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Mike Fletcher: A Novel

by George Moore · English · Gutenberg #16730 · 523,494 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Mike Fletcher: A Novel

Author: George Moore


        
Release date: September 21, 2005 [eBook #16730]
                Most recently updated: December 12, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16730

Credits: E-text prepared by Andrew Sly


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MIKE FLETCHER: A NOVEL ***


E-text prepared by Andrew Sly



MIKE FLETCHER

A Novel

by

GEORGE MOORE

Author of
"A Mummer's Wife," "Confessions of a Young Man," Etc.

1889







                   TO
           MY BROTHER AUGUSTUS,
       IN MEMORY OF MANY YEARS OF
      MUTUAL ASPIRATION AND LABOUR




CHAPTER I


Oaths, vociferations, and the slamming of cab-doors. The darkness was
decorated by the pink of a silk skirt, the crimson of an opera-cloak
vivid in the light of a carriage-lamp, with women's faces, necks,
and hair. The women sprang gaily from hansoms and pushed through the
swing-doors. It was Lubini's famous restaurant. Within the din was
deafening.

  "What cheer, 'Ria!
   'Ria's on the job,"

roared thirty throats, all faultlessly clothed in the purest linen.
They stood round a small bar, and two women and a boy endeavoured
to execute their constant orders for brandies-and-sodas. They were
shoulder to shoulder, and had to hold their liquor almost in each
other's faces. A man whose hat had been broken addressed reproaches
to a friend, who cursed him for interrupting his howling.

Issued from this saloon a long narrow gallery set with a single line
of tables, now all occupied by reproaches to a friend, who cursed him
for interrupting his howling.

Issued from this saloon a long narrow gallery set with a single line
of tables, now all occupied by supping courtesans and their men. An
odour of savouries, burnt cheese and vinegar met the nostrils, also
the sharp smell of a patchouli-scented handkerchief drawn quickly
from a bodice; and a young man protested energetically against a wild
duck which had been kept a few days over its time. Lubini, or Lubi,
as he was called by his pals, signed to the waiter, and deciding the
case in favour of the young man, he pulled a handful of silver out of
his pocket and offered to toss three lords, with whom he was
conversing, for drinks all round.

"Feeling awfully bad, dear boy; haven't been what I could call sober
since Monday. Would you mind holding my liquor for me? I must go and
speak to that chappie."

Since John Norton had come to live in London, his idea had been to
put his theory of life, which he had defined in his aphorism, "Let
the world be my monastery," into active practice. He did not
therefore refuse to accompany Mike Fletcher to restaurants and
music-halls, and was satisfied so long as he was allowed to
disassociate and isolate himself from the various women who clustered
about Mike. But this evening he viewed the courtesans with more
than the usual liberalism of mind, had even laughed loudly when one
fainted and was upheld by anxious friends, the most zealous and the
most intimate of whom bathed her white tragic face and listened in
alarm to her incoherent murmurings of "Mike darling, oh, Mike!" John
had uttered no word of protest until dear old Laura, who had never,
as Mike said, behaved badly to anybody, and had been loved by
everybody, sat down at their table, and the discussion turned on who
was likely to be Bessie's first sweetheart, Bessie being her youngest
sister whom she was "bringing out." Then he rose from the table and
wished Mike good-night; but Mike's liking for John was sincere, and
preferring his company to Laura's, he paid the bill and followed his
friend out of the restaurant; and as they walked home together he
listened to his grave and dignified admonitions, and though John
could not touch Mike's conscience, he always moved his sympathies. It
is the shallow and the insincere that inspire ridicule and contempt,
and even in the dissipations of the Temple, where he had come to
live, he had not failed to enforce respect for his convictions and
ideals.

In the Temple John had made many acquaintances and friends, and about
him were found the contributors to the _Pilgrim_, a weekly newspaper
devoted to young men, their doings, their amusements, their
literature, and their art. The editor and proprietor of this organ
of amusement was Escott. His editorial work was principally done in
his chambers in Temple Gardens, where he lived with his friend, Mike
Fletcher. Of necessity the newspaper drew, like gravitation, art
and literature, but the revelling lords who assembled there were
a disintegrating influence, and made John Norton a sort of second
centre; and Harding and Thompson and others of various temperaments
and talents found their way to Pump Court. Like cuckoos, some men are
only really at home in the homes of others; others are always ill at
ease when taken out of the surroundings which they have composed to
their ideas and requirements; and John Norton was never really John
Norton except when, wrapped in his long dressing-gown and sitting in
his high canonical chair, he listened to Harding's paradoxes or
Thompson's sententious utterances. These artistic discussions--when
in the passion of the moment, all the cares of life were lost and
the soul battled in pure idea--were full of attraction and charm
for John, and he often thought he had never been so happy. And then
Harding's eyes would brighten, and his intelligence, eager as a wolf
prowling for food, ran to and fro, seeking and sniffing in all John's
interests and enthusiasms. He was at once fascinated by the scheme
for the pessimistic poem and charmed with the projected voyage in
Thibet and the book on the Great Lamas.

One evening a discussion arose as to whether Goethe had stolen from
Schopenhauer, or Schopenhauer from Goethe, the comparison of man's
life with the sun "which seems to set to our earthly eyes, but which
in reality never sets, but shines on unceasingly." The conversation
came to a pause, and then Harding said--

"Mike spoke to me of a pessimistic poem he has in mind; did he ever
speak to you about it, Escott?"

"I think he said something once, but he did not tell me what it was
about. He can speak of nothing now but a nun whom he has persuaded
to leave her convent. I had thought of having some articles written
about convents, and we went to Roehampton. While I was talking to my
cousin, who is at school there, he got into conversation with one of
the sisters. I don't know how he managed it, but he has persuaded her
to leave the convent, and she is coming to see him to-morrow."

"You don't mean to say," cried John, "that he has persuaded one of
the nuns to leave the convent and to come and see him in Temple
Gardens? Such things should not be permitted. The Reverend Mother or
some one is in fault. That man has been the ruin of hundreds, if not
in fact, in thought. He brings an atmosphere of sensuality wherever
he goes, and all must breathe it; even the most virtuous are
contaminated. I have felt the pollution myself. If the woman is
seventy she will look pleased and coquette if he notices her. The
fascination is inexplicable!"

"We all experience it, and that is why we like Mike," said Harding.
"I heard a lady, and a woman whose thoughts are not, I assure you,
given to straying in that direction, say that the first time she saw
him she hated him, but soon felt an influence like the fascination
the serpent exercises over the bird stealing over her. We find but
ourselves in all that we see, hear, and feel. The world is but our
idea. All that women have of goodness, sweetness, gentleness, they
keep for others. A woman would not speak to you of what is bad in
her, but she would to Mike; her sensuality is the side of her nature
which she shows him, be she Messalina or St. Theresa; the proportion,
not the principle is altered. And this is why Mike cannot believe in
virtue, and declares his incredulity to be founded on experience."

"No doubt, no doubt!"

Fresh brandies-and-sodas were poured out, fresh cigars were lighted,
and John descended the staircase and walked with his friends into
Pump Court, where they met Mike Fletcher.

"What have you been talking about to-night?" he asked.

"We wanted Norton to read us the pessimistic poem he is writing, but
he says it is in a too unfinished state. I told him you were at work
on one on the same subject. It is curious that you who differ so
absolutely on essentials should agree to sink your differences at the
very point at which you are most opposed to principle and practice."

After a pause, Mike said--

"I suppose it was Schopenhauer's dislike of women that first
attracted you. He used to call women the short-legged race, that were
only admitted into society a hundred and fifty years ago."

"Did he say that? Oh, how good, and how true! I never could think
a female figure as beautiful as a male. A male figure rises to the
head, and is a symbol of the intelligence; a woman's figure sinks to
the inferior parts of the body, and is expressive of generation."

As he spoke his eyes followed the line and balance of Mike's neck and
shoulders, which showed at this moment upon a dark shadow falling
obliquely along an old wall. Soft, violet eyes in which tenderness
dwelt, and the strangely tall and lithe figure was emphasized by the
conventional pose--that pose of arm and thigh which the Greeks never
wearied of. Seeing him, the mind turned from the reserve of the
Christian world towards the frank enjoyment of the Pagan; and John's
solid, rhythmless form was as symbolic of dogma as Mike's of the
grace of Athens.

As he ascended the stairs, having bidden his friends good-night, John
thought of the unfortunate nun whom that man had persuaded to leave
her convent, and he wondered if he were justified in living in such
close communion of thought with those whose lives were set in all
opposition to the principles on which he had staked his life's value.
He was thinking and writing the same thoughts as Fletcher. They were
swimming in the same waters; they were living the same life.

Disturbed in mind he walked across the room, his spectacles
glimmering on his high nose, his dressing-gown floating. The
manuscript of the poems caught his eyes, and he turned over the
sheets, his hand trembling violently. And if they were antagonistic
to the spirit of his teaching, if not to the doctrine that the Church
in her eternal wisdom deemed healthful and wise, and conducive to the
best attainable morality and heaven? What a fearful responsibility
he was taking upon himself! He had learned in bitter experience that
he must seek salvation rather in elimination than in acceptance of
responsibilities. But his poems were all he deemed best in the world.
For a moment John stood face to face with, and he looked into the
eyes of, the Church. The dome of St. Peter's, a solitary pope,
cardinals, bishops, and priests. Oh! wonderful symbolization of man's
lust of eternal life!

Must he renounce all his beliefs? The wish so dear to him that the
unspeakable spectacle of life might cease for ever; must he give
thanks for existence because it gave him a small chance of gaining
heaven? Then it were well to bring others into the world.... True it
is that the Church does not advance into such sloughs of optimism,
but how different is her teaching from that of the early fathers, and
how different is such dull optimism from the severe spirit of early
Christianity.

Whither lay his duty? Must he burn the poems? Far better that they
should burn and he should save his soul from burning. A sudden vision
of hell, a realistic mediæval hell full of black devils and ovens
came upon him, and he saw himself thrust into flame. It seemed to him
certain that his soul was lost--so certain, that the source of prayer
died within him and he fell prostrate. He cursed, with curses that
seared his soul as he uttered them, Harding, that cynical atheist,
who had striven to undermine his faith, and he shrank from thought of
Fletcher, that dirty voluptuary.

He went out for long walks, hoping by exercise to throw off the gloom
and horror which were thickening in his brain. He sought vainly to
arrive at some certain opinions concerning his poems, and he weighed
every line, not now for cadence and colour, but with a view of
determining their ethical tendencies; and this poor torn soul stood
trembling on the verge of fearful abyss of unreason and doubt.

And when he walked in the streets, London appeared a dismal, phantom
city. The tall houses vanishing in darkness, the unending noise, the
sudden and vague figures passing; some with unclean gaze, others in
mysterious haste, the courtesans springing from hansoms and entering
their restaurant, lurking prostitutes, jocular lads, and alleys
suggestive of crime. All and everything that is city fell violently
upon his mind, jarring it, and flashing over his brow all the horror
of delirium. His pace quickened, and he longed for wings to rise out
of the abominable labyrinth.

At that moment a gable of a church rose against the sky. The gates
were open, and one passing through seemed to John like an angel, and
obeying the instinct which compels the hunted animal to seek refuge
in the earth, he entered, and threw himself on his knees. Relief
came, and the dread about his heart was loosened in the romantic
twilight. One poor woman knelt amid the chairs; presently she rose
and went to the confessional. He waited his turn, his eyes fixed on
the candles that burned in the dusky distance.

"Father, forgive me, for I have sinned!"

The priest, an old man of gray and shrivelled mien, settled his
cassock and mumbled some Latin.

"I have come to ask your advice, father, rather than to confess the
sins I have committed in the last week. Since I have come to live in
London I have been drawn into the society of the dissolute and the
impure."

"And you have found that your faith and your morals are being
weakened by association with these men?"

"I have to thank God that I am uninfluenced by them. Their society
presents no attractions for me, but I am engaged in literary
pursuits, and most of the young men with whom I am brought in contact
lead unclean and unholy lives. I have striven, and have in some
measure succeeded, in enforcing respect for my ideals; never have
I countenanced indecent conversation, although perhaps I have not
always set as stern a face against it as I might have."

"But you have never joined in it?"

"Never. But, father, I am on the eve of the publication of a volume
of poems, and I am grievously afflicted with scruples lest their
tendency does not stand in agreement with the teaching of our holy
Church."

"Do you fear their morality, my son?"

"No, no!" said John in an agitated voice, which caused the old man to
raise his eyes and glance inquiringly at his penitent; "the poem I am
most fearful of is a philosophic poem based on Schopenhauer."

"I did not catch the name."

"Schopenhauer; if you are acquainted with his works, father, you will
appreciate my anxieties, and will see just where my difficulty lies."

"I cannot say I can call to mind at this moment any exact idea of his
philosophy; does it include a denial of the existence of God?"

"His teaching, I admit, is atheistic in its tendency, but I do not
follow him to his conclusions. A part of his theory--that of the
resignation of desire of life--seems to me not only reconcilable with
the traditions of the Church, but may really be said to have been
original and vital in early Christianity, however much it may have
been forgotten in these later centuries. Jesus Christ our Lord is the
perfect symbol of the denial of the will to live."

"Jesus Christ our Lord died to save us from the consequences of the
sin of our first parents. He died of His own free-will, but we may
not live an hour more than is given to us to live, though we desire
it with our whole heart. We may be called away at any moment."

John bent his head before the sublime stupidity of the priest.

"I was anxious, father, to give you in a few words some account of
the philosophy which has been engaging my attention, so that you
might better understand my difficulties. Although Schopenhauer may be
wrong in his theory regarding the will, the conclusion he draws from
it, namely, that we may only find lasting peace in resignation, seems
to me well within the dogma of our holy Church."

"It surprises me that he should hold such opinions, for if he does
not acknowledge a future state, the present must be everything, and
the gratification of the senses the only...."

"I assure you, father, no one can be more opposed to materialism than
Schopenhauer. He holds the world we live in to be a mere
delusion--the veil of Maya."

"I am afraid, my son, I cannot speak with any degree of certainty
about either of those authors, but I think it my duty to warn you
against inclining too willing an ear to the specious sophistries of
German philosophers. It would be well if you were to turn to our
Christian philosophers; our great cardinal--Cardinal Newman--has over
and over again refuted the enemies of the Church. I have forgotten
the name."

"Schopenhauer."

"Now I will give you absolution."

The burlesque into which his confession had drifted awakened new
terrors in John and sensations of sacrilege. He listened devoutly to
the prattle of the priest, and to crush the rebellious spirit in him
he promised to submit his poems; and he did not allow himself to
think the old man incapable of understanding them. But he knew he
would not submit those poems, and turning from the degradation he
faced a command which had suddenly come upon him. A great battle
raged; and growing at every moment less conscious of all save his
soul's salvation, he walked through the streets, his stick held
forward like a church candle.

He walked through the city, seeing it not, and hearing all cruel
voices dying to one--this: "I can only attain salvation by the
elimination of all responsibilities. There is therefore but one
course to adopt." Decision came upon him like the surgeon's knife. It
was in the cold darkness of his rooms in Pump Court. He raised his
face, deadly pale, from his hands; but gradually it went aflame with
the joy and rapture of sacrifice, and taking his manuscript, he
lighted it in the gas. He held it for a few moments till it was well
on fire, and then threw it all blazing under the grate.




CHAPTER II


An odour of spirits evaporated in the warm winds of May which came
through the open window. The rich velvet sofa of early English design
was littered with proofs and copies of the _Pilgrim_, and the stamped
velvet was two shades richer in tone than the pale dead-red of the
floorcloth. Small pictures in light frames harmonized with a green
paper of long interlacing leaves. On the right, the grand piano and
the slender brass lamps; and the impression of refinement and taste
was continued, for between the blue chintz curtains the river lay
soft as a picture of old Venice. The beauty of the water, full of
the shadows of hay and sails, many forms of chimneys, wharfs, and
warehouses, made panoramic and picturesque by the motion of the great
hay-boats, were surely wanted for the windows of this beautiful
apartment.

Mike and Frank stood facing the view, and talked of Lily Young, whom
Mike was momentarily expecting.

"You know as much about it as I do. It was only just at the end that
you spoke to your cousin and I got in a few words."

"What did you say?"

"What could I say? Something to the effect that the convent must be a
very happy home."

"How did you know she cared for you?"

"I always know that. The second time we went there she told me she
was going to leave the convent. I asked her what had decided her to
take that step, and she looked at me--that thirsting look which women
cannot repress. I said I hoped I should see her when she came to
London; she said she hoped so too. Then I knew it was all right. I
pressed her hand, and when we went again I said she would find a
letter waiting for her at the post-office. Somehow she got the letter
sooner than I expected, and wrote to say she'd come here if she
could. Here is the letter. But will she come?"

"Even if she does, I don't see what good it will do you; it isn't as
if you were really in love with her."

"I believe I am in love; it sounds rather awful, doesn't it? but she
is wondrous sweet. I want to be true to her. I want to live for her.
I'm not half so bad as you think I am. I have often tried to be
constant, and now I mean to be. This ceaseless desire of change is
very stupid, and it leads to nothing. I'm sick of change, and would
think of none but her. You have no idea how I have altered since I
have seen her. I used to desire all women. I wrote a ballade the
other day on the women of two centuries hence. Is it not shocking
to think that we shall lie mouldering in our graves while women are
dancing and kissing? They will not even know that I lived and was
loved. It will not occur to them to say as they undress of an
evening, 'Were he alive to-day we might love him.'"


   THE BALLADE OF DON JUAN DEAD

  My days for singing and loving are over,
    And stark I lie in my narrow bed,
  I care not at all if roses cover,
    Or if above me the snow is spread;
    I am weary of dreaming of my sweet dead,
  All gone like me unto common clay.
  Life's bowers are full of love's fair fray,
    Of piercing kisses and subtle snares;
  So gallants are conquered, ah, well away!--
    My love was stronger and fiercer than theirs.

  O happy moths that now flit and hover
    From the blossom of white to the blossom of red,
  Take heed, for I was a lordly lover
    Till the little day of my life had sped;
    As straight as a pine-tree, a golden head,
  And eyes as blue as an austral bay.
  Ladies, when loosing your evening array,
    Reflect, had you lived in my years, my prayers
  Might have won you from weakly lovers away--
    My love was stronger and fiercer than theirs.

  Through the song of the thrush and the pipe of the plover
    Sweet voices come down through the binding lead;
  O queens that every age must discover
    For men, that man's delight may be fed;
    Oh, sister queens to the queens I wed.
  For the space of a year, a month, a day,
  No thirst but mine could your thirst allay;
    And oh, for an hour of life, my dears,
  To kiss you, to laugh at your lovers' dismay--
    My love was stronger and fiercer than theirs.


    ENVOI
  Prince was I ever of festival gay,
  And time never silvered my locks with gray;
    The love of your lovers is as hope that despairs,
  So think of me sometimes, dear ladies, I pray--
    My love was stronger and fiercer than theirs.


"It is like all your poetry--merely meretricious glitter; there is no
heart in it. That a man should like to have a nice mistress, a girl
he is really fond of, is simple enough, but lamentation over the
limbo of unborn loveliness is, to my mind, sheer nonsense."

Mike laughed.

"Of course it is silly, but I cannot alter it; it is the sex and not
any individual woman that attracts me. I enter a ball-room and I see
one, one whom I have never seen before, and I say, 'It is she whom I
have sought, I can love her.' I am always disappointed, but hope is
born again in every fresh face. Women are so common when they have
loved you."

Startled by his words, Mike strove to measure the thought.

"I can see nothing interesting in the fact that it is natural to you
to behave badly to every woman who gives you a chance of deceiving
her. That's what it amounts to. At the end of a week you'll tire of
this new girl as you did of the others. I think it a great shame. It
isn't gentlemanly."

Mike winced at the word "gentlemanly." For a moment he thought of
resentment, but his natural amiability predominated, and he said--

"I hope not. I really do think I can love this one; she isn't like
the others. Besides, I shall be much happier. There is, I know, a
great sweetness in constancy. I long for this sweetness." Seeing by
Frank's face that he was still angry, he pursued his thoughts in the
line which he fancied would be most agreeable; he did so without
violence to his feelings. It was as natural to him to think one way
as another. Mike's sycophancy was so innate that it did not appear,
and was therefore almost invariably successful. "I have been the
lover of scores of women, but I never loved one. I have always hoped
to love; it is love that I seek. I find love-tokens and I do not know
who were the givers. I have possessed nothing but the flesh, and I
have always looked beyond the flesh. I never sought a woman for her
beauty. I dreamed of a companion, one who would share each thought;
I have dreamed of a woman to whom I could bring my poetry, who could
comprehend all sorrows, and with whom I might deplore the sadness of
life until we forget it was sad, and I have been given some more or
less imperfect flesh."

"I," said Frank, "don't care a rap for your blue-stockings. I like a
girl to look pretty and sweet in a muslin dress, her hair with the
sun on it slipping over her shoulders, a large hat throwing a shadow
over the garden of her face. I like her to come and sit on my knee in
the twilight before dinner, to come behind me when I am working and
put her hand on my forehead, saying, 'Poor old man, you are tired!'"

"And you could love one girl all your life--Lizzie Baker, for
instance; and you could give up all women for one, and never wander
again free to gather?"

"It is always the same thing."

"No, that is just what it is not. The last one was thin, this one
is fat; the last one was tall, this one is tiny. The last one was
stupid, this one is witty. Some men seek the source of the Nile, I
the lace of a bodice. A new love is a voyage of discovery. What is
her furniture like? What will she say? What are her opinions of love?
But when you have been a woman's lover a month you know her morally
and physically. Society is based on the family. The family alone
survives, it floats like an ark over every raging flood. But you
may understand without being able to accept, and I cannot accept,
although I understand and love family life. What promiscuity of body
and mind! The idea of never being alone fills me with horror to lose
that secret self, which, like a shy bird, flies out of sight in the
day, but is with you, oh, how intensely in the morning!"

"Nothing pleases you so much as to be allowed to talk nonsense about
yourself."

Mike laughed.

"Let me have those opera-glasses. That woman sitting on the bench is
like her."

The trees of the embankment waved along the laughing water, and in
scores the sparrows flitted across the sleek green sward. The porter
in his bright uniform, cocked hat, and brass buttons, explained the
way out to a woman. Her child wore a red sash and stooped to play
with a cat that came along the railings, its tail high in the air.

"They know nothing of Lily Young," Mike said to himself; and knowing
the porter could not interfere, he wondered what he would think if he
knew all. "If she comes nothing can save her, she must and shall be
mine."

Waterloo Bridge stood high above the river, level and lovely. Over
Charing Cross the brightness was full of spires and pinnacles, but
Southwark shore was lost in flat dimness. Then the sun glowed and
Westminster ascended tall and romantic, St. Thomas's and St. John's
floating in pale enchantment, and beneath the haze that heaved and
drifted, revealing coal-barges moored by the Southwark shore, lay a
sheet of gold. The candour of the morning laughed upon the river;
and there came a little steamer into the dazzling water, her smoke
heeling over, coiling and uncoiling like a snake, and casting
tremendous shadow--in her train a line of boats laden to the edge
with deal planks. Then the haze heaved and London disappeared, became
again a gray city, faint and far away--faint as spires seem in a
dream. Again and again the haze wreathed and went out, discovering
wharfs and gold inscriptions, uncovering barges aground upon the
purple slime of the Southwark shore, their yellow yards pointing like
birds with outstretched necks.

The smoke of the little steamer curled and rolled over, now like a
great snake, now like a great bird hovering with a snake in its
talons; and the little steamer made pluckily for Blackfriars. Carts
and hansoms, vans and brewers' vans, all silhouetting. Trains slip
past, obliterating with white whiffs the delicate distances, the
perplexing distances that in London are delicate and perplexing as
a spider's web. Great hay-boats yellow in the sun, brown in the
shadow--great hay-boats came by, their sails scarce filled with the
light breeze; standing high, they sailed slowly and picturesquely,
with men thrown in all attitudes; somnolent in sunshine and pungent
odour--one only at work, wielding the great rudder.

"Ah! if she would not disappoint me; if she would only come; I would
give my life not to be disappointed.... Three o'clock! She said she
would be here by three, if she came at all. I think I could love
her--I am sure of it; it would be impossible to weary of her--so
frail--a white blonde. She said she would come, I know she wanted
to.... This waiting is agony! Oh, if I were only good-looking!
Whatever power I have over women I have acquired; it was the desire
to please women that gave me whatever power I possess; I was as soft
as wax, and in the fingers of desire was modified and moulded. You
did not know me when I was a boy--I was hideous. It seemed to me
impossible that women could love men. Women seemed to me so beautiful
and desirable, men so hideous and revolting. Could they touch us
without a revulsion of feeling? Could they really desire us? That
is why I could not bear to give women money, nor a present of any
kind--no, not even a flower. If I did all my pleasure was gone;
I could not help thinking it was for what they got out of me that
they liked me. I longed to penetrate the mystery of women's life.
It seemed to me cruel that the differences between the sexes should
never be allowed to dwindle, but should be strictly maintained
through all the observances of life. There were beautiful beings
walking by us of whom we knew nothing--irreparably separated from
us. I wanted to be with this sex as a shadow is with its object."

"You didn't find many opportunities of gratifying your tastes in
Cashel?"

"No, indeed! Of course the women about the town were not to be
thought of." Unpleasant memories seemed to check his flow of words.

Without noticing his embarrassment, Frank said--

"After France it must have been a horrible change to come to Ireland.
How old were you?"

"About fourteen. I could not endure the place. Every day was so
appallingly like the last. There was nothing for me to do but to
dream; I dreamed of everything. I longed to get alone and let my
fancy wander--weaving tales of which I was the hero, building castles
of which I was the lord."

"I remember always hearing of your riding and shooting. No one knew
of your literary tastes. I don't mind telling you that Mount Rorke
often suspected you of being a bit of a poacher."

Mike laughed.

"I believe I have knocked down a pheasant or two. I was an odd
mixture--half a man of action, half a man of dreams. My position in
Cashel was unbearable. My mother was a lady; my father--you know how
he had let himself down. You cannot imagine the yearnings of a poor
boy; you were brought up in all elegance and refinement. That
beautiful park! On afternoons I used to walk there, and I remember
the very moments I passed under the foliage of the great beeches and
lay down to dream. I used to wander to the outskirts of the wood as
near as I dared to the pleasure-grounds, and looking on the towers
strove to imagine the life there. The bitterest curses lie in the
hearts of young men who, understanding refinement and elegance, see
it for ever out of their reach. I used to watch the parade of dresses
passing on the summer lawns between the firs and flowering trees.
What graceful and noble words were spoken!--and that man walking into
the poetry of the laburnum gold, did he put his arm about her? And I
wondered what silken ankles moved beneath her skirts. My brain was on
fire, and I was crazed; I thought I should never hold a lady in my
arms. A lady! all the delicacy of silk and lace, high-heeled shoes,
and the scent and colour of hair that a _coiffeur_ has braided."

"I think you are mad!"

Mike laughed and continued--

"I was so when I was sixteen. There was a girl staying there. Her
hair was copper, and her flesh was pink and white. Her waist, you
could span it. I saw her walking one day on ..."

"You must mean Lady Alice Hargood, a very tall girl?"

"Yes; five feet seven, quite. I saw her walking on the terrace with
your uncle. Once she passed our house, and I smarted with shame of it
as of some restless wound, and for days I remembered I was little
better than a peasant. Originally we came, as you know, of good
English stock, but nothing is vital but the present. I cried and
cursed my existence, my father and the mother that bore me, and that
night I climbed out by my window and roved through the dark about the
castle so tall in the moonlight. The sky that night was like a soft
blue veil, and the trees were painted quite black upon it. I looked
for her window, and I imagined her sleeping with her copper hair
tossed in the moonlight, like an illustration in a volume of Shelley.

"You remember the old wooden statue of a nymph that stood in the
sycamores at the end of the terraces; she was the first naked woman I
saw. I used to wander about her, sometimes at night, and I have often
climbed about and hung round those shoulders, and ever since I have
always met that breast of wood. You have been loved more truly; you
have been possessed of woman more thoroughly than I. Though I clasp a
woman in my arms, it is as if the Atlantic separated us. Did I never
tell you of my first love affair? That was the romance of the wood
nymph. One evening I climbed on the pedestal of my divinity, my cheek
was pale ..."

"For God's sake, leave out the poetics, and come to the facts."

"If you don't let me tell my story in my own way I won't tell it at
all. Out of my agony prayer rose to Alice, for now it pleased me to
fancy there was some likeness between this statue and Lady Alice. The
dome of leafage was sprinkled with the colour of the sunset, and as I
pressed my lips to the wooden statue, I heard dead leaves rustling
under a footstep. Holding the nymph with one arm, I turned and saw a
lady approaching. She asked me why I kissed the statue. I looked away
embarrassed, but she told me not to go, and she said, 'You are a
pretty boy.' I said I had never seen a woman so beautiful. Again
I grew ashamed, but the lady laughed. We stood talking in the
stillness. She said I had pretty hands, and asked me if I regretted
the nymph was not a real woman. She took my hands. I praised hers,
and then I grew frightened, for I knew she came from the castle; the
castle was to me what the Ark of the Covenant was to an Israelite.
She put her arm about me, and my fears departed in the thrilling of
an exquisite minute. She kissed me and said, 'Let us sit down.'"

"I wonder who she was! What was her name? You can tell me."

"No, I never mention names; besides, I am not certain she gave her
right name."

"Are you sure she was staying at the castle? For if so, there would
be no use for her to conceal her name. You could easily have found
it out."

"Oh, yes, she was staying at the castle; she talked about you all.
Don't you believe me?"

"What, all about the nymph? I am certain you thought you ought to
have loved her, and if what Harding says is right, that there is more
truth in what we think than in what we do, I'm sure you might say
that you had been on a wedding-tour with one of the gargoyles."

Mike laughed; and Frank did not suspect that he had annoyed him.
Mike's mother was a Frenchwoman, whom John Fletcher had met in Dublin
and had pressed into a sudden marriage. At the end of three years of
married life she had been forced to leave him, and strange were the
legends of the profanities of that bed. She fled one day, taking her
son with her. Fletcher did not even inquire where she had gone; and
when at her death Mike returned to Ireland, he found his father in a
small lodging-house playing the flute. Scarcely deigning to turn his
head, he said--"Oh! is that you, Mike?--sit down."

At his father's death, Mike had sold the lease of the farm for three
hundred pounds, and with that sum and a volume of verse he went to
London. When he had published his poems he wrote two comedies. His
efforts to get them produced led him into various society. He was
naturally clever at cards, and one night he won three hundred pounds.
Journalism he had of course dabbled in--he was drawn towards it by
his eager impatient nature; he was drawn from it by his gluttonous
and artistic nature. Only ten pounds for an article, whereas a
successful "bridge" brought him ten times that amount, and he
revolted against the column of platitudes that the hours whelmed in
oblivion. There had been times, however, when he had been obliged to
look to journalism for daily bread. The _Spectator_, always open to
young talent, had published many of his poems; the _Saturday_ had
welcomed his paradoxes and strained eloquence; but whether he worked
or whether he idled he never wanted money. He was one of those men
who can always find five pounds in the streets of London.

We meet Mike in his prime--in his twenty-ninth year--a man of various
capabilities, which an inveterate restlessness of temperament had
left undeveloped--a man of genius, diswrought with passion,
occasionally stricken with ambition.

"Let me have those glasses. There she is! I am sure it is she--there,
leaning against the Embankment. Yes, yes, it is she. Look at her. I
should know her figure among a thousand--those frail shoulders, that
little waist; you could break her like a reed. How sweet she is on
that background of flowing water, boats, wharfs, and chimneys; it all
rises about her like a dream, and all is as faint upon the radiant
air as a dream upon happy sleep. So she is coming to see me. She will
keep her promise. I shall love her. I feel at last that love is near
me. Supposing I were to marry her?"

"Why shouldn't you marry her if you love her? That is to say, if this
is more than one of your ordinary caprices, spiced by the fact that
its object is a nun."

The men looked at each other for a moment doubtful. Then Mike
laughed.

"I hope I don't love her too much, that is all. But perhaps she will
not come. Why is she standing there?"

"I should laugh if she turned on her heel and walked away right under
your very nose."

A cloud passed over Mike's face.

"That's not possible," he said, and he raised the glass. "If I
thought there was any chance of that I should go down to see her."

"You couldn't force her to come up. She seems to be admiring the
view."

Then Lily left the embankment and turned towards the Temple.

"She is coming!" Mike cried, and laying down the opera-glass he took
up the scent and squirted it about the room. "You won't make much
noise, like a good fellow, will you? I shall tell her I am here
alone."

"I shall make no noise--I shall finish my article. I am expecting
Lizzie about four; I will slip out and meet her in the street.
Good-bye."

Mike went to the head of the staircase, and looking down the
prodigious height, he waited. It occurred to him that if he fell, the
emparadised hour would be lost for ever. If she were to pass through
the Temple without stopping at No. 2! The sound of little feet and
the colour of a heliotrope skirt dispersed his fears, and he watched
her growing larger as she mounted each flight of stairs; when she
stopped to take breath, he thought of running down and carrying her
up in his arms, but he did not move, and she did not see him until
the last flight.

"Here you are at last!"

"I am afraid I have kept you waiting. I was not certain whether I
should come."

"And you stopped to look at the view instead?"

"Yes, but how did you know that?"

"Ah! that's telling; come in."

The girl went in shyly.

"So this is where you live? How nicely you have arranged the room.
I never saw a room like this before. How different from the convent!
What would the nuns think if they saw me here? What strange
pictures!--those ballet-girls; they remind me of the pantomime.
Did you buy those pictures?"

"No; they are wonderful, aren't they? A friend of mine bought them
in France."

"Mr. Escott?"

"Yes; I forgot you knew him--how stupid of me! Had it not been for
him I shouldn't have known you--I was thinking of something else."

"Where is he now? I hope he will not return while I am here. You did
not tell him I was coming?"

"Of course not; he is away in France."

"And those portraits--it is always the same face."

"They are portraits of a girl he is in love with."

"Do you believe he is in love?"

"Yes, rather; head over heels. What do you think of the painting?"

Lily did not answer. She stood puzzled, striving to separate the
confused notions the room conveyed to her. She wore on her shoulders
a small black lace shawl and held a black silk parasol. She was very
slender, and her features were small and regular, and so white was
her face that the blue eyes seemed the only colour. There was,
however, about the cheek-bones just such tint as mellow as a white
rose.

"How beautiful you are to-day. I knew you would be beautiful when you
discarded that shocking habit; but you are far more beautiful than I
thought. Let me kiss you."

"No, you will make me regret that I came here. I wanted to see where
you lived, so that when I was away I could imagine you writing your
poems. Have you nothing more to show me? I want to see everything."

"Yes, come, I will show you our dining-room. Mr. Escott often gives
dinner-parties. You must get your mother to bring you."

"I should like to. But what a good idea to have book-cases in the
passages, they furnish the walls so well. And what are those rooms?"

"Those belong to Escott. Here is where I sleep."

"What a strange room!" discountenanced by the great Christ. She
turned her head.

"That crucifix is a present from Frank. He bought it in Paris. It is
superb expression of the faith of the Middle Ages."

"Old ages, I should think; it is all worm-eaten. And that Virgin? I
did not know you were so religious."

"I do not believe in Christianity, but I think Christ is
picturesque."

"Christ is very beautiful. When I prayed to Him an hour passed like
a little minute. It always seemed to me more natural to pray to Him
than to the Virgin Mary. But is that your bed?"

Upon a trellis supported by lion's claws a feather bed was laid. The
sheets and pillows were covered with embroidered cloth, the gift of
some unhappy lady, and about the twisted columns heavy draperies hung
in apparent disorder. Lily sat down on the pouff ottoman. Mike took
two Venetian glasses, poured out some champagne, and sat at her feet.
She sipped the wine and nibbled a biscuit.

"Tell me about the convent," he said. "That is now a thing over and
done."

"Fortunately I was not professed; had I taken vows I could not have
broken them."

"Why not? A nun cannot be kept imprisoned nowadays."

"I should not have broken my vows."

"It was I who saved you from them--if you had not fallen in love with
me ..."

"I never said I had fallen in love with you; I liked you, that was
all."

"But it was for me you left the convent?"

"No; I had made up my mind to leave the convent long before I saw
you. So you thought it was love at first sight."

"On my part, at least, it was love at first sight. How happy I am!--I
can scarcely believe I have got you. To have you here by me seems so
unreal, so impossible. I always loved you. I want to tell you about
myself. You were my ideal when I was a boy; I had already imagined
you; my poems were all addressed to you. My own sweet ideal that none
knew of but myself. You shall come and see me all the summer through,
in this room--our room. When will you come again?"

"I shall never come again--it is time to go."

"To go! Why, you haven't kissed me yet!"

"I do not intend to kiss you."

"How cruel of you! You say you will never come and see me again; you
break and destroy my dream."

"How did you dream of me?"

"I dreamed the world was buried in snow, barred with frost--that I
never went out, but sat here waiting for you to come. I dreamed that
you came to see me on regular days. I saw myself writing poems to
you, looking up to see the clock from time to time. Tea and wine were
ready, and the room was scented with your favourite perfume. Ting!
How the bell thrilled me, and with what precipitation I rushed to the
door! There I found you. What pleasure to lead you to the great fire,
to help you to take off your pelisse!"

The girl looked at him, her eyes full of innocent wonderment.

"How can you think of such things? It sounds like a fairy tale. And
if it were summer-time?"

"Oh! if it were summer we should have roses in the room, and only a
falling rose-leaf should remind us of the imperceptible passing of
the hours. We should want no books, the picturesqueness of the river
would be enough. And holding your little palm in mine, so silken and
delicately moist, I would draw close to you."

Knowing his skin was delicate to the touch, he took her arm in his
hand, but she drew her arm away, and there was incipient denial in
the withdrawal. His face clouded. But he had not yet made up his mind
how he should act, and to gain time to think, he said--

"Tell me why you thought of entering a convent?"

"I was not happy at home, and the convent, with its prayers and
duties, seemed preferable. But it was not quite the same as I had
imagined, and I couldn't learn to forget that there was a world of
beauty, colour, and love."

"You could not but think of the world of men that awaited you."

"I only thought of Him."

"And who was he?"

"Ah! He was a very great saint, a greater saint than you'll ever be.
I fell in love with Him when I was quite a little girl."

"What was his name?"

"I am not going to tell you. It was for Him I went into the convent;
I was determined to be His bride in heaven. I used to read His life,
and think of Him all day long. I had a friend who was also in love,
but the reverend mother heard of our conversations, and we were
forbidden to speak any more of our saints."

"Tell me his name? Was he anything like me?"

"Well, perhaps there is a something in the eyes."

The conversation dropped, and he laid his hand gently upon her foot.
Drawing it back she spilt the wine.

"I must go."

"No, dearest, you must not."

She looked round, taking the room in one swift circular glance, her
eyes resting one moment on the crucifix.

"This is cruel of you," he said. "I dreamed of you madly, and why do
you destroy my dream? What shall I do?--where shall I go?--how shall
I live if I don't get you?"

"Men do not mind whom they love; even in the convent we knew that."

"You seem to have known a good deal in that convent; I am not
astonished that you left it."

"What do you mean?" She settled her shawl on her shoulders.

"Merely this; you are in a young man's room alone, and I love you."

"Love! You profane the word; loose me, I am going."

"No, you are not going, you must remain." There was an occasional
nature in him, that of the vicious dog, and now it snarled. "If you
did not love me, you should not have come here," he said interposing,
getting between her and the door.

Then she entreated him to let her go. He laughed at her; then
suddenly her face flamed with a passion he was unprepared for, and
her eyes danced with strange lights. Few words were spoken, only a
few ejaculatory phrases such as "How dare you?" "Let me go!" she
said, as she strove to wrench her arms from his grasp. She caught up
one of the glasses; but before she could throw it Mike seized her
hand; he could not take it from her, and unconscious of danger (for
if the glass broke both would be cut to the bone), she clenched it
with a force that seemed impossible in one so frail. Her rage was
like wildfire. Mike grew afraid, and preferring that the glass should
be thrown than it should break in his hand, he loosed his fingers. It
smashed against the opposite wall. He hoped that Frank had not heard;
that he had left the chambers. He seized the second glass. When she
raised her arm, Mike saw and heard the shattered window falling into
the court below. He anticipated the porter's steps on the staircase
and his knock at the door, and it was with an intense relief and
triumph that he saw the bottle strike the curtain and fall harmless.
He would win yet. Lily screamed piercingly.

"No one will hear," he said, laughing hoarsely.

She escaped him and she screamed three times. And now quite like a
mad woman, she snatched a light chair and rushed to the window. Her
frail frame shook, her thin face was swollen, and she seemed to have
lost control over her eyes. If she should die! If she should go mad!
Now really terrified, Mike prayed for forgiveness. She did not
answer; she stood clenching her hands, choking.

"Sit down," he said, "drink something. You need not be afraid of me
now--do as you like, I am your servant. I will ask only one thing of
you--forgiveness. If you only knew!"

"Don't speak to me!" she gasped, "don't!"

"Forgive me, I beseech you; I love you better than all the world."

"Don't touch me! How dare you? Oh! how dare you?"

Mike watched her quivering. He saw she was sublime in her rage, and
torn with desire and regret he continued his pleadings. It was some
time before she spoke.

"And it was for this," she said, "I left my convent, and it was of
him I used to dream! Oh! how bitter is my awakening!"

She grasped one of the thin columns of the bed and her attitude
bespoke the revulsion of feeling that was passing in her soul;
beneath the heavy curtains she stood pale all over, thrown by the
shock of too coarse a reality. His perception of her innocence was a
goad to his appetite, and his despair augmented at losing her. Now,
as died the fulgurant rage that had supported her, and her normal
strength being exhausted, a sudden weakness intervened, and she
couldn't but allow Mike to lead her to a seat.

"I am sorry; words cannot tell you how sorry I am. Why do you tremble
so? You are not going to faint, say--drink something." Hastily he
poured out some wine and held it to her lips. "I never was sorry
before; now I know what sorrow is--I am sorry, Lily. I am not ashamed
of my tears; look at them, and strive to understand. I never loved
till I saw you. Ah! that lily face, when I saw it beneath the white
veil, love leaped into my soul. Then I hated religion, and I longed
to scale the sky to dispossess Heaven of that which I held the one
sacred and desirable thing--you! My soul! I would have given it to
burn for ten thousand years for one kiss, one touch of these
snow-coloured hands. When I saw, or thought I saw, that you loved me,
I was God. I said on reading your sweet letter, 'My life shall not
pass without kissing at least once the lips of my chimera.'"

Words and images rose in his mind without sensation or effort, and
experiencing the giddiness and exultation of the orator, he strove to
win her with eloquence. And all his magnetism was in his hands and
eyes--deep blue eyes full of fire and light were fixed upon
her--hands, soft yet powerful hands held hers, sometimes were
clenched on hers, and a voice which seemed his soul rose and fell,
striving to sting her with passionate sound; but she remained
absorbed in, and could not be drawn out of, angry thought.

"Now you are with me," he said, "nearly mine; here I see you like a
picture that is mine. Around us is mighty London. I saved you from
God, am I to lose you to Man? This was the prospect that faced me,
that faces me, that drove me mad. All I did was to attempt to make
you mine. I hold you by so little--I could not bear the thought that
you might pass from me. A ship sails away, growing indistinct, and
then disappears in the shadows; in London a cab rattles, appears and
disappears behind other cabs, turns a corner, and is lost for ever. I
failed, but had I succeeded you would have come back to me; I failed,
is not that punishment enough? You will go from me; I shall not get
you--that is sorrow enough for me; do not refuse me forgiveness. Ah!
if you knew what it is to have sought love passionately, the high
hopes entertained, and then the depth of every deception, and now
the supreme grief of finding love and losing. Seeing love leave me
without leaving one flying feather for token, I strove to pluck
one--that is my crime. Go, since you must go, but do not go
unforgiving, lest perhaps you might regret."

Lily did not cry. Her indignation was vented in broken phrases, the
meaning of which she did not seem to realize, and so jarred and
shaken were her nerves that without being aware of it her talk
branched into observations on her mother, her home life, the convent,
and the disappointments of childhood. So incoherently did she speak
that for a moment Mike feared her brain was affected, and his efforts
to lead her to speak of the present were fruitless. But suddenly,
waxing calm, her inner nature shining through the eyes like light
through porcelain, she said--

"I was wrong to come here, but I imagined men different. We know so
little of the world in the convent.... Ah, I should have stayed
there. It may be but a poor delusion, but it is better than such
wickedness."

"But I love you."

"Love me! ... You say you have sought love; we find love in
contemplation and desire of higher things. I am wanting in
experience, but I know that love lives in thought, and not in violent
passion; I know that a look from the loved one on entering a room,
a touch of a hand at most will suffice, and I should have been
satisfied to have seen your windows, and I should have gone away, my
heart stored with impressions of you, and I should have been happy
for weeks in the secret possession of such memories. So I have always
understood love; so we understood love in the convent."

They were standing face to face in the faint twilight and scent of
the bedroom. Through the gauze blind the river floated past,
decorative and grand; the great hay-boats rose above the wharfs and
steamers; one lay in the sun's silver casting a black shadow; a barge
rowed by one man drifted round and round in the tide.

"When I knelt in the choir I lifted my heart to the saint I loved.
How far was He from me? Millions of miles!--and yet He was very near.
I dreamed of meeting Him in heaven, of seeing Him come robed in white
with a palm in His hand, and then in a little darkness and dimness I
felt Him take me to His breast. I loved to read of the miracles He
performed, and one night I dreamed I saw Him in my cell--or was it
you?"

All anger was gone from her face, and it reflected the play of her
fancy. "I used to pray to you to come down and speak to me."

"And now," said Mike, smiling, "now that I have come to you, now that
I call you, now that I hold my arms to you--you the bride-elect--now
that the hour has come, shall I not possess you?"

"Do you think you can gain love by clasping me to your bosom? My
love, though separated from me by a million miles, is nearer to me
than yours has ever been."

"Did you not speak of me as the lover of your prayer, and you said
that in ecstasy the nuns--and indeed it must be so--exchange a
gibbeted saint for some ideal man? Give yourself; make this afternoon
memorable."

"No; good-bye! Remember your promises. Come; I am going."

"I must not lose you," he cried, drunk with her beauty and doubly
drunk with her sensuous idealism. "May I not even kiss you?"

"Well, if you like--once, just here," she said, pointing where white
melted to faint rose.

Mastered, he followed her down the long stairs; but when they passed
into the open air he felt he had lost her irrevocably. The river was
now tinted with setting light, the balustrade of Waterloo Bridge
showed like lace-work, the glass roofing of Charing Cross station was
golden, and each spire distinct upon the moveless blue. The splashing
of a steamer sounded strange upon his ears. The "Citizen" passed! She
was crowded with human beings, all apparently alike. Then the eye
separated them. An old lady making her way down the deck, a young man
in gray clothes, a red soldier leaning over the rail, the captain
walking on the bridge.

Mike called a hansom; a few seconds more and she would pass from him
into London. He saw the horse's hooves, saw the cab appear and
disappear behind other cabs; it turned a corner, and she was gone.




CHAPTER III


Seven hours had elapsed since he had parted from Lily Young, and
these seven hours he had spent in restaurants and music-halls,
seeking in dissipation surcease of sorrow and disappointment. He had
dined at Lubi's, and had gone on with Lord Muchross and Lord Snowdown
to the Royal, and they had returned in many hansoms and with many
courtesans to drink at Lubi's. But his heart was not in gaiety, and
feeling he could neither break a hat joyously nor allow his own to be
broken good-humouredly, nor even sympathize with Dicky, the driver,
who had not been sober since Monday, he turned and left the place.

"This is why fellows marry," he said, when he returned home, and sat
smoking in the shadows--he had lighted only one lamp--depressed by
the loneliness of the apartment. And more than an hour passed before
he heard Frank's steps. Frank was in evening dress; he opened his
cigarette-case, lighted a cigarette, and sat down willing to be
amused. Mike told him the entire story with gestures and descriptive
touches; on the right was the bed with its curtains hanging superbly,
on the left the great hay-boats filling the window; and by insisting
on the cruelest aspects, he succeeded in rendering it almost
unbearable. But Frank had dined well, and as Lizzie had promised
to come to breakfast he was in excellent humour, and on the whole
relished the tale. He was duly impressed and interested by the
subtlety of the fancy which made Lily tell how she used to identify
her ideal lover while praying to Him, Him with the human ideal which
had led her from the cloister, and which she had come to seek in the
world. He was especially struck with, and he admired the conclusion
of, the story, for Mike had invented a dramatic and effective ending.

"Well-nigh mad, drunk with her beauty and the sensuous charm of her
imagination, I threw my arms about her. I felt her limbs against
mine, and I said, 'I am mad for you; give yourself to me, and make
this afternoon memorable.' There was a faint smile of reply in her
eyes. They laughed gently, and she said, 'Well, perhaps I do love you
a little.'"

Frank was deeply impressed by Mike's tact and judgement, and they
talked of women, discussing each shade of feminine morality through
the smoke of innumerable cigarettes; and after each epigram they
looked in each other's eyes astonished at their genius and
originality. Then Mike spoke of the paper and the articles that would
have to be written on the morrow. He promised to get to work early,
and they said good-night.

When Frank left Southwick two years ago and pursued Lizzie Baker to
London, he had found her in straitened circumstances and unable to
obtain employment. The first night he took her out to dinner and
bought her a hat, on the second he bought her a gown, and soon after
she became his mistress. Henceforth his days were devoted to her;
they were seen together in all popular restaurants, and in the
theatres. One day she went to see some relations, and Frank had to
dine alone. He turned into Lubini's, but to his annoyance the only
table available was one which stood next where Mike Fletcher was
dining. "That fellow dining here," thought Frank, "when he ought to
be digging potatoes in Ireland." But the accident of the waiter
seeking for a newspaper forced him to say a few words, and Mike
talked so agreeably that at the end of dinner they went out together
and walked up and down, talking on journalism and women.

Suddenly the last strand of Frank's repugnance to make a friend of
Mike broke, and he asked him to come up to his rooms and have a
drink. They remained talking till daybreak, and separated as friends
in the light of the empty town. Next day they dined together, and a
few days after Frank and Lizzie breakfasted with Mike at his
lodgings. But during the next month they saw very little of him, and
this pause in the course of dining and journalistic discussion,
indicating, as Frank thought it did, a coolness on Mike's part,
determined the relation of these two men. When they ran against each
other in the corridor of a theatre, Frank eagerly button-holed Mike,
and asked him why he had not been to dine at Lubini's, and not
suspecting that he dined there only when he was in funds, was
surprised at his evasive answers. Mistress and lover were equally
anxious to know why they had not been able to find him in any of the
usual haunts; he urged a press of work, but it transpired he was
harassed by creditors, and was looking out for rooms. Frank told
him he was thinking of moving into the Temple.

"Lucky fellow! I wish I could afford to live there."

"I wish you could.... The apartment I have in mind is too large for
me, you might take the half of it."

Mike knew where his comforts lay, and he accepted his friend's offer.
There they founded, and there they edited, the _Pilgrim_, a weekly
sixpenny paper devoted to young men, their doings, their amusements,
their literature, and their art. Under their dual editorship this
journal had prospered; it now circulated five thousand a week, and
published twelve pages of advertisements. Frank, whose bent was
hospitality, was therefore able to entertain his friends as it
pleased him, and his rooms were daily and nightly filled with
revelling lords, comic vocalists, and chorus girls. Mike often craved
for other amusements and other society. Temple Gardens was but one
page in the book of life, and every page in that book was equally
interesting to him. He desired all amusements, to know all things, to
be loved by every one; and longing for new sensations of life, he
often escaped to the Cock tavern for a quiet dinner with some young
barristers, and a quiet smoke afterwards with them in their rooms. It
was there he had met John Norton.

The _Pilgrim_ was composed of sixteen columns of paragraphs in which
society, art, and letters were dealt with--the form of expression
preferred being the most exaggerated. Indeed, the formula of
criticism that Mike and Frank, guided by Harding, had developed, was
to consider as worthless all that the world held in estimation, and
to laud as best all that world had agreed to discard. John Norton's
views regarding Latin literature had been adopted, and Virgil was
declared to be the great old bore of antiquity, and some three or
four quite unknown names, gathered amid the Fathers, were upon
occasion trailed in triumph with adjectives of praise.

What painter of Madonnas does the world agree to consider as the
greatest? Raphael--Raphael was therefore decried as being scarcely
superior to Sir Frederick Leighton; and one of the early Italian
painters, Francesco Bianchi, whom Vasari exhumes in some three or
four lines, was praised as possessing a subtle and mysterious talent
very different indeed from the hesitating smile of La Jaconde. There
is a picture of the Holy Family by him in the Louvre, and of it
Harding wrote--"This canvas exhales for us the most delicious
emanations, sorrowful bewitchments, insidious sacrileges, and
troubled prayers."

All institutions, especially the Royal Academy, St. Paul's Cathedral,
Drury Lane Theatre, and Eton College, were held to be the symbols of
man's earthiness, the bar-room and music-hall as certain proof of his
divine origin; actors were scorned and prize-fighters revered; the
genius of courtesans, the folly of education, and the poetry of
pantomime formed the themes on which the articles which made the
centre of the paper were written. Insolent letters were addressed to
eminent people, and a novel by Harding, the hero of which was a
butler and the heroine a cook, was in course of publication.

Mike was about to begin a series of articles in this genial journal,
entitled _Lions of the Season_. His first lion was a young man who
had invented a pantomime, _Pierrot murders his Wife_, which he was
acting with success in fashionable drawing-rooms. A mute brings
Pierrot back more dead than alive from the cemetery, and throws him
in a chair. When Pierrot recovers he re-acts the murder before a
portrait of his wife--how he tied her down and tickled her to death.
Then he begins drinking, and finally sets fire to the curtains of the
bed and is burnt.

It was the day before publishing day, and since breakfast the young
men had been drinking, smoking, telling tales, and writing
paragraphs; from time to time the page-boy brought in proofs, and
the narrators made pause till he had left the room. Frank continued
reading Mike's manuscript, now and then stopping to praise a
felicitous epithet.

At last he said--"Harding, what do you think of this?--'The Sphynx is
representative of the grave and monumental genius of Egypt, the Faun
of the gracious genius of Rome, the Pierrot of the fantastic genius
of the Renaissance. And, in this one creation, I am not sure that
the seventeenth does not take the palm from the earlier centuries.
Pierrot!--there is music, there is poetry in the name. The soul of an
epoch lives in that name, evocative as it is of shadowy trees, lawny
spaces, brocade, pointed bodices, high heels and guitars. And in
expression how much more perfect is he than his ancestor, the Faun!
His animality is indicated without coarse or awkward symbolism;
without cloven hoof or hirsute ears--only a white face, a long white
dress with large white buttons, and a black skull-cap; and yet,
somehow, the effect is achieved. The great white creature is not
quite human--hereditary sin has not descended upon him; he is not
quite responsible for his acts.'"

"I like the paragraph," said Harding; "you finish up, of course, with
the apotheosis of pantomimists, and announce him as one of the lions
of the season. Who are your other lions and lionesses?"

"The others will be far better," said Mike. He took a cigarette from
a silver box on the table, and, speaking as he puffed at it, entered
into the explanation of his ideas.

Mademoiselle D'Or, the _première danseuse_ who had just arrived from
Vienna, was to be the lioness of next week. Mike told how he would
translate into words the insidious poetry of the blossom-like skirt
that the pink body pierces like a stem, the beautiful springing,
the lifted arms, then the flight from the wings; the posturing, the
artificial smiles; this art a survival of Oriental tradition; this
art at once so carnal and so enthusiastically ideal. "A prize-fighter
will follow the _danseuse_. And I shall gloat in Gautier-like
cadence--if I can catch it--over each superb muscle and each splendid
development. But my best article will be on Kitty Carew. Since Laura
Bell and Mabel Grey our courtesans have been but a mediocre lot."

"You must not say that in the _Pilgrim_--we should offend all our
friends," Harding said, and he poured himself out a brandy-and-soda.

Mike laughed, and walking up and down the room, he continued--

"That it should be so is inexplicable, that it is so is certain; we
have not had since Mabel Grey died a courtesan whom a foreign prince,
passing London, would visit as a matter of course as he would visit
St. Paul's or Westminster Abbey; and yet London has advanced
enormously in all that constitutes wealth and civilization. In Paris,
as in ancient Greece, courtesans are rich, brilliant, and depraved;
here in London the women are poor, stupid, and almost virtuous. Kitty
is revolution. I know for a fact that she has had as much as £1000
from a foreign potentate, and she spends in one day upon her
tiger-cat what would keep a poor family in affluence for a week. Nor
can she say half a dozen words without being witty. What do you think
of this? We were discussing the old question, if it were well for a
woman to have a sweetheart. Kitty said, 'London has given me
everything but that. I can always find a man who will give me five
and twenty guineas, but a sweetheart I can't find.'"

Every pen stopped, and expectation was on every face. After a pause
Mike continued--

"Kitty said, 'In the first place he must please me, and I am very
difficult to please; then I must please him, and sufficiently for him
to give up his whole time to me. And he must not be poor, for
although he would not give me money, it would cost him several
hundreds a year to invite me to dinner and send me flowers. And where
am I to find this combination of qualities?' Can't you hear her
saying it, her sweet face like a tea-rose, those innocent blue eyes
all laughing with happiness? The great stockbroker, who has been with
her for the last ten years, settled fifty thousand pounds when he
first took her up. She was speaking to me about him the other day,
and when I said, 'Why didn't you leave him when the money was
settled?' she said, 'Oh no, I wouldn't do a dirty trick like that;
I contented myself simply by being unfaithful to him.'"

"This is no doubt very clever, but if you put all you have told us
into your article, you'll certainly have the paper turned off the
book-stalls."

The conversation paused. Every one finished his brandy-and-soda, and
the correction of proofs was continued in silence, interrupted only
by an occasional oath or a word of remonstrance from Frank, who
begged Drake, a huge-shouldered man, whose hand was never out of the
cigarette-box, not to drop the lighted ends on the carpet. Mike was
reading Harding's article.

"I think we shall have a good number this week," said Mike. "But we
want a piece of verse. I wonder if you could get something from John
Norton. What do you think of Norton, Harding?"

"He is one of the most interesting men I know. His pessimism, his
Catholicism, his yearning for ritual, his very genuine hatred of
women, it all fascinates me."

"What do you think of that poem he told us of the other night?"

"Intensely interesting; but he will never be able to complete it. A
man may be full of talent and yet be nothing of an artist; a man may
be far less clever than Norton, and with a subtler artistic sense. If
a seal had really something to say, I believe it would find a way of
saying it; but has John Norton really got any idea so overwhelmingly
new and personal that it would force a way of utterance where none
existed? The Christian creed with its tale of Mary must be of all
creeds most antipathetic to his natural instincts, he nevertheless
accepts it.... If you agitate a pool from different sides you must
stir up mud, and this is what occurs in Norton's brain; it is
agitated equally from different sides, and the result is mud."

Mike looked at Harding inquiringly, for a moment wondered if the
novelist understood him as he seemed to understand Norton.

A knock was heard, and Norton entered. His popularity was visible in
the pleasant smiles and words which greeted him.

"You are just the man we want," cried Frank. "We want to publish one
of your poems in the paper this week."

"I have burnt my poems," he answered, with something more of
sacerdotal tone and gesture than usual.

All the scribblers looked up. "You don't mean to say seriously that
you have burnt your poems?"

"Yes; but I do not care to discuss my reasons. You do not feel as I
do."

"You mean to say that you have burnt _The Last Struggle_--the poem
you told us about the other night?"

"Yes, I felt I could not reconcile its teaching, or I should say the
tendency of its teaching, to my religion. I do not regret--besides, I
had to do it; I felt I was going off my head. I should have gone mad.
I have been through agonies. I could not think. Thought and pain and
trouble were as one in my brain. I heard voices.... I had to do it.
And now a great calm has come. I feel much better."

"You are a curious chap."

Then at the end of a long silence John said, as if he wished to
change the conversation--

"Even though I did burn my pessimistic poem, the world will not go
without one. You are writing a poem on Schopenhauer's philosophy.
It is hard to associate pessimism with you."

"Only because you take the ordinary view of the tendency of
pessimistic teaching," said Mike. "If you want a young and laughing
world, preach Schopenhauer at every street corner; if you want a
sober utilitarian world, preach Comte."

"Doesn't much matter what the world is as long as it is not sober,"
chuckled Platt, the paragraph-writing youth at the bottom of the
table.

"Hold your tongue!" cried Drake, and he lighted another cigarette
preparatory to fixing his whole attention on the paradox that Mike
was about to enounce.

"The optimist believes in the regeneration of the race, in its
ultimate perfectibility, the synthesis of humanity, the providential
idea, and the path of the future; he therefore puts on a shovel hat,
cries out against lust, and depreciates prostitution."

"Oh, the brute!" chuckled the wizen youth, "without prostitutes and
public-houses! what a world to live in!"

"The optimist counsels manual labour for all. The pessimist believes
that forgetfulness and nothingness is the whole of man. He says, 'I
defy the wisest of you to tell me why I am here, and being here, what
good is gained by my assisting to bring others here.' The pessimist
is therefore the gay Johnny, and the optimist is the melancholy
Johnny. The former drinks champagne and takes his 'tart' out to
dinner, the latter says that life is not intended to be happy
in--that there is plenty of time to rest when you are dead."

John laughed loudly; but a moment after, reassuming his look of
admonition, he asked Mike to tell him about his poem.

"The subject is astonishingly beautiful," said Mike; "I only speak of
the subject; no one, not even Victor Hugo or Shelley, ever conceived
a finer theme. But they had execution, I have only the idea. I
suppose the world to have ended; but ended, how? Man has at last
recognized that life is, in equal parts, misery and abomination, and
has resolved that it shall cease. The tide of passion has again
risen, and lashed by repression to tenfold fury, the shores of life
have again been strewn with new victims; but knowledge--calm,
will-less knowledge--has gradually invaded all hearts; and the
restless, shifting sea (which is passion) shrinks to its furthest
limits.

"There have been Messiahs, there have been persecutions, but the Word
has been preached unintermittently. Crowds have gathered to listen
to the wild-eyed prophets. You see them on the desert promontories,
preaching that human life must cease; they call it a disgraceful
episode in the life of one of the meanest of the planets--you see
them hunted and tortured as were their ancestors, the Christians of
the reign of Diocletian. You see them entering cottage doors and
making converts in humble homes. The world, grown tired of vain
misery, accepts oblivion.

"The rage and the seething of the sea is the image I select to
represent the struggle for life. The dawn is my image for the
diffusion and triumph of sufficient reason. In a couple of hundred
lines I have set my scene, and I begin. It is in the plains of
Normandy; of countless millions only two friends remain. One of them
is dying. As the stars recede he stretches his hand to his companion,
breathes once more, looking him in the face, joyous in the attainment
of final rest. A hole is scraped, and the last burial is achieved.
Then the man, a young beautiful man with the pallor of long vigils
and spiritual combat upon his face, arises.

"The scene echoes strangely the asceticism that produced it.
Rose-garden and vineyard are gone; there are no fields, nor
hedgerows, nor gables seen picturesquely on a sky, human with smoke
mildly ascending. A broken wall that a great elm tears and rends,
startles the silence; apple-orchards spread no flowery snow, and the
familiar thrushes have deserted the moss-grown trees, in other times
their trees; and the virgin forest ceases only to make bleak place
for marish plains with lonely pools and stagnating streams, where
perchance a heron rises on blue and heavy wings.

"All the beautiful colours the world had worn when she was man's
mistress are gone, and now, as if mourning for her lover and lord,
she is clad only in sombre raiment. Since her lord departed she bears
but scanty fruit, and since her lover left her, she that was glad has
grown morose; her joy seems to have died with his; and the feeling of
gloom is heightened, when at the sound of the man's footsteps a pack
of wild dogs escape from a ruin, where they have been sleeping, and
wake the forest with lugubrious yelps and barks. About the dismantled
porches no single rose--the survival of roses planted by some fair
woman's hand--remains to tell that man was once there--worked there
for his daily bread, seeking a goodness and truth in life which was
not his lot to attain.

"There are few open spaces, and the man has to follow the tracks of
animals. Sometimes he comes upon a herd of horses feeding in a glade;
they turn and look upon him in a round-eyed surprise, and he sees
them galloping on the hill-sides, their manes and tails floating in
the wind.

"Paris is covered with brushwood, and trees and wood from the shore
have torn away the bridges, of which only a few fragments remain. Dim
and desolate are those marshes now in the twilight shedding.

"The river swirls through multitudinous ruins, lighted by a crescent
moon; clouds hurry and gather and bear away the day. The man stands
like a saint of old, who, on the last verge of the desert, turns and
smiles upon the world he conquered.

"The great night collects and advances in shadow; and wandering
vapour, taking fire in the darkness, rolls, tumbling over and over
like fiery serpents, through loneliness and reeds.

"But in the eternal sunshine of the South flowers have not become
extinct; winds have carried seeds hither and thither, and the earth
has waxed lovely, and the calm of the spiritual evenings of the
Adriatic descend upon eternal perfume and the songs of birds. Symbol
of pain or joy there is none, and the august silence is undisturbed
by tears. From rotting hangings in Venice rats run, and that idle
wave of palace-stairs laps in listless leisure the fallen glories of
Veronese. As it is with painters so it is with poets, and wolf cubs
tear the pages of the last _Divine Comedy_ in the world. Rome is his
great agony, her shameful history falls before his eyes like a
painted curtain. All the inner nature of life is revealed to him, and
he sees into the heart of things as did Christ in the Garden of
Gethsemane--Christ, that most perfect symbol of the denial of the
will to live; and, like Christ, he cries that the world may pass from
him.

"But in resignation, hatred and horror vanish, and he muses again on
the more than human redemption, the great atonement that man has made
for his shameful life's history; and standing amid the orange and
almond trees, amid a profusion of bloom that the world seems to have
brought for thank-offering, amid an apparent and glorious victory of
inanimate nature, he falls down in worship of his race that had
freely surrendered all, knowing it to be nothing, and in surrender
had gained all.

"In that moment of intense consciousness a cry breaks the stillness,
and searching among the marbles he finds a dying woman. Gathering
some fruit, he gives her to eat, and they walk together, she
considering him as saviour and lord, he wrapped in the contemplation
of the end. They are the end, and all paling fascination, which is
the world, is passing from them, and they are passing from it. And
the splendour of gold and red ascends and spreads--crown and raiment
of a world that has regained its primal beauty.

"'We are alone,' the woman says. 'The world is ours; we are as king
and queen, and greater than any king or queen.'

"Her dark olive skin changes about the neck like a fruit near to
ripen, and the large arms, curving deeply, fall from the shoulder in
superb indolences of movement, and the hair, varying from burnt-up
black to blue, curls like a fleece adown the shoulders. She is large
and strong, a fitting mother of man, supple in the joints as the
young panther that has just bounded into the thickets; and her rich
almond eyes, dark, and moon-like in their depth of mystery, are fixed
on him. Then he awakes to the danger of the enchantment; but she
pleads that they, the last of mankind, may remain watching over each
other till the end; and seeing his eyes flash, her heart rejoices.
And out of the glare of the moon they passed beneath the sycamores.
And listening to the fierce tune of the nightingales in the dusky
daylight there, temptation hisses like a serpent; and the woman
listens, and drawing herself about the man, she says--

"'The world is ours; let us make it ours for ever; let us give birth
to a new race more great and beautiful than that which is dead. Love
me, for I am love; all the dead beauties of the race are incarnate in
me. I am the type and epitome of all. Was the Venus we saw yesterday
among the myrtles more lovely than I?'

"But he casts her from him, asking in despair (for he loves her) if
they are to renew the misery and abomination which it required all
the courage and all the wisdom of all the ages to subdue? He calls
names from love's most fearful chronicle--Cleopatra, Faustina,
Borgia. A little while and man's shameful life will no longer disturb
the silence of the heavens. But no perception of life's shame touches
the heart of the woman. 'I am love,' she cries again. 'Take me, and
make me the mother of men. In me are incarnate all the love songs of
the world. I am Beatrice; I am Juliet. I shall be all love to
you--Fair Rosamond and Queen Eleanor. I am the rose! I am the
nightingale!'

"She follows him in all depths of the forests wherever he may go. In
the white morning he finds her kneeling by him, and in blue and rose
evening he sees her whiteness crouching in the brake. He has fled to
a last retreat in the hills where he thought she could not follow,
and after a long day of travel lies down. But she comes upon him in
his first sleep, and with amorous arms uplifted, and hair shed to the
knee, throws herself upon him. It is in the soft and sensual scent of
the honeysuckle. The bright lips strive, and for an instant his soul
turns sick with famine for the face; but only for an instant, and in
a supreme revulsion of feeling he beseeches her, crying that the
world may not end as it began, in blood. But she heeds him not, and
to save the generations he dashes her on the rocks.

"Man began in bloodshed, in bloodshed he has ended.

"Standing against the last tinge of purple, he gazes for a last time
upon the magnificence of a virgin world, seeing the tawny forms of
lions in the shadows, watching them drinking at the stream."

"Adam and Eve at the end of the world," said Drake. "A very pretty
subject; but I distinctly object to an Eve with black hair. Eve and
golden hair have ever been considered inseparable things."

"That's true," said Platt; "the moment my missis went wrong her hair
turned yellow."

Mike joined in the jocularity, but at the first pause he asked Escott
what he thought of his poem.

"I have only one fault to find. Does not the _dénouement_ seem too
violent? Would it not be better if the man were to succeed in
escaping from her, and then vexed with scruples to return and find
her dead? What splendid lamentations over the body of the last
woman!--and as the man wanders beneath the waxing and waning moon he
hears nature lamenting the last woman. Mountains, rocks, forests,
speak to him only of her."

"Yes, that would do.... But no--what am I saying? Such a conclusion
would be in exact contradiction to the philosophy of my poem. For it
is man's natural and inveterate stupidity (Schopenhauer calls it
Will) that forces man to live and continue his species. Reason is the
opposing force. As time goes on reason becomes more and more
complete, until at last it turns upon the will and denies it, like
the scorpion, which, if surrounded by a ring of fire, will turn and
sting itself to death. Were the man to escape, and returning find the
woman dead, it would not be reason but accident which put an end to
this ridiculous world."

Seeing that attention was withdrawn from him Drake filled his pockets
with cigarettes, split a soda with Platt, and seized upon the
entrance of half a dozen young men as an excuse for ceasing to write
paragraphs. Although it had only struck six they were all in evening
dress. They were under thirty, and in them elegance and dissipation
were equally evident. Lord Muchross, a clean-shaven Johnnie, walked
at the head of the gang, assuming by virtue of his greater volubility
a sort of headship. Dicky, the driver, a stout commoner, spoke of
drink; and a languid blonde, Lord Snowdown, leaned against the
chimney-piece displaying a thin figure. The others took seats and
laughed whenever Lord Muchross spoke.

"Here we are, old chappie, just in time to drink to the health of the
number. Ha, ha, ha! What damned libel have you in this week? Ha, ha!"

"Awful bad head, a heavy day yesterday," said Dicky--"drunk blind."

"Had to put him in a wheelbarrow, wheeled him into a greengrocer's
shop, put a carrot in his mouth, and rang the bell," shouted
Muchross.

"Ha, ha, ha!" shouted the others.

"Had a rippin' day all the same, didn't we, old Dicky? Went up the
river in Snowdown's launch. Had lunch by Tag's Island, went as far as
Datchet. There we met Dicky; he tooted us round by Staines. There we
got in a fresh team, galloped all the way to Houndslow. Laura brought
her sister. Kitty was with us. Made us die with a story she told us
of a fellow she was spoony on. Had to put him under the bed....
Ghastly joke, dear boy!"

Amid roars of laughter Dicky's voice was heard--

"She calls him Love's martyr; he nearly died of bronchitis, and
became a priest. Kitty swears she'll go to confession to him one of
these days."

"By Jove, if she does I'll publish it in the _Pilgrim_."

"Too late this week," Mike said to Frank.

"We got to town by half past six, went round to the Cri. to have a
sherry-and-bitters, dined at the Royal, went on to the Pav., and on
with all the girls in hansoms, four in each, to Snowdown's."

"See me dance the polka, dear boy," cried the languid lord, awaking
suddenly from his indolence, and as he pranced across the room most
of his drink went over Drake's neck; and amid oaths and laughter
Escott besought of the revellers to retire.

"We are still four columns short, we must get on." And for an hour
and a half the scratching of the pens was only interrupted by the
striking of a match and an occasional damn. At six they adjourned to
the office. They walked along the Strand swinging their sticks, full
of consciousness of a day's work done. Drake and Platt, who had
avenged some private wrongs in their paragraphs, were disturbed by
the fear of libel; Harding gnawed the end of his moustache, and
reconsidered his attack on a contemporary writer, pointing his gibes
afresh.

They trooped up-stairs, the door was thrown open. It was a small
office, and at the end of the partitioned space a clerk sat in front
of a ledger on a high stool, his face against the window. Lounging on
the counter, turning over the leaves of back numbers, they discussed
the advertisements. They stood up when Lady Helen entered. [Footnote:
See _A Modern Lover_.] She had come to speak to Frank about a poem,
and she only paused in her rapid visit to shake hands with Harding,
and she asked Mike if his poems would be published that season.

The contributors to the _Pilgrim_ dined together on Wednesday, and
spent four shillings a head in an old English tavern, where unlimited
joint and vegetables could be obtained for half-a-crown. The
old-fashioned boxes into which the guests edged themselves had not
been removed, and about the mahogany bar, placed in the passage in
front of the proprietress's parlour, two dingy barmaids served actors
from the adjoining theatre with whisky-and-water. The contributors to
the _Pilgrim_ had selected a box, and were clamouring for food.
Smacking his lips, the head-waiter, an antiquity who cashed cheques
and told stories about Mr. Dickens and Mr. Thackeray, stopped in
front of this table.

"Roast beef, very nice--a nice cut, sir; saddle of mutton just up."

All decided for saddle of mutton.

"Saddle of mutton, number three."

Greasy and white the carver came, and as if the meat were a delight
the carver sliced it out. Some one remarked this.

"That is nothing," said Thompson; "you should hear Hopkins grunting
as he cuts the venison on Tuesdays and Fridays, and how he sucks his
lips as he ladles out the gravy. We only enjoy a slice or two,
whereas his pleasure ends only with the haunch."

The evening newspapers were caught up, glanced at, and abused as
worthless rags, and the editors covered with lively ridicule.

The conversation turned on Boulogne, where Mike had loved many
solicitors' wives, and then on the impurity of the society girl and
the prurient purity of her creation--the "English" novel.

"I believe that it is so," said Harding; "and in her immorality we
find the reason for all this bewildering outcry against the slightest
license in literature. Strange that in a manifestly impure age there
should be a national tendency towards chaste literature. I am not
sure that a moral literature does not of necessity imply much laxity
in practical morality. We seek in art what we do not find in
ourselves, and it would be true to nature to represent an unfortunate
woman delighting in reading of such purity as her own life daily
insulted and contradicted; and the novel is the rag in which this
leper age coquets before the mirror of its hypocrisy, rehearsing the
deception it would practise on future time."

"You must consider the influence of impure literature upon young
people," said John.

"No, no; the influence of a book is nothing; it is life that
influences and corrupts. I sent my story of a drunken woman to
Randall, and the next time I heard from him he wrote to say he had
married his mistress, and he knew she was a drunkard."

"It is easy to prove that bad books don't do any harm; if they did,
by the same rule good books would do good, and the world would have
been converted long ago," said Frank.

Harding thought how he might best appropriate the epigram, and when
the influence of the liberty lately acquired by girls had been
discussed--the right to go out shopping in the morning, to sit out
dances on dark stairs; in a word, the decadence and overthrow of the
chaperon--the conversation again turned on art.

"It is very difficult," said Harding, "to be great as the old masters
were great. A man is great when every one is great. In the great ages
if you were not great you did not exist at all, but in these days
everything conspires to support the weak."

Out of deference to John, who had worn for some time a very solid
look of disapproval, Mike ceased to discourse on half-hours passed on
staircases, and in summer-houses when the gardener had gone to
dinner, and he spoke about naturalistic novels and an exhibition of
pastels.

"As time goes on, poetry, history, philosophy, will so multiply that
the day will come when the learned will not even know the names of
their predecessors. There is nothing that will not increase out of
all reckoning except the naturalistic novel. A man may write twenty
volumes of poetry, history, and philosophy, but a man will never be
born who will write more than two, at the most three, naturalistic
novels. The naturalistic novel is the essence of a phase of life
that the writer has lived in and assimilated. If you take into
consideration the difficulty of observing twice, of the time an
experience takes to ripen in you, you will easily understand
_à priori_ that the man will never be born who will write three
realistic novels."

Coffee and cigars were ordered, and Harding extolled the charm and
grace of pastels.

Thompson said--"I keep pastels for my hours of idleness--cowardly
hours, when I have no heart to struggle with nature, and may but
smile and kiss my hand to her at a distance. For dreaming I know
nothing like pastel; it is the painter's opium pipe.... Latour was
the greatest pastellist of the eighteenth century, and he never
attempted more than a drawing heightened with colour. But how
suggestive, how elegant, how well-bred!"

Then in reply to some flattery on the personality of his art,
Thompson said, "It is strange, for I assure you no art was ever less
spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and
study of the great masters; of inspiration, spontaneity,
temperament--temperament is the word--I know nothing. When I hear
people talk about temperament, it always seem to me like the strong
man in the fair, who straddles his legs, and asks some one to step
upon the palm of his hand."

Drake joined in the discussion, and the chatter that came from this
enormous man was as small as his head, which sat like a pin's-head
above his shoulders. Platt drifted from the obscene into the
incomprehensible. The room was fast emptying, and the waiter
loitered, waiting to be paid.

"We must be getting off," said Mike; "it is nearly eleven o'clock,
and we have still the best part of the paper to read through."

"Don't be in such a damned hurry," said Frank, authoritatively.

Harding bade them good-night at the door, and the editors walked down
Fleet Street. To pass up a rickety court to the printer's, or to go
through the stage-door to the stage, produced similar sensations
in Mike. The white-washed wall, the glare of the raw gas, the low
monotonous voice of the reading-boy, like one studying a part, or
perhaps like the murmur of the distant audience; the boy coming in
asking for "copy" or proof, like the call-boy, with his "Curtain's
going up, gentlemen." Is there not analogy between the preparation
of the paper that will be before the public in the morning, and the
preparation of the play that will be before its eyes in the evening?

From the glass closet where they waited for the "pages," they could
see the compositors bending over the forms. The light lay upon a red
beard, a freckled neck, the crimson of the volutes of an ear.

In the glass closet there were three wooden chairs, a table, and an
inkstand; on the shelf by the door a few books--the _London
Directory_, an _English Dictionary_, a _French Dictionary_--the
titles of the remaining books did not catch the eye. As they waited,
for no "pages" would be ready for them for some time, Mike glanced at
stray numbers of two trade journals. It seemed to him strange that
the same compositors who set up these papers should set up the
_Pilgrim_.

Presently the "pages" began to come in, but long delays intervened,
and it transpired that some of the "copy" was not yet in type. Frank
grew weary, and he complained of headache, and asked Mike to see the
paper through for him. Mike thought Frank selfish, but there was no
help for it. He could not refuse, but must wait in the paraffin-like
smell of the ink, listening to the droning voice of the reading-boy.
If he could only get the proof of his poem he could kill time by
correcting it; but it could not be obtained. Two hours passed, and
he still sat watching the red beard of a compositor, and the crimson
volutes of an ear. At last the printer's devil, his short sleeves
rolled up, brought in a couple of pages. Mike read, following the
lines with his pen, correcting the literals, and he cursed when the
"devil" told him that ten more lines of copy were wanting to complete
page nine. What should he write?

About two o'clock, holding her ball-skirts out of the dirt, a lady
entered.

"How do you do, Emily?" said Mike. "Just fancy seeing you here, and
at this hour!" He was glad of the interruption; but his pleasure was
dashed by the fear that she would ask him to come home with her.

"Oh, I have had such a pleasant party; So-and-so sang at Lady
Southey's. Oh, I have enjoyed myself! I knew I should find you here;
but I am interrupting. I will go." She put her arm round his neck.
He looked at her diamonds, and congratulated himself that she was
a lady.

"I am afraid I am interrupting you," she said again.

"Oh no, you aren't, I shall be done in half an hour; I have only got
a few more pages to read through. Escott went away, selfish brute
that he is, and has left me to do all the work."

She sat by his side contentedly reading what he had written. At
half-past two all the pages were passed for press, and they descended
the spiral iron staircase, through the grease and vinegar smell of
the ink, in view of heads and arms of a hundred compositors, in
hearing of the drowsy murmur of the reading-boy. Her brougham was at
the door. As she stepped in Mike screwed up his courage and said
good-bye.

"Won't you come?" she said, with disappointment in her eyes.

"No, not to-night. I have been slaving at that paper for the last
four hours. Thanks; not to-night. Good-bye; I'll see you next week."

The brougham rolled away, and Mike walked home. The hands of the
clocks were stretching towards three, and only a few drink-disfigured
creatures of thirty-five or forty lingered; so horrible were they
that he did not answer their salutations.




CHAPTER IV


Mike was in his bath when Frank entered.

"What, not dressed yet?"

"All very well for you to talk. You left me at eleven to get the
paper out as best I could. I did not get away from the printer's
before half-past two."

"I'm very sorry, but you've no idea how ill I felt. I really couldn't
have stayed on. I heard you come in. You weren't alone."

The room was pleasant with the Eau de Lubin, and Mike's beautiful
figure appealed to Frank's artistic sense; and he noticed it in
relation to the twisted oak columns of the bed. The body, it was
smooth and white as marble; and the pectoral muscles were especially
beautiful when he leaned forward to wipe a lifted leg. He turned, and
the back narrowed like a leaf, and expanded in shapes as subtle. He
was really a superb animal as he stepped out of his bath.

"I wish to heavens you'd dress. Leave off messing yourself about.
I want breakfast. Lizzie's waiting. What are you putting on those
clothes for? Where are you going?"

"I am going to see Lily Young. She wrote to me this morning saying
she had her mother's permission to ask me to come."

"She won't like you any better for all that scent and washing."

"Which of these neckties do you like?"

"I don't know.... I wish you'd be quick. Come on!"

As he fixed his tie with a pearl pin he whistled the "Wedding March."
Catching Frank's eyes, he laughed and sang at the top of his voice as
he went down the passage.

Lizzie was reading in one of the arm-chairs that stood by the high
chimney-piece tall with tiles and blue vases. The stiffness and glare
of the red cloth in which the room was furnished, contrasted with the
soft colour of the tapestry which covered one wall. The round table
shone with silver, and an agreeable smell of coffee and sausages
pervaded the room. Lizzie looked up astonished; but without giving
her time to ask questions, Mike seized her and rushed her up and
down.

"Let me go! let me go!" she exclaimed. "Are you mad?"

Frank caught up his fiddle. At last Lizzie wrenched herself from
Mike.

"What do you mean? ... Such nonsense!"

Laughing, Mike placed her in a chair, and uncovering a dish, said--

"What shall I give you this happy day?"

"What do you mean? I don't like being pulled about."

"You know what tune that is? That's the 'Wedding March.'"

"Who's going to be married? Not you."

"I don't know so much about that. At all events I am in love. The
sensation is delicious--like an ice or a glass of Chartreuse. Real
love--all the others were coarse passions--I feel it here, the
genuine article. You would not believe that I could fall in love."

"Listen to me," said Lizzie. "You wouldn't talk like that if you were
in love."

"I always talk; it relieves me. You have no idea how nice she is; so
frail, so white--a white blonde, a Seraphita. But you haven't read
Balzac; you do not know those white women of the North. '_Plus
blanche que la blanche hermine_,' etc. So pure is she that I cannot
think of kissing her without sensations of sacrilege. My lips are not
pure enough for hers. I would I were chaste. I never was chaste."

Mike laughed and chattered of everything. Words came from him like
flour from a mill.

The _Pilgrim_ was published on Wednesday. Wednesday was the day,
therefore, for walking in the Park; for lunching out; for driving in
hansoms. Like a fish on the crest of a wave he surveyed
London--multitudinous London, circulating about him; and he smiled
with pleasure when he caught sight of trees spreading their summer
green upon the curling whiteness of the clouds. He loved the Park.
The Park had always been his friend; it had given him society when no
door was open to him; it had been the inspiration of all his
ambitions; it was the Park that had first showed him ladies and
gentlemen in all the gaud and charm of town leisure. There he had
seen for the first time the panorama of slanting sunshades, patent
leather shoes, horses cantering in the dusty sunlight, or proudly
grouped, the riders flicking the flies away with gold-headed whips.
He loved the androgynous attire of the horsewomen--collars, silk
hats, and cravats. The Park appealed to him intensely and strangely
as nothing else did. He loved the Park for the great pasture it
afforded to his vanity. It was in the Park he saw the fashionable
procuress driving--she who would not allow him to pay even for
champagne in her house; it was in the Park he met the little actress
who looked so beseechingly in his face; it was in the Park he met
fashionable ladies who asked him to dinner and took him to the
theatre; it was in the Park he had found life and fortune, and,
saturated with happiness, with health, tingling with consciousness of
his happiness, Mike passed among the various crowd, which in its
listlessness seemed to balance and air itself like a many-petalled
flower. But much as the crowd amused and pleased him, he was more
amused and pleased with the present vision of his own personality,
which in a long train of images and stories passed within him. He
loved to dream of himself; in dreams he entered his soul like a
temple, seeing himself in various environment, and acting in manifold
circumstances.

"Here am I--a poor boy from the bogs of Ireland--poor people" (the
reflection was an unpleasant one, and he escaped from it); "at all
events a poor boy without money or friends. I have made myself what I
am.... I get the best of everything--women, eating, clothes; I live
in beautiful rooms surrounded with pretty things. True, they are not
mine, but what does that matter?--I haven't the bother of looking
after them.... If I could only get rid of that cursed accent, but I
haven't much; Escott has nearly as much, and he was brought up at an
English school. How pleasant it is to have money! Heigho! How
pleasant it is to have money! Six pounds a week from the paper, and I
could make easily another four if I chose. Sometimes I don't get any
presents; women seem as if they were going to chuck it up, and then
they send all things--money, jewelry, and comestibles. I am sure it
was Ida who sent that hundred pounds. What should I do if it ever
came out? But there's nothing to come out. I believe I am suspected,
but nothing can be proved against me.

"Why do they love me? I always treat them badly. Often I don't even
pretend to love them, but it makes no difference. Pious women, wicked
women, stupid women, clever women, high-class women, low-class women,
it is all the same--all love me. That little girl I picked up in the
Strand liked me before she had been talking to me five minutes. And
what sudden fancies! I come into a room, and every feminine eye fills
with sudden emotion. I wonder what it is. My nose is broken, and my
chin sticks out like a handle. And men like me just as much as women
do. It is inexplicable. True, I never say disagreeable things; and it
is so natural to me to wheedle. I twist myself about them like a
twining plant about a window. Women forgive me everything, and are
glad to see me after years. But they are never wildly jealous.
Perhaps I have never been really loved.... I don't know though--Lady
Seeley loved me. There was an old lady at Margate, sixty if she was a
day (of course there was nothing improper), and she worshipped me.
How nicely she used to smile when she said, 'Come round here that I
may look at you!'--and her husband was quite as bad; he'd run all
over the place after me. So-and-so was quite offended because I
didn't rush to see him; he'd put me up for six months.... Servants
hate Frank; for me they'd do anything. I never was in a lodging-house
in my life that the slavey didn't fall in love with me. People
dislike me; I speak to them for five minutes, and henceforth they run
after me. I make friends everywhere.

"Those Americans wanted me to come and stay six months with them in
New York. How she did press me to come! ... The Brookes, they want me
to come and stay in the country with them; they'd give me horses to
ride, guns to shoot, and I'd get the girls besides. They looked
rather greedily at me just now. How jealous poor old Emily is of
them! She says I'd 'go to the end of the earth for them'--and would
not raise a little finger for her. Dear old Emily, she wasn't a bit
cross the other night when I wouldn't go home with her. I must go and
see her. She says she loved me--really loved me! ... She used to lie
and dream of pulling me out of burning houses. I wonder why I am
liked! How intangible, and yet how real! What a wonderful character I
would make in a novel!"

At that moment he saw Mrs. Byril in the crowd; but notwithstanding
his kind thoughts of her, he prayed she might pass without seeing
him. Perceiving Lady Helen walking with her husband and Harding, he
followed her slim figure with his eyes, remembering what Seymour's
good looks had brought him, for he envied all love, desiring to be
himself all that women desire. Then his thoughts wandered. The
decoration of the Park absorbed him--the nobility of a group of
horses, the attractiveness of some dresses; and amid all this
elegance and parade he dreamed of tragedy--of some queen blowing her
brains out for him--and he saw the fashionable dress and the blood
oozing from the temple, trickling slowly through the sand. Then Lords
Muchross and Snowdown passed, and they passed without acknowledging
him!

"Cads, cads, damn them!" His face changed expression. "I may rise to
any height, queens may fall down and worship me, but I may never undo
my birth. Not to have been born a gentleman! That is to say, of a
long line--a family with a history. Not to be able to whisper, 'I may
lose everything, all troubles may be mine, but the fact remains that
I was born a gentleman!' Those two men who cut me are lords. What a
delight in one's life to have a name all to one's self!" And then
Mike lost himself in a maze of little dreams. A gleam of mail;
escutcheons and castles; a hawk flew from fingers fair; a lady
clasped her hands when the lances shivered in the tourney; and Mike
was the hero that persisted in the course of this shifting little
dream.

The Brookes--Sally and Maggie--stopped to speak to him, and he went
to lunch with them. His interest in all they did and said was
unbounded, and that he might not be able to reproach himself with
waste of time, he contrived by hint and allusion to lay the
foundation for a future intrigue with one of the girls.

Lily Young, however, had never been forgotten; she had been as
constantly present in his mind as this sense of the sunshine and his
own happy condition. She had been parcel of and one with these but
now; as he drove to see her, he separated her from the morning
phenomena of his life, and began to think definitely of her.

Smiling, he called himself a brute, and regretted his failure. But in
her presence his cynicism was evanescent. She sat on a little sofa,
covered with an Indian shawl; behind her was a great bronze, the
celebrated gift of a celebrated Rajah to her mother. Mrs. Young had
been on a tour in the East with her husband, and ever since her house
had been frequented by decrepit old gentlemen interested in Arabi,
and other matters which they spoke of as Eastern questions.

Lily looked at Mike under her eyes as she passed across the room to
get him some tea, and they talked a little while. Then some three or
four great and very elderly historians entered, and she had to leave
him; and feeling he could not prolong his visit he went, conscious of
sensations of purity and some desire of goodness, if not for itself,
for the grace that goodness brings. He paid many visits in this
house, but conversations with learned Buddhists seemed the only
result; a _tête-à-tête_ with Lily seemed impossible. To his surprise
he never met her in society, and his heart beat fast when one evening
he heard she was expected; and for the first time forgetful of the
multitude, and nervous as a school-boy in search of his first love,
he sought her in the crowd. He feared to remain with her, and it
seemed to him he had accomplished much in asking her to come down to
supper. When talking to others his thoughts were with her, and his
eyes followed her. An inquisitive woman noted his agitation, and
suspecting the cause, said, "I see, I see, and I think something may
come of it." Even when Lily left he did not recover his ordinary
humour, and about two in the morning, in sullen weariness and
disappointment, he offered to drive Lady Helen home.

Should he make love to her? He had often wished to. Here was an
opportunity.

"You did not see that I was looking at you tonight; you did not guess
what I was thinking of?"

"Yes, I did; you were looking at and thinking of my arms."

Should he pass his arm round her? Lady Helen knew Lily, and might
tell; he did not dare it, and instead, spoke of her contributions to
the paper. Then the conversation branched into a description of the
Wednesday night festivities in Temple Gardens--the shouting and
cheering of the lords, the comic vocalists, the inimitable Arthur,
the extraordinary Bessie. He told, with fits of laughter, of
Muchross's stump speeches, and how he had once got on the
supper-table and sat down in the very centre, regardless of plates
and dishes. Mike and Lady Helen nearly died of laughter when he
related how on one occasion Muchross and Snowdown, both crying drunk,
had called in a couple of sweeps. "You see," he said, "the look of
amazement on their faces, and the black 'uns were forced into two
chairs, and were waited upon by the lords, who tucked their napkins
under their arms."

"Oh don't, oh don't!" said Lady Helen, leaning back exhausted.

But Mike went on, though he was hardly able to speak, and told how
Muchross and Snowdown had danced the can-can, kicking at the
chandelier from time to time, the sweeps keeping time with their
implements on the sideboard; the revel finishing up with a wrestling
match, Muchross taking the big sweep, and Snowdown the little one.

"You should have seen them rolling over under the dining-room table;
I shall never forget Snowdown's shirt."

"I should like to see one of these entertainments. Do you ever have a
ladies' night? If you do, and the ladies are not supposed to wrestle
with the laundresses in the early light, I should like to come."

"Oh, yes, do come; Frank will be delighted. I'll see that things are
kept within bounds." The conversation fell, and he regretted he must
forego this very excellent opportunity to make love to her.

Next day, changed in his humour, but still thinking of Lily, he went
to see Mrs. Byril, and he stopped a few days with her. He was always
strict in his own room, and if Emily sought him in the morning he
reprimanded her.

She was one of those women who, having much heart, must affect more;
a weak intelligent woman, honest and loyal--one who could not live
without a lover. And with her arms about his neck, she listened to
his amours, and learnt his poetry by heart. Mike was her folly, and
she would never have thought of another if, as she said, he had only
behaved decently to her. "I am sorry, darling, I told you anything
about it, but when I got your beastly letter I wrote to him. Tell me
you'll come and stay with me next month, and I'll put him off.... I
hate this new girl; I am jealous because she may influence you, but
for the others--the Brookes and their friends--the half-hours spent
in summer-houses when the gardener is at dinner, I care not one jot."
So she spoke as she lay upon his knees in the black satin arm-chair
in the drawing-room.

But her presence at breakfast--that invasion of the morning
hours--was irritating; he hated the request to be in to lunch, and
the duty of spending the evening in her drawing-room, instead of in
club or bar-room. He desired freedom to spend each minute as the
caprice of the moment prompted. Were he a rich man he would not have
lived with Frank; to live with a man was unpleasant; to live with a
woman was intolerable. In the morning he must be alone to dream of a
book or poem; in the afternoons, about four, he was glad to
æstheticize with Harding or Thompson, or abandon himself to the charm
of John's aspirations.

John and he were often seen walking together, and they delighted in
the Temple. The Temple is escapement from the omniscient domesticity
which is so natural to England; and both were impressionable to its
morning animation--the young men hurrying through the courts and
cloisters, the picturesqueness of a wig and gown passing up a flight
of steps. It seemed that the old hall, the buttresses and towers, the
queer tunnels leading from court to court, turned the edge of the
commonplace of life. Nor did the Temple ever lose for them its quaint
and primitive air, and as they strolled about the cloisters talking
of art or literature, they experienced a delight that cannot be quite
put into words; and were strangely glad as they opened the iron
gates, and looked on all the many brick entanglements with the tall
trees rising, spreading the delicate youth of leaves upon the weary
red of the tiles and the dim tones of the dear walls.

  "A gentel Manciple there was of the Temple
   Of whom achatours mighten take ensample
   For to ben wise in bying of vitaille."

The gentle shade of linden trees, the drip of the fountain, the
monumented corner where Goldsmith rests, awake even in the most
casual and prosaic a fleeting touch of romance. And the wide steps
with balustrades sweeping down in many turnings to the gardens, cause
vagrant and hurrying steps to pause, and wander about the library and
through the gardens, which lead with such charm of way to the open
spaces of the King's Bench walk.

There, there is another dining-hall and another library. The clock is
ringing out the hour, and the place is filled with young men in
office clothes, hurrying on various business with papers in their
hands; and such young male life is one of the charms of the Temple;
and the absence of women is refreshment to the eye wearied of their
numbers in the streets. The Temple is an island in the London sea.
Immediately you pass the great doorway, studded with great nails, you
pass out of the garishness of the merely modern day, unhallowed by
any associations, into a calmer and benigner day, over which floats
some shadow of the great past. The old staircases lighted by strange
lanterns, the river of lingering current, bearing in its winding so
much of London into one enchanted view. The church built by the
Templars more than seven hundred years ago, now stands in the centre
of the inn all surrounded, on one side yellowing smoke-dried
cloisters, on another side various closes, feebly striving in their
architecture not to seem too shamefully out of keeping with its
beauty. There it stands in all the beauty of its pointed arches and
triple lancet windows, as when it was consecrated by the Patriarch of
Jerusalem in the year 1185.

But in 1307 a great ecclesiastical tribunal was held in London, and
it was proved that an unfortunate knight, who had refused to spit
upon the cross, was haled from the dining-hall and drowned in a well,
and testimony of the secret rites that were held there, and in which
a certain black idol was worshipped, was forthcoming. The Grand
Master was burnt at the stake, the knights were thrown into prison,
and their property was confiscated. Then the forfeited estate of the
Temple, presenting ready access by water, at once struck the
advocates of the Court of Common Pleas at Westminster, and the
students who were candidates for the privilege of pleading therein,
as a most desirable retreat, and interest was made with the Earl of
Lancaster, the king's first cousin, who had claimed the forfeited
property of the monks by escheat, as the immediate lord of the fee,
for a lodging in the Temple, and they first gained a footing there as
his lessees.

Above all, the church with its round tower-like roof was very dear to
Mike and John, and they often spoke of the splendid spectacle of the
religious warriors marching in procession, their white tunics with
red crosses, their black and white banner called Beauseant. It is
seen on the circular panels of the vaulting of the side aisles, and
on either side the letters BEAUSEANT. There stands the church of the
proud Templars, a round tower-like church, fitting symbol of those
soldier monks, at the west end of a square church, the square church
engrafted upon the circular so as to form one beautiful fabric. The
young men lingered around the time-worn porch, lovely with foliated
columns, strange with figures in prayer, and figures holding scrolls.
And often without formulating their intentions in words they entered
the church. Beneath the groined ribs of the circular tower lie the
mail-clad effigies of the knights, and through beautiful gracefulness
of grouped pillars the painted panes shed bright glow upon the
tesselated pavement. The young men passed beneath the pointed arches
and waited, their eyes raised to the celestial blueness of the
thirteenth-century window, and then in silence stole back whither the
knights sleep so grimly, with hands clasped on their breasts and
their long swords.

And seeing himself in those times, clad in armour, a knight Templar
walking in procession in that very church, John recited a verse of
Tennyson's _Sir Galahad_--

  "Sometimes on lonely mountain meres
     I find a magic bark;
   I leap on board; no helmsman steers:
     I float till all is dark.
   A gentle sound, an awful light!
     Three angels bear the holy Grail;
   With folded feet, in stoles of white,
     On sleeping wings they sail.
   Ah, blessed vision! blood of God!
     My spirit beats her mortal bars,
   As down dark tides the glory slides,
     And star-like mingles with the stars."


"Oh! very beautiful. 'On sleeping wings they sail.' Say it again."

John repeated the stanza, his eyes fixed upon the knight.

Mike said--

"How different to-day the girls of the neighbourhood, their
prayer-books and umbrellas! Yet I don't think the anachronism
displeases me."

"You say that to provoke me; you cannot think that all the dirty
little milliners' girls of the neighbourhood are more dignified than
these Templars marching in procession and taking their places with
iron clangour in the choir."

"So far as that is concerned," said Mike, who loved to "draw" John,
"the little girls of the neighbourhood in all probability wash
themselves a great deal oftener than the Templars ever did. And have
you forgotten the accusations that were brought against them before
the ecclesiastical tribunal assembled in London? What about the black
idol with shining eyes and gilded head?"

"Their vices were at least less revolting than the disgustful
meanness of to-day; besides, nothing is really known about the
reasons for the suppression of the Templars. Men who forswear women
are open to all contumely. Oh! the world is wondrous, just wondrous
well satisfied with its domestic ideals."

The conversation came to a pause, and then Mike spoke of Lily Young,
and extolled her subtle beauty and intelligence.

"I never liked any one as I do her. I am ashamed of myself when I
think of her purity."

"The purity of ... Had she been pure she would have remained in her
convent."

"If you had heard her speak of her temptations...."

"I do not want to hear her temptations. But it was you who tempted
her to leave her convent. I cannot but think that you should marry
her. There is nothing for you but marriage. You must change your
life. Think of the constant sin you are living in."

"But I don't believe in sin."

With a gesture that declared a non-admission of such a state of soul,
John hesitated, and then he said--

"The beastliness of it!"

"We have to live," said Mike, "since nature has so willed it, but I
fully realize the knightliness of your revolt against the principle
of life."

John continued his admonitions, and Mike an amused and appreciative
listener.

"At all events, I wish you would promise not to indulge in improper
conversation when I am present. It is dependent upon me to beg of you
to oblige me in this. It will add greatly to your dignity to refrain;
but that is your concern; I am thinking now only of myself. Will you
promise me this?"

"Yes, and more; I will promise not to indulge in such conversation,
even when you are not present. It is, as you say, lowering.... I
agree with you. I will strive to mend my ways."

And Mike was sincere; he was determined to become worthy of Lily. And
now the best hours of his life--hours strangely tense and strangely
personal--were passed in that Kensington drawing-room. She was to him
like the light of a shrine; he might kneel and adore from afar, but
he might not approach. The goddess had come to him like the moon to
Endymion. He knew nothing, not even if he were welcome. Each visit
was the same as the preceding. A sweet but exasperating
changelessness reigned in that drawing-room--that pretty drawing-room
where mother and daughter sat in sweet naturalness, removed from the
grossness and meanness of life as he knew it. Neither illicit
whispering nor affectation of reserve, only the charm of strict
behaviour; unreal and strange was the refinement, material and
mental, in which they lived. And for a time the charm sufficed;
desire was at rest. But she had been to see him, however at variance
such a visit, such event seemed with her present demeanour. And
she must come again! In increasing restlessness he conned all the
narrow chances of meeting her, of speaking to her alone. But no
accident varied the even tenor of their lives, the calm lake-like
impassibility of their relations, and in last resort he urged Frank
to give a dance or an At Home. And how ardently he pleaded, one
afternoon, sitting face to face with mother and daughter. Inwardly
agitated, but with outward calm, he impressed upon them many reasons
for their being of the party. The charm of the Temple, the river, and
glitter of light, the novel experience of bachelors' quarters....
They promised to come.




CHAPTER V


Mike leaned forward to tie his white cravat. He was slight, and white
and black, and he thought of Lily, of the exquisite pleasure of
seeing her and leading her away. And he was pleased and surprised to
find that his thoughts of her were pure.

The principal contributors to the _Pilgrim_ had been invited, and a
selection had been made from the fast and fashionable gang--those who
could be trusted neither to become drunk or disorderly. It had been
decided, but not without misgivings, to ask Muchross and Snowdown.

The doors were open, servants could be seen passing with glasses and
bottles. Frank, who had finished dressing, called from the
drawing-room and begged Mike to hasten; for the housemaid was waiting
to arrange his room, for it had been decided that this room should
serve as a lounge where dancers might sit between the waltzes.

"She can come in now," he shouted. He folded the curtains of his
strange bed; he lighted a silver lamp, re-arranged his palms, and
smiled, thinking of the astonished questions when he invited young
ladies to be seated among the numerous cushions. And Mike determined
he would say that he considered his bed-room far too sacred to admit
of any of the base wants of life being performed there.

It was well-dressed Bohemia, with many markings and varied with
contrasting shades. The air was as sugar about the doorway with the
scent of gardenias; young lords shrank from the weather-stained cloth
of doubtful journalists, and a lady in long puce Cashmere provoked a
smile. Frank received his guests with laughter and epigram.

The emancipation of the women is marked by the decline of the
chaperon, and it was not clear under whose protection the young girls
had come. Beneath double rows of ruche-rose feet passed, and the soft
glow of lamps shaded with large leaves of pale glass bathed the
women's flesh in endless half tints; the reflected light of copper
shades flushed the blonde hair on Lady Helen's neck to auroral
fervencies.

In one group a fat man with white hair and faded blue eyes talked to
Mrs. Bentham and Lewis Seymour. A visit to the Haymarket Theatre
being arranged, he said--

"May I hope to be permitted to form one of the party?"

Harding overheard the remark. He said, "It is difficult to believe,
but I assure you that that Mr. Senbrook was one of the greatest Don
Juans that ever lived."

"We have in this room Don Juan in youth, middle age, and old
age--Mike Fletcher, Lewis Seymour, and Mr. Senbrook."

"Did Seymour, that fellow with the wide hips, ever have success with
women? How fat he has grown!"

"Rather; [Footnote: See _A Modern Lover_.] don't you know his story?
He came up to London with a few pounds. When we knew him first he was
starving in Lambeth. You remember, Thompson, the day he stood us a
lunch? He had just taken a decorative panel to a picture-dealer's,
for which he had received a few pounds, and he told us how he had met
a lady (there's the lady, the woman with the white hair, Mrs.
Bentham) in the picture-dealer's shop. She fell in love with him and
took him down to her country house to decorate it. She sent him to
Paris to study, and it was said employed a dealer for years to buy
his pictures."

"And he dropped her for Lady Helen?"

"Not exactly. Lady Helen dragged him away from her. He never seized
or dropped anything."

"Then what explanation do you give of his success?" said a young
barrister.

"His manner was always gentle and insinuating. Ladies found him
pretty to look upon, and very soothing. Mike is just the same; but of
course Seymour never had any of Mike's brilliancy or enthusiasm."

"Do you know anything of the old gentleman--Senbrook's his name?"

"I have heard that those watery eyes of his were once of entrancing
violet hue, and I believe he was wildly enthusiastic in his love. His
life has been closely connected with mine."

"I didn't know you knew him."

"I do not know him. Yet he poisoned my happiest years; he is the
upas-tree in whose shade I slept. When I was in Paris I loved a lady;
and I used to make sacrifices for this lady, who was, needless to
say, not worthy of them; but she had loved Senbrook in her earliest
youth, and it appears when a woman has once loved Senbrook, she can
love none other. You wouldn't think it, to look at him now, but I
assure you it is so. France is filled with the women he once loved.
The provincial towns are dotted with them. I know eight--eight exist
to my personal knowledge. Sometimes a couple live together, united by
the indissoluble fetter of a Senbrook betrayal. They know their lives
are broken, and they are content that their lives should be broken.
They have loved Senbrook, therefore there is nothing to do but retire
to France. You may think I am joking, but I'm not. It is comic, but
that is no reason why it shouldn't be true. And these ladies neither
forget nor upbraid; and they will attack you like tigers if you dare
say a word against him. This creation of faith is the certain sign of
Don Juan! No matter how cruelly the real Don Juan behaves, the women
he has deceived are ready to welcome him. After years they meet him
in all forgetfulness of wrong. Examine history, and you will find
that the love inspired by the real Don Juan ends only with death. Nor
am I sure that the women attach much importance to his infidelities;
they accept them, his infidelities being a consequential necessity of
his being, the eons and the attributes of his godhead. Don Juan
inspires no jealousy; Don Juan stabbed by an infuriated mistress is a
psychological impossibility."

"I have heard that Seymour used to drive Lady Helen crazy with
jealousy."

"Don Juan disappears at the church-door. He was her husband. The most
unfaithful wife is wildly jealous of her husband."

A sudden silence fell, and a young girl was borne out fainting.

"Nothing more common than for young girls to faint when he is
present. Go," said Harding, "and you will hear her calling his name."
Then, picking up the thread of the paradox, he continued--"But you
can't have Don Juan in this century, our civilization has wiped him
out; not the vice of which he is representative--that is eternal--but
the spectacle of adventure of which he is the hero. No more
fascinating idea. Had the age admitted of Don Juan, I should have
written out his soul long ago. I love the idea. With duelling and
hose picturesqueness has gone out of life. The mantle and the rapier
are essential; and angry words...."

"Are angry words picturesque?"

"Angry words mean angry attitudes; and they are picturesque."

The young men smiled at the fascinating eloquence, and feeling an
appreciative audience about him, Harding continued--

"See Mike Fletcher, know him, understand him, and imagine what he
would have been in the eighteenth century, the glory of adventure he
would have gathered. His life to-day is a mean parody upon an easily
realizable might-have-been. So vital is the idea in him that his life
to-day is the reflection of a life that burned in another age too
ardently to die with death. In another age Mike would have outdone
Casanova. Casanova!--what a magnificent Casanova he would have been!
Casanova is to me the most fascinating of characters. He was
everything--a frequenter of taverns and palaces, a necromancer. His
audacity and unscrupulousness, his comedies, his immortal memoirs!
What was that delightful witty remark he made to some stupid husband
who lay on the ground, complaining that Casanova hadn't fought
fairly? You remember? it was in an avenue of chestnut trees,
approaching a town. Ha! I have forgotten. Mike has all that this man
had--love of adventure, daring, courage, strength, beauty, skill. For
Mike would have made a unique swordsman. Have you ever seen him ride?
Have you ever seen him shoot? I have seen him knock a dozen pigeons
over in succession. Have you ever seen him play billiards? He often
makes a break of a hundred. Have you ever seen him play tennis? He is
the best man we have in the Temple. And a poet! Have you ever heard
him tell of the poem he is writing? The most splendid subject. He
says that neither Goethe nor Hugo ever thought of a better."

"You may include self-esteem in your list of his qualities."

"A platitude! Self-esteem is synonymous to genius. Still, I do not
suppose he would in any circumstances have been a great poet; but
there is enough of the poet about him to enhance and complete his Don
Juan genius."

"You would have to mend his broken nose before you could cite him as
a model Don Juan."

"On the contrary, by breaking his nose chance emphasized nature's
intention; for a broken nose is the element of strangeness so
essential in modern beauty, or shall I say modern attractiveness? But
see that slim figure in hose, sword on thigh, wrapped in rich mantle,
arriving on horseback with Liperello! Imagine the castle balcony, and
the pale sky, green and rose, pensive as her dream, languid as her
attitude. Then again, the grand staircase with courtiers bowing
solemnly; or maybe the wave lapping the marble, the gondola shooting
through the shadow! What encounters, what assignations, what
disappearances, what sudden returnings! So strong is the love idea in
him, that it has suscitated all that is inherent and essential in the
character. It sent him to Boulogne so that he might fight a duel; and
the other day a nun left her convent for him. Curious atavism,
curious recrudescence of a dead idea of man! Say, is it his fault if
his pleasures are limited to clandestine visits; his fame to a
summons to appear in a divorce case; his danger to that most pitiful
of modern ignominies--five shillings a week? ... Bah! this age has
much to answer for."

"But Casanova was a marvellous necromancer, an extraordinary
gambler."

"I know no more enthusiastic gambler than Mike. Have you ever seen
him play whist? At Boulogne he cleaned them all out at baccarat."

"And lost heavily next day, and left without paying."

"The facts of the case have not been satisfactorily established. Have
you seen him do tricks with cards? He used to be very fond of card
tricks; and, by Jove! now I remember, there was a time when ladies
came to consult him. He had two pieces of paper folded up in the same
way. He gave one to the lady to write her question on; she placed it
in a cleft stick and burnt it in a lamp; but the stick was cleft at
both ends, and Mike managed it so that she burnt the blank sheet,
while he read what she had written. Very trivial; inferior of course
to Casanova's immense cabalistic frauds, but it bears out my
contention ... Have you ever read the _Memoirs?_ What a prodigious
book! Do you remember when the Duchesse de Chartres comes to consult
the _cabale_ in the little apartment in the Palais Royal as to the
best means of getting rid of the pimples on her face? ... and that
scene (so exactly like something Wycherley might have written) when
he meets the rich farmer's daughter travelling about with her old
uncle, the priest?"

Mike was talking to Alice Barton, who was chaperoning Lily. Though
she knew nothing of his character she had drawn back instinctively,
but her strictness was gradually annealed in his persuasiveness, and
when he rose to go out of the room with Lily, she was astonished that
she had pleasure in his society.

Lily was more beautiful than usual, the heat and the pleasure of
seeing her admirer having flushed her cheeks. He was penetrated with
her sweetness, and the hand laid on his arm thrilled him. Where
should he take her? Unfortunately the staircase was in stone;
servants were busy in the drawing-room.

"How beautifully Mr. Escott plays the violin!"

The melodious strain reeked through the doorways, filling the
passage.

"That is Stradella's 'Chanson d'Église.' He always plays it; I'm sick
of it."

"Yes, but I'm not. Do not let us go far, I should like to listen."

"I thought you would have preferred to talk with me."

Her manner did not encourage him to repeat his words, and he waited,
uncertain what he should say or do. When the piece was over, he
said--

"We had to turn my bedroom into a retiring-room. I'm afraid we shall
not be alone."

"That does not matter; my mother does not approve of young girls
sitting out dances."

"But your mother isn't here."

"I should not think of doing anything I knew she did not wish me to
do."

The conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Muchross with
several lords, and he was with difficulty dissuaded from an attempt
to swarm up the columns of the wonderful bed. The room was full of
young girls and barristers gathered from the various courts. Some had
stopped before the great Christ. A girl had touched the suspended
silver lamp and spoken of "dim religious light"; but by no word or
look did Lily admit that she had been there before, and Mike felt it
would be useless to remind her that she had. She was the same as she
was every Wednesday in her mother's drawing-room. And the party had
been given solely with a view of withdrawing her from its influence.
What was he to say to this girl? Was he to allow all that had passed
between them to slip? Never had he felt so ill at ease. At last,
fixing his eyes upon her, he said--

"Let us cease this trifling. Perhaps you do not know how painful it
is to me. Tell me, will you come and see me? Do not let us waste
time. I never see you alone now."

"I could not think of coming to see you; it would not be right."

"But you did come once."

"That was because I wanted to see where you lived. Now that I know,
there would be no reason for coming again."

"You have not forgiven me. If you knew how I regret my conduct! Try
and understand that it was for love of you. I was so fearful of
losing you. I have lost you; I know it!"

He cursed himself for the irresolution he had shown. Had he made her
his mistress she would now be hanging about his neck.

"I forgive you. But I wish you would not speak of love in connection
with your conduct; when you do, all my liking for you dies."

"How cruel! Then I shall never kiss you again. Was my kiss so
disagreeable? Do you hate to kiss me?"

"I don't know that I do, but it is not right. If I were married to
you it would be different."

The conversation fell. Then realizing that he was compromising his
chances, he said--

"How can I marry you? I haven't a cent in the world."

"I am not sure I would marry you if you had every cent in the world."

Mike looked at her in despair. She was adorably frail and adorably
pale.

"This is very cruel of you." Words seemed very weak, and he feared
that in the restlessness and pain of his love he had looked at her
foolishly. So he almost welcomed Lady Helen's intrusion upon their
_tête-à-tête_.

"And this is the way you come for your dance, Mr. Fletcher, is it?"

"Have they begun dancing? I did not know it. I beg your pardon."

"And I too am engaged for this dance. I promised it to Mr. Escott,"
said Lily.

"Let me take you back."

He gave her his arm, assuring himself that if she didn't care for him
there were hundreds who did. Lady Helen was one of the handsomest
women in London, and he fancied she was thinking of him. And when he
returned he stood at the door watching her as she leaned over the
mantelpiece reading a letter. She did not put it away at once, but
continued reading and playing with the letter as one might with
something conclusive and important. She took no precaution against
his seeing it, and he noticed that it was in a man's handwriting, and
began _Ma chère amie_. The room was now empty, and the clatter of
knives and forks drowned the strains of a waltz.

"You seemed to be very much occupied with that young person. She is
very pretty. I advise you to take care."

"I don't want to marry. I shall never marry. Did you think I was in
love with Miss Young?"

"Well, it looked rather like it."

"No; I swear you are mistaken. I say, if you don't care about dancing
we'll sit down and talk. So you thought I was in love with Miss
Young? How could I be in love with her while you are in the room? You
know, you must have seen, that I have only eyes for you. The last
time I was in Paris I went to see you in the Louvre."

"You say I am like Jean Gougon's statue."

"I think so, so far as a pair of stays allows me to judge."

Lady Helen laughed, but there was no pleasure in her laugh; it was a
hard, bitter laugh.

"If only you knew how indifferent I am! What does it matter whether I
am like the statue or not? I am indifferent to everything."

"But I admire you because you are like the statue."

"What does it matter to me whether you admire me or not? I don't
care."

He had not asked her for the dance; she had sought him of her
free-will. What did it mean?

"Why should I care? What is it to me whether you like me or whether
you hate me? I know very well that three months after my death every
one will have ceased to think of me; three months hence it will be
the same as if I had never lived at all."

"You are well off; you have talent and beauty. What more do you
want?"

"The world cannot give me happiness. You find happiness in your own
heart, not in worldly possessions.... I am a pessimist. I recognize
that life is a miserable thing--not only a miserable thing, but a
useless thing. We can do no good; there is no good to be done; and
life has no advantage except that we can put it off when we will.
Schopenhauer is wrong when he asserts that suicide is no solution of
the evil; so far as the individual is concerned suicide is a perfect
solution, and were the race to cease to-morrow, nature would
instantly choose another type and force it into consciousness. Until
this earth resolves itself to ice or cinder, matter will never cease
to know itself."

"My dear," said Lewis Seymour, who entered the room at that moment,
"I am feeling very tired; I think I shall go home, but do not mind
me. I will take a hansom--you can have your brougham. You will not
mind coming home alone?"

"No, I shall not mind. But do you take the brougham. It will be
better so. It will save the horse from cold; I'll come back in a
hansom."

Mike noticed a look of relief or of pleasure on her face, he could
not distinguish which. He pressed the conversation on wives,
husbands, and lovers, striving to lead her into some confession. At
last she said--

"I have had a lover for the last four years."

"Really!" said Mike. He hoped his face did not betray his great
surprise. This was the first time he had ever heard a lady admit she
had had a lover.

"We do not often meet; he doesn't live in England. I have not seen
him for more than six months."

"Do you think he is faithful to you all that time?"

"What does it matter whether he is or not? When we meet we love each
other just the same."

"I have never known a woman like you. You are the only one that has
ever interested me. If you had been my mistress or my wife you would
have been happier; you would have worked, and in work, not in
pleasure, we may cheat life. You would have written your books, I
should have written mine."

"I don't want you to think I am whining about my lot. I know what the
value of life is; I'm not deceived, that is all."

"You are unhappy because your present life affords no outlet for your
talent. Ah! had you had to fight the battle! How happy it would have
made me to fight life with you! I wonder you never thought of leaving
your husband, and throwing yourself into the battle of work."

"Supposing I wasn't able to make my living. To give up my home would
be running too great a risk."

"How common all are when you begin to know them," thought Mike.

They spoke of the books they had read. She told him of _Le Journal
d'Amiel_, explaining the charm that that lamentable record of a
narrow, weak mind, whose power lay in an intense consciousness of its
own failure, had for her. She spoke savagely, tearing out her soul,
and flinging it as it were in Mike's face, frightening him not a
little.

"I wish I had known Amiel; I think I could have loved him."

"Did he never write anything but this diary?"

"Oh, yes; but nothing of any worth. The diary was not written for
publication. A friend of his found it among his papers, and from a
huge mass extricated two volumes." Then speaking in praise of the
pessimism of the Russian novels, she said--"There is no pleasure in
life--at least none for me; the only thing that sustains me is
curiosity."

"I don't speak of love, but have you no affection for your
friends?--you like me, for instance."

"I am interested in you--you rouse my curiosity; but when I know you,
I shall pass you by just like another."

"You are frank, to say the least of it. But like all other women, I
suppose you like pleasure, and I adore you; I really do. I have never
seen any one like you. You are superb to-night; let me kiss you." He
took her in his arms.

"No, no; loose me. You do not love me, I do not love you; this is
merely vice."

He pleaded she was mistaken. They spoke of indifferent things, and
soon after went in to supper.

"What a beautiful piece of tapestry!" said Lady Helen.

"Yes, isn't it. But how strange!" he said, stopping in the doorway.
"See how exquisitely real is the unreal--that is to say, how full of
idea, how suggestive! Those blue trees and green skies, those nymphs
like unswathed mummies, colourless but for the red worsted of their
lips,--that one leaning on her bow, pointing to the stag that the
hunters are pursuing through a mysterious yellow forest,--are to my
mind infinitely more real than the women bending over their plates.
At this moment the real is mean and trivial, the ideal is full of
evocation."

"The real and the ideal; why distinguish as people usually
distinguish between the words? The real is but the shadow of the
ideal, the ideal but the shadow of the real."

The table was in disorder of cut pineapple, scattered dishes, and
drooping flowers. Muchross, Snowdown, Dicky the driver, and others
were grouped about the end of the table, and a waiter who styled them
"most amusing gentlemen," supplied fresh bottles of champagne.
Muchross had made several speeches, and now jumping on a chair, he
discoursed on the tapestry, drawing outrageous parallels, and talking
unexpected nonsense. The castle he identified as the cottage where he
and Jenny had spent the summer; the bleary-eyed old peacock was the
chicken he had dosed with cayenne pepper, hoping to cure its
rheumatism; the pool with the white threads for sunlight was the
water-butt into which Tom had fallen from the tiles--"those are the
hairs out of his own old tail." The nymphs were Laura, Maggie, Emily,
&c. Mike asked Lady Helen to come into the dancing-room, but she did
not appear to hear, and her laughter encouraged Muchross to further
excesses. The riot had reached its height and dancers were beginning
to come from the drawing-room to ask what it was all about.

"All about!" shouted Muchross; "I don't care any more about nymphs--I
only care about getting drunk and singing. 'What cheer, 'Ria!'"

"Don't you care for dancing?" said Lady Helen, with tears running
down her cheeks.

"Ra-ther; see me dance the polka, dear girl." And they went banging
through the dancers. Snowdown and Dicky shouted approval.

  "What cheer, 'Ria!
     'Ria's on the job.
   What cheer, 'Ria!
     Speculate a bob.
   'Ria is a toff, and she is immensikoff--
   And we all shouted,
   What cheer, 'Ria!"

Amid the uproar Lady Helen danced with Lily Young. Insidious
fragilities of eighteen were laid upon the plenitudes of thirty! Pure
pink and cream-pink floated on the wind of the waltz, fading out of
colour in shadowy corners, now gliding into the glare of burnished
copper, to the quick appeal of the 'Estudiantina.' A life that had
ceased to dream smiled upon one which had begun to dream. Sad eyes of
Summer, that may flame with no desire again, looked into the eyes of
Spring, where fancies collect like white flowers in the wave of a
clear fountain.

Mike and Frank turned shoulder against shoulder across the room, four
legs following in intricate unison to the opulent rhythm of the 'Blue
Danube'; and when beneath ruche-rose feet died away in little
exhausted steps, the men sprang from each other, and the rhythm of
sex was restored--Mike with Lily, and Frank with Helen, yielding
hearts, hands, and feet in the garden enchantment of Gounod's waltz.

  *        *        *        *        *        *

The smell of burnt-out and quenched candle-ends pervaded the
apartment, and slips of gray light appeared between the curtains. The
day, alas! had come upon them. Frank yawned; and pale with weariness
he longed that his guests might leave him. Chairs had been brought
out on the balcony. Muchross and his friends had adjourned from the
supper-room, bringing champagne and an hysterical lady with them.
Snowdown and Platt were with difficulty dissuaded from attempting
acrobatic feats on the parapet; and the city faded from deep purple
into a vast grayness. Strange was the little party ensconced in the
stone balcony high above the monotone of the river.

Harding and Thompson, for pity of Frank, had spoken of leaving, but
the lords and the lady were obdurate. Her husband had left in
despair, leaving Muchross to bring her home safely to Notting Hill.
As the day broke even the "bluest" stories failed to raise a laugh.
At last some left, then the lords left; ten minutes after Mike,
Frank, Harding, and Thompson were alone.

"Those infernal fellows wouldn't go, and now I'm not a bit sleepy."

"I am," said Thompson. "Come on, Harding; you are going my way."

"Going your way!"

"Yes; you can go through the Park. The walk will do you good."

"I should like a walk," said Escott, "I'm not a bit sleepy now."

"Come on then; walk with me as far as Hyde Park Corner."

"And come home alone! Not if I know it--I'll go if Mike will come."

"I'll go," said Mike. "You'll come with us, Harding?"

"It is out of my way, but if you are all going ... Where's John
Norton?"

"He left about an hour ago."

"Let's wake him up."

As they passed up the Temple towards the Strand entrance, they turned
into Pump Court, intending to shout. But John's window was open, and
he stood, his head out, taking the air.

"What!--not gone to bed yet?"

"No; I have bad indigestion, and cannot sleep."

"We are going to walk as far as Hyde Park Corner with Thompson. Just
the thing for you; you'll walk off your indigestion."

"All right. Wait a moment; I'll put my coat on...."

"I never pass a set of street-sweepers without buttoning up," said
Harding, as they went out of the Temple into the Strand. "The glazed
shoes I don't mind, but the tie is too painfully significant."

"The old signs of City," said Thompson, as a begging woman rose from
a doorstep, and stretched forth a miserable arm and hand.

About the closed wine-shops and oyster-bars of the Haymarket a shadow
of the dissipation of the night seemed still to linger; and a curious
bent figure passed picking with a spiked stick cigar-ends out of
the gutter; significant it was, and so too was the starving dog
which the man drove from a bone. The city was mean and squalid in
the morning, and conveyed a sense of derision and reproach--the
sweep-carriage-road of Regent Street; the Royal Academy, pretentious,
aristocratic; the Green Park still presenting some of the graces of
a preceding century. There were but three cabs on the rank. The
market-carts rolled along long Piccadilly, the great dray-horses
shuffling, raising little clouds of dust in the barren street, the
men dozing amid the vegetables.

They were now at Hyde Park Corner. Thompson spoke of the
_improvements_--the breaking up of the town into open spaces; but he
doubted if anything would be gained by these imitations of Paris. His
discourse was, however, interrupted by a porter from the Alexandra
Hotel asking to be directed to a certain street. He had been sent to
fetch a doctor immediately--a lady just come from an evening party
had committed suicide.

"What was she like?" Harding asked.

"A tall woman."

"Dark or fair?"

He couldn't say, but thought she was something between the two.
Prompted by a strange curiosity, feeling, they knew not why, but
still feeling that it might be some one from Temple Gardens, they
went to the hotel, and obtained a description of the suicide from the
head-porter. The lady was very tall, with beautiful golden hair. For
a description of her dress the housemaid was called.

"I hope," said Mike, "she won't say she was dressed in cream-pink,
trimmed with olive ribbons." She did. Then Harding told the porter he
was afraid the lady was Lady Helen Seymour, a friend of theirs, whom
they had seen that night in a party given in Temple Gardens by this
gentleman, Mr. Frank Escott. They were conducted up the desert
staircase of the hotel, for the lift did not begin working till seven
o'clock. The door stood ajar, and servants were in charge. On the
left was a large bed, with dark-green curtains, and in the middle of
the room a round table. There were two windows. The toilette-table
stood between bed and window, and in the bland twilight of closed
Venetian blinds a handsome fire flared loudly, throwing changing
shadows upon the ceiling, and a deep, glowing light upon the red
panels of the wardrobe. So the room fixed itself for ever on their
minds. They noted the crude colour of the Brussels carpet, and even
the oilcloth around the toilette-table was remembered. They saw that
the round table was covered with a red tablecloth, and that writing
materials were there, a pair of stays, a pair of tan gloves, and some
withering flowers. They saw the ball-dress that Lady Helen had worn
thrown over the arm-chair; the silk stockings, the satin shoes--and a
gleam of sunlight that found its way between the blinds fell upon a
piece of white petticoat. Lady Helen lay in the bed, thrown back low
down on the pillow, the chin raised high, emphasizing a line of
strained white throat. She lay in shadow and firelight, her cheek
touched by the light. Around her eyes the shadows gathered, and as a
landscape retains for an hour some impression of the day which is
gone, so a softened and hallowed trace of life lingered upon her.

Then the facts of the case were told. She had driven up to the hotel
in a hansom. She had asked if No. 57 was occupied, and on being told
it was not, said she would take it; mentioning at the same time that
she had missed her train, and would not return home till late in the
afternoon. She had told the housemaid to light a fire, and had then
dismissed her. Nothing more was known; but as the porter explained,
it was clear she had gone to bed so as to make sure of shooting
herself through the heart.

"The pistol is still in her hand; we never disturb anything till
after the doctor has completed his examination."

Each felt the chill of steel against the naked side, and seeing the
pair of stays on the table, they calculated its resisting force.

Harding mused on the ghastly ingenuity, withal so strangely
reasonable. Thompson felt he would give his very life to make a
sketch. Mike wondered what her lover was like. Frank was overwhelmed
in sentimental sorrow. John's soul was full of strife and suffering.
He had sacrificed his poems, and had yet ventured in revels which had
led to such results! Then as they went down-stairs, Harding gave the
porter Lewis Seymour's name and address, and said he should be sent
for at once.




CHAPTER VI


"I don't say we have never had a suicide here before, sir," said the
porter in reply to Harding as they descended the steps of the hotel;
"but I don't see how we are to help it. Whenever the upper classes
want to do away with themselves they chose one of the big hotels--the
Grosvenor, the Langham, or ourselves. Indeed they say more has done
the trick in the Langham than 'ere, I suppose because it is more
central; but you can't get behind the motives of such people. They
never think of the trouble and the harm they do us; they only think
of themselves."

London was now awake; the streets were a-clatter with cabs; the pick
of the navvy resounded; night loiterers were disappearing and giving
place to hurrying early risers. In the resonant morning the young men
walked together to the Corner. There they stopped to bid each other
good-bye. John called a cab, and returned home in intense mental
agitation.

"It really is terrible," said Mike. "It isn't like life at all, but
some shocking nightmare. What could have induced her to do it?"

"That we shall probably never know," said Thompson; "and she seemed
brimming over with life and fun. How she did dance! ..."

"That was nerves. I had a long talk with her, and I assure you she
quite frightened me. She spoke about the weariness of living;--no,
not as we talk of it, philosophically; there was a special accent of
truth in what she said. You remember the porter mentioned that she
asked if No. 57 was occupied. I believe that is the room where she
used to meet her lover. I believe they had had a quarrel, and that
she went there intent on reconciliation, and finding him gone
determined to kill herself. She told me she had had a lover for the
last four years. I don't know why she told me--it was the first time
I ever heard a lady admit she had had a lover; but she was in an
awful state of nerve excitement, and I think hardly knew what she was
saying. She took the letter out of her bosom and read it slowly. I
couldn't help seeing it was in a man's handwriting; it began, '_Ma
chère amie!_' I heard her tell her husband to take the brougham; that
she would come home in a cab. However, if my supposition is correct,
I hope she burnt the letter."

"Perhaps that's what she lit the fire for. Did you notice if the
writing materials had been used?"

"No, I didn't notice," said Mike. "And all so elaborately planned!
Just fancy--shooting herself in a nice warm bed! She was determined
to do it effectually. And she must have had the revolver in her
pocket the whole time. I remember now, I had gone out of the room for
a moment, and when I came back she was leaning over the
chimney-piece, looking at something."

"I have often thought," said Harding, "that suicide is the
culminating point of a state of mind long preparing. I think that the
mind of the modern suicide is generally filled, saturated with the
idea. I believe that he or she has been given for a long time
preceding the act to considering, sometimes facetiously, sometimes
sentimentally, the advantages of oblivion. For a long time an
infiltration of desire of oblivion, and acute realization of the
folly of living, precedes suicide, and, when the mind is thoroughly
prepared, a slight shock or interruption in the course of life
produces it, just as an odorous wind, a sight of the sea, results in
the poem which has been collecting in the mind."

"I think you might have the good feeling to forbear," said Frank;
"the present is hardly, I think, a time for epigrams or philosophy. I
wonder how you can talk so...."

"I think Frank is quite right. What right have we to analyse her
motives?"

"Her motives were simple enough; sad enough too, in all conscience.
Why make her ridiculous by forcing her heart into the groove of your
philosophy? The poor woman was miserably deceived; abominably
deceived. You do not know what anguish of mind she suffered."

"There is nothing to show that she went to the Alexandra to meet a
lover beyond the fact of a statement made to Mike in a moment of
acute nervous excitement. We have no reason to think that she ever
had a lover. I never heard her name mentioned in any such way. Did
you, Escott?"

"Yes; I have heard that you were her lover."

"I assure you I never was; we have not even been on good terms for a
long time past."

"You said just now that the act was generally preceded by a state of
feeling long preparing. It was you who taught her to read
Schopenhauer."

"I am not going to listen to nonsense at this hour of the morning. I
never take nonsense on an empty stomach. Come, Thompson, you are
going my way."

Mike and Frank walked home together. The clocks had struck six, and
the milkmen were calling their ware; soon the shop-shutters would be
coming down, and in this first flush of the day's enterprise, a last
belated vegetable-cart jolted towards the market. Mike's thoughts
flitted from the man who lay a-top taking his ease, his cap pulled
over his eyes, to the scene that was now taking place in the twilight
bedroom. What would Seymour say? Would he throw himself on his knees?
Frank spoke from time to time; his thoughts growled like a savage
dog, and his words bit at his friend. For Mike had incautiously given
an account in particular detail of his _tête-à-tête_ with Lady Helen.

"Then you are in a measure answerable for her death."

"You said just now that Harding was answerable; we can't both be
culpable."

Frank did not reply. He brooded in silence, losing all perception of
the truth in a stupid and harsh hatred of those whom he termed the
villains that ruined women. When they reached Leicester Square, to
escape from the obsession of the suicide, Mike said--

"I do not think that I told you that I have sketched out a trilogy on
the life of Christ. The first play _John_, the second _Christ_, the
third _Peter_. Of course I introduce Christ into the third play. You
know the legend. When Peter is flying from Rome to escape
crucifixion, he meets Christ carrying His cross."

"Damn your trilogy--who cares! You have behaved abominably. I want
you to understand that I cannot--that I do not hold with your
practice of making love to every woman you meet. In the first place
it is beastly, in the second it is not gentlemanly. Look at the
result!"

"But I assure you I am in no wise to blame in this affair. I never
was her lover."

"But you made love to her."

"No, I didn't; we talked of love, that was all. I could see she was
excited, and hardly knew what she was saying. You are most unjust. I
think it quite as horrible as you do; it preys upon my mind, and if I
talk of other things it is because I would save myself the pain of
thinking of it. Can't you understand that?"

The conversation fell, and Mike thrust both hands into the pockets of
his overcoat.

At the end of a long silence, Frank said--

"We must have an article on this--or, I don't know--I think I should
like a poem. Could you write a poem on her death?"

"I think so. A prose poem. I was penetrated with the modern
picturesqueness of the room--the Venetian blinds."

"If that's the way you are going to treat it, I would sooner not have
it--the face in the glass, a lot of repetitions of words, sentences
beginning with 'And,' then a mention of shoes and silk stockings. If
you can't write feelingly about her, you had better not write at
all."

"I don't see that a string of colloquialisms constitute feelings,"
said Mike.

Mike kept his temper; he did not intend to allow it to imperil his
residence in Temple Gardens, or his position in the newspaper; but he
couldn't control his vanity, and ostentatiously threw Lady Helen's
handkerchief upon the table, and admitted to having picked it up in
the hotel.

"What am I to do with it? I suppose I must keep it as a relic," he
added with a laugh, as he opened his wardrobe.

There were there ladies' shoes, scarves, and neckties; there were
there sachets and pincushions; there were there garters, necklaces,
cotillion favours, and a tea-gown.

Again Frank boiled over with indignation, and having vented his sense
of rectitude, he left the room without even bidding his friend
good-night or good-morning. The next day he spent the entire
afternoon with Lizzie, for Lady Helen's suicide had set his nature in
active ferment.

In the story of every soul there are times of dissolution and
reconstruction in which only the generic forms are preserved. A new
force had been introduced, and it was disintegrating that mass of
social fibre which is modern man, and the decomposition teemed with
ideas of duty, virtue, and love. He interrupted Lizzie's chit-chat
constantly with reflections concerning the necessity of religious
belief in women.

About seven they went to eat in a restaurant close by. It was an old
Italian chop-house that had been enlarged and modernized, but the
original marble tables where customers ate chops and steaks at low
prices were retained in a remote and distant corner. Lizzie proposed
to sit there. They were just seated when a golden-haired girl of
theatrical mien entered.

"That's Lottie Rily," exclaimed Lizzie. Then lowering her voice she
whispered quickly, "She was in love with Mike once; he was the fellow
she left her 'ome for. She's on the stage now, and gets four pounds a
week. I haven't seen her for the last couple of years. Lottie, come
and sit down here."

The girl turned hastily. "What, Lizzie, old pal, I have not seen you
for ages."

"Not for more than two years. Let me introduce you to my friend, Mr.
Escott--Miss Lottie Rily of the Strand Theatre."

"Very pleased to make your acquaintance, sir; the editor of the
_Pilgrim_, I presume?"

Frank smiled with pleasure, and the waiter interposed with the bill
of fare. Lottie ordered a plate of roast beef, and leaned across the
table to talk to her friend.

"Have you seen Mike lately?" asked Lizzie.

"Swine!" she answered, tossing her head. "No; and don't want to. You
know how he treated me. He left me three months after my baby was
born."

"Have you had a baby?"

"What, didn't you know that? It is seven months old; 'tis a boy,
that's one good job. And he hasn't paid me one penny piece. I have
been up to Barber and Barber's, but they advised me to do nothing.
They said that he owed them money, and that they couldn't get what he
owed them--a poor look-out for me. They said that if I cared to
summons him for the support of the child, that the magistrate would
grant me an order at once."

"And why don't you?" said Frank; "you don't like the _exposé_ in the
newspapers."

"That's it."

"Do you care for him still?"

"I don't know whether I do, or don't. I shall never love another man,
I know that. I saw him in front about a month ago. He was in the
stalls, and he fixed his eyes upon me; I didn't take the least
notice, he was so cross. He came behind after the first act. He said,
'How old you are looking!' I said, 'What do you mean?' I was very
nicely made up too, and he said, 'Under the eyes.' I said, 'What do
you mean?' and he said, 'You are all wrinkles.' I said, 'What do you
mean?' and he went down-stairs.... Swine!"

"He isn't good-looking," said Frank, reflectively, "a broken nose, a
chin thrust forward, and a mop of brown curls twisted over his
forehead. Give me a pencil, and I'll do his caricature."

"Every one says the same thing. The girls in the theatre all say,
'What in the world do you see in him?' I tell them that if he
chose--if he were to make up to them a bit, they'd go after him just
the same as I did. There's a little girl in the chorus, and she trots
about after him; she can't help it. There are times when I don't care
for him. What riles me is to see other women messing him about."

"I suppose it is some sort of magnetism, electro-biology, and he
can't help exercising it any more than you women can resist it. Tell
me, how did he leave you?"

"Without a word or a penny. One night he didn't come home, and I sat
up for him, and I don't know how many nights after. I used to doze
off and awake up with a start, thinking I heard his footstep on the
landing. I went down to Waterloo Bridge to drown myself. I don't know
why I didn't; I almost wish I had, although I have got on pretty well
since, and get a pretty tidy weekly screw."

"What do you get?"

"Three ten. Mine's a singing part. Waiter, some cheese and celery."

"What a blackguard he is! I'll never speak to him again; he shall
edit my paper no more. To-night I'll give him the dirty kick-out."

Mike remained the topic of conversation until Lottie said--

"Good Lord, I must be 'getting'--it is past seven o'clock."

Frank paid her modest bill, and still discussing Mike, they walked to
the stage-door. Quick with desire to possess Lizzie wholly beyond
recall, and obfuscated with notions concerning the necessity of
placing women in surroundings in harmony with their natural goodness,
Frank walked by his mistress's side. At the end of a long silence,
she said--

"That's the way you'll desert me one of these days. All men are
brutes."

"No, darling, they are not. If you'll act fairly by me, I will by
you--I'll never desert you."

Lizzie did not answer.

"You don't think me a brute like that fellow Fletcher, do you?"

"I don't think there's much difference between any of you."

Frank ground his teeth, and at that moment he only desired one
thing--to prove to Lizzie that men were not all vile and worthless.
They had turned into the Temple; the old places seemed dozing in the
murmuring quietude of the evening. Mike was coming up the pathway,
his dress-clothes distinct in the delicate gray light, his light-gray
overcoat hanging over his arm.

"What a toff he is!" said Lizzie. His appearance and what it
symbolized--an evening in a boudoir or at the gaming-table--jarred on
Frank, suggesting as it did a difference in condition from that of
the wretched girl he had abandoned; and as Mike prided himself that
scandalous stories never followed upon his loves, the unearthing of
this mean and obscure liaison annoyed him exceedingly. Above all, the
accusation of paternity was disagreeable; but determined to avoid a
quarrel, he was about to pass by, when Frank noticed Lady Helen's
pocket-handkerchief sticking out of his pocket.

"You blackguard," he said, "you are taking that handkerchief to a
gambling hell."

Then realizing that the game was up, he turned and would have struck
his friend had not Lizzie interposed. She threw herself between the
men, and called a policeman, and the quarrel ended in Mike's
dismissal from the staff of the _Pilgrim_.

Frank had therefore to sit up writing till one o'clock, for the whole
task of bringing out the paper was thrown upon him. Lizzie sat by him
sewing. Noticing how pale and tired he looked, she got up, and
putting her arm about his neck, said--

"Poor old man, you are tired; you had better come to bed."

He took her in his arms affectionately, and talked to her.

"If you were always as kind and as nice as you are to-night ...
I could love you."

"I thought you did love me."

"So I do; you will never know how much." They were close together,
and the pure darkness seemed to separate them from all worldly
influences.

"If you would be a good girl, and think only of him who loves you
very dearly."

"Ah, if I only had met you first!"

"It would have made no difference, you'd have only been saying this
to some one else."

"Oh, no; if you had known me before I went wrong."

"Was he the first?"

"Yes; I would have been an honest little girl, trying to make you
comfortable."

Throwing himself on his back, Frank argued prosaically--

"Then you mean to say you really care about me more than any one
else?"

She assured him that she did; and again and again the temptations of
women were discussed. He could not sleep, and stretched at length on
his back, he held Lizzie's hand.

She was in a communicative humour, and told him the story of the
waiter, whom she described as being "a fellow like Mike, who made
love to every woman." She told him of three or four other fellows,
whose rooms she used to go to. They made her drink; she didn't like
the beastly stuff; and then she didn't know what she did. There were
stories of the landlady in whose house she lodged, and the woman who
lived up-stairs. She had two fellows; one she called Squeaker--she
didn't care for him; and another called Harry, and she did care for
him; but the landlady's daughter called him a s----, because he
seldom gave her anything, and always had a bath in the morning.

"How can a girl be respectable under such circumstances?" Lizzie
asked, pathetically. "The landlady used to tell me to go out and get
my living!"

"Yes; but I never let you want. You never wrote to me for money that
I didn't send it."

"Yes; I know you did, but sometimes I think she stopped the letters.
Besides, a girl cannot be respectable if she isn't married. Where's
the use?"

He strove to think, and failing to think, he said--

"If you really mean what you say, I will marry you." He heard each
word; then a sob sounded in the dark, and turning impulsively he took
Lizzie in his arms.

"No, no," she cried, "it would never do at all. Your family--what
would they say? They would not receive me."

"What do I care for my family? What has my family ever done for me?"

For an hour they argued, Lizzie refusing, declaring it was useless,
insisting that she would then belong to no set; Frank assuring her
that hand-in-hand and heart-to-heart they would together, with united
strength and love, win a place for themselves in the world. They
dozed in each other's arms.

Rousing himself, Frank said--

"Kiss me once more, little wifie; good-night, little wife ..."

"Good-night, dear."

"Call me little husband; I shan't go to sleep until you do."

"Good-night, little husband."

"Say little hussy."

"Good-night, little hussy."

Next morning, however, found Lizzie violently opposed to all idea of
marriage. She said he didn't mean it; he said he did mean it, and he
caught up a Bible and swore he was speaking the truth. He put his
back against the door, and declared she should not leave until she
had promised him--until she gave him her solemn oath that she would
become his wife. He was not going to see her go to the dogs--no, not
if he could help it; then she lost her temper and tried to push past
him. He restrained her, urging again and again, and with theatrical
emphasis, that he thought it right, and would do his duty. Then they
argued, they kissed, and argued again.

That night he walked up and down the pavement in front of her door;
but the servant-girl caught sight of him through the kitchen-window
and the area-railings, and ran up-stairs to warn Miss Baker, who was
taking tea with two girl friends.

"He is a-walking up and down, Miss, 'is great-coat flying behind
him."

Lizzie slapped his face when he burst into her room; and scenes of
recrimination, love, and rage were transferred to and fro between
Temple Gardens and Winchester Street. Her girl friends advised her to
marry, and the landlady when appealed to said, "What could you want
better than a fine gentleman like that?"

Frank was conscious of nothing but her, and every vision of Mount
Rorke that had risen in his mind he had unhesitatingly swept away.
All prospects were engulfed in his desire; he saw nothing but the
white face, which like a star led and allured him.

One morning the marriage was settled, and like a knight going to the
crusade, Frank set forth to find out when it could be. They must be
married at once. The formalities of a religious marriage appalled
him. Lizzie might again change her mind; and a registrar's office
fixed itself in his thought.

It was a hot day in July when he set forth on his quest. He addressed
the policeman at the corner, and was given the name of the street and
the number. He hurried through the heat, irritated by the
sluggishness of the passers-by, and at last found himself in front of
a red building. The windows were full of such general announcements
as--Working Men's Peace Preservation, Limited Liability Company, New
Zealand, etc. The marriage office looked like a miniature bank; there
were desks, and a brass railing a foot high preserved the
inviolability of the documents. A fat man with watery eyes rose from
the leather arm-chair in which he had been dozing, and Frank
intimated his desire to be married as soon as possible; that
afternoon if it could be managed. It took the weak-eyed clerk some
little time to order and grasp the many various notions which Frank
urged upon him; but he eventually roused a little (Frank had begun to
shout at him), and explained that no marriage could take place after
two o'clock, and later on it transpired that due notice would have to
be given.

Very much disappointed, Frank asked him to inscribe his name. The
clerk opened a book, and then it suddenly cropped up that this was
the registry office, not for Pimlico, but for Kensington.

"Gracious heavens!" exclaimed Frank, "and where is the registry
office for Pimlico in Kensington?"

"That I cannot tell you; it may be anywhere; you will have to find
out."

"How am I to find out, damn it?"

"I really can't tell you, but I must beg of you to remember where you
are, sir, and to moderate your language," said the clerk, with some
faint show of hieratic dignity. "And now, ma'am, what can I do for
you?" he said, turning to a woman who smelt strongly of the kitchen.

Frank was furious; he appealed again to the casual policeman, who,
although reluctantly admitting he could give him no information,
sympathized with him in his diatribe against the stupidities of the
authorities. The policeman had himself been married by the registrar,
and some time was lost in vain reminiscences; he at last suggested
that inquiry could be made at a neighbouring church.

Frank hurried away, and had a long talk with a charwoman whom he
discovered in the desert of the chairs. She thought the office was
situated somewhere in a region unknown to Frank, which she called St.
George-of-the-Fields; her daughter, who had been shamefully deserted,
had been married there. The parson, she thought, would know, and she
gave him his address.

The heat was intolerable! There were few people in the streets. The
perspiration collected under his hat, and his feet ached so in his
patent leather shoes that he was tempted to walk after the water-cart
and bathe them in the sparkling shower. Several hansoms passed, but
they were engaged. Nor was the parson at home. The maid-servant
sniggered, but having some sympathy with what she discovered was his
mission, summoned the housekeeper, who eyed him askance, and directed
him to Bloomsbury; and after a descent into a grocer's shop, and an
adventure which ended in an angry altercation in a servants' registry
office, he was driven to a large building which adjoined the parish
infirmary and workhouse.

Even there he was forced to make inquiries, so numerous and various
were the offices. At last an old man in gray clothes declared himself
the registrar's attendant, and offered to show him the way; but
seeing himself now within range of his desire, he distanced the old
chap up the four flights of stairs, and arrived wholly out of breath
before the brass railing which guarded the hymeneal documents. A
clerk as slow of intellect as the first, and even more somnolent,
approached and leaned over the counter.

Feeling now quite familiar with a registrar's office, Frank explained
his business successfully. The fat clerk, whose red nose had sprouted
into many knobs, balanced himself leisurely, evidently giving little
heed to what was said; but the broadness of the brogue saved Frank
from losing his temper.

"What part of Oireland do ye come from? Is it Tipperary?"

"Yes."

"I thought so; Cashel, I'm thinking."

"Yes; do you come from there?"

"To be sure I do. I knew you when you were a boy; and is his lordship
in good health?"

Frank replied that Lord Mount Rorke was in excellent health, and
feeling himself obliged to be civil, he asked the clerk his name, and
how long it was since he had been in Ireland.

"Well, this is odd," the clerk began, and then in an irritating
undertone Mr. Scanlon proceeded to tell how he and four others were
driving through Portarlington to take the train to Dublin, when one
of them, Michael Carey he thought it was, proposed to stop the car
and have some refreshment at the Royal Hotel.

Frank tried several times to return to the question of the license,
but the imperturbable clerk was not to be checked.

"I was just telling you," he interposed.

It seemed hard luck that he should find a native of Cashel in the
Pimlico registrar's office. He had intended to keep his marriage a
secret, as did Willy Brookes, and for a moment the new danger
thrilled him. It was intolerable to have to put up with this
creature's idle loquacity, but not wishing to offend him he endured
it a little longer.

When the clerk paused in his narrative of the four gentlemen who had
stopped the car to have some refreshment, Frank made a resolute stand
against any fresh developments of the story, and succeeded in
extracting some particulars concerning the marriage laws. And within
the next few days all formalities were completed, and Frank's
marriage fixed for the end of the week--for Friday, at a quarter to
eleven. He slept lightly that night, was out of bed before eight, and
mistaking the time, arrived at the office a few minutes before ten.
He met the old man in gray clothes in the passage, and this time he
was not to be evaded.

"Are you the gentleman who's come to be married by special license,
sir?"

"Yes."

"Neither Mr. Southey--that is the Registrar--nor Mr. Freeman--that's
the Assistant-Registrar--has yet arrived, sir."

"It is very extraordinary they should be late. Do they never keep
their appointments?"

"They rarely arrives before ten, sir."

"Before ten! What time is it now?"

"Only just ten. I am the regular attendant. I'll see yer through it;
no necessity to hagitate yerself. It will be done quietly in a
private room--a very nice room too, fourteen feet by ten high--them's
the regulations; all the chairs covered with leather; a very nice
comfortable room. Would yer like to see the room? Would yer like to
sit down there and wait? There's a party to be married before you.
But they won't mind you. He's a butcher by trade."

"And what is she?"

"I think she's a tailoress; they lives close by here, they do."

"And who are you, and where do you live?"

"I'm the regular attendant; I lives close by here."

"Where close by?"

"In the work'us; they gives me this work to do."

"Oh, you are a pauper, then?"

"Yease; but I works here; I'm the regular attendant. No need to be
afraid, sir; it's all done in a private room; no one will see you.
This way, sir; this way."

The sinister aspect of things never appealed to Frank, and he was
vastly amused at the idea of the pauper Mercury, and had begun to
turn the subject over, seeing how he could use it for a queer story
for the _Pilgrim_. But time soon grew horribly long, and to kill it
he volunteered to act as witness to the butcher's marriage, one being
wanted. The effects of a jovial night, fortified by some matutinal
potations, were still visible in the small black eyes of the rubicund
butcher--a huge man, apparently of cheery disposition; he swung to
and fro before the shiny oak table as might one of his own carcasses.
His bride, a small-featured woman, wrapped in a plaid shawl,
evidently fearing that his state, if perceived by the Registrar,
might cause a postponement of her wishes, strove to shield him. His
pal and a stout girl, with the air of the coffee-shop about her,
exchanged winks and grins, and at the critical moment, when the
Registrar was about to read the declaration, the pal slipped behind
some friends and, catching the bridegroom by the collar, whispered,
"Now then, old man, pull yourself together." The Registrar
looked up, but his spectacles did not appear to help him; the
Assistant-Registrar, a tall, languid young man, who wore a carnation
in his button-hole, yawned and called for order. The room was lighted
by a skylight, and the light fell diffused on the hands and faces;
and alternately and in combination the whiskied breath and the
carnation's scent assailed the nostrils. Suddenly the silence was
broken by the Registrar, who began to read the declarations. "I
hereby declare that I, James Hicks, know of no impediment whereby I
may not be joined in matrimony with Matilde, Matilde--is it Matilde
or Matilda?"

"I calls her Tilly when I am a-cuddling of her; when she riles me,
and gets my dander up, I says, 'Tilder, come here!'" and the butcher
raised his voice till it seemed like an ox's bellow.

"I really must beg," exclaimed the Registrar, "that the sanctity
of--the gravity of this ceremony is not disturbed by any foolish
frivolity. You must remember ..." But at that moment the glassy look
of the butcher's eyes reached the old gentleman's vision, and a heavy
hiccup fell upon his ears. "I really think, Mr. Freeman, that that
gentleman, one of the contracting parties I mean, is not in a fit
state--is in a state bordering on inebriation. Will you tell me if
this is so?"

"I didn't notice it before," said Mr. Freeman, stifling a yawn, "but
now you mention it, I really think he is a little drunk, and hardly
in a fit ..."

"I ne--ver was more jolly, jolly dog in my life (hiccup)--when you
gentlemen have made it (hiccup) all squ--square between me and my
Tilly" (a violent hiccup),--then suddenly taking her round the waist,
he hugged her so violently that Matilda could not forbear a
scream,--"I fancy I shall be, just be a trifle more jolly still....
If any of you ge--gen'men would care to join us--most 'appy, Tilly
and me."

Lizzie, who had discovered a relation or two--a disreputable father
and a nondescript brother--now appeared on the threshold. Her
presence reminded Frank of his responsibility, so forthwith he
proceeded to bully the Registrar and allude menacingly to his
newspaper.

"I'm sure, sir, I am very sorry you should have witnessed such a
scene. Never, really, in the whole course of my life ..."

"There is positively no excuse for allowing such people ..."

"I will not go on with the marriage," roared the Registrar; "really,
Mr. Freeman, you ought to have seen. You know how short-sighted I am.
I will not proceed with this marriage."

"Oh, please, sir, Mr. Registrar, don't say that," exclaimed Matilda.
"If you don't go on now, he'll never marry me; I'll never be able to
bring 'im to the scratch again. Indeed, sir, 'e's not so drunk as he
looks. 'Tis mostly the effect of the morning hair upon him."

"I shall not proceed with the marriage," said the Registrar, sternly.
"I have never seen anything more disgraceful in my life. You come
here to enter into a most solemn, I may say a sacred, contract, and
you are not able to answer to your names; it is disgraceful."

"Indeed I am, sir; my name is Matilda, that's the English of it, but
my poor mother kept company with a Frenchman, and he would have me
christened Matilde; but it is all the same, it is the same name,
indeed it is, sir. Do marry us; I shan't be able to get him to the
scratch again. For the last five years ..."

"Potter, Potter, show these people out; how dare you admit people who
were in a state of inebriation?"

"I didn't 'ear what you said, sir."

"Show these people out, and if you ever do it again, you'll have to
remain in the workhouse."

"This way, ladies and gentlemen, this way. I'm the regular
attendant."

"Come along, Tilly dear, you'll have to wait another night afore we
are churched. Come, Tilly; do you hear me? Come, Tilda."

Frightened as she was, the words "another night" suggested an idea to
poor Matilde, and turning with supplicating eyes to the Registrar,
she implored that they might make an appointment for the morrow.
After some demur the Registrar consented, and she went away tearful,
but in hope that she would be able to bring him on the morrow, as he
put it, "fit to the post." This matter having been settled, the
Registrar turned to Frank. Never in the course of his experience had
the like occurred. He was extremely sorry that he (Mr. Escott) had
been present. True, they were not situated in a fashionable
neighbourhood, the people were ignorant, and it was often difficult
to get them to sign their names correctly; but he was bound to admit
that they were orderly, and seemed to realize, he would say, the
seriousness of the transaction.

"It is," said the Registrar, "our object to maintain the strictly
legal character of the ceremony--the contract, I should say--and to
avoid any affectation of ritual whatsoever. I regret that you, sir, a
representative of the press ..."

"The nephew and heir to Lord Mount Rorke," suggested the clerk.

The Registrar bowed, and murmured that he did not know he had that
honour. Then he spoke for some time of the moral good the registry
offices had effected among the working classes; how they had allowed
the poor--for instance, the person who has been known for years in
the neighbourhood as Mrs. Thompson, to legalize her cohabitation
without scandal.

But Frank thought only of his wife, when he should clasp her hand,
saying, "Dearest wife!" He had brought his dramatic and musical
critics with him. The dramatic critic--a genial soul, well known to
the shop-girls in Oxford Street, without social prejudices--was deep
in conversation with the father and brother of the bride; the musical
critic, a mild-faced man, adjusted his spectacles, and awaking from
his dream reminded them of an afternoon concert that began unusually
early, and where his presence was indispensable. When the
declarations were over, Frank asked when he should put the ring on.

"Some like to use the ring, some don't; it isn't necessary; all the
best people of course do," said the Assistant-Registrar, who had not
yawned once since he had heard that Frank's uncle was Lord Mount
Rorke.

"I am much obliged to you for the information; but I should like to
have my question answered--When am I to put on the ring?"

The dramatic critic tittered, and Frank authoritatively expostulated.
But the Registrar interposed, saying--

"It is usual to put the ring on when the bride has answered to the
declarations."

"Now all of ye can kiss the bride," exclaimed the clerk from Cashel.

Frank was indignant; the Registrar explained that the kissing of the
bride was an old custom still retained among the lower classes, but
Frank was not to be mollified, and the unhappy clerk was ordered to
leave the room.

The wedding party drove to the Temple, where champagne was awaiting
them; and when health and happiness had been drunk the critics left,
and the party became a family one.

Mike was in his bedroom; he was too indolent to move out of Escott's
rooms, and by avoiding him he hoped to avert expulsion and angry
altercations. The night he spent in gambling, the evening in dining;
and some hours of each afternoon were devoted to the composition of
his trilogy. Now he lay in his arm-chair smoking cigarettes, drinking
lemonade, and thinking. He was especially attracted by the picture he
hoped to paint in the first play of John and Jesus; and from time to
time his mind filled with a picture of Herod's daughter. Closing his
eyes slightly he saw her breasts, scarce hidden beneath jewels, and
precious scarves floated from her waist as she advanced in a vaulted
hall of pale blue architecture, slender fluted columns, and pointed
arches. He sipped his lemonade, enjoying his soft, changing, and
vague dream. But now he heard voices in the next room, and listening
attentively he could distinguish the conversation.

"The drivelling idiot!" he thought. "So he's gone and married
her--that slut of a barmaid! Mount Rorke will never forgive him. I
wouldn't be surprised if he married again. The idiot!"

The reprobate father declared he had not hoped to see such a day, so
let bygones be bygones, that was his feeling. She had always been a
good daughter; they had had differences of opinion, but let bygones
be bygones. He had lived to see his daughter married to a gentleman,
if ever there was one; and his only desire was that God might spare
him to see her Lady Mount Rorke. Why should she not be Lady Mount
Rorke? She was as pretty a girl as there was in London, and a good
girl too; and now that she was married to a gentleman, he hoped they
would both remember to let bygones be bygones.

"Great Scott!" thought Mike; "and he'll have to live with her for the
next thirty years, watching her growing fat, old, and foolish. And
that father!--won't he give trouble! What a pig-sty the fellow has
made of his life!"

Lizzie asked her father not to cry. Then came a slight altercation
between Lizzie and her husband, in which it was passionately debated
whether Harry, the brother, was fitted to succeed Mike on the paper.

"How the fellow has done for himself! A nice sort of paper they'll
bring out."

A cloud passed over Mike's face when he thought it would probably be
this young gentleman who would continue his articles--_Lions of the
Season_.

"You have quarrelled with Mike," said Lizzie, "and you say you aren't
going to make it up again. You'll want some one, and Harry writes
very nicely indeed. When he was at school his master always praised
his writing. When he is in love he writes off page after page. I
should like you to see the letters he wrote to ..."

"Now, Liz, I really--I wish you wouldn't ..."

"I am sure he would soon get into it."

"Quite so, quite so; I hope he will; I'm sure Harry will get into
it--and the way to get into it is for him to send me some paragraphs.
I will look over his 'copy,' making the alterations I think
necessary. But for the moment, until he has learned the trick of
writing paragraphs, he would be of no use to me in the office. I
should never get the paper out. I must have an experienced writer by
me."

Then he dropped his voice, and Mike heard nothing till Frank said--

"That cad Fletcher is still here; we don't speak, of course; we
passed each other on the staircase the other night. If he doesn't
clear out soon I'll have to turn him out. You know who he is--a
farmer's son, and used to live in a little house about a mile from
Mount Rorke Castle, on the side of the road."

Mike thrilled with rage and hatred.

"You brute! you fool! you husband of a bar-girl!--you'll never be
Lord Mount Rorke! He that came from the palace shall go to the
garret; he that came from the little house on the roadside shall go
to the castle, you brute!"

And Mike vowed that he would conquer sloth and lasciviousness, and
outrageously triumph in the gaudy, foolish world, and insult his
rival with riches and even honour. Then he heard Lizzie reproach
Frank for refusing her first request, and the foolish fellow's
expostulations suscitated feelings in Mike of intense satisfaction.
He smiled triumphantly when he heard the old man's talents as
accountant referred to.

"Father never told you about his failure," said Lizzie. Then the
story with all its knots was laboriously unravelled.

"But," said the old man, "my books were declared to be perfect; I was
complimented on my books; I was proud of them books."

"Great Scott! the brother as sub-editor, the father as book-keeper,
the sister as wife--it would be difficult to imagine anything more
complete. I'm sorry for the paper, though;--and my series, what a
hash they'll make of it!" Taking the room in a glance, and imagining
the others with every piece of furniture and every picture, he
thought--"I give him a year, and then these rooms will be for sale. I
shall get them; but I must clear out."

He had won four hundred pounds within the last week, and this and his
share in a play which was doing fairly well in the provinces, had run
up his balance at the bank higher than it had ever stood--to nearly a
thousand pounds.

As he considered his good fortune, a sudden desire of change of scene
suddenly sprang upon him, and in full revulsion of feeling his mind
turned from the long hours in the yellow glare of lamp-light, the
staring faces, the heaps of gold and notes, and the cards flying
silently around the empty space of green baize; from the long hours
spent correcting and manipulating sentences; from the heat and
turmoil and dirt of London; from Frank Escott and his family; from
stinking, steamy restaurants; from the high flights of stairs, and
the prostitution of the Temple. And like butterflies above two
flowers, his thoughts hovered in uncertain desire between the
sanctity of a honeymoon with Lily Young in a fair enchanted pavilion
on a terrace by the sea, near, but not too near, white villas, in a
place as fairylike as a town etched by Whistler, and some months of
pensive and abstracted life, full to overflowing with the joy and
eagerness of incessant cerebration; a summer spent in a quiet
country-side, full of field-paths, and hedge-rows, and shadowy
woodland lanes--rich with red gables, surprises of woodbine and great
sunflowers--where he would walk meditatively in the sunsetting,
seeing the village lads and lassies pass, interested in their homely
life, so resting his brain after the day's labour; then in his study
he would find the candles already lighted, the kettle singing, his
books and his manuscripts ready for three excellent hours; upon his
face the night would breathe the rustling of leaves and the rich
odour of the stocks and tall lilies, until he closed the window at
midnight, casting one long sad and regretful look upon the gold
mysteries of the heavens.

So his reverie ran, interrupted by the conversation in the next room.
He heard his name mentioned frequently. The situation was
embarrassing, for he could not open a door without being heard. At
last he tramped boldly out, slamming the doors after him, leaving a
note for Frank on the table in the passage. It ran as follows--"I am
leaving town in a few days. I shall remove my things probably on
Monday. Much obliged to you for your hospitality; and now, good-bye."
"That will look," he thought, "as if I had not overheard his remarks.
How glad I shall be to get away! Oh, for new scenes, new faces! 'How
pleasant it is to have money!--heigh-ho!--how pleasant it is to have
money!' Whither shall I go? Whither? To Italy, and write my poem? To
Paris or Norway? I feel as if I should never care to see this filthy
Temple again." Even the old dining-hall, with its flights of steps
and balustrades, seemed to have lost all accent of romance; but he
stayed to watch the long flight of the pigeons as they came on
straightened wings from the gables. "What familiar birds they are!
Nothing is so like a woman as a pigeon; perhaps that's the reason
Norton does not like them. Norton! I haven't seen him for ages--since
that morning...." He turned into Pump Court. The doors were wide
open; and there was luggage and some packing-cases on the landing.
The floor-matting was rolled, and the screen which protected from
draughts the high canonical chair in which Norton read and wrote was
overthrown. John was packing his portmanteau, and on either side of
him there was a Buddha and Indian warrior which he had lately
purchased.

"What, leaving? Giving up your rooms?"

"Yes; I'm going down to Sussex. I do not think it is worth while
keeping these rooms on."

Mike expressed his regret. Mike said, "No one understands you as I
do." Herein lay the strength of Mike's nature; he won himself through
all reserve, and soon John was telling him his state of soul: that he
felt it would not be right for him to countenance with his presence
any longer the atheism and immorality of the Temple. Lady Helen's
death had come for a warning. "After the burning of my poems, after
having sacrificed so much, it was indeed a pitiful thing to find
myself one of that shocking revel which had culminated in the death
of that woman."

"There he goes again," thought Mike, "running after his conscience
like a dog after his tail--a performing dog, too; one that likes an
audience." And to stimulate the mental antics in which he was so much
in

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