THE GALAXY.

VOL. XXIII.—MAY, 1877.—No. 5.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1877, by SHELDON & CO., in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

A PROGRESSIVE BABY.

Ober Lahnstein, Jan. 16, 1875.

So much, Susie dear, for our small miseries between Blackwall and Rotterdam. Nurse's sickness and the crowd of Cook's tourists (Cook-oos!) aggravated matters; but it is always a tedious bit of way, though I never minded it in my solitary artist days, when either Dresden and happy work or home and happy rest were at end of the hard journey. What it is to be young, gay, and heart-free! For then I went always second class—when I didn't go third!—(except of course on the steamers, where the cheaper accommodation is too rude, and rough companionship too intimate)—and once managed the entire distance from Dresden to London for fifty thalers!—taking it leisurely too; stopping en route to "do" Frankfort, Weimar, Heidelberg, Lourain, Bruges, and Antwerp, and to pay two or three visits at grand houses, where they didn't dream I was fresh from the peasants' compartments!

And I'd no shillings and sixpences then to fee guards and porters, so had to dodge them, look at them as if I didn't see them, lug about my own parcels, and freeze without a foot-warmer!

Now the way is all padded. I always go first-class if Ronayne's along, haven't to lift so much as a hand satchel, am fairly smothered in comforts, as beseems the true English Philistine I'm become. I've the delightfullest husband and baby the round world can show; a nurse fit to command the channel fleet (if that meant wisdom in babies, and she weren't such an outrageously bad sailor!); and I've about as much vim as a syllabub; am so nervous that I weep if Ronayne gets out of my sight when we go for a stroll, if too little toast comes up for my breakfast, or the chocolate isn't frothed, or the trunk won't lock, and have aphasia to that degree that I say cancel when I mean endorse, hair-brush when I want a biscuit, and go stumping down to dinner in a boot and a slipper, being incapable of the connected effort of memory and will that would get both feet into fellow shoes.

But I'm blissfully happy all the same, and we've beheld a spectacle lately that reconciles me perfectly with my own absurdity, and my awkwardness with my precious tot.

Coming up the Rhine we had a pair of fellow voyagers, circumstanced somewhat like ourselves: first baby, not over young (the couple, not the baby, which was only six weeks old!), but travelling without a nurse. This mighty functionary had struck almost at the moment of their departure from London, and a charitable but inexperienced friend came to their aid and set forth with them in charge of the baby.

We missed them on the Batavier, which wasn't strange, and first had our attention drawn to them by the slow Dutch landlord's asking Ronayne, as we stood looking idly out into the formal little garden of the new Bath hotel at Rotterdam, if that was his baby a young woman seated on one of the garden benches was jerking up and down so violently? "Because it was shaken about too much. Young babies couldn't be kept too quiet." This young woman was the benevolent friend, and I suppose the parents were off sight-seeing in the town; for every now and then the whole day through one or another of us reported encountering the young woman alone somewhere, always tossing the baby more or less about.

But next day, after we had embarked on the Rhine boat, and I had helped nurse turn our tiny state-room into a tolerable nursery (that folding bassinnette is just invaluable, and lulled by the motion and the breezy air, my lammie slept better in it than in her own quarters at home), I went upon deck to find Ronayne, and on the way came upon a most piteous, persistent wail, and the wail's father and mother in abject, helpless tendance upon it.

Of course my newly-found mother's heart took me straight to the miserable group; and after a few sympathetic inquiries, I sat down beside the mother, and took the querulous little creature in my arms, where presently it hushed off to sleep. How proud I felt! for that's more than my own baby often condescends to do for my clumsy soothing! The father skulked away with an immensely relieved look, soon after I sat down, and the mother grew quite confidential. She told me of the perfidious nurse's behavior, of the friend's heroic offer, and that they had not had a wink of sleep the night before at the hotel, for nursing the baby had made the friend so ill that they had had to send her back to London that morning. She didn't know but it would have been better if she and baby had turned back with the overdone friend; but it was her husband's holiday—six weeks he had—and he worked so hard the rest of the year—her husband was an author, a journalist (at sight I had guessed him a literary cus—tomer!—hair parted in the middle, crease—y clothes, spectacles, a sparse, pointed beard, and narrow, sloping shoulders, with a stoop in 'em)—and she thought his vacation oughtn't to be spoiled or deferred by the child; and as he would enjoy it all a great deal more with her than alone, she had "trusted to luck," and was going off up the Rhine with him to make a long excursion, before proceeding to some quiet little town on the Moselle, where another nurse was in waiting for her. It was their first baby—yes; they had not been married much over a year. She was fond of it, poor baby! but it was such a pity it had come! They had not wanted children—children would utterly interfere with their plan of life. Both its father and herself were busy people. Oh, there was so much work to be done! and they had married to help each other in toil for the world, and babies were a sad hindrance.

I suggested that the work of moulding an immortal soul, fashioning the character and destinies of a little human creature, seemed to me labor mighty enough for any one's energies and ambition. But she answered me a little sharply, that there were souls enough in the world already; she wanted to be responsible for no more mistakes and wretchedness. However, she fortunately was well and strong, and if she got a good nurse, she would be able to devote herself to work, and to help her husband as she had done before the child came. Was I interested in the woman question? I answered somewhat tamely, that I was very much interested in whatever made women better; that I believed in women, and that this rather wearisome planet wouldn't even be worth condemning without them.

Ah! Then she supposed I had attended the suffrage meetings in London? Her marriage had brought her to London. Before that she had lived in B——, and was secretary of the Woman's Suffrage Association there. Perhaps I had seen her name—Alice Thorpe? Now it was Malise. Her husband was Clement Malise of "The Aurora."

This was said a little proudly, but with the pretty pride a wife has a right to show when she believes she has a clever husband. And a good woman I am sure she was beside whom I sat—kindly, conscientious, earnest, spirited, full of aspiration and zeal gone astray. Pleasant to look upon, too, when I came to separate her from her disfiguring and thoroughly British travelling costume—a hat like an inverted basin, with a long white ostrich feather, dingy, uncurled, and forlornly drooping; a violet stuff gown all bunchy and tormented with woollen ruffles, ruches, and knobby rosettes, and a dark blue bag of a waterproof garment which I took to be the feminine correspondent of that masculine wrap, the Ulster coat—a covering that would turn Apollo himself into a bagman. Not very tall, solidly rather than gracefully made, with a rather driven-together face, the excessively bulging forehead crowding down upon a nose curved like a bird's beak, and a pair of deep-set eyes of wonderful beauty—clear, gray, intense, brilliant, and shaded by long dark lashes. Add a delicate, rather sarcastic mouth, a complexion of exquisite fairness, dark brown hair without any warmth in its color, hanging in slender short curls down her neck, and that is Mrs. Malise.

We had a great many conversations after this initial one, and I believe I have promised to look them up this winter in London. They're not so very far from us—going by the underground; Notting Hill Gate's their station, and I really feel a call to look after that baby. He's a fine child, but was generally so miserable and cross that almost nobody took other than offensive notice of him. At first I pitied his poor mother when passengers and crew, even, made much of my baby when she came up all placid, white as a snowdrop, daintily fresh, and feathery, and soft, with her lace frills, like a little queen in nurse's arms; but my pity was thrown away, for Mrs. Malise only said, "I cannot spare the time to keep my baby in white, so made that gray flannel dressing gown for him to travel in. It's capital, and not showing the dirt, will last the whole journey." And the little thing was so untidy! For he was treated exactly like a parcel; his parents handled him like one, a rather dangerous one, at arm's length, and like a parcel he was deposited about, sometimes among rolls of carpeting on the deck, or on beer casks, while his father and mother were hanging over the boat's rail staring at castles and ruins, or reading up in the guide-book; sometimes happed up in a shawl on the floor, or on a bed made up on chairs, his head on the lowest one, his mother craning her head out at window to lose no bit of river scenery. One day I nearly sat down upon him, as he was left, quite by himself, lying across a camp-chair; wherever, in unexpected, impossible corners, one stumbled upon a solitary gray object, it was sure to be this poor mite, bemoaning himself for having come into a place so full of cold, wet, sour smells and stomach-ache—a place where he wasn't wanted, and nobody had time to look after him.

"Name's Malise, eh?" said Ronayne. "Malaise, if that poor little beggar knows anything about it"; and "little Malaise" we always call the child.

"Cries? What's he to do but cry?" burst out nurse one day in high indignation. "There's that silly woman as thinks a young baby must only have three meals a day like grown folks; and so she's off a-tramping about the deck, and leaving him here a-sucking at an empty bottle, and filling himself as full of wind as he can hold! And there's them things (nurse's favorite euphuism for an article of attire she detests) as is hardly ever changed, and him sopping wet most of the time! I should like to whip her!"

I think Mrs. Malise is a good deal drawn toward me for two or three reasons. She has found out that I've been an artist—lived by myself, had my studio, paid my way—and she accordingly respects me as a member of the sisterhood who's at least tried to do something. Then I agree far too closely with St. Paul, and she "don't altogether hold with Paul," and wants to convert me to whatever form of kaleidoscopic non-belief she cherishes. Then I'm too luke-warm about the suffrage. I admit that I see no reason why I shouldn't have it, but I don't and can't see in my having it the panacea for all social ills. I'm asked what I think of Hodge in England, and Terence and Scip in the United States getting rights withheld educated women citizens; and I can only plead pitifully that while Hodge and Terence and Scip are ignorant and boorish, I, having already roughed it a good deal, would rather individually not contest anything very closely with them—a plea which is most justly scouted as a mere get-off—a bit of heartless fine-ladyism. Have I read Mill? No. From the time my school days ended, at seventeen, for ten—no, twelve years, until I married, two years ago, I had neither time nor eyes for reading. Why, I could almost count upon my fingers the books I had read—"after school-books, of course, and then some anatomical reading which don't count; there's—let me see—'The Improvisatore,' Vasari's 'Lives of Painters,' 'Charles Auchester,' Rio's 'Lectures on Christian Art,' 'Christie Johnstone,' 'La Mare au Diable,' two or three of Balzac's novels, and all of poetry and of Ruskin I could ever lay hands on!"

She looked astonished for a moment; then her face brightened. "Here's richness!" I'm sure her thought might have been translated. "Here's a virgin soil with nothing to dispute the growth of good seed." And I feel I'm to be taken in hand. I'm quite ready. It is even something to look forward to in the horrible London winter. She told me "little Malaise" is to be brought up after the most recently approved scientific manner, by weight, measure, and clockwork. His birth, even, was a triumph of principle, for on that occasion Mrs. Malise was attended by a young woman who had been unsuccessful in her medical studies, and failed to obtain her degree—"Because I believed it jealousy, you know, and I wished to encourage her!"

When he is three or four years old (certainly as early as they take them!) he is to be put in the kindergarten at Geneva, and left there for some years. It's a consolation to think that he can't be anywhere more desolate than he's sure to be at home.

Meanwhile, work for papa and mamma, and bouts of colic for him, poor little chap!

Last night I assisted at a distance at his nightly bath. The combined forces of father and mother were required for this process, and the ceremony was so utterly whimsical that I should have enjoyed it without a pang if the small object most concerned had only been a dog. The pair had stationed themselves in a strong draught, and the child, cold, unhappy, lay stripped and squirming on his mother's lap, while from a cup full of water in a tiny basin she dabbed him with a bit of flannel precisely as if he were an ink splash which she was essaying to soak up with blotting paper before it should spread about much!

The father's part was to try and present an available surface for the dabbing, which he did by drawing out first an arm, then a leg of the child at full length, just as one pulls an elastic cord to find how far it will stretch, letting it go with a snap when at full tension—as he dropped arm or leg when little Malaise resented such unwarrantable experiments on his ductility by a sudden, louder-than-usual roar. It was piteous! But to see that father and mother—he lanky, spectacled, grave as an owl, she serious, abstracted, revolving doubtless some scheme of work, mechanically getting through this piece of business, recognized as necessary by their conscientiousness, but perplexing in its nature, and unaccountable as having fallen to their lot—no propriety, no indignant sympathy for the baby, could quite withstand the drollery of the scene.

But nothing could pacify nurse! "The idiots!" she almost screamed. "The child will die, and I hope it will, for she's not fit to have it. I hope it will die!"

Biebrich, 21st.

I have kept this open, thinking I could tell you definitely when we shall get into our quarters at Schwalbach, but nothing is settled yet, and we've been pottering about in these river towns. As Schlangenbad and Wiesbaden are very full, I counsel my lord to stop here where we are well off; for this is a very comfortable hotel, and I don't want to do any more unpacking till we are finally bestowed in our rooms at the Villa Authës.

There is an abandoned palace of the Grand Duke of Nassau here—one of the ruins in King William's track of '66. It is so melancholy to see these ruined principalities. Union's a very nice word, but forced union, matrimonial or political, is not comfortable either to see or endure. However, here's the palace, with its lovely neglected gardens, grass uncut, wild flowers flaunting where should be trim velvet turf only, fountains plashing in weedy ponds—and an admirable resort we find the shaded avenues and deserted parterres for ourselves and our small queen. We could scarce be better provided for.

To-day, watching from our windows the steamer coming down the river, we spied, on its deck, our travelling companions again—Mr. and Mrs. Malise—and, sure enough, the little gray parcel on the bench not far from mamma! Going at last, I hope, toward that nurse on the Moselle. Poor little Malaise!

Address your next as last year. And with fond love to the whole household,

Your Lil.

At last I've seen my "poor little Malaise" again. Your questions would have kept him in my memory if there had been a chance of my forgetting the woful baby; and so soon as we were warmly settled into house, home habits, and friendly circle again (and O how charming even London in winter is after seven mortal weeks in Ireland, where scarce anybody has two pence, and everybody is lazy, and everything above the peasant rank is saturated with conventionality and the poorest pride! For the Great Mogul approves of his grandchild, and was pleased to insist on the prolongation of our visit till I was nearly wild with having to behave myself, and during the last week was a dozen times on the very brink of "breaking out." Oh, that horrid life of buckram, inanity, and do-nothing-ism! Even Ronayne, who knows pretty much the worst of me, thought I had gone crazy when we were once fairly off in the train—a carriage all to ourselves. I sang, I whistled, I gnawed chicken-bones, I talked all the slang I could remember, I smoked a cigarette—I went generally to the mischief. And when we had really got back to dear No. 18, and were cosy in the dining-room over our dessert, no speering servant by, I put my elbows on the table; I made a tipsy after-dinner speech, Ronayne applauding, and calling, "Hear! hear!" I rushed around to his end of the table and hugged him, making a "cheese" on my way back—in short, the Bohemian Lil Graham avenged liberally the suffocations the Great Mogul's daughter-in-law had nearly died of. If ever I stop one hour over a fortnight in the home of my husband's fathers again! A fortnight is just supportable)—and to go back to my first-page sentence, I set forth one morning to hunt up the little man. I found my people easily enough—a good house in a good street—"A large house, that must require much thought and care," I said to Mrs. Malise; whereupon she told me the care did not fall upon her, as the house was, after an imperfect fashion, conducted as a coöperative boarding-house—a germ, she hoped, of a coöperative hotel or family club. Half a dozen or so of their friends occupied the house with them, and they paid an admirable housekeeper to manage for them. It was only a make-shift—not what one liked to mention when speaking of future possibilities of confederated homes—had I read the article in a late number of the "Victoria Magazine" containing a magnificent picture of coöperative living?—but better than dreary lodgings or isolated homes, especially when a woman devoted her life to other than household duties. I replied that I believed every ardent spirit at some time or another was discontented with the beaten way, and dreamed of glorious possibilities of associate life and labor, wherein all selfishness should be suppressed, justice and all the beatitudes reign, and souls develop all their capabilities scarce conscious of even the body's hampering; but that practically the only successful lay experiment in communism I had ever heard of was that early one of the Indians in Paraguay under the care of the Jesuit missionaries—Phalansterians who wore their rosaries around their necks because they had no pockets in which to carry them!

And I thought that people without bonds of kinship or close sympathy would not happily bear being forced into incessant, intimate companionship unless they were either saints or prodigies of imperturbable courtesy.

Well, life was a choice of evils, she answered me, and their experiment had so far succeeded very well. But I might judge for myself a little: would I, with my husband, dine with them on either one of such and such days the next week, to meet this confederate household assembled? This was an advance I had not counted on. My especial interest was in the child, and though I liked well enough for myself accepting an invitation that promised to be something out of the common way in dinners, I was hardly prepared to pledge Ronayne. He not only likes a good dinner, and feels injured when he doesn't get it, but he is very particular as to the society in which he eats it. He can be gloriously jolly and informal when he likes; but he wouldn't be his father's son if he weren't what I call just a bit snobbish about the people he will know in England—London especially.

But if he was going in for the correct thing, why on earth did he insist upon marrying me? Because I never was the correct thing, and he fell it love with me when he was quite old enough to know better; and after his friends had for years reckoned him as a fastidious, foreordained bachelor; he says because I was so wholly unlike the young ladies of his generation that he was surprised out of himself. And mamma told him all my faults that he didn't know already, and how people had insisted before upon marrying me, and two or three times I had been silly enough to half think I would let them, and then backed out and vowed I would have no husband but Art—and was generally so impressed with the risks he ran that I believe she even wept over his prospective unhappiness. But he would have his way; he didn't want a housekeeper; he didn't want a well informed young lady; his shirt-buttons and stocking-darning weren't likely to depend upon his wife; he should hate a patient Grizzle; he didn't marry for his friends—you can imagine the rash arguments. But I gave him a last chance of escape, for the night before we were married; when I'd given away all my old clothes, and the license was bought, the ring in his breast-pocket, and the wedding breakfast being laid in the next room, I said to him before all of them in papa's study:

"Ronayne, don't you want one more chance of freedom? Are you frightened about to-morrow morning, and the pell-mell household mamma promises you? Because if you are, I'll let you off now. You may run away in the night. I'll be a forsaken maiden, and papa shan't have the loch dragged, or advertise a 'Mysterious and Heart-Rending Disappearance.'"

"Too late. It's a hopeless case. I'm much too far gone for that. And I'm not going to help you to get rid of me, Mistress Lil."

I was frightened rather, and then and there I made papa give me a five-pound note to run away from Ronayne with in case I found, during our wedding journey, that I'd made a mistake and Art was my only true husband after all. Ronayne added five pounds more so that I could run away first-class, and have something with which to bribe accomplices! And that ten pounds is in my jewel-case now, and I think I shall keep it for my daughter, and give it her on her wedding-day as a reserve fund, in case she needs it as her mother once pretended to fear she herself might do.

However, for once I was discreet, and answered Mrs. Malise that I should like to come, but must see my husband before promising ourselves. Then I asked to see my small friend; but his mother, consulting her watch, begged me to excuse his non-appearance to-day, for this was just the moment when his nurse would be laying him down for his nap; and though often he would not sleep at all, yet system was everything, and he had to lie in his little bed two hours, though his eyes were broad open all the while.

"But will he lie there so long without crying?"

"Oh, two or three times he nearly cried himself into spasms because he was not taken up; but once he found he could not conquer Johanna he gave up trying, and now lies peaceably enough. He had to learn early that there are things more important in the world than his little self. Nothing do I object to more than a household revolving around children as a centre. Marriage ought to double powers—make people unselfish; while, as a rule, it only enlarges the sphere of egotistic concentration and absorption. If I gave up my time and thoughts to Mill (we've named him for this generation's great English apostle of liberty), as ordinary mothers do, it would seem to me a wickedness. But I scarcely find him the least hindrance. I have begun to speak a little in our suffrage meetings this winter, and have been away a good deal from home for that purpose—once for three weeks at Liverpool and in the north of Ireland."

"But you do not mean without your baby?"

"Oh, certainly. He is only a little animal as yet, requiring animal cares which I can provide without making the sacrifice of ability for higher work. Johanna attends to him far better than I could, and is not above such uses. I believe in economizing forces. By and by, when his intellect begins to develop, he will be far more interesting to me, and I shall be of use to him."

"You weaned him, then, very early?"

"Oh, dear, yes. Since he was three months old, he's been brought up as Pip was. But perhaps 'Great Expectations' was not among your books read."

"No; but I suppose you mean your baby's brought up by hand? But I can't think how you could bear to put him away from you if it wasn't actually needful. Why, my heart's broken only to think that in a month or so more my baby will not depend upon me, humanly, for all her little life."

"Ah, plainly you have a vocation to be a mother. I haven't; and if I had to care for Mill in all things, it would be simple slavery to me. But it must be a great step from art to the nursery too."

"That means a step down. I suppose I should have thought so once, but never since I held my baby in my arms, and she's a far more wonderful creation to me than any old master's cherub I ever copied. And not my baby alone, but all babies. I never pass one in the street now, ever so ugly or dirty, without a warm feeling for it, and no charity opens my purse so quickly as a crêche, or a foundling, or orphan asylum. I could have been very happy as an artist always. Art is full of the noblest strength and compensations, and I own that the ordinary life of the English Philistine is irksome to me to the last degree; but what should I do now without a husband and child? And what would I not give up or bear for them? You see I'm only a very humdrum woman, Mrs. Malise."

"Whatever I see, I don't despair of winning you over to our side. I think it only needs that this great movement for woman's freedom and enlightenment, all that underlies it, all it implies, be fairly brought before you, to receive your assent and coöperation. And, to be unwisely frank, perhaps, it is such women as you we ought to gain, must gain—women of sentiment, tenderness, tact, suave manner—sympathetic women, to bring a gracious element into the contest. The workers already in the field have fought so long, against such odds and obloquy, that it is no wonder all the softness, conciliation are gone out of them, and that their aspect and address suggest only warfare, aggressive and unsparing."

And so on during the call. I wish I could photograph for you Mrs. Malise's drawing-room. You will not suppose it cumbered with the ordinary pretty feminine litter; but I can tell you Aunt Janet's sewing-room couldn't begin to rival it in grim dead-in-earnestness: straight up and down chairs that mean work; a writing-table big enough for a board-room, and fitted with suitably mighty writing implements; a slippery green leather couch upon which no laziness could be so desperate as to court repose; books lining one wall, and papers, stacks of papers everywhere—manuscripts and newspapers; no ornaments, unless a clock, a Cleopatra's needle in black marble, a skull, a wild-eyed, shock-headed oil portrait of a man I guessed to be the father of my hostess, and photographs of Mill, Mazzini, and Swinbourne be considered decorative.

Once at home again, I flew up stairs to Ronayne's dressing-room to run over his engagement tablet. One of the days named by Mrs. Malise was clear, so I said quietly at dinner, "Oh, Ronayne, don't make any engagement for Friday, for we are to dine at the Coming Events New Era Peep o'Day Associate Club."

"Plaît-il, madame?"

So I told him all about it. He groaned, made two or three pathetic observations about grocer's wine, raw meat, greasy, peppered entrées, and the cantankerous woman who would fall to his share at dinner, but resigned himself like a lamb—or a well-trained husband, which is much the same thing.

And once I had fairly sent off our acceptance to Mrs. Malise, I didn't spare him one bit. I told him that for once in his life he was to part company with his fossil world, and find himself in the vanguard of civilization, breathing another atmosphere in the high fellowship of the evangels of religious and social liberty. I besought him not to mortify me by any expression of his limited ideas and convictions upon the topics we should probably hear discussed, and above all not to betray horror at any enunciation that seemed to his feeble apprehension to strike at the root of all possible or endurable tarrying on this planet. "Don't let it be known," I entreated, "what a clog you are upon my soarings after the illimitable. I am a victim, but the anguish and humiliation of my lot are too recent and painful for publicity—as yet!

"Let them think you idiotic, dear—that goes without saying because you're a man—but not that you're a tyrant to whom a poor-spirited wife must succumb.

"And you'll see Americans, dear, who've come over to find out why these effete regions and peoples still linger on the earth, and to them you'll only be a 'blarsted Britisher,' and you're not to resent it if they treat you accordin'. And there'll be Internationalists, to whom you're a 'bloated aristocrat,' and they won't have, to say nice manners. Then if you don't take Mrs. Malise down, you'll may be squire some grand new light. I can't tell you how to behave, for I don't know if the men of the future are to be deferential, or free and easy; but you must take a hint from the behavior of the other men. She'll wear a garnet-silk gown trimmed with white Yak lace, a pea-green ostrich feather, and ribbons in her hair, and a profusion of jingling Berlin steel ornaments, and she'll either trample you under foot and heap you over with wisdom, or she'll find you're her affinity. And if that happens, never mind me, love. If you wish to go after affinities, go! I shall always be the same—the meek, forgiving woman who knows that a wife's duty is to smile always—to upbraid never. Leave me and your poor angel child if you will! We both believed in indissoluble marriage once, but that needn't hinder you. Renounce——"

And about here, I think it was, my eloquence and pathos were suddenly checked in their flow. Men, husbands especially, take such mean advantages! And reasoning, and calm, intellectual conversation have, somehow, so little charm for them! I tell you painful truths, my Susie, but they're for your good and guidance. I know that long-legged, yellow-haired laddie out in New Zealand is a demi-god. Of course he is—they all are—but it's best not to marry 'em—if one can help it!

But the dinner. I was dreadfully puzzled what to wear—whether to get myself up as a severe matron, or appear in the costume suited to me—a frivolous woman, jeune encore, and with a mind not above millinery—when a little note from Mrs. Malise, felicitating herself and me that the day of our dinner was also their reception evening, turned the scale against the brown silk in favor of a quite celestial palest green-blue Irish poplin I got in Dublin this last visit. The tint suits my pale dark face admirably, and with rather a profusion of white lace, and pink coral ornaments that Ronayne's brother Gus, the major, just home from India, gave me at Christmas—exquisite swinging fuchsias, with golden stamens and leaves—the toilette was so effective that I was quite ready to hear Ronayne's, "Oh, what a gorgeous swell!" when I exhibited myself just before starting. And, "Ould Ireland for ever!" as his eye fell on the gown he helped me to choose. "And are these the laces my father gave you?" taking hold of one of my frills. "Do they look like antimacassars? Because if they don't, they never were fabricated in your tight little island, my Paddy. I'd do a deal for you. You couldn't help being born there, poor boy; mais toute chose a son terme, and even my devotion won't stretch to the wearing Irish lace."

Our host and hostess received us in the confederate drawing-room, where were three or four other guests already, and the greater number of the associate household and the lacking members presented themselves before dinner was announced. Fourteen or fifteen people in all, and not, to the casual glance, differing strikingly from unassociate dwellers in "isolate homes and dreary lodgings."

There were, first, a brusque-mannered but uncommonly handsome Lady —— ——. If there's a lord, or plain mister —— ——, I don't know, but certainly he's not en evidence. Lady —— —— is an authoress on the woman question and on marriage, and is generally given to the most forward of "advanced" opinions and ideas. Ronayne insultingly says they won't harm me, for I should never get a notion of what they really are—a speech which I treated with the oblivious contempt it deserved, though inwardly tickled at the lucky shot; for it's quite true that, attracted by her great beauty—the most singular combination you can fancy—boldly cut features, softened by babyish roundness of curves, and enchanting dimples, not a wrinkle or crow-foot to be traced, an infantine complexion, all transparent and softly pink, and this grownup baby's face surmounted by a mass of crisp-waved, snowy, but glitteringly snowy hair!—I hovered around her for awhile during the evening, and could make nothing whatsoever of the oracular sentences she let fall. With her her son, a man of twenty-six to thirty, priggish, argumentative, contrary-minded—altogether the most cub-like young Briton I have lately encountered. Next, a widow with two daughters—the mother what, of all things, but a Plymouth sister!—given to hospital and prison work, tract distribution, and mothers' meetings—a tall, spare, gentle-faced woman, dressed with almost Quakerish simplicity. And run over and away with by her daughters, no question—two monstrous girls of thirty, if a day; real grenadiers, nearly six feet high; one painfully thin and large-eyed, the other as stout as tall, and both overpowering in spirits and flippant or cynic smartness of talk. One, the thin one, whom I liked best, amused me during the evening by telling me how she got rid of bores—young, feeble little society men, brief of stature and of wit. "I endure the little creature as long as I can, and when he has buzzed all his little buzzes about the weather, and subjects suited to his size, there comes a pause—a long pause, for I don't help him. Then, if he is too young to know that he should take himself off, and he begins desperately upon some other threadbare topic, then I act. I am seated on a low lounge or ottoman; I begin to rise as if I caught sight of some one I knew at a distance; and I rise, rise, slowly, slowly, but up, up, up I go, till sometimes I stand on tiptoe, or on a hassock, my long skirts hiding all that, and the little man, who has watched me first idly, then curiously, gradually gets horror-struck, and finally bursts desperately away, absolutely tongue-tied with fright."

"And no wonder!" I couldn't help saying, for she had mounted and mounted as she described the scene, until there really was something supernatural and alarming in the slim, white-draped length of lady, and the height from which the big blue eyes in their hollow orbits shone down upon me.

Then an editor and his wife—the editor of "The Food Regenerator," if you please—and a dark, unwholesome looking, wizened little man, who I am sure would have been the better for a good rubbing with sand-paper and emery powder. His wife was a plaintive, helpless, hapless, washed-out woman, who, sidling apologetically about in a frowsy costume of some yellow-white woollen stuff, made me think of a dirty white cat—a likeness I was sorry to have forced on me when I had heard a bit of her history; for the only wonder is how she's kept courage enough to go on dressing or living at all. It seems that M. le mari is by way of being a social as well as dietetic regenerator, and is as full of uncomfortable fads as man can be. They have no fortune, unless you reckon as such seven small children, and over and over again he's thrown up a good appointment or salary because he "must be free to write his convictions—great truths the world needs." And to lighten matters still further, he believes that service should be bartered, not paid for in coin; so they could almost never have a servant, and when they did get one it was of course some poor wretch who was glad to shelter herself on any terms for the moment, but who could be trusted no more than puss in the dairy. Besides carrying her own fardel, this poor wife was expected to fold and direct wrappers for her husband's precious journal, he finding "mechanical writing too exhausting and stultifying."

Next—let me see—two gentlemen, bachelors, one a pugnacious fellow-countryman to whose tremendous r-r's my heart warmed in this lisping land of Cockaigne—a proof-reader at one of the great publishing houses; the other as curious a specimen as I've encountered—a man of sixty or so, of courtly manners, an ex-Anglican parson, an ex-Catholic convert, a present "seeker after truth"—a man who knows something about everything and believes the last thing—but sure of nothing save that this world's a comfortable place, and loving nothing, one would swear, but his pug dog, a superb creature, fairly uncanny for wisdom, but a vilely ill-tempered beast, gurr-ing if one but looked at it.

And three ladies make up, I believe, the tale of the household: a rather young widow, charming in an unearthly, seeress-like fashion—finest porcelain to her finger-tips, but frail as a breath; a handsome, solid blonde girl, with cold blue eyes, and no gold in her fair hair, studying to be what she calls "a healer"—an earnest advocate of the food-regenerating editor's views upon diet, but quite out-Heroding Herod in her practice, for her fare seems only to lag a pace behind Nebuchadnezzar's in simplicity; and last a witty Americaine, an art student at the South Kensington school, with whom I fraternized directly, and from whom I had all the information my own eyes didn't glean. A girl twenty-four or five years old, I fancy, and oh, so satisfyingly handsome—not tall, but majestic in proportions and pose: a beautifully shaped head whose outlines were only revealed by closely-pinned braids of fine dark hair, and a face like a lily for calm and purity—too pale, indeed, for brilliant health, but the faint shadows under the eyes, about the temples and mouth that she owes to months in dimly-lighted rooms are really most effective aids to her peculiar beauty. She captivated me quite; Ronayne, too, who is a great conquest, for usually he dislikes Americans, finding them, he says, so shallow and yet so cockahoop. And the other guests at dinner were a lady lecturer, American, too, young, decidedly pretty, but pert as a pigeon, an Englishwoman who's doing something very notable in reformatories and kindergartens, a Liberal M.P. dancing attendance on the young lady lecturer, and a grand old white-headed lion of a man, a famous literary M.D.—heterodox to a frightful degree, I'm told, but certainly one of the most delightful neighbors I ever had at a dinner table.

And a very enjoyable dinner-party it was, altogether: a simple but carefully arranged menu, the dishes thoroughly well cooked—two or three foreign touches, maccaroni aux tomates, American-trimmed peaches with cream, and little fairy cakes—cat tongues—do you know them?—and roasted almonds in Spanish fashion, and as good claret Sauterne and sparkling Mosel (for I know a good glass of wine when I get it) as one need wish for.

The food-regenerator and his wife and the blonde "healer" had seats together, and were helped only to vegetables and fruits—the girl, indeed, taking only unbolted bread, of which an enormous supply in the shape of hard little cakes was placed before her, together with a large vegetable-dish full of stewed prunes; and the two mountains of bread and fruit had disappeared when the meal was ended—how many pounds I don't know, but then dinner is her sole meal in the twenty-four hours.

"Did you see that young woman's dinner?" burst out my liege that night when we were discussing our late experiences. "Disgusting! It ought to have been served in a trough! I looked every instant to see her fall from her chair and have to be carried out. If one is to gorge oneself like an anaconda once a day upon fruit and chopped straw in order to live to a good old age, I think we'll elect to be cut off in our youthful bloom."

But the talk at table was clever and gay, and thoroughly un-English in that it was general instead of being broken up into a dozen depressing sotto-voce dialogues. The "healer," indeed, was too busy eating to open her mouth much uselessly, and the white cat was too timid for speech. But her editor made amends. He talked for three; not ill, but with a flavor of bitterness, and not enough in the third person.

"Oh, women are the stronghold of superstition," he exclaimed apropos of some passage between himself and the American art-student—"fettered hard and fast by hoary prejudices," he went on with rather a confusion of metaphors, "else the world might move."

"But we bind you, upon a man's testimony, but by a single hair," answered his opponent: "why not burst so slight a shackle?"

"And you to talk of freedom!" he went on as if unhearing. "Why do you wear that emblem at your throat?" (A plain gold cross which came into bold relief against her black velvet bodice.)

"Possibly because I'm a Christian." She answered without change of voice, but stopping the conversation by addressing some one nearer her. But the little porcelain widow, with a pretty upward movement, like the flutter of a bird on her nest, caught at a floating thread, and said in her tiny flute voice.

"But, Mr. Ridley, if he is interested in symbolism, will remember that the cross is a very ancient symbol, typifying the active and passive forces in nature—good and evil, light and darkness. And is it not very curious how everywhere the sign is impressed on external nature—in the heavens, in crystals, in flowers, in a bird's flight? In the arts too."

"And the legends, fables, and touching or droll superstitions concerning it are endless," said the white-headed doctor beside me. "And yet I'm often struck with the comparative newness of what may be termed literature of the cross. This dwelling on apparition in so many forms of the Story of the Cross is quite modern, and I fancy that a Good Friday service, a following through the Three Hours' Agony with a colloquial soliloquy, if one may use such an expression, upon the Seven Last Words, would have seemed as novel to the early Christians as it does now to the Low Church portion of our beautifully consistent Establishment."

"Though the symbol was always probably in private use among the early Christians," struck in the truth-seeker, "I believe its first public appearance would not date further back than its triumphant one upon the Roman eagles. In the Catacombs, I'm told, the Virgin and Child appear in the oldest work, or symbolism—the Cross never save as executed by late hands."

"May there not be subjective reasons for that?" asked my porcelain widow. "I mean for the modern adoration of the Cross? Do you not think we are much softer hearted, much more keenly susceptible of all the finer emotions than were those old Greek, Roman, and Jewish converts? One feels the same thing, it seems to me, in mystic reading. The old visions were triumphant, simple, or, so to say, material—the very A B C of mysticism; while the visions of later mystics are complicated, involved, like the soul-life of this time, often agonizing beyond natural power of endurance. And the stigmatized saints are of these later times."

"And then," said the art-student, "I think they didn't realize in those early days how long time was going to be, and how tough and many-headed, evil. The faith was but young then. Perhaps they couldn't have borne to know the length and fluctuations of the fight—and they felt so sure of speedy victory, that our Lord's resurrection and ascension appealed to them more keenly than His passion."

"All reasonable theories," replied my neighbor. "But, apropos of some of the legends concerning the Tragedy of the Cross, the weeping willow, the trembling aspen, the robin redbreast, the red crossbill, the passion flower, and so many more, I hardly know a more naïve example of the way in which our forefathers pressed the exterior world into testimony for their belief than occurs in an old picture in an Augustinian monastery in Sussex.

"It is a fresco on the wall of a chamber—subject, the Nativity—and the animals therein are made to publish the event in words supposed to resemble their characteristic sounds and cries. A cock, crowing, is perched at the top, and a label from out his mouth has the words, 'Christus natus est!' 'Quando, quando?' quacks the duck. Hoarsely the raven, 'In hæ nocte.' 'Ubi? ubi?' inquires the cow. And, 'Bethlehem,' bleats out the lamb."

"Oh, Mrs. Stainton, I beg your pardon," suddenly called out the ex-Anglican parson from the foot of the table, and despatching a servant with a plate to the little widow. "I quite forgot your predilection."

"But somebody else may like the inner consciousness too," returned she, transferring to her own plate the fowl's gizzard sent. "You make me feel like a terrible old French aunt of mine—a gourmande who spent two or three hours every day in consultation with her cook, a man, concerning her for the most part solitary dinner, and who was at the last found dead with her cook-book lying open on her knee! My oldest brother, when a little fellow, dined with her one day. In his helping of fowl was included the inner consciousness. Childlike, he put this tid-bit carefully aside as a delicious last morsel. But the old lady eyed his plate with great discontent, growing every moment more grim. Finally she could bear it no longer, and, poising her fork, she dexterously harpooned the bonne-bouche, and triumphantly transferred it to her own plate, remarking to the dreadfully disappointed child, 'I see, my nephew, that you don't love this little portion. Now I do, so it is best I should have it.' We none of us could tolerate this aunt, but my brother's feeling toward her ever after was really venomous in its spitefulness."

"That reminds me," said the Scotchman, "that I saw a photograph of Dixblanc to-day, and was astonished to find her not at all an evil-looking person. I quite believe now that she murdered her mistress in a fit of passion, as she says, and not at all for robbery. And there must have been awful provocation. Fancy living with a disreputable, avaricious, nagging old Frenchwoman!"

"But how worse than with an old Englishwoman of like characteristics?" asked somebody.

"Oh, because the Française is more fine, exasperating, and utterly unrestrained by terrors of Mrs. Grundy and the decent," replied the ex-Anglican, ex-things-in-general truth-seeker.

You will easily imagine that the talk, as it ran from one thing to another, was now and then upon topics of which I haven't the faintest gleam of knowledge—the doctrines of Swedenborg, the philosophizings of Spinoza and Vaurenargues. (Ronayne as usual spells the hard names for me, but you, as a wise and much-reading damsel, will know who was meant and all about it.)

After the ladies had returned to the drawing-room (for even in this New Light house the stupid fashion remains of gentlemen lingering alone, or together, or however you like it—you know what I mean—over their wine) I made a little tour of inspection of the public parts of the establishment with Mrs. Malise. They've a common library and reading-room, and most of the associates have their individual sitting-rooms. Dinner is a fixed meal, and all the members meet thereat, but breakfast and lunch may be taken at any time within certain hours, to suit the convenience of each member. "We are too small in number to make it possible to order our meals à la carte, or to economize in general living expenses as it might suit us individually to do. We can only reduce household costs in the mass, and then share these pretty equally. But this is only a beginning. By and by we shall have splendid confederate homes, under whose roofs the simplest and the costliest fashions of living may go on side by side. But to prove so much as we have done is a gain, and in separate homes the same amount of comfort we have here would cost us at least double, and would be, for some of us who have neither time nor talent for domesticity, quite unattainable at any price. What, under my administration, a little home would be upon our income of £500 a year, I shouldn't like to experience. And Mrs. Stainton! (The little widow.) Why, she comes of one of the oldest of the county families in Somerset; was reared like an exotic, lived chiefly upon cream and forced fruit, though now and then she trifled with something solid—an almond soup, a clear jelly, a bit of game, or an intricate entrée! Never dreamed of going beyond their pleasure gardens on her own feet, and knew how to do no earthly thing save to read, write, talk. She read 'Alton Locke,' and by way of comment married a national schoolmaster, the son of a brickmaker on her father's estate! There was a grand hubbub, and before she'd had time to be too much disgusted with her martyr rôle—martyrdom to break down the barriers of caste—her husband left her a penniless widow, and since then her father allows her a small income, but sentences her to banishment from that decorous household whose proprieties she outraged. She can endure nothing, knows nothing of any practical matters. What would she do with £150 a year, in a dingy parlor 'let,' with a flock bed, a burnt chop, a long-brewed cup of tea, and a frowsy-haired, smutty-faced 'slavey' to open the door and attend grudgingly and slatternly upon her?

"But we are not all chiefly moved by economic considerations. Some of our members have very considerable incomes, and might live where and how they pleased, but they seem not less satisfied with our experiment than are the poorer associates. There is such relief from care, and we may see as much or as little society as we choose without offence or burden."

Something interrupted Mrs. Malise's argument here, and I asked to see baby.

"Mill? Oh, certainly, if you like; but we shall find him asleep."

And asleep he was in one of those dreary back rooms that are sure to be sunless—a room that is both day and night nursery, I suppose, for there was a hot fire, a close smell, and the German nurse sat making lace under a gas jet flaming away unshaded.

He was very pale, poor little man! and has grown very fat—a soft, sagging flesh! I remarked upon his pallor to his mother, and she answered that he had measles about the time he was weaned, and that he had never had much color since. But he seemed well, and was he not a great stout fellow?

What treatment had he in measles? I asked. Oh, none! They didn't believe in doctors over much, and thought nature managed best unhindered. Mill was scrubbed with carbolic soap, and that was all the special treatment he had.

Returning to the drawing-rooms, we found them rapidly filling with the evening guests, and a busy hum of conversation going on. A slender, graceful, feeble-looking young man entered just before us. "That is Dodge, the famous medium," whispered my companion; but the words were hardly uttered before the young man gave a sharp cry, flung his arms wildly out, then sank as if prostrated on a near-by lounge. "Oh, what is it? what is it, Mr. Dodge?" cried several persons, rushing to him.

"She! she!" was the answer, with difficulty, and then he languidly pointed to a group of eager talkers under the chandelier. At the moment Lady ——, one of the group, her white hair startlingly gleaming under the full blaze of light, turned, with some sense of the commotion, and as she did so called out, "Why, Dodge! Is it my old friend Dodge?" and came toward him. The young man rallied, rose, and gave her his hand. "It was so sudden," he explained. "Four years ago Lady ——'s hair had not a white thread in it; and when I first caught sight of her, crowned by that mass of snow, I quite believed it was her spirit I saw."

"A great deal may happen in four years," answered Lady ——. "But how are you in these days, Mr. Dodge?"

"Oh, wretchedly ill, as usual," he replied. "The Duc de —— insisted upon it that I must come over to England and try cold water again, and the Emperor, when I left, engaged me to meet him next season at Ems on condition that I had a more respectable body for my spirit to travel about in. Here's a little souvenir he gave me at parting," showing a magnificent diamond on his finger; and I moved on and lost the gorgeous reminiscences. There was a crowd before the evening was over, and I was introduced to a score or so of notables in the unorthodox world. But I seemed destined to funny little dramatic surprises. I had drawn near the piano to listen to Miss Hedges's "Drink to Me Only," etc., and was sitting quietly when the song was ended, speaking to no one, not consciously looking at any one, when a voice near me said, "That is my wife!" and I woke up to find a roly-poly, little old fellow, all smiles, insinuation, and plausibility, with a fringe of venerable white hair around a head round as an apple, bald and shining, smooth, evidently addressing himself to me. "Yes, that is my wife," he went on, and I looked with some bewilderment at a young woman his gaze indicated—a very young woman in a brilliant pink evening dress, the young woman brilliantly colored herself in solid white and red, with black eyes, black hair in rebellious tight curls, and a face with about as much expression as a plate. "Looks rather young for me, don't she? But it's all right, for the spirits give her to me!"

"And pray, Mr. Wardle, what did the spirits do for the old wife you left in Terre Haute?" inquired Miss Hedges, wheeling about toward us. "I am Anna Hedges, and two years ago I painted a portrait of your grandchild, Benny Davis, for Mrs. Wardle in New York."

"Er—er—I was not aware—er—I remember, that is—er—I think I have seen—er, er—yes! yes! A very worthy woman, the first Mrs. Wardle—very worthy. But narrer, narrer! too undeveloped, in fact, to—er—receive the new gospel, or to—er—make any use of the freedom I gave her to find a more harmonious partner, as I have done," and the old creature having floundered into a little more self-possession, smiled amiably, and retreated in tolerable order.

"I do beg your pardon," went on Miss Hedges to me impulsively; "but that sleek old villain! I really couldn't help my outburst. His real wife is one of the nicest, gentlest of simple old women, and dying of shame, I heard the other day, for what has befallen herself and her children through the delusions and misconduct of an infatuated man who has grandchildren older than this 'harmonious partner' he introduces as his wife here abroad. The 'first Mrs. Wardle!' It made me think of one of our Jerseymen who begged that a certain hymn might be sung at his wife's funeral 'because the corpse was particular fond of that hymn!'"

When I could speak for laughter, I inquired, "But is this then a spiritualistic headquarters? Because Mrs. Malise pointed out Dodge, the medium, to me early in the evening?"

"No, not more than of all other insanities, crudities, and unconventionalities—conventionalities too; for with perhaps one exception, all the members of the household, whatever their opinions, are to the last degree rigid as to the proprieties. But at one time or another one meets here all shades of belief and non-belief—much of the orthodox and I should say all the heterodox London. Very curious I find it, and though sometimes outraged, as to-night, I'm oftener amused with my 'proper study of mankind.' But you, as an Englishwoman, would hardly conceive how droll to me was my first experience of one of these receptions. You know, of course, at once, as everybody does, that I'm a Yankee? I came in rather late one evening with an English artist friend, and found, enthroned in the other room, the centre of a throng of bowing gentlemen, a woman as black as the chimney back, her neck and arms bare, white gloves, a gilt comb and white ostrich feather in her woolly hair—a genuine darkey! and Mme. V.—the artist, Mme. V.—hurried up to me. 'Oh, do you know your accomplished countrywoman, Miss Symonds? No? Then pray let me introduce you to her, we find her so charming!' And I dare say she was charming, only it was very queer at first to encounter Chloe en reme!"

Then we had a long talk, getting speedily away from persons and things to the old familiar subject—art. How the girl is working! And how happy and absorbed in her work she is.

"Oh, Ronayne," I said, as we settled back in the carriage for our drive home, "do I smell of turpentine and paint rags? I had such a good time! Miss Hedges and I talked shop for a whole hour."

And then, and later, we compared notes. He was critical, but had been amused, and, trust me, I had the wit to hold my tongue about "the first Mrs. Wardle!"

For over and above my interest in that poor baby, several things draw me toward this associate household, and I should not like to pursue an acquaintance there if Ronayne manifested any decided contempt or hostility. He bursts out about the food-reforming trio, and the young lady-lecturer's manners are not to his fancy—too free and easy. She boasts of her superiority to hampered Englishwomen. She lives here by herself in lodgings, and has gentlemen visiting and dining with her alone, or goes alone, in full dress, to dine, at 7 or 8 o'clock, with a gentleman friend stopping at the Langham Hotel. These are American fashions—innocent permitted freedoms of our republican sisters, she says. She is a pretty little boaster, with ready wit and a sharp tongue; but there are Americans and Americans, and I hardly think it would occur to an English gentleman to stand flicking a heavy curtain-tassel playfully into Miss Hedges's face while chatting with her at a public reception, even if he were an épris Liberal, M.P.—as Ronayne says Mr. Vane did in the little orator's the other night.

But there! there! With love from each to all, not another word this time of my little New Light baby or his expansive household, from

Your own Lil.

(To be continued.)

THE CLIMBING ROSE.

Climb, oh! climb the golden ladder,

Song of mine:

Climb till thou dost reach her heart

For whom I pine.

Cease not, lest thou lose the bliss

For which I sigh:

Climb till thou dost touch her heart—

Ah! why not I?

D. N. R.

MISS MISANTHROPE.

By Justin McCarthy.

CHAPTER X.

"THE POET IN A GOLDEN AGE WAS BORN."

Victor Heron did not leave Mrs. Money's quite as soon as he had intended. He had made a sort of engagement to meet some men in the smoking-room of his club; men with whom he was to have had some talk about the St. Xavier's Settlements. But he remained talking with Minola for some time; and he talked with Lucy and with other women, young and old, and asked many questions, and made himself very agreeable, and, as was his wont, thought every one delightful, and enjoyed himself very much. Then Mr. Money chanced to look in, and seeing Heron, bore him away for a while to his study, to talk with him about something very, very particular. Mr. Money saw Herbert Blanchet, and only performed with him the ceremony which Hajja Baba describes as "the shake-elbows and the fine weather," and then made no further account of him. Mr. Blanchet, seeing Heron invited to the study, and knowing from his acquaintance with the household what that meant, conceived himself slighted, and was angry. Mr. Money always looked upon Blanchet as a sort of young man whom only women were ever supposed to care about, and who would be as much out of place in the private study of a politician and man of business as a trimmed petticoat.

There was, however, some consolation for the poet in the fact that he had Minola Grey nearly all to himself. He secured this advantage by a dexterous stroke of policy, for he attached himself to his sister and did his best to show and describe to her all the celebrities; and Minola, only too glad, came and sat by Mary, and they made a very happy trio. Herbert was inclined to look down upon his sister as a harmless, old-fashioned little spinster, who would be much better if she did not try to write poetry. He felt convinced for a while that Minola must have the same opinion of her in her secret heart, and would not think the less of him for showing it just a little. But when he found that Miss Grey took the poetess quite seriously, and had a genuine affection for her, his sister's value rose immensely in his eyes; he paid her great attention, and, as has been said, he had his reward.

It grew late; the rooms were rapidly thinning. Minola and Miss Blanchet were to remain at Mrs. Money's for the night. Blanchet could not stay much longer, and had risen to go away, when Victor Heron entered. He came up to speak to Minola, and Minola introduced him to her particular friend and camarade, Miss Blanchet; and he sat beside Miss Blanchet and talked to her for a few moments, while Blanchet took advantage of the opportunity to talk again with Minola. Then Mr. Heron rose, and Herbert rose, and Mary Blanchet, growing courageous, told Heron that that was her brother and a great poet, and in a very formal, old-fashioned way, begged permission to make them acquainted. Mr. Heron was a passionate admirer of poetry, and occasionally, perhaps, tried the patience of his friends by too lengthened citations from Shakespeare and Milton; but in modern poetry he had not got much later than "The Arab physician Karshish," which he could recite from end to end; and "In Memoriam," of which he knew the greater part. He was, however, modestly conscious that his administrative engagements in the colonies had kept him a little behind the rest of the world in the matter of poetry, and it did not surprise him in the least that a very great poet, whose name had never before reached his ears, should be there beside him in Mrs. Money's drawing-room. He felt delighted and proud at meeting a poet and a poet's sister.

It so happened that after saying his friendly good night to his hostess—a ceremony which, even had the rooms been crowded, Mr. Heron would have thought it highly rude and unbecoming to omit—our fallen ruler of men found himself in Victoria street with Mr. Blanchet.

"Are you going my way?" Heron asked him with irrepressible sociability. "I am going up Pall Mall and into Piccadilly, and I shall be glad if you are coming the same way. Are you going to walk? I always walk when I can. May I offer you a cigar? I think you will find these good."

Herbert took a cigar, and agreed to walk Heron's way; which was, indeed, so far as it went, his own. Heron was very proud to walk with a poet.

"Yours is a delightful calling, sir," he said. "Excuse me if I speak of it. I remember reading somewhere that one should never talk to an author about his works. But I couldn't help it; we don't meet poets in some of our colonies; and your sister was kind enough to enlighten my ignorance, and tell me that you were a poet. I always thought that a charming anecdote of Wolfe reciting Gray's 'Elegy,' and telling his officers he would rather have written that than take Quebec. Ay, by Jove, and so would I!"

Mr. Blanchet had never heard of the anecdote, and had by no means any clear idea as to the identity or exploits of Wolfe. But he was anxious to know something about Heron, and therefore he was determined to be as companionable as possible.

"You must not believe all my sister says about me. She has an extravagant notion of my merits in every way."

"It must be delightful to have a sister!" Victor Heron said enthusiastically. "Do you know that I can't imagine any greater happiness for a man than to have a sister? I envy you, Mr. Blanchet."

Heron was in the peculiar position of one to whom all the family relationships present themselves in idealized form. He had never had sister or brother; and a sister now rose up in his imagination as a sort of creature compounded of a simplified Flora MacIvor and a glorified Ruth Pinch. His novel-reading in the colonies was a little old-fashioned, like many of his ideas, and his habit of frequently using the word "sir" in talking with men whom he did not know very familiarly.

Mr. Blanchet was not disposed, from his knowledge of Mary Blanchet, to hold the possession of a sister as a gift of romantic or inestimable value. To say the truth, when Victor spoke so warmly of the delight of having a sister, he too was not setting up the poetess as an ideal. He was thinking rather of Miss Grey, and what a sister she would be for a man to confide in and have always with him.

Meanwhile Herbert, with all his self-conceit, had common sense enough to know that it would not do to leave Heron to find out from others that the great poet Blanchet had yet to make his fame.

"My sister and I have been a long time separated," he said. "She lived in the country for the most part, and I had to come to London."

"Of course—the only place for a man of genius. A grand stage, Mr. Blanchet—a grand stage."

"So of course Mary is all the more inclined to make a sort of hero of me. You must not take her estimate of me, Mr. Heron. She fancies the outer world must think just as she does of everything I do. I am not a famous poet, Mr. Heron, and probably never shall be. I belong to a school which does not cultivate fame, or even popularity."

"I admire you all the more for that. It always seems to me that the poet degrades his art who hunts for popularity—the poet or anybody else for that matter," added Victor, thinking of his own unpopular performances in St. Xavier's Settlements. "I am delighted to meet you, Mr. Blanchet. I have seen so much hunting after popularity in England that I honor any man of genius who has the courage to set his face against it."

"My latest volume of poems," Blanchet said firmly, "I do not even mean to publish. They shall be printed, I hope, and got out in a manner becoming of them—becoming, at least, of what I think of them; but they shall not be hawked about book shops and reviewed by self-conceited, ignorant prigs."

"Quite right, Mr. Blanchet; just what I should like to do myself if I could possibly imagine myself gifted like you. But still you must admit that it is little to the credit of the age that a poet should be forced thus to keep his treasures from the public eye. Besides, it may be all very well, you know, in your case or mine; but think of a man of genius who has to live by his poems! It's easy talking for men who have enough—my enough, I confess, is a pretty modest sort of thing—but you must know better than I that there are young men of genius—ay, of real genius—trying to make a living in London by writings that perhaps their own generation will never understand. There is what seems to me the hard thing." Mr. Heron grew quite animated.

The words sent a keen pang through Blanchet's heart. His new acquaintance, whom Blanchet assumed to be confoundedly wealthy, evidently regarded him as a person equally favored by fortune, and therefore only writing poetry to indulge the whim of his genius. Herbert Blanchet had heard from the Money women, in a vague sort of way, that Mr. Heron had been a governor of some place; it might have been Canada or India for aught he knew to the contrary; and he assumed that he must be a very aristocratic and self-conceited person. Blanchet would not for the world have admitted at that moment that he was poor; and he shuddered at the idea that Heron might somehow learn all about Mary Blanchet's official position in the court-house of Duke's Keeton. For all the dignity of poetry and high art, Mr. Blanchet was impressed with a painful consciousness of being small somehow in the company of Mr. Heron. It was not merely because he supposed Heron to be wealthy, for he knew Mrs. Money was rich, and that Lucy would be an heiress; and yet he was always quite at his ease with them, and accustomed to give himself airs and to be made much of; but it occurred to him that Mr. Heron's family, friends, and familiar surroundings would probably be very different from his; and he always found himself at home in the society of women, whom he knew that he could impress and impose on by his handsome presence. Yes, he felt himself rather small in the society of this pleasant, simple, unpretending young man, who was all the time looking up to him as a poet and a child of genius.

Greatly pleased was the poet and child of genius when Victor Heron asked him to come into his rooms and smoke a cigar before going to bed.

"You don't sleep much or keep early hours, I dare say, Mr. Blanchet; literary men don't, I suppose; and I only sleep when I can't help it. Let us smoke and have a talk for an hour or two."

"Night is my day," said Blanchet. "I don't think people who have minds can talk well in the hours before midnight. When I have to work in the day I sometimes close my shutters, light my gas, and fancy I am under the influences of night."

"I got the way of sitting up half the night," said Victor simply, "from living in places where one had best sleep in the day; but I am sure if I were a poet, I should delight in the night for its own sake."

There was something curious in the feeling of deference with which Heron regarded the young poet. He considered Blanchet as something not quite mortal, or at all events, masculine; something entitled to the homage one gives to a woman and the enthusiasm we feel to a spiritual teacher. Blanchet did not seem to him exactly like a man; rather like one of those creatures compounded of fire and dew whom we read of in legend and mythology. The feeling was not that of awe, because Blanchet was young and good-looking, and wore a dress coat and white tie, and it is impossible to have a feeling of awe for a man with a white tie. It was a feeling of delicate consideration and devotion. Had some rude person jostled against or otherwise insulted the poet as they passed along, Victor would have felt it his duty to interpose and resent the affront as promptly as if Minola Grey or Lucy Money were the object of the insult. To his unsophisticated colonial mind the poet was the sweet feminine voice of the literary grammar.

Heron occupied two or three rooms on the drawing-room floor of one of the streets running out of Piccadilly. He paid, perhaps, more for his accommodation than a prudent young man beginning the world all over again would have thought necessary; but Heron could not come down all at one step from his dignity as a sort of colonial governor, and he considered it, in a manner, due to the honor of England's administrative system, that he should maintain a gentlemanlike appearance in London while still engaged in fighting his battle—the battle which had not begun yet. Besides, as he had himself told Minola Grey, his troubles thus far were not money troubles. He had means enough to live like a modest gentleman even in London, provided he did not run into extravagant tastes of any kind, and he had saved, because he had had no means of spending it, a good deal of his salary while in the St. Xavier's his lodgings; and his condition seemed to Blanchet, when they entered the drawing-room together, and the servant was seen to be quietly busy in anticipating his master's wants, to be that of an easy opulence whereof, in the case of young bachelors, he had little personal knowledge. It was very impressive for the moment. Genius, and originality, and the school quailed at first before respectability, West End rooms, and a man servant.

The adornments of the rooms were, to Mr. Blanchet's thinking, atrocious. They were, indeed, only of the better class London lodgings style: mirrors, and gilt, and white, and damask. There were doors where there ought to have been curtains, carpets where artistic feeling would have prescribed mats or rugs; there were no fans, not to say on the ceiling, but even on the walls. The only suggestion of art in the place was a plaster cast of the Venus of the Louvre which Heron himself had bought, and which in all simplicity he adored. Mr. Blanchet held, first, that all casts were nefarious, and next, that the Venus of Milo as a work of art was beneath contempt. One of the divinities of his school had done the only Venus which art could acknowledge as her own. This was, to be sure, a picture, not a statue; but in Mr. Blanchet's mind it had settled the Venus question for ever. The Lady Venus was draped from chin to toes in a snuff-colored gown, and was represented as seated on a rock biting the nails of a lank, greenish hand; and she had sunken cheeks, livid eyes, and a complexion like that of the prairie sage grass. Any other Venus made Herbert Blanchet shudder.

The books scattered about were dispiriting. There were Shakespeare, Byron, and Browning. Mr. Blanchet had never read Shakespeare, considered Byron below criticism, and could hardly restrain himself on the subject of Browning. There were histories, and Mr. Blanchet scorned history; there were blue books, and the very shade of blue which their covers displayed would have made his soul sicken. It will be seen, therefore, how awful is the impressiveness of respectability when, with all these evidences of the lack of artistic taste around him, Mr. Blanchet still felt himself dwarfed somehow in the presence of the occupier of the rooms. It ought to be said in vindication of Mr. Heron, that that poor youth was in nowise responsible for the adornments of the rooms, except in so far as his plaster cast and his books were concerned. He had never, up to this moment, noticed anything about the lodgings, except that the rooms were pretty large, and that the locality was convenient for his purposes and pursuits.

The two young men had some soda and brandy, and smoked and talked. Blanchet was the poorest hand possible at smoking and drinking; but he swallowed soda and brandy in repeated doses, while his host's glass lay still hardly touched before him. One consequence was that his humbled feeling soon wore off, and he became eloquent on his own account, and patronizing to Heron. He set our hero right upon every point connected with modern literature and art, whereon it appeared that Heron had hitherto possessed the crudest and most old-fashioned notions. Then he declaimed some of his own shorter poems, and explained to Heron that there was a conspiracy among all the popular and successful poets of the day to shut him out from public notice, until Heron felt compelled, by a sheer sense of fellow-feeling in grievance, to start up and grasp his hand, and vow that his position was enviable in comparison with that of those who had leagued themselves against him.

"But you must hear my last poem—you shall hear it," Herbert said magnanimously.

"I shall be delighted; I shall feel truly honored," murmured Victor in perfect sincerity. "Only tell me when."

"The first reading—let me see; yes, the first reading is pledged to Miss Grey. No one," the poet grandly went on, "can hear it before she hears it."

"Of course not—certainly not; I shouldn't think of it," the dethroned ruler of St. Xavier's Settlements hastened to interpose. "What a noble girl Miss Grey is! You know her very well, I suppose?"

"I look upon her," said the poet gravely, "as my patron saint." He threw himself back in his chair, raised his eyes to the ceiling, murmured to himself some words which sounded like a poetic prayer, and swallowed his brandy and soda.

Victor thought he understood, and remained silent. His heart swelled with admiration, sympathy, and an entirely innocent, unselfish envy.

"Still," the poet said, rising in his chair again, "there is no reason why you should not hear the poem at the same time. I am going to-morrow to read the poem to Minola—to Miss Grey and Mary. I am sure they will both be delighted if you will come with me and hear it."

"I should like it of all things, of course; but I don't know whether I ought to intrude on Miss Grey. I understood from her that she rather prefers to live to herself—with her friends of course—and that she does not desire to have visitors."

"You may safely come with me," the poet proudly said. "I'll call for you to-morrow, if you like."

Victor assumed that he safely might accept the introduction of his new acquaintance, and the appointment was made.

If Mr. Heron could, under any possible circumstances, be brought to admit to himself that the society of a poet was a little tiresome, he might perhaps have acknowledged it in the present instance. The good-natured young man was quite content for the present to sink and even to forget his own grievance in presence of the grievances of his new acquaintance. His own trouble seemed to him but small in comparison. What, after all, was the misprizing of the political services of an individual in the face of a malign or stupid lack of appreciation, which might deprive the world and all time of the outcome of a poet's genius? Heron began now to infer that his new friend was poor, and the conviction made him more and more devotedly sympathetic. He was already dimly revolving in his mind a project for the publication of Blanchet's poems at the risk or expense of a few private friends, of whom he was to be the foremost. Some persons have a genius, a heaven-bestowed faculty, for the transfer of their own responsibilities and cares to other minds and shoulders. Already two sympathetic friends of a few hours' standing are separately taking thought about the publication of Mr. Blanchet's poems without risk or loss to Mr. Blanchet. Still, it must be owned that Mr. Blanchet's company was growing a little of a strain on the attention of his present host. Blanchet knew absolutely nothing of politics or passing events of any kind in the outer world, and did not affect or pretend to care anything about them. Indeed, had he been a man of large and liberal information in contemporary history, he would in all probability have concealed his treasures of knowledge, and affected an absolute and complacent ignorance. Outside the realms of what he called art, Mr. Blanchet thought it utterly beneath him to know anything; and within his own realm he knew so much, and bore down with such a terrible dogmatism, that the ordinary listener sank oppressed beneath it. Warmed and animated by his own discourse, the poet poured out the streams of his dogmatic eloquence over the patient Heron, who strained every nerve in the effort to appreciate, and in the honest desire to acquire, exalted information.

At last the talk came to an end, and even Blanchet got somehow the idea that it was time to be going away. Victor accompanied him as far as the doorway, and they stood for a moment looking into the silent street.

"You haven't far to go, I hope?"

"No, not far; not exactly far," the poet answered. "I'll find a cab, I dare say. To-morrow, then, you'll come with me to Miss Grey's. You needn't have any hesitation; you will be quite welcome, I assure you. I'll call for you."

"Come to breakfast then at twelve."

"All right," the complacent Blanchet answered, his earlier awe having given place to an easy familiarity; "I'll come."

He nodded and went his way. Victor Heron looked for a while after his tall, slender, and graceful figure.

"He's a handsome fellow," Heron said to himself, "and a poet, and I can easily imagine a girl being in love with him, or any number of girls. She is a very fine girl, quite out of the common track. She must be very happy. I almost envy him. No, I don't. What on earth have I to do with such nonsense?"

He returned to his room and sat thinking for a while. All his political worrying and grievance-mongering seemed to have lost character somehow, and become prosaic, and unsatisfying, and vapid. It did not seem much to look forward to, that sort of thing going on for ever.

CHAPTER XI.

THE GAY SCIENCE IN A NEW ILLUSTRATION.

Mary Blanchet was, for the time, one of the happiest women on the earth when she had to bestir herself, on their returning home next day, to make preparations for the test-reading of her brother's poems. To hear Herbert's poems read was a delight which could only be excelled by the pride and joy of having them read to such an audience. She had so long looked up to Minola as a leader and a princess that she at last came to regard her as the natural arbitress of the destiny of any one belonging to the Blanchet family. In some vague way she had made up her mind that if Miss Grey only gave the word of command, the young poet's works must go forth to the world, and going forth must of course be estimated at their proper worth. Her pride was double-edged. On this side there was the poet-brother to show to her friends; on that side the friend who was to be the poet-brother's patroness. Her "animula vagula, blandula" floated all that day on the saffron and rose clouds of rising joy and fame.

Nor was her gratification at all diminished when Herbert Blanchet called very early to crave permission to bring Mr. Heron with him, and when he obtained it Blanchet had thought it prudent not to rely merely on the close friendship with Miss Grey, of which he had spoken a little too vauntingly to Victor the night before, and it seemed to him a very necessary precaution to call and ask permission to introduce his friend. He was fortunate enough to find Minola not only willing, but even what Mary might have thought, if she had considered the matter, suspiciously willing, to receive Mr. Heron. In truth, Minola had in her mind a little plot to do a service to Mary Blanchet and her brother in the matter of the poems, and she had thought of Mr. Heron as the kindliest and likeliest person she knew to give her a helping hand in the carrying out of her project. Mary, not thinking anything of this, was yet made more happy than before by the prospect of having a handsome young man for one of the audience. As has been said already, she had the kindliest feelings to handsome young men. Then the presence of another listener would make the thing quite an assembly; almost, as she observed in gentle ecstasy more than once to Minola, as if it were one of the poetic contests of the middle ages, in which minstrels sang and peerless ladies awarded the prize of song.

So she busied herself all the morning to adorn the rooms and make them fit for the scene of a poet's triumph. She started away to Covent Garden, and got pots of growing flowers and handfuls of "cut flowers," to scatter here and there. She had an old guitar which she disposed on the sofa with a delightfully artistic carelessness, having tried it in all manner of positions before she decided on the final one, in which the forgetful hand of the musician was supposed to have heedlessly dropped it. All the books in the prettiest bindings—especially poems—she laid about in conspicuous places. Any articles of apparel—bonnets, wraps, and such like, that might upon an ordinary occasion have been seen on tables or chairs—were carefully stowed away in their proper receptacles—except, indeed, for a bright-colored shawl, which, thrown gracefully across an arm of the sofa, made, in conjunction with the guitar, quite an artistic picture in itself. Near the guitar, too, in a moment of sudden inspiration, she arranged a glove of Nola's—a glove only once worn, and therefore for all pictorial effect as good as new, while having still the pretty shape of the owner's hand expressed in it. What can there be, Mary Blanchet thought, more winsome to look at, more suggestive of all poetic thought, than the carelessly-lying glove of a beautiful girl? But she took good care not to consult the owner of the glove on any such point, dreading with good reason Minola's ruthless scorn of all shams and prearranged affectations.

Mary was a little puzzled about the art fixtures, if such an expression may be used, of the room—the framed engravings, which belonged to the owner of the house and were let with the lodgings, of which they were understood to count among the special attractions. She had a strong conviction that her brother would not admire them—would think meanly of them, and say so; and although Minola herself now and then made fun of them, yet it did not by any means follow that she should be pleased to hear them disparaged by a stranger. About the wall paper she was also a little timorous, not feeling sure as to the expression which its study might call into her brother's critical eye. She could not, however, remove the engravings, and doing anything with the paper was still more completely out of the question. There was nothing for it, therefore, but to hope that his poetry and his audience would so engross the poet as to deprive his eyes of perception for cheap art and ill-disciplined colors.

There was to be tea, delightfully served in dainty little cups, and Mary could already form in her mind an idea of the graceful figure which Minola would make as she offered her hospitality to the poet. An alarm, however, began to possess her as the day went on, about the possibility of Minola not being home in time for the reception of the strangers. In order that she might have the place quite to herself to carry out her little schemes of decoration, the artful poetess had persuaded Minola not to give up her usual walk in the park, and now suppose Minola forgot the hour, or lost her way, or was late from any cause, and had not time to make any change in her walking dress, or actually did not come in until long after the visitors had arrived! What on earth was she, Mary, to do with them?

This alarm, however, proved unfounded. Minola came back in very good time, looking healthy and bright, with some raindrops on her hair, and putting away with good-humored contempt all suggestions about an elaborate change of dress. Miss Blanchet would have liked her leader to array herself in some sort of way that should suggest a queen of beauty, or princess of culture, or other such imposing creature. At all events she would have liked trailing skirts and much perfume. She only sighed when Minola persisted in showing herself in very quiet costume.

The rattle of a hansom cab was heard at last—at last, Mary thought—in reality a few minutes before the time appointed; and the poet and Mr. Heron entered. The poet was somewhat pale, and a little preoccupied. He had a considerable bulk of manuscript in his hand. The manuscript was in itself a work of art, as he had already explained to Victor. Each page was a large leaf of elaborately rough and expensive paper, and the lines of poetry, written out with exquisitely careful penmanship, occupied but a small central plot, so to speak, of the field of white. The margins were rich in quaint fantasies of drawing, by the poet himself, and various artists of his brotherhood. Sometimes a thought, or incident, or phrase of the text was illustrated on the margin, in a few odd, rapid strokes. Sometimes the artist, without having read the text, contributed some fancy or whimsy of his own; sometimes it was a mere monogram, sometimes a curious, perplexed, pictorial conceit; now merely the face of a pretty woman, and again some bewildering piece of eccentric symbolism, about the meaning whereof all observers differed. It must be owned that as Minola looked at these ornaments of the manuscript, she could not help feeling a secret throb of satisfaction at the evidence they gave that the reading would not be quite so long as the first sight of the mass of paper had led her to expect.

Mr. Blanchet did not do much in the way of preliminary conversation. He left all that to Minola and Victor; and the latter was seldom wanting in talk when he believed himself to have sympathetic listeners. It should be said that the well-ordered guitar effect proved a failure; for Mr. Blanchet soon after entering the room flung himself into what was to have been a poetic attitude on the sofa, and came rather awkwardly on the guitar, and was a little vexed at the thought of being made to seem ridiculous.

Every one was anxious that a beginning of the reading should be made, and no one seemed to know exactly how to start it. Suddenly Mr. Blanchet arose, as one awakened from a dream.

"May I beg, Miss Grey, for three favors?"

Minola bowed and waited.

"First, I cannot read by daylight. My poems are not made for day. They need a peculiar setting. May I ask that the windows be closed and the lamps lighted? I see you have lamps."

"Certainly, if you wish," and Minola promptly rang the bell.

"Thank you very much. In the second place I would ask that no sign of approval or otherwise be given as I read. The whole must be the impression, not any part. It must be felt as a whole, or it is not felt at all. Until the last line is read no judgment can be formed."

This was discouraging and even depressing, but everybody promised. Minola in particular began to fear that poets were not so much less objectionable than other men as she had hoped. She could not tell why, but as she listened to the child of genius she was filled with a strange memory of Mr. Augustus Sheppard. Everything that seemed formal and egotistic reminded her of Mr. Augustus Sheppard.

"Then," continued Herbert, "when I have finished the last line, you will perhaps allow me to leave you at once, without formality, and without even speaking? I ask for no sudden judgment; that I shall hear another time; too soon, perhaps," and he indulged in a faint smile. "But I prefer to go at once, when I have read a poem; it is a peculiarity of mine," and he passed his hand through his hair. "Reading excites me, and I am overwrought. It may not be so with others, but it is so with me."

"I can quite understand," the good-natured Victor hastened to say. "Quite natural—quite so. I have often worked myself into such a state of excitement, thinking of things—not poetry, of course, but colonial affairs, and such dry stuff—that I have to go out at night, perhaps, and walk in the cool air, and recover myself. Don't you feel so sometimes, Miss Grey?"

"Oh, no; I am neither poet nor politician, and I have nothing to think about." At the moment she thought Blanchet a sham, and Heron rather a weak and foolish person for encouraging him. What would you have of men?

"I have felt so often," Mary Blanchet said with a gentle sigh.

Miss Grey did not doubt that people felt so; that everybody might feel so under appropriate conditions. It was the deliberate arranging of preliminaries by Mr. Blanchet that vexed her; it seemed so like affectation and play-acting. She was prepared to think his poetry rubbish.

It was not rubbish, however; not mere rubbish, by any means. Mr. Blanchet had a considerable mastery of the art of arranging together melodious and penetrating words, and he caught up cleverly and adopted the prevailing idea and purpose of the small new group of yet hardly known artists in verse and color, to whom it was his pride to belong. His poems belonged to what might be called the literature of disease. In principle, they said to corruption, "Thou art my father," and to the worm, "Thou art my mother and my sister." They dealt largely in graves and corpses, and the loves of skeletons, and the sweet virtues of sin, and the joys of despair and dyspepsia. They taught that there is no truth but paradox. Mr. Blanchet read his contributions with great effect: in a voice now wailing, now threatening, now storming fiercely, now creeping along in tones of the lowest hoarseness. What amazed Minola was, to find that any man could have so little sense of the ridiculous as to be able to go through such a performance in a small room before three people. In a crowd there might be courage; but before three! It was wonderful. She felt horribly inclined to laugh; but the gleaming eyes of the poet alighted on hers and fastened them every now and then; and poor Mary too, she knew, was watching her.

It was very trying to her. She endeavored to fill her mind with serious and sad thoughts; and she could not keep herself from thinking of the scene in Richter's "Flegeljahre" where the kin of the eccentric testator are trying in fierce rivalry who shall be the first to shed a tear for his loss, in presence of the notary and the witnesses, and thereby earn the legacy to which that exasperating condition was attached. After all it is probably easier to restrain a laugh than to pump up a tear, especially when the coming of the tear must bring the drying glow of a glad success with it. Minola's condition was bearable; and indeed, when she saw the genuine earnestness of the poet, her inclination to laugh all died away, and she became filled with pity and pain. Then she tried hard to admire the verses, and could not. At first the conceits and paradoxes were a little startling, and even shocking, and they made one listen. But the mind soon became attuned to them and settled down, and was stirred no more. Once you knew that Mr. Blanchet liked corpses, his peculiarity became of no greater interest than if his liking had been for babies. When it was made clear that what other people called hideousness he called beauty, it did not seem to matter much more than honest Faulconbridge's determination, if a man's name be John, to call him Peter.

The poet sometimes closed his eyes for a minute together, and pressed his hand upon his brow, while drops of perspiration stood distinctly on his livid forehead. But he took breath again, and went on. He evidently thought his audience could not have enough of it. The poem was, in fact, a chaplet of short poem-beads. Many of its passages had the peculiarity that they came to a sudden end exactly when the listeners supposed that the interest of the thing was only going to begin. When a page was ended the poet lifted it, so to speak, with the sudden effort of one hand and arm, as though it were something heavy like a shield, and then flung it from him, looking fixedly into the eyes of some one of the three listeners the while. This formality impressed Mary Blanchet immediately. It seemed the very passion and wrestling of poetic inspiration; the prophetic fury rushing into action through the prophet.

Minola once or twice glanced at the face of Victor Heron. At first it was full of respectful and anxious attention, animated now and then by a sudden flicker of surprise. Of late these feelings and moods had gradually changed, and after a while the settling-down condition had clearly arrived. At length Miss Grey could see that while Mr. Heron still maintained an attitude of the most courteous attention, his ears were decidedly with his heart, and that was far away—with his own grievance and the St. Xavier's Settlements.

At last it was over. The close, for all their previous preparation, took the small audience by surprise. It came thus:

I asked of my soul—What is death?

I asked of my love—What is hate?

I asked of decay—Art thou life?

And of night—Art thou day?

Did they answer?

The poet looked up with eyes of keen and almost fierce inquiry. The audience quailed a little, but, not feeling the burden of response thrown upon them, resumed their expectant attitudes, waiting to hear what the various oracles had said to their poetic questioner. But they were taken in, if one might use so homely an expression. The poem was all over. That was the beginning and the end of it. The poet flung away his last page, and sank dreamy, exhausted, back into his chair. A moment of awful silence succeeded. Then he gathered up his illuminated scrolls, rose from his chair, bowed gravely, and left the room, Mary Blanchet hurried after him.

Minola was perplexed, depressed, and remorseful. She thought there must be something in the productions which made their author so much in earnest, and she was afraid she had not seemed attentive enough, or that Blanchet had detected her in her early inclination to smile. There was an embarrassed pause when Victor and she were left together.

"He reads very well," Heron said at last. "A capital reader, I think. Don't you? He throws his soul into it. That's the great thing."

"It is," said Minola, "if it's much to throw—oh, I don't know what I mean by that. But how do you like the poems?"

"Well, I am sure they must be very fine. I should rather hear the judgment of some one else. I should like to hear you speak first. You tell me what you think of them and then I'll tell you, as the children say."

"I don't care about them," said Minola, shaking her head sadly. "I have tried, Mr. Heron; but I can't admire them. I can't see any originality, or poetry, or anything in them. I could not admire them—unless a command came express from the Queen to tell me to think them good."

"So you read the 'Misanthrope'—Molière's 'Misanthrope?'" Victor said eagerly, and having caught in a moment Minola's whimsical allusion to the duty of a loyal critic when under royal command.

"Yes, I used to pass half my time reading it; I have almost grown into thinking that I have a sort of copyright in it. Alceste is my chief hero, Mr. Heron."

"I wish I were like him," said Mr. Heron.

"I wish you were," she answered gravely.

"But I am not—unfortunately."

"Unfortunately," she repeated, determined to pay no compliment.

"You must let me come some day and have a long talk with you about Molière," Victor said, nothing discouraged, having wanted no compliment, nor thought of any.

"I shall be delighted; you shall talk and I will listen. I am so glad to find a companion in Molière. But I wish I could have admired Mr. Blanchet's poems. I prefer my own ever so much."

"Your own!" The audacious self-complacency of the announcement astonished him, and seemed out of keeping with Miss Grey's character and ways. Do you write poems?"

"Oh, no; if I did, I don't think I could admire them."

"But how then—what do you mean?"

"Well—one can feel such poetry in every blink of sunshine even in this West Centre, and every breath of wind, and every stray recollection of some great book that one has read, when we were young, you know. That poetry never is brought to the awful test of being written down and read out. I do so feel for Mr. Blanchet; I suppose his poems seemed glorious before they were written out."

"But I think they seem glorious to him even still."

"They do—and to Mary. Mr. Heron, tell me honestly and without affectation—are you really a judge of poetry?"

"Not I," said Heron. "I adore a few old poets and one or two new ones, but I couldn't tell why—and those that I admire everybody else admires too, so that I can't pretend to myself that I have any original judgment. My opinion, Miss Grey, isn't worth a rush."

"I am very glad to hear it—very. Neither is mine. So you see we may be both of us quite mistaken about Mr. Blanchet's poems."

"Of course we may—I dare say we are; in fact I am quite sure we are," said Heron, growing enthusiastic.

"Anyhow it is possible. Now I have been thinking——"

"Yes, you have been thinking?"

"I don't know whether I am only going to prove myself a busybody; but I am so fond of Mary Blanchet."

"Yes: quite right; so am I—I mean I like her very much. But what do you think of doing?"

"Well, if one could do anything to get these poems published, or brought out in some way—if it could be done without Mr. Blanchet's knowledge, or if he could be got to approve of it, and was not too proud."

"All that I have been thinking of already," Victor said. "I do think it's a shame that a fellow shouldn't have a chance of fighting his battle for the want of a few wretched pounds."

"How glad I am now that I spoke of this to you! Then if I get up a little plot, you'll help me in it."

"I'll do everything—delighted."

"But first you must understand me. This is for my dear old friend, Mary Blanchet—not for Mr. Blanchet; I don't particularly care about him, in that sort of way, and I fancy that men generally can take care of themselves; but I can't bear to have Mary Blanchet disappointed, and that is why I want to do something. Now will you help me? I mean will you help me in my way?"

"I will help in anyway you like, so long as I am allowed to help at all. But I don't quite understand what you mean."

"Don't you? I wish you did without being told so very, very clearly. Well, my Mary Blanchet is proud; and though she might accept for her brother a helping hand from me, it would be quite a different thing where a stranger was concerned. In plain English, Mr. Heron, whatever money is to be paid must be paid by me; or there shall be no plot. Now you understand."

"Yes, certainly; I quite understand your feelings. I should have liked——"

"No doubt; but there are so many things one could have liked. The thing is now, will you help me—on my conditions?"

"Of course I will; but what help can I give, as you have ordered things?"

"There are ever so many things to do which I couldn't do, and shouldn't even know how to go about: seeing publishers and printers, and all that kind of work."

"All that I'll do with pleasure; and I am only sorry that you limit me to that. May I ask, Miss Grey, how old are you?"

"What on earth has that to do with the matter? Shall you have to give the publishers a certificate of my birth?"

"No, it's not for that. But you seem to me a very young woman, and yet you order people and things as if you were a matron."

Minola smiled and colored a little. "I have lived an odd and lonely sort of life," she said, "and never learned manners; perhaps that is the reason. If I don't please you, Mr. Heron—frankly, I shan't try."

There was something at once constrained and sharp in her manner, such as Heron had not observed before. She seemed changed somehow as she spoke these unpropitiatory words.

"Oh, you do please me," he said; "sincere people always please me. Remember that I too admire the 'Misanthrope.'"

"Yes, very well; I am glad that you agree to my terms—and we are fellow-conspirators?"

"We are—and——"

"Stop! Here comes Mary."

Mary Blanchet came back. Her face had a curiously deprecating expression. She herself had been filled with wonder and delight by the reading of her brother's poems; but she had known Minola long enough to be as sensitive to her moods and half-implied meanings as the dog who catches from one glance at his master's face the knowledge of whether the master is or is not in a temper suited for play. Mary had done her very best to reassure her brother; but she had not herself felt quite satisfied about Minola's admiration.

"Well?" Mary said, looking beseechingly at Minola, and then appealingly at Victor, as if to ask whether he would not come to the rescue. "Well?"

"We have been talking," Minola said, with a resolute effort—"we have been talking—Mr. Heron and I—about your brother's poems, Mary; and we think that the public ought to have a chance of judging of them."

"Oh, thank you!" Mary exclaimed, and she clasped her hands fervently.

"Yes, Mr. Heron says he is clear about that."

"I was sure Mr. Heron would be," said Mary with becoming pride in her brother. She was not eager to ask any more questions, for she felt convinced that when Minola Grey said the poems ought to go before the public, they would somehow go; and she saw fame for her brother in the near distance. She thought she saw something else, too, as well as fame. The interest which Minola took in Herbert's poems must surely betoken some interest in Herbert himself. She knew well enough, too, that there is nothing which so disposes some women to love men as the knowledge that they are serving and helping the men. This subject of love the little poetess had long and quaintly studied. She had followed it through no end of poems and romances, and lain awake through long hours of many nights considering it. She had subjected it to severe analysis, bringing to the aid of the analyzing process that gift of imagination which it is rarely permitted to the hard scientific inquirer to employ to any purpose. She had pictured herself as the object of all manner of wooings, under every conceivable variety of circumstances. Love by surprise; love by the slow degrees of steady growth; love pressed upon her by ardent youth; gravely tendered by a dignified maturity which, until her coming, had never known such passion; love bending down to her from a castle, looking up to her from the cottage of the peasant—love in every form had tried her in fancy, and she had pleased and vexed herself into conjuring up its various effects upon her susceptibility. But the general result of the poetess's self-examination was to show that the love which would most keenly touch her heart would be that which was born of passion and compassion united. He, that is to say, whom she had helped and patronized, and saved, would be the man she best could love. Perhaps Mary Blanchet's years had something to do with this turn of feeling. The unused emotions of the maternal went, in her breast, to blend with and make up the equally unsatisfied sentiments of love; and her vague idea of a lover was that of somebody who should be husband and child in one.

Anyhow the result of all this, in the present instance, was that Mary felt a sudden and strong conviction that to allow Minola Grey to do Herbert a kindly service was a grand thing gained toward inducing Minola to fall in love with him.

So the three conspirators fell to making their arrangements. The parts were easily divided. Mr. Heron was to undertake the business of the affair, to see publishers, and printers, and so forth; Mary Blanchet was to undertake, or at least endeavor, to obtain the consent of her brother, whose proud spirit might perhaps revolt against such patronage, even from friendly hands. Miss Grey was to bear the cost. It was soon a very gratifying thing to the conspirators to know that no objection whatever was likely to come from Mr. Blanchet. The poet accepted the proffered favor not only with readiness, but with joy, and was particularly delighted and flattered when he learned from Mary—what Mary was specially ordered not to tell him—that Miss Grey was his lady-patroness. He was to have been allowed vaguely to understand that friends and admirers—whose name might have been legion—were combined to secure justice for him. But Mary, in the pride of her heart, told him all the truth, and her brother was greatly pleased and very proud. The only stipulation he made was that the poems should be brought out in a certain style, with such paper, such margins, such binding, and so on; according to the pattern of another poet's works, whereof he was to furnish a copy.

"She will be rich one day, Mary," he said, "and she can afford to do something for art."

"Will she be rich?" Mary asked, eagerly. "Oh, I am so glad! She ought to be a princess; she should be, if I were a queen."

"Yes, she'll be rich—what you and I would call rich," he said carelessly. "Everything is to be hers when the stepmother dies; and I believe she is in a galloping consumption."

"How do you know, Herbert?"

"You asked me to inquire, you know," he said, "and I did inquire. It was easily done. Her father left his money and things to his second wife only for her life. When she dies everything comes to your friend; and I hear the woman can't live long. Keep all that to yourself, Mary."

"I am sure Minola doesn't know anything about it. I know she never asked nor thought of it."

"Very likely, and the old people would not tell her. But it's true for all that. So you see, Mary, we can afford to have justice done to these poems of mine. If they are stones of any value, let them be put in proper setting or not set at all. I am entitled to ask that much."

CHAPTER XII.

"LOVE, THE MESSENGER OF DEATH."

Victor Heron seemed to Minola about this time in a fair way to let his great grievance go by altogether. He was filled with it personally when he had time to think about it, but the grievances of somebody else were always coming across his path, and drawing away his attention from his own affairs. Minola very soon noticed this peculiarity in him, and at first could hardly believe in its genuineness; it so conflicted with all her accepted theories about the ingrained selfishness of man. But by watching and studying his ways, which she did with some interest, she found that he really had that unusual weakness; and she was partly amused and partly annoyed by it. She felt angry with him now and then for neglecting his own task, like another Hylas, to pick up every little blossom of alien grievance flung in his way. She pressed on him with an earnestness which their growing friendship seemed to warrant the necessity of his doing something to set his cause right, or ceasing to tell himself that he had a cause which called for justice.

It would not be easy to find a more singular friendship than that which was growing up between Miss Grey and Victor. She received him whenever he chose to come and see her. Many a night, when Mary Blanchet and she sat together, he would look in upon them as he went to some dinner-party, or even as he came home from one, if he had got away early, and have a few minutes' talk with them. He came often in the afternoon, and if Minola did not happen to be at home, he would nevertheless remain and have a long chat with Mary Blanchet. He seemed always in good humor with himself and everybody else, except in so far as his grievance was concerned, and always perfectly happy. It has been already shown that although quite a young man, he considered himself, by virtue of his experience and his public career, ever so much older than Minola. Once or twice he sent a throb of keen delight through Mary Blanchet's heart by speaking of something that "I can remember, Miss Blanchet, and perhaps you may remember it—but Miss Grey couldn't of course." To be put on anything like equal ground with him as to years was a delightful experience to the poetess. It was all the more delicious because there was such an evident genuineness in his suggestion. Of course, if he had meant to pay her a compliment—such as a foolish person might be pleased with, but not she, thank goodness—he would have pretended to think her as young as Minola. But he had done nothing of the kind; and he evidently thought that she was about the same age as himself.

At all events, and it was more to the purpose, he set down Miss Grey as belonging to quite a different stage of growth from that to which he had attained. He thought her a handsome and very clever girl, who had the additional advantage over most other girls that she was rather tall, and that he therefore was not compelled to stoop much when speaking to her. He liked women and girls generally. He hardly ever saw the woman or girl he did not like. If he knew that a woman was insincere or affected, he would not have liked her; but then he never knew it; he never saw it; it never occurred to him. Anybody could have seen that he was a man who had no sisters or girl-cousins. The most innocent and natural affectations of womanhood were too deep for him to see. There really was a great deal of truth in what he had said to Minola about his goddess theory as regarded women. He made no secret about his greatly admiring her—thinking her very clever and fresh and handsome. He would without any hesitation have told her that he liked her best of all the women he knew, but then he had often told her that he liked other women very much. He seemed, therefore, the man whom a pure and fearless woman, even though living in Minola's odd condition of semi-isolation, might frankly accept as a friend without the slightest fear for the tranquillity of his heart or of hers. Minola, too, had always in her own breast resented with anger and contempt the idea that a man and woman can never be brought together and allowed to walk in the beaten way of friendship without their forthwith wandering off into the thickets and thorny places of love. All such ideas she looked upon as imbecility, and scorned. "I don't like men," she used to say to herself and even to others pretty freely. "I never saw a man fit to hold a candle to my Alceste. I never saw the man who seemed to me worth a woman's troubling her heart about." She began to say this of late more than ever—and to say it to herself, especially when the day and the evening had closed and she was alone in her own room. She said it over almost as if it were a sort of charm.

The business of the poems now gave him many occasions to call, and one particular afternoon Victor called when, by a rare chance, Mary Blanchet happened to be out of doors. Minola had had it on her mind that he was not pushing his cause very earnestly, and was glad of the opportunity of telling him so. He listened with great good humor. It is nearly as agreeable to be lectured as to be praised by a handsome young woman who is unaffectedly interested in one's welfare.

"I shall lose my good opinion of you if you don't keep more steadily to your purpose."

"But I do keep steadily to it. I am always thinking of it."

"No; you allow anything and everything to interfere with you. Anybody's affairs seem more to you than your own."

Victor shook his head.

"That isn't the reason," he said. "I wish it were, or anything half so good. No; the truth is that I get ashamed of the cursed work of trying to interest people in my affairs who don't want to take any interest in them. I am a restless sort of person and must be doing something, and my own business is now in that awful stage when there is nothing practical or active to be done with it. I find it easier to get up an appearance of prodigious activity about some other person's affairs. And then, Miss Grey, I don't mind confessing that I am rather sensitive and morbid—egotistic, I suppose—and if any one looks coldly on me when I endeavor to interest him in my own affairs, I take it to heart more than if it were the business of somebody else I had in hand."

"But you talked at one time of appealing to the public. Why don't you do that?"

"Get people to bring my case on in the House of Commons?"

"Yes; why not?"

"It looks like being patronized and protected and made a client of."

"Well, why don't you try and get the chance of doing it yourself?"

He smiled.

"I still do hold to that idea—or that dream. I should like it very much if one only had a chance. But no chance seems to turn up; and one loses heart sometimes."

"Oh, no," Minola said earnestly, "don't do that."

"Don't do what?"

He had hardly been thinking of his own words, and he seemed a little surprised at the earnestness of her tone.

"Don't lose heart. Don't give way. Don't fall into the track of the commonplace, and become like every one else. Keep to your purpose, Mr. Heron, and don't be beaten out of it."

"No; I haven't the least idea of that, I can assure you. Quite the contrary. But it is so hard to get a chance, or to do anything all at once. Everything moves so slowly in England. But I have a plan—we are doing something."

"I am very glad. You seem to me to be doing nothing for yourself."