smoke, and sipped cool tankards with easy, epicurean abandon; of delightful promenades in starry groves, where the solemn evening air was stirred by sweet strains of music, and where the pale moonlight fell in calm beauty on the forms of maidens whirling in the rural dance; where satyrs frolicked, and youth engaged in light-hearted wrestlings, and, with quick dexterity, hurled the graceful dart of banter; of nocturnal walks under the awful mystery of the stars, when London was hushed as in the dull, heavy slumber of a sick man, and the church-steeples rose weirdly in the air, though the cloudless moon suffused the earth with a silvery sheen; when all sound had ceased save occasional snatches of melodious song, and the steady tramp of the watchman, and the bewitching accents of the daughters of Hesperus. It was a week fertile in reflections. Walking through these wondrous regions, he felt his life, his experience, his conceptions of the universe, expand. He saw new meanings in the poet reverenced from youth, he was awed by the opening of bottomless depths as he wandered in undreamed-of spots where Nature's every sight and scent and sound was sweet. He marvelled at the equality with which the Great Mother treated her children, and still more at the truly wondrous and wholly feminine address by which she had been able to persuade so cool a head as Paley's of the fact. Yet could not his Nature-worship have been so deep as he thought it, for, far from yielding to all the charms that she displayed to him in his daily pilgrimages, he was frequently disgusted, and occasionally horrified. The manners of the peasantry filled him with alternations of pity and indignation. The sunny lanes, the quaint courts, the shady alleys, the star-lit groves-why was he not soothed by their peaceful beauty, and refreshed in spirit by their fair repose? What was this new sadness that filled his soul when he murmured his favourite lines: "For Nature never did betray The heart that loved her." Had he quite lost the old sense of glory in the grass, of splendour in the flower? And had that divine power-precious possession of the spiritual man-been lost by the sullying of his purity? Alas, that we should have to record it! Not only had the once industrious workman become a flaneur, but he lived in an atmosphere of deceit in which delicate feelings might well be asphyxiated. In the morning he left home, balanced between two resplendent paintpots (freshly-bought); late at night he returned home, balanced between two empty paint-pots; during the day he walked about unencumbered by paint-pots. He took his meals in distant diningrooms, choosing restaurants of a class that must have been beyond his means. One morning he was perforce detained at home to write brief letters of refusal, on the ground of excess of business; and his mother made good use of the opportunity to carry out her threat of worrying him into marriage or the grave. During the rest of the week he had kept out of her way. Armed with a latch-key, he had been able to defend himself against her tongue. Yet he did not spend a happy week. True, he learnt much; he was often interested, and now and then an used. In all these respects he was sensible of a vast contrast between his present idle existence and the busy life he had led hitherto. But his heart sent up many despairing cries to Heaven-and this, too, was strange, for, as the reader knows, he had never cried to Heaven before. Sunday came round once more; once more the church bells rang; and once more Jack went over to the minority. The vicar stared at him with a puzzled look, then sighed, and turned away his head. The calm of the church was soothing after his weary pilgrimage. As he entered, a sudden dimness came over him, he bowed humbly, and returned to the fold. The solemn roll of the organ, the sweet voices of the choir, the sunlight streaming through the stained glass dappled with leafy shadows, these had their wonted effect. The new associations, linked by a myriad electric chains of emotion, banded themselves together against the old and conquered. By the time the service was over, the rays of sun light had given place to serried lines of rain; but Jack hardly noticed the change. He walked home in deep, contrite thought. "De Tocqueville was right," he reflected, as he entered the shop," when he corrected his first opinion, and placed doubt at the head of human evils. But henceforth I falter no more. The truths one so glibly repeats ere one has felt their meaning, must be doubted to be believed. Life is based on suffering, and in suffering must we seek the solution of the mystery of existence." "Why, Jack, you're wringin' wet," cried his mother, who was rapidly piling up potatoes and pudding, and doing an enormous trade; you won't be able to go out on your bicycle. But 'it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good,' as your father said, and I've been wantin' to talk to you all the week about something partik'ler, but you've been that busy I've never been able to get a word with you, like a eel.” Jack turned pale, and for an instant meditated flight; the next, he smiled sadly. Life is based on suffering," he repeated to himself. "I believe you, my boy," cried Mrs. Dawe, smiling in selfapproval, as she issued her plates without a moment's cessation. "I believe you, my boy," cried the company generally, with much mutual winking. "They are poor, they have suffered, they know, they have found spiritual truth," thought Jack, with a flash of intuition. Evidently they were all earnestly acquiescent, from the doddered old man with the rat on his cheek, who was eating peas with his knife, to the flash youth of sixteen in his Sunday paper collar, who was leering suggestively at a soup-swallowing, wide-mouthed maiden of thirty. "Without sufferings," "* croaked the old man who was infested by the pictorial parasite, "the world couldn't stand a day.” "Ear, 'ear !" from the company. #.. "Suffering" was the pronunciation given by the Cockney lower orders to the name of the standard gold coin of the period. "In what a transcendental and mystic shape this cabalist puts his views," thought Fack, passing through the crowd and retiring to his room. He was much cheered by the general intellectual and spiritual level evidenced by this consentience of the company, and it was a much-needed corrective and counteractive to the experiences of the past week, going far to endorse the results of his morning's reflections. "One is always dazzled by a first glance at evil, as at beauty," he observed to the heedless walls. Especially was he pleased with his mother's approval of the sentiment. well as I thought myself religious when I was not," he added, as he washed his face vigorously, "so may she be religious while she thinks she is not." It was, therefore, just as well that he did not hear her dilating on the text. "As "Without sufferings," she was remarking, while the audience looked up to her with such rapt admiration that Sally was all but sent round with a second supply of black-pudding-" without sufferings life would go to the dogs. If it wasn't for sufferings, would I fry myself over the fire for you like Sally Mander? If it wasn't for sufferings, would a man get 'ard labour for stealin'?” ("Hooray!" from a small boy who was meditating the purloining of a saveloy, but who quailed beneath the Argus eyes of the shopkeeper.) "Would the Queen sit in a 'eavy crown, 'oldin' a 'eavy spectre, in all weathers, if she didn't get her screw reggylar? Why is one man poor and another rich? Why?"—the speaker paused rhetorically "Because one's got money, and the other ain't." (Immense enthusiasm.) "Why has one man got to shine other people's boots, while another wouldn't stoop to shine his own?" ("Ear, 'ear! Bravo!" from a shoeblack, who immediately repented of his zeal, for his soup went the wrong way.) "Tell me that," continued Mrs. Dawe fiercely, stamping her foot dramatically, "one man's got to eat humble-pie “Pork-pie, you mean," said the doddered old man, chuckling. Mrs. Dawe glared at him, and the youth in the paper collar cried, "Shut up." The old man subsided into his peas, snivelling pathetically. "One man's got to eat humble-pie," repeated the_oratress, "while another can be as proud as Satan, or his wife Lucy Fer. It's 'cause one's got money in his stockin', and the other ain't even got a spare stockin' to put it in if he had it, that's all. I don't believe in nothing, thank Gord I don't, but my poor 'usband used to say-none of you 'ere knowd 'im except Bill Brown" (Bill Brown was the old man, and this mention of him restored at once his prominence and his self-respect), "'cause he died long afore your time, and many's the things he said sitting on this 'ere very counter, and well do I remember once when he smashed a dish as fell on a boy's head and cut it open, as made everybody roar." "Will you kindly repeat the remark your late husband made?" said a quiet young man with silver studs and a green tie, who prided himself on his company manners, "I didn't quite catch it." "I'm sure I spoke loud enough,” said Mrs. Dawe. “He said, 'I don't believe in nothing, thank Gord I don't; but I do believe in money."" "Thank you very much, madam," said the quiet young man, "and will you oblige me with another hayputh of peas?" "You know I don't make less than a pennuth," returned Mrs. Dawe. “And if I lets you 'ave it this time, you mustn't make a practice of it.” "You may rely on my honour, madam,” said he, putting his hand to his heart. When the press grew less, Mrs. Dawe left Sarah as chief of the commissariat department, and retired to the back parlour to dine with her son. Jack was very happy. The reaction from his anguish during the past week was so great, that he chatted with his mother quite gaily. He even allowed her without wincing to dart a few hymeneal arrows at him, and he said grace internally so as not to alarm her. It was not to be expected that he could convert her as rapidly as a Board School boy converts a vulgar fraction. After dinner, Mrs. Dawe put the finishing stroke to his happiness. She left him. Perhaps she thought she had done enough sharpshooting. Or more probably she felt her victim was safely trapped, and she wished to roll on her tongue the delicate morsel of potentiality as well as to sharpen her weapons on her husband's grind stone. Jack stretched himself on the sofa and gazed at the stuffed birds. Returning from a ramble in the African forests, and from an interview with Hannibal, he fell to thinking of the small man with the bright badge on his breast, and being in a wondrous charitable mood he felt very kindly towards him, too. Then, with a peaceful smile on his weary face, such as had not been seen on it for months, he fell into a calm, dreamless sleep. Sleep, Jack, sleep while thou canst; for lo! the nights come wherein sleep shall be sought and often in vain. Sleep, Jack, sleep, for bitter shall be thy awakening. For behold the nights come, wherein, if thou dreamest, a face shall haunt the visionary halls of sleep -a woman's face, dark, with fierce and passionate eyes full of the wild glory of the South. CHAPTER IV. PLOT AND PASSION. "AND here, Mrs. Dawe, is the answer." The speaker was a tall young woman, coquettishly attired in a black cashmere dress, a fringe cape, and a Princess bonnet, for the shape of which last the curious reader is referred to Myra's Journal in the British Museum. Round her shapely brown throat glittered a snowy-white collar relieved in front by a dainty silver brooch, and in her hand, which displayed a most refreshing contrast of black silk glove and creamy turned-up cuff, she held a most bewitching parasol. The rain had now ceased, and Nature was as bright as the maiden's face. From both, clouds had recently passed away. The girl had arrived at the cookshop with looks as black as night, and with a most determined expression of countenance. Her dark eyes glittered dangerously, her pretty lips were pressed tightly together, and that dark-red hue which is so lovely on a brunette's cheek, glowed with unwonted intensity. But Mrs. Dawe's tidings had restored serenity, and all was sweetness and light. "It's no use, my dear 'Lizer," said Mrs. Dawe, rejecting the proffered journal. "You know I can't read and write; not as I regrets it to be sure, for, as my late 'usband said, 'a man as can't read and write is more likely to make his mark than a man as can.' D'ye twig?" "Oh, certainly," said Eliza, trying hard to convert an expression of perplexity into one of admiration. "How true! How sweet!" "And if I had gone to school and learnt to read," continued Mrs. Dawe, "what would be the use of reading to me at my age? Why, I'm glad of a nap as soon as I've got a moment's rest, and I falls asleep in a second. I don't want no book, I don't." "A lady like you," remarked Eliza suavely, "has no need of books such as a poor, simple person like myself feels. Your mind is, if you will pardon me the flattery-for I assure you I'm speaking only the plain truth--your mind is a book which you are never finished reading, for it is always to be continued in our next. You don't want to know what's in other journals." "You've hit me off hexact, 'Lizer," said Mrs. Dawe complacently. "And now, do read what the Headitur says, for I'm dyin' to 'ear it." Eliza coughed, and then read the following without the faintest blush, either native or exotic: "Á Slighted Fair Old Reader. (That's me, Eliza Bathbrill.) You must act very cautiously for fear of provoking an irreparable breach (as if I cared), as you say you have loved him sincerely for two years and three months. Our advice is to appeal delicately to his sense of honour; and if this fails, to throw yourself openly on his mercy, at the same time taking care to let him know that you will show him none yourself. But once more we say, Be cautious. Write again. We think with you that you have been badly treated.” Badly treated!" exclaimed the widow. "Badly ain't the word for it. He's neglected his dooty shameful, and if my old man had treated me like that when we was keepin' company I'd ha' bashed his hat in, 'usband or no 'usband. He's used you like a umbrella, only using you when it's raining. That Headitur is a man who knows what he's about, and I've a good mind to send him them two pork-pies I've got over, done up in brown paper and tied neat with red string, if you think he'd pay the carridge." "Don't mention pork-pies," said Eliza with a deprecatory snigger, "for the thought of your cookery always makes my mouth water." |