  Which shows Some of the Gods in their Machinery, with but a Shadowy Hint of the Printer’s Devil Amidst the untidy litter of torn paper that strewed the bare plank floor there stood a large double writing-table, spread with proofs and manuscript and pamphlets; and, with his feet in the litter of the floor and his elbows in the litter of the table, sat a gaunt yellow-haired youth, solemnly writing. Netherby Gomme peered at his work in the waning light of the departing November afternoon; and the deepening dusk that took possession of the shabby room, turning all things to the colour of shadows, strained his attention, drawing long lines about his mouth and pronouncing the pallor of his serious face—the grim mask of the humorist. The slips of paper that were set into the sleeve-ends of his well-brushed threadbare coat to save the soiling of his shirt-cuffs, and the long reach of yellow sock that showed his feet thrust a wrinkled span beyond the original intention of his much-knee’d trousers, marked the ordered untidiness of the literary habit. Everything in the room—the overflowed waste-paper basket at his feet; the severe academic comfort of the polished wooden armchair that stood yawning augustly vacant opposite to him; the shut door at his right hand, with its curt announcement of “Editor” in stiff, forbidding letters; the low bookshelves about the room with their rows of books of reference, stacks of journals and literary scraps piled a-top of them; the walls with their irregular array of calendars, advertisements, notices, and printed and pictured odds and ends; the atmosphere of the scrap-gathering paste-pot and of clippings from the knowledge of the world; the sepulchral, monotonous clock that ticked its aggressive statement of the passage of time as though with a cough of admonition that, whatever journalism might be, life was short and art was long; the naked mantel beneath it, which held the shabby soul of the jerrybuilder turned to stone—for it is the hearth that is haunted by the spirit of the architect, and this one had been a vulgar fellow—the bare fireplace that did not even go through the feeble pretence of giving comfort, for it had no fender, no hearthrug, but gaped, bored and empty and black, upon the making of literature—everything marked the room to be one of those scanty workshops where opinions are made, the dingy editorial office of a struggling weekly review; The young man blotted his writing, and flipped through some pages of manuscript: “Oliver,” said he, without looking up, “a light, I think!... We have here lying before us a most caustic literary criticism; but the light is so far gone that we can scarce see the dogmatic gentleman’s own literary infelicities—nay, can scarce see even his most split infinitives.” He spoke like a leading article, with a slight cockney accent. In the gloom of a dark corner by the window, at a high desk that stood against the wall, where he sat perched on a tall office stool with his feet curled round its long legs, a small boy ceased reading, and, fumbling about in the breast-pocket of his short Eton jacket, lugged out a tin box, struck a match, and, leaning forward, set a flame to the gas-jet. The place leaped into light. The youngster flung the matchbox across the room, and went on with his reading. It fell at the feet of the yellow-haired youth. “Ah, Noll,” said he, stooping over and searching for it amongst the torn fragments of paper, “like those of even greater genius, our aims are only too often lost in the sea of wasted endeavour.” He found the box; lit the gas at his right hand; coughed: “Are you putting that down?” he asked drily of the grim unanswering silence. The boy took no notice. The yellow-haired youth chuckled, and the deep-furrowed lines about his mouth broadened into a quizzical smile. The boy Oliver could scarcely have been fourteen years of age, and had he not been son of the editor, and that editor the thriftless owner of but a very broken-winged Muse, and of a steadily diminishing literary property, the boy must still have been at school. He sighed heavily, rousing from his reading: “I say, Netherby,” said he, “here’s a poem by that fellow with the hair.” He held out the manuscript. Netherby Gomme looked up: “A lyric?” he asked. “No. Drivel.” Netherby Gomme sighed, and sat back in his chair: “With what candid brutality the sub-editorial mind treats the most ecstatic flights of the imagination!” said he. The boy Oliver shifted impatiently on his high stool: “Shall I reject the ponderous rot?” he asked. Netherby Gomme coughed: “We—if you please, Oliver—we. It is always better to adopt the editorial we in matters of weight; and it throws the responsibility upon the irresponsible gods of journalism.” Noll sighed, stretched himself, and yawned. “All right. We’ll reject it, eh?... No good troubling the governor”—he jerked his thumb towards the editor’s room—“he’s so beastly short this afternoon. But I had better write the rejection, I suppose—the father doesn’t like poets to be rejected on the printed form—they’re so sensitive.” “The—editor—regrets—that—whilst—he—appreciates—the—beauty of—the—lines—herewith—returned—he—is—unable—to—make—use of—them—owing—to——” He came to a halt and invited the prompt. None coming, he glanced over his shoulder: “What is it owing to, Netherby? I’m such a beastly poor liar. You’ve been on the press so much longer. Hustle your vivid imagination and chuck us an excuse.” Netherby Gomme shook his head: “I am only a humorist, Oliver—humour must walk knee-deep in truth. I do not travel on Romance——” “Oh, shut up!... No good chucking the idiot roughly.... It’s beastly long.... We’ll chuck it for length, eh?” Netherby Gomme smiled at him: “Noll,” said he, “you are possessed of the magnificent carelessness of the gods—and I never interfere with religious bodies.” Noll turned to his writing again, and there was a steady scratching of pen on paper. Netherby Gomme sat for awhile, his face seamed with comic lines of grim amusement: “I suppose,” he said at last—“I suppose we have read the poem, Oliver?” “No, I haven’t. But you can.” Netherby Gomme moved uneasily in his seat: “N-no. No thanks, Oliver. We’ll take it as read.” He coughed: “By the way, Oliver, have you got the dummy for next week’s issue over there?” Noll licked, sealed, and thumped the letter on the desk: “Oh, ah, yes—I’m sitting on it and a bunch of keys to remind me.” He took a bunch of keys from under him, and put them in his trousers pocket, then lugged out from beneath him the dummy form of the review in its brown-paper cover. He opened it, and wetting his finger on his lip, he flipped through the leaves with their proofs pasted in position for guidance to the printer. “Look here, Netherby.” He held up the booklet, pointing to a blank space. “The governor said I was to tell you we had better complete this column with a poem—says verse gives a pleasant appearance to the page.” He dropped the dummy on the desk in front of him. “It’s an awful bore, Netherby,” said he, “but that bundle of poems he gave me the other day took up such a lot of space on my desk that I flung them into the waste-paper basket. Can’t you knock up about twenty lines of amorous matter? I promise not to whistle.” Netherby Gomme smiled grimly, sighed, took up a pen, and, drawing a sheet of paper to him, prepared to write.... The yellow-haired youth had been with this literary venture from the start. He had begun as office-boy; and as each member of the original staff had fallen out, at the stern prunings of necessity, he had The other, the editor’s son, Oliver Baddlesmere, had come to the office to complete establishment straight out of the schoolroom some months back. He had been brought in to reduce the pressure of clerking work, and, owing to extreme youth and inexperience, had been given the simpler duties to perform, so that he came naturally and as a matter of course to preside over the destinies of the poet’s corner and to impart information to a hungry world from the battered volumes of an encyclopÆdia, and suchlike heavy books of reference, the weight of which, in the intervals of airily relieving the world’s thirst for knowledge, the boy used for the purpose of pressing prints—of which he was gathering a collection from the illustrated papers of the day, pasting them into brown paper scrap-books of his own making. Netherby Gomme had scarcely got under fair way with the writing of his amorous matter when the boy whipped round on his office-stool. “I say, Netherby,” said he; “your book is making a splash all along the Thames. The bookstalls are covered with it—the whole blessed town is saffron with it.” The yellow-haired youth smiled complacently; sitting back in his chair, he nodded: “Indeed?” he said. Noll slipped down off the stool, took it up, and carried it over to the fireplace: “You were a chunk-head not to put your name to it!” he said. “But all the same, you know, it’s been roaring funny to hear the father and mother talk about it.” He vaulted to the top of the high stool, scrambled on to his feet, and, reaching up, opened the glass face of the clock: “It almost bursts me sometimes that I can’t tell ’em you wrote it,” he said. He got on tip-toe and put forward the large hand twenty minutes, shut the face with a click, turned where he stood, and, thrusting his hands into his trouser-pockets, he added confidentially: “D’you know, Netherby, between you and me and the office ink-pot, I never thought myself that you could be so uncommon funny.” The yellow-haired youth blushed. Clambering down off the stool, Noll carried it back to his desk, Netherby Gomme coughed: “Oliver,” said he—hesitated—made a pause—then added nervously: “Oliver, I am going to confide in you. In fact, if I don’t I shall get some sort of low malarial fever. Now, don’t treat the confidence with the giggle of childishness.” Noll sighed. He turned, leaped on to his office-stool, swung round, set his feet on the bar, his elbows on his knees, his chin in his palms, and, peering at the other out of the shadow from under the brim of his hat, said gloomily: “O lor! the little typewriter girl!... Why the dickens you don’t kiss Julia and have done with it, Netherby, I can’t make out. Hang it, I have!... It was very nice whilst it lasted, and all that, but there was nothing in it to write poetry about!” Netherby Gomme flushed. “Oliver,” said he, with biting distinctness, “we have not yet shown the resentment that your vulgarity courts; but we would remind you that we may be goaded into flinging the office ink-pot——” He stretched out his long arm towards the large zinc well of ink before him. Noll slid off the stool, putting it between them with the swift and calculated strategy of experience, guarding his head with his raised elbow: “Chuck it, Netherby!” he bawled, dodging under cover of his desk warily; and he added in a hoarse aside, jerking his thumb towards the editor’s door: “Chuck it! I withdraw.” The yellow-haired youth put down the heavy ink-pot. Noll saw out of the corner of his alert eye that honour was satisfied, and as he ran his finger pensively down a large splash of ink that had dried on the wall beside his desk, he asked: “Well?... About that confidence!” Netherby Gomme cleared his throat: “Now, Oliver, don’t say anything about this to anyone. It might make me so ridiculous, and—professional humorists are keenly sensitive to ridicule——” “Lor!” said Noll, leaving the patch on the wall. “Get on.” “This is in strict confidence, Noll.” “Oh, it’s Julia all right enough,” growled Noll. Gomme went on, ignoring the comment: “Noll, it is one of the penalties of fame that its victims must appear in the brilliant world of fashion.” He coughed. “Come here, Noll.” He unlocked and pulled open the drawer before him, and Noll, aroused to sudden interest, sidled over to him as he brought out from the drawer a very carefully folded dress-coat. “Oliver, I’ve got a dress-coat. You see, I may have to go into society at any moment, now that my book has caught the public eye.” Noll put out his hand: “Let’s look at the thing,” said he eagerly. Gomme caught his arm and kept him off it: “Careful, Noll!” he gasped anxiously—“gently! or we shan’t get it back into its folds.” “Now, Noll, as one who has knowledge of the usages of polite society——” “Eh?” said Noll. Gomme touched him on the shoulder nervously. “No, no, Noll—I’m not accusing you of practising them. But as one born within the pale of good society—from no fault of your own, I admit—ought one to put scent on the coat?” Noll whistled: “Je—hoshaphat!” said he, “I never noticed.” He pushed his hat back on his head, thrust his hands deep into his breeches pockets, and fixed a searching eye on experience: “I’m not sure. N-no—I don’t think so. The governor doesn’t.” The yellow-haired youth shook his head solemnly: “It’s a most awkward point, Oliver—a most awkward point—and somewhat momentous.... One’s first step at the threshold of a career should not be a stumble.” Noll’s face lighted up with a suggestion: “Tell you what I should do, Netherby. Just scent your handkerchief; and if it kicks up a beastly lot of notice and makes you uncomfortable, you can always get rid of it——” “Indeed, Oliver!” “Rather. Hand it to a lady and ask her if it is hers. Gives you a sort of introduction, too.” Netherby Gomme stared aghast: “B-but, Oliver, surely one is introduced in society!” “Rather not—it ain’t form.” “Why?” “Oh, I don’t know; it’s the new hospitality. But about that scent, Netherby—let us try some on me, and I’ll see if it worries the mother. The father’ll soon be nasty about it if it’s bad form.” Gomme shook his head, and sighed heavily: “Ah, Oliver, one has to be very careful in one’s pose on entering a new world.” Noll nodded: “Rather!... Do you know, Netherby, it’s a rummy thing how one begins to wash one’s self and think about ornaments and things when one becomes a man, eh?” “A most rummy thing indeed, Noll.” Netherby Gomme sighed. Noll looked at him with interest: “It must be wonderful to feel famous,” he said. “It is,” said Gomme gloomily. “Wonderful.” “But I don’t see why you should be so beastly miserable about it, Netherby. It don’t hurt, does it?” “Not exactly, Noll.” The yellow-haired youth sighed. “I am only suffering from the mood of the time.... Pessimism is on the town.... A clerk with any claim to culture must affect Decadence this season—and it gives me the hump.” He coughed. “Causes me acute mental discomfort.” “Then I should chuck it,” he said. “When I was a kid I used to worry if I were not the same as the other kids; but—hullo!” He looked up at the clock. “It seems to me it’s about time to go and get tea.” He winked an eye solemnly at Gomme, and whistled his way airily out of the office. The door swung open, revealing a dingy stair-landing, shut with a bang, and swallowed him. The sound of Noll’s retreating footsteps on the stair had scarce faded away into the distant echoes of the street, when the door that led to the editor’s room opened, and a well-groomed man of about thirty-five entered the office. Anthony Baddlesmere was a handsome, well-set-up fellow—indeed, it was as much from his father as from his mother that Noll inherited his good looks. He was handsome to the degree of beauty; and this it was, perhaps, which, in spite of the easy carriage of the body and the subtle air of good-breeding, gave the impression of some indecision of character in the man. Or it may have been that this indecision was increased by a certain embarrassment as he endeavoured to get a firm note into his voice: “Oh, Gomme—have you completed the dummy yet—for this week’s issue?” Gomme got up from his chair and searched for the dummy amongst the papers on Noll’s desk. But Anthony Baddlesmere had seated himself on the corner of the desk, and, fingering a paper-knife, he said: “Oh—er—never mind. There’s another matter, Netherby.... It’s some years since I started this sorry venture in this office.” He sighed, and passed his hand over his forehead wearily—“more years than I care to remember. You, the office-boy, were a lank lad of thirteen—I a young man, full of literary enthusiasms.... I tried to sell the public artistic wares”—he shrugged his shoulders—“tried to show them vital things—real things, instead of sham—tried to encourage promising youth”—he laughed sadly—“and a nice waste-paper basket we’ve made of it!” He swung his foot and kicked the waste-paper basket into the middle of the room, sending its contents flying over the floor. Netherby Gomme coughed: “Yes, sir,” said he, “a great deal of the promise of youth goes into the waste-paper basket.” Anthony Baddlesmere laughed uncomfortably; the laugh died out of his eyes, obliterated by a frown: “Downstairs,” he went on, as though repeating an unpleasant task he had set himself—“downstairs they have given the public trash—cheap. And I have lost.... In me the literary enthusiasm, a little chilled, perhaps, remains; but the youth has gone. As for you—you are office-boy still, to all purposes, and lank still—but, lord! how you have grown!” Netherby Gomme looked down at his scanty trousers and sighed: “Yes, sir, I have grown.” “H’m! like a scandal,” said Baddlesmere; and a gleam of merriment He hesitated—stopped. “Where, sir?” asked the yellow-haired youth. The bald fact was that Baddlesmere had never given the matter a thought until this disaster was upon him. He smiled sadly, and added vaguely: “No place would have been good enough for you, Gomme.... You should have been promoted long ago....” He roused and faced the position boldly: “But you have been such a good friend to me and to the boy—so useful a part of this office, that I am afraid I have treated you like a part of myself, and have come by habit to think the hat that covered my head covered yours.... Dame Fortune has knocked the hat off—and I find there were two heads inside it.” “Well, sir, we can look her in the face without the hat.” “Yes, yes, Gomme—but I have looked over your head.” “It has saved your eyes from the commonplace, sir, and my heart from a bad chill. I wouldn’t have missed the past years in this office for a fortune.” “No, no, Gomme; nor I—nor I.” “They have made a man of me,” the youth added hoarsely. Baddlesmere put his hand on the other’s shoulder: “But you should have been promoted—you should have been promoted.... And I could so easily have sent you to a better billet.” He sat down, and, fidgeting with the paper-knife again, he added, after a pause: “By the way, Gomme, I wish you did not write such a shocking bad hand.” He smiled, half jesting, half serious. “Why don’t you practise writing?” Gomme’s face became a dull, expressionless mask: “I have, sir,” he said grimly. “How? You have!” “I’ve written a book,” he said. Baddlesmere whistled: “The devil you have!... Ah, Gomme, everybody writes books nowadays.” “But they read mine, sir,” said Netherby Gomme. He dived his hand into the breast-pocket of his coat, and, taking out a bundle of press-cuttings, drew a much-thumbed one from the others. “Listen to the mighty Thrumsby Burrage in The Discriminator, sir.” He read out the paragraph: “We have here a refined humorist, whose work is stamped with the hall-mark of genius.” Baddlesmere nodded; he was only half listening. “Oh yes,” said he—“hall-mark of genius is Thrumsby Burrage.” “In the present day it is indeed a veritable intellectual treat to come upon the subtle workmanship of a man of large experience of life—workmanship marked by that delicate wit which grows only to perfection in the cloistered atmosphere of scholarship.” “Yes—cloistered atmosphere is Thrumsby Burrage.” Gomme’s eyes twinkled: “We rejoice that a new man of genius has risen amongst us, and we do not hesitate to say that the anonymous writer of ‘The Tragedy of the Ridiculous’ is that man.” Anthony Baddlesmere shook off boredom, stood up slowly, stared at the gaunt yellow-haired youth before him in frank tribute of bewilderment, and said at last with hoarse surprise: “You wrote this book, Gomme?” “Yes, sir,” said Netherby Gomme simply; “but when I write my tragedy——” Baddlesmere clapped a hand on his shoulder, and pleasure danced in his eyes. “But, good God! you are famous, man—famous!... And you must be making a fortune.” “No, sir—I sold the thing for a few pounds.” Anthony Baddlesmere strode up and down the room. “But, man,” said he—“I have been trying all my life, and with every advantage, to create a work of art such as this; and here are you, a mere stripling—damn it, scarcely out of knickerbockers—though, on my soul, you are nearly as old as your trousers—here are you, a mere stripling, famous!” He came to him, gripped him affectionately by the shoulder. “Of all men that I know, I would rather this thing had come to you than to any.” He turned and got to striding up and down the room again. “Famous!—at least you will be as soon as you give out your own name.” Gomme’s face had flushed a little with the praise: “But,” said he, “when I write my tragedy——” Baddlesmere turned on him sharply: “Tragedy be hanged!” said he. “My dear Gomme, you’ve got to recognise that the world never takes its humorists seriously. It’s always looking for the joke in their tragedies.... Which reminds me, Gomme, I’m afraid to-morrow must see us out of this.” Gomme’s face lost its mask: “But, sir!” he faltered—fidgeting nervously with the papers by his hand—“what are you going to do? and Noll?—and Mrs. Baddlesmere—when the blinds are pulled down?” Baddlesmere strode over to the window, and, gazing down into the dusk of the chilly street below, made no answer. He stood so for a long while, and wondered. He wondered if he had given the public vital things! His mind ran rapidly over the failure of his scheme—a scheme that, as he now saw, had been inherent with failure at its very inception. He saw now, as he stood there ruined by it, that it was folly to expect a public to buy literature built up on the mere brilliant literary exercises in technical skill of a smart group of young fellows who had Yes, the work of this Netherby Gomme. He knew now as he ran over the years, that all the best work had come from this youth’s pen—about the only one of them all who had not given himself airs, who had put down the absolute truth as he whimsically saw it, who had worked and wrought amid bare walls and in hours snatched from toil-won leisure, whilst they all sat and prated of what they intended to do, and of how it should be done. He turned from the window into the lighted office, and his glance fell on his son Noll’s desk. It was the only artistic corner in the room—the prints, mounted on brown paper, which the boy had tacked to the wall, had a decorative effect that showed rare artistic taste in one so young. A touch of pride came into the man’s eyes, and went out in a frown. Netherby Gomme, watching him in alert silence, with delicate tact uttered no word. As Baddlesmere moved towards the editor’s room he asked abruptly: “Where’s Noll?” “Heaven knows, sir,” said Netherby Gomme airily. The door closed on the editor, and Gomme heard the slam of the outer door, which told that Baddlesmere had begun to descend the stair. “Heaven knows!” Gomme shook his head. “Playing with a sewer, most like.... But God is very good to boys.” Wherein it is discovered that, likely enough from an Ancestor who was Master of the Horse to King Harry the Eighth, Master Oliver had inherited some Gift of Horseplay, together with a Keen Eye for a Fine Leg on a Woman. Netherby Gomme had been sitting some time writing at his desk when the door behind him was stealthily opened and Noll’s head popped round its edge. There was a sharp click of a pea in a tin pea-shooter as the youngster let fly a careful aim at Gomme’s poll. Gomme jumped, and scratched the back of his neck irritably: “Curse it, Noll!” he growled testily. “Naughty!” said Noll, coming into the room, but giving the yellow-haired youth a wide circle as he moved to his desk, and keeping a wary eye on him under a magnificent pretence of carelessness. “Caught you on the raw that time, I think, my ink-stained warrior!” he added cheerfully; but the fire was gone out of the old jest, and it was borne in on the youngster that the oft-repeated joke is somewhat of a damp squib. He broke the tin pea-shooter across his knee, and flung the two pieces into the empty grate. Strolling over to his desk, he took up the office-stool in his arms and carried it to the dusty fireplace. As he scrambled on to the stool Netherby Gomme watched him under his brows. “I am relieved to see, Noll,” he growled, “that you remember your manhood and your pose as a literary prophet, and intend in future to split hairs instead of spitting peas.” He scratched his head irritably as the other, standing a-tip-toe on the stool, reached up and put back the minute-hand of the clock. “Confound it!” he added, as Noll shut the glass face with a snap, and came down gloomily off his stool—“the whole world seems to be suffering from the vice of forced humour in these days.” “Don’t be waspish, Netherby,” said the youngster. He carried the stool back to his desk, took off his silk hat, hung it up, and solemnly mounted into his seat: “I confess,” he said, and he sighed, “I do feel beastly young at times.” “H’m!” grunted Netherby Gomme drily—“you weren’t very long over your tea.” “No.... As a matter of fact, I haven’t had any tea. I had to dodge Netherby Gomme moved peevishly in his chair: “My dear Noll, for Heaven’s sake don’t call Julia my typewriter girl!” said he—“you’d think you were talking of a sewing-machine.” Noll raised his eyebrows. “But—she is a bit of a sewing-machine—when she isn’t typewriting.” He suddenly disappeared over the side of the stool and took up a defensive attitude beyond his desk. “Chuck it!” he bawled—“shut up, Netherby!... Put that ink-pot down and I’ll tell you the whole tragedy.” Noll climbed on to his stool again as the keen glitter went out of Gomme’s eyes, and, sitting perched there with his back against the desk, he said calmly: “Julia is missing!” Gomme stared at him anxiously: “Missing?” Noll nodded: “H’m—h’m!” said he. “They are getting rather fussy about it downstairs, and inclined to be nasty.” He assumed an editorial manner and continued: “We regret to state that there has been marked uneasiness at Messrs. Rollit’s typewriting offices owing to the fact that Miss Julia Wynne has not been heard of for the last hour; and this conduct, which might have passed unnoticed in any ordinary female clerk, has caused considerable anxiety in the office where she usually carries on her avocation, for, owing to the regular habits and exemplary conduct of the young person in question, the half-starved beauty of whose Burne-Jones-like profile——” “We have not yet thrown the office ink-pot, Oliver!” said Netherby Gomme grimly. Noll, guarding his head with his arm, peered out from beneath his elbow: “No—but really, Netherby, it was beastly hard luck her being out. I like to go and gaze at her. She has such a jolly nice mouth. I should like to kiss it—it would do her a lot of good....” He disappeared over the stool. “Shut up!” he shouted. “Put it down and I’ll chuck it. I say, Netherby,” he added confidentially, coming out into the open and disarming resentment by trusting Gomme’s honour; “I saw a ripping girl to-day. She gave me quite a thrill.” Gomme sat back in his chair: “Indeed, Noll!” said he, putting his fingers together, elbows on chair-arm—“this is most interesting.... What age was the lady?” “Oh, quite twelve or thirteen. None of your Burne-Jones-like——” He ducked his head under his arm and made for his desk backwards. He scrambled on to his stool as he saw that the other was not for war: “No; she was a girl, that! Rich warm hair—reddish. Plumpish. Jolly way of walking....” He paused for a moment and added critically: “She went off a bit in the legs—but—they mostly do at that age.... I offered her chocolates.... She sniffed.” “Not very encouraging, Oliver!” “May I ask,” said Gomme grimly, “if she be a lady of position?” “Well—her antecedents are somewhat humble. Her father is a—well—he’s a butcher. But every tragedy should have comic relief—shouldn’t it, Netherby?” Netherby Gomme shook his head solemnly where he sat: “Noll, you are very, very old. Let us try to be young again.” “It’s so beastly slow being young,” grumbled Noll. “When I’m a man—Jeroos’lum! I should like to be a man—and shave!” “And then you’ll damn the razor.... Ah, Noll, it is with the razor that youth cuts its throat.” There was a long pause. The boy sat brooding on some perplexing problem; the yellow-haired youth watched him. Noll broke the silence. He slipped down off his high seat, and came over to Gomme: “I say, Netherby, your book is terrific though!” “Thanks, Noll—you overwhelm me.... Ah, Noll, if all the world were as prejudiced an admirer as you are—and as frankly honest in the statement of their admiration—I might be a great man.” “But, Netherby,” said Noll, eyeing him critically—“when did you discover you were clever?” Gomme coughed: “Well—er—when people began to tell me my own stories.” “I wish I could write that sort of comic rot,” said Noll enviously. “Noll, it is easy enough to be funny. I envy the man of action.” The yellow-haired youth got up from his chair, lank and lean and awkward, and paced the room with prowling gait. “To feel the blood tingle through one in hair’s-breadth escapes—to use one’s strength—to live, man, live!... To beat grips with life and danger and death, instead of writing lyrics or other tomfoolery about it, or about what you think other people ought to think about it!” “Chuck it, Netherby!” Gomme, pacing up and down the room, took no heed of the interruption. “Writing history across the face of the world!... That is a bigger thing than spilling ink.... I know what it feels like a little,” he added. “The boxing sergeant knocked me down five times running in rapid succession at the gymnasium last night, and at the first fall I felt the transferred glory of what he must have felt. There is wondrous delight, a sense of the sublime, in conquest—even with the boxing-gloves on!... Of course, now, it would be something to write a tragedy.” Noll snorted: “Oh, tragedy’s all piffle! You don’t go to a theatre to sniff.... Give me a jolly good pantomime for an artistic jaunt. Shush! the governor.” He vaulted on to his desk-stool as the door was flung open. “Cafoshulam—it’s Julia!” he cried, swinging round on his stool again as the door shut with a slam, and a pretty young woman in neat black dress ran up to Netherby Gomme. “Oh, Netherby,” she gasped, seizing his arm, “there’s a horror of a “Hush, Julia—keep calm.” Gomme stroked her hand, and, leading her quickly to the editor’s room, threw open the door: “Quick, Julia—in here!” Julia grasped his arm as he was about to shut the door upon her: “No personal violence, please, Netherby. You won’t hurt him—will you?” “My dear Julia,” said he, hurrying her into the room, “I am surprised at such a suggestion!” He shut the door, and, turning his back upon it, he added grimly: “Personal violence is quite contrary to the traditions of this office, Noll—it should, in our judgment, be the very last resource.” He coughed. “The office broom, I fear, Noll, is in the editor’s cupboard——” Noll whooped: “Hooroosh!” cried he—“we haven’t had a row in the office for nearly five weeks!” There was a loud knock. Noll whipped round on his high stool, and was immediately engrossed in the heavy work of his office. “Come in!” cried Netherby Gomme. The door on to the landing was thrown open and revealed the figure of an elaborately dressed exquisite, who entered the room deliberately, diffusing scents—one of those well-polished, shining beings who never seem to catch a speck of dust. He had an hereditary qualification to pass for a gentleman—he knew how to dress for the part. He could strain good taste in adornment to the uttermost stretch without breaking it. He stood with the arrogant self-assurance that largely stands for good-breeding amongst the inane, and though the perfection of his clothes’ fit could not hide the fact that the lamp of intelligence burnt but gutteringly at the top where were his wits, he had the self-respect to ignore his defects. He looked calmly round the room, and, taking a card with deliberate coolness from a silver cardcase, he asked: “Will someone—ah—kindly give my card to—ah—that most comely young lady who—ah—has just come in?” Gomme walked over to him and took the card, which the exquisite held out to him between the first and second fingers of his lavender-gloved hand. “Will no one offer me a chair?” the affected voice asked plaintively. Gomme motioned him to a seat by the empty fireplace, and the other strolled thither and sat down on the edge of it with deliberate care. The seat was gone—a bristling hollow only left. He took off his hat and looked about the room with a cold, critical stare. Gomme took the card to Noll. “Mr. Ponsonby Wattles Ffolliott,” he read in a gruff whisper, handing the card to the youngster; and he added grimly: “Destiny was against the Thing from the beginning, Oliver. A man like that Noll solemnly carried the card into the editor’s office. Gomme went to his seat, sat down, and aggressively paid no heed to the Thing. The exquisite became nettled. Said he affectedly: “That’s an awfully smart office-girl of yours——” Netherby Gomme rose slowly from his chair, and, walking over to him, stood and looked down at him with contempt. “Oh, you’re a judge!” said he—“a sort of overdressed Paris awarding the apple——” “Oh, no,” protested the exquisite Ponsonby Wattles Ffolliott; “you are quite mistaken. I have never been in Paris, and I’m not at all keen about apples.” Gomme laughed loud. Ponsonby Wattles Ffolliott fidgeted uneasily. “Are you the editor?” he asked. Gomme smiled. “No,” he said—and added drily: “Luckily for you.” “Why luck-i-ly?” Gomme coughed. “The editor kicks like a horse.” Ffolliott sniggered uneasily: “Really!” he drawled. It was faintly borne in upon him that he was neither shining nor making an impression. His eyes ranged aimlessly round the room, and he added fatuously: “So this is the sort of place where you literary fellows hang out!” Gomme stared at him in grim silence. The exquisite Ponsonby shifted in his seat: “None of my people have ever been literary,” he drawled; “they all belonged to the virile professions.... At least, I suppose that’s the office-girl.... However, as I said before, I’m not a literary man myself——” Gomme’s eyes glowed threateningly, but the resplendent fool seated before him was too heavy-witted a dullard to hear anything but the cackle of his own voice, or to be alert to anything but the sordid desire of his own eyes. Gomme laughed drily. “Man?... You’re not a man!” said he. Ponsonby Wattles Ffolliott was genuinely shocked: “Really, you know——” He stopped. He saw that this yellow-haired, gaunt other man, a loose-limbed, powerful fellow, was glaring at him in anything but friendly fashion, and he was dumb. Gomme’s level voice went calmly on: “Tsh!” said he, “you’re a perambulating monkey, scented and got up and flung upon the town by Providence to remind us all from what “You—you’re a common fellow!” said Ponsonby Wattles Ffolliott. Gomme’s keen eyes remained fixed on him with a steady contempt, that ate even into this dunce’s conceit. He went on, giving judgment on the travesty of manhood that sat before him: “You silly fool! It’s disgusting that a pretty woman can’t walk down the high streets of the most civilized city in the world without the risk of some painted peacock of an ’Arry like yourself——” “’Arry, indeed!” bleated the exquisite. Ponsonby Wattles Ffolliott was wounded in his most religious parts. “I have the blood of the Plantagenets in my veins,” he said. He was very indignant. He spoke with simple faith, as if of the certainty of a glorious resurrection. Gomme turned, and called out: “Open the door, Oliver!” The door swung open, and discovered Noll at the head of the stairway, gripping a long broom in his hands. “Oliver,” said Netherby, and his eyes shone, “this is, I think, positively the first occasion on which we have flung a genuine Plantagenet down the office-stairs. It is indeed an emotional moment.... I am thrilled.” He made a grab at the throat of Ponsonby Wattles Ffolliott, who evaded it with an upward fling of the elbow as he scrambled in a ladylike way to his patent-leather feet, and put himself into an affected attitude of defence, his silk hat in one hand and his cane in the other. “Wh—what are you—do—ing?” he asked plaintively. Netherby Gomme laughed, eyeing him as might a hungry dog a bone. “Ay, Noll; take careful aim,” said he, as the exquisite began to back towards the door. “What a destiny, to bark the shins of the royal house of Anjou!” Noll could be seen at the head of the stairway, beyond the open door, weighing the broom to get the balance and the grip, and swinging it with careful aim at the place where he calculated would come the shins of the exquisite Ponsonby. Netherby Gomme pounced upon the retreating body of Ponsonby Wattles Ffolliott, and this time he got his fingers inside the exquisite’s collar. “Go—away!” gasped Ponsonby Wattles Ffolliott. There was a sharp struggle as Gomme, gripping him by the throat, forced him backwards to the open doorway, nearly jerking the complaining head off the narrow shoulders, until the room swam round dazedly in the revolving addled wits of the miserable man. “I say,” he gasped—his plaintive voice in pained remonstrance as they swung round the doorpost—“this is—horribly—sudden!” He groaned. In his frenzy his gloved hand made a grab at the handle of the door, which shut upon them with a loud slam. Julia opened the office-door stealthily, and put forth an anxious head. “How dreadful!” she said; ran back into the office; shut herself in. A yell of victory from Noll told that the office broom had got home amongst the shins of the Plantagenets. Julia opened the door a little way again and peeped nervously into the office. She saw the door from the stairway fling open, and Gomme stroll in, adjusting his coat and smoothing down his hair with his hands; and through the open door there came the sound of fugitive anxious feet going nervously before pursuit, rushing frantically down the stairs, leaping and stumbling. Noll, with the broom poised in his hand, was leaning over the balustrade, his legs and back exquisitely thrilled, and as he flung the broom he burst into a cheer, his aim carrying away the silk hat of the fugitive exquisite below. “Ripping!” cried Noll, and dived down the stairs after the hat. Gomme halted, and listened. The distant sound of feet, rapidly descending the stairs, told of the recuperative force and staying power of the Plantagenets even in defeat. There was a loud crash of glass. Julia started and wrung her hands. A bland smile came over the face of Netherby Gomme: “We have repeatedly pointed out to the landlord,” said he, “that the large glass door at the foot of the stairs is a source of considerable danger to any person proceeding down the staircase at an accelerated pace.” Julia came out from behind the door, and ran to Gomme: “Netherby,” said she, “it made a horrible noise.” She wrung her hands, grasped his arm. “I hope to goodness you haven’t dashed that stupid man’s brains out.” Netherby put his hand on her shoulder gently: “It cannot be done, Julia,” said he. “No jury would convict on so weak a charge.” The tears sprang into Julia’s eyes: “I hate to see men quarrel,” said she petulantly; “they always push each other about instead of reasoning.” Gomme laughed loud and long: “Ah, Julia,” said he, tenderly taking her hand in his; “there are some things beyond reason. Take ourselves. The reasons why a certain little woman finds reasons for not being reasonable—oh, bother!” The door shut with a loud slam, and Noll came into the room, trailing the office broom after him. “I say, Julia,” he said; “it’s very soothing and nice, but there’s some one coming.” He shot the broom into a corner, and vaulted on to his high stool, as Julia put herself as far from Netherby as the office would allow. Footsteps came to the door. Wherein Master Oliver comes to the Conclusion that, to complete the Dramatic Picture, Greatness should have known the Hair-Shirt and the Makeshifts of Adversity. The door swung open, and a handsome woman of about thirty walked into the dingy room. She was possessed of that calm and the fresh easy manner and movement that come of generations of women who have exacted respect from their fellows—and given it. Netherby Gomme went to meet her, and as she shut the door she held out her gloved hand to him: “How are you, Mrs. Baddlesmere?” said he. “How are you, Netherby?” It was a charming voice that spoke. “Julia, too! why this thusness?” Julia blushed and smiled embarrassedly: Mrs. Baddlesmere turned to the boy: “Hard at work, Noll?” Noll shrugged his shoulders, where he sat hunched on his office-stool: “No, mother, I miss my tobacco,” said he. Mrs. Baddlesmere laughed lightly. “Don’t be stupid, Noll. Remember, you promised me—for a fortnight, you ridiculous child.” Noll smiled dryly: “Mother still thinks I am in knickerbockers,” said he. “She wanted me to wear a sailor hat last summer with ribbons hanging down behind and H.M.S. Sardine on it in gold letters. Women have the strangest ideas about men’s clothes—even the married ones.” Caroline Baddlesmere went to the boy and put her arm through his. “What an inky state you get into, my dear Noll!” she said. “Literature is not to be made without the spilling of much ink,” said Noll. Caroline Baddlesmere sighed sadly. “Well, Noll, after to-day you need not trouble with the spilling of ink,” she said. “Why, mother?” Mrs. Baddlesmere turned to Gomme: “I suppose, Netherby, you know that our days at the old office are over—that we have failed to make the ends of this paper meet!” “Yes, Netherby; but we must be packing what few things we want to keep.” Cheerily drawing off her gloves, she added with sudden seriousness: “I had not realized the position until Anthony told me a day or two ago, but within twenty-four hours I had settled everything—even the debts. And we have just taken a top-floor within half-an-hour of Charing Cross. It’s very airy—and it’s a large room—and the landlady’s a dear soul.” A twinkle came into her eyes. “But I’m afraid we must give up our weekly receptions.” Her shoulders gave the slightest suspicion of a shrug, and a serious catch came into her voice: “I’m only distressed to think, Netherby, that your loyal friendship to us has brought you no richer reward than a share in our disaster——” There was a heavy step on the landing without. Caroline Baddlesmere dashed a handkerchief across her eyes, and, opening the editor’s door, she signed to Julia to slip away with her. There was a loud knock. A big, gloomy man entered, flung the door to again dramatically, and strode solemnly into the room. His lank iron-grey hair, the massive pale clean-shaven face, the seedy frock-coat tightly buttoned across his body, his close-fitting much-knee’d trousers, and deliberate calculated stride, all gave him the air of a decayed actor of the old school; and his large gesture and full dramatic voice, that gave value to every word he spoke, heightened the impression; whilst the loose black cloak that was flung back from his shoulders finished it. “I am Eustace Lovegood,” he said tragically, and brought his cane down upon the floor. “Yes, sir,” said Gomme. “Thanks, young man,” said he; “I require your confirmation of the pathetic fact. I dined out last night”—he touched his forehead with his forefinger wearily—“and my most unprofitable intellect reminds me of what my bank-book and the neglect of the world have long since ceased to remind me—that my name is Eustace and Lovegood.... I must see the Editor.” “Yes, sir.” Gomme waved him to the chair by the fireplace. “Be seated, sir.” Lovegood looked at the forbidding chair, then glowered at him. “No,” said he, “I will not be seated.” As Gomme rose, and, hiding a smile behind a cough, moved towards the editor’s office, the tragic eyes of Eustace Lovegood turned to the boy Noll, where he sat, still as a statue, on his office-stool: “Ah, Oliver!” said the big man; and a smile shot into his eyes. “How is the boy Oliver?” He was moving towards Noll when the office-door opened, and Caroline, followed by the others, entered the room. “Hah, Caroline—a pleasant surprise indeed!” “What! you too, Miss Julia? I am your servant.” They all smiled affectionately—he was obviously an old friend. As his voice ceased there was a brisk step on the landing outside—a sharp knock—and the door flew open. A little man with a big moustache entered fussily, on jerky restless feet, and glanced sharply round the room; he was best known as a minor critic—one of those men who condemn everything they do not understand: “How do, Mrs. Baddlesmere?” he said, with a harsh voice and nervous manner. His eyes glanced away to Julia, to whom he nodded: “How do, Miss Julia?” His glance jumped to Noll where he sat observant, chin in palms, on the high office-chair: “How do, Master Noll?” The boy nodded: “You’ve forgotten your hat, Fosse,” said he. The fussy little man snapped off his hat: “So I have—so I have!” he yapped. Eustace Lovegood took three heavy paces towards Gomme, and said, with a black frown, in a confidential aside: “Faugh! that dreadful fussy little man of rude health—and the scarlet voice!” Mr. Fosse turned at the grumbled bass: “How do, Lovegood?” said he. “Thanks,” said Lovegood solemnly—“I don’t.” And he added in growled aside to Netherby Gomme: “I wish this person would not be familiar with my health.” Mr. Fosse skipped nervously towards Caroline Baddlesmere: “Eh—eh! Well, Mrs. Baddlesmere; and how’s the book?” Caroline Baddlesmere’s shoulders gave the slightest possible shrug: “My book is dead, Mr. Fosse.” Fosse folded his arms: “Precisely,” said he. “Honestly, it lacked the vital element of style.” He blew out his narrow little chest—he had the floor. “You have tragedy—pathos—and—er, yes—comedy. Yes, you have a certain amount of humour—a marvellous amount, indeed, for a woman, if you will excuse my saying so. Yet, comedy but raises a laugh”—he shrugged his little shoulders—“and there you are!... Tragedy but appeals to the emotions—draws a tear”—he shrugged his little shoulders again—“and there you are!... But Style is independent of laughter or tears. Tragedy——” “Pish!” pshawed Eustace Lovegood. He stepped a pace into the room: “Tragedy!” he roared scornfully, glaring at the fussy minor critic before him; and even the light of the conceited little Egoism seemed to flicker out, blown aside by the big man’s contempt: “Tragedy is the mere melodrama of life—the shedding of blood but the indecent accident of death.... It is comedy, the expression of the joy of living, that is worthy the serious attention of genius.” He Mr. Fosse was not quite sure whether he was being chaffed. He was one of those men so wanting in humour that he accused the humorous of lacking humour. He knew that his thin voice sank to insignificance in the deep thunder of this big man. “Er—yes. N’yes,” he said—and glanced uneasily at the others. Gomme’s face was a stolid impenetrable mask. Fosse skipped over to Gomme, and seizing him by the coat-lapel he said nervously: “Oh—ah—Mr. Gomme——” Eustace Lovegood snorted and strolled away to where Caroline stood. Fosse blinked uncomfortably at Gomme. “Ah—as a matter of fact—I came on business,” said he. His harsh jerky voice dropped into confidential whisper. “Might I beg of you to put in a little paragraph about my coming novel?” Gomme nodded. The little critic coughed: “If—you could hint—just hint that it is somewhat daringly original! I don’t even mind if you hint that it is rather—sinful—with—er—just a little suggestion that I am the English Maupassant, eh!... I can assure you,” he added, touching Gomme’s arm, “I can assure you that Thrumsby Burrage of The Discriminator said so at dinner last night.” Netherby Gomme coughed: “I did not know that Thrumsby Burrage drank,” said he. “Does he? Indeed! Very sad!” The fussy little man’s foxy eyes turned inwards, searching through his quick weasel intelligence to discover the connection, but failed: “Very sad indeed! Genius is nearly always wanting in the moral attributes.... But to return—if you would suggest that my work contains that—er—that—er——” Netherby Gomme nodded: “That combination of religion and immorality which is so alluring to the British public in a work of art,” said he—“yes, I quite understand.” Fosse roused from his self-concentration: “N’yes,” said he—“but perhaps if I——” “Certainly, Mr. Fosse; I was about to suggest that you should write it yourself; and we’ll whip it into shape——” “Delighted, my dear fellow, delighted!” The fussy little man’s fussy little feet began to shuffle with eagerness; he skipped towards Gomme’s desk. Gomme put himself in his way: “If you would send it by post, please, Mr. Fosse! Good-evening!” Fosse came to a halt: “Oh—a moment!” He took a pinch of Gomme’s coat-sleeve: “Y’know the whole town’s as hot over this new humorist, the fellow that wrote The Tragedy of the Ridiculous, as they were over Mrs. Gomme’s eyes twinkled: “But——” Fosse tugged impatiently at his sleeve: “Y’know, it doesn’t do to go with the crowd. Art is only for the elect. The popular verdict must be vulgar——” Noll, watching from his high perch on the office-stool, raised his voice: “Now, that’s curious, Fosse,” said he—“for he was here only this morning—and he was talking about you.” Fosse was intensely interested: “Indeed!” said he—“how very interesting! May I ask what he said?” “Well, you know, it was a private conversation—I don’t quite exactly like to say——” “It will go no farther—go no farther,” persisted Fosse, on the tip-toe of eagerness. “Well, he said you ought to chuck literature and try window-cleaning——” Lovegood’s deep chuckle echoed about the room, and Caroline Baddlesmere reprovingly said: “Noll!” The little man’s face became scarlet; then went white. He raised himself on his little high heels as far as his full rigidity of back and limb and pride would take him, and, tilting his nose in the air: “Puppy!” he snorted, and walked angrily out of the office. Julia went and scolded Noll, who hugged her. Lovegood turned to Caroline Baddlesmere, and the laughter went out of his eyes: “Caroline,” said he, “I have heard rumours of the disaster impending here—Anthony told me only this morning.” “Yes, Eustace. I’ve gone quite out of the fashion—just like yourself. But we must not whimper when the days are black.” “It grieves me,” said the big man sadly.... “You are not a good subject for the boiled potato—the homely bun.” “Nonsense, Eustace; we were all happy enough in the old Paris days—before I made my mark with the book.” Eustace Lovegood’s eyes turned into the past. “Ah, the Paris days!” said he, and fell into reverie.... “That reminds me,” he added after awhile. “Last night, as I supped under the stars at an itinerant barrow, regaling myself on a wondrous baked potato, a wandering musician splitting the air with peevish song in the murk of the London night, like some lost soul from the damned—most dramatic situation—a note of tragedy in the blackness of the world——” His mind wandered off into his thoughts, and he stood for awhile gazing into the night that was gone, forgetful of all that stood about him. “Well, Eustace!” The big man’s consciousness came back to his body with a start “Kate Ormsby?—who was engaged to poor drunken Andrew Blotte?” she asked hoarsely. “Ah, but remember, Caroline, he did not drink when he was engaged to Kate Ormsby. Blotte was the most brilliant in promise of us all.... All that began when Paul Pangbutt took her away from him——” “But—why didn’t you send her to me?” Caroline suddenly flushed embarrassedly, and added with a dry laugh: “Ah—I forgot.” She traced her confusion with her fingers on the palm of her slender hand. Lovegood went on dreamily: “Since Paul Pangbutt threw her over in Paris, like one of his discarded painting-rags, she has steadily gone down hill.... She wanted to know if I had seen Paul since he returned from his tour of the European courts and had set up his big studio in Kensington.” He shrugged his huge shoulders. “But I told her that the great did not much care about associating with me—that most of those that once knew my Christian name have forgotten even my surname.” Caroline nodded: “Kate Ormsby never had imagination,” said she—“she does not realize how greatness crowds out the memory.” Lovegood smiled sadly: “She sings for money at tavern doors now,” he said—“and she was such a dainty creature!” “Yes—I suppose you gave her your last half-crown, Eustace!” The big man put out a deprecating hand: “You exaggerate, Caroline; I lent her a florin——” She nodded: “And so there was no lunch to day—and will be no dinner!” “Pray do not exaggerate, Caroline. I wish you would not exaggerate.... I shall not regale at a restaurant—that is all.... Look at the potentiality of satisfaction in the homely bun!... As a matter of fact, I think the moderns eat too much flesh——” “Tut!” said Caroline Baddlesmere—“don’t make excuses to your own conscience.... But you want to say something, Eustace—I know by the way you are fiddling with other subjects. Do say it like a good fellow.” Lovegood coughed: “Yes—the fact is—I—have—in my room—an old chippendale writing-table. It belonged to an eighteenth-century ancestor who wrote the most execrable verse. You remember the modest piece of furniture?” A twinkle shot into Caroline’s eyes: “Well, since you press the question, Eustace, there is a piece of “It is grown somewhat shabby,” he resumed—“and a friend of mine who has long had a great fancy for it——” “Yes,” said Caroline slyly—“what was your friend’s name, did you say?” “Oh—ah—yes—his name is Gordon.” Caroline nodded: “Yes,” said she—“I suspected it was your uncle, Eustace—his Christian name is, I think, Isaac.” The big man chuckled: “Do you know, now I come to think of it, his Christian name is Isaac,” he said.... “He has long had a fancy for it. I called in just now as I passed, and told him he might have it.... It will give me more room——” “Oh, yes—it will give you more room,” said Caroline dryly. “Go on, Eustace.” “Yes,” said he—“I detest to feel cramped. And I thought—as an old friend—I might be permitted to suggest that—as you might want a little loose cash on changing houses——” Caroline Baddlesmere stamped her foot: “I am exceedingly angry with you, Eustace. You had no right to sell an heirloom,” she said furiously. “Your room is a positive disgrace of emptiness as it is.” She made an effort to keep her voice steady.... “It is quite bare and homeless enough to make me miserable every time I think of it.” Lovegood touched her arm: “Well, it’s done now,” he said pathetically—“and unless you take the money I don’t quite see how I am to proceed in the matter—without thwarting my original intention——” he added fatuously. “I shall go and have the whole bargain cancelled,” she said. “Hush! Caroline; I don’t think it would be quite a proper place for a gentlewoman to be seen in—upon my word——” “Who is the pawnbroker?” she asked bluntly. Lovegood coughed: “Caroline, I do not think I deserve this unkindness. He is a collector of second-hand oddities. As a matter of fact, I only lent it.” Caroline tried to keep back the tears: “You are a ridiculous good fellow,” she said; “but you do exasperate me.... What on earth are you going to write upon?” Lovegood looked relieved: “I wrote for an hour in bed this morning,” he said. “It was an intellectual treat. I shall always compose the finer flights of my imagination in bed in future.” Caroline laughed, with a sob in the laugh, and stroked the big fellow’s sleeve affectionately: “No, Eustace—I cannot accept it, old friend.” She dashed the handkerchief to her eyes, and added airily: “Well, well—it’s really very serious—I shall have to wear shabby gowns again. Hush!” She signed for silence. They all listened. There was a shuffling footstep on the landing, and a ridiculous and He came to an unsteady standstill, blinked at them all, and solemnly took off his hat. “My God!” muttered Caroline Baddlesmere—“it’s Andrew Blotte!” “Here’s poor Mr. Andrew Blotte,” said Julia in a frightened whisper to Noll. “Hullo, Mr. Blotte!” cried Noll from his high perch—“we’ve just been talking about you.” The drunken man sniggered: “Talk of a nightmare—and you hear it hiccup!” said he. But the effort at merriment upset his balance, and he made at a rolling gait for the desk, gripped at it to steady himself, and turning himself very carefully so as to avoid confusing his feet, he sat himself down against the edge of it. His face became a bland smile. His was a splendid head. From the square brow the strong hair sprang like a lion’s mane, and the fine massive head was set on the shoulders in a way that gave a sense of forcefulness in the man. But the once-handsome features were now heavy with drink, their beautiful form was being scarred deep with harsh lines, and the hint of beauty was only a haunting shadow of the thing that had once been. His chin and jowls were sprinkled with a grizzled growth of beard a couple of days old. He waved his hand round the room, and brought it with a strong masterful grip upon the desk on which he leaned. “Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, somewhat shame-facedly—“I had only looked for Anthony Baddlesmere—to find out his new address—but the fact is——” He looked slowly round the room, and his eyes lighted up as he recognised Caroline: “Ah, Caroline!—just the person I would have wished to see. You’ll excuse me maintaining a firm position—here—but the fact is—I’m far from sober.” “Ah, Andrew!” she said, coming to his side. “Yes, Caroline—I’ve been watching the almonds bloom—I have been walking on air—in realms where there is no solid, base, nor tangible reality. Tush! And you would call me—not sober!... Most—ridiculous—prejudice!... Why should people of taste be sober, when by tasting what tastes well they may walk on air? Such a strange convention!... Consider the position: You stroll down the filthy Strand in muddied boots, all the shabby world hurrying by, thinking sordidly of money and greynesses—or crawling along with hunger in their eyes under the miserable gas-lamps.... Sip the nectar of the gods, commune with Bacchus, and you are in a street of the world of dreams—you are a-riot—you walk on the wind—the trees are all in bloom—faces are laughing at you—the very cast-iron lamps come to greet you—the air is full of music—you sing—everyone sings!... Tush! you are a god.” “Ah, Andrew—when vice becomes a virtue, virtue seems but a feeble vice.” “It’s your trick, Caroline,” he said airily; and added, in a thick-voiced confidential aside, glancing round the room with drunken caution: “It’s rather a confidential matter, Caroline—but—we seem to be amongst friends. So I suppose it’s all right. We’re amongst intimates, eh? Good! All right.” He whistled a refrain gallingly out of tune. “Andrew!—Andrew——!” She put her white hand on his arm. Andrew Blotte patted the slender fingers: “Now don’t go wasting shame on me, Caroline. The fact is—nobody ever expects me to be in anything but a shameful condition. Think what a disappointment I must be when I am sober! What more embarrassing to a sober community than the return of the prodigal son?”... He laughed sadly, then seriousness came back to him. “But what I want to say is this: I hear you want money.... Well, I can lend you a loan.... I can’t get it to-day because—well, you see, it’s rather a ridiculous position—the fact is, I’m not quite aggressively sober—and my landlady has strict orders not to give me any money unless I am able to count a handful of small change without leaning for support on a physical basis.... Rather acute, I think—isn’t it?... But I’ll make a note of it for to-morrow. I’ll tie a knot on my handkerchief—hic——” (He fumbled for his handkerchief with drunken awkwardness.) “No!—you tie a knot on my handkerchief.” He held it out, and she took it to humour the poor fellow. “Andrew,” she said, “do go and rest awhile in Anthony’s room. There’s a comfortable armchair for you.” “No,” he said peevishly, “I don’t want to rest. I’m always resting. Andrew Blotte is tired of Andrew Blotte....” His mood suddenly changed; a light came into his eyes: “Yes,” said he, “I will promise to rest—if you’ll promise to take my loan.” Caroline shook her head. Lovegood went over to him: “Come, Blotte,” said he. Andrew Blotte shook his head: “No,” said he. “I mustn’t rest.... I’ve promised to take a poem before gaslight to the editor of that new literary review—forget his name, but his address is on one of my cuffs—somewhere....” He chuckled, as at some reminiscence: “He said he wanted a sonnet of two or three pages or so, but I told him it couldn’t be done—even Will Shakespeare couldn’t do it.... But he wasn’t to be put off.” He dug Lovegood in his tightly buttoned ribs: “He said I might choose my own subject!... But I told him—hic—he must mean a madr’gal.... We became quite friendly. For an illiterate person he was almost poetical. He confessed he had known love. Even editors have not always been bald. But—it is time to come and see the almonds bloom.” He took Lovegood’s arm and made for the door. As they strode out together he turned and kissed his fingers to them all. Caroline followed them to the head of the stairs to see them depart. “Netherby, what is this? Is it all really true?” “Yes.” “Why didn’t you tell me, Netherby?” The tears sprang into her eyes. “I guessed what I guessed, Julia; but I have only known to-day.” “Where are they going to live?” Netherby Gomme smiled sadly: “Well—Mrs. Baddlesmere has taken what is called by the house-agents the spacious, well-lit, and airy upper floor of an imposing family mansion in the West End.... We should call it an attic in Hammersmith.” Noll, who had slid down from his office-stool, crept up to Julia: “I say, Julia,” said he, “things seem a bit sour, don’t they?... I suppose you and Netherby will be wanting to get married, too, and all that sort of tomfoolery—and I had hoped to have coloured a meerschaum pipe for him as a wedding-present. I did begin one, but it made me so jolly sick. I have started a sailor on it now. Awfully ripping chap! Said he didn’t mind doing it for half-a-crown if I supplied the ’baccy. He’s a terrific clever fellow—he can spit fifteen feet! I measured it.... I was very lucky to get him”—he sighed heavily—“but I don’t see how the deuce I shall pay him for the job now.” Julia put her hand on Noll’s shoulder: “You are such a sadly vulgar boy at times, Noll,” she said. She dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief. “What are you sniffing about, Julia?” he asked, knitting his brows. “The mother has taken a jolly nice top-floor, I can tell you. One of the rooms is whopping big. We are going to do our own cooking—on such a rummy little stove. It’ll be a tremendous lark, won’t it? Roof slopes like a hen-roost.... I once poached an egg in the lid of a biscuit-tin over two candles—Jeroosalem! it did take a time—but it was an egg—it never quite got out of the wollopy condition, I don’t know why—and it burst half-way through the business—I think I kept jogging it up too often with a pencil to see if it were stiffening. But it was the most eggy egg I ever tasted.” Julia laughed lightly to smother a sob: “You are a ridiculous boy, Noll,” she said. Noll held her out at arms’ length and looked at her keenly: “What are you sniffing about, Julia? Anyone been annoying you?” Caroline had stolen back to the room. She walked over to Julia and put her hand on her shoulder: “It’s all right, Julia,” she said gently—“no one will be any the worse for it. It’s always darkest before the dawn.” “Of course,” said the boy Noll, straddling his legs and peering at the coming years—“every great man begins in an attic.” Wherein it would appear that the most respectable Stucco Architecture may be but a Screen for Gnawing Secrets The boy Noll shut the door that gave on to the narrow landing from the two large attics which were now his home, pushed back the silk hat on his head, and thrusting his hands into his breeches pockets, and whistling an air, he glanced up at the skylight above him to see whether the weather held. He tramped slowly down a few steps of the top flight of carpetless stairs that proclaim the attic heights, and halted aimlessly. It was more than vaguely borne in upon him that a great change had come over his life since, a month ago, he had taken down his prints from the walls of his empty home, and, with them tucked in a bundle under his arm, had walked into the twilight, trudging it on foot after the cart that contained the few pieces of furniture and such belongings as had not been sold, and, at the solemn journey’s end, skipping up three or four whitened steps, had entered the doors of this stucco well-to-do house that was let in apartments, standing, one of a row of like houses, glued together along the length of a long winding street—a “street with a good address,” the advertisement had it. The cushioned and unthinking ease of childhood was gone, buried in that empty house he had left behind him—the door was shut on that for ever. The rougher, hardier period of boyhood was upon him. It now came to the boy, who had never even wondered where everything came from, that each such everything had always had to be won by the sweat of toil. He had wondered more than once why that for which he had asked had sometimes been refused. But he now realized that the lucky-bag from which childhood gets all it wants was empty—sold at a tap of the hammer with the other things in that dead house, by an auctioneer fellow—gone—vanished. He tramped down some half-dozen bare board steps that resounded to his boots, and halted again. He was beginning to see that the fuel of life was not to be had for the asking. His mother sitting the livelong day and far into the night in that big attic he had just left—the one with his little bed in the corner of it, the large room that served as general sitting-room by day, his bed with coloured covering becoming in the daylight a couch He tramped down another step or two. It bothered him that he could not help. He knew he must grow into youth before his hand could win this wage that all the world was hurrying after. He tramped down a few more steps. For one thing he felt glad. He had thought it a bore when his mother had made out a scheme of reading for him, making him give his morning and a couple of hours of the afternoon to a course of English literature and history, and a promise to keep up his mathematics; but, as a matter of fact, and to his intense surprise, he was enjoying it. He tramped down a couple of steps. It was so like the mother to have clung to her books when she sold even her silks and satins! He tramped down another step. He wondered why there was no carpet to the attic flight. He wondered who lived in the rooms on each of these four landings below. That Major Modeyne, who lived on this one below them, seemed such a pleasant old fellow—it was a great pity he came in so late and so often the worse for liquor.... But he was mighty funny over it. He wondered if he felt as funny as he looked. It seemed such an odd thing to fill one’s self with strong liquors until one glugged hiccuping and ran over! He tramped down several steps. The boy had always thought of himself as being a part of a vague body of people called gentlefolk—a people who were always provided for from some gentlemanly source of livelihood which demanded clean hands and a sense of duty and no manual labour or a shop, quite a species apart from the mere middle-class world, and for whom the working classes provided the comforts of life, cleaning their boots and doing them service. Tradesmen and the labouring class, of course, were bound to earn a livelihood—a thing which he had always felt, without being expressly told so, to be rather a vulgar thing to do; although, of course, it was a very good thing for that sort of people. As he reached the bottom of the uncarpeted stair, and was about to step on to the drugget of the landing, a door opened, and there came out on to the landing a child of about twelve. She shook back the nut-brown hair from her clear grey eyes and gazed defiantly at Noll: “You’re a fool!” she said. Noll took off his hat, sat down on the bottom step, put his chin in his hands, and gazed at her: “I didn’t say you were an impudent fool,” she said hotly—“I meant a common, vulgar tomfool.” Noll nodded. The dainty slender girl before him gazed at him sternly: “It was you that put all the water-cans about the landing, and the water-jugs on the stairs, for my father to fall amongst when”—she hesitated and flushed angrily—“when he came back late last night.” Noll nodded: “Yes,” said he—“and he fell amongst them.” He chuckled. “I watched him over the rail. It was moonlight up here. He came crawling up the stairs in the dark, saying Shush! to himself if a board creaked, and carrying his boots in his hand so as not to wake the landlady—and when he got on to this landing he gave a monstrous hiccup that jolly nearly pulled him off his feet, and he tripped up amongst the cans—away went his boots, and fell in the hall below. D’you know, I shall never play a lark on your father again—he’s such a gentleman. Most people would have sworn themselves putrid, but he just rubbed his shins and elbows, sat up in the moonlight, and said with a hiccup: ‘What a prodigious number of stars there are at the north pole! Shakespeare has cracked every nut—when beggars die, says he, there are no comets seen, the heavens themselves blaze forth the fall of the landed gentry.... I did not know all heaven held so many, various, multitudinous, and vast prodigious stars!’” The girl waited grimly until he had done: “It was you who made a booby-trap in his bed so that he could not get into it?” Noll nodded: “Yes,” said he; “he looked jolly comic under the bed; he got under—he must have slept there.” “That’s just where you are mistaken,” said the child with a sneer. “I never go to bed until my father is asleep. I got him out.... I suppose you thought you were funny!” Noll nodded: “Yes,” he said; “I did, last night. But I don’t now. I think I was a cad.” “So do I,” she said.... Noll sat for awhile and gazed at her. He got up and held out his hand sheepishly: “Shake hands,” said he; “I apologize. It’s my birthday to-day.” Betty considered. She hesitated—then put out a delicate thin hand: “What age are you?” she asked. “Fourteen,” said Noll. “I shall be twelve to-morrow,” she said. “Then let’s keep it now,” said Noll. “I’m going to see a splendid fellow, a friend of mine—he’s a prodigious clever fellow—he’s written a book.” “Has he?” she asked. “Yes, rather. Come and see him too.” “All right,” she said; “but come in and have tea first, and I’ll put on my hat and jacket. We shan’t be very late out, shall we?” “I’ll bring you back the moment you like,” said Noll. “We only have high tea in the evenings now, so my people don’t mind my being late to an hour or so; they know I’m with Netherby. But we’ll be back sharp, and you can come to tea with us, eh? I’d like to introduce you to my mother.” The child nodded, and led the way into the Major’s quarters. Noll, with the boy’s quick vision, took in a first picture of the little lady’s surroundings that never left him. It was a large and airy room, furnished within the absolute limits of necessity. In a corner by a door stood the child’s little white bed, but it required more imagination than was given to the ordinary to call up the image of a small child that stood every night listening at that other door to hear whether her father’s breathing were heavy enough for sleep; to call up the vision of the slight figure that nightly opened that same door with stealthy care to make sure of the candle being out, and all danger of fire set far from the reach of awkward drunken hands; it demanded a keener ear than his to hear the last sigh of the child as she slipped into her bed in the small hours of the night and lay down to take her long-delayed rest in that sleep that should have sealed her eyes for hours, and had already held the rest of the world for a half of the night. The dainty little figure that now stood before the mirror, giving to her hat just that touch which makes or mars the adornment of women, showed no peevish rebellion against, nor carping discontent with, the sordid burden of life that had been thrust upon her far too young and sadly thin little shoulders. She might indeed have gone, as she stood, to Court, and withal taught the ladies of fashion there assembled more than something of the queenly attitude. The atmosphere of the child it was that took the sense of emptiness from the empty room. The little table that stood before the fireplace, with a napkin spread upon it for tablecloth—it had been washed by her small hands—and the coarse tea-things set out upon it: these things and the kettle that bubbled on the hob had quite evidently been deserted by the child when she marched out to her attack in the passage. Noll now proceeded to make the tea at her bidding—she giving him orders as she gazed into the mirror, in which she commanded a view of the room. The lad’s eyes wandered over the walls, which were bare enough to bring his quick attention to rest on the picture of a man in uniform that hungover the mantel—the picture of handsome Cornelius Mauduit Modeyne as he had been when he married the mild beauty with the tragic eyes that dreamed out of the picture hanging pendant to his, and to whom the child bore more than a little likeness. Had the Indeed, there is more in noble tradition than in blood. The battle-cry of the ancient Modeynes had been Loyalty. Modeyne came of old aristocratic Catholic stock, but he had long ceased to attend his church; and the image, a very beautiful image of the Mary and Child, that stood upon his mantel was the sole relic of his old beliefs—even it did not stand there from any vague sentiment towards his church; indeed, it had not gone to the pawnbroker as much from negligence as from religious bias. The child would sing to herself at times the beautiful lines of the Ave Maria that Gounod has set to Bach’s Fugue, just as she would lilt a nursery rhyme; but the learning of it was an early reminiscence of her father in his cups, moved to song. Her prayers, on going to bed at night, were just a part of her duty in putting off her clothes—it warmed and coloured the child’s imagination, was the full stop to her day, but it was quite aloof from the conduct of the world. From Modeyne the child had inherited remarkable charm of manner as well as much of her dainty delicacy.... The hat and jacket being arranged to her taste, the child went and sat down beside Noll, and presided over the hospitalities. She apologized for the thickness of the bread and butter, but she said it was her last meal of the day, and she was always hungry for it. She remembered she had some cake, and tripped off to the cupboard; but her face fell when she took the fragment out of its carefully enwrapping silver-paper. “I got it nearly a month ago—for my father’s birthday,” she said simply. “I’m afraid it’s gone dry.” They ate it between them. “It is rather nutty,” she said. “I never noticed that before.” Childhood takes the world for granted. As the two went cheerily down the stairs and out into the street, the boy’s heart lightened; the gnawing sense of loneliness that had oppressed him fell from him, and the stucco street turned to a way of palaces in the grey of the twilight. Wherein Miss Betty Modeyne is introduced to the Study of Nature As they stood on the doorstep, waiting for the answer to their ring at Netherby Gomme’s bell, Betty broke a pensive silence: “I have never spoken to an author,” she said. She had not imagined the spring of literature as running in so dingy a well. Noll pshawed airily: “I’ve known a lot,” said he. “They’re just like everybody else, except when they think they are not—and then they are beastly tedious.” The door was opened by the grim old lady who was mother to Netherby Gomme. Her, Noll saluted cheerily. The old lady shook hands with him and darted a jealous look at the girl. Noll explained: “I have brought a friend of mine,” said he—“Miss Betty Modeyne.” The old lady bowed stiffly to the child. Noll took off his hat: “I suppose Netherby is in?” he said, calmly walking into the passage; and the child followed him. The old lady shut the outer door: “Yes,” she said—“he’s about finished work by this, I think.” “Don’t you trouble to come up, Mrs. Gomme,” said Noll airily, opening the sitting-room door with elaborate formality for the old lady; “I know the way up, don’t I?” She smiled. The light suddenly snapped out of her shrewd eyes again—she glanced sharply at the girl: “I suppose,” said she, “the little lady will remain with me?” Noll laughed: “Oh no; she wants to see a great writer in his workshop,” he said; and the jealousy went out of the old lady’s eyes. She nodded and smiled as she withdrew to her chair by the fire. The youngsters made a move for the heights. Noll, when he had shut the old lady’s door, said to Betty in a whisper: “That’s her bedroom at the back.” They mounted the stairs. “She lets the other floors,” added Noll, as they passed shut doors. “Netherby’s room is right at the top....” He suddenly missed from her place the dainty little figure, and, looking up, he found that she was making a round of the attic, his beloved workshop. The child had slipped off to peer at the prints which hung tacked on to the walls on squares of stiff brown paper—the overflow from Noll’s collection. They added a delightful touch of beauty to the dingy place, and were in splendid sombre harmony with the books, themselves amongst the most decorative of all ornaments—which here held possession of every nook and cranny, and overflowed every shelf. Netherby Gomme went and lit a candle, holding it for her that she might see the better. “What does that say to you?” he asked the solemn child. She was gazing intently at Timothy Cole’s exquisite wood engraving of Millet’s “Sower.” “It says—no, it sings to me,” she said, trying with deliberate searching to find the absolute word, as a young thrush tries its notes; and the effort of her intellect to express the right hair’s-breadth value touched Gomme’s instincts and made the art leap within him. He nodded. The child faced the picture, and went on haltingly: “It sings to me of—— It is a man walking in a furrow—and all the earth seems to be whispering—in a sort of hush—as if live things were coming out of the silence. Twilight is far more full of spirits than any other time—things that beckon and tell secrets. The dusk is always filled with whispers, as if sweet young things were being born, and poor dying things were glad to be going to sleep.... That’s the sower—he walks along and sows. And he is solemn, because he knows that all that he flings on the dark earth will spring in the dusk, and become alive.” Netherby stroked her head: “Betty,” said he, “do you think the artist who painted that picture meant you to feel all that?” “Didn’t he?” she asked simply. She looked at it again with serious grey eyes. She shook her head doggedly. “No; that isn’t just a man in a field. Sometimes pictures look as if they had been painted just because the painter wanted to show how cleverly he could draw an eye or an ear or a bootlace; but, look! this sower has not got any of these things, yet somehow they are there—they seem to come in as one looks. The sowing in the twilight is the thing. I can hear the big clumsy man walking with long strides, his heavy footfall all muffled in the brown earth. I can see it and hear it and smell it——” The child ceased speaking, at a loss to explain, her little brows knit as she stood searching for expression. The boy Noll stood at gaze, wondering. Netherby Gomme said not a word. The girl sighed: “Doesn’t it say that to you?” she asked, looking up at the big awkward fellow, whose intent face, lit by the candle-light, showed large eyes fixed on some distant thought. “Yes, Betty,” said he—“something like that. That is one of the world’s masterpieces.” “Masterpiece.” The child repeated the word lovingly—“I like that word—masterpiece.” She went to the next print. It was the wondrous little wood-engraving of the vision as seen by the youthful Holman Hunt of The Lady of Shalott when the mirror cracks from side to side and the web on the loom flies wide, for her eyes have seen unheeding Lancelot. The child looked at it for a long while: “I think I know what that means,” she said—“the lady has been weaving something, and it has all got tangled about her, and she can’t undo the knots.” She sighed: “It is so hard to undo the knots,” she said. Netherby Gomme coughed: “Have you ever heard the ballad of The Lady of Shalott, Betty?” he asked. The child shook her dainty head. “Sit down in a cosy chair and I’ll read it to you,” he said. And he set his armchair for her, seating himself by his lamp. He took up a battered, dog-eared volume of Tennyson and read the immortal ballad, and Betty, to the haunting music of the verse, strayed into the meads by Camelot, and, lingering by the river’s brink, she listened with the awed reapers amongst the bearded barley, watching the heavy barges glide by until there came wending past that most tragic barge of all that floated down to the hushed death-song of the broken-hearted faery Lady of Shalott. Netherby Gomme closed the book gently, and watched the child. Her eyes were full of tears: “But—but why did she die?” she asked eagerly. “She loved what could not give her love,” he said. The child nodded her head: “I think I understand,” she said. The child sat silent for a long while. Then she took the lighted candle and went and peered at the little design. She came back to the table, and put down the candle upon it: “I like the way that lady’s head is placed right up against the top of the picture,” she said—“as if she felt something were crushing her down....” She put her small hands on her dainty head—“crushing and crushing her down—and she can’t get away from it, because—it’s all tangled—tangled—tangled. And it won’t come right.... It always feels just like that.” “Good God!” said Netherby Gomme hoarsely—“has this child begun to suffer already?” The child went to his knee and gazed at him: “Your eyes are full of tears,” she said. He blew his nose noisily: “You must not take my tears too seriously, Betty,” said he—“I am a humorist.” “But Mr.——” “But, Netherby,” she said simply, “I thought everyone had known suffering.” “No, thank God,” said he. “Only women?” she asked. “No—it isn’t a matter of man or woman. Only God’s aristocracy are crucified,” he said. “Only a few suffer so.” She looked into the beyond; a smile ran round the serious little lips: “I am glad to hear that,” she said. And she added after a while: “I shall sleep better now.” Netherby turned in his chair and looked at the child solemnly: “Come here, little woman,” he said. She came to him, with her light walk, a dainty lank child, wrought of the finest fibre. Me held out his two hands, and she put a slender little hand in each. “Betty,” he asked, “who have you heard say these things?” “No one,” she said simply—“I just feel them so.” Netherby stroked her head: “One of these days, Betty, the world will listen to you. But don’t trouble about things until you are grown up—just enjoy your life now. Noll, Betty is too much indoors. She must get out into the fresh air of the world—she must study nature—we must take her to the theatre.” Betty’s eyes sparkled: “I’ve never been to a theatre,” she said, her nerves dancing. “Then we’ll go to a pit to-morrow night, Noll, eh? all three of us.” When Betty and Noll with Netherby descended the stairs, the door of the old lady’s sitting-room was open. Betty turned and walked in—stepped lightly to the side of the old woman where she sat before the fire in her armchair, her old watchful eyes fixed on the open door, and the child leaned forward and kissed her withered old cheek: “I love you,” she said, “because you love Netherby; and you have his big kind eyes.” The old lady put out her old hand and stroked the child’s head: “But you are leaving Master Noll sadly out in the cold, my little lady,” she said. Betty turned and looked at Noll: “Oh no,” said she—“I love him in quite a different way.” The old lady laughed. The next morning being Betty’s birthday, she found at her door a sheet of stiff brown paper on which was fixed the print of “The Sower,” the whole set in a battered old picture-frame of Noll’s. It was the first birthday gift she had ever had—as long as she could remember.... The sound of the rushing feet of the theatre-goers passing eagerly into the pit in holiday humour; the rustle of silk and satin and the leisurely entrance of handsomely dressed women into the more gorgeous comfort of the stalls as they dawdled to their elaborate seats; the delicious tunings of violins as the bandsmen took their places in the orchestra; the burst of music; the echo of the stage carpenter’s hammer from the screened world hidden by the great curtain beyond the footlights; the lowering of lights and resulting sudden darkness in the theatre; the sharp clink of a bell for the ringing up of the curtain; the hushing into silence of the whispering audience; the slow uprolling of the great curtain as it was gathered into the flies; and the footlights disclosed another world, flinging its large picture upon the vision—the fantastic reality of the drama—a world that comes to life for a little while and holds the imagination as it were held by a dream. So the child sat, between Noll and Netherby, holding a hand of each. It struck her keen wits as strange that in the large drawing-rooms of her fashionable relations she had felt no warmth of affection towards the glittering women who turned their cold critical eyes upon this child of their ne’er-do-weel soldier kinsman—yet here were two lads, whom she had not known a couple of days ago, winning her confidence by their large chivalry, their whole-souled friendship now grown as old as her life—friendship such as makes of life a splendid adventure. When the curtain came down on the last act, the child sighed. She realized with a pang that the play was over. Wherein it is hinted that to be Famous is not necessarily to be Great In a large and richly furnished studio that was the splendid workshop of a fashionable portrait-painter there stood before an easel a handsome fair-bearded man—handsome, though the head was small—a fellow who held himself with self-reliance, straight and satisfied. And with the calculated stroke of one who has mastered the technique of his craft, he set down the loaded brush on the embrowned canvas, yielding a touch of colour that told like living flesh on the portrait of the pretty woman whose likeness he was building up into life. The stroke of colour pleased him, and he stood back and peered at it. He turned his head and glanced keenly at the pretty woman where she sat in the handsome chair that stood on the painter’s throne before him, her beauty enhanced and brought out by the carefully arranged crimson draping that was set in the grand manner as a heavy curtain looped behind her with golden cords and tassel—indeed, she made a telling picture as she sat there framed in by the great screen that was placed at her left hand to keep away the draught from the large double doors near by. The beauty of Lady Persimmon, as the world knows, had caught roving royal eyes; and she was at the height of her vogue, gathering from this strange source of public esteem such homage as is given to the toy of a court. She was, in very truth, exquisite as a butterfly. “Ah,” said she with languid, lazy accent that caressed the words she uttered, “I should love to live in Bohemia.” And she added with a pout: “Society is such a weary round—and so spiteful!” Paul Pangbutt shrugged his shoulders: “A part of the price you must pay for being a beautiful woman, my dear lady,” he said—and he went back to his painting. “What? Spite!” she asked, the handsome brows meeting in questioning furrows. Her lips were very red—half open with delicious whisperings of scarlet sin, a minor poet had it—so she would keep them half open, though she most pronouncedly estranged herself from the minor poet for close upon a fortnight in display of her deep resentment. Thus, too, she was now being limned. Pangbutt painted the corner of her pathetic mouth: “Spite is the unwitting tribute of a petty mind,” he pronounced. “I don’t see that that is any excuse for it,” she said smartly. Pangbutt stood back; and he uttered a light laugh: “That’s rather alarming, isn’t it?” she cooed. “Fancy if we criticised our friends!” “Exactly what you do!” he pshawed. “You give your friendship: it is criticism in action. On others you turn a cold shoulder. You have said no word—but you have passed criticism. You have—well!—you have turned a very pretty but cruel back—uttered a more brutal verdict than tongue ever spoke.” She laughed lightly: “You’re a charming colourist, Paul—but all your craft cannot whitewash spite,” she said. “No, no,” said he. “I only say that criticism has its shabby side. Spite is criticism gone sour.... But, tsha! I don’t believe there is all this venom in the world.” He laid down his palette: “It’s a very comfortable old world.... I’m afraid the light has gone.” He pushed the easel aside, and came to where she sat. He set a foot on the throne, and leaned his elbow upon his knee, gazing into her eyes: “The light has gone, and your great beauty calls for all the light—it dares the sun’s severest cross-examination.” He held out his hand and she placed her slender fingers in his; she felt his admiring regard upon her. He pressed her fingers: “You are firing my art as it has never been fired—you have given my craft all that it has lacked—yet your beauty, that exquisite thing over which you have no control, which is of no willing of yours, not even your own gift to yourself, is so subtle, so elusive, so wonderful, that all the colours of my art, all my knowledge of their use, cannot give more than a hint of that which you have, and without the asking. You are the living thing—I can at best but paint some poor suggestion of it. And when I have done, what is there in all my effort of the warmth and the sweetness, of the mystic fragrance of you?... Yet”—he played with her fingers—“yet,” he added, “you are giving me that inspiration that will set me above my fellows—the artist has never been anything of moment until fired by the flame of a great passion—and it may be that your beauty will make my art to glow and live.” “I am glad,” she said, “if I—have——” She hesitated prettily, and he kissed her fingers. She was really thinking that this was a doing of the thing handsomely, but young Nick Bellenden of the Guards talked less and made of loving a more exciting affair. After all, the embrace was chief part of the business—not this dandified talk. Thus they played at half-revealed travesties of passion; she keeping back much she would not have had him guess; he himself, perhaps, only half-realizing how little he allowed her glamour to interfere with his art until the light was gone and his craft at rest. The man had not even the excuse of jumping blood, the plea of hot-headedness. He It was dusk when he said inquiringly: “You’ll have some tea?” He rang the bell. She laughed gaily: “You have not turned on the light,” she said. He snapped the trigger of the electric switch, and the room burst into light. An old man-servant flung open the door and entered, bearing a glittering tea-service on a silver salver. As he came into view round the edge of the high screen, Pangbutt beckoned him towards the throne: “Set the tray by her ladyship, Dukes,” said he. The old butler set down the things on the throne at her feet. Lady Persimmon lolled back in her chair: “Nevertheless,” she said, “I should love, just for a little while, to live in Bohemia.” Pangbutt laughed. It had been borne in upon him that this gentle beauty had deft resource and a somewhat confirmed habit in steering awkward corners. He came back to argument: “But Bohemia, too, has its shabby side,” he said—“there is spite even in Bohemia.... I’m afraid I’m watering down some of your illusions, Lady Persimmon.” “Ah, it’s quite easy to see that you were not long in Bohemia—not long enough to be infected with its home-sickness.” The butler passed stealthily out of the room on silent feet—and the catch on the door faintly clicked. The pretty woman nestled back amongst her cushions, and gazed through half-closed lids with languorous eyes at the man who poured out the tea near her feet. “It’s so pleasant,” she said with a comfortable sigh, “to see the tea—the silver—the china. The fragrance of it all——” He stopped, the silver teapot in his hand, and smiled: “But there are no footmen in Bohemia—very little silver—very indifferent china.” He handed her a cup of tea. “They live as often as not upon imagination—and mad cow is their chiefest dish.” She raised inquiring eyebrows: “Mad cow?” she asked. He nodded: “Hunger,” said he, and he laughed.... “It doesn’t sound an alluring dish, does it?” “How dreadful!” she purred, and sipped tea. “Still”—she sighed—“it must be rather exciting. It must be so romantic—to starve.” Pangbutt shrugged his shoulders: “This is an age of romance, then,” said he. She sighed, prattling on: “And it must be delicious to be famous.” The flattery sent a smirk to Pangbutt’s lips: “Ah, Fame——!” he said. The handle of the door moved, clicking in its turning, and Pangbutt, Pangbutt gasped with frank surprise: “Anthony? Good God, where have you sprung from?” “Sorry to come before the light has quite gone, Paul; but I’m starving.” “Starving?” Anthony nodded his head: “H’m, h’m! There you have the real devil in the machinery—and I’m turning on the lime-light of confession.” He glanced round the great studio deliberately: “This is rather a handsome room to confess in—a palace to our rooms in the old Paris days, eh?” Pangbutt was cudgelling his wits to say something that would discover the presence of the seated lady behind the screen to the careless intruder, when Anthony strode up to him; and as the corner of the throne came into his range of vision beyond the end of the screen, he caught sight of the tray with the bright tea-things upon it. “Food, ye gods!” he cried, and strode towards the tray. “Paul,” he said hoarsely—“I must have food.” He stretched out his hand to the tray—halted—hesitated—stood up and took off his hat, as, on passing the screen, the enthroned sitter came into his view. He bowed: “Madame,” said he—“I apologize for my want of manners. The truth is I pawned them weeks ago—with my waistcoat and the last family portrait—a miniature of my uncle the general—a most polished person, who would have died of an apoplectic fit to see himself coming to move in such mixed company——” Pangbutt coughed; and mumbling their names, as the fashion is, he introduced them, adding: “A friend of mine—from Bohemia.” His eyes laughed to her. He turned to Anthony as the two bowed to each other formally: “Anthony,” said he—“the sight of you takes me back to Paris—and makeshifts.” “Makeshifts!” Anthony laughed sadly, and, rousing, added—“I say, Paul, have you finished with the crumbs on that tray?” Pangbutt uttered an embarrassed laugh, and went and rang the bell. “Anthony was always impatient for the dinner-hour,” he said—and turning to Dukes as he appeared at the door he added—“Take away the tray, Dukes——” Anthony put out his hand: “I say—couldn’t he—leave the tray? I see some crumbs.... Bring another tray, Dukes.” Pangbutt signed to the old butler to wait: “A glass of wine, Anthony?” he asked. “Tsah! you don’t understand, Paul. I’m not playing with my vitals—I’m starving, man,” he said hoarsely. “A chicken?” “D’you mind it cold?” “Heavens, Paul! I shall die in the midst of all these elaborate courtesies—this rigid etiquette!” He sank down wearily upon a corner of the painting throne, and fidgeted with the tea-things on the tray. Pangbutt gave an embarrassed laugh, and turned to the butler: “Dukes, bring up a tray—cold chicken—wine—anything you can get. Quick as you can.” “Yessir!” said Dukes, and formally disappeared. The beauty had been markedly uneasy; she now rose to take her leave. “I must be running away, Mr. Pangbutt,” she said; and bowing over her shoulder to Anthony, who rose and returned her bow with stiff precision as she stepped lightly down from the throne: “So sorry!” she said. As Pangbutt moved with her through the door she asked him in confidential undertone: “Who’s the savage? Where does he come from?” “Bohemia,” he said, with a dry mocking smile; and he lingered about her on the landing, to assist her with her cloak. He escorted her downstairs to her carriage.... When they were gone from the studio, Anthony Baddlesmere rose from his seat, carrying the last piece of a tea-cake in his hand, and, walking over to the easel, as he ate the cake he regarded the picture with critical eye: “H’m! ’Tain’t bad!” he growled. Pangbutt entered the room and shut the door. He laughed: “Her ladyship doesn’t seem to be so enamoured of Bohemia after all,” he muttered. “Eh?” asked Anthony. “Oh—nothing—nothing,” said Pangbutt. “I am afraid we have spoilt a pretty woman’s illusion.” Anthony gazed at the canvas before him: “To destroy a pretty woman’s illusions is cruel as plucking out a child’s eyes,” he said, and added: “Who’s the doll?” “Lady Persimmon; but——” “What? Eleanor Persimmon, who married old Gilders Persimmon?... He dyed his beard for the wedding—naughty old man—and he’s had to renew it ever since——” Pangbutt went to the fireplace, and he turned and said severely: “Sir Gilders Persimmon is not in his youth, but——” “No, no, Paul—I’m not blaming him for being a ruin—but he’s so damned badly restored.” He turned to the picture. “So you are Eleanor Persimmon, my lady!” He gazed at the portrait dreamily; and, suddenly rousing, added: “Not much of a likeness, old boy, is it?” Pangbutt smiled wryly. Anthony peered round the easel at him: “I suppose she babbles all the time!” said he. “Lady Persimmon is a most charming woman,” he said. “Yes, yes; it’s in the family,” Anthony said airily—“she’s a sort of cousin of mine. My brother had rather a calf-love for her—when he was seventeen—and a calf.” Pangbutt flushed: “I do not care to discuss Lady Persimmon,” he said stiffly. “No, no; I can quite understand that,” said Anthony breezily. “Nor do I—nor do I. She was always rather uninteresting.” He walked over to the throne: “Ho, ho!” thought he. “H’m! ha! Paul still worships the titled classes. He was always weak in the first commandment.” He sat down wearily and searched aimlessly under the little covers of the cake-dishes on the tray. “Paul,” said he, “I exaggerated when I said there were crumbs....” And he added with a laugh—“I don’t suppose cousin Eleanor recognised cousin Anthony—I was only sixteen—besides, she would not be prepared for his rising at her pretty feet like a down-at-heels pantomime clown in this Palace of Art—this lofty pleasure-house.” “You wrong Lady Persimmon by insinuation,” said Pangbutt sulkily—“she is a woman of most generous sentiments.” Anthony uttered a funny little laughing grunt: “Cousin Eleanor was always the soul of sentiment and—delicate self-indulgence. She used to adore the portrait of Shelley—weep over Chatterton—cry over Kit Marlowe—and—married a baronet in an advanced state of decay.” He got up, strode to the easel again, and examined the picture. Pangbutt watched him under his brows with sulky attention, lolling against the mantelpiece. “Come, Paul, old boy,” Anthony said at last—“I’ve been sketching the doll’s soul for you; but you’ve got none of that into her picture.... The colour and technique may be all there—and it is splendidly handled—but where’s the woman?” Anthony’s frank criticism, his just and keen appreciation of the good and the weak side of a work of art, had always won Pangbutt’s admiration; and the scowl left his eyes now as the praise bit into his conceit. The detraction passed by him: “D’you know, Anthony,” he said—“sometimes I suspect I am too successful—too easily successful—and I have a horror of becoming commonplace.” His eyes followed the other as he slouched carelessly back to the throne and flung himself upon it. “Pooh! Nonsense, Paul.” He searched aimlessly amongst the empty plates again: “That’s all cant. Look at me. I’m as empty as a bubble—but it’s just as difficult to write sparkling prose on an empty stomach as to be a poetic alderman.” Pangbutt gazed down at his own shining boots complacently: “I have not forgotten what personal discomfort was, in the old Paris days. I detested it. I determined from the first to be rid of it.... Where are you living?” “In a very shabby corner of Bohemia, Paul, where, in the streets, every vagrant wind makes whirlpools of stray papers—that shuffle by—like the damned restless whispering ghosts of rejected poems—or other stammerings that are the inky outpourings of broken literary careers.... Not at all the sort of place that you would like, old boy.... But, Paul”—he looked round the room—“you muttered something—about—a chicken—just now——” Paul laughed—a little embarrassedly; and rang the bell: “You’d like to take off your overcoat?” he asked. Anthony laughed drily: “Tsh! Paul!—we’ll avoid delicate subjects, please. But since I am in the confessional, I ought to add that I haven’t a coat or waistcoat. Misfortune makes us acquainted with strange underclothes.” Paul Pangbutt smiled; but a frown followed close upon the smile, and blackened it. He was possessed of that peculiar egoism which, at the sight of the pitiful, is but roused to a delicious self-pity. “Ah,” said he; and a little suspicion of patronage slipped into his manner, as it does when we are content to comfort our friends with phrases—“I have not forgotten what makeshifts were in Paris—before I made my mark.... I always detested frayed cuffs.” A funny little smile played about the lips of the seated man; he nodded grimly: “H’m, yes. Having no shirt at all has that advantage—the cuffs do not fray.” Pangbutt’s scowl came flitting back: “Yes; I know.... You and the others always made a jest of the disgusting pinch and meanness of it all——” The weary man nodded: “Ah, yes, it’s true,” said he, and he sighed—“the road was very weary—very dusty—sometimes—in Paris.” The other strode vigorously up and down the room, with that vigour that had set him on the road to success: his eyes were fixed within: “But I determined at the first chance I got to shake off that dust of the students’ quarter of Paris. I detested the untidiness of them all—the leanness and the grim jest of it—and the everlasting loans that were never paid.” Anthony’s face, as he watched the impatient striding from under his brows, listening to the triumphant note of success, flickered with a grim smile. Paul Pangbutt had not been exactly notorious for the lending of loans. It came to him that his quest for help was not going to be an easy one. The other suddenly came to a halt, and looked keenly at Anthony where he sat; remembering that this brooding man was the real subject of talk, he added: “But—are things really as low with you as you say, Anthony?... You always made a jest of hard work.” Anthony laughed sadly: “And sometimes we got a good deal of hard work out of a jest; eh, Paul?” The smile died out of his eyes as soon as he had spoken: Pangbutt assumed the fatherly note: “Anthony,” said he—“I hope you will not mind my saying so, but you were always most reckless in your expenditure—or rather in your loans to all that army of hangers-on about you.” It came to Anthony, as he stood in the withering blight of this man’s lack of sympathy, that if he were going to ask for help he must set aside all delicacy and put the situation before him bluntly. He made an unwilling start: “Some years ago, Paul,” he said, “after you had made your mark in Paris, and were doing the round of the foreign courts, you no doubt heard that Caroline made rather a sensation with a book.” Pangbutt nodded: “I have read it,” he said—but his attitude was enigma. Anthony was relieved to find there was to be no oratorial protest in honour of Style. He went on as though repeating a distasteful task he had set himself: “It has been attacked from all sides. It is as dead—as—a railway sandwich.” “That is rather a misfortune,” said Pangbutt. Anthony laughed. He felt strangely ashamed—of himself—of his friend. And it flashed through his thinking parts, with lightning stroke, that this was the man whom Caroline had nursed through the typhoid. He was roused from his reflections by Pangbutt’s sharp question: “And you?” He searched about in his mind for what he had last said: “Eh? Me? Oh, ah, yes; I tried to grow a garden of literature in Fleet Street—to bring to blossom the tender buds of the new school of thought. But my star was not in journalism. My paper was burnt up in the fire of the young immortals who flocked to my office, whose masterpieces few would buy—or read.” He smiled a wan smile, and sighed: “The paper has gone into ash.... That’s why, when the wind blows keen, there is so much dust in Fleet Street.” Pangbutt’s eyes were fixed critically upon his own survey of this man’s past, and he had but half listened to the other’s words: “On the whole,” said he drily, “you have not been very fortunate, then?” Anthony laughed sadly, but said nothing. It was definitely borne in upon him that he would never be able to ask this man for money. The other was embarrassed by the silence: “What are you going to do?” he asked uncomfortably. Anthony roused himself. He took up the thread of his appeal, but he now went on vaguely—he felt that it was hopeless: “Oh, ah, yes.... Well, my verse is sunk to the honour of neglect—which is not a matter wholly wanting in subtle flattery, since all the clever young men tell me it is the reward of true poetry. But—here’s food!” he cried, as the door opened and the butler entered, carrying a tray, well laden: “Here’s food—so poetry go hang!” He seized the He carved off the wings and breast, and his searching glance fell on a large handsome quarto that lay upon the throne by his side. “Hullo!” said he—“a large-paper edition!” He turned it over and saw that it was verse. “What idiot has been writing verses now?” Pangbutt smiled: “That’s a volume of collected poems by Sir Gilders Persimmon,” he said. “Indecent old thing!... May I have the fly-leaf for the chicken?” Pangbutt almost put out his hand in panic, fearing sacrilege; but he said instead, rather stiffly: “It is an autograph copy from my friend, Sir Gilders Persimmon; and——” “Yes, yes—quite so. It’s luxury to write poetry when you’re rich,” he said—“poetry should be handsomely treated.” “Ah, Anthony—we scoff at riches——” “Who scoffs at riches?” Anthony looked up sharply. “We all sneer at times.” Anthony laughed: “They don’t trouble my sleep much—not half so much as the lack of them.” Pangbutt smiled drily: “Well,” said he—“you confess by insinuation that it’s very pleasant to be even so discredited a thing as a millionaire?” “I don’t know, Paul. I don’t call on ’em. When all’s said, they are no worse than the folk who do call on ’em. The rich man, too, stands before his abysses—he has his blood-curdlings like the poorest.... There are honest men and dishonest, even amongst the rich. Look at your speculative millionaire—your mighty company-promoter! He don’t sleep too well, thank God; but look at him.... To-day, society is licking his boots—licking them, Paul—for who so sublime a boot-licker as your hereditary flunkey of the Court? To-morrow—— Hang it, I’m talking like a curate.” He laughed. “I always gabble of millionaires in my sleep when the landlady is pressing for the rent.” Pangbutt shrugged his shoulders: “Nevertheless,” said he—“there’s something rather wonderful about a millionaire.” “A very proper and right sentiment, Paul! Of course, a millionaire is a colossal article of commerce. Bigness appeals to the imagination. So a school-boy looks at a bishop and thinks the works of God are very wonderful.... But riches are comparative—there’s a millionaire who cannot buy a digestion. Give me a competency——” Pangbutt’s lip curled: “How much is a competency?” he asked. He stood up suddenly, listening. There was a distant ring of a bell. Anthony hurriedly folded his handkerchief over the scraps of food, and thrust them into his pocket. He strode towards Pangbutt as though to say something—hesitated—he could not bring himself to ask for money. There was a second peal at the bell. “I must be off,” he said—“I hear visitors.” And waving his hand to Pangbutt he stepped quickly to the doorway. When he reached the door he again hesitated—shook his head—and letting himself quietly out, closed the door gently after him. Paul Pangbutt was alone. He stood brooding. His lips moved into a complacent smile: “I believe my success awed him,” he said. Wherein Ambition shrinks from looking down the Ladder The brooding man was still standing in the middle of the great studio when the butler entered, with catlike tread, and handed him a card on a silver salver. Pangbutt took the card without looking at it. “Take away the tray, Dukes,” he said. He pointed with a trace of disgust to the broken meats, and, as he watched the silent servant gathering up the relics of the hurried feast, all that shabby Bohemian life, the very thought of which he had banished for years, came flooding back with disgust across the threshold of his splendid home.... How he loathed it!... But—the strange irony of it all! That the brilliant ones of the time of his pupillage should have gone under!... He himself had been the commonplace one, the near to dullard—he smiled—but here was he, and there were they!... Strange how the promise of youth is unfulfilled!... The Baddlesmeres gone under! God! they of all people!... Whilst for him? Fame, stretching out a vast glittering prospect as he topped the hill of endeavour.... He had left no smallest effort unmade to advance his own interests—and he stood at last in view of the promised land where hang the glittering prizes. By heavens! they were within hand’s reach—— He was roused by the butler’s voice, as the old servant opened the door to depart: “And this gentleman downstairs, sir?” said he. “Ah, yes.” Pangbutt glanced at the card in his fingers: “Eustace Lovegood!” he murmured in surprise. “H’m—he sends up his card—evidently all goes well with Eustace Lovegood!” He turned to Dukes: “All right—show him up.” The old servant vanished, the door stealthily closing after him. Pangbutt’s face was scarred with a self-satisfied smirk: “They find me in rather altered circumstances.” There was no mistaking the comfort of the reflection. He was about to stride towards the fireplace and take up a baronial attitude, but put his hands behind his back instead, and stared at the floor, pondering. He tried to rouse his memory: The door opened, and Eustace Lovegood strode tragically into the room, the old black cloak swinging at his back. Pangbutt turned: “O lord!” he growled into his beard, “another of the failures!” He eyed Lovegood cynically until he halted; and, seeing that he would have to speak, he said: “You asked to see me, Mr. Lovegood.” Lovegood put his heels together and bowed. Pangbutt had to speak again. “Can I do anything for you?” he asked. Eustace Lovegood strode up to him, put his strong hand on his shoulder, and looked him in the face: “Nothing,” he said in his deep bass—“nothing ... except to remember that we were once friends.” Pangbutt, in spite of a biting desire to play the swaggering lord, at once took the defensive. This man made him feel diffident even on his own elaborate carpet. “Why do you choose to remind me of that to-night?” he asked sullenly, trying to assert himself. Eustace took his hand from his shoulder, and fixed his gloomy eyes upon him: “As I stood in the shadows of your hall just now,” said he slowly, “Anthony Baddlesmere passed out.” Pangbutt uttered a light cynical laugh: “What?” said he—“without nodding to you?” Lovegood’s great brows met in a black frown: “His eyes were on a broken career.... But I saw that he had not yet become a good beggar.” A sneer curled the bearded lips of the other: “And you?” he asked flippantly. “I am better practised.... I have come to beg for him.” Pangbutt’s lips curled into a deeper contempt: “Yes,” said he—“you were always a good borrower, Eustace Lovegood.” “I have not grown rich upon it.” “So I see.” Lovegood smiled grimly: “Do I owe you anything?” he asked. Pangbutt hesitated: “N-no,” he said; “I am bound to confess—not for yourself.” “Perhaps your confession involves by implication that there may be virtue even in borrowing—for those in need!” “I cannot deny it.” “Then I have grown virtuous—I have come to borrow.... Nay, man—to ask you to pay back.... Anthony Baddlesmere—did he want help?” “He did not ask for help,” said the painter lamely. The eyes of the great tragic man before him saw into the nakedness of his very conceit; and Paul Pangbutt realized that his chief weapon, “Paul—you never could see the soul in a man.... You could only value what part of him could be bought in shops, or whittled into shapes in the academies. The man who was here to-night is almost destitute. Anthony and Caroline Baddlesmere—who were the Bountifuls to all of us in Paris—destitute!” “I am not the cause of it,” Pangbutt answered sullenly. An ugly frown came over the big man’s eyes: “No, but he helped you to this.” He swept his hand round the room slowly. “He gave you a footing at the Embassy in Paris.... I need not go into details.... The rest is here. And you could let him leave your house ashamed to ask for help!” Pangbutt made an effort to take the domineering careless attitude; but he realized that his play-acting was worse than lost on this man’s grim regard. “I did not grasp that it was so serious, Lovegood.... I will—drop in one day—and—see if something cannot be done——” He saw the smile of contempt move the pale heavy features of Eustace Lovegood as he shrugged his huge shoulders, and, with an exhaustive snort of disgust, strode slowly out of the room. The door closed after him with a loud resounding slam, rattled on its hinges, and was still. Pangbutt stood brooding with frowning eyes fixed upon it: He shrugged his shoulders: “Lovegood never loses the grand manner,” he thought, “even when he has no necktie. Damnation! the Past seems never to be buried.... We think the day is dead because we blowout the candle and lie down at night. We forget the world’s the same—’tis we that sleep. Tush! the Past is never dead—until it’s our winding-sheet——” He saw himself reflected in a large mirror. He gazed at the well-groomed man of the world that stood there in the mirrored make-believe room, solid as he; and he laughed bitterly as it came to him that this dandified spruce shadow that mimicked his magnificence had thought to shake off at a wish the years of sordid striving together with the Things that had been Done and Rejected and—Forsaken!... Tshah; he had been congratulating this spruce fellow upon it only a few minutes gone by—thanking his most gentlemanly star that he had done with the whole gang. And to-day—they were pushing stealthily at his doors, creeping into his magnificent home, nay, bursting into his life again—thrusting jeering faces into his, whether he would or not. Indeed, his smug shadow sneered at him—for behind the well-bred silence of his old comrades was the knowledge of his low origin—and he had no pride in aught but hiding what had been to a bigger man his source of pride. Perhaps he ought to help—for decency’s sake; but—— Strange—these were the very people who had given him his chance in life. But for them, he had still been a mediocrity in Paris. But why should he have the whole crew “hail-fellow”? He started: A door slammed below. There was the loud noise of a gathering tumult without. It was coming up the stairs—his stairs! “Curse it! is all Bedlam abroad to-night?” said he. He strode angrily towards the uproar beyond the great folding doors; but they were flung open, and there entered a gust of loud laughter and the shuffle of many feet upon the stairs. Wherein it is discovered that the Strength of Genius may lie in the Hair With a loud shout of laughter there burst riotously into the room several young fellows, pushing before them the indignant and expostulating Lovegood. A shock-headed fellow, Rippley the sculptor, dressed with the picturesque carelessness of an art student, left the others, advanced to their scowling host, and said breezily: “Look ’ere, Paul Pangbutt—the boys have come to give old Jack Lawrence a house-warming—down the street, you know.” “Indeed!” said Pangbutt icily; and with cutting coldness he added: “I presume that this news should interest me!” Rippley was hugely pleased: “Yes, rather! He’s setting up a studio almost next door to you—but the old rip isn’t in this evening; so, as we have the beer and stuff in a dray outside, we’ve converted it into a surprise party for you instead, d’you see?” Pangbutt’s blanched face was moved to a sneer: “Really, so spontaneous an honour cannot but flatter,” he said. “Of course,” roared Rippley jovially. He went up to his sulky host and slapped him on the shoulder. It floated through Pangbutt’s mind with something like a twinge of jealousy that they had never given him a house-warming when he took his studio, months ago now. “Oh, yes,” he said bitterly—“make yourselves at home.” The sculptor gave him a sounding thump on the shoulder: “That’s a good generous fellow!” cried he, and winked at the others. “All the scum of Bohemia is coming here to-night. We have invited ’em—in your name.... Of course you don’t mind. I said you wouldn’t.” Through the open door there came gusts of hilarity from below, and the sound of horseplay. The sculptor chuckled. Pangbutt scowled: “Oh, no—treat the place like a pot-house,” he said. “Of course I am delighted,” he added ironically. Rippley turned and winked an eye solemnly at the others; he burst “Good old Paul,” cried he—“of course you are!... But we found old Lovegood before us—the sly old dog.” He left his sulky host, and, walking up to Lovegood, punched his embarrassed bulk in the ribs. Lovegood strode over to the brooding man: “Pangbutt,” he said—“you would rather have them go. Why don’t you say so?” “No, no—let them alone.” He waved the subject aside irritably with his hand, and walked impatiently to the fireplace, where he turned and, leaning his shoulders against the mantel, scowled at the riot. There was a shuffle of feet, as of men carrying a heavy burden, and, with a roar, the noisy crew swung through the great doorway and came swarming into the room, headed by half a dozen that carried a full beer-barrel on slings, followed by a red-headed fellow frantically blaring a trombone before another who carried Andrew Blotte upon his shoulders, crowned with a wreath of roses and considerably the worse for strong liquors. They gave their sulking host a shout as they streamed in. The rest of the noisy crew, talking and laughing, escorted a couple of pretty but gauche girl-models, who were awkwardly carrying bouquets as they might have carried cabbages; long streamers of coloured ribbon hung from their nosegays. The barrel was carried at the run to the most handy armchair, and plumped into the seat. The handicraftsmen of Louis Quinze must have turned in their graves—it was a fine specimen of the period. With a whoop they set hiccuping Andrew Blotte astride of the barrel—one of the girls, picking up his wreath of roses, which had fallen to the floor, set it awry on his head. From under its shadow his eyes blinked drunkenly at the room. The men were all smoking. Rippley came forward and, addressing Pangbutt, said: “You don’t mind our smoking, eh?” Pangbutt shrugged his shoulders: “I was not aware my permission was necessary—but of course——” “Of course you don’t,” roared Rippley; and turning to the others he put his tongue in his cheek: “Gentlemen, you may smoke,” said he; “nor, indeed, has friend Paul any conscientious objections to the ladies smokin’.” He turned to the red-haired man with the trombone: “Milk the bell,” said he, “my fluffsome Reubens.” The red-haired fellow with the incipient beard, whom they called Fluffy Reubens, uttered a startled wail on the trombone, and walking over to the bell-pull, tolled the bell solemnly as he might have milked a cow. He smiled at the peal that rang and rang through the house: “It’s rather a good bell,” said he. “Nothing throaty about its top notes.” He turned to his scowling host: “We will put you to as little trouble as possible, Paul,” he said—“so I ring the bell. But if Rippley burst out laughing: “That idiotic hireling man of yours thought we were bailiffs—his language was really quite naughty—for a butler. So Fluffy flung himself at his old legs and I clapped a hand over his fowling-piece—the language was within an ace of being obscene. We whipped him off his legs and sat on his chest and head, or he would have bawled murder. Of course we quite understand, indeed sympathize with, his haughty attitude towards tax-gatherers; but we cannot lightly put aside his stone-blindness to genius when he sees it in full flare of the electric light——” The old butler, sulky as his master, appeared at the door and stood there with stiff dignity. Rippley turned to him: “Glasses, mister!” cried he. The old servant took not the slightest notice—he was deaf to all vulgar appeal. Pangbutt nodded to him: “Glasses, Dukes,” he said. “Yessir.” The old man solemnly turned and left the room. Fluffy Reubens, who had been gazing sentimentally at the portrait upon the easel, turned to the gilt chair that yawned empty amidst its picturesque setting on the painter’s throne: “What! the society beauty has flown!” Rippley kissed his hand to the portrait: “I put it,” said he, “that Eustace Lovegood take the beauty’s chair.” There was a din of acclamation; and the big man stepped tragically on to the throne and took the seat. His pale face smiled. “This is no longer a vulgar brawl,” said he—“but an ordered debauch.” Rippley turned and, staring at Blotte where he sat solemnly astride of the cask, blinking drunkenly from under his wreath, gave him a hail: “Cheer up, my bilious Bacchus!” cried he. “A smile to greet this picnic!” Lovegood coughed: “But what is Bacchus without the cup?” said he. Andrew Blotte, astride the cask, raised his hand as for oration, but overbalanced and tumbled from the barrel to the carpet. Several sprang to help him to his feet; and as he stood with difficulty they restored his fallen wreath. He strode with drunken solemnity into the middle of the room, towards his host, where he stood brooding before the fireplace; and as Blotte came the scowl left the hard pale face of the other, and his mouth fell open a little way—but he took command of himself in the winking of an eyelid, and the blood poured back into his heart: “My God!” slipped from him in a hoarse whisper; “Andrew Blotte!” Andrew Blotte pulled himself up to a halt, and blinking at his memory, shuffling amongst the faces that were ghosts of the past, he “I once knew a—fellow (hic)—rather like you.... Clean-shaven poetic-looking fellow, rather good-looking—nevertheless—rather like you.” He giggled drunkenly. “He—he thought he could paint, too.” He blew through his lips. “We all thought we could do things—in Paris.... Youth lives on illusions——” It struck Paul Pangbutt as he stood there, his arms folded before him, and his eyes set on the poor drunken wreck of a once brilliant youth, that it was nothing less than devil’s irony that had sent this broken man into his life this night—the night which his profession might, as likely as not, have chosen to do him honour—it was the evening of the elections at the Academy. Blotte roused; and added solemnly: “He was one of your good fellows—always the fine gentleman—with as keen an eye on his dignity as—a—colonial bishop. Nevertheless, he was rather like you.” He sniggered, and came closer to Pangbutt; gazing at him hazily he added: “You’ll excuse me, but I’ve quite forgotten the point—and I can’t remember your name.... We have not been formally introduced—there is that excuse for us.... Oh, ah, yes, though—I remember—to be sure—(hic)—yes. He stood just about your height—he was a good-looking fellow—whee-hew—better-looking fellow than you.... Of course—that’s strictly between you and me and”—he swept his hand towards the silent others—“and pandlemonium!... Looked like a poet—but his brain was—mostly—self-respect.... That was it—he looked a man—I was wholly insignificant.... He had the grand manner—I didn’t give a slop-can for manners. Never did. Always had a positive idioshincrasy against dancing-masters—except for dancing.... Of course,” he added slowly, gazing with heavy eyes into the past—“of course when a woman appeared on the scene, he—cut me out—hiccup——” A sneer came to Pangbutt’s pale lips: “Indeed!” said he. “Such modesty——” “Sit down, Blotte,” roared the sculptor, Rippley. The poor drunken fellow took no slightest notice of the interruption, but continued his tale: “Of course—it was easy enough. It wasn’t worth scoring the trick. But—he was a shabby devil—though he stood just about your height....” He whistled aimlessly.... “About this time, what d’you think? the fellow got into the Embassy set—hiccup—God knows how!... Don’t ask me.... The Baddlesmeres were connected with Embassy people—and the fellow got a footing.... CÆsar was always ambitious.... So he dropped Kate Ormsby—poor little devil!... She was such a pretty creature—and I spent the rest of my youth in telling her that the fellow would come back to her—God forgive me!...” Pangbutt shifted uneasily; but his cynical voice showed no uneasiness: “Really,” said he coldly—“your biography is not without romance, Mr. Blotte.” “Quite so,” said Blotte. “She sings outside taverns now.... The man-servant entered the room with the glasses on a tray; Fluffy Reubens nudged Rippley, and jerked his thumb towards Blotte. “Sit down, Blotte,” cried Fluffy Reubens—“and dry up.” “Aha!” cried Rippley—“the glasses, gentlemen! Blotte, I give you better advice—come and be moistened.” The drunken man nodded to his host: “You’ll excuse me,” he said; and he strolled off unsteadily towards the glasses. There was a loud shout of laughter, as Rippley, to cause a diversion, poured a libation of beer on the old butler’s bald head, dedicating him to Venus: the old man, with the beer trickling down his nose, and scorn upon his lip, solemnly withdrew. Rippley started the cask of beer, the girls handing the glasses about as they were filled. Lovegood, master of the revels, coughed: “How naturally Rippley presides at the cask!” said he. “Heaven meant him for an honest publican; but native conceit, or some other maggot in the brain, turned his hands to sculpture.” Pangbutt fretted in sullen silence, wondering when the crew would be done and gone. He even told himself that it would have been less embarrassing if he had gone to see the Baddlesmeres—and for the rest of the evening he brooded upon it. Lovegood sat back in his chair, glad to get all eyes away from the host: “Ah, English-brewed ale to-night!” said he tragically. “None of your sour wines of France.” He turned to one of the girl-models—“Sweet Andromache, a tankard for the chair!” said he. The girl carried beer to him in a tumbler, giggling. “No, no—give me the juice of the pagan grape—of such alone is brewed the nectar of the gods!” said a slim man who lounged on a sofa, glass in hand. He was Aubrey, the poet, and he was as beautiful as a woman, and with his mass of dark hair drawn from his brows and hiding his ears he looked like one: “Ah, that dissipation should destroy the complexion, and to be intoxicated should have grown unpoetic—to be drunk and disorderly simply to be sordid! The exquisite orgies of the deliciously wicked Greeks are done. The Bacchic frenzy is dead. Nay, Pan—even Pan—Pan is dead.” Tears came to the eyes of Andrew Blotte, and he shook his head sadly. The wreath came over one eye. Lovegood blew his nose dramatically: “Poor, poor Pan!” said he. “Really it is quite a tearful statement. It had escaped me that it was the anniversary of Pan.” He turned to the girl-model they called Andromache and held out his empty tumbler: “Repeat the dose, therefore, Andromache,” said he; “we must drink to the translation of Pan—since we cannot go to his funeral. Though I don’t wholly give up Pan on Aubrey’s mere Rippley withdrew his nose from a foaming glass of beer: “I wish you poet johnnies would bury Pan,” he said. “You’re always diggin’ ’im up—or the other dead Greeks.” Aubrey yawned wearily: “Don’t jabber art, Rippley. You make my head ache....” Pangbutt roused, and, walking over to Lovegood, asked him in a whisper for the Baddlesmeres’ address. The big man fumbled in the breast-pocket of his shiny black coat. A shout of protest caught his attention. “Nonsense, Aubrey,” cried Rippley—“sheer nonsense!” Lovegood looked up, and put out his hand: “Order, gentlemen!” said he in thundering bass. “It is most unseemly to insinuate that poets talk nonsense.” He searched again for the pencil, and wrote the address on the other’s cuff. They were roused from their colloquy by a quarrel. Pangbutt returned to the fireplace, his brows set. Lovegood stood up: “Order, gentlemen, order!” he called. Aubrey languidly appealed to him from the sofa: “Rippley says he has an idea,” he complained pathetically. Lovegood motioned for silence: “Hush, Aubrey! you should never repeat a scandal,” said he. Rippley laughed: “I have, though—a rippin’ idea!” “Really?” said Lovegood, and he coughed. “Attention, gentlemen—whilst Mr. Rippley yields up an entirely original and rippin’ idea!” Rippley sniggered: “You make me feel quite nervous,” he said. “But—you know, I’ve got a rippin’ idea for a statoo: A fellow struggling alone against the weight of his pre-ordained destiny, which keeps coming back on ’im, don’t you know! He works for Fame, but finds his load getting heavier and heavier to his hand. Ambition, Pluck, Endurance—all are no good. Doom broods over all—Span of Life don’t give enough time—Age creeps on and numbs his Strength. And when the poor devil gets near the top of the hill, there stands Death at the summit to cut him down at the end of his labours—and he sees the night-mist of Oblivion stretching beyond—a mist in which the greatest names are faintly dying away——” “But, my dear plasterer,” said Fluffy Reubens, “how are you going to express this in stone?” “That’s just it!” said the tousle-headed sculptor, warm to his idea. “That Greek Johnny that pushed a great hanking stone up a hill, and kept letting it go again——” He made an effort to recall the name and shook his head: “No, it wasn’t ’Erkyools——” Aubrey tittered, and languidly corrected him with cutting precision: “Her—cu—les, Rippley—Hercules!” “No, no—it wasn’t ’im,” said Rippley impatiently. “T’other fellow.” “Ra-ther!” said Rippley. “When I got that idea you could have knocked me down with the brains of a minor poet.” Lovegood coughed: “The Grecian gentleman who pushed the—er—hanking great stone up the hill,” said he with measured accent, “I have read somewhere, was called Sisyphus.” Rippley bounced and clutched at the air. “Sisyphus—that’s the chap!... Knew Aubrey was wrong about its being ’Erkyools.... Rummy things the old Greeks used to do! luckily for sculpture and the schoolmasters.” He bent his eyes on his idea again: “But what licks me is Fame!... Such a comical thing is Fame!... Now, look at this fellow Sisyphus: A great muscular chap pushes the dickens of a big stone up a hill, and keeps having to let it go again before he reaches the top. It ain’t much to build a reputation on. But Plato or some blanky poet comes along and writes it down—and that fellow goes pushing and heaving that stone up a hill through the ages. Then look at Aubrey—he works just as hard at his confounded rhymes; yet no one reads him, but everyone goes on talking about ’Omer.” “Omar Khayyam?” asked Aubrey flippantly. “Khayyam be damned!” said the shock-headed sculptor. “No—old ’Omer ’imself. A fine, hairy old fellow, with big workmanlike head! Good solid old poetry! None of your rhymes and jingles and frills and coloured neckties and long nails and modern——” Lovegood tapped his glass on the arm of the judgment-seat: “It is the painful duty of the chair,” said he, “to remind our sculptor that he claims to have been infected with an original and rippin’ idea.” Rippley shook himself peevishly: “This bleating minor poet keeps diggin’ his dandified elbow into my ideas until he makes ’em sulk in their tents like—like Ash-heels.” “Achilles, Rippley—Achilles!” cooed the poet gently. Rippley turned upon him: “I say, poet,” said he, walking up to the languid Aubrey, “you’re looking sallow; you poets don’t take enough exercise. I bet I put you under that sofa.” Aubrey rose to his feet in alarm, and took up a mild attitude of protest: “Now, don’t be vulgar, Rippley!” said he. But the thick-set little sculptor jumped at him and bore him to the ground. The two rolled on the carpet until Rippley, getting the grip of the plaintive poet, pushed his slim figure, expostulating, beneath the sofa, where he disappeared from view under its hangings, amidst a roar of applause. Lovegood coughed: “Poetry is fallen on rough times indeed,” said he. Pangbutt stood frowning at the riot. How these tomfools took him back to the years of his insignificance and Paris! The door was flung open and a stoutish woman, her hands thrust in “How do, Pangbutt?” She nodded to him: “They told me this rotten party was to be at Jack Lawrence’s. But his place is as black as your blooming frontispiece. I’ve been huntin’ for this scum all over the shop, until a policeman sniggered and told me there was a deal of cock-crowin’ goin’ on here.” She turned to the roomful of them: “Hullo, boys! and what are you all up to?... Nothing unladylike, I hope, eh?” She laughed the question jovially. “No, no,” they all cried. Blotte waved his arm, standing by the barrel: “Come along, jovial Emma,” said he, and hiccuped. “Eh?” she queried; “quite sure I’m not——” “No, no,” they chorused. “Come along!” Blotte took up an oratorical attitude by the beer-cask: “Come in—rollicking Emma—you’re making quite a draught—gives me—hic—quite a chill. I must have something to warm me—from within outwards.” He drew his empty tumbler out of his pocket. Emma laughed shrilly, and flung the door to: “My word,” cried she, “you are going it!... Heigho! I say, boys, I have only a paragraph or two to send in to the papers and I’m finished; so let me rest.... Which is the largest and most comfortable seat?” She moved towards the empty sofa. As she swung herself round to sit down, she said shrilly: “Don’t see that poetic idiot Aubrey here. Where’s he braying to-night?” “He isn’t braying, robustious Emma,” said Lovegood from the chair. “He’s on all fours, eating the thistles of humiliation.” Emma Hartroff plumped her weight on to the sofa, and a wail arose from under her. She started—then laughed: “Bless my soul! I have known a sofa to groan before—but this one cries out!” she rattled; and added indignantly: “As if I didn’t know my figure was gone!” Aubrey’s voice came plaintively from under her foundations: “Most adorable Emma,” he groaned. Lovegood coughed: “You press heavily upon a poet’s husk,” he said solemnly. “Arise, madam, as you love poetry, and free him.” Emma arose. As Aubrey crawled out, all tousled and tossed, from under the sofa, a shout went up. He gathered himself on to his feet and brushed his knees. She sat down: “The ecstatic ass is not dead, after all,” she said. Aubrey bowed, polite and affected as always: Lovegood chuckled: “But you have not his death upon your conscience, glorious Emma. The recorded word remains unbroken—no one has yet seen a dead donkey.” Emma Hartroff shrugged her shoulders: “That is of no consequence,” she said. “But there are other—serious things. There’s no doubt about it—I’ve begun to apologize for my figure.” “Hush, Emma!” Lovegood’s pale face became serious “You should never apologize for the acts of Providence. It is most irreligious.” Aubrey, who had taken his stand against the end of the sofa, folded his arms, and said absently: “‘The wit that rouses rippling laughter now, May be but winnow’d chaff at fifty— Raise but a cackling laugh at fourscore years.’” They all thumped on the tables and tapped heels upon the floor: “Certainly,” cried the chorus. Emma Hartroff stood up: “Tsh!” she hushed; “let the inspired idiot speak.” She sat down in a hush of silence. Aubrey ran his hands through his hair: “‘The eyes that catch our eyes, and check our breath with sweet, delicious ecstasies May be but line-marked eyes, with disillusion’d sight at fifty— Tear-fill’d, and inward cast in age’s loneliness at fourscore years. But shall we therefore fear to laugh—since jests grow old? Or cease to garner for old age’s ease—since graveyards yawn alike for spendthrift and for thrifty? Shall we fulfil, with homage of a loveless life, black Pessimism’s scold That that we do matters as little, after the years we lease, as the worn idols to whom none now bow?’” Emma Hartroff, pointing to the vacant place beside her, waved him to it: “H’m!... Sit down, Aubrey.” Aubrey sat down, and, lolling back comfortably in the corner of it, he spread himself out luxuriously. Andrew Blotte cheered: “Excellent! Ex’lent!” he said solemnly. “That ain’t—hiccup—altogether bad.... Wonderful thing, genius!” Lovegood tapped on his chair-arm, and there was silence: “It is my painful duty,” said he, rising to his feet, “to put it to the republic of letters that our poet be not again heard this evening.” They all held out their hands, and solemnly turned their thumbs down. Lovegood nodded gloomily: “The ayes have it,” he said.... “Citizens, I thank you for recording in dignified silence the contempt which you felt compelled Blotte strolled unsteadily over to where Emma Hartroff sat on the sofa; and straddling out his legs he gazed at her pensively—the wreath of roses awry over his brow. “Well, my merry Andrew,” said she, “get it off your chest. What’s worrying you?” “Emma,” said he slowly, “you don’t do yourself justice.” He put his head on one side critically, and uttered a rending hiccup: “you ought to (hiccup) put plum-juice on the—lobes—of your ears. It would make you look so voluptuous.” “Get out,” said she. “But look here, Master Andrew, what have you been doing of late?” He stood swaying and balancing himself, the wreath awry on his head, and hiccuped: “I’ve been trying to discover the source of heartburn in a radish,” he said. “Sorry I can’t stay any longer, adorable Emma,” he added flirtily, “but will you come with me to the sunny south to see the almonds bloom?” “Oh—get out!” He sighed: “Well—I must go alone.” And he added dramatically, spilling much beer in Emma’s lap: “Away from this black cauldron of the city, to meet the pageant of the Spring!” He turned and shuffled over slowly to Paul Pangbutt: “Good-bye, old—Polyglot!...” He crooned. “I forget your name—but I’m sorry I can’t stay.... This palace of varieties” (he waved his arm round the room) is most alluring—but I’m sorry—I can’t stay.” Pangbutt nodded, humouring him: “I understand,” he said. “Of course you do.” Blotte burst out into a great laugh. He suddenly button-holed him again: “I say, I suppose you wouldn’t care to—come—and see the almonds bloom?” He gazed at his dandified host, and slowly shook his head. The wreath came down over one eye: “You won’t come to meet the pageant of the Spring?” He shook his head in answer to the other’s shake; and, turning clumsily, lurched towards the door. Emma Hartroff called to him from her sofa: “Where are you going, Blotte?” At the door Blotte halted and faced the room: “Goo’-night!” he said. “I would embrace you, Emma, but there are so many of you it would seem polygamous.” He squealed gaily, and kicked out a leg—it nearly flung him off his feet. As he fumbled at the handle: “Quite sure,” said he, hanging to the door, “quite sure you won’t all come—and walk on air—and—sing?” He shook his head sadly: “Will no one come with me to see the almonds bloom?” said he; and fell through the doorway with a clatter, his feet inside. “A moment,” said he, as he passed Lovegood. “I’ll see him out. My guests do not require a host.” Lovegood smiled grimly: “No,” said he—“they are a host in themselves.” The door closed on Pangbutt. A titter went round the room. Emma Hartroff sat up suddenly on the sofa: “I say, boys,” said she, “Anthony Baddlesmere’s a bit down at heels, ain’t he? Eh?... Met him an hour ago—looked as if he’d pawned his shirt. I should have thought Caroline Baddlesmere’s book——” Aubrey opened a sleepy eye where he lay on the sofa: “Who says Caroline Baddlesmere?” he asked drowsily. Emma turned on him: “I say Caroline Baddlesmere,” she said. “I say she has written a book—which is more than your worst enemy could say of you, Aubrey.” Aubrey yawned: “Ah! Book is rather a large word, most blunt Emma. Every school-girl prints her literary effusions nowadays. But print and binding do not make a book.” He yawned again. Rippley raised his eyebrows: “Aubrey’s quite inspired to-night,” he said. The fussy little minor critic, Fosse, jumped into the opportunity for an opinion: “One cannot but admire the personality of Caroline Baddlesmere,” he began. Rippley winked to the others: “Shorthand writer, please,” he called. “The lips of James Fosse are about to drop pearls.” Fosse flushed impatiently, but held doggedly to his opportunity: “But her work was bound to die. It lacked the dainty quality of style”—he twiddled fingers in the air, seeking the expression of subtleties too exquisite for translation by the tongue—“that illuminating light that only comes to the virile-minded; the epigram—finesse—the er—er——” “Quite so,” growled Lovegood gloomily—“quite so, Mr. Fosse. Unlike your genius, the thrills of cachinnation never followed at her heels.” Fosse’s fussy eyes looked perplexed: “N-no, no. Perhaps not. Still—that was not exactly what——” “Sit down, Fosse!” cried Rippley impatiently. “Let the other ass speak.” Fosse sat down. Aubrey drowsily took up the cue: “Woman,” said he languidly—“woman is adorably illogical—deliciously ridiculous—exquisitely attractive; but woman has no sense of humour——” Emma Hartroff laughed shrilly: “Silence!” Lovegood’s bass boomed through the room. “Silence! I will have no one insinuate that our poet’s mother was an ass.” Tumblers on tables, and feet on floor, thundered applause. Aubrey, lying back on the sofa, his arms folded, and his head drooped forward, drowsily opened his eyes: “I repeat,” said he—“Caroline Baddlesmere was simply popular. Popularity is merely a vulgar mood—signifying the commonplace—signifying nothing.” Rippley laughed: “Well, you are not above trying for it, old man,” said he. “And it’s a mighty sight easier to be unknown.” Aubrey yawned: “I seek nothing from popularity,” he said. “Then why do you print yourself?” asked Rippley. “I am in love with art.... I have the perplexing preference for the elements of inspiration rather than for the elements of popularity.” Rippley snorted: “Oh—go to sleep!” said he. Aubrey turned to Emma Hartroff apologetically: “I’m sorry,” he murmured drowsily, “but I have been wandering in the meads by running streams all day, and it has only made me sleepy. I had done better to have invented my own facts in Nature—Nature does not select—like the good God, she is most wasteful.” Emma Hartroff jumped to her feet, and strode up and down a turn or so, her hands in her pockets. She came to a halt, and straddling in the middle of the room, she said suddenly: “D’you know, boys—I like Caroline Baddlesmere!” Lovegood coughed: “Fame, indeed, for Caroline Baddlesmere,” said he. “Yes.” She nodded her head decidedly. “Caroline Baddlesmere’s a rippin’ good sort.” Lovegood, sitting back in his chair, eyed the straddling figure gloomily from under his dark brows: “Certificate of character for Caroline Baddlesmere!” he growled. “Yes.” She nodded again. “I’m ding-dong sorry she’s struck bad luck; but—y’know—Caroline is a bit of a new woman.... Now, I like a woman to be a woman—and act like a woman—and—and—dress like a woman!” There was loud and prolonged laughter, and shouts of satiric applause, and cat-calls. She herself dressed like a policeman. Tumblers were banged on the tables. There were loud cries: “Good old Emma!” “Sublime Emma!” “Gorgeous Emma!” She bent her brows on her mood, and set her feet more firmly apart. The laughter became hysteric. Lovegood raised a gloomy eyebrow: “What’s the matter with Caroline Baddlesmere’s voice?” he growled. She turned on him: “Look here, Eustace; can Caroline Baddlesmere cook?” “God knows!” he said. “Why should she? The Creator did not make woman in the image of a Dutch oven!” Emma Hartroff sat down, and uttered a sigh: “Oh, you’re beyond me, Eustace. I don’t like you when you’re serious.” She turned to the others: “Our humorist is as solemn as a pawnbroker,” she said. There were loud cries of “Order! order!” Rippley stood up: “Someone dared to speak of pawnbrokers!” he said. Emma Hartroff seized the tails of his coat: “For heaven’s sake, let us have no fines to-night, Rippley—I’m stone-broke——” She started—gave a shrill scream—and added: “Gracious, boys! I forgot. I have to knock up some paragraphs for The Midnight Sun.” She fumbled in the breast-pocket of her jacket, and lugged out a note-book. “Bother!” said she; “what shall I write about?” She licked the pencil, and cudgelled her genius, but nothing came of it. Rippley looked down upon her contemptuously: “Blue Stephens! Emma,” said he—“you have no imagination. Brilliant Literary and Artistic Reception at Mr. Pangbutt’s!” “Right you are!” she bawled. “That’ll do, rippin’!... Someone dictate, and I’ll write”—she looked round—“You, Lovegood! You have the most gorgeous imagination.” Lovegood bowed: “I cannot agree with him who said that the flattery of woman has no end,” he said drily. “Oh, chuck epigram,” she said—“and dictate, like a good chap.” He set his gaze on the theme, and the great black brows met: “The select Conversazione in the spacious and brilliantly-lighted rooms—of the—er—world-famous portrait-painter was attended by——” Emma Hartroff held up her pencil: “Easy all!” said she—“attended—by——All right. Go on.” Fluffy Reubens took up the dictation: “——by the Élite of the fashionable world and the flower of Upper Bohemia——” Emma Hartroff’s pencil scratched down the addition: “Upper—Bohemia,” said she. Lovegood coughed: “Which idiot is writing this masterpiece, Emma? the fluffsome Reubens or I?” “I was so afraid that Élite might be left out,” he said. “I am sorry,” said Lovegood sadly, “that so old a friend should think me so barren an artist.” Emma Hartroff looked up: “Oh, chuck argument,” she said impatiently. “Go on, Lovegood!” She licked her pencil invitingly: Lovegood entered into his inspiration again: “The palatial rooms were resplendent with a hundred lights, and the myriad glass lustres shone like stars above the well-bred Babel assembled in this gorgeous modern palace. Amongst the witty throng mingled eminent men—in the arts and the—er—liberal professions.” He coughed. “Aubrey represents the liberal professions—though he rarely achieves his larger intentions——” “Shut up, Lovegood—and dictate,” said Emma. Lovegood sighed, and got back to his task: “To say nothing of much beauty and fashion——” Emma simpered: “Flatterer!” she said giddily. Lovegood bowed: “Mr. Fosse, the English Maupassant, was to be seen flitting from group to group, discoursing on the magnetism of style. Mr. Carver Rippley, whose possible election to the Academy was the topic of much speculation, explained away the motive of his coming masterpiece in marble. Mr. Quilliam O’Flaherty Macloughlin Myre——” A bottle-necked man with a shapeless head, colourless hair, and a fat puffy underlip beneath a slovenly moustache slowly rose from a chair. Rippley flung himself upon him, punched him in the midriff, and threw him back into his seat. Rippley’s brows were knit: “For God’s sake,” said he, frowning at Lovegood—“don’t start Quogge Myre talking. He always takes two columns of close print to yield up an idea—and then it isn’t his own.” Lovegood chuckled grimly: “A most pleasant evening showed Mr. Pangbutt to be not only a man of mark in the fashionable world, but a brilliant and amusing host—his loud, jolly laugh and gay camaraderie setting the keynote of refined amusement to the distinguished party that poured through his palatial rooms.” Emma Hartroff looked up—the pencil on her lip: “Hang it all, you’ve left me out, Lovegood!” she said. Lovegood smiled: “I distinctly mentioned beauty and fashion, Emma. But I will give you the personal note: Miss Hartroff was elegantly dressed in peau-de-suede gloves of the latest colour——” Rippley said “Naughty!” Lovegood coughed: “Mr. Aubrey, languidly witty, was the soul of poetry in motion.” There was a gentle snore. Rippley held up a hand, motioning for silence: Aubrey was heavily asleep in his corner of the sofa; chin on chest, his inert arms fallen listless by his sides. Lovegood rose from his chair, and said in a low growl: “Citizens, the republic of letters is again called upon to record its august vote.” He pointed tragically to the sleeping beauty: “This weary Affair that lies before you, its lank indecent limbs stretched in such graceless attitude of repose, has once already, during this evening, offended your eyes, insulted your intelligence, galled your ears, with the declaiming of unasked-for verse.” “Intolerable!” growled Rippley; and “Intolerable!” growled they all. “Hush!” said Rippley. Lovegood pointed a scornful hand at the sleeping poet: “The Thing stood up, stopped conversation, and—uttered indifferent verse!” said he. They all shook their heads. Lovegood’s pale face glowered upon them: “Here is a being, old before his time, usurping the wisdom of the world—which were bad enough—but, worse still, offending your sight, as citizen Rippley might say, by affecting the hair of decadence.” Fluffy Reubens coughed: “Preposterous,” growled he—“cut it off.” An angelic smile spread over the pale features of Eustace Lovegood: “How great thought travels!” he said ecstatically—“how thought begets thought!... Now that was precisely what flashed into my thinking machinery. What? Scissors? Oh, ah, yes—materialistic Emma always carries scissors. But the executioner! who is worthy to clip the godlike locks?” Rippley stole over to Emma and took the scissors. Lovegood smiled: “Ah, yes, Rippley! Thy subtle fingers, creating such blood-curdling insignificances in clay, shall at last be used to noble ends—at last be put to their originally designed calling of barber.” Rippley was snipping off the hair with unskilful gashes, the severed locks falling softly upon the floor. “Thou, Rippley, shalt make minor poetry illustrious—thou shalt breathe notoriety into the nostrils of Aubrey’s verse—thou shalt give him through a success of scandal what his rhymes can never bring him—a grip on the skirts of Fame. Since Fame his verse can never bring him, he shall flirt with her through Infamy.” Rippley held up a lock: “Anyone else have some?” he asked. Lovegood chuckled ironically: “But shear the glory from him tenderly, deftly,” said he. “You’re not cutting a hedge. Set aside each lock that falls, that the hero-worshipper may wear a snippet from a poet’s brow.... All the dear delightful barmaids will want a lock. Peckham tea-parties will thrill at the touch of it—Clapham culture sob—West Kensington be troubled. And in the town I can hear all the little coffee-girls a-weeping.... Rippley dropped the scissors and whipped into a seat, uttering a smothered guffaw, as Aubrey roused and yawned. Lovegood sat down: “Silence,” said he—“the sleeping beauty wakes.” The poet opened his eyes drowsily, and rose slowly, sleepily, from the sofa, amidst a tense silence. As he stood up, his hair raggedly clipped about his head, making his long neck inordinately naked, a titter ran round the guests. He shivered: “I dreamed,” he said; and ran his hand over his hair. “I dreamed——” He ran his hand over his hair again. Emma Hartroff got up from her seat and, thrusting her hands into her pockets, she straddled before him, gazing at him. His eyes were staring blankly into space. She tittered: “Well, I’m blowed!” said she—“Modern Poetry seems to be all rhymes and neckties.” The poet burst into tears. ****** For a month the boy Noll lay seriously ill; but at last his young body began to gain vigour, and strength slowly to come back to him. Wherein Master Oliver is convinced that it is Difficult to play the Man’s Part on a Weak Stomach In a large attic the glow of a stove, that roared of warmth, gave a sense of comfort to the spacious, rambling, rather bare room; and from its opened iron door the ruddy light of its furnace flared cheerily upon the floor. Near by sat Caroline Baddlesmere at a small table, where a shaded lamp flung down a golden glory upon the white pages of the printer’s proofs she was correcting, reflecting little amber lights that played about her handsome eye-pits and nostrils and mouth and chin. Along the low walls, almost to where the steep roof met them, books were piled for lack of shelves; and the largeness of the room and the atmosphere of the books gave the suggestion of a library that was strangely at variance with a small bed in the far end of the large place, where a candle dimly showed the boy Oliver lying amongst his pillows, watching Netherby Gomme and Julia as they whispered their confidences seated on chairs hard by him. The candle’s light painted their faces picturesquely against the black hollow of an open doorway that led to a smaller attic which was the Baddlesmeres’ sleeping-room. Eyes grown accustomed to this gloom might have seen that a thin line of blue smoke curled upwards from the bed, for Noll was colouring the wedding-present—keeping a sharp look-out lest anyone should see him, and raising a screen of bedclothes with his knees, between himself and detection.... Caroline roused from her work, disturbed by the loud sniff of a shabby little maid-of-all-work who entered the room, a dusting-brush under her arm and a dusting-rag in her hand. “Please, lidy,” said the girl, “may I finish a bit of work by the light of the stove?—I won’t be more than four-and-twenty shakes, and I’ll be very quiet.” Caroline nodded good-humouredly. The lank child—she was little more—stooped down by the blaze of warm light that came from the stove’s open door, and lugging a battered periodical out of her pocket, smoothed it out and began to read.... “What are you doing, Victoria May Alice?” asked Caroline, after a while, smiling at the calm effrontery of the girl. “I was just a-finishing this here chapter, lidy—it’s so blamey dark on the landing. I’d got to such a beautiful part—where Sir ’Enery Marjorrybanks is a-telling of the lady’s-maid as her eyes is so magical and is just a-seein’ of poems in their liquid depths, and all that.... It give me a kind of nice hump the way they was a-goin’ hon——” “What are you reading, Victoria May Alice?” Caroline held out her hand. “Let me see it.” The smudgy little maid handed her the periodical: “It’s Bow Bells, marm—what that rummy gent brings me—him what they calls Lovegood.” She went and stood beside her chair as Caroline looked at the paper; and with long bony fingers, not very clean, the girl proceeded to do the honours: “That’s the picture of Sir ’Enery a-kissin’ of the girl hunder the hoak-tree. She’s purtendin’ she don’t like it. I wonder why they always does that in high-class society. I kissed a ’airdresser once, and it was better than a lobster salad—but (sniff) that’s neither ’ere nor there.... I like them wonderful whiskers of Sir’’Enery Marjorrybanks—I like ’is name, too, it’s like crackin’ nuts—Marjorrybanks.” “Marchbanks, Victoria!” Victoria May Alice looked hard at the handsome lady before her, suspiciously: “Garn, mem!” said she—“you’re coddin’.” A smile flickered about the corners of Caroline’s mouth: “No,” she said severely—“you must believe me, Victoria.” “Well,” said Victoria May Alice—“I’ll allow I most generally does. But if that there don’t spell Marjorrybanks I’ll darn my stockings.” Caroline Baddlesmere nodded: “Then,” said she, “Victoria May Alice will have to darn her stockings.” Victoria May Alice considered: “No, mem,” said she—“I takes back the stockin’s. I dessay you’re right.” She put her head on one side and surveyed the difficulty with one eye half shut.... She sighed: “All I can say is that it ain’t the way we was taught to spell at the board-school. But I suppose it’s all right. I reckon it’s high-toned and hupper-class to spell things as they ain’t got no reason to be spelled. There was a lady here quite recent as was callin’ on the first floor as is given to indulgence” She tippled with an imaginary glass of wine. “And this party as was callin’ on the one as is given to——” “Hush, Victoria,” said Caroline. “Yes, you know—well, she was a-doin’ of the thing regular formal and in style, I can tell you, powdered footman and a red-nosed geezer with white leather breeches a-sittin’ on the coachman’s box, and all—well, she rings the bell in the old party’s room as—you know—and in I hustles, a-doin’ up my bun on the back of my ’ead with my ’and as I stood at the door. She asked for her broom. ‘Yes, lidy,’ says I, and takes her one up from the kitchen. But she was that short, you’d Victoria May Alice, in the attitude of a coachman on his box, and with mighty clucks and “gees” and “whoas,” whipped up imaginary horses. A shrill voice called from far below: “Victoria—May—Yall—liss!” The little maid-of-all-work went out of the door, and, leaning over the balustrade, she called down the stairs at the top pitch of her shrill voice, standing a-tiptoe to give her lean lungs full play: “Yes—marm! I’m a-com—ing!” She came back into the room, and added placidly: “I ’ate ’er voice. It goes through yer like a gimlet.... But (sniff) she ain’t bad—not all through—when you knows ’er.” She sniffed. The shrill voice came mounting up the stairs: “Victoria—May—Yall—liss!” The untidy child stepped quickly back to the door, and putting out her head through the cranny, yelled, with sing-song delivery: “Yes—marm!—I’m a-comin’—I’m—a-coming! The top floor’s a-wantin’ coals hasty, marm; and a-gettin’ nasty about the size of the scuttles!” She came blithely into the room, and, screwing up her mouth, said, with a wise nod of the head: “That’s one on the tender for ’er!” Caroline suppressed a smile, and said reprovingly: “I made no complaint about the size of the coal-scuttles, Victoria.” Victoria May Alice sniffed: “Lor bless yer, no,” said she; “but them coal-scuttles is what I calls a vegitable halloocination.... You ain’t one to complain; but it’s about time some one did it for yer.... My word, she do run it fine with them egg-cups o’ coal! She don’t dare let me fill the bucket—so I gets off that job!” Sniff. Caroline sighed: “Ah, Victoria, she has to practise economy.” Victoria May Alice nodded her head seriously: “There’s some kinds of economy as is religion, and some kinds as is against religion, mem,” said she. “She’s always talking of savin’ for that blackguard son of hers in Australia.” She came near to Caroline Baddlesmere and added in a hoarse whisper—“My solemn opinion is the feller is doin’ his five years’ hard.” “Now, now, Victoria—you are descending to scandal!” “Perhaps I am—and again, perhaps I ain’t. Who’d be writing to her from Wormwood Scrubbs Prison but her own relations—garn! D’yer think——” “Now, now, Victoria!” Victoria prepared to depart, but hesitated at the door: “If Master Oliver’s a-wantin’ of anythink, lady, jest you put yer ’ead over the rail and ’owl for it,” said she. Loud sniff. “It’s no good being backward and modest in this ’ouse—nor, for that, in this dirty city.... They——” “Victoria—May—Yall—liss!” Victoria May Alice sniffed: “My eye!” said she—“she’ll thump my ’ed when I go down!” And yelling where she stood: “Yes—marm—I’m a-coming!” she turned to Caroline and added in a confidential whisper: “No, lidy—it’s no gain being backward and modest. She don’t understand it, bless yer. Thinks you’re weak—or can’t pay yer bill. And, bless yer, lidy, I don’t a-mind a-carryin’ up of the scuttles—not to this floor.” Caroline nodded anxiously: “Run along, Victoria, like a good girl.” “Yes, lidy,” said she. Loud sniff. As she turned to go she caught sight of Noll smoking in bed. She smuggled a laugh into her hand: “The ridic’lous little creature,” said she, and disappeared. The door softly shut after her, and her weary young feet could be heard shuffling down the stairs. “I say, Julia,” said Noll, from his bed—“ain’t it time we had a meal?” Caroline Baddlesmere looked up: “There’s some bread soaked in milk for you, Noll—on the table. I will heat it for you.” The boy’s stomach turned against it. He shook his head: “I’m afraid, mother, I can’t eat it,” he said.... “I’m sorry.” Caroline, rising calmly, put on her cloak and hat and let herself out of the room. She said she would soon be back.... Netherby leaned forward, chin in hand, and gazed at Julia. “Julia,” he said, in a low whisper, “look how these people face poverty and neglect—just because they have each other to work for. Why cannot we, you and I, start life together—now—to-morrow?” “But, Netherby——” He took her slender fingers in his hand: “My dear girl,” said he—“I am now known a little. The money will be coming in soon. What more would you wait for?... Must I bring you the moon?” “But supposing I drag you down, Netherby——” “My dear Julia—you talk as if you were sixteen stone, and I swimming in a duck-pond. We can never be in want from now—not more than we are.” “How can you be sure, Netherby?” His stern face smiled: “I can amuse the world. And the world cheerfully flings its pence to its jesters. On the blackest night the court fool may warm his hands at the hearth of the world. And I once heard the greatest ass in London confess that it takes a clever fellow to be reckoned a remarkable fool in these days, Julia.” “This disaster to Caroline and Mr. Anthony has frightened me,” she sighed. “It has strengthened me,” he said—“given me courage. Here are She sighed: “Ah, yes—they laugh to keep the tears away,” she said. “But, my Julia, you would not have them live their life in one long-drawn-out fear lest the world be full of fears!” “But—how do you know your next book will be a success, Netherby?” “I don’t know, dear. I once knew a man who was so afraid of getting a chill that he wore goloshes after sunset—he died of heat-apoplexy.” The boy Noll yawned: “I say, Netherby,” he grumbled from the bed peevishly: “come here, you and Julia, and sit on the bed—I can’t hear a word you say—it’s so beastly dull seeing you billing and cooing there and missing all the letterpress.” Netherby chuckled hugely; and they both got up, he chuckling, and she blushing, and came to the boy’s bedside. Noll was looking very sickly: “Oh, Noll,” said Julia in alarm—“I’m sure you ought not to be smoking. You are looking so pale.” Noll coughed: “Shush!” said he—“or mother’ll hear you.... I got back the pipe from that sailor fellow—I told him I couldn’t pay him because I had had money losses. He waived the fee—he said that though he commanded a barge he’d colour a dozen meerschaum pipes for a good un like me, free of cost—I had only to send along the pipes and the tobacco. Such a gentlemanly fellow, he was! Though a bit dirty.... Thames sailors are such warm-hearted johnnies—but they don’t keep their nails very nice.” “But, Noll,” she said—“you ought not to be sitting up in bed without your jacket on.” She brought the lad his short black jacket, and he submitted to putting it on graciously enough. “Noll,” she said—“surely you cannot get any pleasure from smoking?” “My dear Julia,” he said limply—“I shall never get the pipe coloured in time for your wedding if you go on like this.... Unless you put it off for a little.... You see, I’m not very used to a pipe—and I don’t mind telling you it does make my head go round a bit. But—hullo! I say, hold my pipe, Julia—there’s a whopping great moth!” He handed the pipe to Julia, who took it reluctantly enough; he jumped up, and, seizing a butterfly net which hung over a chest of drawers by his bed-head, he leaped about on his tumbled bed in his night-shirt, Eton jacket, and black stockings, making frantic sweeps Julia sighed—put aside the pipe with dainty fingers of disgust—and sat down again. They could hear Noll fumbling about in the next room. Netherby went and sat beside her. He watched her in silence for awhile: “Julia,” he said—“promise. You must promise. Promise—promise—promise——” They both started. Through the open doorway came the boy, looking like misery, deathly pale, and dragging the butterfly-net limply after him. “O lor!” he said. “My dear Noll!” said Julia—“what on earth have you been doing now?” Noll halted wearily before them: “It’s that sailor-man’s tobacco,” he said gloomily. “It was—too much—for—my strength. I don’t think I’m a man—yet.... Netherby, you and Julia can get married as soon as you like—I shall never smoke again.” He laid the butterfly-net on Gomme’s knees, and added, with a wan smile: “I say, Netherby, let’s change places—you go and catch butterflies whilst I kiss Julia.” Julia jumped and uttered a little scream: “Oh, Noll, you cruel boy—you’ve caught the moth!” she cried. She put her deft fingers into the net, caught the struggling thing, and, taking it out carefully, carried it to the window and let it fly out into the darkness. Noll smiled gloomily at Netherby: “It’s very cruel of Julia,” said he. “It’s a beastly night—that moth’ll get an awful cold in its chest—accompanied by sore throat, fever, and chills, and violent perspiration—and developing into a nasty hacking cough.” Wherein Master Oliver entertains Guests When Caroline Baddlesmere returned to the great bare room, and took off her outdoor wraps, Noll was seemingly drowsing, Netherby Gomme sitting on the bed by his side. The boy had been lying very still for awhile when he touched Netherby’s sleeve, signing to him to put down the ear of confidence: “Netherby,” he whispered, “when it’s within a quarter of midnight, old Modeyne will be fumbling at the door-latch down below.... I shan’t be able to help Betty to bring him up to-night—so you might slip down on tip-toe and just keep a flight of steps above her all the way. In case she needs help you can pretend you are just going home.” He took hold of Gomme’s coat-lapel: “Don’t let her know you are on the look-out unless old Modeyne is very far gone—he’s a goodish weight to push along.” Netherby nodded. A gleam shot into Noll’s eye; and he caught Gomme’s coat-lapel again: “He comes up pretty quiet—he always takes his boots off for fear of waking the gossips!” A twinkle glittered in his eyes: “The bother is that once he begins undressing he takes off everything but his shirt, and insists on going to sleep on the hall mat. Betty has got to keep him moving—she knows exactly what to do.... Once he starts up the stairs he is all right—unless he hiccups, and insists on apologizing to the people whose doors he is passing.... You’ll know soon enough, he nearly kicks their doors down. He looks killingly funny with his braces hanging down behind and carrying his boots and things as he goes crawling up the stairs, cracking his toes, and complaining that it is not seemly that rending Hiccup should climb the Whirling Stairs of Ambition. He sometimes lies down at the head of a flight of steps and insists on going to sleep—he says that we are the slaves of convention, and an overplus of clips tends to an overtax of sleep.... You’ve got to see that he doesn’t stop at the landlady’s door, or he’ll kick it and chuckle in a loud whisper: Behold where whispering gossip lies! with the accent on the ‘lies.’ He’s a bit of a wag is old Modeyne; but he won’t do anything low—he’s always a gentleman—even in his night-shirt.” The lad’s face grew serious Netherby nodded. There was a knock at the door; and the little lodging-house drudge crept in, shut it after her, and set her back against it: “Please, lidy,” she said with a loud sniff, “that lidy what walks like a police-officer is a-straddlin’ on the mat outside.” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder towards the door behind her: “I’ve forgot her name,” she went on. “I’ve showed her up, because it’s such a leg-aching grind a-goin’ down and up them stairs twice—but I’ll show her down again if yer don’t want to be bothered with her—and Master Oliver all of a heap too!... I did give her a hint as it was the small-pox likely enough—and I can easy work up the idea——” The gift was pushed forward by the door opening behind her, and Emma Hartroff entered the room, her hands thrust in the side-pockets of her long jacket. She greeted Caroline breezily: “Hullo, Mrs. Baddlesmere—how are you all?... I could hear every word the little slavey said.... I thought I might come and worry Noll a bit—may I?” Caroline had risen, and came forward to greet her. “Yes, Miss Hartroff—of course you may.” “I’m so glad—I was so afraid they’d send me away.” Caroline, as she shook hands, whispered to her: “If he show signs of drowsiness, please let him go to sleep.” Emma Hartroff bowed an answer, and strode over to Noll’s bed; she nodded to the others, who made way for her, and taking her straddling stand near him, she surveyed the boy: “You do look pretty sick, on my word, Noll,” said she; and added pathetically: “I wish I could do something for you—I never know what to do with kids; but——” “I say, Emma,” said Noll—“you ain’t going to a children’s party, are you?” Emma Hartroff raised eyebrows of inquiry: “N-no, Noll!” He signed to her to sit down beside him. “Then don’t play the snivelling mother,” said he—“it ain’t your size. Come and flirt with me—you may hold my hand.” Emma Hartroff laughed good-naturedly, and sitting down on the bed beside the boy, she took his hand: “Noll, you are very old,” she said—and she blew a breath: “Phooh! you are high up.” “Yes,” he nodded—“it makes me quite giddy when I smoke a pipe.” A knock at the door—and the little drudge skipped in and shut it again. She strode down the room on tip-toe to Caroline: “Please, lidy—here’s that rummy gent as speaks like them beautiful play-actors. He’s waitin’ to see you very partic’lar.” She giggled. “He’s such a funny gentleman! Excuse my laughin’, mum, but he is that hodd and ridic’lous! When I opened the door he says, says he: ‘Hail, lugubrious smudgy serving-wench!’ says he.” She uttered a “May I ask what the gentleman is doing, meanwhile?” asked Caroline drily. The girl leaned forward, and added confidentially behind the back of her hand: “He’s on the mat.” She jerked her thumb at the door. Caroline shifted uneasily in her chair: “I wish you would call gentlemen by their names, Victoria May Alice,” she said irritably. “Do you mean Mr. Eustace Lovegood?” “That’s ’im,” said Victoria May Alice. “Then show him in, you stupid child.” The face of Victoria May Alice cleared. She strode theatrically to the door, flung it open like a footman, and, suppressing a spluttered guffaw, announced mock-heroically: “Mr. Eustace Lovegood!” Lovegood walked in tragically—halted before Victoria May Alice, and put his hand on her head: “Victoria May Alice,” said he, “you will never do for the Embassy. You do not take the world seriously. When you announce genius you must shout it fearlessly, as though you had thrust a benefit upon the world—not as though you were hurriedly hiding away undarned stockings in a coffee canister.” Victoria May Alice muffled a snigger in her hands and skipped from the room. Lovegood turned to his hostess: “Ah, Caroline!” He advanced down the room slowly: “Your devoted slave—Noll’s devoted slave! Ha! Mr. Gomme, your servant! Miss Julia! I am your footstool.” Caroline rose to meet him. She smiled: “You wished to see me, Eustace!” she asked. He nodded: “I came to see if Noll were well,” he said. She made as though she would lead him to the boy’s bedside: “It will do Noll good just to see you,” she said. The big man held her hand: “Ah, my dear Caroline—I come for my own pleasure, not for his. Noll being ill, the town seems unholy quiet. History is an empty tragedy without its historian—an epic less than doggerel without its poet. And the town, being bereft of Noll, has ceased to be moved with incident. The world is become a dead-house. What an eye a boy has for calamities! He scents an event in the air. He arrives before the accident. A boy is always thrilled at the sight of a powder-cask——” “I wish, Eustace, you were not always throwing lighted matches so near the cask.” “Noll,” said Lovegood, sitting down on the bed at his feet—“dear boy, I am not well versed in the teething of infants, the lacy mysteries of long-clothes, the cooing garrulities of the cradle, but—I was once a boy.... I remember the emotional moments of boyhood.... I have never forgotten my first pork-pie.... I would fain have brought you a rare roast goose, Oliver; but I had to decide on the homely chicken broth.” He turned and called: “What ho, without!” “A-coming!” cried, from without, the shrill voice of Victoria May Alice. The door was flung open, and there entered Victoria, carrying a smoking bowl. “Victoria May Alice,” said Lovegood—“bear the goblet to the king.” Victoria May Alice bore the goblet. She handed the bowl to Noll—spluttered into a guffaw behind a grimy hand—and hurried from the room. The big man, sitting at the foot of the bed, smiled. “God bless you, Oliver,” said he—“and get well.” Noll began to sup the fragrant broth with a spoon. Lovegood got up from the bed—coughed—blew his nose. Caroline caught his eye, and signed to him. He strode down the room to her. “Eustace,” she said, “I wish you would not spend your money on the boy. You have no right to stint yourself—but—my dear fellow, you touch my heart—and—I cannot scold you.” He stroked her shoulder: “Tut, tut! nonsense!” said he, “we must not grow sentimental before we are forty——” He was interrupted by the click of the door, and, looking round, found Victoria May Alice at his elbow. She said to Caroline: “My heye, mum, we is a-makin’ of a night of it!” Lovegood laughed and strode back to his seat on Noll’s bed. Caroline turned impatiently to the girl: “Yes, yes, Victoria—what is it?” Victoria May Alice sniffed: “It ain’t it, mum—it’s them,” she said—“two of them comic gentlemen,” she tittered, and pulled herself up behind a grimy hand—“as is always a-hangin’ about with the party from the the-ayter.” She jerked a thumb at Lovegood. “They’re on the ’all doorstep and says is Master Noll at ’ome to partic’lar friends—and I says I’ll go and see; but if they was a-comin’ into this blessed house they’ve got to put out them dirty pipes. It’s not nice of them a-callin’ on the gentry a-smokin’ that muck. I don’t like it. These here London people has no manners. They wouldn’t do it if they was callin’ on a duchess or a bandy-legged bishop, or people as keep a butler. But—they are so She stopped at the clatter of feet on the attic stairs: “O lor!” she said resignedly—“here they comes, bless ’em!” Caroline put out her hand and touched the girl’s arm: “Victoria, my dear child, don’t be so noisy, please.” “Beg pardon, lidy,” the child replied humbly, and with sepulchral hoarseness. There was a loud knock, and before there was time to answer it, Rippley and Robbins boisterously entered the room. Noll’s greetings were too boyish for whispered talk as they all found seats. Victoria May Alice winked at Fluffy Reubens. “He ain’t dead yet!” said she. Caroline had scarcely returned to her work, when Victoria May Alice stepped stealthily to her side: “Mr. Fosse called just before these gentlemen, mum,” said she. “The silly hass wouldn’t take no for an answer, so I says, ‘Well, it’s scarlet fever if you will have it between yer bleery bicycle lamps,’ says I.” She put her lean little arms akimbo: “He’s so blimey pushing.” She put her hand up to her mouth and added confidentially: “I can’t abide Fosse myself——” A distant yell from below called: “Victoria-May-Yallis!” “Hullo!” said the girl, “there’s ’er voice a-yellin’ again.” She stole away softly. Wherein Egoism begins to Suspect that there is a Bottom to the Pint Pot “Please, mum,” Victoria’s untidy head appeared round the edge of the door, whispering hoarsely: “A gentleman as calls hisself Pangbutt is on the hall mat downstairs.” Caroline raised her head inquiringly: “Mr. Paul Pangbutt?” she asked in frank surprise. Victoria May Alice nodded violently: “That’s the gent, mum—he said as you’d know his name.” “Say I am not at home to visitors.” “I did, mum—but he says as I was to say as he is partic’lar anxious to see you. He called before—but he was that blimey gloomy I sent him off for a walk—said as you wouldn’t be in for an hour—Lord ’elp me.” Caroline hesitated. “Wait,” she said. “Show Mr. Pangbutt upstairs, Victoria.” Victoria May Alice dropped her dust-pan and brush with a rattle of surprise: “Oh!—you will see him.... Bless yer, I thought he’d be a gloomy nuisance—he’s that solemn. I told him he hadn’t a charnce. He rather calls for a sunshiny day to show him off, does Pangbutt.” She came in and leaned forward toward Caroline: “Don’t yer hesitate to say a hint, mum—I’d lie like Sapphira, if yer tips the wink. I was a-putting of him off anyway—I’ve been a-hinting as you was in your bath, mum, but, of course, if yer want to see him, I’ll tell him it was all shine and on second thoughts you ain’t a-goin’ to have one to-day.” The girl went to the head of the stairs, rattled the tin dust-pan against the brush handle to call the visitor’s attention down below, and cried shrilly over the balustrade: “Hi! mister—you can come up all right—it’s all off about the bath.” She put her untidy head in at the door: “He’s a-comin’ up, lidy,” she said; and, shutting the door, departed. Caroline sighed wearily: “I wish we could suppress that child,” she said.... “The gentleman as says he’s Mr. Pangbutt, marm!” A burst of laughter came from the group about the bed at some passing sally from Noll. Paul Pangbutt, blinking at the lamp-light, looked dazedly round the room. Caroline rose from her seat: “Ah, Mr. Pangbutt!” She bowed to him formally, and added airily: “So the river of life brings us together again in strange places!” He came to meet her haltingly: “I particularly wished to see you—alone,” he said in a low tone and with some embarrassment. She bowed: “We have drifted along such different ways,” she said coldly, “that I could scarcely believe the little servant when she told me so.” “I came to see if I could be of any help,” he said, almost in a whisper. She laughed lightly: “Help?” Her voice rose in gay surprise. “I heard you needed help,” he said, “nearly a month ago.” “Thank you—no. But won’t you be seated?” He went to the stove and gazed at it—rebuffed—perplexed. Caroline resumed her seat: “So you are settled in London at last!” she said. “I hear nearly a year now.... You see you are quite a celebrity——” A burst of laughter from the group about the bed made him start—and he glanced suspiciously over his shoulder. But they were oblivious of him. “Come, Caroline,” he said hoarsely, “you needn’t wound me more than my own miserable thoughts have been doing for these many days.” “Then let us have no talk of help,” she said, dropping her voice also. “Anthony has got some night-work on the papers at last. We are at the end of the siege. Besides—how do you know I am not on the eve of another masterpiece?” She laughed—a little sadly. “You mustn’t judge me too closely by my gowns—they are a little out of the fashion, beyond a doubt, but we may blossom again next spring.” He drew a chair, a poor rickety piece of furniture, before the stove, and sat down upon it. She smiled as it struck her how, unconsciously, he had, even in a troubled state of mind, taken the warmest place in the room. He sat for some while, gazing drearily into the furnace. She wished he would say his say, and let her get back to her work. At last he spoke in a low voice: “Ah, Caroline, you and Anthony are the true artists—I only a fair-weather one.... I have always dreaded the attic. I never could put aside discomfort.... Anthony was quite right—I am painting the most soulless things.... They pay.” “Well—we do not yearn for the attic heights precisely,” she said drily. He let the flippancy pass. He was too interested in himself to trouble about their tastes. “I am too successful,” he said. She smiled: “I am not sure it isn’t best so,” she said—“for you can help the struggling ones to live——” “Don’t stab me with that weapon”—he winced—“it is just exactly what I have forgotten to do.” And he added half to himself: “Fame has been my very God.” Loud laughter filled the room. Noll yawned drowsily at the far end of the attic. “But how do you tickle a trout?” he asked. Caroline repressed a desire to laugh. She shrugged her shoulders: “Ah, Paul—you still worship at the old shrine—Fame, Posterity, and all the Clap-Trap!... After all, the ages have their own intellectuals?” “I do not think we should wholly neglect posterity,” he said largely. He was deft in throwing the catchpenny. “We ought, if we paint a great picture, to paint it with colours that will not decay.” She smiled sadly, flipped over some proofs, and read: “All language dies, giving birth to other. Colour fades—paint perishes, marble crumbles, the statue falls in the grass, the glowing harmonies pass into blackness and are no more, the rains wash the hand’s craft from the hardest stone—the cathedral, the masonry of which, splendidly upspringing to the clouds, reaches towards the swinging skies, crumbles at last and falls and sinks into the gutter—is carried grain by grain in drainage of runnels to the water-brook, or by babbling brook in rounded pebbles into the sea of obliterate things. That literary works die, as all human effort dies, is a part of the pathos of the unattainable—a part of the grim tribute of Life to Death. In the life of the world, Homer is but of the day before yesterday, and he is dead except to a few scholars; even Shakespeare himself, who is but of yesterday, is read and known by how few of those who utter so glibly the fragments of his wisdom! There is no finality in literature—no end to art. The sweetest love-lyric will one day sound scholastic, pattered by lips that, for all their essaying, cannot taste its native tenderness—sounded in ears that will be deaf to some subtle accent of it—heard by alien minds that must strain by grammar and rule of thumb to catch its meaning, which the very shepherds of its living day could grasp at its mere uttering. But noble work, even though it pass away, gives birth to nobler, as the heroic act ceases at the breathing of a breath, yet lives in the remembering; and we should be content indeed to enrich and strengthen the spirit of our age.” He sat for awhile, after her voice had ceased; and, with puckered brows, stared at the light: “Then you have found a pretty dry biscuit to feed your heart upon,” she said. He nodded: “I have awaked to find myself alone.” There was laughing applause by the bed. Caroline smiled sadly: “So you have been a little lonely, eh, Paul?” “I am finding myself more and more alone.” There was another gust of laughter from the group about the bed. Pangbutt looked round uneasily. The sphinx smile came to Caroline’s lips; she saw his uneasiness. “Paul,” she said—“there are too many ghosts in your house.” “Ghosts?” he asked moodily. He nodded after awhile: “Perhaps there are ghosts,” he said bitterly. She leaned forward: “Yes, Paul—when the twilight comes, and the day’s work is set aside, all the colours turn to drab—and the ghosts of dead friendships and dead follies come out and walk.” He uttered a low bitter laugh: “And yet there are they that are jealous because I am famous.” Laughter burst into the room. Pangbutt moved uneasily: “How oddly those men laugh!” he said. “You are grown suspicious, Paul—they are not even thinking of us.... Every nudge at the elbow is not Envy.” Pangbutt sighed, and turned his eyes inwards again towards the man who interested him most: “I begin to think,” said he, “that I have been living in a fools’ paradise.” Caroline’s eyes hardened: “There are worse things than a fools’ paradise,” she said. “The man who lives for himself alone may awake one day to find himself in a mad-house—one with all the other ghosts that flit about his prison—a shadow amongst shadows, seeking shadows.” “A shadow?” She nodded: “A shadow, Paul.... There is no woman in your life—no child—no care but for self. What does a childless, mateless man know of life? He has not taken up its most initial gifts. He avoids its responsibilities, its risks, its pains, its debt to God and man. Why should he expect, or even hope for, the joys of life? Who can know real delight who shirks the winning—or who shall find happiness that shrinks from sorrows?” He shrugged his shoulders impatiently: “Why should I become a part of the crowd?” he asked with contempt. He sat silent for awhile. He gazed perplexedly at his ambitions: “I have made a career—have won its prizes. Until to-night I considered myself an object of envy.... I am an object of envy.” “Tush!” she said. “Better be a microbe than a loveless man.” She laughed—but at the sight of his wrecked self-esteem falling about his wretched hunched shoulders the laughter left her eyes. She leaned forward: “Listen,” she said.... “As I sat here some days ago, I could have shrieked with terror—lest I should lose my boy. But I would rather go mad with such fear than never have known the possibility of it—than be as you are.... And for what? What is this Fame? Who gives it? Who are these demi-gods who award it?... They don’t even know their own minds for a generation—sometimes not for a year.... Supposing this Fame, then, to which you are giving your life, be nothing at all!” She laughed sadly. “But we are getting quite serious,” she said; and rising to her feet she put her hand on his stooped shoulders: “Paul,” she said—“you are in love with a sad flirt—I should be ungallant, and break off the engagement. A woman could treat you no worse.” Paul rose, realizing his dismissal: “Ah, well, Caroline, old friend,” said he—“it is very late—I must be going.... You make me think of the old days when you kept us all in order in Paris.... Good-night! It is so long since anybody took sufficient interest in me to rate me.... Good-night!” He moved towards the door, saying as he went: “I must go and sit with my ghosts.... They never scold me—are never angry with me, beyond pulling an ugly face now and again—only they are so infernally dull.” She saw him to the door: “Good-night, Paul!” she said—and added, laughing: “Get you a wife—and learn to play with children.” She shut the door and went back to her task. “Heigho! the man has quite forgiven himself for a life full of meannesses,” she yawned. She sat down wearily in her chair by the stove, and as she got out her proofs to correct for the press, she sighed: “Thank heaven, the last page!... Heigho! I am weary....” She sank back in her chair; and as her eyes closed, her hand upon the last corrected page, she fell fast asleep. When Caroline awoke in the greying dawn, the small Betty was sitting in a chair near the boy’s bed, solemnly reading by the guttering candle. The child had set a kettle to boil; and tea-cups and an old brown teapot of the kind that is called toby shone invitingly on the little table whereon the candle feebly struggled against the cold light of the coming day. Betty rose, fetched the kettle that purred on the stove, and filled the teapot; and, when she had let it stand for a spell, she drew off a cup of tea. She looked round. Caroline was kneeling by the bed of the sleeping boy, her head buried in her arms. Betty slipped quietly from the room. Wherein Miss Betty Modeyne wins more Hearts It was a month or more before the boy was allowed to go into the country; so that it was early summer by the time they sent him away with Netherby—the small Betty being added to mother the party at the last moment, there having arisen doubts as to the quality of the housekeeping owing to the absent-mindedness of the bear-leader. So for a fortnight there was a happy party at the old inn by Burford Bridge. Where the Major slept during the fourteen nights was never known; but city wags to this day aver that it was beside the wine-cooler under the sideboard at The Cock and Bull in Fleet Street. There are discrepancies, but the weight of evidence lies near the wine-cooler.... The fresh air of the Surrey uplands soon had the lad Oliver strung to the full pitch of devilment that is nature’s questionable gift to boyhood; and he rapidly regained what Netherby Gomme, with meaning accent, called his “habitual rude health.”... Whilst Netherby Gomme filled the morning hours with the winning of bread in his little room at the inn, Noll and Betty loitered by the river and watched the shadowy grey trout lying along the trailing weeds with blunt noses up stream below the stilly waters of the sluggish flood; or they wandered in the meadows where the high whispering poplars line the margin of the babbling rivulet, their gossip leafage never ceasing the tattling of secrets with the gadding winds amongst the passing rumours of the high heavens; or they climbed the long green slope of Box Hill up to the swinging sky a-top, until it seemed that they might touch the clouds by mere uplifting of outstretched hands, all England lying like a pleasant garden at their feet; or, topping the hill, they would clamber down its steep wooded side, and so out upon the road at foot to the little stone bridge, where they would lean over the parapet and watch the enamelled dragon-fly hang quivering above the glassy pond, scintillant in gay attire with all his silver armour on, bedecked in splendour of green and purple jewellery; or they would flirt pebbles at the shy black water-hen that bobbed up to her quaint swimmings; and so, strolling round by Dorking town, as the sun topped its The mid-day meal done, they would roam out on to the green lawn and sit in the shade, reading some thrilling adventure, or, dragging Netherby with them, break the law and invade the kitchen, where the jolly hostess of the inn would point to the written word above the chimney-place but scarce enforce the law, nay, even dust chairs instead to hold them there; and the cook would pin a kitchen clout to each of their shoulders to display their shame; so they would sit and gossip of the little world about them; and the big-hearted busy woman would discover little stores of hardbake and shortbread and suchlike delightful evils for young stomachs, for she had a soft heart and was fond of her joke—and Netherby came out ridiculously well on such occasions, and the others were not wholly demure. The gay banter would go a-tossing. Or they would wander round to the stables to call upon their friend Sim Crittenden—the prize-fighting ostler with the gentle eyes and the temper that nought might ruffle and a singing voice like a baritone god—who, leaning on the long wooden handle of his pitchfork, his shirt-sleeves rolled up, and his braces hanging looped against his breeches’ flanks, would stand at the end of the stables and sing to them songs from Handel and the masters—Ruddier than the Cherry and Toreador and Nazareth, even descending, with apologies, occasionally to It’s a Great Big Shame or other latest music-hall lilt. Netherby, who began to fear a too poetic pastoral atmosphere at the inn, was to have satisfaction in the life of action that he adored, and a lively descent to vigorous prose. The hard-hitting ostler was to strike the dramatic note. Adventure came with the rougher element that rattled down in hired carriages to the inn, chi-hiking and using squalid language along the highroad on their week-end outing from London city. Cockney youth, with fantastic picturesque tendencies as to dress, and crude love in the wagonettes, descended to the ground, alighting before the inn, and swarmed into the drinking-bar, thirsty with the swallowing of dust and much shouting, buxom beauty hanging upon their arms with proud gaze boldly cast upon their noisy lords from under the heavy hair that shaded their frankly vulgar eyes, and with ear-racking laughings from their full red lips to greet all their swaggering gentlemen’s uttermost ribaldries. They made the inn a riot of vulgarity. Yet, all had gone well till twilight, and had as likely enough gone well to the hour of their home-going—and they were already foregathering in the tap-room for the drinking of the last glass—had it not been for the garrulous and boastful habit of the gardener of the inn, a red-bearded fellow of weak knees and splay feet, who got to bragging about the inn’s ostler. However, a cockney youth, a clean-limbed, quick-eyed cub, being grown something tongue-loosed by reason of the beer, at once brought out his conceit and paraded it—it also had to do with some little parochial honour in which he was held with regard to the skilful use of his naked hands—he had made some tough fellow’s nose bleed or arrived at the like godlike achievement. He thought himself a match, he said, for any fellow that messed about horses. This with prodigious blasphemies. Whereat the red-bearded gardener laughed loudly; and the cockney youth, fired with wrath, hit at the centre of the laugh, and missing the gardener’s mouth, the which was no such difficult job for the tangled thicket of red hair about the laugh, got his clumsy knuckles somewhere in the region of the gardener’s nose and set the blood flowing. The barman called for order, and the cockney youth, forgetting the impiety of mishandling the authority of the chair, got his five fingers into the potman’s neck-cloth. Then it was seen that Sim Crittenden, the ostler, stopping in the midst of the deep note of Nazareth, walked blithely out of the stables on light springy feet, passed along the highroad before the inn, and swung open the outer door of the drinking-bar. He stood before them that brawled in the tavern and grimly eyed the riot. “Who undid the potman’s necktie?” he asked in a deep growl. The cockney youth turned and put out his chin. He said he didn’t give a ruddy geranium who did it, but he was sober enough to take the whole responsibility of the humours of his particular wagonette on his own naked shoulders. He personally detested the potman’s taste in ties. The ostler knocked him down. The cockney youth got up again and lashed out with his hands—London breeds courage when it is not cowardice, to the full pitch; every cockney is a potential hero when he is not a whining thief—he was knocked down again. He scrambled up, and began to feel about dazedly for the ostler’s face, but was grown vague as to the object of his hate. The ostler put down his hands and said that the other might now walk out into the lane with the honours of war if he so willed it; and he added that he hoped he would go out like a gentleman, as he, the ostler, had a deep-seated distaste to making a mess of the bar with anyone from London. He opened the door for him with the polish of a courtier. He made the effort to this base end; was parried; and forthwith kicked for his iniquity through the door into the road, receiving a violent blow under the ear as he went. They all rose up and rushed at the ostler. But they went to their undoing. There was no refuge in retreat, no backing into the room from the smite of the great hands, for the red-bearded gardener assailed from behind—he had a heavy foot. One by one they joined him who stood in the dusk on the King’s highway. And the road was strewn with their hats. The ostler came to the doorstep and touched his forelock: “Shall I put in the horses, gentlemen?” said he. They gathered together in the grey of the twilight muttering mean vengeance, but the cockney youth who had brought them to it said commandingly, “Chuck it!” which being interpreted meant that the vulgarities were at an end. He went up and held out a hand to the ostler: “I know a better man than me,” said he—“when he hits me hard enough; and you ain’t the one I’d choose to slap my face. Hold out your olive-branch.” The ostler held out a great paw and they shook hands; the ostler’s grip, said the cockney youth, made his teeth ache. The gardener strolled about and restored the scattered hats. The ostler stood in the twilight and smiled. The sulky fellows put aside evil desire and came and gripped the great hand that made their knuckles creak. Then he sang them old-world Ruddier than the Cherry whilst their women led their cockney loves aside to the dark shadows under the trees and furtively comforted them. It all struck the small Betty that it was an indecent sight. Yet there was a thrill of contentment in her heart that it should have fallen to the man who could sing Nazareth like a god to do the blood-letting. On the days when it rained, the little party, Betty and Noll and Netherby, would sit in the small parlour of the inn where Nelson and his Emma had spent those pitiful hours many years ago, the night before the great Admiral posted to the sea-coast to hoist his flag aboard the Victory, being at the beginning of that journey that ended in his splendid death at the triumph of Trafalgar—his frail Emma going from the little room, a broken woman, to Neglect, and Worse.... So the happy days went by, until the hour struck for departure. The good hostess kissed Betty on the doorstep, the dainty little lady being dressed for travel—and had to go indoors for the tears that would run, fleeing from the distress of further good-byes. The glorious sun found them at last, with their pathetically small packages, at the little railway-station, the prize-fighting ostler carrying Miss Betty’s little bag, and hovering about the As the train came in he found an empty carriage for them. Betty, stepping forward, held out a dainty hand. The ostler took it, and, stooping down, stroked it between his mighty palms: “Look ye here, Miss Betty,” said he—“you’ll be a great lady some day—I haven’t been chucked out of a markiss’s stables without spottin’ the breed when I see it—but it may likely enough take some nasty days getting there.... Now, missee, if you ever wants anythink in my line of business,” he added significantly, “this address will always find me—it’s where my old mother lives. And if so be that you ever wants physical assistance, jest you go to the nearest telegraph-office. You’ve only got to say the word, and wheresoever it be in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland or the parts lying adjacent thereto, Sim Crittenden will spoil the handsomest face the Lord ever made—so help me God!” He took off his hat and held it in his hand, and they each in turn shook his great fist. He blew his nose strenuously as the train moved out of the station, Betty, where she sat in the window, biting her handkerchief, the tears streaming down the child’s face. The prize-fighting ostler sang no song for several days. Which contains Some Hints towards the Making of a Baronet A door opened, and the echoing tramp of feet on the carpetless boards of the corridor outside ushered the entrance of two men into a large room, wholly devoid of furnishment—the plaster of its walls as bare as its ceiling and floor. The short, stout, red-faced man shut the door with a slam that resounded through the empty place, thrust his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, and said with pride: “Now, sir; how do you call that for a stoodio!” In the fading daylight the younger man, dandified, self-possessed, deliberate, dressed in the severest high fashion of the day, stepped to the end of the great empty place and surveyed it calmly: “Ah, Mr. Malahide—it is the sort of room I should delight to furnish as I liked—and then live in it,” he said; and he sighed: “I have the palatial instincts.” He spoke with a charm of accent and of manner that drew the frank admiration of the vulgar other; indeed, the stout Mr. Malahide was looking at a handsome young Englishman in all the first graceful vigour of early manhood—for Bartholomew Doome’s lithe slender build gave him an easy carriage of the body that told of well-knit strength, and put aside the hint of effeminacy suggested by the great beauty of the head. As the stout man had said to his wife this very morning: “You could find it in your heart to stroke him down with yer ’and, like a dam race-’orse.” Mr. Malahide pushed his silk hat back upon his florid head and looked thereby even more vulgar than his Maker had intended him: “Well,” said he—“ye like it, eh, sir?” The smile still flickered about Bartholomew Doome’s lips: “May I ask, Mr. Malahide,” he said drily—“what I am doing here?” The fat little man kicked out his legs: “That’s just it, sir,” said he—“that’s just it. Well, you see, it’s this way. Now, Mr. Doome, I’m a pretty good-hearted, but rather damn vulgar man——” Doome looked at him steadily: “Yes,” said he—“by the splendour of God, you are.” “Good. Now, sir, I’ve made my bit of money in the house-furniture business already; but Tankerton Wollup he’s at the top; and he’s dead sure to become a bloomin’ baronet; and he’s as vulgar as I am.” He paused, eyeing the floor at his feet, meditatively. Doome nodded: “I will only interrupt you to question the accuracy of your statements, Mr. Malahide,” he said grimly. Pompey Malahide laughed: “Good,” said he. “Well, where Tankerton Wollup can climb, Pompey Malahide can get his boots—and he’s going to—though Wollup’s father did have the business shrewdness to christen him Tankerton—if you can call it christening in Wardour Street.... Tankerton Wollup! Mine called me Pompey! but, bless him, the old man’s only fault was his sentiment. Pompey! Why, Tankerton’s a name to conjure with! Who’d suspect that his Christian name was Isaac? And if yer had seen the dirty hole in the city where he began and—— But, steady, Pompey, my boy—we mustn’t rake up the manufacture of antique things. Besides, luck has been with him all through—he is even a red Jew.... However, sir, you have brought to my shops of late more than one tip-top swell that bought the real old stuff; and I don’t mind tellin’ you that that’s the side of my business I intend to develop.... Wollup and me began life by debauching public taste—and he’s chucking it—and it’s time I did.... I want to meet my God like a man——” Doome coughed: “I thought it was as a baronet,” he said. The dealer laughed loud and long: “God! what a wit you have! Now, sir, don’t you hit me on the neck.... Well, I’ve got clear enough eyes to discover that you know the good stuff when you see it at sales, just by the good taste that’s born in you. Now, it’s no manner o’ use putting that good stuff in my windows—the people that furnish their houses slap through from my shops don’t know the good stuff when they see it; and, I’ll be honest with you, sir, I’ll be damned if I do—and my partner, that did, died last Saturday. You see, sir, the fact is I’m in a hole. I know good stuff if it’s been the fashion long enough—but I have not the knowledge to set the fashion. You have, but you can’t for want of means; whilst I want to and have the means. I hope I’m not talkin’ like a bleating cad,” he said. Bartholomew Doome watched the fat, downright little dealer out of languid eyes; but his alert mind followed every hint. And he had, besides, a very soft corner in his heart for the man. But he said not a word. “Now, Mr. Doome, I like you—though they do say you are the wickedest man in London——” “Oh! Mr. Malahide!” he protested. “Yes,” said the fat important little man, “I like you.” Bartholomew Doome bowed. The dealer put out a hand. “Don’t you sneer, Mr. Doome. A man can’t give more than he’s got—and liking’s the biggest thing he’s got—to bestow.” Bartholomew Doome smiled: “You will know when I sneer, Mr. Malahide—I do not feel like it yet,” he said. “No; well, I’m glad of that, sir.... Because—I’m going to ask you if you’ll accept an offer. You can but refuse it, when all’s said—and break my heart.... I wouldn’t dare to make it, but I’m a shrewd business man, and I’ve hunted up one or two young fellows I’ve seen about with you, and asked them how you lived—and it has emboldened me——” “One moment, Mr. Malahide. I will ask you no names, but—may I ask how my friends solved the problem?” The fat dealer laughed embarrassedly: “They said they were damned if they knew.” Doome smiled: “Yes,” said he—“that sounds like my friends.... And the fact is I scarcely know myself.” The dealer nodded: “Well, sir; what I propose is this: I am not fool enough to think you will turn shopman—it would ruffle you to death—and you’d make a poor one when you did it—your university career has spoilt you for success in business. But if you’ll drop in casually when I ring you up—there’s a telephone in the next room—and give me an opinion whenever I want it; and if you’ll let me furnish this room as your studio with anything you like, just for an advertisement for me amongst your swell friends and the newspapers—if you’ll give me the benefit of your good taste and advice on my better-class furnishing business—I only ask for your mornings—I’ll give you a thousand pound a year for it.” He peered anxiously at the smart young fellow before him, and added hoarsely: “For God’s sake don’t say No. There’s my hand on it—or you can take time to think it out if you like.” He held out a fat jolly vulgar hand. Bartholomew Doome grasped the hand: “I’ll do it,” he said. “And I don’t mind telling you, Mr. Malahide, I’ll be glad to do it.” “Right-o!” bawled the fat little dealer, his red face perspiring with glee as he walked briskly up and down rubbing his hands in his relief. “By Rupert, I’m born to luck. Got that beastly job over.... Well, sir, the day after to-morrow you are free of all my shops, or anywhere you like to pick things up; and just you order what you wish for this room—there’s a couple of rather nice little rooms off it, and a jolly little hall—do it all regardless of cost. And—oh yes—— Now look here, Mr. Doome, to-day I He came close to Doome and whispered as though he feared the very walls might hear. Doome listened closely. The fat little man stood back a pace: “Eh? Pretty strenuous idea, that!... Ye see, Wollup he did the one just opposite.... Now, I don’t mind even dropping a bit of money over it. Can you go over Wollup’s upholstery debauch to-morrow morning, then meet me opposite after lunch, and just give me tips to lick Wollup off his bunyanny feet?” Doome nodded. “Good!” said the beaming Pompey. “My manager will be at my elbow making notes. Don’t take no notice of him. Just you plan the hotel like a lady’s boodywar, in good colour and telling style—the sort o’ thing that pleases the eye so you want to kiss it. Make it sing—like a ruddy violin. It’s got to put me in front of Tankerton Wollup. See? Just come in, sir, as if you had a mortgage on the place—don’t mind me—and—well, it’ll be a bit of All-Right-O! See?... Oh,” he added, growing suddenly serious—“look here, Mr. Doome—you see—my boy’s at Harrow, so he’s all safe from me, bless the lad; but—my girls are springing up—rising sixteen one of ’em—and—they are fine stylish girls, too—but—sometimes—I have my qualms that I rub them on the raw a bit. Now, you might give me a hint—now and again—if I—well—you know! Just say: Malahide, my boy, you’re on the vulgar side, see?” “Off side, eh?” “That’s it.” Doome laughed: “You’ll be a baronet yet,” said he. Which has to do with the Fascination of Naughtiness Doome’s studio became the talk of the town. Who, that is Who, has not sat therein? It came to be a part of the great Social Function to have the entrance to this handsome room. The rich tapestries that hung the walls, the glowing colour and the beauty of the furnishments were held in restraint by the chastening, somewhat religious, atmosphere that made the whisper of wickedness add such a mysterious charm to his habitation as it did to the attraction of the dark-souled mysterious Doome himself. No one knew a single vice against the slender handsome youth of the pale classic features and the black hair and immaculate dress; but it was said that things were said. And he was too charmingly delightful—and just a little alarming. Thus gossip wagged an artful tongue. Dingy-looking weak-eyed journalists of the inferior press sneered in unsigned paragraphs of rancid English at his effeminacy, hinting at unmentionable sins—who, had he struck them, would have thought a horse had kicked them—he, whose only agony was that they should belittle him with their praise. Rude sporting men, that passed their virile lives gazing at horses galloping, said he wanted kicking. None kicked him. Perhaps the great church candlesticks that rose in massive wrought brass from the dark stained floor at the ends and by the sides of the large room, holding aloft enormous candles half way to the high ceiling, struck the religious note. Or it may have been the exquisitely rich image of the Mary which stood on the mantel amongst the glowing splendid nudes. But the yawning accents of the most garrulous society babbler sank to a whisper on entrance. Nay, the most brilliant rakes had been known to lower their strutting voices on coming into this room. The faculty of reverence lies dormant in the cynic as in the fool. Nobody had been known to see Doome at work. It was said that some beautiful women could have said things, and they would. But they would not. Yet his exquisite craftsmanship, the wondrous musical rhythm of his line and the quaint and rather morbid fancy of the subjects that came from his pen, It was significantly whispered that he never worked except at dead of night, with the great candles lit, and all the old-world glass lustres that hung from the ceiling aglow with a hundred lights; it was then, said the traffickers in scandal, he came out to the practice of his art in a silken dressing-gown—the most beautiful woman of London sitting to him to snatch a little of immortality. The scandal grew. Society wrangled for him.
Which tells of a Poet that offered Himself for Sacrifice, and was Rejected of the Gods The last day of September has early bridal with the night. Though the afternoon was not full spent, the dark shadows of the coming darkness held the town. In the midst of the gloom that was in Doome’s studio stood the sulky figure of the Honourable Ponsonby Wattles Ffolliott; and, at his feet, there crouched on the floor a very young and very beautiful woman, and her head was bowed. Wringing her clasped hands upon her knees she said hoarsely: “God have mercy upon me—for this is an awful caricature of His image.... I am lost—lost.” He fidgeted peevishly: “You know, my dear girl, this is most annoying,” said he, with self-pitying drawl—“your taunts are in such bad taste—and it is so absolutely embarrassing. And—I so positively detest being embarrassed.” She rose to her feet wearily: “Ponsonby, all my things are packed, ready to go—Heaven knows there was not so much to pack—it is not that. I do not want to encumber you—to embarrass you. I am going. This place is not such a bewitching Paradise, nor its memories so sweet, that I should stay. I know your time at these rooms is up. But you—even you—must surely realize that I cannot go home where a harsh and bitterly religious step-father sits at the table.” She drooped her head: “I could not disguise my state for a day. And they are so religious.” She fidgeted her fingers pathetically: “No,” she moaned—“I cannot go home—there’s no smallest mercy in them.” The Honourable Ponsonby broke into her mood: “But—I say, my dear gal——” How she had grown to hate the dreadful drawl! “Ponsonby”—she grasped his arm feverishly, trying to rouse some honour in him—“I have no money—none. I shall soon be a mother. You have made it impossible for me to make money in the studios. At home,” she laughed sadly, “they “Well—er—I don’t really know. You see I’m so bad at arranging things.... Almost an ass in some things——” She touched his sleeve—so pathetically: “Let the child be born in honour—a secret marriage—anything.” She shrank back. “It is dreadful to think of being tied to you,” she moaned, “but—for the child’s sake—for the child’s sake you must be made to remember your promises—you must give the child honour.” She saw his inane mouth opening to the uttering of foolishness. She dropped at his feet, bowing her head to her shame, a wounded broken woman—this little more than child—soon to be the mother of a child. He fidgeted: “Well, you see, my dear girl—it can’t be marriage,” he drawled, “because I’m—er—morally married already—I’m almost engaged—and you know—as a gentleman——” She brushed her hand back over her forehead. The enormity of his idiotcy stung her, and she groaned: “My God!” said she—“what a bleating fool this is!” “Oh yes, call me ridiculous names,” he complained huffily—“but I’m really glad to see that you realize that—er—as a gentleman——” She rose from the floor, and turned upon him: “Then why, in the name of all’s that abominable, did you do this thing?” He licked his lips sullenly, flinching a little before her: “Well, don’t you see—I knew you would see reason, that you would see that it can’t possibly be marriage. And as to providing for you, don’t you see I have so precious little for myself—and I have such awfully expensive tastes——” “God!” she growled, stepping to him, with a sudden urging to strike him—“I could kill you.” And she added hoarsely: “I almost think I will.” “Now, don’t be violent—I never know what to do when a woman is violent. In my family the women are never violent.... You see, Polly——” “Don’t befoul my name by speaking it——” He shrugged his shoulders: “My dear girl, this melodramatic way of life is most repulsive to me—it makes me feel quite nervous and ill,” he added plaintively. “You used to be such a nice girl.” She burst into laughter, miserable laughter, and wrung her hands: “My God, this is awful!” she said. She fell a-brooding. The long silence made the youth uneasy: “Polly, don’t you see——” “Urgh!” She swung round upon him savagely—growling as a leopard might: “Stop that awful bleating. Your voice turns Of a sudden she turned to the door: “Go,” she said hoarsely—“go away—or I shall do you an injury. Quick! I can descend to no more foul shame than I have now known. Go—and, as you love yourself, I say, don’t let me hear that awful bleat again.” He walked out of the room in his weak-kneed way, huffily, and was gone. She stood listening there, until all echo of him, dandified, weak-kneed, had passed out of her ears. And when the world was become wholly silent, the tense mood passed. She sank to the seat of the sofa and bent her brows on the problem, what to do? Before her was blackness. No writing across the sullen sky. As she sat thus in the gloom, scowling at cruelty, a key turned in the lock outside, there was the loud slam of the outer door, a heavy step or so, and a man’s figure entered into the dusk of the room. “Eustace Lovegood!” she said hoarsely. “The good God must have sent you.” The big man started; took off his hat: “Bless my soul, Miss Whiffels, you here! Mr. Doome has asked me to use his rooms—for a month.... But I did not know there was anyone—I mean, he—must have forgotten.” “No,” she said—“I have no business here—none. Eustace, I am a desperate woman. I don’t know—where—to go.” “My dear lady!” “Why should I show a modesty that I once had—a long while ago—quite some months now——” “My dear good——” “Listen, Eustace. I must state the indecent thing to somebody. This man has debauched me—body and soul——” “Good God! Bartholomew Doome?” “No, no. This Ffolliott person——” “Ffolliott?” His surprise was unmitigated. She laughed bitterly: “Yes—that is the worst part of my shame. It bleats in my ears just like that.” “But——” “Listen. He will not keep his bond—I cannot appeal to any sense of honour. He himself does not know how to spell the word.” She smiled grimly: “No. My degradation has not sunk to that. He has not even the will nor the desire to support me even for a little while—until the child is born.” The big man frowned: “Oh, I do not think he is quite such an unmitigated cad as that!” She rose from the sofa wearily and went to the fireplace: “I should like some smallest proof,” she said—“for This is the father of—my—child.... Give me some smallest proof, Eustace, that this man has a shred of manhood—the least little frayed shred. I have made every appeal—appeals for enslavement which, if granted, would have bitten into me like the teeth of a dog. But, for the child’s sake, I held out my hand to be bitten, bared my breast, begged him to befoul me with his benefits!” She uttered a little harsh laugh: “I was saved the dog’s teeth of that ignominy,” she said. Lovegood had stood, pondering hard; he suddenly remembered a five-pound note which had been paid to him that day. He coughed: “Well, as it happens, he has given me rather an embarrassing task to fulfil,” he said. “He sends you some money by me—I wish my friends would not always give me their unpleasant duties to perform.” The big man tugged the crisp banknote out of his breast-pocket, and brought it to her. She took it; and crumpled it in her hand: “I will touch nothing,” she began passionately, swinging her hand to fling the money into the fire—stopped—turned sharply and looked keenly at Lovegood: “Oh, Eustace—it’s clean after all! What a sweet big-hearted liar you are!” She went up to him, pulled down his great head, and kissed him on the cheek. “My God!” said she—“you make me sane.... But you are a wretched poor hand at any deceit.... A poorer evil-doer surely was never born.... But, as a matter of fact, the very heavens are against you this time—the bleating awful Thing has only just left the place.” “Yes, God forgive me, I saw him. He smelt of Poudre d’Amour to the Haymarket.” He led her to the sofa, sat down beside her, and took her hand: “Don’t let us pollute the air with him any more,” he said—“let us talk about pleasant things—like you.” The girl was becoming quieted. “Yes,” she said—“I must try and keep myself from horrors—for the sake of the little one.... Eustace, I believe you have something of the woman in your big heart—and, thank God, you have come to me—for this man has made it impossible for me to The big man, elbow on knee, leaned his chin on his knuckles and looked at her: “Miss Polly,” said he—“I see a better way out. Suppose you let me father the child! You might do worse. I am a lonely man.” She shook her head sadly: “There is no such good in store for me,” she said. She took his face between her two slender hands and kissed him—on the brows and cheek and lips and chin: “I wonder how it is that no woman has loved you, Eustace.... It will come.” Her eyes filled with tears. He could not trust himself to speak. She sighed sadly: “One day you will know why I say No,” she said. “You will know that I loved you too well.” “I think,” said he—“I think I know now.” Which hints at an Age of Gold Increasing good fortune came with sundry little successes; and gradually the pressure of want was eased, and the attic became a place of comfort and small luxuries. Caroline Baddlesmere realized that for the boy the ordinary public school life was not only beyond her means, but that it would now be a sheer waste of time. She therefore, foreseeing that thereby as many good mid-day meals would be assured to the big man under witness of her own eyes, and the small fee helpful to him besides, induced Eustace Lovegood to furbish his mathematics and give the boy a couple of hours of them four or five mornings of the week; and Betty, taking the big man’s hand at the conference, shyly slid into the arrangement. Lovegood’s affection for the boy and girl gave him complete command of their attention; and his large scrupulousness, wide humanity, and great-heartedness had an even mightier educational force upon them both than the clear wits he brought to bear in luring them along the gritty path of the dry philosophy of numbers. In his hands geography and geology became a romance—an education in themselves; and science a glittering enchantment. He directed their reading in literature and history and government and statesmanship and social laws, which he put before all else for the training of the good citizen. Indeed he had only to guide—for they were greedy readers. He laid the classics at their feet, making them read good translations first, giving them a clear idea of the author’s relation to the times in which he wrote, and persuading the youngsters, after the mathematics were done in the morning, to run through some pages of the Latin or the Greek with him “to keep up the tune.” The boy’s wits awoke at once, roused as they had never been roused, to an eager curiosity about the very things that at school had but irked him and been an unmitigated weariness to him. He now found that the thing to be expressed was the important thing, whereas formerly, in the schoolroom, ranged in a row of some score of indifferent yawning others, he had been whipped into regarding the way of saying it as of the only interest—nay, the sole interest of the schoolmaster. So that what had aforetime gone in at one ear and out at the other now lodged in the brain and painted pictures in the imagination that none might rub out. The boy had groaned over his Xenophon, until “Thence he advanced parasangs and stathmoi” had become the refrain of boredom as repulsive as the epileptic drivel of Revelation. He now discovered that the book contained one of the mighty adventures of the world. He stepped it out with Xenophon and the Ten Thousand in Cyrus’s march, listened to the camp scandals of the years ago, thrilled by the perplexities and endurance and dangers and hair’s-breadth escapes of the questionable undertaking; followed the great and dogged retreat; took a part in the passing incidents, hunting the bustards, tiring them down, and finding “the flesh of these birds very delicious.” He dawdled before Troy with the Homeric heroes, fought with them, listened to their gossip, bathed with them, sacrificed with them. The Latin tongue revealed other emotions than the frenzy of doubt as to whether Caius and Balbus should build unending walls. To him, Roman Horace, growing fat, unwieldy, laughing at his own disadvantages in subtle Latin verse, lolling about MÆcenas’ villa, became a live acquaintance, as real as the people he rubbed against in the street. And every day the number of his acquaintance grew. As real, more definite than the swarm of boys with whom he had played at school, became Charlemagne and Clovis and Capet, Simon de Montfort, and Bastard William of Normandy and the First and Third Edwards of England, and Cromwell and Chatham and the men of the French Revolution. The very hours of the day, seasons of the year, became frequented with the association of the great dead, so that in the after-years of his manhood, at the break of day it almost seemed that there stole across the years, back over the edge of the drowsy world, out of old pilastered Greece, the hushed image of that festival drawing to its end when Socrates rises from the symposium, the last of his mighty boon companions, drawing his garments about him as he passes out from them that he has outstayed, where they lay adrowse and overcome with wine on couch and floor—in such strange fashion giving to the decaying genius of Greece the new ideals that were to prepare the civilized world for the coming of its Christ—a strange uncouth figure in a wondrous mist of dawn. The twilight became haunted with the drowsy music of Grey’s Elegy, sounding to some mystic fugue played with Handelian dignity upon the aerial organ of the winds. In fact, the big gentle man taught the boy and girl the great aim of education—to know; to educate themselves; to have self-reliance; to establish a code of conduct; in a word, to form character. For, he pointed out to them, the good of the community is the highest human aim, and knowledge of this world the only basis on which to build conduct towards that end. And, the morning’s work done, he would counsel exercise, taking them himself sometimes to Booksellers’ Row, walking beside them, with the great black cloak and theatrical strut, striking a little out of their way towards Soho, before they swung round into the Strand, to drag out Netherby to their frolics; and the four of them, making down their beloved Strand, would haunt the Row by hours, poring over the stalls of the second-hand booksellers, garnering their rare pennies to thrilling purchases in the glorious dingy dusty narrow old picturesque alley of splendid treasure. Indeed, Netherby Gomme did not lack bodily exercise in these days, for the boy and girl considered no junket complete without him. So Noll and Betty and he would go for walks to Chiswick, down the river to Hampton Court, stroll the Strand and gaze into the print-shops that lay thereabout, loiter on Westminster Bridge and wander in the Abbey; haunt the picture-galleries and live in the pits of theatres, getting passes at times from the kindly bohemians to dress circles—and sometimes Julia would come, her long day’s work being done. And there was surely no better audience than they. They had the true theatric instinct—the right theatre spirit. They were in their seats as soon as the opened doors would let them enter. The tuning of the fiddles was exquisite music to their ears—an essential part of the drama. Every moment was precious to them. They would as lief have missed the rising of the great curtain, sweeping upwards with ecstatic jerk into the flies, as have gone out before the last act, or worn their hats to spoil the delight of others. For them the Theatre held something of a sacred pleasure—the dear pleasaunce of populous cities. Ah, the golden age! the days of the wide unquestioning delight in all things that is the eternal theatre of the childhood of the world—for, thank God, Fancy fills the very gutters of the street-children with faery. There is a world of delight enwrapped about a rag doll—when the world is young. They were glad to be alive. And as they took their pleasures, so they took their serious moods, taking the best from all that came. They would dawdle into the churches, leaving early when the parson was dry—Protestant and Papist, High and Low. Particularly the Roman Alas! that there should loom ever at the end of all things the threat of change! And that the young feet, with restless skip, should go so eagerly to meet it! The three went down to Burford Bridge one day—there having been much careful garnering of sixpences to that end. They burst into the old inn—to be rebuffed. The jolly old landlady was gone—their friend the ostler wholly vanished—no trace of him. There was hint of sellings-up, and broken fortunes, and sad flitting from the old home. Strange faces smiled these things down upon them indifferently, indulgently. No, with headshakings, there were no prize-fighting ostlers that sang like baritone gods, no heroes nor colourable imitation of heroes in the stables—none. Nor indeed anything more romantic than racing touts—lazy rogues that sold the hay and corn when the watchful eye was not upon them.... |
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