In the Meshes

Chapter I

A hot July day was drawing to a close. Very late in July it was, and London was emptying fast. The conti nental expresses were crammed to suffocation, and the rolling stock of the home companies was scarcely sufficient to afford carriages for the thousands who were all madly anxious to depart at once. The park was beginning to look utterly deserted ; vehicles had vanished as if by magic, and a few stray pedestrians and an occasional policeman had the walks and flower borders to themselves ; the windows in the houses of all the principal streets and squares were shuttered up, and the flowers on the balconies were drooping untended ; the whole of the West End presented that remarkable appearance which strikes one freshly at the close of every season, and to which some how or other the eye never becomes accustomed, — the appearance of an abandoned city, whose inhabitants have been forced by some dire necessity to flee from it.

But a very short walk is sufficient to remove this im pression, and when you have passed up Regent Street, gone down Mortimer Street, and found yourself in Tottenham Court Road and its adjacent streets, you will have reached a region where the difference between May and August will only be noted by the higher temperature, and the odour of decaying strawberries and cherries, instead of the smell of more vulgar vegetables. And what a dreary region it is ! — even when you have passed out of those thoroughfares where trade seems to be principally carried on in coster mongers' barrows and hucksters' stalls. The melancholy houses in the so-called respectable streets are chiefly conspicuous for the sordid grime of their external aspect, their thrifty occupiers having from the beginning avoided those coats of paint which would need renew ing, and having allowed the London smoke to settle for years upon their brick surfaces, until amidst the prevail ing black it would require the eye of an expert to dis cover what the original colour was.

Rawson Street, where the prologue of my story opens, did not on this summer evening wear a more inviting aspect than its neighbouring streets ; and so thought a young man who at the moment ascended the couple of steps which led to one of its most depressing looking houses, and rang the cracked bell of a door from which the paint was peeling in large blisters. The slatternly maid-of-all-work who replied to the summons said in answer to his question that Mr. Sinclair was at home, and then dived at once into the lower regions, leaving the visitor to find his way unannounced. We will precede him to the sitting-room on the first floor which he is about to enter, and make acquaintance with its two occupants. The room was larger than might have been expected from an outside view of the house, very neat, but furnished with scrupulous plain ness, except in one corner where a decided amount of luxury warred with the threadbare surroundings.

Here, in a deep arm-chair, with a low inlaid bookshelf near him, and beside him a rosewood table, on which a dish of fresh peaches and a cut-glass decanter half filled with claret were standing, reclined a man somewhat past middle life, and yet scarcely elderly. There was a certain look of ill-health about the narrow temples and thin cheeks, his clothes hung loosely about his figure, and the rather querulous expression of countenance seemed (coupled with his whole air and attitude) to say, here is an invalid who requires constant care and consideration, and who will trouble you while in his society to think of him, and of him only. By his side stood a girl, and the striking likeness between them told their relationship at a glance. There were the same delicate features, the same brown eyes, with a golden light in their depths ; and though the father's hair was thin and faded now, it was clear that it had once held the same rich chestnut hue which character ised the wavy tresses of the daughter; only the ex pression of the two countenances was utterly different.

There was a steadfastness and a sweetness in that of the girl which Mr. Sinclair in his best days could not have possessed. She was bending over him now with anxious solicitude as he languidly toyed with the fruit on the plate. ' My dear Adeline,' he said, as he raised a peach and held it towards the light, ' you see how this has been bruised ; there is a mark quite the size of a shilling on the lower side. I trusted to your discrimination not to bring me inferior fruit.' She looked distressed. ' Dear father, I am so sorry ; but the perfectly uninjured peaches were so very ex pensive that I really had not enough money to buy them.' 'Well, well, say no more. If you will get me my silver knife, — you will find it somewhere about, if not here, in the next room or upstairs,— I will do what I can towards removing this taint ; but I want so little, and shall want it for so short a time, it does seem hard that I cannot be supplied with a few necessaries.

I don't blame you, my child ; I know you do your best.' She certainly did, if living principally on bread and tea to supply him with sweetbreads and peaches consti tuted the best. ' I don't blame you, but one must rail a little at the inequalities of fate,' and he smiled resignedly. ' My appetite is so poor that I can not eat the food which I rejoice to think you find palatable.' ' Oh, anything does for me,' she answered hastily, ' if I can only get what will tempt you ; and we have been able to afford a little more, haven't we, since you bought the annuity.' ' Ah, that annuity,' he shook his head in playful reproach. ' You should not have persuaded your poor sick father to expend upon it a portion of what should have been your little fortune after he is gone. The only thing which reconciles me to having done so is, that I have been enabled to provide you with more comforts, and that the few additional necessaries bestowed upon myself may be the means of my being preserved to you for some additional years.

I assure you in this and in all else my sole thought is for you ; my care of myself is in reality care of you.' 'I know it, dear, I know it,' said the girl warmly, as she stooped to kiss him. ' No one has such a father as I have. Let me pour you out some more claret ; you have not had your second glass.' ' Well, if you wish it I will take a very little, but that Pichor Longueville, much as Swayne recommended it, is hardly equal to the Mouton Rothschild. Where are you going?' he added as she turned away. 'Oh,' as if with sudden recollection, ' to get your tea, I suppose ; it is wonderful how fond you women are of tea ; I can't think why you don't dine late.' She made no answer, but she might have told him that, in spite of the annuity which had reduced her poor little portion to less than a thousand pounds, she had the utmost difficulty in making the two ends meet, while supplying him with the luxuries which he never dreamt of doing without for a day.

She had to face an indignant landlady almost as often as the monthly rent became due, and to cajole angry tradesmen into letting her have further supplies, when she had only a modi cum of money with which to meet their long due bills. 'Adeline is my banker and manager,' Mr. Sinclair used to say airily. ' She keeps me supplied with food and pocket money; not a very experienced housekeeper, but she does as well as she can, and she knows I never complain.' Once or twice the girl had attempted to tell him some of her difficulties. 'Don't, my child,' he said plaintively; 'I cannot comprehend the exigencies of the butchers and bakers ; if you can't provide me with decent lodgings — if indeed these can be called decent — and the light sustenance which is absolutely essential for me, I must do without them, and once sunk to a lower level I shall not trouble you long ; but spare me the grovelling details of a deeper degradation than that to which we have already sunk.' And so the poor child struggled silently on, loving him and believing in him as, from some strange perversion, many women do love and believe in men of his type ; the caressing manner, the outward courtesy, the depend ence upon them veiling all that lies below.

As she passed the window Adeline paused. ' I won't go yet, father ; George Ashton is coming up the street, and is sure to be on his way here. I am so glad.' ' So am I that you are pleased, my child. To me George Ashton is a rather overpowering young man. There is a clump in his tread, probably owing to ill made boots, which shakes the room, and he speaks as if a headache was a thing he had never even heard of; he has none of that delicate refinement which is in voluntarily conscious of the sensations and sufferings of others, but he is a very worthy fellow, I quite admit that, and of course as the Ashtons were your poor mother's cousins, we are bound to be cordial to him.' Adeline looked a little pained, but ' the worthy fellow ' being at this moment at the door, she had no time for any reply.

He shook hands with her as he passed, perhaps with a little lingering pressure, and then walked up to the invalid's chair. George Ashton was a well-made, goodlooking young man, rather above the middle height, with clear, honest, blue eyes and an expression of countenance in which firmness and sweet temper were pleasantly blended. He looked what he was, straight forward and kind-hearted, but his was certainly not the nature to sympathise with sentimental grievances, or to be in touch with a man whose first and last thoughts centred in self; and if the truth must be told, there were few people who exercised such an irritating effect upon him as Adeline's parent. He used his utmost endeavours to conceal this sensation, and he would have told any one who had asked him the question, that if there was one thing he prided himself upon more than another, it was his successful hypocrisy in his intercourse with Mr. Sinclair. ' If he spares time from his contemplation of himself to think of me at all,' he once remarked, 'I have no doubt but that he believes I am absolutely attached to him.' But George was wrong ; he was a bad actor ; and Mr. Sinclair, where he himself was concerned, was tolerably acute in his insight into the thoughts of others.

He had a dim conscious ness that Ashton saw through him, that he detected the hollow ring of baser metal in the silvered coin of the lofty sentiments he flung down for George to pick up approvingly ; and therefore, though this consciousness would not have induced him to move a hair's-breadth out of his way, it made the young man's company far from pleasing to him — and while he used him as he would use any tool that came in his way and could serve his purpose, he longed for the power to fling the instrument aside. ' How are you, sir ? ' said George cheerily. ' I am glad to see that you are looking so much better.' Mr. Sinclair smiled languidly. ' Another proof that there is nothing so deceitful as appearances. I am in fact considerably worse, but in your state of robust health, my dear Ashton, nothing can be so uninteresting as the ailments of others.

Pray let us talk of some more exciting subject than my wretched symptoms, especially as we have not seen much of you of late.' ' Not my fault, sir. We have had a difficult case connected with some country client, and I have been a good deal out of town lately.' ' Fortunate profession which takes you away from these dusty streets,' sighed the invalid. ' I am myself thinking of an escape to the seaside for a fortnight or three weeks ; the ozone might be of some little service to me in my debilitated condition ; neither Brighton nor Folkestone are very inaccessible.' George turned with animation towards Miss Sinclair. ' How very nice for you, Adeline ; I am delighted that you have this prospect of a change ; it will do you all the good in the world.' ' I am afraid,' sighed Mr. Sinclair, ' that our slender purse could scarcely bear the double expense, but if I can persuade my child to go instead of me, I shall only be too happy, to remain here and think of her amidst the sea breezes.' ' No, dear ' — the girl put her hand tenderly on his — T know you would like me to go, but you want the change and I don't, and besides I have no one to go with.' ' What is Lina to do while you are away ? ' asked George bluntly, ignoring the lofty renunciation of Mr. Sinclair's little speech. ' Our excellent landlady, Mrs. Cranston, will take charge of her, always supposing that I go ; but I have hopes that I shall be able to induce her to take my place.' Ashton sprang to his feet ; his patience (not a very unlimited quantity) was fast running out. 'It is a beautiful evening,' he said, 'and you look as if you badly wanted a little fresh air, Lina.

Ten minutes of a bus will take us to the Regent's Park, and we can have an hour's walk there before it gets dusk.' The colour flushed into Adeline's pale cheeks. ' Thank you, George ; it would be nice ; I have not seen a tree for days. Can you spare me, father ? I shall be back by nine o'clock.' ' Go, my child, go by all means ; the evening paper has just come in, and I had been looking forward to hearing you read Gladstone's speech about Zanzibar; it would have made a little break in the monotony of my melancholy day, but the sick and sad must not interfere with the strong and happy. Don't think of me ; as there will be nothing for me to do, I shall probably have gone to bed before your return, so I will wish you good-night now.' The light died out of the girl's face. ' I forgot the paper, father ; I would rather stay and read to you,' she said quietly.

An expression of disgust crossed Ashton's features. ' Come,' he said in a low voice, ' you want it, and even if you don't care, show a little consideration for me. I have not seen you for ages.' ' I cannot, George ; ' she glanced at Mr. Sinclair, who with closed eyes lay apparently quite unconscious of this whispered colloquy. ' I should not be happy thinking that he was fretting and lonely. Some other day, earlier in the afternoon, if you can spare the time, I should like it very, very much. Go now, don't disturb him ; ' and with a fervent pressure of her hand, and a longing look at the sweet pale face, George went ; and perhaps it was as well that the young lady whom he so fervently admired, and of whose society he was thus deprived, could not read his thoughts at the moment. Not until he heard the street door close did Mr. Sinclair open his eyes. ' Not gone ! ' he said, with well feigned surprise. ' I thought that selfish young fellow would have been sure to have carried you off, and tired you to death walking you all over the Regent's Park.' 'Not selfish, dear father,' said Adeline gently, 'only thoughtless, and forgetting that I was wanted here.' ' Ah, well, selfishness and thoughtlessness are pretty much the same thing, and are the ruling characteristic of our modern yonth ; if they are not animated by the one, they are actuated by the other.' His daughter made no answer.

She drew her chair into the window and unfolded the paper, and there, while the sun was sinking over the trees and water of the Regent's Park, whose beauties the average Lon doner does not half appreciate, she read through a long hour dreary platitudes about African disagreements and English diplomacy. George Ashton walked slowly homeward in a very discontented, not to say exasperated, frame of mind. The evening was hot and heavy, and the air of the crowded streets, from which oxygen had been pretty thoroughly eliminated, did not tend to soothe either bodily fatigue or nervous irritation. He surveyed the position of affairs backwards, forwards, and from every side, and from no point of view did it present a desirable aspect ; it was all very well to mutter ' selfish beast ' and ' un mitigated humbug ' a dozen times vindictively, and to hurl those pleasing epithets at the head of the patient and dignified invalid who was at present absorbed in the intricacies of the South African question.

But words never yet cleared any man's way, and George had an unpleasant conviction that even were he able to attribute a different scale of moral excellences to Mr. Sinclair, it would not practically make his future path much smoother, though it might enable him in the present to see somewhat more of the girl he loved. Ashton was twenty-eight, and for more than ten years he had been working as hard as it was fairly possible for a young man to do, and he had succeeded as well as he had any reason to expect that he should. He had been articled to the firm of Patterson, Merri dew, and Co., solicitors, in his boyhood, and quite recently he had been received amongst them as a junior partner, — an unusual piece of luck, it may be admitted, at his time of life. But to junior partners, especially to those taken in on sufferance, and having but a remote connection with the other members of the firm, are invariably allotted the maximum of work and the minimum of pay ; and George was no exception to the rule ; while the wheels of his chariot drave all the more heavily in that a mother, a sister, and two young brothers shared that vehicle with him, and effectually hindered the rapidity of their progress.

Patterson, Merridew, and Co. were an eminently respectable, but not an especially wealthy firm, and needless to say their wives and families entailed heavy expenses upon them ; therefore when they admitted new blood in the person of George Ashton, and granted to themselves a little well-earned leisure, they considered that they acted with liberality, tempered by discretion, when they started him with a share of five hundred a year, and a pledge that as the years increased, so should his interest in the firm increase also. The fact that the sum which would have been competence had he been alone, was almost poverty with so many dependent upon him, was naturally nothing to them ; they secured him a certain income, how he chose to expend it was no affair of theirs ; and George quite recognised the justice of the view, admitting that those who had borne the burden of the day should have the rest of the evening hour, and the profit of the work at which they had toiled so long, and at which he was, in comparison, but a mere beginner.

The hardship of the whole matter really lay, not in the action of the senior partners, but in the fact that his father had died insolvent, and that the income which should have been his own, practically appertained to others. George was deeply, genuinely in love with his distant cousin, Adeline Sinclair, and the strongest desire he had on earth was to marry her ; but how was he to ask her to become his wife while four relations were de pendent upon him ? He did not pause to consider whether or no she cared sufficiently for him to agree to his wishes, or to reflect upon the almost positive cer tainty that Mr. Sinclair, while assuming the attitude of a self-sacrificing martyr, would so place the matter IN THE MESHES before his daughter, that she would find it impossible to abandon him ; he only thought with a bitterness which not even his kindly nature could sweeten, how hard it was that a man should start in life so heavily weighted, that not only his own happiness must be laid down at the feet of duty, but also the peace and happiness of one a thousand times dearer to him than self.

He raised his hat, and the sickly breeze swept over his forehead ; the air was heavy with the rumbling of countless wheels, the cries of children, hoarse voices calling in distant alleys, the many jarring noices which all seemed to him the outcome of earth's discontent, of the world's unsatisfied desire. But in a few minutes his sanguine temperament reasserted its supremacy, as a thoroughly healthy nature throws off the first symptoms of disease. 'Time is on our side,' he said hopefully to himself; 'we can 'wait; the boys must find their own feet before long. Florry may marry, probably well ; there will be no one in the old nest but the mother, and then, my darling, then ' Ah ! and then.

Chapter II

' The truth is, that I am sick of the miserable, profitless monotony of my life, and I am determined to make a change somehow ; ' and as Philip Romayne delivered this unsatisfactory opinion of the state of his own existence, he thrust his hands into the depths of his rather empty pockets, and puffed vigorously at the short briar wood pipe which at present adorned his lips. The person whom he addressed was George Ashton. The young men were friends, after a fashion, though Ro mayne was two or three years the senior, and though the difference of their professions and the distance they lived from each other prevented frequent meetings. They had been schoolfellows at Bedford, and there Romayne had taken Ashton, then a very little boy, under his protection, shielded him from bullying, occasionally helped him with his lessons, and in return made him generally useful to his patron in all manner of legal and illegal ways. 'For value received,' was ever in boyhood Philip's motto, when he tendered assist ance to another.

In his childhood George was devoted to the stronger, deeper, far cleverer nature than his own, and though, IN THE MESHES before Romayne went up to Guy's and Ashton was articled to Patterson, a shadowy doubt was beginning to stir in the latter's mind that the moral worth of his friend was scarcely on a par with his intellectual supremacy, yet the shadow had not had time to resolve itself into substance before they practically drifted apart ; and in their rare meetings the old glamour had regained its power, perhaps because Philip's keen sight had detected the wavering allegiance, and his vanity urged him to confirm it, — perhaps because we know little of the lives of those with whom we do not associate, and George was, as a rule, disposed to take a favourable view of his fellow-creatures ; but at any rate, for whatever reason, it is certain that Ashton was prepared to declare, against all contradiction, that his friend was not only the cleverest, but one of the best of fellows as well.

On this evening they had dined together at Romayne's house, a rather shabby abode in a street not far from Euston Square ; they had met by accident in the City a few days previously, and Philip had urged Ashton to come to him at a time when they could have a long and un interrupted talk. ' The mutton will be cooked to a cinder,' he said, ' the potatoes will be underdone, and the powers of my establishment are not equal to the production of any decent article of food ; but you look as if you could defy the terrors of indigestion, and if you decline I shall feel that you sacrifice me to the meal I offer. I have got some decent claret to wash it down, and that may enable us to survive it.' 'I don't believe in the desperate cooking,' said George with a laugh ; ' there was always a dash of the Sybarite about you, but at the worst I daresay your mutton could hold its own against the beef which I should get at home ; at any rate I shall be delighted to come and see.' And now the dinner, which, as George observed, had not at all answered the evil expectations aroused, was over. 'Ah,' as Romayne carelessly remarked, 'fortunately there is nothing so frequently falsified in the fact as prophecy, and no sphere so benighted that the spirit of ambition does not sometimes seek it; we have reaped the benefit of both truths.

Draw your chair into the window, George ; however impure the outer air of a London August is, it is better than that in this vile den,' and he threw a disgusted glance round the room. He had taken the house furnished, and there was not one single article in the apartment, from the uncomfortable easy-chairs upholstered in green rep, down to the carpet on which bloomed gigantic roses of impossible colour, which did not bear evidence of the full-blown taste of a second-class broker in a back street ; a couple of fine prints (artists' proofs before letters) which hung on the wall, and a jar of old oriental china which stood on the mantleshelf, and served Romayne as a tobacco-box, warred almost unpleasantly with the surroundings. Philip was the nominal owner of the house, but necessity had forced him to let the first floor, so that this apartment served him for dining, drawing, and consulting room, while his surgery lay at the back, — a state of things which spoke volumes for his position ; a knee-hole writing-table covered with books and papers occupied the centre of the carpet, so that the young men had been driven into a narrow corner for their dinner, and on its conclusion were not very >l c 17 IN THE MESHES sorry to leave it for the cooler atmosphere of the window.

Philip had been unusually cheerful up to that moment, and had entertained his companion with a flow of anecdote, professional and otherwise, which had had the effect of drawing George's thoughts away from the rather gloomy musings on the future which he had indulged in lately, so that it was with some surprise that he heard his friend give vent to the sentiment with which the chapter opens. 'Why, Romayne,' he said, 'what does this mean? Judging by the numerous stories you have told me of your different patients, I should have thought that their name was legion, and that you always commanded a considerable practice.' 'Their name is legion,' answered Philip, 'and the amount they pay is in inverse ratio to their number.' The superficial gaiety had entirely died out of his manner ; in fact, any one looking at him would have wondered how a mirthful expression could ever lend itself to those stern features ; it is almost worth while describing him, as he lay back in as easy an attitude as Mr. Smith's arm-chair allowed him to assume.

He was a tall man, broad-shouldered, but spare and sinewy ; his age was thirty, but he looked some years older, and in the dark hair which was brushed back from his forehead, a thread or two of white was already apparent ; the jaw and chin were powerfully moulded, and the thin compressed lips bore witness to his determined will; the eyes were deeply set and piercing. In fact, one of his fellow-students some years before remarked to him with the levity of his class, ' When I look at you, Romayne, I thoroughly understand what is meant by a gimlet eye.' Take him altogether, he was rather a handsome man, and the Italian blood he inherited from his mother, who had been a Florentine, was seen in the clear-cut features and olive colouring ; but the impression that he made on the person who first saw him was not that he was good-looking or otherwise, but that his characteristic was a cold concentrated strength.

You instinctively felt that if an obstacle stood in his way he would trample it down if he could, with out any consideration as to what the cost to that obstacle might be, and that he would walk straight forward to the goal he had appointed for himself, regardless of the sufferings of those he thrust out of his path ; not that he had the slightest wish that any one should so suffer, but that his desire for his own success precluded from his point of view the possibility of any thought for them. ' The man,' he once contemptuously observed, when the subject of consideration for others was under discussion, ' who pulls up his horse to prevent its treading on every worm in his road, will find the day is over before he has reached his journey's end ; if the worm objects to be trodden on, he had better get out of my way.' It is needless to say he was ambitious ; his talents were of a high order, and he was devoted to his profession, but he had neither the money nor the leisure which would enable him to pursue the pathological studies which he felt would lead to important results; and as one discovery after another (many of them truly in small things, but still new) was made by those whose better fortune helped them, but whom he knew were not his equals either in intellect or in insight, the position became unendurable, and what was more, he vowed that he would no longer en dure it.