Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 22, August, 1878
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Another rustling outside, a giggle and a whisper—Percival would have sworn that the whisper was Emma's if it had been possible that she could have left it behind her when she went out shopping—an ejaculation, "Gracious! I've blacked my hand!" a pause, presumably for the purpose of removing the stain, and Lydia reappeared with the kettle. She poured a portion of its contents over the fender in her anxiety to plant it firmly on the fire. "Oh dear!" she exclaimed, "how stupid of me! Oh, Mr. Thorne"—this half archly, half pensively, fingering the curl and surveying the steaming pool—"I'm afraid you'll wish Emma hadn't gone out: such a mess as I've made of it! What will you think of me?"
"Pray, don't trouble yourself," said Percival. "The fender can't signify, except perhaps from Emma's point of view. It doesn't interfere with my comfort, I assure you."
She departed, only half convinced. Percival, with another sigh of relief, proceeded to make the tea. The water was boiling and the fire good. Emma was apt to set a chilly kettle on a glimmering spark, but Lydia treated him better. The bit of cold meat on the table looked bigger than he expected, the butter wore a cheerful sprig of green. Percival saw his advantages, but he thought them dearly bought, especially as he had to take a turn up and down Bellevue street while the table was cleared.
After that day it was astonishing how often Emma went out shopping or was busy, or had a bad finger or a bad foot, or was helping ma with something or other, or hadn't made herself tidy, so that Lydia had to wait on Mr. Thorne. But it was always with the same air of its being something very droll and amusing to do, and there were always some artless mistakes which required giggling apologies. Nor could he doubt that he was in her thoughts during his absence. She had a piano down stairs on which she accompanied herself as she sang, but she found time for domestic cares. His buttons were carefully sewn on and his fire was always bright. One evening his table was adorned with a bright blue vase—as blue as Lydia's earrings—filled with dried grasses and paper flowers. He gazed blankly at it in unspeakable horror, and then paced up and down the room, wondering how he should endure life with it continually before his eyes. Some books lay on a side-table, and as he passed he looked absently at them and halted. On his Shelley, slightly askew, as if to preclude all thought of care and design, lay a little volume bound in dingy white and gold. Percival did not touch it, but he stooped and read the title, The Language of Flowers, and saw that—purely by accident of course—a leaf was doubled down as if to mark a place. He straightened himself again, and his proud lip curled in disgust as he glanced from the tawdry flowers to the tawdry book. And from below came suddenly the jingling notes of Lydia's piano and Lydia's voice—not exactly harsh and only occasionally out of tune, but with something hopelessly vulgar in its intonation—singing her favorite song—
Oh, if I had some one to love me,My troubles and trials to share!Percival turned his back on the blue vase and the little book, and flinging himself into a chair before the fire sickened at the thought of the life he was doomed to lead. Lydia, who was just mounting with a little uncertainty to a high note, was a good girl in her way, and good-looking, and had a kind sympathy for him in his evident loneliness. But was she to be the highest type of womanhood that he would meet henceforth? And was Bellevue street to be his world? He glided into a mournful dream of Brackenhill, which would never be his, and of Sissy, who had loved him so well, yet failed to love him altogether—Sissy, who had begged for her freedom with such tender pain in her voice while she pierced him so cruelly with her frightened eyes. Percival looked very stern in his sadness as he sat brooding over his fire, while from the room below came a triumphant burst of song—
But I will marry my own love,For true of heart am I.Sometimes he would picture to himself the future which lay before Horace's three-months-old child, whose little life already played so all—important a part in his own destiny. He had questioned Hammond about him, and Hammond had replied that he heard that Lottie and the boy were both doing well. "They say that the child is a regular Blake, just like Lottie herself," said Godfrey, "and doesn't look like a Thorne at all." Percival thought, not unkindly, of Lottie's boy, of Lottie's great clear eyes in an innocent baby face, and imagined him growing up slim and tall, to range the woods of Brackenhill in future years as Lottie herself had wandered in the copses about Fordborough. And yet sometimes he could not but think of the change that it might make if little James William Thorne were to die. Horace was very ill, they said: Brackenhill was shut up, and they had all gone to winter abroad. The doctors had declared that there was not a chance for him in England.
At this time Percival kept a sort of rough diary. Here is a leaf from it: "I am much troubled by a certain little devil who comes as soon as I am safely in bed and sits on my pillow. He flattens it abominably, or else I do it myself tossing about in my impatience. He is quite still for a minute or two, and I try my best to think he isn't there at all. Then he stoops down and whispers in my ear 'Convulsions!' and starts up again like india-rubber. I won't listen. I recall some tune or other: it won't come, and there is a hitch, a horrible blank, in the midst of which he is down again—I knew he would be—suggesting 'Croup.' I repeat some bit of a poem, but it won't do: what is the next line? I think of old days with my father, when I knew nothing of Brackenhill: I try to remember my mother's face. I am getting on very well, but all at once I become conscious that he has been for some time murmuring, as to himself, 'Whooping-cough and scarlet fever—scarlet fever.' I grow fierce, and say, 'I pray God he may escape them all!' To which he softly replies, 'His grandfather died—his father is dying—of decline.'
"I roll over to the other side, and encounter him or his twin brother there. A perfectly silent little devil this time, with a faculty for calling up pictures. He shows me the office: I see it, I smell it, with its flaring gaslights and sickly atmosphere. Then he shows me the long drawing-room at Brackenhill, the quaint old furniture, the pictures on the walls, the terrace with its balustrade and balls of mossy stone, and through the windows come odors of jasmine and roses and far-off fields, while inside there is the sweetness of dried blossoms and spices in the great china jars. A moment more and it is Bellevue street, with its rows of hideous whited houses. And then again it is a river, curving swiftly and grandly between its castled rocks, or a bridge of many arches in the twilight, and the lights coming out one by one in the old walled town, and the road and river travelling one knows not where, into regions just falling asleep in the quiet dusk. Or there is a holiday crowd, a moonlit ferry, steep wooded hills, and songs and laughter which echo in the streets and float across the tide. Or the Alps, keenly cut against the infinite depth of blue, with a whiteness and a far-off glory no tongue can utter. Or a solemn cathedral, or a busy town piled up, with church and castle high aloft and a still, transparent lake below. But through it all, and underlying it all, is Bellevue street, with the dirty men and women, who scream and shout at each other and wrangle in its filthy courts and alleys. Still, God knows that I don't repent, and that I wish my little cousin well."
CHAPTER XXXVI.
WANTED—AN ORGANIST
In later days Percival looked back to that Christmas as his worst and darkest time. His pride had grown morbid, and he swore to himself that he would never give in—that Horace should never know him otherwise than self-sufficient, should never think that but for Mrs. Middleton's or Godfrey Hammond's charity he might have had his cousin as a pensioner. Brooding on thoughts such as these, he sauntered moodily beneath the lamps when the new year was but two days old.
His progress was stopped by a little crowd collected on the pavement. There was a concert, and a string of carriages stretched halfway down the street. Just as Percival came up, a girl in white and amber, with flowers in her hair, flitted hurriedly across the path and up the steps, and stood glancing back while a fair-haired, faultlessly-dressed young man helped her mother to alight. The father came last, sleek, stout and important. The old people went on in front, and the girl followed with her cavalier, looking up at him and making some bright little speech as they vanished into the building. Percival stood and gazed for a moment, then turned round and hurried out of the crowd. The grace and freshness and happy beauty of the girl had roused a fierce longing in his heart. He wanted to touch a lady's hand again, to hear the delicate accents of a lady's voice. He remembered how he used to dress himself as that fair-haired young man was dressed, and escort Aunt Harriet and Sissy to Fordborough entertainments, where the best places were always kept for the Brackenhill party. It was dull enough sometimes, yet how he longed for one such evening now—to hand the cups once again at afternoon tea, to talk just a little with some girl on the old terms of equality! The longing was not the less real, and even passionate, that it seemed to Thorne himself to be utterly absurd. He mocked at himself as he walked the streets for a couple of hours, and then went back when the concert was just over and the people coming away. He watched till the girl appeared. She looked a little tired, he fancied. As she came out into the chill night air she drew a soft white cloak round her, and went by, quite unconscious of the dark young man who stood near the door and followed her with his eyes. The sombre apparition might have startled her had she noticed it, though Percival was only gazing at the ghost of his dead life, and, having seen it, disappeared into the shadows once more.
"The night is darkest before the morn." In Percival's case this was true, for the next day brought a new interest and hope. A letter came from Godfrey Hammond, through which he glanced wearily till he came to a paragraph about the Lisles: Hammond had seen a good deal of them lately. "Their father treated you shamefully," he wrote, "but, after all, it is harder still on his children." ("Good Heavens! Does he suppose I have a grudge against them?" said Percival to himself, and laughed with mingled irritation and amazement.) "Young Lisle wants a situation as organist somewhere where he might give lessons and make an income so, but we can't hear of anything suitable. People say the boy is a musical genius, and will do wonders, but, for my part, I doubt it. He may, however, and in that case there will be a line in his biography to the effect that I 'was one of the first to discern,' etc., which may be gratifying to me in my second childhood."
Percival laid the letter on the table and looked up with kindling eyes.
Only a few minutes' walk from Bellevue street was St. Sylvester's, a large district church. The building was a distinguished example of cheap ecclesiastical work, with stripes and other pretty patterns in different colored bricks, and varnished deal fittings and patent corrugated roofing. All that could be done to stimulate devotion by means of texts painted in red and blue had been done, and St. Sylvester's, within and without, was one of those nineteenth-century churches which will doubtless be studied with interest and wonder by the architect of a future age if they can only contrive to stand up till he comes. The incumbent was High Church, as a matter of course, and musical, more than as a matter of course. Percival looked up from his letter with a sudden remembrance that Mr. Clifton was advertising for an organist, and on his way to the office he stopped to make inquiries at the High Church bookseller's and to post a line to Hammond. How if this should suit Bertie Lisle? He tried hard not to think too much about it, but the mere possibility that the bright young fellow, with his day-dreams, his unfinished opera, his pleasant voice and happily thoughtless talk, might come into his life gave Percival a new interest in it. Bertie had been a favorite of his years before, when he used to go sometimes to Mr. Lisle's. He still thought of him as little more than a boy—the boy who used to play to him in the twilight—and he had some trouble to realize that Bertie must be nearly two and twenty. If he should come—But most likely he would not come. It seemed a shame even to wish to shut up the young musician, with his love for all that was beautiful and bright, in that grimy town. Thorne resolved that he would not wish it, but he opened Hammond's next letter with unusual eagerness. Godfrey said they thought it sounded well, especially as when he named Brenthill it appeared that the Lisles had some sort of acquaintance living there, an old friend of their mother's, he believed, which naturally gave them an interest in the place. Bertie had written to Mr. Clifton, who would very shortly be in town, and had made an appointment to meet him.
The next news came in a note from Lisle himself. On the first page there was a pen-and-ink portrait of the incumbent of St. Sylvester's with a nimbus, and it was elaborately dated "Festival of St. Hilary."
"It is all as good as settled," was his triumphant announcement, "and we are in luck's way, for Judith thinks she has heard of something for herself too. You will see from my sketch that I have had my interview with Mr. Clifton. He is quite delighted with me. A great judge of character, that man! He is to write to one or two references I gave him, but they are sure to be all right, for my friends have been so bored with me and my prospects for the last few weeks that they would swear to my fitness for heaven if it would only send me there. I rather think, however, that St. Sylvester's will suit me better for a little while. His Reverence is going to look me up some pupils, and I have bought a Churchman's almanac, and am thinking about starting an oratorio instead of my opera. Wasn't it strange that when your letter came from Brenthill we should remember that an old friend of my mother's lived there? Judith and she have been writing to each other ever since. Clifton is evidently undergoing tortures with the man he has got now, so I should not wonder if we are at Brenthill in a few days. It will be better for my chance of pupils too. I shall look you up without fail, and expect you to know everything about lodgings. How about Bellevue street? Are you far from St. Sylvester's?"
Thorne read the letter carefully, and drew from it two conclusions and a perplexity. He concluded that Bertie Lisle's elastic spirits had quickly recovered the shock of his father's failure and flight, and that he had not the faintest idea that any property of his—Percival's—had gone down in the wreck. So much the better.
His perplexity was, What was Miss Lisle going to do? Could the "we" who were to arrive imply that she meant to accompany her brother? And what was the something she had heard of for herself? The words haunted him. Was the ruin so complete that she too must face the world and earn her own living? A sense of cruel wrong stirred in his inmost soul.
He made up his mind at last that she was coming to establish Bertie in his lodgings before she went on her own way. He offered any help in his power when he answered the letter, but he added a postscript: "Don't think of Bellevue street: you wouldn't like it." He heard no more till one day he came back to his early dinner and found a sealed envelope on his table. It contained a half sheet of paper, on which Bertie had scrawled in pencil, "Why did you abuse Bellevue street? We think it will do. And why didn't you say there were rooms in this very house? We have taken them, so there is an end of your peaceful solitude. I'm going to practise for ever and ever. If you don't like it there's no reason why you shouldn't leave: it's a free country, they say."
Percival looked round his room. She had been there, then?—perhaps had stood where he was standing. His glance fell on the turquoise-blue vase and the artificial flowers, and he colored as if he were Lydia's accomplice. Had she seen those and the Language of Flowers?
As if his thought had summoned her, Lydia herself appeared to lay the cloth for his dinner. She looked quickly round: "Did you see your note, Mr. Thorne?"
"Thank you, yes," said Percival.
"I supposed it was right to show them in here to write it—wasn't it?" she asked after a pause. "He said he knew you very well."
"Quite right, certainly."
"A very pleasant-spoken young gentleman, ain't he?" said Miss Bryant, setting down a salt-cellar.
"Very," said Percival.
"Coming to play the High Church organ, he tells me," Lydia continued, as if the instrument in question were somehow saturated with ritualism.
"Yes—at St. Sylvester's."
Lydia looked at him, but he was gazing into the fire. She went out, came back with a dish, shook her curl out of the way, and tried again: "I suppose we're to thank you for recommending the lodgings—ain't we, Mr. Thorne? I'm sure ma's much obliged to you. And I'm glad"—this with a bashful glance—"that you felt you could. It seems as if we'd given satisfaction."
"Certainly," said Percival. "But you mustn't thank me in this case, Miss Bryant. I really didn't know what sort of lodgings my friend wanted. But of course I'm glad Mr. Lisle is coming here."
"And ain't you glad Miss Lisle is coming too, Mr. Thorne?" said Lydia very archly. But she watched him, lynx-eyed.
He uttered no word of surprise, but he could not quite control the muscles of his face, and a momentary light leapt into his eyes. "I wasn't aware Miss Lisle was coming," he said.
Lydia believed him. "That's true," she thought, "but you're precious glad." And she added aloud, "Then the pleasure comes all the more unexpected, don't it?" She looked sideways at Percival and lowered her voice: "P'r'aps Miss Lisle meant a little surprise."
Percival returned her glance with a grave scorn which she hardly understood. "My dinner is ready?" he said. "Thank you, Miss Bryant." And Lydia flounced out of the room, half indignant, half sorrowful: "He didn't know—that's true. But she knows what she's after, very well. Don't tell me!" To Lydia, at this moment, it seemed as if every girl must be seeking what she sought. "And I call it very bold of her to come poking herself where she isn't wanted—running after a young man. I'd be ashamed." A longing to scratch Miss Lisle's face was mixed with a longing to have a good cry, for she was honestly suffering the pangs of unrequited love. It is true that it was not for the first time. The curl, the earrings, the songs, the Language of Flowers, had done duty more than once before. But wounds may be painful without being deep, although the fact of these former healings might prevent all fear of any fatal ending to this later love. Lydia was very unhappy as she went down stairs, though if another hero could be found she was perhaps half conscious that the melancholy part of her present love-story might be somewhat abridged.
The streets seemed changed to Percival as he went back to his work. Their ugliness was as bare and as repulsive as ever, but he understood now that the houses might hold human beings, his brothers and his sisters, since some one roof among them sheltered Judith Lisle. Thus he emerged from the alien swarm amid which he had walked in solitude so many days. Above the dull and miry ways were the beauty of her gray-blue eyes and the glory of her golden hair. He felt as if a white dove had lighted on the town, yet he laughed at his own feelings; for what did he know of her? He had seen her twice, and her father had swindled him out of his money.
Never had his work seemed so tedious, and never had he hurried so quickly to Bellevue street as he did when it was over. The door of No. 13 stood open, and young Lisle stood on the threshold. There was no mistaking him. His face had changed from the beautiful chorister type of two or three years earlier, but Percival thought him handsomer than ever. He ceased his soft whistling and held out his hand: "Thorne! At last! I was looking out for you the other way."
Thorne could hardly find time to greet him before he questioned eagerly, "You have really taken the rooms here?"
"Really and truly. What's wrong? Anything against the landlady?"
"No," said Percival. "She's honest enough, and fairly obliging, and all the rest of it. But then your sister is not coming here to live with you, as they told me? That was a mistake?"
"Not a bit of it. She's coming: in fact, she's here."
"In Bellevue street?" Percival looked up and down the dreary thoroughfare. "But, Lisle, what a place to bring her to!"
"Beggars mustn't be choosers," said Bertie. "We are not exactly what you would call rolling in riches just now. And Bellevue street happens to be about midway between St. Sylvester's and Standon Square, so it will suit us both."
"Standon Square?" Percival repeated.
"Yes. Oh, didn't I tell you? My mother came to school at Brenthill. It was her old schoolmistress we remembered lived here when we had your letter. So we wrote to her, and the old dear not only promised me some pupils, but it is settled that Judith is to go and teach there every day. Judith thinks we ought to stick to one another, we two."
"You're a lucky fellow," said Percival. "You don't know, and won't know, what loneliness is here."
"But how do you come to know anything about it? That's what I can't understand. I thought your grandfather died last summer?"
"So he did."
"But I thought you were to come in for no end of money?"
"SHE DREW A SOFT WHITE CLOAK ROUND HER, AND WENT BY."—Page 173.
"I didn't, you see."
"But surely he always allowed you a lot," said Lisle, still unsatisfied. "You never used to talk of doing anything."
"No, but I found I must. The fact is, I'm not on the best terms with my cousin at Brackenhill, and I made up my mind to be independent. Consequently, I'm a clerk—a copying-clerk, you understand—in a lawyer's office here—Ferguson's in Fisher street—and I lodge accordingly."
"I'm very sorry," said Bertie.
"Hammond knows all about it," the other went on, "but nobody else does."
"I was afraid there was something wrong," said Bertie—"wrong for you, I mean. From our point of view it is very lucky that circumstances have sent you here. But I hope your prospects may brighten; not directly—I can't manage to hope that—but soon."
Percival smiled. "Meanwhile," he said with a quiet earnestness of tone, "if there is anything I can do to help you or Miss Lisle, you will let me do it."
"Certainly," said Bertie. "We are going out now to look for a grocer. Suppose you come and show us one."
"I'm very much at your service. What are you looking at?"
"Why—you'll pardon my mentioning it—you have got the biggest smut on your left cheek that I've seen since I came here. They attain to a remarkable size in Brenthill, have you noticed?" Bertie spoke with eager interest, as if he had become quite a connoisseur in smuts. "Yes, that's it. I'll look Judith up, and tell her you are going with us."
Percival fled up stairs, more discomposed by that unlucky black than he would have thought possible. When he had made sure that he was tolerably presentable he waited by his open door till his fellow-lodgers appeared, and then stepped out on the landing to meet them. Miss Lisle, dressed very simply in black, stood drawing on her glove. A smile dawned on her face when her eyes met Percival's, and, greeting him in her low distinct tones, she held out her white right hand, still ungloved. He took it with grave reverence, for Judith Lisle had once touched his faint dream of a woman who should be brave with sweet heroism, tender and true. They had scarcely exchanged a dozen words in their lives, but he had said to himself, "If I were an artist I would paint my ideal with a face like that;" and the memory, with its underlying poetry, sprang to life again as his glance encountered hers. Percival felt the vague poem, though Bertie was at his elbow chattering about shops, and though he himself had hardly got over the intolerable remembrance of that smut.