"And If the butterfly fall and break,Farewell the Luck of Gilead Beck,"
"And If the butterfly fall and break,Farewell the Luck of Gilead Beck,"
"And If the butterfly fall and break,Farewell the Luck of Gilead Beck,"
"And If the butterfly fall and break,
Farewell the Luck of Gilead Beck,"
said Jack.
"Thank you, sir. That's very neat. I'll take that, sir, if you will allow me, for my motto, unless you want it for yourself."
"No," said Jack; "I have one already."
"If this golden butterfly fall and break,Farewell the Luck of Gilead P. Beck,"
"If this golden butterfly fall and break,Farewell the Luck of Gilead P. Beck,"
"If this golden butterfly fall and break,Farewell the Luck of Gilead P. Beck,"
"If this golden butterfly fall and break,
Farewell the Luck of Gilead P. Beck,"
repeated the owner of the insect. "If you are going on, gentlemen, to San Francisco, I hope you will take me with you."
"Colquhoun," said Ladds, "you do not mean to stay by yourself? Much better come with us, unless, of course——"
Lying on the table was a piece of an old newspaper in which Jack had wrapped something. Ladds saw Colquhoun mechanically take up the paper, read it, and change color. Then he looked straight before him, seeing nothing, and Ladds stopped speaking. Then he smiled in a strange far-off way.
"I think I will go with you," he said.
"Hear, hear!" cried Jack. "Selkirk returns to the sound of the church-going bell."
Ladds refrained from looking at the paper in search of things which did not concern himself, but he perceived that Colquhoun had, like Hamlet, seen something. Therewas, in fact, an announcement in the fragment which greatly interested Lawrence Colquhoun:
"On April 3, by the Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of Turk's Island, at St. George's Hanover Square, Gabriel Cassilis, of etc., to Victoria, daughter of the Late Admiral Sir Benbow Pengelley, K.C.B."
"On April 3, by the Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of Turk's Island, at St. George's Hanover Square, Gabriel Cassilis, of etc., to Victoria, daughter of the Late Admiral Sir Benbow Pengelley, K.C.B."
In the morning they started, Mr. Beck being provided with a new rig-out of a rough and useful kind.
At the last moment one of the Chinamen, Leeching, the cook, besought from his late master, as a parting favour and for the purpose of self-protection, the gift of a pistol, powder, and ball.
Mr. Colquhoun gave them to him, thinking it a small thing after two years of faithful service. Then Leeching, after loading his pistol, went to work with his comrade for an hour or so.
Presently, Achow being on his knees in the shingle, the perfidious Leeching suddenly cocked his pistol, and fired it into Achow's right ear, so that he fell dead.
By this lucky accident Leeching became sole possessor of the little pile of gold which he and the defunct Achow had scraped together and placed in acache.
He proceeded to unearth this treasure, put together his little belongings, and started on the road to San Francisco with a smile of satisfaction.
There was a place in the windings of the road where there was a steep bank. By the worst luck in the world a stone slipped and fell as Leeching passed by. The stone by itself, would not have mattered much, as it did not fall on Leeching's head; but with it fell a rattlesnake, who was sleeping in the warmth of the sun.
Nothing annoys a rattlesnake more than to be disturbed in his sleep. With angry mind he awoke, looked around, and saw the Chinaman. Illogically connecting him with the fall of the stone, he made for him, and, before Leeching knew there was a rattlesnake anywhere near him, bit him in the calf.
Leeching sat down on the bank and realized the position. Being a fatalist, he did not murmur; having no conscience, he did not fear; having no faith, he did not hope; having very little time, he made no testamentary dispositions. In point of fact, he speedily curled up his legs and died.
Then the deserted Empire City was deserted indeed, for there was not even a Chinaman left in it.
Joseph and His Brethren.
The largest and most solid of all the substantial houses in Carnarvon Square, Bloomsbury, is Number Fifteen, which, by reason of its corner position (Mulgrave Street intersecting it at right angles at this point), has been enabled to stretch itself out at the back. It is a house which a man who wanted to convey the idea of a solid income without ostentation or attempt at fashion would find the very thing to assist his purpose. The ladies of such a house would not desire to belong to the world farther west; they would respect the Church, law, and medicine; they would look on the City with favourable eyes when it was represented by a partner in an old firm; they would have sound notions of material comfort; they would read solid books, and would take their pleasure calmly. One always, somehow, in looking at a house wonders first of what sort its women are. There were, however, no women at Number Fifteen at all, except the maids. Its occupants consisted of three brothers, all unmarried. They were named respectively Cornelius, Humphrey, and Joseph Jagenal. Cornelius and Humphrey were twins. Joseph was their junior by ten years. Cornelius and Humphrey were fifty—Joseph was forty. People who did not know this thought that Joseph was fifty and his brethren forty.
When the Venerable the Archdeacon of Market Basing, the well-known author ofSermons on the Duty of Tithe-Offerings, theLesbia of Catullus, and aTreatise on the Right Use of the Anapæst in Greek Iambic Verse, died, it was found that he had bequeathed his little savings, worth altogether about £500 a year, to his three sons in the following proportions: the twins, he said, possessed genius; they would make their mark in the world, but they must be protected. They received the yearly sum of £200 apiece, and it was placed in the hands of trustees to prevent their losing it; the younger was to have the rest, without trustees, because, his father said, "Joseph is a dull boy and will keep it." It was a wise distribution of the money. Cornelius, then nineteen, left Oxford immediately, and went to Heidelberg, where he called himself a poet, studied metaphysics, drank beer, and learned to fence. Humphrey, for his part, deserted Cambridge—their father having chosen that they should not be rivals—and announced his intention of devoting his life to Art. He took up his residence in Rome. Joseph stayed at school, having no other choice. When the boy was sixteen, his guardians articled him to a solicitor. Joseph was dull, but he was methodical, exact, and endowed with a retentive memory. He had also an excellent manner, and the "appearance of age," as port wine advertisers say, before he was out of his articles. At twenty-five, Joseph Jagenal was a partner; at thirty-five, he was the working partner; at forty, he was the senior partner in the great Lincoln's-Inn firm of Shaw, Fairlight, and Jagenal, the confidential advisers of as many respectable county people as any firm in London.
When he was twenty-five, and became a partner, the brethren returned to England simultaneously, and were good enough to live with him and upon him. They had their £200 a year each, and expensive tastes. Joseph, who had made a thousand for his share the first year of his admission to the firm, had no expensive tastes, and a profound respect for genius. He took in the twins joyfully, and they stayed with him. When his senior partner died, and Mr. Fairlight retired, so that Joseph's income was largely increased, they made him move from Torrington Square, where the houses are small, to Carnarvon Square, and regulated his household for him on the broadest and most liberal scale. Needless to say, no part of the little income, which barely served the twins with pocket-money and theirmenus plaisirs, went towards the housekeeping. Cornelius, poet and philosopher, superintended the dinner and daily interviewed the cook. Humphrey, the devotee of art, who furnished the rooms according to the latest designs of the most correct taste, was in command of the cellar. Cornelius took the best sitting-room for himself, provided it with books, easy-chairs, and an immense study-table with countless drawers. He called it carelessly his Workshop. The room on the first floor overlooking Mulgrave Street, and consequently with a north aspect, was appropriated by Humphrey. He called it his Studio, and furnished it in character, not forgetting the easy-chairs. Joseph had the back room behind the dining-room for himself; it was not called a study or a library, but Mr. Joseph's room. He sat in it alone every evening, at work. There was also a drawing-room, but it was never used. They dined together at half-past six: Cornelius sat at the head, and Humphrey at the foot, Joseph at one side. Art and Intellect, thus happily met together and housed under one roof, talked to each other. Joseph ate his dinner in silence. Art held his glass to the light, and flashed into enthusiasm over the matchless sparkle, the divine hues, the incomparable radiance, of the wine. Intellect, with a sigh, as one who regrets the loss of a sense, congratulated his brother on his vivid passion for colour, and, taking another glass, discoursed on the æsthetic aspects of a vintage wine. Joseph drank one glass of claret, after which he retired to his den, and left the brethren to finish the bottle. After dinner the twins sometimes went to the theatre, or they repaired arm-in-arm to their club—the Renaissance, now past its prime and a little fogyish; mostly they sat in the Studio or in the Workshop, in two arm-chairs, with a table between them, smoked pipes, and drank brandy and potash-water. They went to bed at any time they felt sleepy—perhaps at twelve, and perhaps at three. Joseph went to bed at half-past ten. The brethren generally breakfasted at eleven, Joseph at eight. After breakfast, unless on rainy days, a uniform custom was observed. Cornelius, poet and philosopher, went to the window and looked out.
Humphrey, artist, and therefore a man of intuitive sympathies, followed him. Then he patted Cornelius on the shoulder, and shook his head.
"Brother, I know your thought. You want to drag me from my work; you think it has been too much for me lately. You are too anxious about me."
Cornelius smiled.
"Not on my own account too, Humphrey?"
"True—on your account. Let us go out at once, brother. Ah, why did you choose so vast a subject?"
Cornelius was engaged—had been engaged for twenty years—upon an epic poem, entitled theUpheaving of Ælfred. The school he belonged to would not, of course, demean themselves by speaking of Alfred. To them Edward was Eadward, Edgar was Eadgar, and old Canute was Knut. In the same way Cicero became Kikero, Virgil was Vergil, and Socrates was spelt, as by the illiterate bargee, with ak. So the French prigs of the ante-Boileau period sought to make their trumpery pedantries pass for current coin. So, too, Chapelain was in labour with thePucellefor thirty years; and when it came—But Cornelius Jagenal could not be compared with Chapelain, because he had as yet brought forth nothing. He sat with what he and his called "English" books all round him; in other words, he had all the Anglo-Saxon literature on his shelves, and was amassing, as he said, material.
Humphrey, on the other hand, was engaged on a painting, the composition of which offered difficulties which, for nearly twenty years, had proved insuperable. He was painting, he said, the "Birth of the Renaissance." It was a subject which required a great outlay in properties, Venetian glass, Italian jewelry, mediæval furniture, copies of paintings—everything necessary to make this work a masterpiece—he bought at Joseph's expense. Up to the present no one had been allowed to see the first rough drawings.
"Where's Cæsar?" Humphrey would say, leading the way to the hall. "Cæsar! Why, here he is. Cæsar must actually have heard us proposing to go out."
Cornelius called the dog Kaysar, and he refused to answer to it; so that conversation between him and Cornelius was impossible.
There never was a pair more attached to each other than these twin brethren. They sallied forth each morning at twelve, arm-in-arm, with an open and undisguised admiration for each other which was touching. Before them marched Cæsar, who was of mastiff breed, leading the way. Cornelius, the poet, was dressed with as much care as if he were still a young man of five-and-twenty, in a semi-youthful and wholly-æsthetic costume, in which only the general air, and not the colour, revealed the man of delicate perceptions. Humphrey, the artist, greatly daring, affected a warm brown velvet with a crimson-purple ribbon. Both carried flowers. Cornelius had gloves; Humphrey a cigar. Cornelius was smooth-faced, save for a light fringe on the upper lip. Humphrey wore a heavy moustache and a full long silky beard of a delicately-shaded brown, inclining when the sun shone upon it to a suspicion of auburn. Both were of the same height, rather below the middle; they had features so much alike that, but for the hair on the face of one, it would have been difficult to distinguish between them. Both were thin, pale of face, and both had, by some fatality, the end of their delicately-carved noses slightly tipped with red. Perhaps this was due to the daily and nightly brandy-and-water. And in the airy careless carriage of the two men, their sunny faces and elastic tread, it was impossible to suppose that they were fifty and Joseph only forty.
To be sure, Joseph was a heavy man, stout of build, broad in frame, sturdy in the under-jaw; while his brothers were slight shadowy men. And, to be sure, Joseph had worked all his life, while his brothers never did a stroke. They were born to consume the fruits which Joseph was born to cultivate.
Outside the house the poet heaved a heavy sigh, as if the weight of the epic was for the moment off his mind. The artist looked round with a critical eye on the lights and shadows of the great commonplace square.
"Even in London," he murmured, "Nature is too strong for man. Did you ever, my dear Cornelius, catch a more brilliant effect of sunshine than that upon the lilac yonder?"
Time, end of April; season forward, lilacs on the point of bursting into flower; sky dotted with swift-flying clouds, alternate withdrawals and bursts of sunshine.
"I really must," said Humphrey, "try to fix that effect."
His brother took the arm of the artist and drew him gently away.
In front marched Cæsar.
Presently the poet looked round. They were out of the square by this time.
"Where is Kaysar?" he said, with an air of surprise. "Surely, brother Humphrey, the dog can't be in the Carnarvon Arms?"
"I'll go and see," said Humphrey, with alacrity.
He entered the bar of the tavern, and his brother waited outside. After two or three minutes, the poet, as if tired of waiting, followed the artist into the bar. He found him with a glass of brandy-and-water cold.
"I had," he explained, "a feeling of faintness. Perhaps this spring air is chilly. One cannot be too careful."
"Quite right," said the poet. "I almost think—yes, I really do feel—ah! Thank you, my dear."
The girl, as if anticipating his wants, set before him a "four" of brandy and the cold water. Perhaps she had seen the face before. As for the dog, he was lying down with his head on his paws. Perhaps he knew there would be no immediate necessity for moving.
They walked in the direction of the Park, arm-in-arm, affectionately.
It might have been a quarter of an hour after leaving the Carnarvon Arms when the poet stopped and gasped—
"Humphrey, my dear brother, advise me. What would you do if you had a sharp and sudden pain like a knife inside you?"
Humphrey replied promptly:
"If I had a sharp and sudden pain like a knife inside me, I should take a small glass of brandy neat. Mind, no spoiling the effect with water."
Cornelius looked at his brother with admiration.
"Such readiness of resource!" he murmured, pressing his arm.
"I think I see—ah, yes—Kaysar—he's gone in before us. The sagacity of that dog is more remarkable than anything I ever read." He took his small glass of brandy neat.
The artist, looking on, said he might as well have one at the same time. Not, he added, that he felt any immediate want of the stimulant, but he might; and at all times prevention is better than cure.
It was two o'clock when they returned to Carnarvon Square. They walked arm-in-arm, with perhaps even a greater show of confiding affection than had appeared at starting. There was the slightest possible lurch in their walk, and both looked solemn and heavy with thought.
In the hall the artist looked at his watch.
"Pa—pasht two. Corneliush, Work——"
He marched to the Studio with a resolute air, and, arrived there, drew an easy-chair before the fire, sat himself in it, and went fast asleep.
The poet sought the workshop. On the table lay the portfolio of papers, outside which was emblazoned on parchment, with dainty scroll-work by the hands of his brother the artist, the title of his poem:
The Upheaving of Ælfred:
AN EPIC IN TWENTY-FOUR CANTOS.
By Cornelius Jagenal.
He gazed at it fondly for a few minutes; vaguely took up a pen, as if he intended to finish the work on the spot; and then with a sigh, thought being to much for brain, he slipped into his arm-chair, put up his feet, and was asleep in two minutes. At half-past five, one of the maids—they kept no footman in Carnarvon Square—brought him tea.
"I have been dozing, have I, Jane?" he asked. "Very singular thing for me to do."
We are but the creatures of habit. The brethren took the same walk every day, made the same remarks, with an occasional variation, and took the same morning drams; they spent the middle of the day in sleep, they woke up for the afternoon tea, and they never failed to call Jane's attention to the singularity of the fact that they had been asleep. This day Jane lingered instead of going away when the tea was finished.
"Did master tell you, sir," she asked, "that Miss Fleming was coming to-day?"
It was an irritating thing that, although Cornelius ordered the dinner and sat at the head of the table, although Humphrey was in sole command of the wine-cellar, the servants always called Joseph the master. Great is the authority of him who keeps the bag; the power of the penniless twins was a shadowy and visionary thing.
The master had told his brothers that Miss Fleming would probably have to come to the house, but no date was fixed.
"Miss Fleming came this afternoon, sir," said Jane, "with a French maid. She's in Mr. Joseph's room now."
"Oh, tell Mr. Humphrey, Jane, and we will dress for dinner. Tell Mr. Humphrey, also, that perhaps Miss Fleming would like a glass of champagne to-day."
Jane told the artist.
"Always thoughtful," said Humphrey, with enthusiasm. "Cornelius is for ever thinking of others' comfort. To be sure Miss Fleming shall have a glass of champagne."
He brought up two bottles, such was his anxiety to give full expression to his brother's wishes.
When the dinner-bell rang, the brethren emerged simultaneously from their rooms, and descended the stairs together, arm-in-arm. Perhaps in expectation of dinner, perhaps in anticipation of the champagne, perhaps with pleasure at the prospect of meeting with Joseph's ward, the faces of both were lit with a sunny smile, and their eyes with a radiant light, which looked like the real and genuine enthusiasm of humanity. It was a pity that Humphrey wore a beard, or that Cornelius did not; otherwise it would have been difficult to distinguish between this pair so much alike—these youthful twins of fifty, who almost looked like five-and-twenty.
"Phillis is my only joy."
"My brothers, Miss Fleming!"
Joseph introduced the twins with a pride impossible to dissemble. They were so youthful-looking, so airy, so handsome, besides being so nobly endowed with genius, that his pride may be excused. Castor and Pollux the wrong side of forty, but slim still and well preserved—these Greek figures do not run tall—might have looked like Cornelius and Humphrey.
They parted company for a moment to welcome the young lady, large-eyed as Hêrê, who rose to greet them, and then took up a position on the hearthrug, one with his hand on the other's shoulder, like the Siamese twins, and smiled pleasantly, as if, being accustomed to admiration and even awe, they wished to reassure Miss Fleming and put her at ease.
Dinner being announced, Cornelius, the elder by a few moments, gave his arm to the young lady. Humphrey, the younger, hovered close behind, as if he too was taking his part in the chivalrous act. Joseph followed alone, of course, not counting in the little procession.
Phillis Fleming's arrival at No. 15 Carnarvon Square was in a manner legal. She belonged to the office, not to the shrine of intellect, poesy, and art created by the twin brethren. She was an orphan and a ward. She had two guardians: one of them, Mr. Lawrence Colquhoun, being away from England; and the other, Mr. Abraham Dyson, with whom she had lived since her sixth birthday, having finished his earthly career just before this history begins, that is to say, in the spring of last year. Shaw, Fairlight, and Jagenal were solicitors to both gentlemen. Therefore Joseph found himself obliged to act for this young lady when, Mr. Abraham Dyson buried and done with, it became a question what was to be done with her. There were offers from several disinterested persons on Miss Fleming's bereaved condition being known. Miss Skimpit, of the Highgate Collegiate Establishment for Young Ladies, proposed by letter to receive her as a parlour-boarder, and hinted at the advantages of a year's discipline, tempered by Christian kindness, for a young lady educated in so extraordinary and godless a manner. The clergyman of the new district church at Finchley called personally upon Mr. Jagenal. He said that he did not know the young lady except by name, but that, feeling the dreadful condition of a girl brought up without any of the gracious influences of Anglican Ritual and Dogma, he was impelled to offer her a home with his Sisterhood. Here she would receive clear dogmatic teaching and learn what the Church meant by submission, fasting, penance, and humiliation. Mr. Jagenal thought she might also learn how to bestow her fortune on Anglo Catholic objects when she came of age, and dismissed his reverence with scant courtesy. Two or three widows who had known better days offered their services, which were declined with thanks. Joseph even refused to let Miss Fleming stay with Mrs. Cassilis, the wife of Abraham Dyson's second cousin. He thought that perhaps this lady would not be unwilling to enliven her house by the attraction of an heiress and adébutante. And it occurred to him that, for a short time at least, she might, without offending a censorious world, and until her remaining guardian's wishes could be learned, take up her abode at the house of the three bachelors.
"I am old, Miss Fleming," he said, "Forty years old; a great age to you, and my brothers, Cornelius and Humphrey, who live with me, are older still. Cornelius is a great poet; he is engaged on a work—The Upheaving of Ælfred—which will immortalise his name. Humphrey is an artist; he is working at a group the mere conception of which, Cornelius says, would make even the brain of Michel Angelo stagger. You will be proud, I think, in after years, to have made the acquaintance of my brothers."
She came, having no choice or any other wish, accompanied by her French maid and the usual impedimenta of travel.
Phillis Fleming—her father called her Phillis because she was his only joy—was nineteen. She is twenty now, because the events of this story only happened last year. Her mother died in giving her birth; she had neither brothers nor sisters, nor many cousins, and those far away. When she was six her father died too—not of an interesting consumption or of a broken heart, or any ailment of that kind. He was a jovial fox-hunting ex-captain of cavalry, with a fair income and a carefully cultivated taste for enjoyment. He died from an accident in the field. By his will he left all his money to his one child and appointed as her trustees his father's old friend, Abraham Dyson of Twickenham and the City, and with him his own friend, Lawrence Colquhoun, a man some ten years younger than himself, with tastes and pursuits very much like his own. Of course, the child was taken to the elder guardian's house, and Colquhoun, going his way in the world, never gave his trust or its responsibilities a moment's thought.
Phillis Fleming had the advantage of a training quite different from that which is usually accorded to young ladies. She went to Mr. Abraham Dyson at a time when that old gentlemen, always full of crotchety ideas, was developing a plan of his own for female education. His theory of woman's training having just then grown in his mind to finished proportions, he welcomed the child as a subject sent quite providentially to his hand, and proceeded to put his views into practice upon little Phillis. That he did so showed a healthy belief in his own judgment. Some men would have hastened into print with a mere theory. Mr. Dyson intended to wait for twelve years or so, and to write his work on woman's education when Phillis's example might be the triumphant proof of his own soundness. The education conducted on Mr. Dyson's principles and rigidly carried out was approaching completion when it suddenly came to an abrupt termination. Few things in this world quite turn out as we hope and expect. It was on the cards that Abraham Dyson might die before the proof of his theory. This, in fact, happened; and his chief regret at leaving a world where he had been supremely comfortable, and able to enjoy his glass of port to his eightieth and last year, was that he was leaving the girl, the creation of his theory, in an unfinished state.
"Phillis," he said, on his deathbed, "the edifice is now complete,—all but the Coping-stone. Alas, that I could not live to put it on!"
And what the Coping-stone was no man could guess. Great would be the cleverness of him, who seeing a cathedral finished save for roof and upper courses, would undertake to put on these, with all the ornaments, spires, lanterns, gargoyles, pinnacles, flying buttresses, turrets, belfries, and crosses drawn in the dead designer's lost plans.
Abraham Dyson was a wealthy man. Therefore he was greatly respected by all his relations, in spite of certain eccentricities, notably those which forbade him to ask any of them to his house. If the nephews, nieces and cousins wept bitterly on learning their bereavement, deeper and more bitter were their lamentations when they found that Mr. Dyson had left none of them any money.
Not one penny; not a mourning ring; not a single sign or token of affection to one of them. It was a cruel throwing of cold water on the tenderest affections of the heart, and Mr. Dyson's relations were deeply pained. Some of them swore; others felt that in this case it was needless to give sorrow words, and bore their suffering in silence.
Nor did he leave any money to Phillis.
This obstinate old theorist left it all to found a college for girls, who were to be educated in the same manner as Phillis Fleming, and in accordance with the scheme stated to be fully drawn up and among his papers.
Up to the present, Joseph Jagenal had not succeeded in finding the scheme. There were several rolls of paper, forming portions of the great work, but none were finished, and all pointed to the last chapter, that entitled the "Coping-stone," in which, it was stated, would be found the whole scheme with complete fulness of detail. But this last chapter could not be found anywhere. If it never was found, what would become of the will? Then each one of Mr. Dyson's relations began to calculate what might fall to himself out of the inheritance. That was only natural, and perhaps it was not every one who, like Mr. Gabriel Cassilis, openly lamented the number of Mr. Dyson's collateral heirs.
Not to be found. Joseph Jagenal's clerks now engaged in searching everywhere for it, and all the relations praying—all fervently and some with faith—that it might never turn up.
So that poor Phillis is sitting down to dinner with her education unfinished—where is that Coping-stone? Every young lady who has had a finishing year at Brighton may look down upon her. Perhaps, however, as her education has been of a kind quite unknown in polite circles, and she has never heard of a finishing year, she may be calm even in the presence of other young ladies.
What sort of a girl is she?
To begin with, she has fifty thousand pounds. Not the largest kind of fortune, but still something. More than most girls have, more than the average heiress has. Enough to make young Fortunio Hunter prick up his ears, smooth down his moustache, and begin to inquire about guardians; enough to purchase a roomy cottage where Love may be comfortable; enough to enable the neediest wooer, if he be successful, to hang up his hat on the peg behind the door and sit down for the rest of his years. Fifty thousand pounds is a sum which means possibilities. It was her mother's, and, very luckily for her, it was so tied up that Captain Fleming, her father, could not touch more than the interest, which, at three per cent., amounts, as may be calculated, to fifteen hundred a year. Really, after explaining that a young lady has fifty thousand, what further praise is wanted, what additional description is necessary? By contemplation of fifty thousand pounds, ardent youth is inflamed as by a living likeness of Helen. Be she lovely or be she loathly, be she young or old, be she sweet or shrewish—she has fifty thousand pounds.
With her fifty thousand pounds the gods have given Phillis Fleming a tall figure, the lines of which are as delicately curved as those of any yacht in the Solent or of any statue from Greek studio. She is slight, perhaps too slight; she has hair of a common dark brown, but it is fine hair, there is a great wealth of it, it has a gleam and glimmer of its own as the sunlight falls upon it, as if there were a hidden colour lying somewhere in it waiting to be discovered; her eyes, like her hair, are brown—they are also large and lustrous; her lips are full; her features are not straight and regular, like those of women's beauties, for her chin is perhaps a little short, though square and determined; she has a forehead which is broad and rather low; she wears an expression in which good temper, intelligence, and activity are more marked than beauty. She is quick to mark the things that she sees, and she sees everything. Her hands are curious, because they are so small, so delicate, and so sympathetic; while her face is in repose you may watch a passing emotion by the quivering of her fingers, just as you may catch, if you have the luck, the laughter or tears of most girls first in the brightness or the clouding of their eyes.
There are girls who, when we meet them in the street, pass us like the passing of sunshine on an April day; who, if we spend the evening in a room where they are, make us understand something of the warmth which Nature intended to be universal, but has somehow only made special; whom it is a pleasure to serve, whom it is a duty to reverence, who can bring purity back to the brain of a rake, and make a young man's heart blossom like a rose in June.
Of such is Phillis Fleming.
Phillis's Education.
The dinner began without much conversation; partly because the twins were hungry, and partly because they were a little awed by the presence of an unwonted guest in white draperies.
Phillis noted that, so far as she had learned as yet, things of a domestic kind in the outer world were much like things at Mr. Dyson's, that is to say, the furniture of the dining-room was similar, and the dinner was the same. I do not know why she expected it, but she had some vague notion that she might be called upon to eat strange dishes.
"The Böllinger, brother Cornelius," said the artist.
"Thoughtful of you, brother Humphrey," the poet answered. "Miss Fleming, the Böllinger is in your honour."
Phillis looked puzzled. She did not understand where the honour came in. But she tasted her glass.
"It is a little too dry for me," she said with admirable candour. "If you have any Veuve Clicquot, Mr. Jagenal"—she addressed the younger brother—"I should prefer that."
All three perceptibly winced. Jane, the maid, presently returned with a bottle of the sweeter wine. Miss Fleming tasted it critically and pronounced in its favor.
"Mr. Dyson, my guardian," she said, "always used to say the ladies like their wine sweet. At least I do. So he used to drink Perier Jout très sec, and I had Veuve Clicquot."
The poet laid his forefinger upon his brow and looked meditatively at his glass. Then he filled it again. Then he drank it off helplessly. This was a remarkable young lady.
"You have lived a very quiet life," said Joseph, with a note of interrogation in his voice, "with your guardian at Highgate."
"Yes, very quiet. Only two or three gentlemen ever came to the house, and I never went out."
"A fair prisoner, indeed," murmured the poet. "Danae in her tower waiting for the shower of gold."
"Danae must have wished," said Phillis, "when she was put in the box and sent to sea, that the shower of gold had never come."
Cornelius began to regret his allusion to the mythological maid for his classical memory failed, and he could not at the moment recollect what box the young lady referred to. This no doubt came of much poring over Anglo-Saxon Chronicles. But he remembered other circumstances connected with Danae's history, and was silent.
"At least you went out," said Humphrey, "to see the Academy and the Water-colours."
She shook her head.
"I have never seen a picture-gallery at all. I have not once been outside Mr. Dyson's grounds until to-day, since I was six years old."
Humphrey supported his nervous system, like his brother, with another glass of the Böllinger.
"You found your pleasure in reading divine Poetry," said the Maker softly; "perhaps in writing Poetry yourself."
"Oh dear no!" said Phillis. "I have not yet learned to read. Mr. Dyson said that ladies ought not to learn reading till they are of an age when acquiring that mischievous art cannot hurt themselves or their fellow-creatures."
Phillis said this with an air of superior wisdom, as if there could be no disputing the axiom.
Humphrey looked oceans of sympathy at Cornelius, who took out his handkerchief as if to wipe away a tear, but as none was in readiness he only sighed.
"You were taught other things, however?" Joseph asked.
"Yes; I learned to play. My master came twice a week, and I can play pretty well; I play either by ear or by memory. You see," she added simply, "I never forget anything that I am told."
Compensation of civilised nature. We read, and memory suffers. Those who do not read remember. Before wandering minstrels learned to read and write, the whole Iliad was handed down on men's tongues; there are Brahmins who repeat all their Sacred Books word for word without slip or error, and have never learned to read; there are men at Oxford who can tell you the winners of Events for a fabulous period, and yet get plucked for Greats because, as they will tell you themselves, they really cannot read. Phillis did not know how to read. But she remembered—remembered everything; could repeat a poem dictated twice if it were a hundred lines long, and never forgot it; caught up an air and learned how to play it at a sitting.
She could not read. All the world of fiction was lost to her. All the fancies of poets were lost to her; all the records of folly and crime which we call history were unknown to her.
Try to think what, and of what sort, would be the mind of a person, otherwise cultivated, unable to read. In the first place, he would be clear and dogmatic in his views, not having the means of comparison; next, he would be dependent on oral teaching and rumor for his information; he would have to store everything as soon as learned, away in his mind to be lost altogether, unless he knew where to lay his hand upon it; he would hear little of the outer world, and very little would interest him beyond his own circle; he would be in the enjoyment of all the luxuries of civilisation without understanding how they got there; he would be like the Mohammedans when they came into possession of Byzantium, in the midst of things unintelligible, useful, and delightful.
"You will play to us after dinner, if you will be so kind," said Joseph.
"Can it be, Miss Fleming," asked Humphrey, "that you never went outside the house at all?"
"Oh no; I could ride in the paddock. It was a good large field and my pony was clever at jumping; so I got on pretty well."
"Would it be too much to ask you how you managed to get through the day?"
"Not at all," she replied; "it was very easy. I had a ride before breakfast; gave Mr. Dyson his tea at ten; talked with him till twelve; we always talked 'subjects,' you know, and had a regular course. When we had done talking, he asked me questions. Then I probably had another ride before luncheon. In the afternoon I played, looked after my dress, and drew."
"You are, then, an Artist!" cried Humphrey enthusiastically. "Cornelius, I saw from the first that Miss Fleming had the eye of an Artist."
"I do not know about that; I can draw people. I will show you some of my sketches, if you like, to-morrow. They are all heads and figures; I shall draw all of you to-night before going to bed."
"And in the evening?"
"Mr. Dyson dined at seven. Sometimes he had one or two gentlemen to dine with him; never any lady. When there was no one, we talked 'subjects' again."
Never any lady! Here was a young woman, rich, of good family, handsome, and in her way accomplished, who had never seen or talked with a lady, nor gone out of the house save into its gardens, since she was a child.
Yet, in spite of all these disadvantages and the strangeness of her position, she was perfectly self-possessed. When she left the table, the two elder brethren addressed themselves to the bottle of Château Mouton with more rapidity than was becoming the dignity of the wine. Joseph almost immediately joined his ward. When the twins left the dining-room with its empty decanters, and returned arm-in-arm to the drawing-room, they found their younger brother in animated conversation with the girl. Strange that Joseph should so far forget his usual habits as not to go straight to his own room. The two bosoms which heaved in a continual harmony with each other felt a simultaneous pang of jealousy for which there was no occasion. Joseph was only thinking of the Coping stone.
"Did I not feel it strange driving through the streets?" Phillis was saying. "It is all so strange that I am bewildered—so strange and so wonderful. I used to dream of what it was like; my maid told me something about it; but I never guessed the reality. There are a hundred things more than I can ever draw."
It was, as hinted above, the custom of this young person, as it was that of the Mexicans, to make drawings of everything which occurred. She was thus enabled to preserve a tolerably faithful record of her life.
"Show me," said Joseph—"show me the heads of my brothers and myself, that you promised to do, as soon as they are finished."
The brethren sat together on a sofa, the Poet in his favorite attitude of meditation, forefinger on brow; the Artist with his eyes fixed on the fire, catching the effects of colour. Their faces were just a little flushed with the wine they had taken.
One after the other crossed the room and spoke to their guest.
Said Cornelius:
"You are watching my brother Humphrey. Study him, Miss Fleming; it will repay you well to know that childlike and simple nature, innocent of the world, and aglow with the flame of genius."
"I think I can draw him now," said Phillis, looking at the Artist as hard as a turnkey taking Mr. Pickwick's portrait.
Then came Humphrey:
"I see your eyes turned upon my brother Cornelius. He is a great, a noble fellow, Miss Fleming. Cultivate him, talk to him, learn from him. You will be very glad some day to be able to boast that you have met my brother Cornelius. To know him is a Privilege; to converse with him is an Education."
"Come," said Joseph cheerfully, "where is the piano? This is a bachelor's house, but there is a piano somewhere. Have you got it, Cornelius?"
The Poet shook his head, with a soft sad smile.
"Nay," he said, "is a Workshop the place for music? Let us rather search for it in the Realms of Art."
In fact it was in Mr. Humphrey's Studio, whither they repaired. The girl sat down, and as she touched the keys her eyes lit up and her whole look changed. Joseph was the only one of the three who really cared for music. He stood by the fire and said nothing. The brethren on either side of the performer displayed wonders of enthusiastic admiration, each in his own way—the Poet sad and reflective, as if music softened his soul; the Artist with an effervescing gaiety delightful to behold. Joseph was thinking. "Can we"—had his thoughts taken form of speech—"can we reconstruct from the girl's own account the old man's scheme anew, provided the chapter on the Coping-stone be never found? Problem given. A girl brought up in seclusion, without intercourse with any of her sex except illiterate servants, yet bred to be a lady: not allowed even to learn reading, but taught orally, so as to hold her own in talk: required, to discover what the old man meant by it, and what was wanted to finish the structure. Could it be reading and writing? Could Abraham Dyson have intended to finish where all other people begin?"
This solution mightily commended itself to Joseph, and he went to bed in great good spirits at his own cleverness.
In the dead of night he awoke in fear and trembling.
"They will go into Chancery," he thought. "What if the Court refuses to take my view?"
At three in the morning the brethren, long left alone with their pipes, rose to go to bed.
Brandy-and-soda sometimes makes men truthful after the third tumbler, and beguiles them with illusory hopes after the fourth. The twins were at the end of their fourth.
"Cornelius," said the Artist, "she has £50,000."
"She has, brother Humphrey."
"It is a pity, Cornelius, that we, who have only £200 a year each, are already fifty years of age."
"Humphrey, what age do we feel?"
"Thirty. Not a month more," replied the Artist, striking out with both fists at an imaginary foe—probably old Time.
"Right. Not an hour above the thirty," said the Bard, smiting his chest gently. "As for Joseph, he is too old——"
"Very much too old——"
"To think of marrying such a young——"
"Fresh and innocent——"
"Engaging and clever girl as Miss Phillis Fleming."
Did they, then, both intend to marry the young lady?
"To taste the freshness of the morning air."
Phillis retreated to her own room at her accustomed hour of ten. Her nerves were excited; her brain was troubled with the events of this day of emancipation. She was actually in the world, the great world of which her guardian had told her, the world where history was made, where wicked kings, as Mr. Dyson perpetually impressed upon her, made war their play and the people their playthings. She was in the world where all those things were done of which she had only heard as yet. She had seen the streets of London, or some of them—those streets along which had ridden the knights whose pictures she loved to draw, the princesses and queens whose stories Mr. Dyson had taught her; where the business of the world was carried on, and where there flowed up and down the ceaseless stream of those whom necessity spurs to action. As a matter of narrow fact, she had seen nothing but that part of London which lies between Highgate Hill and Carnarvon Square; but to her it seemed the City, the centre of all life, the heart of civilisation. She regretted only that she had not been able to discern the Tower of London. That might be, however, close to Mr. Jagenal's house, and she would look for it in the morning.
What a day! She sat before her fire and tried to picture it all over again. Horses, carriages, carts, and people rushing to and fro; shops filled with the most wonderful exhibition of precious things; eccentric people with pipes, who trundled carts piled with yellow oranges; gentlemen in blue with helmets, who lounged negligently along the streets; boys who ran and whistled; boys who ran and shouted; boys who ran and sold papers; always boys—where were all the girls? Where were they all going? and what were they all wishing to do?
In the evening the world appeared to narrow itself. It consisted of dinner with three elderly gentlemen; one of whom was thoughtful about herself, spoke kindly to her, and asked her about her past life; while the other two—and here she laughed—talked unintelligently about Art and themselves, and sometimes praised each other.
Then she opened her sketch-book and began to draw the portraits of her new friends. And first she produced a faithfuleffigiesof the twins. This took her nearly an hour to draw, but when finished it made a pretty picture. The brethren stood with arms intertwined like two children, with eyes gazing fondly into each other's and heads thrown back, in the attitude of poetic and artistic meditation which they mostly affected. A clever sketch, and she was more than satisfied when she held it up to the light and looked at it, before placing it in her portfolio.
"Mr. Humphrey said I had the eye of an artist," she murmured. "I wonder what he will say when he sees this."
Then she drew the portrait of Joseph. This was easy. She drew him sitting a little forward, playing with his watch-chain, looking at her with deep grave eyes.
Then she closed her eyes and began to recall the endless moving panorama of the London streets. But this she could not draw. There came no image to her mind, only a series of blurred pictures running into each other.
Then she closed her sketch-book, put up her pencils, and went to bed. It was twelve o'clock. Joseph was still thinking over the terms of Mr. Dyson's will and the chapter on the Coping-stone. The twins were taking their third split soda—it was brotherly to divide a bottle, and the mixture was less likely to be unfairly diluted.
Phillis went to bed, but she could not sleep. The steps of the passers-by, the strange room, the excitement of the day kept her awake. She was like some fair yacht suddenly launched from the dock where she had grown slowly to her perfect shape, upon the waters of the harbour, which she takes for the waters of the great ocean.
She looked round her bedroom in Carnarvon Square, and because it was not Highgate, thought it must be the vast, shelterless and unpitying world of which she had so often heard, and at thought of which, brave as she was, she had so often shuddered.
It was nearly three when she fairly slept, and then she had a strange dream. She thought that she was part of the great procession which never ended all day long in the streets, only sometimes a little more crowded and sometimes a little thinner. She pushed and hastened with the rest. She would have liked to stay and examine the glittering things exhibited—the gold and jewelry, the dainty cakes and delicate fruits, the gorgeous dresses in the windows—but she could not. All pushed on, and she with them; there had been no beginning of the rush, and there seemed to be no end. Faces turned round and glared at her—faces which she marked for a moment—they were the same which she had seen in the morning; faces hard and faces hungry; faces cruel and faces forbidding; faces that were bent on doing something desperate—every kind of face except a sweet face. That is a rare thing for a stranger to find in a London street. The soft sweet faces belong to the country. She wondered why they all looked at her so curiously. Perhaps because she was a stranger.
Presently there was a sort of hue and cry and everybody began running, she with them. Oddly enough, they all ran after her. Why? Was that also because she was a stranger? Only the younger men ran, but the rest looked on. The twins, however were both running among the pursuers. The women pointed and flouted at her; the older men nodded, wagged their heads, and laughed. Faster they ran and faster she fled; they distanced, she and her pursuers the crowd behind; they passed beyond the streets and into country fields, where hedges took the place of the brilliant windows; they were somehow back in the old Highgate paddock which had been so long her only outer world. The pursuers were reduced to three or four, among them, by some odd chance, the twin brethren and as one, but who she could not tell, caught up with her and laid his hand upon hers, and she could run no longer and could resist no more, but fell, not with terror at all, but rather a sense of relief and gladness, into a clutch which was like an embrace of a lover for softness and strength, she saw in front of her dead old Abraham Dyson, who clapped his hands and cried, "Well run, well won! The Coping-stone, my Phillis, of your education!"
She woke with a start, and sat up looking round the room. Her dream was so vivid that she saw the group before her very eyes in the twilight—herself, with a figure, dim and undistinguishable in the twilight, leaning over her; and a little distance off old Abraham Dyson himself, standing, as she best remembered him, upright, and with his hands upon his stick. He laughed and wagged his head and nodded it as he said: "Well run, well won, my Phillis; it is the Coping-stone!"
This was a very remarkable dream for a young lady of nineteen. Had she told it to Joseph Jagenal it might have led his thoughts into a new channel.
She rubbed her eyes, and the vision disappeared. Then she laid her head again upon the pillow, just a little frightened at her ghosts, and presently dropped off to sleep.
This time she had no more dreams; but she awoke soon after it was daybreak, being still unquiet in her new surroundings.
And now she remembered everything with a rush. She had left Highgate; she was in Carnarvon Square; she was in Mr. Joseph Jagenal's house; she had been introduced to two gentlemen, one of whom was said to have a child-like nature all aglow with the flame of genius, while the other was described as a great, a noble fellow, to know whom was a Privilege and to converse with whom was an Education.
She laughed when she thought of the pair. Like Nebuchadnezzar, she had forgotten her dream. Unlike that king, she did not care to recall it.
The past was gone. A new life was about to begin. And the April sun was shining full upon her window-blinds.
Phillis sprang from her bed and tore open the curtains with eager hand. Perhaps facing her might be the Tower of London. Perhaps the Thames, the silver Thames, with London Bridge. Perhaps St. Paul's Cathedral, "which Christopher Wren built in place of the old one destroyed by the Great Fire." Phillis's facts in history were short and decisive like the above.
No Tower of London at all. No St. Paul's Cathedral. No silver Thames. Only a great square with houses all round. Carnarvon Square at dawn. Not, perhaps, a fairy piece, but wonderful in its novelty to this newly emancipated cloistered nun, with whom a vivid sense of the beautiful had grown up by degrees in her mind, fed only in the pictures supplied by the imagination. She knew the trees that grew in Lord Manfield's park, beyond the paddock; she could catch in fine days a glimpse of the vast city that stretches itself out from the feet of breezy Highgate; she knew the flowers of her own garden; and for the rest—she imagined it. River, lake, mountain, forest, and field, she knew them only by talk with her guardian. And the mighty ocean she knew because her French maid had crossed it when she quitted fair Normandy, and told her again and again of the horrors encountered by those who go down to the sea in ships.
So that a second garden was a new revelation. Besides it was bright and pretty. There were the first flowers of spring, gay tulips and pretty things, whose name she did not know or could not make out from the window. The shrubs and trees were green with the first sweet chlorine foliage of April, clear and fresh from the broken buds which lay thick upon the ground, the tender leaflets as yet all unsullied by the London smoke.
The pavement was deserted, because it was as yet too early for any one, even a milk-boy, to be out. The only living person to be seen was a gardener, already at work among the plants.
A great yearning came over her to be out in the open air and among the flowers. At Highgate she rose at all hours; worked in the garden; saddled and rode her pony in the field; and amused herself in a thousand ways before the household rose, subject to no restraint or law but one—that she was not to open the front-door, or venture herself in the outer world.
"Mr. Jagenal said I was to do as I liked," she said, hesitating. "It cannot be wrong to go out of the front-door now. Besides," reasoning here like a casuist, "perhaps it is the back-door which leads to that garden."
In a quarter of an hour she was ready. She was not one of those young ladies who, because no one is looking at them, neglect their personal appearance. On the contrary, she always dressed for herself; therefore, she always dressed well.
This morning she wore a morning costume, all one colour, and I think it was gray, but am not quite certain. It was in the graceful fashion of last year, lying in long curved lines, and fitting closely to her slender and tall figure. A black ribbon was tied round her neck, and in her hat—the hats of last year did not suit every kind of face, but they suited the face of Phillis Fleming—she wore one of those bright little birds whose destruction for the purposes of fashion we all deplore. In her hand she carried, as if she were still at Highgate and going to saddle her pony, a small riding-whip. And thus she opened the door, and slid down the stairs of the great silent house as stealthily and almost as fearfully as the Lady Godiva on a certain memorable day. It was a ghostly feeling which came over her when she ran across the broad hall, and listened to the pattering of her own feet upon the oilcloth. The broad daylight streamed through theréverbère; but yet the place seemed only half lit up. The closed doors on either hand looked as if dreadful things lurked behind them. With something like a shudder she let down the door-chain, unbarred the bolts, and opened the door. As she passed through she was aware of a great rush across the hall behind her. It was Cæsar, the mastiff. Awakened by a noise as of one burgling, he crept swiftly and silently up the kitchen-stairs, with intent to do a desperate deed of valour, and found to his rapturous joy that it was only the young lady, she who came the night before, and that she was going out for an early morning walk—a thing he, for his part, had not been permitted to do for many, many moons, not since he had been brought—a puppy yet, and innocent—to the heart of London.
No one out at all except themselves. What joy! Phillis shut the door very carefully behind her, looked up and down the street, and then running down the steps, seized the happy Cæsar by the paws and danced round and round with him upon the pavement. Then they both ran a race. She ran like Atalanta, but Cæsar led till the finish, when out of a courtesy more than Castilian, he allowed himself to be beaten, and Phillis won by a neck. This result pleased them both, and Phillis discovered that her race had brought her quite to the end of one side of the square. And then, looking about her, she perceived that a gate of the garden was open, and went in, followed by Cæsar, now in the seventh heaven. This was better, better, than leading a pair of twins who sometimes tied knots with their legs. The gate was left open by the under-gardener, who had arisen thus early in the morning with a view to carrying off some of the finer tulips for himself. They raced and chased each other up and down the gravel walks between the lilacs and laburnums bursting into blossom. Presently they came to the under-gardener himself, who was busy potting a selection of the tulips. He stared as if at a ghost. Half-past five in the morning, and a young lady, with a dog, looking at him!
He stiffened his upper lip, and put the spade before the flower-pots.
"Beg pardon, miss. No dogs allowed. On the rules, miss."
"William," she replied—for she was experienced in undergardeners, knew that they always answer to the name of William, also that they are exposed to peculiar temptations in the way of bulb—"William, for whom you are potting those tulips?"
Then, because the poor youth's face was suffused and his countenance was "unto himself for a betrayal," she whistled—actually whistled—to Cæsar, and ran on laughing.
"Here's a rum start," said William. "A young lady as knows my name, what I'm up to and all, coming here at five o clock in the blessed morning when all young ladies as I ever heard of has got their noses in their pillowses—else 'tain't no good being a young lady. Ketches me a disposin' of the toolups. With a dawg, and whistles like a young nobleman."
He began putting back the flowers.
"No knowin' who she mayn't tell, nor what she mayn't say. It's dangerous, William."
By different roads, Montaigne wrote, we arrive at the same end. William's choice of the path of virtue was in this case due to Phillis's early visit.
"Te duce Cæsar."
Tired of running, the girl began to walk. It was an April morning, when the east wind for once had forgotten to blow. Walking, she whistled one of the ditties that she knew. She had a very superior mode of performing on that natural piccolo-flute, the human mouth; it was a way of her own, not at all like the full round whistle of the street-boy, with as much volume as in a bottle of '51 port, as full of unmeaning sound as a later poem of Robert Browning's, and as unmelodious as the instrument on which that poet has always played. Quite the contrary. Phillis's whistle was of a curious delicacy and of a bullfinch-like note, only more flexible. She trilled out an old English ditty, "When Love was young," first simply, and then with variations. Presently, forgetting that she was not in the old paddock, she began to sing it in her fresh young voice, William the under-gardener and Cæsar the dog her only audience. They were differently affected. William grew sad, thinking of his sins. The dog wagged his tail and rushed round and round the singer by way of appreciation. Music saddens the guilty, but maketh glad those who are clear of conscience.
It was half past six when she became aware that she was getting hungry. In the old times it was easy to descend to the kitchen and make what Indian people call achota hazri, a little breakfast for herself. Now she was not certain whether, supposing the servants were about, her visit would be well received; or, supposing they were not yet up, she should know where to find the kettle, the tea, and the firewood.
She left the garden, followed by Cæsar, who was also growing hungry after his morning walk, and resolved on going straight home.
There were two objections to this.
First, she did not know one house from another, and they were all alike. Second, she did not know the number, and could not have read it had she known it.
Mr. Jagenal's door was painted a dark brown; so were they all. Mr. Jagenal's door had a knocker; so had they all. Could she go all round the square knocking at every door, and waking up the people to ask if Mr. Jagenal lived there? She knew little of the world, but it did occur to her that it would seem unconventional for a young lady to "knock in" at six in the morning. She did not, most unfortunately, think of asking William the under-gardener.
She turned to the dog.
"Now, Cæsar," she said, "take me home."
Cæsar wagged his tail, nodded his head, and started off before her at a smart walk, looking round now and then to see that his charge was following.
"Lucky," said Phillis, "that I thought of the dog."
Cæsar proceeded with great solemnity to cross the road, and began to march down the side of the square, Phillis expecting him to stop at every house. But he did not. Arrived at the corner where Carnarvon Street strikes off the square he turned aside, and looking round to see that his convoy was steering the same course, he trudged sturdily down that thoroughfare.
"This cannot be right," thought Phillis. But she was loath to leave the dog, for to lose him would be to lose everything, and she followed. Perhaps he knew of a back way. Perhaps he would take her for a little walk, and show her the Tower of London.
Cæsar, no longer running and bounding around her, walked on with the air of one who has an important business on hand, and means to carry it through. Carnarvon Street is long, and of the half-dismal, half-genteel order of Bloomsbury, Cæsar walked halfway down the street. Then he suddenly came to a dead stop. It was in front of a tavern, the Carnarvon Arms, the door of which, for it was an early house, was already open, and the potboy was taking down the shutters. The fact that the shutters were only half down made the dog at first suspect that there was something wrong. The house, as he knew it, always had the shutters down and the portals open. As, however, there seemed no unlawfulness of licensed hours to consider, the dog marched into the bar without so much as looking to see if Phillis was following, and immediately lay down with his head on his paws.
"Why does he go in there?" said Phillis. "And what is the place?"
She pushed the door, which, as usual in such establishments, hung half open by means of a leathern strap, and looked in. Nobody in the place but Cæsar. She entered, and tried to understand where she was. A smell of stale beer and stale tobacco hanging about the room smote her senses, and made her sick and faint. She saw the bottles and glasses, the taps and the counters, and she understood—she was in a drinking-place, one of the wicked dens of which her guardian sometimes spoke. She was in a tavern, that is, a place where workmen spend their earnings and leave their families to starve. She looked round her with curiosity and a little fear.
Presently she became aware of the early-risen potboy, who, having taken down the shutters, was proceeding about his usual work behind the bar, when his eyes fell upon the astonishing sight of a young lady, a real young lady, as he saw at once, standing in the Bottle and Jug department. He then observed the dog, and comprehended that she was come there after Cæsar, and not for purposes of refreshment.
"Why, miss," he said, "Cæsar thinks he's out with the two gentlemen. He brings them here regular, you see, every morning, and they takes their little glass, don't they, Cæsar?"
Probably—thought watchful Phillis, anxious to learn,—probably a custom of polite life which Mr. Dyson had neglected to teach her. And yet he always spoke with such bitterness of public-houses.
"Will you take a drop of somethink, miss?" asked the polite assistant, tapping the handles hospitably. "What shall it be?"
"I should like——" said Phillis.
"To be sure, it's full early," the man went on, "for a young lady and all. But Lor' bless your 'art, it's never none too early for most, when they've got the coin. Give it a name, miss, and there, the guvnor he isn't hup, and we won't chalk it down to you, nor never ask you for the money. On'y give it a name."
"Thank you very much," said Phillis. "Ishouldlike to have a cup of tea, if I could take it outside."
He shook his head, a gesture of disappointment.
"It can't be had here. Tea!"—as if he had thought better things of so much beauty—"Tea! Swipes! After all, miss, it's your way, and no doubt you don't know no better. There's a Early Caufy-'ouse a little way up the street. You must find it for yourself, because the dawg he don't know it; knows nothink about Tea, that dawg. You go out, miss, and Cæsar he'll go to."
Phillis thanked him again for his attention, and followed his advice. Cæsar instantly got up and sallied forth with her. Instead, however, of returning to the square, he went straight on down Carnarvon Street, still leading the way. Turning first to the right and then to the left, he conducted Phillis through what seemed a labyrinth of streets. These were mostly streets of private houses, not of the best, but rather of the seediest. It was now nearly seven o'clock, and the signs of life were apparent. The paper-boy was beginning, with the milk-man, his rounds; the postman's foot was preparing for the first turn on his daily treadmill of doorsteps and double knocks. The workmen, paid by time, were strolling to their hours of idleness with bags of tools; windows were thrown open here and there; and an early servant might be seen rejoicing to bang her mats at the street-door. Phillis tried to retain her faith in Cæsar, and followed obediently. It was easy to see that the dog knew where he was going, and had a distinct purpose in his mind. It was to be hoped, she thought, that his purpose included a return home as soon as possible, because she was getting a little tired.
Streets—always streets. Who were the people who lived in them all? Could there be in every house the family life of which Mr. Dyson used to tell her—the life she had never seen, but which he promised she should one day see—the sweet life where father and mother and children live together and share their joys and sorrows? She began to look into the windows as she walked along, in the hope of catching a hasty glance at so much of the family life as might be seen so early in the morning.
She passed one house where the family were distinctly visible gathered together in the front kitchen. She stopped and looked down through the iron railings. The children were seated at the table. The mother was engaged in some cooking operations at the fire. Were they about to sing a hymn and to have family prayers before their breakfast? Not at this house apparently, for the woman suddenly turned from her occupation at the fire and, without any adequate motive that Phillis could discern, began boxing the children's ears all round. Instantly there arose a mighty cry from those alike who had already been boxed and those who sat expectant of their turn. Evidently this was one of the houses where the family life was not a complete success. The scene jarred on Phillis, upsetting her pretty little Arcadian castle of domestic happiness. She felt disappointed, and hurried on after her conductor.
It is sad to relate that Cæsar presently entered another public-house. This time Phillis went in after him with no hesitation at all. She encountered the landlord in person, who greeted the dog, asked him what he was doing so early, and then explained to Miss Fleming that he was accustomed to call at the house every day about noon, accompanied by two gentlemen, who had their little whack and then went away; and that she only had to go through the form of coming and departing in order to get Cæsar out too.
"Little whack," thought Phillis. "Little glass! What a lot of customs and expressions I have to learn!"
For those interested in the sagacity of dogs, or in comparative psychology, it may be noted as a remarkable thing that when Cæsar came out of that second public-house he hesitated, as one struck suddenly with a grievous doubt. Had he been doing right? He took a few steps in advance, then he looked round and stopped, then he looked up and down the street. Finally he came back to Phillis, and asked for instructions with a wistful gaze.
Phillis turned round and said, "Home, Cæsar." Then, after barking twice, Cæsar led the way back again with alacrity and renewed confidence.
He not only led the way home, but he chose a short cut known only to himself. Perhaps he thought his charge might be tired; perhaps he wished to show her some further varieties of English life.
In the districts surrounding Bloomsbury are courts which few know except the policeman; even that dauntless functionary is chary of venturing himself into them, except in couples, and then he would rather stay outside, if only out of respect to a playful custom, of old standing, prevalent among the inhabitants. They keep flower-pots on their first and second floors, and when a policeman passes through the court they drop them over. If no one is hurt, there is no need of an apology; if a constable receives the projectile on his head or shoulder, it is a deplorable accident which those who have caused it are the first to publicly lament. It was through a succession of these courts that the dog led Phillis.
Those of the men who had work to do were by this time gone to do it. Those who had none, together with those who felt strongly on the subject of Adam's curse and therefore wished for none, stayed at home and smoked pipes, leaning against the doorposts. The ideal heaven of these noble Englishmen is for ever to lean against doorposts and for ever to smoke pipes in a land where it is always balmy morning, and where there are "houses" handy into which they can slouch from time to time for a drink.
The ladies, their consorts, were mostly engaged in such household occupations as could be carried on out of doors and within conversation reach of each other. The court was therefore musical with sweet feminine voices.