"My Dear Morgan:—This is to let you know I shall be in town to-morrow. I want you to come and meet me at Victoria at one o'clock and we shall lunch together before I go on to my hotel. My chief business is to see friend Medhurst about my eyes. I fear my present reading-glasses no longer suit me. By the way, I've some splendid ideas for you to work out. It's quite clear to me now from whom you inherited your genius. Mind you are in time. Your dad, Archibald D."P. S.—The 'Pleiad' to-day publishes that little poem of yours about Diana. I feel very proud of being your father. Present my regards to Mr. Ingram."
"My Dear Morgan:—This is to let you know I shall be in town to-morrow. I want you to come and meet me at Victoria at one o'clock and we shall lunch together before I go on to my hotel. My chief business is to see friend Medhurst about my eyes. I fear my present reading-glasses no longer suit me. By the way, I've some splendid ideas for you to work out. It's quite clear to me now from whom you inherited your genius. Mind you are in time. Your dad, Archibald D.
"P. S.—The 'Pleiad' to-day publishes that little poem of yours about Diana. I feel very proud of being your father. Present my regards to Mr. Ingram."
Morgan merely smiled. He had not had a poem published for many months, and this was his first indication that the one in point had been accepted. Curious, he reflected, it should just appear that day.
"Dear Prince Charming," ran the second. "This is to reproach you for not coming yesterday afternoon. For two hours I waited without giving up hope. Softest-hearted of mortals, for me alone is your heart astone! I had all the sensations of Mariana in the moated grange, but whilst you are in the world, I certainly shall not wish myself dead."When are you going to take me to Whitechapel? My mind wanders longingly from this prosaic Belgrave Square to yon fantastic region. It's quite a month since we last got lost together. I have next Monday and Thursday free. I wonder whether it will occur to you to connect the two last sentences. Either day—or both—will suit me. This doesn't count as a letter. I shall write you a real one this evening. Helen.""Dear Morgan," read the last. "As you have probably heard, your father is coming to town to see Mr. Medhurst professionally, and of course he is to dine here to-morrow evening. Come in and join us; we shall be strictlyen famille. By the way, Margaret has not only finished 'Chiron' and the 'Spanish Marauder,' but she has actually sold both! They look very well, indeed, in bronze. Yours ever, Kate Medhurst."P. S.—Diana sends her love and hopes that if you have any more stamps you will bring them with you."
"Dear Prince Charming," ran the second. "This is to reproach you for not coming yesterday afternoon. For two hours I waited without giving up hope. Softest-hearted of mortals, for me alone is your heart astone! I had all the sensations of Mariana in the moated grange, but whilst you are in the world, I certainly shall not wish myself dead.
"When are you going to take me to Whitechapel? My mind wanders longingly from this prosaic Belgrave Square to yon fantastic region. It's quite a month since we last got lost together. I have next Monday and Thursday free. I wonder whether it will occur to you to connect the two last sentences. Either day—or both—will suit me. This doesn't count as a letter. I shall write you a real one this evening. Helen."
"Dear Morgan," read the last. "As you have probably heard, your father is coming to town to see Mr. Medhurst professionally, and of course he is to dine here to-morrow evening. Come in and join us; we shall be strictlyen famille. By the way, Margaret has not only finished 'Chiron' and the 'Spanish Marauder,' but she has actually sold both! They look very well, indeed, in bronze. Yours ever, Kate Medhurst.
"P. S.—Diana sends her love and hopes that if you have any more stamps you will bring them with you."
This postscript was in the writing of the young lady herself.
The reading of these letters did not give him any pleasure just then. These other lives in whose round he was an important figure were going on without any intuition of his inner tragedy, without any suspicion that they would henceforwards have to go on without him; that he could no more carry them forward into his vague, new life than those equally vital elements of his old self—his poems! How strangely did their moods contrast with his—his father's playful good-humour, Lady Thiselton's sprightlycamaraderieand Mrs. Medhurst's cheerful domesticity!
But the last letter made him wince. It was only a simple invitation, but it hurt him as though a finger had been put on a raw wound. For he, who had made a failure of his existence, whose one remaining link with life was a mere grotesque possibility of an adventure with an unknown serpent-woman, loved Margaret Medhurst with a poet's despairing love.
The figure of the scented woman floated up again. She had let the letter fall into her lap now and her wonderful face seemed to smile at him.
He awoke in the morning, acceptant of what he had done in the night. A calmness had set in and with it had come a clarification of his thought. His grasp of the position was more definite, and his feeling was that, to meet it adequately, he must disattach himself completely from the past.
But the future was mystic and seductive.
However, his tendency to dwell on it had to be put aside in favour of commonplace things that must be done immediately. As Ingram had pointed out to him, he might be as indifferent to money as he pleased, yet he must give it his first attention. Though ready cash was exhausted, he remembered almost with surprise he had several possessions that might be converted into it.
His breakfast was served to him as usual, but he did not open the promised letter which duly arrived from Lady Thiselton. His general sense of things filled his mind sufficiently.
His first business was to wait upon the family jeweller in Oxford Street, from whom he had made occasional purchases for birthday presents. The experience was a strange one for him, and he felt somewhat timid about it. However, when he had explained what he wanted, he was agreeably astonished at the man's insisting, with a great show of goodwill towards him, he must accommodate him with fifty pounds, and before Morgan had recovered from his flurry, he had given an I. O. U. for the amount and had bank notes in his pocket.
"Why, I shouldn't think of chargingyouany interest," the jeweller had declared, and Morgan was much puzzled to understand why. Nor did he quite know what this piece of paper he had signed represented.
He had now accomplished all the action his brain had planned, and it was time to go and meet his father. And then it struck him as curious that life seemed to be ignoring his ideas and to be taking him forward despite himself. With all his intense feeling that he must complete his disattachment from the past, its impetus was stronger than he. Somehow hemustgo and meet his father; hemustdine with the Medhursts that evening.
As was clear from Archibald Druce's note, the relation between father and son was scarcely so theatrical as Ingram might have gathered from Morgan's talk the evening before, a fact of which Morgan was well aware. He had not really intended to give Ingram a theatrical impression, but the somewhat subtle truth could never have been conveyed in the few words they had had together, apart from the fact that it must inevitably have got coloured by the mood of the moment.
There had been many vicissitudes between father and son. The latter well remembered the moment when, unable to keep his big idea to himself any longer, he had divulged it to his father as they were strolling together in the grounds one sunny afternoon. The two had always been on the best of terms. Now Archibald Druce's ideas about his Morgan's career had been definitely shaped for years. He intended that the boy should, afterpassing through the University, enter the banking business with which his whole life had been associated, and ultimately become a partner therein. But Morgan's own idea of his mission in life seemed to the banker so extraordinary that it made him laugh outright. Unfortunately, too, in addition to pooh-poohing his son's unexpected ambition, he went on, by way of implanting in him sensible and serious views of life, to point out that the right to spend money had to be acquired by effort expended.
Morgan had made up his mind at a very boyish age that he was destined to become an immortal bard; the conceptions he had then formed had remained with him in all their boyish freshness. They were pure conceptions, detached from the realities, of which he then knew nothing. Poetry was a great and glorious thing, and when he first decided that his whole life could be devoted to nothing nobler, he had selected it away from the actual material circumstances from which existence cannot be extricated.
But in this first talk with his father he had already been brought into collision with these sordid complications. Archibald's well-intentioned scorn had inflicted a wound that pained still after the lapse of years. Moreover, by raising financial questions, he had unwittingly poured poison into that wound. Morgan, however, refused to have his eyes opened and clung desperately to his detached conception of poetry and the poet's life.
The thought of his being destined for business terrified the lad. He felt he could never live in the atmosphere of an office. He was born to sing, to charm, to enchant. What had he to do with money? He mustargue with his father and convince him. And he effectually did succeed in making him understand he was serious. The banker was upset, and Morgan, carried along by the freshness and purity of his enthusiasm, made an altogether wrong judgment of the position. For the first opposition and the first clash of wills represented a bigger fact to Morgan than it did to the father, who, not entirely understanding the force of the ferment in his son's mind, as yet took it for granted that time was only needed to eradicate this strange, startling madness. He therefore pressed Morgan to proceed at once to the University, in the belief he would take a more sensible view of things when he was a few years older. But Morgan refused. He held to his ambition with frenzied persistence, and he had felt the bitterness of dependence. He determined, therefore, to try his wings at once, remembering that moneywasattached to success, and, in the optimism of enthusiasm, forming impossible hopes of supporting himself before long.
Archibald Druce did not mind his being apparently idle for awhile, and, by a sort of common understanding, the subject was not touched upon between them for some time. Morgan perforce had to live at home, and, as time went by, this very fact caused him a great deal of misery. Perhaps the very magnificence of his surroundings made matters worse for him.
His mother, too, was against him, and, after awhile she seemed to expend all the time she could spare from playing the rôle ofgrande damein the county, in egging on his father against him. The sense of her injustice embittered him, for he knew he could not fairly be accused of spending his time unprofitably. He was studying perhaps harder than he would have done at college, for he was a student almost as much as he was poet. Of recreation, though, he had no stint. He rode, fished, swam and boated; but always alone, for his instinct made for solitude. With his brother he was not unfriendly, but there was no intimate sympathy between the two.
During the years that followed there were many fallings-out and reconciliations between father and son. If the banker had been entirely able to rid his mind of the plans he had so long cherished for his son, he would have been quite content that the latter should go through life as a gentleman of wealth and leisure. But he was wedded to the business to which he had given the best energies of his life, and the idea that Morgan must eventually take his place in it amounted almost to an obsession. A reconciliation always made Morgan happy, for its own sake quite as much as for the belief that his ambition was being recognised. Estrangement and friction were always terrible things to him and caused him unspeakable suffering.
His letter to Ingram was the culmination. It was sincere and expressed exactly what he felt. The immediate cause of the mood which prompted it had been Archibald's putting before him again all the old propositions and his letting it be clearly seen he had never really abandoned them.
Then followed a few months of happiness in London. At last he felt master of his own destiny—free of all that had vexed him, free to succeed. But the routine of his days was much the same as before. He studied and wrote and dreamed. Now and again he was allowed to come and chat with Ingram. Friends of the familymade him welcome at their houses whenever he chose to emerge from the isolation that was natural to him. At the Medhurst's, in particular, he was almost one of the family.
But, some time after Morgan's leaving home, Archibald Druce retired from active affairs and began to acquire the taste for reading. And now came a great change in Archibald's attitude. Morgan one day realised with astonishment that his father had become perfectly reconciled to the idea of his following a literary career, nay, that he was now proud of having a son who was a man of letters. Archibald, in fact, seemed to be relishing the literary atmosphere tremendously. He made constant additions to his library, consulting Morgan as to the choice of books, and spent a great part of his time amid its oaken magnificence. He read very many novels, buying the newest ones as they appeared. When Morgan's first volume of poems was published, Archibald went about in a state of intense excitement. He bought fifty copies to give away, and never went abroad without carrying one in his pocket. He bragged and boasted about Morgan, till one might have imagined the latter had scornfully refused the laureateship.
Morgan, however, had no great respect for his father's literary judgment. It was all very well when he came to him for advice about his reading, but there were times when the banker did not hesitate to lay down the law, for he was growing accustomed to a respectful hearing on the part of his friends, which was somewhat spoiling him. All his world knew he had trouble with his eyes. As a matter of fact, his sight was scarcely worse than it had been for years, his visual weakness being little morethan imaginary, and but one of the manifestations of his literary phase.
Altogether, Archibald Druce seemed quite satisfied with Morgan's slow progress. Once he had finally got rid of the notion of making Morgan a banker, he was a delightful man to have for a father, a fact which Morgan fully appreciated. Often had he asked the latter if "he were all right for money," and Morgan had replied he was; so that he knew quite well his father would take a very lenient view of his expenditure and had no desire at all to hold him to the arrangement made. But Archibald always limited himself to the general question, and never sought to know whether Morgan was living on his interest or spending the capital.
The relation between the two now was a perfectly hearty one. The banker was glad to have Morgan home for a few days now and again, and equally enjoyed coming to town occasionally to see him. But in spite of his father's liberality and cordiality, Morgan's pride, combined with the sense of his failure, made him determine never to come upon the paternal purse again. It was this very pride perhaps that had made him somewhat distort his father's attitude—rather by implication than by any definite statement—in his last evening's conversation with Ingram.
He was but too conscious of that attitude as he waited on the platform for the train to arrive—it had gradually become an intolerable irony to him.
"I'm perfectly ravenous," said Archibald Druce. "We must lunch at once."
Morgan restrained his usual impatient stride, falling in with the slow, dignified step of his sire, who, though of broad build, would have been as tall as his son, had it not been for a slight stoop, of which he was proud, as it gave him an air of erudition.
They repaired to a restaurant close at hand and had a sumptuous lunch served them. Archibald, who had a weakness for punning, was in one of his gayest moods, and was not above being occasionally appreciated by the waiter. Morgan did his best to appear cheerful; he did not wish his father to suspect anything was amiss. He listened to a humourous account of home affairs with smiling face, even interposing a few humourous comments of his own. Eventually he enquired about his father's eyesight and Archibald's face brightened still more. Soon the banker grew eloquent on the subject, detailing all the minute symptoms a morbid attention had detected.
"But I've great faith in John—he's the cleverest oculist in the Kingdom. And so I thought I'd better come up to town and see him before—ha, I was just going to let my secret slip out!"
And Archibald sipped his coffee and beamed at Morgan behind his gold spectacles.
"That sounds like a direct encouragement to me to be inquisitive," said Morgan.
"Well, if you'd like to know the secret, it's simply this: I'm going to write a book."
"What about?" Morgan's tone and gesture summed up his amused astonishment.
"A good many things," answered Archibald, his face assuming a serious expression. "You see, I've got into the habit of thinking a good deal of late, and I've come to the conclusion I ought to be putting my thoughts down on paper. New ideas occur to me almost every day, and I'm really beginning to feel that a man like myself can derive more mental culture from the free play of his own original thought than from simply following other men's, however admirable it be. The latter course rather encourages a certain mental laziness, whereas in thinking for oneself so many points occur which cannot be passed over till they have been wrestled with and vanquished. Now yesterday, for instance, some very stiff problems occurred to me—as thus: Can a man justly lay claim to merit for the talents he possesses, and is it immodest of him to let others perceive by his conversation that he is quite aware he possesses them? Or, on the contrary, is not the fact that he is talented purely a piece of good fortune, and would it not be the merest humbug on his part to pretend to be blind to it? Again, if a man performs what is called a good deed, ought he to claim merit for that? Does not the performance of such a deed give one pleasure, and is not that pleasure the real end in view? It has struck me of late that on such points there's a great confusion of thinking, and between ourselves, Morgan, I've beenlately arriving at conclusions that most people would call revolutionary and dangerous. But I set truth above all things, and I can't do better than devote my remaining years to its service. Now, I think I have really sufficient material for an original and interesting volume. I have been a man of affairs all my days, and I think the views of such a man who has lived in contact with the world should at least be as valuable as those of a college professor who has been secluded from it. It is really about this volume I propose to write that I want to consult you. I have made a memorandum of a few points I should like to thresh out thoroughly with you."
Morgan was rather startled at this sudden and serious awakening of literary ambition in his father, though he had before now had many a hint that he was wrestling with formidable ethical and moral difficulties. He could see Archibald had set his heart on writing the book, so he could not do otherwise than encourage him. It would simply keep him enjoyably occupied, and, as the task would no doubt cause him to dip into accredited works on ethical science, he would ultimately discover that the problems he had chanced upon were not quite so original as he supposed.
But even while Morgan discussed the idea with his father, he had a curious dream-like consciousness of his own affairs, which somehow seemed to be retarded by this appearance of the banker in London. And, all the time he was endeavoring to concentrate himself on the conversation, he was aware of that floating vision which had never ceased to haunt him.
Minute details respecting the work were gone into, even to the colour of the paper on which it was to bewritten. Morgan did not know whether blue or buff was the more restful for the eyes, and the question was left open for John Medhurst to decide. Archibald looked tremendously pleased at his son's reception of his project, and it certainly raised his opinion of Morgan's judgment.
"I'm glad to see you've not been spoiled by success, Morgan," he could not help saying.
It was a strange irony, Morgan thought, that his father's acceptance of him should be so complete just when he himself had finally abandoned all hope. The reflection would have been a bitter one had he not found Archibald's pride in him amusing, in view of the latter's new theories about "merit."
Later on, at the hotel, Archibald produced the copy of the "Pleiad," which contained the verses inspired by Margaret Medhurst's younger sister, and insisted on reading them aloud. His paternal pride was more than satisfied by the small sum total of Morgan's published work, and each little addition to it furnished an occasion of great excitement for him.
Of course, Ingram was mentioned before long, and Morgan had to say that that gentleman and he were no longer friends. Archibald said he was sorry, and looked it. He considered Ingram a great author, and the breach rather a misfortune.
"Is there no hope of smoothing things over?" he asked. "Why not take me into your confidence? I flatter myself I have had some experience in patching up even serious differences between people, and you know I'm at your disposal."
Time had, indeed, brought about a strange reversal of rôle between the banker and Ingram.
Morgan explained that Ingram had behaved in such a way as to make him revise his estimate of him, but that it would scarcely serve any purpose to go into details.
The banker again said he was sorry, and looked it still more than before. Anyhow, as the subject was so obviously disagreeable to Morgan, he would not allude to it again.
In the afternoon they took a little stroll together, and, after partaking of a cup of tea, they parted, promising to see each other at Wimpole Street.
"By the way," said his father, at the last moment, "I hear from Katie that they haven't seen very much of you of late, and that you had struck them as pre-occupied. She even seemed rather doubtful about your coming this evening. I hope you don't stick too long at your desk. I've long since found out that sort of thing is a mistake."
Morgan arrived rather late at Wimpole Street, for father and son had dallied almost till evening. However, he was the earlier of the two, and he took the opportunity of presenting Diana with the stamps he had got together for her and of chatting with her about her collection and her newest acquisitions. He was relieved to find that Mrs. Medhurst gave him his usual warm welcome, but at the same time he felt rather guilty about his unsuspected intention to cease all relations with the family. This house was more associated with happiness for him than any other place in the world; he had passed in it perhaps the best moments of his life. He had always been a favourite with the Medhursts, and they had believed in him and taken his part even in the early days when he had been looked at askance in his own family.
Were oblivion of all else possible, he would have felt to-night supremely happy, for that needed but the sole condition of his being where he was. But he thought of the borrowed money in his pocket, of the charred remains of his manuscripts, of his hopeless love for Margaret, now so near him, speaking to him, of the vague future to which he was going to abandon himself. And the comfort he could not help finding here mingled strangely with the emotions that troubled his spirit and gave him a quivering sense of unrest.
The link between him and the Medhursts had been from the first one of more than ordinary friendship. For, some thirty years before, when Mrs. Medhurst was only seventeen, Archibald Druce had been a suitor for her hand. But her romance with John Medhurst had already begun, and she waited to marry her true love seven years later. Though Archibald married within a few years of his rejection, he had all but kept Kate to her promise to be a sister to him all his life. Certainly he had remained one of her most devoted admirers.
Mrs. Medhurst was still beautiful, and even Morgan admitted that she was just the mother a girl like Margaret ought to have. Her face was winning and sweet, and the simplicity of her attire held no suggestion of severity. Morgan's eye was pleased by the quiet harmony of the gray silk dress with its silver girdle and its touches of silver at the throat and wrists.
Margaret herself was only just nineteen. Taller than her mother by half a head, she was built with a slender grace and a rare purity of outline. A somewhat high forehead lent her distinction, perhaps accentuating the shade of thoughtfulness that was characteristic of her expression, and that never clashed with its sweetness; rather were the two qualities blended into a charming spirituality. Her dark blue, velvety eyes suggested the clear depth of a stream, her cheeks were modelled in a full, soft curve, her nostrils were delicately chiselled, and her mouth was small, red and sweet. The neck showed cool and white above the silver-blue of her girl's soft, silk evening gown that came almost to her throat. Margaret rather affected silver-blue—she knew quite well it made her adorable; for, being a sweet humanbeing, she had just a charming touch of vanity, and would have been less charming without it. The only other note of colour was given by the quaint silver buckle at her waist, for the sash was of the same material as the gown itself.
At sixty-three, Archibald Druce—for the old fellow's heart was still susceptible—worshipped her almost as much as he had once worshipped her mother. And Morgan had only realised how she had grown into his spirit just when despair had begun to show itself again. The discovery had perhaps given him a fresh spurt of hope, but the charred mass had marked the end of that.
John Medhurst was somewhat past fifty, and his beard was getting just a little grey. He was of medium height, and wore spectacles himself—a fact which, in view of his profession, had given Archibald endless material for humour. His manner and voice alike were singularly soft and gentle. He possessed both a sense of humour and a quiet humour of his own; and his laugh was always ready to ring out. Sometimes it struck Morgan that Margaret's features were hinted at in his face even more than in Mrs. Medhurst's, but so subtly, that the resemblance would seem to vanish for long stretches of time, and he would only be able to detect it at odd moments.
Archibald arrived quite half an hour late, so that his ferocious knock and ring caused general rejoicing. His spirits invariably mounted as soon as he set foot on the Medhursts' doorstep, and, once within the house, he overflowed with jest and laughter, extracting fun and merriment from anything and everything, making rather a terrible noise and enjoying every instant.
"My scamp of a boy and I got talking together," he explained, in high-pitched apology. "Now, Morgan has some ideas in that head-piece of his"—here he tapped his son playfully on the skull—"so that when we twodoget talking together, we both find it so fascinating that we lose all count of time. I've had quite a rush to get here, though I see Morgan has raced me. I suppose that, at my age, I mustn't expect——"
"To keep pace with the youngsters."
Margaret finished the sentence for him in playful anticipation of his platitudinarianism. Archibald took her in his arms and kissed her on the forehead, with a "No harm at my age, my dear," after which he laughed gleefully, and proceeded to kiss Diana on the lips, adding: "No harm atyourage, my dear."
"I'm thirteen, and I shall really not allow that sort of thing any more," said Diana, severely.
"Not from me—your sweetheart!" exclaimed Archibald. "Ah! I understand," he went on. "It's the grown-up frock."
She was in a shaped dress to-day, but he had recalled her as she was in her poke-bonnet days, when she had been wont to accept the same kind of salutation without demur. It did not seem so very long ago since he had seen her bare-kneed, in short, crimson skirts and all sorts of fantastic caps and brilliant turbans; and he now reminded her of the fact, undeterred by the haughtiness of her mien and the arrogantly rippling masses of golden-brown hair, just a shade darker than Margaret's.
She gave him a withering glance that asked how he dared!
"Perhaps it's not the frock. It's the poem in the'Pleiad.' Morgan has turned her head," recommenced Archibald.
"Morgan, take me down, please," said Diana, majestically ignoring her tormentor, who thereupon offered his arm to Mrs. Medhurst, and Margaret and her father brought up the rear.
But when they came to take their seats, they somehow got mixed up again, so that Morgan found himself next to Margaret, whilst Diana and Archibald sat opposite. Morgan had more than a suspicion that this was the result of adroit manœuvring on Diana's part. Very soon, however, there arose such a clattering dispute between that young lady and her neighbour, that Morgan could not talk to his, which made him rather angry. Anyhow, it was impossible not to be amused after a while by the altercation, for Diana's tongue was ready and brisk and attacking. Margaret was a far less militant character, and would never strike, were there the slightest chance of wounding. Diana's aim was always to wound, and to wound deeply, provided it was some dear friend she was pitted against.
In view of the fact that this was the last visit he purposed to the Medhursts, Morgan had been feeling that a close conversation with Margaret would prove too much of an ordeal for him, and he had determined to talk to her as little as possible. But somehow he did not find himself welcoming the practical inhibition from the other side of the table; it gave him a sense of frustrated desire. If his will made him say "I must not talk to her intimately, for I shall lose all the ground I have gained by purposely avoiding this house so long; I shall be drawn back close to her and, as the parting mustcome nevertheless, the greater will be its anguish," his temperament made reply: "What! you calculating effects, whose business has always been poetry? Let your business still be poetry, but weave it out of life instead of words. Abandon yourself without underthought. Live in that wonderful region which is here, even as it is everywhere, but in which only the souls of poets may wander and rejoice." And his temperament prevailed over his will. He allowed the full flow of love to flood his spirit. Great poems were summed up in one quick flash; in a second he lived through a century of fine words.
And, as if divining his thought, she turned to him and spoke. Her words seemed softly to ring through the din, and he gave himself up to the full delight of the moment.
"Do you know, Morgan"—for he was always "Morgan" to everybody there—"a great change has occurred in my dignity the last few days?"
"You are to marry a peer," he hazarded.
"I have risen much higher than that."
"You were at the utmost height."
"I only moved in yesterday, with my benches and mess and clay and wax and tools. Pa had a hole made in the roof and a top light put in. I feel so pleased with my studio, and, of course, I mean to entertain there. We shall have such gay times, and I've a fine excuse for keeping the company young and select."
"Too high up for old legs?"
"How shrewd!" she exclaimed. "I see that for real worldly insight one must go to a poet."
"Thank you. This is the first time I've been accused of common sense."
"That is hardly to be wondered at. Your poems have every other quality. You'll come up and see my studio anyhow?"
"By moonlight?"
"No, by candle light. And you the bearer, like the Latin motto on one of my old school books."
Meanwhile the combat opposite still raged, and in the end Archibald and Diana had to be parted almost by force. Diana sent a final shot from the door, and then scampered away.
"The little rogue!" murmured Archibald, and then broke into one of those unrestrained laughs which he usually reserved for his own witticisms.
The three men drew near the fire. Medhurst said something about taking Diana in hand. She had been somewhat spoiled at school, being looked upon as a sort of demi-goddess by her classmates. Archibald declared he wouldn't have her any different for the world. What was the good of a girl if she was just the same as any other girl? Thence, proceeding to attack convention, Archibald eventually steered the conversation round to the contribution he himself purposed making to ethical philosophy, for he had been waiting for an opportunity to let Medhurst into the secret.
"It's curious that the more one thinks, John, the more one gets one's notions upset. I know quite well that most people would think it a highly dangerous doctrine to put forward, but I really cannot see that the man who is a saint deserves any more to be praised than the man who is a murderer. The murderer is simplyunfortunate and ought to be pitied. Nature gave him the impulse to murder—in fact, on a closer analysis, all personal responsibility seems to disappear."
"And what does your wife say to all this? Isn't she rather alarmed?" asked Medhurst.
"My wife!" exclaimed the banker, contemptuously. "She's hopelessly behind the times. Why, she's a perfect child. She takes no interest in anything beyond the tittle-tattle of the county. We had quite a scene the other day because I gave expression to my opinion that young people should be properly instructed in life by means of explanatory handbooks, instead of being left to gather their knowledge haphazard. I have never known her to make a single original remark—her observations are invariably the most obvious. Morgan should be thankful for the happy hazard of nature which fashioned his brain rather in the mould of mine than in that of his mother."
"And so you really intend publishing?" said Medhurst.
"I am not afraid. People must be taught to look the problems of life straight in the face. Truth must be driven home, my dear John, and it is my intention to say some pretty straight things to the world."
"Have you yet fixed on a title?" asked Medhurst, secretly amused at this sudden, strange development on the part of his old friend.
"Ah! there's just the difficulty. It was one of the first questions I put to myself—what about the title? The thing is to get a good striking one, and that's by no means an easy task. The title of a book is almost as important as its contents, and, confound it all, my dearJohn, I'm blessed if it doesn't take nearly as long to manufacture. I've been cudgelling my brains for the last three months, and I must confess my mind is an absolute blank so far."
"Why not call it 'Plain Thoughts of a Practical Thinker?'" suggested Morgan. "And perhaps you might add a sub-title—'An attempt to investigate some questions of primary importance that are usually shelved.' How does that strike you?"
"Splendid!" exclaimed Archibald, enthusiastically. "'Plain Thoughts of a Practical Thinker'—the very thing. 'An attempt to investigate some questions of primary importance that are usually shelved.' Admirable! 'Practical Thinker!' That is just the idea I want to convey to the world. I am not one of your mere dreamers, your theorists, your college professors. I speak as one who has had a large experience of men and affairs, as one who has for years administered the fortunes of a great house. And yet I have sufficient of the thinker and the idealist in me to have begotten a son whose name will live in English letters. It will, Morgan, I tell you. You are a little bit misunderstood now, but what great man has ever escaped misunderstanding? I expect to be misunderstood, but if they think I am to be howled down—'Plain Thoughts of a Practical Thinker!' A perfect inspiration! Suppose we join the ladies. I want to tell Kate about it."
While Archibald unfolded his literary scheme to Mrs. Medhurst, Diana mimicking his enthusiastic gestures at a safe distance, Morgan and Margaret sat apart in that region of the drawing-room which lay nearest the door. She had been telling him about some parties she had gone to, and he, terribly jealous of the men who had danced with her, made pretence to rally her about them. She, however, remained quite calm, admitting cheerfully shehada good many admirers, who filled her programme, and whom it was always pleasant to meet. Then they were both silent and looked at each other.
"Once upon a time," said Margaret, deciding at length to speak her mind; "youused to be one of those who wrote on my programme. Now you never appear anywhere. I suppose you are afraid you might have to talk to me a little."
"You are unjust," he said somewhat bitterly. "It is not kind of you to say such things."
"If a friend suddenly develops a distaste for one's company and manifests it as markedly as you have, how can one be blind to it? You are a changed man, Morgan. In two months you have come here once to tea, and you had not even the decency to put on a cheerful face. Such a lackadaisical expression you had! And not even an enquiry about my great works. You seemed to be saying the whole time, 'How you commonplacepeople depress me—me, the genius, the genius; you are killing my inspiration.'"
Something in his look checked her.
"Genius suffers from fits of melancholy as well as from fits of inspiration," he reminded her.
"Poor Morgan!" said Margaret, softening. "And so you've had a fit of melancholy! What a long one, too! All the same, I ought to reproach you for not believing in our sympathy. Well, I suppose now I may tell mamma not to be afraid to send you a card for our dance next month."
"I had no idea your mamma was so timid a person," he said, with successful evasion. "And how goes Chiron, how the Spanish marauder? And how much did you get for them?" he went on gaily, in one breath. "You see I am well posted in your affairs."
"Well, since youarea little bit interested, come."
Instinctively they looked towards the other group. Archibald still harangued Mrs. Medhurst, endeavouring to prove to her that John's abilities were no merit of his, any more than her beauty was a merit of hers. A happy accident was the cause of either, and he had been intellectually wrong in lavishing so many compliments on her during all these years.
Morgan and Margaret left the room quietly, and stole up the stairs on tip-toe, like two children at play. Right on the top landing Margaret threw open a door, and Morgan peered into a shadowy abyss, for the one gaslight was round a corner by which its rays were cut off from this part of the landing.
"The candle is on a ledge in the hall," explained Margaret, disappearing within the darkness; and in a second he heard her strike a light.
"This is the hall," she went on. "I insisted on pa having it partitioned off from the rest of the room—though, as you see, only by a sort of green baize screen that doesn't reach to the ceiling. But it makes the place ever so much more romantic."
Morgan stepped into the tiny vestibule, which was fitted with a little oak table, and passed through a door in the green baize into the attic itself.
"Was I not to be the candle-bearer?" he asked, taking the light from her. "What a tremendous place!"
"It's perfectly ripping," said Margaret, "though I reckon it won't hold more than four of us when we're in a gay mood. That's an old piano. It takes up a lot of room, but there's still a good deal of thumping to be got out of it. As yet the place is quite bare, but all next week I'm going to hunt up odd things in back streets, and when you come again you'll be astonished at the transformation. All that mess there covered up in the corner—well, you can guess what it consists of."
"And where are Chiron and the Spanish gentleman?"
"The first casts are on the mantel yonder—lost in the gloom. Pa wants them for the drawing-room, but I am so childishly pleased, I can't part with them yet. The moulds were to be destroyed after sixty examples of each had been taken. I have received twenty-five pounds each. You see, Morgan, I, too, am a genius."
On closer examination Morgan found he could conscientiously extol Margaret's handiwork. From a technical point of view both figures were excellent, and therewas a virility and vigour in the handling which one would scarcely have associated with the work of a young lady modeller, and which certainly showed she had towered above her material. The Spanish Marauder swaggered along in helmet, breast-plate, doublet and hose, a hare and pheasant slung jauntily over his shoulder, and his jolly, devil-may-care face, that had evidently smelt powder, full of an arrogant self-satisfaction. The Chiron was a strong piece of anatomical modelling. The ancient centaur, indeed, looked very wise and very noble, and the horse into which he merged was arranged with quiet skill in its lying posture, so that not a line, limb, hoof or muscle struck a note of awkwardness.
"Then you think I really am worth talking to—a little?" asked Margaret.
He set down the light on the mantelshelf and somehow found himself holding her hand. Neither appeared to be aware of the fact.
"My dear Margaret, I was hoping you had accepted my fit of melancholy——"
"You stupid Morgan! I only wanted you to tell me how clever I am. I am so greedy for praise—because I haven't any of those melancholy fits, and my vanity must be gratifiedsomehow. At least, when I do have the mopes I always know the reason, and it has never been anything connected with my genius."
"What! you don't mean to say that you ever——"
"Sometimes," she interrupted. "A good deal of late, only, unlike you, I never let anybody guess."
"I thought you were a perfectly happy girl in the first flood of enthusiasm for your work and with all those nice men to admire you."
Her fingers tightened perceptibly on his.
"If you continue to plague me about those nice men, Morgan, you shall not have a single dance next time, but you'll just see those nice men get them all."
"I am sure you don't look a bit as if you could devise such cruel torture."
"Would it be a very terrible punishment?"
"I would do any penance to avoid it."
"You'd look too comic in sackcloth and ashes. Come to my studio-warming instead."
"A charming penance, Margaret."
"Perhaps we ought to go down now," she suggested, irrelevantly.
He took up the light again.
"Have you fixed the date for the warming?"
"Impossible yet. But I'll send you——"
"Not cards—now you've moved up into Bohemia!"
"Oh, no. A little pink note. I hope that is the correct thing in Bohemia, or, at least, that it isn't incorrect."
"In Bohemia there are no correct things."
"What an awful place it must be. Whatever one does is wrong."
"On the contrary, whatever one does is right."
"Then all things are correct in Bohemia!"
"How can that be, Margaret? There are things—no, there aren't, and—and—I'm afraid I've got myself into an awful tangle. You've quite turned my head with your logic."
He began to move across the room towards the door.
"If it's only my logic that turns your head, then I take everything back. I won't speak to you ever again."
"My goodness!" began Morgan, losing his wits, forgetting he held the candle and letting it fall. The light vanished like a spectre. "I beg your pardon," he ejaculated, in some astonishment, whilst Margaret's laugh rang out.
Just as he stooped down to recover the candle, they became aware of footsteps, and in a moment the handle of the outer door was being turned.
"All dark," said Diana's voice. "Then I suppose they're not here—or, at least, I shouldn't like to think they were. I fancy Marjy put a candle and matches on the table."
They heard the sound of her fumbling, and, as if by common understanding, they remained still as mice. Then Diana declared the things weren't there, and Archibald suggested they might inspect the place in the dark.
"I certainly shall do nothing so improper," returned Diana severely. "There must be match-light at least. I draw the line at that. Produce your pretty, golden box."
Diana opened the green baize door, and Archibald struck a light.
"Ho, ho!" he said, playfully.
"We are evidentlyde trop" said Diana. "Let us retire."
"Be careful," called Margaret. "You'll burn your fingers."
But the mischief was already done. Archibald uttered a "d—n," threw down the end of the match and stamped on it wrathfully.
Morgan picked up the fallen candle, lighted it and replaced it on the mantelshelf. The wax was broken inthe middle, and the top part leaned disconsolately to one side.
"We are sorry to have unwittingly interfered with your little arrangement," said Margaret, curtseying in mock apology. "But you are quite welcome to make free of my humble abode, so we shall leave you in possession. Come, Morgan." And the two swept out of the room.
"Come and lunch with me to-morrow at the hotel," said Archibald to Morgan, as he got into a hansom an hour later. "We'll spend the afternoon together. There are some points about my book I want to settle. 'Plain Thoughts of a Practical Thinker!' Splendid title! Morgan, you're indeed a genius. 'An attempt to investigate some questions of primary importance that are usually shelved.' That just hits it off—the very book I intended to write!"
When his father had driven off, Morgan, seized with a restlessness, began to stroll slowly homeward. He had at least wrung some happiness from the evening. His love for Margaret had been strong enough to absorb him, save when at moments his sense of his general position had obtruded. But now he surrendered himself once more to the mood which the events of the day had interrupted.
He was again conscious of the tragedy of his past life with its culminating episode of the evening before, and of the infinite possibility that life held of mystery and fantasy—a mystery and fantasy into which he was going to plunge. The hours he had just enjoyed, he told himself, must not be allowed to influence him. They must be sternly isolated from the future; the disattachment of the new life before him from the wreckage of the old must be complete.
Wreckage! He used the word deliberately, though he was aware there were elements in the position that would have made his estimate of it seem grotesque to many ears.
He was the son of a father of unlimited wealth, who idolised him now. In addition to very many acquaintanceships, both in London and the country, that were pleasant even if they did not occupy the centre of his consciousness, he had the friendship of Lady Thiseltonand the more intimate though less fantastic relation with the Medhursts. And, moreover, he was in love with a beautiful and talented girl, who, he modestly felt, had a great esteem for him—though any other eyes than those of the diffident lover would have seen at a glance that she loved him in return.
How could all these things fail to make a man happy, especially when the man was only twenty-eight years old?
But Morgan's happiness was dependent on his attitude towards things, not on the things themselves. And just now he but perceived all these elements that might have made another life enviable as so many ironies. His ambition—his self-realisation and its recognition by his fellows—had been all in all to him; its abandonment had been the culmination of anguish infinite. The best years of his youth had been lost in vain effort, and some of the bitterness of early opposition that success might have purged still lingered in his spirit. His nature was proud and sensitive and his very failure made it impossible for him to ask for more money, even though he knew it would be forthcoming without stint. What wonder now if he perceived his life as a tragedy!
Common Sense would have advised him to put on one side all emotions and moods that arose out of and summed up the past, all the subtle feelings that possessed and mastered him; would have urged him to begin a new epoch, seek the paternal aid, retain his friendships, and persevere in his love; would have given him assurance of a perfectly satisfactory outlook if he would but readjust his mental focus.
But Common Sense is obtuse and safe. Morgan was amass of fine sensibility; his temperament was full of subtle light and shade—therefore dangerous. Plain-souled, clumsy-handed Common Sense, with perception limited to the thick outlines of character, could not have comprehended him, and would unwittingly have confessed it by classifying him contemptuously.
Morgan had lived his own life—felt it. His present estimation of it was, therefore, spontaneous; not a cold estimation by mere intellect, but a living one by his whole complex being. And, as the result, he was meditating, at this period of pause and summing-up, to carry forward all that Common Sense would have suppressed, and to suppress all that Common Sense would have carried forward, to sacrifice all the inter-relations with others that constituted his outer life—even as he had already sacrificed the expression of his corresponding inner life; retaining only his emotional unrest.
And the seductive picture of the scented serpent-woman, ever smiling at him now with gleaming teeth, symbolised the future for him, and alone preserved the continuity of interest that stimulated him to go forward at all. His attitude, in some respects, was analogous to that of a romantic boy playing with the idea of running away from home, drawn by visions of marvellous adventures in strange lands. The sequel might be vague and in the clouds, but that very fact only made it the more fascinating.
His temperament had said to him that evening: "Let your business still be poetry, but weave it out of life instead of out of words." The thought resurged in his brain and then it struck him as crystallising his wholefeeling about the future course of his existence, as furnishing the key to his position.
To make of life a fantasy, a poem, a dream! The idea was an illumination.
But beyond a half-considered intention of changing to humbler rooms and hiding therein from his world, he did not meditate any definite activity. The feeling at the bottom of his mind was rather that events would shape themselves. To this attitude of passivity his whole life had tended. His will-strength had gone into his passionate desire of poetic achievement, and were it not that he had, so to speak, grown into relation with others, his life would have been utterly static. The movement of their lives alone had taken his along. He had not the least idea now how he was going to become acquainted with the strange woman who filled his thoughts, but, without actually translating his feelings on the point into definite terms, he counted it as a certainty that a path would somehow be opened. It pleased him, too, to think that he owed his cognisance of her existence to that first impulse which had caused him to write to Ingram. That fantastic initiation had set in motion fantastic life-waves that were now flowing back to him.
For others the regularities of existence, the steady round of work, the care and hoarding of money; for him the mystery and the colour of life!
And in a flash of insight he seemed to understand that the poet in him had already asserted itself in his life as well as in his work. Was it not the very curiousness of his relationship with Ingram had made it so palatable? Was it not the strangeness of his friendship with LadyThiselton and the originality of her personality that appealed to him so much, and was it not his imaginative side that had always been so pleased with both? Was it not his peculiar temperament that had always made him keep his relation with each person a thing apart, so that each was unaware of the others; that had made him like to feel that his life, in a manner, was cut up into strips, along each of which he could look back with a certain sense of completeness, though it was only by the nice fusion of all these isolated completenesses that his existence could be seen as a whole?
But underneath the imaginative spirit of the poet lay the human spirit of the man. And if the former predominated the latter was not entirely dormant. If the poet in him coloured his life and thought, it was the man in him that felt the results, so that the instincts of the poet often clashed with the sympathies and affections of the man. Of this discord within himself he could not help being aware, but he knew it purely by its effect, for he had never searched deeply into the complexity of his nature.
Thus it was that the man in him was grieved at his having had to make promises of further visits to the Medhursts; was paying for every grain of happiness wrung from the evening by a reaction of pain unspeakable. But the poet in him governed, was trying to suppress the man.
He was roused from his meditations by a familiar voice when he was but a few feet from his own door.
"I have been hovering about for a quarter of an hour."
He was startled, then laughed. The veiled womanstood on tip-toe and kissed him on the forehead, he stooping mechanically to meet her movement.
"You don't mind the veil?" she said.
"How did you know I was not indoors and abed by this time?" he asked.
"I didn't know. I only came to meditate in the moonlight. I have been enjoying such exquisite emotions. Are you too tired for a promenade round the circle?"
He fell in with her humour.
"Morgan, reproaches have been accumulating. To save time—you know I never waste any—you shall have them all in one ferocious phrase. You have been brutal to me of late. I don't mean to say that you've ever ceased to be charming, but—why, at least, didn't you answer my note?"
"It only came this morning," he stammered, "and I haven't had time to read it yet."
"In other words, you wrinkled your brow as soon as you saw it, made up your mind I was beginning to be somewhat of a nuisance, and threw it aside unopened. Of course, you forgot all about it afterwards. You have a perfect genius for putting crude facts in a delicate way."
"Another new discovery about me."
"That is but the natural result of the profound thought I bestow upon you."
"Your profound thought contradicts itself. It declares me brutal and charming with the same breath."
"Profound thought always contradicts itself. I know it for a fact, because I've been looking up Hegel. The nice things and nasty things I say about you ariseequally from my love for you, which is thus the unifying principle. The apparent contradictoriness, therefore, disappears in a higher synthesis."
"Quarter! A man can't stand having philosophers hurled at his head."
"But I kiss your head sometimes. I'm sure I'd much prefer that always, only you goad me into the other thing."
"I goad?"
"Yes. By your masterly inactivity when I am concerned. I have to force myself into your life, and after we've been chums for three years, you, left to yourself, ignore my existence. You have such a terrible power of negative resistance against poor, strong-willed me. But, after all, you admire me tremendously, don't you, dear Morgan?"
"I have told you scores of times you are the cleverest woman in the kingdom."
"I am the only woman who understands your poetry. I don't mean that as a bit of sarcasm at the expense of your compliment—I merely want to show you I deserve it."
He made no reply. For a few moments there was a silence.
"How reticent you are to-night!" she said at length. "You usually have quite a deal to tell me. Are the sentimental chapters preying on your mind? I do so much want to know about those sentimental chapters, but you always evade the subject. Tell me,arethere any in your life?"
"Ours was to be an intellectual companionship only."
"Comprising intellectual sympathy and kissing on theforehead—both of them chaste, stony, saint-like, tantalising things. But I'd be content for the time being if I were only sure your heart were perfectly free. I couldn't bear the thought of your making love to another woman."
"You are amusing."
"I am jealous."
"Then you have been imagining sentimental chapters for me."
"Well, being a woman of the world, thirty-three years of age—no deception, Morgan—and, knowing you have lived twenty-eight, I naturally suspect the existence of those chapters, you darling sphinx. And when I suddenly come across a poem from your pen about a sweet little girl, my suspicion becomes almost a certainty."
He could not help laughing.
"That sweet little girl is too concrete, too much away from your metaphysical manner, to be a mere creation of your brain. What vexed me particularly was that the most stupid woman I know—I mean my dear friend Laura—admired the thing and called it a gem. Now I don't like my monopoly threatened in that way. I have always prayed against your own prayer. I don't want the world at large to admire you—yet. I want you, disgusted with the world's non-acceptance of you, to find consolation in my love. There is a fair proposal for you, Morgan. Love me, marry me—and after that you may become as great as you like. Your poetry as yet is my friend, but I begin to feel afraid of it when you start pictures of sweet little girls."
He did not take her the least bit seriously—he never did. Her occasional courtship of him had been alwaysso light and airy, so dispassionately epigrammatic, that he looked on it as mere whimsical banter and rather good amusement. She had plagued him into consenting to that kiss on the forehead which she gave him each time they met, referring to it constantly as an advantage won by hard effort. The circumstance of their first meeting had been commonplace enough—a chance introduction at an afternoon tea. They were friends whilst yet utter strangers to each other, for a mutual personal magnetism had acted immediately. He understood that her playfulness did but conceal fine qualities of character that would have pleased even the aphoristic moralist, whose conception of the ideal woman she mercilessly outraged. That she had really understood and appreciated his work naturally counted a good deal in her favour. He knew her worth, but of course he did not want to marry her. If to-day there was a more earnest ring than usual in her love-making, he had got too indurated to it to believe in it.
"Whoisthe sweet little girl?" she insisted. "I repeat, I am jealous. This is my first experience of that queer emotion, for you are the first man I have ever loved."
He found this most amusing of all.
"Really, Morgan, it is perfectly harassing to have one's tragedy taken for light comedy. You know my wedded life was unhappy. The late baronet was absolutely ignorant of Schopenhauer, and even cursed him to my face for a madman, just because he happened to be my favourite philosopher. Since I've dipped into Hegel, I've come largely to agree with my husband's denunciation, though not on the same grounds. Not thatI profess to know anything either about Hegel or Schopenhauer. Edward always thought me a blue-stocking—me, who have only a woman's tea-table smattering of philosophy! Why, it takes all the fun out of life to be a blue-stocking! Edward hadn't any brains. I married him without love, and in face of his attitude towards Schopenhauer, you may guess what chance it had of springing up. During the brilliant years of my widow-hood—eight in number—my heart has remained positively untouched by anybody but you. It's your childlike helplessness that fascinates me."
"You flatter me."
"There are other things, of course. You've splendid large eyes and nice, soft, silky hair, and such a pretty curl to your lip. And you've such a charming, innocent look. If only you'd promise not to write any more poems about sweet little girls, you'd be perfect."
Whether it was that her proximity at this moment of inner perturbation and suffering roused in him an overmastering desire for her sympathy, or whether her last remark exercised an insidious drawing power, he did not quite know, but he found himself saying immediately:
"I can make that promise very easily. I made a bonfire last night."
She understood at once.
"Which explains much for which I've been reproaching you!" she exclaimed sympathetically. "You have been suffering, dear Morgan."
Her voice had grown soft and coaxing. His determination to shun everybody could not stand against this real concern for him. In a few words he told her of hisdespair and of the dubiousness of his position. But he could not bring himself to speak of his hopeless love, or to raise the veil that concealed his other friendships from her. His comradeship with her had always stood for him as a thing apart; and this attitude of his towards it had made it the more charming. It had been quite natural for him to take it entirely by itself and as unrelated to the rest of his external life.
"But, my dear Morgan," she protested, "this can't go on. How do you intend to live?"
He was glad she did not have recourse to that crude, obvious suggestion of his begging a replenishment from the paternal coffers. But he did not know how to reply to her question, which rather made him regret the turn the conversation had taken. The one future for him was that in which floated mystically the figure of the scented serpent-woman, and he felt that that drift of things he was relying on had begun by a wrong move.
"Perhaps I shall write stories," he hazarded.
"You alarm me," she cried. "Your idea is hopelessly impracticable. How could you possibly hope to rival the Robert Ingrams?"
"The Ingrams!" he echoed, glancing at her sharply.
"I only mention him because he happens to be as popular as all the rest put together, and because I happened to make his acquaintance some time back."
Morgan made no remark. He was relieved at her explanation, about which there was nothing surprising, for he well knew that Ingram moved in high social latitudes.
"Besides," she went on, "you would naturally be tempted to draw women like me, which would simply be courting extinction. Of course, in Ingram's novels nofashionable lady ever does the things I do, and the critics would insist I was an utter impossibility. Now, as to the fifty pounds you've got—before long the sin of that borrowing will rise up against you and you'll be signing again, signing away whole pounds of your flesh. And I daresay you overlook you've various little debts. No doubt you owe your tailor, say a year's account, and then your rooms are pretty expensive, and quarter-day has a spiteful habit of swooping down on one four times a year, and—and you mustn't have to bother your pretty head about all these sordid things."
This was somewhat of an appalling speech for Morgan, who certainly did not want to cheat his creditors. And, indeed, it now occurred to him that he must be indebted to his tailor for quite a large amount. Although his horror of debts was far above the average, he never realised the conception "money" as ordinary people realise it. So far as it figured in his thoughts at all, money was a gorgeous, poetic unit—the treasure of romance, the gold and silver of fairyland. In practice, the very abundance of it at his command had till lately kept his attention from dwelling on it; just as it did not dwell on, say, the second toe of his left foot—an equally constant factor in his existence—till some pain might make him aware it was there. His present forced awareness of the prosaic side of the notion "money" gave him somewhat of a sense of being caught amid a swirl of storm-blown icicles.
"The remedy is simple," he said, at last.
"It is. I have forty thousand a year. Marry me for my money."
"Declined, with thanks."
"So blunt, yet so pointed. A pity it's not original. But I know what you meant by your remedy. You don't see it would be a double crime, and you are too good a man even to commit a single one."
"You mean——"
"I mean I should follow you. It would be just lovely to be rowed across the Styx together. Of course, I should have to pay your obolus."
"It is getting late. I really think we ought to turn back."
Lady Thiselton sighed.
"I must confess I am dejected," she said. "I should like to have a quiet cry. What are you going to do, Morgan?"
"Nothing."
But he knew that would mean bankruptcy, and he had also an unpleasant conviction that she meant what she said about following him.
"And even if we did go to throw sugar to Cerberus, your father would step in and inherit your debts, and you will have sacrificed us both in vain. The result is the same, whether we go to Whitechapel or to the other place. You can't make it otherwise. Now, if you won't let me be your wife, at least let me be a sort of mother to you."
Her thought met his just at the right junction. He did not answer because her argument was unanswerable. How else avoid coming on the paternal purse again?
"I am only asking you, Morgan, to let me help you live just as you want to live."
She spoke with pleading and humility.
"We shall be towards each other just as we are now,"she continued, "and although I intended to torment you till you agreed I was worth an occasional kiss on the forehead in return for mine—which would not at all take us out of the platonic, or rather plutonic, regions in which you so sternly insist we must abide—I shall give you my word to cease from active hostilities for six whole months. Just think—I undertake to be content for the next six months with kissing you on the forehead once each time. Is that not sufficiently an earnest of my good faith?"
Again he gave her no answer, and, in the silence that followed, their footsteps seemed to be echoed back to them. Since to die were futile, let it be she rather than another that helped him to live. She was a good friend and a loyal one. Of course, it was repugnant to take money from a woman, but to take it from anybody else would be still more repugnant.
"As is usually the case in life," she again chimed in his thought, "the choice is not between the good and the less good, but between the bad and the worse. Believe me, I understand and sympathise with your hesitations. But between such friends as we are and such original people to boot, scruples of a conventional kind ought not to enter. With us money should count for nothing. So please don't choose 'the worse,' and perhaps 'the bad' won't turn out so very bad after all."
Still he could not prevail upon himself to accept her generosity, though conscious he was undeserving of her long-sufferance.
"If I could but see the least prospect of repaying you, I should not hesitate so much," he said at last.
"My dear Morgan, in life one mustn't look too farahead, else existence becomes impossible. Let us not bother too much about the future, but let us seize the flying moments; which means we ought to go to Whitechapel on Thursday and spend a happy day."
He was still lost in thought.
"And your silence—may I put the usual interpretation on it?"
"I suppose so," he said, shame-facedly. "Please don't think me ungracious," he added.
"You very dear person!" she cried; and after that they walked for fully five minutes without exchanging a word.
The matter had been decided and, according to their wont, there was no further manifestation, no further reference to it on either side. Each understood the other's emotions, and that sufficed.