This winter afternoon, standing by the fireside, he at length forced himself to realize his final failure. The last critique on his book had reached him. It gave him no quarter. It told him roundly that his work suffered from the one unpardonable fault of dulness. It did not hold the attention. It clamored for skipping. "I have failed finally," Elliot said to himself, as the lamplighter disappeared in the direction of Ebury Street, "finally, finally." He repeated the word mechanically over and over again, as he looked out into the gradually darkening square. He held in his hand the critique he had just been reading, and now he ran his eyes drearily over it again, until they lit on the final words: "Nevertheless, after all has been said that can be said against it, the book shows cleverness, and is undoubtedly the work of a man of promise." A sudden flash of almost tragic anger lit up Elliot's face as he cast the journal down upon the floor. "A man of promise!" he exclaimed with extreme bitterness. "And I am fifty-one, and have been writing steadily for over five-and-twenty years! Good God! There shall be an end of it. I have done. No critic shall say that of me again. No critic shall say anything of me. If I were as old as Methuselah, tottering on the verge of the grave, they would still say I was a man of promise !" He sank down in his chair, leaned his arms upon the table, and dropped his head upon them. When he lifted his head again, the black sleeve of his coat was wet with tears. II. were JOHN ELLIOT and his son smoking together after a quiet dinner. It was eleven o'clock, and a cold, wet night; but the room looked cheerful, for the curtains were drawn, the fire blazed, and a shaded lamp gave just enough light to encourage intimate conversation, as opposed to the mere word-spinning that seems appropriate to the glare of gas or the frosty radiance of electricity. As he The wanderer had returned that very afternoon, bronzed, steeped in the energy that only bounding health can give, full of thoughts born of blessed travel, full of a crisp vitality that struck out sparks, even from the weary who came in contact with it. He had the broad air of the world, not the limited but satisfied air of London. leaned forward in his chair, talking eagerly in a nimbus of smoke that he blew away as easily as he would have blown away à trouble just then, he seemed to breathe out something of the immensity of many lands, to exhale the freshness of a thousand recently gathered experiences. He looked a strong flower of youth just unfolding. His father, grey, weary, with the ended manner that failure brings with it, woke into a momentary life as he sat opposite to him, and saw the firelight dance over his close brown hair and his salient eager face. John Elliot felt for the moment young, as an old man may feel in watching from his window a spring dawn over a garden in which the buds are opening. "Don't you find the placidity of return to the dead level of London rather overwhelming, Jack?" he asked presently. "Coming back to what one has always known from what one has just known is rather like kissing one's nurse after dallying with an enchantress. Can you settle down?" "Yes, father, I can now. I have found something while I have been away, and brought it back with me." Among your curios ?" His son laughed, a laugh with the true ring of the golden age in it. "No, but I want to unpack it now, 1: P TE Π and to you. I know you will under- "Yes?" The young man's face flushed, and his eyes grew serious. He pressed his strong hands on the arms of his chair. "I have found an ambition and brought it home. You know what a number of tastes I had when I went away. Well, at last one has acted the part of Moses' serpent, and swallowed up all the other serpents, just as it must have happened to you when you were young. I want to write. I must write." A curious shadow flitted over the 66 'My ambition,' "I found out that I must, when I "You say I have been successful. What makes you think so? Because a few people know my name when it comes up in conversation, and try to remember whether I am a politician or a financier or an author? My ambition once soared higher than that. Jack, I meant to bury my disappointment in my own heart. My pride told me to do so, but you are always frank with me, and even a father should not bolster himself up with false dignity. I will be frank with you. My ambition has been my happiness for years, but now it is my curse." He got up, went to his writing-table and opened a drawer. Then he came back with a weekly journal in his hand. His face flushed painfully, like a boy's, as he held it out to his son. "Read that, Jack," he said. said: He sat down again and went on smoking, pulling at his cigar hard. The flush lingered on his face, and deepened as the young man read. At last Jack laid the paper down on his His father did not answer for a mo- knees, and looked at his father. John ment. He was meditating on the trag-Elliot laughed, and, touching his breast edy of birth which painful death brings with his right hand, home with so much force to the mind. The blind rushing into life of enthusiasms, ambitions, seemed to him just then as sad as the first waking of an infaut to a short existence of starvation, tricked out with cruelty, and ending in that strange, enigmatic sleep that awaits us. But how could he say so to this lad of twenty-five? "I have found things, Jack," he His tone was profoundly sad, in spite LIVING AGE. VOL. VII. 322 "You see before you a man of promise, Jack, and, believe me, a man of promise who is old is one of the saddest creatures in the world. Come, now, have a whiskey-and-soda. We need not be unnecessarily dismal this first night that we are together. Only, think well before you enter the lists. To be worsted is to be wounded badly." His son had got up with a distinctly awkward air, and was busying himself in the composition of a long drink rather fussily. There was a flush on his face, too. His affection for his father was great, and he wanted to be sympathetic without suggesting the pity that the sensitive ally with contempt. And then, too, another mental feeling complicated the situation. The With a husky "Good-night, my youth in him was entirely unconvinced, boy," he turned from the fire, and entirely undaunted, and hopeful and went out of the room rather hastily. desirous. He thought sadly of his Jack stood looking at the door, father's disappointment, yet his fa- thoughtfully, with a great gravity in ther's words seemed to predict no sor- his face. row for those walking in his footsteps. Between them, despite their love and their sympathy, was the innate antagonism of youth and age. They were at enmity, although they loved each other.searched till he came upon some blank One listened to the knock at the door, the other knocked. That was the difference between them. "Poor old chap !" he said to himself at last. "Poor old chap! ButHe swung round from the fire, seated himself at his father's writing-table, foolscap, selected a quill with obvious hurry, and began to write with an almost careless dash and vigor. It was the old antagonism of youth and age. He wrote on till the dawn, while above-stairs John Elliot lay awake, At last Jack's drink was mixed almost in spite of himself, and he came back slowly to the fire. He took a sip, puffed furiously at his cigar, and then spoke out of the smoke, with an un-staring, till a grey glimmer defined. easy, careful accent. vaguely the position, in the black room, of the window. 66 Surely you don't care for a critic, pater," he said. "One man's opinion is only one man's opinion, even in print." "No, Jack, the public thinks for itself more than the critics like to suppose. In this case it thinks as they do, and it thinks rightly. I accept my limitations once and for all, now, but I work within them no more." He threw his cigar end into the fire. "You will give up writing?" his son asked. "I have done so," Elliot answered quietly, looking into the fire, and pressing his lips together lest his son should see that they were trembling. There was a silence lasting several minutes. Then Jack suddenly strode across the rug and seized his father's hand, pressing it hard. "It's a damned nuisance, pater," he said rather loud, with a tremble in his young voice. "I-I know." The younger generation was knocking at the door with a ringing hope and self-confidence. III. JOHN ELLIOT felt like an old soldier who has just retired from the army, and does not know whether to relapse upon committees, roses, boards, politics, or sitting in the sun. Unlike many rich and well-born men he had created for himself a life, and had lived in it for years. But now the critics and the public had brought the short service system into force. left the army, without any medals. What was he to do? He At first he had entertained some vague idea of living in his son's life. There was a very strong bond of affection between them. Despite the difference in their ages, it might be possible, he thought. But he found that he was mistaken. Life was colored differently for them. The rosecolored view and the grey refused to John Elliot returned his warm grasp. harmonize perfectly together. When In thinking over that moment after-spring and autumn try to walk arm-inwards, he could never tell whether he felt most humiliated, most touched, or most benumbed and finished. That hand-clasp of his son was the period put to the story of his career. So he thought then. arm they are apt to get out of step. So it was with the Elliots for a time. They got out of step, and could not stroll along quite smoothly together. Their progress became a dot-and-goone affair, which they both saw silently to be inartistic. So they unlinked their | smoothed the sheet out again. After arms. all, it was inevitable that Jack should The weariness of the one could not learn by his own deeds only. It is help striving against the fervid fresh- always so in life, otherwise life would ness of the other, and when cynicism almost cease to be life. Nature does peeps out of its kennel, showing its not allow her designs to be interfered teeth and ready to bark, hope retreats with. Enthusiasms, ambitions, will within doors, saddened, though, per-rush into being while the world lasts, haps, at heart still undaunted. Father and son had not got on quite well together for some time, when one day something occurred that seemed likely to separate them still more widely. re-incarnated, expelled from one soul, only to find refuge in another. So Jack was writing, doing that strange work in the dark that is so fascinating and yet so fearful. "What can be the idea on which the fabric of John Elliot discovered, quite by his story rests?" the father wondered, chance, that Jack had begun to write, as he cast his eyes again over the foolsdespite the conversation of the first cap. There was no definite light there. evening after his return from abroad. That page showed some power, but it The discovery was made one morning was enigmatic, cut out from the midst when Elliot sat down after breakfast to of something, inexplicable away from write a letter. He turned over the what preceded and followed it. Again blotting-book to find a sheet of note- Elliot laid the paper down and tried to paper, and some foolscap, closely scrib- write his note. But he could not. A bled over, fell out. For the moment fever seemed to have entered into him Elliot fancied that it was some old a fever of the mind. His whole work of his for Jack's penmanship career danced like a little black and red closely resembled his own but on demon before him that page upon of taking it up and examining it, he saw foolscap, mocking him, grimacing at at once that he was mistaken. He rec-him in the clear light of the London ognized Jack's hand, and, running his morning. It pointed at the words of eyes over the page, he found himself his son with hands whose very finplunged into a strongly dramatic scene that was evidently part of a long work of fiction. Unable to guess what had gone before it, or to know what was to come after, Elliot was nevertheless firmly seized and interested. Almost, without reflecting what he was doing, he read to the end. The scene broke off abruptly in the middle of a sentence, and instinctively he caught hold of a pen with the intention of continuing it. The custom of authorship laid a hand on him for the moment. Then he recollected himself and put the sheet down slowly. To his surprise his first feeling was one of keen anger. He felt as if his son had committed an act deliberately foolish if not wicked. Had he not humiliated himself to give to Jack the teaching of experience? He crumpled the paper up in his hand with the sensation of one who kills some loathsome insect. But then the momentary impulse passed away, and he gers seemed to sneer, each separately. He sprang up from the table angrily. "What is the matter with me?" he asked himself. "Dreaming in the morning like this? It is because I am lost without my accustomed life. I have not settled down yet into the new conditions that I have imposed upon | up his umbrella, pursued his way quite myself. So Jack is writing, and is alone towards the receiving house of far advanced in some book-far advanced." the Humane Society. The numbness began to thaw from his mind, and he He left his note unwritten, took his became conscious of thoughts which hat and stick, and walked out towards surprised and frightened him. For the the Park. His son had gone out almost little red and black demon had changed immediately after breakfast. It was a its mood now, but still companioued dull grey morning in early spring. The him, and whispered strange suggestions sky looked like smoke. No blue tore in his ear. It told him that his son its continuity. The air was rather was doing him some wrong in disrechilly and damp. There had been a garding his despair, and taking no good deal of rain in the night. In the warning by it; that the boy ought to Row the horses of a few determined have learned wisdom after the coufesriders kicked up the moist brown mud sion to which he had listened a conin showers that sent pedestrians flying. fession that had been hard to make, The straight paths were sparsely ten- and hard to remember when it had anted by lounging, vacant nursemaids, been made. And it told him more. staring along behind perambulators in If Jack disregarded the warning of this which rosy children dozed or chuckled. confession, of this sad career, was it Here and there a pale, plain governess, not because he believed that he could looking as if her nature had been starved to its bones, walked briskly and mechanically forward with her young charges, talking uneasy French in a hard, chirping voice that she tried to render cheerfully conversational. Pug dogs smelt and snuffled in the grass that sprang up around the iron posts of the railings. A few old people, wrapped in shawls and comforters, were dismally taking the air in slowly moving carriages. Two or three men, with livid, dirty faces, and heads thrown far back, snored heavily on the curved benches, and a gardener was sweeping away something from the path with a long broom. Elliot found the scene dreary enough as he walked slowly towards the Serpentine. He thought that he was thinking, but if he had been suddenly asked to explain about what, he might have been puzzled to reply. A numbness had come into his mind, preceding a period of unnatural and strained mental activity. do better things himself? Did he not, must he not, look for something very different in the future awaiting him? Otherwise, how could he work so streuuously? The page Elliot had read was numbered in the corner, and the number was 145. Much had gone before that page. Long hours must have been spent in leading up to it. When a man resigns a dear vice, it tortures him to be with another whom he believes to still practise it. He pictures to himself the joys the other possesses joys that he has known and has resolved to know never again. He endows the vice with a thousand beauties that it never had for any one. each hour that he does not spend with his companion he fancies him indulging in that dear vice, and, if he is strong to resist, he writhes with the thought of what he is missing. In He So it was with John Elliot that day. Only now he realized how much he had given up in giving up writing. dwelt over and over again upon the When he reached the Serpentine he long hours of happiness his son must turned towards the right and walked have spent in the glorious labor of crealong its far bank, which was almost ation, while his life was empty, as the deserted. The sky leaned a little lower life of the soldier who hears no more over the lead-colored water, and a the bugle-call, the word of command, drizzle of rain began to fall. This the tramp of troops. He dwelt upon drove even the few people who were them until a cold, rigid anger stole into about homeward, aud Elliot, putting his heart, and a terrible sense of un |