A Romance of Modern London. A novel

Front matter

A ROMANCE OF MODEM LONDON. WORKS BY CURTIS YOf^E, Published by JAEEOLD & SONS. Crown 8vo., Cloth, 3/6 each. (Postage 4_ar.) HUSH ! 2nd Edition. " Is in many ways a remarkable novel, and from every point of view superior to the current fiction of the day." — Morning Post. DUDLEY. 2nd Edition. " It is some time since such a fresh, pleasant book has come under our notice as 'Dudley.' " — Whitehall Review. WILD RUTHVENS. 2nd Edition. "An enchanting work — the story runs on with happy blithesome tread to lhe end, which is reached all too soon."— St. Stephen's Review. THAT LITTLE GIRL. 4th Edition. " A very charming and well-written story.'' — Queen. THE BROWN PORTMANTEAU, AND OTHER STORIES. "The stories are all interesting, and the volume is sure of a welcome." — Literary World, ONCE. An entirely New Work. \Just Published.

" Full of incident, rich in pathos and passion, and told in fascinat ing language, ' Once ! ' will be warmly appreciated by all lovers of fiction." — Christian Age. A ROMANCE OF MODERN LONDON. Second Edition. \Ntnv Ready. "This is an exceedingly clever and well-written novel, full of interest and pathos," — Li/e. LONDON: JARROLD & SONS- 3, Paternoster Buildings. A ROMANCE OF MODERN LONDON. 9 #obrI. BY CURTIS YORKE, „ Author of "Once. '" "Hush!" "Dudley," "The Wild Bvthvens," "The Mystery of Bilgraxe 8_vare," " Tn-o on an Island," etc., etc. SECOND EDITION. LONDON: JARROLD & SONS, 3, PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS, E.C. 1893. [All Eights Eeserred]. CONTENTS. CHAPTCR PA0|, I. Eclipse ... ... ... .. 7 II. The Seed of Ambition ... ... 19 III. The Unforeseen ... ... ... 37 IV. Saionara ! ... ... ... 62 V. A Precocious Young Woman ... ... 71 VI.

Mammon ... .. ... 85 VII. The Grub becomes a Butterfly . ... 97 VIII. " It is Written ! " ... ... 113 IX. The Thawing of an Iceberg ... ... 125 X. " All Unknowing ! " ... ... 140 XI. Two Sides of a Wall ... ... 156 XII. No Alternative ! ... ... 173 XIII. "Just for To-night!" ... ... 191 XIV. In which Bee is Imprudent ... 210 XV. The Man and the Woman ... ... 22-i XVI. "For Eicher— for Poorer!" ... 244 XVIL Chiefly concerning Sir Cyrix ... ... CONTENTS. CHAPTKR PAGE XVIII. " The Old Order Changes ! " ... 272 XIX. "The One Little Woman!" ... ... 292 XX. The Ghost of What Might Have Been! 311 XXI. " For the Last Time ! " .. ... 326 XXII. "The Lights of London!" ... 340 XXIII. In which Bee is Faithful ... ... 361 XXIV. Across the Years! ... ...

Chapter I. Eclipse

" I have known how sickness bends, I have known how sorrow break, — How quick hopes have sudden ends, How the heart thinks till it aches Of the smile of buried friends." E. B. Bron-ning. WHO lives in the star?, Douglas ? " said a child's voice, "Do the angels?" " Don't know, little one." "Why, Douglas, I thought you knew everything ? " and the tiny speaker raised two surprised, reproachful eyes to her companion's face. The boy laughed — a short, amused laugh. "You silly Uttle thing," he said. "I know — just nothing at all." "Douglas!" remonstrated the baby voice, "you do know lots of things." Douglas shook his head. " No, Bee, not the things I want to know. I mean to, though, some day," he added, with a curious quietness in his pleasant, boyish voice. " When you're a man, Douglas ? " asked the child.

"Yes, Bee, when I'm a man," the boy answered, leaning back in his chair and clasping his hands behind his head. " Will it take years and years until you're a man ? " asked the little one. " It'll take a good many years," he answered briefly. Bee smoothed out the 3kirts of a dilapidated and most viciously ugly doll which lay on her lap, and observed sagely : " A year's a long time — an awful long time. Last year I was only a very little girl." " And what are you this year ? " said Douglas, pulling one of her curls with a good-natured smile. " I'm six years old," she answered with an important air. " I'm getting quite a little woman. Mammy says so." They were sitting at an open window which looked into a narrow dingy street near Westminster Abbey. The window was very high up, and the room to which it belonged was very small.

But the window-sill was bright with late summer flowers, and the window-panes were exquisitely clean, which was more than could be said for the general run of window panes in Garth Street. The room itself had an equally clean and fresh appearance — even a certain air of refinement. And the same air of refinement characterized the boy and his companion. He was a straight-limbed, well-made lad of fifteen ; his face was kind and strong, with resolute lips, and keen, black-lashed blue eyes, which faced the world from beneath level brows too strongly marked for beauty. His child companion was a remarkably pretty little creature, with great grey eyes, and a tangle of curly brown hair — hair that floated about her tiny colourless face, and gave to it an added picturesque beauty. Garth Street was unusually quiet and deserted on this par ticular evening.

For one thing it was Sunday, and for another a fine small rain was falling, a wetting unplea sant rain, which made out-of-door locomotion undesirable. ECLIPSE. 9 But Douglas and Bee did not mind the rain. They liked it. Douglas was letting it patter down at will upon his dark young head as he leaned over a fragrant tuft of mignonette, and every now and then Bee, kneeling upon her chair, stretched out her little neck, and put out her little red tongue as far as it would go, to catch the fast-falling drops, which, she declared, " tasted nice aud warm." The summer dusk fell softly, silently ; the rain-drops grew lighter and fewer and finally ceased ; a few stars twinkled out in the pale sky between the fast-drifting clouds. Suddenly the door of the room opened and shut, and a woman's voice, low and clear, sounded through the semi darkness.

" Don't sit at the open window, dears," it said; " the night air is damp and chilly." Douglas rose instantly and closed the window. Then he put his strong young arm round the slender figure of the newcomer. He was nearly as tall as she ; and there was a lingering likeness between the two faces, that were yet so essentially different. "Are you better, mother darling?" he said in a voice of almost womanly tenderness. " Is the pain gone '! Sit down in the easy chair and I will light the candles." He struck a match and lit a couple of candles in tall, curiously-chased brass candlesticks. Candles — in the plural — were a Sunday treat. On other nights they had only one. The candlelight lit up the little room bravely enough. (If one's room is small, it manifestly takes less light to make it cheerful.

Applied variously, this is one of the compensations of existence.) When the blind was drawn down, and the fringed chintz curtain pulled across the window, it looked a very homelike little room. There were one or two good engravings on the walls, a small, but well-filled bookcase in one corner, and, facing the window, a cottage piano of well polished ebony, with a slender heap of music lying upon it. A mirror framed in dark oak hung over the mantelpiece, and A ROMzLNCE OF MODERN LONDON. above it a sword and a pair of spurs. A luxuriant, well cared-for hart's tongue fern occupied the centre of the table. Mrs. Conrath, the neighbours were wont to remark among themselves, had seen " better days." But they were not particularly interested in her. For though the pale-faced widow was always gentle and courteous to such of her fellow lodgers as she came in contact with, she never showed any desire to improve their acquaintance.

Nor did she respond to the kindly-meant advances of her landlady. She had lived for three years in Garth Street, and she had not made a single friend — which the inhabitants (being of a more clannish nature than is usual in London neighbourhoods) denounced as a sign of unwarrantable uppishness, and there fore left her alone. The boy, they added, was as " stuck-up" and "close" as his mother. Little Bee, however, was too young to be either stuck up or close, and she often — when Douglas and his mother were out, and she was left to her own devices — wandered down to the kitchen, where she sat by the fife, and "talked that knowin'," as Mrs. Dobbs, the landlady, said, as to impress that decent woman with the mournfully-announed conviction that " the blessed child was not long for this world — though as healthy and pretty as a pictur'."

Bee looked a bonnie and winsome wee sprite enough to night as she nestled up to the tired-looking woman in the armchair, and wound her small soft arms about her neck. "Poor, poor mammy," she cooed caressingly. "Douglas and me have been so good — and we spoke quite, quite low so as not to wake you up." Mrs. Conrath stroked the child's bright hair without speaking. She was still quite young, with a very sweet, but inexpressibly sad face. It was more than sad ; it was utterly hopeless. All the hope, and nearly all the beauty, had been crushed out of it when she buried her soldier husband three years ago. And it had never come back again. Poor soul! she had had a sore struggle in these three ECLIPSE. 11 years, and she had worked very hard. She had succeeded in keeping her son at a good London school until a year ago, when he had insisted upon earning sometbing for himself.

He was now office-boy to two easy-going young men, who had a couple of handsomely-furnished rooms in Westminster, where they wrote letters, smoked, and chaffed each other from ten till two, and resumed the same arduous programme from four till half-past five. This was on "busy" days. On other days they got into the office at eleven, and left it at two, to return no more. They paid young Conrath eight shillings a week, every penny of which munificent sum the lad scrupulously handed over to " the mother." Mrs. Conrath's life was bleak and dreary enough; but it would have been bleaker and drearier still without Douglas. He was old for his years, and singularly companionable ; and in many ways he reminded her forcibly, sometimes almost painfully, of his dead father. There was something very touching in the boy's manner to his mother.

It was a mixture of chivalrous tenderness and unspoken compassion. Only to Douglas did the widow ever speak of the husband who had been her idol ; and many a passionate fit of tearless sobbing had been soothed to rest in Douglas's loving young arms. She, perhaps, did not realize the shadow her constant grief and melancholy shed around her boy's life. One is so apt, you know, to forget the depressing effect our indulgence in real or fancied troubles may have upon our house-mates. It would have been but a gloomy life for Douglas, much as he loved his mother, had it not been for little Bee's sunshiny presence. The sound of her tiny restless feet, her equally restless tongue, and ber innocent loving ways, were irresistibly winning and heart-cheering. Gloom was almost impossible where Bee was ; and she was as busy, in her inconsequent, baby way, as tbe indefatigable insect whose name she bore.

She was not really a Conrath at all, though the mother and son could hardly have loved her more dearly if she had been. Her advent in the family was in this wise. One snowy winter night four years ago Captain Conrath had found a tiny child, apparently about two years old, curled up in a weeping, half-frozen bundle on the steps of his club, and had been sorely perplexed and dismayed by the forlorn little atom seizing and clinging to his leg with all the tenacity of childish despair. He was about to relinquish her to the care of the grim-looking policeman who had promptly appeared upon the scene, when something in the child's tear wet upturned eyes, some expression in the pathetic quivering baby lips, gave him an uncomfortable feeling in his throat, and made him sign to the policeman to pause.

Such a tiny, forlorn, desolate little creature it looked— this little waif of the midnight and the snow ! And how its eyes, with their piteous upward look, recalled the eyes of his baby daughter, who lay peacefully under the frost and snow in a distant graveyard! She had looked up at him like that — with childish eyes full of suffering — the night she died. Charlie Conrath was softhearted — foolishly so, his comrades said. Anyway, he couldn't bear to think of this poor mite being carried off to the police station until such time as her friends should discover her whereabouts. So, having failed to elicit any thing except sobs from the poor shivering baby, he told the man to hail a hansom, picked up his weeping, snow-soaked protegee, and drove off with her to his home in Kensington Gore — leaving his name and address with the astonished policeman, in case inquiries should be made.

But no inquiries ever were made ; and Edith Conrath welcomed the desolate waif with wistful tears, and took it into the place in her heart that death had left desolate, and called it by her dead baby's name. A year later tender hearted, easy-going Charlie Conrath had followed his little daughter, and left his gentle young wife to face the world alone — except for the children. Except for the children ! God only knew what she would have done in these dark days except for " the children." Their innocent caresses, their loving childish attempts to ECLIPSE. 13 soothe the grief they were too young to understand, saved her perhaps from madness and despair. Though a singularly lovable fellow, Captain Conrath had also been almost incredibly thoughtless and careless of the future. He was hopelessly in debt, it was found, and it had never occurred to him, apparently, to make any provision for his family in the event of his death.

So after the sale of most of the furniture in her pretty home, the young widow took rooms in obscure and dingy Garth Street, and went back to the life of hard work from which her handsome young soldier lover had taken her thirteen years before — the monotonous, soulwithering, thankless, ill-paid work of teaching " other people's children." Yes— it had been a hard struggle ; and something in her sunken eyes and worn cheeks told that it had been rendered harder by ill-health as well as poverty and care. For Edith Conrath was slowly but steadily sinking under the relentless grasp of a mortal disease. Her days were numbered, she knew. The grave that held her husband and child waited for her. To-night she looked almost ghastly in the bright candle light, for she had had a day of terrible pain, and she felt sorely unfit to begin her week-day duties on the morrow.

Bee had perched herself on a stool behind her " mammy's " chair, and was stroking the faded wavy hair with clumsily loving baby fingers. Mrs. Conrath caught one little hand in hers, as it strayed about her neck, and pressed her lips to it. " Time you were in bed, my little one," she said, glancing at the clock on the mantelpiece. " No, mammy," coaxingly replied the small maiden. " I'm not sleepy, and I haven't had my bread and milk — nor I haven't read about my little Samuel." " Here's your bread and milk," said Douglas, catching her up in his arms and carrying her over to the sideboard, where a cup of milk stood side by side with a slice of bread. " And when you've finished it, get your book, and you shall read to mother and me, like a clever little woman as you are." Having disposed of her supper, Bee went with an important air to a certain corner of the little bookcase, and produced a weighty and dilapidated volume, rich in many highly-coloured illustrations, principally of a Scriptural nature.

She gravely turned over tbe leaves until she came to the picture she called " her little Samuel," upon which she proceeded to dissertate at her own sweet will. Then, kneeling upon Douglas's knee, with sweetly-solemn face and tightly-shut eyes, she murmured an extremely conversational, not to say free and easy, little prayer — that nevertheless had something indefi nably touching in its lisping petitions — and having bid good night to Douglas, trotted into the adjoining room, whither Mrs. Conrath presently followed her. Douglas seated himself near one of tbe candles and began to pore over a somewhat worn copy of " Plutarch's Lives." He was passionately fond of reading, aud fortunately for him the late Captain Conrath's library, though small, was better selected than is altogether common in meu of his profession.

Douglas — like most resolute persevering natures — read very slowly, invariably uttering each word mentally as he passed it ; and he possessed the accompanying faculty of remember ing everything he read, as lightning skippers of literature rarely if ever do. When his mother came back into the room again he closed his book, and took a low seat beside her chair, caressing her hand silently. " I think you are getting thinner, little mother," he said regretfully. " I really do. I wish to goodness I could earn a bigger screw, and then you wouldn't have to toil away at that miserable teaching day after day. I seem to be an awful while in growing up," he added with a sigh. " My dear boy," his mother answered, smiling faintly " you are growing up very fast, it seems to me. As for my teaching, why, I like it.

It was all I had to depend on before I met — your father." ECLIPSE. 15 Her voice faltered. She never, even now, could speak of her husband without faltering speech and quivering lip. He had come like a glory of awakening sunshine into her dull, sordid girlhood ; and her faithful woman's heart cried out for him, not less, but more, as the years went on. It depends very much upon our surroundings whether time is the "great consoler" he is popularly supposed to be. There are griefs, not a few, that grow the bitterer for keeping. " You cannot like it," resumed the boy, almost fiercely. " And it makes me wretched — it drives me half-mad to see you going out in all weathers — looking so thin and ill — and I can do nothing to prevent it. In a year or two there will be an end of it, though," he added with a sudden compression of his young lips — " on that I'm determined."

"Yes, my boy — there will be an end of it — soon," was the quiet answer. " What do you mean, mother ? Why do you smile in that strange way ? " asked Douglas in a startled voice. "Dear — do you not understand?" she answered, passing her thin hand over his thick dark hair, and looking up at him with wistful eyes. " Do you not know that I am — very ill ? — that I can never — be any better ? " "Mother!" There was an angiv'shed incredulity in the boy's voice and eyes as he flung himself on his knees and caught his mother's hands in his. She pressed them convulsively. " Mother, you are mistaken. It can't be true," he said with a half break in his voice. " You will — you must get well ! You remember how ill you were last year, and — " " No, my boy, I shall not get well," she answered steadily. " You must not deceive yourself.

I have wanted to speak to you of this — for a long time ; but — I was afraid. I knew, dear, that you would — feel it so." And the sweet voice shook a little. Then she added, "I saw the doctor yesterday, and he says — that it is a question of — weeks." The boy's face had grown very white. " It can't be true ! " he cried breathlessly and passionately. " You are so young, and sweet, and pretty ! Oh, mother ! " He rose abruptly and went to the window, where he stood for a long time in silence, gazing out unseeingly into the night. No tears dimmed his eyes; a strong dull aching tugged at his heart. He had hardly been conscious until now how dearly he loved his mother. And somehow he had never thought of the possibility of her death. He had looked forward to coming years, when he should have compassed by his earnings a cosy, luxurious home for her — a home where he and she and "the little one" should live blissfully and peacefully — a home which should never know death, nor sorrowr, nor care.

And now ? A half-sob rose in his throat, but he choked it back. " Why are we so poor ? " his heart echoed fiercely. " Poverty and grief have killed her — and I can do nothing ! " He shut his hands in a kind of impotent despair. Then his mother's voice called him back to her. He knelt beside her chair, aud took her gently in his arms. " Try to get well, darling," he whispered with an unruly catch in his voice. "It won't be so very long, please God, before I earn enough for you to have good doctors and proper food and change of air. But oh, mother, mother " — the pas sionate young voice rang out despairingly — " don't talk of dying ! Can nothing be done ? " Her eyes answered him. He buried his face in her neck and sobbed. Her tears fell fast too, as she held him more closely to her, and whispered loving, broken words that could not comfort him.

In a minute or two he checked his sobs with a violent effort, remembering how his grief would agitate her. For a time there was silence, broken only by the hurried breathing of each. Then she said : " Douglas, can you bear to listen to me for a little, dear ? " He pressed her hand without speaking. ECLIPSE. 17 " It is about little Bee," she went on after a short pause. " Douglas, I feel it i3 laying a heavy burden on your shoulders, for she has no real claim upon you. But — your father was so fond of her — I cannot bear to think of the dear little one Oh, my dear, what will become of you both when I am gone ? " Her voice broke, and she turned away her face. " Mother, don't worry about Bee," said the boy unsteadily. "I will take care of her. Trust me, dear. I can work for her and for myself too."

"No one knows she is not really your sister," went on his mother. " No one need know. She need not know either — at least, not yet." "No, dear, what difference does it make? I love her just the same as if she were my sister," said the lad in a me chanical, far-away voice; for he could not think of Bee just then. " Another thing," said Mrs. Conrath feverishly, after a minute, " I want you to promise me — to swear to me — that you will never accept a penny of your uncle's, of Evan Conrath's charity. He cut your father dead because he married me ; he refused either to see him or speak to him ; he returned his letters unopened. He wrote me a most cruel and insulting letter when your father died. You shall never be indebted to him — never! " Her thin cheeks were crimson ; her eyes glittered almost fiercely.

Douglas felt that she was trembling from head to foot. " You need not fear, mother," he said slowly. " I swear I never will." His mother lay back in her chair, utterly exhausted by her brief excitement ; her lips were pale, her eyes closed. Douglas felt a sudden vague alarm. "ShaU I get your medicine, dear?" he whi.spered anxiously. She made a gesture of assent; and by and by she sat up, aud a faint tiuge of colour came back to her lips. E " I will go to bed, I think," she said wearily. Douglas helped her to her room, saw that she had all she wanted — as he did every night — then took Tier in his arms with a sorrowful still gentleness very unlike his usual boyish hug and good-night kiss. " Good-night, my darling," murmured his mother brokenly. " My good loving boy. You have been more than a son to me, Douglas.

God will surely bless you, and reward you as you deserve." Then she added wistfully, " Perhaps I have not acted as was best for you, my son. But I did it for the best. Always beheve that, dear. Now, once more, good night." He kissed her hurriedly, for he could not trust himself to speak. Then he went up to his own bedroom, which was a small, low-ceiled apartment at the top of the house, and flung himself face downward upon his bed, trying to realize the crushing sorrow that had come upon him.

Chapter II. The Seed Of Ambition

" Face and figure of a child — Though too cnlm, you think, and tender, For the childhood you would lend her. " Yet child-simple, undefiled, Frank, obedient, waiting still On the turnings of your will. "Moving light-, as all young things, As young birds, or early wheat When the wind blows over it.'' F. B. Browning. MRS. CONRATH did not set out on her usual daily ■"■*■ pilgrimage on the following morning. She could not. When Douglas went into her room according to his wont before leaving, even his inexperienced eyes saw that she was very ill. She would not allow him to send for the doctor ; she would be better in the afternoon, she said. Her son got through his duties that day with a heavy heart, and hurried home to Garth Street with all possible speed. It was a dull, cheerless da}', and a strange insurmountable depression weighed upon him.

Bee met him at the head of the stairs, her small face scared and white. Behind her stood the landlady, Mrs. Dobbs. " Oh, Master Conrath," said the latter, lifting her apron to her eyes. "I was just agoin' to send for you. Your poor ma was took that bad just after you went out, and we sent for the doctor, and " Here she stopped and dried her eyes anew. "Is she — dead?" articulated the boy hoarsely, leaning against the wall, and feeling sick and giddy. " No, Master Conrath, she is not dead ; but the doctor he do say she can't last the night." And the speaker shook her head mournfully. Douglas mechanically put her aside, and went into his mother's room. She was lying quite still ; and her eyes were closed, her face ghastly pale. " Mother ! " he uttered despairingly, flinging himself on his knees by the bedside.

She opened her eyes, and laid her hand caressingly on his head. But she seemed too weak for speech. Little Bee, with round, awestruck eyes, climbed upon the bed. Dying ! The word conveyed no meaning to her childish mind. After a minute or two, Douglas, with a white, terrible look of misery on his young face, rose and went out. When he returned the doctor was with him. But alas ! there was nothing more that medical skill could do. Another fierce attack of almost unbearable agony, and then the patient feU iuto a deep sleep. And from that sleep she awoke — not in this world, but another. Little Bee wept, as children weep for a crossed will or a broken toy. " Ob, mammy — I want mammy," she wailed. But her baby-heart was consoled by the kitten from next door, which stole in and executed such wild fantastic gambols that Bee laughed merrily, while yet the tears stood in her eves.

But Douglas did not weep. He sat, half-stunned, by the dead woman's bedside, almost as white and stUl as she, with set teeth, and convulsively clenched fingers. He fiercely motioned away the fussy little doctor, with his soothing platitudes — "That it must have come sooner or later; that his dear mother had been in a critical state for a very long time ; that she had been mercifully spared further suffering," etc , etc. " I wish you would let me alone," the boy said in a strange, hard voice. " I know all that. I want to be alone." And all night he sat there, pressing despairing kisses on the cold forehead, murmuring loving words to the deaf ears, feeling all the while that this was some unreal ghastly dream from which he must soon awake, and over which he and his mother would smile together in the morning.