Love and Mr. Lewisham Part 9

"Yes," said Miss Heydinger, imagining it. "Yes--that would be a grand way."

So it seemed to many people in those days. But eminent reformers have been now for more than seven years going about the walls of the Social Jericho, blowing their own trumpets and shouting--with such small result beyond incidental displays of ill-temper within, that it is hard to recover the fine hopefulness of those departed days.

"Yes," said Miss Heydinger. "That would be a grand way."

Lewisham appreciated the quality of personal emotion in her voice. He turned his face towards her, and saw unstinted admiration in her eyes. "It would be a great thing to do," he said, and added, quite modestly, "if only one could do it."

"_You_ could do it."

"You think I could?" Lewisham blushed vividly--with pleasure.

"I do. Certainly you could set out to do it. Even to fail hopelessly would be Great. Sometimes ..."

She hesitated. He looked expectation. "I think sometimes it is greater even to fail than to succeed."

"I don't see that," said the proposed Luther, and his eyes went back to the Moses. She was about to speak, and changed her mind.

Contemplative pause.

"And then, when a great number of people have heard of your views?"

she said presently.

"Then I suppose we must form a party and ... bring things about."

Another pause--full, no doubt, of elevated thoughts.

"I say," said Lewisham quite suddenly. "You do put--well--courage into a chap. I shouldn't have done that Socialism paper if it hadn't been for you." He turned round and stood leaning with his back to the Moses, and smiling at her. "You do help a fellow," he said.

That was one of the vivid moments of Miss Heydinger's life. She changed colour a little. "Do I?" she said, standing straight and awkward and looking into his face, "I'm ... glad."

"I haven't thanked you for your letters," said Lewisham, "And I've been thinking ..."

"Yes?"

"We're first-rate friends, aren't we? The best of friends."

She held out her hand and drew a breath. "Yes," she said as they gripped. He hesitated whether to hold her hand. He looked into her eyes, and at that moment she would have given three-quarters of the years she had still to live, to have had eyes and features that could have expressed her. Instead, she felt her face hard, the little muscles of her mouth twitching insubordinate, and fancied that her self-consciousness made her eyes dishonest.

"What I mean," said Lewisham, "is--that this will go on. We're always going to be friends, side by side."

"Always. Just as I am able to help you--I will help you. However I can help you, I will."

"We two," said Lewisham, gripping her hand.

Her face lit. Her eyes were for a moment touched with the beauty of simple emotion. "We two," she said, and her lips trembled and her throat seemed to swell. She s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand back suddenly and turned her face away. Abruptly she walked towards the end of the gallery, and he saw her fumbling for her handkerchief in the folds of the green and black dress.

She was going to cry!

It set Lewisham marvelling--this totally inappropriate emotion.

He followed her and stood by her. Why cry? He hoped no one would come into the little gallery until her handkerchief was put away.

Nevertheless he felt vaguely flattered. She controlled herself, dashed her tears away, and smiled bravely at him with reddened eyes. "I'm sorry," she said, gulping.

"I am so glad," she explained.

"But we will fight together. We two. I _can_ help you. I know I can help you. And there is such Work to be done in the world!"

"You are very good to help me," said Lewisham, quoting a phrase from what he had intended to say before he found out that he had a hold upon her emotions.

"No!

"Has it ever occurred to you," she said abruptly, "how little a woman can do alone in the world?"

"Or a man," he answered after a momentary meditation.

So it was Lewisham enrolled his first ally in the cause of the red tie--of the red tie and of the Greatness that was presently to come. His first ally; for hitherto--save for the indiscretion of his mural inscriptions--he had made a secret of his private ambitions. In that now half-forgotten love affair at Whortley even, he had, in spite of the considerable degree of intimacy attained, said absolutely nothing about his Career.

CHAPTER XI.

MANIFESTATIONS.

Miss Heydinger declined to disbelieve in the spirits of the dead, and this led to controversy in the laboratory over Tea. For the girl students, being in a majority that year, had organised Tea between four o'clock and the advent of the extinguis.h.i.+ng policeman at five. And the men students were occasionally invited to Tea. But not more than two of them at a time really partic.i.p.ated, because there were only two spare cups after that confounded Simmons broke the third.

Smithers, the square-headed student with the hard grey eyes, argued against the spirits of the dead with positive animosity, while Bletherley, who displayed an orange tie and lank hair in unshorn abundance, was vaguely open-minded, "What is love?" asked Bletherley, "surely that at any rate is immortal!" His remark was considered irrelevant and ignored.

Lewisham, as became the most promising student of the year, weighed the evidence--comprehensively under headings. He dismissed the mediumistic _seances_ as trickery.

"Rot and imposture," said Smithers loudly, and with an oblique glance to see if his challenge reached its mark. Its mark was a grizzled little old man with a very small face and very big grey eyes, who had been standing listlessly at one of the laboratory windows until the discussion caught him. He wore a brown velvet jacket and was reputed to be enormously rich. His name was Lagune. He was not a regular attendant, but one of those casual outsiders who are admitted to laboratories that are not completely full. He was known to be an ardent spiritualist--it was even said that he had challenged Huxley to a public discussion on materialism, and he came to the biological lectures and worked intermittently, in order, he explained, to fight disbelief with its own weapons. He rose greedily to Smithers'

controversial bait.

"I say _no_!" he said, calling down the narrow laboratory and following his voice. He spoke with the ghost of a lisp. "Pardon my interrupting, sir. The question interests me profoundly. I hope I don't intrude. Excuse me, sir. Make it personal. Am I a--fool, or an impostor?"

"Well," parried Smithers, with all a South Kensington student's want of polish, "that's a bit personal."

"a.s.sume, sir, that I am an honest observer."

"Well?"

"I have _seen_ spirits, _heard_ spirits, _felt_ the touch of spirits,"

He opened his pale eyes very widely.

"Fool, then," said Smithers in an undertone which did not reach the ears of the spiritualist.

"You may have been deceived," paraphrased Lewisham.