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 »
 
 THE 
 
 WATERDALE NEIGHBOURS. 
 
 BY 
 
 THE AUTHOR OF " PAUL MASSIE." 
 
 " Un tel homme est cinq cents brasses au dessus des royaumes 
 et des duchez : il est luy mesme a soy son empire." 
 
 Montaigne. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18 CATHERINE ST. STRAND. 
 
 1867. 
 [The right of translation and reproduction is reserved.]
 
 LONDON : 
 
 ROBSON AND SON, GREAT NORTHERN PRINTING WORKS, 
 
 PANCRAS ROAD, N.W.
 
 ■J 
 
 
 N 
 
 8^^ 
 
 CONTENTS OF VOL. 1. 
 
 CHAP, PAGB 
 
 I. The broken Heeo i 
 
 II. For England 38 
 
 III. Tom Berry op Southwark 81 
 
 IV. Walter Waeton's Home loi 
 
 V. "Walter Waeton's Hopes 143 
 
 VI. The old Home 158 
 
 VII. The old Friend 170 
 
 VIII. The old Love 198 
 
 IX. And the new 210 
 
 X. Tom Berrt leaving Home 248 
 
 1^* XI. The Alwyns 275 
 
 ^
 
 THE 
 
 WATERDALE NEIGHBOUES. 
 
 -^c- 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE BROKEN HERO. 
 
 The English tourist wlio stays for even two 
 or three clays at Lucerne is sure to steam 
 up that short arm of the lake-cross which 
 points to Kllssnacht, where, according to 
 fame and clii'onicle and Schiller, William 
 Tell sent the arrow into Gessler's heart. 
 He will probably take a carriage and drive 
 along the road, between vines and apple- 
 trees and beehives, until he reaches the 
 memorial chapel with the daub, like a pub- 
 lic-house sign, outside it, representing the 
 death of the tyrant, and exhibiting, conspi- 
 cuous in the foreground, a floundering sup- 
 voL. I. p.
 
 Z THE BROKE?^ HERO. 
 
 plicating woman, wlioni the guide or diiver 
 is pretty sure to describe as Toll's wife, but 
 whom the tourist, consulting, like all the 
 world now, his Schiller for history, knows 
 to be Armgart, the wife of the imprisoned 
 peasant. Perhaps he is disappointed with 
 the tame, rural, and orchard-like appearance 
 of the quiet little ascending road, with its 
 modest green banks on either side, and 
 thinks it very unlike indeed to the wild 
 ravine full of jagged rocks, avalanche-me- 
 naced and thunder-blasted, which he had 
 learned from Schiller to picture as the Pass 
 of Kiissnacht. So, it may be, he returns 
 straightway to the lake and to Lucerne. 
 But if he still keeps on, leaving Lucerne 
 and Kiissnacht behind, and pursues the ap- 
 ple-bordered road, he will very soon break 
 out upon a charming and, supposing him 
 new to the place, a very unexpected sight. 
 Beneath his feet, as he emerges from the 
 trees, lies the tiny lovely Lake of Zug — so 
 quiet, passionless, and dreamy, that it re-
 
 THE BROKEN HERO. O 
 
 minds him of Grasmere or Killarney, rather 
 than of the waters that lie blue and glow- 
 ing under the fierce white glare of Alpine 
 snows. And, still following the road that 
 now skirts the lake, he sees at last, full in 
 front of him, at the farther end of the pool, 
 and nestling quite down to the edge of the 
 water, a quaint odd-looking old town with 
 glittering spire and red roofs, rather Ger- 
 man than Swiss of aspect, and apparently 
 enjoying a genuine Teutonic sleepiness. Per- 
 haps the town, if one were to enter, would 
 proYO uninviting and dirty, with noisome 
 gutters and abounding in queer smells ; but 
 to those who, like the present writer, haye 
 only gazed from a picturesque distance and 
 neyer entered, it is all charming — a sleep- 
 ing town, so close to the waters of a trans- 
 parent lake that you can hardly distinguish 
 the reflected houses beneath the surface of 
 the pool from the realities above ; and both 
 look equally dreamy and fairy -like and 
 beautiful.
 
 4 THE BROKEN HERO. 
 
 " JS'ow that is just the place, I thiiik, for 
 some one who really wanted to retire from 
 the world, isn't it ? If I were some disap- 
 pointed man I would go and live just there, 
 and never leave it until I died; and then 
 they should bury me near the edge of the 
 lake." 
 
 ^^ Yes; but I don't much believe in re- 
 tiring from the world. Why not live in the 
 world, and do some good there ?" 
 
 ^'But a disappointed man, you know, 
 dearest, or woman, — somebody who really 
 could not bear up, and was broken down !" 
 
 ^^Why not endeavour to work off his 
 disappointment, or hers, by trying to do 
 some good for somebody?" 
 
 ^'Yes; but suppose, you practical dear 
 — suppose somebody who had done all the 
 good he could do, or wanted to do, and 
 could do nothing more? A defeated hero, 
 suppose ? Come, that's just it I A broken 
 hero, world-defeated perhaps, with an un- 
 grateful country that would not be saved.
 
 THE BROKEN HERO. D 
 
 let him try liis very best; and at last lie 
 goes away, not angry, you know, but sorrow- 
 fiiFand resigned — and so he lives here ; and 
 he floats over the lake in a boat, and he 
 communes with nature of evenings like 
 this, and he knows nobody, and is alone. 
 I think the idea is delightful. Is not this 
 the very place for him?" 
 
 Her companion laughed — (we need 
 hardly say that the last speaker was a 
 woman); his laugh was full, genial, manly; 
 and he looked down at her as she stood by 
 his side with a fond, indulgent, admiring 
 expression. He was very proud of her, and 
 delighted in her ; most of all, perhaps, when 
 she talked some romantic feminine sort of 
 nonsense ; for she did not often thus in- 
 dulge, but was usually rather earnest, eager, 
 and, in a certain sense, practical. He was 
 a tall, well-built, fine -looking man, with 
 thick curling hair fast growing gray, — in- 
 deed, quite white in some places, — and 
 closely- clipped gray whiskers. One might
 
 b THE BROEEN HEEO. 
 
 have called him stately, but that there was 
 something about him too genial, good-hu- 
 moured, and friendly, to warrant the cold 
 impressiveness of such a word. Although 
 gray-haired, he was fresh and strong and 
 straight ; a man of fifty, perhaps, who would 
 have looked quite young still, but that his 
 hail' had prematurely lost its colour. His 
 companion was perhaps half his age, and 
 about half his size. She was a beautiful, 
 little, dark -haired, dark -eyed woman, with 
 refined and delicate features and pale com- 
 plexion ; only a faint trace of colour in it 
 here and there, just like the first slight 
 blush of the dawn in a pallid sky, — of 
 which, it need not be explained to any 
 poetic reader, her eyes were the stars. She 
 was exquisitely dressed, — all trailing silk 
 and feathers and chains, and what not, — 
 a charming figure for a drawing-room, or 
 even a table cVhote at the Schweizer Hof, but 
 looking a little odd and out of place on the 
 road by the Lake of Zug. Some women,
 
 THE BROKEN HERO. 7 
 
 and more especially little women, seem so 
 inseparable from fine clotlies, that one can 
 hardly help thinking they nuist have been 
 literally — not figuratively — born in the 
 purple of glistening silks and phosphores- 
 cent yelvets. Yet this was a strong little 
 woman too, well able to hold her own, and 
 do her work in the world; and her hus- 
 band and she had had no carriage from 
 the steamer's pier at Xlissnacht, but had 
 walked thus far, and meant to walk back 
 again. 
 
 ^'Perhaps somebody is looking down on 
 our own little lake at home, Myra," said 
 the husband, ^'and fancying it just the 
 place for a broken hero's retirement; and 
 yet we are not quite lonely there, nor very 
 dejected, nor out of work ; and we don't 
 creep into bushes there to groan and die." 
 
 '^I^o; but it has not the lonely, placid 
 look of this, somehow. I always associate 
 our lake and all about it with our work, 
 which I love, and our constant duties and
 
 8 THE BROKEN HERO. 
 
 occupations, and life seems all energy to me 
 there. Here it seems all repose and doing 
 nothing — only, I suppose, because the place 
 is strange to me. Of course, I could not 
 imagine my broken hero at Lucerne — he 
 might as well be found in Eegent-street. 
 But I do delight in the idea of imagining 
 him here; and I shall always pictiu^e him 
 to my mind as a solitary figure somewhere 
 on the bank of this dear little lake. When 
 I get home I will paint him some day in 
 water-colours and send him to the Exhibi- 
 tion — where, I daresay they will never let 
 him in. JSTo matter ; I will paint him — if I 
 haye time." 
 
 ^'Dear little Myra, I fear your round of 
 parish work has sadly eaten up your time 
 for art. Sometimes I think it a pity." 
 
 ^' Then pray don't think it so any more," 
 she said, looking eagerly up at him. '' I 
 love my round of parish work — I delight in 
 having my duties, as you have yours. What 
 do I want with painting, or care about it —
 
 THE BROKEN HERO. 9 
 
 except now and then as an amusement ? 
 All tliat sort of thing is nonsense, and I 
 hope I have thrown my nonsense away." 
 
 Her husband almost sighed ; and looked 
 down at her with a tender expression 
 of something like compassion as well as 
 love. 
 
 ^^The nonsense is the brightest part of 
 life, most women think," he said ; ^^ but 
 you are not like other women, dearest — 
 happily for me." 
 
 She pressed his arm gratefully. 
 
 " But, now, of your world-defeated hero 
 — your Columbus who has come back with- 
 out finding America — your Garibaldi who 
 has not entered Naples ; and who is to live 
 and die here. What is he to be like ? Like 
 me, for instance ?" 
 
 She laughed merrily. 
 
 "0 no, dear : you are too strong and 
 energetic and clever. He must be darker, 
 and paler, and perhaps — " 
 
 She stopped, a little confused.
 
 10 THE BEOKEN HEEO. 
 
 ^^Ancl a good deal younger, lassie? 
 "Why not ? All the better too, to give the 
 picture value as a fable. A man must be 
 still young to be tragical and disappointed 
 and moody. Your defeated hero, were he 
 my age, would be too conscious of the value 
 of time to waste any in lonely regrets. He 
 would be attempting something else straight- 
 way. But your picture will be consistent 
 with truth and nature. Your defeated hero 
 will meditate and perhaps lament here for 
 a season or so, and then, trust me, he will 
 take to the world and work again — -and he 
 will win next time." 
 
 '' He will — indeed he will !" said she, 
 looking earnestly up, as if they had been 
 talking of some real being. 
 
 Her husband laughed, a happy, loving 
 laugh. 
 
 '^ If you become so seriously interested 
 in the fortunes of our hero — your hero, I 
 should rather say — I shall be growing jeal- 
 ous of him presently. Eut I promise you
 
 THE EROKEN HERO. 11 
 
 I'll hold you to your word : I'll find time 
 for you to paint this picture." 
 
 " 0, I can do it if you will help me, 
 and make time for me, and keep me up to 
 it. But who's to sit for the hero ? I don't 
 know of anyone in our place who bears the 
 slightest resemblance to such a creature." 
 
 '' IS'o, neither do I. Our people are for 
 the most part only oatmeal and rye, and 
 such other homely, useful growths : not 
 flowers — passion-flowers especially. I am 
 more fortunate than you, Myra — or should 
 be, if I were an artist. If / want to paint 
 a beautiful heroine I have not far to 
 look." 
 
 ^' Flatterer !" She smiled delightedly as 
 she looked up, knowing that from him there 
 came no flattery, but only the pure and 
 simple truth. 
 
 They remained silent a moment. Sud- 
 denly a plash of the water attracted the 
 attention of the husband, and he looked on 
 the lake, then said in a low tone, "See,
 
 12 THE BROKEN HERO. 
 
 Myra, here comes your broken hero. Here 
 he is in his own proper person." 
 
 For a boat had been slowly approaching 
 the shore, nnperceived hitherto by our pair 
 while they talked. A man was lazily pro- 
 pelling it with his pair of oars. 
 
 ''He is an Englishman," said Myra's 
 husband in an undertone. Myra's husband 
 had been an Oxford man, and rowed well 
 in his day; and always in late years made 
 a point of seeing the great annual race on 
 the Thames; and he knew an English- 
 man's touch at an oar by sight, however 
 lazily it might suit the Englishman's hu- 
 mour to pull. 
 
 The new-comer ran his boat in upon the 
 shore, then got out, doing everything slowly 
 and rather listlessly, and pulled it up safe 
 from the water. Then he arranged the oars 
 in it, and came up the bank, until he stood 
 on the road close to our English j)air. He 
 was a tall, broad-shouldered, slightly-stoop- 
 ing man, with dark full beard and mous-
 
 THE BROKEN HEEO. 13 
 
 taclie, eyes not so dark as the colour of his 
 beard and his complexion might lead one 
 to cxpectj and sqnare forehead with thick 
 wavy hair. A young man he seemed to 
 the Eey. Dr. Alwyn, our friend, who now 
 looked at him; almost an elderly sort of per- 
 son to Dr. Alwyn's young wife. He was 
 probably not much inside forty years of 
 age; but there was a certain wasted look 
 about his face which might have suggested 
 to a worldly-wise observer that youth's 
 chymic treasure had perhaps been spent be- 
 times. To any eye, however careless, he 
 was a remarkable figure. Dr. Alwyn 
 took his measure, or believed heMid, in a 
 moment. " Odd," he thought — ^' poor, per- 
 haps : but a gentleman." 
 
 Myra surveyed him with equal interest, 
 but under her eyes. She was disappointed. 
 ^'Not at all my broken hero," she said to 
 herself; ^^yet there's something of a broken 
 and defeated look about him, too." 
 
 ^' Good -evening, sir," said Dr. Alwyn,
 
 14 THE BROKEN HERO. 
 
 at once addressing the stranger jfrankly, as 
 if they ought to be friends. " An English- 
 man, I know ! I saw it at a glance, by the 
 way you handled the oars." 
 
 The stranger took off his hat to the lady, 
 showing a brown, muscular hand as he did 
 so ; and showing too — what might have been 
 a good deal more surprising — that the sight 
 of a lady embarrassed him. He looked away 
 from her to her husband, and appeared to 
 warm a little at the sight of that genial and 
 manly face. 
 
 ^^Yes," he said, in slow and somewhat 
 embarrassed tones, ''an Englishman. I sup- 
 pose we are easily recognised anywhere." 
 
 "And a north -of- England man, too!" 
 said the Doctor joyously. 
 
 The stranger looked surprised. 
 
 ''Yes, indeed, a north- of-England man," 
 he replied. 
 
 " Ah, I knew it in a moment. I knew 
 your country by observing the touch of your 
 hand — your county, I may venture to say,
 
 THE BROKEN HERO. 15 
 
 by the sound of your voice. I am a north- 
 of-England man myself, and whatever they 
 may say of us in the south, I always hold 
 that we are the friendliest of all English- 
 men — at least to each other. I am glad to 
 hear the tones of a northern voice." 
 
 ^' And so am I — indeed I am I" replied 
 the stranger, with a sort of sudden burst of 
 heartiness, which called into play a sweet- 
 ness and geniality of expression about the 
 lips one would hardly at first have expected 
 to see, but which, as he happened just that 
 moment to meet Myra's dark eyes, kept 
 studiously devoid as they were of all ex- 
 pression of interest or emotion, as suddenly 
 subsided, and, after a moment of embarrass- 
 ment, left him again grave as before. To 
 say the truth, she was uneasily considering 
 what the stranger, if he should prove to be 
 a gentleman, might be thinking of her hus- 
 band's impulsive friendliness, and was per- 
 haps determined that she at least should not 
 be supposed capable of any participation in
 
 16 THE BROKEN HERO. 
 
 it. So she regarded the new-comer with 
 calm eyes of the best-bred impassiveness. 
 The latter crossed to the Doctor's side, and, 
 as our pair were beginning to resume their 
 walk, he walked along with them towards 
 the little town at the head of the lake. He 
 and the Doctor at all events were friends 
 already. 
 
 ^^ Yes," continued the stranger, ''I am 
 glad to hear a voice that reminds me of the 
 north. The fact is, I have been out of Eng- 
 land for many years. I have been in 
 Australia, digging and sheep-farming, and 
 I don't know what else. But I come from 
 the north — from Cumberland, in fact." 
 
 ^' I knew it !" said the Doctor triumph- 
 antly. — '^ I knew it, Myra dear I" and he 
 thus dragged his wife into the conversa- 
 tion. 
 
 "Yes, dear," she demurely answered; 
 and would not be dragged any farther. 
 
 " There have been plenty of changes in 
 the north during the last few years," the
 
 THE BROKEN HERO. 17 
 
 Doctor continued. '^You will find a good 
 deal to wonder at wlien you go back, if you 
 are going back." 
 
 '' Yes, I am going back — soon, too ; but 
 I don't expect to find mucli change in the 
 little out-of-the-way place where I used to 
 live, and mean to live again — if I can stand 
 it. There cannot be much change in hills 
 and water." 
 
 " Nay, railways and tunnels and steam- 
 ers make a sad change, as you probably will 
 find. We live close to a lake — not one of the 
 show-lakes, though, — and we are every day 
 expecting to find the hills behind us pierced 
 with a tunnel, and a service of steamers 
 plying on the lake, and shoals of visitors 
 pouring in just as at "Windermere, or there 
 behind us at Lucerne. My wife is unhappy 
 at the prospect. I can't say that I am, 
 much. I am fond of nature, but I don't 
 want her all to myself; and I like humanity 
 very well." 
 
 ^' I am going to live, or try to live, near 
 
 VOL. I. c
 
 18 THE BROKEN" HERO. 
 
 a lake, too ; but I hope I shall not find it 
 too much in the clutches of humanity. It 
 used not to be so. I have been staying here 
 in the little town below for a few days, just 
 because it reminded me of the old place, and 
 is as quiet and lonely sometimes — when the 
 steamers do not happen to be coming and 
 going — as the old place used to be." 
 
 '' ]^ow, this is odd," Dr. Alwyn said. 
 ^' It is not five minutes since I was think- 
 ing how much this lake is like our lake at 
 home — only that ours is smaller. I was say- 
 ing so to my wife. — Was I not, Myra? — 
 May I ask the name of the place you are 
 going to live in ?" 
 
 The stranger mentioned a district and a 
 little lake in the borderland somewhere of 
 Cumberland and Lancashire. Xot one of 
 the show-lakes, indeed, as Dr. Alwyn had 
 obseryed. It is hardly mentioned in any 
 guide - book. Flights of strangers swoop 
 over it and around it, and hardly ever alight 
 on it — hardly ever rest even a moment on
 
 THE BROKEN HERO. 19 
 
 its banks. The Doctor was deliglited to hear 
 the name — it was Waterdale ; it was his lake. 
 
 ^^Here is, indeed, a coincidence!" he ex- 
 claimed. ^^ That's our lake. Somehow I ex- 
 pected it the moment you spoke of Cumber- 
 land and a lake. "We are to be neighbours, 
 then. Let me introduce myself, politely 
 now, if I can, as I have done it practically 
 and unceremoniously already. My name 
 is Alwyn — Dr. Alwyn — and I am Eector 
 of Waterdale.'' 
 
 The stranger bowed, and reciprocated 
 the confidence. 
 
 ^'My name is Lennon — Ealph Lennon." 
 
 "Lennon — Lennon!" thought the Doc- 
 tor. '^ Surely I know something about that 
 name!" But he did not embarrass his new 
 friend by a pause, as if he were studying 
 the name ; only at once expressed in friendly 
 terms a hope that they might meet before 
 long in Cumberland, and be good neigh- 
 bour's. 
 
 Mr. Lennon stole now and then a glance
 
 20 THE BROKEN HERO. 
 
 at M}Ta, who walked along, calm, graceM, 
 and silent. 
 
 When they came near the little town, 
 Lennon made a desperate effort to overcome 
 shyness, and invited Dr. Alwyn to rest for 
 a while at the small hotel where he lodged. 
 " I have been staying there with a young 
 Frenchman — a Mend," he said; '^but my 
 friend is away, just now, up Pilatus, or at 
 the Griitli, or somewhere. The lady. Miss 
 Alwyn, must feel tired ; and your way back 
 is long. I can get you a carriage." 
 
 "0, we are stout walkers," Dr. Alwyn 
 replied, ^' and don't mind the distance at 
 all." His wife had given his arm an eager 
 admonition that they must not accept the 
 invitation. ^'But I ought to have intro- 
 duced to you, Mr. Lennon, not Miss Alwyn 
 — for there is none such, indeed — but Mrs. 
 Alwyn, my wife." 
 
 Lennon' s confusion at this little incident 
 was great. He had naturally enough taken 
 Myra for the Doctor's daughter, and had
 
 THE BROKEN HERO. 21 
 
 not noticed or micIerstood|the Doctor's fre- 
 quent references to her as his wife. Indeed, 
 his embarrassment was so great that he was 
 glad to get away from his new friends — or 
 friend — and escape to his hotel. But the 
 Doctor, who was only amused at the mis- 
 take, did not allow him to go without some 
 exchange of friendly words, and hopes to 
 meet again. The two men shook hands on 
 parting. Lennon looked doubtingly at 
 Myra ; she settled the question by bowing 
 gracefully. He raised his hat and went his 
 way. 
 
 ^^ What a strange coincidence," observed 
 Dr. Alwyn to his wife, as they returned, 
 ^' that we should both come from the same 
 place, and meet by chance just here !" 
 
 '' Life is all strange coincidences," said 
 the lady sententiously. "The unforeseen 
 always comes to pass, according to somebody 
 —Disraeli, I think." 
 
 " What of your picture now, Myra ? 
 Will he do for your broken hero ?"
 
 22 THE BEOEIEN HERO. 
 
 '^He? Who? Disraeli?" 
 
 " Nonsense ! I meanLennon — our friend 
 yonder." 
 
 '' Hero ? K'o ; I tliink he is more like a 
 goose." 
 
 ^'Come, now, I don't think so at all. 
 I see a good deal of the falcon or the eagle 
 in him. But I cannot recollect what it is 
 that I know of the name Lennon. It seems 
 familiar to me." 
 
 '' I think I know," said Mjra, '^ The 
 large old house down in the hollow — across 
 the bridge, you remember — the house that 
 poor Mrs. Granger had for a season or two, 
 and that has lately been unoccupied — that 
 belonged, or belongs, I have always heard, 
 to somebody named Lennon." 
 
 ^' So it does, indeed. Of course, that is 
 it. The owner died before I came to the 
 parish, and this is his son. I think I have 
 heard something of him, too ; and some- 
 thing peculiar. If I am not much mistaken, 
 his college course was rather a queer one,
 
 THE BROKEN HERO. 23 
 
 and ended very abruptly. Do yon know, 
 Myra, I shonld not be at all surprised if lie 
 were to turn out a broken liero quite of 
 your style ?" 
 
 '^ no ; not at all in my style. I don't 
 think him in the least like tlie thing. What 
 happened to him in college ?" 
 
 Dr. Alwyn did not remember the whole 
 affair clearly enough, and was not suJSici- 
 ently sure of his man to enter into any par- 
 ticulars, which might only be spreading an 
 unfounded story against an individual repu- 
 tation. But he had a vague impression 
 that Lennon had been expelled from his 
 University for some wild act of rebellion 
 against constituted theology. 
 
 ^N'othing more was said at that time, as 
 our pair walked back to Klissnacht. The 
 evening was beautiful, and some light rain 
 which had fallen an hour or two before 
 lent a wonderful freshness to the air and 
 the foliage. Every stone was the sunny 
 resting-place of a basking insect ; every tuft
 
 24 THE BROKEN HERO. 
 
 of grass sparkled with butterflies and dragon- 
 flieSj and other bright -winged creatures. 
 The bells of the cows tinkled pleasantly 
 everywhere ; and all the sights and sounds 
 of the evening were cheery, gracious, melo- 
 dious. Dr. Alwyn and his wife were both 
 botanists, and they paused many a time on 
 their walk to study and delight over some 
 wonderful leaf, or to hail as a dear and 
 familiar old acquaintance some plant which 
 was a common sight to them in their own 
 English home. They enjoyed their evening, 
 and were very happy. They had been little 
 more than a twelvemonth married, and life 
 was yet a honeymoon to both. The differ- 
 ence in their years seemed in no way to 
 divide them — indeed, the husband's boyish 
 heart and unworn nature made him some- 
 times seem the junior of his wife. They 
 had enjoyed the evening so much that both 
 were sorry, without saying so, when the 
 steamer at last brought them under the 
 black shadows of Pilatus, and so up to the
 
 THE BROKEN HERO. 25 
 
 quay at Lucerne and tlie dining-table of the 
 Schweizer Hof. 
 
 A day or two passed away without inci- 
 dent. They sailed or steamed on the lake, 
 and they rambled over the old bridges 
 and studied the Dance of Death, and they 
 mounted the Eigi, no doubt, and fell in with 
 the usual mist, which is the one original sin of 
 that Paradise of Cockneys and Frenchwomen. 
 
 One day they returned to the hotel quite 
 too late for the table dliote^ and therefore 
 ordered dinner for themselves. While they 
 were waiting, two gentlemen entered, like- 
 wise belated and in need of dinner. One 
 was a fresh -complexioned, black -haired, 
 pigeon-breasted, handsome young French- 
 man, with moustache saucily waxed and 
 pointed, and eyes that twinkled like drops 
 of liquified jet. The other was Ealph 
 Lennon, listless and unimpulsive as before. 
 Dr. Alwyn went up to him, and a friendly 
 conversation took place out of earshot of 
 Myra. Then they all came up to the table
 
 26 THE BROKEN HEEO. 
 
 where she sat, and Lennon's young French- 
 man was introduced in due form. He was 
 a Parisian, a member of the Jockey Club, 
 and somewhat of a swell, travelling for his 
 pleasure. He spoke English with great 
 fluency and vivacity. 
 
 ^^ Madame has made the ascension of the 
 Eigi ?" 
 
 He at once devoted himself exclusively 
 to madame. 
 
 '^ yes ; it was delightful." 
 
 '' Ah, true — yes, indeed ! Eut little — 
 tame ; no danger ! I have made all the 
 ascensions — yes, all ! It is my passion ! 
 "What would you have ? Lion-hunting and 
 the ascensions of the mountains ! I live for 
 those. My friend here will not ascend the 
 mountains ; but he has hunted the lion with 
 me in Algeria." 
 
 "You will be killed some day," said 
 Mrs. Alwyn, " and your life will be thrown 
 away for nothing." 
 
 "Not improbable. But what matter?
 
 THE BKOEEN HEEO. 27 
 
 One must die. "Wliat lives a man for — a 
 man like me or my friend there ? Monsieur 
 yoiu' husband — ah, well, he has something 
 to live for !" and the gallant Frenchman 
 darted bold glances upon madame. 
 
 It was proposed that they should ^^ join 
 tables," and they did ; and the dinner passed 
 off very pleasantly. It came out in the 
 course of conversation that Lennon and liis 
 travelling companion had been friends years 
 ago, in London and in Paris, and that they 
 had lately met after long separation in 
 Algeria; and after spending a few weeks 
 together they had agreed to go into Switzer- 
 land before Lennon's return to England. 
 Lennon had come from Australia, over- 
 land, as far as Egypt, and there stayed for 
 a little, and thence found his way to Algeria. 
 
 ^^You don't ascend mountains?" said 
 Dr. Alwyn casually to Lennon. 
 
 '' ^0 ; I don't. I don't see the good of 
 it. I am far too lazy. Life is not long 
 enough, or easy enough, to allow any super-
 
 28 THE BEOKEN HERO. 
 
 fluous trouble. Besides, I like fine views, 
 and nobody can see anytliing from the top 
 of a mountain." 
 
 '^ But the strange vegetation?" 
 
 ^^ Ah, true ; but I don't care about 
 strange vegetation." 
 
 ^^ You are not a botanist, tlien ?" 
 
 '^ dear no ! a scientific botanist — not 
 the least — and I don't want to be." 
 
 '^ Why not ?" asked Myra, almost 
 sharply. 
 
 ^^ Because I am such a lover of nature 
 that I don't care to spend my time potter- 
 ing over the bricks of her temple when I 
 can look at the whole structure, or so much 
 as my eye can reach, all at once." 
 
 ^' But, Mr. Lennon," broke in Dr. Alwyn, 
 ^' do you forget the wonderful beauty in 
 every fibre of a fern-leaf — the marvellous 
 adaptability, the subtle mechanism?" 
 
 ^' They tell me, too, that there is won- 
 derful beauty and adaptability and me- 
 chanism in the tiniest human bone. But
 
 THE BROKEN HERO. 29 
 
 I prefer admiring Canova's Yeniis or Thor- 
 waldsen's Night to studying a scrap of a rib- 
 bone." 
 
 ^^ Ilhistration is sophistry coloured," said 
 Dr. Alwyn, laughing. 
 
 " My friend is a true heretic," said the 
 Frenchman, who knew no more about bo- 
 tany than he did about the Philosophy of 
 the Conditioned. '^ I adore nature — I — in 
 the small as well as in the large. The eye 
 of beauty is worth studying, is it not?" 
 And he gazed at Myra markedly, in order 
 that she might understand he was paying 
 her a double compliment ; first, by standing 
 up for botany because it was her study, 
 and next, by talking of the eye of beauty, 
 which of course was her eye. Myra saw 
 quite through his nonsense, and did not 
 care in the least about it, being neither 
 flattered nor ofi'ended, but liking his good- 
 natured expression and the almost childlike 
 simplicity of his open admiration. But she 
 began to think there was something in Len-
 
 30 THE BEOKEN HERO. 
 
 non. His contradictions piqued her, and 
 his manner puzzled her. 
 
 '^ ISTot caring for botany," she said, gaz- 
 ing at him so fully that he looked away, 
 '' you will miss a great happiness when you 
 go to Cumberland, to your home. Do you 
 call it your home ?" 
 
 " No, Mrs. Alwyn. If it likes me and 
 I like it, then it shall be my home. But I 
 don't see that because a man was bom in a 
 place it has any claim to call itself his 
 home. Perhaps it was only his stepmother, 
 and stony-hearted. I am fond of its me- 
 mory though, and I daresay it will disap- 
 point me. But I don't go there to study 
 botany or anything else." 
 
 ^' You go there to live among your 
 friends and be happy, no doubt ?" 
 
 ^^ IS'o ; pardon me, I really don't. I 
 haye no friends there that I know of, and 
 I don't think of being happy." 
 
 " Then — may one ask the question ? — 
 what do you go there for ?"
 
 THE BROKEN HERO. 31 
 
 ^' I think, on tlie whole, I go there — 
 to sleep." 
 
 General laughter followed this declara- 
 tion. Lennon alone remained perfectly se- 
 rious, as one who has made a calm and 
 practical statement of fact. 
 
 ^' I do assure you," he said, ''it is in 
 some part true. I am tired of working and 
 going about, and making money and losing 
 it and spending it; I am tired of being 
 excited about nothing; and I am tired of 
 being disappointed. I haye come to the 
 conclusion that the one duty of life which 
 man most neglects is the duty to sleep. We 
 don*t any of us sleep half enough. We 
 can't sleep in Australia : every one is too 
 robust and energetic and active. You can't 
 sleep in Africa, because of the heat and the 
 flies. I have not been much in Asia: I 
 daresay Damascus is a good sleepy place; 
 but I have lately thought of my old home 
 among the mountains, and there I mean to 
 sleep away some years of my life, if I can."
 
 32 THE BEOKEN HEEO. 
 
 '' That yon can't," Dr. Alwyn declared. 
 "Not near ns — not if I know it. WeUl 
 waken yon np, never fear, and set yon 
 working at something. I am snre yon are 
 a wonderfally energetic fellow, for all yonr 
 paradoxes." 
 
 " Yon mnst not frighten him," said the 
 Frenchman, " or he will beat in retreat back 
 to his deserts and his bnshes and his sheeps 
 in Anstralia again. / am coming over to 
 see him soon, when he is ranged and settled. 
 I will show yon how to manage him, if 
 madame shall not have divined the secret 
 long before." 
 
 " I shonld so mnch like to see Ans- 
 tralia," Mrs. Alwyn observed. " I have 
 always longed to see the Sonthern Cross." 
 
 " It wonld disappoint yon," Lennon 
 answered. "Onr own Orion is incompara- 
 bly more splendid." 
 
 " Yon love astronomy?" 
 
 '^ "No, not at all; bnt I love Orion. If 
 I do not sleep all my antumn nights away
 
 THE BROKEN HERO. 33 
 
 in Cumberland, it will be Orion alone that 
 can keep me awake. He is in the skies 
 what Shakespeare is in literature — inex- 
 haustible, and never to be admired enough." 
 
 ^^ I hiow that you are a botanist and an 
 astronomer, as well as a reader," Mrs. Alwyn 
 said. 
 
 '^ And I am convinced you are a worker," 
 added her husband. 
 
 '^ Thanks for your good opinion. If I 
 were vain, or wise perhaps, I ought to 
 return to Australia, and then you would 
 always believe that Cumberland had lost a 
 good son. See ! there is Orion. Let us look 
 at him." 
 
 They opened the window, and went on 
 the balcony. It was a glorious sight. The 
 lake and the heavens — which was the finer ? 
 Our French friend cared not a rush for 
 either, but stood near Mrs. Alwyn and paid 
 her pretty compliments. 
 
 The party soon broke up, all hoping to 
 meet again. 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 THE BROKEN HERO. 
 
 Lennon and his friend walked by the 
 lake and smoked, at first in silence. 
 
 '^ But she is charming !" the Frenchman 
 broke out. 
 
 '' Who is charming?" 
 
 '' Who ? — as if you did not know I Ah, 
 coquiji ! Who but madame, the wife of the 
 venerable yonder ? What — yes ! I should 
 like to be near her for ever. And you are 
 going to live near her — happy Briton that 
 you are ! But the husband — ah !" and he 
 shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 ^' Don't, Theodore; don't, like a good 
 fellow," said his companion. 
 
 ^' Don't what?" 
 
 ^^ Go on in that silly way. I hate that 
 sort of rubbish. The cant of virtue is bad ; 
 but I do think the cant of vice is a great 
 deal worse. What right have you and I 
 to go on making ourselves out scoundrels, 
 when we are not so ? I am for a man 
 being openly what he is — carrying his heart 
 upon his sleeve, if you like."
 
 THE BROKEN HERO. 35 
 
 " Yes, I know ; it is your Shakespeare's 
 phrase." 
 
 ^' And so if we were scoundrels, I should 
 be for our talking scoundrel talk ; and then, 
 at all events, our neighbours might keep 
 out of our way. But we are not." 
 
 ''But, my good fiiend, scoundrels be- 
 cause we admire a pretty woman?" 
 
 ''^N'o, not because we admire her; but 
 talking as you did just now, or hinting or 
 suggesting what you don't mean — for you 
 are an honest and manly fellow as ever 
 stepped, and can't help your confounded 
 French way of never looking at a woman 
 without affecting the Eichelieu or Lauzun — 
 I detest it ; and it doesn't suit our English 
 married women at all. They are quite ac- 
 customed to be friendly with men without 
 supposing that the men are all the time 
 contemplating the possibility of seducing 
 them." 
 
 '' But, allons done I Who ever said any- 
 thing like that of our pretty madame above ?"
 
 36 THE BROKEN HERO. 
 
 ^'Yoii did not say it exactly; but yon 
 began the kind of talk that leads to it and 
 hints at it." 
 
 '-' Well, pardon then." Theodore was 
 a thoroughly good-humoured fellow, always 
 ready to make allowance for what he might 
 perchance consider his friend's eccentric 
 insular ways. ^^ I did not mean anything. 
 But you are going to liye near her, that is 
 certain ; and she is pretty ; and pardon 
 again if I whisper that Monsieur the Ee- 
 verend is not quite so young as madame 
 his wife." 
 
 ^^ He struck me as being a very fine 
 fellow. I daresay he would make a gallant 
 figure in a lion-hunt, Theodore. If I were 
 a woman, I think he would attract me ten 
 times more than fellows like you or me." 
 
 Theodore laughed merrily. ^' Thousand 
 thanks for the compliment ! I am happy 
 of it that you are not a woman. I am 
 sure I neyer should be enamoured of you, 
 if you were. I like you much better as a
 
 THE BROKEN HERO. 37 
 
 good-Iiearted surly Jolm Bull, that can bark, 
 but does not bite — liis friends at least." 
 
 The two smoked and walked and talked 
 until a rather late hour. They were leay- 
 ing Lucerne in the morning, and, despite 
 Lennon's love for sleep, they were up 
 almost immediately after dawn. Their 
 rooms were high up aloft; and as they 
 were hurrying downstairs Theodore paused 
 mysteriously outside a bedroom-door on the 
 fii'st-floor, and touched his friend on the 
 arm. 
 
 ^' That is her room," he whispered. 
 ^' She sleeps there." 
 
 ^' Indeed, " calmly rejoined Lennon. 
 ^'Kiss the consecrated threshold." 
 
 " Bah ! You are a mere Briton. You 
 have no soul." 
 
 "^N'o, but I have a stomach; and break- 
 fast is waiting." 
 
 In half an hour they were on their way 
 across the mountains.
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 FOE ENGLAND. 
 
 Through the horrid gloom of pines — the 
 adjective comes in here in the classic, not 
 the cockney sense — over little wooden 
 bridges, flung across gorges where the far 
 torrent thundered below ; along narrow 
 paths, where jnst the one mule clinging 
 close to the edge of the precipice might 
 walk; now in a pass so closely set in by 
 the mountains that one seemed to be in the 
 lowest deep of a profound valley, and yet 
 was high up the shoulder of some Alpine 
 giant; now seeing nothing but mist and 
 blackness; now suddenly dazzled by the 
 snowy glare of a summit flashing on the 
 view; hearing no sound but the hollow 
 roar of the pines and the tinkle of the
 
 FOR ENGLAND. 39 
 
 kine- bells, and more rarely the crack of 
 the muleteer's whip, — thus, at the close of 
 a day that had made glorious promise to 
 break it in rain and murkiness, Ealph 
 Lennon trudged along alone. He had 
 parted from his French companion. From 
 Lucerne they had straggled about — now 
 here, now there — until they reached Cha- 
 mounix; and there the Frenchman, who 
 had already made six ascents of Mont 
 Blanc, fell in with a party of men he 
 knew, who were about to go up, and so 
 resolved to haye a seventh ascent to talk 
 of. Lennon made up his mind at once to 
 cross the mountains to Martigny, walking 
 through the famous path of the Tete IN^oire, 
 where only pedestrians and mules can go. 
 At Martigny he would take the train for 
 Lausanne, and thence on to Geneva; and 
 so to Paris, and home. 
 
 He was glad to be alone for a few hours. 
 He had had enough of companionship for 
 the present ; so he saw his companion and
 
 40 FOR ENGLAND. 
 
 party a little on their way, rejected all in- 
 vitations to go up even as far as the Grands 
 Mulets ; and then set out upon the solitary 
 journey which was to have its termination 
 on the Lancashire border of Cumberland. 
 
 Lennon was well made up for a moun- 
 tain tramj). He carried only a few things 
 in a light knapsack, and he had a good stout 
 stick — no fancy alpenstock branded with a 
 litany of all the hills and passes and peaks 
 in Switzerland. The morning was beau- 
 tiful ; and by the time he had got well up 
 among the mountains his heart and spirits 
 mounted too, and he felt light almost as a 
 boy. The solitude was delightful to him, 
 after the incessant bustle and rattle and 
 change of hotels, and the unresting energy 
 of preparation which is Chamounix's spe- 
 cial characteristic. Lennon was as nearly a 
 genuine lover of solitude as perhaps any 
 man can sincerely be ; that is to say, he en- 
 joyed only the society of the few whom he 
 really liked, and could call his friends. He
 
 FOE ENGLAND. 41 
 
 could have wished never to leave the side 
 of one he loved, if such one there now were ; 
 but he did not like ordinary society. He 
 was not fond of talking to people in general. 
 The excuse he made to any who chajffed him 
 for his silence was, that unless to people he 
 liked he had nothing to say ; and unless 
 from people he liked he did not want to 
 hear anything. He could travel for a whole 
 day in a railway carriage and never utter 
 one word to any of his fellow -voyagers. 
 He journeyed once a day and a night in 
 a German schnellzug alone with one other 
 man, and never spoke a word to him ; and 
 when accosted by him shook his head, as if 
 to signify that he did not understand, and 
 so escaped conversation. He had often ac- 
 knowledged that he enjoyed travelling in 
 foreign countries especially because it af- 
 forded him a reason for not talking to 
 strangers. If he did not understand the 
 language, he could not talk; and even if 
 he did understand it, his resolute silence
 
 42 FOR ENGLAND. 
 
 made people believe that lie did not un- 
 derstand, and so relieved him from the 
 imgracious appearance of being pnrposely 
 silent. Yet he was neither ungenial nor 
 prond nor dull ; only reserved, shy, and 
 with strangers difficult of speech. 
 
 Lennon had been in Switzerland once 
 before, and had crossed this path of the 
 Tete ^Noire. Perhaps the memory of that 
 time was one reason why he wished now to 
 retread the way alone. Then he was a col- 
 lege youth, revelling in the delights of a 
 long holiday, and with all the world of 
 scenery, and books, and companionship, and 
 adventure, and passion opening on him ; 
 now he trod the same path, a disappointed 
 and, to some extent, a perverted man. Fate 
 and his own fault had dealt somewhat heav- 
 ily with him. K'early all the lights which 
 were beginning to flame up in the sky of his 
 life when first he climbed this mountain 
 path had gone out, one after the other. Only 
 the love of nature and the love of books
 
 FOR ENGLAND. 43 
 
 still remained clear and bright — not to be 
 extinguished. '' Friendship soon passed me 
 like a ship at sea," is one of the fine lines 
 of a poem which once promised greatness. 
 Friendship had treated Lennon even worse 
 than this. It was a ship which ran him 
 down at sea when all seemed fair, and left 
 him a wreck. Passion only led him to dis- 
 appointment, and something like despair. 
 Then he raged for a while foolishly against 
 the world, and men and women, and cus- 
 toms and creeds, and even, it may be, 
 against Providence itself. And he flung 
 his youth away ; and being designed for 
 the Chiu'ch, he distinguished himself by so- 
 cial lawlessness and theological rebellion, 
 and was made an outlaw in the Tuiiversity 
 sense. Then his fond and proud old father, 
 who had made his money in trade, and 
 longed to have his son a pillar of the 
 Church, stormed against him, and flung 
 him some money, and bade him go to the 
 diggings, and use his hulking limbs in
 
 44 FOE ENGLAND. 
 
 grubbing for gold; and Lennon went to 
 Australia, and never saw his father again. 
 His mother he had never seen. His birth 
 (he was the only child) was her death. He 
 ought to have devoted his life to replacing, 
 so far as he could, the loss he had brought 
 on his father; and his father died in the 
 presence of strangers, his only son an exile, 
 indeed an outcast. 
 
 After Lennon' s departure his father 
 threw all away. Of the money he had 
 made not one stiver remained at his death. 
 The old house in Cumberland where he had 
 lived as a boy was the only scrap of pro- 
 perty which his father's sudden death, in- 
 testate, bequeathed to his son. This was 
 almost the only compensating consideration 
 to Ealph Lennon — at least he did not profit 
 by the death of the father to whom he had 
 been so useless and disappointing a child. 
 
 Strangely enough, too, all he touched in 
 Australia prospered with him. If he rented 
 a few yards of river sand, gold straightway
 
 FOR ENGLAND. 45 
 
 sparkled there. His speculations, generally 
 made blindly, and for the mere sake of ex- 
 citement, conquered the most tremendous 
 odds, the most adverse chances, and suc- 
 ceeded. Twice he was swindled out of all 
 he had by dishonest partners ; but he made 
 new combinations and experiments, and he 
 became rich again. All this time he could 
 not make up his mind to humble himself, 
 and beg to be allowed to go to his father's 
 house. He remained, always expecting a 
 loving message and a summons. At last a 
 message came, and a summons : his father 
 was dead. 
 
 Then Lennon's heart was smitten. The 
 change which whitens a young man's hau^s 
 in a single night was not greater than that 
 which fell upon him there in Australia. En- 
 mity, rancour, suspicion, bitterness, dropped 
 away from him, stricken by a sacred touch. 
 He gave up money-making, and resolved to 
 go home. If he could do any good in life by 
 means of the money he had made, he would
 
 46 FOR ENGLAND. 
 
 do it somewhere at home, near his father's 
 grave. 
 
 He did not hurry home. There was 
 nothing to hasten for. Perhaps, drawing 
 nearer, he more and more felt inclined to 
 shrink back and linger. At last he seized 
 resolution by the haii', and said, '' I will de- 
 lay no longer ; I will go at once." 
 
 So, having wandered thus a little off the 
 direct track of our story, we come up with 
 Ealph Lennon in the Pass of the Tete JSToire. 
 He had been wandering not a little, and not 
 rarely, from the path, l^ow he scrambled 
 up on this side to gather a mountain flower; 
 now he descended deep among the solemn 
 pines to have a better view of some torrent, 
 the voice whereof, raving in the depths be- 
 low, had caught his ear and fascinated him. 
 Many times there came into his mind that 
 wonderful line of Goethe's, perhaps the most 
 perfect picture in little to be found in mo- 
 dern poetry, ^^Es stiirzt der Pels und liber 
 ihn die Plut," — a line exhaustive and com-
 
 FOR ENGLAND. 47 
 
 plete in its description of an Alpine pass, 
 where it simply seems that the rocks have 
 been suspended in the act of falling, and 
 the flood, not to be stayed, rushes wildly 
 over them. 
 
 But the clouds soon began to gather 
 heavily and ominously round the mountains ; 
 and soon, look where one might, he could 
 see no peak of snow appearing. Gradually 
 one could see little but the path before him 
 and the pines on either side. Then the rain 
 came down in torrents, and continued re- 
 morselessly. Lennon cared little about it; 
 he had camped out during many a rainy 
 season in Australia ; and so he tramped 
 along, regarding the complete change which 
 the downpour and the steaming mist pro- 
 duced in the landscape as a new, unex- 
 pected, and charming transformation. He 
 was getting wet to the skin ; but that mat- 
 tered little, because he meant to walk on to 
 Martigny, and there would be jD^cnty of 
 time for the day and himself to become
 
 48 FOR ENGLAND. 
 
 perfectly dry before he readied the little 
 town imbedded in the valley of tlie Ebone. 
 From Cbamounix to Martigny, most readers 
 are well aware, is a good day's walk, and Len- 
 non was not yet balf-way to bis journey's end. 
 Presently be beard voices on before bim. 
 He was not very glad of tbis, altbongb be 
 did not know tbat tbe fact conld bave any 
 direct concern for bim. But be became 
 still less pleased wben be beard English 
 spoken. A little way ahead of bim be saw 
 a mnle drawn np close to tbe side of tbe 
 acclivity and under some pine-trees, appa- 
 rently tbat its rider might bave such slight 
 shelter as the branches could give. There 
 were two or three people be could see in 
 the group which thus halted ; they bad their 
 backs turned to him. A lady sat on the 
 mule ; and by her figure, and tbe sj^lendid 
 mass of dark hair he could see under her 
 hat, be knew at a glance tbat she was Mrs. 
 Alwyn. Her husband and a guide were 
 with her.
 
 FOR ENGLAND. 49 
 
 There was notliing surprising in tlie 
 meeting. People who are making a tour 
 of Switzerland at the same time are always 
 encountering each other in this way. Go 
 where you will, you meet the same groups. 
 But Lennon was not glad to see his new 
 friends here. Dr. Alwyn he liked ; but his 
 first sensation on meeting a man he did not 
 thoroughly Imow was always one of reluct- 
 ance and discomfort. That first sensation 
 over, it may be that he would enjoy the 
 meeting very well afterwards. But inter- 
 course with strangers, however agreeable he 
 might expect them to prove, was always to 
 Lennon like a cold bath. Let it prove ever 
 so healthy and pleasant afterwards, be con- 
 vinced as one may that it will prove healthy 
 and pleasant, yet the first plunge is always 
 a disagreeable performance. 
 
 Besides, Lennon did not much lilce Mrs. 
 Alwyn. He thought her a mere fine lady, 
 which indeed she was not; and he hated 
 fine ladies. Then again, she just turned 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 50 FOR ENGLAND. 
 
 her head as he came near, and saw him; 
 and he saw that her figure shrank together, 
 slightly but perceptibly, as if she would 
 gladly have avoided being seen by him. 
 So she would too, at the time, if it were 
 possible; but not from any unkindly feel- 
 ing — only for the woman's reason that she 
 felt herself in an awkward and perhaps 
 ridiculous position. She was perched on 
 the back of a high mule, having a port- 
 manteau strapped behind her; and her hat 
 and her clothes were very wet, and her hair 
 was wet, and her feathers were as draggled 
 as the plumage of a drowned crow. So for 
 one instant she physically shrank at the 
 idea of being caught in this pickle ; and she 
 said to her husband in a low tone, which 
 sounded like a mild protest against perverse 
 fate, "0, my dear — Mr. Lennon !" 
 
 Dr. Alwyn was very glad of the meet- 
 ing, and hailed Lennon cheerily. 
 
 ''So we were destined not to part quite 
 so soon, Mr. Lennon ! Yery glad to meet
 
 FOR ENGLAND. 51 
 
 you even here — under such disastrous cir- 
 cumstances. You come from Chamounix, of 
 course ? So do we. How odd that we did 
 not see you there ! And you were going on 
 to Martigny ? So were we ; my wife riding, 
 I walking ; and very pleasant it was until 
 this downpour came on. Is it ever going to 
 get fine ? The guide does not think it will 
 change before sunset, and he advises us to 
 stay at the hotel halfway, a little farther 
 on." 
 
 '^ yes, dear ; we must stay. — Don't 
 you tliink we had better, Mr. Lennon?" 
 
 "Yes; I think you had much better," 
 said Lennon, giving what he considered per- 
 fectly honest advice, but at the same time 
 hoping that he might be allowed to pursue 
 his journey alone. 
 
 " Are you bent on going on ?" asked Dr. 
 Alwyn. 
 
 "Well, yes ; I think so. The rain can't 
 hui't me much. Indeed, I am used to even 
 worse rain than this." 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 ILLINOIS LIBI
 
 52 rOR ENGLAND. 
 
 ^'It couldn't linrt me either," said tlie 
 stout Doctor ; ^' but Myra is tired, I know — 
 tired of jolting on tliat old mule ; and she is 
 getting wet." 
 
 ^'Yes, dear; but I don't mind that — 
 only the few things I have in the portman- 
 teau will be quite soaked through if they 
 get much more rain — and what am I to do 
 then? We haye nothing else nearer than 
 Geneva." 
 
 ^' Quite true," said the Doctor; ^' we'll 
 stay ; it is much better." 
 
 He would have preferred going on ; 
 partly out of the natural restlessness of men, 
 who like to push on without stopping to the 
 end of every journey, and get it done ; and 
 partly, too, because a stout tramp over the 
 mountain, with Lennon to talk to, would 
 have been pleasant to him. Dr. Al^yn 
 dearly and fondly loved his young wife, and 
 she was much attached to him ; but then 
 she was only half his age, and he was full 
 of robust, virile, almost rough energy; and
 
 FOE ENGLAND. 53 
 
 he liked to talk of college times and ways — 
 and, in short, the pair were not bound by 
 that very rare supreme union of soul and 
 natiu'e which makes two people perpetually 
 happy in the society of each other, and in 
 that alone. Dr. Alwyn just now would 
 have liked a few hours of the companionship 
 of a man who was not the guide. But his 
 wife's decided wishes, and the hint about 
 the condition of literally nothing to wear to 
 which much more rain might reduce her, 
 were quite enough for him, and he ruled 
 that the night should be spent in the seclu- 
 sion of the auherge at the Tete Noire. 
 
 It was not much farther on, and Lennon 
 and the guide alike recommended pushing 
 for it. But the portmanteau? Lennon 
 recommended leaving the mule and the 
 portmanteau with the guide, in such shelter 
 as could be had, while madame and her 
 husband walked on to the auherge, from 
 which they could send back people with 
 plenty of coverings to screen the portman-
 
 54 FOR ENGLAND. 
 
 teau from the heaviest rain. That would 
 be better for Mrs. Alwyn than waiting there 
 in the cold and wet, motionless. But Mrs. 
 Alwyn was very tired, and in fact was too 
 wet to get off the mule and drag her clogged 
 and heavy silks and velvets along the road. 
 Then Lennon urged that they should all go 
 on, braving all dangers, and letting the rain 
 do its worst. There really was nothing 
 better — ^nothing else, in fact — to do. The 
 rain did not appear likely to cease for hours. 
 So Mrs. Alwyn made up her mind and 
 switched her mule, and they all set off. 
 Soon they became a merry party, and made 
 fun of their meeting and their misadven- 
 tures. Nothing makes people so friendly 
 as a common drenching in a strange place. 
 By the time they had reached the little 
 hotel, Lennon had so completely thawed 
 that he declared he would go no farther that 
 night, and his companions were both glad 
 of his decision. 
 
 They dined together, and were very
 
 FOR ENGLAND. 55 
 
 pleasant. The calamity she dreaded had 
 fallen on Mrs. Alwyn. Every stitch her 
 portmanteau contained was thoroughly 
 drenched, and she had to come to dinner in 
 a cotton dress and an astonishingly frilled 
 and trimmed white jupon, belonging to the 
 landlady of the house, and obligingly offered 
 as a loan for the occasion. And very pretty 
 she looked, although the gown was made for 
 a woman twice her bulk, and the petticoat 
 trailed behind her when she walked, like a 
 stage train. Lennon thought she looked 
 far prettier than in her silks — and just 
 think, ladies, what sort of creatures you 
 bedizen yourselves for, after all ! 
 
 As for the gentlemen, besides that both 
 were constitutionally weather-proof, their 
 rain-damage was comparatively slight. Outer 
 coats laid aside, boots changed for borrowed 
 slippers, and a quarter of an hour's personal 
 drying at the stove, restored them to en- 
 durable condition. 
 
 ^'You won't banish me now, I hope?"
 
 56 FOR EXGLAXD. 
 
 said Mrs. Alwyn, when dinner was over. 
 ^^Aswe are not in England, let ns not be 
 bound by English ways. Yon don't want 
 me away, Mr. Lennon ?" 
 
 ^^No, indeed, Mrs. Alw}^." And in- 
 deed he did not. ^' I have been so long out 
 of England, and have lived so much lately 
 in places where we dined off mutton and 
 damper, eaten on pieces of board laid on our 
 knees, and where there were no ladies, that 
 I have almost forgotten the solemn old 
 English ways. I really hardly knew at first 
 why you talked of leaying the room." 
 
 ''Then I am nat to be banished? I 
 am very glad — all the more so as there is 
 no place here to banish me to, except my 
 bedroom, and it is such a toil, getting up 
 there in these clothes, that I don't feel able 
 to encounter it more than once in the course 
 of the night." 
 
 So she stayed and talked a good deal, 
 and made both gentlemen very happy. 
 There was a piano in the room, feeble of
 
 FOR ENGLAND. 57 
 
 tone and rattling of keys, but still a piano ; 
 and Dr. Alwyn asked his wife to sing for 
 them, which she did very readily. She 
 sang sweetly — first one or two little hymns, 
 for which it must be owned Lennon did not 
 much care, but in which Dr. Ahyyn de- 
 lighted ; then two or three rather scientific 
 afi'au's, for which neither the one nor the 
 other cared a straw. Lennon' s mind was 
 far away all the time, as he sat at the win- 
 dow and looked at the black pines, over 
 which, the rain-stream having at last ceased 
 to pour, the moon was beginning to shine. 
 
 " Sing us some of your old English bal- 
 lads, Myra," said Dr. Alwyn ; " they are 
 ^e music, and at all events one under- 
 stands them." 
 
 '' Perhaps Mr. Lennon does not care for 
 old English ballads?" said Myra, turning 
 half round from the piano in appeal to our 
 friend. 
 
 " Indeed, I like the ballad-music best of 
 all. Like Dr. Alwyn, I understand it. I
 
 58 
 
 FOR ENGLAND. 
 
 suppose the mind of tlie listener must always 
 help to make the music, must it not ? Mine 
 can make nothing for me out of the more 
 scientific strains." 
 
 ^' In other words, you have not been in 
 the least delighted by what I have been 
 singing ?" 
 
 Asked so directly, Lennon could not 
 frame a quick and polite evasion, and so 
 answered calmly, '' Indeed, not in the least." 
 
 Dr. Alwyn and his wife smiled at the 
 truthfulness, and even the latter was pleased 
 with it. 
 
 She sang them one or two English bal- 
 lads — soft, tender, sweet, melodious; not 
 reaching perhaps any great musical heights, 
 nor ranging over a great variety of ex- 
 pression ; not endowed with the penetrating, 
 passionate, quick-glancing emotion of the 
 ballad-music of Ireland or Scotland, or even 
 Wales; but homely, truthful, and touching 
 — music which might find an echo in any 
 manly or womanly and unconventional
 
 FOR ENGLAND. 59 
 
 heart. Lennon listened with real pleasure, 
 and had now courage even to press for 
 more. So she began another, with words 
 which made some old-fashioned traditional 
 complaint about the suddenness with which 
 love grows cold when its first glow is over. 
 It was not the song of a cynic, nor had it 
 sprung from the bosom of a doubting age ; 
 but was the honest heart-complaint of an 
 English nature at a time when the delusion 
 that love suddenly changes was a sincere, 
 accepted, lamented faith. 
 
 The song from its very first line seemed 
 to move Lennon deeply. He raised his hand 
 at once, as if about to stop the singer and 
 ask her some question ; but he checked him- 
 self in time, and waited until its last echo 
 had ceased. There was then silence. 
 
 '' Don't you like it ?" asked Mrs. Alwyn. 
 
 ^^Yes; I like it much, very much," 
 Lennon replied. "And it is an old, old 
 friend of mine." 
 
 " Indeed ! Then you can tell me whose
 
 60 rOR ENGLAND. 
 
 it is, or wliere it is to be found. I only 
 sing it, words and air and all, from memory." 
 
 ^''No; I cannot tell you anything about 
 it, except that I used to hear it once, and 
 was very fond of it. May I ask, Mrs. Alwyn, 
 where you heard it ? I have not heard it 
 for years, except when I have tried some- 
 times to hum or whistle it myself away in 
 Australia." 
 
 ^^I only heard it sung by a gentleman 
 who belongs, or at least did belong, to our 
 part of the country; a friend of Dr. Alwyn's 
 — or, perhaps, I ought to say an acquaint- 
 ance. — You know, Alwyn dear, — Mr. "War- 
 ton. He sang it ; and you liked it so much 
 — and he promised to bring me the music 
 and the words, but he never did." 
 
 If the lamps had been brighter, if Len- 
 non had not kept his face turned to the 
 window, anyone present might have seen 
 at half a glance that the name was no com- 
 monplace sound to him. He said, without 
 turning round —
 
 FOR ENGLAND. 61 
 
 " l^ot Walter Warton— Walter Ealeigli 
 Warton ?" 
 
 ^^ Yes, indeed, that is his absurd name — 
 Walter Ealeigh ! Do you know him ?" 
 
 ^'I did know him. We were at school 
 together, and at college. I have not heard 
 of him this long time. I — I hope he is 
 doing well?'- 
 
 ^' Yes, I think so," interposed Dr. Al- 
 wyn. "• He is becoming rather a great man, 
 in fact — a sort of great little man. He is a 
 popular speaker and agitator, and whenever 
 he addresses a public meeting he is cheered ; 
 and when he comes to a country town there 
 is sure to be a row about him one way or the 
 other. He is very clever indeed, quite a bril- 
 liant speaker — of the flash- and-rattle kind. 
 He is sure to get into Parliament soon ; the 
 Tories have made quite a pet of him." 
 
 ^'The Tories! A pet of Walter War- 
 ton ? He used to be a wild Eadical — a Ee- 
 publican — a sort of Eed Eevolutionist." 
 
 ''Yes, I daresay: so were Ave all when
 
 62 FOR ENGLAND. 
 
 at college, or emerging from it. At least, 
 those wlio are Eadicals now were furious 
 Tories and State-Church and Divine-Eight 
 True-Blues then ; and those who, like "War- 
 ton, were Eed Eepublicans then are steady 
 Tories now. But I don't think Warton is 
 a steady Tory : indeed, I can't quite make 
 him out. He is a great champion of the 
 working man, and all that sort of thing — on 
 the platform a kind of spouting Jules Simon ; 
 but he is now also the pet of the Tories, 
 and he says his mission is to form an alli- 
 ance between Toryism and Democracy. I'm 
 sure I wish him joy. I wish they would 
 get married, and go for a long honeymoon 
 to the Continent, or anywhere else : I don't 
 think England wants either." 
 
 ^^ It is a singular change," said Lennon. 
 ^' 1 have been too long out of the way of 
 English politics to understand it. But — do 
 you know Wart on' s wife ?" 
 
 '' His wife ?" Mrs. Alwyn asked, '^l^o; 
 — has he a wife ?"
 
 FOR ENGLAND. 63 
 
 ^^ Yes, lie has — he had at least." Len- 
 non's voice was indistinct as he spoke. '' I 
 knew her — once." 
 
 '' He never spoke to lis of his wife : in- 
 deed, we never knew that he was married. 
 But we are not intimate : in fact, Dr. Al- 
 wyn, though he is too charitable to say it, 
 does not much like Mr. Warton : and then 
 he lives in London, and seldom comes our 
 way." 
 
 " Well, we are very good friends," said 
 Dr. Alwyn, ^^when we meet. I chaif him 
 a little sometimes, and he takes it good- 
 humouredly, and answers in splendid sen- 
 tences. He would declaim on your hearth- 
 rug, if you listened to him. I almost think 
 I did hear, somewhere or other, about War- 
 ton's being married, but I had forgotten all 
 about it. He certainly never said anything 
 to me about his wife. Perhaps she is dead." 
 
 ^'0, Alwyn !" These two words Myra 
 spoke in a voice so low that there was ^^ no- 
 thing lived betwixt it and silence." Her
 
 64 FOR ENGLAND. 
 
 Imsband looked interrogatively, but said not 
 a word. He did not know what indiscre- 
 tion lie had committed, and had too much 
 sense to ask ; but his man's sense was not a 
 woman's quick perception. 
 
 The singing and playing and talk were 
 over for that night. Mrs. Alwyn presently 
 took her leave of Lennon, and, gathering 
 her trailing petticoats about her, went up- 
 stairs to bed. Her husband was not given 
 to early going to bed, and as the moon 
 looked bright he said he would have a saun- 
 ter with Lennon along the mountain path. 
 When he came downstairs ready for a tramp, 
 he found to his surprise that Lennon stood 
 at the iim-door with his knapsack on his 
 back and his stick in his hand. 
 
 ^^ Good-bye, Dr. Alwyn — at least for the 
 present ; I am going." 
 
 ^' N'ot going away ? IN'ot going to cross 
 the mountain to-night ?" 
 
 ^' Yes, indeed. I find there is a very 
 early train from Martigny to Lausanne in
 
 FOR ENGLAND. G5 
 
 the morning, and I can easily catcli it if I 
 stai't now." 
 
 '^ But I thought you meant to pass the 
 night here ?" 
 
 ^' So I did : but I did not then know of 
 the possibility of getting on in the morning. 
 And I want to get straight on to England 
 as fast as possible — I must go." 
 
 '^But to cross the mountain at night — 
 what a performance ! ^Beware the pine- 
 tree's withering branch — beware the awful 
 avalanche !' Don't you remember the un- 
 fortunate young man in Longfellow ? Take 
 care that the pious monks of St. Bernard 
 don't find you at break of day stretched 
 lifeless on some crag-side." 
 
 ^'[N'ot much chance of that : the path 
 winds clear and straight along ; a man could 
 hardly miss it if he were blind. The difii- 
 culty would be not to keep it. The moon 
 will shine for some time yet, and then 
 comes the dawn." 
 
 '' Well, if you will go, I'll walk half 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 66 FOR ENGLAND. 
 
 a mile or so with you ; but I am sorry you 
 have to set off in so precipitate a way. You 
 will be in Cumberland long before we get 
 there. Our journey home will be an affair 
 of very easy stages." 
 
 " I don't know that I shall be in Cum- 
 berland so very soon. I have to stay a few 
 days in London. Ey the way, we were 
 talking of your friend Walter Ealeigh War- 
 ton — " Lennon stopped in his sx^eech and 
 looked down. 
 
 '' Yes. I don't know that I can exactly 
 call him my friend : but I meet him some- 
 times — rarely of late. Some of our Cum- 
 berland folks are rather proud of him, espe- 
 cially when they see his name in the Morn- 
 ing Posfs list of the guests at some fashion: 
 able gathering. But what of him ?" 
 
 ^' I am anxious to meet him. I knew 
 him once, as I told you, pretty well; and I 
 should be glad to see him again. You said, 
 I think, that you knew nothing of his family 
 — of his wife ?"
 
 FOR ENGLAND. 67 
 
 ^^ Nothing whatever." 
 
 '^ I think you said that perhaps his wife 
 was dead. Had you any reason to suppose 
 so — any vague recollection, even, of having 
 heard something — " 
 
 '^ Indeed no, not the least : I said the 
 words in pure idleness — only as a sort of 
 random conjecture. Pray, if you have any 
 interest in Warton or his family, don't be 
 made imeasy by anything I may have said. 
 I had no reason whatever for it. And Myra 
 looked at me rather horrified, I can tell 
 you." 
 
 Lennon's colour deepened. 
 
 ''Do you think I can easily find out 
 "Waii;on's whereabouts when I get to Lon- 
 don?" 
 
 '' Yes, quite easily. People of course 
 will be out of town just now ; but you will 
 find it the easiest thing in the world to 
 learn all about him. Anybody interested 
 in politics, any newspaper man, any Tory 
 member of parliament, any secretary of a
 
 68 FOR ENGLAND . 
 
 • 
 
 working-men's associationj can put you on 
 liis track. If it were only a little later in 
 the year, I sliould recommend you simply 
 to walk tliTOugli the streets until you came 
 to some huge placard announcing a meeting, 
 with "Walter Ealeigh Warton as one of the 
 leading speakers." 
 
 ^' Thank you. I shall find him. And 
 now you must not come any farther." They 
 had reached a point where the path began 
 to descend, and soon turned sharply round 
 the shoulder of a hill. Below them lay the 
 deep valley, its pines far down looking like 
 toy trees. The white cloud-masses with the 
 moonlight on them showed like the snow- 
 peaks which had gone out of the landscape 
 with the sun. 
 
 ^^ Good-bye. Eemember Excelsior's fate, 
 and don't let any avalanche rob us of the 
 pleasure of having you for a neighbour." 
 
 ^^l^ever fear ; we shall meet again." 
 
 Lennon turned round the comer of the 
 ridge, and disappeared.
 
 FOR ENGLAND. 69 
 
 ^^ I like liim," spoke Dr. Alwyn aloud, 
 and with emphasis. And he walked back 
 to the hotel. 
 
 He sat reading for some time, and then 
 went npstairs to bed. To his surprise, he 
 found his wife, who was generally a good 
 sleeper, broad awake. He stooped over and 
 kissed her. Very pretty she looked in her 
 white night-dress. Does not Madame de 
 Sevigne say it is woman's prettiest garb ? 
 
 ^' Alwyn dear," said she, without giving 
 him time to say a word, '^ where is Mr. 
 Lennon gone ?" 
 
 ^' Across the mountain. "Won't be stayed; 
 is resolved to catch the first train in the 
 morning from Martigny. But how did you 
 know, my little sleepless watcher, that he 
 had gone anywhere ?" 
 
 ^' I saw him, I saw you both, out of the 
 window. I went to look out, and of course 
 I observed that he had his knapsack, and 
 was evidently going away altogether." 
 
 ''Well, you are quite right; he would
 
 70 FOE EXGLAXD. 
 
 go. I suppose he has stayed too long in 
 Switzerland." 
 
 ^^ 'No, Alwyn dear, it's not that; it's 
 you who have sent him on his way in such 
 haste." 
 
 ^'/, dearest? — I? On the contrary, I 
 wanted him not to go." 
 
 ^' You dear stupid thing, you sent him 
 off with thi^ee or four words, when you 
 spoke of Warton's wife, and said, ' Per- 
 haps she is dead.' " 
 
 ^^Why, what have those words to do 
 with driving him over the mountain ?" 
 
 ^'Ah, that I don't quite know; but he 
 became alarmed when you said it, and made 
 up his mind to go that very moment. He 
 will travel day and night until he rea'ches 
 England." 
 
 ^^Good gracious!" exclaimed the Doc- 
 tor, uplifting hands and eyes in feigned awe 
 and alarm. ^^ The witchcraft of these wo- 
 men ! How does my wife know what Mr. 
 Lennon is resolved in his secret mind to do ?
 
 FOE ENGLAND. 71 
 
 — a man she had never seen the week be- 
 fore last." 
 
 ^^Eeeanse yonr wife has eyes, dear — " 
 
 ^' Yes, that she has." Two gleaming soft 
 dark orbs were looking up at him, and 
 dropj)ed their lids with a smile at his inter- 
 jected compliment. '' But I still don't un- 
 derstand how, with any power of eye, you 
 could haye seen all this." 
 
 ^' Well, dearest, I may be quite wrong; 
 but I think — perhaps, you know, that Mr. 
 Lennon may have cared about Walter War- 
 ton's wife — may have been in love with her 
 perhaps — before she married." 
 
 ^'0, that is it, you think? Well, I 
 should never have thought of it. Perhaps 
 it is so. Poor fellow ! I wish I had not said 
 those foolish words. But who could have 
 supposed that he would attach any import- 
 ance to them? or who indeed could have 
 guessed that the matter could in any pos- 
 sible way concern him ? Your explanation 
 looks very fanciful, Myra."
 
 72 TOR ENGLAND. 
 
 " It is true, dear." 
 
 So it was. The few words sjooken at 
 random by Dr. Alwyn had in very truth 
 sent Lennon speeding over the mountain, 
 resolved to make no stop or stay until he 
 reached England. 
 
 Perhaps she is dead ! Well, what then ? 
 Wherein did that affect him so deeply? 
 Years ago — ever so many, it now seemed — 
 he loved her, and he thought she loved him, 
 and he was disappointed. She was a reli- 
 giously-educated girl, firm in her sect and 
 in her narrow piety : and he became odi- 
 ously distinguished for his free ways of 
 thought. She and her people were strong 
 too in their horror of vice, even in the mild 
 form of youthful extravagance : and did he 
 not win a name for lawlessness? What 
 wonder if she tiu^ned from him and married 
 a better man ? Who could blame her ? If 
 he had promise of any kind, he had not 
 fulfilled it ; if he had talents, he threw them 
 away. What right has a fellow to expect
 
 FOR ENGLAND. 73 
 
 that a girl vrill give herself up, heart and 
 soul and body, to the protection and faith 
 of one who cannot take care of himself, and 
 does not seem to have any faith in himself? 
 Trnly, when girh really love a man, they 
 do such things ; they throw their arms 
 round his neck and leap with him into the 
 sti'uggles of life, as they would leap into the 
 sea or go through the flames for him and 
 with him. She did not love him so; that 
 was clear enough. She was calm and com- 
 posed, quite able to see what she called her 
 duty, and to follow it ; and he justified her 
 decision by immediately flinging himself out 
 of society, and making a fool and a rebel and 
 a reproach of himself. He had nothing to 
 complain of; and as it was evident she did 
 not love him, he had nothing to regret. 
 She was married, and, if living, was doubt- 
 less happy, and had forgotten him. 
 
 If living ! But the mere random words 
 which just hinted at the possibility of her 
 being dead pierced him like a sword; for
 
 74 FOR ENGLAIST). 
 
 he had come back from Australia partly to 
 see her, though he did not own the inten- 
 tion to himself. He thought that years and 
 change and struggle and much excitement 
 and some suffering had purged away the vehe- 
 mence of the old love, as they had gradually 
 expelled the influence of the other passions 
 of youth ; and he hoped that he could see 
 her with calmness and be her friend, as he 
 would be her husband's friend again for her 
 sake. In. Australia he had for some years 
 petulantly avoided looking at any newspa- 
 pers from the north of England which might 
 contain tidings of the old places familiar to 
 him ; and therefore he knew nothing about 
 the career of his old colleague Warton. He 
 had perhaps vague romantic notions about 
 the possibility of Warton and his wife being 
 poor, and about his contriving somehow to 
 share with them the money which had 
 grown up to him, and being splendidly 
 generous and consequently happy. Per- 
 haps he was not so very glad — so purely
 
 FOR ENGLAND. / 
 
 aud unreservedly glad — wlien lie heard that 
 his successful and happy rival was not 
 in a way to need generosity ; that he had 
 prospered in life as well as in love ; that he 
 was a sort of great man, with his name, as 
 Mlirger would say, '^ in the playbill :" while 
 he, Ealph Lennon, was utterly obscure and 
 unknown, his talents, which were once 
 thought promising and rich, having con- 
 ducted him to nothing. Lennon might 
 have felt a bitterness rise up in his heart 
 but for the sudden words which suggested 
 the chance of her death. This he had 
 never thought of. He always pictured her 
 young, bright, and blooming, as he used to 
 see her; or beautiful, sorrowful, and pity- 
 ing, as when last she listened to his wild 
 appeals and passionate implorings, and shed 
 tears over them, but was not to be softened 
 by them. Seeing her again, he thought, 
 would be like looking once more upon the 
 vision of his own youth. Eut it seemed as 
 strange and shocking to him to think that
 
 / rOR ENGLAND. 
 
 he miglit never see her again as to think of 
 a life which had death for its final stage. 
 So, though in a moment after he was calm 
 enough to see that the ominous words had 
 no significance, he yet determined that no- 
 thing should delay him now — that he would 
 travel straight on, night and day, until he 
 reached London, found outWarton, frankly 
 offered him his hand, and bade him to forget 
 the old bitter quarrel of ten years ago. 
 
 Nay, he sometimes — and especially as he 
 marched along in the moonlight and the 
 shadow, and with the night -wind's rush 
 among the pines still sounding sadly in his 
 ears — he sometimes even fancied there was 
 something peculiar which called him to Eng- 
 land. How was it that on the Lake of Zug, 
 where he was staying only for its seclusion, 
 he should have fallen in with two from the 
 very spot whither he was tending? How 
 was it that, wherever he went in Switzer- 
 land, he still met them ? How was it that, 
 when he sat with them alone for once, and
 
 FOR ENGLAND. 77 
 
 the lady chose to sing, she sang a song 
 which brought up such memories to him, 
 and led to such questions, and so to the 
 utterance of the very words which thrilled 
 him ? In all this was there nothing ominous 
 and mysterious ? Yes, there was something, 
 as long as the night lasted ; but when morn- 
 ing flushed over the w^hole scene, and the 
 birds sang, and the pines looked no longer 
 spectral, and children with baskets of wild 
 raspberries met the pedestrian at every turn, 
 and the exquisite valley of the Ehone shone 
 in its sunny beauty at his feet, and he 
 could at last see the old tower of Mar- 
 tigny perched upon its crag, the spell of the 
 ominous words forsook him, and could not 
 be recalled. His resolution not to lag did 
 not desert him with it. He remained but a 
 few minutes in Martigny, and with the first 
 train swept along the shore of the Lake of 
 Geneva to Lausanne; thence to Geneva itself; 
 and thence from the poetry of nature into its 
 brisk prose — fi^om Switzerland into France.
 
 78 FOR ENGLAIS^D. 
 
 Dr. Alw}^n and liis wife were still loung- 
 ing along the CMllon road, the wife fas- 
 cinated by the Byronian castle, the husband 
 absorbed in contemplation of the lake and 
 the snows of the serrated Dent du Midi, 
 when the voice of a guard wakened up a 
 sleepy passenger alone in a first-class car- 
 riage just arriving at London-Bridge station; 
 and Ealph Lennon staggered out upon the 
 platform, and, rubbing his eyes, knew him- 
 self once more at home in England. 
 
 His first feelings were not those of 
 exultation; indeed, far from it — he shud- 
 dered. It was cold, it was foggy, it was 
 raining. All at once he remembered that 
 the day he left England it was cold, foggy, 
 and raining likewise. Xo doubt it was the 
 same fog and the same shower. '' In tears 
 our last farewell was taken; and now in 
 tears we meet again." Accustomed for some 
 years back to warm skies and bright suns, 
 the dingy atmosphere and the raw cold 
 air — raw and cold, though autumn was
 
 FOR ENGLAND. 79 
 
 yet young — seemed to chill him to the 
 marrow. What a beautiful halo always 
 used to hang over England when he looked 
 back upon her through the telescope of his 
 memory across the Pacific ! Even in his 
 moods of anger, when he stormed inwardly 
 against home and all that belonged to it, 
 yet how agonisingly beautiful it seemed ! — 
 beautiful as a faithless mistress, whom we 
 curse in the bitterness of our heart, and 
 yet love so passionately. ]^ow that he was 
 actually in England again, what a dreary, 
 Yulgar, commonplace, disheartening sort of 
 home it looked ! His heart went down like 
 the mercury in a glass when a chill comes. 
 
 "Disappointment number one," he said 
 to himself. " This is dreadful. All the bet- 
 ter : it will help to prepare me for disap- 
 pointment number two, and three, and so 
 on through all the rest, which I sujDpose 
 are siu-e to follow." 
 
 He took a railway-porter into council, 
 and inquired about hotels. Several houses of
 
 80 FOR ENGLAND. 
 
 wliich he had rather a genial memory were 
 gone long ago, he found. Great caravanserais 
 were everjnvhere being substituted. The 
 porter recommended one which he named. 
 Lennon knew it by name, for he had been 
 reading a stray Times now and then on liis 
 homeward journey, and he saw columns of 
 letters appearing day after day in denuncia- 
 tion of this particular hostelry : of its rooms, 
 its -^^ lifts," its charges, its manners; the sa- 
 vage ferocity of its barmaid, the withering 
 scorn of its waiters, the haughty indiffer- 
 ence of its boots. 
 
 '^ Good," said Lennon grimly. '^ I'll go 
 there. ISJ'othing shall be wanting. I'll have 
 a whole bath of discomfort to begin with ; 
 and then, perhaps, when the first shock is 
 over, things may begin to feel better. 
 There's no place like home ; and I'll have 
 as many of its peculiar joys as I can all 
 at once. Is the luggage all up? Then 
 drive to the Eleanor's Cross Hotel."
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 
 TOAI BERRY OF SOUTHWARE:. 
 
 Ealph Lennon set himself to work at once 
 to find out his old companion "Walter War- 
 ton. The time, however, was not favour- 
 able for discovering anybody in London. 
 "No Directory contained any hint of War- 
 ton's whereabouts ; and it was the dull 
 season as regarded meetings, and no pla- 
 cards on the walls announced great political 
 gatherings of any kind. The few people 
 with whom Lcmion had any manner of 
 acquaintance in town all knew Warton's 
 name and something of his public character, 
 but nothing about his private residence. 
 One evening, however, as Lennon passed 
 down the Strand, he saw on a hoarding a 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 TOM BEERY OF SOUTHWAEK. 
 
 small placard announcing in letters of very 
 modest size a meeting of the working men 
 of some trade or other, to discuss some 
 question between masters and men which 
 happened just then to affect their branch of 
 industry. ^' Come," thought Ealph; '^ if 
 Warton be the sort of man I have heard 
 of, these people, or some of them, are sure 
 to know all about him." So he found out 
 the place of meeting (in a back-street. East- 
 end), and he ^^ assisted" at the proceedings. 
 ^^ The public" were ^^ respectfully invited 
 to attend," in order to hear the grievances 
 of the workmen exposed; and Ealph Len- 
 non constituted the public. So far as he 
 could judge, no other creature not an artizan 
 of some kind was present. 
 
 The room was small, badly ventilated, 
 badly lighted, and densely crowded; yet 
 Lennon became interested in the ^^proceed- 
 ings," and sat them out. The meeting was 
 conducted with the utmost order, although 
 it was of course both noisy and demonstra-
 
 TOM BEERY OF SOUTHWARK. 83 
 
 tivc. There was but little of tlie sort of 
 eloquence which he expected to hear ; there 
 was hardly a word said about the rights 
 of mau, or the rights of labour, or serfdom, 
 or the tyrant capitalist. The speakers 
 seemed for the most part to go in for ar- 
 gument; and a rough practical emulation 
 in prompt logic between each successive 
 orator and those whom he addressed was 
 the great game of the night ; for, although 
 the meeting was entirely made up of work- 
 ing men, there was by no means a complete 
 class-unanimity among them. Some boldly 
 contended that the alleged grievance was 
 no grievance at all; some went so far as 
 to espouse the side of the masters. There 
 were evidently conservative minds and ca- 
 pitalist minds among these working men as 
 well as among their social superiors. The 
 utter absence of the imaginative and the 
 ideal qualities, the unconscious instinctive 
 adhesion to the concrete and the practical, 
 which usually make the average Briton so
 
 84 TOH LEREY OF SOUTHWARK. 
 
 successful and so uninteresting, sliowed 
 with peculiar force at this meeting. 
 
 One man only — and he was somewhat 
 older than most of the other speakers — made 
 any appeal to rights and wrongs, and essayed 
 an occasional flight of democratic eloquence. 
 Most of the others were quite young ; he was 
 upwards of forty. He was a great strong 
 man, with an eager face, and hair already 
 grizzling. He denounced social inequalities 
 and class legislation with vehemence, and 
 in language which, but for its occasionally 
 high-flown style and misplaced grandilo- 
 quence of phrase betraying the uneducated or 
 the self-educated man, might have done very 
 well for a much more pretentious platform. 
 
 Lennon felt strangely attracted by this 
 man, though the somewhat old-fashioned 
 and obsolete rhetoric of denunciation in 
 which he indulged made the listener smile. 
 Especially warm did the speaker become 
 when he railed at his own class for their 
 apathy and selfishness.
 
 to:m eeery of southware:. 85 
 
 ^^ Don't tell me," he exclaimed, ^' of your 
 model working man, wlio only looks after 
 his wife and his family, and never listens to 
 the voice of the political agitator. I call 
 the model working man a selfish humbug 
 an' a sneak. When old England was great, 
 she wasn't made great by model men of any 
 kind — fellows who only care to have good 
 blankets to lie in, an' to be patted on the 
 head by their superiors. D'ye think the 
 twelve Apostles were model working men 
 that only thought of mindin' their business? 
 Believe me, fellow working men, when a 
 patron or a swell of any kind praises you for 
 not running after politics and for holding 
 aloof from strikes, he only wants to flatter 
 and cajole you out of looking for what's law- 
 fully and properly your rights, according to 
 the grand old doctrines of the Constitution 
 and the broad principles of humanity." 
 
 There was much more in the same strain, 
 accompanied with some energy of gesticula- 
 tion. The face of the speaker was very re-
 
 86 TOII EEERY OF SOUTHWARK. 
 
 markable. It was dark, stubbly, scrubby, 
 with stiff, broom-like, tufty bail', cut short, 
 and standing up in all irregular ways about 
 bis temples. He bad shaggy eyebrows, and 
 high cheekbones, and a great broad mouth, 
 and a black beard without whiskers. His 
 face was white and lank, and scored with 
 rugged lines. The eyes were bright and 
 full and kindly, and there was sometimes a 
 wonderful softness and simplicity about the 
 great mouth, when its lines subsided into 
 placidness. The figure of the man was 
 strong but awkward; he had great long 
 arms and large hands, with blunted fin- 
 gers. 
 
 The meeting did not respond very cor- 
 dially to the appeals of this speaker. He 
 seemed an anachronism there, somehow. 
 But Lennon liked him, if only for his old- 
 fashioned discontent and class - bitterness. 
 Our friend resolved to wait until the meet- 
 ing closed, and then speak to the orator. 
 ^^He is my man," thought Lennon; ''if
 
 TOM BERRY OF SOUTHWARK. 87 
 
 anybody here can put me on "Warton's track, 
 he can." 
 
 So, when the proceedings were over, and 
 the room began rapidly to thin, Lennon went 
 up to this man, who was standing in excited 
 talk with a little knot of his comrades, and 
 touched him on the shoulder. 
 
 ^^May I say a word to you?" he asked. 
 
 The man came at once, and very civilly, 
 into a quiet corner of the room. 
 
 Ealph went to the point of his business 
 at once. '^Do you," he asked, "know 
 anything of Mr. Warton — Walter Ealeigh 
 Warton?" 
 
 The man's brow darkened in a moment. 
 "Yes," he replied; "I know him — damn 
 him!" 
 
 " Pray, my friend," rejoined Lennon very 
 coolly, " don't be so rude as to damn any- 
 body who may happen to be the long-lost 
 brother of the person you are speaking to. 
 Walter Warton is not my brother ; but he 
 used to be a friend of mine, and I cannot in
 
 88 TO:sL EEEEY OF SOUTHWARK. 
 
 decency hear him ^ damned' without quar- 
 relling with the damner ; and I don't want 
 to quarrel — I want a little very harmless 
 information, and if you can give it to me 
 without unnecessary swearing, you will really 
 very much oblige a man and a brother." 
 
 The good-humoured raillery of Lennon's 
 tone brought its natural and genial expres- 
 sion back into the working man's face. '^I'm 
 sure I beg your pardon," he said, with sim- 
 ple gentlemanliness of manner; ^' I didn't 
 exactly mean any offence, though I ought 
 to have known that such language must be 
 an offence, even if "Warton wasn't a friend 
 of yours — which I'm sorry to hear. But all 
 I Iniow about him lately is that he's proved 
 a humbug and a sneak, and he's sold him- 
 self to the Tories." 
 
 '•^ Well, I heard that he had become a 
 Tory. But a man may change his opinions 
 honestly, may he not ?" 
 
 ''He may, if he doesn't gain by it ; if 
 he doesn't get taken up by swells and patted
 
 TOX BERRY OF SOUTHWARE. 89 
 
 on tlic back, and asked to their dinners, and 
 trotted out on their platforms. Never mind. 
 Wat Warton's a fool — a double fool. The 
 Tories will make a tool of him, and throw 
 him away ; and I know working men that 
 subscribed their shillings — ay, and their 
 pounds — for him when he stood for the 
 borough over — " (the speaker jerked his 
 head to indicate locality) ; ^' yes, and that 
 lost their jobs of work for days and days to 
 work for him — and that would spit at him 
 now, if he was to come on that platform. 
 He'll fall between the two stools, mind you. 
 Tell Wat Warton that : and tell him, if you 
 like, that Tom Berry of Southwark said so. 
 I'm Tom Berry — he'll know me, never fear." 
 ^'Well, Tom Berry, I sha'n't tell him 
 anything of the sort. I have not seen him 
 for years, and I only want to see him now 
 in order to find out something about his 
 family, to whom I wish very well. If you 
 can tell me where he is to be found I will 
 owe you a good turn."
 
 90 Tox BEREY or southwaee:. 
 
 ^'Yes; I can tell yon wliere he's to be 
 found, if lie's in town. I know his place 
 well. Many a time I've been there ar- 
 ranging for meetings of working men and 
 all that, and many a time I've thought 
 he talked like an angel there. It's in 
 the Temple. He has chambers there ; but 
 somebody else's name remains up, because 
 he doesn't want to have all sorts of people 
 dropping in upon him. If you're going 
 that way now, I am, and I'll show you the 
 place ; for I don't remember the name or the 
 number." 
 
 Lennon was very glad of the offer, and 
 began to take an interest in his new fiiend. 
 They walked together towards Fleet-street. 
 
 " Those men who spoke to-night," asked 
 Ealph, ^^were they much of politicians? 
 They did not seem to be." 
 
 '^ 'No ; they were not. They're not the 
 sort of men that Wat "Warton could work 
 upon. London is not much of a place for 
 sound politics — what I call sound politics —
 
 TO AT BEERY OF SOUTHWARK. 91 
 
 among Avorking men. Unless such as, like 
 myself, are old enough to have the Chartist 
 leaven in them, they don't much care. Lon- 
 don's a dead-and-alive place for politics. 
 The bad lot of our younger men here drink, 
 and have dog-fights and ratting matches, 
 and kick their wives, and all that ; the good 
 sort go to chapels and lectures, and become 
 members of temperance societies, and are 
 taught to let politics alone ; and a few of 
 them are Unitarians, and have Yiews of Life, 
 sir, do you understand ?" he spoke with hu- 
 morous emphasis — ''Views of Life ; and they 
 are too high up in the clouds to care about 
 votes and elections and all that sort of thing. 
 They're good fellows, too, and one can't but 
 like them, — we had few such, I can tell 
 you, when I was a young workman, — but 
 they're chips in porridge so far as politics 
 go. London's a dead old place. I'm sick 
 of it. It's different in the IN'orth — in Lanca- 
 shire and Yorkshire. Wat Warton's great 
 there, I can tell you — at least he used to be.
 
 92 TOil LEREY OF SOUTHWAEK. 
 
 Perhaps they've found him out before now, 
 as I have. But the North's the place. 'Ave 
 you ever bin there ?" 
 
 ^'Yes; I come from the North; that 
 is, from Cumberland, — the Lancashire 
 border." 
 
 ^^Ah, yes; I see. Wat Wart on comes 
 from there, I recollect. I worked a good 
 deal in the North myself at one time. But 
 you've not come lately from there, or you'd 
 know more about him ?" 
 
 ^^ No ; I come from Australia." 
 "From Australia? Maybe from Vic- 
 toria?" 
 
 " Yes, indeed — from Victoria." 
 " Ah, they've universal suffrage there ?" 
 '^ Something like it, at least." 
 "That's the place I'd like to live in. 
 Where a man is a man, don't you know ? 
 He was a humbug the man who wrote that, 
 too, with his ' good time coming.' Ah, if I 
 was once tJiere you wouldn't catch me com- 
 ing back Aer^."
 
 TOM BERRY OF SOUTHWARK. Uo 
 
 By this time they liad reached the 
 Temple ; and after some peering at the lists 
 of names on door-posts under dim lamp-light, 
 Tom Berry at last showed Lennon a set of 
 chambers on the groinid-floor, and told him 
 these were Wart on' s. Then he bade him 
 good-night. 
 
 " I should like to see you again some 
 time," said Lennon, as he held out his hand 
 in leave-taking. 
 
 " I'm to be heard of or found at evenings 
 in the reading-room where you saw me to- 
 night," Berry replied, in a tone which, how- 
 ever friendly, meant to say : "I am only a 
 working man, but I don't go hanging after 
 swells. If they want me they call on me, 
 that's all." 
 
 Lennon quite understood the meaning of 
 the tone, and rather liked it. 
 
 "I shall be quite sure to find you out," 
 he said. ^' I want to have a little more talk 
 with you. I am a stranger to English poli- 
 tics, and you can tell me all about them."
 
 94 TO]U BEERY OF SOUTHWARK. 
 
 ^'Ay, ay, I think I can do that right 
 enough; I've paid pretty dear for my learning 
 in that school, and wish sometimes I knew 
 as little of its teaching as the baby at the 
 breast. Good-night. You'll not find "Wat 
 Wart on in now, I'm thinking; and if you 
 take my advice you'll never look after him 
 any more." 
 
 Eerry nodded, and disappeared in the 
 darkness of the Temple courts. His white, 
 eager face, as he looked back a moment, 
 seemed ghostly. In Lennon's mind the odd 
 thought arose that his late companion was 
 indeed like the ghost of that Chartism which 
 used to live once, and shake the country 
 with its loud, defiant tread, but which had 
 long since fallen dead, and been laid in the 
 dust of the grave. And Lennon, whose later 
 years in England before his exile had been 
 a season of social, literary, and theological 
 Chartism, felt a thrill of something like 
 affinity and pitying brotherhood towards the 
 poor fellow who had just left him. He
 
 TOM BERRY OF SOUTHWARK. 95 
 
 paused a moment in tlionglit, and tlien 
 knocked at the door of the old companion 
 whom he had not seen for so many years, 
 and fi-om whom he had parted in bitter- 
 ness. 
 
 It was a relief to him to find that Warton 
 was not in. A smartly- dressed boy, a cross- 
 breed between page and clerk, opened the 
 door, and told him his master was not likely 
 to be home nntil late. Ealph wrote a few 
 lines, announcing in the friendliest manner 
 his arrival in England, giving his town ad- 
 dress at the grim hostelry already mentioned, 
 and adding that he would call again and 
 endeavour to see Warton before he went 
 northward. 
 
 Kext morning he was at brealdast in the 
 coffee-room, when "Warton, looking young, 
 smooth, and dainty as ever — not apparently 
 having added one day to his age — walked 
 in and glanced sharply from table to table. 
 Lennon rose and went to meet him. There 
 was a cordial greeting, and each congratu-
 
 96 TOM BEERY OF SOUTHWAEK. 
 
 lated the other on his looks, and on his not 
 having groTni any older. But Lennon had 
 seen enough to feel convinced that if he had 
 not risen and come forward his old acquaint- 
 ance would never have recognised him. To 
 be sure, he wore a great beard, and his once 
 bright complexion had darkened ; but there 
 still was the fact, — Warton's eye had rested 
 distinctly and inquiringly on him as he sat 
 at the table, and until he rose and came for- 
 ward Wart on did not know him. 
 
 There was little time for exchange of 
 ideas, even if much interchange of that kind 
 had been likely just then. Wart on was 
 leaving town immediately; his cab was at 
 the door. He was going to stay a few days 
 at Coombe Castle, and came to insist on 
 Ealph's giving him a night at his chambers 
 in the Temple immediately on his return, 
 which Ealph promised to do. Warton asked 
 if Ealph meant to remain in England, and 
 was told he did ; asked him what he meant 
 to do with himself, which Ealph answered
 
 TOM BERRY OF SOUTHWARK. 97 
 
 with a slu'iig of the shoulders and the word 
 ^^ Nothing." 
 
 ^^By Jove! Lucky fellow! Brought 
 home wealth from the Antipodes ?" 
 
 ^' Wealth enough for me. I have worked 
 my time, and now I mean to rest." 
 
 '' 0, you sha'n't rest, I promise you ! 
 We'll find something for you to do. Repose 
 ailleurs is our motto here just now. I am 
 so much concerned that I have to go out of 
 town to-day. But I am immersed in politics, 
 and I am not a Croesus from the colonies 
 who can afford to rest. Good-bye — for the 
 hour. You'll not fail to come that night; 
 we will have a long talk over old times." 
 
 Lennon winced a little at the allusion to 
 old times. It was only as Warton was actu- 
 ally going that he asked after Warton's wife. 
 
 '^ Mabel is perfectly well, I am glad to 
 say, now. Her health is not always very 
 good, and we have, therefore, to find a little 
 place in the country for her and the children. 
 She does not like town; it does not agree 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 98 TOM BEERY OF SOUTHWARK. 
 
 with her, this hideous atmosphere, or with 
 the chiklren. It will be a pleasure to her 
 to hear of your return to England." 
 
 With the words, Warton pressed his 
 Mend's hand gently yet fervently, then 
 jumped into his cab, waved his white hand, 
 and drove away. 
 
 Ealph Lennon sauntered listlessly, vacu- 
 ously, back into the breakfast-room. He 
 looked out of the window; he took up a 
 sheet of the Times and glanced gravely down 
 its columns, and was not aware, until a 
 waiter handed him another sheet, that he 
 had been attentively studying the supple- 
 ment. Then he looked through the columns 
 of news for form's sake, his mind taking in 
 nothing which presented itself at the mind's 
 glass door, the eye. He put the paper down at 
 last, relieved to be decently rid of it. Then 
 he lounged into the smoking-room, and was 
 glad to find it vacant. He sat in a rocking- 
 chair, lighted a cigar, smoked, and began to 
 think.
 
 TOH EEERY OF SOTJTHWAEK. 99 
 
 A blank, cold disappointment had fallen 
 on him. "Wliy ? He did not know. What 
 had he expected or wanted ? He could not 
 guess. Perhaps people returning home after 
 long absence generally expect to find the 
 home more actively and dramatically inter- 
 ested about their return than it is. Perhaps 
 the friendly, easy reception with which 
 Warton had greeted him was not exactly 
 what Lennon expected. The impression 
 with which it left him was certainly one of 
 entire personal insignificance. He might 
 come or go, and the old friends or old ene- 
 mies were unconcerned. Perhaps the real se- 
 cret of the blank lay in the four or five days 
 which must intervene before Lennon could 
 meet his old acquaintance again, and hear 
 even a word of his old love. He might 
 as well have been for these days still in 
 Switzerland or in Algeria or in Melbourne. 
 So near, and yet so far ! It was a vexation 
 and a disappointment — all the more so be- 
 cause he could hardly embody it in dis-
 
 100 To:y: beeey of sorTHT\'AEK. 
 
 tinct thoTiglits and look it fixedly in tlie 
 face. 
 
 So, if lie remained in town, there were 
 at least five days before him with nothing 
 to do ; and his only acquaintances in London 
 a few colonial agents, the town partner of a 
 northern attorney, and a Chartist working 
 man. 
 
 '^]^o," he said, and he rose from his 
 chair and flung away his cigar with a burst 
 of determination ; ^^ I could never stand it. 
 I'll go down to Cumberland at once, and 
 have a look at the old place; and I'll be 
 back in time to meet him. !N'obody wants 
 me here just now, — or anywhere, indeed, 
 for that matter. But I can't spend five days 
 dragging through these hideous streets, and 
 looking out of these dreary windows. I'll 
 go and see the poor old place again."
 
 CHAPTEE lY. 
 
 WALTER WAETON's HOME. 
 
 TwE]STT miles to the south of London, on a 
 railway which nms to the sea, there lies a 
 pretty town, which, unlike most other small 
 and old towns, had grown considerably 
 through its proximity to the line. It hap- 
 pens too often that when a railway passes 
 close to such a town it only sweeps up and 
 runs away with whatever poor little business 
 the place may once have had. The tourist, 
 the commercial traveller, the agent, the 
 locomotive business man of any kind, who 
 must some years ago have stayed a night 
 there if he had anything whatever to do in 
 the town, now makes his arrangements to 
 get through his affairs in a couple of hours, 
 and is off* by the evening train somewhere
 
 102 WALTEE WARTOIS^'S HOME. 
 
 else. Eut the town wliich is now to be 
 sj)oken of had had the rare good luck to 
 make a special profit of that which had 
 been the commercial ruin of so many of its 
 fellows. In fact, it was fortunate enough 
 to be exactly suitable as a home for the 
 families of a large class of Londoners, who 
 liked to stow their wives and children, and 
 after business hours themselves, just as far 
 away from the city of smoke and fog as it 
 was possible to get to in time for a late 
 dinner or a substantial tea. It is the fond 
 mania of a great number of nice, soft, mo- 
 therly women that health cannot possibly 
 be had for their children or themselves if 
 they do not live quite out of London ; and 
 although, as a matter of fact, a small semi- 
 rural town is usually about the worst- 
 drained and most insalubrious sort of place 
 engendered by modem civilisation, and 
 although, as a whole, our much-abused me- 
 tropolis is one of the healthiest places man, 
 woman, or child can abide in, yet it will
 
 WALTER WAETON'S HOME. 103 
 
 take some generations before tlie majority of 
 British mothers get to know that a well- 
 drained lane is a better place to live in than 
 a damp hill-side or the neighbourhood of a 
 marshy meadow. So this little town we are 
 now talking of became a favourite succitr- 
 salSj or chapel of ease, to London; and a 
 little removed from its original cluster of 
 queer, quaint, ancient, and grass - grown 
 streets, lined with houses of red brick, there 
 soon grew up a perfect colony of detached 
 and semi-detached villas, with stucco fronts 
 and plate-glass windows, and tall rows of 
 steps, on either side of which stood for 
 adornment plaster urns filled with flowers. 
 
 For the most part these tenements were, 
 in their external character, as mild, mono- 
 tonous, and conventional as the soberest 
 Briton could desire. They were brick-and- 
 stucco symbols of respectability. One could 
 almost imagine an irregular and poetic fancy 
 taking cold and dying at the bare sight 
 of them. But here and there, a little off
 
 104 WALTER WARTON's HOME. 
 
 the track of this mournful colony of pro- 
 priety, there were some irregular and almost 
 fantastic houses, erected probably by some 
 builder who, naturally eccentric, had been 
 driven to downright madness at last by the 
 weary sight of conventionality all around. 
 The eccentric houses, be it said, were gene- 
 rally smaller than the respectable buildings. 
 When a man gets a good income in Eng- 
 land, and can pay a decent rent for a house, 
 he is as little likely to affect eccentricity in 
 a residence as his wife to display it in her 
 clothes. One of the very prettiest, and also 
 one of the smallest, of the new houses was 
 an odd little lodge built in graceful imita- 
 tion of the old style which was real and 
 substantial in the town itself, and having, 
 therefore, so much of local excuse and local 
 colouring to atone for what Mr. Euskin 
 might probably consider the insincerity of 
 its principles. It was long, low, with 
 heavy old -English porch, and plenteously 
 overgrown with ivy. Its windows were
 
 WALTER WARTON's HOME. 105 
 
 lattices ; it had gables and weathercocks ; 
 and not a square inch of stucco was to be 
 seen anywhere about it. At its back was a 
 garden rich in apple-trees and strawberry- 
 beds and the vine; in front was a sunny 
 scrap of well-mown grass, a smooth-shaven 
 green, which only a wooden paling divided 
 from the road. 
 
 At the close of a beautiful evening in 
 late September, two ladies and two children 
 were in this scrap of ground. The children, 
 a fine boy of seven and a girl a year or two 
 older, were playing with a curly little dog. 
 The elder of the ladies was leaning on the 
 railings and looking anxiously up the road. 
 By the word '' elder" we must not be under- 
 stood to mean that either of the two was old, 
 or elderly, or even approaching to elder - 
 liness. But the lady who counted most 
 years — perhaps some thirty- odd — was very 
 plump and matronly; a handsome woman, 
 but falling fast into that flesh- development 
 which used to make poor Hawthorne shud-
 
 106 WALTER WARTON's HOME. 
 
 der when lie noticed the immature obesity 
 of our English dames. She was fair and 
 bright - complexioned ; indeed her cheeks 
 glowed even with the late and mild kisses 
 of the September sun. She now and then 
 turned away from the railings, and walked 
 up and down the little lawn ; and she 
 walked heavily and breathed rather shortly. 
 Just a little less flesh, and she might haye 
 been stately; a little more sprightliness of 
 moyement, and she might have been a 
 plump Hebe some time advanced in matron- 
 hood. Her companion was fan^, like herself, 
 and bright-cheeked ; but she was slender and 
 shapely, with unresting, beaming brown eyes 
 and a step of elastic vigour ; and she was per- 
 haps, at most, some twenty years of age. 
 
 ^^ He is not coming by this train, Mabel," 
 said the younger woman, looking uj) the 
 road ; ^^ everybody has come, quarter of an 
 hour ago." 
 
 They were aunt and niece ; but not 
 being divided by the usual difference of
 
 WALTER WARTON's HOME. 107 
 
 years in such relationsHpSj the aunt was 
 always ^^ Mabel" to the niece. 
 
 ^^ !N'o, I suppose not," Mabel said with 
 something like a sigh. ^^ He is sometimes 
 delayed, you know, on the way from the 
 station. People get talking to him, and 
 keep him standing where their roads divide. 
 But I don't think he's coming by this train. 
 He will come by the next ; and I think I'm 
 glad of it, for the children will be in bed 
 then, and we'll put on our bonnets and go 
 to meet him." 
 
 '^ The next train is the last for the 
 night ?" the niece inquired with a little em- 
 phasis. 
 
 '' Yes, the last for the night. But he'll 
 come in that train, you need not doubt. He 
 said he would." 
 
 '^ 0, he said he would." This was spoken 
 somewhat doubtfully — coldly, indeed. 
 
 Mabel did not notice the expression con- 
 veyed by the tone, or would not acknowledge 
 it. Indeed this good lady had an absence
 
 108 WALTER WAETON's HOME. 
 
 of appreciation of sarcasm or even irony 
 whicli piety itself must have commended. 
 
 '^ Mamma, is papa coming home to- 
 night?" cried the little boy. 
 
 '^ Yes, Wat, he is. Are yon not glad?" 
 
 ^'0, yes, mamma — very glad, if he 
 comes ; for you know he promised to show 
 me how to mend my horse, and it's ever so 
 long ago now. How do yon know he's 
 coming, mamma?" 
 
 '' Because he said so, dear." 
 
 '^ 0, but then he said so before, mamma, 
 many nights, you know; and I stayed up 
 for him, and he didn't come." 
 
 '' Your papa is much engaged, my dear, 
 and cannot always come." 
 
 ^' !" And there was another pause 
 for reflection, while the infantile mind was 
 gathering up a fresh argument suited to the 
 change of position. ^' Eut then, mamma, 
 people oughtn't to promise, you said your- 
 self the other day, unless they were sure of 
 performing. Ought they, mamma ?"
 
 WALTER WARTON's HOME. 109 
 
 " But perhaps your papa did not exactly 
 promise, dear." 
 
 This was a dangerous manoeuvre — a 
 complete change of front in the presence of 
 the enemy. 
 
 '' Well, then, perhaps he'll come now, as 
 he didn't promise." 
 
 The little girl laughed at her brother's 
 epigrannnatic smartness. His mother co- 
 loured a little, but ignored the sarcasm. 
 
 '' Don't be pert, Watty," said the 
 younger lady; ^^I don't like pert children. 
 — ^Mabel dear, I wonder you would not dis- 
 courage yoiu' son's premature displays of 
 wit." 
 
 Mabel shrugged her shoulders, but said 
 nothing. 
 
 '' I saw you smile, for all that, cousin 
 Grace," pursued the irrepressible Watty. 
 '' 0, yes, I did; I saw a twinkle in your 
 eye." 
 
 His cousin cut short the controversy by 
 chasing him round the little lawn and en-
 
 110 WALTER WAETON'S HOME. 
 
 deayouring to capture him -with, her pocket- 
 handkerchief, lasso -fashion, he screaming 
 the while with delight and laughter. At 
 last she caught him, and at his earnest 
 request lifted him on her shoulder and held 
 him there with one arm, as a girl in a 
 classic picture holds a pitcher or an urn. 
 Her sleeve fell down from her white, strong, 
 shapely arm, as she did so. She and the 
 saucy rosy boy on her shoulder made a 
 pretty group. 
 
 When Watty was set on his feet again, 
 he renewed his plainings for papa. 
 
 ^'Do you see him coming yet, mamma?" 
 
 ^'IS^o, dear, I don't." 
 
 ^^ 0, I wish he would come ! I want my 
 horse mended. I'll not go to bed, mamma, 
 until it's mended. ISTobody knows how to 
 mend it but papa." 
 
 '' Perhaps cousin Gracie could mend it 
 for you if you were to ask her very nicely." 
 
 ^' 0, no, she couldn't. Women don't 
 understand anything."
 
 WALTER TVARTON's HOME. Ill 
 
 " Who told jou that ?" asked cousin 
 Grace, looking fixedly at him. 
 
 " Papa said it," the urchin replied very 
 promptly, and with a saucy twinkle in his 
 brown eyes. 
 
 " ! Papa said women don't under- 
 stand anything ?" 
 
 " Yes, he did." 
 
 This was given in a tone of triumph, as 
 if the authority quoted must settle the ques- 
 tion. 
 
 Grace tossed her head slightly, and 
 said in a quiet undertone, " Some women 
 do understand some things, however — and 
 some people too." Then, as if repenting of 
 any inuendo which might seem to be con- 
 veyed by the words — which, however, Ma- 
 bel had not heeded, or perhaps even heard 
 — the young woman laid her hand upon 
 her aunt's massive sjioulder affectionately, 
 and said, "You are tired, Mabel; go in 
 and lie upon the sofa, and I'll see the 
 children safely stowed away in bed; and
 
 112 WALTER WAETON's HOME. 
 
 then we'll walk to the station and meet 
 Walter." 
 
 It need perhaps hardly be said that the 
 Walter for whom these ladies looked was 
 the Walter Ealeigh Warton of whom some- 
 thing was told in the previous chapters. 
 
 Mrs. Warton accepted the offer, being 
 one of a peculiar class of women whose 
 various duties are always discharged by 
 somebody else, and who are invariably^ 
 put quietly on one side by those who 
 love them as well as by those who do not. 
 Especially she was grateful to anyone who 
 managed her children for her ; because, 
 though they were fond of her, she was 
 not of the least importance to them. She 
 could do nothing for them; she had never 
 done anything for them except to bring 
 them into the world; and even that was 
 accomplished so passively and languidly 
 that her own life was nigh to fading out 
 altogether during the performance. So 
 long as they were washed and dressed and
 
 WALTER WARTOJ^'S HOME. 113 
 
 amused by somebody, she was content. 
 Even lier religious devotion, wliicli was 
 her deepest feeling save one, did not get 
 much beyond the careful inculcation of the 
 words of the Lord's Prayer, and a persistent 
 ordinance that, whether the little ones, as 
 they parroted its sublime words, were broad 
 awake and giggling, or half asleep and nod- 
 ding, — whether it were recited to herself or 
 to her niece, or to the nurserymaid or the 
 nurserymaid's sister (who occasionally drop- 
 ped in to tea, and in the absence of Miss 
 Ethelstone was pressed into the service), 
 — it must always be said on bended knees 
 and with folded hands formally uplifted. 
 It would be cruel indeed to accuse a wo- 
 man like Mrs. "Warton of want of faith in 
 the omnipotence of God ; yet it is doubtful 
 whether she believed that He could hear 
 the prayer of a worshipper, even an infant 
 worshipper, who addressed Him in any save 
 a kneeling posture. 
 
 The children said their prayers that 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 114 WALTEE WARTON's HOME. 
 
 night in the presence of their cousin ; and 
 they never giggled or even yawned while 
 she was there; for they felt instinctively 
 that her senses were awake, and that her 
 attention was given to them. And be sure 
 they prayed for papa, though he had not 
 come in time to mend little Watty's horse. 
 
 Leaning somewhat heavily on her niece's 
 arm, Mrs. Warton presently walked out on 
 the way to the station. There was some- 
 thing of a brightness about the poor lady's 
 eyes — and she had beautiful soft eyes, and 
 a deep sweet voice — as she set out to meet 
 her husband. The one passion of her life 
 had been, and still was, for the husband of 
 her youth. To her he was the greatest and 
 the best man on earth. His speeches, when 
 he used to take her to hear them — ah, he 
 was too busy now, and she did not live in 
 London — always seemed to her the sub- 
 limest inspii'ations of human genius. She 
 did not trouble herself to understand them ; 
 indeed, he had a sort of way of conveying 
 to her that women are not supposed to un-
 
 WALTER WARTON's HOME. 115 
 
 clcrstand siicli tilings, and slie accepted tlie 
 intimation meekly, and admired Hm all the 
 more for the starlike dwelling apart of his 
 serene and lofty intellect. Eut she admired 
 them sincerely, and delighted to hear their 
 fine rolling words thunder in her ears ; and 
 her feelings followed every change of mood, 
 and quickened or softened, or saddened or 
 grew angry, at the call of his trumpet-tone 
 — just as people wholly ignorant of the very 
 rudiments of music, and unconscious of any 
 effort to follow the meaning of an organ or 
 an orchestra, are yet compelled to respond 
 to the successive moods of its thrilling and 
 crashing intonations. To his wife Walter 
 Ealeigh "Warton was Demosthenes and St. 
 John in one person. 
 
 The two women walked to the station 
 along a beautiful ascending road which the 
 falling leaves of some beeches were just 
 beginning to strew, and tlirough some 
 charming little groups of silver birches, 
 looking, in their now almost leafless grace-
 
 116 WALTER WAETON's HOME. 
 
 fulness, lilve clusters of IN'aiads or nymphs 
 unrobed for a plunge in the waves. The 
 autumnal stars were beginning to show 
 theii^ faintest lights in the sky; and the 
 deep red and green lamps of the railway- 
 station, which was far up a high embank- 
 ment, seemed like strange fantastic corusca- 
 tions in the heavens. 
 
 Mrs. "Warton was not a poetic woman, 
 but some sense of the beauty of the scene 
 and the calm deliciousness of the atmosphere 
 impressed itself on her. ^^How lovely all 
 this place looks to-night !" she remarked. 
 ^' I wonder Walter does not like to be here 
 oftener, or to stay here longer. But men 
 are so absorbed in politics ; and he owes it 
 to his country, he says, not to desert the 
 career he has taken up." 
 
 Her companion frowned and bit her lip, 
 but said nothing as yet. 
 
 " Patriots, you know, in old days were 
 ready to sacrifice everything for theii' coun- 
 try," pursued Mabel.
 
 WALTER WARTON's HOME. 117 
 
 ^' Even their wives and theii' cliildren?" 
 
 ^' Yes, dear, I suppose so." 
 
 " Well, I think there arc some now 
 who have not at all degenerated, and indeed 
 who could make the sacrifice very cheer- 
 fully. By the way, Mabel, Artemus Ward 
 offers to allow every drop of blood in the 
 veins of all his able-bodied male relatives 
 to be shed in the cause of the American 
 Union." 
 
 " Does he, dear ? 0, but come now, 
 that is only your nonsense. You are laugh- 
 ing at me; I was talking seriously. You 
 unmarried girls are never serious. Wait 
 until you are married." 
 
 ^^ Yes, I shall be made serious enough 
 then, no doubt. But, Mabel, when did 
 Walter write to say that he was coming to- 
 night? Yesterday?" 
 
 ^' ]^o, not yesterday. I think it was 
 Monday, or perhaps Saturday." 
 
 This was Friday. 
 
 ^' A week ago nearly ?"
 
 118 WALTER WARTON's HOME. 
 
 " Well, not quite a week ago, dear. But 
 Ms time is so taken up, and he goes about 
 from place to place a great deal." 
 
 ^^ Yes, I saw Ms name in a paper as 
 among the guests of Earl Somebody, some- 
 where in tlie country, a few days back." 
 
 " Did you really?" Mrs. Warton's face 
 radiated with a mild triumph. ^^At an 
 Earl's in the country ! The naughty boy 
 neyer wrote to tell me ; but he is so modest : 
 he neyer will boast of anything." 
 
 '^ I would not go to these places if I 
 were such a man as "Walter." 
 
 "Why not, dear?" 
 
 " What does he want there ?" 
 
 " Men in political life always have to go 
 to these places. Something about parties, 
 you know; arranging who is to go in for 
 this place and that — into Parliament. Wal- 
 ter hopes to have another chance made for 
 Mm yery soon. We don't quite understand 
 these things, dear ; but Walter does, you may 
 be sure."
 
 WALTER WAETON's HOME. 119 
 
 By this time they had reached the little 
 station. They went in and sat down. 
 
 ^^ How often I have come here alone of 
 evenings/' said Mrs. Wart on, with some- 
 thing like a sigh, ^'before you came to bear 
 me company !" 
 
 '' And been disappointed?" 
 
 '^ Yes, sometimes ; but not always, you 
 know. Yery often I came just in time to 
 find my truant and to bring him away in tri- 
 umph, all tired and dusty, and lead him home 
 and make much of him, and be very happy." 
 
 '^ "Well, my dear, dear Mabel, I hope 
 you may be happy now — indeed I do. I 
 hear the whistle of the train." 
 
 '^ Yes, here it is, and I know he's com- 
 ing." Mrs. Warton sprang to her feet, light 
 for the moment as a girl. 
 
 The train came in, and many people got 
 out of it, some or most of them regular 
 denizens of the place, who knew Mrs. "War- 
 ton and greeted her ; but her husband was 
 not among them.
 
 120 WALTER TTARTON'S HOME. 
 
 ^' Come away, clear," she said wearily to 
 her niece. '^I am so disappointed. 0, if 
 anything has happened to him !" 
 
 '' Nothing has happened to him, you 
 may be sure," her niece replied, in a tone 
 which implied anger towards the absent 
 rather than consolation or encouragement to 
 the present. 
 
 '' Ah, you have no husband," was Mrs. 
 Warton's commentary, '' and you don't 
 know what it is to be always anxiously 
 expecting someone home who can't come 
 when you expect him. How can I tell that 
 there may not have been an accident some- 
 where, and perhaps he is killed?" 
 
 They did not talk much on the way 
 home. When they reached the little porch 
 of the house, Mrs. Wart on said, '^ How glad 
 I am the children are in bed ! They really 
 would worry me terribly just now." 
 
 The two women set themselves to occu- 
 pation of some kind for the rest of an even- 
 ing that promised to be very dreary. They
 
 WALTER WARTON's HOME. 121 
 
 kept a very modest household, two female 
 servants being the entire domestic staff; and 
 they saw few visitors. Miss Ethelstone had 
 not been very long — only some year or so — 
 living in the house. She had come to keep 
 her aunt company, being herself an orphan, 
 when her aunt's husband grew too busy in 
 politics to come home very often. And she 
 came to help to put things to rights, which 
 were going dreadfully astray under Mrs. 
 Warton's superintendence. And finally she 
 came — this being however an unwhispered, 
 hardly understood reason — to share quietly 
 and delicately her very slender purse with 
 her aunt's family. She had a tiny annuity 
 left to her by her father, and it had been for 
 a long time her great ambition to go to 
 Eome, and live there and study art like the 
 American girl in Hawthorne's story. But 
 she cheerfully put off the project for a 
 while, until the long-expected time should 
 come when Wart on' s genius obtained its 
 reward, and he became a prime minister, or
 
 122 WALTER WARTON'S HOME. 
 
 a chief justice, or a governor-general of 
 India, — wliicli lie was quite certain to do ; 
 but lie must get into the House of Commons 
 first, and he had not got there yet. So 
 Grace came and helped his wife to manage 
 her affairs ; and the first step she took was 
 to dispense with the services of the daily 
 governess, and teach the children herself. 
 
 The two women then sat down to a 
 night's occupation. Grace got the terres- 
 trial globe and a volume of geography, and 
 began to revolve the one and con over 
 the other. 
 
 ^'I want so much to study all this 
 latitude and longitude business," she said, 
 looking up with a smile at her aunt. ^' I 
 must keep at least one lesson ahead of 
 little Mabel, or there will be a hopeless 
 break-down. I never was strong in geo- 
 graphy; and only yesterday she asked me 
 some dreadful question about the latitude 
 of something, and what it all meant ; and 
 only that that providential smash of a pane
 
 WALTER WARTON's HOME. 123 
 
 of glass took place through the aid of Watty 
 and his ball, I do believe I should have 
 been compelled, for the sake of my repu- 
 tation as a teacher, to say, ^ Little girls 
 must not ask questions ;' or, ' Hush, my 
 dear ; you'll know all about that when you 
 grow to be a woman.' " 
 
 The last few words of this speech fell 
 upon inattentive ears. Eor a quick step 
 was heard just then at the door, followed 
 by a peculiar whistle; and Mrs. "Warton 
 jumped up and exclaimed, ^^Why, here is 
 "Walter, I do declare !" and ran to open the 
 door herself, and give him a welcome. 
 
 Her niece remained discreetly where 
 she was, being indeed in nowise personally 
 anxious to greet the delinquent. In a mo- 
 ment or two Mrs. Warton entered, leading 
 her husband in triumph. 
 
 Walter Ealeigh Warton was a slight 
 shapely man, rather tall, with a profusion 
 of thick dark curling hair, a colourless face, 
 and a very youthful appearance. He did
 
 124 WALTER WARTON's H0]ME. 
 
 not look more than six- or seven-and-twenty 
 years of age ; he must have been fully ten 
 years older. He might fairly have been 
 called a handsome man. He had beauti- 
 fully white teeth, and hands as small and 
 delicate and well- shaped as those of a wo- 
 man ; and as he wore two or three spark- 
 ling rings, one might have taken his hand, 
 when he laid it on the shoulder of his wife, 
 for that of a woman. He wore neither beard, 
 whiskers, nor moustache. If he were a fair 
 symbol of the rights of labour, then labour 
 is in its perfected illustration a wonder- 
 fully neat, clean, and dainty-looking affair. 
 Close under "Warton's eyes, though, if an 
 observer looked keenly at them, could be 
 discerned some outlines which are only 
 graven by age, or care, or passion. And 
 the eyes themselves, naturally bright, and 
 often made still brighter by a purposed 
 earnestness of expression on the proper 
 occasions, had a way of losing their lustre 
 sometimes with an odd suddenness when
 
 WALTER WARTON'S HOME. 125 
 
 their OT\Ticr was not actually speaking. 
 The light faded out of them as if the dweller 
 within had extinguished his lamps to brood 
 awhile in the darkness. And then those 
 who had best reason to study Warton's 
 ways knew that he was not listening to a 
 word which was spoken to him. But only 
 his wife and her niece had much opportu- 
 nity of studying him in this mood and ex- 
 pression. Abroad, he was generally all 
 energy and yiyacity. Mrs. Warton set 
 down these sudden fits of abstraction to 
 the account of genius and patriotism and 
 a political career. Her niece once offended 
 both Warton and her by suddenly breaking 
 off in some amusing scrap of personal ex- 
 perience she was detailing to him with the 
 words, " Kow, Walter, I know you have not 
 been listening to a word this some time. 
 You quite forgot to keep up the smile! 
 You remind me of a lady in Sam Slich^ 
 of whom it is said that the moment peo- 
 ple's eyes were turned away, the smile
 
 126 WALTER WAETON's HOME. 
 
 droiDped off her face like a petticoat when 
 the string's broke. Eut I had my eyes on 
 you, and I found you out. And now you 
 must listen to the whole story over again 
 as a punishment." 
 
 Which he did ; this time Kstening atten- 
 tively, but not much pleased at even this 
 slight discovery. 
 
 Now Walter is being led in by his de- 
 lighted wife. He kissed his niece, of whom 
 indeed he was very fond ; and, moreover, 
 he always liked being waited on by wo- 
 men. 
 
 ^' Well, Grace, my wee lassie, how charm- 
 ing you look ! Such roses on your cheeks T 
 
 Not to be gathered in Belgravia, these 
 blooming flowers. And Mabel too; she 
 looks well, and apparently has not been 
 pining too much for her husband. Ah, 
 well ; Providence will give us rest some- 
 time ! Eut there is work to be done 
 yet." 
 
 He sighed a very touching sigh — sup-
 
 T\'ALTER WAETON's HOME. 127 
 
 pressed it still more touehingly — tlien re- 
 posed liiniself in his armcliair, and asked 
 with genial gaiety for some tea. 
 
 ^'But have you dined, Walter? Are 
 you sure ?" 
 
 ^^Yes ; yes. I dined two hours ago." 
 
 '^ And where do you come from, dearest ? 
 We quite gave you up. There is no train 
 from London now ?" 
 
 " Xo, dear; I did not come from London 
 — in fact, I came from Coombe Castle." 
 
 ^^ Coombe Castle ! So you were there ! 
 Grace saw your name in the papers. But, 
 my dear Walter, you surely have not been 
 there all this time ?" 
 
 ^^ All what time, Mabel?" 
 
 "All that time since Grace saw the 
 paper — days and days ago." 
 
 " Well, dear, I was there since Sunday, 
 I think. But I was yery much engaged — 
 not pleasure, only politics." 
 
 " So near — within ten miles of me for 
 days — and did not come !"
 
 128 WALTER WARTON's HOME. 
 
 " I could not come, Mabel, before. I 
 have come now." 
 
 "And where are your things — your 
 luggage ?" 
 
 " "Well, the fact is, I have brought no- 
 thing with me. It was not worth while. 
 I must go off again in the morning." 
 
 " 0, my dear Walter ! Again in the 
 morning, after one short night ?" 
 
 " Yes, love. I cannot help it. I must 
 go. I am deeply engaged just at present." 
 
 " Are you going to London, then ?" 
 
 Warton, be it said, always had chambers 
 in London. 
 
 "Yes, to London; that is, presently. 
 But first I have of course to retui-n to the 
 Castle, l^ow, dear, about that promised 
 tea ? I do assure you I feel weary." 
 
 So Walter had some tea, and was well 
 waited on by two women, one of whom 
 honestly adored him, while the other at 
 least did her best to follow the example. 
 He was very gracious, and took his wife's
 
 WALTER WARTON's HOME. 129 
 
 kisses with a sweet patience and benignity, 
 and sometimes ran his hand playfully oyer 
 his niece's hair with a manner half paternal, 
 half gallant. Mabel rattled on with all the 
 news of the little community for the past 
 few days, and asked him countless questions 
 about the castle, about the earl, about the 
 countess, and what she was like, and how 
 she dressed, and about the ladies staying 
 at the castle. Suddenly, and raising his 
 white hand with gentle earnestness to stay 
 the further rush of the torrent of woman's 
 curiosity, Walter said : 
 
 " Come now, I have something to tell 
 you in which you will take an interest. I 
 was near forgetting it. Do you know who 
 is in town, and was asking about you ? Par- 
 ticularly, most particularly anxious about 
 you." 
 
 '' Indeed I don't know at all. Who can 
 there be in town who cares about me ?" 
 
 " Come, then, guess. Three guesses." 
 
 '' But, Walter love, I never could guess. 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 130 WALTER WAETON's HOME. 
 
 And then I know it can be nobody — ^nobody 
 of any consequence, I mean, in whom we 
 take any interest." 
 
 ^^Yes, but it is tliougli; somebody in 
 whom you take an interest — or at least who 
 still takes a deep interest in you. Think of 
 the sail that brings our friends up from the 
 under world. He has come over the ocean 
 — up from the under world." 
 
 ''0, is it possible? You don't mean 
 poor Ealpli Lennon ?" 
 " Indeed I do." 
 
 " And so he has come back again. Poor 
 dear Ealph ! How glad I shall be to see 
 him !" 
 
 Mrs. Warton was still a young woman. 
 Women older than she are capable, in real 
 life if not in romance, of breaking strong 
 hearts with passion; and, stranger still, of 
 feeling their own hearts rent anew, or rent 
 for the first time, with true and unconquer- 
 able love. She knew quite well that Ealph 
 Lennon' s heart once was torn with love for
 
 WALTER WARTON's HOME. 131 
 
 her, and that, refused by her, he flung him- 
 self away, fii'st on what is called life here, 
 and next upon the death-in-life of a far raw 
 colony. Her heart ought to have beat very 
 quickly at the mention of his name; her 
 cheek ought to have flushed a burning red ; 
 at least she ought to have looked em- 
 barrassed in some way. But this good 
 woman was as composed as her niece, who 
 never set eyes on Lennon in her life and 
 had not half-a-dozen times heard his name. 
 Mabel was delighted to hear that her old 
 lover was in England ; but she had no sen- 
 timental emotion whatever connected with 
 his name. She had no secret about him at 
 all,, and would have told anybody who cared 
 to hear it that Ealph Lennon once was in 
 love with her, and wanted to marry her, but 
 that she could not have him, as calmly and 
 sweetly as she might have told of her inti- 
 macy with some schoolgirl friend. How he 
 had loved, and been disappointed, she would 
 have explained with just the same unembar-
 
 132 WALTER WARTON's HOME. 
 
 rassed regret as if she were telling how he 
 once had a fever, and had to have his hair 
 cut off. 
 
 "Poor Ealph ! I hope he will come 
 to see me." There was something magna- 
 nimously simple about her pity for poor 
 Ealph. " What does he look like, Walter 
 love ?'' 
 
 " Strong and brown. Yery much aged, 
 I thought — quite a middle-aged sort of man. 
 Yet he is young — I think younger by a 
 year or two at least than I am." 
 
 " He used to be a very handsome young 
 man. Is he handsome now, Walter ?" 
 
 " Yes, I think so — I don't know, in fact. 
 But I believe he has made a good deal of 
 money. He is very fortunate." And War- 
 ton sighed — a deep, sincere, involuntary 
 sigh. 
 
 " Xot fortunate in everything, love? JS'ot 
 in everything. He used to think you fortu- 
 nate, used he not ?" 
 
 This was said in a fondling tone, and
 
 WALTER WARTON's HOME. 133 
 
 witli a hand laid tenderly on Walter's slionl- 
 der, while his wife's soft, loving eyes looked 
 appealingly into his. She had beautiful eyes. 
 Monotony of life, inactivity of mind and 
 body, and the power of the flesh, — the literal 
 flesh, — had not conquered these. ^' Only 
 thine eyes remained — they would not go." 
 
 But Wart on' s own eyes saw nothing 
 that was before him just now. "Yes," he 
 said ; '^ of course, yes — not fortunate in that 
 way. But how strange that he should have 
 made a heap of money in a few years — dig- 
 ging or farming or something out there ; and 
 what a career it will give him here now, if 
 he has the brains and the spirit to follow it ! 
 What would some of us give for the chance ! 
 We rack our brains, and wear out our frames, 
 and make oiu"selves slaves, and run into all 
 manner of risks, and brave disgrace — good 
 God ! — and think we have talents and genius 
 and what not ; and we remain poor, and find 
 our poverty a millstone round our necks : 
 and a fellow who was always a romantic,
 
 134 WALTER WAETOX'S HOME. 
 
 headlong sort of fool runs out to Botany Bay 
 or somewhere for a few years, and conies 
 back rich! And now" — Wart on' s voice 
 dropped, and he spoke in a quiet, half-medi- 
 tative tone — "now he has lands and beeves 
 — lands and beeves." 
 
 " Are not those Falstaff's words ?" Grace 
 calmly inquired, as she looked up from her 
 globe. 
 
 "They are; and they are bitter words, 
 too." 
 
 " Yes, I suppose so. He had squandered 
 his life away in folly, and idleness, and 
 self-conceit, I think — for I always imagine 
 Falstaff delighting to be the great man of 
 tapsters and low companions ; and then he 
 envied somebody who once was a poor young 
 fellow, perhaps, but who now has lands and 
 beeves. I thought I knew the words ; but 
 I don't know whether I really understand 
 the meaning of them. Do you think I do, 
 Walter ?" 
 
 He put his hand under his chin, and
 
 WALTER WAETON's HOME. 135 
 
 looked fixedly at lier. His piercing dark 
 eyes were met calmly by hers. 
 
 " Yes, I think yon understand them," he 
 said ; and he remained silent for a moment 
 or two. 
 
 ^^But, Walter," began Mrs. Warton 
 again, ^^I always thought Ealph Lennon 
 had talents." 
 
 "Yes, dear, so he had — great talents, I 
 thought at one time. But I used to think 
 he wanted wisdom, perhaps, and was more 
 likely to spoil a career than make it. Now 
 he has England's political life before him. 
 The way is clear — he has money — he may 
 do anything and be anything; while — " He 
 shrugged his shoulders, and dropped into a 
 haggard silence. 
 
 Presently he looked round, and saw that 
 his wife's eyelids were drooping. " You are 
 sleepy, Mabel dear," he said, "and must 
 not remain up for me. I did want a few 
 pages written for me — at my dictation — but 
 I will not keep you up. I daresay I can
 
 136 WALTER WARTON's HOME. 
 
 manage tliem myself, though my writing is 
 so dreadful, people say they can't read it." 
 
 '' Shall I write for you, "Walter ?" asked 
 Grace. 
 
 ^' Thank you — if you would — if it would 
 not much trouble you ?" 
 
 " 0, no ; I will do it with pleasure." 
 
 '' That's a dear girl; and then poor Mabel 
 can go to bed." 
 
 ^^ Thank you both," said Mabel; ^^for 
 indeed I am so tired that I don't belieye I 
 could do anything." With all her love for 
 "Walter, Mabel was always glad when any- 
 body would relieve her of any task which 
 should naturally be hers. So she went to 
 bed and fell asleep, and dreamed — very in- 
 nocently — that poor Ealph Lennon had come 
 to see her, and was very fond of her now, 
 and of Walter too, and that they all lived in 
 the same street, and were very happy. 
 
 Walter meanwhile was walking up and 
 down the room with his hand under his 
 chin, or occasionally lying in his easy-chair,
 
 WALTER WARTON's HOME. 137 
 
 and dictating some letters to liis niece. 
 They did not speak much of anything but 
 the letters while the work was going on. 
 He, as he leaned in his chair, sometimes 
 gazed covertly, fixedly on her, and studied 
 the clear firm lines of her mouth, and noted 
 too the developing beauty of her woman- 
 hood. When the closing sentence of the last 
 letter had been finished, he said : 
 
 ^^!N'ow, Grace, you are tired, I know, 
 and I must not exact any more. I don't 
 think I want anything else done ; and you 
 are a good girl to work so late for me. You 
 must go to bed — I shall remain up a little 
 longer." 
 
 ''Are you going early in the morning, 
 Walter ?" 
 
 ''Yes; very early." 
 
 " Then do you mean to see the children ?" 
 
 The children ! He had never asked for 
 them. Stranger still, their mother had 
 never spoken of them. 
 
 " yes; of course — the dear little ones.
 
 138 WALTER WAETON's HOME. 
 
 I must see them — to-morrow morning, be- 
 fore I go. They are always np very early, 
 are they not ?" 
 
 ^^ Yes, that they are; as I know when 
 they come battering at my door somewhere 
 about sunrise, I think, and clamouring for 
 me to come and play with them." 
 
 "- You women, how happy you are I If 
 you only knew it ! You can stay at home 
 and cultivate the domestic virtues, and be 
 happy children always while you have chil- 
 dren round you ; but we — " 
 
 He would have gone on with some pa- 
 thetic lament over the life of man, but the 
 girl cut him short. 
 
 " Don't, please, talk in that way. It is 
 thrown away on me. It is nonsense." 
 
 '' JSTonsense, dear child ?" 
 
 "Yes, Walter; nonsense. You don't 
 believe a word of it. You despise in your 
 heart our trifling, monotonous lives ; and 
 you despise us for leading them. IS'ow 
 don't stop me. You know I speak the truth.
 
 WALTER WARTON'S HOME. 139 
 
 What hinders you from living a domestic 
 life, and cultivating the domestic virtues, 
 and all that sort of thing ?" 
 
 ''Ah, you dear, impetuous, illogical wo- 
 men, who cannot imderstand that a man's 
 duty is sometimes to sacrifice — " 
 
 " Please, Walter, don't talk to me as if 
 I were a child, or a working man, or — or 
 anybody but what I am." She was actu- 
 ally on the point of saying, " or your wife," 
 but checked herself in time. '' I am sorry 
 to see poor Mabel left always alone ; I see 
 her pining and unhappy, and — and — in fact, 
 I can't stand it;" and, as energetic girls 
 will do when much in earnest nowadays, 
 she broke into slang. 
 
 " My dear girl, what am I to do ? A 
 political career is the most remorseless mis- 
 tress, and if you neglect it for a moment 
 you are thrown out altogether. I have a ter- 
 rible up-hill battle to fight. I have to court 
 friends and supporters and — " 
 
 ''And patrons?"
 
 140 WALTER WARTON'S HOME. 
 
 ^^ Yes; and patrons — it is only too true. 
 I am a man -witliout money. I have ne- 
 glected my i^rofession, and now it deserts 
 me. I talk to you frankly, because I see 
 yon are not a child, but a woman of sense 
 and spirit ; and I want yon to understand 
 me. I am an ambitious man — it is not a 
 girl like you who would blame me for that. 
 I know I have a career before me, if only I 
 can work on yet a little while. And listen, 
 Grace ; it is only by patrons, whether they 
 be peers or mobs — I try both — that a man 
 like me can get on in English political life. 
 If I had Lennon's money — ah, then indeed 
 I could do without either. But I tell you, 
 girl, I am compelled to go on. I cannot 
 stop. I am plunged in difficulties. "What 
 would you do if you were like me ? Would 
 you renounce your career ?" 
 
 ^^I would," she answered vehemently. 
 " I would renounce any career which had to 
 be followed by seeking the patronage of 
 lords — or of mobs either. I would not sur-
 
 WALTER WARTON'S HOME. 141 
 
 render my home — and my soul — for such a 
 career. Give it up, "Walter, give it up ! 
 Your talents would soon make a way for 
 you which would be free and independent, 
 and which would never compel you to sacri- 
 fice your home." 
 
 '' My home !" he said in a low tone, and 
 he again shi'ugged his shoulders. '' I sup- 
 pose a home means companionship of thought 
 and mind, does it not ? Dear Mabel is the 
 best of women ] but do you think you could 
 live long, Grace, on sugar-plums ? I can't." 
 
 He took up one of his letters and began 
 to glance over it. Grace was not inclined 
 to continue the conversation. Perhaps she 
 wished she had not said so much. So she 
 rose and bade him good-night. He di-ew 
 her towards him and kissed her. There 
 was nothing in that. She had sat upon his 
 knee and pulled his hair when a bright little 
 child, ten years ago, and he always since 
 then kissed her on meeting and parting. 
 Eut there was an emphasis in his kiss to-
 
 142 WALTER WARTOX'S H0:ME. 
 
 night, and there was a warmth in the pres- 
 sure of his hand, which sent a somewhat dis- 
 agreeable sensation through her, and made 
 her glad to be alone. 
 
 ^' She grows a fine girl," Wart on thought 
 when she had gone, ^' and she will have 
 brains as well as heart. A man who has a 
 wife like that might perhaps give up a career 
 for her ; or, better still, she would help him 
 to make a career, and would understand him 
 and keep him right. Eyerything is against 
 me. I have nothing but myself. I am 
 alone." 
 
 He remained long up, thinking. When 
 at last he went to bed, he took every care 
 not to waken his wife. Her kisses would 
 have distressed him.
 
 CHAPTER Y. 
 
 WALTER WARTON'S HOPES. 
 
 Walter Ealeigh TVartox was one of the 
 might-liaYe-beens. He might haye been a 
 man of genius. Indeed he seemed to have 
 missed by a narrow chance the ray of in- 
 spiration as it descended. He was, how- 
 ever, a strikingly good imitation of a man 
 of genius. He had the contortions of the 
 Sibyl. IN'ature gave him a glittering sur- 
 face of talent, a passionate aspiration to- 
 wards success of any kind, a deep self-con- 
 fidence, and a thiilling powerful voice. 
 Therefore he started early in life as an 
 orator and a politician; and he naturally 
 fell into a general career of opposition, that 
 path requiring little study and little acqui-
 
 144 WALTER WARTON's HOPES. 
 
 sition of facts. His talents would liave 
 suited just as well for journalism, for fiction, 
 for law, as for politics — perhaps for the 
 pulpit best of all. Anything he did would 
 have made a certain impression, for a time, 
 on what may be called the popular mind. 
 It would have been showy, full of bright 
 colours, sentiments which had a suggestion 
 of novelty and a strong flayour of earnest- 
 ness. Jean Paul Eichter compares some- 
 one to a lighthouse — ^'' high, far -shining, 
 empty." The intellect of Walter Wart on 
 was of this description. He flung himself 
 into politics for three reasons : first, one can 
 make a success there, for a time, without 
 labour, study, or preliminary training ; next, 
 he had acuteness enough to see that in Eng- 
 land political life is the one only sphere in 
 which a man without money or rank can 
 possibly obtain social influence; finally, he 
 had a wonderful fluency, a ready power of 
 turning everything he wanted to say into 
 the form of a noble sentiment or a thrilling
 
 WALTER WABTON's HOPES. 145 
 
 antitliesis, and, as has been already men- 
 tioned, a fine voiee. 
 
 Warton's father was a dissenting minis- 
 ter, who had been a working man. Warton 
 inherited much of the fervent power of 
 denunciation which had made his father 
 conspicuous among Birmingham trade- ora- 
 tors in the days of the proposed march upon 
 London, and of the Manchester blanketeers. 
 The eloquence of denunciation was not so 
 successful when the elder Warton put down 
 his workman's tools and turned minister ; 
 and he subsided into a very quiet, laborious, 
 earnest, and obscure preacher of what he 
 understood to be the Gospel. He lived 
 near the northern border of Lancashire, and 
 "Walter Warton was bom and reared in 
 Cumberland. His father saw that the lad 
 inherited his own declamatory power, and 
 thought the bar would be its best field of 
 exercise. Walter insisted on going to Ox- 
 ford; and as his mother was a woman of 
 some means who had fallen in love with 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 WALTER WARTON's HOPES. 
 
 the elder Wart on' s preaching and married 
 him, and considerately died too soon to 
 interfere with her son's schemes of personal 
 ambition, the money was found for him. 
 He went to Oxford, and quietly lapsed into 
 the social respectability of orthodox opi- 
 nions. Then he studied for the bar, and 
 was called; but before he had made much 
 of his way there, his father died and left 
 him free, and with just enough of annual 
 income to set a man astray — not half enough 
 to secui'e him a career, or even a satisfactory 
 living. "Walter Warton thought the bar 
 slow and toilsome, and deliberately made 
 up his mind for politics, parliament, re- 
 nown, and finally an appointment ; and, 
 looking coolly around him, he saw no other 
 way so congenial and convenient of mount- 
 ing into public life and a parliamentary 
 seat as on the shoulders of the working 
 man. The working man, his wi'ongs and 
 his rights, were just then becoming fashion- 
 able and influential. Warton had naturally
 
 WALTER WARTON's HOPES. 147 
 
 many sympathies witli the "working man — 
 sympathies which had been bequeathed to 
 him, along with his voice and his eloquence, 
 by his honest old father. His instincts in- 
 deed were never decidedly ungenerous where 
 his personal interests did not coerce them ; 
 and he did feel, at the beginning of his 
 public career, an honest ambition to be 
 known as one who loved and served the 
 British artisan. 
 
 But Warton had by nature and by cul- 
 ture unhappily very un-Spartan tastes. He 
 loved luxury and the society of swells. He 
 loved to dine at splendid tables, and to be 
 waited on by liveried servants. He loved 
 to have his clothes made by the first tailor, 
 and to be seen walking arm-in-arm with the 
 heir to a title. A woman's soft, sweet voice 
 filled him with joy ; the sight of a woman's 
 white shoulder and bosom, rising resplendent 
 out of silk and lace, was dear to him as the 
 sun and shadow on a mountain side to one 
 of the Lake poets. He loved perfumes and
 
 148 WALTER AVARTON's HOPES. 
 
 jewels and carriages and sparkling wine. 
 Instincts and interests therefore combined 
 to suggest to him the necessity of giving 
 rather a new complexion and purpose to the 
 character of a working-man's orator. The 
 acknowledged parliamentary leaders of the 
 Eadicals — strong, simple, unselfish men; men 
 too who had plenty of money, but gave no 
 delightful dinners — rather fought shy of 
 him. They did not care much about his 
 eloquence — one or two of them being orators 
 of acknowledged genius and power, and 
 valuing even their oa\tl oratory merely as 
 an instrument in compelling the passing of 
 certain desired laws ; and they did not seem 
 to have much faith in men who had no 
 money, and yet were not content to serve 
 in the ranks. These leaders did not par- 
 ticularly want Warton in parliament ; did 
 not care if he never got there, because they 
 had little need of his eloquence ; and would 
 have preferred some blunt ungainly manu- 
 facturer from the north, whose means placed
 
 WALTER WARTON's HOPES. 149 
 
 liiin above suspicion, and wliosc honest vote 
 miglit always have been connted on. So 
 when, after years of struggling and stumping 
 and spouting, after acquiring a popularity 
 and a name for eloquence vrhich threw 
 artizan crowds into raptures, Warton at last 
 ventured to stand for a borough so Liberal 
 that no Tory had a ghost of a chance there, 
 he found himself defeated after an expen- 
 sive contest by a respectable local nobody, 
 who had plenty of money, professed steady 
 old-fashioned Liberalism, and could hardly 
 utter three consecutive sentences at the 
 hustings. 
 
 From that hour Warton found himself 
 drawing nearer and nearer to the Tories. 
 He began to think they were the true friends 
 to the working man. He began to think 
 they appreciated talent better than the Li- 
 berals, and were less intolerant of poverty — 
 as, indeed, is quite true. He found that 
 there was more of the ^^ good fellow" charac- 
 ter among them ; that their manners were
 
 150 WALTER WAETON's HOPES. 
 
 more refined, their doors more hospitably 
 ojDen, and their women more attractive. He 
 became at last inspired with the grand idea 
 that the country was to be saved by a rap- 
 prochement between the Derby-Disraelites 
 and the working man. Some popular ques- 
 tion or another — perhaps it was the Crimean 
 war — where party politics did not directly 
 interyenOj enabled him decently to break 
 with his old friends, and even to declaim 
 against them as, in that instance, enemies 
 of England. He did the Tories good ser- 
 vice, and they were really grateful; and 
 he whispered to their understrappers that 
 he could do better service still — that he 
 could bring the working man right over 
 at some great crisis; and they whispered 
 the promise to some of their chiefs, who 
 were not too confident, but thought there 
 might be something in it, and passed round 
 the mot dJordre that some attention was to 
 be paid to Warton. Attention was paid to 
 him accordingly, — especially when it was
 
 WALTER WARTON's HOPES. 151 
 
 foimd that his manners were gentlemanly, 
 his hands white, his clothes made by Poole, 
 and his appearance in the drawing-room un- 
 exceptionable. 
 
 Was it mentioned that Walter Warton 
 had no claim whatever to the interjected 
 name of ^'Ealeigh" ? It was never given 
 him by his godfathers or godmathers. He 
 took it '' for the sake of euphony," as Mr. 
 Xinglake would say. His real names were 
 John Walter Warton ; but he did not like 
 the combination, so he dropped the ^^ John," 
 and called himself Walter Warton. Then 
 he thought a third name necessary ; and he 
 liked one which had a suggestion of great- 
 ness in it. So he called himself Walter 
 Ealeigh Warton, and was nearly as proud 
 of the Ealeigh as if it were a patent of no- 
 bility. It made people sometimes assume 
 that he must be a collateral descendant of 
 the great Elizabethan hero; and indeed, 
 at last Warton began to fancy there was 
 something in the idea. At all events, it
 
 152 WALTER WARTON's HOPES. 
 
 seemed to give liiin a new title to a career 
 of distinction. It is hard not to feel he- 
 roic when one brandishes a sword, or great 
 when one subscribes himself the bearer of 
 an illustrious name. "Walter "Warton dearly 
 loved to see his name in print, as one of the 
 speakers at a public meeting, or one of the 
 guests at a fashionable dinner ; but on the 
 whole he would probably have preferred 
 to find it left out altogether than to read it 
 set down as '' Mr. Warton," or '^ Mr. Wal- 
 ter Warton," or— worst of all— '^ Mr. W. 
 Warton." 
 
 Mr. Hotten's History of Signboards has 
 lately called the attention of all of us to an 
 object Avhich doubtless very few who walk 
 up and down Oxford-street would otherwise 
 have noticed — Hogarth's sign-painting of 
 the Man loaded with Mischief. It is hardly 
 necessary now to say that the principal ob- 
 ject in the painting is a man whose bend- 
 ing shoulders bear, among other encum- 
 brances, the weight of a very substantial
 
 WALTER WARTON'S HOPES. 153 
 
 wife. Surely that poor man might be pitied 
 if he had to toil up Holborn Hill thus 
 loaded; more still if he had to mount the 
 steps of the Monument; more yet, if he 
 had to climb to the top of a tree. Walter 
 Warton soon began to find it difficult to 
 climb to the top of the social tree carry- 
 ing his plump wife on his shoulder. So 
 he calmly and prudently put her down and 
 prepared to mount alone, assuring her that 
 when he had made his way, and established 
 a secure place high up among the branches, 
 he would help her to mount up beside 
 him. She believed it, for she had a vast 
 capacity of faith. Sincere, superficial, and 
 sinless herself, she had no thought of in- 
 sincerity or depth or sin in others. Wal- 
 ter Warton was intellectually and morally a 
 very young man when he fell in love with 
 her. Her sweet soft voice, her beautiful 
 eyes, her white arms, fascinated him. He 
 was urged on to a greater passion by ob- 
 serving Ealph Lennon's love for her, and
 
 154 WALTER WARTON's HOPES. 
 
 by man's natural antagonism. He threw 
 himself into the contest, and he won. Per- 
 haps the first decidedly mean act Walter 
 Warton the man committed was when he 
 directed the attention of Mabel Ethelstone 
 and her peoj)le to Ealph Lennon's youthful 
 extrayagances. And even this act "Warton 
 persuaded himself was a conscientious duty. 
 Could he see an innocent and religious girl 
 sacrificed to a scapegrace and an infidel? 
 In virtue's cause a true man knows no 
 friendship. 
 
 Warton' s virtue was rewarded. Mabel 
 fell deeply and faithfully in love with him, 
 and they were married ; and after a twelve- 
 month or so of tepid happiness Walter found 
 that he was bound for life to an innocent, 
 overgrown child — an animated wax doll, 
 with a tender heart and no brains. He began 
 to go about in a sort of society, and he met 
 handsome, graceful, clever women, who 
 could talk with piquancy and force ; who 
 read the books of the day, and knew some-
 
 WALTER WAETON's HOPES. 155 
 
 thing about newspapers and politics; and had 
 husbands and brothers and fathers in the 
 House; and could lead a man charmingly, 
 artlessly up to the edge of a tender, fasci- 
 nating flirtation, and keep him poised there 
 in a bewildering ineffable state of anxiety 
 and ecstasy. After such society, poor Ma- 
 bel was like new milk after champagne. 
 Let us do Warton justice. For a time he 
 honestly tried hard to love his wife still. 
 At last he saw it would not do, and he 
 dropped the idea. Believed of the mental 
 struggle, he found he could put on the ap- 
 pearance of love much more easily; and 
 once he had satisfied his wife that she must 
 live out of London, that he could not pos- 
 sibly spend every night with her, and that 
 she had better have her niece's companion- 
 ship, his mind was at rest. He had set 
 down his load, and could climb the tree 
 alone. Often in society he saw women who 
 were in one sense crowns to their husbands: 
 who understood politics, shared man's am-
 
 156 WALTER WARTON's HOPES. 
 
 bition ; could make friends and keep tkem, 
 and dexterously di'op them if necessary; 
 who could advise and stimulate and guide ; 
 who could plan and scheme and conquer: 
 and sometimes Warton felt that Providence 
 had been imkind to him. When Ealph 
 Lennon came back to England with money 
 and without a wife — ^having apparently all 
 political roads thus thrown open to him — 
 "Warton felt for a moment inclined to be- 
 come an infidel. He suppressed, however, 
 the dreadful promptings of Satanic doubt, 
 which it would be simply impossible to 
 tolerate in connection with a Tory career; 
 and he began to think whether, after all, 
 some good purpose might not be served if 
 he could regain a little of his influence 
 over his old acquaintance. A quick thought 
 glanced through him: "How Mabel might 
 help me now, if she had only sense !" And 
 he remembered with a sigh how fat Mabel 
 was growing, how little vivacity she had, 
 how quiet, innocent, and uninteresting she
 
 WALTER WARTON's HOPES. 157 
 
 was. '' Even /^<?," thouglit Wart on — and 
 lie knew well tlie difference of sentiment 
 between one wlio has and one who has 
 not — " even he conld not think her very 
 interesting now." He Avas glad to get 
 away from his wife's honse — it was not 
 home to him in any human sense — and 
 to breathe again the genial atmosphere of 
 Coombe Castle, where he met men who 
 had influence and money, women who had 
 beauty and brains.
 
 CHAPTEE YI. 
 
 THE OLD HOME. 
 
 In '' canny auld CummerlanV not far off the 
 border where a straggling out-of-the-way end 
 of Lancashire interjects itself, — a little inland, 
 yet when a west wind blows hardly beyond 
 the sweep of the salt breath of the sea, — lies 
 the queer rambling town or village of Water- 
 dale, with the tiny lake behind it, where 
 the Alwyns lived, and where Ealph Lennon 
 now looked npon his early home. The town 
 lies on the seaward side, and has straggling 
 through it the little river which, begin- 
 ning a tlu'ead-like ^'burn" away among the 
 mountains, fills the basin of the lake, after 
 plunging wildly thi'ough many a gully and 
 rock-riven pass, and then speeds away broad- 
 ening to the sea. On the inland side of the
 
 THE OLD HOME. 159 
 
 lake are but few houses — some dozen or so, 
 scattered here and there, mostly those of poor 
 labourers or very small farmers. But there 
 is a deep pass on that side — a pass through 
 which you make your way into the moun- 
 tain-land, and pursuing which up hill and 
 down dale far enough, you at last come upon 
 the more famous lakes which are sung of 
 the poets. One remarkable house stands at 
 the mouth of this pass, some mile or so in 
 from the lake. It is a large, heavy, old- 
 fashioned stone mansion, with a little ground 
 about it — ground once neatly laid out, now 
 falling into drear decay. Damp and gloom 
 appear to make their own of this building ; 
 green mould is on the high steps, and the 
 windows rattle at every gust. Lately, 
 indeed, someone had begun painting and 
 repairing and decorating the house, but 
 stopped in the midst of the work and left 
 the rest undone. The needful operations 
 were checked by imperative command of 
 Ealph Lennon ; for this was his house, and
 
 160 THE OLD ho:me. 
 
 he would, if lie could, have had it utterly 
 unaltered. He came too late to accomplish 
 this wish; but he stopped the further pro- 
 gress of improvement, and he declined posi- 
 tively to refurnish the house. Some of the 
 rooms were absolutely unfurnished; he in- 
 sisted that they should remain so. Perhaps 
 he might not stay there long; perhaps he 
 would have the sad old house pulled down 
 altogether, and so rid his life of its drear 
 associations. But at present it was his 
 humour to steep himself in those very 
 associations ; '' drinking them like wine," 
 filling himself with the luxury of pain, 
 feeding on remorse which came too late. 
 As Johnson did penance bareheaded in the 
 market-place of Uttoxeter, Ealph Lennon 
 humbled and saddened himself, and made 
 vain atonement in the lonely, melancholy 
 rooms where every object he saw revived 
 the memory of his father, and the desolate 
 recollections of a wasted youth. 
 
 An old man and his wife had been left
 
 THE OLD HOME. IGl 
 
 in charge of the house. They were rough, 
 outspoken Cumberland people. Lennon re- 
 tained them still, to keep house in his ab- 
 sence, and to act as his seryants while he 
 remained at home. He wanted no other 
 attendance; and, indeed, had been long ac- 
 customed to do most things for himself. He 
 made arrangements to have such few books 
 as he required brought from Liverpool — 
 some books there were which accompanied 
 him everywhere, and without which he could 
 hardly imagine existence going on ; and he 
 meant to bring back whatever personal ef- 
 fects he had in this country when returning 
 from London after his next visit. So his 
 entering into his father's house was quite a 
 disappointment to the neighbours, who ex- 
 pected grand doings, and looked out to see 
 '^ the dull old place gilt with the gold of 
 a millionnaire." It had gone abroad that 
 Lennon had gathered piles of gold in Aus- 
 tralia, where some of the Cumberland folks 
 pictured it heaped up like the boulders in 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 162 THE OLD HOME. 
 
 the Kirkstone Pass ; and every trunk or "box 
 conveyed into tlie old house was at once as- 
 sumed to be filled with massy ingots of trea- 
 sure. When it was rumoured that Lennon 
 had actually dismissed the workmen who 
 were ^^ reviving" the house, that he was 
 having no new furniture, that he meant to 
 live there alone and without one gleam of 
 surrounding splendour, people refused to 
 believe it; then, when conviction was forced 
 upon them, they could only explain it by 
 the assumption that the returned Australian 
 was a miser, or a madman, or both. 
 
 Of all this, however, Lennon heard little 
 and cared less. He had only two or three 
 days to remain in the place before returning 
 to London to see Warton; and these days he 
 spent for the most part in wandering about 
 the hills and the shore of the lake, and his 
 own desolate garden and more desolate rooms. 
 He did not go into the town of "Waterdale. 
 Many people there knew him, and would have 
 had questions to ask of him, and old associa-
 
 THE OLD HOME. 163 
 
 tions to revive ; and he slirank from all this at 
 present. He would inure himself gradually 
 to it, he thought, and so it would come less 
 embarrassing and disagreeable. He called 
 upon nobody — there were not indeed more 
 than half-a-dozen families near who were in 
 the way of making or receiving formal calls, 
 and he knew that the Alwyns had not re- 
 turned. 
 
 The Alwyns had a handsome house, built 
 in modern style, like the houses which are 
 growing up around "Windermere, with a 
 smooth-shaven lawn, and a conservatory, 
 and a fountain, and glowing flower-beds. 
 It stood upon the opposite side of the lake 
 to that where Lennon lived, and was in- 
 deed a contrast in every way to his heavy 
 and sombre old dwelling. Lennon passed 
 it once — perhaps he walked to it with real 
 though unacknowledged purpose ; and he 
 remembered that in his time only a farm- 
 house stood there. Dr. Alwyn had built 
 the new and elegant villa for his young
 
 164 THE OLD HOME. 
 
 wife, and her tastes and fancies had adorned 
 it everywhere. Lennon was in a grim hn- 
 moiu', and inwardly growled at the elegance, 
 and began to make up his mind that the ac- 
 quaintance originated in Switzerland would 
 hardly warm into friendship in Cumberland. 
 Dr. Alwyn of course would rank Avitli the 
 gentry — they were not many — of the Water- 
 dale neighbourhood ; and Lennon remem- 
 bered how often, when a boy growing into 
 manhood, he had been galled by observing 
 that his father's money was quite impotent 
 to obtain for him any friendly notice from 
 those who claimed to be country gentlemen. 
 Perhaps he might have acknowledged that 
 some at least of the republican and demo- 
 cratic lawlessness of his college days was 
 due to a keen, possibly a wrongheaded, con- 
 viction that he had suffered personal slight 
 at the hands of local aristocrats. 
 
 Little as he cared in general for gossip, 
 he had to talk now and then with his two 
 servants, and old Mrs. Beck would persist
 
 THE OLD HOME. 165 
 
 ill telling Hm anecdotes about tlie neigli- 
 bours. He asked a ehance question of the 
 
 A1W}T1S. 
 
 ^' 0, Doctor's a gud man, and cliver man. 
 Polk say here lie kens all things. His 
 hand's a'ways open t' the poor. All folks 
 here likes him and luves him." 
 
 ^^AndMrs. Alw}Ti?" 
 
 ^'"Well, Mrs. Ahvyn's cliver woman, and 
 gud : but she thinks nae little o' liersel', 
 and hands her head high. ^Nut but she's a 
 kind woman too, and a top marketer I hear; 
 but she fashes ower much fur my taste, and 
 ilytes people that might be her grand- 
 mothers aboot the way they keeps theer 
 houses and minds theer children, and all 
 that. Many of them will tak' affront ; but 
 it's nobut a way she hes o' showin' her 
 likin'. Young as she be she cen manage 
 her husband." 
 
 ^^Weears the breeks, sii^' interjected 
 Mr. Beck. ^^ Meast of oiu- wives wad do't 
 if they cud."
 
 166 THE OLD HOME. 
 
 Ealpli di'ojDj^ed the conYersation — and 
 perhaps, short as it was, had hardly kept up 
 with it. For he had made up his mind that 
 the Alwyns, especially the lady, ''went in" 
 for local aristocracy; and he thought he had 
 good reason to feel conyinced — a conyiction 
 now not without special bitterness — that 
 persons who claimed to be of the gentry of 
 Cumberland were not likely to be yery 
 genial eyen to the sons of people who had 
 made money in trade. He kept to his own 
 side of the lake for the next day or two, 
 and wished he had chosen some other day 
 for the crossing of the Tete ^N'oii-e than that 
 which the Alwyns selected for the same 
 journey. 
 
 It was lonely work, wandering about 
 those roads and paths and rooms, but it was 
 congenial to Lennon just now, and in a kind 
 of way he enjoyed it. He chewed the cud 
 of sweet and bitter association eyery where. 
 Of course the place did not look the same to 
 his eyes, and in some spots he had to conjure
 
 THE OLD HOME. 167 
 
 up the old memories, and with their aid re- 
 habilitate the scene. 'No sensations have 
 been more often analysed and described than 
 those which fill ns when we revisit, after 
 long years, some place familiar to onr boy- 
 hood. In Ealph Lennon's eyes the common 
 change marked itself. Everything looked 
 contracted, poor, and mean compared with 
 the picture which memory painted. The 
 moimtains were low, the lake was a pool, 
 the ravines were tame; there was a faded 
 appearance about everything — like that of 
 a long- disused garment which we take up 
 and cannot help recognising, though it seems 
 so worn and shrunken and shabby. But the 
 memories of the father who was so kind and 
 indulgent and tender, of the woman he loved 
 in vain, of the early years which were so 
 bright and full of promise — these saddened 
 and sweetened and sanctified the place. He 
 stood by his father's grave ; the whole scene 
 seemed the grave of his own youth. 
 
 Yet it must not be supposed that even
 
 168 THE OLD HOME. 
 
 for the few days of his first home-yisit Ealph 
 Lennon did nothing but moon over graves, 
 real and metaphorical. He had set his heart 
 upon doing something good for the neigh- 
 bourhood of his early life ; and perhaps at 
 present all the ambitions that once burned 
 fiercely within him had smouldered down to 
 a mere desire to print his memory on that 
 obscure mountain village. He resolved to 
 build a school here, an asylum of some kind 
 there ; he ranged through the few scattered 
 cottages on his side of the lake, and thought 
 he would buy up the land there, and plant 
 a little model settlement of comfortable 
 picturesque homesteads. He had great 
 ideas of carrying the peasant - proprietary 
 system, almost indigenous to some parts of 
 Cumberland and Westmoreland, to immense 
 completeness on the ground near him; he 
 laid out, mentally, in two or three days, 
 money enough to have beggared him were 
 he another Monte Christo. There was 
 doubtless a good deal of the old spirit of
 
 THE OLD HOME. 
 
 169 
 
 defiance about his benevolence, and perliaps 
 ho woukl have cherished his beneficent 
 jDhans none the less if they directly tended 
 to break the patriarchal tie between lords 
 of the soil and diggers of it. Setting class 
 against class, the crime unpardonable in the 
 respectable eyes of onr generation, was, for 
 that very reason doubtless, rather a fasci- 
 nating sin to the present mood of Ealph 
 Lennon. Perhaps it is not impossible that 
 the short meeting with Walter "Warton, and 
 the allusion to Coombe Castle, had quick- 
 ened and aggravated that mood.
 
 CHAPTEE YII. 
 
 THE OLD FEIEXD. 
 
 Ox the appointed day Lennon was again in 
 London, and dining with Warton at his 
 club. Warton had not made his way into 
 the stately Carlton ; nor, even if its doors 
 had been opened to him, wonld he have 
 ventured as yet on so decided a proclamation 
 of his change of colours. Of coiu^se he had 
 not attempted in his wildly democratic days 
 to seek out Brooks's; and he was only 
 thinking of the chances of the Eeform, then 
 even more restricted in its hospitality than 
 now, when the gradual change began to 
 show itself in his opinions which would 
 have made it useless for him to get his 
 name put up there. He belonged, however, 
 to a small, social, not inexpensive club,
 
 THE OLD PRIEXD. 171 
 
 founded by literary aud politico - literary 
 men, none of tliem actual leaders in their 
 way — a sort of demi-monde of literature and 
 politics. Here you could have a dinner 
 quite as good as anywhere else; and you 
 were safe from being sat upon by bishops, 
 or dons, or heavy dignitaries, or solemn 
 bores of any land. A few members of par- 
 liament, of the younger school and of both 
 parties, belonged to it; a few rising law- 
 yers, many journalists, many literary men, 
 some guardsmen. And here Walter Ealeigh 
 "Warton entertained his friend Ealph Len- 
 non at dinner — and a good dinner too. 
 
 Three other men were present : Captain 
 Eastham, M.P., was one — a stalwart and 
 gallant young county member of the Tory 
 side, who late one night suddenly amazed 
 his party, his opponents, his father, and 
 himself, by jumping on his feet just before 
 the division, interposing between the splen- 
 did resonance of the Whig minister's pero- 
 ration and a house longing to divide, and
 
 172 THE OLD rPJEXD. 
 
 delivering a speech so racy, liiimoroTis, tell- 
 ing, unprepared, full of good sense, good 
 Hts, and roistering animal spirits, that he 
 actually got a hearing, and then thundering 
 applause from rows of exulting Tories, and 
 shouts of laughter from the less serious part 
 of the Liberals, — your true Liberal takes 
 everything generally au grand serieux^ — and 
 finally the unexpected honour of a reply 
 from another minister, who had to be put 
 up unprej)ared at three in the morning to 
 answer the new orator. The division, of 
 course, was not much affected by the im- 
 2Dromptu performance ; but Eastham's speech 
 became for the time almost as famous as 
 Charles Townshend's champagne oration. 
 Handshakings and congi'atulations from all 
 sides rewarded the unrehearsed display; 
 and the only ill-natured thing said on the 
 occasion was murmured by a great Con- 
 servative leader, who whispered, " Mon dne 
 paiie^ et mhne il parle bienP Eastham took 
 his success very modestly, and did not even
 
 THE OLD FRIEXD. 173 
 
 try to encore it. lie frankly confessed tliat 
 lie never could tell wliy lie got up to speak 
 at all, or liow lie came to speak so well; 
 and lie declared tliat when lie found liim- 
 self on liis legs, gazing fixedly at unimpas- 
 sioned and chilling Mr. Speaker, and heard 
 the sound of his own voice, it was a toss-up 
 Avhether he was to sink collapsed and bewil- 
 dered back into his seat, or plunge madly 
 on. '^ I could never have got through a 
 sentence if the House had been quiet and 
 attentive," he used to say; ^'but when I 
 heard your Liberal fellows shouting at me, 
 and saw so many of our own men looking 
 up as if to ask, 'What the devil does he 
 want, making a fool of himself at such a 
 time ?' by Jove, sir, it maddened me, and I 
 let myself go at it — over, anyway." '^ IVo 
 often told you," Captain Eastham would say 
 to any of his Liberal friends — and he had 
 plenty of friends among all parties — '' the 
 one great thing you Eadical fellows want 
 is animal spirits. You haven't got animal
 
 174 THE OLD FRIEXD. 
 
 spirits, and therefore you don't use your 
 Yoices or stand to your friends. You have 
 more sense, I daresay, than we have, and 
 you understand a deal more about figures ; 
 and anybody Avith brains must know that we 
 haven't a speaker fit to hold a candle to 
 Bright ; but you want the pluck, the animal 
 spirits. There we have you. If ive had 
 Bright, what a phalanx of young fellows he 
 would have about him ! How we would 
 cheer for him and shout down his oppo- 
 nents ! Your people don't understand that 
 sort of thing." 
 
 Captain Eastham's notions of party de- 
 ficiencies were not bad. He had such ge- 
 nial ways and so good a nature that every- 
 body liked him ; and now that he had shown 
 himself capable of something there was a 
 great idea among the Tory captains of pro- 
 moting him to the rank of ^' Whip" whenever 
 there came a vacancy in that bustling ofiice. 
 
 The second of Warton's guests was Philip 
 Hamerfield, a rising writer of the politico-
 
 THE OLD FRIEND. 175 
 
 pliilosopliic school. He wrote for progres- 
 sive reviews and higli-class weekly journals. 
 He was a Unitarian, and had what Tom 
 Berry of Southwark called Yiews of Life. 
 His views and opinions suited Warton very 
 well just now, for although Hamerfield de- 
 spised all Conservatism as unphilosophic and 
 stupid, yet such was the peculiar nature of 
 his mental progress that it somehow brought 
 him in particulars quite back to the Conser- 
 vative standpoint. His philosophical world 
 was clearly globular, like the orb we live 
 in ; and starting, therefore, from the Con- 
 servative Greenwich, you were certain, if 
 you only went far enough, to arrive at just 
 the same spot in the end. Or one might 
 adopt another form of illustration. Poor 
 Albert Smith somewhere speaks of people 
 who were so determined to be fashionable 
 that they kept going farther and farther 
 into the West- end, until at last they went 
 too far, and tumbled right over into Chelsea. 
 So Philip Hamerfield and others of his
 
 176 THE OLD rPJEXD. 
 
 scliool ke^it pushing so far and so inde- 
 pendently into the West-end of high po- 
 litical culture, that they were actually fall- 
 ing over into the Chelsea of narroTT and 
 uncultiyated Toryism. 
 
 The third guest was the latest novelty 
 in travel. He had gone wonderful depths 
 into Asia and Africa, and lately had per- 
 formed some sj^ecial feat of discovery or 
 other achievement in the Australian con- 
 tinent. He had brought back from his 
 travels a majestic dogmatism upon all eth- 
 nological subjects, and all political and so- 
 cial questions which had or could be sup- 
 posed to have any possible connection there- 
 with. He settled everything by a reference 
 to the profound and hopeless worthlessness 
 and wickedness of all '^ native" races. To be 
 sure, if you came to talk closely with him, 
 you found that he had but a poor opinion 
 of the human family anywhere. His anec- 
 dotes, which were many, and his philosophy, 
 which was simple and decided, went to
 
 THE OLD FRIEND. l77 
 
 prove tliat man is the most debased of all 
 living creatiu'es, except woman. This how- 
 ever was his philosophy among his friends. 
 In his public wi'itings and lectures he con- 
 fined himself to the inferiority, brutality, 
 sensuality, unteachableness, and cruelty of 
 the dark-skinned peoples — the '^ native" 
 races in short. That was the theory in 
 which he most firmly believed; for he was 
 understood among his friends to reject, as 
 beneath his notice, the popular doctrine about 
 a future life. 
 
 The traveller, Mr. Garth, had been in- 
 vited by "Warton, partly because he was a 
 lion, and ought to produce therefore a good 
 first impression upon Lennon; partly too 
 because, as Lennon came from the colony of 
 Victoria, he ought to feel greatly interested 
 in one who had explored the shores of the 
 Gulf of Carpentaria. But the good inten- 
 tions of the host failed so far. In the first 
 place Lennon had never before heard of the 
 great traveller, and in the next place one of 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 THE OLD FEIEXD. 
 
 the great traveller's favourite subjects of in- 
 vective was the includable wickedness of the 
 Maori race. Lennon had been a good deal 
 in "New Zealand, and the great traveller had 
 never set foot there; but the latter settled 
 the condition of the Maori, and the treatment 
 proper to be applied to him, by reference to 
 experience drawn from the banks of the 
 Congo. Lennon being too lazy to argue, and 
 the traveller too grandly dogmatic to conde- 
 scend to argument, the latter had it all his 
 own way, and Lennon soon shut up as far as 
 that topic was concerned. So there was 
 little good gained for either or for the com- 
 pany by the juxtaposition of two men who 
 had sailed the Southern seas. The conver- 
 sation soon therefore lapsed into politics. 
 Women and politics, said the shrewd old 
 statesman, all men can talk about. Mr. 
 Garth much preferred the former topic, and 
 had some very choice anecdotes touching the 
 ways of the sex in savage life. But the 
 anecdotes hung fire. Nobody liked them.
 
 THE OLD FRIEXD. 179 
 
 Warton had far too mucli of the true epicu- 
 rean about him — Hamerficlcl had too much 
 intellect — Lennon had too much soul — 
 Captain Eastham was too manly — to relish 
 the discussion of woman, even in her African 
 state, as the naturalist might analyse his 
 chimpanzee or the agriculturist his hog. 
 So politics set in; a thing which Warton 
 would perhaps have gladly avoided if he 
 could. 
 
 ^'When do you start again, "Warton?'^ 
 asked Captain Eastham — '^ put up for ano- 
 ther borough, I mean ? There are some 
 stirring times coming, and a fellow like 
 you oughtn't to be out of the House." 
 
 " I don't want to obtrude myself,'^ 
 Warton modestly replied. '' I think I 
 have a sort of claim upon some constitu- 
 ency somewhere. If no one appears to 
 admit the claim, or inclined to recognise 
 it to any purpose, I must only stand aside. 
 I hope the cause can go on without me; 
 that is, without my presence in parliament.
 
 180 THE OLD FRIEND. 
 
 I shall be found working for it to the last, 
 in or out." 
 
 ^' "WTiat cause ? — whose cause ?" asked 
 Garth. ^^ I don't understand your political 
 jargon, you know. Your own cause? — or 
 that of some party you want to serve? — 
 or that of some rabble or another? Put 
 it into English, and let us know what it 
 is; for I don't know, and I daresay Mr. 
 Lennon does not understand the matter any 
 better." 
 
 "I^ot in the least," said Lennon. '^ When 
 I left England, we were all still wild about the 
 Erench Eevolution of 1848, and the Eoman 
 Eepublic, and the German Parliament, and 
 the rights of man. I think universal suf- 
 frage and triennial parliaments, with a dash 
 of communism, represented our cause then ; 
 but I presume it is something a great deal 
 more respectable now." 
 
 '^ My cause," Eastham broke in, ''is a 
 good, honest, intelligible sort of thing. It 
 is legitimate Toiyism."
 
 THE OLD FRIEND. 181 
 
 " And Warton's," growled Garth, ^^ is 
 illegitimate Toryism." 
 
 '' I liave devoted myself," said Wartoii 
 gravely, '' to tlie cause of the working man. 
 I wish to make him a ruler, and not a 
 slave; a benefactor, and not a beggar. 
 You may laugh if you will — that is my 
 cause." 
 
 '^Keep the fellows down," replied Garth; 
 ^' that is the only way. The working man 
 is a savage ; and the savage is a child." 
 
 '' A child-Hercules then," Warton ex- 
 claimed. " In his cradle he can strangle 
 serpents." 
 
 " Splendid !" said Garth. '' Very fine, 
 and convincing too. Quite settles the 
 question, I think." 
 
 ^' To a certain extent," said Hamerfield, 
 the moral philosopher, ^'I agree with Mr. 
 Garth—" 
 
 ^' Deuce you do !" growled under his 
 breath the genial traveller. 
 
 " The working man is as yet a child,
 
 182 THE OLD FEIEND. 
 
 SO far as regards tlie development of his 
 reasoning and intellectual faculties. The 
 reasoning faculties, and not the instincts, 
 must govern political life. I would de- 
 velop these by education, and would pro- 
 ceed carefully and tentatively to intrust him 
 gradually with that share of power which is 
 his just and balanced proportion — " 
 
 ^^ If he would only be good enough to 
 wait," miu^mured Lennon, half yawning. 
 ^' In some j)laces he doesn't wait, and that's 
 awkward; for then he takes his own share 
 and somebody else's too." 
 
 ^^ By a properly -adjusted system of 
 checks — " placidly continued the philosopher. 
 
 ^^ 0, confound it, don't let us get into 
 the banking system !" broke out the traveller, 
 in perfect good faith and seriously alarmed. 
 
 Everybody laughed ; and Garth felt con- 
 vinced he had said a very witty thing. 
 
 ^' I shouldn't mind giving the fellows 
 votes," Eastham said, ^' if our bigwigs saw 
 their way to it. I don't think it would
 
 THE OLD FRIEND. 183 
 
 matter in the least. I am .not a bit afraid 
 of the working man ; and on my word I 
 don't see why he shouldn't have votes as 
 well as any of us. Eut I don't profess to be 
 a wise man or a great politician ; and I fol- 
 low my instincts, which, according to Hamer- 
 field, it is a di-eadfully wrong thing to do." 
 
 "That is, you follow them liereV^ said 
 Mr. Garth. 
 
 " Yes, here, of course," Eastham replied 
 simply. " I don't carry crotchets into the 
 House. Here I have my own opinions, and 
 I talk them out; there I follow my leader 
 into the lobby, and hold my tongue." 
 
 "A man," said Hamerfield, "who sur- 
 renders his individuality, his independent 
 power of judgment, is in my mind a slave." 
 
 " Thanks for the compliment. But I 
 thought the campaign against Eussia rather 
 foolish; and I began to suspect that our 
 military chiefs, or some of them, were no 
 better than old women. Yet when our 
 regiment was ordered to cross the Alma,
 
 184 THE OLD FEIEND. 
 
 I thought it rather better to surrender my 
 individuality and go at my work, than set 
 to argue the question of tactics with my 
 superiors." 
 
 '^ In war and politics," Garth politely 
 remarked, ^^we are governed and served by 
 mere machines. I often heard it was so ; 
 now I begin to see it." 
 
 ^' You are a Tory, Captain Eastham, I 
 believe ?" Lennon asked, looking with in- 
 terest at the young man. 
 
 '' Certainly. Genuine true blue." 
 
 ^'And Mr. Hamerfield is a Liberal?" 
 
 ^'An educated Liberal," Warton inter- 
 polated on behalf of his friend. 
 
 ^'Philosophical Eadical," muttered Garth. 
 
 '^ Then I only get more and more puz- 
 zled with the new aspects of English poli- 
 tics," said Lennon. '' Liberalism long ago- 
 meant an extended and popular vote — Tory- 
 ism something lil^e Divine Eight, and all 
 that sort of thing." 
 
 '' You see, Mr. Lennon," Hamerfield
 
 THE OLD FRIEND. 185 
 
 proceeded to explain, '^ we have had reason 
 of late years to note practically the disturb- 
 ing effects of the mere power of numbers in 
 the business of government. Mere agglo- 
 meration of numbers does not represent 
 arithmetical, far less geometrical, increase of 
 the intellectual force and the moral power 
 which we find to be ordained, alike in the 
 philosophical and in the religious sense, for 
 the task of governing. The problem which 
 England just now has to solve is to combine 
 the maximum of intellectual and moral 
 strength with the minimum of the disturb- 
 ing and disorganising influences. This I, 
 for one, propose to do by a system of checks 
 and balances, which I will not attempt to 
 develop just now." 
 
 '^ That's a good fellow," Eastham ob- 
 served. '^ iN^othing bores me, for one, so 
 much as the checks and balances. Nobody 
 thinks of doing anything with them in the 
 House, and it is a waste of time to talk about 
 them out of doors. Sometimes I think our
 
 186 THE OLD FRIEND. 
 
 fellows would do well to adopt the whole 
 dodge — checks and balances and all. It 
 would be a capital plan of evading a prac- 
 tical change of any kind." 
 
 The talk went on in this way. We need 
 not pursue it any further. Each man threw 
 out his own ideas, or what he supposed to 
 be his ideas, wholly irrespective of any- 
 thing which might be suggested by his 
 neighbour. The one thing which occupied 
 Lennon's attention during the whole time 
 was the evident desire of Warton to avoid 
 declaring himself, or indeed saying anything 
 definite on any political subject. Lennon 
 had really no particular political view^s left 
 in him. His early politics had been the 
 feverish dreams of wild, antagonistic, ag- 
 gressive youth, and when the dreams faded 
 they left nothing, or next to nothing, be- 
 hind. But he was anxious to hear some- 
 thing which might explain Warton' s alleged 
 tergiversation, or refute the charge. He 
 heard nothing. Warton would say nothing
 
 THE OLD FRIEND. 187 
 
 one way or the other. Lciinon was disap- 
 pointed. He was studying Warton's cha- 
 racter, for reasons wholly unpolitical. He 
 was anxious to discover what kind of heart 
 and nature Mabel Ethelstone had intrusted 
 her happiness and her life to. Thus far the 
 conjecture was unsatisfactory. 
 
 Horn's passed, and the friends — at least 
 the guests — separated. Warton asked 
 Lennon to stay yet a little ; to come into 
 the smoking-room and have a cigar. Len- 
 non accepted the invitation. He could not 
 avoid doing so. It would have been to miss 
 the purpose of his coming if he had not re- 
 mained. For as yet he had heard no word 
 of Mabel. 
 
 The smoking-room was a solitude when 
 they went in. Most people were out of 
 town. It was a mere chance that Captain 
 Eastham and Garth were within the confines 
 of the metropolis. 
 
 Lennon and Warton smoked for a few 
 moments almost in silence — at least, only
 
 188 THE OLD FRIEIS^D. 
 
 exchanging a word or two of comment on 
 this unimportant thing and person or that. 
 Lennon noted how worn and almost wasted 
 under certain lights Warton's face seemed. 
 As the latter sat and smoked in silence, deep 
 imprints of anxiety, care, and disappointment 
 began to come ont under his eyes, like flaws 
 detected by the sunlight. Suddenly, and as 
 if with a kind of effort, Warton looked up 
 and said : 
 
 "You will come to see us at home, 
 will you not ? At once — before you leaye 
 town?" 
 
 "Yes; I mean to do so. To-morrow, 
 indeed, if you will allow me." 
 
 " That's a good fellow. Mabel will be so 
 glad. She always thought so much of you. ^^ 
 
 Lennon' s brown face grew a deeper co- 
 lour, and he did not venture to look up. 
 Warton's eye was on him, and he felt it. 
 He was almost as embarrassed as a school- 
 boy, when his playmates chaff him about 
 some girl with a satchel and trousers.
 
 THE OLD FRIEND. 189 
 
 * ^ Lennon — Ealpli L ennon, ' ' Wart on 
 went on, speaking in a low, thrilling voice, 
 admirably toned for the occasion, '^ I know 
 I gave you pain once. I know all that. 
 Eut yon do not blame me; you are too 
 manly and generous. I see that you have 
 not quite forgotten the whole affair; your 
 feelings were too deep and true to pass 
 away. But it was not my fault if I was — " 
 he actually stammered over the words — 
 " more fortunate; as God knows, it was no 
 merit of mine. You were in every way 
 more worthy — and therefore you did not 
 succeed ! But we are friends ? Give me 
 your hand." 
 
 Lennon looked up, and extended his 
 hand. There was a warm clasp. ^^ I have 
 wronged him," was Ealph's thought. And 
 he gladdened to think it. 
 
 '^You were more worthy of her, dear 
 old friend," "Warton went on. '^ Many a 
 time have I wished that you had been suc- 
 cessful."
 
 190 THE OLD FRIEND. 
 
 There Avas a force of sincerity about 
 this which startled our friend ; and his eyes 
 spoke surprise and doubt. But the effect 
 was not unexpected. 
 
 '' Yes, I have wished it often ; for I am 
 not worthy, as you would have been, of 
 any loving woman's heart ; and I see little 
 chance of making her happy, as she ought 
 to be made. Mine is a weary, wasting, un- 
 domestic, homeless sort of life. I am chasing 
 the shadows of an ambition that only leads 
 me away ; and I do it, as she knows, for 
 her — to make for her such a place in life 
 as she deserves to have, and ought to 
 have." 
 
 ^'Then Mabel has grown ambitious," 
 Lennon thought. " She, too, wants to rise 
 into society. Who could have expected this ? 
 It was not thus," &c. &c. But he said 
 nothing. 
 
 ^Tor that lue sacrifice the present; and 
 who knows whether we are ever likely to 
 be rewarded with any success? I am a
 
 THE OLD FEIEXD. 191 
 
 poor man, Lennon, and thus far a disap- 
 pointed man. You are surprised." 
 
 '^ I am indeed. I heard of you as a 
 splendid success; on the high-road to for- 
 tune and distinction, and I know not AYhat. 
 I heard of 3'ou in Switzerland as one of the 
 rising men of the time." 
 
 '' In Switzerland ? Who told you of 
 me ? I did know James Fazy a little, 
 but—" 
 
 " ^0, it was no Swiss politician, or 
 politician of any kind ; it was an English 
 clergyman who spoke to me of you — Dr. 
 Alwyn of Waterdale. I met him, with his 
 wife, at Lucerne." 
 
 " Yes, the Alwyns : I know them well. 
 You saw Alwyn' s wife ? Is she not a 
 charming creature ? Did she speak of me ?" 
 
 Light gleamed in Warton's eyes for a 
 moment, and then went out. He purposely 
 extinguished it, and dropped at once into a 
 different tone of voice, without waiting for 
 Lennon's answer.
 
 192 THE OLD FRIEND. 
 
 ^^ And the Alwyns told you I was a very 
 successful man ! "Well, I daresay I seem 
 so. I make sjDeeches, and I dine at places, 
 and I try to get into parliament, and I don't 
 succeed. So far the success is all barren. I 
 am as poor as when I began, and the party 
 I served — served only too well, Lennon ! 
 — if I had served my God as well ! — cared 
 nothing for me; repudiated me in the end." 
 
 He jumped up and stood upon the 
 hearth-rug, his back to the fireplace, his face 
 towards Lennon. He was quite in earnest 
 now. 
 
 ^' Perhaps you were surprised to find 
 me — me, of all persons — ranging myself 
 even for an hour on a Tory side. But I 
 tell you, Lennon, there is no hope for Eng- 
 land, for anyone, from the selfish crew of 
 calculators, economists, and sophists — splen- 
 did words, those of Burke's! — who call 
 themselves Liberals. Confound them all ! 
 What do they care for the people, or for 
 talents, or for anything but their cursed
 
 THE OLD FRIEND. 103 
 
 commerce and cotton, and all tlie rest of it. 
 I believed in tlieni long enongli ; but I 
 don't any longer; and tliey shall know it 
 too, or my life shall be all a failure." 
 
 Ealph Lennon's heart warmed to the 
 earnestness of his friend. He was about to 
 make some sincere and sympathetic declara- 
 tion, but there was no possibility of inter- 
 jecting anything just yet. Warton streamed 
 away : 
 
 " I worked for them and spoke for them, 
 in season and out, when anybody but myself 
 speaking for them to a meeting of English 
 working men would have been hooted off the 
 platform. And they thanked me by repu- 
 diating me when I stood in need of their 
 help; and they put up some tongueless 
 Manchester drone — some local Moneybags — 
 to stand against me ; and the brute now sits 
 in the House, fat and stolid, and never opens 
 his mouth but to cry ^Hear, hear.' They 
 only believe in money — and I have none. 
 This is my success. I am not in the House; 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 194 THE OLD FRIEiS-D. 
 
 I see at present little chance of getting in; 
 and I find my way — for I have pitched my 
 own profession and its chances clean over- 
 board — growing more and more dark and 
 difficult every day. Yes, old fellow, I do 
 wish sometimes that you had had the success 
 which once divided us — for it did divide us; 
 there's no use in pretending not to know 
 that — and that I had been defeated, and had 
 gone to the Antipodes — or the devil. At 
 least, no one would have been entangled in 
 my fate; and you might have made her 
 happy ! Perhaps I have drunk too much 
 wine, or I wouldn't talk in this way. But 
 I'm glad of it, for it relieves my mind ; and 
 there is no man on earth to whom, with wine 
 or without, I could speak thus except youJ^ 
 Assuredly, Warton had not drunk too 
 much wine. Lennon could not help no- 
 ticing once or twice at table how remarkably 
 abstemious his host was. The sin of excess 
 in drinking was not one of Warton' s faults. 
 Perhaps he was too much of an epicure for
 
 THE OLD FRIEIYD. 195 
 
 such coarse indulgence. He only liked to 
 sip the first fragrance of fine wines, as the 
 gourmand bites the one supremely rosy and 
 delicate spot from the cheek of a peach. 
 
 But Lennon was decidedly warming to 
 his friend. His o^vn naturally rebellious 
 nature responded to even a murmur of rebel- 
 lion. He had for many years had a vague 
 suspicion that Warton acted treacherously 
 towards him — he could not tell how — in the 
 old love-rivahy; that his rival had managed 
 somehow to give him the coup de Jarnac. 
 So one of the things he meant to do with 
 the greatest caution, now that he had come 
 back to England, was to study Warton' s 
 real character. But the heat of Warton' s 
 words carried him away. He thought he 
 saw in him only pride, ambition — self-con- 
 ceit, perhaps — and fearless straightforward- 
 ness. Warton looked handsome, graceful, 
 young; his voice sounded sweet and rich. 
 ^^I don't wonder a woman loved him," 
 thought Ealph; ^^and I am sure she loves
 
 196 THE OLD ERIEND. 
 
 him still — and he her. And that is happi- 
 ness." 
 
 He would have broken into some stam- 
 mering, sincere assurance of friendship and 
 trust, and earnest wish by any means to 
 serve, but that a pair of loungers came into 
 the room. The swearing of eternal friend- 
 ship, therefore, did not come off, and both 
 were saved any chance of being foresworn, 
 which was perhaps fortunate. 
 
 Ealph presently rose to go away. Warton 
 gave him a card with the address of Mabel's 
 house on it. ^^We live modestly," he said, 
 ^^but people can be happy without fine 
 houses. And I will do better for her one 
 day — or fail utterly." 
 
 Ealph wrung his hand warmly, and said 
 nothing. As he was leaving the place, 
 Warton added, ^'I may not be there, per- 
 haps — I have ever so many people to meet 
 to-morrow; but I will come to you before 
 you leave town — and I will see you in the 
 North, too, before long."
 
 THE OLD FRIEND. 197 
 
 ''At last/' tliouglit Ealpli, as lie smoked 
 liis cigar and walked in the direction of 
 Charing-cross, ''I am to see her again. To- 
 morrow!" 
 
 '' He is to live near A^r," tlionglit Warton, 
 ''to see her every day. How charming she 
 is ! What eyes and what spirit ! And 
 he is to live near her ! He has all the luck ! 
 Well, he is a manly fellow, and has a gene- 
 rous heart. I will go to see him in Cumber- 
 land as soon as I can snatch a few days. 
 They told him of me ! I wonder what she 
 said." 
 
 He sat a long time, thoughtful and de- 
 pressed. When men whom he knew came 
 in, he spoke but little. When the room 
 began to fill, he got up and went away.
 
 CHAPTEE YIII. 
 
 the old love. 
 
 ^^ Mabel!" 
 
 The word came out suddenly, uncon- 
 sciously — a sort of low cry. All the full 
 expression of a whole soul of feeling was 
 in it. Eut she to whom it was addi'essed 
 looked at first with blank surprise upon 
 the speaker, then, recovering herself and 
 mentally alighting upon something like a 
 track of explanation, smiled faintly, and 
 blushed. The speaker, however, stood silent 
 and embarrassed. He had clearly made a 
 mistake, but he could not explain or un- 
 derstand it just yet. He was addressing 
 a total stranger. 
 
 But the stranger in a moment recovered
 
 THE OLD LOYE. 199 
 
 lier full composure, and became mistress of 
 the situation. 
 
 ''You are Mr. Lennon, I know," slie 
 said, extending her hand. '' Allow me to 
 welcome you without ceremony to England 
 and to this place, and to introduce myself." 
 
 The morning after he had left Warton, 
 Ealph Lennon went down by an early 
 train to the little town where Warton kept 
 what he called liis home. Lennon was of 
 course impatient, got down far too early, 
 became ashamed and irresolute, looked at 
 his watch, and resolved to wait a little for 
 a more seasonable hour. He easily found 
 ' Warton' s house, and he walked up and 
 down in front of it several times until he 
 began to be afraid of being noticed or 
 watched ; and then he wandered away and 
 got out into the country, among quiet lanes 
 softly lighted and tinted by the autumn sun. 
 He returned, and came towards the house; 
 and when in sight of it lingered and turned 
 away again. !N'ow that he was so near,
 
 200 THE OLD LOYE. 
 
 no^v tliat the time lie liacl so yearned for 
 was at liand, lie hesitated and shrank, and 
 debated Avithin himself whether he had any 
 bnsiness in being there at all. Every objec- 
 tion that the most prudent or timid or prud- 
 ish mind could have suggested to a weakly 
 conscience sprang uj) within him. What if 
 the old passion, which he believed or hoped 
 lay dead in his heart, should arise out of 
 the sepulchre again at the sight of her 
 face, and the sound of her voice ? What 
 if the new and purer and more practical 
 life he was entering upon should vanish 
 the moment she arose once more upon its 
 horizon, and the old frenzy claim command 
 of him again? He positively di-eaded the 
 return of passion — disappointed passion — 
 as a poor creature in his intervals of reason 
 sickens and shudders at the thought of 
 returning madness. For Lennon had 
 studied himself through long and lonely 
 years ; and he knew that the fierce central 
 fire of passion only slept and smouldered
 
 THE OLD LOYE. 201 
 
 in liis heart. In the core of onr little 
 planet, the scientific men tell ns, there is 
 even Avithin the belt of fire a solid mass, 
 kept firm and hard, amid all the fervonr of 
 the heat aronnd, by the mere force of the 
 pressure that is on it. What Lennon did 
 not feel sure of was, whether in the micro- 
 cosm of his nature there was any solid 
 indissoluble kernel of conscience which the 
 fiu-nace of passion, however fiercely stirred, 
 would work upon in vain. But at last he 
 shook ojff all hesitation. ^^ Too late," he 
 said to himself, "to think of all this now. 
 I am certainly not quite a boy ; and I hope 
 I am not quite a fool." And then he 
 marched resolutely towards the house, as 
 one who has business there about which 
 there need be no pretence or hesitation. A 
 tax-collector could not have made his way 
 more determinedly. Head bent down- 
 ward, and looking neither to the right nor 
 the left, he strode on. It was only when 
 he had his hand upon the latch of the little
 
 202 THE OLD LOVE. 
 
 wooden door in the ^^ rustic" paling of the 
 tiny lawn, that he looked up and saw the 
 figure of a woman just before him. A slen- 
 der, firm, shapely young woman, with bright 
 short hair, thick around her head, and beau- 
 tiful deep-brown eyes. The sunshine fell 
 upon her head, upon her thick fair hair — 
 falling on them from behind, so that her 
 face and her eyes showed more distinctly in 
 the light. And the face, the hair, the figure, 
 the eyes — above all the eyes — were so like 
 those which in Lennon's memory an im- 
 perishable youth embalmed and glorified, 
 that for the moment he forgot the lapse of 
 years, forgot the thick and grizzling beard 
 which covered half his face, forgot Austra- 
 lia, and the long absence and silence, and 
 the dead hopes, and the promise that lay 
 buried by the side of gold streams and in 
 the pathless bush — forgot all, and was a 
 boy of twenty- one again, and saw Mabel 
 Ethelstone standing before him. And then 
 there came, as from the lips of one who
 
 THE OLD LOVE. 203 
 
 dreams, the cry of ^^ Mabel I'' and in a mo- 
 ment Lennon came back to himself, thought 
 he had been making himself ridiculous, and 
 stood embarrassed and hesitating under the 
 eyes of a pretty girl. 
 
 The pretty girl, however, restored him 
 to composiu'e. 
 
 "We have been expecting you, Mr. 
 Lennon," she said; ''that is, Mabel has. 
 "Walter told us you had returned to Eng- 
 land, and that you would come and see us. 
 Mabel will be so delighted to see you. I 
 should tell you that I am Mabel's niece, for 
 I have not been very long living here, and I 
 daresay you never heard of me before. I 
 have heard of you, though, and I am glad 
 to see you." 
 
 " You must have been quite a child when 
 I left England," Lennon said, as much to 
 himself as to her. 
 
 So confused had he become after his first 
 mistake, that his mind for a while lost count 
 of years, and he began to wonder whether
 
 204 THE OLD LOYE. 
 
 the giii so like Mabel miglit not be Mabel's 
 daughter. It was quite a relief to him to 
 hear that she was only her niece. Then he 
 thought what a fool he must be to suppose 
 a grown woman — quite a woman, he had 
 beautiful, rounded, shapely evidence under 
 his eyes — could be MabePs child. 
 
 Then he asked gravely, and not ungrace- 
 fully, after Mabel's health, and her children, 
 and signified a wish to see her, and was 
 conducted into the house and left alone in 
 a drawing-room. The truth is, Mabel was 
 asleep, — she always slejDt an hour or so 
 every afternoon, — and Grace herself went to 
 waken her up. Ealph Lennon had a good 
 many minutes to look at the books on the 
 table — an odd mixture : for there was 
 Mabel's Tup2:)er^ which she dearly loved; 
 and there were piles of pamphlets belonging 
 to — many written by- — Warton; and there 
 were the schoolbooks out of which Grace 
 taught the children ] and there was Plump - 
 tre's Sophocles J which Grace delighted to
 
 THE OLD LOVE. 205 
 
 read ; and there were some Italian, Frencli, 
 and German authors, which she loved quite 
 as well, and could read without borrowing 
 the spectacles of any translator. 
 
 Lennon was turning over the books when 
 a quick footfall made him start and flush. 
 There was a rustling, indeed a rushing, of 
 billowy silk into the room ; a sweet, deep 
 voice called out, '^ Ealph, dear old friend, 
 welcome home to England !" two warm lips 
 pressed his cheek, or his beard; and then 
 he clearly saw Mabel Warton standing 
 before him. And — dreadful thing to say 
 to those who like to think that love is 
 all spiritual and mental, and not a thing 
 trammelled to the flesh — a shock went 
 through poor Lennon' s frame, and the love 
 that had been kept alive through disap- 
 pointment and struggle, and success and 
 failure, and pain and pleasure, droj^ped down 
 dead at Mabel "Warton's feet. Dead past 
 hope, past cui'c ; not to be revived, surely, 
 even by that last trumpet which is ortho-
 
 206 THE OLD LOYE. 
 
 doxically expected to impeoj^le so many 
 graves. 
 
 The illusion was gone ; and Lennon, 
 cnred of his fevered dream, like the man in 
 Horace, felt bitterly aggrieved against the 
 fate which restored reality and banished an 
 exquisite and false imagining. 
 
 But the full force of the shock was not 
 appreciated all at once ; and Ealph soon 
 found himself sketching in rapid outline 
 the history of his past life. Probably Ma- 
 bel did not care much about the details, 
 and had a very vague notion of what sort of 
 place Australia might be — having dropped 
 all manner of acquaintance with it ever 
 since school-time, when she used to be 
 taught that it was called Australasia, and 
 had no clearer idea about it than that it was 
 a place where a traveller must inevitably 
 fall among thiei^es. "When Lennon talked 
 of Yictoria she of course assumed that he 
 was speaking of some sort of place — a town 
 or something out there — and not of the
 
 THE OLD LOVE. 
 
 207 
 
 Queen of England, wliicli would be absurd ; 
 but beyond that she did not know, and did 
 not want to know. Her interest was wholly 
 in the man, in dear old Ealpb Lennon, and 
 not in his adventures. And while he was 
 sketching out his life of the last dozen years 
 or so, dashing oif the lines rather to cover 
 his own embarrassment than for any other 
 reason, the good Mabel -was thinking whe- 
 ther he would stay to dinner; whether War- 
 ton would come to dine ; what she and her 
 niece could do to amuse Ealph if he did not ; 
 and how sorry she was that she happened to 
 be asleep when he came, and therefore was 
 not dressed ; and that he must have known 
 she was dressing ; and how glad she was that 
 she had put on her blue silk, because it 
 looked so well. 
 
 Then she talked a little : told him about 
 the children, whom he must see presently ; 
 about Walter being so much engaged; about 
 her niece being so good a girl, and such a 
 comfort to her.
 
 208 THE OLD LOVE. 
 
 ^' I I1020C you are happy," said Ealph, 
 hardly knowing that he spoke the words. 
 
 ^' Happy !" she answered ; "0, yes ! 
 That is, as happy as anyone can be, I sup- 
 pose. As happy as I could be while — while 
 "Walter is so much away." 
 
 There was a look of tenderness and truth 
 about her which was touching, which made 
 her seem almost beautiful — almost romantic, 
 ideal, and Xadonna-like. A strange pang 
 passed through Lennon's heart. 
 
 ^' And you, Ealph?" she asked gently, 
 kindly ; '^ you are happy, are you not ? 
 And you are wise, and have sown all your 
 wild oats — yoiu' foolish, boyish, wild oats ?" 
 
 '' Yes," he replied slowly, and rather 
 sadly ; ^^ I have grown wise, I suppose ; 
 I hope. At least, I have outlived much 
 foolishness, and roused myself from some 
 dreamings." 
 
 These words might be called the elegy 
 of his long passion. They were the short 
 funeral oration pronounced over liis great
 
 THE OLD LOVE. 209 
 
 dead love. PerliajDS Mabel too, so under- 
 stood tliem. A quiet smile, radiant with 
 true and kindly feeling, diffused once more 
 a sort of ideal beauty over lier face. J^o 
 word of allusion to that chapter of the past 
 which they two had read together and 
 alone was ever again exchanged between 
 them. 
 
 "Walton Warton did, luckily for Mabel's 
 comfort, make his appearance very soon, and 
 Lennon dined with them ; and they even 
 found a room for him, and insisted on his 
 passing the night under their roof. The 
 evening was tranquil and happy; but Len- 
 non went to bed with an odd sensation of 
 blankness and vacuity at his heart, and was 
 pervaded by a vague doubt of his having 
 any particular business in life. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 AND THE NEW. 
 
 Children now do not read tlie story of 
 Fortunio ; it is probably out of print ; and 
 this writer, though remembering the tale 
 well enough, does not know who wrote it, or 
 in what collection it is found, except that it 
 is not in the Arabian Nig] its. But it is a 
 charming story. It is about a girl whose 
 father was dead, and whose mother and 
 sisters were in difficulties of some kind, and 
 who, having a spirit far too high for inac- 
 tivity and starvation, resolved to pull them 
 out of all trouble by her own unaided effort 
 and enterj)rise. So she dressed herself as a 
 man, and went out to seek her fortune ; which 
 she found in the shape of some dreadful 
 adventures and daring exploits, whereby she
 
 Ai^D THE NEW. 211 
 
 won tlie gratitude of tlie king — tlie king 
 of all the stories. Unliappily, however, she 
 also won the love of the king's daughter; and 
 this was, for some reason or other, a deadly 
 offence, and Fortunio was doomed to die. 
 She was to be shot to death with arrows, 
 like the wife of the Peruvian prince who had 
 offended Pizarro. !Now in most stories and 
 plays and poems of a certain kind, it is 
 assumed to be a necessary preliminary to 
 death by any sharp instrument that the 
 breast must be bared. Indeed, only the 
 other day in Paris a despairing young mil- 
 liner resolved to kill herself with a dagger ; 
 and she accomplished the deed with a stern 
 unfaltering resolution worthy of a Brutus ; 
 only before doing it she took the trouble 
 partly to bare her breast, and to put on the 
 prettiest trimmed under-garment, that the 
 death and the corpse might be picturesque 
 and Parisian. There was less excuse for 
 her than in the Fortunio instance, because in 
 the latter case the baring of the breast was
 
 212 AND THE NEW. 
 
 absolutely essential to the story, wliicli was 
 by no means the case with the Paris heroine. 
 Eut when Fortnnio's white young bosom 
 came to be uncovered, the king necessarily 
 saw that he ^^^as dooming a girl to death, 
 and for an offence which she could not pos- 
 sibly commit; and of course he pardoned 
 her, and she triumphed, and I think mar- 
 ried the king's son in the end, and made all 
 her family happ3\ 
 
 In these days the little faiiy story may 
 be taken as a sort of timely parable. We 
 are told that signs are eyerywhere yisible 
 of a feminine revolt against petticoats. 
 "Women are invading our monopolies and 
 sanctuaries and privileged grounds every- 
 where ; but the moral of Fortunio may "per- 
 haps remind them that, do what they will, 
 the soft bosom will some time or other re- 
 veal itself, and that it, their womanhood, 
 must make their best success in the end. 
 '^0, if I were but a man !" may be taken 
 as the passionate aspiration, spoken or un-
 
 AXD THE NEW. 213 
 
 spoken, of at least every other Avoman of 
 spirit one meets. A great lady of our own 
 time — a woman full of ambition, but kept 
 by lier very rank, perhaps, in a sort of 
 background — was deploring one day to a 
 confidential diplomatist that she could not 
 make the politics of her country go exactly 
 as she Avished. " Ah, I could do some- 
 thing in politics," said she, ^4f I wore 
 /Aa^;" and she touched his manly coat. 
 ^' You are far better armed for the pur- 
 pose in wearing tliis^'''^ replied the states- 
 man ; and he lightly shook the folds of her 
 womanly skirt. But the world is filled, now 
 more than ever, with unfavoured Fortunios, 
 who long to enter the path of enterprise in 
 man's attire, and find their woman's sphere 
 painfully narrow and mean and pitiful. 
 
 One of these was Mabel Warton's niece. 
 Day by day she grew more weary of her nar- 
 row, monotonous, routine life, with its petty 
 cares and small shifts and shabby Sisyphus 
 struggles. Xever having been at school, —
 
 214 ■ AXD THE KE^\ 
 
 never having set foot inside that hicleons 
 institution for the dwarfing of woman's 
 mind and the withering of her heart, a 
 boarding-school, — she had always something 
 of a high ideal life before her, which she 
 would have striven to attain if she could. 
 She longed to be an artist. It has abeady 
 been mentioned that her strong desire and 
 determination were to go and live in Eome, 
 and study there and carve in marble. Art 
 alone — the sculptor's art alone — seemed to 
 offer a fair hope for the realisation of any- 
 thing worth calling perfect. Meanwhile 
 she had to put off this desire from day to 
 day, and steep her life in trivialities. She 
 read everything that came in her way — 
 literally everything, without attempt at 
 order or purpose or study. She read lead- 
 ing articles and poems indiscrkninately ; 
 the greatest works of the past and the pre- 
 sent, and the most rubbishy novel from the 
 circulating library. Her process of read- 
 ing the latter sort of book, however, was
 
 AND THE NEW. 215 
 
 Tery rapid and summary. She tore through 
 its contents in a moment — a figurative mo- 
 ment at least — disembowelled it, plucked 
 out the heart of its mystery, and then, if 
 it was good for nothing, threw it away, 
 never to be glanced at again. If, however, 
 it proved to have any marrow in it, then 
 she read it more carefully, got whatever 
 was good in it, and left the rest to go. 
 Thus from almost every measuring process 
 of this kind her mind, like Cassim Baba's 
 cup, retained some coin of gold. Her en- 
 ergy, seeking a suitable end, was always 
 grasping around it in every direction ; and 
 so she had accumulated an odd miscel- 
 laneous store of materials, which it only 
 wanted some ordering and superior mind 
 to help her to put to use. 
 
 Indeed, the kind of life she was now 
 leading would have precluded order of 
 study. She read only by fits and snatches, 
 and must grasp greedily all she could 
 crowd into the time, as a hungry traveller
 
 216 AND THE NEW. 
 
 at a railway station pounces on anything 
 he can find close to hand, and swallows it, 
 knowing that in a moment the inexorable 
 bell will ring and he must go. She taught 
 the children as well as she could; she or- 
 dered the house ; she controlled and helped 
 the servants ; she paid the bills ; she made 
 the two ends meet when she could. To 
 keep that household out of debt or out of 
 actual poverty was of late becoming a very 
 difficult task. To think about art and about 
 tradesmen's bills at the same time is not 
 easy even to the professional artist; and 
 poor Grace's artistic heaven was often con- 
 fused by dull clouds of commonplace and 
 petty difficulties. She could of course have 
 shaken off the whole connection in a mo- 
 ment, have stamped the dust from her feet, 
 and gone her own way whither that led 
 her. Her own little purse would have 
 kept her somehow in Eome; and nobody 
 had any fair claim on her time or her 
 money. But she was fond of her aunt —
 
 AND THE NEW. 217 
 
 in a sort of pitying way. Mabel had been 
 very kind and loving to her when she was 
 an orphan girl; and she was grateful, and 
 could not go her own way, and leave the 
 gentle helpless woman lonely. Then the 
 children were very fond of her, and could 
 be managed by her ; and she was fond of 
 them; and she somehow came vaguely to 
 think that evil days were in store for them; 
 and her soul revolted against the idea of 
 deserting them, even for art. So she re- 
 mained — thinldng, perhaps, that if all roads 
 lead to Eome, there might be a path thither 
 at last, even through such a moor of petty, 
 prosaic English cares as she had now to 
 traverse. 
 
 She had never felt, thus far, one single 
 throb of affection for any male creature on 
 earth except her father, who was long dead, 
 and little Watty Warton, who was sometimes 
 as annoying to her as a gadfly. She often 
 wished to be a man, but never cared much 
 about knowing men. Indeed, she almost
 
 218 AND THE NEW. 
 
 took it for granted that wlien you came to 
 know a man well he Avas sure to turn out 
 something like Walter Warton, as the lat- 
 ter showed himself in her clear, undazzled 
 eyes. 
 
 Miss Ethelstone felt little or no interest 
 in the expected visit of Ealph Lennon. She 
 knew that he had been a lorer of Mabel's, 
 and she therefore assumed that he must be 
 a very uninteresting person. She quite 
 understood Mabel, and knew her to be 
 gentle, sweet, mindless, and weak ; she 
 remembered her nothing else so long as she 
 could recollect at all. She saw that Walter 
 Warton never cared to talk to her or com- 
 mune with her ; and she assumed that any 
 man who really loved her must be a worthy, 
 vapid, and commonplace person. Few women 
 of her age — not many, perhaps; of any age — 
 understand how powerful the merely womanly 
 weapons are over men. They cannot com- 
 prehend how the soft light of a bright eye, 
 the soft accents of a sweet voice, can not
 
 AKD THE NEW. 219 
 
 only glamour a man into love, but make 
 him believe a simpering idiot is a creature 
 all soul, sensibility, and intellect. Tliey do 
 not imderstand that womanhood has charms 
 to men — especially to young men — merely 
 because it is womanhood. There are seasons 
 in the career of young and generous men 
 when almost any creature with a fair face 
 and sweet voice may take them by the hand 
 and lead them where she will. Few stately 
 oldsters there are, if they ever knew youth's 
 more generous feeling at all, who might not 
 make confession that there was a crisis in 
 their lives when only good fortune saved 
 them from marrying some pretty brainless 
 girl out of a confectioner's shop, or some 
 actress whose dramatic genius lay wholly 
 in her shapely legs. 
 
 Therefore Grace took little notice of 
 Mabel's first and unsuccessful lover when he 
 came to the house that day. She was friendly 
 and kind to him for Mabel's sake, regarding 
 him as somebody quite out of her own sphere
 
 220 AXD THE XEW. 
 
 altogether, and looking at him only with 
 that slight indirect interest which a girl 
 might feel towards one who was pointed out 
 to her as having proposed for her mother 
 ever so many years ago. 
 
 Lennon rose rather early the next morn- 
 ing. He had been restless and unhappy. 
 He felt humbled, somehow, and disap- 
 pointed. Life looked all prosaic and vulgar. 
 The one deep sentiment of his life thus far 
 was gone. He had clung to it as something 
 that gave his better nature food to live on 
 when "the dreary intercourse of daily life" 
 was done. There is a secret pride as well as a 
 luxury in sorrow. The natiu^e which disdains 
 all other egotism indulges itself freely in ego- 
 tism of that kind. There is a sense of sub- 
 limity in disappointment unflinchingly borne 
 — we like to think of ourselves as of the 
 camel mutely straining beneath the heaviest 
 load, or the wolf dying in silence. If we 
 have only ourselves for sympathisers and 
 admirers, if our own consciousness be the
 
 AND THE NEW. 221 
 
 only stage we jolay to, yet there is somc- 
 tliing inspiriting, even in acting our part in 
 sucli a theatre, to deserve the applause of 
 such an audience. It is a fall to pride to 
 find that we have really lost nothing ; that 
 we ought to be rather glad, and not disap- 
 pointed. It turns the tragedy into a farce ; 
 or, what is worse, into an ordinary, unheroic 
 business transaction. 
 
 Ealph walked out into the little garden 
 behind the house. Evidently Walter and 
 Mabel were not yet up. The whole place 
 looked peaceful, smiling, and happy. Len- 
 non's heroic beneficence was clearly as much 
 out of place as his heroic passion. Common- 
 place contentment and respectability seemed 
 to reign over all. So he felt as he looked 
 at the pleasant garden, on which the mild 
 sun of late autumn was shining through a 
 thin haze of early frost. 
 
 He heard the laugh of children, and it 
 awakened him healthily from the sensuous 
 enjoyment of meditation. Lennon was glad.
 
 222 AND THE NEW. 
 
 He liked the fine boy lie had seen the even- 
 ing before, and was glad to have a talk and 
 a romp with him. He loved sancy, noisy 
 boys, and in the London streets relished the 
 street- sweeping, match-selling, coach- wheel- 
 turning gamin most of all the ordinary fea- 
 tures of London life. So he quickly followed 
 the sound, and it led him to a little summer- 
 house — one of those mock-rustic afi'airs which 
 Londoners love ; which you buy ready-made 
 and all standing, and set up like a water- 
 butt ; and which is about the size of a good 
 sentry-box. And here he found the two 
 children, and found also — less, perhaps, to 
 his delight — their cousin. She was bare- 
 headed, like the young ones, and was plajdng 
 some game or other with them. She was 
 not in the least disconcerted. 
 
 ^'Good-morning, Mr. Lennon," she said; 
 ^' I hardly expected to see you up so early. 
 "We are very early risers, the children and I. 
 Watty is delighted to see you, I am sure. 
 Someone has been telling him that you saw
 
 a:n'd the new 223 
 
 lions, and conld tell liim all about them; 
 and lie delights in lions." 
 
 ^^0, yes, Mr. Lennon," the boy cried, 
 struggling out of some handkerchief-knot in 
 which he had been tied, ^' mamma says you 
 saw lions." 
 
 ^^Yes, Watty, often. Shall I tell you 
 all about them ?" 
 
 ''Yes, please; but look here. Mamma 
 says you hunted lions in Australia ; but I 
 have a natural-history book, and it says 
 there are no lions in Australia." 
 
 "1^0, my boy, nor are there — except in 
 zoological gardens, as you have them here ; 
 but it was in Africa." 
 
 " 0, you were in Africa ! In the desert 
 of Sahara ? And did you ever ride on an 
 ostrich ?" 
 
 ''IN'o, not in the desert of Sahara, but in 
 other parts of Africa ; and I never rode on 
 an ostrich. But I have seen great yellow 
 lions, out on the sand — not in cages — and 
 heard them roar, and shot at them, too."
 
 224 AXD THE XEW. 
 
 '^ 0, liow jolly ! And did you kill 
 any ?" 
 
 "Well, yes; I lielj^ed to kill some, at 
 least ; and I have got the skin of one, wkicli 
 I'll show yon." 
 
 " Have yon got it here ?" 
 
 " 1^0 ; bnt I have it in Cnmberland, 
 where I am living now; and I should be 
 glad to take you there with me for a while. 
 Will you come ?" 
 
 " 0, I'd like to come of all things — if 
 mamma would let me." 
 
 "Would you go without papa and 
 mamma, Watty ?" asked his grave sister, in 
 tone of solemn childish reproof. 
 
 "Why, papa isn't ever here, ]\Iaby, and 
 mamma doesn't care for playing and all that. 
 — But I'd like Maby to come, Mr. Lennon, 
 and cousin Gracie, too. You'll take cousin 
 Gracie, Mr. Lennon, won't you ?" 
 
 "I'll not go, Mr. Lennon," demurely 
 said the little girl, returning to her point, 
 " unless mamma and papa go."
 
 AND THE NEW. 225 
 
 " Isow^ Maby, that's all your nonsense — 
 you know we never see papa here." 
 
 '' Your papa is here now, Watty clear," 
 interposed Miss Ethelstone. 
 
 Eut Watty was not to be put down. 
 " 0, we'll go, Mr. Lennon, never mind," 
 he went on sturdily. '' Papa won't know 
 anything about it until we are back again." 
 
 Lennon's eye rested involuntaril}^ on the 
 3^oung woman who stood near him. She 
 had coloured deeply, and her whole manner 
 suggested anxiety and embarrassment. He 
 came to the rescue : 
 
 '^Well, Watty, I hope jour papa will 
 come too. But now I'm going to tell you 
 a story about a lion — a huge, dreadful lion ; 
 the one whose skin I have, and mean to 
 show you." 
 
 How unfortunate, in one sense — how un- 
 timely, at all events — that Miss Ethelstone 
 should have looked up, relieved and rejoiced ! 
 For Lennon's eye again involuntarily turned 
 towards her, and their glances met. And 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 226 AND THE NEW. 
 
 Lennon's look, though it endured not a 
 second of time, said, as plainly as if words 
 had expressed it, ^' I see that something is 
 wrong here;" and her look replied, '•! see 
 that you know it." 
 
 Lennon went on and told his story, 
 making it pretty long too, and minute in its 
 details; for he knew that the longer he could 
 make it, and the more completely he could 
 absorb the attention of his one listener, the 
 better all the party would be pleased. 
 
 Eut the story came to an end at last. 
 
 ^'Do you go to school, Watty?" asked 
 Lennon, saying anything to start a new 
 topic. 
 
 '''No, I don't," said the boy. ^' But I 
 learn, though — lots of things." 
 
 ^' Mamma teaches you ?" 
 
 "0, no ; mamma don't teach us ; cousin 
 Gracie does. We had a governess, but she 
 went away when Gracie came. I'm so glad ; 
 she was a nasty, cross old thing; and she 
 used to make mamma ciy sometimes."
 
 AND THE NEW. 227 
 
 ^^ And what do you learn, Watty ?" 
 
 ^^All sorts of tilings: globes, and sums 
 on the slate — and Grade's wrong in her 
 sums sometimes, I know — and drawing. 0, 
 isn't she fii'st-rate at drawing ! She drew 
 me a lion yesterday, and a man on horse 
 fighting with him. It's stunning ! She's go- 
 ing to Eome soon — and I'm going with her." 
 
 ''' Do you intend to study art. Miss Ethel- 
 stone ?" 
 
 '^ I have had yague dreams of that kind 
 for a long time, but they don't come to any- 
 thing. I should very much like to study in 
 Eome." 
 
 '' And become a professional artist ?" 
 
 "Yes, Mr. Lennon. I don't see why 
 women should lounge idly through life; 
 and, at all events, I can't do it. I must 
 make a living." There now, thought the 
 girl, if he is a swell, and thinks I am going 
 to set up for a fine lady, that will let him 
 know at once that he is mistaken. 
 
 " I think you are perfectly right," Len-
 
 228 AND THE XEW. 
 
 non quietly remarked. ^'In the country 
 where I lived so long — Australia — women 
 do not lounge away their lives in idleness. 
 And we — I mean they — in that country 
 have had their woman-artists, who have 
 crossed the great ocean and studied their 
 art in Eome, and come back and made a 
 fame for themselves — at least, a colonial 
 fame. I don't suppose their names ever 
 reached England ; but out there we used to 
 be proud of some of them." 
 
 ''Are you an artist, Mr. Lennon?" 
 ''IN'o, not at all; at least, it would be 
 really absurd to call anything I do by the 
 name of art. But I am fond of drawing 
 now and then ; and above all human arts I 
 love sculpture." 
 
 '' 0, and so do I !" She coloured, and 
 became quite enthusiastic. '' I love it better 
 than anything. I look at a fine statue in 
 delight — and despair. I should so love to 
 make a group — I have the idea firmly in my 
 mind — of (Edipus and Antigone."
 
 AND THE NEW. 229 
 
 " (Edipiis and Antigone ! From Sopho- 
 cles?" 
 
 " There ! I laiew you would laugh. Men 
 always laugh at the idea of a woman being 
 able to read Greek. But you need not 
 smile in this case ; I am not guilty — I wish 
 I were. I know no more of Greek than 
 "Watty does. But we have got Plumptre's 
 translation, and I read it; and the moment I 
 read the grand opening line of the play — 
 ^ Child of a blind old man, Antigone!' — I 
 made up my mind that I would try to make 
 a group of that. I see the group — but only 
 when I shut my eyes, though ; and I dare- 
 say I shall never see it otherwise." She 
 laughed, and became a little embarrassed, 
 fearing she had made rather a foolish 
 exhibition; and she glanced doubtfully at 
 Lennon's face. He was quite earnest and 
 interested. 
 
 *' Have you made a drawing of it ?" he 
 asked. 
 
 ^'Yes; but it did not satisfy me. I
 
 230 AND THE NEW. 
 
 made several, in fact ; but very hastily^ and 
 they did not come up to the mark, and so 
 I tore them np." 
 
 ^' Will you make another, and show it to 
 me ? and I will tell you frankly what I think 
 of it. As I said, I am not an artist, but I 
 am fond of art, and of sculpture especially ; 
 and I haye been in Eome, and have seen 
 most of the great European statues ; and I 
 think I could form a tolerable judgment." 
 
 ^^And you would be frank with me — 
 would give me a perfectly honest and candid 
 opinion, and not treat me like a child, or a 
 girl ; I mean as men generally seem to think 
 girls ought to be treated ? I want an honest 
 judgment ; for, if these notions of mine are 
 mere nonsense and vanity, the sooner I get 
 cured of them the better. And I could bear 
 it, too.'' 
 
 ^^But su23pose the idea were a delusion 
 — suppose it were only aspiration, and no- 
 thing of inspiration — how should you feel 
 towards the friend who told you so ?"
 
 AND THE NEW. 231 
 
 " I hope I sliould have sense enough to 
 be grateful ; at least, I would try to. But 
 what need it matter to him, if he did 
 right ?" 
 
 ^' Well, Miss Ethelstone, if you allow me 
 the opportunity, I will run the risk of youi- 
 anger, and try to give an unprejudiced 
 opinion. But I warn you that my mind is 
 already tending towards prejudice. I hope 
 and trust that an earnest desire is in itself 
 an evidence of capacity. Once I used to 
 hold to this as a creed; but that was in 
 more hopeful days, ever so long ago, — 
 before you were born, I daresay." 
 
 '' What nonsense ! Why, you are quite 
 young — much younger than I expected to 
 find you. I thought you must be quite an 
 elderly and heavy sort of person." 
 
 "' Why did you think so ?" 
 
 '^Because — because — 0, really, I don't 
 know." And she gave way to an involun- 
 tary peal of laughter, and grew quite red 
 once more. And Lennon laughed too, and
 
 232 AXD THE NEW. 
 
 the merry outburst somewhat cleared the 
 atmosphere of his temper auci spirits. 
 
 Just at that moment Wartou, in search 
 of his guest, entered the garden. He was 
 about to hurry forward when the peal of 
 laughter attracted his attention, and his 
 eyes rested on the group, composed of Len- 
 non, Grace, and the children, one of the 
 latter hanging on to ^Ralph's shooting - 
 coat pocket. Warton checked himself, and 
 watched the group with an expression of 
 peculiar interest. Miss Ethelstone, in a 
 bright-blue morning - dress, and a smart 
 (and very cheap) straw hat, with her fail' 
 hair, guiltless of chignon or comb, gleam- 
 ing in the pale sun, and her complexion 
 heightened and expression animated by un- 
 wonted interest and mirth, was a very at- 
 tractive figure. So Warton thought. Only 
 of late had his attention been much drawn 
 towards her. To him the familiar was usu- 
 ally the least noticed and the least known. 
 Eut latterly he had been compelled to notice
 
 AXD THE NEW. 233 
 
 once or twice that she was really a girl of 
 spirit and sense ; he had discovered by the 
 agency of one or two divining words that 
 she had ambition and fire, and he began 
 to see that she had some pretensions to 
 beanty and figure. He looked at her now 
 as she walked and laughed by Lennon's 
 side, and his whole face was lighted up by 
 some quick encouraging thought. 
 
 He went forward and greeted them. 
 
 ^' Miss Ethelstone has been telling me," 
 said Lennon, ''that she thought I was quite 
 an aged and stupid person." 
 
 ''0 no, Walter; indeed I never said 
 anything of the kind." 
 
 '' Well, elderly and heavy, then." 
 
 '' But that was nonsense*" 
 
 '' I should hope it was nonsense," said 
 Warton gaily. '' I have personal reasons 
 for it, Grace dear, seeing that Mr. Lennon 
 is somewhat younger than I am; and I 
 don't advise you to tell Mabel that you 
 consider me elderly and heavy."
 
 234 AXD THE NEW. 
 
 ^' Papa," interposed Watty, " mayn't I 
 go Ayitli Mr. Lennon to where tie lives, to 
 see a lion's skin? I do so want to go." 
 
 '^ Certainly, dear, if Mr. Lennon will be 
 so good as to take yon." 
 
 ''And mayn't cousin Grace go too?" 
 
 ''Eeally, Watty, I can't speak for cousin 
 Grace. She goes where she likes, you 
 know." 
 
 ''!N'o, she doesn't, papa. She don't go 
 anywhere. How could she when she has 
 to teach us, you know, since Miss Potts 
 went away ? 0, but you don't know." 
 
 '' But, Watty, I don't care about lions," 
 interposed cousin Grace ; '' and besides, per- 
 haps Mr. Lennon would not take me." 
 
 " Yes, I'm sure he would, if you asked 
 him; when you show him how well you 
 can do your drawing-lessons." 
 
 '' We have been speaking about sculp- 
 ture and drawing," interposed Lennon. '' I 
 was glad to find Miss Ethelstone is an 
 artist.''
 
 a:nd the new. 235 
 
 '''No, no, Mr. Lennon, I don't call my- 
 self an artist." 
 
 "Yes, Grace has the soul and spirit of 
 an artist," said "Warton, wlio np to that 
 moment had regarded any indication of 
 that kind wliich he might have noticed in 
 the girl as a pitiable manifestation of wo- 
 man's inherent silliness. " She has a pas- 
 sion for art; and I at least have always 
 believed that a true woman's ambition in- 
 dicates a consciousness of power." 
 
 Miss Ethelstone fell behind with a 
 scarcely concealed smile of contempt and 
 tremulous motion of disdainful shoulder. 
 She took little Mabel's hand and walked 
 with. her. " I wonder whether your mamma 
 has come downstairs yet, dear?" she said to 
 the little girl ; and thus glided out of the 
 artistic conversation altogether. 
 
 Warton saw and understood the mean- 
 ing of her movement, but was only amused ; 
 and, in fact, began to feel quite a heighten- 
 ing interest in her. Eut he did not proceed
 
 236 AXD THE NEW. 
 
 to dwell upon her good qualities to Lennon 
 any fiu'ther just then. 
 
 They were all walking round the little 
 garden. When they came near the door 
 of the house, a rushing of skirts was heard, 
 and Mabel came out. She was dressed 
 rather tastefully, and looked genial, happy 
 — and heavy. Her soft eyes brightened 
 with a friendly smile to Lennon ; but they 
 turned with the rapture of a first love to 
 her husband, to whom she presently clung, 
 and on whom she fawned like a loving but 
 heavy spaniel. Eut why, when she put her 
 hand so warmly into his own and allowed it 
 to rest there kindly, and greeted him with so 
 glad and cordial a smile, did Lennon glance 
 slightly away from her and steal a look at 
 her niece's face ? And was it only an ab- 
 surd fancy which made him think he saw a 
 satirical and odd expression there ? 
 
 One thing at least he was sincerely glad 
 of, and that was Mabel's evident devotion 
 to her husband. He thought he could in-
 
 AND THE NEW. 237 
 
 terpret easily enough tlie meaning of some 
 of the little evidences which had forced 
 themselves on his attention. He could not 
 doubt that Warton was habitually an ab- 
 sentee from his home ; and he could not 
 avoid conjectming that the home was not 
 so free of care as he had at first imagined. 
 Eut Warton's frequent absence, as he was 
 an ambitious man and steeped in politics, 
 was not surprising. Warton himself had 
 prepared him to expect as much. jSTeither 
 was it wonderful if, under the circumstances, 
 a want of money occasionally pinched the 
 household of an ambitious man to whom 
 politics were but a trade. What gratified 
 Lennon was to see that after so many years 
 Mabel Warton deeply loved her husband. 
 He supposed that no undeserving man could 
 have retained that love, or any woman's 
 love, so long ; and he thought that what- 
 ever difficulties might surroimd the house- 
 hold, Mabel had that which to a woman is 
 better than all other prosperity. He was
 
 238 AND THE NEW. 
 
 sincerely rejoiced to believe that Walter 
 Warton must be, after all, a good husband. 
 
 After all? Yes, after all the vague, 
 deep, long-abiding suspicions of Warton 
 which had brooded in Lennon's mind, which 
 had made him think that some time or other 
 Mabel would have need of friendly counsel 
 and a true helping hand, even though of- 
 fered as the generous revenge of a disin- 
 terested discarded lover. He rejoiced to 
 think just now that his suspicions must have 
 been idle ; and it must be said that his joy 
 over the thought of her husband's worthi- 
 ness was all the more thorough and deep 
 because he loved her now no longer — and 
 wondered how it was he ever could have 
 loved her, could have dreamed and hoped 
 and raved and despaired and tried to fling 
 his life away, for that dear, good-natured, 
 honest matron who stood and smiled before 
 him so sweet and friendly and uninteresting. 
 
 As he returned to London that day, he 
 boldly faced his otvti thoughts. He lighted
 
 AND THE NEW. 239 
 
 a lamp mentally, and went . clown into tlie 
 sepnlclu-e, and opened the coffin and looked 
 at the long-embalmed dead. He brought 
 forth his old love in his arms, and studied, 
 passionless, its fading lineaments. Yes, he 
 was once wildly, madly in loye with Mabel 
 Ethelst one's soft brown eyes and her sweet 
 voice and her white hand ; in love with her 
 gentleness, which he took for intellectual 
 serenity ; in love with her easy composure, 
 which he mistook for noble self-subduino* 
 
 o 
 
 independence of soul ; in love with her very 
 scruples, and most in love of all with her 
 tender, firm rejection of himself, and her 
 complete devotion to another. For her at 
 one time he was ambitious, and would have 
 risked life gladly; he would have thought 
 it sweet to die if her eyes but moistened 
 with a loving farewell. For her he had 
 done more than that : he had lived — lived 
 in the manly devoted hope that some time 
 when sorrow threatened her it might be his 
 happy, unselfish, unrewarded lot to stand
 
 240 AND THE NEW. 
 
 by her side and help to shield her. And 
 now he found her a good-hearted, gentle, 
 prosaic woman, whose very qualities of plain 
 and homely goodness were a febrifuge and 
 antidote to love. JS'ay, more than that, he 
 saw that she really had not changed, except 
 in matronly proportions ; that she must have 
 been always much the same; and that the 
 Ealph Lennon of twenty fell in love, not 
 with her at all, but with the radiant image 
 of his own youth and fervour and yain 
 romance and hopeless longing, as he saw it 
 mirrored in the well of her deep-bro^^ii eyes. 
 
 Walter Warton accompanied him to the 
 railway station. Ealph, of course, had made 
 many promises to return soon and see Mabel, 
 and tell little Watty more about lions, and in- 
 spect the drawing of Antigone and (Edipus. 
 
 ^^ I often go up northward," said War- 
 ton, as they walked along the road together ; 
 '' indeed some of my strongholds are in the 
 north, although I have not the devotion to 
 Lancashire which I used to have once. I
 
 AND THE NEW. 241 
 
 know many people near Waterdale ; I have 
 been at Lowther Castle and Patterdale Hall, 
 and — and other places. Now I shall have a 
 fresh impulse to go there, in wishing to see 
 yon. I'll look yon np there, soon enough ; 
 depend on it." 
 
 ^' You cannot come too soon, if you arc 
 not particular about accommodation. The 
 house is sadly out of repair, and I have not 
 had anything done to it; and indeed don't 
 mean to." 
 
 " Of course not. Why should you ? 
 You'll never live there very long, I should 
 think." 
 
 ^' Well, I don't know ; I sometimes think 
 of living there altogether." 
 
 ^^ There, down in Cumberland; buried 
 alive in a mountain-pass ?" 
 
 " Yes ; why not ? Perhaps I should be 
 bui'ied alive wherever I go." 
 
 ^^ Xotyou; you are quite certain to find 
 existence there unendiu^able after a while; 
 you will have to come out into the living 
 
 VOL. I. R
 
 242 AXD THE XEW. 
 
 world — the activGj the real world, the only- 
 world worth living in or for." 
 
 ^^Whereisthat?" asked Lennon, smiling. 
 
 ^^ The world of London ; the only stage 
 worth playing on, the only audience Avorth 
 playing to. You used to think so once." 
 
 ^' So I used; but I have seen other 
 worlds since, and found life much the same 
 in them. You have no idea how insignifi- 
 cant London looks from an Australian 
 bush." 
 
 "Yet it is the centre of life — Anglo- 
 Saxon life, at least." 
 
 "Perhaps so. Eut the sun looks very 
 little just now up there; and the great cen- 
 tral sun we can't see at all. To you who 
 are in it and of it, London looks all-important 
 — and it is all-important. But I am practi- 
 cally so far away from it that I concern 
 myseK little more about it than that old 
 woman shaking the carpet yonder does about 
 the sun." 
 
 "Ah, you think so now, but your feel-
 
 a:nd the new. 243 
 
 ings will soon change; and I look to see you 
 deserting Cumberland and settling in Lon- 
 don, and probably plunging into politics, or 
 literature, or railway speculation, or some- 
 thing of the kind, before long. Meanwhile, 
 I shall make good haste to come and spend 
 a few days with you in your mountain home, 
 before your recluse fit is over. May I come 
 soon?" 
 
 '^As soon as ever you please, if, as I 
 said, you don't mind bad accommodation. 
 You shall be welcome whenever you come. 
 I wish you could bring that fine little boy 
 with you; but I doubt whether old Mrs. 
 Beck, my housekeeper, would be quite pre- 
 pared to arrange for Am." 
 
 " In any case, my dear fellow, his mamma 
 would never consent to let him out of her 
 sight. Kor his cousin, indeed. A noble - 
 hearted girl that, Lennon; and a girl of 
 spirit and talent. But for her to help us, 
 and commune with us, and keep us alive 
 with her vivacity, her good sense, and her
 
 244 A^^D THE NEW. 
 
 affection, we should be sometimes sore 
 pressed by the workl's vexations. Lennon, 
 why have not you a home ?" 
 
 ^^Of what nse is it to have a homo, 
 if a man must always be absent from it ?" 
 Lennon thought. But he made no reply to 
 the question ; and Wart on, perhaps thinking 
 it rather unlucky, forbore to press it. 
 
 ''Then I'll come to see you very soon,'' 
 he continued. '' You live near the Alwjms, 
 I think?" 
 
 "Yes — that is, not very far from them. 
 The lake lies between." 
 
 '' I used to meet the Alwyns a good deal 
 in London not long ago — shortly after they 
 were married. What do you think of them 
 —of him?" 
 
 '' I only met him two or three times, but 
 I liked him very much. I thought him a 
 fine, manly, upright, intelligent specimen of 
 an English clergyman." 
 
 "Exactly; so do I. People say he's a 
 little, just a little lax — A^ery Broad Church ;
 
 AND THE NEW. 245 
 
 but I don't know; I daresay it's all non- 
 sense. And his Avifc — is she not a charming 
 creature ?" 
 
 ^^Yes, indeed; a bright genial little 
 woman. I do not know much of her." 
 
 ^' Ah, you will come to know her when 
 you live near. She is delightful. I wonder 
 how she ever came to marry a man so much 
 older than herself. He might be her father. 
 She is very strict in her religious views — 
 decidedly Evangelical; and I fancy she guides 
 him of late into more rigid ways of thought 
 than he is naturally inclined to." 
 
 ^^He struck me as being a liberal and 
 sensible man," said Lennon. '' I had no 
 opportunity of observing anything of her 
 views; and, to speak the truth, all these 
 hair-splitting differences of sect fail to in- 
 terest me." 
 
 ^' Eut you have renounced, no doubt, the 
 old extravagances of thought? I suppose 
 they are only a phase of mind we must all 
 pass through."
 
 246 
 
 A^S^D THE ^E^y. 
 
 ^^ Perhaps." And that topic fell lifeless 
 — still-born, in fact. 
 
 They reached the station in a few mi- 
 nntes, and Lennon got into the np-train. 
 Warton spoke a few very friendly words at 
 parting ; and Lennon, internally angry at a 
 coldness of manner he conld hardly get over, 
 did his best to be equally genial. 
 
 Warton asked a porter a question or two 
 about some later trains, and then walked 
 slowly home. 
 
 Mabel came to meet him, joy shining on 
 her face. 
 
 " Dear Walter, how glad I am you have 
 come back ! I am sorry good old Ealph had 
 to go so soon ; but it is so kind of you to 
 come quickly back. Is he not changed, dear 
 old Ealph?" 
 
 ^' Yes, very much changed, indeed. Can 
 you put me up a few things, Mabel ? I am 
 going in an hour — ^by the 2.45." 
 
 ^' Going, dearest? Going already, my 
 Walter ?»
 
 AND THE NEW. 247 
 
 " Yes, love. Didn't I tell you ? Yes, I 
 am going to Leicester. I am pledged to 
 attend a meeting there — I can't get off." 
 
 " 0, what a sad disappointment ! And 
 ■when do yon retnrn?" 
 
 ^^ The day after to-morrow, I think." 
 
 He preceded her into the house. She 
 followed him, tamely and sadly. He saw 
 Miss Ethelstone in one of the rooms, and 
 called to her : 
 
 ^'Well, Gracie dear, how do you like 
 our old fiiend, Ealpli Lennon ?" 
 
 ^'Yery much, indeed — for what I saw of 
 him. He seems manly and straightforward; 
 I like that^^ 
 
 ^^Then, on the whole, you like him?" 
 
 ^'Decidedly — yes." 
 
 ^^ I am very glad to hear it." And he 
 passed on without saying any more ; and his 
 faithful wife, dejected, went to make prepa- 
 rations to expedite the journey which was 
 such a disappointment to her.
 
 CHAPTEE X. 
 
 TOM BERRY LEAVHSTO HOME. 
 
 I]^ the neighboTirliood of Bethlehem and of 
 the Surrey Theatre, on the south side of the 
 Thames, are, as everybody knows, a great 
 many narrow streets of dingy and decaying 
 houses where the poor herd and huddle 
 until some new railway line invades them, 
 bombards them, and drives them out. When 
 we bombarded Kagosima, practical politicians 
 here, who do not understand your senti- 
 mental nonsense, said it did not matter much 
 because the houses were only trumpery 
 wooden affairs, and the people who lived there 
 had nothing to do but just to pack up their 
 traps when they found the home blazing 
 about their ears, and set to work at making 
 a new home somewhere else. The same
 
 T03I BEERY LEAVING HOME. 249 
 
 sort of pliilosopliy reconciles some of us to 
 tlie raihvay bombardments which, every now 
 and then rattle down some acres of little 
 streets on this or that side of the Thames. 
 The houses were so wretched and rickety 
 that it really canH matter to these people 
 whether they are knocked down or not. 
 But even this soothing philosophy does not 
 apply to every instance. There are some 
 neat, humble, bright homes even amid that 
 vast acreage of dirt and disease. Somebody's 
 energy and intelligence convert a squalid 
 den here and there into a genuine home, 
 tasteful in its paint, its neatness, its bird- 
 cage, its box of mignonette ; a sort of place 
 which might, one would think, have its 
 household gods, and be glad with family 
 love. Such a little home has to come down 
 too. The genial memories that haunt it 
 cannot guard it, as the Latin poet pictured 
 the memories of HannibaPs triumphs guard- 
 ing, like spirit-sentinels, the safety of the 
 hero's life. Perhaps if somebody Avere to
 
 250 TOM BERRY LEAYI]S'G HO]\IE. 
 
 paint for us the last night in such an old 
 home it might not be in its way less inter- 
 esting than the pre-Eaphaelite picture we 
 all admired a few years ago — the picture of 
 the dissolute, reckless, and broken squire 
 inviting, in the presence of his sad wife, his 
 boy-heir to pledge him to the memories of 
 the hall they haye to leave to-morrow. 
 
 Tom Berry of Southwark was about to 
 be evicted from one of those rare homes 
 which may be found even amid the dirt and 
 poverty of the neighbourhood. An ener- 
 getic, independent fellow, he always wanted, 
 when he married, to have a house of his 
 own, and hated the idea of living in lodg- 
 ings, where the man over your head might 
 be a drunkard who beat his wife, and the 
 young person who occupied the back-par- 
 lour might have odd ways of staying out at 
 night; where your fellow-lodgers jibed at 
 you if you declined to consort with them 
 and fall into their ways ; and where, if you 
 did consort with them, some of them were
 
 to:m berry leaying home. 251 
 
 sure to dun you to become security for rent, 
 or to lend them a pound until they got that 
 new situation which was always just within 
 their reach. So when Tom Berry married 
 he took a small house, then almost new, and 
 he paid twenty-two pounds a-year for it ; 
 and he became, in due time of occupation, a 
 registered Yoter for the borough of South- 
 wark. He was a carpenter by profession, and 
 a handy man in many ways ; and he could 
 adorn his house with the workmanship of 
 his own fingers — clever to handle a paint- 
 brush or a trowel as well as a saw. He was a 
 man superior to his class in many qualities, 
 and he married an intelligent young woman ; 
 and in the first years of his married life he 
 had great plans for the education of his 
 children — a work more difficult to accom- 
 plish out of weekly wages twenty years ago 
 than it is now. One idea of his was a grand 
 local cooperation plan — so many families in 
 the neighbourhood to combine, and hire, all 
 to themselYcs, the whole serYices of two
 
 252 T03I BEREY LEAVING HOME. 
 
 really good instructors — one for the boys, 
 one for the girls ; the instruction to come off 
 in each of the houses successively ; and thus 
 the father and mother to have a dash of the 
 benefit. But the plan never came to any- 
 thing. It haunted his mind, for the first 
 two or three years, as a thing that must 
 soon be matured : then he and his wife be- 
 gan to shake their heads at each other ; then 
 they grew hopeful ; then the hope faded ; at 
 last it went out altogether, and Tom Berry 
 and his wife made up their minds that they 
 v/ere to have no children. Such a fate can- 
 not be without producing some direct effect 
 on the relations of a married pair to each 
 other. Either it sours and perverts them — the 
 one mentally holding the other responsible ; 
 or it makes them more loving and tender 
 than ever, they knowing that they are to 
 stand side by side alone in the world so long 
 as destiny allows them to stand together. 
 Tom Berry and his wife were thus affected, 
 and they loved each other deeply, and he
 
 TOM BERRY LEAVING HOME. 253 
 
 cleavccl to her, sometimes deserting even 
 politics for her, and letting an unjust, aristo- 
 cratic, and Tory world go by undenounced 
 for weeks together for her sake; and she 
 clung to him, until the time came when she 
 must relax her hold and be gone. 
 
 When Tom Berry first learned that he 
 must quit his house, it was a great vexa- 
 tion to him; and he chafed at it, and pro- 
 bably connected the decree in some way 
 with the domination of an aristocratic fac- 
 tion, half Whig, half Tory, and wholly 
 opposed to manhood suffrage. But there 
 was plenty of time to find a new home., 
 and make every preparation to go there ; 
 and Tom was not a fellow to maunder and 
 grumble and do nothing. Only something 
 happened which much distracted his atten- 
 tion. His wife became liable to severe 
 attacks of illness and faintness, and the 
 doctor talked of some mysterious and dan- 
 gerous organic disease. Tom thought no 
 more of preparation to remove. He re-
 
 254 TO^ EERRY LEAVING HOME. 
 
 mained at liome altogether, except for liis 
 work, and watched her. Then she got 
 better — much better, and appeared likely 
 to do well. It was during this interval 
 that, moved by some question of the rights 
 of his class, Tom went to the meeting 
 where Ealph Lennon saw him. But the 
 rallying was all a delusion. His wife sud- 
 denly fell off, grew alarmingly worse and 
 worse. One gray mournful evening she 
 sat upright in bed, looked wildly at her 
 husband, faintly cried '' 0, poor Tom !" 
 threw her arms round his neck, fell back, 
 and died. 
 
 So Tom Berry was left to set about the 
 task of finding a new home alone. The time 
 was near at hand ; but it did not make any 
 matter now where he went. 
 
 He was sitting by the bed whereon lay 
 the dead body of his wife. His elbows 
 rested on his outspread knees; his clasped 
 hands hung down, his head was bent, and 
 he was staring at the floor; at least his
 
 TO]M EEKRY LEAVIJfG HOME. 255 
 
 eyes vere turned tliitlicrj but lie saw no- 
 tliing there. Sad beautiful pictures passed 
 before liis eyes, filling bis soul with the 
 anguish of despair. He saw a bright lad 
 and a winsome lass having their happy 
 Sunday stroll and love-making along the 
 soft uplands of Sydenham (where then no 
 palace stood), and over smiling Blackheath, 
 and across picturesque daisy-covered Wim- 
 bledon, and where the Thames — there a 
 stream of silver — winds among the foliage 
 of Xew. He saw a happy young married 
 pair — busy, helpful, hopeful, loving — look- 
 ing earnestly out for the baby that never 
 came, and then clinging to each other all 
 the closer for the disappointment. He saw 
 many a time of trial, — when employment 
 failed, when wages were low, when there 
 was a strike, and he, furious for the rights 
 of his class, took high part in it ; and the 
 cupboard was sometimes empty, and the 
 Sunday clothes at last disappeared. He 
 saw, through whatever trial, a loving hope-
 
 256 TOH BEREY LEAYIXG HOME. 
 
 fill face turned to liis o^tq. Xow how 
 sweet even the sorrow seemed ! how trifling 
 and short the inter^^als of trial ! As he 
 looked in a little glass that stood npon the 
 table, he saw a haggard grizzled face and 
 bald temples ; and turning away from that 
 sight his eyes rested on the white lank 
 cheeks of a dead woman. Strange, he could 
 look almost stoically on that corpse ; it 
 hardly reminded him of his wife. Eut 
 there hung behind the door a frayed and 
 faded old gown ; and that, or the stuff that 
 made it, he bought himself — only the other 
 day it seemed, and yet it was before they 
 had any suspicion of what was to happen 
 — and he brought it home to her, and she 
 made it and trimmed it herself; and she 
 wore it on the Sunday, and they went to 
 Sydenham — the old Sydenham, but how 
 changed ! And he felt so proud of her 
 appearance, and told her she was look- 
 ing younger and better than ever. So 
 when he saw this poor old empty gown —
 
 TOM BEERY LEAVING HOME. 257 
 
 this gliost of a garment — he knew it, and 
 lie remembered all ; and with a great bnrst 
 of agony he snccnmbed to the reality of his 
 position, and sobbed aloud. 
 
 Some kindly women looked after the 
 house for him in tui-ns. The one who was 
 now on duty — a decent old Irishwoman — 
 heard a knock at the street-door, and 
 opened it. 
 
 A gentleman asked for Mr. Berry. 
 
 » 
 
 y- 
 
 '' Sure, his wife's dead !" was her reply; 
 as if that ought to settle the matter, death 
 postponing all business — an Irish, not an 
 English, sentiment. 
 
 The gentleman said he knew that — he 
 had heard of the death — and came not for 
 business, but as a friend. If Mr. Berry did 
 not like to sec him just then, he would 
 come another time. 
 
 The woman went upstairs to Berry. 
 
 " Tom, alanna ! there's a sthrange gen- 
 tleman wants to see you. He's a friend, 
 
 VOL. I. s
 
 258 TOM BERRY LEAYixG ho:m:e. 
 
 lie says. Go an' talk. to Mm, Tom; 'twill 
 do you good." 
 
 '^ What does he say he wants ?" 
 
 '' He doesn't want anything, Tom dear. 
 He says he's a friend, and come to talk to 
 yon. He looks a rale gentleman." 
 
 " He can't be a friend of mine. I 
 haven't any swell friends." 
 
 ^^ Well, niver mind. He says he's a 
 friend, anyhow. Come down and talk to 
 him, alanna ; 'twill do you good ; 'twill 
 rouse you up a bit." 
 
 Tom mechanically rose and came down- 
 stairs. 
 
 In the little passage stood the gentleman, 
 and Tom knew him at once as the stranger 
 whom he had conducted to W^at Warton's 
 chambers in the Temple. 
 
 ^^ Come in, sir," said he heavily and 
 listlessly ; and he led the way into a little 
 parlour, neatly kept and adorned with some 
 of the coloured Chiistmas prints from the 
 Illustrated London Neics, and two or three
 
 TO 31 BEREY LEAYIXa IIO:kIE. 259 
 
 pliotograplis, at tlie siglit of one of which 
 a great spasm passed over Tom's face. 
 
 ^' I didn't come to disturb you," said 
 Lennon; ''and in fact I came to you for 
 nothing but just to see and speak with you, 
 and tell you how sorry I was to hear of 
 your trouble. I went to the rooms yonder 
 where I met you first, to inquire after you, 
 and they told me what had happened ; and 
 then I thought perhaps you would not ob- 
 ject to my coming to see you, that we might 
 exchange a friendly word or two." 
 
 "Thank you, sir; you're very kind, I'm 
 sure ; and I'm glad to see you. Of course, I 
 laiew you at once. It's — it's a great grief, 
 this. We were always very happy. We 
 never quarrelled, sir, never ; though there's 
 many a woman couldn't have done with 
 some of my ways. It's hard to have to begin 
 life all over again, at my time — and alone." 
 
 "Yes, it is a great grief; and I am not 
 going to offer you any commonplaces of 
 condolence."
 
 260 TOM BERRY LEAVING HOME. 
 
 '^ 'No, it wouldn't be any use/' said Tom, 
 sliaking his head decisively. 
 
 '^ It wouldn't. Such words either have 
 no effect at all, or they are unnecessary. If 
 a man could be comforted by anything of 
 the kind, his grief is not very deep — as 
 yours is." 
 
 ^' Quite right, sir; that's quite right. 
 Are you married ?" 
 
 ^^No." 
 
 ^' Never have been ?" 
 
 ^' Never; and never am likely to be." 
 
 ^^ Ah, then, you can't know what my loss 
 is ; but I'm much obliged to you for think- 
 ing about it." 
 
 ^' Well, I came to see you partly with a 
 kind of idea that you might like to leave 
 London for a little, and go to the North — 
 not to-day or to-morrow, of coiu^se ; but in a 
 fcAV days, after — " Lennon stopped. He 
 had not the courage to say ^^ after the fune- 
 ral." Eerry made a sign with his hand to 
 signify that he imderstood.
 
 TOM BEERY LEAVK^G HOME. 2G1 
 
 ^' The fact is/' Lennon pursued, begin- 
 uing to sec liis way clearer, ^' I am about to 
 be very busy down there. I want some little 
 building and carpentering work done — not 
 great architectural work by any means, but 
 some school-houses, and an improved kind 
 of cottage, and all that; and I want the 
 help of some one who, being a skilful and 
 practical workman, could give my ideas 
 something like shape. Now, I think you 
 are the very man who could help me — at 
 least, I should like you to come down and 
 talk the matter over with me. Will you 
 come ?" 
 
 "It's very kind of you." 
 
 Then Tom stopped and began to think. 
 His home was gone, in every sense. He 
 must soon remove somewhere, and London 
 would be hideous to him. It was something 
 of a hope awakened within him to think of 
 seeing the fresh country, with hills and river. 
 
 '^It's very kind of you," he repeated; 
 " and I shall soon be glad to go anywhere
 
 262 TOM BERRY LEAVING HOME. 
 
 out of this. I'll go, but only on one con> 
 dition, firm and fast, as a man." 
 
 ^^What is it, Mr. Eeny? Anything 
 you like." 
 
 ^'That you don't let me do nothing for 
 something — that it's a business affair, though 
 all kindness, I know, on your part ; and that 
 
 I'm allowed to 2:iYe full value for ev 
 
 & 
 
 ery 
 
 shilling I get." 
 
 ^^ Certainly; I should never have thought 
 of hinting any other condition." 
 
 ^^Then I'll go," said Tom. ^'I liked 
 you from the first, and I'm glad to go any- 
 where with you." 
 
 So it was soon settled that Tom Berry 
 was to go to the l^orth, and take up his 
 quarters for a little time — or a long time, as 
 the case might be — with Ealph Lennon ; at 
 least, in Lennon's neighbourhood. Lennon 
 had a keen natural shrewdness about him, 
 by which he penetrated at once the depths 
 of Tom's simple, earnest nature. Perhaps it 
 was less a quick and correct appreciation of
 
 TOM BERRY LEAVING HOME. 2 Go 
 
 character that guided him than a mere in- 
 stinct. Himself earnest, unpretending, and 
 manly even in his eccentricity, he read the 
 heart of the Southwark carpenter by the 
 light of his own nature. He quite under- 
 stood, then, that just at such a time the one 
 only way to divert Berry's mind from perso- 
 nal grief was to draw him into talk about a 
 scheme which proposed to do good to others. 
 So he expounded to Berry his ideas about 
 innovation and improvement down in Cum- 
 berland, and Tom grew enthusiastic over the 
 scheme. It was quite new to him to meet 
 with anyone who had a fresh faith in any irre- 
 gular way of doing good. The working men 
 of England — at least, of London — have be- 
 come terrible sceptics of late. They have 
 seen so many shams come up, and so many 
 hopeful, alluring dreams fade away, that the 
 mere suggestion of any plan of improvement, 
 political or social, seems only made to be 
 laughed at. Most of the philanthropic teach- 
 ing of England, directed lately at the working
 
 264 TOM BERRY LEAVING HOME. 
 
 classes, has simply gone to tell tliem tliat it 
 is tlieir duty to keep quiet, mind their busi- 
 ness, stay away from the public-house, avoid 
 politics, and disbelieve in schemes of Eeform. 
 Tom Berry's own class had imbibed the 
 teaching, and chaffed him for his nonsense 
 about Chartism and the rights of Labour. 
 As the black nigger uses the words ^' black 
 nigger" for terms of reproach, so the British 
 working man sometimes holds it up as a re- 
 proach to his brother that he has a working 
 man's natural notions and hopes and dreams. 
 Tom was delighted to meet some one at last 
 who had a flavour of the old freshness about 
 him — delightful and fascinating as a memory 
 of some of the follies of youth. 
 
 As they talked over many things, a 
 twinkle at last came into Tom's eye. 
 
 "And did you see "Wat Warton that 
 night ?" he asked. 
 
 " J^o," answered Lennon, '-not that 
 night ; but the next day, and several times
 
 TOII BERKY LEAVING HOME. 265 
 
 ^^ Well, and wliat did you think of him ? 
 He's not much changed. You'd have no 
 trouble in recognising him." 
 
 ^'Xo; he looks just the same as ever — 
 quite young and fresh." 
 
 ^^Ah! so he does. Would you think 
 that he's nigh as old as me — ay, maybe 
 as old all out ? Well, he's not had the same 
 trouble. iS'o, nor he couldn't have." 
 
 ^'^0] his life seems to have been very 
 successful." 
 
 " Successful ? I don't know that. He 
 has talents, you know. I don't believe in 
 him now ; but I know he has talents." 
 
 ^' Yes ; I always knew that." 
 
 ''Well, and what has he brought his 
 talents to ? What have they done for him ? 
 He's only made himself a poor hack. Let 
 him hang on to the Tories, and see what 
 they'll do for him ! He's hard-up, 'I believe, 
 poor fellow ; and I'm sorry for that. I don't 
 like a fellow to be hard-up, whatever he is. 
 But he's never suffered. He couldn't suffer."
 
 266 T01[ BEERY LEATIXa HOME. 
 
 '^ Why not ?" asked Lennon — not out of 
 curiosity J but only to say something which 
 might allow Tom to go on talking. 
 
 '^Because he hasn't the heart to suffer, 
 sir ; because he never felt for any human 
 being but himself; because, when Fortune's 
 attacking him, she's only beating the wind, 
 so long as she leaves his own carcass alone. 
 Touch him there, and he's quick all over ! 
 Turn him one way, and he's got the hide of 
 a rhinoceros ; turn him the other way, and 
 he's like a skinned eel." 
 
 " You seem to have a strong dislike 
 to him ; and I think you look at him un- 
 faii'ly." 
 
 ^' ISTot a bit of it, sir. Don't you trust 
 him. Mark my words : I know Mr. Walter 
 Warton now ; I didn't once. I believed 
 him ; and I don't know whether I mightn't 
 say I loved him; but he showed himself 
 gradually to me, bit by bit, and I saw him 
 as he was — the slippery selfish humbug. 
 Don't you ever trust him, Mr. Lennon;
 
 to:m berky leavij^g home. 267 
 
 lie'd dceeive any man if lie could, or any 
 woman." 
 
 Tom was growing excited. Lennon 
 made an effort to turn tlic conversation 
 another way. He did not care to sit and 
 hear his old Mend denounced; and he did 
 not want to argue that or any other point 
 with a man in Tom Berry's present mood of 
 mind. But Tom kept on. 
 
 ^^He's going to stand for a place up in 
 the IN'orth soon, I'm told. Some of the 
 working men there wrote to us here ahout 
 it. I gave them my opinion. The Tories 
 are bringing him out. The Carlton is doing 
 the whole thing; and I hear it's his last 
 chance. They think it would be a good 
 thing for them to be able to show ^the 
 orator of the people,' as "Wat used to call 
 himself, on their side." 
 
 ''Is he likely to get in ?" 
 
 ^'Well, I don't know that he wouldn't 
 have a good chance, too, with the Carlton's 
 tin, and one or two big local men to bring
 
 268 to:m beery leaving home. 
 
 him out ; but if the working chaps are true 
 to each other there, they can do a deal. It's 
 a place where some of the old franchises are 
 left; and most of 'em have votes that way — 
 what working man has a ten-pound house in 
 a country-town ? — and they all have voices 
 and throats ; and I'll put them up to some- 
 thing, I know, that'll fix him, or I'm mis- 
 taken. "Wart on' s easily frightened ; I know 
 that. He hasn't the pluck of a schoolgirl." 
 
 ''I see we are likely to be on opposite 
 sides, Mr. Berry, if politics should break in 
 upon us down at the Korth. Unless he 
 really comes out a tremendous and unmiti- 
 gated Tory, I shall feel bound to support 
 my old acquaintance." 
 
 ^' Well, sir, we can't help it. We must 
 only differ. I'll do my best to forward your 
 building work all the same ; perhaps it's the 
 work I'm best fitted for, and ought to have 
 stuck to. And if the thing only gives you 
 time, and does not come on too soon, I've 
 good hope that you'll have seen into Wat
 
 TO^r BERRY LEAYIXG IIO^^E. 2 GO 
 
 Warton before he gets on an election plat- 
 form again." 
 
 After a little conversation Lennon left 
 poor Berry to liis lonely honse — a home no 
 longer. It ^vas arranged that Berry shonld 
 come northward as soon as he conld. 
 
 '' God bless yer honor !" said the old 
 Irishwoman, as she hurried to open the door 
 for Lennon; ^^yon've brightened him up 
 wondherfnl wid talkin' to him, and lettin' 
 him hear himself talk. Poor Tom ! Och, 
 yeh, 'twas she that knew that; and whin 
 anything was the matther wid him, she'd 
 always help him to talk himself out of 
 it." 
 
 Lennon did not pay much attention to 
 Berry's 'denunciation ofWarton. It seemed 
 to him to represent naturally enough the 
 fanatical honesty of the Chartist's indigna- 
 tion against a man who, for any reason, 
 good or bad, wise or unwise, had forsworn 
 one tittle of the ancient creed and sacra- 
 ments. Probably "Wart on had, in the fair
 
 270 TOM BERRY LEAVING HOME. 
 
 development of iiolitical intellect, outgrown 
 the old husk of liis early opinions; and 
 the man whom you have left behind in 
 political sentiments is no more likely to 
 judge you fairly than the old friend who 
 still trudges to business afoot, while you 
 drive in a carriage to the splendid offices of 
 your new limited-liability company, or can- 
 ter to Downing- street with your groom at 
 your tail. Lennon took quite the old Irish- 
 woman's view of the matter, and was glad 
 to have been the means of helping Berry 
 to talk himself, even for a few moments, out 
 of the iron gripe of his affliction. 
 
 The iron gripe closed again round Tom's 
 heart when he was left alone. Eut he had 
 some work to do ; and he turned to and 
 went on with it. He was engaged in mak- 
 ing a coffin for his wife. 'No hand but his, 
 he was resolved, should construct this her 
 last tenement. The best oak he could get 
 was brought under his saw and his plane ; 
 he had bought black velvet to cover all,
 
 to:m berry leaving home. 271 
 
 and solemn bronze clasps and nails and 
 plates to be its dismal ornaments ; and be 
 sawed and planed, and made smooth and 
 symmetrical, fitted in here, rnbbed off there, 
 and toiled with a nervous and morbid ex- 
 actness, as if the dead could be conscious 
 of the anxious presence of his loving hand. 
 He felt a grim and ghastly pride in making 
 the incasing worthy of her he was to lay 
 there — to lay there with his own hands. 
 The jeweller, working with fond attentive 
 eye to make some chain or ornament worthy 
 to lie on the bosom of his love, could not 
 have been more eagerly absorbed in the 
 finish and perfection of his task than the 
 poor Southwark carpenter labouring at the 
 coffin of his wife. 
 
 No hand but his should lay her in the 
 coffin; nay, no hand should touch her 
 but his alone. He peremptorily, and even 
 fiercely, rejected the urgent entreaties of 
 some of the women round him to be allowed 
 to wash and lay out, after the proprieties of
 
 272 to:j: beeey leayixg home. 
 
 tlieir cli'car routine, tlic body wHcLl still 
 held his living heart. He would have no 
 old crones meddling with those lifeless limbs, 
 and profaning with useless touch the sa- 
 cred stillness of that form. He would have 
 no ghastly and hideous shroud, no grim 
 funereal cor23se-gloves ; none of the conven- 
 tional paraphernalia wherewith the ^oilgar 
 think it religion to bedizen the dead. She 
 should lie as she lay now, — just as she used 
 to lie down to sleep of nights ; only a few 
 old things that he had specially given her 
 — an ornament or two, a buckle, her combs, 
 waist-belts, and such-like — laid with her 
 in her coffin, that the presence of some mute 
 memorials of his love might follow her into 
 the central darkness of the grave. 
 
 '' I never saw such work," said his old 
 Irish assistant and consoler; " it's haythen- 
 ish ; it's worse than the Turks. It's mad he 
 is wid the grief, poor fellow, or he wouldn't 
 be going on in such a way. Fancy a da- 
 cent woman j^ut in her grave widout wash-
 
 TOM BEERY LEAVING HOME. 273 
 
 ing or laying out, or a taste of a sliroiid 
 about her ! God help us, Mary Berry ; but 
 it's you would be surprised if you was to 
 wake up and see the state ye're in. And 
 all out of his love, God help him ! Well, 
 it's a quare place is London ; but sure it's 
 aisy seen they're not Christians at all, and 
 they knows no betther ! God be wid poor 
 ould Ireland, where they bury the dead da- 
 cent, whativer happens to the living I" 
 
 So at last the whole work got done; 
 and Tom had his way, and laid his wife in 
 the coffin he had made ; and then in the 
 earth of the suburban churchyard. He 
 came back and took a farewell of his lonely 
 house, sold his few poor sticks of furni- 
 ture, and gave away some trifles of clothing 
 here and there to the women who had been 
 kind to him. The walls of the churchyard 
 seemed now to enclose his whole married life. 
 "Wife and home and all were there. He was 
 poor as he began, alone as he began. All 
 
 YOL. I. T
 
 274 TOM EERRY LEAVING HOME. 
 
 that was left to him after so many years of 
 hope, struggle, happiness, and sorrow, was 
 a memory, a faded old neck-ribbon, and a 
 lock of hair.
 
 CHAPTEE XI. 
 
 THE ALWYlSrS. 
 
 " I HA YE heard something of our new neigh- 
 bour, dear — -Mr. Lennon." 
 
 ^'Indeed, Myra ! What of him? I 
 was thinking of him not many minutes 
 ago." 
 
 Dr. Alwyn put away his paper, and 
 waited to hear what his pretty wife had to 
 say. 
 
 They had been home only a day or 
 twOj but Myra had been already half over 
 the parish, making up by wonderful increase 
 of energy for time snatched from duty for 
 travel and pleasure. Mrs. Alwyn was not a 
 Cumberland woman ; she came, indeed, from 
 the far south-west, and had the pleasant, 
 soft accent of the South, free from the
 
 276 THE ALWY]S'S. 
 
 homely liarsh burr of tlie northern counties. 
 When her marriage brought her to settle in 
 Waterdale, she rushed with a fresh confident 
 energy at the full discharge of all the duties 
 there which she considered proper to her 
 new station. They have, or had, in Aus- 
 tralia a phrase to describe a certain fi-ame 
 of mind into which persons who had any- 
 thing of an organising tendency habitually 
 fell on arriving in the colony. The phrase 
 was "new-chummism." The new chum 
 came in with the con^dction that he was in 
 possession of a perfect plan for setting every- 
 thing to rights. He went with splendid 
 confidence at the reformation of all things, 
 big and little. Older settlers smiled, and 
 knew how it would end. It did end just so. 
 The new chum found that, let him do his 
 best, things went pretty much as before; 
 unless when, in some small instances, the 
 desperate vigour of his interference suc- 
 ceeded in making them go a little worse. 
 The vis inertice which met him on every side
 
 THE ALWYNS. 277 
 
 would have been enough of itself to baffle 
 his best exertions, to say nothing of the 
 fierce and tremendous energy of positive an- 
 tagonism which he had not uncommonly to 
 encounter. The new chum gradually re- 
 laxed his hand from the plough in so stub- 
 born a soil; presently he became an old 
 chum like the rest, and was ready to smile 
 over the virgin vigour of the next fresh 
 importation from the motherland across the 
 ocean. Mrs. Alwyn came into Waterdale 
 filled with the spirit of new-chummism. 
 She resolved to put everything to rights, 
 and to restore the warped order of things all 
 around. The wives of the few wealthy 
 people who lived there did nothing ; had no 
 taste for doing good; neglected the poor, 
 except so far as the occasional giving of in- 
 discriminate charity was concerned ; shrank 
 with lady-like horror from all the unvir- 
 tuous ; and did nothing for religion except 
 to order their carriages on a fine Sunday 
 and go to church. Even this sacred duty
 
 278 THE ALWYNS. 
 
 was performed only about half tlie year, on 
 an average ; for the ladies seized every pos- 
 sible excuse for hurrying themselves and 
 their husbands out of the j)laee whenever 
 they could — to Windermere, to Scarborough, 
 to London, to Brighton, to Paris — anywhere. 
 Among the poor, dirt, ignorance, heedless- 
 ness of religion, absence from church, drink, 
 small-pox, and various other scourges and 
 sins, prevailed. Mrs. Alwyn, who naturally 
 delighted in painting, music, fine clothes, 
 and luxury, gii't up her loins, nevertheless, 
 and went in for sanitary, moral, and religious 
 reform. Her husband smiled now and then, 
 but none the less admired and encouraged. 
 He was an old chum, and was not, perhaps, 
 too sanguine ; but he did his best to stimu- 
 late and to help. Personally, he had long 
 been deeply absorbed in the writing of a 
 book on the flowers, plants, and ferns of the 
 neighbourhood. It was his delight — he 
 had been years over it; and he read each 
 new page of it to his wife. It was always
 
 THE ALWYNS. 270 
 
 with a suppressed sigh that he laid it aside 
 at the call of duty; but he did put it aside, 
 and he never grumbled. Moreover, since 
 his marriage and the importation of his wife, 
 the calls of duty had begun marvellously to 
 increase. For Mrs. Alwyn was teaching 
 everybody to regard her husband and her- 
 self as their spiritual, moral, and social in- 
 structors and helpers in every conceivable 
 difficulty relating to the next world or to 
 this. The result was that the duty of ad- 
 vising, consulting, consoling, scolding, and 
 assisting began to make calls on Dr. Alwyn's 
 time every other moment in the day, and 
 the work on flowers and ferns had to be 
 incessantly put away. Sometimes Alwyn 
 doubted whether it would ever be finished ; 
 but while he sighed he consoled himself 
 with the thought that man has duties on 
 earth which must sometimes take precedence 
 of book- writing, and that the world could do 
 without his work on flowers. 
 
 " Yes, I have heard of him," Mrs. Alwyn
 
 280 THE ALWYNS. 
 
 went on. ^^He lias been here. He stayed 
 a few clays, and then went back to London, 
 He is coming back again — when, I don't 
 know, and I believe nobody does. I am 
 inclined to think he sets np for being eccen- 
 tric ; and I am sorry. I don't like people 
 setting np for anything. That is not the 
 proper motive. He is going to live all alone 
 in that dreadful old house across the lake — 
 at the mouth of that pass ; and they tell me 
 he is not going to have a single thing done 
 to put it in repair, although he is said to be 
 very rich." 
 
 ^^ Who told you all this, Myra?" 
 ^' Old Mrs. Beck, his housekeeper, or 
 servant, or nurse, or whatever she is; a 
 good old woman, I think ; much troubled in 
 body by rheumatism, and in mind by the 
 eccentricities which she fears her master 
 means to display. She came to me in sore 
 perplexity because Mr. Lennon told her, 
 when he went to London, that he might 
 perhaps bring somebody back with him, but
 
 THE ALWYNS. 281 
 
 that she need not make any preparation^ and 
 mnst not alter anything in the rooms ; and 
 she wanted to know whether I did not think 
 she might indnlge in a little pions frand, 
 and set everything to rights without his 
 knowing it." 
 
 ^^ What did yon advise her to do, dear?'^ 
 
 '^ Well, of course I told her to do exactly 
 as she had been ordered, and not for any- 
 thing on earth to put herself in the way of 
 having to deceive. These people, A1w}ti, 
 think nothing of a lie. It's quite dreadful. 
 They call us a truth-telling people. I sup- 
 pose we are, when we are taught rightly 
 and brought up well; but I am sure the 
 poor creatures I meet here — and down in 
 Devonshire too — think nothing of any num- 
 ber of lies. Who was it that said, the other 
 day, the English lower classes were habitual 
 liars ? Carlyle, was it not ?" 
 
 ^^ jS'o, dear; it was Mill." 
 
 " Yes, so it was. I am sure I quite 
 agree with him."
 
 282 THE ALWYNS. 
 
 *' Well, lie did not put it exactly in that 
 nakedj unqualified kind of way; and then 
 lie said there was this good thing about 
 them, — that they were ashamed of lying." 
 
 '' Then there I don't agree with him. 
 They seem to me to take it quite as a mat- 
 ter of course, and never to be ashamed of 
 it — women and girls especially. There is a 
 girl up there, Bessie Eaynes — you know 
 her, dear ; she attended my Bible- class and 
 helped to teach my sewing- class ; and I was 
 quite fond of her — a clever, pretty girl, and 
 motherless too. IS'ow she has been deceiving 
 me." 
 
 Mrs. Alwyn spoke very seriously and 
 sadly, and put her hand under her chin and 
 remained silent for a moment. 
 
 "" How has she been deceiving you, 
 Myra?" 
 
 '' Well, I thought she was acting rather 
 foolishly ; and before we went abroad I spoke 
 to her very earnestly, and made her promise 
 that she would be more careful, and keep
 
 THE ALWYNS. 283 
 
 more to herself — and she with no mother, 
 poor thing ! — and she did promise. And 
 yesterday, when I saw her, she told me she 
 had kept her promise ; and now I find that 
 she didn't, and that she has been deceiving 
 me ; and I am so sorry, and so mnch afraid, 
 and—" 
 
 Myra colonred and beat the table a 
 little with her hand, and broke down in her 
 explanation. She was only a yonng wife, 
 and in parochial work a young practitioner, 
 and hesitated about expressing her suspi- 
 cions. 
 
 " But who told you, my dear, that the 
 girl had not kept her word to you?" 
 
 ^' It was old Mrs. Beck. She's an aunt 
 or something of Bessie's ; and it was partly 
 about that that she came to me. I am 
 afraid I was rather angry, and said some 
 sharp things to the poor old creature; be- 
 cause, when she talked about deceiving Mr. 
 Lennon, I told her that was the kind of 
 teaching she gave her niece, and it was that
 
 284 THE ALWYXS. 
 
 made girls liars, and left them with no care 
 for goodness at all." 
 
 '' I think, MjTa dear, yon had better see 
 the girl yonrself, and talk to her. Old 
 people — ignorant people especially — are 
 very apt to bear harshly on the yonng, and 
 to misconstrne any foolish word or act of 
 thonghtlessness. See the girl yonrself, and 
 talk to her — kindly, yon know, very kindly. 
 She always seemed to me a very good girl, 
 and trnthfal; and I don't think she wonld 
 deceive yon — I don't think she wonld do 
 anything wrong." 
 
 ^' Ah, my dear, dear A1w}ti," — she went 
 up to him and pnt her arms ronnd his neck, 
 in which embrace he looked natnrally very 
 happy, — ^' how little yon know of the 
 vanity of girls and women — of all of ns, 
 even the best,, my dear ! I snppose yon 
 never were vain of anything, or cared what 
 anybody thonght of yon, or prond of any- 
 thing, except perhaps of being a gentleman, 
 and doing what was right."
 
 THE ALWYNS. 285 
 
 ^^ 0, yes, I liave been proud of some- 
 tliing — very proud too." 
 
 '' Of what, for instance ?" 
 
 " Wellj of my wife, dear." 
 
 " Come, that's said to comfort me now ; 
 and I am very glad, because I am rather 
 put out. But I'll take your advice about 
 Bessie Eaynes. I'll speak to her; indeed 
 I meant to sj)eak to her in any case. But 
 I fear that only for your admonition I 
 might have talked to her rather sharply all 
 at once, and without giving her any time to 
 speak for herself. And now, dear, are you 
 ready for breakfast ?" 
 
 The Alwyns were of course early risers : 
 people in Cumberland are. Myra sometimes 
 had scoured the country round on a pony, 
 without the attendance of groom or squire, 
 before breakfast. One of the eccentricities 
 which she had heard of as likely to develop 
 themselves in Ealph Lennon's character was 
 a tendency to sit up reading half the night, 
 and sleep until ten or eleven in the mom-
 
 286 THE ALWYNS. 
 
 ing. She did not like these ways. She 
 thought she could never like Lennon as a 
 neighbour or friend. She began to wish he 
 had remained in Australia. 
 
 People who profess to be very wise in 
 the ways of women say that a married 
 lady's husband has no reason to feel glad 
 when the married lady begins to dislike a 
 man, and says so. She may be perfectly 
 sincere in her dislike, observe these sages 
 or cynics; but it is not an encouraging 
 omen that her mind has dwelt on him long 
 enough and distinctly enough to dislike 
 him. Certainly Myra was preparing to 
 dislike Ealph Lennon already. 
 
 But that did not trouble her much, or 
 occupy much of her mind at present. She 
 had just now a little trouble of a quite dif- 
 ferent kind. It is so hard even when one 
 acts for the very best to make things always 
 go right in this best of all possible worlds. 
 Candide, we know, gave up the task alto- 
 gether, and stuck to cultivating his garden,
 
 THE ALWYNS. 287 
 
 as under all the circumstances the best thing 
 he could do. There at least he was safe 
 from doing any harm. You sow your seeds, 
 and if you know anything about the matter, 
 or take any rational care, you may count 
 on certain results. The fig-tree, at all 
 events, will not begin perplexing and alarm- 
 ing you by shooting out thistles ; if your 
 hen intimates that she is about to lay an 
 eggj you have no fear that she will contri- 
 bute a scorpion for your breakfast. But in 
 trying to keep the human garden in order, 
 especially if it be a little outside the range 
 of one's own household wall, odd, fantastic, 
 and grim results arc of deplorably common 
 occurrence. You are constantly sowing 
 what in your heart you believe good seed, 
 and seeing only tares come up. You pluck 
 away what seems a decayed dead weed, and 
 lo, the shriek of the mandrake thrills your 
 nerves. The acorn sends up a sickly poppy ; 
 the bread-fruit is a poison-plant. 
 
 Mrs. Alwyn was too energetic, unselfish,
 
 288 THE ALWYNS. 
 
 and healthy a "woman to keep herself wholly 
 to the cultivation of her own little domestic 
 life-garden. She went about doing good — 
 at all events trying to do good ; often vexed 
 by disappointment, always somewhat im- 
 patient of results, but never for long dis- 
 couraged. IS'ow, one of the things she did 
 was to found all manner of classes, and have 
 evenings of teachings and lectures ; and, 
 smitten by the example of Mr. Maurice and 
 Mr. Hughes and other good men in London, 
 to bring men and women of her own rank, 
 when she could, in contact with the humbler, 
 to lecture to them and teach them. But 
 Mrs. Alwyn strongly repudiated anything 
 unsectarian. She went in resolutely for re- 
 ligion — her o"WTi religion — and could see little 
 good in anything else, as indeed not many 
 women can. IN'ow one of her favourites, 
 alike as pupil and as helper in the teaching, 
 was the Eessie Eaynes just spoken of, a 
 pretty intelligent girl, left to the care, if one 
 may use that word, of a rather dissolute
 
 THE ALWYNS. 289 
 
 father, who was a shoemaker, and who swore 
 nearly as much as his brother craftsman, the 
 owner of the parrot in our friend Eobert 
 Buchanan's poem. And the classes and 
 lectures had brought Bessie Eaynes into the 
 notice of a rather thoughtless young fellow, 
 a son of a landowner of the place, who once 
 lectured on something or other at Mrs. 
 Alwyn's express request; and he went too 
 often into the town afterwards ; and he sent 
 Bessie presents of game he had shot ; and 
 he had been seen walking with her ; and 
 people talked : nothing more, so far. Mrs. 
 Alwyn advised her earnestly to avoid such 
 company; and the girl faithfully promised 
 that she would : and now Myra had heard 
 that the promise was broken. Even the 
 gossips did not hint any more as yet ; but it 
 troubled Myra sorely. She was grieved and 
 angry over the deceit, and fearful of worse 
 to come. So was her husband, though he 
 said nothing of his fear to her ; and he re- 
 solved at once to make some effort at inter- 
 
 VOL. I. XJ
 
 290 THE ALWTXS. 
 
 ference. This sort of thing, of course, is a 
 story of every clay in the experience of a 
 country clergyman. Some men get used to 
 it, and take it coolly, believing that bell, 
 book, and candle cannot avert it. Dr. Al^svyn 
 never got used to anything that was bad; 
 never believed that bad was ine^dtable. 
 
 Breakfast over, Dr. Ahvyn made ready 
 for a walk into the town, and through the 
 parish generally. He cast only one longing 
 look at his unfinished Ms. volume — which, 
 indeed, he had not di'eamed of taking in 
 hand just that day. Too soon — much too 
 soon. He had had several weeks of mere 
 enjoyment, pure enjoyment ; and now work 
 must set in. The holiday was over, and 
 school was to begin again. People would 
 expect to be called upon by Dr. Alwyn and 
 his wife : not great people — they were few, 
 and Alwyn would have made little account 
 of puttiug off ceremonial visits to them — but 
 people to whom the friendly call of the rec- 
 tor and his wife is always a matter of pride,
 
 THE ALWYNS. 291 
 
 if made — of grief and vexation, if omitted. 
 'Now Dr. Alw^Ti, not attaching much import- 
 ance to social conventionalities himself, was 
 quite ready to defer with the utmost hu- 
 mility to the feelings of others on that score, 
 when those others happened either to be 
 poorer than him, or his inferiors in rank. 
 So he told his wife what they must do, 
 and he bade her get ready to accompany 
 him. 
 
 This was a part of her duties which Myra 
 did not enjoy. She went through it, but 
 she never threw herself into it heart and 
 soul, as into other branches of the parochial 
 business. Dr. Alwyn sometimes smiled at 
 her reluctance, and told her laughingly that 
 he quite saw through it, and that the less 
 she liked the duty the greater her credit in 
 doing it. Myra really delighted to do good ; 
 but she was not sorry if the doing good 
 combined with it a little pleasant exercise 
 of patronage and authority. It is easy, it 
 is bracing, it is self-satisfying, to help and
 
 292 THE ALWTNS. 
 
 counsel and teach the poor. There is a 
 sense of devotedness about it, and some- 
 times a sense of self-sacrifice, which have a 
 positiye fascination for a generous nature. 
 To enter the hovel or the garret where 
 small-pox or fever cowers has often as in- 
 spiring an excitement in it to a brave ener- 
 getic woman, as to climb one of the peaks 
 of Monte Eosa or to explore a new country 
 has for a man; and the woman has the 
 sweet additional joy of believing that she 
 is doing some good, alleviating some pang. 
 In all such dealing with the poor — the suf- 
 fering poor, and even the sinful poor — there 
 is a certain dash of the picturesque, the ro- 
 mantic, the strange. Myra was an artist ; 
 and the situations into which she plunged 
 herself when she visited the sick, or tried 
 to check the course of the falling, had almost 
 always something which discovered an affi- 
 nity for the artistic nature. Death is al- 
 ways sublime. Sin is seldom quite unin- 
 teresting. But the visits, the mere visits,
 
 THE ALWYJ^S. 293 
 
 to people whom you did not come to con- 
 sole, whom you dared not counsel ; who did 
 not appear to have any sorrows or tempta- 
 tions ; who were not in any sense your 
 equals, but must in every way be treated 
 carefully and elaborately as if they were ; 
 who were utterly commonplace and colour- 
 less — that was the labour, there was the 
 trial ! "What on earth did Myra care about 
 Mrs. Eoper, the brewer's wife; and what 
 could Mrs. Eoper want of seeing her ? Mrs. 
 Eoper was not poor ; she was sufficiently well 
 off, and she put on a broad imitation of style 
 in everything she did, while her conversa- 
 tion was utterly stupid, and she had not 
 half an idea in her head. "What possible 
 object was gained by speaking twenty mi- 
 nutes with Jessy and Julia White, the sad- 
 dler's daughters, two vapid gooselike girls, 
 whose only idea while Mrs. Alwyn was 
 present was to make believe that they were 
 genteel, and to try to shut away all sight, 
 sound, and sense, of their decent father's
 
 294 THE ALWYNS. 
 
 honest trade? What human creature en- 
 dowed with the gift of reason could desire 
 to listen to Mrs. Creamer's mild raptures over 
 Martin Tupper and The Angel in the House f 
 And the airs, the clack, and the rustling 
 silks of Mrs. Tracy, the attorney's wife (of 
 course she called herself the solicitor's wife), 
 were a heavy trial of a fastidious woman's 
 patience. Even among people humbler than 
 these, until one got down to the really poor, 
 the great object of the women always seemed 
 to be to convey to Mrs. Alwyn the idea that 
 her visit was something which they had a 
 right to expect as a duty and a tribute to 
 their position, their social rank, in the parish. 
 Everybody would be a lady ; no one seemed 
 to have courage enough not to be ashamed 
 of what she was, and what her husband was ; 
 all were trying to talk themselves for the 
 moment into the appearance of gentility and 
 social position. Then the talk of the wo- 
 men was all so vapid, so empty, so infantile 
 in its smallness, so old and cunning in its
 
 THE ALWYNS. 295 
 
 pretension, so absurdly personal and egotis- 
 tical and uninteresting. 
 
 Myra writhed under it all. 
 
 ^' 0, my dear Alwyn," she said on their 
 return, as she tossed her bonnet from her, 
 ^' how I do wish I might say what I think 
 just now without paining you or lowering 
 myself in your eyes, only to relieve my 
 mind just for once !" 
 
 ^' Eelieve your mind by all means, 
 dear child," said her husband, putting 
 his arm round her waist and drawing her 
 towards him. ^' What do you want to 
 say ?" 
 
 ^' To say how much I hate and detest 
 all these people we have been seeing ; how 
 stupid and petty and egotistical and mean 
 they are, all of them. What silly good-for- 
 nothing lives they lead ! What wretched 
 little gabble they talk ! How little they 
 know or care about anything on earth but 
 their own trumpery likings and dislikings ! 
 What affectation there is in everything they
 
 296 THE AL^YIs^S. 
 
 say and do ! What snobbery — that's the 
 best word I know for it ! And how much I 
 should like for once — just for once — to have 
 them whipped all round !" 
 
 Dr. Alwyn fairly laughed at his wife's 
 energy of vituperation. He did not think 
 any good would X30me of a solemn lecture 
 just then upon the Christian duty of loving 
 even stupid and snobbish neighbours. But 
 half -jestingly, half - earnestly, he gently 
 talked his wife into a more tolerant mood, 
 and referred, not too elaborately or ponder- 
 ously, to the many good things which even 
 the vapidest and vainest of the people she 
 raged at had been known to do. To him 
 too their society was often wearisome — 
 almost always inane ; but he made out 
 something to interest him, discovered some- 
 thing of an individuality, in the flattest and 
 dullest of them all. Like Sydney Smith, 
 he never knew what it was to meet a 
 bore. 
 
 Dr. Alwyn was one of the few tho-
 
 THE ALWYNS. 297 
 
 rouglily unaffected men the civilised world 
 holds at one time. They are very few. 
 The heroic, the honourable, the strictly 
 vii'tuous, are everywhere; the thoroughly 
 unaffected, the men who never play a part, 
 who give nature free and honest scope to 
 show her simple best, are rare and strange 
 phenomena. 'No better advice, and none 
 more difficult to follow, could be given to 
 man or woman than to say, " Be yourself 
 always ; do not fancy you can be anybody 
 else ; do not strive to be : above all, do not 
 play at being anybody else. Trust yourself 
 and be yourself. Every act done, every 
 word said, every look put on to any 
 other end, is from the real purpose of your 
 life." 
 
 Dr. Alwyn might fairly have given such 
 advice, for this was his unconscious practice. 
 His natui'e was simple, manly, loyal. He 
 never studied himself, never indulged in ihe 
 baleful, seducing, egotistical practice of self- 
 examination — that mental and moral opium-
 
 298 THE ALWYNS. 
 
 eating wliicli enfeebles, makes morbid, and 
 debauches the timid untrusting soul. He 
 was a scholar, and in a certain robust sense 
 a thinker ; he loved science, although edu- 
 cated in what Lord Derby called the pre- 
 scientific period ; he read largely and libe- 
 rally ; he could write a plain, manly, sensible 
 article in a magazine or newspaper, such as 
 Englishmen of his class like to read, and 
 had done so many a time ; he took an in- 
 terest in almost everything, although he 
 was not much of a politician, and still less 
 of a theologian. His Church was Yery 
 broad — the broadest that well could be : it 
 embraced all good people, and was only 
 anxious to be able to embrace all the rest. 
 Even on sin, when he saw it, he looked 
 with open, fearless, manly gaze, pitying, 
 but not afraid or miserably and morbidly 
 ashamed ; knowing that that too is a disease 
 which the true physician does not quail or 
 blush to look upon, and for which care has 
 been taken to provide a healing and a re-
 
 THE ALWYNS. 299 
 
 demption. He walked tiirongli life indeed 
 with firm and robust tread, full of sym- 
 pathy and pity, but full too of hope and 
 confidence. 
 
 EXD OF VOL. I. 
 
 LONDOX: 
 
 uonsoy and sox, oreat northern printing works, 
 
 TANCRAS ROAD, N.W.
 
 H