We are apt sometimes to complain that so much of importance in our lives is at the dispensation of accident, yet how often too are we compelled to confess that some of the happiest and most fruitful circumstances of our lives are due to the far-seeing diplomacies of chance.
Among no set of circumstances is this more true than in the fateful relations of men and women. While, in a blind sort of way, we may be said to choose for ourselves the man or woman with whom we are to share the joys and sorrows of our years, yet the choice is only superficially ours. Frequently our brains, our antecedent plans, have no part in the decision. The woman we choose appears at the wrong time, in the wrong place, in an undesirable environment, with hair and eyes and general complexion different in colour from what we had predestined for ourselves, short when we had made up our minds for tall, and tall when we had hoped for short. Yet, in in spite of all our preconceptions, we choose her. This is not properly a choice in which the intelligence confessedly submits to violence. It is the compulsion of mysterious instincts that know better than our brains or our tastes.
Now had she been asked beforehand, Esther might not have sketched out a Mike as the ideal of her maiden dreams, nor indeed might Henry have described an Angelica, any more than perhaps Mike an Esther, or Angelica a Henry. Yet chance has only to place Esther and Mike, and Angelica and Henry in the same room together for less than a minute of time, and they fly into the arms of each other's souls with an instant recognition. This is a mystery which it will take more than biology to explain.
A young man's dreams of the woman he will some day marry are apt to be meretricious, or at all events conventional. A young poet, especially, is likely to err in the direction of paragons of beauty, or fame, or romance. Perhaps he dreams of a great singer, or an illustrious beauty, ignorant of the natural law which makes great singers and illustrious beauties, in common with all artists, incapable of loving really any one but themselves. Or perhaps it will be some woman of great and exquisite culture. But chance knows that women of great and exquisite culture are usually beings lacking in those plastic elemental qualities which a poet, above all men, needs in the woman he shall love. Their very culture, while it may seem to broaden, really narrows them, limits them to a caste of mind, and, for an infinite suggestiveness, substitutes a few finite accomplishments.
Critics without understanding have wondered now and again at attachments such as that of Heine for his Mathilde. Yet in some ways Mathilde was the type of wife best suited for a poet. She was just a wondering child, a bit of unspoiled chaos. She meant as little intellectually, and as much spiritually, as a wave of the sea, a bird of the air, a star in the sky.
Another great poet always kept in his room a growing plant in a big tub of earth, and another tub full of fresh water. With the fire going, he used to say that he had the four elements within his four walls; and to people unaccustomed to talk with the elements these no doubt seemed dull and even remarkable companions,--like Heine's Mathilde.
Now Angel, though far more than a goose intellectually, having, indeed, a very keen and subtle mind, was only secondarily intellectual, being primarily something far more important. You no more asked of her to be intellectual, than you expect a spirit to be mathematical. She was just a dream-child, thrilling with wonder and love before the strange world in which she had been mysteriously placed,--a dream-child and an excellent housewife in one, as full of common-sense on the one hand, as she was filled with fairy "nonsense" on the other. She was just, in fact, the wife for a poet.
The interest taken in each other by Angel and the Man in Possession had not been unobserved by Angel's family. Her sisters had teased her considerably on the subject.
"Why have you changed the way of wearing your hair, Angel?" they would say, "Does Mr. Mesurier like it that way?" or, "My word! we are getting smart and particular, now a certain gentleman has come into the office!" or again, "How small your writing is nowadays, Angel! What have you changed it for? I like your big old writing best; but I suppose--" and then they would retreat to a safe distance to finish--"Mr. Mesurier isn't of the same opinion!"
Sometimes Esther would start in pursuit, and playful scrimmages would ensue, the hilarious uproar of which would turn poor Mrs. Flower's brain.
Mrs. Flower had certainly not been unobservant, and one may perhaps suspect that those cakes and other delicacies which she had so often sent up the yard, had not been sent entirely without those ulterior designs which every thoughtful mother may becomingly cherish for her daughters.
After Angel and Henry's excursion to the country together, Henry felt that some official announcement of the state of his heart was demanded of him, and lost no time in finding Mr. Flower alone for that tremulous purpose. However, it was soon over. There were no questions ofdotsand marriage settlements to discuss. Genealogically, both sides were about equally distinguished, and, socially, belonged to that large undefined class called "respectable"--though it must not be supposed that, when so minded, families of that "respectable" zone do not occasionally make nice distinctions. "Do you know what you are asking for?" once said a retired tradesman's wife in Sidon to her daughter's suitor. "Do you know that both Katie's grandfathers were mayors?"
But there were no traditional mayoralties to keep these two young hearts asunder. It was understood on both sides that they had nothing to bring but each other, and they asked nothing better. Angel was going to marry a poet, and Henry a fairy; and not only they themselves, but the whole family, was more than satisfied. Mr. Flower was undisguisedly pleased, and the tears stood in his eyes as he gripped Henry's hand.
"I've liked you," he said, "since the first time we shook hands. There was something honest about your grip I liked, and I go a good deal by these things. It is not many men I would trust with my little Angel; for when you take her, you take her father's great treasure. Guard her well, dear lad, guard her well."
The first duty of a poet's wife is to inspire him. When she ceases to do that--but that is a consideration which need not occupy us in this unsophisticated story. We have already seen that Angelica in this respect early began her wifely duties towards Henry; and that little song he read in chapter twenty-five was but one of many he had written to her in his capacity of man in possession.
The feminine inspirations of his early youth had been numerous, but mediocre in quality. Even in love, as in all else, his opportunities had been second and even third-rate. He had broken his boy's heart, time after time, for some commonplace, little provincial miss who knew not "the god's wonder or his woe." But, at last, in circumstances so unforeseen, the maiden of the Lord had been revealed to him, and with the revelation a great impulse of metrical expression had come upon the young poet. All day long rhythms and fancies were effervescing within him, till at length he had quite a publishable mass of verse for which, it is to be feared, Angelica must be counted responsible.
Of these he was busily making a surreptitious fair copy one morning, when old Mr. Septimus Lingard suddenly visited his seclusion, with the announcement that his task there was at an end, so that he might now return to his regular office. Though, of course, Henry had realised that the present happy arrangement could not go on for ever, the news brought temporary desolation to the two young lovers. For four months their days had been spent within a few yards of each other; and though Angel's excursions up the yard to Henry's desk could not be many, or long, each day, yet each was conscious that the other was near at hand. When Angel sang at her housework, it was from the secure sense that Henry was close by. Their separation was little more than that of a husband and wife working in different rooms of the same house. But now their meetings would have to be arranged out somewhere in a cold world, little considerate of the convenience of lovers, and, for whole days of warm proximity, they would have to exchange occasional snatched precarious hours.
Well, the only thing to do was for Henry to work away at their dream of a home together--home together, however little, just four walls to love each other in, away from the gaze of prying eyes, none daring to make them afraid. How that home was to be compassed was far from clear in either of their minds; but vaguely it was felt that it would be brought about by the powerful enchantments of literature. Henry had recently had one of Angel's poems accepted by a rather good magazine, and the trance of joy in which for fully two hours he had sat gazing at that, his first, proof-sheet, was hardly less rapturous than that into which he had fallen after seeing Angel for the first time,--so dear are the emblems of his craft to the artist, at the beginning, and still at the end, of his career.
So Henry had to finish the fair copy of his poems at home in his lodgings of an evening, for so ambitious a private enterprise could not be carried on in his own office without perilous interruptions. He was making the copy with especial care, in the form of a real book; and when it was made, he daintily bound it in vellum with his own hands. Then he wrapped it lovingly in tissue paper, and kept it by him two or three days, in readiness for Angel's birthday, on the morning of which day he hid it in a box of flowers and sent it to Angel. The sympathetic reader can imagine her delight, as she discovered among the flowers a dainty little white volume, bearing the title-page, "The Book of Angelica, by Henry Mesurier. Tyre, 1886. Edition limited to one copy."
Now this little book presently began to enjoy a certain very carefully limited circulation among Angel's friends. Of course they were not allowed to take it away. They were only allowed to look at it now and again for a few minutes, Angel anxiously standing by to see that they did not soil her treasure. Sometimes Mr. Flower would ask Angel to show it to one of the family friends; and thus one evening it came beneath the eyes of a little Scotch printer who had a great love for poetry and some taste in it.
"The man's a genius," he said, with all that authority with which a strong Scotch accent mysteriously endows the humblest Scot.
"The man's a genius," he repeated; "his poems must be printed."
Henry had already found that this was easier said than done, for he had already tried several London publishers who professed their willingness to publish--at his expense. This little Scotch printer, however, was to prove more venturesome. He forthwith communicated a proposal to Henry through the Flowers. If Henry would provide him with a list of a certain number of friends he could rely on for subscriptions, he would take the risk of printing an edition, and give Henry half the profits,--a proposal as generous as it was rash. Angel communicated the offer in an excited little letter, with the result that Mr. Leith and Henry met one morning in the bar-parlour of "The Green Man Still," and parted an hour or so after in a high state of friendship, and deeply pledged together to a mutual adventure of three hundred copies of a book to be called "The Book of Angelica," and to be printed in so dainty a fashion that the mere outside should attract buyers.
Mr. Leith worked under difficulties, for his business, small as it was, was much saddled with pecuniary obligations which it but inadequately supported. His printing of Henry's poems was really a work of sheer idealism which none but a Scotsman, or perhaps an Irishman, would have undertaken; and it was a work that might at any moment be interrupted by bailiffs, empowered to carry away the presses and the very types over which Henry loved to hang in his spare hours, trying to read in the lines of mysteriously carved metal, his "Madrigal to Angelica singing," or his "Sonnet on first beholding Angelica."
Then Mr. Leith was of a convivial disposition; and Henry and he must have spent more hours drinking to the success of the little book than would have sufficed to print it twice over. However, the day did at last come when it was a living, breathing reality, and when Angel and Henry sat with tears of joy over the little new-born "Book of Angelica." Was it not, they told each other, the little spirit-child of their love? How wonderful it all was! How wonderful their future was going to be!
"What does it feel like?" said Henry, playfully recalling their old talk, "to have a book written all about one's self?"
"It is to feel the happiest and proudest girl in the world."
That all the other young people were hardly less happy and excited about the little book goes without saying. Mike spent quite a large sum in copies, and for a while employed his luncheon-hour in asking at book-shops with a nonchalant air, as though he had barely heard of the author, if they sold a little book called "The Book of Angelica." Mrs. Mesurier seemed to see her faith in her boy beginning to be justified; and when James Mesurier opened his local paper one morning, and found a long and appreciative article on a certain "fellow-townsman," he cut it out to paste in his diary. Perhaps the lad would prove right, after all.
It is only just to Tyre to acknowledge that it behaved quite sympathetically towards the young poet thus discovered in its midst. Its newspapers reviewed him with marked kindness,--a kindness which in a few years' time, when he had long since grown out of his baby volume, he was obliged to set to the credit of the general goodness of human nature, rather than to the poetic quality of his own verses. In many unexpected quarters also he met with recognition which, if not always intelligent, was at least gratifying. For praise, or at least some form of notice, is breath in the nostrils of the young poet. He hungers to feel that his personality counts for something, though it be merely to anger his fellow-men. It was perhaps no very culpable vanity on his part to be pleased that people began to point him out in the streets, and whisper that that was the young poet; and that distant acquaintances seemed more ready to smile at him than before. Now and again one of these would stop him to say how pleased he had been to see the kind article about him inThe Tyrian Daily Mail, and that he intended to buy "the work" as soon as possible. Henry smiled to himself, to hear his frail little flower of a volume spoken of as a "work," as though it had been the Encyclopaedia Britannica; and he rather wondered what that would-be purchaser would make of it, as he turned over pages of which so large a proportion was reserved for a spotless frame of margin. No doubt he would decide that the margin had been left for the purpose of making notes,--making notes on those abstruse rose-petals of boyish song!
Even in far-away London,--which was as yet merely a sounding name to these young people,--hard-worked reviewers, contemptuously disposing of batches of new poetry in a few lines, found a kind word or two to say for the little provincial volume; and, through one agency or another, Mr. Leith, within six weeks of the publication, was able to announce that the edition was exhausted and that there was something like forty pounds profit to share between them.
That poetry could be exchanged for real money, Henry had heard, but had never hoped to work the miracle in his own case. It was like selling moonlight, or Angelica's smiles. Was it not, indeed, Angelica's smiles turned from one kind of gold into another? One more change they should undergo, and then return to her from whom they had come. From minted gold of the realm they should change into the gold of a ring, and thus Angel should wear upon her finger the ornament of her own smiles. Setting aside a small proportion of his gains to buy Esther and Mike, Dot and Mat and his mother, a little memorial present each, he then spent the rest on Angel's ring. Angel pretended to scold him for his extravagance; but, as no woman can resist a ring, her remonstrance was not convincing, and then, as Henry said, was it not their betrothal ring, and, therefore, one of the legitimate expenses of love?
Three other acknowledgments his poems brought him. The first was a delightful letter from Myrtilla Williamson. How much men of talent owe to the letters of women has never been sufficiently acknowledged, as the debt can never be adequately repaid. Of the many branches of woman's unselfishness, this is perhaps the most important to the world. Always behind the flaming renown of some great soldier, statesman, or poet, there is a woman's hand, or the hands, maybe, of many women, pouring, unseen, the nutritive oil of praise.
This letter Henry, in the gladness of his heart, ingenuously showed to Angel, with the result that it provoked their first quarrel. With the charms of a child, Angel, it now appeared, united also the faults. She had it in her to be bitterly and unreasonably jealous. She read the letter coldly.
"You seem very proud of her praise," she said; "is it so very valuable?"
"I value it a good deal, at all events," answered Henry.
"Oh, I see!" retorted Angel; "I suppose my praise is nothing to hers."
"Angel dear, whatdoyou mean?"
"Oh, nothing, of course; but I'm sure you must regret caring for an ignorant girl like me, when there are such clever, talented women in the world as your Mrs. Williamson. I hate your learned women!"
"Angel, I'm surprised you can talk like that. Because we love each other, are we to have no other friends?"
"Have as many as you like, dear. Don't think I mind. But I don't want to see their letters."
"Very well, Angel," answered Henry, quietly. He was making one of those discoveries of temperament which have to be made, and have to be accepted, in all close relationships. This was evidently one of Angel's faults. He must try to help her with it, as he must try and let her help him with his.
The second was a letter, forwarded care of his printer, by one of the London reviews which had noticed his verses. It was from a rising young London publisher who, it appeared from an envelope enclosed, had already tried to reach him direct at Tyre. "Henry Mesurier, Esqre, Author of 'The Book of Angelica,' Tyre," the address had run, but the post-office of Tyre had returned it to the sender, with the words "Not known" officially stamped upon it.
He was as yet "not known," even in Tyre! "In another five years he shall try again," said Henry, savagely, to himself, "and we shall see whether it will be 'not known' then!"
The letter expressed the writer's pleasure in the extracts he had seen from Mr. Mesurier's book, and hoped that when his next book was ready, he would give the writer an opportunity of publishing it. Fortune was beginning already to smile.
But the third acknowledgment was something more like a frown, and was, at all events, by far the most momentous outcome of Henry's first publication. One morning, soon after Mr. Leith had paid over to him his twenty pounds profit, he found himself unexpectedly requested to step into "the private office." There, at Mr. Lingard's table, he found the three partners seated in solemn conclave, as for a court-martial. Mr. Lingard, as senior partner, was the spokesman.
"Mr. Mesurier," he began, "the firm has been having a very serious consultation in regard to you, and has been obliged, very reluctantly, I would have you believe, to come to a painful conclusion. We gladly acknowledge that during the last few months your work has given us more satisfaction than at one time we expected it to give. But, unfortunately, that is not all. Your attention to your duties, we admit, has been very satisfactory. It is not a sin of omission, but one of commission, of which we have to complain. What we have to complain of as business men is a matter which perhaps you will say does not concern us, though on that point we must respectfully differ from you. Mr. Mesurier, you have recently published a book."
Henry drew himself up haughtily. Surely that was nothing to be ashamed of.
"It is quite a pretty little book," continued Mr. Lingard, with one of his grim smiles. "It contains some quite pretty verses. Oh, yes, I have seen it," and Henry noticed a copy of the offending little volume lying, like a rose, among some legal papers at Mr. Lingard's left hand; "but its excellence as poetry is not to the point here. Our difficulty is that you are now branded so unmistakably as a poet, that it is no use our any longer pretending to our clients that you are a clerk. So long as you were only suspected of being a poet," and the old man smiled again, "it did not so much matter; but now that all Tyre knows you, by your own act and deed, as a poet, the case is different. We can no longer, without risk of losing confidence with our clients, send an acknowledged poet to inspect their books--though, personally, we may have every faith in your capacity. No doubt they will be glad enough to buy your books in the future; but they will be nervous of trusting you with theirs at the moment." And the old man laughed heartily at his own humour.
"You mean, then, sir, that you will have no further need for my services?" said Henry, looking somewhat pale; for it is one thing to hate the means of one's livelihood, and another to exchange it for none.
"I'm afraid, my dear lad, that that is what it comes to. We are, I hope you will believe, exceedingly sorry to come to such a conclusion, both for our own sakes and yours, as well as that of your father,--who is an old and valued friend of ours; but we are able to see no other way out of the difficulty. Of course, you will not leave us this minute; but take what time you need to look round and arrange your future plans; and so far as we are concerned, we shall part from you as good friends and sincere well-wishers."
The old man held out his hand, and Henry took it, with a grateful sense of the friendly manner in which Mr. Lingard had performed a painful task, and a certain recognition that, after all, a poet must be something of a nuisance to business-men.
When he returned to his desk, he sat for a long time thoughtful, divided in mind between exultation that he was soon to be free to take the adventurous highway of literature, and anxiety as to where in a month's time his preliminary meals were to come from.
Yet, after all, the main thing was to be free of this servitude. Out of freedom all things might be hoped.
Still, as Henry looked round at the familiar faces of his fellow-clerks, and realised that in a month's time his comradeship with them would be at an end, he was surprised to feel a certain pang of separation. Mere custom has so great a part in our affections, that though a routine may have been dull and distasteful, if it has any extenuating circumstances at all, we change it with a certain irrational regret. After all, his office-life was associated with much contraband merriment; and, unconsciously, his associates had taken a valuable part in his training, humanised him in certain directions, as he had humanised them in others. They had saved him from dilettanteism, and whatever he wrote in future would owe something warm and kindly to the years he had spent with them.
His very desk took on a pathetic expression, as of a place that was so soon to know him no more for ever; and Mr. Smith, wrangling over wet-traps and cesspools at the counter, just as on the first day he had heard him, almost moved him to tears. Perhaps in ten years' time, were he to come back, he would find him still at his post, fervidly engaged in the same altercations, with only a little additional greyness at the temples to mark the lapse of time.
And Jenkins would still be sitting in the little screened-off cupboard, with "cashier" painted on the glass window. As three o'clock approached, he would still be heard loudly counting his cash and shovelling the gold into wash-leather bags, and the silver into little paper-bags marked £5 apiece, in a wild rush to reach the bank before it closed.
And would the same good fellows, a little more serious, because long since married, be cracking jokes and loafing near the fire-guard, in some rare safe hour, of the afternoon when all the partners were out, to make a spring for the desks, as the carefully learnt tread of one or another of those partners followed the opening of the front door.
The very work that he hated seemed to wear an unwonted look of tenderness. Who would keep the books he had kept--with something of his father's neatness; who would look after the accounts of "the Rev. Thomas Salthouse," or take charge of "Ex'ors James Shuttleworth, Esqre"?
Of course, it was absurd--absurd, perhaps, just because it was human. For was he not going to be free, free to fulfil his dreams, free to follow those voices that had so often called him from beyond the sunset? Soon he would be able to cry out to them, with literal truth, "I am yours, yours--all yours!" And in those ten years which were to pass so invariably for Mr. Smith, and for Jenkins and the rest, what various and dazzling changes might be, must be, in store for him. Long before the end of them he must have written masterpieces and become famous, and Angel and he be long settled together in their paradise of home.
Henry was pleased to find that his chums were to miss him no less than he was to miss them. As an unofficial master of their pale revels, his place would not be easy to fill; and he was much touched, when, a day or two before the end of the month, which was the time mutually agreed upon for Henry to look round, they intimated their desire to give a little dinner in his honour at "The Jovial Clerks" tavern.
Henry was nothing loth, and the evening came and went with no little emotion and no little wine, on either side. He had bidden good-bye to his employers in the afternoon, and Mr. Lingard had shaken his hand, and admonished him as to his future with something of paternal affection.
Toward the close of the dinner, Bob Cherry, who acted as chairman, rose, with an unaccustomed blush upon his cheek, to propose the toast of the evening. They had had the honour and pleasure, he said, to be associated for several years past with a gentleman to whom that evening they were to say good-bye. No better fellow had ever graced the offices of Lingard and Fields, and his would be a real loss to the gaiety of their little world. They understood that he was a poet; and indeed had he not already published a charming volume with which they were all acquainted!--still this made no difference to them. Certain high powers might object, but they liked him none the less; and whether he was a poet or not, he was certainly a jolly good fellow, and wherever his new career might take him, the good wishes of his old chums would certainly follow him. The chairman concluded his speech by requesting his acceptance of a copy of the "Works of Lord Macaulay," as a small remembrance of the days they had spent together.
The toast having been seconded and drunk with resounding cordiality, Henry responded in a speech of mingled playfulness and emotion, assuring them, on his part, that though they might not be poets, he thought no worse of them for that, but should always remember them as the best fellows he had ever known. The talk then became general, and tender with reminiscence. After all, what a lot of pleasant things those hard years had given them to remember! So they kept the evening going, and it was not till an early hour of the following day that this important volume of Henry's life was finally closed.
While Henry had been busily engaged in winning Angelica and writing and printing his little book, Mike's fortunes had not been idle. Meanwhile, the Sothern Dramatic Club had given two more performances, in which his parts had been considerable, and been played by him with such success as to make the former pieman's apprentice one of the chief members of the club. Mike and his friends therefore became more and more eager for him to try his talents on the great stage. But this was an experiment not so easy to make.
However unknown a writer may be, he can still at least write his book in his obscurity, and, when done, bring it to market, with a reasonable hope of its finding a publisher; moreover, though he may remain for years unappreciated, his writings still go on fighting for him till his due recognition is won. He has not to find his publisher before he begins to write. Yet it is actually such a disability under which the unproved and often the proved actor must labour. Unless some one engages him to act, and provides an audience for him, he has no opportunity of showing his powers. And such opportunities are difficult to find, unless you are a dissolute young lord, or belong to one of the traditional theatrical families,--whose members are brought up to the stage, as the sons of a lawyer are brought up to law. For the avenues to the stage are blocked by perhaps more frivolous incompetents than any other profession. Any idle girl with good looks, and any idle gentleman with something of a good carriage, deem themselves qualified for one of the most arduous of the arts.
Mike's plan had been to try every considerable actor that came to Tyre, who might possibly have a vacant place in his company; but he had tried many in vain. While one or two were unable to see him at all, most of them treated him with a kindness remarkable in men daily besieged by the innumerable hopeless. They gave him good advice; they wished him well; but already they had long lists of experienced applicants waiting their turn for the coveted vacancy. At last, however, there came to Tyre a famous romantic actor who was said to be more sympathetic towards the youthful aspirant than the other heads of his profession, and as, too, he was rumoured to be vulnerable on the side of literature, Mike and Henry agreed to make a joint attack upon him. Mike should write a brief note asking for an interview, and Henry should follow it up with another letter to the same effect, and at the same time send him a copy of "The Book of Angelica."
The plan was carried out. Both letters and the book were sent, and the young men awaited with impatience the result. Henry had adopted a very lofty tone. "In granting my friend an interview," he had said, "you may be giving his first chance to an actor of genius. Of course you may not; but at least you will have had the satisfaction of giving to possible genius that benefit of the doubt which we have a right to expect from the creator of ----," and he named one of the actor's most famous rôles.
A cordial answer came by return, enclosing two stalls for the following evening, when, said the great actor, he would be glad to see Mr. Laflin during or after the performance. The two young men were in their places as the curtain rose, and it goes without saying that their enthusiasm was unequalled in the audience. Between the third and fourth acts there was a considerable interval, and early in the performance it had been notified to Mike that the great actor would see him then. So when the time came, with a whispered "good luck" from Henry, he left his place and was led through a little mysterious iron door at the back of the boxes, on to the stage and into the great man's dressing-room. Opening suddenly out of the darkness at one side of the stage, it was more like a brilliantly lighted cave hung with mirrors than a room. Mirrors and lights and laurel wreaths with cards attached, and many photographs with huge signatures scrawled across them, and a magnificent being reading a book, while his dresser laced up some high boots he was to wear in the following act,--made Mike's first impression. Then the magnificent being looked up with a charming smile.
"Good-evening, Mr. Laflin. I am delighted to see you. I hope you will excuse my rising."
He said "Mr. Laflin" with a captivating familiarity of intonation, as though Mike was something between an old friend and a distinguished stranger.
"So you are thinking of joining our profession. I hope you liked the performance. I saw you in front, or at least I thought it was you. And your friend? I hope he will come and see me some other time. I have been delighted with his poems."
There is something dazzling and disconcerting to an average layman about an actor's dressing-room, even though the dressing-room be that of an intimate friend. He feels like a being on the confines of two worlds and belonging to neither, awkwardly suspended 'twixt fact and fancy. The actor for a while has laid aside his part and forgotten his wig and his make-up. As he talks to you, he is thinking of himself merely as a private individual; whereas his visitor cannot forget that in appearance he is a king, or an eighteenth-century dandy, or--though you know him well enough as a clean-shaven young man of thirty--a bowed and wrinkled greybeard. The visitor's voice rings thin and hestitating. It cannot strike the right pitch, and generally he does himself no sort of justice.
Perhaps, however, it was because Mike had been born for this world in which now for the first time he found himself, that he suffered from none of this embarrassment; perhaps, too, it was some half-conscious instinct of his own gifts that made him quite self-contained in the presence of acknowledged distinction, so self-contained that you might have thought he had no reverence. As he had passed across the stage, he had eyed that mysterious behind-the-scenes rather with the eye of a future stage-manager, than of a youth all whose dreams converged at this point, and at this moment.
One touch of the poetry of contrast caught his eye, of which custom would probably have made him unobservant. In an alcove of the stage, a "scene-dock," as Mike knew already to call it, a beautiful spirit in gauze and tights was silently rehearsing to herself a dance which she had to perform in the next act. Softly and silently she danced, absorbed in the evolutions of her lithe young body, paying as little heed to the rough stage-hands who hurried scenery about her on every side, as those hardened stage-hands paid to her dancing. Henry or Ned would probably have fallen madly in love with her on the spot. To Mike, she was but a part of the economy of the stage; and had she been Cleopatra herself, eyes filled to overflowing with the beauty of Esther would have taken no more intimate note of her. So, it is said, painters and sculptors regard their models with cold, artistic eyes.
This self-possession enabled Mike to show to the best advantage; and while they talked, the great actor, with an eye accustomed to read faces, soon made up his mind about him.
"I believe you and your friend are right, Mr. Laflin," he said. "I am much mistaken if you are not a born actor. But if you are that, you will not need to be told that the way is long and difficult, nor will you mind that it is so. Every true artist rather loves than fears the drudgery of his art. It is one of the tests of his being an artist. Art is undoubtedly the pleasantest of all work; but it is work for all that, and none of the easiest. Perhaps it is the pleasantest because it is the hardest. So if you really want to be an artist, you won't object to beginning your journey to the top right away at the bottom."
"Anywhere at all, sir," said Mike, his heart beating at this hint of what was coming.
"Well, in that case," continued the other, "I can perhaps do something, though a very little, for you."
Mike eagerly murmured his gratitude.
"I'm sorry to say I have no vacancy in my own company at present; but would you be willing to take a part in my Christmas pantomime? I may say that I myself began life as harlequin."
"I will gladly take anything you can offer me," said Mike.
"Shall we call it settled then? But I sha'n't need you for another four months. Meanwhile I will have a contract made out and sent to you--"
"Curtain rising for fourth act, sir," cried the call-boy, putting his head in at the door at that moment.
"You see I shall have to say good-bye," said the good-natured manager, rising and moving towards the door; "but I shall look forward to seeing you in October. My good wishes to your friend;" and so the happiest person in that theatre slipped back to his seat by the side of a friend who was surely as happy at his good news as though it had been his own.
Meanwhile Esther had been counting the hours till ten, when she made a pretence of going to bed with the rest. But there was no sleep for her till she had heard Mike's news. Her bedroom looked out from the top of the house into the front garden, and she had arranged to have a lamp burning at the window, so that Mike, on his way home, should understand that all was safe for a snatched five minutes' talk in the porch. She sat trying to read till about midnight, when through her half-opened windows came the soft whistle she had been waiting for. Turning down the lamp to show that she had heard, she stole down through the quiet house and cautiously opened the front door, fastened, it seemed, with a hundred bolts and chains.
"Is that you, Mike?"
For answer two arms, which she didn't mistake for a burglar's, were thrown round her.
"Esther, I've found my million pounds."
"Oh, Mike! He's really going to help you?"
And here there is no further necessity for eaves-dropping. All persons except Mike and Esther will please leave the porch.
On the morning after the dinner with which he bade farewell to Messrs. Lingard and Fields, Henry awoke at his usual hour to a very unusual feeling. For the first time in his life he could stay in bed as long as he pleased.
On the other side of the room Ned Hazell lay sleeping the deep sleep of the unpunctual clerk; and Henry, when he had for a moment or two dwelt upon his own happiness, took a malicious joy in arousing him.
"Ned," he shouted, "get up! You'll be late for the office."
Ned gave out a deep sound, something between a snore, a moan, and an imprecation.
"Ned!" his tormentor persisted, drawing the clothes warmly round him, in a luxury of indifference to the time of day.
Ned presently began rubbing his head vigorously, which was one of his preliminaries of awakening, and then mournfully raised himself in bed, a pillar of somnolence.
"You might let a fellow have his sleep out," he said; "why don't you get up yourself?--oh, I remember, you're a literary gentleman from to-day. That's why you're so mighty ready to root me out," and he aimed a pillow at Henry's bed in derision.
Yes, Henry was free, an independent gentleman of time and space. The clock might strike itself hoarse, yet, if he wished, he might go on staying in bed. He was free! His late task-masters had no jurisdiction here. It would even be in his power here to order Mr. Fields out of the room, and, if he refused, forcibly to eject him into the street. Why didn't Mr. Fields appear to gratify him in this matter?
So he indulged his imagination, while Ned dressed in haste, with the fear of the tyrant evident upon him. Poor fellow, he would have to choose between two cups of coffee and two eggs and five minutes late! Probably he would split the difference, bolt one cup of coffee and one egg, and arrive two and a half minutes late. Henry watched him with compassion; and when he had gone his ways, himself rose languidly and dressed indolently, as with the aid of an invisible valet. At length he sauntered down to breakfast, and sent out for a morning paper, which he on no account ever read. He could imagine no more insulting waste of time. He looked it through, but found no reference to the real significance of the day.
Breakfast over, he wondered what he should do with himself, how he should spend the day. His clear duty was to begin being a great man on the spot, and work at being a great man every day punctually from nine till six. But where should he begin? Should he sit down in a business-like way and begin his long romantic poem, or should he write an essay, or again should he make a start on his novel?
Romantic poems, he felt, however, are only well begun on special days not easy to define; essays are only written on days when we have determined to be idle,--and this, after the opening flirtation with indolence, must be a busy day,--and it is not every day that one can begin a novel. He might arrange his books, but really they were very well arranged already. Or suppose he went out for a walk. Walking quickened the brain. He might go and look in at the Art Gallery, where he hadn't been for a long while, and see the new picture the morning paper was talking about. It was by a painter whose poems he already knew and loved. That might inspire him. So, by an accident of idleness, he presently found himself standing rapt before the most wonderful picture he had ever seen,--a picture to see which, he said to himself, men would make pilgrimages to Tyre, when Tyre was a moss-grown, ruinous seaport, from which the traffic of the world had long since passed away.
Henry at this time had visited none of the great galleries and, except in a few reproductions, knew nothing of the great Italian masters. Therefore to him this picture was Italy, the Renaissance, and Catholicism, all concentrated into one enthralling canvas. But it was something greater than that. It was the terrible meeting of Youth and Love and Death in one tremendous moment of infinite loss. Infinite passion and infinite loss were here pictured, in a medium which combined all that was spiritual and all that was sensual in a harmony of beauty that was in the same moment delirium and peace. The irresistible cry of the colour to the senses, the spheral call of the theme and its agony to the soul. Beatrice dead, and Dante taken in a dream across the strewn poppies of her death-chamber, to look his last on the sleeping face, yet a little smiling in the after-glow of life; her soul already carried by angels far over the curved and fluted roofs of the Florentine houses, on its way to Paradise. Little Beatrice! Not till they meet again in Paradise shall he see again that holy face. In a dream of loss he gazes upon her, as the angels lift up the flower-garnished sheet; and not only her face, but every detail of that room of death is etched in tears upon his eyes,--the distant winding stair, the pallid death-lamps, the intruding light of day. All Passion and all Loss, all Youth, all Love, and all Death met together in an everlasting requiem of tragic colour.
Henry sat long before this picture, enveloped, as it were, in its rich gloom, as the painted profundity of a church absorbs one in its depths. And with the impression of its solemn beauty was blent a despairing awe of the artist who, of a little coloured earth, had created such a masterpiece of vitality, thrown on to a thin screen of canvas so enduringly palpable, so sumptuous, and so poignantly dominating a reflection of his visions. What a passionate energy of beauty must have been in this man's soul; what a constant fury of meditation upon things divine!
When Henry came back to himself, his first thought was to share it with Angel. Little soul, how her face would flame, how her body would tremble with the wonder of it! In the minutiae, the technicalities of appreciation, Angel, like Henry himself, might be lacking; but in the motive fervour of appreciation, who was like her! It was almost painful to see the joy which certain simple wonders gave her. Anything intense or prodigal in nature, any splendidly fluent outpouring of the elements,--the fierce life of streaming fire, water in gliding or tumultuous masses, the vivid gold of crocus and daffodil spouting up through the earth in spring, the exquisite liquidity of a bird singing,--these, as with all elemental poetic natures, gave her the same keen joy which we fable for those who, in the intense morning of the world, first heard them; fable, indeed, for why should we suppose that because ears deaf a thousand years heard the nightingale too, it should therefore be less new for those who to-night hear it for the first time? Rather shall it be more than less for us, by the memories transmitted in our blood from all the generations who before have listened and gone their way.
So Henry sought out Angel, and they both stood in front of the great picture for a long while without a word. Presently Angel put the feeling of both of them into a single phrase,--
"Henry, dear, we have found our church."
And indeed for many months henceforth this picture was to be their altar, their place of prayer. Often hereafter when their hopes were overcast, or life grew mean with little cares, they would slip, singly, or together, into that gallery, and--
"let the beauty of EternitySmooth from their brows the little frets of time."
Thus Henry's first day of freedom had begun auspiciously with the unexpected discovery of an inalienable possession of beauty. Yet the little cares were not far off, waiting their time; and that night, Henry lay long awake asking himself what he was going to do? Whence was to come the material gold and silver by which this impetuous spirit was to be sustained? A sum not exceeding five pounds represented his accumulated resources, and they would not last longer than--five pounds. He needed little, but that little he needed emphatically. Soon a new book and other literary projects would keep him going, but--meanwhile! How were the next two or three months to be bridged? Return to his father's house, he neither would, nor perhaps, indeed, could.
So he lay awake a long while, fruitlessly thinking; but, just before he slept, a thought that made him laugh himself awake suggested itself: "Why not go and ask Aunt Tipping to take pity on you?"
So he went to sleep, resolved, if only for the fun of it, to pay a visit to Aunt Tipping on the morrow.