Catherine Irving. A novel. By the author of 'Ada Gresham'

Chapter 1

The musical bells of Bow Church were ringing in, according to custom, the new year of 18—. It was a night of heavy and incessant rain, and the sound came, as if muffled, through the humid air. Amongst the thousands of human beings who were at that moment intent upon the significant peal, each with his own individual impression or emotion, I have to do but with one. VOL. I. B In a room at the top of an old, spacious house, situated in the heart of the " City" of London, a girl of fifteen sat listening to the sound. The apartment, ample in its dimensions, waa poorly furnished. A small iron bedstead, a few massive but worn mahogany chairs, the workman ship of which was of the last century, a bureau of the 6ame date, and a round, deal table, were almost all it contained. The.uncarpeted floor gave it an appearance of still greater extent ; and the effect of the whole scene, blank and dreary as it was, was rendered still more so by the sickly and inefficient light of the solitary candle.

No attempt had been made to give it a more cheerful aspect. The white-washed walls were as bare as the floor ; the window's uncurtained, and (in spite of the season and the weather) the sashes were thrown up ; the blinds not drawn down, and one could see without into the black and gloomy night. The girl herself suited the scene. The light of the candle, flickering with the draught, fell full upon her face. Though a pale face, it was far from a sickly one. Premature thought and vehement emotion had produced, as they invariably do, an habitual pallor. Few would have called it a pleasing countenance in spite of its power to fix the attention. In tellect and passion seemed to divide its ex pression between them ; both might have been read in the somewhat low but finely-developed brow, in the fierce brightness of the large blue eyes, in the nostril's nervous dilation, and in the delicate lips, firm in their clear outline, but in their flexibility, prompt to express e\ery passing shade of emotion.

At this moment she was sitting with her elbow on a closed volume, her head bent on her hand, the fingers of which were crushing, with a convulsive grasp, the thick, dark curls which fell about her cheeks and throat. Her eyes were fixed upon the gloomy void which lay beyond her window, and in their concentrated b gaze it was easy to read some deep purpose was working in her mind. "Well, I can but try," she said, at length ; springing from her seat as if unable to sit passive any longer. "I can but try, and I will not fail. If I don't get the one thing I must have something else. Another year shan't see me where I am !" She began to pace the room, and stopping before the open window stood as if listening to the bells. The cold was severe, but she seemed insensible to the fact. She wore a thick plaid shawl, the crimson and green of the tartan giving a picturesque effect to the tall, slight figure ; but she had allowed it to fall loosely from her shoulders, and though exposed to the influences of the night air, she made no attempt to draw it closer.

Indeed, iu her attitude as she stood, in the expression of her face there was a sort of recklessness pain ful to see in one so young. She was as indifferent about the rain as the cold, though, as the wind drove it inwards, it fell upon her up raised head and the hands crossed on the win dow-sill. She seemed desirous of piercing through the surrounding darkness, and getting a glimpse of something beyond, but the effort was fruitless. There was neither moon nor stars, no line or gleam of light, to distinguish the sky from the heavy atmosphere. Presently she turned away from the window and renewed her pacing of the room, with her arms folded behind her. At the same moment the bells ceased, and she paused abruptly. " Well," she said aloud, in the clear, vibrating voice in which she had before spoken, " the new year has got his welcome, and has begun his course.

God grant it may prove a new year to me I" The doubt implied in the apostrophe seemed to agonise her, she reiterated passionately what she had said before — " It must, it shall be different. I will bear it no longer ; I will have a change. Surely I shan't play the coward to-morrow !" There seemed little chance, to judge from the present expression of the almost defiant face. " Let me try and fancy myself so happy as to get consent," she continued, after a pause; raising her eyes as we invariably do in the con templation of a distant idea. " I shall then work and strive as I long to work and strive, and with the glorious prospect of liberty beyond. Oh ! I will do my utmost. I won't soon give it up as lost." Her lip quivered and her eyes filled with tears. She conquered the weakuess almost indignantly.

" It will not do for one who has to fight her own battles — her own way to clear — to cry and grow faint hearted. I must not pity myself too much. Perhaps, some day, I shall do more than fancy myself happy, for I suppose no human being goes to the grave without a taste of happiness — a drop of pleasure, and my share is all to come. When it does come, I will exhaust my chance." She relapsed into silence. Her imagination was busy with one of those ideal pictures cherished by all the enthusiastic young. " Ah !" she pursued, with gleaming eyes, " if I ever get so high, when everything con spires to pull me dowD ; I will forget then how very rough was the up-hill road when I am sitting on the height. The worst is I am afraid my energies may give way ; I feel weary sometimes of resisting and struggling.

Perhaps in the end, especially if I fail to-morrow, I may give up the game, and consent to take life as I find it — though it is all dust and chaff. Yet God preserve me from the weakness." At that moment one o'clock struck. " The year is an hour old," thought she ; " well, it has seen my resolution taken. This time to-morrow, how shall I feel ? At least, I won't have to reproach myself for any weakness of my own. I will do my very utmost to rouse up the weak old man." With this resolution she shut the windows, drew down the blinds, and began to prepare for bed. Her very rapid preparations were soon complete, she extinguished the candle and laid herself down. No devotional exercises had delayed her. Fearing lest her excitement might keep her awake, she began to court sleep by repeating, in a monotonous tone, some smooth flowing verses.

The desired end was gained. When the half-hour chimed, she did not hear it. Before we enter on a history of the morrow, it will be necessary to take a condensed view of the past. The earliest remembrances of Catherine Irving were of the old and gloomy house in which she now lived. She had no recollections of her parents. When she woke up to individual consciousness, she found herself under the guardianship of an uncle and aunt ; CATHERINE IRVING. under the same guardianship she still remained. But, in fact, she was born in a con tinental city, even in Rome. Her father, Basil Irving, had been an artist by profession ; but early in life as he had been cut off, he lived long enough to prove that the chances of his achieving either wealth or honour Were against him. The element of success was wanting in his character ; genius he had, but energy and patience, without which genius is a lamp without oil, he lacked.

What he had the ability to conceive, he had not the ability to carry out to completion. It was not that he failed in manipulative skill, it was a more primary deficiency. The picture sketched upon the canvass, aud he would sit down to contemplate it, filling up the imperfect out line in imagination, but wanting the self-sus taining purpose which would have enabled him to do so in fact. Had execution been comparatively as faoile to him as conception, he would undoubtedly have been a great b painter ; but as it was, he failed. It was the inevitable consequence of a temper which chafed at the slowness of the mechanical pro cess, rebelled at the required laboriousness of his profession, and abortively aimed at pro ducing the effect he wanted when he disre garded the only legitimate means. To make success at once more difficult, and more imperative, he had married when only a student at Rome, and with means barely sufficient for his own support.

He took for his wife a young Italian girl, the daughter of the house where he rented his studio, whose per fection of beauty and vivacious sweetness of temper had inspired an extravagant passion which set prudence at defiance. He paid the natural penalty for his rash ness in the wearing anxieties and bitter experience which followed. For three years he struggled against sickness and poverty. At the end of that period his young wife, whose beauty and vivacity had prematurely faded CATHERINE IRVING. under the blighting influences of her married life died, leaving a two-years' infant in his charge. This blow seemed to crush the young artist ; he had no strength of endurance, and little capacity for resistance. The necessity of supporting his wife had roused him to something like exertion, that necessity withdrawn his fitful energies collapsed.

Naturally consump tive, his recklessness of self confirmed the disease. In short, he seemed to give up life as a lost game. Added to the rest, he was in fatuated enough to believe himself a disappointed man, because the world had refused to recognise in his imperfect performances the finished work as it existed in ideal completion in his own mind. He returned to England with his motherless infant, supplicated a home for her in his elder brother's house, and having obtained it, and thus relieved himself of his last responsibility, dragged on existence for a few weary months, and died at an age when other men prepare to begin to live. Basil Irving had been the youngest and favorite son of a poor London clergyman. His father had acted with criminal injustice to his other children in order to furnish him with the means of gratifying the tastes, and meeting the wants, of the profession he had chosen.

His eldest son, Richard, from the moment an old maiden aunt had stepped in to equalise matters by furnishing the means of sending him to college, frankly forgave, or rather forgot, this injustice. So long as he had books to study, and leisure to study them, he was little disposed to dispute with any man. He was then in a state of being where every want seemed met ; he was not only willing but anxious to let things take their course, so long as that course kept clear of interruption of his studeut habits. He had been inteuded for the Church, but the death of his aunt, and her leaving him a legacy large euough to purchase an annuity equal to his simple wants, induced him to change his intention. The life of a bookworm he preferred to any other ; as a clergyman, there would be a perpetual drain on his time and attention.

He was not qualified, he said, for the duties of one, it was a crowded field, and there were many worthier aspirants. With these arguments, he decided the question, and retired with his library, not of general but of antiquarian interest, to the old house in the city of London, which formed an important part of his relative's bequest. In this bequest, his ouly sister, Sarah, was as sociated, as she had also been joint sharer of her aunt's favour during her life time, a favour simply based on the unjust partiality of the father. She inherited a legacy of the same amount as her brother's, and had employed it in the same way. She undertook the management of the house aud their mutual income ; and Richard was very willing to leave such management in her hands. The dust of his library was the breath of life to him.

In character, Sarah Irving differed from both her brothers. Hers was a deep and hard nature, in which past injuries rankled with an undecaying freshness. From childhood, she had resented the paternal injustice by a bitter hatred of her younger brother. Apart from that, she had a contemptuous intolerance for the weakness of his character ; had there been no incentive to dislike, there was a natural antagonism between them. Even the death of old Mr. Irving, which occurred shortly before Basil's rash Italian marriage, did not in any degree mitigate the feeling. The possibility of further wrong was removed, but the uncancelled past remained. When, therefore, Basil Irving returned from Eome with no other hope for his child but in the benevolence of his brother, Sarah had ex erted all her influence to frustrate that hope.

Her brother's marriage had provoked an even deeper contempt than before, and to receive his infant would have deprived her of reveng ing the boyish tyranny he had inflicted, the father's love he had absorbed. But there was still a greater wrong to resent: at a crisis when a small dowry would, she be lieved, have secured her womanly happiness, that right had been denied, and her claim been forced to yield to the necessities of the artist's education. But Richard's nature was kindlier, or at least his wrongs had not been so deep ; Basil's pale looks and faded health touched the soft place in his heart. " Why would not Sarah forget old scores, and adopt the child ?" In the end, Sarah agreed to adopt it ; but not until she had compelled the father to go through an agonising series of doubts and anxieties.

Now she would excite hope, that a few days later she might play with his fears. And when at length she passed her final word, it was owing to no relenting of her hard tenacious nature, but simply beoause she thought her revenge, foiled by Basil's death, could better be gratified by having the life of the child under her control. Under this sinister guardianship, Catherine's life opened, she grew up under an iron rule. Had she brought into the world with her, a soft docile spirit, she would inevitably have been reduced to the lowest degree of passive subservience, and servile timidity. But, on the contrary, her natural temper was at once resolute and passionate. She was born with an intense love of freedom and impatience of control that would have needed, even from the tenderest, a pruning hand.

Perhaps she in herited her temperament from her mother and the land of her birth, but however that might be she was endowed with all the impassioned ardour we are accustomed to ascribe to the children of the south. With her, every feeling was an emotion, every emotion a passion. With such a character the only means of government lay in getting a secure hold of her affections; where she loved she would obey. To endeavour to force submission, was to rouse the principle of resistance to fury. Yet this latter was the course Sarah Irving adopted. From her infancy she had tried no other means but coercion with Catherine ; and, from infancy, Catherine had opposed her impotent defiance. She possessed, naturally, a wild exuberance of animal spirits, against whioh her aunt exercised the most repressive harshness.

The shout and laugh of childhood were transgres sions to be severely punished. But the posi tive will soon showed itself. On one occasion, when only in her fourth year, her tenacious hilarity, which defied the depressing influences around her, had brought down upon her a severity disproportioued to any offence which a child of that age could have committed. The consciousness of injustice and oppression, and the latent spirit of defiance, stirred, as an in stinct within the infant soul. " I'm not hurt, I will laugh !" shouted Catherine, with her face convulsed with prema ture indignation, and suiting the action to the word, she flung herself on the floor, raising her voice to its utmost pitch, in what, in truth, were rather screams than laughter, but still it was a noise which was the fault chastised.

From that hour, the woman and child stood opposed. The warfare was, of course, unequal, and the weaker was always the sufferer. But though defeated and bruised with her hopeless resistance, Catherine was never over come. Subdued one moment, she was on her feet the next, in an attitude as defiant as be fore. Instead of the repressive discipline to which she was subjected, crushing her instinctive passion for independence, it acquired a fiercer force from the prolonged necessity of resisting the power that would have borne it down. Added to this, her position infused a spirit of bitter self-reliance that bid fair to eradicate the wTomanly out of her character. " I stand alone," had been her life-long re flection — " I fight my own battles — I get help from no one. Well, I can do without it. Thank God, He has made me strong both to struggle and to resist !"

But even as the proud thought passed through her mind, her lip would quiver, and the eyes, flashing defiance, fill with tears. How often, at such moments, if alone, she had buried her face in her arms, and wept bitterly !" Sometimes a melancholy foreboding pressed upon her mind. " All the little good there was in my nature, Aunt Sarah will stamp out. Nothing will be left but the power to hate her. I seem now as if I did not care for anything, and, God knows, there was a time when I could have loved even her." Then more passionate thoughts would arise. Miss Irving, under plea that they could not afford it, but really with no other motive than CATHIRINE IRVING. the severe mortification of her niece, refused to send Catherine to school. She professed to teach her herself, but beyond the most ordinary instruction, without which it would have been a public shame to have left her, her teaching did not go.

Now, although Catherine had no opportunity of comparison with girls of her own age, for she lived in the dingy city-house as in a prison, from which she never escaped but with her aunt, she was able to compare her wretched acquirements with her capabilities and aspirations. She was a girl of strong mental power touching upon genius, and hun gered and thirsted after knowledge as after an unsatisfied necessity. That the means of gratifying this strong desire were withheld was one of Catherine's keenest sorrows and deepest wrongs. " She mars my future," was her reflection ; "she will force me to live for ever alone ; for how does she think I will ever live in a world that will look down upon me ?" CATHERINE IRV.NG. Yet Catherine had an earnest longing to know something of the world from which she was shut out; and more than that, a latent passion to distinguish herself in it.

Isolated and frowned upon — with her fervid affections cast back upon herself, and consuming their own vitality — she sometimes cheated a dreary hour by fancying the case reversed, and would clasp a friendly hand, and look up into the face of one who loved her. The same instinct led her — shackled by ignorance as she was — to imagine herself as accomplished as she was gifted ; as having conquered the tongues and sciences she had the unexerted power to con quer. She would make herself the object of adulation to ideal beings whose homage was worth receiving, and which would stimulate her to higher efforts, until she had reached the utmost limit of womanly attainment : or she would turn her cultivated and disciplined powers into another channel. Why she could write now, how then would she write?

Assuredly the whole world would give her a hearing ! And in her imaginative ecstasy Catherine already heard the rapturous rustle of the laurel wreath, and clasped with trem bling hands, drinking a deep draught, the cup in which sparkled the elixir of immortality. And then what bitterness to wake up and realise how barren of love, of knowledge, of all hope or chance of distinction, how tied and enslaved by circumstance she was ! At times the reflection wrought her up to fury, and as she paced her bed room floor, clenching her hands together, she meditated insane projects, planned the most impracticable schemes. " Anything for freedom," she would say, " I would rather earn every morsel I eat by the sweat of my brow than receive it from my slave-holder." And, in truth, if the severest watchfulness had not beeu exercised, it is pro bable that in some abandonment of feeling the young girl would really have made her escape, CATHERINE IRVIVG. 23 aud tried a hand-to-hand struggle with the sternest realities of life.

Her present ex istence was miserable enough to justify such a step. Miss Irving did not hate and persecute her now for her father's sake, but for her own. She was ingenious in modes of suffering ; if there was one employment or household duty more naturally distasteful than another to Catherine's high spirit, it was that which was most surely required from her. She had no companions, and was absolutely cut off from society. True, Miss Irving had a few friends, and when she visited them took Catherine with her, simply because she would have preferred to stay at home ; but these out-goings were more intolerable to her than her habitual con finement. The little circle was naturally in Miss Irving's interest, and receiving her estimate of Catherine treated the young girl as though she were out of the pale of human sympathy, while she; with her bitterest indignation and contempt excited, seemed by her conduct to confirm her aunt's representations.

When after a visit of this kind she returned home, and went to her bed-room, if her out raged feelings still supported her, she would sit down to read, as in defiance of the powerlessness of her enemies to dry up this source of pleasure. She had a few books that had been acquired by stealth, and were guarded with a proportioned vigilance. Amongst them weie an old copy of Shakspeare, and another of the " Fairy Queen." Racy, exhaustless food these were, well fitted to nourish a growing intellect, to develop to the highest point a kindling, quickening fancy. Besides, having but few other books, Catherine studied these well, not to say profoundly. Hers was no surface knowdedge ; there was scarcely a fine passage in either author with which she was not familiar. No critic had helped her to discriminate their beauties, but her keen perception was unerring.

Sometimes, as a diversion, she would recite aloud her favorite fragments (her bed-room being at the top of the house, there was little fear of her being overheard), and she poured forth all the passionate energy of her pent-up soul. She had an instinctive consci ousness that her self-directed recitation was good, for it moved her own feelings ; but she did not know how near her talent approached perfection. Under the guidance of her natural genius, scarcely could a theatrical connoisseur have suggested an improvement. But at other times she was too much depressed to read, and would stand by her window looking up moodily towards the straitened sky, and down into the narrow street. How fruitlessly on these occasions she beat her wings against her cage ; what passionate yearnings came over her to see a broad heaven above her head, a green earth beneath her feet, to breathe a purer and freer air !

Shut out from all sympathetic companionship, Catherine had but one outlet for her thoughts — already she wrote. She had vol. i. c studied English under two of its masters, and was at no loss for words ; she suffered, resented, and desired, and was at no loss for thoughts. Her effusions, sometimes in verse, sometimes in prose, under all sorts of forms — now a burning statement of her wrongs and emotions, now a fictitious story where she was what she desired to be — in spite of their crude ness and imperfections had the two important elements of power and originality. Their author knew it : genius, far as it is removed from presumption, can not ignore its own exis tence. The point to which Catherine most often looked was, when free of her present shackles, the getting first of a little elementary instruction, and the working out of a literary reputation.

" It is the only way in which I shall be able to make myself known," she reflected ; " and as I shall be cut off from love, I will have ad miration." Richard Irving, buried amongst his books, and walking through life with half-shut eyes, knew little or nothing of the warfare waged between Sarah Irving and his niece. His sister told him the girl had a most ungovernable temper, and he having a great deal of respect for her judgment, and a morbid horror of inter fering in women's quarrels, left Catherine entirely to her management. He saw that the orphan was well clothed and well fed, and he persuaded himself it was not his business to interfere any further. Such is a rapid outline of Catherine's life for the first fifteen years, up to the night when she was introduced to the reader. On that night she had come to a fixed resolution.

She had been out to tea with her aunt, and had been introduced, by the lady of the house, to a young girl, much about her own age, who was spending the Christmas holidays with her relative. The young lady was talkative and sociable, and soon made Catherine acquainted with all the little details of her history. She was an orphan, and had been adopted by her aunt, so far their circumstances agreed, but then came a grave distinction. Her aunt was not rich and would have nothing to leave her, so she was being educated for a governess. She spoke of the first-rate school to which she went, the excellent masters, the countless accomplishments taught, and, as a matter of course, acquired. She talked glibly of French, German, and Italian, music, dancing and sciences ; and interrupted her recital every now aud then, to ask her silent but atten tive companion what she learnt, and how far in these multiform studies she was advanced.

Catherine evaded these enquiries, it was no part of her character to pour out her com plaints to any ear ; but the conversation wrought its effect. For almost the first time, the desti tution in which the death of her relatives would leave her, occurred to her mind. Edu cation, which she had often besought for its own sake, she would demand now as a means of support. From the moment she was capable of being a governess, there would be the turn of her bondage and misery. She would be free to labour, and looking abroad into the world might choose her own field. The mere conception of the idea excited her almost to delirium. The hardships and difficulties of such a position she passed by, it only appeared to her a state of release and liberty. That she would stand in the world friendless and un aided was nothing, she was accustomed to rely on self, and at least she would be free — free from the yoke which had cruelly chafed the neck, struggling for emancipation — free from the down pressure and restraint of her ex istence !

And more than that, would she not escape from monotony and confinement and begin to see what life was ? Vitality swelled with a full tide within her soul, and long ago she had begun to writhe under the consciousness of her straitened and untaxed existence. What she asked for, was a hand-to-hand contact with her fellow beings— was to question the living voice, search the living heart. Young as she was, she was weary of dreaming and speculating about things she had never seen ; she wanted to know where she had guessed, to experience where she had ima gined. That night it came upon her, she could bear the present state of things no longer. She resolved to strain every nerve to induce her uncle to send her to school. She did not over rate her chances of success, but she determined to leave none untried.

She knew well how dfficult it would be to rouse her uncle from his state of indolence to active interposition ; and how easy it would be for his sister to in fluence him in the opposite direction, and counteract her own most stringent arguments and passionate representations. And then if she failed ? But Catherine left the step, in that case, to be taken, to be decided upon when necessity forced her to the decision. For the morrow she had but one end in view — she desired to go to school — a school capable of educating her for a governess, and she must constrain Richard Irving to give his consent. It was on this resolution she had slept.