"No, indeed! Of course the women about the town were not to be thought of." Unpleasant memories seemed to check his flow of words.

Without noticing his embarra.s.sment, Frank said--

"After France it must have been a horrible change to come to Ireland.

How old were you?"

"About fourteen. I could not endure the place. Every day was so appallingly like the last. There was nothing for me to do but to dream; I dreamed of everything. I longed to get alone and let my fancy wander--weaving tales of which I was the hero, building castles of which I was the lord."

"I remember always hearing of your riding and shooting. No one knew of your literary tastes. I don't mind telling you that Mount Rorke often suspected you of being a bit of a poacher."

Mike laughed.

"I believe I have knocked down a pheasant or two. I was an odd mixture--half a man of action, half a man of dreams. My position in Cashel was unbearable. My mother was a lady; my father--you know how he had let himself down. You cannot imagine the yearnings of a poor boy; you were brought up in all elegance and refinement. That beautiful park! On afternoons I used to walk there, and I remember the very moments I pa.s.sed under the foliage of the great beeches and lay down to dream. I used to wander to the outskirts of the wood as near as I dared to the pleasure-grounds, and looking on the towers strove to imagine the life there. The bitterest curses lie in the hearts of young men who, understanding refinement and elegance, see it for ever out of their reach. I used to watch the parade of dresses pa.s.sing on the summer lawns between the firs and flowering trees.

What graceful and n.o.ble words were spoken!--and that man walking into the poetry of the laburnum gold, did he put his arm about her? And I wondered what silken ankles moved beneath her skirts. My brain was on fire, and I was crazed; I thought I should never hold a lady in my arms. A lady! all the delicacy of silk and lace, high-heeled shoes, and the scent and colour of hair that a _coiffeur_ has braided."

"I think you are mad!"

Mike laughed and continued--

"I was so when I was sixteen. There was a girl staying there. Her hair was copper, and her flesh was pink and white. Her waist, you could span it. I saw her walking one day on ..."

"You must mean Lady Alice Hargood, a very tall girl?"

"Yes; five feet seven, quite. I saw her walking on the terrace with your uncle. Once she pa.s.sed our house, and I smarted with shame of it as of some restless wound, and for days I remembered I was little better than a peasant. Originally we came, as you know, of good English stock, but nothing is vital but the present. I cried and cursed my existence, my father and the mother that bore me, and that night I climbed out by my window and roved through the dark about the castle so tall in the moonlight. The sky that night was like a soft blue veil, and the trees were painted quite black upon it. I looked for her window, and I imagined her sleeping with her copper hair tossed in the moonlight, like an ill.u.s.tration in a volume of Sh.e.l.ley.

"You remember the old wooden statue of a nymph that stood in the sycamores at the end of the terraces; she was the first naked woman I saw. I used to wander about her, sometimes at night, and I have often climbed about and hung round those shoulders, and ever since I have always met that breast of wood. You have been loved more truly; you have been possessed of woman more thoroughly than I. Though I clasp a woman in my arms, it is as if the Atlantic separated us. Did I never tell you of my first love affair? That was the romance of the wood nymph. One evening I climbed on the pedestal of my divinity, my cheek was pale ..."

"For G.o.d's sake, leave out the poetics, and come to the facts."

"If you don't let me tell my story in my own way I won't tell it at all. Out of my agony prayer rose to Alice, for now it pleased me to fancy there was some likeness between this statue and Lady Alice. The dome of leaf.a.ge was sprinkled with the colour of the sunset, and as I pressed my lips to the wooden statue, I heard dead leaves rustling under a footstep. Holding the nymph with one arm, I turned and saw a lady approaching. She asked me why I kissed the statue. I looked away embarra.s.sed, but she told me not to go, and she said, 'You are a pretty boy.' I said I had never seen a woman so beautiful. Again I grew ashamed, but the lady laughed. We stood talking in the stillness. She said I had pretty hands, and asked me if I regretted the nymph was not a real woman. She took my hands. I praised hers, and then I grew frightened, for I knew she came from the castle; the castle was to me what the Ark of the Covenant was to an Israelite.

She put her arm about me, and my fears departed in the thrilling of an exquisite minute. She kissed me and said, 'Let us sit down.'"

"I wonder who she was! What was her name? You can tell me."

"No, I never mention names; besides, I am not certain she gave her right name."

"Are you sure she was staying at the castle? For if so, there would be no use for her to conceal her name. You could easily have found it out."

"Oh, yes, she was staying at the castle; she talked about you all.

Don't you believe me?"

"What, all about the nymph? I am certain you thought you ought to have loved her, and if what Harding says is right, that there is more truth in what we think than in what we do, I'm sure you might say that you had been on a wedding-tour with one of the gargoyles."

Mike laughed; and Frank did not suspect that he had annoyed him.

Mike's mother was a Frenchwoman, whom John Fletcher had met in Dublin and had pressed into a sudden marriage. At the end of three years of married life she had been forced to leave him, and strange were the legends of the profanities of that bed. She fled one day, taking her son with her. Fletcher did not even inquire where she had gone; and when at her death Mike returned to Ireland, he found his father in a small lodging-house playing the flute. Scarcely deigning to turn his head, he said--"Oh! is that you, Mike?--sit down."

At his father's death, Mike had sold the lease of the farm for three hundred pounds, and with that sum and a volume of verse he went to London. When he had published his poems he wrote two comedies. His efforts to get them produced led him into various society. He was naturally clever at cards, and one night he won three hundred pounds.

Journalism he had of course dabbled in--he was drawn towards it by his eager impatient nature; he was drawn from it by his gluttonous and artistic nature. Only ten pounds for an article, whereas a successful "bridge" brought him ten times that amount, and he revolted against the column of plat.i.tudes that the hours whelmed in oblivion. There had been times, however, when he had been obliged to look to journalism for daily bread. The _Spectator_, always open to young talent, had published many of his poems; the _Sat.u.r.day_ had welcomed his paradoxes and strained eloquence; but whether he worked or whether he idled he never wanted money. He was one of those men who can always find five pounds in the streets of London.

We meet Mike in his prime--in his twenty-ninth year--a man of various capabilities, which an inveterate restlessness of temperament had left undeveloped--a man of genius, diswrought with pa.s.sion, occasionally stricken with ambition.

"Let me have those gla.s.ses. There she is! I am sure it is she--there, leaning against the Embankment. Yes, yes, it is she. Look at her. I should know her figure among a thousand--those frail shoulders, that little waist; you could break her like a reed. How sweet she is on that background of flowing water, boats, wharfs, and chimneys; it all rises about her like a dream, and all is as faint upon the radiant air as a dream upon happy sleep. So she is coming to see me. She will keep her promise. I shall love her. I feel at last that love is near me. Supposing I were to marry her?"

"Why shouldn't you marry her if you love her? That is to say, if this is more than one of your ordinary caprices, spiced by the fact that its object is a nun."

The men looked at each other for a moment doubtful. Then Mike laughed.

"I hope I don't love her too much, that is all. But perhaps she will not come. Why is she standing there?"

"I should laugh if she turned on her heel and walked away right under your very nose."

A cloud pa.s.sed over Mike's face.

"That's not possible," he said, and he raised the gla.s.s. "If I thought there was any chance of that I should go down to see her."

"You couldn't force her to come up. She seems to be admiring the view."

Then Lily left the embankment and turned towards the Temple.

"She is coming!" Mike cried, and laying down the opera-gla.s.s he took up the scent and squirted it about the room. "You won't make much noise, like a good fellow, will you? I shall tell her I am here alone."

"I shall make no noise--I shall finish my article. I am expecting Lizzie about four; I will slip out and meet her in the street.

Good-bye."

Mike went to the head of the staircase, and looking down the prodigious height, he waited. It occurred to him that if he fell, the emparadised hour would be lost for ever. If she were to pa.s.s through the Temple without stopping at No. 2! The sound of little feet and the colour of a heliotrope skirt dispersed his fears, and he watched her growing larger as she mounted each flight of stairs; when she stopped to take breath, he thought of running down and carrying her up in his arms, but he did not move, and she did not see him until the last flight.

"Here you are at last!"

"I am afraid I have kept you waiting. I was not certain whether I should come."

"And you stopped to look at the view instead?"

"Yes, but how did you know that?"

"Ah! that's telling; come in."

The girl went in shyly.

"So this is where you live? How nicely you have arranged the room.

I never saw a room like this before. How different from the convent!

What would the nuns think if they saw me here? What strange pictures!--those ballet-girls; they remind me of the pantomime.

Did you buy those pictures?"

"No; they are wonderful, aren't they? A friend of mine bought them in France."

"Mr. Escott?"

"Yes; I forgot you knew him--how stupid of me! Had it not been for him I shouldn't have known you--I was thinking of something else."