Woman Unsexed. A novel

Front matter

ujomAn itogxgd A NOVEL BY H. HERMAN CHILTON. -H^^jj^ggE^-M- PlJBI.ISHEI) BY W. FOULSHAM & Co., 4, Pilgrim Street, Ludgate Hill. LONDON, E.C 1892. ALI. RIGHTS RESERVED. THOM, KAKEK & RAN KIN, PRI NTF.ro. CHROMO-LITHO WORKS, l8-20, I)F. BEAUVOIR ROAD, KrNf;sr.ANr>, i.onuon, n. TO THE MEMORY OF MARY ELIZABETH WEIR. IN SAD AND SORROWFUL FULFILMENT OF A PROMISE MADE IN JEST. CONTENTS. chap. page. prologue — part i ...... • i ,, part ii . . . . . . 5 I. JOHN crowthek ...... 9 II. history ........ 14 in poverty ........ 19 iv. 'humpy' ........ 24 V. MARGARET ST. IVES . . . . . . 31 VI. THE LAW AND THE I ADY ..... 37 VII. THE MANAGER ....... 4;, VIII. WORK ........ 50 IX. ENNUI AND ITS ANTIDOTE ..... 60 X. THE WALKERS ....... 69 XI. FIRST LOVE ....... 76 XII. LOVES LABOUR LOST ..... 8l XIII. ROMEO AND JULIET ...... 93 XIV.

THE LABOUR CHAMPION ..... 98 XV A CONFIDENCE . . . . . .Ill XVI. A STARTLING SURPRISE . . . . . Il6 XVII. THE BIRTH OF AMBITION . . . . .122 XVII1. THE LITTLE TIN SOLDIER . . . . . I 2<S XIX. FACE TO FACE ....... 138 XX. UP THE RIVER ....... 147 XXI. BACHELOR COGITATIONS ..... CONTENTS. CHAP PACE, XXII. MAIDEN MEDITATIONS: AND HOW THEY ENDED 157 XXIII. THE BROTHERHOOD OK LABOUR . . . 165 XXIV. WESTMINSTER ABBEY . . . . -175 XXV. RUTH'S SECRET . . . . . . 180 XXVI. LILY WALKER ....... 194 XXVII. COMMITTEE NO. 1 249 ..... 201 XXVIII MASTER AND MAN . . . . . .213 XXIX. A STRANGE PROPOSAL . . . . .22 1 XXX. JINKS'S GARDENS ...... 229 XXXI. PREPARATIONS ....... 239 XXXII. THE WEDDING MORN ..... 246 XXXIII. NEMESIS. ....... 252 XXXIV. A NIGHT AND A MORNING .... 260 XXXY. HOME ........ 265 XXXVI THE UPHEAVAL OF LABOUR .... 273 XXXVII.

CLARENDON SQUARE ..... 280 XXXVIII. THE RESCUE ....... 285 XXXIX. ANOTHER STRANGE PROPOSAL .... 234 XL. THE 'FORTNIGHTLY' ARTICLE .... 300 XLI. POLITICAL ........ 306 XLII. IN THE HOUSE . . . . . . 310 XI.III. EXEUNT OMNES ....... WOMAN uNsexeD.

Part I

The old villages of England, like a great many other institutions of a bygone day, are dying out. Only a few survive the omnivorous enterprise of the jerry builder and continue, scattered, irreguiar, insanitary, but, thank Heaven, picturesque. The village green with its fringe of cottages and trees, its quiet parsonage, school and smithy, is not quite extinct, only doomed. The hour cometh, if it is not yet, when the dragon improvement will sweep every one of them away. No more quaint little houses with low thatched roofs, blinking windows a foot square, and bulging walls. Oh, ye deluded villagers of England, sunken in ignorance, know ye not that a low thatch is unhealthy, that small windows keep out the light, that convex walls are unsafe ? Come, let us reason together, and all these abominations shall straightway disappear.

We will build you up abodes straight, stiff, staring, pretentious. Comfort, quotha? The human animal needs air, not comfort. In fact the general breeziness of our work is, we suspect, its strong point. We cannot, of course, stave off death, which, sooner or later, overtakes us all, but yours shall be the inestimable privilege of dying under scientific conditions. Rixton, one of the prettiest spots in England, was a hamlet of the old type. No vulgar wave of innovation had ever washed over Rixton. No. Dissenters and Radicals, who ranged the country from end to end seeking what they might devour, were unknown here. Even competition, which, somehow, is more intolerant than either Dissenters or Radicals, kept its distance. Rixton had a single grocer who sanded his sugar, mixed his tea, chicoried his coffee and indulged in other amenities peculiar to grocers, unmolested.

A single wheelwright, who apparently never did anything but stand, a pipe in his mouth, at the entrance of his yard: AVOMAN UNSEXED. II the pipe itself was always out and the wheelwright had never been seen to light it. A single blacksmith alternated between his forge, on the rare occasions when a horse wanted shoeing, and the 'Pig and Whistle' on the chronic occasions when the craftsman pined for refreshment. A single butcher, a single cobbler, a single parson, (we refer to his vocation and not to his condition, for he was very much married) a single hosier and draper, pursued their various callings in sleepy contentment, as is the manner of men who have no rivals. There were, it is true, two public houses, but the landlords were as friendly as brothers, because they were the only people in the place who had plenty of business of their own to attend to.

We have said that Rixton was pretty. Imagine a village on the lowest slope of a hill, at the bottom of which, in a parallel line, extends the turnpike road. Between this and the cottages is the wide green, where the lads and maidens gather on summer evenings, when the air is balmy and the old folk are gossiping at their doors, to play kiss-in-the-ring or blindman's-buff, or wander away in pairs under the trees, where the ghostly rooks, who have a delicate sense of propriety, caw in hoarse remonstance. Behind the houses is the churchyard, whose gravestones, dotted against the hill side, look from a distance even more solemn and pathetic than close at hand. There are two Rixtons, the monuments seem to say. One down towards the valley, full of life and health, one up here in the shadow of the quiet church, — lifeless.

Gradually all will journey hither. Fair women, and strong men, and winsome children : all their buoyant hopes, and high resolves, and tender blossoming loves, when the autumn is over and the fruit is gathered in, will droop and die. The globe will speed upon its course as ever, careless whether its freight be greater by one life, or less. Only here upon the sad hillside other slabs will be set. That is the end of the palpitating toil and stress of existence. A stone ! In time that too will crumble under searching wind, and drenching rain, and shattering hail, to dust. Then the world will know you no more. The graveyard is full of wrinkled yew-trees planted hundreds of years ago, or so they say at Rixton, and in their branches

PROLOGUE.

. III the sparrows chirp and the thrush and blackbird whistle all day long, though by choice when the heat of noon is overpast. The sparrows, in particular, are very irreverent and merry, impudently cocking their tails, twittering, and settling their quarrels on the graves themselves, as if they wanted the world to take notice that a real, live, irrepressible sparrow, is as good as a thousand dead men. In the far corner of the enclosure rises the parish church, of hoary age, squat, crumbling. Its square tower is swathed in creepers and sacred legends are stained upon its windows. The pews within are high, so high indeed that the members of the congregation on Sundays look like veritable sheep, penned up until the auctioneer, who is not yet in the rostrum, comes to sell them. Behind the graveyard, again, is the school playground, and behind that Rixton Boarding School, a spruce looking building, compounded of many styles of architecture, from which, on a certain July evening, a tumultuous crowd of boys is issuing.

It is seven o'clock, and until half-past eight these hopefuls are free to work what dire mischief is attainable. Evidently something important is afoot, for the boys rush madly down the sloping field to one corner, where they plunge into a coppice. We will follow them. The trees shelter a patch of level green from prying eyes. And here the scholars meet ten or a dozen village boys ( 'louts' is the term preferred at the school) and an animated discussion ensues. It is not of long duration. The lads form a rough ring. A boy, short and sturdy, with a squarish face, dark hair, straight black brows almost meeting above his eyes, and a dogged mouth, steps from among the villagers and is confronted by a fair young gentleman, handsome too if it were not for a sharp scar across one cheek. One of the spectators, who enjoys himself prodigiously, fights being exquisite fun to the onlooker, calls 'time' in a loud voice, and the antagonists begin to spar.

A battle of champions. These sleek scholars in Eton jackets and dainty linen have long overawed the village. But to-day, it matters not through what chain of circumstances, a David has arisen among the 'louts' to strike a blow on their behalf. On both sides it is understood that on the AVOMAN UNSEXED. result the future attitude of school and village wrll depend. There is little to choose between the principals, and they fight very gamely. The taller has perhaps the best of it at the outset, plants his blows deftly, and again and again gets off scot free himself, but the other is undaunted and sticks to his work. They dodge, feint, strike, close, fall, locked together, on the ground, and are rescued, panting, by their seconds, to prepare for the next round. Now, like the guards at Waterloo, they are up and at it.

They circle warily about each other, and presently one rushes in. A swift blow and he is down. His backer lifts him tenderly on to his knee, soothes him, mops a gory handkerchief all over his face, whispers advice, and launches him at the opponent, to be felled again. The scholars are in extasies and the villagers depressed, for things bode ill. As their man is picked up his second remonstrates with him. "You'll be beat Jack, if you keep on rushin' at 'im. Wear 'im out, Jack, wear 'im out !" Jack's answer conies between set teeth. " I shan't be beat, and I shan't wear 'im out. I shall rush in as much as I like, and I'll land 'im an eye-opener just now ! " 'Time', calls the senior. Jack dashes in once more, and successfully. Locked in a furious entanglement of blows, the two struggle in the centre of the ring, and then, exhausted, fall apart, glaring from dishevelled hair and bleeding faces.

The scholar gives a backward step and Jack, interpreting hesitation, gathers courage : throws all his remaining strength into a spring at the foe : sends him roughly to the ground, and falls on top. The villagers whoop. The pair are facing again and the fair boy is determined still, but his distress is evident. Jack sees it and pulls himself together for the final onslaught. The sun, who is making ready to roll into his downy bed of clouds on the horizon, smiles through the coppice, amused, and for his sport casts grotesque shadows of the lads and their capers on the ground. No doubt the sun, who has had the advantage of looking on at so many carnages, and who therefore knows by experience the futility of strife, chuckles

PROLOGUE.

. V to himself, contemptuously, when he beholds the inherent pugnacity of our race breaking out in two mere boys. They at any rate are in dead earnest and pummel each other as if the fate of nations hung in the balance. But meanwhile, and this perhaps is what really tickles the sun, across the field, diagonally, strides a fresh spectator. The figure is portly and scant of breath but is very near the coppice now. Suddenly a little vagabond of a schoolboy on the look out yells 'cave.' Lo, as the doctor bursts with labouring sides into the arena, not a pupil is to be seen. He only hears an indiscriminate scramble among the trees. Muttering forcibly, he turns away and retraces his steps, while the sun, more amused than ever, travesties the old gentleman's chubby legs upon the grass where he bestows on them a quite impossible length.

Baffled and testy the doctor enters his house beside the school building. And the sun, beginning to feel bored by a spectacle that presents no new element, since from age to age he has witnessed just such scenes, sinks into his clouds to rest.

Part II

Once safely in the churchyard the villagers hauled up for repairs and held a council of war. Their flight in the very hour of triumph had been disordered. Now that they were beyond pursuit it was discovered that two of their number, the valiant Jack and his second, had left their jackets and caps behind. " Billy," said Jack to his friend, " this wunna do. I darena go wum without me coat. Granny 'ud be the death on me." " So 'ud feyther," answered Billy, feelingly. Jack thought a bit. " Owd bandyleg," said he, referring to the doctor, "owd bandyleg 'ull be gone now. Let's fetch we traps." They journeyed together, leaving their comrades, to the coppice : approached it stealthily as Indians on the war path, and, when they found the coast clear, searched the place carefully. At the end of a quarter of an hour they looked blankly into each others faces.

Their belongings had disappeared. AVOMAN UNSEXED. VI " Billy," whispered Jack, " here's a go ! You know- Granny. I'd rather fight the lot on 'em up yonder — he indicated the school — " than go wum like this." Billy whispered appreciation. " Feyther 'ull leather me till I caw stand." Jack considered awhile. "Billy," said he at last, " I've got a idee. I baint a goin' to stand granny's strappins no more. I've 'ad enough on it. I've thought many a time as I'd give her the slip, and now I mean to. Why only last week," he added retrospectively, "she lamped me wi' the close line till I shouted 'murder.' ' Spare the rod,' ses she, 'and spile the child.' That's as may be, Billy, but the close line, or the buckle end of a strap, or anythin' else 'andy like, aint the rod, not in my reedin' of the Scriptures !"

"Jack," said the pusillanimous Billy, "you wunna run away?" "Oh, I will." "Wheeres 'ull you run to, Jack?" "Lunnon," said that adventurer promptly. " Granny won't find me there. You come along o' me, Billy, and we '11 make our fortunes together. You shall be my vally," added Jack patronizingly, remembering a twopenny novel in his box at home, "and I'll treat yer kind." "No thank ye, Jack," retorted the other, "a leatherin' is a leatherin', in course, and on-pleasant, and feyther is 'eavy-' anded, but," — Billy grew solemn, — " wittles is wittles. I aint a goin' on no fool's errand to Lunnon. 'Taint good enough." "Well I am a goin', and this very night. Tell yer what Billy : you shall help me through my bedroom winder : I'll get me Sunday soot on, and my things in a bundle, and drop them out.

Then I'll start. Come on 1" It was about half past eight o'clock and the boys, looking down from their point of vantage on the village, could see the people congregated on the green in front of their houses. The friends ran swiftly to the back of one, fetched an old ladder from the garden, and placed it against the window sill. Jack ascended and shortly came back in his best suit, carrying a bundle in his hand. The ladder was replaced and the conspirators retired to the churchyard, their base of operations.

PROLOGUE.

. VII "Billy," said Jack, "you can go 'ome to your leatherin' now. I shall wait a hour or two till the people are all indoors. I can't go along the turnpike road by daylight or maybe I'll get ketched. Then I'll start along the Lunnon road and walk all night. Good bye." " Good bye, Jack." How strange a medley is life of great and little things : and how often do the great things hang on the little ! Nay, if w-e judge by results, are not all our experiences important ? And do not trifles form the fulcrums upon which the world's history has turned ? Anyway, that fear of a thrashing ruled the decisive step of John's career. •J&fyS^pKSr sWOMftN uNsexeD. >

Chapter I. John Crowther

' IS a conversational commonplace I that loneliness is nowhere so oppressive as in a crowd. But to enable one to realize this truth to the full the loneliness and the crowd need to be located in London. Even amid all the distractions of that buoyant period in life when a man has no responsibilities to withhold him from the pursuit of pleasure, nor any after-taste to induce remorse, — when, in a word, he is a gay bachelor of twenty-eight and scorns his liver with impunity — he has lucid intervals during which the hideousness of the Metropolitan streets is not masked for him by their bustle, and when the restless conflict of millions elbowing their way into prominence, seems, as it is, ignominious and unsatisfactory. At such moments our hypothetical young bachelor of twenty-eight is apt to remember and vaguely regret the eaves of his mother's cottage nestling in the rustle of ivy.

What a delightful knack that ivy had ( only he did not think so at the time ) of sending i a tiny shower of dew across his face as he flung wide his casement of a morning ! There comes back to him, also, the solemn quietude of the evenings when he looked out over fields, bathed in the weird pallor of the moon, and saw the black hedges (where he knew of nests), and the mill stream (where he fished for minnows), and in the distance the church spire darting above the highest trees, and further off, and far, far higher, the dark blue sweep of the sky speckled by a host of stars like glorified glow-worms in a boundless shade. How still and awe-inspiring he had thought it ! So still that the incessant drone of the water in the mill-race, and the song of the sedge-warbler in the coppice, who carolled from such a full heart, seemed but the lullaby to which tired nature had yielded.

Heigho ! our hypothetical bachelor grows melancholy. When he emerges from the city fog into the scarcely less oppressive suburban dulness, his mind harks back to the familiar lanes of his boyhood and the involuntary comparison is damaging to the capital. As he turns his latch-key and stumbles upstairs to his dingy room, he is conscious of a sneaking tenderness towards the girls at home, whom he always snubs, and who, womanlike, are proud of him in consequence. The landlady fusses in with his tea, and he is softened, for he thinks of his mother. No thank you, Mrs. Jones, we will not trouble you for anything else to-night. The door closes and our young friend, alone with himself, gets sadder and sadder. The lamp, untrimmed for a week, burns dimly and intensifies the feeling. He sits in front or" the dismal fire, his feet on the fender and his head between his hands, and enjoys to the full the inestimable advantage of being his own master !

We may here remark, in parenthesis, that youth is the only period of life which affords what may be termed the luxury of sadness. As one ages and sorrow becomes real it loses its relish. Considered as an exercise for the imagination the pangs of heroic death, blighted love, baffled aspiration and the like, are delectable. A man toys with them just as in the forties he toys with dainty food. The shoe begins to pinch when they change into everyday experiences. But it is not our hypothetical friend of whom we have to JOHN CROAVTHEU. 11 deal. On a dull evening in November a young man sat in his own room in a back street of that romantic district, Peckham, his untasted dinner on the table, and his bewildered head between his hands, looking into a grate that smoked so feebly he half thought a stray wreath of fog had lost its way and w-as hopelessly trying to rejoin the main body outside by the chimney.

He was lonelier even than Mrs. Jones' lodger since he had none of those associations, at once remorseful and tender, which hallow to men their sombre moments. His only relative was an aged grandmother from whose tyranny he had fled in his boyhood and for whom, to say truth, he had never cared a button. Let us try to describe him. In appearance John Crowther was somewhat ungainly, but striking. His head, profusely covered with wavy black hair never too amenable to discipline, was large and well set on shoulders whose stoop gave a perhaps exaggerated impression of thoughtfulness. His features were irregular. He wore no beard, and his moustache, after the cleanly but ugly fashion of the time, was shaven at the centre of the lip and twisted fiercely upward from the corners of the mouth. His brows were black, straight, and almost met over large brown eyes which redeemed the face by the softer look they imparted to it.

The forehead was broad and lumpy. Altogether, a face that a school-girl would have found 'interesting' and an old maid 'dangerous'. His stature was short, his arms rather long for the size of him, his hands large and sinewy : probably a result of his employment. John Crowther's character w-as very much what the outward man indicated. He was good-humoured, conceited, as a man ought to be, fastidiously honourable, wildly impulsive. For the rest he had drunk rather early of the cup of pleasure and early had found its taste to be tinged with gall. Not that he was depraved or a debauchee. But thrown upon his own resources when in age but a boy, and in experience a child, he had not escaped those errors of youth which allure and engulf: and he was emerging from them now into something of the superficial cynicism of those who have seen only one side of life.

He was by trade a working engineer and he had by his ingenuity, when he cared to apply himself, attained a position that was respectable and might have been command ing. But the fatal ease of a man without responsibilities had induced him to let rare opportunites slip. At twenty-eight he was still a working engineer, distrusted to an extent by his employers because of his too great confidence in the powers he believed he could exert, and suspected by his fellow workmen because he felt himself their superior and held aloof from them. His life hitherto had presented no great difficulties and that was perhaps why to-night, in the grip of his first real trouble, his buoyancy had deserted him. AA7hen he had found himself, after having escaped from the bondage of his grandmother, a weary and footsore boy in the heart of London, poor Jack had been too dazed by the over powering unrest of the streets to realize his helplessness.

Then, after a short series of such hardships as fall to the lot of people in his circumstances, — a few cold nights and hungry days in the streets — a sudden twist of the wheel had landed him as boy of all work at a large engineering yard on the Surrey side of the river. Here his success had been even. From the roughest of ill-paid labour he had reached, by the notice of one of his employers, the condition of apprenticeship. Progress of years had fructified him into a journeyman and at twenty-five he had been appointed foreman of his shop. One further particular. He was well educated, entirely through his own efforts. In spite of his many faults he had had the good sense to discern that knowledge is the only aid by which man can make any desirable impression on those round about him. The superior attainments of the best men he met roused him to jealous rivalry and he lost no opportunity of profiting by their example.

He hourly spurred himself to fresh pains in the hope of one day taking the place he fondly believed he could fill. As a result he retained at twenty eight few ot the tricks of speech and manner that betray the artisan, and possessed a degree of education seldom displayed by those of his class. To-night he sat disconsolately over the fire and brooded, as we have hinted, on his first serious trouble. He had for some time been vaguely dissatisfied with his position at the works, and to-day had been surprised into an open rupture JOHN CROAVTHER. 13 with one of his employers. Soundly rated for a momentary carelessness by an exacting superior, he had replied in words full of sarcasm and defiance. When, on the ringing of the evening bell, he had handed in his check to the timekeeper, he had received in return a note whose portent he had under stood without looking inside.

He opened it now, and drawing his chair to the table read by the lamplight: — "Mr. Crowther — Sir. After your impertinence this morning to a member of the firm you cannot be surprised at our dismissing you without notice. The circumstances under which you leave our employ render it impossible that we should allowyou to use our name in seeking another situation." It was as he had expected, and in the pitiless directness of the words he saw the attitude of whoever he should solicit for any position of trust. Having left the drudgery of the mere mechanic behind, it never entered his thoughts to reinstate himself by the old gradations ; and unrecommended he could not expect to easily obtain a situation of the kind he wanted. He placed his chair before the fire once more and sat tilting himself backward, his feet raised against the mantelpiece, but the coals, so contemplated between his legs, furnished no jot of inspiration.

Presently, as he leaned still farther back in his perplexity, a sixpence fell from his pocket and chinked on the floor. Here at any rate was a practical suggestion. He emptied his pockets and found in them three sovereigns and some loose silver. It did not allay his anxiety to reflect that he owed at least half the sum to his landlady. To be exact, there lay between him and destitution the slender provision of one pound ten shillings and elevenpence halfpenny.

Chapter II

, HISTORY7. TF the reader has no taste for a short historical disquisition, X and less patience, we would advise him to skip this * chapter, its bearing on our tale being purely incidental. But for the sake of making the events we have to touch upon clearly understood it is necessary that we should refresh his mind concerning certain occurrences of two decades ago even if, as is most likely, he should be already perfectly familiar with them. Our story then, is pitched in that period ranging between 1924 and 1925 which for many years was referred to as 'the crisis'. In the great war of 1910 France, after a struggle that drained her of every attribute that makes national life an object in men's minds, avenged upon Germany, enervated by her too fond security, the humiliations of 1870. Unstable as the wind in everything else France had nursed her revenge unfalteringly.

The Republic of 1870 fell like ripe fruit, towards the close of the year 1900, and the Bourbons entered on their last spell of power. Their poltroonery paved the way for the sinister yet impetuous genius of the Emperor Victor. France, in her easy virtue, had been the mistress of many wooers but deep in her heart had cherished all the while the venomous seed of hatred implanted there by Bismarck when he only thought to sow ruin. The Republic had proved oyer-cautious : the monarchy imbecile. France rid herself of both and invoked once again the fateful dynasty of Napoleon. Her call was answered. William II. who, in spite of the indulgence, early in his reign, in a variety of empirical vagaries intended to allay the social disquiet of his country, was a Hohenzollern at heart, uniting the arrogance and prejudices of his grandsire without his virtues, reigned in Germany.

The nation, taking pattern by its ruler, had slowly lost in overweening confidence the stern -qualities that had ensured its past success. The army organ HISTORY. 15 ization, at one time the finest in Europe, had declined. The numerical strength of the forces capable of quick mobilization was grossly exaggerated by those responsible for its maintenance. In a word, the mighty German hosts existed largely on paper. Suddenly, untrammelled by any weak deference to international etiquette, the Emperor Victor hurled two overwhelming armies simultaneously, the one against Metz, the other against Strasburg. Both places, after being shattered by the French artillery in a bombardment lasting only forty-eight hours, were taken by assault on the same night. In a week the two victorious armies, roused to an enthusiasm that was madness by unexampled successes, converged towards Frankfort and Magdeburg and beneath the walls of the latter city routed the Germans with immense slaughter.

Stunned by the rapidity and violence of the French movements, but stung also by their repeated defeats into a full appreciation of their vital peril, the Prussian generals concentrated all their forces at Potsdam, where they were overtaken. The battle raged for three days, and transcended, in concentrated agony, even the sublime carnage of Leipzig. At first it seemed as if the doggedness of despair wrould prove too much for the French. But Victor had gathered his fleet, the most formidable in the world, in the North Sea, ten days before the invasion, under pretence of a series of naval manœuvres in honour of the Mikado, then for the first time a visitor in Europe. Admiral Bataille, a skilful officer and a man of insuperable determination, after annihilating the German squadron sent to oppose him, landed all his forces near the mouth of the Elbe, only leaving on board each of his ships a sufficient complement to work it back to Cherbourg.