The Rich Husband. A novel. New edition

Preface

. Many years have elapsed since "The Rich Hus band " was written — nearly nine since it was first published. The original three volume journey having proved moderately successful, it has been thought desirable to reproduce the book in a cheaper form. In the course of that reproduction I have made no effort to reconstruct the plot, to clothe the story in different words, or to substitute any later ideas for those of an earlier time : with the exception of some slight curtailment and the correction of typographical and gram matical errors, no alteration has been attempted. The title, which is not mine, was suggested by Mr. Charles J. Sheet, through whose courtesy I am per mitted once again to make use of it. C. E. L. R1DDELL. London, November 1st, 1866. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. GREAT CKOWLAND STREET ..... 1 II.

OVER THE WAY . . . . . . . . 11 IU. LIFE AND DEATH .25 IV. THE NEW COMER ........ 34 V. WATKYN CREPTON'S MISTAKE 48 VT. REVERSES 62 VII. JUDITH 73 VIII. CHRISTMAS AT LLANDYL . . . . . . S4 ix. Judith's repentance ...... 96 X. BACK TO LIFE . . . . . . . . Ill XI. WOOED AND MARRIED . . . . . .125 XII. DOMESTIC DIFFERENCES ....... 143 XIII. IN autram street 158 XIV. EVAN CHOOSES HIS OWN ROAD . . . . . 168 XV. A TERRIBLE VIGIL . . . . . . .186 XVI. NEW FRIENDS ........ 202 XVII. BAD NEWS 218 XVIII. AT BROMPTON ........ 230 XIX. FORGERY ......... 237 XX. TOO LATE VIN CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE XXI. AFTER YEARS 263 XXII. AT LIBERTY 287 XXIII. BETWEEN TWO WORLDS . . . . . .311 XXIV. DISCOVERED 324 XXV. INDOMITABLE . 337 XXVI. ANOTHER ASPIRANT ....... 354 XXVII. AN OLD PATIENT 369 XXVIII. FAMILY AFFAIRS 386 XXIX. DUST AND ASHES . 402 XXX. AN UNEXPECTED MEETING 415 XXXI. SAFE AT LAST 427 CONCLUSION THE BICH HUSBAND

Chapter I. Great Crowland Street

A long time ago — at least, what we should think such, were it snipped by fate's relentless scissors out of a human life, though it can be considered but as a brief period when compared with the duration of the world's history : a long, long time ago, speaking of the lapse of years, as that lapse affects, not the grey old earth itself, indeed, but the dwellers thereupon ; before omnibuses were, or cabs had been christ ened, or the new police invented ; ere the electric telegraph had annihilated space, or steam rendered distance a myth, when the past was the present, and the present the future ; — a long, a very long time ago, in the ordinary sense of the phrase, it so chanced that Mr. Henry Bultin lodged in the house of a Mrs. Hilton, whose four-story mansion was known to her friends, the postman, the watchman, all general acquaintances, and her extensive business connection, as Number 72, Great Crowland Street.

Having stated which facts, I should proceed forthwith along the regular highroad of this veracious narrative, if at the very outset of the journey it did not seem better to stop short and satisfy the curiosity of an inquisitive reader, whom I pro phetically hear demanding — " And pray who was Mr. Henry Bultin ? — and where is Great Crowland Street ?" B The latter question, being a much more important one than the former, I proceed to bestow the order of publicity upon the locality once honoured by being made the abiding-place of Mr. Henry Bultin, rather than upon that gentleman himself, — at least, in the first instance. Great Crowland Street, dear reader, may then, to the best of my belief, be found to this day, in the very heart of that large indefinite neutral ground, which people living near the Monument insist on calling the West End, and people dwelling within bowshot of the Duke of Wellington's statue stigmatise as the East ; wherefore, it may safely be pronounced a happy cross betwixt the two, since it is thus proved to be quite as far removed from the unspeakable vulgarity of the one region, as from the overpowering gentility of the other.

It is no business of mine to define more precisely the limits, and land-marks, and boundaries of this locality. I have not the slightest intention of making a martyr of myself, by stating for the edification of any one, the exact point where, losing sight of the " true blues," we find ourselves getting into a different sort of society — a shade removed from the genuine ultramarine of Belgravia ; walking through an atmosphere redolent less of attar of roses than of rose-water ; — a sphere well enough to do in its own way, doubtless, and requiring, like every other sphere about London, a vast deal of money to revolve creditably in ; yet still lying outside the fairy ring, separated by an indefinable, although most powerful, something from the much-envied circle of fashion. — In a word, I do not feel disposed to bring censorious tongues upon this instructive narrative, by endeavouring to state that whereof I am wholly in ignorance, — namely : where superlative gentility ceases ; where comparative gentility commences; where positive vulgarity abides.

East and West ! Thank Heaven, I am writing not in French, which acknowledges no neuter gender, but in English, which does, and can therefore, as before intimated, take refuge in a something lying conveniently betwixt the two : a vague, debateable, respectable, once aristocratic land, the mere fact of dwelling in which renders further reference to either one or TBE RICE EUSBAND. the other superfluous. The people inhabiting Great Crowland Street were called West-End folks in Mark Lane, it is true, but Grosvenor Square turned up its Roman nose in their faces, and styled them Eastern barbarians, as though they had belonged to some of the wild tribes of Tartary ; yet most of the estimable individuals who had habitations in that locality were far too much occupied with their own concerns to be either unduly exalted by the first sentence of homage, or hope lessly abased by the last most unfounded and illiberal slander.

They lived there apart, separated only by a few squares from regions where the nobility drove backwards and for wards in splendid carriages, rendered still more splendid by the addition of a couple of hapless footmen clinging on behind : — only divided by such a little space from rank, fashion, beauty ; the very exotics of Albion's garden, the richest cream of English society ! and still, had the Libyan desert yawned between, they could not have felt further removed from the "Great World," could not have lived in more total and isolated seclusion ; — a peculiar people, " zealous of good works." Well, as for the final portion of the foregoing sentence, it is to be hoped they were; at all events, if they gave their thoughts to eternal matters with one-tenth portion of the vigour and hearty good-will wherewith they devoted their energies to the great temporal affair of making money, they must surely have found heaps of incorruptible treasure awaiting their advent in a better world.

Whether this proved so or not, it is impossible to tell; their good works, worthy people, were hidden, as good works ought to be, while their ostensible employment everybody was free to see and comment upon, for it was that most common one called " turning the penny," fifty times in the course of the day when they could, and of turning it each time moreover, if possible, to greater advantage. Their place of abode was a shop street, ay, and for that matter is a shop street still, wherein an inquisitive stranger, blessed at once with patience inexhaustible, and legs un tire able, and a tongue unwearying, might, after painful research B and long walking, and frequent questioning, make purchases to his heart's content, even at this present hour. But at the remote period of which this story treats, the glory of important publicity still hung about the place.

It was then a good and notable shop street, in the very prime of life, without the faintest conception that the time should ever arrive for it to be hustled by younger and healthier rivals into the corner of dreamy oblivion where now it sleepily reposes. Just as in our own day the last young beauty out forgets in the triumph of her first season that her hair must grow grey, and her eyes lose their brilliancy, and her cheeks be deprived of their roses ; so Great Crowland Street, all radiant with bright red bricks, and fresh paint, and first-class shops, and unexceptionable sign-boards, fancied its day would last for ever, that the glory of morning could scarcely at eve depart from it. It found out its mistake, however, years ago, when the house-fronts grew of a dirty reddish black, when the paint peeled off its window sills, when grander Magasins des Modes, and Pantechnethecas, and Heimatemporions, and monster bazaars, and endless depots and milliners' show-rooms, springing into existence in more modern thoroughfares, it was compelled to walk into the background and stand in the shade for evermore.

But Great Crowland Street undoubtedly enjoyed its day of prosperous celebrity as the new-comers enjoy theirs, and the period when it had arrived at the very zenith of its splendour was that of which I am writing — a long time ago ! Next to the number and excellence of its shops, the thing most noticeable about Great Crowland Street was their arrangement. There were two of every sort under the sun — I won't say clean and unclean, but of every other species and description. Two bakers, two butchers, two jewellers, two grocers, two apothecaries, two ironmongers, two upholsterers, two hair-dressers, two fruiterers, and so on ad infinitum, or at least so on to the last number in the street, which was an even one. The reader must not, however, imagine the spirit of regularity was satisfied with this ingenious arrangement of pairs ; it further divided the said pairs, and distributed them equally at both sides of the thoroughfare.

One of each made up the row on one side, one of each balanced them precisely on the other: not that the rivals exactly faced— innovation herself dare scarcely have suggested such a hostile procedure — they merely, as stated above, balanced. Thus No. 2 was a tobac conist, and No. 31, a long bias across the way, had a full length Highlander over his entrance also. The plan was at once a judicious and a successful one, since it brought two of a trade together, and yet still compelled them to agree; the last consummation most devoutly to be prayed for, being materially influenced by the etiquette of the street, which ordained it a point of honour that the north side should patronize the north solely and exclusively, whilst the south poured forth its favours on the south in like manner. The consequence of which equitable arrangement was, that every man, woman, and child, dwelling in houses, 1 to 44 inclusive, had his, her, and its hair cut and curled at No. 16, on their own side; and every soul inhabiting Nos. 45 to 88, bought bread from Mrs. Hilton, who sold the same at No. 72.

The northerns had their beer brought daily to their doors, by the pot-boy, from corner shop No. 1 ; whilst the southerners, ignoring its very existence, flocked unanimously to public-house No. 45. How this singular fashion originally came to be adopted by the Great Crowlanders, it were vain to conjecture ; for it was a genuine Cockney locality, in which, to employ the phrase ology of the inhabitants, " Nobody knew nothing about no body." Opposite neighbours had children, but the events were never even suspected by people over the way. People over the way got husbands for pretty daughters, and opposite neighbours remained in blessed ignorance of the portion of the bride, of the name of the bridegroom. Men and women died from time to time on both sides of the street, and living men and women, old residents in the same thoroughfare, knew nothing about the matter until the undertaker came to take the corpse away, when they felt satisfied somebody must have TEE RICH HUSBAND. departed into the silent land ; but who, or why, or by what means, they never inquired — they were never informed.

The shopkeepers, it is true, had a sort of acquaintance with their customers, but it was purely a shop acquaintance. They knew who bought from them ; had an accurate idea to which numbers things were to be sent home, and were quite certain as to the persons from whom they were to request payment of their little accounts ; but further than this there was no inter course. Nobody associated with anybody in Great Crowland Street : perhaps that was the reason they agreed so well. They never quarrelled ; there were no soft answers needed amongst them to turn away wrath, for they never spoke at all, except across their counters, and very little then. They were wrapt up so exclusively in their own families, their own affairs, their own friends, their own efforts to " make off a livelihood " and amass wealth ; so totally engrossed with what happened within their own abodes, that they had not a second's leisure to bestow a thought on next door, whilst next door was fifty times too busy to think of them.

Perhaps, dear country reader, you may conceive this description to be a little exaggerated, and declare it impossible such self-contained, unexcitable, uninqttisitive folks could ever, even in remote periods, have existed anywhere on this earth. But never believe it : human nature is much the same one time as another ; and as such people played out their several parts in London long years ago, so such people are playing out their distinctive parts in London still. If you doubt it, come and see. If you want to know what perfect independence is — to be able to do precisely as you like, to be free from censorious observation, to escape the keen scrutiny and malignant criticism of old women of both sexes ; if you desire to live in what style you choose, to wear out shabby clothes without being pointed at as poor; to disport the most fashionable garments without being called extra vagant ; to be married without a living soul but the curate, the clerk, and your wife being the wiser ; to be buried without a score of idle tongues telegraphing the fact from house to house, and calling the funeral stingy, and holding a coroner's inquest with a special jury over your memory; — come and live in the very heart of London, for you will find yourself more alone there than would be the case if you were standing in the middle of a Scotch moor, without a human habitation within a dozen miles of you.

Some people might speedily weary of the experiment ; for, as we know there are a few who, sooner than live alone, would live with persons they hated, so there are thousands who would prefer being spoken evil of, to not being talked about at all. Some might dislike London for that which others imagine to be its crowning beauty ; but all this has nothing to do with Great Crowland Street, where nobody knew anything about anybody, with the exception of Mrs. Hilton, who ventured to break the rule of the street by having vegetables from her son-in-law over the way ; who, to remedy this error, to square the circle, to make odd even, and crooked straight, had his bread from No. 72. There was an excuse, however, for Mrs. Hilton's backsliding, on the score of motherly affection and near relationship ; and although she broke so far across the line as both to trade and talk, the other householders never deserted her for going over to the northern enemy, but, shutting their eyes to her solitary faux pas, continued to deal with her as formerly ; wherefore she throve and prospered exceedingly, and reigned in solemn state at No. 72, whereof Mr. Henry Bultin occupied the second floor.

For it was another peculiarity of Great Crowland Street, that everybody therein took lodgers. Where the family lived in each four-story brick mansion, could only be dimly sur mised ; the following being the sole conjecture anent the domestic arrangements, warranted by appearances : to wit — Underground dungeon, commonly styled basement, used as kitchen, and serving for the abode of damp and the maid-of all-work by day; and of damp, the maid-of-all- work, black beetles, cockroaches, crickets, and various other beasts of prey, by night. Ground floor: — portioned off into hall, shop, and back parlour ; in which latter apartment, eight feet by ten or so, meals were eaten, visitors received, the family, when "at EUSBAND. home," resided, and private business of all kinds was trans acted. First floor : — lodgers.

Second ditto : — more lodgers, and above heavenwards, the whole establishment, parents, children, guests, apprentices, slept, the gods themselves alone knew where or how. Every individual householder or householdress in Great Crowland Street paid his or her rent with the money of single or widowed ladies, city bachelors, or young brokers, who had taken the cares of matrimony on them all too early. Somebody was eternally giving or taking notice in Great Crowland Street ; landladies were perpetually requiring refer ences ; respectable shopkeepers were for ever indignantly refusing offers of " a week in advance," as a substitute for " a name as somebody knowed." " Furnished apartments " were hung up inside the fanlights above the hall doors ; exhibited to public view amongst the apples on the fruiterer's stall, and stuck in moist sugar behind the glass panes of the grocers' windows.

Apartments — furnished and unfurnished: rooms for single and double gentlemen : for ladies suffering from domestic bereavements — for ladies who had not yet knocked themselves down to anybody in the matrimonial market ; for those who had held on their lots till too late in the sale ; for those who had never had a high enough bid ; for others who had perhaps never been bid for at all ; for crape-veiled widows, and cat loving spinsters, and anxious mothers, and prudent heads of families, and testy elderly bachelors, and -third-rate spruce young dandies : apartments furnished and unfurnished for these — first floors and second floors ; bedrooms, with use of sitting-rooms ; sitting-rooms with sofa bedsteads ; lodgings with attendance, and lodgings without ; these announcements met the eye at every turn, and may be said to have constituted, with ledgers on week days, and a limited number of prayer books on Sundays, thc literature of Great Crowland Street, where lodgers were always coming, whence lodgers were always going.

Save perhaps from the house of Mrs. Hilton, whose "ladies TBE RICE BUSBAND. and gentlemen," as she colloquially styled them, always stayed long with her, for she was a shrewd, sensible woman, who after a trial would lower her terms to secure good payers, wisely considering that low cash settlements every Saturday morning were preferable to greater nominal profits at more uncertain intervals. It was a favourite maxim of the acute widow, that she knew as well as any one " how many yards it took to make a gownd ; " which proverb being freely trans lated into modern English, meant that she clearly understood what sort of lodgers best made up her rent. Not wandering stars and unsatisfactory birds of passage, who were in and out fifty times a day, and wore the stair carpeting into holes, and burnt coals ad libitum, and left the linen in a dilapidated condition, and kept some one sitting up half the night for them ; not strangers who came to see London, and to exhaust a servant's constitution and a land lady's patience in a week ; — but quiet, respectable " limited people " (by which rather obscure phrase Mrs. H. meant persons of limited incomes), who were sure to pay and stay.

To these Mrs. Hilton let her apartments gladly, and in the second floor set thereof Mr. Henry Bultin lived. He was a young man of large stature and small means ; clerk in an attorney's office, regular and peaceable enough in his conduct ; by no means clever, or likely to set either the Thames or any other river in the kingdom on fire ; he was not handsome, nor remarkable in any way (save in his own opinion), excepting for a certain lazy ambition, a full share of masculine vanity, and a selfish imagination, which he always kept at full work — building interminable Chateaux en Espagne. Truly there never was anybody more unlike an Adonis, and yet he fancied he was a lady-killer, and liked to walk about the most fashionable streets, stare into the handsomest carriages, look at the " pretty girls," as he carelessly called them, who reclined therein ; and spent whole evenings which might, one would think, have been better employed, in erecting particularly airy castles concerning his future, and inventing nice tales for his own edification, the heroes wherein were invariably Henry Bultin, and the heroines beautiful duchesses ; whilst the plots ECSEAND. usually were to the effect that heiress after heiress fell in love with him, which universal devotion of the female aristocracy he rewarded by eventually marrying one of the fairest of the lot in St. George's, Hanover Square, and breaking the hearts of the others — the curtain finally dropping upon a presentation-scene at Court, and the words " lived happily ever after."

It would take a volume to tell the number and variety of feats of heroism he performed sitting in Mrs. Hilton's second floor front, or walking to his employer's office in the City ; the run-away horses he stopped, the ladies he rescued from drown ing, the beautiful heiresses he discovered in beggary, and whom, through his legal knowledge, he was enabled to reinstate in their rightful position, he of course mounting fortune's ladder along with them ! Sometimes papas were grateful for the salvation of their daughters' necks, and pressed their hands and dowries upon him in quite an unprecedented manner ; but more frequently the loving creatures had property in their own right, and when mamma frowned, and papa stormed, cut the Gordian knot of true-love difficulty by driving off to Gretna and tying another knot there, which many a wife and husband has ere now discovered can be tied too hastily.

It may seem ridiculous to state that any man not a lunatic should spend his leisure moments in concocting such absurdities as these, but, like many another plodder on this earth, he was dissatisfied with his own condition, whilst unfitted to better it. He was too common-place to rise, too poor to save, and too self indulgent even to make the endeavour ; he disliked labour, and wished to have clerks under him instead of being clerk under any one ; he was lazily ambitious, as I have before said, and selfishly imaginative ; wherefore he sate in his shabbily-furnished room, and fancied himself in lordly chambers ; just as an indolent pauper inclined to gluttony might, instead of earning enough to purchase a feast, lie down in the sun, and dream of Christmas turkeys and endless plum-puddings falling ready cooked into his mouth.

Excepting his vanity, and a certain common shrewdness, exhibited not in acquiring money, but in making the most of it when he had got it, there was not much about him worth speaking of ; and having little or nothing to do with the pro gress of this story, he would never have been mentioned therein, had it not chanced that at the period of which I write, the occupation of looking out of window formed the business and amusement of all his leisure moments. Under the cir cumstances in which he was placed, this breach of street etiquette was certainly excusable, for of the female portion of creation — that portion, in fact, to which he exclusively devoted his attention — there was nothing " worth while " in Mrs. Hilton's establishment. That lady herself had a wig on her head, and crows' feet about her eyes, and though she was plump and active, time's finger was busy tracing the score of nearly sixty winters across her brow ; her daughters were respectable matrons, and her spinster niece looked older than her aunt, whilst the maid-of all-work squinted, and the " retired " gentlewoman who occupied the first floor, and of whom the niece afore-mentioned took care was room-ridden — if not bed-ridden — eighty, doting, troublesome, and unsociable.

There was clearly nothing in doors for Mr. Bultin to inflict tortures upon, or to make sentimental romances concerning ; wherefore no alternative remained for him but to direct his gaze across the street — which alternative he accordingly adopted. To explain what he saw there, it will better to commence a new chapter.

Chapter II. Over The Way

From the apartments wliich Mr. Henry Bultin occupied at reduced rates, upon condition (Mrs. Hilton always made endless conditions with her lodgers) that if a more eligible "party" offered, he would vacate the second floor front sitting room, whereof he had the use, he could see down into the windows of No. 72's ris-d-vis, No. 16 ; and the solitary individual who monopolized the genteel flat in that habitation completely engrossed Mr. Bultin's attention. There was something " queer " about her. What in fact first induced him to notice the lady at all, was that he had seen her — yes, that very identical, melancholy-looking woman driving through the park in a carnage drawn by a pair of unexceptionable greys, accompanied by, and talking earnestly to, a very fashionably-dressed personage, whose beauty, although on the wane, was still sufficient to entitle her to the appellation of " strikingly handsome."

There was a mournful expression on her face, too — a dissatisfied, crushed, blighted heart had traced its fretwork across her countenance. Sorrow on both their brows : grief written there in unmistakable characters ! Who could they be ? the one living in Great Crowland Street, the other apparently surrounded by every luxury. Who could they be ? Mr. Bultin's curiosity was excited. Many a day after that on which he first beheld his opposite neighbour in such a fashionable locality, when sent by his City employers to transact business at the other end of the town, he walked a full mile out of his way in the hope of catching another glimpse of that carriage, of learning to whom it belonged, of having a little light thrown on the position of its occupants ; all in vain. Equipage, livery, crest, footmen, horses, never would cross his path ; he could hear nothing about their owner.

She might be in the park every day for aught he knew to the contrary, only he never chanced to see her ; so, partly in pique, partly in despair, he took up the study of No. 16's first-floor lodger, and watched her during every spare moment with the vigilance of a cat. He was the only person in Great Crowland Street who ever did stare into other folks' windows : but then he had long idle summer evenings after he returned from the City ; he had no ledgers to look at — no lodgers to attend to — no taste for litera ture — no talent for flute-playing ; was not rich enough to be always with " other fellows ;" and besides, who knew ? the lady opposite might be a " good spec ;" so, morning and evening, week-day and Sunday, he devoted himself and a pocket telescope to her. Partially hidden by the window-curtains, he pursued his observations, but they also led to nothing.

At the end of thirteen weeks he found himself just as wise as he had been at starting. " She was a curious creature ! " that was the sum total of his discovery. " Curious and a puzzle." " Poor," he thought at first ; " lots of money," he decided afterwards. He watched her in the summer mornings at her unsocial breakfast, which consisted of a single cup of coffee and a slice of thin toasted bread : when that meal was concluded, she watered her geraniums, drew down the blinds, flung up the windows, and so shut out the sun and let in the air, just as Mr. Hemy Bultin departed for the City. When he returned thence, the blinds were up again, and she was dining ; and after the servant had removed the cloth, she drew a low ottoman near to the window, where, screened from all observation but his, she gazed alternately at the street with its many passers-by, its ceaseless traffic, its eternal human tide ebbing and flowing, flowing and ebbing for ever, and at the pages of some book she held in her hand.

It was poetry, Mr. Bultin concluded — but perhaps he was mistaken. For the spring-time of her life was past, and what had she to do with poetry ? what had a woman of peculiar habits, of uncertain age, who had eaten of sorrow and quaffed of the deep cup of mortal grief, to do with poetry ? What indeed ? Mr. Bultin, however, settled she was sentimental, and could be " got at," and accordingly he never ceased marvelling about and forming schemes concerning her. As twilight stole on, she closed the volume, and looked np at the sky, and thought — thought of what ? Mr. Bultin most earnestly desired to know that, but the book of the mind is the only one no curious eye may ever read, except by permission of the owner. That volume is hardly laid open once in a century by any mortal unto his fellow — seldom if ever perused from beginning to end by any save its possessor.