i»ll..i;;:^^-;. L I E> RARY OF THE UN IVERSITY Of ILLINOIS 823) Sp34ff\o v.\ A MODERN QUIXOTE POPULAR EDITIONS OF Mrs. J. KENT SPENDER'S NOVELS. A STRANGE TEMPTATION. In cr. 8vo, cloth gilt and gilt top, 2/6 ; picture boards, 2/-. A WAKING. In cr. 8vo, cloth gilt and gilt top, 2/6 ; picture boards, 2/-. NO HUMDRUM LIFE FOR ME: A Story of an English Home. With illus- trations. In cr. 8vo, handsome cloth, gilt edges, 3/6. London: HUTCHINSON & CO., Paternoster Row. A MODERN Quixote Mrs. J. KENT SPENDER AUTHOR OF " MR. NOBODY," "PARTED LIVES," "RECOLLECTIONS OF A COUNTRY DOCTOR," " LADY HAZLETON's CONFESSION " "a WAKING," "a STRANGE TEMPTATION" ETC., ETC. Goodness admits of no excess, but error — Lord Bacon VOL. I. feonbon HUTCHINSON & CO. 34 PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. 1894 ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS. U2> PREFACE. As this is probably the last three-volume novel I shall ever write, I think it better to explain p that it was in a publisher's hands very early in the present year, and would have been ■^ published in the Spring had not ill health and other causes determined me to delay the ^ publication till the Autumn. It was only to be expected that other ? books treating of the same questions should ^ have appeared meanwhile ; for it would be ^strange if many studies were not attempted ^^at the same time of the problem presented by C^* the extension of wealth, the multiplication ^f luxuries, the increase of wants following sj therefrom — of wants, every one of which is as ^one of the threads which would separately ^break, but which, in their aggregate, bound ^Gulliver to earth ". It is because we realise vi PREFACE. that '' this is the subtle process which, more and more, from day to day, is weighing the scale charged with the things seen, as against the scale whose ethereal burden lies in the things unseen," that we sympathise with the efforts — sometimes blundering and mistaken, but more or less heroic, made by young men and women, every day, to cut the threads and escape from such bondage. August (5, i8g4. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. On Tower Hill i II. A Letter from a Brother 19 III. A Dance at Maidenhead 41 IV. Refusing a Fortune 71 V. Making Compromise 96 VI. In the Via Sistina 109 VII. Walks about Rome 122 VIII. The Vestal Virgin 136 IX. Haunted 147 X. An Unexpected Invitation 166 XI. At Melton Hall 183 XII. The Betting is Successful 196 XIII. A Castle of Indolence 209 XIV. Althea takes Painting Lessons 225 A MODERN QUIXOTE. PART I. CHAPTER I. ON TOWER HILL. It was magnificent August weather, and it goes without saying that nobody was in town. The smart people were either yachting, travelling far afield, or resting in their country houses after the fatigues of the London season. Everybody who had the least pretence to be a Somebody was re- creating. Some were watching the light glittering on the snowy crests of Swiss or Italian Alps ; some were glancing at the torrents foaming amid the rugged clefts of the mountains in Scotland ; and others admiring the rich tints of Norwegian fjords, round which the pine forests grew shaggy and dark. The fashionable English watering-places were all VOL. L I 2 A MODERN QUIXOTE. overcrowded ; the locomotives and steamers all hard at work. If you could not afford to go away you had to pretend that you could. To be whirled with the rapidity of lightning from hamlet to city, and from forest to picture-gallery or cathedral, was the best way to prove that you were a Somebody who could avail yourself of all the resources provided by Art and Nature simply for your amusement. It mattered little that the Nobodies stayed at home ; for the Nobodies had no right to complain of being bored. In this case Nobody was a noun of multitude — the few millions more or less of toiling and suffering human beings packed together in this huge monster of London, growing like a great ant- hill by constant accretion of the little Nobodies, with their longings, their fears, their heartburnings, their tragedies, their dulnesses and their discontent. Now and then it was almost to be expected that there should be a tiny rift in the gigantic ant-hill, causing an unwonted commotion amongst the in- numerable restless beings hurrying from their cells A MODERN QUIXOTE. 3 in the ants' nest in their anxiety to build it up again with the best advantage to themselves. One of those rifts had just taken place. In fact, it was rather more important than usual. It was even attracting the attention of the Somebodies who were enjoying themselves in foreign hotels. For the burning rays of the August sun were beating down on the open space at the top of Tower Hill and upon the earnest upturned faces of a crowd as motley and as eager as that which had been gathered there when Wat Tyler pitched his camp as the leader of a forlorn hope. A man was addressing the crowd, with thousands of eyes fastened upon him, and with coarse and grimy hands held up at his proposals, some of them deformed and maimed with labour. The man had keen eyes, broad forehead and a short beard ; he was no leader of a forlorn hope, but a skilled mechanic, who, by his marvellous power over the masses, his native oratory, and his power of organisation, had shown himself capable 4 A MODERN QUIXOTE. of being able to discipline and drill a hungry army of a hundred thousand men on strike, some of whom had been fighting but a short time before like wild beasts at the dock-gates, each treading down his brother. His voice was ringing out : — " When I come down to the East end of London six weeks or two months after this strike is over, I want to see cleaner and brighter homes than I find to-day. I shall hope to see your wives and children cleaner in person and better dressed than they are now ; and, what is more, I want to see, when this strike is finished, some evidence of the fact that it has personally influenced you as men for the better. I want to see some of your wives bear less evidence on their faces and bodies of your brutal ill- treatment I want this strike, which has been nobly fought, and will, I believe, be nobly won, to make a turning-point in the life of the ignorant man, and I want him to be better educated to-morrow than he is to-day." A MODERN QUIXOTE. 5 Some of the men grinned and looked down ; others cheered vociferously. For all the various strata of labour were represented in the crowd, from the " royals " who had been undistressed by failure of employment, to the lowest of all ; — not only the Hghtermen but the tramps from the casual wards, the timber porters and the "toe-rags," the drift of all trades and the despair of the social reformers. A few of them had keen, intelligent faces, but amongst them were types as barbarous as those to be found at anthropological museums — men with bent backs, short legs, prematurely wrinkled fore- heads and craning necks. Few outsiders had ventured to follow the crowd ; but one of them standing in the outskirts of it — a man of about sixty, broad-shouldered and bull- necked, with his hat drawn a little over his brows — swore softly to himself at what he considered to be the hypocritical misstatements of Lhe demagogue. "Humph!" he said to himself "The fellow knows how to curry favour with the better sort of 6 A MODERN QUIXOTE. people. A lot of those newspaper chaps are sure to be about to report all he says in the evening papers, and he panders to them." Nothing which any one could have said would have been likely to interfere with Thomas Col- ville's pessimistic conclusion that the country was going to rack and ruin, and that men who could combine against their masters were *' unmitigated brutes," making war upon society. That he him- self was a Somebody, and belonged to the class of successful masters, might have been inferred from the substantial broadcloth which encased his ample frame ; though some of his admiring friends could have explained that he had been seldom known to take a holiday, or to get away from his respon- sibilities for more than a few days at a time. There was no fear of his being carried away by that tide of enthusiasm which is often found to be so irresistible in crowds ; and his ire only waxed greater as the next " Socialist spouter " retailed the grievances of the strikers, " so miserably clad A MODERN QUIXOTE. 7 that tliey had scarcely a boot for their feet, and so hungry that they had not a bit of food for their empty stomachs ". " And serve them jolly well right ! " growled the indignant merchant, biting his lips, as the speaker enlarged on the public sympathy which had taken the practical form of helping them in their suffer- ings — the heavy supplies that had come from the English trades unionists and other sympathisers across the Atlantic. '' More fools they — traitors to their country ! " he muttered, with all the pre- judice of the ordinary middle-class Britisher who feels the danger of running counter to recognised laws of gravity. " All the worse for the universities," he thought in the despairing mood, as it was further explained how men of the executive, men who were dominant spirits — some of them educated at the English universities, and others trained in statesmanlike craft — had given up their time and even their 8 A MODERN QUIXOTE. necessary sleep to the systematic distribution of the food supplies. " Keep up your hearts — the kids '11 not be for- gotten ! " shouted the far-reaching voice. The crowd cheered wildly. But the looker-on shook his head. He did not wish any special evil to befall the little ones; but it seemed to be a dangerous experiment to interfere with natural laws, such as the law of the sins of the fathers being visited on the children. It was like dis- obeying one of the most fundamental and universal principles. "A nice state of things ! " he reflected. " Here's the beginning of the end ! Why, the port of London, which ought to be the emporium of the world, with all its crowded shipping stretching for miles off towards the sea, is blocked by the restless daring and insane insolence of these fellows ! " He sighed, and wiped the perspiration from his forehead, as he remembered that the downfall of England would not only be inevitable but would A MODERN QUIXOTE. 9 come quickly if trade were to be banished from the kingdom in this reckless fashion. It was enough to make him desperate, to recall the fact that the warehouses and quays were deserted and silent as if smitten with the plague — the tiny coaster and the great ocean steamer unladen, the cranes idle, and the picturesque crafts blocking the Thames waterway. Not only was the trade paralysed, but such a good time was being lost. No dead east wind was blowing, so that little could be done in the teeth of it, and there was no frost entailing a weary waiting at the gates. This nonsensical strike had not only taken the world by surprise, but it would be the pioneer of other strikes, — of murder, of arson, and of stormy debates in the good old country between employer and employed — debates which were already turning the eyes of Europe upon them. Thomas Colville groaned and turned his shirt collar higher, that he should not be recognised. When he had first heard of the opening of this lO A MODERN QUIXOTE, strike and had resented it, as one of the symptoms showing itself everywhere in internecine and ridi- culous warfare, he had argued that the masters would have to put it down with an iron hand, and teach the men a lesson they should not easily forget. But now it seemed that the masters were yielding like men of straw, that processions were tolerated in the city, that new recruits — stevedores, lightermen, and porters — had been added to the numbers of the older strikers, till in a little while the whole place would be affected by these mal- contents. It was as if he already saw the New Zealander seated on Westminster Bridge. He could get no consistent or coherent account of what had happened. The first speaker and his coadjutor (who was said to have worked once in the buttons of a page boy) prided themselves in giving a voice to the inarticulate ; but Thomas Colville had no sympathy with the inarticulate. He left that sort of thing to his young half-brother, whom he had educated at Oxford, and whom he A MODERN QUIXOTE. II intended to endow with the fortune for which he had worked. He had a great admiration for this half-brother, who was nearly forty years younger than himself, and whose mother had prided herself on her old descent. He handled him like a delicate piece of china, which had been partly of his own manufacture ; and though the younger man was just now passing through a stage of that ** mealy-mouthed " philanthropy which the older Colville looked upon as an aristocratic complaint, he comforted himself by considering that it was as necessary an epidemic of fashionable life as a form of measles or scarlet fever. Thomas Colville was of only middle height, though there was something so erect and powerful in his stalwart frame that nobody would have called him short. Had he been an inch or two taller, or had his eyesight been more keen, he would have seen that his brother, who towered above him head and shoulders, was conspicuous amongst the little 12 A MODERN QUIXOTE. band of helpers who stood near the speakers, and who were moving about among the dockers. Norman Colville was one of those who had been working "all round the clock," busy in distributing the stores. He knew how prevalent was the dis- tress, how the little articles of furniture had been disappearing day by day, how the women and children had been growing paler and paler, and there had been constantly before him a ghastly vision of possible rioting and bloodshed. No wonder that the young fellow was looking thin and worn out, in spite of possessing the form of an athlete, thanks to the football and boating which had prevented him from being too much bent over his books. He would have cared little had he known that the women called him handsome, and would probably have laughed at it — the stamp of intellect which was undeniable on his face being not always consistent with beauty of feature. He looked older than his age, and his hair was already thinning at the temples. But the form of the head A MODERN QUIXOTE. I3 was well proportioned — the development of the frontal bones indicating the strength of the imagin- ative as well as the intellectual faculties, while the bar of Michael Angelo ran up between the eyes. There was something about his sympathy which, in the common cant of the day, might be called electrical, especially when it was exercised on elemental forces, and communicated itself, as it did now, to these sons of the soil. He attracted working men, and knew that he did, partly because his was not a mere access of pity for the sufferings of what some people call the " lower classes," but a desire to be amongst them, to feel as they did, to be stirred as they were stirred. The scene before him did not move him as a strange dramatic pla}' but as a thing of which he was a part, with a sense of brotherhood. He did not come, as most of the journalists did, to seek for tips for a paper, but with a desire to lose sight of himself and all his own petty trials in the woes of those who had suffered more than he was ever likel}' to suffer. 14 A MODERN QUIXOTE. " The rays of light are piercing the darkness, It's coming yet for a' that, That man to man the world o'er Shall brothers be for a' that," he hummed to himself, more or less conscious of his own energetic vitality ready to act on other vitalities, and of his power of influencing whole groups of his fellow-men. He detracted from himself in disavowing this power, and had laughed a little scornfully when he had been told that his was the gift of personal magnetism. " That is all rot — a modern sort of cant," he had answered as he laughed. ''Jones may possess it, but I do not. Jones has only to raise his voice and the ninepins go down before him — all the more reason he should keep a curb over that supposed ' mag- netism ' of his, lest its voluntary exercise should degenerate into demagogism." "Fanaticism is contagious," he reminded himself, trying to quell the dizzy excitement and the thrill A MODERN QUIXOTE. 1 5 of strong emotion of which he was more or less con- scious in times Hke these. He was not aware of struggHng with all his force against an invincible and mysterious influence — the concentrated soul of the crowd— striving to penetrate and dominate him ; till in the flux and reflux of ideas from brain to brain in all such collective assemblies of numerous in- dividuals, the qualities of weighing and judging are often lost, and the will itself overpowered by the irresistible influence of stronger wills. He only said jokingly that he wanted "to keep his head," as he chose the more difficult part of the work — the administering of the funds which were accumulating for the benefit of the men on strike, scarcely conscious that he was throwing in some hundreds of the superabundant income which his elder brother allowed him. It was an opportunity for using up his store of energy. Never before had he had the sense of living so intensely. If there were any danger to health from the want of sleep and the overwork by day and night, or danger to his l6 A MODERN QUIXOTE, prospects from the certainty of offending the brother who had set his mind on making him his heir, Norman Colville enjoyed the risk he was running, with some of the feehng of a man in battle who knows that a shot may come to him at any moment and may strike him anywhere, and whose curiosity about solving the great enigma has become all the keener from the knowledge that his soul may at any moment be hurled from his body. " I am glad we had some plain speaking to-day about the wives and children," said one of his Oxford friends — Jones from "Jesus" — whose experience of labour matters was also first-hand, as the crowd dispersed. '' Too often a working man's wife is merely the missus to look after the house, and to be blackened about the eye whenever he gets drunk. A fellow said to me the other day : ' We take three Sundays about it — the first we squeezes, the second we kisses, and the, third we goes to church '. You see they 7m/st marry when they are turned out of A MODERN QUIXOTE. \J their old homes. They must have some one to mend and cook for them, but as a rule they don't care much for their women." " You expect too much of them," Colville re- marked. " Even the old Greeks knew that as soon as a man had ensured a livelihood he would begin to practise morality, and not before." And they began to discuss together the old, old problems of higher wages and shorter hours, whilst Colville launched out into his favourite scheme for the better administration of the docks. From the docks they got to the importation of alien labour, the reform of the poor law, and many cognate subjects. Thomas Colville, who had made most of his money in iron works, whose creed was, " The higher the wages the worse the workman," and who had a permanent quarrel with the sentimental philanthropy which kept the unfit alive, would have been complimented if he could have known how many of the other men who had given in to the ridiculous craze of residing at the East end VOL. I. 2 1 8 A MODERN QUIXOTE. were apt to defer to his young brother on questions of this sort. For Norman Colville was not the sort of man from whom anybody could hold aloof. If, on the one hand, he had the habit of meeting working men on his own level without seeming to stoop to any of them ; on the other hand, men of older descent were soon on terms of comradeship with him, partly from that obliviousness on his part of all social distinctions which prevented him from courting them, partly because he had been the richest man in his college, and able to entertain on a lavish scale, and partly because his manners were so winning and self- forgetful that you could pursue no middle course concerning him. You had either not to know him, or to find that knowing him meant liking him. CHAPTER II. A LETTER FROM A BROTHER. Thomas Colville had been carried away by the rush of the crowd. He had always prided himself on never spying on his brother, for whose accom- plishments he had considerable respect, though he thought him very foolish in the ordinary affairs of life. But it had been a question of sauve qui pent when the dockers made off for the distribution of the stores at the relief depot. Had Mr. Colville been able to follow to see how this part of the affair was managed, he would have recognised with some surprise that Norman and his allies could show themselves to be both quick and businesslike in details which were not abstract mysteries, but required the smartest colloquial and promptest business faculties. (19) 20 A MODERN QUIXOTE. He thought himself fortunate to escape with no broken bones, and congratulated himself on his fore- thought in having divested himself of his diamond ring as well as his watch and massive gold chain as he made for his brother's lodgings, having taken the precaution of providing himself with the address. The lodgings were only temporary, but a sight of them disgusted him for more reasons than one. For the room in which the young fellow had chosen to pass a considerable portion of his time during these hot summer days illustrated in a provoking way his various crazes. It had seemed to Thomas Colville almost vulgar that this lad — so expensively educated, and sent to Oxford with a view to spending money and making important friends — should contend that there was beauty of a peculiar sort in the Thames, and especially between Hammersmith Bridge and Kew, where the Cockney Sunday pleasure-seekers could find their beloved tea-gardens. Whew ! — the very thought A MODERN QUIXOTE. 21 of those pleasure-seekers packed like sardines in the broiling steamers, which were apt to wheeze as if they had diseases in their lungs, filled the older man with horror. He and Norman had often squabbled about it — the latter talking nonsense about Art, and praising the groups of sails and even the boats about Battersea, such as the dying eyes of Turner looked at. As if Art could be found in the wharves and timber grounds, — and in the strange conglomera- tion of architecture, the tall Jacobean houses with remnants of departed grandeur elbowing the squalid taverns ! Or as if there could be any need for the young fellow to paint pictures when he could afford to turn patron and buy the best things in that line ! It was fine enough to hear him talk of Cotmans and De Wints, Girtins and Paul Sandbys, Constables, Corots and David Coxes. But to think of painting these things himself! It was nearly as great a mistake for him to dabble with painting as it was for him to go in 22 A MODERN QUIXOTE. for what Thomas Colville considered to be ranting Socialism. It spoilt the dream of the elder brother's life, which was a kind and fairly unselfish one. He had a genius for economy, and had saved most of his income, adding to his capital year by year, and though he had not married he intended to found a family by handing it down to his half-brother and ensuring some sort of success for those who bore his name. The lad's mother had been kind to him, and he had a strong affection for him. He blamed himself for having been so absorbed in his own industry that he had not made many inquiries about the young man till he heard that Norman was consorting with "painter fellows". He was not surprised to find that the rooms which his brother had taken commanded views of the river, beautiful in its foulness even here, with iridescent scum covering the oily surface of the dark waters. One of the young fellow's paintings stood unfinished on the easel. Colville turned it A MODERN QUIXOTE. 23 upside down, and thought it looked rather better in that position. He remembered as he looked at it that he had read something in the newspapers about the young English daubers who were imi- tating the French Impressionist school ; and, like most men of his class, he had a horror cf every- thing French. " Humph ! " said the would-be critic to himself. " I wonder how the lad thinks this sort of rubbish would sell. It would bring him to his senses to be forced to find the best market for his goods." (This was apropos of a hint which the younger brother had already ventured to throw out when words had run high between them on the subject of this mania.) Thomas retreated a few steps, and burst into a loud guffaw. For the landscape looked to him more like a dirty palette on which the colours had been squeezed directly from oil tubes. Shipping was supposed to be there ; but to the elder Colville's untrained eye the rigging of the ships looked all 24 A MODERN QUIXOTE. awry. If there was a subtle charm in the masts looming in a ghostly way through the mists he could not see it. He rubbed his hands with glee. " And the boy talks, when you stroke his fur the wrong way, of the possibility of getting his living by selling such trash as this ! Ha ! ha ! It is the fine talk of the day that men of all sorts are to get their own living, and that others are no longer to be ground down in the labour market ! ' Ground down,' — that's the way he puts it. He's a fine fellow, but a little wee bit mistaken just at present about most things. He shouldn't rush at things like that. Why be in such precious haste ? " And then pulling himself up as if his brother had been present and could have heard what he said, he drew a blotting-case towards him which lay on the writing-table, and sat down to write a letter. He knew from past experience that it was difficult to have tact when you are in a rage with A MODERN QUIXOTE. 2$ young people ; and as this young man was the only being in the world for whom he cared, and he was not inclined to indulge in the luxury of matrimony himself or to form any other ties for his old age, he did not wish to come into collision with him. He meant to keep his hold over him ; and was certainly backed up by the consciousness of that wealth which he believed to be all-powerful in levelling hills and exalting valleys. And yet more than once this young Utopian had dared to hint that he did not care for his money ! If Norman came into the room at this moment Thomas felt that he would probably address him in freezing tones, if he did not openly storm at him for his "goings-on". He knew that it would be impossible for him just at that moment to take into his strong grasp the hand that had been pauperising the people. Once before he had been coolly informed that pauper- ising and subsidising were different things, and had been reminded that he was not forbidden to give presents to persons of his own class. Such argu- 26 A MODERN QUIXOTE. merits made him irate ; he prided himself on being a man of common-sense. And yet he did not want matters to come to a crisis. On another occasion, when he had loaded his brother with luxurious knicknacks, he had had more than a suspicion that the young fellow was beginning to tire of such gimcracks. If a life of luxury palled upon him, nauseated and sickened him, he must attract him in some other way. His desire to found a family through his next of kin seemed to him to be rather a fine thing. He had read enough to know that it had been Sir Walter Scott's ambition, and that of many other great men before him. But he must proceed very carefully not to fail in that object. He sat down and wrote : — " My dear Boy,— I saw you to-day making a fool of yourself amongst others who were bigger fools than yourself I don't reproach you. It's only the modern way of sowing wild oats, though it seems to me a deuced queer way. A MODERN QUIXOTE. 27 "The old-fashioned way of the young bloods might be more wicked, but it was not so irritating or so priggish. I would almost rather have heard that you were a gay Lothario about town [the word was smudged as if to hide that the writer was not quite clear about the spelling till the consequence was that it looked like Lutheran] than have you kicking up your heels in this idiotic fashion. Do you know that whilst you are hiding yourself in this precious nasty hole your invitations and a lot of other letters are lying about unopened at your other lodgings at Manvcrs Street ? You must have forgotten to tell them to forward them to you. Extravagant young dog ! to have two sets of lodgings and two land- ladies to look after you ! But when did I ever complain of your extravagance? Had I been your father — a much more natural relationship than this of ours, which came from a marriage contracted when a man was old enough to be a grandfather — I should doubtless have jawed you about extrava- gance. But as it is you score every way — I seldom 28 A MODERN QUIXOTE. interfere. Only when you waste your opportunities I am bound to tell you and to remonstrate. Amongst the neglected letters I found two or three from Lady Caterlot. I shall look uncommonly foolish next time I meet Sir Francis. He has spoken to me in a most obliging way about you, and seems to be deeply interested in your future prospects. Between ourselves that's to be expected. He is no end of a good chap, though every one knows that he is decidedly poor, and neither he nor the lovely Irene can afford to look down on the ^4000 a year which I mean to give you when you marry. " Go in and win, my boy ! If you marry as I wish I shan't grudge you anything. Sir Francis has tried in a sort of way to make me understand that he sees the signs of a flirtation between you and his girl, and that on the whole he is not unfavourable to it. " He is inclined to make allowances in your case for the RadicaHsm which is so beastly ridiculous in A MODERN QUIXOTE. 29 most young men. He laughs good-humouredly about it. ' It's a good thing I'm not a peer,' says he, ' or he'd be in a mighty hurry to clip my feathers.' And then he adds that on the whole you are an excellent young fellow, and he hears that you were well spoken of at Oxford. "It's as plain as a pikestaff that he and Lady Caterlot are inclined to make advances to you. Well, and why not? Blood must meet blood, and flop down on its knees in days like these. Sir Francis has one of the oldest baronetcies in the kingdom. It is said that he refused a peerage — that accounts for his readiness to jibe at the peers. I don't wonder he refused to have anything to do with your mushroom peers, but he's as hard up as a rat in a hole. And if his girl is gone on you, why not accept their invitation to their place at Maidenhead ? You will have boating there to your heart's content. There's to be a little dance among the people in the neighbourhood soon, and you are asked to it. I'm sure I may congratulate you; 30 A MODERN QUIXOTE. for the fair Irene's portrait has figured amongst the beauties in the shop windows. They often chatter about her in the society papers. Don't be afraid that I shall interfere with you — I know how to keep out of the way till I'm wanted. When the marriage is a ' fate accomplished,' and you come to me for the money, I shall know how to fork out. "Write to them post-haste, and say you will go to their dance, and have done once for all with these discreditable ways. " Your long-suffering brother, " Thomas CoLviLLE." At the time when the older man was scribbling this letter, rather satisfied than otherwise with the clearness of his composition, Norman Colville was sitting in a little room nursing a sick child. The boy had cried to come to him, had been taken folded in a blanket from his bed, and was now resting in his arms, his head supported against Colville's shoulder. "He had such a way with him," as the admiring A MODERN QUIXOTE. 3I mother said, that the " little uns all took to him"; and to tell the truth, he was himself so weary from want of sleep that had it not been for the stifling atmosphere of the sick room, he would gladly have stayed there as long as the child, fractious with suffering, required. The problem of the children multiplying in our great towns, with only the fittest surviving by toughness of constitution, was one that preyed upon his mind. When would it be solved? When will that be ? Cried the bells of Dundee, rang absurdly in Colville's brain as he stroked the little fellow's hair and rocked him in his arms. He was always tender in his indulgence to those whom he considered to be weak and down-trodden ; and his friends had sometimes laughed at him for the excited way in which he declared that the children were often fed on garbage too wretched to be flung to dogs, and that it riled him to think of 32 A MODERN QUIXOTE. the way in which the police told them to move on. Ibsen's idea of bringing up every child as if he were a nobleman and of serving his meals in rooms surrounded with beautiful pictures and enlivened with beautiful music, was much more to his taste. The missus stood watching him admiringly ; she was a woman of greater intelligence than most of her slave-driven sisters, though — looking at her and pitying her — he considered, in his exaggerated way, that it was the hardest problem of all for women of her type to be forced to submit for the greater part of their lives to a serfdom more cruel than that which existed at the time of the Conquest. '' There is the differences in the men, which makes it hardest," she said, as she stood with arms akimbo. " Some has to sacrifice themselves for lazy brutes, whilst others " He found it a little difficult to explain to the eager wife that though it was true that the men differed so widely, that the industrious ones were ready to work themselves to the bone for the sake A MODERN QUIXOTE. 33 of their wives and children, while others were as ready to hang about like rag-bundles and do as little work as they could for the shortest number of hours, — yet, at a period like this, all must fare alike. The child was now " beautiful asleep," as the bewildered mother said. He put it down gently, as he went on with the relief distribution, telling himself that he was another sort of Bumble, unable to shirk the difficulty of enforcing some form of oppression upon these wretches. He was haunted by the woman's puzzled face, and wished more than ever that it were possible to keep up the old kindly relations which used to exist between the possessors of capital and labour. It was wonderful what a touch of enthusiasm could do amongst the men, but it was the women who were the real hindrances to combination. As he entered the next house where a newly married couple lived, he was greeted by the young wife's hysterical shrieks. VOL. I. 3 34 A MODERN QUIXOTE. " It's all along o' her new 'at with the ostrich feathers and the plush jacket as I giv her. We was bound to put it in pawn," explained the young husband, who was holding her jerking legs, " and now she is in her tantrums I can't go agen the masters." Her face, fresh with a doll-like prettiness, was wet with tears making channels down her cheeks, her nose was red, and her eyes bleared. The love which had lasted for the few short weeks of court- ship was so worn-out by the " tantrums " that Bill Simmons suggested giving a box on the ear to quiet her. " Harguing ain't o' no use for such as they, as ain't been properly eddicated," he said with an air of superior authority, as Colville sat down quietly by her side and tried to make her understand that her husband was acting as he thought for the best, and that there were cases in life when present good must be forfeited for the sake of future benefit. He had to encounter a fresh shock when he A MODERN QUIXOTE. 35 entered a neighbouring house and found another woman on whom he had counted as one of the most sensible amongst the lot, the worse for drink, jigging about with her black hair loose to her waist, whilst she played a sort of cancan as an accompaniment to her wild dance on a tin sauce- pan, and raved in revolutionary balderdash. It was necessary to speak to her sternly, telling her that she had disqualified herself by her conduct from receiving any relief; but she was too drunk to understand, and her defiant oaths rang in his ears as he went out into the streets. They were accompanied by another demoniac whisper, Qiiavez-voiis a fairc daJis cette galcrc ? In vain his philosophy told him that excesses of this sort were the inevitable accompaniments of all periods of excitement, and that an outbreak here and there was of course to be expected. The thought of the volcanic forces surging beneath tiie surface, and ready to vent themselves in social upheaval or in mad rebellion against God, haunted 36 A MODERN QUIXOTE. him with a new fear — the responsibiHty of meddhng. And he sighed as he remembered that a well-intentioned effort to extinguish a prairie fire might only end in spreading the flames. He was somewhat out of tune with himself and everything else when he turned a few steps out of his way to say some cheering words to an old man whom he had found in the preceding winter uncom- plaining but star^'ing in a cellar, with a lump of coal for his pillow, and lying on damp flags, rather than be persuaded to take refuge in the workhouse, which would have been worse to him than penal servitude. He might have told the old fellow that he was a fool for his pains ; but, as it was, he not only helped him, but let the case turn his thoughts to the question of pensions for old age. The two were firm friends. It was not simply the material help that Norman Colville had imparted. It was something more — .the belief in human kind, and salvation from the despair which had been eating A MODERN QUIXOTE. 37 like rottenness into the old man's soul worse than hunger into his bones. It did him good to have these few words with old George Hitchings, and to tell him all about the other men who had once been his fellow-workers ; yet, as he bent his steps towards his lodgings, the sense of fatigue returned, and with it the depression. The atmosphere was close and unhealthy, the narrow streets steamy and reeking with odours. The insistent summer air seemed pitiless, Shining in all the barren crevices of weary life. " I can admire the curates and sisters and the Toynbee Hall fellows who live and work here ; but I should soon grow wTetched and useless in this dreadful, dingy, sooty, foggy old London myself," he thought in his fit of low spirits, "and I should be bothered by scru[)les. I can well believe what the doctors tell us — that the pure Cockney dies off in the third generation." It seemed to him as if Death must come as a merciful relief to *' poor 38 A MODERN QUIXOTE. chaps" compelled to live oppressed and brutalised by indiscriminate housing. It did not enliven him when he sat down in his little room overlooking the river to be confronted with his brother's letter. The colour rushed into his cheeks as he read it, and in spite of the late hour and his own exhaustion he felt he should have no sleep till he had answered it. '* You are quite mistaken/' he wrote emulating his brother's plain vernacular, "if you think there was ever anything between myself and Miss Caterlot. She is good-looking enough and is much admired ; but I should be behaving like a cad if I concluded that because she is fairly polite she has any par- ticular fancy for me. " The best way to set such a misconception right — as I have not the faintest idea of getting married just yet — will be to accept Lady Caterlot's invitation to the dance, and show myself in my proper colours. 1 do not propose to stay at Allston Lodge for more than a single night, as I am so worn out with the A MODERN QUIXOTE. 39 work of the last fortnight that I think of going to the Highlands by-and-by to recruit. Perhaps you will come with me? Will you make one trifling concession to me — not to make so free with the name of any lady ? I have a particular objection to these speculations on the subject of my marriage. And were I selfish enough to view it only in a per- sonal light I should not like my name to be en- tangled with that of any woman in jokes of that sort. You are wrong, I assure you, — altogether wrong. But as I have no desire to quarrel, and have every reason to be grateful to you, I sign myself, " Yours ever, " Norman Colville. ** P.S. — May I trust you not to talk anymore about 'hard cash,' 'good matches' (meaning matches made for ' position,' as you would call it), and that sort of thing? You mean kindly, but it grates on me. I forgot to add that though I may go to 40 A MODERN QUIXOTE. Allston Lodge for one night, as you wish it, I cannot leave my people here till all is settled. But I hope that will be soon." CHAPTER III. A DANCE AT MAIDENHEAD. Men do not work as Norman Colville had worked without feeHng the strain of it for some time after- wards ; and he was still suffering from a feeling of depression, which was quite unusual with him, when early in the afternoon, a short time afterwards, he was driving across London to Paddington, in accordance with his promise to his brother. The shop windows, with their brilliant display of goods, the autumn toilets and the jewellery, seemed to jar upon something in his nervous system in a way that was utterly unaccountable. It began to dawn upon him that some change had taken place in his life, but he was too tired at present to be able to reason about it. Two things seemed pretty certain, but it was characteristic of (41) 42 A MODERN QUIXOTE. his mental condition that he was only able to recognise them in a dim sort of way. One of these things was that he and his half-brother must come to a speedy understanding about various matters ; another, that Jones was the hero, and much more likely to be of use in his generation than himself. Other matters were not clear to him yet. All his life he had had a faculty for seeing things in differ- ent lights as each in turn came uppermost, but he knew this could not last. Sooner or later these thoughts must sort themselves — one set of them must come uppermost. Hitherto his existence had been spent in incessant hurry, with little time to think. His life at Oxford had been an exciting one ; and the year or two spent in London (during which he had often kept on lodgings both at the East and the West — money being of no importance, as his brother had often told him) had been more exciting still. He had tried to combine many things in defer- ence to his own tastes and those of his elder A MODERN QUIXOTE. 43 brother. Politics, committees, fashionable life, had each in turn absorbed him, leaving little opportunity for thought about his future. He had been very reticent about his own sensations, partly because he did not like to worry or disappoint his brother. " He has centred all his hopes on me, and I must try to carry out his ideas," he had said to himself, when he refrained from telling the retired iron merchant that he had thought a lot of people in this London society — women as well as men — were provokingly vulgar and self-conscious. Society had certainly not impressed him as his brother had intended it to do ; on the contrary, it had alternately surprised, amused, and scandalised him. " It was different when I was quite a boy," he found himself thinking as he leant back in the corner of the first-class carriage w^hich was to whirl him on to Maidenhead. " One thought then of nothing but taking in new impressions." The mere enjoyment in rowing, football and cricket had at one time been sufficient for him. Jkit now 44 A MODERN QUIXOTE, the horizons were widening. He could no longer be content with merely hearing, seeing, feeling and watching the work of others. The preliminary period had indeed been past for some time, and inaction had become hateful to him; but the in- stinct to try his powers in some independent fashion was comparatively new, and no longer to be withstood. He accused himself of having been childishly slow in development, treating life like a fairy tale, when he ought to have been up and doing. The sweets had lost their taste, and palled upon his palate. It was surprising how he had lost his interest in fashionable life. As he took out his paper knife and cut Truth and Modern Society, reading that the season had been an unusually brilliant one, he tossed them away from him in vexation. He did not think that the season had been a brilliant one at all; on the contrary, it had been atrociously dull, in' spite of all the greater and A MODERN QUIXOTE. 45 lesser stars who had played upon lute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, and the yards of canvas which had been hung upon the walls of the picture exhibitions. What did they call "brilliant"? — the dinner tables decorated with orchids at a guinea a piece, when men and women were starving ? or the finery manufactured into ball dresses by anaemic girls who were sweated far into the night, that other girls might be decked out for the matrimonial market ? He laughed at his own pessimistic thoughts. Why couldn't he be like other men, and take the goods which the gods provided for him, contented with his own unruffled existence ? He was never idle, and it was rather far-fetched to take himself to task as if his brain were degenerating in the life which he had to lead to please his brother — spending a lot of his time in this artificial hot- house society — when, after all, it was onl}^ like the brains of other men who were continuall}- straining 46 A MODERN QUIXOTE. themselves to say sharp and clever things, with no proper leisure for any real self-culture. He was grateful to the elder brother, who had hitherto borne so kindly with all his crazes, even when he had gone dead against his prejudices in insisting on providing himself with a second lodging in the East end of London. He wondered if Thomas would insist on his giving it up soon, when he would no longer have the excuse of taking part in these strikes, or whether his brother could be appeased by the excuse that it would be well for him to keep on rooms in which he could study the effects of cloud and fog on the river. Sunshine was better for a change ; and the sun was brilliant, though already westering, when he reached Allston Lodge. Daffodil tints were melting into the horizon, and the opal hues of the water — blending with the greens of the billowy foliage on the banks, and winding away like a riband in the distance — reminded him of the start- ling colour of some of the earlier Italian missals. A MODERN QUIXOTE. 47 " It is not often that we sec anything so gorgeous in England," he thought as he dressed for the dance. It was to take place on the lawn, where tents erected for the refreshments, ornamented with roses and fairy lights, and hung with Chinese lanterns, contrasted oddly with the grey trunks of solemn-looking old oak-trees, and the moss- stained boles of the beeches which had been care- fully trimmed here and there to allow glimpses to be seen of far-off reaches of the Thames. From the window of the bedroom that had been allotted to him and which was somewhat hicrh in the Elizabethan part of the old house, he had a splendid view of the prospect; and, as he dressed himself mechanically, he could watch the delicate gradation of greens in the beautiful woods which made a background to the lawn, melting into the pearly greys of twilight till the whole was swal- lowed up in a velvety semi-darkness. Then the moon — taking the place of that play of sunbeams that had hardly ceased during the da}' — shone with 48 A MODERN QUIXOTE. her feebler rays on the miracle of that multitudnous leafage, on the river, turning it into silver threads, and on the tent erected for the dancers on the lawn, adorned with coloured lamps as if with fireflies. " It is a beautiful old place. I don't wonder Sir Francis is unwilling to part with it, though they say he is head over ears in debt ; and after all it's only a question of time. Places like this must come to the hammer. If only something could be done to turn them into parks for the people ! " said the young Radical to himself as he looked at his watch and saw that it was time for the dancing to begin. Even then he could not help thinking that it was nonsense for the Caterlots to give dances at all ; though this little scratch affair out of the season would doubtless cost them very much less than an expensive ball at the expensive time in which the elect of society would have to vie with others of the elect more plentifully dowered than themselves with this world's goods. A MODERN QUIXOTE. 49 It seemed as if Lady Caterlot had been reading his thoughts ; for as she shook hands with him, standing in one of the tents amidst tall palms and bamboo chairs, she said, smiling graciously : — "You, Mr. Colville, like anything unconven- tional. I need not apologise to a man of sense like you for striking out an original line of my own. No; I must correct myself, it was Irene's idea, and Irene is never hampered by prejudices. She said to me when we were in Berkeley Square : * Don't let us give a dance 7iow when every one is tired out with these hot London crushes. If we give one at all, let it be a little one all to ourselves, with no pretension about it, and in the sweet open air. Most of the people who are worth anything don't leave Maidenhead till September. If you go abroad in August you must sit down at the table d'hote with your butcher and baker and candle- stick maker.' " Colville wondered if he should remind her that he claimed affinity — on one side of his family at VOL. I. 4 50 A MODERN QUIXOTE. least — with " the butcher, baker and candle-stick maker ". But on second thoughts he decided to let it drop, as Lady Caterlot continued : " So you see we still get the best people, and though the grass is worn by daylight — the sun has been so scorching this summer — you notice no defects by moonlight ". It was true in more senses than one. The moonlight hid the defects in the lady's face, soft- ening the expression of it which by daylight was hard and cutting like the diamonds that glittered on her neck. Norman could not help asking himself why — if report spoke truly, and Sir Francis was really so much encumbered with debt — his wife did not sell her diamonds. Diamonds, according to this unconventional young man, were not becoming to dowagers. It was possible that the dazzling precious stones might heighten the beauty of the triumphantly young and happy, whose eyes might outshine the diamonds. But fashion was inexorable in the A MODERN QUIXOTE:. 5 1 matter, and prevented the older women from knowin^^ that these shining ornaments deprived their fading eyes of their remaining brightness, and seemed to glitter at them mockingly. Yet Lady Caterlot was what is generally called a well-preserved woman, and was stately as she stood in the moonlight, wearing a rich brocade dress ; and if she gave her hand, as Colville fancied, a little more coldly than usual to him, it was probably on account of the reason he had given her in his letter for not answering her previous invitation, and burying himself obstinately in the East end. Lady Caterlot was the sort of person who would always take a front seat in life, debt or no debt. Mer daughter Irene also belonged to the type of women who have the knack of making others feel small, and who pride themselves on wearing well. She was probably not so young as she looked, as she also stood in the moonlight, surrounded by the artificial fireflies, dressed in shimmerino- satin •to UBR^R''__, ,, 52 A MODERN QUIXOTE. covered with chiffon, and gave her hand almost as coldly as her mother had given hers before. What did it matter? The touch of her hand, even when she had purposely let it linger in his grasp, had never made his pulses beat faster. Her attitude and even her little grimaces were generally studied. He was so accustomed to her modes of flirtation that he was not astonished when she said, as she glanced up at the vertical shadow on his brow : — " Mr. Colville, you are looking haggard. I am not surprised, for we know all — we have seen your name in the newspapers. It was awfully wicked of you, but you never thought how unhappy you were making uiey She had thawed already, and made an ingenuous little slip. He took no notice of the slip, or of the dainty handkerchief which she held up to veil blushes which would scarcely have been seen in the dim mysterious light cast by Japanese lanterns and the rays of the moon ; for the art was not as A MODERN QUIXOTE. 53 fine as usual, — the words did not correspond with the manner. " You must expect some of us to be unliappy about you, — I as well as the resl," she added, trying to cover \.\\^ faux pas which had been intended but had missed its mark. " Indeed, if we had not seen your name in the papers we should not have known what was going on," she explained, as she stood up with him for the first dance which he had marked on her card ; '* but, of course, we always take an interest in our friends, and don't like to be down upon them even when they make mistakes." " It is the privilege of your class to be ignorant of such things. No one would think of reproaching you for it," he could not help answering. " You are a little bitter," she said with a shrug. " You would be a little bitter," he rejoined, " if you had seen all the horrors which / have seen lately. At any rate, I think too well of you to imagine you would decline to help." 54 A MODERN QUIXOTE. " You are like Dante," she laughed, — " the man who has been in hell." And then as they rested after the first few turns of the waltz, she added : " Do you know you look as if you had been with Dante ? you have added years to your life. There are positively wrinkles, do you know, wrinkles on your brow? Any one who cared for you must feel for you ! And it is such a mistake to be going down to these clamour- ing people. Am I not a man and a brother? or a woman and a sister, if you like that expression better." She spoke unsteadily, as if she really cared about the change in him, in spite of her rallying words. Her eyes were large and pitying, — rounded like Giotto's O's; and as she stood look- ing at him in the mystic light, he could almost have fancied there were tears in them. " To be a brother is a trifle," he tried to say care- lessly ; " grant to oneself luxury and ease, and grant to one's black brother the compensation of unlimited pumpkins." A MODERN QUIXOTE. 55 He did not, of course, tell her that — eminently ridiculous as it was — another refrain seemed to ring in his ears like a nursery rhyme, — How shall I laugh and sing and dance, My very heart recoils, While here to give my mirth a chance, A hungry brother toils ? It would be mawkish sentimentality to let such rhymes keep jigging on in his head; and so he added aloud : " These people are not black brothers, but they are still serfs — they must work or starve, and in some cases, as you know, they have been unable to get work. The 'black brother' with 'unlimited pumpkins' is in some respects a good deal better off. The slave was property — often valuable property ; it was to the interest of men, who were not too brutal, to take care of their slaves." " It is so easy to impose upon j'ou by all this rot. It is because you are so soft-hearted." She said "rot" rather prettil}', pursing up her lips in a childish 56 A MODERN QUIXOTE. manner. But there was a flash of keener intelligence from her eyes as she spoke of the prodigiously rapid spread of thought through the cheap press which her father was always lamenting; and she looked fully her age as she added severely: "Such terribly destructive ideas are abroad now — one never knows what may come next. One would have thought that a man like you would have had too much originality to be led by the nose. But you are so very young." Norman contented himself with smiling. He hated political discussions. Then she chancred her manner, and became asfain the winning coquette. "If /, for instance, were to dress up as an in- digent docker's wife, I should touch your soft heart and get anything out of you," she said slily; "but in our society it is so difficult to get really to know each other." Once more he was on his guard, and answered: "You are a trifle hard on me. The reason all this A'^MODERN QUIXOTE. 57 seems such nonsense to you is because you don't use your imagination, and try to put yourself in the place of these outsiders. You are cultured, and culture teaches us to act to others as we wish them to act to us ; the Christian scheme went a little further." '' Ah, yes, if I remember rightly, the Christians, like those who were martyred in the Coliseum, talked about loving each other, and dying for each other ; but t/iat, of course, is quite out of date. Christianity of that sort no longer exists; but it seems to me queer that you philanthropists, who pose for having inde- pendence of thought and consciences which you keep all to yourselves, should set your affections so entirely on folks of another class. Is our anxiety, <^'^;g#f^ S^ ..J'J'y^SITYonLLINOIS URBANA 30112042052743 ^ . ^4^ i..^1 x;^ y y ^^ Vi yy y ,-*• i: y ^y^ ^4a y/^ .>i:j - ^^^yy'^ ii /- /=*3 1 {^ ^ n PH ^"Z- --^ ^ Xl^ ^y ^ '// y y y ^y-^ i / ', ^K'i ^//