Young Lives by Richard Le Gallienne (page 4)

“You dear child! Yes! I went out of pure love for you.”

“Now you needn’t be so grown up. You know you wanted to go just for yourself as well. And you saw the monkey-house?”

“Yes.”

“And the lions?”

“Yes.”

“And the snakes?”

“Yes!”

“Oh, I’d give anything to see the snakes! Did they eat any rabbits when you were there,–fascinate them, and then draw them slowly, slowly in?”

“Angel, what terrible interests you are developing! No, thank goodness, they didn’t.”

“Why, wouldn’t it fascinate you to see something wonderfully killed?” asked Angel. “It is dreadful and wicked, of course. But it would be so thrillingly real.”

“I think I must introduce you to a young man I met in London,” said Henry, “who solemnly asked me if I had ever murdered anyone. You savage little wild thing! I suppose this is what you mean by saying sometimes that you are a gipsy, eh?”

“Well, and you went to the Tower, and Westminster Abbey, and everything, and it was really wonderful?”

“Yes, I saw everything–including the Queen.”

For young people of Tyre and Sidon to go to London was like what it once was to make the pilgrimage to Rome.

Mike created some valuable nonsense on the occasion, which unfortunately has not been preserved, and Esther was disgusted with Henry because he could give no intelligible description of the latest London hats; and all examined with due reverence those wonderful books for review.

In Tichborne Street Aunt Tipping had taken advantage of his absence to enrich his room with a bargain in the shape of an old desk, which was the very thing he wanted. Dear old Aunt Tipping! And Gerard, it is to be feared, took a little more brandy than usual in honour of his young friend’s adventures in the capital.

These excitements over, Henry sat down at his old desk to write his first review; and there for the present we may leave him, for he took it very seriously and was dangerous to interrupt.

CHAPTER XXXVI

THE OLD HOME MEANWHILE

More than a year had now gone by since Henry left home, and meanwhile, with the exception of Dot’s baptism, there had been no exciting changes to record. Perhaps uneventfulness is part of the security of a real home. Every morning James Mesurier had risen at half-past six,–though he no longer imposed that hour of rising upon his daughters,–breakfasted at eight, and reached his office at nine. Every evening during those months, punctually at half-past six his latch-key had rattled in the front-door lock, and one or other of his daughters had hurried out at the sound to bid him welcome home.

“Home at last, father dear!” they had said, helping him off with his coat; and sometimes when he felt bright he would answer,–

“Yes, my dear, night brings crows home.”

“Home again, James!” his wife would say, as he next entered the front parlour, and bent down to kiss her where she sat. “It’s a long day. Isn’t it time you were pulling in a bit? Surely some of the younger heads should begin to relieve you.”

“Responsibility, Mary dear! We cannot delegate responsibility,” he would answer.

“But we see nothing of you. You just sacrifice your whole life for the business.”

If he were in a good humour, he might answer with one of his rare sweet laughs, and jokingly make one of his few French quotations: “_Telle est la vie_! my dear, _Telle est la vie_! That’s the French for it, isn’t it, Dot?”

James Mesurier was just perceptibly softening. Perhaps it was that he was growing a little tired, that he was no longer quite the stern disciplinarian we met in the first chapter; perhaps the influence of his wife, and his experiences with his children, were beginning to hint to him what it takes so long for a strong individual nature to learn, that the law of one temperament cannot justly or fruitfully be enforced as the law of another.

The younger children–Esther and Dot and Mat used sometimes to say to each other–would grow up in a more clement atmosphere of home than had been Henry’s and theirs. Already they were quietly assuming privileges, and nothing said, that would have meant beatings for their elders. For these things had Henry and Esther gladly faced martyrdom. Henry had looked on the Promised Land, but been denied an entrance there. By his stripes this younger generation would be healed.

The elder girls hastened to draw close to their father in gratitude, and home breathed a kinder, freer air than ever had been known before. Between Esther and her father particularly a kind of comradeship began to spring up, which perhaps more than ever made the mother miss her boy.

But, all the same, home was growing old. This was the kindness of the setting sun!

Childless middle age is no doubt often dreary to contemplate, yet is it an egoistical bias which leads one to find in such limitation, or one might rather say preservation, of the ego, a certain compensation? The childless man or woman has at least preserved his or her individuality, as few fathers and mothers of large families are suffered to do. By the time you are fifty, with a family of half a dozen children, you have become comparatively impersonal as “father” or “mother.” It is tacitly recognised that your life-work is finished, that your ambitions are accomplished or not, and that your hopes are at an end.

The young Mesuriers, for example, were all eagerly hastening towards their several futures. They were garrulous over them at every meal. But to what future in this world were James and Mary Mesurier looking forward? Love had blossomed and brought forth fruit, but the fruit was quickly ripening, and stranger hands would soon pluck it from the boughs. In a very few years they would sit under a roof-tree bared of fruit and blossom, and sad with falling leaves. They had dreamed their dream, and there is only one such dream for a lifetime; now they must sit and listen to the dreams of their children, help them to build theirs. They mattered now no longer for themselves, but just as so much aid and sympathy on which their children might draw. Too well in their hearts they knew that their children only heard them with patience so long as they talked of their to-morrows. Should they sometimes dwell wistfully on their own yesterdays, they could too plainly see how long the story seemed.

_Telle est la vie!_ as James Mesurier said, and, that being so, no wonder life is a sad business. Better perhaps be childless and retain one’s own personal hopes and fears for life, than be so relegated to history in the very zenith of one’s days. If only this younger generation at the door were always, as it assumes, stronger and better than its elder! but, though the careless assumption that it is so is somewhat general, history alone shows how false and impudent the assumption often is. Too often genius itself must submit to the silly presumption of its noisy and fatuous children, and it is the young fool who too often knocks imperiously at the door of wise and active middle age.

That all this is inevitable makes it none the less sad. The young Mesuriers were neither fools nor hard of heart; and sometimes, in moments of sympathy, their parents would be revealed to them in sudden lights of pathos and old romance. They would listen to some old love-affair of their mother’s as though it had been their own, or go out of their way to make their father tell once more the epic of the great business over which he presided, and which, as he conceived it, was doubtless a greater poem than his son would ever write. Yet still even in such genuine sympathy, there was a certain imaginative effort to be made. The gulf between the generations, however hidden for the moment, was always there.

Yet, after all, James and Mary Mesurier possessed an incorruptible treasure, which their children had neither given nor could take away. To regard them as without future would be a shallow observation,–for love has always a future, however old in mortal years it may have grown; and as they grew older, their love seemed to grow stronger. Involuntarily they seemed to draw closer together, as by an instinct of self-preservation. Their love had been before their children; were they to be spared, it would still be the same love, sweeter by trial, when their children had passed from them. In this love had been wise for them. Some parents love their children so unwisely that they forget to love each other; and, when the children forsake them, are left disconsolate. One has heard young mothers say that now their boy has come, their husbands may take a second place; and often of late we have heard the woman say: “Give me but the child, and the lover can go his ways.” Foolish, unprophetic women! Let but twenty years go by, and how glad you will be of that rejected lover; for, though a son may suffice for his mother, what mother has ever sufficed for her son?

But though sometimes, as they looked at their parents, the young Mesuriers caught a glimpse of the infinite sadness of a life-work accomplished, yet it failed to warn them against the eager haste with which they were hurrying on towards a like conclusion. Too late they would understand that all the joy was in the doing; too soon say to themselves: “Was it for this that our little world shook with such fiery commotion and molten ardours, that this present should be so firm and insensitive beneath our feet? This habit–why, it was once a passion! This fact–why, it was once a dream!”

Oh, why shake off youth’s fragile blossoms with the very speed of your own impatience! Why make such haste towards autumn! Who ever thought the ruddiest lapful of apples a fair exchange for a cloud of sunlit blossom? Whose maturity, however laden with prosperity or gilded with honour, ever kept the fairy promise of his youth? For so brief a space youth glitters like a dewdrop on the tree of life, glitters and is gone. For one desperate instant of perfection it hangs poised, and is seen no more.

But, alas! the art of enjoying youth with a wise economy is only learnt when youth is over. It is perhaps too paradoxical an accomplishment to be learnt before; for a youth that economised itself would be already middle age. It is just the wasteful flare of it that leaves such a dazzle in old eyes, as they look back in fancy to the conflagration of fragrant fire which once bourgeoned and sang where these white ashes now slowly smoulder towards extinction.

When Mike has a theatre of his own and can send boxes to his friends, when Henry maybe is an editor of power, when Esther and Angel are the enthroned wives of famous men, and the new heaven and the new earth are quite finished,–will they never sigh sometimes to have the making of them all over again? Then they will have everything to enjoy, so there will be nothing left to hope for. Then there will be no spice of peril in their loves, no keen edge that comes of enforced denial; and the game of life will be too sure for ambition to keep its savour. “There is no thrill, no excitement nowadays,” one can almost fancy their saying, and, like children playing with their bricks, “Now let us knock it all down, and build another, one. It will be such fun.”

However, these are intrusive, autumnal thoughts in this book of simple youth, and our young people knew them not. They were far indeed from Esther’s mind as she talked with Dot of the future one afternoon. Instead, her words were full of impatience with the slow march of events, and the enforced inactivity of a girl’s life at home.

“It is so much easier for the boys,” she was saying. “There is something for them to do. But we can do nothing but sit at home and wait, darn their socks, and clap our hands at their successes. I wish I were a man!”

“No, you don’t,” said Dot; “for then you couldn’t marry Mike. And you couldn’t wear pretty dresses–Oh! and lots of things. I don’t much envy a man’s life, after all. It’s all very well talking about hard work when you haven’t got to do it; and it’s not so much the work as the responsibility. It must be such a responsibility to be a man.”

“Of course you’re right, Dot–but, oh! this waiting is so stupid, all the same. If only I could be doing something–anything!”

“Well, you _are_ doing something. Is it nothing to be all the world to a man?” said Dot, wistfully; “nothing to be his heaven upon earth? Nothing to be the prize he is working for, and nothing to sustain and cheer him on, as you do Mike, and as Angel cheers Henry? Would Henry have been the same without Angel, or Mike the same without you? No, the man’s work makes more noise, but the woman’s work is none the less real and useful because it is quiet and underground.”

“Dear Dot, what a wise old thing you’re growing! But you know you’re longing all the time for some work to do yourself. Didn’t you say the other day that you seemed to be wasting your life here, making beds and doing housework?”

“Yes; but I’m different. Don’t you see?” retorted Dot, sadly. “I’ve got no Mike. Your work is to help Mike be a great actor, but I’ve got no one to help be anything. You may be sure I wouldn’t complain of being idle if I had. I think you’re a bit forgetful sometimes how happy you are.”

“Poor old Dot! you needn’t talk as if you’re such a desperate old maid,–you’re not twenty yet. And I’m sure it’s a good thing for you that you haven’t got any of the young men about here–to help be aldermen! Wait till you come and stay with us in London, then you’ll soon find some one to work for, as you call it.”

“I don’t know,” said Dot, thoughtfully; “somehow I think I shall never marry.”

“I suppose you mean you’d rather be a nun or something serious of that sort.”

“Well, to tell the truth, I have been thinking lately if perhaps I couldn’t do something,–perhaps go into a hospital, or something of that sort.”

“Oh, nonsense, Dot! Think of all the horrible, dirty people you’d have to attend to. Ugh!”

“Christ didn’t think of that when He washed the feet of His disciples,” said little Dot, sententiously.

“Why, Dot, how dreadfully religious you’re getting! You want a good shaking! Besides, isn’t it a little impious to imply that the apostles were horrible, dirty people?”

“You know what I meant,” said Dot, flushing.

“Yes, of course, dear; and I think I know where you’ve been. You’ve been to see that dear Sister Agatha.”

“You admit she’s a dear?”

“Of course I do; but I don’t know whether she’s quite good for you.”

“If you’d only seen her among the poor little children the other day, how beautiful and how happy she looked, you might have thought differently,” said Dot.

“Oh, yes, dear; but then you mustn’t forget that her point of view is different. She’s renounced the world; she’s one of those women,” Esther couldn’t resist adding, maliciously, “who’ve given up hope of man, and so have set all their hopes on God.”

“Esther, that’s unworthy of you–though what if it is as you say, is it so great a failure after all to dedicate one’s self to God rather than to one little individual man?”

“Oh, come,” said Esther, rather wilfully misunderstanding, and suddenly flushing up, “Mike is not so little as all that!”

“Why, you goose, how earthly you are! I never thought of dear Mike–though it would have served you right for saying such a mean thing about Sister Agatha.”

“Forgive me. I know it was mean, but I couldn’t resist it. And it is true, you’ll admit, of some of those pious women, though I withdraw it about Sister Agatha.”

“Of course I couldn’t be a sister like Sister Agatha,” said Dot, “without being a Catholic as well; but I might be a nurse at one of the ordinary hospitals.”

“It would be dreadfully hard work!” said Esther.

“Harder than being a man, do you think?” asked Dot, laughing.

“For goodness’ sake, don’t turn Catholic!” said Esther, in some alarm. “_That_ would break father’s heart, if you like.”

A horror of Catholicism ran in the very marrow of these young people. It was one of the few relics of their father’s Puritanism surviving in them. Of “Catholics” they had been accustomed to speak since childhood as of nightmares and Red Indians with bloody scalps at their waists; and perhaps that instinctive terror of the subtle heart of Rome is the religious prejudice which we will do well to part with last.

Dot had not, indeed, contemplated an apostacy so unnatural; but beneath these comparatively trivial words there was an ever-growing impulse to fulfil that old longing of her nature to do something, as the Christians would say, “for God,” something serious, in return for the solemn and beautiful gift of life. By an accident, she had met Sister Agatha one day in the house of an old Irish servant of theirs, who had been compelled to leave them on account of ill-health, and on whom she had called with a little present of fruit. She had been struck by the sweetness of the Sister’s face, as the Sister had been struck by hers. Sister Agatha had invited Dot to visit her some day at the home for orphan children of which she had charge; and, with some misgiving as to whether it was right thus to visit a Catholic, whether even it was safe, Dot had accepted. So an acquaintance had grown up and ripened into a friendship; and Sister Agatha, while making no attempt to turn the friendship to the account of her church, was a great consolation to the lonely, religious girl.

Dot retained too much rationalism ever to become a Catholic, but the longing to do something grew and grew. At a certain moment, with each new generation of girls, there comes an epidemical desire in maiden bosoms to dedicate their sweet young lives to the service of what Esther called “horrible dirty people.” At these periods the hospitals are flooded with applications from young girls whom the vernal equinox urges first to be mothers, and, failing motherhood, nurses. Just before she met Henry, Angel had done her best to miss him by frantic endeavours to nurse people whom the hospital doctors decided she was far too slight a thing to lift,–for unless you can lift your patients, not to say throw them about, you fail in the muscular qualifications of a hospital nurse. Dot, as we have seen, was impelled in this direction from no merely sentimental impulse, unless the religious impulse, which paradoxically makes nuns of disappointed mothers, may so be called. Perhaps, unacknowledged, deep down in her heart, she longed to be the nurse–of one little wonderful child. Had this been granted her, it is probable that the maimed and the halt would have had less attraction for her pitying imagination. As it was, however, she persuaded herself that she loved them. Was it because, at the moment, no one else seemed to need her love?

CHAPTER XXXVII

STAGE WAITS, MR. LAFLIN

Esther’s impatience was to be appeased, perhaps a little to her regret after all, by an unexpected remission of the time appointed between Mike and his first real engagement. Suddenly one day came an exciting letter from the great actor, saying that he saw his way to giving him a part in his own London company, if he could join him for rehearsal in a week’s time.

Here was news! At last a foundation-stone of the new heaven was to be laid! In a week’s time Mike would be working at one of the alabaster walls. Perhaps in two years’ time, perhaps even in a year, with good fortune, the roof would be on, the door wreathed with garlands, and a modest little heaven ready for occupation.

Now all that remained was to make the momentous break with the old life. Old Mr. Laflin had been left in peaceful ignorance of the mine which must now be exploded beneath his evening armchair. Mike loved his father, and this had been a dread long and wisely postponed. But now, when the moment for inevitable decision had come, Mike remembered, with a certain shrinking, that responsibility of which Dot had spoken,–the responsibility of being a man. It was his dream to be an actor, to earn his bread with joy. To earn it with less than joy seemed unworthy of man. Yet there was another dream for him, still more, immeasurably more, important–to be Esther’s husband. If he stayed where he was, in slow revolutions of a dull business, his father’s place and income would become his. If he renounced that certain prospect, he committed himself to a destiny of brilliant chances; and for the first time he realised that among those chances lurked, too, the chance of failure. Esther must decide; and Henry’s counsel, too, must be taken. Mike thought he knew what the decision and the counsel would be; and, of course, he was not mistaken.

“Why, Mike, how can you hesitate?” said Esther. “Fail, if you like, and I shall still love you; but you don’t surely think I could go on loving a man who was frightened to try?”

That was a little hard of Esther, for Mike’s fear had been for her sake, not his own. However, that and the even more vehement counsel of Henry had the desired bracing effect; and Mike nerved himself to deal the necessary blow at his father’s tranquillity.

As the writer of this book takes no special joy in heart-breaking scenes with fathers, the painful and somewhat violent scene with Mr. Laflin is here omitted, and left to the imagination of any reader with a taste for such unnatural collisions. Any one over thirty will agree that all the reason was on Mr. Laflin’s side, as all the instinct was on his son’s. Luckily for Mike, the instinct was to prove genuine, and his father to live to be prouder of his rebellion than ever he would have been of his obedience.

This scene over, it was only a matter of days–five alone were left–before Mike must up and away in right good earnest.

“Oh, Mike,” said Esther, “you’re sure you’ll go on loving me? I’m awfully frightened of those pretty girls in —-‘s company.”

“You needn’t be,” said Mike; “there’s only one girl in the world will look at a funny bit of a thing like me.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Esther, laughing, “some big girls have such strange tastes.”

“Well, let’s hope that before many months you can come and look after me.”

“If we’d only a certain five pounds a week, we could get along,–anything to be together. Of course, we’d have to be economical–” said Esther, thoughtfully.

On the last night but one before his leaving, it was Mike’s turn for a farewell dinner. Half-a-dozen of his best friends assembled at the “Golden Bee,” and toasts and tears were mingled to do him honour. Henry happily caught the general feeling of the occasion in the following verses, not hitherto printed. Henry was too much in earnest at the time to regard the bathos of rhyming “stage waits” with such dignities as “summoning fates,” except for which _naivete_ the poem is perhaps not a bad example of sincere, occasional verse:

_Dear Mike, at last the wished hour draws nigh– Weary indeed, the watching of a sky
For golden portent tarrying afar; But here to-night we hail your risen star, To-night we hear the cry of summoning fates– Stage waits!

Stage waits! and we who love our brother so Would keep him not; but only ere he go, Led by the stars along the untried ways, We’d hold his hand in ours a little space, With grip of love that girdeth up the heart, And kiss of eyes that giveth strength to part.

Some of your lovers may be half afraid To bid you forth, for fear of pitfalls laid About your feet; but we have no such fears, That cry is as a trumpet in our ears; We dare not, would not, mock those summoning fates– Stage waits!

Stage waits! and shall you fear and make delay? Yes! when the mariner who long time lay, Waiting the breeze, shall anchor when it blows; Yes! when a thirsty summer-flower shall close Against the rain; or when, in reaping days, The husbandman shall set his fields ablaze.

Nay, take your breeze, drink in your strengthening rain, And, while you can, make harvest of your grain; The land is fair to which that breeze shall blow. The flower is sweet the rain shall set aglow, The grain be rich within your garner gates– Stage waits!

Stage waits! and we must loosen now your hand, And miss your face’s gold in all our land; But yet we know that in a little while You come again a conqueror, so smile
Godspeed, not parting, and, with hearts elate, We wait_.

Yes, for the second time the die was cast. Henry was already afoot on the adventure perilous. Now it was Mike’s turn. These young people had passionately invoked those terrible gods who fulfil our dreams, and already the celestial machinery was beginning to move in answer. Perhaps it just a little took their breath, to see the great wheels so readily turning at the touch of their young hands; but they were in for it now, and with stout hearts must abide the issue.

This was to be Esther and Mike’s first experience of parting, and their hearts sickened at the thought. Love surely does well in this world, so full of snares and dangers, to fear to lose from its eyes for a moment the face of its beloved; and in this respect the courage of love is the more remarkable. How bravely it takes the appalling risks of life! To separate for an hour may mean that never as long as the world lasts will love hear the voice it loves again. “Good-bye,” love has called gaily so often, and waved hands from the threshold, and the beloved has called “good-bye” and waved, and smiled back–for the last time. And yet love faces the fears, not only of hours, but of weeks and months; weeks and months on seas bottomless with danger, in lands rife with unknown evils, dizzily taking the chances of desperate occupations. And the courage is the greater, because, finally, in this world, love alone has anything to lose. Other losses may be more or less repaired; but love’s loss is, of its essence, irreparable. Other fair faces and brave hearts the world may bring us, but never that one face! Alas! for the most precious of earthly things, the only precious thing of earth, there is no system of insurance. The many waters have quenched love, and the floods drowned it,–yet in the wide world is there no help, no hope, no recompense.

The love that bound this little circle of young people together was so strong and warm that it had developed in them an almost painful sensibility to such risks of loss. So it was that expressions of affection and outward endearments were more current among them than is usual in a land where manners, from a proper fear of exaggeration, run to a silly extreme of unresponsiveness. They never met without showing their joy to be again together; never parted without that inner fear that this might be their last chance of showing their love for each other.

“You all say good-bye as if you were going to America!” Myrtilla Williamson had once said; “I suppose it’s your Irish grandmother.” And no doubt the _empressement_ had its odd side for those who saw only the surface.

Thus for those who love love, who love to watch for it on human faces, Mike’s good-bye at the railway station was a sight worth going far to see.

“My word, they seem to be fond of each other, these young people!” said a lady standing at the door of the next carriage.

Mike was leaning through the window, and Esther was pressing near to him. They murmured low to each other, and their eyes were bright with tears. A little apart stood a small group, in which Henry and Angel and Ned were conspicuous, and Mike’s sisters and Dot and Mat were there. A callous observer might have laughed, so sad and solemn they were. Mike’s fun tried a rally; but his jests fell spiritless. It was not so much a parting, one might have thought, as a funeral. Little was said, but eyes were eloquent, either with tears, or with long strong glances that meant undying faithfulness all round; and Mike knew that Henry’s eyes were quoting “_Allons_! after the great Companions, and to belong to them!”

Henry’s will to achieve was too strong for him to think of this as a parting; he could only think of it as a glorious beginning. There is something impersonal in ambition, and in the absorption of the work to be done the ambitious man forgets his merely individual sensibilities. To achieve, though the heavens fall,–that was Henry’s ambition for Mike and for himself.

No one really believed that the train would have the hard-heartedness to start; but at last, with deliberate intention, evidently not to be swayed by human pity, the guard set the estranging whistle to his lips, cold and inexorable as Nero turning down the thumb of death, and surely Mike’s sad little face began to move away from them. Hands reached out to him, eyes streamed, handkerchiefs fluttered,–but nothing could hold him back; and when at last a curve in the line had swallowed the white speck of his face, they turned away from the dark gulf where the train had been as though it were a newly opened grave.

A great to-do to make about a mere parting!–says someone. No doubt, my dear sir! All depends upon one’s standard of value. No doubt these young people weighed life in fantastic scales. Their standard of value was, no doubt, uncommon. To love each other was better than rubies; to lose each other was bitter as death. For others other values,–they had found their only realities in the human affections.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

ESTHER AND HENRY ONCE MORE

Yes, Mike had really gone. Henceforth for ever so long, he would only exist for Esther in letters, or as a sad little voice at the end of a wire. It had been arranged that Henry should take Esther with him for dinner that evening to the brightest restaurant in Tyre. He was a great believer in being together, and also in dinner, as comforters of your sad heart. Perhaps, too, he was a little glad to feel Esther leaning gently upon him once more. Their love was too sure and lasting and ever-present to have many opportunities of being dramatic. Nature does not make a fuss about gravitation. One of the most wonderful and powerful of laws, it is yet of all laws the most retiring. Gravitation never decks itself in rainbows, nor does it vaunt its undoubted strength in thunder. It is content to make little show, because it is very strong; yet you have always to reckon with it. It is undemonstrative, but it is always there. The love of Esther and Henry was like that. It has made little show in this history, but few readers can have missed its presence in the atmosphere. It might go for weeks without its festival; but there it was all the time, ready for any service, staunch for any trial. It was one of the laws which kept the little world I have been describing slung safely in space, and securely shining.

It was, indeed, something like a perfect relationship,–this love of Esther and Henry. Had the laws of nature permitted it, it is probable that Mike and Angel would have been forced to seek their mates elsewhere. As it was, though it was thus less than marriage, it was more than friendship–as the holy intercourse of a mother and a son is more than friendship. Freed from the perturbations of sex, it yet gained warmth and exhilaration from the unconscious presence of that stimulating difference. Though they were brother and sister, friend and friend, Henry and Esther were also man and woman. So satisfying were they to each other, that when they sat thus together, the truth must be told, that, for the time at all events, they missed no other man or woman.

“I have always you,” said Esther.

“Do I still matter, then?” said Henry. “Are you sure the old love is not growing old?”

“You know it can never grow old. There is only one Mike; but there is only one Henry too. It’s a good love to have, Harry, isn’t it? It makes one feel so much safer in the world.”

“Dear little Esther! Do you remember those old beatings, and that night you brought me the cake? Bless you!”–and Henry reached his hand across the table, and laid it so kindly on Esther’s that a hovering waiter retreated out of delicacy, mistaking the pair for lovers. It was a mistake that was often made when they were together; and they had sometimes laughed, when travelling, at the kind-hearted way passengers on the point of entering their carriage had suddenly made up their minds not to disturb the poor newly-married young things.

“And how we used to hate you once!” said Esther; “one can hardly understand it now. Do you remember how on Sunday afternoons you would insist on playing at church, and how, with a tablecloth for a surplice, you used to be the minister? How you used to storm if we poor things missed any of the responses!”

“The monstrous egoism of it all!” said Henry, laughing. “It was all got up to give me a stage, and nothing else. I didn’t care whether you enjoyed it or not. What dragons children are!”

“‘Dragons of the prime, that tare each other in their slime,'” quoted Esther. “Yes, we tore each other, and no mistake–“

“Well, I’ve made up for it since, haven’t I?” said Henry. “I hope I’m a humble enough brother of the beautiful to please you nowadays.”

“You’re the truest, most reliable thing in the world,” said Esther; “I always think of you as something strong and true to come to–“

“Except Mike!”

“No, not even except Mike. We’ll call it a draw–dear little Mike! To think of him going further and further away every minute! I wonder where he is by now. He must have reached Rugby long since.”

At that moment the waiter ventured to approach with a silver tray. A telegram,–it was indeed a telegram of tears and distance from Mike, given in at Rugby. Even so long parted and so far away, Mike was still true. He had not yet forgotten!

These young people were great extravagants of the emotional telegram. They were probably among the earliest to apply electricity for heart-breaking messages. Some lovers feel it a profanation thus to reveal their souls beneath the eye of a telegraph-operator; but the objection of delicacy ceases if you can regard the operator in his actual capacity as a part of the machine. French perhaps is an advisable medium; though, if the operator misunderstands it, your love is apt to take strange forms at its destination, and if he understands it, you may as well use English at once.

“Dear Mike! God bless him!” and they pledged Mike in Esther’s favourite champagne. The wives of great actor-managers must early inure themselves to champagne.

“But if you’re jealous of Mike,” said Esther, presently, taking up the dropped thread of their talk; “what about Angel?”

“Of course it was only nonsense,” said Henry. “I know you love Angel far too much to be jealous of her, as I love Mike; and that’s just the beautiful harmony of it all. We are just a little impregnable world of four,–four loving hearts against the world.”

“How clever it was of you to find Angel!”

“I found Mike, too!” said Henry, laughing.

“Oh, yes, I know; but then I discovered you.”

“Ah, but a still higher honour belongs to me, for I discovered you,” retorted Henry. “When you consider that I discovered three such wonderful persons as you and Angel and Mike, don’t you think, on the whole, that I’m singularly modest?”

“Do you love me?” said Esther, presently, quite irrelevantly.

“Do you love _me_?”

“I asked first.”

“Well, for the sake of argument, let us say ‘yes.'”

“How much?”

“As big as the world.”

“Oh, well, then, let’s have some Benedictine with the coffee!” said Esther.

“I’ve thought of something better, more ‘sacramental,'” said Henry, smiling, “but you couldn’t conscientiously drink it with me. It’s the red drink of perfect love. Will you drink it with me?”

“Of course I will.”

So the waiter brought a bottle bearing the beautiful words, “_Parfait Amour_.”

“It’s like blood,” said Esther; “it makes me a little frightened.”

“Would you rather not drink it?” asked Henry. “You know if you drink it with me, you must drink it with no one else. It is the law of it that we can only drink it with one.”

“Not even with Mike?”

“Not even with Mike.”

“What of Angel?”

“I will drink it with no one but you as long as I live.”

“I will drink it then.”

They held up their glasses.

“Dear old Esther!”

“Dear old Henry!”

And then they laughed at their solemnity. It was deeply sworn!

When Esther reached home that evening, she found a further telegram from Mike, announcing his arrival at Euston; and she had scarcely read it when she heard her father’s voice calling her. She went immediately to the dining-room.

“Esther, dear,” he said, “your mother and I want a word with you.”

“No, James, you must speak for yourself in this,” said Mrs. Mesurier, evidently a little perturbed.

“Well, dear, if I must be alone in the matter, I must bear it; I cannot shrink from my duty on that account.” Then, turning to Esther, “I called you in to speak to you about Mike Laflin–“

“Yes, father,” exclaimed Esther, with a little gasp of surprise.

“I met Mr. Laflin on the boat this morning, and was much astonished and grieved to hear of the rash step his son has chosen to take. The matter has evidently been kept from me,”–strictly speaking, it had; “I understand, though on that again I have not been consulted, that you and Mike have for some time been informally engaged to each other. Now you know my views on the theatre, and I am sure that you must see that Mike’s having taken such a step must at once put an end to any such idea. Your own sense of propriety would, I am sure, tell you that, without any words from me–“

“Father!” cried Esther, in astonishment.

“You know that I considered Mike a very nice lad. His family is respectable; and he would have come into a very comfortable business, if he hadn’t taken this foolish freak into his head–“

“But, father, you have laughed at his recitations, yourself, many a time, here of an evening. What difference can there be?”

“There is the difference of the theatre, the contaminating atmosphere, the people it attracts, the harm it does–your father, as you know, has never been within a theatre in his life; is it likely that he can look with calmness upon his daughter marrying a man whose livelihood is to be gained in a scandalous and debasing profession?”

“Father, I cannot listen to your talking of Mike like that. If it is wrong to make people innocently happy, to make them laugh and forget their troubles, to–to–well, if it’s wrong to be Mike–I’m sorry; but, wrong or right, I love him, and nothing will ever make me give him up.”

Mrs. Mesurier here interrupted, “I told you, James, how it would be. You cannot change young hearts. The times are not the same as when you and I were young; and, though I’m sure I don’t want to go against you, I think you are too hard on Esther. Love is love after all–and Mike’s one of the best-hearted lads that ever walked.”

“Thank you, mother,” said Esther, impulsively, throwing her arms round her mother’s neck, and bursting into tears, “I–I will never give–give–him up.”

“No, dear, no; now don’t distress yourself. It will all come right. Your father doesn’t quite understand.” And then a great tempest of sobbing came over Esther, and swept her away to her own room.

The father and mother turned to each other with some anger.

“James, I’m surprised at your distressing the poor child like that to-night; you might have known she would be sensitive, with Mike only gone to-day! You could surely have waited till to-morrow.”

“I am surprised, Mary, that you can encourage her as you did. You cannot surely uphold the theatre?”

“Well, James, I don’t know,–there are theatres and theatres, and actors and actors; and there have been some very good men actors after all, and some very bad men ministers, if it comes to that,” she added; “and theatre or no theatre, love’s love in spite of all the fathers and mothers in the world–“

“All right, Mary, I would prefer then that we spoke no more on the matter for this evening,” and James Mesurier turned to his diary, to record, along with the state of the weather, and the engagements of the day, the undutiful conduct of Esther, and a painful difference with his wife.

Strange, that men who have themselves loved and begotten should thus for a moment imagine that a small social prejudice, or a narrow religious formula, can break the purpose of a young and vigorous passion. Do they realise what it is they are proposing to obstruct? This is love–_love_, my dear sir, at once the mightiest might, and the rightest right in the universe! This is–Niagara–the Atlantic–the power of the stars–and the strength of the tides. It is all the winds of the world, and all the fires of the centre. You surely cannot be serious in asking it to take, in exchange, some obsolete objection against its beloved!

CHAPTER XXXIX

MIKE AFAR

This collision with her father braced up Esther’s nerves, and made Mike’s absence easier to bear. Her father made no more allusion to it. He was entering that period when fathers, however despotic, content themselves with protest, where once they have governed by royal proclamation. He was losing heart to contend with his children. They must go their own ways–though it must not be without occasional severe and solemn warnings on his part.

Mike and Esther wrote to each other twice a week. They had talked of every day, but a wise instinct prompted them to the less romantic, but likely the more enduring arrangement. It would be none the less open to them to write fourteen letters a week if they wished, but to have had to admit that one letter a day was a serious tax, not only on one’s other occupations, including idleness, but also on the amount of subject-matter available, would have been a dangerous correction of an impulsive miscalculation.

Second-rate London lodgings are not great cheerers of the human spirit, and Mike was very lonely in his first letter or two; but, as the rehearsals proceeded, it was evident that he was taking hold of his new world, and the letter which told of his first night, and of his own encouraging success in it, was buoyant with the rising tide of the future. His chief had affectionately laid his hand on his shoulder, as he came off from his scene, and, in the hearing of the whole company, prophesied a great future for him.

Mike had been born under a lucky star; and he had hardly been in London two months when accident very perceptibly brightened it. The chief comedian in the company fell ill; and though Mike had had so little experience, his chief had so much confidence in his native gift, that he cast him for the vacant part. Mike more than justified the confidence, and not only pleased him, but succeeded in individualising himself with the audience. He had only played it for a week, when one Saturday evening the audience, after calling the manager himself three times, set up a cry for “Laflin.” The obsequious attendant pretended to consider it as a fourth call for the manager, and made as if to move the curtain aside for him once more; but, with a magnanimity rare indeed in a “star” of his magnitude, “No, no!” he said; “it is Mr. Laflin they want. Quick, lad, and take your first call.”

So little Mike stepped before the curtain, and made his first bow to an affectionate burst of applause. What happy tears would have glittered in Esther’s eyes had she been there to see it, and in Henry’s too, and particularly, perhaps, in excitable Angel’s!

Even so soon was the blossom giving promise of the fruit.

CHAPTER XL

A LEGACY MORE PRECIOUS THAN GOLD

Meanwhile, Henry plodded away at Aunt Tipping’s, working sometimes on a volume of essays for the London publisher, and sometimes on his novel, now and again writing a review, and earning an odd guinea for a poem; and now and again indulging in a day of richly doing nothing. Otherwise, one day was like another, with the many exceptions of the days on which he saw Angel or Esther. With Ned, he spent many of his evenings; and he soon formed the pleasant habit of dropping in on Gerard, last thing before bed-time, for a smoke and half an hour’s chat.

There is always a good deal of youth left in any one who genuinely loves youth; and Gerard always spoke of his youth as Adam, in his declining years, might have spoken of Paradise. For him life was just youth–and the rest of it death.

“After thirty,” he would say, “the happiest life is only history repeating itself. I am no cynic,–far from it; but the worst of life is the monotony of the bill of fare. To do a thing once, even twice, is delightful–perhaps even a third time is successfully possible; but to do it four times, is middle age. If you think of it, what is there to do after thirty that one ought not to have achieved to perfection before? You know the literary dictum, that the poet who hasn’t written a masterpiece before he is thirty will never write any after. Of course, there are exceptions; I am speaking of the rule. In business, for example, what future is there for the man who has not already a dashing past at thirty? Of course, the bulk, the massive trunk and the impressive foliage of his business, must come afterwards; but the tree must have been firmly rooted and stoutly branched before then, and able to go on growing on its own account. The work, in fact, must have been done.

“Take perhaps the only thing really worth doing in life,” and Gerard perceptibly saddened. “That is, marrying a woman you love, or I should say _the_ woman, for you only really _love_ one woman–I’m old-fashioned enough to think that,–well, I say, marrying the woman you love, and bringing into the world that miracle of miracles,–a child that shall be something of you and all her: that certainly is something to have done before thirty, and not to be repeated, perhaps, more than once before or after. She will want a boy like you, and you will have a girl like her. That you may easily accomplish before thirty. Afterwards, however, if you go on repeating each other, what do you do but blur the individuality of the original masterpieces–though,” pursued Gerard, laughing, always ready to forget his original argument in the seductiveness of an unexpected development of it, “though, after all, I admit, there might be a temptation sometimes to improve upon the originals. ‘Agnes, my dear,’ we might say, ‘I’m not quite satisfied yet with the shade of Eva’s hair. It’s nearly yours, but not quite. It’s an improvement on Anna’s, whose eyes now are exactly yours. Eva’s, unfortunately, are not so faithful. I’m afraid we’ll have to try again.’

“No, but seriously,” he once more began, “for a really vital and successful life there is no adequate employment of the faculties after thirty, except, of course, in the repetition of former successes. No; I even withdraw that,–not the repetition, only the conservation, the feeding, of former successes. The success is in the creation. When a world is once created, any fool can keep it spinning.

“Man’s life is at least thirty years too long. Two score years is more than enough for us to say what we were sent here to say; and if you’ll consider those biographies in which you are most interested, the biographies of great writers, you cannot but bear me out. What, for instance, did Keats and Shelley and Burns and Byron lose by dying, all of them long before they were forty,–Keats even long before he was thirty; and what did Wordsworth and Coleridge gain by living so long after? Wordsworth and Coleridge didn’t even live to repeat themselves, else, of course, one would have begged them to go on living for ever; for some repetitions, it is admitted, are welcome,–for instance, won’t you have a little more whisky?”

Henry always agreed so completely with Gerard’s talk, or at least so delighted in it, that he had little scope of opportunity to say much himself; and Gerard was too keen a talker to complain of a rapt young listener.

“How old are you?” he said, presently.

“Twenty-two next month.”

“Twenty-two! How wonderful to be twenty-two! Yet I don’t suppose you’ve realised it in the least. In your own view, you’re an aged philosopher, white with a past, and bowed down with the cares of a future. Just you stay in bed all day to-morrow, and ponder on the wonderfulness of being twenty-two!

“I’m forty-two. You’re beginning–I’m done with. And yet, in some ways, I believe I’m younger than you–though, perhaps, alas! what I consider the youth in me is only the wish to be young again, the will to do and enjoy, without the force and the appetite. But, by the way, when I say I’m forty-two, I mean that I’m forty-two in the course of next week, next Thursday, in fact, and if you’ll do me that kindness, I should be grateful if you would join me that evening in celebrating the melancholy occasion. I’ve got a great mind to enlist your sympathy in a little ancient history, if it won’t be too great a tax upon your goodness; but I’ll think it over between now and then.”

Gerard’s birthday had come; and the ancient history he had spoken of had proved to be a chapter of his own history, the beauty and sadness of which had made an impression upon Henry, to be rendered ineffaceable a very few days after in a sudden and terrible manner.

One early morning about four, just as it was growing light, he had suddenly awakened with a strong feeling that some one was bending over him. He opened his eyes, to see, as he thought, Gerard hastily leaving his bedside.

“Gerard!” he cried, “what’s the matter?” but the figure gave no answer, faded away down the long room, and disappeared. Henry sat up in bed and struck a light, his heart beating violently. But there was no one there, and the door was closed. It had evidently been one of those dreams that persist on the eye for a moment after waking. Yet it left him uneasy; and presently he wondered if Gerard could be ill. He determined to see; so, slipping on his dressing-gown, he crossed the landing to Gerard’s room, and, softly knocking, opened the door and put in his head.

“Gerard, old chap, are you all right?–Gerard–“

There was no answer, and the room seemed unaccountably still. He listened for the sound of breathing, but he couldn’t hear it.

“Gerard!” he cried, again louder, but there was still no answer; and then, with the silence, a chill terror began to creep through his blood. He had never yet seen death; and perhaps if he had the terror in his thought would not have been lessened. With a heart that had almost stopped beating, and knees that shook beneath him, he pushed open the door and walked over to the bed. It was still too dark to see more than outlines and masses of white and black; but even so he could see that the stillness with which Gerard was lying was the stillness of death.

His next thought was to rouse Aunt Tipping; and together the two bent over the dead face.

“Yes, he’s gone,” said Aunt Tipping; “poor gentlemen, how beautiful he looks!” and they both gazed in silence upon the calm, smiling face.

“Well, he’s better off,” she said, presently, leaning over him, and softly pressing down the lids of his eyes.

Henry involuntarily drew away.

“Dear lad, there’s nothing to be frightened of,” said his aunt. “He’s as harmless as a baby.”

Then she took a handkerchief from a drawer, and spread it gently over the dead man’s face. To Aunt Tipping the dead were indeed as little children, and inspired her with a strange motherly tenderness. Many had been the tired silent ones whose eyes she had closed, and whose limbs she had washed against their last resting place. They were so helpless now; they could do nothing any more for themselves.

Later in the day, Henry came again and sat long by the dead man’s side. It seemed uncompanionable to have grown thus suddenly afraid of him, to leave him thus alone in that still room. And as he sat and watched him, he gave to his memory a solemn service of faithful thought. Thus it was he went over again the words in which Gerard had made him the depository, the legatee, of his most sacred possession.

Gerard had evidently had some presentiment of his approaching end.

“I am going,” he had said, “to place the greatest confidence in you one man can place in another, pay you the greatest compliment. I shall die some day, and something tells me that that divine event is not very far off. Now I have no one in the world who cares an old ‘J’ pen for me, and a new one is perhaps about as much as I care for any one–with one exception, and that is a woman whom I shall never see again. She is not dead, but has been worse than dead for me these ten years. I am optimist enough to believe that her old love for me still survives, making sweet the secret places of her soul. Never once in all these years to have doubted her love has been more than most marriages; but were I to live for another ten years, and still another, I would believe in it still. But the stars were against us. We met too late. We met when she had long been engaged to a friend of her youth, a man noble and true, to whom she owed much, and whom she felt it a kind of murder to desert. It was one of those fallacious chivalries of feeling which are the danger of sensitive and imaginative minds. Religion strengthened it, as it is so apt to strengthen any form of self-destruction, short of technical suicide. There was but a month to their marriage when we met. For us it was a month of rapture and agonies, of heaven shot through with hell. I saw further than she. I begged her at least to wait a year; but the force of my appeal was weakened by scruples similar to her own. To rob another of his happiness is an act from which we may well shrink, though we can clearly see that the happiness was really destined for us, and can never be his in any like degree. During this time I had received from her many letters, letters such as a woman only writes in the May-morning of her passion; and one day I received the last. There was in it one sentence which when I read it I think my heart broke, ‘Do you believe,’ it ran, ‘in a love that can lie asleep, as in a trance, in this world, to awaken again in another, a love that during centuries of silence can still be true, and be love still in a thousand years? If you do, go on loving me. For that is the only love I dare give you. I must love you no more in this world.’

“Each morning as I have risen, and each night as I have turned to sleep, those words have repeated themselves again and again in my heart, for ten years. It was so I became the Ashton Gerard you know to-day. Since that day, we have never met or written to each other. All I know is that she is still alive, and still with him, and never would I disturb their peace. When I die, I would not have her know it. If love _is_ immortal, we shall meet again–when I am worthier to meet her. Such reunions are either mere dreams, or they are realities to which the strongest forces of the universe are pledged.”

Henry’s only comment had been to grip Gerard’s hand, and give him the sympathy of silence.

“Now,” said Gerard, once more after a while, “it is about those letters I want to speak to you. They are here,” and he unlocked a drawer and drew from it a little silver box. “I always keep them here. The key of the drawer is on this ring, and this little gold key is the key of the box itself. I tell you this, because I have what you may regard as a strange request to make.

“I suppose most men would consider it their duty either to burn these letters, or leave instructions for them to be buried with them. That is a gruesome form of sentiment in which I have too much imagination to indulge. Both my ideas of duty and sentiment take a different form. The surname of the writer of these letters is nowhere revealed in them, nor are there any references in them by which she could ever be identified. Therefore the menace to her fair fame in their preservation is not a question involved. Now when the simplest woman is in love, she writes wonderfully; but when a woman of imagination and intellect is caught by the fire of passion, she becomes a poet. Once in her life, every such woman is an artist; once, for some one man’s unworthy sake, she becomes inspired, and out of the fulness of her heart writes him letters warm and real as the love-cries of Sappho. Such are the letters in this little box. They are the classic of a month’s passion, written as no man has ever yet been able to write his love. Do you think it strange then that I should shrink from destroying them? I would as soon burn the songs of Shelley. They are living things. Shall I selfishly bury the beating heart of them in the silence of the grave?

“So, Mesurier,” he continued, affectionately, “when I met you and understood something of your nature, I thought that in you I had found one who was worthy to guard this treasure for me, and perhaps pass it on again to some other chosen spirit–so that these beautiful words of a noble woman’s heart shall not die–for when a man loves a woman, Mesurier, as you yourself must know, he is insatiable to hear her praise, and it is agony for him to think that her memory may suffer extinction. Therefore, Mesurier,–Henry, let me call you,–I want to give the memory of my love into your hands. I want you to love it for me, when perhaps I can love it no more. I want you sometimes to open this box, and read in these letters, as if they were your own; I want you sometimes to speak softly the name of ‘Helen,’ when my lips can speak it no more.”

Such was the beautiful legacy of which Henry found himself the possessor by Gerard’s death. Early on that day he had remembered his promise to his dead friend, and had found the silver box, and locked it away among his own most sacred things. Some day, in an hour and place upon which none might break, he would open the little box and read Helen’s letters, as Gerard had wished. Already one sentence was fixed unforgettably upon his mind, and he said it over softly to himself as he sat by Gerard’s silent bed: “Do you believe in a love that can lie asleep, as in a trance in this world, to awaken again in another,–a love that during centuries of silence can still be true, and be love still in a thousand years? If you do, go on loving me. For that is the only love I dare give you; I must love you no more in this world.”

Strange dreams of the indomitable dust! Already another man’s love was growing dear to him. Already his soul said the name of “Helen” softly for Gerard’s sake.

CHAPTER XLI

LABORIOUS DAYS

With Gerard’s death, Henry began to find Aunt Tipping’s too sad a place to go on living in. It had become haunted; and when new people moved into Gerard’s rooms, it became still more painful for him. It was as though Gerard had been dispossessed and driven out. So he cast about for some new shelter; and, one day, chance having taken him to the shipping end of the city, he came upon some old offices which seemed full of anxiety to be let. Inquiring of a chatty little housekeeper’s wife, he discovered, away at the echoing top of the building, a big, well-lighted room, for which she thought the owner would be glad to take ten pounds a year. That whole storey was deserted. Henry made up his mind at once, and broke the news to Aunt Tipping that evening. It was the withering of one of her few rays of poetry, and she struggled to keep him; but when she saw how it was, the good woman insisted that he should take something from her towards furnishing. Receiving was nothing like so blessed as giving for Aunt Tipping. That old desk,–yes, she had bought it for him,–that he must certainly take, and think of his old aunt sometimes as he wrote his great books on it; and some bed-linen she could well afford. She would take no denial.

Angel and Esther were then called in to help him in the purchase of a carpet, a folding-bed, an old sofa, and a few chairs. A carpenter got to work on the bookshelves, and in a fortnight’s time still another habitation had been built for the Muse,–a habitation from which she was not destined to remove again, till she and Angel and Henry all moved into one house together,–a removal which was, as yet, too far off to be included in this history.

Ten pounds a year, a folding-bed, and a teapot!–this was Henry’s new formula for the cultivation of literature. He had so far progressed in his ambitions as to have arrived at the dignity of a garret of his own, and he liked to pretend that soon he might be romantically fortunate enough to sit face to face with starvation. He knew, however, that it would be a starvation mitigated by supplies from three separate, well-lardered homes. A lad with a sweetheart and a sister, a mother and an aunt, all in love with him, is not likely to become an authority on starvation in its severest forms.

A stern law had been passed that Henry’s daytime hours were to be as strictly respected as those of a man of business; yet quite often, about eleven o’clock in the morning, there would come a heavenly whisper along the passage and a little knock on the door, soft as a flower tapping against a window-pane.

“Thank goodness, that’s Angel!

“Angel, bless you! How glad I am to see you! I can’t get on a bit with my work this morning.”

“Oh, but I haven’t come to interrupt you, dear. I sha’n’t keep you five minutes. Only I thought, dear, you’d be so tired of pressed beef and tinned tongue, and so I thought I’d make a little hot-pot for you. I bought the things for it as I came along, and it won’t take five minutes, if Mrs. Glass [the housekeeper] will only lend me a basin to put it in, and bake it for you in her oven. Now, dear, you mustn’t–you know I mustn’t stay. See now, I’ll just take off my hat and jacket and run along to Mrs. Glass, to get what I want. I’ll be back in a minute. Well, then, just one–now that’s enough; good-bye,” and off she would skip.

If you want to know how fairies look when they are making hot-pot, you should have seen Angel’s absorbed little shining face.

“Now, do be quiet, Henry. I’m busy. Why don’t you get on with your work? I won’t speak a word.”

“Angel, dear, you might just as well stay and help me to eat it. I sha’n’t do any work to-day, I know for certain. It’s one of my bad days.”

“Now, Henry, that’s lazy. You mustn’t give way like that. You’ll make me wish I hadn’t come. It’s all my fault.”

“No, really, dear, it isn’t. I haven’t done a stroke all morning–though I’ve sat with my pen for two hours. You might stay, Angel, just an hour or two.”

“No, Henry; mother wants me back soon. She’s house-cleaning. And besides, I mustn’t. No–no–you see I’ve nearly finished now–see! Get me the salt and pepper. There now–that looks nice, doesn’t it? Now aren’t I a good little housewife?”

“You would be, if you’d only stay. Do stay, Angel. Really, darling, it will be all the same if you go. I know I shall do nothing. Look at my morning’s work, and he brought her a sheet of paper containing two lines and a half of new-born prose, one line and a half of which was plentifully scratched out. To this argument he added two or three persuasive embraces.

“It’s really true, Henry? Well, of course, I oughtn’t; but if you can’t work, of course you can’t. And you must have a little rest sometimes, I know. Well, then, I’ll stay; but only till we’ve finished lunch, you know, and we must have it early. I won’t stay a minute past two o’clock, do you hear? And now I’ll run along with this to Mrs. Glass.”

When Angel had gone promptly at three, as likely as not another step would be heard coming down the passage, and a feminine rustle, suggesting a fuller foliage of skirts, pause outside the door, then a sort of brotherly-sisterly knock.

“Esther! Why, you’ve just missed Angel; what a pity!”

“Well, dear, I only ran up for half-a-minute. I was shopping in town, and I couldn’t resist looking in to see how the poor boy was getting on. No, dear, I won’t take my things off. I must catch the half-past three boat, and then I’ll keep you from your work?”

Esther always said this with a sort of suggestion in her voice that it was just possible Henry might have found some new way of both keeping her there and doing his work at the same time; as though she had said, “I know you cannot possibly work while I am here; but, of course, if you can, and talking to me all the time won’t interfere with it–well, I’ll stay.”

“Oh, no, you won’t really. To tell the truth, I’ve done none to-day. I can’t get into the mood.”

“So you’ve been getting Angel to help you. Oh, well, of course, if Angel can be allowed to interrupt you, I suppose I can too. Well, then, I’ll stay a quarter of an hour.”

“But you may as well take your things off, and I’ll make a cup of tea, eh? That’ll be cosey, won’t it? And then you can read me Mike’s last letter, eh?”

“Oh, he’s doing splendidly, dear! I had a lovely letter from him this morning. Would you really care to hear a bit of it?”

And Esther would proceed to read, picking her way among the endearments and the diminutives.

“I _am_ glad, dear. Why, if he goes on at this rate, you’ll be able to get married in no time.”

“Yes; isn’t it splendid, dear? I am so happy! What I’d give to see his little face for five minutes! Wouldn’t you?”

“Rather. Perhaps he’ll be able to run up on Bank Holiday.”

“I’m afraid not, dear. He speaks of it in his letter, and just hopes for it; but rather fears they’ll have to play at Brighton, or some other stupid seaside place.”

“That’s a bother. Yes, dear old Mike! To think of him working away there all by himself–God bless him! Do you know he’s never seen this old room? It struck me yesterday. It doesn’t seem quite warmed till he’s seen it. Wouldn’t it be lovely to have him here some night?–one of our old, long evenings. Well, I suppose it will really come one of these days. And then we shall be having you married, and going off to London in clouds of glory, while poor old Henry grubs away down here in Tyre.”

“Well, if we do go first, you will not be long after us, dear; and if only Mike could make a really great hit, why, in five years’ time we might all be quite rich. Won’t it be wonderful?”

Then the kettle boiled, and Henry made the tea; and when it had long since been drunk, Esther began to think it must be five o’clock, and, horrified to find it a quarter to six, confessed to being ashamed of herself, and tried to console her conscience by the haste of her good-bye.

“I’m afraid I’ve wasted your afternoon,” she said; “but we don’t often get a chat nowadays, do we? Good-bye, dear. Go on loving me, won’t you?”

After that, Henry would give the day up as a bad job, and begin to wonder if Ned would be dropping in that evening for a smoke; and as that was Ned’s almost nightly custom about eight o’clock, the chances of Henry’s disappointment were not serious.

CHAPTER XLII

A HEAVIER FOOTFALL

One morning, as Henry was really doing a little work, a more ponderous step broke the silence of his landing, a heavy footfall full of friendship. Certainly that was not Angel, nor even the more weighty Esther, though when the knock came it was little and shy as a woman’s.

Henry threw open the door, but for a moment there was no one to be seen; and then, recalling the idiosyncrasy of a certain new friend whom by that very token he guessed it might be, he came out on to the landing, to find a great big friendly man in corpulent blue serge, a rough, dark beard, and a slouched hat, standing a few feet off in a deprecating way,–which really meant that if there were any ladies in the room with Mr. Mesurier, he would prefer to call another time. For though he had two or three grownup daughters of his own, this giant of a man was as shy of a bit of a thing like Angel, whom he had met there one day, as though he were a mere boy. He always felt, he once said in explanation, as though he might break them in shaking hands. They affected him like the presence of delicate china, and yet he could hold a baby deftly as an elephant can nip up a flower; and to see him turn over the pages of a delicate _edition de luxe_ was a lesson in tenderness. For this big man who, as he would himself say, looked for all the world like a pirate, was as insatiable of fine editions as a school-girl of chocolate creams. He was one of those dearest of God’s creatures, a gentle giant; and his voice, when it wasn’t necessary to be angry, was as low and kind as an old nurse at the cradle’s side.

Henry had come to know him through his little Scotch printer, who printed circulars and bill-heads, for the business over which Mr. Fairfax–for that was his name–presided. By day he was the vigorous brain of a huge emporium, a sort of Tyrian Whiteley’s; but day and night he was a lover of books, and you could never catch him so busy but that he could spare the time mysteriously to beckon you into his private office, and with the glee of a child, show you his last large paper. He not only loved books; but he was rumoured liberally to have assisted one or two distressed men of genius well-known to the world. The tales of the surreptitious goodness of his heart were many; but it was known too that the big kind man had a terribly searching eye under his briery brows, and could be as stern towards ingratitude as he was soft to misfortune. Henry once caught a glimpse of this as they spoke of a mutual friend whom he had helped to no purpose. Mr. Fairfax never used many words, on this occasion he was grimly laconic.

“Rat-poison!” he said, shaking his head. “Rat-poison!” It was his way of saying that that was the only cure for that particular kind of man.

It was evident that his generous eye had seen how things were with Henry. He had subscribed for at least a dozen copies of “The Book of Angelica,” and in several ways shown his interest in the struggling young poet. As has been said, he had seen Angelica one day, and his shyness had not prevented his heart from going out to these two young people, and the dream he saw in their eyes. He had determined to do what he could to help them, and to-day he had come with a plan.

“I hope you’re not too proud to give me a hand, Mr. Mesurier, in a little idea I’ve got,” he said.

“I think you know how proud I am, and how proud I’m not, Mr. Fairfax,” said Henry. “I’m sure anything I could do for you would make me proud, if that’s what you mean.”

“Thank you. Thank you. But you mustn’t speak too fast. It’s advertising–does the word frighten you? No? Well, it’s a scheme I’ve thought of for a little really artistic and humorous advertising combined. I’ve got a promise from one of the most original artists of the day, you know his name, to do the pictures; and I want you to do the verses–at, I may say, your own price. It’s not, perhaps, the highest occupation for a poet; but it’s something to be going on with; and if we’ve got good posters as advertisements, I don’t see why we shouldn’t have good humorous verse. What do you think of it?”

“I think it’s capital,” said Henry, who was almost too ready to turn his hand to anything. “Of course I’ll do it; only too glad.”

“Well, that’s settled. Now, name your price. Don’t be frightened!”

“Really, I can’t. I haven’t the least idea what I should get. Wait till I have done a few of the verses, and you can give me what you please.”

“No, sir,” said Mr. Fairfax; “business is business. If you won’t name a figure, I must. Will you consider a hundred pounds sufficient?”

“A hundred pounds!” Henry gasped out, the tears almost starting to his eyes.

Mr. Fairfax did not miss his frank joy, and liked him for his ingenuousness.

“All right, then; we’ll call it settled. I shall be ready for the verses as soon as you care to write them.”

“Mr. Fairfax, I will tell you frankly that this is a great deal to me, and I thank you from my heart.”

“Not a word, not a word, my boy. We want your verses, we want your verses. That’s right, isn’t it? Good verses, good money! Now no more of that,” and the good man, in alarm lest he should be thanked further, made an abrupt and awkward farewell.

“It will keep the lad going a few months anyhow,” he said to himself, as he tramped downstairs, glad that he’d been able to think of something; for, while the scheme was admirable as an advertisement, and would more than repay Messrs. Owens’ outlay, its origin had been pure philanthropy. Such good angels do walk this world in the guise of bulky, quite unpoetic-looking business-men.

“One hundred pounds!” said Henry, over and over again to himself. “One hundred pounds! What news for Angel!”

He had soon a scheme in his head for the book, which entirely hit Mr. Fairfax’s fancy. It was to make a volume of verse celebrating each of the various departments of the great store, in metres parodying the styles of the old English ballads and various poets, ancient and modern, and was to be called, “Bon Marche Ballads.”

“Something like this, for example,” said Henry, a few days later, pulling an envelope covered with pencil-scribble from his pocket. “This for the ladies’ department,–

_”Oh, where do you buy your hats, lady? And where do you buy your hose?
And where do you buy your shoes, lady? And where your underclothes?_

_”Hats, shoes, and stockings, everything A lady’s heart requires,
Quality good, and prices low,
We are the largest buyers!

“The stock we bought on Wednesday last Is fading fast away,
To-morrow it may be too late–
Oh, come and buy to-day!”_

Mr. Fairfax fairly trumpeted approval. “If they’re all as good as that,” he said; “you must have more money. Yes, you must. Well, well,–we’ll see, we’ll see!” And when the “Bon Marche Ballads” actually appeared, the generous creature insisted on adding another fifty pounds to the cheque.

As many were afterwards of opinion that Henry never again did such good work as these nonsense rhymes, written thus for a frolic,–and one hundred and fifty pounds,–and as copies of the “Bon Marche Ballads” are now exceedingly scarce, it may possibly be of interest to quote two or three more of its preposterous numbers. This is a lyric illustrative of cheese, for the provision department:–

“_Are you fond of cheese?
Do you sometimes sigh
For a really good
Gorgonzola? Try,

“Try our one-and-ten,
Wonderfully rotten,
Tasted once, it never can
Be again forgotten_!”

Here is “a Ballad of Baby’s Toys:”–

“_Oh, give me a toy” the baby said– The babe of three months old,–
Oh, what shall I buy my little babee, With silver and with gold?”

“I would you buy a trumpet fine,
And a rocking-horse for me,
And a bucket and a spade, mother, To dig beside the sea.”

“But where shall I buy these pretty things?” The mother’s heart inquires.
“Oh, go to Owens!” cried the babe; “They are the largest buyers.”_

The subject of our last selection is “Melton Mowbray,” which bore beneath its title due apologies to Mr. Swinburne:–

_”Strange pie, that is almost a passion, O passion immoral, for pie!
Unknown are the ways that they fashion, Unknown and unseen of the eye,
The pie that is marbled and mottled, The pie that digests with a sigh:
For all is not Bass that is bottled, And all is not pork that is pie.”_

Of all the goodness else that Henry and Angel were to owe in future days to Mr. Fairfax, there is not room in this book to write. But that matters little, for is it not written in the Book of Love?

CHAPTER XLIII

STILL ANOTHER CALLER

One afternoon the step coming along the corridor was almost light enough to be Angel’s, though a lover’s ear told him that hers it was not. Once more that feminine rustle, the very whisper of romantic mystery; again the little feminine knock.

Daintiness and Myrtilla!

“Well, this is lovely of you, Myrtilla! But what courage! How did you ever dare venture into this wild and savage spot,–this mountain-fastness of Bohemia?”

“Yes, it was brave of me, wasn’t it?” said Myrtilla, with a little laugh, for which the stairs had hardly left her breath. “But what a climb! It is like having your rooms on the Matterhorn. I think I must write a magazine article: ‘How I climbed the fifty-thousand stairs,’ with illustrations,–and we could have some quite pretty ones,” she said, looking round the room.

“That big skylight is splendid! As close, dear lad, to the stars as you can get it? Are you as devoted to them as ever?”

“Aren’t you, Myrtilla?”

“Oh, yes; but they don’t get any nearer, you know.”

“It’s awfully good to see you again, Myrtilla,” said Henry, going over to her and taking both her hands. “It’s quite a long time, you know, since we had a talk. It was a sweet thought of you to come. You’ll have some tea, won’t you?”

“Yes, I should love to see you make tea. Bachelors always make such good tea. What pretty cups! My word, we are dainty! I suppose it was Esther bought them for you?”

Henry detected the little trap and smiled. No, it hadn’t been Esther.

“No? Someone else then? eh! I think I can guess her name. It was mean of you not to tell me about her, Henry. I hear she’s called Angel, and that she looks like one. I wish I could have seen her before I went away.”

“Going away, Myrtilla? why, where? I’ve heard nothing of it. Tell me about it.”

The atmosphere perceptibly darkened with the thought of Williamson.

“Well!” she said, in the little airy melodious way she had when she was telling something particularly unhappy about herself–a sort of harpsichord bravado–“Well, you know, he’s taken to fancying himself seriously ill lately, and the doctors have aided and abetted him; and so we’re going to Davos Platz, or some such health-wilderness–and well, that’s all!”

“And you I suppose are to nurse the–to nurse him?” said Henry, savagely.

“Hush, lad! It’s no use, not a bit! You won’t help me that way,” she said, laying her hand kindly on his, and her eyes growing bright with suppressed tears.

“It’s a shame, nevertheless, Myrtilla, a cruel shame!”

“You’d like to say it was a something-else shame, wouldn’t you, dear boy? Well, you can, if you like: but then you must say no more. And if you really want to help me, you shall send me a long letter now and again, with some of your new poems enclosed; and tell me what new books are worth sending for? Will you do that?”

“Of course, I will. That’s precious little to do anyhow.”

“It’s a good deal, really. But be sure you do it.”

“And, of course, you’ll write to me sometimes. I don’t think you know yet what your letters are to me. I never work so well as when I’ve had a letter from you.”

“Really, dear lad, I don’t fancy you know how happy that makes me to hear.”

“Yes, you take just the sort of interest in my work I want, and that no one else takes.”

“Not even Angel?” said Myrtilla, slily.

“Angel, bless her, loves my work; and is a brave little critic of it; but then it isn’t disloyal to her to say that she doesn’t know as much as you. Besides, she doesn’t approach it in quite the same way. She cares for it, first, because it is mine, and only secondly for its own sake. Now you care for it just for what it is–“

“I care for it, certainly, for what it’s going to be,” said Myrtilla, making one of those honest distinctions which made her opinion so stimulating to Henry.

“Yes, there you are. You’re artistically ambitious for me; you know what I want to do, even before I know myself. That’s why you’re so good for me. No one but you is that for me; and–poor stuff as I know it is–never write a word without wondering what you will think of it.”

“You’re sure it’s quite true,” said Myrtilla; “don’t say so if it isn’t. Because you know you’re saying what I care most to hear, perhaps, of anything you could say. You know how I love literature, and–well, you know too how fond I am of you, dear lad, don’t you?”

Literary criticism had kindled into emotion; and Henry bent down, and kissed Myrtilla’s hand. In return she let her hand rest a moment lightly on his hair, and then, rather spasmodically, turned to remark on his bookshelves with suspicious energy.

At that moment another step was heard in the corridor, again feminine. Henry knew it for Angel’s; and it may be that his expression grew a shade embarrassed, as he said:

“I believe I shall be able to introduce you to Angel after all–for I think this is she coming along the passage.”

As Henry opened the door, Angel was on the point of throwing her arms round his neck, when, noticing a certain constraint in his manner of greeting, she realised that he was not alone.

“We were just talking of you, dear,” said Henry. “This is my friend, Mrs. Williamson,–‘Myrtilla,’ of whom you’ve often heard me speak.”

“Oh, yes, I’ve often heard of Mrs. Williamson,” said Angel, not of course suffering the irony of her thought to escape into her voice.

“And I’ve heard no less of Miss Flower,” said Mrs. Williamson, “not indeed from this faithless boy here,–for I haven’t seen him for so long that I’ve had to humble myself at last and call,–but from Esther.”

Myrtilla loved the transparent face, pulsing with light, flushing or fading with her varying mood, answering with exquisite delicacy to any advance and retreat of the soul within. But an invincible prejudice, or perhaps rather fear, shut Angel’s eyes from the appreciation of Myrtilla. She was sweet and beautiful, but to the child that Angel still was she suggested malign artifice. Angel looked at her as an imaginative child looks at the moon, with suspicion.

So, in spite of Myrtilla’s efforts to make friends, the conversation sustained a distinct loss in sprightliness by Angel’s arrival.

Myrtilla, perhaps divining a little of the truth, rose to go.

“Well, I’m afraid it’s quite a long good-bye,” she said.

“Oh, you’re going away?” said Angel, with a shade of relief involuntarily in her voice.

“Oh, yes, perhaps before we meet again, you and Henry will be married. I’m sure I sincerely hope so.”

“Thank you,” said Angel, somewhat coldly.

“Well, good-bye, Henry,” said Myrtilla,–it was rather a strangled good-bye,–and then, in an evil moment, she caught sight of the Dante’s head which, hidden in a recess, she had not noticed before. “I see you’re still faithful to the Dante,” she said; “that’s sweet of you,–good-bye, good-bye, Miss Flower, Angel, perhaps you’ll let me say, good-bye.”

When she had gone there seemed a curious constraint in the air. You might have said that the consistency of the air had been doubled. Gravitation was at least twice as many pounds as usual to the square inch. Every little movement seemed heavy as though the medium had been water instead of air. As Henry raised his hands to help Angel off with her jacket, they seemed weighted with lead.

“No, thank you,” said Angel, “I won’t take it off. I can’t stay long.”

“Why, dear, what do you mean? I thought you were going to stay the evening with me. I’ve quite a long new chapter to read to you.”

“I’m sorry, Henry,–but I find I can’t.”

“Why, dear, how’s that? Won’t you tell me the reason? Has anything happened?”

Angel stood still in the middle of the room, with her face as firmly miserable as she could make it.

“Won’t you tell me?” Henry pleaded. “Won’t you speak to me? Come, dear–what’s the matter?”

“You know well enough, Henry, what’s the matter!” came an unexpected flash of speech.

“Indeed, I don’t. I know of no reason whatever. How should I?”

“Well, then, Mrs. Williamson’s the matter!–‘Myrtilla,’ as you call her. Something told me it was like this all along, though I couldn’t bear to doubt you, and so I put it away. I wonder how often she’s been here when I have known nothing about it.”

“This is the very first time she has ever set foot in these rooms,” said Henry, growing cold in his turn. “I’ll give you my word of honour, if you need it.”

“I don’t want to hear any more. I’m going. Good-bye.”

“Going, Angel?” said Henry, standing between her and the door. “What can you mean? See now,–give your brains a chance! You’re not thinking in the least. You’ve just let yourself go–for no reason at all. You’ll be sorry to-morrow.”

“Reason enough, I should think, when I find that you love another woman!”

“I love Myrtilla Williamson! It’s a lie, Angel–and you ought to be ashamed to say it. It’s unworthy of you.”

“Why have you never told me then who made that sketch of Dante for you? I suppose I should never have known, if she hadn’t let it out. I asked you once, but you put me off.”

Henry had indeed prevaricated, for Angel had chanced to ask him just after Myrtilla’s letter about his poems.

“Well, I’ll be frank,” said Henry. “I didn’t tell you, just because I feared an unreasonable scene like this–“

“If there had been nothing in it, there was nothing to fear; and, in any case, why should she paint pictures for you, if she doesn’t care for you?–No, I’m going. Nothing will persuade me otherwise. Henry, please let pass, if you’re a gentleman–” and poor little Angel’s face fairly flamed. “No power on earth will keep me here–“

“All right, Angel–” and Henry let her have her way. Her feet echoed down the stairs, further and further away. She was gone; and Henry spent that evening in torturingly imagining every kind of accident that might happen to her on the way home. Every hour he expected to be suddenly called to look at her dead body–his work. And so the night passed, and the morning dawned in agony. So went the whole of the next day, for he could be proud too–and the fault had been hers.

Thus they sat apart for three days, poles of determined silence. And then at last, on the evening of the third day, Henry, who was half beside himself with suspense, heard, with wild thankfulness, once more the little step in the passage–it seemed fainter, he thought, and dragged a little, and the knock at the door was like a ghost’s.

There, with a wan smile, Angel stood; and with joy, wordless because unspeakable, they fell almost like dead things into each other’s arms. For an hour they sat thus, and never spoke a word, only stroking each other’s hands and hair. It was so good for each to know that the other was alive. It took so long for the stored agony in the nerves to relax.

“I haven’t eaten a morsel since Wednesday,” said Angel, at last.

“Nor I,” said Henry.

“Henry, dear, I’m sorry. I know now I was wrong. I give you my word never to doubt you again.”

“Thank you, Angel. Don’t let us even think of it any more.”

“I couldn’t live through it again, darling.”

“But it can never happen any more, can it?”

“No!–but–if you ever love any woman better than you love me, you’ll tell me, won’t you? I could bear that better than to be deceived.”

“Yes, Angel, I promise to tell you.”

“Well, we’re really happy again now–are we? I can hardly believe it–“

“You didn’t see me outside your house last night, did you?”

“Henry!”

“Yes, I was there. And I watched you carry the light into your bedroom, and when you came to the window to draw down the blind, I thought you must have seen me. Yes, I waited and waited, till I saw the light go out and long after–“

“Oh, Henry–you do love me then?”

“And we do know how to hate each other sometimes, don’t we, child?” said Henry, laughing into Angel’s eyes, all rainbows and tears.

CHAPTER XLIV

THE END OF A BEGINNING

And now blow, all ye trumpets, and, all ye organs, tremble with exultant sound! Bring forth the harp, and the psaltry, and the sackbut! For the long winter of waiting is at an end, and Mike is flying north to fetch his bride. Now are the walls of heaven built four-square, and to-day was the roof-beam hung with garlands. ‘Tis but a small heaven, yet is it big enough for two,–and Mike is flying north, flying north, through the midnight, to fetch his bride.

Henry and the morning meet him at Tyre. Blessings on his little wrinkled face! The wrinkles are deeper and sweeter by a year’s hard work. He has laughed with them every night for full twelve months, laughed to make others laugh. To-day he shall laugh for himself alone. The very river seems glad, and tosses its shaggy waves like a faithful dog; and over yonder in Sidon, where the sun is building a shrine of gold and pearl, Esther, sleepless too, all night, waits at a window like the morning-star.

Oh, Mike! Mike! Mike! is it you at last?

Oh, Esther, Esther, is it you?

Their faces were so bright, as they gazed at each other, that it seemed they might change to stars and wing together away up into the morning. Henry snatched one look at the brightness and turned away.

“She looked like a spirit!” said Mike, as they met again further along the road.

“He looked like a little angel,” said Esther, as she threw herself into Dot’s sympathetic arms.

A few miles from Sidon there stood an old church, dim with memories, in a churchyard mossy with many graves. It was hither some few hours after that unwonted carriages were driving through the snow of that happy winter’s day. In one of them Esther and Henry were sitting,–Esther apparelled in–but here the local papers shall speak for us: “The bride,” it said, “was attired in a dress of grey velvet trimmed with beaver, and a large picturesque hat with feathers to match; she carried a bouquet of white chrysanthemums and hyacinths.”

“The very earth has put on white to be your bridesmaid!” said Henry, looking out on the sunlit snow.

“After all, though, of course, I’m sad in one way,” said Esther, more practical in her felicitations, “I’m glad in another that father wouldn’t give me away. For it was really you who gave me to Mike long ago; wasn’t it?–and so it’s only as it should be that you should give me to him to-day.”

“You’ll never forget what we’ve been to each other?”

“Don’t you know?”

“Yes, but our love has no organs and presents and prayer-books to bind it together.”

“Do you think it needs it?”

“Of course not! But it would be fun for us too some day to have a marriage. Why should only one kind of love have its marriage ceremony? When Mike’s and your wedding is over, let’s tell him that we’re going to send out cards for ours!”

“All right. What form shall the ceremony take–_Parfait Amour_?”

“You haven’t forgotten?”

“I shall forget just the second after you–not before–and, no, I won’t be mean, I’ll not even forget you then.”

“Kiss me, Esther,” said Henry.

“Kiss me again, Esther,” he said. “Do you remember?”

“The cake and the beating?”

“Yes, that was our marriage.”

* * * * *

When all the glory of that happy day hung in crimson low down in the west, like a chariot of fire in which Mike and Esther were speeding to their paradise, Henry walked with Angel, homeward through the streets of Tyre, solemn with sunset. In both that happy day still lived like music richly dying.

“Well,” said Angel, in words far too practical for such a sunset, “I am so glad it all went off so well. Poor dear Mrs. Mesurier, how bonny she looked! And your dear old Aunt Tipping! Fancy her hiding there in the church–“

“Of course we’d asked her,” said Henry; “but, poor old thing, she didn’t feel grand enough, as she would say, to come publicly.”

“And your poor father! Fancy him coming home for the lunch like that!”

“After all, it was logical of him,” said Henry. “I suppose he had made up his mind that he would resist as long as it was any use, and after that–gracefully give in. And he was always fond of Mike.”

“But didn’t Esther cry, when he kissed her, and said that, since she’d chosen Mike, he supposed he must choose him too. And Mike was as good as crying too?”

“I think every one was. Poor mother was just a mop.”

“Well, they’re nearly home by now, I suppose.”

“Yes, another half-hour or so.”

“Oh, Henry, fancy! How wonderful for them! God bless them. I _am_ glad!”

“I wonder when we shall get our home,” said Henry, presently.

“Oh, Henry, never mind us! I can’t think of any one but them to-day.”

“Well, dear, I didn’t mean to be selfish–I was only wondering how long you’d be willing to wait for me?”

“Suppose I were to say ‘for ever!’ Would that make you happy?”

“Well, I think, dear–I might perhaps arrange things by then.”

THE END