Chapter VII: On the Bridge

There was one walk of which Minola Grey was especially fond, and which she loved to enjoy alone. It led by a particular track through Regent's Park, avoiding for the most part the frequented paths, and bringing her at one time to the summit of a little mound or knoll, from which she could look across broad fields where sheep were grazing, and through clumps of trees and over hedges, and from which, by a happy peculiarity, all sight of the beaten and dusty avenues of the park was shut out. The view from this little eminence was perhaps most beautiful on a moist and misty day. There the soft, loving, artistic breath of the rain-charged clouds breathed tenderly on the landscape, and effaced any of the harsher, or meaner, or in any way more prosaic details. There the gazer only saw a noble expanse of delicious green grass and darker hedgerows, and trees of dun and gray, and softly-mottled moss-grown trunks, and here and there a bed of flowers, and all under a silver-gray atmosphere that almost seemed to dissolve while the eye rested on it. When Minola had looked long enough on the scene opening below the mound, she then usually pursued her course by devious ways until she reached one of the bridges of the canal, and there she made another halting place. The scene from the canal-bridge, unlike that from the mound, looked best on a bright, breezy day, of quick changing lights and shadows. There the brown water of the canal sparkled and gladdened in the sun, and Minola, leaning over the little bridge, and fixing her eyes on the water as it rippled past the nearer bank, might enjoy, for the hour, the full sensation of one who floats in a boat along a stream, and watches the trees and grasses of the shore. The place was quiet enough, and rich enough in trees and shrubs, and little reeds quivering out of the water, to seem, at least in Minola's pleased eyes, like a spot on the bank of the canal far in the country, while yet there was to her the peculiar and keen delight of knowing herself in London. Sometimes, too, a canal boat came gliding along, steered by a stalwart and sunburnt woman in a great straw bonnet, and the boat and the woman brought wild and delicious ideas of far-off country places, with woods and gipsies, and fresh, half savage, half poetic life. Minola extracted beautiful pictures and much poetry and romance from that little bridge over the discolored canal, creeping through the heart of London.

The population of London--even its idlers--usually move along in tracks and grooves. Where some go, others go; where few go, at last none go. It is wonderful what hours of almost absolute solitude Minola was able to enjoy in the midst of Regent's Park. Voices, indeed, constantly reached her: the cries and laughter of children, the shoutings of cricketers, the dulled clamor of the metropolis itself. These reached her as did the bleating of sheep and the tinkle of their bells, the barking of dogs, and occasionally the fierce, hoarse, thrilling growl or roar of some disturbed or impatient animal in the Zoölogical Gardens near at hand. But many and many a time Minola lounged for half an hour on her little knoll or on her chosen bridge, without seeing more of man or woman than of the lions in their cages on the other side of the enclosure. There was a particular hour of the day, too, when the park in general was especially deserted, and it appears almost needless to say that this was the time selected usually by Miss Grey for her rambles. It was sometimes a curious, half sensuous pleasure for her thus alone, amid the murmur of the trees, to fancy herself, for the moment, back again within sight of the mausoleum at Keeton, where she had spent so many weary and solitary hours, and then, awaking, to rejoice anew in her freedom and in London.

It was a fortunate and kindly destiny which assigned to our heroine a poetess for a companion. Much as she loved occasional solitude, Minola loved still better the spirit of fidelity to the obligations of true _camaraderie_, and if Miss Blanchet had had any manner of work to do, from the mending of a stocking to the teaching of a school, in which Minola could possibly have assisted her, Minola would never have thought of leaving her to do the work alone. Or even if Miss Blanchet had work to do in which Minola could not have helped her, but to which her presence would be any manner of encouragement, Minola would have stayed with her, and never dreamed of play while her companion had to be at work. But we may safely appeal to all the poets of all time to say whether anybody ever desired companionship while engaged in the composition of poetry. Sappho herself could have well dispensed with the society of Phaon at such a moment. It is true that Corinne threw off some of her grandest effusions in full face of an admiring crowd, and recited them not only with Lord Nelvil, but at him. Corinne, however, was of the improvisatrice class, to which Mary Blanchet did not profess to belong; and we own, moreover, to a constant suspicion that Corinne must have sat up late for many previous nights getting her improvisations by heart. At all events Miss Blanchet was not Corinne, and required seclusion, and much thought, and comparison of rhymes, and even looking out in dictionaries, in order to the composition of her poems. At the present time Minola was well aware that her friend had a new collection of poems on hand, and that the poems would be churned off with less difficulty if the author were occasionally left to herself for an hour or two. Therefore Minola was free to go into Regent's Park, with untroubled conscience and light heart. The woman who was not a poet revelled in the rustling branches and the sight of the soft grass, and was filled with glad visions and dreams by the flowing even of a poor, clouded, slow canal stream, and was rapt into the ideal at the sight of a reed growing in the water and shaken by the wind. The poetess remained at home in a dull room, and hammered out rhymes with the help of a dictionary.

But, to do Minola justice, she was not wholly given up, even in these free and lonely hours, to the sweet, innocent sensuousness that fills certain beings when amid trees and the sounds of flowing water. She had many scruples about the possible selfishness of her life, and wondered whether it was not wrong thus to live, and whether it was not through some fault of hers that no opportunity presented itself to her of doing any good for man or woman. She asked herself sometimes whether she had not been impatient and wilful in her dealings with the people at home. She still, when in a self-questioning and penitential mood, thought and spoke of Keeton as "home," and whether she had not done wrong in leaving the material enclosure of any place bearing even by tradition the name of home, for a life of freedom which some censors might have thought unwomanly. There are metaphysicians who hold that, although man of his nature has no intuitive knowledge, yet that the accumulated experience of generations supplies gradually for men, as they are born, a something which is like intuition to start with, and which they could not now start clear of. So the experience or the traditions of generations form a sort of factitious and accumulated conscience for women independent of any abstract or eternal laws, and amounting in strength to something like intuition. Over this shadow they cannot leap. Minola, filled as she was with a peculiarly independent spirit, and driven by circumstances to consider its indulgence a right and even a duty, could not keep from the occasional torment of a doubt whether there must not be something wrong in the conduct of any woman who, under any circumstances, leaves voluntarily, and while she is yet under age, the home of her childhood, and takes up her abode among strangers, without guardians, mistress of herself, and in lodgings.

Perhaps some such ideas were in Minola's mind when she left Mary Blanchet, a few mornings after the meetings described in the last chapter, and set out for a pleasant lonely walk in Regent's Park. Perhaps it was the very pleasure of the walk, and the loneliness, now missed for some days, that made her dread being selfish, and sent her down into a drooping and penitent reaction. "This will never do," she kept thinking. "I ought to try to do something for somebody. I am growing to think only of myself--and I broke away from Keeton because I was getting morbid in thinking about myself."

It was in this remorseful condition of mind that she approached her favorite mound, longing for an hour of quiet delight there, and half ashamed of her longing. When she had nearly reached its height, she discerned that the fates had seemingly resolved to punish her for her love of solitariness, by decreeing that her chosen retreat should that day be occupied. There was a seat on which she usually sat, and now a man was there. That was bad enough, but she could in an ordinary case have passed on, and sought some other place. Now, however, she saw that that was denied to her; for the intruder was Mr. Victor Heron, and at the sound of her footstep he looked round, recognized her, and was already coming toward her, with hat uplifted and courteous bow.

The very rapid moment of time between Minola's first seeing Mr. Heron and his recognizing her had enabled her quick eyes to perceive that when he thought himself alone he was anything but the genial and joyous personage he appeared in company. At first Miss Grey's attention was withdrawn from her own disappointment by the air of melancholy and even of utter despondency about the face and figure of the seated man. He sat leaning forward, his chin supported by one hand, his eyes fixed moodily on the ground. He seemed to have no manner of concern with air, or sky, or scene, and his dark-complexioned face gave the impression of one terribly at odds with fortune. Minola felt almost irresistibly drawn toward one who seemed unhappy. Her harmless misanthropy went out at a breath in the presence of any man who appeared to suffer.

But the change which came over Mr. Heron when he saw her can only be likened to that which would be made by the sudden illumination of a house that a second before was all dark, and seemingly tenantless. He came to meet her with sparkling eyes and delighted expression. Mr. Heron, it should perhaps be explained, considered himself so much older than Miss Grey, so entirely an experienced, mature, not to say outworn man, that he did not think of waiting to see whether Miss Grey was inclined to encourage a renewal of the acquaintance. He considered it his duty to be polite and friendly to the pretty girl he had met at Money's, and whom he assumed to be poor, and wanting in friends.

"How fortunate I am to meet you here to-day!" he said. "You remember me, I hope, Miss Grey? I haven't called you Miss Money this time. Come now--don't say you have forgotten me."

"I could not say I had forgotten you, for it would not be true, Mr. Heron."

"Thank you; that was very prettily said, and kindly."

"Was it? I really didn't mean it to be either pretty or kind--only the truth."

"I see, you go in for being downright, and saying only what you mean. I am very glad. So do I, and I am very much delighted to meet you here, Miss Grey. Come, you won't say as much for me?"

"I cannot say that I was glad to see anybody just here; this place is always deserted, except by me."

"You come here often, and you are sorry to have your retreat broken in upon? Don't hesitate to say so, Miss Grey, and I will promise not to come into this part of the park--or into any part of the park for that matter--any more. Why should I disturb you?"

He spoke with such earnestness and such evident sincerity that Minola began to feel ashamed of her previous ungraciousness.

"That would be rather hard upon you, and a little arrogant on my part," she said smiling. "The park isn't mine, and, if it were, I am sure I could not be selfish enough to wish to shut you out from any part of it. But I am in the habit of being a good deal alone; and I fear it makes me a little rude and selfish sometimes. I was thinking of that just as I came up here, and saw you."

"Then you saw me before I saw you?"

"Oh, yes."

"I am afraid you must have seen a very woe-begone personage."

"Yes; you seemed unhappy, I thought."

"There is something sympathetic about you, Miss Grey, for all your coldness and loneliness."

"Surely," said Miss Grey, "a woman without some feeling of sympathy would be hardly fit to live."

"You think so?" he asked quite earnestly and gravely. "So do I--so do I indeed. Men have little time to sympathize with men--they are all too busy with their own affairs. What should we do but for the sympathy of women? Now tell me, why do you smile at that? I saw that you were trying not to laugh."

"I could not help smiling a little, it was so thoroughly masculine a sentiment."

"Was it? How is that now?" His direct way of propounding his questions rather amused and did not displease her. It was like the way of a rational man talking with another rational being--a style of conversation which has much attraction for some women.

"Well, because it looked upon women so honestly as creatures only formed to make men comfortable, by coming up and sympathizing with them when they are in a humor for sympathy, and then retiring out of the way into their corner again."

"I can assure you, Miss Grey, that never has been my idea--nothing of the kind, indeed. To tell the truth, I have not known much about the sympathy of women and all that. I have lived awfully out of the world, and I never had any sisters, and I hardly remember my mother. I know women chiefly in poems and romances, and I believe I generally adopt the goddess theory. In honest truth, most women do seem to me a sort of goddesses."

"You will not be long in England without unlearning that theory," Miss Grey said. "Our writers seem to have hardly any subject now but the faults and follies of women. One might sometimes think that woman was a newly-discovered creature that the world could never be done wondering at."

"Yes, yes; I read a good deal of that sort of thing out in the colonies. But I have retained the goddess theory, so far at least. Mrs. Money seems to me a sort of divinity. Miss Money is a born saint; she ought to go about with a gilt plate round her head. Miss Lucy Money seems like a little angel of light. Are you smiling again? I do assure you these are my real feelings."

"I was not smiling at the idea, but only at the difference between it and the favorite ideas of most people at present, even of women about women."

"May I walk a little with you," Mr. Heron said, "or will you sit and rest here, if you are tired, and we will talk? Don't stand on formality and send me away, although I will go if you like, and not feel in the least offended. But if we might talk for a little, it would give me great pleasure. You said just now that you did not wish to be selfish. It will be very unselfish and very kind if you will let me talk to you a little. I felt very wretched when you came up--quite in a suicidal frame of mind."

"Oh, no! Pray don't speak in that way. You do not mean it I am sure."

"In one sense I do mean it--that is, it is quite true that I should not have thrown myself into the water or blown my brains out; that sort of thing seems to me like abandoning one's post without orders from headquarters. But I felt in the condition of mind when one can quite understand how such things are done, and would be glad if he were free to follow the example. For _me_ that is a great change in itself," the young man added with some bitterness.

"What can I do for him?" Miss Grey asked herself mentally. "Nothing but to show him the view from the canal bridge. There is nothing else in my power."

"There is a very pretty view a short distance from this," she said; "a view from a bridge, and I am particularly fond of looking from bridges. Should you like to walk there?"

"I should like to walk anywhere with you," Victor Heron said, with a look of genuine gratefulness, which had not the faintest breath of compliment in it, and could only be accepted as frank truth.

Perhaps, if Miss Grey had been a town-bred girl, she might have hesitated about setting out for a companionable walk in the park with a young man who was almost a stranger to her. But, as it was, she appeared to herself to have all the right of free action belonging to one in a place of which the public opinion can in no wise touch her. She acted in London as freely as one speaks with a friend in a foreign hotel room, where he knows that the company around are unable to understand what he is saying. In this particular instance, however, Minola hardly thought about the matter at all. There was something in Heron's open and emotional way which made people almost at the first meeting cease to regard him as a stranger. Perhaps, if Minola had thought over the matter, she might have cited in vindication of her course the valuable authority of Major Pendennis, who, when asked whether Laura might properly take walks in the Temple Gardens with Warrington, eagerly said, "Yes, yes, begad, of course, you go out with him. It's like the country, you know; everybody goes out with everybody in the Gardens; and there are beadles, you know, and that sort of thing. Everybody walks in the Temple Gardens." Regent's Park, one would think, ought to come under the same laws. There are beadles there, too, or guardian functionaries of some sort, although it may be owned that in their walk to and from the canal bridge Heron and Minola encountered none of them.

It is doubtful whether Heron at least would have noticed such a personage even had they come in their way, for he talked nearly all the time, except when he paused for an answer to some direct question, and he seldom took his eyes from Minola's face. He was not staring at her, or broadly admiring her; nor, indeed, was there anything in his manner to make it certain that he was admiring her at all, as man conventionally is understood to admire woman. But he had evidently put Miss Grey into the place of a sympathetic and trusted friend, and he talked to her accordingly. She was amused and interested, and she now and then kept making little disparaging criticisms to herself, in order to sustain her place as the cool depreciator of man. But she was very happy for all that.

One characteristic peculiarity of this sudden and singular acquaintanceship ought to be mentioned. When people still read "Gil Blas" they would have remembered at once how the waiting-woman received delightedly the advances of Gil Blas, believing him to be a gentleman of fortune, and how Gil Blas paid great court to the waiting-woman, believing her to be a lady of rank. The pair of friends in Regent's Park were drawn together by exactly opposite impulses: each believed the other poor and unfriended. Minola was under the impression that she was giving her sympathy to a ruined and unhappy young man, who had failed in life almost at the very beginning, and was now friendless in stony-hearted London. Victor Heron was convinced that his companion was a poor orphan girl, who had been sent down by misfortune from a position of comfort, or even wealth, to earn her bread by some sort of intellectual labor, while she lived in a small back room in a depressed and mournful quarter of London.

He told her the story of his grievance; it may be that he even told her some parts of it more than once. It was a strange sensation to her, as she walked on the soft green turf, in the silver gray atmosphere, to hear this young man, who seemed to have lived so bold and strange a life, appealing to her for an opinion as to the course he ought to pursue to have his cause set right. The St. Xavier's Settlements do not geographically count for much, and politically they count for still less. But when Mr. Heron told of his having been administrator and commandant there; of his having made treaties with neighboring kings (she knew they were only black kings); of his having tried to put down slavery, and to maintain what he persisted in believing to be the true honor of England; of war made on him, and war made by him in return--while she listened to all this, it is no wonder if our romantic girl from Duke's Keeton sometimes thought she was conversing with one of the heroes and master-spirits of the time. He made the whole story very clear to her, and she thoroughly understood it, although her imagination and her senses were sometimes disturbed by the tropic glare which seemed to come over the places and events he described. At last they actually came to be standing on the canal bridge, and neither looked at the view they had come to see.

"Now what do you advise?" Heron said, after having several times impressed some particular point on her. "I attach great importance to a woman's advice. You have instincts, and all that, which we haven't; at least so everybody says. Would you let this thing drop altogether, and try some other career, or would you fight it out?"

"I would fight it out," Minola said, looking up to him with sparkling eyes, "and I would never let it drop. I would make them do me justice."

"Just what I think; just what I came to England resolved to do. I hate the idea of giving in; but people here discourage me. Money discourages me. He says the Government will never do anything unless I make myself troublesome."

"Well, then, why not make yourself troublesome?"

"I have made myself troublesome in one sense," he said, with a vexed kind of laugh, "by haunting ante-chambers, and trying to force people to see me who don't want to see me. But I can't do any more of that kind of work; I am sick of it. I am ashamed of having tried it at all."

"Yes, I couldn't do that," Minola said gravely.

"Then," Heron said, with a little embarrassment, "a man--a very kind and well-meaning fellow, an old friend of my father's--offered to introduce me to Lady Chertsey--a very clever woman, a queen of society, I am told, who gets all the world (of politics, I mean) into her drawing-room, and delights in being a sort of power, and all that. She could push a fellow, they say, wonderfully if she took any interest in him. But I couldn't do that, you know."

"No? Why not?"

"Well, I shouldn't care to be introduced to a lady's drawing-room with the secret purpose of trying to get her to do me a service. There seems something mean in that. Besides, I have a cause (at least, I think I have) which is too good to be served in that kind of way. If I can't get a hearing and justice from the Government of England and the people of England for the sake of right and for the claims I have, I will never try to get it through. Oh, well, perhaps, I ought not to say what I was going to say."

"Why not?" Minola asked again.

"I mean, perhaps I ought not to say it to you."

"I don't know really. Tell me what it is, and then I'll tell you whether you ought to say it."

He laughed. "Well, I was only going to say that I don't care to have my cause served by petticoat influence."

"I think you are quite right. If I were a man, I should think petticoat influence in such a matter contemptible. But why should you not like to say so?"

"Only because I was afraid you might think I meant to speak contemptuously of the influence and the advice of women. I don't mean anything of the kind. I have the highest opinion of the advice of women and their influence, as I have told you already; but I couldn't endure the idea of having a lady, who doesn't know or care anything about me and my claims, asked by somebody to say a word to some great man or some great man's wife, in order that I might get a hearing. I am sure you understand what I mean, Miss Grey."

"Oh, yes, I never should have misunderstood it; and I know that you are quite right. It would be a downright degradation."

"So I felt. Anyhow, I could not do it. Then there remains the making myself troublesome, as Money advises----"

"Yes, what is that?"

"Getting my case brought on again and again in the House of Commons, and having debates about it, and making the whole thing public, and so forcing the Government either to do me justice or to satisfy the country that justice has already been done," he said bitterly.

"That would seem to me a right thing to do," Miss Grey said; "but I know so little that I ought not to offer a word of advice."

"Oh, yes, I should trust to your feelings and instincts in such a case. Well, I don't like, somehow, being in the hands of politicians and party men, who might use me and my cause only as a means of annoying the Government--not really from any sense of right and justice. I don't know if I make myself quite understood; it is hard to expect a lady, especially a young lady, to understand these things."

"I think I can quite understand all that. We are not so stupid as you seem to suppose, Mr. Heron."

"Stupid? Didn't I tell you of my goddess theory?"

"Some of the goddesses were very stupid I always think. Venus was stupid."

"Well, well; anyhow you are not Venus."

"No, indeed."

"In that sense I mean. Then I do succeed in making myself understood?"

"Oh, yes!" She could see that he was looking disappointed at her interruption and her seeming levity, which was indeed only the result of a momentary impulse to keep up to herself her character as a scorner of men. "I think I understand quite clearly that you fear to be made the mere instrument of politicians; and I think you are quite right. I did not think of that at first, but, now that you explain it, I am sure that you are right."

He nodded approvingly. "Then comes the question," he said, "what is to be done?"

Leaning against the bridge, he thrust his hands into his pockets, and stood looking into her face, as if he were really waiting for her to solve the problem for him.

"That is entirely beyond me," she said. "I know nothing; I could not even guess at what ought to be done."

"No? Now here is my idea. Why not plead my cause myself?"

"Plead your cause yourself? Can that be done?"

"Yes; myself--in Parliament."

Minola's mind at once formed and framed a picture of a stately assembly, like a Roman Senate, or like the group of King Agrippa, Festus, Bernice, and the rest, and Mr. Heron pleading his cause like Cicero or Paul. The thing seemed hardly congruous. It did not seem to her to fall in with modern conditions at all. Her face became blank; she did not well know what to answer.

"Are people allowed to do such things now, in England?" she asked--"to plead causes before Parliament?"

An odd idea came up in her mind, that perhaps by the time this strange performance came to be enacted, Mr. Augustus Sheppard might be in Parliament, and Mr. Heron's enthusiastic eloquence would have to be addressed to him. She did not like the idea.

"You don't understand," Heron said. "You really don't this time. What I mean is to get into Parliament--be elected for some place, and then stand up and make my own fight for myself."

She kindled at the idea.

"Oh, yes, of course! How stupid I am not to see at once! That is a splendid idea; the very thing I should like to do if I were a man and in your place."

"You really think so?"

"Indeed I do. But then----" And she hesitated, for she feared that she had been only encouraging him to a wild dream. "Does it not cost a great deal of money to get into Parliament?"

"No; I think not; not always at least. I should look out for an opportunity. I have money enough--for me. I'm not a rich man, Miss Grey, but my father left me well enough off, as far as that goes; and you know that in a place like St. Xavier's one couldn't spend any money. There was no way of getting rid of it. No, my troubles are none of them money troubles. I only want to vindicate my past career, and so to have a career for the future. I ought to be doing something. I feel in an unhealthy state of mind while all this is pressing on me. You understand?"

"I can understand it," Miss Grey said, turning to leave the bridge, and bestowing one glance at the yellow, slow-moving water, and the reeds and the bushes, of which she and her companion had not spoken a word. "It is not good to have to think of oneself. But you are bound to vindicate yourself; that I am sure is your duty. Then you can think of other things--of the public and the country."

"He is rich," she thought, "and he is clever and earnest, in spite of his egotism. Of course he will have a career, and be successful. I thought that he was poor and broken down, and that I was doing him a kindness by showing sympathy with him."

They went away together, and Heron, delighted with her encouragement and her intelligence, unfolded splendid plans of what he was to do. But Minola somehow entered less cordially into them than she had done before, and Mr. Heron at last became ashamed of talking so much about himself.

"I hope we shall meet again," he said as she stopped significantly at one of the gates leading out of the park, to intimate that now their roads were separating. "I wish you would allow me to call and see you. I do hope you won't think me odd, or that I am presuming on your kindness. I am a semi-barbarian, you know--have been so long out of civilization--and I haven't any idea of the ways of the polite world."

"Nor I," said Minola. "I have come from utter barbarism--from a country town."

"But I do hope we shall meet again, for you are so sympathetic and kind."

She bade him good day, and nodded with a friendly smile, but made no answer to the repeated expression of his hope, and she hastened away.

Heron could not endure walking alone just then. He hailed a hansom and disappeared.

"How vain men are!" Minola thought as she went her way. "How egotistical they all are!" Of course she assumed herself to have obtained a complete knowledge of all the characters of men. "How egotistic he is! Of course he tells his whole story to every woman he meets. Lucy Money no doubt has it by heart."

She did not remember for the moment that her own favorite hero was likewise somewhat egotistical and effusive, and that he was very apt to pour out the story of his wrongs into the ear of any sympathetic woman. But she was disappointed with herself and her friend just now, and was not in a mood to make perfectly reasonable comparisons.