John Lothrop Motley - "The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1559 60"

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Aubrey de Vere - "The Legends of Saint Patrick"

Garrett P. Serviss - "The Moon Metal"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Our Friend the Charlatan

G >> George Gissing >> Our Friend the Charlatan



Edited by Charles Aldarondo (aldarondo@yahoo.com)

George Gissing

Our Friend the Charlatan





CHAPTER I




As he waited for his breakfast, never served to time, Mr. Lashmar
drummed upon the window-pane, and seemed to watch a blackbird
lunching with much gusto about the moist lawn of Alverholme
Vicarage. But his gaze was absent and worried. The countenance of
the reverend gentleman rarely wore any other expression, for he took
to heart all human miseries and follies, and lived in a ceaseless
mild indignation against the tenor of the age. Inwardly, Mr. Lashmar
was at this moment rather pleased, having come upon an article in
his weekly paper which reviewed in a very depressing strain the
present aspect of English life. He felt that he might have, and
ought to have, written the article himself a loss of opportunity
which gave new matter for discontent.

The Rev. Philip was in his sixty-seventh year; a thin, dry,
round-shouldered man, with bald occiput, straggling yellowish beard,
and a face which recalled that of Darwin. The resemblance pleased
him. Privately he accepted the theory of organic evolution,
reconciling it with a very broad Anglicanism; in his public
utterances he touched upon the Darwinian doctrine with a weary
disdain. This contradiction involved no insincerity; Mr. Lashmar
merely held in contempt the common understanding, and declined to
expose an esoteric truth to vulgar misinterpretation. Yet he often
worried about it--as he worried over everything.

Nearer causes of disquiet were not lacking to him. For several years
the income of his living had steadily decreased; his glebe, upon
which he chiefly depended, fell more and more under the influence of
agricultural depression, and at present he found himself, if not
seriously embarrassed, likely to be so in a very short time. He was
not a good economist; he despised everything in the nature of
parsimony; his ideal of the clerical life demanded a liberal
expenditure of money no less than unsparing personal toil. He had
generously exhausted the greater part of a small private fortune;
from that source there remained to him only about a hundred pounds a
year. His charities must needs be restricted; his parish outlay must
be pinched; domestic life must proceed on a narrower basis. And all
this was to Mr. Lashmar supremely distasteful.

Not less so to Mr. Lashmar's wife, a lady ten years his junior,
endowed with abundant energies in every direction save that of
household order and thrift. Whilst the vicar stood waiting for
breakfast, tapping drearily on the window-pane, Mrs. Lashmar entered
the room, and her voice sounded the deep, resonant note which
announced a familiar morning mood.

"You don't mean to say that breakfast isn't ready! Surely, my dear,
you could ring the bell?"

"I have done so," replied the vicar, in a tone of melancholy
abstraction.

Mrs. Lashmar rang with emphasis, and for the next five minutes her
contralto swelled through the vicarage, rendering inaudible the
replies she kept demanding from a half rebellious, half intimidated
servant. She was not personally a coarse woman, and her manners did
not grossly offend against the convention of good-breeding; but her
nature was self-assertive. She could not brook a semblance of
disregard for her authority, yet, like women in general, had no idea
of how to rule. The small, round face had once been pretty; now,
with its prominent eyes, in-drawn lips, and obscured chin, it
inspired no sympathetic emotion, rather an uneasiness and an
inclination for retreat. In good humour or in ill, Mrs. Lashmar was
aggressive. Her smile conveyed an amiable defiance; her look of
grave interest alarmed and subdued.

"I have a line from Dyce," remarked the vicar, as at length he
applied himself to his lukewarm egg and very hard toast. "He thinks
of running down."

"When?"

"He doesn't say."

"Then why did he write? I've no patience with those vague projects.
Why did he write until he had decided on the day?"

"Really, I don't know," answered Mr. Lashmar, feebly. His wife, in
this mood, had a dazing effect upon him.

"Let me see the letter."

Mrs. Lashmar perused the half-dozen lines in her son's handwriting.

"Why, he _does_ say!" she exclaimed in her deepest and most
disdainful chord. "He says 'before long.'"

"True. But I hardly think that conveys--"

"Oh, please don't begin a sophistical argument He says when he is
coming, and that's all I want to know here's a letter, I see, from
that silly Mrs. Barker--her husband has quite given up drink, and
earns good wages, sad the eldest boy has a place--pooh!"

"All very good news, it seems to me," remarked the vicar, slightly
raising his eyebrows.

But one of Mrs. Lashmar's little peculiarities was that, though she
would exert herself to any extent for people whose helpless
circumstances utterly subjected them to her authority, she lost all
interest in them as soon as their troubles were surmounted, and even
viewed with resentment that result of her own efforts. Worse still,
from her point of view, if the effort had largely been that of the
sufferers themselves--as in this case. Mrs. Barker, a washerwoman
who had reformed her sottish husband, was henceforth a mere offence
in the eyes of the vicar's wife.

"As silly a letter as ever I read!" she exclaimed, throwing aside
the poor little sheet of cheap note-paper with its illiterate
gratitude. "Oh, here's something from Lady Susan--pooh! Another
baby. What do I care about her babies! Not one word about Dyce--
not one word. Now, really!"

"I don't remember what you expected," remarked the vicar, mildly.

Mrs. Lashmar paid no heed to. him. With a resentful countenance, she
had pushed the letters aside, and was beginning her meal. Amid all
the so-called duties which she imposed upon herself--for, in her
own way, she bore the burden of the world no less than did the Rev.
Philip--Mrs. Lashmar never lost sight of one great preoccupation,
the interests of her son. He, Dyce Lashmar, only child of the house,
now twenty-seven years old, lived in London, and partly supported
himself as a private tutor. The obscurity of this existence, so
painful a contrast to the hopes his parents had nourished, so
disappointing an outcome of all the thought that had been given to
Dyce's education, and of the not inconsiderable sums spent upon it,
fretted Mrs. Lashmar to the soul; at times she turned in anger
against the young man himself, accusing him of ungrateful
supineness, but more often eased her injured feelings by accusation
of all such persons as, by any possibility, might have aided Dyce to
a career. One of these was Lady Susan Harrop, a very remote relative
of hers. Twice or thrice a year, for half-a-dozen years at least,
Mrs. Lashmar had urged upon Lady Susan the claims of her son to
social countenance and more practical forms of advancement; hitherto
with no result--save, indeed, that Dyce dined once every season at
the Harrops' table. The subject was painful to Mr. Lashmar also, but
it affected him in a different way, and he had long ceased to speak
of it.

"That selfish, frivolous woman!" sounded presently from behind the
coffee-service, not now in accents of wrath, but as the deliberate
utterance of cold judgment. "Never in all her life has she thought
of anyone but herself. What right has such a being to bring children
into the world? What can be expected of them but meanness and
hypocrisy?"

Mr. Lashmar smiled. He had just broken an imperfect tooth upon a
piece of toast, and, as usual when irritated, his temper became
ironic.

"Sweet are the uses of disappointment," he observed. "How it clears
one's vision!"

"Do you suppose I ever had any better opinion of Lady Susan?"
exclaimed his wife.

It was a principle of Mr. Lashmar's never to argue with a woman.
Sadly smiling, he rose from the table.

"Here's an article you ought to read," he said, holding out the
weekly paper. "It's fall of truth, well expressed. It may even have
some bearing on this question."

The vicar went about his long day's work, and took with him many
uneasy reflections. He bad not thought of it before breakfast, but
now it struck him that much in that pungent article on the men of
to-day might perchance apply to the character and conduct of his own
son. "A habit of facile enthusiasm, not perhaps altogether
insincere, but totally without moral value . . . convictions assumed
at will, as a matter of fashion, or else of singularity . . . the
lack of stable purpose, save only in matters of gross self-interest
. . . an increasing tendency to verbose expression . . . an all but
utter lack of what old-fashioned people still call principle. . . ."
these phrases recurred to his memory, with disagreeable
significance. Was that in truth a picture of his son, of the boy
whom he had loved and watched over and so zealously hoped for?
Possibly he wronged Dyce, for the young man's mind and heart had
long ceased to be clearly legible to him. "Worst, perhaps, of all
these frequent traits is the affectation of--to use a silly
word--altruism. The most radically selfish of men seem capable of
persuading themselves into the belief that their prime motive is to
'live for others.' Of truly persuading themselves--that is the
strange thing. This, it seems to us, is morally far worse than the
unconscious hypocrisy which here and there exists in professors of
the old religion; there is something more nauseous about
self-deceiving 'altruism' than in the attitude of a man who,
thoroughly worldly in fact, believes himself a hopeful candidate for
personal salvation." Certain recent letters of Dyce appeared in a
new light when seen from this point of view. It was too disagreeable
a subject; the vicar strove to dismiss it from his mind.

In the afternoon, he had to visit a dying man, an intelligent
shopkeeper, who, while accepting the visit as a proof of kindness,
altogether refused spiritual comfort, and would speak of nothing but
the future of his children. Straightway Mr. Lashmar became the
practical consoler, lavish of kindly forethought. Only when he came
forth did he ask himself whether he could possibly fulfil half of
what he had undertaken.

"It is easier," he reflected, "to make promises for the world to
come. Is it not also better? After all, can I not do it with a
clearer conscience?"

He walked slowly, worrying about this and fifty other things,
feeling a very Atlas under the globe's oppression. Rig way took him
across a field in which there was a newly bourgeoned copse; he
remembered that, last spring, he had found white violets about the
roots of the trees. A desire for their beauty and odour possessed
him; he turned across the grass. Presently a perfume guided him to a
certain mossy corner where pale sweet florets nestled amid their
leaves. He bent over them, and stretched his hand to pluck, but in
the same moment checked himself; why should he act the destroyer in
this spot of perfect quietness and beauty?

"Dyce would not care much about them," was another thought that came
into his mind.

He rose from his stooping posture with ache of muscles and creaking
of joints. Alas for the days when he ran and leapt and knew not
pain! Walking slowly away, he worried himself about the brevity of
life.

By a stile he passed into the highroad, at the lower end of the long
village of Alverholme. He had an appointment with his curate at the
church school, and, not to be unpunctual, he quickened his pace in
that direction. At a little distance behind him was a young lady
whom he had not noticed; she, recognizing the vicar, pursued with
light, quick step, and soon overtook him.

"How do you do, Mr. Lashmar!"

"Why--Miss Bride!" exclaimed the vicar. "What a long time since we
saw you! Have you just come?"

"I'm on a little holiday. How are you? And how is Mrs. Lashmar?"

Miss Bride had a soberly decisive way of speaking, and an aspect
which corresponded therewith; her figure was rather short,
well-balanced, apt for brisk movement; she held her head very
straight, and regarded the world with a pair of dark eyes suggestive
of anything but a sentimental nature. Her grey dress, black jacket,
and felt hat trimmed with a little brown ribbon declared the
practical woman, who thinks about her costume only just as much as
is needful; her dark-brown hair was coiled in a plait just above the
nape, as if neatly and definitely put out of the way. She looked
neither more nor less than her age, which was eight and twenty. At
first sight her features struck one as hard and unsympathetic,
though tolerably regular; watching her as she talked or listened,
one became aware of a mobility which gave large expressiveness,
especially in the region of the eyebrows, which seemed to move with
her every thought. Her lips were long, and ordinarily compressed in
the line of conscious self-control. She had a very shapely neck, the
skin white and delicate; her facial complexion was admirably pure
and of warmish tint.

"And where are you living, Miss Bride?" asked Mr. Lashmar, regarding
her with curiosity.

"At Hollingford; that is to say, near it. I am secretary to Lady
Ogram--I don't know whether you ever heard of her?"

"Ogram? I know the name. I am very glad indeed to hear that you have
such a pleasant position. And your father? It is very long since I
heard from him."

"He has a curacy at Liverpool, and seems to be all right. My mother
died about two years ago."

The matter-of-fact tone in which this information was imparted
caused Mr. Lashmar to glance at the speaker's face. Though very
little of an observer, he was comforted by an assurance that Miss
Bride's features were less impassive than her words. Indeed, the
cold abruptness with which she spoke was sufficient proof of feeling
roughly subdued.

Some six years had now elapsed since the girl's father, after acting
for a short time as curate to Mr. Lashmar, accepted a living in
another county. The technical term, in this case, was rich in
satiric meaning; Mr. Bride's incumbency quickly reduced him to
pauperism. At the end of the first twelvemonth in his rural benefice
the unfortunate cleric made a calculation that he was legally
responsible for rather more than twice the sum of money represented
by his stipend and the offertories. The church needed a new roof;
the parsonage was barely habitable for long lack of repairs; the
church school lost its teacher through default of salary--and so
on. With endless difficulty Mr. Bride escaped from his vicarage to
freedom and semi-starvation, and deemed himself very lucky indeed
when at length he regained levitical harbourage.

These things had his daughter watched with her intent dark eyes;
Constance Bride did not feel kindly disposed towards the Church of
England as by law established. She had seen her mother sink under
penury and humiliation and all unmerited hardship; she had seen her
father changed from a vigorous, hopeful, kindly man to an embittered
pessimist. As for herself, sound health and a good endowment of
brains enabled her to make a way in the world. Luckily, she was a
sole child: her father managed to give her a decent education till
she was old enough to live by teaching. But teaching was not her
vocation. Looking round for possibilities, Constance hit upon the
idea of studying pharmaceutics and becoming a dispenser; wherein,
with long, steady effort, she at length succeeded. This project had
already been shaped whilst the Brides were at Alverholme; Mrs.
Lashmar had since heard of Constance as employed in the dispensary
of a midland hospital.

"Hollingford?" remarked the vicar, as they walked on. "I think I
remember that you have relatives there."

"I was born there, and I have an old aunt still living in the town--she
keeps a little baker's shop."

Mr. Lashmar, though a philosopher, was not used to this bluntness of
revelation; it gave him a slight shock, evinced in a troublous
rolling of the eyes.

"Ha! yes!--I trust you will dine with us this evening, Miss
Bride?"

"Thank you, I can't dine; I want to leave by an early evening train.
But I should like to see Mrs. Lashmar, if she is at home."

"She will be delighted. I must beg you to pardon me for leaving you--an
appointment at the schools; but I will get home as soon as
possible. Pray excuse me."

"Why, of course, Mr. Lashmar. I haven't forgotten the way to the
vicarage."

She pursued it, and in a few minutes rang the bell. Mrs. Lashmar was
in the dining-room, busy with a female parishioner whose self-will
in the treatment of infants' maladies had given the vicar's wife a
great deal of trouble.

"It's as plain as blessed daylight, mum," the woman was exclaiming,
"that this medicine don't agree with her."

"Mrs. Dibbs," broke in the other severely, "you will allow me to be
a better judge--_what_ is it?"

The housemaid had opened the door to announce Miss Bride.

"Miss Bride?" echoed the lady in astonishment. "Very well; show her
into the drawing-room."

The visitor waited for nearly a quarter of an hour. She had placed
herself on one of the least comfortable chairs, and sat there in a
very stiff attitude, holding her umbrella across her knees. After a
rather nervous survey of the room, (it had changed very little in
appearance since her last visit six years ago), she fell into uneasy
thoughtfulness, now and then looking impatiently towards the door.
When the hostess at length appeared, she rose with deliberation, her
lips just relaxed in a half-smile.

"So it is really you!" exclaimed Mrs. Lashmar, in a voice of forced
welcome. "I thought you must have altogether forgotten us."

"It's the first time I have returned to Alverholme," replied the
other, in a contrasting tone of calmness.

"And what are you doing? Where are you living? Tell me all about
yourself. Are you still at the hospital? You did get a place at a
hospital, I think? We were told so."

Mrs. Lashmar's patronage was a little more patronizing than usual,
her condescension one or two degrees more condescending. She had
various reasons for regarding Constance Bride with disapproval, the
least of them that sense of natural antipathy which was inevitable
between two such women. In briefest sentences Miss Bride made known
that she had given up dispensing two years ago, and was now acting
as secretary to a baronet's widow.

"A baronet's widow?" repeated the hostess, with some emphasis of
candid surprise. "Row did you manage that? Who is she?"

"An old friend of my family," was the balanced reply. "Lady Ogram,
of Rivenoak, near Hollingford."

"Oh! Indeed! I wasn't aware--"

Mrs. Lashmar thought better of her inclination to be trenchantly
rude, and smoothed off into commonplaces. Presently the vicar
entered, and found his wife conversing with the visitor more amiably
than he had expected.

"You have seen Miss Bride already," said Mrs. Lashmar. "I am trying
to persuade her to stay over-night with us. Is it really
impossible?"

Constance civilly but decidedly declined. Addressing herself to the
vicar, she spoke with more ease and friendliness than hitherto;
nevertheless, it was obvious that she counted the minutes dictated
by decency for the prolongation of her stay. Once or twice her look
wandered to a certain part of the wall where hung a framed
photograph--a portrait of Dyce Lashmar at the age of one and
twenty; she regarded it for an instant with cold fixity, as though
it interested her not at all. Just as she was on the point of
rising, there came a sound of wheels on the vicarage drive.

"Who's that, I wonder?" said Mrs. Lashmar. "Why--surely it isn't--?"

A voice from without had reached her ears; surprise and annoyance
darkened her countenance.

"It's certainly Dyce," said the vicar, who for his part, recognized
the voice with pleasure.

"Impossible! He said he was coming in a week's time."

Mr. Lashmar would not have cared to correct this statement, and
remark was rendered superfluous by the opening of the door and the
appearance of Dyce himself.

"Afraid I'm taking you rather at unawares," said the young man, in a
suave Oxford voice. "Unexpectedly I found myself free--"

His eyes fell upon Constance Bride, and for a moment he was mute;
then he stepped towards her, and, with an air of peculiar frankness,
of comrade-like understanding, extended his hand.

"How do you do, Miss Connie! Delighted to find you here--Mother,
glad to see you." Re touched Mrs. Lashmar's forehead with his lips.
"Well, father? Uncommonly pleasant to be at the vicarage again!"

Miss Bride had stood up, and was now advancing towards the hostess.

"You _must_ go?" said Mrs. Lashmar, with her most agreeable smile.

"What, going?" exclaimed Dyce. "Why? Are you staying in the
village?"

"No. I must catch a train."

"What train?"

"'The six forty-five."

"Why, then you have plenty of time! Mother, bid Miss Connie be
seated; I haven't had a moment's talk with her; it's absurd. Six
forty-five? You needn't leave here for twenty minutes. What a lucky
thing that I came in just now."

For certain ticks of the clock it was a doubtful matter whether Miss
Bride would depart or remain. Glancing involuntarily at Mrs.
Lashmar, she saw the gloom of resentment and hostility hover upon
that lady's countenance, and this proved decisive.

"I'll have some tea, please," cried the young man, cheerfully, as
Constance with some abruptness resumed her seat. "How is your
father, Miss Connie? Well? That's right. And Mrs. Bride?"

"My mother is dead," replied the girl, quite simply, looking away.

A soft murmur of pain escaped Dyce's lips; he leaned forward,
uttered gently a "Pray forgive me!" and was silent. The vicar
interposed with a harmless remark about the flight of years.





CHAPTER II




In the moments when Dyce Lashmar was neither aware of being observed
nor consciously occupied with the pressing problems of his own
existence, his face expressed a natural amiability, inclining to
pensiveness. The features were in no way remarkable; they missed the
vigour of his father's type without attaining the regularity which
had given his mother a claim to good looks. Such a visage falls to
the lot of numberless men born to keep themselves alive and to
propagate their insignificance. But Dyce was not insignificant. As
soon as his countenance lighted with animation, it revealed a
character rich in various possibility, a vital force which, by its
bright indefiniteness, made some appeal to the imagination. Often he
had the air of a lyric enthusiast; often, that of a profound
thinker; not seldom there came into his eyes a glint of stern energy
which seemed a challenge to the world. Therewithal, nothing
perceptibly histrionic; look or speak as he might, the young man
exhaled an atmosphere of sincerity, and persuaded others because he
seemed so thoroughly to have convinced himself.

He did not give the impression of high breeding. His Oxford voice,
his easy self-possession, satisfied the social standard, but left a
defect to the finer sense. Dyce had not the self-oblivion of entire
courtesy; it seemed probable that he would often err in tact; a
certain awkwardness marred his personal bearing, which aimed at the
modern ideal of flowing unconstraint.

Sipping the cup of tea which his mother had handed to him, Dyce
talked at large. Nothing, he declared, was equal to the delight of
leaving town just at this moment of the year, when hedge and meadow
were donning their brightest garments and the sky gleamed with its
purest blue. He spoke in the tone of rapturous enjoyment, and yet
one might have felt a doubt whether his sensibility was as keen as
he professed or imagined; all the time, he appeared to be thinking
of something else. Most of his remarks were addressed to Miss Bride,
and with that manner of intimate friendliness which he alone of the
family used towards their visitor. He inquired about the events of
her life, and manifested a strong interest in the facts which
Constance briefly repeated.

"Let me walk with you as far as the station," he said, when the time
came for her departure.

"Please don't trouble," Constance replied, with a quick glance at
Mrs. Lashmar's face, still resentful under the conventional smile.

Dyce, without more words, took his hat and accompanied her; the
vicar went with them to the garden gate, courteous but obviously
embarrassed.

"Pray remember me to your father, Miss Bride," he said. "I should
much like to hear from him."

"It's chilly this evening," remarked Dyce, as he and his companion
walked briskly away. "Are you going far?"

"To Hollingford."

"But you'll be travelling for two or three hours. What about your
dinner?"

"Oh, I shall eat something when I get home."

"Women are absurd about food," exclaimed Dyce, with laughing
impatience. "Most of you systematically starve yourselves, and
wonder that you get all sorts of ailments. Why wouldn't you stay at
the vicarage to-night? I'm quite sure it would have made no
difference if you had got back to Hollingford in the morning."

"Perhaps not, but I don't care much for staying at other people's
houses."