Among Thorns: a novel

Front matter

BY THE SAME AUTHOR. AN ERRING PILGRIMAGE. Crown 8vo, 6s. "Noel Ainslie has a distinct gift for lively writing, and the story holds the reader to the end." — St. James's Gazette. "There is marked ability in it; and beneath a cynicism which is only superficial, a great deal of sympathy and of insight. We shall hear of Noel Ainslie again." — The Bookman. " The best new novel by a new writer that I have lately read is ' An Erring Pilgrimage.' " — Truth. A NOfEL BY NOEL AINSLIE author of "an erring pilgrimage" "And some fell among thorns " LONDON LAWRENCE & BULLEN, Ltd. 16, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C. Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London & Bungay. TO LEAH CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE i. peggy's summer garden ... 1 II. THE COMING OP LESBIA ... ... ... 7 III. WHAT PEGGY REMEMBERED ... ... ... 16 IV.

THE LADY OP THE MINIATURE ... ... 31 V. ANOTHER GARDEN ... .., ... ... 41 VI. JACK MAKES FRIENDS ... ... ... ... 51 VII. A LATTER-DAY IDEALIST ... ... ... 61 VIII. "TIS IN OURSELVES' ... ... ... ... 71 IX. THE SHADY SIDE ... ... ... ... 82 X. THROUGH THE GAS-LIT STREETS ... ... 92 XI. AN UNLOOKED-FOR TURN IN THE STORY ... 105 XII. STANISLAS BRESSANT ... ... ... ... 118 XIII. A CHAPTER OP GOOD-BYES ... ... ... 132 XIV. IN A NEW SETTING ... ... ... ... 143 XV. THE WEAVING OF THE THREADS ... ... 156 XVI. LESBIA MAKES UP HER MIND ... ... 171 XVII. PEGGY EXPLAINS ... ... ... ... 181 XVIII. MRS. WALTON SPEAKS ... ... ... ... 189 XIX. A MARRIED WOMAN ... ... ... ... 199 XX. OLD RENEWING, NEW CREATING ... ... 210 XXI. 'THOU SHALT NOT WASH DISHES ' ... ... CONTENTS CHAP. PAGB XXII. THE WOMAN TEMPTED ME ... ... ... 229 XXIII.

THE DUTIES OF A FATHER ... ... ... 240 XXIV. PICKING UP THE THREADS ... ... ... 255 XXV. LUCILLE LETHBRIDGE'S ADVICE ... ... 265 XXVI. A RESPECTABLE FAILURE ... ... ... 276 XXVII. THE ANGEL WITH THE FLAMING SWORD ... 289 XXVIII. PEGGY'S WINTER GARDEN ... ... ...

Chapter I

peggy's summer garden No. 17 Carados Street — a typical Bloomsbury house (tall, gloomy, roomy) — did not strike a stranger as possessing any especial feature to distinguish it from others in the same block. Unlike a Society beauty, it did not display all its charms to the casual passer-by, but kept some in reserve for those who knew it and loved it ; for though Carados Street had no social existence, though it could not boast of recognition in fashionable circles, yet to one or two people at least it represented all that is best in the hackneyed word home. That it should mean this to Peggy Walton was not surprising. For sixteen years out of the nineteen that had made her present experience of life, Carados Street had been the setting against which her individuality had de veloped ; and though the setting was somewhat sordid and a trifle frayed at the edges, she had known nothing better.

That her mother let lodgings, and that she herself B had to wait upon the lodgers, had not struck her as an exceptionally hard fate, though she was exceptionally pretty. Jack Graham had set the seal of his approbation upon her when first he came to Carados Street, and. Jack being an artist, his word carried weight. He had been attracted first by the garden — a long narrow strip of ground between high walls covered with creepers, with a wide-spreading lime-tree at one end and a white lilac-bush at the other. At least Peggy told him that the blossoms were white ; for it was early autumn when he saw it, and the lilac leaves were dusty and dried with the summer heat. If the garden — the one beauty that set No. 17 apart from the other houses, where the poetry of original conception had long ago faded into the prose of the back -yard — had convinced him, Peggy charmed him.

He thought it would add to the artistic value of his life if he saw such a pretty face smiling over his breakfast tray, instead of the typical London servant. And artistic value meant much to him at this period of his career, appealing to him in exact proportion to his lack of prosperity. Prosperous people are seldom fanciful; they have solid advantages with which to console themselves, and ideas have little attraction for them : it is only the social outcasts, with no balance at the bank, who know the full beauty of imagination. Jack Graham was, in his own opinion at least, a very ill-used person. Two years ago he had come to London full of hope and enthusiasm, after having served his term of vagabondage in Paris, where he had learned a good deal of the Art of living at high pressure, and PEGGY S SUMMER GARDEN 3 unlearnt many of the conventionalisms of the English Art Schools.

But since then, some of the hopes had found time to die. His talents had not secured that instant recognition that he fancied they deserved, and the disappointment he felt at his want of success had given him a thin over-coating of cynicism that made men and women fight shy of him: a successful cynic is delightful, but the non-successful man must choose his phrases carefully, for fear of offending ears polite. And this was just what Jack Graham did not do. He vexed men by his frank criticisms of better known artists' work, and annoyed women by running down the latest fashionable cult — in a word, he became unpopular ; and it was at this stage of his story that he came to Mrs. Walton's. He had been living there for six months, and had come to look upon it as his home, only in a lesser degree than Peggy herself.

Somehow or other, he never associated her with Mrs. Walton, there being many more points of contrast than resemblance between the mother and daughter, so much so that he had often wondered whether she was not a child of adoption, though he had the good taste to keep his suspicions to himself. Not that Mrs. Walton was an ugly woman ; she rather gave the impression of having once been pretty, with a prettiness that could not stand the stress of years, and that had left behind it a certain forlorn suggestion of what had been. Peggy bore the impress of a higher type of human development — of a birthright of culture that was curiously out of touch with her surroundings. Her virtues were, as yet, merely negative : her vices latent, but if ever they sprang to life, they did not give the promise of being primitive in their nature.

And it was this suggestion of romance about her that set her apart from other girls he had known, just as the lime-tree and the lilac-bush dis tinguished her home from the other houses in the street. Until the great picture was painted that was to bring him fame and fortune — for he was young and still believed in himself — he did black-and-white work for an illustrated paper; sketches in the suggestive French style that the average English draughtsman finds impossible, either from a lack of lightness of touch or an overweight of nioral sensibility. And in these sketches Peggy's face would re-appear with irritating persistency — smiling under an exaggerated hat, or dancing as a Pierrette — but still Peggy : it was slightly monotonous ; but, for the present, she was the star that ruled his artistic life.

" Any news to-day ? " It was an everyday question with him, and the fact that the answer was almost invariably in the negative did not prevent him from taking a certain amount of interest in it : an interest that was not necessarily assumed. Trivial little incidents amused him when retailed by Peggy in the mixture of educated English and street slang that made her conversation peculiarly piquant, reflecting as it did the two sides of her nature — the education that came from contact with men like himself, and the commoner phraseology that was hers by heritage. " Yes, lots of news ! " She put the breakfast tray PEGGY'S SUMMER GARDEN 5 down again, and leaned easily against the sideboard ; it was an attitude in which he had often sketched her, and one in which she was perhaps conscious of being seen at an advantage.

" Well, tell away, then ! " " Mother has let the dining-rooms to a young lady — a Miss Meynell. I haven't seen her yet, but mother says she is very pretty and seems pleasant." " This is interesting. Go on and tell me all about her. But I thought that Mrs. Walton objected to lady-lodgers ? " " She does generally, but you see we can't have the rooms standing empty ; and then this Miss Meynell writes for the papers — and people who write are different to ordinary young ladies — they are not so fussy and particular." " Independence and latch-keys ? " " They are more like actresses, mother says ; if you leave them alone you won't have much trouble with them." " Then I'm not to ask any more questions about Miss Meynell ? But I shall, because you have excited my curiosity; and besides, if she is pretty, I might make a sketch of her."

"Oh! I don't suppose she is as prettyas all that," Peggy interposed hastily — while Jack bent over his work to hide a smile. " At least I mean that of course you can touch in any face and make it pretty enough for a sketch; only I don't suppose she would sit for you." " Probably not. And when is she coming ? " " To-day. And a young man has taken the drawingrooms— he comes in on Saturday. His name is Philip Eden." " And what is he like ? " " We haven't seen him, because he is living up in Yorkshire at a place called Northchester — he's an engineer." "Peggy!" " There's mother calling ! " — and she picked up the breakfast tray and was gone, leaving him to the reflection that life in a London lodging-house, if you are fortunate enough to be on good terms with your land lady's daughter, is not without its elements of comedy, in which it is jDOSsible to be called upon to play a leading joart at any moment.

He liked the idea of this girl " who wrote for the papers " ; the introduction of the feminine element pleased him. Peggy was charming, but he had the man's love of variety — and even charm is apt to pall. Miss Meynell suggested a new experience, and as such was very welcome ; if there were any idea of disloyalty to Peggy in the thought, he consoled himself with the reflection that she was no doubt just as eager for the advent of Philip Eden. Then he turned seriously to work again, to see Peggy's smile exaggerated in the little French dancer that he was sketching, and for the first time it struck him as being a trifle incongruous — yes, he could do with a fresh inspiration.

Chapter II The Coming Of Lesbia

Lesbia Meynell had hardly had time to grow accustomed to the new condition of things. Last night she had been too tired, and this morning she felt too spiritless to give more than a languid attention to her surroundings. Had she been told that there were people to whom Carados Street represented a solid idea of comfort, she would have merely pitied their limited outlook, for she was not inclined to take that optim istic view of life popularly known as "making the best of it." She had a number of foolish little prejudices, and set quite an exaggerated value on her own individuality; and at the present moment the prejudices and the individuality were struggling to express them selves in some definite form of speech, that should help to relieve her feelings. A man would have found no difficulty in selecting the short emphatic word, but Lesbia wanted something more.

She had lived a good deal alone, but yet not so long as to have outgrown the feminine desire to have some one to talk to; a woman being mentally dependent on her friends to an extent that the coarser-fibred sex never dreams of. " A letter for you, Miss Meynell." " A letter ! " She took it eagerly, while Peggy watched her curiously. She had only brought the letter up as an excuse to see Miss Meynell by daylight, and to judge for herself as to how far her impressions of last night would be justified on a closer acquaintance. She was a little anxious, too ; for the coming of another woman is too often equivalent to the admission of the serpent into Eden. And she had to admit that, from her point of view, Lesbia Meynell's outward seeming was too attractive. A pretty pale impertinent face with a quantity of dark curly hair that she had a trick of ruffling with her fingers until it stood up like an aureole over her low forehead — a trick that came from the constant searching after ideas, and showed itself, too, in the grey eyes, so often tired and lustreless.

Women who work show the first signs of fatigue in their eyes, as the women who love chronicle their triumphs there. Perhaps Peggy's scru tiny was keener than she had intended, for Lesbia looked up suddenly. There was a mixture of challenge and appeal in her eyes — and they were very beautiful eyes, and redeemed the face from any suggestion of commonplaceness ; but it was not the beauty of them, but the pathos in them, that struck Peggy, and made her propitiatory. " I thought you might want to send an answer," she suggested, " and then I could have posted it for you." The excuse was a lame one ; but the flash in Miss THE COMING OF LESBIA 9 Meynell's eyes had indicated the necessity for an explanation, while the appeal seemed to hint that a little sympathy might not be unwelcome. " No, I shan't write.

I must answer it in person." There was a pause. Each girl was wondering what she should say next, and each, with the cautionary cowardice that distinguishes women from men, was waiting for the other to speak first. Culture should have broken the 'conversational ice, but it was left to Peggy to make the first advances. " I hope you'll be comfortable here," she ventured. She was not at all sure that this was a statement of actual fact ; but the potentialities appealed to her, for Lesbia might so easily develop into friend or foe. It was the old story of the moth and the candle, and of course the candle was sublimely unconscious of its magnetism. " Yes, I hope so, too." Then seeing her disappointed face she added — " It will be my own fault if I am not, for I am sure everything is very nice."

" It will be when you have unpacked your things and feel more at home. Shall I help you ? " Lesbia was surprised, and just a little touched. " It is very good of you, but this morning I have an engagement. Perhaps this afternoon — - — " " That will do as well. I expect you won't be happy until you have made the rooms pretty with all your own pictures and books. You should have seen the top rooms before Mr. Graham came — they were as ugly as these are now. He's an artist, and I'll take you up there if you like one morning when he's out, to see the sketches." Lesbia began to feel a little more interest in Carados Street. " Is the house full ? " " It will be to-night, for we expect Mr. Eden in the drawing-rooms. He's an engineer, and is coming up from Northchester. I wonder what he will be like ?

" " Do you care what the people are like ? " " Oh yes, of course I do. I was glad when mother told me you were so pretty." It cost Peggy an effort to say it, but Lesbia's smile rewarded her, for she was not proof against the com pliment. And the smile lingered after Peggy had gone ; it was born of a pleasant memory, and such memories, in Lesbia Meynell's past experience, were rare. Not that her life had run on unusual lines, or that her experiences had been very different from those of hundreds of other women. If there were any differ ence between her and them it lay rather in herself, in an originality of temperament that four years of a more or less unsuccessful struggle for the " living wage " had not been able to spoil or draw into more conventional channels. She had grown accustomed to the widening of the horizon, and to many other things besides : to a constant change of address, that was more often necessitated by an inability to meet current expenses than from any restless desire for a fresh outlook, and to a great many disappointments and petty annoyances, that had almost made her begin to mistrust her own powers.

The element of mistrust lay uppermost this morning, as she re-read her letter. THE COMLNG OF LESBLA 11 " I wonder if I can do it ? I wish that I hadn't accepted that introduction." But she knew quite well that the wish was half hearted. She had her ambitions, even thoueb her connection with literature had been that of the poor relation, and the papers for which she had written those whose circulation was limited to a narrow religious sect. And not the least of these ambitions was to write for a good paper — a smart weekly that was known and talked about, a connection with which would give her a better position in the journalistic world that was now the only one she knew. Once she had known another ; but that had been long ago, when she was the spoilt, petted child of a doting father and mother ; the youngest of a family that had grown up before Lesbia was born, and of whom she had necessarily known little ; how little she never realized until the day that she was left an orphan with a sum of money that the family lawyer did not feel justified in describ ing as an income, though with rigid economy it might permit the luxury of semi-starvation.

The married sister in India whom Lesbia hardly remembered, and the two brothers in America, one of whom she had never seen, were all that remained to her, and it was charac teristic of her that she was glad of their absence. " I don't want their help," she explained to the lawyer, " and I'm quite sure they wouldn't want me. I can take care of myself." It had been up-hill work ; and sometimes she had been doubtful as to the ultimate result. In the press and struggle that surrounded her, she had been saved only by what she herself described as luck, but what her mother would have called Providence. It was luck that had led to this introduction to the Decade— a. weekly paper of large circulation, with a reputation for smartness that extended beyond the limited circle of the editor's personal friends.

Everybody knew the Decade, and to Lesbia it meant that her chance had come at last ; once on the staff, she would have secured a certain footing, and success would be no longer an illusive chimera, but an absolute assured reality. The sense of responsibility weighed heavily upon her, as she dressed for the all-important interview. The connection between a becoming hat and the writing of newspaper articles might not have been apparent to the blundering male, but to Lesbia it was self-evident : editors were merely human, and though a writer, she was still a woman. As she walked to the office she was conscious of being in a state of pleasurable excite ment, in which, though anxiety predominated, hope had its share ; unless they had thought well of the specimens she had sent of her writing, they would hardly have wanted to see her.

The Decade office was not imposing either in its outer or inner decorations ; there was no attempt at artistic luxury or gorgeous upholstery. An overgrown office-boy took her card, and came back to ask her to wait for a few minutes as the editor was engaged. She recognized the inevitable formula that is intended to convey the necessary lesson that an editor is not an ordinary man — his time being of inestimable value to his fellow-creatures — and that an audience with him is an even greater privilege than THE COMING OF LESBLA 13 one with royalty. But those few minutes were a weariness to Lesbia. She tried to remember all that she had arranged to say in answer to the questions that she was sure to be asked, but her mind was a blank. The office-boy had considerately left her the current number of the paper, and she had carefully read the two columns that she would have to fill (the ones headed " Frocks and Follies "), and she knew that, do what she would, she could never write like that ; it was only the recollection that the Decade paid a guinea a column that prevented her from leaving the office.

" Step this way, please." There were two men in the room ; the stout, grey bearded one she recognized as the editor, having seen his photograph in so many of those illustrated inter views with which the artistic and literary world delight to advertise themselves, possibly because it costs them nothing. He held some cuttings in his hand that Lesbia knew for her own — those printed specimens that she had sent with some little pride, but which now seemed to her utterly worthless. " I asked you to call here, Miss Meynell, about this vacancy. Your name has been strongly recommended to us, but, judging from these" — he waved the papers as he spoke — " I am afraid your style is hardly up to our mark. We want something smart, crisp, and clear, a little above the average newspaper level. Are these the only papers for which you have written ?

" Lesbia's " Yes " was so low that he hardly heard it, but rather guessed her answer from the movement of her lips. She knew — no one better — how wretched the papers were for which she wrote, but she had always thought herself too good for them. And now she saw that, in the opinion of the editor of the Decade, she and these same wretched papers were very well suited to each other. All at once she felt that the other man was looking at her — amused, no doubt, she thought resentfully, at her presumption and her distress. For she was bitterly disappointed, and though she made an effort to conceal it, she could not persuade herself that her attempted show of indifference would take any body in. She raised her eyes, and unconsciously there was the same look of appeal in them that had earlier in the day had its effect upon Peggy Walton.

It was not lost upon Winyard Cuthbert. "So I think, Miss Meynell," the editor went on comfortably, with the air of a man who has successfully discharged an unpleasant duty ; but he was interrupted. " Would it not be as well if Miss Meynell wrote a specimen article for the Decade ? She knows the kind of thing you want." He spoke suggestively, as though merely venturing an opinion, but there was an author itative under-ring that made itself felt in every note, and Lesbia looked at him with interest. He was a tall man of a rather graceful build, with a lazy way of speaking and moving ; a fair-haired man, with deep-set eyes and a face that she decided was clever as well as good-looking. The editor was a gentleman, and in his way, a distinguished man, but by the side of Winyard Cuthbert he seemed dwarfed into momentary in significance.

"Yes, perhaps that would be best. Write two THE COMING OF LESBLA 15 columns, Miss Meynell, and bring it with you to-morrow morning." It was her dismissal, and after all the interview had been better than she expected. She was doubtful of her own powers, and the two columns weighed heavily upon her mind, but she was determined to do her best, not for the sake of the money — though she wanted it very badly — but because she wished to justify herself in this man's opinion. All the slumbering ambition woke to life in her — the self-mistrust died — she felt the possibility of triumph. The editor showed her to the door with ponderous politeness, but she knew that Cuthbert's eyes were following her, though he had not troubled to leave his easy-chair.

Chapter III What Peggy Remembered

Kind eyes, a pleasant voice, and an ill-cut coat — these were Peggy Walton's first impressions of Philip Eden. Afterwards they suffered expansion, as first impressions invariably do, and she noticed the north-country accent that jarred upon her, but that she grew to like because she associated it with Philip. No one else that she knew spoke like that, except the old Scotch man at the tobacconist's round the corner, where she sometimes went to buy cigarettes for Jack Graham when he was too busy — Peggy called it lazy — to fetch them himself. And Philip's voice was different from the Scotchman's, because it had a trick of softening at odd and unexpected times. Perhaps this was one reason why she found his society so interesting, though for the first fortnight he spoke very little to her, and even then only on indifferent subjects.

" I don't believe he likes me," she had said to Jack Graham one day, and, though vehemently protesting that such a thing was impossible, he was inclined to agree with her. " He may have been hard hit, and doesn't want to fall in love again," he had suggested by way of an explanation. Peggy accepted it, partly because the solution was one that soothed her wounded vanity, and partly because she had great faith in Jack Graham's powers of analysis. " What do you think of him ? " she asked. " He seems a decent sort of a fellow, in his way, but he's provincial you know." She looked at him inquiringly. " That means he wants some London polish, Peggy, and you'd better begin and put it on." " I don't suppose the sort of polish I could give him would be much use," she said sadly. " You think he ought to know gentlemen like you, and learn their ways."

He didn't answer. Social questions were best avoided with Peggy, for the girl had ambitions that soared beyond Carados Street and her present sur roundings, and was apt sometimes to be a trifle im patient of the existing conditions of caste as she knew them. Why should she not be Jack Graham's equal, for instance ? She had asked herself the question often, but honesty compelled her to the inevitable answer that it was her mother — her hard-working, hard-headed mother — who divided her from that enviable stratum of the social crust which entombs those curious, though somewhat uninteresting human specimens, known as the upper classes. But in Jack's opinion Philip Eden was divided from them as surely as she herself. She c recognized the slightly contemptuous tone of easy toler ance in the description " a decent sort of a fellow," and felt that it drew her nearer to Philip, even though he knew nothing of it.

She began to weave a romance, in which he and she were hero and heroine; a harmless little love story that she dreamt at odd moments in her busy life. Philip himself was wholly unconscious of his own position as hero. He had thought very little of Peggy, beyond the first surprise at her prettiness; even the occasional glimpses he had caught of Lesbia having aroused him to more interest. But then the face that had haunted his dreams in those impressionable, con structive years that lie between boyhood and manhood, had been of another type than Peggy's — a bolder outline that appealed directly to the senses, and left nothing to the imagination. His ideal being of so opposite a nature, he was critical where another man would have been content simply to admire ; he thought Peggy a very pretty girl, but he told himself that the girl he had loved was beautiful.

Yet at four-and-twenty the average man is seldom a philosopher, and though at one time Philip Eden promised to shine as a bright, particular star, it is doubtful whether he could ever have achieved greater things than the success of the average man. And not being a philosopher, he soon began to tire of his own society and to long for human companionship — a woman's for preference. In this frame of mind he was an easy prey for any one who cared to fling him a kind word, and having no friends in London it was natural that he should turn to Peggy in his loneliness. The sympathy of a young and pretty woman is always very welcome to an impressionable young man; and like most shy, reserved people, Philip Eden had an affectionate nature, though the circumstances of his life had taught him to keep it well under control.