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Thyrza

by George Gissing · English · Gutenberg #4302 · 1,086,936 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Thyrza

Author: George Gissing


        
Release date: August 1, 2003 [eBook #4302]
                Most recently updated: December 27, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4302

Credits: Produced by Charles Aldarondo.  HTML version by Al Haines.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THYRZA ***




Produced by Charles Aldarondo.  HTML version by Al Haines.









THYRZA


by

GEORGE GISSING




CONTENTS

       I  AMONG THE HILLS
      II  THE IDEALIST
     III  A CORNER OF LAMBETH
      IV  THYRZA SINGS
       V  A LAND OF TWILIGHT
      VI  DISINHERITED
     VII  THE WORK IN PROGRESS
    VIII  A CLASP OF HANDS
      IX  A GOLDEN PROSPECT
       X  TEMPTING FORTUNE
      XI  A MAN WITH A FUTURE
     XII  LIGHTS AND SHADOWS
    XIII  THYRZA SINGS AGAIN
     XIV  MISTS
      XV  A SECOND VISIT TO WALNUT TREE WALK
     XVI  SEA MUSIC
    XVII  ADRIFT
   XVIII  DRAWING NEARER
     XIX  A SONG WITHOUT WORDS
      XX  RAPIDS
     XXI  MISCHIEF AFOOT
    XXII  GOOD-BYE
   XXIII  CONFESSION
    XXIV  THE END OF THE DREAM
     XXV  A BIRD OF THE AIR
    XXVI  IDEALIST AND HIS FRIEND
   XXVII  FOUND
  XXVIII  HOPE SURPRISED
    XXIX  TOGETHER AGAIN
     XXX  MOVEMENTS
    XXXI  AN OLD MAN'S REST
   XXXII  TOTTY'S LUCK
  XXXIII  THE HEART AND ITS SECRET
   XXXIV  A LOAN ON SECURITY
    XXXV  THREE LETTERS
   XXXVI  THYRZA WAITS
  XXXVII  A FRIENDLY OFFICE
 XXXVIII  THE TRUTH
   XXXIX  HER RETURN
      XL  HER REWARD
     XLI  THE LIVING




CHAPTER I

AMONG THE HILLS


There were three at the breakfast-table--Mr. Newthorpe, his daughter
Annabel, and their visitor (Annabel's Cousin), Miss Paula Tyrrell. It
was a small, low, soberly-furnished room, the walls covered with
carelessly-hung etchings and water-colours, and with photographs which
were doubtless mementoes of travel; dwarf bookcases held overflowings
from the library; volumes in disorder, clearly more for use than
ornament. The casements were open to let in the air of a July morning.
Between the thickets of the garden the eye caught glimpses of
sun-smitten lake and sheer hillside; for the house stood on the shore
of Ullswater.

Of the three breakfasting, Miss Tyrrell was certainly the one whose
presence would least allow itself to be overlooked. Her appetite was
hearty, but it scarcely interfered with the free flow of her airy talk,
which was independent of remark or reply from her companions. Though it
was not apparent in her demeanour, this young lady was suffering under
a Calamity; her second 'season' had been ruined at its very culmination
by a ludicrous _contretemps_ in the shape of an attack of measles. Just
when she flattered herself that she had never looked so lovely, an
instrument of destiny embraced her in the shape of an affectionate
child, and lo! she was a fright. Her constitution had soon thrown off
the evil thing, but Mrs. Tyrrell decreed her banishment for a time to
the remote dwelling of her literary uncle. Once more Paula was lovely,
and yet one could scarcely say that the worst was over, seeing that she
was constrained to pass summer days within view of Helvellyn when she
might have been in Piccadilly.

Mr. Newthorpe seldom interrupted his niece's monologue, but his eye
often rested upon her, seemingly in good-natured speculation, and he
bent his head acquiescingly when she put in a quick 'Don't you think
so?' after a running series of comments on some matter which smacked
exceedingly of the town. He was not more than five-and-forty, yet had
thin, grizzled hair, and a sallow face with lines of trouble deeply
scored upon it. His costume was very careless--indeed, all but
slovenly--and his attitude in the chair showed, if not weakness of
body, at all events physical indolence.

Some word that fell from Paula prompted him to ask:

'I wonder where Egremont is?'

Annabel, who had been sunk in thought, looked up with a smile. She was
about to say something, but her cousin replied rapidly:

'Oh, Mr. Egremont is in London--at least, he was a month ago.'

'Not much of a guarantee that he is there now,' Mr. Newthorpe rejoined.

'I'll drop him a line and see,' said Paula. 'I meant to do so
yesterday, but forgot. I'll write and tell him to send me a full
account of himself. Isn't it too bad that people don't write to me?
Everybody forgets you when you're out of town in the season. Now you'll
see I shan't have a single letter again this morning; it is the
cruellest thing!'

'But you had a letter yesterday, Paula,' Annabel remarked.

'A letter? Oh, from mamma; that doesn't count. A letter isn't a letter
unless you feel anxious to see what's in it. I know exactly all that
mamma will say, from beginning to end, before I open the envelope. Not
a scrap of news, and with her opportunities, too! But I can count on
Mr. Egremont for at least four sides--well, three.'

'But surely he is not a source of news?' said her uncle with surprise.

'Why not? He can be very jolly when he likes, and I know he'll write a
nice letter if I ask him to. You can't think how much he's improved
just lately. He was down at the Ditchleys' when we were there in
February; he and I had ever such a time one day when the others were
out hunting. Mamma won't let me hunt; isn't it too bad of her? He
didn't speak a single serious word all the morning, and just think how
dry he used to be! Of course he can be dry enough still when he gets
with people like Mrs. Adams and Clara Carr, but I hope to break him of
the habit entirely.'

She glanced at Annabel, and laughed merrily before raising her cup to
her lips. Mr. Newthorpe just cast a rapid eye over his daughter's face;
Annabel wore a look of quiet amusement.

'Has he been here since then?' Paula inquired, tapping a second egg.
'We lost sight of him for two or three months, and of course he always
makes a mystery of his wanderings.'

'We saw him last in October,' her uncle answered, 'when he had just
returned from America.'

'He said he was going to Australia next. By-the-by, what's his address?
Something, Russell Street. Don't you know?'

'No idea,' he replied, smiling.

'Never mind. I'll send the letter to Mrs. Ormonde; she always knows
where he is, and I believe she's the only one that does.'

When the meal came to an end Mr. Newthorpe went, as usual, to his
study. Miss Tyrrell, also as usual, prepared for three hours of
letter-writing. Annabel, after a brief Consultation with Mrs. Martin,
the housekeeper, would ordinarily have sat down to study in the morning
room. She laid open a book on the table, but then lingered between that
and the windows. At length she took a volume of a lighter kind--in both
senses--and, finding her garden hat in the hall, went forth.

She was something less than twenty, and bore herself with grace
perchance a little too sober for her years. Her head was wont to droop
thoughtfully, and her step measured itself to the grave music of a mind
which knew the influence of mountain solitude. But her health was
complete; she could row for long stretches, and on occasion fatigued
her father in rambles over moor and fell. Face and figure were matched
in mature beauty; she had dark hair, braided above the forehead on each
side, and large dark eyes which regarded you with a pure intelligence,
disconcerting if your word uttered less than sincerity.

When her mother died Annabel was sixteen. Three months after that event
Mr. Newthorpe left London for his country house, which neither he nor
his daughter had since quitted. He had views of his own on the subject
of London life as it affects young ladies. By nature a student, he had
wedded a woman who became something not far removed from a fashionable
beauty. It was a passionate attachment on both sides at first, and to
the end he loved his wife with the love which can deny nothing. The
consequence was that the years of his prime were wasted, and the
intellectual promise of his youth found no fulfilment. Another year and
Annabel would have entered the social mill; she had beauty enough to
achieve distinction, and the means of the family were ample to enshrine
her. But she never 'came out.' No one would at first believe that Mr.
Newthorpe's retreat was final; no one save a close friend or two who
understood what his life had been, and how he dreaded for his daughter
the temptations which had warped her mother's womanhood. 'In any case,'
wrote Mrs. Tyrrell, his sister-in-law, when a year and a half had gone
by, 'you will of course let me have Annabel shortly. I pray you to
remember that she is turned seventeen. You surely won't deprive her of
every pleasure and every advantage?' And the recluse made answer: 'If
bolts and shackles were needful I would use them mercilessly rather
than allow my girl to enter your Middlesex pandemonium. Happily, the
fetters of her reason suffice. She is growing into a woman, and by the
blessing of the gods her soul shall be blown through and through with
the free air of heaven whilst yet the elements in her are blending to
their final shape.' Mrs. Tyrrell raised her eyebrows, and shook her
head, and talked sadly of 'poor Annabel,' who was buried alive.

She walked down to a familiar spot by the lake, where a rustic bench
was set under shadowing leafage; in front two skiffs were moored on the
strand. The sky was billowy with slow-travelling shapes of whiteness; a
warm wind broke murmuring wavelets along the pebbly margin. The
opposite slopes glassed themselves in the deep dark water--Swarth Fell,
Hallin Fell, Place Fell--one after the other; above the southern bend
of the lake rose noble summits, softly touched with mist which the sun
was fast dispelling. The sweetness of summer was in the air. So quiet
was it that every wing-rustle in the brake, every whisper of leaf to
leaf, made a distinct small voice; a sheep-dog barking over at Howtown
seemed close at hand.

This morning Annabel had no inclination to read, yet her face was not
expressive of the calm reflection which was her habit. She opened the
book upon her lap and glanced down a page or two, but without interest.
At length external things were wholly lost to her, and she gazed across
the water with continuance of solemn vision. Her face was almost
austere in this mood which had come upon her.

Someone was descending the path which led from the high road; it was a
step too heavy for Paula's, too rapid to be Mr. Newthorpe's. Annabel
turned her head and saw a young man, perhaps of seven-and-twenty,
dressed in a light walking-suit, with a small wallet hanging from his
shoulder and a stick in his hand. At sight of her he took off his cap
and approached her bare-headed.

'I saw from a quarter of a mile away,' he said, 'that someone was
sitting here, and I came down on the chance that it might be you.'

She rose with a very slight show of surprise, and returned his greeting
with calm friendliness.

'We were speaking of you at breakfast. My cousin couldn't tell us for
certain whether you were in England, though she knew you were in London
a month ago.'

'Miss Tyrrell is with you?' he asked, as if it were very unexpected.

'But didn't you know? She has been ill, and they sent her to us to
recruit.'

'Ah! I have been in Jersey for a month; I have heard nothing.'

'You were able to tear yourself from London in mid-season?'

'But when was I a devotee of the Season, Miss Newthorpe?'

'We hear you progress in civilisation.'

'Well, I hope so. I've had a month of steady reading, and feel better
for it. I took a big chest of books to Jersey. But I hope Miss Tyrrell
is better?'

'Quite herself again. Shall we walk up to the house?'

'I have broken in upon your reading.'

She exhibited the volume; it was Buskin's 'Sesame and Lilies.'

'Ah! you got it; and like it?'

'On the whole.'

'That is disappointing.'

Annabel was silent, then spoke of another matter as they walked up from
the lake.

This Mr. Egremont had not the look of a man who finds his joy in the
life of Society. His clean-shaven face was rather bony, and its lines
expressed independence of character. His forehead was broad, his eyes
glanced quickly and searchingly, or widened themselves into an absent
gazing which revealed the imaginative temperament. His habitual cast of
countenance was meditative, with a tendency to sadness. In talk he
readily became vivacious; his short sentences, delivered with a very
clear and conciliating enunciation, seemed to indicate energy. It was a
peculiarity that he very rarely smiled, or perhaps I should say that he
had the faculty of smiling only with his eyes. At such moments his look
was very winning, very frank in its appeal to sympathy, and compelled
one to like him. Yet, at another time, his aspect could be shrewdly
critical; it was so when Annabel fell short of enthusiasm in speaking
of the book he had recommended to her when last at Ullswater. Probably
he was not without his share of scepticism. For all that, it was the
visage of an idealist.

Annabel led him into the house and to the study door, at which she
knocked; then she stood aside for him to enter before her. Mr.
Newthorpe was writing; he looked up absently, but light gathered in his
eyes as he recognised the visitor.

'So here you are! We talked of you this morning. How have you come?'

'On foot from Pooley Bridge.'

They clasped hands, then Egremont looked behind him; but Annabel had
closed the door and was gone.

She went up to the room in which Paula sat scribbling letters.

'Ten minutes more!' exclaimed that young lady. 'I'm just finishing a
note to mamma--so dutiful!'

'Have you written to Mr. Egremont?'

Paula nodded and laughed.

'He is downstairs.'

Paula started, looking incredulous.

'Really, Bell?'

'He has just walked over from Pooley Bridge.'

'Oh, Bell, do tell me! Have those horrid measles left any trace? I
really can't discover any, but of course one hasn't good eyes for one's
own little speckles. Well, at all events, everybody hasn't forgotten
me. But do look at me, Bell.'

Her cousin regarded her with conscientious gravity.

'I see no trace whatever; indeed, I should say you are looking better
than you ever did.'

'Now that's awfully kind of you. And you don't pay compliments, either.
Shall I go down? Did you tell him where I was?'

Had Annabel been disposed to dainty feminine malice, here was an
opportunity indeed. But she looked at Paula with simple curiosity,
seeming for a moment to lose herself. The other had to repeat her
question.

'I mentioned that you were in the house,' she replied. 'He is talking
with father.'

Paula moved to the door, but suddenly paused and turned.

'Now I wonder what thought you have in your serious head?' she said,
merrily. 'It's only my fun, you know.'

Annabel nodded, smiling.

'But it is only my fun. Say you believe me. I shall be cross with you
if you put on that look.'

They went into the morning room. Annabel stood at the window; her
companion flitted about, catching glimpses of herself in reflecting
surfaces. In five minutes the study door opened, and men's voices drew
near.

Egremont met Miss Tyrrell with the manner of an old acquaintance, but
unsmiling.

'I am fortunate enough to see you well again without having known of
your illness,' he said.

'You didn't know that I was ill?'

Paula looked at him dubiously. He explained, and, in doing so, quite
dispelled the girl's illusion that he was come on her account. When she
remained silent, he said:

'You must pity the people in London.'

'Certainly I do. I'm learning to keep my temper and to talk wisely. I
know nobody in London who could teach me to do either the one or the
other.'

'Well, I suppose you'll go out till luncheon-time?' said Mr. Newthorpe.
'Egremont wants to have a pull. You'll excuse an old man.'

They left the house, and for an hour drank the breath of the hillsides.
Paula was at first taciturn. Very unlike herself she dabbled her
fingers over the boat-side, and any light remark that she made was
addressed to her cousin. Annabel exerted herself to converse, chiefly
telling of the excursions that had been made with Paula during the past
week.

'What have you been doing in Jersey?' Paula asked of Egremont,
presently. Her tone was indifferent, a little condescending.

'Reading.'

'Novels?'

'No.'

'And where are you going next?'

'I shall live in London. My travels are over, I think.'

'We have heard that too often,' said Annabel. 'Did you ever calculate
how many miles you have travelled since you left Oxford?'

'I have been a restless fellow,' he admitted, regarding her with quiet
scrutiny, 'but I dare say some profit has come of my wanderings.
However, it's time to set to work.'

'Work!' asked Paula in surprise. 'What sort of work?'

'Local preacher's.'

Paula moved her lips discontentedly.

'That is your way of telling me to mind my own business. Don't you find
the sun dreadfully hot, Annabel? Do please row into a shady place, Mr.
Egremont.'

His way of handling the oars showed that he was no stranger to exercise
of this kind. His frame, though a trifle meagre, was well set. By
degrees a preoccupation which had been manifest in him gave way under
the influence of the sky, and when it was time to approach the
landing-place he had fallen into a mood of cheerful talk--light with
Paula, with Annabel more earnest. His eyes often passed from one to the
other of the faces opposite him, with unmarked observation; frequently
he fixed his gaze on the remoter hills in brief musing.

Mr. Newthorpe had come down to the water to meet them; he had a
newspaper in his hand.

'Your friend Dalmaine is eloquent on education,' he said, with a
humorous twitching of the eyebrows.

'Yes, he knows his House,' Egremont replied. 'You observe the
construction of his speech. After well-sounding periods on the
elevation of the working classes, he casually throws out the hint that
employers of labour will do wisely to increase the intelligence of
their hands in view of foreign competition. Of course that is the root
of the matter; but Dalmaine knows better than to begin with crude
truths.'

In the meanwhile the boat was drawn up and the chain locked. The girls
walked on in advance; Egremont continued to speak of Mr. Dalmaine, a
rising politician, whose acquaintance he had made on the voyage home
from New York.

'One of the few sincere things I ever heard from his lips was a remark
he made on trade-unions. "Let them combine by all means," he said;
"it's a fair fight." There you have the man; it seems to him mere
common sense to regard his factory hands as his enemies. A fair fight!
What a politico-economical idea of fairness!'

He spoke with scorn, his eyes flashing and his nostrils trembling. Mr.
Newthorpe kept a quiet smile--sympathetic, yet critical.

Annabel sought her father for a word apart before lunch.

'How long will Mr. Egremont stay?' she asked, apparently speaking in
her quality of house-mistress.

'A day or two,' was the reply. 'We'll drive over to Pooley Bridge for
his bag this afternoon; he left it at the hotel.'

'What has he on his mind?' she continued, smiling.

'Some idealistic project. He has only given me a hint. I dare say we
shall hear all about it to-night.'




CHAPTER II

THE IDEALIST


When Egremont began his acquaintance with the Newthorpes he was an
Oxford undergraduate. A close friendship had sprung up between him and
a young man named Ormonde, and at the latter's home he met Mr.
Newthorpe, who, from the first, regarded him with interest. A year
after Mrs. Newthorpe's death Egremont was invited to visit the house at
Ullswater; since then he had twice spent a week there. This personal
intercourse was slight to have resulted in so much intimacy, but he had
kept up a frequent correspondence with Mr. Newthorpe from various parts
of the world, and common friends aided the stability of the relation.

He was the only son of a man who had made a fortune by the manufacture
of oil-cloth. His father began life as a house-painter, then became an
oil merchant in a small way, and at length married a tradesman's
daughter, who brought him a moderate capital just when he needed it for
an enterprise promising greatly. In a short time he had established the
firm of Egremont & Pollard, with extensive works in Lambeth. His wife
died before him; his son received a liberal education, and in early
manhood found himself, as far as he knew, without a living relative,
but with ample means of independence. Young Walter Egremont retained an
interest in the business, but had no intention of devoting himself to a
commercial life. At the University he had made alliances with men of
standing, in the academical sense, and likewise with some whose place
in the world relieved them from the necessity of establishing a claim
to intellect. In this way society was opened to him, and his personal
qualities won for him a great measure of regard from those whom he most
desired to please.

Somebody had called him 'the Idealist,' and the name adhered to him. At
two-and-twenty he published a volume of poems, obviously derived from
study of Shelley, but marked with a certain freshness of impersonal
aspiration which was pleasant enough. They had the note of sincerity
rather than the true poetical promise. The book had no successor.
Having found this utterance for his fervour, Egremont began a series of
ramblings over sea, in search, he said, of himself. The object seemed
to evade him; he returned to England from time to time, always in
appearance more restless, but always overflowing with ideas, for which
he had the readiest store of enthusiastic words. He was able to talk of
himself without conveying the least impression of egotism to those who
were in sympathy with his intellectual point of view; he was accused of
conceit only by a few who were jealous of him or were too conventional
to appreciate his character. With women he was a favourite, and their
society was his greatest pleasure; yet, in spite of his fervid
temperament--in appearance fervid, at all events--he never seemed to
fall in love. Some there were who said that the self he went so far to
discover would prove to have a female form. Perhaps there was truth in
this; perhaps he sought, whether consciously or no, the ideal woman.
None of those with whom he companioned had a charge of light wooing to
bring against him, though one or two would not have held it a
misfortune if they had tempted him to forget his speculations and
declare that he had reached his goal. But his striving always seemed to
be for something remote from the world about him. His capacity for warm
feeling, itself undeniable, was never dissociated from that impersonal
zeal which was the characteristic of his expressions in verse. In fact,
he had written no love-poem.

Annabel and her father observed a change in him since his last visit.
This was the first time that he had come without an express invitation,
and they gathered from his speech that he had at length found some
definite object for his energies. His friends had for a long time been
asking what he meant to do with his life. It did not appear that he
purposed literary effort, though it seemed the natural outlet for his
eager thought; and of the career of politics he at all times spoke with
contempt. Was he one of the men, never so common as nowadays, who spend
their existence in canvassing the possibilities that lie before them
and delay action till they find that the will is paralysed? One did not
readily set Egremont in that class, principally, no doubt, because he
was so free from the offensive forms of self-consciousness which are
wont to stamp such men. The pity of it, too, if talents like his were
suffered to rust unused; the very genuineness of his idealism made one
believe in him and look with confidence to his future.

Having dined, all went forth to enjoy the evening upon the lawn. The
men smoked; Annabel had her little table with tea and coffee. Paula had
brought out a magazine, and affected to read. Annabel noticed, however,
that a page was very seldom turned.

'Have you seen Mrs. Ormonde lately?' Mr. Newthorpe asked of Egremont.

'I spent a day at Eastbourne before going to Jersey.'

'She has promised to come to us in the autumn,' said Annabel; 'but she
seems to have such a difficulty in leaving her Home. Had she many
children about her when you were there?'

'Ten or twelve.'

'Do they all come from London?' asked Annabel.

'Yes. She has relations with sundry hospitals and the like. By-the-by,
she told me one remarkable story. A short time ago out of eight
children that were in the house only one could read--a little girl of
ten--and this one regularly received letters from home. Now there came
for her what seemed to be a small story-paper, or something of the
kind, in a wrapper. Mrs. Ormonde gave it her without asking any
questions, and, in the course of the morning, happening to see her
reading it, she went to look what the paper was. It proved to be an
anti-Christian periodical, and on the front page stood a woodcut
offered as a burlesque illustration of some Biblical incident. "Father
always brings it home and gives it me to read," said the child. "It
makes me laugh!"'

'Probably she knew nothing of the real meaning of it all,' said Mr.
Newthorpe.

'On the contrary, she understood the tendency of the paper surprisingly
well; her father had explained everything to the family.'

'One of the interesting results of popular education,' remarked Mr.
Newthorpe philosophically. 'It is inevitable.'

'What did Mrs. Ormonde do?' Annabel asked.

'It was a difficult point. No good would have been done by endeavouring
to set the child against her father; she would be home again in a
fortnight. So Mrs. Ormonde simply asked if she might have the paper
when it was done with, and, having got possession, threw it into the
fire with vast satisfaction. Happily it didn't come again.'

'What a gross being that father must be!' Annabel exclaimed.

'Gross enough,' Egremont replied, 'yet I shouldn't wonder if he had
brains above the average in his class. A mere brute wouldn't do a thing
of that kind; ten to one he honestly believed that he was benefiting
the girl; educating her out of superstition.'

'But why should the poor people be left to such ugly-minded teachers?'
Annabel exclaimed. 'Surely those influences may be opposed?'

'I doubt whether they can be,' said her father. 'The one insuperable
difficulty lies in the fact that we have no power greater than
commercial enterprise. Nowadays nothing will succeed save on the
commercial basis; from church to public-house the principle applies.
There is no way of spreading popular literature save on terms of supply
and demand. Take the Education Act. It was devised and carried simply
for the reason indicated by Egremont's friend Dalmaine; a more
intelligent type of workmen is demanded that our manufacturers may keep
pace with those of other countries. Well, there is a demand for comic
illustrations of the Bible, and the demand is met; the paper exists
because it pays. An organ of culture for the people who enjoy
burlesquing the Bible couldn't possibly be made to pay.'

'But is there no one who would undertake such work without hope of
recompense in money? We are not all mere tradespeople.'

'I have an idea for a beginning of such work, Miss Newthorpe,' said
Egremont, in a voice rather lower than hitherto. 'I came here because I
wanted to talk it over.'

Annabel met his look for a moment, expressing all the friendly interest
which she felt. Mr. Newthorpe, who had been pacing on the grass, came
to a seat. He placed himself next to Paula. She glanced at him, and he
said kindly:

'You are quite sure you don't feel cold?'

'I dare say I'd better go in,' she replied, checking a little sigh as
she closed her magazine.

'No, no, don't go, Paula!' urged her cousin, rising. 'You shall have a
shawl, dear; I'll get it.'

'It is very warm,' put in Egremont. 'There surely can't be any danger
in sitting till it grows dark.'

This little fuss about her soothed Paula for a while.

'Oh, I don't want to go,' she said. 'I feel I'm getting very serious
and wise, listening to such talk. Now we shall hear, I suppose, what
you mean by your "local preacher"?'

Annabel brought a shawl and placed it carefully about the girl's
shoulders. Then she said to her father:

'Let me sit next to Paula, please.'

The change of seats was effected. Annabel secretly took one of her
cousin's hands and held it. Paula seemed to regard a distant object in
the garden.

There was silence for a few moments. The evening was profoundly calm. A
spirit of solemn loveliness brooded upon the hills, glorious with
sunset. The gnats hummed, rising and falling in myriad crowds about the
motionless leaves. A spring which fell from a rock at the foot of the
garden babbled poetry of the twilight.

'I hope it is something very practicable,' Annabel resumed, looking
with expectancy at Egremont.

'I will have your opinion on that. I believe it to be practical enough;
at all events, it is a scheme of very modest dimensions. That story of
the child and her paper fixed certain thoughts that had been floating
about in my mind. You know that I have long enough tried to find work,
but I have been misled by the common tendency of the time. Those who
want to be of social usefulness for the most part attack the lowest
stratum. It seems like going to the heart of the problem, of course,
and any one who has means finds there the hope of readiest
result--material result. But I think that the really practical task is
the most neglected, just because it does not appear so pressing. With
the mud at the bottom of society we can practically do nothing; only
the vast changes to be wrought by time will cleanse that foulness, by
destroying the monstrous wrong which produces it. What I should like to
attempt would be the spiritual education of the upper artisan and
mechanic class. At present they are all but wholly in the hands of men
who can do them nothing but harm--journalists, socialists, vulgar
propagators of what is called freethought. These all work against
culture, yet here is the field really waiting for the right tillage. I
often have in mind one or two of the men at our factory in Lambeth.
They are well-conducted and intelligent fellows, but, save for a vague
curiosity, I should say they live without conscious aim beyond that of
keeping their families in comfort. They have no religion, a matter of
course; they talk incessantly of politics, knowing nothing better; but
they are very far above the gross multitude. I believe such men as
these have a great part to play in social development--that, in fact,
_they_ may become the great social reformers, working on those above
them--the froth of society--no less than on those below.'

He had laid down his half-finished cigar, and, having begun in a
scrupulously moderate tone, insensibly warmed to the idealist fervour.
His face became more mobile, his eyes gave forth all their light, his
voice was musically modulated as he proceeded in his demonstration. He
addressed himself to Annabel, perhaps unconscious of doing so
exclusively.

Mr. Newthorpe muttered something of assent. Paula was listening
intently, but as one who hears of strange, far-off things, very
difficult of realisation.

'Now suppose one took a handful of such typical men,' Egremont went on,
'and tried to inspire them with a moral ideal. At present they have
nothing of the kind, but they own the instincts of decency, and that is
much. I would make use of the tendency to association, which is so
strong among them. They have numberless benefit clubs; they stand
together resolutely to help each other in time of need and to exact
terms from their employers--the fair fight, as the worthy Member for
Vauxhall calls it. Well, why shouldn't they band for moral and
intellectual purposes? I would have a sort of freemasonry, which had
nothing to do with eating and drinking, or with the dispensing of
charity; it should be wholly concerned with spiritual advancement.
These men cannot become rich, and so are free from one kind of danger;
they are not likely to fall into privation; they have a certain amount
of leisure. If one could only stir a few of them to enthusiasm for an
ideal of life! Suppose one could teach them to feel the purpose of such
a book as "Sesame and Lilies," which you only moderately care for, Miss
Newthorpe--'

'Not so!' Annabel broke in, involuntarily. 'I think it very beautiful
and very noble.'

'What book is that?' asked Paula with curiosity.

'I'll give it to you to read, Paula,' her cousin replied.

Egremont continued:

'The work of people who labour in the abominable quarters of the town
would be absurdly insignificant in comparison with what these men might
do. The vulgar influence of half-taught revolutionists, social and
religious, might be counteracted; an incalculable change for good might
be made on the borders of the social inferno, and would spread. But it
can only be done by personal influence. The man must have an ideal
himself before he can create it in others. I don't know that I am
strong enough for such an undertaking, but I feel the desire to try,
and I mean to try. What do you think of it?'

'Thinking it so clearly must be half doing it,' said Annabel.

Egremont replied to her with a clear regard.

'But the details,' Mr. Newthorpe remarked. 'Are you going to make
Lambeth your field?'

'Yes, Lambeth. I have a natural connection with the place and my name
may be of some service to me there; I don't think it is of evil odour
with the workmen. My project is to begin with lectures. Reserve your
judgment; I have no intention of standing forth as an apostle; all I
mean to do at first is to offer a free course of lectures on a period
of English literature. I shall not throw open my doors to all and
sundry, but specially invite a certain small number of men, whom I
shall be at some pains to choose. We have at the works a foreman named
Bower; I have known him, in a way, for years, and I believe he is an
intelligent man. Him I shall make use of, telling him nothing of my
wider aims, but simply getting him to discover for me the dozen or so
of men who would be likely to care for my lectures. By-the-by, the man
of whom I was speaking, the father of Mrs. Ormonde's patient, lives in
Lambeth; I shall certainly make an effort to draw him into the net!'

'I shall be curious to hear more of him,' said Mr. Newthorpe. 'And you
use English literature to tune the minds of your hearers?'

'That is my thought. I have spent my month in Jersey in preparing a
couple of introductory lectures. It seems to me that if I can get them
to understand what is meant by love of literature, pure and simple,
without a thought of political or social purpose--especially without a
thought of cash profit, which is so disastrously blended with what
little knowledge they acquire--I shall be on the way to founding my
club of social reformers. I shall be most careful not to alarm them
with hints that I mean more than I say. Here arc certain interesting
English books; let us see what they are about, who wrote them, and why
they are deemed excellent. That is our position. These men must get on
a friendly footing with me. Little by little I shall talk with them
more familiarly, try to understand each one. Success depends upon my
personal influence. I may find that it is inadequate, yet I have hope.
Naturally, I have points of contact with the working class which are
lacking to most educated men; a little chance, and I should myself have
been a mechanic or something of the kind. This may make itself felt; I
believe it will.'

Night was falling. The last hue of sunset had died from the swarth
hills, and in the east were pale points of starlight.

'I think you and I must go in, Paula,' said Annabel, when there had
been silence for a little.

Paula rose without speaking, but as she was about to enter the house
she turned back and said to Egremont:

'I get tired so soon, being so much in the open air. I'd better say
good-night.'

Her uncle, when he held her hand, stroked it affectionately. He often
laughed at the child's manifold follies, but her prettiness and the
_naivete_ which sweetened her inbred artificiality had won his liking.
Much as it would have astonished Paula had she known it, his feeling
was for the most part one of pity.

'I suppose you'll go out again?' Paula said to her cousin as they
entered the drawing-room.

'No; I shall read a little and then go to bed.' She added, with a
laugh, 'They will sit late in the study, no doubt, with their cigars
and steaming glasses.'

Paula moved restlessly about the room for a few minutes; then from the
door she gave a 'good-night,' and disappeared without further ceremony.

The two men came in very shortly. Egremont entered the drawing-room
alone, and began to turn over books on the table. Then Annabel rose.

'It promises for another fine day to-morrow,' she said. 'I must get
father away for a ramble. Do you think he looks well?'

'Better than he did last autumn, I think.'

'I must go and say good-night to him. Will you come to the study?'

He followed in silence, and Annabel took her leave of both.

The morning broke clear. It was decided to spend the greater part of
the day on the hills. Paula rode; the others drove to a point whence
their ramble was to begin. Annabel enjoyed walking. Very soon her being
seemed to set itself to more spirited music; the veil of reflection
fell from her face, and she began to talk light-heartedly.

Paula behaved with singularity. At breakfast she had been very silent,
a most unusual thing, and during the day she kept an air of reserve, a
sort of dignity which was amusing. Mr. Newthorpe walked beside her
pony, and adapted himself to her favourite conversation, which was
always of the town and Society.

Once Annabel came up with a spray of mountain saxifrage.

'Isn't it lovely, Paula?' she said. 'Do look at the petals.'

'Very nice,' was the reply, 'but it's too small to be of any use.'

There was no more talk of Egremont's projects. Books and friends and
the delights of the upland scenery gave matter enough for conversation.
Not long after noon the sky began to cloud, and almost as soon as the
party reached home again there was beginning of rain. They spent the
evening in the drawing-room. Paula was persuaded to sing, which she did
prettily, though still without her native vivacity. Again she retired
early.

After breakfast on the morrow it still rained, though not without
promise of clearing.

'You'll excuse me till lunch,' Paula said to Annabel and Egremont, when
they rose from the table. 'I have a great deal of correspondence to see
to.'

'Correspondence' was a new word. Usually she said, 'I have an awful
heap of letters to write.' Her dignity of the former day was still
preserved.

Having dismissed her household duties, Annabel went to the morning room
and sat down to her books. She was reading Virgil. For a quarter of an
hour it cost her a repetition of efforts to fix her attention, but her
resolve was at length successful. Then Egremont came in.

'Do I disturb you?' he said, noticing her studious attitude.

'You can give me a little help, if you will. I can't make out that
line.'

She gave him one copy and herself opened another. It led to their
reading some fifty lines together.

'Oh, why have we girls to get our knowledge so late and with such
labour!' Annabel exclaimed at length. 'You learn Greek and Latin when
you are children; it ought to be the same with us. I am impatient; I
want to read straight on.'

'You very soon will,' he replied absently. Then, having glanced at the
windows, which were suddenly illumined with a broad slant of sunlight,
he asked: 'Will you come out? It will be delightful after the rain.'

Annabel was humming over dactylics. She put her book aside with
reluctance.

'I'll go and ask my cousin.'

Egremont averted his face. Annabel went up to Paula's room, knocked,
and entered. From a bustling sound within, it appeared likely that Miss
Tyrrell's business-like attitude at the table had been suddenly assumed.

'Will you come out, Paula? The rain is over and gone.'

'Not now.'

'Mr. Egremont wishes to go for a walk. Couldn't you come?'

'Please beg Mr. Egremont to excuse me. I am tired after yesterday,
dear.'

When her cousin had withdrawn Paula went to the window. In a few
minutes she saw Egremont and Annabel go forth and stroll from the
garden towards the lake. Then she reseated herself, and sat biting her
pen.

The two walked lingeringly by the water's edge. They spoke of trifles.
When they were some distance from the house, Egremont said:

'So you see I have at last found my work. If you thought of me at all,
I dare say my life seemed to you a very useless one, and little likely
to lead to anything.'

'No, I had not that thought, Mr. Egremont,' she answered simply. 'I
felt sure that you were preparing yourself for something worthy.'

'I hope that is the meaning of these years that have gone so quickly.
But it was not conscious preparation. It has often seemed to me that in
travelling and gaining experience I was doing all that life demanded of
me. Few men can be more disposed to idle dreaming than I am. And even
now I keep asking myself whether this, too, is only a moment of
idealism, which will go by and leave me with less practical energy than
ever. Every such project undertaken and abandoned is a weight upon a
man's will. If I fail in perseverance my fate will be decided.'

'I feel assured that you will not fail. You could not speak as you did
last night and yet allow yourself to falter in purpose when the task
was once begun. What success may await you we cannot say; the work will
certainly be very difficult. Will it not ask a lifetime?'

'No less, if it is to have any lasting result.'

'Be glad, then. What happier thing can befall one than to have one's
life consecrated to a worthy end!'

He walked on in silence, then regarded her.

'Such words in such a voice would make any man strong. Yet I would ask
more from you. There is one thing I need to feel full confidence in
myself, and that is a woman's love. I have known for a long time whose
love it was that I must try to win. Can you give me what I ask?'

The smile which touched his lips so seldom was on them now. He showed
no agitation, but the light of his eyes was very vivid as they read her
expression. Annabel had stayed her steps; for a moment she looked
troubled. His words were not unanticipated, but the answer with which
she was prepared was more difficult to utter than she had thought it
would be. It was the first time that a man had spoken to her thus, and
though in theory such a situation had always seemed to her very simple,
she could not now preserve her calm as she wished. She felt the warmth
of her blood, and could not at once command her wonted voice. But when
at length she succeeded in meeting his look steadily her thought grew
clear again.

'I cannot give you that, Mr. Egremont.'

As his eyes fell, she hastened to add:

'I think of you often. I feel glad to know you, and to share in your
interest. But this is no more than the friendship which many people
have for you--quite different from the feeling which you say would aid
you. I have never known that.'

He was gazing across the lake. The melancholy always lurking in the
thoughtfulness of his face had become predominant. Yet he turned to her
with the smile once more.

'Those last words must be my hope. To have your friendship is much.
Perhaps some day I may win more.'

'I think,' she said, with a sincerity which proved how far she was from
emotion, 'that you will meet another woman whose sympathy will be far
more to you than mine.'

'Then I must have slight knowledge of myself. I have known you for
seven years, and, though you were a child when we first spoke to each
other, I foresaw then what I tell you now. Every woman that I meet I
compare with you; and if I imagine the ideal woman she has your face
and your mind. I should have spoken when I was here last autumn, but I
felt that I had no right to ask you to share my life as long as it
remained so valueless. You see'--he smiled--'how I have grown in my own
esteem. I suppose that is always the first effect of a purpose strongly
conceived. Or should it be just the opposite, and have I only given you
a proof that I snatch at rewards before doing the least thing to merit
them?'

Something in these last sentences jarred upon her, and gave her courage
to speak a thought which had often come to her in connection with
Egremont.

'I think that a woman does not reason in that way if her deepest
feelings are pledged. If I were able to go with you and share your life
I shouldn't think I was rewarding you, but that you were offering me a
great happiness. It is my loss that I can only watch you from a
distance.'

The words moved him. It was not with conscious insincerity that he
spoke of his love and his intellectual aims as interdependent, yet he
knew that Annabel revealed the truer mind.

'And my desire is for the happiness of your love!' he exclaimed.
'Forget that pedantry--always my fault. I cannot feel sure that my
other motives will keep their force, but I know that this desire will
be only stronger in me as time goes on.'

Yet when she kept silence the habit of his thought again uttered itself.

'I shall pursue this work that I have undertaken, because, loving you,
I dare not fall below the highest life of which I am capable. I know
that you can see into my nature with those clear eyes of yours. I could
not love you if I did not feel that you were far above me. I shall
never be worthy of you, but I shall never cease in my striving to
become so.'

The quickening of her blood, which at first troubled her, had long
since subsided. She could now listen to him, and think of her reply
almost with coldness. There was an unreality in the situation which
made her anxious to bring the dialogue to an end.

'I have all faith in you,' she said. 'I hope--I feel assured--that
something will come of your work; but it will only be so if you pursue
it for its own sake.'

The simple truth of this caused him to droop his eyes again with a
sense of shame. He grew impatient with himself. Had he no plain,
touching words in which to express his very real love--words such as
every man can summon when he pleads for this greatest boon? Yet his
shame heightened the reverence in which he held her; passion of the
intellect breathed in his next words.

'If you cannot love me with your heart, in your mind you can be one
with me. You feel the great and the beautiful things of life. There is
no littleness in your nature. In reading with you just now I saw that
your delight in poetry was as spirit-deep as my own; your voice had the
true music, and your cheeks warmed with sympathy. You do not deny me
the right to claim so much kinship with you. I, too, love all that is
rare and noble, however in myself I fall below such ideals. Say that
you admit me as something more than the friend of the everyday world!
Look for once straight into my eyes and know me!'

There was no doubtful ring in this; Annabel felt the chords of her
being smitten to music. She held her hand to him.

'You are my very near friend, and my life is richer for your influence.'

'I may come and see you again before very long, when I have something
to tell you?'

'You know that our house always welcomes you.'

He released her hand, and they walked homewards. The sky was again
overcast. A fresh gust came from the fell-side and bore with it drops
of rain.

'We must hasten,' Annabel said, in a changed voice. 'Look at that
magnificent cloud by the sun!'

'Isn't the rain sweet here?' she continued, anxious to re-establish the
quiet, natural tone between them. 'I like the perfume and the taste of
it. I remember how mournful the rain used to be in London streets.'

They regained the house. Annabel passed quickly upstairs. Egremont
remained standing in the porch, looking forth upon the garden. His
reverie was broken by a voice.

'How gloomy the rain is here! One doesn't mind it in London; there's
always something to do and somewhere to go.'

It was Paula. Egremont could not help showing amusement.

'Do you stay much longer?' he asked.

'I don't know.'

She spoke with indifference, keeping her eyes averted.

'I must catch the mail at Penrith this evening,' he said. 'I'm afraid
it will be a wet drive.'

'You're going, are you? Not to Jersey again, I hope?

'Why not?'

'It seems to make people very dull. I shall warn all my friends against
it.'

She hummed an air and left him.

Late in the afternoon Egremont took leave of his friends. Mr. Newthorpe
went out into the rain, and at the last moment shook hands with him
heartily. Annabel stood at the window and smiled farewell.

The wheels splashed along the road; rain fell in torrents. Egremont
presently looked back from the carriage window. The house was already
out of view, and the summits of the circling hills were wreathed with
cloud.




CHAPTER III

A CORNER OF LAMBETH


A working man, one Gilbert Grail, was spending an hour of his Saturday
afternoon in Westminster Abbey. At five o'clock the sky still pulsed
with heat; black shadows were sharp edged upon the yellow pavement.
Between the bridges of Westminster and Lambeth the river was a
colourless gleam; but in the Sanctuary evening had fallen. Above the
cool twilight of the aisles floated a golden mist; and the echo of a
footfall hushed itself among the tombs.

He was a man past youth, but of less than middle age, with meagre limbs
and shoulders, a little bent. His clothing was rough but decent; his
small and white hands gave evidence of occupation which was not rudely
laborious. He had a large head, thickly covered with dark hair, which,
with his moustache and beard, heightened the wanness of his complexion.
A massive forehead, deep-set eyes, thin, straight nose, large lips
constantly drawn inwards, made a physiognomy impressive rather than
pleasing. The cast of thought was upon it; of thought eager and
self-tormenting; the mark of a spirit ever straining after something
unattainable. At moments when he found satisfaction in reading the
legend on some monument his eyes grew placid and his beetling brows
smoothed themselves; but the haunter within would not be forgotten,
and, as if at a sudden recollection, he dropped his eyes in a troubled
way, and moved onwards brooding. In those brief intervals of peace his
countenance expressed an absorbing reverence, a profound humility. The
same was evident in his bearing; he walked as softly as possible and
avoided treading upon a sculptured name.

When he passed out into the sunny street, he stood for an instant with
a hand veiling his eyes, as if the sudden light were too strong. Then
he looked hither and thither with absent gaze, and at length bent his
steps in the direction of Westminster Bridge. On the south side of the
river he descended the stairs to the Albert Embankment and walked along
by St. Thomas's Hospital.

Presently he overtook a man who was reading as he walked, a second book
being held under his arm. It was a young workman of three- or
four-and-twenty, tall, of wiry frame, square-shouldered, upright. Grail
grasped his shoulder in a friendly way, asking:

'What now?'

'Well, it's tempted eighteenpence out of my pocket,' was the other's
reply, as he gave the volume to be examined. 'I've wanted a book on
electricity for some time.'

He spoke with a slight North of England accent. His name was Luke
Ackroyd; he had come to London as a lad, and was now a work-fellow of
Grail's. There was rough comeliness in his face and plenty of
intelligence, something at the same time not quite satisfactory if one
looked for strength of character; he smiled readily and had eyes which
told of quick but unsteady thought; a mouth, too, which expressed a
good deal of self-will and probably a strain of sensuality. His manner
was hearty, his look frank to a fault and full of sensibility.

'I found it at the shop by Westminster Bridge,' he continued. 'You
ought to go and have a look there to-night. I saw one or two things
pretty cheap that I thought were in your way.'

'What's the other?' Grail inquired, returning the work on electricity,
which he had glanced through without show of much interest.

'Oh, this belongs to Jo Bunce,' Ackroyd replied, laughing. 'He's just
lent it me.'

It was a collection of antitheistic discourses; the titles, which were
startling to the eye, sufficiently indicated the scope and quality of
the matter. Grail found even less satisfaction in this than in the
other volume.

'A man must have a good deal of time to spare,' he said, with a smile,
'if he spends it on stuff of that kind.'

'Oh, I don't know about that. You don't need it, but there's plenty of
people that do.'

'And that's the kind of thing Bunce gives his children to read, eh?'

'Yes; he's bringing them up on it. He's made them learn a secularist's
creed, and hears them say it every night.'

'Well, I'm old-fashioned in such matters,' said Grail, not caring to
pursue the discussion. 'I'd a good deal rather hear children say the
ordinary prayer.'

Ackroyd laughed.

'Have you heard any talk,' he asked presently, 'about lectures by a Mr.
Egremont? He's a son of Bower's old governor.'

'No, what lectures?'

'Bower tells me he's a young fellow just come from Oxford or Cambridge,
and he's going to give some free lectures here in Lambeth.'

'Political?'

'No. Something to do with literature.'

Ackroyd broke into another laugh--louder this time, and contemptuous.

'Sops to the dog that's beginning to show his teeth!' he exclaimed. 'It
shows you what's coming. The capitalists are beginning to look about
and ask what they can do to keep the people quiet. Lectures on
literature! Fools! As if that wasn't just the way to remind us of what
we've missed in the way of education. It's the best joke you could hit
on. Let him lecture away; he'll do more than he thinks.'

'Where does he give them?' Grail inquired.

'He hasn't begun yet. Bower seems to be going round to get men to hear
him. Do you think you'd like to go?'

'It depends what sort of a man he is.'

'A conceited young fool, I expect.'

Grail smiled.

In such conversation they passed the Archbishop's Palace; then, from
the foot of Lambeth Bridge, turned into a district of small houses and
multifarious workshops. Presently they entered Paradise Street.

The name is less descriptive than it might be. Poor dwellings, mean and
cheerless, are interspersed with factories and one or two small shops;
a public-house is prominent, and a railway arch breaks the perspective
of the thoroughfare midway. The street at that time--in the year
'80--began by the side of a graveyard, no longer used, and associated
in the minds of those who dwelt around it with numberless burials in a
dire season of cholera. The space has since been converted into a
flower-garden, open to the children of the neighbourhood, and in summer
time the bright flower-beds enhance the ignoble baldness of the by-way.

When they had nearly reached the railway arch Ackroyd stopped.

'I'm just going in to Bower's shop,' he said; 'I've got a message for
poor old Boddy.'

'Boddy?'

'You know of him from the Trent girls, don't you?'

'Yes, yes,' Grail answered, nodding. He seemed about to add something,
but checked himself, and, with a 'good-bye,' went his way.

Ackroyd turned his steps to a little shop close by. It was of the kind
known as the 'small general'; over the door stood the name of the
proprietor--'Bower'--and on the woodwork along the top of the windows
was painted in characters of faded red: 'The Little Shop with the Large
Heart.' Little it certainly was, and large of heart if the term could
be made to signify an abundant stock. The interior was so packed with
an indescribable variety of merchandise that there was scarcely space
for more than two customers between door and counter. From an inner
room came the sound of a violin, playing a lively air.

When the young man stepped through the doorway he was at once
encompassed with the strangest blend of odours; every article in the
shop--groceries of all kinds, pastry, cooked meat, bloaters,
newspapers, petty haberdashery, firewood, fruit, soap--seemed to exhale
its essence distressfully under the heat; impossible that anything sold
here should preserve its native savour. The air swarmed with flies,
spite of the dread example of thousands that lay extinct on sheets of
smeared newspaper. On the counter, among other things, was a perspiring
yellow mass, retailed under the name of butter; its destiny hovered
between avoirdupois and the measure of capacity. A literature of
advertisements hung around; ginger-beer, blacking, blue, &c., with a
certain 'Samaritan salve,' proclaimed themselves in many-coloured
letters. One descried, too, a scrubby but significant little card,
which bore the address of a loan office.

The music issued from the parlour behind the shop; it ceased as Ackroyd
approached the counter, and at the sound of his footsteps appeared Mrs.
Bower. She was a stout woman of middle age, red of face, much given to
laughter, wholesomely vulgar. At four o'clock every afternoon she laid
aside her sober garments of the working day and came forth in an
evening costume which was the admiration and envy of Paradise Street.
Popular from a certain wordy good-humour which she always had at
command, she derived from this evening garb a social superiority which
friends and neighbours, whether they would or no were constrained to
recognise. She was deemed a well-to-do woman, and as such--Paradise
Street held it axiomatic--might reasonably adorn herself for the
respect of those to whom she sold miscellaneous pennyworths. She did
not depend upon the business. Her husband, as we already know, was a
foreman at Egremont & Pollard's oilcloth manufactory; they were known
to have money laid by. You saw in her face that life had been smooth
with her from the beginning. She wore a purple dress with a yellow
fichu, in which was fixed a large silver brooch; on her head was a
small lace cap. Her hands were enormous, and very red. As she came into
the shop, she mopped her forehead with a handkerchief; perspiration
streamed from every pore.

'What a man you are for keepin' yourself cool, Mr. Hackroyd!' she
exclaimed; 'it's like a breath o' fresh air to look at you, I'm sure.
If this kind o' weather goes on there won't be much left o' me. I'm
a-goin' like the butter.'

'It's warmish, that's true,' said Luke, when she had finished her
laugh. 'I heard Mr. Boddy playing in there, and I've got a message for
him.'

'Come in and sit down. He's just practisin' a new piece for his club
to-night.'

Ackroyd advanced into the parlour. The table was spread for tea, and at
the tray sat Mrs. Bower's daughter, Mary. She was a girl of nineteen,
sparely made, and rather plain-featured, yet with a thoughtful,
interesting face. Her smile was brief, and always passed into an
expression of melancholy, which in its turn did not last long; for the
most part she seemed occupied with thoughts which lay on the borderland
between reflection and anxiety. Her dress was remarkably plain,
contrasting with her mother's, and her hair was arranged in the
simplest way.

In a round-backed chair at a distance from the table sat an old man
with a wooden leg, a fiddle on his knee. His face was parchmenty, his
cheeks sunken, his lips compressed into a long, straight line; his
small grey eyes had an anxious look, yet were ever ready to twinkle
into a smile. He wore a suit of black, preserved from sheer decay by a
needle too evidently unskilled. Wrapped about a scarcely visible collar
was a broad black neckcloth of the antique fashion; his one shoe was
cobbled into shapelessness. Mr. Boddy's spirit had proved more durable
than his garments. Often hard set to earn the few shillings a week that
sufficed to him, he kept up a long-standing reputation for joviality,
and, with the aid of his fiddle, made himself welcome at many a festive
gathering in Lambeth.

'Give Mr. Hackroyd a cup o' tea, Mary,' said Mrs. Bower. 'How you pore
men go about your work days like this is more than I can understand. I
haven't life enough in me to drive away a fly as settles on my nose.
It's all very well for you to laugh, Mr. Boddy. There's good in
everything, if we only see it, and you may thank the trouble you've had
as it's kep' your flesh down.'

Ackroyd addressed the old man.

'There's a friend of mine in Newport Street would be glad to have you
do a little job for him, Mr. Boddy. Two or three chairs, I think.'

Mr. Boddy held forth his stumpy, wrinkled hand.

'Give us a friendly grip, Mr. Ackroyd! There's never a friend in this
world but the man as finds you work; that's the philosophy as has come
o' my three-score-and-nine years. What's the name and address? I'll be
round the first thing on Monday morning.'

The information was given.

'You just make a note o' that in your head, Mary, my dear,' the old mam
continued. ''Taint very likely I'll forget, but my memory do play me a
trick now and then. Ask me about things as happened fifty years ago,
and I'll serve you as well as the almanac. It's the same with my eyes.
I used to be near-sighted, and now I'll read you the sign-board across
the street easier than that big bill on the wall.'

He raised his violin, and struck out with spirit 'The March of the Men
of Harlech.'

'That's the teen as always goes with me on my way to work,' he said,
with a laugh. 'It keeps up my courage; this old timber o' mine stumps
time on the pavement, and I feel I'm good for something yet. If only
the hand'll keep steady! Firm enough yet, eh, Mr. Ackroyd?'

He swept the bow through a few ringing chords.

'Firm enough,' said Luke, 'and a fine tone, too. I suppose the older
the fiddle is the better it gets?'

'Ah, 'taint like these fingers. Old Jo Racket played this instrument
more than sixty years ago; so far back I can answer for it. You
remember Jo, Mrs. Bower, ma'am? Yes, yes, you can just remember him;
you was a little 'un when he'd use to crawl round from the work'us of a
Sunday to the "Green Man." When he went into the 'Ouse he give the
fiddle to Mat Trent, Lyddy and Thyrza's father, Mr. Ackroyd. Ah, talk
of a player! You should a' heard what Mat could do with this 'ere
instrument. What do _you_ say, Mrs. Bower, ma'am?'

'He was a good player, was Mr. Trent; but not better than somebody else
we know of, eh, Mr. Hackroyd?'

'Now don't you go pervertin' my judgment with flattery, ma'am,' said
the old man, looking pleased for all that. 'Matthew Trent was Matthew
Trent, an' Lambeth 'll never know another like him. He was made o'
music! When did you hear any man with a tenor voice like his? He made
songs, too, Mr. Ackroyd--words, music, an' all. Why, Thyrza sings one
of 'em still.'

'But how does she remember it?' Ackroyd asked with much interest. 'He
died when she was a baby.'

'Yes, yes, she don't remember it of her father. It was me as taught her
it, to be sure, as I did most o' the other songs she knows.'

'But she wasn't a baby either,' put in Mrs. Bower. 'She was four years;
an' Lydia was four years older.'

'Four years an' two months,' said Mr. Boddy, nodding with a laugh.
'Let's be ac'rate, Mrs. Bower, ma'am. Thirteen year ago next fourteenth
o' December, Mr. Ackroyd. There's a deal happened since then. On that
day I had my shop in the Cut, and I had two legs like other mortals.
Things wasn't doing so bad with me. Why, it's like yesterday to
remember. My wife she come a-runnin' into the shop just before
dinner-time. "There's a boiler busted at Walton's," she says, "an' they
say as Mr. Trent's killed." It was Walton's, the pump-maker's, in
Ground Street.'

'It's Simpson & Thomas's now,' remarked Mrs. Bower. 'Why, where Jim
Candle works, you know, Mr. Hackroyd.'

Luke nodded, knowing the circumstance. The whole story was familiar to
him, indeed; but Mr. Boddy talked on in an old man's way for pleasure
in the past.

'So it is, so it is. Me an' my wife took the little 'uns to the
'Orspital. He knew 'em, did poor Mat, but he couldn't speak. What a
face he had! Thyrza was frighted and cried; Lyddy just held on hard to
my hand, but she didn't cry. I don't remember to a' seen Lyddy cry more
than two or three times in my life; she always hid away for that, when
she couldn't help herself, bless her!'

'Lydia grows more an' more like her father,' said Mrs. Bower.

'She does, ma'am, she does. I used to say as she was like him, when she
sat in my shop of a night and watched the people in and out. Her eyes
was so bright-looking, just like Mat's. Eh, there wasn't much as the
little 'un didn't see. One day--how my wife did laugh!--she looks at me
for a long time, an' then she says: "How is it, Mr. Boddy," she says,
"as you've got one eyelid lower than the other?" It's true as I have a
bit of a droop in the right eye, but it's not so much as any one 'ud
notice it at once. I can hear her say that as if it was in this room.
An' she stood before me, a little thing that high. I didn't think she'd
be so tall. She growed wonderful from twelve to sixteen. It's me has to
look up to her now.'

A customer entered the shop, and Mrs. Bower went out.

'I don't think Thyrza's as much a favourite with any one as her
sister,' said Ackroyd, looking at Mary Bower, who had been silent all
this time.

'Oh, I like her very much,' was the reply. 'But there's something--I
don't think she's as easy to understand as Lydia. Still, I shouldn't
wonder if she pleases some people more.'

Mary dropped her eyes as she spoke, and smiled gently. Ackroyd tapped
with his foot.

'That's Totty Nancarrow,' said Mrs. Bower, reappearing from the shop.
'What a girl that is, to be sure! She's for all the world like a lad
put into petticoats. I should think there's a-goin' to be a feast over
in Newport Street. A tin o' sardines, four bottles o' ginger-beer, two
pound o' seed cake, an' two pots o' raspberry! Eh, she's a queer 'un! I
can't think where she gets her money from either.'

'It's a pity to see Thyrza going about with her so much,' said Mary,
gravely.

'Why, I can't say as I know any real harm of her,' said her mother,
'unless it is as she's a Catholic.'

'Totty Nancarrow a Catholic!' exclaimed Ackroyd. 'Why, I never knew
that.'

'Her mother was Irish, you see, an' I don't suppose as her father
thought much about religion. I dessay there's some good people
Catholics, but I can't say as I take much to them I know.'

Mary's face was expressing lively feeling.

'How can they be really good, mother, when their religion lets them do
wrong, if only they'll go and confess it to the priest? I wouldn't
trust anybody as was a Catholic. I don't think the religion ought to be
allowed.'

Here was evidently a subject which had power to draw Mary from her
wonted reticence. Her quiet eyes gleamed all at once with indignation.

Ackroyd laughed with good-natured ridicule.

'Nay,' he said, 'the time's gone by for that kind of thing, Miss Bower.
You wouldn't have us begin religious persecution again?'

'I don't want to persecute anybody,' the girl answered; 'but I wouldn't
let them be misled by a bad and false religion.'

On any other subject Mary would have expressed her opinion with
diffidence; not on this.

'I don't want to be rude, Miss Mary,' Luke rejoined, 'but what right
have you to say that their religion's any worse or falser than your
own?'

'Everybody knows that it is--that cares about religion at all,' Mary
replied with coldness and, in the last words, a significant severity.

'It's the faith, Mary, my dear,' interposed Mr. Boddy, 'the faith's the
great thing. I don't suppose as form matters so much.'

The girl gave the old man a brief, offended glance, and drew into
herself.

'Well,' said Mrs. Bower, 'that's one way o' lookin' at it but I can't
see neither as there's much good in believin' what isn't true.'

'That's to the point, Mrs. Bower,' said Ackroyd with a smile.

There was a footstep in the shop--firm, yet light and quick--then a
girl's face showed itself at the parlour door. It was a face which
atoned for lack of regular features by the bright intelligence and the
warmth of heart that shone in its smile of greeting. A fair broad
forehead lay above well-arched brows; the eyes below were large and
shrewdly observant, with laughter and kindness blent in their dark
depths. The cheeks were warm with health; the lips and chin were
strong, yet marked with refinement; they told of independence, of
fervid instincts; perhaps of a temper a little apt to be impatient. It
was not an imaginative countenance, yet alive with thought and
feeling--all, one felt, ready at the moment's need--the kind of face
which becomes the light and joy of home, the bliss of children, the
unfailing support of a man's courage. Her hair was cut short and
crisped itself above her neck; her hat of black straw and dark dress
were those of a work-girl--poor, yet, in their lack of adornment,
suiting well with the active, helpful impression which her look
produced.

'Here's Mary an' Mr. Hackroyd fallin' out again, Lydia,' said Mrs.
Bower.

'What about now?' Lydia asked, coming in and seating herself. Her eyes
passed quickly over Ackroyd's face and rested on that of the old man
with much kindness.

'Oh, the hold talk--about religion.'

'I think it 'ud be better if they left that alone,' she replied,
glancing at Mary.

'You're right, Miss Trent,' said Luke. 'It's about the most
unprofitable thing anyone can argue about.'

'Have you had your tea?' Mrs. Bower asked of Lydia.

'No; but I mustn't stop to have any, thank you, Mrs. Bower. Thyrza 'll
think I'm never coming home. I only looked in just to ask Mary to come
and have tea with us tomorrow.'

Ackroyd rose to depart.

'If I see Holmes I'll tell him you'll look in on Monday, Mr. Boddy.'

'Thank you, Mr. Ackroyd, thank you; no fear but I'll be there, sir.'

He nodded a leave-taking and went.

'Some work, grandad?' Lydia asked, moving to sit by Mr. Boddy.

'Yes, my dear; the thing as keeps the world a-goin'. How's the little
'un?'

'Why, I don't think she seems very well. I didn't want her to go to
work this morning, but she couldn't make up her mind to stay at home.
The hot weather makes her restless.'

'It's dreadful tryin'!' sighed Mrs. Bower.

'But I really mustn't stay, and that's the truth.' She rose from her
chair. 'Where do you think I've been, Mary? Mrs. Isaacs sent round this
morning to ask if I could give her a bit of help. She's going to
Margate on Monday, and there we've been all the afternoon trimming new
hats for herself and the girls. She's given me a shilling, and I'm sure
it wasn't worth half that, all I did. You'll come tomorrow, Mary?'

'I will if--you know what?'

'Now did you ever know such a girl!' Lydia exclaimed, looking round at
the others. 'You understand what she means, Mrs. Bower?'

'I dare say I do, my dear.'

'But I can't promise, Mary. I don't like to leave Thyrza always.'

'I don't see why she shouldn't come too,' said Mary. Lydia shook her
head.

'Well, you come at four o'clock, at all events, and we'll see all about
it. Good-bye, grandad.'

She hurried away, throwing back a bright look as she passed into the
shop.

Paradise Street runs at right angles into Lambeth Walk. As Lydia
approached this point, she saw that Ackroyd stood there, apparently
waiting for her. He was turning over the leaves of one of his books,
but kept glancing towards her as she drew near. He wished to speak, and
she stopped.

'Do you think,' he said, with diffidence, 'that your sister would come
out to-morrow after tea?'

Lydia kept her eyes down.

'I don't know, Mr. Ackroyd,' she answered. 'I'll ask her; I don t think
she's going anywhere.'

'It won't be like last Sunday?'

'She really didn't feel well. And I can't promise, you know Mr.
Ackroyd.'

She met his eyes for an instant, then looked along the street There was
a faint smile on her lips, with just a suspicion of some trouble.

'But you _will_ ask her?'

'Yes, I will.'

She added in a lower voice, and with constraint:

'I'm afraid she won't go by herself.'

'Then come with her. Do! Will you?'

'If she asks me to, I will.'

Lydia moved as if to leave him, but he followed.

'Miss Trent, you'll say a word for me sometimes?'

She raised her eyes again and replied quickly:

'I never say nothing against you, Mr. Ackroyd.'

'Thank you. Then I'll be at the end of the Walk at six o'clock, shall
I?'

She nodded, and walked quickly on. Ackroyd turned back into Paradise
Street. His cheeks were a trifle flushed, and he kept making nervous
movements with his head. So busy were his thoughts that he
unconsciously passed the door of the house in which he lived, and had
to turn when the roar of a train passing over the archway reminded him
where he was.




CHAPTER IV

THYRZA SINGS


Lydis, too, betrayed some disturbance of thought as she pursued her
way. Her face was graver than before: once or twice her lips moved as
if she were speaking to herself.

After going a short distance along Lambeth Walk, she turned off into a
street which began unpromisingly between low-built and poverty-stained
houses, but soon bettered in appearance. Its name is Walnut Tree Walk.
For the most part it consists of old dwellings, which probably were the
houses of people above the working class in days when Lambeth's squalor
was confined within narrower limits. The doors are framed with dark
wood, and have hanging porches. At the end of the street is a glimpse
of trees growing in Kennington Road.

To one of these houses Lydia admitted herself with a latch-key; she
ascended to the top floor and entered a room in the front. It was
sparely furnished, but with a certain cleanly comfort. A bed stood in
one corner; in another, a small washhand-stand; between them a low
chest of drawers with a looking-glass upon it. The rest was arranged
for day use; a cupboard kept out of sight household utensils and food.
Being immediately under the roof, the room was much heated after long
hours of sunshine. From the open window came a heavy scent of
mignonette.

Thyrza had laid the table for tea, and was sitting idly. It was not
easy to recognise her as Lydia's sister; if you searched her features
the sisterhood was there, but the type of countenance was so subtly
modified, so refined, as to become beauty of rare suggestiveness. She
was of pale complexion, and had golden hair; it was plaited in one
braid, which fell to her waist. Like Lydia's, her eyes were large and
full of light; every line of the face was delicate, harmonious, sweet;
each thought that passed through her mind reflected itself in a change
of expression, produced one knew not how, one phase melting into
another like flitting lights upon a stream in woodland. It was a subtly
morbid physiognomy, and impressed one with a sense of vague trouble.
There was none of the spontaneous pleasure in life which gave Lydia's
face such wholesome brightness; no impulse of activity, no resolve; all
tended to preoccupation, to emotional reverie. She had not yet
completed her seventeenth year, and there was still something of
childhood in her movements. Her form was slight, graceful, and of lower
stature than her sister's. She wore a dress of small-patterned print,
with a broad collar of cheap lace.

'It was too hot to light a fire,' she said, rising as Lydia entered.
'Mrs. Jarmey says she'll give us water for the tea.'

'I hoped you'd be having yours,' Lydia replied. 'It's nearly six
o'clock. I'll take the tea-pot down, dear.'

When they were seated at the table, Lydia drew from her pocket a
shilling and held it up laughingly.

'That from Mrs. Isaacs?' her sister asked.

'Yes. Not bad for Saturday afternoon, is it? Now I must take my boots
to be done. If it began to rain I should be in a nice fix; I haven't a
sole to walk on.'

'I just looked in at Mrs. Bower's as I passed,' she continued
presently. 'Mr. Ackroyd was there. He'd come to tell grandad of some
work. That was kind of him, wasn't it?'

Thyrza assented absently.

'Is Mary coming to tea to-morrow?' she asked.

'Yes. At least she said she would if I'd go to chapel with her
afterwards. She won't be satisfied till she gets me there every Sunday.'

'How tiresome, Lyddy!'

'But there's somebody wants you to go out as well. You know who.'

'You mean Mr. Ackroyd?'

'Yes. He met me when I came out of Mrs. Bower's, and asked me if I
thought you would.'

Thyrza was silent for a little, then she said:

'I can't go with him alone, Lyddy. I don't mind if you go too.'

'But that's just what he doesn't want,' said her sister, with a smile
which was not quite natural.

Thyrza averted her eyes, and began to speak of something else. The meal
was quickly over, then Lydia took up some sewing. Thyrza went to the
window and stood for a while looking at the people that passed, but
presently she seated herself, and fell into the brooding which her
sister's entrance had interrupted. Lydia also was quieter than usual;
her eyes often wandered from her work to Thyrza. At last she leaned
forward and said:

'What are you thinking of, Blue-eyes?'

Thyrza drew a deep sigh.

'I don't know, Lyddy. It's so hot, I don't feel able to do anything.'

'But you're always thinking and thinking. What is it that troubles you?'

'I feel dull.'

'Why don't you like to go out with Mr. Ackroyd?' Lydia asked.

'Why do you so much want me to, Lyddy?'

'Because he thinks a great deal of you, and it would be nice if you got
to like him.'

'But I shan't, never;--I know I shan't.'

'Why not, dear?'

'I don't _dislike_ him, but he mustn't get to think it's any thing
else. I'll go out with him if you'll go as well,' she added, fixing her
eyes on Lydia's.

The latter bent to pick up a reel of cotton.

'We'll see when to-morrow comes,' she said.

Silence again fell between them, whilst Lydia's fingers worked rapidly.
The evening drew on. Thyrza took her chair to the window, leaned upon
the sill, and looked up at the reddening sky. The windows of the other
houses were all open; here and there women talked from them with
friends across the street. People were going backwards and forwards
with bags and baskets, on the business of Saturday evening; in the
distance sounded the noise of the market in Lambeth Walk.

Shortly after eight o'clock Lydia said

'I'll just go round with my boots, and get something for dinner
to-morrow.'

'I'll come with you,' Thyrza said. 'I can't bear to sit here any
longer.'

They went forth, and were soon in the midst of the market. Lambeth Walk
is a long, narrow street, and at this hour was so thronged with people
that an occasional vehicle with difficulty made slow passage. On the
outer edges of the pavement, in front of the busy shops, were rows of
booths, stalls, and harrows, whereon meat, vegetables, fish, and
household requirements of indescribable variety were exposed for sale.
The vendors vied with one another in uproarious advertisement of their
goods. In vociferation the butchers doubtless excelled; their 'Lovely,
lovely, lovely!' and their reiterated 'Buy, buy, buy!' rang clangorous
above the hoarse roaring of costermongers and the din of those who
clattered pots and pans. Here and there meat was being sold by Dutch
auction, a brisk business. Umbrellas, articles of clothing, quack
medicines, were disposed of in the same way, giving occasion for much
coarse humour. The market-night is the sole out-of-door amusement
regularly at hand for London working people, the only one, in truth,
for which they show any real capacity. Everywhere was laughter and
interchange of good-fellowship. Women sauntered the length of the
street and back again for the pleasure of picking out the best and
cheapest bundle of rhubarb, or lettuce, the biggest and hardest
cabbage, the most appetising rasher; they compared notes, and bantered
each other on purchases. The hot air reeked with odours. From stalls
where whelks were sold rose the pungency of vinegar; decaying
vegetables trodden under foot blended their putridness with the musty
smell of second-hand garments; the grocers' shops were aromatic; above
all was distinguishable the acrid exhalation from the shops where fried
fish and potatoes hissed in boiling grease. There Lambeth's supper was
preparing, to be eaten on the spot, or taken away wrapped in newspaper.
Stewed eels and baked meat pies were discoverable through the steam of
other windows, but the fried fish and potatoes appealed irresistibly to
the palate through the nostrils, and stood first in popularity.

The people were of the very various classes which subdivide the great
proletarian order. Children of the gutter and sexless haunters of the
street corner elbowed comfortable artisans and their wives; there were
bareheaded hoidens from the obscurest courts, and work-girls whose
self-respect was proof against all the squalor and vileness hourly
surrounding them. Of the women, whatsoever their appearance, the great
majority carried babies. Wives, themselves scarcely past childhood,
balanced shawl-enveloped bantlings against heavy market-baskets. Little
girls of nine or ten were going from stall to stall, making purchases
with the confidence and acumen of old housekeepers; slight fear that
they would fail to get their money's worth. Children, too, had the
business of sale upon their hands: ragged urchins went about with
blocks of salt, importuning the marketers, and dishevelled girls
carried bundles of assorted vegetables, crying, 'A penny all the lot! A
penny the 'ole lot!'

The public-houses were full. Through the gaping doors you saw a
tightly-packed crowd of men, women, and children, drinking at the bar
or waiting to have their jugs filled, tobacco smoke wreathing above
their heads. With few exceptions the frequenters of the Walk turned
into the public-house as a natural incident of the evening's business.
The women with the babies grew thirsty in the hot, foul air of the
street, and invited each other to refreshment of varying strength,
chatting the while of their most intimate affairs, the eternal 'says
I,' 'says he,' 'says she,' of vulgar converse. They stood indifferently
by the side of liquor-sodden creatures whose look was pollution.
Companies of girls, neatly dressed and as far from depravity as
possible, called for their glasses of small beer, and came forth again
with merriment in treble key.

When the sisters had done their business at the boot-maker's, and were
considering what their purchase should be for Sunday's dinner, Thyrza
caught sight of Totty Nancarrow entering a shop. At once she said: 'I
won't be late back, Lyddy. I'm just going to walk a little way with
Totty.'

Lydia's face showed annoyance.

'Where is she?' she asked, looking back.

'In the butcher's just there.'

'Don't go to-night, Thyrza. I'd rather you didn't.'

'I promise I won't be late. Only half an hour.'

She waved her hand and ran off, of a sudden changed to cheerfulness.
Totty received her in the shop with a friendly laugh. Mrs. Bower's
description of Miss Nancarrow as a lad in petticoats was not inapt, yet
she was by no means heavy or awkward. She had a lithe, shapely figure,
and her features much resembled those of a fairly good-looking boy. Her
attire showed little care for personal adornment, but it suited her,
because it suggested bodily activity. She wore a plain, tight-fitting
grey gown, a small straw hat of the brimless kind, and a white linen
collar about her neck. Totty was nineteen; no girl in Lambeth relished
life with so much determination, yet to all appearance so harmlessly.
Her independence was complete; for five years she had been parentless
and had lived alone.

Thyrza was attracted to her by this air of freedom and joyousness which
distinguished Totty. It was a character wholly unlike her own, and her
imaginative thought discerned in it something of an ideal; her own
timidity and her tendency to languor found a refreshing antidote in the
other's breezy carelessness. Impurity of mind would have repelled her,
and there was no trace of it in Totty. Yet Lydia took very ill this
recently-grown companionship, holding her friend Mary Bower's view of
the girl's character. Her prejudice was enhanced by the jealous care
with which, from the time of her own childhood, she had been accustomed
to watch over her sister. Already there had been trouble between Thyrza
and her on this account. In spite of the unalterable love which united
them, their points of unlikeness not seldom brought about debates which
Lydia's quick temper sometimes aggravated to a quarrel.

So Lydia finished her marketing and turned homewards with a perturbed
mind. But the other two walked, with gossip and laughter, to Totty's
lodgings, which were in Newport Street, an offshoot of Paradise Street.

'I'm going with Annie West to a friendly lead,' Totty said; 'will you
come with us?'

Thyrza hesitated. The entertainment known as a 'friendly lead' is
always held at a public-house, and she knew that Lydia would seriously
disapprove of her going to such a place. Yet she had even a physical
need of change, of recreation. Whilst she discussed the matter
anxiously with herself they entered the house and went up to Totty's
room. The house was very small, and had a close, musty smell, as if no
fresh air ever got into it. Totty's chamber was a poor, bare little
retreat, with low, cracked, grimy ceiling, and one scrap of carpet on
the floor, just by the diminutive bed. On a table lay the provisions
she had that afternoon brought in from Mrs. Bower's. On the
mantel-piece was a small card, whereon was printed an announcement of
the friendly lead; at the bead stood the name of a public-house, with
that of its proprietor; then followed: 'A meeting will take place at
the above on Saturday evening, August 2, for the benefit of Bill
Mennie, the well-known barber of George Street, who has been laid up
through breaking of his leg, and is quite unable to follow his
employment at present. We the undersigned, knowing him to be thoroughly
respected and a good supporter of these meetings, they trust you will
come forward on this occasion, and give him that support he so richly
deserve, this being his first appeal.--Chairman:--Count Bismark.
Vice:--Dick Perkins. Assisted by' (here was a long list, mostly of
nicknames) 'Little Arthur, Flash Bob, Young Brummy, Lardy, Bumper, Old
Tacks, Jo at Thomson's, Short-pipe Tommy, Boy Dick, Chaffy Sam
Coppock,' and others equally suggestive.

Whilst Thyrza perused this, Totty was singing a merry song.

'I've had ten shillin's sent me to-day,' she said.

'Who by?'

'An old uncle of mine, 'cause it's my birthday to-morrow. He's a rum
old fellow. About two years ago he came and asked me if I'd go and live
with him and my aunt, and be made a lady of. Honest, he did! He keeps a
shop in Tottenham Court Road. He and father 'd quarrelled, and he never
come near when father died, and I had to look out for myself. Now, he'd
like to make a lady of me; he'll wait a long time till he gets the
chance!'

'But wouldn't it be nice, Totty?' Thyrza asked, doubtfully.

'I'd sooner live in my own way, thank you. Fancy me havin' to sit
proper at a table, afraid to eat an' drink! What's the use o' livin',
if you don't enjoy yourself?'

They were interrupted by a knock at the door, followed by the
appearance of Annie West, a less wholesome-looking girl than Totty, but
equally vivacious.

'Well, will you come to the "Prince Albert," Thyrza?' Totty asked.

'I can't stay long,' was the answer; 'but I'll go for a little while.'

The house of entertainment was at no great distance. They passed
through the bar and up into a room on the first floor, where a
miscellaneous assembly was just gathering. Down the middle was a long
table, with benches beside it, and a round-backed chair at each end;
other seats were ranged along the walls. At the upper end of the room
an arrangement of dirty red hangings--in the form of a canopy,
surmounted by a lion and unicorn, of pasteboard--showed that festive
meetings were regularly held here. Round about were pictures of hunting
incidents, of racehorses, of politicians and pugilists, interspersed
with advertisements of beverages. A piano occupied one corner.

The chairman was already in his place; on the table before him was a
soup-plate, into which each visitor threw a contribution on arriving.
Seated on the benches were a number of men, women, and girls, all with
pewters or glasses before them, and the air was thickening with smoke
of pipes. The beneficiary of the evening, a portly person with a face
of high satisfaction, sat near the chairman, and by him were two girls
of decent appearance, his daughters. The president puffed at a
churchwarden and exchanged genial banter with those who came up to
deposit offerings. Mr. Dick Perkins, the Vice, was encouraging a spirit
of conviviality at the other end. A few minutes after Thyrza and her
companions had entered, a youth of the seediest appearance struck
introductory chords on the piano, and started off at high pressure with
a selection of popular melodies. The room by degrees grew full. Then
the chairman rose, and with jocular remarks announced the first song.

Totty had several acquaintances present, male and female; her laughter
frequently sounded above the hubbub of voices. Thyrza, who had declined
to have anything to drink, shrank into as little space as possible; she
was nervous and self-reproachful, yet the singing and the uproar gave
her a certain pleasure. There was nothing in the talk around her and
the songs that were sung that made it a shame for her to be present.
Plebeian good-humour does not often degenerate into brutality at
meetings of this kind until a late hour of the evening. The girls who
sat with glasses of beer before them, and carried on primitive
flirtations with their neighbours, were honest wage-earners of factory
and workshop, well able to make themselves respected. If they lacked
refinement, natural or acquired, it was not their fault; toil was
behind them and before, the hours of rest were few, suffering and lack
of bread might at any moment come upon them. They had all thrown their
hard-earned pence into the soup-plate gladly and kindly; now they
enjoyed themselves.

The chairman excited enthusiasm by announcement of a song by Mr. Sam
Coppock--known to the company as 'Chaffy Sem.' Sam was a young man who
clearly had no small opinion of himself; he wore a bright-blue necktie,
and had a geranium flower in his button-hole; his hair was cut as short
as scissors could make it, and as he stood regarding the assembly he
twisted the ends of a scarcely visible moustache. When he fixed a round
glass in one eye and perked his head with a burlesque of aristocratic
bearing, the laughter and applause were deafening.

'He's a warm 'un, is Sem!' was the delighted comment on all hands.

The pianist made discursive prelude, then Mr. Coppock gave forth a
ditty of the most sentimental character, telling of the disappearance
of a young lady to whom he was devoted. The burden, in which all bore a
part, ran thus:

  We trecked 'er little footprints in the snayoo,
  We trecked 'er little footprints in the snayoo,
  I shall ne'er forget the d'y
  When Jenny lost her w'y,
  And we trecked 'er little footprints in the snayoo!

It was known that the singer had thoughts of cultivating his talent and
of appearing on the music-hall stage; it was not unlikely that he might
some day become 'the great Sam.' A second song was called for and
granted; a third--but Mr. Coppock intimated that it did not become him
to keep other talent in the background. The chairman made a humorous
speech, informing the company that their friend would stand forth again
later in the evening. Mr. Dick Perkins was at present about to oblige.

The Vice was a frisky little man. He began with what is known as
'patter,' then gave melodious account of a romantic meeting with a
damsel whom he had seen only once to lose sight of for ever. And the
refrain was:

  She wore a lov-e-lie bonnet
  With fruit end flowers upon it,
  End she dwelt in the henvirons of 'Ol-lo-w'y!

As yet only men had sung; solicitation had failed with such of the
girls as were known to be musically given. Yet an earnest prayer from
the chairman succeeded at length in overcoming the diffidence of one.
She was a pale, unhealthy thing, and wore an ugly-shaped hat with a
gruesome green feather; she sang with her eyes down, and in a voice
which did not lack a certain sweetness. The ballad was of springtime
and the country and love.

  Underneath the May-tree blossoms
  Oft we've wandered, you and I,
  Listening to the mill-stream's whisper,
  Like a stream soft-gliding by.

The girl had a drunken mother, and spent a month or two of every year
in the hospital, for her day's work overtaxed her strength. She was one
of those fated toilers, to struggle on as long as any one would employ
her, then to fall among the forgotten wretched. And she sang of
May-bloom and love; of love that had never come near her and that she
would never know; sang, with her eyes upon the beer-stained table, in a
public-house amid the backways of Lambeth.

Totty Nancarrow was whispering to Thyrza:

'Sing something, old girl! Why shouldn't you?'

Annie West was also at hand, urging the same.

'Let 'em hear some real singing, Thyrza. There's a dear.'

Thyrza was in sore trouble. Music, if it were but a street organ,
always stirred her heart and made her eager for the joy of song. She
had never known what it was to sing before a number of people; the
prospect of applause tempted her. Yet she had scarcely the courage, and
the thought of Lydia's grief and anger--for Lydia would surely hear of
it--was keenly present.

'It's getting late,' she replied nervously. 'I can't stay; I can't sing
to-night.'

Only one or two people in the room knew her by sight, but Totty had led
to its being passed from one to another that she was a good singer. The
landlord of the house happened to be in the room; he came and spoke to
her.

'You don't remember me, Miss Trent, but I knew your father well enough,
and I knew you when you was a little 'un. In those days I had the
"Green Man" in the Cut; your father often enough gave us a toon on his
fiddle. A rare good fiddler he was, too! Give us a song now, for old
times' sake.'

Thyrza found herself preparing, in spite of herself. She trembled
violently, and her heart beat with a strange pain. She heard the
chairman shout her name; the sound made her face burn.

'Oh, what shall I sing?' she whispered distractedly to Totty, whilst
all eyes were turned to regard her.

'Sing "A Penny for your thoughts."'

It was the one song she knew of her father's making, a half-mirthful,
half-pathetic little piece in the form of a dialogue between husband
and wife, a true expression of the life of working folk, which only a
man who was more than half a poet could have shaped.

The seedy youth at the piano was equal to any demand for accompaniment;
Totty hummed the air to him, and he had his chords ready without delay.

Thyrza raised her face and began to sing. Yes, it was different enough
from anything that had come before; her pure sweet tones touched the
hearers profoundly; not a foot stirred. At the second verse she had
grown in confidence, and rose more boldly to the upper notes. At the
end she was singing her best--better than she had ever sung at home,
better than she thought she could sing. The applause that followed was
tumultuous. By this time much beer had been consumed; the audience was
in a mood for enjoying good things.

'That's something like, old girl!' cried Totty, clapping her on the
back. 'Have a drink out of my glass. It's only ginger-beer; it can't
hurt you. This is jolly! Ain't it a lark to be alive?'

The pale-faced girl who had sung of May-blossoms looked across the
table with eyes in which jealousy strove against admiration. There were
remarks aside between the men with regard to Thyrza's personal
appearance.

She must sing again. They were not going to be left with hungry ears
after a song like that. Thyrza still suffered from the sense that she
was doing wrong, but the praise was so sweet to her; sweeter, she
thought, than anything she had ever known. She longed to repeat her
triumph.

Totty named another song; the faint resistance was overcome, and again
the room hushed itself, every hearer spellbound. It was a voice well
worthy of cultivation, excellent in compass, with rare sweet power.
Again the rapturous applause, and again the demand for more. Another!
she should not refuse them. Only one more and they would be content.
And a third time she sang; a third time was borne upwards on clamour.

'Totty, I _must_ go,' she whispered. 'What's the time?'

'It's only just after ten,' was the reply. 'You'll soon run home.'

'After ten? Oh, I must go at once!'

She left her place, and as quickly as possible made her way through the
crowd. Just at the door she saw a face that she recognised, but a
feeling of faintness was creeping upon her, and she could think of
nothing but the desire to breathe fresh air. Already she was on the
stairs, but her strength suddenly failed; she felt herself falling,
felt herself strongly seized, then lost consciousness.

She came to herself in a few minutes in the bar-parlour; the landlady
was attending to her, and the door had been shut against intruders. Her
first recognition was of Luke Ackroyd.

'Don't say anything,' she murmured, looking at him imploringly. 'Don't
tell Lyddy.'

'Not I,' replied Ackroyd. 'Just drink a drop and you'll be all right.
I'll see you home. You feel better, don't you?'

Yes, she felt better, though her head ached miserably. Soon she was
able to walk, and longed to hasten away. The landlady let her out by
the private door, and Ackroyd went with her.

'Will you take my arm?' he said, speaking very gently, and looking into
her face with eloquent eyes. 'I'm rare and glad I happened to be there.
I heard you singing from downstairs, and I asked, Who in the world's
that? I know now what Mr. Boddy means when he talks so about your
voice. Won't you take my arm, Miss Trent?'

'I feel quite well again, thank you,' she replied. 'I'd no business to
be there, Mr. Ackroyd. Lyddy 'll be very angry; she can't help hearing.'

'No, no! she won't be angry. You tell her at once. You were with Totty
Nancarrow, I suppose? Oh, it'll be all right. But of course it isn't
the kind of place for you, Miss Trent.'

She kept silence. They were walking through a quiet street where the
only light came from the gas-lamps. Ackroyd presently looked again into
her face.

'Will you come out to-morrow?' he asked, softly.

'Not to-morrow, Mr. Ackroyd.' She added: 'If I did I couldn't come
alone. It is better to tell you at once, isn't it? I don't mind with my
sister, because then we just go like friends; but I don't want to have
people think anything else.'

'Then come with your sister. We _are_ friends, aren't we? I can wait
for something else.'

'But you mustn't, Mr. Ackroyd. It'll never come. I mean it; I shall
never alter my mind. I have a reason.'

'What reason?' he asked, standing still.

She looked away.

'I mean that--that I couldn't never marry you.'

'Don't say that! You don't knew what I felt when I heard you singing.
Have you heard any harm against me. Thyrza? I haven't always been as
steady a fellow as I ought to be, but that was before I came to know
you. It's no good, whatever you say--I can't give up hope. Why, a man
'ud do anything for half a kind word from you. Thyrza (he lowered his
voice), there isn't anyone else, is there?'

She was silent.

'You don't mean that? Good God! I don't know what'll become of me if I
think of that. The only thing I care to live for is the hope of having
you for my wife.'

'But you mustn't hope, Mr. Ackroyd. You'll find someone much better for
you than me. But I can't stop. It's so late, and my head aches so. Do
let me go, please.'

He made an effort over himself. The nearest lamp showed him that she
was very pale.

'Only one word, Thyrza. Is there really any one else?'

'No; but that doesn't alter it.'

She walked quickly on. Ackroyd, with a great sigh of relief, went on by
her side. They came out into Lambeth Walk, where the market was as
noisy as ever; the shops lit up, the stalls flaring with naphtha lamps,
the odour of fried fish everywhere predominant. He led her through the
crowd and a short distance into her own street. Then she gave him her
hand and said: 'Good-night, Mr. Ackroyd. Thank you for bringing me
back. You'll be friends with me and Lyddy?'

'You'll come out with her to-morrow?'

'I can't promise. Good-night!'




CHAPTER V

A LAND OF TWILIGHT


It happened that Mrs. Jarmey, the landlady of the house in which the
sisters lived, had business in the neighbourhood of the 'Prince
Albert,' and chanced to exchange a word with an acquaintance who had
just come away after hearing Thyrza sing. Returning home, she found
Lydia at the door, anxiously and impatiently waiting for Thyrza's
appearance. The news, of course, was at once communicated, with moral
reflections, wherein Mrs. Jarmey excelled. Not five minutes later, and
whilst the two were still talking in the passage, the front door
opened, and Thyrza came in. Lydia turned and went upstairs.

Thyrza, entering the room, sought her sister's face; it had an angry
look. For a moment Lydia did not speak; the other, laying aside her
hat, said: 'I'm sorry I'm so late, Lyddy.'

'Where have you been?' her sister asked, in a voice which strove to
command itself.

Thyrza could not tell the whole truth at once, though she knew it would
have to be confessed eventually; indeed, whether or no discovery came
from other sources, all would eventually be told of her own free will.
She might fear at the moment, but in the end kept no secret from Lydia.

'I've been about with Totty,' she said, averting her face as she drew
off her cotton gloves.

'Yes, you have! You've been singing at a public-house.'

Lydia was too upset to note the paleness of Thyrza's face, which at
another moment would have elicited anxious question. She was deeply
hurt that Thyrza made so little account of her wishes; jealous of the
influence of Totty Nancarrow; stirred with apprehensions as powerful as
a mother's. On the other hand, it was Thyrza's nature to shrink into
coldness before angry words. She suffered intensely when the voice
which was of wont so affectionate turned to severity, but she could not
excuse herself till the storm was over. And it was most often from the
elder girl that the first words of reconcilement came.

'That's your Totty Nancarrow,' Lydia went on, with no check upon her
tongue. 'Didn't I tell you what 'ud come of going about with her? What
next, I should like to know! If you go on and sing in a public-house, I
don't know what you won't do. I shall never trust you out by yourself
again. You shan't go out at night at all, that's about it!'

'You've no right to speak to me like that, Lydia,' Thyrza replied, with
indignation. The excitement and the fainting fit had strung her nerves
painfully; and, for all her repentance, the echo of applause was still
very sweet in her ears. This vehement reproach caused a little injury
to her pride. 'It doesn't depend on you whether I go out or not. I'm
not a child, and I can take care of myself. I haven't done nothing
wrong.'

'You have--and you know you have! You knew I shouldn't have let you go
near such a place. You know how I've begged you not to go with Totty
Nancarrow, and how you've promised me you wouldn't be led into no harm.
I shall never be able to trust you again. You _are_ only a child! You
show it! And in future you'll do as I tell you!'

Thyrza caught up her hat.

'I'm not going to stop here whilst you're in such a bad temper,' she
said, in a trembling voice; 'you'll find that isn't the way to make me
do as you wish.'

She stepped to the door. Lydia, frightened, sprang forward and barred
the way.

'Go and sit down, Thyrza!'

'Let me go! What right have you to stop me?'

Then both were silent. At the same moment they became aware that a
common incident of Saturday night was occurring had got thus far on
their way home, the wife's shrill tongue in the street below. A
half-tipsy man and a nagging woman running over every scale of
scurrility and striking every note of ingenious malice. The man was at
length worked to a pitch of frenzy, and then--thud, thud, mingled with
objurgations and shrill night-piercing yells. Fury little short of
murderous was familiar enough to dwellers in this region, but that
woman's bell-clapper tongue had struck shame into Lydia. She could not
speak another angry word.

'Thyrza, take your hat off,' she said quietly, moving away a little
from the door. Her cheeks burned, and she quivered in the subsidence of
her temper.

Her sister did not obey, but, unable to stand longer, she went to a
chair at a distance. The uproar in the street continued for a quarter
of an hour, then by degrees passed on, the voice of the woman shrieking
foul abuse till remoteness stifled it. Lydia forced herself to keep
silence from good or ill; it was no use speaking the thoughts she had
till morning. Thyrza sat with her eyes fixed on vacancy; she was so
miserable, her heart had sunk so low, that tears would have come had
she not forced them back. More than once of late she had known this
mood, in which life lay about her barren and weary. She was very young
to suffer that oppression of the world-worn; it was the penalty she
paid for her birthright of heart and mind.

By midnight they were lying side by side, but no 'goodnight' had passed
between them. When Thyrza's gentle breathing told that she slept, Lydia
still lay with open eyes, watching the flicker of the street lamp upon
the ceiling, hearing the sounds that came of mirth or brutality in
streets near and far. She did not suffer in the same way as her sister;
as soon as she had gently touched Thyrza's unconscious hand love came
upon her with its warm solace; but her trouble was deep, and she looked
into the future with many doubts.

The past she could scarcely deem other than happy, though a stranger
would have thought it sad enough. Her mother she well remembered--a
face pale and sweet, like Thyrza's: the eyes that have their sad beauty
from foresight of death. Her father lived only a year longer, then she
and the little one passed into the charge of Mr. Boddy, who was paid a
certain small sum by Trent's employers, in consideration of the death
by accident. Then came the commencement of Mr. Boddy's misfortunes; his
shop and house were burnt down, he lost his limb in an endeavour to
save his property, he lost his wife in consequence of the shock. Dreary
things for the memory, yet they did not weigh upon Lydia; she was so
happily endowed that her mind selected and dwelt on sunny hours, on
kind looks and words which her strong heart cherished unassailably, on
the mutual charities which sorrow had begotten rather than on the
sorrow itself. Above all, the growing love of her dear one, of her to
whom she was both mother and sister, had strengthened her against every
trouble. Yet of late this strongest passion of her life had become a
source of grave anxieties, as often as circumstance caused her to look
beyond her contentment. Thyrza was so beautiful, and, it seemed to her,
so weak; always dreaming of something beyond and above the life which
was her lot; so deficient in the practical qualities which that life
demanded. At moments Lydia saw her responsibility in a light which
alarmed her.

They worked at a felt-hat factory, as 'trimmers;' that is to say, they
finished hats by sewing in the lining, putting on the bands, and the
like. In the busy season they could average together wages of about a
pound a week; at dull times they earned less, and very occasionally had
to support themselves for a week or two without employment. Since the
age of fourteen Lydia herself had received help from no one; from
sixteen she had lived in lodgings with Thyrza, independent. Mr. Boddy
was then no longer able to do more than supply his own needs, for
things had grown worse with him from year to year. Lydia occasionally
found jobs for her free hours, and she had never yet wanted. She was
strong, her health had scarcely ever given her a day's uneasiness;
there never came to her a fear lest bread should fail. But Thyrza could
not take life as she did. It was not enough for that imaginative nature
to toil drearily day after day, and year after year, just for the sake
of earning a livelihood. In a month she would be seventeen; it was too
true, as she had said to-night, that she was no longer a child. What
might happen if the elder sister's influence came to an end? Thyrza
loved her: how Lydia would have laughed at anyone who hinted that the
love could ever weaken! But it was not a guard against every danger.

It was inevitable that Lydia should have hoped that her sister might
marry early. And one man she knew in whom--she scarcely could have told
you why--her confidence was so strong that she would freely have
entrusted him with Thyrza's fate. Thyrza could not bring herself to
think of him as a husband. It was with Ackroyd that Lydia's thoughts
were busy as she lay wakeful. Before to-night she had not pondered so
continuously on what she knew of him. For some two years he had been an
acquaintance, through the Bowers, and she had felt glad when it was
plain that he sought Thyrza's society. 'Yes,' she had said to herself,
'I like him, and feel that he is to be relied upon.' Stories, to be
sure, had reached her ears; something of an over-fondness for
conviviality; but she had confidence. To-night she seemed called upon
to review all her impressions. Why? Nothing new had happened. She
longed for sleep, but it only came when dawn was white upon the blind.

When it was time to rise, neither spoke. Lydia prepared the breakfast
as usual--it seemed quite natural that she should do nearly all the
work of the home--and they sat down to it cheerlessly.

Since daybreak a mist had crept over the sky; it thinned the sunlight
to a suffusion of grey and gold. Within the house there was the silence
of Sunday morning; the street was still, save for the jodeling of a
milkman as he wheeled his clattering cans from house to house. In that
London on the other side of Thames, known to these girls with scarcely
less of vagueness than to simple dwellers in country towns, the
autumn-like air was foretaste of holiday; the martyrs of the Season and
they who do the world's cleaner work knew that rest was near, spoke at
breakfast of the shore and the mountain. Even to Lydia, weary after her
short sleep and unwontedly dejected, there came a wish that it were
possible to quit the streets for but one day, and sit somewhere apart
under the open sky. It was not often that so fantastic a dream visited
her.

In dressing, Thyrza had left her hair unbraided. Lydia always did that
for her. When the table was cleared, the former took up a story-paper
which she bought every week, and made a show of reading. Lydia went
about her accustomed tasks.

Presently she took a brush and comb and went behind her sister's chair.
She began to unloosen the rough coils in which the golden hair was
pinned together. It was always a joy to her to bathe her hands in the
warm, soft torrent. With delicate care she combed out every intricacy,
and brushed the ordered tresses till the light gleamed on their smooth
surface; then with skilful fingers she wove the braid, tying it with a
blue ribbon so that the ends hung loose. The task completed, it was her
custom to bend over the little head and snatch an inverted kiss, always
a moment of laughter. This morning she omitted that; she was moving
sadly away, when she noticed that the face turned a little, a very
little.

'Isn't it right?' she asked, keeping her eyes down.

'I think so--it doesn't matter.'

She drew near again, as if to inspect her work. Perhaps there was a
slight lack of smoothness over the temple; she touched the spot with
her fingers.

'Why are you so unkind to me, Thyrza?'

The words had come involuntarily; the voice shook as they were spoken.

'I don't mean to be, Lyddy--you know I don't.'

'But you do things that you know 'll make me angry. I'm quick-tempered,
and I couldn't bear to think of you going to that place; I ought to
have spoke in a different way.'

'Who told you I'd been singing?'

'Mrs. Jarmey. I'm very glad she did; it doesn't seem any harm to you,
Thyrza, but it does to me. Dear, have you ever sung at such places
before?'

Thyrza shook her head.

'Will you promise me never to go there again?'

'I don't want to go. But I get no harm. They were very pleased with my
singing. Annie West was there, and several other girls. Why do you make
so much of it, Lyddy?'

'Because I'm older than you, Thyrza; and if you'll only trust me, and
do as I wish, you'll see some day that I was right. I know you're a
good girl; I don't think a wrong thought ever came into your head. It
isn't that, it's because you can't go about the streets and into
public-houses without hearing bad things and seeing bad people. I want
to keep you away from everything that isn't homelike and quiet. I want
you to love me more than anyone else!'

'I do, Lyddy! I do, dear! It's only that I--'

'What--?'

'I don't know how it is. I'm discontented. There's never any change.
How can you be so happy day after day? I love to be with you, but--if
we could go and live somewhere else! I should like to see a new place.
I've been reading there about the seaside what it must be like! I want
to know things. You don't understand me?'

'I think I do. I felt a little the same when I heard Mrs. Isaacs and
her daughter talking about Margate yesterday. But we shall be better
off some day, see if we aren't! Try your best not to think about those
things. Suppose you ask Mr. Grail to lend you a book to read? I met
Mrs. Grail downstairs last night, and she asked if we'd go down and
have tea to-day. I can't, because Mary's coming, but you might. And I'm
sure he'd lend you something nice if you asked him.'

'I don't think I durst. He always sits so quiet, and he's such a queer
man.'

'Yes, he is rather queer, but he speaks very kind.'

'I'll see. But you mustn't speak so cross to me if I do wrong, Lyddy. I
felt as if I should like to go away, some time when you didn't know. I
did, really!'

Lydia gazed at her anxiously.

'I don't think you'd ever have the heart to do that, Thyrza,' she said,
in a low voice.

'No,' she shook her head, smiling. 'I couldn't do without you. And now
kiss me properly, like you always do.'

Lydia stood behind the chair again, and the laughing caress was
exchanged.

'I should stay,' Thyrza went on, 'if it was only to have you do my
hair. I do so like to feel your soft hands!'

'Soft hands! Great coarse things. Just look!'

She took one of Thyrza's, and held it beside her own. The difference
was noticeable enough; Lydia's was not ill-shapen, but there were marks
on it of all the rough household work which she had never permitted her
sister to do. Thyrza's was delicate, supple, beautiful in its kind as
her face.

'I don't care!' she said laughing. 'It's a good, soft, sleepy hand.'

'Sleepy, child!'

'I mean it always makes me feel dozy when it's doing my hair.'

There was no more cloud between them. The morning passed on with
sisterly talk. Lydia had wisely refrained from exacting promises; she
hoped to resume the subject before long--together with another that was
in her mind. Thyrza, too, had something to speak of, but could not
bring herself to it as yet.

Though it was so hot, they had to keep a small fire for cooking the
dinner. This meal consisted of a small piece of steak, chosen from the
odds and ends thrown together on the front of a butcher's shop, and a
few potatoes. It was not always they had meat; yet they never went
hungry, and, in comparing herself with others she knew, it sometimes
made Lydia a little unhappy to think how well she lived.

Then began the unutterable dreariness of a Sunday afternoon. From the
lower part of the house sounded the notes of a concertina; it was Mr.
Jarmey who played. He had the habit of doing so whilst half asleep,
between dinner and tea. With impartiality he passed from strains of
popular hymnody to the familiar ditties of the music hall, lavishing on
each an excess of sentiment. He shook pathetically on top notes and
languished on final chords. A dolorous music!

The milkman came along the street. He was followed by a woman who
wailed 'wa-ater-creases!' Then the concertina once more possessed the
stillness. Few pedestrians were abroad; the greater part of the male
population of Lambeth slumbered after the baked joint and flagon of
ale. Yet here and there a man in his shirt-sleeves leaned forth
despondently from a window or sat in view within, dozing over the
Sunday paper.

A rattling of light wheels drew near, and a nasal voice cried
''Okey-pokey! 'Okey-'okey-'okey Penny a lump!' It was the man who sold
ice-cream. He came to a stop, and half a dozen boys gathered about his
truck. The delicacy was dispensed to them in little green and yellow
glasses, from which they extracted it with their tongues. The vendor
remained for a few minutes, then on again with his ''Okey'-okey-'okey!'
sung through the nose.

Next came a sound of distressful voices, whining the discords of a
mendicant psalm. A man, a woman, and two small children crawled along
the street; their eyes surveyed the upper windows. All were ragged and
filthy; the elders bore the unmistakable brand of the gin-shop, and the
children were visaged like debased monkeys. Occasionally a copper fell
to them, in return for which the choragus exclaimed 'Gord bless yer!'

Thyrza sat in her usual place by the window, now reading for a few
minutes, now dreaming. Lydia had some stockings to be darned; she
became at length so silent that her sister turned to look at her. Her
head had dropped forward. She slumbered for a few minutes, then started
to consciousness again, and laughed when she saw Thyrza regarding her.

'I suppose Mary'll be here directly?' she said. 'I'd better put this
work out of sight.' And as she began to spread the cloth, she asked:
'What'll you do whilst we're at chapel, Thyrza?'

'I think I'll go and have tea with Mrs. Grail; then I'll see if I dare
ask for a book.'

'You've made up your mind not to go out?'

'There was something I wanted to tell you. I met Mr. Ackroyd as I was
coming home last night. I told him I couldn't come out alone, and I
said I couldn't be sure whether you'd come or not.'

'But what a pity!' returned Lydia. 'You knew I was going to chapel. I'm
afraid he'll wait for us.'

'Yes, but I somehow didn't like to say we wouldn't go at all. What time
is he going to be there?'

'He said at six o'clock.'

'Would you mind just running out and telling him? Perhaps you'll be
going past with Mary, not long after?'

'That's a nice job you give me!' remarked Lydia, with a half smile.

'But I know you don't mind it, Lyddy. It isn't the first thing you've
done for me.'

It was said with so much _naivete_ that Lydia could not but laugh.

'I should like it much better if you'd go yourself,' she replied. 'But
I'm afraid it's no good asking.'

'Not a hit! And, Lyddy, I told Mr. Ackroyd that it would always be the
same. He understands now.'

The other made no reply.

'You won't be cross about it?'

'No, dear; there's nothing to be cross about. But I'm very sorry.'

The explanation passed in a tone of less earnestness than either would
have anticipated. They did not look at each other, and they dismissed
the subject as soon as possible. Then came two rings at the house-bell,
signifying the arrival of their visitor.

Mary Bower and Lydia had been close friends for four or five years, yet
they had few obvious points of similarity, and their differences were
marked enough. The latter increased; for Mary attached herself more
closely to religious observances, whilst Lydia continued to declare
with native frankness that she could not feel it incumbent upon her to
give grave attention to such matters. Mary grieved over this attitude
in one whose goodness of heart she could not call in question; it
troubled her as an inconsequence in nature; she cherished a purpose of
converting Lydia, and had even brought herself to the point of hoping
that some sorrow might befall her friend--nothing of too sad a nature,
but still a grief which might turn her thoughts inward. Yet, had
anything of the kind come to pass, Mary would have been the first to
hasten with consolation.

Thyrza went downstairs, and the two gossiped as tea was made ready.
Mary had already heard of the incident at the 'Prince Albert;' such a
piece of news could not be long in reaching Mrs. Bower's. She wished to
speak of it, yet was in uncertainty whether Lydia had already been
told. The latter was the first to bring forward the subject.

'It's quite certain she oughtn't to make a friend of that girl Totty,'
Mary said, with decision. 'You must insist that it is stopped, Lydia.'

'I shan't do any good that way,' replied the other, shaking her head.
'I lost my temper last night, like a silly, and of course only harm
came of it.'

'But there's no need to lose your temper. You must tell her she's _not_
to speak to the girl again, and there's an end of it!'

'Thyrza's too old for that, dear. I must lead her by kindness, or I
can't lead her at all. I don't think, though, she'll ever do such a
thing as that again. I know what a temptation it was; she does sing so
sweetly. But she won't do it again now she knows how I think about it.'

Mary appeared doubtful. Given a suggestion of iniquity, and it was her
instinct rather to fear than to hope. Secretly she had no real liking
for Thyrza; something in that complex nature repelled her. As she
herself had said: 'Thyrza was not easy to understand,' but she did
understand that the girl's essential motives were of a kind radically
at enmity with her own. Thyrza, it seemed to her, was worldly in the
most hopeless way.

'You'll be sorry for it if you're not firm,' she remarked.

Lydia made no direct reply, but after a moment's musing she said:

'If only she could think of Mr. Ackroyd!'

She had not yet spoken so plainly of this to Mary; the latter was
surprised by the despondency of her tone.

'But I thought they were often together?'

'She's only been out with him when I went as well, and last night she
told him it was no use.'

'Well, I can't say I'm sorry to hear that,' Mary replied with the air
of one who spoke an unpleasant truth.

'Why not, Mary?'

'I think he's likely to do her every bit as much harm as Totty
Nancarrow.'

'What _do_ you mean, Mary?' There was a touch of indignation in Lydia's
voice. 'What harm can Mr. Ackroyd do to Thyrza?'

'Not the kind of harm you're thinking of, dear. But if I had a sister I
know I shouldn't like to see her marry Mr. Ackroyd. He's got no
religion, and what's more he's always talking against religion. Father
says he made a speech last week at that place in Westminster Bridge
Road where the Atheists have their meetings. I don't deny there's
something nice about him, but I wouldn't trust a man of that kind.'

Lydia delayed her words a little. She kept her eyes on the table; her
forehead was knitted.

'I can't help what he thinks about religion,' she replied at length,
with firmness. 'He's a good man, I'm quite sure of that.'

'Lydia, he can't be good if he does his best to ruin people's souls.'

'I don't know anything about that, Mary. Whatever he says, he says
because he believes it and thinks it right. Why, there's Mr. Grail
thinks in the same way, I believe; at all events, he never goes to
church or chapel. And he's a friend of Mr. Ackroyd's.'

'But we don't know anything about Mr. Grail.'

'We don't know much, but it's quite enough to talk to him for a few
minutes to know he's a man that wouldn't say or do anything wrong.'

'He must be a wonderful man, Lydia.'

These Sunday conversations were always fruitful of trouble. Mary was
prepared by her morning and afternoon exercises to be more aggressive
and uncompromising than usual. But the present difficulty appeared a
graver one than any that had yet risen between them. Lydia had never
spoken in the tone which marked her rejoinder:

'Really, Mary, it's as if you couldn't put faith in no one! You know I
don't feel the same as you do about religion and such things, and I
don't suppose I ever shall. When I like people, I like them; I can't
ask what they believe and what they don't believe. We'd better not talk
about it any more.'

Mary's face assumed rather a hard look.

'Just as you like, my dear,' she said.

There ensued an awkward silence, which Lydia at length broke by speech
on some wholly different subject. Mary with difficulty adapted herself
to the change; tea was finished rather uncomfortably.

It was six o'clock. Lydia, hearing the hour strike, knew that Ackroyd
would be waiting at the end of Walnut Tree Walk. She was absent-minded,
halting between a desire to go at once, and tell him that they could
not come, and a disinclination not perhaps very clearly explained. The
minutes went on. It seemed to be decided for her that he should learn
the truth by their failure to join him.

Church bells began to sound. Mary rose and put on her hat, then, taking
up the devotional books she had with her, offered her hand as if to say
good-bye.

'But,' said Lydia in surprise, 'I'm going with you.'

'I didn't suppose you would,' the other returned quietly.

'But haven't you had tea with me?'

Mary had not now to learn that her friend held a promise inviolable;
her surprise would have been great if Lydia had allowed her to go forth
alone. She smiled.

'Will there be nice singing?' Lydia asked, as she prepared herself
quickly. 'I do really like the singing, at all events, Mary.'

The other shook her head, sadly.

They left the house and turned towards Kennington Road. Before Lydia
had gone half a dozen steps she saw that Ackroyd was waiting at the end
of the street. She felt a pang of self-reproach; it was wrong of her to
have allowed him to stand in miserable uncertainty all this time; she
ought to have gone out at six o'clock. In a low voice she said to her
companion:

'There's Mr. Ackroyd. I want just to speak a word to him. If you'll go
on when we get up, I'll soon overtake you.'

Mary acquiesced in silence. Lydia, approaching, saw disappointment on
the young man's face. He raised his hat to her--an unwonted attention
in these parts--and she gave him her hand.

'I'm going to chapel,' she said playfully.

He had a sudden hope.

'Then your sister'll come out?'

'No, Mr. Ackroyd; she can't to-night. She's having tea with Mrs. Grail.'

He looked down the street. Lydia was impelled to say earnestly:

'Some time, perhaps! Thyrza is very young yet, Mr. Ackroyd. She thinks
of such different things.'

'What does she think of?' he asked, rather gloomily.

'I mean she--she must get older and know you better. Good-bye! Mary
Bower is waiting for me.'

She ran on, and Ackroyd sauntered away without a glance after her.




CHAPTER VI

DISINHERITED


When Thyrza left the two at tea and went downstairs, she knocked at the
door of the front parlour on the ground floor. The room which she
entered was but dimly lighted; thick curtains encroached upon each side
of the narrow window, which was also shadowed above by a valance with
long tassels, whilst in front of it stood a table with a great pot of
flowering musk. The atmosphere was close; with the odour of the plant
blended the musty air which comes from old and neglected furniture.
Mrs. Grail, Gilbert Grail's mother, was an old lady with an unusual
dislike for the upset of household cleaning, and as her son's
prejudice, like that of most men, tended in the same direction, this
sitting-room, which they used in common, had known little disturbance
since they entered it a year and a half ago. Formerly they had occupied
a house in Battersea; it was given up on the death of Gilbert's sister,
and these lodgings taken in Walnut Tree Walk.

A prominent object in the room was a bookcase, some six feet high,
quite full of books, most of them of shabby exterior. They were
Gilbert's purchases at second-hand stalls during the past fifteen
years. Their variety indicated a mind of liberal intelligence. Works of
history and biography predominated, but poetry and fiction were also
represented on the shelves. Odd volumes of expensive publications
looked forth plaintively here and there, and many periodical issues
stood unbound.

Another case, a small one with glass doors, contained literature of
another order--some thirty volumes which had belonged to Gilbert's
father, and were now his mother's peculiar study. They were
translations of sundry works of Swedenborg, and productions put forth
by the Church of the New Jerusalem. Mrs. Grail was a member of that
church. She occasionally visited a meeting-place in Brixton, but for
the most part was satisfied with conning the treatises of the mystic,
by preference that on 'Heaven and Hell,' which she read in the first
English edition, an old copy in boards, much worn.

She was a smooth-faced, gentle-mannered woman, not without dignity as
she rose to receive Thyrza and guided her to a comfortable seat. Her
voice was habitually subdued to the limit of audibleness; she spoke
with precision, and in language very free from vulgarisms either of
thought or phrase. Her taste had always been for a home-keeping life;
she dreaded gossipers, and only left the house when it was absolutely
necessary, then going forth closely veiled. With the landlady she held
no more intercourse than arose from the weekly payment of rent; the
other lodgers in the house only saw her by chance on rare occasions.
Her son left home and returned with much regularity, he also seeming to
desire privacy above all things. Mrs. Jarmey had at first been disposed
to take this reserve somewhat ill. When she knocked at Mrs. Grail's
door on some paltry excuse for seeing the inside of the room, and found
that the old lady exchanged brief words with her on the threshold, she
wondered who these people might be who thought themselves too good for
wonted neighbourship. In time, however, her feeling changed, and she
gave everybody to understand that her ground-floor lodgers were of the
highest respectability, inmates such as did not fall to the lot of
every landlady.

Gilbert was surprised when, of her own motion, his mother made
overtures to the sisters who lived at the top of the house. Neither
Lydia nor Thyrza was at first disposed to respond very warmly; they
agreed that the old lady was doubtless very respectable, but, at the
same time, decidedly queer in her way of speaking. But during the past
few months they had overcome this reluctance, and were now on a certain
footing of intimacy with Mrs. Grail, who made it no secret that she
took great interest in Thyrza. Thyrza always entered the sitting-room
with a feeling of awe. The dim light, the old lady's low voice, above
all, the books--in her eyes a remarkable library--impressed her
strongly. If Grail himself were present, he was invariably reading;
Thyrza held him profoundly learned, a judgment confirmed by his
mother's way of speaking of him. For Mrs. Grail regarded her son with
distinct reverence. He, in turn, was tenderly respectful to her; they
did not know what it was to exchange an unkind or an impatient word.

Thyrza liked especially to have tea here on Sunday. The appointments of
the table seemed to her luxurious, for the tea-service was uniform and
of pretty, old-fashioned pattern, and simple little dainties of a kind
new to her were generally forthcoming. Moreover, from her entrance to
her leave-taking, she was flattered by the pleasantest attentions. The
only other table at which she sometimes sat as a guest was Mrs.
Bower's; between the shopkeeper's gross good-nature and the
well-mannered kindness of Mrs. Grail there was a broad distinction, and
Thyrza was very ready to appreciate it. For she was sensible of
refinements; numberless little personal delicacies distinguished her
from the average girl of her class, and even from Lydia. The meals
which she and her sister took in their own room might be ever so poor;
they were always served with a modest grace which perhaps would not
have marked them if it had depended upon Lydia alone. In this respect,
as in many others, Thyrza had repaid her sister's devotion with subtle
influences tending to a comely life.

Once, when she had gone down alone to have tea, she said to Lydia on
her return. 'Downstairs they treat me as if I was a lady,' and it was
spoken with the simple satisfaction which was one of her charming
traits.

Till quite lately Gilbert had scarcely conversed with her at all. When
he broke his habitual silence he addressed himself to Lydia; if he did
speak to the younger girl it was with studied courtesy and kindness,
but he seemed unable to overcome a sort of shyness with which she had
troubled him since the beginning of their acquaintance. It was
noticeable in his manner this evening when he shook hands with a
murmured word or two. Thyrza, however, appeared a little less timid
than usual; she just met his look, and in a questioning way which he
could not understand at the time. The truth was, Thyrza wondered
whether he had heard of her escapade of the night before; she tried to
read his expression, searching for any hint of disapproval.

The easy chair was always given to her when she entered. So seldom she
sat on anything easier than the stiff cane-bottomed seats of her own
room that this always seemed luxurious. By degrees she had permitted
herself to lean back in it. She did so want Lyddy to know what it was
like to sit in that chair; but it had never yet been possible to effect
an exchange. It might have offended Mrs. Grail, a thing on no account
to be risked.

'Lyddy has Mary Bower to tea,' she said on her arrival this evening.
'They're going to chapel. You don't mind me coming alone, Mrs. Grail?'

'You're never anything but welcome, my dear,' murmured the old lady,
pressing the little hand in both her own.

Tea was soon ready. Mrs. Grail talked with pleasant continuousness, as
usual. She had fallen upon reminiscences, and spoke of Lambeth as she
had known it when a girl; it was her birthplace, and through life she
had never strayed far away. She regarded the growth of population, the
crowding of mean houses where open spaces used to be, the whole change
of times in fact, as deplorable. One would have fancied from her
descriptions that the Lambeth of sixty years ago was a delightful
rustic village.

After tea Thyrza resumed the low chair and folded her hands, full of
contentment. Mrs. Grail took the tea-things from the room and was
absent about a quarter of an hour. Thyrza, left alone with the man who
for her embodied so many mysteries, let her eyes stray over the
bookshelves. She felt it very unlikely that any book there would be
within the compass of her understanding; doubtless they dealt with the
secrets of learning--the strange, high things for which her awed
imagination had no name. Gilbert had seated himself in a shadowed
corner; his face was bent downwards. Just when Thyrza was about to put
some timid question with regard to the books, he looked at her and said:

'Do you ever go to Westminster Abbey?'

The intellectual hunger of his face was softened; he did not smile, but
kept a mild gravity of expression which showed that he had a pleasure
in the girl's proximity. When he had spoken he stroked his forehead
with the tips of his fingers, a nervous action.

'I've never been inside,' Thyrza made answer. 'What is there to see?'

'It's the place, you know, where great men have been buried for
hundreds of years. I should like, if I could, to spend a little time
there every day.'

'Can you see the graves?' Thyrza asked.

'Yes, many. And on the stones you read who they were that lie there.
There are the graves of kings, and of men much greater than kings.'

'Greater than kings! Who were they, Mr. Grail?'

She had rested her elbow on the arm of the chair, and her fingers just
touched her chin. She regarded him with a gaze of deep curiosity.

'Men who wrote books,' he answered, with a slight smile.

Thyrza dropped her eyes. In her thought of books it had never occurred
to her that any special interest could attach to the people who wrote
them; indeed, she had perhaps never asked herself how printed matter
came into existence. Even among the crowd of average readers we know
how commonly a book will be run through without a glance at its
title-page.

Gilbert continued:

'I always come away from the Abbey with fresh courage. If I'm tired and
out of spirits, I go there, and it makes me feel as if I daren't waste
a minute of the time when I'm free to try and learn something.'

It was a strange impulse that made him speak in this way to an untaught
child. With those who were far more likely to understand him he was the
most reticent of men.

'But you know a great deal, Mr. Grail,' Thyrza said with surprise,
looking again at the bookshelves.

'You mustn't think that. I had very little teaching when I was a lad,
and ever since I've had very little either of time or means to teach
myself. If I only knew those few books well, it would be something, but
there are some of them I've never got to yet.'

'Those _few_ books!' Thyrza exclaimed. 'But I never thought anybody had
so many, before I came into this room.'

'I should like you to see the library at the British Museum. Every book
that is published in England is sent there. There's a large room where
people sit and study any book they like, all day long, and day after
day. Think what a life that must be!'

'Those are rich people, I suppose,' Thyrza remarked. 'They haven't to
work for their living.'

'Not rich, all of them. But they haven't to work with their hands.'

He became silent. In his last words there was a little bitterness.
Thyrza glanced at him; he seemed to have forgotten her presence, and
his face had the wonted look of trouble kept under.

Then Mrs. Grail returned. She sat down near Thyrza, and, after a little
more of her pleasant talk, said, turning to her son:

'Could you find something to read us. Gilbert?'

He thought for a moment, then reached down a book of biographies,
writing of a popular colour, not above Thyrza's understanding. It
contained a life of Sir Thomas More, or rather a pleasant story founded
upon his life, with much about his daughter Margaret.

'Yes, that'll do nicely,' was Mrs. Grail's opinion.

He began with a word or two of explanation to Thyrza, then entered upon
the narrative. As soon as the proposal was made, Thyrza's face had
lighted up with pleasure; she listened intently, leaning a little
forward in her chair, her hands folded together. Gilbert, if he raised
his eyes from the page, did not look at her. Mrs. Grail interrupted
once or twice with a question or a comment. The reading was good;
Gilbert's voice gave life to description and conversation, and supplied
an interest even where the writer was in danger of growing dull.

When the end was reached, Thyrza recovered herself with the sigh which
follows strained attention. But she was not in a mood to begin
conversation again; her mind had got something to work upon, it would
keep her awake far into the night with a succession of half-realised
pictures. What a world was that of which a glimpse had been given her!
Here, indeed, was something remote from her tedious life. Her brain was
full of vague glories, of the figures of kings and queens, of courtiers
and fair ladies, of things nobly said and done; and her heart throbbed
with indignation at wrongs greater than any she had ever imagined. When
it had all happened she knew not; surely very long ago! But the names
she knew, Chelsea, Lambeth, the Tower--these gave a curiously fantastic
reality to the fairy tale. And one thing she saw with uttermost
distinctness: that boat going down the stream of Thames, and the dear,
dreadful head dropped into it from the arch above. She would go and
stand on the bridge and think of it.

Ah, she must tell Lyddy all that! Better still, she must read it to
her. She found courage to say:

'Could you spare that book, Mr. Grail? Could you lend it me for a day
or two? I'd be very careful with it.'

'I shall be very glad to lend it you,' Gilbert answered. His voice
changed somehow from that in which he usually spoke.

She received it from him and held it on her lap with both hands. She
would not look into it till alone in her room; and, having secured it,
she did not wish to stay longer.

'Going already?' Mrs. Grail said, seeing her rise.

'Lyddy 'll be back very soon,' was the reply. 'I think I'd better go
now.'

She shook hands with both of them, and they heard her run up the
thin-carpeted stairs.

Mother and son sat in silence for some minutes. Gilbert had taken
another book, and seemed to be absorbed in it; Mrs. Grail had a face of
meditation. Occasionally she looked upwards, as though on the track of
some memory which she strove to make clear.

'Gilbert,' she began at length, suggestively.

He raised his eyes and regarded her in an absent way.

'I've been trying for a long time to remember what that child's face
reminded me of. Every time I see her, I make sure I've seen someone
like her before, and now I think I've got it.'

Gilbert was used to a stream of amusing fancifulness in his mother;
analysis and resemblances were dear to her; possibly the Biblical
theories which she had imbibed were in some degree answerable for the
characteristic.

'And who does she remind you of?' he asked.

'Of somebody whose name I can't think of. You remember the school in
Lambeth Road where Lizzie used to go?'

She referred to a time five-and-twenty years gone by, when Gilbert's
sister was a child. He nodded.

'It was Mrs. Green's school, you know, and soon after Lizzie began to
go, there was an assistant teacher taken on. Now can you think what her
name was? You must remember that Lizzie used to walk home along with
her almost every day. Miss--, Miss--. Oh, dear me, what _was_ that
name?'

Gilbert smiled and shook his head.

'I can't help you, mother. I don't even remember any such thing.'

'What a poor memory you have in ordinary things, Gilbert! I wonder at
it, with your mind for study.'

'But what's the connection?'

'Why, Thyrza has got her very face. It's just come to me. I'm sure that
was her mother.'

'But how impossible that you should have that woman's face still in
your mind!' Gilbert protested, good-humouredly.

'My dear, don't be so hasty. It's as clear to me as if Lizzie had just
come in and said, "Miss Denny brought me home." Why, there _is_ the
name! It fell from my tongue! To be sure; Miss Denny! A pale,
sad-looking little thing, she was. Often and often I've been at the
window and seen her coming along the street hand in hand with your
sister. Now I'll ask Thyrza if her mother's name wasn't Denny, and if
she didn't teach at Mrs. Green's school. Depend upon it, I'm right,
Gilbert!'

Gilbert still smiled very incredulously.

'It'll be a marvellous thing if it turns out to be true,' he said.

'Oh, but I have a wonderful memory for faces. I always used to think
there was something very good in that teacher's look. I don't think I
ever spoke to her, though she went backwards and forwards past our
house in Brook Street for nearly two years. Then I didn't see her any
more. Depend upon it, she went away to be married. Lizzie had left a
little before that. Oh yes, it explains why I seemed to know Thyrza the
first time I saw her.'

Mrs. Grail was profoundly satisfied. Again a short silence ensued.

'How nicely they keep themselves!' she resumed, half to herself. 'I'm
sure Lydia's one of the most careful girls I ever knew. But Thyrza's my
favourite. How she enjoyed your reading, Gilbert!'

He nodded, but kept his attention on the book. His mother just glanced
at him, and presently continued:

'I do hope she won't be spoilt. She is very pretty, isn't she? But
they're not girls for going out much, I can see. And Thyrza's always
glad when I ask her to come and have tea with us. I suppose they
haven't many friends.'

It was quite against Mrs. Grail's wont to interrupt thus when her son
had settled down to read. Gilbert averted his eyes from the page, and,
after reflecting a little, said:

'Ackroyd knows them.'

His mother looked at him closely. He seemed to be absorbed again.

'Does he speak to you about them, Gilbert?'

'He's mentioned them once or twice.'

'Perhaps that's why Lydia goes out to chapel,' the old lady said, with
a smile.

'No, I don't think so.'

The reply was so abrupt, so nearly impatient, that Mrs. Grail made an
end of her remarks. In a little while she too began to read.

They had supper at nine; at ten o'clock Mrs. Grail kissed her son's
forehead and bade him good-night, adding, 'Don't sit long, my dear.'
Every night she took leave of him with the same words, and they were
not needless. Gilbert too often forgot the progress of time, and spent
in study the hours which were demanded for sleep.

His daily employment was at a large candle and soap factory. By such
work he had earned his living for more than twenty years. As a boy, he
had begun with wages of four shillings a week, his task being to trim
with a knife the rough edges of tablets of soap just stamped out. By
degrees he had risen to a weekly income of forty shillings,
occasionally increased by pay for overtime. Beyond this he was not
likely to get. Men younger than he had passed him, attaining the
position of foreman and the like; some had earned money by inventions
which they put at the service of their employers; but Gilbert could
hope for nothing more than the standing of a trustworthy mechanic, who,
as long as he keeps his strength, can count on daily bread. His heart
was not in his work; it would have been strange if he had thriven by an
industry which was only a weariness to him.

His hours were from six in the morning to seven at night. Ah, that
terrible rising at five o'clock, when it seemed at first as if he must
fall back again in sheer anguish of fatigue, when his eyeballs throbbed
to the light and the lids were as if weighted with iron, when the
bitterness of the day before him was like poison in his heart! He could
not live as his fellow-workmen did, coming home to satisfy his hunger
and spend a couple of hours in recreation, then to well-earned sleep.
Every minute of freedom, of time in which he was no longer a machine
but a thinking and desiring man, he held precious as fine gold. How
could he yield to heaviness and sleep, when books lay open before him,
and Knowledge, the goddess of his worship, whispered wondrous promises?
To Gilbert, a printed page was as the fountain of life; he loved
literature passionately, and hungered to know the history of man's mind
through all the ages. This distinguished him markedly from the not
uncommon working man who zealously pursues some chosen branch of study.
Such men ordinarily take up subjects of practical bearing; physical
science is wont to be their field; or if they study history it is from
the point of view of current politics. Taste for literature pure and
simple, and disinterested love of historical search, are the rarest
things among the self-taught; naturally so, seeing how seldom they come
of anything but academical tillage of the right soil. The average man
of education is fond of literature because the environment of his
growth has made such fondness a second nature. Gilbert had conceived
his passion by mere grace. It had developed in him slowly. At twenty
years he was a young fellow of seemingly rather sluggish character,
without social tendencies, without the common ambitions of his class,
much given to absence of mind. About that time he came across one of
the volumes of the elder D'Israeli, and, behold, he had found himself.
Reading of things utterly unknown to him, he was inspired with strange
delights; a mysterious fascination drew him on amid names which were
only a sound; a great desire was born in him, and its object was seen
in every volume that met his eye. Had he then been given means and
leisure, he would have become at the least a man of noteworthy
learning. No such good fortune awaited him. Daily his thirteen hours
went to the manufacture of candles, and the evening leisure, with one
free day in the week, was all he could ever hope for.

At five-and-twenty he had a grave illness. Insufficient rest and
ceaseless trouble of spirit brought him to death's door. For a long
time it seemed as if he must content himself with earning his bread. He
had no right to call upon others to bear the burden of his needs. His
brother; a steady hard-headed mechanic, who was doing well in the
Midlands and had just married, spoke to him with uncompromising common
sense; if he chose to incapacitate himself, he must not look to his
relatives to support him. Silently Gilbert acquiesced; silently he went
back to the factory, and, when he came home of nights, sat with eyes
gazing blankly before him. His mother lived with him, she and his
sister; the latter went out to work; all were dependent upon the wages
of the week. Nearly a year went by, during which Gilbert did not open a
book. It was easier for him, he said, not to read at all than to
measure his reading by the demands of his bodily weakness. He would
have sold his handful of books, sold them in sheer bitterness of mind,
but this his mother interfered to prevent.

But he could not live so. There was now a danger that the shadow of
misery would darken into madness, Little by little he resumed his
studious habits, yet with prudence. At thirty his bodily strength
seemed to have consolidated itself; if he now and then exceeded the
allotted hours at night, he did not feel the same evil results as
formerly. His sister was a very dear companion to him; she had his own
tastes in a simpler form, and woman's tact enabled her to draw him into
the repose of congenial talk when she and her mother were troubled by
signs of overwork in him. He purchased a book as often as he could
reconcile himself to the outlay, and his knowledge grew, though he
seemed to himself ever on the mere threshold of the promised land,
hopeless of admission.

Then came his sister's death, and the removal from Battersea back to
Lambeth. Henceforth it would be seldomer than ever that he could devote
a shilling to the enrichment of his shelves. When both he and Lizzie
earned wages, the future did not give much trouble, but now all
providence was demanded. His brother in the Midlands made contribution
towards the mother's support, but Henry had a family of his own, and it
was only right that Gilbert should bear the greater charge. Gilbert was
nearing five-and-thirty.

By nature he was a lonely man. Amusement such as his world offered had
always been savourless to him, and he had never sought familiar
fellowship beyond his home. Even there it often happened that for days
he kept silence; he would eat his meal when he came from work, then
take his book to a corner, and be mute, answering any needful question
with a gesture or the briefest word. At such times his face had the
lines of age; you would have deemed him a man weighed upon by some vast
sorrow. And was he not? His life was speeding by; already the best
years were gone, the years of youth and force and hope--nay, hope he
could not be said to have known, unless it were for a short space when
first the purpose of his being dawned upon consciousness; and the end
of that had been bitter enough. The purpose he knew was frustrated. The
'Might have been,' which is 'also called No more, Too late, Farewell,'
often stared him in the eyes with those unchanging orbs of ghastliness,
chilling the flow of his blood and making life the cruellest of
mockeries. Yet he was not driven to that kind of resentment which makes
the revolutionary spirit. His personality was essentially that of a
student; conservative instincts were stronger in him than the misery
which accused his fortune. A touch of creative genius, and you had the
man whose song would lead battle against the hoary iniquities of the
world. That was denied him; he could only eat his own heart in despair,
his protest against the outrage of fate a desolate silence.

A lonely man, yet a tender one. The capacity of love was not less in
him than the capacity of knowledge. Yet herein too he was wronged by
circumstance. In youth an extreme shyness held him from intercourse
with all women save his mother and his sister; he was conscious of his
lack of ease in dialogue, of an awkwardness of manner and an
unattractiveness of person. On summer evenings, when other young
fellows were ready enough in finding companions for their walk, Gilbert
would stray alone in the quietest streets until he tired himself; then
go home and brood over fruitless longings. In love, as afterwards in
study, he had his ideal; sometimes he would catch a glimpse of some
face in the street at night, and would walk on with the feeling that
his happiness had passed him--if only he could have turned and pursued
it! In all women he had supreme faith; that one woman whom his heart
imagined was a pure and noble creature, with measureless aspiration,
womanhood glorified in her to the type of the upward striving soul--she
did not come to him; his life remained chaste and lonely.

Neither had he friends. There were at all times good fellows to be
found among those with whom he worked, but again his shyness held him
apart, and indeed he felt that intercourse with them would afford him
but brief satisfaction. Occasionally some man more thoughtful than the
rest would be drawn to him by curiosity, but, finding himself met with
so much reserve, involuntary in Gilbert, would become doubtful and turn
elsewhither for sympathy. Yet in this respect Grail improved as time
went on; as his character ripened, he was readier to gossip now and
then of common things with average associates. He knew, however, that
he was not much liked, and this naturally gave a certain coldness to
his behaviour. Perhaps the very first man for whom he found himself
entertaining something like warmth of kindness was Luke Ackroyd.
Ackroyd came to the factory shortly after Gilbert had gone to live in
Walnut Tree Walk, and in the course of a few weeks the two had got into
the habit of walking their common way homewards together. As might have
been anticipated, it was a character very unlike his own which had at
length attached Gilbert. To begin with, Ackroyd was pronounced in
radicalism, was aggressive and at times noisy; then, he was far from
possessing Grail's moral stability, and did not care to conceal his
ways of amusing himself; lastly, his intellectual tastes were of the
scientific order. Yet Gilbert from the first liked him; he felt that
there was no little good in the fellow, if only it could be fostered at
the expense of his weaker characteristics. Yet those very weaknesses
had much to do with his amiability. This they had in common: both
aspired to something that fortune had denied them. Ackroyd had his idea
of a social revolution, and, though it seemed doubtful whether he was
exactly the man to claim a larger sphere for the energies of his class,
his thought often had genuine nobleness, clearly recognisable by
Gilbert. Ackroyd had brain-power above the average, and it was his
right to strive for a better lot than the candle-factory could assure
him. So Grail listened with a smile of much indulgence to the young
fellow's fuming against the order of things, and if he now and then put
in a critical remark was not sorry to have it scornfully swept aside
with a flood of vehement words. He felt, perchance, that a share of
such vigour might have made his own existence more fruitful.

This was Gilbert Grail at the time with which we are now concerned. His
mother believed that she had discovered in him something of a new mood
of late, a tendency to quiet cheerfulness, and she attributed it in
part to the healthfulness of intercourse with a friend; partly she
assigned to it another reason. But her assumption did not receive much
proof from Gilbert's demeanour when left alone in the sitting-room this
Sunday night. Since Thyrza's departure, he had in truth only made
pretence of reading, and now that his mother was gone, he let the book
fall from his hands. His countenance was fixed in a supreme sadness,
his lips were tightly closed, and at times moved, as if in the
suppression of pain. Hopelessness in youth, unless it be justified by
some direst ruin of the future, is wont to touch us either with
impatience or with a comforting sense that reaction is at hand; in a
man of middle age it moves us with pure pathos. The sight of Gilbert as
he sat thus motionless would have brought tears to kindly eyes. The
past was a burden on his memory, the future lay before him like a long
road over which he must wearily toil--the goal, frustration. To-night
he could not forget himself in the thoughts of other men. It was one of
the dread hours, which at intervals came upon him, when the veil was
lifted from the face of destiny, and he was bidden gaze himself into
despair. At such times he would gladly have changed beings with the
idlest and emptiest of his fellow-workmen; their life might be ignoble,
but it had abundance of enjoyment. To him there came no joy, nor ever
would. Only when he lay in his last sleep would it truly be said of him
that he rested.

At twelve o'clock he rose; he had no longing for sleep, but in five
hours the new week would have begun, and he must face it with what
bodily strength he might. Before entering his bedroom, which was next
to the parlour, he went to the house-door and opened it quietly. A soft
rain was falling. Leaving the door ajar, he stepped out into the street
and looked up to the top windows. There was no light behind the blinds.
As if satisfied, he went hack into the house and to his room.

The factory was at so short a distance from Walnut Tree Walk that
Gilbert was able to come home for breakfast and dinner. When he entered
at mid-day on Monday, his mother pointed to a letter on the
mantel-piece. He examined the address, and was at a loss to recognise
the writing.

'Who's this from, I wonder?' he said, as he opened the envelope.

He found a short letter, and a printed slip which looked like a
circular. The former ran thus:


'Sir,--I am about to deliver a course of evening lectures on a period
of English Literature in a room which I have taken for the purpose,
No.--High Street, Lambeth. I desire to have a small audience, not more
than twenty, consisting of working men who belong to Lambeth.
Attendance will be at my invitation, of course without any kind of
charge. You have been mentioned to me as one likely to be interested in
the subject I propose to deal with. I permit myself to send you a
printed syllabus of the course, and to say that it will give me great
pleasure if you are able to attend. I should like to arrange for two
lectures weekly, each of an hour's duration; the days I leave
undecided, also the hour, as I wish to adapt these to the convenience
of my hearers. If you feel inclined to give thought to the matter, will
you meet me at the lecture-room at eight o'clock on the evening of
Sunday, August 16, when we could discuss details? The lectures
themselves had better, I should think, begin with the month of
September.

'Reply to this is unnecessary; I hope to have the pleasure of meeting
you on the 16th.--Believe me to be yours very truly,

'WALTER EGREMONT.'


'Ah, this is what Ackroyd was speaking of on Saturday,' Gilbert
remarked, holding the letter to his mother. 'I wonder what it means.'

'Who is this Mr. Egremont?' asked Mrs. Grail.

'He belongs to the firm of Egremont & Pollard, so Ackroyd tells me. You
know that big factory in Westminster Bridge Road--where they make
oil-cloth.'

Gilbert was perusing the printed syllabus; it interested him, and he
kept it by his plate when he sat down to dinner.

'Do you think of going?' his mother inquired.

'Well, I should like to, if the lectures are good. I suppose he's a
young fellow fresh from college. He may have something to say, and he
may be only conceited; there's no knowing. Still, I don't dislike the
way he writes. Yes, I think I shall go and have a look at him, at all
events.'

Gilbert finished his meal and walked back to the factory. Groups of men
were standing about in the sunshine, waiting for the bell to ring; some
talked and joked, some amused themselves with horse-play. The narrow
street was redolent with oleaginous matter; the clothing of the men was
penetrated with the same nauseous odour.

At a little distance from the factory, Ackroyd was sitting on a
door-step, smoking a pipe. Grail took a seat beside him and drew from
his pocket the letter he had just received.

'I've got one of them, too,' Luke observed with small show of interest.
There was an unaccustomed gloom on his face; he puffed at his pipe
rather sullenly.

'Who has told him our names and addresses?' Gilbert asked.

'Bower, no doubt.'

'But how comes Bower to know anything about me?'

'Oh, I've mentioned you sometimes.'

'Well, do you think of going?'

'No, I shan't go. It isn't at all in my line.'

Gilbert became silent.

'Something the matter?' he asked presently, as his companion puffed on
in the same gloomy way.

'A bit of a headache, that's all.'

His tone was unusual. Gilbert fixed his eyes on the pavement.

'It's easy enough to see what it means,' Ackroyd continued after a
moment, referring to Egremont's invitation. 'We shall be having an
election before long, and he's going to stand for Vauxhall. This is one
way of making himself known.'

'If I thought that,' said the other, musingly, 'I shouldn't go near the
place.'

'What else can it be?'

'I don't know anything about the man, but he may have an idea that he's
doing good.'

'If so, _that's_ quite enough to prevent me from going. What the devil
do I want with his help? Can't I read about English literature for
myself?'

'Well, I can't say that I have that feeling. A lecture may be a good
deal of use, if the man knows his subject well. But,' he added,
smiling, 'I suppose you object to him and his position?'

'Of course I do. What business has the fellow to have so much time that
he doesn't know what to do with it?'

'He might use it worse, anyhow.'

'I don't know about that. I'd rather he'd get a bad name, then it 'ud
be easier to abuse him, and he'd be more good in the end.'

Their eyes met. Gilbert's had a humorous expression, and Ackroyd
laughed in an unmirthful way. The factory bell rang; Gilbert rose and
waited for the other to accompany him. But Luke, after a struggle to
his feet, said suddenly:

'Work be hanged! I've had enough of it; I feel Mondayish, as we used to
say in Lancashire.'

'Aren't you coming, then?'

'No, I'll go and get drunk instead.'

'Come on, old man. No good in getting drunk,'

'Maybe I won't but I can't go back to work to-day. So long!'

With which vernacular leave-taking, he turned and strolled away. The
bell was clanging its last strokes; Gilbert hurried to the door, and
once more merged his humanity in the wage-earning machine.

Two days later, as he sat over his evening meal, Gilbert noticed that
his mother had something to say. She cast frequent glances at him; her
pursed lips seemed to await an opportune moment.

'Well, mother, what is it?' he said presently, with his wonted look of
kindness. By living so long together and in such close intercourse the
two had grown skilled in the reading of each other's faces.

'My dear,' she replied, with something of solemnity, 'I was perfectly
right. Miss Denny _was_ those girls' mother.'

'Nonsense!'

'But there's no doubt about it. I've asked Thyrza. She knows that was
her mother's name, and she knows that her mother was a teacher.'

'In that case I've nothing more to say. You're a wonderful old lady, as
I've often told you.'

'I have a good memory, Gilbert. You can't think how pleased I am that I
found out that. I feel more interest in them than ever. And the child
seemed so pleased too! She could scarcely believe that I'd known her
mother before she was born. She wants me to tell her and her sister all
I can remember. Now, isn't it nice?'

Gilbert smiled, but made no further remark. The evening silence set in.




CHAPTER VII

THE WORK IN PROGRESS


On the sheltered side of Eastbourne, just at the springing of the downs
as you climb towards Beachy Head, is a spacious and heavy-looking stone
house, with pillared porch, oriel windows on the ground floor of the
front, and a square turret rising above the fine row of chestnuts which
flanks the road. It was built some forty years ago, its only neighbours
then being a few rustic cottages; recently there has sprung up a suburb
of comely red-brick houses, linking it with the visitors' quarter of
Eastbourne. The builder and first proprietor, a gentleman whose dignity
derived from Mark Lane, called the house Odessa Lodge; at his death it
passed by purchase into the hands of people to whom this name seemed
something worse than inappropriate, and the abode was henceforth known
as The Chestnuts.

One morning early in November, three months after the date of that
letter which he addressed to Gilbert Grail and other working men of
Lambeth, our friend Egremont arrived from town at Eastbourne station
and was conveyed thence by fly to the house of which I speak. He
inquired for Mrs. Ormonde. That lady was not within, but would shortly
return from her morning drive. Egremont followed the servant to the
library and prepared to wait.

The room was handsomely furnished and more than passably supplied with
books, which inspection showed to be not only such as one expects to
find in the library of a country house, but to a great extent works of
very modern issue, arguing in their possessor the catholicity of taste
which our time encourages. The solid books which form the substratum of
every collection were brought together by Mr. Brook Ormonde, in the
first instance at his house in Devonshire Square; when failing health
compelled him to leave London, the town establishment was broken up,
and until his death, three years later, the family resided wholly at
The Chestnuts. During those years the library grew appreciably, for the
son of the house, Horace Ormonde, had just come forth from the academic
curriculum with a vast appetite for literature. His mother, moreover,
was of the women who read. Whilst Mr. Ormonde was taking a lingering
farewell of the world and its concerns, these two active minds were
busy with the fire-new thought of the scientific and humanitarian age.
Walter Egremont was then a frequent visitor of the house; he and Horace
talked many a summer night into dawn over the problems which nowadays
succeed measles and scarlatina as a form of youthful complaint. But
Horace Ormonde had even a shorter span of life before him than his
invalid father. He was drowned in bathing, and it was Egremont who had
to take the news up to The Chestnuts. A few months later, there was
another funeral from the house. Mrs. Ormonde remained alone.

It was in this room that Egremont had waited for the mother's coming,
that morning when he returned companionless from the beach. He was then
but two-and-twenty; big task was as terrible as a man can be called
upon to perform. Mrs. Ormonde had the strength to remember that; she
shed no tears, uttered no lamentations. When, after a few questions,
she was going silently from the room, Walter, his own eyes blinded,
caught her hand and pressed it passionately in both his own. She was
the woman whom he reverenced above all others, worshipping her with
that pure devotion which young men such as he are wont to feel for some
gracious lady much their elder. At that moment he would have given his
own life to the sea could he by so doing have brought her back the son
who would never return. Such moments do not come often to the best of
us, perhaps in very truth do not repeat themselves. Egremont never
entered the library without having that impulse of uttermost
unselfishness brought back vividly to his thoughts; on that account he
liked the room, and gladly spent a quiet half-hour in it.

In a little less than that Mrs. Ormonde returned from her breathing of
the sea air. At the door she was told of Egremont's arrival, and with a
look of pleased expectancy she went at once to the library.

Egremont rose from the fireside, and advanced with the quiet confidence
with which one greets only the dearest friends.

'So the sunshine has brought you,' she said, holding his hand for a
moment. 'We had a terrible storm in the night, and the morning is very
sweet after it. Had you arrived a very little sooner, you would have
been in time to drive with me.'

She was one of those women who have no need to soften their voice when
they would express kindness. Her clear and firm, yet sweet, tones
uttered with perfection a nature very richly and tenderly endowed.
During the past five years she had aged in appearance; the grief which
she would not expose had drawn its lines upon her features, and
something too of imperfect health was visible there. But her gaze was
the same as ever, large, benevolent, intellectual. In her presence
Egremont always felt a well-being, a peace of mind, which gave to his
own look its pleasantest quality. Of friends she was still, and would
ever be, the dearest to him. The thought of her approval was always
active with him when he made plans for fruitful work; he could not have
come before her with a consciousness of ignoble fault weighing upon his
mind.

She passed upstairs, and he followed more slowly. Behind the first
landing was a small conservatory; and there, amid evergreens, sat two
children whose appearance would have surprised a chance visitor knowing
nothing of the house and its mistress. They obviously came from some
very poor working-class home; their clothing was of the plainest
possible, and, save that they were very clean and in perfect order,
they might have been sitting on a doorstep in a London back street.
Mrs. Ormonde had thrown a kind word to them in hurrying by. At the
sight of Egremont they hushed their renewed talk and turned shamefaced
looks to the ground. He went on to the drawing-room, where there was
the same comfort and elegance as in the library. Almost immediately
Mrs. Ormonde joined him.

'So you want news!' she said, with her own smile, always a little sad,
always mingling tenderness with reserve on the firm lips. 'Really, I
told you everything essential in my letter. Annabel is in admirable
health, both of body and mind. She is deep in Virgil and Dante--what
more could you wish her? Her father, I am sorry to say, is not
altogether well. Indeed, I was guilty of doing my best to get him to
London for the winter.'

'Ah! That is something of which your letter made no mention.'

'No, for I didn't succeed. At least, he shook his head very
persistently.'

'I heartily wish you had succeeded. Couldn't you get help from
Annabel--Miss Newthorpe?'

'Never mind; let it be Annabel between us,' said Mrs. Ormonde, seating
herself near the fire. 'I tried to, but she was not fervent. All the
same, it is just possible, I think, that they may come. Mr. Newthorpe
needs society, however content he may believe himself. Annabel, to my
surprise, does really seem independent of such aids. How wonderfully
she has grown since I saw her two years ago! No, no, I don't mean
physically--though that is also true--but how her mind has grown! Even
her letters hadn't quite prepared me for what I found.'

Egremont was leaning on the back of a chair, his hands folded together.
He kept silence, and Mrs. Ormonde, with a glance at him, added:

'But she is something less than human at present. Probably that will
last for another year or so.'

'Less than human?'

'Abstract, impersonal. With the exception of her father, you were the
only living person of whom she voluntarily spoke to me.'

'She spoke of me?'

'Very naturally. Your accounts of Lambeth affair interest her deeply,
though again in rather too--what shall we call it?--too theoretical a
way. But that comes of her inexperience.'

'Still she at least speaks of me.'

Mrs. Ormonde could have made a discouraging rejoinder. She said nothing
for a moment, her eyes fixed on the fire. Then:

'But now for your own news.'

'What I have is unsatisfactory. A week ago the class suffered a
secession. You remember my description of Ackroyd?'

'Ackroyd? The young man of critical aspect?'

'The same. He has now missed two lectures, and I don't think he'll come
again.'

'Have you spoken to Bower about him?'

'No. The fact is, my impressions of Bower have continued to grow
unfavourable. Plainly, he cares next to nothing for the lectures. There
is a curious pomposity about him, too, which grates upon me. I
shouldn't have been at all sorry if he had been the seceder; he's bored
terribly, I know, yet he naturally feels bound to keep his place. But
I'm very sorry that Ackroyd has gone; he has brains, and I wanted to
get to know him. I shall not give him up; I must persuade him to come
and have a talk with me.'

'What of Mr. Grail?'

'Ah, Grail is faithful. Yes, Grail is the man of them all; that I am
sure of. I am going to ask him to stay after the lecture to-morrow. I
haven't spoken privately with him yet. But I think I can begin now to
establish nearer relations with two or three of them. I have been
lecturing for just a couple of months; they ought to know something of
me by this time, On the whole, I think I am succeeding. But if there is
one of them on whom I found great hopes, it is Grail. The first time I
saw him, I knew what a distinction there was between him and the
others. He seems to be a friend of Ackroyd's, too; I must try to get at
Ackroyd by means of him.'

'Is he--Grail, I mean--a married man?'

'I really don't know. Yet I should think so. I shouldn't be surprised
if he were unhappily married. Certainly there is some great trouble in
his life. Sometimes he looks terribly worn, quite ill.'

'And Mr. Bunce?' she asked, with a look of peculiar interest.

'Poor Bunce is also a good deal of a mystery to me. He, too, always
looks more or less miserable, and I'm afraid his interest is not very
absorbing. Still, he takes notes, and now and then even puts an
intelligent question.'

'He has not attacked you on the subject of religion yet.

'Oh, no! We still have that question to fight out. But of course I must
know him very well before I approach it. I think he bears me goodwill;
I caught him looking at me with a curious sort of cordiality the other
night.'

'I must have that little girl of his down again,' Mrs. Ormonde said. 'I
wonder whether she still reads that insufferable publication.
By-the-by, I found you had told them the story at Ullswater.'

'Yes. It came up _a propos_ of my scheme.'

A gong sounded down below.

'Twelve o'clock' remarked Mrs. Ormonde. 'My birds are going to their
dinner--poor little town sparrows! We'll let them get settled, then go
and have a peep at them--shall we?'

'Yes, I should like to see them--and,' he added pleasantly, 'to see the
look on your face when you watch them.'

'I have much to thank them for, Walter,' she said, earnestly. 'They
brighten many an hour when I should be unhappy.'

Presently Mrs. Ormonde led the way downstairs and to the rear of the
house. A room formerly devoted to billiards had been converted into a
homely but very bright refectory; it was hung round with cheerful
pictures, and before each of the two windows stood a large aquarium,
full of water-plants and fishes. At the table were seated seven little
girls, of ages from eight to thirteen, all poorly clad, yet all looking
remarkably joyous, and eating with much evidence of appetite. At the
head of the table was a woman of middle age and motherly aspect--Mrs.
Mapper. She had the superintendence of the convalescents whom the lady
of the house received and sent back to their homes in London better
physically and morally than they had ever been in their lives before.
The children did not notice that Mrs. Ormonde and her companion had
entered; they were chatting gaily over their meal. Now and then one of
them drew a gentle word of correction from Mrs. Mapper, but on the
whole they needed no rebuke. Those who had been longest in the house
speedily instructed new arrivals in the behaviour they had learned to
deem becoming. A girl waited at table. On that subject Mrs. Ormonde had
amusing stories to relate; how more than one servant had regretfully
but firmly declined to wait upon little ragamuffins (female, too), and
how one in particular had explained that she made no objection to doing
it only because she regarded it as a religious penance.

Egremont had his pleasure in regarding her face, nobly beautiful as she
moved her eyes from one to another of her poor little pensioners. She
had said at first that it would be impossible ever again to live in
this house, when she quitted it for a time after her husband's death.
How could she pass through the barren rooms, how dwell within sight and
sound of the treacherous waves which had taken her dearest? It was a
royal thought which converted the sad dwelling into a home for those
whose reawakening laughter would chide despondency from beneath the
roof; whose happiness would ease the heavy heart and make memory a
sacred solace. She had her abounding reward, and such as only the
greatly loving may attain to.

They withdrew without having excited attention; Mrs. Mapper saw them,
but Mrs. Ormonde made sign to her to say nothing.

'Two are upstairs, I'm sorry to say,' she remarked as they went back to
the drawing-room. 'They have obstinate colds; I keep them under the
bed-clothes. The difficulty these poor things have in getting rid of a
cold! With many of them I believe such a condition is chronic; it goes
on, I suppose, until they die of it.'

They talked together till luncheon time. Egremont led the conversation
back to Ullswater, where Mrs. Ormonde had just spent a fortnight.

'I think I must go and see them at Christmas,' he said, 'if they don't
come south.'

The other considered.

'Don't go so soon,' she said at length.

'So soon? It will be six mortal months.'

'Be advised.'

Egremont sighed and left the subject.

'Tell me what you have been doing of late,' Mrs. Ormonde resumed,
'apart from your lectures.'

'Very little of which any account can be rendered. I read a good deal,
and occasionally come across an acquaintance.'

'Have you seen the Tyrrells since they returned?'

'No. I had an invitation to dine with them the other day, but excused
myself.'

'On what grounds?'

'I mean to see less of people in general.'

Mrs. Ormonde regarded him.

'I hope,' she said, 'that you will pursue no such idea. You mean, of
course, that your Lambeth work is to be absorbing. Let it be so, but
don't fall into the mistake of making it your burden. You are not one
of those who can work in solitude.'

'I am getting a distaste for ordinary society.'

'Then I beg of you to resist the mood. Go into society freely. You are
in danger as soon as you begin to neglect it.'

'I, individually?'

'Yes.' She smiled at the deprecating look he turned on her. 'Let me be
your moral physician. Already I notice that you fall short of perfect
health: the refusal of that invitation is a symptom. Pray give faith to
what I say; if any one knows you, I think it is I.'

He kept silence. Mrs. Ormonde continued:

'I hear that the Tyrrells have made the acquaintance of Mr. Dalmaine.
Paula mentions him in a letter.'

'Ha! With enthusiasm probably?'

'No. They met him somewhere in Switzerland. He gave them the benefit of
his experience on the education question.'

'Of course. Well, I am prejudiced against the man, as you know.'

'He is a force. It looks as if we should hear a good deal of him in the
future.'

'Doubtless. The incarnate ideal of British philistinism is sure to have
a career before him.'

The lady laughed.

Early in the afternoon Egremont took leave of his friend and returned
to London. It was his habit when in England, to run down to Eastbourne
in this way about once a month.

Since the death of his father, his home had been represented by rooms
in Great Russell Street. He chose them on account of their proximity to
the British Museum; at that time he believed himself destined to
produce some monumental work of erudition: the subject had not defined
itself, but his thoughts were then busy with the origins of
Christianity, and it seemed to him that a study of certain Oriental
literatures would be fruitful of results. Characteristically, he must
establish himself at the very doors of the great Library. His Oriental
researches, as we know, were speedily abandoned, but the rooms in Great
Russell Street still kept their tenant. They were far from an ideal
abode, indifferently furnished, with draughty doors and smoky chimneys,
and the rent was exorbitant; the landlady, who speedily gauged her
lodger's character, had already made a small competency out of him.
Even during long absences abroad Egremont retained the domicile; at
each return he said to himself that he must really find quarters at
once more reputable and more homelike, but the thought of removing his
books, of dealing with new people, deterred him from the actual step.
In fact, was indifferent as to where or how he lived; all he asked was
the possibility of privacy. The ugliness of his surroundings did not
trouble him, for he paid no attention to them. Some day he would have a
beautiful home, but what use in thinking of that till he had someone to
share it with him? This was a mere _pied a terre_; it housed his body
and left his mind free.

The real home which he remembered was a house looking upon Clapham
Common. His father dwelt there for the last fifteen years of his life;
his mother died there, shortly after the removal from the small house
in Newington where she went to live upon her marriage. With much
tenderness Egremont thought of the clear-headed and warm-hearted man
whose life-long toil had made such provision for the son he loved.
Uneducated, homely, narrow enough in much of his thinking, the
manufacturer of oil-cloth must have had singular possibilities in his
nature to renew himself in a youth so apt for modern culture as Walter
was; thinking back in his maturity, the latter remembered many a
noteworthy trait in his father, and wished the old man could have lived
yet a few more years to see his son's work really beginning. And
Egremont often felt lonely. Possibly he had relatives living, but he
knew of none; in any case they could not now be of real account to him.
The country of his birth was far behind him; how far, he had recognised
since he began his lecturing in Lambeth. None the less, he at times
knew home-sickness: not seldom there seemed to be a gap between him and
the people born to refinement who were his associates, his friends.
That phase of feeling was rather strong in him just now; disguising
itself in the form of sundry plausible motives, it had induced him to
decline Mrs. Tyrrell's invitation, and was fostering his temporary
distaste for the society in which he had always found much pleasure.
What if in strictness he belonged to neither sphere? What if his life
were to be a struggle between inherited sympathies and the affinities
of his intellect? All the better, perchance, for his prospect of
usefulness; he stood as a mediator between two sections of society. But
for his private happiness, how?

He spent this evening very idly, sometimes pacing his large,
uncomfortable room, sometimes endeavouring to read one or other of
certain volumes new from the circulating library. Of late he had passed
many such evenings, for it was very seldom that any one came to see
him, and for the amusements of the town he had no inclination. He was
thinking much of Annabel; he could not imagine her other than calm,
intellectual; he could not hear her voice uttering passionate words. A
great change must come over her before her reserved maidenliness could
soften to such sweet humility.

And he had no faith in his power so to change her.

The next day was Thursday. This and Sunday were his lecture days; his
class met at half-past eight. Precisely at that hour he reached a small
doorway in High Street, Lambeth, and ascended a flight of stairs to a
room which he had furnished as he deemed most suitable. Several rows of
school-desks faced a high desk at which he stood to lecture. The walls
were washed in distemper, the boarding of the floor was uncovered, the
two windows were hidden with plain shutters. The room had formerly been
used for purposes of storage by a glass and china merchant; below was
the workshop of a saddler, which explained the pervading odour of
leather.

A little group of men stood in conversation near the fire; on
Egremont's appearance they seated themselves at the desks, each
producing a note-book which he laid open before him. Thus ranged they
were seen to be eight in number. Out of fourteen to whom invitations
were addressed, nine had presented themselves at the preliminary
meeting; one, we know, had since proved unfaithful. Egremont looked
round for Ackroyd on entering, but the young man was not here.

On the front bench were two men whom as yet you know only by name. Mr.
Bower was clearly distinguishable by his personal importance and the
_ennui_, not to be disguised, with which he listened to the opening
sentences of the lecture. He leaned against the desk behind him, and
carefully sharpened the point of his pencil. He was a large man with a
spade-shaped beard; his forehead was narrow, and owed its appearance of
height to incipient baldness; his eyes were small and shrewd. He
habitually donned his suit of black for these meetings. At the works,
where he held a foreman's position, he was in good repute: for years he
had proved himself skilful, steady, abundantly respectful to his
employers. In private life he enjoyed the fame of a petty capitalist;
since his marriage, thirty years ago, he and his wife had made it the
end of their existence to put by money, with the result that his
obsequiousness when at work was balanced by the blustering independence
of his leisure hours. The man was a fair instance of the way in which
prosperity affects the average proletarian; all his better
qualities--honesty, perseverance, sobriety--took an ignoble colour from
the essential vulgarity of his nature, which would never have so
offensively declared itself if ill fortune had kept him anxious about
his daily bread. Formerly Egremont had been impressed by his
intelligent manner; closer observation had proved to him of how little
worth this intelligence was, in its subordination to a paltry
character. Bower regarded himself as the originator of this course of
lectures; through all his obsequiousness it was easy to see that he
deemed his co-operation indispensable to the success of the project. At
first, as was natural, Egremont had sometimes seemed to address words
specially to him; of late he had purposely avoided doing so, and Bower
began to feel that his services lacked recognition.

The other, of whom there has been casual mention, was Joseph Bunce. Of
spare frame and with hollow cheeks which suggested insufficiency of
diet, he yet had far more of manliness in his appearance than the
portly Bower. You divined in him independence enough, and of worthier
origin than that which secretly inflated his neighbour. His features
were at first sight by no means pleasing; their coarseness was
undeniable, but familiarity revealed a sensitive significance in the
irregular nose, the prominent lips, the small chin and long throat.
Egremont had now and then caught a light in his eyes which was warranty
for more than his rough tongue could shape into words. He often
appeared to have a difficulty in following the lecture; would shrug
nervously, and knit his brows and mutter. Whenever he noticed that,
Egremont would pause a little and repeat in simpler form what he had
been saying, with the satisfactory result that Bunce showed a clearer
face and jotted something on his dirty note-book with his stumpy pencil.

Gilbert Grail we know. It was impossible not to remark him as the one
who followed with most consecutive understanding, even if his
countenance had not declared him of higher grade than any of those
among whom he sat. It had needed only the first ten minutes of the
first lecture to put him at his ease with regard to Egremont's claims
to stand forward as a teacher; the preliminary meeting, indeed, had
removed the suspicions suggested by Ackroyd. To him these evenings were
pure enjoyment. He delighted in this subject, and had an inexpressible
pleasure in listening continuously to the speech of a cultivated man.
Had the note-books of the class been examined (Egremont had strongly
advised their use), Gilbert's jottings would probably have alone been
found of substantial value, seeing that he alone possessed the mental
habit necessary for the practice. Bunce's would doubtless have come
next, though at a long distance; a Carlylean editor might have
disengaged from them many a rudely forcible scrap of comment. Bower's
pages would have smelt of the day-book. It was to Grail that Egremont
mentally directed the best things he had to say; not seldom he was
repaid by the quick gleam of sympathy on that grave interesting face.

The remaining five hearers were average artisans of the inquiring type;
they followed with perseverance, though at times one or the other would
furtively regard his watch or allow his eyes to stray about the room.
They had made a bargain, and were bent on honourably carrying out their
share in it. But Egremont already began to doubt whether he was really
fixing anything in their thoughts. How were they likely to serve him
for the greater purpose whereto this instruction was only preliminary?
When he looked forward to that, he had to fix his eyes on Grail and
forget the others. He was beginning to regret that the choice of those
to whom his invitations were sent had depended upon Bower; another man
might have aided him more effectually. Yet the fact was that Bower's
selection had been a remarkably good one. It would have been difficult
to assemble nine Lambeth workmen of higher aggregate intellect than
those who responded to the summons; it would have been, on the other
hand, the easiest thing to find nine with not a man of them available
for anything more than futile wrangling over politics or religion.
Egremont would know this some day; he was yet young in social reform.

And the lectures? It is not too much to say that they were good.
Egremont had capacity for teaching; with his education, had he been
without resources, he would probably have chosen an academic career,
and have done service in it. There was nothing deep in his style of
narrative and criticism, and here depth was not wanted; sufficient that
he was perspicuous and energetic. He loved the things of which he
spoke, and he had the power of presenting to others his reason for
loving them. Not one in five hundred men inexperienced in such work
could have held the ears of the class as he did for the first two or
three evenings. It was impossible for them to mistake his
spirit--ardent, disinterested, aspiring--impossible not to feel
something of a respondent impulse. That familiarity should diminish the
effect of his speech was only to be anticipated. He was preaching a
religion, but one that could find no acceptance as such with eight out
of nine who heard him. Common minds are not kept at high-interest mark
for long together by exhibition of the merely beautiful, however
persuasively it be set forth.

He had chosen the Elizabethan period, and he led up to it by the kind
of introduction which he felt would be necessary. Trusting himself more
after the first fortnight, he ceased to write out his lectures
verbatim; free utterance was an advantage to himself and his audience.
He read at large from his authors; to expect the men to do this for
themselves--even had the books been within their reach--would have been
too much, and without such illustration the lectures were vain. This
reading brought him face to face with his main difficulty: how to
create in men a sense which they do not possess. The working man does
not read, in the strict sense of the word; fiction has little interest
for him, and of poetry he has no comprehension whatever; your artisan
of brains can study, but he cannot read. Egremont was under no illusion
on this point; he knew well that the loveliest lyric would appeal to a
man like Bower no more than an unintelligible demonstration of science.
Was it impossible to bestow this sense of intellectual beauty? With
what earnestness he made the endeavour! He took sweet passages of prose
and verse, and read them with all the feeling and skill he could
command. 'Do you yield to that?' he said within himself as he looked
from face to face. 'Are your ears hopelessly sealed, your minds
immutably earthen?' Grail--Oh yes, Grail had the right intelligence in
his eyes; but Ackroyd, but Bunce? Ackroyd thought of the meaning of the
words; no more. Poor Bunce had darkling throes of mind, but struggled
with desperate nervousness and could not be at ease till the
straightforward talk began again. And Bower?--Nay, there goes more to
this matter than mere enthusiasm in a teacher. Who had instructed
Gilbert Grail to discern the grace of the written word? On the other
hand, it was doubtful whether Walter Egremont, left to himself in the
home of his good plain father, would have felt what now he did. The
soil was there, but how much do we not owe to tillage. Read what
Egremont on one occasion read to these men:

'"He beginneth not with obscure definitions, which must blur the
margins with interpretations and load the memory with doubtfulness: but
he cometh to you with words set in delightful proportion, either
accompanied with or prepared for the well-enchanting skill of music and
with a tale forsooth he cometh unto you--with a tale which holdeth
children from play, and old men from the chimney-corner."'

What were _that_ to you, save for the glow of memory fed with incense
of the poets?--save for innumerable dear associations, only possible to
the instructed, which make the finer part of your intellectual being?
Walter was attempting too much, and soon became painfully conscious of
it.

He came to the dramatists, and human interest thenceforth helped him.
He could read well, and a scene from those giants of the prime had
efficiency even with Bower. Hope revived in the lecturer.

To-night he was less happy than usual, for what reason he could not
himself understand. His thoughts wandered, sometimes to Eastbourne,
sometimes to Ullswater; yet he was speaking of Shakespeare. Bower was
more owl-eyed than usual; the five doubtful hearers obviously felt the
time long. Only Grail gave an unfailing ear. Egremont closed with a
sense of depression.

Would Bower come and pester him with fatuous questions and remarks? No;
Bower turned away and reached his hat from the peg. The doubtful five
took down their hats and followed the portly man from the room. Bunce
was talking with Grail, pointing with dirty forefinger to something in
his dirty note-book. But he, too, speedily moved to the hat-pegs. Grail
was also going, when Egremont said:

'Could you spare me five minutes, Mr. Grail; I should like to speak to
you.'




CHAPTER VIII

A CLASP OF HANDS


Grail approached the desk with pleasure. Egremont observed it, and met
his trusty auditor with the eye-smile which made his face so agreeable.

'I am sorry to see that Mr. Ackroyd no longer sits by you,' he began.
'Has he deserted us?'

Gilbert hesitated, but spoke at length with his natural directness.

'I'm afraid so, sir.'

'He has lost his interest in the subject?'

'It's not exactly the bent of his mind. He only came at my persuasion
to begin with. He takes more to science than literature.'

'Ah, I should have thought that. But I wish he could have still spared
me the two hours a week. I felt much interest in him; it's a
disappointment to lose him so unexpectedly. I'm sure he has a head for
our matters as well as for science.'

Grail was about to speak, but checked himself. An inquiring glance
persuaded him to say:

'He's much taken up with politics just now. They don't leave the mind
very quiet.'

'Politics? I regret more than ever that he's gone.'

Egremont moved away from the desk at which he had been standing, and
seated himself on the end of a bench which came out opposite the
fire-place.

'Come and sit down for a minute, will you, Mr. Grail?' he said.

Gilbert silently took possession of the end of the next bench.

'Is there no persuading him back? Do you think he would come and have a
talk with me? I do wish he would; I believe we could understand each
other. You see him occasionally?'

'Every day. We work together.'

'Would you ask him to come and have a chat with me here some evening?'

'I shall be glad to, sir.'

'Pray persuade him to. Any evening he likes. Perhaps next Sunday after
the lecture would do? Tell him to bring his pipe and have a smoke with
me here before the fire.'

Grail smiled, and undertook to deliver the invitation.

'But there are other things I wished to speak of to you,' Egremont
continued. 'Do you think it would be any advantage if I brought books
for the members of the class to take away and use at their leisure?
Shakespeare, of course, you can all lay hands on, but the other
Elizabethan authors are not so readily found. For instance, there's a
Marlowe on the desk; would you care to take him away with you?'

'Thank you very much, sir,' was the reply, 'but I've got Marlowe. I
picked up a second-hand copy a year or two ago.'

'You have him! Ah, that's good!'

Egremont was surprised, but remembered that it would not be very
courteous to express such feeling. After surprise came new warmth of
interest in the man. He began to speak of Marlowe with delight, and in
a moment he and Grail were on a footing of intimacy.

'But there are other books perhaps you haven't come across yet. I shall
be overjoyed if you'll let me be of use to you in that way. Have you
access to any library?'

'No, I haven't. I've often felt the want of it.'

Egremont fell into musing for a moment. He looked up with an idea in
his eyes.

'Wouldn't it be an excellent thing if one could establish a lending
library in Lambeth?'

Grail might have excusably replied that it would be a yet more
excellent thing if those disposed to use such an institution had time
granted them to do so; but with the young man's keen look fixed upon
him, he had other thoughts.

'It would be a great thing!' he replied, with subdued feeling. He
seldom allowed his stronger emotions to find high utterance; that
moderated voice was symbol of the suppression to which his life had
trained itself.

'A free library,' Egremont went on, 'with a good reading-room.'

It was an extension 

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