A Change of Air

In the garden, to his surprise, he came on Arthur Angell. "What brings you here, Arthur?" he said. "Delighted to see you, though."

Arthur explained that he had run down at Nellie Fane's bidding. Nellie had written her letter of warning about the Doctor's conspiracy, but, having thus relieved her mind, had straightway forgotten all about her letter, and it had lain unposted in her pocket for a week. Then she found it, and sent Arthur off in haste to stop the mischief.

"It's awfully kind of Nellie," said Dale; "but I don't suppose it would have been of any use, and anyhow it's too late now."

"Yes, so Phil told me."

"A dirty trick, isn't it?"

"Well, I suppose it's rather rough on you," said Arthur, struggling between principles and friendship, and entirely suppressing his own privity to the said dirty trick.

"You'll stay?"

"I've got no clothes."

"Oh, Wilson will see to that. Come in."

Philip met them at the door.

"I've a message for you, Dale," he said. "The Mayor has been here."

"And what may the Mayor want?"

"The Mayor came as an ambassador. He bore a resolution from the Town Council, a unanimous resolution (absente Johnstone owing to pressure in the bookselling trade), begging you to accede to the Lord Lieutenant's request and write a poem for the Duke."

"Hang the Town Council!" exclaimed Dale. "I wonder why nobody will let me alone!"

Then he remembered that Miss Delane had been almost ostentatious in her determination to let him alone. If he wrote, they could not say that he had written to please her. But he was not going to write. True, it would have been a good revenge on the Doctor, and it would have pleased —

"Shall you do the ode?" asked Philip Hume.

"Certainly not," answered Dale in a resolute tone.

CHAPTER XVII.

Dale tries His Hand at an Ode

Dale's preoccupations with his new friends had thrown on Philip Hume the necessity of seeking society for himself, if he did not wish to spend many solitary evenings at Littlehill. The resources of Denborough were not very great, and his dissipation generally took the form of a quiet dinner, followed by a rubber of whist, at Mount Pleasant. The Colonel and he suited one another, and, even if Philip had been less congenial in temper, the Colonel was often too hard put to it for a fourth player to be nice in scrutinizing the attractions of anyone who could be trusted to answer a call and appreciate the strategy of a long suit. Even with Philip's help the rubber was not a brilliant one; for Tora only played out of filial duty, and Sir Harry came in to join because it was better to be with Tora over a whist-table than not to be with her at all. That he thought so witnessed the intensity of his devotion, for to play whist seemed to Sir Harry to be going out of one's way to seek trouble and perplexity of mind.

On the evening of Arthur Angell's arrival the usual party had dined together and set to work. Things were not going well. At dinner they had discussed the royal visit, and the Colonel had been disgusted to find that his daughter, unmindful of her, or rather his, principles, was eager to see and, if it might be, to speak with "this young whippersnapper of a Prince." The Colonel could not understand such a state of feeling, but Tora was firm. All the county would be there in new frocks; she had ordered a new frock, of which she expected great things, and she meant to be there in it; it would not do, she added, for the Duke to think that the Radicals had no pretty girls on their side. The Colonel impatiently turned to Sir Harry; but Sir Harry agreed with Tora, and even Philip Hume announced his intention of walking down High Street to see, not the Prince of course, but the people and the humors of the day.

"Really, Colonel," he said, "I cannot miss the Mayor."

"Are we going to have a rubber or not?" asked the Colonel with an air of patient weariness.

They sat down, Sir Harry being his host's partner. Now, Sir Harry was, and felt himself to be, in high favor, owing to his sound views on the question of the day, and he was thinking of anything in the world rather than the fall of the cards. Consequently his play was marked by somewhat more than its ordinary atrociousness, and the Colonel grew redder and redder as every scheme he cherished was nipped in the bud by his partner's blunders. Tora and Philip held all the cards, and their good fortune covered Tora's deficiency in skill, and made Philip's sound game seem a brilliant one.

At last the Colonel could bear it no longer. He broke up the party, and challenged Philip to a game of piquet.

"At any rate, one hasn't a partner at piquet," he said.

Sir Harry smiled, and followed Tora to the drawing room. With such rewards for bad play, who would play well? He sat down by her and watched her making spills. Presently he began to make spills too. Tora looked at him. Sir Harry made a very bad spill indeed, and held it up with a sigh.

"That's the sort of thing," he said, "I have to light my pipe with at home!"

"As you've been very good to-night," answered Tora, "I'll give you some of mine to take with you. Let me show you how to do them for yourself."

Then ensued trivialities which bear happening better than they do recording – glances and touches and affectations of stupidity on one side and impatience on the other – till love's ushers, their part fulfilled, stand by to let their master speak, and the hidden seriousness, which made the trifles not trifling, leaps to sudden light. Before her lover's eager rush of words, his glorifying of her, his self-depreciation, Tora was defenseless, her raillery was gone, and she murmured nothing but:

"You're not stupid – you're not dull. Oh, how can you!"

Before he set out for home Philip Hume was privileged to hear the fortunate issue, and to wonder how much happiness two faces can manage to proclaim. Kindly as the little family party took him into their confidence, he hastened away, knowing that he had no place there. Such joys were not for him, he thought, as he walked slowly from the door, remembering how once he had challenged impossibility, and laid his love at a girl's feet; and she, too, had for a moment forgotten impossibility; and they were very happy – for a moment; then they recollected – or had it recollected for them – that they were victims of civilization. And hence an end. Philip recalled this incident as he walked. He had not thought of it for a long time, but the air of Denborough seemed so full of love and love-making that he spared a sigh or two for himself. Well born and well educated, he wrung from the world, by painful labor, some three or four hundred pounds a year. It was enough if he had not been well born or well educated; but his advantages turned to disabilities, and he saw youth going or gone, and the home and the love which had been so confidently assumed as his lot, that even as a boy he had joked and been joked about them, faded away from his picture of the future, and he was only kept from a sigh of self-pity by reminding himself of the ludicrous commonplaceness of his grievance against fate. He knew men so situated by dozens, and nobody thought them ill used. No more they were, he supposed; at least, it seemed nobody's fault, and, in view of sundry other sad things in the world, not a matter to make a fuss about.

He found Dale in high spirits; for Dale had conceived a benevolent scheme, by which he was to make two of his friends happy – as happy as Tora Smith and Harry Fulmer, the news of whom he heard with the distant interest to which Tora's bygone hostility restricted him. He and Arthur Angell had dined together, smoked together, and drunk whisky and water together, and the floodgates of confidence had been opened; a thing prone to occur under such circumstances, a thing that seems then very natural, and reserves any appearance of strangeness for next morning's cold meditations. Dale had chanted Janet's charms, and Arthur had been emboldened to an antistrophe in praise of Nellie Fane. It was a revelation to Dale – a delightful revelation. It would be ideally suitable, and it was his pleasure that the happy issue should be forwarded by all legitimate means.

"Arthur's going to stay," he said; "and I've written to Nellie to tell her to come down with her mother."

"Ah!"

"Of course, I've said nothing about Arthur. I've put it on the royal visit. She'd like to be here for that anyhow; and when she's here, Arthur must look out for himself."

"Why couldn't he do it in London? They live on the same pair of stairs," objected Philip.

"Oh, London! who the deuce could make love in London?" asked Dale in narrow-minded ignorance. "People's faces are always dirty in London."

Philip smiled, but this new plan seemed to him a bad one. It was one of Dale's graces to be unconscious of most of his triumphs, and it had evidently never struck him that Nellie's affections would offer any obstacle to the scheme, or cause her fatally to misinterpret what the scheme was.

"I don't see," said Philip, "that she is more likely to be captivated by our young friend here than in London."

"My dear fellow, he's at work there, and so is she. Here they'll have nothing else to do."

While Dale chattered over his great idea, Philip pondered whether to interfere or not. He was certain that Nellie had been fond, not of Arthur Angell, but of Dale himself; he feared she would think her invitation came from Dale's own heart, not in favor to a friend, and he suspected the kindness would end in pain. But, on the other hand, affections change, and there is such a thing as falling back on the good when the better is out of reach; and, finally, there is a sound general principle that where it is doubtful whether to hold one's tongue or not, one's tongue should be held. Philip held his.

He shrugged his shoulders and said:

"If this goes on, a bachelor won't be safe in Denborough. What have you been doing?" and he pointed at some scribbling which lay on the table.

Dale flushed a little.

"Oh, I've just been trying my hand at that little thing they want me to do – you know."

"For the Radical meeting?"

"No, no. For the Duke of Mercia's visit."

"Oh! So you're going to do it?"

Dale assumed a candid yet judicial air.

"If I find I can say anything gracious and becoming, without going back on my principles, Phil, I think I shall. Otherwise not."

"I see, old fellow. Think you will be able?"

"I don't intend to budge an inch from my true position for anybody."

"Don't be too hard on the Duke. He's a young man."

Dale became suspicious that he was being treated with levity; he looked annoyed, and Philip hastened to add:

"My dear boy, write your poem, and never mind what people tell you about your principles. Why shouldn't you write some verses to the young man?"

"That's what I say," replied Dale eagerly. "It doesn't compromise me in the least. I think you're quite right, Phil."

And he sat down again with a radiant expression.

Philip lit his pipe, and drew his chair near the fire, listening idly to the light scratchings of the writing and the heavy scratchings of the erasures.

"You seem to scratch out a lot, Dale," he remarked.

"A thing's no good," said Dale, without turning round, "till you've scratched it all out twice at least."

"It's a pity, then," said Philip, pulling at his pipe and looking into the fire, "that we aren't allowed to treat life like that."

His words struck a chord in Dale's memory. He started up, and repeated:

"The moving Finger writes, and having writMoves on, nor all your piety nor witCan lure it back to cancel half a line,Nor all your tears wash out a word of it."

"And yet," said Philip, stretching out a hand to the flickering blaze, "we go on being pious and wise – some of us; and we go on crying – all of us."

CHAPTER XVIII.

Delilah Johnstone

When it became known to Mr. Delane that the ode of welcome would be forthcoming, – a fact which, without being definitely announced, presently made its way into general knowledge, – he felt that he owed Dale Bannister a good turn. The young man was obviously annoyed and hurt at the aspect of Alderman Johnstone's window, and the Squire could not, moreover, conceal from himself that the parade of the Alderman's sandwich-men on the day of the royal visit would detract from the unanimity of loyalty and contentment with Queen and Constitution which he felt Denborough ought to display. Finally, his wife and his daughter were so strongly of opinion that something must be done that he had no alternative but to try to do something. Intimidation had failed; the Alderman intrenched himself behind his lease; and Colonel Smith's open triumph was hardly needed to show the Squire that in this matter he had been caught napping. Bribery of a direct and pecuniary sort was apparently also of no avail, and the Squire was driven to play his last card at the cost of great violence to his own feelings. A week before the great day he sent for the Mayor and was closeted with him for half an hour. The Mayor came out from the conference with an important air, and, on his way home, stopped at Alderman Johnstone's door. The poems, placards, and posters were still prominently displayed, and over the way James Roberts, in his well-worn coat, paced up and down on his unwearying patrol. He would wait days rather than miss Dale, in case the poet might chance to pass that way. He had nothing to do, for no one sent for him now; he had no money, and could earn none; therefore his time was his own, and he chose to spend it thus, forgetting his wife and his child, forgetting even to ask how it happened that there was still food and fuel in his house, or to suspect what made him so often see Philip Hume walk past with an inquiring gaze, indifferently concealed, and so often meet Dale's servant, Wilson, carrying baskets up and down the street on his way to and from Littlehill.

The Mayor went in and fell into conversation with Johnstone. He spoke of the glories of the coming day, of his own new gown, and of Mrs. Hedger's; and as he raised his voice in enthusiastic description Mrs. Johnstone stole in from the back parlor and stood within the door. The Alderman affected scorn of the whole affair, and chuckled maliciously when the Mayor referred to Dale Bannister.

"Then," said the Mayor, "after the Institoot's opened, there's a grand luncheon at the Grange, with the Duke, and his Lordship, and the Squire, and all."

He paused: the Alderman whistled indifferently, and his wife drew a step nearer. The Mayor proceeded, bringing his finest rhetoric into play.

"The Crown," he said, "the County, and the Town will be represented."

"What, are you going, Hedger?" asked the Alderman, with an incredulous laugh.

"The Squire and Mrs. Delane are so good as to make a point of me and Mrs. Hedger attendin' – in state, Johnstone."

"My!" said Mrs. Johnstone, moving a step within the door. "That'll be a day for Susan."

"His Lordship gives Susan his arm," said the Mayor.

"Aint there any more going from the town?" asked Mrs. Johnstone, while the Alderman ostentatiously occupied himself with one of his posters.

"The Squire," replied the Mayor, "did want another, – there's no room but for two, – but he thinks there's no one of sufficient standin' – not as would go."

"Well, I'm sure!" said Mrs. Johnstone.

"You see, ma'am," pursued the Mayor, "we must consider the lady. The lady must be asked. Now would you ask Mrs. Maggs, or Mrs. Jenks, or Mrs. Capper, or any o' that lot, ma'am?"

"Sakes, no!" said Mrs. Johnstone scornfully.

"'There is a lady,' I says to the Squire, 'as would do honor to the town, but there – the man's wrong there!'"

Mrs. Johnstone came nearer still, glancing at her husband.

"When I mentioned the party I was thinkin' of," the Mayor went on, "the Squire slapped his thigh, and, says he, 'The very man we want, Hedger,' he says; 'all parties ought to be represented. He's a Liberal – a prominent Liberal; so much the better. Now, won't he come?' 'Well,' says I, 'he's an obstinate man;' and Mrs. Delane says, 'You must try, Mr. Mayor. Say what pleasure it 'ud give me to see him and Mrs. Johnstone – ' There, I've let it out!"

A pause followed. The Mayor drew a card from his pocket. It was headed, "To have the honor of meeting H. R. H. the Duke of Mercia." The Mayor laid it on the counter.

"There!" he said. "You must do as you think right, Johnstone. Of course, if you like to go on like this, worryin' the Squire's friends, why, it isn't for you to put your legs under the Squire's ma'ogany. So the Squire says. He says, 'Let him drop that nonsense, and come and be friendly – he may think what he likes.'"

There was another pause.

"There'll have been nothin' like it in my day," said the Mayor. "And only me and Susan from the town!"

"There'll be plenty ready to go," said Johnstone.

"Aye, that they will, but they won't have the askin'. Mrs. Delane says there aint a soul she'll have, except me and Susan, and you and Mrs. Johnstone. You see, ma'am, it isn't everyone who can sit down with the county."

The heart of Mrs. Johnstone was alight with pride and exultation and longing. She looked at her husband and she looked at the Mayor.

"You and me and the Recorder 'ud drive up in the coach," said the Mayor, with the air of one who regretfully pictures an impossible ideal; "and the ladies – Mrs. Hedger and you, ma'am – was to follow in a carriage and pair with a postilion – his Lordship 'ud send one for ye."

"I'd wear my ruby velvet," murmured Mrs. Johnstone in the voice of soliloquy, "and my gold earrings."

"Well, I must be goin'," said the Mayor. "It's a cryin' shame you won't come, Johnstone. What's that mad feller Roberts to you?"

"A dirty villain as starves his wife!" ejaculated Mrs. Johnstone, with sudden violence.

The Alderman looked up with a start.

"Take a day to think it over," said the Mayor. "Take a day, ma'am;" and he disappeared with a smile on his shrewd, good-tempered face.

There was silence for a moment after he went. The Alderman sat in his chair, glancing at his wife out of the corner of his eye. Mrs. Johnstone gazed fixedly at the shop-window. The Alderman looked at her again: she was, he thought (with much justice), a fine woman; she would look well in the ruby velvet and the gold earrings, and the swells would wonder where old Johnstone picked up that strapping young woman – for she was his junior by twenty years. The Alderman sighed, and looked down again at his poster.

Presently Mrs. Johnstone stole quietly toward the window, the Alderman covertly watching her. When she reached it, she threw a coquettish glance over her shoulder at her elderly husband: did she not know, as well as he, that she was a fine young woman?

Then she began to take Dale Bannister's books out of their place, piling them behind the counter, and to tear down the bills and placards. The Alderman sat and watched her, till she had finished her task. Then he rose and thundered:

"Put them things back, Sally! Do you 'ear me? I aint going to be made a fool of."

Probably Mrs. Johnstone was not so sure. She burst into tears and flung her arms round the Alderman's neck.

"There! what's there to cry about?" said he, drawing her on to his knee.

While the Mayor was still in the shop, James Roberts had gone home to his midday meal. He ate it with good appetite, not knowing who had paid for it, and not noticing his wife's terror lest he should ask her. After the meal he went to his study and read some of Dale's poetry, declaiming it loudly and with fury, while Ethel listened with the horror that had begun to gain on her increasing and increasing as she listened. She was afraid of him now – afraid most for him, but also for the child and herself; and she thanked Heaven every time he went out peacefully, and again when he came back unhurt.

It was about four when the Doctor took his hat and walked down the street to resume his patrol. To his amazement, the window was bare, the books gone, the placards and posters all torn down. With an oath he rushed into the shop, and found the Alderman sitting behind a pile of volumes, on the top of which lay an envelope addressed to himself.

"What's the meaning of this?" gasped the Doctor, and as he spoke the glass door which led to the parlor opened a little way.

"It means, Doctor, that I've had enough of it."

"Enough of it?"

"Yes. Mr. Bannister aint done me any 'arm, and I'm not going to fret him any more."

"You scoundrel!" shrieked the maddened man; "you thief! you took my money – you – "

"There's your books, and there in the envelope you'll find your 'undred pound. Take 'em and get out."

"So Bannister has been at you?" sneered Roberts.

"I aint seen 'im."

"Ah!"

He was quiet now, the cold fit was on him. He took no notice of the books, but put the envelope in his pocket and turned to go, saying:

"You think you can stop my revenge, you pitiful fool; you'll see."

Johnstone gave himself a shake.

"I'm well out of that," he said. "I b'lieve he's crazy. Sally, where are you?"

Sally came, and no doubt the Alderman gained the reward of the righteous, in whose house there is peace.

When the Squire received an acceptance of his invitation from Alderman and Mrs. Johnstone, he became more than ever convinced that every Radical was at heart a snob. Perhaps it would have been fair to remember that most of them are husbands. Be that as it may, his scheme had worked. The posters, the books, and the sandwich-men were gone. There was nothing now to remind Denborough that it harbored a revolutionist. What was more important still, there was nothing to remind Dale Bannister of the indiscretions of his past. He might now read his ode, unblushing, in High Street, and no placard would scream in ill-omened reminder: "No more Kings!"

CHAPTER XIX.

A Well-Paid Poem

Among the quieter satisfactions of life must be ranked in a high place the peace of a man who has made up his mind. He is no longer weighing perplexing possibilities, but, having chosen his path, feels that he has done all that can be done, and that this conviction will enable him to bear with patience the outcome of his determination, whatever it may be. Of course he is wrong, and if misfortune comes, his philosophy will go to the wall, but for the moment it seems as if fate cannot harm him, because he has set his course and bidden defiance to it.

Dale had made up his mind to disregard cavilers, not to write the Radical ditty, to write the ode of welcome, and, lastly, to follow whither his inclination led. And, on the top of these comforting resolutions, came the removal of his thorn in the flesh – Johnstone's be-placarded shop window – and the glow of well-rewarded benevolence with which he had witnessed Nellie Fane's ill-concealed delight in her return to Littlehill and Arthur Angell's openly declared pleasure in greeting her. Dale began to think that he had too easily allowed himself to be put out, and had been false to his poetic temperament by taking trifles hardly. He was jocund as he walked, and nature responded to his mood: the sun shone bright and warm on him, and the spring air was laden with pleasant hints of coming summer. He wondered how and why, a few weeks ago, he had nearly bidden a disgusted farewell to Market Denborough.

Now, when a man sets out in such a mood, being a young man, and a man, as they used to say, of sensibility, next to anything may happen. From his contented meditations on the happy arrangement he had made for his friends, Dale's thoughts traveled on to his own affairs. He was going to the Grange – he was always going to the Grange now, and he seemed always welcome there. Mrs. Delane was kind, the Squire was effusive, and Janet – Here his thoughts became impossible to record in lowly prose. The goddess had become flesh for him; still stately and almost severe in her maiden reserve to all others, as she had once been to him, now for him she smiled and blushed, and would look, and look away, and look again, and vainly summon her tamed pride to hide what her delight proclaimed. It was sudden. Oh, yes; anything worth having was sudden, thought lucky Dale. Fame had been sudden, wealth had been sudden. Should not love be sudden too?

"If I get a chance – " said Dale to himself, and he smiled and struck at the weeds with his stick, and hummed a tune. Anything might happen.