THE CLIMBING ROSE.
Climb, oh! climb the golden ladder,Song of mine:Climb till thou dost reach her heartFor whom I pine.Cease not, lest thou lose the blissFor which I sigh:Climb till thou dost touch her heart—Ah! why not I?
Climb, oh! climb the golden ladder,Song of mine:Climb till thou dost reach her heartFor whom I pine.
Climb, oh! climb the golden ladder,
Song of mine:
Climb till thou dost reach her heart
For whom I pine.
Cease not, lest thou lose the blissFor which I sigh:Climb till thou dost touch her heart—Ah! why not I?
Cease not, lest thou lose the bliss
For which I sigh:
Climb till thou dost touch her heart—
Ah! why not I?
D. N. R.
MISS MISANTHROPE.
ByJustin McCarthy.
CHAPTER X.
"THE POET IN A GOLDEN AGE WAS BORN."
Victor Herondid not leave Mrs. Money's quite as soon as he had intended. He had made a sort of engagement to meet some men in the smoking-room of his club; men with whom he was to have had some talk about the St. Xavier's Settlements. But he remained talking with Minola for some time; and he talked with Lucy and with other women, young and old, and asked many questions, and made himself very agreeable, and, as was his wont, thought every one delightful, and enjoyed himself very much. Then Mr. Money chanced to look in, and seeing Heron, bore him away for a while to his study, to talk with him about something very, very particular. Mr. Money saw Herbert Blanchet, and only performed with him the ceremony which Hajja Baba describes as "the shake-elbows and the fine weather," and then made no further account of him. Mr. Blanchet, seeing Heron invited to the study, and knowing from his acquaintance with the household what that meant, conceived himself slighted, and was angry. Mr. Money always looked upon Blanchet as a sort of young man whom only women were ever supposed to care about, and who would be as much out of place in the private study of a politician and man of business as a trimmed petticoat.
There was, however, some consolation for the poet in the fact that he had Minola Grey nearly all to himself. He secured this advantage by a dexterous stroke of policy, for he attached himself to his sister and did his best to show and describe to her all the celebrities; and Minola, only too glad, came and sat by Mary, and they made a very happy trio. Herbert was inclined to look down upon his sister as a harmless, old-fashioned little spinster, who would be much better if she did not try to write poetry. He felt convinced for a while that Minola must have the same opinion of her in her secret heart, and would not think the less of him for showing it just a little. But when he found that Miss Grey took the poetess quite seriously, and had a genuine affection for her, his sister's value rose immensely in his eyes; he paid her great attention, and, as has been said, he had his reward.
It grew late; the rooms were rapidly thinning. Minola and Miss Blanchet were to remain at Mrs. Money's for the night. Blanchet could not stay much longer, and had risen to go away, when Victor Heron entered. He came up to speak to Minola, and Minola introduced him to her particular friend andcamarade, Miss Blanchet; and he sat beside Miss Blanchet and talked to her for a few moments, while Blanchet took advantage of the opportunity to talk again with Minola. Then Mr. Heron rose, and Herbert rose, and Mary Blanchet, growing courageous, told Heron that that was her brother and a great poet, and in a very formal, old-fashioned way, begged permission to make them acquainted. Mr. Heron was a passionate admirer of poetry, and occasionally, perhaps, tried the patience of his friends by too lengthened citations from Shakespeare and Milton; but in modern poetry he had not got much later than "The Arab physician Karshish," which he could recite from end to end; and "In Memoriam," of which he knew the greater part. He was, however, modestly conscious that his administrative engagements in the colonies had kept him a little behind the rest of the world in the matter of poetry, and it did not surprise him in the least that a very great poet, whose name had never before reached his ears, should be there beside him in Mrs. Money's drawing-room. He felt delighted and proud at meeting a poet and a poet's sister.
It so happened that after saying his friendly good night to his hostess—a ceremony which, even had the rooms been crowded, Mr. Heron would have thought it highly rude and unbecoming to omit—our fallen ruler of men found himself in Victoria street with Mr. Blanchet.
"Are you going my way?" Heron asked him with irrepressible sociability. "I am going up Pall Mall and into Piccadilly, and I shall be glad if you are coming the same way. Are you going to walk? I always walk when I can. May I offer you a cigar? I think you will find these good."
Herbert took a cigar, and agreed to walk Heron's way; which was, indeed, so far as it went, his own. Heron was very proud to walk with a poet.
"Yours is a delightful calling, sir," he said. "Excuse me if I speak of it. I remember reading somewhere that one should never talk to an author about his works. But I couldn't help it; we don't meet poets in some of our colonies; and your sister was kind enough to enlighten my ignorance, and tell me that you were a poet. I always thought that a charming anecdote of Wolfe reciting Gray's 'Elegy,' and telling his officers he would rather have written that than take Quebec. Ay, by Jove, and so would I!"
Mr. Blanchet had never heard of the anecdote, and had by no means any clear idea as to the identity or exploits of Wolfe. But he was anxious to know something about Heron, and therefore he was determined to be as companionable as possible.
"You must not believe all my sister says about me. She has an extravagant notion of my merits in every way."
"It must be delightful to have a sister!" Victor Heron said enthusiastically. "Do you know that I can't imagine any greater happiness for a man than to have a sister? I envy you, Mr. Blanchet."
Heron was in the peculiar position of one to whom all the family relationships present themselves in idealized form. He had never had sister or brother; and a sister now rose up in his imagination as a sort of creature compounded of a simplified Flora MacIvor and a glorified Ruth Pinch. His novel-reading in the colonies was a little old-fashioned, like many of his ideas, and his habit of frequently using the word "sir" in talking with men whom he did not know very familiarly.
Mr. Blanchet was not disposed, from his knowledge of Mary Blanchet, to hold the possession of a sister as a gift of romantic or inestimable value. To say the truth, when Victor spoke so warmly of the delight of having a sister, he too was not setting up the poetess as an ideal. He was thinking rather of Miss Grey, and what a sister she would be for a man to confide in and have always with him.
Meanwhile Herbert, with all his self-conceit, had common sense enough to know that it would not do to leave Heron to find out from others that the great poet Blanchet had yet to make his fame.
"My sister and I have been a long time separated," he said. "She lived in the country for the most part, and I had to come to London."
"Of course—the only place for a man of genius. A grand stage, Mr. Blanchet—a grand stage."
"So of course Mary is all the more inclined to make a sort of hero of me. You must not take her estimate of me, Mr. Heron. She fancies the outer world must think just as she does of everything I do. I am not a famous poet, Mr. Heron, and probably never shall be. I belong to a school which does not cultivate fame, or even popularity."
"I admire you all the more for that. It always seems to me that the poet degrades his art who hunts for popularity—the poet or anybody else for that matter," added Victor, thinking of his own unpopular performances in St. Xavier's Settlements. "I am delighted to meet you, Mr. Blanchet. I have seen so much hunting after popularity in England that I honor any man of genius who has the courage to set his face against it."
"My latest volume of poems," Blanchet said firmly, "I do not even mean to publish. They shall be printed, I hope, and got out in a manner becoming of them—becoming, at least, of what I think of them; but they shall not be hawked about book shops and reviewed by self-conceited, ignorant prigs."
"Quite right, Mr. Blanchet; just what I should like to do myself if I could possibly imagine myself gifted like you. But still you must admit that it is little to the credit of the age that a poet should be forced thus to keep his treasures from the public eye. Besides, it may be all very well, you know, in your case or mine; but think of a man of genius who has to live by his poems! It's easy talking for men who have enough—my enough, I confess, is a pretty modest sort of thing—but you must know better than I that there are young men of genius—ay, of real genius—trying to make a living in London by writings that perhaps their own generation will never understand. There is what seems to me the hard thing." Mr. Heron grew quite animated.
The words sent a keen pang through Blanchet's heart. His new acquaintance, whom Blanchet assumed to be confoundedly wealthy, evidently regarded him as a person equally favored by fortune, and therefore only writing poetry to indulge the whim of his genius. Herbert Blanchet had heard from the Money women, in a vague sort of way, that Mr. Heron had been a governor of some place; it might have been Canada or India for aught he knew to the contrary; and he assumed that he must be a very aristocratic and self-conceited person. Blanchet would not for the world have admitted at that moment that he was poor; and he shuddered at the idea that Heron might somehow learn all about Mary Blanchet's official position in the court-house of Duke's Keeton. For all the dignity of poetry and high art, Mr. Blanchet was impressed with a painful consciousness of being small somehow in the company of Mr. Heron. It was not merely because he supposed Heron to be wealthy, for he knew Mrs. Money was rich, and that Lucy would be an heiress; and yet he was always quite at his ease with them, and accustomed to give himself airs and to be made much of; but it occurred to him that Mr. Heron's family, friends, and familiar surroundings would probably be very different from his; and he always found himself at home in the society of women, whom he knew that he could impress and impose on by his handsome presence. Yes, he felt himself rather small in the society of this pleasant, simple, unpretending young man, who was all the time looking up to him as a poet and a child of genius.
Greatly pleased was the poet and child of genius when Victor Heron asked him to come into his rooms and smoke a cigar before going to bed.
"You don't sleep much or keep early hours, I dare say, Mr. Blanchet; literary men don't, I suppose; and I only sleep when I can't help it. Let us smoke and have a talk for an hour or two."
"Night is my day," said Blanchet. "I don't think people who have minds can talk well in the hours before midnight. When I have to work in the day I sometimes close my shutters, light my gas, and fancy I am under the influences of night."
"I got the way of sitting up half the night," said Victor simply, "from living in places where one had best sleep in the day; but I am sure if I were a poet, I should delight in the night for its own sake."
There was something curious in the feeling of deference with which Heron regarded the young poet. He considered Blanchet as something not quite mortal, or at all events, masculine; something entitled to the homage one gives to a woman and the enthusiasm we feel to a spiritual teacher. Blanchet did not seem to him exactly like a man; rather like one of those creatures compounded of fire and dew whom we read of in legend and mythology. The feeling was not that of awe, because Blanchet was young and good-looking, and wore a dress coat and white tie, and it is impossible to have a feeling of awe for a man with a white tie. It was a feeling of delicate consideration and devotion. Had some rude person jostled against or otherwise insulted the poet as they passed along, Victor would have felt it his duty to interpose and resent the affront as promptly as if Minola Grey or Lucy Money were the object of the insult. To his unsophisticated colonial mind the poet was the sweet feminine voice of the literary grammar.
Heron occupied two or three rooms on the drawing-room floor of one of the streets running out of Piccadilly. He paid, perhaps, more for his accommodation than a prudent young man beginning the world all over again would have thought necessary; but Heron could not come down all at one step from his dignity as a sort of colonial governor, and he considered it, in a manner, due to the honor of England's administrative system, that he should maintain a gentlemanlike appearance in London while still engaged in fighting his battle—the battle which had not begun yet. Besides, as he had himself told Minola Grey, his troubles thus far were not money troubles. He had means enough to live like a modest gentleman even in London, provided he did not run into extravagant tastes of any kind, and he had saved, because he had had no means of spending it, a good deal of his salary while in the St. Xavier's his lodgings; and his condition seemed to Blanchet, when they entered the drawing-room together, and the servant was seen to be quietly busy in anticipating his master's wants, to be that of an easy opulence whereof, in the case of young bachelors, he had little personal knowledge. It was very impressive for the moment. Genius, and originality, and the school quailed at first before respectability, West End rooms, and a man servant.
The adornments of the rooms were, to Mr. Blanchet's thinking, atrocious. They were, indeed, only of the better class London lodgings style: mirrors, and gilt, and white, and damask. There were doors where there ought to have been curtains, carpets where artistic feeling would have prescribed mats or rugs; there were no fans, not to say on the ceiling, but even on the walls. The only suggestion of art in the place was a plaster cast of the Venus of the Louvre which Heron himself had bought, and which in all simplicity he adored. Mr. Blanchet held, first, that all casts were nefarious, and next, that the Venus of Milo as a work of art was beneath contempt. One of the divinities of his school had done the only Venus which art could acknowledge as her own. This was, to be sure, a picture, not a statue; but in Mr. Blanchet's mind it had settled the Venus question for ever. The Lady Venus was draped from chin to toes in a snuff-colored gown, and was represented as seated on a rock biting the nails of a lank, greenish hand; and she had sunken cheeks, livid eyes, and a complexion like that of the prairie sage grass. Any other Venus made Herbert Blanchet shudder.
The books scattered about were dispiriting. There were Shakespeare, Byron, and Browning. Mr. Blanchet had never read Shakespeare, considered Byron below criticism, and could hardly restrain himself on the subject of Browning. There were histories, and Mr. Blanchet scorned history; there were blue books, and the very shade of blue which their covers displayed would have made his soul sicken. It will be seen, therefore, how awful is the impressiveness of respectability when, with all these evidences of the lack of artistic taste around him, Mr. Blanchet still felt himself dwarfed somehow in the presence of the occupier of the rooms. It ought to be said in vindication of Mr. Heron, that that poor youth was in nowise responsible for the adornments of the rooms, except in so far as his plaster cast and his books were concerned. He had never, up to this moment, noticed anything about the lodgings, except that the rooms were pretty large, and that the locality was convenient for his purposes and pursuits.
The two young men had some soda and brandy, and smoked and talked. Blanchet was the poorest hand possible at smoking and drinking; but he swallowed soda and brandy in repeated doses, while his host's glass lay still hardly touched before him. One consequence was that his humbled feeling soon wore off, and he became eloquent on his own account, and patronizing to Heron. He set our hero right upon every point connected with modern literature and art, whereon it appeared that Heron had hitherto possessed the crudest and most old-fashioned notions. Then he declaimed some of his own shorter poems, and explained to Heron that there was a conspiracy among all the popular and successful poets of the day to shut him out from public notice, until Heron felt compelled, by a sheer sense of fellow-feeling in grievance, to start up and grasp his hand, and vow that his position was enviable in comparison with that of those who had leagued themselves against him.
"But you must hear my last poem—youshallhear it," Herbert said magnanimously.
"I shall be delighted; I shall feel truly honored," murmured Victor in perfect sincerity. "Only tell me when."
"The first reading—let me see; yes, thefirstreading is pledged to Miss Grey. No one," the poet grandly went on, "can hear it before she hears it."
"Of course not—certainly not; I shouldn't think of it," the dethroned ruler of St. Xavier's Settlements hastened to interpose. "What a noble girl Miss Grey is! You know her very well, I suppose?"
"I look upon her," said the poet gravely, "as my patron saint." He threw himself back in his chair, raised his eyes to the ceiling, murmured to himself some words which sounded like a poetic prayer, and swallowed his brandy and soda.
Victor thought he understood, and remained silent. His heart swelled with admiration, sympathy, and an entirely innocent, unselfish envy.
"Still," the poet said, rising in his chair again, "there is no reason why you should not hear the poem at the same time. I am going to-morrow to read the poem to Minola—to Miss Grey and Mary. I am sure they will both be delighted if you will come with me and hear it."
"I should like it of all things, of course; but I don't know whether I ought to intrude on Miss Grey. I understood from her that she rather prefers to live to herself—with her friends of course—and that she does not desire to have visitors."
"You may safely come with me," the poet proudly said. "I'll call for you to-morrow, if you like."
Victor assumed that he safely might accept the introduction of his new acquaintance, and the appointment was made.
If Mr. Heron could, under any possible circumstances, be brought to admit to himself that the society of a poet was a little tiresome, he might perhaps have acknowledged it in the present instance. The good-natured young man was quite content for the present to sink and even to forget his own grievance in presence of the grievances of his new acquaintance. His own trouble seemed to him but small in comparison. What, after all, was the misprizing of the political services of an individual in the face of a malign or stupid lack of appreciation, which might deprive the world and all time of the outcome of a poet's genius? Heron began now to infer that his new friend was poor, and the conviction made him more and more devotedly sympathetic. He was already dimly revolving in his mind a project for the publication of Blanchet's poems at the risk or expense of a few private friends, of whom he was to be the foremost. Some persons have a genius, a heaven-bestowed faculty, for the transfer of their own responsibilities and cares to other minds and shoulders. Already two sympathetic friends of a few hours' standing are separately taking thought about the publication of Mr. Blanchet's poems without risk or loss to Mr. Blanchet. Still, it must be owned that Mr. Blanchet's company was growing a little of a strain on the attention of his present host. Blanchet knew absolutely nothing of politics or passing events of any kind in the outer world, and did not affect or pretend to care anything about them. Indeed, had he been a man of large and liberal information in contemporary history, he would in all probability have concealed his treasures of knowledge, and affected an absolute and complacent ignorance. Outside the realms of what he called art, Mr. Blanchet thought it utterly beneath him to know anything; and within his own realm he knew so much, and bore down with such a terrible dogmatism, that the ordinary listener sank oppressed beneath it. Warmed and animated by his own discourse, the poet poured out the streams of his dogmatic eloquence over the patient Heron, who strained every nerve in the effort to appreciate, and in the honest desire to acquire, exalted information.
At last the talk came to an end, and even Blanchet got somehow the idea that it was time to be going away. Victor accompanied him as far as the doorway, and they stood for a moment looking into the silent street.
"You haven't far to go, I hope?"
"No, not far; not exactly far," the poet answered. "I'll find a cab, I dare say. To-morrow, then, you'll come with me to Miss Grey's. You needn't have any hesitation; you will be quite welcome, I assure you. I'll call for you."
"Come to breakfast then at twelve."
"All right," the complacent Blanchet answered, his earlier awe having given place to an easy familiarity; "I'll come."
He nodded and went his way. Victor Heron looked for a while after his tall, slender, and graceful figure.
"He's a handsome fellow," Heron said to himself, "and a poet, and I can easily imagine a girl being in love with him, or any number of girls. She is a very fine girl, quite out of the common track. She must be very happy. I almost envy him. No, I don't. What on earth have I to do with such nonsense?"
He returned to his room and sat thinking for a while. All his political worrying and grievance-mongering seemed to have lost character somehow, and become prosaic, and unsatisfying, and vapid. It did not seem much to look forward to, that sort of thing going on for ever.
CHAPTER XI.
THE GAY SCIENCE IN A NEW ILLUSTRATION.
Mary Blanchet was, for the time, one of the happiest women on the earth when she had to bestir herself, on their returning home next day, to make preparations for the test-reading of her brother's poems. To hear Herbert's poems read was a delight which could only be excelled by the pride and joy of having them read to such an audience. She had so long looked up to Minola as a leader and a princess that she at last came to regard her as the natural arbitress of the destiny of any one belonging to the Blanchet family. In some vague way she had made up her mind that if Miss Grey only gave the word of command, the young poet's works must go forth to the world, and going forth must of course be estimated at their proper worth. Her pride was double-edged. On this side there was the poet-brother to show to her friends; on that side the friend who was to be the poet-brother's patroness. Her "animula vagula, blandula" floated all that day on the saffron and rose clouds of rising joy and fame.
Nor was her gratification at all diminished when Herbert Blanchet called very early to crave permission to bring Mr. Heron with him, and when he obtained it Blanchet had thought it prudent not to rely merely on the close friendship with Miss Grey, of which he had spoken a little too vauntingly to Victor the night before, and it seemed to him a very necessary precaution to call and ask permission to introduce his friend. He was fortunate enough to find Minola not only willing, but even what Mary might have thought, if she had considered the matter, suspiciously willing, to receive Mr. Heron. In truth, Minola had in her mind a little plot to do a service to Mary Blanchet and her brother in the matter of the poems, and she had thought of Mr. Heron as the kindliest and likeliest person she knew to give her a helping hand in the carrying out of her project. Mary, not thinking anything of this, was yet made more happy than before by the prospect of having a handsome young man for one of the audience. As has been said already, she had the kindliest feelings to handsome young men. Then the presence of another listener would make the thing quite an assembly; almost, as she observed in gentle ecstasy more than once to Minola, as if it were one of the poetic contests of the middle ages, in which minstrels sang and peerless ladies awarded the prize of song.
So she busied herself all the morning to adorn the rooms and make them fit for the scene of a poet's triumph. She started away to Covent Garden, and got pots of growing flowers and handfuls of "cut flowers," to scatter here and there. She had an old guitar which she disposed on the sofa with a delightfully artistic carelessness, having tried it in all manner of positions before she decided on the final one, in which the forgetful hand of the musician was supposed to have heedlessly dropped it. All the books in the prettiest bindings—especially poems—she laid about in conspicuous places. Any articles of apparel—bonnets, wraps, and such like, that might upon an ordinary occasion have been seen on tables or chairs—were carefully stowed away in their proper receptacles—except, indeed, for a bright-colored shawl, which, thrown gracefully across an arm of the sofa, made, in conjunction with the guitar, quite an artistic picture in itself. Near the guitar, too, in a moment of sudden inspiration, she arranged a glove of Nola's—a glove only once worn, and therefore for all pictorial effect as good as new, while having still the pretty shape of the owner's hand expressed in it. What can there be, Mary Blanchet thought, more winsome to look at, more suggestive of all poetic thought, than the carelessly-lying glove of a beautiful girl? But she took good care not to consult the owner of the glove on any such point, dreading with good reason Minola's ruthless scorn of all shams and prearranged affectations.
Mary was a little puzzled about the art fixtures, if such an expression may be used, of the room—the framed engravings, which belonged to the owner of the house and were let with the lodgings, of which they were understood to count among the special attractions. She had a strong conviction that her brother would not admire them—would think meanly of them, and say so; and although Minola herself now and then made fun of them, yet it did not by any means follow that she should be pleased to hear them disparaged by a stranger. About the wall paper she was also a little timorous, not feeling sure as to the expression which its study might call into her brother's critical eye. She could not, however, remove the engravings, and doing anything with the paper was still more completely out of the question. There was nothing for it, therefore, but to hope that his poetry and his audience would so engross the poet as to deprive his eyes of perception for cheap art and ill-disciplined colors.
There was to be tea, delightfully served in dainty little cups, and Mary could already form in her mind an idea of the graceful figure which Minola would make as she offered her hospitality to the poet. An alarm, however, began to possess her as the day went on, about the possibility of Minola not being home in time for the reception of the strangers. In order that she might have the place quite to herself to carry out her little schemes of decoration, the artful poetess had persuaded Minola not to give up her usual walk in the park, and now suppose Minola forgot the hour, or lost her way, or was late from any cause, and had not time to make any change in her walking dress, or actually did not come in until long after the visitors had arrived! What on earth was she, Mary, to do with them?
This alarm, however, proved unfounded. Minola came back in very good time, looking healthy and bright, with some raindrops on her hair, and putting away with good-humored contempt all suggestions about an elaborate change of dress. Miss Blanchet would have liked her leader to array herself in some sort of way that should suggest a queen of beauty, or princess of culture, or other such imposing creature. At all events she would have liked trailing skirts and much perfume. She only sighed when Minola persisted in showing herself in very quiet costume.
The rattle of a hansom cab was heard at last—at last, Mary thought—in reality a few minutes before the time appointed; and the poet and Mr. Heron entered. The poet was somewhat pale, and a little preoccupied. He had a considerable bulk of manuscript in his hand. The manuscript was in itself a work of art, as he had already explained to Victor. Each page was a large leaf of elaborately rough and expensive paper, and the lines of poetry, written out with exquisitely careful penmanship, occupied but a small central plot, so to speak, of the field of white. The margins were rich in quaint fantasies of drawing, by the poet himself, and various artists of his brotherhood. Sometimes a thought, or incident, or phrase of the text was illustrated on the margin, in a few odd, rapid strokes. Sometimes the artist, without having read the text, contributed some fancy or whimsy of his own; sometimes it was a mere monogram, sometimes a curious, perplexed, pictorial conceit; now merely the face of a pretty woman, and again some bewildering piece of eccentric symbolism, about the meaning whereof all observers differed. It must be owned that as Minola looked at these ornaments of the manuscript, she could not help feeling a secret throb of satisfaction at the evidence they gave that the reading would not be quite so long as the first sight of the mass of paper had led her to expect.
Mr. Blanchet did not do much in the way of preliminary conversation. He left all that to Minola and Victor; and the latter was seldom wanting in talk when he believed himself to have sympathetic listeners. It should be said that the well-ordered guitar effect proved a failure; for Mr. Blanchet soon after entering the room flung himself into what was to have been a poetic attitude on the sofa, and came rather awkwardly on the guitar, and was a little vexed at the thought of being made to seem ridiculous.
Every one was anxious that a beginning of the reading should be made, and no one seemed to know exactly how to start it. Suddenly Mr. Blanchet arose, as one awakened from a dream.
"May I beg, Miss Grey, for three favors?"
Minola bowed and waited.
"First, I cannot read by daylight. My poems are not made for day. They need a peculiar setting. May I ask that the windows be closed and the lamps lighted? I see you have lamps."
"Certainly, if you wish," and Minola promptly rang the bell.
"Thank you very much. In the second place I would ask that no sign of approval or otherwise be given as I read. The whole must be the impression, not any part. It must be felt as a whole, or it is not felt at all. Until the last line is read no judgment can be formed."
This was discouraging and even depressing, but everybody promised. Minola in particular began to fear that poets were not so much less objectionable than other men as she had hoped. She could not tell why, but as she listened to the child of genius she was filled with a strange memory of Mr. Augustus Sheppard. Everything that seemed formal and egotistic reminded her of Mr. Augustus Sheppard.
"Then," continued Herbert, "when I have finished the last line, you will perhaps allow me to leave you at once, without formality, and without even speaking? I ask for no sudden judgment; that I shall hear another time; too soon, perhaps," and he indulged in a faint smile. "But I prefer to go at once, when I have read a poem; it is a peculiarity of mine," and he passed his hand through his hair. "Reading excites me, and I am overwrought. It may not be so with others, but it is so with me."
"I can quite understand," the good-natured Victor hastened to say. "Quite natural—quite so. I have often worked myself into such a state of excitement, thinking of things—not poetry, of course, but colonial affairs, and such dry stuff—that I have to go out at night, perhaps, and walk in the cool air, and recover myself. Don't you feel so sometimes, Miss Grey?"
"Oh, no; I am neither poet nor politician, and I have nothing to think about." At the moment she thought Blanchet a sham, and Heron rather a weak and foolish person for encouraging him. What would you have of men?
"I have felt so often," Mary Blanchet said with a gentle sigh.
Miss Grey did not doubt that people felt so; that everybody might feel so under appropriate conditions. It was the deliberate arranging of preliminaries by Mr. Blanchet that vexed her; it seemed so like affectation and play-acting. She was prepared to think his poetry rubbish.
It was not rubbish, however; not mere rubbish, by any means. Mr. Blanchet had a considerable mastery of the art of arranging together melodious and penetrating words, and he caught up cleverly and adopted the prevailing idea and purpose of the small new group of yet hardly known artists in verse and color, to whom it was his pride to belong. His poems belonged to what might be called the literature of disease. In principle, they said to corruption, "Thou art my father," and to the worm, "Thou art my mother and my sister." They dealt largely in graves and corpses, and the loves of skeletons, and the sweet virtues of sin, and the joys of despair and dyspepsia. They taught that there is no truth but paradox. Mr. Blanchet read his contributions with great effect: in a voice now wailing, now threatening, now storming fiercely, now creeping along in tones of the lowest hoarseness. What amazed Minola was, to find that any man could have so little sense of the ridiculous as to be able to go through such a performance in a small room before three people. In a crowd there might be courage; but before three! It was wonderful. She felt horribly inclined to laugh; but the gleaming eyes of the poet alighted on hers and fastened them every now and then; and poor Mary too, she knew, was watching her.
It was very trying to her. She endeavored to fill her mind with serious and sad thoughts; and she could not keep herself from thinking of the scene in Richter's "Flegeljahre" where the kin of the eccentric testator are trying in fierce rivalry who shall be the first to shed a tear for his loss, in presence of the notary and the witnesses, and thereby earn the legacy to which that exasperating condition was attached. After all it is probably easier to restrain a laugh than to pump up a tear, especially when the coming of the tear must bring the drying glow of a glad success with it. Minola's condition was bearable; and indeed, when she saw the genuine earnestness of the poet, her inclination to laugh all died away, and she became filled with pity and pain. Then she tried hard to admire the verses, and could not. At first the conceits and paradoxes were a little startling, and even shocking, and they made one listen. But the mind soon became attuned to them and settled down, and was stirred no more. Once you knew that Mr. Blanchet liked corpses, his peculiarity became of no greater interest than if his liking had been for babies. When it was made clear that what other people called hideousness he called beauty, it did not seem to matter much more than honest Faulconbridge's determination, if a man's name be John, to call him Peter.
The poet sometimes closed his eyes for a minute together, and pressed his hand upon his brow, while drops of perspiration stood distinctly on his livid forehead. But he took breath again, and went on. He evidently thought his audience could not have enough of it. The poem was, in fact, a chaplet of short poem-beads. Many of its passages had the peculiarity that they came to a sudden end exactly when the listeners supposed that the interest of the thing was only going to begin. When a page was ended the poet lifted it, so to speak, with the sudden effort of one hand and arm, as though it were something heavy like a shield, and then flung it from him, looking fixedly into the eyes of some one of the three listeners the while. This formality impressed Mary Blanchet immediately. It seemed the very passion and wrestling of poetic inspiration; the prophetic fury rushing into action through the prophet.
Minola once or twice glanced at the face of Victor Heron. At first it was full of respectful and anxious attention, animated now and then by a sudden flicker of surprise. Of late these feelings and moods had gradually changed, and after a while the settling-down condition had clearly arrived. At length Miss Grey could see that while Mr. Heron still maintained an attitude of the most courteous attention, his ears were decidedly with his heart, and that was far away—with his own grievance and the St. Xavier's Settlements.
At last it was over. The close, for all their previous preparation, took the small audience by surprise. It came thus:
I asked of my soul—What is death?I asked of my love—What is hate?I asked of decay—Art thou life?And of night—Art thou day?Did they answer?
I asked of my soul—What is death?I asked of my love—What is hate?I asked of decay—Art thou life?And of night—Art thou day?Did they answer?
I asked of my soul—What is death?
I asked of my love—What is hate?
I asked of decay—Art thou life?
And of night—Art thou day?
Did they answer?
The poet looked up with eyes of keen and almost fierce inquiry. The audience quailed a little, but, not feeling the burden of response thrown upon them, resumed their expectant attitudes, waiting to hear what the various oracles had said to their poetic questioner. But they were taken in, if one might use so homely an expression. The poem was all over. That was the beginning and the end of it. The poet flung away his last page, and sank dreamy, exhausted, back into his chair. A moment of awful silence succeeded. Then he gathered up his illuminated scrolls, rose from his chair, bowed gravely, and left the room, Mary Blanchet hurried after him.
Minola was perplexed, depressed, and remorseful. She thought there must be something in the productions which made their author so much in earnest, and she was afraid she had not seemed attentive enough, or that Blanchet had detected her in her early inclination to smile. There was an embarrassed pause when Victor and she were left together.
"He reads very well," Heron said at last. "A capital reader, I think. Don't you? He throws his soul into it. That's the great thing."
"It is," said Minola, "if it's much to throw—oh, I don't know what I mean by that. But how do you like the poems?"
"Well, I am sure they must be very fine. I should rather hear the judgment of some one else. I should like to hear you speak first. You tell me what you think of them and then I'll tell you, as the children say."
"I don't care about them," said Minola, shaking her head sadly. "I have tried, Mr. Heron; but I can't admire them. I can't see any originality, or poetry, or anything in them. I could not admire them—unless a command came express from the Queen to tell me to think them good."
"So you read the 'Misanthrope'—Molière's 'Misanthrope?'" Victor said eagerly, and having caught in a moment Minola's whimsical allusion to the duty of a loyal critic when under royal command.
"Yes, I used to pass half my time reading it; I have almost grown into thinking that I have a sort of copyright in it. Alceste is my chief hero, Mr. Heron."
"I wish I were like him," said Mr. Heron.
"I wish you were," she answered gravely.
"But I am not—unfortunately."
"Unfortunately," she repeated, determined to pay no compliment.
"You must let me come some day and have a long talk with you about Molière," Victor said, nothing discouraged, having wanted no compliment, nor thought of any.
"I shall be delighted; you shall talk and I will listen. I am so glad to find a companion in Molière. But I wish I could have admired Mr. Blanchet's poems. I prefer my own ever so much."
"Your own!" The audacious self-complacency of the announcement astonished him, and seemed out of keeping with Miss Grey's character and ways. Do you write poems?"
"Oh, no; if I did, I don't think I could admire them."
"But how then—what do you mean?"
"Well—one can feel such poetry in every blink of sunshine even in this West Centre, and every breath of wind, and every stray recollection of some great book that one has read, when we were young, you know. That poetry never is brought to the awful test of being written down and read out. I do so feel for Mr. Blanchet; I suppose his poems seemed glorious before they were written out."
"But I think they seem glorious to him even still."
"They do—and to Mary. Mr. Heron, tell me honestly and without affectation—are you really a judge of poetry?"
"Not I," said Heron. "I adore a few old poets and one or two new ones, but I couldn't tell why—and those that I admire everybody else admires too, so that I can't pretend to myself that I have any original judgment. My opinion, Miss Grey, isn't worth a rush."
"I am very glad to hear it—very. Neither is mine. So you see we may be both of us quite mistaken about Mr. Blanchet's poems."
"Of course we may—I dare say we are; in fact I am quite sure we are," said Heron, growing enthusiastic.
"Anyhow it is possible. Now I have been thinking——"
"Yes, you have been thinking?"
"I don't know whether I am only going to prove myself a busybody; but I am so fond of Mary Blanchet."
"Yes: quite right; so am I—I mean I like her very much. But what do you think of doing?"
"Well, if one could do anything to get these poems published, or brought out in some way—if it could be done without Mr. Blanchet's knowledge, or if he could be got to approve of it, and was not too proud."
"All that I have been thinking of already," Victor said. "I do think it's a shame that a fellow shouldn't have a chance of fighting his battle for the want of a few wretched pounds."
"How glad I am now that I spoke of this to you! Then if I get up a little plot, you'll help me in it."
"I'll do everything—delighted."
"But first you must understand me. This is for my dear old friend, Mary Blanchet—not for Mr. Blanchet; I don't particularly care about him, in that sort of way, and I fancy that men generally can take care of themselves; but I can't bear to have Mary Blanchet disappointed, and that is why I want to do something. Now will you help me? I mean will you help me in my way?"
"I will help in anyway you like, so long as I am allowed to help at all. But I don't quite understand what you mean."
"Don't you? I wish you did without being told so very, very clearly. Well, my Mary Blanchet is proud; and though she might accept for her brother a helping hand from me, it would be quite a different thing where a stranger was concerned. In plain English, Mr. Heron, whatever money is to be paid must be paid by me; or there shall be no plot. Now you understand."
"Yes, certainly; I quite understand your feelings. I should have liked——"
"No doubt; but there are so many things one could have liked. The thing is now, will you help me—on my conditions?"
"Of course I will; but what help can I give, as you have ordered things?"
"There are ever so many things to do which I couldn't do, and shouldn't even know how to go about: seeing publishers and printers, and all that kind of work."
"All that I'll do with pleasure; and I am only sorry that you limit me to that. May I ask, Miss Grey, how old are you?"
"What on earth has that to do with the matter? Shall you have to give the publishers a certificate of my birth?"
"No, it's not for that. But you seem to me a very young woman, and yet you order people and things as if you were a matron."
Minola smiled and colored a little. "I have lived an odd and lonely sort of life," she said, "and never learned manners; perhaps that is the reason. If I don't please you, Mr. Heron—frankly, I shan't try."
There was something at once constrained and sharp in her manner, such as Heron had not observed before. She seemed changed somehow as she spoke these unpropitiatory words.
"Oh, you do please me," he said; "sincere people always please me. Remember that I too admire the 'Misanthrope.'"
"Yes, very well; I am glad that you agree to my terms—and we are fellow-conspirators?"
"We are—and——"
"Stop! Here comes Mary."
Mary Blanchet came back. Her face had a curiously deprecating expression. She herself had been filled with wonder and delight by the reading of her brother's poems; but she had known Minola long enough to be as sensitive to her moods and half-implied meanings as the dog who catches from one glance at his master's face the knowledge of whether the master is or is not in a temper suited for play. Mary had done her very best to reassure her brother; but she had not herself felt quite satisfied about Minola's admiration.
"Well?" Mary said, looking beseechingly at Minola, and then appealingly at Victor, as if to ask whether he would not come to the rescue. "Well?"
"We have been talking," Minola said, with a resolute effort—"we have been talking—Mr. Heron and I—about your brother's poems, Mary; and we think that the public ought to have a chance of judging of them."
"Oh, thank you!" Mary exclaimed, and she clasped her hands fervently.
"Yes, Mr. Heron says he is clear about that."
"I was sure Mr. Heron would be," said Mary with becoming pride in her brother. She was not eager to ask any more questions, for she felt convinced that when Minola Grey said the poems ought to go before the public, they would somehow go; and she saw fame for her brother in the near distance. She thought she saw something else, too, as well as fame. The interest which Minola took in Herbert's poems must surely betoken some interest in Herbert himself. She knew well enough, too, that there is nothing which so disposes some women to love men as the knowledge that they are serving and helping the men. This subject of love the little poetess had long and quaintly studied. She had followed it through no end of poems and romances, and lain awake through long hours of many nights considering it. She had subjected it to severe analysis, bringing to the aid of the analyzing process that gift of imagination which it is rarely permitted to the hard scientific inquirer to employ to any purpose. She had pictured herself as the object of all manner of wooings, under every conceivable variety of circumstances. Love by surprise; love by the slow degrees of steady growth; love pressed upon her by ardent youth; gravely tendered by a dignified maturity which, until her coming, had never known such passion; love bending down to her from a castle, looking up to her from the cottage of the peasant—love in every form had tried her in fancy, and she had pleased and vexed herself into conjuring up its various effects upon her susceptibility. But the general result of the poetess's self-examination was to show that the love which would most keenly touch her heart would be that which was born of passion and compassion united. He, that is to say, whom she had helped and patronized, and saved, would be the man she best could love. Perhaps Mary Blanchet's years had something to do with this turn of feeling. The unused emotions of the maternal went, in her breast, to blend with and make up the equally unsatisfied sentiments of love; and her vague idea of a lover was that of somebody who should be husband and child in one.
Anyhow the result of all this, in the present instance, was that Mary felt a sudden and strong conviction that to allow Minola Grey to do Herbert a kindly service was a grand thing gained toward inducing Minola to fall in love with him.
So the three conspirators fell to making their arrangements. The parts were easily divided. Mr. Heron was to undertake the business of the affair, to see publishers, and printers, and so forth; Mary Blanchet was to undertake, or at least endeavor, to obtain the consent of her brother, whose proud spirit might perhaps revolt against such patronage, even from friendly hands. Miss Grey was to bear the cost. It was soon a very gratifying thing to the conspirators to know that no objection whatever was likely to come from Mr. Blanchet. The poet accepted the proffered favor not only with readiness, but with joy, and was particularly delighted and flattered when he learned from Mary—what Mary was specially ordered not to tell him—that Miss Grey was his lady-patroness. He was to have been allowed vaguely to understand that friends and admirers—whose name might have been legion—were combined to secure justice for him. But Mary, in the pride of her heart, told him all the truth, and her brother was greatly pleased and very proud. The only stipulation he made was that the poems should be brought out in a certain style, with such paper, such margins, such binding, and so on; according to the pattern of another poet's works, whereof he was to furnish a copy.
"She will be rich one day, Mary," he said, "and she can afford to do something for art."
"Will she be rich?" Mary asked, eagerly. "Oh, I am so glad! She ought to be a princess; she should be, if I were a queen."
"Yes, she'll be rich—what you and I would call rich," he said carelessly. "Everything is to be hers when the stepmother dies; and I believe she is in a galloping consumption."
"How do you know, Herbert?"
"You asked me to inquire, you know," he said, "and I did inquire. It was easily done. Her father left his money and things to his second wife only for her life. When she dies everything comes to your friend; and I hear the woman can't live long. Keep all that to yourself, Mary."
"I am sure Minola doesn't know anything about it. I know she never asked nor thought of it."
"Very likely, and the old people would not tell her. But it's true for all that. So you see, Mary, we can afford to have justice done to these poems of mine. If they are stones of any value, let them be put in proper setting or not set at all. I am entitled to ask that much."
CHAPTER XII.
"LOVE, THE MESSENGER OF DEATH."
Victor Heron seemed to Minola about this time in a fair way to let his great grievance go by altogether. He was filled with it personally when he had time to think about it, but the grievances of somebody else were always coming across his path, and drawing away his attention from his own affairs. Minola very soon noticed this peculiarity in him, and at first could hardly believe in its genuineness; it so conflicted with all her accepted theories about the ingrained selfishness of man. But by watching and studying his ways, which she did with some interest, she found that he really had that unusual weakness; and she was partly amused and partly annoyed by it. She felt angry with him now and then for neglecting his own task, like another Hylas, to pick up every little blossom of alien grievance flung in his way. She pressed on him with an earnestness which their growing friendship seemed to warrant the necessity of his doing something to set his cause right, or ceasing to tell himself that he had a cause which called for justice.
It would not be easy to find a more singular friendship than that which was growing up between Miss Grey and Victor. She received him whenever he chose to come and see her. Many a night, when Mary Blanchet and she sat together, he would look in upon them as he went to some dinner-party, or even as he came home from one, if he had got away early, and have a few minutes' talk with them. He came often in the afternoon, and if Minola did not happen to be at home, he would nevertheless remain and have a long chat with Mary Blanchet. He seemed always in good humor with himself and everybody else, except in so far as his grievance was concerned, and always perfectly happy. It has been already shown that although quite a young man, he considered himself, by virtue of his experience and his public career, ever so much older than Minola. Once or twice he sent a throb of keen delight through Mary Blanchet's heart by speaking of something that "I can remember, Miss Blanchet, and perhaps you may remember it—but Miss Grey couldn't of course." To be put on anything like equal ground with him as to years was a delightful experience to the poetess. It was all the more delicious because there was such an evident genuineness in his suggestion. Of course, if he had meant to pay her a compliment—such as a foolish person might be pleased with, but not she, thank goodness—he would have pretended to think her as young as Minola. But he had done nothing of the kind; and he evidently thought that she was about the same age as himself.
At all events, and it was more to the purpose, he set down Miss Grey as belonging to quite a different stage of growth from that to which he had attained. He thought her a handsome and very clever girl, who had the additional advantage over most other girls that she was rather tall, and that he therefore was not compelled to stoop much when speaking to her. He liked women and girls generally. He hardly ever saw the woman or girl he did not like. If he knew that a woman was insincere or affected, he would not have liked her; but then he never knew it; he never saw it; it never occurred to him. Anybody could have seen that he was a man who had no sisters or girl-cousins. The most innocent and natural affectations of womanhood were too deep for him to see. There really was a great deal of truth in what he had said to Minola about his goddess theory as regarded women. He made no secret about his greatly admiring her—thinking her very clever and fresh and handsome. He would without any hesitation have told her that he liked her best of all the women he knew, but then he had often told her that he liked other women very much. He seemed, therefore, the man whom a pure and fearless woman, even though living in Minola's odd condition of semi-isolation, might frankly accept as a friend without the slightest fear for the tranquillity of his heart or of hers. Minola, too, had always in her own breast resented with anger and contempt the idea that a man and woman can never be brought together and allowed to walk in the beaten way of friendship without their forthwith wandering off into the thickets and thorny places of love. All such ideas she looked upon as imbecility, and scorned. "I don't like men," she used to say to herself and even to others pretty freely. "I never saw a man fit to hold a candle to my Alceste. I never saw the man who seemed to me worth a woman's troubling her heart about." She began to say this of late more than ever—and to say it to herself, especially when the day and the evening had closed and she was alone in her own room. She said it over almost as if it were a sort of charm.
The business of the poems now gave him many occasions to call, and one particular afternoon Victor called when, by a rare chance, Mary Blanchet happened to be out of doors. Minola had had it on her mind that he was not pushing his cause very earnestly, and was glad of the opportunity of telling him so. He listened with great good humor. It is nearly as agreeable to be lectured as to be praised by a handsome young woman who is unaffectedly interested in one's welfare.
"I shall lose my good opinion of you if you don't keep more steadily to your purpose."
"But I do keep steadily to it. I am always thinking of it."
"No; you allow anything and everything to interfere with you. Anybody's affairs seem more to you than your own."
Victor shook his head.
"That isn't the reason," he said. "I wish it were, or anything half so good. No; the truth is that I get ashamed of the cursed work of trying to interest people in my affairs who don't want to take any interest in them. I am a restless sort of person and must be doing something, and my own business is now in that awful stage when there is nothing practical or active to be done with it. I find it easier to get up an appearance of prodigious activity about some other person's affairs. And then, Miss Grey, I don't mind confessing that I am rather sensitive and morbid—egotistic, I suppose—and if any one looks coldly on me when I endeavor to interest him in my own affairs, I take it to heart more than if it were the business of somebody else I had in hand."
"But you talked at one time of appealing to the public. Why don't you do that?"
"Get people to bring my case on in the House of Commons?"
"Yes; why not?"
"It looks like being patronized and protected and made a client of."
"Well, why don't you try and get the chance of doing it yourself?"
He smiled.
"I still do hold to that idea—or that dream. I should like it very much if one only had a chance. But no chance seems to turn up; and one loses heart sometimes."
"Oh, no," Minola said earnestly, "don't do that."
"Don't do what?"
He had hardly been thinking of his own words, and he seemed a little surprised at the earnestness of her tone.
"Don't lose heart. Don't give way. Don't fall into the track of the commonplace, and become like every one else. Keep to your purpose, Mr. Heron, and don't be beaten out of it."
"No; I haven't the least idea of that, I can assure you. Quite the contrary. But it is so hard to get a chance, or to do anything all at once. Everything moves so slowly in England. But I have a plan—we are doing something."
"I am very glad. You seem to me to be doing nothing for yourself."
"Do I? I can assure you I am much less Quixotic than you imagine. Now, I am so glad to hear that you still like the Parliamentary scheme, because that is the idea that I have particularly at heart; and if the idea comes to anything, there are some reasons why you should take a special interest in it."
"Are there really? May I be told what they are?"
"Well, the whole thing is only in prospect and uncertainty just yet. The idea is Money's, not mine; he has found out that there is going to be a vacancy in a certain borough," and Victor smiled and looked at her, "before long; and his idea is that I should become a candidate, and tell the people my whole story right out, and ask them to give me a chance of defending myself in the House. But the thing is not yet in shape enough to talk much about it. Only I thought you would be glad to know that I haven't thrown up the sponge all at once."
Minola did not very clearly follow all that he had been saying; partly because she was beginning to be afraid that to put herself into the position of adviser and confidante to this young man was a scarcely becoming performance on her part. Her mind was a little perturbed, and she was not a very good listener then. Some people say that women seldom are good listeners; that while they are playing the part of audience they are still thinking how they look as performers. Anyhow, Minola was now growing anxious to escape from her position.
"I am so glad," she said vaguely, "that you are doing something, and that you don't mean to allow yourself to be beaten."
"I don't mean to be, I assure you," he said, a little surprised at her sudden coolness. "I shouldn't like to be. That isn't my way, I hope."
"I hope not too, and I think not; I wish I had such a purpose. Life seems to me such a pitiful thing—and in a man especially—when there is no great clear purpose in it."
"But is a man's trying to get himself a new appointment a great clear purpose?" he asked with a smile. He was now trying to draw her out again on the subject, having been much pleased with the interest she seemed to take in him, and a little amused by the gravity with which she tendered her advice.
"No, but yours is not merely trying to get an appointment. You are trying to have justice done to your past career and to get an opportunity of being useful again in the same sort of way. You don't want to lead an idle life lounging about London. Mr. Blanchet has his poems; Mr. Money has—well, he has his business, whatever it is, and he is in Parliament."
At this moment the servant entered and handed a card to Minola. A gentleman, she said, particularly wished to see Miss Grey, but he would call any time she pleased to name if she could not see him at present. Minola's cheek grew red as she glanced at the card, for it bore the name of Mr. Augustus Sheppard, and it had the words pencilled on it, "Wishes particularly to see you—has important business." Her lips trembled. Nothing could be more embarrassing and painful than such a visitation. The disagreeable memory of Mr. Sheppard and of the part of her life to which he belonged had been banished from her thoughts, at least except for occasional returning glimpses, and now here was Mr. Sheppard himself in London and asserting a right to see her. She could not refuse him, for he did, perhaps, come to her with some message from those in Keeton who still would have called themselves her family. Mary Blanchet had only just gone out, and Minola was left to talk with Mr. Sheppard alone. For a moment she had a wild idea of begging Victor Heron to stay and bear her company during the interview. But she put this thought away instantly, and made up her mind that she had better hear what Mr. Sheppard had to say alone.
"Show the gentleman in, Jane," she said, as composedly as she could. "A friend—at least a friend of my people, from my old place, Mr. Heron."
Heron was looking at her, she thought, in a manner that showed he had noticed her embarrassment.
"Well, I must wish you a good morning," Mr. Heron said. "Be sure I shan't forget what you were saying."
"Thank you—yes; what was I saying?"
"Oh, the very good advice you were giving me; and I propose to hear it all out another time. Good morning."
"Don't go for a moment—pray don't?" she asked, with an earnestness which surprised Victor. "Only a moment—I would rather you didn't go just yet."
The thought suddenly went through her that Mr. Sheppard was the very man to put an exaggerated meaning on the slightest thing that seemed to hint at secrecy of any kind, and that she had better take care to let him see, face to face, what sort of visitor was with her when he came. Victor was glad in any case of the chance of remaining a few moments longer, and was in no particular hurry to go so long as he could think he was not in anybody's way.
Victor Heron stood, hat in hand, on the hearth-rug near the chimney-piece. As Mr. Sheppard entered, Heron was the first person he happened to see, and the entirely unexpected sight surprised him. He glanced confusedly from Heron to Minola before he spoke a word, and his manner, always stiff and formal, seemed to acquire in a moment an additional incubus of constraint. Victor Heron had something about him which did not seem exactly English, and which, to a provincial mind, might well suggest the appearance of a foreigner—a Frenchman. Mr. Sheppard had never felt quite satisfied in his own mind about that mysterious rival of whom Minola spoke to him on the memorable day when he saw her last. She had told him that her Alceste was only "a man who lived in a book, Mr. Sheppard—in what you would call a play." How well he remembered the very words she used, and the expression of contempt on her lips as she used them. And he had got the book—the play—and read it—toiled through it—and found that there was an Alceste in it. So far she had told the truth, no doubt; but might not the Alceste have a living embodiment, or might she not have found since that time a supposed realization of her Alceste, and might not this be he—this handsome, foreign-looking young man, who was lounging there as coolly and easily as if the place belonged to him? For a moment an awful doubt filled his mind. Could she be married? Was that her husband?
"Miss Grey?" he said in hesitating and questioning tone, as that of one who is not quite clear about the identity of the person he is addressing; but Mr. Sheppard was only giving form unconsciously to the doubt in his own mind, Are you still Miss Grey?
The words and their tone were rather fortunate for Minola. They amused her and seemed ridiculous, although she did not guess at Mr. Sheppard's real meaning, and they enabled her to get back at once to her easy contempt for him.
"You must have forgotten my appearance very soon, Mr. Sheppard," she said in a tone which carried the contempt so lightly and easily that he probably did not perceive it, "or I must have changed very much, if you are not quite certain whether I am Miss Grey. You have not changed at all. I should have known you anywhere."
"It is not that," Mr. Sheppard said with a little renewal of cheerfulness. "I should have known you anywhere, Miss Grey. You have not changed, except indeed that you have, if that were possible, improved. Indeed, I would venture to say that you have decidedly improved."
"Thank you: you are very kind."
"It would be less surprising, if you, Miss Grey, had had some difficulty in recognizing me. Fortune, perhaps, has withdrawn some of her blessings from others only to pour them more lavishly on you."
"I feel very well, thank you; but I hope fortune has not been robbing any Peter to pay Paul in my case. You, at least, don't seem to have been cheated out of any of your good health, Mr. Sheppard."
While he made his little formal speeches Mr. Sheppard continued to glance sidelong at Victor Heron. Mr. Heron now left his place at the chimney-piece and came forward to take his leave.
"Must you go?" Minola asked, with as easy a manner as she could assume. She dreaded atéte-à-tétewith Sheppard, and she also dreaded to let it be seen that she dreaded it. If Mary Blanchet would only come!
An expedient occurred to her for putting off the dreaded conversation yet a moment, and giving Mary Blanchet another chance.
"I should like my friends to know each other," Minola said, with a gayety of manner which was hardly in keeping with her natural ways. "People are not introduced to each other now, I believe, when they meet by chance in London, but we are none of us Londoners. Mr. Sheppard comes from Keeton, Mr. Heron, and is one of the oldest friends of my family."
Mr. Heron held out his hand with eyes of beaming friendliness.
"Mr. Heron?" Sheppard asked slowly. "Mr. Victor Heron?"
"Victor Heron, indeed!"
"Mr. Victor Heron, formerly of the St. Xavier's Settlements?"
Heron only nodded this time, finding Mr. Sheppard's manner not agreeable. Minola wondered what her townsman was thinking of, and how he came to know Heron's name and history.
"Then my name must surely be known to you, Mr. Heron. The name of Augustus Sheppard, of Duke's-Keeton?"
"No, sir," Heron replied. "I am sorry to say that I don't remember to have heard the name before."
"Indeed," Mr. Sheppard said with a formal smile, intended to be incredulous and yet not to seem too plainly so. "Yet we are rivals, Mr. Heron."
Minola started and colored.
"At least we are to be," Mr. Sheppard went on—"if rumor in Duke's-Keeton speaks the truth. I am not wrong in assuming that I have the honor of addressing the future Radical—I mean Liberal—candidate for that borough?"
"Oh, that's it," Heron said carelessly. "Yes, yes: I didn't know that rumor had yet troubled herself about the matter so much as to speak of it truly or falsely. But of course, since you have heard it, Mr. Sheppard, it's no secret. I have some ideas that way, Miss Grey. I intend to try whether I can impress your townspeople. This gentleman, I suppose, is on the other side."
"I am the other side," Mr. Sheppard said gravely. "I am to be the Conservative candidate—I was accepted by the party as the Conservative candidate, no matter who the Radical may be."
"Well, Mr. Sheppard, we shall not be the less good friends I hope," Heron said cheerily. "I can't be expected to wish that the best man may win, for that would be to wish failure for myself; but I wish the better cause may win, and in that you will join me. Good morning, Miss Grey!"
The room seemed to grow very chilly to Minola when his bright smile and sweet courteous tones were withdrawn and she was left with her old lover.
There was not much in Sheppard's appearance to win her back to any interest in him. He did not compare advantageously with Victor Heron. When Heron left the room, the light seemed to have gone out; Heron was so fresh, so free, so sweet, and yet so strong, full of youth, and spirit, and manhood—a natural gentleman without the insipidity of the manners of society. Poor Augustus Sheppard was formal, constrained, and prosaic; he had not even the dignity of austerity. He was not self-sufficing: he was only self-sufficient. As he stood there he was awkward, and almost cowed. He seemed as if he were afraid of the girl, and Minola was woman enough to be angry with him because he seemed afraid of her. He was handsome, but in that commonplace sort of way which in a woman's eye is often worse than being ugly. Minola felt almost pitiless toward him, although the girl's whole nature was usually full of pity, for, as has already been said, she did not believe in his affection, and thought him a thorough sham. He stood awkwardly there, and she would not relieve him from his embarrassment by saying a word.
"Well, Miss Grey," he began at last, "I suppose you hardly expected to see me."
"I did not know you were in town, Mr. Sheppard."
"I fear I am not very welcome," he said, with an uncomfortable smile; "but your mother particularly wished me to see you."
"My mother, Mr. Sheppard?" Minola grew red with pain and anger.
"I mean your stepmother, of course—the wife of your father."
"Once the wife of my father; now the wife of somebody else."
"Well, well, at all events the person who might be naturally supposed to have the best claim to some authority—or influence—influence let us say—over you."
"Has Mrs. Saulsbury sent you to say that she thinks she ought to have some influence over me?"
"Oh, no," he answered with that gentle deprecation of anger which is usually such fuel to anger's fire. "Mrs. Saulsbury has given up any idea of the kind long since—quite long since, I assure you. I think, if you will permit me to say it, that you were always a little unjust in your judgment of Mrs. Saulsbury. She is a true-hearted and excellent woman."
Minola said nothing. Perhaps she felt that she never had been quite in a position to do impartial justice to the excellence and the true-heartedness of Mrs. Saulsbury.
"But," Mr. Sheppard resumed, with a gentle motion of his hands, as if he would wave away now all superfluous and hopeless controversy, "that was not what I came to say."
Minola bowed slightly to signify that she was glad to know he was coming to the point at last.