=A Well-Paid Poem.=
Among the quieter satisfactions of life must be ranked in a high place
the peace of a man who has made up his mind. He is no longer weighing
perplexing possibilities, but, having chosen his path, feels that he
has done all that can be done, and that this conviction will enable him
to bear with patience the outcome of his determination, whatever it may
be. Of course he is wrong, and if misfortune comes, his philosophy will
go to the wall, but for the moment it seems as if fate cannot harm him,
because he has set his course and bidden defiance to it.
Dale had made up his mind to disregard cavilers, not to write the
Radical ditty, to write the ode of welcome, and, lastly, to follow
whither his inclination led. And, on the top of these comforting
resolutions, came the removal of his thorn in the flesh--Johnstone's
be-placarded shop window--and the glow of well-rewarded benevolence
with which he had witnessed Nellie Fane's ill-concealed delight in
her return to Littlehill and Arthur Angell's openly declared pleasure
in greeting her. Dale began to think that he had too easily allowed
himself to be put out, and had been false to his poetic temperament by
taking trifles hardly. He was jocund as he walked, and nature responded
to his mood: the sun shone bright and warm on him, and the spring air
was laden with pleasant hints of coming summer. He wondered how and
why, a few weeks ago, he had nearly bidden a disgusted farewell to
Market Denborough.
Now, when a man sets out in such a mood, being a young man, and a man,
as they used to say, of sensibility, next to anything may happen. From
his contented meditations on the happy arrangement he had made for his
friends, Dale's thoughts traveled on to his own affairs. He was going
to the Grange--he was always going to the Grange now, and he seemed
always welcome there. Mrs. Delane was kind, the Squire was effusive,
and Janet---- Here his thoughts became impossible to record in lowly
prose. The goddess had become flesh for him; still stately and almost
severe in her maiden reserve to all others, as she had once been to
him, now for him she smiled and blushed, and would look, and look
away, and look again, and vainly summon her tamed pride to hide what
her delight proclaimed. It was sudden. Oh, yes; anything worth having
was sudden, thought lucky Dale. Fame had been sudden, wealth had been
sudden. Should not love be sudden too?
"If I get a chance----" said Dale to himself, and he smiled and struck
at the weeds with his stick, and hummed a tune. Anything might happen.
The Prince was due in three days, and already flags and triumphal
arches were beginning to appear. It is to be hoped that the demand for
drugs was small, for Mr. Hedger was to be found everywhere but behind
his own counter, and Alderman Johnstone, having once taken the plunge,
was hardly less active in superintending the preparations. The men who
had carried those obnoxious boards were now more worthily earning their
bread by driving in posts and nailing up banners, and Dale saw that
Denborough was in earnest, and meant to make the reception a notable
testimony to its loyalty. He loitered to watch the stir for a little
while, for it was early afternoon, and he must not arrive at the Grange
too soon. Not even the ode itself, which he carried in his pocket,
could excuse an intrusion on the Squire's midday repose. As he stood
looking on he was accosted by Dr. Spink.
"I have just been to see Roberts," he said.
"Is he ill?"
"Yes. His wife sent for me. As you may suppose, she would not have done
so for nothing."
"What's the matter?"
"I don't like his state at all. He took no notice of me, but lay on his
bed, muttering to himself. I think he's a little touched here;" and the
doctor put a finger just under the brim of his well-brushed hat.
"Poor chap!" said Dale. "I should like to go and see him."
Spink discouraged any such idea.
"You're the very last person he ought to see. I want him to go away."
"Has he got any money?"
"Yes, I think so. His wife told me he had now."
"And won't he go?"
"He says he must stay till after the 15th"--the 15th was the great
day--"and then he will go. That's the only word I could get out of him.
I told his wife to let me know at once if there was any change for the
worse."
"It's hard on her, poor little woman," said Dale, passing on his way.
He found Tora Smith and Sir Harry at the Grange. Rather to his
surprise, Tora greeted him with friendly cordiality, accepting his
congratulations very pleasantly. He had expected her to show some
resentment at his refusal to write a song for her, but in Tora's mind
songs and poets, Liberal meetings, and even royal visits, had been,
for the time at least, relegated to a distant background of entire
unimportance. Captain Ripley was there also, with the ill-used air
that he could not conceal, although he was conscious that it only
aggravated his bad fortune. He took his leave a very few minutes after
Dale arrived; for what pleasure was there in looking on while everybody
purred over Dale, and told him his ode was the most magnificent tribute
ever paid to a youthful Prince? Dale, in his heart, thought the
same,--so does a man love what he creates,--but he bore his compliments
with a graceful outward modesty.
The afternoon was so unseasonably fine--such was the reason
given--that Janet and he found themselves walking in the garden, she
talking merrily of their preparations, he watching her fine, clear-cut
profile, and, as she turned to him in talk, the gay dancing of her eyes.
"Your doing it," she said, "just makes the whole thing perfect. How can
we thank you enough, Mr. Bannister?"
"The Captain did not seem to care about my verses," Dale remarked, with
a smile.
Janet blushed a little, and gave him a sudden glance--a glance that
was a whole book of confidences, telling what she never could have
told in words, what she never would have told at all, did not the eyes
sometimes outrun their mandate and speak unbidden of the brain.
Dale smiled again--this time in triumph.
"You like them?" he asked softly, caressing the little words with his
musical, lingering tones.
"Oh, yes, yes," she said, looking at him once more for a moment, and
then hastily away.
"I'll write you a volume twice as good, if--I may."
"Twice as good?" she echoed, with a laugh. "Now, honestly, don't you
think these perfect yourself?"
"They are good--better than any I wrote before"--he paused to watch her
face, and went on in a lower voice: "I knew you; but I shall do better
the more I know you and the better."
Janet had no light answer ready now. Her heart was beating, and she had
much ado not to bid him end her sweet, unbearable excitement.
They had reached the end of the terrace and passed into the wood that
skirted it to the west. Suddenly she made a movement as if to turn and
go back.
"No, no," he whispered in her ear; and, as she wavered, he caught her
by the arm, and, without words of asking or of doubt, drew her to him
and kissed her.
"My beauty, my queen, my love!" he whispered. "You love me, you love
me!"
She drew back her head, straightening the white column of her neck,
while her hands held his shoulders. "Ah, I would die for you!" she said.
Mrs. Delane was a woman of penetration. Though Janet told her nothing
of what had occurred,--for she and Dale agreed to let the matter remain
a secret till the impending festivities were over,--yet Mrs. Delane
saw something in her daughter's air which made her, that same evening,
express to the Squire her doleful conviction that the worst had
happened.
"I shall say nothing to Janet," she said, "till she speaks to me. I
can trust her absolutely. But I am afraid of it, George. Poor Gerard
Ripley!"
"My dear, I'm not going to break my heart about Gerard Ripley. I think
more of Jan."
"Well, of course, so do I. And I don't at all like it. He's not--well,
not our _sort_, as the young people say."
"Mary, you're talking slang. What's the matter with him? The match will
make Jan famous."
"Well, well, I don't like it, but you must have your way."
"It's not my way. It's Jan's way. Is she fond of him?"
"Terribly, I'm afraid, poor child!"
The Squire became a little irritated at this persistently sorrowful
point of view.
"Really, my dear, why shouldn't she be fond of him? It's not a bad
thing when people are going to marry."
"I wish I'd seen it in time to stop it."
"On the whole, Mary, I'm rather glad you didn't. I like the young
fellow."
In this state of things--with the lady eagerly consenting, and a father
all but ready to urge her on--well might Captain Ripley ride recklessly
home from Dirkham Grange, cursing the ways of women and the folly of
men, and promising himself to go to India and there be killed, to
the end that his tragic fate might bring a pang to Janet's heart in
future days. Well might he discover a sudden recall, and return to his
regiment, escaping the Denborough celebrations, and risking offense in
exalted quarters. So he went; and nobody at Denborough thought any more
about him--not even Janet, for joy swallows up pity, and the best of
humanity are allowed, without reproach, to be selfish once or twice in
life.
That same night, at dinner at Littlehill, Nellie Fane thought Dale had
never been so bright, so brilliant, or so merry. Under his leadership,
the fun and mirth waxed fast and furious, till it carried away her
doubts and fears, and Angell's sore wonderings why she looked always
at Dale and never at him, and Philip's troubled forebodings of sorrows
no friendly hand could avert. Dale's high spirits bore no check and
suffered no resistance, and there was a tumult in Littlehill, such as
had not been heard since its early indecorous days.
Suddenly, into this scene, followed hastily by Wilson, there broke,
hatless and cloakless, Ethel Roberts, her face pale and her eyes wide
with fear. Running to Philip Hume, she cried:
"My husband! He has gone, he has gone! We cannot find him. He has gone,
and taken the pistol with him. What shall I do? Oh, what shall I do?"