Norman; or, Inherited fate. By Colin Clout

Front matter

BY COLIN CLOUT LONDON DIGBY, LONG & CO., PUBLISHERS 18 BOUVERIE STREET, FLEET STREET, E.C. CONTENTS. CHAP- PACE I. — The Railway Journey, ...... i II. — Fairy Glen, 15 III. — Gathering Roses, ....... 30 IV. — A Strange Prayer, ....... 44 V.— The Dancing Malady, 57 VI. — University Life, ....... 71 VII. — A Leaf out of a Strange Diary. .... S5 VIII.— The Small Bonnet, 100 IX. — The Snowstorm, ....... 106 X. — Sowing Grain on Marble, 122 XI. — Making Nets, 136 XII.— The Goodly Apple rotten at the Core, ... 151 XIII. — The Flower of Innocence 171 XIV. — Elopement with the ' Honey-Sucking Bird,' . . 1S5 XV. — The Sympathetic Powder of Religion, . . . 19S XVI.— The Little 'Beasties,' 212 XVII.— The Tame Cat, and Second Sight, .... 237 XVIII.— Throttling Sensations— Murder, .... 262 XIX. — The Curious Mark on the Strange Garment, . . 2<_>6 XX.— The Stag Hunt, and the Strange Letter, . . 302 XXI.— White against Black, 320 XXII. — The Ingredient of every Inordinate Cup is a Big Black Devil, 334 XXIII.— Hanged by Calculation, 34& XXIV.— Woven Paces and Waving Hands, ... 365 XXV.— A Cruel Strike— The Drones control the Bees, . .

CONTENTS. CHAr. rAGE XXVL— Money alone is Solid Food, Learning but Hungry Sauce, .....•■• 393 XXVII.— The Strange Dream 410 XXVIII.— Dipping the Bucket into an Empty Well, . • 422 XXIX. — ' Carding ' an Informer 43^ XXX. — Men are not born Equal no more than Chickens, . 459 XXXI.— The Little Human Insect, 48' XXXII.— The Suicide, 493 XXXIII. — Sensationalism : Garrotting, 5°4 XXXIV.— The Drive over the Moors, 5lS XXXV. — The Cry of Young Humanity saves the Would-be Suicide 53& XXXVI.— Night brings out Stars, Norman; or, Inherited Fate.

Chapter I. The Railway Journey

' Hollo ! hollo ! old fellow,' shouted Norman, ' are you bound for Fairy Glen School ? ' 'Of course I am,' answered Noel, 'the governor says I must have a year under " Old Hat " before going to the University. He swears by the school — was there himself, don't you know, and thinks there is no place where a young fellow can be so well ground in mathematics. Between ourselves it is cheap and nasty, as you well know from experience, the hard schoolmaster ; and as money is devilishly scarce at home just now, I am made the scape goat upon whom the tightening principle must be applied.' 'Well, Noel, cheer up, I have just gained an extra scholar ship there, and so will be your companion for some time. The place is a paradise of beauty, but the fare is rough. The head-master believes in "plain living and high thinking."

Have you brought a well-stocked hamper with you ? We might join our forces of hampers and divide evenly ; in this way our luxuries would last longer.' A NO R.MAN; OR, INHERITED FATE. 2 'I say, Norman, have you a well-filled purse with you, because I want to borrow some money ? I have none to pay my fare to the school, and I was afraid to ask the governor, he was in such a vile temper this morning, as if he had suddenly lost a fortune ; certainly he must have got up on the wrong side. You see, Goodman and I went to a gambling hole last night, drank sodas and brandies and lost every bawbee.' ' I have no money to lend,' said Norman ; ' my advice to you is — Neither a borrower or lender be.' ' Thank you for your bookish advice ; sorry I cannot pay you for it. Oh ! here comes Goodman, he is going back for two more terms.

Well, how are you, old bloke ? Have you managed to squeeze any money out of your delightful mater? ' ' Yes ; just as much as will give me a sight of the famous " Old Hat," but none for you.' ' How in the name of heaven am I to get through the journey ? ' ejaculated Noel. ' Walk it, old boy, and carry your luggage. It is only 200 miles, a flea-bite to a fellow with such legs as yours,' laughingly answered Goodman. ' There is the bell ringing, young sirs. Pop into any carriage you like,' said the friendly voice of the well-known guard. 'Then let us pop into a first-class one; we may as well be comfortable,' said Noel. 'You will be taken up for defrauding the railway com pany, Noel, and fined forty shillings and costs,' roared Goodman. ' Yes, and as I have not the wherewithal to pay, it will be fourteen days' imprisonment.

Happy thought ! Just THE RAILWAY JOURNEY. 3 hand me your ticket, Goodman. I will take the corner off it, and then you will see at the end of the journey how the officials can be done by a genius. Never expect your friends to do for you what you can do for yourself.' Noel puts the corner of the ticket into his pocket. ' Now, Good man, tell me something of the wonderful "Old Hat," over the recollection of which the governor so constantly laughs.' 'Oh, the remarkable hat,' said Goodman, 'they say, is about fifty years old, and has not a particle of nap on it. It acts as a sort of storehouse for Old Dick, the head master, who is able to store away in it his bread and cheese, and a small bottle containing something stronger than water, whenever he goes on a journey ; it is not quite large enough to contain his night gear, or he might do without his black bag.

One day, by mistake, he left his hat on the school table, just before starting for town, and we emptied it of its contents, and a rare feast we had, and a still rarer drink. But I daresay, Noel, you will soon make acquaintance with what is generally carried in the "Old Hat."' ' Why can't you,' said Noel, ' tell a fellow everything, without beating so much about the bush. To be fore warned is to be forearmed.' ' If ever you break bounds, Noel, and Old Dick catches you — off will go the hat and from under the lining he will take a piece of rope and hide you well, so that you will be sore enough for a few days.' ' Surely he does not hide fellows of my age ? I shall be nineteen in a few days.' ' If you were as tall as Goliath, and as old as Adam, Dick would wallop you. He respects not age nor height.' 'Are you asleep, Norman, or thinking out a sermon?

We know you are intended for the Church, but you need not be so holy as to be unable to join in worldly conversa tion. Give us a little of your golden eloquence ; Goodman is so prosy. Let us have a description of Old Dick,' shouted Noel. ' I am not deaf, thank you, Noel. You need not shout when a whisper will do. Old Dick might really sit for the black-bearded fop so splendidly described by Catullus, the Roman poet of love and flowers. You remember, Goodman, the man we read of the other day — the fellow who had a trick of perpetually smiling for the purpose of showing'the whiteness of his teeth ? So Old Dick wears an eternal smile in every place and on every occasion. When he pats a fellow on the head and speaks kindly, he smiles and shows his white teeth, and when he flogs you the eternal grin is on his face.

When he prays, and devotionally raises his eyes to heaven, the comical smile, revealing the white teeth, seems the best part of the performance. Even when he stood, some weeks ago, with his old mother, at the grave of his brother, he wore the grin and showed the teeth. He always stumbles in his reading over a certain imprac ticable letter of the alphabet, leaving it out where it ought to be in, and putting it in where it ought to be out, — And when of his intrigues he blabb'd, With his ' hintrigues ' our ears he stabb'd, And thought, moreover, he displayed A rare" refinement, when he made His h's thus at random fall With emphasis most guttural." 'Well done, Norman,' screamed Goodman, 'quite the parson. You could not have said it more dolefully if you THE RAIL IV A Y JO URNE Y. 5 had been in the pulpit, with an onion concealed in your cambric handkerchief.' ' I am afraid I do not remember much of Catullus,' said Noel, 'except one little poem where he denounces the dulness and stolid indifference of one of his companions, who, being married to a young and beautiful girl, ' Though he is wed to a girl in womanhood's dawn, A creature more dainty and fine than a fawn, One who, guarded, like grapes that are red-ripe should be, was utterly careless of her, and insensible, don't you know, to the dangers to which she was exposed.

In order to rouse the man, Catullus proposes to throw him headlong from a rickety old bridge, into the deepest and dirtiest part of the quagmire over which the bridge was bailt. ' "There is a townsman of mine whom I long to see sped From that bridge to the quagmire, clean heels over head, And just in that spot I would manage his fall, Where the sludge is the bluest and rankest of all." 'I say,' shouted Goodman, 'leave off putting the old heathen into English verse ; you cannot do it — there is neither music, nor rhythm, nor rhyme, nor anything of real poetry in your translations ; besides, it is too early in the day for such deep stuff. I can give a better picture of Old Dick. Norman is always sketching people out of some old author ; he is very fond of the old fathers, and fathers'them on everybody.

If you are really interested in Dick, he is about five feet ten in height, with a head on his shoulders large enough to carry a bucket of water in it ; eyes shaped just like ferrets', and which very quickly read you through and through. His feet are more than twelve inches in length and proportionally broad, so that the old shoemaker told me the other day that more leather went to the making of his boots than to those of two ordinary men. He always walks with a toothpick in his mouth, and it is an old tradition in the school that he came into the world with one. He wears a furious white moustache ; it seems to join in the middle of his upper lip, and then to have no connection with the rest of his mouth. Whenever he goes away for a holiday he comes back with what looks like a new moustache, looking very black, but gradually, as the wash loses its power, it changes to white again, and Old Dick is always in the devil of a temper until it looks black once more.' 'I think at this juncture we may as well have something to eat,' says Noel ; ' I had precious little breakfast this morning.

Let us have a look at your hamper, Norman. Any drink in it? Of course not ; embryo sky-pilots must be teetotallers.' ' Here you are, Noel, real good old port, crusty too, fished up from the very bottom of the pater's cellar, worth a guinea a glass, he told the vicar the other night. I thought if it was good for them it would not do us any harm. A stoppage, by Jove ! put away the bottles and glasses.' ' What a splendid-looking girl on the platform,' said Noel ; 'just a little flat in her back.' ' Qh ! yes, that is our chaplain's niece ; all the boys rave over her,' answered Norman, 'but I dislike her; under her innocent looks there is a smouldering volcano.' ' Bravo ! Norman. What a reader of human nature you are. There goes the train ; now for more tuck and wine,' cried Goodman. ' Do not drink too much, Goodman ; remember Fielding's THE RAIL WAY JO URNE Y. 7 words,' roared Noel, — ' " Wine is a turncoat ; first a friend, and then an enemy."

Now, then, for a smoke. I have here some capital cigars worth a shilling each.' ' Easy ! easy ! Noel ; they only cost fourpence, but still they are smokeable.' ' I thought you were no judge, Goodman, as I have been told Dick expels for smoking.' 'Ah, well! the devil sometimes is an ass, Noel, and there are caves and caverns, and little heathery dells, and beautiful spots, even in the paradise of Fairy Glen, where a little devilment and smoking can be carried on. Of course parsons are forbidden, by the canons, to smoke, so there is no use in offering you one, Norman.' ' Oh ! he can drink and smoke with the best of us,' said Goodman, ' when the blue fit of religion is not on him. Sometimes, indeed, he holds forth, and in grandiloquent language preaches that tobacco renders a man emaciated and consumptive, shatters the nerves, renders his spirits low and moody, his throat dry, and so demands constant drinks ; but it is all an old wife's fable ; there is no better friend to man than a pipe or a cigar.

How soothing a smoke has proved to me after a sore walloping by Old Dick.' 'Yes, Goodman, I agree with you,' said Noel. 'The gospel of health is an excellent thing, but, like the poor, it is too much with us, and the everlasting preaching of it bores me. The apostles of the present day remind me of poor Sancho's doctor, who condemned everything on the table. There are a large number of people who believe that those who smoke will Go mad and beat their wives ; Plunge, after shocking lives, Razors and carving knives Into their gizzards." ' ' You deserve a drink for such sublime poetry; you will become poet laureate if you continue in this strain.' 'None of your chaff, Goodman. I wish you would describe to me, in your racy manner, one of Old Dick's floggings ; my father always goes into convulsions of laughter when he attempts the picturesque description.

He only says that his method of punishment is the most comical and cruel ever devised by the wit of man, and then explodes.' ' Certainly, the flogging is peculiar, Noel. The school bell is loudly rung, so as to assemble all the boys. Then Dick commences with a quotation from Horace. Like Nor man, he loves the Roman poets, — ' " Let rules be fix'd that may our rage contain, And punish faults with a proportion'd pain ; And do not flay him, who deserves alone A whipping for the fault that he has done." The culprit is then laid at full length on a desk, and strapped securely to it. You can hear Dick's false teeth whistling, so great is his delight at the prospect of giving the fellow a sound whipping. He rubs his ugly hands and says — " Boys, you remember the words of Hesiod — the seeds of our own punishment are sown at the same time we commit sin.

Punishment undoubtedly ripens within the flower of the pleasure which concealed it. The dice of God are always loaded. Laurel crowns alone cleave to deserts. This boy has sown the rebellious seed, and he must now reap the whirlwind. You all know how dear every boy is to me. I have no favourites ; my love is evenly distributed ; night and day my thoughts are centred on you. I am constantly scheming and thinking for your intellectual and physical comforts. This caning of the dear sinner, who now lies bound before us, is indeed a big sorrow to me ; I wish I THE RA IL WA Y JO URNE Y. 9 could pardon him. I wish, like the mussel, I could close the wound caused bv him with a pearl, for humanity is never so beautiful as when forgiving, but, alas, discipline must be maintained." Whack goes the cane !

" Oh ! what would his father say, if he saw him in this lowly position ? " Down comes the rod with a terrible thud ; an interval elapses. " And what would his loving mother, she who bore him in sorrow, and cradled him in affection, whose prayers ascend for him to the common Father of Humanity, say if she beheld him in this sad disgrace ; how her heart would bleed." One, two, three thuds of the cane. After resting himself he proceeds, — " And how grieved his little brothers and sisters would be if they saw him lying in this prostrate condition." The cane descends with greater vigour than before. And so Old Dick, who really de lights in boyish anguish, goes on making little speeches, don't you know, about the sorrows of a fellow's relations, down perhaps to the fifteenth cousin, at the conclusion of each recital giving a more cutting blow to the writh ing wretch, and never striking the chap twice in the same place.' 'Now, Noel, can you beat this at the school you have just left ? ' asks Norman. ' You are very good at pumping us, tell us a little about your masters.' 'You see, I have been ata gentleman's school,' drawled Noel, ' where the only vices of the masters are tippling and billiards.' ' Well ! as we are near ten miles from a lemon,' broke in Norman, ' none of these vices can be enjoyed by our masters.' ' Fancy an embryo parson talking of enjoying vices ; it is too good — enough to make a cat laugh.' FAIE. 10 ' Do not interrupt, Goodman ; you are always putting your oar in ; take care it does not one day upset your own boat.' ' Will there be time to tell my story ?

We must be nearing our destination.' ' No ! indeed we have another hundred miles before us, and a jolly drive of ten miles, in Dick's omnibus, lined with straw, afterwards; and sometimes the engine-driver stops the train in a romantic spot, whilst he goes into a village to liquor up, so there is ample time for your experiences,' chimed in the lads, 'and we are simply dying to hear your story.' ' Let us first have a sip of the crusty port ; it is dry work detailing experiences,' said Goodman. ' You remember Milton says that the poets in general may drink wine and live generously, but the Epic poet, like Norman, who one day means to sing of the gods and their descent into men, must drink water out of a wooden bowl. Here is to your Epic poem and the wooden bowl, Norman ! ' 'You are a scoffer, Goodman.

Epic poetry is not devils' wine but gods' wine, and your crusty stuff is stolen. He who laughs at poetry will, in the end, laugh at deeper things.' ' How snappish you are, Norman,' said Noel ; ' I thought poetry created pleasantness and jolly good cheer ; you remember, — Olympian bards who sing Divine ideas below, Which always find us young And always keep us so." ' ' I would be the last,' answered Goodman, ' to laugh at poetry, but surely I may say that we ought to enjoy the good things of life, and that asceticism, and wooden THE RA IL W.4 Y JOURNE V. 11 bowls, and Adam's Ale, are not the best, even in making a man sing divinely. You must confess, Norman, that the beautiful rests on the foundation of the necessary. I know that the poet speaks with the flower of the mind, that he turns the world to the glass, and shows all things in their triumphal procession, but still the natural must come before the spiritual.' ' I never knew before, Goodman, that luxuries were the necessary things of life, and that poetry had for its basis those perishable things ; but one is always learning.

I feel you are a downright scoffer ; your one object in life is to elevate the body to the disparagement of the soul, for getting what wise Spenser said, — ' So every spirit as it is more pure, And hath in it the more of heavenly light, So it the fairer body doth procure To habit in, and it more fairly dight With cheerful grace and amiable sight. For, of the soul, the body from it doth take, For soul is form, and doth the body make."' 'I always thought,' chimed in Noel, 'that poetry should be on a key so low that the common influences would delight the poet, but this cannot be said of your wise Spenser. I like myself to be touched with a wand which makes me dance and run about happily like a child.' 'I should say,' said Norman sneeringly, 'that ' " Where the bee sucks there suck I " would suit you down to the ground.

But poetry is in me, and must go forth of me.' 'Bravo! Norman, we may apply to you the words the old Roman poet applied to himself, — "Hail! poet Ennius, who pledgest to mortals thy fiery verse from thy inmost FATE. 12 marrow." Some people have a mighty good opinion of themselves; they think that no one can ascend to the realm of the gods, or open the vast gate of heaven, but themselves ; they are not wanting in cheek, neither are you. But pride sometimes goes before a fall. Come, Noel, we have only another fifty miles before us, so tell us the story of your drunken master.' 'Such a nice fellow,' began Noel in his low, musical voice, ' is Ben Purser when sober, and so clever ; knows the classics at his fingers' ends, so kind to us boys and so thoughtful, but when the drink is in him very like a devil.

In his sane moments he wrould not hurt the fly which crawls along the window pane ; in his drunken bouts he blacks his wife's eyes, throws his children into the street, uses foul, stinking language, and barks like a mad dog. The other night his wife sent for me. Ben was breaking everything, smashing into smithereens every bit of furniture, and in his madness had set fire to the beds. I had tough work to pacify him, and after a considerable time he stretched himself on the bare floor and began to sleep like a delirious fool. As he lay with his head on the floor, it was seized with the strangest throbbing — quite fright ened me, don't you know — whilst his heart began to beat as fast as I could count, and in the roughest fashion knocked against his ribs. I could hear audibly the awful thumping.

Then began in his ears a noise, loud like the distant fall of a cascade or the rush of a river down the sides of its mountain home ; it was awful music — sough ! sough ! sough ! seemed to be sung by ghosts. I thought at one time the room was full of little devils. This continued for hours until, fortunately, his senses became drowned and stupefied. Then seemed to pass over his brain some weird and dim THE RAIL WA Y JO URNE Y. 13 memories of his awful carousal, as if a shadowy and indis tinct dream tormented him. He seemed to hear echoes of the wild cries and laughter of his boon companions. Wild, fantastic fancies gathered thickly, with strength, round his bewildered brain. Giddiness seized him, and he acted as if he were in a ship tossed upon the heaving sea. At last the poor sot dropped insensibly into a profound sleep, and I still kept watch.

In the morning he awoke in a high fever, called loudly and impatiently for a drink. The whole of his body looked parched, the palms of his hands felt like leather, whilst his head, he told me, was full of the most violent neuralgic pains, and there kept ringing in it something like one hundred bells. It was with difficulty I got him to the school ; but the devil had possessed me during the night. He wears spectacles, so, being idle, I took the glasses neatly out of their frames, and in the morning put the empty frames on his face. When the boys assembled to hear his lecture on " Demosthenes," there was a loud and long laugh, upon hearing which, Ben demanded the reason of the insolence. One boy told him he had lost the glasses of his spectacles. Taking them off he flung them against the wall, seized a couple of canes, and began thrashing us like a man who suddenly had lost his senses, so we all fled, and I took to my bed for a day or two.' ' Here we are at our journey's end.' 'Tickets! tickets all ready!

Your ticket, sir!' said the collector, addressing Noel. ' I have given you mine ; let me pass, please ! ' I beg your pardon, sir, but you have not really given up your ticket, and I cannot let you pass ; it is against our rules. ' Blazes take your rules ! Cannot you accept my word ? ' 'You must come to the station-master, sir.' N0R.M.4N; OR, INHERITED FATE. 14 ' All right, the sooner the better ! ' ' I cannot understand your porter's insolence,' said Noel to the station-master. ' My ticket has been given up, and yet he refuses to let me pass the barrier, but detains me and tries to create a row. The Company, I tell you, will hear of this impertinence. The ticket, I say, has been handed to him, and I can prove it.' ' Well then, sir, prove it,' said the station-master. ' The case at present is decidedly against you.

Here is the ticket collector, who has been in the service of the Company for five-and-twenty years, whose character for steadiness and civility stands high, accuses you of trying to defraud the Company ; a most serious offence, I can assure you.' ' Let the porter produce the tickets he has received, and place them on the table, and I will pick out mine.' The station-master immediately scatters the tickets on the table, Noel quietly picks out the ticket without its corner, and says sarcastically, — 'That is my ticket.' ' You must prove it, sir.' Noel rummages in his pocket, produces the corner which exactly fits the ticket. The station-master and ticket-collector immediately apolo gise, raise their hats and hope the young gentleman will not mention the matter further, they are exceedingly sorry for the mistake.

A grin steals over Noel's countenance as he says, — ' I will think over the matter — it is rather serious to charge me as a travelling vagabond — and you shall have my final decision in a day or two.' So Noel's first deception in the race of life was brought to a triumphant issue.

Chapter II. Fairy Glen

'I say, Noel, is not the Fairy Glen a perfect bit of beauty?' ' Yes, Norman, it is indeed paradise ; truly a most romantic spot.' The mountains rose boldly before the youngsters, to a height of over three thousand feet, on either side, and were clothed in all the glory of greenness ; while, sleeping calmly in the vale below, following its gentle windings, broadening and narrowing as the hills gave room, was the lake, with its two islands, Lough Glenbah. ' I have never seen, Norman, anything so full of weird beauty and savage grandeur as this Glen of Silver Birches. And what a noble bay ! part, I suppose, of the mighty Atlantic. I love the sea ; I love to hear its surfy, slow, deep, mellow voice, so full of mystery and awe, moaning over the dead it holds in its bosom — to watch the gulls among the waves seeking their dinners in the brine.' ' You ought to have seen the ocean last night, Noel ; the butterflies of the deep were splendid ; the fire-flies flitted playfully through the billows, and the little living lamps hung on the waves and poured out their silver radiance from vital urns which were no sooner emptied than filled.

NORMAN ; OR, INHERITED FATE. 16 This morning I got up at cock-crow, and saw the sun com ing up out of the sea like a golden guinea, and the glow of the cloudy bars, on which the rays of light struck like a musician's fingers, and whose notes and chords were simply delightful colours.' ' I wished very much to have been an early bird seeking the worm, Norman, but I heard no bell, so slept on.' ' Oh ! how very stupid of me ; I forgot to tell you that we have no bells here, but each morning at five, some times before, you will hear peals of laughter. They come from a laughing jackass. ' You remember, Noel, Æsop records the fact of an old lady who, in order to make her maids get up early in the morning, took extra care of a fine specimen of a bright chanticleer, whose special duty it was to proclaim the morning to the sleeping servants.