A Bubble Fortune

Front matter

I ■ A BUBBLE FORTUNE Fortune BY Sarah Tytler AUTHOR OF "CITOYENNE JACQUELINE," " ST. MUNGO'S CITY," "FRENCH JANET," "A MORNING MIST," &*C, Soiibon 1893 HUTCHINSON & CO. 34 PATERNOSTER ROW PRINTED AT NIMEGUEN (HOLLAND) BY II. C. A. TII1EME OF NIMEGUEN (HOLLAND) AND TALBOT DOUSE, ARUNDEL STREET LONDON, W.C. CONTENTS CIIAPTUR PAOF I. HARRY NEWTON'S EARLY DAYS I II. ANNIHILATED AND RESUSCITATED II III. LIFE IN PARADISE ROW. NANNY AND NELL NEWTON. 26 IV. NANNY'S AND NELL'S DUTY 39 V. NEWTON- HAYES DROPS FROM THE SKIES 54 VI. "GOOD-BYE" AND "WELCOME" 70 VII. THE FIRST VISITOR AND HIS SUCCESSORS .... 8~ VIII. THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE GENERAL INVITATION TO FOXCHESTER WITH THE RESULT IO3 IX. LADY GOSFORTH'S OPINION. THE PLEASANT PRO- CESS OF BEING SENT TO COVENTRY 1 1 7 X. CAPTAIN PERRY' APPEARS ON THE STAGE .... 137 XI.

A DAY MARKED AVITH A WHITE STONE 155 XII. JULES NEWTON FROM BRISBANE 176 XIII. THE RAILWAY MAN AND HIS ACHIEVEMENTS . . 1 88 XIV. MILES NEWTON'S CREDENTIALS 199 XV. THE TEMPTER AND THE TEMPTED .15 XVI. A NIGHTMARE CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGB XVII. "IS IT WORTH IT, FATHER?" 24O XVIII. SURRENDER 252 XES. GOING BACK TO FOXCHESTER 264 XX. THE NATIVES, LADY GOSFORTH AND CAPTAIN I'ERRY. 278 XXI. A VISITOR 293 XXII. "THE ONLY PROPER AND POSSIBLE COMPROMISE " .

Chapter I. Harry Newton's Early Days

NOT his earliest days, not his childhood and first youth in Australia, but his life when he came to England. He was the only child of a rich squatter and he was sent to the mother country, to receive a University education and be made a gentleman. Newton pere was the younger son of younger sons several times removed from the main line of his race — squires in Mountshire — it was understood he had some drops of good blood in his veins. Certainly he had the ambition to have his son so educated, that he might do honour to an Australian fortune, whether spent in Sydney or Melbourne or London or Paris. Young Harry had no objection in the world to being made a gentleman. He did not display the reluctance some unsophisticated youths betray to the refining process, which perhaps was a small proof that he was a ready-made gentleman, I who had it in him to mount and assert his right to the highest step in the social ladder.

But neither was this true of Harry, who, from first to last, had little self-assertion and was innocently and comfortably satisfied with a claim common to humanity. He neither looked up nor looked down; while he had no pretensions to be a full fledged philanthropist, demagogue, or missionary, he had an innate, ineradicable sense of the universal brotherhood of man, and an unconscious instinct to be all things to all men. He was choke-full of sympathy for everybody with whom he came in contact and he had no self-consciousness to hinder its expression. He was a handsome child and a fine looking boy and lad. The open-air life, he had lived, had lent an ease and freedom to his movements — which the habitual slouch of the born Colonist, more accustomed to riding than to walking, from his babyhood — had not affected.

He was thor oughly rustic while he was nearly absolutely free from vulgarity. Harry did not arrive in England in a state ot nature, where education was concerned. His father's dreams for him had included such a pre paration for keeping University terms, as the honest efforts of a stranded but not incapable University-man could effect. Harry was not at all intellectual in the ordinary sense, or bookish in any sense, but he was at least tolerably familiar with the A B C of learning. He was not in this respect behind the ruck of lads, who come to the Universities from private tutors, instead of from public schools. After the first wrench from home and his father — his mother had died in Harry's infancy — he enjoyed England and Oxford immensely. No doubt he felt sundry restrictions in not knowing himself or his father — which was much the same thing — monarch of all he surveyed — not on Sydney Harbour, but at Red Rock Falls, the Newton's station, where there was any amount of square miles of the Bush to roam in at will.

But there were compensating advantages, and Harry had the adaptability of a woman in availing himself of them. He was possessed of a remarkable faculty of enjoyment, which served him from first to last; only crushing blows could destroy or even sensibly qualify it. A contented, cheery creature was Harry, with a passion for nature and for all nature's posses sions, especially in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, which was almost like an additional sense, an affinity and mutual understanding pecu liar to himself and them, between him and every plant that grew and animal that breathed. He had a kind of mother wit, which expressed itself chiefly in kindly pleasantries, and a command of drolly imagined, grotesque comparisons and con trasts. It was a humour, as superficial and inef fective for serious results, as summer-lightning.

Possibly for that very reason it recommended itself hugely to the duller, heavier witted ; tickled them as with a straw and convulsed them with ready, jovial laughter. " The best of company" young Newton was voted, when he was a freshman. He was highly popular, except in one light, with his gay compa nions. He was flush of money and free with it. He was their man, for all fun and frolic, though he could never be brought to have the devotion to cricket, (the great Australian team was not an institution of his day), foot-ball — not even to boating, so far as it was boat-racing — which he showed always for long walks — after he had taught himself to walk — for rides and rows in pursuit of some fish of the water, or fowl of the air, or plant of half wild common or marshland, which had taken his fancy.

He might have stood for "the scholar-gipsy" with the important elements of scholarship and love of solitude left out. Harry had his popularity also with dons and professors, as well as with undergraduates. There was nothing undisciplined or indocile about him. He was loyal to ordained authority, to the inner most fibre of his being. He was the most obliging, unexacting fellow that ever lived, chary of giving trouble himself, unstinted in taking trouble for others. He was modestly and agreeably at his ease by that happy, half dignified, half obtuse complacency of his, at the table of his dean as at that of the head of his college, when they deigned to honour the undergraduate whom all men liked, as he was, alas ! at the shady board of some other undergraduate upon whom the world was turning its back.

Doubtless the fact, that he was exceptionally handsome, contributed to Harry Newton's popularity at this date. His figure was still spare and loosely jointed, when he was little over twenty, but it was impressive from his height and breadth of shoulder, and barring the slouch, which might have passed for "the student's bend", he carried it well, with the simple confidence of his character and antecedents. As for his face, it was very nearly perfect. It was one of those faces, which in its clear fine cutting, straight nose, delicately curved lips, softly rather than strongly rounded chin, one is apt to compare to a classic face, seen in an old cameo. In addition he had acquired an English freshness and purity of complexion. An eminent prelate lately deceased, was so favoured in this respect, during his college days, that he won from his contemporaries the sobriquet of " the peach."

Harry Newton earned another title. In some lights, his face bore a likeness to that of the man in the world whom he least resembled in character — the great Napoleon — Harry's associates in the exercise of undergraduate wit, taking lively count of the points of difference, no less than of similarity, called him " Big Nap. " In Harry's second year a grave obstacle to his worldly success became plainly discernible. He was not an individual addicted to such indoor games of chance as " Nap " or games of skill like billiards. It was not from a propensity to illicit betting, or undue ratting, or fox hunting, it was not from being " gated " and fined an unreasonable number of times, or from never opening a book or attending a lecture or passing an exam, that Harry Newton gradually grew to be regarded in a dubious and half-disgraced light, by his fellows and his official superiors.

It was certainly not from anything worse, than might have been included in an excessive love of amusement and a lack of brilliant parts. His rectitude was never questioned. His standard of morality was at least as high as that of his neighbours, though it was not of the loftiest order, for the reason that he had the same difficulty, approaching to incapacity, in distinguishing shades in morals, that he had in recognising grades in society. In either case his inveterate humility and his indulgent bonhomie disqualified him for right judgment. Harry's stumbling block, his rock of offence, was that he would not or could not see, where rank and privilege ended and plebeianism stepped in. He would not or could not fathom the gulf between Town and Gown. He was happy and at his ease with Gown, he was equally happy and at his ease with Town.

He really could not comprehend the stern prohibition against such startling elasticity of principle and temperament. What could be done with a fellow, who in this fin du siecle would as lief pray with Kit Smart as with anybody? Nay, what was a hundred times worse than praying, which after all we are permitted to do in any company, Harry would as lief dine, tea and sup, walk arm in arm and shake hands affectionately with Kit Smart's equi valent, as with his vice-chancellor. Actually " Nap " would do his best to sing at a college concert the one night, and the next would exert himself to sing still better at some beastly tradespeople's affair in the Town Hall. He would put in an appearance at a Bampton lecture at St. Mary's in the morning, and in the evening be detected without a blush of shame, figuring as a unit in " a horrid low dissenting meeting-house."

He would play tennis with la Creme de la Creme of Oxford girls in the jealously guarded sanctuary of a garden belonging to the Head of a House; and he would leave his companions, without compunc tion and with only the apology of another engagement, to go and hunt for water-lilies with a bouncing, boisterous troop of town girls, who were simply nowhere in the matter of "form." He had been seen, (tell it not in Gath!) in the Town Barge, instead of his College Barge, watching the " Eights " rowing for dear honour ; he had been seen standing unabashed on the deck of an ordinary steam launch, instead of a private house-boat, going with a set of obnoxious shop-people — utterly obnoxious out of their shops, where, to be sure, they were necessary enough — to witness the Henley Regatta. The humours of well-to-do citizens were appar ently as interesting to Harry Newton, as was the Attic talk of University Society.

Yet he was no more a social reformer or a political radical, than the most conservative of dons could be proved guilty of such wild socialism. Harry was a radical because he did not see the line which divided gentle from simple, and loved them both as alike his friends and neighbours. "Without question the young man's Colonial extraction had something to do with his defective intuitions — rather than views. When he was at " home " as he still called Australia, not near any large town but up at Red Rock Falls, out in the bush he had fraternised with everybody as his father had done before him, station keepers, diggers, stock-drivers, shepherds, had been among his chums. Thus it went without saying, if the keeper of a store had ranked as his father's oldest and most intimate friend and of course as Harry's friend also, out in the Colony, there would be neither sense nor reason, nor for that matter truth in his declining the acquaintance of those wor shipful shop-keepers in Oxford, who were ready to aspire to the distinction — a poor distinction.

There were critics who said that Harry New ton's Colonial experience, in place of being an excuse, should have been a warning to him. He should have shrunk all the more sensitively from anything resembling the pit, from which he was drawn and the hole, whence he was dug. " No, no", these critics insisted, it was simply that he had a taste for low life. It was a great pity, of course, for he was a nice fellow otherwise, and was not in himself objectionable in his originality, but the fact could not be contradicted. There was this much to be said in agreement w-ith the last opinion, Harry was eccentric and his eccentricity proceeded from what is commonly called " a want " in the man. From some dense ness of understanding or blurredness of perception or thick-skinned, easy minded indifference short of individual coarseness, Harry Newton did not know the right hand from the left where the finer shades of manners and morals were in question.

He was worthy, oh very worthy in most respects, and in these not the least deserving of consideration. He was honest and manly, just and generous, but he was destitute in a general sense of fastidiousness with regard to the company he kept and the ways of his companions. He was too easily pleased, too tolerant of his neighbours' shortcomings, even when they greatly exceeded his own, too intolerant w7ith a good humoured obstinacy, of any nicety of judgment and exclusiveness of behaviour towards his fellows whose code differed from his.

Chapter II. Annihilated And Resuscitated Wtth

A NEW ENVIRONMENT. HARRY NEWTON was still at Oxford keeping his third year's terms. He was no longer hovering between Gown and Town, for such unbecoming vacillation is not to be borne in the most rigidly select of university centres. He had shared the fate of those who sit between stools, he had come to the ground. His popularity with dons and undergraduates was, with a few exceptions, a thing of the past. He had not fared much better with the wealthier tradespeople, w-ho built fine houses on the outskirts and inhab ited them, carefully surrounding themselves with all which contributed to the lust of the flesh and the pride of life. If they still kept their sons behind the hereditary counter, because there was no place to speak of for them in college-halls, they sent their daughters to France and Germany to acquire all the modern accomplishments to be had for money and enterprise.

To tell the truth, Harry had no more discrimination here than else where. He was prepared to join forces and be hail-fellow-well-met with the man w-ho still lived above his shop, as well as with the man w-ho had retired to a villa, and if not satisfied with a villa had aimed at a country house. Naturally the man, w-ho dwelt in the villa or the country house and was tabooed even by unattached tutors, was dis gusted with Harry's laxity. Harry Newton was happy in spite of his censors whether of Gown or of Town. He had an innocent vanity of his own, but it was not of the craving, exacting kind which demands unmixed apprecia tion. For a man bred in the wilds he had still companions enough and to spare. In spite of his geniality he had — born of his antecedents and peculiarities — a certain tendency to isolation.

He had after all some taste for lonely rambles, riding and rowing, where he was excellent society for himself, apart from an outer circle of friends, animate and inanimate, among thrushes and nightingales, tom-tits and king-fishers, sheep and oxen, weasels and water-rats, fritillaries and flower ing rushes, wild roses and honeysuckle, moon daisies and grass of Parnassus. For close cronies, he had his bay mare, "Aunt Sally," and his fox-terrier "Adam." The last was never absent from his master's heels out of quad. Harry's scout, alas! helped himself to his master's goods on all hands and so was not raised in the scale of humanity by that master's righteousness, but the one culprit loved the other culprit dearly. If Harry had stayed up long enough to go into lodgings, his landlady would probably have done the same in all respects.

Many a child, in houses where Harry visited, and many a child, belonging to houses the thres holds of which his feet never crossed, many a shop-boy and railway porter felt Harry's charm and fell under his spell. And Harry himself was as happy as the day was long, taking his work easily, yet not w-ithout the prospect of lumbering along and getting his degree in time, taking his pleasures easily so as to taste them to the full and not exhaust them. Then the crash in Australia came; a tremen dous drought wrought such devastation among flocks and herds, as might have matched one of the calamities which overwhelmed the patriarch Job. But natural causes did not work all the mischief with the elder Newton's property, any more than with Job's possessions, a rascally stock-keeper, who had charge of the stock on a tract of land, as extensive as a moderate-sized German principality, contrived to embezzle the proceeds and make off with them.

Mr. Newton had rashly embarked in mining speculations of which he knew little or nothing, the failure of which meant ruin writ large to the share-holders. To complete the calamity the chief sufferer, already a man up in years, was stricken down by his reverses and died after a short illness. Harry heard it all in bewilderment and sorrow but not in revolt. His unassumingness and unselfishness had their natural complement of reverence. If before these evils befell him, he had been suddenly told that he was to die forth with, he would have been startled and more or less shocked, but presently he would have taken refuge in a resignation half manly, half meek. Thus he pulled himself together on this occasion and prepared to face the worst. He was young and strong, he had received a liberal education, though he had to own ruefully that he had not been able to make the most of it.

But if every thing else fai1ed, he supposed his hands could keep his head, quite as well as another man's hands could do him the same service. Harry was no worse of, not even in the pain of the loss, which left him without a relation in the world, than were hundreds and thousands of his fellow ereatures — as good as he, Harry hastened to add. To do human nature justice, Harry Newton was not left alone, to cope with misfortune. His tutor and dean and several more of his college au thorities, together w-ith half a score of men who were his contemporaries, came forward at the sharpest pinch to do what they could for him. A county lady of mature years, residing at some distance, journeyed expressly to Oxford to do what she might on his behalf. Lady Gosforth's interest in Harry Newton was not to be lightly set aside.

Not so long before, she had had a son, an only child like Harry, who was in the same college, with rooms on the same stair. There were other bonds of union between the lads than propinquity and Harry's overflowing good fellowship. Poor Tom Gosforth was fre quently under a cloud. He had a perfect genius for getting into trouble, a good deal more repre hensible than Harry's social escapades, and yet not so very heinous or irretrievable for a harum scarum boy of nineteen. Harry at his own risk had stood by Tom and pulled him through more than one of his scrapes. When Nemesis came at last, in the shape of a coach accident in which Tom Gosforth received a fatal injury, Harry never left his friend till the afflicted mother came on the scene. Towards her he was so tender-hearted, considerate, unfailing in his kindness that she could only say, choking down a sob, when the burden of her grief was heaviest, that he had been like a son to her.

But though Lady Gosforth was a woman of some force of character and considerable energy, and though she had all the will in the world to be of use to Harry, it was after all one of his decried friends belonging to the Town party, who procured a berth for him, which he could fill at once, which would furnish him with bread and cheese when all the money to his account had been spent in paying his bills. This friend in need was a Mr. Bates, a respectable linen-draper in the High Street. Harry and he had managed to get acquainted in Harry's prosperous days and the elder man had extended to the younger a hospitality, which the lad accepted with unconscious intrepidity. Mr. Bates was a good old fellow, as good as another; what was Harry's knowledge of the dead languages or his delight in them, that he should throw stones at old Bates because he could not decline or construe the simplest passage in the classics?

Why should Harry refuse to forgive Mr. Bates, because his h's were not ahvays to the front and with him r invariably stood for a ? Harry wished the fault finders could hear old Levett the store-keeper at home speak, with his inextricable confusion in the matter of singular and plural. Yet Levett was not only a man of substance with really a fine place near the Falls; he was held in general esteem, and his notions of the varieties produced by change of locality on bird and beast no less than on plant, were more to be depended upon than the notions of any other man in that part of the Colony. Mr. Bates returned Harry's liking with interest, and was proud of his friendship, with the inalien able respect of the Oxford tradesman for the College gentleman. The distrust and dislike bred of many centuries of strife have failed to extin guish the respect.

The distrust and dislike could hardly extend to Harry Newton, nobody could know him and bear a grudge against him, though it was perfectly possible to undervalue and des pise him. Mr. Bates happened to have a son, who un like Harry, had social aspirations. To do him justice, he was not without higher motives, but even without them, he would have preferred to starve (metaphorically) as a curate rather than to grow rich as a shop-keeper. Harry had encoun tered the embryo curate in the College class rooms which are not absolutely closed to such as he. Harry had further come across young Bates in his (Harry's) fishing expeditions and botanical and ornithological rambles. With his usual disregard of consequences, he had struck up a warm friendship with the other youngster, though the two had little in common, beyond age and a slight similarity in a few pursuits.

The elder Bates had an old acquintance, who Was in a fair position as a lawyer, in the thriv ing town of Foxchester. This professional man, named Coxe, had a vacancy for a clerk in his office, and on Mr. Bates' recommendation was willing to try Harry, pay him as much as he was worth, and give him the necessary clerkly training. Harry closed thankfully with the offer at once, and on second thoughts none of his friends could regret his determination. Even Lady Gosforth soon saw that not much more could have been done for a young fellow, who gravitated unmistakably to the lower middle class. He would probably not have consented to take orders, and if he had, his pulpit eloquence would have been as doubtful as his tact and dis cretion in a parish. Besides, where was he to get a parish in these days of much competition?

How was he to be supported— he, who had been accustomed to wealth in some form — while he was qualifying himself for the Church, without grievous injury to his self-respect and independence? A commission in the Army? He must have been prepared for that also. He would have found more difficulty in living on his officer's pay than on his clerk's salary. He would have made ducks and drakes of military etiquette. Something in the diplomatic line? No, Lady Gosforth w-as forced to laugh when she thought of simple-minded, one-idea'd Harry in the character of a diplomate. A land-agent? The status was not much better than that of a country lawyer, to which Harry — though, at present, about as destitute of law as of diplomacy — might hope to rise. Harry, in spite of his rural tastes, knew nothing practically of land and agriculture apart from bush-farming.

He had no acquaintance with accounts, with the exception of those which had to do with his personal expenses; these had not been hard to master, when money was plentiful and a fellow was not a spendthrift. He might have gone out as a Colonist to Australia, Southern Africa or America, but as he had not learnt to accept alms, and seemed to have no fancy for acquiring the accomplishment, he must have gone out penniless. Here, Harry's previous Colonial experiences stepped in, and told him that, at this date, his chances of success, as a penniless man who was not a skilled workman, were, on the whole, better in England than in Australia. Therefore, Harry agreed to Mr. Bates' proposal and was presently settled as a clerk in Foxchester, with his dog "Adam" as the sole remnant of his flush of fortune and his University career.

Knowing Harry Newton to be what he was, it need not have surprised anyone to find how rapidly he became acclimatized in Foxchester. The town, which had risen upon carpet weaving^ and was largely a manufacturing town, had no special attraction for him. Indeed, he liked sitting all day in an office considerably less than attending lectures and attempting to burn the midnight oil over ancient classics and philosophies. But Harry was a philosopher in his own person and he was also an honest young fellow, who put his shoulder to the wheel as well as he could, when it was required of him. If he had been landed and left on a desert island, he would have found something to occupy his faculties and awaken his curiosity and sympathy. Perhaps it would have been easier on a desert island than in a bustling, brand-new, self-engrossed manu facturing town, but it was possible in both cases.

He despised no son of Adam — not of Adam his beloved fox-terrier, but Adam the universal pro genitor. Accordingly he was soon on excellent terms with his fellow-clerks — to whom he gave him self no airs; (the idea of Harry Newton giving him self airs!) — in whom he discovered, in the shortest space of time, any amount of admirable qualities, counterbalancing what was lacking in the clerks' minds and manners. When Harry found a man utterly repellant, which was a rare occurrence, he simply left him to himself and forgot all about him. There were so many people in the world, who were friendly and likeable, that it w-as not worth while to trouble himself with seeking to solve the problem of the few, who were hostile and objectionable. Harry was soon happy amidst his totally different surroundings in Foxchester.

The thing, which tried him most and inspired him with the liveliest regret, was that he no longer had money wherewith to scatter debateable sunshine around him. He could minimize his own wants without any great personal discomfort, but not to retain the power of supplying the real or fancied wants of others, and of dispensing gratification to them, was truly a sensible mortification and genuine pain to him. Time passed without Harry Newton accom plishing any marvel of legal progress, but in the most hundrum commonplace manner grew worth more to Mr. Coxe than when Harry first entered the office in Foxchester. In course of years he rose several steps, by dint of seniority in age and superiority in culture, in union with general steadiness and trustworthiness. There he stopped short and was not likely to go any farther, but his easy-going mild-flavoured ambition was well enough satisfied.

As senior and confidential clerk to Mr. Richard Coxe, Harry's income — counted, not by the fast receding past, but by recent experience — appeared sufficient for the reasonable requirements of one person. Nay, he grew to think it sufficient for more than one, when his annual visits to a home over which a woman presided, gradually impressed, even on his contented nature, a sense of his loneliness and led him to covet the domestic tie, for which he, more than most men, was eminently cut out. For Harry Newton was made to be a good, happy husband and father. With all his ready made patience and submission to the decrees of Providence, Harry had shrunk a little from going back to Oxford in his new role, just as he had shrunk from returning to Australia under totally different auspices from those under which he had quitted it, as the son of one of the most prosperous men on this side of the Great Continent lying in the lap of the Pacific.