The Enemies

Front matter

BY THE SAME AUTHOR RICHARD ESCOTT Athenæum. — 'The weakness and pain, and the dreadful spiritual isolation and loneliness in one who had been at least strong in evil-doing, are well divined and interpreted.' Standard. — 'A book that will not easily be put down till it is finished.' Punch. — ' I like " Richard Escott," says the Baron.' Morning Post. — 'An engrossing story, which offers an unusual amount of dramatic interest.' National Observer. — ' There is not an ill-written page in it.' Glasgow Herald. — 'A character drawn with much ability and consistency.' Bookman. — ' Ably written, coherent, and very far from commonplace.' BY E. H. COOPER AUTHOR OP ' RICHARD ESCOTT ' AND 'GEOFFREY HAMILTON' QBeetmtnefer ARCH. CONSTABLE AND CO. _ WHITEHALL GARDENS Edinburgh : T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty

Chapter I

The sunlight of an April morning was marking dark shadows on the lawns and paths of a convent garden in the Faubourg St. Germain. The tops of tall maples and chestnuts waved and rustled as breaths of south wind passed across them, turning their new-born leaves from palest green to dark, and back to white. Flower-beds, gleaming with light and colour in one place and shadow-crossed in another, lay along the paths and wandered across lawns and under trees. Near a pond where water lilies floated with slowly opening flowers there stood an old sundial whose inscription — ' Fugit Hora : 0r«' — had stood there for long generations ser monising to the big grey house opposite ; and through flying hours women, tired of dancing, of playing, of time, had come here to pray and begin their hoped-for eternity.

The house itself had been destroyed several times ; yet even when revolu tions and communes had temporarily ruined the convent and scattered its occupants, the genius of mediæval faith and holiness leant forth from roofless A aisles and crumbling walls to preach its sermons on the sundial's text. It pervaded the place now ; so that the vehement vitality of spring was subdued here to quiet happiness in momentary warmth and life. A sound of traffic from the Quais and Boule vard des Invalides came in low, vexed murmurs, far off and dead as the hurry and ambition and unrest of which it spoke. The world's life was not, however, over for all those who lived here ; for the three nuns who had just come into the garden had been followed by a party of children, who broke up into small groups, and wandered among the trees, chattering of coming holidays.

Some of them were English, and one of these had separated herself from her companions and joined a nun. The two moved away, and walked up and down an avenue of cedars talking with absorbed attention. A curious contrast — the woman and child. Mother Therese Raquin, with tall rounded figure, disguised by her ill-fitting nun's dress, was speaking quietly to her companion, a girl of sixteen, who listened with a look on her face as of a child hearing a story where everything ends in bewilderment. 'Stesichorus tells us,' she said, 'that the com batants at Troy were fighting about a phantom Helen, in ignorance of the true one. You are fighting for and against phantoms ; you are living with phantom ideals, phantom fears. If you were of our faith ' — the child to whom she was speakino was a Protestant and a day-girl, attending the con* vent school, but living during term time with a lady close by — ' and with us always, I would teach you to know yourself better. ' I pray for you, my dear little pupil, whose life with me here is so nearly at an end, that your way may be smooth.

You know the words we both love : " Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low : and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain." I pray that for you ; for the daughter of the dearest friend I ever had on earth ; for the little one sent to me en souvenir du cher autrefois. But you do not yet see your path, or its valleys, or its crooked places. ' I may not press on you the happiness and supreme perfection of our life here ; of that nega tion of self, that absorption of our wills, and actions, and opinions into the one Eternal Truth. Genera tions of mankind have known it as the only real life. It is the perfection dreamt of in the Bud dhist's Nirvana. Plato recognises it as the summit even of earthly happiness. It is the food and air of that life which is lived on the clear, far-off heights of The Imitation.

But even if you must live in the world — in thaf — the woman nodded towards the busy Quais, and there was a look on her face, half scorn, half pity, which seemed to raise her as high above such turmoil as the Madonna in the garden oratory near by—' you need not search for its unreal passing pleasures, or adopt its contemptible aims. Your mind now is far too full of them. ' Home ! Love ! Children ! What are they worth? Do you remember the answer of Sophocles to the question about Love ? " Hush ! to my great delight, I have escaped from it, and feel as if I had escaped from a frantic and savage monster." It is unreal, dear, and not worth the suffering it brings. You may learn all about it by looking at it, by studying it in others — as you may study the pleasures of money-making, gambling, or the strife for honours and fame — while you yourself are caring only to know the truth of things, to see reality, to gain wisdom and knowledge.

Then, as Plato tells you, you will know all three pleasures — the pleasure of money-getting, of honour-getting, and of wisdom getting. ' Do not be so anxious to try them all for your self. Experience will teach even a fool, but you can learn without its aid that no pleasure is real except the pleasure of pursuing knowledge and growing wiser. It is right in many cases to marry, to educate and train up children, but it is not the one end of a woman's life, and it is not even the highest earthly happiness. The pleasure of such a life is for the most part only a species of enchant ment. It is like the joys of social intercourse and sympathy, of gaining celebrity and power, and of indulging such-like human desires. What are they ? Phantoms of true pleasure so coloured by simple juxtaposition to pain that they appear real !

If home and children satisfy . . . ' From among the trees there appeared suddenly a little child, with a dolorous look on her face and a book of poetry in her hand, out of which she had, as it appeared, been condemned to learn two verses during play-time. ' Maudie ! ' she said, and stopped, seeing Mother Therese. Watching her young pupil as the child spoke, Mother Therese saw a look of love, so tender and intense, light up her face, that the girl's whole being seemed changed. Like a mother tending her favourite child, Maudie ran to the little one and kissed her, and heard the story of how ' Nellie ' had promised to hear her poetry, but had faithlessly departed with some other ' panion,' while her own ' panions' were playing games and would not stop. ' I think I had better stay with her for a minute,' said Maud to the Mother, appealingly.- ' Shall I join you in a minute?' Mother Therese looked from one to the other for a moment with a long, steady look, as if she were absorbing and comprehending an inner meaning in the little scene. 'Poor creature as I am,' quoted the woman, turning away, ' I have one talent. I can recognise the lover and beloved ! '

Chapter II

A congregation of persons who had been to a Lenten evening service at St. Andrew's, the Epis copalian Parish Church of Rengor, were moving slowly down Station Road towards the sea-front. As they passed along the street the Presbyterian grocer, who was standing in the doorway of his shop, glanced across at his friend the Wesleyan chemist in sympathetic scorn, after which both men folded their arms and stared steadfastly at the sky. More than one of their customers nodded a good evening; but they were not going to return the courtesies of men and women who openly ' kept ' Lent — who flaunted Papistical follies in sight of honest Ulster Protestantism. The vicar's daughters waited at the church door till their father appeared, and then walked with him in silence, also going towards the sea-front.

A majority of the inhabitants of Rengor seemed to be collected there : children romping on the green ; young men and maidens love-making with the courage and inspiration lent by twilight; and solitary strollers studying humanity or dreaming dreams. Inside the harbour an evening wind ruffled the water into wavelets, which plashed against the stone piers in long uneven lines ; while outside, where a dozen or so of small yachts, together with some coaling boats and fishing smacks, were at anchor, the waters of Belfast Lough lay in moon-lit stillness. As Adelaide and Olive Campbell came on to the sea-wall they stopped for a moment and looked out to sea. ' What a lot of people are out rowing still ! ' said one girl. ' And, look ! there go the English boats.' Far out in the Lough the mast-lights of the Liverpool steamer were visible, and the throbbing of her screw could be heard through the children's distant laughter.

As she came past, lights flashed out from her deck windows and cabin portholes, fading away again as she passed out to sea. Then came the plashing throb of paddle-wheels, and the Fleetwood steamer went past, followed by boats bound for Glasgow and Barrow. Olive watched them till they were out of sight. 'Maudie will just be starting from Liverpool, I suppose. I do hope it will be smooth for her. She does hate it so much ! When Mrs. Macdonald gave her that five pounds, she said she would spend it all in paying the extra fare by Stranraer and Larne.' ' She should have gone to school in Dublin instead of Paris,' said Maud's father. ' Let us go home ; I asked Ewart to come up to supper.1 The Reverend James Donald Campbell, vicar of St. Andrew's, Rengor, and the only representative in that neighbourhood of the Church of Ireland, was a man of five-and-forty, with ab rilliant record at Trinity College, Dublin, and a dreary history since he left it.

In his profession, where ambition is of necessity inarticulate, and a man cannot (unless he would have his neighbours laugh and point the finger of scorn) curse his bad luck in missing this or that goal of fame, it is a peculiarly unhappy lot to be moderately clever and immoderately ambitious. These things mean the daily deception of one's self and others, and to most men there comes a day when deception of self suddenly ends. Campbell was a man to whom such a revelation of realities would certainly come soon if he lived. In the meantime he worked for fame, preached, talked, wrote books to gain it, and it would not come. Men said that he had all the polish of genius without its ground-work. Lord Hothfield had called his last volume of essays 'barley-sugar1; and his work on Old Testament Miracles had fallen by mischance into the hands of a German critic, who, having nothing to do at the moment, read it and reviewed it, to the destruction of its author.

So far Campbell had succeeded that he held one of the richest livings in County Down, with a large comfortable house and plenty of friends ; but he cared little about such things. He would have sacrificed every friend he had in the world for two acquaintances who would speak of him and treat him as a famous man. The Rectory party sat down to supper seemingly dull and out of spirits. Olive was silent altogether, while Adelaide and Ewart talked quietly about people who had been in church that evening. Camp bell did not shine in home-life or routine work. He had this among other disqualifications for a higher rank, that he chafed and fretted against the routine of a lower one, and hated work unless newspapers — at the least, local ones — were likely to chronicle the result. Yet he would never willingly show ill temper, or be rude to his family and subordinates.

If at times he was temperate and courteous only by an effort, the effort, if obvious, was at any rate successful. If he hated his work, he did it, — or saw that some one else did it ; and if his discourse on theology, biology, physiology, and so on showed imperfect appreciation, — well, he did not want to understand scientific matters ; he wanted to write about them. Everything would be different, he told himself, when that canonry or deanery was given to him. He would go deeper into subjects, perform his duties more carefully and readily, form higher ideals and live up to them. He pictured that stronger, happier life to himself as he sat in his study after supper this evening ; sat dreaming over it for two hours, and so left himself no time to verify statements and quotations in a newly written article about the authorship of the Pentateuch.

When, some days later, the proofs of his article were sent to him for correction, accompanied by a note requesting their return as soon as possible, he had forgotten which were the doubtful points, and re turned them with out further consideration. Most of the statements which he had thought of as requiring correction did require it. Olive went into Belfast next morning by an early train and crossed to the docks. The Liverpool steamer was in before her time, and people were disembarking as Olive ran on to the jetty, looking round her. A woebegone little face and limp, untidy figure caught her eye at last, and she waited at the gangway till the dejected young person on the boat could push her way across. ' Maudie darling ! has it been very awful ? 1 ' Oh ! Olive, it was horrid. It wasn't really very rough like Christmas ; only a little ; but the hateful boat rolled and rolled all night ; and this morning I couldn't have a bath ; and I feel sticky all over and perfectly miserable.

Olive dear ! ' Two or three of her fellow-passengers turned round and nodded good-bye to the child, smiling at her lamentations. Olive took her across to the County Down railway station, listening to the story of her journey from Paris, which Maud always managed to find full of adventure. The English lady with whom she had travelled as far as Calais had declined to cross because it was rough; and Maud had been put under the care of the captain— who, as it appeared, was assisted in his charge by several volunteers. Mr. Hamilton met her at Charing Cross and took her to her aunt's house. Mr. Hamilton came to dinner there. Mr. Hamilton took her to Euston next day, and said that he was coming to Ireland after Easter, and would come to Rengor. Olive glanced round for a second at the child's face.

Some colour had come back into it, but only from walking fast ; a smile was coming and going on her lips, but Maudie was always glad to be at home again ; in her eyes was serene unconsciousness of anything except holidays. Young men, and the silent flattery contained in their competition to carry her rugs and buy newspapers for her, were merely incidents in a holiday journey. Olive had heard of them before often enough. Yet she noticed afterwards a little circumstance which made her uneasy for a moment. In repeating to her father and Adelaide the story of her journey, Maud omitted the incidents with which Mr. Hamilton had been connected. There has been writ in another place the story of Geoffrey Hamilton's youth — its virtues and its misdeeds, its hopes, fears, sorrows, and rewards. Therefore the reader of these pages (who is doubtless accustomed in reading biography to begin at the fourth or fifth chapter, with intent and hope to miss the nursery, and sometimes pre-nursery, days of his hero) is invited now to consider that the story has begun, and that, if he shall be pleased to read it, he shall not find therein any but a necessary minimum of past history.

In truth, Geoffrey's past had not been pleasant or profitable. The young man at the beginning of his life and the old man at its end have many a wrong to forget and forgive which they have done or suffered — many a mistake to repair. What use to fret over them, to recall and brood over these old unhappy memories ? Life here is only short in comparison to the long un known life where time has ceased ; and in its span of years there are many moments coming to young and old when by an effort they may fling away regrets and begin again. Geoffrey was the eldest son of Sir James Hamilton of Austell Hall, near Darlington. The Hamiltons were an old Yorkshire Roman Catholic family, wealthy, dull, and (until Sir James became the head of it) perfectly respectable. James had been the third son ; had received from his father a large legacy, which he spent in five years (gaining not a little notoriety and discredit while spending it) ; and together with his wife and family had passed through several years of extreme and disreputable poverty.

After the death of his two elder brothers he entered on the life of a wealthy country gentle man, with pheasant-shooting, race-horses, a family chaplain, and much ill-spent leisure. Geoffrey and Jack Hamilton had been to school at Winchester, and had trained themselves in the discrimination of right and wrong by such negative methods as were afforded by a study of their father and his associates. At school and at Oxford they had learnt what was necessary in order to pass examinations, and maybe the ghosts of wasted hours and neglected oppor tunities came and mocked them afterwards, crying : 'You have let us go into an irreclaimable past, unused and unnoticed, marked by no smallest atom of knowledge, thought, or growth ! You are doing the same with days, years, life ! ' But the two young men, first one and then the other, had risen at last in angry determined rebellion against the disease which was blotting out empty years one by one from their lives.

They were resolved now to write something on a page here and there before the tale of their years was told and the book closed. The Stranraer express was stopping at Newton- Stewart early in the morning, when Geoffrey raised himself on his elbow and looked out of the window. The sleeping-saloon attendant brought him some tea, after which he got up, dressed, and stood at the window looking at the bleak country through which they were passing. 'So we have been companions all night, Hamilton,' said a voice near by, ' and find one another next morning. When did you come to bed ?' 'At Crewe, and I suppose you turned in at Stafford.' ' Yes ; you are going to Carrickfergus ? ' ' To Belfast first. Time is getting short.' Besides being heir to his father's estates in York shire, Mr. Hamilton was owner of some property in Ireland and some money left him by his grandfather, Lord Oakleigh.

After spending a few months in North-East Ireland, he had accepted an invitation to stand as candidate for one of the parliamentary divisions of Belfast. Barney M'Grath, the present member for the division, had called his new opponent 'jist a mere comet, comin' from nobody knew where, and going, shure, as quick as he came, to nobody knows where,' to which Mr. Hamilton made reply that his dictionary defined a comet as a ' large and luminous body attracting into its train everything with which it came in contact,' a description with which he for one was quite satisfied. After this Geoffrey's party became enthusiastic. The young man, James Weston, who had spoken to Mr. Hamilton in the sleeping-car, was honorary secretary of the Ulster Unionist League, one of the innumerable political associations into which Irish politicians, tolerant of all novelty and im patient of silence, triennially band themselves.

He liked the work, his English reticence enjoying the earnestness of men whose disapproval of imperial disruption and of a new parochial tax alike foamed at the mouth. Geoffrey had found a kindred spirit from their first acquaintance, and Sir George Frazer told the two young men that they were typically rude members of a race which had studied Irish problems through the centuries with insolent be wilderment, and endeavoured to solve them with intermittent hanging. The train ran into Stranraer harbour, and some minutes afterwards the young men were breakfasting together on board the Donegal as she ran down Loch Ryan. They talked, as most men were talking at that season, of politics, of dissolutions and elections, and their results. In the land whose high jagged cliffs were shaping themselves against horizon clouds, the political battle was real in a sense not understood across the water.

Social and religious differences were not more violently in conflict at Boyne Water or Derry than they would be some months hence at Antrim polling - booths ; and Weston spoke laughingly of the fights which would take place. Geoffrey answered more soberly, speaking with some little scorn of nineteenth-century folk who would fight and make others fight for a question of church decoration and improbable infallibility. Geoffrey Hamilton did not think even himself to be infallible. After arrival in Belfast, Mr. Hamilton went to the Avenue Hotel for a bath and breakfast, and spent the rest of the morning with his election agent. Speeches had been promised by party leaders, and a day for each had to be arranged, with suitable halls, chairmen, minor speakers, and so on. Then, this business being settled, his thoughts turned towards recreation, first at Carrick fergus, then at Rengor.

He had promised to go and see Maud Campbell when he came to Ulster. She knew that he was coming from England to-day. If she had been grown up she would not have looked for him to come immediately after his arrival — and he certainly would not have gone — but at sixteen the child who expects her friends to think of her always first has not yet been dis illusionised. She would be looking out for him. Geoffrey thought out the last part of this problem in the train on the way down to Rengor. He was not quite sure why he was going there, except that Maud would have been disappointed if he had not gone. Yet he was pleased when the train arrived, when he walked along the sea-front, where spring sunlight flashed and danced on brown sails and yellow sand, where scent-laden sea-winds blew clouds and cloud-shadows across the waking world, and the intoxicating vitality of the spring after noon might have stirred the dead from their hapless sleep.

The Rectory garden ran down to the water's edge, its pale tinted veil of flowers mingling its shades of blue and yellow and grey and green with the darker browns and blues of sand and sea. Under a great lime-tree near the entrance-gate Maud Campbell was standing, picking the primroses which grew on some raised grass round the tree roots. She caught sight of Geoffrey as he walked up the drive, and ran forward to meet him, holding out her arms with an involuntary childish movement, a flush of red dyeing her cheeks, and a light on her face as if April sunbeams were resting there. She looked so young and glad and lovely as she came towards him, that Geoffrey forgot the grown up dignity of sixteen, and put his arms round her, and kissed her, as he used to do two years ago. The red on her cheeks deepened a little, and she stood for a moment looking down at the primroses in her hand. 'I am so sorry, Maudie, but I forgot you were grown up.

I shall never remember till you do your hair up. I apologise.' ' You don't look very sorry,' said the child, rais ing her eyes and laughing as they walked up the drive. ' When did you come to Ireland ? ' ' I arrived in Belfast this morning.' ' This morning ! and ' ' I had to see Mr. Campbell about some important business, so I came straight here.' ' Oh ! ' Maud's face fell. ' I thought perhaps you had come to see me.' With a smile at this naive remark, Geoffrey turned and looked at her, and as she met his glance another great wave of red swept into her face. A consciousness of something new came to her sud denly, of new sensations, of hopes and thoughts as indefinite as they were puzzling. The echo of her own last words coming back to her brought astonishment that she should have said them ; the recollection of their meetings in London, of letters to one another, of presents, kisses, constant thoughts, became suddenly oppressive with half understood meanings.

She was shy and frightened, and, moved by the strong sympathy which had always existed between these two, Mr. Hamilton also became shy and bewildered. He turned his head away ; the colour came into his cheeks too, and his heart was beating fast. Leading out of the drive was a little path which passed between brambles and rhododendron-bushes up to a low open summer-house, where Geoffrey and Maud had spent many an hour together, some times with Olive present, and more often without. IS They had both intended to go there now and chat till tea-time. But as they came near the turning, both of them walked steadily on without percep tible hesitation, and went into the house, Geoffrey going to Mr. Campbell's study. Mr. Hamilton was private secretary to Sir George Frazer, the present Chief Secretary for Ireland ; and he thought — or said so — that Sir George would like to know Mr. Campbell's views on the recent riot at Craigavad.

Chapter III

My Lady Viscountess Oakleigh had come to stay with her grandson at Sands Castle, near Carrick fergus, and had arrived some days before he did. The house, perched up among the wind-swept hills on the north side of Belfast Lough, was gaunt and old and ugly. Looking down from its garden terraces, one might see Belfast in a hollow on one side, and on the other side look over County Down farms and hamlets to a belt of rock-girt sea, and the Isle of Man beyond. Lady Oakleigh was a great personage in the London world ; and, though she had lived more quietly since her husband's death three years ago, still kept round her a large circle of friends. She was a brilliantly clever woman, educated by her father not only in Greek and Latin and other ' advanced ' subjects, but in numerous accomplishments too ; so that she could not only talk about Greek philosophy with an Oxford don, but paint and dance and sing better than his wife and daughters.

At the age of seventeen the young lady had gone to school in Paris to perfect her French, and while there had studied the art of conversation, which was taught then by Parisian teachers as carefully as any other accomplishment. The girls sat round their mistress, and were instructed in the science of turn ing conversation, evading embarrassing questions, and drawing out shy visitors. Finally, Madame would put a diamond pin on the table, and, ' Behold,' she would say, ' a shy and self-conscious young man. Talk to him, mademoiselle, on all possible subjects till you can interest him.' Many a recollection had Lady Oakleigh of this scene — of some girl (whose face of anger and shame contrasted ludicrously with her polite and gracefully spoken sentences) sitting in this circle and talking, with her eyes fixed on the diamond, while Madame sat by putting in an occasional word of approval or sugges tion.

Brilliant among the many brilliant pupils of the famous Faubourg St. Germain school, Frances Bate man had acquired there a polish and tact and self confidence which made her success in after life certain. Her marriage with Lord Oakleigh had placed her at once in the inner circle of political life, and with infinite skill she had widened the circle till it included artistic, scientific, and literary names of all ranks and nations. And because she would talk to an ambassador about politics, and to an Oxford under graduate about his college-boat, or the proposed changes in the history school, with equal charm and interest and knowledge (the latter qualification being the point at which most of her imitators came to grief), she always had troops of admiring young men at her command as well as their elders.