"THE UNEXPLORED."
Lesley retained for some time a feeling of distinct anger against
Maurice Kenyon, even while she came to acknowledge the truth of divers
of his words. But their truth, she told herself indignantly, was no
justification of his brutality. He was horribly rude and meddlesome and
intrusive. What business was it of his whether she gave her father or
not the meed of praise that he deserved? Why should she be lectured for
it by a stranger? Maurice Kenyon's conduct--Maurice Kenyon himself--was
intolerable, and she should hate him all the days of her life.
And in good sooth, Maurice's behavior is somewhat hard to excuse. He
certainly had no business at all to attack Lesley on the subject of her
feelings about her father, and his mode of attack was almost ludicrously
wanting in judgment and discrimination. But that which tact and judgment
might perhaps have failed to effect, Maurice's sledge-hammer blows
brought home to Lesley's understanding. He was to blame; but he did some
good, nevertheless. When the first shock was over, Lesley began to
reflect that her own world had been a narrow one, and that possibly
there were others equally good. And this was a great step to a girl who
had been educated in a French convent school.
Part of Lesley's inheritance from her father, and a part of which she
was quite unconscious, was a singularly fair mind. She could judge and
balance and discriminate with an impartiality which was far beyond the
power of the ordinary woman. Being young her impartiality was now and
then disturbed by little gusts of passion and prejudice; but the faculty
was there to be strengthened by every opportunity of exercising it. This
faculty had been stirred within her when Lady Alice first told her of
her father's existence; but she had tried to stifle it as an accursed
thing. She held it wicked to be anything but a partizan. And now it had
revived within her, and was urging her to form no rash conclusions, to
be careful in her thoughts about her new acquaintances, to weigh her
opinions before expressing them. And all this in spite of a native fire
and vivacity of temperament which might have led her into difficulties
but for the counterbalancing power of judgment which she had inherited
from the father whom she had been taught to despise.
So although she raged with all her young heart and strength against Mr.
Kenyon's construction of her feelings and motives, she had the good
sense to ask herself whether there had not been some truth in what he
said. After all, what did she know of this strange father of hers, whose
every action she judged so harshly? She had heard her mother's story,
which certainly placed him in a very unamiable light. But many years had
gone by since Lady Alice left her husband, and a man's character might
be modified in a dozen years or so. Lesley was willing to go so far. He
might even be repentant for the past. Then Sister Rose's words came back
to her. She, Lesley, might become the instrument of reconciliation
between two who had been long divided!
The color flashed into her face and slowly faded away. What chance had
she of gaining her father's ear? True, she could descant by the hour
together, if she had the opportunity, on Lady Alice's sweetness and
goodness; but when could she get the opportunity of speaking about them
to him? He looked on her with an eye of mistrust, almost of contempt.
She had been brought up in a school of thought which he despised. How
far away from her now, by the by, seemed the old life with which she had
been familiar for so many years! the life of simple duties, of easy
routine, of praise and tenderness and placid contentment. She was out in
the world now, as other girls were who had once shared with her the
convent life near Paris. Where were they now--Aglae and Marthe and
Lucile and Anastasie? Did they all find life in the world as difficult
as Lesley found it?
No, there was little chance, she decided, of acting as a mediatrix
between her parents. Her father would not listen to any word she might
say. And she was quite sure that she could never speak of his private
affairs to him. They had been divided so many years; they were strangers
now, not father and daughter, as they ought to be.
Curious to relate, a feeling of resentment against the decree that had
so long severed her from him rose up in Lesley's heart. It was not exactly
a feeling of resentment against her mother. Rather it was a protest against
fate--the fate that had made that father a sealed book to her, although
known and read of all the world beside. If there _were_ admirable things in
his nature, why had she been kept in ignorance of them?--why told the one
ugly fact of his life which seemed to throw all the rest into shadow? It
was not fair, Lesley very characteristically remarked to herself: it
certainly was not fair.
If he was so distinguished a man in literature as Maurice Kenyon
represented him to be, why had she never been allowed to read his books?
She wanted, for the first time, to read something that he had written.
She supposed she might; for there was no one now to choose her books for
her. Only a day or two before she had dutifully asked her Aunt Sophia if
she might read a book that Ethel had lent her (it was the yellow-backed
novel, the sight of which had made Maurice so angry), and she had said,
with her horrid little laugh--oh, how Lesley hated Aunt Sophy's
laugh!----
"Good heavens, child, read what you like! You're old enough!"
And Lesley had felt crushed, but resolved to avail herself of the
permission. But where should she find her father's works? She would cut
out her tongue before she asked Aunt Sophy for them, or her father, or
the Kenyons, or Mrs. Romaine.
She set to work to search the library shelves, and was soon rewarded by
the discovery of a set of _Tribunes_, a weekly paper in which she knew
that her father wrote. She turned over the leaves, with a dazed feeling
of bewilderment. None of the articles were signed. And she had no clue
to those that were written by her father or anybody else.
She returned the volumes to their places with a heavy sigh, and
continued to look through the shelves--especially through the rows of
ponderous quartos and octavos, where she thought that her father's works
would probably be found. Simple Lesley! It was quite a shock to her when
at last--after she had relinquished her search in heartsick
disappointment--she suddenly came across a little paper volume bearing
this legend:--
"The Unexplored. By Caspar Brooke. Price One Shilling. Tenth Edition."
She took the book in her hand and gazed at it curiously. This was the
"wonderful book" of which Maurice Kenyon had spoken. This little
shilling pamphlet--really it was little more than a pamphlet! It seemed
an extraordinary thing to her that her father should write _shilling
books_. "A shilling shocker" was a name that Lesley happened to know,
and a thing that she heartily despised. Her taste had been formed on the
best models, and Lady Alice had encouraged her in a critical
disparagement of cheap literature. Still--if Caspar Brooke had written
it, and Maurice Kenyon had recommended it, Lesley felt, with flushing
cheek and suspicious eyes, that it was a thing which she ought to read.
Holding it gingerly, as if it were a dangerous combustible which might
explode at any moment, she hurried away with it to her own room, turned
the key in the lock, and sat down to read.
At the risk of fatiguing my readers, I must say a word or two about
Caspar Brooke's romance "The Unexplored." It had obtained a wonderful
popularity in all English-speaking countries, and was well known in
every quarter of the globe. Even Lady Alice must have seen it advertised
and reviewed and quoted a hundred times. Possibly she had refused to
read it, or closed her eyes to its merits. Possibly what a man wrote
seemed to her of little importance compared to that which a man showed
himself in his daily life. At any rate, she had never mentioned the book
to her daughter Lesley. She certainly moved in a circle which was
slightly deaf to the echoes of literary fame.
"The Unexplored" was one of those powerful romances of an ideal society
with which recent days have made us all familiar. But Caspar's book was
the forerunner of the shoal which the last ten years have cast upon our
shores. He was one of the first to follow in the steps of Sir Thomas
More and Sir Philip Sidney, and picture life as it should be rather than
as it is. His hero, an Englishman of our own time, puzzled and
distressed at the social misery and discord surrounding him, leaves
England and joins an exploring expedition. In the unexplored recesses of
the new world he comes across a colony founded in ancient days by a
people who have preserved an idyllic purity of heart and manners,
together with a fuller artistic life and truer civilization than our
own. To these people he brings his stories of London as it is to-day,
and fills their gentle hearts with amazement and dismay. A slender
thread of love-making gives the book its romantic charm. He gains the
affections of the king's daughter, a beautiful maiden, who has been
attracted to him from the very first; and with her he hopes to realize
all that has been unknown to him of noble life in his own country. But
the book does not end with its hero and heroine lapped in slothful
content. For the heart of the maiden burns with sorrow for the toiling
poor of the great European cities of which he has told her: to her this
region has also the charm of "The Unexplored," and the book ends with a
hint that she and her husband are about to wend their way, with a new
gospel in their hand, to the very city of which he had shaken the dust
from his shoes in disgust before he found an unexplored Arcadia.
There was not much novelty in the plot--the charm of the book lay in the
way the story was told, in the beauty of the language; and also--last
but not least--the burning earnestness of the author's tone as he
contrasted the hopeless, heartless misery of the poor in our great
cities with the ideal life of man. His pictures of London life, drawn
from the street, the hospital, the workhouse, were touched in with
merciless fidelity: his satire on the modern benevolence and modern
civilization which allows such evils to flourish side by side with
lecture-rooms, churches, intellectual culture, and refined luxury was
keen and scathing. It was a book which had startled people, but had also
brought many new truths to their minds. And although no one could be
more startled, yet no one could be more avid for the truth than the
author's own daughter, of whom he had never thought in the very least
when he wrote the book.
Lesley rose from her perusal of it with burning cheeks and humid eyes.
She herself, without knowing it, was in much the same position as the
heroine of her father's book. Like the girl Ione, in "The Unexplored,"
she had lived in a charmed seclusion, far from the roar of modern
civilization, far from the great cities which are the abomination of
desolation in our time. Knowledge had come to her filtered through the
minds of those who closed their eyes to evil and their ears to tales of
sin. She did not know how the poor lived: she had only the vaguest and
haziest possible notions concerning misery and want and disease. She was
not only pure and innocent, but she was ignorant. She had scarcely ever
seen a newspaper. She had read very few novels. She had lived almost all
her life with women, and she had imbibed the notion that her marriage
was a matter which her mother would arrange without particularly
consulting her (Lesley's) inclinations.
To a girl brought up in this way there was much to shock and repel in
Caspar Brooke's romance. More than once, indeed, she put it down
indignantly: more than once she cried out, in the silence of her room,
"Oh, but it can't be true!" Nevertheless, she knew in her heart of
hearts that the strong and burning words which she was reading could not
have been written were they not sincerely felt. And as for facts, she
could easily put them to the test. She could ask other people to tell
her whether they were true. Were there really so many criminals in
London; so many people "without visible means of subsistence?" so many
children going out in a morning to their Board Schools without
breakfast? But surely something ought to be done! How could people sit
down and allow these things to be? How could her father himself, who
wrote about such things, live in comfort, even (compared with the
wretchedly poor) in modest luxury, without lifting a finger to help
them?
But there Lesley caught herself up. What had Mr. Kenyon said? Had he not
spoken of the things that Caspar Brooke had done? For almost the first
time Lesley began to wonder what made her father so busy. She had never
heard a word concerning the pursuits that Mr. Kenyon had mentioned as so
engrossing. "The splendid work at Macclesfield Buildings:" what was
that? The people whom he had helped: what people? Whom could she ask?
Not her father himself--that was out of the question. He never spoke to
her except on trivial subjects. She remembered with a sudden and painful
flash of insight, that conversations between him and his sister were
sometimes broken off when she came into the room, or carried on in
half-phrases and under-tones. Of course she _had_ heard of Macclesfield
Buildings; and of a club and an institute and a hospital, and what not;
but the words had gone over her head, being destitute of meaning and of
interest for her. She had been blind and deaf, it seemed to her now,
ever since she came into the house; but Maurice Kenyon and her father's
book had opened her eyes to the reality of things.
Later on in the day her maid came to help her to dress for dinner.
Lesley looked at her with new interest. For was she not one of the
great, poor, struggling mass of human beings whom her father called "the
People?" Not the happy peasant-class, as depicted in sentimental
storybooks: whether that existed or not, Lesley was not learned enough
to say: it certainly did not exist in London. She looked at the woman
who waited on her with keenly observant eyes. Her name was Mary
Kingston, and Lesley knew that she was not one of the prosperous,
self-satisfied, over-dressed type, so common amongst ladies' maids; for
she had been "out of a situation" for some time, and had fallen into
dire straits of poverty. It would not have been like Miss Brooke to hire
a common-place, conventional ladies' maid; she really preferred a
servant "with a history." Lesley remembered that she had heard of Mary
Kingston's past difficulties without noting them.
"Kingston," she said, gently, "do you know much about the poor?"
Kingston started and colored. She was a woman of more than thirty years
of age--pale, thin, flat-chested, not very tall; she had fairly good
features and dark, expressive eyes; but she was not attractive-looking.
Her lips were too pale and her dark eyes too sunken for beauty. There
was a gentleness in her manner, however, a patience in her low voice,
which Lesley had always liked. It reminded her, in some undefined way,
of her old friend, Sister Rose.
"I've lived among the poor all my life, ma'am," Kingston said.
"Do they suffer very much?" Lesley asked.
Kingston looked slightly puzzled. "Suffer, ma'am?"
"Yes--from hunger and cold, I mean: I have been reading about poor
people in this book--and----"
Kingston cast a rapid glance at the volume. Her face kindled at once.
"Oh," she said, "I've read that book, ma'am, and what a beautiful book
it is!"
"Do you know it?" Lesley asked, amazed. Then, moved by a sudden impulse,
"And you know it was written by my father?"
Who would have thought that she could say the last two words with such
an accent of tender pride?
"No, ma'am, I did not know. Is it really _this_ Mr. Brooke? The name,
you see, is not so uncommon as some, and I did not think----"
"I know, I know," said Lesley, hurriedly. "But just tell me this--is it
true? Do the poor people suffer as much in England as he says they do?"
"Oh yes, ma'am, I'm afraid so, at least. I've seen a good deal of
suffering in my day."
Lesley was quiet for a little while, and the woman brushed out her
shining hair. "Tell me," she said, "what is the worst suffering of
all--will you? I mean, a suffering caused by being poor--nothing to do
with your own life, of course. Is it the being hungry, or cold--or
what?"
Kingston considered for a moment. "I think," she said at last, "it isn't
the being cold or hungry yourself that matters so much as seeing those
that belong to you cold and hungry. That's the worst. If you have
children, it does go to your heart to hear them ask you for something to
eat, and you have nothing to give them."
"Yes," said Lesley, softly, "I should think that is the worst."
"But I don't know," said Kingston, in a perfectly unmoved and stolid
tone, "whether it's worse than having no candles."
Lesley looked up in astonishment.
"It's when any one's ill that you feel that," the woman went on, in the
same level tones. "In winter it's dark, maybe, at four o'clock, and not
light again till nearly nine in the morning. It doesn't matter so much
if you can go out. But if you have to sit by some one who's ill, and you
can't see their faces, and if they leave off moaning you think they're
dead--and perhaps when the early morning light comes it's only a dead
face you have to look upon, and you never saw them draw their last
breath--why, then, you feel mad-like to think of the candles that are
wasted in big houses and of the bread that's thrown away."
Lesley listened, appalled. A homely detail of this kind impressed her
more than any appeal to her higher imagination. The woes of the poor
had suddenly become real.
"I hope you never had to go through all that, Kingston," she said, very
gently.
"Yes, ma'am, twice," said Kingston. "Once with my mother, and once with
my little boy. They were both dead in the morning, but I didn't see 'em
die."
"But where was your husband? Was he dead?" said Lesley, quickly.
"Oh, no, ma'am. But he was amusing himself. He was a gentleman, you
see--more shame to me, perhaps you'll say. I couldn't expect him to
think of things like candles."
"Oh!--And is he--is he dead?"
"No ma'am, he isn't dead," said Kingston. And from the shortness of her
tone and the steadiness with which she averted her face Lesley came to
the conclusion that she did not want to be questioned any more.
Lesley went down to dinner feeling that she had made some new and
extraordinary discoveries. She noticed that her father and her aunt made
several allusions which would have seemed mysterious and repellant to
her the day before, but which now possessed an almost tragic interest.
When before had she heard her aunt speak casually of a Mothers' Meeting
and a Lending Library? These were common-place matters to the ordinary
English girl; but to Lesley they possessed the elements of a romance.
For was it not by means of hackneyed, common-place machinery of this
kind that cultured men and women put themselves into relation with the
great, suffering, coarse, uncultured, human-hearted poor?