... Spring Days: A Realistic Novel. A Prelude to "Don Juan."

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Preface

Some six years ago I noticed that an artificial, vicious, and decadent society was represented by a restricted and conventional literature of no relation with the moment of which it chattered.

My first novel, "A Modem Lover," was recognised by Mr Henry Norman in the- Fortnightly Bemew as being unmistakably reactionary. **The Mummer's Wife " brought the librarians to arms.

"The Mummer's Wife" is not an immoral book, it is a highly moral one ; but I did not urge its unintermittingness of moral appeal as a reason for its acceptance when the Daily News invited me to discuss the question. An article on the inalienable right of the artist to write as it pleased him was returned to me ; but I should have been printed had I sent an article on the aristocratic adulteries of the circulating library. ... I had yet to learn that a sinning duchess is less offensive in God's sight than a poor erring workwoman, &c. ... A novel of the people inspired by deep sympathy for their sufferings . . . desire to relieve, to raise . . . incurable belief in the natural wisdom of the race, seeking instinctively the hidden but ultimate end.

IV PREFACE.

On the back of such an article the philanthropic and democratic would have slung their views for a fortnight, my book would have been made the subject of sermons, and been sold by tens of thousands.

Regardless, however, of the great difficulties of my way, I wrote " A Drama in Muslin " and " A Mere Accident " ; and it pleases me to think that both of these books show me scorning aU facfle success, and walking, to the best of my strength, in the way of art.

The persecution of Messrs Mudie and Messrs Smith having failed to ruin me, helped me to the notice of those who axe genuinely interested in art and new artistic developments and manifestations. And to them I now bring '* Spring Days," my fifth novel.

My readers will remember the note that preceded the "Drama in Muslin." I then promised a companion book, dealing with a group of young men, in which the women will be blotted out, or rather in their turn constitute the decorative background.

" Spring Days " is the prelude to this book. It will be called " Don Juan." Of this idea of man, so complex and so strange, so full of subtle psychological interest, the dramatist, the librettist, and the poet have given us only a pretty boy with whom numerous

women fell in love.

G. M.

SPRING DAYS.

CHAPTER I. " Miss, I'll have his blood ; I will, miss, I will."

" For goodness' sake, cook, go back to your kitchen ; put that dreadful pair of boots under your apron."

" No, miss ; I will be revenged. He has insulted me."

" You can't be revenged now, cook ; you see he has shut himself in ; you had better go back to your kitchen."

The groom, who was washing the carriage, stood, mop in hand, grinning, appreciating the discomfiture of the coachman, who was paying the penalty of his joke.

" Cook, if you don't go back to your kitchen instantly, 111 give you notice. It is shameful — think what a scandal you are making in the stable-yard. Go back to your kitchen— I order you. It is half-past six, go and attend to your master's dinner."

" He has insulted me, he has insulted me. 111 have your blood ! " she cried, battering at the door. The rattling of chains was heard as the horses turned their heads.

" Put those boots under your apron, cook ; go back to your kitchen, do as I tell you."

The woman retreated, Maggie following. At intervals there were stoppages, and cook re-stated her desire to have

6 SPRING DAYa

the coachman's blood. Maggie did not attempt to argue with her, but sternly repeated her order to go back to her kitchen, and to conceal the old boots under her apron.

" What business had he to rummage in my box, interfering with my things; he put them all along the kitchen table ; he did it because I told you, miss, that he was carrying on with the kitchenmaid, he goes with her every evening into the wood shed, and a married man too ! I wouldn't be his poor wife."

" Go back to your kitchen, cook ; do as I tell you."

With muttered threats cook entered the house, and she commanded the kitchenmaid to interfere no more with the oven, but to attend to her saucepans.

" What a violent woman," thought Maggie ; " horrid woman. I am sure she is Irish. Ill get rid of her as soon as I can. The place is filthy, but I daren't speak to her now. She's stirring the saucepan with her finger."

At that moment quick steps were heard coming down the corridor, and Sally entered.

" Cook, cook, I want you to put back the dinner half-anhour. I have to go down the town."

" Oh, Sally, I beg of you, what will father say 1 "

" Father isn't everybody. I dare say the train will be a little late ; it often is. He won't know anything about it, that is if you don't tell him."

" What do you want to go down the town for ? "

" Never you mind. I don't ask you what you do."

" You want to go down the slonk," whispered Maggie.

The cook stopped stirring the saucepan, and the kitchenmaid stood listening greedily.

" Nothing of the kind," Sally answered defiantly. "You are always trying to get up something against me. Cook, will you keep back the dinner twenty minutes ? "

" Cook, I forbid you. I*m mistress here."

" How dare you insult me before the servants ! Grace is mistress here, if it comes to that."

"Grace has given me over the housekeeping. I am mistress when she is too unwell to attend to it."

" Nothing of the sort. Grace is the eldest, I would give way to her, but I am not going to give way to you. Cook, the dinner won't be ready for another half-hoiu*, will it ? "

"I don't know when the dinner will be ready, and I don't care."

" It is a quarter to seven now, dinner won't be ready before seven, will it, cook ? Keep it back a bit. Now I must be off."

And, as Maggie expected, Sally ran past the glass houses and the pear and apple trees, for there was at the end of the vegetable garden a door in the brick wall that enclosed the manor house. It was used by the gardeners, and communicated with a path leading through some corn and grass land to the high road. There were five acres of land attached to the manor house, tennis lawn, shady walks, flower garden, kitchen garden, stables, and coach house at the back, and all this spoke in somewhat glaring fashion the wealth and ease of a rich city merchant.

"There she goes," thought Maggie flaunting her head. "What a fool she is to bully father instead of humouring him. We shall never hear the end of this. His dinner put back so that she may continue her flirtation with Meason ! I shall have to tell the truth, why should I tell a lie ? " " Please miss," said the butler as Maggie passed through the baize door, " I think it right to tell you about cook. We find it very hard to put up with her in the servants' hall. She is a very violent tempered woman ; nor can I say much for her in other respects. Last week she sold twenty pounds of dripping, and it wasn't all dripping, miss, it was for the most part butter."

"John, I really can't listen to any more stories about cook. Has the quarter-tonseven come in yet ? "

"I have not seen it pass, miss, but I saw Mr Willy coming up the drive a minute ago."

Willy entered, and she turned to him and said, " Where have you been to, Willy ? "

" Brighton. Has father come in yet ? "

" No. You came by the tramcar ? "

" Yes."

His shoulders set well back and his toes turned out, Willy strode along the passage. His manner was full of deliberation, and he carried a small brown paper parcel under his arm as if it were a sword of state. Maggie followed him up the steep and vulgarly carpeted staircase that branched into the various passages forming the upper part of the house. Willy's room was precise and grave, and there everything was held under lock and key. He put the brown paper parcel on the table ; he took off his coat and laid it on the bed, heaving, at the same time, a sigh.

"Did you notice if the quarter-to-seven has been signalled ? "

" Yes, but don't keep on worrying 3 the train is coming along the embankment."

" Then there will be a row to-night."

" Why 1 "

" Sally told cook to keep the dinner back ; she has gone down the slonk to speak to Meason."

"Why did you not tell cook that she must take her orders from you and no one else ? "

" So I did, but Sally said I was no more mistress here than she was. I said Grace had given me charge of the house, when she could not attend to it; but Sally will listen to no one, shell drive father out of his mind. There's no one he hates like the Measons.'*

" What is the matter with Grace 1 Where is she ? "

" She's in her room, lying on the bed crying. She says she wants to die ; she says that she doesn't care what becomes of her. Shell never care for another man, and father will not give his consent. What's-his-name has nothing — only a small allowance; hell never have any more, he is not a working-man. I know father, hell never hear of any one who is not a working-man. I wish you would speak to her."

"I've quite enough to do with my own affairs; I've had bad luck, enough as it is, without running into new difficulties of my own accord."

" If she refuses Berkins, father '11 never get ov^r it ; I wish you would speak to her."

" No, don't ask me. I never meddle in other people's affairs. I have had trouble enough. — Now I want to dress."

When Maggie went downstairs, she found her father in the drawing-room.

" The train was a little late to-night. — Has Willy come back from Brighton ? "

" Yes, father."

" 1 have been looking over his accounts, and I find he has lost nearly two thousand pounds in Bond Street, and I don't think he is doing any good with that agency in Brighton. I never approved of one or the other. I approve of nothing but legitimate city business. Shops in the West End ! mere gambling. Where is Grace 1 "

" She is in her room,"

" In her room ? I suppose she hasn't left. All this is very terrible. I don't know what to do with you. Since your poor mother died my life has been nothing but trouble and vexation. I can't manage you, you are too strong for me. — So she has not left her room ;— crying her eyes out, because I won't consent to her marrying a penniless young officer I But I will not squander my money. I made it all myself, by my own industry, and I refuse to keep young fellows in idleness."

" I don't give you any trouble, father."

"You are the best, Maggie, but you encourage your sister Sally. I hear that you, too, were seen walking with young Meason."

" It is not true, I assure you, father. I met him as I was going to the post-office. I said, *How do you do?' and I passed on."

" Where is Sally ? "

" She went out a few minutes ago."

" Didn't she know the time ? She ought to be dressing for dinner. Do you know where she's gone ? "

" I think she went down the slonk."

His children had inherited his straight sharp features and his small, black, vivid eyes. Their hair was of various hues of black. Maggie's was raven black and

SPRING DAYS. H

glossy; Sally's was coarse and of a hue like black lead; Grace's was abundant and relieved with sooty shades ; Willy's seemed like a coat of black paint, so close did it lie to the head. He wore a slight moustache, and he was fat. The father was fat too ; and father and son were fat on the same lines — thick long bodies, short necks and legs, and short fat arms ; and if the father's white hair were dyed, the years that separated him from his son would disappear, for although the son was only just turned thirty, he was middle-aged in face and feeling.

Sally and Grace were both thickly built, the latter being a little inclined to fat. Maggie was thin and elegantly angular^ and often stood in picturesque attitudes ; she stood in one now, her hands linked behind her back ; and she watched her father, and her look was subtle and insinuating.

" When I came here," he said, speaking rapidly, and as if he were speaking to himself, " the place was well enough ; there was nothing here but those wretched cottages facing the sea, the gi'een, and a few cottages about it ; but since those villas have been put up, Southwick has become unbearable. — ^All my troubles," he murmured, " originated in the Southdown Eoad."

Maggie turned aside, smiled, and bit her lip ; she did not speak, however, for she knew her father did not care to be interrupted in his musings.

" A hateful place — glass porticoes, and oleographs on the walls."

Here Mr Brookes stopped in his walk to admire one of his favourite Friths. " Those ridiculous haberdashers, with a bas relief of the founder of their house over the doorway.

The proprietors of the baths, the Measons, poor as church mice, the son a mate of a merchant vessel — these are not proper associates for my daughters. I will not know them ; I will not have them in my house."

" The Measons are quite as good as we are, father. They may be poor, but as far as family goes "

" You are just the same as the others, Maggie ; once there is a young man to flirt with, you don't care what he is or where he comes from. When there are no young men, you will snub the old ladies fast enough; and as for Sally, she is downright rude. I did not want to see the haberdashers, but while they were in my house I was polite to them."

" It was the Horlocks who told them to call."

" I know it was. If Mrs Horlock likes to know these people, let her know them; but what does she want to force them upon us for? That's what I want to know. We might never have known any one in the Southdown Eoad ; I mean we never should, we never could have known any one in the Southdown Eoad if Mrs Horlock had not come to live there. We had to call upon her."

"Every Viceroy in India called upon her. She was the only woman whom every Viceroy did call upon.*'

" I know she was. Of course we had to call upon her. Most interesting woman; the Greneral is very nice, too. I like them exceedingly. I often go to see them, although the smell of that mastiff is more than I can bear in the hot weather, especially if lilies or strong smelling flowers are in the room."

" She feeds the mice, she won't let them be destroyed, she lets the traps down at night."

" Don't let us go into the animal question. The constant smell of dogs is unpleasant, but I could put up with it, — what I can't stand are her acquaintances in the Southdown Eoad, and when I think that we should not have known any of them if it had not been for her ! Indirectly — I do not say directly, she is the cause of all my difficulties. It was at her house Sally met young Meason ; it was at her house Grace met that young officer for whom she is crying her eyes out ; and it was at her house — yes, I had not thought of it before — it was at her house that Willy met that swindler who induced him to put £2000 into the Bond Street shop. The Southdown Eoad might have remained here for the next five hundred years, and we should have known nothing of it had it not been for Mrs Horlock ; if she likes to know these people let her know them, but why force them upon us ? — It was only the other day she was talking to me about calling on some new friends of hers who have come to live there. I dare say it is the custom to call on every one at Calcutta, but I say that Calcutta etiquette is not Southwick etiquette, and I don't care how many Viceroys called upon her, I will not know the Southdown Road."

The enunciation of this last sentence was deliberate and impassioned. Mr Brookes walked twice across the room ; then he stood, his hands crossed behind his back, looking at his favourite Gk)odall. His anger melted, and he mused on the price he had paid, and the price he thought it was now worth. Fearing he would return to the Southdown Eoad trouble, Maggie said :

" I am afraid we shall be obliged to get rid of the new cook. She is Irish. Just before you came in I found her in the stable-yard threatening to break Holt's head with a pair' of dreadful old boots."

" I don't want to hear about the cook. The money you spend in housekeeping is enormous. Since your poor mother died I have not had a day's peace. If it is not one thing it is another. You are fit for nothing but pleasiu'e and flirtation; there isn't a young man in the place or within ten miles you have not flirted with. I am often ashamed to look them in the face at the station. It is past seven ; why is not dinner ready ? "

" Sally told the cook to put the dinner back half-an-hoiu*." " Sally told the cook to put my dinner back half-an-hour !" Mr Brookes's face grew livid. The end of all things was at hand ; his dinner had been put back half-an-hour ! This was a climax in the affiairs of his life which for the moment he both failed to grasp or estimate. Was a father ever cursed with such daughters as his ? He had been in the City all day working for them; he did not marry because he wished to leave them his money, and this was the return they made to him. His dinner had been put back half-an-hoiu" ! Passion sustained him for a while ; but he gave way, and, pulling out a silk handkerchief, he sank into a chair.

" Don't cry, father, don't cry ; Sally is thoughtless, she did not mean it."

Mr Brookes wept for a few minutes ; Maggie strove to soothe him; he waved her away, he wiped his eyes, and in a voice broken with anguish, "Ah, well," he said, "I suppose it will be all the same a hundred years hence." In moments of extreme trouble he sought refuge in such philosophy, but now it seemed inadequate and superficial.

and Maggie had begun to fear the violence of the storm she had brewed. She did not mind stimulating ill-feeling, but she did not wish Sally to provoke her father recklessly. The possibility of his marrying again and having a second family was the one restraining influence Mr Brookes still retained over his daughters, so Maggie, who was always keenly alive to the remotest consequences of her actions, took care that his home never became quite unbearable to him; and when Sally entered the room, dark and brilliant in red velvet, and in no way disposed to admit she had been guilty of heinous wrong in countermanding the dinner, Maggie attempted a gentle pouring of oil on the waters. But waving aside her sister's gentle interposition, she said:

" You mustn't think of yourself only, father. I admit I told the cook to put back the dinner a few minutes. What then ? '*

"You did it that you might finish your conversation with young Meason," said Mr Brookes, but his words were weak, it being doubtful if even Meason could add to the original offence, so culminating and final did it seem to him.

"Maggie didn't tell you that last week she met him on the sea road, and walked with him into Portslade."

"Father, father, I beg of you, now, don't cry ; think of the servants."

And it was in such unity of mind and feeling that this family sat down to dinner in the great dining-room rich with all comforts and adorned with pictures by Frith and Goodall. Sally, who unfortunately knew no fear, talked defiantly ; she addressed herself principally to her brother, and she questioned him persistently, although the replies she received were generally monosyllabic. As he chewed his meat with reflection and precaution, broke his bread with deliberate and well-defined movements, and filled his mouth with carefully chosen pieces, he gradually ventured to decide that he would not speak to his father that evening of the scheme he had been hatching for some months. It was one of his strictest rules not to think while eating, so it may be said that it was against his will that he arrived at this conclusion. Willy suffered from indigestion, and he knew that any exercise of the brain was most prejudicial at meal times.

After dinner Mr Brookes and his son retired to the billiard-room to smoke.

" Your sisters are a great trouble to me : a very great anxiety. Since your poor mother died I have had no peace, none whatever. Poor Julia, she's gone; I shall never see her again."

Willy made no answer. He was debating, he was still uncertain whether the present time could be considered a favourable one to introduce his scheme to his father's notice, and he had made up his mind that it was, when he was interrupted by Mr Brookes, who had again lapsed into one of his seminsoliloquies.

" Yoiu" sisters give me a great deal of trouble, a very great deal of anxiety. I am all alone. I have no one to help me since the death of your poor mother."

" My sisters are fitted for nothing but pleasure," Willy replied, severely.

Chapter II

Mr Brookes went to London every day by the five minutes to ten; Willy walked into Brighton. There he had been for some time striving to found an agency for artificial maniu'es, and in the twilight of a small office he brooded over the different means of making money that were open to him. The young ladies worked or played as it struck their fancy. Sally admitted that she infinitely preferred walking round the garden with a young man to doing wool-work in the drawing-room. Maggie shared this taste, although she did not make bold profession of it. Grace was the gentlest of the sisters, and had passed unnoticed until she had fallen in love with a penniless officer, and tortured her father with tears and haggard cheeks because he refused to supply her with money to keep a husband. The doctor had ordered her iron; she had been sent to London for a change, but neither remedy was of much avail ; and when she returned home pale and melancholy she had not taken the keys from Maggie, but had allowed her to usurp her place in the house. Sally was supposed to look after the conservatories, but beyond her own special flowers she left everything to the gardeners.

On Sundays Mr Brookes walked through the long drawing-rooms aimlessly. Sometimes he would stop before one of his pictures. "There, that's a good picture, I paid a

B lot of money for it, I paid too much, mustn't do so again." Passing his daughters, sometimes without speaking, he then stopped before one of the big chimney-pieces, and, pulling out his large silk pocket handkerchief, dusted the massive clocks and candlesticks.

In the billiard-room, at a table drawn up close to the coke fire, Willy slowly and with much care made pencil notes, which he slowly and with great solemnity copied into his diary.

"Your sisters are a great source of trouble to me, a source of deep anxiety," said Mr Brookes, and he flicked the rearing legs of a bronze horse with his handkerchief.

" My sisters are only fit for pleasure," said Willy, and he finished the tail of the y, passed the blotting paper over, and prepared to begin a fresh paragraph.

" I am afraid Grace is scarcely any better ; she will not leave her room, I hear she is crying. It is too ridiculous, too ridiculous. What she can see in that man I cannot think ] he is only a man of pleasure. I have told her so, but somehow she cannot get to see why I will not settle money upon her — ^money that I made myself, by hard work, judicious investments."

" That's a smack at the shop," thought Willy, as he placed his full stop.

" I will not settle my money upon her," said Mr Brookes, as he resumed his dusting ; " and for what ? to keep an idle fellow in idleness. No, I will not do it. She'll get over it, ah, it will be all the same a hundred years hence. — But tell me, have you noticed — no, you notice nothing "

" Yes, I do ; what do you want me to say, that she is looking very ill? I can't help it if she is, I have quite enough troubles of my own without thinking of other people's. I am sure I am very sorry. I wish she had never met the fellow."

" That's what I say, I wish she had never met the fellow, and she never would had it not been for that horrible Southdown Boad. Southwick has never been the same since those villas were put up."

" I know nothing about them ; I won't know them. I don't go to the Horlocks because I may meet people there I don't want to know. If you hadn't allowed the girls to go there, she never would have met him."

" But we had to call on the Horlocks. Every Viceroy that ever came to India called upon her, and they're excellent people — titled people come down from London to see them : but I daresay their banking accounts wouldn't bear looking into. She walks about the green with the chemist's wife, and she has the people of the baths to dinner. Most extraordinary woman. I like her, I enjoy her society ; but I cannot follow her in her opinions. She says that only men are bad ; that all animals are good ; that it is only men who make them bad. Her views on hydrophobia are most astonishing. She says it is a mild and easy death, and sees no reason why the authorities should attempt to stamp it out. She quite frightened me with the story she told me of a mad dog that died in her arms. But that by the way. The point is not now whether she is right to feed mice in her bed-room instead of getting rid of them, but whether we should call on people we don't want to know because she asks us to do so.

I say we should not. When she spoke to me the other day about the lady whose mother was a housemaid, I said, *My dear Mrs Horlock, it is very well for you to call on those people, I approve of, I admire your magnanimity; but what you can do I cannot do. You have no daughters to bring out; every Viceroy that ever came to India called on you, your position in the world is assured, your friends will not think the less of you no matter how intimately you know the chemist's wife, but you could not do these things if you had daughters to bring out."

" What did she say to that ? "

" She was just going out to walk with her pugs. Angelbegan to — you know, and for the moment she could think of nothing else ; when the little beast had finished I had forgotten the thread of my argument. However, I spoke to her about Grace, and she promised that she should not meet the fellow again. I cannot think of his name, I get lost in the different names, and they are all so alike I scarcely know one from the other. I have had nothing but trouble since your poor mother died. Your sisters give me a great deal of trouble, and you have given me a great deal of trouble. We could not get on in business together on account of your infernal slowness. N"o man is more for keeping his accounts and letters straight than I, but your exactitude drives me mad ; it drives me mad ; there you are at it, I should like to know what you are copying into that diary, one would think you were writing an article for the TItms^ from the care with which you are drawing out every letter ; 'pon my word it isn't writing at all, it's painting. You can't write for a pair of boots without taking a copy of the letter.