Part 3 (2/2)

”Cruel child!” and then with a way she had of suddenly finding something she wanted to hear of among the interests of her friends, ”Now,” she said, ”tell me something about Mike. I suppose the course of true love runs as smoothly as ever. Happy children! Give him my love when you see him, won't you?”

Esther told all there was to tell about Mike up-to-date, and wished she could have repaid her friend's sympathetic interest with a request for something similar about Williamson. But it was tacitly understood that there was nothing further to be said on that subject, and that the news of Myrtilla's life could hardly again take any more excitingly personal form than the bric-a-brac excitements of art or literature,--though indeed art and literature were, to be just to them, far more than bric-a-brac in the life of Myrtilla Williamson. They were, indeed, it was easy to see, a very sustaining religion for the lonely little woman who, having no children to study, and having completed her studies of Williamson, was driven a good deal upon the study and development of herself. The Williamson half of the day provided her fully with opportunities for the practice of all the philosophy she was likely to acquire from writers ancient and modern, and for the absorption of all the consolation history and biography was likely to afford in the stories of women similarly circ.u.mstanced. It is to be feared that Myrtilla not only wore tea-gowns in advance of her time, but was also somewhat prematurely something of a ”new” woman; but this was a subject on which she really did very little to ”poison” Esther's ”young mind.”

Esther's young mind, in common with those of her two subsequent sisters, was little in need of ”poisoning” from outside on such subjects. Indeed, it was a curious phenomenon to observe how all these young minds, sprung from a stock of such ancient, unquestioning faith, had, so to say, been born ”poisoned;” or, to state the matter less metaphorically, had all been born with instincts for the most pitiless and effortless reasoning on all subjects human and divine.

As the hour approached when poor Myrtilla must change back to Williamson, Esther rose to say good-bye.

”Come again soon, dear girl; you don't know the good you do me.”

The good, dear woman was entirely done by her unwearied, sympathetic discussion of the affairs and dreams of Esther, Mike, and Henry.

”Oh, here is a wonderful new book I intended to talk to you about. You can take it with you; I have finished it. Come next week and tell me what you think of it.”

As Esther walked down the path, Myrtilla watched her, and, as she pa.s.sed out of the gate, waved her a final kiss of parting, and turned indoors.

There seemed something ever so sad about her dainty back as it disappeared into the doorway.

”Poor little woman!” said Esther to herself, as she looked to see the t.i.tle of the book she was carrying. It included a curious Russian name, the correct p.r.o.nunciation of which she foresaw she must ask Myrtilla on their next meeting. It was ”The Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff.”

CHAPTER VIII

A RHAPSODY OF TYRE

Sidon, the stage of the moving events so far recorded, though it makes much of possessing a separate importance, is really a cross-river residential suburb of Tyre, the great seaport in which all the s.h.i.+ps of the world come to and fro. During the day Sidon is virtually emptied of its men-folk, and is given up to perambulators and feminine activities generally; for the men have streamed across the ferries that bridge the sunny, boisterous river, to the docks and offices of Tyre.

Though Tyre is not a very old city, it is not so new as to be denied a few of those a.s.sociations known as ”historical.” Tyre had once the honour to be taken by Prince Rupert, and long before that its nucleus had existed as a monk's ferry, by which travellers were rowed across the river to the monastery and posting-house at Sidon. Sometimes of an evening Henry and Mike would think of those far-off times as they looked over the ferry-boat at the long lines of river lights, with their restless heaving reflections; and sometimes they could picture to themselves the green sloping banks of the virgin fields, and hear the priory bell calling to them out of the darkness. But such were the faintest of their visions; and they loved the river banks best as they are to-day, with their Egyptian walls and swarming lights and tangled s.h.i.+ps.

And whoso should think that that sordid commercial city, given up to all the prose of trade day by day, is not a poet at heart, has never seen her strange smile at evening when the shops are shut, and the offices empty, and the men who know her not gone home. For then across the crowded roofs softly comes a strange sweetness, and deep down among the gloomy wynds of deserted warehouses, still as temples, sudden fairies of sunset dance and dazzle, and touch the grimy walls with soft hands. In lonely back rooms, full of desks and dust, haunted lights of evening stand like splendid apparitions; and sometimes, if you lingered at the top of High Street, beneath the dark old church, and the moon was out on the left of the steeple and the sunset dying on the right, dying beyond the tangled masts and fading from the river, you would forget you were a city clerk, and you would wonder why the world was so beautiful, why the moon was made of pearl, and what it was that called to you out of yonder golden sea; and your heart would fill with a strange gladness, and you would call back to those unearthly voices, ”I am yours, yours, all yours!”

Thus would this town of bales and merchants, of office-desks and stools, make poets at evening that she might stone them at noon. For, of course, she would have forgotten it all in the morning; and it were well not to remind her with your dreaming eyes of her last night's softness. She will look back at you with stony misunderstanding, and her new lover Reality will sharply box your ears.

It is no use reminding the Exchange that it looked like a scene from Romeo and Juliet in the moonlight. It dare not admit it. But wait patiently till the evening. Tyre will be yours again with the sunset.

She pretends all day that it is the Mayor in the gilded coach and the pursy merchantmen she cares for; but it is really you, a poor shabby poet, she loves all the time, for you only does she wear her gauzy silks at evening!

CHAPTER IX

A PENITENTIARY OF THE MATHEMATICS

Yes, Mike was some day to be another Kean, and Henry was to prove a serious rival to Shakespeare; but, meanwhile, they were clerks in the offices of Tyre.

Of the rigours, and therefore too the truancies and humours of the lot official, Mike was comparatively so comfortably circ.u.mstanced as to have little knowledge. His father was the king of a little flouris.h.i.+ng prison of desks, and Mike was one of the heirs-apparent. Consequently, his lot, though dull, was seldom bitter; and many mitigations of it were within his privilege. With Henry it was different. He was a humble unit among twenty other slaves, chained to that modern subst.i.tute for the galleys, the desk; and, in a wicked bargain, he had contracted to give his life-blood from nine in the morning till six in the evening, for sixty pounds a year, with an occasional ”rise,” which, after thirty years'

service, might end in your having reached a proud annual three hundred for the rest of your maimed and narrowed days.

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