



Produced by Paul Haxo from page images generously made
available by the Internet Archive, the University of
California, the Hathi Trust Digital Library, and the
University of Illinois.





YOUNG EARNEST

THE ROMANCE OF A BAD START IN LIFE


BY

GILBERT CANNAN


Author of "Old Mole," "Round the Corner."


NEW YORK

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

1915



     Now my question is: have you a scheme of life consonant with the
     spirit of modern philosophy--with the views of intelligent, moral,
     humane human beings of this period?

          THE ADVENTURES OF HARRY RICHMOND.




COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY




     To
     O. M.


     Words skilled and woven do not make a book
     Except some truth in beauty shine in it.
     I bring you this because you overlook
     My faults to follow out my probing wit.
     And where it fails or falls short of its aim,
     You see design and waste nor praise nor blame
     On the achievement. Stirring to the will,
     Your wit still urges mine to greater skill.




CONTENTS


BOOK ONE
LINDA BROCK

CHAPTER                            PAGE

   I. LOVE IN EARNEST                 3
  II. 166 HOG LANE WEST              13
 III. GEORGE MARRIED                 29
  IV. A RETURN                       41
   V. SETTLING DOWN                  51
  VI. PROFESSOR SMALLMAN             60
 VII. FLYING NEAR THE CANDLE         71
VIII. INTIMACY                       85
  IX. PATERFAMILIAS                  98
   X. HONEYMOON                     109
  XI. MATRIMONY                     130
 XII. ESCAPE                        147


BOOK TWO
ANN PIDDUCK

   I. ADVENTURE IN LONDON           157
  II. MITCHAM MEWS                  169
 III. MR. MARTIN                    182
  IV. LEARNING A TRADE              196
   V. TOGETHER                      206
  VI. KILNER                        219
 VII. OLD LUNT                      226
VIII. RITA AND JOE                  236
  IX. TALK                          254
   X. AN ENCOUNTER                  270
  XI. VISION                        277
 XII. SETTLEMENT                    285


BOOK THREE
CATHLEEN BENTLEY

   I. MEETING                       301
  II. HAPPINESS                     311
 III. THE WEST WIND                 322
  IV. EXPLANATION                   331
   V. THRIGSBY                      343
  VI. THE COMFORT OF RELIGION       362
 VII. CASEY'S VENTURE               370
VIII. THRIVING                      382
  IX. YOUNG LOVE DREAMING           388




BOOK ONE

LINDA BROCK




                             Ha! Ha!
     _So_ you take human nature upon trust?





I

LOVE IN EARNEST


     O that joy so soon should waste
        Or so sweet a bliss
        As a kiss
     Might not forever last!


IT annoyed the young man that at such a time, in such a place, he
should be thinking of his father. Waiting for his beloved, he desired
to have no thought but for her; most loyal intention sadly
unfulfilled, for he could think only of his father, first as a
wondrous being who could skillfully become at will an elephant or a
zebra, or more tranquilly fascinate and absorb by waggling his ears
with no disturbance of his face. The young man, John René Fourmy,
could more clearly remember his father's ears than his features. He
was introspective enough to know that his tenderness for the young
woman, his melting anticipation of her coming, had led him back to the
first adoration of his life, and from that to the tragedy of its
obliteration.

Came the distressing recollection of his father's downfall,
devastating for the boy of three who had witnessed it. He could
visualize it clearly, so sharp had been the cruel impression, the
indignity of it. The bedroom in the little house in the country where
they had lived near Billy Lummas and Sam Ardwick, who had fits in the
road. A room full of bed. In that bed his father and himself eager for
the moment when his father should arise from his bed and fill the
world, and his mother apparently just as eager because she was
entreating and imploring. Only the more did his father wrap himself in
the bedclothes. These suddenly were torn down amid peals of laughter;
a fond scuffle, though the boy perceived not the fondness; up went his
father's nightshirt, his long body was turned over and it was slapped
resoundingly on that place considerately designed by nature to receive
such onslaughts. The slapping was done with the back of a hairbrush,
an instrument that, in alternation with a slipper, was used upon
himself. That a man, that a glorious father should suffer, and,
because he suffered, deserve such an indignity, was too much. A shadow
came over the world, and René remembered flinging himself down by the
bed and shedding passionate tears for the departed glory. Thereafter
his father was no wonder to him, he too was subject to the authority
of his mother, and became henceforth only a tyrannous buffoon,
nervously kind or noisily angry.

Then René remembered the return from the country to a succession of
houses in streets; his father just risen from his bed as he came home
to dinner at midday; bottles of whisky and boxes of cigarettes. And
when at school they asked him what his father was, he used to reply,
"A gentleman. And he went to a public school," that being the formula
which had been given to him to account for existence and all its
puzzlements. Public school and heaven were for a long time confounded
in his mind, and the formula had accounted adequately for his father's
Elijah-like disappearance from the scene when René was ten.

That was all he knew, and there was the sting of injustice in this
present intrusion in the Scottish glen, hallowed by the delights of a
young love which boy and girl had arranged should shake the world into
a wonder at its glory. A sordid family history was a clog upon
romance, and our young man was that earnest creature, a romantic.

A stolen love, for she lived at the great house taken by her father
for the sport