In the early days of winter, the walls of the palace being now already well above the hoarding, Angela made another important convert. This was no other than Dick Coppin, the cousin of whom mention has been already made.
"I will bring him to your drawing-room," said Harry. "That is, if he will come. He does not know much about drawing-rooms, but he is a great man at the Stepney Advanced Club. He is a reddest of red-hot Rads, and the most advanced of Republicans. I do not think he would himself go a-murdering of kings and priests, but I fancy he regards these things as accidents naturally rising out of a pardonable enthusiasm. His manners are better than you will generally find, because he belongs to my own gentle craft. You shall tame him, Miss Kennedy."
Angela said she would try.
"He shall learn to waltz," Harry went on. "This will convert him from a fierce Republican to a merely enthusiastic Radical. Then he shall learn to sing in parts; this will drop him down into advanced Liberalism. And if you can persuade him to attend your evenings, talk with the girls, or engage in some art, say painting, he will become, quite naturally, a mere Conservative."
With some difficulty Harry persuaded his cousin to come with him. Dick Coppin was not, he said of himself, a dangler after girls' apron-strings, having something else to think of; nor was he attracted by the promise, held out by his cousin, of music and singing. But he came under protest, because music seemed to him an idle thing while the House of Lords remained undestroyed, and because this cousin of his could somehow make him do pretty nearly what he pleased.
He was a man of Harry's own age; a short man, with somewhat rough and rugged features—strong, and not without the beauty of strength. His forehead was broad; he had thick eyebrows, the thick lips of one who speaks much in public, and a straight chin—the chin of obstinacy. His eyes were bright and full; his hair was black; his face was oval; his expression was masterful; it was altogether the face of a man who interested one. Angela thought of his brother, the captain in the Salvation Army; this man, she felt, had all the courage of the other, with more common-sense; yet one who, too, might become a fanatic—who might be dangerous if he took the wrong side. She shook hands with him and welcomed him. Then she said that she wanted dancing men for her evenings, and hoped that he could dance. It was the first time in his life that Mr. Coppin had been asked that question, and also the first time that he had thought it possible that any man in his senses, except a sailor, should be expected to dance. Of course he could not, and said so bluntly, sticking his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, which is a gesture peculiar to the trade, if you care to notice so small a fact.
"Your cousin," said Angela, "will teach you. Mr. Goslett, please give Mr. Coppin a lesson in a quadrille. Nelly, you will be his partner. Now, if you will make up the set, I will play."
An elderly bishop of Calvinistic principles could not have been more astonished than was this young workman. He had not the presence of mind to refuse. Before he realized his position, he was standing beside his partner: in front of him stood his cousin, also with a partner; four girls made up the set. Then the music began, and he was dragged, pushed, hustled, and pulled this way and that. He would have resented this treatment but that the girls took such pains to set him right, and evidently regarded the lesson as one of the greatest importance. Nor did they cease until he had discerned what the mathematician called the Law of the Quadrille, and could tread the measure with some approach to accuracy.
"We shall not be satisfied, Mr. Coppin," said Angela, when the quadrille was finished, "until we have taught everybody to dance."
"What is the good of dancing?" he asked good-humoredly, but a good deal humiliated by the struggle.
"Dancing is graceful; dancing is a good exercise; dancing should be natural to young people; dancing is delightful. See—I will play a waltz; now watch the girls."
She played. Instantly the girls caught each other by the waist and whirled round the room with brightened eyes and parted lips. Harry took Nelly in the close embrace which accompanies the German dance, and swiftly, easily, gracefully, danced round and round the room.
"Is it not happiness that you are witnessing, Mr. Coppin?" asked Angela. "Tell me, did you ever see dressmakers happy before? You, too, shall learn to waltz. I will teach you, but not to-night."
Then they left off dancing and sat down, talking and laughing. Harry took his violin and discoursed sweet music, to which they listened or not as they listed. Only the girl who was lame looked on with rapt and eager face.
"See her!" said Angela, pointing her out. "She has found what her soul was ignorantly desiring. She has found music. Tell me, Mr. Coppin, if it were not for the music and this room, what would that poor child be?"
He made no reply. Never before had he witnessed, never had he suspected, such an evening. There were the girls whom he despised, who laughed and jested with the lads in the street, who talked loud and were foolish. Why, they were changed! What did it mean? And who was this young woman, who looked and spoke as no other woman he had ever met, yet was only a dressmaker?
"I have heard of you, Mr. Coppin," this young person said, in her queen-like manner, "and I am glad that you have come. We shall expect you, now, every Saturday evening. I hear that you are a political student."
"I am a Republican," he replied. "That's about what I am." Again he stuck his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets.
"Yes. You do not perhaps quite understand what it is that we are doing here, do you? In a small way—it is quite a little thing—it may interest even a political student like yourself. The interests of milliners and dressmakers are very small compared with the House of Lords. Still—your sisters and cousins——"
"It seems pleasant," he replied, "if you don't all get set up with high notions. As for me, I am for root-and-branch Reform."
"Yes: but all improvement in government means improvement of the people, does it not? Else, I see no reason for trying to improve a government."
He made no reply. He was so much accustomed to the vague denunciations and cheap rhetoric of his class that a small practical point was strange to him.
"Now," said Angela, "I asked your cousin to bring you here, because I learn that you are a man of great mental activity, and likely, if you are properly directed, to be of great use to us."
He stared again. Who was this dressmaker who spoke about directing him? The same uncomfortable feeling came over him—a cold doubt about himself, which he often felt when in the society of his cousin. No man likes to feel that he is not perfectly and entirely right, and that he must be right.
"We are a society," she went on, "of girls who want to work for ourselves; we all of us belong to your class: we therefore look to you for sympathy and assistance. Yet you hold aloof from us. We have had some support here already, but none from the people who ought most to sympathize with us. That is, I suppose, because you know nothing about us. Very well, then. While your cousin is amusing those girls, I will tell you about our association."
* * * * * * *
"Now you understand, Mr. Coppin. You men have long since organized yourselves—it is our turn now; and we look to you for help. We are not going to work any longer for a master: we are not going to work long hours any longer; and we are going to get time every day for fresh air, exercise, and amusement. You are continually occupied, I believe, at your club, denouncing the pleasures of the rich. But we are actually going to enjoy all those pleasures ourselves, and they will cost us nothing. Look round this room—we have a piano lent to us: there is your cousin with his fiddle, and Captain Sorensen with his; we are learning part-songs, which cost us three-halfpence each; we dance; we play; we read—a subscription to Smith's is only three guineas a year; we have games which are cheap: the whole expense of our evenings is the fire in winter and the gas. On Saturday evenings we have some cake and lemonade, which one of the girls makes for us. What can rich people have more than society, lights, music, singing, and dancing?"
He was silent, wondering at this thing.
"Don't you see, Mr. Coppin, that if we are successful we shall be the cause of many more such associations? Don't you see, that if we could get our principle established, we should accomplish a greater revolution than the overthrow of the Lords and the Church, and one far more beneficial?"
"You can't succeed," he said. "It's been tried before."
"Yes—by men: I know it. And it has always broken down because the leaders were false to their principles and betrayed the cause."
"Where are the girls to get the money to start with?"
"We are fortunate," Angela replied. "We have this house and furniture given to us by a lady interested in us. That, I own, is a great thing. But other rich people will be found to do as much. Why, how much better it is than leaving money to hospitals!"
"Rich people!" he echoed with contempt.
"Yes: rich people, of whom you know so little, Mr. Coppin, that I think you ought to be very careful how you speak of them. But think of us—look at the girls. Do they not look happier than they used to look?"
He replied untruthfully, because he was not going to give in to a woman, all of a sudden, that he did not remember how they used to look, but that undoubtedly they now looked very well. He did not say—which he felt—that they were behaving more quietly and modestly than he had ever known them to behave.
"You," Angela went on, with a little emphasis on the pronoun, which made her speech a delicate flattery—"you, Mr. Coppin, cannot fail to observe how the evening's relaxation helps to raise the whole tone of the girls. The music which they hear sinks into their hearts and lifts them above the little cares of their lives; the dancing makes them merry; the social life, the talk among ourselves, the books they read, all help to maintain a pure and elevated tone of thought. I declare, Mr. Coppin, I no longer know these girls. And then they bring their friends, and so their influence spreads. They will not, I hope, remain in the workrooms all their lives. A woman should be married; do not you think so, Mr. Coppin?"
He was too much astonished at the whole conversation to make any coherent reply.
"I think you have perhaps turned your attention too much to politics, have you not? Yet practical questions ought to interest you."
"They say, at the club," he answered, "that this place is a sham and a humbug."
"Will you bring your friends here to show them that it is not?"
"Harry stood up for you the other night. He's plucky, and they like him for all he looks a swell."
"Does he speak at your club?"
"Sometimes—not to say speak. He gets up after the speech, and says so and so is wrong. Yet they like him—because he isn't afraid to say what he thinks. They call him Gentleman Jack."
"I thought he was a brave man," said Angela, looking at Harry, who was rehearsing some story to the delight of Nelly and the girls.
"Yes—the other night they were talking about you, and one said one thing and one said another, and a chap said he thought he'd seen you in a West End music-hall, and he didn't believe you were any better than you should be."
"Oh!" She shrank as if she had been struck some blow.
"He didn't say it twice. After he'd knocked him down, Harry invited that chap to stand up and have it out. But he wouldn't."
It was a great misfortune for Harry that he lost the soft and glowing look of gratitude and admiration which was quite wasted upon him. For he was at the very point, the critical point, of the story.
Angela had made another convert. When Dick Coppin went home that night, he was humbled but pensive. Here was a thing of which he had never thought; and here was a woman the like of whom he had never imagined. The House of Lords, the Church, the Land Laws, presented no attraction that night for his thoughts. For the first time in his life he felt the influence of a woman.
Engaged in these pursuits, neither Angela nor Harry paid much heed to the circle at the boarding-house, where they were still nominally boarders. For Angela was all day long at her association, and her general assistant, or prime-minister, after a hasty breakfast, hastened to his daily labor. He found that he was left entirely to his own devices: work came in which he did or left undone, Miss Messenger's instructions were faithfully carried out, and his independence was respected. During work-time he planned amusements and surprises for Miss Kennedy and her girls, or he meditated upon the Monotony of Man, a subject which I may possibly explain later on; or when he knocked off, he would go and see the drayman roll about the heavy casks as if they were footballs; or he would watch the machinery and look at the great brown mass of boiling hops, or he would drop suddenly upon his cousin Josephus, and observe him faithfully entering names, ticking off and comparing, just as he had done for forty years, still a junior clerk. But he gave no thought to the boarders.
One evening, however, in late September, he happened to look in toward nine o'clock, the hour when the frugal supper was generally spread. The usual occupants of the room were there, but there was no supper on the table, and the landlady was absent.
Harry stood in the doorway, with his hands in his pockets, carelessly looking at the group. Suddenly he became aware, with a curious sinking of heart, that something was gone wrong with all of them. They were all silent, all sitting bolt upright, no one taking the least notice of his neighbor, and all apparently in some physical pain.
The illustrious pair were in their usual places, but his lordship, instead of looking sleepy and sleepily content, as was his custom at the evening hour, sat bolt upright and thrummed the arm of his chair with his fingers, restless and ill at ease; opposite to him sat his consort, her hands tightly clasped, her bright beady eyes gleaming with impatience, which might at any moment break out into wrath. Yet the case was completely drawn up, as Harry knew, because he had finished it himself, and it only remained to make a clean copy before it was "sent in" to the Lord Chancellor.
As for the professor, he was seated at the window, his legs curled under the chair, looking moodily across Stepney Green—into space, and neglecting his experiments. His generally cheerful face wore an anxious expression as if he was thinking of something unpleasant, which would force itself upon his attention.
Josephus was in his corner, without his pipe, and more than usually melancholy. His sadness always, however, increased in the evening, so that he hardly counted.
Daniel, frowning like a Rhine baron of the good old time, had his books before him, but they were closed. It was a bad sign that even the Version in the Hebrew had no attraction for him.
Mr. Maliphant alone was smiling. His smiles, in such an assemblage of melancholy faces, produced an incongruous effect. The atmosphere was charged with gloom—it was funereal: in the midst of it the gay and cheerful countenance, albeit wrinkled, of the old man, beamed like the sun impertinently shining amid fog and rain, sleet and snow. The thing was absurd. Harry felt the force of Miss Kennedy's remark that the occupants of the room reminded her of a fortuitous concourse of flies, or ants, or rooks, or people in an omnibus, each of whom was profoundly occupied with its own affairs and careless of its neighbors. Out of six in the room, five were unhappy: they did not ask for, or expect, the sympathies of their neighbors; they did not reveal their anxieties; they sat and suffered in silence; the sixth alone was quite cheerful: it was nothing to him what experiences the rest were having, whether they were enjoying the upper airs, or enduring hardness. He sat in his own place near the professor: he laughed aloud; he even talked and told stories, to which no one listened. When Harry appeared, he was just ending a story which he had never begun:
"So it was given to the other fellow. And he came from Baxter Street, close to the City Hall, which is generally allowed to be the wickedest street in New York City."
He paused a little, laughed cheerfully, rubbed his dry old hands together, smoked his pipe in silence, and then concluded his story, having filled up the middle in his own mind, without speech.
"And so he took to the coasting trade off the Andes."
Harry caught the eye of the professor, and beckoned him to come outside.
"Now," he said, taking his arm, "what the devil is the matter with all of you?"
The professor smiled feebly under the gas-lamp in the street, and instantly relapsed into his anxious expression.
"I suppose," he said, "that is, I guess, because they haven't told me, that it's the same with them as with me."
"And that is——?"
The professor slapped his empty pockets:
"Want of cash," he said. "I'm used to it in the autumn, just before the engagements begin. Bless you! It's nothing to me; though, when you've had no dinner for a week, you do begin to feel as if you could murder and roast a cat, if no one was looking. I've even begun to wish that the Eighth Commandment was suspended during the autumn."
"Do you mean, man, that you are all hungry?"
"All except old Maliphant, and he doesn't count. Josephus had some dinner, but he says he can't afford supper and dinner too at the rate his heels wear out. Yes, I don't suppose there's been a dinner apiece among us for the last week."
"Good heavens!" Harry hurried off to find the landlady.
She was in the kitchen sitting before the fire, though it was a warm night. She looked up when her lodger entered, and Harry observed that she, too, wore an air of dejection.
"Well, Mrs. Bormalack."
She groaned and wiped away a tear.
"My heart bleeds for them, Mr. Goslett," she said. "I can't bear to set eyes on them; I can't face them. Because to do what I should like to do for them, would be nothing short of ruin. And how to send them away I cannot tell."
He nodded his head encouragingly.
"You are a young man, Mr. Goslett, and you don't consider—and you are thinking day and night of that sweet young thing, Miss Kennedy. And she of you. Oh! you needn't blush; a handsome fellow like you is a prize for any woman, however good-looking. Besides, I've got eyes."
"Still, that doesn't help us much to the point, Mrs. Bormalack, which is, what can we do for them?"
"Oh, dear me! the poor things don't board and lodge any more, Mr. Goslett. They've had no board to-day. If I did what I should like to do—but I can't. There's the rent and rates and all. And how I can keep them in the house, unless they pay their rent, I can't tell. I've never been so miserable since Captain Saffrey went away, owing for three months."
"Not enough to eat?"
"Lady Davenant came to me this morning, and paid the rent for this week, but not the board; said that her nephew Nathaniel hadn't sent the six dollars, and they could only have breakfast, and must find some cheap place for dinner somewhere else. In the middle of the day they went out. Her ladyship put quite a chirpy face upon it; said they were going into the city to get dinner, but his lordship groaned. Dinner! They came home at two, and his groans have been heart-rending all the afternoon. I never heard such groaning."
"Poor old man!"
"And there's the professor, too. It's low water with him. No one wants conjuring till winter comes. But he's quite used to go without his dinner. You needn't mind him!"
"Eels," said Harry, "are used to being skinned. Yet they wriggle a bit."
He produced a few coins and proffered a certain request to the landlady. Then he returned to his fellow-lodgers.
Presently there was heard in the direction of the kitchen a cheerful hissing, followed by a perfectly divine fragrance. Daniel closed his eyes, and leaned back in his chair. The professor smiled. His lordship rolled in his chair and groaned. Presently Mrs. Bormalack appeared, and the cloth was laid. His lordship showed signs of an increasing agitation. The fragrance increased. He leaned forward clutching the arm of his chair, looking to his wife as if for help and guidance at this most difficult crisis. He was frightfully hungry; all his dinner had been a biscuit and a half, his wife having taken the other half. What is a biscuit and a half to one accustomed to the flesh-pots of Canaan City?
"Clara Martha," he groaned, trying to whisper, but failing in his agitation, "I must have some of that beefsteak or I shall——"
Here he relapsed into silence again.
It was not from a desire to watch the sufferings of the unlucky peer, or in order to laugh at them, that Harry hesitated to invite him. Now, however, he hesitated no longer.
"I am giving a little supper to-night, Lady Davenant, to—to—celebrate my birthday. May I hope that you and his lordship will join us?"
Her ladyship most affably accepted.
Well, they were fed; they made up for the meagreness of the midday meal by such a supper as should be chronicled, so large, so generous was it. Such a supper, said the professor, as should carry a man along for a week, were it not for the foolish habit of getting hungry twice at least in the four-and-twenty hours. After supper they all became cheerful, and presently went to bed as happy as if there were no to-morrow, and the next day's dinner was assured.
When they were gone, Harry began to smoke his evening pipe. Then he became aware of the presence of the two who were left—his cousin Josephus and old Mr. Maliphant.
The former was sitting in gloomy silence, and the latter was making as if he would say something, but thought better of it, and smiled instead.
"Josephus," said Harry, "what the devil makes you so gloomy? You can't be hungry still?"
"No," he replied. "It isn't that; a junior clerk fifty-five years old has no right to get hungry."
"What is it, then?"
"They talk of changes in the office, that is all. Some of the juniors will be promoted; not me, of course, and some will have to go. After forty years in the brewery, I shall have to go. That's all."
"Seems rough, doesn't it? Can't you borrow a handful of malt, and set up a little brewery for yourself?"
"It is only starvation. After all, it doesn't matter—nobody cares what happens to a junior clerk. There are plenty more. And the workhouse is said to be well managed. Perhaps they will let me keep their accounts."
"When do you think—the—the reduction will be made?"
"Next month, they say."
"Come, cheer up, old man," said his cousin. "Why, if they do turn you out—which would be a burning shame—you can find something better."
"No," replied Josephus sadly, "I know my place. I am a junior clerk. They can be got to do my work at seven bob a week. Ah! in thousands."
"Well, but can't you do anything else?"
"Nothing else."
"In all these years, man, have you learned nothing at all?"
"Nothing at all."
Is there, thought Harry, gazing upon his luckless cousin, a condition more miserable than that of the cheap clerk? In early life he learns to spell, to read, to write, and perhaps keep books, but this only if he is ambitious. Here his education ends; he has no desire to learn anything more; he falls into whatever place he can get, and then he begins a life in which there is no hope of preferment and no endeavor after better things. There are, in every civilized country, thousands and thousands of these helpless and hopeless creatures: they mostly suffer in silence, being at the best ill-fed and ill-paid, but they sometimes utter a feeble moan, when one of them can be found with vitality enough about their pay and prospects. No one has yet told them the honest truth—that they are already paid as much as they deserve; that their miserable accomplishments cannot for a moment be compared with the skill of an artisan; that they are self-condemned because they make no effort. They have not even the energy to make a Union; they have not the sense of self-protection; they are content if they are not hungry, if they have tobacco to smoke and beer to drink.
"How long is it since you—did—whatever it was you did, that kept you down?" asked the younger man, at length.
"I did nothing. It was an accident. Unless," added Josephus with a smile—"unless it was the devil. But devils don't care to meddle with junior clerks."
"What was the accident, then?"
"It was one day in June; I remember the day quite well. I was alone in my office, the same office as I am in still. The others, younger than myself, and I was then twenty-one, were gone off on business. The safe stood close to my desk. There was a bundle of papers in it sealed up, and marked 'Mr. Messenger, Private,' which had been there a goodish while, so that I supposed they were not important: some of the books were there as well, and Mr. Messenger himself had sent down, only an hour before ... before.... It happened, a packet of notes to be paid into the bank. The money had been brought in by our country collectors—fourteen thousand pounds, in country bank-notes. Now remember, I was sitting at the desk and the safe was locked, and the keys were in the desk, and no one was in the office except me. And I will swear that the notes were in the safe. I told Mr. Messenger that I would take my oath to it, and I would still." Josephus grew almost animated as he approached the important point in his history.
"Well?"
"Things being so—remember, no one but me in the office, and the keys——"
"I remember. Get along."
"I was sent for."
"By Mr. Messenger?"
"Mr. Messenger didn't send for junior clerks. He used to send for the heads of departments, who sent for the chief clerks, who ordered the juniors. That was the way in those days. No, I was sent for to the chief clerk's office and given a packet of letters for copying. That took three minutes. When I came back the office was still empty, the safe was locked, and the keys in my desk."
"Well?"
"Well—but the safe was empty!"
"What! all the money gone?"
"All gone, every farthing—with Mr. Messenger's private papers."
"What a strange thing!"
"No one saw anybody going into the office or coming out. Nothing else was taken."
"Come—with fourteen thousand pounds in his hand, no reasonable thief would ask for more."
"And what is more extraordinary still, not one of those notes has ever since been presented for payment."
"And then, I suppose, there was a row."
Josephus assented.
"First, I was to be sacked at once; then I was to be watched and searched; next, I was to be kept on until the notes were presented and the thief caught. I have been kept on, the notes have not been presented; and I've had the same pay, neither more nor less, all the time. That's all the story. Now, there's to be an end of that. I'm to be sent away."
Mr. Maliphant had not been listening to the story at all, being pleasantly occupied with his own reminiscences. At this point one of them made him laugh and rub his hands.
"When Mr. Messenger's father married Susannah Coppin, I have heard——"
Here he stopped.
"Halloo!" cried Harry. "Go on, Venerable. Why, we are cousins or nephews, or something, of Miss Messenger. Josephus, my boy, cheer up!"
Mr. Maliphant's memory now jumped over two generations, and he went on:
"Caroline Coppin married a sergeant in the army, and a handsome lad—I forget his name. But Mary Coppin married Bunker. The Coppins were a good old Whitechapel stock, as good as the Messengers. As for Bunker, he was an upstart, he was; and came from Barking, as I always understood."
Then he was once more silent.
It was a frequent custom with Lady Davenant to sit with the girls in the workroom in the morning. She liked to have a place where she could talk; she took an ex-professional interest in their occupation; she had the eye of an artist for their interpretation of the fashion. Moreover, it pleased her to be in the company of Miss Kennedy, who was essentially a woman's woman. Men who are so unhappy as to have married a man's woman will understand perfectly what I mean. On the morning after Harry's most providential birthday, therefore, when she appeared no one was in the least disturbed. But to-day she did not greet the girls with her accustomed stately inclination of the head which implied that, although now a peeress, she had been brought up to their profession and in a republican school of thought, and did not set herself up above her neighbors. Yet respect to rank should be conceded, and was expected. In general, too, she was talkative, and enlivened the tedium of work with many an anecdote illustrating Canaan City and its ways, or showing the lethargic manners of the Davenants, both her husband and his, to say nothing of the grandfather, contented with the lowly occupation of a wheelwright while he might have soared to the British House of Lords. This morning, however, she sat down and was silent, and her head drooped. Angela, who sat next her and watched, presently observed that a tear formed in her eye, and dropped upon her work, and that her lips moved as if she was holding a conversation with herself. Thereupon she arose, put her hand upon the poor lady's arm, and drew her away without a word to the solitude of the dining-room, where her ladyship gave way and burst into an agony of sobbing.
Angela stood before her, saying nothing. It was best to let the fit have its way. When the crying was nearly over, she laid her hand upon her hair and gently smoothed it.
"Poor dear lady," she said, "will you tell me what has happened?"
"Everything," she gasped. "Oh, everything! The six months are all gone, all but one. Nephew Nathaniel writes to say that, as we haven't even made a start all this time, he reckons we don't count to make any; and he's got children, and as for business, it's got down to the hard pan, and dollars are skurce, and we may come back again right away, and there's the money for the voyage home whenever we like, but no more."
"Oh!" said Angela, beginning to understand. "And ... and your husband?"
"There's where the real trouble begins. I wouldn't mind for myself, money or no money. I would write to the Queen for money. I would go to the workhouse. I would beg my bread in the street, but the case I would never give up—never—never—never."
She clasped her hands, dried her eyes, and sat bolt upright, the picture of unyielding determination.
"And your husband is not, perhaps, so resolute as yourself?"
"He says, 'Clara Martha, let us go hum. As for the title, I would sell it to nephew Nathaniel, who's the next heir, for a week of square meals; he should have the coronet, if I'd got it, for a month's certainty of steaks and chops and huckleberry pie; and as for my seat in the House of Lords, he should have it for our old cottage in Canaan City, which is sold, and the school which I have given up and lost.' He says: 'Pack the box, Clara Martha—there isn't much to pack—and we will go at once. If the American Minister won't take up the case for us, I guess that the case may slide till Nathaniel takes it up for himself.' That is what he says, Miss Kennedy. Those were his words. Oh! Oh! Oh! Mr. Feeblemind! Oh! Mr. Facing-Both-Ways!"
She wrung her hands in despair, for it seemed as if her husband would be proof against even the scorn and contempt of these epithets.
"But what do you mean to do?"
"I shall stay," she replied. "And so shall he, if my name is Lady Davenant. Do you think I am going back to Canaan City to be scorned at by Aurelia Tucker? Do you think I shall let that poor old man, who has his good side, Miss Kennedy—and as for virtue he is an angel, and he knows not the taste of tobacco or whiskey—face his nephew, and have to say what good he has done with all those dollars? No, here we stay." She snapped her lips, and made as if she would take root upon that very chair. "Shall he part with his birthright like Esau, because he is hungry? Never! The curse of Esau would rest upon us.
"He's at home now," she went on, "preparing for another day without dinner; groans won't help him now; and this time there will be no supper—unless Mr. Goslett has another birthday."
"Why! good gracious, you will be starved."
"Better starve than to go home as we came. Besides, I shall write to the Queen when there's nothing left. When Nathaniel's money comes, which may be to-morrow, and may be next month, I shall give a month's rent to Mrs. Bormalack, and save the rest for one meal a day. Yes, as long as the money lasts, he shall eat meat—once a day—at noon. He's been pampered, like all the Canaan City folk; set up with turkey roast and turkey boiled, and ducks and beef every day, and buckwheat cakes and such. Oh! a change of diet would bring down his luxury and increase his pride."
Angela thought that starvation was a new way of developing pride of birth, but she did not say so. "Is there no way," she asked, "in which he can earn money?"
She shook her head.
"As a teacher he was generally allowed to be learned, but sleepy. In our city, however, the boys and girls didn't expect too much, and it's a sleepy place. In winter they sit round the stove and they go to sleep; in summer they sit in the shade and they go to sleep. It's the sleepiest place in the States. No, there's no kind o' way in which he can earn any money. And if there were, did you ever hear of a British peer working for his daily bread?"
"But you, Lady Davenant? Surely your ladyship would not mind—if the chance offered—if it were a thing kept secret—if not even your husband knew—would not object to earning something every week to find that square meal which your husband so naturally desires?"
Her ladyship held out her hands without a word.
Angela, in shameful contempt of political economy, placed in them the work which she had in her own, and whispered:
"You had better," she said, "take a week in advance. Then you can arrange with Mrs. Bormalack for the usual meals on the old terms; and if you would rather come here to work, you can have this room to yourself all the morning. Thank you, Lady Davenant. The obligation is entirely mine, you know. For, really, more delicate work, more beautiful work, I never saw. Do all American ladies work so beautifully?"
Her ladyship, quite overcome with these honeyed words, took the work and made no reply.
"Only one thing, dear Lady Davenant," Angela went on, smiling: "you must promise me not to work too hard. You know that such work as yours is worth at least twice as much as mine. And then you can push on the case, you know."
The little lady rose, and threw her arms round Angela's neck.
"My dear!" she cried with more tears, "you are everybody's friend. Oh! yes, I know. And how you do it and all—I can't think, nor Mrs. Bormalack neither. But the day may come—it shall come—when we can show our gratitude."
She retired, taking the work with her.
Her husband was asleep as usual, for he had had breakfast, and as yet the regular pangs of noon were not active. The case was not spread out before him, as was usual ever since Mr. Goslett had taken it in hand. It was ostentatiously rolled up, and laid on the table, as if packed ready for departure by the next mail.
His wife regarded him with a mixture of affection and contempt.
"He would sell the crown of England," she murmured, "for roast turkey and apple fixin's. The Davenants couldn't have been always like that. It must be his mother's blood. Yet she was a church-member, and walked consistent."
She did not wake him up, but sought out Mrs. Bormalack, and presently there was a transfer of coins and the Resurrection of Smiles and Doux Parler, that Fairy of Sweet Speech, who covers and hides beneath the cold wind of poverty.
"Tell me, Mr. Goslett," said Angela, that evening, still thinking over the sad lot of the claimants, "tell me: you have examined the claim of these people—what chance have they?"
"I should say none whatever."
"Then what makes them so confident of success?"
"Hush! listen. They are really confident. His noble lordship perfectly understands the weakness of his claim, which depends upon a pure assumption, as you shall hear. As for the little lady, his wife, she has long since jumped to the conclusion that the assumption requires no proof. Therefore, save in moments of dejection, she is pretty confident. Then they are hopelessly ignorant of how they should proceed and of the necessary delays, even if their case was unanswerable. They thought they had only to cross the ocean and send in a statement in order to get admitted to the rank and privilege of the peerage. And I believe they think that the Queen will, in some mysterious way, restore the property to them."
"Poor things!"
"Yes, it's rather sad to think of such magnificent expectations. Besides, it really is a most beautiful case. The last Lord Davenant had one son. That only son grew up, had some quarrel with his father, and sailed from the port of Bristol, bound for some American port, I forget which. Neither he nor his ship was ever heard of again. Therefore the title became extinct."
"Well?"
"Very good. Now the story begins. His name was Timothy Clitheroe Davenant, the name always given to the eldest son of the family. Now, our friend's name is Timothy Clitheroe Davenant, and so was his father's, and so was his grandfather's."
"That is very strange."
"It is very strange—what is stranger still is, that his grandfather was born, according to the date on his tomb, the same year as the lost heir, and at the same place—Davenant, where was the family-seat."
"Can there have been two of the same name born in the same place and in the same year?"
"It seems improbable, almost impossible. Moreover, the last lord had no brother, nor had his father, the second lord. I found that out at the Heralds' College. Consequently, even if there was another branch, and the birth of two Timothys in the same year was certain, they would not get the title. So that their one hope is to be able to prove what they call the 'connection.' That is to say, the identity of the lost heir with this wheelwright."
"That seems a very doubtful thing to do, after all these years."
"It is absolutely impossible, unless some documents are discovered which prove it. But nothing remains of the wheelwright."
"No book? No papers?"
"Nothing, except a small book of songs, supposed to be convivial, with his name on the inside cover, written in a sprawling hand, and misspelt, with two v's—'Davvenant,' and above the name, in the same hand, the day of the week in which it was written, 'Satturday,' with two t's. No Christian name."
"Does it not seem as if the absence of the Christian name would point to the assumption of the title?"
"Yes: they do not know this, and I have not yet told them. It is, however, a very small point, and quite insufficient in itself to establish anything."
"Yes," Angela mused. She was thinking whether something could not be done to help these poor people and settle the case decisively for them one way or the other. "What is to be the end of it?"
Harry shrugged his shoulders.
"Who knows how long they can go on? When there are no more dollars, they must go home again. I hear they have got another supply of money: Mrs. Bormalack has been paid for a fortnight in advance. After that is gone—perhaps they had better go too."
"It seems a pity," said Angela, slightly reddening at mention of the money, "that some researches could not be made, so as to throw a little light upon this strange coincidence of names."
"We should want to know first what to look for. After that, we should have to find a man to conduct the search. And then we should have to pay him."
"As for the man, there is the professor; as for the place, first, there is the Heralds' College, and secondly, there are the parish registers of the village of Davenant; and as for the money, why, it would not cost much, and I believe something might be advanced for them. If you and I, Mr. Goslett, between us, were to pay the professor's expenses, would he go about for us?"
She seemed to assume that he was quite ready to join her in giving his money for this object. Yet Harry was now living, having refused his guardian's proffered allowance, on his pay by the piece, which gave him, as already stated, tenpence for every working hour.
"What would the professor cost?" she asked.
"The professor is down upon his luck," said Harry. "He is so hard up at present that I believe we would get it for nothing but his expenses. Eighteen shillings a week would buy him outright until his engagements begin again. If there were any travelling expenses, of course that would be extra. But the village of Davenant is not a great way off. It is situated in Essex, and Essex is now a suburb of London, its original name having been East-End-seaxas, which is not generally known."
"Very well," she replied gravely. "That would be only nine shillings apiece, say eleven hours of extra work for you; and probably it would not last long, more than a week or two. Will you give two hours a day to his lordship?"
Harry made a wry face, and laughed. This young person had begun by turning him into a journeyman cabinet-maker, and was now making him work extra time. What next?
"Am I not your slave, Miss Kennedy?"
"O Mr. Goslett, I thought there was to be no more nonsense of that kind! You know it can lead to nothing—even if you desired that it should."
"Even? Miss Kennedy, can't you see——"
"No—I can see nothing—I will hear nothing. Do not—O Mr. Goslett—we have been—we are—such excellent friends. You have been so great a help to me: I look to you for so much more. Do not spoil all; do not seek for what you could never be: pray, pray, do not!"
She spoke with so much earnestness; her eyes were filled with such a frankness; she laid her hand upon his arm with so charming camaraderie, that he could not choose but obey.
"It is truly wonderful," he said, thinking, for the thousandth time, how this pearl among women came to Stepney Green.
"What is wonderful?" she blushed as she asked.
"You know what I mean. Let us both be frank. You command me not to say the thing I most desire to say. Very good, I will be content to wait, but under one promise——"
"What is that?"
"If the reason or reasons which command my silence should ever be removed—mind, I do not seek to know what they are—you will yourself——"
"What?" she asked, blushing sweetly.
"You will yourself—tell me so."
She recovered her composure and gave him her hand.
"If at any time I can listen to you, I will tell you so. Does that content you?"
Certainly not, but there was no more to be got; therefore Harry was fain to be contented whether he would or not. And this was only one of a hundred little skirmishes in which he endeavored to capture an advanced fort or prepared to lay the siege in form. And always he was routed with heavy loss.
"And now," she went on, "we will get back to our professor."
"Yes. I am to work two extra hours a day that he may go about in the luxury of eighteen shillings a week. This it is to be one of the horny-handed. What is the professor to do first?"
"Let us," she said, "find him and secure his services."
It has been seen that the professor was already come to the period of waist-tightening, which naturally follows a too continued succession of banyan-days.
He listened with avidity to any proposition which held forth a prospect of food. The work, he said, only partly understanding it, would be difficult, but, therefore, the more to be desired. Common conjurers, he said, would spoil such a case. As for himself, he would undertake to do just whatever they wanted with the register, whether it was the substitution of a page or the tearing out of a page, under the very eyes of the parish clerk. "There must be," he said, "a patter suitable to the occasion. I will manage that for you. I'm afraid I can't make up as I ought for the part, because it would cost too much, but we must do without that. And now, Miss Kennedy, what is it exactly that you want me to do?"
He was disappointed on learning that there would be no "palming" of leaves, old or new, among the registers; nothing, in fact, but a simple journey, and a simple examination of the books. And though, as he confessed, he had as yet no experience in the art of falsifying parish registers, where science was concerned its interests were above those of mere morality.
What would have happened if certain things had not happened? This is a question which is seldom set on examination papers, on account of the great scope it offers to the imaginative faculty, and we all know how dangerous a thing it is to develop this side of the human mind. Many a severe historian has been spoiled by developing his imagination. But for this, Scott might have been another Alison and Thackeray a Mill. In this Stepney business the appearance of Angela certainly worked changes at once remarkable and impossible to be dissociated from her name. Thus, but for her, the unfortunate claimants must have been driven back to their own country like baffled invaders "rolling sullenly over the frontier." Nelly would have spent her whole life in the sadness of short rations and long hours, with hopeless prayers for days of fatness. Rebekah and the improvers and the dressmakers and the apprentices would have endured the like hardness. Harry would have left the joyless city to its joylessness, and returned to the regions whose skies are all sunshine—to the young and fortunate—and its pavements all of gold. And there would have been no Palace of Delight. And what would have become of Daniel Fagg, one hardly likes to think. The unlucky Daniel had, indeed, fallen upon very evil days. There seemed to be no longer a single man left whom he could ask for a subscription to his book. He had used them all up. He had sent begging letters to every Fellow of every scientific society; he had levied contributions upon every secretary; he had attacked in person every official at the museums of Great Russell Street and South Kensington; he had tried all the publishers; he had written to every bishop, nobleman, clergyman, and philanthropist of whom he could hear, pressing upon them the claims of his great Discovery. Now he could do no more. The subscriptions he had received for publishing his book were spent in necessary food and lodgings: nobody at the Museum would even see him; he got no more answers to his letters: starvation stared him in the face.
For three days he had lived upon ninepence. Threepence a day for food. Think of that, ye who are fed regularly, and fed well. Threepence, to satisfy all the cravings of an excellent appetite! There was now no more money left. And in two days more the week's rent would be due.
On the morning when he came forth, hungry and miserable, without even the penny for a loaf, it happened that Angela was standing at her upper window, on the other side of the Green, and, fortunately for the unlucky scholar that she saw him. His strange behavior made her watch him. First he looked up and down the street in uncertainty; then, as if he had business which could not be delayed a moment, he turned to the right and marched straight away toward the Mile End Road. This was because he thought he would go to the Head of the Egyptian Department at the British Museum and borrow five shillings. Then he stopped suddenly: this was because he remembered that he would have to send in his name, and that the chief would certainly refuse to see him. Then he turned slowly and walked, dragging his limbs and hanging his head in the opposite direction—because he was resolved to make for the London Docks, and drop accidentally into the sluggish green water, the first drop of which kills almost as certainly as a glass of Bourbon whiskey. Then he thought that there would be some luxury in sitting down for a few moments to think comfortably over his approaching demise, and of the noise it would make in the learned world, and how remorseful and ashamed the scholars—especially he of the Egyptian Department—would feel for the short balance of their sin-laden days, and he took a seat on a bench in the green-garden with this view. As he thought he leaned forward, staring into vacancy, and in his face there grew so dark an expression of despair and terror that Angela shuddered and ran for her hat, recollecting that she had heard of his poverty and disappointments.
"I am afraid you are not well, Mr. Fagg."
He started and looked up. In imagination he was already lying dead at the bottom of the green-water, and before his troubled mind there were floating confused images of his former life, now past and dead and gone. He saw himself in his Australian cottage arriving at his grand discovery; he was lecturing about it on a platform; he was standing on the deck of a ship, drinking farewell nobblers with an enthusiastic crowd; and he was wandering hungry, neglected, despised, about the stony streets of London.
"Well? No: I am not well," he replied presently, understanding things a little.
"Is it distress of mind or of body, Mr. Fagg?"
"Yesterday it was both; to-night it will be both; just now it is only one."
"Which one?"
"Mind," he replied fiercely, refusing to acknowledge that he was starving. He threw his hat back, dashed his subscription book to the ground, and banged the unoffending bench with his fists.
"As for mind," he went on, "it's a pity I was born with any. I wish I'd had no more mind than my neighbors. It's mind, and nothing else, that has brought me to this."
"What is this, Mr. Fagg?"
"Nothing to you. Go your ways; you are young; you have yet your hopes, which may come to nothing, same as mine; even though they are not, like mine, hopes of glory and learning. There's Mr. Goslett in love with you; what is mind to you? Nothing. And you in love with him. Very likely he'll go off with another woman, and then you'll find out what it is to be disappointed. What is mind to anybody? Nothing. Do they care for it in the Museum? No. Does the head of the Egyptian Department care for it? Not he; not a bit. It's a cruel and a selfish country."
"O Mr. Fagg!" She disregarded his allusion to herself, though it was sufficiently downright.
"Yes: but I will be revenged. I will do something—yes—something that shall tell all Australia how I have been wronged; the colony of Victoria shall ring with my story. It shall sap their loyalty; they shall grow discontented; they will import more Irishmen; there shall be separation. Yes: my friends shall demand reparation in revenge for my treatment."
"It is Christian to forgive, Mr. Fagg."
"I will forgive when I have had my revenge. No one shall say I am vindictive. Ah!"—he heaved a profound sigh. "They gave me a dinner before I came away; they drank my health; they all told me of the reception I should get, and the glory that awaited me. Look at me now. Not one penny in my pocket. Not one man who believes in the Discovery. Therefore I may truly say that it is better to be born without a brain."
"This is your subscription-book, I believe." She took and turned over its pages.
"Come, Mr. Fagg, you have come to the fifty-first copy of the book. Fifty-one copies ordered beforehand does not look like disbelief. May I add my name? That will make fifty-two. Twelve shillings and sixpence, I see. Oh, I shall look forward with the greatest interest to the appearance of the book, I assure you. Yet you must not expect of a dressmaker much knowledge of Hebrew, Mr. Fagg. You great scholars must be contented with the simple admiration of ignorant work-girls." He was too far gone in misery to be easily soothed, but he began to wish he had not said that cruel thing about possible desertion by her lover.
"Admiration!" he echoed with a hollow groan. "And yesterday nothing to eat further than threepence, and the day before the same, and the day before that. In Australia, when I was in the shoemaking line, there was always plenty to eat. Starvation, I suppose, goes to the brain. And is the cause of suicide, too. I know a beautiful place in the London Docks, where the water's green with minerals. I shall go there." He pushed his hands deeper into his pockets, while his bushy eyebrows frowned so horribly that two children who were playing in the walk screamed with terror and fled without stopping. "That water poisons a man directly."
"Come, Mr. Fagg," said Angela, "we allow something for the superior activity of great minds. But we must not talk of despair, when there should be nothing beyond a little despondency."
He shook his head.
"Too much reading has probably disordered your digestion, Mr. Fagg. You want rest and society, with sympathy—a woman's sympathy. Scholars, perhaps, are sometimes jealous."
"Reading has emptied my purse," he said. "Sympathy won't fill it."
"I do not know—sympathy is a wonderful medicine sometimes; it works miracles. I think, Mr. Fagg, you had better let me pay my subscription in advance—you can give me the change when you please."
She placed a sovereign in his hand. His fingers clutched it greedily. Then his conscience smote him—her kind words, her flattery, touched his heart.
"I cannot take it," he said. "Mr. Goslett warned me not to take your money. Besides (he gasped, and pointed to the subscription list)—fifty-one names! They've all paid their money for printing the book. I've eaten up all the money, and I shall eat up yours as well. Take the sovereign back—I can starve. When I am dead I would rather be remembered for my discovery than for a shameful devourer of subscription money."
She took him by the arm, and led him unresisting to the establishment.
"We must look after you, Mr. Fagg," she said. "Now I have got a beautiful room, where no one sits all day long except sometimes a crippled girl, and sometimes myself. In the evening the girls have it. You may bring your books there, if you like, and sit there to work when you please. And by the way"—she added this as if it were a matter of the very least consequence, hardly worth mentioning—"if you would like to join us any day at dinner (we take our simple meals at one), the girls, no doubt, will all think it a great honor to have so distinguished a scholar at table with them."
Mr. Fagg blushed with pleasure. Why—if the British Museum treated him with contumely; if nobody would subscribe to his book; if he was weary of asking and being refused—here was a haven of refuge, where he would receive some of the honor due to a scholar.
"And now that you are here, Mr. Fagg"—said Angela, when she had broken bread and given thanks—"you shall tell me all about your discovery. Because, you see, we are so ignorant, we girls of the working classes, that I do not exactly know what is your discovery."
He sat down and asked for a piece of paper. With this assistance he began his exposition.
"I was drawn to my investigation," he said solemnly, "by a little old book about the wisdom of the ancients; that is now five years ago, and I was then fifty-five years of age. No time to be lost (says I to myself) if anything is to be done. The more I read and the more I thought—I was in the shoemaking trade and I'm not ashamed to own it; for it's a fine business for such as are born with a head for thinking—the more I thought, I say, the more I was puzzled. For there seemed to me no way possible of reconciling what the scholars said."
"You have not told me the subject of your research yet."
"Antiquity," he replied grandly. "All antiquity was the subject of my research. First, I read about the Egyptians and the hieroglyphics; then I got hold of a new book, all about the Assyrians and the cuniform character."
"I see," said Angela. "You were attracted by the ancient inscriptions?"
"Naturally. Without inscriptions where are you? The scholars said this, and the scholars said that—they talked of reading the Egyptian language and the Assyrian and the Median and what not. That wouldn't do for me."
The audacity of the little man excited Angela's curiosity, which had been languid.
"Pray go on," she said.
"The scholars have the same books to go to as me, yet they don't go—they've eyes as good, but they won't use them. Now follow me, miss, and you'll be surprised. When Abraham went down into Egypt, did he understand their language, or didn't he?"
"Why, I suppose—at least, it is not said that he did not."
"Of course he did. When Joseph went there, did he understand them? Of course he did. When Jacob and his sons came into the country, did they talk a strange speech? Not they. When Solomon married an Egyptian princess, did he understand her talk? Why, of course he did. Now, do you guess what's coming next?"
"No—not at all."
"None of the scholars could. Listen, then: if they all understood each other, they must all have talked the same language—mustn't they?"
"Why, it would seem so."
"It's a sound argument, which can't be denied. Nobody can deny it—I defy them. If they understood each other there must have been a common language. Where did this common language spread? Over all the countries thereabout. What was the common language? Hebrew."
"Oh," said Angela, "then they all talked Hebrew?"
"Every man Jack—nothing else known. What next? They wanted to write it. Now we find what seems to be one character in Egypt, and another in Syria, and another in Arabia, and another in Phœnicia, and another in Judæa. Bless you! I know all about these alphabets. What I say is—if a common language, then a common alphabet to write it with."
"I see. A common alphabet, which you discovered, perhaps?"
"That, young lady, is my discovery—that is the greatest discovery of the age. I found it myself, once a small shoemaker in a little Victorian township—I alone found out that common alphabet, and have come over here to make it known. Not bad, says you, for a shoemaker, who had to teach himself his own Hebrew."
"And the scholars here——"
"They're jealous—that's what it is; they're jealous. Most of them have written books to prove other things, and they won't give in and own that they've been wrong. My word! the scholars——" He paused and shook his hand before her face. "Some of them have got the Hebrew alphabet, and try to make out how one letter is a house and another a bull's head. And so on. And some have got the cuneiforms, and they make out that one bundle of arrows is an A and another a B. And so on. And some have got the hieroglyphic, and it's the same game with all. While I—if you please—with my little plain discovery just show that all the different alphabets—different to outward seeming—are really one and the same."
"This is very interesting," said Angela. The little man was glowing with enthusiasm and pride. He was transformed; he walked up and down throwing about his arms; he stood before her looking almost tall; his eyes flashed with fire, and his voice was strong. "And can you read inscriptions by your simple alphabet?"
"There is not," he replied, "a single inscription in the British Museum that I can't read. I just sit down before it, with my Hebrew dictionary in my hand—I didn't tell you I learned Hebrew on purpose, did I?—and I read that inscription, however long it is. Ah!"
"This seems extraordinary. Can you show me your alphabet?"
He sat down and began to make figures.
"What is the simplest figure? A circle; a square; a naught? No. A triangle. Very good, then. Do you think they were such fools as to copy a great ugly bull's head when they'd got a triangle ready to their hands, and easy to draw? Not they: they just made a triangle—so—" [he drew an equilateral triangle on its base], "and called it the first letter; and two triangles, one atop the other—so—and called that the second letter. Then they struck their triangle in another position, and it was the third letter; and in another, and its fourth——" Angela felt as if her head was swimming as he manipulated his triangles, and rapidly produced his primitive alphabet, which really did present some resemblance to the modern symbols. "There—and there—and there—and what is that; and this? And so you've got the whole. Now, young lady, with this in your hand, which is the key to all learning—and the Hebrew dictionary, there's nothing you can't manage."
"And an account of this is to be given in your book, is it?"
"That is the secret of my book. Now you know what it was I found out; now you see why my friends paid my passage home, and are now looking for the glory which they prophesied."
"Don't get gloomy again, Mr. Fagg. It is a long lane, you know, that has no turning. Let us hope for better luck."
"No one will ever know," he went on, "the inscriptions that I have found—and read—in the Museum. They don't know what they've got. I've told nobody yet, but they are all in the book, and I'll tell you beforehand, Miss Kennedy, because you've been kind to me. Yes, a woman is best; I ought to have gone to the woman first. I would marry you, Miss Kennedy—I would indeed; but—I am too old, and besides, I don't think I could afford a family."
"I thank you, Mr. Fagg, all the same. You do me a great honor. But about these inscriptions?"
"Mind, it's a secret." He lowered his voice to a whisper. "There's cuniform inscriptions in the Museum with David and Jonathan on them—ah!—and Balaam and Balak—Aho!"—he positively chuckled over the thought of these great finds—"and the whole life of Jezebel—Jezebel! What do you think of that? And what else do you think they have got, only they don't know it? The two tables of stone! Nothing short of the two tables, with the Ten Commandments written out at length!"
Angela gazed with amazement at this admirable man: his faith in himself; his audacity; the grandeur of his conceptions; the wonderful power of his imagination overwhelmed her. But, to be sure, she had never before met a genuine enthusiast.
"I know where they are kept; nobody else knows. It is in a dark corner; they are each about two feet high, and there's a hole in the corner of each for Moses' thumb to hold them by. Think of that! I've read them all through—only," he added with a look of bewilderment, "I think there must be something wrong with my Hebrew dictionary, because none of the commandments read quite right. One or two come out quite surprising. Yet the stones must be right, mustn't they? There can be no question about that, and the discovery must be right. No question about that. And as for the dictionaries—who put them together? Tell me that! Yah! the scholars!"