Louis Draycott. The story of his life. A novel

Front matter

LOUIS DRAYCOTT LOUIS DEAYCOTT THE STORY OF HIS LIFE 1 Jloud I'.V BÆES. R. S. DE CO U ROY LAFFAN (Mrs. Leith-Adams) AUTHOR OP "AUNT nEPSY'8 FOUNDLING," ,!MADELON LEMOINE,' " GEOFFREY STIRLING," " MY LAND OF BEULAII," " LADY DEANE," " WINSTOWE," " MY BROTHER SOL," ETC, ETC. " In our two Loves there is but oue respect Though in our Lives a separable spite, Which, though it alter not love's sole effect, Tet doth it steal sweet hours from love's delight.'' Shakespeare's Sonnets, No. 3G. ttn Ctoo Volumes VOL. I. LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL Limited 1890 [All rights reserved] WESTMINSTER : PRINTED BY NICHOLS AND SONS, 26, PARLIAMENT STREET. TO Jiiidi) Jfajflan MY DEAR MOTHER CijtiS Book IS LOVINGLY DEDICATED Stratford-on-Avon Ontober. 1889. CONTENTS OF VOL. 1. Book $.

(TOLD BY CANDACE BIRT.)

Chapter I. In

A CUL-DE-SAC. I am perfectly willing to admit that our house is in a cul-de-sac, and might have a livelier outlook ; on the other hand, we have not half so much traffic as if we were open at hoth ends, instead of only at one ; and, on a quiet summer's afternoon, the rattle of the cans in the premises of the " Country Dairy " just hehind our little street, gives quite a rural atmosphere to the whole place. Three cows under a shed constitute the " dairy," and one of them has a hell round her neck ; when she shakes her b2 patient head it tinkles with a low, mellow sound, and Sister Charlotte— being in one of her calm, happy moods— will say, as she listens, " Sister Dacie, I feel as if I were on the side of a Swiss mountain in the heart of a beautiful country." This is very comforting for me; since foreign travel has often been suggested as likely to do Sister Charlotte good, and we have never been able to afford it.

I must say, I think the mignonette in the window box, to which I devote so much care, has something to say to these pleasant fancies on Sister Charlotte's part, for when the breeze comes stealing in across its crowded ranks of spiral, pale-green flowers, our little parlour smells as sweet as though it were some rustic bower. It is also no small advantage to live just so far from the busy centres of London life that the stir and strife of the great city sound like the murmur of a far-off sea. I think this sound tends to soothe Sister Charlotte. I am always very glad when anything has a soothing effect upon Sister Charlotte, and so is Kezia, for at times However, I must try to tell my story — to put in all the pretty, glancing lights, and the grey and black shadows, too, without saying anything ill-natured or unkind of any one.

First of all, I had perhaps better explain how I came to have such an outlandish name. Not long before I was born, my good mother, piously reading her Bible, was struck with the title of Candace, Queen of Ethiopia, and straightway, when I came into this troublous world, the dark-browed queen became my name-mother. Candace quickly dwindled in our nursery days to Dacie ; and, as I settled down into an old maid and Sister Charlotte's nurse, that became in its turn Sister Dacie — at your service — a small, brown-haired woman, with insignifi cant features, and no presence to speak of ; easily frightened by the mildest cow lurch ing along on its way to the meadow, and chronically haunted by the fear of what the horse may do, whenever she drives in cab or brougham, 'bus or Irish car. Indeed, I hardly think that I, Candace Birt, am particularly gifted or valuable to my fellow-creatures, looked at in any aspect save one or two very common-place ones.

I have a good stock of patience, and I think I am rather a good hand at loving — when I set myself to it — tenacious in my hold, I mean, and made happy by comparatively little things. As to Sister Charlotte, she is five years older than I am, and was once — what I have never been — a beauty. Hers is a story to make your heart ache; the story of a love that had to be laid aside, beaten down, buried out of sight, and that turned to bitterness in the end. Upstairs in the front bedroom, in an old box that is never opened, lies what was to have been her wedding-dress. I dare say its folds would all fall asunder now if they were opened out, and that the sprigs of lavender she made me scatter over it are nothing but little flecks of grey dust. Happy and beautiful, loving and loved, so soon to be a bride — then came the end.

I mean the end to the love-story. An unheeding step on the stairs, a fall, a twisted limb, a face pale with anguish and fear, and then long years upon a couch of feebleness and pain, with no one but Sister Dacie to keep her company. And so it came about that God set my life before me as He would have it. Eor the thing was plain enough, as any one with half an eye could see; and so I told Mr. Green. He was the curate, and I had helped him a good deal in his work among the poor. I had even fancied that I might be of still greater help to him in a time to come. I had fancied that he thought so too. But now, there lay straight before my face what could not be laid aside, and I told him that it must be so, since Char lotte (we used to call her Lottie then) and I stood alone in the world, side by side, and had no one but each other.

Mr. Green — I know it is not a romantic name, but it had grown to have a sort of music of its own for me — looked at me very gravely while I told him all about our trouble, and what the doctors said about Sister Charlotte. Then he turned aside a few moments, and I squeezed one of my hands in the other as tight as I could to keep the tears from starting. It would never have done to make things worse for him by showing how much I cared, would it ? It may seem rather a foolish thing to mention, and rather improbable, too, to some people, but he kissed my hand when he went away. I had on black gloves stitched with violet, and I kept the one his lips had touched ; I kept it always. It is in the upper part of my desk under a heap of old letters. Every woman likes to think that some bit of homage has been given to her in her life; and the little black glove means all kinds of dead possibilities to me.

This was how it came about that Sister Charlotte and myself set out upon our life's journey together, each with our broken story ; but hers so much the sadder and more pitiful of the two that mine hardly deserves thinking of beside it. I see that I have mentioned Kezia, there fore I had better explain who she is. She is our household factotum, our right hand, now and again our tyrant. Kezia is shaped like a cheap wooden doll. Her mouth, wide and thin-lipped, becomes a mere transverse line when she is in one of her obstinate moods. Her face is lined and wrinkled like the rind of an apple that has been laid by towards the Christmas mince-meat ; her eye, keen, and for ever closely focussed upon the petty tradesmen, whom she distrusts with a steady persistency ; her gait, jerky, angular, and — when things in the house go criss-cross — spasmodic, is at times trying to an invalid.

Indeed, I have a difficult part to play between the two of them sometimes. I mean between Sister Charlotte and Kezia, though, to be sure, no one who knew Sister Charlotte's story, could wonder at any irri tability on her part; and, as to Kezia, I have only shown one side of her yet, and that the rough one. The gap between heroism and obstinacy is often not a wide one, and is easily bridged over. Perhaps heroism is only obstinacy disciplined and sanctified. At all events, if the rough side of Kezia was obstinacy, the softer side was heroism. Once upon a time, Sister Charlotte being in a state of greater suffering than usual, I chanced to be sent for on an errand that could not be set aside. On a certain night during my absence, our good doctor ordered Sister Charlotte an opiate, for her pain was great and she could not sleep.

Kezia, always beset with fears of burglars, and doubly careful in Miss Dacie's absence, went round the house to see that all fasten ings were secure. By some evil chance she got the fingers of her hands jammed in the window sash, and found herself a prisoner. She was in the room below that in which Sister Charlotte lay soundly sleeping. There Kezia remained, caught like a rat in a trap, silent, uncomplaining, all through the long hours of darkness, waiting in quiet, resolute endurance for the dawn that would mean help and deliverance. The commonplace treads on the heels of the sublime. The milkman was Kezia's Perseus ; and, as the strain relaxed, as the poor, crushed fingers, purple with the long continued pressure, were set free, the faith ful creature fell back without life or motion ■ — as true a martyr as ever was bound to wheel or stake.

Her own account of the affair was simple enough. " If I'd set up a noise, happen I might have waked Miss Charlotte, an' I know'd that 'ud be a bad job when she'd took the sleepin' stuff ; so I thought I'd best bide." So Kezia " bided " ; and no one can wonder, that from henceforth, we looked upon her rough, north-country ways as the hard husk that held a tender kernel. As for Sister Charlotte, when I told her about that vigil of pain, she lay quite still with her face to the wall for a bit, and then asked for her handkerchief. " I think I must have taken a little cold in my head, when you kept the window open so late the other evening, Sister Dacie," she said, sniffingly. That is the way with sister Charlotte : she had to beat. down all the tender impulses of her nature so cruelly once, that now they seldom show signs of life, and, if they do, she ignores them.

But I noticed that she was very tolerant of Kezia' s peculiarities for a long time to come. I have seemingly wandered far from the cul-de-sac that calls itself Prospect Place, apparently in the pure spirit of irony, since neither side has any prospect at all, save into the windows of the side opposite. We at number eight have one distinct advantage over our neighbours. In our small back garden towers a tall and stately poplar-tree, I doubt not, appearing to many sadly out of place, ridiculously like a very big plant in a very little flower-pot ; but it is a mine of content to us, who are much given, indeed, to dating our small household events from its seasons. In spring, golden scrolls, formed of myriad buds, creep up its bare, brown sides ; these in their turn grow green, expand, and rustle pleasantly as the wind stirs them.

Quite a colony of birds inhabit the branches of this tree of ours, chasing each other up and down its stately height. Querulous, chirping, happy little creatures are they, warily watched by the black cat next door, who squats upon the wall, and turns a pair of green eyes upwards, longingly, then feigns a dreamless sleep, in the hope that some too trustful songster may hop within reach of her stealthy claw. We like to hear the soft swirl of the poplar's plumed head in the autumn wind, and measure the fall of the year by the leaves that strew the garden with a brown-and-amber carpet. It is not much to pride oneself upon, I dare say, but still, we consider our poplar-tree a distinction. Our front parlour is consecrated to Sister Charlotte; and there I have gathered to gether everything that is best and brightest of our joint possessions.

To one whom infirmity chains to a couch, the room in which her life is passed is the world. And I always bear this in mind, bringing home a bunch of violets or a bundle of daffodils from the greengrocer's round the corner, whenever I can, and setting them out to the best advantage in an old china bowl that belonged to a great aunt of ours, and always stands on the little table in the window. Sometimes Sister Charlotte will notice the flowers, and sometimes she will not ; but there is always the chance that she may, and that is something. Even when they are cheapest, I never bring home roses. They used to be her favourite flowers ; and her lover had brought her a bunch of them on that fatal day long ago, when one false step blighted two lives, and all the roses died out of her life for ever.

I really flatter myself that our front parlour is a credit to us ; for, though the chairs are old and spindle - legged, they have an air of well-preserved gentility ; and the centre ottoman which Charlotte and I worked when we were two slips of girls is no ordinary piece of furniture, and most useful in preventing people from knocking their heads against the chandelier. That chandelier is a blow in the eye ; a scar, a defect, as we are always ready to acknow ledge. But, then, as Sister Charlotte pithily observes, "Are there not spots even upon the sun ? Why, therefore, should we expect perfection to be ours in every detail of our household arrangement ? " The great thing is to bear that chandelier in mind, and not get up too suddenly when seated on the ottoman. So that, you see, nothing more than a little care and thought is needed to make things thoroughly smooth and comfortable.

Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, have passed over our heads in Prospect Place, and brought but little change. Our dear invalid being better or worse ; the enormities of the neighbouring tradesmen as reported by Kezia ; the reprehensible conduct of the postman in coming to us on New Year's morning decidedly the worse for the refresh ment partaken of so early in the day ; these, and such-like ups and downs, have formed the ripples of our shallow sea. Of course, there were always our Indian letters, which had to be read, and re-read, and which brightened up all the week, and had to be answered — I writing, and Sister Charlotte dictating, and Kezia putting in a message with "her duty" to Master Ran dall. As a matter of fact, our brother Randall is Major in the Madras Native Infantry ; but titles of any kind are but as empty sounds to Kezia, she having been known to speak of our most gracious sove reign lady as " Mrs. Victory," so " Major Randall Birt, M.N.I.," was just "Master Randall " to Kezia, and would remain so, in spite of any giddy heights of promotion to wmich he might attain.

These letters, coming to us from a far-off land, are among the bright and sun-tipped ripples of our lives — things to talk over, and dwell upon to our friends ; events that give a certain cachet to our grey existences, for do we not possess distinguished relatives abroad ? " Have you heard from India lately ? " wras a common form of question put by our visitors, not without some reverence aud awe, and addressed to us as though that mighty continent were in some sort annexed to Prospect Place, and our brother were Governor-General, at least. At this Sister Charlotte would bridle, and, so to speak, prance a little on her sofa, bringing out bits of Randall's last letter with an air of reser vation, as who should say, " More remains behind, but I wish to give you only such information as is not likely to cause you any inconvenient astonishment." vol. I. c All this was very delightful to us both ; for, though I seldom said much, I always sat by, and nodded and smiled at all the full stops.

Randall is some years younger than either of us, and is still, in Kezia's estima tion at least, but " a bold sauce-box of a little chap as you'd see in a day's journey," though, in reality, as he has several times told us in his letters, he is growing bald on the crown, and shows various other ill effects of his fifteen years' service in India. It is strange how different things appear seen through different mediums. Never has the front parlour at Prospect Place seemed so old-fashioned, never has the chandelier seemed so assertive, as now when I stand looking at it all, with a letter of Randall's in my hand — a letter that holds for us, his sisters, a wonderful message. Our brother is coming home — will, indeed, be with us almost as soon as his letter. He has had fever and ague ; he will need care and nursing.

I am all in a tremble at this marvellous news, and soon I can see neither parlour nor chandelier for the rising tears. It seems so strange that mother should not be here to welcome back the boy who left her fifteen years ago ; that there are only Charlotte and Dacie to greet him. But he is not a boy now. I must remember that. I must ponder on the little bald patch that he has told us of among his curly locks. I must try and put from my mind the slender stripling who caught me for one wild moment to his breast ; the boy whose hot tears fell like rain on my face ; the boy who cried to me between the sobs to go to the mother whom he never saw again, and then pushed me from him and passed me by. I must forget all this, and think of my brother as a man of the world, a man of experience, a man of mark and position.

There is one thing upon which I really think we may congratulate ourselves. The poplar-tree is at its very best ; the golden c2 scrolls, embroidered by the hand of Spring, make it quite beautiful, and tender tufts of leaves are all about its plume-like head. I feel that our brother Randall will be impressed by it ; and I am glad the poplar tree has put on such a pretty dress to wel come the boy home. I know it sounds ridiculous to speak of Randall as " the boy " ; but mother did so to the last. " Tell the boy," she said, " that I " Tell the boy— what ? We knew not ; for, on the wing of that half -uttered message, the loving spirit passed. It was something sweet, for there was a smile upon her lips in the saying of it — a smile that lingered on her dead face to the last. And now the boy is coming home, and she is not here to give him greeting.

Chapter II. After Long Tears

Randall has been home nearly a month now. I cannot deny that his first appear ance was something of a surprise to us. Indeed Kezia fell down three of the kitchen stairs with a crash in her agitation and dismay. "Yon," she said, "does yon be Master Randall ? Lord ha' mercy on us all, Miss Dacie, this here blessed day ! " Then she flung her apron over her head, so as to guard against a second shock, and sat down behind the scullery-door — a retreat she much affected in difficult moments. As for Sister Charlotte and myself, we certainly thought our brother both shorter and stouter in figure than we had imagined him to be. In thinking of him as our family hero, we had drawn out his pro portions in our mind's eye, forgetting that he had never been among the great ones of the earth. However, when he laughed, we recognised " the boy " by the old twinkle in his eyes, and Charlotte came to think that the bald patch on his crown conferred a certain dignity upon him.

He expressed himself charmed with Pros pect Place, and quite fell in with our esti mation of the poplar-tree. Of course there was much pathos underlying our pleasure in Randall's home-coming, and it was nearly a week before any one of the three of us spoke of mother. Sister Charlotte's sad story, too, was for a time untouched upon ; but one night, after she had gone to bed, Randall and I spoke of it together. Telling a thing is always quite different to writing it, and I think my brother understood the matter after this conversation much better than he had done before. I wished that he might do so, because he would then be more ready to make allowance for — well, to be good and patient with Charlotte when one of her bad days came. All the more so, since I could fully explain to him that the doctors were of opinion that a strong nervous and hysterical element had now taken the place of actual disease in her condition, although she was very reluctant to allow that less care and nursing were needful than hereto fore, and that a little effort on her own part was occasionally called for.

My tears fell fast as I told him about the wedding-dress laid by in the old box up stairs, with the sprigs of lavender lying here and there among the folds. After we had done talking about poor Lottie, Ran dall put a sudden question to me. "There was a Mr. White — or was it Brown — we used to tease you about, Dacie ? What became of him? He had Sunday schools on the brain, if I remember rightly, but was a good little man, take him all round." " Very good ; his name was Green. He left the parish shortly after Lottie's acci dent. He — went abroad. Perhaps, you will remember he always had a great idea of missionary work." Randall looked at me sharply for a moment, and then he laid his hand upon my shoulder and patted me ever so gently. " Poor lass ! " he said, and kissed me long and tenderly. I really could not see anything for a moment or two, and, when I looked up, my brother was gone.

I laughed as I lighted my candle to go to bed. Eancy being called a " lass " at my time of life. But it was all very sweet ; like some softening balsam laid upon the scar of an old wound. As time goes ou we see what havoc Indian service has made with Randall's constitution. He is always suffering from what he calls jungle ague. He is always either in a hot fit, a fit of chills, or recovering from the two combined. It may therefore well be imagined that he needs all the cheerful society we can get for him, and that when Sister Charlotte has one of her bad days at the same time that Randall either burns, or shivers, or does each alternately, Kezia and I are rather hard pressed. Fortunately it is spring-time, and several of our nicest hand-organs begin to pay periodical visits to Prospect Place, while the one with a monkey returns from a long visit to the south coast watering places, and Randall is quite amused by the little creature's recog nition of me, and his efforts to embrace Kezia.

Still, as I said to Sister Charlotte, these are amusements which pall upon a man accustomed to a wider sphere, and larger aspects of nature. It it also detrimental for a person to concentrate himself upon his own ailments; to watch himself shake with ague, and speculate upon his probable temperature when in the clutch of fever. Neither can the taking of large doses of quinine be looked upon as an enlivening manner of passing the time away ; and, in short, a small tea-party appears to me to be the thing called for at such a crisis. Kezia has to have a week's notice at least on such an occasion, for jumbles and sponge cakes that will stand up straight and spiky, are not things to be lightly undertaken. Of course we have decided that this entertainment of ours must be most select, including only the very crime -de -la-cr erne of our circle of friends.

This understands itself, as the French say; and I have to harden my heart against insinuating in quiries after Major Randall's health and other amenities offered in hope ; but offered in vain. Of course we shall ask Mrs. Alison McGregor. Military people understand one another. There is a certain cachet ■11 about them which ensures mutual appre ciation. Then, both my brother and Mrs. McGregor have been in India — a fact which alone must naturally draw them the one to the other. Lucille — we call Mrs. McGregor by her Christian name, for we are really quite intimate with her — has been away on a visit to some relatives of her late husband, and that is how it has chanced that she and Randall have not met before. Lucille is, in our estimation, a charming person, and I feel sure she will look upon it as a Christian duty to assist us in cheer ing and amusing my brother, and helping him over his hot fits and his cold fits and the periods of depression that intervene.

She is a woman of that pleasant, hazy age called "about thirty," graceful in figure, and of a naturally bright and gentle dis position. We never knew her in the craped and capped condition of widowhood ; aud, from all we have heard, she must have been glad to lay aside with those trappings of woe all remembrance of the late Colonel Alison McGregor, except such slender, kindly memories as survive in a womanly heart, while all the blacker records of the past are blotted out. Lucille has a quantity of light brown hair piled high upon her head, in a fashion but rarely seen. She has quiet, grey eyes that look sad enough at times, and yet sparkle merrily when she sits beside poor Lottie's couch and tells her something droll to charm the pain away for the moment. We have never heard anything but what is good of Alison McGregor's widow.

With the poor materials Fate gave to her, she made as good a home as she could for the man whose evil temper and selfish tyranny did their best to blight her young life altogether. Unprotected by the shield of a husband's love and care, she had to face all the temptations of social surroundings, in which adulation is offered to any wo man who chooses to accept it. In this trying position her womanly dignity did not desert her. She had many friends, but no lover ; managed to be thoroughly popular, but was never "talked about ;" mourned the temper of her colonel, suffered his cruelty — for it had come to that — with dignity and patience, making no moan, and asking for no pity, and nursed him with devotion when the end came. What more could mortal Avoman do to merit the love and tenderness of women, and the respect and reverence of men ?

We told Randall her sad story, and he took the kindliest interest in it all. He said such women were the " salt of the earth," which I thought neatly put. He said that to come out purified and strength ened from such trials, was a higher and, in one sense, a better lot than the happiest life could ever attain to; and that before such a woman he would stand bareheaded, as though on holy ground. He said it was such an easy thing for a woman to lead a good life, and make a good end, if she had a happy home about her, and a good husband to walk through life beside her. She ought to be ashamed of herself if she didn't. But when there was nothing to help, and everything to hinder, then came the " tug of war." This of course was Randall's military way of putting things, and I thought it very telling.

We were quite delighted to see him take such a warm interest in anything, and I told Kezia, who was mixing the batter for the jumbles, that the Major seemed to like being told about Mrs. McGregor, and all her troubles; to which Kezia replied, "Does he now, ma'am? Well, any one would, you know. She's that sort, you see — so bright and pleasant-spoke — what you may call takin' in her ways, ain't she, now ? And it's loike enoo' " But here Kezia stopped short, stared hard at me, rather rudely, I thought, and then opened her mouth as if to speak again — I could almost have fancied, to say something unpleasant. Anyway, she thought better of it, whatever it was, closed her thin lips tight in the transverse line of which I have spoken elsewhere, and set to stirring the batter like mad. That is the worst of Kezia — she is not always as respectful as she might be.