WANTED--AN ORGANIST.
In later days Percival looked back to that Christmas as his worst and
darkest time. His pride had grown morbid, and he swore to himself that
he would never give in--that Horace should never know him otherwise
than self-sufficient, should never think that but for Mrs. Middleton's
or Godfrey Hammond's charity he might have had his cousin as a
pensioner. Brooding on thoughts such as these, he sauntered moodily
beneath the lamps when the new year was but two days old.
His progress was stopped by a little crowd collected on the pavement.
There was a concert, and a string of carriages stretched halfway down
the street. Just as Percival came up, a girl in white and amber, with
flowers in her hair, flitted hurriedly across the path and up
the steps, and stood glancing back while a fair-haired,
faultlessly-dressed young man helped her mother to alight. The father
came last, sleek, stout and important. The old people went on in
front, and the girl followed with her cavalier, looking up at him and
making some bright little speech as they vanished into the building.
Percival stood and gazed for a moment, then turned round and hurried
out of the crowd. The grace and freshness and happy beauty of the girl
had roused a fierce longing in his heart. He wanted to touch a lady's
hand again, to hear the delicate accents of a lady's voice. He
remembered how he used to dress himself as that fair-haired young
man was dressed, and escort Aunt Harriet and Sissy to Fordborough
entertainments, where the best places were always kept for the
Brackenhill party. It was dull enough sometimes, yet how he longed for
one such evening now--to hand the cups once again at afternoon tea, to
talk just a little with some girl on the old terms of equality! The
longing was not the less real, and even passionate, that it seemed to
Thorne himself to be utterly absurd. He mocked at himself as he walked
the streets for a couple of hours, and then went back when the concert
was just over and the people coming away. He watched till the girl
appeared. She looked a little tired, he fancied. As she came out into
the chill night air she drew a soft white cloak round her, and went
by, quite unconscious of the dark young man who stood near the door
and followed her with his eyes. The sombre apparition might have
startled her had she noticed it, though Percival was only gazing at
the ghost of his dead life, and, having seen it, disappeared into the
shadows once more.
"The night is darkest before the morn." In Percival's case this was
true, for the next day brought a new interest and hope. A letter came
from Godfrey Hammond, through which he glanced wearily till he came
to a paragraph about the Lisles: Hammond had seen a good deal of them
lately. "Their father treated you shamefully," he wrote, "but, after
all, it is harder still on his children." ("Good Heavens! Does he
suppose I have a grudge against them?" said Percival to himself, and
laughed with mingled irritation and amazement.) "Young Lisle wants a
situation as organist somewhere where he might give lessons and make
an income so, but we can't hear of anything suitable. People say the
boy is a musical genius, and will do wonders, but, for my part, I
doubt it. He may, however, and in that case there will be a line in
his biography to the effect that I 'was one of the first to discern,'
etc., which may be gratifying to me in my second childhood."
Percival laid the letter on the table and looked up with kindling
eyes.
Only a few minutes' walk from Bellevue street was St. Sylvester's, a
large district church. The building was a distinguished example of
cheap ecclesiastical work, with stripes and other pretty patterns
in different colored bricks, and varnished deal fittings and patent
corrugated roofing. All that could be done to stimulate devotion
by means of texts painted in red and blue had been done, and St.
Sylvester's, within and without, was one of those nineteenth-century
churches which will doubtless be studied with interest and wonder by
the architect of a future age if they can only contrive to stand up
till he comes. The incumbent was High Church, as a matter of course,
and musical, more than as a matter of course. Percival looked up from
his letter with a sudden remembrance that Mr. Clifton was advertising
for an organist, and on his way to the office he stopped to make
inquiries at the High Church bookseller's and to post a line to
Hammond. How if this should suit Bertie Lisle? He tried hard not to
think too much about it, but the mere possibility that the bright
young fellow, with his day-dreams, his unfinished opera, his pleasant
voice and happily thoughtless talk, might come into his life gave
Percival a new interest in it. Bertie had been a favorite of his years
before, when he used to go sometimes to Mr. Lisle's. He still thought
of him as little more than a boy--the boy who used to play to him in
the twilight--and he had some trouble to realize that Bertie must be
nearly two and twenty. If he should come--But most likely he would not
come. It seemed a shame even to wish to shut up the young musician,
with his love for all that was beautiful and bright, in that grimy
town. Thorne resolved that he would not wish it, but he opened
Hammond's next letter with unusual eagerness. Godfrey said they
thought it sounded well, especially as when he named Brenthill it
appeared that the Lisles had some sort of acquaintance living there,
an old friend of their mother's, he believed, which naturally gave
them an interest in the place. Bertie had written to Mr. Clifton, who
would very shortly be in town, and had made an appointment to meet
him.
The next news came in a note from Lisle himself. On the first page
there was a pen-and-ink portrait of the incumbent of St. Sylvester's
with a nimbus, and it was elaborately dated "Festival of St. Hilary."
"It is all as good as settled," was his triumphant announcement, "and
we are in luck's way, for Judith thinks she has heard of something for
herself too. You will see from my sketch that I have had my interview
with Mr. Clifton. He is quite delighted with me. A great judge of
character, that man! He is to write to one or two references I gave
him, but they are sure to be all right, for my friends have been so
bored with me and my prospects for the last few weeks that they would
swear to my fitness for heaven if it would only send me there. I
rather think, however, that St. Sylvester's will suit me better for a
little while. His Reverence is going to look me up some pupils, and I
have bought a Churchman's almanac, and am thinking about starting an
oratorio instead of my opera. Wasn't it strange that when your letter
came from Brenthill we should remember that an old friend of my
mother's lived there? Judith and she have been writing to each other
ever since. Clifton is evidently undergoing tortures with the man he
has got now, so I should not wonder if we are at Brenthill in a few
days. It will be better for my chance of pupils too. I shall look you
up without fail, and expect you to know everything about lodgings. How
about Bellevue street? Are you far from St. Sylvester's?"
Thorne read the letter carefully, and drew from it two conclusions and
a perplexity. He concluded that Bertie Lisle's elastic spirits had
quickly recovered the shock of his father's failure and flight,
and that he had not the faintest idea that any property of
his--Percival's--had gone down in the wreck. So much the better.
His perplexity was, What was Miss Lisle going to do? Could the "we"
who were to arrive imply that she meant to accompany her brother? And
what was the something she had heard of for herself? The words haunted
him. Was the ruin so complete that she too must face the world and
earn her own living? A sense of cruel wrong stirred in his inmost
soul.
He made up his mind at last that she was coming to establish Bertie in
his lodgings before she went on her own way. He offered any help in
his power when he answered the letter, but he added a postscript:
"Don't think of Bellevue street: you wouldn't like it." He heard no
more till one day he came back to his early dinner and found a sealed
envelope on his table. It contained a half sheet of paper, on which
Bertie had scrawled in pencil, "Why did you abuse Bellevue street? We
think it will do. And why didn't you say there were rooms in this
very house? We have taken them, so there is an end of your peaceful
solitude. I'm going to practise for ever and ever. If you don't like
it there's no reason why you shouldn't leave: it's a free country,
they say."
Percival looked round his room. She had been there, then?--perhaps had
stood where he was standing. His glance fell on the turquoise-blue
vase and the artificial flowers, and he colored as if he were Lydia's
accomplice. Had she seen those and the _Language of Flowers_?
As if his thought had summoned her, Lydia herself appeared to lay the
cloth for his dinner. She looked quickly round: "Did you see your
note, Mr. Thorne?"
"Thank you, yes," said Percival.
"I supposed it was right to show them in here to write it--wasn't it?"
she asked after a pause. "He said he knew you very well."
"Quite right, certainly."
"A very pleasant-spoken young gentleman, ain't he?" said Miss Bryant,
setting down a salt-cellar.
"Very," said Percival.
"Coming to play the High Church organ, he tells me," Lydia continued,
as if the instrument in question were somehow saturated with
ritualism.
"Yes--at St. Sylvester's."
Lydia looked at him, but he was gazing into the fire. She went out,
came back with a dish, shook her curl out of the way, and tried again:
"I suppose we're to thank you for recommending the lodgings--ain't we,
Mr. Thorne? I'm sure ma's much obliged to you. And I'm glad"--this
with a bashful glance--"that you felt you could. It seems as if we'd
given satisfaction."
"Certainly," said Percival. "But you mustn't thank me in this case,
Miss Bryant. I really didn't know what sort of lodgings my friend
wanted. But of course I'm glad Mr. Lisle is coming here."
"And ain't you glad _Miss_ Lisle is coming too, Mr. Thorne?" said
Lydia very archly. But she watched him, lynx-eyed.
He uttered no word of surprise, but he could not quite control the
muscles of his face, and a momentary light leapt into his eyes. "I
wasn't aware Miss Lisle _was_ coming," he said.
Lydia believed him. "That's true," she thought, "but you're precious
glad." And she added aloud, "Then the pleasure comes all the more
unexpected, don't it?" She looked sideways at Percival and lowered her
voice: "P'r'aps Miss Lisle meant a little surprise."
Percival returned her glance with a grave scorn which she hardly
understood. "My dinner is ready?" he said. "Thank you, Miss Bryant."
And Lydia flounced out of the room, half indignant, half sorrowful:
"_He_ didn't know--that's true. But _she_ knows what she's after, very
well. Don't tell me!" To Lydia, at this moment, it seemed as if every
girl must be seeking what she sought. "And I call it very bold of her
to come poking herself where she isn't wanted--running after a young
man. I'd be ashamed." A longing to scratch Miss Lisle's face was mixed
with a longing to have a good cry, for she was honestly suffering the
pangs of unrequited love. It is true that it was not for the first
time. The curl, the earrings, the songs, the _Language of Flowers_,
had done duty more than once before. But wounds may be painful without
being deep, although the fact of these former healings might prevent
all fear of any fatal ending to this later love. Lydia was very
unhappy as she went down stairs, though if another hero could be found
she was perhaps half conscious that the melancholy part of her present
love-story might be somewhat abridged.
The streets seemed changed to Percival as he went back to his work.
Their ugliness was as bare and as repulsive as ever, but he understood
now that the houses might hold human beings, his brothers and his
sisters, since some one roof among them sheltered Judith Lisle. Thus
he emerged from the alien swarm amid which he had walked in solitude
so many days. Above the dull and miry ways were the beauty of her
gray-blue eyes and the glory of her golden hair. He felt as if a white
dove had lighted on the town, yet he laughed at his own feelings; for
what did he know of her? He had seen her twice, and her father had
swindled him out of his money.
Never had his work seemed so tedious, and never had he hurried so
quickly to Bellevue street as he did when it was over. The door of No.
13 stood open, and young Lisle stood on the threshold. There was no
mistaking him. His face had changed from the beautiful chorister type
of two or three years earlier, but Percival thought him handsomer than
ever. He ceased his soft whistling and held out his hand: "Thorne! At
last! I was looking out for you the other way."
Thorne could hardly find time to greet him before he questioned
eagerly, "You have really taken the rooms here?"
"Really and truly. What's wrong? Anything against the landlady?"
"No," said Percival. "She's honest enough, and fairly obliging, and
all the rest of it. But then your sister is not coming here to live
with you, as they told me? That was a mistake?"
"Not a bit of it. She's coming: in fact, she's here."
"In Bellevue street?" Percival looked up and down the dreary
thoroughfare. "But, Lisle, what a place to bring her to!"
"Beggars mustn't be choosers," said Bertie. "We are not exactly what
you would call rolling in riches just now. And Bellevue street happens
to be about midway between St. Sylvester's and Standon Square, so it
will suit us both."
"Standon Square?" Percival repeated.
"Yes. Oh, didn't I tell you? My mother came to school at Brenthill. It
was her old schoolmistress we remembered lived here when we had your
letter. So we wrote to her, and the old dear not only promised me some
pupils, but it is settled that Judith is to go and teach there every
day. Judith thinks we ought to stick to one another, we two."
"You're a lucky fellow," said Percival. "You don't know, and won't
know, what loneliness is here."
"But how do _you_ come to know anything about it? That's what I can't
understand. I thought your grandfather died last summer?"
"So he did."
"But I thought you were to come in for no end of money?"
[Illustration: "SHE DREW A SOFT WHITE CLOAK ROUND HER, AND WENT
BY."--Page 173.]
"I didn't, you see."
"But surely he always allowed you a lot," said Lisle, still
unsatisfied. "You never used to talk of doing anything."
"No, but I found I must. The fact is, I'm not on the best terms with
my cousin at Brackenhill, and I made up my mind to be independent.
Consequently, I'm a clerk--a copying-clerk, you understand--in a
lawyer's office here--Ferguson's in Fisher street--and I lodge
accordingly."
"I'm very sorry," said Bertie.
"Hammond knows all about it," the other went on, "but nobody else
does."
"I was afraid there was something wrong," said Bertie--"wrong for you,
I mean. From our point of view it is very lucky that circumstances
have sent you here. But I hope your prospects may brighten; not
directly--I can't manage to hope that--but soon."
Percival smiled. "Meanwhile," he said with a quiet earnestness of
tone, "if there is anything I can do to help you or Miss Lisle, you
will let me do it."
"Certainly," said Bertie. "We are going out now to look for a grocer.
Suppose you come and show us one."
"I'm very much at your service. What are you looking at?"
"Why--you'll pardon my mentioning it--you have got the biggest smut
on your left cheek that I've seen since I came here. They attain to
a remarkable size in Brenthill, have you noticed?" Bertie spoke with
eager interest, as if he had become quite a connoisseur in smuts.
"Yes, that's it. I'll look Judith up, and tell her you are going with
us."
Percival fled up stairs, more discomposed by that unlucky black than
he would have thought possible. When he had made sure that he
was tolerably presentable he waited by his open door till his
fellow-lodgers appeared, and then stepped out on the landing to meet
them. Miss Lisle, dressed very simply in black, stood drawing on her
glove. A smile dawned on her face when her eyes met Percival's, and,
greeting him in her low distinct tones, she held out her white right
hand, still ungloved. He took it with grave reverence, for Judith
Lisle had once touched his faint dream of a woman who should be brave
with sweet heroism, tender and true. They had scarcely exchanged a
dozen words in their lives, but he had said to himself, "If I were an
artist I would paint my ideal with a face like that;" and the memory,
with its underlying poetry, sprang to life again as his glance
encountered hers. Percival felt the vague poem, though Bertie was at
his elbow chattering about shops, and though he himself had hardly got
over the intolerable remembrance of that smut.
When they were in the street Miss Lisle looked eagerly about her,
and asked as they turned a corner, "Will this be our way to St.
Sylvester's?"
"Yes. I suppose Bertie will make his debut next Sunday? I must come
and hear him."
"Of course you must," said Lisle. "Where do you generally go?"
"Well, for a walk generally. Sometimes it ends in some outlying
church, sometimes not."
"Oh, but it's your duty to attend your parish church when I play
there. I suppose St. Sylvester's _is_ your parish church?"
"Not a bit of it. St. Andrew's occupies that proud position. I've been
there three times, I think."
"And what sort of a place is that?" said Miss Lisle.
"The dreariest, dustiest, emptiest place imaginable," Percival
answered, turning quickly toward her. "There's an old clergyman,
without a tooth in his head, who mumbles something which the
congregation seem to take for granted is the service. Perhaps he means
it for that: I don't know. He's the curate, I think, come to help the
rector, who is getting just a little past his work. I don't remember
that I ever saw the rector."
"But does any one go?"
"Well, there's the clerk," said Percival thoughtfully; "and there's a
weekly dole of bread left to fourteen poor men and fourteen poor women
of the parish. They must be of good character and above the age of
sixty-five. It is given away after the afternoon service. When I have
been there, there has always been a congregation of thirty, without
reckoning the clergyman." He paused in his walk. "Didn't you want a
grocer, Miss Lisle? I don't do much of my shopping, but I believe this
place is as good as any."
Judith went in, and the two young men waited outside. In something
less than half a minute Lisle showed signs of impatience. He inspected
the grocer's stock of goods through the window, and extended his
examination to a toyshop beyond, where he seemed particularly
interested in a small and curly lamb which stood in a pasture of green
paint and possessed an underground squeak or baa. Finally, he returned
to Thorne. "You like waiting, don't you?" he said.
"I don't mind it."
"And I do: that's just the difference. Is there a stationer's handy?"
"At the end of the street, the first turning to the left."
"I want some music-paper: I can get it before Judith has done ordering
in her supplies if I go at once."
"Go, then: you can't miss it. I'll wait here for Miss Lisle, and we'll
come and meet you if you are not back."
When Judith came out she looked round in some surprise: "What has
become of Bertie, Mr. Thorne?"
"Gone to the bookseller's," said Percival: "shall we walk on and meet
him?"
They went together down the gray, slushy street. The wayfarers seemed
unusually coarse and jostling that evening, Percival thought, the
pavement peculiarly miry, the flaring gaslights very cruel to the
unloveliness of the scene.
"Mr. Thorne," Judith began, "I am glad of this opportunity. We haven't
met many times before to-day."
"Twice," said Percival.
She looked at him, a faint light of surprise in her eyes. "Ah! twice,"
she repeated. "But you know Bertie well. You used often to come at one
time, when I was away?"
"Oh yes, I saw a good deal of Bertie," he replied, remembering how he
had taken a fancy to the boy.
"And he used to talk to me about you. I don't feel as if we were quite
strangers, Mr. Thorne."
"Indeed, I hope not," said Percival, eluding a baker's boy and
reappearing at her side.
"I've another reason for the feeling, too, besides Bertie's talk," she
went on. "Once, six or seven years ago, I saw your father. He came in
one evening, about some business I think, and I still remember the
very tone in which he talked of you. I was only a school-girl then,
but I could not help understanding something of what you were to him."
"He was too good to me," said Percival, and his heart was very full.
Those bygone days with his father, which had drifted so far into the
past, seemed suddenly brought near by Judith's words, and he felt the
warmth of the old tenderness once more.
"So I was very glad to find you here," she said. "For Bertie's
sake, not for yours. I am so grieved that you should have been so
unfortunate!" She looked up at him with eyes which questioned and
wondered and doubted all at once.
But a small girl, staring at the shop-windows, drove a perambulator
straight at Percival's legs. With a laugh he stepped into the roadway
to escape the peril, and came back: "Don't grieve about me, Miss
Lisle. It couldn't be helped, and I have no right to complain." These
were his spoken words: his unspoken thought was that it served him
right for being such a fool as to trust her father. "It's worse for
you, I think, and harder," he went on; "and if you are so brave--"
"It's for Bertie if I am," she said quickly: "it is very hard on him.
We have spoilt him, I'm afraid, and now he will feel it so terribly.
For people cannot be the same to us: how should they, Mr. Thorne? Some
of our friends have been very good--no one could be kinder than Miss
Crawford--but it is a dreadful change for Bertie. And I have been
afraid of what he would do if he went where he had no companions. A
sister is so helpless! So I was very thankful when your letter came.
But I am sorry for you, Mr. Thorne. He told me just now--"
"But, as that can't be helped," said Percival, "be glad for my sake
too. I have been very lonely."
She looked up at him and smiled. "He insisted on going to Bellevue
street the first thing this morning," she said. "I don't think any
other lodgings would have suited him."
"But they are not good enough for you."
"Oh yes, they are, and near Standon Square, too: I shall only have
seven or eight minutes' walk to my work. I should not have liked--Oh,
here he is!--Bertie, this is cool of you, deserting me in this
fashion!"
"Why, of course you were all right with Thorne, and he asked me to let
him help me in any way he could. I like to take a man at his word."
"By all means take me at mine," said Percival.
"Help you?" said Judith to her brother. "Am I such a terrible burden,
then?"
"No," Thorne exclaimed. "Bertie is a clever fellow: he lets me share
his privileges first, that I mayn't back out of sharing any troubles
later."
"Are you going to save him trouble by making his pretty speeches for
him, too?" Judith inquired with a smile. "You are indeed a friend in
need."
They had turned back, and were walking toward Bellevue street. As they
went into No. 13 they encountered Miss Bryant in the passage. She
glanced loftily at Miss Lisle as she swept by, but she turned and
fixed a look of reproachful tenderness on Percival Thorne. He knew
that he was guiltless in the matter, and yet in Judith's presence he
felt guilty and humiliated beneath Lydia's ostentatiously mournful
gaze. The idea that she would probably be jealous of Miss Lisle
flashed into his mind, to his utter disgust and dismay. He turned
into his own room and flung himself into a chair, only to find, a few
minutes later, that he was staring blankly at Lydia's blue vase. But
for the Lisles, he might almost have been driven from Bellevue street
by its mere presence on the table. It was beginning to haunt him: it
mingled in his dreams, and he had drawn its hideous shape absently on
the edge of his blotting-paper. Let him be where he might, it lay, a
light-blue burden, on his mind. It was not the vase only, but he felt
that it implied Lydia herself, curl, turquoise earrings, smile and
all, and on the evening of his meeting with Judith Lisle the thought
was doubly hateful.