A Waking

Front matter

A WAKING. (Fron t ispieceu} Zina A WAKING "Ne'er was a dream so hke a waking Shakespeare. BUT MRS. JOHN KENT SPENDER AUTHOR OF 'UK. NODODY," — "GODWYN'S ORDEAL," — "BOTH IN THE WRONG," — "HER OWN PAULT," — "KEPT SECRET," — "LADY HAZLETON'S CONFESSION, " &c. Sec. LONDON : HUTCHINSON & CO., 25, PATERNOSTER SQUARE. 1892. PRINTED AT NIMBGUEN (HOLLAND) BY H. C. A. THIEME OF NIMEGLEN (HOLLAND) AND 14 BILL1TER SQUARE BUILDINGS, LONDON, F.C. TO THE SON, WHO WAS WITH ME IN THE AUTUMN OF 1887, IN A LITTLE HOTEL ON THE SALVAN PASS. WHERE THE FOLLOWING STORY WAS PLANNED, TO BE WRITTEN SOON AFTERWARDS IN ANOTHER MOUNTAIN RETREAT. CONTENTS.

Book I

Chapter. Page. I. A DINNER-PARTY IN CHESTER-SQUARE . . 3 II. A TIRED BREADWINNER II III. STEPHEN IS TAKEN BY SURPRISE . . . . 10. IV. STUART NEWBOLT SPEAKS HIS MIND ... 28 V. ZINA HAS IDEAS OF HER OWN 35 VI. A SUDDEN ILLNESS 43 VII. UNEXPECTED GOSSIP 50 VIII. MORBID FEARS 58 IX. OVER-WROUGHT 63 X. IN THE SICKROOM 69 XI. TOO LATE 75 XII. CAN HE DISTRUST HEP. ? 83 XIII. A FRIEND IN NEED 96 XIV. THE "COMMON ROUND" .100 XV. THE ANDREA DEL SARTO II7 XVI. A MEETING AT SAAS-FEE • 1^5 CONTENTS. Chapter. Page* XVII. A MOUNTAIN WALK 13fj XVIII. A FLIPPANT CHAPERON J45 XIX. AN ANONYMOUS

LETTER 255 BOOK II.

I. AFTER THE MARRIAGE 1 67 II. A GILDED CAGE 174 III. TIME FOR REFLECTION 1 79 IV. COUNTRY LIFE l86 V. BREAKING TO HARNESS 1 94 VI. ZINA EXERTS HERSELF 202 VII. DISILLUSION 214 VIII. A FATAL DISCOVERY 223 IX. AN UNEXPECTED RESOLUTION .... 229 X. HAD SHE GONE MAD? 240 XI. TAKING REFUGE 248 XII. ONE OF THE WORKING WOMEN. . . . 258 XIII. WAS IT A DREAM ? 266 XIV. THE PICTURE 274 XV. .THE RETURN OF AN OLD FRIEND . . . 280 XVI. " WE CAN NEVER SEE EACH OTHER AGAIN*"'. 29O XVII. THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION .... 296 XVIII. GEORGE LAYTON VISITS THE STUDIO . . 304 XIX. "FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE" B OO K I

Chapter I

A DINNER-PARTY IN CHESTER-SQUARE. A WARM summer evening in the heart of the Lon don season. Stuart Newbolt seemed perfectly happy. Hand some, young-looking, reputed to be rich, and of a singular charm of manner, he made a very graceful host at the little dinners which he gave twice a week to an odd mixture of fashionable and literary folk. He well knew how to guide the conversation, how to interest everybody, and how to send the guests away at the end of the evening, feeling as if for once they had been really brilliant, since Mr. Newbolt had been so interested in all they said and had laughed so heartily at all their little wit ticisms. And then, as Lady Catering had afterwards told her intimate friend — whom she mentioned every two minutes in her conversation as "the dear Duchess " — " there never was anything so perfect as his table decoration; my dear, it was simply a dream; the whole table covered with some blue gauzy material so waved and puckered as to look just like a lake, with white water-lilies peeping out in every direction, and then groups of Salviati vases filled with orchids, and two large Salviati candelabra — it was too lovely!"

It was Stuart Newbolt's only child, Zina, who arranged the table herself, often spending many hours over it, and each time trying to find some new combination of colour and flowers, and it was she who had suggested the white panelling which with cafe au lait brocade hangings and Venetian glass was considered so unique and, as Lady Catering said, " so becoming, which is much more important. " Zina was not so popular as her father, but every one admitted that Stuart Newbolt had a splendid coadjutor in his well-trained daughter, who presided at the head of the table, possessing that special knowledge which could make her society agreeable to literary or political men whenever she chose to exert herself, and who could on other occasions be not only discreet, but silent and enigmatical as the Sphinx, and beautiful as the room which was semi darkened and flower-laden, with the balconies all ablaze with blossoms, shining in the westering sun — a medley of scents, colours, pictures, and china, in which the sights and sounds of London were effectually excluded.

No one could have guessed that Mr. Newbolt wras feeling unwell that evening, or that he had recently had occasion to consult his family physi cian, for he was looking his very best. And though there were some gossips who did not hesitate to accuse him of wearing a belt to diminish the size of his figure, or of using cosmetics to soften a skin growing a little wrinkled and rigid with advancing years, there was nothing affected or foppish about him. Nothing could be more free from artifice than A Dinner-party in Chester-Square. 5 his manner that evening as he laughed gaily at some sally made by his pretty ward, Eva Capern, who, although only lately married, was already becoming well-known for her good looks and vivacity, her smart toilettes from La Ferriere or Janet, and her Sunday evening poker parties.

"Society may be rotten," she was saying; "but what would you have ? We are the products of society, and if you reform it you must kill us off. For instance, would you really have us dress dow dily and give to the poor?" "Beauty unadorned," Mr. Newbolt laughed back. "A thousand thanks!" she replied ; "but then you would at once find me out, and know that it is my art to deceive you and make you think that I am pretty, when really it is only my gowns. Besides, to dress out of the fashion is to become de'classe'e; and in London, this "Niobe' of nations,' one can't be too particular." "A woman should be like a diamond; the more beautiful the less conspicuous the setting," said a voice from the other side of the table. "Yes, and those that need a setting should be killed off. One of the problems of the age is to find out an alias for all sorts of infanticide, " laughed -another.

"It is these wicked ideas which make a nation ripe for revolution," remonstrated the other voice, which belonged to a faded middle-aged and quietly dressed woman who, with her white-headed husband of melancholy, expressive face, and a length of beard which Aaron could not have surpassed, were somewhat unwonted figures at Stuart Newbolt's table. The faintest, politest, delicatest frown passed over the brow of the host. He prided himself on the diplomatic talents often brought into play in eluding that gravity which he considered to be fatal to the digestion. "The Radicals call it evolution rather than revolution, rehabilitation rather than dilapidation ; they are enthusiasts," he said lightly. But Mary Carruthers and her husband, the " retired Scotch professor," as his wife vaguely phrased it— whom Zina had insisted on inviting — were not to be so easily put down.

Apparently they thought they had a mission to perform, and Stuart Newbolt winced when they went on to discourse of the decadence of the Romans and the frivolity of the second Empire. The lady had a nervous way of speaking which Stuart Newbolt could not have tolerated even from the lips of the pretty, loveless, self-indulgent creature who had been confided to his care in her orphanhood, and whom his system of education had rendered so fascinating that everyone forgot her selfishness and admired her the more for her fragility. He was too critical to be sympathetic, and had no such thing as a broad comprehension of human beings different from himself. And that the guests at his table should have any more ultimate object than that of toying in dinner-party fashion with those 'imps of ideas' which flit from one mind to another in rapid converse, was sure to be annoying to him.

It mattered little if this rapid converse involved a certain amount of iconoclasm in which the idols of one's neighbours happened to be bat tered, but it mattered a good deal if anything hke a skeleton intruded at the feast. Yet not only did the Carruthers discourse of a sort of socialism which was hateful to him, and jar red on his nerves like a false note, but other things grated on him. An old Canadian whom he had come across in some of his travels and who had impressed him by his weather -beaten face, huge Bar dolph nose, and bushy eyebrows meeting like pent houses over eyes which were singularly mild and grey, as well as by his large store of anecdotes — seemed inclined to turn the talk on still more seri- A Dinner-party in Chester-Square. 7 ous matters. The Canadian had come to London to sell a new patent in connection with photography, ■and Stuart Newbolt cursed his own folly for his haste in inviting him, when he found him irrelevantly boasting of the power which photography would bring to bear on the recent discoveries in astronomy.

It was worse still that Mrs. Carruthers should try to give a religious turn to the conversation, naively quoting Dr. Chalmers in a middle-class sort of fash ion. A woman, as he thought to himself, might talk commonplace sentiment. It was the speciality of the. sex to do so, the only hope being to draw such women into a stream of chatter that fortunately kept them from dwelling too much on the troubles of existence. But Mrs. Carruthers, who had her own public, was not to be so arrested, and Stuart Newbolt did not quite know what to do with her, when, determining not to come to closer quar ters on questions of this sort, he contented himself w*ith remarking quietly that Dr. Chalmers was "a little out of date." He said this with an urbane smile, and that polite intentness which, as a master of deportment, he plumed himself on never losing.

One might have noticed that he kept an extra degree of politeness for middle-aged women, and a look which somehow told them their day was over. But whether it was that Mary Carruthers gathered courage from her desperation, or whether she resented the attempt which had been made to repress her, she quoted, in a tone of enthusiasm, "Though worlds on worlds in myriad myriads roll, What know we greater than the soul ?" The quotation was made in a highly-pitched voice. It arrested the attention, so that everyone was listening. The voice was not only highly-pitched, but there was a sort of thrill in it which made Mr. Newbolt wince as if he were listening to some dis sonant sound. Was it not well known that he hated anything like religious discussions, considering them bad form at the table, and here was a little woman, with opinions in direct opposition to his own, ven turing to come into collision with him?

Lady Catering smiled slightly as the host, keeping his self-command, looked at his guest surprised, and then tried to be satirically amused at the groove into which the conversation was settling itself. Mrs. Carruthers had evidently intended to enlarge on her quotation, but the rest of her words sank into a sort of frightened whisper as she became aware, not only that her host was waiting with some fruit on his uplifted fork, but that there was a sudden hush of other voices, and that all his guests were also listening. Her cheeks were suddenly dyed with colour. Could the observant Lady Catering have made a mistake when she imagined that a fair-haired man who sat on the left side of the hostess — a deep-eyed, dreamy-looking young fellow, who had not yet found his vocation in life, but had made some little reputation as a musician and amateur artist — was answering an appealing look in Zina Newbolt's face, when he came to the rescue, and said lightly — " Who knows that we are not deceived by our senses — if the stars themselves may not be an illu sion?"

And then he backed Mrs. Carruthers' quotation by asking sentimentally, " What is our waking but a dream?" Mr. Newbolt's ward tittered audibly as she gazed down at her beautifully modelled, diamond be-ringed fingers. These, at least, seemed to her no illusion, and she was quite of opinion that they might have served as models for a Canova or a Thorwaldsen. "And if you could argue these questions till the stars burnt out, you would never settle them," A Dinner-party in Chester-Square. 9 responded the host, in the light tone he generally adopted — a tone of half-ironical entreaty — when he wished to protest against our gravity as a race. "Those so-called musicians have a great opinion of themselves, " he was thinking, as he flashed back an amused, comprehensive glance at his ward. But Stephen Dewe's voice did not persist.

It was sufficient for him that the jarred look on Mr. Newbolt's usually impassable clean-shaven face was lessened. He knew him well enough to be perfectly sure that a long story or a philosophical speech from a young man who should have known better would be sure to prove boring, something like having to listen to folks reciting poetry. He knew also perfectly well that though Stuart Newbolt would be likely to give his daughter a piece of his mind about her absurd obstinacy in wishing to invite this tactless woman, he prided himself on being cosmopolitan, on making excuses for everyone and would have no intention of being found fault with for belabouring the popular superstitions. It mattered little to Stephen Dewe if his host should be like Archimedes, who wanted to reduce this little earth to the standing-point from which he could move the whole.

Nothing mattered but that he should be able to "keep in" with him, and at the same time to obey the behests of the beautiful creature who was sitting by his side. Then the conversation slid back into the ordinary topics — the last singer who was making any sensation in the fashionable world, the last good picture, or even the last ball at which some well-known beauties had appeared, as well as the last stormy debate in the House. If much of this chatter about actors and actresses, singers at the opera, and the latest fashions was a little more banal and trivial than Stuart Newbolt generally liked, he at least had ceased to beat an impatient tattoo with his feet beneath the table, and had probably to thank himself, for the party was not large enough to indulge in that sudden gabble and gallop of tongues which might have covered the universal resolution to seek a change of topic.

CHAPTER IL

A TIRED BREADWINNER. ■ You see, my dear, I told you it would be a mistake for me to accept your father's invitations. I could not even afford the dress," said Mary Carruthers with a despondent sigh, when Zina Newbolt visited her a few days afterwards in the ill-furnished lodgings in Great Coram Street, which told an eloquent tale of the hard struggle for existence carried on in them from day to day. By daylight she wore an ill-fitting serge dress and her hair was tightly gathered up in a knot at the back of her head. There were downward lines of patient endurance about the nose and the mouth, but there was a look in the steady eyes which contradicted the mouth, telling you that the meek ness had not been hers by choice. She was in a state of depression which was not usual to her. " Do you think they were so very bad — the deficiencies in my attire ?

" she asked as if aware that in some way her appearance had not been a success; and Zina could not tell her that the deficiencies in her conversation were worse. Stuart Newbolt did not often allow himself to show his irrepressible impatience with everything which was old-fashioned or commonplace; but those wTho knew him intimately were well aware that his fastidious nature w*as continually disgusting him with the ill-chosen wording of a sentence, the infliction of a hackneyed quotation or twice-repeated anecdote. Unconsciously to herself his daughter had fallen into the habit of watching him furtively, being con stantly aware of that something in the attitude of her father's mind which made him acutely sensitive to the deficiencies of his neighbours. She knew that woman's talk as a general rule was condemned by him as "trumpery," and that he complained of the perpetual jabber and clatter of their tongues.

Zina adapted herself perfectly to his idiosyncrasy in this respect, knowing when to be silent and when to speak in few words. He prided himself on having educated a very unusual woman. In the case of his ward — Eva Capern — the triumph had not been so great, though Eva was shrewd enough to know also how to humour her guardian's peculiar fancy. But Mary Carruthers ! Her very vocation was to pander to the tastes of her own sex, consequently to make a trade of what Stuart Newbolt condemned as commonplace chatter. " ' It's such a comfort to have no intellect,' as Jack Poyntz says in the play, " answered Mary good-tem peredly, when the Professor nervously protested against such 'trash' as the 'Family Sympathiser' lying openly on his table and took care to clear it out of the way. Zina's experiment at transplanting her had only proved a failure.

If Mary had been A tired Breadwinner. 13 a person of no views the experiment might have been more successful. But Mrs. Carruthers had very strong 'views,' and though she spoke just now in a deprecating tone that was not natural to her, she was secretly conscious of the existence of her own little circle of admirers. "Do you know, I can remember when I was young, and when I had golden dreams and thought that I could do something better — but that was long ago — I am content now with the lowest rung of the ladder. I have my boys and girls to think of, and I have to put up with these London lodgings — a dingy sort of den isn't this? It seems to me a thousand times more dismal after your beautiful and artistic surroundings, but you know I could not write in a house like yours; I should be looking about me all the time.

Heigh-ho; I am hard up just now for a plot," she said with a sigh. The moving accident is not my trade, To freeze the blood I have no ready art.' " And then she added, with a half-hysterical laugh, as if she would otherwise have broken into sobs, " I am not so very clever, though I do wrrite books." The dignified Zina, who so rarely unbent to the world, answered by kissing her friend affectionately. " You are better than clever, " she said, " you are charming. I should like to know what your husband and children would do without you ; it is you, after all, who are the breadwinner of your family. " " Forced to be so by accident, but not by nature," rejoined the other woman, glancing at a table, covered as usual with untidy papers. " I am translating now, always translating : but 1 should have been happier if I had not been called upon to fill a place, even as a translator, in my generation.

" " You are not your bright self when you talk like that— you are not the 'Liebes Mutter lein' whom I have learned to honour, when you insist on running yourself down. What matter if your intuitions are keener and finer than your intellect? That is the way with most of us. " Mary Carruthers shook her head. " I am mediocre, and it is my duty to protect the world from the fatal spread of mediocrity. When I succeed and do my best, I am only — according to your father — ' one of the fools who are the prophets of Philistia. ' That is my trade. I succeed best when I take it up ; there is one chord common to the largest mass of readers which vibrates when you touch it, and that is — vulgarity. " " You judge yourself hardly when you talk so sadly. And it is your sense of humour, " said her friend, " which saves you from being too sentimental.

" Another heartfelt sigh. " Yet I am one of the folk whose trade it is to revel in the aroma of deli cately-scented sorrows, shutting themselves away from their kind, and hugging sorrow to their souls. " She began to laugh, and then came the truth of the matter in the revelation of a little womanly vanity, and a good deal of personal soreness. " You mustn't ask me any more, dear — you can't expect me to talk as they talk at your father's table. I never believe in conversation as a fine art and doubt if it ever existed. The brilliant wit does not look very brilliant when it is put down on paper, and as to the jests of professional jesters, if they could be repeated in the present days, we should think them — horrid. I must be in earnest in what I say, but I have no time to read — no time even to think.

All I have to do is to keep spinning my own brains for the sort of stories which will please the 'Family Sympathiser.' I have my suspicions that James would tell me the writing is slipshod because I have to write so fast at times. A tired Breadwinner. 15 But it must be enriched with a few luscious patches of tall talk, and I must always choose plots which catch. At one time the run was on gover nesses who married lords, poor girls adopted by great ladies, and ushers at school who were peers in disguise — the next run was on burglars, magnificent Dick Turpins who stood six feet two in their stockings — and now even ghosts are getting hackneyed. My editor says, 'TryDoppelganger' — he means 'doubles,' but 'Doppel ganger' sounds grand er — and how do I know, " said Mary in her self mockery, "whether I am equal to phantasms of the living, when I can't paint the living themselves ?

Meanwhile I must keep the wolf from the door — so I am doing a little translating. " But Zina was ready with her comfort. " After all you are writing for the largest class ot readers — a class which is constantly increasing, and which must be supplied with innocent food. You may number your readers by millions — think of the numbers educated in the elementary schools." " Yes," said Mary, laughing still, though tears were in her eyes, as she blushed like a girl, eager for praise — when do we cease to care for it? — "If one could hope to keep personal touch with them — if one could lift them up a little — only a step or two at a time — without pretending to be superior. What is it someone says, " ' Speak to the heart ! for that alone is sweet ; Weak words are mighty that with heartblood beat?"* "But when an editor says to me that he must have something 'racy' that I must not even speak about the things I care about for fear my readers should think it 'slow', when you have to give them such diet as is generally required by the 'Family Sympathiser'" — and Mary quoted in mock-tragic tones, from a writer on the same stuff, " ' The Duchess made tea for all the little titled ones sitting around,'" till the tears rolled down her cheeks from her excessive laughter.

Then relapsing into a sort of mock gravity, she exclaimed, "They say that observation is nearly the whole of human genius. But how in the world I should like to know am I to observe, shut up between the four walls of this room, and how am I to know about — detectives — for instance?" There was a drollery of absolute despair in the solemn intonation of the last few words, but before Zina could answer that she had better try to put herself into connection with Scotland yard, she had forgotten herself and was descanting on the merits of her husband. "Now, dear, he has a mind if you like, a mind which fills me with the profoundest veneration — a mind far above pot-boilers — you remember his book on Schopenhauer?" Zina shrugged : she did remember it, and how the expenses of publishing it had reduced his family nearly to destitution.

She had no great admiration for the professor, who condescended, in spite of his high ideals, to let himself be mainly supported by the labours of his wife. She did not like to hurt Mary's feelings, and she had never had courage to ask "professor of what?" She had to content herself with a vague idea that Dr. Carruthers had been a professor of Oriental languages, or perhaps of philosophy — she did not exactly know which — at Glasgow or Aberdeen — here again her ideas were misty. She owed the ' professor ' a grudge from the various occasions on which she had had to parry her father's facetious inquiries on the subject. In her secret heart she looked upon the self-con tented old man as a petulant and wayward child, A tired Breadwinner. 17 whose luxuries had to be pandered to at the expense of other people, and who was one of the most troublesome of all the little ones belonging to this poor, persevering woman, whose energy and deter mination endeared her to the few friends who knew her as intimately as Zina did.

But before she could give utterance to the irrational irritation, which she felt whenever the Professor and his powerful intellect were referred to, there came a patter of footsteps, and a whirlwind of petticoats and knick erbockers, through the door, which was burst open without any ceremony. "Tell us a story, mammy, you promised us one when we had done our lessons," cried three or four squeaky and eager little voices, the noisy inter lopers falling aggressively upon their mother before they saw that she had a visitor. " Hush, darlings, be quiet. Father is sleeping downstairs," responded the mother, all her sweet homeliness and natural liveliness of manner return ing to her, as she gazed proudly at these little in centives to her unwilling literary labour. " Go on, let me hear you," cried Zina, though she could not help feeling rather out of it, as the " Miitterlein " began telling racy stories to her children, her eyes glittering with merriment, till laugh ter ensued, in which mother and little ones fell together on the sofa in a heap, avoiding the floor for fear of making a noise for the professor.

The merriment was infectious, and Zina laughed too, as she took leave of Mary Carruthers, whose efforts to rise were made impossible, in consequence of the little legs twined in inextricable confusion about her. " Go on, tell us more, mammy, more," the voices were still imploring, as Miss Newbolt went her way, thinking that if Mrs. Carruthers could only write as she could talk with her one or two intimate friends or her own children, easily and brightly, her work would have been worth a good deal more in the literary market. But Mary's play of mirth was will-o'-the-wispish ; it needed the turn of the still pretty neck, and the flash of the merry eyes, to in terpret it properly, and when she came to set it down on paper the iridescence was gone. " There you see," she whispered, as she said goodbye to her friend " I have more than golden com pensations in this dingy den where everything is so shabby, " and she laughed again, parodying the litany of a brother of the pen, "From dulness and low ness of spirits ; from brooding over fancied miser ies, Good Lord deliver us."

Chapter III. Stephen Is Taken By Surprise

" And that selfish professor — who could not even work hard enough at his professorship to make it a monetary success — I have no patience with him for turning that true, sympathetic, and merry-hearted woman into the demure and decorous creature who figures in society, and who trembles when she tries to assert herself about the slightest thing, Oh how difficult it is for women who have to work for their bread, with this struggle for life becoming harder and harder — this highwater pressure driving poor humanity into all sorts of odd nooks and crevices for which it was never intended. I can never give Mary up whether my father likes her or not ; I can do httle enough for anyone that is of any use — and I mean to keep to her. Why are lots so unequally divided? And yet, she has one thing in her life which I have not — she has domestic love — love in the home surrounding her day and night.

I wonder how it feels " mused the girl, who had known nothing nearer to an embrace than the cold peck, night and morning, upon the cheek which she had to present to her father to salute. She could not help pondering over the inequal ities in human lots as she got into her brougham, and told the coachman to drive her home to Chester square. "Poor Mary is one of the women who would face starvation and even Death just to live for the sake of bringing up those children, and her husband — in spite of all his boasted learning — is as big a child as the rest." The contrast between her own London home and that of the Carruthers struck her more forcibly than usual as she stood at the drawing-room window and surveyed the still luxuriant greenness of the foliage in the square outside, the white lace and rose-coloured blinds of the windows, the decorated walls, the Sevres-china, the white-and-gold furniture, with Persian tiles in the fireplace, the brilliant colours of the petunias, the pelargoniums, lobelias, and calceolarias in the window-gardens, and the portfolio of engravings open on the table, with hand painted copies from Florence of the most celebrated pictures by Botticelli, Filippo Lippi, Fra Angelico and Andrea del Sarto.