A Maiden Fair to See. ... Illustrated by G. A. Storey

Front matter

A MAIDEN FAIR TO SEE tt ASttrxw 1*90. Frontispiece. A Maiden Fair to See BV F. C. PHILIPS AUTHOR OF "AS IN A LOOKING GLASS," &C. &•€. AND C. J. WILLS AUTHOR OF "IN THE LAND OF THE LION AND SUN," &c. &c. 5llustrate& bg G. A. STOREY, A.R.A. OLon&on TRISCHLER AND COMPANY 18 NEW BRIDGE STREET, E.C. 1891 {All rights reserved} CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE I. THE FAIRHOI.MES I II. love's young dream 12 in good-bye, sweetheart ! 2/ IV. " IT'S DOGGED AS DOES IT " 33 V. SUCCESS 41 VI. NURSE CHAFFINCH 5 1 VII. A SMART BOY 57 VIII. THE GIRL-CHILD 69 IX. MISS MARJORIBANKS IS ENGAGED 82 X. FATA MORGANA 93 XI. FICKLE FORTUNE IOI XII. ALICE'S EDUCATION I07 XIII. HUMPTY-DUMPTY Il8 CONTENTS. VI CHAP. PAGE XIV. AT THE ACADEMY 1 34 XV. SIR JOHN'S QUEST 1 5 1 XVI. MR. PARGITER GOES INTO SOCIETY 1 67 XVII. HOW HE BECAME A GENTLEMAN 1 74 XVIII.

IN MR. PARGITER'S STUDY 186 XIX. IN GROSVENOR SQUARE 200 XX. WILL SHE DIE? 211 XXI. A HAPPY ENDING LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE Alice ........ {Frontispiece) BIS DAT QUI CITO DAT 4 MRS. CHAFFINCH 6 THE SILENCE OF DEATH 12 SUNSHINE IN EQUITY COURT l6 DR. POTTLEBERRY 24 JOHN GRAHAM 72 IN HAPPY DREAMLAND I24 ALICE AT HOME I32 AT THE ACADEMY I35 SIR JOHN GARDENER . . 144 IN THE STUDIO 192 CONVALESCENCE ...

Chapter I. The Fairholmes

Charles Fairholme was the third and youngest son of a Lincolnshire rector, whose income allowed him to send his sons one after the other to a public-school, and then to the University. These two stages con cluded, the worthy rector used to tell each boy in his turn that he had now got his start in life and must shift for himself. This they all somehow managed to do. The history of the first one, who was in a marching regiment, and of the second, who was in the navy, need not concern a us. The orders given to Charles Fairholme had been, " Make your own way in the world. You have been sent to Eton, and you have been sent to Christchurch, and you have been entered as a student at the Middle Temple, and you have an allowance of a hundred a year which is paid to you quarterly. What more have you any right to expect ?

" On this understanding young Fairholme had com menced life, and, extraordinary as it may seem, he somehow managed to succeed, and indeed this is all the more extraordinary as he had complicated matters and entangled himself. Not that his entanglements were in any way dishonourable. At a garden-party given by the parents of a fellow-student he met and fell desperately in love with Lady Alicia Conway, the younger daughter of the Earl of St. Neots. Charles Fairholme's passion was returned, and the young people found many opportunities of meeting. Both of them recognised the utter futility of applying to Lord St. Neots for his consent to their marriage, so they took the law into their own hands, and one fine May morning, in American parlance, they "skipped," and were duly married at a registrar's office.

THE EAIRHOLMES. 3 Lady Alicia wrote a sheaf of pathetic letters to her father and mother. These were with characteristic promptitude returned, and the only message that the poor girl received from her parents was contained in a letter from Messrs. Finch, Badger, Trigg, Jobling & F inch, the family solicitors, who informed her in concise terms that the Earl and Countess of St. Neots de clined to hold any communication with her whatsoever. Clearly there was no assistance to be expected by Fairholme from his wife's relations to enable him to carry on the struggle for life until such time as he should be called to the Bar and commence to earn a living for himself. But something must be done, as his slender resources were nearly exhausted, and so it was that he wrote to his father, the rector, begging for some additional help.

In the course of forty-eight hours the young man received the following answer: — " Claxby Rectory, Lincolnshire, "June 14, 18 — . " My dear Charles, — I have received your letter informing me of the position in which you find yourself — a lamentable one, truly, and due entirely to your own crass stupidity. You know my circumstances; you know my income. I have never concealed one or the other from any of my children, and hence you must be perfectly aware that it is utterly out of my power to render you any assistance or to increase your allowance, which, small as you may consider it, I find the greatest difficulty in paying. It is useless to re proach you, or to remind you of the proverb, as true as it is trite, that in this world we are usually compelled to lie upon beds of our own making.

" Enclosed find draft for one hundred pounds. Please clearly understand that this is the last farthing that you will ever receive from me with the exception of your usual allowance, which I shall of course con tinue. I tell you frankly that I only send this sum out of consideration for your unfortunate young wife ; as for you yourself, you deserve none. You may think your self uncommonly lucky that the manager of the Caistor Bank was in a good temper when I called upon him this morning, for if he had not allowed me to overdraw my account, I should have been unable to have helped you. I beg of you to remember that you have nothing more to expect from me, and I trust that, for your -wife's sake, if not for your own, you will work hard and To face page 4, place yourself, with as little delay as possible, in a position to earn your own living, Of course I shall pay the fees for your call to the Bar.

"Your affectionate father, " Algernon Fairholme. The hundred pounds was a great deal more than Fairholme had ever anticipated receiving from his father, so he wrote a letter of genuine thanks to the old gentleman and set manfully to work to qualify himself to pass his examinations at the first opportunity that presented itself — in other words when he had kept ten terms and "eaten his dinners." The Fairholmes took up their residence in two little rooms in Equity Court, where they were looked after by one of that curious species — the Temple laundresses — who did for them in more ways than one. The laundresses, who perform the duties of general servant in the various Inns of Court, are a very singular race, and Mrs. Chaffinch was no exception. They are, indeed, almost a caste, with characteristics quite as distinct as those of the scout or gyp.

Originally, it may be conjectured, they were actually laundresses, who used once a week to bring the young sparks of the Inns their ruffles and cravats, cuffs and stockings, and would so have corresponded more or less to the modern blanchisseuses de fin in Paris. In the present day, however, one is rather disposed to agree with Mr. Weller that the old ladies whom one sees about the Inns of Court, making a great show of doing something with pails and brooms, must be called laundresses because they have a mortal aversion to washing anything. The genuine laundress of the old type is certainly not a pleasant specimen of humanity. She is usually a married woman, living somewhere close by the Inn, and having a keen eye to any little perquisites that may come in useful at home. She is, no doubt, far more honest than an Oxford scout, ora Cambridge gyp, who gives the word " perquisite" a marvellously elastic range of meaning, Unlike the University servants, she does not purloin wine by the bottle, even if she has the chance, or consider the remaining half of a cold pheasant lawful spoil.

Neither is she in league with your coal merchant and your milkman. Instances of downright robbery by the laundress — such as theft of jewellery, or books, or clothes — are practically un known. I have said that Temple laundresses are almost a caste. Singularly enough the occupation is apt to become hereditary. The laundress brings her daughter to help her, or sends her in her place if she herself cannot come. The daughter succeeds the mother, and this will sometimes continue for generations. Then, too, although every occupant of chambers may choose his own laundress, as a matter of fact he finds it con venient to employ the woman who looks after the other rooms on the same staircase, so that laundresses are apt to become, as it were, adscripti scalis — their status in this, as in its hereditary character, again strangely resembling serfdom.

It would, indeed, be almost impossible to bring up a stout, fresh young woman from Norfolk or Lincolnshire, and make a laundress of her. She would be strong enough for the work a dozen times over, but she would never endure it. If you are to have a laundress at all, you must put up with the traditional and recognised article ; and to a man in practice, who leaves his chambers as soon as he can, to get to his home or his club, and is in court the best part of the day, it does not much matter whether his chambers are quite what cleanliness and industry might make them. It would be an affectation to pretend that the Temple laundress is cleanly. She is usually more or less incapable of hard work ; but even is she were not, she has a tolerance for dust and dirt which she seems to resrard as tokens of large practice and impending dignity.

Much, however, depends upon the chambers which are under her charge. There are sets of rooms in all the Inns of Court which no industry — not that of Hercules — could possibly cleanse and keep clean. The old and dilapidated panelling, the irregular floor, the small crooked chimney which is perpetually getting choked with soot, the cupboards and presses that smell of mould, and the general air of dry rot all over the place — all these are unmistakable. There are chambers of another kind, where the only trouble is that mysterious mixture of dust, fluff, and soot which is peculiar to London, and which has such a special affection for book-shelves. Nothing will keep this stuff out of any rooms within a measurable distance from the City. We burn coal, and we cannot hope to escape soot. But in the Temple and in Lincoln's Inn new blocks of buildings have been erected, the chambers in which have the great merit of being easily kept clean.

There is nothing in them, in technical phrase, to hold the dust. The windows are of mullioned stone with metal fittings, the walls are plastered and coloured in dis temper, the floor may or may not be concrete. If of wood, it is the only wood in the structure of the room. Chambers like these lend themselves to cleanly burnishing. You can have a small carpet which is not fastened down and can be shaken once a week with the mats. There are more rooms of this kind than there used to be — especially in the Temple. And it was in chambers such as these that the Fairholmes found them selves. They were very pleasant and looked out upon the Embankment, and the young people could almost fancy themselves in a country house. Here Mrs. Chaf finch could not have been uncleanly if she had tried, for if she had neglected her work she would have stood convicted.

There was nothing to which the London dust could cling, or into which it could work its way. It would settle, of course, on the tops of the books, and on the picture-frames, and in such opportune places ; but from there a handbrush could remove it at once, and Mrs. Chaffinch was really so attached to her young master and mistress that she made, what was for one of her tribe, a gigantic effort, and managed to keep their little home spick and span. For upwards of twelve months the young couple lived in the Temple with great content. If Lady Alicia's parents would have nothing to say to them, her friends were not all so remorseless, and an old school fellow of her ladyship's — a certain Miss Norbury — who was blessed in the most liberal manner with this world's goods, took kindly pleasure in helping the young bride in many ways, and rendered her welcome assistance in such generous and unobtrusive fashion that Lady Alicia was able to accept her friend's bounty without any but a pleasant sense of obligation.

Fifteen months after his marriage, young Fairholme, having passed his examination, was duly called to the Bar. The old rector was as good as his word and promptly paid the fees, and thus it was that his son now found himself at last launched in the most precarious profession in the world.

Chapter II

love's young dream. How they loved each other, those two ! When a young married couple are good-looking, good-tempered, and recently married, it is very easy for them to love each other. Young F airholme was a well-dressed man, which rendered it still more easy for his wife to love him. Nobody ever heard of an out-at-elbows Romeo. That dashing young gentleman of Verona no doubt got those smartly cut velvet doublets of his from the very best tailor in the place, and the scent for his handker chiefs from the Atkinson or the. Rimmel of the period, or Juliet would not have found it so easy to love him. And Charles Fairholme's " fellow " (the fellow kept his carriage and pair, by the way, and had a house at Brighton) was the most confiding, as well as the best To sue: page 12. os tailors, and never worried his young customer for money.

In the tailor's ledger, however, the name of Charles Fairholme, Esquire, of Equity Court, was followed by two mysterious letters in red ink, " D.D.," the meaning of which was that in the eyes of the tailoring establishment in Bond Street their customer was looked upon as " decidedly doubtful." " But," as Mr. Snipper, the foreman, put it, "he was a fellar with a figgar ; and a chap like that, even if he never pays, is as good as a walking advertisement to us. Why, a misfit would look well on a figgar like that." Mr. Snipper would remark in confidence to his subordinates : " When a fellar with a figgar is properly dressed, and is a good-looking fellar into the bargain, all his friends put it down to the man who dresses him, and are anxious to know that man's address." So Fairholme could have as many coats as he pleased, and the piper piped merrily, and did not want to be paid.

It is a wonderful thing how anxious so many people are to oblige the briefless barrister and lend him a helping hand on his way through the world. Once a quarter, at least, Mr. Melchisidec and Mr. Zerrubbabel — the eminent rival money-lenders — sent him their usual friendly circulars, and offered to make him an advance on his personal security. " For,'' as they put it in those generous hearts of theirs, " Lord St. Neots' daughter's husband is bound to be worth powder and shot." But young Fairholme put the money-lenders' circulars into his waste paper basket. Nor did he give way to any kind of extravagance. The real fact was that Fairholme had made up his mind to succeed. Though he was very young, he knew perfectly well that he had handicapped himself by that runaway marriage with his young wife, Lady Alicia ; he knew perfectly well that, as a gentlemanly pauper, the mere fact of his wife being Lady Alicia would be a stumbling-block to him ; if he really did succeed in life it would be a feather in his cap.

And when he remembered that great lawyers had made imprudent marriages before now, and had succeeded in spite of them, he, too, was determined to succeed. Did not young John Scott run away with lovely Bessie Surtees, and did not he become Lord Chancellor of England after all ? And was not the very first lecture that he delivered as Deputy Professor of Law at the University of Oxford upon the Statute against young men running away with maidens ? In his heart of hearts Fairholme saw no reason whatever why he should not follow in the steps of the great Chancellor, for he remembered that consolatory Chinese proverb, that with time and patience the leaves of the mulberry-tree are turned into silk. Ambition, then, you may think, was Fairholme's master passion ; but it was not so. The paramount feeling in the young fellow's breast was his intense love for his beautiful wife — that carefully nurtured and high-born girl who had sacrificed everything for him, the penniless student, because — well, because he was the only man she had ever loved.

When he first became secretly engaged to that young wife of his he had given her a little simple posy and a few lines of boyish verse which ended thus : These flowers will fade, my love will never, But daily grow, and grow for ever. It was but a sort of " foolish posy for a ring," but what he had written he meant, and he had not changed his opinion. This young man led no life of silken dalliance all the same ; he was head over ears in love with his wife — foolishly anxious some people would say — but his fond and faithful love supplied him with the one thing needful for his success, the necessary spur to his ambition. What golden days they were, that brief dream of love and happiness ; those little picnic breakfasts in Equity Court followed by the long morning of hard work when his pen flew over sheets of lined foolscap ; and when he wished for inspiration he had only to look up from his work at the lovely golden-haired vision which sat in the little chair in the sunlight of the great mullioned window (it did not matter a bit where she sat, though, for, wherever she sat, there was, for Charles Fairholme at least, always delicious sunlight), and the inspiration came and a gentle answering smile, a smile of love and happiness.

They were as happy as the days were long, those two. And the young wife worked on in silence, fashioning and embroidering tiny garments of delicate needlework with her pretty little aristocratic hands. She was a vision of love and poetry, that fair young girl-bride, a refreshing sight for sore eyes. You see there is needlework and needlework. There is a lot of charity but very little poetry about those coarse garments To face page 16. that good Mrs. Dorcas is kind enough to confection for the horny-handed. There is something irritating about plain needlework. As one hears the creak of the needle, and the hiss of the thread as it is dragged through the coarse stuff by a powerful muscular effort, one is almost inclined to wish that dear Mrs. Dorcas would carry her charity one step further and " put it out," or clo it by machinery, or by means of good honest tin tacks and a hammer.

It is sad to confess that plain needlework of this description is — well, distinctly repulsive to the mind of the ordinary man. Lady Alicia was what is sometimes called a " dreamy blonde." It is a hateful phrase, but expressive. Now there are blondes and blondes. There is the rosy cheeked, buxom, bursting, bucolic blonde — the human rosebud, that ultimately expands into that tremendous flower, the cabbage-rose. " The rose is fairest when 'tis budding new," says Scott, and he is quite right. Then there is the Art blonde — that glorious beino who may be compared to the painted lady butterfly and looks best by candlelight, and, strange to say, lasts for ever : it is wonderful how much can be ac complished by the judicious use of pearl-powder and E a pair of tongs. It is hardly necessary to add that this variety of the genus is best appreciated by the very young of the opposite sex.

Then there is the Æsthetic blonde, or blonde by courtesy, the lady of the ungraceful attitudes, of the towzley reddish hair and the prehensile toes and the green complexion : there are people who admire the nightmare woman, for there is a fashion in everything, even in beauty. And then there are what may be termed the "sports " —to use a horticultural phrase : there is the adorable blonde cendrde, and the blonde whose hair is the colour of yellow ochre. But to none of these classes of the dreamy blonde did Charles Fairholme's wife belong. It is very difficult to describe the peculiar type of her delicate beauty ; we see it seldom save in our dreams. Tall, graceful, yet slender as a stately lily, her soft and gentle beauty was tinged by that particular refine ment of loveliness which the Italians term morbidezza.

Don't jump to a conclusion ; there was nothing sickly about Charles Fairholme's wife, but we have not words to express it (save the hateful phrase " sentimental-looking ") in our homely English tongue, perhaps because it is with us so very rare. You see it in the Dufferin Greuze. If you have seen the Dufferin Greuze then you know exactly what I mean. I am not going to describe the young wife's perfections as though I were a broker in a Babylonian Marriage Market ; when I say that the fair hair was guinea-gold colour, that the eyes were blue as the fairy flax, that the delicate little aristocratic nose was aquiline, that the complexion was a genuine pink and white, that the rosy lips were arched like Cupid's bow, and that when she smiled — and she was always smiling — you caught a glimpse of, as it were, a row of pearls, and that, as the Orientals say, she was a very rose in the garden of girls, I shall have said perhaps enough ; and I shall be more discreet if I leave the rest to your imagination, my reader, if you are young, and to your memory, if you are no longer so.

They were golden days for Charles Fairholme, those happy, happy days in Equity Court. Then there was the lovers' ramble (and when I say " the lovers " I mean it), when work was over, of an afternoon, in the quiet Temple Gardens, generally followed by a little dinner £11 ville, perhaps at Spagnolettrs, with a.frittura and a cutlet, and a bottle of good rough Barolo, not in frequently followed by a couple of gratuitous stalls at the play. I do not believe there was a happier couple in all the world than the briefless young barrister, Charles Fairholme, and the Lady Alicia, his wife. But they came to an end, those golden days ; alas, all too soon.

Chapter III

good-bye, sweetheart ! It was a bright afternoon in September when the young barrister, a great bunch of roses in his hand, ran up the stairs two at a time, only to find his outer door carefully shut and a white kid glove tied on the knocker. The young fellow turned sick with appre hension and anxiety, and then he softly knocked. After some delay the door was opened by Mrs. Chaf finch the laundress. "I'm glad you have come, sir," said the good woman ; " my lady was asking for yc i, very anxious, sir, and if you please, sir, it's a little ;irl, and would you mind being quite quiet, sir, and sitting down ? " said Mrs. Chaffinch, as she raised a warning finger and admitted Fairholme, who had turned ghastly pale. " How is she, Mrs. Chaffinch ?" he cried, in an ex cited whisper. " Ah, sir, you may well ask," said the old woman ; " but I know my place, sir ; it ain't for me to break it to you, being a lone woman, sir, which don't presume.

We sent for Dr. Pottlebury, sir, out of Fetter Lane, which is highly respected, and an old gentleman. Oh, it's an anxious time with all of us, Mr. Fairholme, and Dr. Pottlebury, he've been a asking for you, sir, and, oh, sir, she's very bad indeed, that's what she is." Then Mrs. Chaffinch burst into tears, which she attempted to dry with her professional apron. "Just you sit down, in that chair, sir, there's a good young gentleman, and Dr. Pottlebury '11 be out to you, and, oh, Mr. Fairholme, sir, do try to bear up." Charles Fairholme dropped into the chair the old woman had indicated and stared at her terrorstricken. " It's a beautiful baby, sir," said Mrs. Chaffinch. " Hang the baby !" cried its miserable father. Charles Fairholme saw the blow confine, the blow that was to destroy his happiness and rob him of the woman he loved : he was utterly helpless ; he knew that he was powerless even to attempt in the slightest degree to avert the stroke of Fate.

Cold beads stood upon his forehead as he stared wistfully at the bedroom door, which a moment or two before had closed upon Mrs. Chaffinch. He leant forward and strained his ear to catch the slightest sound : there was nothing but a dreadful silence. " Perhaps it is the silence of death," thought the young barrister, and he shuddered. And then he tried to pray, but words, even the simplest, failed him, the poor heart-broken man who was an orator by trade, the man who hoped to thrive upon the glibness of his eloquence, the strength of his mind, and the activity of an ever-ready tongue. Words failed him, I say, and being a man he was denied the luxury of tears. Then he heard a sound that was new to him, a sound which caused him to start, the piteous, and almost angry wail of the newlyborn infant ; and then the door that he had been gazing at so anxiously, opened suddenly and noise lessly, the catch of the lock did not even click, and admitted a little fat old man, who immediately closed the door just as deftly as he had opened it.

At any other time Fairholme would have smiled at the strange appearance of the little man in black. To a certain extent he resembled the Tom Noddy of the nursery tales, the mysterious being who was all head and no body. There was an immense bald cranium that bore a polish like a new billiard ball, around the lower part of which ran a single horizontal curl, reaching from one temple to the other, of grey hair ; it was a hollow sausage-shaped curl, evidently produced by art ; there were a pair of huge ears with great pendulous lobes — they looked more like handles than ears — and the face, well, the face was indescrib able. It was a comic mask. Indeed, the face was so preternaturally comic and so preternaturally ugly that if its owner had been born a century ago and had applied for the vacant mayoralty of Garrett, his elec tion would have been a foregone conclusion.

It would not have been necessary for that face to grin through a horse collar to provoke, one's laughter ; the monstrous visage needed no such adventitious aid, and would have made the fortune of a low comedian. Dr. Pottlebury's nose resembled the beak of an eagle, and his mouth was wide, and his vast chin and cheeks were shaven. No man ever saw such a head as Dr. Pottle bury's save on a meerschaum pipe or on a pair of nut-crackers. And then the professional costume of the little man — the great twice-round-the-neck white choker, the long professional frock-coat which seemed to reach almost to his heels, the great waistcoat, and the very short pair of lower extremities which were distinctly — well, shaped like a parenthesis, and termi nated in a gigantic pair of cloth boots with leather tips.

We do not, as a rule, meet people like Dr. Pottlebury in ordinary life. When one wants to see beings of his description, one is generally called upon to pay for admission to the show. Dr. Pottlebury had been born in the profession, his father having been an eminent apothecary who com menced practice in Fetter Lane in the reign of George the Third. The present Dr. Pottlebury was his only son, and the dream of the apothecary's life was that his boy William should make his mark as a physician. Pottlebury senior accumulated a competence, and young William was sent to Charterhouse School. At the age of fourteen he stopped growing and commenced to fill out ; and he went on filling out till he was five and twenty, with the dreadful result which has been des cribed. His extraordinary appearance stood in his way through life.

He distinguished himself as a student at St. Bartholomew's, and, had he resembled the rest of mankind, would certainly have been offered a post upon the hospital staff, but he was not a bit like the rest of mankind, as we know ; so for the remainder of his life he was compelled to practise at the old house in Fetter Lane, as his father had done before him. He was a very popular man in the neighbourhood, for though he never held a parochial appointment, he was elected by acclamation to the post of honorary body physician to the poor of the neighbourhood, from whom he never demanded a fee. Dr. Pottlebury was wealthy, Dr. Pottlebury was eccentric, many people hinted that Dr. Pottlebury was "queer"; his professional rivals said that Dr. Pottlebury was mad. For, now that Dr. Pottlebury had made his fortune, he had ceased to be lieve in drugs, and with an irritating pertinacity persisted in actively practising his profession, refusing fees, and raining half-crowns upon the deserving and unde serving poor : he was as the red rag to the bull to the practitioners in his neighbourhood.