Fortune's Gate

Front matter

Oliver W.C. II NOVELS BY ALAN SAINT AUBYN Crown 8vo, cloth extra, $s. 6d. each ; post 8vo, illustrated boards, 2s. each. A FELLOW OF TRINITY. With a Note by Wendell Holmes, and a Frontispiece. THE JUNIOR DEAN. ORCHARD DAMEREL THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S IN THE FACE OF THE WORLD. TO HIS OWN MASTER. THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS. Fcap. 8vo, cloth boards, is. 6d. each. THE OLD MAID'S SWEETHEART. MODEST LITTLE SARA. Crown 8vo, cloth, gilt top, 6s. FORTUNE'S GATE. London : CHATTO & WINDUS, m St. Martin's Lane, BY ALAN ST. AUBYN AUTHOR OF "A FELLOW OF TRINITY," "THE MASTER OF ST. benedict's," "the junior dean," etc LONDON CHATTO & WINDUS CONTENTS CHAl'TKJt PAGE I. On the Threshold ... ... ... ... i II. St. Gregory's ... ... ... ... ... 10 III. Sweet Girl-graduates ... ... ... ... 19 IV. Philippa burns her Boats ... ... ... 34 V. Gage Eokewode ... ... ... ... ... 45 VI.

A Cambridge Freshman ... ... ... 53 VII. " The Old Stable-jacket ".. . ... ... ... 67 VIII. A Newnham Tea ... ... ... ... So IX. " Eyes in the Boat ! " ... ... ... ... 90 X. A Boating Luncheon ... ... ... ... 99 XI. A Lost Opportunity ... ... ... ... 112 XII. The Pedlar's Arms ... ... ... ... 128 XIII. A Sprig of Heliotrope ... ... ... ... 140 XIV. The Lent Races ... ... ... ... 148 XV. Twyford Place ... ... ... ... ... 157 XVI. Gage Eokewode makes up his Mind ... ... 176 XVII. Under the Willows ... ... ... ... 192 XVIII. May Week ... ... 203 XIX. Mr. Peyton's Dream ... ... ... ... 212 XX. Baitsbite ... ••• ••• ••• •■• CONTENTS. VI CHAPTEK PAGE XXT. "Unto this Last" ... ... ... ... 231 XXII. "My Wedding Gown!" ... ... ... 239 XXIII. "Good-bye! Good-bye!"... ... ... ... 248 XXIV. Ye Merrte Boyes ... ... ... ... 257 XXV.

"Forgive us our Trespasses!" ... ... ... 268 XXVI. In the College Backs ... ... ... 277 XXVII. Peggy finds her Vocation ... ... ... 290 XXVIII. A Great Discovery ... ... ... ...

Chapter I. On The Threshold

Andrew Clay came up to Cambridge upon a small exhibition from a country grammar school. His people could ill afford to send him up; they were much too poor to bear the cost of keeping him for three years at the University. With only that small exhibition to help him, he ought never to have come up at all. He used to speak of the poor things at home, when he had been up at Cambridge a term, and had caught the tricks of speech of other men, as his " people.'" His "people" consisted of a widowed mother of very slender means, and two fond, foolish sisters. If his sisters had not been fond and foolish, he would never have come up to Cambridge. He would have gone behind a counter and weighed up Epsom salts, or sat on a high stool in a lawyer's office, or totted up figures in a bank. He would have done as his fathers had done before him ; he would have carried on the family traditions.

The Clays for generations had been knights of the quill, or the pestle and mortar: they had never belonged to a learned profession. n These things were not good enough for Andrew. He scorned the idea of a bank or of a lawyers office, and he hated the pestle and mortar. He had had a turn at it early in life, when his father was alive. He had stood grinding away at the pestle and mortar by the hour : he could never look back upon that miserable time without a shudder. Augustus Clay, his father, was an apothecary in the High Street of Meldreth. He had invented a pill — a wonderful pill. There were very few diseases that it would not cure, but it was a troublesome pill to make, to concoct rather. The ingredients took a great deal of knocking up. When the pills were being prepared, the pestle and mortar business was going on all day long.

The hammering and pounding in the back yard, behind the shop, deafened everybody in the neighbourhood. Andrew took his turn at the pestle with the rest : and he hated the pills accordingly. Augustus Clay died suddenly, and the secret of the pills died with him. There were no more made after his death. When the stock was exhausted there was an end to the pills. His widow gave up the business — a woman couldn't make up prescriptions and dispense drugs — and retired on a small income. Her husband had put by a little money, a few thousands, during the years he had stood behind that counter in the High Street. He had denied himself every luxury in life, every comfort indeed, that his wife and children might have something to fall back upon when he died. But with all the saving and the pinching, he had not neglected the education of his children.

Philippa, the second girl, had already taken half a dozen " groups " in the Cambridge Locals, and was head student at the High School ; and Andrew, the only boy, was in the sixth form of the Grammar School, which was the pride and glory of Meldreth. He won a small exhibition, a very small one of thirty pounds a year, a few months after his father died, and on this slender preferment he came up to Cambridge. The girls would hear of nothing else but his coming up to the University. They were sure that he had great talents, that he was going to do big things. He wouldn't have won that magnificent reward if he were not going to do big things. It was an earnest of the future. His women-folk believed in him: they were ready to make any sacrifices for his advancement in life. They were ready to work their fingers to the bone, as they put it, with sisterly exaggeration, to live upon bread and water, to wear darned gloves and shabby hats for the rest of their natural lives, if Andrew could go up to Cambridge.

There was no resisting this appeal. If any one were to blame for this unusual step, this storming of the social ladder, it was Philippa and her sister Lucia. Nothing would shake their belief that the brother, of whom they were so justly proud, was intended for the Church. Mrs. Clay was not a whit behind her daughters. She had un bounded belief in Andrew. She thought no future too great for him. The Church meant to her simple mind, not a curacy of a hundred and fifty pounds a year, and, by-and-by, a small — a very small — living in a country parish ; it meant for her, at least for Andrew, a bishopric at the least. A wide vista of preferment leading straight up to a shovel hat and gaiters. She had no doubt about her boy's qualifications. If he had possessed all the talents and the virtues his mother saw in him, he would hardly have stopped at a bishopric : he would have mounted a step higher.

When that small school exhibition was awarded to Andrew, Mrs. Clay took counsel with her friends on the important step before she made up her mind. She had not a great many friends in Meldreth to consult. When she gave up the drug business in the High Street, and went to live in a villa on the outskirts of the town, people ceased to remember her. If they met her in the street, they did not recognize her : they generally looked the other way. They were afraid, perhaps, that she would claim equality ; that she would presume upon her position. She was educating her children so much above their station that there was really no saying where she would stop. First on her list of friends, the fond mother went to consult the Rector of the parish. She did not want any money from him, only a little advice.

She had not come to the rectory with a collecting card or a subscription list in her hand : she was carrying her best parasol, and she had put on a new pair of gloves. She was a meek, nervous little woman, but the lace parasol and the new gloves gave her confidence. The lace parasol had seen a good deal of service, but it had not kept off much sunshine during the twenty-five years Mrs. Clay had earned it. It was new when she was married, twenty-five years ago ; she had carried it to church every Sunday, when summer came round, ever since. It had not been " put up " for several summers past (something had gone wrong with the wires), but she carried it all the same. There was a good deal of pre tence about Mrs. Clay, and the parasol was part of the pretence. Her silk gown was threadbare and shabby, like the parasol ; it had been turned and altered to the fashion year after year ; and the feathers nodding in her black bonnet had been dyed and curled it would be difficult to say the exact number of times.

Augustus Clay's widow did not spend her husband's hard-earned savings on herself. She denied her poor lean body everything that it craved for in food or finery ; she had practised self-denial so long that it had become the habit of her life. When the Rector came into the room, and saw his humble parishioner in her nodding plumes, sitting with her back to the window, he thought it was a lady visitor, and he came forward to greet her with his blandest smile and his nicest manner. He found out his mistake presently. Mrs. Clay told him her errand in a few words. She thought she was sure of his sympathy. Her boy was going into the Church. What more was needed to secure the Rector's help and sympathy ? "Andrew has won a small exhibition worth about thirty pounds a year, you say, and you propose on that to send him to Cambridge ?

" the Rector said bluntly. Mrs. Clay bowed her meek head. "He has fine talents, and he has always been an in dustrious lad," she said, speaking in her deferential way ; "and if he can win a small college scholarship, or an exhibition of one of the City Companies, he will cost me nothing, nothing but his clothes and his journeys, and he will get an university education, and be able to enter the Church. It was always his dear father's desire that he should go into the Church." The Rector winced. He hated to hear ignorant people talk of "going into the Church," as if they hadn't been in it all their lives ! "I wonder that he did not rather desire that his son should follow his own trade. It was a capital business, a most respectable business. I have always thought it a pity you gave it up. Andrew would have found plenty of scope for his talents in it — and he would have had to pass an examination; his Latin would not have been thrown away."

The Rector spoke unfeelingly ; he did not put a grain of sympathy into his voice. He had no patience with this commonplace woman's ambition for her son. His own boy had been at Cambridge for a year, and he had already cost him over two hundred pounds, and this audacious woman proposed to send her son up with his small exhibition ! "Andrew dislikes the business," she said humbly; "he would never do any good in it. If the secret of the pills his father made his money by had not died with him, it would have been different. My poor husband always said there was a fortune in the pills. He used to call his discovery, the secret of the pill, ' Fortune's Gate.' We found the paper in his cash-box after his death, but it was written in cipher; and he left no key to it." " There are other gates to fortune, as Andrew will find if he makes up his mind to succeed ; he will get on very well without pill, and I am sure we shall all be glad to support him for his father's sake," the Rector said in his pompous way.

" Hadn't you better go home and think it over, Mrs. Clay ? It will cost you a great deal to send your son to Cambridge, besides the exhibition — something like a hundred and fifty to two hundred pounds a year. I have a son there myself, so I speak from experience." Mrs. Clay's eager face changed colour ; if he had been looking at her the Rector would have seen that her mouth trembled. "I have thought of the cost," she said quickly; "but if he gets a scholarship, a small scholarship — there are so many given away — I shall be able to manage it." " Oh, if you have got the money to spare, that makes all the difference. I thought, with your two girls at home, it would be rather hard upon you. Of course you know your own business best." "Philippa is going out; there will be only one at home," she explained eagerly.

" We shall be able to manage it very well if Andrew can only win another scholarship." "I should have thought it would have been much better for Andrew to go out, and for his sisters to have stayed at home ; but of course you know best. You must remember that he will have to wait until he is twenty three years old before he can be ordained, before he can earn anything. And even then he will not earn as much as an ordinary clerk. A profession does not pay nearly so well as a trade. It is almost impossible to live by a profession, unless one has a private income." He could not say more to dissuade her. Mrs. Clay shook her head. "Andrew would never succeed in a trade," she said meekly. "He has made up his mind to go into the Church." "If he has made up his mind, there is nothing more to be said," the Rector said in his unsympathetic way.

"Has he any relations in the Church who could help him ? Let me see, your father was " He knew very well what her father was : he had not been dead so many years. He had been clerk at St. Saviour's, his own parish church; he had said "J men''' to his and his predecessor's prayers for over fifty years. The fashion for saying "Amen" had gone out at St. Saviour's for some time, and the old clerk had passed away with the fashion. Mrs. Clay coloured. She wasn't ashamed of her father's "profession" — it wasn't a trade, at any rate — but she smiled weakly at the Rector's delicate allusion. " Oh yes, I remember," he said, recollecting himself — as if he hadn't known quite well all the time — "perhaps some members of your husband's family, then. His father, I knew his father quite well, a most respectable man, a saddler; he had a shop in High Street.

Perhaps some other member of the family, then." Mrs. Clay shook her meek head. "There was only one," she said — "and he was a Bishop." She came away smiling from her interview with the Rector ; she made him one of her very best curtsies when she came away. She was always ready to curtsy and humble herself for the sake of her children. She could bear the rudeness and arrogance of her superiors, she could put up with becoming meekness the scorning and despising of her betters, if she could gain thereby any small advantage for her children. Mrs. Clay went away after that interview smiling. She had got all she had come for. She carried away with her, in a black pocket-book, half a dozen of the Rector's signatures appended to as many different documents, and some autograph letters of recommendation to various City Companies.

It had been a very good morning's work, she told her self when she took off her new gloves outside the rectory gate ; her visit had not been wasted. The Rector had been clay in her hands after that re ference to the Bishop. He knew the Bishop — a Colonial Bishop — quite well, afar off, but he did not know until that moment that he was his humble parishioner's first cousin.

Chapter II

st. Gregory's. When Andrew Clay came up to Cambridge he went in for the college scholarship that his fond parent had set her mind upon — and failed. He was very near winning it. He was only beaten by a few marks; but the scholarship was given to another. There was no partiality shown at St. Gregory's. If a rich man and a poor man went in for the examination, and the rich man scored the higher number of marks, he got the benefit of the scholarship. The circumstances of a candidate were not taken into account. It may not have meant very much to a man who came up with four or five hundred a year, this additional fiftv, sixtv, or seventy pounds, the emolument of the scholarship, but it meant a great deal to a poor student who came up on thirty. No doubt the design of the pious founder was carried out, and the credit of the college was maintained.

That little fiction about the encouragement of poor scholars at the Universities has disappeared, or almost disappeared ; there is a new reading of old bequests as well as of other things — an up-to-date reading. The man who carried off the scholarship at St. Gregory's was the son of a wealthy landowner. He came up on an allowance of five hundred a year. He had scored a dozen marks above the son of a poor apothecary, but the running had not been quite equal. He had had every advantage in the way of education. He had all his life had the best teachers and the best coaches that money could provide, and he had been sent to the best, the most expensive public school in England. Nothing had been spared. It ought to have been easy running for him with a raw lad from a country grammar school, who had picked up a smattering of Greek and Latin between weighing up pennyworths of Epsom salts and pounding away at the ingredients of a quack nostrum.

There was little credit to the successful scholar, if the Cæsarian motto applied to him, Veni, vidi, vki. He could scarcely have done less. Perhaps the dons of St. Gregory's pi'eferred the society of rich men ; it was a curious fact that there was not a poor scholar in the college. There were half a dozen sizars, with a beggarly pittance of twenty-five pounds a year, who "kept" in the garrets, and were looked down upon by everybody. Andrew did not even get a sizarship ; he came up to Cambridge on his school exhibition alone. He was inclined to throw it up sometimes, and tiy his fortune in the Colonies, but the girls would not hear of it. His mother was disappointed, but not discouraged. She did not let Andrew see how disappointed she was. " You did your best, dear," she said when she saw him trying to keep back the tears, when he told her of his failure, " you could not do more : you deserved to succeed ; you will be sure to do better next time."

Next time did not mean another college examination — it meant a voluntary gift of fifty or sixty pounds a year from a City Company. There were a number of City Companies — The Tin tacks-Makers' Company, the Worshipful Company of Scissors-Grinders, and a score of others — who bestowed munificent sums yearly towards the augmentation of small scholarships, or for the maintenance of poor scholars at the Universities. There were all these gifts going begging, all waiting to be poured into the lap of needy scholars. Mrs. Clay took down her list of "London Charities," and began to read through the names of the companies who had scholarships to give away. There were so many, she did not know how to pick and choose. It was a case of embarras dc richesse. She wrote to at least a dozen City Companies at once, and had a dozen printed forms of application sent down.

The way seemed quite easy ; nothing to do but to fill up the forms and get the money. Nothing could be simpler than the questions asked and the answers required — age, circumstances, qualifications, testimonials. There was not a hitch anywhere ; all the questions could be answered satisfactorily, and the testimonials would be forthcoming. There was only one drawback — the papers could not be sent in until the applicant had been at least one term in residence at the University. The initial difficulty must be surmounted before the helping hand could be reached out. Andrew's mother was so sanguine of her son's success that she did not let this stand in the way. She packed him off to Cambridge, when October term came, on the strength of his school exhibition, and in the blissful anticipation of that Scissors-Grinders' scholarship he was to succeed to by-and-by.

Philippa went up to Cambridge with her brother at the beginning of the October term. Being a freshman he went up quite early, before the other men came up. He had certain examinations to pass, and he had to see about his rooms. Philippa came up on business of her own. She came up ostensibly to " settle " Andrew in his rooms ; but she had business of her own besides. She had business at one of the women's colleges. She had won at a recent examination at the High School at Meldreth a fifty-pound scholarship, to be held at either Girton or Newnham — fifty pounds per annum for three years. Fifty pounds a year, magnificent as the sum was for a girl to win, a girl without any helps or advantages, would not, as she was well aware, enable her to take up her residence at either of these " seminaries of sound learning."

Philippa had come down to look about her ; to see how far her fifty pounds would go. There was an examination going on, which she hadn't thought worth while to mention at home, the day after her arrival in Cambridge. It was an examination for a science scholarship worth sixty-five pounds a year, which could be held at either of the colleges for women. Philippa Clay ought to have known something about science. AVhat was the good of being the daughter of an apothecary, if she didn't know something about the properties of an acid salt? to say nothing of the practical training she had had in the preparation of the family pill. It was a silver-coated pill, and Philippa used to do the silver-coating. It was not very hard to do : only to shake the pills about in a basin, until a sufficient quantity of silver adhered to them.

If her father had left a key to that cipher which enumerated the ingredients of the pill, and the propor tions for the mixing, she would have been coating them now. Neither she nor her brother would have come up to Cambridge. It was all due to the loss of the key to the cipher. It was not a very long examination, and it did not take up a great deal of her time. When she came out of the laboratory at Newnham, where the practical part of the examination was conducted, she did not take a consti tutional across Grantchester meadows, as the other girls did, to prepare them for the next day's work ; she ran about the streets of Cambridge all the afternoon, buying pots and pans for her brother's room. It was lucky for him that Philippa had come up : he could never have got together all those housekeeping items without her — got them together and paid for them.

He had only a garret to furnish, and he had taken off a quantity of things from the late tenant, but he might have been setting up housekeeping for the number and variety of items that his bed-maker enumerated as being indispensable. The brooms and brushes were the last straw : Philippa would have remonstrated, but Andrew implored her to submit. He was dreadfully afraid of his bed-maker. He would have spent his quarter's allowance on brooms rather than have sunk in the estimation of Mis. Potts. The college valuation for the bare garret — there was a slip boarded off it for a sleeping room — was preposterous. Besides this, there was a terminal charge for gas, and water, and rates, and knife and shoe cleaning, and carpet beating, and chimney-sweeping. These were initial expenses ; they did not amount to very much, only a mole-hill to most men, but a mountain to the poor pensioner who had come up on his small exhibition.

When Philippa had bought all the things he required, and had laid in a little stock of groceries, and paid the bills, she had only a few shillings left. She had not enough money to take her back to Meldreth. She blamed her self for not taking a return ticket. Andrew would have had to go short; he would have had to do without some of the brooms, if she had had the forethought to take a return ticket. She did not blame herself long. The return ticket was not wanted after all. She came out at the head of the list of candidates for the Science Scholarship. It was worth sixty-five pounds a year, and it could be held at either Girton or Newnham. It was an unlooked-for success. There were tears in Philippa's eyes when she came into her brother's room the morning that the result was made known. Her cheeks were flushed, and her heart was beating, and her eyelashes were wet.

She did not look at all like the same girl who had been buying the pots and pans the day before. Success had changed her completely. Andrew did not see the change, but he saw her red eyes. "I wish you wouldn't come here crying, Pip," he said in an aggrieved voice. " All the fellows in the court must have noticed it, and Mrs. Potts is coming in to clear away the things presently." He thought more of what Mrs. Potts would say than of Philippa's success. "Oh, never mind Mrs. Potts !" Philippa said, with the tears brimming over. " Only think what a great thing it is, Drury. Think, — a hundred and fifteen pounds a year ! I can manage on — on something like eighty ; the fees at Newnham are only seventy-five, and some extras for laboratory fees and other things. Eighty will cover all, and we shall have thirty-five pounds a year to spend.

You will be able to join the college clubs now, and have a blazer like the other men. We will order it to-day." She spoke as if Andrew had a share in her success, as if they had won it between them. " Oh, hang it ! " he said, shaking off her clinging arms — she had thrown her arms about his neck in her eagerness, in the joy of imparting her great news — "I don't want any of your money, Pip ; I shall have something like sixty pounds a year of my own when I get that Tintacks' exhibition. I shall be sure to get that or the Scissors-Grinders'." He was very confident about the City Companies' exhibition. He had already made an arrangement to change his rooms, when it came in, to go down a story lower. " But, meanwhile, Drury, you will want a lot of things : it can't come in for a long time, and you will have my scholarship money to fall back upon.

You can take up boating as soon as you like. You are sure to get your Lent colours if you begin to tub at once. Mr. Rokewode was telling me you were a capital oar, you had such a long stroke." Mr. Rokewode was a man who kept on the same staircase, and Philippa had met him two or three times in her brother's rooms. She was laughing and crying all at once, she was full of happy excitement. Her eyes were shining behind the wet lashes, and her cheeks were crimson, and her pretty brown hair was blown all over her face. She didn't crimp it or curl it with red-hot pincers before a looking-glass, as other girls did ; she let it go its own way — a very delightful way — and it wildered over her fore head beneath the brim of her shabby hat; it was never very tidy, and it was untidier than ever this morning.

Philippa hadn't stayed to brush it back, she was in too great a hurry to impart her wonderful news ; she had put on her hat directly she heard it, and had run all the way from Newnham to St. Gregory's. She was quite out of breath with running when she came panting across the college court, with her wet eyes and her hair blown about her face. " I hope Rokewode didn't see you this morning, Pippa. You might be more particular when you come here among my friends. You might have stayed to do your hair before you came, and not come running upstairs in that breathless way. The fellows who keep below will think there's something the matter." " But there is something the matter, you silly boy ! " Pippa said gleefully. She was so entirely happy, she didn't mind being snubbed. "There's sixty-five pounds a year the matter !