The season over, the song-birds flown, summer on the wane, his picture, the "Moon-Dial," sent to Moses Lyon's (the picture-dealer in Conduit Street), Little Billee felt the time had come to go and see his mother and sister in Devonshire, and make the sun shine twice as brightly for them during a month or so, and the dew fall softer!

So one fine August morning found him at the Great Western Station--the nicest station in all London, I think--except the stations that book you to France and far away.

It always seems so pleasant to be going west! Little Billee loved that station, and often went there for a mere stroll, to watch the people starting on their westward way, following the sun towards Heaven knows what joys or sorrows, and envy them their sorrows or their joys--any sorrows or joys that were not merely physical, like a chocolate drop or a pretty tune, a bad smell or a toothache.

And as he took a seat in a second-cla.s.s carriage (it would be third in these democratic days), south corner, back to the engine, with _Silas Marner_, and Darwin's _Origin of Species_ (which he was reading for the third time), and _Punch_, and other literature of a lighter kind, to beguile him on his journey, he felt rather bitterly how happy he could be if the little spot, or knot, or blot, or clot which paralyzed that convolution of his brain where he kept his affections could but be conjured away!

The dearest mother, the dearest sister in the world, in the dearest little sea-side village (or town) that ever was! and other dear people--especially Alice, sweet Alice with hair so brown, his sister's friend, the simple, pure, and pious maiden of his boyish dreams: and himself, but for that wretched little kill-joy cerebral occlusion, as sound, as healthy, as full of life and energy as he had ever been!

[Ill.u.s.tration: CUP-AND-BALL]

And when he wasn't reading _Silas Marner_, or looking out of window at the flying landscape, and watching it revolve round its middle distance (as it always seems to do), he was sympathetically taking stock of his fellow-pa.s.sengers, and mildly envying them, one after another, indiscriminately!

A fat, old, wheezy philistine, with a bulbous nose and only one eye, who had a plain, sickly daughter, to whom he seemed devoted, body and soul; an old lady, who still wept furtively at recollections of the parting with her grandchildren, which had taken place at the station (they had borne up wonderfully, as grandchildren do); a consumptive curate, on the opposite corner seat by the window, whose tender, anxious wife (sitting by his side) seemed to have no thoughts in the whole world but for him; and her patient eyes were his stars of consolation, since he turned to look into them almost every minute, and always seemed a little the happier for doing so. There is no better star-gazing than that!

So Little Billee gave her up _his_ corner seat, that the poor sufferer might have those stars where he could look into them comfortably without turning his head.

Indeed (as was his wont with everybody), Little Billee made himself useful and pleasant to his fellow-travellers in many ways--so many that long before they had reached their respective journeys' ends they had almost grown to love him as an old friend, and longed to know who this singularly attractive and brilliant youth, this genial, dainty, benevolent little princekin could possibly be, who was dressed so fashionably, and yet went second cla.s.s, and took such kind thought of others; and they wondered at the happiness that must be his at merely being alive, and told him more of their troubles in six hours than they told many an old friend in a year.

But he told them nothing about himself--that self he was so sick of--and left them to wonder.

And at his own journey's end, the farthest end of all, he found his mother and sister waiting for him, in a beautiful little pony-carriage--his last gift--and with them sweet Alice, and in her eyes, for one brief moment, that unconscious look of love surprised which is not to be forgotten for years and years and years--which can only be seen by the eyes that meet it, and which, for the time it lasts (just a flash), makes all women's eyes look exactly the same (I'm told): and it seemed to Little Billee that, for the twentieth part of a second, Alice had looked at him with Trilby's eyes--or his mother's, when that he was a little tiny boy.

It all but gave him the thrill he thirsted for! Another twentieth part of a second, perhaps, and his brain-trouble would have melted away; and Little Billee would have come into his own again--the kingdom of love!

A beautiful human eye! _Any_ beautiful eye--a dog's, a deer's, a donkey's, an owl's even! To think of all that it can look, and all that it can see! all that it can even _seem_, sometimes! What a prince among gems! what a star!

But a beautiful eye that lets the broad white light of infinite s.p.a.ce (so bewildering and garish and diffused) into one pure virgin heart, to be filtered there! and lets it out again, duly warmed, softened, concentrated, sublimated, focussed to a point as in a precious stone, that it may shed itself (a love-laden effulgence) into some stray fellow-heart close by--through pupil and iris, entre quatre-z-yeux--the very elixir of life!

Alas! that such a crown-jewel should ever lose its l.u.s.tre and go blind!

Not so blind or dim, however, but it can still see well enough to look before and after, and inward and upward, and drown itself in tears, and yet not die! And that's the dreadful pity of it. And this is a quite uncalled-for digression; and I can't think why I should have gone out of my way (at considerable pains) to invent it! In fact--

"Of this here song, should I be axed the reason for to show, I don't exactly know, I don't exactly know!

_But all my fancy dwells upon Nancy._" ...

"How pretty Alice has grown, mother! quite lovely, I think! and so nice; but she was always as nice as she could be!"

So observed Little Billee to his mother that evening as they sat in the garden and watched the crescent moon sink to the Atlantic.

"Ah! my darling Willie! If you _could_ only guess how happy you would make your poor old mammy by growing fond of Alice.... And Blanche, too!

what a joy for _her_!"

"Good heavens! mother.... Alice is not for the likes of _me_! She's for some splendid young Devon squire, six foot high, and acred and whiskered within an inch of his life!..."

"Ah, my darling Willie! you are not of those who ask for love in vain.... If you only _knew_ how she believes in you! She almost beats your poor old mammy at _that_!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: SWEET ALICE]

And that night he dreamed of Alice--that he loved her as a sweet good woman should be loved; and knew, even in his dream, that it was but a dream; but, oh! it was good! and he managed not to wake; and it was a night to be marked with a white stone! And (still in his dream) she had kissed him, and healed him of his brain-trouble forever. But when he woke next morning, alas! his brain-trouble was with him still, and he felt that no dream kiss would ever cure it--nothing but a real kiss from Alice's own pure lips!

And he rose thinking of Alice, and dressed and breakfasted thinking of her--and how fair she was, and how innocent, and how well and carefully trained up the way she should go--the beau ideal of a wife.... Could she possibly care for a shrimp like himself?

For in his love of outward form he could not understand that any woman who had eyes to see should ever quite condone the signs of physical weakness in man, in favor of any mental gifts or graces whatsoever.

Little Greek that he was, he worshipped the athlete, and opined that all women without exception--all English women especially--must see with the same eyes as himself.

He had once been vain and weak enough to believe in Trilby's love (with a Taffy standing by--a careless, unsusceptible Taffy, who was like unto the G.o.ds of Olympus!)--and Trilby had given him up at a word, a hint--for all his frantic clinging.

She would not have given up Taffy, _pour si peu_, had Taffy but lifted a little finger! It is always "just whistle, and I'll come to you, my lad!" with the likes of Taffy ... but Taffy hadn't even whistled! Yet still he kept thinking of Alice--and he felt he couldn't think of her well enough till he went out for a stroll by himself on a sheep-trimmed down. So he took his pipe and his Darwin, and out he strolled into the early sunshine--up the green Red Lane, past the pretty church, Alice's father's church--and there, at the gate, patiently waiting for his mistress, sat Alice's dog--an old friend of his, whose welcome was a very warm one.

Little Billee thought of Thackeray's lovely poem in _Pendennis_:

"She comes--she's here--she's past!

May heaven go with her!..."

Then he and the dog went on together to a little bench on the edge of the cliff--within sight of Alice's bedroom window. It was called "the Honeymooners' Bench."

"That look--that look--that look! Ah--but Trilby had looked like that, too! And there are many Taffys in Devon!"

He sat himself down and smoked and gazed at the sea below, which the sun (still in the east) had not yet filled with glare and robbed of the lovely sapphire-blue, shot with purple and dark green, that comes over it now and again of a morning on that most beautiful coast.

There was a fresh breeze from the west, and the long, slow billows broke into creamier foam than ever, which reflected itself as a tender white gleam in the blue concavities of their shining sh.o.r.eward curves as they came rolling in. The sky was all of turquoise but for the smoke of a distant steamer--a long thin horizontal streak of dun--and there were little brown or white sails here and there, dotting; and the stately ships went on....

Little Billee tried hard to feel all this beauty with his heart as well as his brain--as he had so often done when a boy--and cursed his insensibility out loud for at least the thousand and first time.

Why couldn't these waves of air and water be turned into equivalent waves of sound, that he might feel them through the only channel that reached his emotions! That one joy was still left to him--but, alas!

alas! he was only a painter of pictures--and not a maker of music!

He recited "Break, break, break," to Alice's dog, who loved him, and looked up into his face with sapient, affectionate eyes--and whose name, like that of so many dogs in fiction and so few in fact, was simply Tray. For Little Billee was much given to monologues out loud, and profuse quotations from his favorite bards.

Everybody quoted that particular poem either mentally or aloud when they sat on that particular bench--except a few old-fashioned people, who still said,

"Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!"

or people of the very highest culture, who only quoted the nascent (and crescent) Robert Browning; or people of no culture at all, who simply held their tongues--and only felt the more!

Tray listened silently.

"Ah, Tray, the best thing but one to do with the sea is to paint it. The next best thing to that is to bathe in it. The best of all is to lie asleep at the bottom. How would _you_ like that?

"'And on thy ribs the limpet sticks, And in thy heart the scrawl shall play....'"

Tray's tail became as a wagging point of interrogation, and he turned his head first on one side and then on the other--his eyes fixed on Little Billee's, his face irresistible in its genial doggy wistfulness.

"Tray, what a singularly good listener you are--and therefore what singularly good manners you've got! I suppose all dogs have!" said Little Billee; and then, in a very tender voice, he exclaimed,