DAMON AND PYTHIAS
By an odd coincidence, the night which had seen Henry and Esther
confront their father, had seen, in another household in which the young
people counted another member of their secret society of youth, a
similar but even less seemly clash between the generations. Ned Hazell
would be a poet too, and a painter as well, and perhaps a romantic
actor; but his father's tastes for his son's future lay in none of these
directions, and Ned was for the present in cotton. Now the elder Mr.
Hazell was a man of violently convivial habits, and the _bonhomie_, with
which he was accustomed to enliven bar-parlours up till eleven of an
evening, was apt to suffer a certain ungenial transformation as he
reached his own front door. There the wit would fail upon his lips, the
twinkle die out of his glance, and an unaccountable ferocity towards the
household that was waiting up for him take their place. When possible,
he would fix upon some trivial reason to give an air of plausibility to
this curious change in him; but if that were not forthcoming, he would,
it appeared, fly into a violent rage for just that very reason.
However, on this particular night, Heaven had provided him with an
heroic occasion. His son, he discovered, was for once out later than his
father. In what haunt of vice, or low place of drinking, he was at the
moment ensnared, no one better than his father could imagine. The
opportunity was one not to be missed. The outraged parent at last
realised that he had borne with him long enough, borne long enough with
his folderols of art and nonsense; and so determined was he on the
instant that he would have no more of it, that, with a quite remarkable
energy, he had thereupon repaired to his son's room, opened the window,
and begun vigorously to throw his pretty editions, his dainty
water-colours, his drawers full of letters, his cast of the Venus of
Milo, out on to the lawn, upon which at the moment a heavy rain was
also falling.
In the very whirlwind of his righteous vandalism his son had returned,
and, being a muscular, hot-blooded lad, had taken his father by the
throat, called him a drunken beast, and hurled him to the floor, where
he pinned him down with a knee on his chest, and might conceivably have
made an end of him, but for the interference of mother and sisters, who
succeeded at last in getting the dazed and somewhat sobered parent
to bed.
Having raked together from the sodden _débris_ beneath his window some
disfigured remains of his poor treasures, Ned Hazell had left the house
in the early hours of the morning, in good earnest for ever.
When he confided the excitements of the night to Henry at lunch next
day, and heard in return his friend's news, nothing could be more plain
than that they should set up lodgings together; and it was, therefore,
to the rooms of which Ned was already in possession that Henry's cab had
toppled with his various belongings, after those tearful farewells at
his father's door. Esther followed presently to help make the place
straight and dainty for the two boys, and having left them, late that
evening, with flowers in all the jars, and the curtains as they should
be, they were fairly launched on their new life together.
In Mike Henry had a stanch friend and an admirer against all comers, and
in Henry Mike had a friend and admirer no less loyal; but their
friendship was one for which an on-looker might have found it less easy
to give reasons than for that of Henry and Ned. Mike and Henry loved
each other, it would appear, less for any correspondence in dispositions
or tastes, as just because they were Mike and Henry. Right away down in
their natures there was evidently some central affinity which operated
even in spite of surface contradictions. There was much of this
intrinsic quality in the affection of Henry and Ned also, but it was
much more to be accounted for by evident mutual sympathies. It was
largely the impassioned fellowship of two craftsmen in love with the
same art. Both had their literary ambitions; but, irrespective of those,
they both loved poetry. Yes, how they loved it! Ned was perhaps
particularly a born appreciator; and it was worth seeing how the tears
would come into his fine eyes, as his voice shook with tenderness over a
fine phrase or a noble passage. They had discovered some of the most
thrilling things in English literature together, at that impressionable
age when such things mean most to us. Together they had read Keats for
the first wonderful time; together learned Shakespeare's Sonnets by
heart; together rolled out over tavern-tables the sumptuous cadences of
De Quincey. Wonderful indeed, and never to be forgotten, were those
evenings when, the day at last over, they would leave their offices
behind them, and, while the sunset was turning the buildings of Tyre
into enchanted towers, and a clemency of release breathed upon its
streets, steal to the quiet corner of their favourite tavern; to drink
port and share their last new author, or their own latest rhymes, and
then to emerge again, with high calm hearts and eloquent eyes, beneath
the splendid stars.
All the arts within their reach they thus shared together,--pictures,
music, theatres,--in a fine comradeship. Together they had bravoed the
great tragedians, and together hopelessly worshipped the beautiful
faces, enskied and sainted, of famous actresses. In fact, they were the
Damon and Pythias of Tyre.