"Did oo get the place?" said Bruno.

"Sad to say, Your Royal Highness, I did not! So I had to take a situation as--as Waiter, which I have now held for some years haven't I?" He again glanced at Lady Muriel.

"Sylvie dear, do help me to b.u.t.ton this glove!" Lady Muriel whispered, hastily stooping down, and failing to hear the question.

"And what will oo be next?" said Bruno.

"My next place will, I hope, be that of Groom. And after that--"

"Don't puzzle the child so!" Lady Muriel interrupted. "What nonsense you talk!"

"--after that," Eric persisted, "I hope to obtain the situation of Housekeeper, which--Fourth Act!" he proclaimed, with a sudden change of tone. "Lights turned up. Red lights. Green lights. Distant rumble heard.

Enter a pa.s.senger-train!"

And in another minute the train drew up alongside of the platform, and a stream of pa.s.sengers began to flow out from the booking office and waiting-rooms.

"Did you ever make real life into a drama?" said the Earl. "Now just try. I've often amused myself that way. Consider this platform as our stage. Good entrances and exits on both sides, you see. Capital background scene: real engine moving up and down. All this bustle, and people pa.s.sing to and fro, must have been most carefully rehea.r.s.ed! How naturally they do it! With never a glance at the audience! And every grouping is quite fresh, you see. No repet.i.tion!"

It really was admirable, as soon as I began to enter into it from this point of view. Even a porter pa.s.sing, with a barrow piled with luggage, seemed so realistic that one was tempted to applaud. He was followed by an angry mother, with hot red face, dragging along two screaming children, and calling, to some one behind, "John! Come on!" Enter John, very meek, very silent, and loaded with parcels. And he was followed, in his turn, by a frightened little nursemaid, carrying a fat baby, also screaming. All the children screamed.

"Capital byplay!" said the old man aside. "Did you notice the nursemaid's look of terror? It was simply perfect!"

"You have struck quite a new vein," I said. "To most of us Life and its pleasures seem like a mine that is nearly worked out."

"Worked out!" exclaimed the Earl. "For any one with true dramatic instincts, it is only the Overture that is ended! The real treat has yet to begin. You go to a theatre, and pay your ten shillings for a stall, and what do you get for your money? Perhaps it's a dialogue between a couple of farmers--unnatural in their overdone caricature of farmers'

dress---more unnatural in their constrained att.i.tudes and gestures--most unnatural in their attempts at ease and geniality in their talk. Go instead and take a seat in a third-cla.s.s railway-carriage, and you'll get the same dialogue done to the life! Front-seats--no orchestra to block the view--and nothing to pay!"

"Which reminds me," said Eric. "There is nothing to pay on receiving a telegram! Shall we enquire for one?" And he and Lady Muriel strolled off in the direction of the Telegraph-Office.

"I wonder if Shakespeare had that thought in his mind," I said, "when he wrote 'All the world's a stage'?"

The old man sighed. "And so it is," he said, "look at it as you will.

Life is indeed a drama; a drama with but few encores--and no bouquets!"

he added dreamily. "We spend one half of it in regretting the things we did in the other half!"

"And the secret of enjoying it," he continued, resuming his cheerful tone, "is intensity!"

"But not in the modern aesthetic sense, I presume? Like the young lady, in Punch, who begins a conversation with 'Are you intense?'"

"By no means!" replied the Earl. "What I mean is intensity of thought--a concentrated attention. We lose half the pleasure we might have in Life, by not really attending. Take any instance you like: it doesn't matter how trivial the pleasure may be--the principle is the same. Suppose A and B are reading the same second-rate circulating-library novel. A never troubles himself to master the relationships of the characters, on which perhaps all the interest of the story depends: he 'skips' over all the descriptions of scenery, and every pa.s.sage that looks rather dull: he doesn't half attend to the pa.s.sages he does read: he goes on reading merely from want of resolution to find another occupation--for hours after he ought to have put the book aside: and reaches the 'FINIS' in a state of utter weariness and depression! B puts his whole soul into the thing--on the principle that 'whatever is worth doing is worth doing well': he masters the genealogies: he calls up pictures before his 'mind's eye' as he reads about the scenery: best of all, he resolutely shuts the book at the end of some chapter, while his interest is yet at its keenest, and turns to other subjects; so that, when next he allows himself an hour at it, it is like a hungry man sitting down to dinner: and, when the book is finished, he returns to the work of his daily life like 'a giant refreshed'!"

"But suppose the book were really rubbish--nothing to repay attention?"

"Well, suppose it," said the Earl. "My theory meets that case, I a.s.sure you! A never finds out that it is rubbish, but maunders on to the end, trying to believe he's enjoying himself. B quietly shuts the book, when he's read a dozen pages, walks off to the Library, and changes it for a better! I have yet another theory for adding to the enjoyment of Life--that is, if I have not exhausted your patience? I'm afraid you find me a very garrulous old man."

"No indeed!" I exclaimed earnestly. And indeed I felt as if one could not easily tire of the sweet sadness of that gentle voice.

"It is, that we should learn to take our pleasures quickly, and our pains slowly."

"But why? I should have put it the other way, myself."

"By taking artificial pain--which can be as trivial as you please--slowly, the result is that, when real pain comes, however severe, all you need do is to let it go at its ordinary pace, and it's over in a moment!"

"Very true," I said, "but how about the pleasure?"

"Why, by taking it quick, you can get so much more into life. It takes you three hours and a half to hear and enjoy an opera. Suppose I can take it in, and enjoy it, in half-an-hour. Why, I can enjoy seven operas, while you are listening; to one!"

"Always supposing you have an orchestra capable of playing them," I said. "And that orchestra has yet to be found!"

The old man smiled. "I have heard an 'air played," he said, "and by no means a short one--played right through, variations and all, in three seconds!"

"When? And how?" I asked eagerly, with a half-notion that I was dreaming again.

"It was done by a little musical-box," he quietly replied. "After it had been wound up, the regulator, or something, broke, and it ran down, as I said, in about three seconds. But it must have played all the notes, you know!"

"Did you enjoy it? I asked, with all the severity of a cross-examining barrister.

"No, I didn't!" he candidly confessed. "But then, you know, I hadn't been trained to that kind of music!"

"I should much like to try your plan," I said, and, as Sylvie and Bruno happened to run up to us at the moment, I left them to keep the Earl company, and strolled along the platform, making each person and event play its part in an extempore drama for my especial benefit. "What, is the Earl tired of you already?" I said, as the children ran past me.

"No!" Sylvie replied with great emphasis. "He wants the evening-paper.

So Bruno's going to be a little news-boy!"

"Mind you charge a good price for it!" I called after them.

Returning up the platform, I came upon Sylvie alone. "Well, child,"

I said, "where's your little news-boy? Couldn't he get you an evening-paper?"

"He went to get one at the book-stall at the other side," said Sylvie; "and he's coming across the line with it--oh, Bruno, you ought to cross by the bridge!" for the distant thud, thud, of the Express was already audible.

Suddenly a look of horror came over her face. "Oh, he's fallen down on the rails!" she cried, and darted past me at a speed that quite defied the hasty effort I made to stop her.

But the wheezy old Station-Master happened to be close behind me: he wasn't good for much, poor old man, but he was good for this; and, before I could turn round, he had the child clasped in his arms, saved from the certain death she was rushing to. So intent was I in watching this scene, that I hardly saw a flying figure in a light grey suit, who shot across from the back of the platform, and was on the line in another second. So far as one could take note of time in such a moment of horror, he had about ten clear seconds, before the Express would be upon him, in which to cross the rails and to pick up Bruno. Whether he did so or not it was quite impossible to guess: the next thing one knew was that the Express had pa.s.sed, and that, whether for life or death, all was over. When the cloud of dust had cleared away, and the line was once more visible, we saw with thankful hearts that the child and his deliverer were safe.

"All right!" Eric called to us cheerfully, as he recrossed the line.

"He's more frightened than hurt!"

{Image...Crossing the line}

He lifted the little fellow up into Lady Muriel's arms, and mounted the platform as gaily as if nothing had happened: but he was as pale as death, and leaned heavily on the arm I hastily offered him, fearing he was about to faint. "I'll just--sit down a moment--" he said dreamily: "--where's Sylvie?"

Sylvie ran to him, and flung her arms round his neck, sobbing as if her heart would break. "Don't do that, my darling!" Eric murmured, with a strange look in his eyes. "Nothing to cry about now, you know. But you very nearly got yourself killed for nothing!"

"For Bruno!" the little maiden sobbed. "And he would have done it for me. Wouldn't you, Bruno?"

"Course I would!" Bruno said, looking round with a bewildered air.

Lady Muriel kissed him in silence as she put him down out of her arms.