THE LADY'S MILE

A Novel

By M. E. Braddon

THE AUTHOR OF

"LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET," "AURORA FLOYD" ETC. ETC. ETC.

Stereotyped Edition

LONDON JOHN AND ROBERT MAXWELL MILTON HOUSE, SHOE LANE, FLEET STREET [All rights reserved]

CHAPTER I.

"HE IS BUT A LANDSCAPE-PAINTER."

It was high tide—spring tide, if you will—at half past-six o'clock on a warm June evening: not the commonplace ebb and flow of a vulgar river; but the mighty tide of fashion's wonderful sea, surging westward, under the dusty elms and lindens of the Lady's Mile. If you had driven round this very park between four and five on this very afternoon, you would have been gratified by the sight of some half-dozen nursemaids with their straggling charges, an occasional girl and perambulator, a picturesque life guardsman here and there, making a little spot of crimson amongst the wavering shadows of the trees, a few hulking idlers in corduroy and bluchers, and a tipsy female sleeping on the grass. Now the excited policemen have enough to do to keep the four ranks of carriages in line, and to rescue foot-passengers from the pawing hoofs of three-hundred-guinea steeds. The walk under the trees is as crowded as the enclosure at Ascot, and the iron chairs are as fully occupied as the seats in a fashionable chapel. The pouncing proprietor, with the leathern pouch at his side, has hard work to

collect his rents, so rapidly do his customers come and go, and is distracted by vague fears of levanting tenants and bad debts. On all the length of the rails between Hyde-Park Corner and the Serpentine there is scarcely room for one lounger more, for the rule of fashion is so subtile a bondage, that it has compelled millions of people who never in all their lives have spoken to one another to wear the same order of garments, and talk the same slang, and ride in the same kind of carriages, and eat the same class of dinners, and congregate in the same places, at the same hour, year after year, and century after century, from the earliest dawn of civilisation until to-day.

The uninitiated lawyer's clerk from Holloway, lounging in the same attitude, and wearing the same pearl-grey gloves, and the same pattern of whisker as the initiated young patrician from the crack West-end clubs, may wonder whether the occupants of the splendid equipages rolling slowly by him are there by right divine of noble birth and lofty position, or by virtue of that golden 'open sesame,' that wonderful passe partout, which success bestows so often on the struggling plebeian. The Uninitiated from Holloway sees that there is not so much interchange of becks and nods, so friendly greetings, as might be expected if those elegant barouches and useful landaus, those dashing mail-phaetons and dainty little broughams, belonged only to the privileged classes whose highest privilege is the honour of being known to one another. Perceiving this, the Uninitiated perceives also, with astonished aspect, certain inhabitants of the Eastern Hemisphere, known to himself in their form of money-grub, but transformed here into butterflies of fashion, and driving mail-phaetons. Advertising

agents, money-lending lawyers, professional betting-men, dashing brewers, popular distillers, pass before him side by side with dukes and duchesses, and only to be distinguished therefrom by an impalpable something which has no name. The Uninitiated, growing melancholy, begins to think that it is a hard thing not to have high-stepping horses and a mail-phaeton, and turns sadly from so much splendour to wend his way northwards, while high-born elbows close in upon the half-yard of railing which he leaves vacant. There are few places more calculated to inspire discontent that this Lady's Mile. Pale Envy stalks to and fro under the sheltering trees; Greed of Gain lurks invisible behind the iron chairs; Disappointed Ambition waits at the corner, ready to whisper in the poor man's ear, "Time was when you thought it such an easy thing to win a place amongst those favourites of fortune. Time was when you thought to see your wife sitting behind high-stepping horses, and your boy trotting his pony in the Row. Go home, poor drudge, with your blue-bag on your shoulder, and look at

the slatternly drab leaning over the washtub, and the shabby whelp gambling for marbles in the gutter. Compare the picture of the present with the vision you once made for yourself of the future; and then be an agreeable husband and an indulgent father, and enjoy your domestic happiness and your penny newspaper, if you can."

We are a wealthy nation, the political economist tells the poor man, and our superfluous wealth must find employment somehow or other. Hench the crush of high-stepping horses, the crowd of three-hundred-guinea barouches; the flutter of costly garments rustling in the summer air, the glitter and splendour which pervades every object, until it seems almost as if the superfluous gold were melted into the atmosphere, and all the female population were so many Miss Kilmanseggs. The lounger on the rails may for the moment find it almost difficult to believe that hungry women and gaunt haggard-looking men can have any place in the world of which this dazzling region is a part: but he need only look backward, under the shadow of the trees, to see poverty and crime prowling side by side in their rags. Yet at the worst, the dazzle and the glitter are good for trade; and it is better that the tide of wealth should be rolling to and fro along the Lady's Mile than locked in a miser's coffers or given in alms to professional beggars at a church-door. Some part of the superfluous gold must pass

through the horny hands of labour before it can be transmuted into C-springs or patent axles, Honiton lace or Spitalfields silk; and perhaps the safest of all philosophy is that which accepts the doctrine that "whatever is, is right."

But amongst the loungers on the rails this summer evening there was one person stationed with his companion some little distance from the rest of the idlers, who was very much inclined to quarrel with this easy-going axiom, or with any other sentiment that involved contentment. The eyes with which Philip Foley contemplated the world were young, and rather handsome eyes; but they saw every thing in a jaundiced light just now. He was a painter, self-contained and ambitious as a disciple of art should be. But he had not yet learnt the sublime patience of the faithful disciple; and he was angry with Fortune because she hid her face; forgetful that if she is a churlish mother, she can also be an over-indulgent one, and sometimes destroys her fairest favourites by smiling upon them too soon. Philip Foley was in love, and the girl he loved was the most capricious little enchantress who ever studied the prettiest method of breaking her adorers' hearts. The summer light which should have shone upon the back of his shabby painting-jacket, as he stood before his easel, dazzled

his eyes as he looked along the Lady's Mile, seeking her carriage among the crowd.

"I say, Foley, old fellow, when are you coming out of this, eh?" demanded Sigismund Smythe, the novelist, who had abandoned the penny public to court the favour of circulating-library subscribers, and had sublimated the vulgar Smith into the aristocratic Smythe. Mr. Smythe the author and Mr. Foley the painter were sworn friends; and the placid Sigismund was recreating himself after a day's hard labour on the "Testimony" of his latest hero, "Written in the Hulks."

"Out of which?"

"The reflective line. You haven't spoke for the last quarter of an hour. That's a pretty girl with the strawberry-ice coloured parasol. I say, though, old fellow, you don't suppose I've written two dozen three volume, novels without knowing something of the human mind when contemplated in relation to the tender passion. I know all about it, you know; and it's not the least use your abandoning yourself to melancholy meditation on that subject. She's all your fancy painted her, &c. &c., I allow; but she's the coldest-hearted and most mercenary little scoundrel in creation, and she never can be yours. Put a clean sponge over the tablet of your brain, dear boy, and turn your attention to some body else."

"What new imbecility has afflicted your feeble intellect?" asked the painter indignantly. "I don't know what you're talking of."

"Oh yes, you do, dear boy, and it's the same thing that you are thinking of, and its name amongst the vulgar is Florence Crawford; but it is better known in polite society as 'Flo.'"

The young painter gave a sardonic laugh.

"I should be a fool to trouble my head about her," he said contemptuously.

"So you would be a fool, old fellow; and so you are a fool, for you do trouble yourself about her. You've been on the watch for her carriage for the last half-hour, and she has not gone by; for instead of tormenting creation at large by driving here, I dare say she is torturing mankind in particular by stopping at home. Don't be an idiot, Phil, but come to Greenwich and have some dinner."

"No," cried Philip, "I will stop here till she passes me by, with her insolent little affectation of not seeing me, and all the pretty tricks that constitute her fascination. You think me a fool, Sigismund; but you can never think so poorly of me as I think of myself when I find myself here day after day, while the very light I want is shining into my wretched painting room at Highbury. Do you remember what Catullus says?

Do you know that it is quite possible to love and hate the same person at the same moment? I love Florence Crawford because she is Florence Crawford. I hate her for the fatal bondage in which she holds me. I hate her for her evil influence upon my career. I hate her as the slave hates his master. Do other men suffer as I do, I wonder? or has feeling gone out of fashion, and am I behind the time? The most devoted lover nowadays only calls his betrothed a 'nice little party' and hopes the 'governor will do the right thing.' The men whom I meet take pains to advertise their contempt for any thing like real feeling; and girls of eighteen tell you with a smile that a love-match is the most preposterous thing in creation. The women of the present day are as heartless as they are beautiful; as artificial as they are charming,—the Dead-Sea fruit of civilisation, the——"

"The natural growth of the age of sixty-mile-an-hour locomotives," rejoined the placid Sigismund. "Do you forget that man is an imitative animal, and that the rate at which we travel has become the rate at which we live? Steam is the ruling principle of our age, and the pervading influence of our lives. Depend upon it, that ever since mankind began to exist, every succeeding age has lived faster than its predecessor. 'Time was that when the brains were out the man would die,' says Macbeth; 'but now,' &c. &c. He isn't a bit surprised at Banquo's appearance, you see. A ghost more or less is nothing extraordinary in a fast-going age. And we've been accelerating the pace ever since Macbeth's day. It used to take a man a week to go from London to Lyme Regis, and the best part of a lifetime to earn the few thousands which in his simple notions constituted a fortune. Nowadays a man goes from London to New York in less than a fortnight; and he expects to make his half-million or so while the purple bloom is on his locks, and the light of youth in his eyes. Steam is every

where and in every thing. We educate our children by steam; and our men and women want to grow rich at the rate of sixty miles an hour. Every man has the same tastes, the same aspirations. There is no such person nowadays as the Sir Balaam who thought it a grand thing to have two puddings for his Sunday dinner. Sir Visto is not the exception, but the rule; and the poor man ruins himself by blindly following the rich. Sir Balaam has a man cook, and dines à la Russe. Sir Balaam's cashier has his dinners from the confectioner, and dines à la Russe too. Sir Visto, the Manchester cotton-spinner, is a patron of the arts, and buys largely at Christie's. His clerks follow in his wake, and cover the walls of their little suburban dining-rooms with impossible Cuyps and sham Backhuysens, bought in Wardour Street. Before we die we may see Sir Balaam and Sir Visto in the Gazette, with all their followers at their heels. Look at the dresses and carriages passing by us. I know most of the people, more or less; and I can see the wives

and daughters of hard-working professional men vying with the peerage and the autocracy of the money market. Don't rail against the women, my dear Philip; the women are—what the men make them. You must have Lui before you can have Elle. Aspasia is impossible without Pericles. You could never have had a Cleopatra unless you had first your Cæsar; or your Marian de Lorme without Cinq Mars. The lives of the women of the present day are like this drive which they call the Lady's Mile. They go as far as they can, and then go back again. See how mechanically the horses wheel when they reach the prescribed turning-point. If they went any farther, I suppose they would be lost in some impenetrable forest depth in Kensington Gardens. In the drive the rule has no exception; because, you see, the barrier that divides the park from the gardens is a palpable iron railing, which the stoutest hunter might refuse. But on the highway of life the boundary line is not so clearly defined. There are women who lose themselves in some unknown region beyond the

Lady's Mile, and whom we never hear of more. Ah, friend Philip, let us pity those benighted wanderers whose dismal stories are to be found amongst the chronicles of the Divorce Court, whose tarnished names are only whispered by scandal-loving dowagers between the acts of an opera, or in the pauses of a rubber. On this side, the barrier they pass seems so slight a one—a hedge of thorns that are half hidden by the gaudy tropical flowers that hang about them—a few scratches, and the boundary is passed; but when the desperate wanderer pauses for a moment on the other side to look backward, behold! the thorny hedgerow is transformed into a wall of brass that rises to the very skies, and shuts out earth and heaven."

It was not often that Mr. Smythe indulged in any such rhapsody as this in ordinary society; but Philip Foley and the novelist were sworn friends and brothers, united by that pleasant bondage of sympathy which is a better brotherhood than the commoner bond of kindred. Sigismund had brothers and sisters in Midlandshire, but there was not one of them who could be as much to him as Philip the painter.

It is doubtful whether Mr. Foley had heard much of his friend's oration. He had been leaning on the rails in a moody attitude, watching the carriages go by. And now, when he spoke, it seemed as if he were replying to some question that had been brooding in his own mind, rather than to the observations of his friend.

"Do you think I don't know Florence Crawford?" he said, "and know that she is no wife for me—if she would have me—and she would as soon think of marrying me as the carver and gilder who makes her father's frames. Indeed, I dare say she'd rather marry the frame-maker, for he earns more money than I do, and could give her finer dresses. She has told me a hundred times that she will marry for money; that when she leaves her father's house—a bride, with innocent bridal-flowers upon her brow—she will bid farewell to her home on the same principle as that on which her housemaid leaves her—to better herself. Think of her in my carpetless painting-room at Highbury, looking up from her work to watch me at my easel, and beguiling me with hopeful speeches when I am depressed. One reads of that sort of wife in a novel. But can you find me such a one nowadays, Sigismund? The women of the present day live only to look beautiful and to be admired. They are pitiless goddesses, at whose shrines men sacrifice the best gifts of their souls. When I

look at the splendour of these carriages, the glory of the butterfly creatures who ride in them, I think how many plodding wretches are toiling in Temple-chambers, or lecturing in the theatres of hospitals, or pacing to and fro on the dusty floor of the Stock Exchange, racked by the thought of hazardous time-bargains, in order that these frivolous divinities may have gorgeous raiment and high-stepping horses, and plant the arrows of envious rage in one another's tender bosoms. I think they learn the love of splendour in their cradles. They are proud of their lace-frocks and gaudy sashes before they can speak: their dolls are duchesses; or, what is worse, as Hippolyte Rigault has said, 'poupées aux camélias.' And then they grow up, and some fine day a poor man falls in love with one of them, and finds that it would have been infinitely wiser to have dashed out his brains against a stone wall than to have been beguiled by the mad hope that a penniless lover's devotion could have any value in their sight."

"Wait till you have made a name, Phil, and can afford as grand a place as the Fountains, and then see if Miss Crawford won't be civil to you. Come, we may as well slope, old fellow; it's nearly seven o'clock. The enchantress will not appear to-night. Let us go some where and dine, and forget her."

"Dine by yourself, Sybarite," answered the painter. "A man whose most laborious picture sells for a ten-pound note has no right to whitebait and Moselle. I can buy half a pound of damp beef at the cook-shop as I go home. It will not be the first time that the silk-lining of my coat has been greased by a parcel from the cook-shop. I dare say I smell of beef sometimes when I call upon Florence Crawford."

"But, Phil, when you know I'm so glad to stand Sam—" remonstrated Mr. Smythe.

But he remonstrated in vain. Philip Foley rejoiced in his poverty and his deprivations as a gladiator might rejoice in the training that he knew must insure victory. (To suffer and be strong was the young painter's motto, and he took a boyish pride in his bare rooms and his scanty dinners, the feat of pedestrianism that saved him a half-crown in cab-hire, the heroism which enabled him to carry his head loftily under a hat whose bloom had vanished. He was very young. His faults were the faults of youth—his graces the graces that perish with youth. He had all the insolent confidence in his own judgment and the contempt for other people which seems the peculiar attribute of five-and-twenty. He would point you out the feeble drawing in a fresco by Michael Angelo, or the false lights in a Rembrandt, with an utter unconsciousness that he was making a fool of himself. Hot-headed, generous-hearted, impulsive, undisciplined, candid, and true, Philip Foley was the incarnation of ambitious youth before the fiery steel has been thrice refined in the furnace of disappointment. He had only just

begun the great battle, and as yet he saw in failure the evidence of the popular error, and not of his own weakness. The vision of his own future shone before him—only a little distant, and with no hindering clouds between. He was ready to paraphrase Cæsar's despatch, and cry aloud to all the world, "I am coming—I shall see—I shall conquer!")

The painter did not turn his head to bid his friend Sigismund adieu; he was looking along the line of carriages for that one equipage, to behold which was so thrilling a pleasure that it was worth his while to waste half a day for the chance of obtaining it.