Sowing the Wind. A novel. ... A new edition

Front matter

THE PICCADILLY NOVELS. POPULAR STORIES BY THE BEST AUTHORS. Library Editions, many Illustrated. Crown Svo., cloth extra, 3^. 6d. each. [See also Chatto and Wiudus's List 0/ 430 Two-Shilling Novels.] By GRANT ALLEN. Philistia. I The Devil's Die. This Mortal Coil. | The Tents of Shem. By DUTTON COOK. Paul Foster's Daughter. By WILLIAM CYPLES. Hearts of Gold. By Rev. S. BARING GOULD. Rod Spider. I Eve. By ALPHONSE DAUDET. The Evangelist ; or, Port Salvation. BY FRANK BARRETT. Fettered for Life. By JAMES DE MILLE. A Castle in Spain. By WALTER BF.SANT & JAMES RICE. Ready-Money Mor- By Celia's Arbour. tiboy. Monks of Thelema. My Little Girl. 'Twas in Trafalgar's Case of Mr. Lucraft. Bay. -his Son of Vulcan. The Seamy Side. With Harp & Crown. Ten Years' Tenant. By J. LEITH DERWENT. Our Lady of Tears. | Circe's Lovers.

By MRS. ANNIE EDWARDES. Archie Lovell. By M. BETHAM-EDWARDS. Felicia. By PERCY FITZGERALD. Fatal Zero. The GoldenButterfly Chaplain of the Fleet By WALTER BESANT. All Sorts and Condi- Uncle Jack. By R. E. FRAXC1LLON. Queen Cophetua. I One by One. A Real Queen. | King or Knave ? Prefaced by SIR H. BARTLE FRERE. Pandurang Hari. tions of Men. Children of Gibeon. The Captains' Room. The World Went All in a Garden Fair. Very Well Then. Dorothy Forster. Herr Paulus. For Faith and Freedom. By RORERT BUCHANAN. A Child of Nature. Annan Water. God and the Man. Matt. By EDWARD GARRETT. The Capel Girls, By CHARLES GIBBON. Shadow of the Sword The New Abelard. The Martyrdom of Foxglove Manor. Madeline. Master of the Mine. Love Me for Ever. The Heir of Linue. Robin Gray. 1 Tho Braes of Yarrow In Honour Bound.

The Golden Shaft. Queen of the Meadow I Of High Degree. Flower of the Forest. I Loving a Dream. A Heart's Problem. I By HALL CAINE. The Shadow of al A Son of Hagar. Crime. I The Deemster. By BRET HARTE. A Waif of the Plains. By MRS. H. LOVETT CAMERON. Deceivers Ever. | Juliet's Guardian. By JULIAN HAWTHORNE. Garth. Beatrix Randolph. Ellice Quentin. David Poindexter's Sebastian Strome. Disappearance. Dust. The Spectre of the Fortune's Fool. Camera. I'.y-MORTIMERS FRANCES COLLINS. Sweet Anne Page. Blacksmith and Transmigration. Scholar. 'rom Midnight to The Village Comedy. Midnight. You Play Me False. By SIR ARTHUR HELPS. Ivan de Biron. By ISAAC HENDERSON. Agatha Page. By MRS. ALFRED HUNT. Thornicr'oit's Model. I The Leaden Casket. Self-Condemned. | That Other Person. By JEAN INGELOW. Fated to bo Free.

Chapter I. Smothered In Rose-leaves

In a richly-furnished room in Hyde Park Square sat two young people, gravely playing at backgammon. The board was of ebony and silver ; the stakes were dainty bonbons piled up in a filigree gold basket ; and the young people themselves were in full evening costume. The room was gorgeous with the Philistine gorgeousuess of the time — all white and gold and crimson ; with costly ornaments crowding marqueterie tables and gilded etageres, marble slabs and buhl supports, carved brackets and enamelled pedestals — wherever there was the possibility of placing things which cost money and displayed connoisseurship. It was quite a wilderness of ornament ; but the appearance of frippery, or even of scattered effect, was pre vented by the sober tone of the deep red velvet curtains, and the white back3grouDd of the panelled walls.

The two who sat in the midst of this luxury were in keeping with their surroundings — young and beautiful as was befitting ; wedded, loving, and happy. The one was a man of the type which some call "elegant" and others "distinguished." He was tall and slightly built, but his shoulders were too narrow and drooping for the finer kind of manly beauty ; and a habit of carrying his head turned over the left shoulder shyly, gave him a boyish and retreating expression as of one afraid to expose himself. He was a man who never stood square, face to face and chest broadside, but always a little turned edgewise, with one foot in advance of the other ; and the attitude was as expressive as it was instinctive. His face was a long oval in shape and sallow in tint. His hair was black, and fell in soft locks naturally waved and carefully arranged.

His eyes were of a rather metallic brown when they could be seen, but they were generally cast down, and looked up only at intervals and swiftly, like the eyes of some shy beast within its covert, and as if afraid to u have it seen that they looked. He wore l small finely-pointed moustache, but else was clean-shaven : and his lace had a curiously Spanish look, but without the Spanish masculinity of expression. His hands and feet were small, and his whole character, as expressed by bearing, face, and fissure, was that of a refined and careful gentle man of the Brahmin class, but without cither strength or daring. The other was of a different type. Sho was slightly above tho middle height ; generously modelled and richly coloured : with eyes of the true Irish blue, and with a profusion of bright golden hair — not hair of the sleek and silky kind, but mutinous hair that would curl and break in a kind of aureole from out tho triple bands round the well-shaped head — an aureole wherein the light was caught by each separate spiral thread and given back in wonderful intensity ot lustre.

Her skin was clear and of a rich, creamy white — darker ■where the tender little shadows passed into the soft fringe of young hair round the neck and temples. Her lips were broad and of Italian richness in their colour. She had the loveliest arms ami shoulders that ever woman had, and she hail the finely-arched net of a thorough-bred. But her hands, though white and shapely, were a trifle large — like the hands of all callable women. Sho wore the isanie-sized gloves as did her husband, but. her hands wero firmer than his, and with a fuller and broader palm. His were long and thin and dry and narrow. Indeed, there was a general senti ment of abounding physical life about her that contrasted strongly with his more languid grace ; and the contrast was a true one, and expressed the difference between them.

An.l vel Aylott St. John Aylott was the master, and Isola. his wife, knew no will save his. Married at seventeen, she had now been live years a wife : but her state of matronhood had brought with it little knowledge of tho world and less experience of life. Her husband was a man who kept no society anil rarely stirred Gram home. Reserved and shv, he was also proud and sensitive. Haunted by the fear of ridicule, he was studiously cold in manner and careful to avoid all outward demonstrations. He loved his wife, and he was intensely proud of his family name; and, though only the son of a wealthy incumbent and the grandson of a dean, he held himself :is tiii> lar removed from the ordinary middle-class to render familiar association, savo with the five great professions, possible. The only person admit toil to his table was Richard Norton, the family solicitor ; and this was the lowest point to which his pride could stoop.

He was of no profession; for, as ho had inherited his lather's handsome property, ho had no need to work; am\. as his money was still where his father had placed it under Richard Norton's superintendence, he had not even the occupation of managing his own affairs anil seeing his possessions dwindle in the process. He had no brothers nor sisters to break up hia isolation. True, there had been a sister ouce — a SMOTHERED IN EOSE-LEAVES. 3 poor, misguided child whose sinful folly had broken her father's heart ; but she was dead now, and her very name and memory were apparently forgotten. Even Isola did not know the shameful story of her husband's only sister. He was too proud to be able to tell even her how the Aylott ermine had once been stained; and as Harriet was dead now— had not Richard Norton buried her only a few months after her flight ?— there was no need to point out her grave and show the shadow lying across it.

He would talk freely enough of his mother, whom he just remembered as one of the loveliest creatures under heaven, and tell how she died away from home, in the house of a physician under whose care she had been placed, and what a terrible' day it was when news of her death came. And he would talk freely enough of his father; but his sister's name was brushed away from both heart and lips. Had he been asked now, he would probably have denied that he ever had a sister at all. His chief reminiscences were of his father — a grave, tender, sorrow-laden man, who was said to have never smiled again after his wife's death. In truth, the sun of Mark Aylott 's life went down into the night for ever as they laid that beloved woman in her grave — that woman for whose love he had suffered so much — and more than suffered, God pardon him !

Though then close on forty, he took orders and entered the Church, where, as the incumbent of Greythorpe, a poor manufacturing town, he worked hard and faithfully at his post till he died — a week after his daughter's elope ment with a travelling circus-rider. All but this last fact St. John would tell Isola again and again ; and these were his only family histories. » It would almost seem by the social barrenness of the past as if the world had stood aloof from the Aylott house — and yet for what cause ? St. John had never been to school, consequently he had made no friends of his own standing. There were no uncles, aunts, nor cousins — no family connexions anyhow, near or distant, belonging to him ; and when he married Isola Conway, the two young creatures stood alone in the world without a friend between them to help or mar their happiness.

For Isola was an orphan, without living relative of any degree, save one aunt — the sore point on her side. This was a Mrs. Osborn, her mother's sister, who had married a scampish, poverty stricken, atheistic surgeon, and had of course been cut by the whole family. Charles Osborn, M.R.C.S., with his spatulous fingers and loose professional talk, was as little congenial to the dashing gaUantry of Captain Conway, his brother-in-law and Isola's father, as he would have been to St. John Aylott himself; consequently, Mrs. Osborn had been tabooed, and, still under the ban, was known to Isola only by name. Isola's greatest charm in the eyes of her husband was this isolation of circumstance. He was even glad that no children had come to break up the perfect solitude of their home. Had they come, he would have been jealous of them, as so many rivals to himself, for he could not have borne to see his wife's attention diverted from him and his pleasures, and their well-being studied instead.

Thus he was perfectly content with things as they were ; and above all with Isola's want of family ties. The aunt who had married the atheistic surgeon was certainly an ugly branch in the Conway genealogical tree ; but as she was out of sight he did not actively resent what was only a disgrace in abeyance and not an aggressive sore. During their five years of marriage, St. John had not left Isola's side for half an hour, nor had she ever crossed the threshold alone. If by rare chance he had business in the city, he drove there in the brougham, taking her with him. If she had shopping on hand, he accompanied her, and sat turning over silks and muslins with as much critical interest as herself. Her milliner and her dressmaker knew Mr. Aylott quite as well as they knew his lady, they said, and asked his opinion before consulting hers.

As to Isola herself, it never occurred to her as possible that she should choose even a pair of gloves without her husband's sanction, or take an independent line of thought or action on any matter whatsoever, from morals to bonnets. Her husband ruled her life, without a question of divided authority rising between them. He tricked her out with jewels, a'nd loaded her with rich dresses and costly trinkets, till she scarcely knew what to do with the finery which no one but himself ever saw. He filled her home with expensive furniture and rare knickknacks, till it was oppressive in its completeness, having no future save breakages. He ordered her daily life as if she had been a child without reason or free will, and led her to her pleasures and her likings as to a drill-ground. All this was merely the expression of his love, and what he thought was due to the weaker from a man's superiority ; but it left on her a certain cramped and stifled feeling, as of one struggling in silken fetters and smothered under rose leaves.

The life of these young people was a monotonous piece of orderly conventionalism, and St. John at least never felt the repetition dull. It was a still life ; a regular and luxurious life ; a life of quiet voices, of checked laughter, of stately service, of perfect appointments. There was no passion in it, no excitement, no haste, no slovenliness. It was all dress and solitude and well-trained domestic machinery and the quiet succession of days and hours, with no internal events to set things out of order, and with no outside diversion. It was a life which included neither continuous occupation nor social pleasures. It was neither domestic in the way of active household management, nor gay in the way of social amusement. It was simply a cloistered SMOTEERED IN ROSE-LEAVES. 5 hse, with a London drawing-room for the cell, and a voung married coupto for the priest and nun.

But it was a life after St. John Aylott s heart, and ho would not have exchanged it for any other the world could give him. It was the life of an English gentleman ho used to say emphatically ; and that was tho highest point to which God had yet raised humanity ;— in his heart ho thought, tho highest point to which humanity would ever be raised in this world, and where the noxt would not show aught much better. But now the completeness which was so sufficient to the husband was becoming barren to Isola. She would stand by the window, looking wearily at the plashing of the winter rain or as wearily at tho waving of the summer trees, and long to bo that bright-faced woman hurrying onward in the cutting wind, poorly-clad and unprotected as sho was, but with a purpose, an object, that gave her strength and animation.

She would envy the school-girls walking two and two and laughing merrily as the girlish joke flashed slum each to each— unformed, childish girls who knew nothing, and whose lives had yet to come — still she envied them, watching them through the golden bars of her well-found prison. She pined to follow that wretched mother home, to take her children, ragged and half-starved, and feed and clothe them as she had read of in certain pleasant books which made her heart yearn as she read. When she heard the voices of the little ones next door, tears would come inli3 her eyes for the emptiness of tho arms that longed to hold a child of her own to her heart ; ami when tho rich city merchant, their father, brought home his noisy friends to dinner on Sunday, and they sat out on the balcony smoking and laughing, she envied even them, and wished that she was the friend of that loud-voiced, merry woman who sat among them, rubicund and ample in her shining silks, seeming to enjoy their questionable jokes as much as they.

She longed sho knew not for what, and felt an indefinable oppression she could not understand. Sho seemed to herself like one of the Arabian Nights' princesses shut up in a brazen tower where were all sweet fruits and rich apparel — where was all that girlish heart could desire — save what? Not the prince; she had found him, and so fir was better oil' than the princess in the brazen tower waiting for him. Whal was it that she wanted? Married to a husband who adored her in his own still", stately way, and who was handsome, young, well-bred, and rich — what was wanting to complete her happiness? Ought she not to feel that her life was closed, and that she \\.u\ no right to demand a wider horizon? Nevertheless, these objectless, luxurious days of hers weighed on her like imprisonment or spiritual death; and her soul cried out for the freer air of human sympathy and work — of even suffering — as a relief from the cloying sweetness of the present time.

This sense of emptiness and oppression was buried in the innermost depths of her heart, and no one knew that she was not as content as super ficial onlookers would have said she ought to be. Least of all had St. John Aylott any suspicion that the idol he had set up on his drawing-room altar was yearning for aught beyond the practical incense of his love, the richness of his offerings, the luxury of the shrine in which he had confined her. Had he known it, he would have mourned for her as one on the broad way of inevitable destruction, and would have taken it as the death-song of both love and happiness for all time to come. She did well, then, to keep back in the silence of her own soul, scarcely confessing to herself, the weariness of her days. She did well even to preach false words of peace to herself, and to assure herself again and again, as she did, that she was quite happy — quite content — asking nothing more than what she had of fate or fortune at their kindest — yearning for nothing nobler than to fill up the narrow measure of her husband's life, and to satisfy the pride which did not even ask the world to witness his triumph.

She did well. Things had not yet come to the point when she might assert her human rights. Meantime, she must content herself hi her shrine, and be well pleased at the incense offered. They were sitting together as usual, on the evening when this story opens, playing at backgammon for dainty bonbons. Luck had been on Isola's side to-night, and she had already won three dashing games, when they heard the postman's ring and a letter rattle through the box. They had just begun their fourth hit — St. John a little put out by his ill-success — when the servant brought her a letter. Now a letter to Isola was as unusual an event as was a visitor. Save circulars announcing sales conducted on high moral principles, and now and then answers or queries from ladies respecting servants, few letters of any kind were dropped into the Aylott box ; so that when the machine in plush brought her on the silver salver a real letter — a letter in a long envelope, and addressed in a fine, thin, pointed hand — it was an event which made her heart beat and her cheeks flush, as if she had been a school-girl receiving her first secret love-note.

But the flush soon faded, and left her face with an almost scared expression on it, as she continued her reading. "Oh, St. John!" she said, when she had finished; "lam afraid you will be so annoyed ! " She handed the letter to him with a pretty look of loving sorrow, as if she had somehow done him wrong, and was repentant. He took it and read it in silence, as she had done. " I am sorry for it," he said when he had finished, laying it on the table, and turning away. "What can I do?" asked Isola anxiously. "What would you like me to do, St. John ? " SMOTEERED IN ROSE-LEAVES. 7 "Like!" he repeated a little impatiently; "I think you know what I should like, Isola ; not to see her, of course ! " Isola looked down, troubled. " Would that be right? " she asked in a low voice. " Poor mamma told me that if Mr. Osborn were to die, I was to be kind to aunt Juliana and cousin Jane, for that they would be very poor, and I was to help them in every way I could.

Ought I to refuse to see her — poor mamma's sister — my only relation ? " " That is just it ! " said St. John. " Tour relation ! Had she not been that, I would not have cared so much for the intrusion. But I cannot bear to think of any one having the right to say you belong to them, however remotely. The charm of our married life will be broken," he added fretfully. " You will be no longer my Isola ! " " Could such a little thing as this make any difference to you ? " she said affectionately, rising from her chair and going over to him. " You may say what you like, Isola, it is a nuisance," he answered, still in an injured tone, throwing the dice at random. " You know how much I resent the idea of intrusion, and how I have liked the entire isolation of our life. And the widow of a low-bred, free thinking surgeon, the one to invade my peace !

Such an unworthy association altogether ! " " It would have been worse if he had been alive," put in Isola. " It could not be worse," said St. John. " But what can I do ? " she asked again, coming back to the main point, her face still troubled and her heart still anxious. " Do as you like," he answered coldly, after a moment's pause. " You always do as you like. Isola. I only tell you what I prefer, but I leave" you free to follow your own inclinations. It is your affair, not mine. I have no such disagreeable connexions in my family. I rejoice to say ; and it will be long before our happiness is menaced by anything "of the kind occurring on my side." He spoke as 'if seriously displeased ; as indeed he was ; being one of those with whom annoyance by circumstance takes the form of personal displeasure.

" It is so unexpected," said Isola, partly for want of something else to say. " It is what I might have looked for, had I not been blind, he returned a little enigmatically. And Isola saw that no good was to be got by continuing the conversation. " I will answer her to-morrow," she then said. " We can speak about it again." " I do not wish to speak about it again," said St John as coldly as before. " You know exactly what I think find feel about it altogether. It is a mere pretence to say we will speak about it again," he added petulantly. Isola did not answer. Her husband had not often been so annoyed as this, and had not often spoken to her so unpleasantly ; for whenever his temper had been roused by chance trouble, she had carefully avoided occasion for further annoyance. Yet that was difficult, too ; for when he was cross he was cross throughout, and made it equally an offence whether she spoke or kept silence.

"Where are we now?" she said after a short pause, cheerfully taking up her dice-box and rattling the dice. " What was your last throw, St. John ? deuce-ace ? " " I shall not play any more to-night ; the game is spoiled," said Aylott St. John Aylott, shutting up the board.

Chapter II. The Thln End Of The Wedge

" I say, Wyndham, I wish you would look into this for me," said Smith, the proprietor, promoter, and editor of the Comet, tossing over a packet and a letter to his "sub," a bright-eyed, energetic looking, rather undersized man, with a profusion of black hair and beard, and a general look of animation and business "go" about him. " The girl writes creditably enough, but not quite up to our mark ; but if what she says is true, and she is capable of being pulled into shape, we might give her a review now and then. At all events, you see about it, like a good fellow. I am too much bothered with this Mexican business to look after anything just now." Harvey Wyndham took the packet and the note. He glanced through the first; saw that it contained a few water-colour sketches and a crude but vigorous article on some small event that had just happened — a better article in substance than many practised press men would have sent in ; yet not quite fitted for a leader, certain feminine blunders in political economy running through it, and the whole paper wanting that subtle but telling touch of the practised hand.

" Well ? " said Smith after a pause. " She has good stuff in her, but she wants training," said Harvey. " Just my idea ; but we might make her useful. Have you read her letter?" " No, I am reading it now." It was a short note, stating that she, the WTiter, " was one of the women who had to win her bread by her own exertions, and not only her own bread but her mother's also, her father — a surgeon — TEE TEIN END OF TEE WEDGE. 9 having lately died and left them with only business debts and com plications. She had been tolerably well educated, and could do a great many things fairly well, but as yet had not found her speciality, unless perhaps in literature. She enclosed this article as a specimen of what sho could <L> if she was put to it. Would the editor of the I'omct kindly look it over, and tell her if it showed any power of composition?

Of course she did not expect that it" would be accepted and used out of hand, as she knew that all people must go through a certain apprenticeship before they could succeed; but it might serve as an indication of her capacity, and whether she could make anything of herself or no. And would he glance at the accompanying water-colour sketches, and tell her in which she seemed most likely to do best, art or literature ? She apologized for asking his advice so freely, but she was quite alone in the world, save her mother, who was not a business person and there fore could not help her : so she must tight her way as if she were a man. and put aside all false shame. She would be glad of any advice the editor of the Comet would give her; but would he please not recommend her to be a governess ? for she had a horror of children and hated teaching beyond everything else, and she would rather go out as a housemaid than as a governess."

The letter was signed " Jane Osborn" in a large, bold hand, and the address was in Seymour Street, near Cavendish Square. " N.B. — They had a lot of rooms to let. The house was a huge gangrel place that was eating them up. and they could not dispose of the lease. Did the editor know any one to recommend? As lodgings the rooms were very clean and cheap. If he would not mind putting an advertisement in his paper, it should be paid for honestly when she knew what it was." Again another "J. 0."— if possible more bold and decided than the first. " What always amuses me in women's letters is the individualism and private history so sure to come in with the business," said Harvey Wyndham', laughing lightly. " And then the naive way in which they ask tor favours" that cost l>>>th time and money! — the Utterly unconscious habit they have of levying black-mail, and never saving ' thank you ' when they have got it !

" "Ah, poor things! they are awfully ignorant of business." said Smith compassionately. "" But we'll pus in the advertisement for her. and not charge her. What arc the sketches like? You are a better judge of those things. Wyndham, than I. You were a brother of the brush once yourself, weren't you?" •• Yes ! " he laughed. " I have been pretty well everything in my time." '■•A kind of handy man to art and literature, hey ? " " About that. Smith; and no master yet!" " Well ! what arc those sketches like?" " Like her writing — clever and vigorous, but unpractised. She has plenty of go in her, and with a little rubbing up will do." " Can you go and look after her ? " " Yes," said Harvey ; " I can judge better by seeing her. I'll go in a day or two — when I've written my books clear. I say, Smith, how do you find this employment of women answer in the office ?