One morning, two or three months after Henry had left home, old Mr. Lingard came to him as he sat bent, drearily industrious, over some accounts, and said that he wished him in half-an-hour's time to go with him to a new client; and presently the two set out together, Henry wondering what it was to be, and welcoming anything that even exchanged for a while one prison-house for another.
"I am taking you," said the old man, as they walked along together, "to a firm of carriers and carters whose affairs have just come into our hands; there is a dispute arisen between the partners. We represent certain interests, as I shall presently explain to you, and you are to beourrepresentative,--our man in possession," and the old gentleman laughed uncannily.
"You never expected to be a man in possession, did you?"
Henry thrilled with a sense of awful intimacy, thus walking and even jesting with his august employer.
"It may very likely be a long business," the old man continued; "and I fear may be a little dull for you. For you must be on the spot all day long. Your lunch will be served to you from the manager's house; I will see to that. Actually, there will be very little for you to do, beyond looking over the day-book and receipts for the day. The main thing is for you to be there,--so to say, the moral effect of your presence,"--and the old gentleman laughed again. Then, with an amused sympathy that seemed almost exquisite to Henry, he chuckled out, looking at him, from one corner of his eye, like a roguish skeleton--
"You'll be able to write as much poetry as you like. I see you've got a book with you. Well, it will keep you awake. I don't mind that,--or even the poetry,--so long as you don't forget the day-book."
"Thank you, sir," said Henry, almost hysterically.
"I suppose," the old man continued, presently, and in all he said there was a tone of affectionate banter that quite won Henry's heart, "that you're still as set on literature as ever. Well, well, far be it from me to discourage you; but, my dear boy, you'll find out that we can't live on dreams." (Henry thought, but didn't dare to say, that it was dreams alone that made it possible to live at all.) "I suppose you think I'm a dried-up old fellow enough. Well, well, I've had my dreams too. Yes, I've had my dreams,"--Henry thought of what he had discovered that day in the old man's diary,--"and I've written my verses to my lady's eyebrow in my time too. Ah, my boy, we are all young and foolish once in our lives!" and it was evident what a narrow and desperate escape from being a poet the old man had had.
They had some distance to walk, for the stables to which they were bound were situated in an old and rather disreputable part of the town. "It's not a nice quarter," said Mr. Lingard, "not particularly salubrious or refined," as bad smells and dirty women began to cross their path; "but they are nice people you've got to deal with, and the place itself is clean and nice enough, when you once get inside."
"Here we are," he said, presently, as they stopped short of an old-fashioned house, set in a high red-brick wall which seemed to enclose quite a considerable area of the district. In the wall, a yard or two from the house, was set a low door, with a brass bell-pull at the side which answered to Mr. Lingard's summons with a far-off clang. Soon was heard the sound of hob-nailed boots, evidently over a paved yard, and a big carter admitted them to the enclosure, which immediately impressed them with its sense of country stable-yard cleanliness, and its country smell of horses and provender. The stones of the courtyard seemed to have been individually washed and scoured, and a small space in front of a door evidently leading to the house was chalked over in the prim, old-fashioned way.
"Is Mr. Flower about?" asked Mr. Lingard; and, as he asked the question, a handsome, broad-shouldered man of about forty-five came down the yard. It was a massive country face, a little heavy, a little slow, but exceptionally gentle and refined.
"Good-morning, Mr. Lingard."
"Good-morning, Mr. Flower. This is our representative, Mr. Mesurier, of whom I have already spoken to you. I'm sure you will get on well together; and I'm sure he will give you as little trouble as possible."
Henry and Mr. Flower shook hands, and, as men sometimes do, took to each other at once in the grasp of each other's hands, and the glances which accompanied it.
Then the three walked further up the yard, to the little office where Henry was to pass the next few weeks; and as Mr. Lingard turned over books, and explained to Henry what he was expected to do, the sound of horses kicking their stalls, and rattling chains in their mangers, came to him from near at hand with a delightful echo of the country.
When Mr. Lingard had gone, Mr. Flower asked Henry if he'd care to look at the horses. Henry sympathetically consented, though his knowledge of horse-flesh hardly equalled his knowledge of accounts. But with the healthy animal, in whatever form, one always feels more or less at home, as one feels at home with the green earth, or that simple creature the sea.
Mr. Flower led the way to a long stable where some fifty horses protruded brown and dappled haunches on either hand. It was all wonderfully clean and sweet, and the cobbled pavement, the straw beds, the hay tumbling in sweet-scented bunches into the stalls from the loft overhead, made you forget that around this bucolic enclosure swarmed and rotted the foulest slums of the city, garrets where coiners plied their amateur mints, and cellars where murderers lay hidden in the dark.
"It's like a breath of the country," said Henry, unconsciously striking the right note.
"You're right there," said Mr. Flower, at the same moment heartily slapping the shining side of a big chestnut mare, after the approved manner of men who love horses. To thus belabour a horse on its hinder-parts would seem to be equivalent among the horse-breeding fraternity to chucking a buxom milkmaid under the chin.
"You're right there," he said; "and here's a good Derbyshire lass for you," once more administering a sounding caress upon his sleek favourite.
The horse turned its head and whinnied softly at the attention; and it was evident it loved the very sound of Mr. Flower's voice.
"Have you ever been to Derbyshire?" asked Mr. Flower, presently, and Henry immediately scented an idealism in the question.
"No," he answered; "but I believe it's a beautiful county."
"Beautiful's no name for it," said Mr. Flower; "it's just a garden."
And as Henry caught a glance of his eyes, he realised that Derbyshire was Mr. Flower's poetry,--the poetry of a countryman imprisoned in the town,--and that when he died he just hoped to go to Derbyshire.
"Ah, there are places there,--places like Miller's Dale, for instance,--I'd rather take my hat off to than any bishop,"--and Henry eagerly scented something of a thinker; "for God made them for sure, and bishops--well--" and Mr. Flower wisely left the rest unsaid.
Thus they made the tour of the stables; and though Henry's remarks on the subject of slapped horse-flesh had been anything but those of an expert, it was tacitly agreed that Mr. Flower and he had taken to each other. Nor, as he presently found, were Mr. Flower's interests limited to horses.
"You're a reader, I see," he said, presently, when they had returned to the office. "Well, I don't get much time to read nowadays; but there's nothing I enjoy better, when I've got a pipe lit of an evening, than to sit and listen to my little daughter reading Thackeray or George Eliot."
Of course Henry was interested.
"Now there was a woman who knew country life," Mr. Flower continued. "'Silas Marner,' or 'Adam Bede.' How wonderfully she gets at the very heart of the people! And not only that, but the very smell of country air."
And Mr. Flower drew a long breath of longing for Miller's Dale.
Henry mentally furbished up his George Eliot to reply.
"And 'The Mill on the Floss'?" he said.
"And 'Scenes from Clerical Life,'" said Mr. Flower. "There are some rare strokes of nature there."
And so they went on comparing notes, till a little blue-eyed girl of about seventeen appeared, carrying a dainty lunch for Henry, and telling Mr. Flower that his own lunch was ready.
"This is my daughter of whom I spoke," said Mr. Flower.
"She who reads Thackeray and George Eliot to you?" said the Man in Possession; and, when they had gone, he said to himself "What a bright little face!"
Little Miss Flower continued to bring Henry his lunch with great punctuality each day; and each day he found himself more and more interested in its arrival, though when it had come he ate it with no special haste. Indeed, sometimes it almost seemed that it had served its purpose in merely having been brought, judging by the moments of reverie in which Henry seemed to have forgotten it, and to be thinking of something else.
Yes, he had soon begun to watch for that bright little face, and it was hardly to be wondered at; for, particularly come upon against such a background, the face had something of the surprise of an apparition. It seemed all made of light; and when one o'clock had come, and Henry heard the expected footsteps of his little waiting-maid, and the tinkle of the tray she carried, coming up the yard, her entrance was as though some one had carried a lamp into the dark office. Surely it was more like the face of a spirit than that of a little human girl, and you would almost have expected it to shine in the dark. When you got used to the light of it, you realised that the radiance poured from singularly, even disproportionately, large blue eyes, set beneath a broad white brow of great purity, and that what at first had seemed rays of light around her head was a mass of sunny gold-brown hair which glinted even in shadow.
Strange indeed are the vagaries of the Spirit of Beauty! From how many high places will she turn away, yet delight to waste herself upon a slum like this! How fantastic the accident that had brought such a face to flower in such a spot!--and yet hardly more fantastic, he reflected, than that which had sown his own family haphazard where they were. Was it the ironic fate of power to be always a god in exile, turning mean wheels with mighty hands; and was Cinderella the fable of the eternal lot of beauty in this capriciously ordered world?
Yes, what chance wind, blowing all the way from Derbyshire, had set down Mr. Flower with his little garden of girls in this uncongenial spot? For by this Henry had made the acquaintance of the whole family: Mr. and Mrs. Flower and four daughters in all,--all pretty girls, but not one of the others with a face like that,--which was another puzzle. How is it that out of one family one will be chosen by the Spirit of Beauty or genius, and the others so unmistakably left? There could be no doubt as to whom had been chosen here.
One day the step coming up the yard at one o'clock seemed to be different, and when the door opened it was another sister who had brought his lunch that day. Her eldest sister was ill, she explained, and in bed; and it was so for the next day, and again the next. Could it be possible that Henry had watched so eagerly for that little face, that he missed it so much already?
The next morning he bought some roses on his way through town, and begged that they might be allowed to brighten her room; and the next day surely it was the same light little tread once more coming up the yard. Joy! she was better again. She looked pale, he said anxiously, and ventured to say too that he had missed her. As she blushed and looked down, he saw that she wore one of his roses in her bosom.
He had already begun to lend her books, which she returned, always with some clever little criticism, often girlishly naïve, but never merely conventional. There were brains under her bright hair. One day Henry had run out of literature, and asked her if she could lend him a book. Anything,--some novel he had read before; it didn't matter. Oh, yes, he hadn't read George Eliot for ever so long. Had she "The Mill on the Floss"? Yes, it had been a present from her father. She would bring that. As she lingered a moment, while Henry looked at the book, his eye fell upon a name on the title-page: "Angel Flower."
"Is that your name, Miss Flower?" he said.
"Yes; father wrote it there. My real name is Angelica; but they call me Angel, for short," she answered, smiling.
"Are you surprised?" said Henry, suddenly blushing like a girl, as though he had never ventured on such a small gallantry before. "Angelica! How did you come to get such a beautiful name?"
"Father loves beautiful names, and his grandmother was called Angelica."
"I wonder if I might call you Angelica?" presently ventured Henry, in a low voice.
"Do you think you know me well enough?" said Angelica, with a little gasp, which was really joy, in her breath.
Henry didn't answer; but their eyes met in a long, still look. In each heart behind the stillness was a storm of indescribable sweetness. Henry leaned forward, his face grown very pale, and impulsively took Angelica's hand,--
"I think, after all, I'd rather call you Angel," he said.
The gardens of Sidon had a curious habit of growing laurel-trees; laurels and rhododendrons were the only wear in shrubs. Rhododendrons one can understand. They are to the garden what mahogany is to the front parlour,--thebourgeoisieof the vegetable kingdom. But the laurel,--what use could they have for laurel in Sidon? Possibly they supplied it to the rest of the world,--market-gardeners, so to say, to the Temple of Fame; it could hardly be for home consumption. Well, at all events, it was a peculiarity fortunate for Esther's purpose, as one morning, soon after breakfast, she went about the garden cutting the glossiest branches of the distinguished tree. As she filled her arms with them, she recalled with a smile the different purpose for which, dragged at the heels of one of Henry's enthusiasms, she had gathered them several years before.
At that period Henry had been a mighty entomologist; and, as the late summer came on, he and all available sisters would set out, armed with butterfly-nets and other paraphernalia, just before twilight, to the nearest woodland, where they would proceed to daub the trees with an intoxicating preparation of honey and rum,--a temptation to which moths were declared in text-books to be incapable of resistance. Then, as night fell, Henry would light his bull's-eye, and cautiously visit the various snares. It was a sight worth seeing to come upon those little night-clubs of drunken and bewildered moths, hanging on to the sweetness with tragic gluttony,--an easy prey for Henry's eager fingers, which, as greedy of them as they of the honey, would seize and thrust them into the lethal chamber, in the form of a cigar-box loosely filled with bruised laurel leaves, which hung by a strap from his shoulder.
It was for such exciting employment that Esther had once gathered laurel leaves. And, once again, she remembered gathering them one Shakespeare's birthday, to crown a little bust in Henry's study. The sacred head had worn them proudly all day, and they all had a feeling that somehow Shakespeare must know about it, and appreciate the little offering; just as even to-day one might bring roses and myrtle, or the blood of a maiden dove to Venus, and expect her to smile upon our affairs of the heart.
But it was for a dearer purpose that Esther was gathering them this morning. That coming evening Mike was to utter his first stage-words in public. The laurel was to crown the occasion on which Mike was to make that memorable utterance: "That's a pie as is a pie, is that there pie!"
Now while Esther was busily weaving this laurel into a wreath, Henry was busily weaving the best words he could find into a sonnet to accompany the wreath. When Angel duly brought him his lunch, it was finished, and lay about on his desk in rags and tatters of composition. Angel was going to the performance with her sisters,--for all these young people were fond of advertising each other, and he had soon told her about Mike,--so she was interested to hear the sonnet. Whatever other qualities poetry may lack, the presence of generous sincerity will always give it a certain value, to all but the merely supercilious; and this sonnet, boyish in its touches of grandiloquence, had yet a certain pathos of strong feeling about it.
Not unto him alone whom loud acclaimDeclares the victor does the meed belong,For others, standing silent in the throng,May well be worthier of a nobler fame;And so, dear friend, although unknown thy nameUnto the shouting herd, we would give tongueTo our deep thought, and the world's great amongBy this symbolic laurel thee proclaim.And if, perchance, the herd shall find thee outIn coming time, and many a nobler crownTo one they love to honour gladly throw;Wilt thou not turn thee from their eager shout,And whisper o'er these leaves, then sere and brown:'Thou'rt late, O world! love knew it long ago?'
The reader will probably agree with Angel in considering the last line the best. But, of course, she thought the whole was wonderful.
"How wonderful it must be to be able to write!" she said, with a look in her face which was worth all the books ever written.
"And how wonderful even to have something written to one like that!"
"Surely that must have happened to you," said Henry, slyly.
"You're only laughing at me."
"No, I'm not. You don't know what may have been written to you. Poems may quite well have been written to you without your having heard of them. The poet mayn't have thought them worthy of you."
"What nonsense! Why, I don't know any poets!"
"Oh!" said Henry.
"I mean, except you."
"And how do you know that I haven't written a whole book full of poems to you? I've known you--how long now?"
"Two months next Monday," said Angel, with that chronological accuracy on such matters which seems to be a special gift of women in love. Men in love are nothing like so accurate.
"Well, that's long enough, isn't it? And I've had nothing else to do, you know."
"But you don't care enough about me?"
"You never know."
"But tell me really, have you written something for me?"
"Ah, you'd like to know now, wouldn't you?"
"Of course I would. Tell me. It would make me very happy."
"It really would?"
"You know it would."
"But why?"
"It would."
"But you couldn't care for the poetry, unless you cared for the poet?"
"Oh, I don't know. Poetry's poetry, isn't it, whoever makes it? But what if I did care a little for the poet?"
"Do you mean you do, Angel?"
"Ah, you want to know now, don't you?"
"Tell me. Do tell me."
"I'll tell you when you read me my poem," and as Angel prepared to run off with a laugh, Henry called after her,--
"You will really? It's a bargain?"
"Yes, it's a bargain," she called back, as she tripped off again down the yard.
Mike'sdébutwas as great a success as so small a part could make it; and the main point about it was the excitement of knowing that this was an actual beginning. He had made them all laugh and cry in drawing-rooms for ever so long; but to-night he was on the stage, the real stage--real, at all events, for him, for Mike could never be an amateur. Esther's eyes filled with glad tears as the well-loved little figure popped in, with a baker's paper hat on his head, and delivered the absurd words; and if you had looked at Henry's face too, you would have been at a loss to know which loved the little pastry-cook's boy best.
When Mike returned to his dressing-room, a mysterious box was awaiting him. He opened it, and found Esther's wreath and Henry's sonnet.
"God bless them," he said.
No doubt it was very childish and sentimental, and old-fashioned; but these young people certainly loved each other.
As Mike had left the stage, Henry had turned round and smiled at some one a few seats away. Esther had noticed him, and looked in the same direction.
"Who was that you bowed to, Henry?"
"I'll tell you another time," he said; for he had a good deal to tell her about Angel Flower.
The Man in Possession was becoming more and more a favourite at Mr. Flower's. One day Mr. Flower, taking pity on his loneliness, suggested that he might possibly prefer to have his lunch in company with them all down at the house. Henry gladly embraced the proposal, and thus became the daily honoured guest of a family, each member of which had some simple human attraction for him. He had already won the heart of simple Mrs. Flower, few and brief as had been his encounters with her, and that heart she had several times coined in unexpected cakes and other dainties of her own making; but when he thus became partially domiciled with the family, she was his slave outright. There was a reason for this, which will need, and may perhaps excuse, a few lines entirely devoted to Mrs. Flower, who, on her own peculiar merits, deserves them.
Perhaps to introduce Eliza Flower in this way is to take her more seriously than any of her affectionate acquaintance were able to do. For, somehow, people had a bad habit of laughing at Mrs. Flower, though they admitted she was the hardest-working, best-hearted little housewife in the world. Housewife in fact she wasin excelsis, not to sayad absurdum. No little woman who worked herself to skin-and-bone to keep things straight, and the home comfortable, was ever a more typical "squaw." Whatever her religious opinions, which, one may be sure, were inflexibly orthodox, there can be no question that Mr. Flower was her god, and, as the hymn says, heaven was her home. To serve God and Mr. Flower were to her the same thing; and there can be little doubt that a god who had no socks to darn, or linen to keep spotless, was a god whom Mrs. Flower would have found it impossible to conceive.
A more complete and delighted absorption in the physical comforts and nourishments of the human creature than Mrs. Flower's, it would be impossible for dreamer to imagine. Such an absolute adjustment between a being of presumably infinite aspirations and immortal discontents and its environment, is a happiness seldom encountered by philosophers. To think of death for poor Mrs. Flower was to conceive a homelessness peculiarly pathetic; unless, indeed, there are kitcheners to superintend, beds to make, rooms to "turn out," and four spring-cleanings a year in heaven. Of what use else was the bewildering gift of immortality to one who was touchingly mortal in all her tastes? Indeed, Henry used to say that Mrs. Flower was the most convincing argument against the immortality of the soul that he had ever met.
Yet, though it was quite evident that there was nothing in the world else she cared so much to do, and though indeed it was equally evident that she was one of the best-natured little creatures in the world, she did not deny herself a certain more or less constant asperity of reference to occupations which kept her on her feet from morning till night, and made her the slave of the whole house, in spite of four big idle daughters. And she with rheumatism too, so bad that she could hardly get up and down stairs!
Probably nothing so much as Henry's respectful sympathy for this immemorial rheumatism had contributed to win Mrs. Flower's heart. As to the precise amount of rheumatism from which Mrs. Flower suffered, Henry soon realised that there seemed to be an irreverent scepticism in the family, nothing short of heartless; for rheumatism so poignantly expressive, so movingly dramatised, he never remembered to have met. Mrs. Flower could not walk across the floor without grimaces of pain, or piteous indrawings of her breath; and yet demonstrations that you might have thought would have softened stones, left her unfeeling audience not only unmoved, but apparently even unobservant. From sheer decency, Henry would flute out something to show that her suffering was not lost on him; but it is to be feared the young ones would only wink at each other at this sign of unsophistication.
"Oh, you unfeeling child!" Mrs. Flower would exclaim, as sometimes she caught them exchanging comments in this way. "And your father, there, is just as bad," she would say, impatient to provoke somebody.
This remark would probably prompt Mr. Flower to the indulgence of a form of matrimonial banter which was not unlike the endearments he bestowed upon his horses, and which, when you knew that he loved the little quaint woman with all his heart, you were able to translate into more customary modes of affection.
"Yes, indeed," he would say, "it's evidently time I was looking out for some active young woman, Eliza--when you begin limping about like that. It's a pity, but the best of us must wear out some day--"
This superficially heartless pleasantry he would deliver with a sweeping wink at Henry and his four girls; but Mrs. Flower would see nothing to laugh at, for humour was not her strong point.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Ralph," she said, "before the children. I was once young and active enough to take your fancy, anyhow. Mr. Mesurier, won't you have a little more spinach? Do; it's fresh from the country this morning. You mustn't mind Mr. Flower. He's fond of his joke; and, whatever he likes to say, he'd get on pretty badly without his old Eliza."
"Gracious, no!" Mr. Flower would retort. "Don't flatter yourself, old girl. I've got my eye on two or three fine young women who'll be glad of the job, I assure you;" but this, perhaps, proving too much for poor Mrs. Flower, whose tears were never far away, and apt to require smelling-salts, he would change his tone in an instant and say, dropping into his Derbyshire "thous,"--
"Nonsense, lass, can't thee take a bit of a joke? Come now, come. Don't be silly. Thou knowest well enough what thou art to me, and so do the girls. See, let's have a drive out to Livingstone Cemetery this afternoon. Thou'rt a bit out o' sorts. It'll cheer thee up a bit."
And so Mrs. Flower would recover, and harmony would be restored, and nobody would wink for a quarter of an hour. Certainly it was a quaint little mother for an Angel.
"When are you going to read me my poem?" said Angelica, one day.
"When are you going to tell me what I asked?" replied Henry.
"Whenever you read me my poem," retorted Angelica.
"All right. When would you like to hear it?"
"Now."
"But I haven't got it with me to-day."
"Can't you remember it?"
"No, not to-day."
"When will you bring it?"
"I'll tell you what. Come with me to Woodside Meadows on Saturday afternoon. Your father won't mind?"
"Oh, no; father likes you."
"I'm glad, because I'm very fond of him."
"Yes, he's a dear; and he's got far more in him than perhaps you think, under his country ways. If you could see him in the country, it would make you cry. He loves it so."
"Yes, I could tell that by the way he talked of Derbyshire the first day we met. But you'll come on Saturday?"
"Yes, I'll come."
Angel! Yes, it was the face of an angel; but, bright as it had seemed on that dark background, it seemed almost brighter still as it moved by Henry's side among the green lanes. He had never known Angel till then, never known what primal ecstasy her nature was capable of. In the town, her soul was like a flame in a lamp of pearl; here in the country, it was like a star in a vase of dew. To be near trees, to touch their rough barks, to fill one's hands with green leaves, to hear birds, to listen to running water, to look up into the sky,--oh, this was to come home!--and Angel's joy in these things was that of some wood-spirit who you might expect any moment, like Undine, to slip out of your hands in some laughing brook, or change to a shower of blossom over your head.
"Oh, how good the country is! I wish father were here. I could eat the grass. And I just want to take the sky in my arms." As she swept across meadow and through woodland, with the eagerness of a child, greedily hastening from room to room of some inexhaustible palace, her little tense body seemed like a transparent garment fluttering round the flying feet of her soul.
At length she flung herself down, almost breathless, at the grassy foot of a great tree.
"I suppose you think I'm mad," she said. "And really I think I must be; for why should mere green grass and blue sky and a few birds make one so happy?"
"Why should anything make us happy?"
"Or sad?"
"But now you're going to read my poem," she said, presently.
"Yes; but something has to happen before I can read it," said Henry, growing unaccountably serious; "for it is in the nature of a prophecy, or at all events of an anticipation. You have to fulfil that prophecy first."
"It seems to me a very mysterious poem. But what have I to do?"
"I don't know whether you can do it."
"Well, what is it? Try me."
"Oh, Angel, I care nothing about poems. Can't you see how I love you? That's all poetry will ever mean to me. Just to say over and over again, 'I love Angel.' Just to find new and wonderful ways of saying that--"
"Listen, Henry. I've loved you from the first moment I saw you that day talking to father, and I shall love you till I die."
"Dear, dear Angel!"
"Henry!"
Then Henry's arms enfolded Angel with wonderful love, and her fresh young lips were on his, and the world faded away like a dream within a dream.
"Now perhaps you can read me your poem," said Angel, after a while; and she noticed a curious something different in her way of speaking to him, as in his way of speaking to her,--something blissfully homelike, as it were, as though they had sat like this for ever and ever, and were quite used to it, though at the same time it remained thrillingly new.
"It's only a silly little childish rhyme," said Henry; "some day I'll write you far better."
Then, coming close to Angel, he whispered,--
This is Angelica,Fallen from heaven,Fallen from heavenInto my arms.Will you go back again,Little Angelica,Back up to heaven,Out of my arms!"No," said Angelica,"Here is my heaven,Here is my heaven,Here in your arms."Not out of heaven,But into my heaven,Here have I fallen,Here in your arms."
After the long happy silence which followed Henry's recitation of his verses, Angel at length spoke,--
"Shall I tellyousomething now?" she said. "I'm almost ashamed to, for I know you'll laugh at me, and call me superstitious."
"Go on, little child," said Henry.
"You remember the day," said Angel, in a hushed little impressive voice, "I first saw you in father's office?"
Henry was able to remember it.
"Well, that was not the first time I had seen you."
"Really, Angel! Why didn't you tell me before? Where was it, then? In the street, or where?"
"No, it was much stranger than that," said Angel. "Do you believe the future can be foretold to us?"
"Oh, it was in a dream, you funny Angel; was that it?" said Henry, whose rationalism at this period was the chief danger to his imagination.
"No, not a dream. Something stranger than that."
"Oh, well, I give it up."
"It was like this," Angel continued; "there's a strange old gipsy woman who lives near us--"
"Oh, I see, your hand--palmistry," said Henry, with a touch of gentle impatience.
"Henry, dear, I said you would laugh at me. I won't tell you now, if you're going to take it in that spirit."
Henry promptly locked up his reason for the moment, with apologies, and professed himself open to conviction.
"Well, mother sometimes helps this poor old woman, and, one day, when she happened to call, Alice and Edith and I were in the kitchen helping mother. 'God bless you, lady,' she said,--you know how they talk,--'you've got a kind heart; and how are all the young ladies? It's time, I'm thinking, they had their fortunes told.' 'Oh, yes,' we all said, 'tell us our fortunes, mother,'--we always called her mother. 'I'll tell you yours, my dear,' she said, taking hold of my hand. 'Your fortunes are too young yet, ladies,' she said to Alice and Edith; 'come to me in a year's time and, maybe, I'll tell you all about him.'"
"You dear!" said Henry, by way of interruption.
"Then," continued Angel, "she took me aside, and looked at my hand; and she told me first what had happened to me, and then what was to come. What she told me of the past"--as if dear Angel, whose life was as yet all future, could as yet have had any past to speak of!--"was so true, that I couldn't help half believing in what she said of the future. Now you're laughing again!"
"No, indeed, I'm not," said Henry, perfectly solemn.
"She told me that just before I was twenty, I would meet a young man with dark hair and blue eyes, very unexpectedly,--I shall be twenty in six weeks,--and that he would be my fate. But the strangest is yet to come. 'Would you like to see his face?' she said. She made me a little frightened; but, of course, I said, 'Yes,' and then she brought out of her pocket a sort of glass egg, and told me to look in it, and tell her what I saw. So I looked, but for a long time I could see nothing; but suddenly there seemed to be something moving in the centre of the glass, like clouds breaking when the sun is coming out; and presently I could see a lamp burning on a table; and then round the lamp shelves of books began to grow out of the mist; then I saw a picture hanging in a recess, a bowed head with a strange sort of head-dress on it, a dark thin face, very sad-looking--"
"Why, that must have been my Dante!" said Henry, astonished in spite of himself.
The exclamation was a "score" for Angel; and she continued, with greater confidence, "And then I seemed to see some one sitting there; but, though I tried and tried, I couldn't catch sight of his face. I told the old woman what I saw. 'Wait a minute,' she said, 'then try again.' So I waited, and presently tried again. This time I hadn't so long to wait before I saw a room again; but it was quite different, a big desk ran along in front of a window, and there were two tall office-stools. 'Why, it's father's office,' I said. 'Go on looking,' said the old woman, 'and tell me what you see.' In a moment or two, I saw some one sitting on one of the stools, first dimly and then clearer and clearer. 'Why,' I almost cried out, for I felt more and more frightened, 'I see a young man sitting at a desk, with a pen behind his ear.' 'Can you see him clearly?' 'Yes,' I said; 'he's got dark curly hair and blue eyes.' 'You're sure you won't forget his face? You'd know him if you saw him again?' 'Indeed, I would,' I said. 'All right,' said the old woman, 'you can give me back the crystal. You keep a look out for that young man,--you will see him some day, mark my words, and that young man will be your fate.'
"Now, surely, you won't deny that was strange, will you?" asked Angel, in conclusion. "And I shall never forget the start it gave me that day when I came in, quite unsuspecting, with your lunch-tray, and saw you talking to father, with your pen behind your ear, and your blue eyes and dark hair. Now, isn't it strange? How can one help being superstitious after a thing like that?"
"Are you quite sure it was I?" Henry asked, quizzically. "It appears to me that any presentable young man with a pen behind his ear would have answered nearly enough to the vision. You would hardly have been quite sure of the colour of the eyes, would you, now, if the old woman hadn't mentioned it first, as she looked at your hand?"
"You are horrid!" said Angel; "I wish I hadn't told you now. But it wasn't merely the colour of the eyes. It was the look in them."
"Look again, and see if you haven't made a mistake. Look very carefully," said Henry.
"I won't," said Angel; "I think you're cruel."
"Angel, if you'll only look, and say you are quite sure, I'll believe every word the old woman said."
At last Angel was persuaded to look, and to look again, and the old woman's credit rose at each look.
"Yes, Henry, whatever happens, I know it is true. My life is in your hands."
Those are solemn words for one human being to hear uttered by another; and a shiver of new responsibility involuntarily ran through Henry's veins.
"May the hands be always strong and clean enough to hold so precious a gift," he answered, gravely.
"Are you sad, dear?" asked Angel, presently, with a sort of divination.
"Not sad, dear, but serious," he answered.
"Have I turned to a responsibility so soon?"
"You strange, wise child, I believe you are a witch."
"Oh, I was right then."
"Right in one way, but perhaps wrong in another. Don't you know that some responsibilities are the most dearly coveted of mortal honours? But then we shouldn't be worthy of them, if they didn't make us feel a little serious. Can't you imagine that to hear another say that her life is in one's hands makes one feel just a little solemn?"
"But isn't your life in mine, Henry?" asked Angel, simply.
"Of course it is, dear," answered Henry.
And then the moon began to rise through the trees, pouring enchantment over the sleeping woods, and the meadows half-submerged in lakes of mist.
Angel drew close to Henry, and watched it with big eyes.
"What a wonderful world it is! How beautiful and how sad!" she said, half to herself.
"Yes; there is nothing in the world so sad as beauty," answered Henry.
"If only to-night could last forever! If only we could die now, sitting just like this, with the moon rising yonder."
"But we shall have many nights like this together," said Henry.
"No; we shall never have this night again. We may have other wonderful nights, but they will be different. This will never come again."
Henry instinctively realised that here was a mystical side to Angel's nature which, however it might charm him, was not to be indiscriminately encouraged, and he tried to rally her out of her sadness, but her feeling was too much his own for him to persist; and as the moonlight moved in its ascension from one beautiful change to another, now woven by branches and leaves into weird tapestries of light and darkness, now hanging like some golden fruit from the boughs, and now uplifted like a lamp in some window of space, they sat together, alike held by the ancient spell; and, presently, Henry so far lost himself in it as to quote some lines entirely in Angel's mood:
"She dwells with Beauty--Beauty that must die;And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lipsBidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:Ay, in the very temple of DelightVeiled Melancholy has her sov'ran shrine,Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongueCan burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,And be among her cloudy trophies hung."
"What wonderful lines!" said Angel; "who wrote them? Are they your own?"
"Ah, Angel, what would I give if they were! No, they are by John Keats. You must let me give you his poems."
Presently, the moonlight began to lose its lustre. It grew pale, and, as it were, anxious; dark billows of clouds threatened to swallow up its silver coracle, and presently the world grew suddenly black with its submergence, the woods and meadows disappeared, and Henry and Angel began playfully to strike matches to see each other's faces. Thus they suddenly flared up to each other out of the darkness, like Rembrandts seen by lightning, and then they were lost again, and were only voices fumbling for each other in the dark.
Yet, even so, lips and arms found each other without much difficulty, and when they began to think of the last train, and fear they would miss it, but waited for just one last good-night kiss under their sacred tree, the world suddenly lit up again, for the moon had triumphed over its enemies, and come out just in time to give them its blessing.