JACK DAWE (Soliloquises)." This house is a Bedlam! What a home! Alas! I feel more than ever how vulgar it is. Great Beaconsfield, will they never stop! And I must stay here listening to this petty babble, while in another place the great battle of women's suffrage is being fought. It almost drives me mad!" (And much more.)

The quartet, together with its inaudible accompaniment of soliloquy, was abruptly terminated in the midst of a fortissimo passage by a howl of disappointment. This last note brought to a fittingly sombre and ghastly climax one of those weird fantaisies de diable which only the melancholy genius of the English lower orders of that day was capable of extemporising in their full perfection. This particular performance, however, was rather different from the ordinary, which was al fresco, and in which the themes of the one singer were taken up by the other with the finest instinct of harmony, so that the most complicated fugues chased their own tails till the tap of the imperious bâton brought the music to a sudden close.

The howl came from Sally. Eliza's righteous indignation had left her no ears except for her own voice; but when Mrs. Dawe made an unprepared transition into her shrillest key, she caught the speaker's ear, and blanched her cheek. It would seem then that the old lady was not dead, but shrieking. Eliza was startled, but not altogether displeased. Although Jack had at last consented to approximately "name the happy day," she feared he might yet slip through her fingers, and even the joy of his inheritance of the business was not sufficient to counterbalance this dread. Mrs. Dawe was a strong ally; and, all things considered, it would be kinder for her to defer her decease till after the marriage than to leave Jack to the imperceptible impulses of his "sense of honour." Her heart swelled with a genuine joy which she felt to be all the more noble that she would have been the gainer by Mrs. Dawe's death, and she burned to congratulate that personage on her indifference to rumour. Excitement lent her audacity and agility, and she flashed under the uplifted ladle and was half up the stairs before her adversary realised what had happened. Sally gave chase, but too late. A moment's wild commotion on the staircase, and Eliza rushed frantically into the room, shut the door with a bang and fell breathless into Jack's arms with a cry of "Save me, my love." Hardly had she done so when the door was again burst open, and Sally, fire in her eyes, and a ladle in her hand, made for her cowering prey. Mrs. Dawe, seeing the danger of her favourite, neatly dispossessed the drudge of her weapon as she flew past, and whirled it round in the direction of Mr. White with an exclamation of reproach. The latter leapt just beyond its whizzing circuit and retreated to the door with renewed menaces. The duel between the undertaker and his corpse recommenced; both parties making occasional lunges at Jack; one of Jack's arms was around Eliza, who was resting upon his bosom apparently in a swoon, and the other was keeping off the irate Sally, who, unable to effect anything

vi et armis, burst into heartrending sobs, and, brandishing the fragment of newspaper, incoherently demanded a reading lesson. And amid all the din and horror of the scene, cheers and counter cheers rang in the ear of fancy and chafed his soul, and filled it with bitter indignation.

"Great Beaconsfield!" he thought. "The whole house is disorganised-my mother scolds me as if I were a child-this infernal girl chooses to faint on my breast, a liberty she would never have dared to take a month ago-and, worst of all, this unwashed, miserable Sally has the d- -d cheek to kick up a devilish row and attack people with ladles in my very presence, besides clamouring for free education, as if I was bound to teach her because I have advocated it. A nice return of evil for good! While I have been working like a horse and without a single mistake, I find everything topsy-turvy here. If I don't bestir myself while I have the chance, the house will become utterly unbearable, and if I once leave it I shall never be able to return."

Eliza, on hearing the news from her brother, with whom she was staying (having been dismissed from her place a week ago and paid in lieu of notice), had donned a black dress and a plain bonnet hastily decorated with crape, and wended her way to the desolated home. The sobriety of her present costume gave her the demeanour of a Puritan, but of a Puritan whom the merry monarch would have longed to convert to his more orthodox Christianity. It toned down the passion of her dark eyes, touching with a gleam of tenderness and purity those orbs in which a poet might think to read the secret of the universe. But at this moment Jack was not dazzled by her beauty, not because her eyes was shut but because his were open. His first action was to deposit the burden in the arms of Mrs. Dawe, who therefore hurled the ladle at Mr. White as the readiest means of getting rid of it. As she took careful aim at him, the weapon, in accordance with the law of projectiles, struck Sally at the other end of the room. Her, staggering under the shock, Jack took by the nape of the neck and dropped downstairs. This exhibition of sang froid moved Mr. White in more senses than one. Fiat experimentum in corpore vili, thought the undertaker, who naturally knew something of the dead languages. Seeing that nothing, or rather something, was to be got by delay, he retired disgracefully, leaving the enemy in possession of the bedchamber; and a motley audience outside was soon entertained by the story of his wrongs, involving as it did another fact of unprecedented

interest.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE PAINTER DESPAIRS OF THE PEOPLE

THE news spread, and everywhere the shutters retreated at its approach. Combined with the natural rejoicing (not because Mrs. Dawe was such a favourite, but from the reaction) were a sense of irritation as at having been cheated out of pity, and a natural sympathy with the undertaker. Still it was felt that the latter had acted injudiciously in quarrelling with a potential nine-ten funeral. All the next day and during the week, little parties from her greatest cronies to her most casual acquaintances called to gaze upon the woman who had survived her own death. These did her as much harm as if they had been the mothers, and sisters, and aunts of a Funeral Association.

Dr. Thomas, calling in the evening, soon after his patient's revival, summarily expelled an advance-party of such, and temporarily dispelled the knots of outsiders that had congregated round the shop. All the rest of the week the business was magnificent, but it was not Jack that conducted it. Eliza, who came to bury Mrs. Dawe, remained to praise her and to serve in her stead. For although Dr. Thomas said that Mrs. Dawe must not be worried, and that he could not answer for the consequences if the noisy shop were kept open, Dr. Brown, whom Jack also called in, said that she must not worry, and that he could not answer for the consequences if it were kept shut. Mrs. Dawe accused the former of wishing to ruin her, and the latter of neglecting her; and they would both have refused to attend but for the pacificatory remonstrances of her son, the smallness of their practice, and their common belief that the other would treacherously endure the humiliation of return. The unhappy Jack was likewise constantly twitted with desiring to destroy her by flying in the face of his father's axiom : Between two doctors one falls into the ground." But we are anticipating.

66

Some mysterious instinct must have informed Eliza that Jack had dropped Sally, for she opened her eyes just in time to witness Mr. White's retreat. The ladies, being in need of mutual consolation, kissed each other profusely.

Oh, my dear Mrs. Dawe," cried Eliza, "I am so grieved to find you ill, especially as I came here to tell you good news. I have left my place this very day in order to prepare my trow-see-aw for our wedding, which, as you know, takes place in about two months."

Jack started, then frowned, and bit his lips as a flood of bitter memories poured upon him.

"Yes," he thought, "I remember she said so then, the infernal little jade. Was there ever such a d――d piece of foolishness as making her a fresh promise of marriage? What claim after all has she upon me? My punishment is greater than I can bear.

She has done me irreparable mischief, she has been a drag upon my career."

"What!" exclaimed Mrs. Dawe. "And didn't you know I was dead ?"

"No," replied Eliza. "What do you mean?"

Mrs. Dawe burst into tears.

"I wish I was," she sobbed, "I wish I was and they 'ad buried me alive, I should 'ave been well out of it. I am tired of ungrateful sons, and I would rather be buried and layin' with my 'ead on the cold tombstone than on the buzzom that I nussed from a child."

"Look here, mother," interrupted Jack. “If you are going on like that I shan't stay in the house."

She sobbed on, Eliza vainly uttering neutral soothing monosyllables.

"Very well," he said, with icy determination. to the Cogers."

"Then I'm off

"I don't care if you go mad now,” said Mrs. Dawe. "Go and spout as much as ye like now, though ye promised me not to go no more; but a man as wouldn't mind breaking 'is poor old mother's 'eart can't be expected to care about breaking a promise. Go to the Cogers and break yer 'ead over politics, go on."

"There you go, talking rot again!" he cried desperately. "Don't ye remember politics made ye neggelect yer painting?" she said indignantly.

"Yes, I do, and a good job too."

"A good job! I tell ye again, politics is only for those as ain't got to get a 'onest living. Besides, you could never do no good in politics, yer 'ead is too weak."

"The world is not of your opinion, mother," he answered with proud disdain.

"The world! Who's to know what ye can do and what ye can't better than yer mother, who knowed ye before anybody else? Ye can bury me alive, can't ye?"

The thought renewed her momentarily-interrupted sobbing, and Jack shuddered.

"Thank Gord I've got a Go on! Leave yer dyin' mother at the Foresters'. Everybody

"Drunkard!" he gasped.

"Shut up!" he cried savagely. "Good-bye, I'm not going to stand it." And he threw open the door. "Go on!" shrieked Mrs. Dawe. daughter if I ain't got a son. and get drunk, ye beast, as ye did knows what a drunkard ye are." Jack staggered under the blow. He slammed the door furiously, and was rushing downstairs when something moved him to enter his own room. He stood with his hand on the knob, in angry thought. 66 As you make your bed you must lie on it," he murmured bitterly. "It's a fine situation when I come to take stock of it: Eliza present and odiously assertive, and expecting marriage in two months; my mother ill herself and treating me like a baby; Sally perfectly mad; my very

movements constrained by a mad promise; and, best of all, here am I with the reputation of a drunkard!"

Throwing open the door, he looked curiously into his room, as if he expected to find it as changed as everything else. From the leap of Sally into the parlour in the morning till her involuntary fall therein in the evening, the day had been full of crowded hours of excited life. The perils and catastrophes of the forenoon, the descent of Mrs. Dawe and her helpless ascent, the scenes with Sally, the unwonted attendance in the shop with all its novelty and its varying incidents, criminal and professional, the debate on woman's suffrage, the disgusted abandonment of his duties, the agitated promenade, the return, the reception of the bad news, the frantic rush into the omnibus, the second return, the colloquy with the undertaker, the discovery of Mrs. Dawe's true condition, the quarrel with Mr. White, the affray between Sally and Eliza, the fainting of the latter on his bosom, the disposal of the former, the unbearable reproaches of his mother-what wonder that these numerous events produced an illusion of the sense of duration and that it seemed to him years since he had last seen the little dingily-papered bed-room.

Nothing was altered. The pot in which flourished the solitary mignonette glowed redly in the dusk, the jug and basin showed ghost-like in the gloom of their corner, the dark outlines of the iron bedstead were dimly felt from the luminous presence of the cream-coloured quilt, the pipe-rack over the mantelpiece gleamed with its long clay pipes, and the small hanging bookcase was revealed by the vague glimmer of a few brightly-bound volumes. With the unhesitating instinct that comes of familiarity, he walked over to the bookcase and ran his hands along the well-loved books with a strange sense of pathos. He knew them all by the touch, and the feel of each of them was like the grasp of the hand of an old friend. How dear they were to him, one and all, in their different ways. There was Mill, so advanced on the whole, but yet so tentative and sober sometimes, with a giant's strength for demolition, but not using it as a giant. Jack's own mind had not this largeness, this tolerance of intolerance, nor any dubiety in its own conclusions. These numbers of Progress were more the expression of himself with their scornful rejection of the fetishes that made life sacred and beautiful to many, with their passionate enthusiasm for democracy and their fiery denunciations of oligarchy. Then there was Swinburne, the interpreter of all this congenial onesidedness in mighty verse of rushing metre and misty magnificence. The poet's lofty indignation and bitter invective on the one hand, and his Pagan sensuousness on the other, had often moved his spirit to corresponding passion; but he had only vaguely under. stood the mystic pantheism at the root of both, the spiritual materialism, the keen delight in existence, and the deification of love. Perhaps this lack of receptivity was more than compensated for by a superior sense of humour, fun, and satire, which he had inherited