Lady Delmar. A novel. (Fifth thousand.)

Prologue

. PAGE I. Poverty, Misery, and Crime i II. Democrats at Home ... ... ,. 21 III. Democrats Abroad 22

Book I. Chapter

I. After Seven Years ... ... ... 31 II. "You Love Jess" 42 III. Ye Curse of Eustance ... ... ... 53 IV. "We Shall See" 61 V. Politicians on the War-path ... ... 72 VI. The Birth of Love ... ... ... 82 VII. Sad Memories 92 VIII. "When a Woman Hesitates" 104 IX. "Life" 114 X. Too Late 125 XL In the Temple ... 133 XII. The Voice of the Tempter ... ... 144 XIII. Lost ... ... 155 XIV. Sore Hearts 163 XV. A Solemn Perjury 173 XVI. "I Should Die" ... CONTENTS.

Book II Chapter Page

I. No. 27,429 191 II. Falling Leaves ... ... ... ... 202 III. Carter's ... ... ... ... ... 208 IV. A Private Detective ... ... ... 215 V. A Woman of the World ... ... 226 VI. Father and Son... ... ... ... 243 VII. Shadows ... ... ... ... ... 250 VIII. A Confession ... ... ... ... 264 IX. A Broken Heart 274 X. Tears 285 XL The Distant Past ... ... ... 291 XII. "Vengeance is Mine," saith the Lord 300 XIII. Millions ... ... ... ... ... 309 XIV. The Hue and Cry 316 XV. Passing Clouds 321 XVI. Scotch Law 327 XVII. Legal Proceedings 332 XVIII. "Alexis Boron, Lapidary" 343

Epilogue

PROLOGUE.

. I. poverty, misery, and crime. Andrew's Rents, Holborn, on a cold, wet February night, in the year of our Lord 1878. Have you ever seen the place ? If not, go and do so. It is as well that the fat kine should know how the lean kine live. Here you have one end of society's long rope ; the other end is in Mayfair and Campden Hill. You leave your comfortable quarters in the West, and pass down Oxford Street and Holborn until you are just opposite the top of Chancery Lane ; you then walk slowly and look attentively to your left. You must mind, or you will pass the entrance without observing it, it is so very dark and narrow ; you will find it just before the archway which leads into fair, wealthy, historic Gray's Inn. Now there you are, turn up a little. You must shut your umbrella to enter the passage, and as you do so something dirty, beery, and silent shuffles by you — boots are scarce in Andrew's Rents.

" What was that ? " you say. Why, one of those lean kine, of course — a man like yourself, not so well favoured by fortune, that is all. Go on, never mind the odour of the place. There is a small courtyard, with a gas lamp in the middle : this is for the convenience of the police ; they penetrate here occa sionally, in pursuit of some outcast or other who has set at defiance those glorious regulations of law and order from which, no doubt, he derives so much advantage. " It is very wrong to break the law " you say, as you lounge in your luxurious armchair ; you would not dream B of doing so on any account ; but then, you do not live in Andrew's Rents, and you are not cold and wet and hungry, and your wife is not stretched on a bare plank sick unto death, and your children are not faint and starving around you crying for bread, and you are not mad with all this.

Preach and moralise, fat kine, it is your nature to ; but if you can just for once forget that you are fat, and go to Andrew's Rents, and look around you, then imagine what your sermons and your morality and your political economy and your law and order (we must use the term again, it is so common now-a-days) will sound like. Why, man alive, you will laugh at your own voice, and the bitterness of your laugh will find an echo everywhere around you. There are eight four-storey houses in Andrew's Rents, and the yard is very narrow. At the back there is a dead wall which separates the cul de sac from the luxurious gardens of Gray's Inn. This wall is very high, for the fat kine object to the lean kine even seeing the comfort and beauty which are beyond the reach of such as they, and so the air is pent in, and in summer-time gets hot and steamy, and in the winter cold and clammy.

There are many places like Andrew's Rents in this wealthy, busy London of ours. In the East End there are hundreds of them, but then they are not quite so close to grandeur and ease, and somehow or other they do not look so bad. If you doubt this, after you have seen Andrew's Rents, go down Drury Lane and look on each side of you as you do so. If you wish to see this misery in all its appalling horror, then, we suggest to you, make your visit say at io p.m. on a Saturday night in the winter, and there you will see what humanity can be brought to by law and order, and society, and civilisation. On the top storey of one of the houses in Andrew's Rents, on the night of which we have spoken, at about half-past nine, you might have seen two men crouching over a fire, trying to get some warmth into their shivering limbs.

There was no ceiling to the room, there might have been once on a time ; but doubtless, some previous tenants had pulled it down for firewood (for everything that can possibly be burned in these places is used as fuel) The beams of the roof and some very imperfect tiles were prolocue. 3 all that separated the tenants from the drenching rain. Here and there the water had succeeded in finding an opening, and slowly trickled on to the floor ; then, when the pool thus formed got too large, it would start a little stream and find an outlet into the floor beneath, there no doubt, to repeat the process. A little dirty straw was in one corner, and something which in the darkness might have passed for a mattress, was in another — there were no chairs or tables or anything else — and that was all. The men were seated on the floor, and both were smoking short clays.

There had been silence for some time. They were an ill-favoured couple ; dirty, ragged, and unshaved — the one was apparently about forty years of age, the other might have been ten years younger, but it is difficult to estimate men's ages in such circumstances ; besides, there was only the light of the fire. " I shall cut this to-morrow, Bob — can't stand it any longer," said the younger man, after trying hard to get a little more smoke from his exhausted pipe. " You'll be copped," laconically replied the other. " I don't care if I am ; what's the good of stopping ? The King has gone clean off, and old Ike has sloped, and here I'm left. If I get copped I shall round on 'em." " Rounding ! Bah ! It's ten years' hard anyway — they don't make it light now for rounding, like they used to." " Tain't no good, but it's a bit of revenge like ; I'd just like to get the King ten years' hard, for serving me this way." r> " I don't see as he could help it ; the 'tecs were close on him all the time, and if he was to show a finger he'd be nabbed.

It's d d nonsense to talk of rounding; I never see no good come of rounding all my life." " I'm off anyhow to-morrow. I wonder where that little has got to ; I'm starvin' hungry, and she ain't brought a tanner all day." "What a' you going to do with her if you start to morrow ? " " Nothing ! she ain't worth nothing ; I'm about sick of keeping her." " Keeping her," laughed the elder man. " My eyes ! keeping her." " Shut up, d n you ; keep your grins for where they're wanted. Didn't I buy her from Ike, and she's mine, ain't she ? and what she get's mine." After this there was silence again for awhile. They were too near quarrelling to continue the conversation, and gaol birds when they are sober know well enough that quarrel ling amongst themselves, as a rule, doesn't pay. " Let's play round poker to pass the time," suggested the elder.

"There's nothing to play for, except love or credit." "Credit ain't no good. Chuck us those cards, I'll try my luck. . . . That's the King," picking out the king of spades, " and that's Ike," which was the knave, " and that's me," the ace. "You may as well put me in as you are on the job." " Don't mind if I do, seeing as I must start in your company. Well, you be the Jack of Diamonds — that's a lucky card, they say." Then he arranged the cards in some mystic order, cut them two or three times, and dealt them out into three heaps. He picked these up, and eagerly sought for the card which he had assigned as representing his own fortunes. "Ah! money!" he cried. "Not much, though; the two of diamonds ain't the best of cards." " What's become of me ? " asked his companion. "You've got into quod; see here, in between two clubs.

My G — d, and Ike is in quod, and the King. Shuffle again," and he eagerly rattled the cards through his shivering fingers. This time fortune was not so favourable to the ace of spades, it was in. dangerous proximity to clubs. He looked anxious. These people believe implicitly in fortune-telling. When you have got to the very bottom of your luck, any turn in the wheel of the wily goddess is pleasant to contemplate ; there is no apprehension for the future, you're at the bottom and you can't get lower. It is the fat kine who live in dread of what may happen ; they are on the top of the coach, as Mr. Bellamy says, and they have a very doubtful seat — a stone on the road, even a rut, may throw them rudely to the ground, and they are always looking

PROLOGUE.

. 5 ahead and anxiously scanning the path along which they have to travel. " Curse the cards," at length he muttered, " there's no luck to-day," and he threw them across the attic. "There goes our property," laughed the elder. There was a light foot on the stairs — a weak, trembling foot — yet enough to make the creaky steps wince. Both jumped up and listened. "Jess," whispered one. "What's she got ? " And as he uttered these words a trembling feeble hand undid the latch. A little girl, a mere child, she might have been eleven, perhaps twelve years of age — a fragile creature, one that ought to have been a stranger to such life, with fair hair and blue eyes. We tell you this, you could not have seen it by that light. An attitude of overwhelming misery, bare-footed, half-naked, wet, wet to the skin, shivering, starving, and mute, she stood in the doorway afraid to enter.

" Give it here ; don't humbug about," shouted the younger man, roughly. She held out her hand with a few, a very few, coppers. " Oh ! I couldn't get any more," she cried. " I did try." " You've been a-spending it," was the savage answer. " You little , I'll teach you to spend my money. Where's the tanner the bloke gives yer every day ? " "He wouldn't give me any to-day; I followed him ever so long." She shrank back, expecting a blow. " You liar !" and he went up to strike her. " Hold haid," muttered the other between his teeth. " Hold hard what ? Who says hold hard ? Can't I do what I like with my own ? Where's my tanner ? " and he caught the child by the arm. " Hold hard, I say; drop it, or look out for your self." The elder ruffian had got close up ; there was a limit to his brutality, and this limit had been reached.

The other let go the girl to free himself to deal with his assailant. They stood face to face. "You strike the gal, if you dare." They were both excited now, preparing for a struggle which would probably end seriously for one or the other of them. Each had got his knife out. The child saw the blades in the light, and screamed. The door opened, and a third man stood at the entrance, trying to accustom himself to the darkness. He was a tall, spare young man, and, by dress and appearance, was of the upper working-class. There was a long pause. The stranger and the inhabitants of the garret were each trying to fathom the situation. The child seemed to recognise the stranger, and she ran to him. " They are going to kill each other. See, they've got knives ! " " Who are you ? " demanded the elder ruffian in a threatening tone, as the stranger advanced into the room.

The two had ceased their fight, and regarded the visitor with some alarm. " My name is Alman Strange. I followed this child. This is not a night for children to be out begging." " You'd better mind your own business and clear out slippy, or else " and the younger man made for the intruder with his knife. " Dry up, Bill. Mr. What's-your-name, when you've got no victuals, and no drink, and nothing, why you must beg, or crack a crib, or " "Starve," put in Alman Strange'. "True, men can't starve, and it seems pretty near it here." The child was holding him, and watching the others closely; she was afraid that her benefactor would come to harm at their hands. "Who is this child? " he asked, after a moment. "She is wet through," and he felt her little shivering shoulders. Then he remembered his own warm coat, and acting on the impulse of the moment, pulled it off and wrapped it round her.

As he did so, he unwittingly advanced yet farther into the attic. " She's mine," answered the younger man ; " I bought her." "Bought her?" " Ay, fair and square, s'help me Bob ; didn't I, old un ? And she ain't worth her keep ; she can't earn nothing." " I can't say as it wasn't square enough," said the other thus appealed to. " Bought her ! " cried the stranger, astonished ; " are people bought and sold ? "

PROLOGUE.

. 7 " Ha ! ha ! often enough ; but look here, guv'nor, you've got money, and as you've chosen to pry in here, you must pay your footing." During the short preceding interview they had seen their advantage, and suddenly got between him and the door ; he was in a trap — the child caught at his hand. Alman Strange was not a man to be easily frightened, at the same time he felt that he could be murdered in this place without difficulty. He was alone, unarmed, and they had knives. Somehow or other the trembling little girl seemed a sort of protection. So there they stood, two and two, and a moment passed in silence. " How much do you require ? " asked Alman. "All the blessed lot you've got, young man; that's the exact figure," was the encouraging answer. " And if I refuse it ? " " Awkward for you, that's all," and he played with the blade of his knife.

There was another pause. " Give it them," said the child to her protector, in an entreating tone. He knew what she meant. " Stop a moment," he answered ; " you bought this girl?" " That's correct." " Sell he_ to me, and I'll pay the money I have on me. It isn't much, mind you; it's only a pound or so, but I'll buy her." The two consulted together in an undertone for a few seconds. " Done with you," said the elder. " It ain't much odds about the gal ; she ain't no good." He was rather glad to get the child out of the other's clutches than otherwise. " Pack up your box, Jess ; you're sold again, as the auction chap says," put in the younger man, jeering. " Strike a light, pal ; this here's my swag, as it's the price of my property. Now, young man, don't give us more trouble than you can help, as we're in a hurry to slope, that's what we are."

A little bit of candle was lighted. It was the very last, and had been reserved in case of some great emergency. Alman pulled out his purse. It was a small one, and not very heavy. " Who is to have it ? " he asked, as both stretched out their hands to clutch the money. " It's mine, I tell yer," said the young man. "Divide the swag. You do it," said the elder one, addressing Strange. The other growled, but he was compelled to assent, for it was at once two to one against him if he differed. Alman took his own money out of his own purse, and proceeded in the glimmer of the candle-light to divide it between the iwo outcasts. It was easily done, as there was not much ofit — two sovereigns, three or four shillings, and a few coppers. At one moment the ludicrous nature of the proceeding struck him, and he laughed ; then he thought that this was blood-money — the price of a child in the year 1878, as we have said before, in fair, free England, and the spirit of the true-born Radical that he was, was roused, and he bit his lip.

The counting was finished, and the " swag," as they called it, was divided. " Come," said Alman to the child. " Now I have bought you, I suppose you are mine." Jess held back. She looked at Alman and at hei quondam master, and seemed irresolute. " Are you sorry to go from here ? " asked her new owner, surprised at her hesitation. " Oh ! no, no ! " cried the little girl. " But I can't come to-night ; indeed, I can't." The others w;re making ready to start. " Now, guv'nor, clear out. You'll have to go first." The bit of candle had died out, and the fire had come to the last ; there was only a faint glimmer from the gas lamp in the yard. "What's the matter?" asked Alman, nervously. She pulled his sleeve, and he stooped to her. " I want to get something so particular," she whispered in his ear. He didn't know what to make of it ; he had thought she would have been delighted at escaping from such surroundings. "What is it? " he asked.

PROLOGUE.

9 " I can't tell you now. Oh ! I wish I could get it without their seeing; they'll snatch it from me." What could this ragged child possess that was of such value ? She was, however, deeply in earnest. " Now, guv'nor, ain't you a-going ? " They were getting impatient. "We wants to lock these apartments up, we might require 'em again ; they ain't very comfortable, but they're useful." Suddenly the comparative stillness of the night was broken by a yell in the yard below. There were cries of "Coppers! coppers!" then there was a violent struggle, curses, shouts, and the not unfrequent concomitants of a police raid on Andrew's Rents. The two men ran to the window, and looked through the only square of unbroken glass. Alman was going to push open the casement to see what was the matter. " Get back," muttered the elder man, shoving him away.

" D'you want the peelers on us ? It's Neighbourly Boss they've copped ; he'll have five years for smashing." Whoever it was that was wanted had been evidently" secured and dragged off to gaol. The whole affair had not taken five minutes : the crowd in the yard had dispersed, and soon the only sound was the patter-patter of the rain on the pavement below, and on the tiles above. The diversion had been taken advantage of by Jess. As soon as she saw the three men at the window, she slipped back, ran to the little heap of straw that had been her bed, stood on tiptoe, and reached a small parcel that was hidden between the rafters and the tiles ; she quickly put it under the coat in which she was wrapped, and crept up to Alman. " I can go now," she whispered very low. The two others were inclined to be quiet, the events of the last few moments were not of a reassuring character.

The girl opened the door and stepped on to the stairs. " Mind," she said to her protector. It was very dark ; the steps were winding, and there were no balusters, they also had been burned years ago. He went down very gingerly, the child leading the way. Alman shivered ; the cold was penetrating. At last they were in the yard. The others had not followed ; everything was still and dark. They passed under the arch into Holborn. The shops were shut ; only the public-houses remained bright and busy. Alman would have liked something to take the taste out of his mouth, but he remembered that he had no money, so he took the child's hand and led her up towards the West. They walked in silence. He was thinking what they would say when he got home. Jess was wondering what was to become of her now ; she was not afraid ; she was in better hands than the last, anyhow, and with Alman's coat around her she was warmer than she had been for some time.

Still she wondered, and there was a little hope mixed with her wondering. And the rain pattered on. Now and then a policeman would look inquiringly as he passed, and people hurrying home would glance back from under their umbrellas. They were an odd couple of wayfarers — the tall man, closely buttoned up, holding the barefooted child by the hand, and she, wrapped in a careless sort of way with his great overcoat, the sleeves of which hung crookedly over her shoulders. They hurried along, then turned up Southampton Row, then into a side street to the left, along a series of second-rate shops, until they came to one over which, by the light of the street lamp, you might have read, "Alman Strange, Printer." Here they came to a stop, and for a moment he paused to consider. It is not a very easy matter to break the introduction of a ragged stranger such as this, to your household.

However, Alman's family was small, and he knocked at the door. After a moment the latch was undone, and the door was cautiously opened on the chain. " Qui est la 1 " came from within. " It's I, Paulette ; open quick, as it's very wet." " Ah ! c'est bicn, it is you, citoyen ; you are early," muttered Paulette, as she opened the door. " Tiens I " cried the astonished dame, as she caught sight of his com panion, and in the peculiar crescendo style in which French women use that expressive word. " Come in, follow me, Jess. Paulette, what do you think of my purchase ? " As soon as they were in the kitchen he pulled off the great-coat, and disclosed the poor, dirty, ragged child. As he did so the little parcel fell to the floor. She picked it up with a cry.

PROLOGUE.

. 11 Paulette was too astonished to speak. " I bought her, Paulette. What d'you think of that, ma mere?" " Mon Dieu," sighed the old dame, " what shall we do with her ? " " Do with her ! Give her some dry things, and some thing to eat and drink, and a bed to sleep on, because I've bought her, and I'm going to keep her." Poor Jess was sobbing. " Pauvre enfant, quel misere!" said the old woman, and she placed her hand kindly on the child. Jess looked up. It was so long since she had felt a kindly touch of sympathy, that it came as a surprise. " Now, Paulette, I will go and change, as I am wet through. She will die of cold if she is not put into dry things quickly. Where is le mattre?" " In his room. He is at work." " I shall be down again presently, and then I will tell you the history of this purchase."

"Ah! ma pauvre, what shall I do? I have no child's clothes. Wait one moment here, I will see what we have," and the old woman trotted off to her room. She was a kindly soul, was old Paulette, a real citoyenne of the people, a democrat whose democracy was due to love and charity, and not to envy, as too much modern democracy is. She was soon back with a couple of her own flannel petti coats, a blanket, a pair of huge well-darned stockings, and a jersey of home-knitted wool, and when she had pulled off the child's dripping rags, and done her best to rig her out in this new attire, and perched her in a chair near the fire, and given her a big slice of bread-and-butter to devour, she stood back with her arms akimbo and laughed as she admired her. " Mon Dieu! qu'il est drole, ce citoyen, Alman Strange ; but I must wash you, you are dirty — very dirty."

" I'm so sorry. I wasn't always dirty, indeed I wasn't ; " then under the blanket she fingered her little parcel, which was her only property. " Where he find you ? Where he bought you ? " " I will tell you all about it presently, ma mire," answered Alman, stepping in. He caught sight of Jess, looking a very remarkable figure dressed in stout M.re Paulette's clothes, and he laughed heartily. Then they had a discussion as to where she should sleep, and as to a good many other details, which it was necessary to settle with some deliberation, having regard to the small amount of accommodation which they had at their disposal. II. DEMOCRATS AT HOME. "Alman Strange, Printer." These words appeared in white letters on a black ground over the little shop in Parson's Avenue. It was a small house, three storeys high, constructed of red brick and strictly in the style of eighteenth-century London.

When the avenue had been built, there was no Hampstead, no Mayfair, no Bayswater, and where the Hol born Viaduct now stands there existed slums, plenty of them, similar to Andrew's Rents, which we have described. The shop was not strictly a shop, for there was nothing exposed for sale. The bottom windows were whitewashed from the inside to imitate ground glass. In the top panes were two or three bills, placed so as to show, no doubt, samples of the work of the establishment. By the side was a door, which led into the house itself, and the shop communicated with this by means of another door half-glazed. On the right of the entrance there was a post, and fixed thereon a bright brass plate, on which you might have read, " Alexis Boron, Lapidary." People often passed this way along Parson's Avenue.

It enabled them, when they were in a hurry, to avoid busy Oxford Street and Holborn, and to get to the City through Farringdon and Aldersgate Streets, where they were not so liable to be blocked by the traffic. Sometimes some of these people would look up and read these words, " Alman Strange, Printer," and if they were rich and comfortable, they thought to themselves, " Alman Strange, Socialist, Demagogue, Adventurer ; " and if they were poor, ideas came to them which, had they

PROLOGUE.

. 13 known how to put them into words, might have represented, " Alman Strange, friend and lover of men." For Alman Strange was not an unknown name in this Metropolis, even in the year of our Lord 1878. Occasionally, the bright brass plate would catch the eye, but it contained no information, for " Alexis Boron, Lapidary," might mean anything. The immediate neigh bours, and even the printer, often wondered why that plate was put up, or why it was kept so bright, seeing that no one ever called there, or inquired for the owner of it, or brought him 'a letter, or anything. Stay, not quite no one, for as it happens in such districts pretty often, when great distress came upon some household or other, either in the shape of sickness, or of poverty, or death, people would some times ring the bell, which was fixed under the brass plate, and a little old man would shuffle out, and wherever that sickness, or poverty, or death was, those who suffered felt that they were not, after all, deserted by their kind.