Chapter 3

"A ring?" cried Bella, waking up. "Don't keep all the fun to yourselves; we've not had so much of it this evening."

"Miss Ada," said Leander, in great agitation, "I ask you, as a lady, to treat what has happened this evening in the strictest confidence for the present!"

"Secrets, Ada?" cried her sister; "upon my word!"

"Why, where's the harm, Mr. Tweddle, now it's all settled?" exclaimed Ada. "Bella, it was only this: he went and put a ring (now do wait till I've done, Mr. Tweddle!) on a certain person's finger out in those Rosherwich Gardens (you see, I've not said _whose_ finger)."

"Hullo, Tweddle!" cried Jauncy, in some bewilderment.

Leander could only cast a look of miserable appeal at him.

"Shall I tell them any more, Mr. Tweddle?" said Ada, persistently.

"I don't think there's any necessity," he pleaded.

"No more do I," put in Bella, archly. "I think we can guess the rest."

Ada did not absolutely make any further disclosures that evening; but for the rest of the journey she amused herself by keeping the hairdresser in perpetual torment by her pretended revelations, until he was thoroughly disgusted.

No longer could he admire her liveliness; he could not even see that she was good-looking now. "She's nothing but chaff, chaff, chaff!" he thought. "Thank goodness, Matilda isn't given that way. Chaff before marriage means nagging after!"

They reached the terminus at last, when he willingly said farewell to the other three.

"Good-bye, Mr. Tweddle," said Bella, in rather a more cordial tone; "I needn't hope _you_'ve enjoyed yourself!"

"You needn't!" he replied, almost savagely.

"Good night," said Ada; and added in a whisper, "Don't go and dream of your statue-woman!"

"If I dream to-night at all," he said, between his teeth, "it will be a nightmare!"

"I suppose, Tweddle, old chap," said Jauncy, as he shook hands, "you know your own affairs best; but, if you meant what you told me coming down, you've been going it, haven't you?"

He left Leander wondering impatiently what he meant. Did he know the truth? Well, everybody might know it before long; there would probably be a fuss about it all, and the best thing he could do would be to tell Matilda at once, and throw himself upon her mercy. After all, it was innocent enough--if she could only be brought to believe it.

He did not look forward to telling her; and by the time he reached the Bank and got into an omnibus, he was in a highly nervous state, as the following incident may serve to show.

He had taken one of those uncomfortable private omnibuses, where the passengers are left in unlightened gloom. He sat by the door, and, occupied as he was by his own misfortunes, paid little attention to his surroundings.

But by-and-by, he became aware that the conductor, in collecting the fares, was trying to attract the notice of some one who sat in the further corner of the vehicle. "Where are you for, lady, please?" he asked repeatedly, and at last, "_Will_ somebody ask the lady up the end where I'm to set her down?" to all of which the eccentric person addressed returned no reply whatever.

Leander's attention was thus directed to her; but, although in the obscurity he could make out nothing but a dim form of grey, his nerves were so unsettled that he felt a curiously uneasy fancy that eyes were being fixed upon him in the darkness.

This continued until a moment when some electric lights suddenly flashed into the omnibus as it passed, and lit up the whole interior with a ghastly glare, in which the grey female became distinctly visible.

He caught his breath and shrank into the corner; for in that moment his excited imagination had traced a strange resemblance to the figure he had left in Rosherwich Gardens. The inherent improbability of finding a classical statue seated in an omnibus did not occur to him, in the state his mind was in just then. He sat there fascinated, until lights shone in once more, and he saw, or thought he saw, the figure slowly raise her hand and beckon to him.

That was enough; he started up with a smothered cry, thrust a coin into the conductor's hand, and, without waiting for change, flung himself from the omnibus in full motion.

When its varnished sides had ceased to gleam in the light of the lamps, and its lumbering form had been swallowed up in the autumn haze, he began to feel what a coward his imagination had made of him.

"My nightmare's begun already," he thought. "Still, she was so surprisingly like, it did give me a turn. They oughtn't to let such crazy females into public conveyances!"

Fortunately his panic had not seized him until he was within a short distance from Bloomsbury, and it did not take him long to reach Queen Square and his shop in the passage. He let himself in, and went up to a little room on an upper floor, which he used as his sitting-room. The person who "looked after him" did not sleep on the premises; but she had laid a fire and left out his tea-things. "I'll have some tea," he thought, as he lit the gas and saw them there. "I feel as if I want cheering up, and it can't make me any more shaky than I am."

And when his fire was crackling and blazing up, and his kettle beginning to sing, he felt more cheerful already. What, after all, if it did take some time to get his ring again? He must make some excuse or other; and, should the worst come to the worst, "I suppose," he thought, "I could get another made like it--though, when I come to think of it, I'll be shot if I remember exactly what it was like, or what the words inside it were, to be sure about them; still, very likely old Vidler would recollect, and I dessay it won't turn out to be necessa----What the devil's that?"

He had the house to himself after nightfall, and he remembered that his private door could not be opened now without a special key; yet he could not help a fancy that some one was groping his way up the staircase outside.

"It's only the boards creaking, or the pipes leaking through," he thought. "I must have the place done up. But I'm as nervous as a cat to-night."

The steps were nearer and nearer--they stopped at the door--there was a loud commanding blow on the panels.

"Who's here at this time of night?" cried Leander, aloud. "Come in, if you want to!"

But the door remained shut, and there came another rap, even more imperious.

"I shall go mad if this goes on!" he muttered, and making a desperate rush to the door, threw it wide open, and then staggered back panic-stricken.

Upon the threshold stood a tall figure in classical drapery. His eyes might have deceived him in the omnibus; but here, in the crude gaslight, he could not be mistaken. It was the statue he had last seen in Rosherwich Gardens--now, in some strange and wondrous way, moving--alive!

A DISTINGUISHED STRANGER

III.

"How could it be a dream? Yet there She stood, the moveless image fair!"

_The Earthly Paradise._

With slow and stately tread the statue advanced towards the centre of the hairdresser's humble sitting-room, and stood there awhile, gazing about her with something of scornful wonder in her calm cold face. As she turned her head, the wide, deeply-cut sockets seemed the home of shadowy eyes; her face, her bared arms, and the long straight folds of her robe were all of the same greyish-yellow hue; the boards creaked under her sandalled feet, and Leander felt that he had never heard of a more appallingly massive ghost--if ghost indeed she were.

He had retired step by step before her to the hearthrug, where he now stood shivering, with the fire hot at his back, and his kettle still singing on undismayed. He made no attempt to account for her presence there on any rationalistic theory. A statue had suddenly come to life, and chosen to pay him a nocturnal visit; he knew no more than that, except that he would have given worlds for courage to show it the door.

The spectral eyes were bent upon him, as if in expectation that he would begin the conversation, and, at last, with a very unmanageable tongue, he managed to observe--

"Did you want to see me on--on business, mum?"

But the statue only relaxed her lips in a haughty smile.

"For goodness' sake, say something!" he cried wildly; "unless you want me to jump out of the winder! What is it you've come about?"

It seemed to him that in some way a veil had lifted from the stone face, leaving it illumined by a strange light, and from the lips came a voice which addressed him in solemn far-away tones, as of one talking in sleep. He could not have said with certainty that the language was his own, though somehow he understood her perfectly.

"You know me not?" she said, with a kind of sad indifference.

"Well," Leander admitted, as politely as his terror would allow, "you certingly have the advantage of me for the moment, mum."

"I am Aphrodite the foam-born, the matchless seed of AEgis-bearing Zeus. Many names have I amongst the sons of men, and many temples, and I sway the hearts of all lovers; and gods--yea, and mortals--have burned for me, a goddess, with an unconsuming, unquenchable fire!"

"Lor!" said Leander. If he had not been so much flurried, he might have found a remark worthier of the occasion, but the announcement that she was a goddess took his breath away. He had quite believed that goddesses were long since "gone out."

"You know wherefore I am come hither?" she said.

"Not at this minute, I don't," he replied. "You'll excuse me, but you can't be the statue out of those gardens? You reelly are so surprisingly like, that I couldn't help asking you."

"I am Aphrodite, and no statue. Long--how long I know not--have I lain entranced in slumber in my sea-girt isle of Cyprus, and now again has the living touch of a mortal hand upon one of my sacred images called me from my rest, and given me power to animate this marble shell. Some hand has placed this ring upon my finger. Tell me, was it yours?"

Leander was almost reassured; after all, he could forgive her for terrifying him so much, since she had come on so good-natured an errand.

"Quite correct, mum--miss!" (he wished he knew the proper form for addressing a goddess) "that ring is my property. I'm sure it's very civil and friendly of you to come all this way about it," and he held out his hand for it eagerly.

"And think you it was for this that I have visited the face of the earth and the haunts of men, and followed your footsteps hither by roads strange and unknown to me? You are too modest, youth."

"I don't know what there is modest in expecting you to behave honest!" he said, rather wondering at his own audacity.

"How are you called?" she inquired suddenly on this; and after hearing the answer, remarked that the name was known to her as that of a goodly and noble youth who had perished for the sake of Hero.

"The gentleman may have been a connection of mine, for all I know," he said; "the Tweddles have always kep' themselves respectable. But I'm not a hero myself, I'm a hairdresser."

She repeated the word thoughtfully, though she did not seem to quite comprehend it; and indeed it is likely enough that, however intelligible she was to Leander, the understanding was far from being entirely reciprocal.

She extended her hand to him, smiling not ungraciously. "Leander," she said, "cease to tremble, for a great happiness is yours. Bold have you been; yet am I not angered, for I come. Cast, then, away all fear, and know that Aphrodite disdains not to accept a mortal's plighted troth!"

Leander entrenched himself promptly behind the armchair. "I don't know what you're talking about!" he said. "How can I help fearing, with you coming down on me like this? Ask yourself."

"Can you not understand that your prayer is heard?" she demanded.

"_What_ prayer?" cried Leander.

"Crass and gross-witted has the world grown!" said she; "a Greek swain would have needed but few words to divine his bliss. Know, then, that your suit is accepted; never yet has Aphrodite turned the humblest from her shrine. By this symbol," and she lightly touched the ring, "you have given yourself to me. I accept the offering--you are mine!"

Leander was stupefied by such an unlooked-for misconception. He could scarcely believe his ears; but he hastened to set himself right at once.

"If you mean that you were under the impression that I meant anything in particular by putting that ring on, it was all a mistake, mum," he said. "I shouldn't have presumed to it!"

"Were you the lowliest of men, I care not," she replied; "to you I owe the power I now enjoy of life and vision, nor shall you find me ungrateful. But forbear this false humility; I like it not. Come, then, Leander, at the bidding of Cypris; come, and fear nothing!"

But he feared very much, for he had seen the operas of _Don Giovanni_ and _Zampa_, and knew that any familiarity with statuary was likely to have unpleasant consequences. He merely strengthened his defences with a chair.

"You must excuse me, mum, you must indeed," he faltered; "I can't come!"

"Why?" she asked.

"Because I've other engagements," he replied.

"I remember," she said slowly, "in the grove, when light met my eyes once more, there was a maid with you, one who laughed and was merry. Answer--is she your love?"

"No, she isn't," he said shortly. "What if she was?"

"If she were," observed the goddess, with the air of one who mentioned an ordinary fact, "I should crush her!"

"Lord bless me!" cried Leander, in his horror. "What for?"

"Would not she be in my path? and shall any mortal maid stand between me and my desire?"

This was a discovery. She was a jealous and vengeful goddess; she would require to be sedulously humoured, or harm would come.

"Well, well," he said soothingly, "there's nothing of that sort about her, I do assure you."

"Then I spare her," said the goddess. "But how, then, if this be truly so, do you still shrink from the honour before you?"

Leander felt a natural unwillingness to explain that it was because he was engaged to a young lady who kept the accounts at a florist's.

"Well, the fact is," he said awkwardly, "there's difficulties in the way."

"Difficulties? I can remove them all!" she said.

"Not _these_ you can't, mum. It's like this: You and me, we don't start, so to speak, from the same basin. I don't mean it as any reproach to you, but you can't deny you're an Eathen, and, worse than that, an Eathen goddess. Now all my family have been brought up as chapel folk, Primitive Methodists, and I've been trained to have a horror of superstition and idolatries, and see the folly of it. So you can see for yourself that we shouldn't be likely to get on together!"

"You talk words," she said impatiently; "but empty are they, and meaningless to my ears. One thing I learn from them--that you seek to escape me!"

"That's putting it too harsh, mum," he protested. "I'm sure I feel the honour of such a call; and, by the way, do you mind telling me how you got my address--how you found me out, I mean?"

"No one remains long hid from the searching eye of the high gods," she replied.

"So I should be inclined to say," agreed Leander. "But only tell me this, wasn't it you in the omnibus? We call our public conveyances omnibuses, as perhaps you mayn't know."

"I, sea-born Aphrodite, _I_ in a public conveyance, an omnibus? There is an impiety in such a question!"

"Well, I only thought it might have been," he stammered, rather relieved upon the whole that it was not the goddess who had seen his precipitate bolt from the vehicle. Who the female in the corner really was, he never knew; though a man of science might account for the resemblance she bore to the statue by ascribing it to one of those preparatory impressions projected occasionally by a strong personality upon a weak one. But Leander was content to leave the matter unexplained.

"Let it suffice you," she said, "that I am here; and once more, Leander, are you prepared to fulfil the troth you have plighted?"

"I--I can't say I am," he said. "Not that I don't feel thankful for having had the refusal of so very 'igh-class an opportunity; but, as I'm situated at present--what with the state of trade, and unbelief so rampant, and all--I'm obliged to decline with respectful thanks."

He trusted that after this she would see the propriety of going.

"Have a care!" she said; "you are young and not uncomely, and my heart pities you. Do nothing rash. Pause, ere you rouse the implacable ire of Aphrodite!"

"Thank you," said Leander; "if you'll allow me, I will. I don't want any ill-feeling, I'm sure. It's my wish to live peaceable with all men."

"I leave you, then. Use the time before you till I come again in thinking well whether he acts wisely who spurns the proffered hand of Idalian Aphrodite. For the present, farewell, Leander!"

He was overjoyed at his coming deliverance. "Good evening, mum," he said, as he ran to the door and held it open. "If you'll allow me, I'll light you down the staircase--it's rather dark, I'm afraid."

"_Fool!_,'" she said with scorn, and without stirring from her place; and, as she spoke the word, the veil seemed to descend over her face again, the light faded out, and, with a slight shudder, the figure imperceptibly resumed its normal attitude, the drapery stiffened once more into chiselled folds, and the statue was soulless as are statues generally.

FROM BAD TO WORSE

IV.

"And the shadow flits and fleets, And will not let me be, And I loathe the squares and streets!"

_Maud._

For some time after the statue had ceased to give signs of life, the hairdresser remained gaping, incapable of thought or action. At last he ventured to approach cautiously, and on touching the figure, found it perfectly cold and hard. The animating principle had plainly departed, and left the statue a stone.

"She's gone," he said, "and left her statue behind her! Well, of all the _goes_----She's come out without her pedestal, too! To be sure, it would have been in her way, walking."

Seating himself in his shabby old armchair, he tried to collect his scattered wits. He scarcely realised, even yet, what had happened; but, unless he had dreamed it all, he had been honoured by the marked attentions of a marble statue, instigated by a heathen goddess, who insisted that his affections were pledged to her.

Perhaps there was a spice of flattery in such a situation--for it cannot fall to the lot of many hairdressers to be thus distinguished--but Leander was far too much alarmed to appreciate it. There had been suggestions of menace in the statue's remarks which made him shudder when he recalled them, and he started violently once or twice when some wavering of the light gave a play of life to the marble mask. "She's coming back!" he thought. "Oh, I do wish she wouldn't!" But Aphrodite continued immovable, and at last he concluded that, as he put it, she "had done for the evening."

His first reflection was--what had best be done? The wisest course seemed to be to send for the manager of the gardens, and restore the statue while its animation was suspended. The people at the gardens would take care that it did not get loose again.

But there was the ring; he must get that off first. Here was an unhoped-for opportunity of accomplishing this in privacy, and at his leisure. Again approaching the figure, he tried to draw off the compromising circle; but it seemed tighter than ever, and he drew out a pair of scissors and, after a little hesitation, respectfully inserted it under the hoop and set to work to prize it off, with the result of snapping both the points, and leaving the ring entirely unaffected. He glanced at the face; it wore the same dreamy smile, with a touch of gentle contempt in it. "She don't seem to mind," he said aloud; "to be sure, she ain't inside of it now, as far as I make it out. I've got all night before me to get the confounded thing off, and I'll go on till I've done it!"

But he laboured on with the disabled scissors, and only succeeded in scratching the smooth marble a little; he stopped to pant. "There's only one way," he told himself desperately; "a little diamond cement would make it all right again; and you expect cracks in a statue."

Then, after a furtive glance around, he fetched the poker from the fireplace. He felt horribly brutal, as if he were going to mutilate and maltreat a creature that could feel; but he nerved himself to tap the back of Aphrodite's hand at the dimpled base of the third finger. The shock ran up to his elbow, and gave him acute "pins and needles," but the stone hand was still intact. He struck again--this time with all his force--and the poker flew from his grasp, and his arm dropped paralyzed by his side.

He could scarcely lift it again for some minutes, and the warning made him refrain from any further violence. "It's no good," he groaned. "If I go on, I don't know what may happen to me. I must wait till she comes to, and then ask her for the ring, very polite and civil, and try if I can't get round her that way."

He was determined that he would never give her up to the gardens while she wore his ring; but, in the mean time, he could scarcely leave the statue standing in the middle of his sitting-room, where it would most assuredly attract the charwoman's attention.

He had little cupboards on each side of his fireplace: one of these had no shelves, and served for storing firewood and bottles of various kinds. From this he removed the contents, and lifting the statue, which, possibly because its substance had been affected in some subtle and inexplicable manner by the vital principle that had so lately permeated it, proved less ponderous than might have been reasonably expected, he pushed it well into the recess, and turned the key on it.

Then he went trembling to bed, and, after an interval of muddled, anxious thinking, fell into a heavy sleep, which lasted until far into the morning.

He woke with the recollection that something unpleasant was hanging over him, and by degrees he remembered what that something was; but it looked so extravagant in the morning light that he had great hopes all would turn out to be a mere dream.

It was a mild Sunday morning, and there were church bells ringing all around him; it seemed impossible that he could really be harbouring an animated antique. But to remove all doubt, he stole down, half dressed, to his small sitting-room, which he found looking as usual--the fire burning dull and dusty in the sunlight that struck in through the open window, and his breakfast laid out on the table.

Almost reassured, he went to the cupboard and unlocked the door. Alas! it held its skeleton--the statue was there, preserving the attitude of queenly command in which he had seen it first. Sharply he shut the door again, and turned the key with a heavy heart.

He swallowed his breakfast with very little appetite, after which he felt he could not remain in the house. "To sit here with _that_ in the cupboard is more than I'm equal to all Sunday," he decided.

If Matilda had been at his aunt's, with whom she lodged, he would have gone to chapel with her; but Matilda did not return from her holiday till late that night. He thought of going to his friend and asking his advice on his case. James, as a barrister's clerk, would presumably be able to give a sound legal opinion on an emergency.

James, however, lived "out Camden Town way," and was certain on so fine a morning to be away on some Sunday expedition with his betrothed: it was hopeless to go in search of him now. If he went to see his aunt, who lived close by in Millman Street, she might ask him about the ring, and there would be a fuss. He was in no humour for attending any place of public worship, and so he spent some hours in aimless wandering about the streets, which, as foreigners are fond of reminding us, are not exhilarating even on the brightest Sabbath, and did not raise his spirits then.