How It Seemed to the Doctor.

James Roberts made to himself some excuse of business for his sudden expedition to London, but in reality he was moved to go by the desire for sympathy. There are times and moods when a man will do many strange things, if thereby he may gain the comfort of an approving voice. It was not so much his straitened means and impoverished household, with the silent suppressed reproach of his wife's sad face, which made Denborough for the time uninhabitable to the Doctor. The selfishness engendered by his absorption in outside affairs armed him against these; he was more oppressed, and finally overcome and routed to flight, by the universal, unbroken, and unhesitating condemnation and contempt that he met with. The severe banned him as wicked, the charitable dubbed him crazy; even Johnstone, whom he had bought, gave him no sympathy. He could not share his savage sneers, or his bitter mirth, or his passionate indignation, with a man to whom the whole affair was a matter of business or of personal grudge. He felt that he must escape for a time, and seek society in which he could unbosom himself and speak from his heart without stirring horror or ridicule. Arthur Angell at least, who, in regard to Dale and Dale's views, had always been a better royalist than the King, would share his anger and appreciate his meditated revenge. The lesson he meant to give the backslider was so appropriate and of such grim humor that Arthur must be delighted with it.

On Dale's departure, Arthur Angell had moved into the little flat at the top of the tall building in Chelsea, and there he cultivated the Muses with a devotion which was its own ample reward. Though to be passing rich on forty pounds a year is, with the best will, impossible in London as it is to-day, yet to be passing happy on one hundred and fifty is not beyond the range of youth and enthusiasm, when the future still provides a gorgeous setting and background, wherein the sordid details of the present are merged and lose their prominence, and all trials are but landmarks by which the hopeful grub counts his nearer approach to butterflydom. The little room, the humble chop, the occasional pit, the constant tobacco, the unending talks with fellows like-minded and like-pursed—all these had the beauty of literary tradition, and if not a guarantee, seemed at least a condition of future fame. So Arthur often said to Mrs. Hodge, who lived in the same block, a couple of floors lower down; and Mrs. Hodge heartily agreed as she instanced, in confirmation of the doctrine, how the late Mr. Hodge had once played the King at two pound ten, consule Pratt, and had lived to manage his own theater. This was to compare small things with great, felt Arthur, but the truth is true in whatever sphere it works.

Into his happy life there broke suddenly the tempestuous form of the Denborough Doctor. He arrived with but a pound or two in his pocket with wild ideas of employment on ultra-Radical newspapers; above all, with the full load of his rage against Dale Bannister, the traitor. He strode up and down the little room, tugging his beard and fiercely denouncing the renegade, while Arthur looked at his troubled eyes and knitted brows, and wondered if his mind were not unhinged. Who could talk like that about Dale, if he were sane? Arthur would have chaffed his friend, laughed at him, ridiculed him, perhaps slyly hinted at the illicit charms of rank and wealth, for which the poet's old mistress mourned deserted. But to speak in hate and rancor! And what was he plotting?

But when he heard the plot, his face cleared, and he laughed.

"I think you're hard on Dale," he said; "but, after all, it will be a good joke."

"Johnstone will do it," exclaimed the Doctor, pausing in his stride. "His shop window will be full of them. He'll have sandwich-men all over the place. Bannister won't be able to go out without being met by his own words—the words he denies. I'll cram them down his throat."

Arthur laughed again.

"It will be awkward when he's walking with old Delane."

"Aye, and with that girl who's got hold of him. He shan't forget what he wrote—nor shall a soul in Denborough either. I'll make his treachery plain, if I spend my last farthing."

"When are you going back?"

"In a week. It will all be ready in a week. He'll know who did it. Curse him!"

"My dear Doctor, aren't you a little——"

"Are you like that, too?" burst out Roberts. "Have none of you any sincerity? Is it sham with all of you? You laugh as if it were a joke."

"I can't be angry with old Dale. I expect he'll only laugh himself, you know. It will be good fun."

Roberts looked at him in hopeless wrath. It seemed to him that these men, who wrote the words and proclaimed the truths which had turned his life and reformed his soul, were themselves but playing with what they taught. Were they only actors—or amusing themselves?

"You are as bad as he is," he said angrily, and stalked out of the room.

Arthur, puzzled with his unmanageable guest, went down, as he often did, to his neighbors, and laid the whole case before Mrs. Hodge and Nellie Fane. He found them both in, Nellie having just returned from an afternoon concert where she had been singing.

"I believe the fellow's half mad, you know," said Arthur.

"If he isn't, he ought to be ashamed of himself," said Mrs. Hodge, and she launched on a description of Mrs. Robert's pitiable state.

"Well, I don't think that he's got more than five pounds in the world," responded Arthur. "And he's got no chance of making any money. Nobody dares publish what he wants to write."

"He used to be pleasant at Littlehill," Nellie remarked, "when we were first there."

"Yes, wasn't he? But he's gone quite wild over Dale. Do you know what his next move is?" And Arthur disclosed the Johnstone conspiracy.

"It will be rather sport, won't it?" he asked. "Poor old Dale!"

But no; Miss Fane did not see the "sport." She was indignant; she thought that such a trick was mean, malicious, and odious in the highest degree, and she was surprised that Arthur Angell could be amused at it.

"Women never see a joke," said Arthur huffily.

"Where's the joke in making Dale unhappy and—and absurd? And you call yourself his friend!"

"It's only a joke. Old Dale does deserve a dig, you know."

"And pray, why? You choose your friends, why mayn't he choose his? I dare say you would be glad enough to know that sort of people if you could."

"Oh, come, Nellie! I'm not like that. Besides, it's not the people; it's what he's written."

"I've read what he's written. It's beautiful. No, I call the whole thing horrid, and just like Dr. Roberts."

"I suppose you think, just like me, too?"

"If you don't write and warn Dale, I shall."

"I say, you mustn't do that. I told you in confidence. Roberts will be furious."

"What do I care for Dr. Roberts' fury? I shall write at once;" and she sat down at the table.

Arthur glanced in despair at Mrs. Hodge, but that discreet lady was entirely hidden in the evening paper.

"Well, I'll never tell you anything again, Nellie," he said.

"You'll never have the chance, unless you behave something like a gentleman," retorted Nellie.

Arthur banged the door as he went out, exclaiming:

"Damn Roberts! What does he want to make a row for?"

Meanwhile, the Doctor, who was angry enough with Arthur Angell to have rejoiced had he known that he had embroiled him in a quarter where Arthur was growing very anxious to stand well, was pacing the streets, nursing his resentment. His head ached, and fragments of what he had read, and half-forgotten conversations, mingling in his whirling brain, fretted and bewildered him. He could think of nothing but his wrongs and his revenge, returning always to hug himself on his own earnestness, and angrily to sneer at the weakness and treachery of his friends. Whatever it cost him or his, the world should see that there was one man ready to sacrifice himself for truth and right—and punish "that hound Dale Bannister."

As he walked, he bought the special edition of the paper, and, in hastily glancing at it, his eye was caught by the announcement that His Royal Highness the Duke of Mercia was to visit Lord Cransford, and would open the Institute at Market Denborough. The paragraph went on to describe the preparations being made to give the Prince a loyal reception, and ended by saying that it was hoped that the eminent poet, Mr. Dale Bannister, who was resident at Denborough, would consent to write a few lines of welcome to the illustrious visitor. The writer added a word or two of good-natured banter about Mr. Bannister's appearance in a new character, and the well-known effect which the proximity of royalty was apt to have on English republicanism. "Who knows," he concluded, "that Mr. Bannister may not figure as Sir Dale before long?"

The Doctor read the paragraph twice, the flush of anger reddening his pale face. Then he crumpled up the paper and flung it from him, resuming his hasty, restless walk. He could imagine the sickening scene, the rampant adulation, the blatant snobbishness. And, in the midst, a dishonored participator, the man who had been his leader, his liberator, the apostle of all he loved and lived by. Had the man been a hypocrite from the first? Impossible! No hypocrite could have written those burning lines which leaped to his memory and his lips. Or was he merely a weak fool? That could not be either. It was a barter, a deliberate barter of truth and honor against profit—as sordid a transaction as could be. He wanted a position in society, money, a rich wife, petting from great people—perhaps even, as that scribbler said, a ribbon to stick in his coat or a handle to fasten to his name. How could he? how could he? And the Doctor passed his hand across his hot, throbbing brow in the bewilderment of wrath.

For an hour and more he ranged the streets aimlessly, a prey to his unreasoning fury. For this man's sake he had ruined himself; led on by this man's words, he had defied the world—his world. At all hazards he had joined the daring band. Now he was forsaken, abandoned, flung aside. He and his like had served their turn. On their backs Dale Bannister had mounted. But now he had done with them, and their lot was repudiation and disdain. Roberts could not find words for his scorn and contempt. His head racked him more and more. Connected thought seemed to become impossible; he could do nothing but repeat again and again, "The traitor! The traitor!"

At last he turned home to his humble lodgings. The short hush of very early morning had fallen on the streets; he met no one, and the moon shone placidly down on the solitary figure of the maddened man, wrestling with his unconquerable rage. He could not stem it; yielding to its impulse, with quivering voice and face working with passion, he stretched his clenched fist to the sky and cried:

"By God, he shall pay for it!"