"I wish I could," sighed Jack, whom his mother's remarks had sent into a mournful day-dream. I suppose the gods don't love me.” "Well, the girls does, anyhow," retorted Mrs. Dawe. 66 'Possibly-for my position. But then I don't love them." "Except one," he repeated sadly; "and her I can't marry." "Can't marry her!" cried Mrs. Dawe, nearly cutting her finger. "What's a matter now?" "I could not, without violating my conscience and sense of honour," he answered, with a sad smile. "Eh? Just listen to the boy! You can't marry her without wiolating your conscience and sense of honour; and if you don't marry her, you'll prove you've got neither. It makes me giddy to think on it. You're treading on the corns of a dilemma, Jack, and sich things is allus very painful." But Jack was no longer listening. He was immersed in a profound reverie, his eyes were full of tears, and his lips were moving; and in place of Mrs. Dawe, greasy, fat, paint-spotted, loquacious, arose a vision of radiant beauty, a face exquisitely mobile, with tender gray eyes, in which love and pity were strangely blent with a certain wild enthusiasm. "I thought I had completely conquered it," he was murmuring; "but a casual word has revived it in all its intensity. Yet for months I have not seen her face, fearing lest I should take the gleam of her eyes for the light of truth, and the music of her voice for the voice of reason. Oh, eternal contest of passion and duty! Yet am I not unhappy in the renunciation; but, with Romola, I can only tell my happiness from misery by its being what I would choose before everything else, because my soul sees it is good." 66 Well, this is a rum go," cried Mrs. Dawe, looking up suddenly. "Why, the boy is a-cryin'!" "Two things there are," said Jack, uttering the guttural German in a low, solemn tone, while a saint-like calm overspread his worn features, "which, the oftener and the more steadfastly we consider them, fill the mind with an ever new, an ever rising admiration and reverence the starry heaven above, and the moral law within." "'Eaven alone knows what's a matter with him," cried Mrs. Dawe, with exasperation tempered by bewilderment, "a-grumblin' and a-croakin' as if he lived on frogs, like them dirty Pollywoos, and all 'cause a pretty gal is in love with him. And you won't 'ave her, eh?" "I have long given up all hope," responded Jack, in a semi automatic fashion. "Well, she ain't, and I ain't, and we'll soon let you know," was the angry reply. "Why, you couldn't set eyes on a finer gal, not even if you was to search till you was blind. And she's got such a good place now. She's too good for you, that's what she is." "She is, indeed," asserted Jack warmly, his eyes still fixed on an inward vision. "Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself for not marryin her," said his mother somewhat illogically; "and arter keepin' company with her for years, too!" "I have already told you" At this point Jack started, awoke, and stopped. "You're a hass," said Mrs. Dawe shortly. She stopped to skim the soup, and continued: "A gal in a thousand, and if you throw away this dirty water, you'll never catch another fish like'er. And so heddicated! And so mad in love with you! Why, when I told 'er on Saturday night that you was gone out again 'cause you was allus engaged with politics, I thought she'd a had a fit; and she said she wished politics was a girl.' "Why?" cried Jack, startled. “So that she might scratch her eyes out, you know. That'll show you how much she loves you; and if you love her, why, make an end of it at once." "But I don't love her," said Jack, meditatively watching Sally, who was furtively trying to mount a bicycle in the yard, which was out of her mistress's line of vision. "That don't matter," was the unexpected response. "You must do that afterwards. As your father said, you needn't marry the gal you love, but you must love the gal you marry. And why shouldn't you love her? She's none of your Mrs. Prodgers's sausages. She's good stuffin' in a neat brown skin-a broonet as'll be faithful to death; none of your blondes, fair but false, like new tombstones, as your father said. Mark my words, Jack, them as looks as lively as kittens is often as wicious. Marriage often turns turtle-doves into cats and dogs. And you've kept company with her so long that you know all her ins-and-outs. And yet, tell me, Jack, have you ever found anything wrong in her?" 66 Never," said Jack, with a slight smile. "There!" said Mrs. Dawe triumphantly. "You're quite safe -for, as your father said, marryin' in haste is like buyin' a 'ouse without lookin' at the drainage. You must either part or die afore your time. But this gal-Lor' bless you, she'll never make cinders of your meat." The heat of the kitchen, combined with his mother's gabble, had by this time given Jack a headache. He put his hand to his weary brow. "At present you're a trifle skittish," she continued. "Me miserum!" gasped Jack, "skittish!" "And if you was to marry 'Lizer, you'd be settled." "Verum est, it is too true," groaned Jack. “I certainly didn't bargain for any 'Lizer," he muttered. "And I'll give you the business, and send Sally packin', and 'Lizer and me'll attend to the cookin', and you needn't go out, but make yourself generally useful about the shop. You're in a position to marry, I'm sure. Not like Bill Simpson, who ought to ha' been warned in the words your father said to a poor young chap fifty years ago--' Arter the union,' ses your father, the Union.' Yes, that Jane Green is a fool for all her cleverness." 6 Here Jack resolutely put on his hat and took up his painting apparatus. "Well, if you will go, mind you're 'ome at seven at latest," cried his mother. "I wouldn't miss Tichborne for the world, though it's certainly a risk to leave Sally all alone. If she don't take a good penny for herself, she may take a bad 'un for me. Goodbye, and mind, if you don't make up your mind, I shall worry you till you do." The rapidity of Mrs. Dawe's encroachments would have made her reputation in a higher field. It was only a day since her son had shown the faintest symptoms of allowing himself to be pecked at by the maternal hen, and here she was already reasserting the empire she had long ceased to wield. It is surprising how quickly the human animal accommodates itself to changed relations, and how soon it forgets that they were ever different. "I was on to you enough when you didn't marry her" (Mrs. Dawe's suppressed desires took the solidity of actual occurrences, when looked at through the stereoscope of memory), "but now that you say you won't, you've jumped from the frying-pan into the fire. You'll get not a moment's peace." 'Not a moment's peace," echoed the unhappy painter as he strode through the shop. "No peace even with dishonour. Truly have I jumped from the frying-pan into the fire.” CHAPTER II. THE PAINTER PAINTS A LION. I WILL begin with the tail,” said Jack Dawe to himself. He was perched on a ladder confronting a huge signboard. The blazing rays of the sun beat fiercely upon his battered broad-brimmed white felt hat, and he was already "spotted like the pard." Below him slept drowsy Whitechapel-not in calm slumber but in the uneasy sleep of a somnambulist. Nobody seemed awake, yet everybody was working, or going to work, or coming back from it. The mud of Saturday was dried up, and seemed to form an integral or a fractional part of the road. Dogs, preceded by their tongues, strolled languidly along, and from some unexpressed law of precedence, everybody made way for them. It was just noon, and thirst reigned supreme. Jack Dawe had, immediately on his elevation, clutched his brush, and was just beginning to make a dab on the white surface, when it struck him that a little preliminary reflection would be advisable. The reflection had begun well, but in a short time it had strayed away into quite other fields of thought (passing on its way under the tunnel of theology). Occasionally it deviated into painting, but only for an instant. At last, after the lapse of a quarter of an hour, a shrill voice inquired, "Well, master, when are you a-going to begin?" Looking down, he perceived to his horror a crowd of small ragged boys, and of smaller ragged girls carrying large babies, gazing upwards with expectant eyes, while from a whitewashed court at the side of the public-house, a row of close-pressed faces was lit up with eager anticipation. To have beheld a nascent and chaotic lion assuming form and colour, and growing each moment more and more terrible under the creator's hand, would be something to brag about to their playmates. "The sanctity of the atelier is invaded," he murmured grimly. "I must to work, else my critics will be impatient. But how shall I begin? This work is not unpleasant after all, if it were only a little cooler. If peace is not to be found in the house it can be attained on the ladder. High up on the concrete ladder dwells calm, high up on the social ladder, unrest. Better be pestered by young rascals in the open air than by old ones in the torture chamber." "Well, how are you getting on, old man?" inquired the proprietor, sauntering out in his shirt-sleeves. "Hullo! Why, you haven't begun yet?" e-I-it's so hot." "No-o," said Jack, with a start, "I-you seeThe proprietor took the hint, disappeared, and immediately reappeared with a foaming tankard of beer. "Take a pull at that," he said. "That'll make you right." Jack shuddered. "No, thank you," he stammered. "Good heavens, Jack! Surely you haven't joined the teetotalers, who are tempted by the devil to take the bread out of our mouths?" "You mean the beer out of your customers' mouths," said Jack feebly. "Ha! ha! ha! Good, my boy. I can enjoy a joke even against myself. But d'ye remember when you said you wouldn't take the pledge because you weren't a pawnbroker? Well, that joke has gone the round of the entire profession, and your health has been drunk in every bar in London for it. Lord, you don't know how celebrated you are. You've done more harm to the League by your chaff than'll be repaired in a hurry. Come on! Take a good swig, and don't try any of your larks on me.” Unable to resist, Jack put the pewter to his lips. He was pretty thirsty, and somehow the fluid seemed cool and inviting, and he drained the pot. The proprietor received back the empty tankard with a knowing grin. "Run away to school, you young vagabonds," he cried, threatening to throw it among the throng (which if he had done he would never have seen it more), and much to Jack's relief the juvenile crowd fled in all directions. It was when left alone that Jack made the observation which commences this chapter: 66 "I must begin with the tail." So saying, he made a rough, almost perpendicular smear to represent a raging tail. Then he paused and viewed the tail critically. "It is the easiest part of the animal," he said, “and yet it doesn't seem natural." He paused for another minute, lost in thought. "Fool that I am!" he cried. "Of course it's unnatural. Who ever saw an unowned raging tail? The unnatural is that which departs from normal associations. And what does 'Nature' connote as opposed to 'Art,' unless it be the primitive associations only?" Then he gave a curl to the smear, but the result was unsatisfactory. He had often made the British lion wag his tail, but painting that tail was a task that called for higher powers. It seems a very weak tail," he observed confidentially himself. "My animal will not be like the Conservative party, which is at present strongest in the tail. My talent seems to have grown rusty. Yet at school my caricature of the Head was good enough to get me into a scrape." He paused once more. A flood of recollections poured upon his soul-the good old times, his old schoolfellows, his old successes. The hot air was filled with shadows. With tears in his eyes, he began to recite from Eschylus the sacrifice of Iphigenia. Every moment the doors of the public-house swung on their hinges, and men and women, wiping their mouths with satisfaction, or licking their lips in anticipation, stared at the painter, who, waving his brush about frantically, was uttering gibberish in tones of melting pathos. "And plain as a picture fain to speak." The line recalled him to reality. A boy was screaming somewhere below, and, looking down, he found he had not been alone. The same youthful spectators were gazing at him with rapt awe, and one was sitting on the pavement, rubbing his eyes, and crying loudly. "You brute!" cried a slatternly woman in a plaid shawl. "I seed you a-dashin' the paint into the poor children's eyes all the while I was a-comin' up the road. A-grudgin' 'em the sight of your rotten picture!" 66 Go away, my good woman," said Jack mildly. under a delusion." "You are "I'm under your ladder," retorted the woman, violently shaking it, "and s'elp me Bob if I ain't a good mind to chuck yer down!" 66 Go away !" repeated Jack, much alarmed, and feeling in his pocket. The woman saw the action, and, picking up the screaming small boy, she embraced him passionately. "My poor Bobby!" she cried. "I'll 'ave the law on the brute for this! Keep still, you little devil!" she added, sotto voce, to the child, who had vague fears of being kidnapped, and who writhed accordingly. "Keep still, d'yer, or I'll bang yer 'ead on the pavement for yer!" "After all," thought Jack compassionately, "maternal affection is common to all ranks, and perhaps I did hurt the poor lad." And he threw the woman half-a-crown. "You little liar!" she exclaimed, releasing the child, who fled away as fast as his legs could carry him. "What d'ye mean |