Lieutenant Mary. A novel

Chapter I

The sun had finished a long hot day's work, and so had Dr Hamilton. He was now enjoying, what to a medical man is the intensest of luxuries, the luxury of doing nothing. Mary, his daughter, was reading aloud to him from a popular work on As tronomy, in which there were many theories that were built on foundations of metaphorical sand. He was reclining in his substantial armchair at the open window, which opened door-like into the garden. The softest of green swards, as pleasant to the eye as to the feet, stretched out before him ; beyond this VOL I A were flower plots, curiously and artistically arranged, and over all a gnarled old acacia tree threw its guardian wings. A high ivy covered wall surrounded the garden, which gave it a secludedness that was particularly delightful in the midst of a town.

Dr Hamilton was a middle-aged man, bald-headed with a well-rounded cheery face. He had a fine massive forehead, a pair of quick-glancing brown eyes, and lips thin and compressed. It was upwards of twenty-five years since he had come to the town of Nettleby ; at that time he had neither friends nor money, but by his ability as well as by his energy he had made for himself a name and a fortune. When still a young man he married the only daughter of an opulent banker ; but before the end of one short year she was taken away from him, giving him as she died — a daughter. Dr Hamilton's chief characteristic was a sharp decisiveness ; he diagnosed a disease as quickly as he read a man's character, but it must be acknowledged that he was more successful in the former rdle than in the latter. He was a kind-hearted man, but his kindliness was not only as pure but as hidden and deep as an Artesian well.

Strangers might have considered him to be a trifle too satiric, but Dr Hamilton saw more than an average proportion of humbug in Nettleby. He belonged to a profession which is apt to engender egotism ; his egotism, however, was quietly self-assertive and he possessed no more of it than was sufficient to give a supporting backbone to his character. The evening was very peaceful. The day had been sultry and hot, but now a delicious coolness hung in the air. The softest of zephyrs played amid the sleeping flowers and filled the room with the refreshing aroma of mignonette and roses. The supernatural hush of the hour gave to the notes of the solitary thrush that warbled on the topmost bough ofthe acacia tree a new and thrilling de finiteness ; every branch and gable and turret received an extrinsic beauty by being chiselled out in dark relief on the background of a wan green infinitude of sky.

The light faded away imperceptibly. The one calm cloud that had been diaphanously white now slumbered in a vestment of soft and velvet blackness. Pale silvery lights glimmered in the streets of Nettleby ; and far above, the stars were beginning to tremble with faint lambency under the dome of the twilight heavens. At length when Mary had ceased reading she went and seated herself at the piano. At first her fingers played a few impromptu chords, as if to give her will time to decide what errand they were to go on. Before long the chamber was filled with the music of one of Chopin's Nocturnes. At first it babbled along like the swift rippling of a brook that danced in the moonlight over golden flicker ing pebbles. Then was heard a long low moaning like the far-off cry of the coming storm, and the fierce frenzy of the startled ocean where black billows leaped up in loud agony to a black starless sky; but the finale was sadly sweet, for the wind was hushed, and a peaceful moon looked down through cloudy bars of black and gold, on a white face that was at rest on a weary wave.

Dr Hamilton was not a visionary nor a dreamer of dreams, yet, under the influence of the music and the gloaming, his memory was led back to the brightest of his summers. But for the hour of twilight the world would be a worse place to live in than it is. Men would be more gross and callous without it, but as the mellow light clothes every object with an inexpressible charm, so the hardest heart is softened and rendered more sym pathetic by this season of reverie. Who does not vow that he will try to be more kindly and more noble in the future as he travels through the dim shades ''of the sad past ? The silence is so unearthly that it becomes resonant with the echoes of long hushed voices. The light is phantasmal and is peopled with the forms and faces of those whom we have loved and lost. So now the room seemed illuminated with the beauty of his first love.

Her voice seemed to call to him, and he felt the touch of her vanished hand. Ah ! there was the very sward on which they used to walk, arm in arm; there were the same heavens that they were wont to gaze on. But the happy golden hours had fled, the summer flower withered, and before the snowdrops bloomed he had hidden away all that was loveliest to him. Death, however, is often one of those keen implements used for the building up and perfecting the superstructure of an ideal manhood. Sorrow did not freeze the stream of Dr Hamilton's affectionateness into icy and unsympathetic despair. He bestowed on his daughter the fortune of love he had lavished on his wife ; he cared for her with the conjoined tenderness of a father and a mother, and loved her for her own sake as well as for her mother's. Mary was singing an old English air, a favourite one of her father's, the pathos of which was enhanced by the deep tremulous contralto voice of the singer.

Tears were in her eyes when she finished. She sat in silence for a few minutes, then she got up, and putting her arm around her father's neck kissed him. Very beautiful did she look as she sat by her father with her head resting on his shoulder, and very sweet was her countenance with the reflected light ofthe pale sky on it. Her eyes were clear as the stars at which she was gazing, and as blue as forget-me nots after an April shower. Her face was oval, and her lips were exquisitely curved, her brow was of white lilies, and wild roses were on her cheeks. She was beautiful rather than pretty. A pretty face reveals all its charms at a glance, but a beautiful one flashes out some new wonderment of loveliness every time you look at it. Prettiness is a pass-port to sweetly insipid mediocrity, but beauty only reigns where there is intellectual intensity and something of passionate genius.

Mary Hamilton was possessed of ideas and aspirations which young-ladydom in Nettleby and elsewhere was not troubled with. She had been brought up without the guardian ship of a mother. Perhaps in one way she may not have lost much by that, for a mother is apt to spoil a daughter by too much praise or too much depreciation. Mary had grown up like a solitary tree, and there was full space and scope for every branch of her character to be fully and unstuntedly developed. She had received her education at home, as her father had almost a monomania against boarding-schools. He entertained the idea that a priggish superficiality, a sickly sentimentalism and the assumption of a too natural naturalness were the chief adornments to be gained by a long and not inexpensive course at a high-class seminary. ' No,' wrote Dr Hamilton to Mary's aunt, ' I do not intend to send Mary to any of the schools you mention.

In the course of my rounds I have had sufficient opportunities of observing the articles they turn out. A girl goes to one of these places, a fresh bud of promise. She comes out the veriest of artificial flowers and gradually degenerates into a soulless, calculating, husband-catching machine.' Mary was somewhat of a recluse, for as yet she had been unable to discover a girl wdiose companionship would be preferable to solitariness. There was a small-mindedness and a pettiness in action in those she had met, which did not beget a desire in her to have any deeper acquaintance with them. She had at times longed for a congenial friend, but she had failed to discover a mind in whose depths she could behold the image of her own reflected. Such topics as the foibles of fashion, the comparative charms of the pink young fox-hunter, and the pallid young curate, went to make up the bill of fare which a Nettleby young maiden presented for absorption, and for such morceaux Mary had a curiously unappreciative appetite.

She was filled with a deep, yet undemon strative enthusiasm for all that was lofty and great. Her mind vibrated with generous impulses, which were apt to impel her into supposed paths of duty. It was capable of being stirred by the mysticism of religion or the mystery of love. But the mystery of love was to her still a mystery. Baal-like she had turned the deafest of ears to the iterated cries of the mildly pragmatical, Mr Drawler ; and as yet the altar of her heart had not been illuminated by the scintilla of a spark. The religion of the present was not self renouncing enough for one in whose nature there was a touch of asceticism. Its crown was all flowers and no thorns. The path was neither narrow nor rough, but was a broad, respectable, macadamized roadway on which it was permissible for one to be rolled along in the carriage of a smoothly-going conscience.

If the modern revival of mediævalism in the ritual of worship had been accompanied with a possibility of substantial martyrdom, it would have found in Mary Hamilton a fervid votary ; but such questions as the utility of a reredos, whether or not the altar should be illuminated with candles as large as young pine trees, the style and number of genuflections, the desirability of the Pyx as an article in worship, were considerations too grossly physical, to deeply agitate the impassionate mind of Mary. Her ardent yearnings were as yet un satisfied. She had done nothing that could be accounted as memorable, and her deeds were charitable rather than heroic. How ever, she was young and was full of great plans. What a difference between the realizations of harvest and the hopes of sowing -time ! To her father she was somewhat enigma tical.

Her aspirations and motives were as hieroglyphics which he could not decipher aright. It is hard to comprehend the mean ing of the book of which you can see no more than the cover. Dr Hamilton did not understand his child. Parents seldom do, for they have in their minds a type of what a child ought to be (usually what they were themselves when young), and they are apt to fall into the common mistake that the child is but a second edition of a volume that is getting out of print ; but it not unfrequently happens that the second edition is new in all but in name. — Thus blunders in character reading are the result. But the father's perception was not so obtuse that he was unable to see that his daughter's prime desire was to do good, and make her life of service to those in their little world.

He liked to please her in everything, and often threw in her way blank cheques for her to fill up with golden acts of charity. ' Girls, old and young,' he used to say to himself, ' must be busy. They must be looking after something when they have not babies to nurse. Eh, what energy they have ! Life is fast enough as it is ; but what would it be if the women had it all their own way ! ' ' Mary,' he said, ' would you like the window closed ? it is somewhat chilly.' ' Oh, no, father, I should prefer it to remain open ; it is not often we have such a lovely night — indeed, you could hardly call it night, rather a long twilight merging into a long dawn ! ' Then she paused for a minute and con tinued. ' How clear the stars shine in their setting of pale amber. ' ' Yes, but not so bright as on a sharp frosty night,' replied her father; 'the darker the night, the brighter the star ; the darker the world the brighter a good deed !

Eh ! Mary, Mars looks well out there,' he said, pointing to the earth's first cousin. ' I wonder can its inhabitants look down at us,' asked Mary dreamily. 'I shouldn't at all be surprised, if they can,' the doctor answered laughingly. ' You know the astronomers make out that Mars is in a more advanced state of evolution than our own world, and I suppose that its astronomers are more advanced than ours ! What a place it must be ! Man down in the scale, woman up ever so high ! Man degenerated into toothless, careless, brainless chimpanzee ; a mere toy for woman. By this time the ladies are fulfilling all the day-dreams of our own strong-minded women-righters ! There, they are the judges and bishops, prime ministers.- — ' And doctors,' suggested Mary naively. ' Yes, and doctors,' said Dr Hamilton, sitting upright in his chair, and speaking in a more energetic tone, ' and quite as good doctors they would make as some I know, and a great deal better !

Why, look at Baxter there ; he talks to his patients by the hour about the weather and such trifles ; examines their tongue, feels their pulse about a dozen times — and then shakes his head, and blinks his small eyes and looks so ineffably sapient that he does not think it necessary to say anything, — and Hooks has not a bit more brains, but a great deal less sense, for his tongue wags so that it always exposes his ignorance. ' Has not another medical man come recently to town ? ' inquired Mary. ' Yes ; but I am sorry to say he is a disgrace — a positive disgrace to us,' said the doctor with righteous anger, ' Macnab is his name, has it in gold letters on his glass door, also a laudatory and enticing advertisement, winding up with the statement that, " No charges except for medicine. " ' But surely, father, that cannot pay him ? ' asked Mary. ' Oh, indeed it does, and in this way — I saw, to-day, a little girl whom he had been attending — and he has fleeced the parents of any little money they had.

He only charges for medicine, but he takes good care that they will have plenty of it. He gave this child two bottles of medicine, one to be taken by day, the other at night, a wash for a furred tongue, a lotion for the head, a liniment for pain in the side, besides powders and pills.' ' Is that what you call specialism ? ' in quired Mary with a laugh. Her father laughed too, and said, ' Well no, it's rather a caricature on specialism ; but much the same thing happens in London among the upper classes, only there a patient with a dozen symptoms, goes to a dozen different doctors, but here with Macnab it is vice versa. After all, there is nothing like the good old family doctor ! ' There was silence for a few minutes, which was broken by Mary asking, ' What is the name of this poor child you were speaking about ? ' ' Briggs,' replied the father curtly. ' And where does she live ?' Mary inquired. ' In Water Lane — not a very respectable locality,' he answered in a depreciatory tone, for he did not consider it a desirable spot for Mary to visit.

He had more than a suspicion that Mary on the morrow would endeavour to find her way thither with some dainty for this child. But he did not tell Mary or anyone else, that he was attending this patient gratis, and that he had slipped into the mother's hand an occasional and accept able shilling. Every such act was a link in the chain which bound him to the affections of many a suffering and needy one.

Chapter II

Water Lane was a long narrow street. The houses in it wrere the oldest in Nettleby and were of different designs and proportions. Some were one storied, others two storied ; some were thatched, others slated, and not a few had little or no covering. There was some thing grotesquely picturesque, (especially when viewed from a distance) about those sierras of dilapidated roof-tops, gables all awry and chimneys which seemed to defy physical laws, by their alarming inclinations. On closer inspection, however, Water Lane was unlovely and filthy. The houses were small, and would have been more unhealthful only they were so freely ventilated by means of broken windows. The inhabitants of Water Lane were like their houses, for you may know a man by his house. They were poor, for they were poorly paid and had not always the good fortune to find em ployment.

They were mere machines for digging the soil or making bricks or driving four-footed cattle. Joyless and spiritless they went to work in the early dawn ; in the late evening they returned to their cheerless homes, weary and hungry. They were illiterate, dogged, stolid. Life to them was a dreary march, from the unknown to the unknown ; it was a dull tragedy, not even lit up by the luridness of great crime, for their faults were chiefly of the negative type. They did not go to church, they did not wash themselves, they did not pray, they did not pay for their drink ; for betimes by means of alcohol they essayed to raise them selves from their sluggish animalism into a state of mental exaltation. Then they seemed to dimly comprehend the misery and hardship of their condition ; and by way of protest against the existing order of things, they vented their irritability on their wives by beating them.

Such efforts were as transi tory as they were futile, and were succeeded by a more profound and brutish lethargy. Philosophers regard such degenerate mortals as the mud and rubble in the moraine which the ruthless glacier of a progressive evolution has tossed aside as unfit for survival. The clergy considered their bodies to be too palp ably vile, and their souls too essentially plebeian to be received into the select com pany of the Holy Catholic Church, which is respectable, if nothing else. On this June morning the heavens were blue and glad even over Water Lane ; the winnowing of the breeze was fresh and light ; the river Roe was a stream of dia monds and stars ; the sun was clear and great in his light and did not forget to cheer with a softened beam the sweet face of Susie Briggs as she lay sick on her little bed.

It was a pale face, soft and pale as the moon at mid-day when the strong white sun shines on it. The forehead was white as wave-washed marble ; the mouth wras like an opening rosebud ; two large dark hazel eyes were looking with wonderment at Mary Hamilton who was seated on an old chair by the bedside. Mary was a little surprised to find, that though the room was small, yet there was a cleanliness about it that she hardly expected to see in Water Lane. The window had a curtain, the floor was partially covered with a piece of carpet. On the table there was a jug filled with wild flowers and on the walls there were a couple of German prints which were meant to be adornments. A faint flush like the reflection of wild roses, was on Susie's cheek, for the presence of such a beautifully dressed young lady was quite sufficient to elate the child.

As she gazed at Mary in her white costume and large-rimmed hat she was filled with delightful awe, as if she had been looking on a snow-winged angel. Indeed, Mary Hamilton, with her face earnest with sympathy and beautiful with the inimitable glow of youth, was charming to behold. She looked like the personification of Summer, and filled every place she entered with the radiance of her gladness. ' I'm sure, Miss, it's most kind of you to bring Susie such nicetish things,' said Mrs Briggs with a curtsey of gratitude, as Mary handed her some dainty delicacies. Mrs Briggs was standing, partly from humility and partly because there was not another seat in the room. Poor woman ! She had not the appearance of one who was much given to sedentariness. She was a passive looking creature, for life in Water Lane was to her as a slow cruel rack which had made her limp and weak-spined in body as in mind.

Her hair was faded without being gray, and all that her features were remarkable for, was the redness of her nose, which was a contrast to the pallor of her face. This nasal rubicundity was caused vol 1 b by the pinch of Want rather than by a bloated Plethora. ' And what is the matter with Susie ? ' asked Mary, as she stroked her head of black hair. ' Well,' said Mrs Briggs mysteriously ' it's a 'eap o' complaints mixed up an' all, but she has a touch of the hinformation, the doctor calls it.' ' Poor child,' Mary remarked, although she did not derive much information from Mrs Briggs' description, ' I trust she will soon recover.' ' Oh ! Miss,' exclaimed Mrs Briggs, ' I believe that between the Lord and the doctor that she'll be got round. She's weakish and a bit nicetish over her victuals, but as good a child as is in these ere parts.' ' That is something to be very grateful for,' said Mary. ' You're right, Miss, you're right.

This is all the one we 'ave a living ; the rest is all dead and buried. So the father thinks a sight o' this one, and that's no wonder, for she's been the making of him. I could tell you a lot about it an' all, only I'm feared it would be worriting you.' ' Oh, no, no,' said Mary warmly, ' Pray go on — I should like to hear all about it.' ' Not that Briggs were bad — for a man,' began Mrs Briggs, apologetically — 'but he used to take a sup too much and too oftens — and then her werent Briggs at all — but somat fearsome — many a night he would come in raving mad, breaking everything afore him — a hurting hissen and others — Ah ! Miss, them was the haw7fulest nights for us — It werent so bad in summer, but, the winter — the winter.

(Here her voice became so tremulous that she had to pause for a minute as the memory of those terrible nights rose up before her — but with the instinct of a woman, she did not tell Miss Hamilton how she had been beaten and bruised by him who should have been her protector.) 'Well,' she went on to relate, 'in the spring of this year the army came here,' — ' The Army ! ' said Miss Hamilton, in surprise, as she had never heard of any military having been stationed in Nettleby ' Oh ! ' says Mrs Briggs, in explanation, ' this is not the harmy that kills folks ; its the one that saves 'em — at least-aways they tries — at first no one heeded them, but then when it were known wot they were up to, Jackson that keeps the pub.' ' The Black Hoss,' began to set his pals on 'em — I think he got to be afeared of the army taking his custom from him ; the men used to take it as diverting to throw mud at them, and then get their fill o' drink for it — well, unknownst to us, our little lass used to go to the barracks, as she liked the drums and fiddles a sight — and the captain thought a deal of her voice and learned her a lot of songs — she was always a-singing these in the house and out of it — I don't know much about music myself, but Briggs likes a song above anything.

So he was always getting Susie to sing him some of her pieces.' ' Oh ! she must sing something for me — when she gets better,' said Miss Hamilton, graciously. ' She will be pleased to do that, Miss,' said Mrs Briggs. ' Afore long Briggs wanted to know where she got her songs, and when she told him, he said nothing and was strange and quiet. I thought that maybe he was sulky at Susie going to the barracks, but he said nothing— and would you believe it but that very night without saying a word to a soul he went there hisses and hid hisses away in a corner. But the captain is very clever and his words hit him hard. He felt very bad at the meeting and when he came home he roared and cried awfully. The captain (God bless him) came along with him and prayed for him all night. Ah, it was a night, but just before the sun rose, he got quiet and peaceable, and thank God he's been a different man ever since — never touches drink, nor says a bad w^ord nor a cross one — I never had such — Oh !

I declare there's Captain Oldham come in — well ain't that funny and me talking about him ! ' Captain Oldham was in the habit of walking in to see Susie without any prelim inaries. In Water Lane there was an easiness in manners and a freedom from the ordinary routine of etiquette. When he came into the room on this morning he was completely taken aback when he saw a lady visitor. He felt confused on account of the impolite abruptness of his entrance ; he was going to retrace his steps to the kitchen had not Mary gone up to him and said with a winsome smile, ' I am very glad to see you ; Mrs Briggs has just been telling me about you.' There was such a kindly genuineness in these words that inwardly he was reassured, though outwardly he was somewhat abashed and awkward as he had never been thus addressed by a lady, whose beauty was as apparent as her youth.

Oldham was a large man ; he had large feet, large hands, and a large head. He was slightly stooped and awkward in his movements. His face was so covered with hirsute whiskers and beard that it was difficult to discover any of its features except the eyes ; these were dark gray and looked forth from their deep settings with a soft equine gaze. 'Well, Susie, how are you to-day?' he asked Avith a great gentleness. 'Quite well, thank you,' said Susie quickly, as she looked up brightly at her big friend, with whom she had always been a prime favourite. ' I hope you will soon be quite well — and I do believe you will.' This he said as if he did really believe what he said. ' Susie is a good little girl,' remarked Mary. ' Yes ; and has been the cause of much good,' replied Oldham. ' So I have heard,' answered Miss Hamilton. ' She is the good angel of Water Lane,' remarked Oldham. ' Her sweet voice led her father into the better Avay, and that was a great thing, for since Briggs joined us we have had but little opposition.

He is as stout a fighter for his Master as he was for Satan. ' I wonder,' said Mary Hamilton, ' why people maltreat those who only wish to do them good.' ' Well,' said Oldham after a pause, ' it has always been so, so long as there has been Good and Evil in the world. Those two principles are naturally opposed to each other, as Darkness is to Light. Amongst the educated, opposition takes the form of scoffings and sneers ; but in Water Lane and such places it shows its distaste by the outward and visible signs of sticks and stones. Of the two, however,' he added slowly, ' I'd rather bear a blow than a sneer.' ' I hope you were never injured ? ' Mary asked with earnest inquiry. ' Nothing much to speak of,' he answered with a wave of his great hand, as if it were a matter of small consequence. ' But our men, and indeed women too, have been handled very roughly in some places.' 'Don't you think,' inquired Mary, 'that you would be just as successful if you worked more like other religious bodies ? ' ' Oh, no, not at all.' he replied with a blunt brusqueness which was wholly unin tentional. ' All these are played out, as it were.