Jacob Niemand. A novel

Chapter I. The Catons Of Eller Glen

In the early part of January, 1890, there appeared in various London papers an advertisement for news as to the whereabouts of the widow and family of the late Reverend John Caton, formerly curate to the Vicar of Wilton, in Devonshire. The advertisement, which was worded in the usual way. emanated from the office of an obscure firm of solicitors in London. Nothing was said as to the motive of the advertisement, which held out no promise of any advantage to the persons whose whereabouts the advertisers desired to ascertain. In spite of this fact, Mrs. Caton, the widow in question, who was at that time living with her B two children in Ambleside, was not slow in an swering the advertisement, as soon as her attention had been drawn to its publication. Her circumstances at that time were so bad, that barren of promise as was the circumstance, the mere fact of there being somewhere in the world persons in terested in her existence had something hopeful about it.

What hopes, however, the good lady may have entertained when she penned her letter to the London solicitors were destined to no realisation, for after a few days of expectant waiting she received a short note from the firm in question, apologising for having given her useless trouble, and explaining that the advertisement had been inserted in the papers under a misunderstanding of certain directions from a client of theirs, whose name was not given. This unsatisfactory letter arrived one Sunday morning just as the Catons were at breakfast in the small dining-room of Eller Glen, as their house was called. On seeing the post-mark and the embossed name and address on the flap of the envelope, Mrs. Caton, a poor, pinched, but ladylike woman of fifty years, who was dressed in a rusty black gown and wore a widow's cap, flushed up and said, " Oh, here is the answer at last !

" Then laying the letter unopened by the side of the tray on the table, she continued pouring out her daughter's tea, in be ginning to do which she had been interrupted by the entrance of the shabby maid-of-all-work, who had brought in the morning's post. As she handed the cup to her daughter saying, " I do hope that it is good news at last, Mary dear," her thin hand shook with emotion. "Poor dear mamma," said the young woman, " I do hope so, too." " Oh, I say, bother waiting ! " cried the lad who was sitting on Mrs. Caton's left, snatching up the letter and tearing it open. " I must see what it is. One never can hear good news early enough, and I have no patience like you have." " John, John, how rude ! " remonstrated his sister. " You shouldn't open mamma's letters." "No, it's very rude indeed," said Mrs. Caton.

" When will you learn manners ? " "Oh, bother !" cried John. Then holding the letter up in the air to prevent his mother from taking it from him, he added : " I say, mamma, Mary, wouldn't it be jolly if we have come in for a whacking B big fortune ! Thousands and thousands of pounds ! What a spree we would have ! No more bread and scrape . no more bothering boarders, but a high old time for us all." " Come, Jack," said his sister, " I thought you said you did not want to wait. If there be good news, it is you who are keeping it back from us all." " Yes, give it to me, there's a good boy," said his mother. " We are all anxious to hear what it is about." " Let me have a squint at it first," said the lad, putting away his mother's hand and glancing at the written page. "Oh, just as I thought all along," he added, after he had finished reading.

" It's only a sell. Somebody's been having a lark with you, mater. Here's the precious missive. Much good there is in it." " It's quite true, Mary," said Mrs. Caton de jectedly, when she had read the letter which her son had tossed on to the tray. "It was a mistake I knew it was foolish to hope. Read it, dear." "What a shame to play with you like that, mamma!" said Mary, when she too had read the letter. Then after a pause she added resignedly : " Well, we are no worse off than we were before." " I don't know about that," cried Jack viciously. " I have half a mind to write to these people and tell them what I think of their humbugging us in this way. Here I have been swaggering all over Ambleside of what we were coming into, and a pretty donkey I shall look when I have to tell the fellows that it's all a sell. ' Sorry to have troubled you,' indeed !

That's like their cheek." " I hope at least, Jack," said Mrs. Caton with a smile, " that you haven't tried to raise anything on your expectations." "Yes, I did, and that's just what makes me so angry. Crosthwaite, the articled pupil in our office, you know, let me have his second best pair of skates and — and five bob. I was to give him a quid on our coming into our fortune." All three burst out laughing when the boy had finished speaking. Mary laughed the heartiest ; Mrs. Caton's laugh was rather sad. " Tear up the letter and think no more about it, mamma dear," said Mary, bending over and kissing her mother. " At least we have had a good laugh out of it." " Yes, I was foolish to have hopes," said Mrs Caton. " Who in the world should have any interest in us? Still, there it was, 'the widow of the late Reverend John Caton, formerly curate at Wilton, in Devonshire.'" Her voice trembled as she pronounced her husband's name, and the tears came into her eyes.

Mary saw this, and interposed, saying: "Now, mamma dear, we mustn't stop talking any longer. It's time to dress for church, you know. Come along." "Are you coming, Jack?" asked Mrs. Caton, turning to her son. " Do come this morning, Jack." " No fear," said he. " Rydal Lake's frozen over splendidly, and I am going to have a jolly day's skating." " With Crosthwaite's skates ? " said his sister. "Yes. They're mine, you know, now. He is to have his quid when we come into our fortune. Ha ! ha ! ha ! " " What a mean boy you are ! " said Mary. " You shan't take advantage of him like that. I shall insist on your paying him or returning him his skates." " Oh, all right, Old Morality," said Jack. " That will be all right. Crosthwaite's got plenty of coin. And now, Mary, tell Jane to put me up some lunch.

I shan't be back till tea-time." With these words the youth rushed away, whilst the ladies went upstairs to dress. The Catons had lived several years in Ambleside, to which they had come, whilst the young people were quite children, as perfect strangers from London. The house, Eller Glen, which was situated on the right-hand side of the stony road which leads up to Ellerrigg, past the old church, belonged to a cousin of Mrs. Caton's, a rich Liverpool merchant, who, knowing his relation's bad circumstances after her husband's death, had offered her the use of it at the rent of one shilling per annum. It was to take advantage of this offer that Mrs. Caton, who till then had been living in the dreariest of suburban lodgings, had migrated north with her children. The step was, perhaps, not a very wise one, for Ambleside is an expensive place to live in ; but on the other hand, the country air and the magnificent district were decided considerations, and there were certain other advantages in the way of social enjoy ments and the education of the children to be taken into account.

And above all, there was the Liver pool cousin to be propitiated. He would have been offended if his offer had been refused, and though he had never done and never did anything else for his poor relations, there was always the hope of advantages from him. Nor had Mrs. Caton ever regretted the change from London. She found the Ambleside people kind, hospitable, and considerate, and it did her heart good to see how mountain air and the mountain walks helped her children to thrive. Her income was a very small one, barely one hundred and fifty a year, but in spite of the cost of living in a town which is more or less a fancy resort, she was able to make both ends meet, and had succeeded in giving her children as good an education as they were capable of acquiring. Mary, at the time of the opening of this story a fine young woman of twenty-three, had been educated at a first-class girls' school in the town.

John had been educated, though with little advantage to himself, at Windermere College, which he had at tended as a day-boy, going and coming the five miles' walk from Ambleside to Windermere village daily. At the age of sixteen — that is to say, in — his mother, finding that he was making little progress in his studies, had placed him in the office of an Ambleside solicitor, a Mr. Newton, where he earned a small weekly salary, and worked in the vague hope — which he did little or nothing to realise — of having his articles presented to him. He was an indolent young man, fond of pleasure and selfish, a great smoker of cigarettes, and, though a well built youth, indifferent to athletics of any kind. A handsome lad withal, with curly light-brown hair and clear blue eyes, red lips, and a fresh com plexion ; not very tall, but well put together ; the picture of health, in short ; for which reason it was all the more curious to hear his pessimistic and despondent talk, which, at first assumed in boyish affectation, had become a habit There was this true about him, however — that he was profoundly discontented with his position in life.

He wanted money and enjoyment, and had a tolerable vanity of his own to be satisfied. Being well connected both on his father's and mother's side, he had ideas about his position, and thought himself ill-used by circumstances to be a " gentleman " and yet so poor. He used to speak scoffingly of the numerous new-rich families in the district, and had the habit of qualifying the Liverpool cousin "an old cad." At the same time he professed great sympathy with the poor, and talked a great deal of nonsense about class distinctions and property, which he had learned from a queer old Socialist cobbler who lived at Windermere, and who had read widely but had digested little. Though fairly respectful towards his mother, he had no very great affection for her. It irritated him to see her badly dressed.

He was never proud to walk out with her, to be seen in her company by his friends. For his sister Mary, how ever, he had a great respect, engendered by his recognition of her complete superiority over him, both in character and intellect. Certainly the dif ference between the brother and sister was a great one. In appearance the kinship betrayed itself, though Mary was taller, more elegant, and slightly darker than her brother, but in everything else the distinction was very noticeable. Mary was a very clever girl, and had her circumstances admitted of her pursuing her studies after she had left the Ambleside girls' school, she might have achieved any success. In order to help her brother in his studies she had learned Latin and Greek, for her own delectation she had mastered Italian and German.

She was a great reader, and delighted in the poets. With all this there was not an atom of priggishness nor of the blue-stockingdom in her composition. She believed herself a very unimportant little person, and never paraded her knowledge on any subject, seeking friendship, esteem, and approval rather by gentleness and modesty than by any form of self assertion. However, towards her brother she showed decided firmness of character. It was she, far more than poor faded Mrs. Caton, who kept the unruly John in order, who checked habits of his which would have been a nuisance in a small house, and who forced him to be tolerably civil in his language and manners at home. This domination of a very rebellious and self-sufficient youth she owed partly to her seniority in age, partly to the fact that for years he had been her pupil, but chiefly to her great supe riority of character, which could not fail to command the respect of any one who knew her intimately.

She was a most unselfish girl, and though her tastes lay in another direction, made herself most useful in the small house. When there was a boarder at Eller Glen, it was upon her that most of the extra labour devolved. Poor Mrs. Caton was not a good manager, the great grief of her life seemed to have paralysed her energies, and it was Mary who contrived in her place to make the guest comfortable and at the same time remunerative. She was quick with her needle and clever at cooking, and might be seen as often in the kitchen as in her little room upstairs, where her books and her piano were. Her affections were divided between her mother and her brother. For the latter she had no very great respect, and was alive to his faults, but she excused them on the ground of his youth, and believed he would grow up to be a good and useful man.

For her mother, for whose dreary life and sorrows she had the tenderest pity, she had an affection which was reverential in its piety. It was for her sake that she curbed such ambitions as could not but from time to time arise in her heart. It was for her sake that she gladly resigned herself to the monotony of an existence of poverty and partial drudgery. To be her mother's constant companion she had checked all the promptings of a warm nature, and at twenty three, in the full bloom of her beauty, she was still heart-whole. She had resigned herself with great cheerfulness, and perhaps without perception of the self-sacrifice, to the prospect of always living as she had lived in the past ; and if at times her heart fluttered at the sight of a certain youth who was then living in Ambleside, she used to laugh her emotion away.

This youth was a young man called Harry Marsden, who was chief clerk in the Ambleside branch of the Lakes Bank. He was a handsome young fellow of twenty-four, tall and dark. He was very well educated, and had come to Amble side from the University of Oxford, preferring a commercial career which would allow him to live to a profession which might force him to starve. With fifty pounds a year of his own, and the hundred and fifty which he received from the Bank, he was able to cut a very good figure in so small a place as Ambleside. He was a good all-round athlete, and distinguished himself equally on the cricket-field as with the football fifteen, and was considered the best lawn - tennis player and the fastest skater in the district. He dressed well, and was as full of self-respect and dignity as John Caton was lacking in these qualities.

Mrs. Caton had great respect for him, and in her heart anxiously hoped that something might come of the friendship that existed between him and her daughter. If she did not do anything to fan this friendship into a warmer feeling, it was because she considered that the young man's circumstances were not then sufficiently prosperous to enable him to maintain a wife ; but her mind was made up that if ever the promised managership of the Lakes Bank, with its increase of salary, was offered him, she would do her best to bring about a marriage between the two. She was determined that if she could help it her daughter should not live to be an old maid. She loved her too well to desire any such sacrifice, and when she first resolved to take gentlemen boarders at Eller Glen, it was in the vague hope that perhaps amongst them might come a somebody who should realise her ideal of a son-in-law as husband to her pretty, clever, and devoted Mary.

Indeed, this had been her principal motive in taking a step which had not greatly added to her social position. There had been, it is true, the hope of some addition to a very meagre income, and this hope, chiefly thanks *o Mary's management, had to a certain extent been realised. But the profits were very small compared to the extra trouble and the loss of privacy, and it was to her, who was nervous and timid, a real distress to have a stranger in the house. But for the hope mentioned she would gladly have foregone the small earnings, useful as undoubtedly they were. Hope it had always remained, and nothing more. A succession of clergymen, artists, and business-men wanting a change had passed through the best bed room on the first-floor of Eller Glen, but never amongst them had the desired eligible son-in-law manifested himself.

The only manifestations had been enormous appetites, muddy boots, a desire to quarrel with the weekly accounts, rendered in Mary's best penmanship, and unpleasantness about Jack's noisiness and general habits. So abandoning hope in this direction, and seeing no other possible chance for her daughter in the town, she had made up her mind for Harry Marsden. It was during the winter months that the Catons took in boarders. During the summer they let Eller Glen furnished, and went away either to some cheap seaside place or to Liverpool, where Mrs. Caton had friends. A tenant at five pounds a week for ten or twelve weeks could usually be found, and this amount was one of the principal constituents of her income. When her husband died, eighteen years before the opening of this story, Mrs. Caton, then a young mother, with a girl of five, and a new-born babe at her breast, had been left with no resources but an income of forty pounds a year.

Her position had aroused the compassion of the very large number of friends and parishioners in the parish of which her husband had been curate, and a subscription was raised on her behalf, which realised a sum of six hundred pounds, which was invested in her name. Some trifling legacies had afterwards fallen to her, the investment of which added to her other resources enabled her to live. Her life at the best was a mournful one. She had adored her husband, and was inconsolable at his loss. She vowed to be faithful to his memory, and rejected all advances which might have led to a second marriage. It was a noble widowhood, worthy of the highest respect. In memory of her seven years of wifedom, she consecrated her life to her dead husband and his children. After eighteen years of separation by the grave her love for him was as great as ever.

She had his portrait in all the rooms, she wore a lock of his hair in a medallion at her neck. Her favourite occupation was to read over and over again the faded love-letters he had written to her long ago. They were her consolation for the dreari ness of her ruined life. Wrapped up in her grief, and with no other preoccupation but the happiness of her children, she let herself drift on to old age, with no ambition, no hope which was not centred on the pledges of his love. Once not without the instinctive coquettishness of a pretty woman, she retained all through life the sable and disfiguring livery of her widowhood. She had no care for her appearance, looked poor, and pinched, and shabby, and was indifferent to it all. She had not an atom of selfishness except for her children, and had denied herself everything so as to be able to bring them up. It was a life of poor living without the saving grace of high thinking, being spent in a monotony of the most insipid small-talk. c

Chapter II. Jacob Niemand's Arrival

It certainly seemed as if fate, in arousing in the hearts of the Catons, by means of that mysterious advertisement, some hopes of a bettering of their position, had malignantly intended to make the troubles which almost directly afterwards came upon them only all the more bitter to endure. The month of January brought poor Mrs. Caton a succession of annoyances and anxieties. On the very day after the letter from London had dispelled whatever expectations of good fortune she may have entertained, she was called upon by Mr. Newton, the solicitor, who came to say that it was really not worth his while to keep John at his office at the salary he was paying him ; that the lad did no work, and was most irregular in his attendance, and that while he did not wish to close his doors upon him, he could only consent to keep him on trial for another three months on condition that the previous arrangement should be rescinded, and that he should receive no wages.

These, though small, had kept the boy in shoe-leather, and the loss of them was in its way a small disaster, besides arousing very great anxiety as to his future. As it was out of the question that he should remain idle, or at least without some semblance of employment, and as there seemed no opening of any kind anywhere else, Mrs. Caton was forced to consent to the new arrange ment. John did not take the news with any such resignation, called his employer " an old swindler," and quoted at length over the tea-table from the remarks of his Socialist friend, the Windermere cobbler, on those who grind the faces of the poor. At first he refused point-blank to agree to the new arrangement, and spoke of enlisting in a line regi ment, but this talk was speedily put a stop to by his sister, who lectured him soundly, and next morning walked him as far as the office in Lake- Road, urging him all the way to work hard, get back his employer's esteem, and win the promised articles. c a Then the Liverpool cousin began writing ominous letters.

Business was very bad, he said, and as for himself, he did not see any prospect of its improving. This letter was a terrible blow to Mrs. Caton, who saw in it a preliminary to the announcement that he should no longer be able to allow her to live rent free at Eller Glen. "And what we shall do then, and where we shall go to, God only knows," she said to her daughter. Mary said nothing, but went upstairs and wrote a long letter to Liverpool, respectfully but strongly worded, explaining her mother's exact position. She carried this to the post herself, and the result was that another letter came from Liverpool, in which the cousin wrote that while he had no present intentions of making any alterations in the arrangement, he had considered it his duty to himself, his family, and the Catons themselves, to point out the possibility of such an eventuality — cold comfort enough, but which somewhat reassured his relations.

About the middle of January a grocer in the village failed, and the trustee in his bankruptcy issued demands for immediate settlement of their accounts to all persons on the books. Mrs. Caton was amongst these, being in the habit of paying part of her household expenses when the house was let in the summer and the price paid in advance. She was forced, in obedience to the trustee's summons, to break in upon a very small reserve fund at the bank, and matters then looked so bad that poor Mary began talking about selling her piano. Another misfortune, to which, however, Mrs. Caton resigned herself more easily, was that that winter no boarder had presented himself. Yet the hotels were almost as full as in the season, for the skating, both on Windermere and Rydal Lakes, was magnificent, never having been so good for years, and the hills under snow looked so lovely that it was no wonder that people came north from the towns.

Matters were very bad indeed. Poor Mrs. Caton looked still more pinched and meagre, even Jack was sobered and serious, and Mary, who was usually cheerfulness itself, had difficulty in presenting a hopeful face. " I never remember a time," said Mrs. Caton one day at dinner, " when things looked so black. Everything seems breaking away from us, and I hardly feel as if I had the courage to face any more disasters." " Life's a fraud," said Jack, with his mouth full of canned beef. " I have always said so. It's all very well when you've got the tin. Then it's worth living. But like this ! One ought to have the courage to go and chuck oneself into the water." " You mustn't talk like that. You really mustn't talk like that, Jack. I can't bear to hear it," cried his mother, who, unfortunately, attached too much importance to her son's pessimistic sallies.

" Oh, mamma dear," said Mary, " don't pay any attention to Jack. You know how he is. Of course things are very wretched, but we must all have courage. I have courage for you all." "A fat lot of use your courage will be to us," said Jack, irritated at the small effect produced by his speech, which he had fancied impressive. " I don't know," said his sister. " I hope it may. I mean to try to make it so. I have been inquiring for some pupils, and there seems a chance of my getting some. It's very badly paid, of course but it will at least make up for what Jack has lost, and " " There you go," cried her brother. " That's it. Throw that in my face, as if it were my fault that old Newton is an exploiter. If he knows he can get labour free, he is not going to pay for it, of course. It is the invariable rule of capital to — to " Mary smiled.

It was funny to hear the lad speaking of himself as a personification of labour. Then resuming, for her brother, at a loss for words, had finished off his phrase with a gesture full of menace, presumably against capitalists in general, she said : " I have half a promise from the Misses Toison, at the girls' school, of an engagement for French, and if I can get that, that will of course help me with other people." "How wretched to think of your being a gover ness ! I am sure I don't know what people will think of us. And to know that we are by a long shot the best family in the place, and for miles round, too ! " cried Jack. " Then I have another plan," continued his sister. " If we don't get a boarder — and there doesn't seem much likelihood of it — I shall have plenty of spare time, and I mean to try my hand at writing."

" I say, mamma. Shan't we get rich ! " said her brother, with a laugh. "What's it to be, Mary? Poetry ? Is Eller Glen going to take the shine out of Rydal Mount ? Fiction, or philosophy ? " " I shall begin very modestly with little tales for children. I believe there is always a market for writing of that kind, and as I am very fond of children and believe that I understand them well, I ought with practice to be able to write things to please them. At any rate I don't see why I shouldn't try, and, to tell you the truth, mamma, I have already made a start" " I am sure you will be able to write very well, dear," said her mother, " and I think that it is a very good idea, and I am sure I hope you will succeed." " I didn't mean to say anything about it for some time, and perhaps I oughtn't to have spoken now," said the girl, with a smile.

" But I wanted to show you that I have courage, and that I mean to try everything in my power to make things better for us all." " It's a very poor look-out, is writing,' said Jack. " I know it, and I expect nothing from it. But I want to try, and I shall be happy in trying." " I don't think girls ought to write," he continued sententiously. " What you ought to do would be to marry some rich fellow who would give us all a lift." " I will when you marry an heiress." " Oh ! You bet, if I come across one she shan't languish for me long. I do believe in coin." Poor Mary's efforts were not destined to meet with any success. She had not the necessary ex perience, and her writings were too amateurish to meet with acceptance. She sent out many manu scripts, which were all returned. But she was not discouraged, and persevered.