Part 20 (2/2)

Presently there entered a tall young man with a long, thin face, curtained on either side with enormous ma.s.ses of black hair, like a slip of the young moon glimmering through a pine-wood.

At the same moment there entered, as if by design, his very ant.i.thesis: a short, firmly built, clerkly fellow, with a head like a billiard-ball in need of a shave, a big brown moustache, and enormous spectacles.

”That,” said the publisher, referring to the moon-in-the-pine-wood young man, ”is our young apostle of sentiment, our new man of feeling, the best-hated man we have; and the other is our young apostle of blood. He is all for muscle and brutality--and he makes all the money. It is one of our many fas.h.i.+ons just now to sing 'Britain and Brutality.' But my impression is that our young man of feeling will have his day,--though he will have to wait for it. He would hasten it if he would cut his hair; but that, he says, he will never do. His hair, he says, is his battle-cry. Well, he enjoys himself--and loves a fight, though you mightn't think it to look at him.”

A supercilious young man, with pink cheeks, and a voice which his admirers compared to Sh.e.l.ley's, then came up to Henry and asked him what he thought of Mallarme's latest sonnet; but finding Henry confessedly at sea, turned the conversation to the Empire ballet, of which, unfortunately, Henry knew as little. The conversation then languished, and the Sh.e.l.ley-voiced young man turned elsewhere for sympathy, with a shrug at your country b.u.mpkins who know nothing later than Rossetti.

In the thick of the conversational turmoil, Henry's attention had from time to time been attracted by the noise proceeding from a bl.u.s.tering, red-headed man, with a face of fire.

”Who is that?” at last he found opportunity to ask his friend.

”That is our greatest critic,” said the publisher.

”Oh!” said Henry, ”I must try and hear what he is saying. It seems important from the way he is listened to.”

So Henry listened, and heard how the fire-faced man said the word ”d.a.m.n”

with great volubility and variety of cadence, and other words to the same effect, and how the little group around him hung upon his words and said to each other, ”How brilliant!” ”How absolute!”

Henry turned to his friend. ”The only word I can catch is the word 'd.a.m.n,'” he said.

”That,” said the publisher, with a laugh, ”is the master-word of fas.h.i.+onable criticism.”

Presently a little talkative man came up, and said that he hoped Mr.

Mesurier was an adherent of the rightful king.

”Oh, of course!” said Henry.

”And do you belong to any secret society?” asked the little man.

Henry couldn't say that he did.

”Well, you must join us!” he said.

”I suppose there won't be a rising just yet?” asked Henry, realising that this was the Jacobite method.

”Not just yet,” said the little man, rea.s.suringly. So Henry was enrolled.

And so it went on till past midnight, when Henry at last escaped, to talk it all over with the stars. The evening had naturally puzzled him, as a man will always be puzzled who has developed under the influence of the main tendencies of his generation, and who finds himself suddenly in a backwater of fanciful reaction. Henry, in his simple way, was a thinker and a radical, and he had nourished himself on the great main-road masters of English literature. He had followed the lead of modern philosophers and scientists, and had arrived at a mystical agnosticism,--the first step of which was to banish the dogmas of the church as old wives' tales. He considered that he had inherited the hard-won gains of the rationalists. But he came to London and found young men feebly playing with the fire of that Romanism which he regarded as at once the most childish and the most dangerous of all intellectual obsessions. In an age of great biologists and electricians, he came upon children prettily talking about fairies and the philosopher's stone. In one of the greatest ages of English poetry, he came to London to find young English poets falling on their knees to the metrical mathematicians of France. In the great age of democracy, a fool had come and asked him if he were not a supporter of the house of Stuart, a Jacobite of charades. But only once had he heard the name of Milton; it was the learned boy of fifteen who had quoted him,--a lifelong debt of grat.i.tude; and never once had he heard the voice of simple human feeling, nor heard one speak of beauty, simply, pa.s.sionately, with his heart in his mouth; nor of love with his heart upon his sleeve. Much cleverness, much learning, much charm, there had been, but he had missed the generous human impulse. No one seemed to be doing anything because he must. These were pleasant eddies, dainty with lilies and curiously starred water-gra.s.ses, but the great warm stream of English literature was not flowing here.

As he neared his hotel, he thought of his morning visit to Goldsmith's tomb, and ten-fold he repented the little half-sneer with which he had bought the flowers. In a boyish impulse, he rang the Temple bell, and found his way again to the lonely corner. His flowers were lying there in the moonlight, and again he read: ”Here lies Oliver Goldsmith.”

”Forgive me, Goldy,” he murmured. ”Well may men bring you flowers,--for you wrote, not as those yonder; you wrote for the human heart.”

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