  Sister Gertrude, A Tale of the West Riding. BY D. F. E. SYKES, LL.B. Author of “The History of Huddersfield,” “The History of the Colne Valley,” “Ben 0’ Bill’s, the Luddite,” “Tom Pinder, Foundling,” Etc., Etc. SIXTH THOUSAND. WORKER PRESS, 47, MARKET STREET, HUDDERSFIELD. About the author D. F. E. Sykes
D F E Sykes was a gifted scholar, solicitor, local politician, and newspaper proprietor. He listed his own patrimony as ‘Fred o’ Ned’s o’ Ben o’ Billy’s o’ the Knowle’ a reference to Holme village above Slaithwaite in the Colne Valley. As the grandson of a clothier, his association with the woollen trade would be a valuable source of material for his novels, but also the cause of his downfall when, in 1883, he became involved in a bitter dispute between the weavers and the mill owners. When he was declared bankrupt in 1885 and no longer able to practise as a solicitor he left the area and travelled abroad to Ireland and Canada. On his return to England he struggled with alcoholism and was prosecuted by the NSPCC for child neglect. Eventually he was drawn back to Huddersfield and became an active member of the Temperance Movement. He took to researching local history and writing, at first in a local newspaper, then books such as ‘The History of Huddersfield and its Vicinity’. He also wrote four novels. It was not until the 1911 Census, after some 20 years as a writer, that he finally states his profession as ‘author’. In later life he lived with his wife, the daughter of a Lincolnshire vicar, at Ainsley House, Marsden. He died of a heart attack following an operation at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary on 5th June 1920 and was buried in the graveyard of St Bartholomew’s in Marsden. Introduction In all of Sykes’ novels he draws heavily on his own life experiences though none more so than in this, his third, semi-autobiographical novel. The Edward Beaumont of the novel is indeed Sykes; his solicitors practice and early political aspirations are featured along with his romance of the daughter of a Lincolnshire vicar. From newspaper articles we can also confirm that he was a councillor and a potential parliamentary candidate for the West Staffordshire constituency; his embroilment with the weavers dispute, bankruptcy and his dependency on alcohol are also well documented. He is however selective in what he chooses to reveal about himself and uses artistic licence to make the book more readable. He does give us an insight into his ideas, opinions and aspirations and the turmoil he must have endured before turning his life around. It is a salutary lesson in how a talented man can be destroyed for his convictions and his struggle, with support, to regain his self-respect.
SISTER GERTRUDE. CHAPTER I. It was a summer evening of the early eighties, and market-day in the ancient manufacturing town of Huddersfield, in the West Riding. The town is called a manufacturing town in the geographies, and its name may be found therein among the leading centres of the great cloth industry. As a matter of fact, though, to be sure, there are still some few mills in the lower quarters and outskirts of the town, and hard by the inky river that runs through it, the cloth for which Huddersfield is noted is manufactured for the most part in the adjacent villages, and the town itself is its central mart. On market-days the manufacturers of the rural districts, if rural is a term to be applied with any propriety to clusters of mills situate on lofty steeps, betake themselves to the town, attend the Cloth Market, or may be seen in their town warehouses or at the corners of the streets converging on the Cloth Hall, dine heavily at the market ordinary of their favourite hostelry, see their bankers and their lawyers, and not uncommonly, in the late afternoon, join their buxom wives or comely daughters at an accustomed rendezvous, assist in the weekly household shopping of their frugal dames, and by them are driven home in that outward and visible sign of commercial prosperity and social respectability, the family gig or trap. By the time the worthy owner of mill and loom is seated at his ample board, surrounded by his Lares and Penates, consuming the home-fed ham and domestic muffin, and quaffing his fragrant Souchong, his mill hands, male and female, donned in their second-best, have in their turn betaken themselves townwards to see the sights, and indulge the mild dissipation of strolling the streets, gazing in the shop-windows, making a modest purchase—it is then that the Phyllis of the loom buys for Corydon the meerschaum pipe he is afraid to smoke except on Sundays, and that Corydon wastes his substance on sweet-meats for the ripe lips of his charmer. Or maybe Phyllis and Corydon, amorously-linked, seek the pit-door of the town theatre to suck oranges and furtive peppermints, whilst the buskined villain struts upon the none too ample stage and declaims his stilted speech. It was, then, about eight of the evening of a certain Summer market-day when two young men, arm in arm, lounged leisurely past the Market Place, and stopped for no other reason than to see why others had stopped, for a small and shifting crowd had gathered round the base of the Market Cross, and were giving, some a rapt and sustained attention, others but the brief hearing of a soon-sated curiosity to a speaker standing upon the Cross’s pedestal. The audience were, for the most part, of young and little heedful holiday-makers, who took the speaking as part of their outing, and one of the many wonderful things to be heard of market-days, and to be mused upon at leisure, amid the clack of the loom and the hum of the revolving wheels, or discussed in the interchange of feminine experiences for which the all too brief dinner-hour avails. There was, however, a fringe of the more serious-minded, who listened to the speaker with solemn attention, and regarded her with respectful appreciation. These, one may surmise, were in their several homes Sunday-school teachers or chapel members themselves, with some experience of spiritual exhorting, and feeling under some compulsion to lend their countenance, if only, by the way, even to an unauthorised Evangelist. Nearer to the speaker stood a body of men and women, some with cymbals or other instruments of music or of noise, wearing the scarlet tunic and German-band cap, or the close-fitting serge costume and coal-scuttle bonnet by which the gentler soldiers of the Salvation Army seek to conceal what fairness of feature it has pleased the good God to give them. These militant believers served not only as a body-guard of the central figure of the gathering, but as a chorus; a stalwart, rugged-featured soldier, whose secular calling was the ungentle craft of a butcher, evoking an occasional subdued note from the drum he beat o’ nights to the praise and glory of God; whilst a neat and modest maiden, once the slattern scullery-maid of the Red Lion, gently tinkled a tambourine, that served also as a collection-box for stray coppers earnestly entreated; and their brethren of both sexes punctuated the address of their leader by fervent “Amens,” “Glorys,” and “Hallelujahs,” ejaculated at frequent intervals and interspersed with as little regard to their appropriateness to the spoken word as a ’prentice compositor displays in the sprinkling of his commas in the printed line. The speaker, to whom all faces were turned, was young and of a rare beauty. Her features were of Grecian cast, her eye of a soft, dark violet hue, her lips of that Cupid arch so seldom seen, her complexion pure, and suffused now with the glow of health or excitement, and her wealth of rippling hair was of dark chestnut hue, just touched by the parting rays of the westerning sun as it declined behind the roofs of the Bank on the opposite side of New Street, off which the Market Place stood. Her dress was of blue serge, fitting closely to a form of just proportions and unrelieved by any kind of ornament, unless a small cross of chased silver suspended round the neck might deserve the term. The hand, which was occasionally moved to emphasise a sentence or point a remark, was white and soft and well-formed. The voice in which she spoke was soft, sweet, pure, musical, almost caressing; her diction the chaste speech of education and refinement. “Oh! it’s one of that Salvation Army lot,” replied his friend, Sam Storth. “Come along, Beaumont. The usual thing, you know: hell and brimstone, blood and fire, and a collection.” “Poachers on the preserves of the Church, eh, Sam? Well, you’ll admit the saint is pretty enough for a sinner. Let us listen.” Sam Storth shrugged his shoulders, stretched his little legs apart, thrust his hands into his trousers’ pockets, yawned drearily, and fixed his big and bulging eyes upon the speaker, eyeing her beauty with the calmly critical survey he was wont to bestow upon the CoryphÉes of the local ballet. Edward Beaumont, whom two or three of the more respectably clad of the audience recognised and saluted, turned to the speaker with respectful and serious attention, already repenting of his jesting allusion to her good looks. “Dear friends,” the girl was saying, as Beaumont and Storth joined the crowd, “believe me, we plead with you for your good. I cannot think it right so many of you should lead the lives you do. Some of you, I fear, live very far apart from Christ, living only, as it were, that you may continue to live. All your efforts, all your anxieties, are summed up in that—to continue to live. If you can live honestly you are the more content, because you do not like the risks of dishonesty. If you are unhappily compelled to live meanly, meagrely, you put up with it as best you may, hoping, for a turn of your luck. If you are not so compelled how do you show your gratitude to the Almighty giver and disposer? By faring sumptuously every day, caring only for raiment and fine linen, for dainty dishes, good cheer, soft living. Perhaps you are of the foolish ones that cannot be quite happy without the envy of your neighbours. Then you spend your money upon vanities that give you no real pleasure, except the poor delight of making someone jealous of your good fortune. You work very hard to get more money than you have any need for to buy luxuries that are hurtful to you body and soul. You are really very foolish so to waste this precious life in vain strivings. How much of the misery and poverty of this world are caused because one man conceives he cannot be happy till he has amassed a large fortune. It does not seem to matter to him that the price of his wealth is the abject misery of many whom in church on Sundays he calls his brothers. So have I seen a greedy pig snouting in the trough long after he has eaten his fill, and pushing aside some half-starved weakling of the same litter. The vaunted brotherhood of man is like that. Do you think that you have solved all problems when you have spoken glibly of supply and demand, or this new doctrine of the survival of the fittest? Methinks I see one of your sleek manufacturers, an alderman, maybe, perhaps a magistrate. He is well clad, housed sumptuously; he has money always at command, enough and to spare. I can fancy how sweet to him must be that smooth saying, ‘the survival of the fittest.’ Pshaw! The man mistakes a letter. He means the survival of the fattest. Do you think Jesus Christ died for the survival of the fittest, for the sacred law of supply and demand? It seems to me that the fittest do not survive. They are too fit, and the world crucifies them. That is the world’s way of dealing with the fittest. No! Jesus taught a very different doctrine, and His teaching will square with that of neither your Huxleys nor your Spencers, and still less will it square with your consecrated supply and demand. You have tried to carry on the world with theories of men’s devising. Are you satisfied with the result? Does Dives enjoy his dinner the more because he has perforce heard the moans of Lazarus at his gate? Is anybody who has a head to think and eyes to see and a heart to feel content with things as they now are? Oh, no! They tell me you people in Huddersfield are great Radicals and are going to set everything right by Act of Parliament. Well, you have tried Parliament tinkering a many centuries. Is the world so very much better for your Acts of Parliament? Don’t you think it is time to try a little of Christ’s doctrine? And Christ’s doctrine means what? In a word, Christ’s doctrine is Christ living. But you profess Christ on Sunday. Where do you put Him on Monday? On the shelf with the Family Bible. He is too sacred a Being, you think, perhaps, for the mill, the warehouse, the shop. “Christ, I think, meant that the lives of the people should be more joyous, more free from carking care, from grinding poverty. I cannot think Christ meant the world should always have its Dives and always its Lazarus. Surely there is a happy board of solid comfort midway between the insolent ostentation and sinful waste of the rich man’s table, and the floor on which the dogs fight for the fallen crumbs. Let us find that happy mean, and there will be more of the brotherhood of man and more kinship with Christ. “But you tell me that a working-man has only one use for good wages—to spend his superfluity in drink. I know full well how prone so many are to besot themselves with drink. But you—” and here the speaker looked full at Beaumont and the other well-dressed men, now not a few, who stood on the skirts of the growing gathering, “you who have never known want can scarcely credit me if I tell you that the most part of the fearful, sickening drunkenness of the people comes not from too much money, but from too little. When people are stupefied by drink they forget for a time their hunger, their rags, their mean, despicable condition, their empty, dirty homes, their squalid courts, their unkempt children, their slattern wives, in a word, they lose their real selves and become for an hour or two your equals. A drunken man is only dreaming with his eyes open, and when the waking life is so cold, so bare, so unlovely, do you wonder that men love to dream? “Do I then excuse drunkenness? God forbid. Nay, rather do I plead with all that they should quit the accursed thing and not purchase for themselves that Fool’s Paradise, so costly, and from which they awake to find the world still harder. But I am here to-night to plead with all who may hear me, rich or poor, high or low, master or man, to try to live in all things the Christ-life. There are miserable sinners enough besides the poor drunkard. I daresay some of you have stopped to listen just on purpose to hear the faults and vices of the very poor and very lost denounced. It is soothing, no doubt, to see other people soundly trounced, to hear vices we haven’t got, and imagine we are never likely to have, scathingly lashed. But I think we’ll let the poor sinner have a rest to-night. There are sins in high as well as in low places, and first and foremost I count the sin and folly of setting all your heart and all your mind on the mad haste to be rich, caring to stand well with the world, to have the seat of honour at the feast, to surround yourself with all the garb and trappings of wealth—in a word, to get on. It is a mean and paltry ambition. Who are you that you should want to thrust yourself head and shoulders above your fellows? When the final judgment comes, what will it avail you to have piled up riches and be driven to church in a carriage and pair. “I tell you, there are a few other matters that will have to be inquired into there——” “Oh! come along, Beaumont,” said Storth, “we’ve had about enough of this bally rot. Canting humbug, I call it. Chuck the girl a bob, and let’s slide,” and he flung the silver coin towards the tambourine of Happy Sal and moved away. Beaumont flung no coin, but, raising his hat, followed his companion. “I’d have liked to hear the end of it, Storth,” he said. “The young lady, for she’s that you can see with half an eye, has tackled a big subject. I fancy that’s not the usual kind of Salvation Army harangue. If it is, I think I must hunt up their barracks.” “A lot of blooming nonsense, I call it. That is so far as I could understand what the dickens the girl was driving at. But I say, though, if she’s a fair sample of Salvation Army lasses, I think I’ll put in an hour or two at the Barracks myself. Face like a Mary Magdalene, hasn’t she? ’Spose that’s about the time of day with her, eh, Beaumont?” “You’ll have to read faces better than that, Sam, or you’ll never be any good in Court,” said Beaumont. “Do you believe in anything or anybody? Is there no good thing under the sun?” “Believe in anything or anybody? Rather. Not many bodies, but a good many things. I believe in Sam Storth. I’ve a very great respect for him too, and mean to do him well. I believe in a good dinner, and if somebody else is fool enough to pay for it, that won’t spoil my appetite, you bet. I believe in good wine, and it won’t break my heart if it comes out of your or any other fellow’s cellar, and if I can’t get good wine at your expense, I’ll be thankful for good beer at my own. There’s a very good tap of it at the Royal, let me tell you. And I believe in good clothes, and I’d rather drive than walk. Third-class riding’s better than first-class walking, let me tell you. And I like a good play, not Shakespeare, you know, nor anything classic, but something you can take easy, with plenty of leg in it, don’t you know! And I like a pretty girl, too, but not enough to chuck myself away on one, and I like a coin or two in an old stocking, for I’ve an eye for a rainy day, and don’t mean to be out in the wet when it comes. There, that’s about my credo, Beaumont, and if I can only get a fair share of what I want, there isn’t a heartier singer of the doxology in church than yours truly.” “You’re a Sybarite, Sam, a frankly brutal sensualist. Well, I give you credit for making no pretences. You aren’t a hypocrite anyway.” “It isn’t worth while with you, Beaumont. There’s nothing to be got out of you by make-believe. But I can pull a long face and snivel and turn up the whites of my eyes and groan on occasion. It’s in the family, you know. But I’m not paid for doing it. My uncle is. That’s all the difference. But here we are at the club. Don’t think I’ll go in just yet. I’ll do a half-time at the theatre. So long.” Beaumont entered the reading-room of the club. There was no library in this feeble imitation of a London club. He took up the current number of the “Nineteenth Century Review.” He had to cut its leaves. The members of the club, manufacturers, merchants, and the larger shopkeepers preferred to have their monthlies boiled down for them by Mr. Stead in the “Review of Reviews.” But Edward could not concentrate his mind on the weighty problems discussed by the sages of the century. His thoughts wandered to the scene in the Market Place. “Which is right,” he mused, “that girl or Sam? The girl, of course. But am I any better, Edward Beaumont and Sam Storth, though both solicitors, and partners in the practice of a much and perhaps undeservedly abused profession, were in almost every particular in which men may be compared or contrasted as dissimilar as two men may well be. Beaumont was a native of Huddersfield, and his family connections with the town and district were numerous and intricate. The Beaumonts of that vicinity are a numerous progeny, and may be found in every calling, in every trade and every craft. The Squire of White Meadows is a Beaumont, and traces an unbroken line of descent from one of the most intrepid of the Crusaders, whose effigy may be seen to this day in the small, time-worn church on the ancestral domain. The Beaumonts, or de Bellomontes, were, aforetime, lords of the manor of Huddersfield itself, but that position passed from them many centuries ago. Whether or no our Edward Beaumont was of the Beaumonts of White Meadows is a matter which Edward himself affected to regard as of absolutely no importance. His father had been, like himself, a solicitor, and had founded the present firm of Beaumont and Storth. His grandfather had been a cloth manufacturer, and as to his great grandfather, Edward declared that he, too, had been either a cloth manufacturer of the smallest, or, more likely, a handloom weaver of a saving disposition. As in Huddersfield it is quite exceptional for anyone to be able to refer to a grandfather at all, Edward could very well afford to affect indifference on the score of his great grand-sire’s status. If looks go for anything Beaumont might certainly have pretended to aristocratic lineage. He was tall above the ordinary, and well proportioned, his frame well-knit and active, his features regular, his hair abundant, of the hue of the raven, and with the natural sheen of perfect health. His eyes, well shaped, were dark and full of fire and expression. He had a well-formed mouth, mobile lips, of that fullness that may betoken either the orator, the poet, or the sensualist, a rounded, dimpled chin, the long White hand commonly supposed to be indicative of gentle birth. But the tips of the fingers were square rather than finely pointed, a trait which a palmist had assured him indicated stubborness of character or resoluteness of will, but which Edward asserted more probably suggested that one of his female ancestors had been engaged in the manual exercise of “twisting,” one of the many processes of cloth manufacture, and one eminently calculated to stub the fingers of the artist. Edward Beaumont had been carefully educated, and had taken to books like a duck to water. His natural aptitude and facility of apprehension made his studies easy to him, and though no one who knows what is properly implied in the term scholarship, would have called him a scholar, he had taken a fair degree at his University, at that time a somewhat uncommon attainment in the lower branch of the legal profession, and could no doubt hold his own indifferent will among other educated gentlemen. He was reputed to be a sound and careful lawyer, when he could be induced to take the necessary trouble, but none questioned that he was always a ready one, and it is not, therefore, surprising that he preferred the change and excitement and rivalry of the Courts to the more prosaic and monotonous and retired, if also more profitable, exercise of the dreary art of conveyancing. The same alertness of mind and nimbleness of speech that served him well in the forum inclined him to the political platform, and already he was a warm favourite of the working-classes at the meetings under the auspices of the Liberal Party with which the adults of the West Riding beguile the tedium of the winter months. Edward was wont to declare that he had imbibed Radicalism with his mother’s milk, and certain it is he could point with equal truth and pride to more than one of his relations who had suffered in the popular cause. His partner Sam Storth, used to complain that Edward’s political engagements took him a great deal away from the office, and if Edward laughingly pleaded that his public appearances were a capital advertisement of the firm, his more sagacious partner retorted that Edward’s “clap-trap clientÈle,” as he was pleased to stigmatise it, wasn’t worth half the time it took to attend to it, and that for every decent client Beaumont’s Radicalism attracted it frightened a dozen better ones away. “Depend upon it, Beaumont,” he said one day, “Leatham’s is the right tip.” Now, Mr. Leatham was the respected member for Huddersfield, and sat, of course, in the Liberal interest. “Expound, most sapient Sam,” said Edward. “Why, somebody said to him the other day, ‘How is it you never take your seat on the Borough Bench when you’re in town?’ ‘Pas si bete,’ replied Leatham; ‘every time I fine a man or send one down I make at least one enemy, and they count at elections.’ So it is with your informal spouting, Beaumont. You make a lot of admirers, perhaps, among a lot of greasy, dirty, unwashed mill-hands, who shout themselves hoarse about a policy they don’t understand, and they bring you a dirty, greasy guinea or so if they get into trouble with an equally dirty, greasy mill-girl. But who prepares the conveyances and mortgages and settlements for the big-pots? We don’t, anyhow. Why! Leatham himself takes his work to that sheaf of parchment skins, old Heatherington, who has consistently voted against him ever since he first contested the borough. Politics don’t pay, Beaumont, at least, not your sort.” “Ah! well, Sam, suppose we say I like ’em. I think they’re my only serious dissipation. You know I don’t go in much for beer and skittles, and am bored at a ballet. Supposing we call politics my little vice. You don’t want them all yourself, Sam.” Certainly no one could with justice accuse Sam Storth of having any enthusiasms political or otherwise. He called himself a Conservative, and plumed himself on his gentility, and had undoubtedly an uncle in holy orders, to whom, on occasion, he would casually allude. He chose his associates, so far as he could, among the jeunesse doree of the wealthy manufacturers and merchants of the town, who patronised a Bond Street tailor—“can’t get a decent cut in the country, don’t you know,”—were much concerned about the fit of their boots and the colour of their ties and gloves; affected a languid drawl, crawled on the sunny side of New Street of a Saturday morning, found life a “doosid bore,” avoided a reference to the paternal mill or counting-house themselves, and thought any such reference by others uncommon bad form; held commissions in the Yeomanry or Volunteers and were rigorous in the use of their pseudo… military titles in season and out of season; had a club of their own, from which the retailer of the goods their fathers manufactured were jealously excluded; and, in a word, were as innocent a set of sucking young snobs, without knowing it, as one could well wish to encounter. As Storth had lived much in London before condescending upon Huddersfield, he was rather a favourite at this club, though he had to surmount a certain amount of prejudice arising from his connection with that low Radical chap, Beaumont. In person, the junior partner of the firm of Beaumont and Storth was small, stout and stodgy, with a broad, flat nose, and eyes that a disparaging critic had likened to boiled onions. In address he was suavely deferential to the verge of obsequiousness to the local magnates, who liked the implied homage of his voice and look, and voted him a sensible young fellow who knew his place. In revenge for his own lackeydom he bullied and swore at his clerks and the waiters and the billiard-markers who ministered to his needs, and they, too, no doubt, had their opinion of Mr. Sam Storth. He was careful in his dress, without being an exquisite, took in the “Daily Telegraph” and “Bell’s Life,” affected a patriotic interest in the national sport, and played a very judicious hand at whist and other games, as the young nabobs of the club knew to their cost. He had the reputation, in a darkly, mysterious way, of being somewhat of a Lothario among the women, and it was known that he had access to the green-room of the local theatre. But if, indeed, Sam were a sad dog, of which this veracious history alleges nothing, he was a very discreet sad dog, and never imperilled his reputation by any open indiscretion. He was careful, too, to attend church every Sunday morning, and uttered the responses with that modulated fervour that is the hall-mark of good breeding, having neither the perfunctoriness of custom or inattention nor the warmth of spiritual exaltation. How two men so diverse as Edward Beaumont and Sam Storth came to be partners in the same business had puzzled many, but the explanation was simple enough. Beaumont had been in want of a managing clerk, and a mutual acquaintance had recommended Storth as a safe chamber-man, and a safe chamber-man or desk-lawyer Storth proved himself to be. He made no pretence of knowing more law than had sufficed to satisfy the not very exacting examiners of Carey Street; but he had a very considerable endowment of the not very common faculty called common-sense. “Law, sir,” was Storth’s favourite axiom, delivered oracularly, “law is the embodiment of common-sense,” and though the reader can scarcely be expected to believe it, Common law is largely common-sense. At all events with common-sense and a tincture of technicalities and a very considerable knowledge of the shady side of human nature, and a very small opinion of that nature in the general. Storth’s did very well the kind of work that Beaumont wanted him for, and left that somewhat fastidious young gentleman free to lift his voice in the courts without being harassed by the petty details of a lawyer’s practice. Beaumont thought Sam a soulless little animal, but shrewd and steady; Storth thought Beaumont a stuck-up enthusiast with a bee in his bonnet, but a good hand with a brief, and as they saw very little of each other except business hours, there was little friction in the busy office of the well-established and prosperous firm of Beaumont and Storth. But if there was no friction there was no cordiality between the partners. Beaumont’s attitude to Storth was almost of good-humoured contempt. Storth retaliated with undisguised scorn for his partner’s unpracticability and want of worldly wisdom. “What do you want sitting in the Town Council?” he grumbled at times. “There’s no honour in it. Why, hang it, the barber fellow that shaves me sits on the Town Council.” “And a very good councillor he makes, too. Why not? Does he shave you any the worse for being on the Council. I’m sure his opinion on matters municipal is none the worse for his being a barber. Shaving is really, if you think of the matter dispassionately, a most reputable occupation. The profession of a barber, you cannot call it a trade, is an ancient and an honourable one. It was formerly, as you know connected with the profession of a surgeon. Probably the barbers cut the surgeons, and that led to a split. But if you reflect you will see that most exceptional qualities are required by a good barber. Sobriety is indispensable cleanliness, which everyone knows to be nearer to godliness than many people attain, some degree of polish and a pleasing loquacity and an intelligent acquaintance with the topics of the day. People trust their barber more than their lawyer, for would you offer your bared throat to anyone armed with a deadly weapon, unless you had the supremest confidence in him? Surely we can confide the gas-pipes and water-pipes of a town to a man to whom we entrust our own wind-pipes. I protest your barber is a most inestimable profession brother.” “Oh! dry up,” said Storth, “you aren’t in court now. Beaumont, I say again, you get neither profit nor kudos from being in the Council, and it takes up a lot of your time. But that’s a small matter. Do you think, now, it will add to your professional or social status or do you or the office a blessed scintilla of good, to take the chair for that fellow Bradlaugh, as I see you are advertised to do?” “That fellow Bradlaugh, as you are pleased to call him, is worth half-a-dozen such respectabilities as either you or I, Sam. In mere ability as a lawyer he is worth a round dozen of us lumped together. But he is more than that, he is a very fair scholar, though entirely self-educated. He has done more for his brains and with his brains than many do who have had hundreds of pounds spent upon their education by fond parents. He has not only brains but a conscience; he might have earned a fat living as a lawyer or a parson. He has not only a conscience but a character, and a good one, too, and besides all that, he’s the elected member for Northampton, has as much right legally to sit for that borough as Churchill has for Woodstock, and a great deal better right morally.” “The man’s an atheist,” said Storth. “I don’t know that he is; but even so, that’s his concern and Northampton’s. What are you, Sam? What, indeed, is anyone of us that we should throw stones at such a man as Bradlaugh?” “Well, I call myself a Christian and I rather flatter myself I am one, at least, an indifferent one,” replied Sam. “I don’t set up for a saint, of course.” “I should think not, indeed.” replied Beaumont, smiling, as he recalled certain gossip that had floated from the coulisses of the theatre to the club. “I Suppose you fancy yourself what we may call a so-so Christian. So are we all, so-so Christians. Why, man alive, I’d guarantee to empty any church in Christendom simply by preaching Christianity in it. I mean the pure, unadulterated article, as Jesus of Nazareth is reported to have preached it, not as it is watered down to suit the weak stomachs of your latter-day saints, or more likely to square with our conceptions of social necessity.” “Look here, Beaumont;” Storth said, stretching his arms lazily and yawning long and loud, “I’m not going to be drawn into an argument on theology with you. I’d almost said another member of our illustrious family attends to that department. But I don’t think you’d catch the Rev. Jacob arguing about it, either. He’s far too downy for that. It pays better to treat matters you’re paid to believe as beyond question, and a man who questions them as a moral leper. Now, I don’t say you’re a moral leper any more than I say I’m a saint. But I do say that, from a business point of view, it’s just as bad to be thought one as to be one; worse, in fact, for you get damned as a sinner without the fun of the sin.” “Oh, Sam, you’re just incorrigible. I’ve said in my haste you believe in nothing. But you do believe in Mrs. Grundy.” “I do,” said Storth, devoutly. “Great is the Grundy of the British Philistine.” “Hang the fellow, with his affectation of being so superior to another fellow,” he added to himself. “Mind you don’t carry your head so high in the clouds, Master Edward, that you trip and fall over a very little obstacle, and if that obstacle’s Sam Storth thank your own infernal folly. I’ll back common-sense against ideals any day, and if you’ll allow me the one. You’re welcome to my share of the other.” CHAPTER II. The morning after the meeting in the Market Place Edward Beaumont was seated in a capacious easy chair in his own room in the office in Queen Street, smoking a well-seasoned meerschaum pipe, and reading the “Leeds Mercury” of the day. Edward felt a sort of proprietorship in the winged messenger from the fact, which he regarded with satisfaction, that his great-grandfather had purchased the first issue of the paper a hundred years before, and the subscription to that journal had been piously continued in the family down to his own day, though he flattered himself he had considerably overpast the cautious Liberalism but slightly differentiated from Whiggery, of the “Mercury.” He had skimmed the local news, pshaw’d over the leading articles, and was enjoying the London Letter from our Own Correspondent, usually attributed to a rising publicist, when Storth bustled into the room. “There’s not much for Petty Sessions this morning, Beaumont; a couple of assaults, a profane and obscene, and a bastardy; but there’s one case you’ll have to put all you know into. You remember that girl we heard last night in the Market Place?” “The Salvation Army girl?” “That’s the party. Well, she’s in my room now.” “What’s the trouble?” “Well, here’s the brief. It seems she was staying in Matt Duskin’s Lodging House last night.” “In Matt Duskin’s Lodging House in Kirkgate?” “Nowhere else, as I’m a sinner, and a lively time of it she must have had before they settled down for the night and went to bed.” “I should imagine the lively time for a lodger at Matt’s comes after he gets into bed,” said Beaumont, smiling. “The place must be alive with vermin. But what’s the case?” “You remember Pat Sullivan that’s been in trouble with the police so often and that they’re so afraid of? They say it took three of them to get him to the station last night. Well, he’s about half-killed another of Duskin’s select assortment of lodgers, and all Kirkgate and his wife will be in Court this morning to see the last of Sullivan for a few months anyway. He’s sure to be sent down. Ward will work for a committal without the option, and the constables on that beat will do their nightly prowl all the more serenely when they know Pat’s comfortably snoring on a plank bed in Wakefield gaol.” “Miss—the Salvation Army girl’s in your room, you say. What’s she got to do with it?” “There’s her and Sullivan’s wife in tears and a shawl and half-a-dozen more of the quality. They say Pat didn’t begin it. But it’ll be no good. Pat’s booked this journey, you bet. Anyhow, here’s your brief, and it’s about time you were off to Court.” “I think I’ll speak to the Young lady first. Ask her to come here, will you, Sam?” When the speaker of the previous evening entered the large low room, with its walls lined with many rows of calf-bound volumes of statutes, reports, and precedents, its lettered pigeon-holes, its ponderous safe, and japanned deed boxes, it was evident she had lost for a time the calm serenity that had distinguished her at the Market Cross. Her face was pale, and her eyes looked as though they had lately wept. Her expression was anxious, and her manner agitated. As Beaumont rose from his chair she returned the respectful bow with which he greeted her, and took with some trembling the chair he placed for her. She waited for him to speak. “Mr. Storth tells me you will be a witness in the case in which Sullivan is charged with assault, Miss——. I beg your pardon, I don’t think Storth told me your name.” A crimson flush suffused the fair and beautiful features. “I am called Sister Gertrude in the Army.” “H’m; I’m afraid the clerk will ask for your full name. I understand this is a serious case, and he may think it necessary to take depositions.” “My name is Gertrude Fairfax, but, if possible, I prefer that my surname should not appear. There are reasons.” “Fairfax is a name both known and honoured in Yorkshire,” said Edward, with a courteous inclination towards the lady; “but I should not take you for a native of our county.” “Oh, no! my home is in Staffordshire, but my address is at the headquarters of the Army in London.” “Very well, Sister, I think we can manage that your name may not appear. I’ll speak to the reporter; he’ll work the oracle for a drink,” he mentally added. “And now Miss——I beg your pardon, Sister Gertrude—would you mind telling me what you know about this wretched business. You belong to the Salvation Army, I perceive.” “Yes; I am a soldier in the Army, not an officer, and last night, after our meeting at the Market Cross, a poor frightened woman spoke to me. She was in great trouble, but almost afraid to address me. You see, she is a Catholic and the Catholics never care to do anything their priest might not like. She said she was living an awful life. Her husband, the man they are to try to-day, she said, is a good, true man, and a loving husband, but for the drink, and then he is like one possessed. She said he earned good wages, under the Corporation, I fancy, as a navvy; but he spent so much in drink they were always in sore straits, and now had broken up their home and were living in vile lodgings. I was moved by Nellie’s story, and asked how I could help her. She begged me to go speak with her husband, plead and pray with him to give up the drink. Of course I went…. “Oh! yes. Why should I fear? No one would injure me, and if they did, what matter? So she took me to the lodging-house in which they live. Her husband, Pat, was in a long room, where there were several men and women and some children. At first the man was very surly, would not speak to me. But he is Irish, from the county Cork; and I happen to have spent some time with friends in the neighbourhood of Cork, between the city and Queenstown, on the Lea. But perhaps you don’t know the Lea?” “Only the lines: ‘…those bells of Shandon, That sound so grand on, The pleasant waters of the river Lea,’” confessed Edward. “Ah! you read Father Prout,” said the girl, and looked at the grim law books as though to say they did not look suggestive of the warblings of a poet. “Well, when he got to speak of his home in the ould country, and the good mother he had left in the village he was born in, and of the days of boyhood, I led him on to speak of the glad springtime, when he courted Ellen as a sweet colleen, as he called her, and so the man was melted, and he heard me patiently. Then I asked Mr. Duskin if I might say a few words to the others, and offer a prayer, and as he didn’t say me nay, why I did.” “Was this man, what’s his name, the complainant, I mean, there then?” “Oh, no! I was just about to leave, for it was near eleven o’clock, and I feared the friends with whom I stayed would be anxious about me.” “Oh! you weren’t staying at Duskin’s yourself, then? Mr. Storth must have misunderstood you.” “Oh, no! I was saying a few parting words to one or two of the women, who seemed glad that I should speak to them. Then the door was thrust open violently, and the man Graham almost fell into the room. He was very much under the influence of drink. One of the women was his wife, and he accused me of wanting to make a Black Protestant of her, and threatened me. But I did not mind him, for he was not himself and was moving to the door. But he stood in my way, and made as though to prevent my going, and Ellen came between us, and made to push him on one side, and he called her a foul name and struck her in the face. Then Patrick Sullivan jumped to his feet with a wild cry, and before one could think or speak the two men were fighting, and then it seemed as though all the house began to scream and shout and yell and swear, and the street filled even at that late hour, and then the police came and seized Sullivan. Graham was on the floor with a nasty wound in his head, and poor Ellen almost in hysterics blaming herself bitterly for taking me to the house at all.” “You are sure Graham struck Nelly?” “Oh, yes! And now this morning what could I do but come with the poor woman to see her through the trouble. I had much ado to prevent her pawning her wedding-ring to pay your fee, but we managed without that.” “Oh! Nelly had her wedding-ring? Then Pat hadn’t been drinking long. It’s the last thing that goes. When that’s gone the husband starts working again. It’s the last thing in and the first thing out.” “Can you get Sullivan off, Mr. Beaumont? If it is only a question of a fine, perhaps that can be arranged.” “In the same way, I supose as my fee was arranged?” “Well, yes; that way or some other. But I hope he may not be sent to prison. Perhaps he may turn over a new leaf, and give up the drink and mend his ways. I’m sure there’s much more of good than bad in him, and prison will only foster the bad and dwarf the good.” “Oh! we’ll pull him through, Sister Gertrude, if you tell the Bench your story as you have told it to me. I’m sure, if you will permit me to say so, you behaved very pluckily in going unprotected to that horrid hole. But I’m afraid you wasted your time in trying to save Pat Sullivan. He’s always in trouble with the police.” “That’s why my time was not wasted. Society has been trying to deal with such lost creatures as Sullivan for centuries by its police, always its police. I think perhaps a little human sympathy and gentle entreating may do what your police cannot do. That is why I wear this uniform.” Beaumont bowed silently. He had had his own opinion of ecstatic young ladies who take to Slumming as a diversion; but Sister Gertrude did not harmonise with his preconceived ideas. He would have liked to ask many questions, but he resented prying inquisitiveness in his own affairs, and was careful to respect the reserve of others. He looked at his watch. “Jove! we must be off. May I have the pleasure of showing you the way to Court?” “Thank you. Nelly will be waiting for me. I will go with her.” As Beaumont entered the Court and made his way to the solicitors’ well, he glanced at the Bench and noted with satisfaction that the Mayor, Thomas Hoyleham, presided. Mr. Hoyleham was a weak, worthy man of venerable appearance, with a long, flowing, white beard, and of pallid, bloodless complexion. He was a draper by trade, and one of the pillars of the Independent Church at Lowfield. He had signalised his accession to the Chief Magistracy by treating the members of the Town Council to a Temperance Banquet, zoedone, phospherade, and other effervescent and phosphorescent cordials supplanting the wines of France and Spain; much to the discontent of his guests. Beaumont, however, had tossed off a bumper of the beady and gaseous compound with a flourish to the health of the Mayor, and whilst questioning convictions that forced a man to prefer zoedone to champagne, vowed he admired the Mayor’s pluck and consistency, and protested that it was worth while to run the risk of being poisoned to sit at table with a man of principle. Of course, this sentiment had reached the Mayor’s ears, and had not only greatly comforted him and sustained him in presence of the rueful countenances of his guests, but had led him ever after to entertain a high opinion of Beaumont’s discrimination. And though he mourned over the young councillor's infidelity, he was not without hopes some Christian Church might win him to its bosom, and lost no opportunity of speaking a word in season to his young colleague; and had even ventured to give him a Temperance Tract in an apologetic manner, assuring him that the passages marked by the Mayor’s own hand were not to be taken by Edward as offensively personal. Beaumont had taken all in good part, and when ribald members of the Council poked fun at the old gentleman, and called him an old woman, only fit to sit behind the urn at a tea-party, Beaumont had stoutly declared that beneath the mild and deferential, almost shrinking, manner of Mr. Hoyleham, lay a rare staunchness and fidelity to the right as he conceived it. The case against Patrick Sullivan was not taken till the charge-sheet was cleared of all others. Mr. Ward the Chief Constable, was determined to have that redoubtable breaker of the law and terror of the police safe under lock and key for so long a spell as the law could ensure, and he, of course, had heard only the version of the fracas given by the police and by Graham. The strong, most damaging point against Pat was his resistance of the police in the discharge of their duty. It was an article of faith with the Borough Bench that the police must be supported, and it was equally a matter of faith with those who had been summoned before it, or who expected to be, and with their witnesses, that the sworn testimony of one policeman would be taken before that of all Kirkgate put together. Sullivan was looked upon as a doomed man, as good as done for, and his sympathisers only found consolation in the resolve to make the place too hot to hold the complainant. With these sympathisers the back benches of the Court were crowded. They were there, male and female, some scores of them, in all states of dress and undress and all degrees of cleanliness and sobriety. They were all to a man and also woman known to the police, and most of them had stood in the very dock now tenanted by the redoubtable Sullivan, and those who had not looked forward to their appearance in that unenviable rectangle as a natural and inevitable incident in their career. Needless to say, the sympathies of this section of the audience in Court were entirely with the prisoner, and when Edward entered with a light and springing step and bright smiling face, a subdued murmur ran through their ranks. “Och! it’s himself has the cometherin’ way wid ’im,” whispered a shawled and frowsy nymph of the pavement to another lady of the same nationality and facility of affection. “Fwat an eye’s in de face of ’im; ’t would melt a stone, an’ the tongue of him for Blarney most wonderful.” The chief witness against Sullivan was, of course, the aggrieved Graham, who appeared in the box, his head all swathed in bandages and plasters. He told a piteous tale. He was a homeless, inoffensive man that lodged at Duskin’s, and wouldn’t harm a fly, so he said. He had been refreshing himself after the labours of the day at the house of a friend, and at an early hour had sought his humble lodgings and his virtuous couch. But he had no sooner entered the door of that sacred spot—where peace should reign, whatever broils disturb the street—than that cowardly brute, as strong as an ox and as raging as a lion, had leaped upon him, beaten down his feeble defence, and left him senseless on the ground. His wounds were there for their Worships and all the world to see, and so forth. Unfortunately for Graham, Beaumont had a memory and Graham an unwary tongue. Looking at Beaumont’s face as he rose to cross examine the witness, one would have read there nothing but compassion and sympathy with the complainant in his great and unmerited wrongs. Sister Gertrude confided to Ellen, when all was over, that her heart failed her at that moment, for she feared the plausible rogue’s canting tongue had imposed on their chosen champion. “He is so young, you know,” But Ellen had smiled superior. “Let me see, Graham,” Edward began, in an insinuating voice, “I think you did not tell us your age.” “Forty-four, your honour, if I live till Christmas.” “And what trade may you be?” “A mason, sorr.” “May I feel your hands?” “’Deed, they’re too dirty, sir.” “Oh, never mind. His Worship might tell you lawyers are used to dirt. But, indeed, they are dirty, and soft, too; very soft. Where do you work?” “’Deed, sorr, just at the time present I’m out of a job.” “But the building trade’s very brisk just now, I believe?” “’Deed, sorr, I couldn't say.” “What, not know the state of the labour market in your own trade! Where did you work last?” “At Mr. Whitwam’s, sorr.” “You live in Huddersfield, I think?” “Yes, sorr.” “This how long?” “This twenty years and more, sorr” answered Graham, with alacrity, apparently relieved to get away from the subject of his occupation. “Off and on, or all on?” “Straight on, sorr, twenty year an’ more I’ve lived in this town.” “And never out of it this twenty years?” “Not a day, sorr. If I have may I be——” “Oh, quite so. Then may I ask how long it is since you worked for Mr. Whitwam?” After much evasion it appeared that it was ten years since the witness had worked for Mr. Whitwam or anyone else. “Made your fortune at thirty, you lucky man, and retired from business, is that it?” His clothes answered for him. “Then may I ask how you’ve lived since you gave up working?” “Hadn’t he a license to hawk, sure?” “A pedlar, eh? In other words, a licensed mendicant. Let me see your license.” After much fumbling in the inner creases of the rag that served him as a vest, the witness produced a soiled, tattered document that Beaumont handled gingerly. “Dated seven years ago and long out of date. That won’t do, my man. Well what else have you done?” “Arrah! odd jobs, an’ maybe, a copper or two from a friend or a Christian lady of the town or the praste. God bless them.” “Now, turn up the sleeve of your arm, higher, let’s see your muscles, man.” A brawny, muscular arm was bared to view. “An arm, your Worships will observe” said Edward, “that hasn’t done a stroke of honest work these ten years back.” “You’re a married man, I think, Graham?” “’Deed, I am, sorr, worse luck.” “Where’s your wife?” Graham couldn’t say, but when his memory was assisted he confessed she had left him years ago, but not before he had been convicted three or four times in that very Court of aggravated assault upon her. “You didn’t strike Pat Sullivan last night, you say?” “Not a strike, sorr!” “Striking a woman’s more in your line, I suppose. Perhaps you’ll have their Worships believe you never beat your wife. Who was the friend you had been spending the night with?” Then it transpired that the friend was the genial host of the “Spotted Dog,” and that before visiting that popular house of entertainment Graham had favoured the “Brindled Cow” with his company, and when somebody in the crowd at the back called out “Wheatsheaf,” to the great indignation of half-a-dozen constables, who all called out “Silence in Court,” and glared angrily at a very small boy who began to whimper, Mr. Graham confessed to having had a glass, or maybe, two, ’deed, he wouldn’t swear not three, at the “Wheatsheaf.” But at this the confusion of the witness was so great that Beaumont knew it to be more damaging than any evidence, and magnanimously forbore to press the question. “Hadn’t we better get to last night?” suggested Mr. Mayor, mildly. “I agree with your Worship. But it was desirable that we should know who this injured innocent is that comes here with his whimpering, whining story. And now, Graham, you know Nelly Sullivan?” “Sure he did, bad cess to her for a squalling, meddling woman!” “What made you strike Nelly Sullivan when you returned to your lodgings last night?” Of course he hadn’t struck Nelly. “Was he the man to lift his hand against any woman?” “Bar your wife, Graham,” reminded Beaumont. “That was different. He hadn’t come there to talk about his wife. He swore before God and all His saints on the blessed book he’d never lifted so much as his little finger ’gainst Nelly Sullivan; strike him dead, if he had!” “Well, we’ll see what others have to say about it,” concluded Edward, as he sat down. “You’ve settled the assault on Graham, but what about resisting the police?” whispered Storth, to his partner; “that’ll settle his hash you’ll see.” The constables who had arrested Pat and carried him to the cells certainly bore speaking marks of that hero’s prowess, and their story lost nothing in the telling. They told it with that unswerving consistency which distinguishes the British policeman before “their Washups.” They had certain things to say, those and no more. For the time being the sum total of human knowledge was contained in just that. They knew neither more nor less than what they went into the box to swear to. For anything they knew Sullivan might have been provoked beyond endurance by Graham, but when they appeared he ought to have become as a bleating lamb. That was the official view, that, too, it was clear, was the view of the Bench. “We must support the police, you know,” was the most sacred tenet of the magisterial mind. “I shall not occupy your Worship’s time by making a speech,” said Edward briefly. “I shall show you that Sullivan at the time the police appeared was smarting under the sense of a cowardly blow given by that wretched man Graham to his wife. When the police rushed in it was Graham they ought to have seized, not my client. But give a dog a bad name and hang him. But it is a most unfortunate thing that the police should have interfered and put poor Pat to his trial at the very time when there was some likelihood of his becoming a teetotaller and entirely amending his ways.” The Mayor pricked up his ears. “Eh, eh? What’s that you say, Mr. Beaumont—a teetotaller?” “Yes, your Worship, incredible as it may seem. Sullivan had yielded to the persuasion a young lady, who will give her evidence before you, and whose influence, I verily believe, was in a fair way to accomplish what your Worships can do neither by fine nor imprisonment. You shall hear the lady’s story. She is known in the Salvation Army as Sister Gertrude, and as many ladies of very good social position and education are engaged in this good work under these assumed titles, I shall ask the Bench to allow the witness to be sworn in that name. A hush fell upon the Court when Gertrude Fairfax entered the box, a thrill passed through it when her clear but sweet and soft voice spoke. Very quietly, almost timidly, with nothing of the self-assurance and glib loquacity one hears in so many of the public women speakers and that takes the bloom off their womanhood, she told to the Bench, with little prompting from Edward, the story with which we are already acquainted. Insensibly there arose before the minds of all who heard her the picture of this pure, delicately-nurtured maiden, seated in a vile den, surrounded by rough men, and slattern, vicious women, speaking to them words of loving counsel and pleading with them for their good; of Pat Sullivan, at first resentful, then subsiding into sulky silence, then interested, then touched, and at length moved to promise of amendment, the forgotten tenderness for his wife revived, the angel within the man rescued from the death of sensuality and self-indulgence. As she told her simple tale, women in the body of the Court sobbed aloud, and even the stolid policemen looked human. The Mayor, an emotional man, furtively used his handkerchief. Then, when Beaumont adroitly threw in the remark: “You are not, I believe, a paid officer in the Army, Sister Gertrude; why should you concern yourself about the reformation of Patrick Sullivan?” The witness paused for one short moment, and then, with utmost naturalness and naivetÉ, not as one quoting, but as speaking from her own heart, said quietly: “Wist ye not that I must be about Father’s business?” “That is the case for the defence, Sir,” Said Beaumont, with a bow to the Bench. “We cannot convict upon such testimony,” said the Mayor, after consulting his colleagues. “We only hope this will be a warning to Sullivan. He shall go scot free this time, may God help him to be a better man.” “The Clerk ought to say ‘Amen,’” muttered Sam Storth, “and then the thing would be complete. We’d turn the Court into a church and dedicate it to St. Barabbas.” “That was a narrow squeak for Master Sullivan,” said Beaumont to Sister Gertrude. He found her waiting at the Court door, as he passed out of it at the rising of the Court—to thank him, she said. “There’s nothing to thank me for. It’s you they’ve to thank. I’m afraid, if you are returning to Duskin’s Lodging House, you won’t find Pat there cultivating the domestic virtues. He’ll be celebrating his victory over the allied forces of the brutal and bloody Sassenach in his national beverage at the ‘Wheatsheaf.’ The police will keep a sharper eye on him than ever now, and I hope he won’t give them another chance yet awhile. We can’t hope for a Thomas Hoyleham and a Sister Gertrude in conjunction every day in the planetary system of police administration. However, sufficient for the day’s the evil thereof.” “I hope better things for Pat and Nelly, Mr. Beaumont. I know how difficult it will be for him and Nelly to struggle out of their present surroundings; but I have faith.” “Yes, you may have faith, Miss Fairfax; but I fear the surroundings will be stronger than your faith. I suppose environment has a lot to say to it. See! I don’t like the idea of Sullivan going and making a mess of it again after the way you’ve tried to save him. Can’t you get him and Nelly out of Duskin’s?” “It would be a help, of course. But environment isn’t everything, Mr. Beaumont.” They were walking slowly on the New Street now, and many turned to cast an envious and admiring glance at the well-known young lawyer and the beautiful, graceful figure that moved, dea certe, by his side. “Perhaps not. But it must be difficult to cultivate the domestic virtues—that was what we called them, I think?—at such a hole as Duskin’s. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Tell Nelly to find a small house somewhere near Sullivan’s work, and if you don’t mind getting them some furniture into it—you can go to Oldfield and tell him to send the bill in to me. We’ll give poor Pat a chance, anyway; but I’m afraid the sticks will find their way back to Oldfield before the month’s over. And now, good-bye, Miss Fairfax,” and Beaumont hurried away to avoid the thanks his companion was beginning to express. CHAPTER III. It was the beginning of the Long Vacation, and Edward Beaumont was asking himself how he should spend his holiday. Sam Storth had already elected for Scotland, and had amused his partner by appearing at the office in a tweed shooting suit, knicker-bockers and ribbed stockings and stout boots complete. Sam was breaking his suit in, so that by the time he reached the land of cakes it might be subtly suggestive of honourable service on the moors. “I don’t suppose you could hit a haystack if you tried, Sam,” Edward had commented, with an amused smile. “Practising in a shooting gallery at Huddersfield Fair at three shots a penny must be rather different from popping at grouse on their native heath.” “Well, I’m not going to pop at grouse on their native heath or anywhere else. When I tackle that toothsome bird give me a knife and fork, and I’m your man. But a fellow can’t go to Scotland, even if he doesn’t get further North than Princess Street in Auld Reekie—that’s the correct name for the town, isn’t it?—in a frock-coat and top hat. But here’s a letter for you marked ‘Private.’ I’d nearly opened it with the office letters.” Beaumont looked at the envelope. There was a crest and motto on the flap. “Forliter et leniter, a lion rampant air scraping, I call it. What rot this heraldic tomfoolery is? Who the deuce can it be from?” “Better open it and see,” suggested Storth. Beaumont read the letter rapidly, then more carefully, and finally handed it to his partner. “Read it up, Sam. Who in the name of all that’s ecclesiastical is Hugh St. Clair, Archdeacon?” |
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