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     THE STORY
     OF LOUIE

     BY
     OLIVER ONIONS

     Author of "In Accordance With the Evidence,"
     "The Debit Account," etc.

     GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
     NEW YORK

     _Publishers in America for Hodder & Stoughton_




     TO
     GWLADYS




CONTENTS


                          PAGE

     PROLOGUE                9

     PART ONE
     RAINHAM PARVA          25

     PART TWO
     SUTHERLAND PLACE      109

     PART THREE
     MORTLAKE ROAD         175

     PART FOUR
     PILLAR TO POST        213

     PART FIVE
     THE CONSOLIDATION     259

     ENVOI                 356




PROLOGUE

I


In an old number of _Punch_, under the heading "Society's New Pet: The
Artist's Model," is to be found a drawing by Du Maurier, of which the
descriptive text runs:

   "And how did you and Mr. Sopley come to quarrel, dear Miss
   Dragon?"

   "Well, your Grace, it was like this: I was sitting to him in a
   cestus for 'The Judgment of Paris,' when someone called as wished
   to see him most particular; so he said: 'Don't move, Miss Dragon,
   or you'll disturb the cestus.' 'Very good, sir,' I said, and off
   he went; and when he come back in an hour and a 'alf or so he
   said: 'You've moved, Miss Dragon!' 'I 'aven't!' I said. 'You
   '_ave_!' he said. 'I 'AVEN'T!' I said--and no more I 'adn't, your
   Grace. And with that I off with his cestus an' wished him
   good-morning, an' I never been near him since!"

Du Maurier may or may not have been wrong about the newness of this
craze of "Society's." If he was right, the Honourable Emily
Scarisbrick becomes at once a pioneer. Let there be set down, here in
the beginning, the plain facts of how, a good ten years before the
indignant Miss Dragon "offed with" Mr. Sopley's cestus, the Honourable
Emily found a way to bridge the gulf that lies between Bohemia and
Mayfair.

Except in the case of one person not yet born into these pages, the
report that the lady had engaged herself, early in the year 1869, to
"Mr. Buckley, her drawing-master," had only a short currency. It was
probably devised by the Honourable Emily herself in order to soften
the blow for her brother, Lord Moone. The real name of the man to whom
she engaged herself was James Buckley Causton. Under this name he
appears on the rolls of the 4th Dragoon Guards as a trooper in the
years 1862-1867; and as "Buck" Causton he attained some celebrity
when, in the last-named year, he vanquished one Piker Betteridge in
the prize ring, in a battle which, beginning with gloves and ending
with bare knuckles, lasted for nearly nine hours.

For all we know, it may have been Miss Dragon's Mr. Sopley who, seeing
the magnificent Buck in the ring, first put it into the ex-trooper's
head to become an artists' model. However it was, an artists' model he
did become, and, as such, the rage. No doubt Sopley, if it were he,
would gladly have kept his discovery to himself; but a neck like a
sycamore and a thorax capable of containing nine-hours-contest lungs
cannot be hid when Academy time comes round. Sopley's measure was
known. If Sopley painted an heroic picture it was certain he had had a
hero as model. The Academy opens in May; before June was out Sopley's
find was no longer his own. Sir Frederick Henson, the artist who moved
so in the world that in him the tradition of the monarch who picked up
the painter's brush for him might almost have been said to live again,
saw Buck, marked Buck down as his own, and presently had sole
possession of Buck.

The Honourable Emily Scarisbrick already had possession of Sir
Frederick. To be sure, it neither needed a Sir Frederick Henson to
teach her the stippling of birds' eggs and the copying of castles for
the albums of her friends, nor was the great Academician accustomed to
stooping to the office of salaried drawing-master; but--the Honourable
Emily was a Scarisbrick, of Mallard Bois.

In Henson's studio the Honourable Emily first saw Buck Causton.

To say that she fell in love with him would demand a definition of the
term. Certainly she fell in something with him. Perhaps that something
was the something that at the last thrusts baronies and Mallard Boises
aside as hindrances to a design even larger than that in which they
play so important a part; but we have nothing to do with large designs
here. Call it what you will: something proper enough to legend, but of
little enough propriety in a modern lady's life; a feeble echo of
Romance, perhaps, but never itself to become Romance unless, of it or
present scandal, it should prove the stronger. At any rate, it was a
very different thing from anything she felt, or ever had felt, for
Captain Cecil Chaffinger, of the White Hussars, her brother's nominee
for her hand.

It was a word dropped by the gallant Captain, himself a follower of
the fancy, that led her to the discovery that the hero of some feat or
other of extraordinary skill and endurance, and the young Ajax, all
chest and grey eyes and brown curls, who did odd jobs about the studio
in the intervals of posing for Henson's demigodlike canvases, were one
and the same person. Her already throbbing pulse bounded. She herself
was twenty-eight, a small, dark, febrile woman, given over to
discontents based on nothing save on an irremediably spoiled
childhood, and perhaps hankering after an indiscretion in the
conviction that indiscretions were of two kinds--indiscretions, and
the indiscretions of the Scarisbricks. Naturally she became conscious
of a quickened interest in her art.

The first indication that this interest passed beyond birds eggs and
castles was that she began "Lessons in Drapery." If here for a few
moments her story becomes a little technical, it may be none the less
interesting on that account.

The study of Drapery _as_ Drapery has not much interest for anybody
unless perhaps for a student of mechanics. For all that, it is, or
then was, regarded by drawing-masters as a self-contained subject, to
be tackled, ticked off, and thenceforward possessed. To the study of
Drapery in this unrelated sense the Honourable Emily apparently
inclined. Seeing her therefore, in this fundamental error, Sir
Frederick, a master of Drapery, took from her the "copies" which had
already supplanted the "copies" of castles in her portfolio, and
good-humouredly began to tell her what she really wanted. What she
really wanted, he said, was to rid her mind of the idea that folds
existed for their own sake, and to endeavour to realise that their
real significance lay in the thing enfolded. Miss Scarisbrick thanked
him.

So, at first from the lay figure, and then from Henson's model, she
began to draw Drapery with special reference to the thing draped.

About this time she gave Captain Chaffinger for an answer a "No" which
he refused to take. His devotion, he said, forbade him. If by his
devotion he meant his devotion to his creditors, his constancy
remained at their service. In the meantime he was still able to pay
his old debts by contracting new ones.

The Honourable Emily's studies became diligent.

There is little to be said about these things except that they do
happen. A word now about Buck's attitude.

Had the Honourable Emily's maid thrown herself at his head he would
have known what to do. His sense of the holiness of social degrees
would have received no shock. But the Honourable Emily, who could
command her maid, could not command what in all probability her maid
would not have had to ask twice for. The most she got (when after much
that is omitted here, it did at last dawn on the bashful Buck that she
had any will in the matter at all) was a blush so sudden and violent
that it compelled an embarrassed reddening of her own cheeks also.
Buck was not personally outraged. It was his sense of Order that was
outraged. He remembered the lady's station for her, and, stammeringly
but reverentially, put her back into it.

Now to be merely reverential to a woman who is in love with you is to
provoke impatience, anger and tears. On the other hand, to see a woman
in tears because you will not permit her to humiliate herself is to
have the other half of an impossible situation. It was one
luncheon-time (the Honourable Emily now lunched frequently at the
studio) that the tears came.

"Oh, you don't care for me--you don't care for me!" she sobbed.

Buck could not truthfully have said that he did care for her; but
there she was before him, in tears.

"If it were that Dragon girl, now----"

Buck, while not failing to see the force of this, could only make
imploring movements for the Honourable Emily to calm herself.
Presently she did calm herself, sufficiently to change her tone to one
of irony.

"Do you read your Bible?" she shot over her shoulder.

"Yes, miss," said Buck--"that is--I mean----"

The reason for Buck's hesitation was that he had suddenly doubted
whether the Honourable Emily would know a Racing Calendar by the name
she had just used.

"Do you mean _The_ Bible, miss?" he said, fidgeting.

She snapped: "Yes--the one with the story of Joseph in it----"

She burst into tears anew.

"Oh, that I should have to beg a man to marry me! I hate myself--I
hate you!"

Her hatred, however, did not prevent repetitions of the scene. At the
last repetition that need trouble us here her tears conquered. The
helpless Buck comforted her after the only fashion he knew anything
about--the fashion he would have used towards her maid--on his knee.

He still, however, called her "Miss."

They were privately married in the June of 1869.

       *       *       *       *       *

"_Don't_ call me 'Miss'!" she broke out petulantly one day in the
middle of the honeymoon. "And you are _not_ to have your meals with
the servants! I shall lunch in my room to-day, and you are to be ready
to take me out at three o'clock."

"Yes, m'm," said Buck.

       *       *       *       *       *

Probably Lord Moone had less to do than he supposed with the
separation that took place in the September of the same year. We may
assume that a much more potent factor was the Honourable Mrs.
Causton's remembrance of her own words, "That I should have to beg a
man to marry me! I hate myself--I hate you!" She did very soon hate
both herself and him. Poor Buck merely hated the whole subversive
anomaly.

He accepted the proposal that they should separate with perfect
docility. It seemed to him entirely right. Indeed the only thing he
had not accepted with docility had been his introduction to Lord
Moone, on the only occasion on which the two men ever met, as "Mr.
Buckley, the drawing-master." Buck hadn't liked that much. He had made
himself Buck Ca