Young Lives Part 10

And again, what gleaming single phrases, whole counsels of existence in a dozen words! He must copy out some of them for Esther. This, for example: "_Not pleasure, but fulness, completeness of life generally_,"

or this: "_To be able to make use of the flower when the fruit, perhaps, was useless or poisonous_" or again this: "_To be absolutely virgin towards a direct and concrete experience_"--and there were a hundred more.

Then for the young craftsman what an insight into, what a compa.s.sionate, childish remembrance of the moods and the little foolish accidents of creation: "_His dilettanteism, his a.s.siduous preoccupation with what might seem but the details of mere form or manner, was, after all, bent upon the function of bringing to the surface, sincerely and in their integrity, certain strong personal intuitions, certain visions or apprehensions of things as being, with important results, in this way rather than that--apprehensions which the artistic or literary expression was called upon to follow, with the exactness of wax or clay, clothing the model within it. Flavian, too, with his fine, clear mastery of the practically effective, had early laid hold of the principle, as axiomatic in literature: That 'to know when one's self is interested, is the first condition of interesting other people'"_ And once more: "_As it oftenest happens also, with natures of genuinely poetic quality, those piecemeal beginnings came suddenly to harmonious completeness among the fortunate incidents, the physical heat and light, of one singularly happy day_."

And, over all, what a beauty! a beauty at once so sensuous and so spiritual--the beauty of flowering laurel, the beauty of austerity aflower. Here the very senses prayed. Surely this was the most beautiful prose book ever written! It had been compared, he saw, with Gautier's "Mademoiselle de Maupin;" but was not the beauty of that masterpiece, in comparison with the beauty of this, as the beauty of a leopard-skin to the beauty of a statue of Minerva, withdrawn in a grove of ilex.

Still Ned delayed, and, meanwhile, the third gla.s.s of port had come and gone, and at length, reluctantly, Henry emerged from his tavern-cloister upon the warm brilliancy of the streets. All around him the lights beaconed, and the women called with bright eyes. But to-night there was no temptation for him in these things. They but recalled another exquisite quotation from his new-found treasure, which he stopped under a lamp to fix in his memory: "_And, as the fresh, rich evening came on, there was heard all over Rome, far above a whisper, the whole town seeming hushed to catch it distinctly, the living, reckless call to 'play,' from the sons and daughters of foolishness to those in whom their life was still green_--Donec virenti canities abest! Donec virenti canities abest! _Marius could hardly doubt how Cornelius would have taken the call. And as for himself, slight as was the burden of positive moral obligation with which he had entered Rome, it was to no wasteful and vagrant affections, such as these, that his Epicureanism had committed him_."

But what could have happened to Ned?

CHAPTER XX

THE MAN IN POSSESSION

One morning, two or three months after Henry had left home, old Mr.

Lingard came to him as he sat bent, drearily industrious, over some accounts, and said that he wished him in half-an-hour's time to go with him to a new client; and presently the two set out together, Henry wondering what it was to be, and welcoming anything that even exchanged for a while one prison-house for another.

"I am taking you," said the old man, as they walked along together, "to a firm of carriers and carters whose affairs have just come into our hands; there is a dispute arisen between the partners. We represent certain interests, as I shall presently explain to you, and you are to be _our_ representative,--our man in possession," and the old gentleman laughed uncannily.

"You never expected to be a man in possession, did you?"

Henry thrilled with a sense of awful intimacy, thus walking and even jesting with his august employer.

"It may very likely be a long business," the old man continued; "and I fear may be a little dull for you. For you must be on the spot all day long. Your lunch will be served to you from the manager's house; I will see to that. Actually, there will be very little for you to do, beyond looking over the day-book and receipts for the day. The main thing is for you to be there,--so to say, the moral effect of your presence,"--and the old gentleman laughed again. Then, with an amused sympathy that seemed almost exquisite to Henry, he chuckled out, looking at him, from one corner of his eye, like a roguish skeleton--

"You'll be able to write as much poetry as you like. I see you've got a book with you. Well, it will keep you awake. I don't mind that,--or even the poetry,--so long as you don't forget the day-book."

"Thank you, sir," said Henry, almost hysterically.

"I suppose," the old man continued, presently, and in all he said there was a tone of affectionate banter that quite won Henry's heart, "that you're still as set on literature as ever. Well, well, far be it from me to discourage you; but, my dear boy, you'll find out that we can't live on dreams." (Henry thought, but didn't dare to say, that it was dreams alone that made it possible to live at all.) "I suppose you think I'm a dried-up old fellow enough. Well, well, I've had my dreams too. Yes, I've had my dreams,"--Henry thought of what he had discovered that day in the old man's diary,--"and I've written my verses to my lady's eyebrow in my time too. Ah, my boy, we are all young and foolish once in our lives!" and it was evident what a narrow and desperate escape from being a poet the old man had had.

They had some distance to walk, for the stables to which they were bound were situated in an old and rather disreputable part of the town. "It's not a nice quarter," said Mr. Lingard, "not particularly salubrious or refined," as bad smells and dirty women began to cross their path; "but they are nice people you've got to deal with, and the place itself is clean and nice enough, when you once get inside."

"Here we are," he said, presently, as they stopped short of an old-fashioned house, set in a high red-brick wall which seemed to enclose quite a considerable area of the district. In the wall, a yard or two from the house, was set a low door, with a bra.s.s bell-pull at the side which answered to Mr. Lingard's summons with a far-off clang. Soon was heard the sound of hob-nailed boots, evidently over a paved yard, and a big carter admitted them to the enclosure, which immediately impressed them with its sense of country stable-yard cleanliness, and its country smell of horses and provender. The stones of the courtyard seemed to have been individually washed and scoured, and a small s.p.a.ce in front of a door evidently leading to the house was chalked over in the prim, old-fashioned way.

"Is Mr. Flower about?" asked Mr. Lingard; and, as he asked the question, a handsome, broad-shouldered man of about forty-five came down the yard.

It was a ma.s.sive country face, a little heavy, a little slow, but exceptionally gentle and refined.

"Good-morning, Mr. Lingard."

"Good-morning, Mr. Flower. This is our representative, Mr. Mesurier, of whom I have already spoken to you. I'm sure you will get on well together; and I'm sure he will give you as little trouble as possible."

Henry and Mr. Flower shook hands, and, as men sometimes do, took to each other at once in the grasp of each other's hands, and the glances which accompanied it.

Then the three walked further up the yard, to the little office where Henry was to pa.s.s the next few weeks; and as Mr. Lingard turned over books, and explained to Henry what he was expected to do, the sound of horses kicking their stalls, and rattling chains in their mangers, came to him from near at hand with a delightful echo of the country.

When Mr. Lingard had gone, Mr. Flower asked Henry if he'd care to look at the horses. Henry sympathetically consented, though his knowledge of horse-flesh hardly equalled his knowledge of accounts. But with the healthy animal, in whatever form, one always feels more or less at home, as one feels at home with the green earth, or that simple creature the sea.

Mr. Flower led the way to a long stable where some fifty horses protruded brown and dappled haunches on either hand. It was all wonderfully clean and sweet, and the cobbled pavement, the straw beds, the hay tumbling in sweet-scented bunches into the stalls from the loft overhead, made you forget that around this bucolic enclosure swarmed and rotted the foulest slums of the city, garrets where coiners plied their amateur mints, and cellars where murderers lay hidden in the dark.

"It's like a breath of the country," said Henry, unconsciously striking the right note.

"You're right there," said Mr. Flower, at the same moment heartily slapping the shining side of a big chestnut mare, after the approved manner of men who love horses. To thus belabour a horse on its hinder-parts would seem to be equivalent among the horse-breeding fraternity to chucking a buxom milkmaid under the chin.

"You're right there," he said; "and here's a good Derbyshire la.s.s for you," once more administering a sounding caress upon his sleek favourite.

The horse turned its head and whinnied softly at the attention; and it was evident it loved the very sound of Mr. Flower's voice.

"Have you ever been to Derbyshire?" asked Mr. Flower, presently, and Henry immediately scented an idealism in the question.

"No," he answered; "but I believe it's a beautiful county."

"Beautiful's no name for it," said Mr. Flower; "it's just a garden."

And as Henry caught a glance of his eyes, he realised that Derbyshire was Mr. Flower's poetry,--the poetry of a countryman imprisoned in the town,--and that when he died he just hoped to go to Derbyshire.

"Ah, there are places there,--places like Miller's Dale, for instance,--I'd rather take my hat off to than any bishop,"--and Henry eagerly scented something of a thinker; "for G.o.d made them for sure, and bishops--well--" and Mr. Flower wisely left the rest unsaid.

Thus they made the tour of the stables; and though Henry's remarks on the subject of slapped horse-flesh had been anything but those of an expert, it was tacitly agreed that Mr. Flower and he had taken to each other. Nor, as he presently found, were Mr. Flower's interests limited to horses.

"You're a reader, I see," he said, presently, when they had returned to the office. "Well, I don't get much time to read nowadays; but there's nothing I enjoy better, when I've got a pipe lit of an evening, than to sit and listen to my little daughter reading Thackeray or George Eliot."

Of course Henry was interested.

"Now there was a woman who knew country life," Mr. Flower continued.

"'Silas Marner,' or 'Adam Bede.' How wonderfully she gets at the very heart of the people! And not only that, but the very smell of country air."

And Mr. Flower drew a long breath of longing for Miller's Dale.

Henry mentally furbished up his George Eliot to reply.

"And 'The Mill on the Floss'?" he said.

"And 'Scenes from Clerical Life,'" said Mr. Flower. "There are some rare strokes of nature there."

And so they went on comparing notes, till a little blue-eyed girl of about seventeen appeared, carrying a dainty lunch for Henry, and telling Mr. Flower that his own lunch was ready.

"This is my daughter of whom I spoke," said Mr. Flower.

"She who reads Thackeray and George Eliot to you?" said the Man in Possession; and, when they had gone, he said to himself "What a bright little face!"