- bours, and another, I cannot alford it." " Is it cheaper, then, to live out of town,?" asked Kuthven. " I do not live out of town but in chambers," was the repl}'. " And where may they be situated ?" inquired Alan. " Why, in all parts flf London, except in the East," ilr. 2G CITY AND SUBURB. Elyot answered somewhat vaguely, then hurried on witli " rents in the City are too high for a man like me to live with my business even if I wished it. Rents here are — " '' You might have finished your sentence as you intended. I should not have been shocked," said INIr, Euthven with a smile ; " you are quite right — at least, judging from my own limited experience, I should say they were enough to dishearten any one." " Yes, a man in London does not work for himself, he works for his landlord. He slaves not to put so much by in the bank, but to meet that perpetually recurring quarter-da3\ Ah! dear, how fast time flies when you have a heavy rent falling due every three months. They are building model lodging-houses for working men, I wish they would build model-offices for us. I pay for these two dark, dirty rooms sixty pounds a year." " That is enormous," observed Mr. Euthven, looking round in anything rather than a complimentary manner. " Not as rents go," was the reply ; " you see this is a good position for business — at least for my business. Strangers have no difficulty in getting to Cannon Street, and once in it they can find my lane. Of course, no retail trade could survive this situation a week — but there, 1 am not a retailer, and be- sides, there is a great diflference between sixty for these offices, and three, four, five, six, and seven hundred a year which the Cheapside people pay for places they cannot turn round in." Mr. Elyot knocked the ash oft" his cigar at this point, and took breath, whilst Alan, after thinking for a few seconds, asked — " For what sum do you think I could get a place ?" " What sort of a place ?" inquired his host. " A local habitation, a place to write from and receive letters at, where I can say people will be able to find me." " Do you mean a house ?" " No, an office — house, or offic3, — I do not care which at present." " That is fortunate, for you are extremely unlikely to get a house. As for the office, the rent would depend entirely on the situation and the business you desire to push. If you M'cro to tell me precisely what you want," added Mr. Elyot, with some slight hesitation, " I might be able to advise you a little." " Well, then, I want what I have before explained — a local liabitation, an address, in fact," said Alan. *' Yes, but what do you want the habitation for ? I do not wish to intrude into your atiairs, aud hope you will not think IIUtlH ELYOT. 27 me impertinent, now we have got on the subject for asking what you are — I do not mean who, or were, but what business, trade or profession — " " I am nothing," answered Mr. Eutliven, simply. " Nothing !" echoed his companion, and lie looked at Alan in blank astonishment. " Nothing — and you in Loudon." "Even so," was the reply. " And what then do you mean to do ?" " Become something." Mr. Elyot took refuge in silence ; he was stricken dumb ; he could only think of one sentence in reply to this speech, and that he did not care to utter. " Yes, it is a neatly turned phrase, but like most of the samo family it has no sense at the bottom of it." He did not say this fortunately, however, for the nest mo- ment Alan proceeded — " Perhaps I was wrong in saying I am nothing ; what I meant to say, was this — that in your sense of the word I am nothing ; neither lawyer, doctor, merchant, shopkeeper, carpenter, nor shoeblack— I am only an inventor." "An inventor," repeated Mr. Elyot mechanically. " Yes, and I have come to London in order to push my in- ventions." " Oh !" exclaimed his auditor, and relapsed into dumbness. " You think me very foolish, I dare say," begau Alan. He was not smoking now, but sat with a fresh cigar between his fingers, looking eagerly at liis new friend. " You think me very foolish." " I think I am very sorry for you." The words broke out almost without his intending to speak them. " I confess I cannot see why you should select me as an especial object for your compassion," said Mr. Ruthven. " Because I know, though you do not, what coming to Lon- don to push the sale of inventions means. I know all you will have to go through, and bear, and undertake. There are very few men who have strength left to hold out to the end ; but you do not look like a man who would be easily broken- hearted ; most probably you will last out the fight and win, but the struggle will be a hard one." " You do not think much of inventions, then ?" asked Alan, somewhat mollified by the concluding portion of the foregoing speech. " No — why should I ? They have broken more hearts and beggared more children than we should easily count between us. Do you see that little stand behind you ia the corner; it 28 CITY AND SUBURB. ■was scarcely worth a life, was it? It is a foolisli, stupid, use- ]e>nTic[s of lier money had been thrown overboard by my fatlier in the vain hope of reaching land ; but notwithstanding tliat slie still chose to cast her fortune along with us; she is a strange individual, and came strangely to be educated and brought up with my sisters. She is the most lonely person I ever kticv/, her father and mother have been dead for I daresay thirteen or fourteen years : she never had brother, nor sister, nor cousin, and, as far as w? all know, she cannot claim connection or rela- tionship with a soul on the face of the earth." " Arid you do not think she would object to a second floor residence ?" " No, I am sure if I said the step were expedient she would live in the garret." " Eeally !" remarked Mr. Elyot, as he balanced a pair oF com- passes on his finger. " And your sisters ?" " Why they must rough it with me, poor creatures ! so there is no use being miserable about them." " And your brother ?" " He knows how we are situated," answered I^fr. Faithvcn, with the air of a man who conceived that the fact of an evil being irremediable ought to give any one courage to face it. " Besides," he added hastily, " they are all young, years younger than I am, and they have buoyant tempers, and do not fret as I should have expected about their changed position." "Have they felt yet that it is changed?" demanded Mr. Elyot. " Of course they have ; they are away from my father's place, staying in a dull country rectory — they have left behind tliciu their servants, and horses, and carriages, and position, and are out in the world without a home." " Still, they have not seen this home," persisted his friend. " You must fancy my relations are very weak not to bo able to—" " Brave the worst as you did," finished Mr. Elyot. " Tes, I daresay they can, but women are generally such slaves to exter- uals. "Would a small house in the suburbs not be — " " I tell you, Mr. Elyot, I will live near my business, and I must have my sisters beside me. How should you like to leave two young girls alone from morning to night in such a place as London ? They ought to have a protector beside them constantly." " And so you mean to shut them up in the attic, and have another edition of Bluebeard and Fatima ?" " I mean to do my duty towards them, with God's help," retorted Mr. Euthvea. 84 CITY AND SUBURB. " Pray forgive me," said his friend quickly, "I am sure you "will do all and more than all that is right. I only meant that whilst you have something to do down here, they will have nothing to do up there, and they might be lonely and dispirited." " Ah ! they will find employment," answered Mr. Euthvcn. " I know my eldest sister can spin out an liour's work over the length of a summer's day, and the other is fond of drawing and reading, and can amuse herself very nicely." " And what about your ward ?" " I am not afraid of her." There was a something very sharp about the manner in which the young man spoke of his ward, and Mr. Elyot felt puzzled to account for it. At last he settled the matter by deciding that the lady was one of those strong-minded women, whose practical sense and preternatural goodness are at times somewhat exhausting to ordinary mortals, and dismissed Mr. Ruthven's ward from his thoughts. Mr. Euthven did not, however, dismiss the idea of taking the upper part of his landlord's house, and as it chanced that Mr. Prince proposed moving his offices to the ground floor vice an absconding tenant departed, the matter was speedily arranged between the contracting parties; and before the second week in October Alan found himself in possession of seven as dull rooms as could have been found in London. How shall I describe them to you, reader, to you Avho know nothing of the City ? of its queer, quaint rooms, of its dens, and lanes, and corners. How shall I tell you first the manner of lane, and secondly the manner of habitation iu Avhieh my g'rls, my dear, handsome, well-born, accomplished young ladies were to make their debut in London. Under happier auspices, they might have taken a faruished house at the West-end ; coming with papa, as had once been talked of when the sun shone with a delusive splendour on the etate of the family finances but a few months before the final crash, they might have been presented at Court and honourably mentioned among the " Misses" in the newspapers. Dressed in silks and laces, with plumes and diamonds, and nil the hundred and one little items that go to make up the tout enseinble of a fashionable belle, these tliree who were com- ing to live in the City would have looked as brave as any in the land. Euby at all events, who might have been born in courts and reared in society, so au-fait was she in all the ways EUBY. 35 and follies and fashions of that little section of mankind whom we call " The World." Poor Euby ; fancy her away in that northern Eeetory read- ing her brother's letter, and tormenting Ina Trenham to say that she knew Alan always made the worst of everything, " Only fancy, my dear, a lane !" she exclaimed, " he must be jesting — and we to live up at the top of a house. He must be mad, do not you think so, Mr. Eevel?" Whereupon Mr. Eevel, a white-haired old clergjanan, who was a sort of thirtieth cousin of the Euthvens, laid down his paper, and mildly enquired what Euby was talking about. " Why about Alan," returned the young lady, " he says he has taken the upper part of a house — second floor and attic for us in Laurence Pountney Lane ; you do not think he can be serious, he cannot expect us to live in a lane. Just imagine our doing such a thing. I remember once driving through a lane in Carlisle with papa, and — " "My dear Euby," interrupted Mr. Eevel, "many of the London lanes are very respectable places ; you must not run away with the idea that because a street has not a grand name it is not a fit place for you to reside ; Park Lane, for instance, is one of tlic most fashionable streets in London, and I once knew a City Eector who lived in a great old house up a ■ Court.' He showed me Eothschild's bank in some lane near the Mansion House — half the thoroughfares in the City are lanes, if I recollect rightly." " But Alan talks of our living up in a second floor, and hav- ing a kitchen in the attic," Euby said, glancing a little further on in her brother's letter. " Now, you know, Mr. Eevel — " " That everything in London is turned upside down, is that what you were going to say ?" asked her relative. " Tes, I do happen to know that, Euby ; for an old schoolfellow of mine was once manager of a great Insurance office in the City ; and he and his wife and three children lived up in the sky, and had their kitchen and servants over their head, and received com- pany and lived in good style. Their rooms were beautifully furnished — I remember how amazed I was when I got into them." "Well, that is consolatory at any rate," observed Euby, adding, in a sort of mutter, "if it had been as I thought, I would rather have stayed here, and this is bad enough, good- ness knows," which latter observation was intended not for Mr. Eevel, who was slightly deaf, but for Ina Trenham, to whom Miss Euthven was in the habit of confiding her sorrows, " And he goes on to say," resumed the young lady after a 86 CITY AND SUBURB. pause, once again causing tlie clergyman to lay down I113 paper, "that the place will be ready for us next week — that he wishes us to leave here on Tuesday, stop the night at Lancaster, and proceed to London by mail train on Wednesday morning. He also adds that we are to travel first-class, as if I should dream uf going second, E'kI that he will meet us at Euston Square Station, wherever that may be. So I suppose we ought to set about packing our boxes." " I should say so, my dear," returned tlie old gentleman in a sort of Lord-make-us-duly-thankful tone, for liuby was too much for him, her uncertain changeable April pattering girlish rain, and fickle gleaming sunshine was trying to tlie frosty equanimity of his December. Hale old winter ! he was wearied of the tripping lightness of her spring-time footsteps ; she hurried on too last, and then was a hundred leagues behind. Bored herself, she exhausted him ; the livelong day she did nothing but talk — she chatted to him, to Murray, to Ina and Loriue ; she was ubiquitous, now beside his arm-chair, now in the garden, now in the village schools, now drilling the church choir ; wherever he went there Ruby went before, or beside, or after. He was not secure from her in the vestry, but he was in the pulpit ; she could not take joint possession of that or the read- ing desk — but from both he saw her Hail, rain, or snow, Ruby attended the two services to the great distraction of the young men of the congregation, and the exceeding edification of herself. And it was this young lady who, vnth a confused mixture of ideas, started in due course as feminine head of the family to take the management of her brother's establishment in London. With the best intentions in the world, without the slightest inclination to mislead her, Mr. Eevel had filled her brain with a melange of the most incongruous and preposterous ideas. Always in extremes, always either in the cellar, or on the house-top, the clergyman had no sooner lifted her mind out of the depths, than her imagination took wing and plumed itself on the mountain summit. If the London lanes were alive with bankers in the City and nobles at the AVest End, if in London a name signified nothing, and thistles meant moss-roses, why, oh! why should INIiss Euthven alarm herself with horrible pictures of visible poverty and vulgarity ; why should not Laurence Pountney Lane be a happy mixture of Park Lane, Eotten Kow, and Belgravia ; \vhy should not Ivuby herself reign mistress over a housft which had once been a palace or next door to one, and glide RUBY. 8? tliroiigli suites of old-fashioned rooms panelled with oak, and hung with heavy draperies, where she could look down from her second story on linos of carriages and throngs of passers- by, whilst Alan held office in the banquetting-hall below, and made a fortune in about three months. Poor Ruby! sitting on the edge of a lialf-packed trunk, she pored over the pages of a book which she had discovered in Mr. Revel's study, drinking comfort out of every page, and sketching in the midst of the wilderness of London a land of promise for her life. Tracking her route on the map, (an old one), she found Laurence rounlney Lane, and then mastered the names of all tlie streets in the neighbourhood ; startiug with the Thames, along the hanks of which she pictured gardens and stately m:insions, she took excursions round the locality in which her iuture tent was to be pitched. Great names she found were associated with the position Alan had chosen; measuring with her forefinger, she discovered that whilst its first joint rested on the end of their lane, the tip of the nail fell on the spot wdiere the Earls of Oxford had their house and gardens. It was called Oxford Place she found, and of course must be a nice place. Her bright eyes, clear as they w^ere, could not see the departed glory of the Veres — an old disused church-yard, hemmed in by blackened houses tenanted by the St. Swithin's beadle, a dairyman, and others of a like useful and respectable order, never crossed her sight. She never beheld the chemical factory at one corner, nor the narrow approach to all — she only learnt at the point of her nail the Earls of Oxford had once held state, and was happy. Dowgate Hill too ; some place near it she made out that there stood a palace Towner Royal, where King Stephen lived, and Edward the Third lodged ; where Richard the Second received Leon of Armenia, and the Princess Joan retired, in the days when Wat Tyler was lord of the Tower. Did not the Tower proper remain ? Was it not a great and notable place, then why not Tower Royal ? What antiquarian rambles the lady, albeit no reader either by nature or practice, took in that old world book ! Just as you, who, in an ordinary way, think authors and tomes super- numeraries in your busy' business world, can yet relish any amount of literary information concerning the country where you are about to consign your goods or yourself— so my intending emi- grant, pretty, useless, frivolous, soft-hearted, weak-headed Ruby Ruthven, swallowed every morsel of food she found to her liking, and digested her hourly meals like an ostrich. 3S CITY AND SUBURB. A envious jumble slie had altogether rattling in her empty head during the progi'ess of her unmethodical packing, and the pieces of information she bestowed on Miss Trenham were as strange as they were abrupt. " Ina, I think lanes must be rather stylish places after all. Lord Sandys' house was in Fig Lane, and your old friend Pepyg lived in Seething Lane, and Avhole hosts of great people had Inns and things in St. Swithin's Lane, and the Bishop of Bangor has or had his palace in Shoe Lane. I am really very glad Alan has taken us a great city|house in a lane. It sounds well when one knows something of history. What do you say, Ina ?" " That dress will not be fit to put on when you get to London," said Ina, pausing in the middle of her own prepara- tions to look at the speaker. " Tilings are nuisances," observed Miss Euthvensententiously, " like a good soul, fold it up for me, will you ?" " I ought not," answered Miss Trenham, holding out her hand nevertheless. " Ina, you are a cold-blooded animal," remarked Euby, " I declare I W'Ould just as soon live with a fish as with you. It is a great pity old What-do-you-call-him that stayed in his tub did not live in these days. Ton would just have suited him, and it was really a pity to spoil two houses — I mean tubs with such a pair. Then you might have been Mrs. Alexander — " " Diogenes I suppose you mean," corrected Ina who was accustomed to Miss Euthven's flattering comments, and in whom familiarity and criticism had bred its usual quantum of contempt. " Alexander was the king, and Diogenes the cynic — " " Tou are as good as an Encyclopedia," retorted the young lady, " 3'ou are as wise as Solomon and as prosy as Mr. Eevel. I am sure it does not matter in the least about them — what is the use of troubling oneself talking of people who have been dead for thousands of years, and that I, for one, don't believe ever lived at all." " You seem to forget," replied her auditor, " that it was you, not I, who dug up their remains." " Dear me, what a memory you have," was Euby's answer, " could you not now, if you tried, repeat every syllable of * Paradise Lost,' without a mistake ? I reall}"- think you might ; and I know, if you were not an ill-natured old thing, yo\i could get twice as many clothes into that box as it Avould be possible for me to do even if I sat lap every night for a week trying. I wish you would be good-natured ibr once and help me; you know I never could pack, nor contrive, nor do anything ; Alan RUBY. 39 got all our cleverness and his own too, it was a great sbame. Will you now, like a clear, fussy, stupid old maid, put these things right for me ?" " So that you may have time to pursue your studies," re- marked Ina, moving into the midst of the chaos out of which she was expected to bring forth order, whilst Miss Euthven sat down on the floor, and stretched out her hand for the book which so enchained her, " I think it my duty,*' she observed, " to acquire all the in- formation possible concerning our future home: and if you consider the matter calmly over, you will see how very good it is of me, who you know detest reading, to wade through so many pages for the enlightenment of other people. "We ought all of us to know something of London, so that we may not look like simpletons when local subjects are spoken of, and I will tell you and Lorine every particular which is of the slightest interest as I go on. You ought to think yourselves very fortunate, you will have the body without the clothes, as Alan says ; I shall be as good as a — what do you call it ? you know Ina." " Abridgment." " Yes, * Abridgment of the History of London,' and now children, do not interrupt me. Lorine, what was the use of your coming in at all if you do not work. Don't you see, Ina is going to be so good as to finish my packing. Can't you help her to fold ?" Having delivered herself of which practical suggestion. Ruby relapsed into antiquarianism, and remained silent for a few minutes, at the end of which time she announced that Buck- ingham House was in Bread Street, and " where do you think, Ina, the Bishop of Hereford lived ?" " Now, my dear Ruby, how should I know anjrthing about the Bishop of Hereford ?" " Well, that is just what I tell you, and some of us ought to read so that we may know. He lived in 'Labour in Vain Hill.' There's a name for you : but it is not as bad as Broken Wharf, where the Earls of Norfolk had a place ; and just listen to this, Ina: — Milton was born in Bread Street, and Pope was born in Lombard Street, and Sir Clm-istopher Wren, who built St. Paul's, you remember, resided in Walbrook, the very place Alan says he first entered a house in London ; and these lanes, and hills, and things are close to us ; I can find them all in half a minute. I wish to goodness we were off", I don't believe we shall ever leave this stupid old Rectory, I am tired to death of it." 40 CITY AND SUBURB. "Euby, you are surely preparing a grievous tlisappoiniment for yourself,'' was Miss Trenham's reply to the foregoing sen- tence. " If the City were anything at all like what you ima- gine, how could Alan afford to live in it; only consider his means, the thing is impossible." "I do consider his means, and the thing is not impossible.'* returned Kuby ; "of course I am not so ibolisli as to think all these great people are living next door to Alan now ; no, 1 have a little sense, Miss AVisdom, though you do not give me credit for any ; and I only expect to find the city respectable, not fnshiouable. Mr. Eevel will tell you about the great old houses there are in it, and I. should not be at all surprised if Alan had dropped into one of them, perhaps an ancient palace or inn, as many of those grand establishments were called. AVe shall live in rooms so large and dark that you at one end will not be able to see me at the other; and I will try to find out seci-et passages, and you shall help me." "But Alan told us expressly that the house was dreadfully small," persisted Miss Trenham. "Alan is a croak, and so for that matter are you, Ina. Can you not see that he wants to prepare us for a different sort of house from Tarn Hall? I suppose you do not imagine, I expect, to find a place in the city like that. It is very good of Alan to make the worst of a thing, so that we may not be disappointed, but that is no reason why I should believe the worst ; 1 intend to be delighted with London, and it is very wrong and unkiud of you, Ina, to strive to make me discontented." "I do not want to make you discontented, Euby." "Then what do you do it for?" asked Miss Euthven, imme- diately talcing up her book and seeking refuge in silence, a state into which she never voluntarily retired unless some ono was gaining an advantage over her. Ina sighed — she was thinking of a letter she had received from Alan, which stated more precisely than any of his com- munications to Euby the position of his affairs. It was just the sort of letter which a man like Alan might have been ex- pected to write to a girl like Ina, whom he did not love as a brother, nor yet as a lover, but still whom he trusted implicitly. It was to set her free — not from any engagement, for Alan was as likely to marry her as to propose to the Monument — but from her Quixotic determination of sharing the famil}-- misfortunes wheresoever the family went. He told her all ; fancying it was his duty he gave her a list of his disappoint- ments and mortifications, and derived comfort from the recital. He painted the dull lane, and the shabby house, and the dark EUBY. 41 rooms in tlieir blackest colours : he represented how tardy liia Buceess, if it ever came, would be in its arrival — spoke of tiio economy they must practise, the style of living they should have to adopt, and then he summed up by saying he would rather she did not accompany his sisters to London — that al- though he should not strive to influence her decision by any means, except laying the actual state of affairs before her, still H Avould be a relief to him to know that beyond the one fatal loss which he would spend his energies in striving to replace, she had not been crushed by the same ruin that had fallen on tbem. It was a very touching letter, one which did not affect Ina the less because she knew Alan had not meant to make it so. The weariness, and hopelessness, and loneliness that underlay every word were plainly perceived by his ward ; and she wrote back to say that, till they cast her adrift, she should still like to be with the Euthvens wherever they journeyed. " Place is nothing to me," I copy her words as Alan read them. " Place is nothing to me, who was born thousands of miles from here ; home is nothing to me, who have no home in the wide world ; friends are nothing to me, who have none on earth but you ; money is nothing to me, who have more than enough left to satisfy my wants. If you cast me off"," she added, " I shall not now where to turn or what to do. Because you were all so ]:ind to me, I may perhaps have forgotten the difference in our birth and station, and hung myself on a family of which I had no right to consider I was a member ; but still I cannot loosen all old ties of my own free will, nor separate myself from you till you say explicitly that you think me an intruder — that for your and your sisters' sakes, and not for my own, you wish me to go; say this, and I will unpack my boxes, and search the 'Times' for some one who wants a young lady to take care of." Thi.« he could not say, and Ina was perfectly aware of the fact. She knew that, though neither wife, sister, nor betrothed, yet she was more necessary to him as a friend than perhaps wife, sister, or betrothed might ever be. She remembered that they had dasagreed and argued; but she also recollected tbat, whenever Alan had wanted a person he could trust to talk to, he had come to her ; and she did not forget that he always waa willing to listen to her advice, that he respected her opinions ; and while something of vanity floated on the surface of her mind, when she thought how she, weak woman, had more than once led him, strong man — there lay in the depths of her heart, on the shrine of her Holy of Holies, a better and nobler reasoa why she should not forsake Alan in his trouble. 42 CITY AND SUBURB. On the threshold of another world, Mrs. Euthven's spirit geemed to have turned back to whisper to the girl who had been more than a daughter to her, " Ina, if ever you think of the love I gave you, remember Alan," and then before she could catch more than the words, " patient — pride — " Mrs. Euthven was dead. The lady though had done something before she went, given a strong nature an object on which to expend its strength, a Lome mission to one who might otherwise have sought for one afar off. And this was Ina's secret, the trust which she held from the dead, which made her less ward than guardian, and rendered lier not with Alan only, but with all the rest, patient, and long sufferiug, and kind. But not perfect. Alas ! my reader, did you wish her to be so ? I cannot paint what I have never seen — I cannot describe what I have never known. There be some on the earth, it is said, who are almost with- out flaw, but my path has been far from them. When the rivers flow without rippling over the pebbles, when the trees cease waving in the wind, wTien the tide leaves no ridges on the sand, and the flowers bloom without fading under the sum- mer's sun, when there is no more sorrow and no more sin — then may I hope to meet on this side heaven with a woman so inspired by duty, so regenerate by God, that she is perfect even as his angels. CHAPTEE V. EEALITT. Perfectly happy in the ideal she had formed of London, deaf to Ina's warnings and disagreeable references to dates. Miss Euthven completed her preparations for departure ; and in due course, bidding farewell to Mr. Eevel, started from the old Cumberland rectory to join her eldest brother in the home he had chosen for them all. No matter how many individuals chanced to be on the road or in the room with Euby, she had a curious faculty of absorb- ing all other identities in lier own. If you had said that a dozen people started from Cumberland with Miss Euthven, you must have found yourself at the end of the journey speaking of the whole collectively as Miss Euthven and party. Separately they might be distinct persons, but when Euby REALITY. 43 was of the company tliey merged into her train ; just as the goodly assemblage of subjects who cheer Her Majesty when she goes to open Parliament, highly respectable rate-payera though they may be at other times, are on such occasions simply part and parcel of a crowd. Whensoever Miss Beauty condescended to appear as prima donna, everybody else had either to fall in amongst the spec- tators or the orchestra. Even first fiddle was not the part it would have suited her to play at all, she shone as a solo per- former, drowning other voices with her ow^n. In fact, no one was anybody when Kuby appeared on the stage, and for this reason I must decline recording what I^Iur- ray, and Lorine, and Ina felt as they travelled out of Cumber- land and through Westmoreland to Lancaster where they were to sleep. One by one the landmarks they had known faded from sight, the dark lakes and the towering mountains were left behind, and some eyes with tears in them were strained back to catch the last glimpse of a country which could be home to them no more. But the feelings of the party were outwardly represented by lluby, whose motto, " Forward," was repeated so often and with such excellent reasons for its iteration founded on her recent studies, that Murray at last expressed his opinion that she was " an idiot," which remark called down a severe rebuke from the head of the little band. *' I have made up my mind," she was graciously pleased to explain, " exactly the sort of house Alan has chosen for us ; I know it as well as if I had seen it, and at any rate, let London be what it will, it must prove a pleasant change from that stupid old Eectory. Mr. Eevel is a very good sort of man in his way, but he is dreadfully tiresome, and I think almost doting. What do you say, Ina ?" Ina had not seen any symptoms of dotage, and said so. " Ah !" remarked Murray, " Euby did not fiind the Parsonage sso dull always." " Will you be quiet, sir?" exclaimed his sister; " no one asked you for your reminiscences." " I have great pleasure in giving them to you, nevertheless." " You are always extremely disagreeable, Murray ; but I can tell you that no matter who had been at the Eectory, I should have felt delighted to go to London all the same. I am wearied to death of the country, nothing to see in it but black old hills and trees, and rivers, and now and then a lake or two — I don't see the good of the country." Meanwhile in town Alan Euthven was preparing for their 44 CITY AND SUBURB. arriral, making the dull rooms look almost cheerful with light papers and paint, which the housekeeper told him it would be one person's work to keep clean in London. He devoted himself to upholstery, and furnished their single sitting chamber with couches and chairs covered with warm crimson damask, that made the place homelike and pleasant, Tlie small sleeping apartments were hung with chintz, and he tried to forget nothing which it was probable the girls would require. He felt awkward in his new character of furnisher and arranger ; but it came in the road of duty he had chalked out for himself, and he accepted the part as he would have ac- cepted any other which circumstances allotted to it. Not as a martyr though, for he was, after his kind, devoted to his fi\mily. He had not a scheme for the future which ex- cluded sisters or brother from his view ; he never took a flight into the possible— to be — but he cari'ied them along with him. He had no separate and selfish views for himself alone, none for Alan as antagonistic, to Murray or Lorine ; and if even iu liis poverty he looked on Alan Huthven as something superior by reason of sex and primogeniture to the rest, who may blame him when we remember that he was the representative of one branch of an old house — that he had been brought up the heir of Tarn Hall, who was to portion the girls and purchase a fat living for his brother. And he had still to do these things, only without Tarn Hall ; he had to preserve an ancient name untarnished ; he had to fight out such a fight between himself and mankind with brains alone, as no Ruthven had ever previously dreamed of attempt- ing except with the sword ; he had to support and provide for Ruby and Lorine, and push Murray forward in the world : and as if this were not enough, he had to toil, and save, and pinch to repay Ina the great loss she had sustained through hia father. AVork sufficient for any one, to be bread winner, and father and mother, and thinker and guardian, all iu one ; to have such a responsibility as Ruby on his shoulders, and to desire at the same time to do right, and to make the girl happy and to keep her straight. But for her, he might have made plainer furniture and fewer alterations suffice ; but for her, he would not have dreaded as he did, though half unconsciously, their advent in Loudon ; but for her, it might have been that he would have chosen a subur- ban house, or perhaps permitted them to remain iu Cumber- land, till his hopes had become certainties ; but for Ruby ahuosfc every step in his career v.ould have beeu diU'ereut— but she was REALITY. 45 tlie necessity in his life wliicli knew no law ; he was proud and tender of her, hut he was also fearful — fearful as only a strong resolute man can be about a weak, frivolous woman. He had no security one day as to what Ruby would do the next ; there was no rudder in her boat on which he could lay hold with a certainty of bringing her safe to port — all he could do was to take her light craft in tow, and by keeping her always in sight, preserve her from any one of the many casualties which he foresaw might shipwreck her happiness in the voyage of life. Thus he felt constrained to bring her to London, and it was for the same reason that he strove to lighten the dark rooms, and fill them with pretty furniture, and render the certain change as little of a shock as possible. "If Ina had been Euby, and Ruby Ina, what a different position mine would have been," he sometimes reflected bitterly enough, and he thought this more frequently than ever on the day of tbeir expected arrival, when he left his office half-a-dozea times to look once again at the rooms, and tried to persuade himself that they were very comfortable apartments after all. " And the lane," he muttered, when having reached Cannon Street, he turned to look for a moment at the dingy houses and the narrow footpaths. " And the lane — but surely she must be prepared for something like the reality. At any rate, it is not my fault if she is not." Comforting himself with which consideration, Mr. Euthven proceeded to Euston Square, which he reached a few minutes before the Northern express was due. Somehow the days had slipped away very rapidly since his arrival in London, and it seemed to Alan scarcely credible that summer and autumn had really gone, and that the station lamps were actually required. It was but a week, at least so it appeared to him, since he sat that August evening looking over the great city on which the warm rays of the sun were falling, and now the air was damp and chilly, and the nights were long and dark ; the days had fled, not passed, since the evening when you, my reader, first made his acquaintance, and Alan taken away for the time from desk-work and business, stood marvelling at the pace they had travelled. He thought about the country as he had seen it last, its fields rich with corn, its trees just touched with yellow, its meadows filled with lazy, fly-tormented cattle lying under the hedges idly content, and yet still with a grievance or two to complain of. He remembered the green and the gold which had greeted his eyes everywhere on his road to London ; the green that clad the earth, the gold which trimmed her garments, 46 CITY AND SUBURB. the gorgeous flowers of thousand colours she wore on her matronly bosom, and the clear unclouded sky that looked down on all. He remembered the summer glory ; it seemed but so short a time since he liad gazed on the pageant, that he could scarcely persuade himselc he beheld it no more. The wliite dusty roads, the cool wayside fountains, the grateful shade of occasional woods, and the rippling of insignificant brooks ; these things were so much more real to him than the present wintry sky, that Alan Euthven had, as it were, to shake his mind before he could realise that the country througli wliich his sisters were passing, was bare and dreary, with November mists hanging over everything — the leafless trees, and the endless succession of unwholesome-looking turnip fields, and the dreary Chilteru Hills, past which the express sped on. With a velocity almost equal to the rate at which the days of Alan's sojourn in London had travelled, but still not rapidly enough to keep time at Euston Square. Ten minutes, fifteen minutes late. Ah ! it is signalled from Camden Town at last, and then a man, who looks as if he had never before done the least bit of work of any sort, and seems very much ashamed of doing this, sliakes a little white flag at the black tunnel beyond, and all at once life is infused into the porters and officials, and cabmen get down from their seats and open the doors of their vehicles and shut them, and then climb into their places again ; and the North Western Eailway om- nibus, which had started from the " Spread Eagle " in Grace- church Street heaven only knows how long before, came into rank ; and a sort of artificial activity was got up in the station by people who rushed about doing nothing ; but as a Avhole the arrival of the express Avas a failure, though the engine steamed as grandly up to the platform as if it were the pre- cursor of a whole excursion train full of passengers. Alan, misled by a porter, had gone too far down the platform to find the carriages he wanted; and when he discovered his error and turned, the passengers were swarming out, and driving off in cabs, and gathering around luggage. He could not see those he had come to meet anyAvhere ; people rushed between him and the carriages, and made barri- cades of boxes, and — " AVell, old fellow, hero we arc at last," cried a cheery voice in Alan's ear, " and how are you r"* " Where are the girls ?" " Straight on, don't you see them ?" and Murray, who had persisted in travelling second class, pointed to a group collected REALITY. 47 round the luggage van, in the midst of which his brother be- held Eubyand Lorine, whilst Miss Trenham stood a little apart, looking out for Iiim. Just at the inomcnt she caught sight of Murray, and came to meet the pair. " I thought you had somehow missed us, or we you," she said ; but Alan was too busy to attend to her, and almost rudely put aside her remark witli, " Who is that Euby is tallc- iug to ?" " Oh, our travelling companion," she answered, " he is assist- ing her to find our fifteen boxes :" and Ina shrugged her shoulders with a sort of weary impatience, whilst Alan made his >way into the group, elbov/iug twenty clamorous travellers as he did so. " That is mine," cried out Ruby, as a black trunk was ex- tracted from the midst of chaos. "I wish some one would come, I cannot think where my brothers are ; I am sure we shall lose half our luggage." " I will see to it with pleasure, if you first allow me to put you in a cab," the stranger Alan had noticed was saying, when she turned and saw her brother. "Now, Ruby, how many bags and boxes have you?" he asked, drawing her arm within his. " I will find them all ; MiuTay has got a cab ; are you much tired ?" and he would have hurried her off" the plaifonn, but Miss Ruthven was too well bred to leave her late assistant without a sentence of thanks. " She was obliged to him, so much obliged, he had been so kind in helping them about the luggage," this was v^aid witli a look which introduced the stranger and Alan, compelling the latter, sorely against his inclir-atiou, to raise his hat in ac- knowledgment of the other's salutation. And then with a smile and a courtesy, the beauty said good- bye, and was carried off by Alan — Ina and Lorine following. Alan could not avoid glancing back to see how his ward and the stranger parted ; astifl', cold bow, as slight as the scantiest politeness well admitted of, was Ina's leave-taking, and it made Alan angry. " "Why could he trust the one and not the other ?" and he thrust the three girls unceremoniously into one cab, whilst he took another for Murray and the luggage, breathing somehow more freely when the last portmanteau was fastened on, and the address given, and the cabs rattling over the paved streets towards the City. Then he could take Ruby's hand almost lovingly in his, and ask her how she was, and whether she dis- liked comino; to London. 48 CITY AND SUBURB. " For you know," he added, " the house I have got is a poor dull place, and you must make up your mind to find tilings very different from home." " Oh ! Alan, I know I shall be delighted ; I am thankful to be in London on any terms, and I am sure the house is beauti- ful, and I feel so glad to be with you again, and you look so well, does he not, Ina ?" Thus appealed to. Miss Trenham could but sav what she thought, that he was looking thin, which remark Euby received with — " There now, you are croaking again ; I declare, Alan, I never was so tired of anybody in my life as of Ina 'the last fortnight. She has been singing a perfect whatever you call it, telling me the most dreadful things about London, and trying to make me perfectly wretched. If I had not been a model young lady, I am sure she would have frightened me into pro- posing for Mr. Revel, and settling down as a country parsoness. I really think that was what she wanted." The person thus referred to had turned her head towards the window at the commencement of Miss Ruthven's sentence, and kept her eyes obstinately averted from Alan, who she felt was looking at her. " I am afraid, Euby," he said, "you Lave been idolizing your new home, or else Ina, I am sure, would not have tried to spoil your picture. Is it not so ?" " No, not at all ; she knew no more of London than I, and yet still she would say the most dreadful things about it. I went entirely from your letter and Mr. Revel's account of the City ; I have built no castles at all, but I am delighted to be out of that stupid old Rectory, and in this beautiful town. What is the name of this place, Alan ?" " ITolborn-this is Holborn Hill." " Dear ! it's not like a hill in the least, do they call such a little bit of a thing a hill in London ? But, Ina, Ina, do look at that great huge church ; there's a church ! Oli ! I am so glad to be in Loudon; and what is that horrid black building on our right ?" " That is Newgate." ""Well, it is ugly enough to be anything," observed Ruby, " What a narrow street. Ina, would not you think the omni- buses were going to crush us ; now we are getting to a wider part. Oh ! Alan, what is that ?" " The Post Office ; and see, Ina, this is St. Paul's." " I perfectly adore Sir Christopher AVren," remarked Ruby as she brought her head into the cab again, "for buikliug such a place. He lived in AValbrook, Alan " REALITY. 49 " Did he ?" They were iu Canuoii Street now, and her brother was thinking of the coming lane, so the words were not uttered Avith much spirit. " Yes. Are we near liome now ? it seems to me we have been driving about for hours. Ina, do not you want to see the house ?" " Not particularly, still I shall be glad to rest a little." " You look completely exhausted," said Alan, who now noticed her particularly for the first time. " I fear the journey has been too much for you." " The packing was," interposed Loriue ; " she did the whole of it. Murray's and all." " And I have been reading for the family," added Euby, who perhaps felt it was necessary to account for her time. " I have been rummaging old books, so that we might know all about London : I can tell you such hosts of things when we come to explore ; but there was nothing of Laurence Pountney Lane at all." "I should think not," replied Alan, somewhat bitterly; " here it is, at any rate." " This !" ejaculated Euby, and she fell from her seventh heaven on the instant. Alan opened the cab door, and sprang on to the pavement ; then he helped out lua, and went to see about the luggage, leaving Murray to assist Euby and Lorine. " Do you suppose this is the house ?" asked Miss Euthven of Ina, as she saw by the gas-light a dingy hall covered with a worn and dirty oil-cloth. " Oh ! indeed we can't live here." " Hush ! Euby ; don't let Alan hear you. Is this the house ?" she added, addressing herself to her guardian ; " may we go in?" " I am sure this is not the place, surely it cannot be !" and his eldest sister's hands twined themselves implormgly round Mr. Euthven's arm, as he led her up the staircase. '^ It is indeed, my poor little sister," he answered in a low and very sorrowful voice ; " But it is not so bad as you think ; come up to our own part of the house ; don't cry, dear, I cannot bear it." But the more he asked her not to cry the faster her tears* flowed, till by the time they reached their sitting-room she was weeping as much as she knew how. " Dear Euby, do not !" Alan entreated ; yet still Euby re- fused to be comforted. " What a nice room !" exclaimed Lorine as she came in, followed by Miss Treuham and Murray. 50 CITY AND SUBURB. " WTiat a beautiful fire," eclioed Murray ; " I declare Euby is crying. What on earth is the matter now ?" " She Is tired," Ina suggested ; but Miss Euthven indignantly rejected this explanation. " Oh ! no, no, not tired," she sobbed out on her friend's shoulder, "but heart-broken !" This was a pleasaut commeucement for Alan ; but he did the •wisest thing possible under the circumstances, left the apart- ment and retired to his office till Euby's tears should have abated. Long before his return Ina had persuaded her to dry her tears and look about her, and by the time tea was ready for the ladies, and the ladies ready for it, Miss Euthven had " reconciled herself to her position, and determined to make the best of everything." " For Alan's sake," added Miss Beauty impressively, " and because it is my duty, and I want to do my duty, Ina." How far the liglit paint, and the pretty paper, and the snug chairs compassed Euby's conversion to duty, it is not for me to say ; certain it is that she was just one of those tiresome women who make the best of everything till they weary of it ; and if she had been shipwrecked on some distant island, she would first have shrieked till she had no voice left, and then have fascinated the chief of the tribe and played at being queen, till she tired of her lord and her subjects, when she would have compassed Heaven and earth to get oflF in the first vessel the sail of which she saw against the horizon. She was a girl a sensible man might have been drawn into marrying, and cursed his own folly afterwards for doing so. Beguiled by her apparent pliability, a lover would possibly have indulged in visions of moulding and steadying her cha- racter, and found out after marriage that she was capable of *' formation" as a sand bank; that he might as well think of leading a will-o'-the-wisp as Euby ; that whatever sense, and knowledge, and feelings God had given her were so twisted that they only served to make her more inconsistent and dii- ficvdt to understand. It would be useless for me to attempt to state Euby's cha- racter, or rather want of cliaracter, in words ; it is easy enough to tell what slic did, but to say why fihe did it, would be an impos- eibility. Her actions were palpable enough, but her motives, supposing she had any, were inscrutable. Miss Trenham was haunted by an idea that she understood Euby thoroughly ; but though she Avas a woman judging a woman, I rather question the fact. Mux-ray, likewise, laboured under a delusion that he REALITY. 51 could touch the wheel which set his eldest sister's mental machinery in motion ; whilst Alan vainly sought for one rock in the girl's sea of frivolity whereon to huild up a superstruc- ture of steadiness and discretion. All in vain, the elfort of moulding a rational woman out of Euhy Euthven was a lahour not like that of Sisyphus, but rather akin to the work set the areli-enemy of mankind by him who after the fiend bad given him wealth, and honour, and fame and rank, claimed but one gift more. " Spin me a rope of the sand of the sea shore," he said, " and my soul is yours." So the devil has been spinning ever since, but as he spins, the rope falls to pieces, and you may see fragments of the bootless toil lying on the shore like the coil of a rotten cable. Evidence that the task set has been attempted, but never accomplished — type of the result which they who try to mould a character like Euby's may expect. There was only one fact in connection with Miss Euthven which everybody who knew her took for granted, viz., that she never would act like anyone else, and accordingly none of the party felt surprised, as you, my reader, might have done, when Euby having been ^prevailed on to take off her bonnet and bathe her eyes, and assume her place at the tea- table as mistress of her brother's establishment, commenced making the best of things, by praising every article in the room, and speaking ecstatically of the bread, and wondering where Alan got such beautiful milk, and declaring that the London butter was fifty times better than what they had at the Eectory. And looking contentedly with bright eyes at the blazing fire, sitting back in one of the new arm-chairs with her head leaning against the crimson cover, and her white hands peeping from under her crape sleeves, she was so very beautiful, that a diiferent man from Alan might have found it dif&cult to bo angry at her inconsistency. Whilst for him, was she not a Euthven and his sister — the female head of his house, lovely, and graceful and ac- complished ? "What more could he want ? Was not the gem with its flaws better than the rude stone, intact though it might be ? It was better to take the racer with a blemish than the cart horse without fault ; and yet' might the gem not be perfect, and the steed sound ? Might Ina not have been Euby, and Euby Ina— why could not his father's daughter have resembled the daughter of his father's steward ? How did it happen that in this oase blood was no better 52 CITY AND SUBURB. tban water? that tbe cLild of the rough old Norihumhrinn yeoman proved herself in every emergency of life to be niailo of stouter, better, nobler stufi*, than the descendant of a proud and haughty race ? Beauty — Ina had enough and to spare. Grace — Ina's move- ments were more in accordance with Alan's ideas of feminine perfection than tlie more rapid gyrations of his sister, whu;0 normal state was one of fever. Mind — Ina's head was not like Euby's, a library of empty shelves; she had tact and sense and education. Accomplishments — could not Ina Tjt.ii- bam make melody on all sorts of instruments? had not muMic come to her as a beauty, a gift direct from God? liad she not been wont in the long lonely evenings at the Hall to play on the organ at the end of the Armour Gallery till Mr. Putl<- ven himself was won from his laboratory to listen, whilst Alan, standing by one of the windows and looking out over the park flooded with moonlight, felt rather than heard the har- mony which was to be forgotten in life no more. And in other matters she was at least on a par with most young ladies. Her French was good enough for England, and she knew sufficient German to translate the few songs she Buug in that language, and she could dance a little, and draw a little, and had read a great deal. Not in any sort of regular fashion, it is true, but after a man- ner of her own, digging all kinds of quaint attiacf ivo volumes out of the library or lumber-room, and dipping into such por- tions of them as happened to strike her fancy ; she was edu- cated as much as many women — more perhap? than most. She was, as I have said, pretty and graceful; but she had a fault, grievous in women before they are turned forty — she was sen- sible — she w^as more, she was practical. What a wasting of the gifts of God to make a practical woman pretty, when she would have served just the same purpose had she been ugly. And yet, perhaps, not quite the same ; for Alan Euthven might not have listened so readily to her w^ords, had she not been exactly in mind and person the woman she was; spoiled for a belle, but not for a friend, she was yet provoking, for she was so eternally right. It would have been a comfort, as Euby often told her, to find that always available common sense at fault. " I like every sense but common sense, Ina," Miss Euthven was wont to remark ; " and I hate it — and that is just the sort you have." And for once Euby chanced to be right ; for Ina possessed the one sense Miss Beauty wanted — which Miss Beauty hated, and which Alan had faith ia. It was the sense the man's tii-ed REALITY. 53 heart was wanting to talk to ; and accordingly, when Kuby had exhausted her praise, and her wonder, and her aftection — when she was beginning to show signs of unmistakeable weariness, and objected, in a fit of virtuous economy, to more coals being put on the fire, Mr. Euthven suggested, first, that the travellers should retire to rest, second, that he should go with Murray to the lodgings that he had taken for him till the housekeeper vacated her present rooms, and, third, that Ina should inspect his office. "Oh! delightful!" cried Ruby, wide awake in a moment at the prospect of any change. " I propose that we all go in a body to see Alan's mine. I second the motion, and I carry the caudle." " You are too tired to go down stairs again to-night, dear : you will be as white in the morning as a ghost," said her elder brother, whilst Murray, with less ceremony, took the light from Euby's hand, and observing that she ought to have been ia bed hours before, marshalled her to her room. "And why am I always to be tired," she demanded piteously, " and Ina not ? Why is she to go and see things that are not shown to me ? Alan, it is not kind of you." " My dear Euby, you shall see the whole of London if you like to-morrow, but now you ought to be in bed. I cannot have you knocked up the first day you come. Good night, Lorly— good night, Euby ;" and Alan stooped and kissed the forehead of each sister, making, perhaps, his farewell of the eldest a trifle the longest and tenderest. " My dear, dear brother," she said, flinging her arms round his neck, " I am so thankful to be near you again. I feel safe now I have you beside me. Tou will let me help you, won't you ? I mean to be of such use." There came a film over Alan's eyes, as he strained the slight figure to his heart— a film caused, it might be, by the shadow of the darkness to come. " I will try to make you happy, and to keep you safe, Euby," he whispered thickly. " God bless you ! Good night !" " Good night !" Euby answered, and she retired into her room with an air of unwonted gravity. Half undressed,^ she seated herself beside the toilet table, and read a few of the Psalms, having concluded which unwonted religious exercise, she turned to Lorine, who, little accustomed to disrobe without the assistance of some sort of maid, was struggling desperately with a refractory knot in her stay-lace ; and observed that she was "so sorry she had not asked Mr. Eevel to lend tliem flair's sermons, for they would have helped her to do her duty." 54 CITY AND SUBURBi "I wisli," answered Lorine, "that though you have not Blair's sermons you would help me with tliis lace." " Oh ! cut it at the top," was Euby's practical advice, as she shifted her position a little, so that during the process of hair brushing she could command a view of her face. " I wonder what Ina is about, she never said good night, and I wanted her to tell me where she put all my things. Just unlock that box, Lorly, and see what is in it, like a good girl. If I were not afraid of meeting somebody on the stairs, I would go and look for Ina. I cannot think what she is doing." Ina was doing nothing : she Avas standing alone in Alan's office, waiting for his return. He had asked her to do so ; and having concluded ber survey of the new office, she stood with her hands clasped together on the chimney-piece, and ber bead resting on tbem, listening for his coming. It is a bard thing to describe a woman's appearance ; and yet, as Ina Trenham plays as important a part in this story as you, Sir, Madam, or Mademoiselle, who read it must play in your own life, I should like to make you feel that you know my chief heroine sufficiently to be able to identify ber person with ber words in tbe course of the following pages. It is a difficult task, and I have no talent for drawing por- traits. Let me, however, try to sketcb ber as she stands. Hair, dark brown — darker than either Euby's or Lorine's, thick, rich, and glossy, braided in front, and taken smoothly above ber ear to the back, where it was gathered together and wreathed in luxuriant coils round and round a plain tortoise- sbell comb ; her neck was long, slender, and white ; and even in profile you could see that ber forehead was full and square, rather than high; her nose short, straight, and determined; and her mouth — we must get ber to look round to see that fairly — small and dehcate, the most feminine and gentle feature in ber face, except perhaps her eyes, which were grey, a green, brown grey, with great black pupils, that dilating every now and then till the whole eye grew soft and dark, told of some- thing lying hidden ftir away down in Ina's nature, that bad never been touched by human finger yet. Her chin, though well cut, was almost too full for the upper part of her face ; and in no one feature could any trace have been found of ber northern origin. She had no wilderness of forehead and prominence of cheek- bone, attesting that she came of border yeomen ; no, it was a smooth, peculiar, and yet unnational face, which seemed like herself scarcely to belong to any country or any clime, a calm, eool, unimpassioncd countenance, with something in it which REALITY. 55 said that the possessor knew the meaning of the word duty by rote. ^ And there was a distention of the nostrils every now and then, suggestive of an idea that perhaps she had occasionally called in duty to subdue a temper that never now found vent in words ; the very existence of which could only be guessed at by that slight nervous quiver. She_ had no colour, she was usually as pale as a white rose, and with somewhat of the same sort of healthy whiteness as that of the flower ; for Ina Trenham was strong and healthy ; none of the party had brought any delicacy of constitution with them to London, unless indeed Murray, who had always been the weakling of the family, the youngest and perhaps the' best of all. I lear I have not, spite of my efforts, managed to give you even the faintest idea of Ina— Alan Euthven's friend. Her'3 was not an easy face to know till you had been long with it, and it is consequently a hard face to dissect. In iigure she was about the middle height, round and well proportioned, not remarkable in any way except for one thing — the only marked thing to be described about her, an appearance of intense indo- lence. Any stranger introduced to her for the first time would have thought her one of the most gracefully indolent women his eyes ever rested on ; she had a general effect, of weariness and languor, of gliding rather than walking, of reclining rather than sitting, of using her limbs because she must, and not because their exercise was any pleasure to her ; she did not seem to have any bones, any hardness of activity in her body ; when she sat down, she gave you an idea of perfect repose ; when she rose up, you fancied that nothing under heaven could ever induce her to move quickly. Face and figure answered to each other in this respect ; there was a placidity about both her expression and her movements which was one of her greatest virtues in Alan's eyes ; she never banged a door, she never rushed across the room, she never swept down tables and caught her dress on the fire-irons, as was the manner of Euby. If she had anything to do, she did not send round the town-crier, and gather all the inhabitants to see her half finish it ; she was as quiet &i a mouse, as quiet when a woman as she had been when a mere child she sat on the deck of that homeward-bound vessel which was beanng her to be a stranger in a strange land, and looked with her great sorrowful eyes over the waste of waters that bounded the horizon to right and left, straight forward, and far behind, whichever way she tm-ned. Orphaned and homeless she was coming to England, and the 66 CITY AND SUBURB. strange look her eyes acquired during those long childish watchei on deck, stayed with her all her life. Whenever she was think- ing intently, whenever she was quiet and alone, or silent in company, that sort of looking-out-over-the-ocean expression came into her eyes again, not an eager expression as of one who expected and hoped soon to see land, but rather as of one who looked far over the sea and thought. I can fancy some who read these pages turning awav im- patiently from the figure standing with bowed head beside"j\lan Ruthven's hearth, and exclaiming that this is not the sort of woman to love, not the sort of woman to mould a heroine out of. Perhaps not, but lua Trenham comes to me as God made her, and she takes her appointed place in tliis story, not because I put her there, but because she inevitably occupies the position allotted to her by circumstances. For the rest, I know she is not the kind of woman men ftill in love with at first sight, and go deranged about, and run oft' witii and marry ; but she is tlte sort men repent not having mar- ried for the whole of their lives. Lying on a bed of sickness, Ina was the kind of woman to wish for as a nurse ; struggling in the depths of poverty, she was one whose help would have been longed for with sickening despair ; rich and prosperous she might have been thought of by those who had learned her value too late, as the crowning prize and blessing of all. She was not the woman for youth to idolize, but rather for middle age to remember ; she was one to have many friends and few lovers, to be flattered and courted by none — but to be taken, if it so pleased God, in full trust by some honest heart, and cherished tliere till death, as the best gift of heaven — a true and faithful wife. Though older-looking than Euby, she was in reality that young lady's junior, being only two months past twenty, nearly a year younger than Miss Iluthveu, and nine years younger than Alan. It was a strange sort of position in which she stood to her guardian, in one way nearer to him than his sisters, in another a hundred miles distant. I feel the difficulty of describing the kind of relationship that existed between them, and yet that seemed as natural to them as the air they breathed. She was low born, and he high ; he of one sex, she of another ; he of a class who despise labour, she of a grade who uphold its dignity. Tiiey were nothing to each other in blood ; she did not love Alan Euthven, and he did not love ]na Trenham ; but still they stood together as two men might have done ; and as I have said before, strange as the relationship might seem to others, it caniQ natural to them, jifi. rxjthven's waud, 57 .t CHAPTER VI. Me. rtjthveji's waed. At last Alan came back ; when anotlier w oman would have been wearied of waiting, Ina raised ber bead and saw bim entering the apartment. " I suppose you thought I was going to stay away altogether," be said, taking — a rare thing for bim — Ina's band in liis, and pressing it as if be wished to give her a second welcome ; " but I waited to see Murray comfortably settled ; it was very kind of you to be patient for so long." He placed a chair for her and she sat down, be standing on the hearth-rug with bis back against the chimney-piece, looking at ber and at the room. " Well, Ina," be said", after a pause, during which be had perhaps expected some remaxk, " this is a change." "It is," she said, and ber eyes followed the route his had travelled round the office, " greater than I expected." "But I warned you, Ina: you may have wilfully blinded yourself, but I tried" to open your eyes ; I fancy you must find the reality frightful ; it is no't too late yet, there is no earthly- reason why you should continue to reside with us." She looked up in bis face and smiled, such a grave, quaint, amused smile, but made no reply in words. Sitting in the chair Alan bad placed for ber, with ber arms resting on the sides, and the heavy folds of the black dress lying on the floor, she continued to look at bim with the same expression on lier face, till be spoke again — saying, " Then, lua, are you in very truth determined to stay with us, spite of everything I have said to induce you to adopt a different course r"' " I am," she answered, " at least till you say, and till I see that it would be better for us all to part, that it would be pleasauter for you if I went." " But for yourself — do you not think you will weary of this place, and of this life ? do you not feel that it would be happier for you to leave us r" " Listen to me, Alan, for a moment while I make a long speech," she replied. " Suppose you were out on some great wide ocean with those you bad lived with from childhood, and suppose not a ship but your own was in sight, and that you were far from land, and that some little unpleasantness arose ; provisions grew short, or the furniture in the cabin was old and 58 CITY AND SUBURB. worn — what sliould you think if the captain advised you to leave the vessel and plunge into the waves around? you would think one of two things — either that he was weary of your company, or that he was mad. Now the cases are analogous ; the world is that ocean to me, a sea I dread beyond privation, poverty, or anything else on earth — and 3'et you are always urging me to fling myself out of your vessel into it. Still I do not believe you are tired of seeing me, spite of all." "Then, to quote your own alternative, you think me mad," said ]Mr. Euthven. " I always have— slightly deranged — on one point," Ina answered quietl}'. " And yet see me now," he pleaded, pointing round the mean room, and at the papers and drawings lying on the table. *' This does not look much like pride." Once again she glanced up in his face with that calm, amused smile, and answered : " Ah ! Alan, there is a necessity which knows no law, and a pride that apes humility." " You are a very Job's comforter," Mr. Buthven responded with a somewhat heightened colour. *' Perhaps so, but I am also, I flatter myself, one of his friends. If it were likely to do you any good, 1 should not even object to follow their very singular mode of expressing sym- pathy. I would sit down beside you for seven days and speak never a word." " I do believe you would," he answered, " that, or anything else which could serve me or mine ; but to return to the place whence we started. I wish you would try to loolc on your position from the point of view of a third party. "What would any disinterested person advise you to do ?" " Leave you, I have no doubt ; but I do not care what any disinterested person says. I cannot imagine that any man, woman, or child knows what I require one half so well as I do myself. But if you want to carry the matter before a third person, do go. If your mother were alive, what course would she tell me to pursue ?" " Your own, Ina," he replied after a minute's pause. "And you will rest satisfied with that decision." *' If it must be so — ^yes." " Alan, out of your own heart, for your personal comfort, do you wish me to leave your sisters ?" " You put home questions,'' he said. " And I want direct answers," she replied. " Suppose I were to answer in all faith and honour, though imwiilingly, and merely because you force me to express a MR. rutiiven's ward. 55 decided opinion, that for myself and for my sisters I would rather you went — ^wliat then ?" " Why then, Alan, I should go immediately, not indeed of my own free will, but because you wished it, thankin gyou and yours for the home and the kindness given so ungrudgingly for so long." " And the money, Ina." " You are to pay it back, are you not ?" she asked with the smile again on her lips. " And you would not really like to go even if we were tired of you?" " I should not like it, but I should go ;" and as she spoke the last word, Miss Trenham pressed her foot hard on the carpet. " Then, Ina, such being the case, I can say without fear of influencing your decision, that I hope you will never leave my sisters whilst I have a roof to shelter them." " One thing more," she said as he stopped, " but one thing more. Whenever I vpish to go, whenever I feel it is well for me to go, I will tell you so frankly ; and in your turn, Alan, will you be equally candid with me? If ever the day shoidd come when you Avisli to say : ' Ina, we want you no longer' — let nothing hinder your speaking the words. From to-night, remember, Ave are under compact never to mention this subject again till a necessity arises for doing so, and then we are to declare the whole truth as it is in us without fear or favour." " On the honour of a Euthven," he answered with a laugh. " On the word of a Trenham," echoed Ina, " which is as good as your honour any day, I suppose. And now, my Lord of lluthven, may I inquire why you desired my presence here to- night ?" " I thought it vsrell for us to understand one another," he said. " Alan lluthven, you understood me just as well when I was in Cumberland as you understand me now ; and I Avant to know what you wanted with me." " Well, I wanted to talk to you," he confessed. *' I wanted to Bpeak to you about our menage, and Hiiby, and — — . By the bye, Ina, who was that person I found attending to Euby's luggage ?" " A gentleman who travelled with us from Preston." " But who was he ?" " Now, Alan, is it a practice of mine when I meet an indivi- dual in a railway carriage to ask his name and station, where he was born, where he was bred, and how he earns his living ?' " But you seemed on such friendly terms with him ?" 60 CITY AND SUBURB. " Did I ? appearances were never more deceitful then ; I am not much, I think, in the habit of falling in love with people at first sight, but as a rule, I do not absolutely dislike my fellow- creatures. In this case, however, I took a positive antipathy to the man — there seemed a sort of antagonism between us." " Ina ?" " Yoii are astonished, Mr. Euthven ; you feel surprised to hear me speak so strongly about a total stranger ; and I feel surprised myself, but I really disliked him." " And yet he seemed a passable sort of person enough." " Oh ! yes, something more than passable ; well dressed, well mannered, good looking, and yet, and yet — " " Why do you not finish your sentence, Ina ?" he asked &a Bhe paused. " Because I am at a loss for a word ; I wanted to tell you at once if I could why I disliked this person, but I cannot ; per- haps you will know, however, when I say that if I were a man, and had to throw myself on the mercy of another man, I should choose any one in preference to our fellow passenger ; if I wished in any trouble of my own to confide in a stranger, I should not select him, because I should feel sure of being mis- understood. I am obliged to express myself badly, for I can- not tell you exactly why I feel as I do towards this man. I should not like to marry him myself, and I should not like Euby to marry him." Turning her eyes towards Alan when she said this, she saw an angry, impatient expression come over his face, as he rem arkerl that, " Women always brought every man they met, up to a mental altar, and tried his qualities in the matrimonial fire." " It is the only infallible test we know," she answered. " True, Ina— I beg your pardon ; but why did you bring in Euby's name — was not she one too many in your illustration ?" " I was, but not Euby ; there is such a thing as being smitten on first acquaintance, and I do think this stranger admired her exceedingly. Suppose, Alan, that hereafter tliey met, what should you do ?" " In the first place, they will not meet ; and in the second, sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. AVhen they parted at Euston Square all cause for anxiety was over ; for it would be just as easy to pick out any special blade of grass on tlie fells, as to find a stranger in London." " But this person is a City man — at least he has ofEces or warehouses in the City." " Well, Ina ?" " He knows your name and address," MR. RUTH yen's WARD. 61 « That 13 a pity." " Yes, the trunks were directed in fall." "So much the worse," said Alan; then added, " I am rery Borry I brought Euby to town, she will feel our changed posi- tion more keenly here than ahs would have done in Cumber- land ; she will want amusement and excitement ; and by the way, Tna, who is to act as housekeeper here ?" " Euby, of course," replied Miss Trenham. "And pray why of course, when she knows about as much of liousekeeping a.s I, do, or perhaps rather less ?" '• She can learn," was the answer, " it is what any one of us would have to do; why not she?" " Why she '" " Because she is your sister, and your eldest sister, and must take the management of your house; if that was what you wanted to ask me, Alan, I most distinctly decline the situation you propose. Euby must be mistress, and if I cau help her^ well and good — if not, I shall sit down idle." " But consider, Ina." " I have considered, Alan. Do you imagine I did not think about all these things before we came to London ? I never fancied we were going to live without food, and I certainly did wonder who would provide it ; but at the same time I knew Ruby was the only person who ought to be mistress, and she has been looking forward with great pleasure to becoming so." " Will you help her, then ?" " I am as ignorant as she ; but if you do not trouble yourself about household matters, I daresay they will go on very nicely. And now, Alan, I am tired ; suppose we consider everything settled, and say good-night." *' Do not go for a few minutes, you will have plenty of time to rest to-morrow, when I shall have no leisure for talking ; you do not ask me how I have succeeded." " You told me in your letter you had failed so far, and I did not like to ask further. What have you done?" " I may say I have done nothing as yet ; excepting that I have got an office and a house, and that I know my way about London pretty well, I am much where I was when I started from Cumberland," " Only minus the hope," she suggested. " How did you know that?" he asked sharply. "I saw it in your face she replied. " The minute I caught sight of you at Eubtoa Square, I knew it was gone." " But I have got something in its place," he said. " Did you Bee that, Ina ?" 02 CITY AND SUBURB. Slio slioolc liei" head. " I have iilled the blank left by hope with resolution. T loat heart^there is not another human being I would confess this to but yourself — I lost lieavt at the first sight of London. 1 believe I had little to begin with ; and by the time I reached the city hope was gone. I could not tell you, Ina — I ])ray God you may never feel tlie misery I felt walking along these strange streets the night I came here. Whether I starved or fed, lived or died, succeeded or failed, was nothing to anybody. I never knew what solitude was until I turned into Cheapside. If it had not been for Eiyot, I should not, I verily believe, have had an idea what to do with myself." " Who is Elyot ?" *' Did I nol; write to you about him ? lie is my next neigh- bour, he has offices on this floor ; he showed me the way to a boarding-house, and told me about this office, and was reference for me to the landlord ; heis just the kind of person you would like, Ina." "A gentleman — " " No, perhaps not exactly. Scarcely, I should think, a gentle- man by birth, but still gentlemanly. Evidently not a man of family." " I should like bim all the better for that," observed Miss Trenham. " Allow me to thank you for the implied compliment to my- self," said Mr. Euthven. "Tou know what I mean, Alan, and I shall not trouble myself to explain further. Tell ijie more about your new acquaintance." " I have nothing more to tell about him, except that he has helped me in every possible way. He is an analyst, or some- thing of thafc sort; but he seems also to have studied engineer- ing practically, and he can always show mo the nearest road througli a difficulty. I think I shall succeed in time, but ifc is hard Avork." " Tou have not sold any of your inventions ?" " Ah ! Inn, while the grass grows in London the steed starves. I must not depend on my inventions, but take them merely as an adjunct to some established business." " But you know nothing of business." "I did not; but I do now, and I shall know more. I find that it is impossible to begin the ladder at the top, and so I mean to commence at the lirst step and work my way resolutely up. You saw my sign hung out as you came in, did you not ?" " Civil Engineer ! Oh, yes, and was greatly amused, i'ray MR. RUTH yen's WARD. 63 wliat do you say to your clients, wlien they come to consult you?" " "When they do come to consult me, Ina, I daresay I shall find something to say to them. Meantime you must not be too hard on me, my sicin is not of the thickest." " I am sorry," she answered simply. She did not mean then for the thinness of his skin, but rather for the words she had spoken. " I am sorry," and Ina looked as she spoke at a lamp which shone into every corner of the small room, through a mist of womanish tears. By the light of tlie lamp — through the mist of her tears she saw a picture. AVas Alan looking at ifc too ? Woods and lawns, with a stately mansion rising in the midst — a background of mountains, and a horseman riding under the shadow of arching elms slowly down to the open gates. "Was that Alan Euthven, and could this be he too ? "Was that his home once, and could this narrow room in w^hich she sate be his abode now? Woman-like, the world in whicli such changes could be, seemed all at once to grow very little to her. The lord in his castle and the beggar by the wayside came and stood before Ina's mind then equal, as she had often said they were in words. They stood there equal, however, not aB wc all are in the sight of God, but equal as poverty makes us in the eye of man. It was her first look out over the world and the people in it, from the hills that lie between earth and heaven, and she did not like the prospeck. There is not a woman breathing who does — and besides, though she might have laughed at the Ruthvens' list of ances- tors, and genealogical tree, and hereditary features, and tradi- tional peculiarities, still all unconsciously, perhaps, these things had been tlie gods of her idolatry to her. There is no secret worshipper of rank like a low-born, yet noble-minded woman. She feels it is the one thing she v/ants, and she Imeels down secretly before the shrine she mocks at openly. Thus it had been — thus it was with Ina Trenham. From childhood the E-uthvens had been the Baal of her temporal religion. She had believed in them — their pride, their stabi- lity, their rank, their family, their estates, as she believed in nothing else except her Bible. As the towering cliff against which the wintry waves dashed ceaselessly — even so were the Euthvens ; stern, stately, proud, and luimoved from father to Bon for generations. The waves came and went ; but the Euthvens stood firm, till, like the cliff, undermined by the G4. CITY AND SUBURB. fretting pea.tliey came crushing down into the turbulent ocean of every-day life. This was the end of it all : London — and trade and compa- rative property, wnth Ina sittinc: in that back office and trying to realise that it was really to Alan Ruthven she was talking. Could they two be themselves now, or were their former selves an illusion altogether ? AVhich was the dream, the old home or the new ? Which state was imaginary ? The former exal- tation or the present reverse ? AVas not she looking in her sleep at an apartment which she had never seen ? and should she not waken in the morning and find herself back at Tarn Hall ? Might the whole thing— Mr. Euthven's folly and beggary, Lis death, their removal, Alan's journey, their present conversa- tion — not be a dream i'rom which she should start, thanking God it was not true, and that Alan was still heir to the estates of his fathers. Never more, Ina— never, never more ; the life which you hold still unread in your hands has no page in it like that. Strange things may happen to him— stranger in their agony than such an event might seem in its bliss ; but back there — back to the old home, and the old station, and the old pursuits, any more than to the days of his boyhood, Alan Euthven may never retui'n. Through the mist she saw these things, dimly at first, but afterwards more distinctly; and she looked and looked through her tears at the light, trying to realize their position and make the best of it, till Alan, wearying of her silence, asked her why she did not speak. " Because I have nothing to say," she answered simply, "at least nothing which I ought to say. 1 was thinking about you and your prospects, and how hard a struggle lies before you ; and i felt that if I tried to speak I should cry. There, you would force me to open my lips — " " Ina, dear Ina — " She was sobbing passionately, convulsively, and Alan, lean- ing towards her, intreated her to be calm. " What is the matter ? Can you not speak, Ina, and say what it is ?" " It is this," she said at last, looking up at him, and speaking rapidly whilst the tears streamed down her cheeks. " It is this —that I am little better than a child. God knows, Alan Euth- Ten, you have enough to bear first from one woman and then from another. As if Euby were not enough, I must be a baby as well. Tou bro\ight me down here to tell mo your plans and MR. RUTHVEN S WARD. 05 projccfs, and I cannot listen to them without first langhino- at your ideas, and then cryiDg at my own. I am tired, and have a head-aclie. Let me go to bed, Alan. Though I am fooli.sh now, I shall have sense to-morrow. It is a long journey li'oui the North here." " So loDg that we cannot go back again, Ina," he answered gravely. '"We must make the best of our present home, for there is no use in making the worst ; I have been wrong to keep you sitting up. Shall we say good night, and leave every- thing else till to-morrow ?" " Yes, Alan, I shall see you, and London, and your affairs with different eyes when I have had a few hours' sleep. Did I bring a candle down with me ? Oh ! yes. Have you got one ?'* " No ; but 1 am not going up-stairs just at present." "Eeadiug at night. That is bad." " Perhaps so ; but it is the only quiet time I have." She shook her head, and bidding him good night, she took up her candle and walked to the door. Pausing there, Imw- ever, she turned and looked gravely back at Alan, -who still leant against the chimney-piece. He was changed grievously — he bad grown pale, and thin, and careworn. Under all changes and circumstances he could not be otherwise than a handsome, distinguished looking man; but he had a haggard, anxious expression on his face, his dress was careless, his linen was not well got up, and appeared to stand in need of feminine supervision. "Well, my ward," he said, when she had looked at him from head to foot for a couple of seconds, " what is the result of that survey ?" '' You must be the ward, and I the guardian," she said, and the pair smiled in concert. " So be it," answered Mr. Buthven. ''When does the new reign commence?" " I should like to be queen to-night, and lay my commands upon you to put away those books." " I am sure you will be a sensible queen, and not stretch the royal prerogative so far as to encroach on the liberty of the subject," he replied. " The Euthvens have always ruled better than obeyed." " A man must know how to obey before he can rule," she retorted, " that is, ordinary men ; but the Euthvens were ex- traordinary men, and always began their journeys from the end. They knew first and learnt afterwards." He laughed even whilst be winced. 60 CITY AND SUBURB. " Am T to begin my lesson to-night, with you for teacher ?" be inquired. " No, I am going now ; but first say you will not sit uj) much longer with those wi'etched books." " I wiU leave them an hour earlier than usual. "Will that content you ?" " Yes : good night." He did not close the door after her, but waited tiU he heard her reach the top of the first flight, when he went out into the landing and watched her light as she wended her way upstairs. He heard her first go into tlieir sitting-room, and draw back the curtains and put the chairs in their places, and then she went Avith a light step on an exploring expedition to the top of the house ; after that she shut her door, and Alan re-entered his ofiice. With a sort of indefinable feeling of security, he opened his books and commenced his studies. I daresay most men have known what it is to leave behind them at home some one in whoin they can place implicit confi- dence, who is not merely honest and faithful, but also sensible and kind, who will, they feel sure, speak their words exactly as they would say them, and see to their interest more earnestly than they would ever think of doing. We have all known this I hope, for miserable is the man who has not felt what it is to trust some person more implicitly than himself, and there- fore the security which Alan Euthven experienced the first night of Ina's arrival in London, scarcely needs any further explanation. And still I do not know, there are some whose knowledge of the world has been so unfortunate, that they believe in no inhabitant of it. Still they trust a dog ; when they go to Bleep in a desolate country place, they feel as sure of the faith- fulness and bravery of the animal they leave to watch, as Alan did of Ina. Just as when he had been a boy, he laid in sickness his tired, aching head on his mother's breast, and felt that she took half the pain from him, so now when he was a man, he was content to lay his troubles on Ina's heart, and let her help him to bear some of the inevitable annoyances of his position. And yet, though they Avere no kin to one another, Alan did not love his ward. He had been too proud always even to think of marrying one in Ina's rank, while she watched over him as a mother might perhaps over a clever and wayward child, as a middle aged man might over a young, impatient RUBY IN LONDON. 67 boy, but not timidly and secretly as a girl would over the welfare of the lover she hoped to marry. He was and had always been too proud and haughty for the daughter of the border yeoman ; and she, from her earliest years, had been too apt with quick, short answers, and a sort of unanswerable, yet irritating sarcasm, to please the descend- ant of an overbearing house. They had been always talking, and perpetually disagreeing ; she had been sorrel in the mouth of the man who had but to stretch forth his hand and pluck the choicest fruits of the garden ; yet stiU. he gathered the sorrel, and left the fruits untouched. She set his teeth on edge, yet he swallowed the bitter ; and though she provoked him a dozen times a day, still Ina's utter indifference as to whether she anno3'-ed him or not, kept them from an open rupture. " If you are vexed," she said to him once, " you must get pleased again," and so they had wrangled through mauy a day at the Hall ; and were now, when they met once again iu London, firmer and truer friends than ever. So firm and true, that Alan feeling secure in the fact that Ina was one of his household, got through a third more work with less weariness than usual, whilst Ina, thinking of Alan's face and Alan's position, laid her aching head on the pillow, and watched through the darkness for hours to come. It was morning before she heard him lock his office door, and ascend the stairs ; but then, when the first early carts were rattling through the streets, and the house seemed quieter by contrast, she fell into a sound and dreamless sleep. CHAPTEE VIL EUBY IN LONDON. "When Ina at last opened her eyes, the gas was lighted in her room, and through a thick, yellow atmosphere she looked at Ruby, who stoodby her bedside, wondering if she " ever, ever intended to waken." " Is it night or morning ?" enquired Miss Trenham, raising herself on her elbow, and looking round in a slate of bewilder- ment. "It must be either very early, or very late, and I have slept so soundly that I don't know whether I am myself op somebody else looking at you through this horrid light ; on 68 CITY AND SUBURB. tlie wTiolc, I tliiulv I must be somebody else. "What Lour cf the (liiy vr iiiglit is it ?" "It is just twelve o'clock, Ina, and I am tired to death •waiting lor you to waken. I Lave been in a hundred times at least. I was so afraid the fog would clear away before you could see it." "And so this is a fog, is it ? "Well, I don't think much of the sight. It is strange thougb to have this yellow mist iu one's bedroom; this is not like auything we ever saw in Cum- berland." " 'No, but it's the greatest fun possible. "We breakfasted by gaslight, and, as iiir as I can see along the street, lights are burning in the offices. When I look down, I feel as it' 1 were on the top of a mountain, witb clouds of mist between mo and the carts and passers by below. If it gets much worse, all the omnibuses will stop running, Alan says, and the boats on the river, and nobody will go out that can help it ; but I shall not be able to help it, Ina, and I want you to get up and come witli me." " Not while I retain my senses," answered Ina ; " do you really imagine I would go out on a day like this if I could help it anywhere, more especially in London ?" " But, Ina, you know I w^ant to make Alan very comfort- able ; you have no idea how early I was up ; I awoke mvself, and washed in cold water, and did my hair almost in the dark, for I could not thoroughly understand the gas ; and by the time Alan came down to breakfast I had poked up a beautil'ul fire, and got everything so snug ; Alan was quite pleased, poor fellow ! and Murray astonished ; and I told them I intended to do the same every morning, that I thought it was the least I could do, and I never felt better satisfied with myself ia my life. So uow^ Ina, I must see about dinner ; there is not a thing in the house for dinner. I mean to be very economical and have neither fish nor soup, nor anything but what is ab- solutely necessary. We did very nicely at Mr. Revel's without 60 many courses. I was thinking of roast mutton and bread pudding ; what do you say, Ina r" "Eoast mutton and bread pudding hy all means," acquiesced Miss Trenham. " Well, then, get up this minute like a dear, and come and help me to buy the things." " My dear liuby, if we go without dinuer to-day, I shall not stir out in this fog. Is there nobody else on the face of the earth who can order in a joint of meat except ourselves? We do not know so much about marketing that we should com- RUBY IN LONDON. 69 mence our expei-iments in London on a day like this. Cnnnot that lioiisekeeper-woman go out and buy Avhat you waut r" "Ko she cannot, and she shall not," responded Ruby, pas- sionately ; " 1 mean to do everything for Alan myself, 1 don't mean to trust anybody to do anything except myself; I have got a house on my shoulders now, and I waut to attend to it ftitlifully, and you won't let me, and you won't help me. You are just the same here as you were at home, a cold-hearted, selfish old maid." " Well, if you come to that. Ruby," responded Miss Trenham, pausing in her dressing, and looking at the beautiful petted face that was puckered up to cry. " If you come to that, you are not mai-ried either, and you are rather older than I am. As to my not letting you attend to your household duties, I do not know how I have ever prevented your doing so." " You will not let me go out to order any dinner for Alnn, and if he comes in famished and there is nothing for him to eat, it Avill bo all your fault; for I thouglit of the mutton and the pudding, and I was up long, long before it was light, and here it is twelve o'clock, and you are only awake." " If it were six o'clock, and I only awake, I cannot see what it would have to do with Alan's dinner ; you do not expect me to cook it I suppose, and except in the cooking I cannot imagine where the difficulty lies." " You say you will not come out with me," and at this juncture Ruby's small stock of patience being exhausted, she burst into tears. Once again Miss Trenham paused in her dressing, and looked through the fog at Ruby. " Did you tell Alan you wanted to go out ?" she inquired. " Ye— es— I-did." " And what did he say ?" " He said I must not, unless the fog cleared away.** " Well then, what do you come to me for ?" "Because I want the mutton, and that woman upstairs says it will take it two hours ' busy,' (whatever she means by that,) to roast, and I told Alan dinner should be ready by half- past four." " It seems to me then you have nothing to do except give the housekeeper some money, and send her to the nearest butcher's. Have you any money ?" " Yes, Alan gave me five pounds, but I wanted to go out and order in the things myself; and you might have been good- natured for once, and done what I asked you, instead of making me miserable." 70 CITY AND SUBURB. She laid a desperate emphasis on this last word, and fell to Bobbing again on the strength of it. For a minute Ina's eyes rested on her before she answered. " It is rather you, Huby, who make me miserable, for you first ask me to do the most ridiculous things, and then if I refuse, you fret yourself and vex me. I suppose you know well enough there is no reasonable thing I would not do for you ; but it is not reasonable to expect me to go out on a day like this through the streets of a strange toAvn. I should really be afraid to go. I put it to your own sense, Euby, are you reasonable ?" " I have not got any sense, so I don't know ; and I don't want to have any sense, for it only makes people cold and cal- culating ; I would not be like you, Ina, for the wealth of the world, and I don't luiow why I care for you at all." " If you do know that you care for me at all, I should say it is only because I am not in the least ^ke you," was the retort, which contained a sarcasm too subtle to be perceived by Huby, who without heeding the observation moved over to the window, and looked out with disconsolate eyes into the fog. " If Murray will go with us I have no objection to venture," observed Ina after a pause. " Murray has never been iu since breakfast ; for hours I have been quite alone." ""Why, where was Lorly, was she out too?" asked Mis3 Trenham in some surprise. " No, but you know I never talk to her ; you know," she added piteously, " as well as I can tell you, Ina, that I have nobody in the wide world but you and Alan." It was true ; it takes a strong heart to support the burden of a weak one, a wise man to bear with a fool ; and thougli Kuby might not be a fool in the ordinary acceptation of the word, she was as much one as vanity and affectation, and childish pettedness, and a determination to have her own way could make her. A tiresome, restless, hard-to-manage beauty, whose face had come to her, as his pride to Alan, for a sole inheritance ; a enare and a curse ; a lace that was never looked on by man with- out admiration ; so lovely and perfect in its rich attractiveness that even in her father's house it had given cause for anxiety , while here ! — can you wonder, oh reader, that Alan's heart was never easy concerning her ? can you not feel where the thorn lay, which the slightest touch drove deeper into his flesh ; and even thus «arly in the story, is it not evident to you that the RURY IN LONDON. 71 day must come when the beauty aud the pride shall meet and crash together, the Aveaker thing shivering tlie greater to pieces. Some dread of this sort, born of a want of confidence in Euby's discretion, and an utter absence of faith in lier sense, was ever present in Ina's mind, and made her imitate Alan's patience and long-suffering towards his sister. The woman's nature might perpetually assert, that though Euby could not help her beauty, she could her folly ; but something better than woman told Ina that nature had neglected the mind whilst adorning the body, and that it was not altogether Euby's fault if she were mentally weak and physically beautiful. She needed props, and she had them ; but resting her hands on her crutches, she tried to push them from under her wdth her feet ; strong and consistent in nothing except a desire to obtain her own way, she provoked Murray andAvearied Lorine. They were b-oth too young in heart to have learnt tolerance. The boy laughs at the puling of an infant, but the middle-aged roan takes it in his arms, and just in the same way it was that liuby's most patient friends Avere two whom at first sight one would have imagined most likely to be irritable with her. And thus it came to pass, that when poor Euby said so pathe- tically, " you know I have nobody in the world but you and Alan," Ina was softened in a moment, aud replied, "And I am sure, Euby, you kuov/ there is nothing in the world Alan and I would not do for you." " But he said I must not go out iu the fog, and everything you do is right, and everything I do is wrong. He never tells you he does not want you to do this, that, aud the other." '• "Well, Euby, there is a sufficient reason for that : I am not his sister. The beggar may do what the queen must not, and in Alan's eyes I am the beggar, and you the queen." "Was there the slightest touch possible of bitterness iu this ? Perhaps so, for Ina was but mortal, and it is not given to every one to play second fiddle with inward equanimity ; but if there were, it was so slig'lit that it escaped Euby, who only answered the observation with a mournful shake of her pretty head. Next minute, however, she brightened up and declared she thought Alan was very fond of her after all. " i)o you know anybody he loves better ?" inquired Miss Trenham. " No not exactly love — only he likes talking to you very- much, Ina." " Do you know why ?" queried his ward, replying to her own question before Euby could ansAver her, with the words, " Be- cause I contradict him." 72 CITY AND SUBURB. Leaving her companion to consider wliieh explanation, Ina proceeded to arrange by some inexplicable process that re- sembled sleiglit of hand, the \vavy braids of her hair. Stand- ing before the glass, twisting the coils round and round her liead, she pondered over that strange bond, family afleetion, which seemed all the stranger to her because she could scarcely have been said ever to have experienced its influence. Heaven ]. r-^ta- blishment, when the covers wora rennoved, "but you said we must be economical, and I thought it best to be^in as we meant to go on." " My dear little sister, this seems a feast to such an anchorite as I have been of late. This is the first joint I have cut into since I came to London." " Poor Alan !" observed Beauty sympathetically, " but now you shall have as nice things as 1 can buy for you. I mean to be such a housekeeper !" " The fog seems to have cleared away a little," observed Ina, a little irrelevantly to the previous remark, but she was always impatient of Euby's plans for the future. " It seems to me much clearer than it has been all day," " Tes, and the moon will be out in another hour," answered Alan. " I was thinking as I came in, that if it turned out a nice bright night, we might have a stroll somewhere ; what do you say, girls ?" The girls — Euby and Lorine — were thankfal at the prospect of a change, and eagerly embraced the proposition. " It will be so delightful to walk about London by gaslight," observed the former. " And to see Westminster Abbey," chimed in the latter. " Can't we go to the Tower ?" asked Euby. " And get to the Parks ?" suggested Lorine. " Nonsense, about the Parks," retorted Miss Euthven, " I am sure we have had enough of the country to last U3 our lives." " "When you have had enough of both town and country, what will you do, Euby ?" asked her youngest brother. " Do ! why, go to the suburbs, to be sure," retorted Misa Euthven. " I have always heard that suburbs are neither town nor country." " I retire from the contest," observed Murray, with resigna- tion, while Alan declared : " Tou are fairly beaten, my boy." 74 CITY AND SUBURB. Tliey were very happy sitting round their little dining-table , quite as happy as if they had been waited on by solemn footmen in some great Belgravian inansion. I suppose that the mere eating and drinking business of every-day life is not a matter which troubles the contcntcdness of most people ; given enough of plain wholesome food, well cooked and properly served, shall any man or woman under Heaven sit down and quarrel with his joint because it has not been pi'eceded b}^ fish, because it is nofetobe followed by game ? would you have me tell you in this true story what I know to be false, merely because it chimes in with the conventional ideas of a sensitive gentleman, that Alan Euthven during the whole of dinner-time was contrasting his present with his past, his mutton with his venison — that the sight of Euby handing Ina's plate to Murray, who helped the potatoes, recalled to his mind painful reminiscences of the time when he and his sister had servants at their beck and call ? It did no such thing — Alan's pride was of a' different sort to this ; a servant in the room might have chafed his spirit — alone .with his family and his poverty he was happy. There are some people who deny that the man of business knows what it is to have a happy minute. If he be poor, the struggle of life is so hard ; if he be rich, the fear of losing all he possesses is so strong. They tell you that Mr. Jones carries home his ledger in his head, that Mr. Smith dreams there is only ten pounds lying to his credit at his banker's — that when Mr. Brown, let loose from his office, lies down on that twenty-feet by tliirly lawn of his, to let the children tramp over him, he is trying to throw dust in the eyes of materfamilias and blind her to his depression, consequent on the fall in sugar. They will not permit the man's mind to bo away from his busi- ness for a moment, they think he keeps one false eye on his guest, and another true one everlastingly on the skeleton seated at his feast. He is a whited sepulchre, care witliin and smiles without, haunted at bed and at board, sleeping, waking, eating, drinking, talking by Mammon, If tins were true, which, thank God, it is not — but supposing it were, what womld become of all the bright interiors and happy, contented homes of this great metropolis ? Good Heavens, what a life this would be if a man never could forget business for a moment ; if the laugh were not real and the smile true ; if the pleasant talk were forced, and tlie whole of existence a deception, how could we endure the weeks and the years as they roll away ? But it is not true — I come back to that point, entreating RUBY IN LONDON. /O yoTi, reader, to believe the fact on the word of one who knows ; and consequently, though Alan Euthven might be a very anxi- ous man in his little dull back oflace, he was a cheerful and a happy individual when he sat at his own table and looked on the bright loving faces gathered about him. He was very tliankful to be at home again, to have done with boarding-house beds, and Deacon's chops, and his solitary, com- fortless life. There is more love in a man for home pleasures than women generally imagine— a great^ yearning for family ties, and a quiet hour "by his own fireside in the evenings ; and Alan Euthven was no exception to the general rule. He felt very happy ; for Murray and he had always pulled together, and there Avas an eagerness of love and trust about the girls for and in him, whicli might have covered many a fault. Home is not any special house or piece of ground in the universe— it is only that spot or succession of spots where a man sits down under the shadow of the vine he has planted, and gathers his household treasures around him. Home is everywhere on earth. Let us thank God, friends— we who have known many for that. Thus far Alan — as for his sisters, London was new to them ; they were young, they were unsophisticated, and able to derive enjoyment even from the prospect of a round of London sights. Bonneted and shawled they went out later in the evening for the walk Alan had promised them ; Euby clinging to his arm, and liorine following with Murray. Ina, spite of entreaties to the contrary, had remained at home alone, assured by Euby with a pout, that she was a " cross old thing." For to do Miss Euthven justice, she never enjoyed any pleasure thoroughly unless Ina was by her side, and all along the streets, when she could not think of anything else to say, she struck up a refrain of " Oh ! how sorry I am Ina is not here." Alan perhaps did not share in the regret, for he did not ex- actly know what he would have done with two of them, one on each arm. He was of opinion that however happy a man might feel with " other dear charmer away," it was impossible for any one blessed with a lady to right and left, either to feel com- fortable or to look graceful ; on the latter point, indeed, he had strong ideas, which he once expressed with a strength equal to the occasion, averring, much to the scandal of a dowager lady of his acquaintance, that a man in such a position looked like a trussed fowl, with liver on one wing and gizzard on the other. Where did they go ? down Ludgate Hill and Bridge Street 7G CITY AND SUBURB. to Elackfriars, from wliicli in llic moonlip^lit ilipy loo1