And the World Saith

Front matter

a ARABELLA KENEALY'S NOYELS SOME MEN ARE SUCH GENTLEMEN Crown Svo, cloth, 6s. Fifth Edition. Academy— 'We take up a book by Miss Arabella Kenealy confidently expect ing to be amused, and in her latest work we are not disappointed. The story is so brightly written that our interest is never allowed to flag. The heroine, Lois Clinton, is sweet and womanly. . ._ . The tale is told with spirit and vivacity, and shows no little skill in its descriptive passages.' Pall Mall Gazette—' A book to be read breathlessly from beginning to end. It is decidedly original ... its vivid interest. The picture of the girl is admir ably drawn. The style is bright and easy.' Literary World—' A really good story, original, well written and strong. A really excellent and engaging story. The materials are rare, and, we must admit, ideal . . . can be read with interest and enjoyment.' Daily Chronicle — ' Miss Kenealy has original ideas, a nice faculty of literary expression. . . .

Her description of the old house where dwelt her strange young heroine, is quite admirable. . . . There is a quaintness and an air of romance about the whole story, which are very pleasant to note and to remember.' Truth—' Its heroine is at once original and charming.' DR JANET OF HARLEY STREET Crown Svo, cloth, 2s. 6d. Picture Boards^ 2s. This Book ran through Six Editions in the Six Shilling form. Daily Chronicle—' It is a clever book, and well worth reading; it can outstrip the ordinary novel by many knots per day (to pursue the metaphor), and it may make one or two people think who are unaccustomed to that exercise. Miss Kenealy has imagined an interesting character, and realised her vividly.' Pall Mall Gazette— 'In "Dr Janet of Harley Street," Dr Arabella Kenealy has shown that the art of writing lively fiction is not the least of her many accom plishments.

Moreover, she has achieved the rare distinction of producing a novel which is didactic and not dull. Miss Kenealy has a quick sense of humour, and a lively faculty of observation, and her style is vivid and effective.' THE HONOURABLE MRS SPOOR Crown Svo, cloth, 6s. Fourth Edition. Black and White— Her latest novel has advanced her to the front rank of lady novelists.' The Daily Chronicle—' A clever story. The most powerful piece of work that Miss Kenealy has done.' The Pall Mall Gazette — ' This powerful story . . . brilliantly achieved. Her style is, as always, graceful and easy, and her character sketches are excellent wid humorous-' DIGBY, IMG & CO., Publishers, London. BY LEDA LAW LONDON DIGBY, LONG & CO., PUBLISHERS 18 BOUVERIE STREET, FLEET STREET, E.C. i895

Chapter I

"It's not the smallest use trying," said the boy, digging his penholder savagely into the tin inkpot. ." I've worked at this brute of a sum for an hour, and it won't come right. Algebra is only fit for lunatics, and I'm not a lunatic, thank the Lord ! To think that a sensible boy should be made to divide x into z and multiply it by ever so many bs and ds ! Whoever cares that the answer ought to be minus nine ? I don't, and I shall just give it up. Things get miserabler every day." He looked across the shadowy schoolroom, to the spot where his small sister was sitting peering through the iron-barred window at the mass of human souls who were surging along Piccadilly, with a faint hope that she might give him some pity. He hardly expected it, though ; the girl was fighting out some of her own miseries as she sat with her back persistently turned towards him, and her shoulders veiled with a tangle of brown hair.

" And you know what that means," he went on, rubbing an ink-stained finger over his freckled face, whilst his honest blue eyes shone angrily through the twilight ; " another thrashing from old Snuffles, and no pocket-money for a week. The mater was waxy enough this morning when he complained." A " It's jolly hard on me," he continued rapidly, re velling in the joy of recounting his woes ; " it's all very well for a girl, she doesn't mind things ; but for a boy to have a beastly old step-mother, and a lovely and fascinating step-sister whom he's supposed to worship, is hard lines. To say nothing of oeing kept here in stuffy old London when a fellow is longing to get off to Rugby or anywhere decent. Yes, it's loads harder for me than for you." The faint sound of a half-smothered laugh came from the window-corner, and the boy glanced round quickly.

Nothing angered Tom Dunelm more than being laughed at. " You'll get it, too, Gretchen," he said vindic tively. " You've not even touched that tablecloth, and the mater said you were to finish the corner before you went to bed." The little girl gave a last glance at the outside world and slowly got down from her straight backed chair. " I'm not going to touch that table cloth," she said, and the husky little voice sounded strangely through the darkening room. " I told Mrs Dunelm I wouldn't when she sneered at me this morning, and I always keep my wrord." Her brother looked at her in amazement. " You know what will happen," he said significantly. " Last time you disobeyed her she made you do what she wanted, and you had to beg her pardon on your knees, into the bargain. You're a stupid little Johnny, that's what you are.

You said you hated yourself for having to do it, too ; so why on earth do you go and disobey her again . You'd much better give in," he added philoso phically ; " the weaker always goes to the wall, and no one can call the mater that," and he smiled in grim remembrance of that fact. There was silence for some minutes in the laro-e room, broken only by the soothing sound of the contented purr which came from a large, white cat, and the murmur of distant voices from the outside world. Tom returned once more to his algebra with the dogged perseverance which characterised all his actions, talking excitedly to himself as he advanced from stage to stage in his work. The little girl, however, stood curiously still. So still, indeed, that she might almost have been carved out of wood. The only sign of life was when a slight quiver passed over her short upper lip.

Then, still silently, she took up a mass of white cambric and threaded her needle with flossy green silk. Her little brown hands were hot and clammy, and the point of the needle pierced her finger and drew some drops of blood. She seemed unaware of it, though, and, turning a brass button, flooded the room with the cold, intense sparkle of the electric light. Then she sat down and began her work rapidly. In and out the little hands flew, and from the corner of the white square grew a long, silky, pale green leaf, flanking impossible but beautifully worked green roses, and encircling golden daffodils. The child looked at it now and then with a mock ing smile, and then again her fingers took up the work, and the corner neared its completion. For some time there had been a subdued excite ment in the air, footsteps had passed up and down the stairs, never stopping, however, at the nursery door, whilst distant laughter and the murmur of eager voices were heard.

The excitement reached a climax now, with the sound of a door banging, followed by the soft rustle of silk, and the whisper of hushed voices in the passage. The girl heard the sound first. She moved rest lessly and glanced towards her brother. He was enduring throes of agony over his arithmetic, talking to himself in eager argument, according to his usual custom, whilst with one hand he ruffled up his sandy hair into an uncompromising steeple, and with one foot kicked relentlessly against the mahogany leg of the table. " It's Eve," she said, and a faint colour crept over her face, and a light shone in her eyes. " Tom, don't look so hideous, and do push away that sum. You know she hates ugly things, and you're all over ink." Tom obeyed her, as he invariably did. In fact, the girl exercised a strange power over his embryo masculine mind.

A foretaste of the future ? " Is it Eve ? Oh, Jupiter Malone, I wish I had a bit of pumice stone ! " he cried, as he made a desperate effort to remove the ink from his face by the aid of his tongue and a handkerchief, and only succeeded in making it more like a wild Indian's than before. The door opened quickly, the sound of a bracelet clicking was heard, and a delicious odour of violets penetrated through the room. The children knew that their lovely step sister had entered. There are some people whose very presence beautifies the ugliest of scenes, and Eve Lazenby was one of the few. The children's schoolroom was a large, plainly-furnished room, the walls were hung with ancient-looking maps and charts, and fearful and wonderful botanical diagrams ; there was a general suggestion of ink — black and red — chalk, and blotting-paper about the whole place ; but at that moment it was transformed into a perfect sanctuary, and the tall, auburn-haired girl floated through it like some white-robed angel.

A very lovely angel, too, with a suggestion of plaintiveness in the softly-curved lips, and a half smile in the dark eyes. The little brown-haired child had thrown her work in an untidy heap in the corner, and was standing half-hidden by the window curtains, looking with furtive, loving eyes at the beautiful vision before her. " How lovely she is ! " she murmured unconsciously. She would have preferred to remain hidden and gaze . and gaze on Eve's face ; but a moment later she was called out from the window recess. " Gretchen and Tom, come and tell me if you don't admire me," the girl said, in a soft, purring voice. " You're not bad," said Tom, grudgingly. The exquisite effect of tulle-draped satin on maiden innocence had, as yet, no effect on his young soul. He was mathematical and precise, and eminently prosaic.

Eve looked at him mockingly. " Thank you," she said ; " what a pity it is you are so young ' If you were going to the ball to-night I suppose you would snub me and ask for a square at the end of the programme. Poor little fool ! Don't you know that men go mad over me — rave over me — worship me ! But there — of course you don't, little grubby, ink-stained mortal." She advanced into the room, and under the strong, searching light she looked less of an angel and more of a life-loving girl. Her lips were curved in an almost sensuous smile as she spoke. " I'm to be the queen of the ball to-night ! " she said triumphantly, for before her little stepbrother and sister Eve never veiled her feelings, " and break hearts — break hearts, think of that, Tom — Meynell Vosper's amongst them. Thank goodness I'm going with Lady Lisle ! mother is so dreadfully particular about one string at a time to one's bow.

I love to have dozens." She stopped and sneered prettily at Tom, who was regarding her with blue eyes full of wonder ; then she laughed, a ringing, childish laugh. " Keep your mouth shut, do," she said ; " you have no idea how silly it makes you look. It's exactly like a huge 0 now, and your tongue's all over ink. Gretchen, you've not spoken yet, what do you think of me ? " A moment later the little figure was beside her, clinging to the girl's tulle and satin skirts. "You are lovely," gasped the child, "lovelier than ever. Eve, oh, dear Eve, do kiss me just once. I'm quite clean, really and not inky at all. When I grow up I will be just like you. I will ! I will ! " Eve pushed her away almost roughly. Gretchen had unknowingly crushed a spray of lilies which nestled in the soft tulle folds, and an angry look came into the girl's blue eyes.

" Go away at once," she said crossly ; "just see how you've crushed my flowers. What a meddle some little thing you are ! As for kissing you, I certainly shall not, you don't deserve it. You give nothing but trouble, and nearly worry poor dear mother's life out. I think you are abominably con ceited, too ; just imagine you ever growing up like me." She gave a laugh of conscious pride. " You, indeed ! Why, you're as plain as a child could possibly be, and there's not much chance of your ever being anything else. I shall tell mother about my dress to-morrow." She stopped, feeling rather annoyed with herself for her want of self-control, and allowed her usual serene and lovely expression to creep again over her face. She glanced half-nervously at Gretchen, but the child had turned her face away from the light, and was plying her needle with unerring precision.

A rather malicious smile crossed Eve's face as she watched her ; then she turned, gathered up her train, and adjusted her diamond necklace. " Good-night, Tom," she said, nodding carelessly towards the boy, who was staring stupidly in front of him ; " and good-bye, little ugly one. Go to sleep and dream you've been born again, and born lovely." And, as she closed the door, her clear, childish laugh rang out, " Ha, ha, ha ! " There was complete silence in the schoolroom. For a few moments neither of the children spoke. They could hear merry voices downstairs, followed by the slamming of the heavy front door, and the sound of rapidly-departing wheels. Tom had finished his sum and was engaged in the occupa tion in which his soul delighted ; into a large and somewhat dirty book which lay before him he was pasting small and decidedly dirty stamps, looking at each with the loving smile of proprietorship.

Gretchen's face was a study ; complete wretched ness was clearly shown in each uncompromising line ; she bore the sad sign on every feature of an unloved, motherless little child. She stitched away till hot, painful tears blinded her, and then, with her childish self-repression, she forced them back. It was a physical impossibility for her to show any sign of feeling, and, though the sad little heart was bleeding with a keen sense of injustice, the small brown face might have been that of a sphinx. As Tom finished his page with a yellow Chinese stamp which was the pride of his heart — though, if he had only known, he might have bought its duplicate in the Strand any day for twopence — he looked towards his sister, and something in Gret chen's eyes filled him with a desire to comfort her. " Hulloa, Greta," he called out cheerfully, " what's up with you ?

Just come and look at this stamp ; you won't see its fellow in a blue moon. I got it from Tom Carson for half-a-crown, and the biggest bargain you ever heard of, too." But the child made no answer, and Tom suddenly remembered his step-sister's words, which he had forgotten a moment after they were uttered. He got up, put his arms round Gretchen's shoulders, and pulled the brown hair away from the hot forehead, where it lay in a damp, untidy mass. " Cheer up, old fellow ! " he went on. " Eve's a beast, and you're as jolly a little sister as a boy ever had. Talk of conceit, indeed ! Well, I don't know much of girls, and I don't particularly want to, either, but when Eve comes prancing in here and talks of her exquisite loveliness, and of the hearts she's going to break, I say that she's eaten up with conceit.

Pride will have a fall," he hinted darkly, with the intent to comfort. Gretchen, however, instead of being comforted, shook herself free from his arms and looked at him angrily. "Don't say anything against Eve, please," she said, and her voice trembled slightly. "She is lovely. How can she help knowing it ? " Tom regarded her with a stare of complete in comprehension. "Well, I never ! " he gasped, whilst his eyes grew to twice their ordinary size, " you're getting past me, Greta. How in the world you can rave so over Eve, I don't know. Why, she can't endure you — she never gives you a decent word. Hasn't she just told you how ugly you are ? Most girls would be mad at that." He was interrupted by a stifled sob which broke involuntarily from the child beside him. He looked at her closely and saw that, though her eyes were tearless, her frame was shaking with emotion.

"Never mind," he murmured consolingly, not knowing what else to say. " Am I so very ugly ? " Gretchen asked shame facedly. " Do you think I may never be pretty — never — not even when I grow up ? " " Good heavens, no ! " burst from Tom's lips before he had time for consideration. Then, seeing a spasm of pain pass over her face, he could have bitten out his tongue. " Let's see," he said rapidly. " I'll tell you what. We'll have a proper trial by jury, minus the jury, you know, and plus me, and we'll pick out all your features and criticise them, and see if the whole spells beauty, present or future." He stopped and sniffed violently. " AVhat a lovel}* smell ! " he cried ; " it's Eve, of course. I wonder what it is she uses, it always reminds me of bazaars. Now, Gretchen, look at me and I'll begin.

We'll have the eyes first. For my part, I prefer a de cided colour — brown, you know, or blue like Eve's. Yours always remind me of slate tiles. They look quite black now, but that's because you're excited ; generally they are a mixture of grey and violet, with little black specks on them. What a description ! Still, they're not bad as eyes go — not at all bad." He paused and gave a longing glance towards his stamp-album, but, resolutely turning his eyes away, he went on. " Your lips are red enough, if that's any beauty, and you've got white teeth — open your mouth, Greta — yes, and regular, too — fairly regular Look here, old girl, I know what it is, it's that hair of yours ! Why in the world do you wear it in a heavy fringe right down to your eyebrows ? So factory -girlish I " Gretchen pushed back the heavy mat of hair and strained it into a tight knot.

" Is that any better ? " she asked, and there was a furtive gleam of hope in her eyes. "Jupiter Malone, no! Put it back, it's awful that way, it makes your head look like a bullet. It's no good a boy trying to teach a girl how to improve herself, he can't possibly; it's a question the sex must decide for itself. I know there's something wrong with your appearance, but I don't know what it is. Never mind, old girl ; you are heaps nicer than Eve, even though she is so killingly pretty." And he went back to his stamps with the pleasing consciousness that he had tried to do a kind action, and it had only taken him some five minutes. His usually quiet and silent little sister was rest less to-night ; she moved up and down the room almost passionately, and there was a subdued fire in her eyes which fidgeted him.

He fell to watching her with some uneasiness. He had never seen her like this before, for the girl was generally thoughtful and dreamy, with a great capacity for silent suffering. He was hardly surprised when she came to an abrupt standstill beside him and closed the book before his eyes. Her action fell in witli his own consciousness of a new aud strange element in the atmosphere. He looked up with a vague half-interest, and noticed with silent wonder that a dull red glowed in Gretchen's brown cheeks. " I want to talk to you. I must teU some one all I feel, or I shall burst," she said, using a child's metaphor. "Do you ever feel what I do, I wonder? I only hope you don't, — it is awful. A hot, burning feeling in my heart, and everything else cold and wretched." She stooped for a moment and pressed her soft, little mouth against his freckled cheek, and then went on in a rapid, almost incomprehensible way : " Everyone is unjust — everyone — and God lets them be.

He doesn't mind. What is it to Him that I am miserable and wretched, with no one to love me ? Why did He give me my feel ings ? He makes me love Eve. He knows that she never gives me a corner in her heart, and yet He allows me to go on loving her for years and years. Always giving — giving, and nothing — nothing- — " She paused to choke back a sob which was ris ing in her throat. When she next spoke all the passion had gone from her, and her little face looked dreary, and sad, and old. " When I grow up," she continued, " I will never love anybody. It is loving as I do now that makes things so hard. If I didn't simply worship Eve, I should be able to jog along as happily as you do, just eating and drinking, and never longing for something which never comes to me. I won't love a creature. I shall force myself not to.

I shall be great — I feel it ; men will worship me just as they do Eve. Yes, and I shall take it all, and give nothing back. And if ever I feel sorry for them or softened, I shall remember how — when I was a little child — I was treated." She ground her small white teeth together, and clenched her little brown hands in her excitement. The pent-up sorrows of many long years had for once escaped in a natural outlet, and she was carried away by the strange and delicious sensation of telling out her innermost feelings. "I will have power," she cried, in a kind of crude chant, as she paced the wax-clothed floor as a captain paces his deck. " There is nothing like power. Beauty is nothing to it; and if one wants power one must give up love. Love hampers you horribly, and drags you back. It makes you help other people instead of yourself.

I'll have none of it; and for every taunt and every sneer that I have now, I will give two back when I am old and power ful. And I will be as cold as an icicle, and I won't feel ; no, nor lie awake at nights longing for some woman to come and soothe me, and pray for me, and love me." She gave a long sigh that sounded like a quivering sob. " If only I could be like that now," she whispered pitifully to herself. Tom was watching her with a broad grin on his honest, boyish face. " Go on, Gretchen, let's have some more," he said. Gretchen's red lip quivered scornfully. " Ah ! you may laugh," she said ; " you don't understand — no, you never will. Tom, do you ever lie awake for hours before the dawn, longing for something, yet not knowing what it is ; only know ing that it causes a dreadful, aching pain in your heart ?

I do. And the moon looks down so coldly and reprovingly on me, and only chills me when I'm burning with longing, till the grey dawn creeps through the window, and I cry myself to sleep." " No, I do not," said Tom, briefly ; " and I don't see why you should want to grow up cold and cruel, when you see how horrid it is in Eve. I don't believe you ever will, though ; it's onl}' a new freak ot' yours, and you'll never keep to it." " I shall. I'll swear it, Tom, here and now." They looked a curious pair as they stood side by side under the weird electric light, which gave Gretchen's creamy-brown skin a greenish hue, and made Tom's blue eyes gleam oddly. Over their heads was stretched a long piece of twine, from which were suspended three once beautiful, but now headless, wax dolls, with large, irregular holes in their hollow chests from which the sawdust oozed patiently.

They were Gretchen's, and she had grown to hate their pink-and-white countenances and expressionless blue eyes, and that very after noon had perpetrated a wholesale massacre of the innocents with much secret satisfaction. " I swear by St Michael and All Angels," she said gravely, with her head held proudly erect, " that I will never love anyone any more ; and that when I grow up I will take all the love I can get and give none back. My great aim shall be to acquire power. Say 'Amen,' Tom," she whispered to her brother. " Amen," he muttered obediently. He felt rather as if he were making a fool of himself, but there was a queer kind of fascination in it, too. They moved away from their respective positions, and Gretchen pulled down the red cotton blinds of the large bow window. For a few moments there was an intense silence in the room.

The girl worked quickly at the impossible roses and daffodils on the white linen table-cover — it is sometimes a tremendous relief to be able to dash a needle in and out of anything, however inoffensive — whilst the boy swung himself backwards and forwards on a horizontal bar at the end of the room, and frowned gloomily. " Strikes me," he burst out, "that we two are about as unhappy and miserable as two Johnnies could possibly be. Why do you stitch away at that flummery so, Greta? Put it away, do, and defy the mater for once. I can't think why you're always so obedient to her. Yesterday you gave Fido a whipping just because she told you to, though I could hear you gnashing your teeth together for rage all the time you did it. And you never answered her back, neither." The child looked at him half-wistfully.

"You don't understand, dear," she said gently. " I know I must obey her in the end ; she has all the power now. Why, if she'd told me to kill Fido I would have done it, rather than have her make me do it. It doesn't seem so horribly degrading, if one does a thing of one's own free will." Tom whistled comprehendingly. Before he could reply, however, the door opened, and a tidy, sour faced servant brought in two basins of hot bread and milk. " No sugar for either of you, to-night," she snarled unamiably, " through Master Thomas's disobedience of yesterday. Miss Gretchen, take your supper at once, if you please." Tom began his bread and milk with great vigour, and forgot his woes in the delight of eating. Gretchen watched him with a little gleam of amusement in her eyes. She wondered how on earth he managed it.

In her present mood she could not touch a morsel, and, pouring some of the bread and milk out on a saucer, she gave it to the large white cat, who lapped it up with all speed, an expression of heavenly peace in its handsome, green eyes. " I want to know things, to know everything," she said earnestly, aft r a pause. " There are such lots of things I can't understand." "Eh? What kind of things?" stuttered Tom between two spoonfuls. " Far too many to tell you in a night. I was wondering over something just now before the dark came. Why do those women who pass along here of an evening look so terribly sad ? Some of them have bnbies, too ; such little pets, you would think they ought to be happy, and yet they look as though they'd come to the end of all things. I saw one to-night, I think her face will haunt me for ever. i 15 She was pretty and young — but the look in her face — oh, Tom !

I want to know what they've done to give them that sad look ; sadness always seems so very near to me, somehow. And why does father look so queerly at me sometimes? He doesn't like me, I know" — she give a bitter little laugh — "nobody does, but he needn't show it so plainly. Yesterday I was in the dining-room and I kissed that picture of my own beautiful, dead mother. When I looked up he was standing beside me, perfectly white, and he pushed me out and locked the door. Why ? why ? I can't do anything right, it seems." She laughed again to hide a heavy sob which was rising, and then, acting on a sudden impulse, she took a square, black book, with red leaves and an antiquated gilt clasp, from the book-shelf. Hurriedly turning over the pages, she brought it to Tom and placed it before him. " Tell me why God ordered that, if you can?