Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet Part 35

"Lillian, you blind beetle."

I dropped his arm--"Never, as I live!"

He started back, and burst into a horse-laugh.

"Hullo! my eye and Betty Martin! You don't mean to say that I have the honour of finding a rival in my talented cousin?"

I made no answer.

"Come, come, my dear fellow, this is too ridiculous. You and I are very good friends, and we may help each other, if we choose, like kith and kin in this here wale. So if you're fool enough to quarrel with me, I warn you I'm not fool enough to return the compliment. Only" (lowering his voice), "just bear one little thing in mind--that I am, unfortunately, of a somewhat determined humour; and if folks will get in my way, why it's not my fault if I drive over them. You understand? Well, if you intend to be sulky, I don't. So good morning, till you feel yourself better."

And he turned gaily down a side-street and disappeared, looking taller, handsomer, manfuller than ever.

I returned home miserable; I now saw in my cousin not merely a rival, but a tyrant; and I began to hate him with that bitterness which fear alone can inspire. The eleven pounds still remained unpaid. Between three and four pounds was the utmost which I had been able to h.o.a.rd up that autumn, by dint of scribbling and stinting; there was no chance of profit from my book for months to come--if indeed it ever got published, which I hardly dare believe it would; and I knew him too well to doubt that neither pity nor delicacy would restrain him from using his power over me, if I dared even to seem an obstacle in his way.

I tried to write, but could not. I found it impossible to direct my thoughts, even to sit still; a vague spectre of terror and degradation crushed me. Day after day I sat over the fire, and jumped up and went into the shop, to find something which I did not want, and peep listlessly into a dozen books, one after the other, and then wander back again to the fireside, to sit mooning and moping, starting at that horrible incubus of debt--a devil which may give mad strength to the strong, but only paralyses the weak. And I was weak, as every poet is, more or less. There was in me, as I have somewhere read that there is in all poets, that feminine vein--a receptive as well as a creative faculty--which kept up in me a continual thirst after beauty, rest, enjoyment. And here was circ.u.mstance after circ.u.mstance goading me onward, as the gadfly did Io, to continual wanderings, never ceasing exertions; every hour calling on me to do, while I was only longing to be--to sit and observe, and fancy, and build freely at my own will. And then--as if this necessity of perpetual petty exertion was not in itself sufficient torment--to have that accursed debt--that knowledge that I was in a rival's power, rising up like a black wall before me, to cripple, and render hopeless, for aught I knew, the very exertions to which it compelled me! I hated the bustle--the crowds; the ceaseless roar of the street outside maddened me. I longed in vain for peace--for one day's freedom--to be one hour a shepherd-boy, and lie looking up at the blue sky, without a thought beyond the rushes that I was plaiting! "Oh!

that I had wings as a dove!--then would I flee away, and be at rest!"--

And then, more than once or twice either, the thoughts of suicide crossed me; and I turned it over, and looked at it, and dallied with it, as a last chance in reserve. And then the thought of Lillian came, and drove away the fiend. And then the thought of my cousin came, and paralysed me again; for it told me that one hope was impossible. And then some fresh instance of misery or oppression forced itself upon me, and made me feel the awful sacredness of my calling, as a champion of the poor, and the base cowardice of deserting them for any selfish love of rest. And then I recollected how I had betrayed my suffering brothers.--How, for the sake of vanity and patronage, I had consented to hide the truth about their rights--their wrongs. And so on through weary weeks of moping melancholy--"a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways?"

At last, Mackaye, who, as I found afterwards, had been watching all along my altered mood, contrived to worm my secret out of me. I had dreaded, that whole autumn, having to tell him the truth, because I knew that his first impulse would be to pay the money instantly out of his own pocket; and my pride, as well as my sense of justice, revolted at that, and sealed my lips. But now this fresh discovery--the knowledge that it was not only in my cousin's power to crush me, but also his interest to do so--had utterly unmanned me; and after a little innocent and fruitless prevarication, out came the truth with tears of bitter shame.

The old man pursed up his lips, and, without answering me, opened his table drawer, and commenced fumbling among accounts and papers.

"No! no! no! best, n.o.blest of friends! I will not burden you with the fruits of my own vanity and extravagance. I will starve, go to gaol sooner than take your money. If you offer it me I will leave the house, bag and baggage, this moment." And I rose to put my threat into execution.

"I havena at present ony sic intention," answered he, deliberately, "seeing that there's na necessity for paying debits twice owre, when ye ha' the stampt receipt for them." And he put into my hands, to my astonishment and rapture, a receipt in full for the money, signed by my cousin.

Not daring to believe my own eyes, I turned it over and over, looked at it, looked at him--there was nothing but clear, smiling a.s.surance in his beloved old face, as he twinkled, and winked, and chuckled, and pulled off his spectacles, and wiped them, and put them on upside-down; and then relieved himself by rus.h.i.+ng at his pipe, and cramming it fiercely with tobacco till he burst the bowl.

Yes; it was no dream!--the money was paid, and I was free! The sudden relief was as intolerable as the long burden had been; and, like a prisoner suddenly loosed from off the rack, my whole spirit seemed suddenly to collapse, and I sank with my head upon the table to faint even for grat.i.tude.

But who was my benefactor? Mackaye vouchsafed no answer, but that I "suld ken better than he." But when he found that I was really utterly at a loss to whom to attribute the mercy, he a.s.sured me, by way of comfort, that he was just as ignorant as myself; and at last, piecemeal, in his circ.u.mlocutory and cautious Scotch method, informed me, that some six weeks back he had received an anonymous letter, "a'thegither o' a Belgravian cast o' phizog," containing a bank note for twenty pounds, and setting forth the writer's suspicions that I owed my cousin money, and their desire that Mr.

Mackaye, "o' whose uprightness and generosity they were pleased to confess themselves no that ignorant," should write to George, ascertain the sum, and pay it without my knowledge, handing over the balance, if any, to me, when he thought fit--"Sae there's the remnant--aucht pounds, sax s.h.i.+llings, an' saxpence; tippence being deduckit for expense o' twa letters anent the same transaction."

"But what sort of handwriting was it?" asked I, almost disregarding the welcome coin.

"Ou, then--aiblins a man's, aiblins a maid's. He was no chirographosophic himsel--an' he had na curiosity anent ony sic pa.s.sage o' aristocratic romance."

"But what was the postmark of the letter?"

"Why for suld I speired? Gin the writers had been minded to be beknown, they'd ha' sign't their names upon the doc.u.ment. An' gin they didna sae intend, wad it be coorteous o' me to gang speiring an' peering ower covers an' seals?"

"But where is the cover?"

"Ou, then," he went on, with the same provoking coolness, "white paper's o'

geyan use, in various operations o' the domestic economy. Sae I just tare it up--aiblins for pipe-lights--I canna mind at this time."

"And why," asked I, more vexed and disappointed than I liked to confess--"why did you not tell me before?"

"How wad I ken that you had need o't? An' verily, I thocht it no that bad a lesson for ye, to let ye experiment a towmond mair on the precious balms that break the head--whereby I opine the Psalmist was minded to denote the delights o' spending borrowed siller."

There was nothing more to be extracted from him; so I was fain to set to work again (a pleasant compulsion truly) with a free heart, eight pounds in my pocket, and a brainful of conjectures. Was it the dean? Lord Lynedale?

or was it--could it be--Lillian herself? That thought was so delicious that I made up my mind, as I had free choice among half a dozen equally improbable fancies, to determine that the most pleasant should be the true one; and h.o.a.rded the money, which I shrunk from spending as much as I should from selling her miniature or a lock of her beloved golden hair.

They were a gift from her--a pledge--the first fruits of--I dare not confess to myself what.

Whereat the reader will smile, and say, not without reason, that I was fast fitting myself for Bedlam; if, indeed, I had not proved my fitness for it already, by paying the tailors' debts, instead of my own, with the ten pounds which Farmer Porter had given me. I am not sure that he would not be correct; but so I did, and so I suffered.

CHAPTER XXV.

A TRUE n.o.bLEMAN.

At last my list of subscribers was completed, and my poems actually in the press. Oh! the childish joy with which I fondled my first set of proofs! And how much finer the words looked in print than they ever did in ma.n.u.script!--One took in the idea of a whole page so charmingly at a glance, instead of having to feel one's way through line after line, and sentence after sentence.--There was only one drawback to my happiness--Mackaye did not seem to sympathize with it. He had never grumbled at what I considered, and still do consider, my cardinal offence, the omission of the strong political pa.s.sages; he seemed, on the contrary, in his inexplicable waywardness, to be rather pleased at it than otherwise.

It was my publis.h.i.+ng at all at which he growled.

"Ech," he said, "owre young to marry, is owre young to write; but it's the way o' these puir distract.i.t times. Nae chick can find a grain o' corn, but oot he rins cackling wi' the sh.e.l.l on his head, to tell it to a' the warld, as if there was never barley grown on the face o' the earth before. I wonder whether Isaiah began to write before his beard was grown, or Dawvid either? He had mony a long year o' shepherding an' moss-trooping, an'

rugging an' riving i' the wilderness, I'll warrant, afore he got thae gran'

lyrics o' his oot o' him. Ye might tak example too, gin ye were minded, by Moses, the man o' G.o.d, that was joost forty years at the learning o' the Egyptians, afore he thocht gude to come forward into public life, an'

then fun' to his gran' surprise, I warrant, that he'd begun forty years too sune--an' then had forty years mair, after that, o' marching an'

law-giving, an' bearing the burdens o' the people, before he turned poet."

"Poet, sir! I never saw Moses in that light before."

"Then ye'll just read the 90th Psalm--'the prayer o' Moses, the man o'

G.o.d'--the grandest piece o' lyric, to my taste, that I ever heard o' on the face o' G.o.d's earth, an' see what a man can write that'll have the patience to wait a century or twa before he rins to the publisher's. I gie ye up fra' this moment; the letting out o' ink is like the letting out o' waters, or the eating o' opium, or the getting up at public meetings.--When a man begins he canna stop. There's nae mair enslaving l.u.s.t o' the flesh under the heaven than that same _furor scribendi_, as the Latins hae it."

But at last my poems were printed, and bound, and actually published, and I sat staring at a book of my own making, and wondering how it ever got into being! And what was more, the book "took," and sold, and was reviewed in People's journals, and in newspapers; and Mackaye himself relaxed into a grin, when his oracle, the _Spectator_, the only honest paper, according to him, on the face of the earth, condescended, after a.s.serting its impartiality by two or three searching sarcasms, to dismiss me, grimly-benignant, with a paternal pat on the shoulder. Yes--I was a real live author at last, and signed myself, by special request, in the * * * *

Magazine, as "the author of Songs of the Highways." At last it struck me, and Mackaye too, who, however he hated flunkeydom, never overlooked an act of discourtesy, that it would be right for me to call upon the dean, and thank him formally for all the real kindness he had shown me. So I went to the handsome house off Harley-street, and was shown into his study, and saw my own book lying on the table, and was welcomed by the good old man, and congratulated on my success, and asked if I did not see my own wisdom in "yielding to more experienced opinions than my own, and submitting to a censors.h.i.+p which, however severe it might have appeared at first, was, as the event proved, benignant both in its intentions and effects?"

And then I was asked, even I, to breakfast there the next morning. And I went, and found no one there but some scientific gentlemen, to whom I was introduced as "the young man whose poems we were talking of last night."

And Lillian sat at the head of the table, and poured out the coffee and tea. And between ecstasy at seeing her, and the intense relief of not finding my dreaded and now hated cousin there, I sat in a delirium of silent joy, stealing glances at her beauty, and listening with all my ears to the conversation, which turned upon the new-married couple.

I heard endless praises, to which I could not but a.s.sent in silence, of Lord Ellerton's perfections. His very personal appearance had been enough to captivate my fancy; and then they went on to talk of his magnificent philanthropic schemes, and his deep sense, of the high duties of a landlord; and how, finding himself, at his father's death, the possessor of two vast but neglected estates, he had sold one in order to be able to do justice to the other, instead of laying house to house, and field to field, like most of his compeers, "till he stood alone in the land, and there was no place left;" and how he had lowered his rents, even though it had forced him to put down the ancestral pack of hounds, and live in a corner of the old castle; and how he was draining, claying, breaking up old moorlands, and building churches, and endowing schools, and improving cottages; and how he was expelling the old ignorant bankrupt race of farmers, and advertising everywhere for men of capital, and science, and character, who would have courage to cultivate flax and silk, and try every species of experiment; and how he had one scientific farmer after another, staying in his house as a friend; and how he had numbers of his books rebound in plain covers, that he might lend them to every one on his estate who wished to read them; and how he had thrown open his picture gallery, not only to the inhabitants of the neighbouring town, but what (strange to say) seemed to strike the party as still more remarkable, to the labourers of his own village; and how he was at that moment busy transforming an old unoccupied manor-house into a great a.s.sociate farm, in which all the labourers were to live under one roof, with a common kitchen and dining-hall, clerks and superintendents, whom they were to choose, subject only to his approval, and all of them, from the least to the greatest, have their own interest in the farm, and be paid by percentage on the profits; and how he had one of the first political economists of the day staying with him, in order to work out for him tables of proportionate remuneration, applicable to such an agricultural establishment; and how, too, he was giving the spade-labour system a fair-trial, by laying out small cottage-farms, on rocky knolls and sides of glens, too steep to be cultivated by the plough; and was locating on them the most intelligent artisans whom he could draft from the manufacturing town hard by--

And at that notion, my brain grew giddy with the hope of seeing myself one day in one of those same cottages, tilling the earth, under G.o.d's sky, and perhaps--. And then a whole cloud-world of love, freedom, fame, simple, graceful country luxury steamed up across my brain, to end--not, like the man's in the "Arabian Nights," in my kicking over the tray of China, which formed the base-point of my inverted pyramid of hope--but in my finding the contents of my plate deposited in my lap, while I was gazing fixedly at Lillian.

I must say for myself, though, that such accidents happened seldom; whether it was bashfulness, or the tact which generally, I believe, accompanies a weak and nervous body, and an active mind; or whether it was that I possessed enough relations.h.i.+p to the monkey-tribe to make me a first-rate mimic, I used to get tolerably well through on these occasions, by acting on the golden rule of never doing anything which I had not seen some one else do first--a rule which never brought me into any greater sc.r.a.pe than swallowing something intolerably hot, sour, and nasty (whereof I never discovered the name), because I had seen the dean do so a moment before.

But one thing struck me through the whole of this conversation--the way in which the new-married Lady Ellerton was spoken of, as aiding, encouraging, originating--a helpmeet, if not an oracular guide, for her husband--in all these n.o.ble plans. She had already acquainted herself with every woman on the estate; she was the dispenser, not merely of alms--for those seemed a disagreeable necessity, from which Lord Ellerton was anxious to escape as soon as possible--but of advice, comfort, and encouragement. She not only visited the sick, and taught in the schools--avocations which, thank G.o.d, I have reason to believe are matters of course, not only in the families of clergymen, but those of most squires and n.o.blemen, when they reside on their estates--but seemed, from the hints which I gathered, to be utterly devoted, body and soul, to the welfare of the dwellers on her husband's land.

"I had no notion," I dared at last to remark, humbly enough, "that Miss--Lady Ellerton cared so much for the people."