Austin Friars. A novel

Chapter I

A CITY INTERIOR. Where the trains now go puffing in and out of the Cannon Street Terminus, there stood — before the recent changes which have made modern London almost unrecognisable to those who knew it when recent changes were undreamed of — a large house in a cul-de-sac called Scott's Yard. Concerning who Scott may have been, and why he was considered worthy of having a Yard named after him, not merely general but local history is silent ; yet that the place was where I have indi cated, is certain from the fact that Scott's Yard still remains — a very ghost and spectre of its former self. VOL. i. b AUSTIN FRIAES. Gone' is the ancient graveyard; gone are the best and largest of its houses. Where the bones of the citizens crumbled into dust, cinders from innumerable engines now strew the ground.

Where men and women had their homes, other men and women now crowd the rail way platform. The individualism of Scott's Yard has departed. The Quaker boarding-house, the lawyer's offices, the whilom Lord Mayor's chambers with their entrance in Turnwheel Lane, the few trees grow ing in the graveyard, the blackened unregarded monuments, the high iron railings, the parish ladders hung against the walls, the wretched patch of grass, the whole of Turnwheel Lane, are gone ; and in lieu thereof, we behold, not a shady city nook, a quiet pool apart from the human torrent which sweeps through the neighbouring thoroughfares, but walls covered with advertising boards, and an unromantic glass roof covering a terminus from whence one can proceed to various places too numerous to mention. Behold the locality !

Where the great City station and the great City hotel now are, there stood formerly a City bank and a City insurance company. Peace be to their memories ! Over their remains the trains sweep grandly in and out as a great lady of the olden time swept, in her magnificent selfishness, over all inferior feelings, loves, passions, regrets. * But what would you? It is never out of the present, but always out of the " few years back," out of the joyous, out of the sorrowful, out of the irrevocable past that we romancers — true his torians, though the people will not always believe us to be so — weave our tales ; for which reason I ask you, reader, dear reader, who have walked with me ere now over so many and many a mile of the city pavements, to forget all about the Cannon Street Terminus, and go back with me in spirit to the time when Scott's Yard was as quiet as Laurence Pountney Lane and Fen Court are still.

There were but few houses in Scott's Yard ; the last one on the right-hand side, as a person entered the court from Bush Lane, was only No. 5, but this was a large, or at least apparently large, dwelling, with two windows on each side of the hall-door and one very wide window at the gable end, which last overlooked the graveyard before mentioned. This is the house I would ask you to enter with me ; and as we cross the threshold, I observe you look inquiringly at the names on the lintel. What do you make of them ? Ground-floor : Lorenzo & Co. First-floor : John Marks N. Lucca, Second-floor : A. Friars & Co. There the record ends, and you turn inquiringly towards your guide. The fact is, this story has nothing to do with Lorenzo & Co., or Marks, or Lucca, but only with A. Friars, whose Company is a myth, and who really rents the entire house, sub-letting, at con siderable pecuniary advantage to himself, the ground and first-floors of the said desirable pre mises.

On the night when you must, if you ever read these pages, make his acquaintance, he is not at home, but we will go up to his office and wait there for him. " He is certain not to be late," so another, who is waiting for him likewise, says to herself softly ; but will not proceed to the room occupied by this person till you have visited all the lower part of the house. You must know every nook and corner in it some day, so we may as well begin methodically. As the front-door opens we enter a small hall, paved with diamond-shaped blocks of black and white marble. Immediately facing us is Lorenzo & Co.'s private office ; on our right is Lorenzo & Co.'s clerks' office; to the left is the staircase we must ascend, which really occupies a fourth of the entire house, and is lighted on each floor except the ground by three windows.

Until the respec tive offices of John Marks and N. Lucca are reached, the ascent is not very good; but from that point it widens into broad, easy steps, with heavy old-fashioned balustrades and curiously turned balusters. Evidently the first portion, covered with lead, is new ; though for what inscrutable purpose the original plan was changed, it is difficult to imagine. In the hall to the left, on a line with the stair case, is a door opening on to a flight of steps that lead down to the kitchens, awful places below the level of the graveyard, and probably, indeed, built over a portion of it, where the moisture from the rank, foul earth outside makes its way within, and drips slowly down the walls — places where meat will not keep, where silver gets dulled, where myriads of small black flies — flies belonging to no honest and healthy breed — cover the dressers, and crawl over the improving miscellany of light and entertaining reading, adorned with numerous exciting woodcuts, with which a wearied, purpose less-looking maid-servant is amusimr herself.

The front-kitchen, in which she sits, the more cheerful of the two — not that kitchen like a vault, where the moisture drips down and the top of the window is on a level with the churchyard-walk — is clean enough ; the covers hanging against the walls reflect back the bright firelight, the floor is free from grease or stain, the plates are all ranged tidily away, and the servant's work is clearly over for the night ; whereupon we, having now made a sufficiently distinct plan of the house, will proceed upstairs, and, leaving the maid absorbed in the thrilling delights of " Rupert the Avenger," try to make the acquaintance of that maid's mistress. She is in the office on the second-floor, you will be kind enough to observe ; and after the first glance you withdraw your eyes, thinking this woman I have brought you into such regions to see not especially -entitled to notice.

That at the first glance is your idea. You consider a woman clad in sad-coloured garments, with but small pretensions to beauty — not old, yet still looking older than she really is — unworthy so special an introduction. A sentence sums up your opinion. So be it. You will see plenty of her before this story is ended ; wherefore, take your choice now, friend. Leave her at this point, or else agree to hear of her to the end. There is no gas in that room, but the light from a lamp falls down on her lovely face. Lovely — I speak advisedly, for I am writing now not as Yorke Friars impressed people at first sight, but as they came to regard her after weeks, months, years. That face, bent down over her needlework, was grave almost beyond endurance ; it had a sad shadow over it, pitiful to behold on the counte nance of one so young ; for Yorke Friars was still young, as we count age in a wife — barely seven and-twenty.

She had her reasons, doubtless, for looking sad ; for, in the first place, she was often very lonely ; further, she was clever — a curse to any woman not born in the purple, and who has frequently her way to push among utterly incompetent and in appreciative people ; and last, but by no means least of all, she was loving, unselfish, devoted. Are there not, in those three words, grouped thus together, the elements of a romance ? She loved, she never thought of herself, she >was devoted to another. And that other ? The needle came and went, and the busy thoughts flew out and returned with it ; flew out to where he was, returned to where he should be. What had she not borne for his sake, because she loved him — alas for her ! since he was not worthy the love of any woman, whether saint or sinner.

And yet with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his strength he loved Yorke Friars, who was as near a saint in those days as a sinner may be. The women who exercise the greatest influence on men's lives are not, I take it, as a rule, beautisul. Were this idea wrong, we should find nations subjugated and empires freed by the contour of a figure, by the perfection of a face ; but this we know is not so ; and by mere beauty, so far as beauty means regular features, pencilled eyebrows, raven or auburn tresses, and so forth, everyone who has any experience of the world is well aware that very little can be achieved, that few fates are marred, few destinies controlled. When, passing through a portrait-gallery, we behold the celebrated beauties of bygone times, — the belles who made havoc not only widi their own reputations, but also with the hearts of their admirers, the toasts to whom men drank deep in the strong wines that were affected in that more muscular age, — we cannot help marvelling where the charm lay, what it was which lit up those to us uninteresting features, that swayed kings, that bowed the hearts of warriors, that changed the counsels of statesmen, that brought about re bellions, and wrought all the romance of history.

For certainly, as a rule, these women — of whose faces the painters have tried to preserve a record for posterity — are not handsome. No doubt there were much more perfect beauties in those days, concerning whom tradition says never a word, who wondered, as ladies wonder now, " what men can see in that creature with the large mouth, or in that other still more contemptible chit, who is little and insignificant, and who has not a solitary good feature in her face." True ; but then it was not in carved statues that the kings and their courtiers, the soldiers, the fops, and the statesmen delighted, but in flesh and blood that could beautify its features at will ; that had every variety of expression ; that could smile and be sad, be winning, cruel, desponding, exult ing ; that could fascinate and repel, bring sorrow, and then repent over it.

Whether, however, this theory be correct or erroneous, it is quite certain that the woman whose life's story mingled with whatever was best and most pathetic in Austin Friars' experience could lay no claim to strict beauty. In her girlhood no one found much to say in her favour save that she had nice eyes ; but there are some people whose loveliness develops when that of others is on the wane ; and so, in her womanhood, those who knew Yorke Friars best said she owned the "sweetest eyes were ever seen ; " sweetest, tenderest, truest, saddest — eyes in which lay the shadow of a great trouble and a great repentance ; eyes concerning the colour whereof no two persons agreed — shaded by long black lashes, that had been wet and heavy with tears shed because of the sorrow of her life ; of the grief she tried, and tried successfully, to hide from the man who had been more to her than all the earth — for whose tardy return she is waiting when we first make her acquaintance.

After the fashion of the time, her hair was brought smoothly down on her forehead, and then gathered up into a knot behind — a large, thick knot of brown hair, with a ripple in it that proved, had she taken out the confining comb, it would have floated in soft flowing curls over her shoulders. She wore it thus when a girl, when her life had still to be lived, when her lot had still to be chosen ; and there was one who always remembered those tresses, unconfined as Norah Creina's, with a pain at his heart, the sharpness of which time could not dull, nor the years, as they came and went, relieve. She was dressed in black — no one of the few people who then made up her little world had ever seen Yorke Friars save in mourning — and this sombre attire caused her unusual pallor to be more noticeable.

Time had been when a slight colour mantled in her face, but now there was not even a tinge of pink on her cheek, and yet she was perfectly healthy. Her paleness was not the result of sick ness, but of long heart-struggles, of much confine ment, of want of the strength-giving breezes that blew over the hills and dales of her country home. Her hands, as they fell into her lap with the piece of needlework she held, looked as white as camellia-leaves, and she had no rings save a gold one on the third finger of the left hand, and a keeper set round with small diamonds that sparkled in the lamplight. She was delicately shaped, gracefully formed, and of that "just size" Queen Elizabeth extolled ; which is, after all, perhaps the only perfection of height for a woman. There is her sketch as Austin Friars would have made it — finished just in time, for, hearing his latchkey turn in the lock, she rose hastily, and went out on to the landing to meet him.

If he had not seen her bending over the ba lusters as he ascended the stairs, he would have imagined there must be something the matter, since, save during one long illness, Austin Friars never remembered a time when he had to open a door to discover her whereabouts. She always came to greet his return — to ask if he were tired, if he were cold, if he were vexed, if he had got wet. Through all the years they had never grown indifferent, never fallen into that state of conjugal A CIT\' INTERIOR. 15 rudeness which makes a woman less courteous to her husband than she would be to a guest, which renders a man less civil to his wife than to the most casual of his acquaintance. Through the years they had never quarrelled, though the man's temper was none of the sweetest, and although, in her youth, dependents and friends had likened Yorke's fits of passion to thunderstorms.

Through the years the words "mine" and "thine" had never been spoken in the sense of personal possession. They had worked together, struggled together, suffered together — this woman, whom you have seen seated by the fire, and Austin Friars, who slowly ascended the stairs, looking up at the sweet welcoming face of her he had loved so much if not so well. " You are tired," she said, as, slipping her hand into his, they entered the room together. " Will you have any supper ? Anne has not yet gone to bed." " I seem only to have just finished dinner," he answered. " Should you like a cup of tea ? " was the next question. " No," he said ; but immediately afterwards changed the " No " to " Yes," adding, " I have a bad headache." She turned to go downstairs, but he detained her, asking, " Can you not ring the bell, and let Anne bring what you want ?

" " My dear Austin," she answered, " think of how many journeys Anne has up and down these stairs in the course of a day ; and I am not an atom tired. Let me go ; I shall be back in a moment ; please let me go." He took his hand away from her arm, and with his eyes followed her as she left the room. Then he turned towards the fire, and looked moodily into it, thinking how he was to say what he had to say to her, what he was fully determined to say before he slept. There is no accounting for women's tastes, or for the sort of men they love. Certainly, even from a physiognomist's point of view, Austin Friars did not seem worth the sacrifice of a life's hopes and prospects, though, as times go, he was a handsome individual, perfectly conscious of the fact. His was the sort of appearance that fancies blue neckties and light clothing are becoming to it, that impresses the beholder with the idea of being excessively " glad of itself," that has always some thing to advance in its own favour, that is perfectly at ease concerning the impression it is likely to make, and that would be greatly surprised if any one ventured to suggest that it was not very distinguished indeed.

Owing to the colour of his hair, which was light, crisp, and curly, to his fair complexion, to the slightness of his figure and his studiously careful get-up, he looked several years younger than his actual age ; and as he leaned against the chimneypiece, in orthodox evening costume — a costume that suited him much better than grey tweeds and splendid neckties — he must have seemed, even to the eyes of those who did not particularly admire his style of appearance, a very personable man. VOL. i. c Yorke Friars had always thought this, at all events ; which was so much the worse for her. She returned almost immediately, a little out of breath with running upstairs ; and after saying, " Tea will be up directly," resumed her seat, and began asking him how he had enjoyed himself, if there were many people, and how Miss Monteith was dressed.

" She is very pretty, you say, Austin ? " she added, inquiringly. And he answered, " Very pretty, indeed ; and she wore a white dress trimmed with blue, and forget-me-nots in her hair, all of which were exceedingly becoming to her." " And you really think Mr. Monteith intends to stand your friend ? " Yorke further inquired. " I am sure he does," was the reply ; " but I will tell you all about it after I have had a cup of tea ; my head aches desperately." If he had said his heart ached, he would have struck nearer the mark; for an awful fight had been going on there for many a day between his selfishness and his affection, between the worst part of him and the best, between his determina tion to go on his own way, and a feeling that his own way could not lead to happiness for himself, or aught save utter misery to Yorke.

It had been going on for months past, and yet Yorke was only cognisant of anything being amiss through the strange instinct which makes women feel misfortunes are approaching, though they may still be too distant to fling even a shadow before them. But to-night the fight was over, the event de cided, and Yorke had to be told all about it. If he could only have formed an idea as to how she would take the intelligence he meant to communi cate, he felt the story might be more easily repeated ; but Yorke to him still remained an enigma, and the only thing of which he felt certain was, that she would not receive his news after the fashion of any other woman. Would the passion he knew lay under her quiet manner break out at last? Would she be very angry, very indignant, at first, and then fall into his plan ultimately ?

The man hoped it might be thus, for she had loved him so long, and she loved him so much. " She cannot change all that in a moment," he thought, looking at her face speculatively. "I could not ; " which last mental assertion only went to prove that the two were of very different natures indeed. " I am afraid something has annoyed you," Yorke said, after a few minutes' silence. " What is it?" " I will tell you presently," he said ; and he drank his tea, and then went to his table to see what letters had arrived by the evening's post, and afterwards proceeded downstairs to look that the house was properly fastened up, while Yorke waited patiently for some blow which she felt was coming. When she heard him slowly re-ascending the stairs, unconsciously she put out her hand, as if to thrust something back which she beheld approach ing ; then, as he entered the room, she knit her fingers together, and, looking inquiringly towards him, listened to hear what he might have to say.

Chapter II. Mr

FRIARS EXPLAINS. " For some time past I have been thinking about our position," Mr. Friars began, at which point he hesitated aud stopped ; having arrived at a conver sational stile, he thought Yorke might probably help him over. But Yorke did not even make the attempt ; she only sat still, with her fingers twined together, looking at him, and accordingly he had to try back. "For some time past I have been thinking about our position," he repeated. " Excuse me for one moment," Yorke here inter rupted ; " but do you mean our position, or your position ?" " Have they ever been separate ?" he enquired. " They may become so," she replied. " Through all the years during the course of which we have been so happy together, have our interests ever proved other than identical?" he persisted. " I can answer for myself ' No,' " she said ; " but in the years to come they may fail to be so, for all that."

" It is impossible for me to imagine the arrival of such a time," he declared. " Well, we need not talk any more about that," she impatiently suggested. " What is it you have to tell me ?" " You know how we are situated, Yorke," he answered ; " you know for how long a time it has been a struggle for bare life ; you know w hat a fight from day to day I have had to make in order to keep a roof over our heads ; you know that but for the help Mr. Monteith has given me I could not have held on even until now ; you know how hopeless our position is — how impossible it seems that, without substantial assistance, I should make a better thing of it." " I thought Mr. Monteith was going to give you that assistance ?" she said. " He is ; he proposes to take me into partnership, and suggests that we shall throw the two businesses into one."

" And do you like the arrangement so well as having the money to carry out your own plans in your own way ? I thought you had a great objec tion to having a partner ?" " So I had ; but, in the first place, a beggar can scarcely be a chooser, and, in the next, there is a great difference between taking a partner into a struggling business, and being taken as a partner into a great concern like that of Monteith's." " And why does Mr. Monteith want a partner ?" "He is getting old — his health is bad; he wishes to retire from the active part of the business ; besides which — as nowadays people are not in the habit of doing something for nothing — there is a condition attached to the proposal." " What is that condition ?" " First tell me your opinion about the partnership?" " I cannot give one till I know the price you are to pay for all these good things."

" Will you not help me at all, Yorke ?" he said. " Will you not make what I have to say less hard even by a single word ? You have an idea of the price required, and yet still you will not even ask me if your idea be correct." He rose as he spoke, and stood leaning back against the chimney-piece, with his hands stretched out towards Yorke, who never moved, but answered, while her fingers locked themselves more tightly together : " We have not to do with ideas now, Austin, but with facts. What is the price required ?" " Marriage." " You are to marry Miss Monteith ?" " Yes. 0 Yorke, my darling !" She pushed him back, and in a moment re covered herself. At that instant, if there were any one feeling standing apart from its fellows in the man's heart, it was that of relief. She had got her blow, and was neither lying in a swoon, nor crying aloud because of her agony.

Just at the first he thought she was going to faint, and stepped forward to catch her; but Yorke Friars was made of sterner stuff, and now sat quietly bearing her pain. It was in the woman's nature to endure — it is in the nature of most women, who have also the capacity to struggle ; and he who had stabbed her now waited silently for her first comment on his experiment. At length, wearied of waiting, he said : " It need not make any difference to us, need it?" She put his question aside as she had put him, and resuming her former attitude, inquired, as though she had not heard his remark : " Did Mr. Monteith make it a condition of your partnership that you were to marry his daughter ?" " What does it signify how we put the matter ?" he answered ; " it is a condition, and there is an end of it."

" Hardly," was the reply, " so far as I am con cerned. I feel quite confident Mr. Monteith would not force his daughter on any man's accept ance. According to your account, she is young enough, pretty enough, rich enough to marry almost when and whom she pleases. What is the English of this transaction, Austin ? You may as well be frank with me, for it cannot serve your purpose now to be otherwise." " You are very hard, Yorke," he pleaded, " and far too plain to be pleasant ; but if you will have the story put into English, as you call it, Mary Monteith is very fond of me, and her father knows — is aware of her preference." "And she fell in love with you without any sign on your part ?" said Yorke Friars. " Austin, I do not believe you. For a long time past I have known you for what you are ; but I went on trust ing and excusing, because I believed that, if false to all the rest of the world, you were true to me."

" And so I have been," he interposed eagerly ; " God knows, Yorke—" " Do not bring His name into this business," she said ; " I will not have it." " You know, Yorke, I would have married you, if I could." " I know it," she replied ; " I believe you loved me well enough even for that — even to marry a woman without money, name, connection, or influence ; and that, Austin, is saying a great deal for you." " Then what would you have, Yorke ?" he answered eagerly ; " I cannot marry you, and we are on the brink of ruin ; but I can marry another, who will give me the means of supporting you as I desire, and of relieving me from the continual harass which is killing me." " I ought to have thought of all this before," she said bitterly. " The arrangement will give me everything I want," he went on ; " and it need make no differ ence to us," he repeated, while his voice sank a tone lower.

Then she got up. " Austin Friars," she began, " I have loved you as few women are capable of loving any man ; and through poverty, through sickness, through all time, I could have loved you to the end ; but now I hate you. Do you understand ? I hate you — not because you have left me without name, hope, character — not because you have deserted me for the sake of one younger, prettier, happier than myself; but because you are a villain — a base, calculating, mercenary villain." " But, Yorke, dearest Yorke — ' "Don't dare, sir," she interrupted, "ever to address a word of affection to me again. It is all gone and past; it is all over between us; from henceforth we shall be greater strangers to one another than was the case the day we first met. Whatever cause Miss Monteith may find to regret her marriage shall not be given by me.

May I ask who Mr. Monteith thinks I am ? He can scarcely, I imagine, be aware of my actual position." "He believes you to be my sister-in-law." " Oh !" she said. And there ensued an ominous silence, which was broken by Mr. Friars, who commenced : " I have been candid with you." " Yes," she finished, " and you wish me to be candid with you. What you wish to know is, shall I go to Mr. Monteith and make mischief ? Shall I go to the girl, and tell her how it has been with you and me ? I shall do neither ; so far as I am concerned, your life is before you, without a past, to do with it what you like." " But, Yorke, without you I cannot live." " You have elected to live without me," she answered, "and must abide by that decision. From to-night I am as one dead to you — as one who has never been."