The Plaything of an Hour; and other stories

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a Uno ©tbev Stoviee BY Mrs EDWARD KENNARD AUTHOR OF " THI! CATCH OF THE COUNTY," " THE HUNTING GIRL," "THAT PRETTY LITTLE HORSEBREAKER," " THE GIRL IN THE BROWN HABIT, ETC, etc. AV ONE VOL. LONDON F. V. WHITE & CO. 14 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND, W.C C O X T E N T S. PAGE The Plaything of an Hour, ..... 1 Doomed, ....... 81 A Girl who didn't like Little Men, . . . 119 An Old Buffer's Experience on the Brighton Pier, . 145 For Love's Sake, . . . . . .157 The Light that Shines, . . . . .169 Old Peder's Treasure, ..... 177 How I Won Her, . . . . . .189 For the Lovf. of a Woman, . . . . .199 Was She Guilty . ...... 207 A Hunting Flirt, . . . . • .213 Going the Pace, ...... 219 Hunting in the Midlands, ..... 233 A Sporting Adventure, ..... 251 The Story of a Strike, .....

Chapter I. Childish Days

She was only fourteen, and looking back upon her past it seemed to her that she had scarcely heard a kind word in the whole of her dreary young life. Quarrels, oaths, abuse — these things stood out prominently in her memory and obliterated any softer recollections. Often she sighed to herself, longing, with the intensity born of much suffering, for some change in her wretched existence, but none came ; and as the days dragged slowly on, a species of torpor crept over her being. Although too young and too ignorant to analyse her condition, instinct told her that such a childhood as hers was cruel, and a disgrace to those who had been the means of bringing her into the world. Only fourteen, and such a wistful, wild, uncared-for-looking creature, that it made the heart swell and grow big with compassion as one gazed at her.

Her father and mother had originally been respectable people, who, although far from rich, at one time earned quite sufficient to maintain themselves in decency, if not comfort. But by degrees a fatal passion for drink had grown upon them both. This unfortunate failing soon rendered any steady and continuous occupation impossible. Work grew hard to obtain ; employers scarcer and scarcer to find. Then came difficulties, debt, sickness, want. The same A troubles and the same down-sliding which the victims of drink — more especially in the lower classes — so frequently experience. This unhappy pair gradually sank from one stage of poverty to another until, when our story com mences, they had almost reached its very lowest depths. Having pawned the greater portion of their clothes and furniture, and spent the proceeds in a gin-palace, they finally found themselves forced to inhabit a miserable, bare, dilapidated garret, whose dirty, bulging walls, broken window-panes, and rotten flooring, mended here and there with a piece of rough wood torn from an old packing case, were a standing disgrace to the landlord who dared let out, on extortionate terms, such mockeries of dwelling places to his half-starved and wholly pitiable, tenants.

It was simply a terrible home for a child. A young, eager thing, full of passionate impulses and hungry long ings, who pined liked a caged bird to escape from its prison bars, and spreading its wings, to fly forth into the great world of which it dreamed and dreamed, but knew so little. Give it a thought, ye fortunate ones, whose lives are smooth and tranquil, full of happy memories and joyous anticipations. Ye, who possess kind parents, who know not the meaning of harsh words, and who enjoy clean raiment, warm beds, good food and plenty of it, as a matter so much of course, that it never enters your heads to feel thankful for them. Poor little Bessie had none of these things. No love, no warmth, no comfort or bodily ease. She was a desolate and neglected creature, born amidst the most unfavourable conditions and, once brought into the world, left almost en tirely to her own devices, to struggle into womanhood as best she might.

This delicate human organism, in its fight for mere existence, had to contend with fearfully adverse forces. Her parents looked upon her as an incumbrance, nothing more. A thing whose every mouthful of food they grudged, considering it purchased by the sacrifice of their favourite spirit. Thus, from the first moment that Bessie's mind became capable of retaining any definite or permanent impression, it could recall little else save coarse and brutal oaths. As she grew older the child con sidered herself lucky if these oaths were not accompanied by blows, dealt by a powerful, albeit an unsteady, hand. Sometimes her little skinny arms and body were black from the bruises inflicted. When anything went wrong she was invariably the scape-goat, and on such occasions, with a stifled sob of utter misery rising in her dusky throat, she would crawl away into the remotest corner of the comfort less room, in a vain attempt at hiding from the father and mother who inspired such terror and disgust.

For how could she feel towards them as a daughter should feel for her parents ? Her heart was very sore, and she would gladly have loved them had it been possible. Every now and again in their quiet moods she felt herself soften, and a kind word then would have conquered her for ever ; but that word never came, and the springs of her affection were dried up and turned in upon her aching heart. Latterly, she had only seen her father at rare intervals. He appeared once more to have found an occupation, but whatever it might be, it was evidently a mysterious and not very creditable one, for he never alluded to it, or said what the business was which took him out all night and caused him only to return when the suu stood high in the heavens, and the little grimy London sparrows were busily hopping about the courtyard.

Bessie's mother usually spent her days in the streets beg ging for coppers which, when obtained, were immediately con verted into gin. In order to make sure that Bessie should not get into mischief, she generally locked her up in the roam before she went out, leaving the poor little thing with a morsel of dry bread by her side, — a prey to the keenest imaginary terrors. For Bessie was naturally nervous, and these long hours of solitude rendered her still more so. Often her mother remained away until close upon night fall, and then the child would watch her come staggering down the filthy court full of garbage, decaying vegetation and offensive refuse, whose unsavoury odours daily greeted the not over-sensitive nostrils of the inhabitants who occupied Nine Cat Alley. Sometimes the wretched woman would sing snatches of drunken song, or enter into noisy conversation with a boon companion after her own heart.

At others she was too entirely under the influence of the vile spirit deadening her senses, to do aught save dumbly grope her onward way, trusting to instinct to guide her to her home. Thus, in dirt, want, misery, starvation and neglect, the earliest years of Bessie's life were spent. From a state of keen suffering, amounting almost to absolute torture — for it was her misfortune to have been born sensitive — she gradually passed into one of sullen apathy. She was getting harder and more callous. Things that hurt her once did so no longer, or rather, use had rendered her indifferent. Her eyes grew accustomed to the sights, her ears to the sounds of Nine Cat Alley. And yet she was not bad. Her instincts were as pure as those of the child nurtured in luxury. Even although she saw evil in many forms, much good lay dormant within her breast, requiring only kindly cultivation.

It spoke volumes in her favour that she should have retained any good at all, especially as no untamed savage of the desert could have been more totally ignorant of right and wrong, as constituted by civilised laws, than this poor, destitute atom, this small, sentient centre of human forces, born through no desire of her own into a cruel world, and the responsibility of whose existence was altogether ignored by her wretched and degraded parents. Is there anything more awful and solemn than this 1 A young human soul, with all its undeveloped possibilities of good and of evil, left to slide down, down, down, with never a helping hand stretched forth to save it, or a warning word of advice to prevent it from entering the broad gates of moral destruction. The young, as a rule, are so pliable, so easily led, it takes such a little to put them in the wrong way or the right.

Eight times the seasons had repeated themselves without any break taking place in the dark horizon of our little heroine's future. But at the end of that period a very wonderful thing occurred — at least, it seemed so to Bessie. One day Mr jind Mrs O'Brian's miserable garret was visited by a school-board official, a quick, sharp, hawk-eyed little man, who said he had come to inquire the reason why Bessie had not already been sent to school, and peremp torily insisted on her attending without further delay. Mrs O'Brian pleaded a variety of excuses, each one more far-fetched thau the other ; but Mr Robinson was accustomed to prevarication, and preserved an incredulous and unbending countenance. " Bessie ain't got no boots," declared Mrs O'Brian, desperately ; " her last pair was wore out long ago, and I've had no money to buy any more."

" She must wear the shoes she has got on, then," said Mr Robinson, glancing at the two untidy old ones worn by the child. " She can't stop at home on that account." " Can't she indeed ! " exclaimed Mrs O'Brian, squaring her elbows in an excited manner. " That remains to be seen. I'm her mother and I say she sha'n't go to school." " Come, come, my good woman," interposed he, with a mild attempt at pacification. " Do be reasonable." "Reasonable indade ! And pray who is it as is not reasonable ? Don't ' good woman ' me. I want none o' your soft sawder." "Well, but Mrs O'Brian, you know as well as I do that your little girl must go to school when she has reached a certain age. You have evaded the law too long already." " Must," she echoed in tones of deepest scorn and indignation. " A pretty word to employ to a respectable feymale.

Besides, Bessie don't want no eddication. It's all new-fangled nonsense, and she's well enough as she is." " I repeat that she must come," said Mr Robinson more sternly, for the woman's obstinacy was beginning to anger him. " The law is bound to be respected." " Hoity-toity ! Do you think I can spare a great big gurl like Bessie, as 'ull be nine next birthday, and I with not another creature to help me with the work? No, certainly not. So that's flat. She must stop and do the washing." In spite, however, of this decided declaration, from that day forth Bessie went regularly to school, even although she had to do the " washing " late in the afternoon on her return. The school-room was only a big, bare room, with white washed walls, clean-scrubbed floors, and many straight wooden benches on which, in their idle moments, the youth ful scholars had clumsily carved their names or initials, but it seemed like an earthly paradise to Bessie.

She always spoke of it reverentially as " The beautiful place." And indeed it was a beautiful place when compared with hev own most miserable home, for cleanliness and order reigned here, whilst oaths and bad words were quickly suppressed. So the months glided by, and in process of time Bessie acquired the arts of reading and writing. She also obtained glimpses, at first vague, but which gradually grew clearer and sharper, of a higher order of things to that adopted by the inhabitants of Nine Cat Alley. She learnt that everybody did not swear, and drink, and quarrel, but that there existed men and women who gave up their whole time to trying to raise the condition of their less fortunate fellow-creatures. She began by degrees to entertain a species of shy regard for tidiness and cleanliness.

On one occasion the school-mistress rebuked her for coming to school without first having smoothed the tangled masses of her thick black hair. She took care that that should never happen again. Surreptitiously — for fear of being ridiculed if discovered — she washed her hands and face in the family bucket, trying to get rid of the ingrained dirt of years. Now and again when school was over, and on returning home she found as usual both parents absent, she made various vigorous essays to tidy the room and clean the window-panes — at least, such of them as remained and had not long ago been repaired by pieces of soiled rag and brown paper. Once, indeed, when seized by a feverish desire to improve, the result of a lecture from her teacher, she actually soared so far above and beyond the debasing influences of her domestic surroundings, as to set to work on hands and knees and scrub the greasy, uncarpeted boards, that were all spotted and stained until no vestige of their original colour remained.

She took a pail of water, a bit of coarse flannel, and a piece of soap, and never rested until they shone resplendent, and the clean, fresh smell seemed to do her nostrils good. How proud she was of her handiwork ! How tenderly she gazed down at the moist floor, and watched it grow dry bit by bit, and what resolutions she made, to be sure ! Never should those boards be allowed to relapse into their former condition. She only wished the school-mistress could have seen them. But, alas ! her innocent triumph was of short duration. For as she stood proudly surveying the results of her labour, with her sleeves rolled up, and her little thin brown arms set akimbo with the hands resting on the hips, Mr and Mrs O'Brian entered the room together. They were both in an intoxicated condition, and were talking in a loud, querulous way that immediately attracted Bessie's attention and made her heart begin to beat.

She knew but too well what was coming. A noisy argument ensued between husband and wife, neither of whom was in a very lucid state. At last they quarrelled so furiously that they ended by pitching every available article of furniture at each other's heads, making use, meanwhile, of the most violent and abusive language. A few brief moments soon destroyed all the good effects produced by Bessie's scouring. The pail was upset and the water went running in every direction, leaving a sedi ment of soap behind it. Chairs, table, pots and pans littered the ground, and the room was in utter confusion. Frightened, saddened, but, above all, infinitely disgusted, Bessie, who had taken no part in the proceedings, crept away into a corner and threw an old, tattered, black and red shawl over her head, with an ostrich-like effort to shut out displeasing sights.

Meanwhile, she mournfully asked herself what was the use of following the school-mistress's advice and trying to improve such a home 1 What good could it do 1 It was a sheer waste of time and trouble attempting to keep the place clean. All her feeble efforts seemed so powerless to effect any radical change. After some such fashion did the child reason, whilst trembling in every limb she crouched on the moist floor, leaving her father and mother to fight out their drunken quarrel to the bitter end. Bessie had witnessed many a similar scene ere now ; but since she had gone to school she viewed such outbreaks with ever-increasing shame and agony. The poor little child-girl whose intelligence was only just beginning to awake, and to feebly battle its way out of the dark state of intellectual torpor in which it had been steeped, felt hopelessly discouraged.

She was crushed by a sense of her own incompetency. What could she do, when her small endeavours met with such stern repulse ? It was all very well for the schoolmistress to give her good advice, but how could she follow it? A little knowledge, such as she had managed to acquire, only brought pain. It was better to be as she had been before she went to school — a weird, uncouth, half-starved animal, nothing more ; who, if its body were warm, and its stomach tolerably well filled, wanted no higher happiness. A creature whose senses had grown blunted through misery and ill-usage. She was getting past wishing and caring for things when Mr Robinson had insisted on her leaving home for several hours in each day. She questioned now whether it were a kindness, whether it were wise to open her eyes to the abasement of the life she was forced to lead.

She could not get away from it. She had to endure it. Why, there fore, should she not be like the people by whom she was surrounded , So the poor child mused, in her sadness and despair. She hardly knew what she pined for ; if asked, she could but imperfectly have defined her longings, but she realised that she was miserable. Strange new thoughts came crowding in upon her brain ; shoots of light that made the darkness seem still more dark. They confused her ; and yet strangely enough, in the midst of all her misery, she cherished them and clung to them, with an instinctive feeling that they alone would prove her safe-guard.

Chapter II. The Poor Man's Tempter

So time passed away until Bessie had neafly reached her fifteenth year. Up to this date, from the moment of her first going to school, she had always endeavoured to attend regularly. It was not only the information that she gained there — precious as it certainly was — which she valued so highly, but the being able to spend several hours of each day in a quiet, peaceable place, far from that unhappy home where all sorts of disgraceful scenes were perpetually being enacted. The relief obtained, by escaping in a great measure from the effects of her mother's drunken fits, and her father's coarse language, was simply immense. The very repose sufficed to make her love the school and use every effort to become a constant attendant. Accustomed from her baby hood, as it were, to repulsive surroundings, the older she grew, and the better educated, the more did the womanly spirit gradually developing within her recoil from their influences.

Education had conferred upon her a clearer knowledge of evil, and a higher moral standard ; but in contra distinction to these advantages, by helping to raise her above the level of her parents it had brought a keener capacity of suffering and increased sensitiveness to the shame of her condition. In former days, when her clothes were ragged, her hair unkempt and face unwashed, it had never entered her head to feel any distress on account of her personal appear ance. If she were dirty, she was at least unconscious. But now a hole in her stocking, a stain in her frock, or even an ink mark disfiguring her finger-tips, made the hot blushes come to her cheek. Every day small things, which in Bessie's former state of untutored ignorance would have been treated by her with stoicism, if not downright apathy, now caused the very sharpest pain — pain blended with such searing and unutterable shame that it gnawed at her heart-strings just as some insidious parasite gnaws at the fresh, unfolding leaves of a fair flower gently expanding in the sunshine.

And when at home she suffered agonies. Her one great longing was to be the means of bringing about an improvement in her mother's pitiable condition. As she grew older and less timid, Mrs O'Brian's failing filled her with compassion rather than disgust. She no longer judged her as harshly as she had done when quite a child. Nevertheless, every time that Mrs O'Brian came stumbling up the staircase, and with heavy step and lurching gait entered the room, Bessie turned her head aside in mingled revulsion and despair. The task of attempting any reform seemed so difficult and so hopeless, that for a long time she was almost afraid to make a commence ment. At length, by a vigorous effort of courage, she broached the subject nearest her heart. Although she herself but faintly comprehended the solemn truths contained in the Bible, she felt that they were her only hope.

More than once she resolutely endeavoured to read out aloud those passages with which she was most conversant, trusting that they would produce some good effect, however slight that effect might be to begin with. But the wretched, sunken woman was too lost to every sense of decency, of motherhood and religion, to appreciate the beautiful teachings conveyed in God's holy book. They made little or no impression on her degraded mind which, indeed, was so debased as to be scarcely capable of grasping their purport. " For goodness' sake, child, do give up preaching," she would exclaim irritably. "What on earth's the Bible to such as me , " " Oh ! but, mother," answered Bessie gravely, feeling how difficult it was to explain away what she knew was a wrong argument, "it ought to be something. The schoolmistress says that all good people believe in the Bible."

" Upon my word ! " retorted Mrs O'Brian, indignantly, raising her voice with uninelodious strength as she spoke. " Upon my word ! I suppose that means that I'm a bad 'un, eh ? " " Oh, no, mother ; no such thing. Only, all of us might be better than we are." " Perhaps we might, but then we're not, so what's the good of talking about it and making a fuss. As for that school-mistress of yours, I'd like to wring her neck if I got the chance. She ought to be ashamed of herself for trying to teach a daughter to sneer at her own mother." " Indeed, Miss Dawson does nothing of the sort," said Bessie, eagerly ; " she only wants me to improve." " She'd do far better to leave you alone. I've no patience with such improvement as she teaches you." " But, mother—" "Hold your tongue, Bessie," retorted Mrs O'Brian, excitedly, for it did not take much to arouse her anger.

" I'm as sharp as my neighbours — for the matter of that, perhaps a little bit more so — and I says it's all very well for your stuck-up folk to preach and lecture us, but it don't go down." " Miss Dawson is not stuck-up," said Bessie, doggedly. "And I say she is. Pray, does she know what starvation feels like, or what it is to wonder, from one day to another, where the next male is to come from ? " " Perhaps not. I should be sorry for her if she did." " Very well, then, what right has she to set you on to lecturing your own mother. It's beyond all reason, and for my part I think it's only quite nat'ral the bottle should be the poor man's friend. A drop of gin or brandy now and agen quiets the pain in our innards, besides being the one thing that makes us forget our troubles. People like Miss Dawson have no right to set 'emselves up as judges of our class.

They know nothing whatever about us." And so saying, Mrs O'Brian stuck her arms akimbo, in a curiously defiant and aggressive fashion, and stared fixedly at Bessie. " I am sure Miss Dawson is a good woman," said the girl stoutly, standing up in defence of the only person who had ever treated her with the least show of kindness ; " but however that may be, to please me — just to please me, mother," stretching out her hands entreatingly, "do try and give up drink. It's killing you." The other gave a fierce laugh. "And what if it is? My life is not so pleasant that I should wish to spin it out. Nothing to eat, nothing to drink — where's the good of living ? " " There might be more — more, I mean, to eat," returned Bessie, timidly, "if — if you stayed at home and kept things a bit straight." " Shut up.

Don't you begin preaching agen ; I can't abide it. As for pleasing you," continued Mrs O'Brian, brusquely, " what's that to me ? Why should I put my self out to please such an impudent, airified girl ? Nobody ever tries to please me ; no — nor never did." " Ah, mother," sighed Bessie under her breath, " I would. I should like to do so above everything, if only you would let me." "Tut, tut," was the rough reply, " let's have no more of this tomfoolery. I'm tired of it, quite. Leave off bother ing, Bessie, else you and I 'ull fall out. You ought to know pretty well by this time that drink I must and will have. It's the only thing I care for." And this was her invariable answer. She drank to drown care, to forget — to steep her senses in oblivion, and by so doing deaden the dull, heavy, cheer less burden of existence.

The gin-palace was to her an earthly paradise. A blissful retreat, beneath whose four sheltering walls a few happy, careless moments might be snatched from the miserable world. Drink warmed the blood, increased the circulation, quickened the pulses. For a short time it produced a state of positive enjoyment. Drink was the magician who drove away care, soothed sorrow, and put a brighter complexion on abject human suffering. His worshippers purchased — dearly, but still they purchased, that which otherwise the poor wretches had no chance of obtaining — a hilarity which passed for content. For there are hundreds and thousands of our fellow-creatures in the great cities who, weary of perpetual toil and monotonous physical labour, deadened by misery and want, are but a degree removed from the brute creation.

What wonder then if these, like Mrs O'Brian, resort to our public-houses, so as to drown their great life-sickness, and quiet the pangs of semi-starvation in the transient joys conferred by an intoxicating spirit. They know so few pleasures, and drink, if it gives them nothing else, gives them one great — one inestimable, boon — forgetfulness. Whilst under its influence they can fancy themselves rich, happy, prosperous. They see the world as it might be, not as it is. What care they that the awaking from their dreams is terrible ? These people are improvident, and reck but little of the future. The painful, narrow present contains too much that is bitter, is too hard and wearing, to render foresight a very common virtue. Between the poor and the rich a mighty gulf subsists. The rich, at the breaking of each day, in their ennui and lack of real useful employment, say to one another discontentedly, — " How shall we amuse ourselves ?

What is to be done ? " Done ? An immensity, if only they would set to work, and bear in mind the pitiful cry of their poorer brethren — not, " How shall we amuse ourselves ? " but, " How shall we keep body and soul together? " And yet, with strange irony, one class presumes to judge the other. The wealthy wonder when they hear an instance of how all that is lowest and most animal in man rises to the surface, obliterating his finer qualities. They either forget, or ignore, that the biped and the beast are not separated by any very sharp divisions. Civilisation alone divides them. Poverty, want, famine, bring them horribly near together, and induce a dangerous reversion to the original type, appalling to witness. After her conversations with her mother, Bessie would shed many scalding tears, recognising how unavailing were any endeavours to overcome the passion whose slave Mrs O'Brian was.

Therefore she sought comfort elsewhere, and •attended school with redoubled regularity, fretting if she missed a single day. Her great desire now was to be good, and to grow up as unlike her parents as possible. Unfortunately, she did not quite know what constituted goodness. Her ideas on the subject, though surely expanding, still remained somewhat undefined, for she was passing through a transition stage full of doubt and perplexity, as every new phase of thought must necessarily prove. And all this limp, deep down in the child-girl's heart, lurked a great hungry longing for affection. A craving to live with somebody who would utter a few kind words now and again, and bestow occasionally a little encouraging praise such as her whole nature thirsted for. Young as she was, it had not taken her long to discover that the narrow path she had chosen to tread was a very laborious one to follow, and every forward step was only gained after having successfully overcome innumerable difficulties.

Luckily Nature, our universal mother, had been more or less charitable to poor little Bessie. Instead of concentrat ing in her small person all the hereditary vices of both parents, she had taken a flying leap and harked back to some more distant, and evidently less vicious, ancestors. But in spite of her moral advancement, there were moments, neither few nor far between, when the girl felt positively stifled by the atmosphere in which she lived, and dragged down, so to speak, into the great, murky swamp of degradation in whose midst her lot had so unfortunately been cast. She often thought, when dejectedly reviewing the situation, that it would be far wiser for her to resign herself to the existing state of things, rather than expend her strength by a series of ineffectual struggles, each one of which only left her more and more disheartened.