It is the middle of July, but the London season has not, as yet, shown any symptoms of being on the wane, and the drawing-room of the Honourable Mrs Carnaby-Hicks is arranged for the reception of visitors. Curtains of guipure lace, looped with pale-blue ribbons, shroud every window, purple irises and yellow jonquils as displayed in art needlework, adorn each chair and sofa; fanciful little tables of silk and velvet, laden with Sevres and Dresden china are placed in everybody’s way, and a powerful odour of hot-house flowers pervades the apartment. A double knock sounds at the door, and the Honourable Mrs Carnaby-Hicks starts from the dose into which she has fallen, and seizing a novel, sits upright, and pretends that she is deep in its contents. But she need not have been so punctilious, for the footman, throwing open the door, announces her brother, Mr Tresham. Roland enters the room, looking fagged, dusty, and out of sorts, a complete contrast to the dainty adornments of his sister’s drawing-room.
‘Well, Roland!’ exclaims Mrs Carnaby-Hicks, ‘and what is your news? It is an age since we have seen you! I was beginning to think you must have made away with yourself.’
‘No such luck,’ replies her brother, moodily, ‘though I believe it would be the best thing that I could do.’
He is a handsome man of only thirty years of age, but the look of care upon his brow makes him appear older. His dress is not exactly shabby, but it is the dress of a needy gentleman, and did not issue from the tailor’s hands this season, nor even last.
‘How are you all at home?’ continues the lady.
‘Just the same as usual; a medley of dirt, ill-management, and unpunctuality! I dread to enter the house.’
‘Ah! Roland, it is too late to advise you now, but that marriage was the worst day’s work you ever did. Not thirty till September, and with a wife and six children on your hands. It is a terrible misfortune!’
‘And two hundred a-year on which to support them,’ laughs Mr Tresham, bitterly. ‘Don’t speak of it, Valeria, unless you wish to drive me mad. And to add to my troubles I have just received this letter;’ tossing it over to her.
‘Who is it from?’
‘Lady Tresham! Her generosity seems to be on a par with his! You see how she writes me word that Sir Ralph is in Switzerland mountain-climbing with Handley Harcourt, but that if he were at home she fears he would be unlikely to comply with my request.’
‘Did you ask Ralph for money then?’
‘Not as a gift. I wrote to him for a loan of fifty pounds, to carry on the war, but of course I should regard it as a debt. The fact is, Valeria, I don’t know where to look for money; my profession brings me in nothing, and we cannot live on the miserable pittance my father left me. It is simply impossible!’
If Roland Tresham has entertained any hope that, on hearing of his difficulty, his rich sister will offer to lend or give him the money, which would be a trifle out of her pocket, he has reckoned without his host. She likes Roland in her way, and is always pleased to see him in her house, but the woman and the children may starve for aught she will do to help them. She considers them only in the light of a burthen and disgrace.
‘I don’t see why you shouldn’t live on two hundred a-year,’ she answers shortly. ‘Of course it is very little, but if your wife were worth her salt she would make you comfortable on it. But that is what comes of marrying a beauty. They’re seldom good for anything else.’
‘There’s not much beauty left about Juliet now,’ replies Roland Tresham, ‘but I don’t think it is entirely her fault. The children worry her so, she has no energy left to do anything.’
‘It’s a miserable plight to be in,’ sighs the Honourable Mrs Carnaby-Hicks, ‘and I can see how it tells upon your health and spirits. What do you propose to do?’
‘Do! I should like to hang myself. Do you think there is any chance, Valeria, of your husband getting me a foreign appointment? I don’t care where it is. I would go out to the Fiji Islands, or Timbuctoo, or to the devil himself, to get away from it all.’
‘And leave them at home?’ says Mrs Carnaby-Hicks.
‘Yes! Juliet should have the two hundred, and I would keep myself. Perhaps if she had only the children to look after, she might get on better. And the happiest thing for me would be, never to return!’
‘I will ask Mr Carnaby-Hicks about it,’ replies his sister. ‘If it is to be done at all, it must be before Parliament is prorogued. But I wouldn’t lose all hope with regard to Ralph on account of Lady Tresham’s letter. When he returns he can hardly refuse to lend you such a trifling sum as fifty pounds.’
It does not seem to occur to her that she would miss the money as little as Sir Ralph himself.
‘I shall not ask him a second time,’ says Roland, ‘nor Lady Tresham either. They may keep their money to themselves. But how a father can justify to himself the fact of leaving ten thousand a-year to one son, and two hundred to the other, beats me altogether!’
‘The money must go with the baronetcy,’ remarks his sister coolly, ‘and your portion was only intended to supplement your professional income. You ought to have made a competency by this time, Roland. You would have done so, had you not hampered yourself in such a reckless manner!’
At this moment the conversation is interrupted by the entrance of a young lady, dressed in the height of the reigning fashion.
‘My husband’s niece, Miss Mabel Moore,’ says Mrs Carnaby-Hicks, and then extending a hand to the girl, she draws her forward. ‘Mabel, dear, this is my younger brother, of whom you have heard me speak. Ring the bell and let us have tea. Roland and I have had a long conversation, and I feel quite fatigued.’
Roland Tresham stares at his new acquaintance with unmitigated surprise. Miss Moore is a tall, dark girl with a commanding figure, clad in a pale, cream-coloured dress that fits it like a skin. Her rounded arms, her well-developed bust and shapely waist are as distinctly displayed as if the material had been strained across them; and the uninitiated Roland gazes at her in astonishment.
‘Such a sweet girl,’ whispers Mrs Carnaby-Hicks to him, as Mabel quits her side; ‘I love her as if she were my daughter. As soon as the season is over, Mr Carnaby-Hicks and I are going to take her for a tour in Italy. And, by the way, Roland, could you not manage to accompany us? A second gentleman would be a great acquisition on the journey, and you would be invaluable to Mabel and me as a cicerone. Do come!’
‘You might as well talk of my going to the moon, Valeria. I should enjoy it above all things, but it is impossible. Only fancy the delight though of change of scene and air and freedom from all the horrors of Camden Town. It would be like a taste of Heaven to me!’
‘I am sure you could manage it if you tried! Come here, Mabel, and persuade my brother to join us in our trip to Italy.’
‘Oh! Mr Tresham, do come,’ says Mabel, throwing a glance at him from a pair of dark, languishing eyes. ‘It will double Aunt Valeria’s pleasure to have your company.’
Roland Tresham has not, as a rule, admired dark eyes in women nor commanding figures. His wife is very fair, and slight and fragile in appearance, and when he married her eight years before, he thought her the loveliest creature God ever made. But as Mabel Moore casts her black-lashed eyes upon him, he feels a very strong desire to join the travelling party to Italy.
‘You hold out powerful temptations to me, Miss Moore,’ he answers, ‘but it is too important a matter to be settled in a day. But if I can go, you may be sure I will.’
And then he falls to wondering whether Mrs Carnaby-Hicks intends her offer to be taken as an invitation, and means to defray his expenses. For she must know he has no money to pay them himself. Meanwhile Miss Moore pours out his tea, and hands it to him in a porcelain cup with the most gracious and encouraging of smiles. It is a strange contrast to the man who knows what he will encounter on reaching home, to be seated among all the refinement of his sister’s drawing-room, sipping the most fragrant Pekoe from a costly piece of china, whilst he is waited on by a handsome woman clad in a cream-coloured skin, every fold of the train of which shakes out the essence of a subtle perfume. He revels in it whilst it lasts, though after a while he rises with a sudden sigh of recollection, and says he must be going home.
‘Don’t forget to ask Hicks about the appointment,’ he whispers to his sister as he takes his leave. ‘Remember, I will take anything and go anywhere just to get away from this.’
‘Very good,’ she answers, ‘and don’t you forget that we expect you to be one of our party to Italy.’
‘Yes! indeed,’ echoes Mabel with a parting glance, ‘I shall not enjoy my trip at all now, unless Mr Tresham goes with us!’
‘What a good-looking fellow!’ she exclaims as soon as the door has closed behind him. ‘Aunty! why did you never tell me what he was like?’
‘My dear child, where was the use of talking of him? The unfortunate man is married, and has no money. Had he been rich and a bachelor, it would have been a different thing!’
‘I don’t know that,’ says Miss Mabel, ‘for my part I prefer married men to flirt with; they’re so safe. Besides, it’s such fun making the wives jealous.’
‘It would take a great deal to make Mrs Tresham jealous,’ says the elder lady. ‘They’re past all that, my dear. So you can flirt with Roland to your heart’s content, only don’t go too far. Remember Lord Ernest Freemantle!’
‘Bother Lord Ernest,’ returns the fashionable young lady in precisely the same tone as she would have used the stronger word had she been of the stronger sex.
Meanwhile the gentleman is going home by train to Camden Town: a locality which he has chosen, not on account of its convenience, but because he can rent a house there for the modest sum of thirty pounds a-year. His immediate neighbours are bankers’ clerks, milliners, and petty tradesmen from the West End, but the brother of Sir Ralph Tresham of Tresham Court, and the Honourable Mrs Carnaby-Hicks, of 120 Blue Street, Mayfair, has no alternative but to reside amongst them. He has chosen a profession in which he has signally failed, and has hampered himself with a wife and six children, when his private means are not sufficient to support himself. He fancies he can hear his children shouting even before he has gained the little terrace in which they reside. They are all so abominably strong and healthy: their voices will reach to any distance. And as he comes in sight of the familiar spot, his suspicions turn to certainties. Wilfrid and Bertie and Fred, three sturdy rascals with faces surrounded by aureoles of golden hair like angels’ crowns, but plastered with dirt like the very lowest of human creatures, are hanging on to the palings which enclose a patch of chickweed and dandelions in front of the house, and shouting offensive epithets to every passer-by.
‘Can’t you keep inside and behave yourselves? How often have I ordered you not to hang about the garden in this way?’ exclaims Roland Tresham, as he cuffs the little urchins right and left. The two youngest rush for protection to their mother, howling, whilst the eldest sobs out,—
‘Mamma said we might play here.’
‘Then your mother’s as great a fool as you are,’ replies the father, angrily, as he strides into the house.
Juliet Tresham is waiting to receive him, with a deep frown upon her brow. Any unprejudiced observer would see at a glance that she is a lovely woman, but it is the loveliness of beauty unadorned. Her luxuriant golden hair is all pushed off her face, and strained into a tight knot at the back of her head. Her large blue eyes are dull and languid; her lips are colourless, and her ill-fitting, home-made dress hangs awkwardly upon her figure. In her husband’s eyes, all her beauty and her grace have faded long ago. He associates her with nothing now, but weak lungs and spirits, squalling children, badly-cooked dinners, and an untidy home. It is scarcely to be wondered at that she does not smile him a welcome home.
‘You might inquire whether the children are in the right or wrong, before you hit them,’ she says sharply. ‘I told them they might play in the front garden.’
‘Then they must suffer for your folly, for I won’t have them hanging about the place like a set of beggars’ brats.’
‘It’s all very fine for you to talk, but what am I to do with them cooped up in the house, on a day like this? If you had the charge of them, you’d turn them out anywhere, just to get rid of them.’
‘Why don’t you let the girl look after them?’
‘“The girl!” That’s just how you men talk! As if one wretched girl of fourteen had not enough to do to keep the house clean, and cook the dinner, without taking charge of half-a-dozen children!’
‘Oh! well, don’t bother me about it. Am I to have any dinner to-day or not?’
‘I suppose Ann will bring it up when it is ready,’ says his wife indifferently; ‘you can’t expect to be waited on as if you were the owner of Tresham Court.’
‘D—n you! I wish you’d hold your tongue!’ he answers angrily.
He calls it his dinner, for the good reason that it is the only dinner he ever gets, but it is a wretched mockery of the meal.
‘What do you call this?’ he says, as he examines the untempting-looking viands, and views with disgust the evident traces of black fingers on the edge of the dish. ‘Take it away, and serve it me on a clean plate. I may be obliged to swallow any dog’s meat you chose to put before me, but I’ll be hanged if I’ll eat the smuts off your servant’s hands as well.’
Mrs Tresham, who is occupied at the other end of the table in cutting slices of bread and salt butter for the tribe of little cormorants by which she is surrounded, just turns her head and calls through the open door to the maid-of-all-work in the kitchen.
‘Ann, come and fetch away this dish; your master says it is dirty.’
‘Do it yourself!’ roars her exasperated husband. ‘It is quite bad enough that you are so lazy, you won’t look after any of my comforts in my absence, without your refusing to set matters right now.’
His wife takes up the dish in silence, and leaves the apartment, whereupon two of the children, disappointed of their bread and butter, begin to cry. Roland Tresham, after threatening to turn them out of the room if they do not hold their tongues, leaves his seat and leans out of the open window, disconsolately. What a position it is in which to find his father’s son! Outside, his neighbours are sitting in their shirt sleeves, smoking clay pipes in their strips of garden, or hanging over the railings talking with one another; in the road itinerant merchants are vending radishes, onions, and shellfish; whilst a strong, warm smell is wafted right under his nostrils from the pork-pie shop round the corner. Inside, the children are whimpering for the return of their mother round a soiled table-cloth which bears a piece of salt butter, warm and melting, a jar of treacle with a knife stuck in it, a stale loaf, a metal teapot, and knives and forks which have been but half-cleaned. A vision comes over Roland of that art-decorated drawing-room in Blue Street, with the porcelain tea-service, the silken clad figure, and the subtle perfume that pervaded the scene; and a great longing for all the delicacies and refinements of life comes over him, with a proportionate disgust for his surroundings. When his wife returns with the beefsteak, he pushes it from him. His appetite has vanished with the delay.
‘I can’t eat it,’ he says impatiently. ‘Take the filth away.’
‘Well, it’s the best I can do for you,’ is her reply. ‘It’s quite enough for a woman to be nurse and housemaid, without turning cook into the bargain.’
‘It is a long time since I have expected you to do anything to please me, Juliet; however, stop the mouths of those brats of yours, and send them to bed. I want the room to myself. I have work which must be done this evening.’
She supplies the children’s wants, and hurries them from the room, whilst her husband sits sulking and dreaming of Blue Street. If his brother-in-law can only get him a foreign appointment, how gladly he will fly from this squalid home for ever. He pictures a life by the shores of the Mediterranean, in the forests of Brazil, on the plains of India, or the Australian colonies, and each and every one seems a paradise compared with that which he leads at present.
Mrs Tresham, putting her little ones to rest, feels also that, except for them, she would lay down her existence. She is utterly sick and wearied of her life. She is almost cross with Wilfrid and Bertie and Fred, because they will bolster one another, instead of lying down in their cots and going to sleep like pattern boys. For Baby Roland is whimpering for the breast, and two-year-old May is fractious with the pain of cutting her double teeth. Lily, her mother’s help and companion, is the only one that waits patiently until her turn arrives to be undressed. But when the rest are at last subdued, or satisfied, and Juliet Tresham turns to attend to her eldest daughter, her trembling fingers have busied themselves but for a few seconds with strings and buttons, before her arms are cast around the child, and she bursts into a storm of tears.
‘Mamma, why do you cry?’ asks Lily anxiously.
‘Oh, Lily, Lily! It is not my fault—it is not my fault.’
God help her, poor Juliet, it is not! Almost a girl in years, yet laden with cares such as few wives in her position are ever called upon to bear, she has sunk beneath the weight of an overwhelming load. Health and energy have failed her, and her husband’s patience has not proved equal to the occasion, and so irritability and discontent have crept in on the one hand, and disgust and indifference on the other. And yet they loved each other once, oh! so dearly, and believed from their hearts they would have died sooner than give up their mutual affection.
But Mrs Tresham does not cry long. She persuades herself that the man downstairs is not worth crying for.
‘Get into bed, Lily, darling, or papa will be coming up to see what we are about.’
‘I didn’t kiss papa nor wish him good-night,’ says the child.
‘No, no! it doesn’t signify. He doesn’t care for your kisses, nor for mine.’
She tucks her little girl into her bed and descends to the sitting-room again, feeling injured and hard of heart. Roland, as she enters, glances at her with a look of disgust.
‘Your hair is half way down your back.’
She laughs slightly, and, pulling out the fastenings of her hair, lets the rippling mass fall over her shoulders. Roland used to admire it so much in the days gone by, and say it was the only gold he cared to possess. Has she any hope that he will recall his former feelings at the sight of her loosely falling locks? If so, she is mistaken, for he only remarks coldly,—
‘I must beg you not to turn my room into a dressing-room. Go and put your hair up tidily. I hate to find it amongst my papers.’
‘I believe you hate everything except your own comfort,’ she replies. ‘You’re the most selfish man I ever came across.’
‘Perhaps so! But as long as this house belongs to me, you’ll be good enough to keep your opinions to yourself. If I can’t have comfort when I come home, I will at least have peace.’
‘And much peace I get, day or night.’
‘It is by your own mismanagement if you do not.’
‘How do you make that out? Has your want of money anything to do with my mismanagement? Have the children anything to do with it? You ought to be ashamed of yourself.’
‘Ought I?’ he returns, biting his lip. ‘Then, perhaps, you’ll be glad to hear that I have applied for a foreign appointment that will take me out to India, or the Brazils, for the remainder of my life.’
‘Oh, Roland!’ she cries, catching her breath; ‘but not to leave us?’
‘Certainly to leave you. That was the sole object of my application. Aren’t you delighted to hear it? We lead a cat-and-dog life as things are at present, and the sooner we are separated the better.’
‘But the children—and me!’ she gasps, with a face of chalky whiteness.
‘Oh, don’t be afraid! you will be provided for.’
‘But if you should be ill?’ suggests the woman fearfully.
‘Then I shall die, perhaps, and so much the better. You have not made my life such a heaven to me that I shall lose much by its resignation.’
Then she falls upon his neck, weeping.
‘Oh, Roland, Roland! do not speak to me like that.’
But he pushes her from him. He has had no dinner, and that is a trial that never improves the masculine temper.
‘Don’t make a fool of yourself!’ he says roughly.
Juliet raises her head and dries her eyes. She is a proud woman and a high-spirited one, and never disposed to take a rebuff meekly.
‘I am a fool,’ she answers. ‘Any woman would be a fool who wasted a regret upon such an icicle as you are. I hope to Heaven you may get your appointment and go out to the Brazils, and never come back again; for the less I see and hear of you the better.’
‘Just what I said,’ remarks her husband indifferently. ‘You are as sick of me as I am of you, and it’s of no use disguising the truth from one another.’
‘There was a time when you thought nothing too good to say of me,’ she cries, hysterically.
‘Was there? Well, you can’t expect such things to last for ever, and you have really made my life such a hell to me of late that you can’t be surprised if I look forward to any change as a blessing.’
‘Oh! It has come to that, has it—that you want to get rid of me? Why don’t you put the finishing stroke to your cruelty and say at once that you hate me?’
‘I am afraid you are making me do something very much like it.’
‘The truth is, you are tired of me, Roland! It is nursing your children and trying out of our scanty income to provide for your wants that has brought me down to what I am, and since I have ceased to please your eyes, I have wearied out your fancy.’
‘Yes! my dear,’ he says, with provoking nonchalance. ‘You are quite right; I am very tired of you, and particularly at this moment. Suppose you leave me to my writing, and go to bed.’
Mrs Tresham rushes from the little room and slams the door behind her. But she does not go to bed. She takes a seat amongst her sleeping children, and, resting her head upon her hands, weeps for the past which is slumbering like them, although she thinks it dead. It is just nine o’clock, and as the hour strikes from a neighbouring church tower, she sees the postman coming up the street. He enters the parterre of chickweed and dandelions, and gives a double knock at the front door, whilst Mrs Tresham, sitting at her bedroom window, wonders vaguely who the letter can be from. But presently she hears a shout from below—a mingled shout of surprise and horror and excitement, and startled and curious she runs downstairs to learn the cause.
Her husband’s handsome face—flushed and animated—turns towards her as she opens the door.
‘What is the matter?’ she exclaims hurriedly.
‘What is the matter?’ he repeats. ‘What is not the matter? My God! can it possibly be true?’
He has leapt from his seat and passed his fingers through his hair, which is all on end. His eyes flame like living fire; his whole frame is trembling; she thinks for the moment that he has gone mad.
‘Roland, you are frightening me terribly! Have you had bad news?’
‘Bad news! No. Glorious news! At least I suppose I ought not to call it so, because he’s my brother, but he has never been like a brother to me. Juliet! Only fancy—Ralph is dead, killed by a fall down the mountain side.’
‘Oh! Poor Sir Ralph! How terrible! But perhaps it is not true.’
‘It is true. This letter is from Lady Tresham’s nephew, Handley Harcourt, who was with Ralph at the time of his death. And they are bringing the body to England. And—and—can’t you understand? I am Sir Roland Tresham, of Tresham Court—with ten thousand a-year to keep it up on, and—Oh, my God!—my God! I believe the news will drive me mad.’
He casts himself face downwards on the rickety couch in the corner of the room, and sobs as if, without that relief, his heart would burst with joy. Meanwhile his wife stands motionless, almost unable to comprehend the sudden change in their condition, until her husband starts up again, exclaiming,—
‘What a child I am. But it only proves what I have suffered. To be free, once and for ever, of all this struggling and starvation—to see my poor children placed in the position to which they were born—It is too great a change to be believed in, all at once. My boys shall enter the army and navy—and my girls have every advantage my wealth can procure them. Oh, it is too much! It has all happened so suddenly. I feel as if I should die before I come into it. Sir Roland Tresham, of Tresham Court! Sir Roland Tresham, of Tresham Court! Merciful heavens, am I awake or in a dream?’
He has never mentioned his wife whilst enumerating the advantages his new fortune will bring him. He has never once congratulated himself on the fact that she will no longer be obliged to slave and work and deny herself as she has been used to do. All he thinks of are the children and himself.
‘When will you come into all this, Roland?’ she asks.
‘I am it now! I was the Baronet from the moment of my poor brother’s death.’
‘And shall we go to Tresham Court soon?’
‘Directly the funeral is over. I shall see the lawyers and Valeria the first thing in the morning, and know all about it. But I would rather you went upstairs and left me alone. I must have time to become accustomed to the idea of this wonderful transformation scene. By to-morrow morning I shall be all right. Good-night! Good-night! There will be no more trouble about money now. And Sir Wilfrid shall be at Eton before he knows what he is about. By Jove! How marvellously things do come round.’
He nods her a careless farewell in an excited sort of manner, and the new Lady Tresham creeps up to her bed and takes baby Roland in her arms, and sobs herself to sleep with his chubby face pressed close against her bosom.