by her manner a sort of idea of blushing, and went out of the room with a final giggle, being confused by his opening the door for her.
Percival breathed again, relieved from an oppression, and wondered what on earth had made her take an interest in his tea and him. Yet the reason was not far to seek. It was that tragic, melancholy, hero's face of his—he felt so little like a hero that it was hard for him to realize that he looked like one—his sombre eyes, which might have been those of an exile thinking of his home, the air of proud and rather old-fashioned courtesy which he had inherited from his grandfather the rector and developed for himself. Every girl is ready to find something of the prince in one who treats her with deference as if she were a princess. Percival had an unconscious grace of bearing and attitude, and the considerable advantage of well-made clothes. Poverty had not yet reduced him to cheap coats and advertised trousers. And perhaps the crowning fascination in poor Lydia's eyes was the slight, dark, silky moustache which emphasized without hiding his lips.
Another rustling outside, a giggle and a whisper—Percival would have sworn that the whisper was Emma's if it had been possible that she could have left it behind her when she went out shopping—an ejaculation, "Gracious! I've blacked my hand!" a pause, presumably for the purpose of removing the stain, and Lydia reappeared with the kettle. She poured a portion of its contents over the fender in her anxiety to plant it firmly on the fire. "Oh dear!" she exclaimed, "how stupid of me! Oh, Mr. Thorne"—this half archly, half pensively, fingering the curl and surveying the steaming pool—"I'm afraid you'll wish Emma hadn't gone out: such a mess as I've made of it! What will you think of me?"
"Pray, don't trouble yourself," said Percival. "The fender can't signify, except perhaps from Emma's point of view. It doesn't interfere with my comfort, I assure you."
She departed, only half convinced. Percival, with another sigh of relief, proceeded to make the tea. The water was boiling and the fire good. Emma was apt to set a chilly kettle on a glimmering spark, but Lydia treated him better. The bit of cold meat on the table looked bigger than he expected, the butter wore a cheerful sprig of green. Percival saw his advantages, but he thought them dearly bought, especially as he had to take a turn up and down Bellevue street while the table was cleared.
After that day it was astonishing how often Emma went out shopping or was busy, or had a bad finger or a bad foot, or was helping ma with something or other, or hadn't made herself tidy, so that Lydia had to wait on Mr. Thorne. But it was always with the same air of its being something very droll and amusing to do, and there were always some artless mistakes which required giggling apologies. Nor could he doubt that he was in her thoughts during his absence. She had a piano down stairs on which she accompanied herself as she sang, but she found time for domestic cares. His buttons were carefully sewn on and his fire was always bright. One evening his table was adorned with a bright blue vase—as blue as Lydia's earrings—filled with dried grasses and paper flowers. He gazed blankly at it in unspeakable horror, and then paced up and down the room, wondering how he should endure life with it continually before his eyes. Some books lay on a side-table, and as he passed he looked absently at them and halted. On his Shelley, slightly askew, as if to preclude all thought of care and design, lay a little volume bound in dingy white and gold. Percival did not touch it, but he stooped and read the title, The Language of Flowers, and saw that—purely by accident of course—a leaf was doubled down as if to mark a place. He straightened himself again, and his proud lip curled in disgust as he glanced from the tawdry flowers to the tawdry book. And from below came suddenly the jingling notes of Lydia's piano and Lydia's voice—not exactly harsh and only occasionally out of tune, but with something hopelessly vulgar in its intonation—singing her favorite song—
Oh, if I had some one to love me,
My troubles and trials to share!
Percival turned his back on the blue vase and the little book, and flinging himself into a chair before the fire sickened at the thought of the life he was doomed to lead. Lydia, who was just mounting with a little uncertainty to a high note, was a good girl in her way, and good-looking, and had a kind sympathy for him in his evident loneliness. But was she to be the highest type of womanhood that he would meet henceforth? And was Bellevue street to be his world? He glided into a mournful dream of Brackenhill, which would never be his, and of Sissy, who had loved him so well, yet failed to love him altogether—Sissy, who had begged for her freedom with such tender pain in her voice while she pierced him so cruelly with her frightened eyes. Percival looked very stern in his sadness as he sat brooding over his fire, while from the room below came a triumphant burst of song—
But I will marry my own love,
For true of heart am I.
Sometimes he would picture to himself the future which lay before Horace's three-months-old child, whose little life already played so all—important a part in his own destiny. He had questioned Hammond about him, and Hammond had replied that he heard that Lottie and the boy were both doing well. "They say that the child is a regular Blake, just like Lottie herself," said Godfrey, "and doesn't look like a Thorne at all." Percival thought, not unkindly, of Lottie's boy, of Lottie's great clear eyes in an innocent baby face, and imagined him growing up slim and tall, to range the woods of Brackenhill in future years as Lottie herself had wandered in the copses about Fordborough. And yet sometimes he could not but think of the change that it might make if little James William Thorne were to die. Horace was very ill, they said: Brackenhill was shut up, and they had all gone to winter abroad. The doctors had declared that there was not a chance for him in England.
At this time Percival kept a sort of rough diary. Here is a leaf from it: "I am much troubled by a certain little devil who comes as soon as I am safely in bed and sits on my pillow. He flattens it abominably, or else I do it myself tossing about in my impatience. He is quite still for a minute or two, and I try my best to think he isn't there at all. Then he stoops down and whispers in my ear 'Convulsions!' and starts up again like india-rubber. I won't listen. I recall some tune or other: it won't come, and there is a hitch, a horrible blank, in the midst of which he is down again—I knew he would be—suggesting 'Croup.' I repeat some bit of a poem, but it won't do: what is the next line? I think of old days with my father, when I knew nothing of Brackenhill: I try to remember my mother's face. I am getting on very well, but all at once I become conscious that he has been for some time murmuring, as to himself, 'Whooping-cough and scarlet fever—scarlet fever.' I grow fierce, and say, 'I pray God he may escape them all!' To which he softly replies, 'His grandfather died—his father is dying—of decline.'
"I roll over to the other side, and encounter him or his twin brother there. A perfectly silent little devil this time, with a faculty for calling up pictures. He shows me the office: I see it, I smell it, with its flaring gaslights and sickly atmosphere. Then he shows me the long drawing-room at Brackenhill, the quaint old furniture, the pictures on the walls, the terrace with its balustrade and balls of mossy stone, and through the windows come odors of jasmine and roses and far-off fields, while inside there is the sweetness of dried blossoms and spices in the great china jars. A moment more and it is Bellevue street, with its rows of hideous whited houses. And then again it is a river, curving swiftly and grandly between its castled rocks, or a bridge of many arches in the twilight, and the lights coming out one by one in the old walled town, and the road and river travelling one knows not where, into regions just falling asleep in the quiet dusk. Or there is a holiday crowd, a moonlit ferry, steep wooded hills, and songs and laughter which echo in the streets and float across the tide. Or the Alps, keenly cut against the infinite depth of blue, with a whiteness and a far-off glory no tongue can utter. Or a solemn cathedral, or a busy town piled up, with church and castle high aloft and a still, transparent lake below. But through it all, and underlying it all, is Bellevue street, with the dirty men and women, who scream and shout at each other and wrangle in its filthy courts and alleys. Still, God knows that I don't repent, and that I wish my little cousin well."
CHAPTER XXXVI.
WANTED—AN ORGANIST
In
