Mike Fletcher | Page 9

have loved her, and if what Harding says is right, that there is more truth in what we think than in what we do, I'm sure you might say that you had been on a wedding-tour with one of the gargoyles."
Mike laughed; and Frank did not suspect that he had annoyed him. Mike's mother was a Frenchwoman, whom John Fletcher had met in Dublin and had pressed into a sudden marriage. At the end of three years of married life she had been forced to leave him, and strange were the legends of the profanities of that bed. She fled one day, taking her son with her. Fletcher did not even inquire where she had gone; and when at her death Mike returned to Ireland, he found his father in a small lodging-house playing the flute. Scarcely deigning to turn his head, he said--"Oh! is that you, Mike?--sit down."
At his father's death, Mike had sold the lease of the farm for three hundred pounds, and with that sum and a volume of verse he went to London. When he had published his poems he wrote two comedies. His efforts to get them produced led him into various society. He was naturally clever at cards, and one night he won three hundred pounds. Journalism he had of course dabbled in--he was drawn towards it by his eager impatient nature; he was drawn from it by his gluttonous and artistic nature. Only ten pounds for an article, whereas a successful "bridge" brought him ten times that amount, and he revolted against the column of platitudes that the hours whelmed in oblivion. There had been times, however, when he had been obliged to look to journalism for daily bread. The Spectator, always open to young talent, had published many of his poems; the Saturday had welcomed his paradoxes and strained eloquence; but whether he worked or whether he idled he never wanted money. He was one of those men who can always find five pounds in the streets of London.
We meet Mike in his prime--in his twenty-ninth year--a man of various capabilities, which an inveterate restlessness of temperament had left undeveloped--a man of genius, diswrought with passion, occasionally stricken with ambition.
"Let me have those glasses. There she is! I am sure it is she--there, leaning against the Embankment. Yes, yes, it is she. Look at her. I should know her figure among a thousand--those frail shoulders, that little waist; you could break her like a reed. How sweet she is on that background of flowing water, boats, wharfs, and chimneys; it all rises about her like a dream, and all is as faint upon the radiant air as a dream upon happy sleep. So she is coming to see me. She will keep her promise. I shall love her. I feel at last that love is near me. Supposing I were to marry her?"
"Why shouldn't you marry her if you love her? That is to say, if this is more than one of your ordinary caprices, spiced by the fact that its object is a nun."
The men looked at each other for a moment doubtful. Then Mike laughed.
"I hope I don't love her too much, that is all. But perhaps she will not come. Why is she standing there?"
"I should laugh if she turned on her heel and walked away right under your very nose."
A cloud passed over Mike's face.
"That's not possible," he said, and he raised the glass. "If I thought there was any chance of that I should go down to see her."
"You couldn't force her to come up. She seems to be admiring the view."
Then Lily left the embankment and turned towards the Temple.
"She is coming!" Mike cried, and laying down the opera-glass he took up the scent and squirted it about the room. "You won't make much noise, like a good fellow, will you? I shall tell her I am here alone."
"I shall make no noise--I shall finish my article. I am expecting Lizzie about four; I will slip out and meet her in the street. Good-bye."
Mike went to the head of the staircase, and looking down the prodigious height, he waited. It occurred to him that if he fell, the emparadised hour would be lost for ever. If she were to pass through the Temple without stopping at No. 2! The sound of little feet and the colour of a heliotrope skirt dispersed his fears, and he watched her growing larger as she mounted each flight of stairs; when she stopped to take breath, he thought of running down and carrying her up in his arms, but he did not move, and she did not see him until the last flight.
"Here you are at last!"
"I am afraid I have kept you waiting. I was not certain whether I