"Very likely, and the old people would not tell her. But it's true for all that. So you see, Mary, we can afford to have justice done to these poems of mine. If they are stones of any value, let them be put in proper setting or not set at all. I am ent.i.tled to ask that much."

CHAPTER XII.

"LOVE, THE MESSENGER OF DEATH."

Victor Heron seemed to Minola about this time in a fair way to let his great grievance go by altogether. He was filled with it personally when he had time to think about it, but the grievances of somebody else were always coming across his path, and drawing away his attention from his own affairs. Minola very soon noticed this peculiarity in him, and at first could hardly believe in its genuineness; it so conflicted with all her accepted theories about the ingrained selfishness of man. But by watching and studying his ways, which she did with some interest, she found that he really had that unusual weakness; and she was partly amused and partly annoyed by it. She felt angry with him now and then for neglecting his own task, like another Hylas, to pick up every little blossom of alien grievance flung in his way. She pressed on him with an earnestness which their growing friendship seemed to warrant the necessity of his doing something to set his cause right, or ceasing to tell himself that he had a cause which called for justice.

It would not be easy to find a more singular friendship than that which was growing up between Miss Grey and Victor. She received him whenever he chose to come and see her. Many a night, when Mary Blanchet and she sat together, he would look in upon them as he went to some dinner-party, or even as he came home from one, if he had got away early, and have a few minutes' talk with them. He came often in the afternoon, and if Minola did not happen to be at home, he would nevertheless remain and have a long chat with Mary Blanchet. He seemed always in good humor with himself and everybody else, except in so far as his grievance was concerned, and always perfectly happy. It has been already shown that although quite a young man, he considered himself, by virtue of his experience and his public career, ever so much older than Minola. Once or twice he sent a throb of keen delight through Mary Blanchet's heart by speaking of something that "I can remember, Miss Blanchet, and perhaps you may remember it--but Miss Grey couldn't of course." To be put on anything like equal ground with him as to years was a delightful experience to the poetess. It was all the more delicious because there was such an evident genuineness in his suggestion. Of course, if he had meant to pay her a compliment--such as a foolish person might be pleased with, but not she, thank goodness--he would have pretended to think her as young as Minola. But he had done nothing of the kind; and he evidently thought that she was about the same age as himself.

At all events, and it was more to the purpose, he set down Miss Grey as belonging to quite a different stage of growth from that to which he had attained. He thought her a handsome and very clever girl, who had the additional advantage over most other girls that she was rather tall, and that he therefore was not compelled to stoop much when speaking to her.

He liked women and girls generally. He hardly ever saw the woman or girl he did not like. If he knew that a woman was insincere or affected, he would not have liked her; but then he never knew it; he never saw it; it never occurred to him. Anybody could have seen that he was a man who had no sisters or girl-cousins. The most innocent and natural affectations of womanhood were too deep for him to see. There really was a great deal of truth in what he had said to Minola about his G.o.ddess theory as regarded women. He made no secret about his greatly admiring her--thinking her very clever and fresh and handsome. He would without any hesitation have told her that he liked her best of all the women he knew, but then he had often told her that he liked other women very much. He seemed, therefore, the man whom a pure and fearless woman, even though living in Minola's odd condition of semi-isolation, might frankly accept as a friend without the slightest fear for the tranquillity of his heart or of hers. Minola, too, had always in her own breast resented with anger and contempt the idea that a man and woman can never be brought together and allowed to walk in the beaten way of friendship without their forthwith wandering off into the thickets and th.o.r.n.y places of love. All such ideas she looked upon as imbecility, and scorned. "I don't like men," she used to say to herself and even to others pretty freely. "I never saw a man fit to hold a candle to my Alceste. I never saw the man who seemed to me worth a woman's troubling her heart about." She began to say this of late more than ever--and to say it to herself, especially when the day and the evening had closed and she was alone in her own room. She said it over almost as if it were a sort of charm.

The business of the poems now gave him many occasions to call, and one particular afternoon Victor called when, by a rare chance, Mary Blanchet happened to be out of doors. Minola had had it on her mind that he was not pushing his cause very earnestly, and was glad of the opportunity of telling him so. He listened with great good humor. It is nearly as agreeable to be lectured as to be praised by a handsome young woman who is unaffectedly interested in one's welfare.

"I shall lose my good opinion of you if you don't keep more steadily to your purpose."

"But I do keep steadily to it. I am always thinking of it."

"No; you allow anything and everything to interfere with you. Anybody's affairs seem more to you than your own."

Victor shook his head.

"That isn't the reason," he said. "I wish it were, or anything half so good. No; the truth is that I get ashamed of the cursed work of trying to interest people in my affairs who don't want to take any interest in them. I am a restless sort of person and must be doing something, and my own business is now in that awful stage when there is nothing practical or active to be done with it. I find it easier to get up an appearance of prodigious activity about some other person's affairs. And then, Miss Grey, I don't mind confessing that I am rather sensitive and morbid--egotistic, I suppose--and if any one looks coldly on me when I endeavor to interest him in my own affairs, I take it to heart more than if it were the business of somebody else I had in hand."

"But you talked at one time of appealing to the public. Why don't you do that?"

"Get people to bring my case on in the House of Commons?"

"Yes; why not?"

"It looks like being patronized and protected and made a client of."

"Well, why don't you try and get the chance of doing it yourself?"

He smiled.

"I still do hold to that idea--or that dream. I should like it very much if one only had a chance. But no chance seems to turn up; and one loses heart sometimes."

"Oh, no," Minola said earnestly, "don't do that."

"Don't do what?"

He had hardly been thinking of his own words, and he seemed a little surprised at the earnestness of her tone.

"Don't lose heart. Don't give way. Don't fall into the track of the commonplace, and become like every one else. Keep to your purpose, Mr.

Heron, and don't be beaten out of it."

"No; I haven't the least idea of that, I can a.s.sure you. Quite the contrary. But it is so hard to get a chance, or to do anything all at once. Everything moves so slowly in England. But I have a plan--we are doing something."

"I am very glad. You seem to me to be doing nothing for yourself."

"Do I? I can a.s.sure you I am much less Quixotic than you imagine. Now, I am so glad to hear that you still like the Parliamentary scheme, because that is the idea that I have particularly at heart; and if the idea comes to anything, there are some reasons why you should take a special interest in it."

"Are there really? May I be told what they are?"

"Well, the whole thing is only in prospect and uncertainty just yet. The idea is Money's, not mine; he has found out that there is going to be a vacancy in a certain borough," and Victor smiled and looked at her, "before long; and his idea is that I should become a candidate, and tell the people my whole story right out, and ask them to give me a chance of defending myself in the House. But the thing is not yet in shape enough to talk much about it. Only I thought you would be glad to know that I haven't thrown up the sponge all at once."

Minola did not very clearly follow all that he had been saying; partly because she was beginning to be afraid that to put herself into the position of adviser and confidante to this young man was a scarcely becoming performance on her part. Her mind was a little perturbed, and she was not a very good listener then. Some people say that women seldom are good listeners; that while they are playing the part of audience they are still thinking how they look as performers. Anyhow, Minola was now growing anxious to escape from her position.

"I am so glad," she said vaguely, "that you are doing something, and that you don't mean to allow yourself to be beaten."

"I don't mean to be, I a.s.sure you," he said, a little surprised at her sudden coolness. "I shouldn't like to be. That isn't my way, I hope."

"I hope not too, and I think not; I wish I had such a purpose. Life seems to me such a pitiful thing--and in a man especially--when there is no great clear purpose in it."

"But is a man's trying to get himself a new appointment a great clear purpose?" he asked with a smile. He was now trying to draw her out again on the subject, having been much pleased with the interest she seemed to take in him, and a little amused by the gravity with which she tendered her advice.

"No, but yours is not merely trying to get an appointment. You are trying to have justice done to your past career and to get an opportunity of being useful again in the same sort of way. You don't want to lead an idle life lounging about London. Mr. Blanchet has his poems; Mr. Money has--well, he has his business, whatever it is, and he is in Parliament."

At this moment the servant entered and handed a card to Minola. A gentleman, she said, particularly wished to see Miss Grey, but he would call any time she pleased to name if she could not see him at present.

Minola's cheek grew red as she glanced at the card, for it bore the name of Mr. Augustus Sheppard, and it had the words pencilled on it, "Wishes particularly to see you--has important business." Her lips trembled.

Nothing could be more embarra.s.sing and painful than such a visitation.

The disagreeable memory of Mr. Sheppard and of the part of her life to which he belonged had been banished from her thoughts, at least except for occasional returning glimpses, and now here was Mr. Sheppard himself in London and a.s.serting a right to see her. She could not refuse him, for he did, perhaps, come to her with some message from those in Keeton who still would have called themselves her family. Mary Blanchet had only just gone out, and Minola was left to talk with Mr. Sheppard alone.

For a moment she had a wild idea of begging Victor Heron to stay and bear her company during the interview. But she put this thought away instantly, and made up her mind that she had better hear what Mr.

Sheppard had to say alone.

"Show the gentleman in, Jane," she said, as composedly as she could. "A friend--at least a friend of my people, from my old place, Mr. Heron."

Heron was looking at her, she thought, in a manner that showed he had noticed her embarra.s.sment.

"Well, I must wish you a good morning," Mr. Heron said. "Be sure I shan't forget what you were saying."

"Thank you--yes; what was I saying?"

"Oh, the very good advice you were giving me; and I propose to hear it all out another time. Good morning."

"Don't go for a moment--pray don't?" she asked, with an earnestness which surprised Victor. "Only a moment--I would rather you didn't go just yet."

The thought suddenly went through her that Mr. Sheppard was the very man to put an exaggerated meaning on the slightest thing that seemed to hint at secrecy of any kind, and that she had better take care to let him see, face to face, what sort of visitor was with her when he came.

Victor was glad in any case of the chance of remaining a few moments longer, and was in no particular hurry to go so long as he could think he was not in anybody's way.

Victor Heron stood, hat in hand, on the hearth-rug near the chimney-piece. As Mr. Sheppard entered, Heron was the first person he happened to see, and the entirely unexpected sight surprised him. He glanced confusedly from Heron to Minola before he spoke a word, and his manner, always stiff and formal, seemed to acquire in a moment an additional incubus of constraint. Victor Heron had something about him which did not seem exactly English, and which, to a provincial mind, might well suggest the appearance of a foreigner--a Frenchman. Mr.

Sheppard had never felt quite satisfied in his own mind about that mysterious rival of whom Minola spoke to him on the memorable day when he saw her last. She had told him that her Alceste was only "a man who lived in a book, Mr. Sheppard--in what you would call a play." How well he remembered the very words she used, and the expression of contempt on her lips as she used them. And he had got the book--the play--and read it--toiled through it--and found that there was an Alceste in it. So far she had told the truth, no doubt; but might not the Alceste have a living embodiment, or might she not have found since that time a supposed realization of her Alceste, and might not this be he--this handsome, foreign-looking young man, who was lounging there as coolly and easily as if the place belonged to him? For a moment an awful doubt filled his mind. Could she be married? Was that her husband?