When Mike had paid his hotel bill, very few pounds were left for the
card-room, and judging it was not an hour in which he might tempt
fortune, he "rooked" a young man remorselessly. Having thus
replenished his pockets he turned to the whist-table for amusement.
Luck was against him; he played, defying luck, and left the club
owing eighty pounds, five of which he had borrowed from Longley.
Next morning as he dozed, he wondered if, had he played the ten of
diamonds instead of the seven of clubs, it would have materially
altered his fortune; and from cards his thoughts wandered, till they
took root in the articles he was to write for the _Pilgrim_. He was
in Hall's spare bed-room--a large, square room, empty of all
furniture except a camp bedstead. His portmanteau lay wide open in
the middle of the floor, and a gaunt fireplace yawned amid some
yellow marbles.
"'Darling, like a rose you hold the whole world between your lips,
and you shed its leaves in little kisses.' That will do for the
opening sentences." Then as words slipped from him he considered the
component parts of his subject.
"The first letter is of course introductory, and I must establish
certain facts, truths which have become distorted and falsified, or
lost sight of. Addressing an ideal courtesan, I shall say, 'You must
understand that the opening sentence of this letter does not include
any part of the old reproach which has been levelled against you
since man began to love you, and that was when he ceased to be an ape
and became man.
"'If you were ever sphinx-like and bloodthirsty, which I very much
doubt, you have changed flesh and skin, even the marrow of your
bones. In these modern days you are a kind-hearted little woman who,
to pursue an ancient metaphor, sheds the world rosewise in little
kisses; but if you did not so shed it, the world would shed itself in
tears. Your smiles and laughter are the last lights that play around
the white hairs of an aged duke; your winsome tendernesses are the
dreams of a young man who writes "pars" about you on Friday, and
dines with you on Sunday; you are an ideal in many lives which
without you would certainly be ideal-less.' Deuced good that; I
wish I had a pencil to make a note; but I shall remember it. Then
will come my historical paragraph. I shall show that it is only
by confounding courtesans with queens, and love with ambition,
that any sort of case can be made out against the former. Third
paragraph--'Courtesans are a factor in the great problem of the
circulation of wealth, etc.' It will be said that the money thus
spent is unproductive.... So much the better! For if it were given to
the poor it would merely enable them to bring more children into the
world, thereby increasing immensely the general misery of the race.
Schopenhauer will not be left out in the cold after all. Quote
Lecky,--'The courtesan is the guardian angel of our hearths and
homes, the protector of our wives and sisters.'"
"Will you have a bath this morning, sir?" cried the laundress,
through the door.
"Yes, and get me a chop for breakfast."
"I shall tell her (the courtesan, not the laundress) how she may
organize the various forces latent in her and culminate in a power
which shall contain in essence the united responsibilities of church,
music-hall, and picture gallery." Mike turned over on his back and
roared with laughter. "Frank will be delighted. It will make the
fortune of the paper. Then I shall attack my subject in detail.
Dress, house, education, friends, female and male. Then the
money question. She must make a provision for the future.
Charming chapter there is to be written on the old age of the
courtesan--charities--ostentatious charities--charitable bazaars,
reception into the Roman Catholic faith."
"Shall I bring in your hot water, sir?" screamed the laundress.
"Yes, yes.... Shall my courtesan go on the stage? No, she shall be a
pure courtesan, she shall remain unsullied of any labour. She might
appear once on the boards;--no, no, she must remain a pure courtesan.
Charming subject! It will make a book. Charming opportunity for wit,
satire, fancy. I shall write the introductory letter after
breakfast."
Frank was in shoaling water, and could not pay his contributors; but
Mike could get blood out of a turnip, and Frank advanced him ten
pounds on the proposed articles. Frank counted on these articles to
whip up the circulation, and Mike promised to let him have four
within the week, and left the cottage at Henley, where Frank was
living, full of dreams of work. And every morning before he got out
of bed he considered and reconsidered his subject, finding always
more than one idea, and many a witty fancy; and every day after
breakfast the work undone hung like a sword between Hall and him as
they sat talking of their friends, of art, of women, of things that
did not interest them. They hung around each other, loth yet desirous
to part; they followed each other through the three rooms, buttoning
their braces and shirt-collars. And when conversation had worn itself
out, Mike accepted any pretext to postpone the day's work. He had to
fetch ink or cigarettes.
But he was always detained, if not by friends, by the beauty of the
gardens or the river. Never did the old dining-hall and the
staircases, balustraded--on whose gray stone a leaf, the first of
many, rustles--seem more intense and pregnant with that mystic
mournfulness which is the Thames, and which is London. The dull
sphinx-like water rolling through multitude of bricks, seemed to mark
on this wistful autumn day a more melancholy enchantment, and looking
out on the great waste of brick delicately blended with smoke and
mist, and seeing the hay-boats sailing picturesquely, and the tugs
making for Blackfriars, long lines of coal-barges in their wake,
laden so deep that the water slopped over the gunwales, he thought of
the spring morning when he had waited there for Lily. How she
persisted in his mind! Why had he not asked her to marry him instead
of striving to make her his mistress? She was too sweet to be cast
off like the others; she would have accepted him if he had asked her.
He had sacrificed marriage for self, and what had self given him?
Mike was surprised at these thoughts, and pleased, for they proved a
certain residue of goodness in him; at all events, called into his
consideration a side of his nature which he was not wearisomely
familiar with. Then he dismissed these thoughts as he might have the
letter of a determined creditor. He could still bid them go. And
having easily rid himself of them, he noticed the porters in their
white aprons, and the flight of pigeons, the sacred birds of the
Temple, coming down from the roofs. And he loved now more than ever
Fleet Street, and the various offices where he might idle, and the
various luncheon-bars to which he might adjourn with one of the
staff, perhaps with the editor of one of the newspapers. The October
sunlight was warm and soft, greeted his face agreeably as he lounged,
stopping before every shop in which there were books or prints.
Ludgate Circus was always a favourite with him, partly because he
loved St. Paul's, partly because women assembled there; and now in
the mist, delicate and pure, rose above the town the lovely dome.
"None but the barbarians of the Thames," thought Mike, "none other
would have allowed that most shameful bridge."
Mike hated Simpson's. He could not abide the stolid city folk, who
devour there five and twenty saddles of mutton in an evening. He
liked better the Cock Tavern, quiet, snug, and intimate. Wedged with
a couple of chums in a comfortable corner, he shouted--
"Henry, get me a chop and a pint of bitter."
There he was sure to meet a young barrister ready to talk to him, and
they returned together, swinging their sticks, happy in their
bachelordom, proud of the old inns and courts. Often they stayed to
look on the church, the church of the Knight Templars, those terrible
and mysterious knights who, with crossed legs for sign of mission,
and with long swords and kite-shaped shields, lie upon the pavement
of the church.
One wet night, when every court and close was buried in a deep,
cloying darkness, and the church seemed a dead thing, the pathetic
stories of the windows suddenly became dreamily alive, and the organ
sighed like one sad at heart. The young men entered; and in the pomp
of the pipes, and in shadows starred by the candles, the lone
organist sat playing a fugue by Bach.
"It is," said Mike, "like turning the pages of some precious missal,
adorned with gold thread and bedazzled with rare jewels. It is like a
poem by Edgar Allen Poe." Quelled, and in strange awe they listened,
and when the music ceased, unable at once to return to the simple
prose of their chambers, they lingered, commenting on the mock taste
of the architecture of the dining-hall, and laughing at the inflated
inscription over the doorway.
"It is worse," said Mike, "than the Middle Temple Hall--far worse;
but I like this old colonnade, there is something so suggestive in
this old inscription in bad Latin.
'Vetustissima Templariorum porticu
Igne consumptâ; an 1679
Nova hæc sumptibus medii
Templie extructa an 1681
Gulielmo Whiteloche arm
Thesauör.'"
Once or twice a week Hall dined at the Cock for the purpose of
meeting his friends, whom he invited after dinner to his rooms to
smoke and drink till midnight. His welcome was so cordial that all
were glad to come. The hospitality was that which is met in all
chambers in the Temple. Coffee was made with difficulty, delay, and
uncertain result; a bottle of port was sometimes produced; of whiskey
and water there was always plenty. Every one brought his own tobacco;
and in decrepit chairs beneath dangerously-laden bookcases some six
or seven barristers enjoyed themselves in conversation, smoke, and
drink. Mike recognized how characteristically Temple was this
society, how different from the heterogeneous visitors of Temple
Gardens in the heyday of Frank's fortune.
James Norris was a small, thin man, dark and with regular features,
clean shaven like a priest or an actor, vaguely resembling both,
inclining towards the hieratic rather than to the histrionic type. He
dressed always in black, and the closely-buttoned jacket revealed the
spareness of his body. He was met often in the evening, going to dine
at the Cock; but was rarely seen walking about the Temple in the
day-time. It was impossible to meet any one more suasive and
agreeable; his suavity was penetrating as his small dark eyes. He
lived in Elm Court, and his rooms impressed you with a sense of
cleanliness and comfort. The furniture was all in solid mahogany;
there were no knick-knacks or any lightness, and almost the only
æsthetic intentions were a few sober engravings--portraits of men in
wigs and breastplates. He took pleasure in these and also in some
first editions, containing the original plates, which, when you knew
him well, he produced from the bookcase and descanted on their value
and rarity.
Mr. Norris had always an excellent cigar to offer you, and he pressed
you to taste of his old port, and his Chartreuse; there was whiskey
for you too, if you cared to take it, and allusion was made to its
age. But it was neither an influence nor a characteristic of his
rooms; the port wine was. If there was fruit on the sideboard, there
was also pounded sugar; and it is such detail as the pounded sugar
that announces an inveterate bachelorhood. Some men are born
bachelors. And when a man is born a bachelor, the signs unmistakable
are hardly apparent at thirty; it is not until the fortieth year is
approached that the fateful markings become recognizable. James
Norris was forty-two, and was therefore a full-fledged bachelor. He
was a bachelor in the complete equipment of his chambers. He was
bachelor in his arm-chair and his stock of wine; his hospitality was
that of a bachelor, for a man who feels instinctively that he will
never own a "house and home" constructs the materiality of his life
in chambers upon a fuller basis than the man who feels instinctively
that he will, sooner or later, exchange the perch-like existence of
his chambers for the nest-like completeness of a home in South
Kensington.
James Norris was of an excellent county family in Essex. He had a
brother in the army, a brother in the Civil Service, and a brother in
the Diplomatic Service. He had also a brother who composed somewhat
unsuccessful waltz tunes, who borrowed money, and James thought that
his brother caused him some anxiety of mind. The eldest brother, John
Norris, lived at the family place, Halton Grange, where he stayed
when he went on the Eastern circuit. James was far too securely a
gentleman to speak much of Halton Grange; nevertheless, the flavour
of landed estate transpired in the course of conversation. He has
returned from circuit, having finished up with a partridge drive,
etc.
James Norris was a sensualist. His sensuality was recognizable in the
close-set eyes and in the sharp prominent chin (he resembled vaguely
the portrait of Baudelaire in _Les Fleurs du Mal_); he never spoke of
his amours, but occasionally he would drop an observation, especially
if he were talking to Mike Fletcher, that afforded a sudden glimpse
of a soul touched if not tainted with erotism. But James Norris was
above all things prudent, and knew how to keep vice well in hand.
Like another, he had had his love story, or that which in the life of
such a man might pass for a love story. He had flirted a great deal
when he was thirty, with a married woman. She had not troubled, she
had only slightly eddied, stirred with a few ripples the placidity of
a placid stream of life. In hours of lassitude it pleased him to
think that she had ruined his life. Man is ever ready to think that
his failure comes from without rather than from within. He wrote to
her every week a long letter, and spent a large part of the long
vacation in her house in Yorkshire, telling her that he had never
loved any one but her.
James Norris was an able lawyer, and he was an able lawyer for three
reasons. First, because he was a clear-headed man of the world, who
had not allowed his intelligence to rust;--it formed part of the
routine of his life to read some pages of a standard author before
going to bed; he studied all the notorious articles that appeared in
the reviews, attempting the assimilation of the ideas which seemed to
him best in our time. Secondly, he was industrious, and if he led an
independent life, dining frequently in a tavern instead of touting
for briefs in society, and so harmed himself, such misadventure was
counterbalanced by his industry and his prudence. Thirdly, his
sweetness and geniality made him a favourite with the bench. He had
much insight into human nature, he studied it, and could detect
almost at once the two leading spirits on a jury; and he was always
aware of the idiosyncrasies of the judge he was pleading before, and
knew how to respect and to flatter them.
Charles Stokes was the oldest man who frequented Hall's chambers, and
his venerable appearance was an anomaly in a company formed
principally of men under forty. In truth, Charles Stokes was not more
than forty-six or seven, but he explained that living everywhere, and
doing everything, had aged him beyond his years. In mind, however, he
was the youngest there, and his manner was often distressingly
juvenile. He wore old clothes which looked as if they had not been
brushed for some weeks, and his linen was of dubious cleanliness, and
about his rumpled collar there floated a half-tied black necktie.
Mike, who hated all things that reminded him of the casualness of
this human frame, never was at ease in his presence, and his eye
turned in disgust from sight of the poor old gentleman's trembling
and ossified fingers. His beard was long and almost white; he
snuffed, and smoked a clay pipe, and sat in the arm-chair which stood
in the corner beneath the screen which John Norton had left to Hall.
He was always addressed as Mr. Stokes; Hall complimented him and kept
him well supplied with whiskey-and-water. He was listened to on
account of his age--that is to say, on account of his apparent age,
and on account of his gentleness. Harding had described him as one
who talked learned nonsense in sweetly-measured intonations. But
although Harding ridiculed him, he often led him into conversation,
and listened with obvious interest, for Mr. Stokes had drifted
through many modes and manners of life, and had in so doing acquired
some vague knowledge.
He had written a book on the ancient religions of India, which he
called the _Cradleland of Arts and Creeds_, and Harding, ever on the
alert to pick a brain however poor it might be, enticed him into
discussion in which frequent allusion was made to Vishnu and Siva.
Yes, drifted is the word that best expresses Mr. Stokes' passage
through life--he had drifted. He was one of the many millions who
live without a fixed intention, without even knowing what they
desire; and he had drifted because in him strength and weakness stood
at equipoise; no defect was heavy enough for anchor, nor was there
any quality large enough for sufficient sail; he had drifted from
country to country, from profession to profession, whither winds and
waves might bear him.
"Of course I'm a failure," was a phrase that Mr. Stokes repeated with
a mild, gentle humour, and without any trace of bitterness. He spoke
of himself with the naïve candour of a docile school-boy, who has
taken up several subjects for examination and been ploughed in them
all. For Mr. Stokes had been to Oxford, and left it without taking a
degree. Then he had gone into the army, and had proved himself a
thoroughly inefficient soldier, and more than any man before or
after, had succeeded in rousing the ire of both adjutant and colonel.
It was impossible to teach him any drill; what he was taught to-day
he forgot to-morrow; when the general came down to inspect, the
confusion he created in the barrack-yard had proved so complex, that
for a second it had taxed the knowledge of the drill-sergeant to get
the men straight again.
Mr. Stokes was late at all times and all occasions: he was late for
drill, he was late for mess, he was late for church; and when sent
for he was always found in his room, either learning a part or
writing a play. His one passion was theatricals; and wherever the
regiment was stationed, he very soon discovered those who were
disposed to get up a performance of a farce.
When he left the army he joined the Indian bar, and there he applied
himself in his own absent-minded fashion to the study of Sanscrit,
neglecting Hindustani, which would have been of use to him in his
profession. Through India, China, and America he had drifted. In New
York he had edited a newspaper; in San Francisco he had lectured, and
he returned home with an English nobleman who had engaged him as
private secretary.
When he passed out of the nobleman's service he took chambers in the
Temple, and devoted his abundant leisure to writing his memoirs, and
the pleasantest part of his life began. The Temple suited him
perfectly, its Bohemianism was congenial to him, the library was
convenient, and as no man likes to wholly cut himself adrift from his
profession, the vicinity of the law courts, and a modicum of legal
conversation in the evening, sufficed to maintain in his
absent-minded head the illusion that he was practising at the bar.
His chambers were bare and dreary, unadorned with spoils from India
or China. Mr. Stokes retained nothing; he had passed through life
like a bird. He had drifted, and all things had drifted from him; he
did not even possess a copy of his _Cradleland of Arts and Creeds_.
He had lost all except a small property in Kent, and appeared to be
quite alone in the world.
Mr. Stokes talked rarely of his love affairs, and his allusions were
so partial that nothing exact could be determined about him. It was,
however, noticed that he wore a gold bracelet indissolubly fastened
upon his right wrist, and it was supposed that an Indian princess had
given him this, and that a goldsmith had soldered it upon him in her
presence, as she lay on her death-bed. It was noticed that a young
girl came to see him at intervals, sometimes alone, sometimes
accompanied by her aunt. Mr. Stokes made no secret of this young
person, and he spoke of her as his adopted daughter. Mr. Stokes dined
at a theatrical club. All men liked him; he was genial and harmless.
Mr. Joseph Silk was the son of a London clergyman. He was a tall,
spare young man, who was often met about the Temple, striding towards
his offices or the library. He was comically careful not to say
anything that might offend, and nervously concerned to retreat from
all persons and things which did not seem to him to offer
possibilities of future help; and his assumed geniality and
good-fellowship hung about him awkwardly, like the clothes of a
broad-chested, thick-thighed man about miserable limbs. For some time
Silk had been seriously thinking of cutting himself adrift from all
acquaintanceship with Hall. He had, until now, borne with his
acquaintanceship because Hall was connected with a society journal
that wrote perilously near the law of libel; several times the paper
had been threatened with actions, but had somehow, much to Silk's
chagrin, managed to escape. All the actionable paragraphs had been
discussed with Silk; on each occasion Hall had come down to his
chambers for advice, and he felt sure that he would be employed in
the case when it did come off. But unfortunately this showed no signs
of accomplishment. Silk read the paper every week for the paragraph
that was to bring him fame; he would have given almost anything to be
employed "in a good advertising case." But he had noticed that
instead of becoming more aggressive and personal, that week by week
the newspaper was moderating its tone. In the last issue several
paragraphs had caught his eye, which could not be described otherwise
than as complimentary; there were also several new pages of
advertisements; and these robbed him of all hope of an action. He
counted the pages, "twelve pages of advertisements--nothing further
of a questionable character will go into that paper," thought he, and
forthwith fell to considering Hall's invitation to "come in that
evening, if he had nothing better to do." He had decided that he
would not go, but at the last moment had gone, and now, as he sat
drinking whiskey-and-water, he glanced round the company, thinking it
might injure him if it became known that he spent his evenings there,
and he inwardly resolved he would never again be seen in Hall's
rooms.
Silk had been called to the bar about seven years. The first years he
considered he had wasted, but during the last four he applied himself
to his profession. He had determined "to make a success of life,"
that was how he put it to himself. He had, during the last four
years, done a good deal of "devilling"; he had attended at the Old
Bailey watching for "soups" with untiring patience. But lately,
within the last couple of years, he had made up his mind that waiting
for "soups" at the Old Bailey was not the way to fame or fortune. His
first idea of a path out of his present circumstances was through
Hall and the newspaper; but he had lately bethought himself of an
easier and wider way, one more fruitful of chances and beset with
prizes. This broad and easy road to success which he had lately begun
to see, wound through his father's drawing-room. London clergymen
have, as a rule, large salaries and abundant leisure, and young Silk
determined to turn his father's leisure to account. The Reverend Silk
required no pressing. "Show me what line to take, and I will take
it," said he; and young Silk, knowing well the various firms of
solicitors that were dispensing such briefs as he could take,
instructed his father when and where he should exercise his tea-table
agreeabilities, and forthwith the reverend gentleman commenced his
social wrigglings. There were teas and dinners, and calls, and lying
without end. Over the wine young Silk cajoled the senior member of
the firm, and in the drawing-room, sitting by the wife, he alluded to
his father's philanthropic duties, which he relieved with such
sniggering and pruriency as he thought the occasion demanded.
About six months ago, Mr. Joseph Silk had accidentally learnt, in the
treasurer's offices, that the second floor in No. 5, Paper Buildings
was unoccupied. He had thought of changing his chambers, but a second
floor in Paper Buildings was beyond his means. But two or three days
after, as he was walking from his area in King's Bench Walk to the
library, he suddenly remembered that the celebrated advocate, Sir
Arthur Haldane, lived on the first floor in Paper Buildings. Now at
his father's house, or in one of the houses his father frequented, he
might meet Sir Arthur; indeed, a meeting could easily be arranged.
Here Mr. Silk's sallow face almost flushed with a little colour, and
his heart beat as his little scheme pressed upon his mind. Dreading
an obstacle, he feared to allow the thought to formulate; but after a
moment he let it slip, and it said--"Now if I were to take the second
floor, I should often meet Sir Arthur on the doorstep and staircase.
What an immense advantage it would be to me when Stoggard and Higgins
learnt that I was on terms of friendship with Sir Arthur. I know as a
positive fact that Stoggard and Higgins would give anything to get
Sir Arthur for some of their work.... But the rent is very heavy in
Paper Buildings. I must speak to father about it." A few weeks after,
Mr. Joseph transferred his furniture to No. 2, Paper Buildings; and
not long after he had the pleasure of meeting Sir Arthur at dinner.
Mr. Silk's love affairs were neither numerous nor interesting. He had
spent little of his time with women, and little of his money upon
women, and his amativeness had led him into no wilder exploit than
the seduction of his laundress's daughter, by whom he had had a
child. Indeed, it had once been whispered that the mother, with the
child in her arms, had knocked at King's Bench Walk and had insisted
on being admitted. Having not the slightest knowledge or perception
of female nature, he had extricated himself with difficulty from the
scandal by which he was menaced, and was severely mulcted before the
girl was induced to leave London. About every three months she wrote
to him, and these letters were read with horror and burnt in
trembling haste; for Mr. Joseph Silk was now meditating for
matrimonial and legal purposes one of the daughters of one of the
solicitors he had met in Paper Buildings, and being an exceedingly
nervous, ignorant, and unsympathetic man in all that did not concern
his profession, was vastly disturbed at every echo of his
indiscretion.
Harding, in reply to a question as to what he thought of Silk, said--
"What do I think of Silk? Cotton back" ... and every one laughed,
feeling the intrinsic truth of the judgement.
Mr. George Cooper was Mr. Joseph Silk's friend. Cooper consulted Silk
on every point. Whenever he saw a light in Silk's chambers he
thrilled a little with anticipation of the pleasant hour before him,
and they sat together discussing the abilities of various eminent
judges and barristers. Silk told humorous anecdotes of the judges;
Cooper was exercised concerning their morality, and enlarged
anxiously on the responsibility of placing a man on the Bench without
having full knowledge of his private life. Silk listened, puffing at
his pipe, and to avoid committing himself to an opinion, asked Cooper
to have another glass of port. Before they parted allusion was made
to the law-books that Cooper was writing--Cooper was always bringing
out new editions of other people's books, and continually exposed the
bad law they wrote in his conversation. He had waited his turn like
another for "soups" at the Bailey, and like another had grown weary
of waiting; besides, the meditative cast of his mind enticed him
towards chamber practice and away from public pleading before judge
and jury. Silk sought "a big advertising case"; he desired the
excitement of court, and, though he never refused any work, he
dreaded the lonely hours necessary for the perfect drawing up of a
long indictment. Cooper was very much impressed with Silk's
abilities; he thought him too hard and mechanical, not sufficiently
interested in the science of morals; but these defects of character
were forgotten in his homage to his friend's worldly shrewdness. For
Cooper was unendowed with worldly shrewdness, and, like all dreamers,
was attracted by a mind which controlled while he might only attempt
to understand. Cooper's aspirations towards an ideal tickled Silk's
mind as it prepared its snares. Cooper often invited Silk to dine
with him at the National Liberal Club; Silk sometimes asked Cooper to
dine with him at the Union. Silk and Cooper were considered alike,
and there were many points in which their appearances coincided.
Cooper was the shorter man of the two, but both were tall, thin,
narrow, and sallow complexioned; both were essentially clean,
respectable, and middle-class.
Cooper was the son of a Low Church bishop who had gained his mitre by
temperance oratory, and what his Lordship was in the cathedral,
Cooper was in the suburban drawing-rooms where radical politics and
the woman's cause were discussed. When he had a brief he brought it
to the library to show it; he almost lived in the library. He arrived
the moment it was opened, and brought a packet of sandwiches so as
not to waste time going out to lunch. His chambers were furnished
without taste, but the works of Comte and Spencer showed that he had
attempted to think; and the works of several socialistic writers
showed that he had striven to solve the problem of human misery. On
the table were several novels by Balzac, which conversation with
Harding had led him to purchase and to read. He likewise possessed a
few volumes of modern poetry, but he freely confessed that he
preferred Pope, Dryden, and Johnson; and it was impossible to bring
him to understand that De Quincey was more subtle and suggestive than
the author of London.
Generally our souls are made of one conspicuous modern mental aspect;
but below this aspect we are woven and coloured by the spirit of some
preceding century, our chance inheritance, and Cooper was a sort of
product of the pedantry of Johnson and the utilitarian mysticism of
Comte. Perhaps the idea nearest to Cooper's heart was "the woman's
cause." The misery and ignominy of human life had affected him, and
he dreamed of the world's regeneration through women; and though well
aware that Comte and Spencer advocate the application of experience
in all our many mental embarrassments, he failed to reconsider
his beliefs in female virtue, although frequently pressed to do
so by Mike. Some personal animosity had grown out of their desire
to convince each other. Cooper had once even meditated Mike's
conversion, and Mike never missed an opportunity of telling some
story which he deemed destructive of Cooper's faith. His faith was
to him what a microscope is to a scientist, and it enabled him to
discover the finest characteristics in the souls of bar-girls, chorus
girls, and prostitutes; and even when he fell, and they fell, his
belief in their virtue and the nobility of their womanly instincts
remained unshaken.
Mike had just finished a most racy story concerning his first
introduction to a certain countess. Cooper had listened in silence,
but when Mike turned at the end of his tale and asked him what he
thought of his conduct, Cooper rose from his chair.
"I think you behaved like a blackguard."
In a moment Mike was aware he had put himself in the wrong--the story
about the countess could not be told except to his destruction in any
language except his own, and he must therefore forbear to strike
Cooper and swallow the insult.
"You ass, get out; I can't quarrel with you on such a subject."
The embarrassment was increased by Cooper calling to Silk and asking
if he were coming with him. The prudent Silk felt that to stay was to
signify his approval of Mike's conduct in the case of the indiscreet
countess. To leave with Cooper was to write himself down a prig,
expose himself to the sarcasm of several past masters in the art of
gibing, and to make in addition several powerful enemies. But the
instinct not to compromise himself in any issue did not desert him,
and rushing after Cooper he attempted the peace-maker. He knew the
attempt would mean no more than some hustling in the doorway, and
some ineffectual protestation, and he returned a few minutes after to
join in the ridicule heaped upon the unfortunate Cooper, and to vow
inwardly that this was his last evening in Bohemia.
By the piano, smoking a clay pipe, there sat a large, rough, strong
man. His beard was bristly and flame-coloured, his face was crimson
and pimply; lion-like locks hung in profusion about the collar of his
shabby jacket. His linen was torn and thin; crumpled was the necktie,
and nearly untied, and the trousers were worn and frayed, and the
boots heavy. He looked as if he could have carried a trunk
excellently well, but as that thought struck you your eyes fell upon
his hands, which were the long, feminine-shaped hands generally found
in those of naturally artistic temperament, nearly always in those
who practise two or more of the arts. Sands affected all the arts.
Enumerate: He played snatches of Bach on the violin, on the piano,
and on the organ; he composed fragments for all three instruments. He
painted little landscapes after (a long way after) the manner of
Corot, of whom he could talk until the small hours in the morning if
an occasional drink and cigar were forthcoming. He modelled little
statuettes in wax, cupids and nymphs, and he designed covers for
books. He could do all these things a little, and not stupidly,
although inefficiently. He had been a volunteer, and therefore wrote
on military subjects, and had on certain occasions been permitted to
criticize our naval defences and point out the vices and shortcomings
in our military system in the leading evening papers. He was
generally seen with a newspaper under his arm going towards Charing
Cross or Fleet Street. He never strayed further west than Charing
Cross, unless he was going to a "picture show," and there was no
reason why he should pass Ludgate Circus, for further east there were
neither newspapers nor restaurants. He was quite without vanity, and
therefore without ambition, Buddha was never more so, not even after
attaining the Nirvana. A picture show in Bond Street, a half-crown
dinner at Simpson's, or the Rainbow, coffee and cigars after, was all
that he desired; give him that, and he was a pleasant companion who
would remain with you until you turned him out, or in charity, for he
was often homeless, allowed him to sleep on your sofa.
Sands was not a member of the Temple, but Hall's rooms were ever a
refuge to the weary--there they might rest, and there was there ever
for them a drink and a mouthful of food. And there Sands had met the
decayed barrister who held the rooms opposite; which, although he had
long ceased to occupy, and had no use for, he still wished to own, if
he could do so without expense, and this might be done by letting two
rooms, and reserving one for himself.
The unwary barrister, believing in the solvency of whoever he met at
Hall's, intrusted his chambers to Sands, without demanding the rent
in advance. A roof to sleep under had been the chief difficulty in
Sands' life. He thought not at all of a change of clothes, and clean
linen troubled him only slightly. Now almost every want seemed
provided for. Coals he could get from Hall, also occasional
half-crowns; these sufficed to pay for his breakfast; a dinner he
could generally "cadge," and if he failed to do so, he had long ago
learnt to go without. It was hard not to admire his gentleness, his
patience and forbearance. If you refused to lend him money he showed
no faintest trace of anger. Hall's friends were therefore delighted
that the chambers opposite were let on conditions so favourable to
Sands; they anticipated with roars of laughter the scene that would
happen at the close of the year, and looked forward to seeing, at
least during the interim, their friend in clean clothes, and reading
"his copy" in the best journals. But the luxury of having a fixed
place to sleep in, stimulated, not industry, but vicious laziness of
the most ineradicable kind. Henceforth Sands abandoned all effort to
help himself. Uncombed, unwashed, in dirty clothes, he lay in an
arm-chair through all the morning, rising from time to time to mess
some paint into the appearance of some incoherent landscape, or to
rasp out some bars of Beethoven on his violin.
"Never did I imagine any one so idle; he is fairly putrid with
idleness," said Hall after a short visit. "Would you believe it, he
has only ninepence for sole shield between him and starvation. The
editor of the _Moon_ has just telegraphed for the notice he should
have written of the Academy, and the brute is just sending a
'wire'--'nothing possible this week.' Did any one ever hear of such a
thing? To-night he won't dine, and he could write the notice in an
hour."
Besides having contributed to almost every paper in London, from the
_Times_ downwards, Sands had held positions as editor and sub-editor
of numerous journals. But he had lost each one in turn, and was
beginning to understand that he was fated to die of poverty, and was
beginning to grow tired of the useless struggle. No one was better
organized to earn his living than Peter Sands, and no one failed more
lamentably. Had fortune provided him with a dinner at Simpson's, a
cigar and a cup of coffee, he would have lived as successfully as
another. But our civilization is hard upon those who are only
conversationalists, it does not seem to have taken them into account
in its scheme, and, in truth, Peter could not do much more than
æstheticize agreeably.
Paul L'Estrange admitted freely that he was not fitted for a lawyer;
but even before he explained that he considered himself one of those
beings who had slipped into a hole that did not fit them, it was
probable that you had already begun to consider the circumstances
that had brought him to choose the law as a profession; for his vague
intelligence "where nothing was and all things seemed," lay mirrored
in his mild eyes like a landscape in a pool. Over such a partial and
meditative a mind as L'Estrange's, the Temple may exercise a
destructive fascination; and since the first day, when a boy he had
walked through the closes gathering round the church, and had heard
of the knights, had seen the old dining-hall with its many
inscriptions, he had never ceased to dream of the Temple--that relic
of the past, saved with all its traditions out of the ruin of time;
and the memory of his cousin's chambers, and the association and
mutuality of the life of the Temple, the picturesqueness of the wigs
and gowns passing, and the uncommonness of it all had taken root and
grown, overshadowing other ideals, and when the time came for him to
choose a profession, no choice was open to him but the law, for the
law resided in the Temple.
Soon after his father died, the family property was sold and the
family scattered; some went to Australia, some to Canada; but
L'Estrange had inherited a hundred a year from a grand-aunt, and he
lived on that, and what he made by writing in the newspapers, for of
course no one had thought of intrusting him with a brief; and what he
made by journalism varied from a hundred and fifty to two hundred and
fifty a year. Whenever a new scare arose he was busy among blue-books
in the library.
L'Estrange loved to dine at the Cock tavern with a party of men from
the inn, and to invite them to his chambers to take coffee
afterwards. And when they had retired, and only one remained, he
would say, "What a nice fellow so-and-so is; you do meet a nice lot
of fellows in the Temple, don't you?" It seemed almost sufficient
that a man should belong to the Temple for L'Estrange to find him
admirable. The dinners in hall were especially delightful. Between
the courses he looked in admiration on the portraits and old oak
carvings, and the armorial bearings, and would tell how one bencher
had been debarred from election as treasurer because he had, on three
occasions, attended dinner without partaking of any food. Such an
insult to the kitchen could not be forgiven. L'Estrange was full of
such stories, and he relished their historical flavour as a gourmet
an unusually successful piece of cooking. He regarded the Temple and
its associations with love.
When he had friends to dinner in his rooms the dinner was always
brought from the hall; he ordered it himself in the large spacious
kitchen, which he duly admired, and prying about amid the various
meats, he chose with care, and when told that what he desired could
not be obtained that day, he continued his search notwithstanding. He
related that on one occasion he discovered a greengage pie, after
many assurances that there was no such thing in the kitchen. If he
was with a friend he laid his hand on his shoulder, and pointing out
an inscription, he said, "Now one thing I notice about the Temple is
that never is an occasion missed of putting up an inscription; and
note the legal character of the inscriptions, how carefully it is
explained, that, for instance, the cloisters, although they are for
the use of the Inner as well as the Middle Temple, yet it was the
Middle Temple that paid to have them put up, and therefore owns the
property." L'Estrange always spoke of the gardens as "our gardens,"
of the church as "our church." He was an authority on all that
related to the Temple, and he delighted in a friend in whom he might
confide; and to walk about the courts with Hall or Sands, stopping
now and then to note some curious piece of sculpture or date, and
forthwith to relate an anecdote that brought back some of the
fragrance and colour of old time, and to tell how he intended to work
such curious facts into the book he was writing on the Temple, was
the essence and the soul of this dreamy man's little life.
Saturday night is the night of dalliance in the Temple, and not
unfrequently on Sunday morning, leaving a lady love, L'Estrange would
go to church--top hat, umbrella, and prayer-book--and having a sense
of humour, he was amused by the incongruity.
"I have left the accursed thing behind me," he once said to Mr.
Collier, and by such facetiousness had seriously annoyed the immense
and most staid Mr. Collier.
A gaunt, hollow-eyed man was he, worn to a thread by diabetes; and to
keep the disease in check, strictly dieted. His appearance was so
suggestive of illness, that whenever he was present the conversation
always turned on what he might eat and what he must refrain from
touching. A large, gray-skinned man, handsome somewhat like a figure
of Melancholy carved out of limestone. Since he had left Oxford,
where he had taken a double first, he had failed--at the bar, in
literature, and in love. It was said that he had once written an
absurd letter asking a lady, who hoped to marry a duke, to go to
South America with him. This letter had been his only adventure.
He was like a bookcase, a store of silent learning, with this
difference--from the bookcase much may be extracted, from Mr. Edmund
Collier nothing. He reminded you of a dry well, a London fog, an
abandoned quarry, the desert of Sahara, and the North Pole; of all
dull and lugubrious things he seemed the type. Nature had not
afflicted him with passions nor any original thought, he therefore
lived an exemplary existence, his mind fortified with exemplary
opinions, doctrines, and old saws.
"I wonder if he is alive," Mike had once said.
"_Hé, hé, tout au plus_," Harding had replied, sardonically.
Collier was now learning Sanscrit and writing an article for the
_Quarterly_. L'Estrange used, as he said, "to dig at him," and after
many exhausting efforts brought up interesting facts to the effect
that he had just finished his treatise on the Greek participle, and
was about to launch a volume of verses mainly addressed to children.
Collier had once possessed considerable property, but he had invested
some in a newspaper of which he was editor, and he had squandered
much in vague speculation. From the account he gave of his losses it
was difficult to decide whether he had been moved by mercenary or
charitable temptations. Now only the merest competence remained. He
lived in a small garret where no solicitor had penetrated, studying
uninteresting literatures, dimly interested in all that the world did
not care for. He lived in the gloom of present failure, embittered by
the memory of past successes, wearied with long illness, and
therefore constrained to live like a hermit, never appearing anywhere
except in Hall's rooms.
Even Mr. Horace Baird, the recluse of the Temple, was sometimes met
in Hall's chambers. When he lifted his hat, the white locks growing
amid the black, magnificent masses of hair caught the eye, and set
the mind thinking on the brevity of youth, or wondering what
ill-fortune had thus done the work of time. A passing glance told you
that he was unsuccessful in his profession and unfortunate in his
life, and if you spoke to him, an affected gaiety of manner confirmed
the truth of the first impression. Near him sat a patriarchal
barrister who had travelled in the colonies, had had political
appointments, and in vague hopes of further political appointments
professed advanced views, which he endeavoured to redeem with
flavourless humour. There were also two young men who shared chambers
and took in pupils. Fine tales their laundress told of the state of
their sitting-room in the morning, the furniture thrown about, the
table-cloth drenched in whiskey.
There was a young man whose hobby was dress and chorus girls. There
was a young man whose hobby was pet birds; he talked about the
beautiful South American bird he had just bought, and he asked you to
come and see it taking its bath in the morning. Several persons were
writing law-books, which their authors hoped would rival _Chitty on
Contracts_.
The Temple, like a fatherland, never loses its influence over its
children. He who has lived in the Temple will return to the Temple.
All things are surrendered for the Temple. All distances are
traversed to reach the Temple. The Temple is never forgotten. The
briefless barrister, who left in despair and became Attorney-General
of New South Wales, grows homesick, surrenders his position, and
returns. The young squire wearies in his beautiful country house, and
his heart is fixed in the dingy chambers, which he cannot relinquish,
and for which wealth cannot compensate him. Even the poor clerks do
not forget the Temple, and on Saturday afternoons they prowl about
their old offices, and often give up lucrative employments. They are
drawn by the Temple as by a magnet, and must live again in the shadow
of the old inns. The laundresses' daughters pass into wealthy
domesticities, but sooner or later they return to drudge again in the
Temple.
"How awfully jolly!--I do enjoy an evening like this," said Mike,
when the guests had departed.
At that moment a faint footstep was heard on the landing; Hall rushed
to see who was there, and returned with two women. They explained
that they wanted a drink. Mike pressed them to make themselves at
home, and Hall opened another bottle.
"How comfortable you bachelors are here by yourselves," said one.
"I should think we are just; no fear of either of us being such fools
as to break up our home by getting married," replied Mike.
Sometimes Mike and Hall returned early from the restaurant, and wrote
from eight to eleven; then went out for a cup of coffee and a prowl,
beating up the Strand for women. They stayed out smoking and talking
at the corners till the streets were empty. Once they sent a couple
of harlots to rouse a learned old gentleman who lived in Brick Court,
and with bated breath listened from the floor beneath to the dialogue
above.
But to continue this life, which he enjoyed so intensely that he had
even lost his desire to gamble, Mike was forced to borrow. Knowing
how such things are bruited about, Mike chose to go to a woman rather
than to any of his men friends. Mrs. Byril lent him twenty pounds,
wherefore he thought it necessary to lecture Hall for one whole
evening on the immorality of ever accepting money from women; and he
remained for weeks in idleness, smoking and drinking in restaurants
and bar rooms, deaf to Frank's many pleadings for "copy." At last he
roused a little, and feeling he could do nothing in London, proposed
to come and stay with Frank in his cottage at Marlow, and there write
the letters.
It was a bright October afternoon, Frank had gone to the station, and
Lizzie, to appease the baby, had unbuttoned her dress. The little
servant-girl who assisted with the house-work was busy in the
kitchen; for the fatted calf had been killed--that is to say, a pair
of soles, a steak, and a partridge were in course of preparation.
Lizzie thought of the partridge. She had omitted soup from the dinner
so that she might herself see to the fish; the steak, unless
something quite unforeseen occurred, Annie would be able to manage,
but the partridge! Lizzie determined she would find an excuse for
leaving the room; Frank would not like it, but anything would be
better than that the bird should appear in a raw or cindery
condition, which would certainly be the case if she did not see to
it. The jam-pudding was boiling and would be taken out of the pot at
a fixed time. And with baby upon her breast, she watched Sally scrape
and clean the fish and beat the steak; then, hearing the front door
open, she buttoned her dress, put baby in his cot, and went to meet
her visitor. Mike said he had never seen her looking so well; but in
truth he thought she had grown fat and coarse; and in half an hour he
had realized all the detail of their misfortune. He guessed that she
had helped to cook the dinner, that the wine had come from the
public-house, that they had given up their room to him, and were
sleeping in some small cupboard-like place at the end of the passage.
Of the many various unpleasantnesses of married life which had
crowded into his consciousness since he had been in the cottage, this
impressed him the most. He went to sleep thinking of it, and when he
sat down to write next morning (a little study had been arranged for
him), it was the first thought that stirred in him.
"How fearfully unpleasant!--and after having been married for nearly
two years! I could not do it. If I were married--even if I were to
marry Lily, I should insist on having separate rooms. Even with
separate rooms marriage is intolerable. How much better to see her
sometimes, sigh for her from afar, and so preserve one's ideal.
Married! One day I should be sure to surprise her washing herself;
and I know of no more degrading spectacle than that of a woman
washing herself over a basin. Degas painted it once. I'd give
anything to have that picture."
But he could not identify Lily as forming part of that picture; his
imagination did not help him, and he could only see her staid and
gracious, outside all the gross materialism of life. He felt that
Lily would never lose her dignity and loveliness, which in her were
one, and in his mind she ever stood like a fair statue out of reach
of the mud and the contumely of the common street; and ashamed, an
unsuccessful iconoclast, he could not do otherwise than kneel and
adore.
And when at the end of a week he received an invitation to a ball
where he thought she would be, he must perforce obey, and go with
tremulous heart. She was engaged in a quadrille that passed to and
fro beneath blue tapestry curtains, and he noticed the spray of
lilies of the valley in her bodice, so emblematic did they seem of
her. Beneath the blue curtain she stood talking to her partner after
the dance; and he did not go to speak to her, but remained looking.
They only danced together twice; and that evening was realized by him
in a strangely intense and durable perception of faint scent and
fluent rhythm. The sense of her motion, of her frailness, lingered in
his soul ever afterwards. And he remembered ever afterwards the
moments he spent with her in a distant corner--the palm, the gold of
the screen, the movement of her white skirt as she sat down. All was,
as it were, bitten upon his soul--exquisite etchings! Even the pauses
in the conversation were remembered; pauses full of mute affection;
pauses full of thought unexpressed, falling in sharp chasms of
silence. In such hours and in such pauses is the essence of our
lives, the rest is adjunct and decoration. He watched, fearing each
man that looked through the doorway might claim her for the next
dance. His thought swept through his soul edgeways. Did he love her?
Would he love her always? And he was conscious of the contrast his
speech presented, to the tumult that raged and shrieked within him.
Yet he couldn't speak the word, and he cursed his little cowardice.
The ball came and went--a little year with its four seasons; and when
in the hall he stood by her, helping her with her cloak (silk and
gray fur, folding the delicate line of the neck), and became aware
that even those last moments did not hold the word his soul was
whispering, he cursed his cowardice, and, weary of himself, he turned
down the dark street, feeling that he had lost his life.
"Now all is ended," he thought, "I'm like a convict who attempted
escape and has been brought back and yoked again in the sweaty and
manacled gang; and I must continue in and bear with this life of
gross sensuality and dirty journalism, 'which I have borne and yet
must bear'--a wearisome repetition of what has been done and re-done
a thousand times, 'till death-like sleep shall steal on me,' and I
may hear some horrible lodging-house keeper 'breathe o'er my dying
brain a last monotony.' And in various degradations my intellect will
suffer, will decay; but with her refining and elevating influence, I
might be a great writer. It is certain that the kernel of Art is
aspiration for higher things; at all events, I should lead a cleanly
life. If I were married to her I should not write this book. It
certainly is a disgraceful book; and yet it amuses me."
His thoughts paused, then an idea came, and with his pen he pursued
it and the quickly rising flight which followed for a couple of
hours.
"Why should I not write and ask her to marry me?" He smiled at the
thought, but the thought was stronger than he, and he went to bed
thinking of her, and he rose thinking of her; and the desire to write
and tell her that he loved her and wanted her for wife persisted; he
shook it off a dozen times, but it grew more and more poignant, until
it settled on his heart, a lancinating pain which neither work nor
pleasure could remove. Daily he grew feebler, losing at each effort
some power of resistance. One day he took up the pen to write the
irrevocable. But the reality of the ink and paper frightened him.
"Will you be my wife?" seemed to him silly. Even in this crisis
self-esteem lay uppermost in his mind; and he wrote many letters
before he felt certain he had guarded himself against ridicule. At
last he folded up a sheet upon which he had written--"Dearest Lily,
you are the only woman I may love; will you allow me to love you for
ever?" He put this into an envelope and directed it; nothing remained
but to post it. The clock told him he could catch the post if he
started away at once, but he drew back, frightened at the reality of
the post-office, and decided to sleep over his letter.
The night was full of Lily--fair, chaste dreams, whence he rose as
from a bath clothed in the samite of pure delight. While dressing he
felt sure that marriage--marriage with Lily must be the realization
of such dreams, and that it would be folly not to post his letter.
Still, it might be as well to hear the opinion of one who had taken
the important step, and after breakfast he drew Frank into
conversation about Lizzie.
"I am quite happy," he said. "Lizzie is a good wife, and I love her
better to-day than the day I married her; but the price I paid for
her was too high. Mount Rorke has behaved shamefully, and so has
everybody but you. I never see any of the old lot now. Snowdown came
once to dine about a year ago, but I never go anywhere where Lizzie
is not asked. Mount Rorke has only written once since my marriage,
and then it was to say he never wished to see me again. The next I
heard was the announcement of his marriage."
"So he has married again," said Mike, looking at Frank, and then he
thought--"So you who came from the top shall go to the bottom! Shall
he who came from the bottom go to the top?"
"I have not heard yet of a child. I have tried to find out if one is
expected; but what does it matter?--Mount Rorke wouldn't give me a
penny-piece to save me from starvation, and I should have time to
starve a good many times before he goes off the hooks. I don't mind
telling you I'm about as hard up as a man possibly can be. I owe
three quarters' rent for my rooms in Temple Gardens, nearly two
hundred pounds. The Inn is pressing me, and I can't get three hundred
for my furniture, and I'm sure I paid more than fifteen hundred for
what there is there."
"Why don't you sell a share in the paper?"
"I have sold a small part of it, a very small part of it, a fifth,
and there is a fellow called Thigh--you know the fellow, he has
edited every stupid weekly that has appeared and disappeared for the
last ten years--well, he has got hold of a mug, and by all accounts a
real mug, one of the right sort, a Mr. Beacham Brown. Mr. Brown wants
a paper, and has commissioned Thigh to buy him one. Thigh wants me to
sell a half share in the _Pilgrim_ for a thousand, but I shall have
to give Thigh back four hundred; and I shall--that is to say, I shall
if I agree to Thigh's terms--become assistant editor at a salary of
six pounds a week; two pounds a week of which I shall have to hand
over to Thigh, who comes in as editor at a salary of ten pounds a
week. All the staff will be engaged on similar conditions. Thigh is
'working' Beacham Brown beautifully--he won't have a sixpence to
bless himself with when Thigh has done with him."
"And are you going to accept Thigh's terms?"
"Not if I can possibly help it. If your articles send up the
circulation and my new advertising agent can do the West End
tradesmen for a few more advertisements, I shall stand off and wait
for better terms. My new advertising agent is a wonder, the finest in
Christendom. The other day a Bond Street jeweller who advertises with
us came into my office. He said, 'Sir, I have come to ask you if you
circulate thirty thousand copies a week.' 'Well,' I said, 'perhaps
not quite.' 'Then, sir,' he replied, 'you will please return me my
money; I gave your agent my advertisement upon his implicit assurance
that you circulated thirty thousand a week.' I said there must be
some mistake; Mr. Tomlinson happens to be in the office, if you'll
allow me I'll ask him to step down-stairs. I touched the bell, and
told the boy to ask Mr. Tomlinson to step into the office. 'Mr.
Tomlinson,' I said, 'Mr. Page says that he gave you his advertisement
on our implicit assurance that we circulated thirty thousand copies
weekly. Did you tell him that?' Quite unabashed, Tomlinson answered,
'I told Mr. Page that we had more than thirty thousand readers a
week. We send to ten line regiments and five cavalry regiments--each
regiment consists of, let us say, eight hundred. We send to every
club in London, and each club has on an average a thousand members.
Why, sir,' exclaimed Tomlinson, turning angrily on the jeweller, 'I
might have said that we had a hundred thousand readers and I should
have still been under the mark!' The jeweller paid for his
advertisement and went away crestfallen. Such a man as Tomlinson is
the very bone and muscle of a society journal."
"And the nerves too," said Mike.
"Better than the contributors who want to write about the relation
between art and morals."
The young men laughed mightily.
"And what will you do," said Mike, "if you don't settle with Thigh?"
"Perhaps my man will be able to pick up another advertisement or two;
perhaps your articles may send up the circulation. One thing is
certain, things can't go on as they are; at this rate I shall not be
able to carry the paper on another six months."
The conversation fell, and Mike remembered the letter in his side
pocket; it lay just over his heart. Frank's monetary difficulties had
affected his matrimonial aspirations. "For if the paper 'bursts up'
how shall I live, much less support a wife? Live! I shall always be
able to live, but to support a wife is quite another matter. Perhaps
Lily has some money. If she had five hundred a year I would marry
her; but I don't know if she has a penny. She must have some, a few
thousands--enough to pay the first expenses. To get a house and get
into the house would cost a thousand." A cloud passed over his face.
The householder, the payer of rates and taxes which the thought
evoked, jarred and caricatured the ideal, the ideal Mike Fletcher,
which in more or less consistent form was always present in his mind.
He who had always received, would have to make presents. The
engagement ring would cost five-and-twenty pounds, and where was he
to get the money? The ring he would have to buy at once; and his
entire fortune did not for the moment amount to ten pounds. Her
money, if she had any, would pay for the honeymoon; and it was only
right that a woman should pay for her honeymoon. They would go to
Italy. She was Italy! At least she was his idea of Italy. Italy! he
had never been there; he had always intended to keep Italy for his
wedding tour. He was virgin of Italy. So much virginity he had at all
events kept for his wife. She was the emblem and symbol of Italy.
Venice rose into his eyes. He is in a gondola with her; the water is
dark with architrave and pillar; and a half moon floats in a
boundless sky But remembering that this is the Venice of a hundred
"chromos," his imagination filled the well-known water-way with
sunlight and maskers, creating the carnival upon the Grand Canal.
Laughing and mocking Loves; young nobles in blue hose, sword on
thigh, as in Shakespeare's plays; young brides in tumultuous satin,
with collars of translucent pearls; garlands reflected in the water;
scarves thrown about the ample bosoms of patrician matrons. Then the
brides, the nobles, the pearls, the loves, and the matrons disappear
in a shower of confetti. Wearying of Venice he strove to see
Florence, "the city of lilies"; but the phrase only suggested
flower-sellers. He intoxicated upon his love, she who to him was now
Italy. He imagined confidences, sudden sights of her face more
exquisite than the Botticelli women in the echoing picture galleries,
more enigmatic than the eyes of a Leonardo; and in these days of
desire, he lived through the torment of impersonal love, drawn for
the first time out of himself. All beautiful scenes of love from
books, pictures, and life floated in his mind. He especially
remembered a sight of lovers which he had once caught on an hotel
staircase. A young couple, evidently just returned from the theatre,
had entered their room; the woman was young, tall, and aristocratic;
she was dressed in some soft material, probably a dress of
cream-coloured lace in numberless flounces; he remembered that her
hair was abundant and shadowed her face. The effect of firelight
played over the hangings of the bed; she stood by the bed and raised
her fur cloak from her shoulders. The man was tall and thin, and the
light caught the points of the short sharp beard. The scene had
bitten itself into Mike's mind, and it reappeared at intervals
perfect as a print, for he sometimes envied the calm and
healthfulness of honourable love.
"Great Scott! twelve o'clock!" Smiling, conscious of the incongruity,
he set to work, and in about three hours had finished a long letter,
in which he usefully advised "light o' loves" on the advantages of
foreign travel.
"I wonder," he thought, "how I can write in such a strain while I'm
in love with her. What beastliness! I hate the whole thing. I desire
a new life; I have tried vice long enough and am weary of it; I'm not
happy, and if I were to gain the whole world it would be dust and
ashes without her. Then why not take that step which would bring her
to me?" He faced his cowardice angrily, and resolved to post the
letter. But he stopped before he had walked fifty yards, for his
doubts followed him, buzzing and stinging like bees. Striving to rid
himself of them, and weary of considering his own embarrassed
condition, he listened gladly to Lizzie, who deplored Mount Rorke's
cruelty and her husband's continuous ill luck.
"I told him his family would never receive me; I didn't want to marry
him; for days I couldn't make up my mind; he can't say I persuaded
him into it."
"But you are happy now; don't you like being married?"
"Oh, yes, I should be happy enough if things only went better with
us. He is so terribly unlucky. No one works harder than Frank; he
often sits up till three o'clock in the morning writing. He tries
everything, but nothing seems to succeed with him. There's this
paper. I don't believe he has ever had a penny out of it. Tell me,
Mr. Fletcher, do you think it will ever succeed?"
"Newspapers generally fail for want of a concerted plan of appeal to
a certain section of society kept steadily in view; they are nearly
always vague and undetermined; but I believe when four clever pens
are brought together, and write continuously, and with set purpose
and idea, that they can, that they must and invariably do create a
property worth at least twenty thousand pounds."
"Frank has gone to the station to meet Thigh. I distrust that man
dreadfully; I hope he won't rob my poor husband. Frank told me to get
a couple of pheasants for dinner. Which way are you going? To the
post-office? Do you want a stamp?"
"No, thank you, my letter is stamped." He held the letter in the box
unable to loose his fingers, embarrassed in the consideration whether
marriage would permit him to develop his artistic nature as he
intended. Lizzie was looking at him, and it was with difficulty that
he concealed from her the fact that he had not dropped his letter in
the box.
When they returned to the cottage they found Thigh and Frank were
turning over the pages of the last number of the _Pilgrim_.
"Just let's go through the paper," said Frank. "One, two,
three--twelve columns of paragraphs! and I'll bet that in every one
of those columns there is a piece of news artistic, political, or
social, which no other paper has got. Here are three articles, one
written by our friend here, one by me, and one by a man whose name I
am not at liberty to mention; but I may tell you he has written some
well-known books, and is a constant contributor to the _Fortnightly_;
here is a column of gossip from Paris excellently well done; here is
a short story ... What do you think the paper wants?"
Thigh was a very small and very neatly-dressed man. His manner was
quiet and reserved, and he caressed a large fair moustache with his
left hand, on which a diamond ring sparkled.
"I think it wants smartening up all round," he said. "You want to
make it smarter; people will have things bright nowadays."
"Bright!" said Frank; "I don't know where you are going for
brightness nowadays. Just look at the other papers--here is the
_Club_--did you ever see such a rag? Here is the _Spy_--I don't think
you could tell if you were reading a number of last year or this week
if you didn't look at the date! I've given them up for news. I look
to see if they have got a new advertisement; if they have, I send
Tomlinson and see if I can get one too."
Thigh made some judicious observations, and the conversation was
continued during dinner. Frank and Mike vying with each other to show
their deference to Thigh's literary opinions--Lizzie eager to know
what he thought of her dinner.
Thigh said the turbot was excellent, that the cutlets were very nice,
that the birds were splendid; the jam pudding was voted delicious.
And they leaned back in their chairs, their eyes filled with the
torpor of digestion. Frank brought out a bottle of old port, the last
of a large supply which he had had from Mount Rorke's wine merchant.
The pleasure of the wine was in their stomachs, and under its
influence they talked of Tennyson, Leonardo da Vinci, Corot, and the
_Ingoldsby Legends_. The servant had brought in the lamp, cigars were
lighted, the clock struck nine. As yet not a word had been spoken of
the business, and seeing that Mike was deep in conversation with
Lizzie, Frank moved his chair towards Thigh, and said--
"Well, what about buying half of the paper?"
"I'm quite ready to buy half the paper on the conditions I've already
offered you."
"But they won't do. If I have to go smash, I may as well go smash for
a large sum as a small one. To clear myself of debts I must have five
hundred pounds."
"Well, you'll get six hundred; you'll receive a thousand and you'll
give me back four hundred."
"Yes, but I did not tell you that I have sold a small share in the
paper to an old schoolfellow of mine. When I have paid him I shall
have only two hundred, and that won't be of the slightest use to me."
"Oh, you have sold part of the paper already, have you? How do you
know your friend will consent to be bought out? That complicates
matters."
"My friend only did it to oblige me; he is only too anxious to be
bought out. He is in a fearful funk lest he should be compromised in
a libel action."
"Oh, then I think it can be managed. Were I in your place I should
try and get rid of him for nothing. I can't offer you better terms;
it wouldn't pay me to do so; I might as well start a new paper."
"Yes, but tell me, how can I get rid of him for nothing?"
Thigh looked at Frank inquiringly, and apparently satisfied he drew
his chair nearer, stroked his moustache, and said, speaking under his
breath--
"Have you collected what money is owing to the paper lately? Have you
many outstanding debts?"
"We have got some."
"Well, don't collect any money that is owing, but make out a long
statement of the paper's liabilities; don't say a word about the
outstanding debts, and tell your friend that he is responsible as
part owner of the paper for this money. When you have sufficiently
frightened him, suggest that he should sign over his share to you,
you being a man of straw whom it would be useless to proceed against.
Or you might get your printer to press you for money--"
"That won't be difficult."
"Offer him a bill, and then mix the two accounts up together."
At this moment Mike was speaking to Lizzie of love. She told him
there was no real happiness except in married life, assured him that
though they might be beggars to-day, she would not give up her
husband for all the wealth of the three kingdoms.
Very anxious to ascertain the truth about married life, Mike pressed
Lizzie upon several points; the old ache awoke about his heart, and
again he resolved to regenerate his life, and love Lily and none but
her. He looked round the room, considering how he could get away.
Frank was talking business. He would not disturb him. No doubt Thigh
was concocting some swindle, but he (Mike) knew nothing of business;
he had a knack of turning the king at écarté, but was nowhere once
bills and the cooking of accounts were introduced. Should he post the
letter? That was the question, and it played in his ears like an
electric bell. Here was the letter; he could feel it through his
coat, lying over his heart, and there it had lain since he had
written it.
Frank and Thigh continued talking; Lizzie went to the baby, and Mike
walked into the night, looking at the stars. He walked along the
white high-road--to him a road of dreams--towards the white town--to
him a town of chimeras--and leaning over the moon-lit river, shaking
himself free from the hallucination within and without him, he said--
"On one hand I shall belong to one woman. Her house shall be my
house, her friends shall be my friends; the others, the beautiful,
fascinating others, will cease to dream of me, I shall no longer be
their ideal. On the other hand I shall gain the nicest woman, and
surely it must be right to take, though it be for life, the nicest
woman in the world. She will supply what is wanting in my character;
together we shall attain a goal; alone I shall attain none. In twenty
years I shall be a foolish old bachelor whom no one cares for. I have
stated both cases--on which side does the balance turn?"
The balance still stood at equipoise. A formless moon soared through
a white cloud wrack, and broken gold lay in the rising tide. The
sonorous steps of the policeman on the bridge startled him, and
obeying the impulse of the moment, he gave the officer the letter,
asking him to post it. He waited for some minutes, as if stupefied,
pursuing the consequences of his act even into distant years. No, he
would not send the letter just yet. But the officer had disappeared
in some by-streets, and followed by the spirits of future loves, Mike
ran till he reached the post-office, where he waited in nervous
apprehension. Presently steps were heard in the stillness, and
getting between him and the terrible slot, Mike determined to fight
for his letter if it were refused him.
"I met you just now on the bridge and asked you to post a letter;
give it back to me, if you please. I've changed my mind."
The officer looked at him narrowly, but he took the proffered
shilling, and returned the letter.
"That was the narrowest squeak I've had yet," thought Mike.
When he returned to the cottage he found Frank and Thigh still
together.
"Mr. Beacham Brown," said Thigh, "is now half-proprietor of the
_Pilgrim_. The papers are signed. I came down quite prepared. I
believe in settling things right off. When Mrs. Escott comes in, we
will drink to the new _Pilgrim_, or, if you like it better, to the
old _Pilgrim_, who starts afresh with a new staff and scrip, and a
well-filled scrip too," he added, laughing vacuously.
"I hope," said Mike, "that Holloway is not the shrine he is
journeying towards."
"I hope your book won't bring us there."
"Why, I didn't know you were going to continue--"
"Oh, yes," said Thigh; "that is to say, if we can come to an
arrangement about the purchase," and Thigh lapsed into a stony
silence, as was his practice when conducting a bargain.
"By God!" Mike thought, "I wish we were playing at écarté or poker.
I'm no good at business."
"Well," he said at last, "what terms do you propose to offer me?"
Thigh woke up.
"I never bargain," he said. "I'll give you Beacham Brown's cheque for
a hundred and fifty if you will give me a receipt for three hundred,"
and he looked inquiry out of his small, pale blue eyes, and Mike
noticed the diamond ring on the hand that caressed his moustache.
"No," said Mike, "that isn't fair. You don't write a line of the
book. There is not even the excuse of commission, for the book is now
appearing."
"Escott would not have paid you anything like that amount. I think
I'm treating you very liberally. Indeed I don't mind telling you that
I should not offer you anything like such terms if Beacham Brown were
not anxious to have the book; he read your last article in the train,
and came back raving about it."
Bright pleasure passed across Mike's face; he thought Thigh had
slipped in the avowal, and he girt himself for resolute resistance
and cautious attack. But Thigh was the superior strategist. Mike was
led from the subject, and imperceptibly encouraged to speak of other
things, and without interruption he span paradoxes and scattered
jokes for ten minutes. Then the conversation dropped, and annoyed,
Mike fixed his eyes on Thigh, who sat in unmovable silence.
"Well," said Mike, "what do you intend to do?"
"About what?" said Thigh, with a half-waking stare.
"About this book of mine. You know very well that if I take it to
another shop you'll find it difficult to get anything like as good a
serial. I know pretty well what talent is walking about Fleet
Street."
Thigh said nothing, only raised his eyes as if Mike's words were full
of suggestion, and again beguiled, Mike rambled into various
criticisms of contemporary journalism. Friends were laughed at, and
the papers they edited were stigmatized as rags that lived upon the
ingenuity of the lies of advertising agents. When the conversation
again dropped, Thigh showed no inclination of returning to the book,
but, as before, sat in stony silence, and out of temper with himself,
Mike had to ask him again what the terms were.
"I cannot offer you better terms than I have already done."
"Very well; I'll take one hundred and fifty for the serial rights."
"No, for the entire rights."
"No, I'll be damned, I don't care what happens!"
Then Frank joined in the discussion. Every one withdrew the offer he
had made, and all possibility of agreement seemed at an end. Somehow
it was suggested that Thigh should toss Mike whether he should pay
him two hundred or a hundred and fifty. The men exchanged questioning
looks, and at that moment Lizzie entered with a pack of cards, and
Thigh said--
"I'll play you at écarté--the best out of seven games."
Mike realized at once the situation, and he hoped Frank would not
betray him. He saw that Thigh had been drinking. "God has given him
into my hands," he thought; and it was agreed that they should play
the best out of seven games for twenty-five pounds, and that the
loser should have the right to call for a return match. Mike knew
nothing of his opponent's play, but he did not for a moment suspect
him of superior skill. Such a thing could hardly be, and he decided
he would allow him to win the first games, watching carefully the
while, so that he might study his combinations and plans, and learn
in what measure he might pack and "bridge" the cards. There is much
in a shuffle, and already Mike believed him to be no more than an
ordinary club player, capable of winning a few sovereigns from a
young man fresh from the university; and although the cards Mike held
did not warrant such a course, he played without proposing, and when
he lost the trick he scanned his opponent's face, and seeing it
brighten, he knew the ruse had succeeded. But luck seemed to run
inexplicably against him, and he was defeated. In the return match he
met with similar luck, and rose from the table, having lost fifty
pounds. Mike wrote a second I O U for twenty-five pounds, to be paid
out of the hundred and fifty pounds which he had agreed in writing to
accept for the book before sitting down to play. Then he protested
vehemently against his luck, and so well did he act his part, that
even if Thigh had not drunk another glass of whiskey-and-water he
would not have perceived that Mike was simulating an excitement which
he did not feel.
"I'll play you for a hundred pounds--the best out of seven games;
damn the cards! I can beat you no matter how they run!"
"Very well, I don't mind, anything to oblige a friend."
Lizzie besought Mike not to play again, and she nearly upset the
apple-cart by angrily telling Thigh she did not wish her house to be
turned into a gambling hell. Thigh rose from the table, but Frank
apologized for his wife, and begged of him to sit down. The incident
was not without a good effect, for it removed Thigh's suspicions, if
he had any, and convinced him that he was "in for a real good thing."
He laid on the table a cheque, signed Beacham Brown, for a hundred
pounds; Mike produced his nearly completed manuscript. Thigh looked
over the MS., judging its length.
"It is all here?"
"No, there's one chapter to come; that's good enough for you."
"Oh yes, it will do. You'll have to finish it, for you'll want to
write for the paper."
This time the cards were perfectly packed, and Mike turned the king.
"Cards?"
"No, play."
Frank and Lizzie leaned breathless over the table, their faces white
in the light of the unshaded lamp. Mike won the whole five tricks.
But luck was dead against him, and in a few minutes the score stood
at three games all. Then outrageously, for there was no help for it,
as he never would have dared if his opponent had been quite sober, he
packed and bridged the cards. He turned the king.
"Cards?"
"No, play."
Mike won the fourth game, and put Mr. Beacham Brown's cheque in his
pocket.
"I'll play you again," said Thigh.
Mike accepted, and before eleven o'clock Thigh had paid three hundred
pounds for the manuscript and lost all his available spare cash. He
glanced narrowly at Mike, paused as he put on his hat and coat, and
Frank wished Lizzie would leave the room, feeling sure that violent
words were inevitable. But at that moment Mike's shoulders and
knuckles seemed more than usually prominent, and Mr. Beacham Brown's
agent slunk away into the darkness.
"You did turn the king pretty often," said Frank, when the door
closed. "I'm glad there was no row."
"Row! I'd have broken his dirty neck. Not content with swindling poor
Beacham Brown, he tries it on with the contributors. I wish I had
been able to get him to go on. I would willingly have fleeced him of
every penny he has in the world."
Lizzie bade them good-night, and the servant brought in a letter for
Mike, a letter which she explained had been incorrectly addressed,
and had just come from the hotel. Frank took up a newspaper which
Thigh had left on the table. He turned it over, glancing hastily
through it. Then something caught his eye, and the expression of his
face changed. And what caused him pain could be no more than a few
words, for the paper fell instantly from his hands and he sat quite
still, staring into space. But neither the sound of the paper
falling, nor yet the frozen rigidity of his attitude drew Mike's
thoughts from the letter he was reading. He glanced hastily through
it, then he read it attentively, lingering over every word. He seemed
to suck sweetness out of every one; it was the deep, sensual
absorption of a fly in a pot of treacle. His eyes were dim with
pleasure long drawn out; they saw nothing, and it was some moments
before the pallor and pain of Frank's face dispelled the melliferous
Edens in which Mike's soul moved.
"What is the matter, old chap? Are you ill?"
Frank did not answer.
"Are you ill? Shall I get you a drink?"
"No, no," he said. "I assure you it is nothing; no, it is nothing."
He struggled for a moment for shame's sake to keep his secret, but it
was more than he could bear. "Ah!" he said, "it is all over; I'm done
for--read."
He stooped to pick up the paper. Mike took the paper from him and
read--
"Thursday--Lady Mount Rorke, of a son."
Whilst one man hears his doom pronounced, another sees a golden
fortune fallen in his hand, and the letter Mike had just read was
from a firm of solicitors, informing him that Lady Seeley had left
him her entire fortune, three thousand a year in various securities,
and a property in Berkshire; house, pictures, plate--in a word,
everything she possessed. The bitterness of his friend's ill fortune
contrasting with the sweetness of his own good fortune, struck his
heart, and he said, with genuine sorrow in his voice--
"I'm awfully sorry, old chap."
"There's no use being sorry for me, I'm done for; I shall never be
Lord Mount Rorke now. That child, that wife, are paupers; that
castle, that park, that river, all--everything that I was led to
believe would be mine one day, has passed from me irrevocably. It is
terribly cruel--it seems too cruel to be true; all those old
places--you know them--all has passed from me. I never believed Mount
Rorke would have an heir, he is nearly seventy; it is too cruel."
Tears swam in his eyes, and covering his face in his hands he burst
into a storm of heavy sobbing.
Mike was sincere, but "there is something not wholly disagreeable to
us in hearing of the misfortunes even of our best friends," and Mike
felt the old thought forced into his mind that he who had come from
the top had gone to the bottom, and that he who came from the bottom
was going--had gone to the top. Taking care, however, that none of
the triumph ebullient within him should rise into his voice, he
said--
"I am really sorry for you, Frank. You mustn't despair; perhaps the
child won't live, and perhaps the paper will succeed. It must
succeed. It shall succeed."
"Succeed! nothing succeeds with me. I and my wife and child are
beggars on the face of the earth. It matters little to me whether the
paper succeeds or fails. Thigh has got pretty nearly all of it. When
my debts are paid I shall not have enough to set myself up in rooms."
At the end of a painful silence, Mike said--
"We've had our quarrels, but you've been a damned good friend to me;
it is my turn now to stand to you. To begin with, here is the three
hundred that I won from Thigh. I don't want it. I assure you I don't.
Then there are your rooms in Temple Gardens; I'll take them off your
hands. I'll pay all the arrears of rent, and give you the price you
paid for your furniture."
"What damned nonsense! how can you do that? Take three hundred pounds
from you--the price of your book. You have nothing else in the
world!"
"Yes, I have; it is all right, old chap; you can have the money. The
fact is," he said, "Lady Seeley has left me her whole fortune; the
letter I just received is from the solicitors. They say three
thousand a year in various securities, and a property in Berkshire.
So you see I can afford to be generous. I shall feel much hurt if you
don't accept. Indeed, it is the least I can do; I owe it to you."
The men looked at each other, their eyes luminous with intense and
quickening emotions. Fortune had been so derisive that Mike feared
Frank would break into foolish anger, and that only a quarrel and
worse hatred might result from his offer of assistance.
"It was in my box you met her; I remember the night quite well. You
were with Harding." [Footnote: See _Spring Days_.] The men exchanged
an inquiring look. "She wanted me to go home and have supper with
her; she was in love with me then; I might have been her lover. But I
refused, and I went into the bar and spoke to Lizzie; when she went
off on duty I went and sat with you and Harding. Not long after I saw
you at Reading, in the hotel overlooking the river. I was with
Lizzie." [Footnote: See _Spring Days_.]
"You can't accuse me of having cut you out. You could have got her,
and--"
"I didn't want her; I was in love with Lizzie, and I am still. And
strange as it may appear to you, I regret nothing, at least nothing
that concerns Lizzie."
Mike wondered if this were true. His fingers fidgeted with the
cheques. "Won't you take them?"
Frank took them. It was impossible to continue the conversation.
Frank made a remark, and the young men bade each other good-night.
As Mike went up the staircase to his room, his exultation swelled,
and in one of those hallucinations of the brain consequent upon
nerve excitement, and in which we are conscious of our insanity, he
wondered the trivial fabric of the cottage did not fall, and his soul
seemed to pierce the depth and mystery imprisoned in the stars. He
undressed slowly, looking at himself in the glass, pausing when he
drew off his waistcoat, unbuttoning his braces with deliberation.
"I can make nothing of it; there never was any one like me.... I
could do anything, I might have been Napoleon or Cæsar."
As he folded his coat he put his hand into the breast pocket and
produced the unposted letter.
"That letter will drive me mad! Shall I burn it? What do I want with
a wife? I've plenty of money now."
He held the letter to the flame of the candle. But he could not burn
it.
"This is too damned idiotic!" he thought, as he laid it on the table
and prepared to get into bed; "I'm not going to carry that letter
about all my life. I must either post it or destroy it."
Then the darkness became as if charged with a personality sweet and
intense; it seemed to emanate from the letter which lay on the table,
and to materialize strangely and inexplicably. It was the fragrance
of brown hair, and the light of youthful eyes; and in this perfume,
and this light, he realized her entire person; every delicate defect
of thinness. She hung over him in all her girlishness, and he clasped
her waist with his hands.
"How sweet she is! There is none like her."
Then wearying of the strained delight he remembered Belthorpe Park,
now his. Trees and gardens waved in his mind; downs and river lands
floated, and he half imagined Lily there smiling upon them; and when
he turned to the wall, resolute in his search for sleep, the perfume
he knew her by, the savour of the skin, where the first faint curls
begin, haunted in his hallucinations, and intruded beneath the
bed-clothes. One dream was so exquisite in its tenderness, so
illusive was the enchanted image that lay upon his brain, that
fearing to lose it, he strove to fix his dream with words, but no
word pictured her eyes, or the ineffable love they expressed, and yet
the sensation of both was for the moment quite real in his mind. They
were sitting in a little shady room; she was his wife, and she hung
over him, sitting on his knee. Her eyes were especially distinct and
beautiful, and her arms--those thin arms which he knew so well--and
that waist were clothed in a puritanic frock of some blue material.
His happiness thrilled him, and he lay staring into the darkness till
the darkness withered, and the lines of the room appeared--the
wardrobe, the wash-hand-stand, and then the letter. He rose from his
bed. In all-pervading grayness the world lay as if dead; not a whiff
of smoke ascended, not a bird had yet begun, and the river, like a
sheet of zinc, swirled between its low banks.
"God! it is worse than the moonlight!" thought Mike, and went back to
bed. But he could not rest, and when he went again to the window
there was a faint flush in the sky's cheek; and then a bar of rose
pierced the heavy ridge of clouds that hung above the woodland.
"An omen! I will post her letter in the sunrise." And conscious of
the folly, but unable to subdue that desire of romance so inveterate
in him, he considered how he might leave the house. He remembered,
and with pleasure, that he could not pass down the staircase without
disturbing the dog, and he thought of the prolonged barking that
would begin the moment he touched the chain on the front door. He
would have to get out of the window; but the window was twenty feet
from the ground. "A rope! I have no rope! How absurd!" he thought,
and, rejoicing in the absurdity, he drew a sheet from the bed and
made it fast. Going to Lily through a window seemed to relieve
marriage of some of its shame.
"Life wouldn't be complete without her. Yes, that's just it; that
sums it up completely; curious I did not think of that before. It
would have saved such a lot. Yes, life would not be complete without
her. The problem is solved," and he dropped the letter as easily as
if it had been a note asking for seats in the theatre. "I'm married,"
he said. "Good heavens! how strange it seems. I shall have to give
her a ring, and buy furniture. I had forgotten! ... No difficulty
about that now. We shall go to my place in Berkshire."
But he could not go back to bed, and he walked down to the river, his
fine figure swinging beautifully distinct in his light clothing. The
dawn wind thrilled in his chest, for he had only a light coat over
the tasselled silk night-shirt; and the dew drenched his feet as he
swung along the pathway to the river. The old willow was full of
small birds; they sat ruffling their feathers, and when Mike sprang
into the boat they flew through the gray light, taking refuge in some
osier-beds. And as he looked down stream he saw the night clouds
dispersing in the wind. He pulled, making the boat shoot through the
water for about a mile, then touched by the beauty of the landscape,
paused to view it. Cattle lay in the long, moist meadows, harmonizing
in their semi-unconsciousness with the large gray earth; mist hung in
the sedges, floated evanescent upon the surface of the water, within
reach of his oars, floated and went out in the sunshine. But on the
verge of an oak wood, amid tangled and tawny masses of fern and
grass, a hound stopped and looked up. Then the huntsman appeared
galloping along the upland, and turning in his saddle, he blew a
joyful blast.
Mike sat still, his heart close shut, the beauty of the scene in its
quick and core. Then yielding utterly he drove the boat ashore, and
calling to the nearest, to one who had stopped and was tightening his
horse's girths, he offered to buy his horse. A hundred pounds was
asked. "It is not worth it," he thought; "but I must spend my four
thousand a year." The desire to do what others think of doing but
don't do was always active in Mike. He gave his name and address;
and, fearing to miss dealing on such advantageous terms, the owner
consented to allow Mike to try the horse then and there. But the
hounds had got on the scent of a fox. The horn was heard ringing in
the seared wood in the crimson morning, and the hounds streamed
across the meadows.
"I must try him over some fences. Take my boat and row up to Ash
Cottage; I'll meet you there."
"I'll do nothing of the sort!" roared the man in top-boots.
"Then walk across the fields," cried Mike; and he rode at the hedge
and rail, coming down heavily, but before the owner could reach him
he had mounted and was away.
Some hours later, as he approached the cottage, he saw Frank and a
man in top-boots engaged in deep converse.
"Get off my horse instantly!" exclaimed the latter.
"The horse is mine," said Mike, who unfortunately could not control
his laughter.
"Your horse! Certainly not! Get off my horse, or I'll pull you off."
Mike jumped off.
"Since you will have it so, I'll not dispute with you. There is your
horse; not a bad sort of animal--capital sport."
"Now pay me my hundred pounds!" said the owner, between his clenched
teeth.
"You said just now that you hadn't sold me the horse. There is your
horse, and here is the name of my solicitors, if you want to go to
law with me."
"Law with you! I'll give you law!" and letting go the horse, that
immediately began to browse, he rushed at Mike, his whip in the air.
Mike fought, his long legs wide apart, his long arms going like
lightning, straight from the shoulder, scattering blood over necktie
and collar; and presently the man withdrew, cursing Mike for an Irish
horse-stealer.
"I never heard of such a thing!" said Frank. "You got on his horse
and rode away, leaving him standing on the outside of the cover."
"Yes," shouted Mike, delighted with his exploit; "I felt I must go
after the hounds."
"Yes, but to go away with the man's horse!"
"My dear fellow, why not? Those are the things that other fellows
think of doing but don't do. An excitement like that is worth
anything."
While waiting for Lily's answer, Mike finished the last chapter of
his book, and handed the manuscript to Frank. Between the sentences
he had speculated on the state of soul his letter would produce in
her, and had imagined various answers. "Darling, how good of you! I
did not know you loved me so well." She would write, "Your letter
surprised me, but then you always surprise me. I can promise you
nothing; but you may come and see me next Thursday." She would write
at once, of that there could be no doubt; such letters were always
answered at once. He watched the postman and the clock; every double
knock made tumult in his heart; and in his stimulated perceptions he
saw the well-remembered writing as if it lay under his eyes. And the
many communications he received during those days whetted the edge of
his thirst, and aggravated the fever that floated in his brain.
And towards the end of the week, at the end of a long night of
suffering, he went to London. And for the first time, forgetful of
himself, without a thought of the light he would appear in, he told
the cabman where to drive. His heart failed him when he heard that
Miss Young had been ordered abroad by the doctor. And as he walked
away a morbid sense instilled in him that Lily would never be his
bride. Fear for her life persisted, and corrupted all his joy. He
could not listen to Lady Seeley's solicitors, and he could not
meditate upon the new life which Helen had given him. He had
inherited sixty thousand pounds in various securities, yielding three
thousand a year; the estate in Berkshire brought in fifteen hundred a
year; and a sum of twelve hundred pounds lay in the bank for
immediate uses.
"Dear, sweet Helen--she was the best of the lot--none were as sweet
as she. Well, after all, it isn't so strange when one thinks of
it--she hadn't a relation in the world. I must see her grave. I'll
put a beautiful marble tomb over her; and when I'm in Berkshire I'll
go there every day with flowers."
Then a shocking thought appeared in his mind. Accustomed to analyse
all sentiments, he asked his soul if he would give up all she had
given him to have her back in life; and he took courage and joy when
the answer came that he would. And delighted at finding himself
capable of such goodness, he walked in a happier mood. His mind hung
all day between these two women--while he paid the rent that was
owing there in Temple Gardens; while he valued the furniture and
fixtures. He valued them casually, and in a liberal spirit, and wrote
to Frank offering him seven hundred pounds for the place as it stood.
"It is not worth it," he thought, "but I'd like to put the poor
fellow on his legs."
Where should he dine? He wanted distraction, and unable to think of
any better relief, he turned into Lubi's for a merry dinner. The
little gilt gallery was in disorder, Sally Slater having spent the
afternoon there. Her marquis was with her; her many admirers
clustered about the cigarette-strewn table, anxious to lose no word
of her strange conversation. One drunkard insisted on telling
anecdotes about the duke, and asking the marquis to drink with him.
"I tell you I remember the circumstances perfectly--the duke wore a
gray overcoat," said drunkard No. 1.
"Get out! I tell you to get out!" cried drunkard No. 2. "Brave
Battlemoor, I say; long live Battlemoor! Have a drink?--I want
Battlemoor to drink with me."
"For God's sake have a drink with him," said Sally, "and then perhaps
he'll take another box for my benefit."
"What, another?"
"Only a guinea one this time; there's the ticket--fork out. And now I
must be off."
The street echoed with the porter's whistle, half a dozen cabs came
racing for these excellent customers, and to the Trocadero they went.
The acting manager passed them in. Mike, Sally, Marquis, and the
drunkards lingered in the bar behind the auditorium, and
brandies-and-sodas were supplied to them over a sloppy mahogany
counter. A woman screamed on the stage in green silk, and between the
heads of those standing in the entrance to the stalls, her open mouth
and an arm in black swede were seen occasionally.
Tired of drunkenness and slang Mike went into the stalls. The boxes
were bright with courtesans; the young men whispered invitations to
drink, and the chairman, puffing at a huge cigar, used his little
hammer and announced "Miss Sally Slater will appear next." Battlemoor
roared approval, and then in a short skirt and black stockings Sally
rushed to the footlights and took her audience, as it were, by the
throat.
"Oh, you men, what would you do without us?
You kiss us, you cuddle and play,
You win our hearts away.
Oh, you men, there's something so nice about us."
The "Oh, you men," was given with a shake of the fist and the waggle
of the bustle, in which there was genius, and Mike could not but
applaud. Suddenly he became aware that a pair of opera-glasses were
bracketed upon him, and looking up he saw Kitty Carew sitting with a
young nobleman, and he saw the white line of her teeth, for she was
laughing. She waved him to come to her.
"You dear old sweet," she said, "where have you been all this
time?--Come, kiss me at once." And she bent her head towards him.
"And now Newtimber, good-bye; I want to be with Mike. But you'll not
forget me, you'll come and see me one of these days?" And she spoke
so winningly that the boy hardly perceived that he was dismissed.
Mike and Kitty exchanged an inquiring look.
"Ah! do you remember," she said, "when I was at the Avenue, and you
used to come behind? ... You remember the dear old marquis. When I was
ill he used to come and read to me. He used to say I was the only
friend he had. The dear marquis--and he is gone now. I went to his
grave yesterday, and I strewed the tomb with chrysanthemums, and
every spring he has the first lilac of my garden."
"And who is your lover?"
"I assure you I haven't got one. Harding was the last, but he is
becoming a bore; he philosophizes. I dare say he's very clever, but
people don't kiss each other because they are clever. I don't think I
ever was in love.... But tell me, how do you think I am looking? Does
this dress suit me? Do I look any older?"
Mike vowed he had never seen her so charming.
"Very well, if you think so, I'll tell you what we'll do. As soon as
Coburn has sung his song, we'll go; my brougham is waiting ... You'll
come home and have supper with me."
A remembrance of Lily came over him, but in quick battle he crushed
it out of mind and murmured, "That will be very nice; you know I
always loved you better than any one."
At that moment they were interrupted by cheers and yells. Muchross
had just entered at the head of his gang; his lieutenants, Snowdown
and Dicky the driver, stood beside him. They stood under the gallery
bowing to the courtesans in the boxes, and singing--
"Two lovely black eyes
Oh! what a surprise,
Two lovely black eyes."
"I wish we could avoid those fellows," said Kitty; "they'll only
bother me with questions. Come, let's be off, they'll be up here in a
moment." But they were intercepted by Muchross and his friends in a
saloon where Sally and Battlemoor were drinking with various singers,
waiting their turns.
"Where are you going? You aren't going off like that?" cried
Muchross, catching her by her sleeve.
"Yes, I am; I am going home."
"Let me see you home," whispered Dicky.
"Thanks, Mike is seeing me home."
"You are in love," cried Muchross; "I shan't leave you."
"You are in drink; I'll leave you in charge if you don't loose my
sleeve."
"This joker," cried Sally, "will take a ticket if something wins a
Lincoln, and he doesn't know which." She stood in the doorway, her
arms akimbo. "People are very busy here," she snarled, when a woman
tried to pass.
"I beg your pardon," said the ex-chorus girl.
"And a good thing too," said Sally. "You are one of the busy ones,
just got your salary for shoving, I suppose." There was no competing
with Sally's tongue, and the girl passed without replying.
This queen of song was attired in a flowery gown of pale green, and
she wore a large hat lavishly trimmed with wild flowers; she moved
slowly, conscious of her importance and fame.
But at that moment a man in a check suit said, doffing his cap, "Very
pleased to see you here, Miss Slater."
Sally looked him over. "Well, I can't help that."
"I was at your benefit. Mr. Jackson was there, and he introduced me
to you after the performance."
"No, I'm sure he didn't."
"I beg your pardon, Miss Slater. Don't you remember when Peggy Praed
got on the table and made a speech?"
"No, I don't; you saw _me_ on the stage and you paid your money for
that. What more do you want?"
"I assure you--"
"Well, that's all right, now's your chance to lend me a fiver."
"I'll lend you a fiver or a tenner, if you like, Miss Slater."
"You could not do it if you tried, and now the roast pork's off."
The witticism was received with a roar from her admirers, and
satisfied with her victory, she said--"And now, you girls, you come
and have drinks with me. What will you have, Kitty, what will you
have? give it a name."
Kitty protested but was forced to sit down. The courtesans joined the
comic vocalists, waiting to do their "turns." Lord Muchross and Lord
Snowdown ordered magnums, and soon the hall was almost deserted. A
girl was, however, dancing prettily on the stage, and Mike stood to
watch her. Her hose were black, and in limp pink silk skirts she
kicked her slim legs surprisingly to and fro. After each dance she
ran into the wings, reappearing in a fresh costume, returning at
length in wide sailor's trousers of blue silk, her bosom partially
covered in white cambric. As the band played the first notes of the
hornpipe, she withdrew a few hair-pins, and forthwith an abundant
darkness fell to her dancing knees, almost to her tiny dancing feet,
heavy as a wave, shadowy as sleeping water. As some rich weed that
the warm sea holds and swings, as some fair cloud lingers in radiant
atmosphere, her hair floated, every parted tress an impalpable film
of gold in the crude sunlight of the ray turned upon her; and when
she danced towards the footlights, the bright softness of the threads
clung almost amorously about her white wrists--faint cobwebs hanging
from white flowers were not more faint, fair, and soft; wonderful was
the hair of this dancing girl, suggesting all fabled enchantments,
all visions of delicate perfume and all the poetry of evanescent
colour.
She was followed by the joyous Peggy Praed (sweet minx), the soul and
voice of the small back streets. Screwing up her winsome, comical
face, drawling a word here, accentuating a word there, she evoked, in
an illusive moment, the washing day, the quarrel with the
mother-in-law (who wanted to sleep in the house), tea-time, and the
trip to the sea-side with all its concomitant adventures amid bugs
and landladies. With an accent, with a gesture, she recalled in a
moment a phase of life, creating pictures vivid as they were
transitory, but endowing each with the charm of the best and most
highly finished works of the Dutch masters. Lords, courtesans, and
fellow-artists crowded to listen, and profiting by the opportunity,
Kitty touched Mike on the shoulder with her fan.
"Now we had better go."
"I'm driving to-morrow. Come down to Brighton with us," said Dicky
the driver. "Shall I keep places for you?"
Rising, Kitty laid her hand upon his mouth to silence him, and
whispered, "Yes; we'll come, and good-night."
In the soft darkness of the brougham, gently swung together, the
passing gaslights revealing the blueness of the cushions, a diamond
stud flashing intermittently, they lay, their souls sunk deep in the
intimacy of a companionship akin to that of a nest--they, the
inheritors of the pleasure of the night and the gladness of the
morrow.
Dressing was delirium, and Kitty had to adjure Mike to say no more;
if he did she should go mad. Breakfast had to be skipped, and it was
only by bribing a cabman to gallop to Westminster that they caught
the coach. Even so they would have missed it had not Mike sprung at
risk of limb from the hansom and sped on the toes of his patent
leather shoes down the street, his gray cover coat flying.
"What a toff he is," thought Kitty, full of the pride of her love.
Bessie, whom dear Laura had successfully chaperoned into well-kept
estate, sat with Dicky on the box; Laura sat with Harding in the back
seat; Muchross and Snowdown sat opposite them. The middle of the
coach was taken up by what Muchross said were a couple of bar-girls
and their mashers.
On rolled the coach over Westminster Bridge, through Lambeth, in
picturesqueness and power, a sympathetic survival of aristocratic
days. The aristocracy and power so vital in the coach was soon
communicated to those upon it. And now when Jem Gregory, the
celebrated whip, with one leg swinging over the side, tootled, the
passers-by seemed littler than ever, the hansoms at the corner seemed
smaller, and the folk standing at their poor doors seemed meaner. As
they passed through those hungry streets, ragged urchins came
alongside, throwing themselves over and over, beseeching coppers from
Muchross, and he threw a few, urging them to further prostrations.
Tootle, Jim, tootle; whether they starve or whether they feed, we
have no thought. The clatter of the hooves of the bays resounds
through those poor back-rooms, full of human misery; the notes of our
horn are perhaps sounding now in dying ears. Tootle, Jim, tootle;
what care we for that pale mother and her babe, or that toiling
coster whose barrow is too heavy for him! If there is to be
revolution, it will not be in our time; we are the end of the world.
Laura is with us to-day, Bessie sits on the box, Kitty is with our
Don Juan; we know there is gold in our pockets, we see our courtesans
by us, our gallant bays are bearing us away to pleasure. Tootle, Jim,
my boy, tootle; the great Muchross is shouting derision at the poor
perspiring coster. "Pull up, you devil, pull up," he cries, and
shouts to the ragged urchins and scatters halfpence that they may
tumble once more in the dirt. See the great Muchross, the
clean-shaven face of the libertine priest, the small sardonic eyes.
Hurrah for the great Muchross! Long may he live, the singer of "What
cheer, Ria?" the type and epitome of the life whose outward signs are
drags, brandies-and-soda, and pale neckties.
Gaily trotted the four bays, and as Clapham was approached brick
tenements disappeared in Portland stone and iron railings. A girl was
seen swinging; the white flannels of tennis players passed to and
fro, and a lady stood by a tall vase watering red geraniums. Harding
told Mike that the shaven lawns and the greenhouses explained the
lives of the inhabitants, and represented their ideas; and Laura's
account of the money she had betted was followed by an anecdote
concerning a long ramble in a wood, with a man who had walked her
about all day without even so much as once asking her if she had a
mouth on her.
"Talking of mouths," said Mike, as they pulled up to change horses,
"we had to start without breakfast. I wonder if one could get a
biscuit and a glass of milk."
"Glass of milk!" screamed Muchross, "no milk allowed on this coach."
"Well, I don't think I could drink a brandy-and-soda at this time in
the morning."
"At what time could you drink one then? Why, it is nearly eleven
o'clock! What will you have, Kitty? A brandy?"
"No, I think I'll take a glass of beer."
The beauty of the landscape passed unperceived. But the road was full
of pleasing reminiscences. As they passed through Croydon dear old
Laura pointed out an hotel where she used to go every Sunday with the
dear Earl, and in the afternoons they played cribbage in the
sitting-room overlooking the street. And some miles further on the
sweetness of the past burst unanimously from all when Dicky pointed
out with his whip the house where Bessie had gone for her honeymoon,
and where they all used to spend from Saturday till Monday. The
incident of Bill Longside's death was pathetically alluded to. He had
died of D. T. "Impossible," said Laura, "to keep him from it. Milly,
poor little woman, had stuck to him almost to the last. He had had
his last drink there. Muchross and Dicky had carried him out."
The day was filled with fair remembrances of summer, and the earth
was golden and red; and the sky was folded in lawny clouds, which the
breeze was lifting, revealing beautiful spaces of blue. All the
abundant hedgerows were red with the leaf of the wild cherry, and the
oak woods wore masses of sere and russet leafage. Spreading beeches
swept right down to the road, shining in beautiful death; once a
pheasant rose and flew through the polished trunks towards the yellow
underwood. Sprays trembled on naked rods, ferns and grasses fell
about the gurgling watercourses, a motley undergrowth; and in the
fields long teams were ploughing, the man labouring at the plough,
the boy with the horses; and their smock-frocks and galligaskins
recalled an ancient England which time has not touched, and which
lives in them. And the farm-houses of gables and weary brick,
sometimes well-dismantled and showing the heavy beam, accentuated
these visions of past days. Yes, indeed, the brick villages, the old
gray farm-houses, and the windmill were very beautiful in the endless
yellow draperies which this autumn country wore so romantically. One
spot lingered in Mike's memory, so representative did it seem of that
country. The road swept round a beech wood that clothed a knoll,
descending into the open country by a tall redding hedge to a sudden
river, and cows were seen drinking and wading in the shallows, and
this last impression of the earth's loveliness smote the poet's heart
to joy which was near to grief.
At Three Bridges they had lunch, in an old-fashioned hotel called the
George. Muchross cut the sirloin, filling the plates so full of juicy
meat that the ladies protested. Snowdown paid for champagne, and in
conjunction with the wine, the indelicate stories which he narrated
made some small invasion upon the reserve of the bar-girls; for their
admirers did not dare forbid them the wine, and could not prevent
them from smiling. After lunch the gang was photographed in the
garden, and Muchross gave the village flautist half a "quid," making
him promise to drink their healths till he was "blind."
"I never like to leave a place without having done some good," he
shouted, as he scrambled into his seat.
This sentiment was applauded until the sensual torpor of digestion
intervened. The clamour of the coach lapsed into a hush of voices.
The women leaned back, drawing their rugs about their knees, for it
was turning chilly, arms were passed round yielding waists, hands lay
in digestive poses, and eyes were bathed in deep animal indolences.
Conversation had almost ceased. The bar-girls had not whispered one
single word for more than an hour; Muchross had not shouted for at
least twenty minutes; the only interruption that had occurred was an
unexpected stopping of the coach, for the off-leader was pulling
Dicky so hard that he had to ask Jem to take the ribbons, and now he
snoozed in the great whip's place, seriously incommoding Snowdown
with his great weight. Suddenly awaking to a sense of his
responsibility Muchross roared--
"What about the milk-cans?"
"You'd better be quick," answered Jem, "we shall be there in five
minutes."
One of the customs of the road was a half-crown lottery, the winning
member to be decided by the number of milk-cans outside a certain
farm-house.
"Ease off a bit, Jem," bawled Muchross. "Damn you! give us time to
get the numbers out."
"It ain't my fault if you fall asleep."
"The last stage was five miles this side of Cuckfield, you ought to
know the road by this time. How many are we?"
"Eight," shouted Dicky, blowing the blatant horn. "You're on, Jem,
aren't you? Number two or three will get it; at this time of the year
milk is scarce. Pass on the hat quick; quick, you devil, pass it on.
What have you got, Kitty?"
"Just like my luck," cried Muchross; "I've got eight."
"And I've seven," said Snowdown; "never have I won yet. In the autumn
I get sevens and eights, in the summer ones and twos. Damn!"
"I've got five," said Kitty, "and Mike has got two; always the lucky
one. A lady leaves him four thousand a year, and he comes down here
and rooks us."
The coach swept up a gentle ascent, and Muchross shouted--
"Two milk-cans! Hand him over the quid and chuck him out!"
The downs rose, barring the sky; and they passed along the dead level
of the weald, leaving Henfield on their right; and when a great piece
of Gothic masonry appeared between some trees, Mike told Kitty how it
had been once John Norton's intention to build a monastery.
"He would have founded a monastery had he lived two centuries ago,"
said Harding; "but this is an age of concessions, and instead he puts
up a few gargoyles. Time modifies but does not eradicate, and the
modern King Cophetua marries not the beggar, but the bar-maid."
The conversation fell in silence, full of consternation; and all
wondered if the two ladies in front had understood, and they were
really bar-maids. Be this as it may, they maintained their
unalterable reserve; and with suppressed laughter, Mike persuaded
Dicky, who had resumed the ribbons, to turn into the lodge-gates.
"Who is this Johnny?" shouted Muchross. "If he won't stand a drink,
we don't want none of his blooming architecture."
"And I wouldn't touch a man with a large pole who didn't like women,"
said Laura. At which emphatic but naïve expression of opinion, the
whole coach roared;--even the bar-girls smiled.
"Architecture! It is a regular putty castle," said Kitty, as they
turned out of an avenue of elms and came in view of the house.
Not a trace of the original Italian house remained. The loggia had
been replaced by a couple of Gothic towers. Over the central hall he
had placed a light lantern roof, and the billiard-room had been
converted into a chapel. A cold and corpse-like sky was flying; the
shadows falling filled the autumn path with sensations of deep
melancholy. But the painted legend of St. George overthrowing the
dragon, which John had placed in commemoration of his victories over
himself, in the central hall, glowed full of colour and story; and in
the melodious moan of the organ, and in the resonant chord which
closes the awful warning of the _Dies Iræ_, he realized the soul of
his friend. Castle, window, and friend were now one in his brain, and
seized with dim, undefinable weariness of his companions, and an
irritating longing to see John, Mike said--
"I must go and see him."
"We can't wait here while you are paying visits; who doesn't like
getting drunk or singing, 'What cheer, Ria?' Let's give him a song."
Then the whole coach roared: even the bar-girls joined in.
"What cheer, Ria?
Ria's on the job;
What cheer, Ria?
Speculate a bob."
As soon as he could make himself heard, Mike said--
"You need not wait for me. We are only five minutes from Brighton.
I'll ride over in an hour's time. Do you wait for me at the Ship,
Kitty."
"I don't think this at all nice of you."
Mike waved his hand; and as he stood on the steps of this Gothic
mansion, listening to the chant, watching the revellers disappearing
in the gray and yellow gloom of the park, he said--
"The man here is the one who has seized what is best in life; he
alone has loved. I should have founded with him a new religious
order. I should walk with him at the head of the choir. Bah! life is
too pitifully short. I should like to taste of every pleasure--of
every emotion; and what have I tasted? Nothing. I have done nothing.
I have wheedled a few women who wanted to be wheedled, that is all."