A YOUNG MAN'S YEAR
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE GOD IN THE CAR
A CHANGE OF AIR
A MAN OF MARK
THE CHRONICLES OF COUNT ANTONIO
PHROSO
SIMON DALE
THE KING'S MIRROR
QUISANTÉ
THE DOLLY DIALOGUES
A SERVANT OF THE PUBLIC
TALES OF TWO PEOPLE
THE GREAT MISS DRIVER
MRS. MAXON PROTESTS
A YOUNG MAN'S
YEAR
BY
ANTHONY HOPE
METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W. C.
LONDON
_First Published in 1915_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE, ESQUIRE 1
II. MISS SARRADET'S CIRCLE 11
III. IN TOUCH WITH THE LAW 19
IV. A GRATEFUL FRIEND 28
V. THE TENDER DIPLOMATIST 37
VI. A TIMELY DISCOVERY 46
VII. ALL OF A FLUTTER 54
VIII. NOTHING VENTURE, NOTHING HAVE! 62
IX. A COMPLICATION 71
X. THE HERO OF THE EVENING 80
XI. HOUSEHOLD POLITICS 89
XII. LUNCH AT THE LANCASTER 98
XIII. SETTLED 108
XIV. THE BATTLE WITH MR. TIDDES 118
XV. THE MAN FOR A CRISIS 127
XVI. A SHADOW ON THE HOUSE 136
XVII. FOR NO PARTICULAR REASON! 146
XVIII. GOING TO RAIN! 156
XIX. THE LAST ENTRENCHMENT 166
XX. A PRUDENT COUNSELLOR 175
XXI. IDOL AND DEVOTEE 185
XXII. PRESSING BUSINESS 194
XXIII. FACING THE SITUATION 204
XXIV. "DID YOU SAY MRS.?" 213
XXV. THE OLD DAYS END 224
XXVI. RATHER ROMANTIC! 233
XXVII. IN THE HANDS OF THE GODS 244
XXVIII. TAKING MEDICINE 254
XXIX. TEARS AND A SMILE 264
XXX. A VARIETY SHOW 274
XXXI. START AND FINISH 284
XXXII. WISDOM CONFOUNDED 294
XXXIII. A NEW VISION 304
XXXIV. THE LINES OF LIFE 314
XXXV. HILSEY AND ITS FUGITIVE 324
XXXVI. IN THE SPRING 335
A YOUNG MAN'S YEAR
A YOUNG MAN'S YEAR
CHAPTER I
OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE, ESQUIRE
It was a dark, dank, drizzly morning in March. A dull mist filled all
the air, and the rain drifted in a thin sheet across the garden of the
Middle Temple. Everything looked a dull drab. Certainly it was a beastly
morning. Moreover--to add to its offences--it was Monday morning. Arthur
Lisle had always hated Monday mornings; through childhood, school, and
university they had been his inveterate enemies--with their narrow
rigorous insistence on a return to work, with the end they put to
freedom, to leisure, to excursions in the body or in the spirit. And
they were worse now, since the work was worse, in that it was not real
work at all; it was only waiting for work, or at best a tedious and
weary preparation for work which did not come and (for all that he could
see) never would come. There was no reason why it ever should. Even
genius might starve unnoticed at the Bar, and he was no genius. Even
interest might fail to help a man, and interest he had none. Standing
with his hands in the pockets, listlessly staring out of the window of
his cell of a room, unable to make up his mind how to employ himself, he
actually cursed his means of subsistence--the hundred and fifty pounds a
year which had led him into the fatal ambition of being called to the
Bar. "But for that it would have been impossible for me to be such an
ass," he reflected gloomily, as he pushed back his thick reddish-brown
hair from his forehead and puckered the thin sensitive lines of his
mouth into a childish pout.
Henry the clerk (of whom Mr. Arthur Lisle owned an undivided fourth
share) came into the room, carrying a bundle of papers tied with red
tape. Turning round on the opening of the door, Arthur suddenly fell
prey to an emotion of extraordinary strength and complexity; amazement,
joy, excitement, fear, all in their highest expression, struggled for
mastery over him. Had he got a Brief?
"Mr. Norton Ward says, will you be kind enough to protect him in Court
III, in case he's on in the Court of Appeal? It's a very simple matter,
he says; it's the Divisional Court, sir, third in the list." Henry put
the papers on the table and went out, quite disregardful of the storm of
emotion which he had aroused. Though keenly interested in the fortunes
of his employers, he did not study their temperaments.
It had happened, the thing that Arthur knew he ought always to hope for,
the thing that in fact he had always dreaded. He had not got a brief; he
had to "hold" one--to hold one for somebody else, and that at short
notice--"unhouseled, disappointed, unanealed!" That is to say, with no
time to make ready for the fearful ordeal. It was nearly ten o'clock, at
half-past he must be in court; at any moment after that the case might
come on, its two predecessors having crumpled up, as cases constantly
did in the Divisional Court. The fell terrors of nervousness beset him,
so that he was almost sick. He dashed at the brief fiercely, but his
fingers trembled so that he could hardly untie the tape. Still, he
managed a hurried run through the papers and got the point into his
head.
Lance and Pretyman, JJ. took their seats punctually at ten-thirty.
Arthur Lisle, who felt much interest in judges as human beings and would
often spend his time in court studying them rather than the law they
administered, was glad to see Lance there, but feared Pretyman to the
bottom of his heart. Lance was a gentle man, of courtly manners and a
tired urbanity, but Pretyman was gruff, abrupt, terribly anxious about
saving public time, and therefore always cutting into a man's argument
with the Stand-and-deliver of a question to which, in Pretyman's
opinion, there was no answer. It would be an awful thing if Pretyman set
on him like that! Because then he might be incapable of speech, although
he knew that he was in the right. And he believed that his case was
good. "All the worse then, if you lose it!" said a mocking voice within
him.
Henry had taken him over to the court and had done everything possible
for him--had told the solicitor who had briefed Norton Ward how the
matter stood and how very safe he would be in Mr. Lisle's hands if it
came to that, had given his name to the usher so that the usher could,
if necessary, give it to the Bench, and had even introduced him to Mr.
O'Sullivan, who was on the other side, a tall and burly Irishman, famous
for defending criminals, but not credited with knowing much law.
As the first two cases proceeded, Arthur read his brief again and again,
and, when he was not doing that, he read the reported case which (in the
opinion of the pupil who had got up Norton Ward's brief and had made a
note of it for him) was decisive in his favour. All the while he was
praying that the first two cases might last a long time. They did not.
Pretyman, J., smashed the pair of them in three-quarters of an hour.
"Brown and Green" called the usher, and O'Sullivan was on his legs--and
there was no sign of Norton Ward. Henry nodded to Arthur and left the
court; he was going to see how matters stood in the Court of Appeal.
"This is an appeal from the West Hampstead County Court, my lords,"
began Mr. O'Sullivan, "which raises a question of some importance," and
he went on in such a fashion that Arthur hoped he was going to take a
long time; for Henry had come back, and, by a shake of his head, had
indicated that there was no present hope of Norton Ward's arrival. Mr.
O'Sullivan meant to take a decently long time; he wanted his client to
feel that he was getting his money's worth of argument; therefore he
avoided the main point and skirmished about a good deal. Above all he
avoided that case which Norton Ward's pupil had considered decisive. Mr.
O'Sullivan knew all about the case too, and had it with him, but he was
in no hurry to get to it yet.
Lance, J., was leaning back, the picture of polite acquiescence in a lot
assigned to him by Providence, a position wherein dignity was tempered
by _ennui_. But Pretyman, J., was getting restive; he was fingering his
beard--he committed the solecism of wearing a beard on the Bench; then
he picked out a book from the shelf by him, and turned over the leaves
quickly. Mr. O'Sullivan came, by a series of flourishes, a little nearer
the point. And Norton Ward did not come; and Arthur Lisle felt no
better.
"What about Watkins and Chichester?" demanded Pretyman, J., with a
sudden violence that made Arthur jump.
"I have that case here, my lord, and----"
"You don't seem in a hurry to cite it, Mr. O'Sullivan. It seems to me
dead in your teeth."
"Let us hear the headnote, Mr. O'Sullivan," said Lance, J., suavely.
Then they got to it, and Pretyman, J., and Mr. O'Sullivan had a fine
wrangle over it, worrying it up and down, one saying that this was that
case, the other that this case was not that case, because in that case
that happened and in this case this happened, and so forth. Mr.
O'Sullivan "distinguished" valiantly, and Pretyman knocked his
distinctions into a cocked hat. Lance, J., sat on smiling in silence,
till at last he asked blandly:
"If we think the cases indistinguishable, Watkins and Chichester binds
us, I take it, Mr. O'Sullivan?"
That Mr. O'Sullivan had to admit, and on that admission down he sat.
The moment had come--and Norton Ward had not. With an actual physical
effort Arthur rose to his feet; a strange voice, which did not seem to
belong to him, and sounded quite unfamiliar, said, "My lords----" He saw
Lance and Pretyman, JJ., in the shape of a grotesque, monstrous,
two-headed giant; for the latter was leaning over to the former, who sat
listening and twice nodded his head.
A slip of paper was handed up to Lance, J. He glanced at it and from it
to Arthur. Again that strange voice said, "My lords----" But Lance, J.,
interposed suavely, "I don't think we need trouble you, Mr. Lisle," and
he proceeded to say that not even Mr. O'Sullivan's ingenious arguments
could enable his brother or himself to distinguish Brown and Green from
Watkins and Chichester, and therefore the appeal must be dismissed with
costs.
"I concur," said Pretyman, J., with contemptuous curtness; in fact he
did not say "I" at all; he merely grunted out "Concur."
Of course such a thing happened often, and was quite likely to happen;
very probably Norton Ward, after glancing over his pupil's note and at
_Watkins v. Chichester_, had seen that it might happen here and had the
less scruple about entrusting his case to hands so inexperienced. None
the less, Arthur Lisle felt that the gods had played a cruel game with
him. All that agony of apprehension, all that tension of desperate
coward's courage, endured for nothing and gone for nothing! All to be
endured and achieved again--how soon? He got out of court he hardly knew
how, and made his way hurriedly across the Strand. He would have that
wig and gown off, or somebody else would be tapping him on the shoulder,
arresting him with the stern command to hold another brief!
Now, back in chambers, with the strain over, he was furious with
himself, savage and furious; that mood follows hard on the paroxysms of
the malady. He began to attribute to it all the failures of his past
life--quite unjustly, for in most cases, though it had tortured him, he
had overcome the outward manifestation of it. He could not see his life
as liveable if it were to meet him at every turn. What made him a prey
to it? Self-consciousness, silly self-consciousness, his wise elders had
always told him. But what made people self-conscious? Self-conceit, the
same wise mentors had added. His soul rose in a plain and sincere
protest, certain of its truth: "But I'm not conceited." "Yes, but" (he
imagined the mentors' argument now) "you really are; you think
everybody's looking at you and thinking of you." "Well, but so they are
when I'm on my legs speaking; and beforehand I know they're going to
be." The mentors did not seem to have anything to say to that.
In the afternoon Norton Ward came into his room to thank him for holding
the brief; he was a man of punctilious courtesy, as indeed he was master
of most of the arts and gifts that make for success in life. At little
more than thirty he had already a fine practice; he was on the edge of
"taking silk"; he had married well--the daughter of a peer, with a
substantial portion; he was a "prospective" candidate for Parliament. A
favourite of nature and of fortune indeed! Moreover he was a kindly man,
although a ruthlessly ambitious one. He and Arthur had become acquainted
merely through the accident of Arthur's renting the spare room in his
chambers, when he had been called to the Bar a twelve-month before; but
the landlord had taken to his tenant and would gladly have done him a
turn.
"I thought the case quite plain," he said; "but I'm sorry you were done
out of your argument."
"I wasn't sorry," Arthur confessed, with a frankness habitual to him.
"You weren't? Oh, I see! Nervous!" He laughed gently.
"Beyond belief. Did you used to be?"
"Just at first. I soon got over it. But they say one oughtn't to get
over it. Oh, you've heard the stories about big men, haven't you? Anyhow
some men never do. Why, I've sat behind Huntley and seen his hand
tremble like our old friend the aspen leaf--and that when he was
Attorney-General!"
"Lord!" was Arthur's despairing comment; because a malady which did not
spare an Attorney-General must surely be unconquerable by lesser folk.
"But I expect it's not quite the same sort," Norton Ward went on,
smiling. "It's rather like falling in love, I expect. A man's excited
every time he falls in love, but I don't think it's the same sort of
excitement as he suffers when he falls in love for the first time--I
mean badly."
Now the last word of this observation so struck Arthur that he forgot
all the earlier part of it--nay, he forgot his malady itself, together
with the truth or falsity of the parallel Norton Ward suggested.
"Badly? What do you mean by falling in love badly?"
"I'm not speaking with regard to morals, Lisle. I mean severely, or
utterly, or passionately, or, if you prefer, idiotically."
Arthur's lips puckered about his pipe-stem; it was a trick he had.
"I think I should call that falling in love well, not badly," he
observed gravely.
It was the gravity of the speaker, not the import of the thing spoken,
which made Norton Ward laugh again and heartily. His was one of those
temperaments--sane, practical, concrete, equable--which regard the
affairs of love as a very subsidiary matter in real life, in the real
life of any individual, that is, for of course they possess a national
and racial importance when reduced to statistics. He did not quarrel
with the literary convention which exalted love to the highest
place--the convention made good reading and produced exciting plays--but
it did not answer to real life as he knew it, to the stern yet
delightful fight which filled his days, and really filled his wife's
too, since she was a partner wherever she could be, and an eager
encourager in all things. But what of the great amorists who were also
great men and women? Well, how much of that too was play-acting--to the
public and to themselves? That was the question his mind instinctively
put about such cases.
As he looked at Arthur Lisle's slight figure and sensitive face, he felt
a compassion for him, a pitying doubt whether so frail a vessel could
live in the rough sea on which it had embarked. Characteristically this
friendly impulse expressed itself in an invitation to dinner, which was
received by Arthur with surprise, delight, and gratitude.
"Of course I will, and it really is most awfully kind of you," he said.
Norton Ward went off to a consultation with a smile of mingled pity and
amusement still on his lips.
His invitation to dinner really pleased Arthur very much, not only as a
sign of friendship, but for its own sake. He had found his early days in
London lonely--in depressing contrast with the full social life of
school and Oxford. The glowing anticipations with which imagination had
invested his coming to the metropolis had not stood the test of
experience. For some young men family connections, or notable
achievements and high reputation, provide a ready-made place in London.
Others possessed of ample means can make a pretty good one for
themselves speedily. But Arthur's university career, though creditable
and to him delightful in the highest degree from its teeming fulness of
interests, had not been conspicuous; he had no powerful friends, and he
was very poor. After his chambers were paid for, and his share in Henry,
and his lodgings in Bloomsbury Street, there was left not much margin
beyond the necessities of life--food, raiment, and tobacco. The theatre,
even the pit, could not be indulged in often. He had many solitary
evenings. When it was fine, he often walked the streets; when it was wet
he read--and often stopped reading to wish that something would happen.
His vague and restless longings took no form more definite than
that--wanting something to happen. He was in London, he was young, he
was ready--and nothing happened! Consequently an invitation to dinner
was a prize in the daily lottery of life.
When he got back to his 'diggings' in the evening, he found a letter
from home. His mother and sister had continued to live on in the old
house at Malvern Wells after the death of his father, who had enjoyed a
fairly good practice as a doctor there, but dying comparatively early
had left a slender provision for his family. Mrs. Lisle preferred to be
poor, since poor she had to be, in a place where she was already known
and respected. The school too was a great attraction; there Arthur had
been educated as a day boy, and thence had proceeded to Oxford with an
exhibition, to which he added a second from his college, thus much
easing the family finances, and indeed rendering Oxford possible. There
had been talk of his people's migrating to London and making a home for
him there, but in fact none of the three had been zealous for the
change. Mrs. Lisle was frail and clung to her accustomed hills and
breezes; Anna had her friends, her circle, her church work, her local
importance; and Arthur was at that time too full of those glowing
anticipations of London life to press the project of a family villa
somewhere in the suburbs and a season-ticket to take him out of town at
the precise hour of the evening when town began to be amusing.
For all that, he was an affectionate son and brother, and he smiled
sympathetically over Anna's home gossip. Only the postscript made him
frown rather peevishly. It ran: "Mother wants to know whether you have
called on the Godfrey Lisles _yet_!"
Mother wanted to know that in pretty nearly every one of her own and
Anna's letters; hence the italics which distinguished Anna's "yet." And
the answer still had to be in the negative. Why should he call on the
Godfrey Lisles? He knew his mother's answer; a thoroughly maternal
answer it was. Godfrey Lisle, though only a distant cousin, was the head
of the house, squire of Hilsey Manor, the old family place, and a man of
considerable wealth--altogether, in fact, the Personage of the family.
Most families have a Personage, to them very important, though varying
infinitely in significance or insignificance to the world outside. On
the whole the Lisle Personage was above the average from the outside
point of view, and Mrs. Lisle's anxiety that her son should pay him
proper attention, and reap therefrom such advantage as might accrue, was
no more than natural.
But to Arthur all the reasons why he ought to call on his cousin were
reasons why he could not do it. Just as, while Mr. O'Sullivan was
arguing, his imagination was picturing what a young fool Pretyman, J.,
would soon be thinking him, so here, whenever the question of this call
arose, the same remorselessly active faculty rehearsed for him all the
aspects in which he would appear to the Godfrey Lisles--a poor relation,
a tiresome duty, a country cousin, a raw youth--Oh, in fine and in the
end, a Bore of purest quality and great magnitude! That, and nothing
else, the Godfrey Lisles would think him.
Still, if his mother persisted, the thing might have to happen. He had a
vision of himself watching the Godfrey Lisles out of their house, and
then diving across the road to deposit furtive cards with the butler. A
funny vision, but with him quite capable of turning into reality!
His brow cleared as he took up a second letter which awaited him. He
knew the hand:
"DEAR MR. LISLE,
"Do drop in to-morrow evening after dinner. We shall be having
cards and perhaps a little music. About 9.30. Do as you like about
dressing.
"Yours sincerely,
"MARIE SARRADET."
The Sarradets lived in Regent's Park--rather far from any Underground
station. "I'll dress if it's fine, and not if it's wet," thought Arthur.
The balance of profit and loss as between paying a cab-fare on the one
hand and taking the shine out of his patent leathers on the other
presented a problem of constant difficulty in connection with his
evening gaieties.