And yet a man who had to live in mean lodgings in a small, dark house, in a narrow dirty street in the Strand, where in two musty stuffy rooms he crowded his wife, who was as refined and delicate as himself, and six little girls, who would have been beautiful had they not suffered so much from confined air, bad food and scant clothing.
His position really was not at fault. England, and especially London, is so fearfully overcrowded; the competition in all trades, professions and occupations is so hopelessly great.
He was an usher in a third-rate London school, and he had an income barely sufficient to support himself in comfort; and of course it will be said that he ought not to have married.
Ah! but Nature had fooled him in his youth as she fools so many. And yet I take that back. I will utter no such blasphemy against Holy Nature. No doubt Nature is always right, and it is always well that children should be born, even though they should suffer cruelly and die early, since they are born for the eternal life, through to which this earthly life is but a short, rough gateway, soon passed.
But without excusing themselves with any such hypothesis as this, the young man and young girl had followed Nature, taken the leap in the dark, and plunged head—no, heart foremost, into their imprudent marriage. And the natural consequences ensued. The beautiful children came as unhesitatingly as if they were entering upon a heritage of wealth, health and happiness, instead of want, illness, and misery; and every year added to their number.
The wretched father groaned for himself and his wife.
But the gentle mother reminded him that Heaven, in afflicting them with lighter trials, had always spared them the one great trial that they never could be able to bear—namely, the loss of their children. Not one of the little ones had been taken from them. Each and all had fought valiantly and successfully through measles, whooping-cough, scarlet fever, and the rest; but whether because of, or in spite of the cheap quack medicines the impoverished parents poured down their throats, I cannot say.
It was when they were expecting their seventh child that Clarence Everage, who had been hunted out by Alexander Lyon and the lawyers, was suddenly called from his obscurity to bear witness in the investigation of Mr. Lyon’s claim to the Barony of Killcrichtoun.
It was but a link in the chain of evidence that he was to furnish. But any information he was expected to be able to give was as nothing compared to the tremendous revelation that was about to be made to himself.
He, the poor usher, starving in a miserable third-floor back in Wellington street, Strand—heir presumptive to a barony!—the ancient Barony of Killcrichtoun! And but for this intrusive foreigner actually Baron of Killcrichtoun himself. For be it remembered that Clarence Everage knew nothing whatever of Alexander Lyon’s wife and child.