IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD
 
 NEW LIBRARY NOVELS. 
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER. By R. E. Francillon. 
 
 3 vols. 
 A SOLDIER OF FORTUNE. By L. T. Meade. 3 vols. 
 SAINT ANN'S. By W. E. Norris. 2 vols. 
 TOM SAWYER ABROAD. By Mark Twain, i vol. 
 A DOG AND HIS SHADOW. By R. E. Francillon, i vol. 
 THE KING'S ASSEGAL By Bertram Mitford. i vol. 
 THE ONE TOO MANY. By E. Lynn Linton. 3 vols. 
 IN DIREST PERIL. By David Christie Murray. 3 vols. 
 THE COMMON ANCESTOR. By John Hill. 3 vols. 
 DOROTHY'S DOUBLE. By G. A. Hentv. 3 vols. 
 THE BURDEN OF ISABEL. By Maclaren Cobban. 3 vols. 
 THE QUEEN AGAINST OWEN. By Allen Upward. 
 
 I vol. 
 
 London : CHATTO & WINDUS, 214 Piccadilly.
 
 IN THE 
 FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 ^ Tiovel 
 
 ALAN ST. AUBYN 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'a FELLOW OF TRINITY,' 'tHF, JUNIOR DEAN,' ETC 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES 
 VOL. I. 
 
 %onIlon 
 
 CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY 
 
 1894
 
 V. I 
 
 I 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 %0 
 
 AECHDEACON FAERAR 
 
 THE ADVOCATE OF SPECIAL INDIVIDUAL EFFORT 
 
 THE ENTIRE CONSECRATION OF SELF-DEVOTED LIVES TO 
 
 dRAPPLE EFFECTUALLY WITH THE PROBLEMS OF SIN AND SUFFERING 
 
 OF WRONG AND WRETCHEDNESS 
 
 V* 
 
 WHICH THREATEN THE STABILITY OF OUR MODERN CIVILIZATION 
 
 THIS NOVEL 
 
 WITH HIS VERY KIND PERMISSION 
 
 IS DEDICATED BY 
 
 'S- T H E A U T H R
 
 CONTENTS OF VOL. I. 
 
 CHAPTER PACK 
 
 I. GOING DOWN ----- 1 
 
 IT. CHESHAM PLACE - - - - - 15 
 
 III. lushington's entire - - - - 30 
 
 ly. GARLANDS - - - - - 44 
 
 Y. BREDWARDINE - - - - - 59 
 
 VL LADY BREDWARDINE'S AYALK - - - 74 
 
 Yii. ST. neot's mission - - - - 87 
 
 YIIL THE SILYER CORD - - - - 98 
 
 IX. THE GOAT AND COMPASSES - - - 113 
 
 X. SISTER WINIYER . - . - 129 
 
 XI. 'the VOICE OF THE \YEEPEli' - - - 142 
 
 XII. A WHISPER ACROSS THE GRASS- - - 156 
 
 XIII. IN THE TWILIGHT - - . . 169 
 
 XIY. THAT MILLION OF MONEY I - - - 185 
 
 XY. MRS. LOWRY LOMAX - - - - 200
 
 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 CHAPTEE E 
 
 GOING DOWN. 
 
 ' Armed with his dainty, ribbon-tied degree, 
 Pleased and yet pensive, Exite and A.B.' 
 
 It was the last night of term. Everyone was ' going 
 down.' Some of the men who were * going down ' 
 would come up again next term to apply themselves 
 with renewed vigour to their work or to their play ; 
 to live again the old happy, thoughtless life, to 
 repeat the old follies, to make the old mistakes. 
 
 Others were 'going down,' really and altogether, 
 for the last time. They would never come up 
 again. The old college days, with their bright 
 
 VOL. I. 1
 
 2 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 memories, were all over. For them University life, 
 with its hopes and ambitions, its heartburnings 
 and failures, its rewards and distinctions, was 
 already a thing of the past. They had taken their 
 degrees, they had been sorted and labelled accord- 
 ing to their merit, and they were ' going down.' 
 How quickly the years had run ! 
 
 ' One wave, two waves, three waves, four — 
 Gliding up the sparkling floor; 
 Then they ebb to flow no more, 
 Wandering off from shore to shore 
 "With their freight of golden ore 1' 
 
 A man who was * going down ' had just recalled 
 the dear old Autocrat's lines, and was moralizing 
 upon them on that last night. He had been up 
 four years, and he had taken a First in two 
 Triposes. He was a Wrangler and the Senior 
 Theologian of his year. He had taken such high 
 honours that he was sure of a Fellowship. His 
 college was justly purod of him. It did not turn 
 out many * Double Firsts.' It had only turned out 
 one Senior Wrangler in a hundred years. It had
 
 GOING DOWN 3* 
 
 sent out into the world a good many theologians, 
 who did respectably in their calling — quite respect- 
 ably — and who, it was remarked of them, always 
 did their duty. If St. Neot's had not produced 
 many brilliant scholars, it had sent out, year after 
 year, a larger number of good average men — men 
 who had drifted into the Church and done good 
 work there, but never risen to distinction— than 
 any other college of its size in Cambridge. Now it 
 had turned out a scholar. 
 
 Harold Beech's success created quite a flutter 
 among the Dons of St. Neot's. There was not a 
 Fellowship vacant, or they would have presented 
 it to him forthwith ; but they offered him a lecture- 
 ship, and begged him to stay among them and take 
 pupils. 
 
 But Harold Beech was not to be entreated. 
 His work here was quite done, he told them. It 
 had never been his intention to stop here, cooped 
 up in these old walls, lining a slow, musty life, 
 when there was a great wide world outside this
 
 4 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 place — there was all Christendom — clamouring 
 for champions. He had been getting his armour 
 ready all this time; he had been proving it, 
 and testing it, and getting used to wielding the 
 weapons the University had put into his hands, 
 and now he must needs go out in the world and 
 use them. 
 
 He had nothing to detain him a day longer in 
 Cambridge. He had taken his degree, and he had 
 packed his books, and his clothes, and his new B.A. 
 hood, and his well-worn surplice, and his shabby 
 undergraduate gown. He had little else to pack. 
 His income had been too slender to waste it upon 
 bric-a-brac, to buy anything, indeed, that he could 
 do without, so that when the time came to go away 
 he had very little to pack. 
 
 He had corded the box of books, and tightened 
 the strap of his portmanteau, and taken a half- 
 regretful look round the old room, at the empty 
 shelves, and the table where he had worked, and 
 he had gone over in the sweet June twilight to say
 
 GOING DOWN 5 
 
 good-bye to a college friend who, like himself, 
 was ' going down ' on the morrow. 
 
 Tristram Lushington had taken his degree, only 
 a Poll degree, and his life here was ended. He 
 was a pale, pensive-looking young man with the 
 face of a poet. He had no right to look like a poet, 
 for he was only a brewer. At least, his father was 
 a brewer, an enormously rich London brewer, and 
 he was his eldest son ; he would be worth by-and- 
 by something like a million, perhaps two millions, 
 of money. He had everything now, in those hand- 
 some college rooms of his, that money would buy — 
 pictures, books, china, car\ings, tapestry, objects 
 of art, and articles of vertu in endless variety. 
 The eye was quite weary with travelling over the 
 beautiful things that were scattered about on walls 
 and tables in such profusion. 
 
 *It's deuced slow "going down," old fellow, with 
 all one's dreams unrealized,' the poet, or rather the 
 brewer, remarked thoughtfully, knocking the ashes 
 out of the pipe he had been smoking. ' I had made
 
 6 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 up my mind to do so much when I came up —and 
 — and I have done nothing.' 
 
 Harold Beech smiled. He was sitting at the 
 open window, looking down at the slow dark 
 waters of the Cam that flowed beneath, at the 
 college bridges, and the willows, and the beautiful 
 greenery of the Backs. He had seen these things 
 hundreds of times before, but to-night they seemed 
 to have a new interest to him. Because he was 
 going away, perhaps. 
 
 'No,' he said, smiling, *I suppose not. A great 
 many men come up intending to do great things, 
 but they seldom do them. What did you propose 
 to do ?' 
 
 ' I ? Oh, there was so much I was going to do ; I 
 hardly know where I was going to begin.' 
 
 ' But you must have had some definite plans.' 
 ' Oh yes, I had some definite plans. They were 
 
 not all dreams. I was going ' 
 
 'What were you going to do?' Harold Beech 
 asked, seeing he paused.
 
 GOING DO WN 7 
 
 ' I — I was going to get up a University Temper- 
 ance League. I was going to start a New Crusade.' 
 
 'You — you !' 
 
 Harold Beech didn't exactly laugh, but he could 
 not keep a tone of mocking incredulity out of his 
 voice. He was sorry for it a moment after, when 
 he saw a white, pained look come into the other's 
 face. 
 
 'I don't wonder at your crying out "You!"' 
 Tristram said bitterly. ' It was the dread of the 
 derision it would bring down on me, it was the fear 
 of what men would say, that kept me back, and 
 now — now — the opportunity is gone!' 
 
 * There are plenty more opportunities, if you are 
 really in earnest,' Harold said cheerfully. ' I don't 
 thmk from your position— which you couldn't help, 
 but which everybody would remember — you would 
 have done much here, and you have the world 
 before you.' 
 
 Tristram shook his head sadly. 
 
 'I have lost an opportunity,' he said; 'I shall
 
 8 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 never meet these men again. They have gone then- 
 way, and I am going mine, and our paths may 
 never cross again. Think what I might have done 
 in three years in this place, by my influence, by 
 my example, if I had been brave enough, if I had 
 been manly enough, to come out and take a stand ! 
 We, I and the rest — there would have been many 
 gather round me if I had come out — we should 
 have carried all before us. Oh, you don't know 
 what the force of example is ! It would have been 
 another Crusade; only, instead of rescuing the 
 empty tomb of our risen Lord, we should be rescu- 
 ing the souls and bodies of our fellow-men !' 
 
 His pale, pensive face had flushed, and his pale 
 blue eyes were shining, and he was trembling with 
 eagerness. 
 
 Harold Beech's face was flushed too ; it was a 
 brave, strong face, but the tell-tale blood would 
 leap up into it in a moment. 
 
 * I know something about example,' he said, 
 feeling his way, and with his voice not quite
 
 GOING DOWN 9 
 
 steady ; ' but — but I don't quite catch what 3'ou 
 mean. You surely do not mean ' 
 
 He stojoped, and looked at the other across the 
 table. Theh eyes met, and a question that was 
 unspoken was answered m the June twilight. 
 
 'I do mean,' said the brewer eagerly. 'Good 
 Heavens ! Beech, what else could I do ? I mean 
 to throw the whole business up !' 
 
 They sat silent m the darkling room, while the 
 sweet June night rose outside, and the shadows 
 collected m the corners, and a faint breath of air, 
 like a sigh, was wafted in at the open window. It 
 was so faint that neither of the men felt it, but it 
 stirred the petals of a rose that was blooming 
 in a pot on the window-ledge, and scattered them 
 on the pavement of the court beneath ; it moved the 
 peacock-feathers over the mirror, it rustled the 
 papers that were scattered about the table— it was 
 like a hand in the room moving everything. 
 
 ' Have you counted the cost ?' Harold Beech 
 said, breaking the silence.
 
 lo IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 * Yes ; I have counted the cost.' 
 
 His voice was fairly steady, but there was a 
 faint quiver in it ; he could not keep the quiver 
 out of it. 
 
 ' Do your people know ? Have you told 
 them ' 
 
 * I have told no one !' Tristram interrupted im- 
 patiently ; ' I only made up my mind to-day. I 
 only made it up an hour ago. If I had made it up 
 before, I should have done differently. I should 
 not have lost these three years.' 
 
 ' Are you sure you have not decided hastily ? 
 Think ; it is a great deal to give up. Are you sure 
 you will not reconsider it ?' 
 
 * For God's sake, don't tempt me, Beech ! You, 
 above all men ! I am sure of nothing. I only 
 know I have made up my mind — I have taken a 
 vow. See here, I have written it down. I could 
 not be sure of myself if I had not written it down. 
 I am not doing it in my own strength. I should 
 not keep it a day if — if it depended on my own
 
 GOING DOWN II 
 
 weak will. I have committed it all to God — my 
 weakness, and my desire to get rid of this burden 
 that has been weighing upon me for years. I have 
 sworn on my knees never to touch a penny of that 
 accursed money ; and I am trusting to the Lord 
 Jesus, who has put it in my heart, to give me 
 strength to keep the oath I have taken. See, read 
 it for yourself.' 
 
 He pushed a paper towards Beech as he spoke, 
 a paper with some writing on it in a shaky, almost 
 illegible hand. The ink seemed still wet, or it had 
 been blotted and blurred by some big drops that 
 had fallen and blistered the page. 
 
 Harold Beech read the opening words on the 
 paper, ' God, who art the Strength of all who 
 
 put their trust in Thee ' and then a mist came 
 
 before his eyes, and he pushed the paper away 
 from him. 
 
 'It is between you and God,' he said; 'it was 
 not written for human eyes. I am sure you have 
 done right, Lushington. Feeling as you do, you
 
 12 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 could do nothing else. But you will find it harder 
 than you think ; you will meet with great opposition. 
 How will you break it to your father ?' 
 
 * I have thought about all that. I have thought 
 of all — everything. I shall go to him at once, 
 and tell him all. He has another son. There is 
 Cecil. It will be a great disappointment to him. 
 People will say that I am mad — a fanatic' 
 
 ' They will say that you have the courage of 
 your opinions, which few men have.' 
 
 ' They may say what they will. It is not of the 
 world I am thinking — what men may say. The 
 world's praise or blame is a very small matter to 
 me. In doing this — that has been borne upon my 
 soul that I miiBt do, that I cannot help doing — I 
 am not only flying in the face of the world, but I 
 am giving up what I value most on earth — the 
 woman I love.' 
 
 Harold Beech smiled his slow, quiet smile. 
 
 * I don't think you should put these things in the 
 same category — the love of a woman and the loss
 
 GOIXG DOWN 13 
 
 of a great fortune. They have nothing to do with 
 each other. Money and love ! They ought not to 
 be named in the same breath.' 
 
 ' Oh, you don't know, Beech — how should you ?' 
 Tristram said, with a touch of impatience in his 
 voice. ' If — if I give up the brewery, I shall have 
 to give up the girl I am engaged to. Mary Gas- 
 coigne would never marry me without the brewery. 
 She has been counting upon it, and her mother 
 has been counting upon it. It is all we shall have 
 to live upon.' 
 
 ' No,' said the other, with a sudden flush of 
 colom- in his face ; ' you are quite right. How 
 should I know ? The women I am accustomed to 
 meet, in my own station, have another standard. 
 They do not measure a man by his money. No 
 woman whose love was worth the name could 
 throw over a man who did this noble thing.' 
 
 * You think so ?' Tristram said eagerly ; ' you 
 think she will look at it in that light ?' 
 
 ' If she loves you, she can do no other. It will
 
 14 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 be a test of her love. It is better that it should be 
 tried now than after—when it is too late. It may 
 be the alchemy that was needed to purge the dross 
 away from it; to make it shine like gold— pure 
 gold.'
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 CHESHAM PLACE. 
 
 ' Like a storm he came 
 And shook the house, and hke a storm he went.' 
 
 Tristram Lushington * went down ' the next day. 
 He arrived at the railway- station in a hansom five 
 minutes before the train started. He brought no 
 luggage with him but a portmanteau, which was 
 thrown up on the top of the cab. He had left all 
 his * things ' behind at his rooms, to be packed by 
 professional packers and sent after him. 
 
 As he strolled down the long Cambridge plat- 
 form, which was crowded with men ' going down,' 
 he saw Harold Beech superintending the transfer 
 of a particularly shabby box into the luggage van.
 
 i6 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 He was so concerned about that box that he had 
 no eyes for anything else. 
 
 * I was afraid the bottom would come out,' he ex- 
 plained, when Tristram tapped him on the shoulder. 
 ' All my books are in that box ; I wouldn't have 
 anything happen to it for the world.' 
 
 He went up to town in a third-class carriage 
 adjoining the luggage van, that he might be near 
 that box, and Tristram jumped in beside him. 
 
 * You've made a mistake, sir,' the porter said, 
 when he took Tristram's first - class ticket, just 
 before the train started. 
 
 ' Oh no, I've made no mistake,' he said cheer- 
 fully. He wasn't thinking about the ticket ; he was 
 thinking of that other matter he had been talking 
 to Harold Beech about the night before. 
 
 He had suddenly remembered that he had started 
 in life with a first-class ticket for the whole of the 
 journey, and that he had voluntarily thrown it up, 
 and cast in his lot with the poor, despised third- 
 class — with Beech and his books.
 
 CHE S HA M PL A CE 1 7 
 
 They parted at Liverpool Street : Harold Beech 
 in a four-wheeler, with the shabby box between his 
 knees, to a lodging in Bloomsbury, and Lushington 
 in the paternal carriage for Belgra\'ia. 
 
 He had left Cambridge so early in the day that 
 he reached Chesham Place in time for luncheon. 
 Sir Tristram was in the morning-room when his 
 son arrived; he was reading the Times in a wide 
 easy-chair under a big window, and he looked up 
 when Tristram came m. 
 
 * How d'ye do, Trim ?' he said, nodding over the 
 top of his paper, and holding out two or three 
 fingers to his firstborn. 
 
 He was a big, rather handsome man, very well 
 fed and nurtured generally, and more aristocratic- 
 looking than his son. He had iron-gray hair, 
 beautifully cut, and a gray moustache, and a beard 
 with a good deal of white in it — rather a long 
 beard for the present fashion, but beautifully 
 trimmed. He had a red, full face and dark eyes, 
 full, too, like his cheeks, and his figure had a 
 
 VOL. I. 2
 
 1 8 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 corresponding fulness. He wore a black morning- 
 coat and light waistcoat and trousers, and they 
 were beautifully cut, and he had a flower in his 
 button-hole. He looked exactly like a country 
 squire, a magistrate, a member for the county, a 
 descendant of a long, long line of baronets. 
 
 He was all these things — all but the last. 
 
 The room was a beautiful room ; it looked as if 
 it had belonged to an old, old family. Everything 
 in it had the appearance of age — of having been 
 handed down for generations. The portraits by 
 Old Masters on the walls, the beautiful crewel- 
 embroidered hangings to the windows, the Chip- 
 pendale furniture, the old china and bronzes and 
 enamels, all denoted the accumulated heirlooms of 
 an ancient family. 
 
 There were no gimcrackeries here, nothing 
 modern or frivolous. Everything was in the 
 best possible taste; there was not a flaw any- 
 where. 
 
 ' Lady Cornelia will be in presently,' the Baronet
 
 CHESHAM PLA CE 1 9 
 
 said, when he had greeted his son ; ' she will be in 
 to lunch.' 
 
 Lady Corneha was Tristram's mother, a daughter 
 of the Earl of Sark, and he was said to have in- 
 herited his pale, clear-cut features from her. 
 
 He was distinctly unlike his father, as he stood 
 before him in the clear June sunlight, with his lips 
 twitching nervously, and a cold dew breaking out 
 on his forehead. He had inherited nothing from 
 him but — but a million of money, and he was 
 going to renounce that. He was going to get it 
 over before lunch. 
 
 Sir Tristram couldn't think why his son was 
 standing there in that ridiculous attitude, shifting 
 himself uneasily from one leg to the other, with 
 his lips quivering and that sickly pallor on his face. 
 He jumped at once to the conclusion that most men 
 would have jumped at under the circumstances. 
 Tristram had got into trouble, money trouble, and 
 he was going to make a clean breast of it. 
 
 There was going to be a mauvais quart d'heure,
 
 20 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 and then it would be all over. It was only a ques- 
 tion of money. When there was so much to fall 
 back upon, a few thousands more or less didn't 
 matter. A stroke of the pen would put things 
 right in a moment. 
 
 These pleasing reflections passed through the 
 Baronet's mind as he glanced at his firstborn over 
 the columns of the Times, but he did not make the 
 confession that was coming any easier. He only 
 looked at his watch, and remarked that Lady Cor- 
 nelia was late for lunch. 
 
 The luncheon was spread in the adjoining room. 
 The heavy embroidered hangings that separated 
 the morning-room, where Sir Tristram was reading 
 the Times, from the dining-room beyond were 
 drawn aside. It was quite a lordly room, and the 
 big dining-table was spread for a lordly meal. A 
 dozen people might have been coming to partake of 
 the luncheon that was spread, instead of three. 
 The table shimmered in the June sunshine with 
 silver and frosted glass, and there was a faint.
 
 CHE SHAM PLA CE 2 1 
 
 delicious perfume of flowers, an indescribable air 
 of hien-etre about the place that appealed to Tris- 
 tram, as he stood there, ^Yith a strange sinking at 
 his heart, as it ha'd never appealed to him before. 
 
 He had been used to these things all his life. He 
 had gro^ATi up amid these surroundings. They had 
 never appealed to him before, but they had a new 
 attraction for him to-day. 
 
 'I have got something to say to you, sir,' he 
 said, moistenmg his dry lips, and with that terrible 
 sinking at his heart that he could not understand. 
 ' I should like to say it before Lady Cornelia comes 
 in.' 
 
 'Whatever you have to say, I hope you will 
 get it over before lunch. I have an appointment 
 at two o'clock. Have you got into a scrape, 
 Trim?' 
 
 He took it so easily, this trouble of his son's ; he 
 spoke quite in an airy tone of that ' scrape ' that he 
 had made up his mind Tristram had got himself 
 into.
 
 22 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 * No, sir, I have not got into a scrape ; it is some- 
 thing more serious. I — I have ' 
 
 It was very hard to get it out. 
 
 'Something more serious? Egad! you haven't 
 had a flare-up with Mary Gascoigne? Nothing 
 wrong in that direction, I hope ?' 
 
 'It has nothing to do with Mary Gascoigne; 
 at least, my decision has nothing to do with Mary. 
 I am going to give up the brewery, sir, that 
 is all.' 
 
 * Going to do what ?' thundered the Baronet. He 
 didn't shout, he thundered. Parkyn, the footman, 
 who was coming in with a letter on a silver tray, 
 almost jumped the letter off the tray into the 
 Baronet's lap, and he shook a cloud of powder out 
 of his hair. 
 
 ' I am going to give up my share in the brewery, 
 sir. I cannot reconcile it to my conscience as a 
 Christian to engage in a traffic that is bringing 
 misery to thousands of my fellow-creatures.' 
 
 The Baronet dropped the paper he was reading.
 
 CHESHAM PLA CE 23 
 
 and he threw back his head with an involuntary 
 gesture of scorn. 
 
 * Good Lord !' he exclaimed, in a voice that 
 thrilled through the poor trembling fellow before 
 him. ' He can't reconcile it to his conscience !' 
 
 * I have had it on my mind to tell you for a long 
 time,' Tristram went on, speaking rapidly, and not 
 seeming to notice the interruption. ' If I hadn't 
 been a coward I should have told you years ago. 
 I should never have touched a penny of these ill- 
 gotten gains. I will never touch another penny so 
 long as I live. I am sorry to disappoint you, sir ; 
 but I desire to give up from this time my connec- 
 tion with the brewery.' 
 
 The Baronet had dropped the Times, and his 
 hands were grasping the knees of his beautifully 
 fitting trousers, and he was looking at his son — his 
 firstborn — with an air of amusement, in which 
 scorn and ridicule were equally blended. 
 
 ' Humph !' he remarked in a tone that made the 
 poor white-faced fellow blush like a girl.
 
 24 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 * You have no sympathy with my motives, sir. 
 You do not see with me,' the poor fellow blurted 
 out, hanging his head, and looking a sorry spectacle 
 for the leader of a New Crusade. 
 
 'I certainly have no sympathy with your mo- 
 tives,' Sir Tristram said bluntly, in a dry, hard 
 voice that did not belie his words. ' The brewery 
 has been good enough for me, and for my father 
 before me, for three generations of Lushingtons. 
 The money that the brewery has brought in, and it 
 has brought in a good deal in its time, has been well 
 spent. It has not been selfishly hoarded or 
 squandered upon selfish gratifications. It has been 
 distributed, as few rapidly-built fortunes have been 
 distributed, in works of usefulness and philan- 
 thropy. The Lushingtons have headed every 
 public subscription list for years past. Their 
 liberality in some cases, in most cases, has been 
 princely. There is no good work, no work of far- 
 reaching philanthropy or Christian usefulness, that 
 has been set afoot during the last fifty years but
 
 CHESHAM PLACE 25 
 
 the Lushingtons have taken a prominent part in it. 
 A tithe, a considerable deal more than a tithe, of 
 the profits of the brewery, that you speak so 
 disparagingly of, has been set apart for years past 
 for philanthropic purposes. Go down into the 
 East End and see what the brewery has done for 
 the people there. Ask who built that row of 
 lodging-houses that are matchless in all Europe 
 for then' accommodation and the perfection of their 
 sanitary arrangements, and you will be told 
 Lushingtons. Ask who built and endowed that 
 great institute, with its libraries and reading-rooms, 
 its great hall for lectures and concerts, its classes 
 for instruction, its gymnasium and grounds for 
 outdoor games and recreation, the People's Insti- 
 tute, as it is well called, and you will be told 
 Lushingtons. Ask who built the almshouses, 
 where one hundred poor men and women are com- 
 fortably housed, and fed, and clothed, where all 
 the wants of their age are anticipated and pro- 
 vided for, and you will be told Lushingtons. Ask
 
 26 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 who supports the local charities, the soup kitchen, 
 the coffee palace, the clothing clubs, the coal, the 
 blanket, the provident sick societies, the night 
 schools, the infirmary, and you will get the same 
 answer. And in the face of all this benevolent 
 work that the brewery is carrying on at its own 
 cost, and out of its own legitimate profits, you talk 
 of your conscience not permitting you to share in 
 its ill-gotten gains !' 
 
 The son of the house that had done such great 
 things, that was doing such great things, looked 
 very red and uncomfortable as he stood crestfallen 
 and in a most unheroic attitude while Sir Tristram 
 condescended to make this explanation, not defence. 
 Oh dear no, not defence ! 
 
 If the truth must be told, Tristram Lushington 
 had no idea that the great house with which he had 
 the honour of being connected had done all these 
 things — had done half these things. He had a 
 vague idea that it was grinding the faces of the 
 poor ; that it was taking all, everything, and giving
 
 CHE SHAM PLACE 27 
 
 nothing. It was quite a new thing to learn that it 
 had made this use of the great wealth it was 
 accumulating year by year. It almost justified its 
 existence. The end almost justified the means. 
 StiU, the question of the morality of making beer 
 had not been solved. 
 
 Tristram was silenced for the moment, but he 
 was not con^TQced. 
 
 ' I did not know that the brewery was doing all 
 this, sir,' he said presently, feeling just a little 
 small. 
 
 He had only now begun to realize that his com- 
 plaint against the great house had been a tacit 
 charge against his father with lining upon ill- 
 gotten gains. Whether ill-gotten or not. he cer- 
 tainly flourished upon them — they agreed with 
 him exceedingly ; he had never looked so pros- 
 perous and portly as he did now, posing as a 
 philanthropist, the gi'eat benefactor of the East 
 End. 
 
 Lady CorneKa came in while Tristram was
 
 28 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 stammering his excuses, and then he had to kiss 
 his mother and sit down to lunch, which was 
 already half an hour late. The servants were 
 coming in and out of the room all through the 
 meal, and Sir Tristram talked about the debate in 
 the House the night before, and the division, and 
 the pass that the country was coming to. 
 
 He was a Tory of the old, old school, and he 
 brewed Conservative beer. He had no patience 
 with the Radical notions of the present day. He 
 wouldn't have sent his son to Cambridge for 
 the world, if he had dreamt that he would be 
 led away by these so-called advanced thinkers. 
 The knowledge had fallen upon him like a bomb, 
 but it had not interfered with his appetite. No 
 one, to have seen him looking at the wine in his 
 glass with the approving eye of a connoisseur, and 
 despatching with equal relish that pdte-de-foie-graSf 
 would have surmised that the interview with his 
 son had been a disquieting one. 
 
 Tristram was made of different stuff. He had
 
 CHESHAM PLA CE 29 
 
 no appetite for the meal, and he refused every- 
 thing but water. He was conscious of an u-ritating 
 feeUng of something akin to shame ; he was not at 
 all sure that he had not been over-hastj in taking 
 that oath.
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 
 lushington's entire. 
 
 ' What know we of the secret of a man ? 
 His nerves were wrong/ 
 
 It was Lady Cornelia's custom to have a nap after 
 lunch — not a long nap, a mere ' forty winks ' — and 
 then to rise refreshed and take her afternoon 
 drive. 
 
 To-day, this beautiful June day that brought her 
 son back to her released from his academical pur- 
 suits, and invested with a degree in Arts, she 
 departed from her custom, and did not indulge in a 
 single ' wink.' Something had disturbed her usual 
 serenity, and sleep would not have come to her, 
 however tightly she had closed her eyelids.
 
 LUSHINGTOISrS ENTIRE 31 
 
 She did not look the least like closing them as 
 she sat, very upright, on a beautiful Louis- Seize 
 chair, fanning herself vigorously with a feather 
 fan. It was a warm June day, and her ladyship 
 felt the heat. She was a handsome, well-preserved 
 woman of uncertain age, with a fine figure and a 
 remarkable complexion. She had been a beauty 
 in her time, and she still retained her waxen com- 
 plexion and her abundant fair hair. It was 
 abundant still, and a pale yellow, not straw, with a 
 touch of gold in it. Especially the big, handsome 
 plait, that she wore well forward, under a tiny cap 
 of dainty lace, was particularly golden. 
 
 Fair women proverbially wear well, and Lady 
 Cornelia had worn remarkably well. She had 
 never had a single care m her life. Nothing had 
 ever happened to cause a wrinkle to mar the 
 smooth surface of her polished brow, to gather 
 horrid little crows' -feet round the corners of her 
 pale blue eyes. She had a fine aristocratic profile, 
 a high, narrow forehead, a well-cut, thin-lipped
 
 32 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 mouth, and a most distinguished nose — a Eoman 
 nose of dainty proportions, that had descended to 
 her from a long line of earls — Earls of Sark. She^ 
 had also inherited from this noble race her pale 
 blue eyes. There was only one fault about her 
 eyes : they were small. 
 
 Perhaps from looking at the world, the every-day 
 world, from such an immense distance, her eyes 
 had contracted. 
 
 Tristram had inherited from his mother her 
 high, narrow forehead, and her pale, clear-cut face, 
 and her abundant fair hair — he wore it long, and 
 it curled over the collar of his coat, and over his 
 narrow forehead, like a poet — but he had not in- 
 herited her eyes. He had gone back a generation 
 or two, to some very ancient Earls of Sark, for 
 his thoughtful, melancholy gray eyes. They were 
 dreamy eyes, too, and the young man was always 
 losing himself in day-dreams. He sometimes at 
 college lectures had fits of abstraction, and sat 
 open-mouthed throughout the lecture, with his
 
 LUSHINGTON'S ENTIRE 33 
 
 notebook open before him, without taking a single 
 note, and when he got up with the rest and went 
 out, he would not be able to tell, for the life of 
 him, what the lecturer had been talking about, 
 
 He was dreaming now, as he sat in the drawing- 
 room at Chesham Place, opposite Lady Cornelia. 
 He had not heard anything her ladyship had been 
 saying for the last ten minutes. 
 
 ' It would be flying in the face of the world,' her 
 ladyship said sharply. 
 
 Something in her voice, or in the words, aroused 
 him, and he looked up with a sudden light in his 
 dreamy eyes. 
 
 'Yes,' he said eagerly; 'that is just what it 
 would be. It would be flying in the face of the 
 world. Instead of being content to swim with the 
 stream, it would be dri\dng in the very teeth of 
 public opinion. Instead of answermg the world 
 according to its idols — wealth, fame, success, 
 luxury, self-indulgence — it would be smiting them 
 in the face. It would be giving up all, everything, 
 
 VOL. I. 3
 
 34 JN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 It would be following the example of the saints of 
 old, who gave up lands and ease, and father and 
 mother, and counted all things but dross, in com- 
 parison with obedience to the command of their 
 Master !' 
 
 Lady Cornelia shivered. 
 
 ' I cannot think where you have got these dread- 
 ful notions,' she said. *I am sure you ought to 
 see Dr. Busby ; you have been working too hard, 
 Trim. You must go abroad, and travel till the 
 spring ; there is nothing like going abroad for the 
 nerves. I would go with you if it were not in 
 the middle of the season. Geraldine has to be 
 brought out. She has improved so much. Trim, 
 lately ; she is expected to make quite a sensation.' 
 
 Then Tristram remembered that he had not 
 seen his sister. There was only one Miss Lush- 
 ington, and she was five years younger than he. 
 There was a brother between them, Cecil, whose 
 coming of age had recently been celebrated with 
 much pomp and rejoicing.
 
 LUSHINGTOlSrS ENTIRE 35 
 
 ' I had forgotten Dene,' he said ; ' where is she ? 
 Why isn't she here ?' 
 
 * Here ! She is not to be introduced till the 
 next Drawing-room. She is at Garlands until she 
 comes up to be presented. She must not be seen 
 until she comes out.' 
 
 * Why not ?' he asked stupidly. 
 
 * AMiy not ! It would do away with the surprise 
 and the expectation if she were seen every day. It 
 will be the event of the season. Everybody is 
 talking about it. Eumours have got afloat that 
 she is a lovely brunette, that she will put all the 
 other debutantes in the shade.' 
 
 Lady Cornelia was so full of her daughter's 
 coming success that she had forgotten all about 
 Tristram's tiresome quixotic notions. 
 
 *I don't see the use of shutting her up,' he said 
 moodily. ' A girl like Dene does not need to be 
 brought out like a show. I wish you would take a 
 higher ^-iew of things, mamma.' 
 
 Her ladyship fanned herself and drew her eye-
 
 36 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 lids together. She had a habit of contracting her 
 eyelids if things did not please her, and that made 
 her blue eyes look smaller than ever. 
 
 *You don't understand these things, Trim, and 
 your nerves are shaken. I'm sure no time should 
 be lost in your seeing Dr. Busby.' 
 
 Then Lady Cornelia went out for her drive, and 
 told all the dear friends she met at the Belgravian 
 tea-tables that she honoured with her presence, that 
 her eldest son had just returned from Cambridge 
 with his nerves quite shattered with the severe 
 strain of the examination he had emerged from 
 with such distinction and honour. 
 
 Dr. Busby really did call the next morning to see 
 Tristram. He quite took her ladyship's view of the 
 case. He detected unmistakable signs of cerebral 
 excitement and over-work, and prescribed rest and 
 change. Thorough change : theatres, concerts, 
 dances, life — Life spelt with a big ' L ' — a whirl of 
 gaiety and amusement, constant occupation, to keep 
 the mind from dwelling on its morbid notions.
 
 LUSHINGTOlSrS ENTIRE 37 
 
 Tristram consented to try the prescription for a 
 week — at least, he did not say a word about giving 
 up the brewery for a whole week — and he went into 
 society. 
 
 He was not quite sure that he had not been a 
 little hasty in taking that oath that he had locked 
 away at the bottom of his desk. He was naturally 
 weak and excitable, and easily led away by his 
 emotions, and he had not considered this matter 
 calmly before he had committed himself by that 
 rash oath. 
 
 Was he really bound to keep it ? Would it be 
 well to reconsider it ? 
 
 There was something of self-abasement in the 
 way he submitted to himself that he had been 
 hasty, that perhaps, after all, he was wrong — he 
 was throwing away a great opportunity for good. 
 
 Think what a million of money could do ! Who 
 ever heard of a philanthropist throwing away a 
 million of money ? 
 
 Perhaps Sir Tristram was right, after all. The
 
 38 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 brewery was doing a great work for the people. It 
 was the centre of a vast system of beneficence. 
 He inspected the private cash-book of the firm 
 during that week, and was surprised to see the 
 large sums that were devoted yearly to works of 
 public usefulness and private charity. It supported 
 an orphanage, endowed schools, provided for the old 
 age, for the needs and infirmities, of its great army 
 of employes. If it were to stop its beneficent work 
 a single day it would cause widespread ruin and 
 dismay. 
 
 Perhaps it was this thought that made Tristram 
 pause— pause and consider. He was so anxious to 
 do right. He would have liked to go on tilting 
 at windmills, but perhaps, after all, this was not 
 the kind of knight-errantry he was called upon to 
 perform. 
 
 He found an opportunity during that week in 
 town to go over the brewery. He would see it for 
 himself. He went over it with Cecil, who had 
 come up for a day or two from Oxford.
 
 LUSHING TO X'S ENTIRE 39 
 
 The foreman received the two young men, and 
 went over the place with them. ' Master Cecil,' he 
 remarked, when the i^isit was over and the brothers 
 had gone away, * looked more like a brewer than 
 the other. He didn't turn green and yaller at 
 the smell of the beer, like the other chap ; not 
 he!' 
 
 The man was right in his estimate. Cecil looked 
 every inch a brewer — a ruddy, well-favoured, 
 clean-shaven young man, square about the 
 shoulders and square about the head, particularly 
 square about the jaw, but disappointing about the 
 eyes. He bore a strikmg resemblance to Sh* 
 Tristram in his manly figure and his fresh-coloured 
 face, but he ' favoured ' her ladyship about the 
 eyes. 
 
 The brothers went through the place quietly : 
 they did not hurry over it. Tristram wanted to 
 see it for the first and, perhaps, the last time. He 
 wanted to see how this wealth grew. They went 
 first into a great hall full of vats — Tristram had
 
 40 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 never seen anything like them : he looked like a 
 pigmy standing beside them ; he never remembered 
 to have felt so small — and then upstairs into a floor 
 above, a floor with iron bars to walk upon, where 
 they could look down and see the liquor seething 
 and fermenting beneath. 
 
 The smell of the place made Tristram sick. He 
 turned green and yellow and all sorts of unpleasant 
 colours as he climbed the stairs and wandered in 
 and out among the great vats. The very smell of 
 the place made him drunk. 
 
 He was not one of the old sort at all. His grand- 
 father used to work in this place with the men. 
 He used to spend his days, sometimes his nights, 
 here. He discovered, he created, that wonderful 
 Double X that made the fortunes of the house. He 
 was not above wearing a leather apron and working 
 with the men. There were some old men there 
 still who remembered him, and they looked up 
 stupidly as Tristram with his chalky face went by, 
 and shook their heads and muttered to themselves,
 
 LUSHINGTON'S ENTIRE 41 
 
 ' A poor sort 0' chap that ; not one of the old sort 
 at all.' 
 
 They saw everything while they were about it — 
 the crushing of the malt, the storing of the hops, 
 the working and fermenting of the beer, the storing 
 of the barrels when the process was complete, the 
 vast wilderness of cellars that held thousands and 
 thousands of barrels. 
 
 * By Jove, it's a fine place !' Cecil remarked 
 more than once, as he ran up and down those stairs 
 and looked between the h'on bars of the flooring at 
 the great vats of liquor fermenting below. There 
 was one vat that quite won his heart, a big-bellied 
 vat that held four thousand barrels. He sniffed at 
 the steam that uprose from this monster with 
 evident relish, and watched with a lo\dng eye the 
 slow heaving of the surface, and the upheaved 
 masses of malt turning lazily over, while Tristram 
 — Tristram was far too sick and giddy to trust 
 himself near that horrible steam. 
 
 The foreman was quite right — Cecil was a born
 
 42 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 brewer. If Tristram gave up this place his brother 
 was quite ready to step into his shoes. 
 
 ' It's a jolly place,' Cecil remarked, when 
 they stepped out again into the sunshine ; * it's 
 an awfully jolly place. Why, what ails you, 
 Trim ?' 
 
 He might well ask the question. Tristram had 
 staggered against an iron railing ; the smell of the 
 beer, that had made him sick in the close atmo- 
 sphere of the brewery, made him faint when he 
 came out into the open air. If it hadn't been for 
 that convenient iron railing he would have fallen 
 on the kerb. 
 
 ' It is that horrible fusel-oil,' he murmured with 
 a shudder. 
 
 It was not altogether the fusel-oil which caused 
 that deadly sickness when he came out into the air ; 
 it was the remembrance of those barrels. He had 
 not asked, he would rather not have known, how 
 many thousands of barrels were stored away in 
 those vast cellars, how many gallons of beer were
 
 L USHING TON'S ENTIRE 43 
 
 fermenting in those monster vats, how much beer 
 would be made from the malt and hops he saw 
 stored away in those endless warehouses. He 
 shuddered to think of it. He only remembered 
 that every barrel might be the price of a soul, 
 perhaps of a hundred souls !
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 GAELANDS. 
 
 ' A land of hops and poppy -mingled corn.' 
 
 Tristram went down to Garlands the next day. 
 He was sick of town already, and he was haunted 
 with the smell of the brewery. He couldn't get 
 away from the smell of the beer. London reeked 
 of it. He couldn't cross a road, or turn the corner 
 of a street, or take a stroll in the Park, without 
 encountering beer, beer, beer at every step. 
 
 An elderly man had fallen off a seat in the Park 
 the morning he came away, and was lying on the 
 ground breathing heavily when Tristram came 
 across him, and called the attention of a policeman 
 to him. It looked like a case of apoplexy as the
 
 GARLANDS 45 
 
 man lay on the grass with his distorted purple 
 face turned up to the sweet June sky, and his 
 laboured breath coming short and thick. The 
 policeman turned him over with his foot, as he 
 would have turned a dog over. 
 
 *Beer, sn, beer; he's had too much beer, an' 
 the heat's overpowered him.' 
 
 A drunken woman with a child in her arms was 
 knocked down by a hansom the evening before, as 
 he was crossing the road, and he saw the miserable 
 wretch dragged from beneath the wheels, and heard 
 the frightened cry of the little child. He couldn't 
 get the cry out of his ears. He couldn't get away 
 from the faint sickly odour of the beer ; it greeted 
 him at every street corner. The doors of the beer- 
 shops seemed to fly open as he passed and belch 
 forth beer, beer, beer ! 
 
 Tristram couldn't bear it any longer, so he 
 packed his portmanteau and went down to Gar- 
 lands. It was a four hom's' journey by a fast 
 Great Western express to that distant Devonshire
 
 46 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 • 
 
 village ; the smell of beer surely could not follow 
 him there ! 
 
 Nobody was expecting him, and he had to hire 
 a fly from the railway hotel to take him up to the 
 house. The landlord was in his bar, among his 
 taps, and the place reeked of beer ; the ostler who 
 brought the fly round brought a distinct aroma of 
 beer round with it ; and the driver came out of the 
 yard wiping his mouth. 
 
 He couldn't get away from beer even here. 
 
 In the lovely close of the summer day he drove 
 through the sweet green silent country. He had 
 only three miles to drive, through the twisting 
 village street, and along the high-road,.with the rich 
 cultivated fields and pleasant meadows on either 
 side, past scattered hamlets clustering round their 
 old gray churches, and picturesque homesteads 
 standing amid cornfields and orchards. Every- 
 thing was soothing and restful. There was nothing 
 here to jar his nerves and remind him of beer. 
 
 Garlands was not an old house ; it was built on
 
 GARLANDS 47 
 
 the site of an old house that had been pulled 
 down to make room for it. Nothing of the old 
 place was left but its pleasant suggestive name. 
 Everything had been cleared away, and a new 
 house had arisen from its ashes. It stood on rismg 
 ground, with a wooded hill rising steeply behind it : 
 a big white block of building, without any dis- 
 tinctive character in it, but with plenty of windows 
 to reflect the red sunset light ; an imposing house, 
 dazzling in its whiteness in the midst of the wide 
 stretch of green country, and with the dark back- 
 ground of pines. 
 
 Geraldine Lushington was walking in the park 
 with her governess, and she saw the fly commg up 
 the drive with Tristram m it. She ran across the 
 grass to intercept it, as it turned a corner, in a most 
 unladylike way, shouting ' Trim ! Trim !' at the 
 top of her voice. 
 
 Tristram saw his sister running, and he stopped 
 the fly and jumped down to meet her. 
 
 * Oh, Trim, what has brought you here ?' she
 
 48 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 panted ; she was quite out of breath with running 
 when she came up to him. 
 
 She threw her arms around his neck and gave 
 him a sounding kiss of welcome, and they walked 
 arm-in-arm together towards the house. 
 
 The brother and sister were strangely unlike; 
 they were cast in quite different moulds. Geral- 
 dine was decidedly j^etite, and a brunette — an 
 English brunette, with a clear, delightful com- 
 plexion that is shown off to advantage by dark 
 hair — that is quite irresistible boneath soft cluster- 
 ing rings of blue-black hair. Her eyes were dark 
 like her hair, not languishing, almond-shaped eyes, 
 but round, honest, wide -opened English eyes, 
 bright and clear, with beautiful dark lashes and 
 eyebrows. 
 
 Lady Cornelia was right; she would be quite 
 sure to make a sensation by-and-by. Her face was 
 flushed now with running ; she was not usually so 
 red-cheeked — had only a faint suspicion of peach- 
 bloom beneath the pale, clear whiteness of her skin.
 
 GARLANDS 49 
 
 Her brother looked at her with pardonable pride ; 
 he was not thinking of the ' sensation ' she would 
 presently make ; he was thinking what a jolly 
 thing it was to have such a dear little sister. 
 
 * You are looking splendid, Dene,' he said. 
 
 *0h yes, I'm well enough. I shall do. I'm 
 going to be presented soon. Think ! I've got the 
 loveliest gown you ever saw, with a train ! You 
 wouldn't be able to walk near me, you'd tumble 
 over it ; that's the fun of trains. I've been 
 practising walking in a train for weeks. I wear a 
 sheet, and it drags behind me yards. I used to 
 tumble over it at first, but I can manage it better 
 now. You shall see me practismg to-morrow.' 
 
 The girl was full of her tram and the coming 
 glories of her debut. Tristram listened to her list- 
 lessly. He was thinking what a waste of enthu- 
 siasm it was to spend so much emotion, time, 
 thought, and admiration upon a tram — a mere 
 bundle of rags, costly rags : silk, lace, feathers — 
 and drag it in a senseless, ridiculous fashion in the 
 
 VOL. I. 4
 
 50 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 dust. He was dreadfully in earnest. He had no 
 patience with fashions and customs that were 
 frivolous and senseless. He was always tilting at 
 windmills. 
 
 * You haven't told me what you came down here 
 for in the middle of the season, Trim,' the girl 
 asked, as she was pouring out his tea in the school- 
 room ; the drawing-room was wrapped up in brown 
 holland, and the blinds were kept down all day for 
 fear of the sunlight fading the carpets. All the 
 reception-rooms were shrouded in holland and 
 darkness ; only the old schoolroom, with its shabby, 
 well-worn furniture, and the rooms occupied by 
 Geraldine and her governess, were in habitable 
 condition. 
 
 The governess had considerately left the brother 
 and sister together. The June sunset bathed the 
 distant landscape, the village and the church, and 
 the sweet green country, in a blaze of purple and 
 red and gold. It shone upon their faces in this 
 western room as they sat at tea, and made them
 
 GARLANDS 51 
 
 glorious. They could scarce look at each other for 
 the shining of their faces. 
 
 * I ?' he said, answering her question — ' I ? I 
 •have come down here, Dene, to — to get away from 
 
 the beer.' 
 
 ' To get away — from — the — beer ?' she repeated, 
 opening her round eyes very wide. 
 
 *Yes, dear, to get away from the beer. I am 
 going to give up my share in the brewery. Dene. 
 Anyone can have it. I will never touch another 
 penny of it, if I can help it, as long as I live. It 
 will go to swell your portion, yours and Cecil's. 
 You will be able to buy as many trams as you like 
 with it.' 
 
 * Going to give up the brewery. Trim ?' 
 
 The colour dropped out of the girl's cheeks, out 
 of her lips ; she looked quite white in the glowing 
 sunset, and her voice shook ; she could not keep 
 it steady. 
 
 ' Yes, dear, I am giving it up. It is not much to 
 give up. Thank God, it never really belonged to me.' 

 
 52 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 '1 don't understand,' Geraldine said, looking 
 pale and troubled; *I can't think what you 
 mean, Trim. Why do you want to give up the 
 brewery ?' 
 
 *I want to give it up, dear, because — because I 
 think it immoral ; because it is piling up a great, 
 terrible fortune out of the ruin of thousands of my 
 fellow-creatures.' 
 
 * Im — moral ?' the girl repeated slowly. She 
 could not take it in all at once, the significance of 
 her brother's words ; ' im — moral ? How can it be 
 im — moral. Trim, when — when it has gone on so 
 many years, and it has done so much for us — for 
 others ? It provides for hundreds of families, I have 
 heard papa say, and it spends thousands a year in 
 charities. When did you find out it was immoral, 
 Trim ?' 
 
 * I have found it out a long time,' he answered 
 sadly, hanging his head as he spoke ; * but I had 
 not the courage of my opinions — I was afraid to 
 make a stand, I am so horribly nervous of ridicule ;
 
 GARLANDS 53 
 
 it is my weakness, Dene. I should have come out 
 before, but I was afraid of what the world would 
 say.' 
 
 * You think it wicked, im — moral, to make beer ?' 
 *I think anything that causes a fellow-creature 
 
 to fall — that lays a net to entrap others — is wicked,' 
 he said warmly. He was always stu'red up when 
 he spoke on the subject of temperance, the subject 
 so near his heart. 
 
 ' And the brewery — the beer — does this ?' 
 
 * How can you ask, Dene ? It is the ruin of 
 thousands. It causes men and women to forget all 
 natural ties ; it makes men give up wife and chil- 
 dren and home ; it makes a woman forget the babe 
 at her breast. I saw one, only yesterday, run over. 
 I saw her dragged out from beneath the horse's 
 feet, drunk and insensible, and I heard the piteous 
 cry of the little child in her arms ; I cannot get the 
 cry out of my ears. I saw a man this morning — 
 an old man with gi-ay hair — drunk in the Park. 
 He had fallen off a seat, and lay on the ground
 
 54 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 with his face to the sky, drugged and insensible 
 with beer. Good God ! it might have been our 
 beer !' 
 
 The girl covered her face with her hands. ' I 
 did not know — I never thought of it being wrong,' 
 she said with a shudder. ' I did not know it made 
 people do these dreadful things. I always thought 
 it was such a respectable thing, a big, famous 
 brewery that is known all over the world ; and papa 
 is so proud of it !' 
 
 *Yes,' he said, 'that is the worst: papa is so 
 proud of it ; he cannot see that it is wrong.' 
 
 ' Have you spoken to him ? Have you told him 
 what you think about it?' 
 
 *I have told him that as a Christian I cannot 
 engage in this dreadful business, seeing it as I see 
 it — a traffic in the souls of my fellow-creatures ; 
 I have told him that I will never touch another 
 penny of these ill-gotten gains !' 
 
 * And he — what did he say ?' 
 
 * He thought I was quixotic, that my mind had
 
 GARLANDS 55 
 
 been upset,' he said bitterly. ' They have sent for 
 a doctor for me, he and mamma ; they think I am 
 the victim of delusions — that I am mad, quite mad. 
 I am to go abroad for change ; to travel with a 
 keeper for a year, and come back when I have got 
 over my delusions.' 
 
 Dene rose from her seat, and came over to him, 
 and put her arms around his neck and her cheek 
 against his. 
 
 * Never mind what people say, Trim ; they can't 
 send you away against your will. 1 know you are 
 not mad.' 
 
 As the brother and sister talked, the sun went 
 down in the crimson west, and the ruddy glow 
 faded from then shining faces and from the dark- 
 ling room, and the shadows deepened, and still they 
 talked late into the summer night. 
 
 Tristram was always sure of sympathy from 
 Geraldine; she understood him better than the 
 others — better than Cecil, who was at Oxford, and 
 who had not been contaminated by these Eadical
 
 56 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 notions. Cecil was prouder of the great brewery 
 and his connection with it than any of the family. 
 He had no patience with Tristram's scruples. 
 He agreed in the general verdict. After that 
 visit to the brewery he had no hesitation in 
 declaring that his brother was as mad as a 
 hatter. 
 
 But it was not for Geraldine's sympathy alone 
 that Tristram had left town in the height of the 
 London season for Garlands. He had another 
 object in view, and they talked it over in the sweet 
 June twilight. 
 
 * And you have not told Mary?' Geraldine was 
 saying a little breathlessly. 
 
 * No ; I shall tell her to-morrow.' 
 ' How will she take it ?' 
 
 * I don't know how she will take it ; it is scarcely 
 possible that she will see with me. She may think 
 me mad, like the rest,' he said bitterly. 
 
 ' Oh, you must not say that. Trim ! Mary is as 
 good as gold. She will be sure to do you justice.
 
 GARLANDS 57 
 
 She may not see things as you see them, but she 
 will not think you mad.' 
 
 The young man looked up and smiled, and he 
 flushed hotly, like a girl. His complexion was so 
 pale for a man — so pale, or so fair, or both — that, 
 when any sudden colour came into his cheeks, it 
 looked ridiculously like blushing. 
 
 * You think there is a chance, then, of her think- 
 ing that I am doing right— that she will not give 
 me up — because — because I am acting according to 
 my conscience ?' 
 
 ' I am sure she would not have you do otherwise. 
 Mary is so noble ; she would not have you do any- 
 thing — that — that your conscience would not let 
 you do, for the world ! Oh, you don't know Mary, 
 Trim, if you thmk she would wish you to live and 
 act a lie !' 
 
 The rare colour had come into the girl's face, and 
 her eyes were shining, and her red lips were parted 
 in defence of her friend. If Lady Cornelia could 
 have seen her daughter now, she would have said
 
 58 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 that her success was assured, that, though the last 
 of the debutantes, she would be the acknowledged 
 beauty of the London season. 
 
 The young man sighed. 
 
 * You are sanguine. Dene,' he said moodily. 
 * Mary could not have a better champion. I wish 
 she could hear you now. She may not see things 
 as you see them ; she may think, as everybody else 
 thinks, that it is throwing away a fortune — a for- 
 tune, when money is so much needed. She may 
 take quite a different view; she may think it 
 quixotic, and flying in the face of the world.'
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 BREDTVAPtDDsE. 
 • The splendour falls on castle walls.' 
 
 TRISTRA3I had an opportunity the following morn- 
 ing of learning from Mary Gascoigne's own lips 
 what she thought of it. He had come over after 
 breakfast to tell her. It was not far to come. The 
 two estates of Garlands and Bredwardme adjoined, 
 and the houses were not a mile apart. 
 
 He had left Dene to her lessons and practising in 
 a sheet how to carry her train. Her thoughts kept 
 wandering all the morning from the pages of the 
 German poet she was vainly trying to master, and 
 she could put no spirit into the train. She dragged 
 it after her in a limp, spiritless way, and once or
 
 6o IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 twice, when she was walking backwards, she fell 
 over it, and moved her instructress to tears. She 
 would disgrace her, she declared ; she would dis- 
 grace everyone in the face of her Britannic 
 Majesty ! 
 
 Tristram crossed the park into the high-road 
 that skirted the broad demesne of Bredwardine. 
 He could have saved half a mile by going through 
 the shrubbery and the plantation beyond, and over 
 the rustic bridge into the grounds of Bredwardine. 
 The park and ornamental grounds extended over a 
 thousand acres, and reached up to the gates of 
 Garlands. He did not choose to go by the near 
 cut this morning, the short private path that 
 Geraldine used when she paid her frequent in- 
 formal visits to her friend Mary Gascoigne. He 
 went round by the road and through the great 
 gates up to the front entrance. He was not 
 ashamed of his errand, and he would not go round 
 the back way. 
 
 Bredwardine was the finest house in the county
 
 BREDWARDINE 6i 
 
 — a beautiful old house, surrounded by beautiful 
 grounds and a noble park. It was a perfect speci- 
 men of, so far as it went, a perfect style of archi- 
 tecture. Everything that we have in England that 
 has any claim to architectural beauty dates back to 
 it. There are some earlier buildings, but they are 
 not more beautiful ; for they are less complete, and 
 have been patched and added to and restored so 
 often that there is little to tell where the old, the 
 really old, leaves off and the new begins. 
 
 There had not been a brick added to Bredwardine 
 since it left the builder's hands in the last years of 
 James I. 
 
 An avenue of great breadth, with noble trees, led 
 up from the imposing gate-tower to the house. 
 The trees had been planted when the house was 
 built, and they were now in their prime. In this 
 leafy month of June they were in their richest 
 foliage, with their heads in the sunshine and long 
 cool shadows at their feet. 
 
 Between the green of the trees the old masses of
 
 62 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 red brick, warmed to a deeper red by the sunshine, 
 glowed in all their picturesque beauty : a huge 
 mass of weather-beaten brickwork, with projecting 
 turrets, and arches, and parapets, and finials, that 
 two hundred and seventy years seemed only to 
 have softened and mellowed into more stately 
 beauty. A clock-tower surmounted the entrance, 
 and to the right and left were projecting wings, 
 with the sunlight flashing back from long rows of 
 windows, and quaint garden banks rising up in 
 terraces on either side. 
 
 On the ancient oak door was the date ' Anno 
 Domini 1623,' and within an arch, the keystone of 
 which bore a grotesque figure over the entablature, 
 was a rich compartment bearing the arms and 
 quarterings of the Gascoignes. 
 
 The gardens rose on either side the house, 
 terrace upon terrace, with natural arbours formed 
 by ingenious bending of trees and boughs — old, 
 formal gardens, matching the fashion of the house, 
 and ablaze now with flowers.
 
 BREDWARDINE 63 
 
 Tristram took in all these details as he walked 
 slowly up the avenue. He looked at them with a 
 strange feeling of regret. The beauty of the place 
 touched him — the stately beauty and the mellow 
 charm, the soothing, restful quiet of this abode of 
 ancient peace. He could not stifle a sigh as he 
 rang the bell at the hall door. He had often 
 heard that solemn old bell ring out before, but it 
 had a new sound for him to-day — it sounded like a 
 knell. 
 
 Mary Gascoigne was at home. He did not ask 
 for Lady Bredwardine; he only asked for Mary. 
 She was in the library. He followed the servant 
 up the great oak staircase, which is one of the 
 features of the house, with its rich carvings and 
 terminal figures, through a stately suite of rooms, 
 with beautiful carved mantelpieces and oak- 
 panelled walls hung with family portraits as old as 
 the house itself. 
 
 He knew all these ancestors of the Gascoignes 
 by heart. He had seen them hundreds of times
 
 64 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 before, but they seemed to look down upon him to- 
 day with a new look in their painted eyes. The 
 house was full of portraits of dead and gone 
 Gascoignes who had once occupied these stately 
 rooms. There was no space on the walls for any- 
 thing but portraits. 
 
 Mary Gascoigne was in the library. The servant 
 brought Tristram to the door, and murmured his 
 name, and closed the door upon him, leaving him 
 to find the object of his visit. The library of 
 Bredwardine was the most remarkable room in the 
 house — the most remarkable room in the county. 
 It was over a hundred feet in length, and not more 
 than twenty broad, and it hail wide deeply-recessed 
 windows on either side, that anyone could be well 
 concealed in. Tristram walked the whole length 
 of the room before he found Mary. There was a 
 crimson carpet in the middle of the polished floor 
 that muffled the sound of his footsteps. He did 
 not trust himself on the shiny shimmery surface of 
 the highly beeswaxed floor on either side that
 
 BREDWARDISE 65 
 
 strip of carpet. He might have made his presence 
 known in a way that would scarcely have been 
 dignified, and that would have ill accorded with the 
 gravity of his errand. 
 
 He found her in the last recess at the end of 
 the room. She was buried m the book she was 
 reading, and did not hear him until he stood before 
 her. 
 
 *Mary !' he cried under his breath. 
 
 She looked up quickly with a little cry of sur- 
 prise, and saw him standing there. 
 
 His face was pale and anxious, she saw in that 
 rapid glance, and he was looking at her with 
 troubled eyes. 
 
 'You here. Trim!' she said, rising from her 
 seat, and coming forward to meet him with out- 
 stretched hands, and with a beautiful colour in 
 her cheeks. 
 
 He took both her hands in his, and looked down 
 into her upturned face. He did not take her in his 
 arms, as he had a right to do — they were lovers 
 
 VOL. I. 5
 
 66 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 * long betrothed ' — but he held her hands in his, 
 and looked down into her clear eyes. 
 
 They were eyes worth looking into. They were 
 beautiful, clear, gray eyes, exactly like the eyes of 
 the beautiful ladies in the pictures on the walls. 
 She might have stepped down from one of those 
 massive gilt frames with a coronet on the top. 
 Her eyes were exactly like the painted eyes of the 
 old Gascoignes, only they were deeper and graver 
 eyes, and absorbed the light ; and her hair was not 
 powdered and curled. It was beautiful rich brown 
 hair, with a red light in it. It did not curl ; it was 
 not dragged over her forehead in a fringe, nor was 
 it fluffy, surrounding her face like a nimbus. It 
 was smooth brown hair with a wave in it, and, like 
 her eyes, it seemed to absorb the light. 
 
 For the rest, to the man who was looking down 
 at her with anxious, troubled eyes, it was the most 
 beautiful face in the world — perhaps that goes 
 without saying, for it was the face of the woman 
 he loved.
 
 BREDWARDINE 67 
 
 Something in his manner startled her, and the 
 colour dropped out of her cheeks as quickly as it 
 had come in. 
 
 ' Is — is anything the matter, Tristram ?' she 
 asked, with a Just perceptible quiver in her voice. 
 
 There is a great deal in voices ; Mary Gascoigne's 
 voice was rich and full, and it thrilled through the 
 young man, who was standing there, sad and silent, 
 with a wistful, troubled look in his eyes, and with 
 not a word to say for himself. There was an ache 
 in his voice when he found words to answer her : 
 
 ' No, dear ; there is nothing the matter — only — 
 only I have something to say to you.' 
 
 His answer did not reassure her. 
 
 What could he have to say to her that made his 
 face so grave ? She sat down in the seat she had 
 just risen from, and he stood before her, with his 
 hand on the pages of the book she had been read- 
 ing. It seemed to her afterwards, looking back 
 to this interview, that his heavy hand had been 
 pressed down over the fair open page of her life.
 
 68 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 ' Something — to — say — to — me ?' she repeated. 
 
 ' Yes, dear ; somethmg you must hear — that you 
 ought to hear at once. How shall I tell you ?' 
 
 His face was working strangely, and there was a 
 mist before his eyes. If he had not loved her so 
 well he would not have had that lump in his 
 throat and that foolish mist before his eyes. 
 
 She laid her hand on his with that charming 
 frankness that was her especial charm, and with a 
 look in her eyes that was so full of trust and con- 
 fidence that his heart gave a great bound, and the 
 blood leaped up into his white face. Surely this 
 ought to have made the telling easier. 
 
 'I have found out,' he said, speaking hurriedly 
 in a hoarse whisper, ^ I ought to have found it out 
 long ago, that — that, feeling as I do, I cannot 
 accept the share that it was always expected I 
 should take in the brewery ' 
 
 He paused and looked at her, but she could not 
 understand — she could not see the drift of his 
 words.
 
 BREDWARDINE 69 
 
 ' No,' she said vaguely ; ' why should you ?' 
 
 She was only trying to help him out. She did 
 not understand at all what he meant. 
 
 'I have told my father this,' he went on, speak- 
 ing with difficulty ; that lump m his throat was 
 getting bigger every moment ; * that I can have 
 nothing to do with the brewery — that I will never 
 touch a penny of — of those ill-gotten gains as 
 long as I live !' 
 
 He breathed freer now, when his tale was told, 
 but she did not understand. 
 
 *I do not understand,' she said, speaking like 
 one in a dream ; ' what does it mean, Tristram ?' 
 
 ' It means, Mary,' he said, speakmg slowly, in a 
 voice hoarse and ashamed in his throat, ' it means 
 — that — that I have given up a million of money !' 
 
 She did not grasp it even then. 
 
 ' A million ?' she repeated breathlessly. 
 
 He had not the courage of his opinions ; he could 
 not speak out boldly, not even to the woman he 
 loved, and tell her what a noble thing this was that
 
 70 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 he was doing. He stood before her with ashen 
 cheeks, hanging his head, as if he were doing some 
 shameful thing. 
 
 . He was a champion who was ashamed of his 
 cause. 
 
 ' I cannot understand,' she murmured. ' Oh, 
 Tristram, what does it mean ?' 
 
 'It means, dear,' he said, and his manliness 
 came back to him as he spoke, * that I have volun- 
 tarily renounced a fortune — a great fortune that 
 has been built up on the destruction of thousands. 
 I cannot engage in — this — this unholy traffic. I 
 have given it up. I have renounced it for ever. 
 Henceforth I am a poor man. I shall have to earn 
 my living like the rest. I have given up all — 
 everything. I can give it up without a pang, 
 knowing at what cost it is purchased. I can give 
 up everything, Mary, everything — but you !' 
 
 She understood him now. 
 
 She understood so much — that he stood before 
 her robbed of everything that had before made
 
 BREDWARDINE 71 
 
 him attractive in the eyes of the world — the heir 
 of a great fortune ; the owner of a million of money, 
 with a perennial stream of gold flowing in, rolling 
 in, without pause or break at his feet. 
 
 He was Midas no longer. He was only a 
 white-faced, commonplace young man with con- 
 victions. 
 
 He might have joined the Salvation Army, for all 
 she knew. She didn't know whether to be angry 
 with him or not. It was all so new to her, so hard 
 to realize. She only felt in a dull, dazed sort of 
 way that he had chosen between his convictions 
 and her. 
 
 She could not answer him ; she sat white and 
 frozen, with a strange smking at her heart. He 
 had had his choice, and he had not chosen her. In 
 those few seconds she felt herself drifting away from 
 him as if an ocean were widening between them. 
 
 * I cannot hope, I cannot expect, Mary,' he went 
 on, in that faltermg, shamefaced way that stirred 
 all the depths of her nature against him, ' that —
 
 72 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 that things can go on between us as they have done. 
 By my own act I have changed everything. I have 
 made myself a poor man ; I have given up all — 
 everything. I cannot ask you, Mary, to share my 
 poverty. It is for you to say whether I have done 
 well. It is for you to send me away — or — or — to 
 bid me stay.' 
 
 He could not look in her face as he spoke ; he 
 could only look beyond her at the beautiful land- 
 scape that spread out beneath the window where 
 he was standing. It was a lovely English land- 
 scape, with a wide park and stately trees, melting 
 away in the distance to blue misty hills. Every 
 acre, as far as the eye could reach, belonged to the 
 Gascoignes. It was all hers, this girl's at his side, 
 and he — he was a penniless descendant of a London 
 brewer. 
 
 She followed the direction of his eyes, and 
 perhaps she followed his thought. What had she, 
 the heiress of the Gascoignes, to do with this 
 ridiculous quixotic young man ?
 
 BREDWARDIXE 
 
 73 
 
 'You must give me time to thiiik, Tristram,' she 
 said, removing her hand from his and passing it 
 across her forehead, as if this trying interview had 
 bewildered her. ' I must speak to mamma. I 
 must tell her what you have done. I think you 
 should see her for yourself, and explain. It has 
 all been so sudden, I — I cannot realize it.'
 
 CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 LADY BEEDWAEDINE's WALK. 
 
 ' Tears from the depth of some divine despair.' 
 
 Teisteam did not leave his errand only half done. 
 He saw Lady Bredwardine before he went away. 
 It was a trying interview. A mauvais quart dlieure 
 would hardly describe it. It spread over half an 
 hour, and at the end of that time he went away. 
 
 He went away with a stricken face, and he did 
 not go back by the way he came. He took the 
 short-cut through the grounds, and across the 
 rustic bridge into the plantation. When he reached 
 the plantation and was far away from human 
 observation, he flung himself on the ground, at the 
 foot of the great tall solemn fir-trees, with their
 
 LADY BREDWARDINE'S WALK 75 
 
 beautiful brave heads in the sunshine, and he 
 buried his poor shamed face in the grass. 
 
 * Mary, Mary, Mary !' he moaned. 
 
 He was quite wrong when he said he had counted 
 the cost. 
 
 Lady Bredwardine told Mary the result of that 
 interview when Tristram had gone away. She 
 sent for her daughter, and told her that she had 
 dismissed her lover. 
 
 ' I could do nothing else,' she said ; ' if the young 
 man chooses to take up such ridiculous notions, to 
 fly in the face of the world, he could expect nothing 
 else. 'Wlien he made up his mind to this act of 
 quixotism, he must have quite understood that m 
 giving up a million of money — it is nearer two 
 millions, I believe — he was giving you up.' 
 
 Mary sighed. 
 
 ' Perhaps he may reconsider it, mamma,' she 
 said, but she didn't say it very hopefully. 
 
 * Yes, it is just possible. But a young man of 
 Tristram Lushington's temperament is hardly
 
 76 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 likely to reconsider it. He was always dreamy 
 and emotional, not practical like his younger 
 brother. It will be a fine thing for Cecil; he is 
 not likely to have any conscientious scruples.' 
 
 ' N— 0,' Mary said thoughtfully, but she was not 
 thinking about Cecil. 
 
 Lady Bredwardine was not emotional, and she 
 had no sympathy with enthusiasm in any form. 
 She had no sympathy with anyone or anything in 
 particular. All the deeper depths of her nature 
 were frozen up — frozen up or dried up. She had 
 had immense capacities for loving and suffering 
 once, and she had loved and suffered as few women 
 had suffered and loved. 
 
 Her husband, to whom she was devotedly 
 attached, had been found dead by her side on a 
 June morning three years ago ; and her son, her 
 only son, had been accidentally shot in Africa. He 
 had been brought back six months ago, and buried 
 in the vault of the Gascoignes. She was wearing 
 mourning for him now — heavy crape mourning on
 
 LADY BREDWARDINE'S WALK 77 
 
 this hot June day. She ^as buried in crape from 
 head to foot. She was the picture of bereavement, 
 of life-long, undying sorrow, but she had no 
 sympathy to spare for others. She wanted all her 
 sympathy for her own exceptional grief. 
 
 With her son she had lost, not exactly all, for 
 this beautiful old family place was hers, and Mary's 
 after her ; but the title, and the estates m Scot- 
 land, from which the principal revenues of the 
 family were derived, and Bredwardine Castle hi 
 Lothian, had gone to a distant branch. 
 
 Her income, too, would revert, when she was 
 gone, to the stranger who had stepped into her 
 son's and her husband's place. There would be 
 nothing left for Mary to keep up this great house 
 with. She would have to go away and shut it up. 
 She would be unable to keep it up a smgle day. 
 
 If all had gone well, and Mary had married the 
 son of the rich London brewer, with his milhon of 
 money, and all that perennial stream of wealth 
 flowing in, the former glories of the house would
 
 78 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 have been restored ; the loss of the wide acres and 
 the place in Scotland would not have been felt. 
 
 This was all over now; the young man had 
 knocked over all these airy castles with his own 
 hand. It was out of the question to think that 
 Mary could marry him when he had renounced 
 that million of money. 
 
 'I think you must write to him, Mary,' her 
 ladyship said, ' and tell him that the engagement is 
 at an end. He cannot complain. He has left you 
 no alternative.' 
 
 * He could not expect me to marry him, mamma, 
 if he does this ' — she was going to say ' this noble 
 thing,' but she paused, and the colour crept up 
 into her face — ' this thing,' she said meekly. ' He 
 has had to choose between me and his conscience — 
 and I think he has chosen well.' 
 
 Then Mary sat down and wrote her letter. 
 Her ladyship never knew what it cost her to write 
 it. There was no nonsense about Mary Gascoigne ; 
 she knew that she could not marry a poor man.
 
 LADY BREDWARDINE'S WALK 79 
 
 She gave up her lover without a moan, because he 
 had voluntarily given up that which had made the 
 match desirable. He had chosen well, she told 
 herself ; she would not have had him choose 
 differently for the world. 
 
 Tristram went back to town the same day. He 
 did not wait for Mary's letter ; his interview with 
 Lady Bredwardine had decided his fate. He knew 
 it before he walked up that wide avenue in the sun- 
 shine, with the branches waving overhead, and a 
 lark singing a great way up a strange sweet song, 
 as if he knew all about it and were sorry for him. 
 There was a lark singing somewhere in the blue 
 when he came out after the interview was over, but 
 she had changed her tune, and the sweetness had 
 gone out of her song. 
 
 Dene knew exactly what the result of his errand 
 had been, when he drove away from Garlands, with 
 his white stricken face, and something that looked 
 suspiciously like tears in his eyes. He was such a 
 weak, emotional fellow ; he couldn't put on a brave
 
 8o IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 face like some men. He wore his heart on his 
 sleeve for all the world to laugh at. 
 
 Dene was angry with Mary, angry and indignant 
 when she saw her brother drive away. She did not 
 know what she expected. She thought Mary ought 
 to have shown some sympathy with his project. It 
 was quite dreadful of her to let him go away as he 
 had gone, with that miserable knowledge that she 
 had only loved him for his money. They had been 
 near neighbours, friends, children brought up 
 together all their lives, betrothed lovers for a year, 
 and all this time it was that million of money that 
 had won Mary's heart, not the sweet, noble, un- 
 selfish nature that had grown up by her side. 
 
 Dene went over to Bredwardine to see Mary when 
 he was gone. Her governess would not hear of her 
 going out in the sun until the heat of the day was 
 past. It was of the greatest importance now that 
 her complexion should not suffer. 
 
 ^he made up for the delay by running all the 
 way as soon as she was out of sight of the many
 
 LADY BREDWARDINE'S WALK 8i 
 
 windows of the house, and arrived at the Hall 
 flushed and panting like a dairymaid. 
 
 She came upon the stately old place that Tris- 
 tram had given up, when he gave up everything 
 else for the sake of his conscience, at exactly the 
 right moment to see it at its best. The beautiful 
 old red pile was warmed to a deeper red by the 
 sunset, and the light flashed back from the long 
 rows of windows, and the sloping lawns and the 
 terraced gardens were flecked with broad patches of 
 light and shade. 
 
 She ought to have understood then, if she had 
 not understood before, how impossible it was for 
 Mary Gascoigne to have done other than she had • 
 done. If she had not been a Gascoigne it would 
 have been different ; but with the burden of all this 
 greatness she had no alternative. Tristram with 
 his own hands had cut the knot. Surely it was 
 her brother who was to blame, not Mary. 
 
 Something of this passed through Geraldine's 
 mind as she ran up the steps of the terrace and 
 
 VOL. I. 6
 
 82 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 burst into the room where Mary was sitting. Her 
 face, always serious, had a deeper earnestness to- 
 night, and there w^ere tears in her eyes, and traces 
 of tears on her cheeks. The writing of that letter 
 had not been eas.y to her. 
 
 * Oh, Mary, why did j^ou send him away ?' Dene 
 cried ; and then she Hung herself into the other's 
 arms. 
 
 'I did not send him away,' Mar}^ Gascoigne said 
 with some dignity ; ' he gave me up. He chose 
 between me and his conscience, and — and I think 
 he has chosen well.' 
 
 And then her dignity gave way, and the tears 
 crowded into her eyes, and she hid her face on 
 Dene's shoulder. She did not seek to justify 
 herself. She had no alternative ; she had done 
 the only thing that remained for her to do ; but 
 she thought her lover had done right. The more 
 she thought of it, the more she was convinced that, 
 feeling as he did, she would not have had him do 
 differently for the world.
 
 LADY BREDWARDINE'S WALK 83 
 
 * It was like the heroes of old,' she told herself — 
 ' the only truly great, who gave up everythmg, 
 love, life, everything they held dear — the world's 
 favour, the soft voices of praise, success, comfort, 
 ease ; who had flung all these thmgs to the four 
 winds, and chosen the thorny path of persecution 
 and poverty. It was like going back to the old, 
 noble days.' 
 
 Mary Gascoigne's face glowed as she spoke of 
 what her lover was domg. She was ready to 
 defend him agamst all the world. 
 
 * I am not going to send his likeness back. Dene,' 
 she whispered. It seemed such a sacred thing to 
 speak of her love to this child. ' Other gMs send 
 things back when — when it is all over ; but I am 
 not like other girls. It is different with me. I 
 have known him all his life. "We played together 
 before you were born, Dene. I remember your 
 being brought into the room in someone's arms, 
 and we looked at you together. We wondered at 
 vour little feet and vour hands — vour tmv hands
 
 84 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 that Tristram folded together as if you were saying 
 your prayers. We used to say our prayers often 
 together in those days, and Trim would wrap some- 
 thing white around him and preach. He could 
 preach by the hour even then. I am sure he will 
 make a great preacher; he will move all hearts. 
 He used to make me cry, and I did not know what 
 he meant. I shall keep his picture always by my 
 side to remind me that there is something loftier 
 and deeper and nobler — oh, so much nobler — than 
 mere happiness.' 
 
 ' You feel all this, Mary, and yet you can give 
 him up ?' Dene said reproachfully. 
 
 ' That is not it,' Mary said eagerly, with a look 
 of beautiful, generous enthusiasm in her wet eyes. 
 'He could never have been happy here, with all 
 this in his heart ; he could never have gone on in 
 the old lines ; he has chosen well — his choice has 
 nothing to do with me. Eemember, it was his 
 choice, not mine.' 
 
 * But he gave you a choice.'
 
 LADY BREDWARDINE'S WALK 85 
 
 *Yes; he gave me a choice, but it -was not 
 possible to me. I had not myself to consider. 
 There was my mother ; she has no one left but me. 
 I must always think of her first.' 
 
 *Y— e — s,' Dene said doubtfully. She was not 
 at all sure that if it had been her lover she should 
 have thought of Lady Cornelia. 
 
 * This has upset her a good deal. It came upon 
 her so suddenly, and she is so easily shaken. It has 
 upset her more than anything that has happened 
 
 since — since Howard • Hark ! She is pacmg 
 
 the room agam, as she used to pace it for weeks 
 after he was brought back. Always, day after day, 
 at sunset, she used to walk up and down that room 
 till she was tired out. He was killed at sunset.' 
 
 Dene listened. In the stillness of the silent 
 house she heard the soft, regular footfall on the 
 oak floor of the adjommg room, and every now and 
 then she heard a faint sighing somid like a moan. 
 She would not have noticed it if she had not been 
 listening.
 
 86 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 Mary drew aside a heavy curtain that separated 
 this room of hers from her mother's sitting-room. 
 It was Hke all the rooms in that great house — a 
 large, many-windowed room, a chill, stately, mag- 
 nificent apartment that did not suggest homeliness 
 or comfort. The furniture was arranged in the 
 stiff, old-fashioned way, and there was no womanly 
 litter about to suggest gossip and feminine occupa- 
 tion. At the farther end of the long, bare room 
 Dene saw Lady Bredwardine, a sad, black-robed 
 figure, trailing her sable draperies behind her as 
 she paced the oak floor, and sometimes uttering a 
 low moan. She did not always know when she 
 moaned. She did not take any notice of the girls ; 
 she did not take any notice of outside things when 
 these gloomy fits were upon her. Mary let the 
 curtain fall ; but all through their low- toned talk, 
 while the sun was sinking slowly in the west, they 
 heard the footsteps coming and going in the ad- 
 joining room.
 
 CHAPTEK VII. 
 
 ST. neot's mission. 
 ' We have but faith : we cannot know.' 
 
 Tristram did not go back to Chesham Place when 
 he left Garlands. He had an idea that his father's 
 house would no longer be the sort of home for him 
 with his present intentions. He knew exactly what 
 sort of reception awaited him there. Su' Tristram 
 would treat the subject that was so very, very near 
 his heart m his fine ironical vein ; he would not 
 condescend to discuss it, and her ladyship would 
 say that he was mad, and call m the family 
 physician. 
 
 Knowing all this, Tristram got into a hansom 
 at Paddington and gave the driver an address in a
 
 88 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 thickly-populated and unsavoury slum in the East 
 End. 
 
 It was the address of his college mission — a 
 large, barrack-looking building in a dreadfully 
 shabby street. It was not only shabby, but squalid ; 
 a hopelessly unlovely place on this sultry June 
 evening. Tristram paid the man, and stood on the 
 steps of the mission house, looking round at the new 
 strange surroundings of this * settlement,' wherein 
 he had elected to take up his quarters. 
 
 It had been a hot June day, hot and breathless in 
 the sweet green country, but close and stifling here, 
 among these crowded London courts. The air was 
 full of strange noises : street cries, costermongers 
 bawling, women quarrelling, children screaming, 
 and the continuous noise of passing footsteps and 
 the roll of wheels. 
 
 The discordant sounds and the close, stifling air 
 smote upon him as he stood there, on the threshold 
 of this new life. He turned away, giddy and sick ; 
 perhaps he was only faint for want of food ; he had
 
 ST. AEOT'S MISSION 89 
 
 not remembered to eat anything since the early 
 morning. A vision of Mary Gascoigne and the 
 wide, cool greenness of Bredwardine had risen up 
 before him as he stood there m the oppressive 
 breathless heat with those strange noises in his 
 ears. 
 
 The missioner, an old college friend, received him 
 with open arms. If he had been of any other 
 nationality, and not a cold-blooded Englishman, he 
 would have embraced him ; he would have thrown 
 himself mto his arms and saluted him on both 
 cheeks. He very nearly did it as it was ; he was so 
 glad to see him. He took both his hands and held 
 them m his strong, welcoming grip. 
 
 * Dear old fellow ! God has sent you to us in 
 our need. I have been asking Him all day to send 
 someone — and He has sent you.' 
 
 And then Japie (the missioner of St. Neot's 
 settlement was called Jayne — he is not quite a new 
 friend) noticed that Tristram was looking pale and 
 tired, and he thrust him into the only easy-chair in
 
 90 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 the place, and limped off to see about getting him 
 some refreshment. 
 
 The sound of the dear fellow's voice, and the 
 pressure of his hands, and the well-remembered 
 limp — poor Jayne had not lost his old infirmity — 
 did more to reconcile Tristram to his new surround- 
 ings than a hundred homilies. He was quite sure 
 he was in his right place here, with Jayne — dear 
 old Jayne — as his leader. 
 
 He poured out his tea and cut a plate of bread- 
 and-butter, and ministered to all his wants as if he 
 had been a woman. While Tristram drank his tea, 
 Jayne told him all about the mission — who was work- 
 ing here, and who had gone away. A good many 
 had gone away this hot June weather ; some had not 
 been able to stand the heat, the heat and the bad 
 air ; the drainage had not been particularly good, 
 and fever had broken out in some of the crowded 
 courts, and the workers had succumbed one by one, 
 and gone away to recruit, and Jayne was left alone. 
 
 Tristram could not have come at a better time.
 
 ST. NEOrS MISSION 91 
 
 Clearly, as Jayne said, it was ' a direct answer to 
 prayer.' He, dear simple fellow, was always tracing 
 a kind leading Hand in all the events of life ; he 
 was always discovering miraculous answers to prayer. 
 
 The mission was not quite so flourishing now as 
 in its early days, and the zeal of the men of St. 
 Neot's had slackened. There were only three or 
 four workers now, even at the best of times, where 
 there used to be a dozen, and now, in this sultry 
 June weather, with all this sickness about, Jayne 
 was here alone. 
 
 The mission had been begun several years ago by 
 some men of St. Neot's, a little band of enthusiasts 
 who had pledged themselves to do somethmg for 
 their Master m this place. Everybody called them 
 enthusiasts. Enthusiasm is such an easy name ; 
 it fits every work that is unusual, that is fraught 
 with difficulty, that is open to ridicule. It is a 
 moral force m the world, nevertheless ; it is perhaps 
 the greatest force m the world ; it has removed 
 mountains.
 
 92 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 Nobody but enthusiasts would have come to this 
 dreadful slum, and cared for its seething population. 
 Nobody but enthusiasts would, have taken a railway 
 arch and rigged it up as a mission-hall, and worked 
 here night after night, summer and winter, fighting 
 the demons of drink and indifference. The railway 
 arch was a thing of the past now. A big ungainly 
 building had taken its place, a great barn-like 
 structure that would hold one or two thousand 
 people. The little band of enthusiasts who had 
 worked side by side in the railway-arch was dispersed 
 now. Some had gone into the foreign mission-field, 
 and some were working elsewhere. All were 
 scattered — the willing hands and the warm young 
 hearts. 
 
 As the difficulties disappeared, the fiery zeal that 
 had distinguished the workers seemed to have 
 cooled. Persecution had done more for the mission 
 than prosperity. It had kept the little band 
 together, working shoulder by shoulder, in the 
 teeth of fierce opposition, difficulties that seemed
 
 57: NEOT'S MISSION 93 
 
 at the time iiisurmountable, and raillery that cut 
 them to the quick. It had loosened the purse- 
 strings of theu' friends, and called forth a new 
 power to help them m their work — sympathy. 
 The outcome of all this was the big mission- 
 hall. 
 
 Somehow, when the hall was built the enthusiasm 
 cooled. The old band of workers had dispersed, 
 and people were content to rest and think they had 
 done enough. There never was a time when help 
 was more needed than on that sultry June night 
 when Tristram stood beside his portmanteau on the 
 steps of the settlement. 
 
 Perhaps Jayne was right. It really looked like a 
 direct answer to prayer. 
 
 Jayne would not hear of Tristram begmnmg work 
 on the night of his arrival, though he was in a 
 feverish hurry to begm. He limped off alone to 
 take the meetmg in the big hall ; he had been 
 visiting all day in close, crowded courts, and he had 
 sat up all the night before with a man who was
 
 94 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 down with the fever, one of the willing helpers in 
 building that mission-room, but he went off alone 
 to the meeting. He would not hear of Tristram 
 doing anything that first night. He saw how tired 
 and worn the poor fellow looked ; he didn't know 
 what he had gone through that day, nor what this 
 effort was costing him. It hadn't cost Jayne any- 
 thing. No other life had ever seemed possible to 
 him than a life of self -dedication. He could not 
 conceive any other reason for being born into the 
 world if it were not to help other people. We are 
 not all cast in the same mould. 
 
 While Jayne went off to his meeting, Tristram 
 had time to look about him and to write a letter 
 that he had had on his mind all through the 
 journey — a letter to his father. He looked about 
 him first. There was not much to see. A bare, 
 shabby, barrack-like building, with dormitories 
 above, and a common sitting-room beneath, where 
 business was discussed and plans were arranged, 
 and a refectory or dining-room behind. It was all
 
 57: NEOT'S MISSION 95 
 
 bare— uncarpeted, and unlovely. It was exactly 
 the place for an ascetic who had given up the 
 world, and had no hankerings after art, literature, 
 and the higher culture. 
 
 These thmgs were not represented at the settle- 
 ment. The only attempt at decoration was a large 
 number of texts on the walls, as if the anchorites 
 required a good deal of reminding. There were few 
 books about or on the shelves, but there was a 
 prodigious number of tracts and leaflets and illus- 
 trated periodicals bearing on the special subjects of 
 the mission. The men who worked here had given 
 up the gentle life, with its aims and pursuits. They 
 had renounced, for the time at least, pleasures of 
 every kmd, and they had thrown themselves heart 
 and soul into ' the work.' 
 
 There is one thing to be said for it : it is an 
 imitative life. It may fall far short of the standard: 
 it only acknowledges One standard. 
 
 It was exactly the life to suit Tristram, he told 
 himself, as he sat down at the bare table m the dull,
 
 96 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 unlovely room to write that letter to his father. 
 He was twenty-three, the heir of an enormous 
 fortune, and he sat down at the bare deal table, in 
 the hush of the soft sweet June night, and re- 
 nounced, absolutely and for ever, the world and all 
 its delights — and he gave up a million of money. 
 
 He had quite made up his mind now; he had 
 chosen his lot. He wanted to put it quite out of 
 his power to go back if he should fall so low as to 
 desire it. He couldn't put any enthusiasm into his 
 letter. He wrote it in quite cool blood, though his 
 pulses were throbbing, and his poor, tired head was 
 splitting, and there was a dreadful sinking at his 
 heart. 
 
 It would have been so much easier for him if he 
 could have put any enthusiasm into it like other 
 men ; if he could have burned and glowed, and 
 been filled with those divine ecstasies, that joy un- 
 speakable, that is in the midst of failure and loss 
 the miraculous paradox of Christianity. He had 
 none of these helps. He was giddy and sick, and
 
 ST. NEOrS MISSION 97 
 
 had a miserable feeling at his heart ; but he sat 
 down, in spite of his coldness and his cowardice, 
 and wrote his letter. 
 
 He felt exactly like the rich young Pailer as he 
 turned his back upon the world and renounced its 
 vanities. He had not made the same choice, but 
 the result had been the same. 
 
 He went awav sorrowing. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 CHAPTEE VIII. 
 
 THE SILVER CORD. 
 ' Thou wilt not leave us in the dust.' 
 
 There was great consternation in Chesham Place 
 when that letter of Tristram's arrived. Lady 
 Cornelia was frantic. She was quite sure that her 
 son was mad. She was for locking him up in an 
 asylum at once. She did not mend matters by 
 writing an indignant and long-winded remonstrance, 
 and sending Dr. Busby to call upon him. 
 
 Sir Tristram was indignant too, indignant and 
 angry, but he did not ventilate his anger like her 
 ladyship. He knew more of young men. He 
 thought that by- and -by Tristram would recon- 
 sider this decision. Opposition would only fan the
 
 THE SILVER CORD 99 
 
 flame. He talked over the situation with Cecil, his 
 younger son, who was home from Oxford, who 
 reiterated his belief that his brother was ' as mad 
 as a hatter.' He was quite ready to step mto his 
 shoes. He had no scruples about the brewery. 
 Like all Oxford men, he was ashamed of every- 
 thing connected with trade, but he was quite ready 
 to share in the profits. 
 
 Sir Tristram talked the matter over with his 
 lawyers, and when the preliminaries were settled he 
 wrote to his son and made him an offer — a hand- 
 some offer, as matters stood. He offered to transfer 
 to Cecil his share in the brewery, with the accumu- ' 
 lated results, and to give Tristram the portion of a 
 younger son, the estate of Garlands, and the land 
 in the county that the Lushingtons had from time 
 to time acquu'ed. It was a generous offer, but it 
 fell far short of the funded wealth of the family and 
 the share in the brewery. 
 
 Tristram's eyes filled with tears as he read his 
 father's generous letter. He would have to dis-
 
 loo IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 appoint him in this, too. How could he accept the 
 land and the estates that were purchased with the 
 proceeds of the brewery ? It would be the same as 
 deriving the money direct from the drink traffic 
 that he hated ; it would be partaking in the ill- 
 gotten gains. 
 
 Conscience, which had prevented him from 
 becoming a partner in the brewery, prevented him 
 from sharing in the accumulated profits of past 
 years. Every acre of land had been bought with 
 the money gained by the brewing of beer, Tristram 
 had told himself at the onset that he would have 
 nothing to do with it, that he would not touch the 
 accursed thing. 
 
 He had to sit down again at that deal table and 
 write another letter to Sir Tristram. It cost him 
 more to write this second letter than the first had 
 cost him. He was sorry to disappoint his father, 
 but he didn't see how he could accept the offer. 
 It was clearly as much the outcome of beer as the 
 yearly income it had been arranged he should draw
 
 THE SILVER CORD loi 
 
 from the brewery. If he accepted the land and the 
 beautiful family place, and refused the money, the 
 dirty, ill-gotten money, it would clearly be strammg 
 at a gnat and swallowmg a camel. Feeling this, he 
 had no alternative but to sit down and write that 
 letter. 
 
 He declined Sh* Tristram's offer — his 'munificent 
 offer,' as he termed it — firmly but humbly. He was 
 rather ashamed, if the truth must be told, of 
 flaunting his conscience so often in Sir Tristram's 
 face. It seemed like setting himself up as his 
 judge. The brewery had been good enough for 
 him, and his father before him ; they had been 
 troubled with no qualms about pocketmg the 
 unhallowed gold it brought in. It was left for 
 Tristram, the latest descendant of a race of brewers, 
 to discover that it was an milawful trade, and that 
 no God-fearmg man who valued his own soul could 
 engage m it. 
 
 Tristram didn't say all this. He said, as humbly 
 as he could, that his conscience wouldn't allow him
 
 I02 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 to touch a penny of the money that had been made 
 by beer. He had youth, and health, and strength, 
 and he would earn his living like other men. It 
 was quite beautiful to read what things he said 
 about the new order he was going to join, the 
 brotherhood where money would not be wanted. 
 He was going to live among the poor, the lost, the 
 most degraded ; he was going to consecrate his life 
 to an entire self-sacrifice, a poor man living among 
 poor men. 
 
 Sir Tristram crumpled the letter up in his hand 
 and used strong language when he read it. He 
 not only crumpled it up, but he flung it across the 
 room, where Dene found it when she came m a few 
 hours after and saw it lying in a corner. There 
 was no help for it ; if his son would not listen to 
 reason, he must take the consequences of his folly. 
 The wealth that he had rejected would swell the 
 fortunes of his other children, Cecil and Dene. 
 
 Sir Tristram was in a towering rage, and Lady 
 Cornelia was in hysterics. She was now more con-
 
 THE SILVER CORD loj 
 
 viiicecl than ever that Tristram was mad, and that 
 he ought to be put under restraint. This blow, 
 coming just at this inopportune time, quite took off 
 the edge of her maternal pride in Dene's success. 
 
 Geraldine had been introduced b}^ her mother at 
 the last Drawing-room. Her debut had created quite 
 a sensation in the fashionable world. Columns 
 had appeared in the society papers on her charms, 
 her beauty, her distinguished appearance — her dress 
 had come from Worth's — and her wealth. She was 
 the acknowledged beauty of the season, and now 
 she would be the richest heiress. 
 
 It was all quite new and delightful to Dene after 
 having been shut up all her life in the country ; it 
 was a wonder her head wasn't turned. It would 
 have been quite turned if it hadn't been for that 
 trouble of Tristram's. She was so sorry for Trim — 
 so sorry and sad ! If he had been the black sheep 
 of the family instead of the white sheep, she 
 couldn't have been more sorry. She wanted so 
 much to write to him and tell him what Mary had
 
 104 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 said. She was sure it would comfort him. Every- 
 body had said he was mad and a fanatic, everybody 
 but Mary. 
 
 She took this letter of his that she found on the 
 floor, and smoothed it out, and read it with shining 
 eyes and glowing cheeks. When she had read it, 
 she sat down and wrote him a little letter. She 
 did not say anything about the wealth he had 
 renounced, but she offered him a legacy that had 
 been left to her by a maiden aunt, Lady Cornelia's 
 sister, who had died young and unmarried, and left 
 her small fortune to be divided among her nieces. 
 There was no taint of the brewery in this legacy. 
 The Earls of Sark had never defiled their white 
 hands with trade, and there was no reason why 
 Tristram should not accept it. Dene was so full of 
 her offer that she did not say a word about the 
 Drawing-room, or that train she had been practising 
 so long to carry gracefully. 
 
 When she had finished the letter and sealed it, 
 she opened it to add a postscript :
 
 THE SILVER CORD 105 
 
 '■ Who were his helpers iii the work ? Aiid did 
 there happen to be a Sisterhood working on the 
 same lines ?' 
 
 Dene told nobody what she had done, not even 
 her mother. She was quite sure that she would 
 have no sympathy from Lady Cornelia. She 
 would say she was quixotic, like Trim, and most 
 probably send her down into the comitry before the 
 season was over. 
 
 Tristram showed Jayne Dene's letter, and asked 
 him what he should do. He didn't like taking the 
 gu'l's money ; not that she would feel it, this little 
 two hmidred pounds a year. She would spend it 
 all on one Court dress, all and more, and it would 
 be a real fortmie to him. It would keep him from 
 being dependent on the mission. He could pay his 
 share with this like the rest, and it would leave his 
 hands free for the work. Above all thmgs, it was 
 not tainted with beer ! 
 
 ' I don't think you should refuse her this privi- 
 lege,' Japie said, with his eyes shmmg, and that
 
 ic6 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 light on his face that always seemed like a reflection, 
 a broken light. ' It may be a silver cord running 
 all through her life, the beginning of miracles. 
 I am sure she would not have made this offer if 
 God had not put it into her heart to do some work 
 for Him. It is not much she can do, a girl alone 
 amid such surroundings ; but she has done what 
 she could.' 
 
 After that there was nothing more to be said. 
 Tristram wrote and told Dene what Jayne had said 
 about her giving up this legacy, the silver cord that 
 would change the pattern of her life, change it and 
 glorify it. He would not accept it for himself ; but 
 if she devoted it to the work of the mission, it 
 would be accepted gladly, thankfully, and it would 
 be returned a hundredfold into her bosom. 
 
 So the way was made clear — quite clear. One 
 has only got to trust and to wait, and to do the 
 right thing, and the way is always made clear. 
 
 There was so much work to do in that dreadful 
 slum. There was work enough for a hundred
 
 THE SILVER CORD 107 
 
 zealous workers, and there were only two or three 
 pau's of hands to grapple with it all. There was a 
 population of thirty thousand people and only one 
 church ! Not that if there had been a dozen 
 churches it would have materially altered the case, 
 because no one went to church. It was a big 
 church with a tall steeple, and could be seen a long 
 way off, and the sound of the bell — it had a very 
 sweet-toned old bell that was always calling ' Come ! 
 come !' — could be heard a long way off, but nobody 
 responded to the invitation. Whatever work was 
 done in the parish was done outside the church. 
 The evils that were to be met and overcome were 
 multifarious, and the work that had to be carried 
 on was many-sided. 
 
 It was not all spiritual work. There were the 
 bodies as well as the souls of the people to care for. 
 Soup-kitchens, and free dmners, and coal-and- 
 blanket distributions were part of the wmter pro- 
 gramme; just now there were other matters on 
 hand. There was a night-school attached to the
 
 io8 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 mission for boys — boys of the difficult, dangerous 
 age that defies the Board School ; there were 
 Bible-classes, temperance meetings, and mission 
 services to be held daily, and there was a great deal 
 of house-to-house visiting. 
 
 There was a great deal of work to be done, and 
 just now there was only one man to do it — a 
 man with a lame leg. 
 
 While Jayne was limping about the unsavoury 
 courts looking after the sick folk, Tristram devoted 
 himself to the classes and meetings. He could 
 never have made himself heard in the crowded 
 Band of Hope meetings on those hot summer 
 nights if it had not been for the help of some lady 
 workers who kept order among the children. He 
 was not quite satisfied with the temperance meet- 
 ings from the first. He didn't believe in calling 
 people together once a week, to amuse them with 
 little temperance songs and recitations, when 
 there was a great work to be done. He was burning 
 to begin work in earnest. Jayne did not see the
 
 THE SILVER CORD 109 
 
 way clear just then, with the mission staff all away, 
 to make any changes in the programme, and Tris- 
 tram contmued to fret and chafe, and not find the 
 work so congenial as he had expected. 
 
 At the end of the week Jayne offered to change 
 places, and Tristram went out into the great hive of 
 swarming life, and made acquaintance with what, 
 for want of a better name, society is pleased to 
 term ' the dangerous classes.' He went up and 
 down a great many courts and alleys, and into 
 numberless poor men's homes. It seemed to him 
 that most of the evils of life had taken up their 
 abode in these unsavoury courts — poverty, disease, 
 drunkenness. Doubtless for all these there were 
 compensations, but he did not discover these all at 
 once ; they were not to be met with easily, certainly 
 not on the surface. 
 
 The sight of the misery, and the destitution, and 
 the vice — the vice of drunkenness — filled him with 
 sickness and loathing. It made his heart — his 
 poor, weak heart for such a great work — sink down,
 
 no IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 down, down into his very boots. It couldn't sink 
 much lower. It used to sink every time he saw the 
 door of a beer- shop swing to, and the crowds of men 
 and women pouring in and out. Doors were always 
 swinging open in the neighbourhood of those courts 
 and alleys, and wretchedly-clad, half-starved men 
 and women — women with little children in their 
 arms or clinging to their skirts — were flowing in 
 and out in a continuous stream. There was a door 
 that he passed a dozen times a day, with a big sign- 
 board above it inscribed with a familiar legend, 
 ' Lushington's Entire,' in great crimson letters, 
 that was always swinging to. People must have 
 found something very attractive in that 'Entire,' 
 for they went in, he remarked, with a look of 
 expectant anxiety on their eager faces, and they 
 came out happy and smiling, and wiping their 
 lips. 
 
 Oh, how he hated that ' Entire ' ! He always felt 
 sick and humiliated when he passed that particular 
 corner.
 
 THE SILVER CORD in 
 
 He was passing it one daj^, when he ran across a 
 lady whom he had seen at the Band of Hope 
 meetings, keeping order among the children. He 
 had often run across her dm'ing his visits to a 
 particular court, where the fever had been excep- 
 tionally bad, but he had never spoken to her until 
 to-day. He would not have spoken to her to-day, 
 but she stopped him just outside the swinging- 
 door, beneath the signboard that proclaimed his 
 shame. 
 
 ' I beg your pardon, Mr. ' she began. 
 
 *Lushington,' he answered, supplymg the pause, 
 and glancing up involuntarily to the signboard 
 above his head. 
 
 The gh'l — she was no more than a ghl, a j)mk- 
 faced ghi, with blue eyes and fluffy light hau', 
 which she had crumpled up beneath a nurse's 
 bonnet — followed the direction of his eyes. 
 
 ' Oh !' she said, and a light of recognition came 
 into her face. She had heard — everybody had heard 
 by this time — of the ridiculous young man who
 
 112 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 had thrown away a million of money. 'I'm so 
 glad !' 
 
 She had recognised him in a moment. It was 
 like presenting his card.
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 THE GOAT AND COMPASSES. 
 
 ' Blest be Heaven 
 That brought me here to this poor house of ours, 
 "Where all the brethren are so hard to warm.' 
 
 When Geraldine had asked her brother, m that 
 postscript which she opened her letter to add, if 
 there was a Sisterhood connected with the mis- 
 sion, he had answered rather impatiently in the 
 negative. 
 
 What had the mission to do with women ? Its 
 work was not woman's work. He had certainlv 
 answered that question hastily. He had reckoned 
 without his host. 
 
 If a Sisterhood did not exist in connection with 
 
 the mission, there were lady helpers. How could 
 VOL. I. 8
 
 114 J^ THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 he be so idiotic as to think that any good work 
 could be successfully carried on without the help of 
 a woman ? 
 
 The girl who introduced herself to Tristram out- 
 side the door of the Goat and Compasses, beneath 
 that hateful signboard, was a lady helper. She 
 wasn't exactly ' a Sister,' for there was no sister- 
 hood at present. Only two or three ladies rented 
 a little house, living together in a very simple way, 
 and ministering to the needs of the poor people 
 around them. It wasn't worthy the name of a 
 Sisterhood. 
 
 There were so few of them, and their hands were 
 so full, they hadn't time to form committees and 
 make resolutions, and do things in an orthodox 
 fashion ; they had only time to attend the sick, and 
 visit the poor, and dispense, according to their 
 limited means, nourishment and clothing. 
 
 A Sisterhood means money and subscriptions 
 flowing in. These lady helpers had no money, and 
 there were no subscriptions. They were a handful
 
 THE GOAT AND COMPASSES 115 
 
 of women living on their humble means — li\dng 
 very barely, with painful economy — and distributing 
 out of the surplus to the necessities of their poorer 
 sisters. 
 
 ' I am so glad to have met you, Mr. Lushington,' 
 the gh'l in a Sister's dress said, smiling and show- 
 ing her white teeth. 
 
 She was such a little thmg, and so fair and 
 young-looking; she didn't seem fit to be running 
 about unprotected in this London slum. 
 
 * I have wanted to know you so much,' she went 
 on a little breathlessly, and with the pretty pink 
 colour coming into her cheeks ; ' I have heard so 
 much about you. I am sure you have been sent in 
 answer to our prayers. We want a champion so 
 much. I am sure God has sent you !' 
 
 This was rather embarrassing to Tristram, tc 
 be stopped outside a public-house by a girl, and 
 welcomed m this unconventional fashion. The giii 
 had a sweet voice, with a reedy thrill m it that 
 made the people who were passing by turn round
 
 ii6 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 and listen to what she was saying. A delightful 
 voice for a sick-room and for dull ears, but not 
 exactly the voice one would choose to be addressed 
 in outside a public-house. 
 
 * See,' she went on, ' see ! You have not come a 
 moment too soon. The people are all pressing in 
 to their destruction — men, women, children; the 
 place will hardly hold them, and no one can keep 
 them back !' 
 
 She was pointing to the open door of the Goat 
 and Compasses, where the people were pressing in 
 for their mid-day beer; the place was full to the 
 door, and still the crowd came surging in. 
 
 Tristram hung his head. 
 
 * What can I do ?' he said bitterly. He was 
 thinking of that Band of Hope and the temperance 
 meetings, the recitations and the little glees, and 
 the puny efforts of the drum-and-fife band. What 
 were these against this great giant of Intemper- 
 ance ? It was like tickling the ogre with a 
 straw !
 
 THE GOAT AND COMPASSES 117 
 
 Perhaps the little Sister divmed his thoughts. 
 
 ' Oh, there is so much you can do,' she said 
 eagerly. ' It is only to be in earnest. Everything 
 is possible when one is in earnest.' 
 
 ' Tell me where to begin,' Tristram said help- 
 lessly. ' I am willing to lay down my life for the 
 cause, God knows. I would hold nothmg back, if I 
 only knew where to begin !' 
 
 * Begin here,' she said. ' You could not find a 
 better place. Address the people here, outside this 
 stronghold — under — under your own standard ;' 
 and she glanced up at that hateful sign. ' Haul it 
 down here, before all these people ; tell them you 
 have renounced it. They know what it has cost 
 you. Oh, believe me, there is nothing in the 
 world that moves people so much as a noble 
 example ! It is so much better to live a truth than 
 to preach a truth.' 
 
 She carried him away with her words. There 
 was an opalme fire in her blue eyes, with then- 
 wide pupils, and her lips were trembling, and her
 
 Ii8 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 words thrilled him, as she stood pleading with him 
 at the door of that public-house. 
 
 * I will do what I can,' he said ; ' I will do what 
 3^ou tell me.' 
 
 She took him away with her. He was a tool in 
 her hands ; he was quite ready to do whatever she 
 told him. He followed her meekly, like a sheep to 
 the slaughter. He had just discovered that man, 
 by himself, is incomplete ; that he can do nothing 
 without a woman. 
 
 It was a great discovery. 
 
 The little Sister took him back with her, and 
 unfolded her plans to him by the way. 
 
 She lived quite near, in a poor house, with 
 a grape-vine over the front, one of a row of 
 poor houses, only that in her case the whole of 
 the house was occupied by the Sisters, and the 
 adjoining houses were let out as tenements, as 
 many as ten families living in one house. There 
 is nothing like living shoulder to shoulder with 
 
 the people.
 
 THE GOAT AND COMPASSES 119 
 
 # 
 
 She took him over the 'home,' as she called it, 
 before she unfolded her plans. 
 
 ' See,' she said, opening the door of a big, barely- 
 furnished room, with a table and some benches in 
 it ; * this is our board-room. In this we hold all 
 our meetings and our classes. We have a gu'ls* 
 club here once a week, a mothers' meetmg, a 
 workmg class, a Sunday-school, a prayer-meeting, 
 a Confirmation class, something every day in the 
 week. There are, besides, guilds that are the 
 very backbone of our work. You must come and 
 visit our guilds ; they include Bible-classes, mission 
 work, and, above all, temperance work. We have 
 above a thousand women and girls belonging to our 
 guilds.' 
 
 Tristram could only murmur a feeble assent. 
 He could not understand all this great work being 
 done by a mere handful of women. 
 
 ' We should like to do a great deal more,' the 
 little Sister said with a sigh ; ' but we have no 
 funds. We want to open a maternity branch, and
 
 I20 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 to extend our sick and poor relief fund, but our 
 hands are tied for want of means. Oh, how we do 
 want money ! It would make your heart bleed to 
 see the cases we have to turn away. It is so hard 
 to refuse help when it seems a matter of life and 
 death — and we have to do it every day !' 
 
 She wrung her hands as she spoke, and her 
 reedy voice, with its soft, liquid inflexions, thrilled 
 through him. Did she think he was Croesus, that 
 she was appealing to him in that way ? Perhaps 
 she was thinking of that million of money he had 
 flung away. 
 
 * It is very sad,' he said humbly, feeling guilty. 
 * Have you no regular income, no resources ?' 
 
 *We have nothing!' she said, with something 
 like a moan — * nothing but the little we bring our- 
 selves. There are only five of us — sometimes only 
 four. * One, Sister Katherine, is often away sick. 
 We throw all that we have into the common fund, 
 but it does not amount to much. We are none of 
 us rich, but we give our all ; that is ' — here her face
 
 THE GOAT AND COMPASSES 121 
 
 flushed suddenly, and her eyelids drooped — ' the 
 rest give all — everything ; but I keep back a part. 
 It is not much — only two hundred a year — but. I 
 shall not want to keep it back much longer, not 
 another year.' 
 
 * Why do you keep this back ?' Tristram asked 
 abruptly. 
 
 He was angry with himself when he had spoken ; 
 he would have given anything to recall his words. 
 What right had he to inquire into her affairs ? 
 
 The girl did not answer his question for a 
 moment. She stood lookmg out into the bare 
 court, with the bit of blue sky above it. He was 
 not sure if she was looking at the unlovely roofs 
 and chimneys of those wretched hovels, or at the 
 blue sky above, where the sun was shming, and 
 where a white pigeon was strammg across the blue. 
 
 'You may well ask,' she said, with a little break 
 in her voice, and her lip quivering. ' Having given 
 up all, was it worth while to hold back this ? It 
 was like keepmg back the price of the land. Oh,
 
 122 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 you must know why I am keeping it back — you 
 have a right to know, you who have given up so 
 mjich !' 
 
 ' I had no right to ask you. I have no right to 
 pry into your secrets,' he said humbly, in a shame- 
 faced way, and blushing under his sallow, white 
 skin like a girl. 
 
 ' Oh yes, you have ! Are we not, each one of us, 
 our brother's keeper? You have a right to know 
 why I have held back a portion of the price of the 
 field. Everybody here knows. I was engaged to 
 be married before I came here. I could not marry 
 anyone who could not feel as I feel. One does not 
 meet with people every day who have the same 
 call, who see and hear and feel alike— and — and I 
 had to go out of my way to find such a one. He 
 was not in my own station ; he was a schoolmaster 
 — the schoolmaster of our parish. What did it 
 matter ? He saw with my eyes, and he was eager 
 to help, and he was called — distinctly called. He 
 was ready to dedicate himself heart and soul to
 
 THE GOAT AND COMPASSES 123 
 
 the work — and — and in order to fit him for it the 
 better, I sent him to college. He has been at 
 Oxford over two years ; he will be ordamed next 
 year. It was for him, to fit him for this great work, 
 I kept back a part of the price of the land.' 
 
 She spoke hurriedly, with her lips tremblmg and 
 her voice breaking, and when she had ended she 
 put her hand over her heart, and the colour dropped 
 out of her face as suddenly as it had come m. 
 
 * I think you have done a noble thing,' Tristram 
 said huskily. He had heard of women doing this 
 sort of thing for their lovers before, but he had 
 never met with a woman who had done it. He 
 could hardly believe that this little bit of a girl, 
 with her round blue eyes, and her flufi'y hair, and 
 that ridiculous reedy voice like a child's, should 
 have done this noble thing. 
 
 ' Oh no ! it is not at all noble ; it was, perhaps, 
 a selfish thing to do. Other men would have done 
 the work, would have thrown themselves into it, 
 and done it quite as well, without bemg ordained.
 
 124 ^^V THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 Why, even you ' — she paused and looked at Tristram 
 as if she had not discovered it until now — ' you are 
 not ordained ' 
 
 ' No,' he said humbly, ' I am only a layman.' 
 
 ' And why not ?' she went on, speaking hurriedly 
 in her eager way — 'why not? the consecration is 
 the same. But for Percival it would be different. 
 He was one of the people, and they would not have 
 listened to him without — without some distinction, 
 some authority. He would have more influence if 
 he were in the Church, an ordained priest. Oh, I 
 hope I have not been doing wrong !' 
 
 'I am sure you are doing right,' Tristram said, 
 smiling at her doubts. ' You have done it from the 
 best motives ' — he was going to say the highest, 
 but he corrected himself, and said ' best ' ; it is so 
 difficult to gauge motives by an exact and arbitrary 
 standard. 
 
 * I could not bear him to labour at a disadvantage,' 
 she said, with her voice shaking just perceptibly. 
 ' I have mapped out his life for him — there is so
 
 THE GOAT AND COMPASSES 125 
 
 much waiting for him to do !' And she lifted up 
 her eyes to the unlovely roofs, and the grimy 
 windows, and the chimney-pots. 
 
 There was no opaline fire in them now, Tristram 
 noticed, and her eyelashes were wet. 
 
 He was quite sorry for her. To wait three years 
 for a champion, and to educate him and equip him 
 for the work — the work she had mapped out for 
 him — and perhaps after all, after three years' 
 waiting, to be disappointed ! He could not help 
 being sorry for her. 
 
 * You must let me be your champion meanwhile,' 
 he said. * There is plenty of work for all.' 
 
 *0h yes,' she said, commg back to the question 
 ihat had brought him there, and lookmg no longer 
 up at the dull roofs and the far-off sky, ' there is 
 plenty of work for all. It cannot wait a single day. 
 There is a battle which has no end, to be fought 
 every day with a fierce, devourmg dragon lurking 
 at every street corner. Oh, you don't know what a 
 cruel, remorseless dragon it is ! It has no pity : it
 
 125 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 devours men, women, children. There is not a 
 house here, in all these courts and alleys, that is 
 not filled with its victims. There are two men in 
 one court down with delirium tremens; there is a 
 woman who has been half murdered by a drunken 
 husband ; there are hundreds of little children who 
 are dying daily of neglect and starvation; homes 
 are broken up every week, and whole families 
 turned adrift, because the father — alas ! sometimes 
 the mother — has " broken out," and spent the last 
 penny in the public-house. Go up these courts 
 and alleys of a night — Saturday nights, when the 
 men get their wages, and the women are paid for 
 their work — and see the crowds pouring into the 
 open doors. Listen to the language, and hear the 
 screams of the women and the cries of the children ! 
 Oh, it is pitiful!' 
 
 Tristram covered his face with his hands. He 
 was thinking of those barrels in his father's cellars. 
 The picture was too dreadful ! 
 
 ' What can I do ?' he said presently. His face
 
 THE GOAT AND COMPASSES 127 
 
 was very pale, and there were beads of perspiration 
 on his forehead. 
 
 ' Do ? You can stand outside that place where I 
 met you, beneath that signboard — which is an 
 ensign of your shame and your victory — and warn 
 all those poor things who are pressing on to their 
 ruin.' 
 
 ' Speak outside that place ?' he faltered, turning 
 quite a shade paler — not paler, but grayer. 
 
 Did he lack the courage of his convictions, after 
 all ? Was he afraid of commg out and taking a 
 stand — a decided stand ? The little Sister saw his 
 face grow suddenly gray, and she marked the 
 hesitation in his voice. He was not like her 
 Champion — the man who was bemg tramed to do 
 her bidding, whose life she had mapped out ; he 
 would be ready to stand up at any moment, when- 
 ever she bade him, in the street, on the housetop — 
 he would not hesitate a moment. 
 
 *Why not?' she said, with a little inflexion of 
 impatience in her reedy voice — impatience or scorn.
 
 128 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 'Women have gone down on their knees outside 
 these places, and prayed aloud; they have lifted 
 up their voices in the streets, and prayed and wept. 
 Their warnings and their intercession have not 
 been in vain. What a woman has done you would 
 not ' 
 
 He did not let her finish the sentence. 
 
 ' I will speak there to-night,' he said ; * I am but 
 a poor speaker ; I have never spoken in the street 
 before. Whatever is given me to say, I will say. 
 I cannot say anything of myself.'
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 SISTER WINIYEE. 
 ' Oil, shut me round ^^ith narrowing nunnery walls.' 
 
 The oracle had spoken. 
 
 Tristram had been waiting all this time for a 
 message, and it had come to him m the street. It 
 had been spoken by a woman. There was no 
 mistaking it. It came to him clear, sharp, and 
 incisive. If he wanted to reach the people he must 
 go among them, he must not wait for them to come 
 to him. If he had a message to deliver to them he 
 must go where they congregate. 
 
 He must take his stand at the street corners ; he 
 must cry aloud m the street. 
 
 He cried aloud that very night. There is 
 
 VOL. I. 9
 
 I30 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 nothing like doing things at once — good things, 
 things that will help other people. There may 
 never be another chance of reaching them, certainly 
 not of reaching the same people. The stream is 
 always flowing on ; a day, an hour hence, they will 
 have drifted out of reach — perhaps out of all reach. 
 
 It was not exactly a pleasant place to speak in, 
 that street corner. It was a very public and 
 exposed place, the junction of three streets, and it 
 was surrounded by courts and alleys. It was the 
 centre of a swarming hive of human life. 
 
 Tristram could not make his voice heard very far 
 w^hen he took up his stand beneath the lamp-post, 
 with that signboard of his father's brewery just 
 over his head by way of introduction. He was not 
 addressing anyone in particular when he began, 
 but by-and-by a crowd collected, and then his 
 words came freer. Before he had stood there a 
 quarter of an hour there was quite a concourse of 
 people outside that swinging door. It did not 
 swing quite so often, for the people stopped to
 
 SISTER WINIVER 131 
 
 listen ; the door was just handy — the}' could go in 
 at any time, and they paused outside and listened. 
 
 People will generally listen if one speaks aloud 
 at a street corner. They may not have much 
 interest m what is bemg said, but they will stop 
 and listen. Somethmg arrests their feet, and they 
 refuse to move on. 
 
 The people who listened to Tristram were not 
 interested very much in what he was saymg ; they 
 had heard it before, it was not at all new to them. 
 He was pointmg out the broad way and the narrow 
 way, the easy way and the rough way. They had 
 had that choice presented to them before, and 
 most of them standing there had already made 
 their choice. 
 
 There were some yomig boys and lads jeering 
 at him m the crowd — ' Tell us somethmg new, 
 guv'ner,' they were saymg ; and a costermonger, 
 with some vegetables on his barrow, kept drowning 
 his words with his stentorian crieSj ' Summer cab- 
 bages !' He had not a great many cabbages left on
 
 132 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 his barrow ; he need not have been m such a hurry 
 to sell them. Someone reminded him of this. It 
 was the little Sister, who stood near in the crowd, 
 but Tristram did not see her. He did not see any- 
 one or anything but that signboard overhead, and 
 a crowd of faces piled upon each other, swimming 
 before his eyes like faces in a moving glass, and he 
 remembered only that for all these he should have 
 to give account. 
 
 The little Sister said something to the man with 
 the barrow, and a whisper passed through the 
 crowd. And then a very strange thing happened. 
 Everybody in the crowd, with that whisper going 
 round, looked up at the signboard over the speaker's 
 head, the handsome board with the scarlet letters : 
 ' Lushington's Entire.' And the jeering voices 
 were hushed in a moment ; 3^ou could have heard 
 a pin drop. 
 
 ' Would you please to step on the barrer, guv'ner, 
 I'll keep it steady,' the costermonger said, taking off 
 his greasy cap like a gentleman.
 
 SISTER WINIVER 133 
 
 Tristram did not -^ant a second invitation. He 
 mounted the barrow among the cabbages, and from 
 that point of vantage addressed the crowd. 
 
 It was while he was addressing the crowd from 
 the costermonger's barrow that a carriage drove by. 
 At least, it did not drive by ; it drew up suddenly 
 for a few mmutes, and a lady opened the wmdow 
 and looked out. The wmdows were partly drawn 
 up, and the blmds were down though it was a 
 sultry July night. The only occupant of the 
 carriage was a lady, thickly veiled, who drew up 
 her veil for a moment to look at the strange sight. 
 A gentleman addressing a crowd outside a public- 
 house, from a costermonger's barrow ! 
 
 It was too brief a view of the face m the carriage 
 for anyone standmg by to have recognised it, and it 
 was a strikingly beautiful face. 
 
 She only paused a mmute listenmg to Tristram's 
 words. It was astonishing how far his voice could 
 be heard now. It could only be heard a few yards 
 off when he began to speak ; it could be heard now
 
 134 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 distinctly at the edge of the crowd. The lady pulled 
 up the window sharply, and told the coachman to 
 drive on. 
 
 It was quite a gay night for the East End. A 
 most unusual thing happened. No sooner had the 
 first carriage driven away than another drove by 
 and stopped at the edge of the crowd. At least, it 
 was a hansom this time, and the gentleman inside 
 put out his head, as the lady had done, and looked 
 inquiringly at the man on the barrow. Unlike the 
 lady, his face was not veiled. It was a young, 
 handsome, manly face ; it would have been a pity 
 to cover it up. 
 
 The face matched the figure : a young, strong, 
 manly figure, full of grace and strength, beautifully 
 endowed by nature, and quite faultlessly dressed — 
 an unusual figure to meet on a summer night in 
 that London slum. 
 
 The young man waited at the edge of the crowd 
 to listen for a longer time than the lady had waited, 
 and his handsome face flushed scarlet as he listened.
 
 SISTER WINIVER 135 
 
 and his brow clouded. Once, quite involuntarily, 
 the speaker turned round, and saw him leanmg out 
 of the hansom, and their eyes met. He pulled the 
 check- string, and shouted to the driver to drive on ; 
 but it was too late. Tristram had seen and recog- 
 nised him. It was his brother Cecil. 
 
 The burnmg words were frozen on the speaker's 
 lips ; the eager, hurried warnmgs and invitations 
 that were pouring out m a stream of impassioned 
 eloquence the moment before stuck m his throat. 
 He could not pick up the thread he had lost. The 
 sight of his brother's face had put it all out of his 
 mind. He could only stammer, and mop his 
 damp forehead, and his faltering lips, and get down 
 from among the. cabbages in a most undignified 
 manner. 
 
 When the little Sister got back to the *home,' 
 the lady who had stopped the cab to listen was 
 there before her. 
 
 'You here!' she said by way of greeting, in a 
 tone of surprise.
 
 136 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 It was not a very warm greeting. There was 
 more of surprise than welcome in the little Sister's 
 voice. 
 
 'Yes,' said the other meekly; * I've come again. 
 I hope you won't send me away.' 
 
 * We never send anyone away,' the Sister said a 
 little sharply, ' not if they are in earnest.' 
 
 ' I am in earnest this time, dear. I have come 
 to stay, if you will have me.' 
 
 The little Sister looked at her with a certain 
 amount of doubt in her keen blue eyes. It seemed 
 quite unworthy to doubt the sincerity of the beau- 
 tiful stranger — unworthy and unlike the little 
 Sister. 
 
 'You can make another trial if you like,' she 
 said ; but she didn't say it very graciously. 
 
 'Dear little Sister,' the stranger said, flinging 
 herself down in a heap on the floor at the girl's 
 knee, ' I'm really in earnest now. I will never, 
 never go away if you will keep me here ! I have 
 quite made up my mind now. Something has hap-
 
 SISTER WINIVER 137 
 
 pened since I was here last that has altered every- 
 thing. I cannot go back if "I would !' 
 
 She was talkmg wildly, with her hot face buried 
 in the Sister's lap, and her dark hair falling about 
 her. It was such beautiful hair, and it fell over 
 her shoulders in a shower, and her rich dress lay 
 in great shining folds on the floor. 
 
 * You are welcome to make another trial,' the 
 little Sister said coldly. ' You know best whether 
 you are prepared to put aside the pleasures of the 
 world — your world — and give up your life to thank- 
 less, uncongenial labour. Unless you can do it 
 from the right motive — there is only one motive 
 that will enable you to do it — it is better not to 
 attempt it at all.' 
 
 The stranger looked up with a wild light in her 
 beautiful dark eyes, and her hot cheeks were 
 crimson, and her lips were tremulous. 
 
 *If I could tell you all,' she said passionately, 
 ' you would not doubt me. He has made it im- 
 possible for me to go back. If you will give me
 
 138 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 shelter here, I will do the meanest work ; I will toil 
 day and night. You shall never have reason to 
 doubt me. You would not blame me for going 
 back if you knew all ; but it is over now, and there 
 is nothing to drag me back !' And she wrung her 
 hands as she spoke. 
 
 'You know best; you can make another trial. 
 After every false step it is harder to recover yourself.' 
 
 The woman laughed. Her laugh was wild, like 
 her eyes. 
 
 * Who should know that so well as I ?' she said 
 bitterly. 
 
 'You will find your dress in your old room,' the 
 Sister said coldly. * There is plenty for you to do 
 here ; you can begin at once. Sister Katherine 
 has been up three nights with a man in delirium 
 tremens. He has nearly killed his wife ; they are 
 both in the same room. He will kill himself if he 
 is not watched — if he is left alone a single minute. 
 Sister Katherine is worn out; you can take her 
 place if you like.'
 
 SISTER WIXIVER I39 
 
 *I will go at once,' the woman said meekly. 
 
 She came down agam presently in her nnrsa's 
 dress, with all her beautiful black hah: hidden away 
 beneath a cap, and the lines of her stately figure 
 concealed under an ill-fitting, hideous serge gown. 
 She could not hide the scarlet of her cheeks or the 
 brightness of her eyes, and she had forgotten to 
 take the rings off her fingers. 
 
 'I am ready,' she said meekly, folding her white 
 hands with the jewels gleaming upon them over her 
 coarse gown. 
 
 *You cannot go m these,' the little Sister said, 
 pointing to the rings. 
 
 She drew them off and laid them on the table in 
 a little glittering heap ; but there was one that 
 would not come off, a plam gold chclet. The 
 Sister had not noticed it beneath those heavy 
 jewelled rings till now. 
 
 ' Oh, I did not know you were married,' she said 
 softly. 
 
 ' I have been twice married,' the woman said
 
 I40 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 quickly; and she drew on her cotton gloves with 
 fioj-ce impatience ; but she did not volunteer any 
 further information. 
 
 * Perhaps you are tired, Winiver,' the Sister said, 
 speaking more gently than she had yet done. ' It 
 will be a trying night for whoever sits up with the 
 wretched man ; and he may die before morning. 
 Do you think you are fit for it ?' 
 
 * Fit for it ? I could stay up for a week without 
 getting tired. I should not mind his raving, and 
 if the worst came, I would do what I could. If you 
 want to keep me here, make me useful ; send me 
 where no one else will go. You know that I will 
 do my best. If I can be useful to poor sick 
 people, it will keep me from thinking about 
 myself.' 
 
 The two Sisters went out together. They were 
 silent until they reached the corner where Tristram 
 had been speaking, when Sister Winiver, looking 
 round, seemed to remember something. 
 
 ' Who was that man who was speaking to the
 
 SISTER WINIVER 14T 
 
 crowd ?' she asked suddenly. ' I heard hira speak- 
 mg as I 'passed.' 
 
 'It is Tristram Lushmgton, the young brewer, 
 who has given up a milHon of money,' the Sister 
 answered. She thought everybody had heard of 
 him. 
 
 *Lushington— Tristram Lushington ? Is he a 
 son of Lady Cornelia, do you know ? and has he a 
 sister, a lovely young sister, who has just been 
 presented, and who is the richest heiress in 
 London ?' 
 
 She asked the question eagerly, and she stopped 
 in the middle of the court they were passmg through 
 for the Sister's answer. 
 
 'I know nothmg about the world,' the little 
 Sister said with some asperity. ' I have given it 
 up, with the things that belong to it. I only know 
 that Tristram Lushington has been snatched as a 
 brand from the burnmg, and that God has given 
 him a great ^^-ork to do — and — and I think he will 
 do it.'
 
 CHAPTEE XI. 
 
 * THE VOICE OF THE WEEPER.' 
 
 ' Peace ; come away : the song of woe 
 Is, after all, an earthly song.' 
 
 Mary Gascoigne was very unhappy. She was quite 
 sure she had done right, but she was miserable, 
 notwithstanding. She would lock herself in her 
 room and pull out those old letters she had received 
 from Tristram in the old days, which seemed so far 
 away now, and a mist would come before her eyes so 
 that she could not read a single word, and her hot, 
 foolish tears would fall upon the dear pages and 
 blur the well-remembered lines. She knew them 
 by heart, she had no need to read them ; but she 
 was only a woman, and it comforted her to take 
 them out of their hiding-place and weep over them.
 
 'THE VOICE OF THE WEEPER' 143 
 
 Life is so long ; time is so slow to the young ; 
 the days succeeded each other with such weary 
 monotony, but they brought no forgettmg, no happy 
 oblivion. Mary Gascoigne had trusted to time to 
 heal the wound, and at the end of a month, a 
 month that seemed a year, it was as raw and as 
 new as ever. She had never regretted her decision 
 for an hour all through this time — she was quite 
 sure she had done right— but she was miserable 
 and lonely, and, m spite of herself, she hungered 
 for a life more complete than this sad, dreadful, 
 monotonous existence. 
 
 Sometimes she looked in the glass and wondered 
 that her trouble had left no deeper mark on the 
 beautiful face that smiled sadly back at her. She 
 did not see very deep, or she could not read her 
 own face aright ; it is so hard to read the familiar 
 face that one looks at in the glass with so little love 
 or mterest, that one goes away and forgets entirely 
 what manner of face it was. 
 
 Other people lookmg at Mary would have noticed
 
 f 
 144 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 that her face, always serious, had a deeper earnest- 
 ness in it now, and that there was no ready smile 
 on her lips. The first impress of a great grief on 
 the countenance is not the stamping and puckering 
 with wrinkles — they come in due course ; it is the 
 altered smile. It does not come so readily as of 
 old ; it is not always lurking at the corners of the 
 lips ; it has to be summoned, and it comes tardily. 
 
 Mary smiled now when she greeted her mother, 
 and strove to dispel the gloom that was settling 
 down upon her ; it was not her old smile, but it 
 suited her ladyship's case better. 
 
 Lady Bredwardine had not taken her trouble 
 lightly ; she had given herself up to her grief, and 
 she was sinking beneath the intolerable weight of 
 it. There is a great deal in temperament, and her 
 ladyship's was naturally a gloomy temperament, 
 and there was no rebound in it. Her griefs had 
 been exceptional griefs, and they had come upon 
 her with overwhelming suddenness. The wonder 
 was that they had not crushed her beneath them.
 
 ' THE VOICE OF THE WEEPER' 145 
 
 They had been crushing her slowly ever since they 
 had fallen. They had crushed all interest in life 
 out of her. She had gone on living, but she took 
 no interest in the things about her. The pleasures, 
 the occupations, the anxieties, the longings of life 
 were things that were strange to her. She could 
 not understand how anyone could be affected by 
 them. At fifty she was a shrivelled, selfish, worn- 
 out old woman, who made herself and everybody 
 about her miserable. She was always worrying 
 and wearying, and weeping and moaning. She 
 did not know when she wept or moaned. 
 
 She shut herself up from the world and its 
 sympathy ; since the death of her son she had seen 
 no one but the Eector of the place. She had lived 
 alone in this great house, seeing no one but Mary 
 — Mary and her lover; she already looked upon 
 Tristram as a son. He was not excluded with the 
 rest of the world when the blow fell that bereft her 
 of her only son. Tristram would be her son 
 by-and-by, though he would never take the place 
 
 VOL. I. 10
 
 146 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 of the one that was so rudely snatched away from 
 her. She would have to leave Mary with him, and 
 he would stand in her boy's place — in her husband's 
 place — and sit in his seat, and keep up the glories 
 of the old house. By-and-by, perhaps, his children 
 — Mary's children — with the Gascoigne blood in 
 them, would bring back something of the joy and 
 gladness, the tender happiness, of the old days ; but 
 she would not be there to see it; she would be in 
 another mansion, elsewhere. 
 
 When Tristram failed her, and went off on that 
 quixotic mission. Lady Bredwardine shrank more 
 into herself than ever, and the cloud of gloom that 
 hung about her deepened. All her plans for Mary's 
 future were shattered, and she was too worn-out 
 and weary of life to make fresh ones. It was like 
 another blow. She could only walk about as she 
 used to do in the first days of her bereavement, and 
 moan and wring her hands. 
 
 It was a sad life for a girl like Mary, shut up in 
 this great, silent, gloomy house, listening to the
 
 'THE VOICE OF THE WEEPER' 147 
 
 moans and complaints of a sorrowful, selfish old 
 woman. The silence and sadness of the house, and 
 the dreary grandeur of the big shut-up state-rooms, 
 oppressed Mary more at this time than it had ever 
 done before within her remembrance. She used to 
 long, as she had never longed before, for a simpler 
 and more busy life. She wanted to do something for 
 other people ; she wanted to be of use in the world, 
 of use like — like her lover. The parish, with its 
 small charities and little goody clubs, no longer 
 satisfied her. She yearned for a larger field. She 
 said something of this to the Eector one day when 
 he called to see Lady Bredwardine — he often called 
 now — and he looked grave, and reminded her of her 
 duty to her mother. 
 
 ' Her ladyship wants all your care,' he said 
 gravely ; ' she is more shaken than I have ever 
 seen her — more shaken and weaker. This dis- 
 appointment ' — he called Tristram's defection ' a 
 disappointment' — 'has tried her more than any- 
 thing I can remember, except, indeed, her great
 
 148 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 loss; it is the last straw. I fear she will never 
 rally from it. I think Lady Bredwardine should 
 see her medical adviser.' 
 
 Mary looked at her mother with new eyes after 
 this interview — new eyes sharpened by fear. She 
 was not looking paler than her wont, but she' was 
 certainly thinner, she remarked. One cannot go on 
 living mechanically, supporting the functions of 
 life on the appetite of a bird, without losing flesh 
 and wearing away the material elements of this 
 mortal coil. Mary was astonished that she had not 
 observed before this change in her mother. It 
 quite frightened her to see how transparent her 
 hands were, and how her figure had shrunk and 
 her cheeks had fallen in. 
 
 On the pretence of some ailment of her own, 
 Mary managed to get Lady Bredwardine to see her 
 medical adviser a few days after the Kector's warn- 
 ing. She had not sent for him a minute too soon. 
 
 The doctor was closeted a long time with her 
 ladyship, and then he saw Mary. Lady Bredwardine
 
 ' THE VOICE OF THE WEEPER' 149 
 
 had asked him some strange questions. People do 
 sometimes ask then- doctors strange questions, but 
 they cannot always bear to have them answered 
 truthfully. A merciful prevarication is sometimes, 
 oftentimes, wiser and kinder than a direct answer. 
 
 Lady Bredwardine had asked her medical coun- 
 sellor how long she had to live. He had looked at 
 her with a grave pity in his kmd eyes, but he had 
 answered her question with professional ambiguity. 
 
 ' That, to a great extent, depends upon yourself,' 
 he had said. ' There is no reason why your lady- 
 ship should not live as long as — well, not exactly 
 Methuselah — to the limit assigned to ordinary 
 human lives. With more attention to diet, and 
 care — extreme care — m avoiding shocks to the 
 system, you will do very well ; there is really no 
 cause for anxiety — but you must be careful.' 
 
 With this warnmg the doctor took his leave. 
 Before he went away he saw Mary. He repeated in 
 substance what he had said to her ladyship ; but he 
 warned her not to cross her mother or allow her to
 
 150 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 be crossed or excited in any way, and to guard her 
 from shocks. Any sudden shock, or excitement, or 
 opposition might be attended with very grave results. 
 
 Mary did not ask what the results he feared were, 
 but she watched him drive away in his carriage, 
 down the long avenue beneath the beeches, with a 
 strange sinking at her heart. 
 
 The next day Lady Bredwardine made a com- 
 munication to her. It did not stir her pulses the 
 least, but it set her a-thinking. She informed her, 
 in the solemn, formal way in which she had accus- 
 tomed herself to speak of quite every-day things, 
 that she had written to Cecil ; she had asked him 
 to come down. 
 
 Mary puzzled all day over that piece of news 
 her ladyship had told her. She could not for the 
 life of her think why she had sent for Cecil. She 
 knew her mother's fondness for Lady Cornelia's 
 children ; they had been brought up with her own, 
 and had been near neighbours all their lives ; but 
 this did not account for her sending for Cecil. She
 
 ' THE VOICE OF THE WEEPER' 151 
 
 had not seen him, Mary remembered, since 
 Howard's death ; she had not seen anyone, not 
 even Lady CorneHa, only Tristram and Dene, but 
 she looked upon them as her own children. The 
 more she thought about it, the more Mary was 
 puzzled to understand why her ladyship had sent 
 for Cecil. 
 
 She found out the reason the next day. 
 
 Lady Bredwardme's summons — it was not an 
 invitation, it was a summons — reached Cecil a few 
 days after his encounter with his brother outside 
 the public-house. 
 
 The dreadful pictui'e had never been out of his 
 eyes since that unhappy night. La an evil hour he 
 had yielded to Dene's entreaties to look after Tris- 
 tram, and he had hned a hansom — he would not 
 go in the paternal carriage — and driven across 
 London from the West to the East to look him up. 
 
 * As far as the East is from the West ' is the 
 greatest distance the human mind can grasp, and 
 it comforts some of us to remember that it is so
 
 152 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 far. From the West of London, with its brightness 
 and luxury, to the East, with its dulness and 
 poverty, is only an hour's drive; we have not to 
 go far to find our sins — our sins and shortcomings, 
 that we had set so far away from us — alive and in 
 rags, crying out to us as we pass ! 
 
 Cecil certainly heard a voice crying to him, as he 
 drove past in a hansom on that miserable night — a 
 familiar voice that he had known and honoured all 
 his life. 
 
 It was crying out to him, and to all who stood 
 near, 'to touch not the accursed thing!' He had 
 not heard much, but he had heard those words, 
 and he had met the infinite appeal and entreaty in 
 his brother's eyes, and he had shouted to the driver 
 to * drive on.' 
 
 He was trembling all over with mortification and 
 shame when he reached home. He had not said a 
 word to Sir Tristram or her ladyship when he had got 
 home ; he would not have bowed his mother's proud 
 head for the world with that humiliating story.
 
 'THE VOICE OF THE WEEPER' 153 
 
 He went straight to his room, and it was there that 
 Dene found him, looking white and micomfortable. 
 
 She got the story from him, whether he would or 
 not. She heard all about that costermonger's 
 barrow, and the cabbages, and the disorderly mob, 
 and the young woman in a Sister's dress keeping 
 order. 
 
 Her face flushed from white to red while she 
 heard it, and paled from red to white. She did 
 not know whether she was sad or glad. It was 
 altogether a new sensation. The situation was 
 new ; it requh-ed a new set of sentiments to con- 
 template it. 
 
 ' I did not know that Trim had the com'age,' she 
 said, in an awe-stricken voice. 'We used to call 
 him a coward, because he cried at pain.' 
 
 ' He's not a coward,' Cecil said gloomily. ' If he 
 does these things now, I don't know where he'll 
 stop ' 
 
 He had a vision of Tristram leadmg a new Salva- 
 tion Army across London, to the exhilarating strains
 
 154 JN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 of a drum-and-fife band. He paused and shud- 
 dered. 
 
 ' You will not tell anyone, Dene,' he said huskily. 
 ' It would be all over the clubs in a day. I should 
 have to go abroad. I shouldn't be able to stand it!' 
 
 There were real tears in his eyes as he spoke. 
 He was so dreadfully afraid of public opinion. 
 
 * Of course I shan't tell anyone !' Dene said 
 shortly. She had no patience with him. 
 
 ' I wouldn't have Southernhay hear of it for the 
 world !' Cecil groaned. 
 
 'I don't care a bit if the Duke hears of it!' 
 Dene said indignantly, with a rising colour. ' He 
 knows all about Tristram ; everybody knows about 
 Tristram, and what a noble thing he has done ! If 
 the Duke is ashamed of the connection, I'm sure 
 he's quite welcome to take his title elsewhere ! You 
 don't think I'm such a mean thing as to care about 
 being a Duchess, Ciss? I would rather marry a 
 man who had done a noble thing like Tristram than 
 marry a duke. There's something bigger in the
 
 ' THE VOICE OF THE WEEPER' 155 
 
 world than titles and a long line of dead-and-gone 
 ancestors. Look what a lot poor Lady Bredwardine 
 has on her walls, and how unhappy she is ! She 
 would be quite as well off without them. After all, 
 Ciss, there's only one kind of nobility — and Trim 
 has come as near it as any man — the nobility of an 
 unselfish life : 
 
 ' " Kind hearts are more than coronets, 
 And simple faith than Norman blood." ' 
 
 ' You'd better tell the Duke that when he calls to- 
 morrow,' Cecil said, with somethmg very like a 
 sneer. ' He's a lively illustration of the text !'
 
 CHAPTEE XII. 
 
 A WHISPER ACROSS THE GRASS. 
 
 * Behold, ye speak an idle thing ; 
 Ye never knew the sacred dust.' 
 
 The next day Cecil received Lady Bredwardine's 
 invitation. He did not hurry himself to accept it. 
 He had an idea that she wanted to talk to him 
 about his brother, and his engagement to Mary. 
 He hadn't much interest in other people's love 
 affairs, and he wrote back to her ladyship to say he 
 had a pressing engagement for the next day, but he 
 would come down the day following. 
 
 It was rather a bore being summoned away from 
 town just at the close of the season, when there 
 were two or three good things coming off, to listen 
 to the complaints of an old woman.
 
 A WHISPER ACROSS THE GRASS 157 
 
 Lady Bredwardine saw Cecil alone ; Mary was 
 nowhere visible. He thought he had never seen the 
 old place look so fine as it did to-day, as he drove 
 up the wide avenue between the beeches, and caught 
 delightful views of the red brick building, with its 
 deeply-recessed windows, and quaint turrets and 
 gables, and the beautiful gate-tower, sculptured with 
 the emblazonments of the Gascoignes. 
 
 It was all so mellow with age, and had an old- 
 world stateliness about it, as if it had been the 
 dwelling-place of lords and ladies for generations ; 
 there was not a suspicion of trade about it. Money 
 could not buy this kind of thing, Cecil told him- 
 self, as he drove up the avenue ; whoever had 
 built this place hadn't made his money out of beer. 
 After all, there was something in the ancienne 
 noblesse. 
 
 Perhaps his mind had been dwelling on this sub- 
 ject during the journey. Dene was going to make 
 a magnificent alliance ; it would be her own fault 
 if she did not. A peer of the realm, with a garter
 
 158 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 and strawberry-leaves, no less a personage than the 
 Duke of Southernhay, had requested permission of 
 Sir Tristram to address his daughter. He had not 
 gone to Dene first ; he had gone to her father. 
 There were tales about the Duke — what bachelor 
 Duke has reached thirty-five without tales, sad tales, 
 being whispered about him ? Perhaps Sir Tristram 
 had not heard the tales, or he had remembered his 
 own youth, and given the Duke credit for having 
 sown his wild oats. At any rate, he gave him the 
 permission that he sought. 
 
 It was certainly the beer that had brought this 
 about. If Dene had not been the richest heiress of 
 the season, so distinguished a nobleman would not 
 have laid his strawberry-leaves at her feet. She 
 had Tristram to thank for this — Tristram and his 
 ridiculous quixotism. 
 
 Cecil was closeted with Lady Bredwardine nearly 
 an hour, and when he came out and drove back 
 down the avenue he looked flushed and nervous. 
 Something her ladyship had said to him made him
 
 A WHISPER ACROSS THE GRASS 159 
 
 look at the place with new interest, as he drove 
 back. He even drew up at one part of the avenue 
 where a good view of the house could be obtained, 
 and looked back. He could see the park from here, 
 with the deer sheltering beneath the trees, and the 
 terraced gardens, which were just now m their 
 richest summer bloom. It was a sight to touch the 
 heart of a jaded Londoner. He couldn't think how 
 Tristram could have given it all up — Bredwardine 
 and Mary ! 
 
 After all, this was only the casket, and Mary the 
 jewel it enclosed — a jewel quite worthy of the 
 setting. 
 
 Mary saw Cecil drive away ; she had not seen 
 him come ; she had been buried in a book, and she 
 had not looked up from it when she heard the 
 sound of carriage-wheels in the gravelled court 
 below. Most young women would have been glad 
 of an excuse to look up from the book that Mary 
 was reading, if they had heard the sound of car- 
 riage-wheels in the court beneath. They would
 
 i6o IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 have been glad of an excuse to yawn and look up. 
 It was not a yellow-back. There were no yellow- 
 backs in the library at Bredwardine. There' were 
 nothing but dingy, parchment - covered, unattrac- 
 tive old books on the many, many shelves that lined 
 the long gloomy room from floor to ceiling. No- 
 body knew who had collected this library of old 
 books ; it had grown. It had not been added to for 
 generations. Frivolous modern books of literature, 
 and science, and the questions of the day were 
 excluded from those sacred shelves, and found a 
 more congenial resting-place elsewhere. 
 
 A change had come over Mary Gascoigne's read- 
 ing since her lover had shocked everybody by his 
 quixotism. She had sought among the old books 
 on the shelves for a parallel — it was no use looking 
 for it in modern books — and she found what she 
 sought among the Lives of the Saints in those old 
 musty, parchment- covered tomes that hadn't been 
 opened for a century. She shut herself up in the 
 library, day after day, with her books, and read
 
 A WHISPER ACROSS THE GRASS i6i 
 
 those wonderful old heroic stories that are ever 
 new. She was never th'ed of reading them. She 
 found a good many parallels m the early years of 
 the Church. The Great Eenunciation was quite a 
 common thing in those old early days ; it grew 
 rarer and rarer as the years wore on. 
 
 Mary, with her mmd full of the saintly lives she 
 had been reading about, saw Cecil drive away, and 
 then she rose up with a sigh and put away her 
 book. She was crossing the gallery to go to her 
 mother's apartments, when from one of the long 
 windows she saw her ladyship crossing the park in 
 the direction of the village. 
 
 It was not often Lady Bredwardine went out 
 alone, and she had not been out for weeks. Mary 
 could not understand why she should be crossmg 
 the park at that hour of the day, and she remarked, 
 with a vague feeling of wonder, that her ladyship 
 was walkmg in an abstracted, hurried manner that 
 was unusual to her. Whom could she want to see 
 in the \T.llage ? 
 
 VOL. I. 11
 
 i62 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 Mary put on her broad sun-hat and followed her 
 mother through the park ; she did not think it was 
 safe for her to go so far alone. The path she had 
 taken led to the church, as well as to the village, 
 and when it came to the path where the roads met, 
 Lady Bredwardine turned off in the direction of the 
 church. She had reached the church before Mary 
 overtook her. 
 
 It was an old country church, like hundreds 
 of others in the West Country, with a square 
 flint tower and beautiful old Decorated windows. 
 The yard that led up to it was full of humble 
 folk who had passed their uneventful lives in the 
 village below, and been gathered together here, 
 generation after generation. The yard was full 
 of old stones, all aslant now, and covered with 
 lichen and moss, inscribed with the names of the 
 humble dead, and with touching inscriptions and 
 verses from Holy Writ, full of simple faith and 
 hope. 
 
 Lady Bredwardine hurried up the church path
 
 A WHISPER ACROSS THE GRASS 163 
 
 between the graves to the chancel door, which she 
 unlocked, and passed mto the church. 
 
 The Gascoignes had a mortuary chapel attached 
 to the church, full of old tombs and effigies of those 
 who slept beneath ; and of this chapel, which opened 
 into the chancel, Lady Bredwardine had a private 
 key. 
 
 There was a big, gloomy family pew in the 
 chapel, and above it still hung the hatchment that 
 had been put up when her husband died. The 
 Gascoignes for centuries past had been buried 
 beneath the stones of the chapel. In the great 
 vault, to which there was access by a flight of stone 
 stairs outside the chancel door, there were deposited 
 the remains of Earls of Bredwardme smce early 
 Tudor times. There was one old Earl m a mouldy 
 red velvet coffin, with a gilt coronet on the lid, who 
 had been stood up there when Queen Mary was on 
 the throne, and he was standing there still. 
 
 The old house with its ancient glories had passed 
 away, and a new mansion — that was already old —
 
 i64 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 had risen on its site, while he had been standing 
 there in the darkness and the dust. 
 
 Lady Bredwardine's late husband did not lie with 
 his kinsfolk. He was buried in the nave, outside 
 the chapel where he had worshipped so many years, 
 and an altar-tomb of white marble, with a recum- 
 bent figure, was raised above him to mark the spot. 
 It was a wonderful tomb, and the figure it bore was 
 the work of a great artist. It represented the late 
 Earl sleeping with his head on his hand, as he had 
 been found on that memorable morning when Lady 
 Bredwardine had awoke and found him dead by her 
 side ; the marble face resting on a marble pillow 
 was a life-like representation of the Earl as he was 
 found on that blue June day — the face, and the 
 figure, and the beautiful transparent hands, and 
 the white drapery falling in light folds about 
 him. 
 
 It was a noble face, nobly conceived ; a sensitive, 
 refined face, delicate as a woman's, with the light 
 of a high resolve on the marble forehead, which
 
 A WHISPER ACROSS THE GRASS 165 
 
 was shadowed with rugged masses of loose curls. 
 It was quite unlike the effigies of the old Gas- 
 coignes in the chapel, the marble earls who had 
 been sleeping for centuries on then- marble beds. 
 
 It was not a funereal monument : it was a beautiful 
 creation instinct with life and hope and immor- 
 tality. 
 
 Lady Bredwardine had to pass the monument 
 every time she entered or left the church ; she was 
 a ecustomed to stand beside it Sunday after Sunday 
 while the congregation filed out. She was so 
 jealous of other eyes looking upon it ! She waited 
 behind the rest at the head of the tomb, with her 
 head bowed, and her hands clasped, until everybody 
 had passed out. No vulgar eyes could look upon 
 him while she stood there. She wanted to shield 
 him m death from the impertinent gaze of the 
 curious and the indifferent. When she left the 
 church the figure was covered with a white shroud. 
 It was covered now, when Mary Gascoigne entered 
 the church, and her mother was standmg beside it
 
 1 66 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 — a black, drooping figure beside the white shrouded 
 monument. Something in her attitude arrested 
 Mary's footsteps as she stood within the dusky 
 chapel looking out into the nave. 
 
 While Mary waited, Lady Bredwardine drew aside 
 the cloth that covered the marble face, and she 
 heard her moan as the linen covering slipped off the 
 tomb and lay in a heap at her feet. 
 
 She was standing beside it now as she stood on 
 Sundays while the village folk left the church, only 
 that to-day she was not silent. She was talking to 
 the sleeping Earl as she would have talked to him 
 in life, in eager, hurried sentences. She was 
 telling him something, something that she had 
 done, speaking softly, quickly, with the eager 
 assurance and relief in her tones of one who had 
 carried out an injunction that had been laid upon 
 her. 
 
 ' I have done as you wished,' she said : ' I have 
 spoken to him, and he is willing. It will be the 
 best for Mary. She will be safe and cared for ; she
 
 A WHISPER ACROSS THE GRASS 167 
 
 will not be alone when I come. Go back, dearest, 
 to your happy place ! Oh, go back, go back ! There 
 is no other to be anxious for now, no one but Mary ; 
 we must leave her, we have done what we could, 
 we must trust her to God !' 
 
 Mary turned away ; it seemed like profanation to 
 stand there listening to the mourner talkina to her 
 dead. Whatever she had to say was addressed to 
 the dull ears of the sleeping figure. She put out a 
 hand in the pale gloom and touched the marble, 
 and a soft, long sigh, that seemed to draw the 
 breath out of her laden bosom, sobbed through the 
 building. 
 
 Mary hurried out of the chapel in a state of 
 agitation. She could not control her limbs trem- 
 blmg beneath her, and that long-drawn sigh follow- 
 ing her like a whisper across the grass. 
 
 What had the Countess been promismg for 
 her? 
 
 She fled softly beneath the trees through the 
 park — she would not have Lady Bredwardine know
 
 1 68 jN the face of THE WORLD 
 
 she had been watching her for the world — and the 
 sighing voice followed her footsteps back to the 
 house. 
 
 ' I have spoken to him, and he is willing.' Oh, 
 what had she ' spoken ' to Cecil ?
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 IN THE T^yILIGHT. 
 
 ' At iiight she weeps, How vain am I ! 
 How should he love a tlimg so low ?' 
 
 Maey was not left long in doubt of the purport of 
 her mother's interview with Cecil, and the nature 
 of the promise she had extracted from him. 
 
 Lady Bredwardine sent for her the same evening 
 in the June twilight, while she was pacmg up and 
 down the long many-wmdowed room, as was her 
 wont, when the sun was settmg. The sun ought to 
 have been setting now, but there was a mist of rain 
 m the sky, and the twilight had fallen early. The 
 trees of the park had veiled themselves in a mist, 
 and loomed gray and ghostly in the growmg dusk, 
 and a soft, small rain was falling.
 
 I70 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 Lady Bredwardine was slowly pacing the room 
 when Mary came in ; she did not stop, she went on 
 with her walk, but Mary noticed that her footsteps 
 lagged and faltered now and again, and that she 
 seemed to have altered and shrunk since she had 
 last seen her hurrying across the park. 
 
 She looked at her daughter with a shade of 
 anxiety on her white face, and her voice was not 
 quite steady, and Mary remarked that she pressed 
 her hand over her heart. 
 
 ' Cecil has been here,' her ladyship said presently ; 
 ' do you know why I sent for him ?' 
 ' No, mamma.' 
 
 Mary spoke truly; she had not the least idea 
 why the Countess had sent for Cecil. 
 
 ' I sent for him to ask him to take his brother's 
 
 place ' 
 
 'Tristram's place?' Mary faltered. She could 
 not understand what her mother meant, but a 
 vision had risen up before her eyes of the dim aisle, 
 and the sleeping figure on the tomb, and the words
 
 IN THE TWILIGHT 171 
 
 were still ringing in her ears : ' It will be best for 
 Mary.' 
 
 What could this have to do with her lover ? 
 
 *I cannot always be with you,' the Countess 
 went on, not heeding Mary's interruption ; ' m the 
 nature of things, I — I must go away some day. I 
 may be called away at any time — life is uncertain 
 — and I could not go away and leave you here 
 unprotected.' 
 
 *Dear mamma,' Mary cried, her tears fallmg as 
 she spoke, ' why need we talk about this now ?' 
 
 * It must be talked about some time,' her ladyship 
 said almost severely ; ' and there is no time like 
 the present. We must look it m the face, Mary. 
 When — when I go away — I may go suddenly, like 
 — like the others — you will be here alone.' She 
 looked wistfully at the girl standing by the wmdow, 
 watching the rain and the mist blotting and blurring 
 all the familiar landscape. ' There will be nothing 
 left, when I am gone, to keep this place up. It 
 would have been different if Tristram had not done
 
 172 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 this cruel thing — this cruel, selfish, inconsiderate 
 thing!' 
 
 She wrung her hands as she spoke, and moaned. 
 ' Oh,' she cried in an agitated voice, * he has left 
 me no alternative ! I could not go and leave you 
 here, Mary ! There is no time for other plans ; I 
 have done my best — I have done what he would 
 wish, your father in heaven — I have asked Cecil to 
 take his brother's place ' 
 
 Mary gave a startled cry. 
 
 * Oh, mamma, not that — not that !' 
 
 * Hush ! There is nothing else. I have done it 
 for the best. It was your father' s ivish.' 
 
 Mary listened with a face growing ashy pale, and 
 her beautiful eyes seemed to flicker, and her lips 
 were not steady enough to speak. 
 
 She understood it all now. 
 
 'You— have — asked— Cecil ?' was all she could 
 gasp. 
 
 The humiliation of that thought overpowered 
 her ; she had to cling to the window for support.
 
 I\ THE TWILIGHT 173 
 
 'I have asked Cecil. Who else should I ask? 
 You have known hhn all your life. He is one of 
 ourselves — he is no stranger. He will have the 
 money his brother has thrown away. He will keep 
 up the place, as the Gascoignes have always kept 
 it up ; and perhaps some day, when he has 
 children, a son of his — of yours — will take the old 
 name, and the title will come back. There is no 
 one but you, Mary, if the Earl is childless.' 
 
 Mary did not know how she heard her speak, 
 she was so stmmed and transfixed with this 
 dreadful news ; she could only wonder at herself 
 with a woful, agonized amaze. Oh, the shame 
 and the pity of it ! 
 
 * "Why was I not asked, before you did this — this 
 thing ?' she moaned, with a piteous appeal, standmg 
 white as death, and motionless. 
 
 * Why should I ask you, when it was his wish?' 
 Lady Bredwardine said severely. ' I have not done 
 it of myself ; Cecil understands — he knows why. 
 He will not thmk you have a voice in it. He is
 
 174 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 willing — he is more than willing — he has loved 
 you all his life. He is not selfish like Tristram. 
 I can trust you with him, Mary — you and this 
 place.' 
 
 How could Mary tell her mother that this could 
 never be ? The horror of the dreadful humiliation 
 was not more terrible to her than the thought of 
 crossing her in this scheme that she had set her 
 heart upon. She remembered what Dr. Boultby 
 had said : that she must not be crossed or excited. 
 How could she answer her mother without running 
 a terrible risk ? She made an involuntary gesture 
 with her upraised hand to stop the revelation, and 
 she dropped it again, and stood speechless, with 
 her head drooping on her bosom, wringing her 
 hands. She looked an image of grief and shame. 
 Her heart had quite failed her. 
 
 ' Cecil is coming to-morrow,' her ladyship went 
 on, pausing in her walk to confront the trembling 
 girl, with her dark eyes blazing and her wasted 
 fingers twisting together. 'He is coming to ask
 
 liV THE TWILIGHT 175 
 
 you to marry him — to get the answer from your 
 own Hps. What will you say to him, Mary ?' 
 
 Mary Gascoigne stood white and tremblmg, not 
 daring to look up. How could she answer this 
 sudden question? She could not brmg herself to 
 utter a falsehood ; she could not find any ambiguous 
 words ; she could only stand silent and confomided, 
 with her head droopmg and her hands caught 
 together m a pitiful clasp. 
 
 Lady Bredwardine came over to her side, and 
 put her arms around her. 
 
 ' For my sake, dearest — for your father's sake ; 
 it is his wish, remember: I have not done this of 
 myself. You will give Cecil the answer he seeks !' 
 
 Mary shrank away from her mother with a 
 deprecating gesture. She could find no words to 
 answer her. 
 
 'Why do you not speak?' Lady Bredwardine 
 said severely. 'Why do you hesitate? It is for 
 your good. Would he have wished it if it had not 
 been for your good ? It would kill me — if — if you
 
 176 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 disobeyed him in this. It is not possible you could 
 do this wicked thing ' 
 
 Her voice shook, and a faint groan escaped from 
 her lips, and she pressed her hand to her side ; and 
 then Mary saw that her face was working strangely, 
 and her lips were twitching. It was this that 
 decided her. 
 
 'Oh, mamma, mamma!' she sobbed, 'I would 
 do anything to save you from pain.' 
 
 She got the Countess into a chair and held some 
 water to her quivering lips, and for some minutes 
 mother and daughter were silent, clasping each 
 other's hands, while the sad sunset light faded 
 away and the misty twilight closed around them. 
 
 When the Countess was sufficiently recovered to 
 go to her room, Mary was left sitting there alone, 
 feeling guilty and miserable, and unable to subdue 
 the wild storm of weeping that had come upon her. 
 She had promised Lady Bredwardine to accept 
 Cecil. 
 
 Cecil came for his answer the next day. He
 
 IN THE TWILIGHT 177 
 
 came early, as befits a wooer : and he came Avith an 
 
 eager step and a light heart. He was assm*ed of 
 
 * 
 
 his answer before he came ; there was not a shade 
 of anxiety on his brow. 
 
 He had come up that broad avenue beneath the 
 beeches hmidreds of times before, but he had never 
 remarked before to-day what a remarkably fine 
 avenue it was. There was not another like it in 
 the county. There was a changed aspect in aU 
 the familiar things — the house and the grounds ; 
 the park, with its breadth of greenness and its 
 noble trees, its broad stretches of sunshme and 
 shadow ; the violet tones of the hills ; the songs of 
 the birds, and the shimmer of the leaves as he 
 passed beneath them. Everything belonged to the 
 Gascoignes so far as the eye could see. It had 
 belonged to them for centuries. It must be a fine 
 thing to be the owner of this old ancestral place. 
 
 Cecil looked at his future prospects with satisfac- 
 tion, and already with a sense of ownership : 
 beautiful green park, waving boughs, violet mist 
 
 VOL. I. 12
 
 178 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 and morning sunshine, all were his; and youth 
 and love and happiness, and a million of money 
 to boot. His cup could not have held much more. 
 
 Mary was not in the drawing-room when he went 
 in. He was ushered this morning into the great 
 state drawing-room, whose old-fashioned magnifi- 
 cence would have overawed most suitors, but it 
 didn't overawe Cecil. He admired its handsome 
 proportions, the fine allegorical ceiling, the beauti- 
 ful carved mantelpiece, the panelled walls, the 
 lovely old furniture, the rich embroidered hangings, 
 the portraits looking down at him out of their 
 carved frames. 
 
 There was a beautiful ancestress by Gainsborough, 
 in a Court gown, with her hair dressed high, and a 
 patch on her cheek, who looked at him with a 
 haughty smile of recognition. She was the 
 daughter of a marquis, and near her hung the 
 portrait of her husband, the seventh Earl of Bred- 
 wardine, wearing his orders on his breast and the 
 garter on his leg.
 
 IN THE TWILIGHT 179 
 
 Cecil really felt they were his ancestors ; he 
 forgot all about the bre^Yery ; he knew exactly what 
 it was to be the descendant of a hundred earls. 
 
 Mary came in while he was examinmg the family 
 pictures. 
 
 He remarked, what he had never remarked before, 
 as he went down the long room to meet her — her 
 resemblance to the beautiful countess in the frame, 
 the same high-bred air and the beautiful proud 
 face. 
 
 She was looking pale, he noticed, not flushed 
 and downcast as he had pictured her to himself as 
 he came up the avenue. She was not at all down- 
 cast or nervous. She was cool and collected, and 
 listened to all Cecil had to say without betraying 
 any agitation or blushiag, as she certainly ought to 
 have blushed. Perhaps the daughter of — well, not 
 exactly a hundred — a dozen or two earls does not 
 blush when the son of a brewer honours her with 
 the offer of his hand. 
 
 He got over the busmess that had brought him
 
 i8o IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 to Bredwardine as quickly as he could, but Mary 
 would not help him out in the least. She would 
 not blush in the right place, and she never looked 
 down at the carpet : she looked straight at him with 
 her serious eyes all the time. 
 
 He had arranged exactly what to say as he came 
 up the avenue ; he had rehearsed his part under 
 the beeches, with the wood-pigeons cooing above, 
 but Mary's serious eyes drove the ordered words 
 out of his head — they flew asunder and got in the 
 wrong places. He stammered and hesitated, and 
 finally blurted out the offer he had come to make 
 like a schoolboy recalling a forgotten lesson. 
 He couldn't put any sentiment into it. 
 * I have always admired you, Mary,' he said 
 awkwardly, looking down at the pattern of the 
 carpet — ' admired you — and loved you — but I had 
 no chance with Tristram ; I was only a younger 
 
 son ' He paused for Mary to say something, 
 
 but she was silent. ' If you could look into my 
 haart,' he went on desperately, 'you would see that
 
 IN THE TWILIGHT i8i 
 
 I have loved you all my life. I have never loved 
 anyone but you, Mary.' 
 
 Still she gave him no encouragement. It was a 
 difficult woomg. 
 
 'You won't say ''No" because I didn't ask you 
 l)efore — before Lady Bredwardine gave her consent ! 
 I should have asked you years ago if I had thought 
 I had any chance. It wasn't because I didn't love 
 you, Mary — I had to give you up to Tristram ; but 
 now — but now ' 
 
 He paused and looked at Mary with a lover's 
 eagerness for just a little encouragement — a blush, 
 a flicker of an eyelid, a quiver of the white lips. 
 If Mary had only sighed it would have helped 
 him. 
 
 The young man saw he was not gaming ground. 
 His eyes wandered from Mary's pale face to the 
 l)eautiful ancestress m her powder and patches, and 
 he took courage. Perhaps it was the repose that 
 marked the caste of the Gascoignes. It wasn't like 
 the little millmers he used to make fine speeches to
 
 1 82 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 at Oxford. They were ready to blush, and smile, 
 and dimple at a moment's notice. 
 
 *0h, Mary,' he said, taking heart, ' if you would 
 only believe that I love you !' 
 
 'I wish to believe you, Cecil,' Mary said quietly; 
 ' I should be sorry to think that you came to me 
 from any other motive — that my mother ' 
 
 * No, indeed !' the young man interrupted 
 eagerly ; ' it was not Lady Bredwardine. She gave 
 me her consent ; she has known me all my life ; I 
 am already like a son to her ; she said I might try. 
 She promised to use her influence with you, Mary.' 
 
 He really spoke with a tender vehemence that 
 might have touched her — that would have touched 
 most women — but his very fervour seemed to 
 increase her reluctance. 
 
 ' She has used her influence,' Mary said coldly, 
 and he noticed that her lips quivered as she spoke 
 of her mother. ' It is for her sake I have 
 consented to listen to you. We have known each 
 other all our lives, Cecil ; we are not like strangers.
 
 IN THE TWILIGHT 183 
 
 But this has taken me by surprise, it has come 
 upon me so suddenly that I can hardly bring myself 
 to realize it. It will take a long time for me to regard 
 you in any other light than that of an old friend and 
 playmate. If I accept your offer, you must give me 
 
 time ; you must not claim its fulfilment — until " 
 
 She paused, and her voice shook, and he saw 
 that her lips were quivering. 
 
 ' I will promise anything!' he said hotly. 'Oh, 
 Mary, if you will only say " Yes " !' 
 
 'You will understand,' she said, unmoved by his 
 ardour, ' that it is not to be made known for six 
 months at least ; that it is between ourselves.' 
 
 She could not bear that Tristram should think so" 
 basely of her ; she was not thinking of anyone else. 
 She blushed scarlet, and her limbs trembled 
 beneath her as she pleaded with her lover for delay. 
 ' Oh, what would Tristram say to this indecent 
 haste?' 
 
 ' I will promise anything, darling, so long as you 
 are mine — mine !'
 
 1 84 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 It was her last protest. She suffered him to take 
 her hand and press it to his Hps. He would have 
 liked to take her in his arms, but there was a 
 stand-off look in Mary's eyes that stopped him. 
 He touched her forehead lightly with his lips, and 
 then, having accomplished his errand, he went 
 away. 
 
 *You are no longer a free woman, Mary,' he 
 murmured, as he took his leave ; ' you are mine !' 
 
 Mary shivered. 
 
 It hadn't been exactly the kind of wooing he had 
 pictured to himself. It was not at all the wooing 
 that poets describe. There had been no blushing 
 or weeping ; Mary's bosom hadn't heaved with a 
 sudden storm of sighs when she consented to be his 
 bride ; and he had not folded her in his arms and 
 ratified the agreement on her willing lips. 
 
 * By Jove !' he said, as he went back down the 
 avenue, recalling that unemotional seal of his 
 acceptance, ' it was like kissing an iceberg !'
 
 CHAPTEE XIY. 
 
 THAT MILLION OF MONEY ! 
 ' I falter where I firmly trod.' 
 
 Mary had reckoned without her mother when she 
 made that futile agreement with Cecil that her 
 acceptance of his suit should not be made known 
 for six months. 
 
 Lady Bredwardine wrote at once to Sh* Tristram 
 and apprised him of the engagement. She also 
 stipulated that the marriage should not be long 
 deferred. Before the week was over it was in all 
 the society papers. 
 
 There was nothing to be done but to submit to 
 the mevitable. Mary had to receive the congratula- 
 tions of the county on her engagement — her re-
 
 1 86 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 engagement — with the best grace she could. The 
 day after that interview with Cecil she sent Tris- 
 tram back the ring he had given her two years ago. 
 It was a trumpery affair with a single pearl in it — 
 not a large pearl. It was the kind of thing a 
 banker's clerk would have given to his suburban 
 sweetheart. It was not at all a gift for a millionaire. 
 Perhaps there was a meaning in it. It was only a 
 single pearl — his pearl. 
 
 Tristram knew, when he received his poor little 
 gift back, what it meant. He was at breakfast in 
 the bare room of the mission when the packet was 
 put into his hands, and Jayne was sitting opposite 
 to him. The sight of the dear writing brought a 
 mist before his eyes, and he opened the packet 
 mechanically, not knowing what he should find, 
 and the little slender gold circlet rolled out on the 
 table. It rolled across the table under Jayne's 
 plate. 
 
 ' A lady's ring,' the simple fellow said, handing 
 it back with a weak attempt at a smile.
 
 THA T MILLION OF MONE Y! 187 
 
 'It was Mary's engagement-ring,' Tristram said, 
 with a catch in his voice, ' and — and she has sent 
 it back to me.' 
 
 Jayne had heard all about the engagement, and 
 why it was broken off. He thought Mary had done 
 quite right. She could not marry a man with a 
 divided heart. 
 
 ' She could do nothing else, dear fellow,' Jayne 
 said kindly. ' She has acted like a sensible girl.' 
 
 Tristram bowed his face on his hands, and Jayne 
 could see his shoulders heavmg and his breath 
 coming hard. He was such a poor fellow; he 
 couldn't control his feelmgs. He was not made of 
 the stuff those old saints Mary read about were 
 made of. 
 
 * Oh, you don't know what she was to me !' the 
 poor fellow sobbed. ' I loved her better than any- 
 thing m the world ; she was my pearl.' 
 
 * You have lost her, but you have found another 
 pearl — the Pearl of great price,' Jayne said, laying 
 his hand on his shoulder. ' I am sure you have
 
 1 88 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 not done this thing in a hurry. You counted the 
 cost before you gave up father and mother and 
 house and lands — and wife — for the Gospel's sake.' 
 
 ' Oh, yes ; I counted the cost, or I thought that 
 I had counted the cost. I did not know it would 
 be so hard.' 
 
 * If you had ' 
 
 Jayne did not finish the question, but he looked 
 at him with his kind, grave eyes, out of which he 
 could not keep the unspoken rebuke. 
 
 ' If I had, I should never have done it !' Tristram 
 cried passionately. ' I — I am only a man, Jayne ; 
 I am not a saint, like you. I loved Mary with all 
 my soul. I knew how noble she was, how unlike 
 other women, and — and I thought she would under- 
 stand me. I did not think it would come to this, 
 that she would give me up.' 
 
 He took up the little circlet of gold and put it in 
 his waistcoat pocket. He could not bear to look 
 at it. 
 
 Jayne could not find a single word with which
 
 THA T MILLION OF MONE Y! 1 89 
 
 to comfort him. He took him out with him after 
 breakfast into a poor street ^Yhere he had some 
 visiting to do. He would see real sorrow here — 
 sorrow and disease, and suffering, quite unmerited 
 suffering, and poverty. There is nothing like com- 
 paring one's trials with other people's. 
 
 In one house they went mto there was a w^oman 
 down with cancer. They heard her groaning as they 
 came up the stairs. She wanted all sorts of 
 nourishing things to support that cruel disease, 'but 
 she had only weak tea and a crust beside her that 
 a neighbour had just brought in. She had been 
 groaning all night, the neighbour said, and she had 
 heard her through the partition, and brought her 
 her own meal. She had nothing else to bring her. 
 She ought to have l)een in a hospital and carefully 
 nursed, but she had no one to get her admission. 
 She had been an out-patient until now, and now 
 she could no longer reach so far, and she had lain 
 down to die. 
 
 ' She will not die just yet,' Jayne said as they
 
 190 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 came down over the dark stairs. ' She has a great 
 deal more to suffer before the end. She has days 
 and nights of pain to go through, until she is 
 wasted quite away. God only can give her patience 
 to bear it.' 
 
 There was a sadder case on the other side of the 
 court : a poor man afflicted with paralysis of the 
 optic nerve, quite blind, and with some dreadful 
 disease of the feet that prevented his moving 
 without help — a big, heavy blind man who had to 
 be lifted about like a baby. In the bed by which 
 he was sitting — he had been sitting there day and 
 night for months — his wife was dying of some 
 painful internal complaint. The woman was weep- 
 ing when Jayne and his friend entered the room, 
 and the man was groaning. The air of the room 
 was intolerable on this hot summer day. The sad 
 sounds and the stifling air smote Tristram, as he 
 stood bare-headed in the poor room, with a sudden 
 sense of shame. What was his grief to such suffer- 
 ing as this — suffering that no relief could ever reach ?
 
 THA T MILLION OF MONE Y ! 191 
 
 Jajne took him to other houses in the court ; in 
 every house there was suffering and poverty. A 
 man slowly dying of consumption was busy at some 
 mechanical work by the window of one room they 
 entered, while his wife sat stitching at some slop 
 work by another, rockmg a cradle at her feet while 
 she worked. 
 
 * Tom is better to-day,' she explained to Jayne 
 when he entered ; ' he is doing a bit of work while 
 he can ; he has been at work smce seven. The 
 cough may come on any moment, and then he will 
 have to stop.' 
 
 ' He will have to stop altogether soon,' Jayne 
 said with a sigh, as he came out ; ' the doctor says 
 he cannot last many days. He is always at work 
 between the attacks of coughing ; he is so anxious 
 to earn a little, there are so many mouths to feed — 
 five besides the one m the cradle, and only her poor 
 earnings.' 
 
 It was the old story : sickness and poverty and 
 suffering. Poverty was always here ; it was its
 
 192 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 natural home, and disease had taken up its abode 
 here lately — how could it help it, in this filthy 
 court, with whole families crowded into a single 
 room in this sultry summer weather ? Death had 
 been busy, too. It had carried off two children in 
 one house, and another lay dying. Tristram had 
 to stand aside on the stairs to let the tiny black 
 box be carried by. 
 
 He came away sorrowful and saddened at the 
 sight of so much evil that he was powerless to help 
 — that was past all help but God's. He forgot his 
 own trial in witnessing the trials and burdens laid 
 on other men — on weaker men — and borne so 
 bravely. It shamed him to see how poor people 
 bore their trials, with what patience and sub- 
 mission, and how grateful they were for a little 
 sympathy. 
 
 With this morning's lesson in his mind, Tristram 
 went back to the mission, and put away that little 
 rmg of Mary's ; and he put, or he strove to put, his 
 repinings away with it. It was not so easy a task
 
 THA T MILLION OF MONEY/ 193 
 
 as he had thought, to cut himself adrift from his 
 moorings, and go on with the work he had begmi, 
 without looking back. The old Adam was not quite 
 dead ; it asserted itself at times, and then, like the 
 man at the plough — the woman hastenmg across 
 the plam — he looked back. 
 
 If he had been a strong man the sacrifice he had 
 made would have come easier to him and been 
 nobler. It was not at all noble if one could have 
 looked down into his heart of hearts. His spnit 
 was so weak and shrmking ; he was always askmg 
 himself if he had done right — askmg, and waitmg 
 for the answer. 
 
 This was not at all the temper of Mary's saints. 
 Self-denial was not an hereditary virtue with the 
 Lushingtons or the Earls of Sark. Tristram must 
 have gone far back to some distant ancestor for that 
 feeble germ of heroism that was always threatenmg 
 to die out. A hero, a real hero, ought to believe in 
 himself and in his mission ; but Tristram had no 
 faith in himself. He was always questionmg his 
 
 VOL. I. 13
 
 194 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 motives, and asking himself if he had done right, 
 after all. Sometimes he thought he had made a 
 mistake — a grave mistake. He had not followed 
 the Divine command. He had taken the rich 
 Young Euler, whose sad denial has been a lesson 
 to all ages, for his example and warning. Like 
 him, he had asked the momentous question and 
 received the Divine answer, and he had interpreted 
 it according to his lights. He had not been guilty 
 of the great refusal, like the Young Euler. He had 
 made the great acceptance ; he had left father and 
 mother and house and lands — and more than all 
 these — but he had stopped short at the last injunc- 
 tion. He had not sold all that he had and given to 
 the poor. 
 
 He had thrown away a million of money ! He 
 didn't know what that million of money would do 
 for the poor until he came to live among them. A 
 hundred times a day he asked himself if he had 
 done right in throwing it away ; a hundred times 
 a day he saw channels of usefulness for that wide
 
 THA T MILLION OF MONE Y I 195 
 
 stream of gold that had been brewed in the great 
 vats of Lushington's brewery. 
 
 He told the little Sister about his doubts when 
 he met her the next day. He generally met her 
 when he was about his work in those wretched 
 courts and alleys. Wherever sickness and suffering 
 were, the Sisters were generally to be found. The 
 pity was, there were so few of them, and their 
 means were so limited. They had often nothing 
 to give but themselves, but what they had to give 
 they gave freely, without stmt — then* time, their 
 strength, their labour, their lives." They kept 
 nothing back. 
 
 There were tears m the little Sister's eyes when 
 Tristram met her the next day ; he met her at the 
 door of a poor house, and she had a basket in her 
 hand, an empty basket. Tristram offered to take 
 it from her, but she shook her head. 
 
 ' There is nothing in it,' she said with a sigh ; 
 ' it is empty, quite empty, when it ought to be full 
 to overflowing. It ought to be full of soup and
 
 196 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 jelly, and grapes and wine. There is a family of 
 little children up there,' and she pointed to the 
 staircase she had just come down, ' all sick with 
 fever. They have been ill for a week, and two of 
 them are delirious. The doctor has ordered them 
 beef-tea and wine and milk every hour. It is their 
 only chance ; the fever has sapped all the strength 
 out of them, and without nourishment, continuous 
 nourishment, for days and weeks, perhaps, they 
 must die. What is the use of doctors ordering 
 these things to people who have no money and no 
 work ?_ The poor mother has been up with them 
 night after night for a week ; she has nothing to 
 give them but weak gruel and this horrible luke- 
 warm London water ; nothing to cool their parched 
 lips with; nothing to slake their dreadful thirst 
 when they lie tossing and moaning through the 
 night with fever. Hark ! you can hear them moan- 
 ing here.' 
 
 Tristram put his hand to his ear to shut out the 
 sound that seemed like an accusation. He was
 
 THA T MILLION OF MONE Y! 197 
 
 powerless to help. He could only look on like the 
 little Sister. He hung his head and walked silently 
 down the court by her side. 
 
 'Oh, if we had only that million of money you 
 have given up, Mr. Lushington!' she said, with a 
 little moan she could not keep back. • Oh, whj*. 
 why did you give it up ?' 
 
 It was just the question Tristram had been asking 
 himself. 
 
 'I did it for the best,' he said humbly. 'I 
 thought it was right. I believed it was my duty to 
 do it.' 
 
 ' Oh, I'm sure you thought you were doing right,* 
 she said quickly, but she could not keep a touch 01 
 impatience out of her voice ; ' but why didn't you 
 think of other people ? A woman would not have 
 been so hasty ; she would have thought of others. 
 She would not have thrown up this stewardship 
 that was committed to her — this great stewardship 
 — because the burden of it was too much for her, 
 or because — forgive my saying so — she questioned
 
 198 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 this great wealth having been lawfully acquired. 
 She had nothing to do with its morality ; that was a 
 question of the past. She would not have put it 
 aside in a napkin, and refused to trade with it in 
 her Lord's service because she was troubled with 
 scruples.' 
 
 Tristram's face flamed scarlet while she was 
 speaking ; he had never seen it in that light. 
 
 ' You think it would have been right — to — 
 to ' 
 
 * I am sure it would have been right !' she said, 
 interrupting him eagerly. ' Why, the command is 
 quite clear, "Make to yourselves friends of the 
 Mammon of unrighteousness." What could be 
 clearer ?' 
 
 ' That is not money unlawfully gained,' he said 
 sadly. ' This — this money that I have put aside, 
 that T have sworn never to touch, has been wrung 
 out of the bodies and souls of men. It is blood- 
 money ; it represents the ruin of thousands of lives, 
 the destruction of thousands of homes : it is the
 
 THA T MILLION OF MONE Yf 199 
 
 price of shame and despaii* and death. It could 
 bring no blessing with it.' 
 
 *That would depend upon how it was used,' the 
 little Sister said quickly. * It would bring showers 
 of blessings if it were used aright. Think what a 
 fraction of it would do now, at this moment. It 
 would bring life and health m the place of disease 
 and death to those poor thmgs you just heard 
 moanmg. It would cool then* parched tongues and 
 fevered lips. They would not stop to ask if it were 
 lawful gains !' 
 
 The little Sister was very much in earnest. She 
 could not help speaking bitterly. 
 
 Her words went straight to Tristram's conscience. 
 He had never seen it in this light. 
 
 Had he made a mistake, after all ?
 
 CHAPTEE XV. 
 
 MES. LOWRY LOMAX. 
 ' Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds.' 
 
 Tristram's quixotism had been a nine dayg' 
 wonder. Hardly nine days ; the world moves so 
 fa'st now that three days suffice for the world's 
 wonder and the world's blame, and then all things 
 are forgotten in the turning of the wheel. 
 
 Various things had happened to keep alive the 
 interest in Tristram's folly — folly the world called 
 it, if not a stronger name. Mary Gascoigne's en- 
 gagement was on every tongue. It was so sudden 
 and barefaced, it took the world by surprise. Some 
 people were shocked at the indecent haste with 
 which, having thrown over one brother, she had 
 accepted the other.
 
 . MRS. LOWRY LOMAX 201 
 
 The world said very hard thmgs about poor 
 Mary, and wasted a lot of pity upon Tristram. It 
 exalted him for a time into a hero. People came 
 from a distance — from West to East — to look at the 
 man who had given up so much and who had been 
 served so badly. Among the people who came to 
 stare at him, and to listen to his addresses m the 
 big mission hall, was a popular author who wanted 
 to put him in a book. Perhaps it would be more 
 correct to say authoress, as it happened to be a 
 lady. She had no other idea but to put him m a 
 book when she entered St. Katherine's Hall and 
 took her seat among the unwashed crowd in the 
 gallery. She chose the gallery at the end of the 
 hall as better for her purpose : she could look down 
 upon the audience and get a better view of the man 
 she had come so far to see. 
 
 If he were the man she sought — she was always 
 seekmg. for a representative man ; she had such 
 splendid ideas, and she wanted a man to represent 
 them — he would be worth thousands of pounds to
 
 202 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 her. She was sick of writing about dummies, im- 
 possible creatures who were always knocking their 
 heads against the wall and bewailing their self- 
 inflicted bruises. The world had begun to grow 
 callous, and was indifferent to their complainings. 
 She wanted a real man, moved by the passion of 
 humanity which she had vainly been endeavouring 
 to portray, to revive its drooping interest. 
 
 She found the man she sought in Tristram. 
 From her high seat she looked down upon the 
 motley crowd beneath, an orderly crowd of men 
 and boys and women. There was much fustian 
 and corduroy in the crowd, greasy with use, and 
 neither sound nor fragrant. The ladies who made 
 up the audience were not at all clean in their 
 persons or choice in their lives and conversation : 
 but they were all real men and women, hanging 
 with rapt attention on the words that fell from the 
 pale young orator on the platform. 
 
 He was not much of an orator, she remarked, but 
 he had the secret of touching these people. The
 
 MRS. LOWRY LOMAX 203 
 
 lady from her high seat, looking down on the crowd 
 beneath, saw their coarse, common faces hght up as 
 Tristram spoke. There was no mistaking the flash 
 of recognition that lighted up every face m the 
 crowd as some truth struck home. Tristram was 
 not at all a great preacher ; he did not attempt to 
 preach, he only spoke as one man to another, but 
 he swayed the hearts of every man and woman in 
 that motley crowd as the heart of one man. 
 • It was exactly the man that IMrs. Lowry Lomax 
 wanted. Here was the genuine passion of 
 humanity that her wooden heroes had been 
 counterfeitmg so clumsily — and here was some- 
 thing beyond all counterfeit that her philosophy 
 had never dreamed of. 
 
 Perhaps this was why she waited behind, when 
 the crowd had filed out of the hall ; which — she 
 observed with surprise — they did m silence and 
 decorum. They might have been pourmg out of a 
 cathedral. 
 
 When they had all gone, Mrs. Lowry Lomax
 
 204 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 went into a' little bare room behind the platform 
 and saw Tristram. 
 
 He was not expecting a lady, and he received her 
 — well, she found him on his knees. He got up 
 hurriedly, blushing like a school-girl. 
 
 ' This will never do !' she said inwardly. Heroes 
 — at least, her heroes — are not given to blushing. 
 They are such splendid manly fellows, they never 
 wear out the knees of their trousers ; they are 
 always up a moral tree, and have no weaknesses to 
 blush for. 
 
 ' I hope I am not intruding,' she said sweetly.- 
 She had a very sweet voice, and quite perfect 
 manners. She hadn't been giving these gracious 
 gifts to her heroines for years and years without 
 retaining some portion for herself. She was a 
 handsome woman, too, with a sad, thoughtful face. 
 She had been trying to solve a great many 
 mysteries, to find out God's ways, and she had not 
 succeeded any better than other people. What she 
 had fotind out had only made her sad.
 
 MRS. LOWR V LOMAX 205 
 
 * Not at all!' Tristram said awkwardly. He 
 couldn't think what the lady wanted in there, un- 
 announced. 
 
 * I have just heard you speaking to the peoj)le,' 
 she said ; ' you have found out the great secret ; 
 you have found the way to then hearts. I wanted 
 to know somethmg of the work you are domg in 
 this place, so I came here to see for myself.' 
 
 ' It is not our work,' Tristram said humbly ; ' we 
 are only instruments — very poor mstruments at the 
 best. There is a great work to be done m this ' 
 place if we had more workers and more means. 
 We are a mere handful among so many, and we 
 are crippled for want of means.' He did not know 
 why he was telling her this. He had no thought 
 of askhig for a subscription. 
 
 ' Ah ! that is what I wanted to know, how I could 
 help you ?' she said quickly. ' You are doing so 
 much here, two or three of you, among such num- 
 bers ; and we outsiders are looking idly on. Tell 
 me how I can help you.'
 
 2o6 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 ' How ?' he repeated, with a smile and an in- 
 voluntary gesture of his hands. Perhaps he had 
 learnt the trick from the little Sister, who was 
 always throwing her hands up, and shrugging her 
 round shoulders, and doing all sorts of uncon- 
 ventional things, when she was moved in any way. 
 ' How ? We want so much help ; it is hard to 
 tell what we want most, to begin with. Perhaps 
 our chiefest want is money ; we are so crippled for 
 funds. There is nothing to be done in this place 
 without money — nothing ! We want workers, too, 
 but we want money most. What is the good of 
 going to people with empty hands ?' 
 
 ' Exactly,' the lady said, with her handsome 
 eyes shining, and her fingers already tingling to 
 help. This was the man, after all, that she had 
 been looking for. 
 
 ' If I had known how much money was needed 
 before I came here — I — I should not ' 
 
 ' You would not have thrown away that million ?' 
 she said eagerly.
 
 MRS. LOWRY LOMAX 207 
 
 ' No ; perhaps not. I thought only of the ^York. 
 Besides, feeling as I did, I had no right to keep a 
 penny of that money.' 
 
 ' And you gave it all up ?' 
 
 ' I gave up everything : I could do nothing less. 
 My sister has made over to me a small legacy left 
 her by an aunt — an aunt on my mother's side — 
 and I have nothmg besides. Nothing to help, and 
 men and women perishing around me day by day, 
 ^Yhen a little timely help ^YOuld save them ! Oh, 
 you don't know what the value of money is until 
 you see how little, how very little-^the mere price 
 of a moment's pleasure — will save a man or woman 
 from despair, and death — and destruction that is 
 worse than death !' 
 
 ' I know somethmg of this,' she said, with a little 
 quiver m her voice, ' and I want to know more. I 
 want to learn about the people, their wants and 
 trials, and how to help them — how to help them 
 most effectually. I don't mean mere almsgiving. 
 I do not believe in mdiscriminate charity, and I am
 
 2o8 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 sorry to say I have no faith m charity organizations. 
 There is so much red-tape, and they do not reach 
 the right people. One wants to go in and out 
 among the people, and find out cases of real need. 
 I do not think the parish clergy are any use ; they 
 relieve a few people here and there, but they are 
 too full of their views and doctrines, and all the 
 paraphernalia of their work, to care for the. material 
 wants of the poor.' 
 
 Tristram murmured a feeble protest. 
 
 ^ They do what they can, but their hands are 
 tied, like ours, for want of funds.' 
 
 * That maybe,' she said impatiently; 'but that 
 has not always been their excuse. The Church was 
 rich enough once ; it is rich still ; and it has gone 
 in and out among the people for over a thousand 
 years, and done little for them. There is more 
 poverty now than ever; poverty, with the evils 
 that follow in its train — disease, destitution, drunken- 
 ness, ignorance, vice, misery. They are all here 
 with us now, as if the Church had never existed.
 
 MRS. LO WR V LOMAX 209 
 
 I do not thiiik we must leave the regeneration of 
 the world to the Church.' 
 
 * The Church is a mere handful among so many. 
 There are thirty thousand people m this place, and 
 only one clergyman to work among them. Only 
 one man — thmk, what can he do among so many ? 
 We have strengthened his hands since we came 
 here — since God sent us here — but what is our 
 feeble help among these thousands ? There is not 
 only destitution and distress always here, and sick- 
 ness and suffering, but there is indifference and 
 drunkenness. The Church has done what she 
 could. She is powerless to fight single-handed 
 against the e\dls in this place. Oh, you don't know 
 what she has to contend with : the callousness of 
 the people, the frightful stupor, resulting, perhaps, 
 from years of neglect, the indifference, the ignorance 
 — all these vices in league with drink to break down 
 and overcome. Oh ! she has a great work to do 
 here, " and she is waiting only for workers and 
 funds.' " ■ 
 
 VOL. I. 14
 
 2IO IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 ' She is only reaping, as you say, the results of 
 long years of neglect,' Mrs. Lomax said. ' She 
 cannot complain now, after having been tried and 
 having failed, if the work is taken out of her hands. 
 We want newer methods and more zealous workers. 
 We want men like you, Mr. Lushington, who have 
 given up all — all your life — to work for the people, 
 and with them. We want a new order, a new 
 brotherhood, consecrated to an entire self-sacrifice, 
 living as poor men among poor men, wrestling as 
 men only wrestle for dear life, with the horrible 
 problems of wrong and misery. Conventional 
 routine will not do this, nor musical services, nor 
 incense, nor candles, nor sacraments. These will 
 never make up the loss of centuries of neglect. 
 There must be a new effort, a new gospel — the gospel 
 of humanity. It need not be preached ; it must be 
 lived by men self-devoted to the cause. There must 
 be no half-hearted apostles of this new dispensation : 
 there must be entire self-devotion, complete self- 
 sacrifice, a total self -consecration, a living service.'
 
 MRS. LOIVRY LOMAX 211 
 
 She paused for breath; her eyes were shmmg, 
 and her cheeks were flushed, and her bosom was 
 heavmg. She was very much m earnest. Tris- 
 tram had never seen a woman so much m earnest 
 as this strange lady, who had come m unannounced, 
 not even the Httle Sister. Her earnestness took 
 another form, and there was a different ring 
 in it. 
 
 'Are you ready to take the lead in this new 
 order, Mr. Lushington? Are you ready — having 
 given up so much — to give up all ? — to live poor, 
 among the poorest and the lost, gettmg face to face 
 with them, and bemg one with them m that near 
 mtimacy ? Are you ready to give up love and 
 home and happiness — narrow, selfish, domestic 
 happmess, the love of wife and little children 
 — and live unmarried, consecrated to this great 
 work ?' 
 
 Tristram's white face flushed as she spoke; 
 he did not know that she was makmg a study 
 of him. He thought of Mary as she spoke —
 
 212 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 of Mary and the happiness he had given up. He 
 had akeady given up all. He had nothing else 
 to lose. 
 
 ' I would work with others,' he said humbly ; ' but 
 I am not fit to take the lead.' 
 
 ' Who so fit as you ?' she cried, interrupting him. 
 * The leader of a new order must have some excep- 
 tional fitness — must have separated himself by some 
 noble act from his fellows ; he must be a living wit- 
 ness of the faith he is the exponent of. You have 
 fulfilled all these conditions; you have set before 
 the world an example of a self-sacrificing life. Be 
 the mouthpiece of this new order, and you will 
 draw hundreds of men to you ; the call, coming 
 from you, will flash and thrill through their hearts, 
 as no other voice would reach them. Eemember, 
 the impulse always comes from individual men. 
 Will you accept this responsibility, or will you let 
 this great opportunity pass ?' 
 
 Tristram hung his head. He did not know what 
 to answer. He was bewildered, confused. ' I am
 
 MRS. LO WR V LOMAX 213 
 
 not at all fit to be a leader,' he murmured. He 
 could find no other words to say. 
 
 ' Is it want of money that makes you hesitate ?' 
 she asked eagerly. ' You must not let that stand in 
 the way of your acceptance. The money shall be 
 found. Of what use would be an order without 
 money? It is the sinews of your work; you can 
 do nothmg without it. There would be plenty of 
 money forthcommg if people knew it would be 
 rightly applied. People do not like to see their 
 money wasted on elaborate machmery, or drivelled 
 away m useless expenditure ; they want results. 
 You cannot blame them. They want every penny 
 of every pound they give to find its way direct to 
 the objects of their bounty ; they don't want two- 
 thirds of it diverted half-way, and sjDent upon 
 cumbrous machinery. The money would pour m 
 if you midertook to be the almoner of it. It would 
 flow in in a contmuous stream ; there would be no 
 end to the generosity of the rich. The abmidance 
 of the world would be yours. Oh, you don't know
 
 214 /^ THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 how willing, how glad, people would be to give their 
 money, if they were only assured it would be used 
 aright. I will give you an earnest myself to begin 
 with. I will give you the proceeds of — of ' 
 
 She stopped and looked at Tristram, with a ques- 
 tion in her eyes, and then she remembered some- 
 thing, and a faint flush of colour came into her 
 cheeks. ' No,' she said softly, under her breath ; 
 ' I will not give you that. I will give you ten 
 thousand pounds to start with.' 
 
 She was going to say that she would give Tris- 
 tram the proceeds of her last book — the book of the 
 season, the book that had made her name — she 
 was going to give him fifteen thousand pounds, but 
 at that moment she remembered something. She 
 remembered that she had caught him on his 
 knees. 
 
 Tristram murmured his broken thanks. He 
 trembled all over ; he was not accustomed to 
 people walking in and offering him thousands of 
 pounds. ' What would ten thousand pounds do ?'
 
 MRS. LOWRY LOMAX 2 1 5 
 
 he asked himself, as he stood flushed and tremblmg 
 before her, stammermg his feeble thanks. 
 
 It would provide beef-tea and wme and milk for 
 those fever- stricken patients of the little Sister's ; 
 it would send that poor fellow m -a consumption 
 somewhere away mto the country ; it would provide 
 an attendant, a nurse of some khid, for that blind 
 paralytic and his dymg wife ; it would provide 
 nourishment and relief for the woman smkmg with 
 cancer. It would do these thmgs and a great many 
 others ; but these came uppermost m Tristram's 
 mmd, with the vision of that ten thousand pounds 
 before him. He never knew how much could be 
 done with ten thousand pomids until he began to 
 speculate on the many, many ways in which it 
 could be employed. 
 
 ' You will thmk this offer over, Mr. Lushmgton?' 
 the lady said. ' And you can write to me. Re- 
 member, you can have the money whenevei- you 
 like to write for it.' 
 
 Before she went away she gave Tristmm her
 
 2i6 IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD 
 
 address. She did not give him her card ; she wrote 
 down on a shp of paper that happened to be on the 
 table her name and address : 
 
 ' Mrs. Lomax, 
 
 ' Kensington Park Gardens.' 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.