"Two months more will decide whether he is to be a broker or a poet. It will mean death to Ronald to be sent into the City."

"You are wrong there. If he is a poet, no amount of brokering will alter the fact, any more than it will change the colour of his eyes or hair. It is bound to come out sooner or later. You will probably think me a brute, if I suggest that a little discipline and knowledge of the world might improve the value of his writings."

"Yes, I will! What does a poet want with a knowledge of the world, in the common, sordid sense? Let him keep his mind unsullied, and be an inspiration to others. When we were children, we used to keep birds in the nursery, in a very fine cage with golden bars, and we fed them with every bird delicacy we could find. They lived for a little time, and tried to sing, poor brave things! We threw away the cage in a fury, after finding one soft dead thing after another lying huddled up in a corner. No one shall cage Ronald, if I can prevent it! It's no use pretending to be cold-blooded and middle-aged, Jack, for I know you are with us at heart. This means every bit as much to Ron as your business troubles do to you."

Jack drew in his breath with a wince of pain.

"Well, what is it you wish me to do? I am afraid I have very little influence in the literary world, and I have always heard that introductions do more harm than good. An editor would soon ruin his paper if he accepted all the ma.n.u.scripts pressed upon him by admiring relatives."

"But you see I don't ask you for an introduction. It's just a piece of information I want, which I can't get for myself. You know the _Loadstar Magazine_?"

"Certainly I do."

"Well, the _Loadstar_ is--the _Loadstar_! The summit of Ron's ambition.

It's the magazine of all others which he likes and admires, and the editor is known to be a man of great power and discernment. It is said that if he has the will, he can do more than any man in London to help on young writers. It is useless sending ma.n.u.scripts, for he refuses to consider unsolicited poetical contributions. He shuts himself up in a fastness in Fleet Street, and the door thereof is guarded with dragons with lying tongues. I know! I have made it my business to inquire, but I feel convinced that if he once gave Ron a fair reading, he would acknowledge his gifts. There is no hope of approaching him direct, but I intend to get hold of him all the same."

Jack Martin looked up at that, his thin face twitching into a smile.

"You little baggage! and you expect me to help you. I must hear some more about this before I involve myself any further. What mischief are you up to now?"

"Dear Jack, what can I do; a little girl like me?" cried Miss Margot, mightily meek all of a sudden, as she realised that she had ventured a step too far. "I wouldn't for the whole world get you into trouble.

It's just a little, simple thing that I want you to find out from some one in the office."

"I don't know any one in the office."

"But you could find out some one who did? For instance, you know that Mr Oliver who ill.u.s.trates? I've seen his things in the _Loadstar_.

You could ask him in a casual, off-hand manner without ever mentioning our name."

"What could I ask him?"

"Such a nice, simple little question! Just the name of the place where the editor proposes to spend this summer holiday, and the date on which he will start."

Jack stared in amazement, but the meekest, most demure of maidens confronted him from the opposite chair, with eyes so translucently candid, lips so guilelessly sweet, that it seemed incredible that any hidden mischief could lurk behind the innocent question. Nevertheless seven years' intimacy with Miss Margot made Jack Martin suspicious of mischief.

"What do you know about this editor man? Have you seen him anywhere?

He is handsome, I suppose, and a bachelor?"

"You're a wretch!" retorted Miss Margot. "I don't know the man from Adam, and he may be a Methuselah for all I care; but if possible I want it to happen that Ron and I chance to be staying in the same place, in the same house, or hotel, or _pension_, whichever it may be, when he goes away for his yearly rest. We are going to the country in any case--why should we not be guided by the choice of those older and wiser than ourselves? Why should we not meet the one of all others we are most anxious to know?"

"Just so! and having done so, you will confide in the editor that Ronald is an embryo Poet Laureate, and try to enlist his kind sympathy and a.s.sistance!"

Margot smiled; a smile of lofty superiority.

"No, indeed! I know rather better than that! He will be out on a holiday, poor man, and won't want to be troubled with literary aspirants. He has enough of them all the year round. We'll never mention poetry, but we will try to get to know _him_, and to make him like us so much that he will want to see more of us when we return to town. No one can live in the same house with Ron, and have an opportunity of talking to him day by day, without feeling that he is different from other boys, and alone together in the country one can never tell what may happen. Opportunities may arise, too; opportunities for help and service. We would be on the look-out for them, and would try by every means in our power to forge the first link in the chain.

Don't look so solemn, old Jack, it's all perfectly innocent! You can trust me to do nothing you would disapprove."

"I believe I can. You are a madcap, Margot, but you are a good girl.

I'm not afraid of you, but I imagine that the editor will be a match for a dozen youngsters like you and Ron, and will soon see through your little scheme. However, I'll do what I can. In big offices holiday arrangements have to be made a good while ahead, so it ought not to be difficult to get the information you want. Now I must be off upstairs to see the boys before they get into bed. Shall I see you again when I come down?"

"No, indeed! I've played truant since half-past eleven, so I shall have to hang about the end of the terrace until father appears, and go in under his wing, to escape a scolding from Agnes. I had arranged to pay calls with her this afternoon. I wonder how it is that my memory is so dreadfully uncertain about things I don't want to do! Good-bye then, Jack, and a hundred thanks. Posterity will thank you for your help."

Jack Martin laughed and shrugged his shoulders. He had a man's typical disbelief in the ability of his wife's relatives.

CHAPTER FIVE.

AN EXPLOSION.

Relationships were somewhat strained in the Vane household during the next few weeks, the two elder members being banded together in an unusual partnership to bring about the confusion of the younger.

"I can't understand what you are making such a fuss about. You'll have to give in, in the end. You a poet, indeed! What next? If you would come down to breakfast in time, and give over burning the gas till one o'clock in the morning, it would be more to the point than writing silly verses. I'd be ashamed to waste my time scribbling nonsense all day long!" So cried Agnes, in Martha-like irritation, and Ronald turned his eyes upon her with that deep, dreamy gaze which only added fuel to the flame.

He was not angry with Agnes, who, as she herself truly said, "did not understand." Out of the storm of her anger an inspiration had fluttered towards him, like a crystal out of the surf. "The Worker and the Dreamer"--he would make a poem out of that idea! Already the wonderful inner vision pictured the scene--the poet sitting idle on the hillside, the man of toil labouring in the heat and glare of the fields, casting glances of scorn and impatience at the inert form. The lines began to take shape in his brain.

"...And the worker worked from the misty dawn, Till the east was golden and red; But the dreamer's dream which he thought to scorn, Lived on when they both were dead..."

"I asked him three times over if he would have another cup of coffee, and he stared at me as if he were daft! I believe he _is_ half daft at times, and he will grow worse and worse, if Margot encourages him like this!" Agnes announced to her father, on his weary return from City.

It was one of Agnes's exemplary habits to refuse all invitations which could prevent her being at home to welcome her father every afternoon, and a.s.sist him to tea and scones, accompanied by a minute _resume_ of the bad news of the day. What the housemaid had broken; what the cat had spilt; the parlourmaid's impertinences; the dressmaker's delinquencies; Ronald's vapourings; the new and unabashed transgressions of Margot--each in its turn was dropped into the tired man's cup with the lumps of sugar, and stirred round with the cream. There was no escaping the ordeal. On the hottest day of summer there was the boiling tea, with the hot m.u.f.fins, and the rich, indigestible cake, exactly as they had appeared amidst the ice and snows of January; and the accompanied recital hardly varied more. It was a positive relief to hear that the chimney had smoked, or the parrot had had a fit.

Once a year Agnes departed on a holiday, handing over the keys to Margot, who meekly promised to follow in her footsteps; and then, heigho! for a fortnight of Bohemia, with every arrangement upside down, and appearing vastly improved by the change of position. Instead of tea in the drawing-room, two easy-chairs on the balcony overlooking the Park; cool iced drinks sipped through straws, and luscious dishes of fruit. Instead of Agnes, stiff and starched and tailor-made, a radiant vision in muslin and laces, with a ruffled golden head, and distracting little feet peeping out from beneath the frills.

"Isn't this fun?" cried the vision. "Don't you feel quite frivolous and Continental? Let's pretend we are a newly-married couple, and you adore me, and can't deny a thing I ask! There was a blouse in Bond Street this morning... Sweetest darling, wouldn't you like me to buy it to- morrow, and show me off in it to your friends? I told them to send it home on approval. I knew you couldn't bear to see your little girl unhappy for the sake of four miserable guineas!"

This sort of treatment was very agreeable to a worn-out City man, and as a pure matter of bargaining, the blouse was a cheap price to pay for the refreshment of that cool, restful hour, and the pretty chatter which smoothed the tired lines out of his face, and made him laugh and feel young again.

Another night Mr Vane would be decoyed to a rendezvous at Earl's Court, when Margot would wear the blouse, and insist upon turning round the pearl band on her third finger, so as to imitate a wedding-ring, looking at him in languishing fashion across the table the while, to the delight of fellow-diners and his own mingled horror and amus.e.m.e.nt. Then they would wander about beneath the glimmer of the fairy-lights, listening to the band, as veritable a pair of lovers as any among the throng.

As summer approached, Mr Vane's thoughts turned to these happy occasions, and it strengthened his indignation against his son to realise that this year a cloud had arisen between himself and his dearest daughter. Margot had openly ranked herself against him, which was a bitter pill to swallow, and, so far from showing an inclination to repent as the prescribed time drew to a close, the conspirators appeared only to be the more determined. Long envelopes were continually being dispatched to the post, to appear with astonishing dispatch on the family breakfast-table. The pale, wrought look on Ronald's face as he caught sight of them against the white cloth! No parent's heart could fail to be wrung for the lad's misery; but the futility of it added to the inward exasperation. Thousands of men walking the streets of London vainly seeking for work, while this misguided youth scorned a safe and secure position!

The pent-up irritation exploded one Sunday evening, when the presence of Edith and her husband recalled the consciousness of yet another disappointment. Mr Vane had made his own way, and, after the manner of successful men, had little sympathy with failure. The presence of the two pale, dejected-looking young men filled him with impatient wrath.

At the supper-table he was morose and irritable, until a chance remark set the fuse ablaze.

"Yes, yes! You all imagine yourselves so clever nowadays that you can afford to despise the experience of men who knew the world before you were born! I can see you look at each other as I speak! I'm not blind!

I'm an out-of-date old fogey who doesn't know what he is talking about, and hasn't even the culture to appreciate his own children. Because one has composed a bundle of rhymes that no one will publish, he must needs a.s.sume an att.i.tude of forbearance with the man who supplies the bread and b.u.t.ter! I've never been accustomed to regard failure as an instance of superiority, but no doubt I am wrong--no doubt I am behind the times--no doubt you are all condemning me in your minds as a blundering old ignoramus! A father is nothing but a nuisance who must be tolerated for the sake of what can be got out of him."

He looked round the table with his tired, angry eyes. Jack Martin sat with bent head and lips pressed tightly together, repressing himself for his wife's sake. Edith struggled against tears. Agnes served the salad dressing and grunted approval. Margot, usually so pert and ready of retort, stared at the cloth with a frown of strained distress. Only Ronald faced him with steady eyes.

"That is not true, father, and you know it yourself!"

"I know nothing, it appears! That's just what I say. Why don't you undertake my education? You never show me your work; you take the advice of a child like Margot, and leave me out in the cold, and then expect me to have faith enough to believe you a genius without a word of proof. You want to become known to the public? Very well, bring down some of that precious poetry and read it aloud to us now! You can't say then that I haven't given you a chance!"

It was a frightful prospect! The criticism of the family is always an ordeal to the budding author, and the moment was painfully unpropitious.

It would have been as easy for a bird to sing in the presence of the fowler. Ronald turned white to the lips, but his reply came as unwavering as the last.

"Do you think you would care to hear even the finest poetry in the world read aloud to-night? Mine is very far from the best. I will read it to you if you wish, but you must give me a happier opportunity."