YOUNG LIVES

BY

RICHARD LE GALLIENNE

1899

TO

ALFRED LEE

IN MEMORY OF ANGEL

_September, 1898_. 

 _Let thy soul strive that still the same Be early friendship's sacred flame; The affinities have strongest part In youth, and draw men heart to heart: As life wears on and finds no rest, The individual in each breast Is tyrannous to sunder them_. 

CONTENTS

Chapter I. HARD YOUNG HEARTS. II. CONCERNING THOSE "ATLANTIC LINERS" AND AN OLD DESK. III. OF THE LOVE OF HENRY AND ESTHER. IV. OF THE PROFESSIONS THAT CHOOSE, AND MIKE LAFLIN. V. OF THE LOVE OF ESTHER AND MIKE, AND THE MESURIER LAW IN REGARD TO "SWEETHEARTS". VI. THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF HOME. VII. A LINK WITH CIVILISATION. VIII. A RHAPSODY OF TYRE. IX. A PENITENTIARY OF THE MATHEMATICS. X. THE GRASS BETWEEN THE FLAG-STONES. XI. HUMANITY IN HIGH PLACES. XII. DAMON AND PYTHIAS. XIII. DAMON AND PYTHIAS AT THE THEATRE. XIV. CONTRIBUTIONS TOWARDS A GENEALOGY. XV. MERELY A HUMBLE INTERRUPTION AND ILLUSTRATION OF THE LAST. XVI. CHAPTER FOURTEEN CONCLUDED. XVII. DOT'S DECISION. XVIII. MIKE AND HIS MILLION POUNDS. XIX. ON CERTAIN ADVANTAGES OF A BACKWATER. XX. THE MAN IN POSSESSION. XXI. LITTLE MISS FLOWER. XXII. MIKE'S FIRST LAURELS. XXIII. THE MOTHER OF AN ANGEL. XXIV. AN ANCIENT THEORY OF HEAVEN. XXV. THE LAST CONTINUED, AFTER A BRIEF INTERVAL. XXVI. CONCERNING THE BEST KIND OF WIFE FOR A POET. XXVII. THE BOOK OF ANGELICA. XXVIII. WHAT COMES OF PUBLISHING A BOOK. XXIX. MIKE'S TURN TO MOVE. XXX. UNCHARTERED FREEDOM. XXXI. A PREPOSTEROUS AUNT. XXXII. THE LITERARY GENTLEMAN IN THE BACK PARLOUR. XXXIII. "THIS IS LONDON, THIS IS LIFE". XXXIV. THE WITS. XXXV. BACK TO REALITY. XXXVI. THE OLD HOME MEANWHILE. XXXVII. STAGE WAITS, MR. LAFLIN. XXXVIII. ESTHER AND HENRY ONCE MORE. XXXIX. MIKE AFAR. XL. A LEGACY MORE PRECIOUS THAN GOLD. XLI. LABORIOUS DAYS. XLII. A HEAVIER FOOTFALL. XLIII. STILL ANOTHER CALLER. XLIV. THE END OF A BEGINNING. 

YOUNG LIVES

CHAPTER I

HARD YOUNG HEARTS

Behind the Venetian blinds of a respectable middle-class, fifty-pound-a-year, "semi-detached, " "family" house, in a respectablemiddle-class road of the little north-county town of Sidon, midwaybetween the trees of wealth upon the hill, and the business quartersthat ended in squalor on the bank of the broad and busy river, --a houseboasting a few shabby trees of its own, in its damp little rockeriedslips of front and back gardens, --on a May evening some ten or twelveyears ago, a momentous crisis of contrasts had been reached. 

The house was still as for a battle. It was holding its breath to hearwhat was going on in the front parlour, the door of which seemed to wearan expression of being more than usually closed. A mournful half-lightfell through a little stained-glass vestibule into a hat-racked hall, onthe walls of which hung several pictures of those great steamships knownas "Atlantic liners" in big gilt frames--pictures of a significancepresently to be noted. A beautiful old eight-day clock ticked solemnlyto the flickering of the hall lamp. From below came occasionally afurtive creaking of the kitchen stairs. The two servants were half wayup them listening. The stairs a flight above the hall also creaked atintervals. Two young girls, respectively about fourteen and fifteen, were craning necks out of nightdresses over the balusters in a shadowyangle of the staircase. On the floor above them three other little girlsof gradually diminishing ages slept, unconscious of the issues beingdecided between their big brother and their eldest sister on the oneside, and their father and mother on the other, in the frontparlour below. 

That parlour, a room of good size, was unostentatiously furnished withgood bourgeois mahogany. A buxom mahogany chiffonier, a large squaredining-table, a black marble clock with two dials, one being abarometer, three large oil landscapes of exceedingly umbrageous treesand glassy lakes, inoffensively uninteresting, more Atlantic liners, anda large bookcase, apparently filled with serried lines of boundmagazines, and an excellent Brussels carpet of quiet pattern, weremainly responsible for a general effect of middle-class comfort, inwhich, indeed, if beauty had not been included, it had not been wilfullyviolated, but merely unthought of. The young people for whom thesefamiliar objects meant a symbolism deep-rooted in their earliestmemories could hardly in fairness have declared anything positivelypainful in that room--except perhaps those Atlantic liners; theircharges against furniture, which was unconsciously to them accumulatingmemories that would some day bring tears of tenderness to their eyes, could only have been negative. Beauty had been left out, but at leastugliness had not been ostentatiously called in. There was no bad taste. 

In fact, whatever the individual character of each component object, there was included in the general effect a certain indefinable dignity, which had doubtless nothing to do with the mahogany, but was probablyone of those subtle atmospheric impressions which a room takes from thepeople who habitually live in it. Had you entered that room when it wasempty, you would instinctively have felt that it was accustomed to theoccupancy of calm and refined people. There was something almostreligious in its quiet. Some one often sat there who, whatever hiscommonplace disguises as a provincial man of business, howeverinadequate to his powers the work life had given him to do, provincialand humiliating as were the formulae with which narrowing conditions hadsupplied him for expression of himself, was in his central being anaristocrat, --though that was the very last word James Mesurier wouldhave thought of applying to himself. He was a man of business, servingGod and his employers with stern uprightness, and bringing up a largefamily with something of the Puritan severity which had marked his ownearly training; and, as in his own case no such allowance had been made, making no allowance in his rigid abstract code for the diversetemperaments of his children, --children in whom certain qualities andneeds of his own nature, dormant from his birth, were awakening, supplemented by the fuller-fed intelligence and richer nature of themother, into expansive and rebellious individualities. 

It was now about eleven o'clock, and the house was thus lit and alivehalf-an-hour beyond the rigorously enforced bed-time. An hour before, James Mesurier had been peacefully engaged on the task which had beennightly with him at this hour for twenty-five years, --the writing of hisdiary, in a shorthand which he wrote with a neatness, almost adaintiness, that always marked his use of pen and ink, and gave to hismerely commercial correspondence and his quite exquisitely keptaccounts, a certain touch of the scholar, --again an air of distinctionin excess of, and unaccounted for, by the nature of the interests whichit dignified. 

His somewhat narrow range of reading, had you followed it by his carefulmarkings through those bound volumes of sermons in the bookcase, borethe same evidence of inherited and inadequately occupied refinement. Hislife from boyhood had been too much of a struggle to leave him muchleisure for reading, and such as he had enjoyed had been diverted intoevangelical channels by the influence of a certain pious old lady, withwhom as a young man he had boarded, and for whose memory all his lifehe cherished a reverence little short of saint-worship. 

The name of Mrs. Quiggins, whose portrait had still a conspicuous nicheamong the _lares_ of the household, --a little thin silvery oldwidow-lady, suggesting great sadness, much gentleness, and a littleseverity, --had thus become for the family of James Mesurier a symbol ofsanctity, with which a properly accredited saint of the calendar couldcertainly not, in that Protestant home, have competed. It was she whohad given him that little well-worn Bible which lay on the table withhis letters and papers, as he wrote under the lamplight, and than whicha world full of sacred relics contains none more sacred. A business-likeelastic band encircled its covers, as a precaution against pagesbecoming loose with much turning; and inside you would have foundscarcely a chapter unpencilled, --texts underlined, and sermons ofspecial helpfulness noted by date and preacher on the margin, --theitinerary of a devout human soul on its way through this world tothe next. 

The Bible and the sermons of a certain famous Nonconformist Divine ofthe day were James Mesurier's favourite and practically his onlyreading, at this time; though as a young man he had picked up a faireducation for himself, and had taken a certain interest in modernhistory. For novels he had not merely disapproval, but absolutely notaste. Once in a specially genial mood he had undertaken to try"Ivanhoe, " to please his favourite daughter, --this night in revoltagainst him, --and in half-an-hour he had been surprised with laughter, sound asleep. The sermon that would send him to sleep had never beenwritten, at all events by his favourite theologian, whose sermons heread every Sunday afternoon, and annotated with that same lovingappreciation and careful pencil with which a scholar annotates someclassic; so true is it that it is we who dignify our occupations, not they us. 

Similarly, James Mesurier presided over the destinies of a largecommercial undertaking, with the air of one who had been called ratherto direct an empire than a business. You would say as he went by, "Theregoes one accustomed to rule, accustomed to be regarded with greatrespect;" but that air had been his long before the authority that oncemore inadequately accounted for it. 

Thus this night, as he sat writing, his handsome, rather small, iron-grey head bent over his papers, his face somewhat French incharacter, his short beard slightly pointed; distinguished, refined, severe; he had the look of a marshal of France engrossed withdocuments of state. 

The mother, who sat in an armchair by the fire, reading, was a woman ofabout forty-five, with a fine blonde, aquiline face, distinctivelyEnglish, and radiating intelligence from its large sympathetic lines. She was in some respects so different from her husband as at times tomake children precociously wise--but nevertheless, far from knowingeverything--wonder why she had ever married their father, for whom, atthat time, it would be hypocrisy to describe their attitude as one oflove. To them he was not so much a father as the policeman of home, --apersonification of stern negative decrees, a systematic thwarter ofalmost everything they most cared to do. He was a sort of embodied "Thoushalt not, " only to be won into acquiescence by one influence, --that ofthe mother, whose married life, as she looked back on it, seemed toconsist of little else than bringing children into the world, with aChristian-like regularity, and interceding with the father for theirvarying temperaments when there. 

Though it might have been regarded as certain beforehand, that sevenchildren would differ each from each other in at least as many ways, itnever seems to have occurred to the father that one inflexible systemfor them all could hardly be wise or comfortable. But, indeed, like somany parents similarly trained and circumstanced, it is questionablewhether he ever realised their possession of separate individualitiestill they were pleaded for by the mother, or made, as on this evening, surprising assertion of themselves. 

Though this system of mediation had been responsible for the onlydisagreements in their married life, there had never been any long orserious difference between husband and wife; for, in spite of natures sodifferent, they loved each other with that love which is given us forthe very purpose of such situations, the love that no strain can snap, the love that reconciles all such disparities. Though Mary Mesurier hadalso been brought up among Nonconformists, and though the conditions ofher youth, like her husband's, had been far from adequate to thedemands of her nature, yet her religion had been of a gentler character, broadening instead of narrowing in its effects, and had concerned itselfless with divinity than humanity. Her home life, if humble, had beengenial and rich in love, and there had come into it generous influencesfrom the outer world, --books with more of the human beat in them than isto be found in sermons; and particularly an old travelled grandfatherwho had been regarded as the rolling stone of his family, but in whom, at all events, failure and travel had developed a great gentleness andunderstanding of the human creature, which in long walks and talks withhis little grand-daughter somehow passed over into her young character, and proved the best legacy he could have left her. Through him too wasencouraged a native love of poetry, of which in her childhood her memoryacquired a stock which never failed her, and which had often cheered herlonely hours by successive cradles. She had a fine natural gift ofrecitation, and in evening hours when the home was particularly unitedin some glow of visitors or birthday celebration, she would be persuadedto recall some of those old songs and simple apologues, with such charmthat even her husband, to whom verse was naturally an incomprehensibletriviality, was visibly softened, and perhaps, deep in the sadness ofhis silent nature, moved to a passing realisation of a certain somethingkind and musical in life which he had strangely missed. 

This greater breadth of temperament and training enabled Mary Mesurierto understand and make allowances for the narrower and harder nature ofher husband, whom she learnt in time rather to pity for the bleakness ofhis early days, than to condemn for their effect upon his character. Hewas strong, good, clever, and handsome, and exceptionally all those fourgood reasons for loving him; and the intellectual sympathy, the sharingof broader interests, which she sometimes missed in him, she had forsome three or four years come to find in her eldest son, who, to hisfather's bewilderment and disappointment, had reincarnated his ownstrong will, in connection with literary practices and dreams whichthreatened to end in his becoming a poet, instead of the business manexpected of him, for which development that love of poetry in oneparent, and a certain love of books in both, was no doubt to some degreeguiltily responsible. 

James Mesurier, as we have said, was no judge of poetry; and, had hebeen so, a reading of his son's early effusions would have made himstill more obdurate in the choice for him of a commercial career; but ongeneral principles he was quite sufficiently firm against any but themost non-committing, leisure-hour flirtation with the Muse. The mother, while agreeing with the father's main proposition of the undesirability, nay, impossibility, of literature as a livelihood, --had not the greatand successful Sir Walter himself described it as a good walking-stick, but a poor crutch; a stick applied, since its first application as animage, to the shoulders of how many generations of youthful genius, --wasnaturally more sympathetic towards her son's ambition, and encouraged itto the extent of helping from her housekeeping money the formation ofhis little library, even occasionally proving successful in winning sumsof money from the father for the purchase of some book specially, as theyoung man would declare, necessary for his development. 

As this little library had outgrown the accommodation of the commonrooms, a daring scheme had been conceived between mother and son, --noless than that he should have a small room set apart for himself as astudy. When first broached to the father, this scheme had met with anabsolute denial that seemed to promise no hope of further consideration;but the mother, accepting defeat at the time, had tried again and again, with patient dexterity at favourable moments, till at last one proud daythe little room, with its bookshelves, a cast of Dante, and a strangepicture or two, was a beautiful, significant fact--all ready for thepossible visitation of the Muse. 

In such ways had the mother negotiated the needs of all her children;though the youth of the rest--save the eldest girl, whose music lessonshad meant a battle, and whose growing attractiveness for the boys of thedistrict, and one in particular, was presently to mean another--made asyet but small demands. In one question, however, periodically fruitfulof argument, even the youngest was becoming interested, --the question ofthe visits to the household of the various friends and playmates of thechildren. To these, it must be admitted, James Mesurier was apt to behardly less of a figure of fear than to his own children; for, apartfrom the fact that such inroads from without were apt to disturb his fewquiet evening hours with rollicking and laughter, he, being entirelyunsocial in his own nature, had a curious idea that the family should besufficient to itself, and that the desire for any form of entertainmentoutside it was a sign of dissatisfaction with God's gifts of a goodhome, and generally a frivolity to be discouraged. 

As a boy he had grown up without companions, and as a man had remainedlonely, till he had met in his wife the one comrade of his days. Whathad been good enough for their father should be good enough for hischildren, was a formula which he applied all round to their bringing up, curiously forgetful, for a man at heart so just, of the pleasure onewould have expected it to be to make sure that the errors of his owntraining were not repeated in that of his offspring. But, indeed, therewas in him constitutionally something of the Puritan suspicion of, andaversion from, pleasure, which it had never occurred to him to consideras the end of, or, indeed, as a considerable element of existence. Lifewas somehow too serious for play, spiritually as well as materially; andmuch work and a little rest was the eternal and, on the whole, salutarylot of man. 

Such were some of the conditions among which the young Mesuriers foundthemselves, and of which their impatience had become momentouslyexplosive this February evening. 

For some days there had been an energetic simmer of rebellion among thefour elder children against a new edict of early rising which was surelysomewhat arbitrary. Early rising was one of James Mesurier's articles offaith; and he was always up and dressed by half-past six, though therewas no breakfast till eight, and absolutely no necessity for his risingat that hour beyond his own desire. There was still less, indeed none atall, for his children to rise thus early; but nevertheless he hadrecently decreed that such, for the future, must be the rule. The rulefell heaviest upon the sisters, for the elder brother had always enjoyeda certain immunity from such edicts. His sense of justice, however, kindled none the less at this final piece of tyranny. He blazed andfumed indignantly on behalf of his sisters, in the sanctuary of thatlittle study, --a spot where the despot seldom set foot; and out of thiscomparatively trivial cause had sprung a mighty resolution, which he andshe whom he proudly honoured as "sister and friend" had, after somegirding of the loins, repaired to the front parlour this evening tocommunicate. 

They had entered somewhat abruptly, and stood rather dramatically by thetable on which the father was writing, --the son with dark set face, inwhich could be seen both the father and mother, and the daughter, timidand close to him, resolutely keeping back her tears, a slim young copyof the mother. 

"Well, my dears?" said the father, looking up with a keen, rathersurprised glance, and in a tone which qualified with some severity the"my dears. "

The son had had some exceedingly fine beginnings in his head, but theyfled ignominiously with the calm that was necessary for their successfuldelivery, and he blurted at once to the point. 

"We have come to say that we are no longer comfortable at home, and havedecided to leave it. "

"Henry, " exclaimed the mother, hastily, "what do you mean, how can yoube so ungrateful?"

"Mary, my dear, " interrupted the father, "please leave the matter tome. " Then turning to the son: "What is this you are saying? I'm afraid Idon't understand. "

"I mean that Esther and I have decided to leave home and live together;because it is impossible for us to live here any longer in happiness--"

"On what do you propose to live?"

"My salary will be sufficient for the present. "

"Sixty pounds a year!"

"Yes!"

"And may I ask what is wrong with your home? You have every comfort--farmore than your mother or father were accustomed to. "

"Yes, indeed!" echoed the mother. 

"Yes, we know you are very good and kind, and mean everything for ourgood; but you don't understand other needs of our natures, and you makeno allowance for our individualities--"

"Indeed! Individualities--I should like you to have heard what myfather would have said to talk about individualities. A rope's end wouldhave been his answer to that--"

"It would have been a very silly one, and no argument. "

"It would have been effective, at all events. "

"Not with me--"

"Well, please don't bandy words with me, sir. If you, " particularlyaddressing his son, "wish to go--then go; but remember that once youhave left your father's roof, you leave it for ever. As for your sister, she has no power to leave her mother and father without my consent, andthat I shall certainly withhold till she is of a proper age to know whatis best for herself--"

"She will go then without your consent, " defiantly answered the son. 

"Oh, Henry, for shame!" exclaimed Mrs. Mesurier. 

"Mother dear, I'm sorry, --we don't mean to be disrespectful orundutiful, --but father's petty tyrannies are more than we can bear. Heobjects to the friends we care for; he denies us the theatre--"

"Most certainly, and shall continue to do so. I have never been inside atheatre in my life; nor, with my consent, shall any child of mine enterone of them. "

"You can evidently know little about them then, and you'd be a muchfiner man if you had, " flashed out the son. 

"Your sitting in judgment on your father is certainly very pretty, Imust say, "--answered the father, --"very pretty; and I can only hope thatyou will not have cause to regret it some future day. But I cannot allowyou to disturb me, " for, with something of a pang, Henry noticed signsof agitation amid the severity of his parent, though the matter was toomomentous for him to allow the indulgence of pity. 

"You have been a source of much anxiety to your mother and me, a childof many prayers;" the father continued. "Whether it is the books youread, or the friends you associate with, that are responsible for yourstrange and, to my thinking, impious opinions, I do not know; but this Iknow, that your influence on your sister has not of late been for good, and for her sake, and the sake of your young sisters, it may perhaps bewell that your influence in the home be removed--"

"Oh, James, " exclaimed the wife. 

"Mary, my dear, you must let me finish. If Henry will go, go he shall;but if he still stays, he must learn that I am master in this house, andthat while I remain so, not he, but I shall dictate how it is to becarried on. "

It was at this point that Esther ventured to lift the girlish tremor ofher voice. 

"But, father, if you'll forgive my saying so, I think it would be bestfor another reason for us to go. There are too many of us. We haven'troom to grow. We get in each other's way. And then it would ease you; itwould be less expense--"

"When I complain of having to support my children, it will be time tospeak of that--"

"But you have complained, " hotly interrupted the son; "you havereproached us many a time for what we cost you for clothes and food--"

"Yes, when you have shown yourselves ungrateful for them, as you doto-night--"

"Ungrateful! For what should we be grateful? That you do your bare dutyof feeding and clothing us, and even for that, expect, in my case at allevents, that I shall prove so much business capital invested for thefuture. Was it we who asked to come into the world? Did you consult us, or did you beget us for anything but your own selfish pleasure, withouta thought--"

Henry got no further. His father had grown white, and, with terribleanger pointed to the door. 

"Leave the room, sir, " he said, "and to-morrow leave my house for ever. "

The son was not cowed. He stood with an unflinching defiance before thefather, in whom he forgot the father and saw only the tyrant. For amoment it seemed as if some unnatural blow would be struck; but so muchof pain was spared the future memory of the scene, and saying only, "Itis true for all that, " he turned and left the room. The sister followedhim in silence, and the door closed. 

Mother and father looked at each other. They had brought up children, they had suffered and toiled for them, --that they should talk to themlike this! Mrs. Mesurier came over to her husband, and put her armtenderly on his shoulder. 

"Never mind, dear. I'm sure he didn't mean to talk like that. He is agood boy at heart, but you don't understand each other. "

"Mary dear, we will talk no more of it to-night, " he replied; "I willtry and put it from me. You go to bed. I will finish my diary, and beup in a few minutes. "

When he was alone, he sat still a little while, with a great lonely painon his face, and almost visibly upon it too the smart of the woundedpride of his haughty nature. Never in his life had he been spoken tolike that, --and by his own son! The pang of it was almost more than hecould bear. But presently he had so far mastered himself as to take uphis pen and continue his writing. When that was finished, he opened hisBible and read his wonted chapter. It was just the simple twenty-thirdpsalm: "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. " It was his favouritepsalm, and always had a remarkable tranquillising effect upon him. JamesMesurier's faith in God was very great. Then he knelt down and prayed insilence, --prayed with a great love for his disobedient children; and, when he rose from his knees, anger and pain had been washed away fromhis face, and a serenity that is not of this world was there instead. 

CHAPTER II

CONCERNING THOSE "ATLANTIC LINERS" ANDAN OLD DESK

Of all battles in this complicated civil warfare of human life, none ismore painful than that being constantly waged from generation togeneration between young and old, and none, it would appear, moreinevitable, or indeed necessary. "The good gods sigh for the cost andpain, " and as, growing older ourselves, we become spectators of such aconflict, with eyes able to see the real goodness and truth of bothcombatants, how often must we exclaim: "Oh, just for a little touch ofsympathetic comprehension on either side!"

And yet, after all, it is from the older generation that we have a rightto expect that. If that vaunted "experience" with which they areaccustomed to extinguish the voice of the young means anything, itshould surely include some knowledge of the needs of expanding youth, and be prepared to meet them, not in a spirit of despotic denial, but inthat of thoughtful provision. The young cannot afford to be generous, even if they possess the necessary insight. It would mean their losingtheir battle, --a battle very necessary for them to win. 

Sometimes it would seem that a very little kindly explanation on thepart of the elder would set the younger at a point of view where greatersympathy would be possible. The great demand of the young is for someform of poetry in their lives and surroundings; and it is largely thefault of the old if the poetry of one generation is almost invariablythe prose of the next. 

Those "Atlantic liners" are an illustration of my meaning. To the youngMesuriers they were hideous chromo-lithographs in vulgar gilt frames, arbitrary defacements of home; but undoubtedly even they would havefound a tolerant tenderness for them, had they realised that theyrepresented the poetry--long since renounced and put behind him--ofJames Mesurier's life. He had come of a race of sea-captains, two of hisbrothers had been sailors, and deep down in his heart the spirit ofromance answered, with voice fresh and young as ever, to any breath orassociation of the sea. But he seldom, if ever, spoke of it, and only inan anecdote or two was it occasionally brought to mind. Sometimes hiswife would tease him with the vanity which, on holidays by the sea, would send him forth on blustering tempestuous nights clad in agreatcoat of blue pilot-cloth and a sealskin cap, and tell how proud hewas on one occasion, as he stood on the wharf, at being addressed as"captain, " and asked what ship he had brought into port. Even the hardheart of youth must soften at such a reminiscence. 

Then scattered about the house was many a prosaic bit of furniture whichwas musical with memories for the parents, --memories of their firstlittle homes and their early struggles together. This side-board, nowrelegated to the children's play-room, had once been their _pièce deresistance_ in such and such a street, twelve years ago, before theirchildren had risen up and--not called them blessed. 

A few years, and the light of poetry will be upon these things for theirchildren too; but, meanwhile, can we blame them that they cannot acceptthe poetry of their elders in exchange for that of their own which theyare impatient to make? And when that poetry is made and resident insimilar concrete objects of home--how will it seem, one wonders, totheir children? This old desk which Esther has been allowed toappropriate, and in a secret drawer of which are already accumulatingcertain love-letters and lavender, will it ever, one wonders, turn tolumber in younger hands? For a little while she leans her sweet youngbosom against it, and writes scented letters in a girlish hand to alittle red-headed boy who has these past weeks begun to love her. Can itbe possible that the desk on which Esther once wrote to her little Mikewill ever hear itself spoken of as "this ugly old thing"? Let ushope not. 

CHAPTER III

OF THE LOVE OF HENRY AND ESTHER

Father and son had both meant what they said; and even the mother, forwhom it would be the cruellest wrench of all, knew that Henry was goingto leave home. Not literally on the morrow, for the following evening hehad appeared before his father to apologise for the manner--carefullyfor the manner, not _the matter_, --in which he had spoken to him theevening before, and asked for a day or two in which to make hisarrangements for departure. James Mesurier was too strong a man to beresentful, and he accepted his son's apology with a gentleness that, aseach knew, detracted nothing from the resolution which each had come to. 

"My boy, " he said, "you will never have such good friends as your fatherand mother; but it is best that you go out into the world to learn it. "

There is something terribly winning and unnerving to the blackestresolution, when the severity of the strong dissolves for a brief momentinto tenderness. The rare kind words of the stern, explain it as wewill, and unjust as the preference must surely be, one values beyond thefrequent forgivenesses of the gentle. Mary Mesurier would have laid downher life in defence of her son's greatest fault, and James Mesurierwould as readily have court-martialled him for his smallest, and yet, somehow, a kind word from him brought the tears to his son's eyes. 

He had no longer the heart to stimulate the rebellion of Esther, as hefelt it his duty to do; and, to her disappointment, he announced that, on the whole, it would perhaps be best for him to go alone. 

"It would almost kill poor mother, " he said; "and father means wellafter all, " he added. 

"I'm afraid it would break father's heart, " said Esther. 

So these two young people agreed to spare their parents, though--let itnot be otherwise imagined--at a great sacrifice. The little paper onwhich they had carefully worked out their housekeeping, skilfullyallotting so much for rent, butcher's meat, milk, coals, and washing, and making "everything" come most optimistically to _£59 17s. 9d. _ ayear, would be of no use now, at all events for the present. Theirlittle Charles and Mary Lamb dream must be laid aside--for, of course, they had thought of Charles and Mary Lamb; and indeed, out beyond thishistory of a few youthful years, their friendship was to prove itselffar from unworthy of its famous model. 

Yet at this time it was of no great antiquity; for, but a very few yearsback, Henry had been a miniature tyrant too, and ruled it over hiskingdom of six sisters with all the hideous egoism of a pampered "sonand heir. " Although in the very middle class of society into which HenryMesurier was born, the dignity of eldest son is one but verycontingently connected with tangible inheritance, it is none the lessvigorously kept up; and, no doubt, without any consciousness ofpartiality, Henry Mesurier, from his childhood, had been brought up toregard himself as a sort of young prince, for whom all the privileges ofhome were, by divine right, reserved. For example, he took his mealswith his parents fully five years before any of his sisters wereallowed to do so; and for retention of this privilege, when at lengththe democratic measure of its extension to his two elder sisters wasproposed, he fought with the bitterest spirit of caste. Indeed, fewoligarchs have been more wildly hated than Henry Mesurier up to the age, say, of fourteen. That was the age of his last thrashing, and it was inthe gloomy dusk of that momentous occasion, as he lay alone withsmarting back in the twilight of an unusually early bed-time, that apossible new view of woman--as a creature of like passions andprivileges--presented itself to him. 

His thrashing had been so unjustly severe, that even the granite littlehearts of his sisters had been softened; and Esther, managing to secretea cake that he loved from the tea that was lost to him, stole with it tothe top of the house, where he writhed amid lonely echoes and shadows. 

She had brought it to him awkwardly, by no means sure of its reception, but sure in her heart that she would hate him for ever, if he missed themeaning of the little solatium. But fortunately his back was far toosore, and his spirit too broken to remember his pride, and he acceptedthe offering with gratitude and tears. 

"Kiss me, Esther, " he had said; and a wonderful thrill had gone throughthe little girl at this strange softness in the mighty, while the dawnof a wonderful pity for the lot of woman had, unconsciously, broken inthe soul of the boy. 

"Kiss me again, Esther, " he had said, and, with the tears that mingledin that kiss, an eternal friendship was baptized. 

Henry rose on the morrow a changed being. The grosser pretensions of themale had fallen from him for ever, and there was at first somethingalmost awe-inspiring to his sisters in the gentle solicitude for themand their rights and pleasures which replaced the old despotism. Fromthat time, Esther and he became closer and closer companions, and asthey more and more formed an oligarchy of two, a rearrangement ofparties in the little parliament of home came about, to be upset againas Dot and Mat qualified for admission into that exclusivelittle circle. 

So soon as Henry had a new dream or a new thought, he shared it withEsther; and freely as he had received from Carlyle, or Emerson, orThoreau, freely he passed it on to her. For the gloomiest occasion hehad some strengthening text, and one of the last things he did before heleft home was to make for her a little book which he called "Faith forCloudy Days, " consisting of energising and sustaining phrases fromcertain great writers, --as it were, a bottle of philosophical phosphatesagainst seasons of spiritual cowardice or debility. There one opened andread: "_Sudden the worst turns best to the brave_" or Thoreau's "_I haveyet to hear a single word of wisdom spoken to me by my elders, _" oragain Matthew Arnold's

 "_Tasks in hours of insight willed May be through hours of gloom fulfilled_. "

James Mesurier knew nothing of all this; but if he had, he might haveunderstood that after all his children were not so far from the kingdomof heaven. 

CHAPTER IV

OF THE PROFESSIONS THAT CHOOSE, ANDMIKE LAFLIN

However we may hint at its explanation by theories of inheritance, itstill remains curious with what unerring instinct a child of characterwill from the first, and when it is so evidently ignorant of the fieldof choice, select, out of all life's occupations and distinctions, onespecial work it hungers to do, one special distinction that to it seemsthe most desirable of earthly honours. That Mary Mesurier loved poetry, and James Mesurier sermons, in face of the fact that so many mothers andfathers have done the same with no such result, hardly seems adequate toaccount for the peculiar glamour which, almost before he could read, there was for Henry Mesurier in any form of print. While books werestill being read to him, there had already come into his mind, unaccountably, as by outside suggestion, that there could be nothing sosplendid in the world as to write a book for one's self. To be either asoldier, a sailor, an architect, or an engineer, would, doubtless, haveits fascinations as well; but to make a real printed book, with yourname in gilt letters outside, was real romance. 

At that early day, and for a long while after, the boy had no preferencefor any particular kind of book. It was an entirely abstract passion forprint and paper. To have been the author of "The Iliad" or of Beeton's"Book of Household Recipes" would have given him almost the sameexaltation of authorship; and the thrill of worship which came over himwhen, one early day, a man who had actually had an article on the sugarbounties accepted by a commercial magazine was pointed out to him in thestreet, was one he never forgot; nor in after years did he everencounter that transfigured contributor without an involuntaryrecurrence of that old feeling of awe. No subsequent acquaintance witheditorial rooms ever led him into materialistic explanations of thatenchanted piece of work--a newspaper. The editors might do theirbest--and succeed surprisingly--in looking like ordinary mortals, youmight even know the leader-writers, and, with the very public, gazethrough gratings into the subterranean printing-rooms, --the mystery nonethe less remained. No exposure of editorial staffs or other machinerycould destroy the sense of enchantment, as no amount of anatomy orbiology can destroy the mystery of the human miracle. 

So I suppose Nature first makes us in love with the tools we are to use, long before we have a thought upon what we shall use them. Perhaps thefirst desire of the born writer is to be a compositor. Out of the loveof mere type quickly evolves a love of mere words for their own sake;but whether we shall make use of them as a historian, novelist, philosopher, or poet, is a secondary consideration, a mere afterthought. To Henry Mesurier had already come the time when the face of life beganto Wear a certain aspect, the peculiar attraction of which for himselfhe longed to fix, a certain mystical importance attaching to thecommonest every-day objects and circumstances, a certain ecstaticquality in the simplest experiences; but even so far as it had beenrevealed, this dawning vision of the world seemed only to have come tohim, not so much to find expression, as to mock him with his childishincapacity adequately to use the very tools he loved. He would hang forhours over some scene in nature, caught in a woodland spell, like anympholept of old; but when he tried to put in words what he had seen, what a poor piece of ornamental gardening the thing was! There weretrees and birds and grass, to be sure; but there was nothing of thatmeaning look which they had worn, that look of being tiptoe withrevelation which is one of the most fascinating tricks of the visibleworld, and which even a harsh town full of chimneys can sometimes takeon when seen in given moments and lights. And it was astonishing to seeinto what lifeless imitative verse his most original and passionatemoments could be transformed. 

Still some unreasonably indulgent spirit of the air, that had evidentlynot read his manuscripts, whispered him to be of good cheer: thelifeless words would not always be lifeless, some day the birds wouldsing in his verses too. This sense of failure did not, it must be said, immediately follow composition; for, for a little while the originalexpression of the thing seen reinforced with reflected significance itspale copy. It was only some weeks after, when the written copy was leftto do all the work itself, that its foolish inadequacy was exposed. 

"However, there is one consolation, they are not worse than Keats andShelley wrote at the same age, " he said to himself, as he looked througha bundle of the poor things the evening before his room was to bedismantled. "Indeed, they couldn't be, " he added, with a smile. Fortunately he was but nineteen as yet; would he venture on a likecomparison were he twenty-five?

Yes, his little room was to be dismantled on the morrow, --this firstlittle private chapel of his spirit. This fair order of shelves, thisexternal harmony answering to an inner harmony of his spirit, were to bebroken up for ever. Often as he had sat in the folioed lamplit nookwhich was, as it were, the very chancel of the little church, and gazedin an ecstasy at the books, each with a great shining name of fame uponits cover, it had seemed as though he had put his very soul outside him, externalised it in this little corner of books and pictures. His soulshivered, as one who must go houseless awhile, at the thought thatto-morrow its home would be no more. When and how would be itsreincarnation? More magnificent, maybe, but never this again. It wassacrilege, --was it not ingratitude too? When once more the books and thepictures began to form into a new harmony, there would be no mother'slove to help the work go on. .. . 

But as he mused in this no doubt sentimental fashion, the door openedand the little red-headed Mike entered. His was a little Flibbertigibbetof a face, already lined with the practice of mimicry; and there was init a very attractive blending of tenderness and humour. Mike was alsoone of those whom life at the beginning had impressed with the delightof one kind of work and no other. When a mere imp of a boy, theheartless tormentor of a large and sententious stepmother, the despairof schoolmasters, the most ingenious of truants, a humorous ragamuffininvulnerable to punishment, it was already revealed to him that hismission in life was to be the observation and reproduction of humancharacter, particularly in its humorous aspects. To this end Nature hadgifted him with a face that was capable of every form of transformation, and at an early age he hastened to put it in training. All day long hewas pulling faces. As an artist will sketch everything he comes across, so Mike would endeavour to imitate any characteristic expression orattitude, animate or inanimate, in the world around him. Dogs, littleboys, and grotesque old men were his special delight, and of all hiselders he had, it goes without saying, a private gallery of irreverentlyfaithful portraits. 

In addition to his plastic face, Nature had given him a larynx which wascapable of imitating every human and inhuman sound. To squeak like apig, bark like a dog, low like a cow, and crow like a cock, were theveriest juvenilia of his attainments; and he could imitate the buzzingof a fly so cunningly that flies themselves have often been deceived. Itwas this delight in imitation for its own sake, and not so much that hehad been caught by the usual allurements of the theatre, that he lookedupon the career of an actor as his natural and ultimate calling. It wasalready privately whispered in the little circle that Mike would someday go on the stage. But don't tell that as yet to old Mr. Laflin, whatever you do. 

There was a good deal more in Mike than pulling faces, as Estherrecently, and Henry before her, had discovered. His acting was some dayto stir the hearts of audiences, because he had instincts for knowinghuman nature inside as well as out, knew the secret springs of tears, aswell as the open secrets of laughter; and it was rather on this commonground of a rich "many-veined humanity" that these two had met andbecome friends, rather than on any real community of tastes and ideas. Yet Mike loved books too, and had an excellent taste in them, thoughperhaps he had hardly loved them, had not Henry and Esther loved themfirst, and it is quite certain, and quite proper, that he never found apage of any book so fascinating as the face of some lined and batteredhuman being. Over that writing he was never found asleep. 

There was one other literary matter on which he held a very personal andunshakable opinion, --Henry Mesurier's future as a poet; and on this hecame just in the nick of time to cheer him this evening. 

"The next move will be to London, old fellow, " he said; "and then you'llsoon see my prophecies come true. My opinion mayn't be worth much, butyou know what it is. You'll be a great writer some day, never fear. "

"Thank you, dear old boy. And you know what I think about your acting, don't you?"

Then it was that Esther appeared, and Henry made some transparent excuseto leave them awhile together. 

"You dear old thing, " said Esther, kissing him, "now don't stay away toolong. "

CHAPTER V

OF THE LOVE OF ESTHER AND MIKE, ANDTHE MESURIER LAW IN REGARD TO"SWEETHEARTS"

I'm afraid Esther was little more than fourteen when she had first seenand fallen in love with Mike. She had heard much of him from herbrother; but, for one reason or another, he had never been to the house. One evening, however, at a concert, Henry had told her to look in acertain direction and she would see Mike. 

"I don't suppose you'll call him good looking, " he said. 

So Esther had looked round, and seen the pretty curly red hair and theeager little wistful humorous face for the first time. 

"Why, he's got a lovely little face!" she said, blushing deeply for noreason at all, --except perhaps that there had seemed something pleadingand shelter-seeking in that little face, something that cried out to be"mothered, " and that instantly there had welled up in her heart a greatwarm wish that some day she might be that for it and more. 

And at the same instant it had occurred to the boy, that the face thusturned to him for a moment was the loveliest face he had ever seen, theonly lovely face he would ever care to see. But with that thought, too, had come a curious pang of hopelessness into his heart. For EstherMesurier was one of those girls who are the prizes of men. With allthose pretty tall fellows about her, it was unlikely indeed that shewould care for a little red-headed, face-pulling ragamuffin like him!And yet if she never could care for him, --never, never at all, what alonely place the world would be!

When, after the concert, Henry looked round to introduce Mike to hissister, he had somehow slipped away and was nowhere to be seen. 

However, it was not long after this that Mike paid a visit to Henry'sstudy one evening, and, coming ostensibly to look at his books, oncemore saw his sister, and spoke to her a brief introductory word. Hisinterest in literature became positively remarkable from this time; andthe enthusiasm with which his actor's mind reflected, and, no doubt inall good faith, mimicked the various philosophical and literaryenthusiasms of his friend, was, though neither realised it, a sureearnest of his future. More and more frequent visits to that studybecame necessary for its gratification; and, in the course of one ofthem, Mike confessed to Henry that he loved his sister, previouslypiling upon himself many anticipatory terms of ignominy for daring to doso presumptuous a thing. Henry, however, was so taken with the ideathat, in his singleness of mind, he suffered no pang of retrospectivesuspicion of his friend's love for himself. Pending Esther'sdecision, --and of her mind in the matter, he had something more than aglimmering, --he welcomed Mike with gladness as a prospectivebrother-in-law, and, as soon as he found an opportunity, left them alonetogether, returning quite a long time afterwards--to find themextraordinarily happy, it would appear, at his safe return. 

Esther and Mike had thus been fortunate enough to get that importantquestion of a mate settled quite early in life, and to be saved fromthose arduous and desolating experiments in being fitted with a heartwhich so many less happy people have to go through. But this happy factwas as yet a secret beyond this strict circle of three; for, strange asit may sound, the beautiful attraction of a girl for a boy, thebeautiful worship of a boy for a girl, were matters not even mentionableas yet in the Mesurier household. For a child, particularly a girl, under twenty to speak of having a "sweetheart" was an offence which hada strong savour of disgust in it, even for Mrs. Mesurier, broad-mindedas in most matters she was. 

So far as the only decent theory of the relations of the sexes wasinvoluntarily explicit, by virtue of certain explosions on the subject, it was something like this: That, at a certain age, say twenty-one, or, for leniency, twenty, as it were on the striking of a clock, the younggirl, who previously had been profoundly and inexpressibly unconsciousthat the male being existed, would suddenly sit up wide awake in anattitude of attention to offers of marriage; and that, similarly, theyoung man, who had meanwhile lived with his eyes shut and his sensesasleep, would jump up also at the striking of a clock, and, as it were, with hilarity, say, "It is high time I chose a wife, " and thereuponbegin to look about, among the streets and tennis-parties known to him, for that impossible paragon, --a wife to satisfy both his parents. 

One or two of Henry's earliest troubles and most drastic punishments hadcome of a propensity to "sweethearts, " developed at an indecorouslyearly age, and in fact at the time of which I write he could barelyrecall the name of Miss This or Miss The Other by the association ofancient physical pangs suffered for their sake. The greatest danger tosuch contraband passions was undoubtedly the post; for, in the Mesurierhousehold, a more than Russian censorship was exercised over theincoming and--as far as it could be controlled--the outgoing mail. Oneold morning, at family breakfast, which the subsequent events of theevening were to fix on his mind, Henry Mesurier had grown white withfear, as the stupid maid had handed him a fat letter addressed in asprawling school-girl's hand. 

"Who is your letter from, Henry?" asked the father. 

Henry blushed and boggled. 

"Pass it over to me. "

Resistance was worse than useless. As in war-time a woman will see herhusband set up against a wall and shot before her face, as aconspirator sees the hands of the police close upon papers of the mostterrible secrecy, so did Henry watch that scented little package passwith a sense of irrevocable loss into the cold hands of his father. Thefather opened it, placed a little white enclosure by the side of hiscoffee-cup for further inspection, and then read the letter--full of"darlings" and "for evers"--with the severe attention he would havegiven a business letter. Then he handed it across to the mother withouta word, but with the look one doctor gives another in discovering a newand terrible symptom in a patient on whom they are consulting. While themother read, the father opened the little packet, and out rolled a tinyplait of silky brown hair tied into a loop with a blue ribbon. 

"Disgusting!" exclaimed the father and mother, simultaneously, to eachother, as though the boy was not there. 

"I am shocked at you, Henry, " said the mother. 

"I shall certainly write to the forward little girl's parents, " said thefather. 

"Oh, don't do that, father, " exclaimed the boy, in terror, and halfwondering if so sweet a thing could really be so criminal. 

"Don't dare to speak to me, " said the father. "Leave thebreakfast-table. I will see you again this evening. "

Henry knew too well what the verb "to see" signified under thecircumstances, and the day passed in such apprehensive gloom that it wasa positive relief, when evening had at last come, to feel a walking-caneabout him, at once more snaky and more notched than any previouslyapplied to his stubborn young frame. Not to cry was, of course, a pointof honour; and as the infuriating absence of tears inflamed therighteous anger of the parent, the stick splintered and broke with acrash, in which accident Henry learned he was responsible for adouble offence. 

"I wouldn't have broken that stick for five pounds, " said the father, his interest suddenly withdrawn from his son; "it was given to me by myold friend Tarporley, " which, as can be imagined, was a mightysatisfaction to the sad small soul, smarting, not merely from the stick, but from the sense that life held something stupid in its injustice, inthat he was thus being mauled for the most beautiful exalted feelingthat had ever visited his young heart. 

Those dark ages of oppression were long since passed for Henry andEsther, when Mike began to steal in of an evening to see Esther, andthey were only referred to now and again, anecdotally, as the nineteenthcentury looks back at the days of the Holy Inquisition; but still it waswise to be cautious, for an interdict against Mike's coming to the housewas quite within possibility, even in this comparatively enlightenedepoch; and that would have been even more effective than JamesMesurier's old friend Tarporley's stick of sacred memory. 

CHAPTER VI

THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF HOME

Recalling for another moment or two the ancient affair of the heartdescribed in the last chapter, it may pertinently be added that JamesMesurier fulfilled his threat on that occasion, and had in fact writtento the "forward little girl's" parents. Could he have seen the ratheramused reception of his letter, he would have realised with sorrow thatan age of parental leniency, little short of degeneration, was incertain quarters unmistakably supplanting the stern age of which he wasin a degree an anachronistic survival. That forward little girl'sparents chanced to know James Mesurier enough by sight and reputation torespect him, while they smiled across to each other at his rather quaintdisciplinarianism. Could Henry Mesurier have seen that smile, he wouldnot only have felt reassured as to the fate of his little sweetheart, but have understood that there were temperate zones of childhood, aswell as arctic, when young life waxed gaily to the sound of laughterand other musical accompaniments. 

This revelation, however, was deferred some few years, till he becameacquainted with the merry family of which Mike Laflin was thecharacteristic expression. Old Mr. Laflin was a little, jolly, bald-headed gentleman, bubbling over with mirth, who liked to have youngpeople about him, and in his quips and cranks was as young as, and muchcleverer than, any of them. It almost startled Henry on his firstintroduction to this family of two daughters and two brothers, where thefather was rather like a brother grown prematurely bald, and thestepmother supplied with monumental dignity that element of solemnitywithout which no properly regulated household is complete, to notice the_camaraderie_ which prevailed amongst them all. Jokes were flying aboutfrom one to another all the time, and the father made a point of cappingthem all. This was home in a liberal sense which the word had nevermeant to Henry. Doubtless, it had its own individual restrictions andcensorships; but its surface was at all events debonair, and it wasserviceable to Henry as revealing the existence of more genial socialclimates than that in which he had been nurtured--though in making thecomparison with his own atmosphere, he realised that this _bonhomie_ wasnothing more important than a grace. 

Perhaps, nay, very surely, the seriousness, even the severity of, hisown training, had been among the very conditions needed to make him whathe some day hoped to be, though they had seemed so purposely inimical. Had James Mesurier's religion been more free and easy, a matter lesspersonally assured and momentous, his son's almost oppressive sense ofthe spiritual significance of existence had been less radiant andconstantly supporting. Life might have gained in superficialliveableness; but it would have lost in intensity, in real importance, and with that loss would have gone too Henry's chance of being a poet. "The poet in a golden clime was born!"--once and again, maybe, but moreoften he comes from a land of iron and tears. 

It is in the nature of things that Henry should begin to appreciate theservices of his home to his development at the moment when he wasleaving it. And the mere pang of the parting from it, when one day thehour for parting had surely come, was much more deep and complicatedthan he could have dreamed. As in our bodies we become conscious ofcertain vital centres, certain dependencies of relation and harmony, only when they have suffered shock, so often in life we may go alongunconscious of the vital dependencies of our human relationships, tillthe moment comes to strain or sever them. Then a thousand hidden nervesquiver at the discovering touch of the knife. Henry's leaving home, though it had been originally the suggestion of violent feeling, was notto be an actual severance. His father's "leave my house for ever" hadowed something to the rhetoric of anger, and the expulsion and cuttingoff which it had implied had since been so softened as practically tohave disappeared. Henry was certainly not leaving his father's house forever, but merely going into lodgings with a friend, with full privilegesto visit his own home as often as he chose. 

Still, he was, all the same, leaving home, and he was the first to leaveit. The mother, at all events, knew that this was the beginning of theend, knew that, with her first-born's departure (desertion, she may havecalled it), a new era had commenced for the home, --the era ofdisintegration. For twenty years and more it had been all building andbuilding; now it would be all just pulling down again; and there was adreary sound as of demolition and wind-driven rain in her ears. 

Oh, tragic love of mothers! Of no love is the final loss and doom soinevitably destined. The husband may desert the wife, but the son issure to desert his mother--must, for nature demands the desertion. Putnot your trust in princes--and yet put it rather in princes, oh, fondand doting parents, than in the blue-eyed flower of childhood for whichyear after year, with labours infinite, you would buy all the sunshineof the world. 

Henry's pang at leaving home was mainly the pang of parting with hismother. It seemed more than a mere physical parting. It was hischildhood that was parting from her for ever. When he came to see themhe would be something different, --a man, an independent being. As longago physically, now spiritually, the umbilical cord had been cut. 

With Esther and Dot and Mat the parting was hardly a parting, as it wasrather a promise of their all meeting together some day in a new placeof freedom, which there was a sense of his going out to prepare forthem. Their way would be his way, as the mother's could not; for theirswas the highway of youth, which, sooner or later, they would all taketogether, singing in the morning sun. 

The three younger sisters, the as yet unopened buds of the familyflower, took Henry's departure with the surface tears and the centralindifference of childhood. When a family is so large, it practicallyincludes two generations in itself; and these three girls were really toprove a generation so different in characteristics from their fourelders as to demand a separate chronicle to themselves. 

Thus as Henry drove away amid his trunks from the home of his father(genealogical poverty denies us the romantic grandiloquence of theplural), it was his mother's farewell arms and farewell tears, and hisfarewell promises to her, of which he was mainly conscious. He hadpromised "to take care of himself, " and particularly to beware of dampsheets, and then he too had burst into tears. Indeed, it was generally atearful business, after which everybody was glad to retire into cornersto subside privately and dry themselves. 

Henry crouched in the corner of his cab with fully half his cry tofinish out; and, curiously, all the time a sad little story from an oldholiday in the country kept haunting him. It was at once a fact and afable concerning a happy little family of swallows, whose sudden tragedyhe had seen with his own boyish, pitying eyes. 

In a little vinery attached to an old country house which the Mesuriershad rented for a month or so for certain successive summers, twoswallows had built their nest, and, in due course, there were threeyoung swallows to keep them company. It was understood that the door ofthe vinery must be left open, that the parent swallows might fly to andfro for food; but by some accident it chanced that the door was one dayclosed, and the vinery not visited again for several days. When at lastthe door was opened again, the sight that met young eyes was one Henryhad never forgotten. Three little starved swallows, hardly bigger thanbutterflies, lay upon the floor, and from the nest above hung the longhorse-hairs with which the parents had vainly sought to anchor themsafely to the home. But still sadder details were forthcoming, when thechildren, who had been wondering what had become of the parents, hadsuddenly discovered their wasted bodies in the grass a yard or two awayfrom the vinery door. A few days ago this had been a happy, thrivinghome, and now it was absolutely desolated, done away with for ever. Itneeded no exceptional imagination or sympathy to conceive the agonisedlonging of the parents, as they had dashed themselves again and againupon that cruel, unyielding door, hearing the piteous cries of theiryoung ones within, and the anguish in which their exhausted little liveshad at last gone out. The young swallows had died for lack of food; butthe old ones had died--for love. Had some other hand brought them food, would the young ones have missed the old ones like that?

CHAPTER VII

A LINK WITH CIVILISATION

On the afternoon following Henry's departure, Esther went out for awalk, and she came presently to a pretty little house half hidden in itsbig garden. A well-kept lawn, richly bathed in sunlight, flashed throughthe trees; and, opening the gate and following the tree-shaded pathalong one side of the house, Esther presently mounted to a smallterrace, where, as she had hoped, she came upon a dainty little ladywatering her flowers. 

"Why, Esther, it's you! How sweet of you! I was just dying to see you!"exclaimed the little lady, turning a pretty, but somewhat worn, andbrilliantly sad face from her gardening. "Just let me finish thisthirsty bed, and then you must give me a kiss. There!"

Then the two embraced; and as Mrs. Myrtilla Williamson held Esther atarm's length and looked at her admiringly, --

"How pretty you look to-day!" she exclaimed, generously. "That newhat's a great success. Didn't I tell you mauve was your colour? Turnround. Yes, dear, you look charming. Where in the world, I wonder, didyou all get that grand look of yours from?--I don't mean your good looksmerely, but that look of distinction. Your father and mother have ittoo; but where did _they_ get it from? You're a puzzle-family--all ofyou. But wouldn't you like a cup of tea? Come in, " and she led the wayindoors to a tiny, sweet-smelling boudoir on the left of the hall, ofwhich a dainty glimpse, with its books and water-colours and bibelots, was to be caught from the terrace. 

Everything about Myrtilla Williamson was scrupulously, determinedlydainty, from the flowered tea-gown about her slim, girlish figure, --herpredilection for that then novel and suspected garment was regarded as asure mark of a certain Parisian levity by her neighbours, --to her just alittle "precious" enunciation. In France, in the seventeenth century, she would almost certainly have been a visitor at the Hotel Rambouillet, and to-day she was mysteriously and disapprovingly spoken of as"aesthetic. " She had a look as if she had tripped out of a Japanese fan, and slept at night in a pot-pourri jar. And she had brains, those goodthings--brains. 

Her name was very like her life, one-half of which might be described asMyrtilla, the other half as Williamson. She was Myrtilla during the day, dabbling with her water-colours, her flowers, or her books; but at sixo'clock each afternoon, with the sound of aggressive masculine boots inthe hall, her life suddenly changed with a sigh to Williamson. TheWilliamson half of her life was so clumsily, so grotesquely ill-matchedwith the Myrtilla half that it was, and probably will always remain, amystery why she had ever attempted so tasteless and inconvenient anaddition, --a mystery, however, far from unique in the history of thosemysteriously stupid unhappy marriages with evident boors which refinedand charming women will, it is to be feared, go on making to the end ofthe human chapter. 

It was perhaps a day hardly less interesting for Myrtilla than for theyoung people themselves when she had first met Henry and EstherMesurier. Before, in the dull bourgeois society into which Williamsonhad transplanted her from London, she had found none with whom she daredbe her natural Myrtilla. There she was expected to be Williamson to thebone. Henry and Esther, however, were only too grateful for Myrtilla, through whom was to come to them the revelation of some minor graces oflife for which they had the instincts, but on which they had lackedinstruction; and who, still more important, at least for Henry, was tobe their first fragile link with certain strenuous new northern writers, translations of whom in every tongue had just then descended, Gothlike, upon Europe, to the great energising of its various literatures. She itwas too who first handed them the fretted golden key to the enchantedgarden of the Pre-Raphaelites, and the striking head of the young Dantein sepia, which had hung in a sort of shrine-recess in Henry's study, had been copied for him from Rossetti's sketch by Myrtilla's own hand. 

She had, too, one of the most precious gifts for friendship, the gift ofunselfish and diligent and progressive appreciation of all a friend'sgood points. She never flattered; but she never missed the smallestopportunity for praise. She was one of those rare people who make youfeel happy in yourself, who send you away somehow dignified, profitablyraised in your own esteem; just as others have a mysterious power ofdejecting you in your proudest moments. If you had any charm, howevershy, Myrtilla Williamson would find it, and send you away with a greatgush of gratitude to her because it had been found at last. This wasperhaps the greatest charm of her clever letters; they were all about"you, "--not, of course, that you didn't want to hear about her. Butfrequently all she told you of herself was her name. Perhaps she wouldwrite in the half-hour that remained between, say, a visit from Estherand the arrival of Williamson, to fix in a few intimate vivid words thecharm of their afternoon together, and tell Esther in some newgratifying way what she was to her and why and how she was it; or whenHenry had been there--even more carefully in the absence ofWilliamson--to read her his new poem, she would write him a long letterof literary criticism, just perceptibly vibrating with the emotion shemight have felt for the romantic young poet, whom she allowed to callhimself her "cavaliere servente, " had she not been Williamson as well asMyrtilla, and had she not, as she somewhat unscientifically declared, been old enough to be his mother. 

"Well, " she said, as they sipped their tea, "so Henry's really gone. Heslipped round to bid me a sort of good-bye yesterday, and told me thewhole story. On the whole, I'm glad, though I know how you'll miss eachother. But I'm sorriest for your mother. Yes, yes, I'm sorry for her. You must try to make it up to her, dear child. I think just that, aboveall things, would make me fear to be a mother. One can do withoutchildren, " and there was a certain implication in the conversationalatmosphere that children of the name of Williamson had been mercifullyspared the world; "but when once they have come into one's life, it mustbe terrible to see them go out again. I should like to come round andhave a little talk with your mother. I wonder if she'd care to see me?"

"So long as you don't come in your tea-gown, " said Esther, with a laugh. 

"Cruel child!" and then with a way she had of suddenly findingsomething she wanted to hear of among the interests of her friends, "Now, " she said, "tell me something about Mike. I suppose the course oftrue love runs as smoothly as ever. Happy children! Give him my lovewhen you see him, won't you?"

Esther told all there was to tell about Mike up-to-date, and wished shecould have repaid her friend's sympathetic interest with a request forsomething similar about Williamson. But it was tacitly understood thatthere was nothing further to be said on that subject, and that the newsof Myrtilla's life could hardly again take any more excitingly personalform than the bric-a-brac excitements of art or literature, --thoughindeed art and literature were, to be just to them, far more thanbric-a-brac in the life of Myrtilla Williamson. They were, indeed, itwas easy to see, a very sustaining religion for the lonely little womanwho, having no children to study, and having completed her studies ofWilliamson, was driven a good deal upon the study and development ofherself. The Williamson half of the day provided her fully withopportunities for the practice of all the philosophy she was likely toacquire from writers ancient and modern, and for the absorption of allthe consolation history and biography was likely to afford in thestories of women similarly circumstanced. It is to be feared thatMyrtilla not only wore tea-gowns in advance of her time, but was alsosomewhat prematurely something of a "new" woman; but this was a subjecton which she really did very little to "poison" Esther's "young mind. "Esther's young mind, in common with those of her two subsequent sisters, was little in need of "poisoning" from outside on such subjects. Indeed, it was a curious phenomenon to observe how all these young minds, sprungfrom a stock of such ancient, unquestioning faith, had, so to say, beenborn "poisoned;" or, to state the matter less metaphorically, had allbeen born with instincts for the most pitiless and effortless reasoningon all subjects human and divine. 

As the hour approached when poor Myrtilla must change back toWilliamson, Esther rose to say good-bye. 

"Come again soon, dear girl; you don't know the good you do me. "

The good, dear woman was entirely done by her unwearied, sympatheticdiscussion of the affairs and dreams of Esther, Mike, and Henry. 

"Oh, here is a wonderful new book I intended to talk to you about. Youcan take it with you; I have finished it. Come next week and tell mewhat you think of it. "

As Esther walked down the path, Myrtilla watched her, and, as she passedout of the gate, waved her a final kiss of parting, and turned indoors. There seemed something ever so sad about her dainty back as itdisappeared into the doorway. 

"Poor little woman!" said Esther to herself, as she looked to see thetitle of the book she was carrying. It included a curious Russian name, the correct pronunciation of which she foresaw she must ask Myrtilla ontheir next meeting. It was "The Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff. "

CHAPTER VIII

A RHAPSODY OF TYRE

Sidon, the stage of the moving events so far recorded, though it makesmuch of possessing a separate importance, is really a cross-riverresidential suburb of Tyre, the great seaport in which all the ships ofthe world come to and fro. During the day Sidon is virtually emptied ofits men-folk, and is given up to perambulators and feminine activitiesgenerally; for the men have streamed across the ferries that bridge thesunny, boisterous river, to the docks and offices of Tyre. 

Though Tyre is not a very old city, it is not so new as to be denied afew of those associations known as "historical. " Tyre had once thehonour to be taken by Prince Rupert, and long before that its nucleushad existed as a monk's ferry, by which travellers were rowed across theriver to the monastery and posting-house at Sidon. Sometimes of anevening Henry and Mike would think of those far-off times as they lookedover the ferry-boat at the long lines of river lights, with theirrestless heaving reflections; and sometimes they could picture tothemselves the green sloping banks of the virgin fields, and hear thepriory bell calling to them out of the darkness. But such were thefaintest of their visions; and they loved the river banks best as theyare to-day, with their Egyptian walls and swarming lights andtangled ships. 

And whoso should think that that sordid commercial city, given up to allthe prose of trade day by day, is not a poet at heart, has never seenher strange smile at evening when the shops are shut, and the officesempty, and the men who know her not gone home. For then across thecrowded roofs softly comes a strange sweetness, and deep down among thegloomy wynds of deserted warehouses, still as temples, sudden fairies ofsunset dance and dazzle, and touch the grimy walls with soft hands. Inlonely back rooms, full of desks and dust, haunted lights of eveningstand like splendid apparitions; and sometimes, if you lingered at thetop of High Street, beneath the dark old church, and the moon was outon the left of the steeple and the sunset dying on the right, dyingbeyond the tangled masts and fading from the river, you would forget youwere a city clerk, and you would wonder why the world was so beautiful, why the moon was made of pearl, and what it was that called to you outof yonder golden sea; and your heart would fill with a strange gladness, and you would call back to those unearthly voices, "I am yours, yours, all yours!"

Thus would this town of bales and merchants, of office-desks and stools, make poets at evening that she might stone them at noon. For, of course, she would have forgotten it all in the morning; and it were well not toremind her with your dreaming eyes of her last night's softness. Shewill look back at you with stony misunderstanding, and her new loverReality will sharply box your ears. 

It is no use reminding the Exchange that it looked like a scene fromRomeo and Juliet in the moonlight. It dare not admit it. But waitpatiently till the evening. Tyre will be yours again with the sunset. She pretends all day that it is the Mayor in the gilded coach and thepursy merchantmen she cares for; but it is really you, a poor shabbypoet, she loves all the time, for you only does she wear her gauzy silksat evening!

CHAPTER IX

A PENITENTIARY OF THE MATHEMATICS

Yes, Mike was some day to be another Kean, and Henry was to prove aserious rival to Shakespeare; but, meanwhile, they were clerks in theoffices of Tyre. 

Of the rigours, and therefore too the truancies and humours of the lotofficial, Mike was comparatively so comfortably circumstanced as to havelittle knowledge. His father was the king of a little flourishing prisonof desks, and Mike was one of the heirs-apparent. Consequently, his lot, though dull, was seldom bitter; and many mitigations of it were withinhis privilege. With Henry it was different. He was a humble unit amongtwenty other slaves, chained to that modern substitute for the galleys, the desk; and, in a wicked bargain, he had contracted to give hislife-blood from nine in the morning till six in the evening, for sixtypounds a year, with an occasional "rise, " which, after thirty years'service, might end in your having reached a proud annual three hundredfor the rest of your maimed and narrowed days. 

Henry had come to the office straight from school, at the age ofsixteen; and, though classrooms breathe an air sufficiently frigid andsuggestive of inhuman interests and unmeaning discipline, the icy air ofthat office had at first almost taken his breath. The place was soridiculously serious! There might conceivedly be interests in the worldworthy of so abject an absorption, so bleaching an obeisance of theindividual; but Henry, with the dews of certain classics still upon him, remembered that anything really Olympian in its importance is alwaysstrong enough to smile. It is a lesser strength that must make themuscular effort of severity. True dignities, as often as possible, standat ease. But here indeed were no true strengths and dignities, --onlyprison-strengths and prison-dignities. Here the majesties, theoccupations, the offences, were alike frivolities, fantastically changedabout into solemnities. 

That first impression of abject bowed heads and chains rattled beneathdesks, was roughly correct. For all that was human in a man, this was aprison. These men who bent over foolish papers were evidently convictsof the most desperate character; so, at all events, you would judge whenoccasionally one or other of the prison-governors, known as "partners, "passed among them with the lash of his eye. Such faint human twitteringas may have grown up amongst even these poor exiles would suddenly dieinto a silence white with fear, as when the shadow of a hawk fallsacross the song of smaller birds. 

No human relations are acknowledged here. Outside, you may be a husbandwonderfully beloved and tragically important; you may be a man whosecourage has be-medalled your brave breast; you may be a passionate andsubtle musician in your private hours; you may even on Sundays be a muchappreciated vessel of the divine: but all such distinctions are notcurrent here; here they are foreign coin, diplomas unacknowledged inthis barbarous realm of ink and steel. The more ignorant, the morenarrow, the more mean, the more unnatural, you can contrive to be, thebetter will be your lot in this sad monastery of Mammon. When the doorhissed behind you, with that little patent pneumatic device, you ceasedto be a human being, and began to be--the human machine. All thevitality you have stored within that pale body you are expected toexhaust here, --you have sold it, don't you remember, for sixty or threehundred pounds a year; you are not expected to have any left over forpleasures. That will be robbery. Masters suffer much from peculationindeed in this way; but a machine is in course of invention which shallput an end to this, by the application of which to your heart thetask-master will know whether or not you have spent every availableheart-beat in his slavery during the day, or whether you areendeavouring, you miserable thief, to steal home with a little remnantof it for your children at night. 

This was the theory of the office, as Henry once heard it expressed, with a cynicism more brief and direct from the lips of one of histask-masters; but it must be admitted that in certain respects hisexperience was extreme. There are offices which are the ears and eyes ofactivities absorbingly and even romantically human. To be in ashipping-office is not perhaps to be the rose, but it is to live nearit, --the great rose of the sea. You are, so to say, a land-sailor, asupercargo left on shore. Your office-windows are lashed withhurricanes; your talk is frequently of cyclones. The names of farromantic isles are constantly on your lips, and your bills of lading arethreepenny romances in themselves. Strange produce of distant lands areyour daily concern, and the four winds meet at your counter with asavour of tar. For all you know, a pirate may claim your attention anyminute of the day. 

Or, again, to be, say, in a corn-merchant's, a clearing-house of thefruitful earth. There at your telephone you may hear the corn-fieldswhispering to you, hear the wheat waving in the wind, and the thinchatter of oats. Or you may sell butter and cheese in an office thatsmells of farms. However removed, you are an indirect agent of theearth, a humble go-between of the seasons and the eternal needs of man. 

Or, once more, you may be one of the thousand clerks of a greatmanufacturer, and be humbly related to one of the arts or crafts thatgladden the eye or add to the comforts of man. Or even, though you maybe denied so close an association with the elements, or the arts, youmay be the pen to some subtle legal confidante of human nature. Youroffice may be stored with records of human perversity and whimsicality. You may be the witness to fantastic wills, or assist in theadministration of the estates of lunatics. At all events, you will comewithin hearing of the human passions. Misers will visit you at times, and beautiful ladies in mourning deep as their distress; and from yourdesk you will catch a glimpse of the sombre pageantry of litigious man. 

Though it is true that a certain far-off flavour of these legalexcitements occasionally enlivened the business to which Henry had beensacrificially indentured, for the most part it was an abstractparasitical thing which had succeeded in persuading other businesses, more directly fed from the human spring, of its obliging usefulness inrelieving them of detachable burdens. In fact, it had no activity orinterest of its own to account for, so it proposed, in default of anysuch original reason for existence, to look after the accounts ofothers, as a self-constituted body of financial police. For thoseengaged in it, except those who had been born mentally deformed, orthose who had become unnaturally perverted by long usage, it was a sortof penitentiary of the mathematics. 

CHAPTER X

THE GRASS BETWEEN THE FLAG-STONES

Yes, it was a curiously unreal world; and, for the first day or two, asHenry, bent, lonely and bewildered, over his desk, studied it furtivelywith questioning eyes, it seemed to him as though he had strayed intosome asylum for the insane, where fantastic interests and mock honourstake the place of the real interests and honours of sane human beings. 

Part of the business of the firm consisted in the collection ofhouse-rents, frequently entailing visits from tenants and questions ofrepairs. A certain Mr. Smith, a wiry little grey-headed man, with a keenface and a decisive manner, looked after this branch; and the gusto withwhich he did it was one of Henry's earliest and most instructiveamazements. House-repairs were quite evidently his poetry, and he neverseemed so happy as when passionately wrangling with a tenant on somequestion of drains. The words "cesspool" and "wet-trap"--words to whichI don't pretend to attach any meaning--seemed to be particularfavourites of his. In fact, an hour seldom passed without their fallingfrom his lips. But Mr. Smith's great opportunity was a gale. For thatalways meant an exciting harvest of dislodged chimney-pots, flyingslates, and smashed skylights, which would impart an energetic interestto his life for days. 

Again, in Henry's department--for the office was cut into two halves, with about ten clerks in each, the partners having, of course, their ownprivate offices, from which they might dart out at any moment--there wasa certain little fussy chief clerk who was obviously a person of verymysterious importance. He was frequently away, evidently on missions ofgreat moment, for always on his return he would be closeted immediatelywith one or other of the partners, who in turn seemed to consider himimportant too, and would sometimes treat him almost like one ofthemselves, actually condescending to laugh with him now and again oversome joke, evidently as mysterious as all the rest. This Mr. Perkinsseldom noticed the juniors in his department, though occasionally hewould select one of them to accompany him on one of his missions toclients of the firm; and they would start off together, as you may see aplumber and his apprentice sometimes in the streets, --the proudmaster-plumber in front, and the little apprentice plumber behind, carrying the lead pipe and the iron smelting-pot. 

Now, did Mr. Smith really take such a heart-interest in cesspools andwet-traps as he appeared to do? and did Mr. Perkins really think hemattered all that?

These were two of the earliest questions which Henry asked himself, andas time brought the answers to them, and kindred questions, there wereunexpected elements of comfort for the heart of the boy, longing sodesperately in that barren place for any hint of the human touch. Oneday Mr. Smith startled him by mentioning Dickens, and even Charles Lamb. It was a kindly recognition of Mesurier's rumoured interest inliterature. Henry looked at him in amazement. "Oh, you read then!" heexclaimed. Of anything so human as reading he had suspected no one inthat office. 

Then as to the great Mr. Perkins, the time came when he was to provevery human indeed. For, dying suddenly one day, his various work had topass into other hands; and, bit by bit, it began to leak out that thosemissions had not been so industriously devoted to the interests of thefirm, nor been so carefully executed, as had been imagined. For Mr. Perkins, it transpired, had been fond of his pleasures, could appreciatewine, and liked an occasional informal holiday. So, posthumously, hebegan to wear for Henry a faint halo of humanity. 

Indeed, it did not take Henry many days to realise that, as grass willforce its way even between the flag-stones in a prison-yard, no littlehumanity contrived to support its existence even in this dead place. Bydegrees, he realised that these apparently colourless and frigid figuresabout him had each their separate individuality, engaging or otherwise;that their interests were by no means centred on the dull pages beforethem; and that, for the most part, they were very much in a like casewith himself. Although thus immured from the world of realities, theystill maintained, in vigorous activity, many healthy outdoor interests, and were quite keen in their enthusiasm for, and remarkably instructedin, the latest developments of horse-racing, football, andprize-fighting. Likewise, they had retained an astonishingly fresh andunimpaired interest in women, and still enjoyed the simple earth-bornpleasures of the glass and the pipe. 

As he understood this, Henry began to feel more at home; and, as thecharacters of his associates revealed themselves, he began to see thatthere were amongst them several pleasant and indeed merry fellows, andthat, after all, fortune might have thrown him into much worse company. They, on their side, making like discoveries in him, he presently foundhimself admitted to their freemasonry, and initiated into their manysecret ways of mitigating their lot, and shortening their long days. Thus, this chill, stern world of automata, which, on first sight, lookedas if no human word or smile or jest could escape the detection of itsiron laws, revealed, when you were once inside it, an under-world ofpleasant escapes and exciting truancies, of which, as you grewaccustomed to the risks and general conditions of the life, you wereable skilfully to avail yourself. 

The main principle of these was to seem to spend twice as much time oneach task as it needed, that you might have the other half for suchprivate uses as were within your reach, --to elongate dinner-hours atboth ends so adroitly, and on such carefully selected propitiousoccasions, that the elongation, or at least the whole extent of it, would pass unobserved; and, in general, to gain time, any waste ends offive minutes or quarter hours, on all possible occasions. If the readercalls this shirking and robbery, he must. Technically, no doubt, it was;but these clerks, without so formulating it, merely exercised the rightof all oppressed beings liberally to interpret to their own advantage, where possible, the terms of an unjust contract which grinding economicconditions had compelled them to make. They had been forced to promisetoo much in exchange for too little, and they equalised the disparitywhere they could. 

Whether they spent the time thus hoarded in a profitable fashion, is aquestion of personal definition. It was usually expended in companies oftwos or threes, with a pipe and a pot of beer and much spirited talk, inthe warm corners of adjacent taverns; and, so long as you don't drinktoo much, there has perhaps been invented none pleasanter than thatold-fashioned way of spending an hour. Certainly, it was the way for aleto taste good, and a pipe to seem the most satisfying of all earthlyconsolations. It was almost worth the bondage to enjoy the keen relishof the escape. 

By degrees, though the youngest there, Henry came to be allowed acertain leadership in these sorties of the human element. He made it hisbusiness to stimulate these unthrifty instincts, and to fan the welcomesparks of natural idleness; and so successfully that at times thereseemed to have entered with him into that gloomy place a certain Bacchicinfluence, which now and again would prompt his comrades to such daringclutches of animated release, that the spirit of it even pervaded thepenetralia of the senior partner's office, with the result that somemishap of truancy would undo the genial work of months, and precipitateupon them for a while the rigours of a ten-fold discipline. It was aftersuch an occasion that, in writing to James Mesurier as to the progressof his son, old Mr. Septimus Lingard had paid Henry one of the proudestcompliments of his young days. "I fear that we shall make little of yourson Henry, " he wrote. "His head seems full of literature, and he is soidle that he is demoralising the whole office. "

It took Henry more than a year to win that testimonial; but the odds hadbeen so great against him that the wonder is he was ever able to win itat all. Mr. Lingard wrote "demoralise. " It was his way of saying"humanise. "

CHAPTER XI

HUMANITY IN HIGH PLACES

One day, however, Henry was to make the still more surprising discovery, that not only were the clerks human beings, but that one of thepartners--only one of them--was also human. He made this discovery aboutthe senior partner, whose old-world figure and quaint name, SeptimusSearle Lingard, had, in spite of his severity, attracted him by acertain musty distinction. 

A stranger figure than Septimus Searle Lingard has seldom walked thestreets of any town. Though not actually much over sixty, you would havesaid he must be a thousand; his abnormally long, narrow, shaven face wasso thin and gaunt and hollowed, and his tall, upright figure was sopainfully fragile, that his black broadcloth seemed almost too heavy forthe worn frame inside it. And nothing in the world else was ever sopiercingly solemn as his keen weary old eyes. With his tall silk hat, his thin white hair, his long white face, long black frock-coat, andblack trousers, he looked for all the world like a distinguishedskeleton. Henry could never be quite sure whether he was to be classedas a "character, " or as a genuine personality. One thing was certain, that, sometime or other, or many times, in his life he had donesomething, or many things, which had won for him a respect as deep ashis solemnity of aspect; and certainly, if gravity of demeanour goes foranything, all the owls of all the ages in collaboration could not haveproduced an expression of time-honoured wisdom so convincing. Sometimeshis old lantern-jaws would emit an uncanny cackle of a laugh, and aghastly flicker of humour play across his parchment features; but theseonly deepened the general sense of solemnity, as the hoot of anight-bird deepens the loneliness of some desolate hollow amongthe hills. 

It was this strange old ghost of a man that was to be the next to turnhuman, and it came about like this. Right away at the top of thebuilding was a lonely room where the sun never shone, in which werestored away the old account-books, diaries, and variousdead-and-done-with documents of the firm; and here too was deposited, from time to time, various wreckage of the same kind from otherbusinesses whose last offices had been done by the firm, and whoserecords were still preserved, in the unlikely event of any chanceresurrection of claim upon, or interest in, their long forgotten names. 

Here crumbled the last relics of many an ambitious enterprise, --greatledgers, with their covers still fresh, lay like slabs, from which, ifyou wiped away the dust, the gilded names of foundered companies wouldflash as from gaudy tombstones; letter-books bursting with letters thatno eye would read again so long as the world lasted; yellow title-deedsfrom which all the virtue had long since exhaled, and to which nodangling of enormous seals could any longer lend a convincing air ofimportance. Here everything was dead and dusty as an old shoe. The drybones in the valley of Askelon were as children skipping in the morningsun compared with the dusty death that mouldered and mouldered in thislonely locked-up room, --this catacomb of dead businesses. 

It was seldom necessary to visit this room; but occasionally Henrywould find an excuse to loiter an hour there, for there was a certaindreary romance about the place, and the almost choking smell of oldleather seemed to promise all sorts of buried secrets. It cannot be saidthat the place ever adequately gratified the sense of mystery itexcited; but, after all, to excite the sense of mystery is perhapsbetter than to gratify it, and, considering its poor material, this roomwas quite a clever old mysteriarch. 

One day, however, Henry came upon some writing that did greatly interesthim, though it was almost contemporary. It was old Mr. SeptimusLingard's diary for the year preceding, which he had got hold of, --nothis private diary, but the entirely public official diary in which hekept account of the division of his days among his various clients--forthe most part an unexciting record. But at the end of the book, on oneof the general memoranda pages, Henry noticed a square block of writingwhich, to his surprise, proved to be a long quotation from a book whichthe old man had been reading, --on the Immortality of the soul!

Had old Mr. Septimus Lingard a soul too, a soul that troubled himmaybe, a soul that had its moving memories, and its immortalaspirations? Yes, somewhere hidden in that strange legal document of abody, there was evidently a soul. Mr. Lingard had a soul!

But wait a moment, here was an addition of the old man's own! Thepassage quoted had been of death and its possible significance, and itwas just a sigh, a fear, the old man had breathed after it: _How highhas the winding-sheet encompassed my own bosom_!

Solemn as were the words in themselves, they seemed doubly so in thatlonely room; and Henry was glad to lock the door and return to thecomparatively living world downstairs. But from that moment old Mr. Lingard was transfigured in his eyes. Beneath all the sternness of hisexterior, the grimness of the business interests which seemed to absorbhim, Henry had discovered the blessed human spring. And he came too towear a certain pathos and sanctity in Henry's eyes, as he remembered howold a man he was, and that secretly all this time, while he seemed sobusy with this public company and another, he was quietly preparing todie. From this moment tasks done for him came to have a certain joy inthem. For his sake, as it were, he began to understand how you mighttake a pride in doing well something that, in your opinion, was notworth doing; and one day when the old man, well satisfied with some workhe had done, patted him kindly on the back and said, "We'll make abusiness man of you after all!" the tears started to his eyes, and for amoment he almost hoped that they would. 

CHAPTER XII

DAMON AND PYTHIAS

By an odd coincidence, the night which had seen Henry and Estherconfront their father, had seen, in another household in which the youngpeople counted another member of their secret society of youth, asimilar but even less seemly clash between the generations. Ned Hazellwould be a poet too, and a painter as well, and perhaps a romanticactor; but his father's tastes for his son's future lay in none of thesedirections, and Ned was for the present in cotton. Now the elder Mr. Hazell was a man of violently convivial habits, and the _bonhomie_, withwhich he was accustomed to enliven bar-parlours up till eleven of anevening, was apt to suffer a certain ungenial transformation as hereached his own front door. There the wit would fail upon his lips, thetwinkle die out of his glance, and an unaccountable ferocity towards thehousehold that was waiting up for him take their place. When possible, he would fix upon some trivial reason to give an air of plausibility tothis curious change in him; but if that were not forthcoming, he would, it appeared, fly into a violent rage for just that very reason. 

However, on this particular night, Heaven had provided him with anheroic occasion. His son, he discovered, was for once out later than hisfather. In what haunt of vice, or low place of drinking, he was at themoment ensnared, no one better than his father could imagine. Theopportunity was one not to be missed. The outraged parent at lastrealised that he had borne with him long enough, borne long enough withhis folderols of art and nonsense; and so determined was he on theinstant that he would have no more of it, that, with a quite remarkableenergy, he had thereupon repaired to his son's room, opened the window, and begun vigorously to throw his pretty editions, his daintywater-colours, his drawers full of letters, his cast of the Venus ofMilo, out on to the lawn, upon which at the moment a heavy rain wasalso falling. 

In the very whirlwind of his righteous vandalism his son had returned, and, being a muscular, hot-blooded lad, had taken his father by thethroat, called him a drunken beast, and hurled him to the floor, wherehe pinned him down with a knee on his chest, and might conceivably havemade an end of him, but for the interference of mother and sisters, whosucceeded at last in getting the dazed and somewhat sobered parentto bed. 

Having raked together from the sodden _débris_ beneath his window somedisfigured remains of his poor treasures, Ned Hazell had left the housein the early hours of the morning, in good earnest for ever. 

When he confided the excitements of the night to Henry at lunch nextday, and heard in return his friend's news, nothing could be more plainthan that they should set up lodgings together; and it was, therefore, to the rooms of which Ned was already in possession that Henry's cab hadtoppled with his various belongings, after those tearful farewells athis father's door. Esther followed presently to help make the placestraight and dainty for the two boys, and having left them, late thatevening, with flowers in all the jars, and the curtains as they shouldbe, they were fairly launched on their new life together. 

In Mike Henry had a stanch friend and an admirer against all comers, andin Henry Mike had a friend and admirer no less loyal; but theirfriendship was one for which an on-looker might have found it less easyto give reasons than for that of Henry and Ned. Mike and Henry lovedeach other, it would appear, less for any correspondence in dispositionsor tastes, as just because they were Mike and Henry. Right away down intheir natures there was evidently some central affinity which operatedeven in spite of surface contradictions. There was much of thisintrinsic quality in the affection of Henry and Ned also, but it wasmuch more to be accounted for by evident mutual sympathies. It waslargely the impassioned fellowship of two craftsmen in love with thesame art. Both had their literary ambitions; but, irrespective of those, they both loved poetry. Yes, how they loved it! Ned was perhapsparticularly a born appreciator; and it was worth seeing how the tearswould come into his fine eyes, as his voice shook with tenderness over afine phrase or a noble passage. They had discovered some of the mostthrilling things in English literature together, at that impressionableage when such things mean most to us. Together they had read Keats forthe first wonderful time; together learned Shakespeare's Sonnets byheart; together rolled out over tavern-tables the sumptuous cadences ofDe Quincey. Wonderful indeed, and never to be forgotten, were thoseevenings when, the day at last over, they would leave their officesbehind them, and, while the sunset was turning the buildings of Tyreinto enchanted towers, and a clemency of release breathed upon itsstreets, steal to the quiet corner of their favourite tavern; to drinkport and share their last new author, or their own latest rhymes, andthen to emerge again, with high calm hearts and eloquent eyes, beneaththe splendid stars. 

All the arts within their reach they thus shared together, --pictures, music, theatres, --in a fine comradeship. Together they had bravoed thegreat tragedians, and together hopelessly worshipped the beautifulfaces, enskied and sainted, of famous actresses. In fact, they were theDamon and Pythias of Tyre. 

CHAPTER XIII

DAMON AND PYTHIAS AT THE THEATRE

Once, long before the beginning of this story, Damon and Pythias weresitting in a theatre together, with the wonderful overture justbeginning to steal through their senses. 

Ah, violins, whither would you take their souls? You call to them likethe voice of one waiting by the sea, bathed in sunset. What are thesewonderful things you are whispering to their souls? You promise--ah, what things you promise, strange voices of the string!

Oh, sirens, have pity! Their hearts are pure, their bodies sweet asapples. Oh, be faithful, betray them not, beautiful voices of thewondrous world!

The overture had succeeded. Their souls had followed it over thefootlights, and, floating in the limelight, shone there awaiting thefulfilment of the promise. 

The play was "Pygmalion and Galatea, " and at the appearance of Galateathey knew that the overture had not lied. There, in dazzling whiteflesh, was all it had promised; and when she called "Pyg-ma-lion!" howtheir hearts thumped!--for they knew it was really them she was calling. 

"Pyg-ma-lion! Pyg-ma-lion!"

It was as though Cleopatra called them from the tomb. 

Their hands met. They could hear each other's blood singing. And was notthe play itself an allegory of their coming lives? Did not Galateasymbolise all the sleeping beauty of the world that was to awaken, warmand fragrant, at the kiss of their youth? And somewhere, too, shroudedin enchanted quiet, such a white white woman waited for their kiss. In avision they saw life like the treasure cave of the Arabian thief; andthey said to their beating hearts that they had the secret of the magicword, that the "open Sesame" was youth. 

No fall of the curtain could hide the vision from their young eyes. Ittransfigured the faces of their fellow-playgoers, crowding from the pit;it made another stage of the embers of the sunset, a distant bridge ofsilver far down the street. Then they took it with them to the tavern;and to write of the solemn libations of that night would be to laugh orcry. Only youth can be so radiantly ridiculous. 

They had found their own corner. Turning down the gas, the fire playedat day and night with their faces. Imagine them in one of the flashes, solemnly raising their glasses, hands clasped across the table, earnestgleaming eyes holding each other above it. 

"Old man, some day, somewhere, a woman like that!"

But there was still a sequel. At home at last and in bed, how couldDamon sleep! It seemed as if he had got into a rosy sunset cloud inmistake for his bed. The candle was out, and yet the room was full ofrolling light. 

It was no use; he must get up. So, striking a light, he was presentlydeep in the composition of a fiery sonnet. It was evidently that whichhad caused all the phosphorescence. But a sonnet is a mere pill-box; itholds nothing. A mere cockle-shell, --and, oh, the raging sea it couldnot hold! Besides being confessedly an art-form, duly licenced to lie, it was apt to be misunderstood. It could not say in plain words, "Meetme at the pier to-morrow at three in the afternoon;" it could make noassignation nearer than the Isles of the Blest, "after life's fitfulfever. " Therefore, it seemed well to add a postscript to that effectin prose. 

But then, how was she to receive it? There was nothing to be hoped fromthe post, and Damon's home in Sidon was three miles from the ferry. Likewise, it was now nearing three in the morning. Just time to catchthe half-past three boat, run up to the theatre, a mile away, and meetthe return boat. So down, down through the creaking house, carefully, asthough he were a Jason picking his way among the coils of the sleepingdragon; and soon he was shooting through the phantom streets, likeMercury on a message through Hades. 

At last the river came in sight, growing slate-colour in the earliestdawn. He could see the boat nuzzling up against the pier, and snoring inits sleep. He said to himself that this was Styx and the fare an obolus. As he jumped on board, with hot face and hotter heart, Charon clickedhis signal to the engines; the boat slowly snuffled itself half awake, and shoved out into the sleepy water. 

As they crossed, the light grew, and the gas-lamps of Tyre beaconed withfading gleam. Overhead began a restlessness in the clouds, as of a giantdrowsily shuffling off some of his bedclothes; but as yet he slept, andonly the silver bosom of his spouse, the moon, was uncovered. 

When they landed, the streets of Tyre were already light, but empty, asthough they had got up early to meet some one who had not arrived. Damonsped through them like a sea-gull that has the harbour to itself, andwas not long in reaching the theatre. How desolate the play-bills lookedthat had been so companionable but three or four hours before! And therewas her photograph! Surely it was an omen. 

"Ah, my angel! See, I am bringing you my heart in a song. 'All my heartin this my singing!'"

He dropped the letter into the box; but, as he turned away, momentarilyglancing up the long street, he caught sight of an approaching figurethat could hardly be mistaken. Good Heavens! it was Pythias, and he toowas carrying a letter. 

CHAPTER XIV

CONTRIBUTIONS TOWARDS A GENEALOGY

The egregious Miss Bashkirtseff did not greatly fascinate Esther. Heregotism was too hard, too self-bounded, even for egotism, and there wasgenerally about her a lack of sympathy. Her passion for fame hadsomething provincial in its eagerness, and her broadest ideals seemed tobecome limited by her very anxiety to compass them. Even her love of artseemed a form of snobbery. In all these young Mesuriers there wasimplicit, --partly as a bye-product of the sense of humour, and partly asan unconscious mysticism, --a surprising instinct for allowing thesuccesses of this world their proper value and no more. Even Esther, whowas perhaps the most worldly of them all, and whose ambitions werelargely social, as became a bonny girl whom nature had marked out to bepopular, and on whom, some day when Mike was a great actor, --and had atheatre of his own!--would devolve the cares of populous "at home" days, bright after-the-performance suppers, and all the various diplomacies ofthe popular wife of fame, --even Esther, however brilliant her life mightbecome, would never for a moment imagine that such success was a thingworth winning, at the expense of the smallest loss to such humanrealities as the affection she felt for Mike and Henry. To love some onewell and faithfully, to be one of a little circle vowed to eternalfidelity one to the other, --such was the initial success of these younglives; and it was to make them all their days safe from the dangers ofmore meretricious successes. 

All the same, though the chief performer in Marie Bashkirtseff's"Confessions" interested her but little, the stage on which for a littlewhile she had scolded and whimpered did interest her--for should it nothave been her stage too, and Henry's stage, and Dot's stage, father'sand mother's stage too? You had only to look at father to realise thatnature had really meant him for the great stage; here in Sidon, what washe but a god in exile, bending great powers and a splendid characterupon ridiculously unimportant interests? Indeed, was not his destiny, more or less, their destiny as a family? Henry would escape from itthrough literature, and she through Mike. But what of Dot, what of Mat, not yet to speak of "the children"?

All she envied Marie Bashkirtseff was her opportunity. Great GoddessOpportunity! So much had come to Marie in the cradle, and came daily toa hundred thousand insignificant aristocratic babes, to approach whichfor the Mesuriers, even ten years too late, meant convulsions of thehome, and to attain which in any satisfactory degree was probablyimpossible. French, for example, and music! Why, if so disposed, MarieBashkirtseff might have read old French romances at ten, and to playChopin at an earlier age was not surprising in the opportunitied, so-called "aristocratic" infant. Oh, why had they not been born like theother Sidonians, whose natures and ideals had been mercifully calculatedto the meridian of Sidon! Why didn't they think the Proudfoots and theWilkinsons and the Wagstaffs, and other local nobody-somebodies, peopleof importance, and why did they think the mayor a ludicrous upstart, and the adjacent J. P. A sententious old idiot? Far better to have restedcontent in that state of life to which God had called them. To talkFrench, or to play Chopin! What did it matter? In one sense nothing, butin another it mattered like other convenient facilities of life. To theimmortal soul it mattered nothing, but to the mortal social unit it madelife the easier, made the passage of ideas, the intercourse ofindividualities, the readier, and, in general, facilitated spiritual andintellectual, as well as social, communication. To be first-ratein your instincts, in all your fibres, and third-rate in youropportunities, --that was a bitter indignity of circumstance. 

This sub-conscious sense of aristocracy--it must be observed, lest itshould have been insufficiently implied--was almost humorouslydissociated in the minds of the young Mesuriers from any recorded familydistinctions. In so far as it was conscious, it was defiantlyindependent of genealogy. Had the Mesuriers possessed a coat-of-arms, James Mesurier would probably have kept it locked up as a frivolity tobe ashamed of, for it was a part of his Puritanism that such earthlydistinctions were foolishness with God; but, as a matter of fact, between Adam and the immediate great-grandparents of the youngMesuriers, there was a void which the Herald's office would have found adifficulty in filling. This it never occurred to them to mind inthe least. 

It was one of Henry's deep-sunken maxims that "a distinguished productimplied a distinguished process, " and that, at all events, thegenealogical process was only illustratively important. It would havebeen interesting to know how they, the Mesuriers, came to be what theywere. In the dark night of their history a family portrait or two, or anoccasional reference in history, would have been an entertainingillumination--but, such not being forthcoming, they were, documentally, so much the less indebted to their progenitors. Yet if they had onlybeen able to claim some ancestor with a wig and a degree for thehumanities, or some beautiful ancestress with a romantic reputation!One's own present is so much more interesting for developing, or evenrepeating, some one else's past. And yet how much better it was to be asthey were, than as most scions of aristocratic lineage, whose presentwas so often nothing and their past everything. How humiliating to be sopathetically inadequate an outcome of such long and elaboratepreparation, --the mouse of a genealogical mountain! Yes, it wasimmeasurably more satisfactory to one's self-respect to be Something outof Nothing, than Nothing out of Everything. Here so little had made somuch; here so much had made--hardly even a lord. It was better for yourcircumstances to be inadequate for you, than you to be inadequate foryour circumstances. 

Henry had amused himself one day in making a list of all their"ancestors" to whom any sort of worldly or romantic distinction couldattach, and it ran somewhat as follows:--

(1) A great-grandmother on the father's side, fabled to live in somesort of a farm-house château in Guernsey, who once a year, up till twoyears ago, when she died, had sent them a hamper of apples from ChannelIsland orchards. Said "château" believed by his children to descend toJames Mesurier, but the latter indifferent to the matter, and relativeson the spot probably able to look after it. 

(2) A great-grandfather on the mother's side given to travel, a"rolling-stone, " fond of books and talk, and rich in humanity. Survivingstill in a high-nosed old silhouette. 

(3) A grand-uncle on the father's side who was one of Napoleon's guardat St. Helena!

(4) A grandfather on the mother's side, who used to design and engravelittle wooden blocks for patterns on calico-stuffs, and whose little boxof delicate instruments, evidently made for the tracing of lines andflowers, was one of the few family heirlooms. 

(5) A grandmother on the father's side of whom nothing was known beyondthe beautiful fact that she was Irish. 

(6) A grandfather on the father's side who was a sea-captain, sailinghis own ship (barque "the Lucretia") to the West Indies, and who died ofyellow fever, and was buried, in the odour of romance, on the Isthmusof Panama. 

(7) An uncle who had also been a sea-captain, and who, in rescuing awrecked crew from an Australian reef, was himself capsized, and after along swim finally eaten by a shark, --said shark being captured next day, and found to contain his head entire, two gold rings still in his ears, which he wore for near-sightedness, after the manner of common sailors, and one of which, after its strange vicissitudes, had found aresting-place in the secretaire of his brother, James Mesurier. 

Such was the only accessible "ancestry" of the Mesuriers, and it is tobe feared that the last state of the family was socially worse than thefirst. James Mesurier was unapproachably its present summit, its Alpinepeak; and he was made to suffer for it no little by humble andimpecunious relatives. Still, whatever else they lacked, Henry Mesurierloved to insist that these various connections were rich in character, one or two of them inexhaustible in humour; and their rare and somewhattimorous visits to the castle of their exalted relative, James Mesurier, were occasions of much mirthful embarrassment to the young people. Herethe reader is requested to excuse a brief parenthetical chapter by wayof illustration, which, if he pleases, he may skip without any loss ofcontinuity in the narrative, or the least offence in the world to thewriter. This present chapter will be found continued in chapter sixteen. 

CHAPTER XV

MERELY A HUMBLE INTERRUPTION ANDILLUSTRATION OF THE LAST

Some peaceable afternoon when Mrs. Mesurier was enjoying a little dozeon the parlour sofa, and her three elder daughters were snatching anhour or two from housework--they had already left school--for a littleprivate reading, the drowsy house would suddenly be awakened by one loudwooden knock at the door. 

"Now, whoever can that be!" the three girls would impatiently exclaim;and presently the maid would come to Miss Esther to say that there wasan old man at the door asking for Mrs. Mesurier. 

"What's his name, Jane?"

"He wouldn't give it, miss. He said it would be all right. Mrs. Mesurierwould know him well enough. "

"Whoever can it be? What's he like, Jane?"

"He looks like a workman, miss, --very old, and rather dotey. "

"Who can it be? Go and ask him his name again. "

Esther would then arouse her mother; and the maid would come in to saythat at last the old man had been persuaded to confide his name asClegg--Samuel Clegg. 

"Tell the missus it's Samuel Clegg, " the old man had said, with acertain amusing conceit. "She'll be glad enough to see Samuel Clegg. "

"Why!" said Mrs. Mesurier, "it's your father's poor old uncle, Mr. Clegg. Now, girls, you mustn't run away, but try and be nice to him. He's a simple, good, old man. "

Mrs. Mesurier was no more interested in Mr. Clegg than her daughters;but she had a great fund of humanity, and an inexhaustible capacity forsuffering bores brilliantly. 

"Why, I never!" she would say, adapting her idiom to make the old manfeel at home, as he was presently ushered in, chuntering and triumphant;"you don't mean to say it's Uncle Clegg. Well, we are glad to see you! Iwas just having a little nap, and so you must excuse my keepingyou waiting. "

"Ay, Mary. It's right nice of you to make me so welcome. I got a bitmisdoubtful at the door, for the young maid seemed somehow a littlefrightened of me; but when I told the name it was all right. 'SamuelClegg, ' I said. 'She'll be glad enough to see Samuel Clegg, ' I said. "

"Glad indeed, " murmured Mrs. Mesurier, "I should think so. Find a chairfor your uncle, Esther. "

"Ay, the name did it, " chuckled the old man, who as a matter of fact wasanything but a humble old person, and to whom the bare fact ofexistence, and the name of Clegg, seemed warrant enough for thinkingquite a lot of yourself. 

"I'm afraid you don't remember your old uncle, " said the old man toEsther, looking dimly round, and rather bewildered by the fine youngladies. Actually, he was only a remote courtesy uncle, having marriedtheir father's mother's sister. 

"Oh, of course, Uncle Clegg, " said Esther, a true daughter of hermother; "but, you see, it's a long time since we saw you. "

"And this is Dorcas. Come and kiss your uncle, Dorcas. And this isMatilda, " said Mrs. Mesurier. 

"Ay, " said the old man, "and you're all growing up such fine youngladies. Deary me, Mary, but they must make you feel old. "

"We were just going to have some tea, " said Esther; "wouldn't you like acup, uncle?"

"I daresay your uncle would rather have a glass of beer, " said Mrs. Mesurier. 

"Ay, you're right there, Mary, " answered the old man, "right there. Aglass of beer is good enough for Samuel Clegg. A glass of beer and somebread and cheese, as the old saying is, is good enough for a king; butbread and cheese and water isn't fit for a beggar. "

All laughed obligingly; and the old man turned to a bulging pocket whichhad evidently been on his mind from his entrance. 

"I've got a little present here from Esther, " he said, --"Esther" beingthe aunt after whom Mike's Esther had been named, --bringing out a littlenewspaper parcel. "But I must tell you from the beginning. 

"Well, you know, Mary, " he continued, "I was feeling rather lowyesterday, and Esther said to me, 'Why not take a day off to-morrow, Samuel, and see Mary, it'll shake you up a bit, and I'll be bound she'sright glad to see you?' 'Why, lass!' I said, 'it's the very thing. Seeif I don't go in the morning. '

"So this morning, " he continued, "she tidies me up--you know herway--and sends me off. But before I started, she said, 'Here, Samuel, you must take this, with my love, to Mary. ' I've kept it wrapped up inthis drawer for thirty years, and only the other day our Mary Elizabethsaid, 'Mother, you might give me that old jug. It would look nice in ourlittle parlour. '" "But no!" I says, "Mary Elizabeth, if any one's to havethat jug, it's your Aunt Mary. "

"How kind of her!" murmured Mrs. Mesurier, sympathetically. 

"Yes, those were her words, Mary, " said the old man, unfolding thenewspaper parcel, and revealing an ugly little jug of metallicallyglistening earthenware, such as were turned out with strange pride fromcertain English potteries about seventy years ago. It seemed made inimitation of metal, --a sort of earthenware pewter; and evidently it hadbeen a great aesthetic treasure in the eyes of Mrs. Clegg. Mrs. Mesurierreceived it accordingly. 

"How pretty, " she said, "and how kind of Aunt Esther! They don't makesuch things nowadays. "

"No, it's a vallyble relic, " said the old man; "but you're worthy ofit, Mary. I'd rather see you have it than any of them. My word, but I'mglad I've got it here safely. Esther would never have forgiven me. ' Now, Samuel, ' she said, as I left, 'mind you get home before dark, and don'tsit on the jug, whatever you do. '"

Meanwhile the "young ladies" were in imminent danger of convulsions;and, at that moment, further to enhance the situation, an old lady ofthe neighbourhood, who occasionally dropped in for a gossip, wasannounced. She was a prim little lady, with "Cranford" curls, and acertain old-world charm and old-world vanity about her, and very deaf. She too was a "character" in her way, but so different from old Mr. Clegg that the entertainment to be expected from their conjunction wasirresistible even to anticipate. 

"This is Mr. Clegg, an uncle of Mr. Mesurier, " said poor Mrs. Mesurier, by way of introduction. 

"Howd'ye do, marm?" said Mr. Clegg, without rising. 

Mrs. Turtle bowed primly. "Are you sure, my dear, I don't interrupt?"she said to Mrs. Mesurier; "shall I not call in some other day?"

"Oh, dear, no!" said Mrs. Mesurier. "Esther, get Mrs. Turtle a littlewhisky and water. "

"Oh, my dear!" exclaimed Mrs. Turtle, "only the least little drop in theworld, Esther dear. My heart, you know, my dear. Even so short a walk asthis tires me out. "

Mrs. Mesurier responded sympathetically; and then, by way of makinghimself pleasant, Mr. Clegg suddenly broke in with such an extraordinaryamenity of old-world gallantry that everybody's hair stood on end. 

"How old do you be?" he said, bowing to the new-comer. 

"I beg your pardon, " said Mrs. Turtle, putting her hand to her ear; "butI'm slightly deaf. "

"How old do you be?" shouted the old man. 

Though not unnaturally taken aback at such an unwonted conception ofconversational intercourse, Mrs. Turtle recovered herself withconsiderable humour, and, bridling, with an old-world shake of herhead, said, --

"What would you take me for?"

"I should say you were seventy, if you're a day, " promptly answered theold man. 

"Oh, dear, no!" replied Mrs. Turtle, with some pique; "I was only sixtylast January. "

"Well, you carry your age badly, " retorted the old man, not to bebeaten. 

"What does he say, my dear?" said the poor old lady turning to Mrs. Mesurier. 

"You carry your age badly, " shouted the determined old man; "she shouldsee our Esther, shouldn't she, Mary?"

The silence here of the young people was positively electric withsuppressed laughter. Two of them escaped to explode in another room, andEsther and her mother were left to save the situation. But on suchoccasions as these Mrs. Mesurier grew positively great; and the mannerin which she contrived to "turn the conversation, " and smooth over theterrible hiatus, was a feat that admits of no worthy description. 

Presently the old man rose to go, as the clock neared five. He hadpromised to be home before dark, and Esther would think him "benighted"if he should be late. He evidently had been to America and back in thatshort afternoon. 

"Well, Mary, good-bye, " he said; "one never knows whether we shall meetagain. I'm getting an old man. "

"Eh, Uncle Clegg, you're worth twenty dead ones yet, " said Mrs. Mesurier, reassuringly. 

"What a strange old gentleman!" said Mrs. Turtle, somewhat bewildered, as this family apparition left the room. 

"Good-bye, Uncle Clegg, " Esther was heard singing in the hall. "Good-bye, be careful of the steps. Good-bye. Give our love toAunt Esther. "

Then the door would bang, and the whole house breathe a gigantic sigh ofhumorous relief. 

(This was the kind of thing girls at home had to put up with!)

"Well, mother, did you ever see such a funny old person?" said Esther, on her return to the parlour. 

"You mustn't laugh at him, " Mrs. Mesurier would say, laughing herself;"he's a good old man. "

"No doubt he's good enough, mother dear; but he's unmistakably funny, "Esther would reply, with a whimsical thought of the family tree. Yes, they were a distinguished race!

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER FOURTEEN CONCLUDED

No, the Mesuriers had absolutely nothing to hope for from theirrelations, --nothing to look back upon, less to look forward to. Mostfamilies, however poor and even _bourgeois_, had some memories todignify them or some one possible contingency of pecuniary inheritance. At the very least, they had a ghost-story in the family. You seldom readthe biographies of writers or artists without finding references, however remote, to at least one person of some distinction or substance. To have had even a curate for an ancestor, or a connection, would havebeen something, some frail link with gentility. 

Now if, instead of being a rough old sea-captain of a trading ship, Grandfather Mesurier had only been a charming old white-headed admiralliving in London, and glad, now and again, to welcome his little countrygranddaughters to stay with him! He would probably have been very dull, but then he would have looked distinguished, and taken one for walks inthe Park, or bought one presents in the Burlington arcade. At least oldadmirals always seemed to serve this indulgent purpose in stories. Atall events, he would have been something, some possible link with anexistence of more generous opportunities. Dot and Mat would then atleast have seen a nice boy or two occasionally, and in time got marriedas they deserved to be, and thus escape from this little provincialtheatre of Sidon. Who could look at Dot and think that anything short ofa miracle--a miracle like Esther's own meeting with Mike--was going tofind her a worthy mate in Sidon; and, suppose the miracle happened oncemore in her case, what of Mat and all the rest? To be the wife of aSidonian town-councillor, at the highest, --what a fate!

Henry and she had often discussed this inadequate outlook for theiryounger sisters, quite in the manner of those whose positions ofenlargement were practically achieved. The only thing to be done was forHenry to make haste to win a name as a writer, and Mike to make hisfortune as an actor. Then another society would be at once opened tothem all. Yes, what wonders were to take place then, particularly whenMike had made his fortune!--for the financial prospects of the youngpeople were mainly centred in him. Literature seldom made muchmoney--except when it wasn't literature. Henry hoped to be too good awriter to hope to make money as well. But that would be a mere detail, when Mike was a flourishing manager; for when that had come about, hadnot Henry promised him that he would not be too proud to regard him ashis patron to the extent of accepting from him an allowance of, say, athousand a year. No, he positively wouldn't agree to more than athousand; and Mike had to be content with his promising to take that. 

Meanwhile, what could girls at home do, but watch and wait and make homeas pretty as possible, and, by the aid of books and pictures, reflect asmuch light from a larger world into their lives as might be. 

On Henry's going away, the three girls had promptly bespoken thereversion of his study as a little sitting-room for themselves. Herethey concentrated their books, and some few pictures that appealed totastes in revolt against Atlantic liners, but not yet developed to theappreciation of those true classics of art--to which indeed they had yetto be introduced. Such half-way masters as Leighton, Alma-Tadema, Sant, and Dicksee were as yet to them something of what Rossetti andBurne-Jones, and certain old Italian masters, were soon to become. Inbooks, they had already learnt from Henry a truer, or at all events amore strenuous, taste; and they would grapple manfully with Carlyle andBrowning, and presently Meredith, long before their lives had use orunderstanding for such tremendous nourishment. 

One evening, as they were all three sitting cosily in Henry's study, --asthey still faithfully called it, --Esther was reading "Pride andPrejudice" aloud, while Dot and Mat busied themselves respectively with"macramé" work and a tea-cosy against a coming bazaar. Esther's tasks inthe house were somewhat illustrated by her part in the trio thisevening. Her energies were mainly devoted to "the higher nights" ofhousekeeping, to the aesthetic activities of the home, --arrangingflowers, dusting vases and pictures, and so on, --and the lightness ofthese employments was, it is to be admitted, an occasionally raisedgrievance among the sisters. To Dot and Mat fell much more arduous andmanual spheres of labour. Yet all were none the less grateful for thedecorative innovations which Esther, acting on occasional hints from herfriend Myrtilla Williamson, was able to make; and if it were true thatshe hardly took her fair share of bed-making and pastry-cooking, it wasequally undeniable that to her was due the introduction of Liberty silkcurtains and cushions in two or three rooms. She too--alas, for themistakes of young taste!--had also introduced painted tambourines, andswathed the lamps in wonderful turbans of puffed tissue paper. Was sheto receive no credit for these services? Then it was she who had daredto do battle with her mother's somewhat old-fashioned taste in dress;and whenever the Mesurier sisters came out in something specially prettyor fashionable, it was due to Esther. 

Well, on this particular evening, she was, as we have said, taking hershare in the housework by reading "Jane Austen" aloud to Dot and Mat;when the door suddenly opened, and James Mesurier stood there, a littlealoof, --for it was seldom he entered this room, which perhaps had forhim a certain painful association of his son's rebellion. Perhaps, too, the picture of this happy little corner of his children--a worldevidently so complete in itself, and daily developing more and more awayfrom the parent world in the front parlour--gave him a certain pang ofestrangement. Perhaps he too felt as he looked on them that same drearysense of disintegration which had overtaken the mother on Henry'sdeparture; and perhaps there was something of that in his voice, as, looking at them with rather a sad smile, he said, --

"You look very comfortable here, children. I hope that's a profitablebook you are reading, Esther. "

"Oh, yes, father. It's 'Jane Austen, ' you know. "

"Well, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I want a few words with Dorcas. She can join you again soon. "

So Dot, wondering what was in store for her, rose and accompanied herfather to the front parlour, where Mrs. Mesurier was peacefully knittingin the lamplight. 

"Dorcas, my dear, " he said, when the door was closed, "your mother andI have had a serious talk this evening on the subject of your joiningthe church. You are now nearly sixteen, and of an age to think foryourself in such matters; and we think it is time that you made someprofession of your faith as a Christian before the world. "

The Church James Mesurier referred to was that branch of the EnglishNonconformists known as Baptists; and the profession of faith was thecurious rite of baptism by complete immersion, the importance claimedfor which by this sect is, perhaps, from a Christian point of view, madethe less disproportionate by another condition attaching to it, --thecondition that not till years of individual judgment have been reachedis one eligible for the sacred rite. With that rationalism whichreligious sects are so skilful in applying to some unimportant point ofritual, and so careful not to apply to vital questions of dogma, theBaptists reasonably argue that to baptise an unthinking infant, and, byan external rite which has no significance except as the symbol of aninternal decision, declare him a Christian, is nothing more than anidolatrous mummery. Wait till the child is of age to choose for him orherself, to understand the significance of the Christian revelation andthe nature of the profession it is called upon to make; then if, by thegrace of God, it chooses aright, let him or her be baptised. And for themanner of that baptism, if symbols are to be made use of by theChristian church, --and it is held wise among the Baptists to make use offew, and those the most central, --should they not be designed as nearlyafter the fashion set forth in the Bible itself as is possible? The"Ordinance" of the Lord's Supper--as it is called amongst them--followsthe procedure of the Last Supper as recorded in the Gospels; should not, therefore, the rite of baptism be in its details similarly faithful toauthority? Now in Scripture, as is well known, baptisms were completeimmersions, symbolic alike of the washing away of sin, and also of thedying to this world and the resurrection to the Life eternal inChrist Jesus. 

So much theology was bred in the bone of all the young Mesuriers; andthe youngest of them could as readily have capitulated these articles ofbelief as their father, who once more briefly summarised them to-nightfor the benefit of his daughter. He ended with something of a personalappeal. It had been one of the griefs of his life that Henry and Estherhad both refused to join their father's church, though Esther alwaysdutifully attended it every Sunday morning; and it was thinking of them, though without naming them, that he said, --

"I met Mr. Trotter yesterday, "--Mr. Trotter was the local Baptistminister, and Dot remarked to herself that her father was able topronounce his name without the smallest suspicion that such a name, asbelonging to a minister of divine mysteries, was rather ludicrous, though indeed Baptist ministers seemed always to have names likethat!--"and he asked me when some of my young ladies were going to jointhe church. I confess the question made me feel a little ashamed; for, you know, my dear, out of our large family not one of you has yet comeforward as a Christian. "

"No, father, " said Dot, at last. 

"I hope, my dear, you are not going to disappoint me in this matter. "

"No indeed, father, " said Dot, whose nature was pliable andsympathetic, as well as fundamentally religious; "but I'm afraid Ihaven't thought quite as much about it as I should like to, and, if youdon't mind, I should like to have a few days to think it out. "

"Of course, my dear. That is a very right feeling; for the step is asolemn one, and should not be taken without reverent thought. You cannotdo better than to talk it over with Mr. Trotter. If you have anydifficulties, you can tell him; and I'm sure he would be delighted tohelp you. Isn't it so, mother? Well, dear, " he continued, "you can runaway now; but bear in mind what I have said, and I shall hope to hearthat you have made the right choice before long. Kiss me, dear. "

And so, with something of a lump in her throat, Dot returned to theinterrupted "Jane Austen. "

"Whatever did father want?" asked the two girls, looking up as sheentered the room. 

"What do you think?" said Dot. "He wants me to be baptised!"

CHAPTER XVII

DOT'S DECISION

Now, in thus appealing to Dot, her father had appealed to just the oneout of all his children who was least likely to disappoint him. To Dotand Henry had unmistakably been transmitted the largest share of theirfather's spirituality. Esther was not actively religious, any more thanshe was actively poetic. Hers was one of those composite, admirablybalanced natures which include most qualities and faculties, but no onein excess of another. Such make those engaging good women of the world, who are able to understand and sympathise with the most diverseinterests and temperaments; as it is the characteristic of a good criticto understand all those various products of art, which it would beimpossible for him to create. Thus Esther could have delighted a saintwith her sympathetic comprehension, as she could have healed the woundsof a sinner by her comprehensive sympathy; but it was certain she wouldnever be, in sufficient excess, spiritually wrought or sensuallyrebellious to be one or the other. She was beautifully, buoyantlynormal, with a happy, expansive, enjoying nature, glad in the sunlight, brave in the shadow, optimistically looking forward to blithe years oflife and love with Mike and her friends, and not feeling the necessityof being anxious about her soul, or any other world but this. She wasnot shallow; but she merely realised life more through her intelligencethan through her feelings. To have become a Baptist would have offendedher intelligence, without bringing any satisfaction to spiritualinstincts not, in any event, clamorous. 

As for Henry, it was not only activity of intelligence, but activity ofspirituality, that made it impossible for him to embrace any such narrowcreed as that proposed to him; and, for the present, that spiritualactivity found ample scope for itself in poetry. 

Dot's, however, was an intermediate case. With an intelligence activetoo, she united a spirituality torturingly intense, but for which shehad no such natural creative outlet as Henry. With her loss of the oldcreed, --in discarding which these three sisters had followed the lead oftheir brother with a curious instinctiveness, almost, it would seem, independent of reasoning, --her spirituality had been left somewhatbleakly houseless, and she had often longed for some compromise by whichshe could reconcile her intelligence to the acceptance of someestablished home of faith, whose kindly enclosing walls should be moregenially habitable to the soul than the cold, star-lit spaces whichHenry declared to be sufficient temple. 

Perhaps Esther's commiseration of her sisters' narrow opportunities was, so far as it related to Dot, a little unnecessary, for indeed Dot'sambitions were not social. By nature shy and meditative, and with herreligious bias, had she been born into a Catholic family, she might notimprobably have found the world well lost in a sisterhood. The Puritanconscience had an uncomfortable preponderance in the deep places of hernature, and, far down in her soul, like her father, she would askherself if pleasure could be the end of life--was there not somethingserious each of us could and ought to do, to justify his place in theworld? Were we not all under some mysterious solemn obligation to dosomething, however little, in return for life?

Mat, on the other hand, had no such scruples. She was more like Estherin nature, with a touch of cynicism curling her dainty lip, arising, perhaps, from an early divination that she was to lack Esther'sopportunities. Perhaps it was because she was the pessimist--the quitecheerful pessimist--of the family, that she was by far the cleverest andmost industrious at the housework. If it was her fate to be Cinderella, she might as well make the best of it, with a cynical endurance andgood-humour, and be Cinderella with a good grace. Probably the onlyglass slipper in the family had already fallen to Esther. Never mind, though her good looks might fade with being a good girl at home, year byyear, what did it matter, after all? Nothing mattered in the end. Andthus, out of a great indifference, Mat developed a great unselfishness;and if you could name one special angel in the house of the Mesuriers, she was unmistakably Mat. 

In addition to her religious promptings, Dot had lately developed agreat sympathy for her father. Standing a little aside from the conflictbetween him and Henry, she was able to divine something of the feelingsof both; and she had now and again caught a look of loneliness on herfather's face that made her ready to do almost anything to please him. 

Of course the question was one for general consultation. She knew whatHenry would say. It didn't much matter anyhow, he would say, but it wasa pity. How was intellectual freedom to be won, if those who had seenthe light should thus deliberately forego it, time after time, from suchmerely sentimental reasons? And when she saw Henry, that was just whathe did say. 

"But, " she said, "it would make father so happy. "

"Yes, I know, " he answered; "and it would be very beautiful of you. Besides, of course, in one way it's only a matter of symbolism; butthen, on the other hand, it's symbolism hardened into dogmatism that hasdone all the mischief. Do it, dear, if you like; I hardly know what tosay. As you say, it will make father happy, and I shall quiteunderstand. "

Dot was one of those natures that like to seek, and are liable to take, advice; so, after seeing Henry, she thought she would see what Mr. Trotter had to say; for, in spite of his unfortunate name, Mr. Trotterwas a gentle, cultivated mind, and was indeed somewhat incongruously, perhaps in a mild way Jesuitically, circumstanced as a Baptist minister. Henry and he were great friends on literary matters; and Dot and he hadhad many talks, greatly helpful to her, on spiritual things. In fact, Chrysostom Trotter was one of those numerous half-way men between theold beliefs and their new modifications, which the continuous advance ofscientific discovery and philosophical speculation on the one hand, andthe obstinate survival of Christianity on the other, necessitate--if menof spiritual intuitions who are not poets and artists are to earn theirliving. There was nothing you could say to Chrysostom Trotter, providedyou said it reverently, that would startle him. He knew all that longago and far more. For, though obliged to trade in this backwater ofbelief, he was in many respects a very modern mind. You were hardlylikely to know your Herbert Spencer as intimately as he, and all themost exquisite literature of doubt was upon his shelves. Though youmight declare him superficially disingenuous, you could not, unless youwere some commonplace atheist or materialist, gainsay the honest logicof his position. 

"You believe that the world, that life, is a spiritual mystery?" hewould say. 

"Yes. "

"You do not for a moment think that any materialistic science hasremotely approached an adequate explanation of its meaning?"

"Certainly not. "

"You believe too that, however it comes about, and whatever it means, there is an eternal struggle in man between what, for sake of argument, we will call the higher and lower natures?"

"Yes. "

"Well, then, this spiritual mystery, this struggle, are hinted at invarious media of human expression, in an ever-changing variety of humansymbols. Art chiefly concerns itself with the sexual mystery, with thewonderful love of man and woman, in its explanation of which alonescience is so pitifully inadequate. Literature more fully concernsitself with the mystery of man's indestructibly instinctive relation towhat we call the unseen, --that is, the Whole, the Cosmos, God, orwhatever you please to call it. But more than literature, religion hasfor centuries concerned itself with these considerations, hasconsciously and industriously sought to make itself the science of whatwe call the soul. It has thrown its observations, just as poetry and arthave thrown their observations, into symbolic forms, of whichChristianity is incomparably the most important. You don't reject therevelation of human love because Hero and Leander are probably creationsof the poet's fancy. Will you reject the revelation of divine love, because it chances, for its greater efficiency in winning human hearts, to have found expression in a similar human symbolism? Personally, Ihold that Christ actually lived, and was literally the Son of God; but, were the human literalness of his divine story discredited, the eternalverities of human degeneration, and a mysterious regeneration, would beno whit disproved. Externally, Christianity may be a symbol;essentially, it is a science of spiritual fact, as really as geology isa science of material fact. 

"And as for its miraculous, supernatural, side, --are the laws of natureso easy to understand that we should find such a difficulty in acceptinga few divergencies from them? He who can make laws for so vast auniverse may surely be capable of inventing a few comparatively trivialexceptions. "

Not perhaps in so many words, but in some such spirit, would ChrysostomTrotter argue; and it was in some such fashion that he talked in hischarmingly sympathetic way with Dorcas Mesurier, one afternoon, as shehad tea with him in a study breathing on every hand the man of letters, rather than the minister of a somewhat antiquated sect. 

"My dear Dorcas, " he said, "you know me well enough--you know me perhapsbetter than your father knows me--know me well enough to believe that Iwouldn't urge you to do this thing if I didn't think it was right _foryou_--as well as for your father and me. But I know it is right, and forthis reason. You are a deeply religious nature, but you need someoutward symbol to hold on to, --you need, so to say, the magnetisingassociation of a religious organisation. Henry can get along very well, as many poets have, with his birds and his sunsets and so forth; but youneed something more authoritative. It happens that the church Irepresent, the church of your father, is nearest to you. You might, withall the goodwill in the world, so far as I am concerned, embrace someother modification of the Christian faith; but here is a church, so tosay, ready for you, familiar by long association, endeared to yourfather. You believe in God, you believe in the spiritual meaning oflife, you believe that we poor human beings need something to keep oureyes fixed upon that spiritual meaning--well, dear Dorcas, " he ended, abruptly, "what do you think?"

"I'll do it, " said Dot. 

"Good girl, " said the minister; "sometimes it is a form of righteousnessto waive our doubts for those who are at once so dear and good as yourfather. And don't for a moment think that it will leave you just whereyou are. These outward acts are great energisers of the soul. DearDorcas, I welcome you into one of God's many churches. "

So it was that Dot came to be baptised; and, to witness the ceremony, all the Mesuriers assembled at the chapel that Sunday evening, --evenHenry, who could hardly remember when he used to sit in thisstill-familiar pew, and scribble love-verses in the back of hishymn-book during the sermon. 

To the mere mocker, the rite of baptism by immersion might well seem asomewhat grotesque antic of sectarianism; but to any one who must needsfind sympathy for any observance into which, in whatsoever forgotten andsuperseded time, has passed the prayerful enthusiasm of man, the ritecould hardly fail of a moving solemnity. As Chrysostom Trotter orderedit, it was certainly made to yield its fullest measure ofimpressiveness. To begin with, the chapel was quite a comely edificeinside and out; and its ministerial end, with its singers' gallerybacked by great organ pipes, and fronted by a handsome pulpit, which Mr. Trotter had dared to garnish with chrysanthemums on each side of hisBible, had a modest, sacerdotal effect. Beneath the pulpit on ordinaryoccasions stood the Communion-table; but on evenings when the rite ofbaptism was prepared, this table, and a boarding on which it stood, were removed, revealing a tiled baptistry, --that is, a tiled tank, abouteight feet long, and six wide, with steps on each side descending intoabout four feet of water. 

Towards the close of the service, the minister would leave his pulpit, and, during the singing of a hymn, would presently emerge from hisvestry in a long waterproof garment. As the hymn ended, some "sister" or"brother" that night to be admitted into the church, would timidly joinhim at the baptistry side, and together they would go down intothe water. 

Holding the hands of the new communicant, the minister, in a solemnvoice, would say, "Sister, " or "Brother, on confession of your faith inour Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, I baptise thee in the name of theFather, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. "

Then the organ would strike up a triumphant peal, and, to theaccompaniment of its music and the mellow plashing of the water, thesister or brother would be plunged beneath the symbolic wave. 

Great was the excitement, needless to say, in the Mesurier pew, aslittle Dot at last came forth from the vestry, and, stealing down intothe water, took the minister's out-stretched hands. 

"There she is! There's Dot!" passed round the pew, and the hardest youngheart, whoever it belonged to, stopped beating, to hear the minister'swords. They seemed to come with a special personal tenderness, --

"Sister, on confession of your faith in our Lord and Saviour JesusChrist, I baptise thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and ofthe Holy Ghost. "

Once more the organ triumphant, and the mellow splashing of the water. 

Dear little Dot, she had done it!

"Did you see father's face?" Esther whispered to Henry. 

Yes; perhaps none of them would ever do such a beautiful thing as Dothad done that night. At least there was one of James Mesurier's childrenwho had not disappointed him. 

CHAPTER XVIII

MIKE AND HIS MILLION POUNDS

The most exquisite compliment a man has ever paid to him is wordedsomething like this: "Well, dear, you certainly know how to make love;"and this compliment is always the reward, not of passion howeversustained, or sentiment however refined, but of humour whimsicallyfantasticating and balancing both. It is the gentle laugh, notviolating, but just humanising, that very solemn kiss; the quip thatjust saves passion from toppling over the brink into bathos, that markthe skilful lover. No lover will long be successful unless he is ahumourist too, and is able to keep the heart of love amused. A lovershould always be something of an actor as well; not, of course, for thepurpose of feigning what he does not feel, but so that he may the betterdramatise his sincerity!

Mike had therefore many advantages over those merely pretty fellowswhose rivalry he had once been modest enough to fear. He was a masterof all the child's play of love; and to attempt to describe the fancieswhich he found to vary the game of love, would be to run the risk ofexposing the limitations of the literary medium. No words can pull thosewhimsical faces, or put on those heart-breaking pathetic expressions, with which he loved to meet Esther after some short absence. Sometimeshe would come into the room, a little forlorn sparrow of a creature, signifying, by a dejection in which his very clothes took part, that hewas out in the east wind of circumstance and no one in the world cared ashabby feather for him. He would stand shivering in a corner, and looktimorously from side to side, till at last he would pretend she hadwarmed him with her kisses, and generally made him welcome to the world. 

Sometimes he would come in with his collar dismally turned up, and anold battered hat upon his head, and pretend that he hadn't had ameal--of kisses--for a whole week; and occasionally he would comeblowing out his cheeks like a king's trumpeter, to announce that MikeLaflin might be at any moment expected. But for the most part theseimpersonations were in a minor key, as Mike had soon discovered that themore pathetic he was, the more he was hugged and called a "weenty, "which was one of his own sad little names for himself. 

One of his "long-run" fairy-tales, as he would call them, was that eachmorning as he went to business, he really started out in search of amillion pounds, which was somewhere awaiting him, and which he mightbreak his shins over at any moment. It might be here, it might be there, it might come at any hour of the day. The next post might bring it. Itmight be in yonder Parcel Delivery van, --nothing more probable. Or atany moment it might fall from heaven in a parachute, or be at thatsecond passing through the dock-gates, wearily home from the Islands ofSugar and Spice. You never could tell. 

"Well, Mike, " said Esther, one evening, as he came in, hopping in apitifully wounded way, and explaining that he had been one of the threeravens sitting on a bough which the cruel huntsman had shot through thewing, etc. , "have you found your million pounds to-day?"

"No, not my million pounds, " said Mike. "I'm told I shall find themto-morrow. "

"Who told you?"

"The Weenty. "

"You silly old thing! Give me a kiss. Are you a dear? Tell me, aren'tyou a dear?"

"No-p! I'm only a poor little houseless, roofless, windowless, chimney-less, Esther-less, brainless, out-in-the-wind-and-the-snow-and-the-rain, Mike!"

"You're the biggest dear in the world!"

"No, I'm not. I'm the littlest!"

"Suppose you found your million pounds, Mike?"

"Suppose! Didn't I tell you I'm sure of it to-morrow?"

"Well, when you find it to-morrow, what will you do with it?"

"I'll buy the moon. "

"The moon?"

"Yes; as a present for Henry. "

"Wouldn't it be rather dear?"

"Not at all. Twenty thousand would buy it any time this last hundredyears. But the worst of it is, no one wants it but the poets, and theycannot afford it. Yet if only a poet could get hold of it, why what aliterary property it would be!"

"You silly old thing!"

"No! but you don't seem to realise that I'm quite serious. Think of themoney there would be for any poet who had acquired the exclusiveliterary rights in the moon! Within a week I'd have it placarded allover, 'Literary trespassers will be prosecuted!' And then I've no doubtHenry would lend me the Man in the Moon for my Christmas pantomimes. "

"After all, it's not a bad idea, " said Esther. 

"Of course it's not, " said Mike; "but be careful not to mention it toHenry just yet. I shouldn't like to disappoint him--for, of course, before we took any final steps in the purchase, we'd have to make surethat it wasn't, as some people think, made of green cheese. "

"But never mind about the moon. Tell us how you got on with TheSothern. "

The Sothern was an amateur dramatic club in Tyre which took itself veryseriously, and to which Mike was seeking admission, as a first steptowards London management. He had that day passed an examination beforethree of the official members, solemn and important as though they hadbeen the Honourable Directors of Drury Lane, and had been admitted tomembership in the club, with the promise of a small part in theirforthcoming performance. 

"Oh, that's good!" said Esther. "What were they like?"

"Oh, they were all right, --rather humorous. They gave me 'Eugene Aram'to read--Me reading 'Eugene Aram'!--and a scene out of 'LondonAssurance, ' which was, of course, better. Naturally, not one of the menwas the remotest bit like himself. One was a queer kind of Irving, another a sad sort of Arthur Roberts, and the other was--shall we say, aTyrian Wyndham. "

Actors, like poets, have provincial parodists of their styles in evengreater numbers, so adoringly imitative is humanity. Some day, Mikewould have his imitators, --boys who pulled faces like his, and pridedthemselves on having the Laflin wrinkles; just as it was once thefashion for girls to look like Burne-Jones pictures, or young poets toimitate Mr. Swinburne. 

"Yes, I've got my first part. I've got it in my pocket, " said Mike. 

"Oh, really! That's splendid!" exclaimed Esther, with delight. 

"Wait till you see it, " said Mike, bringing out a French's actingedition of some forgotten comedy. "Yes; guess how many words I've got tosay! Just exactly eleven. And such words!"

"Well, never mind, dear. It's a beginning. "

"Certainly, it's a beginning, --the very beginning of a beginning. "

"Come, let me see it, Mike. What are you supposed to be?"

At last Mike was persuaded to confess the humble little _rôle_ for whichthe eminent actors who had consented to be his colleagues had cast him. He was to be the comic boy of a pastry-cook's man, and his distinguishedpart in the action of the piece was to come in at a certain moment withthe pie that had been ordered, and, as he delivered it, he was toremark, "That's a pie as is a pie, is that there pie!"

"Oh, Mike, what a shame!" exclaimed Esther. "How absurd! Why, you're abetter actor with your little finger than any one of them with theirwhole body. "

"Ah, but they don't know that yet, you see. "

"Any one could see it if they looked at your face half-a-minute. "

"I wanted to play the part of Snodgrass; but they couldn't think ofgiving me that, of course. So, do you know what I pretended, to comfortmyself? I pretended I was Edward Kean waiting in the passages at DruryLane, with all the other fine fellows looking down at the shabby littlegloomy man from the provinces. That was conceit for you, wasn't it?"

The pathos of this was, of course, irresistible to Esther, and Mike wasthereupon hugged and kissed as he expected. 

"Never mind, " he said, "you'll see if I don't make something of the poorlittle part after all. "

And, thereupon, he described what he laughingly called his "conception, "and how he proposed to dress and make up, so vividly that it was evidentthat the pastry-cook's boy was already to him a personality whoseactions and interests were by no means limited to his brief appearanceon the stage, but who, though accidentally he had but few words to speakbefore the audience, was a very voluble and vital little person inscenes where the audience did not follow him. 

"Yes, you see I'll do something with it. The best of a small part, "said Mike, speaking as one of experience, "is that it gives you plentyof opportunity for making the audience wish there was more of it. "

"From that point of view, you certainly couldn't have a finer part, "laughed Esther. 

Then for a moment Mike skipped out of the room, and presently knocked, and, putting in a funny face, entered carrying a cushion with alacrity. 

"That's a pie as is a pie, is that there pie!" he fooled, throwing thecushion into Esther's lap, where presently his little red head foundits way too. 

"How can you love such a silly little creature?" he said, looking upinto Esther's blue eyes. 

"I don't know, I'm sure, " said Esther; "but I do, " and, bending down, she kissed the wistful boy's face. Was it because Esther was in a wayhis mother, as well as his sweetheart, that she seemed to do allthe kissing?

Thus was Mike's first part rehearsed and rewarded. 

CHAPTER XIX

ON CERTAIN ADVANTAGES OF A BACKWATER

Though from a maritime point of view, Tyre was perhaps the chief centreof conjunction for all the main streams of the world, from the point ofview of literature and any other art, it was an admitted backwater. Takewhat art you pleased, Tyre was a dunce. Even to music, the mostpersuasive of the arts, it was deaf. Surely, of all cities, it had notbeen built to music. It possessed, indeed, one private-spiritedtown-councillor, who insisted on presenting it with nude sculptures andmysterious paintings which it furiously declined. If Tyre was to beartistically great, it must certainly be with a greatness reluctantlythrust upon it. 

Still Henry and Ned had sense enough to be glad that they had been bornthere. It was from no mere recognition of an inexpensively effectivebackground; perhaps they hardly knew why they were glad till later on. But, meanwhile, they instinctively laid hold of the advantages of theirlimitations. Had they been London-born and Oxford-bred, they would havebeen much more fashionable in their tastes; but their very isolation, happily, saved them from the passing superstitions of fashion; and theywere thus able to enjoy the antiquities of beauty with the samefreshness of appetite as though they had been novelties. If Henry was tomeet Ned some evening with the announcement that he had a wonderful newbook to share with him, it was just as likely to be Sir Philip Sidney's"Astrophel and Stella, " as any more recent publication--though, indeed, they contrived to keep in touch with the literary developments of theday with a remarkable instinct, and perhaps a juster estimate of theircharacter and value than those who were taking part in them; for it isseldom that one can be in the movement and at the centre as well. 

As a matter of fact, there was little that interested them, or which atall events didn't disappoint and somewhat bewilder. The novel wasgroaning under the thraldom of realism; poetry, with one or twoexceptions, was given up to bric-a-brac and metrical ingenuity. Toyoung men for whom French romanticism was still alive, who were stillcontent to see the world through the spiritual eyes of Shelley andKeats, and who had not yet learned to belittle Carlyle, there seemed astrange lack of generosity and, indeed, vitality in the literary idealsof the hour. The novel particularly seemed barren and unprofitable tothem, more and more an instrument of science than a branch ofliterature. Laughter had deserted it, as clearly as romance or pathos, and more and more it was becoming the vehicle of cynical biology on theone hand, and Unitarian theology on the other. Besides, strangest ofall, men were praised for lacking those very qualities which to theseboys had seemed essential to literature. The excellences praised werethe excellences of science, not literature. In fact, there seemed to bebut one excellence, namely, accuracy of observation; and to write anovel with any eye to beauty of language was to err, as the writer of ascientific treatise would err who endeavoured to add charm and grace tothe sober record of his investigations. Dull sociological analystsreigned in the once laughing domain of Cervantes, of Fielding andThackeray, of Dumas and Dickens, of Hugo and Gautier and George Sand. 

Were they born too late? Were they anachronisms from the forgotten ageof romanticism, or were they just born in time to assist at the birth ofanother romantic, idealistic age? Would dreams and love and beautifulwriting ever come into fashion again? Would the poet be again a creatureof passion, and the novelist once more make you laugh and cry; and wouldthere be essayists any more, whose pages you would mark and whosephrases you would roll over and over again on your tongue, with delightat some mysterious magic in the words?

History may be held to have answered these questions since then, much infavour of those young men, or at all events is engaged in answeringthem; but, meanwhile, what a miraculous refreshment in a dry and thirstyland was the new book Henry Mesurier had just discovered, and hadeagerly brought to share with Ned in their tavern corner one summerevening in 1885. 

Ned was late; but when Henry had sipped a little at his port, and turnedto the new-born exquisite pages, he hardly noticed how the minutes weregoing by as he read. Presently he had come to the end of the firstvolume, the only one he had with him, and he raised his eyes from theclosing page with that exquisite exaltation, that beatific satisfactionof mind and spirit, --even almost one might say of body, --which for thelover of literature nothing in the world like a fine passage can bring. 

He turned again to the closing sentences: "_Yes; what was wanting wasthe heart that would make it impossible to witness all this; and thefuture would be with the forces that would beget a heart like that. Hisfavourite philosophy had said, Trust the eye. Strive to be right always, regarding the concrete experience. Never falsify your impressions. Andits sanction had been at least effective here, in saying: It is what Imay not see! Surely, evil was a real thing; and the wise man wanting inthe sense of it, where not to have been, by instinctive election, on theright side was to have failed in life_. "

The passage referred to the Roman gladiatorial shows, and to thephilosophic detachment by which Marcus Aurelius was able to see and yetnot to see them; and the whole book was the spiritual story of a youngRoman's soul, a priestlike artistic temperament, born in the hauntedtwilight between the setting sun of pagan religion and philosophy andthe dawn of the Christian idea. The theme presented many fascinatinganalogies to the present time; and in the hero's "sensations and ideas"Henry found many correspondences with his own nature. In him, too, wasunited that same joy in the sensuous form, that same adoration of thespiritual mystery, the temperaments in one of artist and priest. He, too, in a dim fashion indeed, and under conditions of culture lessfavourable, had speculated and experimented in a similar manner upon theliterary art over which as yet he had acquired--how crushingly thisexquisite book taught him--such pathetically uncertain mastery. Thatimpassioned comradeship in books beautiful, was it not to-day Ned's andhis, as all those years before it had been that of Marius and Flavian?

And where in the world _was_ Ned? How he would kindle at a passage likethis: "_To keep the eye clear by a sort of exquisite personal alacrityand cleanliness, extending even to his dwelling-place; to discriminate, ever more and more exactly, select form and colour in things from whatwas less select; to meditate much on beautiful visible objects, onobjects, more especially, connected with the period of youth, --onchildren at play in the morning, the trees in early spring, on younganimals, on the fashions and amusements of young men; to keep ever byhim, if it were but a single choice flower, a graceful animal orsea-shell, as a token and representation of the whole kingdom of suchthings; to avoid jealously, in his way through the world, everythingrepugnant to sight; and, should any circumstance tempt him to a generalconverse in the range of such objects, to disentangle himself from thatcircumstance at any cost of place, money, or opportunity: such were, inbrief outline, the duties recognised, the rights demanded, in this newformula of life_. "

And again, what gleaming single phrases, whole counsels of existence ina dozen words! He must copy out some of them for Esther. This, forexample: "_Not pleasure, but fulness, completeness of life generally_, "or this: "_To be able to make use of the flower when the fruit, perhaps, was useless or poisonous_" or again this: "_To be absolutely virgintowards a direct and concrete experience_"--and there were ahundred more. 

Then for the young craftsman what an insight into, what a compassionate, childish remembrance of the moods and the little foolish accidents ofcreation: "_His dilettanteism, his assiduous preoccupation with whatmight seem but the details of mere form or manner, was, after all, bentupon the function of bringing to the surface, sincerely and in theirintegrity, certain strong personal intuitions, certain visions orapprehensions of things as being, with important results, in this wayrather than that--apprehensions which the artistic or literaryexpression was called upon to follow, with the exactness of wax or clay, clothing the model within it. Flavian, too, with his fine, clear masteryof the practically effective, had early laid hold of the principle, asaxiomatic in literature: That 'to know when one's self is interested, isthe first condition of interesting other people'"_ And once more: "_Asit oftenest happens also, with natures of genuinely poetic quality, those piecemeal beginnings came suddenly to harmonious completenessamong the fortunate incidents, the physical heat and light, of onesingularly happy day_. "

And, over all, what a beauty! a beauty at once so sensuous and sospiritual--the beauty of flowering laurel, the beauty of austerityaflower. Here the very senses prayed. Surely this was the mostbeautiful prose book ever written! It had been compared, he saw, withGautier's "Mademoiselle de Maupin;" but was not the beauty of thatmasterpiece, in comparison with the beauty of this, as the beauty of aleopard-skin to the beauty of a statue of Minerva, withdrawn in agrove of ilex. 

Still Ned delayed, and, meanwhile, the third glass of port had come andgone, and at length, reluctantly, Henry emerged from his tavern-cloisterupon the warm brilliancy of the streets. All around him the lightsbeaconed, and the women called with bright eyes. But to-night there wasno temptation for him in these things. They but recalled anotherexquisite quotation from his new-found treasure, which he stopped undera lamp to fix in his memory: "_And, as the fresh, rich evening came on, there was heard all over Rome, far above a whisper, the whole townseeming hushed to catch it distinctly, the living, reckless call to'play, ' from the sons and daughters of foolishness to those in whomtheir life was still green_--Donec virenti canities abest! Donec virenticanities abest! _Marius could hardly doubt how Cornelius would havetaken the call. And as for himself, slight as was the burden ofpositive moral obligation with which he had entered Rome, it was to nowasteful and vagrant affections, such as these, that his Epicureanismhad committed him_. "

But what could have happened to Ned?

CHAPTER XX

THE MAN IN POSSESSION

One morning, two or three months after Henry had left home, old Mr. Lingard came to him as he sat bent, drearily industrious, over someaccounts, and said that he wished him in half-an-hour's time to go withhim to a new client; and presently the two set out together, Henrywondering what it was to be, and welcoming anything that even exchangedfor a while one prison-house for another. 

"I am taking you, " said the old man, as they walked along together, "toa firm of carriers and carters whose affairs have just come into ourhands; there is a dispute arisen between the partners. We representcertain interests, as I shall presently explain to you, and you are tobe _our_ representative, --our man in possession, " and the old gentlemanlaughed uncannily. 

"You never expected to be a man in possession, did you?"

Henry thrilled with a sense of awful intimacy, thus walking and evenjesting with his august employer. 

"It may very likely be a long business, " the old man continued; "and Ifear may be a little dull for you. For you must be on the spot all daylong. Your lunch will be served to you from the manager's house; I willsee to that. Actually, there will be very little for you to do, beyondlooking over the day-book and receipts for the day. The main thing isfor you to be there, --so to say, the moral effect of yourpresence, "--and the old gentleman laughed again. Then, with an amusedsympathy that seemed almost exquisite to Henry, he chuckled out, lookingat him, from one corner of his eye, like a roguish skeleton--

"You'll be able to write as much poetry as you like. I see you've got abook with you. Well, it will keep you awake. I don't mind that, --or eventhe poetry, --so long as you don't forget the day-book. "

"Thank you, sir, " said Henry, almost hysterically. 

"I suppose, " the old man continued, presently, and in all he said therewas a tone of affectionate banter that quite won Henry's heart, "thatyou're still as set on literature as ever. Well, well, far be it from meto discourage you; but, my dear boy, you'll find out that we can't liveon dreams. " (Henry thought, but didn't dare to say, that it was dreamsalone that made it possible to live at all. ) "I suppose you think I'm adried-up old fellow enough. Well, well, I've had my dreams too. Yes, I've had my dreams, "--Henry thought of what he had discovered that dayin the old man's diary, --"and I've written my verses to my lady'seyebrow in my time too. Ah, my boy, we are all young and foolish once inour lives!" and it was evident what a narrow and desperate escape frombeing a poet the old man had had. 

They had some distance to walk, for the stables to which they were boundwere situated in an old and rather disreputable part of the town. "It'snot a nice quarter, " said Mr. Lingard, "not particularly salubrious orrefined, " as bad smells and dirty women began to cross their path; "butthey are nice people you've got to deal with, and the place itself isclean and nice enough, when you once get inside. "

"Here we are, " he said, presently, as they stopped short of anold-fashioned house, set in a high red-brick wall which seemed toenclose quite a considerable area of the district. In the wall, a yardor two from the house, was set a low door, with a brass bell-pull at theside which answered to Mr. Lingard's summons with a far-off clang. Soonwas heard the sound of hob-nailed boots, evidently over a paved yard, and a big carter admitted them to the enclosure, which immediatelyimpressed them with its sense of country stable-yard cleanliness, andits country smell of horses and provender. The stones of the courtyardseemed to have been individually washed and scoured, and a small spacein front of a door evidently leading to the house was chalked over inthe prim, old-fashioned way. 

"Is Mr. Flower about?" asked Mr. Lingard; and, as he asked the question, a handsome, broad-shouldered man of about forty-five came down the yard. It was a massive country face, a little heavy, a little slow, butexceptionally gentle and refined. 

"Good-morning, Mr. Lingard. "

"Good-morning, Mr. Flower. This is our representative, Mr. Mesurier, ofwhom I have already spoken to you. I'm sure you will get on welltogether; and I'm sure he will give you as little trouble as possible. "

Henry and Mr. Flower shook hands, and, as men sometimes do, took to eachother at once in the grasp of each other's hands, and the glances whichaccompanied it. 

Then the three walked further up the yard, to the little office whereHenry was to pass the next few weeks; and as Mr. Lingard turned overbooks, and explained to Henry what he was expected to do, the sound ofhorses kicking their stalls, and rattling chains in their mangers, cameto him from near at hand with a delightful echo of the country. 

When Mr. Lingard had gone, Mr. Flower asked Henry if he'd care to lookat the horses. Henry sympathetically consented, though his knowledge ofhorse-flesh hardly equalled his knowledge of accounts. But with thehealthy animal, in whatever form, one always feels more or less at home, as one feels at home with the green earth, or that simple creaturethe sea. 

Mr. Flower led the way to a long stable where some fifty horsesprotruded brown and dappled haunches on either hand. It was allwonderfully clean and sweet, and the cobbled pavement, the straw beds, the hay tumbling in sweet-scented bunches into the stalls from the loftoverhead, made you forget that around this bucolic enclosure swarmed androtted the foulest slums of the city, garrets where coiners plied theiramateur mints, and cellars where murderers lay hidden in the dark. 

"It's like a breath of the country, " said Henry, unconsciously strikingthe right note. 

"You're right there, " said Mr. Flower, at the same moment heartilyslapping the shining side of a big chestnut mare, after the approvedmanner of men who love horses. To thus belabour a horse on itshinder-parts would seem to be equivalent among the horse-breedingfraternity to chucking a buxom milkmaid under the chin. 

"You're right there, " he said; "and here's a good Derbyshire lass foryou, " once more administering a sounding caress upon his sleekfavourite. 

The horse turned its head and whinnied softly at the attention; and itwas evident it loved the very sound of Mr. Flower's voice. 

"Have you ever been to Derbyshire?" asked Mr. Flower, presently, andHenry immediately scented an idealism in the question. 

"No, " he answered; "but I believe it's a beautiful county. "

"Beautiful's no name for it, " said Mr. Flower; "it's just a garden. "

And as Henry caught a glance of his eyes, he realised that Derbyshirewas Mr. Flower's poetry, --the poetry of a countryman imprisoned in thetown, --and that when he died he just hoped to go to Derbyshire. 

"Ah, there are places there, --places like Miller's Dale, forinstance, --I'd rather take my hat off to than any bishop, "--and Henryeagerly scented something of a thinker; "for God made them for sure, andbishops--well--" and Mr. Flower wisely left the rest unsaid. 

Thus they made the tour of the stables; and though Henry's remarks onthe subject of slapped horse-flesh had been anything but those of anexpert, it was tacitly agreed that Mr. Flower and he had taken to eachother. Nor, as he presently found, were Mr. Flower's interests limitedto horses. 

"You're a reader, I see, " he said, presently, when they had returned tothe office. "Well, I don't get much time to read nowadays; but there'snothing I enjoy better, when I've got a pipe lit of an evening, than tosit and listen to my little daughter reading Thackeray orGeorge Eliot. "

Of course Henry was interested. 

"Now there was a woman who knew country life, " Mr. Flower continued. "'Silas Marner, ' or 'Adam Bede. ' How wonderfully she gets at the veryheart of the people! And not only that, but the very smell ofcountry air. "

And Mr. Flower drew a long breath of longing for Miller's Dale. 

Henry mentally furbished up his George Eliot to reply. 

"And 'The Mill on the Floss'?" he said. 

"And 'Scenes from Clerical Life, '" said Mr. Flower. "There are some rarestrokes of nature there. "

And so they went on comparing notes, till a little blue-eyed girl ofabout seventeen appeared, carrying a dainty lunch for Henry, and tellingMr. Flower that his own lunch was ready. 

"This is my daughter of whom I spoke, " said Mr. Flower. 

"She who reads Thackeray and George Eliot to you?" said the Man inPossession; and, when they had gone, he said to himself "What a brightlittle face!"

CHAPTER XXI

LITTLE MISS FLOWER

Little Miss Flower continued to bring Henry his lunch with greatpunctuality each day; and each day he found himself more and moreinterested in its arrival, though when it had come he ate it with nospecial haste. Indeed, sometimes it almost seemed that it had served itspurpose in merely having been brought, judging by the moments of reveriein which Henry seemed to have forgotten it, and to be thinking ofsomething else. 

Yes, he had soon begun to watch for that bright little face, and it washardly to be wondered at; for, particularly come upon against such abackground, the face had something of the surprise of an apparition. Itseemed all made of light; and when one o'clock had come, and Henry heardthe expected footsteps of his little waiting-maid, and the tinkle of thetray she carried, coming up the yard, her entrance was as though someone had carried a lamp into the dark office. Surely it was more likethe face of a spirit than that of a little human girl, and you wouldalmost have expected it to shine in the dark. When you got used to thelight of it, you realised that the radiance poured from singularly, evendisproportionately, large blue eyes, set beneath a broad white brow ofgreat purity, and that what at first had seemed rays of light around herhead was a mass of sunny gold-brown hair which glinted even in shadow. 

Strange indeed are the vagaries of the Spirit of Beauty! From how manyhigh places will she turn away, yet delight to waste herself upon a slumlike this! How fantastic the accident that had brought such a face toflower in such a spot!--and yet hardly more fantastic, he reflected, than that which had sown his own family haphazard where they were. Wasit the ironic fate of power to be always a god in exile, turning meanwheels with mighty hands; and was Cinderella the fable of the eternallot of beauty in this capriciously ordered world?

Yes, what chance wind, blowing all the way from Derbyshire, had set downMr. Flower with his little garden of girls in this uncongenial spot?For by this Henry had made the acquaintance of the whole family: Mr. AndMrs. Flower and four daughters in all, --all pretty girls, but not one ofthe others with a face like that, --which was another puzzle. How is itthat out of one family one will be chosen by the Spirit of Beauty orgenius, and the others so unmistakably left? There could be no doubt asto whom had been chosen here. 

One day the step coming up the yard at one o'clock seemed to bedifferent, and when the door opened it was another sister who hadbrought his lunch that day. Her eldest sister was ill, she explained, and in bed; and it was so for the next day, and again the next. Could itbe possible that Henry had watched so eagerly for that little face, thathe missed it so much already?

The next morning he bought some roses on his way through town, andbegged that they might be allowed to brighten her room; and the next daysurely it was the same light little tread once more coming up the yard. Joy! she was better again. She looked pale, he said anxiously, andventured to say too that he had missed her. As she blushed and lookeddown, he saw that she wore one of his roses in her bosom. 

He had already begun to lend her books, which she returned, always withsome clever little criticism, often girlishly naïve, but never merelyconventional. There were brains under her bright hair. One day Henry hadrun out of literature, and asked her if she could lend him a book. Anything, --some novel he had read before; it didn't matter. Oh, yes, hehadn't read George Eliot for ever so long. Had she "The Mill on theFloss"? Yes, it had been a present from her father. She would bringthat. As she lingered a moment, while Henry looked at the book, his eyefell upon a name on the title-page: "Angel Flower. "

"Is that your name, Miss Flower?" he said. 

"Yes; father wrote it there. My real name is Angelica; but they call meAngel, for short, " she answered, smiling. 

"Are you surprised?" said Henry, suddenly blushing like a girl, asthough he had never ventured on such a small gallantry before. "Angelica! How did you come to get such a beautiful name?"

"Father loves beautiful names, and his grandmother was calledAngelica. "

"I wonder if I might call you Angelica?" presently ventured Henry, in alow voice. 

"Do you think you know me well enough?" said Angelica, with a littlegasp, which was really joy, in her breath. 

Henry didn't answer; but their eyes met in a long, still look. In eachheart behind the stillness was a storm of indescribable sweetness. Henryleaned forward, his face grown very pale, and impulsively tookAngelica's hand, --

"I think, after all, I'd rather call you Angel, " he said. 

CHAPTER XXII

MIKE'S FIRST LAURELS

The gardens of Sidon had a curious habit of growing laurel-trees;laurels and rhododendrons were the only wear in shrubs. Rhododendronsone can understand. They are to the garden what mahogany is to the frontparlour, --the _bourgeoisie_ of the vegetable kingdom. But thelaurel, --what use could they have for laurel in Sidon? Possibly theysupplied it to the rest of the world, --market-gardeners, so to say, tothe Temple of Fame; it could hardly be for home consumption. Well, atall events, it was a peculiarity fortunate for Esther's purpose, as onemorning, soon after breakfast, she went about the garden cutting theglossiest branches of the distinguished tree. As she filled her armswith them, she recalled with a smile the different purpose for which, dragged at the heels of one of Henry's enthusiasms, she had gatheredthem several years before. 

At that period Henry had been a mighty entomologist; and, as the latesummer came on, he and all available sisters would set out, armed withbutterfly-nets and other paraphernalia, just before twilight, to thenearest woodland, where they would proceed to daub the trees with anintoxicating preparation of honey and rum, --a temptation to which mothswere declared in text-books to be incapable of resistance. Then, asnight fell, Henry would light his bull's-eye, and cautiously visit thevarious snares. It was a sight worth seeing to come upon those littlenight-clubs of drunken and bewildered moths, hanging on to the sweetnesswith tragic gluttony, --an easy prey for Henry's eager fingers, which, asgreedy of them as they of the honey, would seize and thrust them intothe lethal chamber, in the form of a cigar-box loosely filled withbruised laurel leaves, which hung by a strap from his shoulder. 

It was for such exciting employment that Esther had once gathered laurelleaves. And, once again, she remembered gathering them one Shakespeare'sbirthday, to crown a little bust in Henry's study. The sacred head hadworn them proudly all day, and they all had a feeling that somehowShakespeare must know about it, and appreciate the little offering; justas even to-day one might bring roses and myrtle, or the blood of amaiden dove to Venus, and expect her to smile upon our affairs ofthe heart. 

But it was for a dearer purpose that Esther was gathering them thismorning. That coming evening Mike was to utter his first stage-words inpublic. The laurel was to crown the occasion on which Mike was to makethat memorable utterance: "That's a pie as is a pie, is that there pie!"

Now while Esther was busily weaving this laurel into a wreath, Henry wasbusily weaving the best words he could find into a sonnet to accompanythe wreath. When Angel duly brought him his lunch, it was finished, andlay about on his desk in rags and tatters of composition. Angel wasgoing to the performance with her sisters, --for all these young peoplewere fond of advertising each other, and he had soon told her aboutMike, --so she was interested to hear the sonnet. Whatever otherqualities poetry may lack, the presence of generous sincerity willalways give it a certain value, to all but the merely supercilious; andthis sonnet, boyish in its touches of grandiloquence, had yet a certainpathos of strong feeling about it. 

 Not unto him alone whom loud acclaim Declares the victor does the meed belong, For others, standing silent in the throng, May well be worthier of a nobler fame; And so, dear friend, although unknown thy name Unto the shouting herd, we would give tongue To our deep thought, and the world's great among By this symbolic laurel thee proclaim. 

 And if, perchance, the herd shall find thee out In coming time, and many a nobler crown To one they love to honour gladly throw; Wilt thou not turn thee from their eager shout, And whisper o'er these leaves, then sere and brown: 'Thou'rt late, O world! love knew it long ago?'

The reader will probably agree with Angel in considering the last linethe best. But, of course, she thought the whole was wonderful. 

"How wonderful it must be to be able to write!" she said, with a look inher face which was worth all the books ever written. 

"And how wonderful even to have something written to one like that!"

"Surely that must have happened to you, " said Henry, slyly. 

"You're only laughing at me. "

"No, I'm not. You don't know what may have been written to you. Poemsmay quite well have been written to you without your having heard ofthem. The poet mayn't have thought them worthy of you. "

"What nonsense! Why, I don't know any poets!"

"Oh!" said Henry. 

"I mean, except you. "

"And how do you know that I haven't written a whole book full of poemsto you? I've known you--how long now?"

"Two months next Monday, " said Angel, with that chronological accuracyon such matters which seems to be a special gift of women in love. Menin love are nothing like so accurate. 

"Well, that's long enough, isn't it? And I've had nothing else to do, you know. "

"But you don't care enough about me?"

"You never know. "

"But tell me really, have you written something for me?"

"Ah, you'd like to know now, wouldn't you?"

"Of course I would. Tell me. It would make me very happy. "

"It really would?"

"You know it would. "

"But why?"

"It would. "

"But you couldn't care for the poetry, unless you cared for the poet?"

"Oh, I don't know. Poetry's poetry, isn't it, whoever makes it? But whatif I did care a little for the poet?"

"Do you mean you do, Angel?"

"Ah, you want to know now, don't you?"

"Tell me. Do tell me. "

"I'll tell you when you read me my poem, " and as Angel prepared to runoff with a laugh, Henry called after her, --

"You will really? It's a bargain?"

"Yes, it's a bargain, " she called back, as she tripped off again downthe yard. 

 * * * * *

Mike's _début_ was as great a success as so small a part could make it;and the main point about it was the excitement of knowing that this wasan actual beginning. He had made them all laugh and cry in drawing-roomsfor ever so long; but to-night he was on the stage, the realstage--real, at all events, for him, for Mike could never be anamateur. Esther's eyes filled with glad tears as the well-loved littlefigure popped in, with a baker's paper hat on his head, and deliveredthe absurd words; and if you had looked at Henry's face too, you wouldhave been at a loss to know which loved the little pastry-cook'sboy best. 

When Mike returned to his dressing-room, a mysterious box was awaitinghim. He opened it, and found Esther's wreath and Henry's sonnet. 

"God bless them, " he said. 

No doubt it was very childish and sentimental, and old-fashioned; butthese young people certainly loved each other. 

As Mike had left the stage, Henry had turned round and smiled at someone a few seats away. Esther had noticed him, and looked in the samedirection. 

"Who was that you bowed to, Henry?"

"I'll tell you another time, " he said; for he had a good deal to tellher about Angel Flower. 

CHAPTER XXIII

THE MOTHER OF AN ANGEL

The Man in Possession was becoming more and more a favourite at Mr. Flower's. One day Mr. Flower, taking pity on his loneliness, suggestedthat he might possibly prefer to have his lunch in company with them alldown at the house. Henry gladly embraced the proposal, and thus becamethe daily honoured guest of a family, each member of which had somesimple human attraction for him. He had already won the heart of simpleMrs. Flower, few and brief as had been his encounters with her, and thatheart she had several times coined in unexpected cakes and otherdainties of her own making; but when he thus became partially domiciledwith the family, she was his slave outright. There was a reason forthis, which will need, and may perhaps excuse, a few lines entirelydevoted to Mrs. Flower, who, on her own peculiar merits, deserves them. 

Perhaps to introduce Eliza Flower in this way is to take her moreseriously than any of her affectionate acquaintance were able to do. For, somehow, people had a bad habit of laughing at Mrs. Flower, thoughthey admitted she was the hardest-working, best-hearted little housewifein the world. Housewife in fact she was _in excelsis_, not to say _adabsurdum_. No little woman who worked herself to skin-and-bone to keepthings straight, and the home comfortable, was ever a more typical"squaw. " Whatever her religious opinions, which, one may be sure, wereinflexibly orthodox, there can be no question that Mr. Flower was hergod, and, as the hymn says, heaven was her home. To serve God and Mr. Flower were to her the same thing; and there can be little doubt that agod who had no socks to darn, or linen to keep spotless, was a god whomMrs. Flower would have found it impossible to conceive. 

A more complete and delighted absorption in the physical comforts andnourishments of the human creature than Mrs. Flower's, it would beimpossible for dreamer to imagine. Such an absolute adjustment between abeing of presumably infinite aspirations and immortal discontents andits environment, is a happiness seldom encountered by philosophers. Tothink of death for poor Mrs. Flower was to conceive a homelessnesspeculiarly pathetic; unless, indeed, there are kitcheners tosuperintend, beds to make, rooms to "turn out, " and fourspring-cleanings a year in heaven. Of what use else was the bewilderinggift of immortality to one who was touchingly mortal in all her tastes?Indeed, Henry used to say that Mrs. Flower was the most convincingargument against the immortality of the soul that he had ever met. 

Yet, though it was quite evident that there was nothing in the worldelse she cared so much to do, and though indeed it was equally evidentthat she was one of the best-natured little creatures in the world, shedid not deny herself a certain more or less constant asperity ofreference to occupations which kept her on her feet from morning tillnight, and made her the slave of the whole house, in spite of four bigidle daughters. And she with rheumatism too, so bad that she couldhardly get up and down stairs!

Probably nothing so much as Henry's respectful sympathy for thisimmemorial rheumatism had contributed to win Mrs. Flower's heart. As tothe precise amount of rheumatism from which Mrs. Flower suffered, Henrysoon realised that there seemed to be an irreverent scepticism in thefamily, nothing short of heartless; for rheumatism so poignantlyexpressive, so movingly dramatised, he never remembered to have met. Mrs. Flower could not walk across the floor without grimaces of pain, orpiteous indrawings of her breath; and yet demonstrations that you mighthave thought would have softened stones, left her unfeeling audience notonly unmoved, but apparently even unobservant. From sheer decency, Henrywould flute out something to show that her suffering was not lost onhim; but it is to be feared the young ones would only wink at each otherat this sign of unsophistication. 

"Oh, you unfeeling child!" Mrs. Flower would exclaim, as sometimes shecaught them exchanging comments in this way. "And your father, there, isjust as bad, " she would say, impatient to provoke somebody. 

This remark would probably prompt Mr. Flower to the indulgence of a formof matrimonial banter which was not unlike the endearments he bestowedupon his horses, and which, when you knew that he loved the littlequaint woman with all his heart, you were able to translate into morecustomary modes of affection. 

"Yes, indeed, " he would say, "it's evidently time I was looking out forsome active young woman, Eliza--when you begin limping about like that. It's a pity, but the best of us must wear out some day--"

This superficially heartless pleasantry he would deliver with a sweepingwink at Henry and his four girls; but Mrs. Flower would see nothing tolaugh at, for humour was not her strong point. 

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Ralph, " she said, "before thechildren. I was once young and active enough to take your fancy, anyhow. Mr. Mesurier, won't you have a little more spinach? Do; it's fresh fromthe country this morning. You mustn't mind Mr. Flower. He's fond of hisjoke; and, whatever he likes to say, he'd get on pretty badly withouthis old Eliza. "

"Gracious, no!" Mr. Flower would retort. "Don't flatter yourself, oldgirl. I've got my eye on two or three fine young women who'll be gladof the job, I assure you;" but this, perhaps, proving too much for poorMrs. Flower, whose tears were never far away, and apt to requiresmelling-salts, he would change his tone in an instant and say, droppinginto his Derbyshire "thous, "--

"Nonsense, lass, can't thee take a bit of a joke? Come now, come. Don'tbe silly. Thou knowest well enough what thou art to me, and so do thegirls. See, let's have a drive out to Livingstone Cemetery thisafternoon. Thou'rt a bit out o' sorts. It'll cheer thee up a bit. "

And so Mrs. Flower would recover, and harmony would be restored, andnobody would wink for a quarter of an hour. Certainly it was a quaintlittle mother for an Angel. 

CHAPTER XXIV

AN ANCIENT THEORY OF HEAVEN

"When are you going to read me my poem?" said Angelica, one day. 

"When are you going to tell me what I asked?" replied Henry. 

"Whenever you read me my poem, " retorted Angelica. 

"All right. When would you like to hear it?"

"Now. "

"But I haven't got it with me to-day. "

"Can't you remember it?"

"No, not to-day. "

"When will you bring it?"

"I'll tell you what. Come with me to Woodside Meadows on Saturdayafternoon. Your father won't mind?"

"Oh, no; father likes you. "

"I'm glad, because I'm very fond of him. "

"Yes, he's a dear; and he's got far more in him than perhaps you think, under his country ways. If you could see him in the country, it wouldmake you cry. He loves it so. "

"Yes, I could tell that by the way he talked of Derbyshire the first daywe met. But you'll come on Saturday?"

"Yes, I'll come. "

 * * * * *

Angel! Yes, it was the face of an angel; but, bright as it had seemed onthat dark background, it seemed almost brighter still as it moved byHenry's side among the green lanes. He had never known Angel till then, never known what primal ecstasy her nature was capable of. In the town, her soul was like a flame in a lamp of pearl; here in the country, itwas like a star in a vase of dew. To be near trees, to touch their roughbarks, to fill one's hands with green leaves, to hear birds, to listento running water, to look up into the sky, --oh, this was to comehome!--and Angel's joy in these things was that of some wood-spirit whoyou might expect any moment, like Undine, to slip out of your hands insome laughing brook, or change to a shower of blossom over your head. 

"Oh, how good the country is! I wish father were here. I could eat thegrass. And I just want to take the sky in my arms. " As she swept acrossmeadow and through woodland, with the eagerness of a child, greedilyhastening from room to room of some inexhaustible palace, her littletense body seemed like a transparent garment fluttering round the flyingfeet of her soul. 

At length she flung herself down, almost breathless, at the grassy footof a great tree. 

"I suppose you think I'm mad, " she said. "And really I think I must be;for why should mere green grass and blue sky and a few birds make oneso happy?"

"Why should anything make us happy?"

"Or sad?"

"But now you're going to read my poem, " she said, presently. 

"Yes; but something has to happen before I can read it, " said Henry, growing unaccountably serious; "for it is in the nature of a prophecy, or at all events of an anticipation. You have to fulfil thatprophecy first. "

"It seems to me a very mysterious poem. But what have I to do?"

"I don't know whether you can do it. "

"Well, what is it? Try me. "

"Oh, Angel, I care nothing about poems. Can't you see how I love you?That's all poetry will ever mean to me. Just to say over and over again, 'I love Angel. ' Just to find new and wonderful ways of saying that--"

"Listen, Henry. I've loved you from the first moment I saw you that daytalking to father, and I shall love you till I die. "

"Dear, dear Angel!"

"Henry!"

Then Henry's arms enfolded Angel with wonderful love, and her freshyoung lips were on his, and the world faded away like a dream withina dream. 

 * * * * *

"Now perhaps you can read me your poem, " said Angel, after a while; andshe noticed a curious something different in her way of speaking to him, as in his way of speaking to her, --something blissfully homelike, as itwere, as though they had sat like this for ever and ever, and were quiteused to it, though at the same time it remained thrillingly new. 

"It's only a silly little childish rhyme, " said Henry; "some day I'llwrite you far better. "

Then, coming close to Angel, he whispered, --

 This is Angelica, Fallen from heaven, Fallen from heaven Into my arms. 

 Will you go back again, Little Angelica, Back up to heaven, Out of my arms!

 "No, " said Angelica, "Here is my heaven, Here is my heaven, Here in your arms. 

 "Not out of heaven, But into my heaven, Here have I fallen, Here in your arms. "

CHAPTER XXV

THE LAST CONTINUED, AFTER A BRIEF INTERVAL

After the long happy silence which followed Henry's recitation of hisverses, Angel at length spoke, --

"Shall I tell _you_ something now?" she said. "I'm almost ashamed to, for I know you'll laugh at me, and call me superstitious. "

"Go on, little child, " said Henry. 

"You remember the day, " said Angel, in a hushed little impressive voice, "I first saw you in father's office?"

Henry was able to remember it. 

"Well, that was not the first time I had seen you. "

"Really, Angel! Why didn't you tell me before? Where was it, then? Inthe street, or where?"

"No, it was much stranger than that, " said Angel. "Do you believe thefuture can be foretold to us?"

"Oh, it was in a dream, you funny Angel; was that it?" said Henry, whose rationalism at this period was the chief danger to hisimagination. 

"No, not a dream. Something stranger than that. "

"Oh, well, I give it up. "

"It was like this, " Angel continued; "there's a strange old gipsy womanwho lives near us--"

"Oh, I see, your hand--palmistry, " said Henry, with a touch of gentleimpatience. 

"Henry, dear, I said you would laugh at me. I won't tell you now, ifyou're going to take it in that spirit. "

Henry promptly locked up his reason for the moment, with apologies, andprofessed himself open to conviction. 

"Well, mother sometimes helps this poor old woman, and, one day, whenshe happened to call, Alice and Edith and I were in the kitchen helpingmother. 'God bless you, lady, ' she said, --you know how theytalk, --'you've got a kind heart; and how are all the young ladies? It'stime, I'm thinking, they had their fortunes told. ' 'Oh, yes, ' we allsaid, 'tell us our fortunes, mother, '--we always called her mother. 'I'll tell you yours, my dear, ' she said, taking hold of my hand. 'Yourfortunes are too young yet, ladies, ' she said to Alice and Edith; 'cometo me in a year's time and, maybe, I'll tell you all about him. '"

"You dear!" said Henry, by way of interruption. 

"Then, " continued Angel, "she took me aside, and looked at my hand; andshe told me first what had happened to me, and then what was to come. What she told me of the past"--as if dear Angel, whose life was as yetall future, could as yet have had any past to speak of!--"was so true, that I couldn't help half believing in what she said of the future. Nowyou're laughing again!"

"No, indeed, I'm not, " said Henry, perfectly solemn. 

"She told me that just before I was twenty, I would meet a young manwith dark hair and blue eyes, very unexpectedly, --I shall be twenty insix weeks, --and that he would be my fate. But the strangest is yet tocome. 'Would you like to see his face?' she said. She made me a littlefrightened; but, of course, I said, 'Yes, ' and then she brought out ofher pocket a sort of glass egg, and told me to look in it, and tell herwhat I saw. So I looked, but for a long time I could see nothing; butsuddenly there seemed to be something moving in the centre of the glass, like clouds breaking when the sun is coming out; and presently I couldsee a lamp burning on a table; and then round the lamp shelves of booksbegan to grow out of the mist; then I saw a picture hanging in a recess, a bowed head with a strange sort of head-dress on it, a dark thin face, very sad-looking--"

"Why, that must have been my Dante!" said Henry, astonished in spite ofhimself. 

The exclamation was a "score" for Angel; and she continued, with greaterconfidence, "And then I seemed to see some one sitting there; but, though I tried and tried, I couldn't catch sight of his face. I told theold woman what I saw. 'Wait a minute, ' she said, 'then try again. ' So Iwaited, and presently tried again. This time I hadn't so long to waitbefore I saw a room again; but it was quite different, a big desk ranalong in front of a window, and there were two tall office-stools. 'Why, it's father's office, ' I said. 'Go on looking, ' said the old woman, 'andtell me what you see. ' In a moment or two, I saw some one sitting onone of the stools, first dimly and then clearer and clearer. 'Why, ' Ialmost cried out, for I felt more and more frightened, 'I see a youngman sitting at a desk, with a pen behind his ear. ' 'Can you see himclearly?' 'Yes, ' I said; 'he's got dark curly hair and blue eyes. ''You're sure you won't forget his face? You'd know him if you saw himagain?' 'Indeed, I would, ' I said. 'All right, ' said the old woman, 'youcan give me back the crystal. You keep a look out for that youngman, --you will see him some day, mark my words, and that young man willbe your fate. '

"Now, surely, you won't deny that was strange, will you?" asked Angel, in conclusion. "And I shall never forget the start it gave me that daywhen I came in, quite unsuspecting, with your lunch-tray, and saw youtalking to father, with your pen behind your ear, and your blue eyes anddark hair. Now, isn't it strange? How can one help being superstitiousafter a thing like that?"

"Are you quite sure it was I?" Henry asked, quizzically. "It appears tome that any presentable young man with a pen behind his ear would haveanswered nearly enough to the vision. You would hardly have been quitesure of the colour of the eyes, would you, now, if the old woman hadn'tmentioned it first, as she looked at your hand?"

"You are horrid!" said Angel; "I wish I hadn't told you now. But itwasn't merely the colour of the eyes. It was the look in them. "

"Look again, and see if you haven't made a mistake. Look verycarefully, " said Henry. 

"I won't, " said Angel; "I think you're cruel. "

"Angel, if you'll only look, and say you are quite sure, I'll believeevery word the old woman said. "

At last Angel was persuaded to look, and to look again, and the oldwoman's credit rose at each look. 

"Yes, Henry, whatever happens, I know it is true. My life is in yourhands. "

Those are solemn words for one human being to hear uttered by another;and a shiver of new responsibility involuntarily ran throughHenry's veins. 

"May the hands be always strong and clean enough to hold so precious agift, " he answered, gravely. 

"Are you sad, dear?" asked Angel, presently, with a sort of divination. 

"Not sad, dear, but serious, " he answered. 

"Have I turned to a responsibility so soon?"

"You strange, wise child, I believe you are a witch. "

"Oh, I was right then. "

"Right in one way, but perhaps wrong in another. Don't you know thatsome responsibilities are the most dearly coveted of mortal honours? Butthen we shouldn't be worthy of them, if they didn't make us feel alittle serious. Can't you imagine that to hear another say that her lifeis in one's hands makes one feel just a little solemn?"

"But isn't your life in mine, Henry?" asked Angel, simply. 

"Of course it is, dear, " answered Henry. 

And then the moon began to rise through the trees, pouring enchantmentover the sleeping woods, and the meadows half-submerged in lakesof mist. 

Angel drew close to Henry, and watched it with big eyes. 

"What a wonderful world it is! How beautiful and how sad!" she said, half to herself. 

"Yes; there is nothing in the world so sad as beauty, " answered Henry. 

"If only to-night could last forever! If only we could die now, sittingjust like this, with the moon rising yonder. "

"But we shall have many nights like this together, " said Henry. 

"No; we shall never have this night again. We may have other wonderfulnights, but they will be different. This will never come again. "

Henry instinctively realised that here was a mystical side to Angel'snature which, however it might charm him, was not to be indiscriminatelyencouraged, and he tried to rally her out of her sadness, but herfeeling was too much his own for him to persist; and as the moonlightmoved in its ascension from one beautiful change to another, now wovenby branches and leaves into weird tapestries of light and darkness, nowhanging like some golden fruit from the boughs, and now uplifted like alamp in some window of space, they sat together, alike held by theancient spell; and, presently, Henry so far lost himself in it as toquote some lines entirely in Angel's mood:

 "She dwells with Beauty--Beauty that must die; And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh, Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips: Ay, in the very temple of Delight Veiled Melancholy has her sov'ran shrine, Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine; His soul shall taste the sadness of her might, And be among her cloudy trophies hung. "

"What wonderful lines!" said Angel; "who wrote them? Are they your own?"

"Ah, Angel, what would I give if they were! No, they are by John Keats. You must let me give you his poems. "

Presently, the moonlight began to lose its lustre. It grew pale, and, asit were, anxious; dark billows of clouds threatened to swallow up itssilver coracle, and presently the world grew suddenly black with itssubmergence, the woods and meadows disappeared, and Henry and Angelbegan playfully to strike matches to see each other's faces. Thus theysuddenly flared up to each other out of the darkness, like Rembrandtsseen by lightning, and then they were lost again, and were only voicesfumbling for each other in the dark. 

Yet, even so, lips and arms found each other without much difficulty, and when they began to think of the last train, and fear they would missit, but waited for just one last good-night kiss under their sacredtree, the world suddenly lit up again, for the moon had triumphed overits enemies, and come out just in time to give them its blessing. 

CHAPTER XXVI

CONCERNING THE BEST KIND OF WIFE FOR A POET

We are apt sometimes to complain that so much of importance in our livesis at the dispensation of accident, yet how often too are we compelledto confess that some of the happiest and most fruitful circumstances ofour lives are due to the far-seeing diplomacies of chance. 

Among no set of circumstances is this more true than in the fatefulrelations of men and women. While, in a blind sort of way, we may besaid to choose for ourselves the man or woman with whom we are to sharethe joys and sorrows of our years, yet the choice is only superficiallyours. Frequently our brains, our antecedent plans, have no part in thedecision. The woman we choose appears at the wrong time, in the wrongplace, in an undesirable environment, with hair and eyes and generalcomplexion different in colour from what we had predestined forourselves, short when we had made up our minds for tall, and tall whenwe had hoped for short. Yet, in in spite of all our preconceptions, wechoose her. This is not properly a choice in which the intelligenceconfessedly submits to violence. It is the compulsion of mysteriousinstincts that know better than our brains or our tastes. 

Now had she been asked beforehand, Esther might not have sketched out aMike as the ideal of her maiden dreams, nor indeed might Henry havedescribed an Angelica, any more than perhaps Mike an Esther, or Angelicaa Henry. Yet chance has only to place Esther and Mike, and Angelica andHenry in the same room together for less than a minute of time, and theyfly into the arms of each other's souls with an instant recognition. This is a mystery which it will take more than biology to explain. 

A young man's dreams of the woman he will some day marry are apt to bemeretricious, or at all events conventional. A young poet, especially, is likely to err in the direction of paragons of beauty, or fame, orromance. Perhaps he dreams of a great singer, or an illustrious beauty, ignorant of the natural law which makes great singers and illustriousbeauties, in common with all artists, incapable of loving really any onebut themselves. Or perhaps it will be some woman of great and exquisiteculture. But chance knows that women of great and exquisite culture areusually beings lacking in those plastic elemental qualities which apoet, above all men, needs in the woman he shall love. Their veryculture, while it may seem to broaden, really narrows them, limits themto a caste of mind, and, for an infinite suggestiveness, substitutes afew finite accomplishments. 

Critics without understanding have wondered now and again at attachmentssuch as that of Heine for his Mathilde. Yet in some ways Mathilde wasthe type of wife best suited for a poet. She was just a wondering child, a bit of unspoiled chaos. She meant as little intellectually, and asmuch spiritually, as a wave of the sea, a bird of the air, a star inthe sky. 

Another great poet always kept in his room a growing plant in a big tubof earth, and another tub full of fresh water. With the fire going, heused to say that he had the four elements within his four walls; and topeople unaccustomed to talk with the elements these no doubt seemed dulland even remarkable companions, --like Heine's Mathilde. 

Now Angel, though far more than a goose intellectually, having, indeed, a very keen and subtle mind, was only secondarily intellectual, beingprimarily something far more important. You no more asked of her to beintellectual, than you expect a spirit to be mathematical. She was justa dream-child, thrilling with wonder and love before the strange worldin which she had been mysteriously placed, --a dream-child and anexcellent housewife in one, as full of common-sense on the one hand, asshe was filled with fairy "nonsense" on the other. She was just, infact, the wife for a poet. 

The interest taken in each other by Angel and the Man in Possession hadnot been unobserved by Angel's family. Her sisters had teased herconsiderably on the subject. 

"Why have you changed the way of wearing your hair, Angel?" they wouldsay, "Does Mr. Mesurier like it that way?" or, "My word! we are gettingsmart and particular, now a certain gentleman has come into theoffice!" or again, "How small your writing is nowadays, Angel! What haveyou changed it for? I like your big old writing best; but I suppose--"and then they would retreat to a safe distance to finish--"Mr. Mesurierisn't of the same opinion!"

Sometimes Esther would start in pursuit, and playful scrimmages wouldensue, the hilarious uproar of which would turn poor Mrs. Flower's brain. 

Mrs. Flower had certainly not been unobservant, and one may perhapssuspect that those cakes and other delicacies which she had so oftensent up the yard, had not been sent entirely without those ulteriordesigns which every thoughtful mother may becomingly cherish for herdaughters. 

After Angel and Henry's excursion to the country together, Henry feltthat some official announcement of the state of his heart was demandedof him, and lost no time in finding Mr. Flower alone for that tremulouspurpose. However, it was soon over. There were no questions of _dots_and marriage settlements to discuss. Genealogically, both sides wereabout equally distinguished, and, socially, belonged to that largeundefined class called "respectable"--though it must not be supposedthat, when so minded, families of that "respectable" zone do notoccasionally make nice distinctions. "Do you know what you are askingfor?" once said a retired tradesman's wife in Sidon to her daughter'ssuitor. "Do you know that both Katie's grandfathers were mayors?"

But there were no traditional mayoralties to keep these two young heartsasunder. It was understood on both sides that they had nothing to bringbut each other, and they asked nothing better. Angel was going to marrya poet, and Henry a fairy; and not only they themselves, but the wholefamily, was more than satisfied. Mr. Flower was undisguisedly pleased, and the tears stood in his eyes as he gripped Henry's hand. 

"I've liked you, " he said, "since the first time we shook hands. Therewas something honest about your grip I liked, and I go a good deal bythese things. It is not many men I would trust with my little Angel; forwhen you take her, you take her father's great treasure. Guard her well, dear lad, guard her well. "

CHAPTER XXVII

THE BOOK OF ANGELICA

The first duty of a poet's wife is to inspire him. When she ceases to dothat--but that is a consideration which need not occupy us in thisunsophisticated story. We have already seen that Angelica in thisrespect early began her wifely duties towards Henry; and that littlesong he read in chapter twenty-five was but one of many he had writtento her in his capacity of man in possession. 

The feminine inspirations of his early youth had been numerous, butmediocre in quality. Even in love, as in all else, his opportunities hadbeen second and even third-rate. He had broken his boy's heart, timeafter time, for some commonplace, little provincial miss who knew not"the god's wonder or his woe. " But, at last, in circumstances sounforeseen, the maiden of the Lord had been revealed to him, and withthe revelation a great impulse of metrical expression had come upon theyoung poet. All day long rhythms and fancies were effervescing withinhim, till at length he had quite a publishable mass of verse for which, it is to be feared, Angelica must be counted responsible. 

Of these he was busily making a surreptitious fair copy one morning, when old Mr. Septimus Lingard suddenly visited his seclusion, with theannouncement that his task there was at an end, so that he might nowreturn to his regular office. Though, of course, Henry had realised thatthe present happy arrangement could not go on for ever, the news broughttemporary desolation to the two young lovers. For four months their dayshad been spent within a few yards of each other; and though Angel'sexcursions up the yard to Henry's desk could not be many, or long, eachday, yet each was conscious that the other was near at hand. When Angelsang at her housework, it was from the secure sense that Henry was closeby. Their separation was little more than that of a husband and wifeworking in different rooms of the same house. But now their meetingswould have to be arranged out somewhere in a cold world, littleconsiderate of the convenience of lovers, and, for whole days of warmproximity, they would have to exchange occasional snatchedprecarious hours. 

Well, the only thing to do was for Henry to work away at their dream ofa home together--home together, however little, just four walls to loveeach other in, away from the gaze of prying eyes, none daring to makethem afraid. How that home was to be compassed was far from clear ineither of their minds; but vaguely it was felt that it would be broughtabout by the powerful enchantments of literature. Henry had recently hadone of Angel's poems accepted by a rather good magazine, and the tranceof joy in which for fully two hours he had sat gazing at that, hisfirst, proof-sheet, was hardly less rapturous than that into which hehad fallen after seeing Angel for the first time, --so dear are theemblems of his craft to the artist, at the beginning, and still at theend, of his career. 

So Henry had to finish the fair copy of his poems at home in hislodgings of an evening, for so ambitious a private enterprise could notbe carried on in his own office without perilous interruptions. He wasmaking the copy with especial care, in the form of a real book; and whenit was made, he daintily bound it in vellum with his own hands. Then hewrapped it lovingly in tissue paper, and kept it by him two or threedays, in readiness for Angel's birthday, on the morning of which day hehid it in a box of flowers and sent it to Angel. The sympathetic readercan imagine her delight, as she discovered among the flowers a daintylittle white volume, bearing the title-page, "The Book of Angelica, byHenry Mesurier. Tyre, 1886. Edition limited to one copy. "

Now this little book presently began to enjoy a certain very carefullylimited circulation among Angel's friends. Of course they were notallowed to take it away. They were only allowed to look at it now andagain for a few minutes, Angel anxiously standing by to see that theydid not soil her treasure. Sometimes Mr. Flower would ask Angel to showit to one of the family friends; and thus one evening it came beneaththe eyes of a little Scotch printer who had a great love for poetry andsome taste in it. 

"The man's a genius, " he said, with all that authority with which astrong Scotch accent mysteriously endows the humblest Scot. 

"The man's a genius, " he repeated; "his poems must be printed. "

Henry had already found that this was easier said than done, for he hadalready tried several London publishers who professed their willingnessto publish--at his expense. This little Scotch printer, however, was toprove more venturesome. He forthwith communicated a proposal to Henrythrough the Flowers. If Henry would provide him with a list of a certainnumber of friends he could rely on for subscriptions, he would take therisk of printing an edition, and give Henry half the profits, --aproposal as generous as it was rash. Angel communicated the offer in anexcited little letter, with the result that Mr. Leith and Henry met onemorning in the bar-parlour of "The Green Man Still, " and parted an houror so after in a high state of friendship, and deeply pledged togetherto a mutual adventure of three hundred copies of a book to be called"The Book of Angelica, " and to be printed in so dainty a fashion thatthe mere outside should attract buyers. 

Mr. Leith worked under difficulties, for his business, small as it was, was much saddled with pecuniary obligations which it but inadequatelysupported. His printing of Henry's poems was really a work of sheeridealism which none but a Scotsman, or perhaps an Irishman, would haveundertaken; and it was a work that might at any moment be interrupted bybailiffs, empowered to carry away the presses and the very types overwhich Henry loved to hang in his spare hours, trying to read in thelines of mysteriously carved metal, his "Madrigal to Angelica singing, "or his "Sonnet on first beholding Angelica. "

Then Mr. Leith was of a convivial disposition; and Henry and he musthave spent more hours drinking to the success of the little book thanwould have sufficed to print it twice over. However, the day did at lastcome when it was a living, breathing reality, and when Angel and Henrysat with tears of joy over the little new-born "Book of Angelica. " Wasit not, they told each other, the little spirit-child of their love? Howwonderful it all was! How wonderful their future was going to be!

"What does it feel like?" said Henry, playfully recalling their oldtalk, "to have a book written all about one's self?"

"It is to feel the happiest and proudest girl in the world. "

That all the other young people were hardly less happy and excitedabout the little book goes without saying. Mike spent quite a large sumin copies, and for a while employed his luncheon-hour in asking atbook-shops with a nonchalant air, as though he had barely heard of theauthor, if they sold a little book called "The Book of Angelica. " Mrs. Mesurier seemed to see her faith in her boy beginning to be justified;and when James Mesurier opened his local paper one morning, and found along and appreciative article on a certain "fellow-townsman, " he cut itout to paste in his diary. Perhaps the lad would prove right, after all. 

CHAPTER XXVIII

WHAT COMES OF PUBLISHING A BOOK

It is only just to Tyre to acknowledge that it behaved quitesympathetically towards the young poet thus discovered in its midst. Itsnewspapers reviewed him with marked kindness, --a kindness which in a fewyears' time, when he had long since grown out of his baby volume, he wasobliged to set to the credit of the general goodness of human nature, rather than to the poetic quality of his own verses. In many unexpectedquarters also he met with recognition which, if not always intelligent, was at least gratifying. For praise, or at least some form of notice, isbreath in the nostrils of the young poet. He hungers to feel that hispersonality counts for something, though it be merely to anger hisfellow-men. It was perhaps no very culpable vanity on his part to bepleased that people began to point him out in the streets, and whisperthat that was the young poet; and that distant acquaintances seemedmore ready to smile at him than before. Now and again one of these wouldstop him to say how pleased he had been to see the kind article abouthim in _The Tyrian Daily Mail_, and that he intended to buy "the work"as soon as possible. Henry smiled to himself, to hear his frail littleflower of a volume spoken of as a "work, " as though it had been theEncyclopaedia Britannica; and he rather wondered what that would-bepurchaser would make of it, as he turned over pages of which so large aproportion was reserved for a spotless frame of margin. No doubt hewould decide that the margin had been left for the purpose of makingnotes, --making notes on those abstruse rose-petals of boyish song!

Even in far-away London, --which was as yet merely a sounding name tothese young people, --hard-worked reviewers, contemptuously disposing ofbatches of new poetry in a few lines, found a kind word or two to sayfor the little provincial volume; and, through one agency or another, Mr. Leith, within six weeks of the publication, was able to announcethat the edition was exhausted and that there was something like fortypounds profit to share between them. 

That poetry could be exchanged for real money, Henry had heard, but hadnever hoped to work the miracle in his own case. It was like sellingmoonlight, or Angelica's smiles. Was it not, indeed, Angelica's smilesturned from one kind of gold into another? One more change they shouldundergo, and then return to her from whom they had come. From mintedgold of the realm they should change into the gold of a ring, and thusAngel should wear upon her finger the ornament of her own smiles. Setting aside a small proportion of his gains to buy Esther and Mike, Dot and Mat and his mother, a little memorial present each, he thenspent the rest on Angel's ring. Angel pretended to scold him for hisextravagance; but, as no woman can resist a ring, her remonstrance wasnot convincing, and then, as Henry said, was it not their betrothalring, and, therefore, one of the legitimate expenses of love?

Three other acknowledgments his poems brought him. The first was adelightful letter from Myrtilla Williamson. How much men of talent oweto the letters of women has never been sufficiently acknowledged, asthe debt can never be adequately repaid. Of the many branches of woman'sunselfishness, this is perhaps the most important to the world. Alwaysbehind the flaming renown of some great soldier, statesman, or poet, there is a woman's hand, or the hands, maybe, of many women, pouring, unseen, the nutritive oil of praise. 

This letter Henry, in the gladness of his heart, ingenuously showed toAngel, with the result that it provoked their first quarrel. With thecharms of a child, Angel, it now appeared, united also the faults. Shehad it in her to be bitterly and unreasonably jealous. She read theletter coldly. 

"You seem very proud of her praise, " she said; "is it so very valuable?"

"I value it a good deal, at all events, " answered Henry. 

"Oh, I see!" retorted Angel; "I suppose my praise is nothing to hers. "

"Angel dear, what _do_ you mean?"

"Oh, nothing, of course; but I'm sure you must regret caring for anignorant girl like me, when there are such clever, talented women in theworld as your Mrs. Williamson. I hate your learned women!"

"Angel, I'm surprised you can talk like that. Because we love eachother, are we to have no other friends?"

"Have as many as you like, dear. Don't think I mind. But I don't want tosee their letters. "

"Very well, Angel, " answered Henry, quietly. He was making one of thosediscoveries of temperament which have to be made, and have to beaccepted, in all close relationships. This was evidently one of Angel'sfaults. He must try to help her with it, as he must try and let her helphim with his. 

The second was a letter, forwarded care of his printer, by one of theLondon reviews which had noticed his verses. It was from a rising youngLondon publisher who, it appeared from an envelope enclosed, had alreadytried to reach him direct at Tyre. "Henry Mesurier, Esqre, Author of'The Book of Angelica, ' Tyre, " the address had run, but the post-officeof Tyre had returned it to the sender, with the words "Not known"officially stamped upon it. 

He was as yet "not known, " even in Tyre! "In another five years he shalltry again, " said Henry, savagely, to himself, "and we shall see whetherit will be 'not known' then!"

The letter expressed the writer's pleasure in the extracts he had seenfrom Mr. Mesurier's book, and hoped that when his next book was ready, he would give the writer an opportunity of publishing it. Fortune wasbeginning already to smile. 

But the third acknowledgment was something more like a frown, and was, at all events, by far the most momentous outcome of Henry's firstpublication. One morning, soon after Mr. Leith had paid over to him histwenty pounds profit, he found himself unexpectedly requested to stepinto "the private office. " There, at Mr. Lingard's table, he found thethree partners seated in solemn conclave, as for a court-martial. Mr. Lingard, as senior partner, was the spokesman. 

"Mr. Mesurier, " he began, "the firm has been having a very seriousconsultation in regard to you, and has been obliged, very reluctantly, Iwould have you believe, to come to a painful conclusion. We gladlyacknowledge that during the last few months your work has given us moresatisfaction than at one time we expected it to give. But, unfortunately, that is not all. Your attention to your duties, we admit, has been very satisfactory. It is not a sin of omission, but one ofcommission, of which we have to complain. What we have to complain of asbusiness men is a matter which perhaps you will say does not concern us, though on that point we must respectfully differ from you. Mr. Mesurier, you have recently published a book. "

Henry drew himself up haughtily. Surely that was nothing to be ashamedof. 

"It is quite a pretty little book, " continued Mr. Lingard, with one ofhis grim smiles. "It contains some quite pretty verses. Oh, yes, I haveseen it, " and Henry noticed a copy of the offending little volume lying, like a rose, among some legal papers at Mr. Lingard's left hand; "butits excellence as poetry is not to the point here. Our difficulty isthat you are now branded so unmistakably as a poet, that it is no useour any longer pretending to our clients that you are a clerk. So longas you were only suspected of being a poet, " and the old man smiledagain, "it did not so much matter; but now that all Tyre knows you, byyour own act and deed, as a poet, the case is different. We can nolonger, without risk of losing confidence with our clients, send anacknowledged poet to inspect their books--though, personally, we mayhave every faith in your capacity. No doubt they will be glad enough tobuy your books in the future; but they will be nervous of trusting youwith theirs at the moment. " And the old man laughed heartily at hisown humour. 

"You mean, then, sir, that you will have no further need for myservices?" said Henry, looking somewhat pale; for it is one thing tohate the means of one's livelihood, and another to exchange it for none. 

"I'm afraid, my dear lad, that that is what it comes to. We are, I hopeyou will believe, exceedingly sorry to come to such a conclusion, bothfor our own sakes and yours, as well as that of your father, --who is anold and valued friend of ours; but we are able to see no other way outof the difficulty. Of course, you will not leave us this minute; buttake what time you need to look round and arrange your future plans; andso far as we are concerned, we shall part from you as good friends andsincere well-wishers. "

The old man held out his hand, and Henry took it, with a grateful senseof the friendly manner in which Mr. Lingard had performed a painfultask, and a certain recognition that, after all, a poet must besomething of a nuisance to business-men. 

When he returned to his desk, he sat for a long time thoughtful, dividedin mind between exultation that he was soon to be free to take theadventurous highway of literature, and anxiety as to where in a month'stime his preliminary meals were to come from. 

Yet, after all, the main thing was to be free of this servitude. Out offreedom all things might be hoped. 

Still, as Henry looked round at the familiar faces of his fellow-clerks, and realised that in a month's time his comradeship with them would beat an end, he was surprised to feel a certain pang of separation. Merecustom has so great a part in our affections, that though a routine mayhave been dull and distasteful, if it has any extenuating circumstancesat all, we change it with a certain irrational regret. After all, hisoffice-life was associated with much contraband merriment; and, unconsciously, his associates had taken a valuable part in his training, humanised him in certain directions, as he had humanised them in others. They had saved him from dilettanteism, and whatever he wrote in futurewould owe something warm and kindly to the years he had spent with them. 

His very desk took on a pathetic expression, as of a place that was sosoon to know him no more for ever; and Mr. Smith, wrangling overwet-traps and cesspools at the counter, just as on the first day he hadheard him, almost moved him to tears. Perhaps in ten years' time, werehe to come back, he would find him still at his post, fervidly engagedin the same altercations, with only a little additional greyness at thetemples to mark the lapse of time. 

And Jenkins would still be sitting in the little screened-off cupboard, with "cashier" painted on the glass window. As three o'clock approached, he would still be heard loudly counting his cash and shovelling the goldinto wash-leather bags, and the silver into little paper-bags marked £5apiece, in a wild rush to reach the bank before it closed. 

And would the same good fellows, a little more serious, because longsince married, be cracking jokes and loafing near the fire-guard, insome rare safe hour, of the afternoon when all the partners were out, tomake a spring for the desks, as the carefully learnt tread of one oranother of those partners followed the opening of the front door. 

The very work that he hated seemed to wear an unwonted look oftenderness. Who would keep the books he had kept--with something of hisfather's neatness; who would look after the accounts of "the Rev. ThomasSalthouse, " or take charge of "Ex'ors James Shuttleworth, Esqre"?

Of course, it was absurd--absurd, perhaps, just because it was human. For was he not going to be free, free to fulfil his dreams, free tofollow those voices that had so often called him from beyond the sunset?Soon he would be able to cry out to them, with literal truth, "I amyours, yours--all yours!" And in those ten years which were to pass soinvariably for Mr. Smith, and for Jenkins and the rest, what various anddazzling changes might be, must be, in store for him. Long before theend of them he must have written masterpieces and become famous, andAngel and he be long settled together in their paradise of home. 

Henry was pleased to find that his chums were to miss him no less thanhe was to miss them. As an unofficial master of their pale revels, hisplace would not be easy to fill; and he was much touched, when, a day ortwo before the end of the month, which was the time mutually agreed uponfor Henry to look round, they intimated their desire to give a littledinner in his honour at "The Jovial Clerks" tavern. 

Henry was nothing loth, and the evening came and went with no littleemotion and no little wine, on either side. He had bidden good-bye tohis employers in the afternoon, and Mr. Lingard had shaken his hand, andadmonished him as to his future with something of paternal affection. 

Toward the close of the dinner, Bob Cherry, who acted as chairman, rose, with an unaccustomed blush upon his cheek, to propose the toast of theevening. They had had the honour and pleasure, he said, to be associatedfor several years past with a gentleman to whom that evening they wereto say good-bye. No better fellow had ever graced the offices of Lingardand Fields, and his would be a real loss to the gaiety of their littleworld. They understood that he was a poet; and indeed had he not alreadypublished a charming volume with which they were all acquainted!--stillthis made no difference to them. Certain high powers might object, butthey liked him none the less; and whether he was a poet or not, he wascertainly a jolly good fellow, and wherever his new career might takehim, the good wishes of his old chums would certainly follow him. Thechairman concluded his speech by requesting his acceptance of a copy ofthe "Works of Lord Macaulay, " as a small remembrance of the days theyhad spent together. 

The toast having been seconded and drunk with resounding cordiality, Henry responded in a speech of mingled playfulness and emotion, assuringthem, on his part, that though they might not be poets, he thought noworse of them for that, but should always remember them as the bestfellows he had ever known. The talk then became general, and tender withreminiscence. After all, what a lot of pleasant things those hard yearshad given them to remember! So they kept the evening going, and it wasnot till an early hour of the following day that this important volumeof Henry's life was finally closed. 

CHAPTER XXIX

MIKE'S TURN TO MOVE

While Henry had been busily engaged in winning Angelica and writing andprinting his little book, Mike's fortunes had not been idle. Meanwhile, the Sothern Dramatic Club had given two more performances, in which hisparts had been considerable, and been played by him with such success asto make the former pieman's apprentice one of the chief members of theclub. Mike and his friends therefore became more and more eager for himto try his talents on the great stage. But this was an experiment not soeasy to make. 

However unknown a writer may be, he can still at least write his book inhis obscurity, and, when done, bring it to market, with a reasonablehope of its finding a publisher; moreover, though he may remain foryears unappreciated, his writings still go on fighting for him till hisdue recognition is won. He has not to find his publisher before hebegins to write. Yet it is actually such a disability under which theunproved and often the proved actor must labour. Unless some one engageshim to act, and provides an audience for him, he has no opportunity ofshowing his powers. And such opportunities are difficult to find, unlessyou are a dissolute young lord, or belong to one of the traditionaltheatrical families, --whose members are brought up to the stage, as thesons of a lawyer are brought up to law. For the avenues to the stage areblocked by perhaps more frivolous incompetents than any otherprofession. Any idle girl with good looks, and any idle gentleman withsomething of a good carriage, deem themselves qualified for one of themost arduous of the arts. 

Mike's plan had been to try every considerable actor that came to Tyre, who might possibly have a vacant place in his company; but he had triedmany in vain. While one or two were unable to see him at all, most ofthem treated him with a kindness remarkable in men daily besieged by theinnumerable hopeless. They gave him good advice; they wished him well;but already they had long lists of experienced applicants waiting theirturn for the coveted vacancy. At last, however, there came to Tyre afamous romantic actor who was said to be more sympathetic towards theyouthful aspirant than the other heads of his profession, and as, too, he was rumoured to be vulnerable on the side of literature, Mike andHenry agreed to make a joint attack upon him. Mike should write a briefnote asking for an interview, and Henry should follow it up with anotherletter to the same effect, and at the same time send him a copy of "TheBook of Angelica. "

The plan was carried out. Both letters and the book were sent, and theyoung men awaited with impatience the result. Henry had adopted a verylofty tone. "In granting my friend an interview, " he had said, "you maybe giving his first chance to an actor of genius. Of course you may not;but at least you will have had the satisfaction of giving to possiblegenius that benefit of the doubt which we have a right to expect fromthe creator of ----, " and he named one of the actor's most famous rôles. 

A cordial answer came by return, enclosing two stalls for the followingevening, when, said the great actor, he would be glad to see Mr. Laflinduring or after the performance. The two young men were in their placesas the curtain rose, and it goes without saying that their enthusiasmwas unequalled in the audience. Between the third and fourth acts therewas a considerable interval, and early in the performance it had beennotified to Mike that the great actor would see him then. So when thetime came, with a whispered "good luck" from Henry, he left his placeand was led through a little mysterious iron door at the back of theboxes, on to the stage and into the great man's dressing-room. Openingsuddenly out of the darkness at one side of the stage, it was more likea brilliantly lighted cave hung with mirrors than a room. Mirrors andlights and laurel wreaths with cards attached, and many photographs withhuge signatures scrawled across them, and a magnificent being reading abook, while his dresser laced up some high boots he was to wear in thefollowing act, --made Mike's first impression. Then the magnificent beinglooked up with a charming smile. 

"Good-evening, Mr. Laflin. I am delighted to see you. I hope you willexcuse my rising. "

He said "Mr. Laflin" with a captivating familiarity of intonation, asthough Mike was something between an old friend and a distinguishedstranger. 

"So you are thinking of joining our profession. I hope you liked theperformance. I saw you in front, or at least I thought it was you. Andyour friend? I hope he will come and see me some other time. I have beendelighted with his poems. "

There is something dazzling and disconcerting to an average layman aboutan actor's dressing-room, even though the dressing-room be that of anintimate friend. He feels like a being on the confines of two worlds andbelonging to neither, awkwardly suspended 'twixt fact and fancy. Theactor for a while has laid aside his part and forgotten his wig and hismake-up. As he talks to you, he is thinking of himself merely as aprivate individual; whereas his visitor cannot forget that in appearancehe is a king, or an eighteenth-century dandy, or--though you know himwell enough as a clean-shaven young man of thirty--a bowed and wrinkledgreybeard. The visitor's voice rings thin and hestitating. It cannotstrike the right pitch, and generally he does himself no sortof justice. 

Perhaps, however, it was because Mike had been born for this world inwhich now for the first time he found himself, that he suffered fromnone of this embarrassment; perhaps, too, it was some half-consciousinstinct of his own gifts that made him quite self-contained in thepresence of acknowledged distinction, so self-contained that you mighthave thought he had no reverence. As he had passed across the stage, hehad eyed that mysterious behind-the-scenes rather with the eye of afuture stage-manager, than of a youth all whose dreams converged at thispoint, and at this moment. 

One touch of the poetry of contrast caught his eye, of which customwould probably have made him unobservant. In an alcove of the stage, a"scene-dock, " as Mike knew already to call it, a beautiful spirit ingauze and tights was silently rehearsing to herself a dance which shehad to perform in the next act. Softly and silently she danced, absorbed in the evolutions of her lithe young body, paying as littleheed to the rough stage-hands who hurried scenery about her on everyside, as those hardened stage-hands paid to her dancing. Henry or Nedwould probably have fallen madly in love with her on the spot. To Mike, she was but a part of the economy of the stage; and had she beenCleopatra herself, eyes filled to overflowing with the beauty of Estherwould have taken no more intimate note of her. So, it is said, paintersand sculptors regard their models with cold, artistic eyes. 

This self-possession enabled Mike to show to the best advantage; andwhile they talked, the great actor, with an eye accustomed to readfaces, soon made up his mind about him. 

"I believe you and your friend are right, Mr. Laflin, " he said. "I ammuch mistaken if you are not a born actor. But if you are that, you willnot need to be told that the way is long and difficult, nor will youmind that it is so. Every true artist rather loves than fears thedrudgery of his art. It is one of the tests of his being an artist. Artis undoubtedly the pleasantest of all work; but it is work for allthat, and none of the easiest. Perhaps it is the pleasantest because itis the hardest. So if you really want to be an artist, you won't objectto beginning your journey to the top right away at the bottom. "

"Anywhere at all, sir, " said Mike, his heart beating at this hint ofwhat was coming. 

"Well, in that case, " continued the other, "I can perhaps do something, though a very little, for you. "

Mike eagerly murmured his gratitude. 

"I'm sorry to say I have no vacancy in my own company at present; butwould you be willing to take a part in my Christmas pantomime? I may saythat I myself began life as harlequin. "

"I will gladly take anything you can offer me, " said Mike. 

"Shall we call it settled then? But I sha'n't need you for another fourmonths. Meanwhile I will have a contract made out and sent to you--"

"Curtain rising for fourth act, sir, " cried the call-boy, putting hishead in at the door at that moment. 

"You see I shall have to say good-bye, " said the good-natured manager, rising and moving towards the door; "but I shall look forward to seeingyou in October. My good wishes to your friend;" and so the happiestperson in that theatre slipped back to his seat by the side of a friendwho was surely as happy at his good news as though it had been his own. 

Meanwhile Esther had been counting the hours till ten, when she made apretence of going to bed with the rest. But there was no sleep for hertill she had heard Mike's news. Her bedroom looked out from the top ofthe house into the front garden, and she had arranged to have a lampburning at the window, so that Mike, on his way home, should understandthat all was safe for a snatched five minutes' talk in the porch. Shesat trying to read till about midnight, when through her half-openedwindows came the soft whistle she had been waiting for. Turning down thelamp to show that she had heard, she stole down through the quiet houseand cautiously opened the front door, fastened, it seemed, with ahundred bolts and chains. 

"Is that you, Mike?"

For answer two arms, which she didn't mistake for a burglar's, werethrown round her. 

"Esther, I've found my million pounds. "

"Oh, Mike! He's really going to help you?"

And here there is no further necessity for eaves-dropping. All personsexcept Mike and Esther will please leave the porch. 

CHAPTER XXX

UNCHARTERED FREEDOM

On the morning after the dinner with which he bade farewell to Messrs. Lingard and Fields, Henry awoke at his usual hour to a very unusualfeeling. For the first time in his life he could stay in bed as long ashe pleased. 

On the other side of the room Ned Hazell lay sleeping the deep sleep ofthe unpunctual clerk; and Henry, when he had for a moment or two dweltupon his own happiness, took a malicious joy in arousing him. 

"Ned, " he shouted, "get up! You'll be late for the office. "

Ned gave out a deep sound, something between a snore, a moan, and animprecation. 

"Ned!" his tormentor persisted, drawing the clothes warmly round him, ina luxury of indifference to the time of day. 

Ned presently began rubbing his head vigorously, which was one of hispreliminaries of awakening, and then mournfully raised himself in bed, apillar of somnolence. 

"You might let a fellow have his sleep out, " he said; "why don't you getup yourself?--oh, I remember, you're a literary gentleman from to-day. That's why you're so mighty ready to root me out, " and he aimed a pillowat Henry's bed in derision. 

Yes, Henry was free, an independent gentleman of time and space. Theclock might strike itself hoarse, yet, if he wished, he might go onstaying in bed. He was free! His late task-masters had no jurisdictionhere. It would even be in his power here to order Mr. Fields out of theroom, and, if he refused, forcibly to eject him into the street. Whydidn't Mr. Fields appear to gratify him in this matter?

So he indulged his imagination, while Ned dressed in haste, with thefear of the tyrant evident upon him. Poor fellow, he would have tochoose between two cups of coffee and two eggs and five minutes late!Probably he would split the difference, bolt one cup of coffee and oneegg, and arrive two and a half minutes late. Henry watched him withcompassion; and when he had gone his ways, himself rose languidly anddressed indolently, as with the aid of an invisible valet. At length hesauntered down to breakfast, and sent out for a morning paper, which heon no account ever read. He could imagine no more insulting waste oftime. He looked it through, but found no reference to the realsignificance of the day. 

Breakfast over, he wondered what he should do with himself, how heshould spend the day. His clear duty was to begin being a great man onthe spot, and work at being a great man every day punctually from ninetill six. But where should he begin? Should he sit down in abusiness-like way and begin his long romantic poem, or should he writean essay, or again should he make a start on his novel?

Romantic poems, he felt, however, are only well begun on special daysnot easy to define; essays are only written on days when we havedetermined to be idle, --and this, after the opening flirtation withindolence, must be a busy day, --and it is not every day that one canbegin a novel. He might arrange his books, but really they were verywell arranged already. Or suppose he went out for a walk. Walkingquickened the brain. He might go and look in at the Art Gallery, wherehe hadn't been for a long while, and see the new picture the morningpaper was talking about. It was by a painter whose poems he already knewand loved. That might inspire him. So, by an accident of idleness, hepresently found himself standing rapt before the most wonderful picturehe had ever seen, --a picture to see which, he said to himself, men wouldmake pilgrimages to Tyre, when Tyre was a moss-grown, ruinous seaport, from which the traffic of the world had long since passed away. 

Henry at this time had visited none of the great galleries and, exceptin a few reproductions, knew nothing of the great Italian masters. Therefore to him this picture was Italy, the Renaissance, andCatholicism, all concentrated into one enthralling canvas. But it wassomething greater than that. It was the terrible meeting of Youth andLove and Death in one tremendous moment of infinite loss. Infinitepassion and infinite loss were here pictured, in a medium whichcombined all that was spiritual and all that was sensual in a harmonyof beauty that was in the same moment delirium and peace. Theirresistible cry of the colour to the senses, the spheral call of thetheme and its agony to the soul. Beatrice dead, and Dante taken in adream across the strewn poppies of her death-chamber, to look his laston the sleeping face, yet a little smiling in the after-glow of life;her soul already carried by angels far over the curved and fluted roofsof the Florentine houses, on its way to Paradise. Little Beatrice! Nottill they meet again in Paradise shall he see again that holy face. In adream of loss he gazes upon her, as the angels lift up theflower-garnished sheet; and not only her face, but every detail of thatroom of death is etched in tears upon his eyes, --the distant windingstair, the pallid death-lamps, the intruding light of day. All Passionand all Loss, all Youth, all Love, and all Death met together in aneverlasting requiem of tragic colour. 

Henry sat long before this picture, enveloped, as it were, in its richgloom, as the painted profundity of a church absorbs one in its depths. And with the impression of its solemn beauty was blent a despairing aweof the artist who, of a little coloured earth, had created such amasterpiece of vitality, thrown on to a thin screen of canvas soenduringly palpable, so sumptuous, and so poignantly dominating areflection of his visions. What a passionate energy of beauty must havebeen in this man's soul; what a constant fury of meditation uponthings divine!

When Henry came back to himself, his first thought was to share it withAngel. Little soul, how her face would flame, how her body would tremblewith the wonder of it! In the minutiae, the technicalities ofappreciation, Angel, like Henry himself, might be lacking; but in themotive fervour of appreciation, who was like her! It was almost painfulto see the joy which certain simple wonders gave her. Anything intenseor prodigal in nature, any splendidly fluent outpouring of theelements, --the fierce life of streaming fire, water in gliding ortumultuous masses, the vivid gold of crocus and daffodil spouting upthrough the earth in spring, the exquisite liquidity of a birdsinging, --these, as with all elemental poetic natures, gave her thesame keen joy which we fable for those who, in the intense morning ofthe world, first heard them; fable, indeed, for why should we supposethat because ears deaf a thousand years heard the nightingale too, itshould therefore be less new for those who to-night hear it for thefirst time? Rather shall it be more than less for us, by the memoriestransmitted in our blood from all the generations who before havelistened and gone their way. 

So Henry sought out Angel, and they both stood in front of the greatpicture for a long while without a word. Presently Angel put the feelingof both of them into a single phrase, --

"Henry, dear, we have found our church. "

And indeed for many months henceforth this picture was to be theiraltar, their place of prayer. Often hereafter when their hopes wereovercast, or life grew mean with little cares, they would slip, singly, or together, into that gallery, and--

 "let the beauty of Eternity Smooth from their brows the little frets of time. "

Thus Henry's first day of freedom had begun auspiciously with theunexpected discovery of an inalienable possession of beauty. Yet thelittle cares were not far off, waiting their time; and that night, Henrylay long awake asking himself what he was going to do? Whence was tocome the material gold and silver by which this impetuous spirit was tobe sustained? A sum not exceeding five pounds represented hisaccumulated resources, and they would not last longer than--five pounds. He needed little, but that little he needed emphatically. Soon a newbook and other literary projects would keep him going, but--meanwhile!How were the next two or three months to be bridged? Return to hisfather's house, he neither would, nor perhaps, indeed, could. 

So he lay awake a long while, fruitlessly thinking; but, just before heslept, a thought that made him laugh himself awake suggested itself:"Why not go and ask Aunt Tipping to take pity on you?"

So he went to sleep, resolved, if only for the fun of it, to pay a visitto Aunt Tipping on the morrow. 

CHAPTER XXXI

A PREPOSTEROUS AUNT

No doubt it has been surmised from what has gone before, that when Henrysaid to himself that he would go and see Aunt Tipping, he did notpropose to himself a visit to the country seat of some quaint old ladyof quality. Baronial towers and stately avenues of ancestral elm did notmake a picturesque background for his thoughts as he recalledAunt Tipping. 

Poor kind Aunt Tipping, it is a shame to banter her memory even in soobvious a fashion; for if ever there was a kind heart, it was hers. Infact she possessed, in a degree that amounted to genius, one of therarest of human qualities, --unconditional pity for the unhappy humancreature. Within her narrow and squalid sphere, she was never known tofail of such succour as was hers to give to misfortune, howeverwell-merited, or misery however self-made. 

No religion or philosophy has ever yet been merciful enough to humanweakness. Matilda Tipping repaired the lack so far as she went. In fact, she had unconsciously realised that weakness _is_ human nature. It wouldbe difficult to fix upon an offence that would disqualify you for AuntTipping's pity. To the prodigalities of the passions, and the appetitesdisastrously indulged, she was accustomed by a long succession of thosesad and shady lodgers to whom it was part of her precarious livelihoodto let her rooms, and, not infrequently, to forgive them their rent. That men and women should drink too much, and love too many, was, herexperience told her, one of those laws of nature that seemed to make agood deal of unnecessary inconvenience in mortal affairs, but againstwhich mere preaching or punishment availed nothing. All that was to bedone was, so far as possible, to repair their ravages in particularinstances, and heal the wounds of human passion with simplehuman kindness. 

Of two vessels, one for honour and the other for dishonour, surelynature never made so complete a contrast as Matilda Tipping and hersister, Mary Mesurier. Both country girls, born in a humble, thoughdefiantly respectable, stratum of society, the ways of the two sistershad already parted in childhood. Mary was studious, neat, and religious;Matilda was tomboyish, impatient of restraint, and fond of unedifyingassociates. 

"Your aunt never aspired, " Mrs. Mesurier would say of Aunt Tippingsometimes to her children; and, while still a child, she had oftenreproached her with her fondness for gossiping with companions "beneathher. " Matilda could never be persuaded to care for books. She wasnaturally illiterate, and even late in life had a fixed aversion towriting her own letters; whereas, at the age of seven, Mary had beenpublic scrivener for the whole village. But with these regrettableinstincts, from the first Matilda had also manifested a whimsicalliveliness, an unconquerable lightheartedness which made you forgive heranything, and for which, poor soul, she had use enough before she wasdone with life. At seventeen, added to good looks, of which at fiftythere was scarcely a trace in the thin and meanly worn face, thisvivacity had proved a tragic snare. A certain young capitalist--known asa great gentleman--of that countryside had pounced down on the gay andcareless young Matilda, and had at once provided her life with itsformative tragedy and its deathless romance. Even at fifty, hopelesslyburied among the back streets and pawnshops of life, heaven still openedin the heart of Matilda Tipping at the mention of the name of WilliamAllsopp. For several years she had lived with the Mesuriers, as generalhelp to her sister, between whom and her, in spite of surfacedisparities, there was an indissoluble bond of affection; till, atthirty-five or so, she had suddenly won the heart of a sad old widowerof fifty-five, named Samuel Tipping. 

Samuel Tipping was no ordinary widower. As you looked at his severe, thoughtful face, surmounted by a shock of beautiful white hair, youinstinctively respected him; and when you heard that he lived bycobbling shoes by day and playing a violin in the Theatre Royalorchestra by night, occasionally putting off his leather apron to give amusic lesson in the front parlour of an afternoon, you respected himall the more. There had been but one thing against Mr. Tipping'seligibility for marriage, Matilda Tipping would tell you, even yearsafter, with a lowering of her voice: he was said to be an "atheist, " anda reader of strange books. Yet he seemed a quiet, manageable man, andlikely--again in Mrs. Tipping's phrase--to prove a "good provider;" soshe had risked his heterodoxy, which indeed was a somewhat fancifulobjection on her part, and made him, as he declared with his dyingbreath, the best of wives. 

It chanced that when Henry, in pursuance of his over-night resolve, madehis way the following afternoon through a dingy little street, andknocked on the door of a dingy little house, bearing upon a brass platethe legend "Boots neatly repaired, " Mr. Tipping was engaged in givingone of those very music lessons. A dingy little maid-of-all-work openedthe door, and said that Mrs. Tipping was out shopping, but would be backsoon. From the front parlour came the lifeless tum-tumming of the piano, and Mr. Tipping's voice gruffly counting time to the cheerlessfive-finger exercises of a very evident beginner. 

"One--two--three! One--two--three! One--two--three!" went Mr. Tipping'svoice, with an occasional infusion of savagery. 

"But Mr. Tipping is at home?" said Henry. "I will wait till he isdisengaged. I will make myself comfortable in the kitchen, " (Henry knewhis way about at Aunt Tipping's, and remembered there was only one frontparlour) adding, with something of pride, "I'm Mrs. Tipping's nephew, you know. "

Presently the torture in the front parlour was at an end; and, as Mr. Tipping was about to turn upstairs to the little back room where hemended his shoes, Henry emerged upon him from the kitchen. They had hadsome talks on books and the general misgovernment of the universe, --forMr. Tipping really was something of an "atheist, "--on Henry's occasionalvisits, and were no strangers to each other. 

"Why, Henry, lad, whoever expected to see you! Your aunt's out atpresent; but she'll be back soon. Come into the parlour. "

"If you don't mind, Uncle Tipping, I'd rather come upstairs with you. Ilove the smell of the leather and the sight of all those sharp littleknives, and the black, shiny 'dubbin, ' do you call it? And we can have atalk about books till aunt comes home. "

"All right, lad. But it's a dusty place, and there's hardly a corner tosit down in. "

So up they went to a little room where, in a chaos of boots mended onone hand, and boots to mend on the other, sheets of leather lying about, in one corner a great tubfull of water in which the leather wassoaked, --an old boyish fascination of Henry's, --Mr. Tipping spent thegreater part of his days. He sat on a low bench near a window, alongwhich ran a broad sill full of tools. On this, too, lay an opened book, into which Mr. Tipping would dip now and again, when he could safelyleave the boot he was engaged upon to the mechanical skill of his hands. At one end of the tool-shelf was a small collection of books, a dozen orso shabby volumes, though these were far from constituting Mr. Tipping'scomplete library. 

Mr. Tipping belonged to that pathetic army of book-lovers who subsist onthe refuse of the stalls, which he hunted not for rare editions, but forthe sheer bread of life, or rather the stale crusts of knowledge. Histastes were not literary in the special sense of the word. Forbelles-lettres he had no fancy, and fine passages, except in so far asthey were controversial, left him cold. His mind was primarilyscientific, secondarily philosophic, and occasionally historic. Travelsand books of physical science were the finds for which, mainly, herummaged the stalls. At the moment his pet study was astronomy; and acurious apparatus in one of the corners, which Henry had noticed as heentered, was his sad attempt to rig up a telescope for himself. 

"It's not so bad as it looks, " he said, pointing it out; "but then, " headded, with a smile half sad and half humorous, "there are not manystars to be seen from Tichborne Street. "

It was a touching characteristic of the type of bookman to which Mr. Tipping belonged, that the astronomy from which he was reading by nomeans embodied the latest discoveries. In fact, it narrowly escapedbeing eighteenth-century science, for it was dated very early in theeighteen hundreds. But an astronomy was an astronomy to Mr. Tipping; andhad Copernicus been born late enough, he would most certainly haveimbibed Ptolemaic doctrines with grateful unsuspicion. Indeed, had itbeen put to him: "This astronomy after Copernicus at half-a-crown, andthis after Ptolemy for sixpence, " his means alone would have left him nochoice. It is so the old clothes of the mind, like the old clothes ofthe body, --superseded science, forgotten philosophy, --find a market, anda book remains a book, with the power of comforting or diverting someindigent, poor soul, so long as the stitching holds it together. 

Presently there was a knock at the front door. 

"There's your aunt, " said Mr. Tipping; and, as the door opened, thelittle maid-of-all-work was to be heard whispering her mistress that ayoung gentleman who said he was her nephew had come and was upstairswith "the master. "

"Well, I never!" exclaimed Mrs. Tipping, immediately starting upstairstowards the open door of the cobblery. 

Henry was standing on the threshold, and the warm-hearted little womangave him a hearty hug of welcome. 

"Well, I _am_ glad to see you! And how are they all at home?" and sheran over the list, name for name. "We mustn't forget your father. Buthe's a hard 'un and no mistake, " said the aunt, putting on a mimicexpression of severity. 

"He's an upright man, is James Mesurier, " said Mr. Tipping, ratherseverely. 

"Oh, yes, yes; we know that, crosspatch. I'm saying nothing againsthim. He's good at heart, I know; but he's a little hard on thesurface--like some other folks I know, " making a face at her husband. "But you must come down and talk to me a bit, lad; you'll have hadenough of him and his old books. You never saw the like of him! Here hesits day after day over his musty books, and you can hardly get him awayfor his meals. He's no company for any one. "

"Talk of something you can understand, lass, " retorted the husband, in avoice that took any unkindness from the words, rather like a father thana husband. "You don't ail much for lack of company, I'm sure. "

"Now if it was only a good novel, " his wife persisted; "but nothing buttravels, geographies, and such like. Last thing he's taken up with isthe stars. I suppose he's been telling you about them--" and she saidthis half as though it were a new form of lunacy Mr. Tipping haddeveloped, and half as though he had been opening up new realms ofknowledge--original but useless. She was far indeed from understandingthat lonely mind and its tragedy, thirsting so hopelessly forknowledge, and to die athirst. She heard him knock, knock all dayupstairs; but the knocking told her nothing of his loneliness. He wasjust a good, hard-working, rather cross old man, unaccountably fond ofprinted matter, whom she liked to be good to, and if in her time thatknocking upstairs should stop for ever--well! she wasn't one to meettrouble half way, but she would miss it a good deal, old man as he was. 

She was herself nearing fifty; but her slim little wiry body and herelfish, wrinkled face, never still, but ever alive with the samevivacity that years ago had attracted William Allsopp, made her seemyounger than her years; and her husband treated her as though she werestill a child, a wilful child. 

"Eh, Matilda, " he said, "you're just a child. No more nor less, --just achild. The years haven't tamed you one bit--"

"Get out with you and your old stars!" she said, laughing. "Henry, comealong and have a talk with your old aunt. "

Though invincibly cheerful through it all, Aunt Tipping was always introuble, if not for herself, for somebody else. To-day, it was forherself, though it was but a minor reverse in the guerilla warfare ofher life. A distressed lodger who had just left had begged her toaccept, in lieu of rent, the pawn-ticket of a handsome clock which hadbeen hers in happier days; and Mrs. Tipping, moved as she always was byany tale of woe, however elaborate, had consented. Nor in her world wassuch a way of settling accounts very exceptional, for pawn-tickets werethere looked upon as legitimately negotiable securities. Indeed, AuntTipping was seldom without a selection of such securities upon herhands; and, if a neighbour should chance to be in need, say, of a newset of chimney ornaments, as likely as not Aunt Tipping had in her pursea pledge for the very thing. This she would sell at a reasonable profit, which would probably amount to but a small proportion of the originaldebt for which she had accepted it. It was not a lucrative business, though there were occasional "bargains" in it. 

In that word "bargains, " all the active romance of Aunt Tipping's lifewas now centred. In all departments of the cast-off and the second-handshe was a daring speculator; and a spirited "auction" now and againexhilarated her as much as a fortnight by the sea. That house which shefought so desperately to keep tidy and respectable, had been furnishedalmost entirely in this way. There was hardly an article in it that hadnot already lived other lives in other houses, before it had been pickedup, "dirt cheap, " by Aunt Tipping. 

But this afternoon her confidence in human nature had received a cruelwound. When, after an hour's weary drag to a remote end of the town, shehad arrived at the pawnshop where was preserved the handsome clock ofthe distressed lady, and had confidently presented the ticket and thenecessary money, the man had looked awhile perplexed. They had no suchclock, he said. And then, as he further examined the ticket, a lightbroke in upon him. 

"My dear lady, " he said, "look here. The year on this ticket has beenchanged. "

So indeed it had, and poor Aunt Tipping was at least a year too late. 

"Did you ever hear of such treatment?" she said to Henry; "and such anice lady she was. 'I shall never forget your goodness to me, Mrs. Tipping, ' she said as she went away, 'never, if I live to be a hundred. 'I'll 'goodness' her, if ever I catch her. Cheating honest folks likethat! Such people oughtn't to be allowed. I don't know how people canbehave so!"

Aunt Tipping's indignation seldom outlived a few plaintive words of thissort; and had the offending lady of the clock appeared next moment, andgiven some Arabian Nights' explanation, there is little doubt that AuntTipping would have forgiven her on the spot. A tendency to do so wasalready active in her next remark, --

"Well, poor soul, we mustn't be too hard on her. We never know what wemay be brought to ourselves. " For it was Aunt Tipping's unformulatedaxiom that, whatever cock-and-bull stories misfortune may tell, there isalways some truth in human misery. 

When Henry had told Aunt Tipping his story, and ventured to hint asuggestion that, if it should not be inconvenient for her, he would liketo take sanctuary with her for a month or two, till he got his hopesinto working order, her little sharp face fairly gleamed with delight. You would have thought that he was bringing her some great benefit, instead of proposing to take something from her. That he should havethought of _her_, such a little humble aunt; that, added to the loveshe had for any one with any tincture of her family's blood running intheir veins, plus her general weakness for any one in trouble, broughttears to her eyes that made her look quite young again. 

"I should think so indeed!" she said. "The best your poor old auntie'sgot is yours with all her heart--Ah, your father never understood you. You've got too much of our side of the family in you. You're a bit wild, you know, lad; but you're none the worse for that, eh?"

There is no need to say that Aunt Tipping's understanding of the tastesand ambitions which had driven Henry momentarily to take refuge with herwas of the vaguest; but all she needed to know of such a situation wasthat: here on the one hand was something somebody very much wanted todo, and here on the other were certain stern powers ranked against hisdoing it. That was enough for her. Her sympathy with all forms of revoltwas instantaneous. For law and order, as such, she had an instinctiveantipathy, as in all contests whatsoever her one general rule was: "Sidewith the weaker. " And it cannot but have been perceived that so muchsympathy with weakness could hardly have been in the gift of weakness. No; Aunt Tipping was entirely impersonal in these charities of feeling, and it was because there was so much sterling honesty and strengthhidden in her little wiry frame, that she could afford so much succourto those who were neither honest nor strong. 

"Well, it was nice of you to think of your poor old aunt, " she repeatedagain and again; and then she remarked on the good fortune which hadcaused the vacation of the front room over the parlour, her grievanceagainst the lady of the handsome clock quite forgotten. 

"It's a nice airy room, " she said; and then she began planning how shemight best arrange it for his comfort. 

"Dear little aunt, " said Henry, taking the little wisp of a woman intohis arms, "you're the salt of the earth. "

 * * * * *

"Why ever didn't I think of it before!" exclaimed Aunt Tipping, presently. "I've got the very gentleman to help you with your writing. "

"Indeed, " said Henry, somewhat sceptical. 

"Yes; he's down there in the back parlour. They say he's a greatwriter, " continued Aunt Tipping; "but he's not very well the last day ortwo, and doesn't see anybody. To tell the truth, poor gentleman, " sheconfided, lowering her voice, "he's just a little too fond of his glass. But he's as good and kind a gentleman as ever stepped, and alwaysregular with his rent every Monday morning. "

There was usually something mysterious about Aunt Tipping's lodgers. Attheir best, she had known them as elaborately wronged bye-products ofaristocracy. Many of them were lawful expectants of illegally delayedfortunes, and at the very least they always drank romantically. 

Thus it was that to the somewhat amused surprise of his family, Henrycame to take up his abode for a while with Aunt Tipping, and that hisbooks and the cast of Dante, and the sketch of the young Dante done insepia by Myrtilla Williamson's own fair hand, came to find themselves inthe incongruous environment of Tichborne Street. 

CHAPTER XXXII

THE LITERARY GENTLEMAN IN THE BACK PARLOUR

Aunt Tipping proved not so ludicrously out of it after all in regard tothe literary gentleman in the back parlour. Henry had hardly known whatto expect; but certainly he had pictured no one so interesting as AshtonGerard proved to be. For a dark den smelling strongly of whisky andwater, and some slovenly creature of the under-world crouched in a dirtyarmchair over the fire, he found instead a pleasant little room, veryneatly kept, with books, two or three good pictures, and generalevidence of cultivated tastes; and on Mr. Gerard's refined sad face, which, being shaven, and surmounted by a tuft of vigorous curly hair, once black but now curiously splashed with vivid flakes of white, retained something of boyish beauty even at forty, you looked in vainfor the marks of one who was in the grip of an imperious vice. Only bythe marked dimness and weariness of his blue eyes, which gave the face arather helpless, dreamy expression, might the experienced observer haveunderstood. So to speak, the ocular will had gone out of them; they nolonger grasped the visible, but glided listlessly over it; nor did theyseem to be looking on things invisible. They were the eyes ofthe drowned. 

Mr. Gerard had exceedingly gentle manners. It was easy to understandthat a landlady would worship him. He gave little trouble, asked for themost necessary service as though it were a courtesy, and never forgot aninterest in Aunt Tipping's affairs. On bright days he revealed a vein ofquite boyish gaiety; and in his talk with Henry he flashed out a strangeparadoxical humour, too often morbid in its themes, which, as usuallythe case with such humour, was really sadness coming to the surface ina jest. 

It soon transpired that a favourite subject of his talk was that veryweakness which most men would have been at pains to hide. 

"So you're going to be a poet, Mr. Mesurier, " he said. "Well, so was Ionce, so was I--but, " he continued, "all too early another Muse tookhold of me, a terrible Muse--yet a Muse who never forsakes you--" andhe laid his hand on a decanter which stood near him on the table, --"yes, Mr. Mesurier, the terrible Muse of Drink! You may be surprised to hearme talk so; yet were this laudanum instead of brandy, there would seemto you a certain element of the poetic in the service of such a Muse. Drinks with Oriental or unfamiliar names have a romantic sound. ThusAlfred de Musset as the slave to absinthe sounds much more poetic than, say, Alfred de Musset as a slave to rum or gin, or even this brandyhere. Yet this, too, is no less the stuff that dreams are made of; andthe opium-eater, the absinthe-sipper, the brandy-drinker, are allmembers of the same great brotherhood of tragic idealists--"

He talked deliberately; but there was a smile playing at the corners ofthe mouth which took from his talk the sense of a painfulself-revelation, and gave it the air of a playful fantasia upon aparadox that for the moment amused him. 

"Idealists! Yes, " he continued; "for what few understand is that drinkis an idealism--and, " he presently added with a laugh, "and, of course, like all idealisms, it has its dangers. "

With a monomaniac, conversation is apt to limit itself to monologue;so, while Henry was greatly interested in this odd talk, it left him butlittle to say. 

"I'm afraid I shock you a little, Mr. Mesurier, perhaps even--disgustyou, " said Mr. Gerard. 

"Indeed, no!" exclaimed Henry; "but both the subject and your way oftreating it are, I confess, a little new to me. "

"You are surprised to find one who is what is popularly known as adrunkard not so much ashamed of as interested in himself; isn't that it?Well, that comes of the introspective literary temperament. It is onlythe oyster fascinated by the pearl that is killing it. "

"You should write some 'Confessions' after the manner of De Quincey, "said Henry. 

"Indeed, I've often thought of it, for there's so much that needs sayingon the subject. There is nothing with which we are at once so familiarand of which we know so little. For example"--and now he was quiteplainly off again--"for example, the passion for, I might say the dreamof, drink is usually regarded as a sensual appetite, a physicalindulgence. No doubt in its first crude stages it often is so; but soonit becomes something much more strange and abstract. It becomes amysterious command, issuing we know not whence. It is hardly a desire, and it is not so much a joyless, as a quite colourless, obedience to animperious necessity, decreed by some unknown will. You might wellimagine that I like the taste of this brandy there, as a child isgreedily fond of sweetstuff; but it would be quite a mistake. For my ownpersonal taste, there is no drink like a cup of tea; it is the demon, the strange will that has imposed itself upon me, that has a tastefor brandy. 

"I sometimes wonder whether we poor drunkards are not the victims ofdisembodied powers of the air who, by some chance, have contracted acraving for earthly liquors, and can only satisfy that craving byfastening themselves upon some unhappy human organism. At times therecomes an intermission of the command, as mysterious almost as thecommand itself. For weeks together we give no thought to our tyrant. Wegrow gay and young and innocent again. We are free, --so free, we seem tohave forgotten that we were ever enslaved. Then suddenly one day we hearthe call again. We cry for mercy; we throw ourselves on our knees inprayer. We clutch sacred relics; we conjure the aid of holy memories; wesay over to ourselves the names of the dead we have loved: but it is allin vain--surely we are dragged to the feet of that inexorable will, surely we submit ourselves once more to the dark dominion. "

Henry listened, fascinated, and a little frightened. 

"The longer I live, the more I grow convinced that this is no merefancy, but actual science, " Mr. Gerard continued; "for, again, you mightwell imagine that one drinks for the dreams or other illusory effects itis said to produce. At first, perhaps, yes; but such effects speedilypass away, they pass away indeed before the tyranny has establisheditself, while it would still be possible to shake it off. No, the dreamsof drink are poor things, not worth having at the best. Indeed, thereare no dreams worth having, believe me, but those of youth and healthand spring-water. "

And Mr. Gerard passed for awhile in silence into some hidden country ofhis lost dreams. 

Henry gazed at him with a curious wonder. Here was a man evidently ofconsiderable gifts, a man of ideals, of humour, a man witty and gentle, who surely could have easily made his mark in the world, and yet he hadthrown all away for a mechanical habit which he himself did not pretendto be a passion, --a mere abstract attraction: as though a man shouldsay, "I care not for the joys or successes of this world. My destiny isto sit alone all day and count my fingers and toes, count them over andover and over again. There is not much pleasure in it, and I should beglad to break off the habit, --but there it is. It is imposed upon me bya will stronger than mine which I must obey. It is my destiny. "

"Yes, idealists!" said Mr. Gerard, presently coming back from his dreamsto his great subject, with a laugh. "That reminds me of a story abusiness friend of mine told me the other day. A clerk in his office wasan incorrigible drunkard. He was quite alone in the world, and had noone dependent upon him. The firm had been lenient to him, and again andagain forgiven his outbreaks. But one morning they called him in andsaid: 'Look here, Jones, we have had a great deal of patience with you;but the time has come when you must choose between the drink and theoffice. ' To their surprise, Jones, instead of eagerly promising reform, looked up gravely, and replied, 'Will you give me a week to think itover, sir? It is a very serious matter. ' Drink was all the poor fellowhad outside his drudgery; was it to be expected that he should thuslightly sacrifice it?--

"But, to talk about something else, your aunt, Mrs. Tipping, who has agreat idea of my literary importance, has a notion that I may be of somehelp to you, Mr. Mesurier. Well, I'll tell you the whole extent of mypresent literary engagements, and you are perfectly at liberty to laugh. At the present time I do the sporting notes for the _Tyrian Daily Mail_, and I write the theological reviews for _The Fleet Street Review_. Theseapparently incongruous occupations are the relics of an old taste forsport, which as a boy in the country I had ample opportunity forindulging, and of an interrupted training for the Church--'twixt thenand now there is an eventful gap which, if you don't mind, we won'tsadden each other by filling--Let us fill our glasses and our pipesinstead; and, having failed so entirely myself, I will give you minutedirections how to succeed in literature. "

Mr. Gerard's discourse on how to succeed in literature was partlypractical and partly ironical, and probably too technical to interestthe general reader, who has no intention of being a great or a littlewriter, and who perhaps has already found Mr. Gerard's previousdiscourse a little too special in its character. Suffice it that Henryheard much to remember, and much to laugh over, and that Mr. Gerardconcluded with a practical offer of kindness. 

"I don't know how much use it may be to you, " he said; "but if you careto have it, I should be very glad to give you a letter to the editor of_The Fleet Street Review_. He has, I think, a certain regard for me, andhe might send you a book to do now and again. At all events, it would besomething. "

Henry embraced the offer gratefully; and it occurred to him that in aday or two's time there was a five days' excursion running from Tyre toLondon and back, for half-a-guinea. Why not take it, and expend his lastfive pounds in a stimulating glimpse of the city he some day hoped toconquer? He could then see his friend the publisher, present his letterto the editor, and perhaps bring home with him some little work and arenewed stock of hopes. 

So, before they parted that night, Mr. Gerard wrote him the letter. 

CHAPTER XXXIII

"THIS IS LONDON, THIS IS LIFE"

Thus it was that, all unexpectedly, Henry found himself set down oneautumn morning at the homeless hour of a quarter-to-seven, in Eustonstation. He was going to stay in some street off the Strand, andchartered a hansom to take him there. Few great cities are impressive inthe neighbourhood of their railway termini. You enter them, so to speak, by the back door; and London waves no banners of bright welcome to thestranger who first enters it by the Euston Road. 

But there was an interesting church presently, and on a dust-cart closeby Henry read "Vestry of St. Pancras. "

"Can that be the St. Pancras' Church, " he said to himself, "where MaryWollstonecraft lies buried, and Browning was married?"

Then as they drove along through Bloomsbury, the name "Great CoramStreet" caught his eye, and he exclaimed with delight: "Why, that'swhere Thackeray lived for a time!"

Great Coram Street is little accustomed to create such excitement in thebreast of the passer-by. But to the stranger London is necessarily firsta museum, till he begins to love it as a home, and, in addition to deadmen's associations, begins to people it with memories of his own. Whenyou have lived awhile in Gray's Inn, you grow to forget that Bacon'sghost is your fellow-tenant; and it is the kind-hearted provincial whofrom time to time lays those flowers on Goldsmith's tomb. When you arecaught in a block on Westminster Bridge, with only five minutes to getto Waterloo, you forget to say to yourself: "Ah, this is the bridge onwhich Wordsworth wrote his famous sonnet. " You usually say somethingquite different. 

The mere names of the streets, --how laden with immemorial poetry theywere! "Chancery Lane!" How wonderful! Yet the poor wretch standingoutside the public-house at the corner seemed to derive smallconsolation from the fact that he was starving in Chancery Lane. 

But to Henry, as yet, London was an extended Westminster Abbey, andevery other street was Poet's Corner. He had hardly patience tobreakfast, so eager was he to be out in the streets; and while he ate, his eyes were out of the windows all the time, and his ears drinking inall the London morning sounds like music. At the foot of the street ranthe Thames; he had caught a thrilling glimpse of it as he stepped fromhis cab, and had had a childish impulse to rush down to it beforeentering his hotel. 

At last, free of food and baggage, light of heart, and brimming overwith youth, he stepped into the street. It was but little past eighto'clock. He had just heard the hour chimed, in various tones ofsweetness and solemnity, from several mellow clocks, evidently hiddenhigh in the air in his near vicinity. For two or three hours there wouldbe no editor or publisher to be seen, and meanwhile he had London tohimself. He stepped out into it as into a garden, --a garden of thoseold-time flowers in which antiquity has become a perfume fullof pictures. 

Yes, there was the Thames! "Sweet Themmes, run softly till I end mysong!" he quoted to himself. Chaucer's, Spenser's, Elizabeth's Thames!

It was a bright morning and the river gleamed to advantage. The talltower of Westminster glittered richly in the sun, and the long front ofSomerset House wore a lordly smile. The embankment gardens sparkled andrustled in morning freshness. Henry drew in the air of London as thoughit had been a rose. Here was the Thames at the foot of the street, andthere at the head was the Strand, a stream of omnibuses and cabs, andcity-faring men and women. The Temple must be somewhere close by. Ofcourse it was here to his left. But he would first walk quietly by theThames side to Westminster, and then come back by the Strand. As hewalked, he stepped lightly and gently, as though reverent to the verystones of so sacred a city, and all the time from every prospect andevery other street-corner came streaming like strains of music magneticmemories, --"streets with the names of old kings, strong earls, andwarrior saints. " If for no other reason, how important for the future ofa nation is it to preserve in such ancient cities as London and Oxfordthe energising spectacle of a noble and strenuous antiquity; for thereare no such inspirers of young men as these old places! So much strengthand youth went into them long ago that even yet they have strength andyouth to give, and from them, as from the strong hills, pours out aninexhaustible potency of bracing influence. 

At last Henry found himself back at the top-end of his street. He hadwalked the Strand with deliberate enjoyment. Fleet Street he stillreserved, but, as according to the tower of Clement Danes it was onlyjust ten o'clock, it seemed still a little early to attack his business. A florist's close by suggested a charming commonplace way of filling thetime. He would buy some flowers and carry them to Goldsmith's grave. WhyGoldsmith's grave should thus be specially honoured, he a littlewondered. He was conscious of loving several writers quite as well. Butit was a Johnsonian tradition to love Goldy, and the accessibility ofhis resting-place made sentiment easy. 

He repented this momentary flippancy of thought as he stood in thecloistered corner where Goldsmith sleeps under the eye of the law; and, when he laid his little wreath on the worn stone, it was a genuineoffering. From it he turned away to his own personal dreams. 

By eleven he had found his friend the publisher, in a dainty littleplace of business crammed with pottery, Rowlandsons, and books, andmore like a curiosity-shop than a publishing-house, for the publisherproved an enthusiast in everything that was beautiful or curious, andhad indeed taken to publishing from that rare motive in apublisher, --the love of books, rather than the love of money. He wasaiming to make his little shop the rallying-point of all the youngtalent of the day, and as young talent has never too many publishers onthe look-out for it, his task was not difficult, though it was one ofthose real services to literature which such publishers and booksellershave occasionally done in our literary history, with but scantacknowledgment. 

Henry was pleased to find that he looked upon him to make one of hislittle band of youth; and as the publisher understood the art ofencouragement, Henry already felt it had been worth while to come toLondon just to see him. He knew the editor to whom Henry had a letterand volunteered him another. The afternoon would be the best time;meanwhile, they must lunch together. He smiled when Henry suggested theCheshire Cheese. Henry had a sort of vague idea that literary men couldhardly think of taking their meals anywhere else. There had been anattempt to bring it into fashion again, the publisher said; but it hadcome to nothing--though he, for one, loved those old chop-houses, withtheir tankards, and their sanded floors. So to the Cheshire Cheese theyrepaired, and drank to a long friendship in foaming pewters of porter. 

"Alas!" said Henry, "we are fallen on smaller times. Once it was 'thepoet's pint of port. ' Now we must be content with the poetaster'shalf-a-pint of porter!"

"You must come to my rooms to-night, " said the publisher, "and beintroduced to some of our young men. I have one or two of our oldercritics coming too. "

Henry's fortune was evidently made. 

He found the editor in a dim back room at the top of a high building, solost in a world of books and dust that at first Henry could hardly makehim out, writing by a window with his back to the door. Then an alerthead turned round to him, and a rather peevish gesture bade him beseated, while the editor resumed his work. This hardly came up toHenry's magnificent dreams of the editorial dignity. Perhaps he had avague idea that editors lived in palaces, and sat on thrones. 

Presently the editor put down his pen with an exclamation ofsatisfaction; and the first impression of peevishness vanished in thecordiality with which he now turned to his visitor. 

"You must excuse my absorption. It was a rather tough piece ofproof-reading. A subject I'm rather interested in, --new Welshdictionary. Don't suppose it's in your line, eh, eh?"--and the tall, spare man laughed a boyish laugh like a mischievous bird, and tossed hishead at the jest. 

His face was small and sallow and tired; but the dark eyes were full offun and kindness. Presently, he rose and began to walk up and down theroom with a curious, prancing walk, rolling himself a cigarette, andtalking away in a rapid, jerky fashion with his continual, "eh, eh?"coming in all the time. 

"Poor Gerard! So you know him? How is he now?" and he lowered his voicewith the suggestion of a mutual confidence, and stopped in his walk tillHenry should answer. "Poor Gerard! And he might have been--well, well, --never mind. We were together at King's. Brilliant fellow. So youknow Gerard. Dear me! Dear me!"

Then he turned to the subject of Henry's visit. 

"Well, my poor boy, nothing will satisfy you but literature? You aredetermined to be a literary man, eh, eh?" Then he stopped in front ofHenry and laid his hand kindly on his shoulder, "Is it too late to say, 'Go back while there is yet time'? Perhaps--of course--you're going tobe a very great man, " and he broke off into his walk again, with one ofhis mischievous laughs. "But unless you are, take my word, it's a poorgame--Yet, I suppose, it's no use talking. I know, wasted breath, wastedbreath--Well, now, what can you do? and, by the way, you won't grow faton _The Fleet Street Review_. Ten shillings a column is our magnificentrate of payment, and we can hardly afford that--"

Then he began pulling out one book and another from the piles of allsorts that lay around him. "I suppose, like the rest, you'd better beginon poetry. There's a tableful over there--go and take your pick of it, unless, of course, you've got some special subject. You're not, Isuppose, an authority on Assyriology, eh, eh?"

Henry feared not, and then a new fit of industry came upon the editor, and he begged Henry to take a look at the books while he ran throughanother proof for the post. 

That dusty table--evidently the rubbish-heap of the room--was Henry'sfirst object-lesson in the half tragical, half farcical, over-productionof modern literature. Such a mass of foolishness and ineptitude he hadnever conceived of; such pretentiousness too--and while he made variousmelancholy reflections upon human vanity, what should he unearthsuddenly from the heap, but his own little volume. He could but halfsuppress a cry of recognition. 

"What's that?" asked the editor, not turning round. "Found anything?"

"No, " said Henry; "nothing--for a moment I thought I had. "

Presently he had made a small pile of the most promising volumes, andturned to take his leave. The editor took up one or two of themcarelessly. 

"Not much here, I'm afraid, " he said. "Never mind; see what you can makeof them. Not more than three columns at the most, you know. And come andsee me again. I'm glad to have seen you. "

"Oh, " said Henry, on the point of leaving, and laying his hand on hisown little book, "may I take this one too? It's not worth reviewing, butit rather interested me just now. "

"God bless me, yes, certainly, " said the editor; "you're welcome to thelot, if you care to bring a hand-cart. Good-bye, good-bye. "

And Henry slipped his poor little neglected volume into his pocket. Onhow many dusty tables, he wondered, was it then lying ignominiouslydisregarded. Well, the day would come! Meanwhile, he had his first batchof books for review. 

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE WITS

There now remained the gathering of wits fixed for the evening. Hispublisher had asked him to dinner, but he had declined, from a secretand absurd desire to dine at "The Cock. " This he gratified, and with hismind full of the spacious times of the early Victorians, he turned intothe publisher's little room about nine o'clock to meet some ofthe later. 

There was no great muster as yet. Some half-a-dozen rather shy young menspasmodically picked up strange drawings or odd-looking books, lyingabout on the publisher's tables, struggled maidenly with cigars, sippeda little whisky and soda; but little was said. 

Among them a pale-faced lad of about fifteen, miraculouslyself-possessed, stood with his back to the chimney-piece. But soonothers began to turn in, and by ten the room was as full of chatter andsmoke as it could hold. Not least conspicuous among the talkers was thepale-faced boy of fifteen. Henry had been sitting near to him, and hadbeen suddenly startled by his unexpectedly breaking out into a volley oflearning, delivered in a voice impressively deliberate and sententious. 

"What a remarkable boy that is!" said Henry, innocently, to thepublisher. 

"Yes; but he's not quite a boy, --though he's young enough. A curiouslittle creature, morbidly learned. A friend of mine says that he wouldlike to catch him and keep him in a bottle, and label it 'the learnedhomunculus. '"

"What dialect is it he is talking in?" said Henry; "I don't remember tohave heard it before. "

The publisher smiled: "My dear fellow, you must be careful what you say. That is what we call 'the Oxford voice. '"

"How remarkable!" said Henry, his attention called off by a being with aface that half suggested a faun, and half suggested a flower, --a small, olive-skinned face crowned with purply black hair, that kept falling inan elflock over his forehead, and violet eyes set slant-wise. He wastalking earnestly of fairies, in a beautiful Irish accent, and Henryliked him. The attraction seemed mutual, and Henry found himself drawninto a remarkable relation about a fairy-hill in Connemara, and fairylights that for several nights had been seen glimmering about it; andhow at last he--that is, the narrator--and a particularly hard-headedfriend of his had kept watch one moonlit night, with the result thatthey had actually seen and talked with the queen of the fairies andlearned many secrets of the ----. The narrator here made use of a long, unpronounceable Irish word, which Henry could not catch. 

"I should have explained some of these phenomena to you, " whispered thepublisher presently, noticing that Henry looked a little bewildered. "This is a young Irish poet, who, in the intervals of his raising thedevil, writes very beautiful lyrics that he may well have learned fromthe fairies. It is his method to seem mad on magic and such things. Youwill meet with many strange methods here to-night. Don't be alarmed ifsome one comes and talks to you about strange sins. You have come toLondon in the 'strange sins' period. I will explain afterwards. "

He had hardly spoken when a pallid young man, with a preternaturallength and narrowness of face, began to talk to him about the sins ofthe Borgias. 

"I suppose you never committed a murder yourself?" he asked Henry, languidly. 

"No, " said Henry, catching the spirit of the foolishness; "no, not yet. I am keeping that--" implying that he was reserving so extreme astimulant till all his other vices failed him. 

Presently there entered a tall young man with a long, thin face, curtained on either side with enormous masses of black hair, like a slipof the young moon glimmering through a pine-wood. 

At the same moment there entered, as if by design, his very antithesis:a short, firmly built, clerkly fellow, with a head like a billiard-ballin need of a shave, a big brown moustache, and enormous spectacles. 

"That, " said the publisher, referring to the moon-in-the-pine-wood youngman, "is our young apostle of sentiment, our new man of feeling, thebest-hated man we have; and the other is our young apostle of blood. Heis all for muscle and brutality--and he makes all the money. It is oneof our many fashions just now to sing 'Britain and Brutality. ' But myimpression is that our young man of feeling will have his day, --thoughhe will have to wait for it. He would hasten it if he would cut hishair; but that, he says, he will never do. His hair, he says, is hisbattle-cry. Well, he enjoys himself--and loves a fight, though youmightn't think it to look at him. "

A supercilious young man, with pink cheeks, and a voice which hisadmirers compared to Shelley's, then came up to Henry and asked him whathe thought of Mallarmé's latest sonnet; but finding Henry confessedly atsea, turned the conversation to the Empire ballet, of which, unfortunately, Henry knew as little. The conversation then languished, and the Shelley-voiced young man turned elsewhere for sympathy, with ashrug at your country bumpkins who know nothing later than Rossetti. 

In the thick of the conversational turmoil, Henry's attention had fromtime to time been attracted by the noise proceeding from a blustering, red-headed man, with a face of fire. 

"Who is that?" at last he found opportunity to ask his friend. 

"That is our greatest critic, " said the publisher. 

"Oh!" said Henry, "I must try and hear what he is saying. It seemsimportant from the way he is listened to. "

So Henry listened, and heard how the fire-faced man said the word "damn"with great volubility and variety of cadence, and other words to thesame effect, and how the little group around him hung upon his words andsaid to each other, "How brilliant!" "How absolute!"

Henry turned to his friend. "The only word I can catch is the word'damn, '" he said. 

"That, " said the publisher, with a laugh, "is the master-word offashionable criticism. "

Presently a little talkative man came up, and said that he hoped Mr. Mesurier was an adherent of the rightful king. 

"Oh, of course!" said Henry. 

"And do you belong to any secret society?" asked the little man. 

Henry couldn't say that he did. 

"Well, you must join us!" he said. 

"I suppose there won't be a rising just yet?" asked Henry, realisingthat this was the Jacobite method. 

"Not just yet, " said the little man, reassuringly. So Henry wasenrolled. 

 * * * * *

And so it went on till past midnight, when Henry at last escaped, totalk it all over with the stars. The evening had naturally puzzled him, as a man will always be puzzled who has developed under the influence ofthe main tendencies of his generation, and who finds himself suddenly ina backwater of fanciful reaction. Henry, in his simple way, was athinker and a radical, and he had nourished himself on the greatmain-road masters of English literature. He had followed the lead ofmodern philosophers and scientists, and had arrived at a mysticalagnosticism, --the first step of which was to banish the dogmas of thechurch as old wives' tales. He considered that he had inherited thehard-won gains of the rationalists. But he came to London and foundyoung men feebly playing with the fire of that Romanism which heregarded as at once the most childish and the most dangerous of allintellectual obsessions. In an age of great biologists and electricians, he came upon children prettily talking about fairies and thephilosopher's stone. In one of the greatest ages of English poetry, hecame to London to find young English poets falling on their knees to themetrical mathematicians of France. In the great age of democracy, a foolhad come and asked him if he were not a supporter of the house ofStuart, a Jacobite of charades. But only once had he heard the name ofMilton; it was the learned boy of fifteen who had quoted him, --alifelong debt of gratitude; and never once had he heard the voice ofsimple human feeling, nor heard one speak of beauty, simply, passionately, with his heart in his mouth; nor of love with his heartupon his sleeve. Much cleverness, much learning, much charm, there hadbeen, but he had missed the generous human impulse. No one seemed to bedoing anything because he must. These were pleasant eddies, dainty withlilies and curiously starred water-grasses, but the great warm stream ofEnglish literature was not flowing here. 

As he neared his hotel, he thought of his morning visit to Goldsmith'stomb, and ten-fold he repented the little half-sneer with which he hadbought the flowers. In a boyish impulse, he rang the Temple bell, andfound his way again to the lonely corner. His flowers were lying therein the moonlight, and again he read: "Here lies Oliver Goldsmith. "

"Forgive me, Goldy, " he murmured. "Well may men bring you flowers, --foryou wrote, not as those yonder; you wrote for the human heart. "

CHAPTER XXXV

BACK TO REALITY

It was good to get back to reality, with Angel's blue eyes, Mike'slaugh, and Esther's common sense. 

"Let me look deep into them, Angel--deep--deep. It is so good to getback to something true. "

"Are they true?" said Angel, opening them very wide. 

"Something that will never forsake one, something we can never forsake!Something in all the wide world's change that will never change. Something that will still be Angel even in a thousand years. "

"I hope to be a real angel long before that, " said Angel, laughing. 

"Do you think you can promise to be true so long, Angel?" asked Henry. 

"Dear, you know that so long as there is one little part of me leftanywhere in the world, that part will be true to you. --But come, tellme about London. I'm afraid you didn't enjoy it very much. "

"Oh, yes, I loved London, --that is, old London; but new London made me alittle sad. I expect it was only because I didn't quite understand theconditions. "

"Perhaps so, " said Angel. "But tell me, --did you go to the Zoo?"

"You dear child! Yes! I went out of pure love for you. "

"Now you needn't be so grown up. You know you wanted to go just foryourself as well. And you saw the monkey-house?"

"Yes. "

"And the lions?"

"Yes. "

"And the snakes?"

"Yes!"

"Oh, I'd give anything to see the snakes! Did they eat any rabbits whenyou were there, --fascinate them, and then draw them slowly, slowly in?"

"Angel, what terrible interests you are developing! No, thank goodness, they didn't. "

"Why, wouldn't it fascinate you to see something wonderfully killed?"asked Angel. "It is dreadful and wicked, of course. But it would be sothrillingly real. "

"I think I must introduce you to a young man I met in London, " saidHenry, "who solemnly asked me if I had ever murdered anyone. You savagelittle wild thing! I suppose this is what you mean by saying sometimesthat you are a gipsy, eh?"

"Well, and you went to the Tower, and Westminster Abbey, and everything, and it was really wonderful?"

"Yes, I saw everything--including the Queen. "

For young people of Tyre and Sidon to go to London was like what it oncewas to make the pilgrimage to Rome. 

Mike created some valuable nonsense on the occasion, which unfortunatelyhas not been preserved, and Esther was disgusted with Henry because hecould give no intelligible description of the latest London hats; andall examined with due reverence those wonderful books for review. 

In Tichborne Street Aunt Tipping had taken advantage of his absence toenrich his room with a bargain in the shape of an old desk, which wasthe very thing he wanted. Dear old Aunt Tipping! And Gerard, it is tobe feared, took a little more brandy than usual in honour of his youngfriend's adventures in the capital. 

These excitements over, Henry sat down at his old desk to write hisfirst review; and there for the present we may leave him, for he took itvery seriously and was dangerous to interrupt. 

CHAPTER XXXVI

THE OLD HOME MEANWHILE

More than a year had now gone by since Henry left home, and meanwhile, with the exception of Dot's baptism, there had been no exciting changesto record. Perhaps uneventfulness is part of the security of areal home. Every morning James Mesurier had risen at half-pastsix, --though he no longer imposed that hour of rising upon hisdaughters, --breakfasted at eight, and reached his office at nine. Everyevening during those months, punctually at half-past six his latch-keyhad rattled in the front-door lock, and one or other of his daughtershad hurried out at the sound to bid him welcome home. 

"Home at last, father dear!" they had said, helping him off with hiscoat; and sometimes when he felt bright he would answer, --

"Yes, my dear, night brings crows home. "

"Home again, James!" his wife would say, as he next entered the frontparlour, and bent down to kiss her where she sat. "It's a long day. Isn't it time you were pulling in a bit? Surely some of the youngerheads should begin to relieve you. "

"Responsibility, Mary dear! We cannot delegate responsibility, " he wouldanswer. 

"But we see nothing of you. You just sacrifice your whole life for thebusiness. "

If he were in a good humour, he might answer with one of his rare sweetlaughs, and jokingly make one of his few French quotations: "_Telle estla vie_! my dear, _Telle est la vie_! That's the French for it, isn't it, Dot?"

James Mesurier was just perceptibly softening. Perhaps it was that hewas growing a little tired, that he was no longer quite the sterndisciplinarian we met in the first chapter; perhaps the influence of hiswife, and his experiences with his children, were beginning to hint tohim what it takes so long for a strong individual nature to learn, thatthe law of one temperament cannot justly or fruitfully be enforced asthe law of another. 

The younger children--Esther and Dot and Mat used sometimes to say toeach other--would grow up in a more clement atmosphere of home than hadbeen Henry's and theirs. Already they were quietly assuming privileges, and nothing said, that would have meant beatings for their elders. Forthese things had Henry and Esther gladly faced martyrdom. Henry hadlooked on the Promised Land, but been denied an entrance there. By hisstripes this younger generation would be healed. 

The elder girls hastened to draw close to their father in gratitude, andhome breathed a kinder, freer air than ever had been known before. Between Esther and her father particularly a kind of comradeship beganto spring up, which perhaps more than ever made the mother miss her boy. 

But, all the same, home was growing old. This was the kindness of thesetting sun!

Childless middle age is no doubt often dreary to contemplate, yet is itan egoistical bias which leads one to find in such limitation, or onemight rather say preservation, of the ego, a certain compensation? Thechildless man or woman has at least preserved his or her individuality, as few fathers and mothers of large families are suffered to do. By thetime you are fifty, with a family of half a dozen children, you havebecome comparatively impersonal as "father" or "mother. " It is tacitlyrecognised that your life-work is finished, that your ambitions areaccomplished or not, and that your hopes are at an end. 

The young Mesuriers, for example, were all eagerly hastening towardstheir several futures. They were garrulous over them at every meal. Butto what future in this world were James and Mary Mesurier lookingforward? Love had blossomed and brought forth fruit, but the fruit wasquickly ripening, and stranger hands would soon pluck it from theboughs. In a very few years they would sit under a roof-tree bared offruit and blossom, and sad with falling leaves. They had dreamed theirdream, and there is only one such dream for a lifetime; now they mustsit and listen to the dreams of their children, help them to buildtheirs. They mattered now no longer for themselves, but just as so muchaid and sympathy on which their children might draw. Too well in theirhearts they knew that their children only heard them with patience solong as they talked of their to-morrows. Should they sometimes dwellwistfully on their own yesterdays, they could too plainly see how longthe story seemed. 

_Telle est la vie!_ as James Mesurier said, and, that being so, nowonder life is a sad business. Better perhaps be childless and retainone's own personal hopes and fears for life, than be so relegated tohistory in the very zenith of one's days. If only this youngergeneration at the door were always, as it assumes, stronger and betterthan its elder! but, though the careless assumption that it is so issomewhat general, history alone shows how false and impudent theassumption often is. Too often genius itself must submit to the sillypresumption of its noisy and fatuous children, and it is the young foolwho too often knocks imperiously at the door of wise and activemiddle age. 

That all this is inevitable makes it none the less sad. The youngMesuriers were neither fools nor hard of heart; and sometimes, inmoments of sympathy, their parents would be revealed to them in suddenlights of pathos and old romance. They would listen to some oldlove-affair of their mother's as though it had been their own, or go outof their way to make their father tell once more the epic of the greatbusiness over which he presided, and which, as he conceived it, wasdoubtless a greater poem than his son would ever write. Yet still evenin such genuine sympathy, there was a certain imaginative effort to bemade. The gulf between the generations, however hidden for the moment, was always there. 

Yet, after all, James and Mary Mesurier possessed an incorruptibletreasure, which their children had neither given nor could take away. Toregard them as without future would be a shallow observation, --for lovehas always a future, however old in mortal years it may have grown; andas they grew older, their love seemed to grow stronger. Involuntarilythey seemed to draw closer together, as by an instinct ofself-preservation. Their love had been before their children; were theyto be spared, it would still be the same love, sweeter by trial, whentheir children had passed from them. In this love had been wise forthem. Some parents love their children so unwisely that they forget tolove each other; and, when the children forsake them, are leftdisconsolate. One has heard young mothers say that now their boy hascome, their husbands may take a second place; and often of late we haveheard the woman say: "Give me but the child, and the lover can go hisways. " Foolish, unprophetic women! Let but twenty years go by, and howglad you will be of that rejected lover; for, though a son may sufficefor his mother, what mother has ever sufficed for her son?

But though sometimes, as they looked at their parents, the youngMesuriers caught a glimpse of the infinite sadness of a life-workaccomplished, yet it failed to warn them against the eager haste withwhich they were hurrying on towards a like conclusion. Too late theywould understand that all the joy was in the doing; too soon say tothemselves: "Was it for this that our little world shook with such fierycommotion and molten ardours, that this present should be so firm andinsensitive beneath our feet? This habit--why, it was once a passion!This fact--why, it was once a dream!"

Oh, why shake off youth's fragile blossoms with the very speed of yourown impatience! Why make such haste towards autumn! Who ever thought theruddiest lapful of apples a fair exchange for a cloud of sunlit blossom?Whose maturity, however laden with prosperity or gilded with honour, ever kept the fairy promise of his youth? For so brief a space youthglitters like a dewdrop on the tree of life, glitters and is gone. Forone desperate instant of perfection it hangs poised, and is seenno more. 

But, alas! the art of enjoying youth with a wise economy is only learntwhen youth is over. It is perhaps too paradoxical an accomplishment tobe learnt before; for a youth that economised itself would be alreadymiddle age. It is just the wasteful flare of it that leaves such adazzle in old eyes, as they look back in fancy to the conflagration offragrant fire which once bourgeoned and sang where these white ashes nowslowly smoulder towards extinction. 

When Mike has a theatre of his own and can send boxes to his friends, when Henry maybe is an editor of power, when Esther and Angel are theenthroned wives of famous men, and the new heaven and the new earth arequite finished, --will they never sigh sometimes to have the making ofthem all over again? Then they will have everything to enjoy, so therewill be nothing left to hope for. Then there will be no spice of perilin their loves, no keen edge that comes of enforced denial; and the gameof life will be too sure for ambition to keep its savour. "There is nothrill, no excitement nowadays, " one can almost fancy their saying, and, like children playing with their bricks, "Now let us knock it all down, and build another, one. It will be such fun. "

However, these are intrusive, autumnal thoughts in this book of simpleyouth, and our young people knew them not. They were far indeed fromEsther's mind as she talked with Dot of the future one afternoon. Instead, her words were full of impatience with the slow march ofevents, and the enforced inactivity of a girl's life at home. 

"It is so much easier for the boys, " she was saying. "There is somethingfor them to do. But we can do nothing but sit at home and wait, darntheir socks, and clap our hands at their successes. I wish I werea man!"

"No, you don't, " said Dot; "for then you couldn't marry Mike. And youcouldn't wear pretty dresses--Oh! and lots of things. I don't much envya man's life, after all. It's all very well talking about hard work whenyou haven't got to do it; and it's not so much the work as theresponsibility. It must be such a responsibility to be a man. "

"Of course you're right, Dot--but, oh! this waiting is so stupid, allthe same. If only I could be doing something--anything!"

"Well, you _are_ doing something. Is it nothing to be all the world to aman?" said Dot, wistfully; "nothing to be his heaven upon earth? Nothingto be the prize he is working for, and nothing to sustain and cheer himon, as you do Mike, and as Angel cheers Henry? Would Henry have been thesame without Angel, or Mike the same without you? No, the man's workmakes more noise, but the woman's work is none the less real and usefulbecause it is quiet and underground. "

"Dear Dot, what a wise old thing you're growing! But you know you'relonging all the time for some work to do yourself. Didn't you say theother day that you seemed to be wasting your life here, making beds anddoing housework?"

"Yes; but I'm different. Don't you see?" retorted Dot, sadly. "I've gotno Mike. Your work is to help Mike be a great actor, but I've got no oneto help be anything. You may be sure I wouldn't complain of being idleif I had. I think you're a bit forgetful sometimes how happy you are. "

"Poor old Dot! you needn't talk as if you're such a desperate oldmaid, --you're not twenty yet. And I'm sure it's a good thing for youthat you haven't got any of the young men about here--to help bealdermen! Wait till you come and stay with us in London, then you'llsoon find some one to work for, as you call it. "

"I don't know, " said Dot, thoughtfully; "somehow I think I shall nevermarry. "

"I suppose you mean you'd rather be a nun or something serious of thatsort. "

"Well, to tell the truth, I have been thinking lately if perhaps Icouldn't do something, --perhaps go into a hospital, or something ofthat sort. "

"Oh, nonsense, Dot! Think of all the horrible, dirty people you'd haveto attend to. Ugh!"

"Christ didn't think of that when He washed the feet of His disciples, "said little Dot, sententiously. 

"Why, Dot, how dreadfully religious you're getting! You want a goodshaking! Besides, isn't it a little impious to imply that the apostleswere horrible, dirty people?"

"You know what I meant, " said Dot, flushing. 

"Yes, of course, dear; and I think I know where you've been. You've beento see that dear Sister Agatha. "

"You admit she's a dear?"

"Of course I do; but I don't know whether she's quite good for you. "

"If you'd only seen her among the poor little children the other day, how beautiful and how happy she looked, you might have thoughtdifferently, " said Dot. 

"Oh, yes, dear; but then you mustn't forget that her point of view isdifferent. She's renounced the world; she's one of those women, " Esthercouldn't resist adding, maliciously, "who've given up hope of man, andso have set all their hopes on God. "

"Esther, that's unworthy of you--though what if it is as you say, is itso great a failure after all to dedicate one's self to God rather thanto one little individual man?"

"Oh, come, " said Esther, rather wilfully misunderstanding, and suddenlyflushing up, "Mike is not so little as all that!"

"Why, you goose, how earthly you are! I never thought of dearMike--though it would have served you right for saying such a mean thingabout Sister Agatha. "

"Forgive me. I know it was mean, but I couldn't resist it. And it istrue, you'll admit, of some of those pious women, though I withdraw itabout Sister Agatha. "

"Of course I couldn't be a sister like Sister Agatha, " said Dot, "without being a Catholic as well; but I might be a nurse at one of theordinary hospitals. "

"It would be dreadfully hard work!" said Esther. 

"Harder than being a man, do you think?" asked Dot, laughing. 

"For goodness' sake, don't turn Catholic!" said Esther, in some alarm. "_That_ would break father's heart, if you like. "

A horror of Catholicism ran in the very marrow of these young people. It was one of the few relics of their father's Puritanism surviving inthem. Of "Catholics" they had been accustomed to speak since childhoodas of nightmares and Red Indians with bloody scalps at their waists; andperhaps that instinctive terror of the subtle heart of Rome is thereligious prejudice which we will do well to part with last. 

Dot had not, indeed, contemplated an apostacy so unnatural; but beneaththese comparatively trivial words there was an ever-growing impulse tofulfil that old longing of her nature to do something, as the Christianswould say, "for God, " something serious, in return for the solemn andbeautiful gift of life. By an accident, she had met Sister Agatha oneday in the house of an old Irish servant of theirs, who had beencompelled to leave them on account of ill-health, and on whom she hadcalled with a little present of fruit. She had been struck by thesweetness of the Sister's face, as the Sister had been struck by hers. Sister Agatha had invited Dot to visit her some day at the home fororphan children of which she had charge; and, with some misgiving as towhether it was right thus to visit a Catholic, whether even it wassafe, Dot had accepted. So an acquaintance had grown up and ripened intoa friendship; and Sister Agatha, while making no attempt to turn thefriendship to the account of her church, was a great consolation to thelonely, religious girl. 

Dot retained too much rationalism ever to become a Catholic, but thelonging to do something grew and grew. At a certain moment, with eachnew generation of girls, there comes an epidemical desire in maidenbosoms to dedicate their sweet young lives to the service of what Esthercalled "horrible dirty people. " At these periods the hospitals areflooded with applications from young girls whom the vernal equinox urgesfirst to be mothers, and, failing motherhood, nurses. Just before shemet Henry, Angel had done her best to miss him by frantic endeavours tonurse people whom the hospital doctors decided she was far too slight athing to lift, --for unless you can lift your patients, not to say throwthem about, you fail in the muscular qualifications of a hospital nurse. Dot, as we have seen, was impelled in this direction from no merelysentimental impulse, unless the religious impulse, which paradoxicallymakes nuns of disappointed mothers, may so be called. Perhaps, unacknowledged, deep down in her heart, she longed to be the nurse--ofone little wonderful child. Had this been granted her, it is probablethat the maimed and the halt would have had less attraction for herpitying imagination. As it was, however, she persuaded herself that sheloved them. Was it because, at the moment, no one else seemed toneed her love?

CHAPTER XXXVII

STAGE WAITS, MR. LAFLIN

Esther's impatience was to be appeased, perhaps a little to her regretafter all, by an unexpected remission of the time appointed between Mikeand his first real engagement. Suddenly one day came an exciting letterfrom the great actor, saying that he saw his way to giving him a part inhis own London company, if he could join him for rehearsal in aweek's time. 

Here was news! At last a foundation-stone of the new heaven was to belaid! In a week's time Mike would be working at one of the alabasterwalls. Perhaps in two years' time, perhaps even in a year, with goodfortune, the roof would be on, the door wreathed with garlands, and amodest little heaven ready for occupation. 

Now all that remained was to make the momentous break with the old life. Old Mr. Laflin had been left in peaceful ignorance of the mine whichmust now be exploded beneath his evening armchair. Mike loved hisfather, and this had been a dread long and wisely postponed. But now, when the moment for inevitable decision had come, Mike remembered, witha certain shrinking, that responsibility of which Dot had spoken, --theresponsibility of being a man. It was his dream to be an actor, to earnhis bread with joy. To earn it with less than joy seemed unworthy ofman. Yet there was another dream for him, still more, immeasurably more, important--to be Esther's husband. If he stayed where he was, in slowrevolutions of a dull business, his father's place and income wouldbecome his. If he renounced that certain prospect, he committed himselfto a destiny of brilliant chances; and for the first time he realisedthat among those chances lurked, too, the chance of failure. Esther mustdecide; and Henry's counsel, too, must be taken. Mike thought he knewwhat the decision and the counsel would be; and, of course, he wasnot mistaken. 

"Why, Mike, how can you hesitate?" said Esther. "Fail, if you like, andI shall still love you; but you don't surely think I could go on lovinga man who was frightened to try?"

That was a little hard of Esther, for Mike's fear had been for her sake, not his own. However, that and the even more vehement counsel of Henryhad the desired bracing effect; and Mike nerved himself to deal thenecessary blow at his father's tranquillity. 

As the writer of this book takes no special joy in heart-breaking sceneswith fathers, the painful and somewhat violent scene with Mr. Laflin ishere omitted, and left to the imagination of any reader with a taste forsuch unnatural collisions. Any one over thirty will agree that all thereason was on Mr. Laflin's side, as all the instinct was on his son's. Luckily for Mike, the instinct was to prove genuine, and his father tolive to be prouder of his rebellion than ever he would have been of hisobedience. 

This scene over, it was only a matter of days--five alone wereleft--before Mike must up and away in right good earnest. 

"Oh, Mike, " said Esther, "you're sure you'll go on loving me? I'mawfully frightened of those pretty girls in ----'s company. "

"You needn't be, " said Mike; "there's only one girl in the world willlook at a funny bit of a thing like me. "

"Oh, I don't know, " said Esther, laughing, "some big girls have suchstrange tastes. "

"Well, let's hope that before many months you can come and look afterme. "

"If we'd only a certain five pounds a week, we could getalong, --anything to be together. Of course, we'd have to beeconomical--" said Esther, thoughtfully. 

On the last night but one before his leaving, it was Mike's turn for afarewell dinner. Half-a-dozen of his best friends assembled at the"Golden Bee, " and toasts and tears were mingled to do him honour. Henryhappily caught the general feeling of the occasion in the followingverses, not hitherto printed. Henry was too much in earnest at the timeto regard the bathos of rhyming "stage waits" with such dignities as"summoning fates, " except for which _naïveté_ the poem is perhaps not abad example of sincere, occasional verse:

 _Dear Mike, at last the wishéd hour draws nigh-- Weary indeed, the watching of a sky For golden portent tarrying afar; But here to-night we hail your risen star, To-night we hear the cry of summoning fates-- Stage waits!

 Stage waits! and we who love our brother so Would keep him not; but only ere he go, Led by the stars along the untried ways, We'd hold his hand in ours a little space, With grip of love that girdeth up the heart, And kiss of eyes that giveth strength to part. 

 Some of your lovers may be half afraid To bid you forth, for fear of pitfalls laid About your feet; but we have no such fears, That cry is as a trumpet in our ears; We dare not, would not, mock those summoning fates-- Stage waits!

 Stage waits! and shall you fear and make delay? Yes! when the mariner who long time lay, Waiting the breeze, shall anchor when it blows; Yes! when a thirsty summer-flower shall close Against the rain; or when, in reaping days, The husbandman shall set his fields ablaze. 

 Nay, take your breeze, drink in your strengthening rain, And, while you can, make harvest of your grain; The land is fair to which that breeze shall blow. The flower is sweet the rain shall set aglow, The grain be rich within your garner gates-- Stage waits!

 Stage waits! and we must loosen now your hand, And miss your face's gold in all our land; But yet we know that in a little while You come again a conqueror, so smile Godspeed, not parting, and, with hearts elate, We wait_. 

Yes, for the second time the die was cast. Henry was already afoot onthe adventure perilous. Now it was Mike's turn. These young people hadpassionately invoked those terrible gods who fulfil our dreams, andalready the celestial machinery was beginning to move in answer. Perhapsit just a little took their breath, to see the great wheels so readilyturning at the touch of their young hands; but they were in for it now, and with stout hearts must abide the issue. 

This was to be Esther and Mike's first experience of parting, and theirhearts sickened at the thought. Love surely does well in this world, sofull of snares and dangers, to fear to lose from its eyes for a momentthe face of its beloved; and in this respect the courage of love is themore remarkable. How bravely it takes the appalling risks of life! Toseparate for an hour may mean that never as long as the world lasts willlove hear the voice it loves again. "Good-bye, " love has called gaily sooften, and waved hands from the threshold, and the beloved has called"good-bye" and waved, and smiled back--for the last time. And yet lovefaces the fears, not only of hours, but of weeks and months; weeks andmonths on seas bottomless with danger, in lands rife with unknown evils, dizzily taking the chances of desperate occupations. And the courage isthe greater, because, finally, in this world, love alone has anything tolose. Other losses may be more or less repaired; but love's loss is, ofits essence, irreparable. Other fair faces and brave hearts the worldmay bring us, but never that one face! Alas! for the most precious ofearthly things, the only precious thing of earth, there is no system ofinsurance. The many waters have quenched love, and the floods drownedit, --yet in the wide world is there no help, no hope, no recompense. 

The love that bound this little circle of young people together was sostrong and warm that it had developed in them an almost painfulsensibility to such risks of loss. So it was that expressions ofaffection and outward endearments were more current among them than isusual in a land where manners, from a proper fear of exaggeration, runto a silly extreme of unresponsiveness. They never met without showingtheir joy to be again together; never parted without that inner fearthat this might be their last chance of showing their love foreach other. 

"You all say good-bye as if you were going to America!" MyrtillaWilliamson had once said; "I suppose it's your Irish grandmother. " Andno doubt the _empressement_ had its odd side for those who saw onlythe surface. 

Thus for those who love love, who love to watch for it on human faces, Mike's good-bye at the railway station was a sight worth going farto see. 

"My word, they seem to be fond of each other, these young people!" saida lady standing at the door of the next carriage. 

Mike was leaning through the window, and Esther was pressing near tohim. They murmured low to each other, and their eyes were bright withtears. A little apart stood a small group, in which Henry and Angel andNed were conspicuous, and Mike's sisters and Dot and Mat were there. Acallous observer might have laughed, so sad and solemn they were. Mike'sfun tried a rally; but his jests fell spiritless. It was not so much aparting, one might have thought, as a funeral. Little was said, but eyeswere eloquent, either with tears, or with long strong glances that meantundying faithfulness all round; and Mike knew that Henry's eyes werequoting "_Allons_! after the great Companions, and to belong to them!"

Henry's will to achieve was too strong for him to think of this as aparting; he could only think of it as a glorious beginning. There issomething impersonal in ambition, and in the absorption of the work tobe done the ambitious man forgets his merely individual sensibilities. To achieve, though the heavens fall, --that was Henry's ambition for Mikeand for himself. 

No one really believed that the train would have the hard-heartedness tostart; but at last, with deliberate intention, evidently not to beswayed by human pity, the guard set the estranging whistle to his lips, cold and inexorable as Nero turning down the thumb of death, and surelyMike's sad little face began to move away from them. Hands reached outto him, eyes streamed, handkerchiefs fluttered, --but nothing could holdhim back; and when at last a curve in the line had swallowed the whitespeck of his face, they turned away from the dark gulf where the trainhad been as though it were a newly opened grave. 

A great to-do to make about a mere parting!--says someone. No doubt, mydear sir! All depends upon one's standard of value. No doubt these youngpeople weighed life in fantastic scales. Their standard of value was, nodoubt, uncommon. To love each other was better than rubies; to lose eachother was bitter as death. For others other values, --they had foundtheir only realities in the human affections. 

CHAPTER XXXVIII

ESTHER AND HENRY ONCE MORE

Yes, Mike had really gone. Henceforth for ever so long, he would onlyexist for Esther in letters, or as a sad little voice at the end of awire. It had been arranged that Henry should take Esther with him fordinner that evening to the brightest restaurant in Tyre. He was a greatbeliever in being together, and also in dinner, as comforters of yoursad heart. Perhaps, too, he was a little glad to feel Esther leaninggently upon him once more. Their love was too sure and lasting andever-present to have many opportunities of being dramatic. Nature doesnot make a fuss about gravitation. One of the most wonderful andpowerful of laws, it is yet of all laws the most retiring. Gravitationnever decks itself in rainbows, nor does it vaunt its undoubted strengthin thunder. It is content to make little show, because it is verystrong; yet you have always to reckon with it. It is undemonstrative, but it is always there. The love of Esther and Henry was like that. Ithas made little show in this history, but few readers can have missedits presence in the atmosphere. It might go for weeks without itsfestival; but there it was all the time, ready for any service, staunchfor any trial. It was one of the laws which kept the little world I havebeen describing slung safely in space, and securely shining. 

It was, indeed, something like a perfect relationship, --this love ofEsther and Henry. Had the laws of nature permitted it, it is probablethat Mike and Angel would have been forced to seek their mateselsewhere. As it was, though it was thus less than marriage, it was morethan friendship--as the holy intercourse of a mother and a son is morethan friendship. Freed from the perturbations of sex, it yet gainedwarmth and exhilaration from the unconscious presence of thatstimulating difference. Though they were brother and sister, friend andfriend, Henry and Esther were also man and woman. So satisfying werethey to each other, that when they sat thus together, the truth must betold, that, for the time at all events, they missed no other manor woman. 

"I have always you, " said Esther. 

"Do I still matter, then?" said Henry. "Are you sure the old love is notgrowing old?"

"You know it can never grow old. There is only one Mike; but there isonly one Henry too. It's a good love to have, Harry, isn't it? It makesone feel so much safer in the world. "

"Dear little Esther! Do you remember those old beatings, and that nightyou brought me the cake? Bless you!"--and Henry reached his hand acrossthe table, and laid it so kindly on Esther's that a hovering waiterretreated out of delicacy, mistaking the pair for lovers. It was amistake that was often made when they were together; and they hadsometimes laughed, when travelling, at the kind-hearted way passengerson the point of entering their carriage had suddenly made up their mindsnot to disturb the poor newly-married young things. 

"And how we used to hate you once!" said Esther; "one can hardlyunderstand it now. Do you remember how on Sunday afternoons you wouldinsist on playing at church, and how, with a tablecloth for a surplice, you used to be the minister? How you used to storm if we poor thingsmissed any of the responses!"

"The monstrous egoism of it all!" said Henry, laughing. "It was all gotup to give me a stage, and nothing else. I didn't care whether youenjoyed it or not. What dragons children are!"

"'Dragons of the prime, that tare each other in their slime, '" quotedEsther. "Yes, we tore each other, and no mistake--"

"Well, I've made up for it since, haven't I?" said Henry. "I hope I'm ahumble enough brother of the beautiful to please you nowadays. "

"You're the truest, most reliable thing in the world, " said Esther; "Ialways think of you as something strong and true to come to--"

"Except Mike!"

"No, not even except Mike. We'll call it a draw--dear little Mike! Tothink of him going further and further away every minute! I wonder wherehe is by now. He must have reached Rugby long since. "

At that moment the waiter ventured to approach with a silver tray. Atelegram, --it was indeed a telegram of tears and distance from Mike, given in at Rugby. Even so long parted and so far away, Mike was stilltrue. He had not yet forgotten!

These young people were great extravagants of the emotional telegram. They were probably among the earliest to apply electricity forheart-breaking messages. Some lovers feel it a profanation thus toreveal their souls beneath the eye of a telegraph-operator; but theobjection of delicacy ceases if you can regard the operator in hisactual capacity as a part of the machine. French perhaps is an advisablemedium; though, if the operator misunderstands it, your love is apt totake strange forms at its destination, and if he understands it, you mayas well use English at once. 

"Dear Mike! God bless him!" and they pledged Mike in Esther's favouritechampagne. The wives of great actor-managers must early inure themselvesto champagne. 

"But if you're jealous of Mike, " said Esther, presently, taking up thedropped thread of their talk; "what about Angel?"

"Of course it was only nonsense, " said Henry. "I know you love Angel fartoo much to be jealous of her, as I love Mike; and that's just thebeautiful harmony of it all. We are just a little impregnable world offour, --four loving hearts against the world. "

"How clever it was of you to find Angel!"

"I found Mike, too!" said Henry, laughing. 

"Oh, yes, I know; but then I discovered you. "

"Ah, but a still higher honour belongs to me, for I discovered you, "retorted Henry. "When you consider that I discovered three suchwonderful persons as you and Angel and Mike, don't you think, on thewhole, that I'm singularly modest?"

"Do you love me?" said Esther, presently, quite irrelevantly. 

"Do you love _me_?"

"I asked first. "

"Well, for the sake of argument, let us say 'yes. '"

"How much?"

"As big as the world. "

"Oh, well, then, let's have some Benedictine with the coffee!" saidEsther. 

"I've thought of something better, more 'sacramental, '" said Henry, smiling, "but you couldn't conscientiously drink it with me. It's thered drink of perfect love. Will you drink it with me?"

"Of course I will. "

So the waiter brought a bottle bearing the beautiful words, "_ParfaitAmour_. "

"It's like blood, " said Esther; "it makes me a little frightened. "

"Would you rather not drink it?" asked Henry. "You know if you drink itwith me, you must drink it with no one else. It is the law of it that wecan only drink it with one. "

"Not even with Mike?"

"Not even with Mike. "

"What of Angel?"

"I will drink it with no one but you as long as I live. "

"I will drink it then. "

They held up their glasses. 

"Dear old Esther!"

"Dear old Henry!"

And then they laughed at their solemnity. It was deeply sworn!

When Esther reached home that evening, she found a further telegram fromMike, announcing his arrival at Euston; and she had scarcely read itwhen she heard her father's voice calling her. She went immediately tothe dining-room. 

"Esther, dear, " he said, "your mother and I want a word with you. "

"No, James, you must speak for yourself in this, " said Mrs. Mesurier, evidently a little perturbed. 

"Well, dear, if I must be alone in the matter, I must bear it; I cannotshrink from my duty on that account. " Then, turning to Esther, "I calledyou in to speak to you about Mike Laflin--"

"Yes, father, " exclaimed Esther, with a little gasp of surprise. 

"I met Mr. Laflin on the boat this morning, and was much astonished andgrieved to hear of the rash step his son has chosen to take. The matterhas evidently been kept from me, "--strictly speaking, it had; "Iunderstand, though on that again I have not been consulted, that you andMike have for some time been informally engaged to each other. Now youknow my views on the theatre, and I am sure that you must see thatMike's having taken such a step must at once put an end to any suchidea. Your own sense of propriety would, I am sure, tell you that, without any words from me--"

"Father!" cried Esther, in astonishment. 

"You know that I considered Mike a very nice lad. His family isrespectable; and he would have come into a very comfortable business, ifhe hadn't taken this foolish freak into his head--"

"But, father, you have laughed at his recitations, yourself, many atime, here of an evening. What difference can there be?"

"There is the difference of the theatre, the contaminating atmosphere, the people it attracts, the harm it does--your father, as you know, hasnever been within a theatre in his life; is it likely that he can lookwith calmness upon his daughter marrying a man whose livelihood is to begained in a scandalous and debasing profession?"

"Father, I cannot listen to your talking of Mike like that. If it iswrong to make people innocently happy, to make them laugh and forgettheir troubles, to--to--well, if it's wrong to be Mike--I'm sorry; but, wrong or right, I love him, and nothing will ever make me give him up. "

Mrs. Mesurier here interrupted, "I told you, James, how it would be. Youcannot change young hearts. The times are not the same as when you and Iwere young; and, though I'm sure I don't want to go against you, Ithink you are too hard on Esther. Love is love after all--and Mike's oneof the best-hearted lads that ever walked. "

"Thank you, mother, " said Esther, impulsively, throwing her arms roundher mother's neck, and bursting into tears, "I--I will nevergive--give--him up. "

"No, dear, no; now don't distress yourself. It will all come right. Yourfather doesn't quite understand. " And then a great tempest of sobbingcame over Esther, and swept her away to her own room. 

The father and mother turned to each other with some anger. 

"James, I'm surprised at your distressing the poor child like thatto-night; you might have known she would be sensitive, with Mike onlygone to-day! You could surely have waited till to-morrow. "

"I am surprised, Mary, that you can encourage her as you did. You cannotsurely uphold the theatre?"

"Well, James, I don't know, --there are theatres and theatres, and actorsand actors; and there have been some very good men actors after all, andsome very bad men ministers, if it comes to that, " she added; "andtheatre or no theatre, love's love in spite of all the fathers andmothers in the world--"

"All right, Mary, I would prefer then that we spoke no more on thematter for this evening, " and James Mesurier turned to his diary, torecord, along with the state of the weather, and the engagements of theday, the undutiful conduct of Esther, and a painful difference withhis wife. 

Strange, that men who have themselves loved and begotten should thus fora moment imagine that a small social prejudice, or a narrow religiousformula, can break the purpose of a young and vigorous passion. Do theyrealise what it is they are proposing to obstruct? This is love--_love_, my dear sir, at once the mightiest might, and the rightest right in theuniverse! This is--Niagara--the Atlantic--the power of the stars--andthe strength of the tides. It is all the winds of the world, and all thefires of the centre. You surely cannot be serious in asking it to take, in exchange, some obsolete objection against its beloved!

CHAPTER XXXIX

MIKE AFAR

This collision with her father braced up Esther's nerves, and madeMike's absence easier to bear. Her father made no more allusion to it. He was entering that period when fathers, however despotic, contentthemselves with protest, where once they have governed by royalproclamation. He was losing heart to contend with his children. Theymust go their own ways--though it must not be without occasional severeand solemn warnings on his part. 

Mike and Esther wrote to each other twice a week. They had talked ofevery day, but a wise instinct prompted them to the less romantic, butlikely the more enduring arrangement. It would be none the less open tothem to write fourteen letters a week if they wished, but to have had toadmit that one letter a day was a serious tax, not only on one's otheroccupations, including idleness, but also on the amount ofsubject-matter available, would have been a dangerous correction of animpulsive miscalculation. 

Second-rate London lodgings are not great cheerers of the human spirit, and Mike was very lonely in his first letter or two; but, as therehearsals proceeded, it was evident that he was taking hold of his newworld, and the letter which told of his first night, and of his ownencouraging success in it, was buoyant with the rising tide of thefuture. His chief had affectionately laid his hand on his shoulder, ashe came off from his scene, and, in the hearing of the whole company, prophesied a great future for him. 

Mike had been born under a lucky star; and he had hardly been in Londontwo months when accident very perceptibly brightened it. The chiefcomedian in the company fell ill; and though Mike had had so littleexperience, his chief had so much confidence in his native gift, that hecast him for the vacant part. Mike more than justified the confidence, and not only pleased him, but succeeded in individualising himself withthe audience. He had only played it for a week, when one Saturdayevening the audience, after calling the manager himself three times, setup a cry for "Laflin. " The obsequious attendant pretended to consider itas a fourth call for the manager, and made as if to move the curtainaside for him once more; but, with a magnanimity rare indeed in a "star"of his magnitude, "No, no!" he said; "it is Mr. Laflin they want. Quick, lad, and take your first call. "

So little Mike stepped before the curtain, and made his first bow to anaffectionate burst of applause. What happy tears would have glittered inEsther's eyes had she been there to see it, and in Henry's too, andparticularly, perhaps, in excitable Angel's!

Even so soon was the blossom giving promise of the fruit. 

CHAPTER XL

A LEGACY MORE PRECIOUS THAN GOLD

Meanwhile, Henry plodded away at Aunt Tipping's, working sometimes on avolume of essays for the London publisher, and sometimes on his novel, now and again writing a review, and earning an odd guinea for a poem;and now and again indulging in a day of richly doing nothing. Otherwise, one day was like another, with the many exceptions of the days on whichhe saw Angel or Esther. With Ned, he spent many of his evenings; and hesoon formed the pleasant habit of dropping in on Gerard, last thingbefore bed-time, for a smoke and half an hour's chat. 

There is always a good deal of youth left in any one who genuinely lovesyouth; and Gerard always spoke of his youth as Adam, in his decliningyears, might have spoken of Paradise. For him life was just youth--andthe rest of it death. 

"After thirty, " he would say, "the happiest life is only historyrepeating itself. I am no cynic, --far from it; but the worst of life isthe monotony of the bill of fare. To do a thing once, even twice, isdelightful--perhaps even a third time is successfully possible; but todo it four times, is middle age. If you think of it, what is there to doafter thirty that one ought not to have achieved to perfection before?You know the literary dictum, that the poet who hasn't written amasterpiece before he is thirty will never write any after. Of course, there are exceptions; I am speaking of the rule. In business, forexample, what future is there for the man who has not already a dashingpast at thirty? Of course, the bulk, the massive trunk and theimpressive foliage of his business, must come afterwards; but the treemust have been firmly rooted and stoutly branched before then, and ableto go on growing on its own account. The work, in fact, must havebeen done. 

"Take perhaps the only thing really worth doing in life, " and Gerardperceptibly saddened. "That is, marrying a woman you love, or Ishould say _the_ woman, for you only really _love_ one woman--I'mold-fashioned enough to think that, --well, I say, marrying the woman youlove, and bringing into the world that miracle of miracles, --a childthat shall be something of you and all her: that certainly is somethingto have done before thirty, and not to be repeated, perhaps, more thanonce before or after. She will want a boy like you, and you will have agirl like her. That you may easily accomplish before thirty. Afterwards, however, if you go on repeating each other, what do you do but blur theindividuality of the original masterpieces--though, " pursued Gerard, laughing, always ready to forget his original argument in theseductiveness of an unexpected development of it, "though, after all, Iadmit, there might be a temptation sometimes to improve upon theoriginals. 'Agnes, my dear, ' we might say, 'I'm not quite satisfied yetwith the shade of Eva's hair. It's nearly yours, but not quite. It's animprovement on Anna's, whose eyes now are exactly yours. Eva's, unfortunately, are not so faithful. I'm afraid we'll have to try again. '

"No, but seriously, " he once more began, "for a really vital andsuccessful life there is no adequate employment of the faculties afterthirty, except, of course, in the repetition of former successes. No; Ieven withdraw that, --not the repetition, only the conservation, thefeeding, of former successes. The success is in the creation. When aworld is once created, any fool can keep it spinning. 

"Man's life is at least thirty years too long. Two score years is morethan enough for us to say what we were sent here to say; and if you'llconsider those biographies in which you are most interested, thebiographies of great writers, you cannot but bear me out. What, forinstance, did Keats and Shelley and Burns and Byron lose by dying, allof them long before they were forty, --Keats even long before he wasthirty; and what did Wordsworth and Coleridge gain by living so longafter? Wordsworth and Coleridge didn't even live to repeat themselves, else, of course, one would have begged them to go on living for ever;for some repetitions, it is admitted, are welcome, --for instance, won'tyou have a little more whisky?"

Henry always agreed so completely with Gerard's talk, or at least sodelighted in it, that he had little scope of opportunity to say muchhimself; and Gerard was too keen a talker to complain of a raptyoung listener. 

"How old are you?" he said, presently. 

"Twenty-two next month. "

"Twenty-two! How wonderful to be twenty-two! Yet I don't suppose you'verealised it in the least. In your own view, you're an aged philosopher, white with a past, and bowed down with the cares of a future. Just youstay in bed all day to-morrow, and ponder on the wonderfulness of beingtwenty-two!

"I'm forty-two. You're beginning--I'm done with. And yet, in some ways, I believe I'm younger than you--though, perhaps, alas! what I considerthe youth in me is only the wish to be young again, the will to do andenjoy, without the force and the appetite. But, by the way, when I sayI'm forty-two, I mean that I'm forty-two in the course of next week, next Thursday, in fact, and if you'll do me that kindness, I should begrateful if you would join me that evening in celebrating the melancholyoccasion. I've got a great mind to enlist your sympathy in a littleancient history, if it won't be too great a tax upon your goodness; butI'll think it over between now and then. "

Gerard's birthday had come; and the ancient history he had spoken ofhad proved to be a chapter of his own history, the beauty and sadness ofwhich had made an impression upon Henry, to be rendered ineffaceable avery few days after in a sudden and terrible manner. 

One early morning about four, just as it was growing light, he hadsuddenly awakened with a strong feeling that some one was bending overhim. He opened his eyes, to see, as he thought, Gerard hastily leavinghis bedside. 

"Gerard!" he cried, "what's the matter?" but the figure gave no answer, faded away down the long room, and disappeared. Henry sat up in bed andstruck a light, his heart beating violently. But there was no one there, and the door was closed. It had evidently been one of those dreams thatpersist on the eye for a moment after waking. Yet it left him uneasy;and presently he wondered if Gerard could be ill. He determined to see;so, slipping on his dressing-gown, he crossed the landing to Gerard'sroom, and, softly knocking, opened the door and put in his head. 

"Gerard, old chap, are you all right?--Gerard--"

There was no answer, and the room seemed unaccountably still. Helistened for the sound of breathing, but he couldn't hear it. 

"Gerard!" he cried, again louder, but there was still no answer; andthen, with the silence, a chill terror began to creep through his blood. He had never yet seen death; and perhaps if he had the terror in histhought would not have been lessened. With a heart that had almoststopped beating, and knees that shook beneath him, he pushed open thedoor and walked over to the bed. It was still too dark to see more thanoutlines and masses of white and black; but even so he could see thatthe stillness with which Gerard was lying was the stillness of death. 

His next thought was to rouse Aunt Tipping; and together the two bentover the dead face. 

"Yes, he's gone, " said Aunt Tipping; "poor gentlemen, how beautiful helooks!" and they both gazed in silence upon the calm, smiling face. 

"Well, he's better off, " she said, presently, leaning over him, andsoftly pressing down the lids of his eyes. 

Henry involuntarily drew away. 

"Dear lad, there's nothing to be frightened of, " said his aunt. "He'sas harmless as a baby. "

Then she took a handkerchief from a drawer, and spread it gently overthe dead man's face. To Aunt Tipping the dead were indeed as littlechildren, and inspired her with a strange motherly tenderness. Many hadbeen the tired silent ones whose eyes she had closed, and whose limbsshe had washed against their last resting place. They were so helplessnow; they could do nothing any more for themselves. 

Later in the day, Henry came again and sat long by the dead man's side. It seemed uncompanionable to have grown thus suddenly afraid of him, toleave him thus alone in that still room. And as he sat and watched him, he gave to his memory a solemn service of faithful thought. Thus it washe went over again the words in which Gerard had made him thedepository, the legatee, of his most sacred possession. 

Gerard had evidently had some presentiment of his approaching end. 

"I am going, " he had said, "to place the greatest confidence in you oneman can place in another, pay you the greatest compliment. I shall diesome day, and something tells me that that divine event is not very faroff. Now I have no one in the world who cares an old 'J' pen for me, anda new one is perhaps about as much as I care for any one--with oneexception, and that is a woman whom I shall never see again. She is notdead, but has been worse than dead for me these ten years. I am optimistenough to believe that her old love for me still survives, making sweetthe secret places of her soul. Never once in all these years to havedoubted her love has been more than most marriages; but were I to livefor another ten years, and still another, I would believe in it still. But the stars were against us. We met too late. We met when she had longbeen engaged to a friend of her youth, a man noble and true, to whom sheowed much, and whom she felt it a kind of murder to desert. It was oneof those fallacious chivalries of feeling which are the danger ofsensitive and imaginative minds. Religion strengthened it, as it is soapt to strengthen any form of self-destruction, short of technicalsuicide. There was but a month to their marriage when we met. For us itwas a month of rapture and agonies, of heaven shot through with hell. Isaw further than she. I begged her at least to wait a year; but theforce of my appeal was weakened by scruples similar to her own. To robanother of his happiness is an act from which we may well shrink, thoughwe can clearly see that the happiness was really destined for us, andcan never be his in any like degree. During this time I had receivedfrom her many letters, letters such as a woman only writes in theMay-morning of her passion; and one day I received the last. There wasin it one sentence which when I read it I think my heart broke, 'Do youbelieve, ' it ran, 'in a love that can lie asleep, as in a trance, inthis world, to awaken again in another, a love that during centuries ofsilence can still be true, and be love still in a thousand years? If youdo, go on loving me. For that is the only love I dare give you. I mustlove you no more in this world. '

"Each morning as I have risen, and each night as I have turned to sleep, those words have repeated themselves again and again in my heart, forten years. It was so I became the Ashton Gerard you know to-day. Sincethat day, we have never met or written to each other. All I know is thatshe is still alive, and still with him, and never would I disturb theirpeace. When I die, I would not have her know it. If love _is_ immortal, we shall meet again--when I am worthier to meet her. Such reunions areeither mere dreams, or they are realities to which the strongest forcesof the universe are pledged. "

Henry's only comment had been to grip Gerard's hand, and give him thesympathy of silence. 

"Now, " said Gerard, once more after a while, "it is about those lettersI want to speak to you. They are here, " and he unlocked a drawer anddrew from it a little silver box. "I always keep them here. The key ofthe drawer is on this ring, and this little gold key is the key of thebox itself. I tell you this, because I have what you may regard as astrange request to make. 

"I suppose most men would consider it their duty either to burn theseletters, or leave instructions for them to be buried with them. That isa gruesome form of sentiment in which I have too much imagination toindulge. Both my ideas of duty and sentiment take a different form. Thesurname of the writer of these letters is nowhere revealed in them, norare there any references in them by which she could ever be identified. Therefore the menace to her fair fame in their preservation is not aquestion involved. Now when the simplest woman is in love, she writeswonderfully; but when a woman of imagination and intellect is caught bythe fire of passion, she becomes a poet. Once in her life, every suchwoman is an artist; once, for some one man's unworthy sake, she becomesinspired, and out of the fulness of her heart writes him letters warmand real as the love-cries of Sappho. Such are the letters in thislittle box. They are the classic of a month's passion, written as no manhas ever yet been able to write his love. Do you think it strange thenthat I should shrink from destroying them? I would as soon burn thesongs of Shelley. They are living things. Shall I selfishly bury thebeating heart of them in the silence of the grave?

"So, Mesurier, " he continued, affectionately, "when I met you andunderstood something of your nature, I thought that in you I had foundone who was worthy to guard this treasure for me, and perhaps pass it onagain to some other chosen spirit--so that these beautiful words of anoble woman's heart shall not die--for when a man loves a woman, Mesurier, as you yourself must know, he is insatiable to hear herpraise, and it is agony for him to think that her memory may sufferextinction. Therefore, Mesurier, --Henry, let me call you, --I want togive the memory of my love into your hands. I want you to love it forme, when perhaps I can love it no more. I want you sometimes to openthis box, and read in these letters, as if they were your own; I wantyou sometimes to speak softly the name of 'Helen, ' when my lips canspeak it no more. "

Such was the beautiful legacy of which Henry found himself the possessorby Gerard's death. Early on that day he had remembered his promise tohis dead friend, and had found the silver box, and locked it away amonghis own most sacred things. Some day, in an hour and place upon whichnone might break, he would open the little box and read Helen's letters, as Gerard had wished. Already one sentence was fixed unforgettably uponhis mind, and he said it over softly to himself as he sat by Gerard'ssilent bed: "Do you believe in a love that can lie asleep, as in atrance in this world, to awaken again in another, --a love that duringcenturies of silence can still be true, and be love still in a thousandyears? If you do, go on loving me. For that is the only love I dare giveyou; I must love you no more in this world. "

Strange dreams of the indomitable dust! Already another man's love wasgrowing dear to him. Already his soul said the name of "Helen" softlyfor Gerard's sake. 

CHAPTER XLI

LABORIOUS DAYS

With Gerard's death, Henry began to find Aunt Tipping's too sad a placeto go on living in. It had become haunted; and when new people movedinto Gerard's rooms, it became still more painful for him. It was asthough Gerard had been dispossessed and driven out. So he cast about forsome new shelter; and, one day, chance having taken him to the shippingend of the city, he came upon some old offices which seemed full ofanxiety to be let. Inquiring of a chatty little housekeeper's wife, hediscovered, away at the echoing top of the building, a big, well-lightedroom, for which she thought the owner would be glad to take ten pounds ayear. That whole storey was deserted. Henry made up his mind at once, and broke the news to Aunt Tipping that evening. It was the withering ofone of her few rays of poetry, and she struggled to keep him; but whenshe saw how it was, the good woman insisted that he should takesomething from her towards furnishing. Receiving was nothing like soblessed as giving for Aunt Tipping. That old desk, --yes, she had boughtit for him, --that he must certainly take, and think of his old auntsometimes as he wrote his great books on it; and some bed-linen shecould well afford. She would take no denial. 

Angel and Esther were then called in to help him in the purchase of acarpet, a folding-bed, an old sofa, and a few chairs. A carpenter got towork on the bookshelves, and in a fortnight's time still anotherhabitation had been built for the Muse, --a habitation from which she wasnot destined to remove again, till she and Angel and Henry all movedinto one house together, --a removal which was, as yet, too far off to beincluded in this history. 

Ten pounds a year, a folding-bed, and a teapot!--this was Henry's newformula for the cultivation of literature. He had so far progressed inhis ambitions as to have arrived at the dignity of a garret of his own, and he liked to pretend that soon he might be romantically fortunateenough to sit face to face with starvation. He knew, however, that itwould be a starvation mitigated by supplies from three separate, well-lardered homes. A lad with a sweetheart and a sister, a mother andan aunt, all in love with him, is not likely to become an authority onstarvation in its severest forms. 

A stern law had been passed that Henry's daytime hours were to be asstrictly respected as those of a man of business; yet quite often, abouteleven o'clock in the morning, there would come a heavenly whisper alongthe passage and a little knock on the door, soft as a flower tappingagainst a window-pane. 

"Thank goodness, that's Angel!

"Angel, bless you! How glad I am to see you! I can't get on a bit withmy work this morning. "

"Oh, but I haven't come to interrupt you, dear. I sha'n't keep you fiveminutes. Only I thought, dear, you'd be so tired of pressed beef andtinned tongue, and so I thought I'd make a little hot-pot for you. Ibought the things for it as I came along, and it won't take fiveminutes, if Mrs. Glass [the housekeeper] will only lend me a basin toput it in, and bake it for you in her oven. Now, dear, you mustn't--youknow I mustn't stay. See now, I'll just take off my hat and jacket andrun along to Mrs. Glass, to get what I want. I'll be back in a minute. Well, then, just one--now that's enough; good-bye, " and off shewould skip. 

If you want to know how fairies look when they are making hot-pot, youshould have seen Angel's absorbed little shining face. 

"Now, do be quiet, Henry. I'm busy. Why don't you get on with your work?I won't speak a word. "

"Angel, dear, you might just as well stay and help me to eat it. Isha'n't do any work to-day, I know for certain. It's one of mybad days. "

"Now, Henry, that's lazy. You mustn't give way like that. You'll make mewish I hadn't come. It's all my fault. "

"No, really, dear, it isn't. I haven't done a stroke all morning--thoughI've sat with my pen for two hours. You might stay, Angel, just anhour or two. "

"No, Henry; mother wants me back soon. She's house-cleaning. Andbesides, I mustn't. No--no--you see I've nearly finished now--see! Getme the salt and pepper. There now--that looks nice, doesn't it? Nowaren't I a good little housewife?"

"You would be, if you'd only stay. Do stay, Angel. Really, darling, itwill be all the same if you go. I know I shall do nothing. Look at mymorning's work, and he brought her a sheet of paper containing two linesand a half of new-born prose, one line and a half of which wasplentifully scratched out. To this argument he added two or threepersuasive embraces. 

"It's really true, Henry? Well, of course, I oughtn't; but if you can'twork, of course you can't. And you must have a little rest sometimes, Iknow. Well, then, I'll stay; but only till we've finished lunch, youknow, and we must have it early. I won't stay a minute past two o'clock, do you hear? And now I'll run along with this to Mrs. Glass. "

When Angel had gone promptly at three, as likely as not another stepwould be heard coming down the passage, and a feminine rustle, suggesting a fuller foliage of skirts, pause outside the door, then asort of brotherly-sisterly knock. 

"Esther! Why, you've just missed Angel; what a pity!"

"Well, dear, I only ran up for half-a-minute. I was shopping in town, and I couldn't resist looking in to see how the poor boy was getting on. No, dear, I won't take my things off. I must catch the half-past threeboat, and then I'll keep you from your work?"

Esther always said this with a sort of suggestion in her voice that itwas just possible Henry might have found some new way of both keepingher there and doing his work at the same time; as though she had said, "I know you cannot possibly work while I am here; but, of course, if youcan, and talking to me all the time won't interfere with it--well, I'll stay. "

"Oh, no, you won't really. To tell the truth, I've done none to-day. Ican't get into the mood. "

"So you've been getting Angel to help you. Oh, well, of course, if Angelcan be allowed to interrupt you, I suppose I can too. Well, then, I'llstay a quarter of an hour. "

"But you may as well take your things off, and I'll make a cup of tea, eh? That'll be cosey, won't it? And then you can read me Mike's lastletter, eh?"

"Oh, he's doing splendidly, dear! I had a lovely letter from him thismorning. Would you really care to hear a bit of it?"

And Esther would proceed to read, picking her way among the endearmentsand the diminutives. 

"I _am_ glad, dear. Why, if he goes on at this rate, you'll be able toget married in no time. "

"Yes; isn't it splendid, dear? I am so happy! What I'd give to see hislittle face for five minutes! Wouldn't you?"

"Rather. Perhaps he'll be able to run up on Bank Holiday. "

"I'm afraid not, dear. He speaks of it in his letter, and just hopes forit; but rather fears they'll have to play at Brighton, or some otherstupid seaside place. "

"That's a bother. Yes, dear old Mike! To think of him working away thereall by himself--God bless him! Do you know he's never seen this oldroom? It struck me yesterday. It doesn't seem quite warmed till he'sseen it. Wouldn't it be lovely to have him here some night?--one of ourold, long evenings. Well, I suppose it will really come one of thesedays. And then we shall be having you married, and going off to Londonin clouds of glory, while poor old Henry grubs away down here in Tyre. "

"Well, if we do go first, you will not be long after us, dear; and ifonly Mike could make a really great hit, why, in five years' time wemight all be quite rich. Won't it be wonderful?"

Then the kettle boiled, and Henry made the tea; and when it had longsince been drunk, Esther began to think it must be five o'clock, and, horrified to find it a quarter to six, confessed to being ashamed ofherself, and tried to console her conscience by the haste ofher good-bye. 

"I'm afraid I've wasted your afternoon, " she said; "but we don't oftenget a chat nowadays, do we? Good-bye, dear. Go on loving me, won't you?"

After that, Henry would give the day up as a bad job, and begin towonder if Ned would be dropping in that evening for a smoke; and as thatwas Ned's almost nightly custom about eight o'clock, the chances ofHenry's disappointment were not serious. 

CHAPTER XLII

A HEAVIER FOOTFALL

One morning, as Henry was really doing a little work, a more ponderousstep broke the silence of his landing, a heavy footfall full offriendship. Certainly that was not Angel, nor even the more weightyEsther, though when the knock came it was little and shy as a woman's. 

Henry threw open the door, but for a moment there was no one to be seen;and then, recalling the idiosyncrasy of a certain new friend whom bythat very token he guessed it might be, he came out on to the landing, to find a great big friendly man in corpulent blue serge, a rough, darkbeard, and a slouched hat, standing a few feet off in a deprecatingway, --which really meant that if there were any ladies in the room withMr. Mesurier, he would prefer to call another time. For though he hadtwo or three grownup daughters of his own, this giant of a man was asshy of a bit of a thing like Angel, whom he had met there one day, asthough he were a mere boy. He always felt, he once said in explanation, as though he might break them in shaking hands. They affected him likethe presence of delicate china, and yet he could hold a baby deftly asan elephant can nip up a flower; and to see him turn over the pages of adelicate _édition de luxe_ was a lesson in tenderness. For this big manwho, as he would himself say, looked for all the world like a pirate, was as insatiable of fine editions as a school-girl of chocolate creams. He was one of those dearest of God's creatures, a gentle giant; and hisvoice, when it wasn't necessary to be angry, was as low and kind as anold nurse at the cradle's side. 

Henry had come to know him through his little Scotch printer, whoprinted circulars and bill-heads, for the business over which Mr. Fairfax--for that was his name--presided. By day he was the vigorousbrain of a huge emporium, a sort of Tyrian Whiteley's; but day and nighthe was a lover of books, and you could never catch him so busy but thathe could spare the time mysteriously to beckon you into his privateoffice, and with the glee of a child, show you his last large paper. Henot only loved books; but he was rumoured liberally to have assisted oneor two distressed men of genius well-known to the world. The tales ofthe surreptitious goodness of his heart were many; but it was known toothat the big kind man had a terribly searching eye under his brierybrows, and could be as stern towards ingratitude as he was soft tomisfortune. Henry once caught a glimpse of this as they spoke of amutual friend whom he had helped to no purpose. Mr. Fairfax never usedmany words, on this occasion he was grimly laconic. 

"Rat-poison!" he said, shaking his head. "Rat-poison!" It was his way ofsaying that that was the only cure for that particular kind of man. 

It was evident that his generous eye had seen how things were withHenry. He had subscribed for at least a dozen copies of "The Book ofAngelica, " and in several ways shown his interest in the strugglingyoung poet. As has been said, he had seen Angelica one day, and hisshyness had not prevented his heart from going out to these two youngpeople, and the dream he saw in their eyes. He had determined to dowhat he could to help them, and to-day he had come with a plan. 

"I hope you're not too proud to give me a hand, Mr. Mesurier, in alittle idea I've got, " he said. 

"I think you know how proud I am, and how proud I'm not, Mr. Fairfax, "said Henry. "I'm sure anything I could do for you would make me proud, if that's what you mean. "

"Thank you. Thank you. But you mustn't speak too fast. It'sadvertising--does the word frighten you? No? Well, it's a scheme I'vethought of for a little really artistic and humorous advertisingcombined. I've got a promise from one of the most original artists ofthe day, you know his name, to do the pictures; and I want you to do theverses--at, I may say, your own price. It's not, perhaps, the highestoccupation for a poet; but it's something to be going on with; and ifwe've got good posters as advertisements, I don't see why we shouldn'thave good humorous verse. What do you think of it?"

"I think it's capital, " said Henry, who was almost too ready to turn hishand to anything. "Of course I'll do it; only too glad. "

"Well, that's settled. Now, name your price. Don't be frightened!"

"Really, I can't. I haven't the least idea what I should get. Wait tillI have done a few of the verses, and you can give me what you please. "

"No, sir, " said Mr. Fairfax; "business is business. If you won't name afigure, I must. Will you consider a hundred pounds sufficient?"

"A hundred pounds!" Henry gasped out, the tears almost starting to hiseyes. 

Mr. Fairfax did not miss his frank joy, and liked him for hisingenuousness. 

"All right, then; we'll call it settled. I shall be ready for the versesas soon as you care to write them. "

"Mr. Fairfax, I will tell you frankly that this is a great deal to me, and I thank you from my heart. "

"Not a word, not a word, my boy. We want your verses, we want yourverses. That's right, isn't it? Good verses, good money! Now no more ofthat, " and the good man, in alarm lest he should be thanked further, made an abrupt and awkward farewell. 

"It will keep the lad going a few months anyhow, " he said to himself, as he tramped downstairs, glad that he'd been able to think ofsomething; for, while the scheme was admirable as an advertisement, andwould more than repay Messrs. Owens' outlay, its origin had been purephilanthropy. Such good angels do walk this world in the guise of bulky, quite unpoetic-looking business-men. 

"One hundred pounds!" said Henry, over and over again to himself. "Onehundred pounds! What news for Angel!"

He had soon a scheme in his head for the book, which entirely hit Mr. Fairfax's fancy. It was to make a volume of verse celebrating each ofthe various departments of the great store, in metres parodying thestyles of the old English ballads and various poets, ancient and modern, and was to be called, "Bon Marché Ballads. "

"Something like this, for example, " said Henry, a few days later, pulling an envelope covered with pencil-scribble from his pocket. "Thisfor the ladies' department, --

 _"Oh, where do you buy your hats, lady? And where do you buy your hose? And where do you buy your shoes, lady? And where your underclothes?_

_"Hats, shoes, and stockings, everything A lady's heart requires, Quality good, and prices low, We are the largest buyers!

 "The stock we bought on Wednesday last Is fading fast away, To-morrow it may be too late-- Oh, come and buy to-day!"_

Mr. Fairfax fairly trumpeted approval. "If they're all as good as that, "he said; "you must have more money. Yes, you must. Well, well, --we'llsee, we'll see!" And when the "Bon Marché Ballads" actually appeared, the generous creature insisted on adding another fifty pounds tothe cheque. 

As many were afterwards of opinion that Henry never again did such goodwork as these nonsense rhymes, written thus for a frolic, --and onehundred and fifty pounds, --and as copies of the "Bon Marché Ballads" arenow exceedingly scarce, it may possibly be of interest to quote two orthree more of its preposterous numbers. This is a lyric illustrative ofcheese, for the provision department:--

 "_Are you fond of cheese? Do you sometimes sigh For a really good Gorgonzola? Try, "Try our one-and-ten, Wonderfully rotten, Tasted once, it never can Be again forgotten_!"

Here is "a Ballad of Baby's Toys:"--

 "_Oh, give me a toy" the baby said-- The babe of three months old, -- Oh, what shall I buy my little babee, With silver and with gold?"

 "I would you buy a trumpet fine, And a rocking-horse for me, And a bucket and a spade, mother, To dig beside the sea. "

 "But where shall I buy these pretty things?" The mother's heart inquires. "Oh, go to Owens!" cried the babe; "They are the largest buyers. "_

The subject of our last selection is "Melton Mowbray, " which borebeneath its title due apologies to Mr. Swinburne:--

 _"Strange pie, that is almost a passion, O passion immoral, for pie! Unknown are the ways that they fashion, Unknown and unseen of the eye, The pie that is marbled and mottled, The pie that digests with a sigh: For all is not Bass that is bottled, And all is not pork that is pie. "_

Of all the goodness else that Henry and Angel were to owe in future daysto Mr. Fairfax, there is not room in this book to write. But thatmatters little, for is it not written in the Book of Love?

CHAPTER XLIII

STILL ANOTHER CALLER

One afternoon the step coming along the corridor was almost light enoughto be Angel's, though a lover's ear told him that hers it was not. Oncemore that feminine rustle, the very whisper of romantic mystery; againthe little feminine knock. 

Daintiness and Myrtilla!

"Well, this is lovely of you, Myrtilla! But what courage! How did youever dare venture into this wild and savage spot, --thismountain-fastness of Bohemia?"

"Yes, it was brave of me, wasn't it?" said Myrtilla, with a littlelaugh, for which the stairs had hardly left her breath. "But what aclimb! It is like having your rooms on the Matterhorn. I think I mustwrite a magazine article: 'How I climbed the fifty-thousand stairs, 'with illustrations, --and we could have some quite pretty ones, " shesaid, looking round the room. 

"That big skylight is splendid! As close, dear lad, to the stars as youcan get it? Are you as devoted to them as ever?"

"Aren't you, Myrtilla?"

"Oh, yes; but they don't get any nearer, you know. "

"It's awfully good to see you again, Myrtilla, " said Henry, going overto her and taking both her hands. "It's quite a long time, you know, since we had a talk. It was a sweet thought of you to come. You'll havesome tea, won't you?"

"Yes, I should love to see you make tea. Bachelors always make such goodtea. What pretty cups! My word, we are dainty! I suppose it was Estherbought them for you?"

Henry detected the little trap and smiled. No, it hadn't been Esther. 

"No? Someone else then? eh! I think I can guess her name. It was mean ofyou not to tell me about her, Henry. I hear she's called Angel, and thatshe looks like one. I wish I could have seen her before I went away. "

"Going away, Myrtilla? why, where? I've heard nothing of it. Tell meabout it. "

The atmosphere perceptibly darkened with the thought of Williamson. 

"Well!" she said, in the little airy melodious way she had when she wastelling something particularly unhappy about herself--a sort ofharpsichord bravado--"Well, you know, he's taken to fancying himselfseriously ill lately, and the doctors have aided and abetted him; and sowe're going to Davos Platz, or some such health-wilderness--and well, that's all!"

"And you I suppose are to nurse the--to nurse him?" said Henry, savagely. 

"Hush, lad! It's no use, not a bit! You won't help me that way, " shesaid, laying her hand kindly on his, and her eyes growing bright withsuppressed tears. 

"It's a shame, nevertheless, Myrtilla, a cruel shame!"

"You'd like to say it was a something-else shame, wouldn't you, dearboy? Well, you can, if you like: but then you must say no more. And ifyou really want to help me, you shall send me a long letter now andagain, with some of your new poems enclosed; and tell me what new booksare worth sending for? Will you do that?"

"Of course, I will. That's precious little to do anyhow. "

"It's a good deal, really. But be sure you do it. "

"And, of course, you'll write to me sometimes. I don't think you knowyet what your letters are to me. I never work so well as when I've had aletter from you. "

"Really, dear lad, I don't fancy you know how happy that makes me tohear. "

"Yes, you take just the sort of interest in my work I want, and that noone else takes. "

"Not even Angel?" said Myrtilla, slily. 

"Angel, bless her, loves my work; and is a brave little critic of it;but then it isn't disloyal to her to say that she doesn't know as muchas you. Besides, she doesn't approach it in quite the same way. Shecares for it, first, because it is mine, and only secondly for its ownsake. Now you care for it just for what it is--"

"I care for it, certainly, for what it's going to be, " said Myrtilla, making one of those honest distinctions which made her opinion sostimulating to Henry. 

"Yes, there you are. You're artistically ambitious for me; you know whatI want to do, even before I know myself. That's why you're so good forme. No one but you is that for me; and--poor stuff as I know itis--never write a word without wondering what you will think of it. "

"You're sure it's quite true, " said Myrtilla; "don't say so if it isn't. Because you know you're saying what I care most to hear, perhaps, ofanything you could say. You know how I love literature, and--well, youknow too how fond I am of you, dear lad, don't you?"

Literary criticism had kindled into emotion; and Henry bent down, andkissed Myrtilla's hand. In return she let her hand rest a moment lightlyon his hair, and then, rather spasmodically, turned to remark on hisbookshelves with suspicious energy. 

At that moment another step was heard in the corridor, again feminine. Henry knew it for Angel's; and it may be that his expression grew ashade embarrassed, as he said:

"I believe I shall be able to introduce you to Angel after all--for Ithink this is she coming along the passage. "

As Henry opened the door, Angel was on the point of throwing her armsround his neck, when, noticing a certain constraint in his manner ofgreeting, she realised that he was not alone. 

"We were just talking of you, dear, " said Henry. "This is my friend, Mrs. Williamson, --'Myrtilla, ' of whom you've often heard me speak. "

"Oh, yes, I've often heard of Mrs. Williamson, " said Angel, not ofcourse suffering the irony of her thought to escape into her voice. 

"And I've heard no less of Miss Flower, " said Mrs. Williamson, "notindeed from this faithless boy here, --for I haven't seen him for so longthat I've had to humble myself at last and call, --but from Esther. "

Myrtilla loved the transparent face, pulsing with light, flushing orfading with her varying mood, answering with exquisite delicacy to anyadvance and retreat of the soul within. But an invincible prejudice, orperhaps rather fear, shut Angel's eyes from the appreciation ofMyrtilla. She was sweet and beautiful, but to the child that Angel stillwas she suggested malign artifice. Angel looked at her as an imaginativechild looks at the moon, with suspicion. 

So, in spite of Myrtilla's efforts to make friends, the conversationsustained a distinct loss in sprightliness by Angel's arrival. 

Myrtilla, perhaps divining a little of the truth, rose to go. 

"Well, I'm afraid it's quite a long good-bye, " she said. 

"Oh, you're going away?" said Angel, with a shade of reliefinvoluntarily in her voice. 

"Oh, yes, perhaps before we meet again, you and Henry will be married. I'm sure I sincerely hope so. "

"Thank you, " said Angel, somewhat coldly. 

"Well, good-bye, Henry, " said Myrtilla, --it was rather a strangledgood-bye, --and then, in an evil moment, she caught sight of the Dante'shead which, hidden in a recess, she had not noticed before. "I seeyou're still faithful to the Dante, " she said; "that's sweet ofyou, --good-bye, good-bye, Miss Flower, Angel, perhaps you'll let me say, good-bye. "

When she had gone there seemed a curious constraint in the air. Youmight have said that the consistency of the air had been doubled. Gravitation was at least twice as many pounds as usual to the squareinch. Every little movement seemed heavy as though the medium had beenwater instead of air. As Henry raised his hands to help Angel off withher jacket, they seemed weighted with lead. 

"No, thank you, " said Angel, "I won't take it off. I can't stay long. "

"Why, dear, what do you mean? I thought you were going to stay theevening with me. I've quite a long new chapter to read to you. "

"I'm sorry, Henry, --but I find I can't. "

"Why, dear, how's that? Won't you tell me the reason? Has anythinghappened?"

Angel stood still in the middle of the room, with her face as firmlymiserable as she could make it. 

"Won't you tell me?" Henry pleaded. "Won't you speak to me? Come, dear--what's the matter?"

"You know well enough, Henry, what's the matter!" came an unexpectedflash of speech. 

"Indeed, I don't. I know of no reason whatever. How should I?"

"Well, then, Mrs. Williamson's the matter!--'Myrtilla, ' as you call her. Something told me it was like this all along, though I couldn't bear todoubt you, and so I put it away. I wonder how often she's been here whenI have known nothing about it. "

"This is the very first time she has ever set foot in these rooms, "said Henry, growing cold in his turn. "I'll give you my word of honour, if you need it. "

"I don't want to hear any more. I'm going. Good-bye. "

"Going, Angel?" said Henry, standing between her and the door. "What canyou mean? See now, --give your brains a chance! You're not thinking inthe least. You've just let yourself go--for no reason at all. You'll besorry to-morrow. "

"Reason enough, I should think, when I find that you love anotherwoman!"

"I love Myrtilla Williamson! It's a lie, Angel--and you ought to beashamed to say it. It's unworthy of you. "

"Why have you never told me then who made that sketch of Dante for you?I suppose I should never have known, if she hadn't let it out. I askedyou once, but you put me off. "

Henry had indeed prevaricated, for Angel had chanced to ask him justafter Myrtilla's letter about his poems. 

"Well, I'll be frank, " said Henry. "I didn't tell you, just because Ifeared an unreasonable scene like this--"

"If there had been nothing in it, there was nothing to fear; and, inany case, why should she paint pictures for you, if she doesn't care foryou?--No, I'm going. Nothing will persuade me otherwise. Henry, pleaselet pass, if you're a gentleman--" and poor little Angel's face fairlyflamed. "No power on earth will keep me here--"

"All right, Angel--" and Henry let her have her way. Her feet echoeddown the stairs, further and further away. She was gone; and Henry spentthat evening in torturingly imagining every kind of accident that mighthappen to her on the way home. Every hour he expected to be suddenlycalled to look at her dead body--his work. And so the night passed, andthe morning dawned in agony. So went the whole of the next day, for hecould be proud too--and the fault had been hers. 

Thus they sat apart for three days, poles of determined silence. Andthen at last, on the evening of the third day, Henry, who was halfbeside himself with suspense, heard, with wild thankfulness, once morethe little step in the passage--it seemed fainter, he thought, anddragged a little, and the knock at the door was like a ghost's. 

There, with a wan smile, Angel stood; and with joy, wordless becauseunspeakable, they fell almost like dead things into each other's arms. For an hour they sat thus, and never spoke a word, only stroking eachother's hands and hair. It was so good for each to know that the otherwas alive. It took so long for the stored agony in the nerves to relax. 

"I haven't eaten a morsel since Wednesday, " said Angel, at last. 

"Nor I, " said Henry. 

"Henry, dear, I'm sorry. I know now I was wrong. I give you my wordnever to doubt you again. "

"Thank you, Angel. Don't let us even think of it any more. "

"I couldn't live through it again, darling. "

"But it can never happen any more, can it?"

"No!--but--if you ever love any woman better than you love me, you'lltell me, won't you? I could bear that better than to be deceived. "

"Yes, Angel, I promise to tell you. "

"Well, we're really happy again now--are we? I can hardly believe it--"

"You didn't see me outside your house last night, did you?"

"Henry!"

"Yes, I was there. And I watched you carry the light into your bedroom, and when you came to the window to draw down the blind, I thought youmust have seen me. Yes, I waited and waited, till I saw the light go outand long after--"

"Oh, Henry--you do love me then?"

"And we do know how to hate each other sometimes, don't we, child?" saidHenry, laughing into Angel's eyes, all rainbows and tears. 

CHAPTER XLIV

THE END OF A BEGINNING

And now blow, all ye trumpets, and, all ye organs, tremble with exultantsound! Bring forth the harp, and the psaltry, and the sackbut! For thelong winter of waiting is at an end, and Mike is flying north to fetchhis bride. Now are the walls of heaven built four-square, and to-day wasthe roof-beam hung with garlands. 'Tis but a small heaven, yet is it bigenough for two, --and Mike is flying north, flying north, through themidnight, to fetch his bride. 

Henry and the morning meet him at Tyre. Blessings on his little wrinkledface! The wrinkles are deeper and sweeter by a year's hard work. He haslaughed with them every night for full twelve months, laughed to makeothers laugh. To-day he shall laugh for himself alone. The very riverseems glad, and tosses its shaggy waves like a faithful dog; and overyonder in Sidon, where the sun is building a shrine of gold and pearl, Esther, sleepless too, all night, waits at a window like themorning-star. 

Oh, Mike! Mike! Mike! is it you at last?

Oh, Esther, Esther, is it you?

Their faces were so bright, as they gazed at each other, that it seemedthey might change to stars and wing together away up into the morning. Henry snatched one look at the brightness and turned away. 

"She looked like a spirit!" said Mike, as they met again further alongthe road. 

"He looked like a little angel, " said Esther, as she threw herself intoDot's sympathetic arms. 

A few miles from Sidon there stood an old church, dim with memories, ina churchyard mossy with many graves. It was hither some few hours afterthat unwonted carriages were driving through the snow of that happywinter's day. In one of them Esther and Henry were sitting, --Estherapparelled in--but here the local papers shall speak for us: "Thebride, " it said, "was attired in a dress of grey velvet trimmed withbeaver, and a large picturesque hat with feathers to match; she carrieda bouquet of white chrysanthemums and hyacinths. "

"The very earth has put on white to be your bridesmaid!" said Henry, looking out on the sunlit snow. 

"After all, though, of course, I'm sad in one way, " said Esther, morepractical in her felicitations, "I'm glad in another that fatherwouldn't give me away. For it was really you who gave me to Mike longago; wasn't it?--and so it's only as it should be that you should giveme to him to-day. "

"You'll never forget what we've been to each other?"

"Don't you know?"

"Yes, but our love has no organs and presents and prayer-books to bindit together. "

"Do you think it needs it?"

"Of course not! But it would be fun for us too some day to have amarriage. Why should only one kind of love have its marriage ceremony?When Mike's and your wedding is over, let's tell him that we're goingto send out cards for ours!"

"All right. What form shall the ceremony take--_Parfait Amour_?"

"You haven't forgotten?"

"I shall forget just the second after you--not before--and, no, I won'tbe mean, I'll not even forget you then. "

"Kiss me, Esther, " said Henry. 

"Kiss me again, Esther, " he said. "Do you remember?"

"The cake and the beating?"

"Yes, that was our marriage. "

 * * * * *

When all the glory of that happy day hung in crimson low down in thewest, like a chariot of fire in which Mike and Esther were speeding totheir paradise, Henry walked with Angel, homeward through the streets ofTyre, solemn with sunset. In both that happy day still lived like musicrichly dying. 

"Well, " said Angel, in words far too practical for such a sunset, "I amso glad it all went off so well. Poor dear Mrs. Mesurier, how bonny shelooked! And your dear old Aunt Tipping! Fancy her hiding there inthe church--"

"Of course we'd asked her, " said Henry; "but, poor old thing, shedidn't feel grand enough, as she would say, to come publicly. "

"And your poor father! Fancy him coming home for the lunch like that!"

"After all, it was logical of him, " said Henry. "I suppose he had madeup his mind that he would resist as long as it was any use, and afterthat--gracefully give in. And he was always fond of Mike. "

"But didn't Esther cry, when he kissed her, and said that, since she'dchosen Mike, he supposed he must choose him too. And Mike was as good ascrying too?"

"I think every one was. Poor mother was just a mop. "

"Well, they're nearly home by now, I suppose. "

"Yes, another half-hour or so. "

"Oh, Henry, fancy! How wonderful for them! God bless them. I _am_ glad!"

"I wonder when we shall get our home, " said Henry, presently. 

"Oh, Henry, never mind us! I can't think of any one but them to-day. "

"Well, dear, I didn't mean to be selfish--I was only wondering howlong you'd be willing to wait for me?"

"Suppose I were to say 'for ever!' Would that make you happy?"

"Well, I think, dear--I might perhaps arrange things by then. "

THE END