"Esther, I've found my million pounds."

"Oh, Mike! He's really going to help you?"

And here there is no further necessity for eaves-dropping. All persons except Mike and Esther will please leave the porch.

CHAPTER x.x.x

UNCHARTERED FREEDOM

On the morning after the dinner with which he bade farewell to Messrs.

Lingard and Fields, Henry awoke at his usual hour to a very unusual feeling. For the first time in his life he could stay in bed as long as he pleased.

On the other side of the room Ned Hazell lay sleeping the deep sleep of the unpunctual clerk; and Henry, when he had for a moment or two dwelt upon his own happiness, took a malicious joy in arousing him.

"Ned," he shouted, "get up! You'll be late for the office."

Ned gave out a deep sound, something between a snore, a moan, and an imprecation.

"Ned!" his tormentor persisted, drawing the clothes warmly round him, in a luxury of indifference to the time of day.

Ned presently began rubbing his head vigorously, which was one of his preliminaries of awakening, and then mournfully raised himself in bed, a pillar of somnolence.

"You might let a fellow have his sleep out," he said; "why don't you get up yourself?--oh, I remember, you're a literary gentleman from to-day.

That's why you're so mighty ready to root me out," and he aimed a pillow at Henry's bed in derision.

Yes, Henry was free, an independent gentleman of time and s.p.a.ce. The clock might strike itself hoa.r.s.e, yet, if he wished, he might go on staying in bed. He was free! His late task-masters had no jurisdiction here. It would even be in his power here to order Mr. Fields out of the room, and, if he refused, forcibly to eject him into the street. Why didn't Mr. Fields appear to gratify him in this matter?

So he indulged his imagination, while Ned dressed in haste, with the fear of the tyrant evident upon him. Poor fellow, he would have to choose between two cups of coffee and two eggs and five minutes late!

Probably he would split the difference, bolt one cup of coffee and one egg, and arrive two and a half minutes late. Henry watched him with compa.s.sion; and when he had gone his ways, himself rose languidly and dressed indolently, as with the aid of an invisible valet. At length he sauntered down to breakfast, and sent out for a morning paper, which he on no account ever read. He could imagine no more insulting waste of time. He looked it through, but found no reference to the real significance of the day.

Breakfast over, he wondered what he should do with himself, how he should spend the day. His clear duty was to begin being a great man on the spot, and work at being a great man every day punctually from nine till six. But where should he begin? Should he sit down in a business-like way and begin his long romantic poem, or should he write an essay, or again should he make a start on his novel?

Romantic poems, he felt, however, are only well begun on special days not easy to define; essays are only written on days when we have determined to be idle,--and this, after the opening flirtation with indolence, must be a busy day,--and it is not every day that one can begin a novel. He might arrange his books, but really they were very well arranged already. Or suppose he went out for a walk. Walking quickened the brain. He might go and look in at the Art Gallery, where he hadn't been for a long while, and see the new picture the morning paper was talking about. It was by a painter whose poems he already knew and loved. That might inspire him. So, by an accident of idleness, he presently found himself standing rapt before the most wonderful picture he had ever seen,--a picture to see which, he said to himself, men would make pilgrimages to Tyre, when Tyre was a moss-grown, ruinous seaport, from which the traffic of the world had long since pa.s.sed away.

Henry at this time had visited none of the great galleries and, except in a few reproductions, knew nothing of the great Italian masters.

Therefore to him this picture was Italy, the Renaissance, and Catholicism, all concentrated into one enthralling canvas. But it was something greater than that. It was the terrible meeting of Youth and Love and Death in one tremendous moment of infinite loss. Infinite pa.s.sion and infinite loss were here pictured, in a medium which combined all that was spiritual and all that was sensual in a harmony of beauty that was in the same moment delirium and peace. The irresistible cry of the colour to the senses, the spheral call of the theme and its agony to the soul. Beatrice dead, and Dante taken in a dream across the strewn poppies of her death-chamber, to look his last on the sleeping face, yet a little smiling in the after-glow of life; her soul already carried by angels far over the curved and fluted roofs of the Florentine houses, on its way to Paradise. Little Beatrice! Not till they meet again in Paradise shall he see again that holy face. In a dream of loss he gazes upon her, as the angels lift up the flower-garnished sheet; and not only her face, but every detail of that room of death is etched in tears upon his eyes,--the distant winding stair, the pallid death-lamps, the intruding light of day. All Pa.s.sion and all Loss, all Youth, all Love, and all Death met together in an everlasting requiem of tragic colour.

Henry sat long before this picture, enveloped, as it were, in its rich gloom, as the painted profundity of a church absorbs one in its depths.

And with the impression of its solemn beauty was blent a despairing awe of the artist who, of a little coloured earth, had created such a masterpiece of vitality, thrown on to a thin screen of canvas so enduringly palpable, so sumptuous, and so poignantly dominating a reflection of his visions. What a pa.s.sionate energy of beauty must have been in this man's soul; what a constant fury of meditation upon things divine!

When Henry came back to himself, his first thought was to share it with Angel. Little soul, how her face would flame, how her body would tremble with the wonder of it! In the minutiae, the technicalities of appreciation, Angel, like Henry himself, might be lacking; but in the motive fervour of appreciation, who was like her! It was almost painful to see the joy which certain simple wonders gave her. Anything intense or prodigal in nature, any splendidly fluent outpouring of the elements,--the fierce life of streaming fire, water in gliding or tumultuous ma.s.ses, the vivid gold of crocus and daffodil spouting up through the earth in spring, the exquisite liquidity of a bird singing,--these, as with all elemental poetic natures, gave her the same keen joy which we fable for those who, in the intense morning of the world, first heard them; fable, indeed, for why should we suppose that because ears deaf a thousand years heard the nightingale too, it should therefore be less new for those who to-night hear it for the first time? Rather shall it be more than less for us, by the memories transmitted in our blood from all the generations who before have listened and gone their way.

So Henry sought out Angel, and they both stood in front of the great picture for a long while without a word. Presently Angel put the feeling of both of them into a single phrase,--

"Henry, dear, we have found our church."

And indeed for many months henceforth this picture was to be their altar, their place of prayer. Often hereafter when their hopes were overcast, or life grew mean with little cares, they would slip, singly, or together, into that gallery, and--

"let the beauty of Eternity Smooth from their brows the little frets of time."

Thus Henry's first day of freedom had begun auspiciously with the unexpected discovery of an inalienable possession of beauty. Yet the little cares were not far off, waiting their time; and that night, Henry lay long awake asking himself what he was going to do? Whence was to come the material gold and silver by which this impetuous spirit was to be sustained? A sum not exceeding five pounds represented his acc.u.mulated resources, and they would not last longer than--five pounds.

He needed little, but that little he needed emphatically. Soon a new book and other literary projects would keep him going, but--meanwhile!

How were the next two or three months to be bridged? Return to his father's house, he neither would, nor perhaps, indeed, could.

So he lay awake a long while, fruitlessly thinking; but, just before he slept, a thought that made him laugh himself awake suggested itself: "Why not go and ask Aunt Tipping to take pity on you?"

So he went to sleep, resolved, if only for the fun of it, to pay a visit to Aunt Tipping on the morrow.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

A PREPOSTEROUS AUNT

No doubt it has been surmised from what has gone before, that when Henry said to himself that he would go and see Aunt Tipping, he did not propose to himself a visit to the country seat of some quaint old lady of quality. Baronial towers and stately avenues of ancestral elm did not make a picturesque background for his thoughts as he recalled Aunt Tipping.

Poor kind Aunt Tipping, it is a shame to banter her memory even in so obvious a fashion; for if ever there was a kind heart, it was hers. In fact she possessed, in a degree that amounted to genius, one of the rarest of human qualities,--unconditional pity for the unhappy human creature. Within her narrow and squalid sphere, she was never known to fail of such succour as was hers to give to misfortune, however well-merited, or misery however self-made.

No religion or philosophy has ever yet been merciful enough to human weakness. Matilda Tipping repaired the lack so far as she went. In fact, she had unconsciously realised that weakness _is_ human nature. It would be difficult to fix upon an offence that would disqualify you for Aunt Tipping's pity. To the prodigalities of the pa.s.sions, and the appet.i.tes disastrously indulged, she was accustomed by a long succession of those sad and shady lodgers to whom it was part of her precarious livelihood to let her rooms, and, not infrequently, to forgive them their rent.

That men and women should drink too much, and love too many, was, her experience told her, one of those laws of nature that seemed to make a good deal of unnecessary inconvenience in mortal affairs, but against which mere preaching or punishment availed nothing. All that was to be done was, so far as possible, to repair their ravages in particular instances, and heal the wounds of human pa.s.sion with simple human kindness.

Of two vessels, one for honour and the other for dishonour, surely nature never made so complete a contrast as Matilda Tipping and her sister, Mary Mesurier. Both country girls, born in a humble, though defiantly respectable, stratum of society, the ways of the two sisters had already parted in childhood. Mary was studious, neat, and religious; Matilda was tomboyish, impatient of restraint, and fond of unedifying a.s.sociates.

"Your aunt never aspired," Mrs. Mesurier would say of Aunt Tipping sometimes to her children; and, while still a child, she had often reproached her with her fondness for gossiping with companions "beneath her." Matilda could never be persuaded to care for books. She was naturally illiterate, and even late in life had a fixed aversion to writing her own letters; whereas, at the age of seven, Mary had been public scrivener for the whole village. But with these regrettable instincts, from the first Matilda had also manifested a whimsical liveliness, an unconquerable lightheartedness which made you forgive her anything, and for which, poor soul, she had use enough before she was done with life. At seventeen, added to good looks, of which at fifty there was scarcely a trace in the thin and meanly worn face, this vivacity had proved a tragic snare. A certain young capitalist--known as a great gentleman--of that countryside had pounced down on the gay and careless young Matilda, and had at once provided her life with its formative tragedy and its deathless romance. Even at fifty, hopelessly buried among the back streets and p.a.w.nshops of life, heaven still opened in the heart of Matilda Tipping at the mention of the name of William Allsopp. For several years she had lived with the Mesuriers, as general help to her sister, between whom and her, in spite of surface disparities, there was an indissoluble bond of affection; till, at thirty-five or so, she had suddenly won the heart of a sad old widower of fifty-five, named Samuel Tipping.

Samuel Tipping was no ordinary widower. As you looked at his severe, thoughtful face, surmounted by a shock of beautiful white hair, you instinctively respected him; and when you heard that he lived by cobbling shoes by day and playing a violin in the Theatre Royal orchestra by night, occasionally putting off his leather ap.r.o.n to give a music lesson in the front parlour of an afternoon, you respected him all the more. There had been but one thing against Mr. Tipping's eligibility for marriage, Matilda Tipping would tell you, even years after, with a lowering of her voice: he was said to be an "atheist," and a reader of strange books. Yet he seemed a quiet, manageable man, and likely--again in Mrs. Tipping's phrase--to prove a "good provider;" so she had risked his heterodoxy, which indeed was a somewhat fanciful objection on her part, and made him, as he declared with his dying breath, the best of wives.

It chanced that when Henry, in pursuance of his over-night resolve, made his way the following afternoon through a dingy little street, and knocked on the door of a dingy little house, bearing upon a bra.s.s plate the legend "Boots neatly repaired," Mr. Tipping was engaged in giving one of those very music lessons. A dingy little maid-of-all-work opened the door, and said that Mrs. Tipping was out shopping, but would be back soon. From the front parlour came the lifeless tum-tumming of the piano, and Mr. Tipping's voice gruffly counting time to the cheerless five-finger exercises of a very evident beginner.

"One--two--three! One--two--three! One--two--three!" went Mr. Tipping's voice, with an occasional infusion of savagery.

"But Mr. Tipping is at home?" said Henry. "I will wait till he is disengaged. I will make myself comfortable in the kitchen," (Henry knew his way about at Aunt Tipping's, and remembered there was only one front parlour) adding, with something of pride, "I'm Mrs. Tipping's nephew, you know."

Presently the torture in the front parlour was at an end; and, as Mr.

Tipping was about to turn upstairs to the little back room where he mended his shoes, Henry emerged upon him from the kitchen. They had had some talks on books and the general misgovernment of the universe,--for Mr. Tipping really was something of an "atheist,"--on Henry's occasional visits, and were no strangers to each other.

"Why, Henry, lad, whoever expected to see you! Your aunt's out at present; but she'll be back soon. Come into the parlour."

"If you don't mind, Uncle Tipping, I'd rather come upstairs with you. I love the smell of the leather and the sight of all those sharp little knives, and the black, shiny 'dubbin,' do you call it? And we can have a talk about books till aunt comes home."

"All right, lad. But it's a dusty place, and there's hardly a corner to sit down in."