An Ill-regulated Mind. A novel

Chapter I

Mr Cole was a self-made man. He had begun life without relations, without schooling, with out money to speak of. He was only a boy in a bookshop ; a Dissenter, moreover, brought up by a pious mother under the eye of the minister, whose chapel he attended twice every Sunday. The minister had a pretty daughter, very unlike her parents. Young Hugh Cole took to reading the books and thinking a bit on his own account. He became a good man of business, and there were passages be tween him and the minister's daughter. After a while Hugh opened a bookshop on his own account — (an old bookshop; he had a poor opinion of modern writings and cheap editions). About the same time, his mother being dead, he gave up Dissent, and with it the minister's daughter. After a year or two he married some one else, and before long was left a widower.

By degrees he became prosperous, if not exactly rich, and an authority in his own line of business. He had educated himself ; was refined by nature, and had acquaintances among gentle folk. At the age of fifty he was bald and a little withered. He was something of a pedant, and a good deal of a philanthropist. His speech was apt to be dry, and he kept his feelings to himself; but in secret he did a good many quixotic things. He was fond of young people, and they of him ; and there was often a twinkle in his eye when he made his driest and quietest remarks. Mr Cole had a son — Lewis. At one time the fancy took him to make a gentleman of his boy. The youngster was sent to a good school, where young gentlemen were his associates. It soon became evident that Master Lewis had a will of his own.

He made formal complaints against the system of instruction, and was quite too many for the young gentlemen. At last he was dismissed in disgrace, having broken a boy's arm in too energetic punishment of some con duct he had stigmatised as cowardly and de testable. Mr Cole reproved his son, though with the aforesaid twinkle in his eye, aud looked for another school. Either the boy's reputation preceded him, or the scent of the shop clung to his name. No schoolmaster to Mr Cole's mind would receive him. With the quiet twinkle in his eye the bookseller gave up the desire for gentility, and resolved to educate Lewis himself. Aware of a certain skimpiness in his own appearance, of a stoop and a tend ency to short sight, he made a great point of open air and athletics. For the rest, he let the boy alone a good deal, and turned him loose into the bookshop.

On his twenty-first birthday Lewis was a head and shoulders above his little father ; bright - eyed, healthy com plexioned, and straight as an arrow. Mr Cole looked at his " performance " — so he called his son — and pronounced himself satisfied. Lewis was not at all satisfied. " I want work," said he. "That is your business," replied Mr Cole. " My department has been to fit you for work." Lewis walked up and down the room, stamp ing to get rid of some superfluous energy. " I am ready for anything ! " he exclaimed. " I am proud to observe it," said Mr Cole. "But I don't care about this century," con tinued Lewis, presently. " I want a few heroes to worship " " And a heroine," suggested Mr Cole. " Yes, and a heroine. And I should like to be a hero ; but heroism has gone out of date," said Lewis with a sigh.

" True," said Mr Cole ; " there were no heroes after Troy." " If no worthier led the way," quoted Lewis, " Resolved That, of a thousand vessels, mine should be The foremost prow in pressing to the strand- Mine the first blood that tinged the Trojan sand." " He was a useful man, Protesilaus," assented Mr Cole. " Oh, the Trojan business was a mistake alto gether, perhaps," said Lewis ; " but, you see, it's advantageous living near the world's beginning. There's such a lot to be done, and there aren't so many to do it. And even one's mistakes are important, because they're the first mistakes." " Quite so, Lewis. Only, who told you the world was near its end ? " " But there were heroes after Troy," said Lewis. "Dante, now; he was a man!" "You are welcome to write another ' Corn media,' if you can," said Mr Cole.

"Ah, but I couldn't. We don't believe in those things nowadays. My Inferno wouldn't be horrible enough, for I know folks aren't as bad as they seem, so don't deserve much of a punishment. And the Paradiso would be a mitigated sort of place too, for no man is as good as he seems either— at least, I'm not, and I suppose I mustn't pride myself on any special singu larity. Then as to Purgatory — I am not ready with a theory. I don't know about that central idea of improvement. The books I have read lately seem to teach that deterioration is the rule here, there, and everywhere." " Deluded Dante ! I hope his shade hears not this exposure of his ignorance." " Oh, I admire him above all men. I hope his shade is listening ! Besides, he didn't only write a divine comedy. He was active and a worker.

All the men of heroic days were. If they wrote divine comedies, they didn't lock themselves up in musty old bookshops to do it. But now we are all crammed tight into grooves; and we can't even peep over the edges without being taken up for poaching. Dante didn't only write a divine comedy. He loved like a hero ; and wrote the ' Vita Nuova.' " And Lewis took a copy from his pocket and ■slammed it on the table. Mr Cole pushed his spectacles up into his hair (what there was of it), and sat down in his arm-chair by the fire. "Well," he said, gravely, "love is a form of heroism that never goes out of date. I trust you will find a Beatrice, my son." " Hugoline ? " said Lewis, in an accent of pro found contempt. " I hope so," said Mr Cole, with increasing gravity. " Now, father," said Lewis, after a minute's silence, tossing up his head as he spoke and looking as tall as he could, "it is high time to put an end to all this folly.

Of course, I know it has been a joke " " Not at all," put in Mr Cole. " But it is a joke I am tired of. Some people might be flattered by the kind of thing. I find it insulting. I mean to be my own master. And I shall never marry any woman who is not — well, Beatrice." ' Beatrices are rare." " I know they are, so Hugoline is not likely to be Beatrice. And so there never can be any thing between her and me. I daresay she is a nice, pretty girl. One likes a nice, pretty girl to — flirt with sometimes," said Lewis, blushing, " though, for my own part, I am not very fond of flirting. But if it is a question of marriage, I must have Beatrice or no one." " But I don't think Dante did marry Beatrice." " No, he didn't. Well, there is a point in which the man of the nineteenth century may surpass him.

I won't have anything to say to this Hugoline — that's the long and the short of it." " Evidently, Lewis, you are cutting your wisdom teeth. Nevertheless, as you have started the subject yourself, I will take the opportunity to read you the letter." " The letter be hanged," said Lewis, energeti cally. Mr Cole lighted his reading-lamp, and polished and adjusted his spectacles. Then he produced from his pocket a large, old-fashioned sheet of yellowing paper, covered with small, angular writing in faded ink. " Do you always carry it about with you ? " asked the son, derisively. Mr Cole read in a voice of extreme quietness and neutrality : — " My dear Hugh, — No, I don't feel at all in clined to forgive you. I am too ill, and have gone through too much to care how I put things. I say what I mean nowadays, and I don't feel so amiable as I did once.

The Bible bids us be long-suffering ; well, I have suffered long, and I don't know what good it has done me. I don't mind the Bible, like I used. That is your fault too, for you first set me against it, trying to please you ; and after all you let it come between us, instead of getting grace yourself and learn ing to shape both our lives together accord ingly." " I think it's disgusting," interrupted Lewis. " You mustn't stumble at expressions which are merely the language of a sect," said Mr Cole, quietly ; and proceeded : " I'm afraid I've lost the grace I had, and mother doubts that I'm one of the elect after all." " Confound it ! " said Lewis ; "is it all that sort of stuff?" " Even that sort of stuff is now and then the occasion of feeling, Lewis," said Mr Cole, and continued the letter : " I doubt it myself, and whose fault is that, I'd like to know ?

I was in the good way once, and who was it drew me off into Bypath Meadow? I daresay you don't think much of it, Hugh ; but it isn't a light thing to me to have lost the peace I once enjoyed." " Now, my dear father," expostulated Lewis, " surely you don't ask me to feel any emotion at " " The only thing I ask you, Lewis, is not to answer this matter before you have heard it. Allow me to go on without interruption : " No, Hugh, it isn't in human nature, with grace or without it, to forgive you, and I'm not going to pretend I do. We've had a deal of trouble — a deal more than you know of. I didn't mind. Mr Duncan's death as much as you seem to think I ought. I never deceived him, thank God. When I married him, I said, ' Mr Duncan, it's not because I love you ; all the love I ever had was given away, before ever I knew you, to some one I needn't be mentioning now.

But as there's no good in waiting longer for him, and as I'd rather be doing something for somebody, and as you want me, and have the means to help father and mother beside, I won't stand out longer.' I oughtn't to have done it, Hugh, — I knew that soon enough. And though I thought I was wanting to do right at the time, I'm afraid now it was more out of anger with you I did it than anything else. Well, anyhow, Mr Duncan had no right to behave to me as he did. I was a good wife to him, though I was fretting my heart into pieces all the while about you. He tried to separate me from father and mother, because he fancied he was a gentleman, and his minister wasn't good enough company for him. And then Jack went and broke father's and mother's hearts by running away and marrying a low girl out of a play-house.

And Mr Duncan was downrightly insolent to me, and asked what I meant by having a brother like that to bring shame on his family. You'd never have acted so, Hugh, when it was trouble enough as it was. Well then, Mr Duncan, who, if he was ashamed of his wife's family, had better have washed his dirty linen at home, must needs go trumping up accusations against poor father. Father had been making a collection for repairing the chapel, and the money was stolen, and father wasn't able to pay it all of a sudden. And he asked Mr Duncan to help him, who was well-to-do, and his son-in-law, and of the oldest family of the congregation. And he must needs go and say father had stolen the money himself. I couldn't stand that. I just took baby and my clothes and my boxes, and came straight off to father and mother, who were as wretched as anything.

And I never left them again, and at this minute would work my fingers to the bone for them. It isn't likely I could care much for Mr Duncan, is it ? Well, he got father dis missed from the chapel, though I don't think the congregation half believed in it; and we knew well enough, and Mr Duncan ought to have known, that if it was any one took the money, it was poor Jack, when he went off that way. And poor father tried to get another chapel or something, but Mr Duncan managed so that no one would have him ; and poor father lost heart at last when he heard of the doings of Jack and that low wife of his, and declared he'd never hold up his head or go among the world again. A sort of melancholy state he has got into. Mother and I don't know what to do with him. But we let him have his fancy, and got this house all by itself on the moor.

It's miserably lonely ; but mother and I were too down-hearted to care much, and I had baby for an amusement. Well, Mr Duncan, I do believe, got sorry at the last, and has left me all his money pretty near, though it wasn't so much as he ought to have left, considering what a good farm he had. But we're pretty comfortable now — father and mother and baby and me. And I kept the house till I got the pneumonia, and was in bed five weeks, and then two months before I got about again. And now the doctors say I've got the consumption, and that I shan't last more than a month or two longer. Hugh, I'd like to have forgiven you ; but I've been a wretched woman, and I might have been happy with you. I can't forget that. You treated me very ill, and you couldn't ever have got any one to love you better than I did, and who was as pretty as me.

I'm wasted and miserable look ing now, but I was a pretty girl, and you've often told me so ; and the woman you did marry wasn't particularly pretty, was she ? What's the use of wanting to help me now ? There isn't anything to be done, and I'm a dying woman. It is too late to think of anything now. Mr Cole paused. "Well," said Lewis, "I am very sorry for her. She evidently had a good deal of suffer ing, poor thing. But I really cannot agree with her, that it was all your fault. What does she mean by that last part ? My mother was dead then, wasn't she? Had you been suggesting marriage to her again ? " Mr Cole made no reply. " Were you — very fond of her, father ? " asked Lewis, with a sudden accession of interest. " She had an ill-regulated mind," said Mr Cole, quietly. " Well, go on — finish it ; we haven't got to the point yet."

Mr Cole read on : " Still, Hugh, there is one thing you can do for me. I am going to put it down as my last wish, and you're not the man to disregard the last wish of the girl you loved once, and who loved you to the end, for all you broke her heart. I saw your boy last year, and I liked his look. He wasn't actually beautiful, like my Hugoline, but he looked healthy, with good eyes like you, and as if he'd go the right way through the world. Hugoline, of course, has the most lovely complexion, and a gloss on her hair, and her eyes are brown, not grey like his. But I kissed the boy, Hugh, for your sake." Here Lewis drummed impatiently on the table, irritated beyond measure at the idea of having been kissed by the woman with the ill regulated mind. Moreover, all this " lovering " did not please him.

There was something over done and sentimental and ridiculous about it. Lewis had studied the subject of love, and thought he had mastered it. This was not the right style at all, and it annoyed him to think his father had had anything to say to it. " And since then," continued the letter, "I often think of the boy, and cannot forget that he ought to have been mine. And then I look at Hugoline, and think she ought to have been your daughter, Hugh, and you'd say the same if you saw her. She can't fail to grow up a beautiful woman, and I reckon she'll be a good one, being brought up by mother. And she'll have a bit of money, too, some day, if you care about that. Well, Hugh, I'm going to tell you my wish, and I know you'll do it for me. It's not much to ask, when you treated me so badly, and I've had so much trouble.

I want your boy to marry my girl. When he's twenty-one, she'll be nineteen, and a pretty pair they'll be. B That's all you can do for me now, Hugh, for I'm a dying woman ; but Hugoline is worth a deal more than me, and I know you'll take her and let me die happy. Julia Duncan." " Well ! " exclaimed Lewis, " all I can say is, she had an extremely ill-regulated mind ! " Mr Cole was silent. " One would have thought, as her own mar riage of expediency turned out so ill, she would not have tried to force such another upon her daughter. Come now, father," said Lewis, presently, " do speak." " I don't think you are very like Mr Duncan," said the bookseller, reflectively. " Well, I'm certain of one thing," said Lewis, "I don't want a wife like that!" — pointing to the letter with great disdain. Mr Cole put it back in his breast-pocket.

Lewis rose and stalked up and down the room, evidently finding it rather small. He moved several chairs, and pushed the little table back into the window. " Well, sir ? " said Mr Cole, after a while. " I haven't the smallest intention of marrying Miss Hugoline." " But this is downright rebellion ! " said Mr Cole, holding up his hands. "Did you agree to this insane proposal, father ? Because," said Lewis, taking up a warlike posi tion in front of the bookseller, "you will find yourself in an awkward predicament if you did. And you'll have to get out of the scrape your self as best you can. / shan't help you." " Calm yourself, Lewis. Think now ; what reply do you suppose I made ? " Lewis broke into an involuntary smile, as his eyes met his father's. " I should think you probably answered, that your son and Miss Hugoline would have to be consulted."

"Certainly," said Mr Cole, rising and raking out the fire, as the clock struck twelve. " I also said that I should endeavour to meet her wishes." "Now, father, you are not going to bed yet. You needn't think it. Come, now ; you are con sulting your son, as you resolved you would. I suppose you will now abandon the attempt to meet the wishes of this — this Mrs Duncan, with whom you seem to have entangled your feelings. I have stated my opinion. I won't have anything to say to her daughter." " That is not an opinion, but a prejudiced and obstinate resolution." "My opinion is I shall abide by that resolution. Pray, what did you wish me to do ? " " I wish you to go down to Barnley, and fall in love with Hugoline Duncan as quickly as pos sible. In your present mood, and remembering that you are now twenty-one years of age, I should not think of commanding you anything."

But it is nonsense wishing a man to fall in love." Wishes are free." "So is love. Of course, it stands to reason we should hate each other." " Oh, certainly, if you hate each other, there is an end of the matter," said Mr Cole ; " and now I am going to bed. I must be off early to morrow to secure that volume of Scaliger. It has got wind that it has turned up. If you like to rise early, you can call a hansom at 5.30." " Now, father, I don't know what your views on this subject are yet." Mr Cole extinguished the candles, and standing by Lewis on the hearthrug, put his arm through his tall son's. "Well, Lewis, I loved that woman once. How much I need not say. We were divided necessarfly, as I thought. Perhaps I was wrong ; but do not suppose I disagree with you when you say, under some circumstances mar riage is a dangerous experiment.

Under similar circumstances I should not like you to marry Hugoline. Nevertheless it would grieve me to think Julia's dying wish was disregarded, though I know as well as you it was not a very wise wish. I hope you enter enough into my feelings to help me. Hugoline and you must meet. If you dislike each other, there is an end to the matter. Probably you will, neither of you, fall violently in love at first sight. But you are a good boy ; and if she is a good, nice girl, you might still be very happy and comfortable together. I should be glad it were so ; but of course, my son, you are both perfectly free. You may refuse each other at once, if you like ; but I should prefer your meeting." Lewis was silent, and seemed touched, " Good night, my son," said Mr Cole. CHAPTEE II. Lewis, after the bookseller had retired, still walked excitedly up and down the room.

Then he knelt by the fire and played with the poker. Somehow his aversion to being married in this way, by other people, abated a little. He began to feel interested in this old love-story of his father's. Lewis was very fond of his father ; but it had never occurred to him that the little bookseller could have been a hero of romance : that two beautiful women had once had a bitter rivalry for the honour of his hand. Lewis had been under the impression that all sweethearting and that sort of thing was his own prerogative ; it had not struck him that it could once have been his father's prerogative. Of his mother he had but a shadowy recollection. He had never doubted that she was lovely, loving, and beloved. Mothers, of course, were; but when he thought of his mother, it was as of a mother, not at all as of his father's sweetheart.

And now this other woman ! Lewis began to wonder which of the two had been really his father' s love. He began to be excited about Mrs Dun can, and to wonder what she had been like ; and then he thought of Hugoline, and began to wonder what she was like — this maiden who had been brought up for him : the romance of the situation dawned upon him. Lewis had been taken by a pretty face now and then ; but, as he said himself, he was not much given to flirting, and he had not yet been seriously enamoured. He required too much. He had formed an ideal of the woman he intended to love, and as yet he had met no one in the least like it. Some times he feared that the ideal woman was not to be found in his own rank. There was a lofti ness and serenity about her that did not seem possible to a maiden in any way concerned in money - getting.

Lewis, never oppressed by pecuniary cares, held money-getting in abhor rence. His father's enthusiasm in the turning of old books into new sovereigns met with no sympathy from him. On the other hand, he was democratic in his views, and inclined to be severe on those of his peers who set up to be gentlemen. It was an unpleasant thought to Lewis that perhaps his Beatrice must be a lady. " I don't want anything but a perfect wo man," he said ; " our world must have got all wrong together, if a perfect woman cannot be found out of one class." But wherever she came from, Lewis was pre pared to fall down and worship her. Were she beggar or were she princess, once found, there could be none other in the world for him. At twenty - one, hope deferred is delicious. Lewis Cole read, and worked, and played, and inspected every girl he met, and shook his head with increasing eagerness of expectation, and dreamed of his glorious love to be, — the heavenly woman who was to lift him off the common earth, and place him for ever among the beati genti.

In all which dreams Hugoline Duncan had found no place at all. But after that talk with his father, Lewis felt he could not refuse just AN ILL-REGELATED MIND. 25 to go and look at the girl. Evidently Mr Cole, in the days of his lovering, had not had his son's lofty ideal. But perhaps because the imaginary is always apt to succumb ignomini ously before the actual, the bookseller's forgotten love-story impressed the boy ; and thinking less than usual of Beatrice, he arranged a visit of inspection to Julia Duncan's daughter, the unknown Hus*oline. 2$ CHAPTEE III. Lewis Cole set out with a good deal of alarm in his heart and some pleasant excitement. He was anxious to see Hugoline ; her stately name attracted him. On the other hand, he was afraid of her. He seemed to be putting his head into the lion's mouth.

If she once got hold of him, she might insist upon devouring him up in matrimony. Still, at one-and-twenty, Lewis was self-confident, and rather anxious to prove to every one that he could put his head into the lion's mouth and still be more than a match for the lion. He had not announced his approach — had even thought of changing his name for the occasion. " She will certainly think I have come to marry her," thought Lewis, " whatever way I put it." And then he reflected, that when the time came, he would spend a mauvais quart d'heure in explaining to her that as she wasn't Beatrice, he was obliged to decline her with thanks. "It will be particularly painful if she is ugly," thought Lewis ; " quite a brutal thing to do." And then he blushed, all by himself in the second-class carriage, at his own presumption.

" You coxcomb," said he, half aloud, " she will save you the trouble. You will be de clined without thanks, and you can come home with your tail between your legs. It is very unfair of father to put me in such a ridiculous position." Lewis, who was of an adventurous nature, was pleased to find himself travelling by a quite new railway to an unimportant inland town ; and thence by a still newer single line to the small station of Barnley, the name of which he had never heard till he had opened his Bradshaw the night before. Having left the train, he set forth through the heart of a wild district, soon no doubt to be improved off the face of the earth, by the influence of the single line, and the telegraph wires, men in uniform, and other reforming agents, come with it. Lewis informed himself of his way, not with out difficulty — for no one at the little station seemed interested in Mr Grey and his lonely house : moreover, the village of Eothley, the nearest landmark, seemed to be at least four miles from everything else.

Then, knapsack on shoulder, he started alone on his journey to the other end of nowhere. It was open moorland upon which he found himself, with low sand - hills dotted here and there, and a few stunted and distorted firs, victims of the autumn winds and the burning rays of an untempered sun. At first Lewis enjoyed the holiday feeling of freedom and independence. Self-important, too, he had felt when he had stiffly replied " On business," to the stationmaster's rude query, " What do you want to go there for ? " It was very interesting business, Lewis thought, as he stepped forward with his vigorous, elastic young tread. After a time it began to rain ; the evening suddenly closed in, he was not sure of his way, and he fell into a bad humour. " If I had known there were fifty-six miles to walk," he said, " I'd have come by an earlier train.