Young Earnest, the Romance of a Bad Start in Life
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
HANDBOUND AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS YOUNG EARNEST THE ROMANCE OF A BAD START IN LIFE BY GILBERT CANNAN Author of "Old Mole," "Round the Corner.' V NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1915 Now my question is : have you a scheme of life consonant with the spirit of modern philosophy with the views of intelligent, moral, humane human beings of this period ? THE ADVENTURES OF HARRY RICHMOND. COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY To O. M. Words skilled and woven do not make a book Except some truth in beauty shine in it. I bring you this because you overlook My faults to follow out my probing wit. And where it fails or falls short of its aim, You see design and waste nor praise nor blame On the achievement. Stirring to the will, Your wit still urges mine to greater skill. CONTENTS BOOK ONE LINDA BROCK PAGB CHAPTER I. LOVE IN EARNEST 3 II. 166 HOG LANE WEST 13 III. GEORGE MARRIED 29 IV. A RETURN 4* V. SETTLING DOWN 5 1 . 60 VI. PROFESSOR SMALLMAN . VII. FLYING NEAR THE CANDLE 7 1 VIII. INTIMACY 85 IX. PATERFAMILIAS 9s X. HONEYMOON I09 XI. MATRIMONY I 3 XII. ESCAPE J 47 BOOK TWO ANN PIDDUCK I. ADVENTURE IN LONDON 157 II. MITCHAM MEWS ...... 169 182 III. MR. MARTIN ....... IV. LEARNING A TRADE 196 V. TOGETHER 206 VI. KILNER 2I 9 226 VII. OLD LUNT . i vii CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE VIII. RITA AND JOE 236 IX. TALK . 254 X. AN ENCOUNTER 270 XI. VISION 277 XII. SETTLEMENT 285 BOOK THREE . CATHLEEN BENTLEY I. MEETING 301 II. HAPPINESS 3 11 III. THE WEST WIND 322 IV. EXPLANATION . , . .331 V. THRIGSBY ........ 343 VI. THE COMFORT OF RELIGION .... 362 VII. CASEY'S VENTURE ...... 370 VIII. THRIVING . .382 IX. YOUNG LOVE DREAMING . 388 BOOK ONE LINDA BROCK Ha! Ha! So you take human nature upon trust? LOVE IN EARNEST O that joy so soon should waste Or so sweet a bliss As a kiss Might not forever last! TT annoyed the young man that at such a time, in 1 such a place, he should be thinking of his father. Waiting for his beloved, he desired tojiave no thought for intention for but her ; most loyal sadly unfulfilled, he could think only of his father, first as a wondrous being who could skillfully become at will an elephant or a zebra, or more tranquilly fascinate and absorb by waggling his ears with no disturbance of his face. The young man, John Rene Fourmy, could more clearly remember his father's ears than his features. He was introspective enough to know that his tender- ness for the young woman, his melting anticipation of her coming, had led him back to the first adoration of his life, and from that to the tragedy of its oblitera- tion. Came the distressing recollection of his father's downfall, devastating for the boy of three who had witnessed it. He could visualize it clearly, so sharp had been the cruel impression, the indignity of it. The bedroom in the little house in the country where they 3 YOUNG EARNEST had lived near Billy Lummas and Sam Ardwick, who had fits in the road. A room full of bed. In that bed his father and himself eager for the moment when his father should arise from his bed and fill the world, and his mother apparently just as eager because she was entreating and imploring. Only the more did his father wrap himself in the bedclothes. These sud- denly were torn down amid peals of laughter; a fond scuffle, though the boy perceived not the fondness; up went his father's nightshirt, his long body was turned over and it was slapped resoundingly on that place considerately designed by nature to receive such onslaughts. The slapping was done with the back of a hairbrush, an instrument that, in alternation with a slipper, was used upon himself. That a man, that a glorious father should suffer, and, because he suf- fered, deserve such an indignity, was too much. A shadow came over the world, and Rene remembered flinging himself down by the bed and shedding pas- sionate tears for the departed glory. Thereafter his father was no wonder to him, he too was subject to the authority of his mother, and became henceforth only a tyrannous buffoon, nervously kind or noisily angry. Then Rene remembered the return from the coun- try to a succession of houses in streets; his father just risen from his bed as he came home to dinner at midday; bottles of whisky and boxes of cigarettes. And when at school they asked him what his father was, he used to reply, "A gentleman. And he went to a public school," that being the formula which had been given to him to account for existence and 4 LOVE IN EARNEST all its puzzlements. Public school and heaven were for a long time confounded in his mind, and the for- mula had accounted adequately for his father's Elijah- like disappearance from the scene when Rene was ten, That was all he knew, and there was the sting of injustice in this present intrusion in the Scottish glen, hallowed by the delights of a young love which boy and girl had arranged should shake the world into a wonder at its glory. A sordid family history was a clog upon romance, and our young man was that ear- nest creature, a romantic. A stolen love, for she lived at the great house taken by her father for the sport of the autumn months, and he was staying with his great-aunt Janet, an ex- governess, in the village, as he had done ever since he was eleven, for his holidays. Now he was nearly twenty, wonderfully in love, punctual to his appointment, striving for romantic thoughts and able to achieve nothing but these humili- ating memories of his father. He tried singing; that was of no avail. It did but call to mind his father's songs. He threw pebbles into the burn, but they gave him no amusement. Then from his pocket he drew an anthology of love poems from which he had been ac- customed to read to his fair and so he lulled himself to something near the warm mood of expectancy and began to tell himself that she was very late, that she had failed him on this their last day. There was a sort of sweet anguish in the disappointment which he liked so much that he was almost put out when she came. YOUNG EARNEST He leaped to his feet and opened his arms and she sank into them, and an enchantment descended upon them and they kissed. He had prepared for her a couch of bracken. On this they lay and kissed again. This kiss was tragic. The enchantment broke in the middle, and he found the proximity of her face ridiculous and embarrassing and his position uncomfortable. He did not tell her so, and a simulated rapture hid his feelings from her. She sighed: "Oh, Rene!'* The sound of his name on her lips never failed to move him, and a little of the enchantment returned. He could endure her nearness, and gave her an af- fectionate little hug quite genuinely warm. It sur- prised her into happy laughter. "Oh, Rene! it has been more beautiful this year even than last. Of course we're older. Do you think it goes on for ever and ever, year after year, grow- ing more and more beautiful ?" " "Very few lovers began Rene in a solemn voice, but at once the generalization offended him and he never reached his predicate. The subject seemed entirely to satisfy Cathleen. She took his hand in hers : "We mustn't stop writing to each other again." "It was you who stopped." " "I thought "It made it very horrid meeting you again, very anxious, I mean I mean I don't know what your life is like." 6 LOVE IN EARNEST "You know I shall never find anyone like you, Rene, never." He thought with distaste of her brothers, robust, athletic young men, wonderfully tailored, with a knack of getting the last ounce of effect out of soap and water. Dirt avoided them; they could not be shabby or untidy, and they made him feel grubby and shrunken. Oxford and Cambridge they were, and they stared him into a sort of silly shame when he spoke of his university, Thrigsby, and yet, through his shame there would dart tremors of a fierce feel- ing of moral superiority. Anyhow, their sister loved him, and never "chipped" him as their young women "chipped" them. There was never any sign that their young women took them seriously. "I will write," said Cathleen. "This year won't seem so long. I couldn't be certain, last year." "Are you certain now?" "Oh, Rene!" This time the enchantment was full on them, raced through them, alarmed them. They moved a little apart. "Let's talk sense," said he. "I want to marry you." "Oh, yes." "They won't let me, you know. I've got my own way to make. In three years you'll be twenty-one. I shall probably have to stay in Thrigsby because I can make a living there, but I'll get to London as soon as I can. You wouldn't like Thrigsby." "Anywhere with you." "The people there aren't your sort. My own peo- 7 YOUNG EARNEST pie won't like my marrying so young.