A Man's Man. A novel

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HOW TO PUKCHASE A PILOT OP LAND FOE FIVE SHILLINGS PEE MONTH. The BIRKBECK ALMANACK, with full particulars, post free. FRANCIS RAVENSCROFT, Manager. IN USE OVER FIFTY YEARS, STEEDMAN'S SOOTHIM POWDERS FOR CHILDREN CUTTING TEETH- RELIEVE FEVERISH HEAT, PREVENT FITS, CONVULSIONS, &c. Preserve a healthy state of the constitution during the period of TEETHING. Observe the EE in STEEDMAN, and the address:— WALWORTH, SURREY. A MAN'S MAN, H Bovel. ET JOHN STEANGE WINTER, AUTHOE OF r-* " BOOTLES' BABY," " CAVALEY LIFE," " AEMY SOCIETY," " BEAUTIFUL JIM," "MIGNON'S SECEET," "DINNA FOEGET," "BUTTONS," "THE OTHEE MAN'S WIFE," "GOOD-BYE," "MRS. BOB," "ONLY HUMAN," " THEEE GIRLS," " A SOLDIEE'S CHILDREN," " MY GEOFF," "THE SOUL OF THE BISHOP, Etc. " How contemptible is the pride of another man when he holds himself aloof from those of inferior rank !

How admirable our own self-respect, when we carefully uphold that station of life to which it has pleased God to call us." IN ONE VOLUME. LONDON » F. V. WHITE & CO., 14, BEDFORD STREET, STRAND, W.C. 1893. «' THE DRINK OF HEALTH." "MALT-COFFEE" (PATENTED.) Prepared from delicious Mocha Coffee and nourishing Malt. Taken at breakfast fortifies the system for the day; taken after meals, without milk, prevents and cures INDIGESTION. Does not excite the nerves and cause sleeplessness, like ordinary coffee and tea, or affect the liver like chicory. It is preferable to cocoa, being free from fatty matters that cause biliousness. It is as nourishing as stout or ale. It goes much farther than any ordinary coffee, therefore it is cheaper but by far superior. Highly recommended to invalids recovering and ladies of delicate health.

Chapter I. By The Great North Sea

It was a soft June afternoon, sufficiently late in the day for the sun to have lost its power, so that walking was a pleasure instead of a toil. Along the white winding road which leads from the quaint old-fashioned town of Harburgh along the Essex coast to the little village of Dagleigh, some three miles distant, a young girl was walking. She was very young, not more than nineteen or twenty,' slight and slim of build, a little above the middle height. She was fair of complexion, though her hair was dark, and soft, and very abundant. She was not strikingly pretty, though her features were good enough, and she had wonderful grey eyes, such eyes as you seldom see, except in those of Irish birth — what they call in the " ould " country, " put in with a dirthy finger." She was very plainly dressed in blue serge, with an open jacket, shewing a pink cotton shirt ; she wore a sailor hat upon the plentiful coils of her hair, her gloves were of sensible tan, and she carried a neat workmanlike walking-stick.

There was nothing unusual or out of the ordinary about her, excepting one thing, which was her extreme air of distinction. There were dozens of I girls walking about at that moment, in various parts of the country, dressed in precisely the same manner, neither better nor worse ; in Harburgh itself she had spoken to at least half a dozen girls whose garments had been bought at the same shops as her own, and yet not one of them was able to boast the same air as she had. On the whole, it was not a very happy face ; there was a wistfulness about the grey eyes and a sad little line about the corners of the mouth, which told a story such as we never like to see in a young girl's face. As she walked steadily and lightly on, she turned her grey eyes now and again over the wide sweep of waters on her left hand.

It was a lovely scene. The blue sea stretched so far that it was finally lost in the opal tints of the fading summer sky, and only the little crested wavelets that broke upon the shore showed it to be a thing of life and motion. Between the road and the sea lay the fresh green fields and hedgerows in all their tender beauty ; there were one or two coverts shewing darkly between sward and sky, and the note of the cuckoo sounded monotonously through the still clear summer air. The girl's eyes roved over it all with a look that was one of very real affection, and yet the cloud in them was not lifted. About half a mile further on she came to the one large house of Dagleigh, and passed in at the white gate set hospitably open. It was not a very large house, being little more than a rambling farm, but it was the largest house of which the village could boast, and the mistress of it invariably took the position that she would have taken if her husband had been the squire of several thousand acres, instead of being, as he was, only lord of the manor by courtesy, and as the tenant of the property.

She was standing at the morning-room window when Phyllis Damer passed through the little gate which divided the drive from the broader road. I think that Phyllis saw at a glance that her sister's face was clouded, for she gave an impatient sigh as she turned the handle of the hall door. "Where have you been, Phyllis?" said Mrs. Winton sharply, as her sister entered the room. " I have been down into Harburgh, Florence," she replied. " How tiresome of you to go into Harburgh this afternoon," said the other vexedly. " Why ? Did you want me?" asked the girl. " Oh, yes, I wanted you," Mrs. Winton replied, with a great air of resignation, " but of course that's nothing." " You never said that you wanted me, Florence," said Phyllis gently. " Oh, no, I know I didn't, but you are always out of the way.

You might have known Mr. Hawkesley would come this afternoon." " Mr. Hawkesley, oh — " said Phyllis, significantly. " Oh, yes, I know you don't oare anything about Mr. Hawkesley, or my pleasure, or anything, Phyllis," said Mrs. Winton, in disgusted accents. " But, at the same time, you know my opinion on the subject." " Oh, yes, Florence, I know your opinion well — and you know mine," she added, a moment later. 1* " I think you are a stupid, foolish, inexperienced little idiot," cried Mrs. Winton. " Thank you," answered Phyllis, with much politeness. " Oh, yes, now you're going to get sarcastic. I know your way, Phyllis, you never think anything of how you vex me." " My dear sister," said the girl, a little wearily, " I do think of howl vex you — I am really very sorry, for your sake, but I cannot take the intense interest in Mr. Hawkesley that you do.

I call him a dreadful young man, rich, and ugly, and uninteresting, with nothing on earth but his vicarage to recommend him." " And surely that is enough," said her sister, spreading out her hands and looking at her with wide-open eyes of amazement. " It would be enough with a man one liked," said Phyllis, deliberately, " but with Mr. Hawkesley ten thousand vicarages would not be enough." Mrs. Winton gave an impatient sigh. " It's hard upon me," she said — " it is hard upon me." "I cannot see why," said the other, in a voice which told plainly that she was utterly tired of the discussion. "No, you don't see anything but yourself and your own side ; you have always been the same ever since you were a tiny little dot. You don't consider how nice it would be for us to have a sister at the Vicarage — and you don't consider how it would satisfy my amour propre to carry off the best match in the county from the other girls — and you don't consider what a difference it would make to Gerald, or anything.

Really, Phyl, I don't know what you want more." A half smile came upon the girl's face. " I'll tell you what I want more, Florence," she said, in a soft voice. " I don't care anything about vicarages, or matches, or money, or any other con sideration, except one — when I think of marriage, I want to marry a man that I can love with my whole heart; all other considerations count as nothing beside that." " But you don't love anybody ? " Mrs. Winton cried. " I don't, but I shall — some day." " And if you don't— ? " "Then I'll remain Phyllis Damer to the end of my life." Mrs. Winton sat down and began to pat impa tiently upon the arm of her chair. " Really, Phyl, it is inconceivable that you can be so short-sighted, so blind to your own interests. Why can't you love Mr. Hawkesley ? " " Because I don't like Mr. Hawkesley."

" I can't see why," said the elder lady vexedly. " No, I daresay not, but I don't like him." "But he's big — six foot two— he belongs to one of the best families in the Eastern counties ; he is descended from the old Danes — what more would you have ? " " Oh, he's hideous," said Phyllis. " He is the finest man in the neighbourhood." " Oh, yes, he's big," said the girl, in an unmoved tone. " He's a splendid man," Mrs. Winton went on. " He is an athlete ; he is just churchy enough, he is young — very young to have such a living as Dagleigh — he is strong, and he is devotedly in love with you." " Ugh ! " was Phyllis's answer to this. " Look at the position you would have." " I don't care about position," said Phyllis per versely. "Well, I don't see what more you can possibly want. If you are waiting for Prince Charming, let me tell you seriously, Phyl, as a woman of the world, that you will not find him hereabouts."

" No, perhaps, not, but I'm not going to marry Mr. Hawkesley on the chance of that." " Well, I don't see what more you can want." " Well, I've told you what I want — and what I mean to have. Florence," the girl went on, in a half joking tone, " what a pity you couldn't marry Mr. Hawkesley yourself — but I must say I'd rather be married to Gerald of the two." " Oh, well," said Mrs. Winton, with a deprecating gesture, " Gerald is Gerald — of course, there's no comparing them — still, if I had been your age and free, as you are, I don't think Mr. Hawkesley would have had to ask me twice." " It's safe to say that when you've got Gerald," said Phyllis, sarcastically. Mrs. Winton gave a gesture of impatience. " Oh, you are trying — you are trying to think of your letting a man like that slip through your fingers, shilly-shallying and dilly-dallying ; I have no patience with you, Phyl."

" Well, you never had any patience with me, Florence," said the girl quietly. " I have less than ever with you now," declared her sister. " I can't think why you don't like Mr. Hawkesley." "Well, I will tell you. He is rich, and young,and big, and broad-minded, and an athlete — and a hypocrite." " Phyl ! " cried Mrs. Winton. " Yes, Florence ; he's a hypocrite. He is broad minded, because he didn't want to go into the Church at all. He went into the Church not from any love of the profession, not because he wanted to do the Master's work, but solely because there was an uncommonly good living in the family to which he was presented as soon as he very well could be. He is curt, and brusque, and rough ; he could be brutal. I know it — -I've seen it — and if I had nothing between myself and the cold world, Florence, I would rather go out and scrub floors and clean doorsteps for my living than I would trust my life into that man's keeping.

He is big, and he is strong, and he's an athlete — I admit all that — but be isn't a man. What man, when a girl had said " No " so often as I have done, would go snivelling to her sister, trying to curry favour with her, and trying to get her by a roundabout way ? Did Gerald go snivelling to anybody else when he wanted you ? No, he asked you like a man." " Ah, but I said ' Yes ' the first time he asked me," said her sister. " H'm 1 it's a thousand pities it wasn't Mr. Hawkesley. You would have suited him to a T; and the sooner you make up your mind, my dear sister, to the fact that I am not going to marry Mr. Hawkesley, the better it will be for everybody concerned. I won't marry him, so it's no use arguing about it any longer." Now, as it happened that Mrs. Winton's half-sister, Phyllis Damer, had three hundred a year of her own, and was in the habit of paying her a very welcome hundred a year for the privilege of remain ing at Dagleigh Manor as much or as little as she chose, Mrs. Winton had no special lever that she could use for the purpose of thwarting her sister's prejudices against the vicar of the parish.

"I suppose you've had tea? " said Phyllis, as she crossed the room. " Yes ; I had tea for Mr. Hawkesley. Of course you can have some if you will tell them." " Oh, don't trouble," said Phyl carelessly. " I'll go up and get some with the chicks." She went out of the room, with a snatch of song on her lips, and Mrs. Winton got up in a small passion and went to the window, more that she might check herself from saying what she would afterwards be sorry for, than from any desire to look out upon the fair stretch of green meadows and blue sea melting into the opal sky. Now Mrs. Winton was a lady who did not easily give up an idea that had once commended itself to her as a desirable one. When Phyllis Damer went out of the room, having apparently dismissed the subject of Mr. Hawkesley for ever, her sister had no notion of sitting quietly down and accepting the situation as one of defeat to herself and her highly cherished desires.

No, she simply let the subject drop for that night, and when Phyllis met her again, which was not until dinner-time, she was as sweet, and sisterly, and kind, as it was possible to be — and, let me tell you, Mrs. Winton had the power of making herself a very lovable woman. There is a distinction between a lovable person and a person who has the power of making herself lovable. Mrs. Winton was one of those women who could be delightful at times, but I think that there was nobody in that neighbour hood who had an equal power of making herself so utterly detestable as she could be. That evening, however, she was on the charming tack. She expressed an affectionate interest in her husband's doings for the day, and displayed a kindly curiosity about any news that Phyllis might have picked up in Harburgh, though, as a matter of fact, Phyllis had picked up no news whatever.

She had gone in, ostensibly, to match some embroidery silks, but, in reality, to cash a cheque for five pounds at the bank. Mrs. Winton especially admired the embroidery silks, which were in process of being sewn into an afternoon tea-cloth of exceeding beauty. Mrs. Winton knew that the afternoon tea cloth was being made for herself, and she was lavish in her praises of its lovely design, its exquisite colouring, and the beauty and finish of its embroi dery. " It's much too good for a tea-cloth, you know, Phyl," she said, sweetly. " I shall use it on the little table by the window." " Just as you like," said Phyllis, cheerfully. Yes, Mrs. Winton was exceedingly pleasant that evening. She smoked a tiny cigarette with her husband, just for friendship's sake. She was not much of a smoker, and her feats in that direction always gave her sister infinite amusement.

She would hold the little cigarette in the most approved fashion, draw in a tiny little puff, and immediately send it forth with an energy which would have blown out a candle. Phyllis never said anything, but she used to wonder how Gerald Winton could, as she put it, " butter " his wife about her smoking. When the smoking was over, Mrs. Winton went and sang a little. She sang rather nicely, with a high treble voice and a good deal of muscular development. The piano was not the best that ever lady sang to, but Gerald Winton laid back in a big chair, apparently enjoying it intensely, and smoking a cigarette in true work manlike fashion, that is to say, without making any smoke to speak of. And the end of it all was, that Phyllis went off to bed feeling that, really, considering her idiosyncrasies and her passion for Mr. Hawkesley, Florence wasn't so bad after all.

That was the worst of Phyllis Darner's character. Put her up in a corner and make her do something which she did not want to do, and she would always be ready to fight like a true Briton ; but pat her on the head, and smooth her down a little, and she was equally ready to honestly forget the past. She had, in fact, no power of foretelling the future from the experience of the days that were gone by. She felt quite a glow of sisterly affection towards Mrs. Winton, and, as she was combing out her hair that night, she even went so far as to make excuses in her own mind for her sister's anxiety that she should marry the Vicar of Dagleigh. " Of course it's natural enough," she said to herself. " He's a good match, THREATENED CLOUDS. 11 and it's a good living, and he has a good deal to recom mend him.

Of course, Florence couldn't know how detestable I think him personally — after all, it's natural enough." She ought to have known better ; she ought to have guessed in an instant, when she came down the next morning to breakfast, and found her sister with a sore throat, what that sore throat meant, because it was Saturday morning. But she did not ; no, Phyllis Damer never learnt by experience. " My dear Florence, what is the matter ? " she asked, seeing that her sister had a little shawl round her shoulders. " Oh, I've got one of my sore throats again. I can't think where I get them." "Oh, my dear, I am so sorry," cried Phyllis sympathetically. " So long as it isn't scarlet-fever," said Mrs. Winton, in a low voice, " I don't care a bit. I've such a dread of the scarlet-fever, you know, Phyllis."

Chapter II. Threatened Clouds

Now, everybody in Dagleigh had a dread of scarlet fever, because it was always breaking out in the village. Scarlet-fever, indeed, might be said to be the dominant note of this otherwise perfectly healthy community of men, women, and children. I don't quite know how it was, but if the harvest happened to be unusually good, scarlet-fever was invariably unusually bad. When everything else was going well, scarlet-fever always put in a warning note, as much as to say, " Now, don't you get above yourselves — remember I'm here, and you've got me to reckon with." In a less primitive community, the people would have risen up and stamped out the malignant foe — but they never did anything of that kind in Dagleigh. The people went on living year after year, and generation after generation, in their miserable thatched houses, houses made without foundations, without drains, without any of that accommodation which is considered necessary for good health and decency nowadays.

The ordinary cottage, in that part of Essex, consists of a living room, which is also the kitchen, and a bedroom over it. A little lean-to, which will form scullery and washhouse, is quite a luxury ; and two bedrooms make quite a mansion. It is true that the people do not pay much for these terrible little tenements, which but for the fresh air playing about outside of them, would rival any dens at the East End of London for squalor and misery. Two to four pounds a year is an ordinary rent in such a village as Dagleigh, and for six pounds a year you expect to have something quite superior in the way of accommodation, say two bedrooms and a little sitting-room. But they are dreadful places. The landlords shiver and get scared when the scarlet-fever comes, or the typhoid, or the more insidious and more difficult to treat ulcer — but they do nothing.

It was good enough for their fathers and their grandfathers, and it is good enough for them. And so the people go on, year in, year out, living over cesspools, and drinking out of wells in which the toads lie fat upon THREATENED CLOUDS. 13 the green mosses which are lovely but scarcely sani tary. It isa strange existence, a strange mingling of squalor and beauty, of healthfulness and disease, of roominess and of want of space. For these miserable cottages, these hovels (to call them by their proper name) are garlanded with roses, clematis, and jas mine. They stand, for the most part, in large gardens, or, at least, in comparatively large gardens, wherein children can run and play, and breathe the blessed air of Heaven, pick flowers and catch butter flies, and live, in that particular sense, as surely God intended them to live.

On the other hand, father, mother, grown-up children, the whole household, sleep in one room, one little room, with a sloping roof, whose little dormer window is hung with snowy curtains, but whose air is pestilential. Fresh air outside the house there is in plenty, save where it is poisoned and rendered dangerous to life by the total want of drainage. The people are fairly strong and healthy ; they have starvation wages, and live chiefly on bread, and tea, and fat bacon. While they have health they do well enough, until the dread day comes when there is too much rain or too little, or not wind enough, or for some such reason a whisper goes round that So-and-so's down with the scarlet-fever ; then death begins to reap the harvest sown by the criminal want of care among the landowners. It has always puzzled me to know how large families with a single bedroom manage when sickness and death comes in among them.

The dead can not lie out in the open, and they have not the decent custom of laying the departed in the church, while the poor relations, with trembling fingers and eyes blinded with tears, stitch their pathetic bits of mourning together so as to make a decent appear ance on the funeral day. We hear a great deal about the delights of the blessed country, of the advantages which country people have over those in towns. And so perhaps they have, but to those who know village life even tolerably well, the disadvantages of being poor come with appalling force, and, be you rich or poor, in such a village as Dagleigh, you are always ready for the scarlet-fever scare, and that morning the mere men tion of a sore throat was enough to allay all Phyllis Darner's suspicions as to her sister's bona fides.

" Dear, dear, a sore throat ! " she exclaimed. " You didn't complain yesterday, Florence ; what have you been doing ? Is it true that Mrs. Thatcher's little boy has got the fever ? I shouldn't let the children go into the village. Dear, dear, how dreadful. I wonder what one can do ; send for the doctor, of course." "I don't think I'll send for him at present; we must see how I get on during the day," said Mrs. Winton. " Of course, I can't go out, Phyllis ; I wonder if you would mind doing the vases in the church for me ? " Even then Phyllis did not see. " Oh, bother the vases — at least, I didn't mean " she said, half apologetically, " I didn't mean that. You're too good, Florence ; why don't you let that muscular young man do his own vases ? " " It is not very much that I do for the church, Phyllis," said Mrs. Winton with dignity.

"Oh, I don't know ; you're always pottering round. I wonder Gerald stands it. Well, I'll do them for THREATENED CLOUDS. 15 you, but there isn't a flower in the garden, and I don't know where I shall get any from, and James will be after me* if I go down to the asparagus beds. There is no sentiment about him. When I tell him it's for the church, he only says, ' Drat the church ! ' Don't you think you had better have a little sharp syrup for your throat, dear ? " " Perhaps it would be as well," said Mrs. Winton, with a deprecating little cough. Thereupon Phyllis finished her breakfast and went along to the kitchen, where she concocted a truly horrible decoction in a large breakfast cup, a decoction which was, I should say, calculated to cure any sore throat, no matter from what cause. It had sage in it, and raspberry-vinegar, and treacle, and butter, and several other ingredients equally nauseous and disgusting.

However, Phyllis was without mercy, for the sole reason that she thoroughly believed in the genuineness of the sore throat, and having made this dreadful compound exceedingly hot, she carried it into the morning-room and literally stood over her sister while she swallowed several spoonfuls of it. But Mrs. Winton was content to pay the price in order to get her own way, and she swallowed the nauseous mixture with a docility which spoke volumes for her determination and power of will. "Chris," said Phyllis, meeting her eldest niece in the hall, " will you go down to the church with me ? I've got those vases to do." " Oh, yes, dear. You know Mr. Hawkesley has gone down to the village, don't you ? " '* Then let us fly," said Phyllis, " and get the vasea done before he comes back again."

Chapter III

A COMPLETE FIASCO. Now*, as a matter of fact, Mrs. Winton had on the previous afternoon, without absolutely saying it in plain English to the Vicar of Dagleigh, hinted that she would contrive to send Phyllis to do the vases the following morning. He had conveyed to her, in a roundabout fashion, that he had never had a real opportunity of putting a certain question plump and plain to Miss Damer, and Mrs. Winton had said, " Well, yes, it is awkward. You see, she is such a favourite with the children, and, of course, they, poor little things, have no idea of anything of the kind, and, of course, if she expected it at all, she would not like in any way to seem to be making an opportunity ; I must see if I can't help you a little ; only Phyllis is a difficult girl to arrange for. Shall you be at the church to-morrow, when I am doing the vases ?

" " I will be," said Mr. Hawkesley promptly. "Well, then I'll— I'll think it over; I'll sound her and tell you what I think. By the bye, if I shouldn't be able to do them myself, Mr. Hawkesley, you will forgive me, won't you ? " " Oh, certainly." He knew, as well as if she had spoken in plain English what she meant — that she would send Phyllis to do the vases for the next day's services, and prepared himself accordingly. It was Mrs. Winton's regular custom to arrange the vases about half-past twelve, just before luncheon, in fact ; and Mr. Hawkesley, looking very big and A COMPLETE FIASCO. 17 very smart, in a short morning jacket, and with a white sailor hat upon his head, went gaily along, a little before that time, into the church, hoping that he would be able to walk back with Miss Damer and put a certain important question to her as he did so.

I am bound to say that when he walked into the little church, which always stood hospitably open from morning till sunset, and saw that the vases were already decked with June roses and fronds of asparagus — J am bound to confess that a very ugly and a very naughty little word escaped his lips, for he realised, in an instant, that Phyllis had already been and gone. As for Mrs. Winton, she sat nursing herself in the morning-room until lunch time, when she appeared in the dining-room, happily able to announce that she felt a little better. " My throat is nearly well," she said, in a tone of mild self-congratulation. " I am so delighted," cried Phyllis. " By the bye, Mrs. Thatcher's little boy is better — it is not fever, it is only a bad cold." " You didn't go there ? " said the lady of the house, in alarm.