George bent forward. "Tobacco," he announced.

"My nose informed me. My eyes affirm. Yours?"

"I am afraid so."

"My simple rule. In the vegetable garden you may smoke; here you may not. Is it so hard to observe?"

"I quite forgot myself."

Mr. Marrapit cried: "Adjust that impression. You forgot me.

Consistently you forget me. My desires, my interests are nothing to you."

"It's a rotten thing to make a fuss about."

"That is why I make a fuss. It _is_ a rotten thing. A disgusting and a noisome thing. Bury it."

Into a bed of soft mould George struck a sullen heel; kicked the tobacco towards the pit. Mr. Marrapit chanted over the obsequies: "I provide you with the enormous expanse of my vegetable garden in which to smoke. Yet upon my little acre you intrude. I am Naboth."

Ahab straightened his back; sighed heavily. Naboth started against the p.r.i.c.k of a sudden recollection:

"I had forgotten. Your examination?"

George half turned away. The bitterest moment of a sad day was come.

He growled:

"Pipped."

"_Pipped?_"

"Pilled."

"_Pilled?_"

"Spun."

"_Spun?"_

"Three months."

Mr. Marrapit put his hands to his head: "I shall go mad. My brain reels beneath these conundrums. I implore English."

The confession of defeat is a thousandfold more bitter when made to unkind ears. George paled a little; spoke very clearly: "I failed. I was referred for three months."

"I am Job," groaned Mr. Marrapit. "I expected this. The strain is unendurable. It is unnatural. The next chance shall be your last. What is the fee for re-examination?"

"Five guineas."

"My G.o.d!" said Mr. Marrapit.

He tottered away up the path.

CHAPTER II

Excursions In Melancholy.

I.

Gloom brooded over Herons' Holt that evening. Gloom hung thickly about the rooms: blanketed conversation; veiled eyes that might have sparkled; choked appet.i.tes.

Nevertheless this was an atmosphere in which one member of the household felt most comfortable.

Margaret, Mr. Marrapit's only child, was nineteen; of sallow complexion, pet.i.te, pretty; with large brown eyes in which sat always a constant quest--an entreaty, a wistful yearning.

Hers was a clinging nature, readily responsive to the attraction of any stouter mind. Enthusiasm was in this girl, but it lay well-like-- not as a spring. To stir it the influence of another was wanted; of itself, spontaneous, it could not leap. Aroused, there was no rush and surge of emotion--it welled, rose deeply; thickly, without ripple; crestless, flinging no intoxicating spume. Waves rush triumphant, hurtling forward the stick they support: the pool swells, leaving the stick quiescent, floating.

Many persons have this order of enthusiasm; it is a clammy thing to attract. A curate with a glimpse at Sh.e.l.ley's mind once roused Margaret's enthusiasm for the poet. It welled so suffocatingly about him that he came near to d.a.m.ning Sh.e.l.ley and all his works; threw up his hat when opportunity put out a beckoning finger and drew him elsewhere.

Margaret walked in considerable fear of her father; but she clung to him despite his oppressive foibles, because this was her nature. She loved church; incense; soft music; a prayer-book tastefully bound. She "wrote poetry."

Warmed by the gloom that lay over Herons' Holt upon this evening, she sat brooding upon her cousin George's failure until a beautiful picture was hatched. He had gone to his room directly after dinner; during the meal had not spoken. She imagined him seated on his bed, hands deep in pockets, chin sunk, brow knitted, wrestling with that old devil despair. She knew that latterly he had worked tremendously hard. He had told her before the examination how confident of success he was, had revealed how much in the immediate prospect of freedom he gloried. She recalled his gay laugh as he had bade her good-bye on the first day, and the recollection stung her just as, she reflected, it must now be stinging him.... Only he must a thousand times more fiercely be feeling the burn of its venom....

Margaret moved impatiently with a desire to shake into herself a profounder sense of her cousin's misfortune. By ten she was plunged in a most pleasing melancholy.

II.

She was of those who are by nature morbid; who deceive themselves if they imagine they have enjoyment from the recreations that provoke lightness of heart in the majority. Only the surface of their spirits ripples under such breezes; to stir the whole, to produce the counterpart of a hearty laugh in your vigorous animal, a feast on melancholy must be provided. This is a quality that is common among the lower cla.s.ses who find their greatest happiness in funerals. The sombre trappings; white handkerchiefs against black dresses; tears; the mystery of gloom--these trickle with a warm glow through all their senses. They are as aroused by grief, unpleasant to the majority, as the drunkard is quickened by wine, to many abhorrent.

Thus it was with Margaret, and to her the shroud of melancholy in which she was now wrapped brought an added boon--arrayed in it she was best able to make her verses. Not of necessity sad little verses; many of her brightest were conceived in profoundest gloom. With a pang at the heart she could be most merry--tinkling out her laughing little lines just as martyrs could breathe a calm because, rather than spite of, they were devilishly racked.

III.

But this was no hour for tinkling lines. A ma.n.u.script returned by the last post emphasised her gloom.

Kissing her father good-night, Margaret crept to her room, aching with desire to write.

She undressed, read a portion of the _Imitation_, then to her table by the open window.

Two hours brought relief. Margaret placed her poem in an envelope against its presentation to George in the morning, then from her window leaned.

From her thoughts at once George sped; they rushed across the sleeping fields to cling about the person of that Mr. William Wyvern who had spoken of Mr. Marrapit as reminding him of a minor prophet--shaved.