Here Below. A novel

Front matter

ROWLANDS' MACASSAR OIL, known for 84 years as the best and safest preserver ofthe hair; it contains no lead, mineral nor poisonous ingredients, and can now also be had in a GOLDEN COLOUR, for fair and golden-haired people and children. Avoid spurious worthless imitations, and ask for ROWLANDS' MACASSAR OIL, of 20, Hatton Garden, London. Sold everywhere in usual 4 sizes, 3s. 6d., 7s., ios. 6d. (equal to 4 small), and 21s. ■^-m.-.-iw imi-wil KEATING'S yBfltPMFP COUGH B^»l^»J.-£j LOZENGES, V^Li^B '"' -BEST AND SURE REMEDY POR l8cldinfins6'lM2/6| bronchitis. Sold in Tins, la. l^d. each, WONDERFUL INFANT'S MEDICINE. In these days of drugging infants to sleep when the poor children are suffering from Gripes, Wind, and Colic, "it is refreshing to know that Thomas Keating, the well-known Chemist, introduces a reliable cure (tbe relief is almost instant, the child at once ceasing to be troubled), guaranteed free from any Sedative in any form whatever — it is emphatically a pure and simple natural remedy, it is called NURSE EDDA'S BABY SOOTHER.

Price is. per bottle, of any Chemist, who will obtain it if not kept in his stock, or free by post for 12 stamps. THOMAS KEATING, CHEMIST, LONDON. THE GREAT MEDICINE -gSS2_*>s It gives instant relief in HEADACHE, SEA or BILIOUS Oœ1tW\ SICKNESS, CONSTIPATION, INDIGESTION, LASSI ffl|g_jt_r5Ya T0DE> HEARTBURN, and FEVERISH COLDS; prevents \5^LiLL~iJK? quickly relieves or cures the worst form of TYPHUS, N-%^g*^? SCARLET, and other FEVERS, SMALLPOX, MEASLES, ERUpTivE or SKIN COMPLAINTS, and various other altered conditions of the Blood. It is THE Cure for CHOLERA. The Testimony of Medical Gentlemen and the Professional Press has been unqualified in praise of LAMPLOUGH'S PYRETIC SALINE as possessing most important elements calculated to restore and maintain Health With perfect Vigour of Body and Mind.

It is effervescing and tasteless, and forms a most invigorating, vitalizing, and refreshing beverage. Dr. MORGAN,- " It furnishes the blood with its lost saline constituents." Dr.TURLEY.-"! found it act as a specific, in my experience and family, in the worst forms Soarlet Fever, no other medicine being required." 3>r, S. GIBBON (formerly Physician to the London Hospital).— "I have been in the habit of using it in private practice for many years. In hot climates it is of special value." Dr. SPARKS (Government Medical Inspector of Emigrants from the port of London) writes:— "I have great pleasure iu hearing my cordial testimony to its efficacy in the treatment of many of the ordinary and chronic forms of Gastric Complaints and other forms of Febrile Dyspepsia." -Dr. T. VT. DO"V*TSIN"G.— " I used it in the treatment of forty-two cases of Yellow Fever, and am happy to state I never lost a single case."

Part I. Chapter

I. With the day's mist falling heavily, and with half-thawed snow refrozen still beplastering the pavement, it was not a night to dawdle about at the corners of the streets. Yet there was one person who, interrupting himself in a swift swinging walk, stopped almost every time a crossing offered wider gaps of view to the upward gaze. His walk was straight, but velocity once arrested, his attitude became unsteady, like his half-closed eyes as they rested on the moon. ' Three quarters of her face brooding in tbe calm light of eternity,' he muttered, 'and one quarter darkened with the shadow of her monstrous self — one quarter of our life a bright blank of sleep, and three quarters shadowed with the darkness of our waking day.' He leant backwards against his stick, and so steadied himself. ' Now, am I drunk or not, to talk like that ? ' he continued thickly ; ' I am able to reflect that, when apostrophising the moon or the other orbs of night, I have always had a narrow escape of becoming incapable, but when we dream we sometimes comfort ourselves by saying, " I am asleep, and this is only a dream ; " and so, when we are drunk, we sometimes say, "Theythink I am drunk, but I can see how deluded they are by appearances, and I know that I am not drunk," and yet we are drunk all the while ; and so, in the same way — but I forget now where I was.

However, the question is — Am I drunk ? I don't know.' Then after further reflection he continued — ' Is the alcohol I have taken too strong for my will, or is my will, stiU under the control of reason, able to assert, unmistakably, that I am sober ? I am going to see. This quarter of the town is well adapted to the experiment.' He strode off with great swiftness, but with a regularity of pace and a steadiness of carriage that showed he was exerting his will to the one purpose at least of proving that he had still unimpaired physical control over himself. The quarter, as he said, was well adapted to his purpose. The pavements were wide and the streets straight and far-stretching, so that any one could be seen in the moonlight a long way off. It is a peculiar quarter of London. In contact with the cream of magnificence on the one side, and with the dregs of squalor on another, it shows signs of the proximity of both things.

In its stately squares and its spacious thoroughfares, sleek horses tossing the foam from rattling bits, carriages with coronets on their panels, spurred and cockaded henchmen ambling behind quality on horse back — these and other such signs point to the cream ; in the demure cross streets and back streets, unwashed doorsteps and window panes, dingy curtains in holes, and rotting blinds twisted or askew, medicine bottles filled with gin, and conveyed down area-steps by the intermediary of work-stained charwomen, beer-cans hung on area railings in readiness for the pot-boy, touzled heads stretched out of bedroom windows above, nodding to touzled heads over the way, unlaced figures leaning round portico-columns below, in wait for the costermonger's barrow or the coal-retailer's wagon — these are particulars which show a tendency towards the dregs.

Three marks, however, stamp the two diversities as being one growth — all is of the same modern design, all palpably new, and yet every part looks to be grown old before its time. Being in this last respect like the younger ones of those who on this night, as on every night, issued forth to take possession of the stately squares and spacious thoroughfares, the cross streets and back streets which the mounted quality and the cockaded henchmen, the yelling co_.termonger and the whistling pot-boy had left empty. They who issued forth sauntered on the pavement with the easy swagger of a happiness which had known no sorrow in the past, and had none to fear in the future, broke fitfully into snatches of con vivial and erotic song, and in such determined gaiety of spirit that, when by inadvertence a sigh came up instead of a note, they in stantly covered the mistake with a loud burst of laughter, and some times with a volley of oaths to more completely reassure each other.

As the midnight warnings of many a clock far and near signalled the instant coming of another day, some of these resolute promoters of gaiety, who had been aiding in the liveliness of other quarters, now began to return in hansom cabs, pealing, like their sisters on foot, with laughter and with song. They seemed to desire that all things animate and inanimate— the passers-by, the moon and stars, the mist, the lamps, the policemen — all should bear witness to their undisturbed enjoyment of the present hour, and their courageous indifference to the morrow as a matter not worth a thought — being, in truth, a thing which happens to everybody every day of his life. But this seeming abundance of joy found no reflection in the saddened face of the young man who was still striding along so swiftly, nor in the long-drawn sigh, ending in a quick derisive gasp — it could not be called a laugh — with which he started forward into a half-run, as if smitten with a secret pain, modulating this sudden increase of pace on coming face to face with the policeman, into the cheery stamping of a man suffering from nothing worse than a cold, and the gasp into a sympathising shudder at thq inclemency of the night. 'Good-night, sir,' said the policeman, in acknowledgment of this sign of human fellowship in so keen a frost. ' Good-night,' said the other.

He hurried on until he came to the door of a house with uncur tained windows. Fumbling for his latch-key, he curiously and unsteadily eyed certain bits of shavings and straw which littered the place where he was standing, then looking once more onthemoonlit sky, he said still somewhat thickly, — ' If I had been a man all this time ; if, instead of spasmodic fits of self-denial and labour too severe to last, and therefore too often lapsing into indolence and something worse, I had shown the staying-power of men of less pretension ; if I had soared less and plodded more, I might now have been of some help to him in the difficulties that somehow or another seem at length to be over whelming him. But so far, I am of no use to him or to anybody else; and I know that I am a reproach to myself. But I don't think I am drunk to-night, though.' Having at length found his key, he put jt into the door, remark ing, as he did so, with another unsteady look of curious inquiry, — ' I wonder what that litter of straw and shavings means?' Opening the door and stepping quickly inside, he suddenly drew back as though he had made a mistake, and had entered the wrong house.

His foot had encountered nothing but bare boards, and the sound echoed along the passage and up the staircase, and about the rooms above, as if the house was deserted and empty. In an instant the meaning of the straw and the shavings flashed upon him. The moving reflection of an ascending light at the end of the passage, and the labouring step and heavy breathing of some one coming up the stairs, however, were signs that he welcomed more than he had ever welcomed them before ; and presently a woman, bonneted and shawled, as if only waiting to give the keys up to any one willing to take them, appeared, bearing in her hand a guttering tallow candle stuck in a holder, hastily made out of a strip of deal and three large nails. ' Hush ! ' she said, pointing to a door on her right. ' They have made a clean sweep here, then, Mrs. Spike ? ' he whispered. 'Yes,' she whispered back ; ' I didn't like to tell you there was a man in possession, and this morning they came and took every stick except a chair I begged for him' — and here she again pointed to the door on her right — ' and a bit of beddin'.' 'When?' 'Just after you left this morning, Mr. Matthy.

He wouldn t send for you, and I didn't know myself whether to send for you or not. But now don't get worritin' over it to-night. Go in and help to cheer him up, poor. gen'l'm'n ! and I'll bring you up some supper ; and you mustn't get low-spirited, but look at things cheerful, which they'll all come right in time, no doubt. ' ' In time, no doubt,' he repeated, as if to himself. * Come now, Mr. Matthy, don't think about it to-night,' she con tinued. ' Just go in and sit by the fire, and I'll make you as com fortable as possible. I have fetched one of my chairs for you, and some knives and forks and a plate or two, and a towel, and so on ; so you'll be able to manage till I come in in the morning. But I thought you was never coming home to-night, and they'll think at home I'm lost, which Spike, he's been drinking again all day, and wasn't come in when I went to give them a look an hour ago.

We've all got our troubles, Mr. Matthy: you've got him, and I've got Spike.' He said nothing, but marvelled at the cheerful spirit of this daughter of toil and sorrow as she laboured down-stairs again. •

Chapter II

Then opening the door at his side, he entered a room, which, though bare of almost every article of furniture, was neither tenant less nor wholly cheerless. Before a briskly burning fire, with his feet on the naked hearth, where the fender should have been, sat a large-framed, gaunt old man, with a grand cast of face, in which expression was almost blotted out. He was listlessly stirring the blazing coals with a piece of half burnt wood. On the mantelpiece stood another guttering candle, supported in a candlestick similar in construction to the one carried by Mrs. Spike, and lighting up two handleless and cracked mugs, lent for the occasion by that helpful person, and a partly emptied bottle of spirits. The old man, turning round with a shaking head and a hiccuping voice, exclaimed, — ' Home at last, then, Mat ! — home at last, my dear boy !

A poor home this time, Mat, but not for long, my boy — not for long ! ' ' Never mind, uncle,' said the young man, laying aside his hat and overcoat, and then putting his hand kindly on the old man' s shoulder. ' Mind, Mat— mind ! ' shouted the old man, in a voice which began in hoarse defiance, but quickly ended in a drunken gurgle. ' Mind ! — / mind ! we mind ! — no, my boy, we'll beat 'em yet— beat ' em yet ! ' And then he broke into a crowing, hysterical laugh, and stamped his foot and shook his fist defiantly. ' But sit down, my dear — sit down ; here is a chair for you. Mrs. Spike fetched it purposely for you; an excellent good woman, Mrs. Spike — a good, worthy soul, Mat ; don't let me forget her, Mat, when my affairs are re-arranged; I wish to bear Mrs. Spike in mind — an honest, deserving, good body.' The young man, thrusting his hands into his pockets, and letting his chin sink on his breast, merely nodded in acquiescence. 'But come, come,' continued the other, 'help yourself, Mat, and join an old fellow in making the best of things for the present.' With a ready hand Matthew reached out to take the bottle ; but glancing at the old man's blotched face and swollen nose and lips and bloodshot eyes, he drew back with a shudder and filled up his mug with water only. 'That's right, Mat!' said the old man, thinking that the younger one had helped himself from the bottle. 'Now, let us make our selves comfortable.

And here comes Mrs. Spike, thoughtful and mindful as ever of all our little wants, with some supper for the dear boy, after his hard day's work.' And bearing in one hand a plate of meat, and in the other a jug of ale, and under her arm a loaf of bread, Mrs. Spike entered, and set out the young man's supper on the further corner of the. chimney-piece. Telling her to take away the ale for her own refreshment — an order to which Mrs. Spike gave preliminary effect by dexterously withdrawing the measure under her shawl — Matthew stood up, and with his back to the old man, ate from the plate with an apparent zest, which might have been mistaken for hunger, but which was in reality nothing more than a desire to master the fumes that were rising to his head. A copious draught of water was swallowed to the same end.

Mrs. Spike, going up to the old man, said in a soothing voice, — 'Now don't drink any more to-night, there's a dear good gen'l'm'n ; but go to bed and get the trouble off your mind. When things is at their worst, it's a sure sign they're going to take a turn.' '' A turn, Mrs. Spike ! ' exclaimed the old man, assuming a stiffened posture, although not a steady one. ' A turn ! there will be a turn ! — in the morning ! — by the first post ! Wait till the morning ! Mat, Mrs. Spike, friends, all who are good and true to me in my extremity! and you, Francis, villain, scoundrel, liar, who have jockeyed me and hunted me ! — wait till the morning ! The morning will bring a turn you little dream of ! ' A turn he little dreamt of — such as, if it had been whispered to him, he would have dropped on the hearth at the thought of.

Finding that her remark had thrown him into this paroxysm of rage and defiance, Mrs. Spike whispered Matthew a cheerful good night, and withdrew. The old man, unobserved by the younger one, who had still his back towards him, poured out half a mugful of the spirit, and diluting it with half that quantity of water, drank it off without a. pause. Then when Matthew, after another but smaller draught of water, sat down, the other cried out in the high-pitched quaver of intoxication, — ' Come, Mat, my boy, fill up, and we'll face the night out, until the letter comes ; until the letter comes which is to make our fortunes ! ' The young man smiled sadly at the mention of a letter. For of late his relative had seemed to look to the post-office for the fulfil ment of his dearest hopes. But the post-office had so far failed him.

Letters it had brought him — letters in abundance ; but not letters of the sort. he was feverishly waiting for : letters from. the money lender, who, having advanced him a part of fifty pounds on a bill at four months, and having carefully tended it until its second renewal, when it had ripened into a goodly fruit of one hundred and fifty pounds, had now, at the end of the period of its last renewal, that is, at the end of a twelvemonth, relieved the acceptor of all further trouble about it, by selling off at half its value the three hundred pounds' marketable worth of furniture, which had served as security. Letters from persons whose subject or whose style was so unpalatable, that the old man cursed their missives as he read them, and straightway thrust them between the bars. Letters of his own writing, which had missed their aim and came back through the returned-letter office, — of these, so many, that the postman of the beat began to think the old gentleman was seeking to renew acquaintance with the friends of his youth, now that they were all dead and buried.

So, when the old man spoke of a letter coming to put all things right, the younger one smiled sadly and said nothing. His com panion, as if reading his thoughts, turned sharply, and exclaimed, — ' Ah ! but this letter will be different from all the others. This letter, Mat, will be the means of restoring me in some measure to the position that is rightly mine, and you too. But when I am dead and gone, Mat, you will need no help from me, you will be a rich man.' In this there was nothing to excite the young man's attention; he had heard it too many times of late. ' When I am dead and gone, Mat, and all my shame is buried with me — ' In this there was enough to make Matthew turn round with a look of inquiry ; but, regarding once again in the old man's face the unseemly marks of that weakness of his which was cause enough for shame, and for the worst shame— the shame of a man who had suffered bright reason to succumb to a gross and growing appetite — he relapsed into his previous attitude of listless indifference. 'When that takes place, you will be a rich man, Mat.

Mean while I must live— and as I ought to live—' and now again he stamped his feet, and threw out his clenched fists in defiance—' as I ought to live, in comfort ! And you must live, Mat, and without serving a master, boy; do you hear? I shall insist this time on nothing less than a thousand a-year; and this time I shall take care not to forestall it, Mat ; and I shall allow you something handsome out of it, you rascal ; do you hear? ' But the other showed no sign of awakened interest. ' When I am dead and buried, and all my shame is buried, with me,' continued the old man, 'then, Mat, you can step forward at last, and then you will be a rich man. Then, instead of a thousand, you will have many thousands a-year ! Ha ! you dog, what do you say to that ? — what do you say to that, eh ? ' Matthew still sat uninterested, striving not to yawn.

He was considering what argument would the soonest induce his companion to lie down on the mattress in the corner, and try to sleep. ' But you won't wish your old — but you won't wish the old man dead before his time, Mat, for all that, eh ? I sha'n't stand in your path much longer, Mat. You will be kind to the old man, Mat, while there's a breath in him, eh ?' Here the tears of intoxication trickled down his puffed and wrinkled cheeks. ' Kind to you, uncle ! Why, if you were gone, I should stand alone, without a single relative by blood or marriage the wide world through ! ' ' Poor boy ! poor boy ! so he would ! ' ' Don't talk of dying, uncle ; only rely — ' and here Matthew's voice grew as gentle as a woman's — 'only rely less on your dangerous friend the bottle, there, and more on your own stout heart ; and then, shoulder to shoulder, we'll fight it through to the end ! ' The spirit of this sentiment was so much in accordance with the old man's present mood of defiance and self-assertion, that he instantly sprang to his feet and shouted out, — 'Aha! shoulder to shoulder we'll meet them!

Do you hear, villain ? And you, his hirelings — all of you ! — shoulder to shoulder we'll meet you, and be d — d to you ! ' In an instant his face blenched to a deathly whiteness, his eyes rolling up till they looked like a blind man's, and his mouth twitching spasmodically. Swaying to and fro, he might have fallen headlong into the fire, but Matthew caught him in his arms, and carefully assisted him to the mattress on the floor. ' A spasm in the chest, Mat, that's all. I can't have had too much, my boy, can I ? — two of us drinking, and the bottle not empty yet.' His companion did not think it necessary to mention that he himself had drank nothing out of the bottle, but gently lowered the old man on to the bed, and threw over him such coverings as he could find. ' Good-night, Mat ; and God bless you, my dear boy !

You will be a rich man when I am dead, Mat — ' Matthew put something additional under the pillow, to raise it as much as possible ; and then, wrapping him self in his overcoat and a railway-rug, he took the old man's vacated chair as being the easier of the only two seats in the room, and prepared himself to think. ' A rich man when I am dead and gone, Mat,' murmured the old man ; 'when I am dead and gone, and all my shame is buried with me.' Gazing into the fire, and thinking sadly over his own past — a past in which much self-denial and industry had, so far, been rendered abortive by much indolence and folly— Matthew every now and then found the sleeper's closing words working themselves into the woof of his own thoughts ; at which moments he would start up, and rousing himself with a shake, put the fire together, and then, with another shake, fall back into another uneasy train of reflection. 'Have I, all this time,' ran his thoughts, 'while fondly dreaming that I could mingle ambitious toil and idle folly with impunity — have I, all this time, been surely working out for myself meet punish ment ?

Have I, all presumptuously aiming with the highest, and all as grossly wallowing with the lowest — have I — But don't touch that bottle ; throw it away ; some of them have been putting poison in it for a joke — But look ! — why, she has drunk some of it, and new I hardly know her ! Her eyes are gone, and she smiles like a skeleton. Well, she always did say her teeth were her own — And there's my Past turned up again ! It looks like me when I was a boy; that's because I was looking at an old portrait this morning. You often dream of what you see in the day — But now the Past fades into the Future, as it always does, and now I am old and wrinkled, and bent and bald ; and how pale and blear-eyed I am, and my head shakes so ! But drink, they say, ages a man terribly fast. And that is how I shall be remembered, when I am dead and gone — and all my shame is buried with me — no, his shame — why not mine ?

Shame enough in pretending at endurance and lofty aims ! O God ! make me better than I have been ! How shattered and blotched and shrunken I look, and my head and limbs shake as with the palsy! Thank God it fades now, and sleep is coming ! When the struggle is over, and the weary waiting is all past, will death come then as sleep comes now ? — steeping the senses in this soft oblivion — this balm of ease — or — '

Chapter III

And, as it seemed to him, a moment afterwards he started up in what he took for the natural darkness of the night, every limb shaking, and stiffened and cramped with the cold, and with the sharp concussion of the postman's knock sounding in his ear. Guiding himself by a pencil of light, which entered through the keyhole, he stepped into the passage ; and in the dull glimmer of a winter's morning, made duller still by a long accumulation of dust on the panes of the fanlight, he went to the letter-box. The bitter smile which broke out on his face as he read the superscription on the only letter the box contained, softened with pity as he thought of the old man he had left in the room. ' Another blank,' he said. The printed part of the superscription on the envelope showed that the enclosure was nothing more than a letter returned by the post-office.

Going back into the darkened room, with the letter in his hand, he quietly opened the shutters, and then turned to look at the old man. Looked at the old man, and still looked — with a sudden sinking of the heart, and with a sudden moisture of the palms, and with a faintness creeping over him. With an effort he ran to the mattress, and stooped down over the pallid figure lying there ; felt its temples, placed his hand upon its breast, tried its wrists — all in haste and horror. It needed but a touch, however, to tell that the earthly machine had stopped for ever. He recoiled with a deep-drawn sigh. ' I might have been kinder to him,' he thought. All the kindness he had ever shown the dead man — and it had been shown ungrudgingly and in no spirit of calculation — he would often and often be glad to think of in the time to come.

All the neglect he had ever shown him — and this had been shown rarely and only in thoughtlessness — he might often regret but he could never repair. The kind words he would now have spoken must go unspoken for ever. Thrusting the letter into an inner pocket of his coat, he ran out of the house, meeting Mrs. Spike in the act of letting herself in by the area-gate. Having made the startled woman comprehend the truth, he himself sped off for the doctor. This gentleman, leaving the reception of his early patients to his assistant, hurried forth in answer to the summons with his customary speed ; which, being always the highest he could attain without running, could not fail to be sufficient now when it was certain to be quite as effective as that of electricity itself in overtaking the life which was the object of it.

The doctor, who had beckoned in a policeman as he entered the house, briefly inspected the stiffened figure on the mattress, and then said to Matthew, — ' Just what I told him to expect with that heart of his, and ' — nodding in the direction of the bottle on the chimney-piece — 'with that little habit of his.' 'Goin' to have the body removed or left here, sir?' asked the policeman, who was jotting down, from personal knowledge, the name and address of the deceased, as well as the precise time at which an official air began to be thrown over the case by his own presence there. ' Left here,' replied Matthew. ' Now, if you two gen'l'm'n have got anything to attend to out-of doors,' observed Mrs. Spike, who, though shedding tears of pity, was too accustomed to death and other sorrow to forget the need of the hour; 'and if the constable will keep watch for ten minutes, I'll go and get help and do what is necessary — poor old gen'l'm'n ! This was all the help that the morning when it came had brought him.