[Illustration: JULIAN HAWTHORNE.]
“OUR CONTINENT” LIBRARY.
DUST:
A NOVEL
BY
JULIAN HAWTHORNE,
_Author of “Bressant,” “Sebastian Strome,” “Idolatry,”
“Garth,” etc._
[Illustration: colophon]
NEW YORK:
FORDS, HOWARD, & HULBERT
1883
COPYRIGHT, 1882,
BY JULIAN HAWTHORNE.
_All rights reserved._
ILLUSTRATIONS.
JULIAN HAWTHORNE (Portrait), _Frontispiece_.
“I AM A BIT OF A SURGEON; LET ME LOOK AT YOUR ARM,” 14
“PULLING THEMSELVES TOGETHER AND DISCUSSING THE
MAGNITUDE OF THEIR DISASTER,” 86
“I TIED THE CARD TO THE GATE MYSELF. NOBODY CAN FAIL TO SEE IT,” 134
“ONLY THE ACTIONS OF THE JUST
SMELL SWEET AND BLOSSOM IN THE DUST.”
DUST.
CHAPTER I.
The time at which this story begins was a time of many beginnings and
many endings. The Eighteenth Century had expired the better part of a
score of years before, and everything was in confusion.
Youth--tumultuous, hearty, reckless, showy, slangy, insolent, kindly,
savage--was the genius of the hour. The Iron Duke had thrashed the
Corsican Ogre, England was the Queen of nations, and Englishmen thought
so much of themselves and of one another that society, for all its
caste, became well-nigh republican. Gentlemen were bruisers and bruisers
were gentlemen. At Ranelagh and Vauxhall fine ladies rubbed shoulders
with actresses, magistrates foregathered with jockeys and sharpers, and
the guardians of public order had more to fear from young bloods and
sprigs of nobility than from professional thieves and blacklegs.
Costumes were grotesque and irrational, but were worn with a dash and
effrontery that made them becoming. There were cocked hats and
steeple-crowned hats; yards of neck-cloth and mountains of coat-collar;
green coats and blue coats, claret coats and white coats; four or five
great coats, one on top of another; small clothes and tight breeches,
corduroys, hessians and pumps. Beards were shaved smooth, and hair grew
long. Young ladies wore drab josephs and flat-crowned beaver bonnets,
and rode to balls on pillions with their ball clothes in bandboxes. The
lowest of necks were compensated by the shortest of waists; and the
gleam of garter-buckles showed through the filmy skirts that scarcely
reached to the ankle. Coral necklaces were the fashion, and silvery
twilled silks and lace tuckers; and these fine things were laid up in
lavender and rose leaves. Hair was cropped short behind and dressed with
flat curls in front. Mob-caps and top-knotted caps, skull-caps and
fronts, turbans and muslin kerchiefs, and puffed yellow satins--these
things were a trifle antiquated, and belonged to the elder generation.
Gentlemen said “Dammy, sir!” “Doosid,” “Egad,” “Stifle me!” “Monstrous
fine,” “Faith!” and “S’blood!” The ladies said, “Thank God!” “God
A’mighty!” and “Law!” and everybody said “Genteel.” Stage-coaches and
post-horses occupied the place of railways and telegraphs, and driving
was a fine art, and five hours from Brighton to London was monstrous
slow going. Stage-coachmen were among the potentates of the day; they
could do but one thing, but that they did perfectly; they were clannish
among themselves, bullies to the poor, comrades to gentlemen,
lickspittles to lords, and the high-priests of horse-flesh, which was at
that epoch one of the most influential religions in England; pugilism
being another, caste a third, and drunkenness the fourth. A snuff-box
was still the universal wear, blue-pill was the specific for liver
complaint, shopping was done in Cheape and Cornhill; fashionable bloods
lodged in High Holborn, lounged at Bennet’s and the Piazza Coffee-House,
made calls in Grosvenor Square, looked in at a dog-fight, or to see
Kemble, Siddons or Kean in the evening, and finished the night over
rack-punch and cards at the club. Literature was not much in vogue,
though most people had read “Birron” and the “Monk,” and many were
familiar with the “Dialogues of Devils,” the “Arabian Nights,” and
“Zadkiel’s Prophetic Almanac;” while the “Dairyman’s Daughter” either
had been written or soon was to be. Royalty and nobility showed
themselves much more freely than they do now. George the Third was still
King of England, and George, his son, was still the first gentleman and
foremost blackguard of Europe; and everything, in short, was outwardly
very different from what it is at the present day. Nevertheless,
underneath all appearances, flowed then, as now, the mighty current of
human nature. Then, as now, mothers groaned that infants might be born;
poverty and wealth were married in every human soul, so that beggars
were rich in some things and princes poor in others; young men and women
fell in love, and either fell out again, or wedded, or took the law into
their own hands, or jilted one another, just as they do now. Men in
power were tyrannous or just, pompous or simple, wise or foolish, and
men in subjection were faithful or dishonest, servile or
self-respectful, scheming or contented, then as now. Then, no less than
now, some men broke one Commandment, some another, and some broke all;
and the young looked forward to a good time coming and the old
prophesied misfortune. At that epoch, as in this, Death plied his trade
after his well-known fashion, which seems so cruel and arbitrary, and is
so merciful and wise. And finally--to make an end of this summary--the
human race was predestined to good, and the individual human being was
free to choose either good or evil, the same then as now and always.
And--to leave generalities and begin upon particulars--it was at this
time that Mrs. Lockhart (who, seven-and-forty years ago, as lovely Fanny
Pell, had cherished a passing ideal passion for Handsome Tom Grantley,
and had got over it and married honest young Lieutenant Lockhart)--that
Mrs. Lockhart, we say, having lost her beloved Major at Waterloo, and
finding herself in somewhat narrow circumstances, had made up her mind
to a new departure in life, and had, in accordance with this
determination, caused her daughter Marion to write “Lodgings to Let” on
a card, and to hang the same up in the window of the front drawing-room.
This event occurred on the morning of the third of May, Eighteen hundred
and sixteen.