doesn't feel that it's real, for the time being she won't care anything about it. She likes to lose herself in the illusion, she says.”
“Well!” said Sewell with a slight shrug, “then we must let her get what good she can out of it as an exercise of the sensibilities.”
“O my dear!” exclaimed his wife, “You don't mean anything so abominable as that! I've heard you say that the worst thing about fiction and the theatre was that they brought emotions into play that ought to be sacred to real occasions.”
“Did I say that? Well, I must have been right. I—”
Barker made a scuffling sound with his boots under the table, and rose to his feet. “I guess,” he said, “I shall have to be going.”
They had all forgotten him, and Sewell felt as if he had neglected this helpless guest. “Why, no, you mustn't go! I was in hopes we might do something to make the day pleasant to you. I intended proposing—”
“Yes,” his wife interrupted, believing that he meant to give up one of his precious afternoons to Barker, and hastening to prevent the sacrifice, “my son will show you the Public Garden and the Common, and go about the town with you.” She rose too, and young Sewell, accustomed to suffer, silently acquiesced. “If your train isn't to start very soon—”
“I guess I better be going,” said Barker, and Mrs. Sewell now gave her husband a look conveying her belief that Barker would be happier if they let him go. At the same time she frowned upon the monstrous thought of asking him to stay the night with them, which she detected in Sewell's face.
She allowed him to say nothing but, “I'm sorry; but if you really must—”
“I guess I better,” persisted Barker. He got himself somehow to the door, where he paused a moment, and contrived to pant, “Well, good day,” and without effort at more cordial leave-taking, passed out.
Sewell followed him, and helped him find his hat, and made him shake hands. He went with him to the door, and, beginning to suffer afresh at the wrong he had done Barker, he detained him at the threshold. “If you still wish to see a publisher, Mr. Barker, I will gladly go with you.”
“Oh, not at all, not at all. I guess I don't want to see any publisher this afternoon. Well, good afternoon!” He turned away from Sewell's remorseful pursuit, and clumsily hurrying down the steps, he walked up the street and round the next corner. Sewell stood watching him in rueful perplexity, shading his eyes from the mild October sun with his hand; and some moments after Barker had disappeared, he remained looking after him.
When he rejoined the ladies in the dining-room they fell into a conscious silence.
“Have you been telling, Lucy?” he asked.
“Yes, I've been telling, David. It was the only way. Did you offer to go with him to a publisher again?”
“Yes, I did. It was the only way,” said Sewell.
Miss Vane and his wife both broke into a cry of laughter. The former got her breath first. “So that was the origin of the famous sermon that turned all our heads grey with good resolutions.” Sewell assented with a sickly grin. “What in the world made you encourage him?”
“My goodness of heart, which I didn't take the precaution of mixing with goodness of head before I used it.”
Everything was food for Miss Vane's laugh, even this confession. “But what is the natural history of the boy? How came he to write poetry? What do you suppose he means by it?”
“That isn't so easy to say. As to his natural history, he lives with his mother in a tumbledown, unpainted wooden house in the deepest fastness of Willoughby Pastures. Lucy and I used to drive by it and wonder what kind of people inhabited that solitude. There were milk-cans scattered round the door-yard, and the Monday we were there a poverty-stricken wash flapped across it. The thought of the place preyed upon me till one day I asked about it at the post-office, and the postmistress told me that the boy was quite a literary character, and read everything he could lay his hands on, and 'sat up nights' writing poetry. It seemed to me a very clear case of genius, and the postmistress's facts rankled in my mind till I couldn't stand it any longer. Then I went to see him. I suppose Lucy has told you the rest?”
“Yes, Mrs. Sewell has told me the rest. But still I don't see how he came to write poetry. I believe it doesn't pay, even in extreme cases of genius.”
“Ah, but that's just what this poor fellow didn't know. He must have read somewhere, in some deleterious newspaper, about the sale of some large edition of a poem, and have had his own wild hopes about it. I don't say his work didn't show sense; it even showed some rude strength, of a didactic, satirical sort, but it certainly didn't show poetry. He might have taken up painting by a little different chance. And when it was once known about the neighbourhood that he wrote poetry, his vanity was flattered—”
“Yes, I see. But wasn't there any kind soul to tell him that he was throwing his time away?”
“It appears not.”
“And even the kind soul from Boston, who visited him,” suggested Mrs. Sewell. “Go on, David.”
“Visited him in spite of his wife's omniscience,—even the kind soul from Boston paltered with this plain duty. Even he, to spare himself the pain of hurting the boy's feelings, tried to find some of the lines better than others, and left him with the impression that he had praised them.”
“Well, that was pretty bad,” said Miss Vane. “You had to tell him to-day, I suppose, that there was no hope for him?”
“Yes, I had to tell him at last, after letting him waste his time and money in writing more stuff and coming to Boston with it. I've put him to needless shame, and I've inflicted suffering upon him that I can't lighten in the least by sharing.”
“No, that's the most discouraging thing about pitying people. It does them no manner of good,” said Miss Vane, “and just hurts you. Don't you think that in an advanced civilisation we shall cease to feel compassion? Why don't you preach against common pity, as you did against common politeness?”
“Well, it isn't quite such a crying sin yet. But really, really,” exclaimed Sewell, “the world seems so put together that I believe we ought to think twice before doing a good action.”
“David!” said his wife warningly.
“Oh, let him go on!” cried Miss Vane, with a laugh. “I'm proof against his monstrous doctrines. Go on, Mr. Sewell.”
“What I mean is this.” Sewell pushed himself back in his chair, and then stopped.
“Is what?” prompted both the ladies.
“Why, suppose the boy really had some literary faculty, should I have had any right to encourage it? He was very well where he was. He fed the cows and milked them, and carried the milk to the crossroads, where the dealer collected it and took it to the train. That was his life, with the incidental facts of cutting the hay and fodder, and bedding the cattle; and his experience never went beyond it. I doubt if his fancy ever did, except in some wild, mistaken excursion. Why shouldn't he have been left to this condition? He ate, he slept, he fulfilled his use. Which of us does more?”
“How
