Dealers in marine stores generally select quiet by-ways, back-waters of traffic, for the scene of their trade. In the open high roads of business the current is too quick for them. They buy and sell substantial and weighty articles; their transactions are few and far between. Those who come to sell may be in haste; those who come to buy, never. No one ever yet rushed into a marine-store dealer's, and hammered with his money on a second-hand copper, in lieu of a counter, and shouted out that he could not wait a moment for a second-hand iron tripod. It is extremely doubtful if a marine-store dealer ever sells anything. Occasionally buying of ungainly, heavy, amorphous, valueless-looking bundles goes on, but a sale hardly ever. Who, for instance, could want an object visible in the business establishment of John Timmons, Tunbridge Street, London Road? The most important-looking article was a donkey-engine without a funnel, or any of its taps, and with a large rusty hole bulged in its knobby boiler. Then there lay a little distance from the engine the broken beam of a large pair of scales and the huge iron scoop of another pair. After this, looking along the left-hand side out of the gloom towards the door, lay three cannon-shot, for guns of different calibres; then the funnel of a locomotive, flat, and making a very respectable pretence of having been the barrel from which the cannon-shot had dribbled, instead of flown, because of the barrel's senile decay. After the funnel came a broken anvil, around the blockless and deposed body of which gathered--no doubt for the sake of old lang syne--two sledge-hammer heads, without handles, and the nozzle of a prodigious forge-bellows. Next appeared a heap of chunks of leaden pipe. Next, a patch of mutilated cylindrical half-hundred weights, like iron mushrooms growing up out of the ferruginous floor. The axle-tree and boxes of a cart stood against the wall, like the gingham umbrella of an antediluvian giant, and keeping them company the pillars and trough of a shower-bath, plainly the stand into which the umbrella ought to have been placed, if the dead Titan had had any notion of tidiness. Then appeared the cistern of the shower-bath, like the Roundhead iron cap of the cyclopean owner of the umbrella. Then spread what one might fancy to be the mouth of a mine of coffee mills, followed by a huge chaotic pile of rusty and broken guns and swords, and blunderbusses and pistols. Beyond this chaotic patch, a ton of nuts and screws and bolts; and, later, a bank of washers, a wire screen, five dejected chimney-jacks, the stock of an anchor, broken from the flukes, several hundred fathoms of short chains of assorted lengths, half a bundle of nailrod iron, three glassless ship's lamps, a pile of brazen miscellanies, a pile of iron miscellanies, a pile of copper miscellanies, and then the doorless opening into Tunbridge Street, and standing on the iron-grooved threshold, into which the shutters fitted at night, Mr. John Timmons in person, the owner of this flourishing establishment.
Mr. John Timmons was a tall and very thin man, of fifty years, or thereabouts. His face was dust-colour, with high, well-padded cheek bones, blue eyes and insignificant cocked nose. His hair was dark brown, touched here and there with grey, curly, short, thin. He wore a low-crowned brown felt hat and a suit of dark chocolate tweed, the trousers being half a span too short over his large shoes, and the waistcoat half a span too wide, half a span too long, and buttoned up to the deep-sunken hollow of his scraggy throat. His neck was extremely long and thin and wrinkled, and covered with sparse greyish hair. His ears were enormous, and stood out from his ill-shapen head like fins. They were iron-grey, the colour of the under surface of a bat's wing. The forehead was low, retreating, and creased with close parallel lines. The eyes were keen, furtive, suspicious. A hand's-breath below the sharp, large apple of his throat, and hanging loose upon the waistcoat, was the knot of a washed-out blue cotton neckerchief. He wore long mutton-chop whiskers. The rest of the face was covered with a short, grizzled stubble. When he was not using his hands, he carried them thrust down to the utmost in his trousers' pockets, showing a wide strip of red sinewy arm between the sleeve of his coat and the pocket of the trousers. No shirt was visible, and the neckerchief touched the long, lank neck, there being no collar or trace of linen. Excepting the blue patch of neckerchief on his chest, and his blue eyes, no positive colour appeared anywhere about the man. No part of the man himself or of his clothes was clean.
Mr. Timmons was taking the air on his own threshold late in the afternoon of that last Thursday in June. It was now some hours since the dwarf had called and had held that conversation with him in the cellar. Not a human being had entered the marine store since. Mr. Timmons was gazing out of his watchet blue eyes in a stony and abstracted way at the dead brick wall opposite. He had been standing in this position for a good while, now shifting the weight of his body to one foot, now to the other. Occasionally he cleared his throat, which, being a supererogation, showed that he was in deep thought, for no man, in his waking moments, could think of clearing so long a throat without ample reason. The sound he made was so deep and sepulchral it seemed as though he had left his voice behind him in the cellar, and it was becoming impatient there.
Although it had not yet struck six o'clock, he was thinking of closing his establishment. At this time of the day very few people passed through Tunbridge Street; often a quarter of an hour went by bringing no visitor. But after six the street became busier, for with the end of the working day came more carts and vans and barrows to rest for the night with their shafts thrust up in the air, after their particular manner of sleeping. This parking of the peaceful artillery of the streets Mr. Timmons looked on with dislike, for it brought many people about the place and no grist to his mill. He shared with poets and aristocrats the desire for repose and privacy.
As he was about to retire for the long shutters that by night defended and veiled his treasure from predatory hands or prying eyes, his enormous left ear became aware that feet were approaching from the end of the street touching London Road. He turned his pale blue eyes in the direction of the sound and saw coming along close to the wall the figure of a low sized stout woman, wearing a black bonnet far off her forehead. She was apparently about his own age, but except in the matter of age there was no likeness in the appearance of the two. She was dressed in shabby black stuff which had long ago forgotten to what kind of material it belonged. Her appearance was what merciful newspaper reporters describe as "decent," that is, she was not old or in tatters, or young and attractive and gaudy in apparel; her clothes were black and whole, and she was sober. She looked like an humble monthly nurse or an ideal charwoman. She carried a fish-basket in her hand. Out of this basket projected the tails of half-a-dozen red herrings. She had, apparently, once been good-looking, and was now well-favoured. She had that smooth, cheesy, oily, colourless rounded face peculiar to well-fed women of the humbler class indigenous in London.
Mr. Timmons' forehead wrinkled upwards as he recognised the visitor to Tunbridge Street. He smiled, displaying an imperfect line of long discoloured teeth.
"Good afternoon," said John Timmons in a deep vibrating voice that sounded as though it had effected its escape from the cellar through a drum.
"Afternoon," said the woman entering the store without pausing. Then nodding her head back in the direction whence she had come she asked: "Anyone?"
"No," answered Timmons, after a long and careful scrutiny of the eastern half of Tunbridge Street. "Not a soul."
"I thought I'd never get here. It's mortal hot. Are you sure there is no one after me?" said the woman, sitting down on a broken fire-grate, in the rear of the pile of shutters standing up against the wall on the left. She began rubbing her perspiring glistening face with a handkerchief of a dun colour rolled up in a damp ball. Still she held her fish-bag in her hand.
"Certain. Which shows what bad taste the men have. Now, only for Tom I know you'd have one follower you could never shake off," said Timmons, with a gallant laugh that sounded alarmingly deeper than his speaking voice. Timmons was at his ease and leisure, and he made it a point to be always polite to ladies.
"Tom's at home," said the woman, thrusting the handkerchief into her pocket and smiling briefly and mechanically in acknowledgment of the man's compliment to her charms. "I've brought you some fish for your tea."
"Herrings," he said, bending to examine the protruding tails. "Fresh herrings, or red?" he asked in a hushed significant voice. He did not follow the woman into the store, but still stood at the threshold, so that he could see up and down the street.
"Red," she whispered hoarsely, "and as fine as ever you saw. I thought you might like them for your tea."
By this time a man with a cart turned into the street, and, it just then striking six, the door of a factory poured out a living turbid stream of bedraggled, frowsy girls, some of whom went up and some down the street, noisily talking and laughing.
"Yes, There is nothing I am so fond of for my tea as red herrings," he said, with his face half turned to the store, half to the street. "And I shall like them particularly to-night."
"Eh! Particularly to-night? Are you alone? Are you going to have company at tea, Mr. Timmons?" asked the woman in a tone and manner of newly-awakened interest. She now held her fish basket with both hands in front of her fat body and resting on her shallow lap.
Timmons was standing half-a-dozen yards from her on the threshold. She could hear his voice quite plainly, notwithstanding the noise in the street and the fact that he spoke in a muffled tone. While he answered he kept his mouth partly open, and, because of so doing, spoke with some indistinctness. It was apparent he did not want people within sight or hearing to know he was speaking. "No; I am not expecting anyone to tea, and there is no one here. I am going to have my tea all by myself. I am very busy just now. I have had a visitor to-day--a few hours ago----"
"Well," whispered the woman eagerly.
"AndI have the kettle on the boil, and I am going to put those red herrings in it for my tea." He was looking with vacant blue eyes down the street as he spoke. He did not lay stress upon the words, "I have the kettle on the boil." He uttered them in a lower tone and more slowly than any others. The emphasis thus given them was very great. It seemed to startle the woman. She rose partly as if to go to him. She was fluttered and agreeably fluttered.
"Stay where you are," he said. He seemed to know she had attempted to rise without turning his eyes upon her. She was half hidden in the gloom of the store. No casual observer passing by would have noticed her. She was simply a black shapeless mass on the old fire-grate against a dingy dark wall in a half light. She might easily be taken for some of Timmons's stock.
"And," she said, "he'll do it!"
"He will. He's been to Birmingham and has arranged all. They'll take every bit they can get and pay a good price--twice as much as could be got otherwise--from anyone else."
"Fine! Tine! You know, Mr. Timmons, how hard it is to find a bit now, and to get so little for it as we have been handling is very bad--heartbreaking. It takes all the spirit out of Tom."
"Where did you buy the six herrings?"
"Well," said the woman, with a smile, "I didn't exactly buy them herrings, though they are as good ones as ever you saw. You see, my little boys went to the meeting about the votes, or the Niggers, or the Gospel, or something or other, and they found the herrings growing on the trees there, ha-ha-ha."
"I know. It was a meeting for trying to get some notion of Christianity into the heads of the African Blacks. I read about it in the newspaper this morning. The missionaries and ourselves are much beholden to the Blacks."
"It was something now I remember about the Blacks. Anyway, they're six beauties. And can you let me have a little money, Mr. Timmons, for I must hurry back to Tom with the good news."
"How is Tom? Is he on the drink?"
"No, he isn't."
"That's a bad sign. What's the matter?"
"I don't know, if it isn't going to them Christian meetings about the Blacks. It's my belief that he'll turn Christian in the end, and you know, Mr. Timmons, that won't payhim."
"Not at Tom's time of life. You must begin that kind of thing young. There are lots of converted--well sinners, but they don't often make bishops of even the best of them."
"Well, am I to go? What are you going to give me, Mr. Timmons? When Tom isn't in a reasonable state of drink there's no standing him. Make it as much as you can. Say a fiver for luck on the new-found-out."
"I'll give you an order on the Bank of England for a million if you like, but I can't give you more than ten thousand pounds in sovereigns, or even half sovereigns, just at this moment, even for the good of the unfortunate heathen Blacks. But here, anyway, take this just to keep you going. I haven't landed any fish myself yet."
The woman rose and he handed to her money. Then followed a long, good-humoured dialogue in which she begged for more, and he firmly, but playfully, refused her. Then she went away, and Mr. John Timmons was left once more alone.
He had taken the fish basket from the woman when giving her the money, and now carried it to the back of the store and descended with, it to the cellar. He did not remain long below, but soon came trotting up the ladder, humming a dull air in a deep growl. Then he set himself briskly to work putting up the shutters, taking them out of the pile in front of the old fire-grate on which the woman had sat, carrying each one separately to the front and running it home through the slot. When all were up, he opened the lower part of one, which hung on hinges serving as a wicket, and stepped out into the street full from end to end of the bright, warm evening sunlight.
He rubbed his forehead with the sleeve of his coat and took a leisurely survey of the street. The noisy girls from the factory had all disappeared, and the silence of evening was falling upon the place. A few men busied themselves among the carts and vans and a dull muffled sound told of the traffic in London Road. The hum of machinery had ceased, and, contrasted with the noise of an hour ago, the place was soundless.
John Timmons seemed satisfied with his inspection. He closed the wicket and retired into the deep gloom of the store. The only light now in this place entered through holes up high in two shutters. The holes were no more than a foot square, and were protected by perforated iron plates. They were intended for ventilating not lighting the store.
Even in the thick dark air John Timmons was quite independent of light. He could have found any article in his stock blindfold. He was no sun-worshipper, nor did he pay divine honours to the moon. A good thick blinding London fog was his notion of reasonable weather. One could then do one's business, whatever it might be, without fear of bright and curious eyes.
He had told his late visitor that he had the kettle on the fire. She had brought him half-a dozen red herrings and left them with him in a fish-basket. Now red herrings, differing in this respect from other kinds of fish, are seldom or never cooked in a kettle, and although the front of the door was closed and the only visible source of heat the two ventilators high up in the shutters, the air of the store was growing already warmer and drier, and although there was no smell of cooking there was an unmistakable smell of fire.
The owner did not seem in any great hurry to cook and taste his savoury victuals. He might have meant that the kettle was for tea merely, and had nothing to do directly with the red herrings. He fastened the wicket-door very carefully, and then slowly examined the rear of the shutters one by one, and, holding his eye close to them here and there, tried if he could spy out, in order to ascertain if any one could spy in. Then he rested his shoulder against the middle shutter, leant his head against the panel and, having thrust his hands deeper than ever into his trousers' pockets, gave up his soul to listening.
In the meantime the fish basket, with the tails of the six red herrings sticking out, was lying on the top of the old fire-grate which had served his visitor as a seat. It had been placed here by Timmons when he took it from the woman.
A quarter of an hour the man remained thus without moving. Apparently he was satisfied at last. He stood upright upon his feet, shook himself, gazed confidently round the store and then walked to the old fire-grate. He was going to get his tea at last.
He took up the basket, drew out the wooden skewer by which it was closed, caught the herrings in a bundle and threw them behind him on the gritty earthen floor.
He opened the bag wide and peered into it. Holding it in his left hand upon his upraised thigh he thrust his right hand into it and fumbled about, bending his head down to look the better.
He was on the point of drawing something out when he suddenly paused and listened motionless.
There was the sound of approaching steps. Timmons stood as still as death.
Three soft knocks sounded upon the wicket and then, after an interval of a few seconds, two more knocks still softer.
"It's Stamer himself," cried Timmons, with an imprecation, in a muffled voice. Then he added: "What does he want? More money? Anyway, I suppose I must let him in."
He turned round, caught up the scattered red herrings, thrust them into the bag, fixed it with the skewer, and then threw it carelessly on the hob of the old grate. Then he went to the wicket, opened it without speaking, and admitted his second visitor of that evening.
When the new comer was inside the door and the bolt drawn once more, Timmons said, in a slow angry tone, "Well, Stamer, what do you want? Is a bargain a bargain? You were not to come here in daylight, and only in the dark when something of great consequence brought you. I gave your wife all I will give just now, if we are to go on working on the co-operative principle. What do you want?"
The low sized, round shouldered man, dressed in fustian and wearing two gold rings on the little finger of his left hand, said in a whisper: "The ole 'oman gev me the coin, gov'nor. I don't want no more till all's right. What I did come about is of consequence, is of the greatest consequence, gov'nor." He glanced round with furtive eyes, looking apprehensively in the dim light at everything large enough to conceal a man.
"What is it? Out with it!" said Timmons impatiently.
"You're going to see this cove to-night?"
"Yes."
"At what o'clock?"
"That's my affair," said Timmons savagely.
"I know it is, Mr. Timmons, but still I'm a bit interested too, if I understand right the co-operative principle."
"You! What are you interested in so long as you get the coin?"
"In you. I'm powerful interested in you."
"What do you mean?" asked Timmons, frowning.
"Tell me when you're going and I'll tell you."
"Midnight."
"Ah! It will be dark then!"
"What news you tell us. It generally is dark at midnight."
"Are you going to take much of the stuff with you--much of the red stuff--of the red herrings?"
Timmons drew back a pace with a start and looked at Stamer suspiciously. "Have you come to save me the trouble? Eh? Would you like to take it yourself? Eh? Did you come here to rob me? I mean to share fair. Do you want to throw up the great co-operative principle and bag all?"
Stamer's eyes winked quickly, and he answered in a tone of sorrow and reproach: "Don't talk like that, gov'nor. You know I'm a square un, I am. I'd die for you. Did I ever peach on you when I was in trouble, gov'nor? It hurts my feelings for you to talk like that! I say, don't do it, gov'nor. You know I'm square. Tell me how much stuff are you going to take with you to-night?"
The words and manner of the man indicated extreme sincerity, and seemed to reassure Timmons. "About two pounds," he answered.
"Oh!" groaned Stamer, shaking his close-cropped head dismally.
"What is the matter with the man? Are you mad? You're not drunk. Your wife tells me you're not on the drink."
"No. I'm reforming. Drink interferes dreadful with business. It spoils a man's nerve too. Two pounds is an awful lot."
"What are you driving at, Stamer? You say you're a square man. Well, as far as I have had to do with you I have found you a square man----"
"And honest?" said Stamer pathetically.
"With me. Yes."
"No man is honest in the way of business."
"Well, well! What is the matter?" said Timmons impatiently; "I've got the kettle on and must run down. I haven't put in those herrings your old woman brought yet."
"I know. I'm sorry, gov'nor, for bothering you. I'd give my life for you. Look here, gov'nor, supposeheis not an honest man, like me. He isn't in our co-operative plan, you know. Supposeheisn't particular about how he gets hold of a bit of stuff?"
"And tried to rob me?"
"That's not what I'd mind." He put his hand to the back of his waistband. "You know what I carry here. Suppose he carries one too?"
"You mean that he may murder me first and rob me after?"
Stamer nodded.
"Well, I'm very much obliged to you, Stamer, indeed I am; but I'm not a bit afraid, not a bit. Why, he's not much over four feet, and he's a hunchback as well."
"But hunchbacks can buy tools like this, and a man's inches don't matter then," moving his hand under his coat.
"I'm not a bit afraid. Not a bit. If that's what you came about it's all right, and now Imustgo down. The fire is low by this time, and I may as well run these out of likeness at once."
He opened the door for Stamer, who, with a doubtful shake of the head, stepped over the raised threshold and went out. As Stamer sauntered down Tunbridge Street he muttered to himself, "I'll keep my eye on this affair anyway."
When the wicket-door was closed Timmons took up the fish-basket, flung away the red herrings a second time, and descended to the cellar.
When Oscar Leigh left Mrs. Ashton's drawing-room abruptly that afternoon, Hanbury was too much annoyed and perplexed to trust himself to speak to Dora. It was getting late. He had promised to dine in Curzon Street that evening, and would have ample opportunity after dinner of saying to Dora anything he liked. Therefore he made an excuse and a hasty exit as if to overtake Leigh. He had had however enough of the clockmaker for that day, for all his life; so when he found himself on the landing and stairs and in the hall he walked slowly, allowing time for Leigh to get out of sight before emerging from the house.
He took his way south and crossed Piccadilly at Hyde Park Corner. He had to get to his mother's house in Chester Square, to dress for dinner, and there was not much time to lose. His mother did not expect him to dine at home that day. She knew he had promised to go to Curzon Street, and was not in the house when he arrived.
He went straight to his own room in no very amiable humour. He was not at all pleased with the day. He did not think Dora had acted with prudence in persisting on going slumming in Chelsea, he was quite certain she had not done prudently in giving Leigh their names. He considered Leigh had behaved--well, not much better than a man of his class might be expected to behave, and, worst of all and hardest of all to bear, he did not consider his own conduct had been anything like what it ought.
If he made up his mind to go in for a popular platform, he must overcome, beat down this squeamishness which caused him to give way at unpleasant sights. Whether he did or did not adopt the popular platform he ought to do this. It was grotesque that his effectiveness in an emergency should be at the mercy of a failing which most school-girls would laugh at! It was too bad that Dora should be able to help where he became a mere encumbrance. Poor girl----but there, he must not allow himself to run off on a sentimental lead just now. He must keep his mind firm, for he must be firm with Dora this evening.
What a wonderful likeness there was between that strange girl and Dora. Yes, Miss Grace was, if possible, lovelier in face than Dora. More quiet and still mannered. She absolutely looked more of an aristocrat than Dora. It would be curious to see if her mind was like Dora's too; if, for example, she had active, vivid, democratic sympathies.
Every one who knew him told him he had a brilliant future before him. Before he got married (about which there was no great hurry as they were both young) it would be necessary for him to take up a definite position in politics. He felt he had the stuff in him out of which to make an orator, and an orator meant a statesman, and a statesman meant power, what he pleased, a coronet later in life if he and Dora cared for one. But he must select his career before marriage.
It would be very interesting to see if those two girls, so marvellously alike in appearance, were similar in aspirations. How extraordinarily alike they were. The likeness was as that man had said, stranger than his own fabulous miracle gold.
Ashton and his wife got on very well together, although they did not take the same view of public affairs. But then in this case things were different from what they would be in his. Mrs. Ashton was an ardent politician, her husband none at all. For a politician to enter upon his public career with a young wife opposed to him would be most unwise, the beginning of disagreement at home. At first, when he met Dora, he was attracted towards her by the enthusiasm of her spirit. He had never before met so young a woman, a mere girl, with such settled faith. At that time he was not very sure how he himself thought on many of the questions which divided men. She knew no doubt or hesitancy, and she was very lovely and bright and fresh. He had thought--What a helpmate for a busy man! And then, before he had time to think much more, he had made up his mind he could not get on without Dora.
There were many cases in which wives had been the best aids and friends of illustrious politicians. It would never do for a man to have a wife who would continually throw cold water on her husband's public ardours; or, worse still, who would be actively opposed to him. Such a state could not be borne.
Dora had clearer views and more resolute convictions than he. Women always saw more quickly and sharply than men. If he threw himself into the arms of the people she would be with him heart and soul, and he should attain a wide popularity at all events.
How on earth did that man Leigh become acquainted with that exquisite creature, Miss Grace? No wonder he called her miracle gold.
Well, it was time for him to be getting back to Curzon Street. There was to be no one at dinner but the family and himself. There would, therefore, neither before nor after be any politics. What a relief it was to forget the worry, and heat and dust of politics now and then for a while, for a little while even!
Grimsby Street was an awful place for a girl like Miss Grace to live in. Why did she live in such horrible street? Poverty, no doubt. Poverty. What a shame! She looked as if it would suit her better to live in a better place. By heavens, what a lovely, exquisite girl she was. Could that poor misshapen clockmaker be in love with her? He in love? Monstrous!
Ten minutes past eight! Not a moment to be lost.
"Hansom! Curzon Street."
John Hanbury reached Ashton's as dinner was announced. The host greeted him with effusion. He was always glad to have some guest, and he particularly liked Hanbury. He was by no means hen-pecked, but there was between him and his wife when alone the consciousness of a truce, not the assurance of peace. Each felt the other was armed, she with many convictions, he with only one, namely, that all convictions were troublesome and more or less fraudulent. They lived together in the greatest amity. They did not agree to disagree, but they agreed not to disagree, which is a much better thing. Ashton of course guessed there was something between Dora and Hanbury, but he had no official cognizance of it yet, and therefore treated Hanbury merely as a very acceptable visitor. He liked the young man, and his position and prospects were satisfactory.
Towards the end of dinner, he said: "They tell me, Hanbury, that you brought a very remarkable character with you to-day, a sorcerer, or an astrologer, or alchemist. I thought men of that class had all turned into farriers by this time."
"I don't think Leigh has anything to do with hooves, unless hooves of the cloven kind," said Hanbury with a laugh. "If a ravenous appetite for bread confirms the graminivorous characteristic of the hoof I am afraid it is all up with poor Leigh in Mrs. Ashton's opinion."
"I found him very interesting I am sure," said Mrs. Ashton, "and I am only sorry I had not more opportunity of hearing about his wonderful clock."
"Clock? Oh, he is a clockmaker, is he," said the host, "Then I did not make such a bad shot after all. He has something to do with metal?"
"I told you, Jerry, he makesgold, miracle gold," said Mrs. Ashton vivaciously.
"So you did, my dear. So you did. My penetration then in taking him for an alchemist does not seem to have been very great. I should be a first-rate man to discover America now. But I fancy if I had been born before Columbus I should not have taken the bread out of his mouth."
"Mr. Leigh told us he was not sure he would go on making this miracle gold," said Dora.
"Not go on making gold!" cried the father in astonishment, "was there ever yet a man who of his own free will gave up making gold? Why is he thinking of abandoning the mine, Dora?"
"There is so much difficulty and danger, he says, father."
"Difficulty and danger! Of course there is always difficulty in making gold; but danger--what is the danger?"
"He is liable to be blown up."
"Good heavens! for making gold? Why, what are you talking of, child? Ah! I see," with a heavy, affected sigh, "he is a bachelor. If he were a married man he would stand in danger of being blown up fornotmaking gold. Well, Josephine, my dear," to his wife, "you do get some very original people around you. I must say I should like to see this timid alchemist."
"If Mr. Ashton will honour his own house with his presence this day week, he will have an excellent opportunity of meeting Mr. Leigh," said Mrs. Ashton with a bow.
"My dearest Josephine, your friend, Mr. Ashton, will do nothing of the kind. He will not add another to your collection of monsters."
"That's a very heartless and rude speech, father."
"And I look on it as distinctly personal," said Hanbury, "for I attend regularly."
"I have really very little to do with the matter," said Mrs. Ashton. "Mr. Leigh is Dora's thrall."
The girl coloured and looked reproachfully at her mother, and uneasily at Hanbury. It would be much more pleasant if the conversation shifted away from Leigh.
"He is going to model her for Pallas-Athena."
"Mother, the poor man did not say that."
"No; he did notsayit, but he meant it, Dora."
"Oh, he is a sculptor, too!" cried Mr. Ashton with a laugh. "Is there any end to this prodigy's perfections and accomplishments? But, I say, Dora, seriously, I won't have any folly of that kind. I won't have you give sittings to any one."
"Oh, father! indeed, you must not mind mother. She is joking. Mr. Leigh never said or meant anything of the kind." She had grown red and very uncomfortable.
Her father sat back in his chair and said in a bantering tone, under which the note of seriousness could be heard:
"You know I am not a bigot. But I will have no professional-beauty nonsense, for three reasons: First, because professional beauties are played out; they are no longer the rage--that reason would be sufficient with average people. Second, and more important, it isn't, and wasn't, and never can be good form to be a professional beauty; and third," he hesitated and looked fondly at his daughter, "and third--confound it, my girl is too good-looking to be mentioned in the same breath as any of these popular beauties."
"Bravo, sir," said Hanbury, as he got up to open the door for Mrs. Ashton and Dora, who had risen to leave the room.
When the two men were left alone, Mr. Ashton said:
"This Leigh is, I assume, one of the people?"
"Yes," said Hanbury, who wished Leigh and all about him at the bottom of the Red Sea. "But, he is not, you know, one of the horny-handed sons of toil. He is a man of some reading, and intelligence, and education, but rather vulgar all the same."
"All right. I'm sure if he is your friend he must be an excellent fellow, my dear Hanbury; and if you put him up for this constituency, I'll vote for him, no matter what his principles are. That is," he added thoughtfully, "if I have a vote. But, for the present, my dear fellow, I'll tell you what we'll do with him--we'll let him alone--that is, if you don't mind doing so."
"I shall do so with great pleasure. I have had quite enough of him for to-day," said the other, greatly relieved.
"All right. Hanbury, I shall let you into a secret. I don't care for people who aren't nice. I prefer nice people. I like people like my wife and Dora, and your mother and yourself."
"I am sure, sir, you are very good to include me in your list."
"And I don't care at all for people who aren't nice, you know. I don't care at all for the poor. When they aren't objectionable they are an awful bore. For the life of me I can't make out what reasonable men and women see in the people. I don't object to them. I suppose they are necessary, and have their uses and functions, and all that; but if they have, why interfere with them? Lots of fellows I know go in for the poor partly out of fun, and for a change, and partly to catch votes. All right. But these fellows don't emigrate from the West and live in the East End. If they did, they'd go mad, my boy--they'd go mad. Anyway, I should. You know, I hate politics, and never talk politics. If I were a very rich man, I'd buy the whole of the Isle of Wight and banish all the poor from it, and live there the whole of my life, and drown any of the poor that dared to land on it. I wouldn't tell this to any soul in the world except you. I know I can trust you to keep my secret. Mind, I don't object to my wife and Dora doing what they like in such affairs; in fact, I rather like it, for it keeps matters smooth for me. This is, I know, a horribly wicked profession of faith; but I make it to you alone. I know that, according to poetic justice, I ought to be killed on my way to the club by a coster's run-away ass or the horse in a pauper's hearse, but I don't think I shall oblige poetic justice by falling into or under such a scheme--I am always very careful at crossings. If you areverycareful at crossings, I don't see how poetic justice is to get at you. There, let us drop this ghastly subject now."
The conversation then wandered off into general ways, and lost its particular and personal character.
Hanbury had never heard from any other man so cynical a speech as Ashton's, and he was considerably shocked and pained by it. His own convictions were few. He was himself in that condition of aimless aspiring enthusiasm proper to ardent youth, when youth has just begun to think conscientiously with a view to action. He could see nothing very clearly, but everything he did see shone fiercely in splendid clouds. This low view of life, this mere animal craving for peace and comfort, for nice things and nice people, was abhorrent to him. If in the early part of that day he had spoken slightingly of the people, it was out of no cynical indifference, but from the pain and worry caused to himself in his own mind by his opinions not being ascertained and fixed.
If he hesitated to throw his fortunes into the scale with the more advanced politicians, it was from no mean or sordid motive. He could not decide within himself which class had the more worthy moral sanction. If the present rate of progress was too slow, then those who sought to retard it were villains; if too quick, those who tried to accelerate it were fools. Whatever else he might be, he was not corrupt.
What Mr. Ashton said had a great influence on young Hanbury. It aroused his suspicions. Could it be that most of those who sought to check the car of progress harboured such vile and unmanly sentiments as his host had uttered in confidence? Could it be that Ashton was more courageous because he had nothing tangible to lose by candour? Could it be that if he himself espoused the side of the slower movers, it would be assumed he harboured opinions such as those Ashton had just uttered? The mere supposition was an outrage. It was a suspicion under which he would not willingly consent to rest one hour. This cold-blooded declaration of Ashton's had done more towards the making up of his mind than all he had heard and read since he turned his attention to public affairs.
Yes, he would decide to throw himself body and soul among the more progressive party. He would espouse the principles of the extreme Liberals. Then there would be no more wavering or doubt, and no question of discord in politics would arise between Dora and himself. They would have but the one creed in public affairs. Their opinions would not merely resemble the principles of one another--they would be identical.
Mr. Ashton and his guest did not remain long in the dining-room. Hanbury was not treated with ceremony in that house, so Mr. Ashton merely looked into the drawing-room for a few minutes, and then went off to his club. Mrs. Ashton had letters to write, and retired shortly after him to the study, leaving Dora alone with John Hanbury.
He thought that in order to keep a good understanding there was nothing like establishing a clear understanding. In order to ensure complete pleasantness in the future, all things that might lead to unpleasantness ought to be removed from the past and present. The best way of treating a nettle, when you have to touch it, is to seize it boldly.
He was in love with Dora, and he was resolved to marry her. That very evening he was going to ask her if she did not think the best thing they could do would be to get married soon, at once. He had made up his mind to adopt the popular platform, and then, of course, his way would be clear. Up to this he had been regarded as almost committed to the more cautious side, to the Conservative party, the Democratic Conservative party. By declaring himself now for the advanced party, he should be greeted by it as a convert, and no doubt he could find a willing constituency at the next general election.
That was all settled, all plain sailing. He was a young man, and in love; but it must be observed he was not also a fool. He would show all who knew him he was no fool. The life he now saw before him was simple, straightforward, pleasant. Dora was beautiful, and good, and clever, and in his part of popular politician would be an ornament by his side, and, perhaps, a help to him in his career. She was a dear girl, and would adorn any position to which he might aspire, to which he might climb.
Yes, he was a young man, he was in love, but he was no fool, and he knew that Dora would think less of him, would think nothing at all of him, if she believed him to be a fool. Between lovers there ought to be confidence, freedom of speech. She would esteem him all the more for being candid and plain with her. What was this he had to say to her? Oh, yes, he recollected----
Dora and he were sitting close to one another in the window-place where Leigh and he had found her earlier. The long June day had faded into luminous night; the blinds had not been lowered, or the lamps in the room lit. The long, soft, cool, blue midsummer twilight was still and delicious for any people, but especially for lovers.