The Book-Bills of Narcissus | Page 6

a game of dominoes, and one huge quart pot of ale, used among them as woman in the early world, was a grateful inglenook, indeed, wherein to close the day. Of course, friend N. joined them, and took his pull and paid his round, like a Walt Whitman. I like to think of his slight figure amongst them; his delicate, almost girl-like, profile against theirs; his dreamy eyes and pale brow, surmounted by one of those dark clusters of hair in which the fingers of women love to creep--an incongruity, though of surfaces only, which certain who knew him but 'by sight,' as the phrase is, might be at a loss to understand. That was one of the surprises of his constitution. Nature had given him the dainty and dreamy form of the artist, to which habit had added a bookish touch, ending in a tout ensemble of gentleness and distinction with little apparent affinity to a scene like that in the 'Traveller's Rest.' But there are many whom a suspicion of the dilettante in such an exterior belies, and Narcissus was one of them. He had very strongly developed that instinct of manner to which sympathy is a daily courtesy, and he thus readily, when it suited him, could take the complexion of his company, and his capacity of 'bend' was well-nigh genius. Of course, all this is but to say that he was a gentleman; yet is not that in itself a fine kind of originality? Besides, he had a genuine appetite for the things of earth, such as many another delicate thing--a damask rose-bush, for example--must be convicted of too; and often, when some one has asked him 'what he could have in common with so-and-so,' I have heard him answer: 'Tobacco and beer.' Samuel Dale once described him as Shelley with a chin; and perhaps the chin accounted for the absence of any of those sentimental scruples with regard to beefsteaks and certain varieties of jokes, for which the saint-like deserter of Harriet Westbrook was distinguished.
A supremely quaint instance of this gift of accommodation befell during that same holiday, which should not pass unrecorded, but which I offer to the Reader with an emphatic Honi soit qui mal y pense. Despairing of reaching a certain large manufacturing town on foot in time to put up there, one evening, he was doing the last mile or two by rail, and, as the train slackened speed he turned to his companions in the carriage to enquire if they could tell him of a good hotel. He had but carelessly noticed them before: an old man, a slight young woman of perhaps thirty, and a girl about fifteen; working people, evidently, but marked by that air of cleanly poverty which in some seems but a touch of ascetic refinement. The young woman at once mentioned The Bull, and thereupon a little embarrassed consultation in undertone seemed to pass between her and the old man, resulting in a timid question as to whether Narcissus would mind putting up with them, as they were poor folk, and could well do with any little he cared to offer for his accommodation. There was something of a sad winningness in the woman which had predisposed him to the group, and without hesitation he at once accepted, and soon was walking with them to their home, through streets echoing with Lancashire 'clogs.' On the way he learnt the circumstances of his companions. The young woman was a widow, and the girl her daughter. Both worked through the day at one of the great cotton mills, while the old man, father and grandfather, stayed at home and 'fended' for them. Thus they managed to live in a comfort which, though straitened, did not deny them such an occasional holiday as to-day had been, or the old man the comfort of tobacco. The home was very small, but clean and sweet; and it was not long before they were all sat down together over a tea of wholesome bread and butter and eggs, in the preparation of which it seemed odd to see the old man taking his share. That over, he and Narcissus sat to smoke and talk of the neighbouring countryside; N. on the look-out for folk-lore, and especially for any signs in his companion of a lingering loyalty of belief in the traditions thereabout, a loyalty which had something in it of a sacred duty to him in those days. Those were the days when he still turned to the east a-Sundays, and went out in the early morning, with Herrick under his arm, to gather May-dew, with a great uplifting of the spirit, in what indeed was a very real act of worship.
But to my story! As bedtime approached Narcissus could not