Beggars all. A novel

Chapter I

In one of the western counties of England there is a flat-topped hill. It rises to west and north with precipitate sides from the plain, whose tilled land is dappled with the habitations of men. On this plain, as far as eye can see, are larger and smaller collections of roofs, from farmstead to city ; but the top of the hill is a lonesome moorland. A long, white road stretches across it, leading from the village of Croom, on the eastern slope, to a town at the western base. The wind was wild on a dull March afternoon when a man walked on this road from Croom and came to the brink of the hill overlooking the town. On this edge of the moor a line of stunted larches, gray and one-sided, bent with the gale ; and below, where the road dipped, was a niggardly fir wood, which swayed with a sound like rushing water.

Some rocks on a beetling brow further over had slipped and fallen ; beneath them there was a quarry which laid bare the stony heart of earth. Underneath stood an old town, with a new town added to it. The old town was on a ridge which was a low spur of the hill ; its parish church and old-world roofs, thus raised, were conspicuous. Beyond them a new town had spread itself and crept all round, circling the older part with an arm of newer houses. It seemed a prosperous place, and the time-worn lines of the buildings on the ridge gave it stateliness of aspect. Far and wide the plain stretched cold, swept by the wind. White smoke, rising from chimneys, was chased this way and that. The town lay like a thing which God had helped man to build, so much a part of nature it seemed, grouped according to the contour of the land, matched in colour to the leaden sky and the scarred face of the rocky hill.

When one looks down upon a busy centre of life from a solitary place the situation gives objective reality to the attitude the spirit of man must often take as it looks out upon the haunts and doings of himself and his fellows. The man who had now crossed the hill loitered in a mood of contemplation. He was middle-aged, stout, and of common appearance. Here in the fir wood the road divided and a sign post, giving insufficient explanation of the division, stood with extended arms, like a white cross. The stranger stood with his fat hands clasped behind his ample back and almost a beseeching look upon his broad, uncomely face. He looked at the town, the sky, at the perplexing division of his road — one could hardly tell at what he was looking. There was strength underlying the entreaty on his face : entreaty is not necessarily weak. • He evidently thought himself quite alone as far as his kind were concerned, for there came from him an audible breathing of the emotion within him.

It seemed to take the form of a psalm or prayer ; at least, there was something about the greatness of God's pity and power in his whispered monotone, the spasmodic utterance of which seemed to give him relief and refreshment. He was not alone. Among the firs above the quarry there were two shanties, habitable, but looking, at first sight, like the rest of the place, deserted. In the door way of one a young man stood, and from that niche of observation watched the newcomer with that minute interest which an alert mind in idle moments often bestows upon a novel object. His interest, or a feeling of honour in making his observation apparent, drew him out on the road. He was young ; lighter, quicker everyway, than the other. As he emerged his face wore that curious mask of impenetrability which sensitive men can assume when they wish to hide that they have caught another in what to them would have been a mortifying lapse of self-control, i They were strangers, and they talked as strangers do, beginning with desultory remarks, entering into dialogue of question and answer.

It was a couple of miles to the town, the young man said, by either road round the hill, but there was a short, steep path through the quarry. He was rambling for pleasure ; he did not mind going home now and showing that way. It was a beastly day, anyway — this as a further blast of the wild, cold wind struck the hill and the men and the fir trees — not a good day for a walk, but what else could a fellow do on such a holiday ? ♦J BEGGARS ALL. [Book I. " Is it a holiday ? " asked the other absently. The reply was laconic. " Good Friday." "Ah, so it is." The stout man seemed still more absent for a minute ; his mind seemed to wander with his glance beyond the old post, with its cross piece, to the distant sky. He recalled himself and spoke. The voice was pleasant ; there was a ring of simple honesty in it.

" I have been travelling for some days." " A walking tour ? " There was something in the question which indicated disbelief in the suggestion — a swift, curious glance from the young man's eyes which was. past before the man of heavier make would have had time to begin to meet it. " I am not in a position to take a pleasure tour. I have only walked from Croom Junction. I am looking for a poor woman whom I have traced here from London." " I am in the news line. I am a reporter for the Evening Journal. My name is Kent." " My name is Gilchrist. I am going to try to get a situation in some gentleman's service." The extreme simplicity of this reply caused Kent to look with more open curiosity. " I told you my name and what I do because I thought I might help you to find whoever you want. About things that go on, you know, I know — well, almost everything."

It was not an exultant boast, if boast it was. The weather and the place were not such as to inspire hicrh spirits. All was dull and bleak. Gilchrist made as if to sit down by the roadside. His movements were those of a very tired man. His face looked heavy with fatigue. Kent glanced at him with a light, good-natured pity. " Come into this cabin. It belongs to a friend of mine." He did not look as if he would be on intimate terms with the inhabitant of such a shanty ; he seemed almost a gentleman — this young townsman; but a man seeks a rude cabin as shelter from weather almost involun tarily and without much question of invitation. Gil christ went in at the open door to which he was pointed. He found himself in a one-roomed dwelling, fitted up with tolerable comfort. That which surprised him was that, after he had seated himself near the fire at Kent's invitation, he discovered the friend alluded to, stretched on a low pallet, asleep.

He looked like a young man somewhat withered and prematurely grey. He slept on like a baby. Kent stood between them and introduced the sleeping to the waking man. There was veiled comedy in his manner. Perhaps he had been amused at the simplicity of Gilchrist's self-introduction, and supposed him too stupid to perceive his mockery. " My friend whom you see asleep is called Montagu the lamplighter. Montagu was, for unknown reasons, entered as his name on the Orphanage register when he was a baby, and he was there brought up to the task of lighting street lamps. He sleeps by day because, what with lighting the lamps and putting them out, he runs about half the night." " He has faith in humanity to sleep with his door open." Kent was blowing the embers of the fire. He gave again a furtive glance of curiosity.

The form of words struck him as unnatural in a servant. Yet he would have staked his reputation for shrewdness on the assertion that Gilchrist was truthful. " He doesn't leave it open, but he lets me open it from the outside. He and I are old chums ; we began life in the same orphanage together." He coaxed the fire into flame, and began searching for means to make tea. " He and I are the products of modern philan thropy. He was half-witted, so they trained him to light lamps ; I was sharp, and they gave me schooling." Kent made tea without milk. He was deft with his hands. " We will each leave a penny on the table : that will pay," he said. Gilchrist rose and went to the bed, looking down with kind curiosity in his expression. " I was sharp and they gave me schooling," repeated Kent. " They put me through the Board School, and I got on.

There is just one thing in all the Christian philanthropy nowadays that is worth giving and re ceiving — that is education." " Yes, if it is the right sort." When they came out Kent shut the door behind him. Putting a bit of twisted wire into the rude lock, he tried to push back the bolt. Gilchrist asked further questions about the lamplighter as he watched the operation with interest. " Bother it ! " Kent was poking with his wire, and could not make the bolt slide. " A professional house breaker would do it with dexterity, I suppose, or have better implements." Then, succeeding at last, he answered the questions in better humour. " Oh yes, he'll wake when the sun goes down and it's time to go his rounds, as sure as a church clock, and he'll sleep till then unless the crack o' doom wakes him.

He goes by habit as a clock by springs — he goes, he doesn't live. He is a character." They clambered down by the edge of the quarry-pit to the broad, beaten surface of a high road running into the town from the south. An old house, labelled " Or phanage," stood in trim, uninteresting grounds. Gilchrist was surprised to come upon it so suddenly. " Is this the place you spoke of ? " Kent's regard turned on the place to which the question directed his attention with the look a man might bestow upon some monster which, in spite of familiarity, had power to excite wonder as well as disgust. " The same," he said ; " and they trained Montagu to go from here to his lamps, and from his lamps here, till he couldn't get out of the habit, so he lives above there." " They were kind, I suppose. Authorized cruelty is out of date."

" Kind ? " He shrugged his arms. " As kind as one can be to a batch of anything. They brought us up in batches ; but Montagu had the worst of it, for he had to stay a long time before he was sufficiently wound up to go by himself." They walked between fields where garden stuff was grown in summer. Further on, the side of a small park, which belonged to a private house, skirted the road. That passed, the town began by an outstanding row of small, brick cottages. Kent gave information idly when he felt inclined. The land, he said, grew remarkably good strawberries. The house in the park had been empty for years ; it was said to be haunted by the ghost of a baby. " A baby ! " " Yes ; floats through the air in long clothes, I be lieve, and yells." The tone implied great contempt for such superstitions.

" It is said some one left a foundling at the door, mistaking the house for the Orphanage- The owner wouldn't take it in, so it died. The ghost resulted." Some paces further along the road he added, " An old man named Gower, from India, is going to buy the place, they say." Gilchrist straightened himself. " I am going to see an invalid gentleman of that name." " Just come home from India, gouty, has a daughter unmarried — not young, rather pretty, arranges penny readings, and that sort of thing ? " Kent's items of interest were a long interrogation. " There is one lady in the house — a niece, I believe." " ' Miss Marian Gower ' is the name on the charity lists. She's been taking a header into benevolence since they came here. You may depend it's the same people." When they came to the first tavern a blue omnibus stood before it, just about to start on its route further into the town.

Gilchrist caught it by hastening his steps. As the heavy vehicle jolted away, Kent walked up the pavement in the same direction. He tried not to follow Gilchrist's bulky form with too evident curiosity in his eyes. He was conscious of that awkward sensation which a naturalist feels when some new specimen escapes him before it is classified, and he, remembering its peculiarities, fails entirely to imagine to what class it may belong. The omnibus went on to the end of its journey. The stopping place was at the old parish church. There Gilchrist, alighting, looked about him as strangers look at such old town centres. On all sides there were stone pavements, old walls, high antique roofs. Gilchrist, turning instinctively from the thoroughfare, sought a square pavement, upon which the main door of the church opened — a lounging place, where old elm trees stood up in the flagstones and horses and wheels might not come.

Opposite the church stood a block of build ings, put up by some ambitious merchant of a past generation who had built his own name, in the pos sessive case, in large stone letters upon its upper wall. " Babbit's " was the name of this building ; but Babbit was dead and his business had vanished, and, like a sign of the times, his place of merchandise had been rebuilt inside and converted into a Board school. Ugly, dingy, and square its walls looked _ the March wind shrieked as its blast fell against it. The elm trees also rattled, and the church tower seemed to shiver with cold. The wind had full sweep here, as on the hill, for the third side of the pavement ended only with a railing and the top of a stone stair which descended to the streets of the lower level. By this staircase the stranger went down into the more fashionable squares and roads of the new town.

Chapter II

Marian Gower sat in an overhanging window that looked out on the parade. The waxen flowers of Easter week had come up in the little garden strip ; snowdrop and crocus seemed to sleep, folded in their own cool breath. It was that hour when we notice that spring days have grown long because twilight does not come when we look for it. In all the air there was the wonderful impulse of life that holds the promise of budding leaves and nesting birds. Here even, on the fashionable parade, the impulse of the spring pervaded, giving birth in young minds to new thoughts, new hopes, and in older hearts reviving dreams of time gone by. The ladies on the pavement wore new bonnets, and the men had something fresh in their attire. Earth was keeping holiday, and the people felt it and talked in neighbourly fashion.

The World and his wife walked home arm in arm to dinner, their daughters wore violets, and their sons came near to inhale the fragrance. Some thing stirred within Marian's heart. Marian was forty, and she sat alone. A woman, with a baby in her arms, stood under the window to beg. She was ragged, dirty, and had an ignoble face. " For God's sake, help me, dear lady," she moaned. Marian sighed, turned away, and forgot the beggar. That which stirred in her heart with the movement of the spring was a great longing, an overwhelming Book I.] 13 BEGGARS ALL. desire for some mind with whom she could have fellow ship ; with whom she could exchange her thoughts, saying, " That girl has a pretty face ; " " These flowers are fair ; " " The air is sweet ; " for what pleasure is there in noting beauty unless there is some other to see it with us, some one who can see exactly wherein beauty consists for us ?

Yet this feeling of loneliness in Marian's heart was not mingled with visions of any past love story. She was too nice-minded to have imagined romance where it had not existed. Lovely, intelligent, and well-bred, this lady had passed her youth without once coming into such sympathy with any man that the steadfast fire which burns on the altar of every good woman's heart could leap up and glow, even for a transient moment, in her eyes as she looked into his. She sympathized with women, not with men ; she did not like men. She had known some kinds of friendship. In that woman's school-world where women teach and girls are taught she had laboured for years and known varied companionships; that had its pleasures, but now " Marian." A nervous invalid spoke in fretful tones from the inner part of the room.

" Who or what is that whining ? " She rose instantly, with that involuntary gesture of service that becomes habitual to one living as an attendant. " A beggar woman, uncle." :' Send her away." " I have shaken my head at her. " Give her sixpence." " It is wrong to givTe to beggars. Do you want me to be haunted by the fear that in the next world this poor creature may come and accuse me of helping her in a downward course ? " " I don't want anything of the sort." He spoke with a suppressed rage, as if she had seriously accused him. " Shut the window, and tuck my rug round me." " Lady, sweet lady, be kind, for God's dear sake," moaned the beggar beneath the window. Marian, putting down the sash, arranged the rug more gently and more efficiently because of the words she had heard. The fretful old man looked at her with strange impatience in his eyes.

" I'd like you a great deal better if you had a bit of the devil in you," he said. " You think so." " I tell you I should.' " I think not. You are always turning away your servants, and, according to you, they have all some of that ingredient in them. I should not like to be turned away." He gave a lurch, disarranging the rug. " Being ill tempered to you is just like sticking pins in a pin cushion, than which nothing is more aggravating ; it receives them without emitting a shriek, like St. Sebastian in the pictures." Marian had lived long enough to observe that con scious kindness is only the imitation of love. She did not pride herself on her patience. " And yet," she said, " if people will spend their time sticking pins, I do not see but that, for the good of society, they must be supplied with something to receive them noiselessly.

If the man of the pins were furnished with a live pig, for instance, the neighbours might object." The uncle laughed hoarsely. The idea of the pig's objections gave him a moment's distraction. " What business is it of yours if I do change my servants ? " he growled. *' None." " But you think it is. You think that because I sent that fellow away at a day's notice I was cruel — eh ? But I wasn't, as it happens, for he got a quarter's pay for nothing." " Your last choice seems to me a very curious one," she replied, with anxious lingering on the words. " He does not act as servants do. Do you think he is quite in his right mind ? " She knew by the knowledge that comes of long habit that the mere fact of making the suggestion would be enough to provoke its contradiction, but she was sur prised at the sudden strength of the answer.

" I don't know, I'm sure, but I know this — he's more in his right mind than I am." In the dusk of the room the dissipated old man lay, stretched out in a sort of gaudy magnificence, under Eastern rugs, and the slight woman, in white evening dress, bent over him. Just then Gower's new servant came into the room, walking clumsily. He brought Marian a letter, and lit a lamp that she might read it. Gower fretted. " You needn't do this sort of thing, Gilchrist, you know ; it isn't your work." The servant stood to listen, his hand on the door. " No," he agreed ; " but I thought I might as well." He went out. Marian stood near the light to read her letter. A written chat from a governess friend was the most lively communication she had reason to expect. But the enter tainment might be less — the letter might prove an advertisement or a bill.

" What is it ? " asked the uncle. Perhaps one of his most provoking habits was a constant curiosity about affairs in which he took not the slightest interest when they were explained to him. " I don't understand." Marian stood with a puzzled face. " Eh ? " sharply, as if her perplexity were an offence. "The envelope is from some shipping company in Liverpool ; it has the company's stamp on the back." " Well, isn't the letter from the same place ? " " No — yes ; that is, there is a note from a clerk. He says, ' The enclosed letter was not received at our office in time to be delivered on board the ship as requested,' and here is a letter addressed to ' B. Tod, Esq., Passenger from New York to Liverpool by ss. Delaware.' " " And who is ' B. Tod ' ? " asked the old man, with a disagreeable elevation of his eyebrows.

But his atten tion was already returning to his gouty legs. With a bad pain in one's legs, and an habitual selfishness in one's heart, it is difficult to keep up more than a momentary interest in anything. Marian had lifted her head with an evident sentiment of indignation. " I never heard the name of Tod. I never knew there was such a ship, or such a line of ships." " Send it back, and say it's a mistake." " But why have they sent it to me ? Where have they got my address ? It is addressed to my full name, and to your care." Some minutes elapsed — he suffering, thinking only of his pain ; she twisting the letter in her hands, striving to get hold of some clue of thought which might afford a ri _, _> possible explanation. At length he turned again with some reviving interest. " What does Tod's correspondent say ?

" " The letter is not open." A flicker of deeper curiosity crossed his face. "■ Open it, and see what is in it." " I will not open it. It is no affair of mine." There was a certain scorn in her decision. Gilchrist came into the room again with his master's medicine. He seemed uneasy and shuffled about, drawing down the window blinds. " I am going out," he said to Marian, without using any title of respect that would have seemed natural! to her ear. " If you ha\Te letters I will take them." She went to her desk. Enclosing the letter to the unknown Tod in a fresh envelope, she directed it to the office whence it came. She wrote a line with it quickly, hauo-htily, as if the supposed acquaintance were an insult. " Miss Gower knows nothing of the enclosed letter or of the Mr. Tod to whom it is addressed."

When he was gone she felt the reaction from the momentary excitement. The weariness of the friendless monotony of her life rushed back on her consciousness like a current of cold air where the atmosphere has been heated. She almost wished she had read the letter ; it might, at least, have supplied a bit of human interest C coming nearer than the printed page, and offering more entertainment than the practical page of daily life. In her idleness she walked again to the window and looked through the blind. " It must have been a mere mistake. Perhaps they meant to send us some advertisement, and the clerk enclosed the wrong thing." She said this a little vaguely to her uncle. " Clerks invariably do the wrong thing," he assented. For a moment Marian was beguiled into an amusing reverie as to what the state of affairs would be in the world if this statement were true.

The Easter moon was rising in the twilight over the gray town. Trees in the square across the parade formed a screen of budding twigs, so that she could only dimly see the parish church on the old town hill which rose beyond. There was a lull in the passing ; the World and his family had gone in to dinner ; the parade was quiet. Gilchrist went out with the letter, and she watched him, idly wondering what good this spring-time, or other spring-times, could bring to her — to her who had everything she wanted except the impulse of joy of which the spring air told. She felt at that moment that she would gladly have gone about begging for it from door to door, as the ragged woman begged, if she could have hoped any one would give it to her. That same woman stood, still whining, some way down the pavement.

Marian knew her cant so well she almost fancied she heard her words. " Ah, dear heart, be kind, for the dear Lord's sake." She saw Gilchrist stop and speak to the woman. Marian watched, and did not feel kindly toward him. A certain determination of suspicion was born in her heart toward the new servant.

Chapter III

When Gilchrist stopped by the beggar-woman she was standing with her back to him. He laid a light finger for an instant on her shoulder. " Whose baby is that ? " She turned with a start. Her whine ceased. " Is it you ? " she gasped in an awed whisper. " Yes. Whose baby is that ? " " Where did you come from ? " Her dazed wits seemed incapable of the effort she was making to collect her ideas. Instead of answering him, or waiting for his answer, she broke again into her habitual whimper. " For the love of heaven, don't be hard on me, Tom." " Don't," he said. " I found you had come here, and I have followed you. I know that you picked up the child on the way." " I borrowed it from a woman I met ; she had six, and a drunken man. It helps to keep me warm as I carry it, and it's a sight better for it to be with me, and," whimpering again, " I kind of like to hug and kiss it, Tom ; it comforts me best, next to the drink."

Her gray hair blew untidily over her unlovely face. She did not look womanly; the dignity of her soul seemed soiled and tattered like her garments, yet she had this left — that, when he brushed aside the shawl to look at the child, she strained the little head to her breast and kissed it fondly. They stood in mingled moonlight and gaslight. Gilchrist watched her narrowly. Strange to say, the child looked healthy enough and not wholly uncared for. " You never give it a drop ? " he asked. She steadied her voice to answer. " On your honour, no, Tom." " Nor let it fall when you can't walk straight ? " " It would be worse off at home, Tom ; on your honour, it would." Again she broke into her whine. " Don't take it from me, Tom ; it's all the bit of love I've got, and I walked from London just to see " He lowered his voice, but spoke steadily, " To see Gower."

She stood stupidly, crying a little, as if from habit. " I only wanted just to look at him." " Silvia." " Yes, Tom." " I don't know what you may have wanted of Gower, but you will get nothing from him. I have told him that you are provided for. I am going to stay with him as his servant in order to be near you if you need help. Do you hear ? do you understand ? " "I'll never come and disgrace yon, Tom, I'm sure; I bless you every day of my life. For the love of God " " Stop." She stopped so suddenly that the whine, the sound of which he had checked, was still written on her features. " You got my message ? " he said. " You are in the room I arranged for you to have, and you get good food every day ? " " Yes, thank you, Tom." But her face spoke an un speakable discontent. " I'll let you have milk for the child if you want to keep it a few weeks."