After the confession they walked home in silence. Claire was ashamed because she pretended while Allen was so much in earnest; yet she rejoiced over her success. The reality of a man’s ambition always frightens a woman at first.

     
Allen was also ashamed and yet relieved. It was become almost intolerable to have no one in whom he could confide.

At home, in the family circle, ambition is too often treated with the wet blanket or the bucket of cold water: no one believes that Johnny is going to be a great man. How can he? None of his grandfathers, cousins, brothers, or sisters have been great. Of course, he will grow up in obscurity, like the rest of them. To dream of anything else is like contempt for one’s ancestors — a dreadful impiety. Every house, in fact, is situated in the city of Nazareth. Allen knew that his mother, for instance, could not have the least sympathy with poetry. She knew none except the ancient and modern poems in her hymn-book. Even if he were to succeed she would have no sympathy. There is a success more disheartening than any failure — to win the greatness you desire and not to have it recognised. There was once, I remember, a respectable pair in a country town. They had three sons born unto them. One of these carried on his father’s trade, became rich, and was much thought of by his fellow-citizens. The second, who was the dullest of the three, went to
Cambridge, and was fain to take a degree in Law. Now, in his day this branch of learning was considered to be reserved for those who could not take their degree, by reason of ignorance and thickness of brain, in Arts. Then he presently went into holy orders, and is now a country vicar, and more solemn than the whole bench of bishops. The third became a painter, and a great painter, and an Academician, and is held in high esteem, so that his name is known everywhere. The venerable parents regard this son even as the Prodigal. To be sure, he does not live on husks, nor has he yet returned to ask for the fatted calf, and from all they can hear he lives in a good house. But, you see, his greatness is not of a kind they can understand. Their eldest son is, in his line, eminent; he is a warm man; he is ex-mayor, and is greatly respected. They are proud of him. Their next son, who took the Law degree, and wags an unrelenting forefinger in a pulpit, dressed in a white surplice and a hood, is also an intelligible success. It is not every mother who has a son in the Church. But how is the painter to be classified, and
with whom compared?

     
This might be, in some sort, Allen’s portion. His mother’s disappointment would be dreadful if she learned his ambition. When he set forth on that morning when he was to mount the desk of the City clerk for the first time, she took him in her
arms and solemnly kissed him with tears. ‘Go,’ she said, ‘go, my son; retrieve the disgrace of your father. He failed, poor man, not through any fault of his own — no, no — it was his partner’s doing — it was all John Stephens. But work, Allen, work, and get a good name, and perhaps some day you, too, will be rich.’

     
So it seemed to him, as he walked homeward through the great forest, that there was no one to trust except Claire. Will, to be sure, might be trusted to keep a secret. But he cared

nothing at all about poetry; he regarded books and literature from the simplest point of view, namely, as the means of conveying information. He had no feeling for style; did not understand, in spite of instruction, what it meant, and was careless of the collocation of words, provided they conveyed the meaning intended. Allen, on the contrary, was quite happy even if there was no meaning at all, provided the words were musical and rang melodiously on his ear. Claire would understand him — nay, she had already understood him.

     
‘You think,’ he asked timidly, ‘you think, Claire, that I may, some day, succeed?’

     
‘Oh, Allen, I am sure you will!’ she replied, with the generous warmth of feminine sympathy which strengthens a man’s courage and consoles the most despondent. Observe that Claire pretended no longer; she was now quite overpowered by the depth of his ambition. She believed in him henceforth as Kadijah believed in the Prophet — because he said it. Had he never produced a line of poetry in his life she would have believed in him to the end.

     
‘As for the City,’ Allen went on, ‘I hate it, Claire. The same work every day; the same letters to be written; the same papers to be copied; the same figures to be entered and added up; the same chatter of the clerks. Will doesn’t mind it; he takes an interest in it. I take none — I hate it! Why, if I were to tell the fellows in the office about my — my verses they would think it the best joke they had ever heard.’

     
‘Patience, Allen,’ she said, ‘patience, and keep up your courage.’

     
‘I should have courage, and I could endure a great deal more of the City, if I had only confidence in myself.’

     
They parted at the garden gate. Usually Claire contented herself with a nod and a good-night. This evening she gave Allen her hand. He understood the act to mean an assurance of secrecy, but she meant more, though she did not dare to put it into words. She meant an act of respect and an appeal for forgiveness. She started with pretence and play-acting; she ended with conquest which brought humiliation with it.

     
‘Allen,’ she whispered, ‘you have only half trusted me.’

     
‘What more is there that I can tell you?’

     
‘You can show me your verses.’

     
He blushed to the roots of his hair, and left her without a word. When he got home he found his mother waiting supper for him. She knew that he spent nearly all his evenings at the Cottage, and she asked no questions.

     
‘Things going on well at the office, Allen?’ she inquired. It was a daily question, just as the old residents, when they met in the morning, asked each other what news was stirring in the
City.

     
‘Nothing changes at the office, mother,’ he replied wearily.

‘We go there every morning, we come away every evening; nothing ever will change.’

     
She sighed. It was not thus that an ambitious youth should talk.

     
‘There are many things,’ she said, ‘which change. Young men become known, they are promoted, they become heads of departments, they even become partners, or they go away and set up for themselves, as your father did when he had saved some money, and was known to all the friends of the House.’

     
‘Yet he failed,’ said Allen bitterly.

     
‘Yes, he failed.’ The widow’s eyes filled with tears.

     
‘Forgive me, mother. I will — I will retrieve the name; if not in one way, then in another. There are many ways, believe me, my dear mother.’

     
‘There is only one for you, Allen; it is to win a good name, and make money in the City —— where he hoped to make it.’

     
He made no reply, but presently finished his supper, and went to his own room for the night. There, with a beating heart, he unlocked his desk and spread out his verses before him. Many nights had he done this, but this night it was different; he was going to read them to himself for the last time; tomorrow he would give them to Claire. The sweet secrecy would be gone; he would no longer be sole guardian,
so to speak, of his children. Even for Claire’s eyes to rest on them seemed a profanation. Besides, what would she think of them? How would she like them?

     
The door was locked; his mother had gone to bed; the house was perfectly silent; he was quite alone with his poems. He was not going to write; he was going to correct, to arrange, to read dispassionately. He spread out his papers, placed the light conveniently, and began his reading critically. Here a very odd thing happened to him. Tonight he felt very strongly the strangeness of it. It happened to him, in fact, whenever he sat down to read his own verses, but it never happened so very strongly as on that night. The thing was this. At the first outset, particularly if he had not looked at the verses for a week or so, a chill disappointment fell upon him, and he grew pale with shame; for he always, on each occasion, found them cold, weak, and ineffective; a dreadful flatness marked them all. Presently, as he continued reading, a change would come over his mind — the verses would become natural, warm, glowing with fancy, full of sacred fire. Now the reason, which he did not know, was this, and no other. He began his reading determined to maintain the attitude of an outsider. He was resolved to read on as if the leaflets before him were the work of another man altogether; as if he had been called upon by publishers to give an opinion on the literary merits of the poem. He began well, but he could not keep up the mental position. Presently, little by little, he began to remember the things

which had been in his head, the effects which he desired to produce, when he wrote down those lines. These effects were always ambitious, so that he really read, not the actual words, but the great and soaring thoughts which had been in his heart. There is nothing in the whole of literature so splendid in shape and colour as the half-defined imagery of a young man’s fancy; but it has never been caught. And, while Allen read, it was well that the door was shut, because he sat with tears in his eyes, with trembling hand, and with his heart aglow.

     
While he read and corrected, this short night of June passed away, and presently he became aware that it was already broad day — that the sun was up and the blackbird singing in the Forest. He bitterly thought of’ the morrow; he would have to go to church, instead of talking to Claire about his poetry. He threw himself upon the bed where he dreamed, not of sweet verses, as he would have wished, but of an ignoble day at his desk in the City, and a dinner at Crosby Hall in the company of Tommy.

     
‘Your face tells me something, Claire,’ said her father when the girl returned.

     
‘Allen has confessed to me,’ she replied gravely. ‘You were right. He dreams of being a poet.’

     
On Monday evening Allen came again, but not alone, for Will was with him on his bicycle. Claire joined them, and they all three went off, as usual, into the Forest. By this time Will, nearly six feet high, was as handsome a young fellow as one may wish to see, rejoicing in his strength and in his youth. The girl could not avoid observing the difference between his careless, natural ease, his confident bearing, his brave eyes, which looked as if he was ready to meet any reverses whom Fate might send, and fight them all, and the anxious, nervous face of Allen, with his sharp, thin face, slight figure, and stooping shoulders. Will managed his iron horse with dexterity, sometimes careering round them, sometimes reining in the eager steed to a walk, sometimes darting swiftly ahead, and as swiftly returning. In these brief absences the pair conversed in guilty whispers.

     
‘I sat up all Saturday night,’ said Allen, ‘and looked over my verses. It seemed as if I was reading them for the last time. Do you think you would like to see them, Claire — really?’

     
‘Oh! Allen, of course I would, if you think you can trust me with them.’

     
They were both blushing, as if the secret were the recollection
of a crime.

     
‘I want,’ he went on hurriedly, because Will might return at any moment, ‘I want nothing but a candid opinion, Claire — not praise which I do not deserve.’ This is, in fact, what all

young writers want. ‘I want your dispassionate judgment. Tell me what my faults are.’

     
‘I shall see no faults, Allen.’

     
‘Yes, oh yes! I am sure there are faults. Sometimes I think they are full of faults; but sometimes — oh! Claire, do not think me vain — sometimes I think they are really good — worthy even of being published.’

     
‘I am sure they are. Allen.’

     
‘Then, Claire’ — his hand stole into the breast-pocket of his coat — ‘I have them here. Remember, if I give them to you it must be on the promise that you are not to flatter me. Put them into the fire if you find them bad.’ He said this with so rueful a face that Claire was fain to laugh at him.

     
‘You silly boy,’ she said; ‘give me the papers. And what would you say if I were really to put your poems into the fire? To be sure, we have no fire in June.’

     
He handed her the packet, solemnly and slowly, almost as an alchemist might hand to a disciple the secret of the elixir.

     
‘Here is my work,’ he said. ‘Hide the packet, Claire. Quick, quick! I see the bicycle coming back.’

     
Back, in fact, it came, the face of the rider glowing in the sunlight.

     
‘Oh, you two!’ he cried, ranging alongside. ‘Has Allen been firing off any more verses, Claire? The way he spouts sometimes is enough to lift off the top of a fellow’s head. Did he tell you what Keats had the good luck to say about the sunset? With these fellows it’s all what they say about a thing. I don’t believe they really care about anything half so much as we people who don’t make rhymes.’

     
‘Ah!’ said Claire; ‘they care so much more for beautiful things than we do that they cannot help putting their thoughts into beautiful words.’

     
‘Don’t believe it,’ said the lad of prose, ‘else they wouldn’t make so much fuss about what they say. But I like a rattling good story in verse. Give me the tale of the fellow who kept the bridge; but I can’t see any fun in bothering one’s head about a fellow who couldn’t be happy aboard ship till he’d said something fine about the sea.’

     
Claire laughed.

     
‘Mostly he throws Keats at my head. Keats was no end of a fellow; once he worried the life out of the west wind, and once he got hold of a moon, and turned it full into a room; you never saw such a sight. He died young, did Keats — so that Allen had better look out.’

     
‘Why?’ asked Claire.

     
‘Well, you see, Allen is getting so full of the poets that one of these fine days he will be setting up for a poet himself. Next thing, he’ll die young, like Keats; or he’ll leave off believing anything at all, like Shelley’ — here he wondered why

Claire, as well as Allen, looked red and guilty — ‘or perhaps he’ll leave the City and live here, and write odes on the buttercups, like Wordsworth. He’ll be a lost Allen, Claire.’ He laughed, turned his vehicle, and was off again along the level road. Will at least was a lad with no dreams.

     
‘You see,’ said Claire, ‘there is no great merit in guessing your secret. But it was my father who told it to me first.’

     
‘Your father?’

     
‘Yes; and now Will half guesses it. Allen’ —she spoke, the deceitful creature, as if moved by a sudden thought — ‘you want better advice than I can give you. All I can say is, that I shall find your verses beautiful and delightful; I know I shall. You must read them yourself to my father.’

     
‘To your father? Claire, I could not.’

     
‘Why, he is not a harsh critic, Besides, you must have some one to take counsel with, and I am only a very ignorant girl.’

     
‘Not ignorant, Claire, unless Will and I are ignorant. You know all that we know.’

     
‘Then, come, Allen, come with me to my father. See, he has guessed your secret already.’

     
‘I am ashamed, Claire.’ This tall lad of eighteen was like a girl for shyness over his own verses. A man’s works are to himself, when he is a boy, and bashful, even more than the charms of a maiden are to her.

     
‘You are ashamed? Why? Because your verses are your own. Allen? That is all the more reason for pride. Come.’

     
They found M. Philipon in the garden among the vegetables. Consequently he had on his working blouse. At their approach he stood up and straightened his back. ‘In this garden, Allen,’ he said, ‘there is a slug — not a common slug, a slug of vast resource and insatiable appetite. Every night I search for this slug. I give him no peace; I have vowed his destruction. Yet he is a crafty slug, and he eludes my hunt. The nature of the slug is treachery, cowardice, and greediness. For him I grow the finest peas, the largest lettuces, the roundest cabbages. He mocks me. He eats my substance; he waits till I am in bed; then he laughs and comes out. By this time he must be like a pillow for fatness.’

     
‘Father,’ said Claire, ‘can you leave the slug this evening? Allen wishes to ask your counsel.’

     
They all went solemnly into the house, and M. Philipon sat down, assuming visibly the air of a Boileau.

     
‘Allen has written some verses,’ Claire explained, abruptly plunging at once into the middle of things. Girls have no understanding of a young man’s modesty. ‘He wants no one to know about them as yet, except ourselves, and he asks you to hear him read them.’

     
Allen acquiesced by a feeble inclination of the head and a

sickly smile. He could not have said all this for himself in terms so plain and direct; and he felt somehow as if Claire should have participated, so to speak, in his own reserve.

     
‘Allen has written some verses.’ Why, she might just as well have said, ‘Allen has walked ten miles.’ Yet the thing was said, and her father was in the secret. It seemed like the
letting out of water.

     
‘You have done well,’ said the critic, folding his arms, ‘to entrust your ambitions to the sympathy of your playfellow and the experience of your teacher. Read your works. Expect, young man, from me a rigid censure. I look for nothing short of the merits of French verse: these merits are precision, netteté, clearness of thought; everywhere the right word. Even in English, where there are so many words, there is always the right word. Claire, my child, sit beside me. Open your heart to the noble sentiments of the poet, and leave to me the coldness of the critic.’

     
This was encouraging; Boileau, in his age, might so have received Béranger in his youth.