HARD HIT.
Lucius Davoren found himself curiously disturbed by the memory of
that pretty face in his own rank of life—that glimpse of a fireside
different from the common firesides of the Shadrack-Basin district—the
fat and prosperous hearths, where the atmosphere was odorous with tea,
shrimps, muffins, and gin-and-water; the barren hearth-stoves by which
destitution hugged itself in its rags. He went about his daily work
with his accustomed earnestness, was no whit the less tender to the
little children, watched with the same anxious care by pauper sick
beds, handled shattered limbs or loathsome sores with the same gentle
touch; in a word, did his duty thoroughly, in this dismal, initiative
stage of his career.
But he never passed Cedar House without a regretful sigh and a
lingering gaze at its blank upper windows; which, showing no trace of
the life within, had a wall-eyed look that was worse than the utter
blindness of closed shutters. He sometimes went out of his way even,
for the sake of passing those inexorable walls. He wasted a few minutes
of his busy day loitering by the iron gate, hoping that by some kindly
caprice of Fortune the pale sweet face of Lucille Sivewright would
appear behind the rusty bars, the ponderous hinge would creak, and the
girl who haunted his thoughts would emerge from her gloomy prison.
‘Does she never come out?’ he asked himself one fine winter day, when
there was sunshine even in the realms of Shadrack. It was a month
after his adventure with Homer Sivewright, and he had lingered by
the gate a good many times. ‘Does she never breathe the free air of
heaven, never see the faces of mankind? Is she a cloistered nun in all
but the robe, and without the companionship which may make a convent
tolerable?—without even the affection of that grim old grandfather? for
how coldly he spoke of her! What a life!’
Lucius was full of pity for this girl, whom he had only known one
brief hour. If any one had suggested that he was in love with her, he
would have scorned the notion. Yet there are passions which endure
for a lifetime; which defy death and blossom above a grave; though
their history may be reckoned by rare hours of brightness, too easily
reckoned in the dull sum of life.
‘Love at sight is but the fancy of poets and fools,’ thought Lucius;
‘but it would be strange if I were not sorry for a fair young life thus
blighted.’
His violin had a new pathos for him now, in those occasional hours of
leisure when he laid aside his books and opened the case which held
that magician. His favourite sonatas breathed a languid melancholy,
which sounded to him like the complaint of an imprisoned soul—that
princess of fairy tale—the bric-à-brac dealer’s granddaughter. But to
think of her thus, as he played dreamily by his lonely fireside, was
only to feel a natural compassion for an oppressed fellow-creature.
This tendency to dwell upon one subject, and that a foolish one, since
his pity could not be of the smallest service to its object, finally
worried him not a little. Thus it was that, finding himself his own
master an hour or so earlier than usual one January afternoon, he told
himself that the wisest thing he could do would be to get away from the
Shadrack-road atmosphere altogether.
‘The life I lead is too narrow, too completely monotonous,’ he thought.
‘No wonder I have taken to exaggerate the importance of trifles. Yes,
I will refresh myself by a few hours’ liberty in a brighter world. I
will go and hunt up Geoffrey Hossack.’
They were firm friends still, though their lives lay as wide apart as
two rivers which have their source from the same watershed, and wander
off by opposite ways to the sea, never to touch again. They had lost
sight of each other for some time of late. Geoffrey, ever a peripatetic
spirit, had been doing Norway, with an excursus into Lapland during
the last two years; but a letter received just before Christmas had
announced his return, and his sojourn at a manor-house in Yorkshire.
‘I shall begin the new year in the City of cities,’ he wrote; ‘and
one of my first occupations will be to beat up your quarters in that
queer world of yours beyond the Tower. But if you are kind enough to
forestall me, you will find me in my old rooms at Philpott’s.—Yours, as
per usual, G. H.’
The new year had begun, and had brought no sign from Geoffrey; so
Lucius took advantage of his leisure to go westward in quest of his
friend. He detested the slow tortures of an omnibus, and was too poor
to afford himself a hansom; so he gave himself the luxury of a walk.
That journey took him almost from one end of London to the other.
The forest of spars, the ropewalk, the open gates of the docks,
the perpetual procession of hogsheads, cotton bales, iron bars,
packing-cases, and petroleum barrels, gave place to the crowded streets
of the City, where all the operations of commerce seemed to be carried
on quietly, by men who walked to and fro, carrying no merchandise,
but buying and selling as it were by sign and countersign. Then came
that borderland on the westward side of Temple Bar—that somewhat
shabby and doubtful region where loom the churches of St. Clement and
St. Mary, which seem to have been especially designed as perpetual
standing impediments to the march of architectural progress in this
quarter; then the brighter shop-windows and more holiday air of the
western Strand; and then Charing-cross; and a little way farther on,
hanging-on to the skirts of Pall Mall and the Clubs, behold Philpott’s
or the Cosmopolitan Hotel, an old-fashioned house with a narrow façade
in red-brick, pinched-in between its portlier neighbours—a house which
looked small, but boasted of making up forty beds, and retaining all
the year round a staff of thirty servants.
Mr. Hossack was at home. The waiter of whom Lucius asked the question
brightened at the sound of his name, as if he had been a personal
friend, and took Lucius under his protection on the instant.
‘This way, sir; the first-floor. Mr. Hossack has his own particular
rooms here. We once refused them to a Cabinet Minister, because Mr.
Hossack wanted them.’
‘A general favourite, I suppose.’
‘Lord bless you, sir, down to the vegetable maid, we worship him.’
The enthusiastic waiter opened a door, and ushered in the guest.
There had been no question as to card or name. Geoffrey Hossack was
accessible as the sunshine.
He was half buried in a low capacious chair, his head flung back on the
cushions, a cigar between his lips, an open French novel flung face
downwards on the carpet beside him, amongst a litter of newspapers. The
winter dusk had almost deepened into night, and the room was unlighted
save by the fire. Yet even in that fitful light Lucius saw that his
friend’s countenance was moody; a fact so rare as to awaken curiosity,
or even concern.
‘Geoff, old fellow!’
‘Why, Davoren!’ cried Geoffrey, starting up from his luxurious repose,
and flinging the unfinished cigar into the fire. ‘How good of you! And
I ought to have come to your place. I’ve been in London a fortnight.’
‘My dear old boy, one hardly expects Alcibiades beyond the Minories. I
have been living at that dingy end of town until to come westward is a
new sensation. When I saw Trafalgar-square and the lighted windows of
yonder Club to-night, I felt like Columbus when he sighted the coast of
San Salvador. I had a leisure afternoon, and thought I couldn’t spend
it better than in looking you up. And now, Geoff, for your Norwegian
and Laplandian experiences. You were looking uncommonly gloomy when I
came in; as if your memories of the north were not of the brightest.’
‘My northern memories are pleasant enough,’ said the other, putting
aside the question lightly, just in that old familiar way Lucius knew
so well. ‘Come, Lucius, plant yourself there,’ rolling over another
capacious chair, the last device of some satanic upholsterer for the
propagation of slothful habits; ‘take one of those Havanas, and light
up. I can never talk freely to a man till I can hardly see his face
across the clouds of his tobacco—a native modesty of disposition, I
suppose; or perhaps that disinclination to look my fellow-man straight
in the face which is accounted one of the marks of a villanous
character. Goodish weed, isn’t it? Do you remember British Columbia,
Davoren, and the long days and nights when there was no tobacco?’
‘Do I remember?’ echoed the surgeon, looking at the fire. ‘Am I ever
likely to forget?’
‘Of course not. The question was a mere _façon de parler_. There are
things that no man can forget. Can I forget, for instance, how you
saved my life? how through all those wearisome nights and days when I
was lying rolled up in my buffalo skins raving like a lunatic, fancying
myself in all sorts of places and among all sorts of people, you were
at once doctor and sick-nurse, guardian and provider?’
‘Please don’t talk of that time, Geoff. There are some things better
forgotten. I did no more for you than I’d have done for a stranger;
except that my heart went with my service, and would have almost broken
if you had died. Our sufferings and our peril at that time seem to me
too bitter even for remembrance. I can’t endure to look back at them.’
‘Strange!’ exclaimed Geoffrey lightly. ‘To me they afford an unfailing
source of satisfaction. I rarely order a dinner without thinking of
the days when my vital powers were sustained—“sustained” is hardly
the word, say rather “suspended”—by mouldy pemmican. I seldom open a
new box of cigars without remembering those doleful hours in which
I smoked dried grass, flavoured with the last scrapings of nicotine
from my meerschaum. It is the converse of what somebody says about a
sorrow’s crown of sorrow. The memory of past hardship sweetens the
comfort of the present. But I do shudder sometimes when I remember
awakening from _my_ delirium to find _you_ down with brain-fever, and
poor little Schanck sitting awestricken by your side, like a man who
had been holding converse with spirits. I don’t mean schnapps, but
something uncanny. Thank God, those Canadian emigrants found us out
soon afterwards, or He only knows how our story would have ended.’
‘Thank God!’ echoed Lucius solemnly. ‘I know nothing of my illness,
can remember nothing till I found myself strapped like a bundle upon a
horse’s back, riding through the snow.’
‘We moved you before you were quite right in your head,’ answered
Geoffrey apologetically. ‘The Canadians wouldn’t wait any longer. It
was our only chance of being put into the right track.’
‘You did a wise thing, Geoff. It was good for me to wake up far from
that wretched log-hut.’
‘Come now, after all, we had some very jolly times there,’ said
Geoffrey, with his habit of making the best of life; ‘sitting by the
blazing pine-logs jawing away like old boots. It was only when our
’baccy ran out that existence became a burden. I give you my honour
that sometimes when civilised life begins to hang heavy, I look back
to the days when we crossed the Rocky Mountains with a regretful sigh.
I almost envy that plucky little German sea-captain who left us at
Victoria, and went on to San Francisco to dig for gold.’
‘I verily believe, Geoff, you would have contrived to be cheerful
in the Black Hole at Calcutta, or on the middle passage. You have a
limitless reserve fund of animal spirits.’
‘There you’re wrong. I believed as much myself till the other day. But
I have lately discovered a latent faculty hitherto unsuspected even by
myself; the capacity for being miserable.’
‘You have sustained some family affliction,—or you have taken to
wearing tight boots?’
‘Neither. I wish you’d help yourself to some brandy-and-soda yonder,’
interjected Mr. Hossack, pointing to a side-table on which those
refreshments were provided, and ringing the bell clamorously; ‘I’ll
order dinner before I unbosom myself. George,’ to the enthusiastic
waiter, who appeared in prompt answer to the noisy summons, ‘the best
you can do for this gentleman and me, at seven sharp; and don’t
come fidgeting in and out to lay the cloth until five minutes before
you bring the soup tureen. By the way, we’ll begin with oysters and
Montrachet, and you can give us a bottle of Yquem afterwards. No
sparkling wine. We’ll wind up with Chambertin, if you’ve a bottle in
good condition. But don’t bring it half-frozen out of the cellar,
or muddled by hasty thawing. Exercise judgment, George; you have
to deal with connoisseurs. Now,’ continued this epicurean youth,
flinging himself back into the depths of his chair, ‘before I begin my
egotistical prosing, let me hear what you’ve been doing all this time,
my Lucius.’
‘That may be told in two words. Hard work.’
‘Poor old Davoren!’
‘Don’t take that simple statement as a complaint. It is work I like. I
might have set up my Penates in what is called a genteel neighbourhood,
and earned my crust a good deal more easily than I can earn it yonder.
But I wanted wide experience—a complete initiation—and I went where
humanity is thickest. The result has more than satisfied me. If ever I
move westward it will be to Savile-row.’
The sybarite contemplated his friend admiringly, yet with a stifled
yawn, as if the very contemplation of so much vital force were
fatiguing.
‘Upon my word, I don’t know that I wouldn’t exchange my three-per-cents
for your ambition, Lucius,’ he said. ‘To have something to achieve,
something to win—that is the keenest rapture of the human mind, that
makes the chief delight of the chase. Upon my honour, I envy you. I
seem to awake to the conviction that it is a misfortune to be born with
the proverbial silver spoon in one’s mouth.’
‘The man who begins life with a fortune starts ahead of the penniless
struggler in the race for fame,’ answered the surgeon. ‘There is plenty
of scope for your ambition, Geoff, in spite of the three-per-cents.’
‘What could I do?’
‘Try to make yourself famous.’
‘Not possible! Unless I took to a pea-green coat, like that rich
young West Indian swell in the last generation. Fame! bah! for Brown,
Jones, or Robinson to talk of making themselves famous is about as
preposterous as it would be for Hampstead-hill to try and develop a
volcano. Men born to fame have a special brand upon their foreheads,
like the stamp on Veuve Clicquot’s champagne corks. I think I see it in
the anxious lines that mark yours, Lucius.’
‘There is the senate,’ said Davoren; ‘the natural aim of an
Englishman’s ambition.’
‘What! truckle to rural shopkeepers for the privilege of wasting
the summer evenings and the spring tides in a stuffy manufactory of
twaddle. _Pas si bête!_’
‘After all,’ returned Lucius, with a faint sigh, ‘you have something
better than ambition, which is only life in the future—mere fetish
worship, perhaps—or the adoration of a shadow which may never become
a substance. You have youth, and the power to enjoy all youth’s
pleasures; that is to say, life in the present.’
‘So I thought till very lately,’ answered Geoffrey, with another sigh;
‘but there is a new flavour of bitterness in the wine of life. Lucius,
I’m going to ask you a serious question. Do you believe in love at
first sight?’
A startling question at any rate, for it brought the blood into the
surgeon’s toil-worn face. Happily they were still sitting in the
fire-light, which just now waxed dim.
‘About as much as I believe in ghosts or spirit-rapping,’ he answered
coldly.
‘Which means that you’ve never seen a ghost or had a message from
spirit-land,’ answered Geoffrey. ‘Six months ago I should have called
any one an ass who could love a woman of whom he knew no more than that
her face was lovely and her voice divine. But as somebody—a baker’s
daughter, wasn’t she?—observed, “We know what we are, but we know not
what we may be.”’
‘You have fallen in love, Geoff?’
‘Descended into abysmal depths of folly, a million fathoms below the
soundings of common sense. There’s nothing romantic in the business
either, which of course makes it worse. It’s only foolish. I didn’t
save the lady’s life; by stopping a pair of horses that were galloping
to perdition with her; or by swimming out a mile or so to snatch
her from the devouring jaws of an ebb tide. I have no excuse for my
madness. The lady is a concert-singer, and I first saw her while
dancing attendance upon some country cousins who were staying in town
the other day, and led me like a victim to musical mornings and evening
recitals, and so on. You know that I have not a passionate love of
music.’
‘I know that you had a very moderate appreciation of my violin.’
‘All the tunes sounded so much alike. Want of taste on my part, of
course. However, my cousins—Arabella and Jessie, nice girls, but
domineering—insisted that I should go to concerts, so I went. They
both sing and play, and wanted to improve their style, they said;
selfishly ignoring the fact that I had no style to improve; and
allowing me to pay for all the tickets. One morning—splendid weather
for snowballing; I wished myself young again and at Winchester, as
I looked at the streets—we went to a Recital, which took place in a
dreary-looking house near Manchester-square, by the kind permission
of the tenant. The concert people might as well have borrowed a
roomy family vault. It would have been quite as cheerful. Well, we
surrendered our tickets—parallelograms of sky-blue pasteboard, and
uncommonly dear at half a guinea—to a shabby footman, who ushered us
up-stairs over a threadbare stair carpet to a faded drawing-room, where
we found some elderly ladies of the dowdy order, and a miscellaneous
collection of antique gentlemen in well-worn coats of exploded cut.
These I took to represent the musical nobility. It was not a cheerful
concert. First came a quartette, in ever so many parts, like a dull
sermon; a quartette for a piano, violoncello, and two fiddles, with
firstly, and secondly, and thirdly. Every now and then, when the
violoncello gave forth rather deeper groans than usual, or one of
the fiddles prolonged a wire-drawn note, the musical nobility gave a
little gasp, and looked at one another, and one of the old gentlemen
tapped the lid of his snuffbox. After the quartette we had a pianoforte
solo, to my unenlightened mind an arid waste of tuneless chords,
and little meandering runs to nowhere in particular, a little less
interesting than a problem in Euclid. I prefer my cousin Arabella’s
hearty thumping, and frantic rushes up and down the keyboard, to this
milk-and-water style, which is, I understand, classical. Number three
was a vocal duet by Handel, which I won’t describe, as it lulled me
into a placid slumber. When I reopened my eyes there was a gentle
murmur of admiration floating in the atmosphere; and I beheld a lady
dressed in black, with a sheet of music in her hand, waiting for the
end of the symphony.’
‘_The_ lady, I suppose,’ said Lucius, duly interested.
‘The lady. I won’t attempt to describe her; for after all what can one
say of the loveliest woman except that she has a straight nose, fine
eyes, a good complexion? And yet these constitute so small a part of
Beauty. One may see them in the street every day. This one stood there
like a statue in the cold wintry light, and seemed to me the most
perfect being I had ever beheld. She appeared divinely unconscious of
her beauty, as unconscious as Aphrodite must have been in that wild
free world of newborn Greece, though all creation worshipped her. She
didn’t look about her with a complacent smile, challenging admiration.
Her dark-fringed eyelids drooped over the violet-gray eyes, as she
looked downward at the music. Her dress was Quaker-like, a linen collar
round the full firm throat, the perfect arm defined by the plain black
sleeve. Art had done nothing to enhance or to detract from her beauty.
She sang “Auld Robin Gray” in a voice that went to my inmost heart. The
musical nobility sniffed and murmured rapturously. The old gentleman
rapped his snuffbox, and said Bwava! and the song was re-demanded. She
curtsied and began something about a blue bodice and Lubin, and in this
there were bird-like trills, and a prolonged shake, clear and strong
as the carol of a sky-lark. Lucius, I was such a demented ass at that
moment, that if the restraints of civilisation hadn’t been uncommonly
strong upon me, I should have wept like a schoolboy before a caning.’
‘Something in the _timbre_ of the voice,’ said Lucius, ‘simpatica.’
‘Sim-anybody you like; it knocked me over as if I’d been a skittle.’
‘Have you seen her since?’
‘Have I seen her! I have followed her from concert-room to
concert-room, until my _sensorium_—that’s the word, isn’t it?—aches
from the amount of classical music that has been inflicted upon it—the
x minors and z majors, and so forth. Sometimes I hunted her down in
some other aristocratic drawing-room, by the kind permission, &c.;
sometimes I found her at the Hanover-square Rooms. Mitchell has a
standing order to send me a ticket for every concert at which she
sings. It’s deuced hard work. I’m due this time to-morrow at St.
George’s Hall, Liverpool.’
‘But, my dear old Geoff, can anything be more foolish?’ expostulated
Lucius, forgetful of that rusty old gate in the Shadrack-road, to which
purest pity had so often led him.
‘I daresay not. But I can’t help myself.’
‘Do you know anything about the lady?’
‘All that a diligent process of private inquiry could discover; and yet
very little. The lady is a widow—’
‘Disenchanting fact.’
‘Her name, Bertram.’
‘Assumed, no doubt.’
‘Very possibly. She has lodgings in Keppel-street, Russell-square, and
lives a life of extreme seclusion with one little girl. I saw the child
one morning, a seraph of seven or eight, with flowing flaxen hair,
blue frock, and scarlet legs, like a tropical bird, or a picture by
Millais.’
‘That sounds like respectability.’
‘Respectability!’ cried Geoffrey, flaming with indignation. ‘I would no
more doubt her honour than I would question that of my dead mother. If
you had heard her sing “Voi che sapéte,” the clear thrilling tones, now
swelling into a flood of melody, now sinking to the tenderest whisper!
Could such tones as those come from an impure heart? No, Lucius. I need
no certificate of character to tell me that Jane Bertram is true.’
Lucius smiled—the slow smile of worldly wisdom—and then breathed a
faint regretful sigh for his friend’s delusion.
‘My dear Geoff,’ he said, ‘I daresay the conclusion you arrive at is
natural to the unsophisticated mind. A great orator addresses us like
a demigod; ergo, he must be by nature godlike. Yet his life may be no
better than Thurlow’s or Wilkes’s. A woman is divinely beautiful; and
we argue that her soul, too, must be divine. The history of the musical
stage tells us that in days gone by there were women who sang like
angels, yet were by no means perfect as women. For God’s sake, dear old
friend, beware of music. Of all man’s ensnarers the siren with lyre and
voice is the most dangerous. Of all woman’s tempters he who breathes
his earthly desires in heavenly-sounding melody is the most fatal. In
my own family there has been a wretched example of this nature. I speak
with all the bitterness that comes from bitter experience.’
‘That may be so,’ returned the other, unconvinced; ‘but there are
instincts which cannot lie. My belief in Jane Bertram is fixed as the
sun in heaven.’
‘Did you contrive to obtain an introduction?’
‘No. I found that impossible. She knows no one, goes nowhere, except
for her professional engagements. Even the people who engage her—music
publishers, and what not—know nothing about her; except that she
sings better than five out of six sopranos of established reputation,
and that she has struggled into her present modest position out of
obscurity and hard work. She was only a teacher of music until very
lately. She would do wonders if she went on the stage, my informant
told me; and such a course was suggested to her; but she peremptorily
declined to entertain the idea. She earns, in the season, about five
pounds a week. What a pittance for a goddess!’
‘And who was Mr. Bertram?’
‘I was not curious upon that subject; enough for me to know that he is
in his grave. But had I been ever so inquisitive my curiosity must
have gone unsatisfied. The people who know so little about her know
still less about her late husband. He has been dead some years. That is
all they could tell me.’
‘And you positively go down to Liverpool to hear her sing!’
‘As I would go back to the shores of the Red River for the same
purpose. Ay, live again on mouldy pemmican, and hear again the howling
of the wolves at sunset.’
‘And is this kind of thing to go on indefinitely?’
‘It will go on until circumstances favour my passion, until I can win
my way to her friendship, to her confidence; until I can say to her,
without fear of repulse or discouragement, “Jane, I love you.” I am
quite content to serve a longish apprenticeship, even to classical
music, for the sake of that reward.’
Lucius stretched out his hand, and the two men’s broad palms met in the
grasp of friendship.
‘Upon my honour, Geoffrey, I admire you,’ said the surgeon. ‘I won’t
preach any more. Granted that your passion is foolish, at least it’s
thorough. I honour a man who can say to himself, “That woman I will
marry, and no other; that woman I will follow, through honour and
dishonour, evil report and good report—”’
‘Stop,’ cried Geoffrey; ‘let there be no mention of dishonour in the
same breath with her name. If I did not believe in her truth and
purity, I would pluck this passion out of my breast—as the Carthusian
prior in the mediæval legend plucked deadly sin out of the entrails of
St. Hugo of Lincoln—though I cut my heart open to do it. I love her,
and I believe in her.’
‘And if you ceased to believe in her, you would cease to love her?’
‘Yes,’ answered Geoffrey Hossack firmly.
He had risen from his seat by the hearth, and was pacing the dusky
chamber, where the street lamps without and the red fire within made a
curious half-light. Truly had his friend called him thorough. Intense,
passionate, and impulsive was this generous nature—a nature which had
never been spoiled by that hard school in which all men must learn
whose first necessity is to get their living, that dreary breadwinner’s
academical career to which God condemned Adam as the direst punishment
of his disobedience and deceit. ‘No longer shalt thou wander careless
in these flowery vales and groves, where generous emotions and
affectionate impulses and noble thoughts might bud and blossom in the
happy idlesse. For thee, sinner, the daily round of toil, the constant
hurry, the ever-goading pressure of sordid necessities, which shall
make thee selfish and hard and remorseless, with no leisure in which
to be kind to thy brother strugglers, with hardly a pause in which to
remember thy God!’