Chapter 5

“Ah, my Beloved, fill the cup that clearsTO-DAY of past Regrets and future Fears—To-morrow?Why, To-morrow I may beMyself with Yesterday’s Sev’n Thousand years”

“Ah, my Beloved, fill the cup that clearsTO-DAY of past Regrets and future Fears—To-morrow?Why, To-morrow I may beMyself with Yesterday’s Sev’n Thousand years”

“Ah, my Beloved, fill the cup that clears

TO-DAY of past Regrets and future Fears—

To-morrow?Why, To-morrow I may be

Myself with Yesterday’s Sev’n Thousand years”

“Good old Omar,” the reader mutters, as he drains his goblet, and replenishes it from bottle and jug, “good old Omar, thine is the only true philosophy.Carpe diem, pluck the passing hour, let us eat and drink for to-morrow we may die, and who cares?

“Into this Universe, and why not knowing,Norwhence, like Water willy-nilly flowing;And out of it, as Wind along the Waste,I know notwhither, willy-nilly blowing.What, without asking, hither hurriedwhence?And, without asking, whither hurriedhence!Another and another Cup to drownThe Memory of this Impertinence.”

“Into this Universe, and why not knowing,Norwhence, like Water willy-nilly flowing;And out of it, as Wind along the Waste,I know notwhither, willy-nilly blowing.What, without asking, hither hurriedwhence?And, without asking, whither hurriedhence!Another and another Cup to drownThe Memory of this Impertinence.”

“Into this Universe, and why not knowing,

Norwhence, like Water willy-nilly flowing;

And out of it, as Wind along the Waste,

I know notwhither, willy-nilly blowing.

What, without asking, hither hurriedwhence?

And, without asking, whither hurriedhence!

Another and another Cup to drown

The Memory of this Impertinence.”

“Now, talk of Impertinence, who the deuce is this coming up my stairs at this hour of the night, and such a night? It can’t be the printer’s devil, besides, the step’s a man’s at that. If his thirst’s as big as himself, God help the bottle or what’s left of it. Oh! come in, whoever you are, and be hanged to you!” and in response to this not very pressing invitation the door opens, and in the doorway stands, peering into the room, dazzled in the transition from the gloomy staircase, a tall, erect figure, closely draped in a heavy Inverness cape, sodden with the rain.

“It is Mr. Beaumont, is it not?” asks a manly, pleasant voice. “Why, of course it is, now I can see you. How are you, Beaumont?” and a white but strong firm hand is outstretched and grasps the hand that not too gladly meets it.

“Denis Caird, by all that’s holy!”

“Of course, it’s Denis Caird, and glad to see you, Beaumont. Been hunting for you everywhere this month or two back. Was up in the West Riding lecturing, inquired about my old pupil we all prophesied such great things from, expected to find you in the Mayor’s parlour at least, till such times as you could follow Chamberlain’s lead heard you’d gone under, been seen in London, made up my mind to find you by hook or crook, and here I am and there you are. I say, what’s this, and this?” And the speaker, who had thrown off his cape, took up the little volume of verse, glanced at the title, and shook his head at the tall bottle. “‘Omar Khayyam’ and a whiskey bottle; bad food for mind, worse food for the body, my friend; the apostle of self-indulgence, and the worst, or nearly the worst, way to gratify it. This won’t do, Beaumont; this won’t do, my lad.”

Edward moved uneasily in his chair.

“Dulce est” he began.

“Dulce estbe hanged,” quoth his visitor.

“I’m a clergyman or I’d say something stronger than that. What’s a young fellow like you want cooped up in a garret reading that rubbish, beautiful rubbish, if you like, but still rubbish, and making matters ten thousand times worse by drinking liquid damnation at three-and-six a bottle; up here, I say, in a garret, mooning over a lot of verses and soaking yourself with poison, when all around you there’s work to be done, man’s work, God’s work, and none too many to do it. What’s wrong with you, Beaumont, what’s wrong, say?”

“Everything’s wrong. You know, of course, how I came a mucker up yonder. Well, I’ve cared for nothing since, but just to get a crust of bread, and as much of that stuff as the money’ll run to.”

“Wasn’t there a girl in the case. Hadn’t you her to live for if nothing and nobody else?”

“Oh! yes, there was a girl, if it comes to that. But when the smash came she very promptly declined to permit me to ‘live for her,’ as you put it. See, look here, you can read my letters of dismissal, if you care to. Short and sweet, like a donkey’s gallop, I call ’em.”

And Beaumont took from a drawer and threw upon the table two letters:

“The Vicarage,Caistorholm,Lincs.February, 188“DEAR MR. BEAUMONT,—I am exceedingly distressed to learn of your misfortune. You will do me the justice to remember that I gave only a reluctant and conditional assent to my daughter’s engagement to you. Of course that must now be absolutely and finally broken. I trust the dear girl may be given strength to bear this fearful trial, and I hope that your future may be brighter than present prospects indicate.Yours faithfully,HUGH ST. CLAIR.”“The Vicarage,Caistorholm.“DEAR EDWARD,—Papa insists that I endorse his words. What else can I do? I am so sorry, but there seems no other way. And, after all, I’m sure I should not have made you the wife you ought to have. With best wishes,ELEANOR ST. CLAIR.”

“The Vicarage,Caistorholm,Lincs.February, 188“DEAR MR. BEAUMONT,—I am exceedingly distressed to learn of your misfortune. You will do me the justice to remember that I gave only a reluctant and conditional assent to my daughter’s engagement to you. Of course that must now be absolutely and finally broken. I trust the dear girl may be given strength to bear this fearful trial, and I hope that your future may be brighter than present prospects indicate.Yours faithfully,HUGH ST. CLAIR.”“The Vicarage,Caistorholm.“DEAR EDWARD,—Papa insists that I endorse his words. What else can I do? I am so sorry, but there seems no other way. And, after all, I’m sure I should not have made you the wife you ought to have. With best wishes,ELEANOR ST. CLAIR.”

“The Vicarage,

Caistorholm,

Lincs.

February, 188

“DEAR MR. BEAUMONT,—

I am exceedingly distressed to learn of your misfortune. You will do me the justice to remember that I gave only a reluctant and conditional assent to my daughter’s engagement to you. Of course that must now be absolutely and finally broken. I trust the dear girl may be given strength to bear this fearful trial, and I hope that your future may be brighter than present prospects indicate.

Yours faithfully,

HUGH ST. CLAIR.”

“The Vicarage,

Caistorholm.

“DEAR EDWARD,—

Papa insists that I endorse his words. What else can I do? I am so sorry, but there seems no other way. And, after all, I’m sure I should not have made you the wife you ought to have. With best wishes,

ELEANOR ST. CLAIR.”

“Humph!” said the Rev. Denis Caird.

“There’s nothing lacking on the score of lucidity anyway. Anything else?”

“Merely this,” said Edward, bitterly, as he handed a newspaper to his visitor.

“A marriage has been arranged, and will shortly be solemnised, between Mr. George Wright, of Thoresby Manor, Lincs, and Eleanor, only child of the Very Reverend Archdeacon St. Clair, of Caistorholm Vicarage, Lincs.”

“A marriage has been arranged, and will shortly be solemnised, between Mr. George Wright, of Thoresby Manor, Lincs, and Eleanor, only child of the Very Reverend Archdeacon St. Clair, of Caistorholm Vicarage, Lincs.”

“A marriage has been arranged, and will shortly be solemnised, between Mr. George Wright, of Thoresby Manor, Lincs, and Eleanor, only child of the Very Reverend Archdeacon St. Clair, of Caistorholm Vicarage, Lincs.”

“Ah, well!” said Mr. Denis; “there’s an end of that chapter anyway.”

“With your permission we’ll drop these precious letters carefully into that not very cheerful fire of yours. It’s simply mawkish sentimentality keeping them by you to gloom over. I don’t know the lady, but it seems to me she knew what she was talking about when she said she wasn’t quite the kind of wife you want. A fair-weather sort of mate isn’t quite the sort of mate for a shipwrecked mariner. And so, because you’ve got two nasty slaps in the face from that fickle jade, Dame Fortune, you coop yourself up in this dingy hole, read Omar Khayyam and that rot, and drink yourself into a fool’s paradise or a sot’s oblivion, by way of mending matters. I thought you were made of better stuff, Beaumont, and that’s a fact. Why, man alive, if you’ve no more backbone in you than that comes to Eleanor St. Clair’s well rid of you, or any other decent woman for that matter.”

“Oh, yes, I’m down, jump on me,” said Beaumont, savagely.

“It’s time somebody did jump on you to some purpose. I’ve no patience with you, man. Why, it’s just such nasty knocks as those that test a man. Life’s a fight for the best of us, a stand-up fight, shoulders squared, knees braced, fists clenched, lips tight-pressed, and eyes intent and steadfast. A fight not with your fellow-man, to see which can down the other, that’s a poor business, but with the world, the flesh, and the devil. What sort of a fighter do you call the man who, on the first knockout, lies grovelling in the saw-dust, bleating for mercy? he’s not the man you put your money on. No, it’s the little game one who never knows when he’s beaten, that takes his gruel kindly, and is up on his feet after a breathing space, bruised and stricken, if you like, but eager for another round, and another, and still another, so long as he’s a leg to stand on. Now, you’ve had your breathing space. Look on me, if you like, as the man who brushes the saw-dust off your clothes, sponges your brow, gives you a knee, and bucks you up generally for another set-to. I want to see you in the ring again. Are you willing, or is it to be whiskey and Omar Khayyam, till the inevitable end, a leap over Westminster Bridge into the Thames, or the Workhouse? I could almost quote Scripture to you: ‘See, I have set before thee this day life and good, death and evil. Therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.’”

For a long time there was silence between the men. Edward leaned with his elbows upon his knees, gazing into the dull embers of the fire, the minister watching him anxiously. Then Beaumont rose and stretched out his hand.

“I choose life,” he said. “Show me the way.”

“There is only one way, Beaumont. There never has been, never will be, anyway but one. It is theVia Crucis—the way of the Cross. It is a way that was before Gethsemane, though men knew it not as they may know it now, if they but will. And you may put your foot on that way to-night, this very moment. What are you going to do with that whiskey bottle? You can’t carry that sort of luggage on theVia Crucis?”

“There’s the sink,” said Edward.

“Precisely, there’s the sink, and here goes for the sink and the sewer and the rats. And those letters?”

“There’s the fire.”

“Exactly. Let the dead past bury its dead, or as burial is not convenient for letters, here’s for cremation. And Omar Khayyam?”

“In with him.”

“Now we breathe a purer air. Now put on your hat and coat and come with me to a place I wot of where you can get the juiciest steak in all London town, with fried onions and roast potatoes and a cup of very decent coffee, piping hot. And then we’ll talk of things, and I may be able to put you in the way of doing a bit of useful work and earning a modest shilling or two by doing it. And that’s something to be thankful for in this vale of tears, I can tell you.”

CHAPTER X.

THE LAST.

Denis Caird was as good as his word, and better. He stuck to Beaumont like a leech. In those hours of depression that always come to him who has abandoned alcoholic stimulant—those hours in which every fibre of the being seems to clamour for the wonted drug, the good clergyman was to Beaumont a man and a brother, cheering him, rallying him, exhorting him, appealing to all the better forces of his nature, and aiding him in the bitter fight, till, after anxious months, both could feel the victory was won.

And Beaumont got work, work to his heart’s desire, work for his pen and work for what gift of speech he had.

“Go into the slums, go to the bottommost pit in this London hell,” said Mr. Caird. “Go and see for yourself what the teaching of your Omar Khayyam makes of men and women. See human beings turned into beasts and devils by yielding to the beast and devil latent within every man and every woman. You believe in evolution, you say. Well, what has made men and women only a little lower than the angels? Why, nought but myriads of years of beating down Satan under their feet, beating down the animal basis on which the moral and the spiritual superstructure is reared. Go, learn your lesson, and then, and not till then, with pen and tongue preach your lesson. I’m a Socialist, you know I am. But ere ever the masses enter into their kingdom of economic justice, ere ever they win the full heritage of their toil, I pray and labour that they may be worthy of that kingdom and of that heritage, that they may learn the right use of wealth; else will all their gains be but added curses.”

And Beaumont went into the slums, and their teaching sank deep into his soul. And in his goings he met time after time that sweet and winsome maiden whom he had first seen, years ago, in circumstances how different, in his office in Huddersfield—Gertrude Fairfax, Sister Gertrude. He saw her move, a ministering angel, among the foul purlieus, the noxious dens, speaking to Women from whose touch Respectability plucked its skirts, saw her indeed touch pitch without being defiled, a serene and wholesome presence before which sin slunk abashed away, and e’en the drunkard forbore to curse.

And seeing her thus almost daily, old memories died away, the carking bitterness left his heart, and it was filled again with the image of a woman whom to love was a liberal education and a holy cult in one.

The last scene of this story shall not open under the fogs nor ’mid the slums of hideous London. Come with me, gentle reader, to that goodly mansion by Stafford town, where dwell Mistress Jane Fairfax and her niece Gertrude. It is the month of leafy June, the skies are blue o’erhead, the air sweet and soft and warm, and the garden of Cromwell House is rich in verdure and in bloom, and redolent of the choicest perfumes distilled by that cunningest of all alchemists—Dame Nature. There is a bower there with rustic seat, a bower all garlanded with roses sweetly breathing, with clematis and wild convolvulus, and a purling brook alive with darting troutlet babbles by. And there are seated side by side the heroine of this story and Edward Beaumont.

“I have something to give you, Mr. Beaumont, that I think belongs to you. Let me first tell you how it came to my hands. You had a clerk, had you not, called Barnes?”

“I had.”

“Well, he came to a sad end, poor fellow. Drifted to London, took to evil courses, and died in great straits. I was by his bed when the end drew near. He remembered my being at your office, when you defended Pat Sullivan. He had tried to find you. He confessed he had abstracted this paper from your office, thinking he might make money by it, if a reward were offered for its recovery. I promised if ever I met you to restore it to you, and the man seemed easier for the promise.”

Beaumont wondering opened the document she handed to him.

“By Jove!” he cried, “the missing valuer’s certificate for Midgley’s mortgage. Why, I’ve searched high and low for this. What would I not have given for this precious bit of paper that night in Stafford Town Hall when I got that awful telegram. You were there, you tell me. If I’d only had this then! But it’s better as it is, much better. Don’t you think God schemes for us better than we can scheme for ourselves? A man need have long visions to scan the ways of God.”

“I don’t think, I know. But why do you ask that question just now?”

“Why, you see, Gertrude, if I may call you so, if I had had this paper I should probably have made a fight and struggled on in the law. And if I had, it seems to stand to reason I shouldn’t have been here!”

“No; you’d have been happily married by this to Eleanor St. Clair!”

“Who is much more happily married to George Wright, and I am free to say what say I must before I leave for London and my work. Can’t you guess what it is I would say, Gertrude? I’m not much of a man to offer to any woman, but such as I am I love you, Gertrude. I’m poor, you are rich or will be; I’m tainted, you are pure, unsullied. But, there, I think you know me as I am. Say, Gertrude, is there in your heart any tiny seedling of love for me that time and the warmth of my love may woo to life and growth?”

Edward had risen and now stood before the girl to whom he pleaded, who drooped her eyes before the ardour of his gaze, her bosom fluttering ’neath her modest dress like a prisoned bird that beats its bars, the rich colour suffusing the pale brow and cheeks.

“I think I have loved you, Edward, since that day in the Police Court. Oh! it nearly broke my heart when I heard how sadly you had fallen from what I dreamed you might be, and shall from what, God willing, you may be yet.”

“And you will help, Gertrude?”

“Aye, that I will.” And she rose and placed her hands in his and spake to him as Ruth the Maobitish damsel, spake to Naomi, and as Edward drew her to his breast and kissed the lips that met his he murmured: “The Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.”

And this is the end of my story, and yet but the real beginning of the lives that were joined before God’s altar by the Rev. Denis Caird. The wedding presents were neither costly nor numerous, but they included one from Eleanor St Clair, now Lady Wright, for that ambitious matron never rested till she saw her spouse a member for the Louth division, and, once in Parliament, that gentleman wisely refrained from speech, “never thought of thinking for himself at all, but always voted at his party’s call” ; and in due time the Premier of the day, yielding, it was said, to the blandishments of that brilliant leader of society, Mrs. George Wright, rewarded him with a baronetcy.

And what of Miss Amelia Wrigley and her amorous Sam? Alas! that lady never realised her modest ambitions. Mr. Storth prospered, as indeed he deserved to prosper, in the profession of his choice; but much beer, added to a plethoric habit and a choleric temperament, induced an apoplectic seizure from which he never rallied, and Miss Wrigley still lives in maiden meditation, if not fancy free, still to be wooed and won.

THE END.

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