“J’AIME: IL FAUT QUE J’ESPERE.”
EUSTACE THORBURN found existence altogether a new kind of thing at the
old house amongst the Berkshire woods. His sorrow for the death of his
mother was no transient shadow, to be dispelled by the first bright
glimpse of sunlight that fell across his pathway. It was a deep and
enduring sorrow; but it was a grief which held a fixed place in his
mind, apart from the common joys and vexations of life. All through
those bright summer days the young man showed himself a cheerful
companion, an enthusiastic student, a willing and devoted worker; and
it was only by his mourning dress that those amongst whom he lived
were reminded of his recent loss. But every night, in the stillness of
his own room, the familiar agony came back to his breast; memory and
imagination travelled again upon the beaten track; and he thought of
his mother’s joyless womanhood and lonely death with a pain as bitter
as that which he had felt when he stood beside her newly made grave.
Such things as these are not to be forgotten. Are they not the
“pathetic minor” which underlies all the harmonies of earth, heard more
or less distinctly, but silent never?
The one clue which his mother’s letter afforded had been sedulously
followed up by Eustace. The stranger calling himself Hardwick was the
writer of a book first published in the year ’43; and a book of some
repute, as the young man gathered from the letters of his unknown
father. Eustace had Mrs. Willows’ authority for the fact that the book
was some kind of novel or romance; and acting upon this information,
he devoted himself for three consecutive days to an examination of the
critical magazines and periodicals of that year in the reading-room of
the British Museum.
The result of his labours was not particularly satisfactory. So many
romances published within the year were spoken of as the best novels
of the season, or as works bearing the seal of genius, or as the
promise of greater things from the matured mind of the writer, that
it needed much sifting of all this chaff before the amount of genuine
wheat contained therein could be fairly estimated. But at last, after a
careful study of the _Literary Gazette_ and _Athenæum_, the
quarterlies and monthlies, Eustace Thorburn selected, from a long list
of brilliant successes and best novels of the season, three books, each
of which seemed to bear upon it the stamp of something greater than
amiable mediocrity.
These are the titles of the three books which Eustace Thorburn
selected, after having read them carefully and thoughtfully:
1. _Dion_: a Confession.
2. _Latimer’s Sister_: a Story. By Marcus Anderton.
3. _The Spectre of Walden_: a Romance. By G. G. G.
Of these three, _Dion_ was the most singular; _Latimer’s
Sister_ the most tender; _The Spectre_ the most poetical. Any
one of these books might have exercised a powerful effect upon the mind
of a sentimental woman. That they were all three written by men, and
by young men, Eustace entertained no doubt. He did not, indeed, trust
entirely to his own judgment; for he enlisted the services of his Uncle
Dan, and induced that practised reviewer to read the three books.
“All masculine work!” cried Mr. Mayfield. “No woman could have written
_Latimer’s Sister_ without telling us when the young lady who
figures as the heroine wore blue silk, or how lovely she looked in
pink tarlatane. _The Spectre_ is a translation from the German.
No Englishman would have been as simple and true to nature in his
peasant-life; and I recognize untranslatable German compounds in my
friend’s phraseology. The book which indicates power, and even genius,
is _Dion_. I have a sort of hazy recollection of hearing that
book talked about when I was a young man, and of hearing that it was
written by some sprig of quality. In my opinion, Eustace, that story of
_Dion_ is the kind of book to fascinate a girl.”
“It is so morbid, so gloomy.”
“Gloom is the very thing a girl loves, especially when it is the gloom
of the storm-cloud--passion, and anguish, and so on. Depend upon it, my
dear lad, _Dion_ is the book that man wrote--the book your mother
was reading in the unlucky hour in which he first saw her face.”
“I am inclined to believe that you are right, Uncle Dan,” Eustace
answered, thoughtfully. “It is evidently the work of a scholar.”
“Yes, but of a very young scholar. The learning is there, but in
a crude, half-digested state. The pages bristle with fragments of
old-world wisdom. The wisdom does not underlie the whole, it is not
interwoven with the very fabric of the book, as in the work of a mature
mind. There is passion and poetry,--a hazy kind of poetry, but with a
certain fascination and grace of its own,--the poetry of a man who has
never written for bread, or been troubled by uncertainties about his
dinner. That parting with the girl Una is very pretty; and the dream
in the ruined manor-house has a weird power. One almost feels the cold
winds blowing through the windows that will not shut; one almost sees
the midnight shadows of ash and poplar lying black on the moss-grown
flags of the quadrangle, and all the nakedness and desolation of the
place. Yes, Eustace, there is the glamour of youth and poetry upon
_Dion_; I should not wonder if the man who wrote that book were
the man who won your mother’s heart.”
Daniel Mayfield spoke with an air of conviction that had considerable
influence upon his nephew. He went back to the reviews of _Dion_,
in the hope of finding some clue to the writer in the opinions and
speculations of the reviewers.
In this he was disappointed. The reviewers told him no more than his
Uncle Dan had told him. They judged the writer as Mr. Mayfield had
judged him, from the evidence of the book; they had evidently no
knowledge outside the book. The mystery of anonymous publication had
been religiously preserved, and as the book had created some sensation
at the time of its appearance, there had been considerable speculation
as to the individuality of the writer.
The result of all this speculation was limited to the following
deductions:
1st. The writer of the book was a young man who had gone through the
usual curriculum of a university education.
2nd. The style and manner of thinking were eminently Oxonian.
3rd. The writer was well acquainted with Continental life.
4th. He was as familiar with German literature as with the classics.
5th. His proclivities were aristocratic; his contempt for the masses
supreme and undisguised.
6th. His philosophy was Epicurean; his gods the graceful divinities
of Greece; his nature sensuous, selfish, but not altogether base. He
was an ardent worshipper of the beautiful. He thirsted for woman’s
love,--the pure, the true; but it was the purity and truth of earth’s
primæval freedom for which he languished, rather than the divine
sentiment allowed by Christian rule.
Upon these points the reviewers were strong, and they had
sufficient justification for their opinion. The book was pervaded
by the personality of the writer. It was indeed a confession, an
autobiographical record, in which the events and circumstances of
actual life were doubtless altered and disguised, but a record which
laid bare the heart and mind of the man.
Eustace read the book at the British Museum, and persuaded his uncle to
read it at the same place. He tried to obtain a copy of the story; but
_Dion_ had long been out of print. The booksellers had only the
faintest recollection of a book of that name, and of the fact that it
had created some slight stir during the brief season of its popularity.
“I’ll get you a copy of the book, sooner or later, if your heart is
set upon it, lad,” said Daniel Mayfield. “You know what a habitual
book-stall lounger I am, and how many times I have had my pocket
picked while I have been dipping into one of the Neo-Platonists, or
an Amsterdam edition of Hysminias and Hysmine, before a second-hand
bookseller’s emporium. _Dion_ is just the sort of book to figure
in a bookseller’s box of odd volumes--‘All these at twopence,’--and,
depend upon it, I shall meet with the gentleman some day. I know a man
who is very clever at picking up any out-of-the-way book I happen to
want; and if you wish it, I’ll set him to work.”
“I shall be very glad if you do; I would willingly give a guinea for
that book.”
“I’ll get it you for half the money; but I wish to heaven you would
abandon all speculations about this man, who, after all, may not be the
author of _Dion_.”
“That I shall never do while my brain has power to speculate; so let us
say no more about that, Uncle Dan.”
It was rather late in the autumn when Eustace Thorburn made his
researches at the British Museum. He obtained a few days’ holiday from
his employer, and shared his Uncle Daniel’s lodgings in Great Ormond
Street,--big rooms that had once been very grand and noble, and which,
even now, had a pleasant airy aspect, and some remains of old-world
splendour.
The “few days” stretched themselves into a week before the young
man had completed his studies, but at the end of the week he bade
his kinsman good-bye, and went back to Berkshire, in no wise sorry
to return to the park and forest, the winding river and odorous
flower-garden of his new home.
In no wise sorry? Could there be gladness more complete than that which
filled his breast as he returned to the house he had learned to think
of as a home?
“M. de Bergerac’s book will be finished by and by, and he will have
no further need of my services,” thought the returning traveller, as
the sober goddess of common-sense projected her dark shadow athwart
the sunlit realms of fancy. “I shall have to bid farewell to these new
friends, and begin the world once more among strangers. I suppose that
will be the story of my life. I may find friends; I may attach myself
to a stranger’s house, until I almost fancy I have kindred and a home,
like the rest of mankind; and then, just when I am happiest, my foolish
dream will end all at once, and I shall have to begin life again. Oh,
let me be patient when the trial comes! My life can never be so sad and
dreary as _hers_ was.”
Further reflection developed consoling ideas that brought back a happy
smile to the traveller’s lips.
“The _History of Superstition_ will not be finished for many a
long year at its present rate of progress,” he said to himself. “I
could wish for nothing better than to live for ever at the bailiff’s
cottage, working for the kindest of employers.”
He could not, indeed, imagine any state of happiness more perfect
than that which he enjoyed in Theodore de Bergerac’s quiet home, after
all due reservation had been made for that secret sorrow which was not
altogether to be put away from his mind, even when his surroundings
were brightest.
Life at Greenlands was very quiet. The scholar and his daughter were
a modern Prospero and Miranda, with trim maid-servants to wait upon
them instead of Caliban; and the new Miranda’s life was not much less
lonely than that of her prototype on the enchanted isle. Mademoiselle
de Bergerac had very few friends and no acquaintance. She had never
been to school, and she had scarcely heard the names of those pleasures
and excitements which are the necessities of fashionable damsels. To
take tea with the curate’s daughters, under the walnut-trees in the
prettiest corner of the lawn, was a delightful festivity; to picnic
at Burnham Beeches with her father and two or three chosen friends
was a matter of almost bewildering excitement; to creep along by the
willowy margin of the river in her own light skiff, while her father
sat in the stern reciting some of Victor Hugo’s noblest verses for her
edification, was a quiet rapture above and beyond all those unknown
pleasures of whose existence she was vaguely conscious.
Never was maiden better pleased with her own life and her own
surroundings than Helen de Bergerac. She had the Gallic vivacity of
disposition, the sanguine, romantic temperament of the Celt. She adored
her father, and adored the fair English country, and the river, and her
dog, and Greenlands; and it was only sometimes, in a tender reverie,
that she pictured to herself sunnier lands,--the vineyards of Provence,
the towers and steeples of Norman cities, the broad blue waters of the
Seine, broken by islets of tender green, and curving like a silver bow,
by valley and woodland, chalky cliff and quaint nestling town, gray
rock and mediæval castle, half-fortress, half-château.
Mademoiselle de Bergerac thought of this romantic land sometimes, and
sighed for a state of things that might bring about her father’s
return to his native country. For the exiled family she entertained
a sentiment that was akin to adoration, confounding all distinction
between _famille aînée_ and _famille cadette_; and beholding
in the quiet country gentlemen of Twickenham and Bushey the direct
descendants of that bold warrior whose white plume flashed like a star
athwart the serried ranks at Fontenoy.
But second only to her affection for that country whereof she knew so
little, and which must always be more or less a dreamland for her, was
Mademoiselle de Bergerac’s affection for Berkshire, the land of her
birth, the pastoral scene amidst which there was one corner, one quiet
grave in a village churchyard--a grave above which there bloomed roses
more beautiful than common flowers growing in common gardens--that
must for ever make this one spot holier in her eyes than all other
regions of this lower world. To keep her father’s house, to supply in
some measure the place of that dear companion who was lost to him,
to sustain the student’s ambition, and to watch the scholar’s health,
meting out the midnight oil, and restraining the too eager spirit in
the interests of the ill-used flesh,--in these things was comprised the
desire of Helen de Bergerac’s heart and mind.
She received her father’s secretary with a most delightful cordiality,
accepting this new member of the family with a grace as easy as if he
had been some long-absent brother or cousin come from beyond seas to
take his place in the household. Prudery and affectation were unknown
to this sylvan damsel. She found it rather agreeable than otherwise to
have a well-bred, well-informed young man in attendance upon her when
she inspected her garden, or supervised the arrangement of a rustic
banquet under the chestnuts on the lawn. She found it agreeable to
be assisted in her reading by some one whose time was less occupied,
and whose erudition was less alarming than her father’s. She found
it pleasant to have a friend who went to the extremest lengths in
the worship of Beethoven and Weber,--a friend who could discourse
most eloquently of Hugo and Shakespeare, Bulwer and Göthe, Balzac
and Thackeray, while her father dozed in the quiet summer twilights,
wearied out by his long day’s labour,--a friend who seemed, strange
to say, always intensely interested in every subject that happened
to interest her, a knight-errant who, living perchance in a prosaic
century, was fain to demonstrate his devotion by the clipping of faded
rose-leaves, and the hunting out of recondite islands and promontories
in the classic atlas,--a friend who, by some unerring instinct,
contrived always to do and say precisely what she wished,--a friend who
was always the right man in the right place.
“I don’t know how it is, but it seems to me that I am always right,”
remarked the young Duchess of Burgundy with charming _naïveté_;
and Mademoiselle de Bergerac on more than one occasion gave utterance
to observations quite as _naïf_ on the subject of her new
acquaintance.
“I really cannot tell how it is Mr. Thorburn always contrives to make
himself so agreeable, papa,” she said.
The simple-hearted book-worm was no less blind than his daughter.
“I am glad you like him, my love,” he replied, carelessly. “I was
rather afraid you might object to a third person in the house. He is a
most admirable young man. For hunting out a reference or a quotation,
he is, I think, unrivalled. I only hope I shall be able to keep him
till my book is finished; but that will be a long time, Helen, a very
long time--if I live to finish it at all.”
“Dear, dear father,” murmured the girl, tenderly; and then she
continued, with some appearance of alarm, “Do you think Mr. Thorburn
wishes to leave us?”
“No, my dear, I have no reason to think that. But he is very young, you
know; and this must be a dull kind of life for a young man.”
“And yet I am sure Mr. Thorburn is not unhappy. He had only just lost
his mother, you know, when he came to us; and of course the memory of
that loss makes him thoughtful and melancholy sometimes. But I am sure
he is quite content to lead our quiet life, papa, and that he takes
a very deep interest in your book. He told me the other day that he
cannot venture to look forward to the end of that book; it seems to him
like looking forward to the end of his life.”
“It is, indeed, an interesting subject, my love,” replied M. de
Bergerac, with complacency, “and an almost inexhaustible one--the
history of superstition: a mighty record, a vast survey, embracing
the length and breadth of this earth, from the monstrous temples of
the East to the classic shrines of the West--from the altar of the
Carthaginian Æsculapius to the funeral pyre of the Scandinavian Balder.
I am much pleased to think the young man likes his work. He is very
clever.”
“Is he not clever, papa? He wrote a little poem the other day, and he
asked my opinion of it. As if _my_ opinion could be worth having!
It was charming. I do not think your favourite Catullus, whom you
praise so much, and yet will not allow me to read, could have written
anything more graceful. It is full of that mournful langour that there
is in some of Victor Hugo’s minor poems, and in Longfellow’s--a sweet,
calm sadness that pierces one’s heart.”
“I am glad he distracts himself by the composition of verses,” said
the scholar. “There are some who consider such a course of reading as
he is now engaged in dry and laborious; but to my mind there can be no
better nurture for a poet. I trust Mr. Thorburn may achieve some kind
of success in the future.”
“I think he writes or studies a good deal at night, after you have done
with him.”
“How do you know that, my dear?”
“Through Susan, papa. She is always complaining about the candles.
You know how economical she is; and I assure you Mr. Thorburn’s
consumption of candles is quite an affliction to her. I wonder whether
the Grecian _ménagères_ were angry when their lords consumed the
midnight oil. Perhaps that was one of Xantippe’s grievances. I don’t
think Socrates could have been a _very_ agreeable husband.”
“That point is open to discussion,” said the scholar, slyly. “We
possess the sage’s opinion of Xantippe, but we do not possess
Xantippe’s opinion of the sage.”
The weeks and months slipped by, and the fern was sear and brown in
Windsor Great Park and Forest, and all the woodlands of Berkshire were
leafless; but Eustace Thorburn showed no signs of distaste for his
labours as secretary and amanuensis, collator and collaborateur. He
languished for no change, he pined for no pleasure. His considerate
employer had borrowed an extra horse from the stables of the great
house, where there was still the remnant of a noble stud; and at his
suggestion the young man took long rides in the early morning, before
the day’s studious drudgery began. It was very pleasant to come home
to breakfast in the snug old-fashioned parlour, and to be welcomed by
Mademoiselle de Bergerac, whose bright eyes grew brighter at sight
of some sprig of rare comb-bearing fern. Life at Greenlands seemed,
indeed, to be altogether an existence of perfect and serene delight,
only overshadowed now and then by the vague consciousness that it was
too sweet to last.
“The time will come when I shall have to pack my portmanteau and bid
her good-bye,” the young man said to himself, in moments of sober
meditation at night, when he sat alone in his pleasant room, and some
break, some stagnation in the course of his composition brought him to
a stand-still; “or some one will come and see her, and learn to love
her as dearly as I love her even; and he will be in a position to say
the sweet words I dare not say to her; and I shall hear the jangling
village-bells some misty summer morning, and she will come in her white
bridal dress to bid me farewell. Men have to bear such pain as that,
and to bear it quietly.”
By these reflections it will be seen that Eustace Thorburn, without
fortune, friends, or name, and with the ever-present consciousness of
the bar-sinister on his escutcheon, had presumed to fall in love with
the only child of his employer. Could he have done otherwise? “Lives
there a wretch with soul so dead” as to be able to inhabit the same
dwelling with a Helen de Bergerac for six months and not own himself
her worshipper and slave ere the sixth month is ended? Eustace Thorburn
had surrendered himself an unresisting victim to the pitiless goddess
who sways the weak souls of men, as her kinswoman Artemis rules the
tides of ocean. He had allowed himself to be cradled in the shadowy
arms of Fancy, rocked to the sweetest sleep that was ever broken by
bitter waking.
“I know that it must end in misery,” he said to himself; “but it is so
sweet--while it lasts.”
He loved her, and he feared that his love was hopeless. Simple as M.
de Bergerac’s life might be, he bore upon him the stamp of the old
_noblesse_. He was of that nation whose _dernière grand dame_
died with Queen Marie-Amélie; and it was not to be supposed there was
no latent pride of birth beneath that graceful humility of manner which
rendered the exile so dear to the cottagers and peasant children about
Greenlands.
“I think he would give his daughter to a poor man,” thought Eustace,
when he meditated this vital question; “for his soul seems to me so
pure and noble as to be above all consideration of worldly wealth; and
then Helen’s simple habits fit her for a poor man’s wife. But I cannot
think that he would consent to an alliance with a man of low origin, or
of unknown origin, which to that proud and pure mind would seem worse
than the lowest, since it must bear the stigma of shame.”
There were times when a hope--vague but exquisite--awoke in the young
man’s breast as he pondered on the future. If he was nameless to-day,
must he needs go nameless to the grave? Might he not win for himself a
renown that would give grace and lustre to that simple family name of
Thorburn, which he had seen on his grandfather’s tombstone? Was it only
a foolish presumption, the besotted vanity of a young pedant, which
buoyed him up and supported him in his hours of depression? Was that
word _Parvenir_, which he had taken for himself as his motto, and
cherished in secret as the watch-word of his life, only the formula of
a braggart? Was that pleasant land of dreams, in which he was wont to
take refuge when the world of realities seemed dark and dreary, only a
fool’s paradise?
Insomuch as poetic dreams and aspirations can make a man a poet,
Eustace Thorburn was a member of that glorious brotherhood which began
with Homer; but it yet remained to be shown whether he were gifted with
something more than the vague yearnings and lofty imaginings of the
dreamer who would fain admit the world within the mystic portals of
his fair shadowland. To think high thoughts, to dream delicious dreams,
is one thing; but to be able to translate thought and dream into the
eloquent verse of a Byron, or the polished syllables of a Tennyson,
is another thing. To how many eyes the Coliseum and the Adriatic,
the Drachenfels and the quiet field that lies beyond Ardennes, may
have seemed as fair as they appeared to the eyes of that one lonely
traveller who has recorded his wanderings in words that can never die!
How many brains must have been crowded by grand imaginings, how many
hearts must have beat high with the dreamer’s enthusiasm, as the youth
of England have trodden the ground that is hallowed by the footsteps of
heroes and demigods! and yet, of all the youth of England, there has
been but one whose poetic record of his emotions has reached a second
edition, and held a place in the memory of mankind. Of all the men
who read the rugged legends of Macbeth and Lear, the Italian story of
Othello’s passion and Iago’s cunning, there was only one man who could
give to the crude unshapely records life and form, immortal as his own
genius!
Whether Eustace Thorburn possessed that subtle and wondrous power of
expression, that mystic sympathy with the minds of his fellowmen, that
marvellous perception which is a kind of clairvoyance, time alone could
show. He had his moments of proud hope, his hours of abject depression;
but he worked on patiently, steadily, devoting more than one quiet
hour of every night to the composition of a narrative poem--dramatic,
philosophical, passionate, and perhaps just a little tainted with the
egotism which is so common in the work of youthful genius.
Eustace Thorburn had no suspicion that the hero of his poetic fiction
was a shadow of himself, a projection of his own brain; but he knew
that the heroine was an airy sister of Helen de Bergerac, and that the
love of his Egbert for his Amy was very near akin to his own love for
Helen.
There was no odour of the midnight oil in the poet’s verses. They
breathed the freshness of youth, the perfume of woods and groves; the
harmonious lines were musical with the ripple of cool waters, the low
sound of leafy branches swaying gently in the summer wind. The life
which Eustace Thorburn led at Greenlands was the ideal existence for
which the poet sighs, for which he yearns with fond imaginings, pent
up in the darksome city counting-house, chained to the cruel wheel of
distasteful labour. Nor was the young man ungrateful to Providence, or
to the kindly kinsman who had procured for him so pleasant a position.
He thanked God for his easy existence, his congenial labours; and he
wrote sweet, playful letters, full of affection and gratitude, to Uncle
Dan, who treasured those effusions, and was pleased to favour his
friends and boon-companions with the recital of eloquent little bits in
those delightful epistles.
“What would you give to be able to write like that, Tom Granger?” he
said to one of his associates. “You write uncommonly well, you know,
dear boy, and so does John Harrington, and Ted Rochester, and Frank
Dorset; and there’s plenty of _chic_ in all you do. You all write
uncommonly well, Tom; you can all describe the things you see every
day, _from the outside_, with a certain amount of smartness; but
there is no more evidence of thought in your compositions than if you
were so many copying-machines; and you all write so like one another,
that if Frank wrote page one, and Ted page two, and John page three,
no one but themselves and the compositors who set-up their copy would
be any the wiser. You have all got the slang of the day, and you all
write for the current market, and you are all wise in your generation.
But the day will come when this boy here will show you that a writer
may have something more than ‘a knack,’ and be something better than a
publisher’s ‘clever hand.’”
“I wouldn’t mind giving you long odds against that immaculate nephew
of yours ever writing a book that will sell,” replied the incredulous
Tom, in no wise put out of countenance by his friend’s exordium. “They
all begin in the same style, these young uns. Epic poem about King
Arthur, or King Alfred, or King Athelstane, that is to be the Iliad
of future generations,--high-falutin sentiment, pure aspirations, and
so on. And they write their epic poems, and pass them on from one
publisher’s office to another, till the poor valueless manuscripts
are limp and dirty; and then they learn to adapt themselves to the
requirements of their generation, and turn into ‘clever hands’ like
you and me, Dan. They must all go through the same apprenticeship, and
‘learn in suffering what they teach in song,’--that is to say, learn in
Whitecross Street what they teach in the monthly magazines, unless they
happen to be careful souls, with snug little incomes: in which case
they hug their sweet delusions to the last, and publish their epics at
their own expense. Epic poems, forsooth! Do you think the Greeks would
have read Homer if they had possessed periodical literature?”
“I look upon periodical literature as the sworn foe to learning.”
“You are not the first of dirty birds, Daniel Mayfield,” cried his
friend, sternly; “and now for the divine Louisa.”
The “divine Louisa” was Mr. Granger’s playful name for unlimited loo, a
pastime which cost Daniel Mayfield many a five-pound note in the course
of the year, but which he had not the moral courage to forswear. He
had his reputation as a Bohemian, and he was too old to hope for a new
reputation amongst the ranks of the respectable; so he was fain to be
true to the brotherhood in which he had some _status_.
“Better to be a prince among the nomad tribes than a nobody among the
Philistines,” he said to himself. “One might submit to that, if the
Philistines were a perfect race; but when a man sees how much malice
and selfishness there may be in the Pharisees and Sadducees, he is apt
to prefer the society of publicans and sinners.”
These were the arguments with which Daniel Mayfield was wont to stifle
the upbraidings of conscience; for the sinner can forgive himself all
his other sins more easily than the one sin of a wasted life. Mr.
Mayfield had his hours of depression, his moments of savage bitterness;
and to escape from these, he fled to the scenes he liked and the
friends he loved--the friends who in some sort loved him.