With the Help of the Angels

Front matter

NEW NOVELS IN ONE VOLUME. THE TWILIGHT OF LOVE : Four Studies of the Artistic Temperament. By Chaki.es H. Brookfield. 3s. 6tf. BY A HIMALAYAN LAKE. By "An Idle Exile." Crown Svo, 3s. 6d. THE HEART OF TIPPERARY. By W. P. RyAX. With an Introduction by Wiiliam O'Brie.v, Esq., M.P. Crown Svo, 3s. 6d. MR. JOCKO. By J. Fogerty. Crown Svo, 6s. LONDON: WARD AND DOAVNEY, YORK STREET, COVEXT GARDEN. I:Y WILFRID WOOLLAM " Chance — that is the work of the angels " ICuniiiJit WARD AND DOWNEY, Ld. 12 YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN 1894 IAU rights reserved] Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London & Bungay. CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE

Prologue

... ... ... ... 1 I. AT THE END OF HIS TETHER ... ... 7 II. A BRIGHT IDEA ... ... ... ... 24 III. GOOD-BYE, BLACK BARNFIELD ! . . . ... 46 IV. FROM FOREIGN PARTS ... ... ... 51 V. "MY FRIEND, MADAME BARONNE " ... 59 VI. CONFIDENTIAL ... ... ... ... 78 VII. ON VIEW... ... ... ... ... 92 VIII. MORE CONFIDENTIAL ... ... ... 107 IX. "NEARLY A stroke" ... ... ... 121 X. ALTERED CIRCUMSTANCES ... ... 132 XI. '-ACCORDING TO HIS WORKS " ... ... 145 XII. EN ROUTE ... ... ... ... 153 XIII. "ALL MEN ARE LIARS"... ... ... 162 XIV. "LIKE A FIGHTING-COCK AGAIN " ... 176 xv. "the new phase" ... ... ... VI CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE XVI. "FAMOUS" ... 207 XVII. FROM ANOTHER POINT OF VIEW ... 216 XVIII. "THE WORK OF THE ANGELS"... ... 226 XIX. "A MAN OF THE WORLD" ... ... 243 XX. "JUST THE SAME" ... ... ... 258 XXI.

"ARE ALL OUR WANDERINGS O'ER 1 " ... 275 XXII. "THE HEART KNOWETH " ... ... 283 XXIII. FAMILY AFFAIRS ... ... ... 290 XXIV. A WAKING DREAM ... ... ... 300 XXV. " AND A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM"

PROLOGUE.

. " Do you want me ? " "Yes, come in. Didn't you see me beckon you ? " " But I didn't know whether I ought to come through the window — must I ? And my boots are dirty." " Never mind. Come in. So you are Baity Brown ? And Mrs. Nodder tells me you are fond of pictures ! " " My name is Tom. But I'm Tom Brown really — not Barty Brown. Oh, you have a lot of very beautiful pictures ! May I show you my mother ? because Mr. Patterwell says it's worth fifty pounds." " By all means. I should very much like to see it." B " Oh, thank you. I'll fetch it." And the young gentleman, about eight years old, who had so frankly announced his name and his appreciation of the pictures which he saw around him, was about to make his exit through the open window as suddenly as he had appeared. He had come from the next house but one, by the verandah which ran along the second storey windows from one end of St. Philip's Terrace to the other.

" Here, come back, Barty. I'll look at that picture by and by — sit down, and pitch into those strawberries. Why haven't you ever been in before ? " Tom turned round and surveyed his new acquaintance with a kindly critical eye. He was a sturdy little fellow rather shabbily dressed — and to be candid his boots were not the only part of him that was dirty. But he had a very pleasing face, beautiful eyes, and a wealth of brown curly hair. " I didn't know that you wanted me ; and I didn't know that — that I should like you. But I like you very much, Mr. Fairfax — you are very kind— shall I help myself?" "Yes," said Mr. Fairfax. "But not in that

PROLOGUE.

. 3 way," he added, as Tom relinquished the spoon after putting half-a-dozen strawberries on a plate ; and he proceeded to shovel out a portion more suitable to a boy's receptive capacity. "Oh, Mr. Fairfax, oh!" said Tom, and forth with began to take a new survey of the some what luxurious room, with the plate of strawberries on his knee, his conversational powers placed under disadvantage, and periodically suspended altogether. Yes, it looked to Tom a very luxurious room, very elegant and artistic. But this effect was not due to the upholstery. It was due to Mr. Fair fax's etchings and watercolours, his antique secretaire, his easy-chairs, and innumerable knick knacks that were strewn about with artistic effect. His landlady certainly had humoured his elegant taste by tying back his curtains with some very pretty sashes, and setting his things off with an effective wall-paper.

Fairfax paid well for his rooms, and — at this time — punctually. Then the unfinished or un framed paintings standing on their easels — for Mr. Fairfax was a painter, if he could make a distinct claim to any profession — greatly impressed Tom. Meanwhile the occupier of what Tom afterwards described as the most beautiful room he had ever seen — in a velvet jacket and very neat slippers — reclined in a basket lounge, smoking a cigarette, with a good many art publications and some daily papers strewn about him on the carpet. The substantial remains of a breakfast, by no means frugal, still stood on the table, with the dish of strawberries, which even Tom's liberal helping had not left nearly empty. Mr. Fairfax never harassed his landlady with petty economies. Just now he seemed to enjoy his cigarette, and the sight of Tom devouring his strawberries, and the scraps of conversation with which Tom was 4ible to entertain him between times, very much indeed.

And when the cigarette and strawberries were finished, Mr. Fairfax began to enjoy Tom's com pany even more. He found the boy entertaining, and by the time Tom's visit had come to an end, had begun to like him very much. " Well, good-bye, then, Tom — if I mayn't call you Barty." " Oh, well, you may, Mr. Fairfax, if — if you very much want to." " Oh, no, ' Tom ' will do. I like ' Tom.' But

PROLOGUE.

. 5 how did you get it — your nickname ? Tell me again." " I wrote it on my slate, my full name, you know, Tom Bart Brown, and I told Mr. Booking why I did it. It was a dictation letter ; and they all laughed." "And you didn't like that; so you had three fights." "Yes, altogether; not all at once. Because, you know, my mother told me Bart Brown was our full name, but she didn't use it. She thought that just Mrs. Brown was nicer ; but she told me not to forget — oh, I remember how we talked about it very well — that it was our full name. So I always sign myself Tom Bart Brown to remember her by. Shouldn't you ? " "I should." " But Mrs. Nodder says ' it's stuff and non sense,' because I was only christened Tom, or Thomas, I think, and that's true, because she has the paper — I'm only Tom Brown there.

But my full name is Tom Bart Brown, and I shall keep it to remember my mother by. My father died, you know, when I was a very, very little boy." " You are quite right, my boy, and never you be laughed out of what you think is right. Very likely Bart was your mother's name ! " " Yes, I think it was ; that is why I like it. And I know it's my full name, because my mother showed it to me when we talked that time — when she told me that she had drojiped the Bart. Mrs. Nodder says I've mixed things up ; but I don't think I have. It was written very big, and beautiful and plain, ' Thomas Bart Brown,' and I always try to write exactly like it — except that I put Tom. I shall put Thomas when I'm grown up. But you want to paint, Mr. Fairfax. Good bye." " Good-bye, my little man. Come and see me again some time." " I will. I'll come this afternoon."

Chapter I. At The End Of His Tether

" Our Studio, " 9, St. Philip's Terrace, "May 1£,*188— , Midnight. " My dear Tom— " Before you get this, you will have had a good cry, and have been told a great many things about me. You will not understand it until you are grown up. But don't cry any more or you may be making me very, very unhappy. Good-bye for a long, long time. Be a good brave boy ; and always remember that Mrs. Nodder has been very kind to you, if she is a bit crabby. Stick to being a gentleman, and never mind Johnny Gubbs laughing at you. I am leaving you all my paints and things, and the picture on the easel, and twenty-five pounds — all I They will be taken care of for you. But don't be an artist when you are grown up if you can help it. I find it very hard leaving you, but I must. If people tell you I was insane, don't contradict them.

Perhaps they are right, If they say I was a very wicked man, tell them that is God's affair. Good bye, my boy ; God bless you ! Stick to being a gentleman ; and always get Mrs. Nodder to mend your clothes and give you clean collars. Never tell lies — try every day to grow brave — don't give up saying your prayers at bedtime — think of others, and God will think of you. Oh, Tom, my boy, if I could see any way " George Fairfax had written so much before he realized the incongruity and absurdity of his letter. Then he threw down his pen, pressed his hands to his temples, and rose and paced the room. He was not " being brave." He was not " thinking of others," not of his one little friend who asked so little — and as for going on saying his prayers at bedtime, he had thought to snatch the sleep of death with violence ; and what could he say to God at such a bedtime as that ?

A loaded revolver lay on the table at which he was writing, and a picture of the death of Chatterton hung on the wall at his elbow — at once a horrible and beautiful thing, showing the exceeding loveliness of death in the poet's face, and the little phial which had rolled out of his white, dead hand on the floor by his couch, with wliich he had defied the whole hard world — and God! Fairfax's room was neat and tidy, all but in a condition for the next tenant, without signs of any work having been done lately. But there was one picture, standing on an easel in a con spicuous place, as if it had been placed there to attract attention. It had recently been rejected by the Academy, and Fairfax thought that he would never paint a better. It was a painting of Tom standing in that very room — their studio.

The boy was clutching the portrait of a lady, and looking defiantly at two men — one with a pocket-book in his hand — who were overhauling the room, and evidently seizing effects for debt. Both Tom's face, frank and warlike, and the lady's face, beautiful and rather scornful, were painted with great force, and they bore a strong resemblance to each other. The picture would have needed no title in any catalogue. The boy's attitude and expression said plainly, " You shall never take this — it is my mother ! " When George Fairfax had walked up and down his room for half-an-hour — pausing several times to look down on his revolver and on that un finished letter to Tom — he went to the window, drew up the blind, opened the sash, and stepped out on to the verandah. It was nearly midnight in May.

The air was cool. There was no sound of toil, for the toilers had long been asleep, and not a rumble from the wheels of restless pleasure reached that grim brick, three-storeyed terrace with its black verandah. The pleasure-seekers — if any — returning to St. Philip's Terrace would walk back with their shoes in their pockets or in paper parcels. Fairfax looked out at the grim black church towering into the star-sprinkled violet sky, on the verge of the black town blinking behind it, and gave a groan. But black as it was, St. Philip's Church looked to him less black and ugly than it had ever looked before, and exactly over its looming tower in the blue calm sky he saw the constellation of Orion — like a cross in stars swung down from heaven over the sin-blacked cross beneath, and then he knew that the spell of his evil angel had been broken.

Fairfax hated Barnfield. It was a place of iron, said to be the dirtiest and most hospitable town in England. But he had known little of its hospitality, and the dirt had choked him, and the iron of it had entered into his heart. He had come there two years ago with two or three hundred pounds left of a little fortune which had been very unwisely lost if not squandered ; and now he had come to his last twenty-five pounds, after being eased of all his superfluous bits of personal property by the sheriffs officers. He had come to Barnfield because it was his native town, and his father had been buried there, long ago — the Vicar of St. Clement's — a suburban church, boasting a congregation exclusively com posed of " carriage people," whose spiritual wants, which were excessive, Mr. Fairfax had struggled with for ten years, and then succumbed to.

More over, Barnfield had very few painters, and very many wealthy citizens, who bought pictures by the wall-full. Fairfax knew he could paint, and had intended to set about it in good earnest ; but so far his new enterprise had ended in the art patrons of Barnfield buying one or two of his pictures at a price which paid for the canvas and the meals he consumed while at work on it. But he had not yet learned to accommodate himself to such small earnings. Moreover, he had been very ambitious, and seemed doomed to be a failure. If any one will take the trouble to attend one picture-dealer's sale in this day, he will know what failure means to a painter ! Where do they all go, those beautiful bits of coloured thought, which teem from artists' brains who are dying in attics ? God knows ! And He may know why the artist must go on making more of them, instead of learning to plough or of getting coals in if he is past learning.

Verily this is an age of progress, and enlighteu ment and culture ! You can starve people and "sweat" them, those people at least whom you can do without ; who only teach you and charm you, and better you — a little, and they will thank you — some of them — almost going down on their knees, and call you the patrons of art. But you are not ! You are ostentatious, advertising house decorators, who only understand marketing and trade-marks. You go often up to the temple of Art, but it is only to the money-changers ; and you profane it. You are killing the prophets, and your children will live narrowed and sordid lives. You, Barnfield, whose fair palaces in green parks belt the black pit whence ye were digged — white suburbed city of the purple hills, that smiles by the lake of smoke — you, Barnfield, for whom art — God's art and song have done so much, what have you done for artists aud singers ?

Less than any other town ! But you cannot help it — you haven't the time — being the most favoured and pampered daughter of an evil and froward generation in haste to be rich. And your children are rich. But their riches will not buy them souls, which they so much need. They will die, nearly all of them, neither loved nor admired — only envied. And they will have no record in the days to come, save one big tinsel tottering monument for all their generation lumped together — to the meinoi-ji ot WEALTH, WHICH PASSED AWAY, &c, &c. George Fairfax thought hardly of the world, and very hardly of Barnfield as he looked then on its lurid face, asleep under the quiet stars. He cursed his native town, and cursed himself — with similar folly — and was not wanting coun sellors who bade him curse God too, and die.

But death, when summoned imperiously by a weak mortal, does not come with an olive leaf and a kiss. He comes with a masked face, bearing a naked sword — clearer, more terrible every step he takes — and if men do not shut their eyes at once, and fling themselves upon him, they recoil, tremble, look away at the stars or the sun-steeped meadows, or the face of a little child, and fly back into the open arms of a tender stooping God, and hide themselves in His vesture. So Geor»*e Fairfax did, as more of our neisrli hours have done than we dream of. He went back into his room and shut the window, unloaded his revolver and put it by, tore up his self-accusing letter to Tom ; then flung himself into a chair, brushed away the blessed tears from his opened eyes, and promised God to be a better man.

Moreover, he promised himself to stick to Tom through thick and thin, and, at present, to black Barnfield and 9, St. Philip's Terrace, for Tom's sake. St. Philip's Terrace, though a good way from the heart of the town, and boasting a few blackened old trees which were dying hard, had long ceased to offer "a desirable suburban residence." It was a row of well-built spacious houses, some of them with stables behind them, and had once belonged to some of Barnfield's notable people. Now they were tenanted by third-rate doctors and advertising dentists with large families, people who were experimenting in "flats," and ladies "reduced," or otherwise especially adapted for the business of letting rooms. One of the houses, with a stable, was taken by a brewer's agent, who filled the yard with barrels, and put his head man, Robbins, into the house to look after his interests, while Mrs. Robbins looked after lodgers.

Mr. Robbins was a chum of Tom's. But Fairfax was not his chum ; he was his master and his hero, whom he adored. Tom, now ten years old, had spent some portion of every day for the last two years in Fairfax's studio. He had his own corner, where he drew and daubed with the materials which his friend gave him in abundance, along with much real, patient help; and the boy's career was quite a settled thing in his own mind. But there was Mrs. Nodder to be considered. And Mrs. Nodder stigmatized art, without any classification, as trumpery, and artists as " people who were bad at payin' " ; and Tom " belonged " to Mrs. Nodder. He was not a possession she seemed to set great store by ; she neither poured out love nor luxuries for him very lavishly, and she frequently boxed his ears. But for three years she had "done for him," which expression — her own — describes a considerable outlay, and on the whole she was kind, even to the point of looking at every new bit of " trumpery " which his genius produced, pointing out its prominent defects with a hairpin, and occasionally — very occasionally, when the lodgers were out and the kitchen was tidy — giving a grunt of qualified admiration.

Mrs. Nodder was not Fairfax's landlady. She lived next door but one, and slightly resented the attractions — not to say allurement into idleness and folly — which No. 9 possessed for Tom, to the disparagement of No. 7, where he might have cultivated the society under her own roof of two eminently respectable and punctually paying lodgers — Mr. Patterwell, the curate of the great grim, black church opposite — and "a scientific dressmaker " who " gave lessons." Tom's mother, Mrs. Brown, had " died on Mrs. Nodder**s hands " about three years ago after a sudden and short illness. She had given singing and dancing lessons " as per advertisement," and it was said matrimonial introductions, from which she was supposed to have made a good deal of money, without advertisements. She had been a clever woman, with a large share of good looks, high spirits, and much pride of deportment.

She had paid Mrs. Nodder well for her two large rooms, which she could throw into one, and a bedroom ; and besides living well, for which Mrs. Nodder naturally admired her, she used to drop many hints, not obscure ones, about her " high descent," and the day that would see her again restored to her proper sphere — hints which, not accompanying poor living and deferred reckonings, did not arouse Mrs. Nodder's disdain. However, death came instead, suddenly and yet insidiously. Is not that a most pathetically sudden death when a young woman, who was dancing three days ago, says, " I think I am better to night ; my cough is gone, and I am very drowsy," then slips into unconsciousness and dies — dies just then, though she may breathe and toss and talk for two or three more days ? c So Mrs. Brown died, and left Tom and two or three trifling effects and ten pounds or so ; and Mrs. Nodder took to the lot pending arrange ments; and very soon found that arrangements (wholly self-acting) had disposed of everything but Tom, a little writing-desk, containing nothing which she could sell, and the picture of her late lodger, on the back of which she munificently in scribed Tom's name, and hung it over his bed.

Mr. Patterwell, the curate, once informed her that for such a picture, though it was only eighteen inches by twelve, signed by such a name, any picture-dealer would give her fifty pounds, upon which Mrs. Nodder laconically replied that " picture-dealers must have more money than brains." And when Tom triumphantly brought Mr. Fairfax's confirmation of the curate's state ment, Mrs. Nodder rubbed the picture with her apron, held it at arm's length, grunted, looked at Tom's name on the back, and then returned it to the boy with the remark that " she wished it had only been his aunt." In the writing-desk Mrs. Nodder had discovered, among a mass of receipted bills and some old letters — which she had found it too much trouble in her busy days to read, the register of Tom's birth, which pleased her greatly, removing some lingering doubts of her late lodger's perfect respectability, and even lending some faint colour ing to the hints which she had dropped touching her high descent.

Mrs. Brown's maiden name had been Violet Gladys Vaughan, and she had condescended to many a Mr. Henry Brown, who had styled him self " gentleman " — which Mrs. Nodder, with her experience of lodgers who bore no other dis tinction, considered was equivalent to scamp — and so, naturally, she concluded poor Violet Gladys Vaughan, a high-born maiden, had come to giving dancing lessons, and otherwise suffer ing for her sins. She sought no clue in the register to Tom's enigmatical signature, and it is not likely that she would have found one if she had. She only found what she looked for, and was glad to find — that Tom had been born in wedlock. But to return to the first-floor gentleman of No. 9. Fairfax sat motionless in his chair for a long time, as if asleep. He was not asleep — only dreaming — a vivid dream which he never forgot.

It was a panorama of the brightest year of his life — his matured life — when he had painted his way through Switzerland— not on the highway of wealthy tourists, but among the Swiss, in places where life went on tranquilly and tunefully day by day— tranquilly and tunefully,' without the aid of the ever-climbing English and omni-seeing Americans. As he sat with his eyes closed — wisely closed — before his rejected picture, the bright bracing memories of that romantic year came back to him in troops. He had fallen in love on the shore of Lake Lenian with a wilful, pretty little maiden who was earning her own living by teaching English in a Swiss school. He had painted her portrait as she appeared to him — takinglittle stolen sketches in the sedon and the garden of the pension where they lived — and he had worshipped her for a month.

Then they separated, and soon after she wrote to him on the advisability of their " being friends." And that was the end of it (for she was then doubtless in love once more), save that there is no end to the dreams of youth — they colour all one's life, if it has any colour. Her face came back to Fairfax now only as the sweetest memory of that memory-haunted year. Oh, how he wished himself out there once more, in that bright still land of his dreams ! There he could breathe in youth and hope and vigour again ; and whistle and paint his way from chalet to chalet, and pension to pension, all on two guineas a week or less, if only he could have Tom with him ; and Tom belonged to nobody. And it might have been clone. He could paint, He had the stuff in him to make an .artist. But he had been idle just when he ought to have worked like a day labourer — squandered money just when he ought to have saved it.

And now it was an impossible dream. He had drifted on recklessly to the last — he had only twenty-five pounds left, and Tom ! So black Barnfield had him fast. " Too late ! " he said aloud, opening his eyes again and looking with a weary look at the picture of Tom, clasping his mother's portrait. " Too late ! " he repeated, and at that moment the great mournful bell from the black tower opposite began to strike midnight. It sounded like the stroke of doom. He did not put his hands to his ears or stamp his foot now, as he so often had done, till the melancholy monotonous clangs had ceased. He only shook his head abjectly and hopelessly, as if he acquiesced in the slowly-uttered, mournful, unalterable sentence that the bell seemed to be passing upon him — " Too late, too late, too late ! " But George Fairfax's good angel had been very active that night ; and there were other forces at work besides those conflicts of remorse and remembered hopes, which were wringing his heart — blessed forces which we call chance.

Chance ! What is that ? Our little coincidences, which may be God's great designs ! The dull reverberation of the twelfth dismal dong was just dying away, when Fairfax started to hear a tapping at the window — a little cheerful tap which he knew very well, but had never heard before at twelve o'clock at night. He literally jumped with joy, hurried to the window, and threw up the sash. Yes, it was Tom ; but Fairfax's joy, though it still remained, had to give place also to a great deal of wonder and apprehension. There the boy stood, in his best sailor suit and a cap, much the worse for wear, which did not match it. At his feet there was quite a little collection of miscellaneous property, including a pair of knickerbockers, an alarum clock, and the portrait of his mother, valued at fifty pounds.

Evidently these impedimenta had not been de posited there at the end of one journey from No. 7 — a piece of reasoning made irrefragable by the boy's attitude and occupation when the window was opened. He stood there proud and smiling, his eyes bright and his cheeks glowing, holding a little ugly fourmonths-old cur under his left arm, while he used his right hand as a closely-fitting muzzle, to the perceptible discomfort of the pup, as witnessed by his spasmodic and laboured breathing. " God bless you, my boy ! What- " Hush, Mr. Fairfax — just lift those things in ; he might bark. I'm going to seek my fortune ! "

Chapter II

A BRIGHT IDEA. Tom's things had been " lifted in." The window was closed, and Wag, with a most de monstrative tail but discreet tongue, was making himself happy in his new quarters, where he was by no means a stranger. Tom was still standing by the window in the midst of his belongings, with his cap in his hand, holding up a bright proud face to Mr. Fairfax, who looked down on him with mingled constern ation, pride, and love. "Now then, sir," he said, with mock severity, "begin again." " Well, you know, Mr. Fairfax, I was ten years old last week ; and I'm a big boy for my age, and I can ride Captain, and he is sixteen hands. Mr. Robbins says I should very soon be fit to take his place. But, of course, delivering beer barrels wouldn't do for a gentleman — at least not to keep on doing it." " No, it wouldn't, Tom ; and I thought you had a standing quarrel with beer."