Passing the Love of Women. A novel

Part I. Chapter Pagi

I. A DOMESTIC INTERIOR .... 1 II. MRS. CARTWRIGHT EXAMINES HER NEPHEW - 17 III. ' THE SOUL OF JONATHAN WAS KNIT TO THE SOUL OF DAVID' - - - - 41 IV. MY UNCLE, THE DRAPER - - - 61 V. LIKE AND UNLIKE - - - - 84 VI. UNDER THE ROOF-TREE OF THE CHACE - 103 VII. CASTLE STREET CHAPEL - 124 VIII. A GIRL'S VENTURE .... 133 IX. AT THE BAR - - - - - 151 X. MOTHER A>"D SON .... 165 ■XI. SIR OWEN YbRKE MAKES HIS BOW TO HIS GRANDSON - - - - 175 XII. THREE GENERATIONS - - - 195 XIII. QUESTS AT ROOKHURST - - -

PART I. CHAPTER

I. A DOMESTIC INTERIOR. It was a foggy night even over the open moors and hills of Hallamshire, so that in the towns, although the moon was at the full, not a single ray pierced the gloom. In the streets of Copplestone itself the fog, thickened and blackened by the smoke of factory chimneys, had made itself palpable to every sense but that of hearing. It condensed in unwholesome moisture on the clothes and beards of the passers by, and obscured the light of the gas-lamps, feebly vol. i. struggling upwards against the unequal pressure. The steam-trams had ceased to run, and not a cab was to be tempted out by the offer of a fare, however exorbitant. Martin Cartwright stood for a few moments on the threshold of his shop, with his confidential clerk beside him, before he braced himself to plunge into the darkness. ' Happy's the man,' he said, with a good-natured laugh, ' who has got no home to go to, or whose home, like yours, Mitchell, is only across the street.

Good-night — I shall find my way.' The other hesitated, with a vague doubt whether an offer of companionship might have been ex pected ; but before he could make up his mind his master's firm footsteps had carried him out of hearing. The sense of sight had ceased to be of account. The man walked on without hesitation and without collisions, guiding himself, not only through long familiarity with the road, but also from the same instinct of place and its bearings which serves the pioneer in some pathless forest. His way led right through the town to a close adjacent suburb, built over with substantial detached houses standing in trim gardens of about a quarter of an acre, and with a few scattered rows of ' villa residences ' of an inferior type and worse construction. It was to one of the houses of the better class that Mr. Cartwright found his way.

He observed that the garden-gate had been set securely back, and when he had approached the house a little nearer he saw that the door also stood wide open, the blaze of gas within the hall being bright enough to reveal the fact, though unable to penetrate the darkness a stone's-throw beyond. A few minutes later he had given his overcoat into the hands of the maid, who had come forward to meet him, and had stepped at once into the warmth and brightness of his home. The dining-room at Elm Lodge — for so the prosperous tradesman called his house — was furnished in the style of fifty years ago, before art had been drilled to order and reform our domestic interiors. At one end of the room stood a huge sideboard, as innocent of plateglass as of the shelves and alcoves now held essential for the deposit of super fluous china ; but the fine grain and markings of the wood were resplendent with the persistent polish of what the mistress of the house called elbow-grease — an unguent almost unknown to the present generation — and every panel served as a reflector to the firelight.

Curtains of red damask draped in hard, straight lines the opposite windows, and a dinner table stood between, of such large dimensions as almost to occupy the ample space. The chairs were ranged against the wall with the precision of a military martinet ; an old-fashioned bureau, the contents of which were concealed by red silk curtains drawn on thin brass rods behind the glass doors, stood in one recess by the fire place, and a square piano in the other. The only possibilities of informal arrangement lay in the few books and papers, which appeared upon a table which was placed below the windows, and in the comfortable easy-chairs which flanked the hearth. Both chairs were provided with rockers. A few framed prints hung on the walls, for the most part the outcome of Art Union subscriptions and prizes.

And yet it could not be said there was nothing picturesque in the room, for the fire itself, built up with the lavish hand of the North-country housewife, and reflected on brass and steel wrought by patient labour to the highest point of brilliancy, was in itself a thing of beauty. So also was the mistress of the establishment, she who sat expectant by the fireside — Mrs. Cart wright, the draper's wife, and known as the hand somest woman in Copplestone. She was a tall, stately, large-framed woman, with fine aquiline features, and an habitual air of reserve and self repression ; but at the moment that we see her now, alone and consciously free from all restraint, with her hands folded on the dropped stocking in her lap, and her head bent in deepest thought, there is a sort of spiritual aloofness in her aspect which is singularly noble and impressive.

She rose slowly as her husband entered. 'I did not hear you come in,' she said; 'you are so light-footed. I think you pride yourself upon that.' There was a slight touch of querulousness in her voice. No direct greeting passed between them. He came forward to the welcoming fire, and, drawing his chair close up to it, leaned forward to the blaze with extended hands. 'It is a frightful night,' he remarked briskly, ' as you must know. A man cannot see his hand before his face. Were you uneasy ?' ' A little. We did what we could, and I knew how sure you were.' She looked at him intently. ' Have you something to tell me ?' she asked. ' You look so keen and so eager. Your face, Martin, is always an open book.' Again there was the same touch of querulousness in her tone, as if these characteristics did not please her. ' Right you are,' was his answer, with a sort of assumed jocularity ; ' but it can wait till after supper.

Where is the boy ?' ' Gone to bed with a headache, which he puts down to the fog, and I — to temper.' She paused; then added : ' Things have not gone well to-day.' ' I am sorry — very sorry !' It was on his lips to say more ; but he checked himself, his wife's glance resting on his face. 'Let us have supper,' he said, ' and then you shall hear my news.' The supper was hot and substantial ; but Mrs. Cartwright perceived that her husband ate without appetite, and also without recognition that one of his favourite dishes had been prepared by her own hands. His preoccupation was so unusual that it was with difficulty that she kept her curiosity within strict bounds till the moment of explanation came. When at length they had both returned to their rocking-chairs, and the servant had left the room, Mr. Cartwright began without preamble. ' You will remember, Rachel, that I had a sister ?' She was a little startled by his abruptness ; but it was always her instinct to conceal her feelings. ' Certainly.

I have heard your poor mother mention her sometimes. She ran away with an officer of the 10th Hussars, a son of Sir Owen Yorke, a bold, profligate young man — the bad son of a bad father — of whom her friends had warned her in vain. I remember your mother telling me what an agony of apprehension she suffered until she knew that the man had really married her, as his friends were desperately opposed to the match. It is a very sad story — a girl cutting herself adrift from all the sacred influences of her home ties. Have you news of her ?' She looked at him with sharp anxiety, suspend ing the almost mechanical knitting of the stocking which she had resumed. For a moment he hesitated to answer, then said abruptly : ' She is dead, Rachel ! I have got the news to-day — the time is gone by to throw stones at her.

Poor girl ! poor girl ! It only seems to me like yesterday when she and I walked to chapel together on Sunday, and every head was turned to look at her as we passed. She was the prettiest girl in Copplestone — there were those who said in all Yorkshire !' The fine curve of Mrs. Cartwright's lips hardened a little, and the colour in her face deepened. Then, with a sigh of prompt compunction, she checked the weakness she had detected, and said gently : ' I am sorry, Martin ; I spoke without knowing. I have always heard that your sister was very handsome — was the letter from her husband ?' ' Her husband, Colonel Yorke, has been dead for years. The — the letter was written by herself from her deathbed — a few shaky lines in pencil.' vol. 1. '^ He got up and shook himself a little ; then added firmly, as he placed himself on the hearthrug, with his back to the fire, and looked at his wife's softening face, ' and they were brought to me by her son.' The effect of his words was not, perhaps, greater than he expected.

A strange look, almost of terror, came into his wife's eyes. 'Her son!' she repeated; 'and what have you done with her son ?' ' I have left him at the shop for to-night. It was not a night to take him out in, and — I would not bring him home without consulting you.' He looked at her anxiously, hoping for some ex pression of opinion or feeling ; but she had resumed her knitting, and her fine face had grown hard and cold. ' I will tell you all about it,' he said nervously. ' I was in the counting-house — fog everywhere, gas lighted, shop empty — when Mitchell came in to say a youth wanted to speak to me. He had brought a letter of introduction — would not give his name. Do you know, Rachel, I had an intuition of some thing — I won't say wrong, but upsetting — and when I saw him I knew him before he had opened his lips.

He is the very picture of his poor mother !' A dubious smile touched Mrs. Cartwright's lips. ' Do you mean me to understand that he is very good-looking or very girlish in appearance ?' The ' boy ' upstairs, sleeping off his headache, was unquestionably neither the one nor the other. ' Both. A handsome, effeminate fellow, with a look of his father in his eyes. But his looks don't matter much, Rachel. If he were as ugly as sin, our duty— my duty, at least — would be the same. He does not seem to have a friend in the world but ourselves. This is the letter he brought.' He hesitated a moment as he pulled the paper out of his pocket. There was small encourage ment to trust such desperate words to his wife's sympathy, and he read them in a constrained, almost shamefaced way. ' I am dying, Martin, or I would not trouble you ; and I am dying of slow starvation.

Body, soul, and spirit have been starved ever since my blessed husband died and left me to suffer alone. I should have killed myself long ago had it not been for Bertie, and a faint memory of Castle Street Chapel. Question him. I have no strength to com plain. Be a friend to him — he has no other — aud you are rich and prosperous, and had only one sister. Give back to my son just a tithe of what his mother's share would have been if she had her rights. As you do to him, may God do to you and yours ! 'Christina Yorke.' His wife held out her hand for the letter as he finished, and read it over again. Her face flushed a little as she did so. ' It is a dreadful letter for a dying woman to write,' she said, returning it. ' It is blasphemous, and it is audacious. She does not ask forgiveness, and seems to have no sense of wrong-doing.

She even speaks of self-murder as if it were a mere matter of choice ! Possibly, she did not believe in a judgment to come. Then she does not even beg you to be kind to her son, but demands it as a right, and threatens you in default. She could not have succeeded better if she had wished to harden our hearts against him.' She paused, but her husband made no answer. He was carefully smoothing out and refolding the letter. When he had done so he went to the old bureau, and deposited it carefully in a drawer with some other family records. He relocked the desk, and resumed his seat with an air of decision. He was often afraid of his wife, but he was able on occasions to throw off the weakness. ' Rachel,' he said, ' I was afraid you would take this tone, but you will think better of it on reflec tion.

Such a woman as you cannot harden her heart against a friendless lad because his mother failed in what you think her duty. I mean to do mine, as far as I see it. God has given us one child only. He helping me, to all intents and pur poses Gilbert Yorke shall stand as John's brother.' Mrs. Cartwright recognised the tone. ' Have you considered,' she asked, in a suppressed voice, ' what may be the consequences of bringing these boys together? I suppose that is your idea. Don't you think we are answerable before God for any influence to which we subject the soul He has given into our charge ? Are you justified in exposing John to the companionship of a lad older than himself, I imagine, and who has been brought up most certainly with no fear of God before his eyes ? Martin, consider how I have striven to train up our son in the way that he should go !' She did not often make an appeal, and it touched him sensibly. ' My dear,' he answered evasively, ' you do not know how this boy will turn out.

He seemed to me a lad of promise, easy to like. He may do John good rather than harm — you have often said yourself that he wanted brightening.' ' If I have, it has been in some moment of weak ness. There is not much call for brightness in such a world as ours — to those, at least, who look below the surface. Do you think because I am well housed, well clothed, and well fed, that I for get the sin and misery around me ? I bear it on my heart and conscience daily, and it makes me — what I am. My one prayer to God is that I may be so strengthened to brace up the temper of my son that he will be willing to give up his life to doing battle against the evil.' ' But if he is to do this, Rachel, he must know of it. He will be overmatched if you shut him up so close in your mother-love that he can see nothing beyond it.' She smiled a little grimly. ' I do not think I often allow my mother-love to make a fool of me, Martin.

Time enough for John to come to closer acquaintance with the world, the flesh, and the devil when he is of full age, and has got his weapons ready for the encounter. Samuel was brought up at Eli's feet in the temple of the Lord, but I have never read that he was thereby rendered unfit to deliver God's judgments, and denounce the backslidings of the people and their king. It shall not be with my consent that you bring your nephew home if his character and training make him a dangerous companion for our son.' She rose and folded up her knitting preparatory to leaving the room. ' I am going upstairs for a few minutes to see if John is asleep. Sometimes the pain in his head keeps him awake.' She paused at the door, and turned round. ' Let us both sleep upon this,' she said, ' and make it a matter of prayer.

At all events, I shall see Gilbert Yorke and judge for myself before we make him one of the family. It would be quite easy for you to provide for him other wise.'

Chapter II. Mrs

CARTWRIGHT EXAMINES HER NEPHEW. The room in which John Cartwright slept was large and airy, and faced the pleasant, well-kept garden, but it was almost as bare in point of com fort as an anchorite's cell. A narrow iron bedstead, a washstand, a chest of drawers, which served also as dressing-table, and a couple of chairs, included the whole of the furni ture, with the exception of some book-shelves against the wall. There were no curtains at the window nor a shred of carpet on the floor. The meaning of this austerity was to be found partly in Mrs. Cartwright's hygienic dogmas, but still more in her religious convictions. She was a vol. i. rigid Methodist, with a concentrated horror of Popery as bearing the ineffaceable mark of the beast, and sinking its votaries to hopeless per dition ; but her methods of training her son to ' endure hardness ' were curiously akin to the practices of the faith she denounced.

The chamber was full of fog, added to the dense darkness of a November night. No object was distinguishable except from the few rays of light that struggled upwards from the hall. She had opened the door noiselessly, and now stood in the doorway, with her head a little bent, listening intently. Quiet as her movements had been, the boy, stretched in bed with wide-open 'eyes and arms flung upward on the pillow, heard them, and instinctively held his breath. He could just distinguish the outline of his mother's figure in the open doorway, and his hope was that she would think he was asleep, and neither speak to him nor approach him. Presently the sound of her voice broke the silence, and as it reached his ears he MRS. CARTWRIGHT EXA MINES HER NEPHE W. 19 shrank a little, as if the contact had been tangible. ' Are you asleep, John ?' she asked, in a careful whisper.

There was no answer. She waited another moment, and then took a few steps nearer the bed, still listening. The boy, perceiving his first mistake, now drew his breath with simulated regularity, and attained his object. His mother thought he was asleep, and withdrew ; but before doing so she stroked, half unconsciously, the cover let of the bed once or twice in a sort of mute caress, and a brief, unspoken prayer, to which the incident of the night lent additional intensity, rushed from her soul upwards, that God would have her darling in safe keeping. Meanwhile, the son she adored drew a long breath of relief as he heard her retreating footsteps, and saw the faint streak of light shut out by the closing door. Five minutes after he was on his knees by his bedside in the thick darkness. ' 0 God !' he cried aloud, in an agony, but stifling the sound with the bedclothes, ' break my hard heart !

It is like the nether millstone. I do not love Thee, nor my Saviour, nor even my mother. I love nothing upon earth nor in heaven !' He stopped, shaken with strangling sobs, then prayed in silence. ' I need not speak ; Thou knowest all things. Thou knowest that I am sick with misery !' And at the same hour, in a bedchamber of the house above his father's shop, another youth — his unknown kinsman, with whom his own life was to be henceforth so closely knit — lay heartsore and sleepless, counting the hours as they struck through the murk of the fog from the sonorous clock of St. Peter's Church. No passion of premature despair shook him, though he was very unhappy ; nor did any prayer pass his lip, though desire was strong upon him. He lay still, and suffered with the quiescence of one at home with trouble, and yet with the fire of hope and determination alive in his heart.

More, he had rather enjoyed the evening. Much goodwill had been shown him by the young men employed in his uncle's shop, and who lived in the house above, under the care of a trusty house keeper. Their strong provincialisms, and the rough freedom of their manners, had pleased his quick sense of humour, and he had been able to hold his own in the familiar give-and-take of inter course, without any wound to his fastidiousness. He was already allowed to be ' not a bad soart 0' chap.' Such was Mrs. Cartwright's influence over her husband, that by ten o'clock the next morning Gilbert Yorke was walking in the direction of Elm Lodge, for the purpose of being subjected to a searching examination. His cousin John was bound to be at his desk in the Grammar School before that hour, for his mother had no intention of consulting his wishes in the matter, and 'he was kept in ignorance of yesterday's event.

But, by a sort of caprice of chance, the two boys encountered each other that morning. The one — with his strapped books in his hand, and his eyes, after their wont, fixed on the ground in sombre rumination — came into such sharp collision with the other at the corner of a street as almost to knock him down, and to dash his own loosely-held pack out of his hand. John grunted an apology, which was accepted with such singular pleasant ness — -the stranger stooping at the same moment to recover and restore the books — as to produce a feeling of surprise, for, perhaps, in nothing are the middle-class English more deficient than in those social amenities which, though they have no power to propel or divert the wheels of life, prevent, at least, their intolerable friction. As John Cartwright went on his way he took with him an impression that seemed to quicken his habitual sense of loneliness and dissatisfaction ; probably there were people in the world who found and made things pleasant !

Meantime, as Gilbert Yorke pursued his walk to his uncle's house, his heart sank within him. The fog still prevailed, less dense than the pre ceding day, but dense enough to hang like a foul canopy over the town, and imprison the unwhole some smoke of the factory chimneys. Only the sharpest outlines of the buildings asserted them selves through the gloom, and for the first time in his life he saw shops and streets gas-lighted at mid day. ' Is life possible here ?' he thought. ' No wonder that fellow looked so miserable. Poor mother ! I shall understand some things better soon.' It was a little clearer when he reached the outskirts of the town, but he would still have had great difficulty in distinguishing the house he wanted had not a man who chanced to be going in the same direction pointed it out. ' The master will be down at th' shop,' he ex plained, ' but thou'll find the missis at home.' A question sprang to the lad's lips, but he checked it ; the moment was close at hand when he would be able to judge for himself.

He was admitted to the house like one expected, and shown into the dining-room. Mrs. Cartwright did not appear immediately, but he was not impatient. He was tired with his comfortless walk, and every thing around him was new and strange ; the glorious coal-fire drew him like a magnet. He sat down near it, avoiding the capacious rocking-chairs, and stretching out his benumbed hands to the warmth, passed the room and its contents in anxious review. It was gas-lighted like the streets, and its formality struck him painfully ; it looked to him less like the interior of a home than a room in some institution, the only sign of occupation that he could discover being a half-knitted stocking, neatly rolled up on a bracket beneath the mantel shelf. He rose, cap in hand, as the door opened and the mistress of the house entered, standing uncertain whether to advance or not, and waiting for her salutation with an anxiety that could be read in every line of his face.

Mrs. Cartwright's anxiety was scarcely less than his own, but it was better concealed. She came forward slowly until within a few paces of the hearth, and looked at him deliberately for a moment or two before she spoke. It seemed an act of discourtesy, and, under the circumstances, even one of unkindness, but it was instinctive. She looked, as it were, in her son's behalf, to see whether this unwelcome intruder possessed any advantages over him. What she saw was a tall, slender youth, straight and lissom as the typical young palm-tree, and apparently about seventeen years old. The face, somewhat thin and wan, was very broad at the brows, but formed below a delicate oval, to which the cleft but rounded chin gave manliness and distinction. The brown eyes were full of anima tion when he talked or listened, but in silence and in solitude were inclined to melancholy, and the lips were so mobile and sensitive as to give the impression of a highly nervous and perhaps un certain temperament.

Rachel Cartwright's judgment was distinctly vol. 1. unfavourable ; she fancied she read all the indications of character which she most dreaded, and another point touched her to his disadvantage. She possessed an almost morbid consciousness of her own good looks, and of the dignity of her presence (for such self-appreciation was regarded by her as one of her besetting sins) ; but she was also curiously aware that no charm of expression or grace of manner softened or enhanced these advantages. Her heart had often secretly ached when she had observed the sweet, intense gaze of childhood shrink away from hers, and had furtively watched how her son's eyes would rest at times upon her face, and be withdrawn without any softening or kindling of aspect. And now, before a word had passed her lips, she saw that the youth before her, who had met her steadfast gaze with one of unconcealed anxiety, dropped his eyes, and that his countenance fell. ' Sit down,' she said at last, moving slowly to her accustomed seat by the fire, and taking up her stocking, partly from habit, partly to hide her strong excitement. ' I suppose you understand that I am your uncle's wife ; and I have sent for you that we may become better acquainted.

I did not know till last night that I had a nephew. Tell me your name, and all about yourself.' He still stood looking away from her, with an expression half wistful, half perplexed. Then he answered : ' I think you must know my name ; it is Gilbert Yorke, the same as my father's, and I am seven teen years old. For the rest, I do not know what to say. I never set foot in this country — in England — until yesterday.' ' Is that possible ?' She thought of the privileges he had missed, and the temptations to which he must have been exposed, and her voice took an inflection which brought Gilbert's eyes again upon her face. 'Do you pity me,' he asked, 'because I have lived where the sun shines and the air is clear ? If your climate were always like this — but I know it isn't — I would rather beg my bread in Florence or Marseilles than be the greatest man in England.

Had we lived in this town always, my poor mother and I, we should have been dead years ago ; but one is able to live and to enjoy life on very little in Italy.' He spoke with great vivacity, in a voice as clear as a bell, and with an accent decidedly foreign. There was no boldness in the glance with which he returned her scrutiny, but neither was there any fear ; and both look and manner impressed Mrs. Cartwright disagreeably, as indicative of un chastened temper and spirit. ' Perhaps,' she answered, with a rather grim smile, ' there is nothing so very unpalatable to you in the idea of begging your brea I mean, it is possible you might dislike the prospect of earning it still more.' He flushed a little. ' It was a way of speaking ; and I am not used to be taken so literally. Certainly I have never done that yet ; but I have more than once been very near doing it — though it was not because I would not have earned it if I could.' He paused, his face settling into an expression of troubled recollection.