The Duchess of Rosemary Lane. A Novel

"No holiday this year, Duchess."

Sally shook her head mournfully.

"Can't afford it, eh, Sally? Now, what's the next best thing to the holiday we can't afford? What do you say to a present-something pretty for-who do you think?"

"For the Duchess!" cried Sally.

The Duchess looked up eagerly.

"Yes, for the Duchess. These, for instance."

He carefully untied the little packet wrapt in silver tissue-paper, carefully opened the leather case, and pointed triumphantly to the earrings nestling softly in their blue-velvet couches. Sally clapped her hands, and jumped up; the Duchess gazed on the pretty ornaments with parted lips and eyes aglow with admiration.

"For me!" she exclaimed, almost under her breath. "For me!"

"For you, Duchess," said Seth. "What do you think of 'em?"

She threw her arms round his neck, and kissed him, with perhaps more affection than she had ever shown towards him, and then turned hastily to the earrings, in fear lest they might have vanished from the table. The glittering ornaments fitted her nature most thoroughly and completely. They seemed to say, "We are yours. You are ours. We belong to each other. You have no business to wear bits of trumpery glass. We are what you have a right to possess." There was absolute harmony between her and the pretty things, and she experienced a new and singularly entrancing pleasure in merely gazing upon them.

"Is one kiss all you will give me for them?" asked Seth.

"No, no," she replied; "I will give you a thousand thousand."

She smothered him with kisses, murmuring: "I love you for them, I love you for them."

"They are real gold," said Seth, more than satisfied with his bargain. "What will Rosemary Lane say to that?"

With trembling fingers the Duchess lifted the earrings from the case. Had they been imbued with feeling she could not have felt more tender towards them.

"May I put them in?"

"Surely, my dear; I bought them for you to wear."

The Duchess hastily unhooked Sally's birthday gift from her ears, and threw it on the table, replacing it with the more valuable and therefore more precious offering. A pang shot through Sally's breast as she witnessed the action. The bits of trumpery glass, albeit they cost but a few pence, had not been easily obtained by her; they were the result of many weeks' saving of farthings and halfpence, and to pay for them she had put down with a strong spirit a number of small cravings. Not that the saving and scraping was not in itself a delight to her; to deny herself in order that the Duchess might be gratified was one of her sweetest pleasures. The common glass earrings were her love-gift, and she had dreamt of them long before and after they were presented; and to see them now so carelessly thrust aside brought the tears to her eyes. She brushed them instantly away. The Duchess, with a piece of broken looking-glass in her hand, was walking up and down the cellar, gazing at the reflection of the new earrings, with eyes so sparkling that they outshone the glittering baubles. As she turned this way and that, now bending forward, now leaning back, in enchanting attitudes, holding the glass so that the ornaments were always in view, a thousand graces and charms were depicted in her of which for the time she was unconscious. Sally, despite her sorrow at the despisal of her love-gift, could not help admiring the beautiful picture, and when the Duchess came close to her, she drew her idol to her breast, and kissed her passionately.

"Don't!" said the Duchess, with a little struggle to be free; "you hurt me, Sally!"

Sally's arms relaxed, and she turned aside with quivering lips; for a moment, everything swam before her eyes, and she felt quite faint.

"And that's not all," said Seth; "I have something else for our Duchess."

"Oh, what is it, what is it?" cried the Duchess, springing to his side.

"See," he said, holding up the hat, "what will Rosemary Lane say to this? Sally, fit it on, and let us see how our princess looks in it."

Sally kept her sobs back with a vicious pinch of her own arm which almost made her scream, and placed the hat on the Duchess's head, to the best advantage be sure. There was no meanness in Sally's soul. She could suffer and be strong. Nothing would satisfy the Duchess that afternoon but to dress herself in her best clothes, and go out and show herself. It was done; and in her blue-merino dress, her boots made for her in the most dainty fashion by Seth's loving hands, her hat and her gold earrings, she walked about Rosemary Lane, with Sally by her side, the envy and admiration of all beholders. In the eyes of the Rosemary Lane folk Sally was a most complete foil to the beautiful Duchess. Her hands were dirty, and her clothes had many a hole in them; but there was a soft light in her eyes, and an expression of deep, almost suffering devotion in her face, which might have attracted the attention of close observers-and not entirely to Sally's disadvantage. The Duchess had an afternoon of rare enjoyment; even those who envied her paid court to her, and her train included all the young radicals in Rosemary Lane who had hitherto held aloof from her, but who now, fairly conquered by the splendour of her personal adornment, fell down and worshipped. It was the story of the golden calf over again-the old story which to-day is being enacted with so much fervour by beggar and millionaire, from Whitechapel to Belgravia. Late at night, when the Duchess was asleep with her gold earrings in her ears, and her new hat hanging by the side of her bed, so that she might see it the moment she awoke in the morning, Sally, with tears in her eyes, wrapt the bits of trumpery glass in paper, and placed them carefully away. "She'll be hunting about for 'em soon," thought Sally, "and then I'll give 'em to her." But the Duchess never sought, never asked for the common love-gift; it was worthless in her eyes, being worthless in itself; she had gold earrings now, and perhaps by-and-by-who could tell? – she would have earrings with sparkling stones in them, worth a handful of money. For in the Duchess's soul was growing a most intense hankering after fine things. She would wander by herself away from Sally and Seth and Rosemary Lane into the thoroughfares frequented by ladies and gentlemen, and watch them and their dress and ways with an eager, strange, and restless spirit. She saw children beautifully dressed riding in carriages; and, yearning to be like them, would shed rebellious tears at the fate which bound her to Rosemary Lane. It is not to be supposed that she considered this matter as clearly as it is here briefly expressed; she was not yet old enough to give it clear expression; but she felt it; the seed of discontent was implanted within her, and grew for lack of material and intellectual light. Intellectual light Seth Dumbrick certainly did give the Duchess, but it was light of a kind which dazed and confused her mental vision. The experiences of the man who mingles freely with men, who shares their pleasures and sorrows, and even their follies and foibles, are of infinitely higher value than those of a solitary liver. Such an existence narrows the sympathies, and it narrowed Seth's. The exercise of all the better feelings of his nature was confined to the small circle which included only Sally and the Duchess, and what of good he saw outside that boundary was evoked by his love for these children of his adoption. Surrounded by these influences the Duchess grew in years. Seth bestowed upon her the fullest measure of affection, and he let her go her way. He placed no restraint upon her; he demanded no sacrifice from her. He never attended a place of worship, nor did she; he had his hard-and-fast opinions upon religious matters, which, viewed in the light (or darkness) of dogmatic belief, constituted him a materialist-an accusation which, with a proper understanding of the term, he would have indignantly denied. Thus, from month to month, and year to year, Rosemary Lane passed through a routine of daily tasks and duties, so dull as to weigh sorely and heavily upon the soul of the Duchess. Colour was necessary to her existence, and she sought for it and obtained it in other places. Stronger and stronger grew her passion for wandering from the narrow to the wider spaces, where the life was more in harmony with her desires, and so frequently and for so long a time was she now absent that, on one occasion when she was missing from morning till night, Seth took her to task for her truant propensities.

"Do you want me to keep always in Rosemary Lane?" she inquired, with her lovely blue eyes fixed full upon him.

"It would be best," was his reply.

"It doesn't matter to you," she said, "whether I stop at home or not; there is nothing for me to do, and I sometimes feel that-that-"

Her eyes wandered round the cellar in dull discontent, and with something of self-reproach, also, for the feeling which she strove but could not find words to express.

"Well, my dear?" said Seth, patiently waiting for an explanation.

"Only this, guardian," she rejoined, "that I must go away when I like, and that you mustn't stop me. If you do" – with a little laugh which might mean anything or nothing-"I might run away altogether."

"Then there are other places," said Seth, after a short pause; he found it necessary very often when conversing with the Duchess to consider his words before he uttered them; "and other people that you love better than us."

"Other places, not other people. I don't know any other people."

"You don't love Rosemary Lane, my dear," he said wistfully.

"What is there to love in it?" she replied, evading the question. "I might love it less if I were not free to go from it when the fit seizes me-"

"But you go always alone, my dear," he said, with a sigh, "and I am afraid you might get into mischief."

"What mischief?" she asked, with innocent wonder in her face. "No one would hurt me. Everybody is kind to me. But as you seem to care for it, I'll take Sally with me now and then. So here's a kiss, guardian, and we'll say no more about it."

Time ripened, but did not beautify Sally. Her figure was awkward and ungainly, and her limbs had not the roundness or the grace of those of the Duchess. Her face was at once too young and too old for her age; you saw in it both the innocence and simplicity of the child and the wary look of the woman of the world who knows that snares abound. Her skin was as brown as a berry, and her form appeared lank and thin, although she and the Duchess were of the same height. Undressing one night, they stood, with bare shoulders, side by side, looking into the glass. The contrast was very striking, and both saw and felt it, the Duchess with a joyous palpitation because of her beauty, and Sally with no repining because of her lack of it. The contrast was striking even in the quality and fashion of their linen, Sally's being coarse, and brown as the skin it covered, and the Duchess's being white and fine, with delicate edgings about it.

"I don't believe," said Sally, with tender admiration, her brown arm embracing the Duchess's white shoulder, "that there's another girl in the world with such a skin, and such eyes, and altogether as pretty as you are, Duchess."

"Do you really mean it, Sally?" asked the Duchess, as though the observation were made for the first instead of the thousandth time.

"You know I do."

"I think you do," said the Duchess, showing her teeth of pearl. "But if I were to say the same of myself, you'd say I was the vainest instead of the prettiest girl that breathes."

"A girl can't help knowing she's pretty," said Sally philosophically; she had imbibed much of the spirit and some of the peculiarities of Seth's utterances, "if she is pretty; and can't help being glad of it. As you are, of course, Duchess."

"Yes, I am glad, Sally; I can't tell you how glad. I should be a miserable girl if I were like-"

She paused suddenly, with a guilty blush, being about to say, "if I were like you, Sally."

Sally smiled. "I don't doubt I should be glad if I had a skin as white, and eyes as blue, and lips as red as yours; but for all that, I don't seem to be sorry because I am ugly. For I am very ugly!"

She gazed at the reflection of herself in the glass with eyes that were almost merry, and despite her self-depreciation there was something very attractive in her appearance. The grace of youth was hers, and the kindliness and unselfishness of her nature imparted a charm to her face which mere beauty of feature could not supply.

"You are not so very ugly," observed the Duchess.

"No?" questioned Sally.

"No. You are as good-looking as most of the girls in Rosemary Lane-"

"Leaving you out," interrupted Sally quickly.

"Yes," said the Duchess complacently, "leaving me out. Your teeth are not white, but they are regular, and I like your mouth, Sally" – kissing it-"though it is a little bit too large. Your hair isn't as silky as mine-"

"Oh, no, Duchess, how could it be?"

"But it is longer and stronger; and as for your eyes, you have no idea how they sparkle. They are full of fire."

"If a fairy was to come to me to-night," said Sally, delighted at the Duchess's praises, "and give me wishes, I don't think I would have myself changed."

"I know what I would wish for."

"What?"

"Silk dresses and furs and kid gloves and gold watches and chains and bracelets; carriages and footmen and white dogs; flowers and fans and lace pocket-handkerchiefs and-"

"Oh, my!" exclaimed Sally. "We shouldn't have room for them all. Goodnight. I'm so sleepy."

The Duchess dreamt that all the things she wished for were hers, and that she was a fine lady, driving in her carriage through Rosemary Lane, with all the neighbours cheering and bowing to her.

In this way, and with this kind of teaching, the Duchess grew from child to woman. And here for a time we drop the curtain. The silent years, fraught with smiles and tears, roll on; for some the buds are blossoming; for some the leaves are falling; the young look forward to the sunny land they shall never reach; the old look back with sighs upon days made happy by regret. And midst the triumph and the anguish, the hope and fear, the joy and sorrow, Time, with passionless finger, marks the record, and pushes us gently on towards the grave.

Part the Second. THE WOMAN

CHAPTER XX

Certain pictures here present themselves in the shape of a medallion.

In the centre is the portrait of a beautiful girl-woman, as tall to many a man with an eye for beauty as Rosalind was to Orlando; with limbs perfectly moulded; with white and shapely hands; with flaxen wavy hair and blue eyes tempered by a shade of silver grey; with teeth that are almost transparent in their pearliness, and in whose fair face youth's roses are blooming. This is the Duchess of Rosemary Lane, in the springtime of her life.

Around the portrait of this girl-woman are certain others, associated with her by sympathetic links, not all of which are in active play or in harmony with her being.

The picture of one in whose cheeks, although she is but little over twenty years of age, no roses are blooming. Her cheeks are sallow, and wanting in flesh, her limbs are thin and ungraceful, her long black hair has not a wave in it, her hands are large and coarse from too much work. But her eyes are beautiful, and have in them the almost pathetic light which is frequently seen in the eyes of a faithful dog. This is Sally, grown to womanhood.

The picture of a working man, with large features, overhanging forehead, and great grey eyes, all out of harmony with one another. His hands are hard and horny, his chin is unshaven, and his hair is almost white. This is Seth Dumbrick, going down the hill of life.

The picture of a woman, working in an attic in a poor neighbourhood, within a mile of Rosemary Lane. Her fingers are long and supple, streaks of silver are in her hair, and she has "quite a genteel figure," according to the dictum of her neighbours, who are led to that opinion by the circumstance of the woman being thin and graceful. She is cunning with the needle, as the saying is, but not so cunning as to be able by its aid to butter her bread at every meal; therefore, very often she eats it dry. She is not contented; she is not resigned; but she does not openly repine. She is merely passive. The fire and enthusiasm of life are not dead within her soul, but by the exercise of a hidden force, she keeps all traces of it from the eye of man; she has dreams, but no human being shares them with her, or knows of them. She speaks in a calm even tone, and her voice is low and sweet, but if it expresses feeling or passion, the expression springs from a quality belonging to itself, and not from the revealed emotions of the speaker. She works hard from morning till night in a dull, listless fashion, performing her task conscientiously, and receiving at the end of the week, without thanks or murmurs, the pitiful payment for so many thousands of yards of stitches from the hands of a man who lives in a great house in Lancaster Gate and keeps a score of servants, and a dozen horses in his town stables. This man is a contractor, and he fattens on misery. He will undertake to clothe twenty thousand men in a month, and patient, weak-eyed women who can scarcely get shoes to their feet are working for him, upon starvation wages, through the weary watches of the night. From their poverty and misery comes the wherewithal to pay for his wine and his horses and his fine linen. He was not born to riches; in his earlier years he experienced severe hardships, and frequently had to live on a crust. Those times are gone, never to return, and, strange to say, he has, in his present high state, no feeling of compassion for his once comrades who are suffering as he suffered, and who cannot escape from their bondage. Then he was glad to eat his bread and meat, when he could get it, with the help of a pocket-knife and his fingers; now he can dine off gold plate if he chooses. There is a well-known saying that there is a tide in the affairs of man, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. It is a popular fallacy. Such a tide, with such a golden prize in its flood, comes to not one man in a thousand, but it came to the contractor for whom this woman works, and he took it at its flood. He worked his way from small contracts to large, from large to larger. Having been ground down himself when he was a young man, his sole aim in the execution of his contracts was to grind others down, so that his margin of profit would be broader. It was the truest political economy. Buy in the cheapest market. And if you can by any means in your power, – by any system of grinding-down, by any exercise of terrorism over helpless people who, being unable without your aid to obtain half a loaf in payment for their labour, snatch at the quarter of a loaf you hold out to them (being from necessity compelled to keep some life in their bodies) – if you can by any of these means cheapen still further the cheapest market, do so. Success will attend you, and the world, worshipping success, will look on and approve. An article is only worth what it will fetch in the market, and labour is worth no more than it receives. Such, for instance, as the labour of this needlewoman, who works for sixteen hours out of the twenty-four, and cannot get butter for her bread. Meantime, while she, the type of a class, labours and starves, the contractor, out of her weary stitches, shall die worth a plum, and a costly tombstone shall record his virtues. He pays regularly, to be sure, but you must not defraud him of a stitch. He gives the women constant employment, for in addition to being a Government contractor, he is a large exporter of ready-made clothing. She has worked for him for twelve years. Presenting herself one morning in answer to an advertisement for needlewomen, in company with a hundred other females who had labour to sell and no bread to eat, he happened to pass through the office when her turn came to be called. Although she had been one of the earliest arrivals among the crowd of anxious applicants, she was the last of them all. Not having the strength to push her way to the front, she had been hustled to the rear, and bore the unfair treatment without a murmur. It was the way of the world. The weakest to the wall.

"Name?" said the clerk.

"Mrs. Lenoir."

The contractor paused at the desk by the side of his clerk, and looked at the applicant in a careless way, perhaps attracted to her because her voice was softer than he was accustomed to hear from his workpeople.

"French?" inquired the clerk.

"Yes, it is a French name."

"Yourself, I mean," said the clerk testily. "Are you French?"

"I am an English lady."

"Eh?" cried the contractor, in a harsh tone.

"I beg your pardon. I am an English woman."

"O," said the contractor, somewhat mollified.

"Married?" pursued the clerk, glancing at Mrs. Lenoir's left hand.

"My husband-" pausing, and gazing around uneasily.

"Your husband-" prompted the clerk.

"Is dead."

"Children?"

A quivering of the lips, which grew suddenly white. This, however, was not apparent to the clerk, for Mrs. Lenoir wore a veil, and did not raise it.

"Children?" repeated the clerk.

"I have none."

"References?"

She paused before she replied, and then slowly said:

"I was not aware that references were necessary."

To the clerk's surprise the contractor took up the burden of the inquiry.

"We are very particular," he said, with a frown, "about the character of the persons we employ, and references, therefore, are necessary."

"I did not know," said Mrs. Lenoir, in so low a tone that the words scarcely reached their ears; and turned to depart.

"Stop a moment," said the contractor; "what did you come here for?"

"For work," with a motion of the hands, deprecating the question as unnecessary.

"You want it?"

"Else I should not be here."

It by no means displeased the contractor that this woman, suing to him for work, should unconsciously have adopted in her last reply an air of haughtiness.

"You want work badly, I infer?"

"I want it badly."

"You have applied elsewhere?"

"I have."

"Unsuccessfully?"

"Unsuccessfully."

"From what cause?"

"I do not know."

"You have no other means of support?"

"None."

"If you are unsuccessful in this application, what will you do?"

Mrs. Lenoir did not reply to this question. Had the contractor known what was in the woman's mind, he would have been startled out of his propriety. She had been in London for nearly six months, and although she had been indefatigable in her endeavours, had not succeeded in obtaining a day's work. All her resources were exhausted, and she saw nothing but starvation before her. She was wearied and sick with trying, and she pined for rest or work. She must obtain either the one or the other. A vague fear oppressed her that if she were unsuccessful in this application she would be compelled, when the night came, to walk to the river, and gaze upon the restful waters. Then the end would come; she felt that she had not strength to resist it.

The contractor resumed his questioning; it was a kind of angling he seemed to enjoy.

"Have you no friends?"

"No."

"Relatives?"

"No."

"Money?"

"No."

"You are alone in the world?"

"I am alone in the world."

"Then if I employ you, I should be your only friend?"

"I suppose so."

"As a rule," proceeded the contractor, "we do not employ ladies in this establishment, which gives employment to-how many persons do I give employment to, Mr. Williams?" addressing the clerk.

"There are eleven hundred and seventy-two names upon the books, sir."

The hard taskmaster nodded his head with exceeding satisfaction.

"I provide bread for eleven hundred and seventy-two persons, and by to-morrow this number will be increased by two hundred. I have given employment to over two thousand persons at one time, I believe, Mr. Williams?"

"You have, sir."

"And shall do so again, I have no doubt, before long. To repeat, I do not employ ladies in this establishment. Common girls and women are good enough for me-and bad enough. For there is absolutely no gratitude to be found among the poorer classes, absolutely no gratitude; not a particle."