Julius looked at him, and set the cat down.

"My dear Lefevre," said he, "I did not think you could urge such common twaddle! You know well enough,--n.o.body knows better,--first of all, that there are already more men waiting to do that kind of thing than can find occupation: why should I go down among them and try to take their work? And you know, in the next place, that medical philanthropy, like all other philanthropy, is so overdone that the race is fast deteriorating; we strive with so much success to keep the sickly and the diseased alive, that perfect health is scarcely known. Life without health can be nothing but a weariness: why should it be reckoned a praiseworthy thing to keep it going at any price? If life became a burden to me, I should lay it down."

"But," said Lefevre, earnestly, "your life surely is not your own to do with it what you like!"

"In the name of truth, Lefevre," answered Julius, "if my life is not my own, what is? I get its elements from others, but I fashion it myself, just as much as the sculptor shapes his statue, or the poet turns his poem. You don't deny to the sculptor the right to smash his statue if it does not please him, nor to the poet the right to burn his ma.n.u.script;--why should you deny me the right to dispose of my life? I know--I know," said he, seeing Lefevre open his mouth and raise his hand for another observation, "that your opinion is the common one, but that is the only sanction it has; it has the sanction neither of true morality nor of true religion! But here is the waiter to tell you the carriage is come. I'm glad. Let us get out into the air and the sunshine."

The carriage was the doctor's own; his mother, although the widow of a Court physician, was too poor to maintain much equipage, but she made what use she pleased of her son's possessions. When Lady Lefevre saw Julius at the carriage-door, she broke into smiles and cries of welcome.

"Where have you been this long, long while, Julius?" said she. "This is Julius Courtney, Nora. You remember Nora, Julius, when she was a little girl in frocks?"

"She now wears remarkable gowns," chimed in the doctor.

"Which," said Julius, "I have no doubt are becoming."

"My brother," said Nora, with a sunny smile, "is jealous; because, being a doctor, he must wear only dowdy clothes of dingy colours."

"We have finished at school and college, and been presented at Court,"

laughed Lady Lefevre.

"And," broke in the brother, "we have had cards engraved with our full name, _Leonora_."

"With all this," said Lady Lefevre, "I hope you won't be afraid of us."

"I see no reason," said Julius. "For, if I may say so, I like everything in Nature, and it seems to me Nature has had more to do with the finishing you speak of than the schoolmistress or the college professor."

"There he is already," laughed Lady Lefevre, "with his equivocal compliments. I shouldn't wonder if he says that, my dear, because you have not yet had more than a word to say for yourself."

By that time Lefevre and Julius were seated, and the carriage was rolling along towards the Park. Julius sat immediately opposite Lady Lefevre, but he included both her and Nora in his talk and his bright glances. The doctor sat agreeably suffused with delight and wonder. No one, as has been seen, had a higher opinion of Courtney's rare powers, or had had more various evidence of them, than Lefevre, but even he had never known his friend so brilliant. He was instinct with life and eloquence. His face shone as with an inner light, and his talk was bright, searching, and ironical. The amazing thing, however, was that Julius had as stimulating and intoxicating an influence on Nora as, it was clear, Nora had on him. His sister had not appeared to Lefevre hitherto more than a beautiful, healthy, shy girl of tolerable intelligence; now she showed that she had brilliance and wit, and, moreover, that she understood Julius as one native of a strange realm understands another. When they entered the Park, they were the observed of all. And, indeed, Leonora Lefevre was a vision to excite the worship of those least inclined to idolatry of Nature. She was of the n.o.blest type of English beauty, and she seemed as calmly unconscious of its excellence and rarity as one of the grand Greek women of the Parthenon.

She had, however, a sensuous fulness and bloom, a queenly carriage of head and neck, a clearness of feature, and a liquid kindness of eye that suggested a deep potentiality of pa.s.sion.

They drove round the Row, and round again, and they talked and laughed their fill of wisdom and frivolity and folly. To be foolish wisely and gracefully is a rare attainment. When they had almost completed their third round, Julius (who had finished a marvellous story of a fairy princess and a cat) said, "I can see you are fond of beasts, Miss Lefevre. I should like to take you to the Zoological Gardens and show you my favourites there. May we go now, Lady Lefevre?"

"By all means," said Lady Lefevre, "let us go. What do you say, John?"

"Oh, wherever you like, mother," answered her son.

Arrived in the Gardens, Julius took possession of his companions, and exerted all his arts to charm and fascinate. He led the ladies from cage to cage, from enclosure to enclosure, showed himself as familiar with the characters and habits of their wild denizens as a farmer is with those of his stock, and they responded to his strange calls, to his gentleness and fearlessness, with an alert understanding and confidence beautiful to see. His favourites were certain creatures of the deer species, which crowded to their fences to sniff his clothes, and to lick his hands, which he abandoned to their caresses with manifest satisfaction. His example encouraged the queenly Nora and her sprightly mother to feed the beautiful creatures with bread and buns, and to feel the suffusion of pleasure derived from the contact of their soft lips with the palm of the hand. After that they were scarcely astonished when, without bravado, but clearly with simple confidence and enjoyment, Julius put his hand within the bars of the lion's cage and scratched the ears of a lioness, murmuring the while in a strange tongue such fond sounds as only those use who are on the best terms with animals. The great brute rose to his touch, closing its eyes, and bearing up its head like a cat.

Then came an incident that deeply impressed the Lefevres. Julius went to a cage in which, he said, there was a recent arrival--a leopard from the "Land of the Setting Sun," the romantic land of the Moors. The creature crouched sulking in the back of the cage. Julius tapped on the bars, and entreated her in the language of her native land, "Ya, dudu! ya, lellatsi!" She bounded to him with a "_wir-r-r_" of delight, leaned and rubbed herself against the bars, and gave herself up to be stroked and fondled. When he left her, she cried after him piteously, and wistfully watched him out of sight.

"Do you know the beautiful creature?" asked Lady Lefevre.

"Yes," answered Julius quietly; "I brought her over some months ago."

Lefevre had explained to his mother that Julius had always been on friendly or fond terms with animals, but never till now had he seen the remarkable understanding he clearly maintained with them.

"Look!" said Lady Lefevre to her son as they turned to leave the Gardens. "He seems to have fascinated Nora as much as the beasts."

Nora stood a little aloof, regarding Julius in an ecstasy of admiration.

When she found her mother was looking at her, her eyes sank, and as it were a veil of blushes fell over her. Mother and son walked on first, and Julius followed with Nora.

"He is a most charming and extraordinary man," said the mother.

"He is," said the son, "and amazingly intelligent."

"He seems to know everything, and to have been everywhere,--to have been a kind of rolling stone. If anything should come of this, I suppose he can afford to marry. You ought to know about him."

"I believe I know as much as any one."

"He has no profession?" queried the lady.

"He has no profession; but I suppose he could afford it," said Lefevre musingly.

"You don't like the idea," said his mother.

"Not much. I scarce know why. But I somehow think of him as not having enough sense of the responsibility of life."

"I suppose his people are of the right sort?"

"I suppose they are; though I don't know if he has any people," said he, with a laugh. "He is the kind of man who does not need parents or relations."

"Still, hadn't you better try to find out what he may have in that line?"

"Yes," said Lefevre; "perhaps I had."

Chapter II.

A Mysterious Case.

The two friends returned, as they had arranged, to the Hyacinth Club for dinner. Courtney's coruscating brilliancy sank into almost total darkness when they parted from Lady and Miss Lefevre, and when they sat down to table he was preoccupied and silent, yet in no proper sense downcast or dull. Lefevre noted, while they ate, that there was clear speculation in his eye, that he was not vaguely dreaming, but with alert intelligence examining some question, or facing some contingency; and it was natural he should think that the question or contingency must concern Nora as much as Julius. Yet he made no overture of understanding, for he knew that Courtney seldom offered confidence or desired sympathy; not that he was churlish or reserved, but simply that he was usually sufficient unto himself, both for counsel and for consolation. Lefevre was therefore surprised when he was suddenly asked a question, which was without context in his own thought.

"Have you ever found something happen or appear," said Julius, "that completely upsets your point of view, and tumbles down your scheme of life, like a stick thrust between your legs when you are running?"

"I have known," said Lefevre, "a new fact arise and upset a whole scientific theory. That's often a good thing," he added, with a pointed glance; "for it compels a reconstruction of the theory on a wider and sounder basis."

"Yes," murmured Julius; "that may be. But I should think it does not often happen that the new fact swallows up all the details that supported your theory,--as Aaron's rod, turned into a serpent, swallowed up the serpent-rods of the magicians of Egypt,--so that there is no longer any theory, but only one great, glorious fact. I do admire," he exclaimed, swerving suddenly, "the imagination of those old Greeks, with their beautiful, half-divine personifications of the Spirits of Air and Earth and Sea! But their imagination never conceived a G.o.ddess that embodied them all!"

"I have often thought, Julius," said Lefevre, "that you must be some such embodiment yourself; for you are not quite human, you know."

The doctor said that with a clear recollection of his mother's request.

He hoped that his friend would take the cue, and tell him something of his family. Julius, however, said nothing but "Indeed." Lefevre then tried to tempt him into confession by talking about his own father and mother, and by relating how the French name "Lefevre" came to be domiciled in England; but Julius ignored the temptation, and dismissed the question in an eloquent flourish.

"What does a man want with a family and a name? They only tie him to the earth, as Gulliver was tied by the people of Lilliput. We have life and health,--_if_ we have them,--and it is only veiled prurience to inquire whence we got them. A man can't help having a father and a mother, I suppose; but he need not be always reminding himself of the fact: no other creature on earth does. For myself, I wish I were like that extraordinary person, Melchizedek, without father and without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days nor end of life."